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Title: The Complete Project Gutenberg Works of John Galsworthy

Author: John Galsworthy

Release Date: June, 2002 [eBook #3254]
[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
[This file was first posted on February 28,2001]
[This file was last updated on March 15, 2002]

Edition: 12

Language: English

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*** START OF THE COMPLETE PROJECT GUTENBERG WORKS OF JOHN GALSWORTHY ***



This eBook was produced by David Widger <widger@cecomet.net>




                  THE ENTIRE GUTENBERG GALSWORTHY FILES


CONTENTS:

The Forsyte Saga:
     Volume 1. The Man of Property
     Volume 2. Indian Summer of a Forsyte
               In Chancery
     Volume 3. Awakening
               To Let
Other Novels:
     The Dark Flower
     The Freelands
     Beyond
     Villa Rubein and Other Stories
          Villa Rubein
          A Man of Devon
          A Knight
          Salvation of a Forsyte
          The Silence
     Saint's Progress
     The Island Pharisees
     The Country House
     Fraternity
     The Patrician
     The Burning Spear
     Five Short Tales
          The First and Last
          A Stoic
          The Apple Tree
          The Juryman
          Indian Summer of a Forsyte
Essays and Studies:
     Concerning Life
          Inn of Tranquility
          Magpie over the Hill
          Sheep-shearing
          Evolution
          Riding in the Mist
          The Procession
          A Christian
          Wind in the Rocks
          My Distant Relative
          The Black Godmother
          Quality
          The Grand Jury
          Gone
          Threshing
          That Old-time Place
          Romance--three Gleams
          Memories
          Felicity
     Concerning Letters
          A Novelist's Allegory
          Some Platitudes Concerning Drama
          Meditation on Finality
          Wanted--Schooling
          On Our Dislike of Things as They Are
          The Windlestraw
          About Censorship
          Vague Thoughts on Art
Plays:
     First Series:
          The Silver Box
          Joy
          Strife
     Second Series:
          The Eldest Son
          The Little Dream
          Justice
     Third Series:
          The Fugitive
          The Pigeon
          The Mob
     Fourth Series:
          A Bit O' Love
          The Foundations
          The Skin Game
     Six Short Plays:
          The First and The Last
          The Little Man
          Hall-marked
          Defeat
          The Sun
          Punch and Go
     Fifth Series:
          A Family Man
          Loyalties
          Windows




FORSYTE SAGA--Complete

By John Galsworthy



[Spelling conforms to the original: "s's" instead of our "z's";
and "c's" where we would have "s's"; and "...our" as in colour
and flavour; and many interesting double consonants; etc.]



FORSYTE SAGA

I. THE MAN OF PROPERTY

By John Galsworthy



VOLUME I



TO MY WIFE:

I DEDICATE THE FORSYTE SAGA IN ITS ENTIRETY,
BELIEVING IT TO BE OF ALL MY WORKS THE LEAST
UNWORTHY OF ONE  WITHOUT WHOSE ENCOURAGEMENT,
SYMPATHY AND CRITICISM COULD NEVER HAVE
BECOME EVEN SUCH A WRITER AS I AM.




PREFACE:

"The Forsyte Saga" was the title originally destined for that
part of it which is called "The Man of Property"; and to adopt it
for the collected chronicles of the Forsyte family has indulged
the Forsytean tenacity that is in all of us.  The word Saga might
be objected to on the ground that it connotes the heroic and that
there is little heroism in these pages.  But it is used with a
suitable irony; and, after all, this long tale, though it may
deal with folk in frock coats, furbelows, and a gilt-edged
period, is not devoid of the essential beat of conflict.
Discounting for the gigantic stature and blood-thirstiness of old
days, as they have come down to us in fairy-tale and legend, the
folk of the old Sagas were Forsytes, assuredly, in their
possessive instincts, and as little proof against the inroads of
beauty and passion as Swithin, Soames, or even Young Jolyon.  And
if heroic figures, in days that never were, seem to startle out
from their surroundings in fashion unbecoming to a Forsyte of the
Victorian era, we may be sure that tribal instinct was even then
the prime force, and that "family" and the sense of home and
property counted as they do to this day, for all the recent
efforts to "talk them out."

So many people have written and claimed that their families were
the originals of the Forsytes that one has been almost encouraged
to believe in the typicality of an imagined species.  Manners
change and modes evolve, and "Timothy's on the Bayswater Road"
becomes a nest of the unbelievable in all except essentials; we
shall not look upon its like again, nor perhaps on such a one as
James or Old Jolyon.  And yet the figures of Insurance Societies
and the utterances of Judges reassure us daily that our earthly
paradise is still a rich preserve, where the wild raiders, Beauty
and Passion, come stealing in, filching security from beneath our
noses.  As surely as a dog will bark at a brass band, so will the
essential Soames in human nature ever rise up uneasily against
the dissolution which hovers round the folds of ownership.

"Let the dead Past bury its dead" would be a better saying if the
Past ever died.  The persistence of the Past is one of those
tragi-comic blessings which each new age denies, coming cocksure
on to the stage to mouth its claim to a perfect novelty.

But no Age is so new as that!  Human Nature, under its changing
pretensions and clothes, is and ever will be very much of a
Forsyte, and might, after all, be a much worse animal.

Looking back on the Victorian era, whose ripeness, decline, and
'fall-of' is in some sort pictured in "The Forsyte Saga," we see
now that we have but jumped out of a frying-pan into a fire.  It
would be difficult to substantiate a claim that the case of
England was better in 1913 than it was in 1886, when the Forsytes
assembled at Old Jolyon's to celebrate the engagement of June to
Philip Bosinney.  And in 1920, when again the clan gathered to
bless the marriage of Fleur with Michael Mont, the state of
England is as surely too molten and bankrupt as in the eighties
it was too congealed and low-percented.  If these chronicles had

been a really scientific study of transition one would have dwelt
probably on such factors as the invention of bicycle, motor-car,
and flying-machine; the arrival of a cheap Press; the decline of
country life and increase of the towns; the birth of the Cinema.
Men are, in fact, quite unable to control their own inventions;
they at best develop adaptability to the new conditions those
inventions create.

But this long tale is no scientific study of a period; it is
rather an intimate incarnation of the disturbance that Beauty
effects in the lives of men.

The figure of Irene, never, as the reader may possibly have
observed, present, except through the senses of other characters,
is a concretion of disturbing Beauty impinging on a possessive
world.

One has noticed that readers, as they wade on through the salt
waters of the Saga, are inclined more and more to pity Soames,
and to think that in doing so they are in revolt against the mood
of his creator.  Far from it!  He, too, pities Soames, the
tragedy of whose life is the very simple, uncontrollable tragedy
of being unlovable, without quite a thick enough skin to be
thoroughly unconscious of the fact.  Not even Fleur loves Soames
as he feels he ought to be loved.  But in pitying Soames, readers
incline, perhaps, to animus against Irene: After all, they think,
he wasn't a bad fellow, it wasn't his fault; she ought to have
forgiven him, and so on!

And, taking sides, they lose perception of the simple truth,
which underlies the whole story, that where sex attraction is
utterly and definitely lacking in one partner to a union, no
amount of pity, or reason, or duty, or what not, can overcome a
repulsion implicit in Nature.  Whether it ought to, or no, is
beside the point; because in fact it never does.  And where Irene
seems hard and cruel, as in the Bois de Boulogne, or the Goupenor
Gallery, she is but wisely realistic--knowing that the least
concession is the inch which precedes the impossible, the
repulsive ell.

A criticism one might pass on the last phase of the Saga is the
complaint that Irene and Jolyon those rebels against property--
claim spiritual property in their son Jon.  But it would be
hypercriticism, as the tale is told.  No father and mother could
have let the boy marry Fleur without knowledge of the facts; and
the facts determine Jon, not the persuasion of his parents.
Moreover, Jolyon's persuasion is not on his own account, but on
Irene's, and Irene's persuasion becomes a reiterated: "Don't
think of me, think of yourself!" That Jon, knowing the facts, can
realise his mother's feelings, will hardly with justice be held
proof that she is, after all, a Forsyte.

But though the impingement of Beauty and the claims of Freedom on
a possessive world are the main prepossessions of the Forsyte
Saga, it cannot be absolved from the charge of embalming the
upper-middle class.  As the old Egyptians placed around their
mummies the necessaries of a future existence, so I have
endeavoured to lay beside the, figures of Aunts Ann and Juley and
Hester, of Timothy and Swithin, of Old Jolyon and James, and of
their sons, that which shall guarantee them a little life here-
after, a little balm in the hurried Gilead of a dissolving
"Progress."

If the upper-middle class, with other classes, is destined to
"move on" into amorphism, here, pickled in these pages, it lies
under glass for strollers in the wide and ill-arranged museum of
Letters.  Here it rests, preserved in its own juice: The Sense
of Property.

1922.




THE MAN OF PROPERTY

by JOHN GALSWORTHY




"........  You will answer
The slaves are ours ....."
-Merchant of Venice.




TO EDWARD GARNETT





PART I


CHAPTER I

'AT HOME' AT OLD JOLYON'S


Those privileged to be present at a family festival of the
Forsytes have seen that charming and instructive sight--an upper
middle-class family in full plumage.  But whosoever of these
favoured persons has possessed the gift of psychological analysis
(a talent without monetary value and properly ignored by the
Forsytes), has witnessed a spectacle, not only delightful in
itself, but illustrative of an obscure human problem.  In plainer
words, he has gleaned from a gathering of this family--no branch
of which had a liking for the other, between no three members of
whom existed anything worthy of the name of sympathy--evidence of
that mysterious concrete tenacity which renders a family so
formidable a unit of society, so clear a reproduction of society
in miniature.  He has been admitted to a vision of the dim roads
of social progress, has understood something of patriarchal life,
of the swarmings of savage hordes, of the rise and fall of
nations.  He is like one who, having watched a tree grow from its
planting--a paragon of tenacity, insulation, and success, amidst
the deaths of a hundred other plants less fibrous, sappy, and
persistent--one day will see it flourishing with bland, full
foliage, in an almost repugnant prosperity, at the summit of its
efflorescence.

On June 15, eighteen eighty-six, about four of the afternoon, the
observer who chanced to be present at the house of old Jolyon
Forsyte in Stanhope Gate, might have seen the highest
efflorescence of the Forsytes.

This was the occasion of an 'at home' to celebrate the engagement
of Miss June Forsyte, old Jolyon's granddaughter, to Mr. Philip
Bosinney.  In the bravery of light gloves, buff waistcoats,
feathers and frocks, the family were present, even Aunt Ann, who
now but seldom left the comer of her brother Timothy's green
drawing-room, where, under the aegis of a plume of dyed pampas
grass in a light blue vase, she sat all day reading and knitting,
surrounded by the effigies of three generations of Forsytes.
Even Aunt Ann was there; her inflexible back, and the dignity of
her calm old face personifying the rigid possessiveness of the
family idea.

When a Forsyte was engaged, married, or born, the Forsytes were
present; when a Forsyte died--but no Forsyte had as yet died;
they did not die; death being contrary to their principles, they
took precautions against it, the instinctive precautions of
highly vitalized persons who resent encroachments on their
property.

About the Forsytes mingling that day with the crowd of other
guests, there was a more than ordinarily groomed look, an alert,
inquisitive assurance, a brilliant respectability, as though they
were attired in defiance of something.  The habitual sniff on the
face of Soames Forsyte had spread through their ranks; they were
on their guard.

The subconscious offensiveness of their attitude has constituted
old Jolyon's 'home' the psychological moment of the family
history, made it the prelude of their drama.

The Forsytes were resentful of something, not individually, but
as a family; this resentment expressed itself in an added
perfection of raiment, an exuberance of family cordiality, an
exaggeration of family importance, and--the sniff.  Danger--so
indispensable in bringing out the fundamental quality of any
society, group, or individual--was what the Forsytes scented; the
premonition of danger put a burnish on their armour.  For the
first time, as a family, they appeared to have an instinct of
being in contact, with some strange and unsafe thing.

Over against the piano a man of bulk and stature was wearing two
waistcoats on his wide chest, two waistcoats and a ruby pin,
instead of the single satin waistcoat and diamond pin of, more
usual occasions, and his shaven, square, old face, the colour of
pale leather, with pale eyes, had its most dignified look, above
his satin stock.  This was Swithin Forsyte.  Close to the window,
where he could get more than his fair share of fresh air, the
other twin, James--the fat and the lean of it, old Jolyon called
these brothers--like the bulky Swithin, over six feet in height,
but very lean, as though destined from his birth to strike a
balance and maintain an average, brooded over the scene with his
permanent stoop; his grey eyes had an air of fixed absorption in
some secret worry, broken at intervals by a rapid, shifting
scrutiny of surrounding facts; his cheeks, thinned by two
parallel folds, and a long, clean-shaven upper lip, were framed
within Dundreary whiskers.  In his hands he turned and turned a
piece of china.  Not far off, listening to a lady in brown, his
only son Soames, pale and well-shaved, dark-haired, rather bald,
had poked his chin up sideways, carrying his nose with that
aforesaid appearance of 'sniff,' as though despising an egg which
he knew he could not digest.  Behind him his cousin, the tall
George, son of the fifth Forsyte, Roger, had a Quilpish look on
his fleshy face, pondering one of his sardonic jests.  Something
inherent to the occasion had affected them all.

Seated in a row close to one another were three  ladies--Aunts
Ann, Hester (the two Forsyte maids), and Juley (short for Julia),
who not in first youth had so far forgotten herself as to marry
Septimus Small, a man of poor constitution.  She had survived him
for many years.  With her elder and younger sister she lived now
in the house of Timothy, her sixth and youngest brother, on the
Bayswater Road.  Each of these ladies held fans in their hands,
and each with some touch of Colour, some emphatic feather or
brooch, testified to the solemnity of the opportunity.

In the centre of the room, under the chandelier, as became a
host, stood the head of the family, old Jolyon himself.  Eighty
years of age, with his fine, white hair, his dome-like forehead,
his little, dark grey eyes, and an immense white moustache, which
drooped and spread below the level of his strong jaw, he had a
patriarchal look, and in spite of lean cheeks and hollows at his
temples, seemed master of perennial youth.  He held him self
extremely upright, and his shrewd, steady  eyes had lost none of
their clear shining.  Thus  he gave an impression of superiority
to the  doubts and dislikes of smaller men.  Having had  his own
way for innumerable years, he had  earned a prescriptive right to
it.  It would never have occurred to old Jolyon that it was
necessary to wear a look of doubt or of defiance.

Between him and the four other brothers who were present, James,
Swithin, Nicholas, and Roger, there was much difference, much
similarity.  In turn, each of these four brothers was very
different from the other, yet they, too, were alike.

Through the varying features and expression  of those five faces
could be marked a certain  steadfastness of chin, underlying
surface distinctions, marking a racial stamp, too prehistoric to
trace, too remote and permanent to discuss--the  very hall-mark
and guarantee of the family for tunes.

Among the younger generation, in the tall, bull-like George, in
pallid strenuous Archibald, in young Nicholas with his sweet and
tentative obstinacy, in the grave and foppishly determined
Eustace, there was this same stamp--less meaningful perhaps, but
unmistakable--a sign of something ineradicable in the family
soul. At one time or another during the afternoon, all these
faces, so dissimilar and so alike, had worn an expression of
distrust, the object of which was undoubtedly the man whose
acquaintance they were thus assembled to make.  Philip Bosinney
was known to be a young man without fortune, but Forsyte girls
had become engaged to such before, and had actually married them.
It was not altogether for this reason, therefore, that the minds
of the Forsytes misgave them.  They could not have explained the
origin of a misgiving obscured by the mist of family gossip.  A
story was undoubtedly told that he had paid his duty call to
Aunts Ann, Juley, and Hester, in a soft grey hat--a soft grey
hat, not even a new one--a dusty thing with a shapeless crown.
"So, extraordinary, my dear--so odd," Aunt Hester, passing
through the little, dark hall (she was rather short-sighted), had
tried to 'shoo' it off a chair, taking it for a strange,
disreputable cat--Tommy had such disgraceful friends!  She was
disturbed when it did not move.  Like an artist for ever seeking
to discover the significant trifle which embodies the whole
character of a scene, or place, or person, so those unconscious
artists--the Forsytes had fastened by intuition on this hat; it
was their significant trifle, the detail in which was embedded
the meaning of the whole matter; for each had asked himself:
"Come, now, should I have paid that visit in that hat?" and each
had answered "No!" and some, with more imagination than others,
had added: "It would never have come into my head!"

George, on hearing the story, grinned.  The hat had obviously
been worn as a practical joke!  He himself was a connoisseur of
such. "Very haughty!" he said, "the wild Buccaneer."

And this mot, the 'Buccaneer,' was bandied from mouth to mouth,
till it became the favourite mode of alluding to Bosinney.

Her aunts reproached June afterwards about the hat.

"We don't think you ought to let him, dear!" they had said.

June had answered in her imperious brisk way, like the little
embodiment of will she was:  "Oh! what does it matter?  Phil
never knows what he's got on!"

No one had credited an answer so outrageous.  A man not to know
what he had on?  No, no!  What indeed was this young man, who, in
becoming engaged to June, old Jolyon's acknowledged heiress, had
done so well for himself?  He was an architect, not in itself a
sufficient reason for wearing such a hat.  None of the Forsytes
happened to be architects, but one of them knew two architects
who would never have worn such a hat upon a call of ceremony in
the London season.

Dangerous--ah, dangerous!  June, of course, had not seen this,
but, though not yet nineteen, she was notorious.  Had she not
said to Mrs. Soames--who was always so beautifully dressed--that
feathers were vulgar?  Mrs. Soames had actually given up wearing
feathers, so dreadfully downright was dear June!

These misgivings, this disapproval, and perfectly genuine
distrust, did not prevent the Forsytes from gathering to old
Jolyon's invitation.  An 'At Home' at Stanhope Gate was a great
rarity; none had been held for twelve years, not indeed, since
old Mrs. Jolyon had died.

Never had there been so full an assembly, for, mysteriously
united in spite of all their differences, they had taken arms
against a common peril.  Like cattle when a dog comes into the
field, they stood head to head and shoulder to shoulder, prepared
to run upon and trample the invader to death.  They had come,
too, no doubt, to get some notion of what sort of presents they
would ultimately be expected to give; for though the question of
wedding gifts was usually graduated in this way: 'What are you
givin?  Nicholas is givin' spoons!'--so very much depended on the
bridegroom.  If he were sleek, well-brushed, prosperous-looking,
it was more necessary to give him nice things; he would expect
them.  In the end each gave exactly what was right and proper, by
a species of family adjustment arrived at as prices are arrived
at on the Stock Exchange--the exact niceties being regulated at
Timothy's commodious, red-brick residence in Bayswater,
overlooking the Park, where dwelt Aunts Ann, Juley, and Hester.

The uneasiness of the Forsyte family has been justified by the
simple mention of the hat.  How impossible and wrong would it
have been for any family, with the regard for appearances which
should ever characterize, the great upper middle-class, to feel
otherwise than uneasy!

The author of the uneasiness stood talking to June by the further
door; his curly hair had a rumpled appearance, as though he found
what was going on around him unusual.  He had an air, too, of
having a joke all to himself.  George, speaking aside to his
brother, Eustace, said:

"Looks as if he might make a bolt of it--the dashing Buccaneer!"

This 'very singular-looking man,' as Mrs. Small afterwards called
him, was of medium height and strong build, with a pale, brown
face, a dust-coloured moustache, very prominent cheek-bones, and
hollow checks.  His forehead sloped back towards the crown of his
head, and bulged out in bumps over the eyes, like foreheads seen
in the Lion-house at the Zoo.  He had sherry-coloured eyes,
disconcertingly inattentive at times.  Old Jolyon's coachman,
after driving June and Bosinney to the theatre, had remarked to
the butler:

"I dunno what to make of 'im.  Looks to me for all the world like
an 'alf-tame leopard." And every now and then a Forsyte would
come up, sidle round, and take a look at him.

June stood in front, fending off this idle curiosity--a little
bit of a thing, as somebody once said, 'all hair and spirit,'
with fearless blue eyes, a firm jaw, and a bright colour, whose
face and body seemed too slender for her crown of red-gold hair.

A tall woman, with a beautiful figure, which some member of the
family had once compared to a heathen goddess, stood looking at
these two with a shadowy smile.

Her hands, gloved in French grey, were crossed one over the
other, her grave, charming face held to one side, and the eyes of
all men near were fastened on it.  Her figure swayed, so balanced
that the very air seemed to set it moving.  There was warmth, but
little colour, in her cheeks; her large, dark eyes were soft.

But it was at her lips--asking a question, giving an answer, with
that shadowy smile--that men looked; they were sensitive lips,
sensuous and sweet, and through them seemed to come warmth and
perfume like the warmth and perfume of a flower.

The engaged couple thus scrutinized were unconscious of this
passive goddess.  It was Bosinney who first noticed her, and
asked her name.

June took her lover up to the woman with the beautiful figure.

"Irene is my greatest chum," she said: "Please be good friends,
you two!"

At the little lady's command they all three smiled; and while
they were smiling, Soames Forsyte, silently appearing from behind
the woman with the beautiful figure, who was his wife, said:

"Ah!  introduce me too!"

He was seldom, indeed, far from Irene's side at public functions,
and even when separated by, the exigencies of social intercourse,
could be seen following her about with his eyes, in which were
strange expressions of watchfulness and longing.

At the window his father, James, was still scrutinizing the marks
on the piece of china..

"I wonder at Jolyon's allowing this engagement," he said to Aunt
Ann.  "They tell me there's no chance of their getting married
for years.  This young Bosinney" (he made the word a dactyl in
opposition to general usage of a short o) "has got nothing.  When
Winifred married Dartie, I made him bring every penny into
settlement--lucky thing, too--they'd ha' had nothing by this
time!"

Aunt Ann looked up from her velvet chair.  Grey curls banded her
forehead, curls that, unchanged for decades, had extinguished in
the family all sense of time.  She made no reply, for she rarely
spoke, husbanding her aged voice; but to James, uneasy of
conscience, her look was as good as an answer.

"Well," he said, "I couldn't help Irene's having no money.
Soames was in such a hurry; he got quite thin dancing attendance
on her."

Putting the bowl pettishly down on the piano, he let his eyes
wander to the group by the door.

"It's my opinion," he said unexpectedly, "that it's just as well
as it is."

Aunt Ann did not ask him to explain this strange utterance.  She
knew what he was thinking.  If Irene had no money she would not
be so foolish as to do anything wrong; for they said--they said--
she had been asking for a separate room; but, of course, Soames
had not....

James interrupted her reverie:

"But where," he asked, "was Timothy?  Hadn't he come with them?"

Through Aunt Ann's compressed lips a tender smile forced its way:

"No, he didn't think it wise, with so much of this diphtheria
about; and he so liable to take things."

James answered:

"Well, be takes good care of himself.  I can't afford to take the
care of myself that he does."

Nor was it easy to say which, of admiration, envy, or contempt,
was dominant in that remark.

Timothy, indeed, was seldom seen.  The baby of the family, a
publisher by profession, he had some years before, when business
was at full tide, scented out the stagnation which, indeed, had
not yet come, but which ultimately, as all agreed, was bound to
set in, and, selling his share in a firm engaged mainly in the
production of religious books, had invested the quite conspicuous
proceeds in three per cent. consols.  By this act he had at once
assumed an isolated position, no other Forsyte being content with
less than four per cent.  for his money; and this isolation had
slowly and surely undermined a spirit perhaps better than
commonly endowed with caution.  He had become almost a myth--a
kind of incarnation of security haunting the background of the
Forsyte universe.  He had never committed the imprudence of
marrying, or encumbering himself in any way with children.

James resumed, tapping the piece of china:

"This isn't real old Worcester.  I s'pose Jolyon's told you
something about the young man.  From all I can learn, he's got no
business, no income, and no connection worth speaking of; but
then, I know nothing--nobody tells me anything."

Aunt Ann shook her head.  Over her square-chinned, aquiline old
face a trembling passed; the spidery fingers of her hands pressed
against each other and interlaced, as though she were subtly
recharging her will.

The eldest by some years of all the Forsytes, she held a peculiar
position amongst them.  Opportunists and egotists one and all--
though not, indeed, more so than their neighbours--they quailed
before her incorruptible figure, and, when opportunities were too
strong, what could they do but avoid her!

Twisting his long, thin legs, James went on:

"Jolyon, he will have his own way.  He's got no children"--and
stopped, recollecting the continued existence of old Jolyon's
son, young Jolyon, June's father, who had made such a mess of it,
and done for himself by deserting his wife and child and running
away with that foreign governess.  "Well," he resumed hastily,
"if he likes to do these things, I s'pose he can afford to.  Now,
what's he going to give her?  I s'pose he'll give her a thousand
a year; he's got nobody else to leave his money to."

He stretched out his hand to meet that of a dapper, clean-shaven
man, with hardly a hair on his head, a long, broken nose, full
lips, and cold grey eyes under rectangular brows.

"Well, Nick," he muttered, "how are you?"

Nicholas Forsyte, with his bird-like rapidity and the look of a
preternaturally sage schoolboy (he had made a large fortune,
quite legitimately, out of the companies of which he was a
director), placed within that cold palm the tips of his still
colder fingers and hastily withdrew them.

"I'm bad," he said, pouting--"been bad all the week; don't sleep
at night.  The doctor can't tell why.  He's a clever fellow, or I
shouldn't have him, but I get nothing out of him but bills."

"Doctors!" said James, coming down sharp on his words: "I've had
all the doctors in London for one or another of us.  There's no
satisfaction to be got out of them; they'll tell you anything.
There's Swithin, now.  What good have they done him?  There he
is; he's bigger than ever; he's enormous; they can't get his
weight down.  Look at him!"

Swithin Forsyte, tall, square, and broad, with a chest like a
pouter pigeon's in its plumage of bright waistcoats, came
strutting towards them.

"Er--how are you?" he said in his dandified way, aspirating the
'h' strongly (this difficult letter was almost absolutely safe in
his keeping)--"how are you?"

Each brother wore an air of aggravation as he looked at the other
two, knowing by experience that they would try to eclipse his
ailments.

"We were just saying," said James, "that you don't get any
thinner."

Swithin protruded his pale round eyes with the effort of hearing.

"Thinner?  I'm in good case," he said, leaning a little forward,
"not one of your thread-papers like you!"

But, afraid of losing the expansion of his chest, he leaned back
again into a state of immobility, for he prized nothing so highly
as a distinguished appearance.

Aunt Ann turned her old eyes from one to the other.  Indulgent
and severe was her look.  In turn the three brothers looked at
Ann.  She was getting shaky.  Wonderful woman!  Eighty-six if a
day; might live another ten years, and had never been strong.
Swithin and James, the twins, were only seventy-five, Nicholas a
mere baby of seventy or so.  All were strong, and the inference
was comforting. Of all forms of property their respective healths
naturally concerned them most.

"I'm very well in myself," proceeded James, "but my nerves are
out of order.  The least thing worries me to death.  I shall have
to go to Bath."

"Bath!" said Nicholas.  "I've tried Harrogate.  That's no good.
What I want is sea air.  There's nothing like Yarmouth.  Now,
when I go there I sleep...."

"My liver's very bad," interrupted Swithin slowly.  "Dreadful
pain here;" and he placed his hand on his right side.

"Want of exercise," muttered James, his eyes on the china.  He
quickly added: "I get a pain there, too."

Swithin reddened, a resemblance to a turkey-cock coming upon his
old face.

"Exercise!" he said.  "I take plenty: I never use the lift at the
Club."

"I didn't know," James hurried out.  "I know nothing about
anybody; nobody tells me anything...."

Swithin fixed him with a stare:

"What do you do for a pain there?"

James brightened.

"I take a compound...."

"How are you, uncle?"

June stood before him, her resolute small face raised from her
little height to his great height, and her hand outheld.

The brightness faded from James's visage.

"How are you?" he said, brooding over her.  "So you're going to
Wales to-morrow to visit your young man's aunts?  You'll have a
lot of rain there.  This isn't real old Worcester."  He tapped the
bowl.  "Now, that set I gave your mother when she married was the
genuine thing."

June shook hands one by one with her three great-uncles, and
turned to Aunt Ann.  A very sweet look had come into the old
lady's face, she kissed the girl's check with trembling fervour.

"Well, my dear," she said, "and so you're going for, a whole
month!"

The girl passed on, and Aunt Ann looked after her slim little
figure.  The old lady's round, steel grey eyes, over which a film
like a bird's was beginning to come, followed her wistfully
amongst the bustling crowd, for people were beginning to
say good-bye; and her finger-tips, pressing and pressing against
each other, were busy again with the recharging of her will
against that inevitable ultimate departure of her own.

'Yes,' she thought, 'everybody's been most kind; quite a lot of
people come to congratulate her.  She ought to be very happy.'
Amongst the throng of people by the door, the well-dressed throng
drawn from the families of lawyers and doctors, from the Stock
Exchange, and all the innumerable avocations of the upper-middle
class--there were only some twenty percent of Forsytes; but to
Aunt Ann they seemed all Forsytes--and certainly there was not
much difference--she saw only her own flesh and blood.  It was
her world, this family, and she knew no other, had never perhaps
known any other.  All their little secrets, illnesses,
engagements, and marriages, how they were getting on, and whether
they were making money--all this was her property, her delight,
her life; beyond this only a vague, shadowy mist of--facts and
persons of no real significance.  This it was that she would have
to lay down when it came to her turn  to die; this which gave to
her that importance, that secret self-importance, without which
none of us can bear to live; and to this she clung wistfully,
with a greed that grew each day!  If life were slipping away from
her, this she would retain to the end.

She thought of June's father, young Jolyon, who had run away with
that foreign girl.  And what a sad blow to his father and to them
all.  Such a promising young fellow!  A sad blow, though there
had been no public scandal, most fortunately, Jo's wife seeking
for no divorce!  A long time ago!  And when June's mother died,
six years ago, Jo had married that woman, and they had two
children now, so she had heard.  Still, he had forfeited his
right to be there, had cheated her of the complete fulfilment of
her family pride, deprived her of the rightful pleasure of seeing
and kissing him of whom she had been so proud, such a promising
young fellow!  The thought rankled with the bitterness of a
long-inflicted injury in her tenacious old heart.  A little water
stood in her eyes.  With a handkerchief of the finest lawn she
wiped them stealthily.

"Well, Aunt Ann?" said a voice behind.

Soames Forsyte, flat-shouldered, clean-shaven, flat-cheeked,
flat-waisted, yet with something round and secret about his whole
appearance, looked downwards and aslant at Aunt Ann, as though
trying to see through the side of his own nose.

"And what do you think of the engagement?" he asked.

Aunt Ann's eyes rested on him proudly; of all the nephews since
young Jolyon's departure from the family nest, he was now her
favourite, for she recognised in him a sure trustee of the family
soul that must so soon slip beyond her keeping.

"Very nice for the young man," she said; "and he's a good-looking
young fellow; but I doubt if he's quite the right lover for dear
June."

Soames touched the edge of a gold-lacquered lustre.

"She'll tame him," he said, stealthily wetting his finger and
rubbing it on the knobby bulbs.  "That's genuine old lacquer; you
can't get it nowadays.  It'd do well in a sale at Jobson's." He
spoke with relish, as though he felt that he was cheering up his
old aunt.  It was seldom he was so confidential.  "I wouldn't
mind having it myself," he added; "you can always get your price
for old lacquer."

"You're so clever with all those things," said Aunt Ann.  "And
how is dear Irene?"

Soames's smile died.

"Pretty well," he said.  "Complains she can't sleep; she sleeps a
great deal better than I do," and he looked at his wife, who was
talking to Bosinney by the door.

Aunt Ann sighed.

"Perhaps," she said, "it will be just as well for her not to see
so much of June.  She's such a decided character, dear June!"

Soames flushed; his flushes passed rapidly over his flat cheeks
and centered between his eyes, where they remained, the stamp of
disturbing thoughts.

"I don't know what she sees in that little flibbertigibbet," he
burst out, but noticing that they were no longer alone, he turned
and again began examining the lustre.

"They tell me Jolyon's bought another house," said his father's
voice close by; "he must have a lot of money--he must have more
money than he knows what to do with!  Montpellier Square, they
say; close to Soames!  They never told me, Irene never tells me
anything!"

"Capital position, not two minutes from me," said the voice of
Swithin, "and from my rooms I can drive to the Club in eight."

The position of their houses was of vital importance to the
Forsytes, nor was this remarkable, since the whole spirit of
their success was embodied therein.

Their father, of farming stock, had come from Dorsetshire near
the beginning of the century.

'Superior Dosset Forsyte, as he was called by his intimates, had
been a stonemason by trade, and risen to the position of a
master-builder.

Towards the end of his life he moved to London, where, building
on until he died, he was buried at Highgate.  He left over thirty
thousand pounds between his ten children.  Old Jolyon alluded to
him, if at all, as 'A hard, thick sort of man; not much
refinement about him.' The second generation of Forsytes felt
indeed that, he was not greatly to their credit.  The only
aristocratic trait they could find in his character was a habit
of drinking Madeira.

Aunt Hester, an authority on family history, described him thus:
"I don't recollect that he ever did anything; at least, not in my
time.  He was  er--an owner of houses, my dear.  His hair about
your Uncle Swithin's colour; rather a square build.  Tall?  No--
not very tall" (he had been five feet, five, with a mottled
face); "a fresh-coloured man.  I remember he used to drink
Madeira; but ask your Aunt Ann.  What was his father?  He--er--
had to do with the land down in Dorsetshire, by the sea."

James once went down to see for himself what sort of place this
was that they had come from.  He found two old farms, with a cart
track rutted into the pink earth, leading down to a mill by the
beach; a little grey church with a buttressed outer wall, and a
smaller and greyer chapel.  The stream which worked the mill came
bubbling down in a dozen rivulets, and pigs were hunting round
that estuary.  A haze hovered over the prospect.  Down this
hollow, with their feet deep in the mud and their faces towards
the sea, it appeared that the primeval Forsytes had been content
to walk Sunday after Sunday for hundreds of years.

Whether or no James had cherished hopes of an inheritance, or of
something rather distinguished to be found down there, he came
back to town in a poor way, and went about with a pathetic
attempt at making the best of a bad job.

"There's very little to be had out of that," he said; "regular
country little place, old as the hills...."

Its age was felt to be a comfort.  Old Jolyon, in whom a
desperate honesty welled up at times, would allude to his
ancestors as: "Yeomen--I suppose very small beer."  Yet he would
repeat the word 'yeomen' as if it afforded him consolation.

They had all done so well for themselves, these Forsytes, that
they were all what is called 'of a certain position.' They had
shares in all sorts of things, not as yet--with the exception of
Timothy--in consols, for they had no dread in life like that of
3 per cent. for their money.  They collected pictures, too, and
were supporters of such charitable  institutions as might be
beneficial to their sick domestics.  From their father, the
builder, they inherited a talent for bricks and mortar.
Originally, perhaps, members of some primitive sect, they were
now in the natural course of things members of the Church of
England, and caused their wives and children to attend with some
regularity the more fashionable churches of the Metropolis.  To
have doubted their Christianity would have caused them both pain
and surprise.  Some of them paid for pews, thus expressing in the
most practical form their sympathy with the teachings of Christ.

Their residences, placed at stated intervals round the park,
watched like sentinels, lest the fair heart of this London, where
their desires were fixed, should slip from their clutches, and
leave them lower in their own estimations.

There was old Jolyon in Stanhope Place; the Jameses in Park Lane;
Swithin in the lonely glory of orange and blue chambers in Hyde
Park Mansions--he had never married, not he--the Soamses in their
nest off Knightsbridge; the Rogers in Prince's Gardens (Roger was
that remarkable Forsyte who had conceived and carried out the
notion of bringing up his four sons to a new profession.

"Collect house property, nothing like it," he would say; "I never
did anything else").

The Haymans again--Mrs. Hayman was the one married Forsyte
sister--in a house high up on Campden Hill, shaped like a
giraffe, and so tall that it gave the observer a crick in the
neck; the Nicholases in Ladbroke Grove, a spacious abode and a
great bargain; and last, but not least, Timothy's on the
Bayswater Road, where Ann, and Juley, and Hester, lived under his
protection.

But all this time James was musing, and now he inquired of his
host and brother what he had given for that house in Montpellier
Square.  He himself had had his eye on a house there for the last
two years, but they wanted such a price.

Old Jolyon recounted the details of his purchase.

"Twenty-two years to run?" repeated James; "The very house I was
after--you've given too much for it!"

Old Jolyon frowned.

"It's not that I want it," said James hastily; it wouldn't suit
my purpose at that price.  Soames knows the house, well--he'll
tell you it's too dear--his opinion's worth having."

"I don't," said old Jolyon, "care a fig for his opinion."

"Well," murmured James, "you will have your own way--it's a good
opinion.  Good-bye!  We're going to drive down to Hurlingham.
They tell me June's going to Wales.  You'll be lonely tomorrow.
What'll you do with yourself?  You'd better come and dine with
us!"

Old Jolyon refused.  He went down to the front door and saw them
into their barouche, and twinkled at them, having already
forgotten his spleen--Mrs. James facing the horses, tall and
majestic with auburn hair; on her left, Irene--the two husbands,
father and son, sitting forward, as though they expected
something, opposite their wives.  Bobbing and bounding upon the
spring cushions, silent, swaying to each motion of their chariot,
old Jolyon watched them drive away under the sunlight.

During the drive the silence was broken by Mrs. James.

"Did you ever see such a collection of rumty-too people?"

Soames, glancing at her beneath his eyelids, nodded, and he saw
Irene steal at him one of her unfathomable looks.  It is likely
enough that each branch of the Forsyte family made that remark as
they drove away from old Jolyon's 'At Home!'

Amongst the last of the departing guests the fourth and fifth
brothers, Nicholas and Roger, walked away together, directing
their steps alongside Hyde Park towards the Praed Street Station
of the Underground.  Like all other Forsytes of a certain age
they kept carriages of their own, and never took cabs if by any
means they could avoid it.

The day was bright, the trees of the Park in the full beauty of
mid-June foliage; the brothers did not seem to notice phenomena,
which contributed, nevertheless, to the jauntiness of promenade
and conversation.

"Yes," said Roger, "she's a good-lookin' woman, that wife of
Soames's.  I'm told they don't get on."

This brother had a high forehead, and the freshest colour of any
of the Forsytes; his light grey eyes measured the street frontage
of the houses by the way, and now and then he would level his,
umbrella and take a 'lunar,' as he expressed it, of the varying
heights.

"She'd no money," replied Nicholas.

He himself had married a good deal of money, of which, it being
then the golden age before the Married Women's Property Act, he
had mercifully been enabled to make a successful use.

"What was her father?"

"Heron was his name, a Professor, so they tell me."

Roger shook his head.

"There's no money in that," he said.

"They say her mother's father was cement."

Roger's face brightened.

"But he went bankrupt," went on Nicholas.

"Ah!" exclaimed Roger, "Soames will have trouble with her; you
mark my words, he'll have trouble--she's got a foreign look."

Nicholas licked his lips.

"She's a pretty woman," and he waved aside a crossing-sweeper.

"How did he get hold of her?" asked Roger presently.  "She must
cost him a pretty penny in dress!"

"Ann tells me," replied Nicholas," he was half-cracked about her.
She refused him five times.  James, he's nervous about it, I can
see."

"Ah!" said Roger again; "I'm sorry for James; he had trouble with
Dartie."  His pleasant colour was heightened by exercise, he swung
his umbrella to the level of his eye more frequently than ever.
Nicholas's face also wore a pleasant look.

"Too pale for me," he said, "but her figures capital!"

Roger made no reply.

"I call her distinguished-looking," he said at last--it was the
highest praise in the Forsyte vocabulary.  "That young Bosinney
will never do any good for himself.  They say at Burkitt's he's
one of these artistic chaps--got an idea of improving English
architecture; there's no money in that!  I should like to hear
what Timothy would say to it."

They entered the station.

"What class are you going?  I go second."

"No second for me," said Nicholas;--"you never know what you may
catch."

He took a first-class ticket to Notting Hill Gate; Roger a second
to South Kensington.  The train coming in a minute later, the two
brothers parted and entered their respective compartments.  Each
felt aggrieved that the other had not modified his habits to
secure his society a little longer; but as Roger voiced it in his
thoughts:
'Always a stubborn beggar, Nick!'

And as Nicholas expressed it to himself:

'Cantankerous chap Roger--always was!'

There was little sentimentality about the Forsytes.  In that
great London, which they had conquered and become merged in, what
time had they to be sentimental?




CHAPTER II

OLD JOLYON GOES TO THE OPERA


At five o'clock the following day old Jolyon sat alone, a cigar
between his lips, and on a table by his side a cup of tea.  He
was tired, and  before he had finished his cigar he fell asleep.
A fly settled on his hair, his breathing sounded heavy in the
drowsy silence, his upper lip under the white moustache puffed in
and out.  From between the fingers of his veined and wrinkled
hand the 'cigar, dropping on the empty hearth, burned itself out.

The gloomy little, study, with windows of stained glass to
exclude the view, was full of dark green velvet and
heavily-carved mahogany--a suite of which old Jolyon was wont to
say: 'Shouldn't wonder if it made a big price some day!'

It was pleasant to think that in the after life he could get more
for things than he had given.

In the rich brown atmosphere peculiar to back rooms in the
mansion of a Forsyte, the Rembrandtesque effect of his great
head, with its white hair, against the cushion of his high-backed
seat, was spoiled by the moustache, which imparted a somewhat
military look to his face.  An old clock that had been with him
since before his marriage forty years ago kept with its ticking a
jealous record of the seconds slipping away forever from its old
master.

He had never cared for this room, hardly going into it from one
year's end to another, except to take cigars from the Japanese
cabinet in the corner, and the room now had its revenge.

His temples, curving like thatches over the hollows beneath, his
cheek-bones and chin, all were sharpened in his sleep, and there
had come upon his face the confession that he was an old man.

He woke.  June had gone!  James had said he would be lonely.
James had always been a poor thing.  He recollected with
satisfaction that he had bought that house over James's head.

Serve him right for sticking at the price; the only thing the
fellow thought of was money.  Had he given too much, though?  It
wanted a lot of doing to--He dared say he would want all his
money before he had done with this affair of June's.  He ought
never to have allowed the engagement.  She had met this Bosinney
At the house of Baynes, Baynes and Bildeboy, the architects.  He
believed that Baynes, whom he knew--a bit of an old woman--was
the young man's uncle by marriage.  After that she'd been always
running after him; and when she took a thing into her head there
was no stopping her.  She was continually taking up with 'lame
ducks' of one sort or another.  This fellow had no money, but she
must needs become engaged to him--a harumscarum, unpractical
chap, who would get himself into no end of difficulties.

She had come to him one day in her slap-dash way and told him;
and, as if it were any consolation, she had added:

"He's so splendid; he's often lived on cocoa for a week!"

"And he wants you to live on cocoa too?"

"Oh no; he is getting into the swim now."

Old Jolyon had taken his cigar from under his white moustaches,
stained by coffee at the edge, and looked at her, that little
slip of a thing who had got such a grip of his heart.  He knew
more about 'swims' than his granddaughter.  But she, having
clasped her hands on his knees, rubbed her chin against him,
making a sound like a purring cat.  And, knocking the ash off his
cigar, he had exploded in nervous desperation:

"You're all alike: you won't be satisfied till you've got what
you want.  If you must come to grief, you must; I wash my hands
of it."

So, he had washed his hands of it, making the condition that they
should not marry until Bosinney had at least four hundred a year.

"I shan't be able to give you very much," he had said, a formula
to which June was not unaccustomed."  Perhaps this What's-his-
name will provide the cocoa."

He had hardly seen anything of her since it began.  A bad
business!  He had no notion of giving her a lot of money to
enable a fellow he knew nothing about to live on in idleness.
He had seen that sort of thing before; no good ever came of it.
Worst of all, he had no hope of shaking her resolution; she was
as obstinate as a mule, always had been from a child.  He didn't
see where it was to end.  They must cut their coat according to
their cloth.  He would not give way till he saw young Bosinney
with an income of his own.  That June would have trouble with the
fellow--was as plain as a pikestaff; he had no more idea of money
than a cow.  As to this rushing down to Wales to visit the young
man's aunts, he fully expected they were old cats.

And, motionless, old Jolyon stared at the wall; but for his open
eyes, he might have been asleep....  The idea of supposing that
young cub Soames could give him advice!  He had always been a
cub, with his nose in the air!  He would be setting up as a man
of property next, with a place in the country!  A man of
property!  H'mph! Like his father, he was always nosing out
bargains, a cold-blooded young beggar!

He rose, and, going to the cabinet, began methodically stocking
his, cigar-case from a bundle fresh in.  They were not bad at the
price, but you couldn't get a good cigar, nowadays, nothing to
hold a candle to those old Superfinos of Hanson and Bridger's.
That was a cigar!

The thought, like some stealing perfume, carried him back to
those wonderful nights at Richmond when after dinner he sat
smoking on the terrace of the Crown and Sceptre with Nicholas
Treffry and Traquair and Jack Herring and Anthony Thornworthy.
How good his cigars were then!  Poor old Nick!--dead, and Jack
Herringdead, and Traquair--dead of that wife of his, and
Thornworthy--awfully shaky (no wonder, with his appetite).

Of all the company of those days he himself alone seemed left,
except Swithin, of course, and he so outrageously big there was
no doing anything with him.

Difficult to believe it was so long ago; he felt young still!  Of
all his thoughts, as he stood there counting his cigars, this was
the most poignant, the most bitter.  With his white head and his
loneliness he had remained young and green at heart.  And those
Sunday afternoons on Hampstead Heath, when young Jolyon and he
went for a stretch along the Spaniard's Road to Highgate, to
Child's Hill, and back over the Heath again to dine at Jack
Straw's Castle--how delicious his cigars were then!  And such
weather!  There was no weather now.

When June was a toddler of five, and every other Sunday he took
her to the Zoo, away from the society of those two good women,
her mother and her grandmother, and at the top of the bear den
baited his umbrella with buns for her favourite bears, how sweet
his cigars were then!

Cigars!  He had not even succeeded in out-living his palate--the
famous palate that in the fifties men swore by, and speaking of
him, said: "Forsyte=s the best palate in London!" The palate that
in a sense had made his fortune--the fortune of the celebrated
tea men, Forsyte and Treffry, whose tea, like no other man's tea,
had a romantic aroma, the charm of a quite singular genuineness.
About the house of Forsyte and Treffry in the City had clung an
air of enterprise and mystery, of special dealings in special
ships, at special ports, with special Orientals.

He had worked at that business!  Men did work in those days!
these young pups hardly knew the meaning of the word.  He had
gone into every detail, known everything that went on, sometimes
sat up all night over it.  And he had always chosen his agents
himself, prided himself on it.  His eye for men, he used to say,
had been the secret of his success, and the exercise of this
masterful power of selection had been the only part of it all
that he had really liked.  Not a career for a man of his ability.
Even now, when the business had been turned into a Limited
Liability Company, and was declining (he had got out of his
shares long ago), he felt a sharp chagrin in thinking of that
time.  How much better he might have done!  He would have
succeeded splendidly at the Bar!  He had even thought of standing
for Parliament.  How often had not Nicholas Treffry said to him:

"You could do anything, Jo, if you weren't so d-damned careful of
yourself!" Dear old Nick!  Such a good fellow, but a racketty
chap!  The notorious Treffry!  He had never taken any care of
himself.  So he was dead.  Old Jolyon counted his cigars with a
steady hand, and it came into his mind to wonder if perhaps he
had been too careful of himself.

He put the cigar-case in the breast of his coat, buttoned it in,
and walked up the long flights to his bedroom, leaning on one
foot and the other, and helping himself by the bannister.  The
house was too big.  After June was married, if she ever did marry
this fellow, as he supposed she would, he would let it and go
into rooms.  What was the use of keeping half a dozen servants
eating their heads off?

The butler came to the ring of his bell--a large man with a
beard, a soft tread, and a peculiar capacity for silence.  Old
Jolyon told him to put his dress clothes out; he was going to
dine at the Club.

How long had the carriage been back from taking Miss June to the
station?  Since two?  Then let him come round at half-past six!

The Club which old Jolyon entered on the stroke of seven was one
of those political institutions of the upper middle class which
have seen better days.  In spite of being talked about, perhaps
in consequence of being talked about, it betrayed a disappointing
vitality.  People had grown tired of saying that the 'Disunion'
was on its last legs.  Old Jolyon would say it, too, yet
disregarded the fact in a manner truly irritating to
well-constituted Clubmen.

"Why do you keep your name on?" Swithin often asked him with
profound vexation.  "Why don't you join the 'Polyglot?  You can't
get a wine like our Heidsieck under twenty shillin' a bottle
anywhere in London;" and, dropping his voice, he added: "There's
only five hundred dozen left.  I drink it every night of my
life."

"I'll think of it," old Jolyon would answer; but when he did think
of it there was always the question of fifty guineas entrance
fee, and it would take him four or five years to get in.  He
continued to think of it.

He was too old to be a Liberal, had long ceased to believe in the
political doctrines of his Club, had even been known to allude to
them as 'wretched stuff,' and it afforded him pleasure to
continue a member in the teeth of principles so opposed to his
own.  He had always had a contempt for the place, having joined
it many years ago when they refused to have him at the 'Hotch
Potch' owing to his being 'in trade.'  As if he were not as good
as any of them!  He naturally despised the Club that did take
him.  The members were a poor lot, many of them in the City--
stockbrokers, solicitors, auctioneers--what not!  Like most men
of strong character but not too much originality, old Jolyon set
small store by the class to which he belonged.  Faithfully he
followed their customs, social and otherwise, and secretly he
thought them 'a common lot.'

Years and philosophy, of which he had his share, had dimmed the
recollection of his defeat at the 'Hotch Potch'; and now in his
thoughts it was enshrined as the Queen of Clubs.  He would have
been a member all these years himself, but, owing to the slipshod
way his proposer, Jack Herring, had gone to work, they had not
known what they were doing in keeping him out.  Why! they had
taken his son Jo at once, and he believed the boy was still a
member; he had received a letter dated from there eight years
ago.

He had not been near the 'Disunion' for months, and the house had
undergone the piebald decoration which people bestow on old
houses and old ships when anxious to sell them.

'Beastly colour, the smoking-room!' he thought.  'The dining-room
is good!'

Its gloomy chocolate, picked out with light green, took his
fancy.

He ordered dinner, and sat down in the very corner, at the very
table perhaps I (things did not progress much at the 'Disunion,'
a Club of almost Radical principles) at which he and young Jolyon
used to sit twenty-five years ago, when he was taking the latter
to Drury Lane, during his holidays.

The boy had--loved the theatre, and old Jolyon recalled how he
used to sit opposite, concealing his excitement under a careful
but transparent nonchalance.

He ordered himself, too, the very dinner the boy had always
chosen-soup, whitebait, cutlets, and a tart.  Ah! if he were
only opposite now!

The two had not met for fourteen years.  And not for the first
time during those fourteen years old Jolyon wondered whether he
had been a little to blame in the matter of his son.  An
unfortunate love-affair with that precious flirt Danae Thorn-
worthy (now Danae Pellew), Anthony Thornworthy's daughter, had
thrown him on the rebound into the arms of June's mother.  He
ought perhaps to have put a spoke in the wheel of their marriage;
they were too young; but after that experience of Jo's
susceptibility he had been only too anxious to see him married.
And in four years the crash had come!  To have approved his son's
conduct in that crash was, of course, impossible; reason and
training--that combination of potent factors which stood for his
principles--told him of this impossibility, and his heart cried
out.  The grim remorselessness of that business had no pity for
hearts.  There was June, the atom with flaming hair, who had
climbed all over him, twined and twisted herself about him--about
his heart that was made to be the plaything and beloved resort of
tiny, helpless things.  With characteristic insight he saw he
must part with one or with the other; no half-measures could
serve in such a situation.  In that lay its tragedy.  And the
tiny, helpless thing prevailed.  He would not run with the hare
and hunt with the hounds, and so to his son he said good-bye.

That good-bye had lasted until now.

He had proposed to continue a reduced allowance to young Jolyon,
but this had been refused, and perhaps that refusal had hurt him
more than anything, for with it had gone the last outlet of his
penned-in affection; and there had come such tangible and solid
proof of rupture as only a transaction in property, a bestowal or
refusal of such, could supply.

His dinner tasted flat.  His pint of champagne was dry and bitter
stuff, not like the Veuve Clicquots of old days.

Over his cup of coffee, he bethought him that he would go to the
opera.  In the Times, therefore--he had a distrust of other
papers--he read the announcement for the evening.  It was
'Fidelio.'

Mercifully not one of those new-fangled German pantomimes by that
fellow Wagner.

Putting on his ancient opera hat, which, with its brim flattened
by use, and huge capacity, looked like an emblem of greater days,
and, pulling out an old pair of very thin lavender kid gloves
smelling strongly of Russia leather, from habitual proximity to
the  cigar-case in the pocket of his overcoat, he stepped into a
hansom.

The cab rattled gaily along the streets, and old Jolyon was
struck by their unwonted animation.

'The hotels must be doing a tremendous business,' he thought.  A
few years ago there had been none of these big hotels.  He made
a satisfactory reflection on some property he had in the
neighbourhood.  It must be going up in value by leaps and bounds!
What traffic!

But from that he began indulging in one of those strange
impersonal speculations, so uncharacteristic of a Forsyte,
wherein lay, in part, the secret of his supremacy amongst them.
What atoms men were, and what a lot of them!  And what would
become of them all?

He stumbled as he got out of the cab, gave the man his exact
fare, walked up to the ticket office to take his stall, and stood
there with his purse in his hand--he always carried his money in
a purse, never having approved of that habit of carrying it
loosely in the pockets, as so many young men did nowadays.  The
official leaned out, like an old dog from a kennel.

"Why," he said in a surprised voice, "it's Mr. Jolyon Forsyte!
So it is!  Haven't seen you, sir, for years.  Dear me!  Times
aren't what they were.  Why! you and your brother, and that
auctioneer--Mr. Traquair, and Mr. Nicholas Treffry--you used to
have six or seven stalls here regular every season.  And how are
you, sir?  We don't get younger!"

The colour in old Jolyon's eyes deepened; he paid his guinea.
They had not forgotten him.  He marched in, to the sounds of the
overture, like an old war-horse to battle.

Folding his opera hat, he sat down, drew out his lavender gloves
in the old way, and took up his glasses for a long look round the
house.  Dropping them at last on his folded hat, he fixed his
eyes on the curtain.  More poignantly than ever he felt that it
was all over and done with him.  Where were all the women, the
pretty women, the house used to be so full of?  Where was that
old feeling in the heart as he waited for one of those great
singers?  Where that sensation of the intoxication of life and
of his own power to enjoy it all?

The greatest opera-goer of his day!  There was no opera now!
That fellow Wagner had ruined everything; no melody left, nor any
voices to sing it.  Ah! the wonderful singers!  Gone!  He sat
watching the old scenes acted, a numb feeling at his heart.

From the curl of silver over his ear to the pose of his foot in
its elastic-sided patent boot, there was nothing clumsy or weak
about old Jolyon.  He was as upright--very nearly--as in those
old times when he came every night; his sight was as good--almost
as good.  But what a feeling of weariness and disillusion!

He had been in the habit all his life of enjoying things, even
imperfect things--and there had been many imperfect things--he
had enjoyed them all with moderation, so as to keep himself
young.  But now he was deserted by his power of enjoyment, by his
philosophy, and left with this dreadful feeling that it was all
done with.  Not even the Prisoners' Chorus, nor Florian's Song,
had the power to dispel the gloom of his loneliness.

If Jo, were only with him!  The boy must be forty by now.  He had
wasted fourteen years out of the life of his only son.  And Jo
was no longer a social pariah.  He was married.  Old Jolyon had
been unable to refrain from marking his appreciation of the
action by enclosing his son a cheque for L500.  The cheque had
been returned in a letter from the 'Hotch Potch,' couched in
these words.


'MY DEAREST FATHER,

'Your generous gift was welcome as a sign that you might think
worse of me.  I return it, but should you think fit to invest it
for the benefit of the little chap (we call him Jolly), who bears
our Christian and, by courtesy, our surname, I shall be very
glad.

'I hope with all my heart that your health is as good as ever.

'Your loving son,

 'Jo.'


The letter was like the boy.  He had always been an amiable chap.
Old Jolyon had sent this reply:


'MY DEAR JO,

'The sum (L500) stands in my books for the benefit of your boy,
under the name of Jolyon Forsyte, and will be duly-credited with
interest at 5 per cent.  I hope that you are doing well.  My
health remains good at present.

'With love, I am,
'Your affectionate Father,

'JOLYON FORSYTE.'


And every, year on the 1st of January he had added a hundred and
the interest.  The sum was mounting up--next New Year's Day it
would be fifteen hundred and odd pounds!  And it is difficult to
say how much satisfaction he had got out of that yearly
transaction.  But the correspondence had ended.

In spite of his love for his son, in spite of an instinct, partly
constitutional, partly the result, as in thousands of his class,
of the continual handling and watching of affairs, prompting him
to judge conduct by results rather than by principle, there was
at the bottom of his heart a sort of uneasiness.  His son ought,
under the circumstances, to have gone to the dogs; that law was
laid down in all the novels, sermons, and plays he had ever read,
heard, or witnessed.

After receiving the cheque back there seemed to him to be
something wrong somewhere.  Why had his son, not gone to--the
dogs?  But, then, who could tell?

He had heard, of course--in fact, he had made it his business
to find out--that Jo lived in St.  John's Wood, that he had a
little house in Wistaria Avenue with a garden, and took his wife
about with, him into society--a queer sort of society, no doubt--
and that they had two children--the little chap they called Jolly
(considering the circumstances the name struck him as cynical,
and old Jolyon both feared and disliked cynicism), and a girl
called Holly, born since the marriage.  Who could tell what his
son's circumstances really were?  He had capitalized the income
he had inherited from his mother's father and joined Lloyd's as
an underwriter; he painted pictures, too--water-colours.  Old
Jolyon knew this, for he had surreptitiously bought them from
time to time, after chancing to see his son's name signed at the
bottom of a representation of the river Thames in a dealer's
window.  He thought them bad, and did not hang them because of
the signature; he kept them locked up in a drawer.

In the great opera-house a terrible yearning came on him to see
his son.  He remembered the days when he had been wont to slide
him, in a brown holland suit, to and fro under the arch of his
legs; the times when he ran beside the boy's pony, teaching him
to ride; the day he first took him to school.  He had been a
loving, lovable little chap!  After he went to Eton he had
acquired, perhaps, a little too much of that desirable manner
which old Jolyon knew was only to be obtained at such places and
at great expense; but he had always been companionable.  Always a
companion, even after Cambridge--a little far off, perhaps, owing
to the advantages he had received.  Old Jolyon's feeling towards
our public schools and 'Varsities never wavered, and he retained
touchingly his attitude of admiration and mistrust towards a
system appropriate to the highest in the land, of which he had
not himself  been privileged to partake....  Now that June had
gone and left, or as good as left him, it would have been a
comfort to see his son again.  Guilty of this treason to his
family, his principles, his class, old Jolyon fixed his eyes on
the singer.  A poor thing--a wretched poor thing!  And the
Florian a perfect stick!

It was over.  They were easily pleased nowadays!

In the crowded street he snapped up a cab under the very nose of
a stout and much younger gentleman, who had already assumed it to
be his own.  His route lay through Pall Mall, and at the corner,
instead of going through the Green Park, the cabman turned to
drive up St.  James's Street.  Old Jolyon put his hand through
the trap (he could not bear being taken out of his way); in
turning, however, he found himself opposite the 'Hotch Potch, '
and the yearning that had been secretly with him the whole
evening prevailed.  He called to the driver to stop.  He would go
in and ask if Jo still belonged there.

He went in.  The hall looked exactly as it did when he used to
dine there with Jack Herring, and they had the best cook in
London; and he looked round with the shrewd, straight glance that
had caused him all his life to be better served than most men.

"Mr. Jolyon Forsyte still a member here?"

"Yes, sir; in the Club now, sir.  What name?"

Old Jolyon was taken aback.

"His father," he said.

And having spoken, he took his stand, back to the fireplace.

Young Jolyon, on the point of leaving the Club, had put on his
hat, and was in the act of crossing the hall, as the porter met
him.  He was no longer young, with hair going grey, and face--a
narrower replica of his father's, with the same large drooping
moustache--decidedly worn.  He turned pale.  This meeting was
terrible after all those years, for nothing in the world was so
terrible as a scene.  They met and crossed hands without a word.
Then, with a quaver in his voice, the father said:

"How are you, my boy?"

The son answered:

"How are you, Dad?"

Old Jolyon's hand trembled in its thin lavender glove.

"If you're going my way," he said, "I can give you a lift."

And as though in the habit of taking each other home every night
they went out and stepped into the cab.

To old Jolyon it seemed that his son had grown.  'More of a man
altogether,' was his comment.  Over the natural amiability of
that son's face had come a rather sardonic mask, as though he had
found in the circumstances of his life the necessity for armour.
The features were certainly those of a Forsyte, but the expression
was more the introspective look of a student or philosopher.
He had no doubt been obliged to look into himself a good deal in
the course of those fifteen years.

To young Jolyon the first sight of his father was undoubtedly a
shock--he looked so worn and old.  But in the cab he seemed
hardly to have changed, still having the calm look so well
remembered, still being upright and, keen-eyed.

"You look well, Dad."

"Middling," old Jolyon answered.

He was the prey of an anxiety that he found he must put into
words.  Having got his son back like this, he felt he must know
what was his financial position.

"Jo," he said, "I should like to hear what sort of water you're
in.  I suppose you're in debt?"

He put it this way that his son might find it easier to confess.

Young Jolyon answered in his ironical voice:

"No!  I'm not in debt!"

Old Jolyon saw that he was angry, and touched his hand.  He had
run a risk.  It was worth it, however, and Jo had never been
sulky with him.  They drove on, without speaking again, to
Stanhope Gate.  Old Jolyon invited him in, but young Jolyon shook
his head.

"June's not here," said his father hastily: "went of to-day on a
visit.  I suppose you know that she's engaged to be married?"

"Already?" murmured young Jolyon'.

Old Jolyon stepped out, and, in paying the cab fare, for the
first time in his life gave the driver a sovereign in mistake for
a shilling.

Placing the coin in his mouth, the cabman whipped his horse
secretly on the underneath and hurried away.

Old Jolyon turned the key softly in the lock, pushed open the
door, and beckoned.  His son saw him gravely hanging up his coat,
with an expression on his face like that of a boy who intends to
steal cherries.

The door of the dining-room was open, the gas turned low; a
spirit-urn hissed on a tea-tray, and close to it a cynical
looking cat had fallen asleep on the dining-table.  Old Jolyon
'shoo'd' her off at once.  The incident was a relief to his
feelings; he rattled his opera hat behind the animal.

"She's got fleas," he said, following her out of the room.
Through the door in the hall leading to the basement he called
"Hssst!" several times, as though assisting the cat's departure,
till by some strange coincidence the butler appeared below.

"You can go to bed, Parfitt," said old Jolyon.  "I will lock up
and put out."

When he again entered the dining-room the cat unfortunately
preceded him, with her tail in the air, proclaiming that she had
seen through this manouevre for suppressing the butler from the
first....

A fatality had dogged old Jolyon's domestic stratagems all his
life.

Young Jolyon could not help smiling.  He was very well versed in
irony, and everything that evening seemed to him ironical.  The
episode of the cat; the announcement of his own daughter's
engagement.  So he had no more part or parcel in her than he had
in the Puss!  And the poetical justice of this appealed to him.

"What is June like now?" he asked.

"She's a little thing," returned old Jolyon; they say she's like
me, but that's their folly.  She's more like your mother--the
same eyes and hair."

"Ah!  and she is pretty?"

Old Jolyon was too much of a Forsyte to praise anything freely;
especially anything for which he had a genuine admiration.

"Not bad looking--a regular Forsyte chin.  It'll be lonely here
when she's gone, Jo."

The look on his face again gave young Jolyon the shock he had
felt on first seeing his father.

"What will you do with yourself, Dad?  I suppose she's wrapped up
in him?"

"Do with myself?" repeated old Jolyon with an angry break in his
voice.  "It'll be miserable work living here alone.  I don't know
how it's to end.  I wish to goodness...."  He checked himself, and
added: "The question is, what had I better do with this house?"

Young Jolyon looked round the room.  It was peculiarly vast and
dreary, decorated with the enormous pictures of still life that
he remembered as a boy--sleeping dogs with their noses resting on
bunches of carrots, together with onions and grapes lying side by
side in mild surprise.  The house was a white elephant, but he
could not conceive of his father living in a smaller place; and
all the more did it all seem ironical.

In his great chair with the book-rest sat old Jolyon, the
figurehead of his family and class and creed, with his white head
and dome-like forehead, the representative of moderation, and
order, and love of property.  As lonely an old man as there was
in London.

There he sat in the gloomy comfort of the room, a puppet in the
power of great forces that cared nothing for family or class or
creed, but moved, machine-like, with dread processes to
inscrutable ends.  This was how it struck young Jolyon, who had
the impersonal eye.

The poor old Dad!  So this was the end, the purpose to which he
had lived with such magnificent moderation!  To be lonely, and
grow older and older, yearning for a soul to speak to!

In his turn old Jolyon looked back at his son.  He wanted to talk
about many things that he had been unable to talk about all these
years.  It had been impossible to seriously confide in June his
conviction that property in the Soho quarter would go up in
value; his uneasiness about that tremendous silence of Pippin,
the superintendent of the New Colliery Company, of which he had
so long been chairman; his disgust at the steady fall in American
Golgothas, or even to discuss how, by some sort of settlement, he
could best avoid the payment of those death duties which would
follow his decease.  Under the influence, however, of a cup of
tea, which he seemed to stir indefinitely, he began to speak at
last.  A new vista of life was thus opened up, a promised land of
talk, where he could find a harbour against the waves of
anticipation and regret; where he could soothe his soul with the
opium of devising how to round off his property and make eternal
the only part of him that was to remain alive.

Young Jolyon was a good listener; it was his great quality.  He
kept his eyes fixed on his father's face, putting a question now
and then.

The clock struck one before old Jolyon had finished, and at the
sound of its striking his principles came back.  He took out his
watch with a look of surprise:

"I must go to bed, Jo," he said.

Young Jolyon rose and held out his hand to help his father up.
The old face looked worn and hollow again; the eyes were steadily
averted.

"Good-bye, my boy; take care of yourself."

A moment passed, and young Jolyon, turning on his, heel, marched
out at the door.  He could hardly see; his smile quavered.  Never
in all the fifteen years since he had first found out that life
was no simple business, had he found it so singularly
complicated.




CHAPTER III


DINNER AT SWITHIN'S


In Swithin's orange and light-blue dining-room, facing the Park,
the round table was laid for twelve.

A cut-glass chandelier filled with lighted candles hung like a
giant stalactite above its centre, radiating over large
gilt-framed mirrors, slabs of marble on the tops of side-tables,
and heavy gold chairs with crewel worked seats.  Everything
betokened that love of beauty so deeply implanted in each family
which has had its own way to make into Society, out of the more
vulgar heart of Nature.  Swithin had indeed an impatience of
simplicity, a love of ormolu, which had always stamped him
amongst his associates as a man of great, if somewhat luxurious
taste; and out of the knowledge that no one could possibly enter
his rooms without perceiving him to be a man of wealth, he had
derived a solid and prolonged happiness such as perhaps no other
circumstance in life had afforded him.

Since his retirement from land agency, a profession deplorable in
his estimation, especially as to its auctioneering department, he
had abandoned himself to naturally aristocratic tastes.

The perfect luxury of his latter days had embedded him like a fly
in sugar; and his mind, where very little took place from morning
till night, was the junction of two curiously opposite emotions,
a lingering and sturdy satisfaction that he had made his own way
and his own fortune, and a sense that a man of his distinction
should never have been allowed to soil his mind with work.

He stood at the sideboard in a white waistcoat with large gold
and onyx buttons, watching his valet screw the necks of three
champagne bottles deeper into ice-pails.  Between the points of
his stand-up collar, which--though it hurt him to move--he would
on no account have had altered, the pale flesh of his under chin
remained immovable.  His eyes roved from bottle to bottle.  He
was debating, and he argued like this: Jolyon drinks a glass,
perhaps two, he's so careful of himself.  James, he can't take
his wine nowadays.  Nicholas--Fanny and he would swill water he
shouldn't wonder!  Soames didn't count; these young nephews--
Soames was thirty-one--couldn't drink!  But Bosinney?

Encountering in the name of this stranger something outside the
range of his philosophy, Swithin paused.  A misgiving arose
within him!  It was impossible to tell!  June was only a girl, in
love too!  Emily (Mrs. James) liked a good glass of champagne.
It was too dry for Juley, poor old soul, she had no palate.  As
to Hatty Chessman!  The thought of this old friend caused a cloud
of thought to obscure the perfect glassiness of his eyes: He
shouldn't wonder if she drank half a bottle!

But in thinking of his remaining guest, an expression like that
of a cat who is just going to purr stole over his old face: Mrs.
Soames!  She mightn't take much, but she would appreciate what
she drank; it was a pleasure to give her good wine!  A pretty
woman--and sympathetic to him!

The thought of her was like champagne itself!  A pleasure to give
a good wine to a young woman who looked so well, who knew how to
dress, with charming manners, quite distinguished--a pleasure to
entertain her.  Between the points of his collar he gave his head
the first small, painful oscillation of the evening.

"Adolf!" he said.  "Put in another bottle."

He himself might drink a good deal, for, thanks to that
prescription of Blight's, he found himself extremely well, and he
had been careful to take no lunch.  He had not felt so well for
weeks.  Puffing out his lower lip, he gave his last instructions:

"Adolf, the least touch of the West India when you come to the
ham."

Passing into the anteroom, he sat down on the edge of a chair,
with his knees apart; and his tall, bulky form was wrapped at
once in an expectant, strange, primeval immobility.  He was ready
to rise at a moment's notice.  He had not given a dinner-party
for months.  This dinner in honour of June's engagement had
seemed a bore at first (among Forsytes the custom of solemnizing
engagements by feasts was religiously observed), but the labours
of sending invitations and ordering the repast over, he felt
pleasantly stimulated.

And thus sitting, a watch in his hand, fat, and smooth, and
golden, like a flattened globe of butter, he thought of nothing.

A long man, with side whiskers, who had once been in Swithin's
service, but was now a greengrocer, entered and proclaimed:

"Mrs. Chessman, Mrs. Septimus Small!"

Two ladies advanced.  The one in front, habited entirely in red,
had large, settled patches of the same colour in her cheeks, and
a hard, dashing eye.  She walked at Swithin, holding out a hand
cased in a long, primrose-coloured glove:

"Well!  Swithin," she said, "I haven't seen you for ages.  How are
you?  Why, my dear boy, how stout you're getting!"

The fixity of Swithin's eye alone betrayed emotion.  A dumb and
grumbling anger swelled his bosom.  It was vulgar to be stout, to
talk of being stout; he had a chest, nothing more.  Turning to
his sister, he grasped her hand, and said in a tone of command:

"Well, Juley."

Mrs. Septimus Small was the tallest of the four sisters; her
good, round old face had gone a little sour; an innumerable pout
clung all over it, as if it had been encased in an iron wire mask
up to that evening, which, being suddenly removed, left little
rolls of mutinous flesh all over her countenance.  Even her eyes
were pouting.  It was thus that she recorded her permanent
resentment at the loss of Septimus Small.

She had quite a reputation for saying the wrong thing, and,
tenacious like all her breed, she would hold to it when she had
said it, and add to it another wrong thing, and so on.  With the
decease of her husband the family tenacity, the family
matter-of-factness, had gone sterile within her.  A great talker,
when allowed, she would converse without the faintest animation
for hours together, relating, with epic monotony, the innumerable
occasions on which Fortune had misused her; nor did she ever
perceive that her  hearers sympathized with Fortune, for her
heart was kind.

Having sat, poor soul, long by the bedside of Small (a man of
poor constitution), she had acquired, the habit, and there were
countless subsequent occasions when she had sat immense periods
of time to amuse sick people, children, and other helpless
persons, and she could never divest herself of the feeling that
the world was the most ungrateful place anybody could live in.
Sunday after Sunday she sat at the feet of that extremely witty
preacher, the Rev. Thomas Scoles, who exercised a great
influence  over her; but she succeeded in convincing everybody
that even this was a misfortune.  She had passed into a proverb
in the family, and when anybody was observed to be peculiarly
distressing, he was known as a regular 'Juley.' The habit of her
mind would have killed anybody but a Forsyte at forty; but she
was seventy-two, and had never looked better.  And one felt that
there were capacities for enjoyment about her which might yet
come out.  She owned three canaries, the cat Tommy, and half a
parrot--in common with her sister Hester;--and these poor
creatures (kept carefully out of Timothy's way--he was nervous
about animals), unlike human beings, recognising that she could
not help being blighted, attached themselves to her passionately.

She was sombrely magnificent this evening in black bombazine,
with a mauve front cut in a shy triangle, and crowned with a
black velvet ribbon round the base of her thin throat; black and
mauve for evening wear was esteemed very chaste by nearly every
Forsyte.

Pouting at Swithin, she said:

"Ann has been asking for you.  You haven't been near us for an
age!"

Swithin put his thumbs within the armholes of his waistcoat, and
replied:

"Ann's getting very shaky; she ought to have a doctor!"

"Mr. and Mrs. Nicholas Forsyte!"

Nicholas Forsyte, cocking his rectangular eyebrows, wore a smile.
He had succeeded during the day in bringing to fruition a scheme
for the employment of a tribe from Upper India in the gold-mines
of Ceylon.  A pet plan, carried at last in the teeth of great
difficulties--he was justly pleased.  It would double the output
of his mines, and, as he had often forcibly argued, all
experience tended to show that a man must die; and whether he
died of a miserable old age in his own country, or prematurely of
damp in the bottom of a foreign mine, was surely of little
consequence, provided that by a change in his mode of life he
benefited the British Empire.

His ability was undoubted.  Raising his broken nose towards his
listener, he would add:

"For want of a few hundred of these fellows we haven't paid a
dividend for years, and look at the price of the shares.  I can't
get ten shillings for them."

He had been at Yarmouth, too, and had come back feeling that he
had added at least ten years to his own life.  He grasped
Swithin's hand, exclaiming in a jocular voice:

"Well, so here we are again!"

Mrs. Nicholas, an effete woman, smiled a smile of frightened
jollity behind his back.

"Mr. and Mrs. James Forsyte!  Mr. and Mrs. Soames Forsyte!"

Swithin drew his heels together, his deportment ever admirable.

"Well, James, well Emily!  How are you, Soames?  How do you do?"

His hand enclosed Irene's, and his eyes swelled.  She was a
pretty woman--a little too pale, but her figure, her eyes, her
teeth!  Too good for that chap Soames!

The gods had given Irene dark brown eyes and golden hair, that
strange combination, provocative of men's glances, which is said
to be the mark of a weak character.  And the full, soft pallor of
her neck and shoulders, above a gold-coloured frock, gave to her
personality an alluring strangeness.

Soames stood behind, his eyes fastened on his wife's neck.  The
hands of Swithin's watch, which he still held open in his hand,
had left eight behind; it was half an hour beyond his
dinner-time--he had had no lunch--and a strange primeval
impatience surged up within him.

"It's not like Jolyon to be late!" he said to Irene, with
uncontrollable vexation.  "I suppose it'll be June keeping him!"

"People in love are always late," she answered.

Swithin stared at her; a dusky orange dyed his cheeks.

"They've no business to be.  Some fashionable nonsense!"

And behind this outburst the inarticulate violence of primitive
generations seemed to mutter and grumble.

"Tell me what you think of my new star, Uncle Swithin," said
Irene softly.

Among the lace in the bosom of her dress was shining a
five-pointed star, made of eleven diamonds.  Swithin looked at
the star.  He had a pretty taste in stones; no question could
have been more sympathetically devised to distract his attention.

"Who gave you that?" he asked.

"Soames."

There was no change in her face, but Swithin's pale eyes bulged
as though he might suddenly have been afflicted with insight.

"I dare say you're dull at home," he said.  "Any day you like to
come and dine with me, I'll give you as good a bottle of wine as
you'll get in London."

"Miss June Forsyte--Mr. Jolyon Forsyte!...  Mr. Boswainey!..."

Swithin moved his arm, and said in a rumbling voice:

"Dinner, now--dinner!"

He took in Irene, on the ground that he had not entertained her
since she was a bride.  June was the portion of Bosinney, who was
placed between Irene and his fiancee.  On the other side of June
was James with Mrs. Nicholas, then old Jolyon with Mrs. James,
Nicholas with Hatty Chessman, Soames with Mrs. Small, completing,
the circle to Swithin again.

Family dinners of the Forsytes observe certain traditions.  There
are, for instance, no hors d'oeuvre.  The reason for this is
unknown.  Theory among the younger members traces it to the
disgraceful price of oysters; it is more probably due to a desire
to come to the point, to a good practical sense deciding at once
that hors d'oeuvre are but poor things.  The Jameses alone,
unable to withstand a custom almost universal in Park Lane, are
now and then unfaithful.

A silent, almost morose, inattention to each other succeeds to
the subsidence into their seats, lasting till well into the first
entree, but interspersed with remarks such as, "Tom's bad again;
I can't tell what's the matter with him!"  "I suppose Ann doesn't
come down in the mornings?"--"What's the name of your doctor,
Fanny?"  "Stubbs?"  "He's a quack!"--"Winifred?  She's got too many
children.  Four, isn't it?  She's as thin as a lath!"--"What
d'you give for this sherry, Swithin?  Too dry for me!"

With the second glass of champagne, a kind of hum makes itself
heard, which, when divested of casual, accessories and resolved
into its primal element, is found to be James telling a story,
and this goes on for a long time, encroaching sometimes even upon
what must universally be recognised as the crowning point of a
Forsyte feast--'the saddle of mutton.'

No Forsyte has given a dinner without providing a saddle of
mutton.  There is something in its succulent solidity which makes
it suitable to people 'of a certain position.'  It is nourishing
and tasty; the sort of thing a man remembers eating.  It has a
past and a future, like a deposit paid into a bank; and it is
something that can be argued about.

Each branch of the family tenaciously held to a particular
locality--old Jolyon swearing by Dartmoor, James by Welsh,
Swithin by Southdown, Nicholas maintaining that people might
sneer, but there was nothing like New Zealand!  As for Roger, the
'original' of the brothers, he had been obliged to invent a
locality of his own, and with an ingenuity worthy of a man who
had devised a new profession for his sons, he had discovered a
shop where they sold German; on being remonstrated with, he had
proved his point by producing a butcher's bill, which showed that
he paid more than any of the others.  It was on this occasion
that old Jolyon, turning to June, had said in one of his bursts
of philosophy:

"You may depend upon it, they're a cranky lot, the Forsytes--and
you'll find it out, as you grow older!"

Timothy alone held apart, for though he ate saddle of mutton
heartily, he was, he said, afraid of it.

To anyone interested psychologically in Forsytes, this great
saddle-of-mutton trait is of prime importance; not only does it
illustrate their tenacity, both collectively and as individuals,
but it marks them as belonging in fibre and instincts to that
great class which believes in nourishment and flavour, and yields
to no sentimental craving for beauty.

Younger members of the family indeed would have done without a
joint altogether, preferring guinea-fowl, or lobster salad--
something which appealed to the imagination, and had less
nourishment--but these were females; or, if not, had been
corrupted by their wives, or by mothers, who having been forced
to eat saddle of mutton throughout their married lives, had
passed a secret hostility towards it into the fibre of their
sons.

The great saddle-of-mutton controversy at an end, a Tewkesbury
ham commenced, together with the least touch of West Indian--
Swithin was so long over this course that he caused a block in
the progress of the dinner.  To devote himself to it with better
heart, he paused in his conversation.

From his seat by Mrs. Septimus Small Soames was watching.  He had
a reason of his own connected with a pet building scheme, for
observing Bosinney.  The architect might do for his purpose; he
looked clever, as he sat leaning back in his chair, moodily
making little ramparts with bread-crumbs.  Soames noted his dress
clothes to be well cut, but too small, as though made many years
ago.

He saw him turn to Irene and say something and her face sparkle
as he often saw it sparkle at other people--never at himself.  He
tried to catch what they were saying, but Aunt Juley was
speaking.

Hadn't that always seemed very extraordinary to Soames?  Only
last Sunday dear Mr. Scole, had been so witty in his sermon, so
sarcastic, "For what," he had said, "shall it profit a mar if he
gain his own soul, but lose all his property?"  That, he had
said, was the motto of the middle-class; now, what had he meant
by that?  Of course, it might be what middle-class people
believed--she didn't know; what did Soames think?

He answered abstractedly: "How should I know?  Scoles is a
humbug, though, isn't he?"  For Bosinney was looking round the
table, as if pointing out the peculiarities of the guests, and
Soames wondered what he was saying.  By her smile Irene was
evidently agreeing with his remarks.  She seemed always to agree
with other people.

Her eyes were turned on himself; Soames dropped his glance at
once.  The smile had died off her lips.

A humbug?  But what did Soames mean?  If Mr. Scoles was a humbug,
a clergyman--then anybody might be--it was frightful!

"Well, and so they are!" said Soames.

During Aunt Juley's momentary and horrified silence he caught
some words of Irene's that sounded like: 'Abandon hope, all ye
who enter here!'

But Swithin had finished his ham.

"Where do you go for your mushrooms?" he was saying to Irene in a
voice like a courtier's; "you ought to go to Smileybob's he'll
give 'em you fresh.  These little men, they won't take the
trouble!"

Irene turned to answer him, and Soames saw Bosinney watching her
and smiling to himself.  A curious smile the fellow had.  A
half-simple arrangement, like a child who smiles when he is
pleased.  As for George's nickname--'The Buccaneer'--he did not
think much of that.  And, seeing Bosinney turn to June, Soames
smiled too, but sardonically--he did not like June, who was not
looking too pleased.

This was not surprising, for she had just held the following
conversation with James:

"I stayed on the river on my way home, Uncle James, and saw a
beautiful site for a house."

James, a slow and thorough eater, stopped the process of
mastication.

"Eh?" he said.  "Now, where was that?"

"Close to Pangbourne."

James placed a piece of ham in his mouth, and June waited.

"I suppose you wouldn't know whether the land about there was
freehold?" he asked at last.  "You wouldn't know anything about
the price of land about there?"

"Yes," said June; "I made inquiries." Her little resolute face
under its copper crown was suspiciously eager and aglow.

James regarded her with the air of an inquisitor.

"What?  You're not thinking of buying land!" he ejaculated,
dropping his fork.

June was greatly encouraged by his interest.  It had long been
her pet plan that her uncles should benefit themselves and
Bosinney by building country-houses.

"Of course not," she said.  "I thought it would be such a
splendid place for--you or--someone to build a country-house!"

James looked at her sideways, and placed a second piece of ham in
his mouth....

"Land ought to be very dear about there," he said.

What June had taken for personal interest was only the impersonal
excitement of every Forsyte who hears of something eligible in
danger of passing into other hands.  But she refused to see the
disappearance of her chance, and continued to press her point.

"You ought to go into the country, Uncle James.  I wish I had a
lot of money, I wouldn't live another day in London."

James was stirred to the depths of his long thin figure; he had
no idea his niece held such downright views.

"Why don't you go into the country?" repeated June; "it would do
you a lot of good."

"Why?" began James in a fluster.  "Buying land--what good d'you
suppose I can do buying land, building houses?--I couldn't get
four per cent. for my money!"

"What does that matter?  You'd get fresh air."

"Fresh air!" exclaimed James; "what should I do with fresh air,"

"I should have thought anybody liked to have fresh air," said
June scornfully.

James wiped his napkin all over his mouth.

"You don't know the value of money," he said, avoiding her eye.

"No! and I hope I never shall!" and, biting her lip with
inexpressible mortification, poor June was silent.

Why were her own relations so rich, and Phil never knew where the
money was coming from for to-morrow's tobacco.  Why couldn't they
do something for him?  But they were so selfish.  Why couldn't
they build country-houses?  She had all that naive dogmatism
which is so pathetic, and sometimes achieves such great results.
Bosinney, to whom she turned in her, discomfiture, was talking to
Irene, and a chill fell on June's spirit.  Her eyes grew steady
with  anger, like old Jolyon's when his will was crossed.

James, too, was much disturbed.  He felt as though someone had
threatened his right to invest his money at five per cent.
Jolyon had spoiled her.  None of his girls would have said such a
thing.  James had always been exceedingly liberal to his
children, and the consciousness of this made him feel it all the
more deeply.  He trifled moodily with his strawberries, then,
deluging them with cream, he ate them quickly; they, at all
events, should not escape him.

No wonder he was upset.  Engaged for fifty-four years (he had
been admitted a solicitor on the earliest day sanctioned by the
law) in arranging mortgages, preserving investments at a dead
level of high and safe interest, conducting negotiations on the
principle of securing the utmost possible out of other people
compatible with safety to his clients and himself, in
calculations as to the exact pecuniary possibilities of all the
relations of life, he had come at last to think purely in terms
of money.  Money was now his light, his medium for seeing, that
without which he was really unable to see, really not cognisant
of phenomena; and to have this thing, "I hope I shall never know
the value of money!" said to his face, saddened and exasperated
him.  He knew it to be nonsense, or it would have frightened him.
What was the world coming to!  Suddenly recollecting the story of
young Jolyon, however,(he felt a little comforted, for what could
you expect with a father like that!)  This turned his thoughts
into a channel still less pleasant.  What was all this talk about
Soames and Irene?

As in all self-respecting families, an emporium had been
established where family secrets were bartered, and family stock
priced.  It was known on Forsyte 'Change that Irene regretted her
marriage.  Her regret was disapproved of.  She ought to have
known her own mind; no dependable woman made these mistakes.

James reflected sourly that they had a nice house (rather small)
in an excellent position, no children, and no money troubles.
Soames was reserved about his affairs, but he must be getting a
very warm man.  He had a capital income from the business--for
Soames, like his father, was a member of that well-known firm of
solicitors, Forsyte, Bustard and Forsyte--and had always been very
careful.  He had done quite unusually well with some mortgages he
had taken up, too--a little timely foreclosure--most lucky hits!

There was no reason why Irene should not be happy, yet they said
she'd been asking for a separate room.  He knew where that ended.
It wasn't as if Soames drank,

James looked at his daughter-in-law.  That unseen glance of his
was cold and dubious.  Appeal and fear were in it, and a sense of
personal grievance.  Why should he be worried like this?  It was
very likely all nonsense; women were funny things!  They
exaggerated so, you didn't know what to believe; and then, nobody
told him anything, he had to find out everything for himself.
Again he looked furtively at Irene, and across from her to
Soames.  The latter, listening to Aunt Juley, was looking up,
under his brows in the direction of Bosinney.

'He's fond of her, I know,' thought James.  'Look at the way he's
always giving her things.'

And the extraordinary unreasonableness of her disaffection struck
him with increased force.

It was a pity, too, she was a taking little thing, and he, James,
would be really quite fond of her if she'd only let him.  She had
taken up lately with June; that was doing her no good, that was
certainly doing her no good.  She was getting to have opinions of
her own.  He didn't know what she wanted with anything of the
sort.  She'd a good home, and everything she could wish for.  He
felt that her friends ought to be chosen for her.  To go on like
this was dangerous.

June, indeed, with her habit of championing the unfortunate, had
dragged from Irene a confession, and, in return, had preached the
necessity of facing the evil, by separation, if need be.  But in
the face of these exhortations, Irene had kept a brooding silence,
as though she found terrible the thought of this struggle carried
through in cold blood.  He would never give her up, she had said
to June.

"Who cares?" June cried; "let him do what he likes--you've only
to stick to it!"  And she had not scrupled to say something of
this sort at Timothy's; James, when he heard of it, had felt a
natural indignation and horror.

What if Irene were to take it into her head to--he could hardly
frame the thought--to leave Soames?  But he felt this thought so
unbearable that he at once put it away; the shady visions it
conjured up, the sound of family tongues buzzing in his ears, the
horror of the conspicuous happening so close to him, to one of
his own children!  Luckily, she had no money--a beggarly fifty
pound a year!  And he thought of the deceased Heron, who had had
nothing to leave her, with contempt.  Brooding over his glass,
his long legs twisted under the table, he quite omitted to rise
when the ladies left the room.  He would have to speak to Soames-
-would have to put him on his guard; they could not go on like
this, now that such a contingency had occurred to him.  And he
noticed with sour disfavour that June had left her wine-glasses
full of wine.

'That little, thing's at the bottom of it all,' he mused;
'Irene'd never have thought of it herself.'  James was a man of
imagination.

The voice of Swithin roused him from his reverie.

"I gave four hundred pounds for it," he was saying.  "Of course
it's a regular work of art."

"Four hundred!  H'm! that's a lot of money!" chimed in Nicholas.

The object alluded to was an elaborate group of statuary in
Italian marble, which, placed upon a lofty stand (also of
marble), diffused an atmosphere of culture throughout the room.
The subsidiary figures, of which there were six, female, nude,
and of highly ornate workmanship, were all pointing towards the
central figure, also nude, and female, who was pointing at
herself; and all this gave the observer a very pleasant sense of
her extreme value.  Aunt Juley, nearly opposite, had had the
greatest difficulty in not looking, at it all the evening.

Old Jolyon spoke; it was he who had started the discussion.

"Four hundred fiddlesticks!  Don't tell me you gave four hundred
for that?"

Between the points of his collar Swithin's chin made the second
painful oscillatory movement of the evening.

"Four-hundred-pounds, of English money; not a farthing less.  I
don't regret it.  It's not common English--it's genuine modern
Italian!"

Soames raised the comer of his lip in a smile, and looked across
at Bosinney.  The architect was grinning behind the fumes of his
cigarette.  Now, indeed, he looked more like a buccaneer.

"There's a lot of work about it," remarked James hastily, who was
really moved by the size of the group.  "It'd sell well at
Jobson's."

"The poor foreign dey-vil that made it, "went on Swithin," asked
me five hundred--I gave him four.  It's worth eight.  Looked
half-starved, poor dey-vil!

"Ah!" chimed in Nicholas suddenly, "poor, seedy-lookin' chaps,
these artists; it's a wonder to me how they live.  Now, there's
young Flageoletti, that Fanny and the girls are always hav'in'
in, to play the fiddle; if he makes a hundred a year it's as much
as ever he does!"

James shook his head.  "Ah!" he said, "I don't know how they
live!"

Old Jolyon had risen, and, cigar in mouth, went to inspect the
group at close quarters.

"Wouldn't have given two for it!" he pronounced at last.

Soames saw his father and Nicholas glance at each other
anxiously; and, on the other side of Swithin, Bosinney, still
shrouded in smoke.

'I wonder what he thinks of it?' thought Soames, who knew well
enough that this group was hopelessly vieux jeu; hopelessly of
the last generation.  There was no longer any sale at Jobson's
for such works of art.

Swithin's answer came at last.  "You never knew anything about a
statue.  You've got your pictures, and that's all!"

Old Jolyon walked back to his seat, puffing his cigar.  It was
not likely that he was going to be drawn into an argument with an
obstinate beggar like Swithin, pig-headed as a mule, who had
never known a statue from a---straw hat.

"Stucco!" was all he said.

It had long been physically impossible for Swithin to start; his
fist came down on the table.

"Stucco!  I should like to see anything you've got in your house
half as good!"

And behind his speech seemed to sound again that rumbling
violence of primitive generations.

It was James who saved the situation.

"Now, what do you say, Mr. Bosinney?  You're an architect; you
ought to know all about statues and things!"

Every eye was turned upon Bosinney; all waited with a strange,
suspicious look for his answer.

And Soames, speaking for the first time, 'asked:

"Yes, Bosinney, what do you say?"

Bosinney replied coolly:

"The work is a remarkable one."

His words were addressed to Swithin, his eyes smiled slyly at old
Jolyon; only Soames remained unsatisfied.

"Remarkable for what?"

"For its naivete"

The answer was followed by an impressive silence; Swithin alone
was not sure whether a compliment was intended.




CHAPTER IV

PROJECTION OF THE HOUSE


Soames Forsyte walked out of his green-painted front door three
days after the dinner at Swithin's, and looking back from across
the Square, confirmed his impression that the house wanted
painting.

He had left his wife sitting on the sofa in the drawing-room, her
hands crossed in her lap, manifestly waiting for him to go out.
This was not unusual.  It happened, in fact, every day.

He could not understand what she found wrong with him.  It was
not as if he drank!  Did he run into debt, or gamble, or swear;
was he violent; were his friends rackety; did he stay out at
night?  On the contrary.

The profound, subdued aversion which he felt in his wife was a
mystery to him, and a source of the most terrible irritation.
That she had made a mistake, and did not love him, had tried to
love him and could not love him, was obviously no reason.

He that could imagine so outlandish a cause for his wife's not
getting on with him was certainly no Forsyte.

Soames was forced, therefore, to set the blame entirely down to
his wife.  He had never met a woman so capable of inspiring
affection.  They could not go anywhere without his seeing how all
the men were attracted by her; their looks, manners, voices,
betrayed it; her behaviour under this attention had been beyond
reproach.  That she was one of those women--not too common in the
Anglo-Saxon race--born to be loved and to love, who when not
loving are not living, had certainly never even occurred to him.
Her power of attraction, he regarded as part of her value as his
property; but it made him, indeed, suspect that she could give as
well as receive; and she gave him nothing!  'Then why did she
marry me?'  was his continual thought.  He had, forgotten his
courtship; that year and a half when he had besieged and lain in
wait for her, devising schemes for her entertainment, giving her
presents, proposing to her periodically, and keeping her other
admirers away with his perpetual presence.  He had forgotten the
day when, adroitly taking advantage of an acute phase of her
dislike to her home surroundings, he crowned his labours with
success.  If he remembered anything, it was the dainty
capriciousness with which the gold-haired, dark-eyed girl had
treated him.  He certainly did not remember the look on her face-
-strange, passive, appealing--when suddenly one day she had
yielded, and said that she would marry him.

It had been one of those real devoted wooings which books and
people praise, when the lover is at length rewarded for hammering
the iron till it is malleable, and all must be happy ever after
as the wedding bells.

Soames walked eastwards, mousing doggedly along on the shady
side.

The house wanted doing, up, unless he decided to move into the
country, and build.

For the hundredth time that month he turned over this problem.
There was no use in rushing into things!  He was very comfortably
off, with an increasing income getting on for three thousand a
year; but his invested capital was not perhaps so large as his
father believed--James had a tendency to expect that his children
should be better off than they were.  'I can manage eight
thousand easily enough,' he thought, 'without calling in either

Robertson's or Nicholl's.'

He had stopped to look in at a picture shop, for Soames was an
'amateur' of pictures, and had a little-room in No.  62,
Montpellier Square, full of canvases, stacked against the wall,
which he had no room to hang.  He brought them home with him on
his way back from the City, generally after dark, and would enter
this room on Sunday afternoons, to spend hours turning the
pictures to the light, examining the marks on their backs, and
occasionally making notes.

They were nearly all landscapes with figures in the foreground, a
sign of some mysterious revolt against London, its tall houses,
its interminable streets, where his life and the lives of his
breed and class were passed.  Every now and then he would take
one or two pictures away with him in a cab, and stop at Jobson's
on his way into the City.

He rarely showed them to anyone; Irene, whose opinion he secretly
respected and perhaps for that reason never solicited, had only
been into the room on rare occasions, in discharge of some wifely
duty.  She was not asked to look at the pictures, and she never
did.  To Soames this was another grievance.  He hated that pride
of hers, and secretly dreaded it.

In the plate-glass window of the picture shop his image stood and
looked at him.

His sleek hair under the brim of the tall hat had a sheen like
the hat itself; his cheeks, pale and flat, the line of his
clean-shaven lips, his firm chin with its greyish shaven tinge,
and the buttoned strictness of his black cut-away coat, conveyed
an appearance of reserve and secrecy, of imperturbable, enforced
composure; but his eyes, cold,--grey, strained--looking, with a
line in the brow between them, examined him wistfully, as if they
knew of a secret weakness.

He noted the subjects of the pictures, the names of the painters,
made a calculation of their values, but without the satisfaction
he usually derived from this inward appraisement, and walked on.

No. 62 would do well enough for another year, if he decided to
build!  The times were good for building, money had not been so
dear for years; and the site he had seen at Robin Hill, when he
had gone down there in the spring to inspect the Nicholl
mortgage--what could be better!  Within twelve miles of Hyde Park
Corner, the value of the land certain to go up, would always
fetch more than he gave for it; so that a house, if built in
really good style, was a first-class investment.

The notion of being the one member of his family with a country
house weighed but little with him; for to a true Forsyte,
sentiment, even the sentiment of social position, was a luxury
only to be indulged in after his appetite for more material
pleasure had been satisfied.

To get Irene out of London, away from opportunities of going
about and seeing people, away from her friends and those who put
ideas into her head!  That was the thing!  She was too thick with
June!  June disliked him.  He returned the sentiment.  They were
of the same blood.

It would be everything to get Irene out of town.  The house would
please her she would enjoy messing about with the decoration, she
was very artistic!

The house must be in good style, something that would always be
certain to command a price, something unique, like that last
house of Parkes, which had a tower; but Parkes had himself said
that his architect was ruinous.  You never knew where you were
with those fellows; if they had a name they ran you into no end
of expense and were conceited into the bargain.

And a common architect was no good--the memory of Parkes' tower
precluded the employment of a common architect:

This was why he had thought of Bosinney.  Since the dinner at
Swithin's he had made enquiries, the result of which had been
meagre, but encouraging: "One of the new school."

"Clever?"

"As clever as you like--a bit--a bit up in the air!"

He had not been able to discover what houses Bosinney had built,
nor what his charges were.  The impression he gathered was that
he would be able to make his own terms.  The more he reflected on
the idea, the more he liked it.  It would be keeping the thing in
the family, with Forsytes almost an instinct; and he would be
able to get 'favoured-nation,' if not nominal terms--only fair,
considering the chance to Bosinney of displaying his talents, for
this house  must be no common edifice.

Soames reflected complacently on the work it would be sure to
bring the young man; for, like every Forsyte, he could be a
thorough optimist when there was anything to be had out of it.

Bosinney's office was in Sloane Street, close at, hand, so that
he would be able to keep his eye continually on the plans.

Again, Irene would not be to likely to object to leave London if
her greatest friend's lover were given the job.  June's marriage
might depend on it.  Irene could not decently stand in the way of
June's marriage; she would never do that, he knew her too well.
And June would be pleased; of this he saw the advantage.

Bosinney looked clever, but he had also--and--it was one of his
great attractions--an air as if he did not quite know on which
side his bread were buttered; he should be easy to deal with in
money matters.  Soames made this reflection in no defrauding
spirit; it was the natural attitude of his mind--of the mind of
any good business man--of all those thousands of good business
men through whom he was threading his way up Ludgate Hill.

Thus he fulfilled the inscrutable laws of his great class--of
human nature itself--when he reflected, with a sense of comfort,
that Bosinney would be easy to deal with in money matters.

While he elbowed his way on, his eyes, which he usually kept
fixed on the ground before his feet, were attracted upwards by
the dome of St.  Paul's.  It had a peculiar fascination for him,
that old dome, and not once, but twice or three times a week,
would he halt in his daily pilgrimage to enter beneath and stop
in the side aisles for five or ten minutes, scrutinizing the
names and epitaphs on the monuments.  The attraction for him of
this great church was inexplicable, unless it enabled him to
concentrate his thoughts on the business of the day.  If any
affair of particular moment, or demanding peculiar acuteness, was
weighing on his mind, he invariably went in, to wander with
mouse-like attention from epitaph to epitaph.  Then retiring in
the same noiseless way, he would hold steadily on up Cheapside, a
thought more of dogged purpose in his gait, as though he had seen
something which he had made up his mind to buy.

He went in this morning, but, instead of stealing from monument
to monument, turned his eyes upwards to the columns and spacings
of the walls, and remained motionless.

His uplifted face, with the awed and wistful look which faces
take on themselves in church, was whitened to a chalky hue in the
vast building.  His gloved hands were clasped in front over the
handle of his umbrella.  He lifted them.  Some sacred inspiration
perhaps had come to him.

'Yes,' he thought, 'I must have room to hang my pictures.

That evening, on his return from the City, he called at
Bosinney's office.  He found the architect in his shirt-sleeves,
smoking a pipe, and ruling off lines on a plan.  Soames refused a
drink, and came at once to the point.

"If you've nothing better to do on Sunday, come down with me to
Robin Hill, and give me your opinion on a building site."

"Are you going to build?"

"Perhaps," said Soames; "but don't speak of it.  I just want your
opinion."

"Quite so," said the architect.

Soames peered about the room.

"You're rather high up here," he remarked.

Any information he could gather about the nature and scope of
Bosinney's business would be all to the good.

"It does well enough for me so far," answered the architect.
"You're accustomed to the swells."

He knocked out his pipe, but replaced it empty between his teeth;
it assisted him perhaps to carry on the conversation.  Soames
noted a hollow in each cheek, made as it were by suction.

"What do you pay for an office like this?" said he.

"Fifty too much," replied Bosinney.

This answer impressed Soames favourably.

"I suppose it is dear," he said.  "I'll call for you--on Sunday
about eleven."

The following Sunday therefore he called for Bosinney in a
hansom, and drove him to the station.  On arriving at Robin Hill,
they found no cab, and started to walk the mile and a half to the
site.

It was the 1st of August--a perfect day, with a burning sun and
cloudless sky--and in the straight, narrow road leading up the
hill their feet kicked up a yellow dust.

"Gravel soil," remarked Soames, and sideways he glanced at the
coat Bosinney wore.  Into the side-pockets of this coat were
thrust bundles of papers, and under one arm was carried a queer-
looking stick.  Soames noted these and other peculiarities.

No one but a clever man, or, indeed, a buccaneer, would have
taken such liberties with his appearance; and though these
eccentricities were revolting to Soames, he derived a certain
satisfaction from them, as evidence of qualities by which he must
inevitably profit.  If the fellow could build houses, what did
his clothes matter?

"I told you," he said, "that I want this house to be a surprise,
so don't say anything about it.  I never talk of my affairs until
they're carried through."

Bosinney nodded.

"Let women into your plans," pursued Soames, "and you never know
where it'll end."

"Ah!" Said Bosinney, "women are the devil!"

This feeling had long been at the--bottom of Soames's heart; he
had never, however, put it into words.

"Oh!" he Muttered, "so you're beginning to...."  He stopped, but
added, with an uncontrollable burst of spite: "June's got a
temper of her own--always had."

"A temper's not a bad thing in an angel."

Soames had never called Irene an angel.  He could not so have
violated his best instincts, letting other people into the secret
of her value, and giving himself away.  He made no reply.

They had struck into a half-made road across a warren.  A
cart-track led at right-angles to a gravel pit, beyond which the
chimneys of a cottage rose amongst a clump of trees at the border
of a thick wood.  Tussocks of feathery grass covered the rough
surface of the ground, and out of these the larks soared into the
hate of sunshine.  On the far horizon, over a countless
succession of fields and hedges, rose a line of downs.

Soames led till they had crossed to the far side, and there he
stopped.  It was the chosen site; but now that he was about to
divulge the spot to another he had become uneasy.

"The agent lives in that cottage," he said; "he'll give us some
lunch--we'd better have lunch before we go into this matter."

He again took the lead to the cottage, where the agent, a tall
man named Oliver, with a heavy face and grizzled beard, welcomed
them.  During lunch, which Soames hardly touched, he kept looking
at Bosinney, and once or twice passed his silk handkerchief
stealthily over his forehead.  The meal came to an end at last,
and Bosinney rose.

"I dare say you've got business to talk over," he said; "I'll
just go and nose about a bit." Without waiting for a reply he
strolled out.

Soames was solicitor to this estate, and he spent nearly an hour
in the agent's company, looking at ground-plans and discussing
the Nicholl and other mortgages; it was as it were by an
afterthought that he brought up the question of the building
site.

"Your people," he said, "ought to come down in their price to me,
considering that I shall be the first to build."

Oliver shook his head.

The site you've fixed on, Sir, he said, "is the cheapest we've
got.  Sites at the top of the slope are dearer by a good bit."

"Mind," said Soames," I've not decided; it's quite possible I
shan't build at all.  The ground rent's very high."

"Well, Mr. Forsyte, I shall be sorry if you go off, and I think
you'll make a mistake, Sir.  There's not a bit of land near
London with such a view as this, nor one that's cheaper, all
things considered; we've only to advertise, to get a mob of
people after it."

They looked at each other.  Their faces said very plainly: 'I
respect you as a man of business;  and you can't expect me to
believe a word you say.'

Well, repeated Soames, "I haven't made up my mind; the thing will
very likely go off!"  With these words, taking up his umbrella,
he put his chilly hand into the agent's, withdrew it without the
faintest pressure, and went out into the sun.

He walked slowly back towards the site in deep thought.  His
instinct told him that what the agent had said was true.  A cheap
site.  And the beauty of it was, that he knew the agent did not
really think it cheap; so that his own intuitive knowledge was a
victory over the agent's.

'Cheap or not, I mean to have it,'  he thought.

The larks sprang up in front of his feet, the air was full of
butterflies, a sweet fragrance rose from the wild grasses.  The
sappy scent of the bracken stole forth from the wood, where,
hidden in the depths, pigeons were cooing, and from afar on the
warm breeze, came the rhythmic chiming of church bells.

Soames walked with his eyes on the ground, his lips opening and
closing as though in anticipation of a delicious morsel.  But
when he arrived at the site, Bosinney was nowhere to be seen.
After waiting some little time, he crossed the warren in the
direction of the slope.  He would have shouted, but dreaded the
sound of his voice.

The warren was as lonely as a prairie, its silence only broken by
the rustle of rabbits bolting to their holes, and the song of the
larks.

Soames, the pioneer-leader of the great Forsyte army advancing to
the civilization of this wilderness, felt his spirit daunted by
the loneliness, by the invisible singing, and the hot, sweet air.
He had begun to retrace his steps when he at last caught sight of
Bosinney.

The architect was sprawling under a large oak tree, whose trunk,
with a huge spread of bough and foliage, ragged with age, stood
on the verge of the rise.

Soames had to touch him on the shoulder before he looked up.

"Hallo!  Forsyte," he said, "I've found the very place for your
house!  Look here!"

Soames stood and looked, then he said, coldly:

"You may be very clever, but this site will cost me half as much
again."

"Hang the cost, man.  Look at the view!"

Almost from their feet stretched ripe corn, dipping to a small
dark copse beyond.  A plain of fields and hedges spread to the
distant grey-bluedowns.  In a silver streak to the right could be
seen the line of the river.

The sky was so blue, and the sun so bright, that an eternal
summer seemed to reign over this prospect.  Thistledown floated
round them, enraptured by the serenity, of the ether.  The heat
danced over the corn, and, pervading all, was a soft, insensible
hum, like the murmur of bright minutes holding revel between
earth and heaven.

Soames looked.  In spite of himself, something swelled in his
breast.  To live here in sight of all this, to be able to point
it out to his friends, to talk of it, to possess it!  His cheeks
flushed.  The warmth, the radiance, the glow, were sinking into
his senses as, four years before, Irene's beauty had sunk into
his senses and made him long for her.  He stole a glance at
Bosinney, whose eyes, the eyes of the coachman's 'half-tame
leopard,' seemed running wild over the landscape.  The sunlight
had caught the promontories of the fellow's face, the bumpy
cheekbones, the point of his chin, the vertical ridges above his
brow; and Soames watched this rugged, enthusiastic, careless face
with an unpleasant feeling.

A long, soft ripple of wind flowed over the corn, and brought a
puff of warm air into their faces.

"I could build you a teaser here," said Bosinney, breaking the
silence at last.

"I dare say," replied Soames, drily.  "You haven't got to pay for
it."

"For about eight thousand I could build you a palace."

Soames had become very pale--a struggle was going on within him.
He dropped his eyes, and said stubbornly:

"I can't afford it."

And slowly, with his mousing walk, he led the way back to the
first site.

They spent some time there going into particulars of the
projected house, and then Soames returned to the agent's cottage.

He came out in about half an hour, and, joining Bosinney,
started for the station.

"Well," he said, hardly opening his lips, "I've taken that site
of yours, after all."

And again he was silent, confusedly debating how it was that this
fellow, whom by habit he despised, should have overborne his own
decision.




CHAPTER V

A FORSYTE MENAGE


Like the enlightened thousands of his class and generation in
this great city of London, who no longer believe in red velvet
chairs, and know that groups of modern Italian marble are 'vieux
jeu,' Soames Forsyte inhabited a house which did what it could.
It owned a copper door knocker of individual design, windows
which had been altered to open outwards, hanging flower boxes
filled with fuchsias, and at the back (a great feature) a little
court tiled with jade-green tiles, and surrounded by pink
hydrangeas in peacock-blue tubs.  Here, under a parchment-
coloured Japanese sunshade covering the whole end, inhabitants
or visitors could be screened from the eyes of the curious
while they drank tea and examined at their leisure the latest
of Soames's little silver boxes..

The inner decoration favoured the First Empire and William
Morris.  For its size, the house was commodious; there were
countless nooks resembling birds' nests, and little things made
of silver were deposited like eggs.

In this general perfection two kinds of fastidiousness were at
war.  There lived here a mistress who would have dwelt daintily
on a desert island; a master whose daintiness was, as it were, an
investment, cultivated by the owner for his advancement, in
accordance with the laws of competition.  This competitive
daintiness had caused Soames in his Marlborough days to be the
first boy into white waistcoats in summer, and corduroy
waistcoats in winter, had prevented him from ever appearing in,
public with his tie climbing up his collar, and induced him to
dust his patent leather boots before a great multitude assembled
on Speech Day to hear him recite Moliere.

Skin-like immaculateness had grown over Soames, as over many
Londoners; impossible to conceive of him with a hair out of
place, a tie deviating one-eighth of an inch from the
perpendicular, a collar unglossed!  He would not have gone
without a bath for worlds--it was the fashion to take baths; and
how bitter was his scorn of people who omitted them!

But Irene could be imagined, like some nymph, bathing in wayside
streams, for the joy of the freshness and of seeing her own fair
body.

In this conflict throughout the house the woman had gone to the
wall.  As in the struggle between Saxon and Celt still going on
within the nation, the more impressionable and receptive
temperament had had forced on it a conventional superstructure.

Thus the house had acquired a close resemblance to hundreds of
other houses with the same high aspirations, having become: 'That
very charming little house of the Soames Forsytes, quite
individual, my dear--really elegant.'

For Soames Forsyte--read James Peabody, Thomas Atkins, or
Emmanuel Spagnoletti, the name in fact of any upper-middle class
Englishman in London with any pretensions to taste; and though
the decoration be different, the phrase is just.

On the evening of August 8, a week after the expedition to Robin
Hill, in the dining-room of this house--'quite individual, my
dear--really elegant'--Soames and Irene were seated at dinner.  A
hot dinner on Sundays was a little distinguishing elegance common
to this house and many others.  Early in married life Soames had
laid down the rule: 'The servants must give us hot dinner on
Sundays--they've nothing to do but play the concertina.'

The custom had produced no revolution.  For--to Soames a rather
deplorable sign--servants were devoted to Irene, who, in defiance
of all safe tradition, appeared to recognise their right to a
share in the weaknesses of human nature.

The happy pair were seated, not opposite each other, but
rectangularly, at the handsome rosewood table; they dined without
a cloth--a distinguishing elegance--and so far had not spoken a
word.

Soames liked to talk during dinner about business, or what he had
been buying, and so long as he talked Irene's silence did not
distress him.  This evening he had found it impossible to talk.
The decision to build had been weighing on his mind all the week,
and he had made up his mind to tell her.

His nervousness about this disclosure irritated him profoundly;
she had no business to make him feel like that--a wife and a
husband being one person.  She had not looked at him once since
they sat down; and he wondered what on earth she had been
thinking about all the time.  It was hard, when a man worked as
he did, making money for her--yes, and with an ache in his heart-
-that she should sit there, looking--looking as if she saw the
walls of the room closing in.  It was enough to make a man get up
and leave the table.

The light from the rose-shaded lamp fell on her neck and arms--
Soames liked her to dine in a low dress, it gave him an
inexpressible feeling of superiority to the majority of his
acquaintance, whose wives were contented with their best high
frocks or with tea-gowns, when they dined at home.  Under that
rosy light her amber-coloured hair and fair skin made strange
contrast with her dark brown eyes.

Could a man own anything prettier than this dining-table with its
deep tints, the starry, soft-petalled roses, the ruby-coloured
glass, and quaint silver furnishing; could a man own anything
prettier than the woman who sat at it?  Gratitude was no virtue
among Forsytes, who, competitive, and full of common-sense, had
no occasion for it; and Soames only experienced a sense of
exasperation amounting to pain, that he did not own her as it was
his right, to own her, that he could not, as by stretching out
his hand to that rose, pluck her and sniff the very secrets of
her heart.

Out of his other property, out of all the things he had
collected, his silver, his pictures, his houses, his investments,
he got a secret and intimate feeling; out of her he got none.

In this house of his there was writing on every wall.  His
business-like temperament protested against a mysterious warning
that she was not made for him.  He had married this woman,
conquered her, made her his own, and it seemed to him contrary to
the most fundamental of all laws, the law of possession, that he
could do no more than own her body--if indeed he could do that,
which he was beginning to doubt.  If any one had asked him if he
wanted to own her soul, the question would have seemed to him
both ridiculous and sentimental.  But he did so want, and the
writing said he never would.

She was ever silent, passive, gracefully averse; as though
terrified lest by word, motion, or sign she might lead him to
believe that she was fond of him; and he asked himself: Must I
always go on like this?

Like most novel readers of his generation (and Soames was a great
novel reader), literature coloured his view of life; and he had
imbibed the belief that it was only a question of time.

In the end the husband always gained the affection of his wife.
Even in those cases--a class of book he was not very fond of--
which ended in tragedy, the wife always died with poignant
regrets on her lips, or if it were the husband who died--
unpleasant thought--threw herself on his body in an agony of
remorse.

He often took Irene to the theatre, instinctively choosing the
modern Society Plays with the modern Society conjugal problem, so
fortunately different from any conjugal problem in real life.  He
found that they too always ended in the same way, even when there
was a lover in the case.  While he was watching the play Soames
often sympathized with the lover; but before he reached home
again, driving with Irene in a hansom, he saw that this would not
do, and he was glad the play had ended as it had.  There was one
class of husband that had just then come into fashion, the
strong, rather rough, but extremely sound man, who was peculiarly
successful at the end of the play; with this person Soames was
really not in sympathy, and had it not been for his own position,
would have expressed his disgust with the fellow.  But he was so
conscious of how vital to himself was the necessity for being a
successful, even a 'strong,' husband, that be never spoke of a
distaste born perhaps by the perverse processes of Nature out of
a secret fund of brutality in himself.

But Irene's silence this evening was exceptional.  He had never
before seen such an expression on her face.  And since it is
always the unusual which alarms, Soames was alarmed.  He ate his
savoury, and hurried the maid as she swept off the crumbs with
the silver sweeper.  When she had left the room, he filled his.
glass with wine and said:

"Anybody been here this afternoon?"

"June."

"What did she want?"  It was an axiom with the Forsytes that
people did not go anywhere unless they wanted something.  "Came
to talk about her lover, I suppose?"

Irene made no reply.

"It looks to me," continued Soames, "as if she were sweeter on him
than he is on her.  She's always following him about."

Irene's eyes made him feel uncomfortable.

"You've no business to say such a thing!" she exclaimed.

"Why not?  Anybody can see it."

"They cannot.  And if they could, it's disgraceful to say so."

Soames's composure gave way.

"You're a pretty wife!" he said.  But secretly he wondered at the
heat of her reply; it was unlike her.  "You're cracked about
June!  I can tell you one thing: now that she has the Buccaneer
in tow, she doesn't care twopence about you, and, you'll find it
out.  But you won't see so much of her in future; we're going to
live in the country."

He had been glad to get his news out under cover of this burst of
irritation.  He had expected a cry of dismay; the silence with
which his pronouncement was received alarmed him.

"You don't seem interested," he was obliged to add.

"I knew it already."

He looked at her sharply.

"Who told you?"

"June."

"How did she know?"

Irene did not answer.  Baffled and uncomfortable, he said:

"It's a fine thing for Bosinney, it'll be the making of him.  I
suppose she's told you all about it?"

"Yes."

There was another pause, and then Soames said:

"I suppose you don't want to, go?"

Irene made no reply.

"Well, I can't tell what you want.  You never seem contented
here."

"Have my wishes anything to do with it?"

She took the vase of roses and left the room.  Soames remained
seated.  Was it for this that he had signed that contract?  Was
it for this that he was going to spend some, ten thousand pounds?
Bosinney's phrase came back to him: "Women are the devil!"

But presently he grew calmer.  It might have, been worse.  She
might have flared up.  He had expected something more than this.
It was lucky, after all, that June had broken the ice for him.
She must have wormed it out of Bosinney; he might have known she
would.

He lighted his cigarette.  After all, Irene had not made a scene!
She would come round--that was the best of her; she was cold, but
not sulky.  And, puffing the cigarette smoke at a lady-bird on
the shining table, he plunged into a reverie about the house.  It
was no good worrying; he would go and make it up presently.  She
would be sitting out there in the dark, under the Japanese
sunshade, knitting.  A beautiful, warm night....

In truth, June had come in that afternoon with shining eyes, and
the words: "Soames is a brick!  It's splendid for Phil--the very
thing for him!"

Irene's face remaining dark and puzzled, she went on:

"Your new house at Robin Hill, of course.  What?  Don't you
know?"

Irene did not know.

"Oh! then, I suppose I oughtn't to have told you!"  Looking
impatiently at her friend, she cried: "You look as if you didn't
care.  Don't you see, it's what I've' been praying for--the very
chance he's been wanting all this time.  Now you'll see what he
can do;" and thereupon she poured out the whole story.

Since her own engagement she had not seemed much interested in
her friend's position; the hours she spent with Irene were given
to confidences of her own; and at times, for all her affectionate
pity, it was impossible to keep out of her smile a trace of
compassionate contempt for the woman who had made such a mistake
in her life--such a vast, ridiculous mistake.

"He's to have all the decorations as well--a free hand.  It's
perfect--"June broke into laughter, her little figure quivered
gleefully; she raised her hand, and struck a blow at a muslin
curtain.  "Do you, know I even asked Uncle James...." But, with a
sudden dislike to mentioning that incident, she stopped; and
presently, finding her friend so unresponsive, went away.  She
looked back from the pavement, and Irene was still standing in
the doorway.  In response to her farewell wave, Irene put her
hand to her brow, and, turning slowly, shut the door....

Soames went to the drawing-room presently, and peered at her
through the window.

Out in the shadow of the Japanese sunshade she was sitting very
still, the lace on her white shoulders stirring with the soft
rise and fall of her bosom.

But about this silent creature sitting there so motionless, in
the dark, there seemed a warmth, a hidden fervour of feeling, as
if the whole of her being had been stirred, and some change were
taking place in its very depths.

He stole back to the dining-room unnoticed.




CHAPTER VI

JAMES AT LARGE


It was not long before Soames's determination to build went the
round of the family, and created the flutter that any decision
connected with property should make among Forsytes.

It was not his fault, for he had been determined that no one
should know.  June, in the fulness of her heart had told Mrs.
Small, giving her leave only to tell Aunt Ann--she thought it
would cheer her, the poor old sweet! for Aunt Ann had kept her
room now for many days.

Mrs. Small told Aunt Ann at once, who, smiling as she lay back on
her pillows, said in her distinct, trembling old voice:

"It's very nice for dear June; but I hope they will be careful--
it's rather dangerous!"

When she was left alone again, a frown, like a cloud presaging a
rainy morrow, crossed her face.

While she was lying there so many days the process of recharging
her will went on all the time; it spread to her face, too, and
tightening movements were always in action at the corners of her
lips.

The maid Smither, who had been in her service since girlhood, and
was spoken of as "Smither--a good girl--but so slow!"--the maid
Smither performed every morning with extreme punctiliousness the
crowning ceremony of that ancient toilet.  Taking from the
recesses of their, pure white band-box those flat, grey curls,
the insignia of personal dignity, she placed them securely in her
mistress's hands, and turned her back.

And every day Aunts Juley and Hester were required to come and
report on Timothy; what news there was of Nicholas; whether dear
June had succeeded in getting Jolyon to shorten the engagement,
now that Mr. Bosinney was building Soames a house; whether young
Roger's wife was really--expecting; how the operation on Archie
had succeeded; and what Swithin.  had done about that empty house
in Wigmore Street, where the tenant had lost all his money and
treated him so badly; above all, about Soames; was Irene still--
still asking for a separate room?  And every morning Smither was
told: "I shall be coming down this afternoon, Smither, about two
o'clock.  I shall want your arm, after all these days in bed!"

After telling Aunt Ann, Mrs. Small had spoken of the house in the
strictest confidence to Mrs. Nicholas, who in her turn had asked
Winifred Dartie for confirmation, supposing, of course, that,
being Soames's sister, she would know all about it.  Through her
it had in due course come round to the ears of James. He had been
a good deal agitated.

"Nobody," he said, "told him anything." And, rather than go
direct to Soames himself, of whose taciturnity he was afraid, he
took his umbrella and went round to Timothy's.

He found Mrs. Septimus and Hester (who had been told--she was so
safe, she found it tiring to talk) ready, and indeed eager, to
discuss the news.  It was very good of dear Soames, they thought,
to employ Mr. Bosinney, but rather risky.  What had George named
him? 'The Buccaneer' How droll!  But George was always droll!
However, it would be all in the family they supposed they must
really look upon Mr. Bosinney as belonging to the family, though
it seemed strange.

James here broke in:

"Nobody knows anything about him.  I don't see what Soames wants
with a young man like that.  I shouldn't be surprised if Irene
had put her oar in.  I shall speak to...."

"Soames," interposed Aunt Juley, "told Mr. Bosinney that he
didn't wish it mentioned.  He wouldn't like it to be talked
about, I'm sure, and if Timothy knew he would be very vexed,
I...."

James put his hand behind his ear:

"What?" he said.  "I'm getting very deaf.  I suppose I don't hear
people.  Emily's got a bad toe.  We shan't be able to start for
Wales till the end of the month.  There' s always something!"
And, having got what he wanted, he took his hat and went away.

It was a fine afternoon, and he walked across the Park towards
Soames's, where he intended to dine, for Emily's toe kept her in
bed, and Rachel and Cicely were on a visit to the country.  He
took the slanting path from the Bayswater side of the Row to the
Knightsbridge Gate, across a pasture of short, burnt grass,
dotted with blackened sheep, strewn with seated couples and
strange waifs; lying prone on their faces, like corpses on a
field over which the wave of battle has rolled.

He walked rapidly, his head bent, looking neither to right nor,
left.  The appearance of this park, the centre of his own
battle-field, where he had all his life been fighting, excited no
thought or speculation in his, mind.  These corpses flung down,
there, from out the press and turmoil of the struggle, these
pairs of lovers sitting cheek by jowl for an hour of idle Elysium
snatched from the monotony of their treadmill, awakened no
fancies in his mind; he had outlived that kind of imagination;
his nose, like the nose of a sheep, was fastened to the pastures
on which he browsed.

One of his tenants had lately shown a disposition to be
behind-hand in his rent, and it had become a grave question
whether he had not better turn him out at once, and so run the
risk of not re-letting before Christmas.  Swithin had just been
let in very badly, but it had served him right--he had held on
too long.

He pondered this as he walked steadily, holding his umbrella
carefully by the wood, just below the crook of the handle, so as
to keep the ferule off the ground, and not fray the silk in the
middle.  And, with his thin, high shoulders stooped, his long
legs moving with swift mechanical precision, this passage through
the Park, where the sun shone with a clear flame on so much
idleness--on so many human evidences of the remorseless battle of
Property, raging beyond its ring--was like the flight of some
land bird across the sea.

He felt a--touch on the arm as he came out at, Albert Gate.

It was Soames, who, crossing from the shady side of Piccadilly,
where he had been walking home from the office, had suddenly
appeared alongside.

"Your mother's in bed," said James; "I was, just coming to you,
but I suppose I shall be in the way."

The outward relations between James and his son were marked by a
lack of sentiment peculiarly Forsytean, but for all that the two
were by no means unattached.  Perhaps they regarded one another
as an investment; certainly they were solicitous of each other's
welfare, glad of each other's company.  They had never exchanged
two words upon the more intimate problems of life, or revealed in
each other's presence the existence of any deep feeling.

Something beyond the power of word-analysis bound them together,
something hidden deep in the fibre of nations and families--for
blood, they say, is thicker than water--and neither of them was a
cold-blooded man.  Indeed, in James love of his children was now
the prime motive of his existence.  To have creatures who were
parts of himself, to whom he might transmit the money he saved,
was at the root of his saving; and, at seventy-five, what was
left that could give him pleasure, but--saving?  The kernel of
life was in this saving for his children.

Than James Forsyte, notwithstanding all his 'Jonah-isms,' there
was no saner man (if the leading symptom of sanity, as we are
told, is self-preservation, though without doubt Timothy went too
far) in all this London, of which he owned so much, and loved
with such a dumb love, as the centre of his opportunities.  He
had the marvellous instinctive sanity of the middle class.  In
him--more than in Jolyon, with his masterful will and his moments
of tenderness and philosophy--more than in Swithin, the martyr to
crankiness--Nicholas, the sufferer from ability--and Roger, the
victim of enterprise--beat the true pulse of compromise; of all
the brothers he was least remarkable in mind and person, and for
that reason more likely to live for ever.

To James, more than to any of the others, was "the family"
significant and dear.  There had always been something primitive
and cosy in his attitude towards life; he loved the family
hearth, he loved gossip, and he loved grumbling.  All his
decisions were formed of a cream which he skimmed off the family
mind; and, through that family, off the minds of thousands of
other families of similar fibre.  Year after year, week after
week, he went to Timothy's, and in his brother's front
drawing-room--his legs twisted, his long white whiskers framing
his clean-shaven mouth would sit watching the family pot simmer,
the cream rising to the top; and he would go away sheltered,
refreshed, comforted, with an indefinable sense of comfort.

Beneath the adamant of his self-preserving instinct there was
much real softness in James; a visit to Timothy's was like an
hour spent in the lap of a mother; and the deep craving he
himself had for the protection of the family wing reacted in turn
on his feelings towards his own children; it was a nightmare to
him to think of them.  exposed to the treatment of the world, in
money, health, or reputation.  When his old friend John Street's
son volunteered for special service, he shook his head
querulously, and wondered what John Street was about to allow it;
and when young Street was assagaied, he took it so much to heart
that he made a point of calling everywhere with the special
object of saying: He knew how it would be--he'd no patience with
them!

When his son-in-law Dartie had that financial crisis, due to
speculation in Oil Shares, James made himself ill worrying over
it; the knell of all prosperity seemed to have sounded.  It took
him three months and a visit to Baden-Baden to get better; there
was something terrible in the idea that but for his, James's,
money, Dartie's name might have appeared in the Bankruptcy List.

Composed of a physiological mixture so sound that if he had an
earache he thought he was dying, he regarded the occasional
ailments of his wife and children as in the nature of personal
grievances, special interventions of Providence for the purpose
of destroying his peace of mind; but he did not believe at all in
the ailments of people outside his own immediate family,
affirming them in every case to be due to neglected liver.

His universal comment was: "What can they expect?  I have it
myself, if I'm not careful!"

When he went to Soames's that evening he felt that life was hard
on him: There was Emily with a bad toe, and Rachel gadding about
in the country; he got no sympathy from anybody; and Ann, she was
ill--he did not believe she would last through the summer; he had
called there three times now without her being able to see him!
And this idea of Soames's, building a house, that would have to
be looked into.  As to the trouble with Irene, he didn't know
what was to come of that--anything might come of it!

He entered 62, Montpellier Square with the fullest intentions of
being miserable.  It was already half-past seven, and Irene,
dressed for dinner, was seated in the drawing-room.  She was
wearing her gold-coloured frock--for, having been displayed at a
dinner-party, a soiree, and a dance, it was now to be worn at
home--and she had adorned the bosom with a cascade of lace, on
which James's eyes riveted themselves at once.

"Where do you get your things?" he said in an aggravated voice.
"I never see Rachel and Cicely looking half so well.  That
rose-point, now--that's not real!"

Irene came close, to prove to him that he was in error.

And, in spite of himself, James felt the influence of her
deference, of the faint seductive perfume exhaling from her.  No
self-respecting Forsyte surrendered at a blow; so he merely said:
He didn't know--he expected she was spending a pretty penny on
dress.

The gong sounded, and, putting her white arm within his, Irene
took him into the dining-room.  She seated him in Soames's usual
place, round the corner on her left.  The light fell softly
there, so that he would not be worried by the gradual dying of
the day; and she began to talk to him about himself.

Presently, over James came a change, like the mellowing that
steals upon a fruit in the, sun; a  sense of being caressed, and
praised, and petted, and all without the bestowal of a single
caress or word of praise.  He felt that what he was eating was
agreeing with him; he could not get that feeling at home; he did
not know when he had enjoyed a glass of champagne so much, and,
on inquiring the brand and price, was surprised to find that it
was one of which he had a large stock himself, but could never
drink; he instantly formed the resolution to let his wine
merchant know that he had been swindled.

Looking up from his food, he remarked:

"You've a lot of nice things about the place.  Now, what did you
give for that sugar-sifter?  Shouldn't wonder if it was worth
money!"

He was particularly pleased with the appearance of a picture, on
the wall opposite, which he himself had given them:

"I'd no idea it was so good!" he said.

They rose to go into the drawing-room, and James followed Irene
closely.

"That's what I call a capital little dinner," he murmured,
breathing pleasantly down on her shoulder; "nothing heavy--and
not too Frenchified.  But I can't get it at home.  I pay my cook
sixty pounds a year, but she can't give me a dinner like that!"

He had as yet made no allusion to the building of the house, nor
did he when Soames, pleading the excuse of business, betook
himself to the room at the top, where he kept his pictures.

James was left alone with his daughter-in-law.  The glow of the
wine, and of an excellent liqueur, was still within him.  He felt
quite warm towards her.  She was really a taking little thing;
she listened to you, and seemed to understand what you were
saying; and, while talking, he kept examining her figure, from
her bronze-coloured shoes to the waved gold of her hair.  She was
leaning back in an Empire chair, her shoulders poised against the
top--her body, flexibly straight and unsupported from the hips,
swaying when she moved, as though giving to the arms of a lover.
Her lips were smiling, her eyes half-closed.

It may have been a recognition of danger in the very charm of her
attitude, or a twang of digestion, that caused a sudden dumbness
to fall on James.  He did not remember ever having, been quite
alone with Irene before.  And, as he looked at her, an odd
feeling crept over him, as though he had come across something
strange and foreign.

Now what was she thinking about--sitting back like that?

Thus when he spoke it was in a sharper voice, as if he had been
awakened from a pleasant dream.

"What d'you do with yourself all day?" he said.  "You never come
round to Park Lane!"

She seemed to be making very lame excuses, and James did not look
at her.  He did not want to believe that she was really avoiding
them--it would mean too much.

"I expect the fact is, you haven't time," he said; "You're always
about with June.  I expect you're useful to her with her young
man, chaperoning, and one thing and another.  They tell me she's
never at home now; your Uncle Jolyon he doesn't like it, I fancy,
being left so much alone as he is.  They tell me she's always
hanging about for this young Bosinney; I suppose he comes here
every day.  Now, what do you think of him?  D'you think he knows
his own mind?  He seems to me a poor thing.  I should say the
grey mare was the better horse!"

The colour deepened in Irene's face; and James watched her
suspiciously.

"Perhaps you don't quite understand Mr. Bosinney," she said.

"Don't understand him!" James humied out: "Why not?--you can see
he's one of these artistic chaps.  They say he's clever--they all
think they're clever.  You know more about him than I do," he
added; and again his suspicious glance rested on her.

"He is designing a house for Soames," she said softly, evidently
trying to smooth things over.

"That brings me to what I was going to say," continued James; "I
don't know what Soames wants with a young man like that; why
doesn't he go to a first-rate man?"

"Perhaps Mr. Bosinney is first-rate!"

James rose, and took a turn with bent head.

"That's it'," he said, "you young people, you all stick together;
you all think you know best!"

Halting his tall, lank figure before her, he raised a finger, and
levelled it at her bosom, as though bringing an indictment
against her beauty:

"All I can say is, these artistic people, or whatever they call
themselves, they're as unreliable as they can be; and my advice
to you is, don't you have too much to do with him!"

Irene smiled; and in the curve of her lips was a strange
provocation.  She seemed to have lost her deference.  Her breast
rose and fell as though with secret anger; she drew her hands
inwards from their rest on the arms of her chair until the tips
of her fingers met, and her dark eyes looked unfathomably at
James.

The latter gloomily scrutinized the floor.

"I tell you my opinion," he said, "it's a pity you haven't got a
child to think about, and occupy you!"

A brooding look came instantly on Irene's face, and even James
became conscious of the rigidity that took possession of her
whole figure beneath the softness of its silk and lace clothing.

He was frightened by the effect he had produced, and like most
men with but little courage, he sought at once to justify himself
by bullying.

"You don't seem to care about going about.  Why don't you drive
down to Hurlingham with us?  And go to the theatre now and then.
At your time of life you ought to take an interest in things.
You're a young woman!"

The brooding look darkened on her face; he grew nervous.

"Well, I know nothing about it," he said; "nobody tells me
anything.  Soames ought to be able to take care of himself.  If
he can't take care of himself he mustn't look to me--that's all."

Biting the corner of his forefinger he stole a cold, sharp look
at his daughter-in-law.

He encountered her eyes fixed on his own, so dark and deep, that
he stopped, and broke into a gentle perspiration.

"Well, I must be going," he said after a short pause, and a
minute later rose, with a slight appearance of surprise, as
though he had expected to be asked to stop.  Giving his hand to
Irene, he allowed himself to be conducted to the door, and let
out into the street.  He would not have a cab, he would walk,
Irene was to say good-night to Soames for him, and if she wanted
a little gaiety, well, he would drive her down to Richmond any
day.

He walked home, and going upstairs, woke Emily out of the first
sleep she had had for four and twenty hours, to tell her that it
was his impression things were in a bad way at Soames's; on this
theme he descanted for half an hour, until at last, saying that
he would not sleep a wink, he turned on his side and instantly
began to snore.

In Montpellier Square Soames, who had come from the picture room,
stood invisible at the top of the stairs, watching Irene sort the
letters brought by the last post.  She turned back into the
drawing-room; but in a minute came out, and stood as if
listening.  Then she came stealing up the stairs, with a kitten
in her arms.  He could see her face bent over the little beast,
which was purring against her neck.  Why couldn't she look at him
like that?

Suddenly she saw him, and her face changed.

"Any letters for me?" he said.

"Three."

He stood aside, and without another word she passed on into the
bedroom.




CHAPTER VII

OLD JOLYON'S PECCADILLO


Old Jolyon came out of Lord's cricket ground that same afternoon
with the intention of going home.  He had not reached Hamilton
Terrace before he changed his mind, and hailing a cab, gave the
driver an address in Wistaria Avenue.  He had taken a resolution.

June had hardly been at home at all that week; she had given him
nothing of her company for a long time past, not, in fact, since
she had become engaged to Bosinney.  He never asked her for her
company.  It was not his habit to ask people for things!  She had
just that one idea now--Bosinney and his affairs--and she left
him stranded in his great house, with a parcel of servants, and
not a soul to speak to from morning to night.  His Club was
closed for cleaning; his Boards in recess; there was nothing,
therefore, to take him into the City.  June had wanted him to go
away; she would not go herself, because Bosinney was in London.

But where was he to go by himself?  He could not go abroad alone;
the sea upset his liver; he hated hotels.  Roger went to a
hydropathic--he was--not going to begin that at his time of life,
those new-fangled places we're all humbug!

With such formulas he clothed to himself the desolation of his
spirit; the lines down his face deepening, his eyes day by day
looking forth with the melancholy which sat so strangely on a
face wont to be strong and serene.

And so that afternoon he took this journey through St.  John's
Wood, in the golden-light that sprinkled the rounded green bushes
of the acacia's before the little houses, in the summer sunshine
that seemed holding a revel over the little gardens; and he
looked about him with interest; for this was a district which no
Forsyte entered without open disapproval and secret curiosity.

His cab stopped in front of a small house of that peculiar buff
colour which implies a long immunity from paint.  It had an outer
gate, and a rustic approach.

He stepped out, his bearing extremely composed; his massive head,
with its drooping moustache and wings of white hair, very
upright, under an excessively large top hat; his glance firm, a
little angry.  He had been driven into this!

"Mrs. Jolyon Forsyte at home?"

"Oh, yes sir!--what name shall I say, if you please, sir?"

Old Jolyon could not help twinkling at the little maid as he gave
his name.  She seemed to him such a funny little toad!

And he followed her through the dark hall, into a small double,
drawing-room, where the furniture was covered in chintz, and the
little maid placed him in a chair.

"They're all in the garden, sir; if you'll kindly take a seat,
I'll tell them."

Old Jolyon sat down in the chintz-covered chair, and looked
around him.  The whole place seemed to him, as he would have
expressed it, pokey; there was a certain--he could not tell
exactly what--air of shabbiness, or rather of making two ends
meet, about everything.  As far as he could see, not a single
piece of furniture was worth a five-pound note.  The walls,
distempered rather a long time ago, were decorated with
water-colour sketches; across the ceiling meandered a long crack.

These little houses were all old, second-rate concerns; he should
hope the rent was under a hundred a year; it hurt him more than
he could have said, to think of a Forsyte--his own son living in
such a place.

The little maid came back.  Would he please to go down into the
garden?

Old Jolyon marched out through the French windows.  In descending
the steps he noticed that they wanted painting.

Young Jolyon, his wife, his two children, and his dog Balthasar,
were all out there under a pear-tree.

This walk towards them was the most courageous act of old
Jolyon's life; but no muscle of his face moved, no nervous
gesture betrayed him.  He kept his deep-set eyes steadily on the
enemy.

In those two minutes he demonstrated to perfection all that
unconscious soundness, balance, and vitality of fibre that made,
of him and so many others of his class the core of the nation.
In the unostentatious conduct of their own affairs, to the
neglect of everything else, they typified the essential
individualism, born in the Briton from the natural isolation of
his country's life.

The dog Balthasar sniffed round the edges of his trousers; this
friendly and cynical mongrel offspring of a liaison between a
Russian poodle and a fox-terrier--had a nose for the unusual.

The strange greetings over, old Jolyon seated himself in a wicker
chair, and his two grandchildren, one on each side of his knees,
looked at him silently, never having seen so old a man.

They were unlike, as though recognising the difference set
between them by the circumstances of their births.  Jolly, the
child of sin, pudgy-faced, with his tow-coloured hair brushed off
his forehead, and a dimple in his chin, had an air of stubborn
amiability, and the eyes of a Forsyte; little Holly, the child of
wedlock, was a dark-skinned, solemn soul, with her mother's, grey
and wistful eyes.

The dog Balthasar, having walked round the three small flower-
beds, to show his extreme contempt for things at large, had also
taken a seat in front of old Jolyon, and, oscillating a tail
curled by Nature tightly over his back, was staring up with
eyes that did not blink.

Even in the garden, that sense of things being pokey haunted old
Jolyon; the wicker chair creaked under his weight; the
garden-beds looked 'daverdy'; on the far side, under the smut-
stained wall, cats had made a path.

While he and his grandchildren thus regarded each other with the
peculiar scrutiny, curious yet trustful, that passes between the
very young and the very old, young Jolyon watched his wife.

The colour had deepened in her thin, oval face, with its straight
brows, and large, grey eyes.  Her hair, brushed in fine, high
curves back from her forehead, was going grey, like his own, and
this greyness made the sudden vivid colour in her cheeks
painfully pathetic.

The look on her face, such as he had never seen there before,
such as she had always hidden from him, was full of secret
resentments, and longings, and fears.  Her eyes, under their
twitching brows, stared painfully.  And she was silent.

Jolly alone sustained the conversation; he had many possessions,
and was anxious that his unknown friend with extremely large
moustaches, and hands all covered with blue veins, who sat with
legs crossed like his own father (a habit he was himself trying
to acquire), should know it; but being a Forsyte, though not yet
quite eight years old, he made no mention of the thing at the
moment dearest to his heart--a camp of soldiers in a shop-window,
which his father had promised to buy.  No doubt it seemed to him
too precious; a tempting of Providence to mention it yet.

And the sunlight played through the leaves on that little party
of the three generations grouped tranquilly under the pear-tree,
which had long borne no fruit.

Old Jolyon's furrowed face was reddening patchily, as old men's
faces redden in the sun.  He took one of Jolly's hands in his
own; the boy climbed on to his knee; and little Holly, mesmerized
by this sight, crept up to them; the sound of the dog Balthasar's
scratching arose rhythmically.

Suddenly young Mrs. Jolyon got up and hurried indoors.  A minute
later her husband muttered an excuse, and followed.  Old Jolyon
was left alone with his grandchildren.

And Nature with her quaint irony began working in him one of her
strange revolutions, following her cyclic laws into the depths of
his heart.  And that tenderness for little children, that passion
for the beginnings of life which had once made him forsake his
son and follow June, now worked in him to forsake June and follow
these littler things.  Youth, like a flame, burned ever in his
breast, and to youth he turned, to the round little limbs, so
reckless, that wanted care, to the small round faces so
unreasonably solemn or bright, to the treble tongues,  and the
shrill, chuckling laughter, to the insistent tugging hands, and
the feel of small bodies against his legs, to all that was young
and young, and once more young.  And his eyes grew soft, his
voice, and thin-veined hands soft, and soft his heart within him.
And to those small creatures he became at once a place of
pleasure, a place where they were secure, and could talk and
laugh and play; till, like sunshine, there radiated from old
Jolyon's wicker chair the perfect gaiety of three hearts.

But with young Jolyon following to his wife's room it was
different.

He found her seated on a chair before her dressing-glass, with
her hands before her face.

Her shoulders were shaking with sobs.  This passion of hers for
suffering was mysterious to him.  He had been through a hundred
of these moods; how he had survived them he never knew, for he
could never believe they were moods, and that the last hour of
his partnership had not struck.

In the night she would be sure to throw her o arms round, his
neck and say: "Oh! Jo, how I make you suffer!" as she had done a
hundred times before.

He reached out his hand, and, unseen, slipped his razor-case into
his pocket.
'I cannot stay here,' he thought, 'I must go down!'  Without a
word he left the room, and went back to the lawn.

Old Jolyon had little Holly on his knee; she had taken possession
of his watch; Jolly, very red in the face, was trying to show
that he could stand on his head.  The dog Balthasar, as close as
he might be to the tea-table, had fixed his eyes on the cake.

Young Jolyon felt a malicious desire to cut their enjoyment
short.

What business had his father to come and upset his wife like
this?  It was a shock, after all these years!  He ought to have
known; he ought to have given them warning; but when did a
Forsyte ever imagine that his conduct could upset anybody!  And
in his thoughts he did old Jolyon wrong.

He spoke sharply to the children, and told them to go in to their
tea.  Greatly surprised, for they had never heard their father
speak sharply before, they went off, hand in hand, little Holly
looking back over her shoulder.

Young Jolyon poured out the tea.

"My wife's not the thing today," he said, but he knew well enough
that his father had penetrated the cause of that sudden
withdrawal, and almost hated the old man for sitting there so
calmly.

"You've got a nice little house here," said old Jolyon with a
shrewd look; "I suppose you've taken a lease of it!"

Young Jolyon nodded.

"I don't like the neighbourhood," said old Jolyon; "a ramshackle
lot."

Young Jolyon replied: "Yes, we're a ramshackle lot."'

The silence was now only broken by the sound of the dog
Balthasar's scratching.

Old Jolyon said simply: "I suppose I oughtn't to have come here,
Jo; but I get so lonely!"

At these words young Jolyon got up and put his hand on his
father's shoulder.

In the next house someone was playing over and over again: 'La
Donna  mobile' on an untuned piano; and the little garden had
fallen into shade, the sun now only reached the wall at the end,
whereon basked a crouching cat, her yellow eyes turned sleepily
down on the dog Balthasar.  There was a drowsy hum of very
distant traffic; the creepered trellis round the garden shut out
everything but sky, and house, and pear-tree, with its top
branches still gilded by the sun.

For some time they sat there, talking but little.  Then old
Jolyon rose to go, and not a word was said about his coming
again.

He walked away very sadly.  What a poor miserable place; and he
thought of the great, empty house in Stanhope Gate, fit residence
for a Forsyte, with its huge billiard-room and drawing-room that
no one entered from one week's end to another.

That woman, whose face he had rather liked, was too thin-skinned
by half; she gave Jo a bad time he knew!  And those sweet
children!  Ah! what a piece of awful folly!

He walked towards the Edgware Road, between rows of little
houses, all suggesting to him (erroneously no doubt, but the
prejudices of a Forsyte are sacred) shady histories of some sort
or kind.

Society, forsooth, the chattering hags and jackanapes--had set
themselves up to pass judgment on his flesh and blood!  A parcel
of old women!  He stumped his umbrella on the ground, as though
to drive it into the heart of that unfortunate body, which had
dared to ostracize his son and his son's son, in whom he could
have lived again!

He stumped his umbrella fiercely; yet he himself had followed
Society's behaviour for fifteen years--had only today been false
to it!

He thought of June, and her dead mother, and the whole story,
with all his old bitterness.  A wretched business!

He was a long time reaching Stanhope Gate, for, with native
perversity, being extremely tired, he walked the whole way.

After washing his hands in the lavatory downstairs, he went to
the dining-room to wait for dinner, the only room he used when
June was out--it was less lonely so.  The evening paper had not
yet come; he had finished the Times, there was therefore nothing
to do.

The room faced the backwater of traffic, and was very silent.  He
disliked dogs, but a dog even would have been company.  His gaze,
travelling round the walls, rested on a 'picture entitled: 'Group
of Dutch fishing boats at sunset; the chef d'oeuvre of his
collection.  It gave him no pleasure.  He closed his eyes.  He
was lonely!  He oughtn't to complain, he knew, but he couldn't
help it: He was a poor thing--had always been a poor thing--no
pluck!  Such was his thought.

The butler came to lay the table for dinner, and seeing his
master apparently asleep, exercised extreme caution in his
movements.  This bearded man also wore a moustache, which had
given rise to grave doubts in the minds of many members--of the
family--, especially those who, like Soames, had been to public
schools, and were accustomed to niceness in such matters.  Could
he really be considered a butler?  Playful spirits alluded to him
as: 'Uncle Jolyon's Nonconformist'; George, the acknowledged wag,
had named him: 'Sankey.'

He moved to and fro between the great polished sideboard and the
great polished table inimitably sleek and soft.

Old Jolyon watched him, feigning sleep.  The fellow was a sneak--
he had always thought so--who cared about nothing but rattling
through his work, and getting out to his betting or his woman or
goodness knew what!  A slug!  Fat too! And didn't care a pin
about his master!

But then against his will, came one of those moments of
philosophy which made old Jolyon different from other Forsytes:

After all why should the man care?  He wasn't paid to care, and
why expect it?  In this world people couldn't look for affection
unless they paid for it.  It might be different in the next--he
didn't know--couldn't tell!  And again he shut his eyes.

Relentless and stealthy, the butler pursued his labours, taking
things from the various compartments of the sideboard.  His back
seemed always turned to old Jolyon; thus, he robbed his
operations of the unseemliness of being carried on in his
master's presence; now and then he furtively breathed on the
silver, and wiped it with a piece of chamois leather.  He
appeared to pore over the quantities of wine in the decanters,
which he carried carefully and rather high, letting his heard
droop over them protectingly.  When he had finished, he stood for
over a minute watching his master, and in his greenish eyes there
was a look of contempt:

After all, this master of his was an old buffer, who hadn't much
left in him!

Soft as a tom-cat, he crossed the room to press the bell.  His
orders were 'dinner at seven.' What if his master were asleep; he
would soon have him out of that; there was the night to sleep in!
He had himself to think of, for he was due at his Club at
half-past eight!

In answer to the ring, appeared a page boy with a silver soup
tureen.  The butler took it from his hands and placed it on the.
table, then, standing by the open door, as though about to usher
company into the room, he said in a solemn voice:

"Dinner is on the table, sir!"

Slowly old Jolyon got up out of his chair, and sat down at the
table to eat his dinner.




CHAPTER VIII

PLANS OF THE HOUSE


Forsytes, as is generally admitted, have shells, like that
extremely useful little animal which is made into Turkish
delight, in other words, they are never seen, or if seen would
not be recognised, without habitats, composed of circumstance,
property, acquaintances, and wives, which seem to move along with
them in their passage through a world composed of thousands of
other Forsytes with their habitats.  Without a habitat a Forsyte
is inconceivable--he would be like a novel without a plot, which
is well-known to be an anomaly.

To Forsyte eyes Bosinney appeared to have no habitat, he seemed
one of those rare and unfortunate men who go through life
surrounded by circumstance, property, acquaintances, and wives
that do not belong to them.

His rooms in Sloane Street, on the top floor, outside which, on a
plate, was his name, 'Philip Baynes Bosinney, Architect,' were
not those of a Forsyte.--He had no sitting-room apart from his
office, but a large recess had been screened off to conceal the
necessaries of life--a couch, an easy chair, his pipes, spirit
case, novels and slippers.  The business part of the room had the
usual furniture; an open cupboard with pigeon-holes, a round oak
table, a folding wash-stand, some hard chairs, a standing desk of
large dimensions covered with drawings and designs.  June had
twice been to tea there under the chaperonage of his aunt.

He was believed to have a bedroom at the back.

As far as the family had been able to ascertain his income, it
consisted of two consulting appointments at twenty pounds a year,
together with an odd fee once in a way, and--more worthy item--a
private annuity under his father's will of one hundred and fifty
pounds a year.

What had transpired concerning that father was not so reassuring.
It appeared that he had been a Lincolnshire country doctor of
Cornish extraction, striking appearance, and Byronic tendencies--
a well-known figure, in fact, in his county.  Bosinney's uncle by
marriage, Baynes, of Baynes and Bildeboy, a Forsyte in instincts
if not in name, had but little that was worthy to relate of his
brother-in-law.

"An odd fellow!' he would say: 'always spoke of his three eldest
boys as 'good creatures, but so dull'; they're all doing
capitally in the Indian Civil!  Philip was the only one he liked.
I've heard him talk in the queerest way; he once said to me: 'My
dear fellow, never let your poor wife know what you're thinking
of!  But I didn't follow his advice; not I!  An eccentric man!
He would say to Phil: 'Whether you live like a gentleman or not,
my boy, be sure you die like one!  and he had himself embalmed in
a frock coat suit, with a satin cravat and a diamond pin.  Oh,
quite an original, I can assure you I"

Of Bosinney himself Baynes would speak warmly, with a certain
compassion: "He's got a streak of his father's Byronism.  Why,
look at the way he threw up his chances when he left my office;
going off like that for six months with a knapsack, and all for
what?--to study foreign architecture--foreign!  What could he
expect?  And there he is--a clever young fellow--doesn't make his
hundred a year!  Now this engagement is the best thing that could
have happened--keep him steady; he's one of those that go to bed
all day and stay up all night, simply because they've no method;
but no vice about him--not an ounce of vice.  Old Forsyte's a
rich man!"

Mr. Baynes made himself extremely pleasant to June, who
frequently visited his house in Lowndes Square at this period.

"This house of your cousin's--what a capital man of business--is
the very thing for Philip," he would say to her; "you mustn't
expect to see too much of him just now, my dear young lady.  The
good cause--the good cause!  The young man must make his way.
When I was his age I was at work day and night.  My dear wife
used to say to me, 'Bobby, don't work too hard, think of your
health'; but I never spared myself!"

June had complained that her lover found no time to come to
Stanhope Gate.

The first time he came again they had not been together a quarter
of an hour before, by one of those coincidences of which she was
a mistress, Mrs. Septimus Small arrived.  Thereon Bosinney rose
and hid himself, according to previous arrangement, in the little
study, to wait for her departure.

"My dear," said Aunt Juley, "how thin he is!  I've often noticed
it with engaged people; but you mustn't let it get worse.
There's Barlow's extract of veal; it did your Uncle Swithin a lot
of good."

June, her little figure erect before the hearth, her small face
quivering grimly, for she regarded her aunt's untimely visit in
the light of a personal injury, replied with scorn:

"It's because he's busy; people who can do anything worth doing
are never fat!"

Aunt Juley pouted; she herself had always been thin, but the only
pleasure she derived from the fact was the opportunity of longing
to be stouter.

I don't think," she said mournfully, "that you ought to let them
call him 'The Buccaneer'; people might think it odd, now that
he's going to build a house for Soames.  I do hope he will be
careful; it's so important for him.  Soames has such good taste!"

"Taste!" cried June, flaring up at once; "wouldn't give that for
his taste, or any of the family's!"

Mrs. Small was taken aback.

"Your Uncle Swithin," she said, "always had beautiful taste!  And
Soames's little house is lovely; you don't mean to say you don't
think so!"

"H'mph!" said June, "that's only because Irene's there!"

Aunt Juley tried to say something pleasant:

"And how will dear Irene like living in the country?"

June gazed at her intently, with a look in her eyes as if her
conscience had suddenly leaped up into them; it passed; and an
even more intent look took its place, as if she had stared that
conscience out of countenance.  She replied imperiously:

"Of course she'll like it; why shouldn't she?"

Mrs. Small grew nervous.

"I didn't know," she said; "I thought she mightn't like to leave
her friends.  Your Uncle James says she doesn't take enough
interest in life.  We think--I mean Timothy thinks--she ought to
go out more.  I expect you'll miss her very much!"

June clasped her hands behind her neck.

"I do wish, "she cried, "Uncle Timothy wouldn't talk about what
doesn't concern him!"

Aunt Juley rose to the full height of her tall figure.

"He never talks about what doesn't concern him," she said.

June was instantly compunctious; she ran to her aunt and kissed
her.

"I'm very sorry, auntie; but I wish they'd let Irene alone."

Aunt Juley, unable to think of anything further on the subject
that would be suitable, was silent; she prepared for departure,
hooking her black silk cape across her chest, and, taking up her
green reticule:

"And how is your dear grandfather?" she asked in the hall, "I
expect he's very lonely now that all your time is taken up with
Mr. Bosinney."

She bent and kissed her niece hungrily, and with little, mincing
steps passed away.

The tears sprang up in June's eyes; running into the little
study, where Bosinney was sitting at the table drawing birds on
the back of an envelope, she sank down, by his side and cried:

"Oh, Phil! it's all so horrid!"  Her heart was as warm as the
colour of her hair.

On the following Sunday morning, while Soames was shaving, a
message was brought him to the effect that Mr. Bosinney was
below, and would be glad to see him.  Opening the door into his
wife's room, he said:

"Bosinney's downstairs.  Just go and entertain him while I finish
shaving.  I'll be down in a minute.  It's about the plans, I
expect."

Irene looked at him, without reply, put the finishing touch to
her dress and went downstairs.  He could not make her out about
this house.  She had said nothing against it, and, as far as
Bosinney was concerned, seemed friendly enough.

From the window of his dressing-room he could see them talking
together in the little court below.  He hurried on with his
shaving, cutting his chin twice.  He heard them laugh, and
thought to himself: "Well, they get on all right, anyway!"

As he expected, Bosinney had come round to fetch, him to look at
the plans.

He took his hat and went over.

The plans were spread on the oak table in the architect's room;
and pale, imperturbable, inquiring, Soames bent over them for a
long time without speaking.

He said at last in a puzzled voice:

"It's an odd sort of house!"

A rectangular house of two stories was designed in a quadrangle
round a covered-in court.  This court, encircled by a gallery on
the upper floor, was roofed with a glass roof, supported by eight
columns running up from the ground.

It was indeed, to Forsyte eyes, an odd house.

"There's a lot of room cut to waste," pursued Soames.

Bosinney began to walk about, and Soames did not like the
expression on his face.

"The principle of this house," said the architect, "was that you
should have room to breathe--like a gentleman!"

Soames extended his finger and thumb, as if measuring the extent
of the distinction he should acquire; and replied:

"Oh! yes; I see."

The peculiar look came into Bosinney's face which marked all, his
enthusiasms.

"I've tried to plan you a house here with some self-respect of
its own.  If  you don't like it, you'd better say so.  It's
certainly the last thing to be considered--who wants self-respect
in a house, when you can squeeze in an extra lavatory?"  He put
his finger suddenly down on the left division of the centre
oblong: "You can swing a cat here.  This is for your pictures,
divided from this court by curtains; draw them back and you'll
have a space of fifty-one by twenty-three six.  This double-faced
stove in the centre, here, looks one way towards the court, one
way towards the picture room; this end wall is all window; You've
a southeast light from that, a north light from the court.  The
rest of your pictures you can hang round the gallery upstairs, or
in the other rooms."  "In architecture," he went on--and though
looking at Soames he did not seem to see him, which gave Soames
an unpleasant feeling--"as in life, you'll get no self-respect
without regularity.  Fellows tell you that's old fashioned.  It
appears to be peculiar any way; it never occurs to us to embody
the main principle of life in our buildings; we load our houses
with decoration, gimcracks, corners, anything to distract the
eye.  On the contrary the eye should rest; get your effects with
a few strong lines.  The whole thing is regularity there's no
self-respect without it."

Soames, the unconscious ironist, fixed his gaze on Bosinney's
tie, which was far from being in the perpendicular; he was
unshaven too, and his dress not remarkable for order.
Architecture appeared to have exhausted his regularity.

"Won't it look like a barrack?" he inquired.

He did not at once receive a reply.

"I can see what it is," said Bosinney, "you want one of Little-
master's houses--one of the pretty and commodious sort, where the
servants will live in garrets, and the front door be sunk so that
you may come up again.  By all means try Littlemaster, you'll
find him a capital fellow, I've known him all my life!"

Soames was alarmed.  He had really been struck by the plans, and
the concealment of his satisfaction had been merely instinctive.
It was difficult for him to pay a compliment.  He despised people
who were lavish with their praises.

He found himself now in the embarrassing position of one who must
pay a compliment or run the risk of losing a good thing.
Bosinney was just the fellow who might tear up the plans and
refuse to act for him; a kind of grown-up child!

This grown-up childishness, to which he felt so superior,
exercised a peculiar and almost mesmeric effect on Soames, for he
had never felt anything like it in himself.

"Well," he stammered at last, "it's--it's, certainly original."

He had such a private distrust and even dislike of the word--
'original' that he felt he had not really given himself away by
this remark.

Bosinney seemed pleased.  It was the sort of thing that would
please a fellow like that!  And his success encouraged Soames.

"It's--a big place," he said.

"Space, air, light," he heard Bosinney murmur, "you can't live
like a gentleman in one of Littlemaster's--he builds for
manufacturers."

Soames made a deprecating movement; he had been identified with a
gentleman; not for a good deal of money now would he be classed
with manufacturers.  But his innate distrust of general
principles revived.  What the deuce was the good of talking about
regularity and self-respect?  It looked to him as if the house
would be cold.

"Irene can't stand the cold!" he said.

"Ah!" said Bosinney sarcastically.  "Your wife?  She doesn't like
the cold?  I'll see to that; she shan't be cold.  Look here!" he
pointed, to four marks at regular intervals on the walls of the
court.  "I've given you hot-water pipes in aluminium casings; you
can get them with very good designs."

Soames looked suspiciously at these marks.

"It's all very well, all this," he said, "but what's it going to
cost?"

The architect took a sheet of paper from his pocket:

"The house, of course, should be built entirely of stone, but, as
I thought you wouldn't stand that, I've compromised for a facing.
It ought to have a copper roof, but I've made it green slate.  As
it is, including metal work, it'll cost you eight thousand five
hundred."

"Eight thousand five hundred?" said Soames.  "Why, I gave you an
outside limit of eight!"

"Can't be done for a penny less," replied Bosinney coolly.

"You must take it or leave it!"

It was the only way, probably, that such a proposition could have
been made to Soames.  He was nonplussed.  Conscience told him to
throw the whole thing up.  But the design was good, and he knew
it--there was completeness about it, and dignity; the servants'
apartments were excellent too.  He would gain credit by living in
a house like that--with such individual features, yet perfectly.
well-arranged.

He continued poring over the plans, while Bosinney went into his
bedroom to shave and dress.

The two walked back to Montpellier Square in silence, Soames
watching him out of the corner of his eye.

The Buccaneer was rather a good-looking fellow--so he thought--
when he was properly got up.

Irene was bending over her flowers when the two men came in.

She spoke of sending across the Park to fetch June.

"No, no," said Soames, "we've still got business to talk over!"

At lunch he was almost cordial, and kept pressing Bosinney to
eat.  He was pleased to see the architect in such high spirits,
and left him to spend the afternoon with Irene, while he stole
off to his pictures, after his Sunday habit.  At tea-time he came
down to the drawing-room, and found them talking, as he expressed
it, nineteen to the dozen.

Unobserved in the doorway, he congratulated himself that things
were taking the right turn.  It was lucky she and Bosinney got
on; she seemed to be falling into line with the idea of the new
house.

Quiet meditation among his pictures had decided him to spring the
five hundred if necessary; but he hoped that the afternoon might
have softened Bosinney's estimates.  It was so purely a matter
which Bosinney could remedy if he liked; there must be a dozen
ways in which he could cheapen the production of a house without
spoiling the effect.

He awaited, therefore, his opportunity till Irene was handing the
architect his first cup of tea.  A chink of sunshine through the
lace of the blinds warmed her cheek, shone in the gold of her
hair, and in her soft eyes.  Possibly the same gleam deepened
Bosinney's colour, gave the rather startled look to his face.

Soames hated sunshine, and he at once got up, to draw the blind.
Then he took his own cup of tea from his wife, and said, more
coldly than he had intended:

"Can't you see your way to do it for eight thousand after all?
There must be a lot of little things you could alter."

Bosinney drank off his tea at a gulp, put down his cup, and
answered:

"Not one!"

Soames saw that his suggestion had touched some unintelligible
point of personal vanity.

"Well," he agreed, with sulky resignation; "you must have it your
own way, I suppose."

A few minutes later Bosinney rose to go, and Soames rose too, to
see him off the premises.  The architect seemed in absurdly high
spirits.  After watching him walk away at a swinging pace, Soames
returned moodily to the drawing-room, where Irene was putting
away the music, and, moved by an uncontrollable spasm of
curiosity, he asked:

"Well, what do you think of 'The Buccaneer'?"

He looked at the carpet while waiting for her answer, and he had
to wait some time.

"I don't know," she said at last.

"Do you think he's good-looking?"

Irene smiled.  And it seemed to Soames that she was mocking him.

"Yes," she answered; "very."




CHAPTER IX

DEATH OF AUNT ANN


There came a morning at the end of September when Aunt Ann was
unable to take from Smither's hands the insignia of personal
dignity.  After one look at the old face, the doctor, hurriedly
sent for, announced that Miss Forsyte had passed away in her
sleep.

Aunts Juley and Hester were overwhelmed by the shock.  They had
never imagined such an ending.  Indeed, it is doubtful whether
they had ever realized that an ending was bound to come.
Secretly they felt it unreasonable of Ann to have left them like
this without a word, without even a struggle.  It was unlike her.

Perhaps what really affected them so profoundly was the thought
that a Forsyte should have let go her grasp on life.  If one,
then why not all!

It was a full hour before they could make up their minds to tell
Timothy.  If only it could be kept from him!  If only it could be
broken to him by degrees!

And long they stood outside his door whispering together.  And
when it was over they whispered together again.

He would feel it more, they were afraid, as time went on.  Still,
he had taken it better than could have been expected.  He would
keep his bed, of course!

They separated, crying quietly.

Aunt Juley stayed in her room, prostrated by the blow.  Her face,
discoloured by tears, was divided into compartments by the little
ridges of pouting flesh which had swollen with emotion.  It was
impossible to conceive of life without Ann, who had lived with
her for seventy-three years, broken only by the short interregnum
of her married life, which seemed now so unreal.  At fixed
intervals she went to her drawer, and took from beneath the
lavender bags a fresh pocket-handkerchief.  Her warm heart could
not bear the thought that Ann was lying there so cold.

Aunt Hester, the silent, the patient, that backwater of the
family energy, sat in the drawing-room, where the blinds were
drawn; and she, too, had wept at first, but quietly, without
visible effect.  Her guiding principle, the conservation of
energy, did not abandon her in sorrow.  She sat, slim,
motionless, studying the grate, her hands idle in the lap of her
black silk dress.  They would want to rouse her into doing
something, no doubt.  As if there were any good in that!  Doing
something would not bring back Ann!  Why worry her?

Five o'clock brought three of the brothers, Jolyon and James and
Swithin; Nicholas was at Yarmouth, and Roger had a bad attack of
gout.  Mrs. Hayman had been by herself earlier in the day, and,
after seeing Ann, had gone away, leaving a message for Timothy--
which was kept from him--that she ought to have been told sooner.
In fact, there was a feeling amongst them all that they ought to
have been told sooner, as though they had missed something; and
James said:

"I knew how it'd be; I told you she wouldn't last through the
summer."

Aunt Hester made no reply; it was nearly October, but what was
the good of arguing; some people were never satisfied.

She sent up to tell her sister that the brothers were there.
Mrs. Small came down at once.  She had bathed her face, which was
still swollen, and though she looked severely at Swithin's
trousers, for they were of light blue--he had come straight from
the club, where the news had reached him she wore a more cheerful
expression than usual, the instinct for doing the wrong thing
being even now too strong for her.

Presently all five went up to look at the body.  Under the pure
white sheet a quilted counter-pane had been placed, for now, more
than ever, Aunt Ann had need of warmth; and, the pillows removed,
her spine and head rested flat, with the semblance of their
life-long inflexibility; the coif banding the top of her brow was
drawn on either side to the level of the ears, and between it and
the sheet her face, almost as white, was turned with closed eyes
to the faces of her brothers and sisters.  In its extraordinary
peace the face was stronger than ever, nearly all bone now under
the scarce-wrinkled parchment of skin--square jaw and chin,
cheekbones, forehead with hollow temples, chiselled nose--the
fortress of an unconquerable spirit that had yielded to death,
and in its upward sightlessness seemed trying to regain that
spirit, to regain the guardianship it had just laid down.

Swithin took but one look at the face, and left the room; the
sight, he said afterwards, made him very queer.  He went
downstairs shaking the whole house, and, seizing his hat,
clambered into his brougham, without giving any directions to the
coachman.  He was driven home, and all the evening sat in his
chair without moving.

He could take nothing for dinner but a partridge, with an
imperial pint of champagne....

Old Jolyon stood at the bottom of the bed, his hands folded in
front of him.  He alone of those in the room remembered the death
of his mother, and though he looked at Ann, it was of that he was
thinking.  Ann was an old woman, but death had come to her at
last--death came to all!  His face did not move, his gaze seemed
travelling from very far.

Aunt Hester stood beside him.  She did not cry now, tears were
exhausted--her nature refused to permit a further escape of
force; she twisted her hands, looking not at Ann, but from side
to side, seeking some way of escaping the effort of realization.

Of all the brothers and sisters James manifested the most
emotion.  Tears rolled down the parallel furrows of his thin
face; where he should go now to tell his troubles he did not
know; Juley was no good, Hester worse than useless!  He felt
Ann's death more than he had ever thought he should; this would
upset him for weeks!

Presently Aunt Hester stole out, and Aunt Juley began moving
about, doing 'what was necessary,' so that twice she knocked
against something.  Old Jolyon, roused from his reverie, that
reverie of the long, long past, looked sternly at her, and went
away.  James alone was left by the bedside; glancing stealthily
round, to see that he was not observed, he twisted his long body
down, placed a kiss on the dead forehead, then he, too, hastily
left the room.  Encountering Smither in the hall, he began to ask
her about the funeral, and, finding that she knew nothing,
complained bitterly that, if they didn't take care, everything
would go wrong.  She had better send for Mr. Soames--he knew all
about that sort of thing; her master was very much upset, he
supposed--he would want looking after; as for her mistresses,
they were no good--they had no gumption!  They would be ill too,
he shouldn't wonder.  She had better send for the doctor; it was
best to take things in time.  He didn't think his sister Ann had
had the best opinion; if she'd had Blank she would have been
alive now.  Smither might send to Park Lane any time she wanted
advice.  Of course, his carriage was at their service for the
funeral.  He supposed she hadn't such a thing as a glass of
claret and a biscuit--he had had no lunch!

The days before the funeral passed quietly.  It had long been
known, of course, that Aunt Ann had left her little property to
Timothy.  There was, therefore, no reason for the slightest
agitation.  Soames, who was sole executor, took charge of all
arrangements, and in due course sent out the following invitation
to every male member of the family:


To...........

Your presence is requested at the funeral of Miss Ann Forsyte, in
Highgate Cemetery, at noon of Oct. 1st.  Carriages will meet at
"The Bower," Bayswater Road, at 10.45.  No flowers by request.

'R.S.V.P.'


The morning came, cold, with a high, grey, London sky, and at
half-past ten the first carriage, that of James, drove up.  It
contained James and his son-in-law Dartie, a fine man, with a
square chest, buttoned very tightly into a frock coat, and a
sallow, fattish face adorned with dark, well-curled moustaches,
and that incorrigible commencement of whisker which, eluding the
strictest attempts at shaving, seems the mark of something deeply
ingrained in the personality of the shaver, being especially
noticeable in men who speculate.

Soames, in his capacity of executor, received the guests, for
Timothy still kept his bed; he would get up after the funeral;
and Aunts Juley and Hester would not be coming down till all was
over, when it was understood there would be lunch for anyone who
cared to come back.  The next to arrive was Roger, still limping
from the gout, and encircled by three of his sons--young Roger,
Eustace, and Thomas.  George, the remaining son, arrived almost
immediately afterwards in a hansom, and paused in the hall to ask
Soames how he found undertaking pay.

They disliked each other.

Then came two Haymans--Giles and Jesse perfectly silent, and very
well dressed, with special creases down their evening trousers.
Then old Jolyon alone.  Next, Nicholas, with a healthy colour in
his face, and a carefully veiled sprightliness in every movement
of his head and body.  One of his sons followed him, meek and
subdued.  Swithin Forsyte, and Bosinney arrived at the same
moment,--and stood--bowing precedence to each other,--but on the
door opening they tried to enter together; they renewed their
apologies in the hall, and, Swithin, settling his stock, which
had become disarranged in the struggle, very slowly mounted the
stairs.  The other Hayman; two married sons of Nicholas, together
with Tweetyman, Spender, and Warry, the husbands of married
Forsyte and Hayman daughters.  The company was then complete,
twenty-one in all, not a male member of the family being absent
but Timothy and young Jolyon.

Entering the scarlet and green drawing-room, whose apparel made
so vivid a setting for their unaccustomed costumes, each tried
nervously to find a seat, desirous of hiding the emphatic
blackness of his trousers.  There seemed a sort of indecency in
that blackness and in the colour of their gloves--a sort of
exaggeration of the feelings; and many cast shocked looks of
secret envy at 'the Buccaneer,' who had no gloves, and was
wearing grey trousers.  A subdued hum of conversation rose, no
one speaking of the departed, but each asking after the other, as
though thereby casting an indirect libation to this event, which
they had come to honour.

And presently James said:

"Well, I think we ought to be starting."

They went downstairs, and, two and two, as they had been told off
in strict precedence, mounted the carriages.

The hearse started at a foot's pace; the carriages moved slowly
after.  In the first went old Jolyon with Nicholas; in the
second, the twins, Swithin and James; in the third, Roger and
young Roger; Soames, young Nicholas, George, and Bosinney
followed in the fourth.  Each of the other carriages, eight in
all, held three or four of the family; behind them came the
doctor's brougham; then, at a decent interval, cabs containing
family clerks and servants; and at the very end, one containing
nobody at all, but bringing the total cortege up to the number of
thirteen.

So long as the procession kept to the highway of the Bayswater
Road, it retained the foot's-pace, but, turning into less
important thorough-fares, it soon broke into a trot, and so
proceeded, with intervals of walking in the more fashionable
streets, until it arrived.  In the first carriage old Jolyon and
Nicholas were talking of their wills.  In the second the twins,
after a single attempt, had lapsed into complete silence; both
were rather deaf, and the exertion of making themselves heard was
too great.  Only once James broke this silence:

"I shall have to be looking about for some ground somewhere.
What arrangements have you made, Swithin?"

And Swithin, fixing him with a dreadful stare, answered:

"Don't talk to me about such things!"

In the third carriage a disjointed conversation was carried on in
the intervals of looking out to see how far they had got, George
remarking, "Well, it was really time that the poor old lady
went."  He didn't believe in people living beyond seventy, Young
Nicholas replied mildly that the rule didn't seem to apply to the
Forsytes.  George said he himself intended to commit suicide at
sixty.  Young Nicholas, smiling and stroking A long chin, didn't
think his father would like that theory; he had made a lot of
money since he was sixty.  Well, seventy was the outside limit;
it was then time, George said, for them to go and leave their
money to their children.  Soames, hitherto silent, here joined
in; he had not forgotten the remark about the 'undertaking,' and,
lifting his eyelids almost imperceptibly, said it was all very
well for people who never made money to talk.  He himself
intended to live as long as he could.  This was a hit at George,
who was notoriously hard up.  Bosinney muttered abstractedly
"Hear, hear!" and, George yawning, the conversation dropped.

Upon arriving, the coffin was borne into the chapel, and, two by
two, the mourners filed in behind it.  This guard of men, all
attached to the dead by the bond of kinship, was an impressive
and singular sight in the great city of London, with its
overwhelming diversity of life, its innumerable vocations,
pleasures, duties, its terrible hardness, its terrible call to
individualism.

The family had gathered to triumph over all this, to give a show
of tenacious unity, to illustrate gloriously that law of property
underlying the growth of their tree, by which it had thriven and
spread, trunk and branches, the sap flowing through all, the full
growth reached at the appointed time.  The spirit of the old
woman lying in her last sleep had called them to this
demonstration.  It was her final appeal to that unity which had
been their strength--it was her final triumph that she had died
while the tree was yet whole.

She was spared the watching of the branches jut out beyond the
point of balance.  She could not look into the hearts of her
followers.  The same law that had worked in her, bringing her up
from a tall, straight-backed slip of a girl to, a woman strong
and grown, from a woman grown to a woman old, angular, feeble,
almost witchlike, with individuality all sharpened and sharpened,
as all rounding from the world's contact fell off from her--that
same law would work, was: working, in the family she had watched
like a mother.

She had seen it young, and growing, she had, seen it strong and
grown, and before her old eyes had time or strength to see any
more, she died.  She would have tried, and who knows but she
might have kept it young and strong, with her old fingers, her
trembling kisses--a little longer; alas! not even Aunt Ann could
fight with Nature.

'Pride comes before a fall!' In accordance with this, the
greatest of Nature's ironies, the Forsyte family had gathered for
a last proud pageant before they fell.  Their faces to right and
left, in single lines, were turned for the most part impassively
toward the ground, guardians of their thoughts; but here and
there, one looking upward, with a line between his brows,
searched to see some sight on the chapel walls too much for, him,
to be listening to something that appalled.  And the, responses,
low-muttered, in voices through which rose the same tone, the
same unseizable family ring, sounded weird, as though murmured in
hurried duplication by a single person.

The service in the chapel over, the mourners filed up again to
guard the body to the tomb.  The vault stood open, and, round it,
men in black were waiting.

From that high and sacred field, where thousands of the upper
middle class lay in their last sleep, the eyes of the Forsytes
travelled down across the flocks of graves.  There--spreading to
the distance, lay London, with no sun over it, mourning the loss
of its daughter, mourning with this family, so dear, the loss of
her who was mother and guardian.  A hundred thousand spires and
houses, blurred in the great grey web of property, lay there like
prostrate worshippers before the grave of this, the oldest
Forsyte of them all.

A few words, a sprinkle of earth, the thrusting of the coffin
home, and Aunt Ann had passed to her last rest.

Round the vault, trustees of that passing, the five brothers
stood, with white heads bowed; they would see that Ann was
comfortable where she was.  going.  Her little property must stay
behind, but otherwise, all that could be should be done....

Then, severally, each stood aside, and putting on his hat, turned
back to inspect the new inscription on the marble of the family
vault:


SACRED TO THE MEMORY OF ANN FORSYTE,
THE DAUGHTER OF THE ABOVE JOLYON
AND ANN FORSYTE, WHO DEPARTED
THIS LIFE THE 27TH DAY OF SEPTEMBER,
1886, AGED EIGHTY-SEVEN YEARS AND FOUR DAYS


Soon perhaps, someone else would be wanting an inscription.  It
was strange and intolerable, for they had not thought somehow,
that Forsytes could die.  And one and all they had a longing to
get away from this painfulness, this ceremony which had reminded
them of things they could not bear to think about--to get away
quickly and go about their business and forget.

It was cold, too; the wind, like some slow, disintegrating force,
blowing up the hill over the graves, struck them with its chilly
breath; they began to split into groups, and as quickly as
possible to fill the waiting carriages.

Swithin said he should go back to lunch at Timothy's, and he
offered to take anybody with him in his brougham.  It was
considered a doubtful privilege to drive with Swithin in his
brougham, which was not a large one; nobody accepted, and he went
off alone.  James and Roger followed immediately after; they also
would drop in to lunch.  The others gradually melted away, Old
Jolyon taking three nephews to fill up his carriage; he had a
want of those young faces.

Soames, who had to arrange some details in the cemetery office,
walked away with Bosinney.  He had much to talk over with him,
and, having finished his business, they strolled to Hampstead,
lunched together at the Spaniard's Inn, and spent a long time in
going into practical details connected with the building of the
house; they then proceeded to the tram-line, and came as far as
the Marble Arch, where Bosinney went off to Stanhope Gate to see
June.

Soames felt in excellent spirits when he arrived home, and
confided to Irene at dinner that he had had a good talk with
Bosinney, who really seemed a sensible fellow; they had had a
capital walk too, which had done his liver good--he had been
short of exercise for a long time--and altogether a very
satisfactory day.  If only it hadn't been for poor Aunt Ann, he
would have taken her to the theatre; as it was, they must make
the best of an evening at home.

"The Buccaneer asked after you more than once," he said
suddenly.  And moved by some inexplicable desire to assert his
proprietorship, he rose from his chair and planted a kiss on
his wife's shoulder.





PART II


CHAPTER I

PROGRESS OF THE HOUSE


The winter had been an open one.  Things in the trade were slack;
and as Soames had reflected before making up his mind, it had
been a good time for building.  The shell of the house at Robin
Hill was thus completed by the end of April.

Now that there was something to be seen for his money, he had
been coming down once,  twice, even three times a week, and would
mouse about among the debris for hours, careful never to soil his
clothes, moving silently through the unfinished brickwork of
doorways, or circling round the columns in the central court.

And he would stand before them for minutes' together, as though
peering into the real quality of their substance

On April 30 he had an appointment with Bosinney to go over the
accounts, and five minutes before the proper time he entered the
tent which the architect had pitched for himself close to the old
oak tree.

The Accounts were already prepared on a folding table, and  with
a nod Soames sat down to study them.  It was some time before he
raised his head.

"I can't make them out," he said at last; "they come to nearly
seven hundred more than they ought"

After a glance at Bosinney's face he went on quickly:

"If you only make a firm stand against these builder chaps you'll
get them down.  They stick you with everything if you don't look
sharp....  Take ten per cent. off all round.  I shan't mind it's
coming out a hundred or so over the mark!"

Bosinney shook his head:

I've taken off every farthing I can!

Soames pushed back the table with a movement of anger, which sent
the account sheets fluttering to the ground.

"Then all I can say is," he flustered out, "you've made a pretty
mess of it!"

"I've told you a dozen times," Bosinney answered sharply, "that
there'd be extras.  I've pointed them out to you over and over
again!"

"I know that," growled Soames: "I shouldn't have objected to a ten
pound note here and there.  How was I to know that by 'extras'
you meant seven hundred pounds?"

The qualities of both men had contributed to this notinconsider-
able discrepancy.  On the one hand, the architect's devotion
to his idea, to the image of a house which he had created and
believed in--had made him nervous of being stopped, or forced
to the use of makeshifts; on the other, Soames' not less true
and wholehearted devotion to the very best article that could  be
obtained for the money, had rendered him averse to believing that
things worth thirteen shillings could not be bought with twelve.

I wish I'd never undertaken your house," said Bosinney suddenly.
"You come down here worrying me out of my life.  You want double
the value for your money anybody else would, and now that you've
got a house that for its size is not to be beaten in the county,
you don't want to pay for it.  If you're anxious to be off your
bargain, I daresay I can find the balance above the estimates
myself, but I'm d----d if I do another stroke of work for you!

Soames regained his composure.  Knowing that Bosinney had no
capital, he regarded this as a wild suggestion.  He saw, too,
that he would be kept indefinitely out of this house on which he
had set his heart, and just at the crucial point when the
architect's personal care made all the difference.  In the
meantime there was Irene to be thought of!  She had been very
queer lately.  He really believed it was only because she had
taken to Bosinney that she tolerated the idea of the house at
all.  It would not do to make an open breach with her.

"You needn't get into a rage," he said.  "If I'm willing to put
up with it, I suppose you needn't cry out.  All I meant was that
when you tell me a thing is going to cost so much, I like to--
well, in fact, I--like to know where I am."

"Look here!" said Bosinney, and Soames was both annoyed and
surprised by the shrewdness of his glance.  "You've got my
services dirt cheap.  For the kind of work I've put into this
house, and the amount of time I've given to it, you'd have had to
pay Littlemaster or some other fool four times as much.  What you
want, in fact, is a first-rate man for a fourth-rate fee, and
that's exactly what you've got!"

Soames saw that he really meant what he said, and, angry though
he was, the consequences of a row rose before him too vividly.
He saw his house unfinished, his wife rebellious, himself a
laughingstock.

"Let's go over it," he said sulkily, "and see how the money's
gone."

"Very well," assented Bosinney.  "But we'll hurry up, if you
don't mind.  I have to get back in time to take June to the
theatre."

Soames cast a stealthy look at him, and said: "Coming to our
place, I suppose to meet her?" He was always coming to their
place!

There had been rain the night before-a spring rain, and the earth
smelt of sap and wild grasses.  The warm, soft breeze swung the
leaves and the golden buds of the old oak tree, and in the
sunshine the blackbirds were whistling their hearts out.

It was such a spring day as breathes into a man an ineffable
yearning, a painful sweetness, a longing that makes him stand
motionless, looking at the leaves or grass, and fling out his
arms to embrace he knows not what.  The earth gave forth a
fainting warmth, stealing up through the chilly garment in which
winter had wrapped her.  It was her long caress of invitation, to
draw men down to lie within her arms, to roll their bodies on
her, and put their lips to her breast.

On just such a day as this Soames had got from Irene the promise
he had asked her for so often.  Seated on the fallen trunk of a
tree, he had promised for the twentieth time that if their
marriage were not a success, she should be as free as if she had
never married him!

"Do you swear it?" she had said.  A few days back she had
reminded him of that oath.  He had answered: "Nonsense!  I
couldn't have sworn any such thing!"  By some awkward fatality he
remembered it now.  What queer things men would swear for the
sake of women!  He would have sworn it at any time to gain her!
He would swear it now, if thereby he could touch her--but nobody
could touch her, she was cold-hearted!

And memories crowded on him with the fresh, sweet savour of the
spring wind-memories of his courtship.

In the spring of the year 1881 he was visiting his old school-
fellow and client, George Liversedge, of Branksome, who, with
the view of developing his pine-woods in the neighbourhood of
Bournemouth, had placed the formation of the company necessary
to the scheme in Soames's hands.  Mrs. Liversedge, with a sense
of the fitness of things, had given a musical tea in his honour.
Later in the course of this function, which Soames, no musician,
had regarded as an unmitigated bore, his eye had been caught by
the face of a girl dressed in mourning, standing by herself.  The
lines of her tall, as yet rather thin figure, showed through the
wispy, clinging stuff of her black dress, her black-gloved hands
were crossed in front of her, her lips slightly parted, and her
large, dark eyes wandered from face to face.  Her hair, done low
on her neck, seemed to gleam above her black collar like coils of
shining metal.  And as Soames stood looking at her, the sensation
that most men have felt at one time or another went stealing
through him--a peculiar satisfaction of the senses, a peculiar
certainty, which novelists and old ladies call love at first
sight.  Still stealthily watching her, he at once made his way to
his hostess, and stood doggedly waiting for the music to cease.

"Who is that girl with yellow hair and dark eyes?" he asked.

"That--oh!  Irene Heron.  Her father, Professor Heron, died this
year.  She lives with her stepmother.  She's a nice girl, a
pretty girl, but no money!"

"Introduce me, please," said Soames.

It was very little that he found to say, nor did he find her
responsive to that little.  But he went away with the resolution
to see her again.  He effected his object by chance, meeting her
on the pier with her stepmother, who had the habit of walking
there from twelve to one of a forenoon.  Soames made this lady's
acquaintance with alacrity, nor was it long before he perceived
in her the ally he was looking for.  His keen scent for the
commercial side of family life soon told him that Irene cost her
stepmother more than the fifty pounds a year she brought her; it
also told him that Mrs. Heron, a woman yet in the prime of life,
desired to be married again.  The strange ripening beauty of her
stepdaughter stood in the way of this desirable consummation.
And Soames, in his stealthy tenacity, laid his plans.

He left Bournemouth without having given, himself away, but in a
month's time came back, and this time he spoke, not to the girl,
but to her stepmother.  He had made up his mind, he said; he
would wait any time.  And he had long to wait, watching Irene
bloom, the lines of her young figure softening, the stronger
blood deepening the gleam of her eyes, and warming her face to a
creamy glow; and at each visit he proposed to her, and when that
visit was at an end, took her refusal away with him, back to
London, sore at heart, but steadfast and silent as the grave.  He
tried to come at the secret springs of her resistance; only once
had he a gleam of light.  It was at one of those assembly dances,
which afford the only outlet to the passions of the population of
seaside watering-places.  He was sitting with her in an
embrasure, his senses tingling with the contact of the waltz.
She had looked at him over her, slowly waving fan; and he had
lost his head.  Seizing that moving wrist, he pressed his lips to
the flesh of her arm.  And she had shuddered--to this day he had
not forgotten that shudder--nor the look so passionately averse
she had given him.

A year after that she had yielded.  What had made her yield he
could never make out; and from Mrs. Heron, a woman of some
diplomatic talent, he learnt nothing.  Once after they were
married he asked her, "What made you refuse me so often?"  She had
answered by a strange silence.  An enigma to him from the day
that he first saw her, she was an enigma to him still....

Bosinney was waiting for him at the door; and on his rugged,
good-looking, face was a queer, yearning, yet happy look, as
though he too saw a promise of bliss in the spring sky, sniffed a
coming happiness in the spring air.  Soames looked at him waiting
there.  What was the matter with the fellow that he looked so
happy?  What was he waiting for with that smile on his lips and
in his eyes?  Soames could not see that for which Bosinney was
waiting as he stood there drinking in the flower-scented wind.
And once more he felt baffled in the presence of this man whom by
habit he despised.  He hastened on to the house.

"The only colour for those tiles," he heard Bosinney say,--"is
ruby with a grey tint in the stuff, to give a transparent effect.
I should like Irene's opinion.  I'm ordering the purple leather
curtains for the doorway of this court; and if you distemper the
drawing-room ivory cream over paper, you'll get an illusive look.
You want to aim all through the decorations at what I call
charm."

Soames said: "You mean that my wife has charm!"

Bosinney evaded the question.

"You should have a clump of iris plants in the centre of that
court."

Soames smiled superciliously.

"I'll look into Beech's some time," he said, "and see what's
appropriate!"

They, found little else to say to each other, but on the way to
the Station Soames asked:

"I suppose you find Irene very artistic."

"Yes." The abrupt answer was as distinct a snub as saying: "If
you want to discuss her you can do it with someone else!"

And the slow, sulky anger Soames had felt all the afternoon
burned the brighter within him.

Neither spoke again till they were close to the Station, then
Soames asked:

"When do you expect to have finished?"

"By the end of June, if you really wish me to decorate as well."

Soames nodded.  "But you quite understand," he said, "that the
house is costing me a lot beyond what I contemplated.  I may as
well tell you that I should have thrown it up, only I'm not in
the habit of giving up what I've set my mind on."

Bosinney made no reply.  And Soames gave him askance a look of
dogged dislike--for in spite of his fastidious air and that
supercilious, dandified taciturnity, Soames, with his set lips
and squared chin, was not unlike a bulldog....

When, at seven o'clock that evening, June arrived at 62,
Montpellier Square, the maid Bilson told her that Mr. Bosinney
was in the drawing-room; the mistress--she said--was dressing,
and would be down in a minute.  She would tell her that Miss June
was here.

June stopped her at once.

"All right, Bilson," she said, "I'll just go in.  You, needn't
hurry Mrs. Soames."

She took off her cloak, and Bilson, with an understanding look,
did not even open the drawing-room door for her, but ran
downstairs.

June paused for a moment to look at herself in the, little
old-fashioned silver mirror above the oaken rug chest--a slim,
imperious young figure, with a small resolute face, in a white
frock, cut moon-shaped at the base of a neck too slender for her
crown of twisted red-gold hair.

She opened the drawing-room door softly, meaning to take him by
surprise.  The room was filled with a sweet hot scent of
flowering azaleas.

She took a long breath of the perfume, and heard Bosinney's
voice, not in the room, but quite close, saying.

"Ah!  there were such heaps of things I wanted to talk about, and
now we shan't have time!"

Irene's voice answered: "Why not at dinner?"

"How can one talk...."

June's first thought was to go away, but instead she crossed to
the long window opening on the little court.  It was from there
that the scent of the azaleas came, and, standing with their
backs to her, their faces buried in the goldenpink blossoms,
stood her lover and Irene.

Silent but unashamed, with flaming cheeks and angry eyes, the
girl watched.

"Come on Sunday by yourself--We can go over the house together."

June saw Irene look up at him through her screen of blossoms.  It
was not the look of a coquette, but--far worse to the watching
girl--of a woman fearful lest that look should say too much.

"I've promised to go for a drive with Uncle...."

"The big one!  Make him bring you; it's only ten miles--the very
thing for his horses."

"Poor old Uncle Swithin!"

A wave of the azalea scent drifted into June's face; she felt
sick and dizzy.

"Do!  ah!  do!"

"But why?"

"I must see you there--I thought you'd like to help me...."

The answer seemed to the girl to come softly with a tremble from
amongst the blossoms: "So I do!"

And she stepped into the open space of the window.

"How stuffy it is here!" she said; "I can't bear this scent!"

Her eyes, so angry and direct, swept both their faces.

"Were you talking about the house?  I haven't seen it yet, you
know--shall we all go on Sunday?"'

From Irene's face the colour had flown.

"I am going for a drive that day with Uncle Swithin," she
answered.

"Uncle Swithin!  What does he matter?  You can throw him over!"

"I am not in the habit of throwing people over!"

There was a sound of footsteps and June saw Soames standing just
behind her.

"Well! if you are all ready," said Irene, looking from one to
the other with a strange smile, "dinner is too!"




CHAPTER II

JUNE'S  TREAT


Dinner began in silence; the women facing one another, and the
men.

In silence the soup, was finished--excellent, if a little thick;
and fish was brought.  In silence it was handed.

Bosinney ventured: "It's the first spring day."

Irene echoed softly: Yes--the first spring day.

"Spring!" said June: "there isn't a breath of air!" No one
replied.

The fish was taken away, a fine fresh sole from Dover.  And
Bilson brought champagne, a bottle swathed around the neck with
white....

Soames said: "You'll find it dry."

Cutlets were handed, each pink-frilled about the legs.  They were
refused by June, and silence fell.

Soames said: "You'd better take a cutlet, June; there's nothing
coming."

But June again refused, so they were borne away.  And then Irene
asked: "Phil, have you heard my blackbird?"

Bosinney answered: "Rather--he's got a hunting-song.  As I came
round I heard him in the Square."

"He's such a darling!"

"Salad, sir?" Spring chicken was removed.

But Soames was speaking: "The asparagus is very poor.  Bosinney,
glass of sherry with your sweet?  June, you're drinking nothing!"

June said: "You know I never do.  Wine's such horrid stuff!"

An apple charlotte came upon a silver dish, And smilingly Irene
said: "The azaleas are so wonderful this year!"

To this Bosinney murmured: "Wonderful! The scent's
extraordinary!"

June said: "How can you like the scent?  Sugar, please, Bilson."

Sugar was handed her, and Soames remarked: "This charlottes
good!"

The charlotte was removed.  Long silence followed.  Irene,
beckoning, said: "Take out the azalea, Bilson.  Miss June can't
bear the scent."

"No; let it stay," said June.

Olives from France, with Russian caviare, were placed on little
plates.  And Soames remarked: "Why can't we have the Spanish?"
But no one answered.

The olives were removed.  Lifting her tumbler June demanded:
"Give me some water, please."  Water was given her.  A silver tray
was brought, with German plums.  There was a lengthy pause.  In
perfect harmony all were eating them.

Bosinney counted up the stones: "This year--next year--some time."

Irene finished softly: "Never! There was such a glorious sunset.
The sky's all ruby still--so beautiful!"

He answered: "Underneath the dark."

Their eyes had met, and June cried scornfully: "A London sunset!"

Egyptian cigarettes were handed in a silver box.  Soames, taking
one, remarked: "What time's your play begin?"

No one replied, and Turkish coffee followed in enamelled cups.

Irene, smiling quietly, said: "If only...."

"Only what?" said June.

"If only it could always be the spring!"

Brandy was handed; it was pale and old.

Soames said: "Bosinney, better take some brandy."

Bosinney took a glass; they all arose.

"You want a cab?" asked Soames.

June answered: "No! My cloaks Please, Bilson."  Her cloak was
brought.

Irene, from the window, murmured: "Such a lovely night!  The
stars are coming out!"

Soames added: "Well, I hope you'll both enjoy yourselves."

From the door June answered: "Thanks.  Come, Phil."

Bosinney cried: "I'm coming."

Soames smiled a sneering smile, and said: "I wish you luck!"

And at the door Irene watched them go.

Bosinney called: "Good night!"

"Good night!" she answered softly....

June made her lover take her on the top of a 'bus, saying she
wanted air, and there sat silent, with her face to the breeze.

The driver turned once or twice, with the intention of venturing
a remark, but thought better of it.  They were a lively couple!
The spring had got into his blood, too; he felt the need for
letting steam escape, and clucked his tongue, flourishing his
whip, wheeling his horses, and even they, poor things, had
smelled the spring, and for a brief half-hour spurned the
pavement with happy hoofs.

The whole town was alive; the boughs, curled upward with their
decking of young leaves, awaited some gift the breeze could
bring.  New-lighted lamps were gaining mastery, and the faces of
the crowd showed pale under that glare, while on high the great
white clouds slid swiftly, softly, over the purple sky.

Men in, evening dress had thrown back overcoats, stepping
jauntily up the steps of Clubs; working folk loitered; and women-
-those women who at that time of night are solitary--solitary and
moving eastward in a stream--swung slowly along, with expectation
in their gait, dreaming of good wine and a good supper, or--for
an unwonted minute, of kisses given for love.

Those countless figures, going their ways under the lamps and the
moving-sky, had one and all received some restless blessing from
the stir of spring.  And one and all, like those clubmen with
their opened coats, had shed something of caste, and creed, and
custom, and by the cock of their hats, the pace of their walk,
their laughter, or their silence, revealed their common kinship
under the passionate heavens.

Bosinney and June entered the theatre in silence, and mounted to
their seats in the upper boxes.  The piece had just begun, and
the half-darkened house, with its rows of creatures peering all
one way, resembled a great garden of flowers turning their faces
to the sun.

June had never before been in the upper boxes.  From the age of
fifteen she had habitually accompanied her grandfather to the
stalls, and not common stalls, but the best seats in the house,
towards the centre of the third row, booked by old Jolyon, at
Grogan and Boyne's, on his way home from the City, long before
the day; carried in his overcoat pocket, together with his
cigarcase and his old kid gloves, and handed to June to keep till
the appointed night.  And in those stalls--an erect old figure
with a serene white head, a little figure, strenuous and eager,
with a red-gold head--they would sit through every kind of play,
and on the way home old Jolyon would say of the principal actor:
"Oh, he's a poor stick!  You should have seen little Bobson!"

She had looked forward to this evening with keen delight; it was
stolen, chaperone-less, undreamed of at Stanhope Gate, where she
was supposed to be at Soames'.  She had expected reward for her
subterfuge, planned for her lover's sake; she had expected it to
break up the thick, chilly cloud, and make the relations between
them which of late had been so puzzling, so tormenting--sunny and
simple again as they had been before the winter.  She had come
with the intention of saying something definite; and she looked
at the stage with a furrow between her brows, seeing nothing, her
hands squeezed together in her lap.  A swarm of jealous
suspicions stung and stung her.

If Bosinney was conscious of her trouble he made no sign.

The curtain dropped.  The first act had come to an end.

"It's awfully hot here!" said the girl; "I should like to go
out."

She was very white, and she knew--for with her nerves thus
sharpened she saw everything--that he was both uneasy and
compunctious.

At the back of the theatre an open balcony hung over the street;
she took possession of this, and stood leaning there without a
word, waiting for him to begin.

At last she could bear it no longer.

"I want to say something to you, Phil," she said.

"Yes?"

The defensive tone of his voice brought the colour flying to her
cheek, the words flying to her lips: "You don't give me a chance
to be nice to you; you haven't for ages now!"

Bosinney stared down at the street.  He made no answer....

June cried passionately: "You know I want to do everything for
you--that I want to be everything to you...."

A hum rose from the--street, and, piercing it with a sharp
'ping,' the bell sounded for the raising of the curtain, June did
not stir.  A desperate struggle was going on within her.  Should
she put everything to the proof?  Should she challenge directly
that influence, that attraction which was driving him away from
her?  It was her nature to challenge, and she said: "Phil, take
me to see the house on Sunday!"

With a smile quivering and breaking on her lips, and trying, how
hard, not to show that she was watching, she searched his face,
saw it waver and hesitate, saw a troubled line come between his
brows, the blood rush into his face.  He answered: "Not Sunday,
dear; some other day!"

"Why not Sunday?  I shouldn't be in the way on Sunday."

He made an evident effort, and said: I have an engagement."

"You are going to take...."

His eyes grew angry; he shrugged his shoulders, and answered: "An
engagement that will prevent my taking you to see the house!"

June bit her lip till the blood came, and walked back to her seat
without another word, but she could not help the tears of rage
rolling down her face.  The house had been mercifully darkened
for a crisis, and no one could see her trouble.

Yet in this world of Forsytes let no man think himself immune
from observation.

In the third row behind, Euphemia, Nicholas's youngest daughter,
with her married-sister, Mrs. Tweetyman, were watching.

They reported at Timothy's, how they had seen June and her fiance
at the theatre.

"In the stalls?"  "No, not in the...."  "Oh! in the dress
circle, of course.  That seemed to be quite fashionable nowadays
with young people!"

Well--not exactly.  In the....  Anyway, that engagement wouldn't
last long.  They had never seen anyone look so thunder and
lightningy as that little June!  With tears of enjoyment in their
eyes, they related how she had kicked a man's hat as she returned
to her seat in the middle of an act, and how the man had looked.
Euphemia had a noted, silent laugh, terminating most disappoint-
ingly in squeaks; and when Mrs. Small, holding up her hands, said:
"My dear!  Kicked a ha-at?" she let out such anumber of these that
she had to be recovered with smelling-salts.  As she went away
she said to Mrs. Tweetyman:

"Kicked a--ha-at!  Oh!  I shall die."

For 'that little June' this evening, that was to have been 'her
treat,' was the most miserable she had ever spent.  God knows she
tried to stifle her pride, her suspicion, her jealousy!

She parted from Bosinney at old Jolyon's door without breaking
down; the feeling that her lover must be conquered was strong
enough to sustain her till his retiring footsteps brought home
the true extent of her wretchedness.

The noiseless 'Sankey' let her in.  She would have slipped up to
her own room, but old Jolyon, who had heard her entrance, was in
the dining-room doorway.

"Come in and have your milk," he said.  "It's been kept hot for
you.  You're very late.  Where have you been?"

June stood at the fireplace, with a foot on the fender and an arm
on the mantelpiece, as her grandfather had done when he came in
that night of the opera.  She was too near a breakdown, to care
what she told him.

"We dined at Soames's."

"H'm!  the man of property!  His wife there and Bosinney?"

"Yes."

Old Jolyon's glance was fixed on her with the penetrating gaze
from which it was difficult to hide; but she was not looking at
him, and when she turned her face, he dropped his scrutiny at
once.  He had seen enough, and too much.  He bent down to lift
the cup of milk for her from the hearth, and, turning away,
grumbled: "You oughtn't to stay out so late; it makes you fit for
nothing."

He was invisible now behind his paper, which he turned with a
vicious crackle; but when June came up to kiss him, he said:
"Good-night, my darling," in a tone so tremulous and unexpected,
that it was all the girl could do to get out of the room without
breaking into the fit of sobbing which lasted her well on into
the night.

When the door was closed, old Jolyon dropped his paper, and
stared long and anxiously in front of him.

'The beggar!' he thought.  'I always knew she'd have trouble with
him!'

Uneasy doubts and suspicions, the more poignant that he felt
himself powerless to check or control the march of events, came
crowding upon him.

Was the fellow going to jilt her?  He longed to go and say to
him: "Look here, you sir!  Are you going to jilt my grand-
daughter?"  But how could he?  Knowing little or nothing, he
was yet certain, with his unerring astuteness, that there was
something going on.  He suspected Bosinney of being too much at
Montpellier Square.

'This fellow,' he thought, 'may not be a scamp; his face is not a
bad one, but he's a queer fish.  I don't know what to make of
him.  I shall never know what to make of him!  They tell me he
works like a nigger, but I see no good coming of it.  He's
unpractical, he has no method.  When he comes here, he sits as
glum as a monkey.  If I ask him what wine he'll have, he says:
"Thanks, any wine." If I offer him a cigar, he smokes it as if it
were a twopenny German thing.  I never see him looking at June as
he ought to look at her; and yet, he's not after her money.  If
she were to make a sign, he'd be off his bargain to-morrow.  But
she won't--not she!  She'll stick to him!  She's as obstinate as
fate--Sh'ell never let go!'

Sighing deeply, he turned the paper; in its columns, perchance he
might find consolation.

And upstairs in her room June sat at her open window, where the
spring wind came, after its revel across the Park, to cool her
hot cheeks and burn her heart.




CHAPTER III

DRIVE WITH SWITHIN


Two lines of a certain song in a certain famous old school's
songbook run as follows:

'How the buttons on his blue frock shone, tra-la-la!
How he carolled and he sang, like a bird!....'

Swithin did not exactly carol and sing like a bird, but he felt
almost like endeavouring to hum a tune, as he stepped out of Hyde
Park  Mansions, and contemplated his horses drawn up before the
door.

The afternoon was as balmy as a day in June, and to complete the
simile of the old song, he had put on a blue frock-coat,
dispensing with an overcoat, after sending Adolf down three times
to make sure that there was not the least suspicion of east in
the wind; and the frock-coat was buttoned so tightly around his
personable form, that, if the buttons did not shine, they might
pardonably have done so.  Majestic on the pavement he fitted on a
pair of dog-skin gloves; with his large bell-shaped top hat, and
his great stature and bulk he looked too primeval for a Forsyte.
His thick white hair, on which Adolf had bestowed a touch of
pomatum, exhaled the fragrance of opoponax and cigars--the
celebrated Swithin brand, for which he paid one hundred and,
forty shillings the hundred, and of which old Jolyon had unkindly
said, he wouldn't smoke them as a gift; they wanted the stomach
of a horse!

"Adolf!"

"Sare!"

"The new plaid rug!"

He would never teach that fellow to look smart; and Mrs. Soames
he felt sure, had an eye!

"The phaeton hood down; I am going--to--drive--a--lady!"

A pretty woman would want to show off her frock; and well--he was
going to drive a lady!  It was like a new beginning to the good
old days.

Ages since he had driven a woman!  The last time, if he
remembered, it had been Juley; the poor old soul had been as
nervous as a cat the whole time, and so put him out of patience
that, as he dropped her in the Bayswater Road, he had said: "Well
I'm d---d if I ever drive you again!"  And he never had, not he!

Going up to his horses' heads, he examined their bits; not that
he knew anything about bits--he didn't pay his coachman sixty
pounds a  year to do his work for him, that had never been his
principle.  Indeed, his reputation as a horsey man rested mainly
on the fact that once, on Derby Day, he had been welshed by some
thimble-riggers.  But someone at the Club, after seeing him drive
his greys up to the door--he always drove grey horses, you got
more style for the money, some thought--had called him 'Four-
in-hand Forsyte.' The name having reached his ears through that
fellow Nicholas Treffry, old Jolyon's dead partner, the great
driving man notorious for more carriage accidents than any man in
the kingdom--Swithin had ever after conceived it right to act up
to it.  The name had taken his fancy, not because he had ever
driven four-in-hand, or was ever likely to, but because of
something distinguished in the sound.  Four-in-hand Forsyte!  Not
bad!  Born too soon, Swithin had missed his vocation.  Coming
upon London twenty years later, he could not have failed to have
become a stockbroker, but at the time when he was obliged to
select, this great profession had not as yet became the chief
glory of the upper-middle class.  He had literally been forced
into land agency.

Once in the driving seat, with the reins handed to him, and
blinking over his pale old cheeks in the full sunlight, he took a
slow look round--Adolf was already up behind; the cockaded groom
at the horses' heads stood ready to let go; everything was
prepared for the signal, and Swithin gave it.  The equipage
dashed forward, and before you could say Jack Robinson, with a
rattle and flourish drew up at Soames' door.

Irene came out at once, and stepped in--he afterward described it
at Timothy's--"as light as--er--Taglioni, no fuss about it, no
wanting this or wanting that;" and above all, Swithin dwelt on
this, staring at Mrs. Septimus in a way that disconcerted her a
good deal, "no silly nervousness!"  To Aunt Hester he portrayed
Irene's hat.  "Not one of your great flopping things, sprawling
about, and catching the dust, that women are so fond of nowadays,
but a neat little--"he made a circular motion of his hand, "white
veil--capital taste."

"What was it made of?" inquired Aunt Hester, who manifested a
languid but permanent excitement at any mention of dress.

"Made of?" returned Swithin; "now how should I know?"

He sank into silence so profound that Aunt Hester began to be
afraid he had fallen into a trance.  She did not try to rouse him
herself, it not being her custom.

'I wish somebody would come,' she thought; 'I don't like the look
of him!'

But suddenly Swithin returned to life.  "Made of" he wheezed out
slowly, "what should it be made of?"

They had not gone four miles before Swithin received the
impression that Irene liked driving with him.  Her face was so
soft behind that white veil, and her dark eyes shone so in the
spring light, and whenever he spoke she raised them to him and
smiled.

On Saturday morning Soames had found her at her writing-table
with a note written to Swithin, putting him off.  Why did she
want to put him off? he asked.  She might put her own people off
when she liked, he would not have her putting off his people!

She had looked at him intently, had torn up the note, and said:
"Very well!"

And then she began writing another.  He took a casual glance
presently, and saw that it was addressed to Bosinney.

"What are you writing to him about?" he asked.

Irene, looking at him again with that intent look, said quietly:
"Something he wanted me to do for him!"

"Humph!" said Soames,--"Commissions!"

"You'll have your work cut out if you begin that sort of thing!"
He said no more.

Swithin opened his eyes at the mention of Robin Hill; it was a
long way for his horses, and he always dined at half-past seven,
before the rush at the Club began; the new chef took more trouble
with an early dinner--a lazy rascal!

He would like to have a look at the house, however.  A house
appealed to any Forsyte, and especially to one who had been an
auctioneer.  After all he said the distance was nothing.  When he
was a younger man he had had rooms at Richmond for many years,
kept his carriage and pair there, and drove them up and down to
business every day of his life.

Four-in-hand Forsyte they called him!  His T-cart, his horses had
been known from Hyde Park Corner to the Star and Garter.  The
Duke of Z....  wanted to get hold of them, would have given him
double the money, but he had kept them; know a good thing when
you have it, eh?  A look of solemn pride came portentously on his
shaven square old face, he rolled his head in his stand-up
collar, like a turkey-cock preening himself.

She was really--a charming woman!  He enlarged upon her frock
afterwards to Aunt Juley, who held up her hands at his way of
putting it.

Fitted her like a skin--tight as a drum; that was how he liked
'em, all of a piece, none of your daverdy, scarecrow women!  He
gazed at Mrs. Septimus Small, who took after James--long and
thin.

"There's style about her," he went on, "fit for a king!  And
she's so quiet with it too!"

"She seems to have made quite a conquest of you, any way,"
drawled Aunt Hester from her corner.

Swithin heard extremely well when anybody attacked him.

"What's that?" he said.  "I know a--pretty--woman when I see one,
and all I can say is, I don't see the young man about that's fit
for her; but perhaps--you--do, come, perhaps--you-do!"

"Oh?" murmured Aunt Hester, "ask Juley!"

Long before they reached Robin Hill, however, the unaccustomed
airing had made him terribly sleepy; he drove with his eyes
closed, a life-time of deportment alone keeping his tall and
bulky form from falling askew.

Bosinney, who was watching, came out to meet them, and all three
entered the house together; Swithin in front making play with a
stout gold-mounted Malacca cane, put into his hand by Adolf, for
his knees were feeling the effects of their long stay in the same
position.  He had assumed his fur coat, to guard against the
draughts of the unfinished house.

The staircase--he said--was handsome! the baronial style!  They
would want some statuary about!  He came to a standstill between
the columns of the doorway into the inner court, and held out his
cane inquiringly.

What was this to be--this vestibule, or whatever they called it?
But gazing at the skylight, inspiration came to him.

"Ah! the billiard-room!"

When told it was to be a tiled court with plants in the centre,
he turned to Irene:

"Waste this on plants?  You take my advice and have a billiard
table here!"

Irene smiled.  She had lifted her veil, banding it like a nun's
coif across her forehead, and the smile of her dark eyes below
this seemed to Swithin more charming than ever.  He nodded.  She
would take his advice he saw.

He had little to say of the drawing or dining-rooms, which he
described as 'spacious"; but fell into such raptures as he
permitted to a man of his dignity, in the wine-cellar, to which
he descended by stone steps, Bosinney going first with a light.

"You'll have room here," he said, "for six or seven hundred.
dozen--a very pooty little cellar!"

Bosinney having expressed the wish to show them the house from
the copse below, Swithin came to a stop.

"There's a fine view from here," he remarked; "you haven't such a
thing as a chair?"

A chair was brought him from Bosinney's tent.

"You go down," he said blandly; "you two!  I'll sit here and look
at the view."

He sat down by the oak tree, in the sun; square and upright, with
one hand stretched out, resting on the nob of his cane, the other
planted on his knee; his fur coat thrown open, his hat, roofing
with its flat top the pale square of his face; his stare, very
blank, fixed on the landscape.

He nodded to them as they went, off down through the fields.  He
was, indeed, not sorry to be left thus for a quiet moment of
reflection.  The air was balmy, not too much heat in the sun; the
prospect a fine one, a remarka....  His head fell a little to one
side; he jerked it up and thought: Odd!  He--ah!  They were
waving to him from the bottom!  He put up his hand, and moved it
more than once.  They were active--the prospect was remar....
His head fell to the left, he jerked it up at once; it fell to
the right.  It remained there; he was asleep.

And asleep, a sentinel on the--top of the rise, he  appeared to
rule over this prospect--remarkable--like some image blocked out
by the special artist, of primeval Forsytes in pagan days, to
record the domination of mind over matter!

And all the unnumbered generations of his yeoman ancestors, wont
of a Sunday to stand akimbo surveying their little plots of land,
their grey unmoving eyes hiding their instinct with its hidden
roots of violence, their instinct for possession to the exclusion
of all the world--all these unnumbered generations seemed to sit
there with him on the top of the rise.

But from him, thus slumbering, his jealous Forsyte spirit
travelled far, into God-knows-what jungle of fancies; with those
two young people, to see what they were doing down there in the
copse--in the copse where the spring was running riot with the
scent of sap and bursting buds, the song of birds innumerable, a
carpet of bluebells and sweet growing things, and the sun caught
like gold in the tops of the trees; to see what they were doing,
walking along there so close together on the path that was too
narrow; walking along there so close that they were always
touching; to watch Irene's eyes, like dark thieves, stealing the
heart out of the spring.  And a great unseen chaperon, his spirit
was there, stopping with them to look at the little furry corpse
of a mole, not dead an hour, with his mushroom--and silver coat
untouched by the rain or dew; watching over Irene's bent head,
and the soft look of her pitying eyes; and over that young man's
head, gazing at her so hard, so strangely.  Walking on with them,
too, across the open space where a wood-cutter had been at work,
where the bluebells were trampled down, and a trunk had swayed
and staggered down from its gashed stump.  Climbing it with them,
over, and on to the very edge of the copse, whence there
stretched an undiscovered country, from far away in which came
the sounds, 'Cuckoo-cuckoo!'

Silent, standing with them there, and uneasy at their silence!
Very queer, very strange!

Then back again, as though guilty, through the wood--back to the
cutting, still silent, amongst the songs of birds that never
ceased, and the wild scent--hum! what was it--like that herb
they put in--back to the log across the path....

And then unseen, uneasy, flapping above them, trying to make
noises, his Forsyte spirit watched her balanced on the log, her
pretty figure swaying, smiling down at that young man gazing up
with such strange, shining eyes, slipping now--a--ah! falling,
o--oh!  sliding--down his breast; her soft, warm body clutched,
her head bent back from his lips; his kiss; her recoil; his cry:
"You must know--I love you!"  Must know--indeed, a pretty...?
Love!  Hah!

Swithin awoke; virtue had gone out of him.  He had a taste in his
mouth.  Where was he?

Damme!  He had been asleep!

He had dreamed something about a new soup, with a taste of mint
in it.

Those young people--where had they got to?  His left leg had pins
and needles.

"Adolf!"  The rascal was not there; the rascal was asleep
somewhere.

He stood up, tall, square, bulky in his fur, looking anxiously
down over the fields, and presently he saw them coming.

Irene was in front; that young fellow--what had they nicknamed
him--'The Buccaneer?' looked precious hangdog there behind her;
had got a flea in his ear, he shouldn't wonder.  Serve him right,
taking her down all that way to look at the house!  The proper
place to look at a house from was the lawn.

They saw him.  He extended his arm, and moved it spasmodically to
encourage them.  But they had stopped.  What were they standing
there for, talking--talking?  They came on again.  She had been,
giving him a rub, he had not the least doubt of it, and no
wonder, over a house like that--a great ugly thing, not the sort
of house be was accustomed to.

He looked intently at their faces, with his pale, immovable
stare.  That young man looked very queer!

"You'll never make anything of this!" he said tartly, pointing at
the mansion;--"too newfangled!"

Bosinney gazed at him as though he had not heard; and Swithin
afterwards described him to, Aunt Hester as "an extravagant sort
of fellow very odd way of looking at you--a bumpy beggar!"

What gave rise to this sudden piece of psychology he did not
state; possibly Bosinney's, prominent forehead and cheekbones and
chin, or something hungry in his face, which quarrelled with
Swithin's conception of the calm satiety that should characterize
the perfect gentleman.

He brightened up at the mention of tea.  He had a contempt for
tea--his brother Jolyon had been in tea; made a lot of money by
it--but he was so thirsty, and had such a taste in his mouth,
that he was prepared to drink anything.  He longed to inform
Irene of the taste in his mouth--she was so sympathetic--but it
would not be a, distinguished thing to do; he rolled his tongue
round, and faintly smacked it against his palate.

In a far corner of the tent Adolf was bending his cat-like
moustaches over a kettle.  He left it at once to draw the cork of
a pint-bottle of champagne.  Swithin smiled, and, nodding at
Bosinney, said: "Why, you're quite a Monte Cristo!"  This
celebrated novel--one of the half-dozen he had read--had produced
an extraordinary impression on his mind.

Taking his glass from the table, he held it away from him to
scrutinize the colour; thirsty as he was, it was not likely that
he was going to drink trash!  Then, placing it to his lips, he
took a sip.

"A very nice wine," he said at last, passing it before his nose;
"not the equal of my Heidsieck!"

It was at this moment that the idea came to him which he
afterwards imparted at Timothy's in this nutshell: "I shouldn't
wonder a bit if that architect chap were sweet upon Mrs. Soames!"

And from this moment his pale, round eyes never ceased to bulge
with the interest of his discovery.

"The fellow," he said to Mrs. Septimus, "follows her about with
his eyes like a dog--the bumpy beggar!  I don't wonder at it--
she's a very charming woman, and, I should say, the pink of
discretion!"  A vague consciousness of, perfume caging about
Irene, like that from a flower with half-closed petals and a
passionate heart, moved him to the creation of this image.  "But
I wasn't sure of it," he said, "till I saw him pick up her
handkerchief."

Mrs. Small's eyes boiled with excitement.

"And did he give it her back?" she asked.

"Give it back?" said Swithin: "I saw him slobber on it when he
thought I wasn't looking!"

Mrs. Small gasped--too interested to speak.

"But she gave him no encouragement," went on Swithin; he stopped,
and stared for a minute or two in the way that alarmed Aunt
Hester so--he had suddenly recollected that, as they were
starting back in the-phaeton, she had given Bosinney her hand a
second time, and let it stay there too....  He had touched his
horses smartly with the whip, anxious to get her all to himself.
But she had looked back, and she had not answered his first
question; neither had he been able to see her face--she had kept
it hanging down.

There is somewhere a picture, which Swithin has not seen, of a
man sitting on a rock, and by him, immersed in the still, green
water, a sea-nymph lying on her back, with her hand on her naked
breast.  She has a half-smile on her face--a smile of hopeless
surrender and of secret joy.

Seated by Swithin's side, Irene may have been smiling like that.

When, warmed by champagne, he had her all to himself, he
unbosomed himself of his wrongs; of his smothered resentment
against the new chef at the club; his worry over the house in
Wigmore Street, where the rascally tenant had gone bankrupt
through helping his brother-in-law as if charity did not begin at
home; of his deafness, too, and that pain he sometimes got in his
right side.  She listened, her eyes swimming under their lids.
He thought she was thinking deeply of his troubles, and pitied
himself terribly.  Yet in his fur coat, with frogs across the
breast, his top hat aslant, driving this beautiful woman, he had
never felt more distinguished.

A coster, however, taking his girl for a Sunday airing, seemed to
have the same impression about himself.  This person had flogged
his donkey into a gallop alongside, and sat, upright as a
waxwork, in his shallopy chariot, his chin settled pompously on a
red handkerchief, like Swithin's on his full cravat; while his
girl, with the ends of a fly-blown boa floating out behind, aped
a woman of fashion.  Her swain moved a stick with a ragged bit of
string dangling from the end, reproducing with strange fidelity
the circular flourish of Swithin's whip, and rolled his head at
his lady with a leer that had a weird likeness to Swithin's
primeval stare.

Though for a time unconscious of the lowly ruffian's presence,
Swithin presently took it into his head that he was being guyed.
He laid his whip-lash across the mares flank.  The two chariots,
however, by some unfortunate fatality continued abreast.
Swithin's yellow, puffy face grew red; he raised his whip to lash
the costermonger, but was saved from so far forgetting his
dignity by a special intervention of Providence.  A carriage
driving out through a gate forced phaeton and donkey-cart into
proximity; the wheels grated, the lighter vehicle skidded, and
was overturned.

Swithin did not look round.  On no account would he have pulled
up to help the ruffian.  Serve him right if he had broken his
neck!

But he could not if he would.  The greys had taken alarm.  The
phaeton swung from side to side, and people raised frightened
faces as they went dashing past.  Swithin's great arms, stretched
at full length, tugged at the reins.  His cheeks were puffed, his
lips compressed, his swollen face was of a dull, angry red.

Irene had her hand on the rail, and at every lurch she gripped it
tightly.  Swithin heard her ask:

"Are we going to have an accident, Uncle Swithin?"

He gasped out between his pants: "It's nothing; a--little fresh!"

"I've never been in an accident."

"Don't you move!"  He took a look at--her.  She was smiling,
perfectly calm.  "Sit still," he repeated.  "Never fear, I'll get
you home!"

And in the midst of all his terrible efforts, he was surprised to
hear her answer in a voice not like her own:

"I don't care if I never get home!"

The carriage giving a terrific lurch, Swithin's exclamation was
jerked back into his throat.  The horses, winded by the rise of a
hill, now steadied to a trot, and finally stopped of their own
accord.

"When"--Swithin described it at Timothy's--"I pulled 'em up,
there she was as cool as myself.  God bless my soul! she behaved
as if she didn't care whether she broke her neck or not!  What
was it she said: 'I don't care if I never get home?"  Leaning over
the handle of his cane, he wheezed out, to Mrs. Small's terror:
"And I'm not altogether surprised, with a finickin' feller like
young Soames for a husband!"

It did not occur to him to wonder what Bosinney had done after
they had left him there alone; whether he had gone wandering
about like the dog to which Swithin had compared him; wandering
down to that copse where the spring was still in riot, the cuckoo
still calling from afar; gone down there with her handkerchief
pressed to lips, its fragrance mingling with the scent of mint
and thyme.  Gone down there with such a wild, exquisite pain in
his heart that he could have cried out among the trees.  Or what,
indeed, the fellow had done.  In fact, till he came to Timothy's,
Swithin had forgotten all about him.




CHAPTER IV

JAMES GOES TO SEE FOR HIMSELF


Those ignorant of Forsyte 'Change would not, perhaps, foresee all
the stir made by Irene's visit to the house.

After Swithin had related at Timothy's the full story of his
memorable drive, the same, with the least suspicion of curiosity,
the merest touch of malice, and a real desire to do good, was
passed on to June.

"And what a dreadful thing to say, my dear!" ended Aunt Juley;
"that about not going home.  What did she mean?"

It was a strange recital for the girl.  She heard it flushing
painfully, and, suddenly, with a curt handshake, took her
departure.

"Almost rude!" Mrs. Small said to Aunt Hester, when June was
gone.

The proper construction was put on her reception of the news.
She was upset.  Something was therefore very wrong.  Odd!  She
and Irene had been such friends!

It all tallied too well with whispers and hints that had been
going about for some time past.  Recollections of Euphemia's
account of the visit to the theatre--Mr. Bosinney always at
Soames's?  Oh, indeed!  Yes, of course, he would be about the
house!  Nothing open.  Only upon the greatest, the most important
provocation was it necessary to say anything open on Forsyte
'Change.  This machine was too nicely adjusted; a hint, the
merest trifling expression of regret or doubt, sufficed to set
the family soul so sympathetic--vibrating.  No one desired that
harm should come of these vibrations--far from it; they were set
in motion with the best intentions, with the feeling, that each
member of the family had a stake in the family soul.

And much kindness lay at the bottom of the gossip; it would
frequently result in visits of condolence being made, in
accordance with the customs of Society, thereby conferring a real
benefit upon the sufferers, and affording consolation to the
sound, who felt pleasantly that someone at all events was
suffering from that from which they themselves were not
suffering.  In fact, it was simply a desire to keep things
well-aired, the desire which animates the Public Press, that
brought James, for instance, into communication with Mrs.
Septimus, Mrs. Septimus, with the little Nicholases, the little
Nicholases with who-knows-whom, and so on.  That great class to
which they had risen, and now belonged, demanded a certain
candour, a still more certain reticence.  This combination
guaranteed their membership.

Many of the younger Forsytes felt, very naturally, and would
openly declare, that they did not want their affairs pried into;
but so powerful was the invisible, magnetic current of family
gossip, that for the life of them they could not help knowing all
about everything.  It was felt to be hopeless.

One of them (young Roger) had made an heroic attempt to free the
rising generation, by speaking of Timothy as an 'old cat.' The
effort had justly recoiled upon himself; the words, coming round
in the most delicate way to Aunt Juley's ears, were repeated by
her in a shocked voice to Mrs. Roger, whence they returned again
to young Roger.

And, after all, it was only the wrong-doers who suffered; as, for
instance, George, when he lost all that money playing billiards;
or young Roger himself, when he was so dreadfully near to
marrying the girl to whom, it was whispered, he was already
married by the laws of Nature; or again Irene, who was thought,
rather than said, to be in danger.

All this was not only pleasant but salutary.  And it made so many
hours go lightly at Timothy's in the Bayswater Road; so many
hours that must otherwise have been sterile and heavy to those
three who lived there; and Timothy's was but one of hundreds of
such homes in this City of London--the homes of neutral persons
of the secure classes, who are out of the battle themselves, and
must find their reason for existing, in the battles of others.

But for the sweetness of family gossip, it must indeed have been
lonely there.  Rumours and tales, reports, surmises--were they
not the children of the house, as dear and precious as the
prattling babes the brother and sisters had missed in their own
journey?  To talk about them, was as near as they could get to
the possession of all those children and grandchildren, after
whom their soft hearts yearned.  For though it is doubtful
whether Timothy's heart yearned, it is indubitable that at the
arrival of each fresh Forsyte child he was quite upset.

Useless for young Roger to say, "Old cat!" for Euphemia to hold up
her hands and cry: "Oh! those three!" and break into her silent
laugh with the squeak at the end.  Useless, and not too kind.

The situation which at this stage might seem, and especially to
Forsyte eyes, strange--not to  say 'impossible'--was, in view of
certain facts, not so strange after all.  Some things had been
lost sight of.  And first, in the security bred of many harmless
marriages, it had been forgotten that Love is no hot-house
flower, but a wild plant, born of  a wet night, born of an hour
of sunshine; sprung  from wild seed, blown along the road by a
wild wind.  A wild plant that, when it blooms by chance within
the hedge of our gardens, we call a flower; and when it blooms
outside we call a  weed; but, flower or weed, whose scent and
colour  are always, wild!  And further--the facts and figures of
their own lives being against the perception of this truth--it
was not generally recognised by Forsytes that, where, this wild
plant springs, men and women  are but moths around the pale,
flame-like  blossom.

It was long since young Jolyon's escapade--there was danger of a
tradition again arising that people in their position never cross
the hedge to pluck that flower; that one could reckon on having
love, like measles, once in due season, and getting over it
comfortably for all time--as with measles, on a soothing mixture
of butter and honey--in the arms of wedlock.

Of all those whom this strange rumour about Bosinney and Mrs.
Soames reached, James was the most affected.  He had long
forgotten how he had hovered, lanky and pale, in side whiskers of
chestnut hue, round Emily, in the days of his own courtship.  He
had long forgotten the small house in the purlieus of Mayfair,
where he had spent the early days of his married life, or rather,
he had long forgotten the early days, not the small house,--a
Forsyte never forgot a house--he had afterwards sold it at a
clear profit of four hundred pounds.

He had long, forgotten those days, with their hopes and fears and
doubts about the prudence of the match (for Emily, though pretty,
had nothing, and he himself at that time was making a bare
thousand a year), and that strange, irresistible attraction which
had drawn him on, till he felt he must die if he could not marry
the girl with the fair hair, looped so neatly back, the fair arms
emerging from a skin-tight bodice, the fair form decorously
shielded by a cage of really stupendous circumference.

James had passed through the fire, but he had passed also through
the river of years which washes out the fire; he had experienced
the saddest experience of all--forgetfulness of what it was like
to be in love.

Forgotten!  Forgotten so long, that he had forgotten even that he
had forgotten.

And now this rumour had come upon him, this rumour about his
son's wife; very vague, a shadow dodging among the palpable,
straightforward appearances of things, unreal, unintelligible as
a ghost, but carrying with it, like a ghost, inexplicable terror.

He tried to bring it home to his mind, but it was no more use
than trying to apply to himself one of those tragedies he read of
daily in his evening paper.  He simply could not.  There could be
nothing in it.  It was all their nonsense.  She didn't get on
with Soames as well as she might, but she was a good little
thing--a good little thing!

Like the not inconsiderable majority of men, James relished a
nice little bit of scandal, and would say, in a matter-of-fact
tone, licking his lips, "Yes, yes--she and young Dyson; they tell
me they're living at Monte Carlo!"

But the significance of an affair of this sort--of its past, its
present, or its future--had never struck him.  What it meant,
what torture and raptures had gone to its construction, what
slow, overmastering fate had lurked within the facts, very naked,
sometimes sordid, but generally spicy, presented to his gaze.  He
was not in the habit of blaming, praising, drawing deductions, or
generalizing at all about such things; he simply listened rather
greedily, and repeated what he was told, finding considerable
benefit from the practice, as from the consumption of a sherry
and bitters before a meal.

Now, however, that such a thing--or rather the rumour, the breath
of it--had come near him personally, he felt as in a fog, which
filled his mouth full of a bad, thick flavour, and made it
difficult to draw breath.

A scandal!  A possible scandal!

To repeat this word to himself thus was the only way in which he
could focus or make it thinkable.  He had forgotten the
sensations necessary for understanding the progress, fate, or
meaning of any such business; he simply could no longer grasp the
possibilities of people running any risk for the sake of passion.

Amongst all those persons of his acquaintance, who went into the
City day after day and did their business there, whatever it was,
and in their leisure moments bought shares, and houses, and ate
dinners, and played games, as he was told, it would have seemed
to him ridiculous to suppose that there were any who would run
risks for the sake of anything so recondite, so figurative, as
passion.

Passion!  He seemed, indeed, to have heard of it, and rules such
as 'A young man and a young woman ought never to be trusted
together' were fixed in his mind as the parallels of latitude are
fixed on a map (for all Forsytes, when it comes to 'bed-rock'
matters of fact, have quite a fine taste in realism); but as to
anything else--well, he could only appreciate it at all through
the catch-word 'scandal.'

Ah! but there was no truth in it--could not be.  He was not
afraid; she was really a good little thing.  But there it was
when you got a thing like that into your mind.  And James was of
a nervous temperament--one of those men whom things will not
leave alone, who suffer tortures from anticipation and
indecision.  For fear of letting something slip that he might
otherwise secure, he was physically unable to make up his mind
until absolutely certain that, by not making it up, he would
suffer loss.

In life, however, there were many occasions when the business of
making up his mind did not even rest with himself, and this was
one of them.

What could he do?  Talk it over with Soames?  That would only
make matters worse.  And, after all, there was nothing in it, he
felt sure.

It was all that house.  He had mistrusted the idea from the
first.  What did Soames want to go into the country for?  And, if
he must go spending a lot of money building himself a house, why
not have a first-rate man, instead of this young Bosinney, whom
nobody knew anything about?  He had told them, how it would be.
And he had heard that the house was costing Soames a pretty penny
beyond what he had reckoned on spending.

This fact, more than any other, brought home to James the real
danger of the situation.  It was always like this with these
'artistic' chaps; a sensible man should have nothing to say to
them.  He had warned Irene, too.  And see what had come of it!

And it suddenly sprang into James's mind that he ought to go and
see for himself.  In the midst of that fog of uneasiness in which
his mind was enveloped the notion that he could go and look at
the house afforded him inexplicable satisfaction.  It may have
been simply the decision to do something--more possibly the fact
that he was going to look at a house--that gave him relief.
He felt that in staring at an edifice of bricks and mortar, of
wood and stone, built by the suspected man himself, he would be
looking into the heart of that rumour about Irene.

Without saying a word, therefore, to anyone, he took a hansom to
the station and proceeded by train to Robin Hill; thence--there
being no 'flies,' in accordance with the custom of the
neighbourhood--he found himself obliged to walk.

He started slowly up the hill, his angular knees and high
shoulders bent complainingly, his eyes fixed on his feet, yet,
neat for all that, in his high hat and his frock-coat, on which
was the speckless gloss imparted by perfect superintendence.
Emily saw to that; that is, she did not, of course, see to it--
people of good position not seeing to each other's buttons, and
Emily was of good position--but she saw that the butler saw to
it.

He had to ask his way three times; on each occasion he repeated
the directions given him, got the man to repeat them, then
repeated them a second time, for he was naturally of a talkative
disposition, and one could not be too careful in a new
neighbourhood.

He kept assuring them that it was a new house he was looking for;
it was only, however, when he was shown the roof through the
trees that he could feel really satisfied that he had not been
directed entirely wrong.

A heavy sky seemed to cover the world with the grey whiteness of
a whitewashed ceiling.  There was no freshness or fragrance in
the air.  On such a day even British workmen scarcely cared to do
more then they were obliged, and moved about their business
without the drone of talk which whiles away the pangs of labour.

Through spaces of the unfinished house, shirt-sleeved figures
worked slowly, and sounds arose--spasmodic knockings, the
scraping of metal, the sawing of wood, with the rumble of
wheelbarrows along boards; now and again the foreman's dog,
tethered by a string to an oaken beam, whimpered feebly, with a
sound like the singing of a kettle.

The fresh-fitted window-panes, daubed each with a white patch in
the centre, stared out at James like the eyes of a blind dog.

And the building chorus went on, strident and mirthless under the
grey-white sky.  But the thrushes, hunting amongst the fresh-
turned earth for worms, were silent quite.

James picked his way among the heaps of gravel--the drive was
being laid--till he came opposite the porch.  Here he stopped and
raised his eyes.  There was but little to see from this point of
view, and that little he took in at once; but he stayed in this
position many minutes, and who shall know of what he thought.

His china-blue eyes under white eyebrows that jutted out in
little horns, never stirred; the long upper lip of his wide
mouth, between the fine white whiskers, twitched once or twice;
it was easy to see from that anxious rapt expression, whence
Soames derived the handicapped look which sometimes came upon his
face.  James might have been saying to himself: 'I don't know--
life's a tough job.'

In this position Bosinney surprised him.

James brought his eyes down from whatever bird's-nest they had
been looking for in the sky to Bosinney's face, on which was a
kind of humorous scorn.

"How do you do, Mr. Forsyte?  Come down to see for yourself?"

It was exactly what James, as we know, had come for, and he was
made correspondingly uneasy.  He held out his hand, however,
saying:

"How are you?" without looking at Bosinney.

The latter made way for him with an ironical smile.

James scented something suspicious in this courtesy.  "I should
like to walk round the outside first," he said, "and see what
you've been doing!"

A flagged terrace of rounded stones with a list of two or three
inches to port had been laid round the south-east and south-west
sides of the house, and ran with a bevelled edge into mould,
which was in preparation for being turfed; along this terrace
James led the way.

"Now what did this cost?" he asked, when he saw the terrace
extending round the corner.

"What should you think?" inquired Bosinney.

"How should I know?" replied James somewhat nonplussed; "two or
three hundred, I dare say!"

"The exact sum!"

James gave him a sharp look, but the architect appeared
unconscious, and he put the answer down to mishearing.

On arriving at the garden entrance, he stopped to look at the
view.

"That ought to come down," he said, pointing to the oak-tree.

"You think so?  You think that with the tree there you don't get
enough view for your money."

Again James eyed him suspiciously--this young man had a peculiar
way of putting things: "Well!" he said, with a perplexed,
nervous, emphasis, "I don't see what you want with a tree."

"It shall come down to-morrow," said Bosinney.

James was alarmed.  "Oh," he said, "don't go saying I said it was
to come down!  I know nothing about it!"

"No?"

James went on in a fluster: "Why, what should I know about it?
It's nothing to do with me!  You do it on your own
responsibility."

"You'll allow me to mention your name?"

James grew more and more alarmed: "I don't know what you want
mentioning my name for," he muttered; "you'd better leave the
tree alone.  It's not your tree!"

He took out a silk handkerchief and wiped his brow.  They entered
the house.  Like Swithin, James was impressed by the inner
court-yard.

You must have spent a douce of a lot of money here," he said,
after staring at the columns and gallery for some time.  "Now,
what did it cost to put up those columns?"

"I can't tell you off-hand," thoughtfully answered Bosinney, "but
I know it was a deuce of a lot!"

"I should think so," said James.  "I should...."  He caught the
architect's eye, and broke off.  And now, whenever he came to
anything of which he desired to know the cost, he stifled that
curiosity.

Bosinney appeared determined that he should see everything, and
had not James been of too 'noticing=a nature, he would
certainly have found himself going round the house a second time.
He seemed so anxious to be asked questions, too, that James felt
he must be on his guard.  He began to suffer from his exertions,
for, though wiry enough for a man of his long build, he was
seventy-five years old.

He grew discouraged; he seemed no nearer to anything, had not
obtained from his inspection any of the knowledge he had vaguely
hoped for.  He had merely increased his dislike and mistrust of
this young man, who had tired him out with his politeness, and in
whose manner he now certainly detected mockery.

The fellow was sharper than he had thought, and better-looking
than he had hoped.  He had a--a 'don't care' appearance that
James, to whom risk was the most intolerable thing in life, did
not appreciate; a peculiar smile, too, coming when least
expected; and very queer eyes.  He reminded James, as he said
afterwards, of a hungry cat.  This was as near as he could get,
in conversation with Emily, to a description of the peculiar
exasperation, velvetiness, and mockery, of which Bosinney's
manner had been composed.

At last, having seen all that was to be seen, he came out again
at the door where he had gone in; and now, feeling that he was
wasting time and strength and money, all for nothing, he took the
courage of a Forsyte in both hands, and, looking sharply at
Bosinney, said:

"I dare say you see a good deal of my daughter-in-law; now, what
does she think of the house?  But she hasn't seen it, I suppose?"

This he said, knowing all about Irene's visit not, of course,
that there was anything in the visit, except that extraordinary
remark she had made about 'not caring to get home'--and the story
of how June had taken the news!

He had determined, by this way of putting the question, to give
Bosinney a chance, as he said to himself.

The latter was long in answering, but kept his eyes with
uncomfortable steadiness on James.

"She has seen the house, but I can't tell you what she thinks of,
it."

Nervous and baffled, James was constitutionally prevented from
letting the matter drop.

"Oh!" he said, "she has seen it?  Soames brought her down, I
suppose?"

Bosinney smilingly replied: "Oh, no!"

"What, did she come down alone?"

"Oh, no!"

"Then--who brought her?"

"I really don't know whether I ought to tell you who brought
her."

To James, who knew that it was Swithin, this answer appeared
incomprehensible.

"Why!" he stammered, "you know that...." but he stopped, suddenly
perceiving his danger.

"Well," he said, "if you don't want to tell me I suppose you
won't!  Nobody tells me anything."

Somewhat to his surprise Bosinney asked him a question.

"By the by," he said, "could you tell me if there are likely to
be any more of you coming down?  I should like to be on the
spot!"

"Any more?" said James bewildered, "who should there be more?  I
don't know of any more.  Good-bye?"

Looking at the ground he held out his hand, crossed the palm of
it with Bosinney's, and taking his umbrella just above the silk,
walked away along the terrace.

Before he turned the corner he glanced back, and saw Bosinney
following him slowly--'slinking along the wall' as he put it to
himself, 'like a great cat.' He paid no attention when the young
fellow raised his hat.

Outside the drive, and out of sight, he slackened his pace still
more.  Very slowly, more bent than when he came, lean, hungry,
and disheartened, he made his way back to the station.

The Buccaneer, watching him go so sadly home, felt sorry perhaps
for his behaviour to the old man.




CHAPTER V

SOAMES AND BOSINNEY CORRESPOND


James said nothing to his son of this visit to the house; but,
having occasion to go to Timothy's on morning on a matter
connected with a drainage scheme which was being forced by the
sanitary authorities on his, brother, he mentioned it there.

It was not, he said, a bad house.  He could see that a good deal
could be made of it.  The fellow was clever in his way, though
what it was going to cost Soames before it was done with he
didn't know.

Euphemia Forsyte, who happened to be in the room--she had come
round to borrow the Rev. Mr. Scoles' last novel, 'Passion and
Paregoric', which was having such a vogue--chimed in.

"I saw Irene yesterday at the Stores; she and Mr. Bosinney were
having a nice little chat in the Groceries."

It was thus, simply, that she recorded a scene which had really
made a deep and complicated impression on her.  She had been
hurrying to the silk department of the Church and Commercial
Stores--that Institution than which, with its admirable system,
admitting only guaranteed persons on a basis of payment before
delivery, no emporium can be more highly recommended to Forsytes-
-to match a piece of prunella silk for her mother, who was
waiting in the carriage outside.

Passing through the Groceries her eye was unpleasantly attracted
by the back view of a very beautiful, figure.  It was so
charmingly proportioned, so balanced, and so well clothed, that
Euphemia's instinctive propriety was at once alarmed; such
figures, she knew, by intuition rather than experience, were
rarely connected with virtue--certainly never in her mind, for
her own back was somewhat difficult to fit.

Her suspicions were fortunately confirmed.  A young man coming
from the Drugs had snatched off his hat, and was accosting the
lady with the unknown back.

It was then that she saw with whom she had to deal; the lady was
undoubtedly Mrs. Soames, the young man Mr. Bosinney.  Concealing
herself rapidly over the purchase of a box of Tunisian dates, for
she was impatient of awkwardly meeting people with parcels in her
hands, and at the busy time of the morning, she was quite
unintentionally an interested observer of their little interview.

Mrs. Soames, usually somewhat pale, had a delightful colour in
her cheeks; and Mr. Bosinney's manner was strange, though
attractive (she thought him rather a distinguished-looking man,
and Georges name for him, 'The Buccaneer--about which there was
something romantic--quite charming).  He seemed to be pleading.
Indeed, they talked so earnestly--or, rather, he talked so
earnestly, for Mrs. Soames did not say much--that they caused,
inconsiderately, an eddy in the traffic.  One nice old General,
going towards Cigars, was obliged to step quite out of the way,
and chancing to look up and see Mrs. Soames' face, he actually
took off his hat, the old fool!  So like a man!

But it was Mrs. Soames' eyes that worried Euphemia.  She never
once looked at Mr. Bosinney until he moved on, and then she
looked after him.  And, oh, that look!

On that look Euphemia had spent much anxious thought.  It is not
too much to say that it had hurt her with its dark, lingering
softness, for all the world as though the woman wanted to
drag him back, and unsay something she had been saying.

Ah, well, she had had no time to go deeply into the matter just
then, with that prunella silk on her hands; but she was 'very
intriguee--very!  She had just nodded to Mrs. Soames, to show her
that she had seen; and, as she confided, in talking it over
afterwards, to her chum Francie (Roger's daughter), "Didn't she
look caught out just? ...."

James, most averse at the first blush to accepting any news
confirmatory of his own poignant suspicions, took her up at once.

"Oh" he said, "they'd be after wall-papers no doubt."

Euphemia smiled.  "In the Groceries?" she said softly; and,
taking 'Passion and Paregoric' from the table, added: "And so
you'll lend me this, dear Auntie?  Good-bye!" and went away.

James left almost immediately after; he was late as it was.

When he reached the office of Forsyte, Bustard and Forsyte, he
found Soames, sitting in his revolving, chair, drawing up a
defence.  The latter greeted his father with a curt good-morning,
and, taking an envelope from his pocket, said:

"It may interest you to look through this."

James read as follows:


309D, SLOANE STREET,
May 15.

'DEAR FORSYTE,

'The construction of your house being now completed, my duties as
architect have come to an end.  If I am to go on with the
business of decoration, which at your request I undertook, I
should like you to clearly understand that I must have a free
hand.

'You never come down without suggesting something that goes
counter to my scheme.  I have here three letters from you, each
of which recommends an article I should never dream of putting
in.  I had your father here yesterday afternoon, who made further
valuable suggestions.

'Please make up your mind, therefore, whether you want me to
decorate for you, or to retire which on the whole I should prefer
to do.

'But understand that, if I decorate, I decorate alone, without
interference of any sort.

If I do the thing, I will do it thoroughly, but I must have a
free hand.

'Yours truly,

'PHILIP BOSINNEY.'


The exact and immediate cause of this letter cannot, of course,
be told, though it is not improbable that Bosinney may have been
moved by some sudden revolt against his position towards Soames--
that eternal position of Art towards Property--which is so
admirably summed up, on the back of the most indispensable of
modern appliances, in a sentence comparable to the very finest in
Tacitus:


THOS.  T.  SORROW, Inventor.
BERT M.  PADLAND, Proprietor.


"What are you going to say to him?" James asked.

Soames did not even turn his head.  "I haven't made up my mind,"
he said, and went on with his defence.

A client of his, having put some buildings on a piece of ground
that did not belong to him, had been suddenly and most irritat-
ingly warned to take them off again.  After carefully going into
the facts, however, Soames had seen his way to advise that his
client had what was known as a title by possession, and that,
though undoubtedly the ground did not belong to him, he was
entitled to keep it, and had better do so; and he was now
following up this advice by taking steps to--as the sailors say--
'make it so.'

He had a distinct reputation for sound advice; people saying of
him: "Go to young Forsyte--a long-headed fellow!" and he prized
this reputation highly.

His natural taciturnity was in his favour; nothing could be more
calculated to give people, especially people with property
(Soames had no other clients), the impression that he was a safe
man.  And he was safe.  Tradition, habit, education, inherited
aptitude, native caution, all joined to form a solid professional
honesty, superior to temptation--from the very fact that it was
built on an innate avoidance of risk.  How could he fall, when
his soul abhorred circumstances which render a fall possible--a
man cannot fall off the floor!

And those countless Forsytes, who, in the course of innumerable
transactions concerned with property of all sorts (from wives to
water  rights), had occasion for the services of a safe man,
found it both reposeful and profitable to confide in Soames.
That slight superciliousness of his, combined with an air of
mousing amongst precedents, was in his favour too--a man would
not be supercilious unless he knew!

He was really at the head of the business, for though James still
came nearly every day to, see for himself, he did little now but
sit in his chair, twist his legs, slightly confuse things already
decided, and presently go away again, and the other partner,
Bustard, was a poor thing, who did a great deal of work, but
whose opinion was never taken.

So Soames went steadily on with his defence.  Yet it would be
idle to say that his mind was at ease.  He was suffering from a
sense of impending  trouble, that had haunted him for some time
past.  He tried to think it physical--a condition of his liver--
but knew that it was not.

He looked at his watch.  In a quarter of an hour he was due at
the General Meeting of the New Colliery Company--one of Uncle
Jolyon's concerns; he should see Uncle Jolyon there, and say
something to him about Bosinney--he had not made up his mind
what, but something--in any case he should not answer this letter
until he had seen Uncle Jolyon.  He got up and methodically put
away the draft of his defence.  Going into a dark little
cupboard, he turned up the light, washed his hands with a piece
of brown Windsor soap, and dried them on a roller towel.  Then he
brushed his hair, paying strict attention to the parting, turned
down the light, took his hat, and saying he would be back at
half-past two, stepped into the Poultry.

It was not far to the Offices of the New Colliery Company in
Ironmonger Lane, where, and not at the Cannon Street Hotel, in
accordance with the more ambitious practice of other companies,
the General Meeting was always held.  Old Jolyon had from the
first set his face against the Press.  What business--he said--
had the Public with his concerns!

Soames arrived on the stroke of time, and took his seat alongside
the Board, who, in a row, each Director behind his own ink-pot,
faced their Shareholders.

In the centre of this row old Jolyon, conspicuous in his black,
tightly-buttoned frock-coat and his white moustaches, was leaning
back with finger tips crossed on a copy of the Directors' report
and accounts.

On his right hand, always a little larger than life, sat the
Secretary, 'Down-by-the-starn' Hemmings; an all-too-sad sadness
beaming in his fine eyes; his iron-grey beard, in mourning like
the rest of him, giving the feeling of an all-too-black tie
behind it.

The occasion indeed was a melancholy one, only six weeks having
elapsed since that telegram had come from Scorrier, the mining
expert, on a private mission to the Mines, informing them that
Pippin, their Superintendent, had committed suicide in
endeavouring, after his extraordinary two years' silence, to
write a letter to his Board.  That letter was on the table now;
it would be read to the Shareholders, who would of course be put
into possession of all the facts.

Hemmings had often said to Soames, standing with his coat-tails
divided before the fireplace:

"What our Shareholders don't know about our affairs isn't worth
knowing.  You may take that from me, Mr. Soames."

On one occasion, old Jolyon being present, Soames recollected a
little unpleasantness.  His uncle had looked up sharply and said:
"Don't talk nonsense, Hemmings!  You mean that what they do know
isn't worth knowing!" Old Jolyon detested humbug.

Hemmings, angry-eyed, and wearing a smile like that of a trained
poodle, had replied in an outburst of artificial applause: "Come,
now, that's good, sir--that's very good.  Your uncle will have
his joke!"

The next time he had seen Soames: he had taken the opportunity of
saying to him: "The chairman's getting very old!--I can't get him
to understand things; and he's so wilful--but what can you
expect, with a chin like his?"

Soames had nodded.

Everyone knew that Uncle Jolyon's chin was a caution.  He was
looking worried to-day, in spite of his General Meeting look; he
(Soames) should certainly speak to him about Bosinney.

Beyond old Jolyon on the left was little Mr. Booker, and he, too,
wore his General Meeting look, as though searching for some
particularly tender shareholder.  And next him was the deaf
director, with a frown; and beyond the deaf director, again, was
old Mr. Bleedham, very bland, and having an air of conscious
virtue--as well he might, knowing that the brown-paper parcel he
always brought to the Board-room was concealed behind his hat
(one of that old-fashioned class, of flat-brimmed top-hats which
go with very large bow ties, clean-shaven lips, fresh cheeks, and
neat little, white whiskers).

Soames always attended the General Meeting; it was considered
better that he should do so, in case 'anything should arise!' He
glanced round with his close, supercilious air at the walls of
the room, where hung plans of the mine and harbour, together with
a large photograph of a shaft leading to a working which had
proved quite remarkably unprofitable.  This photograph--a witness
to the eternal irony underlying commercial enterprise till
retained its position on the--wall, an effigy of the directors'
pet, but dead, lamb.

And now old Jolyon rose, to present the report and accounts.

Veiling under a Jove-like serenity that perpetual antagonism
deep-seated in the bosom of a director towards his shareholders,
he faced them calmly.  Soames faced them too.  He knew most of
them by sight.  There was old Scrubsole, a tar man, who always
came, as Hemmings would say, 'to make himself nasty,' a
cantankerous-looking old fellow with a red face, a jowl, and an
enormous low-crowned hat reposing on his knee.  And the Rev. Mr.
Boms, who always proposed a vote of thanks to the chairman, in
which he invariably expressed the hope that the Board would not
forget to elevate their employees, using the word with a double
e, as being more vigorous and Anglo-Saxon (he had the strong
Imperialistic tendencies of his cloth).  It was his salutary
custom to buttonhole a director afterwards, and ask him whether
he thought the coming year would be good or bad; and, according
to the trend of the answer, to buy or sell three shares within
the ensuing fortnight.

And there was that military man, Major O'Bally, who could not
help speaking, if only to second the re-election of the auditor,
and who sometimes caused serious consternation by taking toasts--
proposals rather--out of the hands of persons who had been
flattered with little slips of paper, entrusting the said
proposals to their care.

These made up the lot, together with four or five strong, silent
shareholders, with whom Soames could sympathize--men of business,
who liked to keep an eye on their affairs for themselves, without
being fussy--good, solid men, who came to the City every day and
went back in the evening to good, solid wives.

Good, solid wives!  There was something in that thought which
roused the nameless uneasiness in Soames again.

What should he say to his uncle?  What answer should he make to
this letter?

.  .  .  .  "If any shareholder has any question to put, I shall
be glad to answer it." A soft thump.  Old Jolyon had let the
report and accounts fall, and stood twisting his tortoise-shell
glasses between thumb and forefinger.

The ghost of a smile appeared on Soames' face.  They had better
hurry up with their questions!  He well knew his uncle's method
(the ideal one) of at once saying: "I propose, then, that the
report and accounts be adopted!"  Never let them get their wind--
shareholders were notoriously wasteful of time!

A tall, white-bearded man, with a gaunt, dissatisfied face,
arose:

"I believe I am in order, Mr. Chairman, in raising a question on
this figure of  L5000 in the accounts.  'To the widow and
family"' (he looked sourly round), "'of our late superintendent,'
who so--er--ill-advisedly (I say--ill-advisedly) committed
suicide, at a time when his services were of the utmost value to
this Company.  You have stated that the agreement which he has so
unfortunately cut short with his own hand was for a period of
five years, of which one only had expired--I--"

Old Jolyon made a gesture of impatience.

"I believe I am in order, Mr. Chairman--I ask whether this amount
paid, or proposed to be paid, by the Board to the er--deceased--
is for services which might have been rendered to the Company--
had he not committed suicide?"

"It is in recognition of past services, which we all know--you as
well as any of us--to have been of vital value."

"Then, sir, all I have to say is, that the services being past,
the amount is too much."

The shareholder sat down.

Old Jolyon waited a second and said: "I now propose that the
report and--"

The shareholder rose again: "May I ask if the Board realizes
that it is not their money which--I don't hesitate to say that if
it were their money...."

A second shareholder, with a round, dogged face, whom Soames
recognised as the late superintendent's brother-in-law, got up
and said warmly: "In my opinion, sir, the sum is not enough!"

The Rev. Mr. Boms now rose to his feet.  "If I may venture to
express myself," he said, "I should say that the fact of the--er-
-deceased having committed suicide should weigh very heavily--
very heavily with our worthy chairman.  I have no doubt it has
weighed with him, for--I say this for myself and I think for
everyone present (hear, hear)--he enjoys our confidence in a high
degree.  We all desire, I should hope, to be charitable.  But I
feel sure" (he-looked severely at the late superintendent's
brother-in-law) "that he will in some way, by some written
expression, or better perhaps by reducing the amount, record our
grave disapproval that so promising and valuable a life should
have been thus impiously removed from a sphere where both its own
interests and--if I may say so--our interests so imperatively
demanded its continuance.  We should not--nay, we may not--
countenance so grave a dereliction of all duty, both human and
divine."

The reverend gentleman resumed his seat.  The late super-
intendent's brother-in-law again rose: "What I have said I
stick to," he said; "the amount is not enough!"

The first shareholder struck in: "I challenge the legality of the
payment.  In my opinion this payment is not legal.  The Company's
solicitor is present; I believe I am in order in asking him the
question."

All eyes were now turned upon Soames.  Something had arisen!

He stood up, close-lipped and cold; his nerves inwardly
fluttered, his attention tweaked away at last from contemplation
of that cloud looming on the horizon of his mind.

"The point," he said in a low, thin voice, "is by no means clear.
As there is no possibility of future consideration being
received, it is doubtful whether the payment is strictly legal.
If it is desired, the opinion of the court could be taken."

The superintendent's brother-in-law frowned, and said in a
meaning tone: "We have no doubt the opinion of the court could be
taken.  May I ask the name of the gentleman who has given us that
striking piece of information?  Mr. Soames Forsyte?  Indeed!"  He
looked from Soames to old Jolyon in a pointed manner.

A flush coloured Soames' pale cheeks, but his superciliousness
did not waver.  Old Jolyon fixed his eyes on the speaker.

"If," he said, "the late superintendents brother-in-law has
nothing more to say, I propose that the report and accounts...."

At this moment, however, there rose one of those five silent,
stolid shareholders, who had excited Soames' sympathy.  He said:

"I deprecate the proposal altogether.  We are expected to give
charity to this man's wife and children, who, you tell us, were
dependent on him.  They may have been; I do not care whether they
were or not.  I object to the whole thing on principle.  It is
high time a stand was made against this sentimental human-
itarianism.  The country is eaten up with it.  I object to
my money being paid to these people of whom I know nothing, who
have done nothing to earn it.  I object in toto; it is not
business.  I now move that the report and accounts be put back,
and amended by striking out the grant altogether."

Old Jolyon had remained standing while the strong, silent man was
speaking.  The speech awoke an echo in all hearts, voicing, as it
did, the worship of strong men, the movement against generosity,
which had at that time already commenced among the saner members
of the community.

The words 'it is not business' had moved even the Board;
privately everyone felt that indeed it was not.  But they knew
also the chairman's domineering temper and tenacity.  He, too, at
heart must feel that it was not business; but he was committed to
his own proposition.  Would he go back upon it?  It was thought
to be unlikely.

All waited with interest.  Old Jolyon held up his hand;
dark-rimmed glasses depending between his finger and thumb
quivered slightly with a suggestion of menace.

He addressed the strong, silent shareholder.

"Knowing, as you do, the efforts of our late superintendent upon
the occasion of the explosion at the mines, do you seriously wish
me to put that amendment, sir?"

"I do."

Old Jolyon put the amendment.

"Does anyone second this?" he asked, looking calmly round.

And it was then that Soames, looking at his uncle, felt the power
of will that was in that old man.  No one stirred.  Looking
straight into the eyes of the strong, silent shareholder, old
Jolyon said:

"I now move, 'That the report and accounts for the year 1886 be
received and adopted.' You second that?  Those in favour signify
the same in the usual way.  Contrary--no.  Carried.  The next
business, gentlemen...."

Soames smiled.  Certainly Uncle Jolyon had a way with him!

But now his attention relapsed upon Bosinney.

Odd how that fellow haunted his thoughts, even in business hours.

Irene's visit to the house--but there was nothing in that, except
that she might have told him; but then, again, she never did tell
him anything.  She was more silent, more touchy, every day.  He
wished to God the house were finished, and they were in it, away
from London.  Town did not suit her; her nerves were not strong
enough.  That nonsense of the separate room had cropped up again!

The meeting was breaking up now.  Underneath the photograph of
the lost shaft Hemmings was buttonholed by the Rev. Mr. Boms.
Little Mr. Booker, his bristling eyebrows wreathed in angry
smiles, was having a parting turn-up with old Scrubsole.  The two
hated each other like poison.  There was some matter of a
tar-contract between them, little Mr. Booker having secured it
from the Board for a nephew of his, over old Scrubsole's head.
Soames had heard that from Hemmings, who liked a gossip, more
especially about his directors, except, indeed, old Jolyon, of
whom he was afraid.

Soames awaited his opportunity.  The last shareholder was
vanishing through the door, when he approached his uncle, who was
putting on his hat.

"Can I speak to you for a minute, Uncle Jolyon?"

It is uncertain what Soames expected to get out of this
interview.

Apart from that somewhat mysterious awe in which Forsytes: in
general held old Jolyon, due to his philosophic twist, or
perhaps--as Hemmings would doubtless have said--to his chin,
there was, and always had been, a subtle antagonism between the
younger man and the old.  It had lurked under their dry manner of
greeting, under their non-committal allusions to each other, and
arose perhaps from old Jolyon's perception of the quiet tenacity
('obstinacy,' he rather naturally called it) of the young man, of
a secret doubt whether he could get his own way with him.

Both these Forsytes, wide asunder as the poles in many respects,
possessed in their different ways--to a greater degree than the
rest of the family--that essential quality of tenacious and
prudent insight into 'affairs,' which is the highwater mark of
their great class.  Either of them, with a little luck and
opportunity, was equal to a lofty career; either of them would
have made a good financier, a great contractor, a statesman,
though old Jolyon, in certain of his moods when under the
influence of a cigar or of Nature--would have been capable of,
not perhaps despising, but certainly of questioning, his own high
position, while Soames, who never smoked cigars, would not.

Then, too, in old Jolyon's mind there was always the secret ache,
that the son of James--of James, whom he had always thought such
a poor thing, should be pursuing the paths of success, while his
own son...!

And last, not least--for he was no more outside the radiation of
family gossip than any other Forsyte he had now heard the
sinister, indefinite, but none the less disturbing rumour about
Bosinney, and his pride was wounded to the quick.

Characteristically, his irritation turned not against Irene but
against Soames.  The idea that his nephew's wife (why couldn't
the fellow take better care of her--Oh!  quaint injustice!  as
though Soames could possibly take more care!)--should be drawing
to herself June's lover, was intolerably humiliating.  And seeing
the danger, he did not, like James, hide it away in sheer
nervousness, but owned with the dispassion of his broader
outlook, that it was not unlikely; there was something very
attractive about Irene!

He had a presentiment on the subject, of Soames' communication as
they left the Board Room together, and went out into the noise
and hurry of Cheapside.  They walked together a good minute
without speaking, Soames with his mousing, mincing step, and old
Jolyon upright and using his umbrella languidly as a
walking-stick.

They turned presently into comparative quiet, for old Jolyon's
way to a second Board led him in the direction of Moorage Street.

Then Soames, without lifting his eyes, began: "I've had this
letter from Bosinney.  You see what he says; I thought I'd let
you know.  I've spent a lot more than I intended on this house,
and I want the position to be clear."

Old Jolyon ran his eyes unwillingly over the letter: "What he
says is clear enough," he said.

"He talks about 'a free hand,"' replied Soames.

Old Jolyon looked at him.  The long-suppressed irritation and
antagonism towards this young fellow, whose affairs were
beginning to intrude upon his own, burst from him.

"Well, if you don't trust him, why do you employ him?"

Soames stole a sideway look: "It's much too late to go into
that," he said, "I only want it to be quite understood that if I
give him a free hand, he doesn't let me in.  I thought if you
were to speak to him, it would carry more weight!"

"No," said old Jolyon abruptly; "I'll have nothing to do with
it!"

The words of both uncle and nephew gave the impression of
unspoken meanings, far more important, behind.  And the look they
interchanged was like a revelation of this consciousness.

"Well," said Soames; "I thought, for June's sake, I'd tell you,
that's all; I thought You'd better know I shan't stand any
nonsense!"

"What is that to me?" old Jolyon took him up.

"Oh! I don't know," said Soames, and flurried by that sharp look
he was unable to say more.  "Don't say I didn't tell you," he
added sulkily, recovering his composure.

"Tell me!" said old Jolyon; "I don't know what you mean.  You
come worrying me about a thing like this.  I don't want to hear
about your affairs; you must manage them yourself!"

"Very well," said Soames immovably, "I will!"

"Good-morning, then," said old Jolyon, and they parted.

Soames retraced his steps, and going into a celebrated eating-
house, asked for a plate of smoked salmon and a glass of
Chablis; he seldom ate much in the middle of the day, and
generally ate standing, finding the position beneficial to his
liver, which was very sound, but to which he desired to put down
all his troubles.

When he had finished he went slowly back to his office, with bent
head, taking no notice of the swarming thousands on the
pavements, who in their turn took no notice of him.

The evening post carried the following reply to Bosinney:


'FORSYTE, BUSTARD AND FORSYTE,
'Commissioners for Oaths,
'92001, BRANCH LANE, POULTRY, E.C.,

'May 17, 1887.

'DEAR BOSINNEY,

'I have, received your letter, the terms of which not a little
surprise me.  I was under the impression that you had, and have
had all along, a "free hand"; for I do not recollect that any
suggestions I have been so unfortunate as to make, have met with
your approval.  In giving you, in accordance with your request,
this "free hand," I wish you to clearly understand that the total
cost of the house as handed over to me completely decorated,
inclusive of your fee (as arranged between us), must not exceed
twelve thousand pounds--L12,000.  This gives you an ample margin,
and, as you know, is far more than I originally contemplated.

'I am,
'Yours truly,

 'SOAMES FORSYTE.'


On the following day he received a note from Bosinney:


'PHILIP BAYNES BOSINNEY,
'Architect,
'309D, SLOANE STREET, S.W.,
'May 18.

'DEAR FORSYTE,

'If you think that in such a delicate matter as decoration I can
bind myself to the exact pound, I am afraid you are mistaken.  I
can see that you are tired of the arrangement, and of me, and I
had better, therefore, resign.

'Yours faithfully,

'PHILIP BAYNES BOSINNEY.'


Soames pondered long and painfully over his answer, and late at
night in the dining-room, when Irene had gone to bed, he composed
the following:


'62, MONTPELLIER SQUARE, S.W.,
'May 19, 1887.

'DEAR BOSINNEY,

'I think that in both our interests it would be extremely
undesirable that matters should be so left at this stage.  I did
not mean to say that if you should exceed the sum named in my
letter to you by ten or twenty or even fifty pounds, there would
be any difficulty between us.  This being so, I should like you
to reconsider your answer.  You have a "free hand" in the terms
of this correspondence, and I hope you will see your way to
completing the decorations, in the matter of which I know it is
difficult to be absolutely exact.

'Yours truly,

'SOAMES FORSYTE.'


Bosinney's answer, which came in the course of the next day, was:


'May 20.

'DEAR FORSYTE,

'Very well.

'PH.  BOSINNEY.'




CHAPTER VI

OLD JOLYON AT THE ZOO


Old Jolyon disposed of his second Meeting--an ordinary Board--
summarily.  He was so dictatorial that his fellow directors were
left in cabal over the increasing domineeringness of old Forsyte,
which they were far from intending to stand much longer, they
said.

He went out by Undergound to Portland Road Station, whence he
took a cab and drove to the Zoo.

He had an assignation there, one of those assignations that had
lately been growing more frequent, to which his increasing
uneasiness about June and the 'change in her,' as he expressed
it, was driving him.

She buried herself away, and was growing thin; if he spoke to her
he got no answer, or had his head snapped off, or she looked as
if she would burst into tears.  She was as changed as she could
be, all through this Bosinney.  As for telling him about
anything, not a bit of it!

And he would sit for long spells brooding, his paper unread
before him, a cigar extinct between his lips.  She had been such
a companion to him ever since she was three years old!  And he
loved her so!

Forces regardless of family or class or custom were beating down
his guard; impending events over which he had no control threw
their shadows on his head.  The irritation of one accustomed to
have his way was, roused against he knew not what.

Chafing at the slowness of his cab, he reached the Zoo door; but,
with his sunny instinct for seizing the good of each moment, he
forgot his vexation as he walked towards the tryst.

From the stone terrace above the bear-pit his son and his two
grandchildren came hastening down when they saw old Jolyon
coming, and led him away towards the lion-house.  They supported
him on either side, holding one to each of his hands,--whilst
Jolly, perverse like his father, carried his grandfather's
umbrella in such a way as to catch people's legs with the crutch
of the handle.

Young Jolyon followed.

It was as good as a play to see his father with the children, but
such a play as brings smiles with tears behind.  An old man and
two small children walking together can be seen at any hour of
the day; but the sight of old Jolyon, with Jolly and Holly seemed
to young Jolyon a special peep-show of the things that lie at the
bottom of our hearts.  The complete surrender of that erect old
figure to those little figures on either hand was too poignantly
tender, and, being a man of an habitual reflex action, young
Jolyon swore softly under his breath.  The show affected him in a
way unbecoming to a Forsyte, who is nothing if not undemonstrative.

Thus they reached the lion-house.

There had been a morning fete at the Botanical Gardens, and a
large number of Forsy...'--that is, of well-dressed people who
kept carriages had brought them on to the Zoo, so as to have
more, if possible, for their money, before going back to Rutland
Gate or Bryanston Square.

"Let's go on to the Zoo," they had said to each other; "it'll be
great fun!"  It was a shilling day; and there would not be all
those horrid common people.

In front of the long line of cages they were collected in rows,
watching the tawny, ravenous beasts behind the bars await their
only pleasure of the four-and-twenty hours.  The hungrier the
beast, the greater the fascination.  But whether because the
spectators envied his appetite, or, more humanely, because it
was so soon to be satisfied, young Jolyon could not tell.
Remarks kept falling on his ears: "That's a nasty-looking brute,
that tiger!"  "Oh, what a love!  Look at his little mouth!"
"Yes, he's rather nice!  Don't go too near, mother."

And frequently, with little pats, one or another would clap their
hands to their pockets behind and look round, as though expecting
young Jolyon or some disinterested-looking person to relieve them
of the contents.

A well-fed man in a white waistcoat said slowly through his
teeth: "It's all greed; they can't be hungry.  Why, they take no
exercise."  At these words a tiger snatched a piece of bleeding
liver, and the fat man laughed.  His wife, in a Paris model frock
and gold nose-nippers, reproved him: "How can you laugh, Harry?
Such a horrid sight!"

Young Jolyon frowned.

The circumstances of his life, though he had ceased to take a too
personal view of them, had left him subject to an intermittent
contempt; and the class to which he had belonged--the carriage
class--especially excited his sarcasm.

To shut up a lion or tiger in confinement was surely a horrible
barbarity.  But no cultivated person would admit this.

The idea of its being barbarous to confine wild animals had
probably never even occurred to his father for instance; he
belonged to the old school, who considered it at once humanizing
and educational to confine baboons and panthers, holding the
view, no doubt, that in course of time they might induce these
creatures not so unreasonably to die of misery and heart-
sickness.  against the bars of their cages, and put the society
to the expense of getting others!  In his eyes, as in the eyes
of all Forsytes, the pleasure of seeing these beautiful
creatures in a state of captivity far outweighed the
inconvenience of imprisonment to beasts whom God had so
improvidently placed in a state of freedom!  It was for the
animals good, removing them at once from the countless dangers
of open air and exercise, and enabling them to exercise their
functions in the guaranteed seclusion of a private compartment!
Indeed, it was doubtful what wild animals were made for but to be
shut up in cages!

But as young Jolyon had in his constitution the elements of
impartiality, he reflected that to stigmatize as barbarity that
which was merely lack of imagination must be wrong; for none who
held these views had been placed in a similar position to the
animals they caged, and could not, therefore, be expected to
enter into their sensations.   It was not until they were leaving
the gardens--Jolly and Holly in a state of blissful delirium--
that old Jolyon found an opportunity of speaking to his son on
the matter next his heart.  "I don't know what to make of it," he
said; "if she's to go on as she's going on now, I can't tell
what's  to come.  I wanted her to see the doctor, but she  won't.
She's not a bit like me.  She's your mother  all over.  Obstinate
as a mule!  If she doesn't want  to do a thing, she won't, and
there's an end of it!"

Young Jolyon smiled; his eyes had wandered  to his father's chin.
'A pair of you,' he thought,  but he said nothing.

"And then," went on old Jolyon, "there's this  Bosinney.  I
should like to punch the fellow's head, but I can't, I suppose,
though--I don't see  why you shouldn't," he added doubtfully.

"What has he done?  Far better that it should come to an end, if
they don't hit it off!"

Old Jolyon looked at his son.  Now they had actually come to
discuss a subject connected with the relations between the sexes
he felt distrustful.  Jo would be sure to hold some loose view or
other.

"Well, I don't know what you think," he said; "I dare say your
sympathy's with him--shouldn't be surprised; but I think he's
behaving precious badly, and if he comes my way I shall tell him
so."  He dropped the subject.

It was impossible to discuss with his son the true nature and
meaning of Bosinney's defection.  Had not his son done the very
same thing (worse, if possible) fifteen years ago?  There seemed
no end to the consequences of that piece of folly.

Young Jolyon also was silent; he had quickly penetrated his
father's thought, for, dethroned from the high seat of an obvious
and uncomplicated view of things, he had become both perceptive
and subtle.

The attitude he had adopted towards sexual matters fifteen years
before, however, was too different from his father's.  There was
no bridging the gulf.

He said coolly: "I suppose he's fallen in love with some other
woman?"

Old Jolyon gave him a dubious look: "I can't tell," he said;
"they say so!"

"Then, it's probably true," remarked young Jolyon unexpectedly;
"and I suppose they've told you who she is?"

"Yes," said old Jolyon, "Soames's wife!"

Young Jolyon did not whistle: The circumstances of his own life
had rendered him incapable of whistling on such a subject, but he
looked at his father, while the ghost of a smile hovered over his
face.

If old Jolyon saw, he took no notice.

"She and June were bosom friends!" he muttered.

"Poor little June!" said young Jolyon softly.  He thought of his
daughter still as a babe of three.

Old Jolyon came to a sudden halt.

"I don't believe a word of it," he said, "it's some old woman's
tale.  Get me a cab, Jo, I'm tired to death!"

They stood at a corner to see if an empty cab would come along,
while carriage after carriage drove past, bearing Forsytes of all
descriptions from the Zoo.  The harness, the liveries, the gloss
on the horses' coats, shone and glittered in the May sunlight,
and each equipage, landau, sociable, barouche, Victoria, or
brougham, seemed to roll out proudly from its wheels:


'I and my horses and my men you know,'
Indeed the whole turn-out have cost a pot.
But we were worth it every penny.  Look
At Master and at Missis now, the dawgs!
Ease with security--ah!  that's the ticket!


And such, as everyone knows, is fit accompaniment for a
perambulating Forsyte.

Amongst these carriages was a barouche coming at a greater pace
than the others, drawn by a pair of bright bay horses.  It swung
on its high springs, and the four people who filled it seemed
rocked as in a cradle.

This chariot attracted young Jolyon's attention; and suddenly, on
the back seat, he recognised his Uncle James, unmistakable in
spite of the increased whiteness of his whiskers; opposite, their
backs defended by sunshades, Rachel Forsyte and her elder but
married sister, Winifred Dartie, in irreproachable toilettes, had
posed their heads haughtily, like two of the birds they had been
seeing at the Zoo; while by James' side reclined Dartie, in a
brand-new frock-coat buttoned tight and square, with a large
expanse of carefully shot linen protruding below each wristband.

An extra, if subdued, sparkle, an added touch of the best gloss
or varnish characterized this vehicle, and seemed to distinguish
it from all the others, as though by some happy extravagance--
like that which marks out the real 'work of art' from the
ordinary 'picture'--it were designated as the typical car, the
very throne of Forsytedom.

Old Jolyon did not see them pass; he was petting poor Holly who
was tired, but those in the carriage had taken in the little
group; the ladies' heads tilted suddenly, there was a spasmodic
screening movement of parasols; James' face protruded naively,
like the head of a long bird, his mouth slowly opening.  The
shield-like rounds of the parasols grew smaller and smaller, and
vanished.

Young Jolyon saw that he had been recognised, even by Winifred,
who could not have been more than fifteen when he had forfeited
the right to be considered a Forsyte.

There was not much change in them!  He remembered the exact look
of their turn-out all that time ago: Horses, men, carriage--all
different now, no doubt--but of the precise stamp of fifteen
years before; the same neat display, the same nicely calculated
arrogance ease with security!  The swing exact, the pose of the
sunshades exact, exact the spirit of the whole thing.

And in the sunlight, defended by the haughty shields of parasols,
carriage after carriage went by.

"Uncle James has just passed, with his female folk," said young
Jolyon.

His father looked black.  "Did your uncle see us?  Yes?  Hmph!
What's he want, coming down into these parts?"

An empty cab drove up at this moment, and old Jolyon stopped it.

"I shall see you again before long, my boy!" he said.  "Don't you
go paying any attention to what I've been saying about young
Bosinney--I don't believe a word of it!"

Kissing the children, who tried to detain him, he stepped in and
was borne away.

Young Jolyon, who had taken Holly up in his arms, stood
motionless at the corner, looking after the cab.




CHAPTER VII

AFTERNOON AT TIMOTHY'S


If old Jolyon, as he got into his cab, had said: 'I won't believe
a word of it!' he would more truthfully have expressed his
sentiments.

The notion that James and his womankind had seen him in the
company of his son had awakened in him not only the impatience he
always felt when crossed, but that secret hostility natural
between brothers, the roots of which--little nursery rivalries--
sometimes toughen and deepen as life goes on, and, all hidden,
support a plant capable of producing in season the bitterest
fruits.

Hitherto there had been between these six brothers no more
unfriendly feeling than that caused by the secret and natural
doubt that the others might be richer than themselves; a feeling
increased to the pitch of curiosity by the approach of death--
that end of all handicaps--and the great 'closeness' of their man
of business, who, with some sagacity, would profess to Nicholas
ignorance of James' income, to James ignorance of old Jolyon's,
to Jolyon ignorance of Roger's, to Roger ignorance of Swithin's,
while to Swithin he would say most irritatingly that Nicholas
must be a rich man.  Timothy alone was exempt, being in
gilt-edged securities.

But now, between two of them at least, had arisen a very
different sense of injury.  From the moment when James had the
impertinence to pry into his affairs--as he put it--old Jolyon no
longer chose to credit this story about Bosinney.  His grand-
daughter slighted through a member of 'that fellow's' family!
He made up his mind that Bosinney was maligned.  There must be
some other reason for his defection.

June had flown out at him, or something; she was as touchy as she
could be!

He would, however, let Timothy have a bit of his mind, and see if
he would go on dropping hints!  And he would not let the grass
grow under his feet either, he would go there at once, and take
very good care that he didn't have to go again on the same
errand.

He saw James' carriage blocking the pavement in front of 'The
Bower.' So they had got there before him--cackling about having
seen him, he dared say!  And further on, Swithin's greys were
turning their noses towards the noses of James' bays, as though
in conclave over the family, while their coachmen were in
conclave above.

Old Jolyon, depositing his hat on the chair in the narrow hall,
where that hat of Bosinney's had so long ago been mistaken for a
cat, passed his thin hand grimly over his face with its great
drooping white moustaches, as though to remove all traces of
expression, and made his way upstairs.

He found the front drawing-room full.  It was full enough at the
best of times--without visitors--without any one in it--for
Timothy and his sisters, following the tradition of their
generation, considered that a room was not quite 'nice' unless it
was 'properly' furnished.  It held, therefore, eleven chairs, a
sofa, three tables, two cabinets, innumerable knicknacks, and
part of a large grand piano.  And now, occupied by Mrs. Small,
Aunt Hester, by Swithin, James, Rachel, Winifred, Euphemia, who
had come in again to return 'Passion and Paregoric' which she had
read at lunch, and her chum Frances, Roger's daughter (the
musical Forsyte, the one who composed songs), there was only one
chair left unoccupied, except, of course, the two that nobody
ever sat on--and the only standing room was occupied by the cat,
on whom old Jolyon promptly stepped.

In these days it was by no means unusual for Timothy to have so
many visitors.  The family had always, one and all, had a real
respect for Aunt Ann, and now that she was gone, they were coming
far more frequently to The Bower, and staying longer.

Swithin had been the first to arrive, and seated torpid in a red
satin chair with a gilt back, he gave every appearance of lasting
the others out.  And symbolizing Bosinney's name 'the big one,'
with his great stature and bulk, his thick white hair, his puffy
immovable shaven face, he looked more primeval than ever in the
highly upholstered room.

His conversation, as usual of late, had turned at once upon
Irene, and he had lost no time in giving Aunts Juley and Hester
his opinion with regard to this rumour he heard was going about.
No--as he said--she might want a bit of flirtation--a pretty
woman must have her fling; but more than that he did not believe.
Nothing open; she had too much good sense, too much proper
appreciation of what was due to her position, and to the family!
No sc...,  he was going to say 'scandal' but the very idea was so
preposterous that he waved his hand as though to say--'but let
that pass!'

Granted that Swithin took a bachelor's view of the situation--
still what indeed was not due to that family in which so many had
done so well for themselves, had attained a certain position?  If
he had heard in dark, pessimistic moments the words 'yeomen' and
'very small beer' used in connection with his origin, did he
believe them?

No!  he cherished, hugging it pathetically to his bosom, the
secret theory that there was something distinguished somewhere in
his ancestry.

"Must be," he once said to young Jolyon, before the latter went
to the bad.  "Look at us, we've got on!  There must be good blood
in us somewhere."

He had been fond of young Jolyon: the boy had been in a good set
at College, had, known that old ruffian Sir Charles Fiste's
sons--a pretty rascal one of them had turned out, too; and there
was style about him--it was a thousand pities he had run off with
that half-foreign governess!  If he must go off like that why
couldn't he have chosen someone who would have done them credit!
And what was he now?--an underwriter at Lloyd's; they said he
even painted pictures--pictures!  Damme! he might have ended as
Sir Jolyon Forsyte, Bart., with a seat in Parliament, and a place
in the country!

It was Swithin who, following the impulse which sooner or later
urges thereto some member of every great family, went to the
Heralds' Office, where they assured him that he was undoubtedly
of the same family as the well-known Forsites with an 'i,' whose
arms were 'three dexter buckles on a sable ground gules,' hoping
no doubt to get him to take them up.

Swithin, however, did not do this, but having ascertained that
the crest was a 'pheasant proper,' and the motto 'For Forsite,'
he had the pheasant proper placed upon his carriage and the
buttons of his coachman, and both crest and motto on his
writing-paper.  The arms he hugged to himself, partly because,
not having paid for them, he thought it would look ostentatious
to put them on his carriage, and he hated ostentation, and partly
because he, like any practical man all over the country, had a
secret dislike and contempt for things he could not understand he
found it hard, as anyone might, to swallow 'three dexter buckles
on a sable ground gules.'

He never forgot, however, their having told him that if he paid
for them he would be entitled to use them, and it strengthened
his conviction that he was a gentleman.  Imperceptibly the rest
of the family absorbed the 'pheasant proper,' and some, more
serious than others, adopted the motto; old Jolyon, however,
refused to use the latter, saying that it was humbug meaning
nothing, so far as he could see.

Among the older generation it was perhaps known at bottom from
what great historical event they derived their crest; and if
pressed on the subject, sooner than tell a lie--they did not like
telling lies, having an impression that only Frenchmen and
Russians told them--they would confess hurriedly that Swithin had
got hold of it somehow.

Among the younger generation the matter was wrapped in a
discretion proper.  They did not want to hurt the feelings of
their elders, nor to feel ridiculous themselves; they simply used
the crest....

"No," said Swithin, "he had had an opportunity of seeing for
himself, and what he should say was, that there was nothing in
her manner to that young Buccaneer or Bosinney or whatever his
name was, different from her manner to himself; in fact, he
should rather say...." But here the entrance of Frances
and Euphemia put an unfortunate stop to the conversation, for
this was not a subject which could be discussed before young
people.

And though Swithin was somewhat upset at being stopped like this
on the point of saying something important, he soon recovered his
affability.  He was rather fond of Frances--Francie, as she was
called in the family.  She was so smart, and they told him she
made a pretty little pot of pin-money by her songs; he called it
very clever of her.

He rather prided himself indeed on a liberal attitude towards
women, not seeing any reason why they shouldn't paint pictures,
or write tunes, or books even, for the matter of that, especially
if they could turn a useful penny by it; not at all--kept them
out of mischief.  It was not as if they were men!

'Little Francie,' as she was usually called with good-natured
contempt, was an important personage, if only as a standing
illustration of the attitude of Forsytes towards the Arts.  She
was not really 'little,' but rather tall, with dark hair for a
Forsyte, which, together with a grey eye, gave her what was
called 'a Celtic appearance.' She wrote songs with titles like
'Breathing Sighs,' or 'Kiss me, Mother, ere I die,' with a
refrain like an anthem:


'Kiss me, Mother, ere I die;
Kiss me-kiss me, Mother, ah!
Kiss, ah!  kiss me e-ere I-
Kiss me, Mother, ere I d-d-die!'


She wrote the words to them herself, and other poems.  In lighter
moments she wrote waltzes, one of which, the 'Kensington Coil,'
was almost national to Kensington, having a sweet dip in it.

It was very original.  Then there were her 'Songs for Little
People,' at once educational and witty, especially 'Gran'ma's
Porgie,' and that ditty, almost prophetically imbued with the
coming Imperial spirit, entitled 'Black him in his little eye.'

Any publisher would take these, and reviews like 'High Living,'
and the 'Ladies' Genteel Guide' went into raptures over: 'Another
of Miss Francie Forsyte's spirited ditties, sparkling and
pathetic.  We ourselves were moved to tears and laughter.  Miss
Forsyte should go far.'

With the true instinct of her breed, Francie had made a point of
knowing the right people--people who would write about her, and
talk about her, and people in Society, too--keeping a mental
register of just where to exert her fascinations, and an eye on
that steady scale of rising prices, which in her mind's eye
represented the future.  In this way she caused herself to be
universally respected.

Once, at a time when her emotions were whipped by an attachment--
for the tenor of Roger's life, with its whole-hearted collection
of house property, had induced in his only daughter a tendency
towards passion--she turned to great and sincere work, choosing
the sonata form, for the violin.  This was the only one of her
productions that troubled the Forsytes.  They felt at once that
it would not sell.

Roger, who liked having a clever daughter well enough, and often
alluded to the amount of pocket-money she made for herself, was
upset by this violin sonata.

"Rubbish like that!" he called it.  Francie had borrowed young
Flageoletti from Euphemia, to play it in the drawing-room at
Prince's Gardens.

As a matter of fact Roger was right.  It was rubbish, but--
annoying! the sort of rubbish that wouldn't sell.  As every
Forsyte knows, rubbish that sells is not rubbish at all--far from
it.

And yet, in spite of the sound common sense which fixed the worth
of art at what it would fetch, some of the Forsytes--Aunt
Hester, for instance, who had always been musical--could not help
regretting that Francie's music was not 'classical'; the same
with her poems.  But then, as Aunt Hester said, they didn't see
any poetry nowadays, all the poems were 'little light things.'

There was nobody who could write a poem like 'Paradise Lost,' or
'Childe Harold'; either of which made you feel that you really
had read something.  Still, it was nice for Francie to have
something to occupy her; while other girls were spending money
shopping she was making it!

And both Aunt Hester and Aunt Juley were always ready to listen
to the latest story of how Francie had got her price increased.

They listened now, together with Swithin, who sat pretending not
to, for these young people talked so fast and mumbled so, he
never could catch what they said.

"And I can't think," said Mrs. Septimus, "how you do it.  I
should never have the audacity!"

Francie smiled lightly.  "I'd much rather deal with a man than a
woman.  Women are so sharp!"

"My dear," cried Mrs. Small, "I'm sure we're not."

Euphemia went off into her silent laugh, and, ending with the
squeak, said, as though being strangled: "Oh, you'll kill me some
day, auntie."

Swithin saw no necessity to laugh; he detested people laughing
when he himself perceived no joke.  Indeed, he detested Euphemia
altogether, to whom he always alluded as 'Nick's daughter, what's
she called--the pale one?'  He had just missed being her god-
father--indeed, would have been, had he not taken a firm stand
against her outlandish name.  He hated becoming a godfather.
Swithin then said to Francie with dignity: "It's a fine day--
er--for the time of year." But Euphemia, who knew perfectly well
that he had refused to be her godfather, turned to Aunt Hester,
and began telling her how she had seen Irene--Mrs. Soames--at the
Church and Commercial Stores.

"And Soames was with her?" said Aunt Hester, to whom Mrs. Small
had as yet had no opportunity of relating the incident.

"Soames with her?  Of course not!"

"But was she all alone in London?"

"Oh, no; there was Mr. Bosinney with her.  She was perfectly
dressed."

But Swithin, hearing the name Irene, looked severely at Euphemia,
who, it is true, never did look well in a dress, whatever she may
have done on other occasions, and said:

"Dressed like a lady, I've no doubt.  It's a pleasure to see
her."

At this moment James and his daughters were announced.  Dartie,
feeling badly in want of a drink, had pleaded an appointment with
his dentist, and, being put down at the Marble Arch, had got into
a hansom, and was already seated in the window of his club in
Piccadilly.

His wife, he told his cronies, had wanted to take him to pay some
calls.  It was not in his line--not exactly.  Haw!

Hailing the waiter, he sent him out to the hall to see what had
won the 4.30 race.  He was dog-tired, he said, and that was a
fact; had been drivin' about with his wife to 'shows' all the
afternoon.  Had put his foot down at last.  A fellow must live
his own life.

At this moment, glancing out of the bay window--for he loved this
seat whence he could see everybody pass--his eye unfortunately,
or perhaps fortunately, chanced to light on the figure of Soames,
who was mousing across the road from the Green Park-side, with
the evident intention of coming in, for he, too, belonged to 'The
Iseeum.'

Dartie sprang to his feet; grasping his glass, he muttered
something about 'that 4.30 race,' and swiftly withdrew to the
card-room, where Soames never came.  Here, in complete isolation
and a dim light, he lived his own life till half past seven, by
which hour he knew Soames must certainly have left the club.

It would not do, as he kept repeating to himself whenever he felt
the impulse to join the gossips in the bay-window getting too
strong for him--it absolutely would not do, with finances as low
as his, and the 'old man' (James) rusty ever since that business
over the oil shares, which was no fault of his, to risk a row
with Winifred.

If Soames were to see him in the club it would be sure to come
round to her that he wasn't at the dentist's at all.  He never
knew a family where things 'came round' so.  Uneasily, amongst
the green baize card-tables, a frown on his olive coloured face,
his check trousers crossed, and patent-leather boots shining
through the gloom, he sat biting his forefinger, and wondering
where the deuce he was to get the money if Erotic failed to win
the Lancashire Cup.

His thoughts turned gloomily to the Forsytes.  What a set they
were!  There was no getting anything out of them--at least, it
was a matter of extreme difficulty.  They were so d---d
particular about money matters; not a sportsman amongst the lot,
unless it were George.  That fellow Soames, for instance, would
have a ft if you tried to borrow a tenner from him, or, if he
didn't have a fit, he looked at you with his cursed supercilious
smile, as if you were a lost soul because you were in want of
money.

And that wife of his (Dartie's mouth watered involuntarily), he
had tried to be on good terms with her, as one naturally would
with any pretty sister-in-law, but he would be cursed if the (he
mentally used a coarse word)--would have anything to say to him--
she looked at him, indeed, as if he were dirt--and yet she could
go far enough, he wouldn't mind betting.  He knew women; they
weren't made with soft eyes and figures like that for nothing, as
that fellow Soames would jolly soon find out, if there were
anything in what he had heard about this Buccaneer Johnny.

Rising from his chair, Dartie took a turn across the room, ending
in front of the looking-glass over the marble chimney-piece; and
there he stood for a long time contemplating in the glass the
reflection of his face.  It had that look, peculiar to some men,
of having been steeped in linseed oil, with its waxed dark
moustaches and the little distinguished commencements of side
whiskers; and concernedly he felt the promise of a pimple on the
side of his slightly curved and fattish nose.

In the meantime old Jolyon had found the remaining chair in
Timothy's commodious drawing-room.  His advent had obviously put
a stop to the conversation, decided awkwardness having set in.
Aunt Juley, with her well-known kindheartedness, hastened to set
people at their ease again.

"Yes, Jolyon," she said, "we were just saying that you haven't
been here for a long time; but we mustn't be surprised.  You're
busy, of course?  James was just saying what a busy time of
year...."

"Was he?" said old Jolyon, looking hard at James.  "It wouldn't
be half so busy if everybody minded their own business."

James, brooding in a small chair from which his knees ran uphill,
shifted his feet uneasily, and put one of them down on the cat,
which had unwisely taken refuge from old Jolyon beside him.

"Here, you've got a cat here," he said in an injured voice,
withdrawing his foot nervously as he felt it squeezing into the
soft, furry body.

"Several," said old Jolyon, looking at one face and another; "I
trod on one just now."

A silence followed.

Then Mrs. Small, twisting her fingers and gazing round with
'pathetic calm, asked: "And how is dear June?"

A twinkle of humour shot through the sternness of old Jolyon's
eyes.  Extraordinary old woman, Juley!  No one quite like her for
saying the wrong thing!

"Bad!" he said; "London don't agree with her--too many people
about, too much clatter and chatter by half."  He laid emphasis on
the words, and again looked James in the face.

Nobody spoke.

A feeling of its being too dangerous to take a step in any
direction, or hazard any remark, had fallen on them all.
Something of the sense of the impending, that comes over the
spectator of a Greek tragedy, had entered that upholstered room,
filled with those white-haired, frockcoated old men, and
fashionably attired women, who were all of the same blood,
between all of whom existed an unseizable resemblance.

Not that they were conscious of it--the visits of such fateful,
bitter spirits are only felt.

Then Swithin rose.  He would not sit there, feeling like that--he
was not to be put down by anyone!  And, manoeuvring round the
room with added pomp, he shook hands with each separately.

"You tell Timothy from me," he said, "that he coddles himself too
much!"  Then, turning to Francie, whom he considered 'smart,' he
added: "You come with me for a drive one of these days."  But this
conjured up the vision of that other eventful drive which had
been so much talked about, and he stood quite still for a second,
with glassy eyes, as though waiting to catch up with the
significance of what he himself had said; then, suddenly
recollecting that he didn't care a damn, he turned to old Jolyon:
"Well, good-bye, Jolyon!  You shouldn't go about without an
overcoat; you'll be getting sciatica or something!"  And, kicking
the cat slightly with the pointed tip of his patent leather boot,
he took his huge form away.

When he had gone everyone looked secretly at the others, to see
how they had taken the mention of the word 'drive'--the word
which had become famous, and acquired an overwhelming importance,
as the only official--so to speak--news in connection with the
vague and sinister rumour clinging to the family tongue.

Euphemia, yielding to an impulse, said with a short laugh: "I'm
glad Uncle Swithin doesn't ask me to go for drives."

Mrs. Small, to reassure her and smooth over any little
awkwardness the subject might have, replied: "My dear, he likes
to take somebody well dressed, who will do him a little credit.
I shall never forget the drive he took me.  It was an
experience!"  And her chubby round old face was spread for a
moment with a strange contentment; then broke into pouts, and
tears came into her eyes.  She was thinking of that long ago
driving tour she had once taken with Septimus Small.

James, who had relapsed into his nervous brooding in the little
chair, suddenly roused himself: "He's a funny fellow, Swithin,"
he said, but in a half-hearted way.

Old Jolyon's silence, his stern eyes, held them all in a kind of
paralysis.  He was disconcerted himself by the effect of his own
words--an effect which seemed to deepen the importance of the
very rumour he had come to scotch; but he was still angry.

He had not done with them yet--No, no--he would give them another
rub or two

He did not wish to rub his nieces, he had no quarrel with them--a
young and presentable female always appealed to old Jolyon's
clemency--but that fellow James, and, in a less degree perhaps,
those others, deserved all they would get.  And he, too, asked
for Timothy.

As though feeling that some danger threatened her younger
brother, Aunt Juley suddenly offered him tea: "There it is," she
said, "all cold and nasty, waiting for you in the back drawing
room, but Smither shall make you some fresh."

Old Jolyon rose: "Thank you," he said, looking straight at James,
"but I've no time for tea, and--scandal, and the rest of it!
It's time I was at home.  Good-bye, Julia; good-bye, Hester;
good-bye, Winifred."

Without more ceremonious adieux, he marched out.

Once again in his cab, his anger evaporated, for so it ever was
with his wrath--when he had rapped out, it was gone.  Sadness
came over his spirit.  He had stopped their mouths, maybe, but at
what a cost!  At the cost of certain knowledge that the rumour he
had been resolved not to believe was true.  June was abandoned,
and for the wife of that fellow's son!  He felt it was true, and
hardened himself to treat it as if it were not; but the pain he
hid beneath this resolution began slowly, surely, to vent itself
in a blind resentment against James and his son.

The six women and one man left behind in the little drawing-room
began talking as easily as might be after such an occurrence, for
though each one of them knew for a fact that he or she never
talked scandal, each one of them also knew that the other six
did; all were therefore angry and at a loss.  James only was
silent, disturbed, to the bottom of his soul.

Presently Francie said: "Do you know, I think Uncle Jolyon is
terribly changed this last year.  What do you think, Aunt
Hester?"

Aunt Hester made a little movement of recoil: "Oh, ask your Aunt
Julia!" she said; "I know nothing about it."

No one else was afraid of assenting, and James muttered gloomily
at the floor: "He's not half the man he was."

"I've noticed it a long time," went on Francie; "he's aged
tremendously."

Aunt Juley shook her head; her face seemed suddenly to have
become one immense pout.

"Poor dear Jolyon," she said, "somebody ought to see to it for
him!"

There was again silence; then, as though in terror of being left
solitarily behind, all five visitors rose simultaneously, and
took their departure.

Mrs. Small, Aunt Hester, and their cat were left once more alone,
the sound of a door closing in the distance announced the
approach of Timothy.

That evening, when Aunt Hester had just got off to sleep in the
back bedroom that used to be Aunt Juley's before Aunt Juley took
Aunt Ann's, her door was opened, and Mrs. Small, in a pink
night-cap, a candle in her hand, entered: "Hester!" she said.
"Hester!"

Aunt Hester faintly rustled the sheet.

"Hester," repeated Aunt Juley, to make quite sure that she had
awakened her, "I am quite troubled about poor dear Jolyon.
What," Aunt Juley dwelt on the word, "do you think ought to be
done?"

Aunt Hester again rustled the sheet, her voice was heard faintly
pleading: "Done?  How should I know?"

Aunt Juley turned away satisfied, and closing the door with extra
gentleness so as not to disturb dear Hester, let it slip through
her fingers and fall to with a 'crack.'

Back in her own room, she stood at the window gazing at the moon
over the trees in the Park, through a chink in the muslin
curtains, close drawn lest anyone should see.  And there, with
her face all round and pouting in its pink cap, and her eyes wet,
she thought of 'dear Jolyon,' so old and so lonely, and how she
could be of some use to him; and how he would come to love her,
as she had never been loved since--since poor Septimus went away.




CHAPTER VIII

DANCE AT ROGER'S


Roger's house in Prince's Gardens was brilliantly alight.  Large
numbers of wax candles had been collected and placed in cut-glass
chandeliers, and the parquet floor of the long, double
drawing-room reflected these constellations.  An appearance of
real spaciousness had been secured by moving out all the
furniture on to the upper landings, and enclosing the room with
those strange appendages of civilization known as 'rout' seats.
In a remote corner, embowered in palms, was a cottage piano, with
a copy of the 'Kensington Coil' open on the music-stand.

Roger had objected to a band.  He didn't see in the least what
they wanted with a band; he wouldn't go to the expense, and there
was an end of it.  Francie (her mother, whom Roger had long since
reduced to chronic dyspepsia, went to bed on such occasions), had
been obliged to content herself with supplementing the piano by a
young man who played the cornet, and she so arranged with palms
that anyone who did not look into the heart of things might
imagine there were several musicians secreted there.  She made up
her mind to tell them to play loud--there was a lot of music in a
cornet, if the man would only put his soul into it.

In the more cultivated American tongue, she was 'through' at
last--through that tortuous labyrinth of make-shifts, which must
be traversed before fashionable display can be combined with the
sound economy of a Forsyte.  Thin but brilliant, in her
maize-coloured frock with much tulle about the shoulders, she
went from place to place, fitting on her gloves, and casting her
eye over it all.

To the hired butler (for Roger only kept maids) she spoke about
the wine.  Did he quite understand that Mr. Forsyte wished a
dozen bottles of the champagne from Whiteley's to be put out?
But if that were finished (she did not suppose it would be, most
of the ladies would drink water, no doubt), but if it were, there
was the champagne cup, and he must do the best he could with
that.

She hated having to say this sort of thing to a butler, it was so
infra dig.; but what could you do with father?  Roger, indeed,
after making himself consistently disagreeable about the dance,
would come down presently, with his fresh colour and bumpy
forehead, as though he had been its promoter; and he would smile,
and probably take the prettiest woman in to supper; and at two
o'clock, just as they were getting into the swing, he would go up
secretly to the musicians and tell them to play 'God Save the
Queen,' and go away.

Francie devoutly hoped he might soon get tired, and slip off to
bed.

The three or four devoted girl friends who were staying in the
house for this dance, had partaken with her, in a small,
abandoned room upstairs, of tea and cold chicken-legs, hurriedly
served; the men had been sent out to dine at Eustace's Club, it
being felt that they must be fed up.

Punctually on the stroke of nine arrived Mrs. Small alone.  She
made elaborate apologies for the absence of Timothy, omitting all
mention of Aunt Hester, who, at the last minute, had said she
could not be bothered.  Francie received her effusively, and
placed her on a rout seat, where she left her, pouting and
solitary in lavender-coloured satin--the first time she had worn
colour since Aunt Ann's death.

The devoted maiden friends came now from their rooms, each by
magic arrangement in a differently coloured frock, but all with
the same liberal allowance of tulle on the shoulders and at the
bosom--for they were, by some fatality, lean to a girl.  They
were all taken up to Mrs. Small.  None stayed with her more than
a few seconds, but clustering together talked and twisted their
programmes, looking secretly at the door for the first appearance
of a man.

Then arrived in a group a number of Nicholases, always punctual--
the fashion up Ladbroke Grove way; and close behind them Eustace
and his men, gloomy and smelling rather of smoke.

Three or four of Francie's lovers now appeared, one after the
other; she had made each promise to come early.  They were all
clean-shaven and sprightly, with that peculiar kind of young-man
sprightliness which had recently invaded Kensington; they did not
seem to mind each other's presence in the least, and wore their
ties bunching out at the ends, white waistcoats, and socks with
clocks.  All had handkerchiefs concealed in their cuffs.  They
moved buoyantly, each armoured in professional gaiety, as though
he had come to do great deeds.  Their faces when they danced, far
from wearing the traditional solemn look of the dancing, English-
man, were irresponsible, charming, suave; they bounded, twirling
their partners at great pace, without pedantic attentionto the
rhythm of the music.

At other dancers they looked with a kind of airy scorn--they, the
light brigade, the heroes of a hundred Kensington 'hops'--from
whom alone could the right manner and smile and step be hoped.

After this the stream came fast; chaperones silting up along the
wall facing the entrance, the volatile element swelling the eddy
in the larger room.

Men were scarce, and wallflowers wore their peculiar, pathetic
expression, a patient, sourish smile which seemed to say: "Oh,
no! don't mistake me, I know you are not coming up to me.  I can
hardly expect that!"  And Francie would plead with one of her
lovers, or with some callow youth: "Now, to please me, do let me
introduce you to Miss Pink; such a nice girl, really!" and she
would bring him up, and say: "Miss Pink--Mr. Gathercole.  Can you
spare him a dance?"  Then Miss Pink, smiling her forced smile,
colouring a little, answered: "Oh! I think so!" and screening
her empty card, wrote on it the name of Gathercole, spelling it
passionately in the district that he proposed, about the second
extra.

But when the youth had murmured that it was hot, and passed, she
relapsed into her attitude of hopeless expectation, into her
patient, sourish smile.

Mothers, slowly fanning their faces, watched their daughters, and
in their eyes could be read all the story of those daughters'
fortunes.  As for themselves, to sit hour after hour, dead tired,
silent, or talking spasmodically--what did it matter, so long as
the girls were having a good time!  But to see them neglected and
passed by!  Ah! they smiled, but their eyes stabbed like the
eyes of an offended swan; they longed to pluck young, Gathercole
by the slack of his dandified breeches, and drag him to their
daughters--the jackanapes!

And all the cruelties and hardness of life, its pathos and
unequal chances, its conceit, self-forgetfulness, and patience,
were presented on the battle-field of this Kensington ball-room.

Here and there, too, lovers--not lovers like Francie's, a
peculiar breed, but simply lovers--trembling, blushing, silent,
sought each other by flying glances, sought to meet and touch in
the mazes of the dance, and now and again dancing together,
struck some beholder by the light in their eyes.

Not a second before ten o'clock came the Jameses--Emily, Rachel,
Winifred (Dartie had been left behind, having on a former
occasion drunk too much of Roger's champagne), and Cicely, the
youngest, making her debut; behind them, following in a hansom
from the paternal mansion where they had dined, Soames and Irene.

All these ladies had shoulder-straps and no tulle--thus showing
at once, by a bolder exposure of flesh, that they came from the
more fashionable side of the Park.

Soames, sidling back from the contact of the dancers, took up a
position against the wall.  Guarding himself with his pale smile,
he stood watching.  Waltz after waltz began and ended, couple
after couple brushed by with smiling lips, laughter, and snatches
of talk; or with set lips, and eyes searching the throng; or
again, with silent, parted lips, and eyes on each other.  And the
scent of festivity, the odour of flowers, and hair, of essences
that women love, rose suffocatingly in the heat of the summer
night.

Silent, with something of scorn in his smile, Soames seemed to
notice nothing; but now and again his eyes, finding that which
they sought, would fix themselves on a point in the shifting
throng, and the smile die off his lips.

He danced with no one.  Some fellows danced with their wives; his
sense of 'form' had never permitted him to dance with Irene since
their marriage, and the God of the Forsytes alone can tell
whether this was a relief to him or not.

She passed, dancing with other men, her dress, iris-coloured,
floating away from her feet.  She danced well; he was tired of
hearing women say with an acid smile: "How beautifully your wife
dances, Mr. Forsyte--it's quite a pleasure to watch her!"  Tired
of answering them with his sidelong glance: "You think so?"

A young couple close by flirted a fan by turns, making an
unpleasant draught.  Francie and one of her lovers stood near.
They were talking of love.

He heard Roger's voice behind, giving an order about supper to a
servant.  Everything was very second-class!  He wished that he
had not come!  He had asked Irene whether she wanted him; she had
answered with that maddening smile of hers "Oh, no!"

Why had he come?  For the last quarter of an hour he had not even
seen her.  Here was George advancing with his Quilpish face; it
was too late to get out of his way.

"Have you seen 'The Buccaneer'?" said this licensed wag; "he's on
the warpath--hair cut and everything!"

Soames said he had not, and crossing the room, half-empty in an
interval of the dance, he went out on the balcony, and looked
down into the street.

A carriage had driven up with late arrivals, and round the door
hung some of those patient watchers of the London streets who
spring up to the call of light or music; their faces, pale and
upturned above their black and rusty figures, had an air of
stolid watching that annoyed Soames.  Why were they allowed to
hang about; why didn't the bobby move them on?

But the policeman took no notice of them; his feet were planted
apart on the strip of crimson carpet stretched across the
pavement; his face, under the helmet, wore the same stolid,
watching look as theirs.

Across the road, through the railings, Soames could see the
branches of trees shining, faintly stirring in the breeze, by the
gleam of the street lamps; beyond, again, the upper lights of the
houses on the other side, so many eyes looking down on the quiet
blackness of the garden; and over all, the sky, that wonderful
London sky, dusted with the innumerable reflection of countless
lamps; a dome woven over between its stars with the refraction of
human needs and human fancies--immense mirror of pomp and misery
that night after night stretches its kindly mocking over miles of
houses and gardens, mansions and squalor, over Forsytes,
policemen, and patient watchers in the streets.

Soames turned away, and, hidden in the recess, gazed into the
lighted room.  It was cooler out there.  He saw the new arrivals,
June and her grandfather, enter.  What had made them so late?
They stood by the doorway.  They looked fagged.  Fancy Uncle
Jolyon turning out at this time of night!  Why hadn't June come
to Irene, as she usually did, and it occurred to him suddenly
that he had seen nothing of June for a long time now.

Watching her face with idle malice, he saw it change, grow so
pale that he thought she would drop, then flame out crimson.
Turning to see at what she was looking, he saw his wife on
Bosinney's arm, coming from the conservatory at the end of the
room.  Her eyes were raised to his, as though answering some
question he had asked, and he was gazing at her intently.

Soames looked again at June.  Her hand rested on old Jolyon's
arm; she seemed to be making a request.  He saw a surprised look
on his uncle's face; they turned and passed through the door out
of his sight.

The music began again--a waltz--and, still as a statue in the
recess of the window, his face unmoved, but no smile on his lips,
Soames waited.  Presently, within a yard of the dark balcony, his
wife and Bosinney passed.  He caught the perfume of the gardenias
that she wore, saw the rise and fall of her bosom, the languor in
her eyes, her parted lips, and a look on her face that he did not
know.  To the slow, swinging measure they danced by, and it
seemed to him that they clung to each other; he saw her raise her
eyes, soft and dark, to Bosinney's, and drop them again.

Very white, he turned back to the balcony, and leaning on it,
gazed down on the Square; the figures were still there looking up
at the light with dull persistency, the policeman's face, too,
upturned, and staring, but he saw nothing of them.  Below, a
carriage drew up, two figures got in, and drove away....

That evening June and old Jolyon sat down to dinner at the usual
hour.  The girl was in her customary high-necked frock, old
Jolyon had not dressed.

At breakfast she had spoken of the dance at Uncle Roger's, she
wanted to go; she had been stupid enough, she said, not to think
of asking anyone to take her.  It was too late now.

Old Jolyon lifted his keen eyes.  June was used to go to dances
with Irene as a matter of course!  And deliberately fixing his
gaze on her, he asked: "Why don't you get Irene?"

No!  June did not want to ask Irene; she would only go if--if her
grandfather wouldn't mind just for once for a little time!

At her look, so eager and so worn, old Jolyon had grumblingly
consented.  He did not know what she wanted, he said, with going
to a dance like this, a poor affair, he would wager; and she no
more fit for it than a cat!  What she wanted was sea air, and
after his general meeting of the Globular Gold Concessions he was
ready to take her.  She didn't want to go away?  Ah! she would
knock herself up!  Stealing a mournful look at her, he went on
with his breakfast.

June went out early, and wandered restlessly about in the heat.
Her little light figure that lately had moved so languidly about
its business, was all on fire.  She bought herself some flowers.
She wanted--she meant to look her best.  He would be there!  She
knew well enough that he had a card.  She would show him that she
did not care.  But deep down in her heart she resolved that
evening to win him back.  She came in flushed, and talked
brightly all lunch; old Jolyon was there, and he was deceived.

In the afternoon she was overtaken by a desperate fit of sobbing.
She strangled the noise against the pillows of her bed, but when
at last it ceased she saw in the glass a swollen face with
reddened eyes, and violet circles round them.  She stayed in the
darkened room till dinner time.

All through that silent meal the struggle went on within her.

She looked so shadowy and exhausted that old Jolyon told 'Sankey'
to countermand the carriage, he would not have her going out....
She was to go to bed!  She made no resistance.  She went up to
her room, and sat in the dark.  At ten o'clock she rang for her
maid.

"Bring some hot water, and go down and tell Mr. Forsyte that I
feel perfectly rested.  Say that if he's too tired I can go to
the dance by myself."

The maid looked askance, and June turned on her imperiously.
"Go," she said, "bring the hot water at once!"

Her ball-dress still lay on the sofa, and with a sort of fierce
care she arrayed herself, took the flowers in her hand, and went
down, her small face carried high under its burden of hair.  She
could hear old Jolyon in his room as she passed.

Bewildered and vexed, he was dressing.  It was past ten, they
would not get there till eleven; the girl was mad.  But he dared
not cross her the expression of her face at dinner haunted him.

With great ebony brushes he smoothed his hair till it shone like
silver under the light; then he, too, came out on the gloomy
staircase.

June met him below, and, without a word, they went to the
carriage.

When, after that drive which seemed to last for ever, she entered
Roger's drawing-room, she disguised under a mask of resolution a
very torment of nervousness and emotion.  The feeling of shame at
what might be called 'running after him' was smothered by the
dread that he might not be there, that she might not see him
after all, and by that dogged resolve--somehow, she did not know
how--to win him back.

The sight of the ballroom, with its gleaming floor, gave her a
feeling of joy, of triumph, for she loved dancing, and when
dancing she floated, so light was she, like a strenuous, eager
little spirit.  He would surely ask her to dance, and if he
danced with her it would all be as it was before.  She looked
about her eagerly.

The sight of Bosinney coming with Irene from the conservatory,
with that strange look of utter absorption on his face, struck
her too suddenly.  They had not seen--no one should see--her
distress, not even her grandfather.

She put her hand on Jolyon's arm, and said very low:

"I must go home, Gran; I feel ill."

He hurried her away, grumbling to himself that he had known how
it would be.

To her he said nothing; only when they were once more in the
carriage, which by some fortunate chance had lingered near the
door, he asked her: "What is it, my darling?"

Feeling her whole slender body shaken by sobs, he was terribly
alarmed.  She must have Blank to-morrow.  He would insist upon
it.  He could not have her like this....  There, there!

June mastered her sobs, and squeezing his hand feverishly, she
lay back in her corner, her face muffled in a shawl.

He could only see her eyes, fixed and staring in the dark, but he
did not cease to stroke her hand with his thin fingers.




CHAPTER IX

EVENING AT RICHMOND


Other eyes besides the eyes of June and of Soames had seen 'those
two' (as Euphemia had already begun to call them) coming from the
conservatory; other eyes had noticed the look on Bosinney's face.

There are moments when Nature reveals the passion hidden beneath
the careless calm of her ordinary moods--violent spring flashing
white on almond-blossom through the purple clouds; a snowy,
moonlit peak, with its single star, soaring up to the passionate
blue; or against the flames of sunset, an old yew-tree standing
dark guardian of some fiery secret.

There are moments, too, when in a picture-gallery, a work, noted
by the casual spectator as '......Titian--remarkably fine,'
breaks through the defences of some Forsyte better lunched
perhaps than his fellows, and holds him spellbound in a kind of
ecstasy.  There are things, he feels--there are things here
which--well, which are things.  Something unreasoning,
unreasonable, is upon him; when he tries to define it with the
precision of a practical man, it eludes him, slips away, as the
glow of the wine he has drunk is slipping away, leaving him
cross, and conscious of his liver.  He feels that he has been
extravagant, prodigal of something; virtue has gone out of him.
He did not desire this glimpse of what lay under the three stars
of his catalogue.  God forbid that he should know anything about
the forces of Nature!  God forbid that he should admit for a
moment that there are such things!  Once admit that, and where
was he?  One paid a shilling for entrance, and another for the
programme.

The look which June had seen, which other Forsytes had seen, was
like the sudden flashing of a candle through a hole in some
imaginary canvas, behind which it was being moved--the sudden
flaming-out of a vague, erratic glow, shadowy and enticing.  It
brought home to onlookers the consciousness that dangerous forces
were at work.  For a moment they noticed it with pleasure, with
interest, then felt they must not notice it at all.

It supplied, however, the reason of June's coming so late and
disappearing again without dancing, without even shaking hands
with her lover.  She was ill, it was said, and no wonder.

But here they looked at each other guiltily.  They had no desire
to spread scandal, no desire to be ill-natured.  Who would have?
And to outsiders no word was breathed, unwritten law keeping them
silent.

Then came the news that June had gone to the seaside with old
Jolyon.

He had carried her off to Broadstairs, for which place there was
just then a feeling, Yarmouth having lost caste, in spite of
Nicholas, and no Forsyte going to the sea without intending to
have an air for his money such as would render him bilious in a
week.  That fatally aristocratic tendency of the first Forsyte to
drink Madeira had left his descendants undoubtedly accessible.

So June went to the sea.  The family awaited developments; there
was nothing else to do.

But how far--how far had 'those two' gone?  How far were they
going to go?  Could they really be going at all?  Nothing could
surely come of it, for neither of them had any money.  At the
most a flirtation, ending, as all such attachments should, at the
proper time.

Soames' sister, Winifred Dartie, who had imbibed with the breezes
of Mayfair--she lived in Green Street--more fashionable
principles in regard to matrimonial behaviour than were current,
for instance, in Ladbroke Grove, laughed at the idea of there
being anything in it.  The 'little thing'--Irene was taller than
herself, and it was real testimony to the solid worth of a
Forsyte that she should always thus be a 'little thing'--the
little thing was bored.  Why shouldn't she amuse herself?  Soames
was rather tiring; and as to Mr. Bosinney--only that buffoon
George would have called him the Buccaneer--she maintained that
he was very chic.

This dictum--that Bosinney was chic--caused quit a sensation.  It
failed to convince.  That he was 'good-looking in a way' they
were prepared to admit, but that anyone could call a man with his
pronounced cheekbones, curious eyes, arid soft felt hats chic was
only another instance of Winifred's extravagant way of running
after something new.

It was that famous summer when extravagance was fashionable, when
the very earth was extravagant, chestnut-trees spread with
blossom, and flowers drenched in perfume, as they had never been
before; when roses blew in every garden; and for the swarming
stars the nights had hardly space; when every day and all day
long the sun, in full armour, swung his brazen shield above the
Park, and people did strange things, lunching and dining in the
open air.  Unprecedented was the tale of cabs and carriages that
streamed across the bridges of the shining river, bearing the
upper-middle class in thousands to the green glories of Bushey,
Richmond, Kew, and Hampton Court.  Almost every family with any
pretensions to be of the carriage-class paid one visit that year
to the horse-chestnuts at Bushey, or took one drive amongst the
Spanish chestnuts of Richmond Park.  Bowling smoothly, if
dustily, along, in a cloud of their own creation, they would
stare fashionably at the antlered heads which the great slow deer
raised out of a forest of bracken that promised to autumn lovers
such cover as was never seen before.  And now and again, as the
amorous perfume of chestnut flowers and of fern was drifted too
near, one would say to the other: "My dear!  What a peculiar
scent!"

And the lime-flowers that year were of rare prime, near
honey-coloured.  At the corners of London squares they gave out,
as the sun went down, a perfume sweeter than the honey bees had
taken--a perfume that stirred a yearning unnamable in the hearts
of Forsytes and their peers, taking the cool after dinner in the
precincts of those gardens to which they alone had keys.

And that yearning made them linger amidst the dim shapes of
flower-beds in the failing daylight, made them turn, and turn,
and turn again, as though lovers were waiting for them--waiting
for the last light to die away under the shadow of the branches.

Some vague sympathy evoked by the scent of the limes, some
sisterly desire to see for herself, some idea of demonstrating
the soundness of her dictum that there was 'nothing in it'; or
merely the craving to drive down to Richmond, irresistible that
summer, moved the mother of the little Darties (of little
Publius, of Imogen, Maud, and Benedict) to write the following
note to her sister-in-law:


'DEAR IRENE,
'June 30.

'I hear that Soames is going to Henley tomorrow for the night.  I
thought it would be great fun if we made up a little party and
drove down to, Richmond.  Will you ask Mr. Bosinney, and I will
get young Flippard.

'Emily (they called their mother Emily--it was so chic) will lend
us the carriage.  I will call for you and your young man at seven
o'clock.

'Your affectionate sister,

'WINIFRED DARTIE.

'Montague believes the dinner at the Crown and Sceptre to be
quite eatable.'


Montague was Dartie's second and better known name--his first
being Moses; for he was nothing if not a man of the world.

Her plan met with more opposition from Providence than so
benevolent a scheme deserved.  In the first place young Flippard
wrote:


'DEAR Mrs. DARTIE,

'Awfully sorry.  Engaged two deep.

'Yours,

'AUGUSTUS FLIPPARD.'


It was late to send into the byeways and hedges to remedy this
misfortune.  With the promptitude and conduct of a mother,
Winifred fell back on her husband.  She had, indeed, the decided
but tolerant temperament that goes with a good deal of profile,
fair hair, and greenish eyes.  She was seldom or never at a loss;
or if at a loss, was always able to convert it into a gain.

Dartie, too, was in good feather.  Erotic had failed to win the
Lancashire Cup.  Indeed, that celebrated animal, owned as he was
by a pillar of the turf, who had secretly laid many thousands
against him, had not even started.  The forty-eight hours that
followed his scratching were among the darkest in Dartie's life.

Visions of James haunted him day and night.  Black thoughts about
Soames mingled with the faintest hopes.  On the Friday night he
got drunk, so greatly was he affected.  But on Saturday morning
the true Stock Exchange instinct triumphed within him.  Owing
some hundreds, which by no possibility could he pay, he went into
town and put them all on Concertina for the Saltown Borough
Handicap.

As he said to Major Scrotton, with whom he lunched at the Iseeum:
"That little Jew boy, Nathans, had given him the tip.  He didn't
care a cursh.  He wash in--a mucker.  If it didn't come up--well
then, damme, the old man would have to pay!"

A bottle of Pol Roger to his own cheek had given him a new
contempt for James.

It came up.  Concertina was squeezed home by her neck--a terrible
squeak!  But, as Dartie said: There was nothing like pluck!

He was by no means averse to the expedition to Richmond.  He
would 'stand' it himself!  He cherished an admiration for Irene,
and wished to be on more playful terms with her.

At half-past five the Park Lane footman came round to say: Mrs.
Forsyte was very sorry, but one of the horses was coughing!

Undaunted by this further blow, Winifred at once despatched
little Publius (now aged seven) with the nursery governess to
Montpellier Square.

They would go down in hansoms and meet at the Crown and Sceptre
at 7.45.

Dartie, on being told, was pleased enough.  It was better than
going down with your back to the horses!  He had no objection to
driving down with Irene.  He supposed they would pick up the
others at Montpellier Square, and swop hansoms there?

Informed that the meet was at the Crown and Sceptre, and that he
would have to drive with his wife, he turned sulky, and said it
was d---d slow!

At seven o'clock they started, Dartie offering to bet the driver
half-a-crown he didn't do it in the three-quarters of an hour.

Twice only did husband and wife exchange remarks on the way.

Dartie said: "It'll put Master Soames's nose out of joint to hear
his wife's been drivin' in a hansom with Master Bosinney!"

Winifred replied: "Don't talk such nonsense, Monty!"

"Nonsense!" repeated Dartie.  "You don't know women, my fine
lady!"

On the other occasion he merely asked: "How am I looking?  A bit
puffy about the gills?  That fizz old George is so fond of is a
windy wine!"

He had been lunching with George Forsyte at the Haversnake.

Bosinney and Irene had arrived before them.  They were standing
in one of the long French windows overlooking the river.

Windows that summer were open all day long, and all night too,
and day and night the scents of flowers and trees came in, the
hot scent of parching grass, and the cool scent of the heavy
dews.

To the eye of the observant Dartie his two guests did not appear
to be making much running, standing there close together, without
a word.  Bosinney was a hungry-looking creature--not much go
about him

He left them to Winifred, however, and busied himself to order
the dinner.

A Forsyte will require good, if not delicate feeding, but a
Dartie will tax the resources of a Crown and Sceptre.  Living as
he does, from hand to mouth, nothing is too good for him to eat;
and he will eat it.  His drink, too, will need to be carefully
provided; there is much drink in this country 'not good enough'
for a Dartie; he will have the best.  Paying for things
vicariously, there is no reason why he should stint himself.  To
stint yourself is the mark of a fool, not of a Dartie.

The best of everything!  No sounder principle on which a man can
base his life, whose father-in-law has a very considerable
income, and a partiality for his grandchildren.

With his not unable eye Dartie had spotted this weakness in James
the very first year after little Publius's arrival (an error); he
had profited by his perspicacity.  Four little Darties were now a
sort of perpetual insurance.

The feature of the feast was unquestionably the red mullet.  This
delectable fish, brought from a considerable distance in a state
of almost perfect preservation, was first fried, then boned, then
served in ice, with Madeira punch in place of sauce, according to
a recipe known to a few men of the world.

Nothing else calls for remark except the payment of the bill by
Dartie.

He had made himself extremely agreeable throughout the meal; his
bold, admiring stare seldom abandoning Irene's face and figure.
As he was obliged to confess to himself, he got no change out of
her--she was cool enough, as cool as her shoulders looked under
their veil of creamy lace.  He expected to have caught her out in
some little game with Bosinney; but not a bit of it, she kept up
her end remarkably well.  As for that architect chap, he was as
glum as a bear with a sore head--Winifred could barely get a word
out of him; he ate nothing, but he certainly took his liquor, and
his face kept getting whiter, and his eyes looked queer.

It was all very amusing.

For Dartie himself was in capital form, and talked freely, with a
certain poignancy, being no fool.  He told two or three stories
verging on the improper, a concession to the company, for his
stories were not used to verging.  He proposed Irene's health in
a mock speech.  Nobody drank it, and Winifred said: "Don't be
such a clown, Monty!"

At her suggestion they went after dinner to the public terrace
overlooking the river.

"I should like to see the common people making love," she said,
"it's such fun!"

There were numbers of them walking in the cool, after the day's
heat, and the air was alive with the sound of voices, coarse and
loud, or soft as though murmuring secrets.

It was not long before Winifred's better sense--she was the only
Forsyte present--secured them an empty bench.  They sat down in a
row.  A heavy tree spread a thick canopy above their heads, and
the haze darkened slowly over the river.

Dartie sat at the end, next to him Irene, then Bosinney, then
Winifred.  There was hardly room for four, and the man of the
world could feel Irene's arm crushed against his own; he knew
that she could not withdraw it without seeming rude, and this
amused him; he devised every now and again a movement that would
bring her closer still.  He thought: 'That Buccaneer Johnny
shan't have it all to himself!  It's a pretty tight fit,
certainly!'

From far down below on the dark river came drifting the tinkle of
a mandoline, and voices singing the old round:

'A boat, a boat, unto the ferry,
For we'll go over and be merry;
And laugh, and quaff, and drink brown sherry!'

And suddenly the moon appeared, young and tender, floating up on
her back from behind a tree; and as though she had breathed, the
air was cooler, but down that cooler air came always the warm
odour of the limes.

Over his cigar Dartie peered round at Bosinney, who was sitting
with his arms crossed, staring straight in front of him, and on
his face the look of a man being tortured.

And Dartie shot a glance at the face between, so veiled by the
overhanging shadow that it was but like a darker piece of the
darkness shaped and breathed on; soft, mysterious, enticing.

A hush had fallen on the noisy terrace, as if all the strollers
were thinking secrets too precious to be spoken.

And Dartie thought: 'Women!'

The glow died above the river, the singing ceased; the young moon
hid behind a tree, and all was dark.  He pressed himself against
Irene.

He was not alarmed at the shuddering that ran through the limbs
he touched, or at the troubled, scornful look of her eyes.  He
felt her trying to draw herself away, and smiled.

It must be confessed that the man of the world had drunk quite as
much as was good for him.

With thick lips parted under his well-curled moustaches, and his
bold eyes aslant upon her, he had the malicious look of a satyr.

Along the pathway of sky between the hedges of the tree tops the
stars clustered forth; like mortals beneath, they seemed to shift
and swarm and whisper.  Then on the terrace the buzz broke out
once more, and Dartie thought: 'Ah!  he's a poor, hungry-looking
devil, that Bosinney!'and again he pressed himself against Irene.

The movement deserved a better success.  She rose, and they all
followed her.

The man of the world was more than ever determined to see what
she was made of.  Along the terrace he kept close at her elbow.
He had within him much good wine.  There was the long drive home,
the long drive and the warm dark and the pleasant closeness of
the hansom cab--with its insulation from the world devised by
some great and good man.  That hungry architect chap might drive
with his wife--he wished him joy of her!  And, conscious that his
voice was not too steady, he was careful not to speak; but a
smile had become fixed on his thick lips.

They strolled along toward the cabs awaiting them at the farther
end.  His plan had the merit of all great plans, an almost brutal
simplicity he would merely keep at her elbow till she got in, and
get in quickly after her.

But when Irene reached the cab she did not get in; she slipped,
instead, to the horse's head.  Dartie was not at the moment
sufficiently master of his legs to follow.  She stood stroking
the horse's nose, and, to his annoyance, Bosinney was at her side
first.  She turned and spoke to him rapidly, in a low voice; the
words 'That man' reached Dartie.  He stood stubbornly by the cab
step, waiting for her to come back.  He knew a trick worth two of
that!

Here, in the lamp-light, his figure (no more than medium height),
well squared in its white evening waistcoat, his light overcoat
flung over his arm, a pink flower in his button-hole, and on his
dark face that look of confident, good-humoured insolence, he was
at his best--a thorough man of the world.

Winifred was already in her cab.  Dartie reflected that Bosinney
would have a poorish time in that cab if he didn't look sharp!
Suddenly he received a push which nearly overturned him in the
road.  Bosinney's voice hissed in his ear: "I am taking Irene
back; do you understand?"  He saw a face white with passion, and
eyes that glared at him like a wild cat's.

"Eh?" he stammered.  "What? Not a bit.  You take my wife!"

"Get away!" hissed Bosinney--"or I'll throw you into the road!"

Dartie recoiled; he saw as plainly as possible that the fellow
meant it.  In the space he made Irene had slipped by, her dress
brushed his legs.  Bosinney stepped in after her.

"Go on!" he heard the Buccaneer cry.  The cabman flicked his
horse.  It sprang forward.

Dartie stood for a moment dumbfounded; then, dashing at the cab
where his wife sat, he scrambled in.

"Drive on!" he shouted to the driver, "and don't you lose sight
of that fellow in front!"

Seated by his wife's side, he burst into imprecations.  Calming
himself at last with a supreme effort, he added: "A pretty mess
you've made of it, to let the Buccaneer drive home with her; why
on earth couldn't you keep hold of him?  He's mad with love; any
fool can see that!"

He drowned Winifred's rejoinder with fresh calls to the Almighty;
nor was it until they reached Barnes that he ceased a Jeremiad,
in the course of which he had abused her, her father, her
brother, Irene, Bosinney, the name of Forsyte, his own children,
and cursed the day when he had ever married.

Winifred, a woman of strong character, let him have his say, at
the end of which he lapsed into sulky silence.  His angry eyes
never deserted the back of that cab, which, like a lost chance,
haunted the darkness in front of him.

Fortunately he could not hear Bosinney's passionate pleading--
that pleading which the man of the world's conduct had let loose
like a flood; he could not see Irene shivering, as though some
garment had been torn from her, nor her eyes, black and mournful,
like the eyes of a beaten child.  He could not hear Bosinney
entreating, entreating, always entreating; could not hear her
sudden, soft weeping, nor see that poor, hungry-looking devil,
awed and trembling, humbly touching her hand.

In Montpellier Square their cabman, following his instructions to
the letter, faithfully drew up behind the cab in front.  The
Darties saw Bosinney spring out, and Irene follow, and hasten up
the steps with bent head.  She evidently had her key in her hand,
for she disappeared at once.  It was impossible to tell whether
she had turned to speak to Bosinney.

The latter came walking past their cab; both husband and wife had
an admirable view of his face in the light of a street lamp.  It
was working with violent emotion.

"Good-night, Mr. Bosinney!" called Winifred.

Bosinney started, clawed off his hat, and hurried on.  He had
obviously forgotten their existence.

"There!" said Dartie, "did you see the beast's face?  What did I
say?  Fine games!"  He improved the occasion.

There had so clearly been a crisis in the cab that Winifred was
unable to defend her theory.

She said: "I shall say nothing about it.  I don't see any use in
making a fuss!"

With that view Dartie at once concurred; looking upon James as a
private preserve, he disapproved of his being disturbed by the
troubles of others.

"Quite right," he said; "let Soames look after himself.  He's
jolly well able to!"

Thus speaking, the Darties entered their habitat in Green Street,
the rent of which was paid by James, and sought a well-earned
rest.  The hour was midnight, and no Forsytes remained abroad in
the streets to spy out Bosinney's wanderings; to see him return
and stand against the rails of the Square garden, back from the
glow of the street lamp; to see him stand there in the shadow of
trees, watching the house where in the dark was hidden she whom
he would have given the world to see for a single minute--she who
was now to him the breath of the lime-trees, the meaning of the
light and the darkness, the very beating of his own heart.




CHAPTER X

DIAGNOSIS OF A FORSYTE


It is in the nature of a Forsyte to be ignorant that he is a
Forsyte; but young Jolyon was well aware of being one.  He had
not known it till after the decisive step which had made him an
outcast; since then the knowledge had been with him continually.
He felt it throughout his alliance, throughout all his dealings
with his second wife, who was emphatically not a Forsyte.

He knew that if he had not possessed in great measure the eye for
what he wanted, the tenacity to hold on to it, the sense of the
folly of wasting that for which he had given so big a price--in
other words, the 'sense of property' he could never have retained
her (perhaps never would have desired to retain her) with him
through all the financial troubles, slights, and misconstructions
of those fifteen years; never have induced her to marry him on
the death of his first wife; never have lived it all through, and
come up, as it were, thin, but smiling.

He was one of those men who, seated cross-legged like miniature
Chinese idols in the cages of their own hearts, are ever smiling
at themselves a doubting smile.  Not that this smile, so intimate
and eternal, interfered with his actions, which, like his chin
and his temperament, were quite a peculiar blend of softness and
determination.

He was conscious, too, of being a Forsyte in his work, that
painting of water-colours to which he devoted so much energy,
always with an eye on himself, as though he could not take so
unpractical a pursuit quite seriously, and always with a certain
queer uneasiness that he did not make more money at it.

It was, then, this consciousness of what it meant to be a
Forsyte, that made him receive the following letter from old
Jolyon, with a mixture of sympathy and disgust:


'SHELDRAKE HOUSE,
     'BROADSTAIRS,

'July 1.
'MY DEAR JO,'

(The Dad's handwriting had altered very little in the thirty odd
years that he remembered it.)

'We have been here now a fortnight, and have had good weather on
the whole.  The air is bracing, but my liver is out of order, and
I shall be glad enough to get back to town.  I cannot say much
for June, her health and spirits are very indifferent, and I
don't see what is to come of it.  She says nothing, but it is
clear that she is harping on this engagement, which is an
engagement and no engagement, and--goodness knows what.  I have
grave doubts whether she ought to be allowed to return to London
in the present state of affairs, but she is so self-willed that
she might take it into her head to come up at any moment.  The
fact is someone ought to speak to Bosinney and ascertain what he
means.  I'm afraid of this myself, for I should certainly rap him
over the knuckles, but I thought that you, knowing him at the
Club, might put in a word, and get to ascertain what the fellow
is about.  You will of course in no way commit June.  I shall be
glad to hear from you in the course of a few days whether you
have succeeded in gaining any information.  The situation is very
distressing to me, I worry about it at night.

With my love to Jolly and Holly.
'I am,
     'Your affect.  father,

'JOLYON FORSYTE.'


Young Jolyon pondered this letter so long and seriously that his
wife noticed his preoccupation, and asked him what was the
matter.  He replied: "Nothing."

It was a fixed principle with him never to allude to June.  She
might take alarm, he did not know what she might think; he
hastened, therefore, to banish from his manner all traces of
absorption, but in this he was about as successful as his father
would have been, for he had inherited all old Jolyon's
transparency in matters of domestic finesse; and young Mrs.
Jolyon, busying herself over the affairs of the house, went about
with tightened lips, stealing at him unfathomable looks.

He started for the Club in the afternoon with the letter in his
pocket, and without having made up his mind.

To sound a man as to 'his intentions' was peculiarly unpleasant
to him; nor did his own anomalous position diminish this
unpleasantness.  It was so like his family, so like all the
people they knew and mixed with, to enforce what they called
their rights over a man, to bring  him up to the mark; so like
them to carry their business principles into their private
relations.

And how that phrase in the letter--'You will, of course, in no
way commit June'--gave the whole thing away.

Yet the letter, with the personal grievance, the concern for
June, the 'rap over the knuckles,' was all so natural.  No wonder
his father wanted to know what Bosinney meant, no wonder he was
angry.

It was difficult to refuse!  But why give the thing to him to do?
That was surely quite unbecoming; but so long as a Forsyte got
what he was after, he was not too particular about the means,
provided appearances were saved.

How should he set about it, or how refuse?  Both seemed impossible.
So, young Jolyon!

He arrived at the Club at three o'clock, and the first person he
saw was Bosinney himself, seated in a corner, staring out of the
window.

Young Jolyon sat down not far off, and began nervously to
reconsider his position.  He looked covertly at Bosinney sitting
there unconscious.  He did not know him very well, and studied
him attentively for perhaps the first time; an unusual looking
man, unlike in dress, face, and manner to most of the other
members of the Club--young Jolyon himself, however different he
had become in mood and temper, had always retained the neat
reticence of Forsyte appearance.  He alone among Forsytes was
ignorant of Bosinney's nickname.  The man was unusual, not
eccentric, but unusual; he looked worn, too, haggard, hollow in
the cheeks beneath those broad, high cheekbones, though without
any appearance of ill-health, for he was strongly built, with
curly hair that seemed to show all the vitality of a fine
constitution.

Something in his face and attitude touched young Jolyon.  He knew
what suffering was like, and this man looked as if he were
suffering.

He got up and touched his arm.

Bosinney started, but exhibited no sign of embarrassment on
seeing who it was.

Young Jolyon sat down.

"I haven't seen you for a long time," he said.  "How are you
getting on with  my cousin's house?"

"It'll be finished in about a week."

"I congratulate you!"

"Thanks--I don't know that it's much of a subject for
congratulation."

"No?" queried young Jolyon; "I should have thought you'd be glad
to get a long job like that off your hands; but I suppose you
feel it much as I do when I part with a picture--a sort of
child?"

He looked kindly at Bosinney.

"Yes," said the latter more cordially, "it goes out from you and
there's an end of it.  I didn't know you painted."

"Only water-colours; I can't say I believe in my work."

"Don't believe in it?  There--how can you do it?  Work's no use
unless you believe in it!"

"Good," said young Jolyon; "it's exactly what I've always said.
By-the-bye, have you noticed that whenever one says 'Good,' one
always adds 'it's exactly what I've always said'!  But if you ask
me how I do it, I answer, because I'm a Forsyte."

"A Forsyte!  I never thought of you as one!"

"A Forsyte," replied young Jolyon, "is not an uncommon animal.
There are hundreds among the members of this Club.  Hundreds out
there in the streets; you meet them wherever you go!"

"And how do you tell them, may I ask?" said Bosinney.

"By their sense of property.  A Forsyte takes a practical--one
might say a commonsense--view of things, and a practical view of
things is based fundamentally on a sense of property.  A Forsyte,
you will notice, never gives himself away."

"Joking?"

Young Jolyon's eye twinkled.

"Not much.  As a Forsyte myself, I have no business to talk.  But
I'm a kind of thoroughbred mongrel; now, there's no mistaking
you: You're as different from me as I am from my Uncle James, who
is the perfect specimen of a Forsyte.  His sense of property is
extreme, while you have practically none.  Without me in between,
you would seem like a different species.  I'm the missing link.
We are, of course, all of us the slaves of property, and I admit
that it's a question of degree, but what I call a 'Forsyte' is a
man who is decidedly more than less a slave of property.  He
knows a good thing, he knows a safe thing, and his grip on
property--it doesn't matter whether it be wives, houses, money,
or reputation--is his hall-mark."

"Ah!" murmured Bosinney.  "You should patent the word."

"I should like," said young Jolyon, "to lecture on it:

"Properties and quality of a Forsyte: This little animal,
disturbed by the ridicule of his own sort, is unaffected in his
motions by the laughter of strange creatures (you or I).
Hereditarily disposed to myopia, he recognises only the persons
of his own species, amongst which he passes an existence of
competitive tranquillity."

"You talk of them," said Bosinney, "as if they were half
England."

"They are," repeated young Jolyon, "half England, and the better
half, too, the safe half, the three per cent. Half, the half
that counts.  It's their wealth and security that makes
everything possible; makes your art possible, makes literature,
science, even religion, possible.  Without Forsytes, who believe
in none of these things, and habitats but turn them all to use,
where should we be?  My dear sir, the Forsytes are the middlemen,
the commercials, the pillars of society, the cornerstones of
convention; everything that is admirable!"

"I don't know whether I catch your drift," said Bosinney, "but I
fancy there are plenty of Forsytes, as you call them, in my
profession."

"Certainly," replied young Jolyon.  "The great majority of
architects, painters, or writers have no principles, like any
other Forsytes.  Art, literature, religion, survive by virtue of
the few cranks who really believe in such things, and the many
Forsytes who make a commercial use of them.  At a low estimate,
three-fourths of our Royal Academicians are Forsytes, seven-
eighths of our novelists, a large proportion of the press.
Of science I can't speak; they are magnificently represented in
religion; in the House of Commons perhaps more numerous than
anywhere; the aristocracy speaks for itself.  But I'm not
laughing.  It is dangerous to go against the majority and what a
majority!"  He fixed his eyes on Bosinney: "It's dangerous to let
anything carry you away--a house, a picture, a--woman!"

They looked at each other.--And, as though he had done that which
no Forsyte did--given himself away, young Jolyon drew into his
shell.  Bosinney broke the silence.

"Why do you take your own people as the type?" said he.

"My people," replied young Jolyon, "are not very extreme, and
they have their own private peculiarities, like every other
family, but they possess in a remarkable degree those two
qualities which are the real tests of a Forsyte--the power of
never being able to give yourself up to anything soul and body,
and the 'sense of property'."

Bosinney smiled: "How about the big one, for instance?"

"Do you mean Swithin?" asked young Jolyon.  "Ah! in Swithin
there's something primeval still.  The town and middle-class
life haven't digested him yet.  All the old centuries of farmwork
and brute force have settled in him, and there they've stuck, for
all he's so distinguished."

Bosinney seemed to ponder.  "Well, you've hit your cousin Soames
off to the life," he said suddenly.  "He'll never blow his brains
out."

Young Jolyon shot at him a penetrating glance.

"No," he said; "he won't.  That's why he's to be reckoned with.
Look out for their grip!  It's easy to laugh, but don't mistake
me.  It doesn't do to despise a Forsyte; it doesn't do to
disregard them!"

"Yet you've done it yourself!"

Young Jolyon acknowledged the hit by losing his smile.

"You forget," he said with a queer pride, "I can hold on, too--
I'm a Forsyte myself.  We're all in the path of great forces.
The man who leaves the shelter of the wall--well--you know what I
mean.  I don't," he ended very low, as though uttering a threat,
"recommend every man to-go-my-way.  It depends."

The colour rushed into Bosinney's face, but soon receded, leaving
it sallow-brown as before.  He gave a short laugh, that left his
lips fixed in a queer, fierce smile; his eyes mocked young
Jolyon.

"Thanks," he said.  "It's deuced kind of you.  But you're not the
only chaps that can hold on."  He rose.

Young Jolyon looked after him as he walked away, and, resting his
head on his hand, sighed.

In the drowsy, almost empty room the only sounds were the rustle
of newspapers, the scraping of matches being struck.  He stayed a
long time without moving, living over again those days when he,
too, had sat long hours watching the clock, waiting for the
minutes to pass--long hours full of the torments of uncertainty,
and of a fierce, sweet aching; and the slow, delicious agony of
that season came back to him with its old poignancy.  The sight
of Bosinney, with his haggard face, and his restless eyes always
wandering to the clock, had roused in him a pity, with which was
mingled strange, irresistible envy.

He knew the signs so well.  Whither was he going--to what sort of
fate?  What kind of woman was it who was drawing him to her by
that magnetic force which no consideration of honour, no
principle, no interest could withstand; from which the only
escape was flight.

Flight!  But why should Bosinney fly?  A man fled when he was in
danger of destroying hearth and home, when there were children,
when he felt himself trampling down ideals, breaking something.
But here, so he had heard, it was all broken to his hand.

He himself had not fled, nor would he fly if it were all to come
over again.  Yet he had gone further than Bosinney, had broken up
his own unhappy home, not someone else's: And the old saying came
back to him: 'A man's fate lies in his own heart.'

In his own heart!  The proof of the pudding was in the eating--
Bosinney had still to eat his pudding.

His thoughts passed to the woman, the woman whom he did not know,
but the outline of whose story he had heard.

An unhappy marriage!  No ill-treatment--only that indefinable
malaise, that terrible blight which killed all sweetness under
Heaven; and so from day to day, from night to night, from week to
week, from year to year, till death should end it

But young Jolyon, the bitterness of whose own feelings time had
assuaged, saw Soames' side of the question too.  Whence should a
man like his cousin, saturated with all the prejudices and
beliefs of his class, draw the insight or inspiration necessary
to break up this life?  It was a question of imagination, of
projecting himself into the future beyond the unpleasant gossip,
sneers, and tattle that followed on such separations, beyond the
passing pangs that the lack of the sight of her would cause,
beyond the grave disapproval of the worthy.  But few men, and
especially few men of Soames' class, had imagination enough for
that.  A deal of mortals in this world, and not enough
imagination to go round!  And sweet Heaven, what a difference
between theory and practice; many a man, perhaps even Soames,
held chivalrous views on such matters, who when the shoe pinched
found a distinguishing factor that made of himself an exception.

Then, too, he distrusted his judgment.  He had been through the
experience himself, had tasted too the dregs the bitterness of an
unhappy marriage, and how could he take the wide and dispassionate
view of those who had never been within sound of the battle?
His evidence was too first-hand--like the evidence on military
matters of a soldier who has been through much active service,
against that of civilians who have not suffered the disadvantage
of seeing things too close.  Most people would consider such a
marriage as that of Soames and Irene quite fairly successful;
he had money, she had beauty; it was a case for compromise.
There was no reason why they should not jog along, even if they
hated each other.  It would not matter if they went their own
ways a little so long as the decencies were observed--the
sanctity of the marriage tie, of the common home, respected.
Half the marriages of the upper classes were conducted on these
lines: Do not offend the susceptibilities of Society; do not
offend the susceptibilities of the Church.  To avoid offending
these is worth the sacrifice of any private feelings.  The
advantages of the stable home are visible, tangible, so many
pieces of property; there is no risk in the statu quo.  To break
up a home is at the best a dangerous experiment, and selfish into
the bargain.

This was the case for the defence, and young Jolyon sighed.

'The core of it all,' he thought, 'is property, but there are
many people who would not like it put that way.  To them it is
"the sanctity of the marriage tie"; but the sanctity of the
marriage tie is dependent on the sanctity of the family, and the
sanctity of the family is dependent on the sanctity of property.
And yet I imagine all these people are followers of One who never
owned anything.  It is curious!'

And again young Jolyon sighed.

'Am I going on my way home to ask any poor devils I meet to share
my dinner, which will then be too little for myself, or, at all
events, for my wife, who is necessary to my health and happiness?
It may be that after all Soames does well to exercise his rights
and support by his practice the sacred principle of property
which benefits us all, with the exception of those who suffer by
the process.'

And so he left his chair, threaded his way through the maze of
seats, took his hat, and languidly up the hot streets crowded
with carriages, reeking with dusty odours, wended his way home.

Before reaching Wistaria Avenue he removed old Jolyon's letter
from his pocket, and tearing it carefully into tiny pieces,
scattered them in the dust of the road.

He let himself in with his key, and called his wife's name.  But
she had gone out, taking Jolly and Holly, and the house was
empty; alone in the garden the dog Balthasar lay in the shade
snapping at flies.

Young Jolyon took his seat there, too, under the pear-tree that
bore no fruit.




CHAPTER XI

BOSINNEY ON PAROLE


The day after the evening at Richmond Soames returned from Henley
by a morning train.  Not constitutionally interested in
amphibious sports, his visit had been one of business rather than
pleasure, a client of some importance having asked him down.

He went straight to the City, but finding things slack, he left
at three o'clock, glad of this chance to get home quietly.  Irene
did not expect him.  Not that he had any desire to spy on her
actions, but there was no harm in thus unexpectedly surveying the
scene.

After changing to Park clothes he went into the drawing-room.
She was sitting idly in the corner of the sofa, her favourite
seat; and there were circles under her eyes, as though she had
not slept.

He asked: "How is it you're in?  Are you expecting somebody?"

"Yes that is, not particularly."

"Who?"

"Mr. Bosinney said he might come."

"Bosinney.  He ought to be at work."

To this she made no answer.

"Well," said Soames, "I want you to come out to the Stores with
me, and after that we'll go to the Park."

"I don't want to go out; I have a headache."

Soames replied: "If ever I want you to do anything, you've always
got a headache.  It'll do you good to come and sit under the
trees."

She did not answer.

Soames was silent for some minutes; at last he said: "I don't
know what your idea of a wife's duty is.  I never have known!"

He had not expected her to reply, but she did.

"I have tried to do what you want; it's not my fault that I
haven't been able to put my heart into it."

"Whose fault is it, then?" He watched her askance.

"Before we were married you promised to let me go if our marriage
was not a success.  Is it a success?"

Soames frowned.

"Success," he stammered--"it would be a success if you behaved
yourself properly!"

"I have tried," said Irene.  "Will you let me go?"

Soames turned away.  Secretly alarmed, he took refuge in bluster.

"Let you go?  You don't know what you're talking about.  Let you
go?  How can I let you go?  We're married, aren't we?  Then, what
are you talking about?  For God's sake, don't let's have any of
this sort of nonsense!  Get your hat on, and come and sit in the
Park."

"Then, you won't let me go?"

He felt her eyes resting on him with a strange, touching look.

"Let you go!" he said; "and what on earth would you do with
yourself if I did?  You've got no money!"

"I could manage somehow."

He took a swift turn up and down the room; then came and stood
before her.

"Understand," he said, "once and for all, I won't have you say
this sort of thing.  Go and get your hat on!"

She did not move.

"I suppose," said Soames, "you don't want to miss Bosinney if he
comes!"

Irene got up slowly and left the room.  She came down with her
hat on.

They went out.

In the Park, the motley hour of mid-afternoon, when foreigners
and other pathetic folk drive, thinking themselves to be in
fashion, had passed; the right, the proper, hour had come, was
nearly gone, before Soames and Irene seated themselves under the
Achilles statue.

It was some time since he had enjoyed her company in the Park.
That was one of the past delights of the first two seasons of his
married life, when to feel himself the possessor of this gracious
creature before all London had been his greatest, though secret,
pride.  How many afternoons had he not sat beside her, extremely
neat, with light grey gloves and faint, supercilious smile,
nodding to acquaintances, and now and again removing his hat.

His light grey gloves were still on his hands, and on his lips
his smile sardonic, but where the feeling in his heart?

The seats were emptying fast, but still he kept her there, silent
and pale, as though to work out a secret punishment.  Once or
twice he made some comment, and she bent her head, or answered
"Yes" with a tired smile.

Along the rails a man was walking so fast that people stared
after him when he passed.

"Look at that ass!" said Soames; "he must be mad to walk like
that in this heat!"

He turned; Irene had made a rapid movement.

"Hallo!" he said: "it's our friend the Buccaneer!"

And he sat still, with his sneering smile, conscious that Irene
was sitting still, and smiling too.

"Will she bow to him?" he thought.

But she made no sign.

Bosinney reached the end of the rails, and came walking back
amongst the chairs, quartering his ground like a pointer.  When
he saw them he stopped dead, and raised his hat.

The smile never left Soames' face; he also took off his hat.

Bosinney came up, looking exhausted, like a man after hard
physical exercise; the sweat stood in drops on his brow, and
Soames' smile seemed to say: "You've had a trying time, my friend
......What are you doing in the Park?" he asked.  "We thought
you despised such frivolity!"

Bosinney did not seem to hear; he made his answer to Irene: "I've
been round to your place; I hoped I should find you in."

Somebody tapped Soames on the back, and spoke to him; and in the
exchange of those platitudes over his shoulder, he missed her
answer, and took a resolution.

"We're just going in," he said to Bosinney; "you'd better come
back to dinner with us." Into that invitation he put a strange
bravado, a stranger pathos: "You, can't deceive me," his look and
voice seemed saying, "but see--I trust you--I'm not afraid of
you!"

They started back to Montpellier Square together, Irene between
them.  In the crowded streets Soames went on in front.  He did
not listen to their conversation; the strange resolution of
trustfulness he had taken seemed to animate even his secret
conduct.  Like a gambler, he said to himself: 'It's a card I dare
not throw away--I must play it for what it's worth.  I have not
too many chances.'

He dressed slowly, heard her leave her room and go downstairs,
and, for full five minutes after, dawdled about in his dressing-
room.  Then he went down, purposely shutting the door loudly to
show that he was coming.  He found them standing by the hearth,
perhaps talking, perhaps not; he could not say.

He played his part out in the farce, the long evening through--
his manner to his guest more friendly than it had ever been
before; and when at last Bosinney went, he said: "You must come
again soon; Irene likes to have you to talk about the house!"
Again his voice had the strange bravado and the stranger pathos;
but his hand was cold as ice.

Loyal to his resolution, he turned away from their parting,
turned away from his wife as she stood under the hanging lamp to
say good-night--away from the sight of her golden head shining so
under the light, of her smiling mournful lips; away from the
sight of Bosinney's eyes looking at her, so like a dog's looking
at its master.

And he went to bed with the certainty that Bosinney was in love
with his wife.

The summer night was hot, so hot and still that through every
opened window came in but hotter air.  For long hours he lay
listening to her breathing.

She could sleep, but he must lie awake.  And, lying awake, he
hardened himself to play the part of the serene and trusting
husband.

In the small hours he slipped out of bed, and passing into his
dressing-room, leaned by the open window.

He could hardly breathe.

A night four years ago came back to him--the night but one before
his marriage; as hot and stifling as this.

He remembered how he had lain in a long cane chair in the window
of his sitting-room off Victoria Street.  Down below in a side
street a man had banged at a door, a woman had cried out; he
remembered, as though it were now, the sound of the scuffle, the
slam of the door, the dead silence that followed.  And then the
early water-cart, cleansing the reek of the streets, had
approached through the strange-seeming, useless lamp-light; he
seemed to hear again its rumble, nearer and nearer, till it
passed and slowly died away.

He leaned far out of the dressing-room window over the little
court below, and saw the first light spread.  The outlines of
dark walls and roofs were blurred for a moment, then came out
sharper than before.

He remembered how that other night he had watched the lamps
paling all the length of Victoria Street; how he had hurried on
his clothes and gone down into the street, down past houses and
squares, to the street where she was staying, and there had stood
and looked at the front of the little house, as still and grey as
the face of a dead man.

And suddenly it shot through his mind; like a sick man's fancy:
What's he doing?--that fellow who haunts me, who was here this
evening, who's in love with my wife--prowling out there, perhaps,
looking for her as I know he was looking for her this afternoon;
watching my house now, for all I can tell!

He stole across the landing to the front of the house, stealthily
drew aside a blind, and raised a window.

The grey light clung about the trees of the square, as though
Night, like a great downy moth, had brushed them with her wings.
The lamps were still alight, all pale, but not a soul stirred--no
living thing in sight

Yet suddenly, very faint, far off in the deathly stillness, he
heard a cry writhing, like the voice of some wandering soul
barred out of heaven, and crying for its happiness.  There it was
again--again!  Soames shut the window, shuddering.

Then he thought: 'Ah!  it's only the peacocks, across the water.'




CHAPTER XII

JUNE PAYS SOME CALLS



Jolyon stood in the narrow hall at Broadstairs, inhaling that
odour of oilcloth and herrings which permeates all respectable
seaside lodging-houses.  On a chair--a shiny leather chair,
displaying its horsehair through a hole in the top left-hand
corner--stood a black despatch case.  This he was filling with
papers, with the Times, and a bottle of Eau-de Cologne.  He had
meetings that day of the 'Globular Gold Concessions' and the 'New
Colliery Company, Limited,' to which he was going up, for he
never missed a Board; to 'miss a Board' would be one more piece
of evidence that he was growing old, and this his jealous Forsyte
spirit could not bear.

His eyes, as he filled that black despatch case, looked as if at
any moment they might blaze up with anger.  So gleams the eye of
a schoolboy, baited by a ring of his companions; but he controls
himself, deterred by the fearful odds against him.  And old
Jolyon controlled himself, keeping down, with his masterful
restraint now slowly wearing out, the irritation fostered in him
by the conditions of his life.

He had received from his son an unpractical letter, in which by
rambling generalities the boy seemed trying to get out of
answering a plain question.  'I've seen Bosinney,' he said; 'he
is not a criminal.  The more I see of people the more I am
convinced that they are never good or bad--merely comic, or
pathetic.  You probably don't agree with me!'

Old Jolyon did not; he considered it cynical to so express
oneself; he had not yet reached that point of old age when even
Forsytes, bereft of those illusions and principles which they
have cherished carefully for practical purposes but never
believed in, bereft of all corporeal enjoyment, stricken to the
very heart by having nothing left to hope for--break through the
barriers of reserve and say things they would never have believed
themselves capable of saying.

Perhaps he did not believe in 'goodness' and 'badness' any more
than his son; but as he would have said: He didn't know--couldn't
tell; there might be something in it; and why, by an unnecessary
expression of disbelief, deprive yourself of possible advantage?

Accustomed to spend his holidays among the mountains, though
(like a true Forsyte) he had never attempted anything too
adventurous or too foolhardy, he had been passionately fond of
them.  And when the wonderful view (mentioned in Baedeker--
'fatiguing but repaying')--was disclosed to him after the effort
of the climb, he had doubtless felt the existence of some great,
dignified principle crowning the chaotic strivings, the petty
precipices, and ironic little dark chasms of life.  This was as
near to religion, perhaps, as his practical spirit had ever gone.

But it was many years since he had been to the mountains.  He had
taken June there two seasons running, after his wife died, and
had realized bitterly that his walking days were over.

To that old mountain--given confidence in a supreme order of
things he had long been a stranger.

He knew himself to be old, yet he felt young; and this troubled
him.  It troubled and puzzled him, too, to think that he, who had
always been so careful, should be father and grandfather to such
as seemed born to disaster.  He had nothing to say against Jo--
who could say anything against the boy, an amiable chap?--but his
position was deplorable, and this business of June's nearly as
bad.  It seemed like a fatality, and a fatality was one of those
things no man of his character could either understand or put up
with.

In writing to his son he did not really hope that anything would
come of it.  Since the ball at Roger's he had seen too clearly
how the land lay--he could put two and two together quicker than
most men--and, with the example of his own son before his eyes,
knew better than any Forsyte of them all that the pale flame
singes men's wings whether they will or no.

In the days before June's engagement, when she and Mrs. Soames
were always together, he had seen enough of Irene to feel the
spell she cast over men.  She was not a flirt, not even a
coquette--words dear to the heart of his generation, which loved
to define things by a good, broad, inadequate word--but she was
dangerous.  He could not say why.  Tell him of a quality innate
in some women--a seductive power beyond their own control!  He
would but answer: 'Humbug!'  She was dangerous, and there was an
end of it.  He wanted to close his eyes to that affair.  If it
was, it was; be did not want to hear any more about it--he only
wanted to save June's position and her peace of mind.  He still
hoped she might once more become a comfort to himself.

And so he had written.  He got little enough out of the answer.
As to what young Jolyon had made of the interview, there was
practically only the queer sentence: 'I gather that he's in the
stream.' The stream!  What stream?  What was this new-fangled way
of talking?

He sighed, and folded the last of the papers under the flap of
the bag; he knew well enough what was meant.

June came out of the dining-room, and helped him on with his
summer coat.  From her costume, and the expression of her little
resolute face, he saw at once what was coming.

"I'm going with you," she said.

"Nonsense, my dear; I go straight into the City.  I can't have
you racketting about!"

"I must see old Mrs. Smeech."

"Oh, your precious 'lame ducks!" grumbled out old Jolyon.  He
did not believe her excuse, but ceased his opposition.  There was
no doing anything with that pertinacity of hers.

At Victoria he put her into the carriage which had been ordered
for himself--a characteristic action, for he had no petty
selfishnesses.

"Now, don't you go tiring yourself, my darling," he said, and
took a cab on into the city.

June went first to a back-street in Paddington, where Mrs.
Smeech, her 'lame duck,' lived--an aged person, connected with
the charring interest; but after half an hour spent in hearing
her habitually lamentable recital, and dragooning her into
temporary comfort, she went on to Stanhope Gate.  The great house
was closed and dark.

She had decided to learn something at all costs.  It was better
to face the worst, and have it over.  And this was her plan: To
go first to Phil's aunt, Mrs. Baynes, and, failing information
there, to Irene herself.  She had no clear notion of what she
would gain by these visits.

At three o'clock she was in Lowndes Square.  With a woman's
instinct when trouble is to be faced, she had put on her best
frock, and went to the battle with a glance as courageous as old
Jolyon's itself.  Her tremors had passed into eagerness.

Mrs. Baynes, Bosinney's aunt (Louisa was her name), was in her
kitchen when June was announced, organizing the cook, for she was
an excellent housewife, and, as Baynes always said, there was 'a
lot in a good dinner.'  He did his best work after dinner.  It was
Baynes who built that remarkably fine row of tall crimson houses
in Kensington which compete with so many others for the title of
'the ugliest in London.'

On hearing June's name, she went hurriedly to her bedroom, and,
taking two large bracelets from a red morocco case in a locked
drawer, put them on her white wrists--for she possessed in a
remarkable degree that 'sense of property,' which, as we know, is
the touchstone of Forsyteism, and the foundation of good
morality.

Her figure, of medium height and broad build, with a tendency to
embonpoint, was reflected by the mirror of her whitewood
wardrobe, in a gown made under her own organization, of one of
those half-tints, reminiscent of the distempered walls of
corridors in large hotels.  She raised her hands to her hair,
which she wore a la Princesse de Galles, and touched it here and
there, settling it more firmly on her head, and her eyes were
full of an unconscious realism, as though she were looking in the
face one of life's sordid facts, and making the best of it.  In
youth her cheeks had been of cream and roses, but they were
mottled now by middle-age, and again that hard, ugly directness
came into her eyes as she dabbed a powder-puff across her
forehead.  Putting the puff down, she stood quite still before
the glass, arranging a smile over her high, important nose, her,
chin, (never large, and now growing smaller with the increase of
her neck), her thin-lipped, down-drooping mouth.  Quickly, not to
lose the effect, she grasped her skirts strongly in both hands,
and went downstairs.

She had been hoping for this visit for some time past.  Whispers
had reached her that things were not all right between her nephew
and his fiancee.  Neither of them had been near her for weeks.
She had asked Phil to dinner many times; his invariable answer
had been 'Too busy.'

Her instinct was alarmed, and the instinct in such matters of
this excellent woman was keen.  She ought to have been a Forsyte;
in young Jolyon's sense of the word, she certainly had that
privilege, and merits description as such.

She had married off her three daughters in a way that people said
was beyond their deserts, for they had the professional plainness
only to be found, as a rule, among the female kind of the more
legal callings.  Her name was upon the committees of numberless
charities connected with the Church-dances, theatricals, or
bazaars--and she never lent her name unless sure beforehand that
everything had been thoroughly organized.

She believed, as she often said, in putting things on a commercial
basis; the proper function of the Church, of charity, indeed,
of everything, was to strengthen the fabric of 'Society.'
Individual action, therefore, she considered immoral.
Organization was the only thing, for by organization alone could
you feel sure that you were getting a return for your money.
Organization--and again, organization!  And there is no doubt
that she was what old Jolyon called her--"a 'dab' at that"--he
went further, he called her "a humbug."

The enterprises to which she lent her name were organized so
admirably that by the time the takings were handed over, they
were indeed skim milk divested of all cream of human kindness.
But as she often justly remarked, sentiment was to be deprecated.
She was, in fact, a little academic.

This great and good woman, so highly thought of in ecclesiastical
circles, was one of the principal priestesses in the temple of
Forsyteism, keeping alive day and night a sacred flame to the God
of Property, whose altar is inscribed with those inspiring words:
'Nothing for nothing, and really remarkably little for sixpence.'

When she entered a room it was felt that something substantial
had come in, which was probably the reason of her popularity as a
patroness.  People liked something substantial when they had paid
money for it; and they would look at her--surrounded by her staff
in charity ballrooms, with her high nose and her broad, square
figure, attired in an uniform covered with sequins--as though she
were a general.

The only thing against her was that she had not a double name.
She was a power in upper middle-class society, with its hundred
sets and circles, all intersecting on the common battlefield of
charity functions, and on that battlefield brushing skirts so
pleasantly with the skirts of Society with the capital 'S.' She
was a power in society with the smaller 's,' that larger, more
significant, and more powerful body, where the commercially
Christian institutions, maxims, and 'principle,' which Mrs.
Baynes embodied, were real life-blood, circulating freely, real
business currency, not merely the sterilized imitation that
flowed in the veins of smaller Society with the larger 'S.'
People who knew her felt her to be sound--a sound woman, who
never gave herself away, nor anything else, if she could possibly
help it.

She had been on the worst sort of terms with Bosinney's father,
who had not infrequently made her the object of an unpardonable
ridicule.  She alluded to him now that he was gone as her 'poor,
dear, irreverend brother.'

She greeted June with the careful effusion of which she was a
mistress, a little afraid of her as far as a woman of her
eminence in the commercial and Christian world could be afraid--
for so slight a girl June had a great dignity, the fearlessness
of her eyes gave her that.  And Mrs. Baynes, too, shrewdly
recognized that behind the uncompromising frankness of June's
manner there was much of the Forsyte.  If the girl had been
merely frank and courageous, Mrs. Baynes would have thought her
'cranky,' and despised her; if she had been merely a Forsyte,
like Francie--let us say--she would have patronized her from
sheer weight of metal; but June, small though she was--Mrs.
Baynes habitually admired quantity--gave her an uneasy feeling;
and she placed her in a chair opposite the light.

There was another reason for her respect which Mrs. Baynes, too
good a churchwoman to be worldly, would have been the last to
admit--she often heard her husband describe old Jolyon as
extremely well off, and was biassed towards his granddaughter for
the soundest of all reasons.  To-day she felt the emotion with
which we read a novel describing a hero and an inheritance,
nervously anxious lest, by some frightful lapse of the novelist,
the young man should be left without it at the end.

Her manner was warm; she had never seen so clearly before how
distinguished and desirable a girl this was.  She asked after old
Jolyon's health.  A wonderful man for his age; so upright, and
young looking, and how old was he?  Eighty-one!  She would never
have thought it!  They were at the sea!  Very nice for them; she
supposed June heard from Phil every day?  Her light grey eyes
became more prominent as she asked this question; but the girl
met the glance without flinching.

"No," she said, "he never writes!"

Mrs. Baynes's eyes dropped; they had no intention of doing so,
but they did.  They recovered immediately.

"Of course not.  That's Phil all over--he was always like that!"

"Was he?" said June.

The brevity of the answer caused Mrs. Baynes's bright smile a
moment's hesitation; she disguised it by a quick movement, and
spreading her skirts afresh, said: "Why, my dear--he's quite the
most harum-scarum person; one never pays the slightest attention
to what he does!"

The conviction came suddenly to June that she was wasting her
time; even were she to put a question point-blank, she would
never get anything out of this woman.

'Do you see him?' she asked, her face crimsoning.

The perspiration broke out on Mrs. Baynes' forehead beneath the
powder.

"Oh, yes!  I don't remember when he was here last--indeed, we
haven't seen much of him lately.  He's so busy with your cousin's
house; I'm told it'll be finished directly.  We must organize a
little dinner to celebrate the event; do come and stay the night
with us!"

"Thank you," said June.  Again she thought: 'I'm only wasting my
time.  This woman will tell me nothing.'

She got up to go.  A change came over Mrs. Baynes.  She rose too;
her lips twitched, she fidgeted her hands.  Something was
evidently very wrong, and she did not dare to ask this girl, who
stood there, a slim, straight little figure, with her decided
face, her set jaw, and resentful eyes.  She was not accustomed to
be afraid of asking question's--all organization was based on
the asking of questions!

But the issue was so grave that her nerve, normally strong, was
fairly shaken; only that morning her husband had said: "Old Mr.
Forsyte must be worth well over a hundred thousand pounds!"

And this girl stood there, holding out her hand--holding out her
hand!

The chance might be slipping away--she couldn't tell--the chance
of keeping her in the family, and yet she dared not speak.

Her eyes followed June to the door.

It closed.

Then with an exclamation Mrs. Baynes ran forward, wobbling her
bulky frame from side to side, and opened it again.

Too late!  She heard the front door click, and stood still, an
expression of real anger and mortification on her face.

June went along the Square with her bird-like quickness.  She
detested that woman now whom in happier days she had been
accustomed to think so kind.  Was she always to be put off thus,
and forced to undergo this torturing suspense?

She would go to Phil himself, and ask him what he meant.  She had
the right to know.  She hurried on down Sloane Street till she
came to Bosinney's number.  Passing the swing-door at the bottom,
she ran up the stairs, her heart thumping painfully.

At the top of the third flight she paused for breath, and holding
on to the bannisters, stood listening.  No sound came from above.

With a very white face she mounted the last flight.  She saw the
door, with his name on the plate.  And the resolution that had
brought her so far evaporated.

The full meaning of her conduct came to her.  She felt hot all
over; the palms of her hands were moist beneath the thin silk
covering of her gloves.

She drew back to the stairs, but did not descend.  Leaning
against the rail she tried to get rid of a feeling of being
choked; and she gazed at the door with a sort of dreadful
courage.  No! she refused to go down.  Did it matter what people
thought of her?  They would never know!  No one would help her if
she did not help herself!  She would go through with it.

Forcing herself, therefore, to leave the support of the wall, she
rang the bell.  The door did not open, and all her shame and fear
suddenly abandoned her; she rang again and again, as though in
spite of its emptiness she could drag some response out of that
closed room, some recompense for the shame and fear that visit
had cost her.  It did not open; she left off ringing, and,
sitting down at the top of the stairs, buried her face in her
hands.

Presently she stole down, out into the air.  She felt as though
she had passed through a bad illness, and had no desire now but
to get home as quickly as she could.  The people she met seemed
to know where she had been, what she had been doing; and
suddenly--over on the opposite side, going towards his rooms from
the direction of Montpellier Square--she saw Bosinney himself.

She made a movement to cross into the traffic.  Their eyes met,
and he raised his hat.  An omnibus passed, obscuring her view;
then, from the edge of the pavement, through a gap in the
traffic, she saw him walking on.

And June stood motionless, looking after him.




CHAPTER XIII

PERFECTION OF THE HOUSE


'One mockturtle, clear; one oxtail; two glasses of port.'

In the upper room at French's, where a Forsyte could still get
heavy English food, James and his son were sitting down to lunch.

Of all eating-places James liked best to come here; there was
something unpretentious, well-flavoured, and filling about it,
and though he had been to a certain extent corrupted by the
necessity for being fashionable, and the trend of habits keeping
pace with an income that would increase, he still hankered in
quiet City moments after the tasty fleshpots of his earlier days.
Here you were served by hairy English waiters in aprons; there
was sawdust on the floor, and three round gilt looking-glasses
hung just above the line of sight.  They had only recently done
away with the cubicles, too, in which you could have your chop,
prime chump, with a floury-potato, without seeing your
neighbours, like a gentleman.

He tucked the top corner of his napkin behind the third button of
his waistcoat, a practice he had been obliged to abandon years
ago in the West End.  He felt that he should relish his soup--the
entire morning had been given to winding up the estate of an old
friend.

After filling his mouth with household bread, stale, he at once
began: "How are you going down to Robin Hill?  You going to take
Irene?  You'd better take her.  I should think there'll be a lot
that'll want seeing to."

Without looking up, Soames answered: "She won't go."

"Won't go?  What's the meaning of that?  She's going to live in
the house, isn't she?"

Soames made no reply.

"I don't know what's coming to women nowadays," mumbled James; "I
never used to have any trouble with them.  She's had too much
liberty.  She's spoiled...."

Soames lifted his eyes: "I won't have anything said against her,"
he said unexpectedly.

The silence was only broken now by the supping of James's soup.

The waiter brought the two glasses of port, but Soames stopped
him.

"That's not the way to serve port," he said; "take them away, and
bring the bottle."

Rousing himself from his reverie over the soup, James took one of
his rapid shifting surveys of surrounding facts.

"Your mother's in bed," he said; "you can have the carriage to
take you down.  I should think Irene'd like the drive.  This
young Bosinney'll be there, I suppose, to show you over"

Soames nodded.

"I should like to go and see for myself what sort of a job he's
made finishing off," pursued James.  "I'll just drive round and
pick you both up."

"I am going down by train," replied Soames.  "If you like to
drive round and see, Irene might go with you, I can't tell."

He signed to the waiter to bring the bill, which James paid.

They parted at St. Paul's, Soames branching off to the station,
James taking his omnibus westwards.

He had secured the corner seat next the conductor, where his long
legs made it difficult for anyone to get in, and at all who
passed him he looked resentfully, as if they had no business to
be using up his air.

He intended to take an opportunity this afternoon of speaking to
Irene.  A word in time saved nine; and now that she was going to
live in the country there was a chance for her to turn over a new
leaf!  He could see that Soames wouldn't stand very much more of
her goings on!

It did not occur to him to define what he meant by her 'goings
on'; the expression was wide, vague, and suited to a Forsyte.
And James had more than his common share of courage after lunch.

On reaching home, he ordered out the barouche, with special
instructions that the groom was to go too.  He wished to be kind
to her, and to give her every chance.

When the door of No.62 was opened he could distinctly hear her
singing, and said so at once, to prevent any chance of being
denied entrance.

Yes, Mrs. Soames was in, but the maid did not know if she was
seeing people.

James, moving with the rapidity that ever astonished the
observers of his long figure and absorbed expression, went
forthwith into the drawing-room without permitting this to be
ascertained.  He found Irene seated at the piano with her hands
arrested on the keys, evidently listening to the voices in the
hall.  She greeted him without smiling.

"Your mother-in-law's in bed," he began, hoping at once to enlist
her sympathy.  "I've got the carriage here.  Now, be a good girl,
and put on your hat and come with me for a drive.  It'll do you
good!"

Irene looked at him as though about to refuse, but, seeming to
change her mind, went upstairs, and came down again with her hat
on.

"Where are you going to take me?" she asked.

"We'll just go down to Robin Hill," said James, spluttering out
his words very quick; "the horses want exercise, and I should
like to see what they've been doing down there."

Irene hung back, but again changed her mind, and went out to the
carriage, James brooding over her closely, to make quite sure.

It was not before he had got her more than half way that he
began: "Soames is very fond of you--he won't have anything said
against you; why don't you show him more affection?"

Irene flushed, and said in a low voice: "I can't show what I
haven't got."

James looked at her sharply; he felt that now he had her in his
own carriage, with his own horses and servants, he was really in
command of the situation.  She could not put him off; nor would
she make a scene in public.

"I can't think what you're about," he said.  "He's a very good
husband!"

Irene's answer was so low as to be almost inaudible among the
sounds of traffic.  He caught the words: "You are not married to
him!"

"What's that got to do with it?  He's given you everything you
want.  He's always ready to take you anywhere, and now he's built
you this house in the country.  It's not as if you had anything
of your own."

"No."

Again James looked at her; he could not make out the expression
on her face.  She looked almost as if she were going to cry, and
yet....

"I'm sure," he muttered hastily, "we've all tried to be kind to
you."

Irene's lips quivered; to his dismay James saw a tear steal down
her cheek.  He felt a choke rise in his own throat.

"We're all fond of you," he said, "if you'd only"--he was going
to say, "behave yourself," but changed it to--"if you'd only be
more of a wife to him."

Irene did not answer, and James, too, ceased speaking.  There was
something in her silence which disconcerted him; it was not the
silence of obstinacy, rather that of acquiescence in all that he
could find to say.  And yet he felt as if he had not had the last
word.  He could not understand this.

He was unable, however, to long keep silence.

"I suppose that young Bosinney," he said, "will be getting
married to June now?"

Irene's face changed.  "I don't know," she said; "you should ask
her."

"Does she write to you?" No.

"How's that?" said James.  "I thought you and she were such great
friends."

Irene turned on him.  "Again," she said, "you should ask her!"

"Well," flustered James, frightened by her look, "it's very odd
that I can't get a plain answer to a plain question, but there it
is."

He sat ruminating over his rebuff, and burst out at last:

"Well, I've warned you.  You won't look ahead.  Soames he doesn't
say much, but I can see he won't stand a great deal more of this
sort of thing.  You'll have nobody but yourself to blame, and,
what's more, you'll get no sympathy from anybody."

Irene bent her head with a little smiling bow.  "I am very much
obliged to you."

James did not know what on earth to answer.

The bright hot morning had changed slowly to a grey, oppressive
afternoon; a heavy bank of clouds, with the yellow tinge of
coming thunder, had risen in the south, and was creeping up.

The branches of the trees dropped motionless across the road
without the smallest stir of foliage.  A faint odour of glue from
the heated horses clung in the thick air; the coachman and groom,
rigid and unbending, exchanged stealthy murmurs on the box,
without ever turning their heads.

To James' great relief they reached the house at last; the
silence and impenetrability of this woman by his side, whom he
had always thought so soft and mild, alarmed him.

The carriage put them down at the door, and they entered.

The hall was cool, and so still that it was like passing into a
tomb; a shudder ran down James's spine.  He quickly lifted the
heavy leather curtains between the columns into the inner court.

He could not restrain an exclamation of approval.

The decoration was really in excellent taste.  The dull ruby
tiles that extended from the foot of the walls to the verge of a
circular clump of tall iris plants, surrounding in turn a sunken
basin of white marble filled with water, were obviously of the
best quality.  He admired extremely the purple leather curtains
drawn along one entire side, framing a huge white-tiled stove.
The central partitions of the skylight had been slid back, and
the warm air from outside penetrated into the very heart of the
house.

He stood, his hands behind him, his head bent back on his high,
narrow shoulders, spying the tracery on the columns and the
pattern of the frieze which ran round the, ivory-coloured walls
under the gallery.  Evidently, no pains had been spared.  It was
quite the house of a gentleman.  He went up to the curtains, and,
having discovered how they were worked, drew them asunder and
disclosed the picture-gallery, ending in a great window taking up
the whole end of the room.  It had a black oak floor, and its
walls, again, were of ivory white.  He went on throwing open
doors, and peeping in.  Everything was in apple-pie order, ready
for immediate occupation.

He turned round at last to speak to Irene, and saw her standing
over in the garden entrance, with her husband and Bosinney.

Though not remarkable for sensibility, James felt at once that
something was wrong.  He went up to them, and, vaguely alarmed,
ignorant of the nature of the trouble, made an attempt to smooth
things over.

"How are you, Mr. Bosinney?" he said, holding out his hand.
"You've been spending money pretty freely down here, I should
say!"

Soames turned his back, and walked away.

James looked from Bosinney's frowning face to Irene, and, in his
agitation, spoke his thoughts aloud: "Well, I can't tell what's
the matter.  Nobody tells me anything!"  And, making off after his
son, he heard Bosinney's short laugh, and his "Well, thank God!
You look so...."  Most unfortunately he lost the rest.

What had happened?  He glanced back.  Irene was very close to the
architect, and her face not like the face he knew of her.  He
hastened up to his son.

Soames was pacing the picture-gallery.

"What's the matter?" said James.  "What's all this?"

Soames looked at him with his supercilious calm unbroken, but
James knew well enough that he was violently angry.

"Our friend," he said, "has exceeded his instructions again,
that's all.  So much the worse for him this time."

He turned round and walked back towards the door.  James followed
hurriedly, edging himself in front.  He saw Irene take her finger
from before her lips, heard her say something in her ordinary
voice, and began to speak before he reached them.

"There's a storm coming on.  We'd better get home.  We can't take
you, I suppose, Mr. Bosinney?  No, I suppose not.  Then,
good-bye!"  He held out his hand.  Bosinney did not take it, but,
turning with a laugh, said:

"Good-bye, Mr. Forsyte.  Don't get caught in the storm!" and
walked away.

"Well," began James, "I don't know...."

But the 'sight of Irene's face stopped him.  Taking hold of his
daughter-in-law by the elbow, he escorted her towards the
carriage.  He felt certain, quite certain, they had been making
some appointment or other....

Nothing in this world is more sure to upset a Forsyte than the
discovery that something on which he has stipulated to spend a
certain sum has cost more.  And this is reasonable, for upon the
accuracy of his estimates the whole policy of his life is
ordered.  If he cannot rely on definite values of property, his
compass is amiss; he is adrift upon bitter waters without a helm.

After writing to Bosinney in the terms that have already been
chronicled, Soames had dismissed the cost of the house from his
mind.  He believed that he had made the matter of the final cost
so very plain that the possibility of its being again exceeded
had really never entered his head.  On hearing from Bosinney that
his limit of twelve thousand pounds would be exceeded by some-
thing like four hundred, he had grown white with anger.  His
original estimate of the cost of the house completed had been ten
thousand pounds, and he had often blamed himself severely for
allowing himself to be led into repeated excesses.  Over this
last expenditure, however, Bosinney had put himself completely in
the wrong.  How on earth a fellow could make such an ass of
himself Soames could not conceive; but he had done so, and all
the rancour and hidden jealousy that had been burning against him
for so long was now focussed in rage at this crowning piece of
extravagance.  The attitude of the confident and friendly husband
was gone.  To preserve property--his wife--he had assumed it, to
preserve property of another kind he lost it now.

"Ah!" he had said to Bosinney when he could speak, "and I suppose
you're perfectly contented with yourself.  But I may as well tell
you that you've altogether mistaken your man!"

What he meant by those words he did not quite know at the time,
but after dinner he looked up the correspondence between himself
and Bosinney to make quite sure.  There could be no two opinions
about it--the fellow had made himself liable for that extra four
hundred, or, at all events, for three hundred and fifty of it,
and he would have to make it good.

He was looking at his wife's face when he came to this conclusion.
Seated in her usual seat on the sofa, she was altering the lace
on a collar.  She had not once spoken to him all the evening.

He went up to the mantelpiece, and contemplating his face in the
mirror said: "Your friend the Buccaneer has made a fool of
himself; he will have to pay for it!"

She looked at him scornfully, and answered: "I don't know what
you are talking about!"

"You soon will.  A mere trifle, quite beneath your contempt--four
hundred pounds."

"Do you mean that you are going to make him pay that towards this
hateful, house?"

"I do."

"And you know he's got nothing?"

"Yes."

"Then you are meaner than I thought you."

Soames turned from the mirror, and unconsciously taking a china
cup from the mantelpiece, clasped his hands around it as though
praying.  He saw her bosom rise and fall, her eyes darkening with
anger, and taking no notice of the taunt, he asked quietly:

"Are you carrying on a flirtation with Bosinney?"

"No, I am not!"

Her eyes met his, and he looked away.  He neither believed nor
disbelieved her, but he knew that he had made a mistake in
asking; he never had known, never would know, what she was
thinking.  The sight of her inscrutable face, the thought of all
the hundreds of evenings he had seen her sitting there like that
soft and passive, but unreadable, unknown, enraged him beyond
measure.

"I believe you are made of stone," he said, clenching his fingers
so hard that he broke the fragile cup.  The pieces fell into the
grate.  And Irene smiled.

"You seem to forget," she said, "that cup is not!"

Soames gripped her arm.  "A good beating," he said, "is the only
thing that would bring you to your senses," but turning on his
heel, he left the room.




CHAPTER XIV

SOAMES SITS ON THE STAIRS


Soames went upstairs that night that he had gone too far.  He was
prepared to offer excuses for his words.

He turned out the gas still burning in the passage outside their
room.  Pausing, with his hand on the knob of the door, he tried
to shape his apology, for he had no intention of letting her see
that he was nervous.

But the door did not open, nor when he pulled it and turned the
handle firmly.  She must have locked it for some reason, and
forgotten.

Entering his dressing-room, where the gas was also light and
burning low, he went quickly to the other door.  That too was
locked.  Then he noticed that the camp bed which he occasionally
used was prepared, and his sleeping-suit laid out upon it.  He
put his hand up to his forehead, and brought it away wet.  It
dawned on him that he was barred out.

He went back to the door, and rattling the handle stealthily,
called: "Unlock the door, do you hear?  Unlock the door!"

There was a faint rustling, but no answer.

"Do you hear?  Let me in at once--I insist on being let in!"

He could catch the sound of her breathing close to the door, like
the breathing of a creature threatened by danger.

There was something terrifying in this inexorable silence, in the
impossibility of getting at her.  He went back to the other door,
and putting his whole weight against it, tried to burst it open.
The door was a new one--he had had them renewed himself, in
readiness for their coming in after the honeymoon.  In a rage he
lifted his foot to kick in the panel; the thought of the servants
restrained him, and he felt suddenly that he was beaten.

Flinging himself down in the dressing-room, he took up a book.

But instead of the print he seemed to see his wife--with her
yellow hair flowing over her bare shoulders, and her great dark
eyes--standing like an animal at bay.  And the whole meaning of
her act of revolt came to him.  She meant it to be for good.

He could not sit still, and went to the door again.  He could
still hear her, and he called: "Irene!  Irene!"

He did not mean to make his voice pathetic.

In ominous answer, the faint sounds ceased.  He stood with
clenched hands, thinking.

Presently he stole round on tiptoe, and running suddenly at the
other door, made a supreme effort to break it open.  It creaked,
but did not yield.  He sat down on the stairs and buried his face
in his hands.

For a long time he sat there in the dark, the moon through the
skylight above laying a pale smear which lengthened slowly
towards him down the stairway.  He tried to be philosophical.

Since she had locked her doors she had no further claim as a
wife, and he would console himself with other women.

It was but a spectral journey he made among such delights--he had
no appetite for these exploits.  He had never had much, and he
had lost the habit.  He felt that he could never recover it.  His
hunger could only be appeased by his wife, inexorable and
frightened, behind these shut doors.  No other woman could help
him.

This conviction came to him with terrible force out there in the
dark.

His philosophy left him; and surly anger took its place.  Her
conduct was immoral, inexcusable, worthy of any punishment within
his power.  He desired no one but her, and she refused him!

She must really hate him, then!  He had never believed it yet.
He did not believe it now.  It seemed to him incredible.  He felt
as though he had lost for ever his power of judgment.  If she, so
soft and yielding as he had always judged her, could take this
decided step--what could not happen?

Then he asked himself again if she were carrying on an intrigue
with Bosinney.  He did not believe that she was; he could not
afford to believe such a reason for her conduct--the thought was
not to be faced.

It would be unbearable to contemplate the necessity of making his
marital relations public property.  Short of the most convincing
proofs he must still refuse to believe, for he did not wish to
punish himself.  And all the time at heart--he did believe.

The moonlight cast a greyish tinge over his figure, hunched
against the staircase wall.

Bosinney was in love with her!  He hated the fellow, and would
not spare him now.  He could and would refuse to pay a penny
piece over twelve thousand and fifty pounds--the extreme limit
fixed in the correspondence; or rather he would pay, he would pay
and sue him for damages.  He would go to Jobling and Boulter and
put the matter in their hands.  He would ruin the impecunious
beggar!  And suddenly--though what connection between the
thoughts?--he reflected that Irene had no money either.  They
were both beggars.  This gave him a strange satisfaction.

The silence was broken by a faint creaking through the wall.  She
was going to bed at last.  Ah! Joy and pleasant dreams!  If she
threw the door open wide he would not go in now!

But his lips, that were twisted in a bitter smile, twitched; he
covered his eyes with his hands....

It was late the following afternoon when Soames stood in the
dining-room window gazing gloomily into the Square.

The sunlight still showered on the plane-trees, and in the breeze
their gay broad leaves shone and swung in rhyme to a barrel organ
at the corner.  It was playing a waltz, an old waltz that was out
of fashion, with a fateful rhythm in the notes; and it went on
and on, though nothing indeed but leaves danced to the tune.

The woman did not look too gay, for she was tired; and from the
tall houses no one threw her down coppers.  She moved the organ
on, and three doors off began again.

It was the waltz they had played at Roger's when Irene had danced
with Bosinney; and the perfume of the gardenias she had worn came
back to Soames, drifted by the malicious music, as it had been
drifted to him then, when she passed, her hair glistening, her
eyes so soft, drawing Bosinney on and on down an endless
ballroom.

The organ woman plied her handle slowly; she had been grinding
her tune all day-grinding it in Sloane Street hard by, grinding
it perhaps to Bosinney himself.

Soames turned, took a cigarette from the carven box, and walked
back to the window.  The tune had mesmerized him, and there came
into his view Irene, her sunshade furled, hastening homewards
down the Square, in a soft, rose-coloured blouse with drooping
sleeves, that he did not know.  She stopped before the organ,
took out her purse, and gave the woman money.

Soames shrank back and stood where he could see into the hall.

She came in with her latch-key, put down her sunshade, and stood
looking at herself in the glass.  Her cheeks were flushed as if
the sun had burned them; her lips were parted in a smile.  She
stretched her arms out as though to embrace herself, with a laugh
that for all the world was like a sob.

Soames stepped forward.

"Very-pretty!" he said.

But as though shot she spun round, and would have passed him up
the stairs.  He barred the way.

"Why such a hurry?" he said, and his eyes fastened on a curl of
hair fallen loose across her ear....

He hardly recognised her.  She seemed on fire, so deep and rich
the colour of her cheeks, her eyes, her lips, and of the unusual
blouse she wore.

She put up her hand and smoothed back the curl.  She was
breathing fast and deep, as though she had been running, and with
every breath perfume seemed to come from her hair, and from her
body, like perfume from an opening flower.

"I don't like that blouse," he said slowly, "it's a soft,
shapeless thing!"

He lifted his finger towards her breast, but she dashed his hand
aside.

"Don't touch me!" she cried.

He caught her wrist; she wrenched it away.

"And where may you have been?" he asked.

"In heaven--out of this house!"  With those words she fled
upstairs.

Outside--in thanksgiving--at the very door, the organ-grinder was
playing the waltz.

And Soames stood motionless.  What prevented him from following
her?

Was it that, with the eyes of faith, he saw Bosinney looking down
from that high window in Sloane Street, straining his eyes for
yet another glimpse of Irene's vanished figure, cooling his
flushed face, dreaming of the moment when she flung herself on
his breast--the scent of her still in the air around, and the
sound of her laugh that was like a sob?





PART III


CHAPTER I

Mrs. MAcANDER'S EVIDENCE


Many  people, no doubt, including the editor of the 'Ultra
Vivisectionist,' then in the bloom of its first youth, would say
that Soames was less than a man not to have removed the locks
from his wife's doors, and, after beating her soundly, resumed
wedded happiness.

Brutality is not so deplorably diluted by humaneness as it used
to be, yet a sentimental segment of the population may still be
relieved to learn that he did none of these things.  For active
brutality, is not popular with Forsytes; they are too
circumspect, and, on the whole, too softhearted.  And in Soames
there was some common pride, not sufficient to make him do a
really generous action, but enough to prevent his indulging in an
extremely mean one, except, perhaps, in very hot blood.  Above
all this true Forsyte refused to feel himself ridiculous.  Short
of actually beating his wife, he perceived nothing to be done; he
therefore accepted the situation without another word.

Throughout the summer and autumn he continued to go to the
office, to sort his pictures, and ask his friends to dinner.

He did not leave town; Irene refused to go away.  The house at
Robin Hill, finished though it was, remained empty and ownerless.
Soames had brought a suit against the Buccaneer, in which he
claimed from him the sum of three hundred and fifty pounds.

A firm of solicitors, Messrs.  Freak and Able, had put in a
defence on Bosinney's behalf.  Admitting the facts, they raised a
point on the correspondence which, divested of legal phraseology,
amounted to this: To speak of 'a free hand in the terms of this
correspondence' is an Irish bull.

By a chance, fortuitous but not improbable in the close borough
of legal circles, a good deal of information came to Soames' ear
anent this line of policy, the working partner in his firm,
Bustard, happening to sit next at dinner at Walmisley's, the
Taxing Master, to young Chankery, of the Common Law Bar.

The necessity for talking what is known as 'shop,' which comes on
all lawyers with the removal of the ladies, caused Chankery, a
young and promising advocate, to propound an impersonal conundrum
to his neighbour, whose name he did not know, for, seated as he
permanently was in the background, Bustard had practically no
name.

He had, said Chankery, a case coming on with a 'very nice point.'
He then explained, preserving every professional discretion, the
riddle in Soames' case.  Everyone, he said, to whom he had
spoken, thought it a nice point.  The issue was small
unfortunately, 'though d----d serious for his client he
believed'--Walmisley's champagne was bad but plentiful.  A Judge
would make short work of it, he was afraid.  He intended to make
a big effort--the point was a nice one.  What did his neighbour
say?

Bustard, a model of secrecy, said nothing.  He related the
incident to Soames however with some malice, for this quiet man
was capable of human feeling, ending with his own opinion that
the point was 'a very nice one.'

In accordance with his resolve, our Forsyte had put his interests
into the hands of Jobling and Boulter.  From the moment of doing
so he regretted that he had not acted for himself.  On receiving
a copy of Bosinney's defence he went over to their offices.

Boulter, who had the matter in hand, Jobling having died some
years before, told him that in his opinion it was rather a nice
point; he would like counsel's opinion on it.

Soames told him to go to a good man, and they went to Waterbuck,
Q.C., marking him ten and one, who kept the papers six weeks and
then wrote as follows

'In my opinion the true interpretation of this correspondence
depends very much on the intention of the parties, and will turn
upon the evidence given at the trial.  I am of opinion that an
attempt should be made to secure from the architect an admission
that he understood he was not to spend at the outside more than
twelve thousand and fifty pounds.  With regard to the expression,
"a free hand in the terms of this correspondence," to which my
attention is directed, the point is a nice one; but I am of
opinion that upon the whole the ruling in "Boileau v. The
Blasted Cement Co., Ltd.," will apply.'

Upon this opinion they acted, administering interrogatories, but
to their annoyance Messrs.  Freak and Able answered these in so
masterly a fashion that nothing whatever was admitted and that
without prejudice.

It was on October 1 that Soames read Waterbuck's opinion, in the
dining-room before dinner.

It made him nervous; not so much because of the case of 'Boileau
v. The Blasted Cement Co., Ltd.,' as that the point had lately
begun to seem to him, too, a nice one; there was about it just
that pleasant flavour of subtlety so attractive to the best legal
appetites.  To have his own impression confirmed by Waterbuck,
Q.C., would have disturbed any man.

He sat thinking it over, and staring at the empty grate, for
though autumn had come, the weather kept as gloriously fine that
jubilee year as if it were still high August.  It was not
pleasant to be disturbed; he desired too passionately to set his
foot on Bosinney's neck.

Though he had not seen the architect since the last afternoon at
Robin Hill, he was never free from the sense of his presence--
never free from the memory of his worn face with its high cheek
bones and enthusiastic eyes.  It would riot be too much to say
that he had never got rid of the feeling of that night when he
heard the peacock's cry at dawn--the feeling that Bosinney
haunted the house.  And every man's shape that he saw in the dark
evenings walking past, seemed that of him whom George had so
appropriately named the Buccaneer.

Irene still met him, he was certain; where, or how, he neither
knew, nor asked; deterred by a vague and secret dread of too much
knowledge.  It all seemed subterranean nowadays.

Sometimes when he questioned his wife as to where she had been,
which he still made a point of doing, as every Forsyte should,
she looked very strange.  Her self-possession was wonderful, but
there were moments when, behind the mask of her face, inscrutable
as it had always been to him, lurked an expression he had never
been used to see there.

She had taken to lunching out too; when he asked Bilson if her
mistress had been in to lunch, as often as not she would answer:
"No, sir."

He strongly disapproved of her gadding about by herself, and told
her so.  But she took no notice.  There was something that
angered, amazed, yet almost amused, him about the calm way in
which she disregarded his wishes.  It was really as if she were
hugging to herself the thought of a triumph over him.

He rose from the perusal of Waterbuck, Q.C.'s opinion, and, going
upstairs, entered her room, for she did not lock her doors till
bed-time--she had the decency, he found, to save the feelings of
the servants.  She was brushing her hair, and turned to him with
strange fierceness.

"What do you want?" she said.  "Please leave my room!"

He answered: "I want to know how long this state of things
between us is to last?  I have put up with it long enough."

"Will you please leave my room?"

"Will you treat me as your husband?"

"No."

"Then, I shall take steps to make you."

"Do!"

He stared, amazed at the calmness of her answer.  Her lips were
compressed in a thin line; her hair lay in fluffy masses on her
bare shoulders, in all its strange golden contrast to her dark
eyes--those eyes alive with the emotions of fear, hate, contempt,
and odd, haunting triumph.

"Now, please, will you leave my room?" He turned round, and went
sulkily out.

He knew very well that he had no intention of taking steps, and
he saw that she knew too--knew that he was afraid to.

It was a habit with him to tell her the doings of his day: how
such and such clients had called; how he had arranged a mortgage
for Parkes; how that long-standing suit of Fryer v. Forsyte was
getting on, which, arising in the preternaturally careful
disposition of his property by his great uncle Nicholas, who had
tied it up so that no one could get at it at all, seemed likely
to remain a source of income for several solicitors till the Day
of Judgment.

And how he had called in at Jobson's, and seen a Boucher sold,
which he had just missed buying of Talleyrand and Sons in Pall
Mall.

He had an admiration for Boucher, Watteau, and all that school.
It was a habit with him to tell her all these matters, and he
continued to do it even now, talking for long spells at dinner,
as though by the volubility of words he could conceal from
himself the ache in his heart.

Often, if they were alone, he made an attempt to kiss her when
she said good-night.  He may have had some vague notion that some
night she would let him; or perhaps only the feeling that a
husband ought to kiss his wife.  Even if she hated him, he at all
events ought not to put himself in the wrong by neglecting this
ancient rite.

And why did she hate him?  Even now he could not altogether
believe it.  It was strange to be hated!--the emotion was too
extreme; yet he hated Bosinney, that Buccaneer, that prowling
vagabond, that night-wanderer.  For in his thoughts Soames always
saw him lying in wait--wandering.  Ah, but he must be in very low
water!  Young Burkitt, the architect, had seen him coming out of
a third-rate restaurant, looking terribly down in the mouth!

During all the hours he lay awake, thinking over the situation,
which seemed to have no end--unless she should suddenly come to
her senses--never once did the thought of separating from his
wife seriously enter his head....

And the Forsytes!  What part did they play in this stage of
Soames' subterranean tragedy?

Truth to say, little or none, for they were at the sea.

From hotels, hydropathics, or lodging-houses, they were bathing
daily; laying in a stock of ozone to last them through the
winter.

Each section, in the vineyard of its own choosing, grew and
culled and pressed and bottled the grapes of a pet sea-air.

The end of September began to witness their several returns.

In rude health and small omnibuses, with considerable colour in
their cheeks, they arrived daily from the various termini.  The
following morning saw them back at their vocations.

On the next Sunday Timothy's was thronged from lunch till dinner.

Amongst other gossip, too numerous and interesting to relate,
Mrs. Septimus Small mentioned that Soames and Irene had not been
away.

It remained for a comparative outsider to supply the next
evidence of interest.

It chanced that one afternoon late in September, Mrs. MacAnder,
Winifred Dartie's greatest friend, taking a constitutional, with
young Augustus Flippard, on her bicycle in Richmond Park, passed
Irene and Bosinney walking from the bracken towards the Sheen
Gate.

Perhaps the poor little woman was thirsty, for she had ridden
long on a hard, dry road, and, as all London knows, to ride a
bicycle and talk to young Flippard will try the toughest
constitution; or perhaps the sight of the cool bracken grove,
whence 'those two' were coming down, excited her envy.  The cool
bracken grove on the top of the hill, with the oak boughs for
roof, where the pigeons were raising an endless wedding hymn, and
the autumn, humming, whispered to the ears of lovers in the fern,
while the deer stole by.  The bracken grove of irretrievable
delights, of golden minutes in the long marriage of heaven and
earth!  The bracken grove, sacred to stags, to strange tree-stump
fauns leaping around the silver whiteness of a birch-tree nymph
at summer dusk

This lady knew all the Forsytes, and having been at June's 'at
home,' was not at a loss to see with whom she had to deal.  Her
own marriage, poor thing, had not been successful, but having
had the good sense and ability to force her husband into
pronounced error, she herself had passed through the necessary
divorce proceedings without incurring censure.

She was therefore a judge of all that sort of thing, and lived in
one of those large buildings, where in small sets of apartments,
are gathered incredible quantities of Forsytes, whose chief
recreation out of business hours is the discussion of each
other's affairs.

Poor little woman, perhaps she was thirsty, certainly she was
bored, for Flippard was a wit.  To see 'those two' in so unlikely
a spot was quite a merciful 'pick-me-up.'

At the MacAnder, like all London, Time pauses.

This small but remarkable woman merits attention; her all-seeing
eye and shrewd tongue were inscrutably the means of furthering
the ends of Providence.

With an air of being in at the death, she had an almost
distressing power of taking care of herself.  She had done more,
perhaps, in her way than any woman about town to destroy the
sense of chivalry which still clogs the wheel of civilization.
So smart she was, and spoken of endearingly as 'the little
MacAnder!'

Dressing tightly and well, she belonged to a Woman's Club, but
was by no means the neurotic and dismal type of member who was
always thinking of her rights.  She took her rights unconsciously,
they came natural to her, and she knew exactly how to make the
most of them without exciting anything but admiration amongst
that great class to whom she was affiliated, not precisely
perhaps by manner, but by birth, breeding, and the true, the
secret gauge, a sense of property.

The daughter of a Bedfordshire solicitor, by the daughter of a
clergyman, she had never, through all the painful experience of
being married to a very mild painter with a cranky love of
Nature, who had deserted her for an actress, lost touch with the
requirements, beliefs, and inner feeling of Society; and, on
attaining her liberty, she placed herself without effort in the
very van of Forsyteism.

Always in good spirits, and 'full of information,' she was
universally welcomed.  She excited neither surprise nor
disapprobation when encountered on the Rhine or at Zermatt,
either alone, or travelling with a lady and two gentlemen; it was
felt that she was perfectly capable of taking care of herself;
and the hearts of all Forsytes warmed to that wonderful instinct,
which enabled her to enjoy everything without giving anything
away.  It was generally felt that to such women as Mrs. MacAnder
should we look for the perpetuation and increase of our best type
of woman.  She had never had any children.

If there was one thing more than another that she could not stand
it was one of those soft women with what men called 'charm' about
them, and for Mrs. Soames she always had an especial dislike.

Obscurely, no doubt, she felt that if charm were once admitted as
the criterion, smartness and capability must go to the wall; and
she hated--with a hatred the deeper that at times this so-called
charm seemed to disturb all calculations--the subtle seductiveness
which she could not altogether overlook in Irene.

She said, however, that she could see nothing in the woman--there
was no 'go' about her--she would never be able to stand up for
herself--anyone could take advantage of her, that was plain--she
could not see in fact what men found to admire!

She was not really ill-natured, but, in maintaining her position
after the trying circumstances of her married life, she had found
it so necessary to be 'full of information,' that the idea of
holding her tongue about 'those two' in the Park never occurred
to her.

And it so happened that she was dining that very evening at
Timothy's, where she went sometimes to 'cheer the old things up,'
as she was wont to put it.  The same people were always asked to
meet her: Winifred Dartie and her husband; Francie, because she
belonged to the artistic circles, for Mrs. MacAnder was known to
contribute articles on dress to 'The Ladies Kingdom Come'; and
for her to flirt with, provided they could be obtained, two of
the Hayman boys, who, though they never said anything, were
believed to be fast and thoroughly intimate with all that was
latest in smart Society.

At twenty-five minutes past seven she turned out the electric
light in her little hall, and wrapped in her opera cloak with the
chinchilla collar, came out into the corridor, pausing a moment
to make sure she had her latch-key.  These little self-contained
flats were convenient; to be sure, she had no light and no air,
but she could shut it up whenever she liked and go away.  There
was no bother with servants, and she never felt tied as she used
to when poor, dear Fred was always about, in his mooney way.  She
retained no rancour against poor, dear Fred, he was such a fool;
but the thought of that actress drew from her, even now, a
little, bitter, derisive smile.

Firmly snapping the door to, she crossed the corridor, with its
gloomy, yellow-ochre walls, and its infinite vista of brown,
numbered doors.  The lift was going down; and wrapped to the ears
in the high cloak, with every one of her auburn hairs in its
place, she waited motionless for it to stop at her floor.  The
iron gates clanked open; she entered.  There were already three
occupants, a man in a great white waistcoat, with a large, smooth
face like a baby's, and two old ladies in black, with mittened
hands.

Mrs. MacAnder smiled at them; she knew everybody; and all these
three, who had been admirably silent before, began to talk at
once.  This was Mrs. MacAnder's successful secret.  She provoked
conversation.

Throughout a descent of five stories the conversation continued,
the lift boy standing with his back turned, his cynical face
protruding through the bars.

At the bottom they separated, the man in the white waistcoat
sentimentally to the billiard room, the old ladies to dine and
say to each other: "A dear little woman!"  "Such a rattle!" and
Mrs. MacAnder to her cab.

When Mrs. MacAnder dined at Timothy's, the conversation (although
Timothy himself could never be induced to be present) took that
wider, man-of-the-world tone current among Forsytes at large, and
this, no doubt, was what put her at a premium there.

Mrs. Small and Aunt Hester found it an exhilarating change.  "If
only," they said, "Timothy would meet her!"  It was felt that she
would do him good.  She could tell you, for instance, the latest
story of Sir Charles Fiste's son at Monte Carlo; who was the real
heroine of Tynemouth Eddy's fashionable novel that everyone was
holding up their hands over, and what they were doing in Paris
about wearing bloomers.  She was so sensible, too, knowing all
about that vexed question, whether to send young Nicholas' eldest
into the navy as his mother wished, or make him an accountant as
his father thought would be safer.  She strongly deprecated the
navy.  If you were not exceptionally brilliant or exceptionally
well connected, they passed you over so disgracefully, and what
was it after all to look forward to, even if you became an
admiral--a pittance!  An accountant had many more chances, but
let him be put with a good firm, where there was no risk at
starting!

Sometimes she would give them a tip on the Stock Exchange; not
that Mrs. Small or Aunt Hester ever took it.  They had indeed no
money to invest; but it seemed to bring them into such exciting
touch with the realities of life.  It was an event.  They would
ask Timothy, they said.  But they never did, knowing in advance
that it would upset him.  Surreptitiously, however, for weeks
after they would look in that paper, which they took with respect
on account of its really fashionable proclivities, to see whether
'Bright's Rubies' or 'The Woollen Mackintosh Company' were up or
down.  Sometimes they could not find the name of the company at
all; and they would wait until James or Roger or even Swithin
came in, and ask them in voices trembling with curiosity how that
'Bolivia Lime and Speltrate was doing--they could not find it in
the paper.

And Roger would answer: "What do you want to know for?  Some
trash!  You'll go burning your fingers--investing your money in
lime, and things you know nothing about!  Who told you?" and
ascertaining what they had been told, he would go away, and,
making inquiries in the City, would perhaps invest some of his
own money in the concern.

It was about the middle of dinner, just in fact as the saddle of
mutton had been brought in by Smither, that Mrs. MacAnder,
looking airily round, said: "Oh! and whom do you think I passed
to-day in Richmond Park?  You'll never guess--Mrs. Soames and--
Mr. Bosinney.  They must have been down to look at the house!"

Winifred Dartie coughed, and no one said a word.  It was the
piece of evidence they had all unconsciously been waiting for.

To do Mrs. MacAnder justice, she had been to Switzerland and the
Italian lakes with a party of three, and had not heard of Soames'
rupture with his architect.  She could not tell, therefore, the
profound impression her words would make.

Upright and a little flushed, she moved her small, shrewd eyes
from face to face, trying to gauge the effect of her words.  On
either side of her a Hayman boy, his lean, taciturn, hungry face
turned towards his plate, ate his mutton steadily.

These two, Giles and Jesse, were so alike and so inseparable that
they were known as the Dromios.  They never talked, and seemed
always completely occupied in doing nothing.  It was popularly
supposed that they were cramming for an important examination.
They walked without hats for long hours in the Gardens attached
to their house, books in their hands, a fox-terrier at their
heels, never saying a word, and smoking all the time.  Every
morning, about fifty yards apart, they trotted down Campden Hill
on two lean hacks, with legs as long as their own, and every
morning about an hour later, still fifty yards apart, they
cantered up again.  Every evening, wherever they had dined, they
might be observed about half-past ten, leaning over the
balustrade of the Alhambra promenade.

They were never seen otherwise than together; in this way passing
their lives, apparently perfectly content.

Inspired by some dumb stirring within them of the feelings of
gentlemen, they turned at this painful moment to Mrs. MacAnder,
and said in precisely the same voice: "Have you seen the...?"

Such was her surprise at being thus addressed that she put down
her fork; and Smither, who was passing, promptly removed her
plate.  Mrs. MacAnder, however, with presence of mind, said
instantly: "I must have a little more of that nice mutton."

But afterwards in the drawing--room she sat down by Mrs. Small,
determined to get to the bottom of the matter.  And she began:

"What a charming woman, Mrs. Soames; such a sympathetic
temperament!  Soames is a really lucky man!"

Her anxiety for information had not made sufficient allowance for
that inner Forsyte skin which refuses to share its troubles with
outsiders.

Mrs. Septimus Small, drawing herself up with a creak and rustle
of her whole person, said, shivering in her dignity:

"My dear, it is a subject we do not talk about!"




CHAPTER II

NIGHT IN THE PARK


Although with her infallible instinct Mrs. Small had said the
very thing to make her guest 'more intriguee than ever,' it is
difficult to see how else she could truthfully have spoken.

It was not a subject which the Forsytes could talk about even
among themselves--to use the word Soames had invented to
characterize to himself the situation, it was 'subterranean.'

Yet, within a week of Mrs. MacAnder's encounter in Richmond Park,
to all of them--save Timothy, from whom it was carefully kept--to
James on his domestic beat from the Poultry to Park Lane, to
George the wild one, on his daily adventure from the bow window
at the Haversnake to the billiard room at the 'Red Pottle,' was
it known that 'those two' had gone to extremes.

George (it was he who invented many of those striking expressions
still current in fashionable circles) voiced the sentiment more
accurately than any one when he said to his brother Eustace that
'the Buccaneer' was 'going it'; he expected Soames was about 'fed
up.'

It was felt that he must be, and yet, what could be done?  He
ought perhaps to take steps; but to take steps would be
deplorable.

Without an open scandal which they could not see their way to
recommending, it was difficult to see what steps could be taken.
In this impasse, the only thing was to say nothing to Soames, and
nothing to each other; in fact, to pass it over.

By displaying towards Irene a dignified coldness, some impression
might be made upon her; but she was seldom now to be seen, and
there seemed a slight difficulty in seeking her out on purpose to
show her coldness.  Sometimes in the privacy of his bedroom James
would reveal to Emily the real suffering that his son's
misfortune caused him.

"I can't tell," he would say; "it worries me out of my life.
There'll be a scandal, and that'll do him no good.  I shan't say
anything to him.  There might be nothing in it.  What do you
think?  She's very artistic, they tell me.  What?  Oh, you're a
'regular Juley!  Well, I don't know; I expect the worst.  This is
what comes of having no children.  I knew how it would be from
the first.  They never told me they didn't mean to have any
children--nobody tells me anything!"

On his knees by the side of the bed, his eyes open and fixed with
worry, he would breathe into the counterpane.  Clad in his
nightshirt, his neck poked forward, his back rounded, he
resembled some long white bird.

"Our Father-," he repeated, turning over and over again the
thought of this possible scandal.

Like old Jolyon, he, too, at the bottom of his heart set the
blame of the tragedy down to family interference.  What business
had that lot--he began to think of the Stanhope Gate branch,
including young Jolyon and his daughter, as 'that lot'--to
introduce a person like this Bosinney into the family?  (He had
heard George's soubriquet, 'The Buccaneer,' but he could make
nothing of that--the young man was an architect.)

He began to feel that his brother Jolyon, to whom he had always
looked up and on whose opinion he had relied, was not quite what
he had expected.

Not having his eldest brother's force of character, he was more
sad than angry.  His great comfort was to go to Winifred's, and
take the little Darties in his carriage over to Kensington
Gardens, and there, by the Round Pond, he could often be seen
walking with his eyes fixed anxiously on little Publius Dartie's
sailing-boat, which he had himself freighted with a penny, as
though convinced that it would never again come to shore; while
little Publius--who, James delighted to say, was not a bit like
his father skipping along under his lee, would try to get him to
bet another that it never would, having found that it always did.
And James would make the bet; he always paid--sometimes as many
as three or four pennies in the afternoon, for the game seemed
never to pall on little Publius--and always in paying he said:
"Now, that's for your money-box.  Why, you're getting quite a
rich man!"  The thought of his little grandson's growing wealth
was a real pleasure to him.  But little Publius knew a
sweet-shop, and a trick worth two of that.

And they would walk home across the Park, James' figure, with
high shoulders and absorbed and worried face, exercising its
tall, lean protectorship, pathetically unregarded, over the
robust child-figures of Imogen and little Publius.

But those Gardens and that Park were not sacred to James.
Forsytes and tramps, children and lovers, rested and wandered day
after day, night after night, seeking one and all some freedom
from labour, from the reek and turmoil of the streets.

The leaves browned slowly, lingering with the sun and summer-like
warmth of the nights.

On Saturday, October 5, the sky that had been blue all day
deepened after sunset to the bloom of purple grapes.  There was
no moon, and a clear dark, like some velvety garment, was wrapped
around the trees, whose thinned branches, resembling plumes,
stirred not in the still, warm air.  All London had poured into
the Park, draining the cup of summer to its dregs.

Couple after couple, from every gate, they streamed along the
paths and over the burnt grass, and one after another, silently
out of the lighted spaces, stole into the shelter of the feathery
trees, where, blotted against some trunk, or under the shadow of
shrubs, they were lost to all but themselves in the heart of the
soft darkness.

To fresh-comers along the paths, these forerunners formed but
part of that passionate dusk, whence only a strange murmur, like
the confused beating of hearts, came forth.  But when that murmur
reached each couple in the lamp-light their voices wavered, and
ceased; their arms enlaced, their eyes began seeking, searching,
probing the blackness.  Suddenly, as though drawn by invisible
hands, they, too, stepped over the railing, and, silent as
shadows, were gone from the light.

The stillness, enclosed in the far, inexorable roar of the town,
was alive with the myriad passions, hopes, and loves of
multitudes of struggling human atoms; for in spite of the
disapproval of that great body of Forsytes, the Municipal
Council--to whom Love had long been considered, next to the
Sewage Question, the gravest danger to the community--a process
was going on that night in the Park, and in a hundred other
parks, without which the thousand factories, churches, shops,
taxes, and drains, of which they were custodians, were as
arteries without blood, a man without a heart.

The instincts of self-forgetfulness, of passion, and of love,
hiding under the trees, away from the trustees of their
remorseless enemy, the 'sense of property,' were holding a
stealthy revel, and Soames, returning from Bayswater for he had
been alone to dine at Timothy's walking home along the water,
with his mind upon that coming lawsuit, had the blood driven from
his heart by a low laugh and the sound of kisses.  He thought of
writing to the Times the next morning, to draw the attention of
the Editor to the condition of our parks.  He did not, however,
for he had a horror of seeing his name in print.

But starved as he was, the whispered sounds in the stillness, the
half-seen forms in the dark, acted on him like some morbid
stimulant.  He left the path along the water and stole under the
trees, along the deep shadow of little plantations, where the
boughs of chestnut trees hung their great leaves low, and there
was blacker refuge, shaping his course in circles which had for
their object a stealthy inspection of chairs side by side,
against tree-trunks, of enlaced lovers, who stirred at his
approach.

Now he stood still on the rise overlooking the Serpentine, where,
in full lamp-light, black against the silver water, sat a couple
who never moved, the woman's face buried on the man's neck--a
single form, like a carved emblem of passion, silent and
unashamed.

And, stung by the sight, Soames hurried on deeper into the shadow
of the trees.

In this search, who knows what he thought and what he sought?
Bread for hunger--light in darkness?  Who knows what he expected
to find--impersonal knowledge of the human heart--the end of his
private subterranean tragedy--for, again, who knew, but that each
dark couple, unnamed, unnameable, might not be he and she?

But it could not be such knowledge as this that he was seeking--
the wife of Soames Forsyte sitting in the Park like a common
wench!  Such thoughts were inconceivable; and from tree to tree,
with his noiseless step, he passed.

Once he was sworn at; once the whisper, "If only it could always
be like this!" sent the blood flying again from his heart, and he
waited there, patient and dogged, for the two to move.  But it
was only a poor thin slip of a shop-girl in her draggled blouse
who passed him, clinging to her lover's arm.

A hundred other lovers too whispered that hope in the stillness
of the trees, a hundred other lovers clung to each other.

But shaking himself with sudden disgust, Soames returned to the
path, and left that seeking for he knew not what.




CHAPTER III

MEETING AT THE BOTANICAL


Young Jolyon, whose circumstances were not those of a Forsyte,
found at times a difficulty in sparing the money needful for
those country jaunts and researches into Nature, without having
prosecuted which no watercolour artist ever puts brush to paper.

He was frequently, in fact, obliged to take his colour-box into
the Botanical Gardens, and there, on his stool, in the shade of a
monkey-puzzler or in the lee of some India-rubber plant, he would
spend long hours sketching.

An Art critic who had recently been looking at his work had
delivered himself as follows

"In a way your drawings are very good; tone and colour, in some
of them certainly quite a feeling for Nature.  But, you see,
they're so scattered; you'll never get the public to look at
them.  Now, if you'd taken a definite subject, such as 'London by
Night,' or 'The Crystal Palace in the Spring,' and made a regular
series, the public would have known at once what they were
looking at.  I can't lay too much stress upon that.  All the men
who are making great names in Art, like Crum Stone or Bleeder,
are making them by avoiding the unexpected; by specializing and
putting their works all in the same pigeon-hole, so that the
public know pat once where to go.  And this stands to reason, for
if a man's a collector he doesn't want people to smell at the
canvas to find out whom his pictures are by; he wants them to be
able to say at once, 'A capital Forsyte!'  It is all the more
important for you to be careful to choose a subject that they can
lay hold of on the spot, since there's no very marked originality
in your style."

Young Jolyon, standing by the little piano, where a bowl of dried
rose leaves, the only produce of the garden, was deposited on a
bit of faded damask, listened with his dim smile.

Turning to his wife, who was looking at the speaker with an angry
expression on her thin face, he said:

"You see, dear?"

"I do not," she answered in her staccato voice, that still had a
little foreign accent; "your style has originality."

The critic looked at her, smiled' deferentially, and said no
more.  Like everyone else, he knew their history.

The words bore good fruit with young Jolyon; they were contrary
to all that he believed in, to all that he theoretically held
good in his Art, but some strange, deep instinct moved him
against his will to turn them to profit.

He discovered therefore one morning that an idea had come to him
for making a series of watercolour drawings of London.  How the
idea had arisen he could not tell; and it was not till the
following year, when he had completed and sold them at a very
fair price, that in one of his impersonal moods, he found himself
able to recollect the Art critic, and to discover in his own
achievement another proof that he was a Forsyte.

He decided to commence with the Botanical Gardens, where he had
already made so many studies, and chose the little artificial
pond, sprinkled now with an autumn shower of red and yellow
leaves, for though the gardeners longed to sweep them off, they
could not reach them with their brooms.  The rest of the gardens
they swept bare enough, removing every morning Nature's rain of
leaves; piling them in heaps, whence from slow fires rose the
sweet, acrid smoke that, like the cuckoo's note for spring, the
scent of lime trees for the summer, is the true emblem of the
fall.  The gardeners' tidy souls could not abide the gold and
green and russet pattern on the grass.  The gravel paths must lie
unstained, ordered, methodical, without knowledge of the
realities of life, nor of that slow and beautiful decay which
flings crowns underfoot to star the earth with fallen glories,
whence, as the cycle rolls, will leap again wild spring.

Thus each leaf that fell was marked from the moment when it
fluttered a good-bye and dropped, slow turning, from its twig.

But on that little pond the leaves floated in peace, and praised
Heaven with their hues, the sunlight haunting over them.

And so young Jolyon found them.

Coming there one morning in the middle of October, he was
disconcerted to find a bench about twenty paces from his stand
occupied, for he had a proper horror of anyone seeing him at
work.

A lady in a velvet jacket was sitting there, with her eyes fixed
on the ground.  A flowering laurel, however, stood between, and,
taking shelter behind this, young Jolyon prepared his easel.

His preparations were leisurely; he caught, as every true artist
should, at anything that might delay for a moment the effort of
his work, and he found himself looking furtively at this unknown
dame.

Like his father before him, he had an eye for a face.  This face
was charming!

He saw a rounded chin nestling in a cream ruffle, a delicate face
with large dark eyes and soft lips.  A black 'picture' hat
concealed the hair; her figure was lightly poised against the
back of the bench, her knees were crossed; the tip of a
patent-leather shoe emerged beneath her skirt.  There was
something, indeed, inexpressibly dainty about the person of this
lady, but young Jolyon's attention was chiefly riveted by the
look on her face, which reminded him of his wife.  It was as
though its owner had come into contact with forces too strong for
her.  It troubled him, arousing vague feelings of attraction and
chivalry.  Who was she?  And what doing there, alone?

Two young gentlemen of that peculiar breed, at once forward and
shy, found in the Regent's Park, came by on their way to lawn
tennis, and he noted with disapproval their furtive stares of
admiration.  A loitering gardener halted to do something
unnecessary to a clump of pampas grass; he, too, wanted an excuse
for peeping.  A gentleman, old, and, by his hat, a professor of
horticulture, passed three times to scrutinize her long and
stealthily, a queer expression about his lips.

With all these men young Jolyon felt the same vague irritation.
She looked at none of them, yet was he certain that every man who
passed would look at her like that.

Her face was not the face of a sorceress, who in every look holds
out to men the offer of pleasure; it had none of the 'devil's
beauty' so highly prized among the first Forsytes of the land;
neither was it of that type, no less adorable, associated with
the box of chocolate; it was not of the spiritually passionate,
or passionately spiritual order, peculiar to house-decoration and
modern poetry; nor did it seem to promise to the playwright
material for the production of the interesting and neurasthenic
figure, who commits suicide in the last act.

In shape and colouring, in its soft persuasive passivity, its
sensuous purity, this woman's face reminded him of Titian's
'Heavenly Love,' a reproduction of which hung over the sideboard
in his dining-room.  And her attraction seemed to be in this soft
passivity, in the feeling she gave that to pressure she must
yield.

For what or whom was she waiting, in the silence, with the trees
dropping here and there a leaf, and the thrushes strutting close
on grass, touched with the sparkle of the autumn rime?  Then her
charming face grew eager, and, glancing round, with almost a
lover's jealousy, young Jolyon saw Bosinney striding across the
grass.

Curiously he watched the meeting, the look in their eyes, the
long clasp of their hands.  They sat down close together, linked
for all their outward discretion.  He heard the rapid murmur of
their talk; but what they said he could not catch.

He had rowed in the galley himself!  He knew the long hours of
waiting and the lean minutes of a half-public meeting; the
tortures of suspense that haunt the unhallowed lover.

It required, however, but a glance at their two faces to see that
this was none of those affairs of a season that distract men and
women about town; none of those sudden appetites that wake up
ravening, and are surfeited and asleep again in six weeks.  This
was the real thing!  This was what had happened to himself!  Out
of this anything might come!

Bosinney was pleading, and she so quiet, so soft, yet immovable
in her passivity, sat looking over the grass.

Was he the man to carry her off, that tender, passive being, who
would never stir a step for herself?  Who had given him all
herself, and would die for him, but perhaps would never run away
with him!

It seemed to young Jolyon that he could hear her saying: "But,
darling, it would ruin you!"  For he himself had experienced to
the full the gnawing fear at the bottom of each woman's heart
that she is a drag on the man she loves.

And he peeped at them no more; but their soft, rapid talk came to
his ears, with the stuttering song of some bird who seemed trying
to remember the notes of spring: Joy--tragedy?  Which--which?

And gradually their talk ceased; long silence followed.

'And where does Soames come in?' young Jolyon thought.  'People
think she is concerned about the sin of deceiving her husband!
Little they know of women!  She's eating, after starvation--
taking her revenge!  And Heaven help her--for he'll take his.'

He heard the swish of silk, and, spying round the laurel, saw
them walking away, their hands stealthily joined....

At the end of July old Jolyon had taken his grand-daughter to the
mountains; and on that visit (the last they ever paid) June
recovered to a great extent her health and spirits.  In the
hotels, filled with British Forsytes--for old Jolyon could not
bear a 'set of Germans,' as he called all foreigners--she was
looked upon with respect--the only grand-daughter of that fine-
looking, and evidently wealthy, old Mr. Forsyte.  She did not mix
freely with people--to mix freely with people was not June's
habit--but she formed some friendships, and notably one in the
Rhone Valley, with a French girl who was dying of consumption.

Determining at once that her friend should not die, she forgot,
in the institution of a campaign against Death, much of her own
trouble.

Old Jolyon watched the new intimacy with relief and disapproval;
for this additional proof that her life was to be passed amongst
'lame ducks' worried him.  Would she never make a friendship or
take an interest in something that would be of real benefit to
her?

'Taking up with a parcel of foreigners,' he called it.  He often,
however, brought home  grapes or roses, and presented them to
'Mam'zelle' with an ingratiating twinkle.

Towards the end of September, in spite of June's disapproval,
Mademoiselle Vigor breathed her last in the little hotel at St.
Luc, to which they had moved her; and June took her defeat so
deeply to heart that old Jolyon carried her away to Paris.  Here,
in contemplation of the 'Venus de Milo' and the 'Madeleine,' she
shook off her depression, and when, towards the middle of
October, they returned to town, her grandfather believed that he
had effected a cure.

No sooner, however, had they established themselves in Stanhope
Gate than he perceived to his dismay a return of her old absorbed
and brooding manner.  She would sit, staring in front of her, her
chin on her hand, like a little Norse spirit, grim and intent,
while all around in the electric light, then just installed,
shone the great, drawing-room brocaded up to the frieze, full of
furniture from Baple and Pullbred's.  And in the huge gilt mirror
were reflected those Dresden china groups of young men in tight
knee breeches, at the feet of full-bosomed ladies nursing on
their laps pet lambs, which old Jolyon had bought when he was a
bachelor and thought so highly of in these days of degenerate
taste.  He was a man of most open mind, who, more than any
Forsyte of them all, had moved with the times, but he could never
forget that he had bought these groups at Jobson's, and given a
lot of money for them.  He often said to June, with a sort of
disillusioned contempt:

"You don't care about them!  They're not the gimcrack things you
and your friends like, but they cost me seventy pounds!"  He was
not a man who allowed his taste to be warped when he knew for
solid reasons that it was sound.

One of the first things that June did on getting home was to go
round to Timothy's.  She persuaded herself that it was her duty
to call there, and cheer him with an account of all her travels;
but in reality she went because she knew of no other place where,
by some random speech, or roundabout question, she could glean
news of Bosinney.

They received her most cordially: And how was her dear grand-
father?  He had not been to see them since May.  Her Uncle
Timothy was very poorly, he had had a lot of trouble with the
chimney-sweep in his bedroom; the stupid man had let the soot
down the chimney!  It had quite upset her uncle.

June sat there a long time, dreading, yet passionately hoping,
that they would speak of Bosinney.

But paralyzed by unaccountable discretion, Mrs. Septimus Small
let fall no word, neither did she question June about him.  In
desperation the girl asked at last whether Soames and Irene were
in town--she had not yet been to see anyone.

It was Aunt Hester who replied: Oh, yes, they were in town, they
had not been away at all.  There was some little difficulty about
the house, she believed.  June had heard, no doubt!  She had
better ask her Aunt Juley!

June turned to Mrs. Small, who sat upright in her chair, her
hands clasped, her face covered with innumerable pouts.  In
answer to the girl's look she maintained a strange silence, and
when she spoke it was to ask June whether she had worn night-
socks up in those high hotels where it must be so cold of a
night.

June answered that she had not, she hated the stuffy things; and
rose to leave.

Mrs. Small's infallibly chosen silence was far more ominous to
her than anything that could have been said.

Before half an hour was over she had dragged the truth from Mrs.
Baynes in Lowndes Square, that Soames was bringing an action
against Bosinney over the decoration of the house.

Instead of disturbing her, the news had a strangely calming
effect; as though she saw in the prospect of this struggle new
hope for herself.  She learnt that the case was expected to come
on in about a month, and there seemed little or no prospect of
Bosinney's success.

"And whatever he'll do I can't think," said Mrs. Baynes; "it's
very dreadful for him, you know--he's got no money--he's very
hard up.  And we can't help him, I'm sure.  I'm told the
money-lenders won't lend if you have no security, and he has
none--none at all."

Her embonpoint had increased of late; she was in the full swing
of autumn organization, her writing-table literally strewn with
the menus of charity functions.  She looked meaningly at June,
with her round eyes of parrot-grey.

The sudden flush that rose on the girl's intent young face--she
must have seen spring up before her a great hope--the sudden
sweetness of her smile, often came back to Lady Baynes in after
years (Baynes was knighted when he built that public Museum of
Art which has given so much employment to officials, and so
little pleasure to those working classes for whom it was
designed).

The memory of that change, vivid and touching, like the breaking
open of a flower, or the first sun after long winter, the memory,
too, of all that came after, often intruded itself, unaccountably,
inopportunely on Lady Baynes, when her mind was set upon the most
important things.

This was the very afternoon of the day that young Jolyon
witnessed the meeting in the Botanical Gardens, and on this day,
too, old Jolyon paid a visit to his solicitors, Forsyte, Bustard,
and Forsyte, in the Poultry.  Soames was not in, he had gone down
to Somerset House; Bustard was buried up to the hilt in papers
and that inaccessible apartment, where he was judiciously placed,
in order that he might do as much work as possible; but James was
in the front office, biting a finger, and lugubriously turning
over the pleadings in Forsyte v. Bosinney.

This sound lawyer had only a sort of luxurious dread of the 'nice
point,' enough to set up a pleasurable feeling of fuss; for his
good practical sense told him that if he himself were on the
Bench he would not pay much attention to it.  But he was afraid
that this Bosinney would go bankrupt and Soames would have to
find the money after all, and costs into the bargain.  And behind
this tangible dread there was always that intangible trouble,
lurking in the background, intricate, dim, scandalous, like a bad
dream, and of which this action was but an outward and visible
sign.

He raised his head as old Jolyon came in, and muttered: "How are
you, Jolyon?  Haven't seen you for an age.  You've been to
Switzerland, they tell me.  This young Bosinney, he's got himself
into a mess.  I knew how it would be!"  He held out the papers,
regarding his elder brother with nervous gloom.

Old Jolyon read them in silence, and while he read them James
looked at the floor, biting his fingers the while.

Old Jolyon pitched them down at last, and they fell with a thump
amongst a mass of affidavits in 're Buncombe, deceased,' one of
the many branches of that parent and profitable tree, 'Fryer v.
Forsyte.'

"I don't know what Soames is about," he said, "to make a fuss
over a few hundred pounds.  I thought he was a man of property."

James'long upper lip twitched angrily; he could not bear his son
to be attacked in such a spot.

"It's not the money "he began, but meeting his brother's glance,
direct, shrewd, judicial, he stopped.

There was a silence.

"I've come in for my Will," said old Jolyon at last, tugging at
his moustache.

James' curiosity was roused at once.  Perhaps nothing in this
life was more stimulating to him than a Will; it was the supreme
deal with property, the final inventory of a man's belongings,
the last word on what he was worth.  He sounded the bell.

"Bring in Mr. Jolyon's Will," he said to an anxious, dark-haired
clerk.

"You going to make some alterations?" And through his mind there
flashed the thought: 'Now, am I worth as much as he?'

Old Jolyon put the Will in his breast pocket, and James twisted
his long legs regretfully.

"You've made some nice purchases lately, they tell me," he said.

"I don't know where you get your information from," answered old
Jolyon sharply.  "When's this action coming on?  Next month?  I
can't tell what you've got in your minds.  You must manage your
own affairs; but if you take my advice, you'll settle it out of
Court.  Good-bye!"  With a cold handshake he was gone.

James, his fixed grey-blue eye corkscrewing round some secret
anxious image, began again to bite his finger.

Old Jolyon took his Will to the offices of the New Colliery
Company, and sat down in the empty Board Room to read it through.
He answered 'Down-by-the-starn' Hemmings so tartly when the
latter, seeing his Chairman seated there, entered with the new
Superintendent's first report, that the Secretary withdrew with
regretful dignity; and sending for the transfer clerk, blew him
up till the poor youth knew not where to look.

It was not--by George--as he (Down-by-the-starn) would have him
know, for a whippersnapper of a young fellow like him, to come
down to that office, and think that he was God Almighty.  He
(Down-by-the-starn) had been head of that office for more years
than a boy like him could count, and if he thought that when he
had finished all his work, he could sit there doing nothing, he
did not know him, Hemmings (Down-by-the-starn), and so forth.

On the other side of the green baize door old Jolyon sat at the
long, mahogany-and-leather board table, his thick, loose-jointed,
tortoiseshell eye-glasses perched on the bridge of his nose, his
gold pencil moving down the clauses of his Will.

It was a simple affair, for there were none of those vexatious
little legacies and donations to charities, which fritter away a
man's possessions, and damage the majestic effect of that little
paragraph in the morning papers accorded to Forsytes who die with
a hundred thousand pounds.

A simple affair.  Just a bequest to his son of twenty thousand,
and 'as to the residue of my property of whatsoever kind whether
realty or personalty, or partaking of the nature of either--upon
trust to pay the proceeds rents annual produce dividends or
interest thereof and thereon to my said grand-daughter June
Forsyte or her assigns during her life to be for her sole use and
benefit and without, etc... and from and after her death or
decease upon trust to convey assign transfer or make over the
said last-mentioned lands hereditaments premises trust moneys
stocks funds investments and securities or such as shall then
stand for and represent the same unto such person or persons
whether one or more for such intents purposes and uses and
generally in such manner way and form in all respects as the said
June Forsyte notwithstanding coverture shall by her last Will and
Testament or any writing or writings in the nature of a Will
testament or testamentary disposition to be by her duly made
signed and published direct appoint or make over give and dispose
of the same And in default etc....  Provided always...' and so on,
in seven folios of brief and simple phraseology.

The Will had been drawn by James in his palmy days.  He had
foreseen almost every contingency.

Old Jolyon sat a long time reading this Will; at last he took
half a sheet of paper from the rack, and made a prolonged pencil
note; then buttoning up the Will, he caused a cab to be called
and drove to the offices of Paramor and Herring, in Lincoln's Inn
Fields.  Jack Herring was dead, but his nephew was still in the
firm, and old Jolyon was closeted with him for half an hour.

He had kept the hansom, and on coming out, gave the driver the
address--3, Wistaria Avenue.

He felt a strange, slow satisfaction, as though he had scored a
victory over James and the man of property.  They should not poke
their noses into his affairs any more; he had just cancelled
their trusteeships of his Will; he would take the whole of his
business out of their hands, and put it into the hands of young
Herring, and he would move the business of his Companies too.  If
that young Soames were such a man of property, he would never
miss a thousand a year or so; and under his great white moustache
old Jolyon grimly smiled.  He felt that what he was doing was in
the nature of retributive justice, richly deserved.

Slowly, surely, with the secret inner process that works the
destruction of an old tree, the poison of the wounds to his
happiness, his will, his pride, had corroded the comely edifice
of his philosophy.  Life had worn him down on one side, till,
like that family of which he was the head, he had lost balance.

To him, borne northwards towards his son's house, the thought of
the new disposition of property, which he had just set in motion,
appeared vaguely in the light of a stroke of punishment, levelled
at that family and that Society, of which James and his son
seemed to him the representatives.  He had made a restitution to
young Jolyon, and restitution to young Jolyon satisfied his
secret craving for revenge-revenge against Time, sorrow, and
interference, against all that incalculable sum of disapproval
that had been bestowed by the world for fifteen years on his only
son.  It presented itself as the one possible way of asserting
once more the domination of his will; of forcing James, and
Soames, and the family, and all those hidden masses of Forsytes--
a great stream rolling against the single dam of his obstinacy--
to recognise once and for all that be would be master.  It was
sweet to think that at last he was going to make the boy a richer
man by far than that son of James, that 'man of property.' And it
was sweet to give to Jo, for he loved his son.

Neither young Jolyon nor his wife were in (young Jolyon indeed
was not back from the Botanical), but the little maid told him
that she expected the master at any moment:

"He's always at 'ome to tea, sir, to play with the children."

Old Jolyon said he would wait; and sat down patiently enough in
the faded, shabby drawing room, where, now that the summer
chintzes were removed, the old chairs and sofas revealed all
their threadbare deficiencies.  He longed to send for the
children; to have them there beside him, their supple bodies
against his knees; to hear Jolly's: "Hallo, Gran!" and see his
rush; and feel Holly's soft little hand stealing up against his
cheek.  But he would not.  There was solemnity in what he had
come to do, and until it was over he would not play.  He amused
himself by thinking how with two strokes of his pen he was going
to restore the look of caste so conspicuously absent from
everything in that little house; how he could fill these rooms,
or others in some larger mansion, with triumphs of art from Baple
and Pullbred's; how he could send little Jolly to Harrow and
Oxford (he no longer had faith in Eton and Cambridge, for his son
had been there); how he could procure little Holly the best
musical instruction, the child had a remarkable aptitude.

As these visions crowded before him, causing emotion to swell his
heart, he rose, and stood at the window, looking down into the
little walled strip of garden, where the pear-tree, bare of
leaves before its time, stood with gaunt branches in the
slow-gathering mist of the autumn afternoon.  The dog Balthasar,
his tail curled tightly over a piebald, furry back, was walking
at the farther end, sniffing at the plants, and at intervals
placing his leg for support against the wall.

And old Jolyon mused.

What pleasure was there left but to give?  It was pleasant to
give, when you could find one who would be thankful for what you
gave--one of your own flesh and blood!  There was no such
satisfaction to be had out of giving to those who did not belong
to you, to those who had no claim on you!  Such giving as that
was a betrayal of the individualistic convictions and actions of
his life, of all his enterprise, his labour, and his moderation,
of the great and proud fact that, like tens of thousands of
Forsytes before him, tens of thousands in the present, tens of
thousands in the future, he had always made his own, and held his
own, in the world.

And, while he stood there looking down on the smut-covered
foliage of the laurels, the blackstained grass-plot, the progress
of the dog Balthasar, all the suffering of the fifteen years
during which he had been baulked of legitimate enjoyment mingled
its gall with the sweetness of the approaching moment.

Young Jolyon came at last, pleased with his work, and fresh from
long hours in the open air.  On hearing that his father was in
the drawing room, he inquired hurriedly whether Mrs. Forsyte was
at home, and being informed that she was not, heaved a sigh of
relief.  Then putting his painting materials carefully in the
little coat-closet out of sight, he went in.

With characteristic decision old Jolyon came at once to the
point.  "I've been altering my arrangements, Jo," he said.  "You
can cut your coat a bit longer in the future--I'm settling a
thousand a year on you at once.  June will have fifty thousand at
my death; and you the rest.  That dog of yours is spoiling the
garden.  I shouldn't keep a dog, if I were you!"

The dog Balthasar, seated in the centre of the lawn, was
examining his tail.

Young Jolyon looked at the animal, but saw him dimly, for his
eyes were misty.

"Yours won't come short of a hundred thousand, my boy," said old
Jolyon; "I thought you'd better know.  I haven't much longer to
live at my age.  I shan't allude to it again.  How's your wife?
And--give her my love."

Young Jolyon put his hand on his father's shoulder, and, as
neither spoke, the episode closed.

Having seen his father into a hansom, young Jolyon came back to
the drawing-room and stood, where old Jolyon had stood, looking
down on the little garden.  He tried to realize all that this
meant to him, and, Forsyte that he was, vistas of property were
opened out in his brain; the years of half rations through which
he had passed had not sapped his natural instincts.  In extremely
practical form, he thought of travel, of his wife's costume, the
children's education, a pony for Jolly, a thousand things; but in
the midst of all he thought, too, of Bosinney and his mistress,
and the broken song of the thrush.  Joy--tragedy!  Which?  Which?

The old past--the poignant, suffering, passionate, wonderful
past, that no money could buy, that nothing could restore in all
its burning sweetness--had come back before him.

When his wife came in he went straight up to her and took her in
his arms; and for a long time he stood without speaking, his eyes
closed, pressing her to him, while she looked at him with a
wondering, adoring, doubting look in her eyes.




CHAPTER IV

VOYAGE INTO THE INFERNO


The morning after a certain night on which Soames at last
asserted his rights and acted like a man, he breakfasted alone.

He breakfasted by gaslight, the fog of late November wrapping the
town as in some monstrous blanket till the trees of the Square
even were barely visible from the diningroom window.

He ate steadily, but at times a sensation as though he could not
swallow attacked him.  Had he been right to yield to his
overmastering hunger of the night before, and break down the
resistance which he had suffered now too long from this woman who
was his lawful and solemnly constituted helpmate?

He was strangely haunted by the recollection of her face, from
before which, to soothe her, he had tried to pull her hands--of
her terrible smothered sobbing, the like of which he had never
heard, and still seemed to hear; and he was still haunted by the
odd, intolerable feeling of remorse and shame he had felt, as he
stood looking at her by the flame of the single candle, before
silently slinking away.

And somehow, now that he had acted like this, he was surprised at
himself.

Two nights before, at Winifred Dartie's, he had taken Mrs.
MacAnder into dinner.  She had said to him, looking in his face
with her sharp, greenish eyes: "And so your wife is a great
friend of that Mr. Bosinney's?"

Not deigning to ask what she meant, he had brooded over her
words.

They had roused in him a fierce jealousy, which, with the
peculiar perversion of this instinct, had turned to fiercer
desire.

Without the incentive of Mrs. MacAnder's words he might never
have done what he had done.  Without their incentive and the
accident of finding his wife's door for once unlocked, which had
enabled him to steal upon her asleep.

Slumber had removed his doubts, but the morning brought them
again.  One thought comforted him: No one would know--it was not
the sort of thing that she would speak about.

And, indeed, when the vehicle of his daily business life, which
needed so imperatively the grease of clear and practical thought,
started rolling once more with the reading of his letters, those
nightmare-like doubts began to assume less extravagant importance
at the back of his mind.  The incident was really not of great
moment; women made a fuss about it in books; but in the cool
judgment of right-thinking men, of men of the world, of such as
he recollected often received praise in the Divorce Court, he had
but done his best to sustain the sanctity of marriage, to prevent
her from abandoning her duty, possibly, if she were still seeing
Bosinney, from....

No, he did not regret it.

Now that the first step towards reconciliation had been taken,
the rest would be comparatively--comparatively....

He, rose and walked to the window.  His nerve had been shaken.
The sound of smothered sobbing was in his ears again.  He could
not get rid of it.

He put on his fur coat, and went out into the fog; having to go
into the City, he took the underground railway from Sloane Square
station.

In his corner of the first-class compartment filled with City men
the smothered sobbing still haunted him, so he opened the Times
with the rich crackle that drowns all lesser sounds, and,
barricaded behind it, set himself steadily to con the news.

He read that a Recorder had charged a grand jury on the previous
day with a more than usually long list of offences.  He read of
three murders, five manslaughters, seven arsons, and as many as
eleven rapes--a surprisingly high number--in addition to many
less conspicuous crimes, to be tried during a coming Sessions;
and from one piece of news he went on to another, keeping the
paper well before his face.

And still, inseparable from his reading, was the memory of
Irene's tear-stained face, and the sounds from her broken heart.

The day was a busy one, including, in addition to the ordinary
affairs of his practice, a visit to his brokers, Messrs. Grin
and Grinning, to give them instructions to sell his shares in the
New Colliery Co., Ltd., whose business he suspected, rather than
knew, was stagnating (this enterprise afterwards slowly declined,
and was ultimately sold for a song to an American syndicate); and
a long conference at Waterbuck, Q.C.'s chambers, attended by
Boulter, by Fiske, the junior counsel, and Waterbuck, Q.C.,
himself.

The case of Forsyte v. Bosinney was expected to be reached on
the morrow, before Mr. Justice Bentham.

Mr. Justice Bentham, a man of common-sense rather than too great
legal knowledge, was considered to be about the best man they
could have to try the action.  He was a 'strong' Judge.

Waterbuck, Q.C., in pleasing conjunction with an almost rude
neglect of Boulter and Fiske paid to Soames a good deal of
attention, by instinct or the sounder evidence of rumour, feeling
him to be a man of property.

He held with remarkable consistency to the opinion he had already
expressed in writing, that the issue would depend to a great
extent on the evidence given at the trial, and in a few well
directed remarks he advised Soames not to be too careful in
giving that evidence.  "A little bluffness, Mr. Forsyte," he said,
"a little bluffness," and after he had spoken he laughed firmly,
closed his lips tight, and scratched his head just below where he
had pushed his wig back, for all the world like the gentleman-
farmer for whom he loved to be taken.  He was considered perhaps
the leading man in breach of promise cases.

Soames used the underground again in going home.

The fog was worse than ever at Sloane Square station.  Through
the still, thick blur, men groped in and out; women, very few,
grasped their reticules to their bosoms and handkerchiefs to
their mouths; crowned with the weird excrescence of the driver,
haloed by a vague glow of lamp-light that seemed to drown in
vapour before it reached the pavement, cabs loomed dimshaped ever
and again, and discharged citizens, bolting like rabbits to their
burrows.

And these shadowy figures, wrapped each in his own little shroud
of fog, took no notice of each other.  In the great warren, each
rabbit for himself, especially those clothed in the more
expensive fur, who, afraid of carriages on foggy days, are driven
underground.

One figure, however, not far from Soames, waited at the station
door.

Some buccaneer or lover, of whom each Forsyte thought: 'Poor
devil! looks as if he were having a bad time!'  Their kind hearts
beat a stroke faster for that poor, waiting, anxious lover in the
fog; but they hurried by, well knowing that they had neither time
nor money to spare for any suffering but their own.

Only a policeman, patrolling slowly and at intervals, took an
interest in that waiting figure, the brim of whose slouch hat
half hid a face reddened by the cold, all thin, and haggard, over
which a hand stole now and again to smooth away anxiety, or renew
the resolution that kept him waiting there.  But the waiting
lover (if lover he were) was used to policemen's scrutiny, or too
absorbed in his anxiety, for he never flinched.  A hardened case,
accustomed to long trysts, to anxiety, and fog, and cold, if only
his mistress came at last.  Foolish lover!  Fogs last until the
spring; there is also snow and rain, no comfort anywhere; gnawing
fear if you bring her out, gnawing fear if you bid her stay at
home!

"Serve him right; he should arrange his affairs better!"

So any respectable Forsyte.  Yet, if that sounder citizen could
have listened at the waiting lover's heart, out there in the fog
and the cold, he would have said again: "Yes, poor devil he's
having a bad time!"

Soames got into his cab, and, with the glass down, crept along
Sloane Street, and so along the Brompton Road, and home.  He
reached his house at five.

His wife was not in.  She had gone out a quarter of an hour
before.  Out at such a time of night, into this terrible fog!
What was the meaning of that?

He sat by the dining-room fire, with the door open, disturbed to
the soul, trying to read the evening paper.  A book was no good--
in daily papers alone was any narcotic to such worry as his.
From the customary events recorded in the journal he drew some
comfort.  'Suicide of an actress'--'Grave indisposition of a
Statesman' (that chronic sufferer)--'Divorce of an army officer'
--'Fire in a colliery'--he read them all.  They helped him a
little--prescribed by the greatest of all doctors, our natural
taste.

It was nearly seven when he heard her come in.

The incident of the night before had long lost its importance
under stress of anxiety at her strange sortie into the fog.  But
now that Irene was home, the memory of her broken-hearted sobbing
came back to him, and he felt nervous at the thought of facing
her.

She was already on the stairs; her grey fur coat hung to her
knees, its high collar almost hid her face, she wore a thick
veil.

She neither turned to look at him nor spoke.  No ghost or
stranger could have passed more silently.

Bilson came to lay dinner, and told him that Mrs. Forsyte was not
coming down; she was having the soup in her room.

For once Soames did not 'change'; it was, perhaps, the first time
in his life that he had sat down to dinner with soiled cuffs,
and, not even noticing them, he brooded long over his wine.  He
sent Bilson to light a fire in his picture-room, and presently
went up there himself.

Turning on the gas, he heaved a deep sigh, as though amongst
these treasures, the backs of which confronted him in stacks,
around the little room, he had found at length his peace of mind.
He went straight up to the greatest treasure of them all, an
undoubted Turner, and, carrying it to the easel, turned its face
to the light.  There had been a movement in Turners, but he had
not been able to make up his mind to part with it.  He stood for
a long time, his pale, clean-shaven face poked forward above his
stand-up collar, looking at the picture as though he were adding
it up; a wistful expression came into his eyes; he found,
perhaps, that it came to too little.  He took it down from the
easel to put it back against the wall; but, in crossing the room,
stopped, for he seemed to hear sobbing.

It was nothing--only the sort of thing that had been bothering
him in the morning.  And soon after, putting the high guard
before the blazing fire, he stole downstairs.

Fresh for the morrow!  was his thought.  It was long before he
went to sleep....

It is now to George Forsyte that the mind must turn for light on
the events of that fog-engulfed afternoon.

The wittiest and most sportsmanlike of the Forsytes had passed
the day reading a novel in the paternal mansion at Princes'
Gardens.  Since a recent crisis in his financial affairs he had
been kept on parole by Roger, and compelled to reside 'at home.'

Towards five o'clock he went out, and took train at South
Kensington Station (for everyone to-day went Underground).  His
intention was to dine, and pass the evening playing billiards at
the Red Pottle--that unique hostel, neither club, hotel, nor good
gilt restaurant.

He got out at Charing Cross, choosing it in preference to his
more usual St.  James's Park, that he might reach Jermyn Street
by better lighted ways.

On the platform his eyes--for in combination with a composed and
fashionable appearance, George had sharp eyes, and was always on
the look-out for fillips to his sardonic humour--his eyes were
attracted by a man, who, leaping from a first-class compartment,
staggered rather than walked towards the exit.

'So ho, my bird!' said George to himself; 'why, it's "the
Buccaneer!"' and he put his big figure on the trail.  Nothing
afforded him greater amusement than a drunken man.

Bosinney, who wore a slouch hat, stopped in front of him, spun
around, and rushed back towards the carriage he had just left.
He was too late.  A porter caught him by the coat; the train was
already moving on.

George's practised glance caught sight of the face of a lady clad
in a grey fur coat at the carriage window.  It was Mrs. Soames--
and George felt that this was interesting!

And now he followed Bosinney more closely than ever--up the
stairs, past the ticket collector into the street.  In that
progress, however, his feelings underwent a change; no longer
merely curious and amused, he felt sorry for the poor fellow he
was shadowing.  'The Buccaneer' was not drunk, but seemed to be
acting under the stress of violent emotion; he was talking to
himself, and all that George could catch were the words "Oh,
God!"  Nor did he appear to know what he was doing, or where
going; but stared, hesitated, moved like a man out of his mind;
and from being merely a joker in search of amusement, George felt
that he must see the poor chap through.

He had 'taken the knock'--'taken the knock!'  And he wondered what
on earth Mrs. Soames had been saying, what on earth she had been
telling him in the railway carriage.  She had looked bad enough
herself!  It made George sorry to think of her travelling on with
her trouble all alone.

He followed close behind Bosinney's elbow--tall, burly figure,
saying nothing, dodging warily--and shadowed him out into the
fog.

There was something here beyond a jest!  He kept his head
admirably, in spite of some excitement, for in addition to
compassion, the instincts of the chase were roused within him.

Bosinney walked right out into the thoroughfare--a vast muffled
blackness, where a man could not see six paces before him; where,
all around, voices or whistles mocked the sense of direction; and
sudden shapes came rolling slow upon them; and now and then a
light showed like a dim island in an infinite dark sea.

And fast into this perilous gulf of night walked Bosinney, and
fast after him walked George.  If the fellow meant to put his
'twopenny' under a 'bus, he would stop it if he could!  Across
the street and back the hunted creature strode, not groping as
other men were groping in that gloom, but driven forward as
though the faithful George behind wielded a knout; and this chase
after a haunted man began to have for George the strangest
fascination.

But it was now that the affair developed in a way which ever
afterwards caused it to remain green in his mind.  Brought to a
stand-still in the fog, he heard words which threw a sudden light
on these proceedings.  What Mrs. Soames had said to Bosinney in
the train was now no longer dark.  George understood from those
mutterings that Soames had exercised his rights over an estranged
and unwilling wife in the greatest--the supreme act of property.

His fancy wandered in the fields of this situation; it impressed
him; he guessed something of the anguish, the sexual confusion
and horror in Bosinney's heart.  And he thought: 'Yes, it's a bit
thick!  I don't wonder the poor fellow is halfcracked!'

He had run his quarry to earth on a bench under one of the lions
in Trafalgar Square, a monster sphynx astray like themselves in
that gulf of darkness.  Here, rigid and silent, sat Bosinney, and
George, in whose patience was a touch of strange brotherliness,
took his stand behind.  He was not lacking in a certain delicacy-
-a sense of form--that did not permit him to intrude upon this
tragedy, and he waited, quiet as the lion above, his fur collar
hitched above his ears concealing the fleshy redness of his
cheeks, concealing all but his eyes with their sardonic,
compassionate stare.  And men kept passing back from business on
the way to their clubs--men whose figures shrouded in cocoons of
fog came into view like spectres, and like spectres vanished.
Then even in his compassion George's Quilpish humour broke forth
in a sudden longing to pluck these spectres by the sleeve, and
say:

"Hi, you Johnnies!  You don't often see a show like this!  Here's
a poor devil whose mistress has just been telling him a pretty
little story of her husband; walk up, walk up!  He's taken the
knock, you see."

In fancy he saw them gaping round the tortured lover; and grinned
as he thought of some respectable, newly-married spectre enabled
by the state of his own affections to catch an inkling of what
was going on within Bosinney; he fancied he could see his mouth
getting wider and wider, and the fog going down and down.  For in
George was all that contempt of the of the married middle-class--
peculiar to the wild and sportsmanlike spirits in its ranks.

But he began to be bored.  Waiting was not what he had bargained
for.

'After all,' he thought, 'the poor chap will get over it; not the
first time such a thing has happened in this little city!' But
now his quarry again began muttering words of violent hate and
anger.  And following a sudden impulse George touched him on the
shoulder.

Bosinney spun round.

"Who are you?  What do you want?"

George could have stood it well enough in the light of the gas
lamps, in the light of that everyday world of which he was so
hardy a connoisseur; but in this fog, where all was gloomy and
unreal, where nothing had that matter-of-fact value associated by
Forsytes with earth, he was a victim to strange qualms, and as he
tried to stare back into the eyes of this maniac, he thought:

'If I see a bobby, I'll hand him over; he's not fit to be at
large.'

But waiting for no answer, Bosinney strode off into the fog, and
George followed, keeping perhaps a little further off, yet more
than ever set on tracking him down.

'He can't go on long like this,' he thought.  'It's God's own
miracle he's not been run over already.' He brooded no more on
policemen, a sportsman's sacred fire alive again within him.

Into a denser gloom than ever Bosinney held on at a furious pace;
but his pursuer perceived more method in his madness--he was
clearly making his way westwards.

'He's really going for Soames!' thought George.  The idea was
attractive.  It would be a sporting end to such a chase.  He had
always disliked his cousin.

The shaft of a passing cab brushed against his shoulder and made
him leap aside.  He did not intend to be killed for the Buccaneer,
or anyone.  Yet, with hereditary tenacity, he stuck to the trail
through vapour that blotted out everything but the shadow of the
hunted man and the dim moon of the nearest lamp.

Then suddenly, with the instinct of a town-stroller, George knew
himself to be in Piccadilly.  Here he could find his way blindfold;
and freed from the strain of geographical uncertainty, his mind
returned to Bosinney's trouble.

Down the long avenue of his man-about-town experience, bursting,
as it were, through a smirch of doubtful amours, there stalked to
him a memory of his youth.  A memory, poignant still, that brought
the scent of hay, the gleam of moonlight, a summer magic, into
the reek and blackness of this London fog--the memory of a night
when in the darkest shadow of a lawn he had overheard from a
woman's lips that he was not her sole possessor.  And for a moment
George walked no longer in black Piccadilly, but lay again, with
hell in his heart, and his face to the sweet-smelling, dewy grass,
in the long shadow of poplars that hid the moon.

A longing seized him to throw his arm round the Buccaneer, and
say, "Come, old boy.  Time cures all.  Let's go and drink it off!"

But a voice yelled at him, and he started back.  A cab rolled out
of blackness, and into blackness disappeared.  And suddenly
George perceived that he had lost Bosinney.  He ran forward and
back, felt his heart clutched by a sickening fear, the dark fear
which lives in the wings of the fog.  Perspiration started out on
his brow.  He stood quite still, listening with all his might.

"And then," as he confided to Dartie the same evening in the
course of a game of billiards at the Red Pottle, "I lost him."

Dartie twirled complacently at his dark moustache.  He had just
put together a neat break of twenty-three,--failing at a 'Jenny.'
"And who was she?" he asked.

George looked slowly at the 'man of the world's' fattish, sallow
face, and a little grim smile lurked about the curves of his
cheeks and his heavy-lidded eyes.

'No, no, my fine fellow,' he thought, 'I'm not going to tell
you.' For though he mixed with Dartie a good deal, he thought him
a bit of a cad.

"Oh, some little love-lady or other," he said, and chalked his
cue.

"A love-lady!" exclaimed Dartie--he used a more figurative
expression.  "I made sure it was our friend Soa...."

"Did you?" said George curtly.  "Then damme you've made an
error."

He missed his shot.  He was careful not to allude to the subject
again till, towards eleven o'clock, having, in his poetic
phraseology, 'looked upon the drink when it was yellow,' he drew
aside the blind, and gazed out into the street.  The murky
blackness of the fog was but faintly broken by the lamps of the
'Red Pottle,' and no shape of mortal man or thing was in sight.

"I can't help thinking of that poor Buccaneer," he said.  "He may
be wandering out there now in that fog.  If he's not a corpse,"
he added with strange dejection.

"Corpse!" said Dartie, in whom the recollection of his defeat at
Richmond flared up.  "He's all right.  Ten to one if he wasn't
tight!"

George turned on him, looking really formidable, with a sort of
savage gloom on his big face.

"Dry up!" he said.  "Don't I tell you he's 'taken the knock!"'




CHAPTER V

THE TRIAL


In the morning of his case, which was second in the list, Soames
was again obliged to start without seeing Irene, and it was just
as well, for he had not as yet made up his mind what attitude to
adopt towards her.

He had been requested to be in court by half-past ten, to provide
against the event of the first action (a breach of promise)
collapsing, which however it did not, both sides showing a
courage that afforded Waterbuck, Q.C., an opportunity for
improving his already great reputation in this class of case.  He
was opposed by Ram, the other celebrated breach of promise man.
It was a battle of giants.

The court delivered judgment just before the luncheon interval.
The jury left the box for good, and Soames went out to get
something to eat.  He met James standing at the little luncheon-
bar, like a pelican in the wilderness of the galleries, bent over
a sandwich with a glass of sherry before him.  The spacious
emptiness of the great central hall, over which father and son
brooded as they stood together, was marred now and then for a
fleeting moment by barristers in wig and gown hurriedly bolting
across, by an occasional old lady or rusty-coated man, looking up
in a frightened way, and by two persons, bolder than their
generation, seated in an embrasure arguing.  The sound of their
voices arose, together with a scent as of neglected wells, which,
mingling with the odour of the galleries, combined to form the
savour, like nothing but the emanation of a refined cheese, so
indissolubly connected with the administration of British
Justice.

It was not long before James addressed his son.

"When's your case coming on?  I suppose it'll be on directly.  I
shouldn't wonder if this Bosinney'd say anything; I should think
he'd have to.  He'll go bankrupt if it goes against him." He took
a large bite at his sandwich and a mouthful of sherry.  "Your
mother," he said, "wants you and Irene to come and dine
to-night."

A chill smile played round Soames' lips; he looked back at his
father.  Anyone who had seen the look, cold and furtive, thus
interchanged, might have been pardoned for not appreciating the
real understanding between them.  James finished his sherry at a
draught.

"How much?" he asked.

On returning to the court Soames took at once his rightful seat
on the front bench beside his solicitor.  He ascertained where
his father was seated with a glance so sidelong as to commit
nobody.

James, sitting back with his hands clasped over the handle of his
umbrella, was brooding on the end of the bench immediately behind
counsel, whence he could get away at once when the case was over.
He considered Bosinney's conduct in every way outrageous, but he
did not wish to run up against him, feeling that the meeting
would be awkward.

Next to the Divorce Court, this court was, perhaps, the favourite
emporium of justice, libel, breach of promise, and other
commercial actions being frequently decided there.  Quite a
sprinkling of persons unconnected with the law occupied the back
benches, and the hat of a woman or two could be seen in the
gallery.

The two rows of seats immediately in front of James were
gradually filled by barristers in wigs, who sat down to make
pencil notes, chat, and attend to their teeth; but his interest
was soon diverted from these lesser lights of justice by the
entrance of Waterbuck, Q.C., with the wings of his silk gown
rustling, and his red, capable face supported by two short, brown
whiskers.  The famous Q.C. looked, as James freely admitted, the
very picture of a man who could heckle a witness.

For all his experience, it so happened that he had never seen
Waterbuck, Q.C., before, and, like many Forsytes in the lower
branch of the profession, he had an extreme admiration for a good
cross-examiner.  The long, lugubrious folds in his cheeks relaxed
somewhat after seeing him, especially as he now perceived that
Soames alone was represented by silk.

Waterbuck, Q.C., had barely screwed round on his elbow to chat
with his Junior before Mr. Justice Bentham himself appeared--a
thin, rather hen-like man, with a little stoop, clean-shaven
under his snowy wig.  Like all the rest of the court, Waterbuck
rose, and remained on his feet until the judge was seated.  James
rose but slightly; he was already comfortable, and had no opinion
of Bentham, having sat next but one to him at dinner twice at the
Bumley Tomms'.  Bumley Tomm was rather a poor thing, though he
had been so successful.  James himself had given him his first
brief.  He was excited, too, for he had just found out that
Bosinney was not in court.

'Now, what's he mean by that?' he kept on thinking.

The case having been called on, Waterbuck, Q.C., pushing back his
papers, hitched his gown on his shoulder, and, with a
semi-circular look around him, like a man who is going to bat,
arose and addressed the Court.

The facts, he said, were not in dispute, and all that his
Lordship would be asked was to interpret the correspondence which
had taken place between his client and the defendant, an
architect, with reference to the decoration of a house.  He
would, however, submit that this correspondence could only mean
one very plain thing.  After briefly reciting the history of the
house at Robin Hill, which he described as a mansion, and the
actual facts of expenditure, he went on as follows:

"My client, Mr. Soames Forsyte, is a gentleman, a man of
property, who would be the last to dispute any legitimate claim
that might be made against him, but he has met with such
treatment from his architect in the matter of this house, over
which he has, as your lordship has heard, already spent some
twelve--some twelve thousand pounds, a sum considerably in
advance of the amount he had originally contemplated, that as a
matter of principle--and this I cannot too strongly emphasize--as
a matter of principle, and in the interests of others, he has
felt himself compelled to bring this action.  The point put
forward in defence by the architect I will suggest to your
lordship is not worthy of a moment's serious consideration."  He
then read the correspondence.

His client, "a man of recognised position," was prepared to go
into the box, and to swear that he never did authorize, that it
was never in his mind to authorize, the expenditure of any money
beyond the extreme limit of twelve thousand and fifty pounds,
which he had clearly fixed; and not further to waste the time of
the court, he would at once call Mr. Forsyte.

Soames then went into the box.  His whole appearance was striking
in its composure.  His face, just supercilious enough, pale and
clean-shaven, with a little line between the eyes, and compressed
lips; his dress in unostentatious order, one hand neatly gloved,
the other bare.  He answered the questions put to him in a
somewhat low, but distinct voice.  His evidence under cross-
examination savoured of taciturnity.

Had he not used the expression, "a free hand"?  No.

"Come, come!"

The expression he had used was 'a free hand in the terms of this
correspondence.'

"Would you tell the Court that that was English?"

"Yes!"

"What do you say it means?"

"What it says!"

"Are you prepared to deny that it is a contradiction in terms?"

"Yes."

"You are not an Irishman?"

"No."

"Are you a well-educated man?"

"Yes."

"And yet you persist in that statement?"

"Yes."

Throughout this and much more cross-examination, which turned
again and again around the 'nice point,' James sat with his hand
behind his ear, his eyes fixed upon his son.

He was proud of him!  He could not but feel that in similar
circumstances he himself would have been tempted to enlarge his
replies, but his instinct told him that this taciturnity was the
very thing.  He sighed with relief, however, when Soames, slowly
turning, and without any change of expression, descended from the
box.

When it came to the turn of Bosinney's Counsel to address the
Judge, James redoubled his attention, and he searched the Court
again and again to see if Bosinney were not somewhere concealed.

Young Chankery began nervously; he was placed by Bosinney's
absence in an awkward position.  He therefore did his best to
turn that absence to account.

He could not but fear--he said--that his client had met with an
accident.  He had fully expected him there to give evidence; they
had sent round that morning both to Mr. Bosinney's office and to
his rooms (though he knew they were one and the same, he thought
it was as well not to say so), but it was not known where he was,
and this he considered to be ominous, knowing how anxious Mr.
Bosinney had been to give his evidence.  He had not, however,
been instructed to apply for an adjournment, and in default of
such instruction he conceived it his duty to go on.  The plea on
which he somewhat confidently relied, and which his client, had
he not unfortunately been prevented in some way from attending,
would have supported by his evidence, was that such an expression
as a 'free hand' could not be limited, fettered, and rendered
unmeaning, by any verbiage which might follow it.  He would go
further and say that the correspondence showed that whatever he
might have said in his evidence, Mr. Forsyte had in fact never
contemplated repudiating liability on any of the work ordered or
executed by his architect.  The defendant had certainly never
contemplated such a contingency, or, as was demonstrated by his
letters, he would never have proceeded with the work--a work of
extreme delicacy, carried out with great care and efficiency, to
meet and satisfy the fastidious taste of a connoisseur, a rich
man, a man of property.  He felt strongly on this point, and
feeling strongly he used, perhaps, rather strong words when he
said that this action was of a most unjustifiable, unexpected,
indeed--unprecedented character.  If his Lordship had had the
opportunity that he himself had made it his duty to take, to go
over this very fine house and see the great delicacy and beauty
of the decorations executed by his client--an artist in his most
honourable profession--he felt convinced that not for one moment
would his Lordship tolerate this, he would use no stronger word
than, daring attempt to evade legitimate responsibility.

Taking the text of Soames' letters, he lightly touched on
'Boileau v. The Blasted Cement Company, Limited.'  "It is
doubtful," he said, "what that authority has decided; in any case
I would submit that it is just as much in my favour as in my
friend's."  He then argued the 'nice point' closely.  With all
due deference he submitted that Mr. Forsyte's expression
nullified itself.  His client not being a rich man, the matter
was a serious one for him; he was a very talented architect,
whose professional reputation was undoubtedly somewhat at stake.
He concluded with a perhaps too personal appeal to the Judge, as
a lover of the arts, to show himself the protector of artists,
from what was occasionally--he said occasionally--the too iron
hand of capital.  "What," he said, "will be the position of the
artistic professions, if men of property like this Mr. Forsyte
refuse, and are allowed to refuse, to carry out the obligations
of the commissions which they have given."  He would now call
his client, in case he should at the last moment have found
himself able to be present.

The name Philip Baynes Bosinney was called three times by the
Ushers, and the sound of the calling echoed with strange
melancholy throughout the Court and Galleries.

The crying of this name, to which no answer was returned, had
upon James a curious effect: it was like calling for your lost
dog about the streets.  And the creepy feeling that it gave him,
of a man missing, grated on his sense of comfort and security-on
his cosiness.  Though he could not have said why, it made him
feel uneasy.

He looked now at the clock--a quarter to three!  It would be all
over in a quarter of an hour.  Where could the young fellow be?

It was only when Mr. Justice Bentham delivered judgment that he
got over the turn he had received.

Behind the wooden erection, by which he was fenced from more
ordinary mortals, the learned Judge leaned forward.  The electric
light, just turned on above his head, fell on his face, and
mellowed it to an orange hue beneath the snowy crown of his wig;
the amplitude of his robes grew before the eye; his whole figure,
facing the comparative dusk of the Court, radiated like some
majestic and sacred body.  He cleared his throat, took a sip of
water, broke the nib of a quill against the desk, and, folding
his bony hands before him, began.

To James he suddenly loomed much larger than he had ever thought
Bentham would loom.  It was the majesty of the law; and a person
endowed with a nature far less matter-of-fact than that of James
might have been excused for failing to pierce this halo, and
disinter therefrom the somewhat ordinary Forsyte, who walked and
talked in every-day life under the name of Sir Walter Bentham.

He delivered judgment in the following words:

"The facts in this case are not in dispute.  On May 15 last the
defendant wrote to the plaintiff, requesting to be allowed to
withdraw from his professional position in regard to the
decoration of the plaintiff's house, unless he were given 'a free
hand.'  The plaintiff, on May 17, wrote back as follows: 'In
giving you, in accordance with your request, this free hand, I
wish you to clearly understand that the total cost of the house
as handed over to me completely decorated, inclusive of your fee
(as arranged between us) must not exceed twelve thousand pounds.'
To this letter the defendant replied on May 18: 'If you think
that in such a delicate matter as decoration I can bind myself to
the exact pound, I am afraid you are mistaken.'  On May 19 the
plaintiff wrote as follows: 'I did not mean to say that if you
should exceed the sum named in my letter to you by ten or twenty
or even fifty pounds there would be any difficulty between us.
You have a free hand in the terms of this correspondence, and I
hope you will see your way to completing the decorations.'  On
May 20 the defendant replied thus shortly: 'Very well.'

"In completing these decorations, the defendant incurred
liabilities and expenses which brought the total cost of this
house up to the sum of twelve thousand four hundred pounds, all
of which expenditure has been defrayed by the plaintiff.  This
action has been brought by the plaintiff to recover from the
defendant the sum of three hundred and fifty pounds expended by
him in excess of a sum of twelve thousand and fifty pounds,
alleged by the plaintiff to have been fixed by this
correspondence as the maximum sum that the defendant had
authority to expend.

"The question for me to decide is whether or no the defendant is
liable to refund to the plaintiff this sum.  In my judgment he is
so liable.

"What in effect the plaintiff has said is this 'I give you a free
hand to complete these decorations, provided that you keep within
a total cost to me of twelve thousand pounds.  If you exceed that
sum by as much as fifty pounds, I will not hold you responsible;
beyond that point you are no agent of mine, and I shall repudiate
liability.' It is not quite clear to me whether, had the
plaintiff in fact repudiated liability under his agent's
contracts, he would, under all the circumstances, have been
successful in so doing; but he has not adopted this course.  He
has accepted liability, and fallen back upon his rights against
the defendant under the terms of the latter's engagement.

"In my judgment the plaintiff is entitled to recover this sum
from the defendant.

"It has been sought, on behalf of the defendant, to show that no
limit of expenditure was fixed or intended to be fixed by this
correspondence.  If this were so, I can find no reason for the
plaintiff's importation into the correspondence of the figures of
twelve thousand pounds and subsequently of fifty pounds.  The
defendant's contention would render these figures meaningless.
It is manifest to me that by his letter of May 20 he assented to
a very clear proposition, by the terms of which he must be held
to be bound.

"For these reasons there will be judgment for the plaintiff for
the amount claimed with costs."

James sighed, and stooping, picked up his umbrella which had
fallen with a rattle at the words 'importation into this
correspondence.'

Untangling his legs, he rapidly left the Court; without waiting
for his son, he snapped up a hansom cab (it was a clear, grey
afternoon) and drove straight to Timothy's where he found
Swithin; and to him, Mrs. Septimus Small, and Aunt Hester, he
recounted the whole proceedings, eating two muffins not
altogether in the intervals of speech.

"Soames did very well," he ended; "he's got his head screwed on
the right way.  This won't please Jolyon.  It's a bad business
for that young Bosinney; he'll go bankrupt, I shouldn't wonder,"
and then after a long pause, during which he had stared
disquietly into the fire, he added

"He wasn't there--now why?"

There was a sound of footsteps.  The figure of a thick-set man,
with the ruddy brown face of robust health, was seen in the back
drawing-room.  The forefinger of his upraised hand was outlined
against the black of his frock coat.  He spoke in a grudging
voice.

"Well, James," he said, "I can't--I can't stop," and turning
round, he walked out.

It was Timothy.

James rose from his chair.  "There!" he said, "there!  I knew
there was something wro...."  He checked himself, and was silent,
staring before him, as though he had seen a portent.




CHAPTER VI

SOAMES BREAKS THE NEWS


In leaving the Court Soames did not go straight home.  He felt
disinclined for the City, and drawn by need for sympathy in his
triumph, he, too, made his way, but slowly and on foot, to
Timothy's in the Bayswater Road.

His father had just left; Mrs. Small and Aunt Hester, in
possession of the whole story, greeted him warmly.  They were
sure he was hungry after all that evidence.  Smither should toast
him some more muffins, his dear father had eaten them all.  He
must put his legs up on the sofa; and he must have a glass of
prune brandy too.  It was so strengthening.

Swithin was still present, having lingered later than his wont,
for he felt in want of exercise.  On hearing this suggestion, he
'pished.' A pretty pass young men were coming to!  His own liver
was out of order, and he could not bear the thought of anyone
else drinking prune brandy.

He went away almost immediately, saying to Soames: "And how's
your wife?  You tell her from me that if she's dull, and likes to
come and dine with me quietly, I'll give her such a bottle of
champagne as she doesn't get every day."  Staring down from his
height on Soames he contracted his thick, puffy, yellow hand as
though squeezing within it all this small fry, and throwing out
his chest he waddled slowly away.

Mrs. Small and Aunt Hester were left horrified.  Swithin was so
droll!

They themselves were longing to ask Soames how Irene would take
the result, yet knew that they must not; he would perhaps say
something of his own accord, to throw some light on this, the
present burning question in their lives, the question that from
necessity of silence tortured them almost beyond bearing; for
even Timothy had now been told, and the effect on his health was
little short of alarming.  And what, too, would June do?  This,
also, was a most exciting, if dangerous speculation!

They had never forgotten old Jolyon's visit, since when he had
not once been to see them; they had never forgotten the feeling
it gave all who were present, that the family was no longer what
it had been--that the family was breaking up.

But Soames gave them no help, sitting with his knees crossed,
talking of the Barbizon school of painters, whom he had just
discovered.  These were the coming men, he said; he should not
wonder if a lot of money were made over them; he had his eye on
two pictures by a man called Corot, charming things; if he could
get them at a reasonable price he was going to buy them--they
would, he thought, fetch a big price some day.

Interested as they could not but be, neither Mrs. Septimus Small
nor Aunt Hester could entirely acquiesce in being thus put off.

It was interesting--most interesting--and then Soames was so
clever that they were sure he would do something with those
pictures if anybody could; but what was his plan now that he had
won his case; was he going to leave London at once, and live in
the country, or what was he going to do?

Soames answered that he did not know, he thought they should be
moving soon.  He rose and kissed his aunts.

No sooner had Aunt Juley received this emblem of departure than a
change came over her, as though she were being visited by
dreadful courage; every little roll of flesh on her face seemed
trying to escape from an invisible, confining mask.

She rose to the full extent of her more than medium height, and
said: "It has been on my mind a long time, dear, and if nobody
else will tell you, I have made up my mind that...."

Aunt Hester interrupted her: "Mind, Julia, you do it...." she
gasped--"on your own responsibility!"

Mrs. Small went on as though she had not heard: "I think you
ought to know, dear, that Mrs. MacAnder saw Irene walking in
Richmond Park with Mr. Bosinney."

Aunt Hester, who had also risen, sank back in her chair, and
turned her face away.  Really Juley was too--she should not do
such things when she--Aunt Hester, was in the room; and,
breathless with anticipation, she waited for what Soames would
answer.

He had flushed the peculiar flush which always centred between
his eyes; lifting his hand, and, as it were, selecting a finger,
he bit a nail delicately; then, drawling it out between set lips,
he said: "Mrs. MacAnder is a cat!"

Without waiting for any reply, he left the room.

When he went into Timothy's he had made up his mind what course
to pursue on getting home.  He would go up to Irene and say:

"Well, I've won my case, and there's an end of it!  I don't want
to be hard on Bosinney; I'll see if we can't come to some
arrangement; he shan't be pressed.  And now let's turn over a
new leaf!  We'll let the house, and get out of these fogs.  We'll
go down to Robin Hill at once.  I--I never meant to be rough with
you!  Let's shake hands--and--"  Perhaps she would let him kiss
her, and forget!

When he came out of Timothy's his intentions were no longer so
simple.  The smouldering jealousy and suspicion of months blazed
up within him.  He would put an end to that sort of thing once
and for all; he would not have her drag his name in the dirt!  If
she could not or would not love him, as was her duty and his
right--she should not play him tricks with anyone else!  He would
tax her with it; threaten to divorce her!  That would make her
behave; she would never face that.  But--but--what if she did?
He was staggered; this had not occurred to him.

What if she did?  What if she made him a confession?  How would
he stand then?  He would have to bring a divorce!

A divorce!  Thus close, the word was paralyzing, so utterly at
variance with all the principles that had hitherto guided his
life.  Its lack of compromise appalled him; he felt--like the
captain of a ship, going to the side of his vessel, and, with his
own hands throwing over the most precious of his bales.  This
jettisoning of his property with his own hand seemed uncanny to
Soames.  It would injure him in his profession: He would have to
get rid of the house at Robin Hill, on which he had spent so much
money, so much anticipation--and at a sacrifice.  And she!  She
would no longer belong to him, not even in name!  She would pass
out of his life, and he--he should never see her again!

He traversed in the cab the length of a street without getting
beyond the thought that he should never see her again!

But perhaps there was nothing to confess, even now very likely
there was nothing to confess.  Was it wise to push things so far?
Was it wise to put himself into a position where he might have to
eat his words?  The result of this case would ruin Bosinney; a
ruined man was desperate, but--what could he do?  He might go
abroad, ruined men always went abroad.  What could they do--if
indeed it was 'they'--without money?  It would be better to wait
and see how things turned out.  If necessary, he could have her
watched.  The agony of his jealousy (for all the world like the
crisis of an aching tooth) came on again; and he almost cried
out.  But he must decide, fix on some course of action before he
got home.  When the cab drew up at the door, he had decided
nothing.

He entered, pale, his hands moist with perspiration, dreading to
meet her, burning to meet her, ignorant of what he was to say or
do.

The maid Bilson was in the hall, and in answer to his question:
"Where is your mistress?" told him that Mrs. Forsyte had left the
house about noon, taking with her a trunk and bag.

Snatching the sleeve of his fur coat away from her grasp, he
confronted her:

"What?" he exclaimed; "what's that you said?" Suddenly
recollecting that he must not betray emotion, he added: "What
message did she leave?" and noticed with secret terror the
startled look of the maid's eyes.

"Mrs. Forsyte left no message, sir."

"No message; very well, thank you, that will do.  I shall be
dining out."

The maid went downstairs, leaving him still in his fur coat, idly
turning over the visiting cards in the porcelain bowl that stood
on the carved oak rug chest in the hall.

Mr. and Mrs. Bareham Culcher.
Mrs. Septimus Small.
Mrs. Baynes.
Mr. Solomon Thornworthy.
Lady Bellis.
Miss Hermione Bellis.
Miss Winifred Bellis.
Miss Ella Bellis.

Who the devil were all these people?  He seemed to have forgotten
all familiar things.  The words 'no message--a trunk, and a bag,'
played a hide-and-seek in his brain.  It was incredible that she
had left no message, and, still in his fur coat, he ran upstairs
two steps at a time, as a young married man when he comes home
will run up to his wife's room.

Everything was dainty, fresh, sweet-smelling; everything in
perfect order.  On the great bed with its lilac silk quilt, was
the bag she had made and embroidered with her own hands to hold
her sleeping things; her slippers ready at the foot; the sheets
even turned over at the head as though expecting her.

On the table stood the silver-mounted brushes and bottles from
her dressing bag, his own present.  There must, then, be some
mistake.  What bag had she taken?  He went to the bell to summon
Bilson, but remembered in time that he must assume knowledge of
where Irene had gone, take it all as a matter of course, and
grope out the meaning for himself.

He locked the doors, and tried to think, but felt his brain going
round; and suddenly tears forced themselves into his eyes.

Hurriedly pulling off his coat, he looked at himself in the
mirror.

He was too pale, a greyish tinge all over his face; he poured out
water, and began feverishly washing.

Her silver-mounted brushes smelt faintly of the perfumed lotion
she used for her hair; and at this scent the burning sickness of
his jealousy seized him again.

Struggling into his fur, he ran downstairs and out into the
street.

He had not lost all command of himself, however, and as he went
down Sloane Street he framed a story for use, in case he should
not find her at Bosinney's.  But if he should?  His power of
decision again failed; he reached the house without knowing what
he should do if he did find her there.

It was after office hours, and the street door was closed; the
woman who opened it could not say whether Mr. Bosinney were in or
no; she had not seen him that day, not for two or three days; she
did not attend to him now, nobody attended to him, he....

Soames interrupted her, he would go up and see for himself.  He
went up with a dogged, white face.

The top floor was unlighted, the door closed, no one answered his
ringing, he could hear no sound.  He was obliged to descend,
shivering under his fur, a chill at his heart.  Hailing a cab, he
told the man to drive to Park Lane.

On the way he tried to recollect when he had last given her a
cheque; she could not have more than three or four pounds, but
there were her jewels; and with exquisite torture he remembered
how much money she could raise on these; enough to take them
abroad; enough for them to live on for months!  He tried to
calculate; the cab stopped, and he got out with the calculation
unmade.

The butler asked whether Mrs. Soames was in the cab, the master
had told him they were both expected to dinner.

Soames answered: "No.  Mrs. Forsyte has a cold."

The butler was sorry.

Soames thought he was looking at him inquisitively, and
remembering that he was not in dress clothes, asked: "Anybody
here to dinner, Warmson?"

"Nobody but Mr. and Mrs. Dartie, sir."

Again it seemed to Soames that the butler was looking curiously
at him.  His composure gave way.

"What are you looking at?" he said.  "What's the matter with me,
eh?"

The butler blushed, hung up the fur coat, murmured something that
sounded like: "Nothing, sir, I'm sure, sir," and stealthily
withdrew.

Soames walked upstairs.  Passing the drawing-room without a look,
he went straight up to his mother's and father's bedroom.

James, standing sideways, the concave lines of his tall, lean
figure displayed to advantage in shirt-sleeves and evening
waistcoat, his head bent, the end of his white tie peeping askew
from underneath one white Dundreary whisker, his eyes peering
with intense concentration, his lips pouting, was hooking the top
hooks of his wife's bodice.  Soames stopped; he felt half-choked,
whether because he had come upstairs too fast, or for some other
reason.  He--he himself had never--never been asked to....

He heard his father's voice, as though there were a pin in his
mouth, saying: "Who's that?  Who's there?  What d'you want?" His
mother's: "Here, Felice, come and hook this; your master'll never
get done."

He put his hand up to his throat, and said hoarsely:

"It's I--Soames!"

He noticed gratefully the affectionate surprise in Emily's:
"Well, my dear boy?" and James', as he dropped the hook: "What,
Soames!  What's brought you up?  Aren't you well?"

He answered mechanically: "I'm all right," and looked at them,
and it seemed impossible to bring out his news.

James, quick to take alarm, began: "You don't look well.  I
expect you've taken a chill--it's liver, I shouldn't wonder.
Your mother'll give you...."

But Emily broke in quietly: "Have you brought Irene?"

Soames shook his head.

"No," he stammered, "she--she's left me!"

Emily deserted the mirror before which she was standing.  Her
tall, full figure lost its majesty and became very human as she
came running over to Soames.

"My dear boy!  My dear boy!"

She put her lips to his forehead, and stroked his hand.

James, too, had turned full towards his son; his face looked
older.

"Left you?" he said.  "What d'you mean--left you?  You never told
me she was going to leave you."

Soames answered surlily: "How could I tell?  What's to be done?"

James began walking up and down; he looked strange and stork-like
without a coat.  "What's to be done!" he muttered.  "How should I
know what's to be done?  What's the good of asking me?  Nobody
tells me anything, and then they come and ask me what's to be
done; and I should like to know how I'm to tell them!  Here's
your mother, there she stands; she doesn't say anything.  What I
should say you've got to do is to follow her.."

Soames smiled; his peculiar, supercilious smile had never before
looked pitiable.

"I don't know where she's gone," he said.

"Don't know where she's gone!" said James.  "How d'you mean,
don't know where she's gone?  Where d'you suppose she's gone?
She's gone after that young Bosinney, that's where she's gone.  I
knew how it would be."

Soames, in the long silence that followed, felt his mother
pressing his hand.  And all that passed seemed to pass as though
his own power of thinking or doing had gone to sleep.

His father's face, dusky red, twitching as if he were going to
cry, and words breaking out that seemed rent from him by some
spasm in his soul.

"There'll be a scandal; I always said so."  Then, no one saying
anything: "And there you stand, you and your mother!"

And Emily's voice, calm, rather contemptuous: "Come, now, James!
Soames will do all that he can."

And James, staring at the floor, a little brokenly: "Well, I
can't help you; I'm getting old.  Don't you be in too great a
hurry, my boy."

And his mother's voice again: "Soames will do all he can to get
her back.  We won't talk of it.  It'll all come right, I dare
say."

And James: "Well, I can't see how it can come right.  And if she
hasn't gone off with that young Bosinney, my advice to you is not
to listen to her, but to follow her and get her back."

Once more Soames felt his mother stroking his hand, in token of
her approval, and as though repeating some form of sacred oath,
he muttered between his teeth: "I will!"

All three went down to the drawing-room together.  There, were
gathered the three girls and Dartie; had Irene been present, the
family circle would have been complete.

James sank into his armchair, and except for a word of cold
greeting to Dartie, whom he both despised and dreaded, as a man
likely to be always in want of money, he said nothing till dinner
was announced.  Soames, too, was silent; Emily alone, a woman of
cool courage, maintained a conversation with Winifred on trivial
subjects.  She was never more composed in her manner and
conversation than that evening.

A decision having been come to not to speak of Irene's flight, no
view was expressed by any other member of the family as to the
right course to be pursued; there can be little doubt, from the
general tone adopted in relation to events as they afterwards
turned out, that James's advice: "Don't you listen to her,
follow-her and get her back!" would, with here and there an
exception, have been regarded as sound, not only in Park Lane,
but amongst the Nicholases, the Rogers, and at Timothy's.  Just
as it would surely have been endorsed by that wider body of
Forsytes all over London, who were merely excluded from judgment
by ignorance of the story.

In spite then of Emily's efforts, the dinner was served by
Warmson and the footman almost in silence.  Dartie was sulky, and
drank all he could get; the girls seldom talked to each other at
any time.  James asked once where June was, and what she was
doing with herself in these days.  No one could tell him.  He
sank back into gloom.  Only when Winifred recounted how little
Publius had given his bad penny to a beggar, did he brighten up.

"Ah!" he said, "that's a clever little chap.  I don't know
what'll become of him, if he goes on like this.  An intelligent
little chap, I call him!" But it was only a flash.

The courses succeeded one another solemnly, under the electric
light, which glared down onto the table, but barely reached the
principal ornament of the walls, a so-called 'Sea Piece by
Turner,' almost entirely composed of cordage and drowning men.

Champagne was handed, and then a bottle of James' prehistoric
port, but as by the chill hand of some skeleton.

At ten o'clock Soames left; twice in reply to questions, he had
said that Irene was not well; he felt he could no longer trust
himself.  His mother kissed him with her large soft kiss, and he
pressed her hand, a flush of warmth in his cheeks.  He walked
away in the cold wind, which whistled desolately round the
corners of the streets, under a sky of clear steel-blue, alive
with stars; he noticed neither their frosty greeting, nor the
crackle of the curled-up plane-leaves, nor the night-women
hurrying in their shabby furs, nor the pinched faces of vagabonds
at street corners.  Winter was come!  But Soames hastened home,
oblivious; his hands trembled as he took the late letters from
the gilt wire cage into which they had been thrust through the
slit in the door.'

None from Irene!

He went into the dining-room; the fire was bright there, his
chair drawn up to it, slippers ready, spirit case, and carven
cigarette box on the table; but after staring at it all for a
minute or two, he turned out the light and went upstairs.
There was a fire too in his dressing-room, but her room was
dark and cold.  It was into this room that Soames went.

He made a great illumination with candles, and for a long time
continued pacing up and down between the bed and the door.  He
could not get used to the thought that she had really left him,
and as though still searching for some message, some reason, some
reading of all the mystery of his married life, he began opening
every recess and drawer.

There were her dresses; he had always liked, indeed insisted,
that she should be well-dressed--she had taken very few; two or
three at most, and drawer after drawer; full of linen and silk
things, was untouched.

Perhaps after all it was only a freak, and she had gone to the
seaside for a few days' change.  If only that were so, and she
were really coming back, he would never again do as he had done
that fatal night before last, never again run that risk--though
it was her duty, her duty as a wife; though she did belong to
him--he would never again run that risk; she was evidently not
quite right in her head!

He stooped over the drawer where she kept her jewels; it was not
locked, and came open as he pulled; the jewel box had the key in
it.  This surprised him until he remembered that it was sure to
be empty.  He opened it.

It was far from empty.  Divided, in little green velvet
compartments, were all the things he had given her, even her
watch, and stuck into the recess that contained--the watch was a
three-cornered note addressed 'Soames Forsyte,' in Irene's
handwriting:

'I think I have taken nothing that you or your people have given
me.'  And that was all.

He looked at the clasps and bracelets of diamonds and pearls, at
the little flat gold watch with a great diamond set in sapphires,
at the chains and rings, each in its nest, and the tears rushed
up in his eyes and dropped upon them.

Nothing that she could have done, nothing that she had done,
brought home to him like this the inner significance of her act.
For the moment, perhaps, he understood nearly all there was to
understand--understood that she loathed him, that she had loathed
him for years, that for all intents and purposes they were like
people living in different worlds, that there was no hope for
him, never had been; even, that she had suffered--that she was to
be pitied.

In that moment of emotion he betrayed the Forsyte in him--forgot
himself, his interests, his property--was capable of almost
anything; was lifted into the pure ether of the selfless and
unpractical.

Such moments pass quickly.

And as though with the tears he had purged himself of weakness,
he got up, locked the box, and slowly, almost trembling, carried
it with him into the other room.




CHAPTER VII

JUNE'S VICTORY


June had waited for her chance, scanning the duller columns of
the journals, morning and evening with an assiduity which at
first puzzled old Jolyon; and when her chance came, she took it
with all the promptitude and resolute tenacity of her character.

She will always remember best in her life that morning when at
last she saw amongst the reliable Cause List of the Times
newspaper, under the heading of Court XIII, Mr. Justice Bentham,
the case of Forsyte v. Bosinney.

Like a gambler who stakes his last piece of money, she had
prepared to hazard her all upon this throw; it was not her nature
to contemplate defeat.  How, unless with the instinct of a woman
in love, she knew that Bosinney's discomfiture in this action was
assured, cannot be told--on this assumption, however, she laid
her plans, as upon a certainty.

Half past eleven found her at watch in the gallery of Court
XIII., and there she remained till the case of Forsyte v.
Bosinney was over.  Bosinney's absence did not disquiet her; she
had felt instinctively that he would not defend himself.  At the
end of the judgment she hastened down, and took a cab to his
rooms.

She passed the open street-door and the offices on the three
lower floors without attracting notice; not till she reached the
top did her difficulties begin.

Her ring was not answered; she had now to make up her mind
whether she would go down and ask the caretaker in the basement
to let her in to await Mr. Bosinney's return, or remain patiently
outside the door, trusting that no one would, come up.  She
decided on the latter course.

A quarter of an hour had passed in freezing vigil on the landing,
before it occurred to her that Bosinney had been used to leave
the key of his rooms under the door-mat.  She looked and found it
there.  For some minutes she could not decide to make use of it;
at last she let herself in and left the door open that anyone who
came might see she was there on business.

This was not the same June who had paid the trembling visit five
months ago; those months of suffering and restraint had made her
less sensitive; she had dwelt on this visit so long, with such
minuteness, that its terrors were discounted beforehand.  She was
not there to fail this time, for if she failed no one could help
her.

Like some mother beast on the watch over her young, her little
quick figure never stood still in that room, but wandered from
wall to wall, from window to door, fingering now one thing, now
another.  There was dust everywhere, the room could not have been
cleaned for weeks, and June, quick to catch at anything that
should buoy up her hope, saw in it a sign that he had been
obliged, for economy's sake, to give up his servant.

She looked into the bedroom; the bed was roughly made, as though
by the hand of man.  Listening intently, she darted in, and
peered into his cupboards.  A few shirts and collars, a pair of
muddy boots--the room was bare even of garments.

She stole back to the sitting-room, and now she noticed the
absence of all the little things he had set store by.  The clock
that had been his mother's, the field-glasses that had hung over
the sofa; two really valuable old prints of Harrow, where his
father had been at school, and last, not least, the piece of
Japanese pottery she herself had given him.  All were gone; and
in spite of the rage roused within her championing soul at the
thought that the world should treat him thus, their disappearance
augured happily for the success of her plan.

It was while looking at the spot where the piece of Japanese
pottery had stood that she felt a strange certainty of being
watched, and, turning, saw Irene in the open doorway.

The two stood gazing at each other for a minute in silence; then
June walked forward and held out her hand.  Irene did not take
it.

When her hand was refused, June put it behind her.  Her eyes grew
steady with anger; she waited for Irene to speak; and thus
waiting, took in, with who-knows-what rage of jealousy,
suspicion, and curiosity, every detail of her friend's face and
dress and figure.

Irene was clothed in her long grey fur; the travelling cap on her
head left a wave of gold hair visible above her forehead.  The
soft fullness of the coat made her face as small as a child's.

Unlike June's cheeks, her cheeks had no colour in them, but were
ivory white and pinched as if with cold.  Dark circles lay round
her eyes.  In one hand she held a bunch of violets.

She looked back at June, no smile on her lips; and with those
great dark eyes fastened on her, the girl, for all her startled
anger, felt something of the old spell.

She spoke first, after all.

"What have you come for?"  But the feeling that she herself was
being asked the same question, made her add: "This horrible case.
I came to tell him--he has lost it."

Irene did not speak, her eyes never moved from June's face, and
the girl cried:

"Don't stand there as if you were made of stone!"

Irene laughed: "I wish to God I were!"

But June turned away: "Stop!" she cried, "don't tell me!  I don't
want to hear!  I don't want to hear what you've come for.  I
don't want to hear!" And like some uneasy spirit, she began
swiftly walking to and fro.  Suddenly she broke out:

"I was here first.  We can't both stay here together!"

On Irene's face a smile wandered up, and died out like a flicker
of firelight.  She did not move.  And then it was that June
perceived under the softness arid immobility of this figure
something desperate and resolved; something not to be turned
away, something dangerous.  She tore off her hat, and, putting
both hands to her brow, pressed back the bronze mass of her hair.

"You have no right here!" she cried defiantly.

Irene answered: "I have no right anywhere!

"What do you mean?"

"I have left Soames.  You always wanted me to!"

June put her hands over her ears.

"Don't!  I don't want to hear anything--I don't want to know
anything.  It's impossible to fight with you!  What makes you
stand like that?  Why don't you go?"

Irene's lips moved; she seemed to be saying: "Where should I go?"

June turned to the window.  She could see the face of a clock
down in the street.  It was nearly four.  At any moment he might
come!  She looked back across her shoulder, and her face was
distorted with anger.

But Irene had not moved; in her gloved hands she ceaselessly
turned and twisted the little bunch of violets.

The tears of rage and disappointment rolled down June's cheeks.

"How could you come?" she said.  "You have been a false friend to
me!"

Again Irene laughed.  June saw that she had played a wrong card,
and broke down.

"Why have you come?" she sobbed.  "You've ruined my life, and now
you want to ruin his!"

Irene's mouth quivered; her eyes met June's with a look so
mournful that the girl cried out in the midst of her sobbing,
"No, no!"

But Irene's head bent till it touched her breast.  She turned,
and went quickly out, hiding her lips with the little bunch of
violets.

June ran to the door.  She heard the footsteps going down and
down.  She called out: "Come back, Irene!  Come back!"

The footsteps died away....

Bewildered and torn, the girl stood at the top of the stairs.
Why had Irene gone, leaving her mistress of the field?  What did
it mean?  Had she really given him up to her?  Or had she...?
And she was the prey of a gnawing uncertainty....  Bosinney did
not come....

About six o'clock that afternoon old Jolyon returned from
Wistaria Avenue, where now almost every day he spent some hours,
and asked if his grand-daughter were upstairs.  On being told
that she had just come in, he sent up to her room to request her
to come down and speak to him.

He had made up his mind to tell her that he was reconciled with
her father.  In future bygones must be bygones.  He would no
longer live alone, or practically alone, in this great house; he
was going to give it up, and take one in the country for his son,
where they could all go and live together.  If June did not like
this, she could have an allowance and live by herself.  It
wouldn't make much difference to her, for it was a long time
since she had shown him any affection.

But when June came down, her face was pinched and piteous; there
was a strained, pathetic look in her eyes.  She snuggled up in
her old attitude on the arm of his chair, and what he said
compared but poorly with the clear, authoritative, injured
statement he had thought out with much care.  His heart felt
sore, as the great heart of a mother-bird feels sore when its
youngling flies and bruises its wing.  His words halted, as
though he were apologizing for having at last deviated from the
path of virtue, and succumbed, in defiance of sounder principles,
to his more natural instincts.

He seemed nervous lest, in thus announcing his intentions, he
should be setting his granddaughter a bad example; and now that
he came to the point, his way of putting the suggestion that, if
she didn't like it, she could live by herself and lump it, was
delicate in the extreme.'

"And if, by any chance, my darling," he said, "you found you
didn't get on--with them, why, I could make that all right.  You
could have what you liked.  We could find a little flat in London
where you could set up, and I could be running to continually.
But the children," he added, "are dear little things!"

Then, in the midst of this grave, rather transparent, explanation
of changed policy, his eyes twinkled.  "This'll astonish
Timothy's weak nerves.  That precious young thing will have
something to say about this, or I'm a Dutchman!"

June had not yet spoken.  Perched thus on the arm of his chair,
with her head above him, her face was invisible.  But presently
he felt her warm cheek against his own, and knew that, at all
events, there was nothing very alarming in her attitude towards
his news.  He began to take courage.

"You'll like your father," he said--"an amiable chap.  Never was
much push about him, but easy to get on with.  You'll find him
artistic and all that."

And old Jolyon bethought him of the dozen or so water-colour
drawings all carefully locked up in his bedroom; for now that his
son was going to become a man of property he did not think them
quite such poor things as heretofore.

"As to your--your stepmother," he said, using the word with some
little difficulty, "I call her a refined woman--a bit of a Mrs.
Gummidge, I shouldn't wonder--but very fond of Jo.  And the
children," he repeated--indeed, this sentence ran like music
through all his solemn self-justification--"are sweet little
things!"

If June had known, those words but reincarnated that tender love
for little children, for the young and weak, which in the past
had made him desert his son for her tiny self, and now, as the
cycle rolled, was taking him from her.

But he began to get alarmed at her silence, and asked
impatiently: "Well, what do you say?"

June slid down to his knee, and she in her turn began her tale.
She thought it would all go splendidly; she did not see any
difficulty, and she did not care a bit what people thought.

Old Jolyon wriggled.  H'm! then people would think!  He had
thought that after all these years perhaps they wouldn't!  Well,
he couldn't help it!  Nevertheless, he could not approve of his
granddaughter's way of putting it--she ought to mind what people
thought!

Yet he said nothing.  His feelings were too mixed, too
inconsistent for expression.

No--went on June he did not care; what business was it of theirs?
There was only one thing--and with her cheek pressing against his
knee, old Jolyon knew at once that this something was no trifle:
As he was going to buy a house in the country, would he not--to
please her--buy that splendid house of Soames' at Robin Hill?  It
was finished, it was perfectly beautiful, and no one would live
in it now.  They would all be so happy there.

Old Jolyon was on the alert at once.  Wasn't the 'man of
property' going to live in his new house, then?  He never alluded
to Soames now but under this title.

"No"--June said--"he was not; she knew that he was not!"

How did she know?

She could not tell him, but she knew.  She knew nearly for
certain!  It was most unlikely; circumstances had changed!
Irene's words still rang in her head: "I have left Soames.
Where should I go?"

But she kept silence about that.

If her grandfather would only buy it and settle that wretched
claim that ought never to have been made on Phil!  It would be
the very best thing for everybody, and everything--everything
might come straight

And June put her lips to his forehead, and pressed them close.

But old Jolyon freed himself from her caress, his face wore the
judicial look which came upon it when he dealt with affairs.  He
asked: What did she mean?  There was something behind all this--
had she been seeing Bosinney?

June answered: "No; but I have been to his rooms."

"Been to his rooms?  Who took you there?"

June faced him steadily.  "I went alone.  He has lost that case.
I don't care whether it was right or wrong.  I want to help him;
and I will!"

Old Jolyon asked again: "Have you seen him?" His glance seemed to
pierce right through the girl's eyes into her soul.

Again June answered: "No; he was not there.  I waited, but he did
not come."

Old Jolyon made a movement of relief.  She had risen and looked
down at him; so slight, and light, and young, but so fixed, and
so determined; and disturbed, vexed, as he was, he could not
frown away that fixed look.  The feeling of being beaten, of the
reins having slipped, of being old and tired, mastered him.

"Ah!" he said at last, "you'll get yourself into a mess one of
these days, I can see.  You want your own way in everything."

Visited by one of his strange bursts of philosophy, he added:
"Like that you were born; and like that you'll stay until you
die!"

And he, who in his dealings with men of business, with Boards,
with Forsytes of all descriptions, with such as were not
Forsytes, had always had his own way, looked at his indomitable
grandchild sadly--for he felt in her that quality which above all
others he unconsciously admired.

"Do you know what they say is going on?" he said slowly.

June crimsoned.

"Yes--no!  I know--and I don't know--I don't care!" and she
stamped her foot.

"I believe," said old Jolyon, dropping his eyes, "that you'd have
him if he were dead!"

There was a long silence before he spoke again.

"But as to buying this house--you don't know what you're talking
about!"

June said that she did.  She knew that he could get it if he
wanted.  He would only have to give what it cost.

"What it cost!  You know nothing about it.  I won't go to Soames-
--I'll have nothing more to do with that young man."

"But you needn't; you can go to Uncle James.  If you can't buy
the house, will you pay his lawsuit claim?  I know he is terribly
hard up--I've seen it.  You can stop it out of my money!"

A twinkle came into old Jolyon's eyes.

"Stop it out of your money!  A pretty way.  And what will you do,
pray, without your money?"

But secretly, the idea of wresting the house from James and his
son had begun to take hold of him.  He had heard on Forsyte
'Change much comment, much rather doubtful praise of this house.
It was 'too artistic,' but a fine place.  To take from the 'man
of property' that on which he had set his heart, would be a
crowning triumph over James, practical proof that he was going to
make a man of property of Jo, to put him back in his proper
position, and there to keep him secure.  Justice once for all on
those who had chosen to regard his son as a poor, penniless
outcast.

He would see, he would see!  It might be out of the question; he
was not going to pay a fancy price, but if it could be done, why,
perhaps he would do it!

And still more secretly he knew that he could not refuse her.

But he did not commit himself.  He would think it over--he said
to June.




CHAPTER VIII

BOSINNEY'S DEPARTURE


Old Jolyon  was not given to hasty decisions; it is probable that
he would have continued to think over the purchase of the house
at Robin Hill, had not June's face told him that he would have no
peace until he acted.

At breakfast next morning she asked him what time she should
order the carriage.

"Carriage!" he said, with some appearance of innocence; "what
for?  I'm not going out!"

She answered: "If you don't go early, you won't catch Uncle James
before he goes into the City."

"James! what about your Uncle James?"

"The house," she replied, in such a voice that he no longer
pretended ignorance.

"I've not made up my mind," he said.

"You must!  You must!  Oh! Gran--think of me!"

Old Jolyon grumbled out: "Think of you--I'm always thinking of
you, but you don't think of yourself; you don't think what you're
letting yourself in for.  Well, order the carriage at ten!"

At a quarter past he was placing his umbrella in the stand at
Park Lane--he did not choose to relinquish his hat and coat;
telling Warmson that he wanted to see his master, he went,
without being announced, into the study, and sat down.

James was still in the dining-room talking to Soames, who had
come round again before breakfast.  On hearing who his visitor
was, he muttered nervously: "Now, what's be want, I wonder?"

He then got up.

"Well," he said to Soames, "don't you go doing anything in a
hurry.  The first thing is to find out where she is--I should go
to Stainer's about it; they're the best men, if they can't find
her, nobody can." And suddenly moved to strange softness, he
muttered to himself, "Poor little thing, I can't tell what she
was thinking about!" and went out blowing his nose.

Old Jolyon did not rise on seeing his brother, but held out his
hand, and exchanged with him the clasp of a Forsyte.

James took another chair by the table, and leaned his head on his
hand.

"Well," he said, "how are you?  We don't see much of you
nowadays!"

Old Jolyon paid no attention to the remark.

"How's Emily?" he asked; and waiting for no reply, went on
"I've come to see you about this affair of young Bosinney's.  I'm
told that new house of his is a white elephant."

"I don't know anything about a white elephant," said James, "I
know he's lost his case, and I should say he'll go bankrupt."

Old Jolyon was not slow to seize the opportunity this gave him.

"I shouldn't wonder a bit!" he agreed; "and if he goes bankrupt,
the 'man of property'--that is, Soames'll be out of pocket.  Now,
what I was thinking was this: If he's not going to live there...."

Seeing both surprise and suspicion in James' eye, he quickly went
on: "I don't want to know anything; I suppose Irene's put her
foot down--it's not material to me.  But I'm thinking of a house
in the country myself, not too far from London, and if it suited
me I don't say that I mightn't look at it, at a price."

James listened to this statement with a strange mixture of doubt,
suspicion, and relief, merging into a dread of something behind,
and tinged with the remains of his old undoubted reliance upon
his elder brother's good faith and judgment.  There was anxiety,
too, as to what old Jolyon could have heard and how he had heard
it; and a sort of hopefulness arising from the thought that if
June's connection with Bosinney were completely at an end, her
grandfather would hardly seem anxious to help the young fellow.
Altogether he was puzzled; as he did not like either to show
this, or to commit himself in any way, he said:

"They tell me you're altering your Will in favour of your son."

He had not been told this; he had merely added the fact of having
seen old Jolyon with his son and grandchildren to the fact that
he had taken his Will away from Forsyte, Bustard and Forsyte.
The shot went home.

"Who told you that?" asked old Jolyon.

"I'm sure I don't know," said James; "I can't remember names--I
know somebody told me Soames spent a lot of money on this house;
he's not likely to part with it except at a good price."

"Well," said old Jolyon, "if, he thinks I'm going to pay a fancy
price, he's mistaken.  I've not got the money to throw away that
he seems to have.  Let him try and sell it at a forced sale, and
see what he'll get.  It's not every man's house, I hear!"

James, who was secretly also of this opinion, answered: "It's a
gentleman's house.  Soames is here now if you'd like to see him."

"No," said old Jolyon, "I haven't got as far as that; and I'm not
likely to, I can see that very well if I'm met in this manner!"

James was a little cowed; when it came to the actual figures of a
commercial transaction he was sure of himself, for then he was
dealing with facts, not with men; but preliminary negotiations
such as these made him nervous--he never knew quite how far he
could go.

"Well," he said, "I know nothing about it.  Soames, he tells me
nothing; I should think he'd entertain it--it's a question of
price."

"Oh!" said old Jolyon, "don't let him make a favour of it!" He
placed his hat on his head in dudgeon.

The door was opened and Soames came in.

"There's a policeman out here," he said with his half smile, "for
Uncle Jolyon."

Old Jolyon looked at him angrily, and James said: "A policeman?
I don't know anything about a policeman.  But I suppose you know
something about him," he added to old Jolyon with a look of
suspicion: "I suppose you'd better see him!"

In the hall an Inspector of Police stood stolidly regarding with
heavy-lidded pale-blue eyes the fine old English furniture picked
up by James at the famous Mavrojano sale in Portman Square.
"You'll find my brother in there," said James.

The Inspector raised his fingers respectfully to his peaked cap,
and entered the study.

James saw him go in with a strange sensation.

"Well," he said to Soames, "I suppose we must wait and see what
he wants.  Your uncle's been here about the house!"

He returned with Soames into the dining-room, but could not rest.

"Now what does he want?" he murmured again.

"Who?" replied Soames: "the Inspector?  They sent him round from
Stanhope Gate, that's all I know.  That 'nonconformist' of Uncle
Jolyon's has been pilfering, I shouldn't wonder!"

But in spite of his calmness, he too was ill at ease.

At the end of ten minutes old Jolyon came in.  He walked up to
the table, and stood there perfectly silent pulling at his long
white moustaches.  James gazed up at him with opening mouth; he
had never seen his brother look like this.

Old Jolyon raised his hand, and said slowly:

"Young Bosinney has been run over in the fog and killed."

Then standing above his brother and his nephew, and looking down
at him with his deep eyes:

"There's--some--talk--of--suicide," he said.

James' jaw dropped.  "Suicide!  What should he do that for?"

Old Jolyon answered sternly: "God knows, if you and your son
don't!"

But James did not reply.

For all men of great age, even for all Forsytes, life has had
bitter experiences.  The passer-by, who sees them wrapped in
cloaks of custom, wealth, and comfort, would never suspect that
such black shadows had fallen on their roads.  To every man of
great age--to Sir Walter Bentham himself--the idea of suicide has
once at least been present in the ante-room of his soul; on the
threshold, waiting to enter, held out from the inmost chamber by
some chance reality, some vague fear, some painful hope.  To
Forsytes that final renunciation of property is hard.  Oh! it is
hard!  Seldom--perhaps never--can they achieve, it; and yet, how
near have they not sometimes been!

So even with James!  Then in the medley of his thoughts, he broke
out: "Why I saw it in the paper yesterday: 'Run over in the fog!'
They didn't know his name!" He turned from one face to the other
in his confusion of soul; but instinctively all the time he was
rejecting that rumour of suicide.  He dared not entertain this
thought, so against his interest, against the interest of his
son, of every Forsyte.  He strove against it; and as his nature
ever unconsciously rejected that which it could not with safety
accept, so gradually he overcame this fear.  It was an accident!
It must have been!

Old Jolyon broke in on his reverie.

"Death was instantaneous.  He lay all day yesterday at the
hospital.  There was nothing to tell them who he was.  I am going
there now; you and your son had better come too."

No one opposing this command he led the way from the room.

The day was still and clear and bright, and driving over to Park
Lane from Stanhope Gate, old Jolyon had had the carriage open.
Sitting back on the padded cushions, finishing his cigar, he had
noticed with pleasure the keen crispness of the air, the bustle
of the cabs and people; the strange, almost Parisian, alacrity
that the first fine day will bring into London streets after a
spell of fog or rain.  And he had felt so happy; he had not felt
like it for months.  His confession to June was off his mind; he
had the prospect of his son's, above all, of his grandchildren's
company in the future--(he had appointed to meet young Jolyon at
the Hotch Potch that very manning to--discuss it again); and
there was the pleasurable excitement of a coming encounter, a
coming victory, over James and the 'man of property' in the
matter of the house.

He had the carriage closed now; he had no heart to look on
gaiety; nor was it right that Forsytes should be seen driving
with an Inspector of Police.

In that carriage the Inspector spoke again of the death:

"It was not so very thick--Just there.  The driver says the
gentleman must have had time to see what he was about, he seemed
to walk right into it.  It appears that he was very hard up, we
found several pawn tickets at his rooms, his account at the bank
is overdrawn, and there's this case in to-day's papers;" his cold
blue eyes travelled from one to another of the three Forsytes in
the carriage.

Old Jolyon watching from his corner saw his brother's face
change, and the brooding, worried, look deepen on it.  At the
Inspector's words, indeed, all James' doubts and fears revived.
Hard-up--pawn-tickets--an overdrawn account!  These words that
had all his life been a far-off nightmare to him, seemed to make
uncannily real that suspicion of suicide which must on no account
be entertained.  He sought his son's eye; but lynx-eyed,
taciturn, immovable, Soames gave no answering look.  And to old
Jolyon watching, divining the league of mutual defence between
them, there came an overmastering desire to have his own son at
his side, as though this visit to the dead man's body was a
battle in which otherwise he must single-handed meet those two.
And the thought of how to keep June's name out of the business
kept whirring in his brain.  James had his son to support him!
Why should he not send for Jo?

Taking out his card-case, he pencilled the following message:

'Come round at once.  I've sent the carriage for you.'

On getting out he gave this card to his coachman, telling him to
drive--as fast as possible to the Hotch Potch Club, and if Mr.
Jolyon Forsyte were there to give him the card and bring him at
once.  If not there yet, he was to wait till he came.

He followed the others slowly up the steps, leaning on his
umbrella, and stood a moment to get his breath.  The Inspector
said: "This is the mortuary, sir.  But take your time."

In the bare, white-walled room, empty of all but a streak of
sunshine smeared along the dustless floor, lay a form covered by
a sheet.  With a huge steady hand the Inspector took the hem and
turned it back.  A sightless face gazed up at them, and on either
side of that sightless defiant face the three Forsytes gazed
down; in each one of them the secret emotions, fears, and pity of
his own nature rose and fell like the rising, falling waves of
life, whose wish those white walls barred out now for ever from
Bosinney.  And in each one of them the trend of his nature, the
odd essential spring, which moved him in fashions minutely,
unalterably different from those of every other human being,
forced him to a different attitude of thought.  Far from the
others, yet inscrutably close, each stood thus, alone with death,
silent, his eyes lowered.

The Inspector asked softly:

"You identify the gentleman, sir?"

Old Jolyon raised his head and nodded.  He looked at his brother
opposite, at that long lean figure brooding over the dead man,
with face dusky red, and strained grey eyes; and at the figure of
Soames white and still by his father's side.  And all that he had
felt against those two was gone like smoke in the long white
presence of Death.  Whence comes it, how comes it--Death?  Sudden
reverse of all that goes before; blind setting forth on a path
that leads to where?  Dark quenching of the fire!  The heavy,
brutal crushing--out that all men must go through, keeping their
eyes clear and brave unto the end!  Small and of no import,
insects though they are!  And across old Jolyon's face there
flitted a gleam, for Soames, murmuring to the Inspector, crept
noiselessly away.

Then suddenly James raised his eyes.  There was a queer appeal in
that suspicious troubled look: "I know I'm no match for you," it
seemed to say.  And, hunting for handkerchief he wiped his brow;
then, bending sorrowful and lank over the dead man, he too turned
and hurried out.

Old Jolyon stood, still as death, his eyes fixed on the body.
Who shall tell of what he was thinking?  Of himself, when his
hair was brown like the hair of that young fellow dead before
him?  Of himself, with his battle just beginning, the long, long
battle he had loved; the battle that was over for this young man
almost before it had begun?  Of his grand-daughter, with her
broken hopes?  Of that other woman?  Of the strangeness, and the
pity of it?  And the irony, inscrutable, and bitter of that end?
Justice!  There was no justice for men, for they were ever in the
dark!

Or perhaps in his philosophy he thought: Better to be out of, it
all!  Better to have done with it, like this poor youth....

Some one touched him on the arm.

A tear started up and wetted his eyelash.  "Well," he said, "I'm
no good here.  I'd better be going.  You'll come to me as soon as
you can, Jo," and with his head bowed he went away.

It was young Jolyon's turn to take his stand beside the dead man,
round whose fallen body he seemed to see all the Forsytes
breathless, and prostrated.  The stroke had fallen too swiftly.

The forces underlying every tragedy--forces that take no denial,
working through cross currents to their ironical end, had met and
fused with a thunder-clap, flung out the victim, and flattened to
the ground all those that stood around.

Or so at all events young Jolyon seemed to see them, lying around
Bosinney's body.

He asked the Inspector to tell him what had happened, and the
latter, like a man who does not every day get such a chance,
again detailed such facts as were known.

"There's more here, sir, however," he said, "than meets the eye.
I don't believe in suicide, nor in pure accident, myself.  It's
more likely I think that he was suffering under great stress
of mind, and took no notice of things about him.  Perhaps you can
throw some light on these."

He took from his pocket a little packet and laid it on the table.
Carefully undoing it, he revealed a lady's handkerchief, pinned
through the folds with a pin of discoloured Venetian gold, the
stone of which had fallen from the socket.  A scent of dried
violets rose to young Jolyon's nostrils.

"Found in his breast pocket," said the Inspector; "the name has
been cut away!"

Young Jolyon with difficulty answered: "I'm afraid I cannot help
you!"  But vividly there rose before him the face he had seen
light up, so tremulous and glad, at Bosinney's coming!  Of her he
thought more than of his own daughter, more than of them all--of
her with the dark, soft glance, the delicate passive face,
waiting for the dead man, waiting even at that moment, perhaps,
still and patient in the sunlight.

He walked sorrowfully away from the hospital towards his father's
house, reflecting that this death would break up the Forsyte
family.  The stroke had indeed slipped past their defences into
the very wood of their tree.  They might flourish to all
appearance as before, preserving a brave show before the eyes of
London, but the trunk was dead, withered by the same flash that
had stricken down Bosinney.  And now the saplings would take its
place, each one a new custodian of the sense of property.

Good forest of Forsytes! thought young Jolyon--soundest timber
of our land!

Concerning the cause of this death--his family would doubtless
reject with vigour the suspicion of suicide, which was so
compromising!  They would take it as an accident, a stroke of
fate.  In their hearts they would even feel it an intervention of
Providence, a retribution--had not Bosinney endangered their two
most priceless possessions, the pocket and the hearth?  And they
would talk of 'that unfortunate accident of young Bosinney's,'
but perhaps they would not talk--silence might be better!

As for himself, he regarded the bus-driver's account of the
accident as of very little value.  For no one so madly in love
committed suicide for want of money; nor was Bosinney the sort of
fellow to set much store by a financial crisis.  And so he too
rejected this theory of suicide, the dead man's face rose too
clearly before him.  Gone in the heyday of his summer--and to
believe thus that an accident had cut Bosinney off in the full
sweep of his passion was more than ever pitiful to young Jolyon.

Then came a vision of Soames' home as it now was, and must be
hereafter.  The streak of lightning had flashed its clear uncanny
gleam on bare bones with grinning spaces between, the disguising
flesh was gone....

In the dining-room at Stanhope Gate old Jolyon was sitting alone
when his son came in.  He looked very wan in his great armchair.
And his eyes travelling round the walls with their pictures of
still life, and the masterpiece 'Dutch fishing-boats at Sunset'
seemed as though passing their gaze over his life with its hopes,
its gains, its achievements.

"Ah! Jo!" he said, "is that you?  I've told poor little June.
But that's not all of it.  Are you going to Soames'?  She's
brought it on herself, I suppose; but somehow I can't bear to
think of her, shut up there--and all alone." And holding up his
thin, veined hand, he clenched it.




CHAPTER IX

IRENE'S RETURN


After leaving James and old Jolyon in the mortuary of the
hospital, Soames hurried aimlessly along the streets.

The tragic event of Bosinney's death altered the complexion of
everything.  There was no longer the same feeling that to lose a
minute would be fatal, nor would he now risk communicating the
fact of his wife's flight to anyone till the inquest was over.

That morning he had risen early, before the postman came, had
taken the first-post letters from the box himself, and, though
there had been none from Irene, he had made an opportunity of
telling Bilson that her mistress was at the sea; he would
probably, he said, be going down himself from Saturday to Monday.
This had given him time to breathe, time to leave no stone
unturned to find her.

But now, cut off from taking steps by Bosinney's death--that
strange death, to think of which was like putting a hot iron to
his heart, like lifting a great weight from it--he did not know
how to pass his day; and he wandered here and there through the
streets, looking at every face he met, devoured by a hundred
anxieties.

And as he wandered, he thought of him who had finished his
wandering, his prowling, and would never haunt his house again.

Already in the afternoon he passed posters announcing the
identity of the dead man, and bought the papers to see what they
said.  He would stop their mouths if he could, and he went into
the City, and was closeted with Boulter for a long time.

On his way home, passing the steps of Jobson's about half past
four, he met George Forsyte, who held out an evening paper to
Soames, saying:

"Here! Have you seen this about the poor Buccaneer?"

Soames answered stonily: "Yes."

George stared at him.  He had never liked Soames; he now held him
responsible for Bosinney's death.  Soames had done for him--done
for him by that act of property that had sent the Buccaneer to
run amok that fatal afternoon.

'The poor fellow,' he was thinking, 'was so cracked with
jealousy, so cracked for his vengeance, that he heard nothing of
the omnibus in that infernal fog.'

Soames had done for him!  And this judgment was in George's eyes.

"They talk of suicide here," he said at last.  "That cat won't
jump."

Soames shook his head.  "An accident," he muttered.

Clenching his fist on the paper, George crammed it into his
pocket.  He could not resist a parting shot.

"H'mm!  All flourishing at home?  Any little Soameses yet?"

With a face as white as the steps of Jobson's, and a lip raised
as if snarling, Soames brushed past him and was gone....

On reaching home, and entering the little lighted hall with his
latchkey, the first thing that caught his eye was his wife's
gold-mounted umbrella lying on the rug chest.  Flinging off his
fur coat, he hurried to the drawing-room.

The curtains were drawn for the night, a bright fire of
cedar-logs burned in the grate, and by its light he saw Irene
sitting in her usual corner on the sofa.  He shut the door
softly, and went towards her.  She did not move, and did not seem
to see him.

"So you've come back?" he said.  "Why are you sitting here in the
dark?"

Then he caught sight of her face, so white and motionless that it
seemed as though the blood must have stopped flowing in her
veins; and her eyes, that looked enormous, like the great, wide,
startled brown eyes of an owl.

Huddled in her grey fur against the sofa cushions, she had a
strange resemblance to a captive owl, bunched fir its soft
feathers against the wires of a cage.  The supple erectness of
her figure was gone, as though she had been broken by cruel
exercise; as though there were no longer any reason for being
beautiful, and supple, and erect.

"So you've come back," he repeated.

She never looked up, and never spoke, the firelight playing over
her motionless figure.

Suddenly she tried to rise, but he prevented her; it was then
that he understood.

She had come back like an animal wounded to death, not knowing
where to turn, not knowing what she was doing.  The sight of her
figure, huddled in the fur, was enough.

He knew then for certain that Bosinney had been her lover; knew
that she had seen the report of his death--perhaps, like himself,
had bought a paper at the draughty corner of a street, and read
it.

She had come back then of her own accord, to the cage she had
pined to be free of--and taking in all the tremendous
significance of this, he longed to cry: "Take your hated body,
that I love, out of my house!  Take away that pitiful white face,
so cruel and soft--before I crush it.  Get out of my sight; never
let me see you again!"

And, at those unspoken words, he seemed to see her rise and move
away, like a woman in a terrible dream, from which she was
fighting to awake--rise and go out into the dark and cold, without
a thought of him, without so much as the knowledge of his
presence.

Then he cried, contradicting what he had not yet spoken, "No;
stay there!" And turning away from her, he sat down in his
accustomed chair on the other side of the hearth.

They sat in silence.

And Soames thought: 'Why is all this?  Why should I suffer so?
What have I done?  It is not my fault!'

Again he looked at her, huddled like a bird that is shot and
dying, whose poor breast you see panting as the air is taken from
it, whose poor eyes look at you who have shot it, with a slow,
soft, unseeing look, taking farewell of all that is good--of the
sun, and the air, and its mate.

So they sat, by the firelight, in the silence, one on each side
of the hearth.

And the fume of the burning cedar logs, that he loved so well,
seemed to grip Soames by the throat till he could bear it no
longer.  And going out into the hall he flung the door wide, to
gulp down the cold air that came in; then without hat or overcoat
went out into the Square.

Along the garden rails a half-starved cat came rubbing her way
towards him, and Soames thought: 'Suffering!  when will it cease,
my suffering?'

At a front door across the way was a man of his acquaintance
named Rutter, scraping his boots, with an air of 'I am master
here.' And Soames walked on.

From far in the clear air the bells of the church where he and
Irene had been married were pealing in 'practice' for the advent
of Christ, the chimes ringing out above the sound of traffic.  He
felt a craving for strong drink, to lull him to indifference, or
rouse him to fury.  If only he could burst out of himself, out of
this web that for the first time in his life he felt around him.
If only he could surrender to the thought: 'Divorce her--turn her
out!  She has forgotten you.  Forget her!'

If only he could surrender to the thought: 'Let her go--she has
suffered enough!'

If only he could surrender to the desire: 'Make a slave of her--
she is in your power!'

If only even he could surrender to the sudden vision: 'What does
it all matter?'  Forget himself for a minute, forget that it
mattered what he did, forget that whatever he did he must
sacrifice something.

If only he could act on an impulse!

He could forget nothing; surrender to no thought, vision, or
desire; it was all too serious; too close around him, an
unbreakable cage.

On the far side of the Square newspaper boys were calling their
evening wares, and the ghoulish cries mingled and jangled with
the sound of those church bells.

Soames covered his ears.  The thought flashed across him that but
for a chance, he himself, and not Bosinney, might be lying dead,
and she, instead of crouching there like a shot bird with those
dying eyes....

Something soft touched his legs, the cat was rubbing herself
against them.  And a sob that shook him from head to foot burst
from Soames' chest.  Then all was still again in the dark, where
the houses seemed to stare at him, each with a master and
mistress of its own, and a secret story of happiness or sorrow.

And suddenly he saw that his own door was open, and black against
the light from the hall a man standing with his back turned.
Something slid too in his breast, and he stole up close behind.

He could see his own fur coat flung across the carved oak chair;
the Persian rugs; the silver bowls, the rows of porcelain plates
arranged along the walls, and this unknown man who was standing
there.

And sharply he asked: "What is it you want, sir?"

The visitor turned.  It was young Jolyon.

"The door was open," he said.  "Might I see your wife for a
minute, I have a message for her?"

Soames gave him a strange, sidelong stare.

"My wife can see no one," he muttered doggedly.

Young Jolyon answered gently: "I shouldn't keep her a minute."

Soames brushed by him and barred the way.

"She can see no one," he said again.

Young Jolyon's glance shot past him into the hall, and Soames
turned.  There in the drawing-room doorway stood Irene, her eyes
were wild and eager, her lips were parted, her hands out-
stretched.  In the sight of both men that light vanished from
her face; her hands dropped to her sides; she stood like stone.

Soames spun round, and met his visitor's eyes, and at the look he
saw in them, a sound like a snarl escaped him.  He drew his lips
back in the ghost of a smile.

"This is my house," he said; "I manage my own affairs.  I've told
you once--I tell you again; we are not at home."

And in young Jolyon's face he slammed the door.





End of The Project Gutenberg Etext Man of Property, by John Galsworthy






THE FORSYTE SAGA

VOLUME II

Contents:
Indian Summer of a Forsyte
In Chancery



TO ANDRE CHEVRILLON




Indian Summer of a Forsyte

"And Summer's lease hath all
       too short a date."

--Shakespeare




I


In the last day of May in the early 'nineties, about six o'clock of
the evening, old Jolyon Forsyte sat under the oak tree below the
terrace of his house at Robin Hill.  He was waiting for the midges
to bite him, before abandoning the glory of the afternoon.  His
thin brown hand, where blue veins stood out, held the end of a
cigar in its tapering, long-nailed fingers--a pointed polished nail
had survived with him from those earlier Victorian days when to
touch nothing, even with the tips of the fingers, had been so
distinguished.  His domed forehead, great white moustache, lean
cheeks, and long lean jaw were covered from the westering sunshine
by an old brown Panama hat.  His legs were crossed; in all his
attitude was serenity and a kind of elegance, as of an old man who
every morning put eau de Cologne upon his silk handkerchief.  At
his feet lay a woolly brown-and-white dog trying to be a
Pomeranian--the dog Balthasar between whom and old Jolyon primal
aver-sion had changed into attachment with the years.  Close to his
chair was a swing, and on the swing was seated one of Holly's dolls
--called 'Duffer Alice'--with her body fallen over her legs and her
doleful nose buried in a black petticoat.  She was never out of
disgrace, so it did not matter to her how she sat.  Below the oak
tree the lawn dipped down a bank, stretched to the fernery, and,
beyond that refinement, became fields, dropping to the pond, the
coppice, and the prospect 'Fine, remarkable'--at which Swithin
Forsyte, from under this very tree, had stared five years ago when
he drove down with Irene to look at the house.  Old Jolyon had
heard of his brother's exploit--that drive which had become quite
celebrated on Forsyte 'Change.' Swithin! And the fellow had gone
and died, last November, at the age of only seventy-nine, renewing
the doubt whether Forsytes could live for ever, which had first
arisen when Aunt Ann passed away.  Died! and left only Jolyon and
James, Roger and Nicholas and Timothy, Julia, Hester, Susan!  And
old Jolyon thought: 'Eighty-five! I don't feel it--except when I
get that pain.'

His memory went searching.  He had not felt his age since he had
bought his nephew Soames' ill-starred house and settled into it
here at Robin Hill over three years ago.  It was as if he had been
getting younger every spring, living in the country with his son
and his grandchildren--June, and the little ones of the second
marriage, Jolly and Holly; living down here out of the racket of
London and the cackle of Forsyte 'Change,' free of his boards, in a
delicious atmosphere of no work and all play, with plenty of
occupation in the perfecting and mellowing of the house and its
twenty acres, and in ministering to the whims of Holly and Jolly.
All the knots and crankiness, which had gathered in his heart
during that long and tragic business of June, Soames, Irene his
wife, and poor young Bosinney, had been smoothed out.  Even June
had thrown off her melancholy at last--witness this travel in Spain
she was taking now with her father and her stepmother.  Curiously
perfect peace was left by their departure; blissful, yet blank,
because his son was not there.  Jo was never anything but a comfort
and a pleasure to him nowadays--an amiable chap; but women,
somehow--even the best--got a little on one's nerves, unless of
course one admired them.

Far-off a cuckoo called; a wood-pigeon was cooing from the first
elm-tree in the field, and how the daisies and buttercups had
sprung up after the last mowing! The wind had got into the sou'-
west, too--a delicious air, sappy! He pushed his hat back and let
the sun fall on his chin and cheek.  Somehow, to-day, he wanted
company wanted a pretty face to look at.  People treated the old as
if they wanted nothing.  And with the un-Forsytean philosophy which
ever intruded on his soul, he thought: 'One's never had enough'

With a foot in the grave one'll want something, I shouldn't be
surprised!'  Down here--away from the exigencies of affairs--his
grandchildren, and the flowers, trees, birds of his little domain,
to say nothing of sun and moon and stars above them, said, 'Open,
sesame,' to him day and night.  And sesame had opened--how much,
perhaps, he did not know.  He had always been responsive to what
they had begun to call 'Nature,' genuinely, almost religiously
responsive, though he had never lost his habit of calling a sunset
a sunset and a view a view, however deeply they might move him.
But nowadays Nature actually made him ache, he appreciated it so.
Every one of these calm, bright, lengthening days, with Holly's
hand in his, and the dog Balthasar in front looking studiously for
what he never found, he would stroll, watching the roses open,
fruit budding on the walls, sunlight brightening the oak leaves and
saplings in the coppice, watching the water-lily leaves unfold and
glisten, and the silvery young corn of the one wheat field;
listening to the starlings and skylarks, and the Alderney cows
chewing the cud, flicking slow their tufted tails; and every one of
these fine days he ached a little from sheer love of it all,
feeling perhaps, deep down, that he had not very much longer to
enjoy it.  The thought that some day perhaps not ten years hence,
perhaps not five--all this world would be taken away from him,
before he had exhausted his powers of loving it, seemed to him in
the nature of an injustice brooding over his horizon.  If anything
came after this life, it wouldn't be what he wanted; not Robin
Hill, and flowers and birds and pretty faces--too few, even now, of
those about him! With the years his dislike of humbug had
increased; the orthodoxy he had worn in the 'sixties, as he had
worn side-whiskers out of sheer exuberance, had long dropped off,
leaving him reverent before three things alone--beauty, upright
conduct, and the sense of property; and the greatest of these now
was beauty.  He had always had wide interests, and, indeed could
still read The Tines, but he was liable at any moment to put it
down if he heard a blackbird sing.  Upright conduct, property--
somehow, they were tiring; the blackbirds and the sunsets never
tired him, only gave him an uneasy feeling that he could not get
enough of them.  Staring into the stilly radiance of the early
evening and at the little gold and white flowers on the lawn, a
thought came to him: This weather was like the music of 'Orfeo,'
which he had recently heard at Covent Garden.  A beautiful opera,
not like Meyerbeer, nor even quite Mozart, but, in its way, perhaps
even more lovely; some-thing classical and of the Golden Age about
it, chaste and mellow, and the Ravogli 'almost worthy of the old
days'--highest praise he could bestow.  The yearning of Orpheus for
the beauty he was losing, for his love going down to Hades, as in
life love and beauty did go--the yearning which sang and throbbed
through the golden music, stirred also in the lingering beauty of
the world that evening.  And with the tip of his cork-soled,
elastic-sided boot he involuntarily stirred the ribs of the dog
Balthasar, caus-ing the animal to wake and attack his fleas; for
though he was supposed to have none, nothing could persuade him of
the fact.  When he had finished, he rubbed the place he had been
scratching against his master's calf, and settled down again with
his chin over the instep of the disturbing boot.  And into old
Jolyon's mind came a sudden recollection--a face he had seen at
that opera three weeks ago--Irene, the wife of his precious nephew
Soames, that man of property! Though he had not met her since the
day of  the 'At Home' in his old house at Stanhope Gate, which
celebrated his granddaughter June's ill-starred engagement to young
Bosinney, he had remembered her at once, for he had always admired
her--a very pretty creature.  After the death of young Bosinney,
whose mistress she had so reprehensibly become, he had heard that
she had left Soames at once.  Goodness only knew what she had been
doing since.  That sight of her face--a side view--in the row in
front, had been literally the only reminder these three years that
she was still alive.  No one ever spoke of her.  And yet Jo had
told him some-thing once--something which had upset him completely.
The boy had got it from George Forsyte, he believed, who had seen
Bosinney in the fog the day he was run over--something which
explained the young fellow's distress--an act of Soames towards his
wife--a shocking act.  Jo had seen her, too, that afternoon, after
the news was out, seen her for a moment, and his description had
always lingered in old Jolyon's mind--'wild and lost' he had called
her.  And next day June had gone there  bottled up her feelings and
gone there, and the maid had cried and told her how her mistress
had slipped out in the night and vanished.  A tragic business
altogether! One thing was certain--Soames had never been able to
lay hands on her again.  And he was living at Brighton, and
journeying up and down--a fitting fate, the man of property! For
when he once took a dislike to anyone--as he had to his nephew--old
Jolyon never got over it.  He remembered still the sense of relief
with which he had heard the news of Irene's disappearance.  It had
been shocking to think of her a prisoner in that house to which she
must have wandered back, when Jo saw her, wandered back for a
moment--like a wounded animal to its hole after seeing that news,
'Tragic death of an Architect,' in the street.  Her face had struck
him very much the other night--more beautiful than he had remem-
bered, but like a mask, with something going on beneath it.  A
young woman still--twenty-eight perhaps.  Ah, well! Very likely she
had another lover by now.  But at this subversive thought--for
married women should never love: once, even, had been too much--his
instep rose, and with it the dog Balthasar's head.  The sagacious
animal stood up and looked into old Jolyon's face.  'Walk?' he
seemed to say; and old Jolyon answered: "Come on, old chap!"

Slowly, as was their wont, they crossed among the constellations of
buttercups and daisies, and entered the fernery.  This feature,
where very little grew as yet, had been judiciously dropped below
the level of the lawn so that it might come up again on the level
of the other lawn and give the impression of irregularity, so
important in horticulture.  Its rocks and earth were beloved of the
dog Balthasar, who sometimes found a mole there.  Old Jolyon made a
point of passing through it because, though it was not beautiful,
he intended that it should be, some day, and he would think: 'I
must get Varr to come down and look at it; he's better than Beech.'
For plants, like houses and human complaints, required the best
expert consideration.  It was inhabited by snails, and if
accompanied by his grandchildren, he would point to one and tell
them the story of the little boy who said: 'Have plummers got
leggers, Mother?  'No, sonny.'  'Then darned if I haven't been and
swallowed a snileybob.'  And when they skipped and clutched his
hand, thinking of the snileybob going down the little boy's 'red
lane,' his, eyes would twinkle.  Emerging from the fernery, he
opened the wicket gate, which just there led into the first field,
a large and park-like area, out of which, within brick walls, the
vegetable garden had been carved.  Old Jolyon avoided this, which
did not suit his mood, and made down the hill towards the pond.
Balthasar, who knew a water-rat or two, gambolled in front, at the
gait which marks an oldish dog who takes the same walk every day.
Arrived at the edge, old Jolyon stood, noting another water-lily
opened since yesterday; he would show it to Holly to-morrow, when
'his little sweet' had got over the upset which had followed on her
eating a tomato at lunch--her little arrangements were very
delicate.  Now that Jolly had gone to school--his first term--Holly
was with him nearly all day long, and he missed her badly.  He felt
that pain too, which often bothered him now, a little dragging at
his left side.  He looked back up the hill.  Really, poor young
Bosinney had made an uncommonly good job of the house; he would
have done very well for himself if he had lived!  And where was he
now? Perhaps, still haunting this, the site of his last work, of
his tragic love affair.  Or was Philip Bosinney's spirit diffused
in the general?  Who could say?  That dog was getting his legs
muddy!  And he moved towards the coppice.  There had been the most
delightful lot of bluebells, and--he knew where some still lingered
like little patches of sky fallen irk between the trees, away out
of the sun.  He passed the cow-houses and the hen-houses there
installed, and pursued a path into the thick of the saplings,
making for one of the bluebell plots.  Balthasar, preceding him
once more, uttered a low growl.  Old Jolyon stirred him with his
foot, but the dog remained motionless, just where there was no room
to pass, and the hair rose slowly along the centre of his woolly
back.  Whether from the growl and the look of the dog's stivered
hair, or from the sensation which a man feels in a wood, old Jolyon
also felt something move along his spine.  And then the path
turned, and there was an old mossy log, and on it a woman sitting.
Her face was turned away, and he had just time to think: 'She's
trespassing--I must have a board put up!' before she turned.
Powers above!  The face he had seen at the opera--the very woman he
had just been thinking of! In that confused moment he saw things
blurred, as if a spirit--queer effect--the slant of sunlight
perhaps on her violet-grey frock! And then she rose and stood
smiling, her head a little to one side.  Old Jolyon thought: 'How
pretty she is!' She did not speak, neither did he; and he realized
why with a certain admiration.  She was here no doubt because of
some memory, and did not mean to try and get out of it by vulgar
explanation.

"Don't let that dog touch your frock," he said; "he's got wet feet.
Come here, you!"

But the dog Balthasar went on towards the visitor, who put her hand
down and stroked his head.  Old Jolyon said quickly:

"I saw you at the opera the other night; you didn't notice me."

"Oh, yes! I did."

He felt a subtle flattery in that, as though she had added: 'Do you
think one could miss seeing you?'

"They're all in Spain," he remarked abruptly.  "I'm alone; I drove
up for the opera.  The Ravogli's good.  Have you seen the cow-
houses?"

In a situation so charged with mystery and something very like
emotion he moved instinctively towards that bit of property, and
she moved beside him.  Her figure swayed faintly, like the best
kind of French figures; her dress, too, was a sort of French grey.
He noticed two or three silver threads in her amber-coloured hair,
strange hair with those dark eyes of hers, and that creamy-pale
face.  A sudden sidelong look from the velvety brown eyes disturbed
him.  It seemed to come from deep and far, from another world
almost, or at all events from some one not living very much in
this.  And he said mechanically

"Where are you living now?"

"I have a little flat in Chelsea."

He did not want to hear what she was doing, did not want to hear
anything; but the perverse word came out:

"Alone?"

She nodded.  It was a relief to know that.  And it came into his
mind that, but for a twist of fate, she would have been mistress of
this coppice, showing these cow-houses to him, a visitor.

"All Alderneys," he muttered; "they give the best milk.  This one's
a pretty creature.  Woa, Myrtle!"

The fawn-coloured cow, with eyes as soft and brown as Irene's own,
was standing absolutely still, not having long been milked.  She
looked round at them out of the corner of those lustrous, mild,
cynical eyes, and from her grey lips a little dribble of saliva
threaded its way towards the straw.  The scent of hay and vanilla
and ammonia rose in the dim light of the cool cow-house; and old
Jolyon said:

"You must come up and have some dinner with me.  I'll send you home
in the carriage."

He perceived a struggle going on within her; natural, no doubt,
with her memories.  But he wanted her company; a pretty face, a
charming figure, beauty!  He had been alone all the afternoon.
Perhaps his eyes were wistful, for she answered: "Thank you, Uncle
Jolyon.  I should like to."

He rubbed his hands, and said:

"Capital! Let's go up, then!" And, preceded by the dog Balthasar,
they ascended through the field.  The sun was almost level in their
faces now, and he could see, not only those silver threads, but
little lines, just deep enough to stamp her beauty with a coin-like
fineness--the special look of life unshared with others.  "I'll
take her in by the terrace, "he thought: "I won't make a common
visitor of her."

"What do you do all day?" he said.

"Teach music; I have another interest, too."

"Work!" said old Jolyon, picking up the doll from off the swing,
and smoothing its black petticoat.  "Nothing like it, is there?  I
don't do any now.  I'm getting on.  What interest is that?"

"Trying to help women who've come to grief."  Old Jolyon did not
quite understand.  "To grief?" he repeated; then realised with a
shock that she meant exactly what he would have meant himself if he
had used that expression.  Assisting the Magdalenes of London!
What a weird and terrifying interest!  And, curiosity overcoming
his natural shrinking, he asked:

"Why? What do you do for them?"

"Not much.  I've no money to spare.  I can only give sympathy and
food sometimes."

Involuntarily old Jolyon's hand sought his purse.  He said hastily:
"How d'you get hold of them?"

"I go to a hospital."

"A hospital! Phew!"

"What hurts me most is that once they nearly all had some sort of
beauty."

Old Jolyon straightened the doll.  "Beauty!" he ejaculated: "Ha!
Yes! A sad business!" and he moved towards the house.  Through a
French window, under sun-blinds not yet drawn up, he preceded her
into the room where he was wont to study 'The Times' and the sheets
of an agricultural magazine, with huge illustrations of mangold
wurzels, and the like, which provided Holly with material for her
paint brush.

"Dinner's in half an hour.  You'd like to wash your hands!  I'll
take you to June's room."

He saw her looking round eagerly; what changes since she had last
visited this house with her husband, or her lover, or both perhaps-
-he did not know, could not say!  All that was dark, and he wished
to leave it so.  But what changes!  And in the hall he said:

"My boy Jo's a painter, you know.  He's got a lot of taste.  It
isn't mine, of course, but I've let him have his way."

She was standing very still, her eyes roaming through the hall and
music room, as it now was--all thrown into one, under the great
skylight.  Old Jolyon had an odd impression of her.  Was she trying
to conjure somebody from the shades of that space where the
colouring was all pearl-grey and silver? He would have had gold
himself; more lively and solid.  But Jo had French tastes, and it
had come out shadowy like that, with an effect as of the fume of
cigarettes the chap was always smoking, broken here and there by a
little blaze of blue or crimson colour.  It was not his dream!
Mentally he had hung this space with those gold-framed masterpieces
of still and stiller life which he had bought in days when quantity
was precious.  And now where were they?  Sold for a song!  That
something which made him, alone among Forsytes, move with the times
had warned him against the struggle to retain them.  But in his
study he still had 'Dutch Fishing Boats at Sunset.'

He began to mount the stairs with her, slowly, for he felt his
side.

"These are the bathrooms," he said, "and other arrangements.  I've
had them tiled.  The nurseries are along there.  And this is Jo's
and his wife's.  They all communicate.  But you remember, I
expect."

Irene nodded.  They passed on, up the gallery and entered a large
room with a small bed, and several windows.

"This is mine," he said.  The walls were covered with the
photographs of children and watercolour sketches, and he added
doubtfully:

"These are Jo's.  The view's first-rate.  You can see the Grand
Stand at Epsom in clear weather."

The sun was down now, behind the house, and over the 'prospect' a
luminous haze had settled, emanation of the long and prosperous
day.  Few houses showed, but fields and trees faintly glistened,
away to a loom of downs.

"The country's changing," he said abruptly, "but there it'll be
when we're all gone.  Look at those thrushes--the birds are sweet
here in the mornings.  I'm glad to have washed my hands of London."

Her face was close to the window pane, and he was struck by its
mournful look.  'Wish I could make her look happy!' he thought.  'A
pretty face, but sad!'  And taking up his can of hot water he went
out into the gallery.

"This is June's room," he said, opening the next door and putting
the can down; "I think you'll find everything." And closing the
door behind her he went back to his own room.  Brushing his hair
with his great ebony brushes, and dabbing his forehead with eau de
Cologne, he mused.  She had come so strangely--a sort of visit-
ation; mysterious, even romantic, as if his desire for company, for
beauty, had been fulfilled by whatever it was which fulfilled that
sort of thing.  And before the mirror he straightened his still
upright figure, passed the brushes over his great white moustache,
touched up his eyebrows with eau de Cologne, and rang the bell.

"I forgot to let them know that I have a lady to dinner with me.
Let cook do something extra, and tell Beacon to have the landau and
pair at half-past ten to drive her back to Town to-night.  Is Miss
Holly asleep?"

The maid thought not.  And old Jolyon, passing down the gallery,
stole on tiptoe towards the nursery, and opened the door whose
hinges he kept specially oiled that he might slip in and out in the
evenings without being heard.

But Holly was asleep, and lay like a miniature Madonna, of that
type which the old painters could not tell from Venus, when they
had completed her.  Her long dark lashes clung to her cheeks; on
her face was perfect peace--her little arrangements were evidently
all right again.  And old Jolyon, in the twilight of the room,
stood adoring her!  It was so charming, solemn, and loving--that
little face.  He had more than his share of the blessed capacity of
living again in the young.  They were to him his future life--all
of a future life that his fundamental pagan sanity perhaps
admitted.  There she was with everything before her, and his
blood--some of it--in her tiny veins.  There she was, his little
companion, to be made as happy as ever he could make her, so that
she knew nothing but love.  His heart swelled, and he went out,
stilling the sound of his patent-leather boots.  In the corridor an
eccentric notion attacked him: To think that children should come
to that which Irene had told him she was helping!  Women who were
all, once, little things like this one sleeping there!  'I must
give her a cheque!' he mused; 'Can't bear to think of them!'  They
had never borne reflecting on, those poor outcasts; wounding too
deeply the core of true refinement hidden under layers of
conformity to the sense of property--wounding too grievously the
deepest thing in him--a love of beauty which could give him, even
now, a flutter of the heart, thinking of his evening in the society
of a pretty woman.  And he went downstairs, through the swinging
doors, to the back regions.  There, in the wine-cellar, was a hock
worth at least two pounds a bottle, a Steinberg Cabinet, better
than any Johan-nisberg that ever went down throat; a wine of
perfect bouquet, sweet as a nectarine--nectar indeed! He got a
bottle out, handling it like a baby, and holding it level to the
light, to look.  Enshrined in its coat of dust, that mellow
coloured, slender--necked bottle gave him deep pleasure.  Three
years to settle down again since the move from Town--ought to be in
prime condition! Thirty-five years ago he had bought it--thank God
he had kept his palate, and earned the right to drink it.  She
would appreciate this; not a spice of acidity in a dozen.  He wiped
the bottle, drew the cork with his own hands, put his nose down,
inhaled its perfume, and went back to the music room.

Irene was standing by the piano; she had taken off her hat and a
lace scarf she had been wearing, so that her gold-coloured hair was
visible, and the pallor of her neck.  In her grey frock she made a
pretty picture for old Jolyon, against the rosewood of the piano.

He gave her his arm, and solemnly they went.  The room, which had
been designed to enable twenty-four people to dine in comfort, held
now but a little round table.  In his present solitude the big
dining-table oppressed old Jolyon; he had caused it to be removed
till his son came back.  Here in the company of two really good
copies of Raphael Madonnas he was wont to dine alone.  It was the
only disconsolate hour of his day, this summer weather.  He had
never been a large eater, like that great chap Swithin, or Sylvanus
Heythorp, or Anthony Thornworthy, those cronies of past times; and
to dine alone, overlooked by the Madonnas, was to him but a
sorrowful occupation, which he got through quickly, that he might
come to the more spiritual enjoyment of his coffee and cigar.  But
this evening was a different matter! His eyes twinkled at her
across the little table and he spoke of Italy and Switzerland,
telling her stories of his travels there, and other experiences
which he could no longer recount to his son and grand-daughter
because they knew them.  This fresh audience was precious to him;
he had never become one of those old men who ramble round and round
the fields of reminiscence.  Himself quickly fatigued by the
insensitive, he instinctively avoided fatiguing others, and his
natural flirtatiousness towards beauty guarded him specially in his
relations with a woman.  He would have liked to draw her out, but
though she murmured and smiled and seemed to be enjoying what he
told her, he remained conscious of that mysterious remoteness which
constituted half her fascination.  He could not bear women who
threw their shoulders and eyes at you, and chattered away; or hard-
mouthed women who laid down the law and knew more than you did.
There was only one quality in a woman that appealed to him--charm;
and the quieter it was, the more he liked it.  And this one had
charm, shadowy as afternoon sunlight on those Italian hills and
valleys he had loved.  The feeling, too, that she was, as it were,
apart, cloistered, made her seem nearer to himself, a strangely
desirable companion.  When a man is very old and quite out of the
running, he loves to feel secure from the rivalries of youth, for
he would still be first in the heart of beauty.  And he drank his
hock, and watched her lips, and felt nearly young.  But the dog
Balthasar lay watching her lips too, and despising in his heart the
interruptions of their talk, and the tilting of those greenish
glasses full of a golden fluid which was distasteful to him.

The light was just failing when they went back into the music-room.
And, cigar in mouth, old Jolyon said:

"Play me some Chopin."

By the cigars they smoke, and the composers they love, ye shall
know the texture of men's souls.  Old Jolyon could not bear--a
strong cigar or Wagner's music.  He loved Beethoven and Mozart,
Handel and Gluck, and Schumann, and, for some occult reason, the
operas of Meyerbeer; but of late years he had been seduced by
Chopin, just as in painting he had succumbed to Botticelli.  In
yielding to these tastes he had been conscious of divergence from
the standard of the Golden Age.  Their poetry was not that of
Milton and Byron and Tennyson; of Raphael and Titian; Mozart and
Beethoven.  It was, as it were, behind a veil; their poetry hit no
one in the face, but slipped its fingers under the ribs and turned
and twisted, and melted up the heart.  And, never certain that this
was healthy, he did not care a rap so long as he could see the
pictures of the one or hear the music of the other.

Irene sat down at the piano under the electric lamp festooned with
pearl-grey, and old Jolyon, in an armchair, whence he could see
her, crossed his legs and drew slowly at his cigar.  She sat a few
moments with her hands on the keys, evidently searching her mind
for what to give him.  Then she began and within old Jolyon there
arose a sorrowful pleasure, not quite like anything else in the
world.  He fell slowly into a trance, interrupted only by the
movements of taking the cigar out of his mouth at long intervals,
and replacing it.  She was there, and the hock within him, and the
scent of tobacco; but there, too, was a world of sunshine lingering
into moonlight, and pools with storks upon them, and bluish trees
above, glowing with blurs of wine-red roses, and fields of lavender
where milk-white cows were grazing, and a woman all shadowy, with
dark eyes and a white neck, smiled, holding out her arms; and
through air which was like music a star dropped and was caught on a
cow's horn.  He opened his eyes.  Beautiful piece; she played well-
-the touch of an angel!  And he closed them again.  He felt mirac-
ulously sad and happy, as one does, standing under a lime-tree in
full honey flower.  Not live one's own life again, but just stand
there and bask in the smile of a woman's eyes, and enjoy the
bouquet!  And he jerked his hand; the dog Balthasar had reached up
and licked it.

"Beautiful!" He said: "Go on--more Chopin!"

She began to play again.  This time the resemblance between her and
'Chopin' struck him.  The swaying he had noticed in her walk was in
her playing too, and the Nocturne she had chosen and the soft
darkness of her eyes, the light on her hair, as of moonlight from a
golden moon.  Seductive, yes; but nothing of Delilah in her or in
that music.  A long blue spiral from his cigar ascended and
dispersed.  'So we go out!' he thought.  'No more beauty! Nothing?'

Again Irene stopped.

"Would you like some Gluck?  He used to write his music in a sunlit
garden, with a bottle of Rhine wine beside him."

"Ah!; yes.  Let's have 'Orfeo.'" Round about him now were fields of
gold and silver flowers, white forms swaying in the sunlight,
bright birds flying to and fro.  All was summer.  Lingering waves
of sweetness and regret flooded his soul.  Some cigar ash dropped,
and taking out a silk handkerchief to brush it off, he inhaled a
mingled scent as of snuff and eau de Cologne.  'Ah!' he thought,
'Indian summer--that's all!' and he said: "You haven't played me
'Che faro.'"

She did not answer; did not move.  He was conscious of something--
some strange upset.  Suddenly he saw her rise and turn away, and a
pang of remorse shot through him.  What a clumsy chap!  Like
Orpheus, she of course--she too was looking for her lost one in the
hall of memory!  And disturbed to the heart, he got up from his
chair.  She had gone to the great window at the far end.  Gingerly
he followed.  Her hands were folded over her breast; he could just
see her cheek, very white.  And, quite emotionalized, he said:

"There, there, my love!"  The words had escaped him mechanically,
for they were those he used to Holly when she had a pain, but their
effect was instantaneously distressing.  She raised her arms,
covered her face with them, and wept.

Old Jolyon stood gazing at her with eyes very deep from age.  The
passionate shame she seemed feeling at her abandonment, so unlike
the control and quietude of her whole presence was as if she had
never before broken down in the presence of another being.

"There, there--there, there!" he murmured, and putting his hand out
reverently, touched her.  She turned, and leaned the arms which
covered her face against him.  Old Jolyon stood very still, keeping
one thin hand on her shoulder.  Let her cry her heart out--it would
do her good.

And the dog Balthasar, puzzled, sat down on his stern to examine
them.

The window was still open, the curtains had not been drawn, the
last of daylight from without mingled with faint intrusion from the
lamp within; there was a scent of new-mown grass.  With the wisdom
of a long life old Jolyon did not speak.  Even grief sobbed itself
out in time; only Time was good for sorrow--Time who saw the
passing of each mood, each emotion in turn; Time the layer-to-rest.
There came into his mind the words: 'As panteth the hart after
cooling streams'--but they were of no use to him.  Then, conscious
of a scent of violets, he knew she was drying her eyes.  He put his
chin forward, pressed his moustache against her forehead, and felt
her shake with a quivering of her whole body, as of a tree which
shakes itself free of raindrops.  She put his hand to her lips, as
if saying: "All over now!  Forgive me!"

The kiss filled him with a strange comfort; he led her back to
where she had been so upset.  And the dog Balthasar, following,
laid the bone of one of the cutlets they had eaten at their feet.

Anxious to obliterate the memory of that emotion, he could think of
nothing better than china; and moving with her slowly from cabinet
to cabinet, he kept taking up bits of Dresden and Lowestoft and
Chelsea, turning them round and round with his thin, veined hands,
whose skin, faintly freckled, had such an aged look.

"I bought this at Jobson's," he would say; "cost me thirty pounds.
It's very old.  That dog leaves his bones all over the place.  This
old 'ship-bowl' I picked up at the sale when that precious rip, the
Marquis, came to grief.  But you don't remember.  Here's a nice
piece of Chelsea.  Now, what would you say this was?"  And he was
comforted, feeling that, with her taste, she was taking a real
interest in these things; for, after all, nothing better composes
the nerves than a doubtful piece of china.

When the crunch of the carriage wheels was heard at last, he said

"You must come again; you must come to lunch, then I can show you
these by daylight, and my little sweet--she's a dear little thing.
This dog seems to have taken a fancy to you."

For Balthasar, feeling that she was about to leave, was rubbing his
side against her leg.  Going out under the porch with her, he said:

"He'll get you up in an hour and a quarter.  Take this for your
protegees," and he slipped a cheque for fifty pounds into her hand.
He saw her brightened eyes, and heard her murmur: "Oh Uncle
Jolyon!" and a real throb of pleasure went through him.  That meant
one or two poor creatures helped a little, and it meant that she
would come again.  He put his hand in at the window and grasped
hers once more.  The carriage rolled away.  He stood looking at the
moon and the shadows of the trees, and thought: 'A sweet night!
She ......!'




II


Two days of rain, and summer set in bland and sunny.  Old Jolyon
walked and talked with Holly.  At first he felt taller and full of
a new vigour; then he felt restless.  Almost every afternoon they
would enter the coppice, and walk as far as the log.  'Well, she's
not there!' he would think, 'of course not!'  And he would feel a
little shorter, and drag his feet walking up the hill home, with
his hand clapped to his left side.  Now and then the thought would
move in him: 'Did she come--or did I dream it?' and he would stare
at space, while the dog Balthasar stared at him.  Of course she
would not come again!  He opened the letters from Spain with less
excitement.  They were not returning till July; he felt, oddly,
that he could bear it.  Every day at dinner he screwed up his eyes
and looked at where she had sat.  She was not there, so he
unscrewed his eyes again.

On the seventh afternoon he thought: 'I must go up and get some
boots.'  He ordered Beacon, and set out.  Passing from Putney
towards Hyde Park he reflected: 'I might as well go to Chelsea and
see her.'  And he called out: "Just drive me to where you took that
lady the other night."  The coachman turned his broad red face, and
his juicy lips answered: "The lady in grey, sir?"

"Yes, the lady in grey."  What other ladies were there!  Stodgy
chap!

The carriage stopped before a small three-storied block of flats,
standing a little back from the river.  With a practised eye old
Jolyon saw that they were cheap.  'I should think about sixty pound
a year,'  he mused; and entering, he looked at the name-board.  The
name 'Forsyte' was not on it, but against 'First Floor, Flat C'
were the words: 'Mrs. Irene Heron.'  Ah! She had taken her maiden
name again!  And somehow this pleased him.  He went upstairs
slowly, feeling his side a little.  He stood a moment, before
ringing, to lose the feeling of drag and fluttering there.  She
would not be in!  And then Boots!  The thought was black.  What did
he want with boots at his age? He could not wear out all those he
had.

"Your mistress at home?"

"Yes, sir."

"Say Mr. Jolyon Forsyte."

"Yes, sir, will you come this way?"

Old Jolyon followed a very little maid--not more than sixteen one
would say--into a very small drawing-room where the sun-blinds were
drawn.  It held a cottage piano and little else save a vague
fragrance and good taste.  'He stood in the middle, with his top
hat in his hand, and thought: 'I expect she's very badly off!'
There was a mirror above the fireplace, and he saw himself
reflected.  An old-looking chap!  He heard a rustle, and turned
round.  She was so close that his moustache almost brushed her
forehead, just under her hair.

"I was driving up," he said.  "Thought I'd look in on you, and ask
you how you got up the other night."

And, seeing her smile, he felt suddenly relieved.  She was really
glad to see him, perhaps.

"Would you like to put on your hat and come for a drive in the
Park?"

But while she was gone to put her hat on, he frowned.  The Park!
James and Emily!  Mrs. Nicholas, or some other member of his
precious family would be there very likely, prancing up and down.
And they would go and wag their tongues about having seen him with
her, afterwards.  Better not!  He did not wish to revive the echoes
of the past on Forsyte 'Change.'  He removed a white hair from the
lapel of his closely-buttoned-up frock coat, and passed his hand
over his cheeks, moustache, and square chin.  It felt very hollow
there under the cheekbones.  He had not been eating much lately--he
had better get that little whippersnapper who attended Holly to
give him a tonic.  But she had come back and when they were in the
carriage, he said:

"Suppose we go and sit in Kensington Gardens instead?" and added
with a twinkle: "No prancing up and down there," as if she had been
in the secret of his thoughts.

Leaving the carriage, they entered those select precincts, and
strolled towards the water.

"You've gone back to your maiden name, I see," he said: "I'm not
sorry."

She slipped her hand under his arm: "Has June forgiven me, Uncle
Jolyon?"

He answered gently: "Yes--yes; of course, why not?"

"And have you?"

"I?  I forgave you as soon as I saw how the land really lay."  And
perhaps he had; his instinct had always been to forgive the
beautiful.

She drew a deep breath.  "I never regretted--I couldn't.  Did you
ever love very deeply, Uncle Jolyon?"

At that strange question old Jolyon stared before him.  Had he?  He
did not seem to remember that he ever had.  But he did not like to
say this to the young woman whose hand was touching his arm, whose
life was suspended, as it were, by memory of a tragic love.  And he
thought: 'If I had met you when I was young I--I might have made a
fool of myself, perhaps.'  And a longing to escape in generalities
beset him.

"Love's a queer thing," he said, "fatal thing often.  It was the
Greeks--wasn't it?--made love into a goddess; they were right, I
dare say, but then they lived in the Golden Age."

"Phil adored them."

Phil! The word jarred him, for suddenly--with his power to see all
round a thing, he perceived why she was putting up with him like
this.  She wanted to talk about her lover!  Well!  If it was any
pleasure to her!  And he said: "Ah! There was a bit of the sculptor
in him, I fancy."

"Yes.  He loved balance and symmetry; he loved the whole-hearted
way the Greeks gave themselves to art."

Balance! The chap had no balance at all, if he remembered; as for
symmetry--clean-built enough he was, no doubt; but those queer eyes
of his, and high cheek-bones--Symmetry?

"You're of the Golden Age, too, Uncle Jolyon."

Old Jolyon looked round at her.  Was she chaffing him?  No, her
eyes were soft as velvet.  Was she flattering him?  But if so, why?
There was nothing to be had out of an old chap like him.

"Phil thought so.  He used to say: 'But I can never tell him that I
admire him.'"

Ah! There it was again.  Her dead lover; her desire to talk of him!
And he pressed her arm, half resentful of those memories, half
grateful, as if he recognised what a link they were between herself
and him.

"He was a very talented young fellow," he murmured.  "It's hot; I
feel the heat nowadays.  Let's sit down."

They took two chairs beneath a chestnut tree whose broad leaves
covered them from the peaceful glory of the afternoon.  A pleasure
to sit there and watch her, and feel that she liked to be with him.
And the wish to increase that liking, if he could, made him go on:

"I expect he showed you a side of him I never saw.  He'd be at his
best with you.  His ideas of art were a little new--to me "--he had
stiffed the word 'fangled.'

"Yes: but he used to say you had a real sense of beauty."  Old
Jolyon thought: 'The devil he did!' but answered with a twinkle:
"Well, I have, or I shouldn't be sitting here with you."  She was
fascinating when she smiled with her eyes, like that!

"He thought you had one of those hearts that never grow old.  Phil
had real insight."

He was not taken in by this flattery spoken out of the past, out of
a longing to talk of her dead lover--not a bit; and yet it was
precious to hear, because she pleased his eyes and heart which
quite true!--had never grown old.  Was that because--unlike her and
her dead lover, he had never loved to desperation, had always kept
his balance, his sense of symmetry.  Well! It had left him power,
at eighty-four, to admire beauty.  And he thought, 'If I were a
painter or a sculptor!  But I'm an old chap.  Make hay while the
sun shines.'

A couple with arms entwined crossed on the grass before them, at
the edge of the shadow from their tree.  The sunlight fell cruelly
on their pale, squashed, unkempt young faces.  "We're an ugly lot!"
said old Jolyon suddenly.  "It amazes me to see how--love triumphs
over that."

"Love triumphs over everything!"

"The young think so," he muttered.

"Love has no age, no limit; and no death."

With that glow in her pale face, her breast heaving, her eyes so
large and dark and soft, she looked like Venus come to life!  But
this extravagance brought instant reaction, and, twinkling, he
said: "Well, if it had limits, we shouldn't be born; for by George!
it's got a lot to put up with."

Then, removing his top hat, he brushed it round with a cuff.  The
great clumsy thing heated his forehead; in these days he often got
a rush of blood to the head--his circulation was not what it had
been.

She still sat gazing straight before her, and suddenly she
murmured:

"It's strange enough that I'm alive."

Those words of Jo's 'Wild and lost' came back to him.

"Ah!" he said: "my son saw you for a moment--that day."

"Was it your son? I heard a voice in the hall; I thought for a
second it was--Phil."

Old Jolyon saw her lips tremble.  She put her hand over them, took
it away again, and went on calmly: "That night I went to the
Embankment; a woman caught me by the dress.  She told me about
herself.  When one knows that others suffer, one's ashamed."

"One of those?"

She nodded, and horror stirred within old Jolyon, the horror of one
who has never known a struggle with desperation.  Almost against
his will he muttered: "Tell me, won't you?"

"I didn't care whether I lived or died.  When you're like that,
Fate ceases to want to kill you.  She took care of me three days--
she never left me.  I had no money.  That's why I do what I can for
them, now."

But old Jolyon was thinking: 'No money!'  What fate could compare
with that?  Every other was involved in it.

"I wish you had come to me," he said.  "Why didn't you?"  But Irene
did not answer.

"Because my name was Forsyte, I suppose?  Or was it June who kept
you away?  How are you getting on now?"  His eyes involuntarily
swept her body.  Perhaps even now she was--!  And yet she wasn't
thin--not really!

"Oh! with my fifty pounds a year, I make just enough."  The answer
did not reassure him; he had lost confidence.  And that fellow
Soames!  But his sense of justice stifled condemnation.  No, she
would certainly have died rather than take another penny from him.
Soft as she looked, there must be strength in her somewhere--
strength and fidelity.  But what business had young Bosinney to
have got run over and left her stranded like this!

"Well, you must come to me now," he said, "for anything you want,
or I shall be quite cut up."  And putting on his hat, he rose.
"Let's go and get some tea.  I told that lazy chap to put the
horses up for an hour, and come for me at your place.  We'll take a
cab presently; I can't walk as I used to."

He enjoyed that stroll to the Kensington end of the gardens--the
sound of her voice, the glancing of her eyes, the subtle beauty of
a charming form moving beside him.  He enjoyed their tea at
Ruffel's in the High Street, and came out thence with a great box
of chocolates swung on his little finger.  He enjoyed the drive
back to Chelsea in a hansom, smoking his cigar.  She had promised
to come down next Sunday and play to him again, and already in
thought he was plucking carnations and early roses for her to carry
back to town.  It was a pleasure to give her a little pleasure, if
it WERE pleasure from an old chap like him!  The carriage was
already there when they arrived.  Just like that fellow, who was
always late when he was wanted!  Old Jolyon went in for a minute to
say good-bye.  The little dark hall of the fiat was impregnated
with a disagreeable odour of patchouli, and on a bench against the
wall--its only furniture--he saw a figure sitting.  He heard Irene
say softly: "Just one minute."  In the little drawing-room when the
door was shut, he asked gravely: "One of your protegees?"

"Yes.  Now thanks to you, I can do something for her."

He stood, staring, and stroking that chin whose strength had
frightened so many in its time.  The idea of her thus actually in
contact with this outcast, grieved and frightened him.  What could
she do for them?  Nothing.  Only soil and make trouble for herself,
perhaps.  And he said: "Take care, my dear!  The world puts the
worst construction on everything."

"I know that."

He was abashed by her quiet smile.  "Well then--Sunday," he
murmured: "Good-bye."

She put her cheek forward for him to kiss.

"Good-bye," he said again; "take care of yourself."  And he went
out, not looking towards the figure on the bench.  He drove home by
way of Hammersmith; that he might stop at a place he knew of and
tell them to send her in two dozen of their best Burgundy.  She
must want picking-up sometimes!  Only in Richmond Park did he
remember that he had gone up to order himself some boots, and was
surprised that he could have had so paltry an idea.




III


The little spirits of the past which throng an old man's days had
never pushed their faces up to his so seldom as in the seventy
hours elapsing before Sunday came.  The spirit of the future, with
the charm of the unknown, put up her lips instead.  Old Jolyon was
not restless now, and paid no visits to the log, because she was
coming to lunch.  There is wonderful finality about a meal; it
removes a world of doubts, for no one misses meals except for
reasons beyond control.  He played many games with Holly on the
lawn, pitching them up to her who was batting so as to be ready to
bowl to Jolly in the holidays.  For she was not a Forsyte, but
Jolly was--and Forsytes always bat, until they have resigned and
reached the age of eighty-five.  The dog Balthasar, in attendance,
lay on the ball as often as he could, and the page-boy fielded,
till his face was like the harvest moon.  And because the time was
getting shorter, each day was longer and more golden than the last.
On Friday night he took a liver pill, his side hurt him rather, and
though it was not the liver side, there is no remedy like that.
Anyone telling him that he had found a new excitement in life and
that excitement was not good for him, would have been met by one of
those steady and rather defiant looks of his deep-set iron-grey
eyes, which seemed to say: 'I know my own business best.'  He
always had and always would.

On Sunday morning, when Holly had gone with her governess to
church, he visited the strawberry beds.  There, accompanied by the
dog Balthasar, he examined the plants narrowly and succeeded in
finding at least two dozen berries which were really ripe.
Stooping was not good for him, and he became very dizzy and red in
the forehead.  Having placed the strawberries in a dish on the
dining-table, he washed his hands and bathed his forehead with eau
de Cologne.  There, before the mirror, it occurred to him that he
was thinner.  What a 'threadpaper' he had been when he was young!
It was nice to be slim--he could not bear a fat chap; and yet
perhaps his cheeks were too thin!  She was to arrive by train at
half-past twelve and walk up, entering from the road past Drage's
farm at the far end of the coppice.  And, having looked into June's
room to see that there was hot water ready, he set forth to meet
her, leisurely, for his heart was beating.  The air smelled sweet,
larks sang, and the Grand Stand at Epsom was visible.  A perfect
day!  On just such a one, no doubt, six years ago, Soames had
brought young Bosinney down with him to look at the site before
they began to build.  It was Bosinney who had pitched on the exact
spot for the house--as June had often told him.  In these days he
was thinking much about that young fellow, as if his spirit were
really haunting the field of his last work, on the chance of
seeing--her.  Bosinney--the one man who had possessed her heart, to
whom she had given her whole self with rapture!  At his age one
could not, of course, imagine such things, but there stirred in him
a queer vague aching--as it were the ghost of an impersonal
jealousy; and a feeling, too, more generous, of pity for that love
so early lost.  All over in a few poor months!  Well, well!  He
looked at his watch before entering the coppice--only a quarter
past, twenty-five minutes to wait!  And then, turning the corner of
the path, he saw her exactly where he had seen her the first time,
on the log; and realised that she must have come by the earlier
train to sit there alone for a couple of hours at least.  Two hours
of her society missed!  What memory could make that log so dear to
her?  His face showed what he was thinking, for she said at once:

"Forgive me, Uncle Jolyon; it was here that I first knew."

"Yes, yes; there it is for you whenever you like.  You're looking a
little Londony; you're giving too many lessons."

That she should have to give lessons worried him.  Lessons to a
parcel of young girls thumping out scales with their thick fingers.

"Where do you go to give them?" he asked.

"They're mostly Jewish families, luckily."

Old Jolyon stared; to all Forsytes Jews seem strange and doubtful.

"They love music, and they're very kind."

"They had better be, by George!"  He took her arm--his side always
hurt him a little going uphill--and said:

"Did you ever see anything like those buttercups?  They came like
that in a night."

Her eyes seemed really to fly over the field, like bees after the
flowers and the honey.  "I wanted you to see them--wouldn't let
them turn the cows in yet."  Then, remembering that she had come to
talk about Bosinney, he pointed to the clock-tower over the
stables:

"I expect be wouldn't have let me put that there--had no notion of
time, if I remember."

But, pressing his arm to her, she talked of flowers instead, and he
knew it was done that he might not feel she came because of her
dead lover.

"The best flower I can show you," he said, with a sort of triumph,
"is my little sweet.  She'll be back from Church directly.  There's
something about her which reminds me a little of you," and it did
not seem to him peculiar that he had put it thus, instead of
saying: "There's something about you which reminds me a little of
her."  Ah! And here she was!

Holly, followed closely by her elderly French governess, whose
digestion had been ruined twenty-two years ago in the siege of
Strasbourg, came rushing towards them from under the oak tree.  She
stopped about a dozen yards away, to pat Balthasar and pretend that
this was all she had in her mind.  Old Jolyon who knew better,
said:

"Well, my darling, here's the lady in grey I promised you."

Holly raised herself and looked up.  He watched the two of them
with a twinkle, Irene smiling, Holly beginning with grave inquiry,
passing into a shy smile too, and then to something deeper.  She
had a sense of beauty, that child--knew what was what!  He enjoyed
the sight of the kiss between them.

"Mrs. Heron, Mam'zelle Beauce.  Well, Mam'zelle--good sermon?"

For, now that he had not much more time before him, the only part
of the service connected with this world absorbed what interest in
church remained to him.  Mam'zelle Beauce stretched out a spidery
hand clad in a black kid glove--she had been in the best families--
and the rather sad eyes of her lean yellowish face seemed to ask:
"Are you well-brrred?" Whenever Holly or Jolly did anything
unpleasing to her--a not uncommon occurrence he would say to them:
"The little Tayleurs never did that--they were such well-brrred
little children."  Jolly hated the little Tayleurs; Holly wondered
dreadfully how it was she fell so short of them.  'A thin rum
little soul,' old Jolyon thought her--Mam'zelle Beauce.

Luncheon was a successful meal, the mushrooms which he himself had
picked in the mushroom house, his chosen strawberries, and another
bottle of the Steinberg cabinet filled him with a certain aromatic
spirituality, and a conviction that he would have a touch of eczema
to-morrow.

After lunch they sat under the oak tree drinking Turkish coffee.
It was no matter of grief to him when Mademoiselle Beauce withdrew
to write her Sunday letter to her sister, whose future had been
endangered in the past by swallowing a pin--an event held up daily
in warning to the children to eat slowly and digest what they had
eaten.  At the foot of the bank, on a carriage rug, Holly and the
dog Balthasar teased and loved each other, and in the shade old
Jolyon with his legs crossed and his cigar luxuriously savoured,
gazed at Irene sitting in the swing.  A light, vaguely swaying,
grey figure with a fleck of sunlight here and there upon it, lips
just opened, eyes dark and soft under lids a little drooped.  She
looked content; surely it did her good to come and see him!  The
selfishness of age had not set its proper grip on him, for he could
still feel pleasure in the pleasure of others, realising that what
he wanted, though much, was not quite all that mattered.

"It's quiet here," he said; "you mustn't come down if you find it
dull.  But it's a pleasure to see you.  My little sweet's is the
only face which gives me any pleasure, except yours."

>From her smile he knew that she was not beyond liking to be
appreciated, and this reassured him.  "That's not humbug," he said.
"I never told a woman I admired her when I didn't.  In fact I
don't know when I've told a woman I admired her, except my wife in
the old days; and wives are funny."  He was silent, but resumed
abruptly:

"She used to expect me to say it more often than I felt it, and
there we were."  Her face looked  mysteriously troubled, and,
afraid that he had said something painful, he hurried on: "When my
little sweet marries, I hope she'll find someone who knows what
women feel.  I shan't be here to see it, but there's too much
topsy-turvydom in marriage; I don't want her to pitch up against
that."  And, aware that he had made bad worse, he added: "That dog
will scratch."

A silence followed.  Of what was she thinking, this pretty creature
whose life was spoiled; who had done with love, and yet was made
for love?  Some day when he was gone, perhaps, she would find
another mate--not so disorderly as that young fellow who had got
himself run over.  Ah! but her husband?

"Does Soames never trouble you?" he asked.

She shook her head.  Her face had closed up  suddenly.  For all her
softness there was something irreconcilable about her.  And a
glimpse of light on the inexorable nature of sex antipathies
strayed into a brain which, belonging to early Victorian civil-
isation--so much older than this of his old age--had never thought
about such primitive things.

"That's a comfort," he said.  "You can see the Grand Stand to-day.
Shall we take a turn round?"

Through the flower and fruit garden, against whose high outer walls
peach trees and nectarines were trained to the sun, through the
stables, the vinery, the mushroom house, the asparagus beds, the
rosery, the summer-house, he conducted her--even into the kitchen
garden to see the tiny green peas which Holly loved to scoop out of
their pods with her finger, and lick up from the palm of her little
brown hand.  Many delightful things he showed her, while Holly and
the dog Balthasar danced ahead, or came to them at intervals for
attention.  It was one of the happiest afternoons he had ever
spent, but it tired him and he was glad to sit down in the music
room and let her give him tea.  A special little friend of Holly's
had come in--a fair child with short hair like a boy's.  And the
two sported in the distance, under the stairs, on the stairs, and
up in the gallery.  Old Jolyon begged for Chopin.  She played
studies, mazurkas, waltzes, till the two children, creeping near,
stood at the foot of the piano their dark and golden heads bent
forward, listening.  Old Jolyon watched.

"Let's see you dance, you two!"

Shyly, with a false start, they began.  Bobbing and circling,
earnest, not very adroit, they went past and past his chair to the
strains of that waltz.  He watched them and the face of her who was
playing turned smiling towards those little dancers thinking:

'Sweetest picture I've seen for ages.'

A voice said:

"Hollee! Mais enfin--quest-ce que tu fais la--danser, le dimanche!
Viens, donc!"

But the children came close to old Jolyon, knowing that he would
save them, and gazed into a face which was decidedly 'caught out.'

"Better the day, better the deed, Mam'zelle.  It's all my doing.
Trot along, chicks, and have your tea."

And, when they were gone, followed by the dog Balthasar, who took
every meal, he looked at Irene with a twinkle and said:

"Well, there we are! Aren't they sweet? Have you any little ones
among your pupils?"

"Yes, three--two of them darlings."

"Pretty?"

"Lovely!"

Old Jolyon sighed; he had an insatiable appetite for the very
young.  "My little sweet," he said, "is devoted to music; she'll be
a musician some day.  You wouldn't give me your opinion of her
playing, I suppose?"

"Of course I will."

"You wouldn't like--" but he stifled the words "to give her
lessons."  The idea that she gave lessons was unpleasant to him;
yet it would mean that he would see her regularly.  She left the
piano and came over to his chair.

"I would like, very much; but there is--June.  When are they coming
back?"

Old Jolyon frowned.  "Not till the middle of next month.  What does
that matter?"

"You said June had forgiven me; but she could never forget, Uncle
Jolyon."

Forget! She must forget, if he wanted her to.

But as if answering, Irene shook her head.  "You know she couldn't;
one doesn't forget."

Always that wretched past! And he said with a sort of vexed
finality:

"Well, we shall see."

He talked to her an hour or more, of the children, and a hundred
little things, till the carriage came round to take her home.  And
when she had gone he went back to his chair, and sat there
smoothing his face and chin, dreaming over the day.

That evening after dinner he went to his study and took a sheet of
paper.  He stayed for some minutes without writing, then rose and
stood under the masterpiece 'Dutch Fishing Boats at Sunset.'  He
was not thinking of that picture, but of his life.  He was going to
leave her something in his Will; nothing could so have stirred the
stilly deeps of thought and memory.  He was going to leave her a
portion of his wealth, of his aspirations, deeds, qualities, work--
all that had made that wealth; going to leave her, too, a part of
all he had missed in life, by his sane and steady pursuit of
wealth.  All! What had he missed?  'Dutch Fishing Boats' responded
blankly; he crossed to the French window, and drawing the curtain
aside, opened it.  A wind had got up, and one of last year's oak
leaves which had somehow survived the gardener's brooms, was
dragging itself with a tiny clicking rustle along the stone terrace
in the twilight.  Except for that it was very quiet out there, and
he could smell the heliotrope watered not long since.  A bat went
by.  A bird uttered its last 'cheep.'  And right above the oak tree
the first star shone.  Faust in the opera had bartered his soul for
some fresh years of youth.  Morbid notion!  No such bargain was
possible, that was real tragedy! No making oneself new again for
love or life or anything.  Nothing left to do but enjoy beauty from
afar off while you could, and leave it something in your Will.  But
how much? And, as if he could not make that calculation looking out
into the mild freedom of the country night, he turned back and went
up to the chimney-piece.  There were his pet bronzes--a Cleopatra
with the asp at her breast; a Socrates; a greyhound playing with
her puppy; a strong man reining in some horses.  'They last!' he
thought, and a pang went through his heart.  They had a thousand
years of life before them!

'How much?' Well! enough at all events to save her getting old
before her time, to keep the lines out of her face as long as
possible, and grey from soiling that bright hair.  He might live
another five years.  She would be well over thirty by then.  'How
much?'  She had none of his blood in her!  In loyalty to the tenor
of his life for forty years and more, ever since he married and
founded that mysterious thing, a family, came this warning thought-
-None of his blood, no right to anything!  It was a luxury then,
this notion.  An extravagance, a petting of an old man's whim, one
of those things done in dotage.  His real future was vested in
those who had his blood, in whom he would live on when he was gone.
He turned away from the bronzes and stood looking at the old
leather chair in which he had sat and smoked so many hundreds of
cigars.  And suddenly he seemed to see her sitting there in her
grey dress, fragrant, soft, dark-eyed, graceful, looking up at him.
Why! She cared nothing for him, really; all she cared for was that
lost lover of hers.  But she was there, whether she would or no,
giving him pleasure with her beauty and grace.  One had no right to
inflict an old man's company, no right to ask her down to play to
him and let him look at her--for no reward!  Pleasure must be paid
for in this world.  'How much?'  After all, there was plenty; his
son and his three grandchildren would never miss that little lump.
He had made it himself, nearly every penny; he could leave it where
he liked, allow himself this little pleasure.  He went back to the
bureau.  'Well, I'm going to,' he thought, 'let them think what
they like.  I'm going to!'  And he sat down.

'How much?' Ten thousand, twenty thousand--how much? If only with
his money he could buy one year, one month of youth.  And startled
by that thought, he wrote quickly:


'DEAR HERRING,--Draw me a codicil to this effect: "I leave to my
niece Irene Forsyte, born Irene Heron, by which name she now goes,
fifteen thousand pounds free of legacy duty."
'Yours faithfully,
'JOLYON FORSYTE.'


When he had sealed and stamped the envelope, he went back to the
window and drew in a long breath.  It was dark, but many stars
shone now.




IV


He woke at half-past two, an hour which long experience had taught
him brings panic intensity to all awkward thoughts.  Experience had
also taught him that a further waking at the proper hour of eight
showed the folly of such panic.  On this particular morning the
thought which gathered rapid momentum was that if he became ill, at
his age not improbable, he would not see her.  From this it was but
a step to realisation that he would be cut off, too, when his son
and June returned from Spain.  How could he justify desire for the
company of one who had stolen--early morning does not mince words--
June's lover?  That lover was dead; but June was a stubborn little
thing; warm-hearted, but stubborn as wood, and--quite true--not one
who forgot!  By the middle of next month they would be back.  He
had barely five weeks left to enjoy the new interest which had come
into what remained of his life.  Darkness showed up to him absurdly
clear the nature of his feeling.  Admiration for beauty--a craving
to see that which delighted his eyes.

Preposterous, at his age! And yet--what other reason was there for
asking June to undergo such painful reminder, and how prevent his
son and his son's wife from thinking him very queer?  He would be
reduced to sneaking up to London, which tired him; and the least
indisposition would cut him off even from that.  He lay with eyes
open, setting his jaw against the prospect, and calling himself an
old fool, while his heart beat loudly, and then seemed to stop
beating altogether.  He had seen the dawn lighting the window
chinks, heard the birds chirp and twitter, and the cocks crow,
before he fell asleep again, and awoke tired but sane.  Five weeks
before he need bother, at his age an eternity!  But that early
morning panic had left its mark, had slightly fevered the will of
one who had always had his own way.  He would see her as often as
he wished!  Why not go up to town and make that codicil at his
solicitor's instead of writing about it; she might like to go to
the opera!  But, by train, for he would not have that fat chap
Beacon grinning behind his back.  Servants were such fools; and, as
likely as not, they had known all the past history of Irene and
young Bosinney--servants knew everything, and suspected the rest.
He wrote to her that morning:


"MY DEAR IRENE,--I have to be up in town to-morrow.  If you
would like to have a look in at the opera, come and dine
with me quietly ...."

But where?  It was decades since he had dined anywhere in London
save at his Club or at a private house.  Ah! that new-fangled place
close to Covent Garden....

"Let me have a line to-morrow morning to the Piedmont Hotel whether
to expect you there at 7 o'clock."
"Yours affectionately,
"JOLYON FORSYTE."


She would understand that he just wanted to give her a little
pleasure; for the idea that she should guess he had this itch to
see her was instinctively unpleasant to him; it was not seemly that
one so old should go out of his way to see beauty, especially in a
woman.

The journey next day, short though it was, and the visit to his
lawyer's, tired him.  It was hot too, and after dressing for dinner
he lay down on the sofa in his bedroom to rest a little.  He must
have had a sort of fainting fit, for he came to himself feeling
very queer; and with some difficulty rose and rang the bell.  Why!
it was past seven!  And there he was and she would be waiting.  But
suddenly the dizziness came on again, and he was obliged to relapse
on the sofa.  He heard the maid's voice say:

"Did you ring, sir?"

"Yes, come here"; he could not see her clearly, for the cloud in
front of his eyes.  "I'm not well, I want some sal volatile."

"Yes, sir."  Her voice sounded frightened.

Old Jolyon made an effort.

"Don't go.  Take this message to my niece--a lady waiting in the
hall--a lady in grey.  Say Mr. Forsyte is not well--the heat.  He
is very sorry; if he is not down directly, she is not to wait
dinner."

When she was gone, he thought feebly: 'Why did I say a lady in
grey--she may be in anything.  Sal volatile!'  He did not go off
again, yet was not conscious of how Irene came to be standing
beside him, holding smelling salts to his nose, and pushing a
pillow up behind his head.  He heard her say anxiously: "Dear Uncle
Jolyon, what is it?" was dimly conscious of the soft pressure of
her lips on his hand; then drew a long breath of smelling salts,
suddenly discovered strength in them, and sneezed.

"Ha!" he said, "it's nothing.  How did you get here? Go down and
dine--the tickets are on the dressing-table.  I shall be all right
in a minute."

He felt her cool hand on his forehead, smelled violets, and sat
divided between a sort of pleasure and a determination to be all
right.

"Why! You are in grey!" he said.  "Help me up."  Once on his feet
he gave himself a shake.

"What business had I to go off like that!"  And he moved very
slowly to the glass.  What a cadaverous chap!  Her voice, behind
him, murmured:

"You mustn't come down, Uncle; you must rest."

"Fiddlesticks!  A glass of champagne'll soon set me to rights.  I
can't have you missing the opera."

But the journey down the corridor was troublesome.  What carpets
they had in these newfangled places, so thick that you tripped up
in them at every step! In the lift he noticed how concerned she
looked, and said with the ghost of a twinkle:

"I'm a pretty host."

When the lift stopped he had to hold firmly to the seat to prevent
its slipping under him; but after soup and a glass of champagne he
felt much better, and began to enjoy an infirmity which had brought
such solicitude into her manner towards him.

"I should have liked you for a daughter," he said suddenly; and
watching the smile in her eyes, went on:

"You mustn't get wrapped up in the past at your time of life;
plenty of that when you get to my age.  That's a nice dress--I like
the style."

"I made it myself."

Ah! A woman who could make herself a pretty frock had not lost her
interest in life.

"Make hay while the sun shines," he said; "and drink that up.  I
want to see some colour in your cheeks.  We mustn't waste life; it
doesn't do.  There's a new Marguerite to-night; let's hope she
won't be fat.  And Mephisto--anything more dreadful than a fat chap
playing the Devil I can't imagine."

But they did not go to the opera after all, for in getting up from
dinner the dizziness came over him again, and she insisted on his
staying quiet and going to bed early.  When he parted from her at
the door of the hotel, having paid the cabman to drive her to
Chelsea, he sat down again for a moment to enjoy the memory of her
words: "You are such a darling to me, Uncle Jolyon!"  Why! Who
wouldn't be!  He would have liked to stay up another day and take
her to the Zoo, but two days running of him would bore her to
death.  No, he must wait till next Sunday; she had promised to come
then.  They would settle those lessons for Holly, if only for a
month.  It would be something.  That little Mam'zelle Beauce
wouldn't like it, but she would have to lump it.  And crushing his
old opera hat against his chest he sought the lift.

He drove to Waterloo next morning, struggling with a desire to say:
'Drive me to Chelsea.'  But his sense of proportion was too strong.
Besides, he still felt shaky, and did not want to risk another
aberration like that of last night, away from home.  Holly, too,
was expecting him, and what he had in his bag for her.  Not that
there was any cupboard love in his little sweet--she was a bundle
of affection.  Then, with the rather bitter cynicism of the old, he
wondered for a second whether it was not cupboard love which made
Irene put up with him.  No, she was not that sort either.  She had,
if anything, too little notion of how to butter her bread, no sense
of property, poor thing! Besides, he had not breathed a word about
that codicil, nor should he--sufficient unto the day was the good
thereof.

In the victoria which met him at the station Holly was restraining
the dog Balthasar, and their caresses made 'jubey' his drive home.
All the rest of that fine hot day and most of the next he was
content and peaceful, reposing in the shade, while the long
lingering sunshine showered gold on the lawns and the flowers.  But
on Thursday evening at his lonely dinner he began to count the
hours; sixty-five till he would go down to meet her again in the
little coppice, and walk up through the fields at her side.  He had
intended to consult the doctor about his fainting fit, but the
fellow would be sure to insist on quiet, no excitement and all
that; and he did not mean to be tied by the leg, did not want to be
told of an infirmity--if there were one, could not afford to hear
of it at his time of life, now that this new interest had come.
And he carefully avoided making any mention of it in a letter to
his son.  It would only bring them back with a run!  How far this
silence was due to consideration for their pleasure, how far to
regard for his own, he did not pause to consider.

That night in his study he had just finished his cigar and was
dozing off, when he heard the rustle of a gown, and was conscious
of a scent of violets.  Opening his eyes he saw her, dressed in
grey, standing by the fireplace, holding out her arms.  The odd
thing was that, though those arms seemed to hold nothing, they were
curved as if round someone's neck, and her own neck was bent back,
her lips open, her eyes closed.  She vanished at once, and there
were the mantelpiece and his bronzes.  But those bronzes and the
mantelpiece had not been there when she was, only the fireplace and
the wall!  Shaken and troubled, he got up.  'I must take medicine,'
he thought; 'I can't be well.'  His heart beat too fast, he had an
asthmatic feeling in the chest; and going to the window, he opened
it to get some air.  A dog was barking far away, one of the dogs at
Gage's farm no doubt, beyond the coppice.  A beautiful still night,
but dark.  'I dropped off,' he mused, 'that's it!  And yet I'll
swear my eyes were open!'  A sound like a sigh seemed to answer.

"What's that?" he said sharply, "who's there?"

Putting his hand to his side to still the beating of his heart, he
stepped out on the terrace.  Something soft scurried by in the
dark.  "Shoo!"  It was that great grey cat.  'Young Bosinney was
like a great cat!' he thought.  'It was him in there, that she--
that she was--He's got her still!'  He walked to the edge of the
terrace, and looked down into the darkness; he could just see the
powdering of the daisies on the unmown lawn.  Here to-day and gone
to-morrow!  And there came the moon, who saw all, young and old,
alive and dead, and didn't care a dump!  His own turn soon.  For a
single day of youth he would give what was left!  And he turned
again towards the house.  He could see the windows of the night
nursery up there.  His little sweet would be asleep.  'Hope that
dog won't wake her!' he thought.  'What is it makes us love, and
makes us die!  I must go to bed.'

And across the terrace stones, growing grey in the moonlight, he
passed back within.

How should an old man live his days if not in dreaming of his
well-spent past? In that, at all events, there is no agitating
warmth, only pale winter sunshine.  The shell can withstand the
gentle beating of the dynamos of memory.  The present he should
distrust; the future shun.  From beneath thick shade he should
watch the sunlight creeping at his toes.  If there be sun of
summer, let him not go out into it, mistaking it for the
Indian-summer sun!  Thus peradventure he shall decline softly,
slowly, imperceptibly, until impatient Nature clutches his
wind-pipe and he gasps away to death some early morning before the
world is aired, and they put on his tombstone: 'In the fulness of
years!' yea!  If he preserve his principles in perfect order, a
Forsyte may live on long after he is dead.

Old Jolyon was conscious of all this, and yet there was in him that
which transcended Forsyteism.  For it is written that a Forsyte
shall not love beauty more than reason; nor his own way more than
his own health.  And something beat within him in these days that
with each throb fretted at the thinning shell.  His sagacity knew
this, but it knew too that he could not stop that beating, nor
would if he could.  And yet, if you had told him he was living on
his capital, he would have stared you down.  No, no; a man did not
live on his capital; it was not done!  The shibboleths of the past
are ever more real than the actualities of the present.  And he, to
whom living on one's capital had always been anathema, could not
have borne to have applied so gross a phrase to his own case.
Pleasure is healthful; beauty good to see; to live again in the
youth of the young--and what else on earth was he doing!

Methodically, as had been the way of his whole life, he now
arranged his time.  On Tuesdays he journeyed up to town by train;
Irene came and dined with him.  And they went to the opera.  On
Thursdays he drove to town, and, putting that fat chap and his
horses up, met her in Kensington Gardens, picking up the carriage
after he had left her, and driving home again in time for dinner.
He threw out the casual formula that he had business in London on
those two days.  On Wednesdays and Saturdays she came down to give
Holly music lessons.  The greater the pleasure he took in her
society, the more scrupulously fastidious he became, just a matter-
of-fact and friendly uncle.  Not even in feeling, really, was he
more--for, after all, there was his age.  And yet, if she were late
he fidgeted himself to death.  If she missed coming, which happened
twice, his eyes grew sad as an old dog's, and he failed to sleep.

And so a month went by--a month of summer in the fields, and in his
heart, with summer's heat and the fatigue thereof.  Who could have
believed a few weeks back that he would have looked forward to his
son's and his grand-daughter's return with something like dread!
There was such a delicious freedom, such recovery of that
independence a man enjoys before he founds a family, about these
weeks of lovely weather, and this new companionship with one who
demanded nothing, and remained always a little unknown, retaining
the fascination of mystery.  It was like a draught of wine to him
who has been drinking water for so long that he has almost
forgotten the stir wine brings to his blood, the narcotic to his
brain.  The flowers were coloured brighter, scents and music and
the sunlight had a living value--were no longer mere reminders of
past enjoy-ment.  There was something now to live for which stirred
him continually to anticipation.  He lived in that, not in
retrospection; the difference is considerable to any so old as he.
The pleasures of the table, never of much consequence to one
naturally abstemious, had lost all value.  He ate little, without
knowing what he ate; and every day grew thinner and more worn to
look at.  He was again a 'threadpaper'; and to this thinned form
his massive forehead, with hollows at the temples, gave more
dignity than ever.  He was very well aware that he ought to see the
doctor, but liberty was too sweet.  He could not afford to pet his
frequent shortness of breath and the pain in his side at the
expense of liberty.  Return to the vegetable existence he had led
among the agricultural journals with the life-size mangold wurzels,
before this new attraction came into his life--no! He exceeded his
allowance of cigars.  Two a day had always been his rule.  Now he
smoked three and sometimes four--a man will when he is filled with
the creative spirit.  But very often he thought: 'I must give up
smoking, and coffee; I must give up rattling up to town.'  But he
did not; there was no one in any sort of authority to notice him,
and this was a priceless boon.

The servants perhaps wondered, but they were, naturally, dumb.
Mam'zelle Beauce was too concerned with her own digestion, and too
'wellbrrred' to make personal allusions.  Holly had not as yet an
eye for the relative appearance of him who was her plaything and
her god.  It was left for Irene herself to beg him to eat more, to
rest in the hot part of the day, to take a tonic, and so forth.
But she did not tell him that she was the a cause of his thinness--
for one cannot see the havoc oneself is working.  A man of eighty-
five has no passions, but the Beauty which produces passion works
on in the old way, till death closes the eyes which crave the sight
of Her.

On the first day of the second week in July he received a letter
from his son in Paris to say that they would all be back on Friday.
This had always been more sure than Fate; but, with the pathetic
improvidence given to the old, that they may endure to the end, he
had never quite admitted it.  Now he did, and something would have
to be done.  He had ceased to be able to imagine life without this
new interest, but that which is not imagined sometimes exists, as
Forsytes are perpetually finding to their cost.  He sat in his old
leather chair, doubling up the letter, and mumbling with his lips
the end of an unlighted cigar.  After to-morrow his Tuesday
expeditions to town would have to be abandoned.  He could still
drive up, perhaps, once a week, on the pretext of seeing his man of
business.  But even that would be dependent on his health, for now
they would begin to fuss about him.  The lessons!  The lessons must
go on!  She must swallow down her scruples, and June must put her
feelings in her pocket.  She had done so once, on the day after the
news of Bosinney's death; what she had done then, she could surely
do again now.  Four years since that injury was inflicted on her--
not Christian to keep the memory of old sores alive.  June's will
was strong, but his was stronger, for his sands were running out.
Irene was soft, surely she would do this for him, subdue her
natural shrinking, sooner than give him pain!  The lessons must
continue; for if they did, he was secure.  And lighting his cigar
at last, he began trying to shape out how to put it to them all,
and explain this strange intimacy; how to veil and wrap it away
from the naked truth--that he could not bear to be deprived of the
sight of beauty.  Ah! Holly!  Holly was fond of her, Holly liked
her lessons.  She would save him--his little sweet!  And with that
happy thought he became serene, and wondered what he had been
worrying about so fearfully.  He must not worry, it left him always
curiously weak, and as if but half present in his own body.

That evening after dinner he had a return of the dizziness, though
he did not faint.  He would not ring the bell, because he knew it
would mean a fuss, and make his going up on the morrow more
conspicuous.  When one grew old, the whole world was in conspiracy
to limit freedom, and for what reason?--just to keep the breath in
him a little longer.  He did not want it at such cost.  Only the
dog Balthasar saw his lonely recovery from that weakness; anxiously
watched his master go to the sideboard and drink some brandy,
instead of giving him a biscuit.  When at last old Jolyon felt able
to tackle the stairs he went up to bed.  And, though still shaky
next morning, the thought of the evening sustained and strengthened
him.  It was always such a pleasure to give her a good dinner--he
suspected her of undereating when she was alone; and, at the opera
to watch her eyes glow and brighten, the unconscious smiling of her
lips.  She hadn't much pleasure, and this was the last time he
would be able to give her that treat.  But when he was packing his
bag he caught himself wishing that he had not the fatigue of
dressing for dinner before him, and the exertion, too, of telling
her about June's return.

The opera that evening was 'Carmen,' and he chose the last
entr'acte to break the news, instinctively putting it off till the
latest moment.

She took it quietly, queerly; in fact, he did not know how she had
taken it before the wayward music lifted up again and silence
became necessary.  The mask was down over her face, that mask
behind which so much went on that he could not see.  She wanted
time to think it over, no doubt!  He would not press her, for she
would be coming to give her lesson to-morrow afternoon, and he
should see her then when she had got used to the idea.  In the cab
he talked only of the Carmen; he had seen better in the old days,
but this one was not bad at all.  When he took her hand to say
good-night, she bent quickly forward and kissed his forehead.

"Good-bye, dear Uncle Jolyon, you have been so sweet to me."

"To-morrow then," he said.  "Good-night.  Sleep well."  She echoed
softly: "Sleep welll" and from the cab window, already moving away,
he saw her face screwed round towards him, and her hand put out in
a gesture which seemed to linger.

He sought his room slowly.  They never gave him the same, and he
could not get used to these 'spick-and-spandy' bedrooms with new
furniture and grey-green carpets sprinkled all over with pink
roses.  He was wakeful and that wretched Habanera kept throbbing in
his head.

His French had never been equal to its words, but its sense he
knew, if it had any sense, a gipsy thing--wild and unaccountable.
Well, there was in life something which upset all your care and
plans--something which made men and women dance to its pipes.  And
he lay staring from deep-sunk eyes into the darkness where the
unaccountable held sway.  You thought you had hold of life, but it
slipped away behind you, took you by the scruff of the neck, forced
you here and forced you there, and then, likely as not, squeezed
life out of you!  It took the very stars like that, he shouldn't
wonder, rubbed their noses together and flung them apart; it had
never done playing its pranks.  Five million people in this great
blunderbuss of a town, and all of them at the mercy of that Life-
Force, like a lot of little dried peas hopping about on a board
when you struck your fist on it.  Ah, well! Himself would not hop
much longer--a good long sleep would do him good!

How hot it was up here!--how noisy! His forehead burned; she had
kissed it just where he always worried; just there--as if she had
known the very place and wanted to kiss it all away for him.  But,
instead, her lips left a patch of grievous uneasiness.  She had
never spoken in quite that voice, had never before made that
lingering gesture or looked back at him as she drove away.

He got out of bed and pulled the curtains aside; his room faced
down over the river.  There was little air, but the sight of that
breadth of water flowing by, calm, eternal, soothed him.  'The
great thing,' he thought 'is not to make myself a nuisance.  I'll
think of my little sweet, and go to sleep.'  But it was long before
the heat and throbbing of the London night died out into the short
slumber of the summer morning.  And old Jolyon had but forty winks.

When he reached home next day he went out to the flower garden, and
with the help of Holly, who was very delicate with flowers,
gathered a great bunch of carnations.  They were, he told her, for
'the lady in grey'--a name still bandied between them; and he put
them in a bowl in his study where he meant to tackle Irene the
moment she came, on the subject of June and future lessons.  Their
fragrance and colour would help.  After lunch he lay down, for he
felt very tired, and the carriage would not bring her from the
station till four o'clock.  But as the hour approached he grew
restless, and sought the schoolroom, which overlooked the drive.
The sun-blinds were down, and Holly was there with Mademoiselle
Beauce, sheltered from the heat of a stifling July day, attending
to their silkworms.  Old Jolyon had a natural antipathy to these
methodical creatures, whose heads and colour reminded him of
elephants; who nibbled such quantities of holes in nice green
leaves; and smelled, as he thought, horrid.  He sat down on a
chintz-covered windowseat whence he could see the drive, and get
what air there was; and the dog Balthasar who appreciated chintz on
hot days, jumped up beside him.  Over the cottage piano a violet
dust-sheet, faded almost to grey, was spread, and on it the first
lavender, whose scent filled the room.  In spite of the coolness
here, perhaps because of that coolness the beat of life vehemently
impressed his ebbed-down senses.  Each sunbeam which came through
the chinks had annoying brilliance; that dog smelled very strong;
the lavender perfume was overpowering; those silkworms heaving up
their grey-green backs seemed horribly alive; and Holly's dark head
bent over them had a wonderfully silky sheen.  A marvellous cruelly
strong thing was life when you were old and weak; it seemed to mock
you with its multitude of forms and its beating vitality.  He had
never, till those last few weeks, had this curious feeling of being
with one half of him eagerly borne along in the stream of life, and
with the other half left on the bank, watching that helpless
progress.  Only when Irene was with him did he lose this double
consciousness.

Holly turned her head, pointed with her little brown fist to the
piano--for to point with a finger was not 'well-brrred'--and said
slyly:

"Look at the 'lady in grey,' Gran; isn't she pretty to-day?"

Old Jolyon's heart gave a flutter, and for a second the room was
clouded; then it cleared, and he said with a twinkle:

"Who's been dressing her up?"

"Mam'zelle."

"Hollee! Don't be foolish!"

That prim little Frenchwoman!  She hadn't yet got over the music
lessons being taken away from her.  That wouldn't help.  His little
sweet was the only friend they had.  Well, they were her lessons.
And he shouldn't budge shouldn't budge for anything.  He stroked
the warm wool on Balthasar's head, and heard Holly say: "When
mother's home, there won't be any changes, will there?  She doesn't
like strangers, you know."

The child's words seemed to bring the chilly atmosphere of
opposition about old Jolyon, and disclose all the menace to his
new-found freedom.  Ah! He would have to resign himself to being an
old man at the mercy of care and love, or fight to keep this new
and prized companionship; and to fight tired him to death.  But his
thin, worn face hardened into resolution till it appeared all Jaw.
This was his house, and his affair; he should not budge!  He looked
at his watch, old and thin like himself; he had owned it fifty
years.  Past four already!  And kissing the top of Holly's head in
passing, he went down to the hall.  He wanted to get hold of her
before she went up to give her lesson.  At the first sound of
wheels he stepped out into the porch, and saw at once that the
victoria was empty.

"The train's in, sir; but the lady 'asn't come."

Old Jolyon gave him a sharp upward look, his eyes seemed to push
away that fat chap's curiosity, and defy him to see the bitter
disappointment he was feeling.

"Very well," he said, and turned back into the house.  He went to
his study and sat down, quivering like a leaf.  What did this mean?
She might have lost her train, but he knew well enough she hadn't.
'Good-bye, dear Uncle Jolyon.'  Why 'Good-bye' and not 'Good-
night'?  And that hand of hers lingering in the air.  And her kiss.
What did it mean?  Vehement alarm and irritation took possession of
him.  He got up and began to pace the Turkey carpet, between window
and wall.  She was going to give him up!  He felt it for certain--
and he defenceless.  An old man wanting to look on beauty!  It was
ridiculous!  Age closed his mouth, paralysed his power to fight.
He had no right to what was warm and living, no right to anything
but memories and sorrow.  He could not plead with her; even an old
man has his dignity.  Defenceless!  For an hour, lost to bodily
fatigue, he paced up and down, past the bowl of carnations he had
plucked, which mocked him with its scent.  Of all things hard to
bear, the prostration of will-power is hardest, for one who has
always had his way.  Nature had got him in its net, and like an
unhappy fish he turned and swam at the meshes, here and there,
found no hole, no breaking point.  They brought him tea at five
o'clock, and a letter.  For a moment hope beat up in him.  He cut
the envelope with the butter knife, and read:


"DEAREST UNCLE JOLYON,--I can't bear to write anything that may
disappoint you, but I was too cowardly to tell you last night.  I
feel I can't come down and give Holly any more lessons, now that
June is coming back.  Some things go too deep to be forgotten.  It
has been such a joy to see you and Holly.  Perhaps I shall still
see you sometimes when you come up, though I'm sure it's not good
for you; I can see you are tiring yourself too much.  I believe you
ought to rest quite quietly all this hot weather, and now you have
your son and June coming back you will be so happy.  Thank you a
million times for all your sweetness to me.

"Lovingly your IRENE."


So, there it was! Not good for him to have pleasure and what he
chiefly cared about; to try and put off feeling the inevitable end
of all things, the approach of death with its stealthy, rustling
footsteps.  Not good for him!  Not even she could see how she was
his new lease of interest in life, the incarnation of all the
beauty he felt slipping from him.

His tea grew cold, his cigar remained unlit; and up and down he
paced, torn between his dignity and his hold on life.  Intolerable
to be squeezed out slowly, without a say of your own, to live on
when your will was in the hands of others bent on weighing you to
the ground with care and love.  Intolerable!  He would see what
telling her the truth would do--the truth that he wanted the sight
of her more than just a lingering on.  He sat down at his old
bureau and took a pen.  But he could not write.  There was some-
thing revolting in having to plead like this; plead that she should
warm his eyes with her beauty.  It was tantamount to confessing
dotage.  He simply could not.  And instead, he wrote:


"I had hoped that the memory of old sores would not be allowed to
stand in the way of what is a pleasure and a profit to me and my
little grand-daughter.  But old men learn to forego their whims;
they are obliged to, even the whim to live must be foregone sooner
or later; and perhaps the sooner the better.
"My love to you,
"JOLYON FORSYTE."


'Bitter,' he thought, 'but I can't help it.  I'm tired.'  He sealed
and dropped it into the box for the evening post, and hearing it
fall to the bottom, thought: 'There goes all I've looked forward
to!'

That evening after dinner which he scarcely touched, after his
cigar which he left half-smoked for it made him feel faint, he went
very slowly upstairs and stole into the night-nursery.  He sat down
on the window-seat.  A night-light was burning, and he could just
see Holly's face, with one hand underneath the cheek.  An early
cockchafer buzzed in the Japanese paper with which they had filled
the grate, and one of the horses in the stable stamped restlessly.
To sleep like that child!  He pressed apart two rungs of the
venetian blind and looked out.  The moon was rising, blood-red.  He
had never seen so red a moon.  The woods and fields out there were
dropping to sleep too, in the last glimmer of the summer light.
And beauty, like a spirit, walked.  'I've had a long life,' he
thought, 'the best of nearly everything.  I'm an ungrateful chap;
I've seen a lot of beauty in my time.  Poor young Bosinney said I
had a sense of beauty.  There's a man in the moon to-night!'  A
moth went by, another, another.  'Ladies in grey!'  He closed his
eyes.  A feeling that he would never open them again beset him; he
let it grow, let himself sink; then, with a shiver, dragged the
lids up.  There was something wrong with him, no doubt, deeply
wrong; he would have to have the doctor after all.  It didn't much
matter now!  Into that coppice the moon-light would have crept;
there would be shadows, and those shadows would be the only things
awake.  No birds, beasts, flowers, insects; Just the shadows--
moving; 'Ladies in grey!'  Over that log they would climb; would
whisper together.  She and Bosinney!  Funny thought!  And the frogs
and little things would whisper too!  How the clock ticked, in
here!  It was all eerie-out there in the light of that red moon; in
here with the little steady night-light and, the ticking clock and
the nurse's dressing-gown hanging from the edge of the screen,
tall, like a woman's figure.  'Lady in grey!'  And a very odd
thought beset him: Did she exist?  Had she ever come at all?  Or
was she but the emanation of all the beauty he had loved and must
leave so soon?  The violet-grey spirit with the dark eyes and the
crown of amber hair, who walks the dawn and the moonlight, and at
blue-bell time?  What was she, who was she, did she exist?  He rose
and stood a moment clutching the window-sill, to give him a sense
of reality again; then began tiptoeing towards the door.  He
stopped at the foot of the bed; and Holly, as if conscious of his
eyes fixed on her, stirred, sighed, and curled up closer in
defence.  He tiptoed on and passed out into the dark passage;
reached his room, undressed at once, and stood before a mirror in
his night-shirt.  What a scarecrow--with temples fallen in, and
thin legs! His eyes resisted his own image, and a look of pride
came on his face.  All was in league to pull him down, even his
reflection in the glass, but he was not down--yet!  He got into
bed, and lay a long time without sleeping, trying to reach
resignation, only too well aware that fretting and disappointment
were very bad for him.  He woke in the morning so unrefreshed and
strengthless that he sent for the doctor.  After sounding him, the
fellow pulled a face as long as your arm, and ordered him to stay
in bed and give up smoking.  That was no hardship; there was
nothing to get up for, and when he felt ill, tobacco always lost
its savour.  He spent the morning languidly with the sun-blinds
down, turning and re-turning The Times, not reading much, the dog
Balthasar lying beside his bed.  With his lunch they brought him a
telegram, running thus:


'Your letter received coming down this afternoon will be with you
at four-thirty.  Irene.'


Coming down!  After all!  Then she did exist--and he was not
deserted.  Coming down!  A glow ran through his limbs; his cheeks
and forehead felt hot.  He drank his soup, and pushed the tray-
table away, lying very quiet until they had removed lunch and left
him alone; but every now and then his eyes twinkled.  Coming down!
His heart beat fast, and then did not seem to beat at all.  At
three o'clock he got up and dressed deliberately, noiselessly.
Holly and Mam'zelle would be in the schoolroom, and the servants
asleep after their dinner, he shouldn't wonder.  He opened his door
cautiously, and went downstairs.  In the hall the dog Balthasar lay
solitary, and, followed by him, old Jolyon passed into his study
and out into the burning afternoon.  He meant to go down and meet
her in the coppice, but felt at once he could not manage that in
this heat.  He sat down instead under the oak tree by the swing,
and the dog Balthasar, who also felt the heat, lay down beside him.
He sat there smiling.  What a revel of bright minutes!  What a hum
of insects, and cooing of pigeons!  It was the quintessence of a
summer day.  Lovely!  And he was happy--happy as a sand-boy, what-
ever that might be.  She was coming; she had not given him up!  He
had everything in life he wanted--except a little more breath, and
less weight--just here!  He would see her when she emerged from the
fernery, come swaying just a little, a violet-grey figure passing
over the daisies and dandelions and 'soldiers' on the lawn--the
soldiers with their flowery crowns.  He would not move, but she
would come up to him and say: 'Dear Uncle Jolyon, I am sorry!' and
sit in the swing and let him look at her and tell her that he had
not been very well but was all right now; and that dog would lick
her hand.  That dog knew his master was fond of her; that dog was a
good dog.

It was quite shady under the tree; the sun could not get at him,
only make the rest of the world bright so that he could see the
Grand Stand at Epsom away out there, very far, and the cows crop-
ping the clover in the field and swishing at the flies with their
tails.  He smelled the scent of limes, and lavender.  Ah!  that was
why there was such a racket of bees.  They were excited--busy, as
his heart was busy and excited.  Drowsy, too, drowsy and drugged on
honey and happiness; as his heart was drugged and drowsy.  Summer--
summer--they seemed saying; great bees and little bees, and the
flies too!

The stable clock struck four; in half an hour she would be here.
He would have just one tiny nap, because he had had so little sleep
of late; and then he would be fresh for her, fresh for youth and
beauty, coming towards him across the sunlit lawn--lady in grey!
And settling back in his chair he closed his eyes.  Some thistle-
down came on what little air there was, and pitched on his
moustache more white than itself.  He did not know; but his
breathing stirred it, caught there.  A ray of sunlight struck
through and lodged on his boot.  A bumble-bee alighted and strolled
on the crown of his Panama hat.  And the delicious surge of slumber
reached the brain beneath that hat, and the head swayed forward and
rested on his breast.  Summer--summer!  So went the hum.

The stable clock struck the quarter past.  The dog Balthasar
stretched and looked up at his master.  The thistledown no longer
moved.  The dog placed his chin over the sunlit foot.  It did not
stir.  The dog withdrew his chin quickly, rose, and leaped on old
Jolyon's lap, looked in his face, whined; then, leaping down, sat
on his haunches, gazing up.  And suddenly he uttered a long, long
howl.

But the thistledown was still as death, and the face of his old
master.

Summer--summer--summer!  The soundless footsteps on the grass!


1917







IN CHANCERY

Two households both alike in dignity,
>From ancient grudge, break into new mutiny.

---Romeo and Juliet



TO JESSIE AND JOSEPH CONRAD





PART 1




CHAPTER I

AT TIMOTHY'S


The possessive instinct never stands still.  Through florescence
and feud, frosts and fires, it followed the laws of progression
even in the Forsyte family which had believed it fixed for ever.
Nor can it be dissociated from environment any more than the
quality of potato from the soil.

The historian of the English eighties and nineties will, in his
good time, depict the somewhat rapid progression from self-
contented and contained provincialism to still more self-contented
if less contained imperialism--in other words, the 'possessive'
instinct of the nation on the move.  And so, as if in conformity,
was it with the Forsyte family.  They were spreading not merely on
the surface, but within.

When, in 1895, Susan Hayman, the married Forsyte sister, followed
her husband at the ludicrously low age of seventy-four, and was
cremated, it made strangely little stir among the six old Forsytes
left.  For this apathy there were three causes.  First: the almost
surreptitious burial of old Jolyon in 1892 down at Robin Hill--
first of the Forsytes to desert the family grave at Highgate.  That
burial, coming a year after Swithin's entirely proper funeral, had
occasioned a great deal of talk on Forsyte 'Change, the abode of
Timothy Forsyte on the Bayswater Road, London, which still col-
lected and radiated family gossip.  Opinions ranged from the
lamentation of Aunt Juley to the outspoken assertion of Francie
that it was 'a jolly good thing to stop all that stuffy Highgate
business.'  Uncle Jolyon in his later years--indeed, ever since the
strangeand lamentable affair between his granddaughter June's
lover, young Bosinney, and Irene, his nephew Soames Forsyte's wife-
-had noticeably rapped the family's knuckles; and that way of his
own which he had always taken had begun to seem to them a little
wayward.  The philosophic vein in him, of course, had always been
too liable to crop out of the strata of pure Forsyteism, so they
were in a way prepared for his interment in a strange spot.  But
the whole thing was an odd business, and when the contents of his
Will became current coin on Forsyte 'Change, a shiver had gone
round the clan.  Out of his estate (L145,304 gross, with
liabilities L35 7s. 4d.) he had actually left L15,000 to "whomever
do you think, my dear?  To Irene!" that runaway wife of his nephew
Soames; Irene, a woman who had almost disgraced the family, and--
still more amazing was to him no blood relation.  Not out and out,
of course; only a life interest--only the income from it!  Still,
there it was; and old Jolyon's claim to be the perfect Forsyte was
ended once for all.  That, then, was the first reason why the
burial of Susan Hayman--at Woking--made little stir.  The second
reason was altogether more expansive and imperial.  Besides the
house on Campden Hill, Susan had a place (left her by Hayman when
he died) just over the border in Hants, where the Hayman boys had
learned to be such good shots and riders, as it was believed, which
was of course nice for them, and creditable to everybody; and the
fact of owning something really countrified seemed somehow to
excuse the dispersion of her remains--though what could have put
cremation into her head they could not think!  The usual
invitations, however, had been issued, and Soames had gone down and
young Nicholas, and the Will had been quite satisfactory so far as
it went, for she had only had a life interest; and everything had
gone quite smoothly to the children in equal shares.

The third reason why Susan's burial made little stir was the most
expansive of all.  It was summed up daringly by Euphemia, the pale,
the thin: "Well, I think people have a right to their own bodies,
even when they're dead."  Coming from a daughter of Nicholas, a
Liberal of the old school and most tyrannical, it was a startling
remark--showing in a flash what a lot of water had run under
bridges since the death of Aunt Ann in '86, just when the
proprietorship of Soames over his wife's body was acquiring the
uncertainty which had led to such disaster.  Euphemia, of course,
spoke like a child, and had no experience; for though well over
thirty by now, her name was still Forsyte.  But, making all
allowances, her remark did undoubtedly show expansion of the
principle of liberty, decentralisation and shift in the central
point of possession from others to oneself.  When Nicholas heard
his daughter's remark from Aunt Hester he had rapped out: "Wives
and daughters!  There's no end to their liberty in these days.  I
knew that 'Jackson' case would lead to things--lugging in Habeas
Corpus like that!"  He had, of course, never really forgiven the
Married Woman's Property Act, which would so have interfered with
him if he--had not mercifully married before it was passed.  But,
in truth, there was no denying the revolt among the younger
Forsytes against being owned by others; that, as it were, Colonial
disposition to own oneself, which is the paradoxical forerunner of
Imperialism, was making progress all the time.  They were all now
married, except George, confirmed to the Turf and the Iseeum Club;
Francie, pursuing her musical career in a studio off the King's
Road, Chelsea, and still taking 'lovers' to dances; Euphemia,
living at home and complaining of Nicholas; and those two Dromios,
Giles and Jesse Hayman.  Of the third generation there were not
very many--young Jolyon had three, Winifred Dartie four, young
Nicholas six already, young Roger had one, Marian Tweetyman one;
St. John Hayman two.  But the rest of the sixteen married--Soames,
Rachel and Cicely of James' family; Eustace and Thomas of Roger's;
Ernest, Archibald and Florence of Nicholas'; Augustus and Annabel
Spender of the Hayman's--were going down the years unreproduced.

Thus, of the ten old Forsytes twenty-one young Forsytes had been
born; but of the twenty-one young Forsytes there were as yet only
seventeen descendants; and it already seemed unlikely that there
would be more than a further unconsidered trifle or so.  A student
of statistics must have noticed that the birth rate had varied in
accordance with the rate of interest for your money.  Grandfather
'Superior Dosset' Forsyte in the early nineteenth century had been
getting ten per cent. for his, hence ten children.  Those ten,
leaving out the four who had not married, and Juley, whose husband
Septimus Small had, of course, died almost at once, had averaged
from four to five per cent. for theirs, and produced accordingly.
The twenty-one whom they produced were now getting barely three per
cent. in the Consols to which their father had mostly tied the
Settlements they made to avoid death duties, and the six of them
who had been reproduced had seventeen children, or just the proper
two and five-sixths per stem.

There were other reasons, too, for this mild reproduction.  A
distrust of their earning powers, natural where a sufficiency is
guaranteed, together with the knowledge that their fathers did not
die, kept them cautious.  If one had children and not much income,
the standard of taste and comfort must of necessity go down; what
was enough for two was not enough for four, and so on-it would be
better to wait and see what Father did.  Besides, it was nice to be
able to take holidays unhampered.  Sooner in fact than own
children, they preferred to concentrate on the ownership of them-
selves, conforming to the growing tendency fin de siecle, as it
was called.  In this way, little risk was run, and one would be
able to have a motor-car.  Indeed, Eustace already had one, but it
had shaken him horribly, and broken one of his eye teeth; so that
it would be better to wait till they were a little safer.  In the
meantime, no more children!  Even young Nicholas was drawing in his
horns, and had made no addition to his six for quite three years.

The corporate decay, however, of the Forsytes, their dispersion
rather, of which all this was symptomatic, had not advanced so far
as to prevent a rally when Roger Forsyte died in 1899.  It had been
a glorious summer, and after holidays abroad and at the sea they
were practically all back in London, when Roger with a touch of his
old originality had suddenly breathed his last at his own house in
Princes Gardens.  At Timothy's it was whispered sadly that poor
Roger had always been eccentric about his digestion--had he not,
for instance, preferred German mutton to all the other brands?  Be
that as it may, his funeral at Highgate had been perfect, and
coming away from it Soames Forsyte made almost mechanically for his
Uncle Timothy's in the Bayswater Road.  The 'Old Things'--Aunt
Juley and Aunt Hester--would like to hear about.  it.  His father--
James--at  eighty-eight had not felt up to the fatigue of the
funeral; and Timothy himself, of course, had not gone; so that
Nicholas had been the only brother present.  Still, there had been
a fair gathering; and it would cheer Aunts Juley and Hester up to
know.  The kindly thought was not unmixed with the inevitable
longing to get something out of everything you do, which is the
chief characteristic of Forsytes, and indeed of the saner elements
in every nation.  In this practice of taking family matters to
Timothy's in the Bayswater Road, Soames was but following in the
footsteps of his father, who had been in the habit of going at
least once a week to see his sisters at Timothy's, and had only
given it up when he lost his nerve at eighty-six, and could not go
out without Emily.  To go with Emily was of no use, for who could
really talk to anyone in the presence of his own wife?  Like James
in the old days, Soames found time to go there nearly every Sunday,
and sit in the little drawing-room into which, with his undoubted
taste, he had introduced a good deal of change and china not quite
up to his own fastidious mark, and at least two rather doubtful
Barbizon pictures, at Christmastides.  He himself, who had done
extremely well with the Barbizons, had for some years past moved
towards the Marises, Israels, and Mauve, and was hoping to do
better.  In the riverside house which he now inhabited near
Mapledurham he had a gallery, beautifully hung and lighted, to
which few London dealers were strangers.  It served, too, as a
Sunday afternoon attraction in those week-end parties which his
sisters, Winifred or Rachel, occasionally organised for him.  For
though he was but a taciturn showman, his quiet collected
determinism seldom failed to influence his guests, who knew that
his reputation was grounded not on mere aesthetic fancy, but on his
power of gauging the future of market values.  When he went to
Timothy's he almost always had some little tale of triumph over a
dealer to unfold, and dearly he loved that coo of pride with which
his aunts would greet it.  This afternoon, however, he was
differently animated, coming from Roger's funeral in his neat dark
clothes--not quite black, for after all an uncle was but an uncle,
and his soul abhorred excessive display of feeling.  Leaning back
in a marqueterie chair and gazing down his uplifted, nose at the
sky-blue walls plastered with gold frames, he was noticeably
silent.  Whether because he had been to a funeral or not, the
peculiar Forsyte build of his face was seen to the best advantage
this afternoon--a face concave and long, with a jaw which divested
of flesh would have seemed extravagant: altogether a chinny face
though not at all ill-looking.  He was feeling more strongly than
ever that Timothy's was hopelessly 'rum-ti-too' and the souls of
his aunts dismally mid-Victorian.  The subject on which alone he
wanted to talk--his own undivorced position--was unspeakable.  And
yet it occupied his mind to the exclusion of all else.  It was only
since the Spring that this had been so and a new feeling grown up
which was egging him on towards what he knew might well be folly in
a Forsyte of forty-five.  More and more of late he had been
conscious that he was 'getting on.'  The fortune already
considerable when he conceived the house at Robin Hill which had
finally wrecked his marriage with Irene, had mounted with
surprising vigour in the twelve lonely years during which he had
devoted himself to little else.  He was worth to-day well over a
hundred thousand pounds, and had no one to leave it to--no real
object for going on with what was his religion.  Even if he were to
relax his efforts, money made money, and he felt that he would have
a hundred and fifty thousand before he knew where he was.  There
had always been a strongly domestic, philoprogenitive side to
Soames; baulked and frustrated, it had hidden itself away, but now
had crept out again in this his 'prime of life.'  Concreted and
focussed of late by the attraction of a girl's undoubted beauty, it
had become a veritable prepossession.  And this girl was French,
not likely to lose her head, or accept any unlegalised position.
Moreover, Soames himself disliked the thought of that.  He had
tasted of the sordid side of sex during those long years of forced
celibacy, secretively, and always with disgust, for he was
fastidious, and his sense of law and order innate.  He wanted no
hole and corner liaison.  A marriage at the Embassy in Paris, a few
months' travel, and he could bring Annette back quite separated
from a past which in truth was not too distinguished, for she only
kept the accounts in her mother's Soho Restaurant; he could bring
her back as something very new and chic with her French taste and
self-possession, to reign at 'The Shelter' near Mapledurham.  On
Forsyte 'Change and among his riverside friends it would be current
that he had met a charming French girl on his travels and married
her.  There would be the flavour of romance, and a certain cachet
about a French wife.  No! He was not at all afraid of that.  It was
only this cursed undivorced condition of his, and--and the question
whether Annette would take him, which he dared not put to the touch
until he had a clear and even dazzling future to offer her.

In his aunts' drawing-room he heard with but muffled ears those
usual questions: How was his dear father?  Not going out, of
course, now that the weather was turning chilly?  Would Soames be
sure to tell him that Hester had found boiled holly leaves most
comforting for that pain in her side; a poultice every three hours,
with red flannel afterwards.  And could he relish just a little pot
of their very best prune preserve it was so delicious this year,
and had such a wonderful effect.  Oh! and about the Darties--had
Soames heard that dear Winifred was having a most distressing time
with Montague?  Timothy thought she really ought to have protect-
ion.  It was said--but Soames mustn't take this for certain--that
he had given some of Winifred's jewellery to a dreadful dancer.  It
was such a bad example for dear Val just as he was going to
college.  Soames had not heard?  Oh, but he must go and see his
sister and look into it at once!  And did he think these Boers were
really going to resist?  Timothy was in quite a stew about it.  The
price of Consols was so high, and he had such a lot of money in
them.  Did Soames think they must go down if there was a war?
Soames nodded.  But it would be over very quickly.  It would be so
bad for Timothy if it wasn't.  And of course Soames' dear father
would feel it very much at his age.  Luckily poor dear Roger had
been spared this dreadful anxiety.  And Aunt Juley with a little
handkerchief wiped away the large tear trying to climb the
permanent pout on her now quite withered left cheek; she was
remembering dear Roger, and all his originality, and how he used to
stick pins into her when they were little together.  Aunt Hester,
with her instinct for avoiding the unpleasant, here chimed in: Did
Soames think they would make Mr. Chamberlain Prime Minister at
once?  He would settle it all so quickly.  She would like to see
that old Kruger sent to St. Helena.  She could remember so well the
news of Napoleon's death, and what a, relief it had been to his
grandfather.  Of course she and Juley..." We were in pantalettes
then, my dear"--had not felt it much at the time.

Soames took a cup of tea from her, drank it quickly, and ate three
of those macaroons for which Timothy's was famous.  His faint,
pale, supercilious smile had deepened just a little.  Really, his
family remained hopelessly provincial, however much of London they
might possess between them.  In these go-ahead days their provinc-
ialism stared out even more than it used to.  Why, old Nicholas was
still a Free Trader, and a member of that antediluvian home of
Liberalism, the Remove Club--though, to be sure, the members were
pretty well all Conservatives now, or he himself could not have
joined; and Timothy, they said, still wore a nightcap.  Aunt Juley
spoke again.  Dear Soames was looking so well, hardly a day older
than he did when dear Ann died, and they were all there together,
dear Jolyon, and dear Swithin, and dear Roger.  She paused and
caught the tear which had climbed the pout on her right cheek.  Did
he--did he ever hear anything of Irene nowadays?  Aunt Hester
visibly interposed her shoulder.  Really, Juley was always saying
something!  The smile left Soames' face, and he put his cup down.
Here was his subject broached for him, and for all his desire to
expand, he could not take advantage.

Aunt Juley went on rather hastily:

"They say dear Jolyon first left her that fifteen thousand out and
out; then of course he saw it would not be right, and made it for
her life only."

Had Soames heard that?

Soames nodded.

"Your cousin Jolyon is a widower now.  He is her trustee; you knew
that, of course?"

Soames shook his head.  He did know, but wished to show no
interest.  Young Jolyon and he had not met since the day of
Bosinney's death.

"He must be quite middle-aged by now," went on Aunt Juley dreamily.
"Let me see, he was born when your dear uncle lived in Mount
Street; long before they went to Stanhope Gate in December.  Just
before that dreadful Commune.  Over fifty!  Fancy that!  Such a
pretty baby, and we were all so proud of him; the very first of you
all."  Aunt Juley sighed, and a lock of not quite her own hair came
loose and straggled, so that Aunt Hester gave a little shiver.
Soames rose, he was experiencing a curious piece of self-discovery.
That old wound to his pride and self-esteem was not yet closed.  He
had come thinking he could talk of it, even wanting to talk of his
fettered condition, and--behold! he was shrinking away from this
reminder by Aunt Juley, renowned for her Malapropisms.

Oh, Soames was not going already!

Soames smiled a little vindictively, and said:

"Yes.  Good-bye.  Remember me to Uncle Timothy!"  And, leaving a
cold kiss on each forehead, whose wrinkles seemed to try and cling
to his lips as if longing to be kissed away, he left them looking
brightly after him--dear Soames, it had been so good of him to come
to-day, when they were not feeling very....!

With compunction tweaking at his chest Soames descended the stairs,
where was always that rather pleasant smell of camphor and port
wine, and house where draughts are not permitted.  The poor old
things--he had not meant to be unkind!  And in the street he
instantly forgot them, repossessed by the image of Annette and the
thought of the cursed coil around him.  Why had he not pushed the
thing through and obtained divorce when that wretched Bosinney was
run over, and there was evidence galore for the asking!  And he
turned towards his sister Winifred Dartie's residence in Green
Street, Mayfair.




CHAPTER II

EXIT A MAN OF THE WORLD


That a man of the world so subject to the vicissitudes of fortunes
as Montague Dartie should still be living in a house he had
inhabited twenty years at least would have been more noticeable if
the rent, rates, taxes, and repairs of that house had not been
defrayed by his father-in-law.  By that simple if wholesale device
James Forsyte had secured a certain stability in the lives of his
daughter and his grandchildren.  After all, there is something
invaluable about a safe roof over the head of a sportsman so
dashing as Dartie.  Until the events of the last few days he had
been almost-supernaturally steady all this year.  The fact was he
had acquired a half share in a filly of George Forsyte's, who had
gone irreparably on the turf, to the horror of Roger, now stilled
by the grave.  Sleeve-links, by Martyr, out of Shirt-on-fire, by
Suspender, was a bay filly, three years old, who for a variety of
reasons had never shown her true form.  With half ownership of this
hopeful animal, all the idealism latent somewhere in Dartie, as in
every other man, had put up its head, and kept him quietly ardent
for months past.  When a man has some thing good to live for it is
astonishing how sober he becomes; and what Dartie had was really
good--a three to one chance for an autumn handicap, publicly
assessed at twenty-five to one.  The old-fashioned heaven was a
poor thing beside it, and his shirt was on the daughter of Shirt-
on-fire.  But how much more than his shirt depended on this
granddaughter of Suspender!  At that roving age of forty-five,
trying to Forsytes--and, though perhaps less distinguishable from
any other age, trying even to Darties--Montague had fixed his
current fancy on a dancer.  It was no mean passion, but without
money, and a good deal of it, likely to remain a love as airy as
her skirts; and Dartie never had any money, subsisting miserably on
what he could beg or borrow from Winifred--a woman of character,
who kept him because he was the father of her children, and from a
lingering admiration for those now-dying Wardour Street good looks
which in their youth had fascinated her.  She, together with anyone
else who would lend him anything, and his losses at cards and on
the turf (extraordinary how some men make a good thing out of
losses!) were his whole means of subsistence; for James was now too
old and nervous to approach, and Soames too formidably adamant.  It
is not too much to say that Dartie had been living on hope for
months.  He had never been fond of money for itself, had always
despised the Forsytes with their investing habits, though careful
to make such use of them as he could.  What he liked about money
was what it bought--personal sensation.

"No real sportsman cares for money," he would say, borrowing a
'pony' if it was no use trying for a 'monkey.'  There was something
delicious about Montague Dartie.  He was, as George Forsyte said, a
'daisy.'

The morning of the Handicap dawned clear and bright, the last day
of September, and Dartie who had travelled to Newmarket the night
before, arrayed himself in spotless checks and walked to an
eminence to see his half of the filly take her final canter: If she
won he would be a cool three thou. in pocket--a poor enough
recompense for the sobriety and patience of these weeks of hope,
while they had been nursing her for this race.  But he had not been
able to afford more.  Should he 'lay it off' at the eight to one to
which she had advanced?  This was his single thought while the
larks sang above him, and the grassy downs smelled sweet, and the
pretty filly passed, tossing her head and glowing like satin.

After all, if he lost it would not be he who paid, and to 'lay it
off' would reduce his winnings to some fifteen hundred--hardly
enough to purchase a dancer out and out.  Even more potent was the
itch in the blood of all the Darties for a real flutter.  And
turning to George he said: "She's a clipper.  She'll win hands
down; I shall go the whole hog."  George, who had laid off every
penny, and a few besides, and stood to win, however it came out,
grinned down on him from his bulky height, with the words: "So ho,
my wild one!" for after a chequered apprenticeship weathered with
the money of a deeply complaining Roger, his Forsyte blood was
beginning to stand him in good stead in the profession of owner.

There are moments of disillusionment in the lives of men from which
the sensitive recorder shrinks.  Suffice it to say that the good
thing fell down.  Sleeve-links finished in the ruck.  Dartie's
shirt was lost.

Between the passing of these things and the day when Soames turned
his face towards Green Street, what had not happened!

When a man with the constitution of Montague Dartie has exercised
self-control for months from religious motives, and remains un-
rewarded, he does not curse God and die, he curses God and lives,
to the distress of his family.

Winifred--a plucky woman, if a little too fashionable--who had
borne the brunt of him for exactly twenty-one years, had never
really believed that he would do what he now did.  Like so many
wives, she thought she knew the worst, but she had not yet known
him in his forty-fifth year, when he, like other men, felt that it
was now or never.  Paying on the 2nd of October a visit of inspec-
tion to her jewel case, she was horrified to observe that her
woman's crown and glory was gone--the pearls which Montague had
given her in '86, when Benedict was born, and which James had been
compelled to pay for in the spring of '87, to save scandal.  She
consulted her husband at once.  He 'pooh-poohed' the matter.  They
would turn up!  Nor till she said sharply: "Very well, then, Monty,
I shall go down to Scotland Yard myself," did he consent to take
the matter in hand.  Alas! that the steady and resolved continuity
of design necessary to the accomplishment of sweeping operations
should be liable to interruption by drink.  That night Dartie
returned home without a care in the world or a particle of
reticence.  Under normal conditions Winifred would merely have
locked her door and let him sleep it off, but torturing suspense
about her pearls had caused her to wait up for him.  Taking a small
revolver from his pocket and holding on to the dining table, he
told her at once that he did not care a cursh whether she lived
s'long as she was quiet; but he himself wash tired o' life.
Winifred, holding onto the other side of the dining table,
answered:

"Don't be a clown, Monty.  Have you been to Scotland Yard?"

Placing the revolver against his chest, Dartie had pulled the
trigger several times.  It was not loaded.  Dropping it with an
imprecation, he had muttered: "For shake o' the children," and sank
into a chair.  Winifred, having picked up the revolver, gave him
some soda water.  The liquor had a magical effect.  Life had
illused him; Winifred had never 'unshtood'm.'  If he hadn't the
right to take the pearls he had given her himself, who had?  That
Spanish filly had got'm.  If Winifred had any 'jection he w'd cut--
her--throat.  What was the matter with that?  (Probably the first
use of that celebrated phrase--so obscure are the origins of even
the most classical language!)

Winifred, who had learned self-containment in a hard school, looked
up at him, and said: "Spanish filly!  Do you mean that girl we saw
dancing in the Pandemonium Ballet?  Well, you are a thief and a
blackguard."  It had been the last straw on a sorely loaded
consciousness; reaching up from his chair Dartie seized his wife's
arm, and recalling the achievements of his boyhood, twisted it.
Winifred endured the agony with tears in her eyes, but no murmur.
Watching for a moment of weakness, she wrenched it free; then
placing the dining table between them, said between her teeth: "You
are the limit, Monty."  (Undoubtedly the inception of that phrase--
so is English formed under the stress of circumstances.) Leaving
Dartie with foam on his dark moustache she went upstairs, and,
after locking her door and bathing her arm in hot water, lay awake
all night, thinking of her pearls adorning the neck of another, and
of the consideration her husband had presumably received therefor.

The man of the world awoke with a sense of  being lost to that
world, and a dim recollection  of having been called a 'limit.'  He
sat for half  an hour in the dawn and the armchair where he  had
slept perhaps the unhappiest half-hour he  had ever spent, for even
to a Dartie there is something tragic about an end.  And he knew
that he  had reached it.  Never again would he sleep in his
dining-room and wake with the light filtering  through those
curtains bought by Winifred at  Nickens and Jarveys with the money
of James.  Never again eat a devilled kidney at that rose-wood
table, after a roll in the sheets and a hot bath.  He took his note
case from his dress coat pocket.  Four hundred pounds, in fives and
tens--the remainder of the proceeds of his half of Sleeve-links,
sold last night, cash down, to George Forsyte, who, having won over
the race, had not conceived the sudden dislike to the animal which
he himself now felt.  The ballet was going to Buenos Aires the day
after to-morrow, and he was going too.  Full value for the pearls
had not yet been received; he was only at the soup.

He stole upstairs.  Not daring to have a bath, or shave (besides,
the water would be cold), he changed his clothes and packed
stealthily all he could.  It was hard to leave so many shining
boots, but one must sacrifice something.  Then, carrying a valise
in either hand, he stepped out onto the landing.  The house was
very quiet--that house where he had begotten his four children.  It
was a curious moment, this, outside the room of his wife, once
admired, if not perhaps loved, who had called him 'the limit.'  He
steeled himself with that phrase, and tiptoed on; but the next door
was harder to pass.  It was the room his daughters slept in.  Maud
was at school, but Imogen would be lying there; and moisture came
into Dartie's early morning eyes.  She was the most like him of the
four, with her dark hair, and her luscious brown glance.  Just
coming out, a pretty thing!  He set down the two valises.  This
almost formal abdication of fatherhood hurt him.  The morning light
fell on a face which worked with real emotion.  Nothing so false as
penitence moved him; but genuine paternal feeling, and that
melancholy of 'never again.'  He moistened his lips; and complete
irresolution for a moment paralysed his legs in their check
trousers.  It was hard--hard to be thus compelled to leave his
home!  "D---nit!" he muttered, "I never thought it would come to
this."  Noises above warned him that the maids were beginning to
get up.  And grasping the two valises, he tiptoed on downstairs.
His cheeks were wet, and the knowledge of that was comforting, as
though it guaranteed the genuineness of his sacrifice.  He lingered
a little in the rooms below, to pack all the cigars he had, some
papers, a crush hat, a silver cigarette box, a Ruff's Guide.  Then,
mixing himself a stiff whisky and soda, and lighting a cigarette,
he stood hesitating before a photograph of his two girls, in a
silver frame.  It belonged to Winifred.  'Never mind,' he thought;
'she can get another taken, and I can't!'  He slipped it into the
valise.  Then; putting on his hat and overcoat, he took two others,
his best malacca cane, an umbrella, and opened the front door.
Closing it softly behind him, he walked out, burdened as he had
never been in all his life, and made his way round the corner to
wait there for an early cab to come by.

Thus had passed Montague Dartie in the forty-fifth year of his age
from the house which he had called his own.

When Winifred came down, and realised that he was not in the house,
her first feeling was one of dull anger that he should thus elude
the reproaches she had carefully prepared in those long wakeful
hours.  He had gone off to Newmarket or Brighton, with that woman
as likely as not.  Disgusting!  Forced to a complete reticence
before Imogen and the servants, and aware that her father's nerves
would never stand the disclosure, she had been unable to refrain
from going to Timothy's that afternoon, and pouring out the story
of the pearls to Aunts Juley and Hester in utter confidence.  It
was only on the following morning that she noticed the
disappearance of that photograph.  What did it mean?  Careful
examination of her husband's relics prompted the thought that he
had gone for good.  As that conclusion hardened she stood quite
still in the middle of his dressing-room, with all the drawers
pulled out, to try and realise what she was feeling.  By no means
easy!  Though he was 'the limit' he was yet her property, and for
the life of her she could not but feel the poorer.  To be widowed
yet not widowed at forty-two; with four children; made conspicuous,
an object of commiseration!  Gone to the arms of a Spanish Jade!
Memories, feelings, which she had thought quite dead, revived
within her, painful, sullen, tenacious.  Mechanically she closed
drawer after drawer, went to her bed, lay on it, and buried her
face in the pillows.  She did not cry.  What was the use of that?
When she got off her bed to go down to lunch she felt as if only
one thing could do her good, and that was to have Val home.  He--
her eldest boy--who was to go to Oxford next month at James'
expense, was at Littlehampton taking his final gallops with his
trainer for Smalls, as he would have phrased it following his
father's diction.  She caused a telegram to be sent to him.

"I must see about his clothes," she said to Imogen; "I can't have
him going up to Oxford all anyhow.  Those boys are so particular."

"Val's got heaps of things," Imogen answered.

"I know; but they want overhauling.  I hope he'll come."

"He'll come like a shot, Mother.  But he'll probably skew his
Exam."

"I can't help that," said Winifred.  "I want him."

With an innocent shrewd look at her mother's face, Imogen kept
silence.  It was father, of course!  Val did come 'like a shot' at
six o'clock.

Imagine a cross between a pickle and a Forsyte and you have young
Publius Valerius Dartie.  A youth so named could hardly turn out
otherwise.  When he was born, Winifred, in the heyday of spirits,
and the craving for distinction, had determined that her children
should have names such as no others had ever had.  (It was a mercy-
-she felt now--that she had just not named Imogen Thisbe.) But it
was to George Forsyte, always a wag, that Val's christening was
due.  It so happened that Dartie dining with him, a week after the
birth of his son and heir, had mentioned this aspiration of
Winifred's.

"Call him Cato," said George, "it'll be damned piquant!"  He had
just won a tenner on a horse of that name.

"Cato!" Dartie had replied--they were a little 'on' as the phrase
was even in those days--"it's not a Christian name."

"Halo you!" George called to a waiter in knee breeches.  "Bring me
the Encyc'pedia Brit. from the Library, letter C."

The waiter brought it.

"Here you are!" said George, pointing with his cigar: "Cato Publius
Valerius by Virgil out of Lydia.  That's what you want.  Publius
Valerius is Christian enough."

Dartie, on arriving home, had informed Winifred.  She had been
charmed.  It was so 'chic.'  And Publius Valerius became the baby's
name, though it afterwards transpired that they had got hold of the
inferior Cato.  In 1890, however, when little Publius was nearly
ten, the word 'chic' went out of fashion, and sobriety came in;
Winifred began to have doubts.  They were confirmed by little
Publius himself who returned from his first term at school com-
plaining that life was a burden to him--they called him Pubby.
Winifred--a woman of real decision--promptly changed his school and
his name to Val, the Publius being dropped even as an initial.

At nineteen he was a limber, freckled youth with a wide mouth,
light eyes, long dark lashes; a rather charming smile, considerable
knowledge of what he should not know, and no experience of what he
ought to do.  Few boys had more narrowly escaped being expelled--
the engaging rascal.  After kissing his mother and pinching Imogen,
he ran upstairs three at a time, and came down four, dressed for
dinner.  He was, awfully sorry, but his 'trainer,' who had come up
too, had asked him to dine at the Oxford and Cambridge; it wouldn't
do to miss--the old chap would be hurt.  Winifred let him go with
an unhappy pride.  She had wanted him at home, but it was very nice
to know that his tutor was so fond of him.  He went out with a wink
at Imogen, saying: "I say, Mother, could I have two plover's eggs
when I come in?--cook's got some.  They top up so jolly well.  Oh!
and look here--have you any money?--I had to borrow a fiver from
old Snobby."

Winifred looking at him with fond shrewdness, answered:

"My dear, you are naughty about money.  But you shouldn't pay him
to-night, anyway; you're his guest.  "How nice and slim he looked
in his white waistcoat, and his dark thick lashes!

"Oh, but we may go to the theatre, you see, Mother; and I think I
ought to stand the tickets; he's always hard up, you know."

Winifred produced a five-pound note, saying:

"Well, perhaps you'd better pay him, but you mustn't stand the
tickets too."

Val pocketed the fiver.

"If I do, I can't," he said.  "Good-night, Mum!"

He went out with his head up and his hat cocked joyously, sniffing
the air of Piccadilly like a young hound loosed into covert.  Jolly
good biz!  After that mouldy old slow hole down there!

He found his 'tutor,' not indeed at the Oxford and Cambridge, but
at the Goat's Club.  This 'tutor' was a year older than himself, a
good-looking youth, with fine brown eyes, and smooth dark hair, a
small mouth, an oval face, languid, immaculate, cool to a degree,
one of those young men who without effort establish moral
ascendancy over their companions.  He had missed being expelled
from school a year before Val, had spent that year at Oxford, and
Val could almost see a halo round his head.  His name was Crum, and
no one could get through money quicker.  It seemed to be his only
aim in life--dazzling to young Val, in whom, however, the Forsyte
would stand apart, now and then, wondering where the value for that
money was.

They dined quietly, in style and taste; left the Club smoking
cigars, with just two bottles inside them, and dropped into stalls
at the Liberty.  For Val the sound of comic songs, the sight of
lovely legs were fogged and interrupted by haunting fears that he
would never equal Crum's quiet dandyism.  His idealism was roused;
and when that is so, one is never quite at ease.  Surely he had too
wide a mouth, not the best cut of waistcoat, no braid on his
trousers, and his lavender gloves had no thin black stitchings down
the back.  Besides, he laughed too much--Crum never laughed, he
only smiled, with his regular dark brows raised a little so that
they formed a gable over his just drooped lids.  No! he would never
be Crum's equal.  All the same it was a jolly good show, and
Cynthia Dark simply ripping.  Between the acts Crum regaled him
with particulars of Cynthia's private life, and the awful knowledge
became Val's that, if he liked, Crum could go behind.  He simply
longed to say: "I say, take me!" but dared not, because of his
deficiencies; and this made the last act or two almost miserable.
On coming out Crum said: "It's half an hour before they close;
let's go on to the Pandemonium."  They took a hansom to travel the
hundred yards, and seats costing seven-and-six apiece because they
were going to stand, and walked into the Promenade.  It was in
these little things, this utter negligence of money that Crum had
such engaging polish.  The ballet was on its last legs and--night,
and the traffic of the Promenade was suffering for the moment.  Men
and women were crowded in three rows against the barrier.  The
whirl and dazzle on the stage, the half dark, the mingled tobacco
fumes and women's scent, all that curious lure to promiscuity which
belongs to Promenades, began to free young Val from his idealism.
He looked admiringly in a young woman's face, saw she was not
young, and quickly looked away.  Shades of Cynthia Dark!  The young
woman's arm touched his unconsciously; there was a scent of musk
and mignonette.  Val looked round the corner of his lashes. Perhaps
she was young, after all.  Her foot trod on his; she begged his
pardon.  He said:

"Not at all; jolly good ballet, isn't it?"

"Oh, I'm tired of it; aren't you?"

Young Val smiled--his wide, rather charming smile.  Beyond that he
did not go--not yet convinced.  The Forsyte in him stood out for
greater certainty.  And on the stage the ballet whirled its
kaleidoscope of snow-white, salmon-pink, and emerald-green and
violet and seemed suddenly to freeze into a stilly spangled
pyramid.  Applause broke out, and it was over!  Maroon curtains had
cut it off.  The semi-circle of men and women round the barrier
broke up, the young woman's arm pressed his.  A little way off
disturbance seemed centring round a man with a pink carnation; Val
stole another glance at the young woman, who was looking towards
it.  Three men, unsteady, emerged, walking arm in arm.  The one in
the centre wore the pink carnation, a white waistcoat, a dark
moustache; he reeled a little as he walked.  Crum's voice said slow
and level: "Look at that bounder, he's screwed!"  Val turned to
look.  The 'bounder' had disengaged his arm, and was pointing
straight at them.  Crum's voice, level as ever, said:

"He seems to know you!"  The 'bounder' spoke:

"H'llo!" he said.  "You f'llows, look!  There's my young rascal of
a son!"

Val saw.  It was his father!  He could have sunk into the crimson
carpet.  It was not the meeting in this place, not even that his
father was 'screwed'; it was Crum's word 'bounder,' which, as by
heavenly revelation, he perceived at that moment to be true.  Yes,
his father looked a bounder with his dark good looks, and his pink
carnation, and his square, self-assertive walk.  And without a word
he ducked behind the young woman and slipped out of the Promenade.
He heard the word, "Val!" behind him, and ran down deep-carpeted
steps past the 'chuckersout,' into the Square.

To be ashamed of his own father is perhaps the bitterest experience
a young man can go through.  It seemed to Val, hurrying away, that
his career had ended before it had begun.  How could he go up to
Oxford now amongst all those chaps, those splendid friends of
Crum's, who would know that his father was a 'bounder'!  And
suddenly he hated Crum.  Who the devil was Crum, to say that?  If
Crum had been beside him at that moment, he would certainly have
been jostled off the pavement.  His own father--his own!  A choke
came up in his throat, and he dashed his hands down deep into his
overcoat pockets.  Damn Crum!  He conceived the wild idea of
running back and fending his father, taking him by the arm and
walking about with him in front of Crum; but gave it up at once and
pursued his way down Piccadilly.  A young woman planted herself
before him.  "Not so angry, darling!"  He shied, dodged her, and
suddenly became quite cool.  If Crum ever said a word, he would
jolly well punch his head, and there would be an end of it.  He
walked a hundred yards or more, contented with that thought, then
lost its comfort utterly.  It wasn't simple like that!  He
remembered how, at school, when some parent came down who did not
pass the standard, it just clung to the fellow afterwards.  It was
one of those things nothing could remove.  Why had his mother
married his father, if he was a 'bounder'?  It was bitterly unfair-
-jolly low-down on a fellow to give him a 'bounder' for father.
The worst of it was that now Crum had spoken the word, he realised
that he had long known subconsciously that his father was not 'the
clean potato.'  It was the beastliest thing that had ever happened
to him--beastliest thing that had ever happened to any fellow!
And, down-hearted as he had never yet been, he came to Green
Street, and let himself in with a smuggled latch-key.  In the
dining-room his plover's eggs were set invitingly, with some cut
bread and butter, and a little whisky at the bottom of a decanter--
just enough, as Winifred had thought, for him to feel himself a
man.  It made him sick to look at them, and he went upstairs.

Winifred heard him pass, and thought: 'The dear boy's in.  Thank
goodness!  If he takes after his father I don't know what I shall
do!  But he won't he's like me.  Dear Val!'




CHAPTER III

SOAMES PREPARES TO TAKE STEPS


When Soames entered his sister's little Louis Quinze drawing-room,
with its small balcony, always flowered with hanging geraniums in
the summer, and now with pots of Lilium Auratum, he was struck by
the immutability of human affairs.  It looked just the same as on
his first visit to the newly married Darties twenty-one years ago.
He had chosen the furniture himself, and so completely that no
subsequent purchase had ever been able to change the room's
atmosphere.  Yes, he had founded his sister well, and she had
wanted it.  Indeed, it said a great deal for Winifred that after
all this time with Dartie she remained well-founded.  From the
first Soames had nosed out Dartie's nature from underneath the
plausibility, savoir faire, and good looks which had dazzled
Winifred, her mother, and even James, to the extent of permitting
the fellow to marry his daughter without bringing anything but
shares of no value into settlement.

Winifred, whom he noticed next to the furniture, was sitting at her
Buhl bureau with a letter in her hand.  She rose and came towards
him.  Tall as himself, strong in the cheekbones, well tailored,
something in her face disturbed Soames.  She crumpled the letter in
her hand, but seemed to change her mind and held it out to him.  He
was her lawyer as well as her brother.

Soames read, on Iseeum Club paper, these words:


'You will not get chance to insult in my own again.  I am leaving
country to-morrow.  It's played out.  I'm tired of being insulted
by you.  You've brought on yourself.  No self-respecting man can
stand it.  I shall not ask you for anything again.  Good-bye.  I
took the photograph of the two girls.  Give them my love.  I don't
care what your family say.  It's all their doing.  I'm going to
live new life.

'M.D.'


This after-dinner note had a splotch on it not yet quite dry.  He
looked at Winifred--the splotch had clearly come from her; and he
checked the words: 'Good riddance!'  Then it occurred to him that
with this letter she was entering that very state which he himself
so earnestly desired to quit--the state of a Forsyte who was not
divorced.

Winifred had turned away, and was taking a long sniff from a little
gold-topped bottle.  A dull commiseration, together with a vague
sense of injury, crept about Soames' heart.  He had come to her to
talk of his own position, and get sympathy, and here was she in the
same position, wanting of course to talk of it, and get sympathy
from him.  It was always like that!  Nobody ever seemed to think
that he had troubles and interests of his own.  He folded up the
letter with the splotch inside, and said:

"What's it all about, now?"

Winifred recited the story of the pearls calmly.

"Do you think he's really gone, Soames?  You see the state he was
in when he wrote that."

Soames who, when he desired a thing, placated Providence by
pretending that he did not think it likely to happen, answered:

"I shouldn't think so.  I might find out at his Club."

"If George is there," said Winifred, "he would know."

"George?" said Soames; "I saw him at his father's funeral."

"Then he's sure to be there."

Soames, whose good sense applauded his sister's acumen, said
grudgingly: "Well, I'll go round.  Have you said anything in Park
Lane?"

"I've told Emily," returned Winifred, who retained that 'chic' way
of describing her mother.  "Father would have a fit."

Indeed, anything untoward was now sedulously kept from James.  With
another look round at the furniture, as if to gauge his sister's
exact position, Soames went out towards Piccadilly.  The evening
was drawing in--a touch of chill in the October haze.  He walked
quickly, with his close and concentrated air.  He must get through,
for he wished to dine in Soho.  On hearing from the hall porter at
the Iseeum that Mr. Dartie had not been in to-day, he looked at the
trusty fellow and decided only to ask if Mr. George Forsyte was in
the Club.  He was.  Soames, who always looked askance at his cousin
George, as one inclined to jest at his expense, followed the page-
boy, slightly reassured by the thought that George had just lost
his father.  He must have come in for about thirty thousand, be-
sides what he had under that settlement of Roger's, which had
avoided death duty.  He found George in a bow-window, staring out
across a half-eaten plate of muffins.  His tall, bulky, black-
clothed figure loomed almost threatening, though preserving still
the supernatural neatness of the racing man.  With a faint grin on
his fleshy face, he said:

"Hallo, Soames!  Have a muffin?"

"No, thanks," murmured Soames; and, nursing his hat, with the
desire to say something suitable and sympathetic, added:

"How's your mother?"

"Thanks," said George; "so-so.  Haven't seen you for ages.  You
never go racing.  How's the City?"

Soames, scenting the approach of a jest, closed up, and answered:

"I wanted to ask you about Dartie.  I hear he's...."

"Flitted, made a bolt to Buenos Aires with the fair Lola.  Good for
Winifred and the little Darties.  He's a treat."

Soames nodded.  Naturally inimical as these cousins were, Dartie
made them kin.

"Uncle James'll sleep in his bed now," resumed George; "I suppose
he's had a lot off you, too."

Soames smiled.

"Ah! You saw him further," said George amicably.  "He's a real
rouser.  Young Val will want a bit of looking after.  I was always
sorry for Winifred.  She's a plucky woman."

Again Soames nodded.  "I must be getting back to her," he said;
"she just wanted to know for certain.  We may have to take steps.
I suppose there's no mistake?"

"It's quite O.K.," said George--it was he who invented so many of
those quaint sayings which have been assigned to other sources.
"He was drunk as a lord last night; but he went off all right this
morning.  His ship's the Tuscarora;" and, fishing out a card, he
read mockingly:

"'Mr. Montague Dartie, Poste Restante, Buenos Aires.'  I should
hurry up with the steps, if I were you.  He fairly fed me up last
night."

"Yes," said Soames; "but it's not always easy."  Then, conscious
from George's eyes that he had roused reminiscence of his own
affair, he got up, and held out his hand.  George rose too.

"Remember me to Winifred....  You'll enter her for the Divorce
Stakes straight off if you ask me."

Soames took a sidelong look back at him from the doorway.  George
had seated himself again and was staring before him; he looked big
and lonely in those black clothes.  Soames had never known him so
subdued.  'I suppose he feels it in a way,' he thought.  'They must
have about fifty thousand each, all told.  They ought to keep the
estate together.  If there's a war, house property will go down.
Uncle Roger was a good judge, though.'  And the face of Annette
rose before him in the darkening street; her brown hair and her
blue eyes with their dark lashes, her fresh lips and cheeks, dewy
and blooming in spite of London, her perfect French figure.  'Take
steps!' he thought.  Re-entering Winifred's house he encountered
Val, and they went in together.  An idea had occurred to Soames.
His cousin Jolyon was Irene's trustee, the first step would be to
go down and see him at Robin Hill.  Robin Hill!  The odd--the very
odd feeling those words brought back!  Robin Hill--the house
Bosinney had built for him and Irene--the house they had never
lived in--the fatal house!  And Jolyon lived there now!  H'm!  And
suddenly he thought: 'They say he's got a boy at Oxford!  Why not
take young Val down and introduce them!  It's an excuse!  Less
bald--very much less bald!' So, as they went upstairs, he said to
Val:

"You've got a cousin at Oxford; you've never met him.  I should
like to take you down with me to-morrow to where he lives and
introduce you.  You'll find it useful."

Val, receiving the idea with but moderate transports, Soames
clinched it.

"I'll call for you after lunch.  It's in the country--not far;
you'll enjoy it."

On the threshold of the drawing-room he recalled with an effort
that the steps he contemplated concerned Winifred at the moment,
not himself.

Winifred was still sitting at her Buhl bureau.

"It's quite true," he said; "he's gone to Buenos Aires, started
this morning--we'd better have him shadowed when he lands.  I'll
cable at once.  Otherwise we may have a lot of expense.  The sooner
these things are done the better.  I'm always regretting that I
didn't..." he stopped, and looked sidelong at the silent Winifred.
"By the way," he went on, "can you prove cruelty?"

Winifred said in a dull voice:

"I don't know.  What is cruelty?"

"Well, has he struck you, or anything?"

Winifred shook herself, and her jaw grew square.

"He twisted my arm.  Or would pointing a pistol count?  Or being
too drunk to undress himself, or--No--I can't bring in the
children."

"No," said Soames; "no!  I wonder!  Of course, there's legal
separation--we can get that.  But separation!  Um!"

"What does it mean?" asked Winifred desolately.

"That he can't touch you, or you him; you're both of you married
and unmarried."  And again he grunted.  What was it, in fact, but
his own accursed position, legalised!  No, he would not put her
into that!

"It must be divorce," he said decisively;" failing cruelty, there's
desertion.  There's a way of shortening the two years, now.  We get
the Court to give us restitution of conjugal rights.  Then if he
doesn't obey, we can bring a suit for divorce in six months' time.
Of course you don't want him back.  But they won't know that.
Still, there's the risk that he might come.  I'd rather try
cruelty."

Winifred shook her head.  "It's so beastly."

"Well," Soames murmured, "perhaps there isn't much risk so long as
he's infatuated and got money.  Don't say anything to anybody, and
don't pay any of his debts."

Winifred sighed.  In spite of all she had been through, the sense
of loss was heavy on her.  And this idea of not paying his debts
any more brought it home to her as nothing else yet had.  Some
richness seemed to have gone out of life.  Without her husband,
without her pearls, without that intimate sense that she made a
brave show above the domestic whirlpool, she would now have to face
the world.  She felt bereaved indeed.

And into the chilly kiss he placed on her forehead, Soames put more
than his usual warmth.

"I have to go down to Robin Hill to-morrow," he said, "to see young
Jolyon on business.  He's got a boy at Oxford.  I'd like to take
Val with me and introduce him.  Come down to 'The Shelter' for the
week-end and bring the children.  Oh! by the way, no, that won't
do; I've got some other people coming."  So saying, he left her and
turned towards Soho.




CHAPTER IV

SOHO


Of all quarters in the queer adventurous amalgam called London,
Soho is perhaps least suited to the Forsyte spirit.  'So-ho, my
wild one!'  George would have said if he had seen his cousin going
there.  Untidy, full of Greeks, Ishmaelites, cats, Italians,
tomatoes, restaurants, organs, coloured stuffs, queer names, people
looking out of upper windows, it dwells remote from the British
Body Politic.  Yet has it haphazard proprietary instincts of its
own, and a certain possessive prosperity which keeps its rents up
when those of other quarters go down.  For long years Soames'
acquaintanceship with Soho had been confined to its Western
bastion, Wardour Street.  Many bargains had he picked up there.
Even during those seven years at Brighton after Bosinney's death
and Irene's flight, he had bought treasures there sometimes, though
he had no place to put them; for when the conviction that his wife
had gone for good at last became firm within him, he had caused a
board to be put up in Montpellier Square:

FOR SALE

THE LEASE OF THIS DESIRABLE RESIDENCE

Enquire of Messrs.  Lesson and Tukes,
Court Street, Belgravia.


It had sold within a week--that desirable residence, in the shadow
of whose perfection a man and a woman--had eaten their hearts out.

Of a misty January evening, just before the board was taken down,
Soames had gone there once more, and stood against the Square
railings, looking at its unlighted windows, chewing the cud of
possessive memories which had turned so bitter in the mouth.  Why
had she never loved him?  Why?  She had been given all she had
wanted, and in return had given him, for three long years, all he
had wanted--except, indeed, her heart.  He had uttered a little
involuntary groan, and a passing policeman had glanced suspiciously
at him who no longer possessed the right to enter that green door
with the carved brass knocker beneath the board 'For Sale!'  A
choking sensation had attacked his throat, and he had hurried away
into the mist.  That evening he had gone to Brighton to live....

Approaching Malta Street, Soho, and the Restaurant Bretagne, where
Annette would be drooping her pretty shoulders over her accounts,
Soames thought with wonder of those seven years at Brighton.  How
had he managed to go on so long in that town devoid of the scent of
sweetpeas, where he had not even space to put his treasures?  True,
those had been years with no time at all for looking at them--years
of almost passionate money-making, during which Forsyte, Bustard
and Forsyte had become solicitors to more limited Companies than
they could properly attend to.  Up to the City of a morning in a
Pullman car, down from the City of an evening in a Pullman car.
Law papers again after dinner, then the sleep of the tired, and up
again next morning.  Saturday to Monday was spent at his Club in
town--curious reversal of customary procedure, based on the deep
and careful instinct that while working so hard he needed sea air
to and from the station twice a day, and while resting must indulge
his domestic affections.  The Sunday visit to his family in Park
Lane, to Timothy's, and to Green Street; the occasional visits
elsewhere had seemed to him as necessary to health as sea air on
weekdays.  Even since his migration to Mapledurham he had main-
tained those habits until--he had known Annette.

Whether Annette had produced the revolution in his outlook, or that
outlook had produced Annette, he knew no more than we know where a
circle begins.  It was intricate and deeply involved with the
growing consciousness that property without anyone to leave it to
is the negation of true Forsyteism.  To have an heir, some
continuance of self, who would begin where he left off--ensure, in
fact, that he would not leave off--had quite obsessed him for the
last year and more.  After buying a bit of Wedgwood one evening in
April, he had dropped into Malta Street to look at a house of his
father's which had been turned into a restaurant--a risky pro-
ceeding, and one not quite in accordance with the terms of the
lease.  He had stared for a little at the outside  painted a good
cream colour, with two peacock-blue tubs containing little bay-
trees in a recessed doorway--and at the words 'Restaurant Bretagne'
above them in gold letters, rather favourably impressed.  Entering,
he had noticed that several people were already seated at little
round green tables with little pots of fresh flowers on them and
Brittany-ware plates, and had asked of a trim waitress to see the
proprietor.  They had shown him into a back room, where a girl was
sitting at a simple bureau covered with papers, and a small round,
table was laid for two.  The impression of cleanliness, order, and
good taste was confirmed when the girl got up, saying, "You wish to
see Maman, Monsieur?" in a broken accent.

"Yes," Soames had answered, "I represent your landlord; in fact,
I'm his son."   "Won't you sit down, sir, please?  Tell Maman to
come to this gentleman."

He was pleased that the girl seemed impressed, because it showed
business instinct; and suddenly he noticed that she was remarkably
pretty--so remarkably pretty that his eyes found a difficulty in
leaving her face.  When she moved to put a chair for him, she
swayed in a curious subtle way, as if she had been put together by
someone with a special secret skill; and her face and neck, which
was a little bared, looked as fresh as if they had been sprayed
with dew.  Probably at this moment Soames decided that the lease
had not been violated; though to himself and his father he based
the decision on the efficiency of those illicit adaptations in the
building, on the signs of prosperity, and the obvious business
capacity of Madame Lamotte.  He did not, however, neglect to leave
certain matters to future consideration, which had necessitated
further visits, so that the little back room had become quite
accustomed to his spare, not unsolid, but unobtrusive figure, and
his pale, chinny face with clipped moustache and dark hair not yet
grizzling at the sides.

"Un Monsieur tres distingue," Madame Lamotte found him; and
presently, "Tres amical, tres gentil," watching his eyes upon her
daughter.

She was one of those generously built, fine-faced, dark-haired
Frenchwomen, whose every action and tone of voice inspire perfect
confidence in the thoroughness of their domestic tastes, their
knowledge of cooking, and the careful increase of their bank
balances.

After those visits to the Restaurant Bretagne began, other visits
ceased--without, indeed, any definite decision, for Soames, like
all Forsytes, and the great majority of their countrymen, was a
born empiricist.  But it was this change in his mode of life which
had gradually made him so definitely conscious that he desired to
alter his condition from that of the unmarried married man to that
of the married man remarried.

Turning into Malta Street on this evening of early October, 1899,
he bought a paper to see if there were any after-development of the
Dreyfus case--a question which he had always found useful in making
closer acquaintanceship with Madame Lamotte and her daughter, who
were Catholic and anti-Dreyfusard.

Scanning those columns, Soames found nothing French, but noticed a
general fall on the Stock Exchange and an ominous leader about the
Transvaal.  He entered, thinking: 'War's a certainty.  I shall sell
my consols.'  Not that he had many, personally, the rate of
interest was too wretched; but he should advise his Companies--
consols would assuredly go down.  A look, as he passed the doorways
of the restaurant, assured him that business was good as ever, and
this, which in April would have pleased him, now gave him a certain
uneasiness.  If the steps which he had to take ended in his
marrying Annette, he would rather see her mother safely back in
France, a move to which the prosperity of the Restaurant Bretagne
might become an obstacle.  He would have to buy them out, of
course, for French people only came to England to make money; and
it would mean a higher price.  And then that peculiar sweet
sensation at the back of his throat, and a slight thumping about
the heart, which he always experienced at the door of the little
room, prevented his thinking how much it would cost.

Going in, he was conscious of an abundant black skirt vanishing
through the door into the restaurant, and of Annette with her hands
up to her hair.  It was the attitude in which of all others he
admired her--so beautifully straight and rounded and supple.  And
he said:

"I just came in to talk to your mother about pulling down that
partition.  No, don't call her."

"Monsieur will have supper with us?  It will be ready in ten
minutes."  Soames, who still held her hand, was overcome by an
impulse which surprised him.

"You look so pretty to-night," he said, "so very pretty.  Do you
know how pretty you look, Annette?"

Annette withdrew her hand, and blushed.  "Monsieur is very good."

"Not a bit good," said Soames, and sat down gloomily.

Annette made a little expressive gesture with her hands; a smile
was crinkling her red lips untouched by salve.

And, looking at those lips, Soames said:

"Are you happy over here, or do you want to go back to France?"

"Oh, I like London.  Paris, of course.  But London is better than
Orleans, and the English country is so beautiful.  I have been to
Richmond last Sunday."

Soames went through a moment of calculating struggle.  Mapledurham!
Dared he?  After all, dared he go so far as that, and show her what
there was to look forward to!  Still!  Down there one could say
things.  In this room it was impossible.

"I want you and your mother," he said suddenly, "to come for the
afternoon next Sunday.  My house is on the river, it's not too late
in this weather; and I can show you some good pictures.  What do
you say?"

Annette clasped her hands.

"It will be lovelee.  The river is so beautiful"

"That's understood, then.  I'll ask Madame."

He need say no more to her this evening, and risk giving himself
away.  But had he not already said too much?  Did one ask
restaurant proprietors with pretty daughters down to one's country
house without design?  Madame Lamotte would see, if Annette didn't.
Well! there was not much that Madame did not see.  Besides, this
was the second time he had stayed to supper with them; he owed them
hospitality.

Walking home towards Park Lane--for he was staying at his father's-
-with the impression of Annette's soft clever hand within his own,
his thoughts were pleasant, slightly sensual, rather puzzled.  Take
steps!  What steps?  How?  Dirty linen washed in public?  Pah!
With his reputation for sagacity, for far-sightedness and the
clever extrication of others, he, who stood for proprietary
interests, to become the plaything of that Law of which he was a
pillar!  There was something revolting in the thought!  Winifred's
affair was bad enough!  To have a double dose of publicity in the
family!  Would not a liaison be better than that--a liaison, and a
son he could adopt?  But dark, solid, watchful, Madame Lamotte
blocked the avenue of that vision.  No! that would not work.  It
was not as if Annette could have a real passion for him; one could
not expect that at his age.  If her mother wished, if the worldly
advantage were manifestly great--perhaps!  If not, refusal would be
certain.  Besides, he thought: 'I'm not a villain.  I don't want to
hurt her; and I don't want anything underhand.  But I do want her,
and I want a son!  There's nothing for it but divorce--somehow--
anyhow--divorce!'  Under the shadow of the plane-trees, in the
lamplight, he passed slowly along the railings of the Green Park.
Mist clung there among the bluish tree shapes, beyond range of the
lamps.  How many hundred times he had walked past those trees from
his father's house in Park Lane, when he was quite a young man; or
from his own house in Montpellier Square in those four years of
married life!  And, to-night, making up his mind to free himself if
he could of that long useless marriage tie, he took a fancy to walk
on, in at Hyde Park Corner, out at Knightsbridge Gate, just as he
used to when going home to Irene in the old days.  What could she
be like now?--how had she passed the years since he last saw her,
twelve years in all, seven already since Uncle Jolyon left her that
money?  Was she still beautiful?  Would he know her if he saw her?
'I've not changed much,' he thought; 'I expect she has.  She made
me suffer.'  He remembered suddenly one night, the first on which
he went out to dinner alone--an old Malburian dinner--the first
year of their marriage.  With what eagerness he had hurried back;
and, entering softly as a cat, had heard her playing.  Opening the
drawingroom door noiselessly, he had stood watching the expression
on her face, different from any he knew, so much more open, so
confiding, as though to her music she was giving a heart he had
never seen.  And he remembered how she stopped and looked round,
how her face changed back to that which he did know, and what an
icy shiver had gone through him, for all that the next moment he
was fondling her shoulders.  Yes, she had made him suffer!
Divorce!  It seemed ridiculous, after all these years of utter
separation!  But it would have to be.  No other way!  'The
question,' he thought with sudden realism, 'is--which of us?  She
or me?  She deserted me.  She ought to pay for it.  There'll be
someone, I suppose.'  Involuntarily he uttered a little snarling
sound, and, turning, made his way back to Park Lane.





CHAPTER V

JAMES SEES VISIONS


The butler himself opened the door, and closing it softly, detained
Soames on the inner mat.

"The master's poorly, sir," he murmured.  "He wouldn't go to bed
till you came in.  He's still in the diningroom."

Soames responded in the hushed tone to which the house was now
accustomed.

"What's the matter with him, Warmson?"

"Nervous, sir, I think.  Might be the funeral; might be Mrs.
Dartie's comin' round this afternoon.  I think he overheard
something.  I've took him in a negus.  The mistress has just gone
up."

Soames hung his hat on a mahogany stag's-horn.

"All right, Warmson, you can go to bed; I'll take him up myself."
And he passed into the dining-room.

James was sitting before the fire, in a big armchair, with a
camel-hair shawl, very light and warm, over his frock-coated
shoulders, on to which his long white whiskers drooped.  His white
hair, still fairly thick, glistened in the lamplight; a little
moisture from his fixed, light-grey eyes stained the cheeks, still
quite well coloured, and the long deep furrows running to the
corners of the clean-shaven lips, which moved as if mumbling
thoughts.  His long legs, thin as a crow's, in shepherd's plaid
trousers, were bent at less than a right angle, and on one knee a
spindly hand moved continually, with fingers wide apart and
glistening tapered nails.  Beside him, on a low stool, stood a
half-finished glass of negus, bedewed with beads of heat.  There he
had been sitting, with intervals for meals, all day.  At eighty-
eight he was still organically sound, but suffering terribly from
the thought that no one ever told him anything.  It is, indeed,
doubtful how he had become aware that Roger was being buried that
day, for Emily had kept it from him.  She was always keeping things
from him.  Emily was only seventy!  James had a grudge against his
wife's youth.  He felt sometimes that he would never have married
her if he had known that she would have so many years before her,
when he had so few.  It was not natural.  She would live fifteen or
twenty years after he was gone, and might spend a lot of money; she
had always had extravagant tastes.  For all he knew she might want
to buy one of these motor-cars.  Cicely and Rachel and Imogen and
all the young people--they all rode those bicycles now and went off
Goodness knew where.  And now Roger was gone.  He didn't know--
couldn't tell!  The family was breaking up.  Soames would know how
much his uncle had left.  Curiously he thought of Roger as Soames'
uncle not as his own brother.  Soames!  It was more and more the
one solid spot in a vanishing world.  Soames was careful; he was a
warm man; but he had no one to leave his money to.  There it was!
He didn't know!  And there was that fellow Chamberlain!  For James'
political principles had been fixed between '70 and '85 when 'that
rascally Radical' had been the chief thorn in the side of property
and he distrusted him to this day in spite of his conversion; he
would get the country into a mess and make money go down before he
had done with it.  A stormy petrel of a chap!  Where was Soames?
He had gone to the funeral of course which they had tried to keep
from him.  He knew that perfectly  well; he had seen his son's
trousers.  Roger!  Roger in his coffin!  He remembered how, when
they came up from school together from the West, on the box seat of
the old Slowflyer in 1824, Roger had got into the 'boot' and gone
to sleep.  James uttered a thin cackle.  A funny fellow--Roger--an
original!  He didn't know!  Younger than himself, and in his
coffin!  The family was breaking up.  There was Val going to the
university; he never came to see him now.  He would cost a pretty
penny up there.  It was an extravagant age.  And all the pretty
pennies that his four grandchildren would cost him danced before
James' eyes.  He did not grudge them the money, but he grudged
terribly the risk which the spending of that money might bring on
them; he grudged the diminution of security.  And now that Cicely
had married, she might be having children too.  He didn't know--
couldn't tell!  Nobody thought of anything but spending money in
these days, and racing about, and having what they called 'a good
time.'  A motor-car went past the window.  Ugly great lumbering
thing, making all that racket!  But there it was, the country
rattling to the dogs!  People in such a hurry that they couldn't
even care for style--a neat turnout like his barouche and bays was
worth all those new-fangled things.  And consols at 116!  There
must be a lot of money in the country.  And now there was this old
Kruger!  They had tried to keep old Kruger from him.  But he knew
better; there would be a pretty kettle of fish out there!  He had
known how it would be when that fellow Gladstone--dead now, thank
God! made such a mess of it after that dreadful business at Majuba.
He shouldn't wonder if the Empire split up and went to pot.  And
this vision of the Empire going to pot filled a full quarter of an
hour with qualms of the most serious character.  He had eaten a
poor lunch because of them.  But it was after lunch that the real
disaster to his nerves occurred.  He had been dozing when he became
aware of voices--low voices.  Ah! they never told him anything!
Winifred's and her mother's.  "Monty!"  That fellow Dartie--always
that fellow Dartie!  The voices had receded; and James had been
left alone, with his ears standing up like a hare's, and fear
creeping about his inwards.  Why did they leave him alone?  Why
didn't they come and tell him?  And an awful thought, which through
long years had haunted him, concreted again swiftly in his brain.
Dartie had gone bankrupt--fraudulently bankrupt, and to save
Winifred and the children, he--James would have to pay!  Could he--
could Soames turn him into a limited company?  No, he couldn't!
There it was!  With every minute before Emily came back the spectre
fiercened.  Why, it might be forgery!  With eyes fixed on the
doubted Turner in the centre of the wall, James suffered tortures.
He saw Dartie in the dock, his grandchildren in the gutter, and
himself in bed.  He saw the doubted Turner being sold at Jobson's,
and all the majestic edifice of property in rags.  He saw in fancy
Winifred unfashionably dressed, and heard in fancy Emily's voice
saying: "Now, don't fuss, James!"  She was always saying: "Don't
fuss!"  She had no nerves; he ought never to have married a woman
eighteen years younger than himself.  Then Emily's real voice said:

"Have you had a nice nap, James?"

Nap!  He was in torment, and she asked him that!

"What's this about Dartie?" he said, and his eyes glared at her.

Emily's self-possession never deserted her.

"What have you been hearing?" she asked blandly.

"What's this about Dartie?" repeated James.  "He's gone bankrupt."

"Fiddle!"

James made a great effort, and rose to the full height of his
stork-like figure.

"You never tell me anything," he said; "he's gone bankrupt."

The destruction of that fixed idea seemed to Emily all that
mattered at the moment.

"He has not," she answered firmly.  "He's gone to Buenos Aires."

If she had said "He's gone to Mars" she could not have dealt James
a more stunning blow; his imagination, invested entirely in British
securities, could as little grasp one place as the other.

"What's he gone there for?" he said.  "He's got no money.  What did
he take?"

Agitated within by Winifred's news, and goaded by the constant
reiteration of this jeremiad, Emily said calmly:

"He took Winifred's pearls and a dancer."

"What!" said James, and sat down.

His sudden collapse alarmed her, and smoothing his forehead, she
said:

"Now, don't fuss, James!"

A dusky red had spread over James' cheeks and forehead.

"I paid for them," he said tremblingly; "he's a thief!  I--I knew
how it would be.  He'll be the death of me; he ...."  Words failed
him and he sat quite still.  Emily, who thought she knew him so
well, was alarmed, and went towards the sideboard where she kept
some sal volatile.  She could not see the tenacious Forsyte spirit
working in that thin, tremulous shape against the extravagance of
the emotion called up by this outrage on Forsyte principles--the
Forsyte spirit deep in there, saying: 'You mustn't get into a
fantod, it'll never do.  You won't digest your lunch.  You'll have
a fit!'All unseen by her, it was doing better work in James than
sal volatile.

"Drink this," she said.

James waved it aside.

"What was Winifred about," he said, "to let him take her pearls?"
Emily perceived the crisis past.

"She can have mine," she said comfortably.  "I never wear them.
She'd better get a divorce."

"There you go!" said James.  "Divorce!  We've never had a divorce
in the family.  Where's Soames?"

"He'll be in directly."

"No, he won't," said James, almost fiercely; "he's at the funeral.
You think I know nothing."

"Well," said Emily with calm, "you shouldn't get into such fusses
when we tell you things."  And plumping up his cushions, and
putting the sal volatile beside him, she left the room.

But James sat there seeing visions--of Winifred in the Divorce
Court, and the family name in the papers; of the earth falling on
Roger's coffin; of Val taking after his father; of the pearls he
had paid for and would never see again; of money back at four per
cent., and the country going to the dogs; and, as the afternoon
wore into evening, and tea-time passed, and dinnertime, those
visions became more and more mixed and menacing--of being told
nothing, till he had nothing left of all his wealth, and they told
him nothing of it.  Where was Soames?  Why didn't he come in?...
His hand grasped the glass of negus, he raised it to drink, and saw
his son standing there looking at him.  A little sigh of relief
escaped his lips, and putting the glass down, he said:

"There you are!  Dartie's gone to Buenos Aires."

Soames nodded.  "That's all right," he said; "good riddance."

A wave of assuagement passed over James' brain.  Soames knew.
Soames was the only one of them all who had sense.  Why couldn't he
come and live at home?  He had no son of his own.  And he said
plaintively:

"At my age I get nervous.  I wish you were more at home, my boy."

Again Soames nodded; the mask of his countenance betrayed no
understanding, but he went closer, and as if by accident touched
his father's shoulder.

"They sent their love to you at Timothy's," he said.  "It went off
all right.  I've been to see Winifred.  I'm going to take steps."
And he thought: 'Yes, and you mustn't hear of them.'

James looked up; his long white whiskers quivered, his thin throat
between the points of his collar looked very gristly and naked.

"I've been very poorly all day," he said; "they never tell me
anything."

Soames' heart twitched.

"Well, it's all right.  There's nothing to worry about.  Will you
come up now?" and he put his hand under his father's arm.

James obediently and tremulously raised himself, and together they
went slowly across the room, which had a rich look in the
firelight, and out to the stairs.  Very slowly they ascended.

"Good-night, my boy," said James at his bedroom door.

"Good-night, father," answered Soames.  His hand stroked down the
sleeve beneath the shawl; it seemed to have almost nothing in it,
so thin was the arm.  And, turning away from the light in the
opening doorway, he went up the extra flight to his own bedroom.

'I want a son,' he thought, sitting on the edge of his bed;
'I want a son.'




CHAPTER VI

NO-LONGER-YOUNG JOLYON AT HOME


Trees take little account of time, and the old oak on the upper
lawn at Robin Hill looked no day older than when Bosinney sprawled
under it and said to Soames: "Forsyte, I've found the very place
for your house."  Since then Swithin had dreamed, and old Jolyon
died, beneath its branches.  And now, close to the swing,
no-longer-young Jolyon often painted there.  Of all spots in the
world it was perhaps the most sacred to him, for he had loved his
father.

Contemplating its great girth--crinkled and a little mossed, but
not yet hollow--he would speculate on the passage of time.  That
tree had seen, perhaps, all real English history; it dated, he
shouldn't wonder, from the days of Elizabeth at least.  His own
fifty years were as nothing to its wood.  When the house behind it,
which he now owned, was three hundred years of age instead of
twelve, that tree might still be standing there, vast and hollow--
for who would commit such sacrilege as to cut it down?  A Forsyte
might perhaps still be living in that house, to guard it jealously.
And Jolyon would wonder what the house would look like coated with
such age.  Wistaria was already about its walls--the new look had
gone.  Would its hold its own and keep the dignity Bosinney had
bestowed on it, or would the giant London have lapped it round and
made it into an asylum in the midst of a jerry-built wilderness?
Often, within and without of it, he was persuaded that Bosinney had
been moved by the spirit when he built.  He had put his heart into
that house, indeed!  It might even become one of the 'homes of
England'--a rare achievement for a house in these degenerate days
of building.  And the aesthetic spirit, moving hand in hand with
his Forsyte sense of possessive continuity, dwelt with pride and
pleasure on his ownership thereof.  There was the smack of
reverence and ancestor-worship (if only for one ancestor) in his
desire to hand this house down to his son and his son's son.  His
father had loved the house, had loved the view, the grounds, that
tree; his last years had been happy there, and no one had lived
there before him.  These last eleven years at Robin Hill had formed
in Jolyon's life as a painter, the important period of success.  He
was now in the very van of water-colour art, hanging on the line
everywhere.  His drawings fetched high prices.  Specialising in
that one medium with the tenacity of his breed, he had 'arrived'-
-rather late, but not too late for a member of the family which
made a point of living for ever.  His art had really deepened and
improved.  In conformity with his position he had grown a short
fair beard, which was just beginning to grizzle, and hid his
Forsyte chin; his brown face had lost the warped expression of his
ostracised period--he looked, if anything, younger.  The loss of
his wife in 1894 had been one of those domestic tragedies which
turn out in the end for the good of all.  He had, indeed, loved her
to the last, for his was an affectionate spirit, but she had become
increasingly difficult: jealous of her step-daughter June, jealous
even of her own little daughter Holly, and making ceaseless plaint
that he could not love her, ill as she was, and 'useless to
everyone, and better dead.'  He had mourned her sincerely, but his
face had looked younger since she died.  If she could only have
believed that she made him happy, how much happier would the twenty
years of their companionship have been!

June had never really got on well with her who had reprehensibly
taken her own mother's place; and ever since old Jolyon died she
had been established in a sort of studio in London.  But she had
come back to Robin Hill on her stepmother's death, and gathered the
reins there into her small decided hands.  Jolly was then at
Harrow; Holly still learning from Mademoiselle Beauce.  There had
been nothing to keep Jolyon at home, and he had removed his grief
and his paint-box abroad.  There he had wandered, for the most part
in Brittany, and at last had fetched up in Paris.  He had stayed
there several months, and come back with the younger face and the
short fair beard.  Essentially a man who merely lodged in any
house, it had suited him perfectly that June should reign at Robin
Hill, so that he was free to go off with his easel where and when
he liked.  She was inclined, it is true, to regard the house rather
as an asylum for her proteges! but his own outcast days had filled
Jolyon for ever with sympathy towards an outcast, and June's 'lame
ducks' about the place did not annoy him.  By all means let her
have them down--and feed them up; and though his slightly cynical
humour perceived that they ministered to his daughter's love of
domination as well as moved her warm heart, he never ceased to
admire her for having so many ducks.  He fell, indeed, year by year
into a more and more detached and brotherly attitude towards his
own son and daughters, treating them with a sort of whimsical
equality.  When he went down to Harrow to see Jolly, he never quite
knew which of them was the elder, and would sit eating cherries
with him out of one paper bag, with an affectionate and ironical
smile twisting up an eyebrow and curling his lips a little.  And he
was always careful to have money in his pocket, and to be modish in
his dress, so that his son need not blush for him.  They were
perfect friends, but never seemed to have occasion for verbal
confidences, both having the competitive self-consciousness of
Forsytes.  They knew they would stand by each other in scrapes, but
there  was no need to talk about it.  Jolyon had a striking horror-
-partly original sin, but partly the result of his early
immorality--of the moral attitude.  The most he could ever have
said to his son would have been:  "Look here, old man; don't forget
you're a gentleman," and then have wondered whimsically whether
that was not a snobbish sentiment.  The great cricket match was
perhaps the most searching and awkward time they annually went
through together, for Jolyon had been at Eton.  They would be
particularly careful during that match, continually saying:
"Hooray! Oh! hard luck, old man!" or "Hooray! Oh! bad luck, Dad!"
to each other, when some disaster at which their hearts bounded
happened to the opposing  school.  And Jolyon would wear a grey top
hat, instead of his usual soft one, to save his son's feelings, for
a black top hat he could not stomach.  When Jolly went up to
Oxford, Jolyon went up with him, amused, humble, and a little
anxious not to discredit his boy amongst all these youths who
seemed so much more assured and old than himself.  He often
thought, 'Glad I'm a painter' for he had long dropped under-writing
at Lloyds--'it's so innocuous.  You can't look down on a painter--
you can't take him seriously enough.'  For Jolly, who had a sort of
natural lordliness, had passed at once into a very small set, who
secretly amused his father.  The boy had fair hair which curled a
little, and his grandfather's deepset iron-grey eyes.  He was
well-built and very upright, and always pleased Jolyon's aesthetic
sense, so that he was a tiny bit afraid of him, as artists ever are
of those of their own sex whom they admire physically.  On that
occasion, however, he actually did screw up his courage to give his
son advice, and this was it:

"Look here, old man, you're bound to get into debt; mind you come
to me at once.  Of course, I'll always pay them.  But you might
remember that one respects oneself more afterwards if one pays
one's own way.  And don't ever borrow, except from me, will you?"

And Jolly had said:

"All right, Dad, I won't," and he never had.

"And there's just one other thing.  I don't know much about
morality and that, but there is this: It's always worth while
before you do anything to consider whether it's going to hurt
another person more than is absolutely necessary."

Jolly had looked thoughtful, and nodded, and presently had squeezed
his father's hand.  And Jolyon had thought: 'I wonder if I had the
right to say that?'  He always had a sort of dread of losing the
dumb confidence they had in each other; remembering how for long
years he had lost his own father's, so that there had been nothing
between them but love at a great distance.  He under-estimated, no
doubt, the change in the spirit of the age since he himself went up
to Cambridge in '65; and perhaps he underestimated, too, his boy's
power of understanding that he was tolerant to the very bone.  It
was that tolerance of his, and possibly his scepticism, which ever
made his relations towards June so queerly defensive.  She was such
a decided mortal; knew her own mind so terribly well; wanted things
so inexorably until she got them--and then, indeed, often dropped
them like a hot potato.  Her mother had been like that, whence had
come all those tears.  Not that his incompatibility with his
daughter was anything like what it had been with the first Mrs.
Young Jolyon.  One could be amused where a daughter was concerned;
in a wife's case one could not be amused.  To see June set her
heart and jaw on a thing until she got it was all right, because it
was never anything which interfered fundamentally with Jolyon's
liberty--the one thing on which his jaw was also absolutely rigid,
a considerable jaw, under that short grizzling beard.  Nor was
there ever any necessity for real heart-to-heart encounters.  One
could break away into irony--as indeed he often had to.  But the
real trouble with June was that she had never appealed to his
aesthetic sense, though she might well have, with her red-gold hair
and her viking-coloured eyes, and that touch of the Berserker in
her spirit.  It was very different with Holly, soft and quiet, shy
and affectionate, with a playful imp in her somewhere.  He watched
this younger daughter of his through the duckling stage with
extraordinary interest.  Would she come out a swan?  With her
sallow oval face and her grey wistful eyes and those long dark
lashes, she might, or she might not.  Only this last year had he
been able to guess.  Yes, she would be a swan--rather a dark one,
always a shy one, but an authentic swan.  She was eighteen now, and
Mademoiselle Beauce was gone--the excellent lady had removed, after
eleven years haunted by her continuous reminiscences of the 'well-
brrred little Tayleurs,' to another family whose bosom would now be
agitated by her reminiscences of the 'well-brrred little Forsytes.'
She had taught Holly to speak French like herself.

Portraiture was not Jolyon's forte, but he had already drawn his
younger daughter three times, and was drawing her a fourth, on the
afternoon of October 4th, 1899, when a card was brought to him
which caused his eyebrows to go up:


        Mr. SOAMES FORSYTE

THE SHELTER,          CONNOISSEURS CLUB,
MAPLEDURHAM.          ST. JAMES'S.


But here the Forsyte Saga must digress again ....

To return from a long travel in Spain to a darkened house, to a
little daughter bewildered with tears, to the sight of a loved
father lying peaceful in his last sleep, had never been, was never
likely to be, forgotten by so impressionable and warm-hearted a man
as Jolyon.  A sense as of mystery, too, clung to that sad day, and
about the end of one whose life had been so well-ordered, balanced,
and above-board.  It seemed incredible that his father could thus
have vanished without, as it were, announcing his intention,
without last words to his son, and due farewells.  And those
incoherent allusions of little Holly to 'the lady in grey,' of
Mademoiselle Beauce to a Madame Errant (as it sounded) involved all
things in a mist, lifted a little when he read his father's will
and the codicil thereto.  It had been his duty as executor of that
will and codicil to inform Irene, wife of his cousin Soames, of her
life interest in fifteen thousand pounds.  He had called on her to
explain that the existing investment in India Stock, ear-marked to
meet the charge, would produce for her the interesting net sum of
L430 odd a year, clear of income tax.  This was but the third time
he had seen his cousin Soames' wife--if indeed she was still his
wife, of which he was not quite sure.  He remembered having seen
her sitting in the Botanical Gardens waiting for Bosinney--a
passive, fascinating figure, reminding him of Titian's 'Heavenly
Love,' and again, when, charged by his father, he had gone to
Montpellier Square on the afternoon when Bosinney's death was
known.  He still recalled vividly her sudden appearance in the
drawing-room doorway on that occasion--her beautiful face, passing
from wild eagerness of hope to stony despair; remembered the
compassion he had felt, Soames' snarling smile, his words, "We are
not at home!" and the slam of the front door.

This third time he saw a face and form more beautiful--freed from
that warp of wild hope and despair.  Looking at her, he thought:
'Yes, you are just what the Dad would have admired!'  And the
strange story of his father's Indian summer became slowly clear to
him.  She spoke of old Jolyon with reverence and tears in her eyes.
"He was so wonderfully kind to me; I don't know why.  He looked so
beautiful and peaceful sitting in that chair under the tree; it was
I who first came on him sitting there, you know.  Such a lovely
day.  I don't think an end could have been happier.  We should all
like to go out like that."  'Quite right I' he had thought.  'We
should all a like to go out in full summer with beauty stepping
towards us across a lawn.'  And looking round the little, almost
empty drawing-room, he had asked her what she was going to do now.
"I am going to live again a little, Cousin Jolyon.  It's wonderful
to have money of one's own.  I've never had any.  I shall keep this
flat, I think; I'm used to it; but I shall be able to go to Italy."
"Exactly!"  Jolyon had murmured, looking at her faintly smiling
lips; and he had gone away thinking: 'A fascinating woman!  What a
waste!  I'm glad the Dad left her that money.'  He had not seen her
again, but every quarter he had signed her cheque, forwarding it to
her bank, with a note to the Chelsea flat to say that he had done
so; and always he had received a note in acknowledgment, generally
from the flat, but sometimes from Italy; so that her personality
had become embodied in slightly scented grey paper, an upright fine
handwriting, and the words, 'Dear Cousin Jolyon.'  Man of property
that he now was, the slender cheque he signed often gave rise to
the thought: 'Well, I suppose she just manages'; sliding into a
vague wonder how she was faring otherwise in a world of men not
wont to let beauty go unpossessed.  At first Holly had spoken of
her sometimes, but 'ladies in grey' soon fade from children's
memories; and the tightening of June's lips in those first weeks
after her grandfather's death whenever her former friend's name was
mentioned, had discouraged allusion.  Only once, indeed, had June
spoken definitely: "I've forgiven her.  I'm frightfully glad she's
independent now...."

On receiving Soames' card, Jolyon said to the maid--for he could
not abide butlers--"  Show him into the study, please, and say I'll
be there in a minute"; and then he looked at Holly and asked:

"Do you remember 'the lady in grey,' who used to give you music-
lessons?"

"Oh yes, why?  Has she come?"

Jolyon shook his head, and, changing his holland blouse for a coat,
was silent, perceiving suddenly that such history was not for those
young ears.  His face, in fact, became whimsical perplexity
incarnate while he journeyed towards the study.

Standing by the french-window, looking out across the terrace at
the oak tree, were two figures, middle-aged and young, and he
thought: 'Who's that boy?  Surely they never had a child.'

The elder figure turned.  The meeting of those two Forsytes of the
second generation, so much more sophisticated than the first, in
the house built for the one and owned and occupied by the other,
was marked by subtle defensiveness beneath distinct attempt at
cordiality.  'Has he come about his wife?' Jolyon was thinking; and
Soames, 'How shall I begin?' while Val, brought to break the ice,
stood negligently scrutinising this 'bearded pard' from under his
dark, thick eyelashes.

"This is Val Dartie," said Soames, "my sister's son.  He's just
going up to Oxford.  I thought I'd like him to know your boy."

"Ah!  I'm sorry Jolly's away.  What college?"

"B.N.C.," replied Val.

"Jolly's at the 'House,' but he'll be delighted to look you up."

"Thanks awfully."

"Holly's in--if you could put up with a female relation, she'd show
you round.  You'll find her in the hall if you go through the
curtains.  I was just painting her."

With another "Thanks, awfully!"  Val vanished, leaving the two
cousins with the ice unbroken.

"I see you've some drawings at the 'Water Colours,'" said Soames.

Jolyon winced.  He had been out of touch with the Forsyte family at
large for twenty-six years, but they were connected in his mind
with Frith's 'Derby Day' and Landseer prints.  He had heard from
June that Soames was a connoisseur, which made it worse.  He had
become aware, too, of a curious sensation of repugnance.

"I haven't seen you for a long time," he said.

"No," answered Soames between close lips, "not since--as a matter
of fact, it's about that I've come.  You're her trustee, I'm told."

Jolyon nodded.

"Twelve years is a long time," said Soames rapidly: "I--I'm tired
of it."

Jolyon found no more appropriate answer than:

"Won't you smoke?"

"No, thanks."

Jolyon himself lit a cigarette.

"I wish to be free," said Soames abruptly.

"I don't see her," murmured Jolyon through the fume of his
cigarette.

"But you know where she lives, I suppose?"

Jolyon nodded.  He did not mean to give her address without
permission.  Soames seemed to divine his thought.

"I don't want her address," he said; "I know it."

"What exactly do you want?"

"She deserted me.  I want a divorce."

"Rather late in the day, isn't it?"

"Yes," said Soames.  And there was a silence.

"I don't know much about these things--at least, I've forgotten,"
said Jolyon with a wry smile.  He himself had had to wait for death
to grant him a divorce from the first Mrs. Jolyon.  "Do you wish me
to see her about it?"

Soames raised his eyes to his cousin's face.  "I suppose there's
someone," he said.

A shrug moved Jolyon's shoulders.

"I don't know at all.  I imagine you may have both lived as if the
other were dead.  It's usual in these cases."

Soames turned to the window.  A few early fallen oak-leaves strewed
the terrace already, and were rolling round in the wind.  Jolyon
saw the figures of Holly and Val Dartie moving across the lawn
towards the stables.  'I'm not going to run with the hare and hunt
with the hounds,' he thought.  'I must act for her.  The Dad would
have wished that.'  And for a swift moment he seemed to see his
father's figure in the old armchair, just beyond Soames, sitting
with knees crossed, The Times in his hand.  It vanished.

"My father was fond of her," he said quietly.

"Why he should have been I don't know," Soames answered without
looking round.  "She brought trouble to your daughter June; she
brought trouble to everyone.  I gave her all she wanted.  I would
have given her even--forgiveness--but she chose to leave me."

In Jolyon compassion was checked by the tone of that close voice.
What was there in the fellow that made it so difficult to be sorry
for him?

"I can go and see her, if you like," he said.  "I suppose she might
be glad of a divorce, but I know nothing."

Soames nodded.

"Yes, please go.  As I say, I know her address; but I've no wish to
see her."  His tongue was busy with his lips, as if they were very
dry.

"You'll have some tea?" said Jolyon, stifling the words: 'And see
the house.'  And he led the way into the hall.  When he had rung
the bell and ordered tea, he went to his easel to turn his drawing
to the wall.  He could not bear, somehow, that his work should be
seen by Soames, who was standing there in the middle of the great
room which had been designed expressly to afford wall space for his
own pictures.  In his cousin's face, with its unseizable family
likeness to himself, and its chinny, narrow, concentrated look,
Jolyon saw that which moved him to the thought: 'That chap could
never forget anything--nor ever give himself away.  He's pathetic!'




CHAPTER VII

THE COLT AND THE FILLY


When young Val left the presence of the last generation he was
thinking: 'This is jolly dull!  Uncle Soames does take the bun.
I wonder what this filly's like?'  He anticipated no pleasure from
her society; and suddenly he saw her standing there looking at him.
Why, she was pretty!  What luck!

"I'm afraid you don't know me," he said.  "My name's Val Dartie--
I'm once removed, second cousin, something like that, you know.  My
mother's name was Forsyte."

Holly, whose slim brown hand remained in his because she was too
shy to withdraw it, said:

"I don't know any of my relations.  Are there many?"

"Tons.  They're awful--most of them.  At least, I don't know--some
of them.  One's relations always are, aren't they?"

"I expect they think one awful too," said Holly.

"I don't know why they should.  No one could think you awful, of
course."

Holly looked at him--the wistful candour in those grey eyes gave
young Val a sudden feeling that he must protect her.

"I mean there are people and people," he added astutely.  "Your dad
looks awfully decent, for instance."

"Oh yes!" said Holly fervently; "he is."

A flush mounted in Val's cheeks--that scene in the Pandemonium
promenade--the dark man with the pink carnation developing into his
own father!  "But you know what the Forsytes are," he said almost
viciously.  "Oh! I forgot; you don't."

"What are they?"

"Oh! fearfully careful; not sportsmen a bit.  Look at Uncle
Soames!"

"I'd like to," said Holly.

Val resisted a desire to run his arm through hers.  "Oh! no," he
said, "let's go out.  You'll see him quite soon enough.  What's
your brother like?"

Holly led the way on to the terrace and down to the lawn without
answering.  How describe Jolly, who, ever since she remembered
anything, had been her lord, master, and ideal?

"Does he sit on you?" said Val shrewdly.  "I shall be knowing him
at Oxford.  Have you got any horses?"

Holly nodded.  "Would you like to see the stables?"

"Rather!"

They passed under the oak tree, through a thin shrubbery, into the
stable-yard.  There under a clock-tower lay a fluffy brown-and-
white dog, so old that he did not get up, but faintly waved the
tail curled over his back.

"That's Balthasar," said Holly; "he's so old--awfully old, nearly
as old as I am.  Poor old boy!  He's devoted to Dad."

"Balthasar!  That's a rum name.  He isn't purebred you know."

"No!  but he's a darling," and she bent down to stroke the dog.
Gentle and supple, with dark covered head and slim browned neck and
hands, she seemed to Val strange and sweet, like a thing slipped
between him and all previous knowledge.

"When grandfather died," she said, "he wouldn't eat for two days.
He saw him die, you know."

"Was that old Uncle Jolyon?  Mother always says he was a topper."

"He was," said Holly simply, and opened the stable door.

In a loose-box stood a silver roan of about fifteen hands, with a
long black tail and mane.  "This is mine Fairy."

"Ah!" said Val, "she's a jolly palfrey.  But you ought to bang her
tail.  She'd look much smarter."  Then catching her wondering look,
he thought suddenly: 'I don't know--anything she likes!'  And he
took a long sniff of the stable air.  "Horses are ripping, aren't
they?  My Dad ..."  he stopped.

"Yes?" said Holly.

An impulse to unbosom himself almost overcame him--but not quite.
"Oh!  I don't know he's often gone a mucker over them.  I'm jolly
keen on them too--riding and hunting.  I like racing awfully, as
well; I should like to be a gentleman rider."  And oblivious of the
fact that he had but one more day in town, with two engagements, he
plumped out:

"I say, if I hire a gee to-morrow, will you come a ride in Richmond
Park?"

Holly clasped her hands.

"Oh yes!  I simply love riding.  But there's Jolly's horse; why
don't you ride him?  Here he is.  We could go after tea."

Val looked doubtfully at his trousered legs.

He had imagined them immaculate before her eyes in high brown boots
and Bedford cords.

"I don't much like riding his horse," he said.  "He mightn't like
it.  Besides, Uncle Soames wants to get back, I expect.  Not that I
believe in buckling under to him, you know.  You haven't got an
uncle, have you?  This is rather a good beast," he added,
scrutinising Jolly's horse, a dark brown, which was showing the
whites of its eyes.  "You haven't got any hunting here, I suppose?"

"No; I don't know that I want to hunt.  It must be awfully
exciting, of course; but it's cruel, isn't it?  June says so."

"Cruel?" ejaculated Val.  "Oh! that's all rot.  Who's June?"

"My sister--my half-sister, you know--much older than me."  She had
put her hands up to both cheeks of Jolly's horse, and was rubbing
her nose against its nose with a gentle snuffling noise which
seemed to have an hypnotic effect on the animal.  Val contemplated
her cheek resting against the horse's nose, and her eyes gleaming
round at him.  'She's really a duck,' he thought.

They returned to the house less talkative, followed this time by
the dog Balthasar, walking more slowly than anything on earth, and
clearly expecting them not to exceed his speed limit.

"This is a ripping place," said Val from under the oak tree, where
they had paused to allow the dog Balthasar to come up.

"Yes," said Holly, and sighed.  "Of course I want to go everywhere.
I wish I were a gipsy."

"Yes, gipsies are jolly," replied Val, with a conviction which had
just come to him; "you're rather like one, you know."

Holly's face shone suddenly and deeply, like dark leaves gilded by
the sun.

"To go mad-rabbiting everywhere and see everything, and live in the
open--oh! wouldn't it be fun?"

"Let's do it!" said Val.

"Oh yes, let's!"

"It'd be grand sport, just you and I."

Then Holly perceived the quaintness and gushed.

"Well, we've got to do it," said Val obstinately, but reddening
too.

"I believe in doing things you want to do.  What's down there?"

"The kitchen-garden, and the pond and the coppice, and the farm."

"Let's go down!"

Holly glanced back at the house.

"It's tea-time, I expect; there's Dad beckoning."

Val, uttering a growly sound, followed her towards the house.

When they re-entered the hall gallery the sight of two middle-aged
Forsytes drinking tea together had its magical effect, and they
became quite silent.  It was, indeed, an impressive spectacle.  The
two were seated side by side on an arrangement in marqueterie which
looked like three silvery pink chairs made one, with a low
tea-table in front of them.  They seemed to have taken up that
position, as far apart as the seat would permit, so that they need
not look at each other too much; and they were eating and drinking
rather than talking--Soames with his air of despising the tea-cake
as it disappeared, Jolyon of finding himself slightly amusing.  To
the casual eye neither would have seemed greedy, but both were
getting through a good deal of sustenance.  The two young ones
having been supplied with food, the process went on silent and
absorbative, till, with the advent of cigarettes, Jolyon said to
Soames:

"And how's Uncle James?"

"Thanks, very shaky."

"We're a wonderful family, aren't we?  The other day I was
calculating the average age of the ten old Forsytes from my
father's family Bible.  I make it eighty-four already, and five
still living.  They ought to beat the record;" and looking
whimsically at Soames, he added:

"We aren't the men they were, you know."

Soames smiled.  'Do you really think I shall admit that I'm not
their equal'; he seemed to be saying, 'or that I've got to give up
anything, especially life?'

"We may live to their age, perhaps," pursued Jolyon, "but self-
consciousness is a handicap, you know, and that's the difference
between us.  We've lost conviction. How and when self-consciousness
was born I never can make out.  My father had a little, but I don't
believe any other of the old Forsytes ever had a scrap.  Never to
see yourself as others see you, it's a wonderful preservative.  The
whole history of the last century is in the difference between us.
And between us and you," he added, gazing through a ring of smoke
at Val and Holly, uncomfortable under his quizzical regard,
"there'll be--another difference.  I wonder what."

Soames took out his watch.

"We must go," he said, "if we're to catch our train."

"Uncle Soames never misses a train," muttered Val, with his mouth
full.

"Why should I?" Soames answered simply.

"Oh! I don't know," grumbled Val, "other people do."

At the front door he gave Holly's slim brown hand a long and
surreptitious squeeze.

"Look out for me to-morrow," he whispered; "three o'clock.  I'll
wait for you in the road; it'll save time.  We'll have a ripping
ride."  He gazed back at her from the lodge gate, and, but for the
principles of a man about town, would have waved his hand.  He felt
in no mood to tolerate his uncle's conversation.  But he was not in
danger.  Soames preserved a perfect muteness, busy with far-away
thoughts.

The yellow leaves came down about those two walking the mile and a
half which Soames had traversed so often in those long-ago days
when he came down to watch with secret pride the building of the
house--that house which was to have been the home of him and her
from whom he was now going to seek release.  He looked back once,
up that endless vista of autumn lane between the yellowing hedges.
What an age ago!  "I don't want to see her," he had said to Jolyon.
Was that true?  'I may have to,' he thought; and he shivered,
seized by one of those queer shudderings that they say mean
footsteps on one's grave.  A chilly world!  A queer world!  And
glancing sidelong at his nephew, he thought: 'Wish I were his age!
I wonder what she's like now!'




CHAPTER VIII

JOLYON PROSECUTES TRUSTEESHIP


When those two were gone Jolyon did not return to his painting, for
daylight was failing, but went to the study, craving unconsciously
a revival of that momentary vision of his father sitting in the old
leather chair with his knees crossed and his straight eyes gazing
up from under the dome of his massive brow.  Often in this little
room, cosiest in the house, Jolyon would catch a moment of
communion with his father.  Not, indeed, that he had definitely any
faith in the persistence of the human spirit--the feeling was not
so logical--it was, rather, an atmospheric impact, like a scent, or
one of those strong animistic impressions from forms, or effects of
light, to which those with the artist's eye are especially prone.
Here only--in this little unchanged room where his father had spent
the most of his waking hours--could be retrieved the feeling that
he was not quite gone, that the steady counsel of that old spirit
and the warmth of his masterful lovability endured.

What would his father be advising now, in this sudden recrudescence
of an old tragedy--what would he say to this menace against her to
whom he had taken such a fancy in the last weeks of his life?  'I
must do my best for her,' thought Jolyon; 'he left her to me in his
will.  But what is the best?'

And as if seeking to regain the sapience, the balance and shrewd
common sense of that old Forsyte, he sat down in the ancient chair
and crossed his knees.  But he felt a mere shadow sitting there;
nor did any inspiration come, while the fingers of the wind tapped
on the darkening panes of the french-window.

'Go and see her?' he thought, 'or ask her to come down here?
What's her life been?  What is it now, I wonder?  Beastly to rake
up things at this time of day.'  Again the figure of his cousin
standing with a hand on a front door of a fine olive-green leaped
out, vivid, like one of those figures from old-fashioned clocks
when the hour strikes; and his words sounded in Jolyon's ears
clearer than any chime: "I manage my own affairs.  I've told you
once, I tell you again: We are not at home."  The repugnance he had
then felt for Soames--for his flat-cheeked, shaven face full of
spiritual bull-doggedness; for his spare, square, sleek figure
slightly crouched as it were over the bone he could not digest--
came now again, fresh as ever, nay, with an odd increase.  'I
dislike him,' he thought, 'I dislike him to the very roots of me.
And that's lucky; it'll make it easier for me to back his wife.'
Half-artist, and half-Forsyte, Jolyon was constitutionally averse
from what he termed 'ructions'; unless angered, he conformed deeply
to that classic description of the she-dog, 'Er'd ruther run than
fight.'  A little smile became settled in his beard.  Ironical that
Soames should come down here--to this house, built for himself!
How he had gazed and gaped at this ruin of his past intention;
furtively nosing at the walls and stairway, appraising everything!
And intuitively Jolyon thought: 'I believe the fellow even now
would like to be living here.  He could never leave off longing for
what he once owned!  Well, I must act, somehow or other; but it's a
bore--a great bore.'

Late that evening he wrote to the Chelsea flat, asking if Irene
would see him.

The old century which had seen the plant of individualism flower so
wonderfully was setting in a sky orange with coming storms.
Rumours of war added to the briskness of a London turbulent at the
close of the summer holidays.  And the streets to Jolyon, who was
not often up in town, had a feverish look, due to these new motor-
cars and cabs, of which he disapproved aesthetically.  He counted
these vehicles from his hansom, and made the proportion of them one
in twenty.  'They were one in thirty about a year ago,' he thought;
'they've come to stay.  Just so much more rattling round of wheels
and general stink'--for he was one of those rather rare Liberals
who object to anything new when it takes a material form; and he
instructed his driver to get down to the river quickly, out of the
traffic, desiring to look at the water through the mellowing screen
of plane-trees.  At the little block of flats which stood back some
fifty yards from the Embankment, he told the cabman to wait, and
went up to the first floor.

Yes, Mrs. Heron was at home!

The effect of a settled if very modest income was at once apparent
to him remembering the threadbare refinement in that tiny flat
eight years ago when he announced her good fortune.  Everything was
now fresh, dainty, and smelled of flowers.  The general effect was
silvery with touches of black, hydrangea colour, and gold.  'A
woman of great taste,' he thought.  Time had dealt gently with
Jolyon, for he was a Forsyte.  But with Irene Time hardly seemed to
deal at all, or such was his impression.  She appeared to him not a
day older, standing there in mole-coloured velvet corduroy, with
soft dark eyes and dark gold hair, with outstretched hand and a
little smile.

"Won't you sit down?"

He had probably never occupied a chair with a fuller sense of
embarrassment.

"You look absolutely unchanged," he said.

"And you look younger, Cousin Jolyon."

Jolyon ran his hands through his hair, whose thickness was still a
comfort to him.

"I'm ancient, but I don't feel it.  That's one thing about paint-
ing, it keeps you young.  Titian lived to ninety-nine, and had to
have plague to kill him off.  Do you know, the first time I ever
saw you I thought of a picture by him?"

"When did you see me for the first time?"

"In the Botanical Gardens."

"How did you know me, if you'd never seen me before?"

"By someone who came up to you."  He was looking at her hardily,
but her face did not change; and she said quietly:

"Yes; many lives ago."

"What is your recipe for youth, Irene?"

"People who don't live are wonderfully preserved."

H'm! a bitter little saying!  People who don't live!  But an
opening, and he took it.  "You remember my Cousin Soames?"

He saw her smile faintly at that whimsicality, and at once went on:

"He came to see me the day before yesterday!  He wants a divorce.
Do you?"

"I?"  The word seemed startled out of her.  "After twelve years?
It's rather late.  Won't it be difficult?"

Jolyon looked hard into her face.  "Unless...."  he said.

"Unless I have a lover now.  But I have never had one since."

What did he feel at the simplicity and candour of those words?
Relief, surprise, pity!  Venus for twelve years without a lover!

"And yet," he said, "I suppose you would give a good deal to be
free, too?"

"I don't know.  What does it matter, now?"

"But if you were to love again?"

"I should love."  In that simple answer she seemed to sum up the
whole philosophy of one on whom the world had turned its back.

"Well!  Is there anything you would like me to say to him?"

"Only that I'm sorry he's not free.  He had his chance once.  I
don't know why he didn't take it."

"Because he was a Forsyte; we never part with things, you know,
unless we want something in their place; and not always then."

Irene smiled.  "Don't you, Cousin Jolyon?--I think you do."

"Of course, I'm a bit of a mongrel--not quite a pure Forsyte.  I
never take the halfpennies off my cheques, I put them on," said
Jolyon uneasily.

"Well, what does Soames want in place of me now?"

"I don't know; perhaps children."

She was silent for a little, looking down.

"Yes," she murmured; "it's hard.  I would help him to be free if I
could."

Jolyon gazed into his hat, his embarrassment was increasing fast;
so was his admiration, his wonder, and his pity.  She was so
lovely, and so lonely; and altogether it was such a coil!

"Well," he said, "I shall have to see Soames.  If there's anything
I can do for you I'm always at your service.  You must think of me
as a wretched substitute for my father.  At all events I'll let you
know what happens when I speak to Soames.  He may supply the
material himself."

She shook her head.

"You see, he has a lot to lose; and I have nothing.  I should like
him to be free; but I don't see what I can do."

"Nor I at the moment," said Jolyon, and soon after took his leave.
He went down to his hansom.  Half-past three!  Soames would be at
his office still.

"To the Poultry," he called through the trap.  In front of the
Houses of Parliament and in Whitehall, newsvendors were calling,
"Grave situation in the Transvaal!" but the cries hardly roused
him, absorbed in recollection of that very beautiful figure, of her
soft dark glance, and the words: "I have never had one since."
What on earth did such a woman do with her life, back-watered like
this?  Solitary, unprotected, with every man's hand against her or
rather--reaching out to grasp her at the least sign.  And year
after year she went on like that!

The word 'Poultry' above the passing citizens brought him back to
reality.

'Forsyte, Bustard and Forsyte,' in black letters on a ground the
colour of peasoup, spurred him to a sort of vigour, and he went up
the stone stairs muttering: "Fusty musty ownerships!  Well, we
couldn't do without them!"

"I want Mr. Soames Forsyte," he said to the boy who opened the
door.

"What name?"

"Mr. Jolyon Forsyte."

The youth looked at him curiously, never having seen a Forsyte with
a beard, and vanished.

The offices of 'Forsyte, Bustard and Forsyte' had slowly absorbed
the offices of 'Tooting and Bowles,' and occupied the whole of the
first floor.

The firm consisted now of nothing but Soames and a number of
managing and articled clerks.  The complete retirement of James
some six years ago had accelerated business, to which the final
touch of speed had been imparted when Bustard dropped off, worn
out, as many believed, by the suit of 'Fryer versus Forsyte,' more
in Chancery than ever and less likely to benefit its beneficiaries.
Soames, with his saner grasp of actualities, had never permitted it
to worry him; on the contrary, he had long perceived that
Providence had presented him therein with L200 a year net in
perpetuity, and--why not?

When Jolyon entered, his cousin was drawing out a list of holdings
in Consols, which in view of the rumours of war he was going to
advise his companies to put on the market at once, before other
companies did the same.  He looked round, sidelong, and said:

"How are you?  Just one minute.  Sit down, won't you?" And having
entered three amounts, and set a ruler to keep his place, he turned
towards Jolyon, biting the side of his flat forefinger....

"Yes?" he said.

"I have seen her."

Soames frowned.

"Well?"

"She has remained faithful to memory."   Having said that, Jolyon
was ashamed.  His cousin had flushed a dusky yellowish red.  What
had made him tease the poor brute!

"I was to tell you she is sorry you are not free.  Twelve years is
a long time.  You know your law, and what chance it gives you."
Soames uttered a curious little grunt, and the two remained a full
minute without speaking.  'Like wax!' thought Jolyon, watching that
close face, where the flush was fast subsiding.  'He'll never give
me a sign of what he's thinking, or going to do.  Like wax!'  And
he transferred his gaze to a plan of that flourishing town, 'By-
Street on Sea,' the future existence of which lay exposed on the
wall to the possessive instincts of the firm's clients.  The whim-
sical thought flashed through him: 'I wonder if I shall get a bill
of costs for this--"To attending Mr. Jolyon Forsyte in the matter
of my divorce, to receiving his account of his visit to my wife,
and to advising him to go and see her again, sixteen and
eightpence."'

Suddenly Soames said: "I can't go on like this.  I tell you, I
can't go on like this."  His eyes were shifting from side to side,
like an animal's when it looks for way of escape.  'He really
suffers,' thought Jolyon; 'I've no business to forget that, just
because I don't like him.'

"Surely," he said gently, "it lies with yourself.  A man can always
put these things through if he'll take it on himself."

Soames turned square to him, with a sound which seemed to come from
somewhere very deep.

"Why should I suffer more than I've suffered already?  Why should
I?"

Jolyon could only shrug his shoulders.  His reason agreed, his
instinct rebelled; he could not have said why.

"Your father," went on Soames, "took an interest in her--why,
goodness knows!  And I suppose you do too?" he gave Jolyon a sharp
look.  "It seems to me that one only has to do another person a
wrong to get all the sympathy.  I don't know in what way I was to
blame I've never known.  I always treated her well.  I gave her
everything she could wish for.  I wanted her."

Again Jolyon's reason nodded; again his instinct shook its head.
'What is it?' he thought; 'there must be something wrong in me.
Yet if there is, I'd rather be wrong than right.'

"After all," said Soames with a sort of glum fierceness, "she was
my wife."

In a flash the thought went through his listener: 'There it is!
Ownerships!  Well, we all own things.  But--human beings!  Pah!'

"You have to look at facts," he said drily, "or rather the want of
them."

Soames gave him another quick suspicious look.

"The want of them?" he said.  "Yes, but I am not so sure."

"I beg your pardon," replied Jolyon; "I've told you what she said.
It was explicit."

"My experience has not been one to promote blind confidence in her
word.  We shall see."

Jolyon got up.

"Good-bye," he said curtly.

"Good-bye," returned Soames; and Jolyon went out trying to
understand the look, half-startled, half-menacing, on his cousin's
face.  He sought Waterloo Station in a disturbed frame of mind, as
though the skin of his moral being had been scraped; and all the
way down in the train he thought of Irene in her lonely flat, and
of Soames in his lonely ofce, and of the strange paralysis of life
that lay on them both.  'In chancery!'  he thought.  'Both their
necks in chancery--and her's so pretty!'




CHAPTER IX

VAL HEARS THE NEWS


The keeping of engagements had not as yet been a conspicuous
feature in the life of young Val Dartie, so that when he broke two
and kept one; it was the latter event which caused him, if
anything, the greater surprise, while jogging back to town from
Robin Hill after his ride with Holly.  She had been even prettier
than he had thought her yesterday, on her silver-roan, long-tailed
'palfrey'; and it seemed to him, self-critical in the brumous
October gloaming and the outskirts of London, that only his boots
had shone throughout their two-hour companionship.  He took out his
new gold 'hunter'--present from James--and looked not at the time,
but at sections of his face in the glittering back of its opened
case.  He had a temporary spot over one eyebrow, and it displeased
him, for it must have displeased her.  Crum never had any spots.
Together with Crum rose the scene in the promenade of the
Pandemonium.  To-day he had not had the faintest desire to unbosom
himself to Holly about his father.  His father lacked poetry, the
stirrings of which he was feeling for the first time in his
nineteen years.  The Liberty, with Cynthia Dark, that almost
mythical embodiment of rapture; the Pandemonium, with the woman of
uncertain age--both seemed to Val completely 'off,' fresh from
communion with this new, shy, dark-haired young cousin of his.  She
rode 'Jolly well,' too, so that it had been all the more flattering
that she had let him lead her where he would in the long gallops of
Richmond Park, though she knew them so much better than he did.
Looking back on it all, he was mystified by the barrenness of his
speech; he felt that he could say 'an awful lot of fetching things'
if he had but the chance again, and the thought that he must go
back to Littlehampton on the morrow, and to Oxford on the twelfth--
'to that beastly exam,' too--without the faintest chance of first
seeing her again, caused darkness to settle on his spirit even more
quickly than on the evening.  He should write to her, however, and
she had promised to answer.  Perhaps, too, she would come up to
Oxford to see her brother.  That thought was like the first star,
which came out as he rode into Padwick's livery stables in the
purlieus of Sloane Square.  He got off and stretched himself
luxuriously, for he had ridden some twenty-five good miles.  The
Dartie within him made him chaffer for five minutes with young
Padwick concerning the favourite for the Cambridgeshire; then with
the words, "Put the gee down to my account," he walked away, a
little wide at the knees, and flipping his boots with his knotty
little cane.  'I don't feel a bit inclined to go out,' he thought.
'I wonder if mother will stand fizz for my last night!'  With
'fizz' and recollection, he could well pass a domestic evening.

When he came down, speckless after his bath, he found his mother
scrupulous in a low evening dress, and, to his annoyance, his Uncle
Soames.  They stopped talking when he came in; then his uncle said:

"He'd better be told."

At those words, which meant something about his father, of course,
Val's first thought was of Holly.  Was it anything beastly?  His
mother began speaking.

"Your father," she said in her fashionably appointed voice, while
her fingers plucked rather pitifully at sea-green brocade, "your
father, my dear boy, has--is not at Newmarket; he's on his way to
South America.  He--he's left us."

Val looked from her to Soames.  Left them!  Was he sorry?  Was he
fond of his father?  It seemed to him that he did not know.  Then,
suddenly--as at a whiff of gardenias and cigars--his heart twitched
within him, and he was sorry.  One's father belonged to one, could
not go off in this fashion--it was not done!  Nor had he always
been the 'bounder' of the Pandemonium promenade.  There were
precious memories of tailors' shops and horses, tips at school, and
general lavish kindness, when in luck.

"But why?" he said.  Then, as a sportsman himself, was sorry he had
asked.  The mask of his mother's face was all disturbed; and he
burst out:

"All right, Mother, don't tell me!  Only, what does it mean?"

"A divorce, Val, I'm afraid."

Val uttered a queer little grunt, and looked quickly at his uncle--
that uncle whom he had been taught to look on as a guarantee
against the consequences of having a father, even against the
Dartie blood in his own veins.  The flat-checked visage seemed to
wince, and this upset him.

"It won't be public, will it?"

So vividly before him had come recollection of his own eyes glued
to the unsavoury details of many a divorce suit in the Public
Press.

"Can't it be done quietly somehow?  It's so disgusting for--for
mother, and--and everybody."

"Everything will be done as quietly as it can, you may be sure."

"Yes--but, why is it necessary at all?  Mother doesn't want to
marry again."

Himself, the girls, their name tarnished in the sight of his
schoolfellows and of Crum, of the men at Oxford, of--Holly!
Unbearable!  What was to be gained by it?

"Do you, Mother?" he said sharply.

Thus brought face to face with so much of her own feeling by the
one she loved best in the world, Winifred rose from the Empire
chair in which she had been sitting.  She saw that her son would be
against her unless he was told everything; and, yet, how could she
tell him?  Thus, still plucking at the green' brocade, she stared
at Soames.  Val, too, stared at Soames.  Surely this embodiment of
respectability and the sense of property could not wish to bring
such a slur on his own sister!

Soames slowly passed a little inlaid paperknife over the smooth
surface of a marqueterie table; then, without looking at his
nephew, he began:

"You don't understand what your mother has had to put up with these
twenty years.  This is only the last straw, Val."  And glancing up
sideways at Winifred, he added:

"Shall I tell him?"

Winifred was silent.  If he were not told, he would be against her!
Yet, how dreadful to be told such things of his own father!
Clenching her lips, she nodded.

Soames spoke in a rapid, even voice:

"He has always been a burden round your mother's neck.  She has
paid his debts over and over again; he has often been drunk, abused
and threatened her; and now he is gone to Buenos Aires with a
dancer."  And, as if distrusting the efficacy of those words on the
boy, he went on quickly

"He took your mother's pearls to give to her."

Val jerked up his hand, then.  At that signal of distress Winifred
cried out:

"That'll do, Soames-stop!"

In the boy, the Dartie and the Forsyte were struggling.  For debts,
drink, dancers, he had a certain sympathy; but the pearls-no!  That
was too much!  And suddenly he found his mother's hand squeezing
his.

"You see," he heard Soames say, "we can't have it all begin over
again.  There's a limit; we must strike while the iron's hot."

Val freed his hand.

"But--you're--never going to bring out that about the pearls!  I
couldn't stand that--I simply couldn't!"

Winifred cried out:

"No, no, Val--oh no!  That's only to show you how impossible your
father is!"  And his uncle nodded.  Somewhat assuaged, Val took out
a cigarette.  His father had bought him that thin curved case.  Oh!
it was unbearable--just as he was going up to Oxford!

"Can't mother be protected without?" he said.  "I could look after
her.  It could always be done later if it was really necessary."

A smile played for a moment round Soames' lips, and became bitter.

"You don't know what you're talking of; nothing's so fatal as delay
in such matters."

"Why?"

"I tell you, boy, nothing's so fatal.  I know from experience."

His voice had the ring of exasperation.  Val regarded him round-
eyed, never having known his uncle express any sort of feeling.
Oh! Yes--he remembered now--there had been an Aunt Irene, and
something had happened--something which people kept dark; he had
heard his father once use an unmentionable word of her.

"I don't want to speak ill of your father," Soames went on
doggedly, "but I know him well enough to be sure that he'll be back
on your mother's hands before a year's over.  You can imagine what
that will mean to her and to all of you after this.  The only thing
is to cut the knot for good."

In spite of himself, Val was impressed; and, happening to look at
his mother's face, he got what was perhaps his first real insight
into the fact that his own feelings were not always what mattered
most.

"All right, mother," he said; "we'll back you up.  Only I'd like to
know when it'll be.  It's my first term, you know.  I don't want to
be up there when it comes off."

"Oh! my dear boy," murmured Winifred, "it is a bore for you."  So,
by habit, she phrased what, from the expression of her face, was
the most poignant regret.  "When will it be, Soames?"

"Can't tell--not for months.  We must get restitution first."

'What the deuce is that?' thought Val.  'What silly brutes lawyers
are!  Not for months!  I know one thing: I'm not going to dine in!'
And he said:

"Awfully sorry, mother, I've got to go out to dinner now."

Though it was his last night, Winifred nodded almost gratefully;
they both felt that they had gone quite far enough in the
expression of feeling.

Val sought the misty freedom of Green Street, reckless and
depressed.  And not till he reached Piccadilly did he discover that
he had only eighteen-pence.  One couldn't dine off eighteen-pence,
and he was very hungry.  He looked longingly at the windows of the
Iseeum Club, where he had often eaten of the best with his father!
Those pearls!  There was no getting over them!  But the more he
brooded and the further he walked the hungrier he naturally became.
Short of trailing home, there were only two places where he could
go--his grandfather's in Park Lane, and Timothy's in the Bayswater
Road.  Which was the less deplorable?  At his grandfather's he
would probably get a better dinner on the spur of the moment.  At
Timothy's they gave you a jolly good feed when they expected you,
not otherwise.  He decided on Park Lane, not unmoved by the thought
that to go up to Oxford without affording his grandfather a chance
to tip him was hardly fair to either of them.  His mother would
hear he had been there, of course, and might think it funny; but he
couldn't help that.  He rang the bell.

"Hullo, Warmson, any dinner for me, d'you think?"

"They're just going in, Master Val.  Mr. Forsyte will be very glad
to see you.  He was saying at lunch that he never saw you
nowadays."

Val grinned.

"Well, here I am.  Kill the fatted calf, Warmson, let's have fizz."

Warmson smiled faintly--in his opinion Val was a young limb.

"I will ask Mrs. Forsyte, Master Val."

"I say," Val grumbled, taking off his overcoat, "I'm not at school
any more, you know."

Warmson, not without a sense of humour, opened the door beyond the
stag's-horn coat stand, with the words:

"Mr. Valerus, ma'am."

"Confound him!" thought Val, entering.

A warm embrace, a "Well, Val!" from Emily, and a rather quavery "So
there you are at last!" from James, restored his sense of dignity.

"Why didn't you let us know?  There's only saddle of mutton.
Champagne, Warmson," said Emily.  And they went in.

At the great dining-table, shortened to its utmost, under which so
many fashionable legs had rested, James sat at one end, Emily at
the other, Val half-way between them; and something of the
loneliness of his grandparents, now that all their four children
were flown, reached the boy's spirit.  'I hope I shall kick the
bucket long before I'm as old as grandfather,' he thought.  'Poor
old chap, he's as thin as a rail!'  And lowering his voice while
his grandfather and Warmson were in discussion about sugar in the
soup, he said to Emily:

"It's pretty brutal at home, Granny.  I suppose you know."

"Yes, dear boy."

"Uncle Soames was there when I left.  I say, isn't there anything
to be done to prevent a divorce?  Why is he so beastly keen on it?"

"Hush, my dear!" murmured Emily; "we're keeping it from your
grandfather."

James' voice sounded from the other end.

"What's that?  What are you talking about?"

"About Val's college," returned Emily.  "Young Pariser was there,
James; you remember--he nearly broke the Bank at Monte Carlo
afterwards."

James muttered that he did not know--Val must look after himself up
there, or he'd get into bad ways.  And he looked at his grandson
with gloom, out of which affection distrustfully glimmered.

"What I'm afraid of," said Val to his plate, "is of being hard up,
you know."

By instinct he knew that the weak spot in that old man was fear of
insecurity for his grandchildren.

"Well," said James, and the soup in his spoon dribbled over,
"you'll have a good allowance; but you must keep within it."

"Of course," murmured Val; "if it is good.  How much will it be,
Grandfather?"

"Three hundred and fifty; it's too much.  I had next to nothing at
your age."

Val sighed.  He had hoped for four, and been afraid of three.  "I
don't know what your young cousin has," said James; "he's up there.
His father's a rich man."

"Aren't you?" asked Val hardily.

"I?" replied James, flustered.  "I've got so many expenses.  Your
father...." and he was silent.

"Cousin Jolyon's got an awfully jolly place.  I went down there
with Uncle Soames--ripping stables."

"Ah!" murmured James profoundly.  "That house--I knew how it would
be!"  And he lapsed into gloomy meditation over his fish-bones.
His son's tragedy, and the deep cleavage it had caused in the
Forsyte family, had still the power to draw him down into a
whirlpool of doubts and misgivings.  Val, who hankered to talk of
Robin Hill, because Robin Hill meant Holly, turned to Emily and
said:

"Was that the house built for Uncle Soames?"  And, receiving her
nod, went on: "I wish you'd tell me about him, Granny.  What became
of Aunt Irene?  Is she still going?  He seems awfully worked-up
about something to-night."

Emily laid her finger on her lips, but the word Irene had caught
James' ear.

"What's that?" he said, staying a piece of mutton close to his
lips.  "Who's been seeing her?  I knew we hadn't heard the last of
that."

"Now, James," said Emily, "eat your dinner.  Nobody's been seeing
anybody."

James put down his fork.

"There you go," he said.  "I might die before you'd tell me of it.
Is Soames getting a divorce?"

"Nonsense," said Emily with incomparable aplomb; "Soames is much
too sensible."

James had sought his own throat, gathering the long white whiskers
together on the skin and bone of it.

"She--she was always...." he said, and with that enigmatic remark
the conversation lapsed, for Warmson had returned.  But later, when
the saddle of mutton had been succeeded by sweet, savoury, and
dessert, and Val had received a cheque for twenty pounds and his
grandfather's kiss--like no other kiss in the world, from lips
pushed out with a sort of fearful suddenness, as if yielding to
weakness--he returned to the charge in the hall.

"Tell us about Uncle Soames, Granny.  Why is he so keen on mother's
getting a divorce?"

"Your Uncle Soames," said Emily, and her voice had in it an
exaggerated assurance, "is a lawyer, my dear boy.  He's sure to
know best."

"Is he?" muttered Val.  "But what did become of Aunt Irene?  I
remember she was jolly good-looking."

"She--er...."  said Emily, "behaved very badly.  We don't talk
about it."

"Well, I don't want everybody at Oxford to know about our affairs,"
ejaculated Val; "it's a brutal idea.  Why couldn't father be pre-
vented without its being made public?"

Emily sighed.  She had always lived rather in an atmosphere of
divorce, owing to her fashionable proclivities--so many of those
whose legs had been under her table having gained a certain notor-
iety.  When, however, it touched her own family, she liked it no
better than other people.  But she was eminently practical, and a
woman of courage, who never pursued a shadow in preference to its
substance.

"Your mother," she said, "will be happier if she's quite free, Val.
Good-night, my dear boy; and don't wear loud waistcoats up at
Oxford, they're not the thing just now.  Here's a little present."

With another five pounds in his hand, and a little warmth in his
heart, for he was fond of his grandmother, he went out into Park
Lane.  A wind had cleared the mist, the autumn leaves were
rustling, and the stars were shining.  With all that money in his
pocket an impulse to 'see life' beset him; but he had not gone
forty yards in the direction of Piccadilly when Holly's shy face,
and her eyes with an imp dancing in their gravity, came up before
him, and his hand seemed to be tingling again from the pressure of
her warm gloved hand.  'No, dash it!'  he thought, 'I'm going
home!'




CHAPTER X

SOAMES ENTERTAINS THE FUTURE


It was full late for the river, but the weather was lovely, and
summer lingered below the yellowing leaves.  Soames took many looks
at the day from his riverside garden near Mapledurham that Sunday
morning.

With his own hands he put flowers about his little house-boat, and
equipped the punt, in which, after lunch, he proposed to take them
on the river.  Placing those Chinese-looking cushions, he could not
tell whether or no he wished to take Annette alone.  She was so
very pretty--could he trust himself not to say irrevocable words,
passing beyond the limits of discretion?  Roses on the veranda were
still in bloom, and the hedges ever-green, so that there was almost
nothing of middle-aged autumn to chill the mood; yet was he
nervous, fidgety, strangely distrustful of his powers to steer just
the right course.  This visit had been planned to produce in
Annette and her mother a due sense of his possessions, so that they
should be ready to receive with respect any overture might later be
disposed to make.  He dressed with great care, making himself
neither too young nor too old, very thankful that his hair was
still thick and smooth and had no grey in it.  Three times he went
up to his picture-gallery.  If they had any knowledge at all, they
must see at once that his collection alone was worth at least
thirty thousand pounds.  He minutely inspected, too, the pretty
bedroom overlooking the river where they would take off their hats.
It would be her bedroom if--if the matter went through, and she
became his wife.  Going up to the dressing-table he passed his hand
over the lilac-coloured pincushion, into which were stuck all kinds
of pins; a bowl of pot-pourri exhaled a scent that made his head
turn just a little.  His wife!  If only the whole thing could be
settled out of hand, and there was not the nightmare of this
divorce to be gone through first; and with gloom puckered on his
forehead, he looked out at the river shining beyond the roses and
the lawn.  Madame Lamotte would never resist this prospect for her
child; Annette would never resist her mother.  If only he were
free!  He drove to the station to meet them.  What taste French-
women had!  Madame Lamotte was in black with touches of lilac
colour, Annette in greyish lilac linen, with cream coloured gloves
and hat.  Rather pale she looked and Londony; and her blue eyes
were demure.  Waiting for them to come down to lunch, Soames stood
in the open french-window of the diningroom moved by that sensuous
delight in sunshine and flowers and trees which only came to the
full when youth and beauty were there to share it with one.  He had
ordered the lunch with intense consideration; the wine was a very
special Sauterne, the whole appointments of the meal perfect, the
coffee served on the veranda super-excellent.  Madame Lamotte
accepted creme de menthe; Annette refused.  Her manners were
charming, with just a suspicion of 'the conscious beauty' creeping
into them.  'Yes,' thought Soames, 'another year of London and that
sort of life, and she'll be spoiled.'

Madame was in sedate French raptures.  "Adorable!  Le soleil est si
bon!  How everything is chic, is it not, Annette?  Monsieur is a
real Monte Cristo."  Annette murmured assent, with a look up at
Soames which he could not read.  He proposed a turn on the river.
But to punt two persons when one of them looked so ravishing on
those Chinese cushions was merely to suffer from a sense of lost
opportunity; so they went but a short way towards Pangbourne,
drifting slowly back, with every now and then an autumn leaf
dropping on Annette or on her mother's black amplitude.  And Soames
was not happy, worried by the thought: 'How--when--where--can I
say--what?' They did not yet even know that he was married.  To
tell them he was married might jeopardise his every chance; yet, if
he did not definitely make them understand that he wished for
Annette's hand, it would be dropping into some other clutch before
he was free to claim it.

At tea, which they both took with lemon, Soames spoke of the
Transvaal.

"There'll be war," he said.

Madame Lamotte lamented.

"Ces pauvres gens bergers!"  Could they not be left to themselves?

Soames smiled--the question seemed to him absurd.

Surely as a woman of business she understood that the British could
not abandon their legitimate commercial interests.

"Ah! that!"  But Madame Lamotte found that the English were a
little hypocrite.  They were talking of justice and the Uitlanders,
not of business.  Monsieur was the first who had spoken to her of
that.

"The Boers are only half-civilised," remarked Soames; "they stand
in the way of progress.  It will never do to let our suzerainty
go."

"What does that mean to say?  Suzerainty!"

"What a strange word!"  Soames became eloquent, roused by these
threats to the principle of possession, and stimulated by Annette's
eyes fixed on him.  He was delighted when presently she said:

"I think Monsieur is right.  They should be taught a lesson."  She
was sensible!

"Of course," he said, "we must act with moderation.  I'm no jingo.
We must be firm without bullying.  Will you come up and see my
pictures?"  Moving from one to another of these treasures, he soon
perceived that they knew nothing.  They passed his last Mauve, that
remarkable study of a 'Hay-cart going Home,' as if it were a
lithograph.  He waited almost with awe to see how they would view
the jewel of his collection--an Israels whose price he had watched
ascending till he was now almost certain it had reached top value,
and would be better on the market again.  They did not view it at
all.  This was a shock; and yet to have in Annette a virgin taste
to form would be better than to have the silly, half-baked pre-
dilections of the English middle-class to deal with.  At the end of
the gallery was a Meissonier of which he was rather ashamed--
Meissonier was so steadily going down.  Madame Lamotte stopped
before it.

"Meissonier!  Ah! What a jewel!"  Soames took advantage of that
moment.  Very gently touching Annette's arm, he said:

"How do you like my place, Annette?"

She did not shrink, did not respond; she looked at him full, looked
down, and murmured:

"Who would not like it?  It is so beautiful!"

"Perhaps some day--" Soames said, and stopped.

So pretty she was, so self-possessed--she frightened him.  Those
cornflower-blue eyes, the turn of that creamy neck, her delicate
curves--she was a standing temptation to indiscretion!  No!  No!
One must be sure of one's ground--much surer!  'If I hold off,' he
thought, 'it will tantalise her.'  And he crossed over to Madame
Lamotte, who was still in front of the Meissonier.

"Yes, that's quite a good example of his later work.  You must come
again, Madame, and see them lighted up.  You must both come and
spend a night."

Enchanted, would it not be beautiful to see them lighted?  By
moonlight too, the river must be ravishing!

Annette murmured:

"Thou art sentimental, Maman!"

Sentimental!  That black-robed, comely, substantial Frenchwoman of
the world!  And suddenly he was certain as he could be that there
was no sentiment in either of them.  All the better.  Of what use
sentiment?  And yet....!

He drove to the station with them, and saw them into the train.  To
the tightened pressure of his hand it seemed that Annette's fingers
responded just a little; her face smiled at him through the dark.

He went back to the carriage, brooding.  "Go on home, Jordan," he
said to the coachman; "I'll walk."  And he strode out into the
darkening lanes, caution and the desire of possession playing
see-saw within him.  'Bon soir, monsieur!'  How softly she had said
it.  To know what was in her mind!  The French--they were like
cats--one could tell nothing!  But--how pretty!  What a perfect
young thing to hold in one's arms!  What a mother for his heir!
And he thought, with a smile, of his family and their surprise at a
French wife, and their curiosity, and of the way he would play with
it and buffet it confound them!

The, poplars sighed in the darkness; an owl hooted.  Shadows
deepened in the water.  'I will and must be free,' he thought.  'I
won't hang about any longer.  I'll go and see Irene.  If you want
things done, do them yourself.  I must live again--live and move
and have my being.'  And in echo to that queer biblicality church-
bells chimed the call to evening prayer.




CHAPTER XI

AND VISITS THE PAST


On a Tuesday evening after dining at his club Soames set out to do
what required more courage and perhaps less delicacy than anything
he had yet undertaken in his life--save perhaps his birth, and one
other action.  He chose the evening, indeed, partly because Irene
was more likely to be in, but mainly because he had failed to find
sufficient resolution by daylight, had needed wine to give him
extra daring.

He left his hansom on the Embankment, and walked up to the Old
Church, uncertain of the block of flats where he knew she lived.
He found it hiding behind a much larger mansion; and having read
the name, 'Mrs. Irene Heron'--Heron, forsooth!  Her maiden name: so
she used that again, did she?--he stepped back into the road to
look up at the windows of the first floor.  Light was coming
through in the corner fiat, and he could hear a piano being played.
He had never had a love of music, had secretly borne it a grudge in
the old days when so often she had turned to her piano, making of
it a refuge place into which she knew he could not enter.  Repulse!
The long repulse, at first restrained and secret, at last open!
Bitter memory came with that sound.  It must be she playing, and
thus almost assured of seeing her, he stood more undecided than
ever.  Shivers of anticipation ran through him; his tongue felt
dry, his heart beat fast.  'I have no cause to be afraid,' he
thought.  And then the lawyer stirred within him.  Was he doing a
foolish thing?  Ought he not to have arranged a formal meeting in
the presence of her trustee?  No!  Not before that fellow Jolyon,
who sympathised with her!  Never!  He crossed back into the
doorway, and, slowly, to keep down the beating of his heart,
mounted the single flight of stairs and rang the bell.  When the
door was opened to him his sensations were regulated by the scent
which came--that perfume from away back in the past, bringing
muffled remembrance: fragrance of a drawing-room he used to enter,
of a house he used to own--perfume of dried rose-leaves and honey!

"Say, Mr. Forsyte," he said, "your mistress will see me, I know."
He had thought this out; she would think it was Jolyon!

When the maid was gone and he was alone in the tiny hall, where the
light was dim from one pearly-shaded sconce, and walls, carpet,
everything was silvery, making the walled-in space all ghostly, he
could only think ridiculously: 'Shall I go in with my overcoat on,
or take it off?' The music ceased; the maid said from the doorway:

"Will you walk in, sir?"

Soames walked in.  He noted mechanically that all was still
silvery, and that the upright piano was of satinwood.  She had
risen and stood recoiled against it; her hand, placed on the keys
as if groping for support, had struck a sudden discord, held for a
moment, and released.  The light from the shaded piano-candle fell
on her neck, leaving her face rather in shadow.  She was in a black
evening dress, with a sort of mantilla over her shoulders--he did
not remember ever having seen her in black, and the thought passed
through him: 'She dresses even when she's alone.'

"You!" he heard her whisper.

Many times Soames had rehearsed this scene in fancy.  Rehearsal
served him not at all.  He simply could not speak.  He had never
thought that the sight of this woman whom he had once so
passionately desired, so completely owned, and whom he had not seen
for twelve years, could affect him in this way.  He had imagined
himself speaking and acting, half as man of business, half as
judge.  And now it was as if he were in the presence not of a mere
woman and erring wife, but of some force, subtle and elusive as
atmo-sphere itself within him and outside.  A kind of defensive
irony welled up in him.

"Yes, it's a queer visit!  I hope you're well."

"Thank you.  Will you sit down?"

She had moved away from the piano, and gone over to a window-seat,
sinking on to it, with her hands clasped in her lap.  Light fell on
her there, so that Soames could see her face, eyes, hair, strangely
as he remembered them, strangely beautiful.

He sat down on the edge of a satinwood chair, upholstered with
silver-coloured stuff, close to where he was standing.

"You have not changed," he said.

"No?  What have you come for?"

"To discuss things."

"I have heard what you want from your cousin."

"Well?"

"I am willing.  I have always been."

The sound of her voice, reserved and close, the sight of her figure
watchfully poised, defensive, was helping him now.  A thousand
memories of her, ever on the watch against him, stirred, and....

"Perhaps you will be good enough, then, to give me information on
which I can act.  The law must be complied with."

"I have none to give you that you don't know of.

"Twelve years!  Do you suppose I can believe that?"

"I don't suppose you will believe anything I say; but it's the
truth."

Soames looked at her hard.  He had said that she had not changed;
now he perceived that she had.  Not in face, except that it was
more beautiful; not in form, except that it was a little fuller--
no!  She had changed spiritually.  There was more of her, as it
were, something of activity and daring, where there had been sheer
passive resistance.  'Ah!' he thought, 'that's her independent
income!  Confound Uncle Jolyon!'

"I suppose you're comfortably off now?" he said.

"Thank you, yes."

"Why didn't you let me provide for you?  I would have, in spite of
everything."

A faint smile came on her lips; but she did not answer.

"You are still my wife," said Soames.  Why he said that, what he
meant by it, he knew neither when he spoke nor after.  It was a
truism almost preposterous, but its effect was startling.  She rose
from the window-seat, and stood for a moment perfectly still,
looking at him.  He could see her bosom heaving.  Then she turned
to the window and threw it open.

"Why do that?" he said sharply.  "You'll catch cold in that dress.
I'm not dangerous."  And he uttered a little sad laugh.

She echoed it--faintly, bitterly.

"It was--habit."

"Rather odd habit," said Soames as bitterly.  "Shut the window!"

She shut it and sat down again.  She had developed power, this
woman--this--wife of his!  He felt it issuing from her as she sat
there, in a sort of armour.  And almost unconsciously he rose and
moved nearer; he wanted to see the expression on her face.  Her
eyes met his unflinching.  Heavens!  how clear they were, and what
a dark brown against that white skin, and that burnt-amber hair!
And how white her shoulders.

Funny sensation this!  He ought to hate her.

"You had better tell me," he said; "it's to your advantage to be
free as well as to mine.  That old matter is too old."

"I have told you."

"Do you mean to tell me there has been nothing--nobody?"

"Nobody.  You must go to your own life."

Stung by that retort, Soames moved towards the piano and back to
the hearth, to and fro, as he had been wont in the old days in
their drawing-room when his feelings were too much for him.

"That won't do," he said.  "You deserted me.  In common justice
it's for you...."

He saw her shrug those white shoulders, heard her murmur:

"Yes.  Why didn't you divorce me then?  Should I have cared?"

He stopped, and looked at her intently with a sort of curiosity.
What on earth did she do with herself, if she really lived quite
alone?  And why had he not divorced her?  The old feeling that she
had never understood him, never done him justice, bit him while he
stared at her.

"Why couldn't you have made me a good wife?" he said.

"Yes; it was a crime to marry you.  I have paid for it.  You will
find some way perhaps.  You needn't mind my name, I have none to
lose.  Now I think you had better go."

A sense of defeat--of being defrauded of his self-justification,
and of something else beyond power of explanation to himself, beset
Soames like the breath of a cold fog.  Mechanically he reached up,
took from the mantel-shelf a little china bowl, reversed it, and
said:

"Lowestoft.  Where did you get this?  I bought its fellow at
Jobson's."  And, visited by the sudden memory of how, those many
years ago, he and she had bought china together, he remained
staring at the little bowl, as if it contained all the past.  Her
voice roused him.

"Take it.  I don't want it."

Soames put it back on the shelf.

"Will you shake hands?" he said.

A faint smile curved her lips.  She held out her hand.  It was cold
to his rather feverish touch.  'She's made of ice,' he thought--
'she was always made of ice!'  But even as that thought darted
through him, his senses were assailed by the perfume of her dress
and body, as though the warmth within her, which had never been for
him, were struggling to show its presence.  And he turned on his
heel.  He walked out and away, as if someone with a whip were after
him, not even looking for a cab, glad of the empty Embankment and
the cold river, and the thick-strewn shadows of the plane-tree
leaves-confused, flurried, sore at heart, and vaguely disturbed, as
though he had made some deep mistake whose consequences he could
not foresee.  And the fantastic thought suddenly assailed him
if instead of, 'I think you had better go,' she had said, 'I think
you had better stay!'  What should he have felt, what would he have
done?  That cursed attraction of her was there for him even now,
after all these years of estrangement and bitter thoughts.  It was
there, ready to mount to his head at a sign, a touch.  'I was a
fool to go!'  he muttered.  'I've advanced nothing.  Who could
imagine?  I never thought!'  Memory, flown back to the first years
of his marriage, played him torturing tricks.  She had not deserved
to keep her beauty--the beauty he had owned and known so well.  And
a kind of bitterness at the tenacity of his own admiration welled
up in him.  Most men would have hated the sight of her, as she had
deserved.  She had spoiled his life, wounded his pride to death,
defrauded him of a son.  And yet the mere sight of her, cold and
resisting as ever, had this power to upset him utterly!  It was
some damned magnetism she had!  And no wonder if, as she asserted;
she had lived untouched these last twelve years.  So Bosinney--
cursed be his memory!--had lived on all this time with her!  Soames
could not tell whether he was glad of that knowledge or no.

Nearing his Club at last he stopped to buy a paper.  A headline
ran: 'Boers reported to repudiate suzerainty!'  Suzerainty!  'Just
like her!' he thought: 'she always did.  Suzerainty!  I still have
it by rights.  She must be awfully lonely in that wretched little
flat!'




CHAPTER XII

ON FORSYTE 'CHANGE


Soames belonged to two clubs, 'The Connoisseurs,' which he put on
his cards and seldom visited, and 'The Remove,' which he did not
put on his cards and frequented.  He had joined this Liberal
institution five years ago, having made sure that its members were
now nearly all sound Conservatives in heart and pocket, if not in
principle.  Uncle Nicholas had put him up.  The fine reading-room
was decorated in the Adam style.

On entering that evening he glanced at the tape for any news about
the Transvaal, and noted that Consols were down seven-sixteenths
since the morning.  He was turning away to seek the reading-room
when a voice behind him said:

"Well, Soames, that went off all right."

It was Uncle Nicholas, in a frock-coat and his special cut-away
collar, with a black tie passed through a ring.  Heavens!  How
young and dapper he looked at eighty-two!

"I think Roger'd have been pleased," his uncle went on.  "The thing
was very well done.  Blackley's?  I'll make a note of them.
Buxton's done me no good.  These Boers are upsetting me--that
fellow Chamberlain's driving the country into war.  What do you
think?"

"Bound to come," murmured Soames.

Nicholas passed his hand over his thin, cleanshaven cheeks, very
rosy after his summer cure; a slight pout had gathered on his lips.
This business had revived all his Liberal principles.

"I mistrust that chap; he's a stormy petrel.  House-property will
go down if there's war.  You'll have trouble with Roger's estate.
I often told him he ought to get out of some of his houses.  He was
an opinionated beggar."

'There was a pair of you!' thought Soames.  But he never argued
with an uncle, in that way preserving their opinion of him as 'a
long-headed chap,' and the legal care of their property.

"They tell me at Timothy's," said Nicholas, lowering his voice,
"that Dartie has gone off at last.  That'll be a relief to your
father.  He was a rotten egg."

Again Soames nodded.  If there was a subject on which the Forsytes
really agreed, it was the character of Montague Dartie.

"You take care," said Nicholas, "or he'll turn up again.  Winifred
had better have the tooth out, I should say.  No use preserving
what's gone bad."

Soames looked at him sideways.  His nerves, exacerbated by the
interview he had just come through, disposed him to see a personal
allusion in those words.

"I'm advising her," he said shortly.

"Well," said Nicholas, "the brougham's waiting; I must get home.
I'm very poorly.  Remember me to your father."

And having thus reconsecrated the ties of blood, he passed down the
steps at his youthful gait and was wrapped into his fur coat by the
junior porter.

'I've never known Uncle Nicholas other than "very poorly,"' mused
Soames, 'or seen him look other than everlasting.  What a family!
Judging by him, I've got thirty-eight years of health before me.
Well, I'm not going to waste them.'  And going over to a mirror he
stood looking at his face.  Except for a line or two, and three or
four grey hairs in his little dark moustache, had he aged any more
than Irene?  The prime of life--he and she in the very prime of
life!  And a fantastic thought shot into his mind.  Absurd!
Idiotic!  But again it came.  And genuinely alarmed by the recur-
rence, as one is by the second fit of shivering which presages a
feverish cold, he sat down on the weighing machine.  Eleven stone!
He had not varied two pounds in twenty years.  What age was she?
Nearly thirty-seven--not too old to have a child--not at all!
Thirty-seven on the ninth of next month.  He remembered her
birthday well--he had always observed it religiously, even that
last birthday so soon before she left him, when he was almost
certain she was faithless.  Four birthdays in his house.  He had
looked forward to them, because his gifts had meant a semblance of
gratitude, a certain attempt at warmth.  Except, indeed, that last
birthday--which had tempted him to be too religious!  And he shied
away in thought.  Memory heaps dead leaves on corpse-like deeds,
from under which they do but vaguely offend the sense.  And then he
thought suddenly: 'I could send her a present for her birthday.
After all, we're Christians!  Couldn't!--couldn't we join up
again!'  And he uttered a deep sigh sitting there.  Annette!  Ah!
but between him and Annette was the need for that wretched divorce
suit!  And how?

"A man can always work these things, if he'll take it on himself,"
Jolyon had said.

But why should he take the scandal on himself with his whole career
as a pillar of the law at stake?  It was not fair!  It was quix-
otic!  Twelve years' separation in which he had taken no steps to
free himself put out of court the possibility of using her conduct
with Bosinney as a ground for divorcing her.  By doing nothing to
secure relief he had acquiesced, even if the evidence could now be
gathered, which was more than doubtful.  Besides, his own pride
would never let him use that old incident, he had suffered from it
too much.  No!  Nothing but fresh misconduct on her part--but she
had denied it; and--almost--he had believed her.  Hung up!  Utterly
hung up!

He rose from the scooped-out red velvet seat with a feeling of
constriction about his vitals.  He would never sleep with this
going on in him!  And, taking coat and hat again, he went out,
moving eastward.  In Trafalgar Square he became aware of some
special commotion travelling towards him out of the mouth of the
Strand.  It materialised in newspaper men calling out so loudly
that no words whatever could be heard.  He stopped to listen, and
one came by.

"Payper!  Special!  Ultimatium by Krooger!  Declaration of war!"
Soames bought the paper.  There it was in the stop press....!  His
first thought was: 'The Boers are committing suicide.'  His second:
'Is there anything still I ought to sell?' If so he had missed the
chance--there would certainly be a slump in the city to-morrow.  He
swallowed this thought with a nod of defiance.  That ultimatum was
insolent--sooner than let it pass he was prepared to lose money.
They wanted a lesson, and they would get it; but it would take
three months at least to bring them to heel.  There weren't the
troops out there; always behind time, the Government!  Confound
those newspaper rats!  What was the use of waking everybody up?
Breakfast to-morrow was quite soon enough.  And he thought with
alarm of his father.  They would cry it down Park Lane.  Hailing a
hansom, he got in and told the man to drive there.

James and Emily had just gone up to bed, and after communicating
the news to Warmson, Soames prepared to follow.  He paused by
after-thought to say:

"What do you think of it, Warmson?"

The butler ceased passing a hat brush over the silk hat Soames had
taken off, and, inclining his face a little forward, said in a low
voice: "Well, sir, they 'aven't a chance, of course; but I'm told
they're very good shots.  I've got a son in the Inniskillings."

"You, Warmson?  Why, I didn't know you were married."

"No, sir.  I don't talk of it.  I expect he'll be going out."

The slighter shock Soames had felt on discovering that he knew so
little of one whom he thought he knew so well was lost in the
slight shock of discovering that the war might touch one
personally.  Born in the year of the Crimean War, he had only come
to consciousness by the time the Indian Mutiny was over; since then
the many little wars of the British Empire had been entirely
professional, quite unconnected with the Forsytes and all they
stood for in the body politic.  This war would surely be no
exception.  But his mind ran hastily over his family.  Two of the
Haymans, he had heard, were in some Yeomanry or other--it had
always been a pleasant thought, there was a certain distinction
about the Yeomanry; they wore, or used to wear, a blue uniform with
silver about it, and rode horses.  And Archibald, he remembered,
had once on a time joined the Militia, but had given it up because
his father, Nicholas, had made such a fuss about his 'wasting his
time peacocking about in a uniform.'  Recently he had heard
somewhere that young Nicholas' eldest, very young Nicholas, had
become a Volunteer.  'No,' thought Soames, mounting the stairs
slowly, 'there's nothing in that!'

He stood on the landing outside his parents' bed and dressing
rooms, debating whether or not to put his nose in and say a
reassuring word.  Opening the landing window, he listened.  The
rumble from Piccadilly was all the sound he heard, and with the
thought, 'If these motor-cars increase, it'll affect house
property,' he was about to pass on up to the room always kept ready
for him when he heard, distant as yet, the hoarse rushing call of a
newsvendor.  There it was, and coming past the house!  He knocked
on his mother's door and went in.

His father was sitting up in bed, with his ears pricked under the
white hair which Emily kept so beautifully cut.  He looked pink,
and extraordinarily clean, in his setting of white sheet and
pillow, out of which the points of his high, thin, nightgowned
shoulders emerged in small peaks.  His eyes alone, grey and
distrustful under their withered lids, were moving from the window
to Emily, who in a wrapper was walking up and down, squeezing a
rubber ball attached to a scent bottle.  The room reeked faintly of
the eau-de-Cologne she was spraying.

"All right!" said Soames, "it's not a fire.  The Boers have
declared war--that's all."

Emily stopped her spraying.

"Oh!" was all she said, and looked at James.

Soames, too, looked at his father.  He was taking it differently
from their expectation, as if some thought, strange to them, were
working in him.

"H'm!" he muttered suddenly, "I shan't live to see the end of
this."

"Nonsense, James!  It'll be over by Christmas."

"What do you know about it?" James answered her with asperity.
"It's a pretty mess at this time of night, too!"  He lapsed into
silence, and his wife and son, as if hypnotised, waited for him to
say: 'I can't tell--I don't know; I knew how it would be!'  But he
did not.  The grey eyes shifted, evidently seeing nothing in the
room; then movement occurred under the bedclothes, and the knees
were drawn up suddenly to a great height.

"They ought to send out Roberts.  It all comes from that fellow
Gladstone and his Majuba."

The two listeners noted something beyond the usual in his voice,
something of real anxiety.  It was as if he had said: 'I shall
never see the old country peaceful and safe again.  I shall have to
die before I know she's won.'  And in spite of the feeling that
James must not be encouraged to be fussy, they were touched.
Soames went up to the bedside and stroked his father's hand which
had emerged from under the bedclothes, long and wrinkled with
veins.

"Mark my words!" said James, "consols will go to par.  For all I
know, Val may go and enlist."

"Oh, come, James!" cried Emily, "you talk as if there were danger."

Her comfortable voice seemed to soothe James for once.

"Well," he muttered, "I told you how it would be.  I don't know,
I'm sure nobody tells me anything.  Are you sleeping here, my boy?"

The crisis was past, he would now compose himself to his normal
degree of anxiety; and, assuring his father that he was sleeping in
the house, Soames pressed his hand, and went up to his room.

The following afternoon witnessed the greatest crowd Timothy's had
known for many a year.  On national occasions, such as this, it
was, indeed, almost impossible to avoid going there.  Not that
there was any danger or rather only just enough to make it
necessary to assure each other that there was none.

Nicholas was there early.  He had seen Soames the night before--
Soames had said it was bound to come.  This old Kruger was in his
dotage--why, he must be seventy-five if he was a day!

(Nicholas was eighty-two.) What had Timothy said?  He had had a fit
after Majuba.  These Boers were a grasping lot!  The dark-haired
Francie, who had arrived on his heels, with the contradictious
touch which became the free spirit of a daughter of Roger, chimed
in:

"Kettle and pot, Uncle Nicholas.  What price the Uitlanders?" What
price; indeed!  A new expression, and believed to be due to her
brother George.

Aunt Juley thought Francie ought not to say such a thing.  Dear
Mrs. MacAnder's boy, Charlie MacAnder, was one, and no one could
call him grasping.  At this Francie uttered one of her mots,
scandalising, and so frequently repeated:

"Well, his father's a Scotchman, and his mother's a cat."

Aunt Juley covered her ears, too late, but Aunt Hester smiled; as
for Nicholas, he pouted--witticism of which he was not the author
was hardly to his taste.  Just then Marian Tweetyman arrived,
followed almost immediately by young Nicholas.  On seeing his son,
Nicholas rose.

"Well, I must be going," he said, "Nick here will tell you what'll
win the race."  And with this hit at his eldest, who, as a pillar
of accountancy, and director of an insurance company, was no more
addicted to sport than his father had ever been, he departed.  Dear
Nicholas!  What race was that?  Or was it only one of his jokes?
He was a wonderful man for his age!  How many lumps would dear
Marian take?  And how were Giles and Jesse?  Aunt Juley supposed
their Yeomanry would be very busy now, guarding the coast, though
of course the Boers had no ships.  But one never knew what the
French might do if they had the chance, especially since that
dreadful Fashoda scare, which had upset Timothy so terribly that he
had made no investments for months afterwards.  It was the
ingratitude of the Boers that was so dreadful, after everything had
been done for them--Dr. Jameson imprisoned, and he was so nice,
Mrs. MacAnder had always said.  And Sir Alfred Milner sent out to
talk to them--such a clever man!  She didn't know what they wanted.

But at this moment occurred one of those sensations--so precious at
Timothy's--which great occasions sometimes bring forth:

"Miss June Forsyte."

Aunts Juley and Hester were on their feet at once, trembling from
smothered resentment, and old affection bubbling up, and pride at
the return of a prodigal June!  Well, this was a surprise!  Dear
June--after all these years!  And how well she was looking!  Not
changed at all!  It was almost on their lips to add, 'And how is
your dear grandfather?' forgetting in that giddy moment that poor
dear Jolyon had been in his grave for seven years now.

Ever the most courageous and downright of all the Forsytes, June,
with her decided chin and her spirited eyes and her hair like
flame, sat down, slight and short, on a gilt chair with a bead-
worked seat, for all the world as if ten years had not elapsed
since she had been to see them--ten years of travel and
independence and devotion to lame ducks.  Those ducks of late had
been all definitely painters, etchers, or sculptors, so that her
impatience with the Forsytes and their hopelessly inartistic
outlook had become intense.  Indeed, she had almost ceased to
believe that her family existed, and looked round her now with a
sort of challenging directness which brought exquisite discomfort
to the roomful.  She had not expected to meet any of them but 'the
poor old things'; and why she had come to see them she hardly knew,
except that, while on her way from Oxford Street to a studio in
Latimer Road, she had suddenly remembered them with compunction as
two long-neglected old lame ducks.

Aunt Juley broke the hush again.  "We've just been saying, dear,
how dreadful it is about these Boers!  And what an impudent thing
of that old Kruger!"

"Impudent!" said June.  "I think he's quite right.  What business
have we to meddle with them?  If he turned out all those wretched
Uitlanders it would serve them right.  They're only after money."

The silence of sensation was broken by Francie saying:

"What?  Are you a pro-Boer?" (undoubtedly the first use of that
expression).

"Well!  Why can't we leave them alone?" said June, just as, in the
open doorway, the maid said "Mr. Soames Forsyte."  Sensation on
sensation!  Greeting was almost held up by curiosity to see how
June and he would take this encounter, for it was shrewdly
suspected, if not quite known, that they had not met since that old
and lamentable affair of her fiance Bosinney with Soames' wife.
They were seen to just touch each other's hands, and look each at
the other's left eye only.  Aunt Juley came at once to the rescue:

"Dear June is so original.  Fancy, Soames, she thinks the Boers are
not to blame."

"They only want their independence," said June; "and why shouldn't
they have it?"

"Because," answered Soames, with his smile a little on one side,
"they happen to have agreed to our suzerainty."

"Suzerainty!" repeated June scornfully; "we shouldn't like anyone's
suzerainty over us."

"They got advantages in payment," replied Soames; "a contract is a
contract."

"Contracts are not always just," fumed out June, "and when they're
not, they ought to be broken.  The Boers are much the weaker.  We
could afford to be generous."

Soames sniffed.  "That's mere sentiment," he said.

Aunt Hester, to whom nothing was more awful than any kind of
disagreement, here leaned forward and remarked decisively:

"What lovely weather it has been for the time of year?"

But June was not to be diverted.

"I don't know why sentiment should be sneered at.  It's the best
thing in the world."  She looked defiantly round, and Aunt Juley
had to intervene again:

"Have you bought any pictures lately, Soames?"

Her incomparable instinct for the wrong subject had not failed her.
Soames flushed.  To disclose the name of his latest purchases would
be like walking into the jaws of disdain.  For somehow they all
knew of June's predilection for 'genius' not yet on its legs, and
her contempt for 'success' unless she had had a finger in securing
it.

"One or two," he muttered.

But June's face had changed; the Forsyte within her was seeing its
chance.  Why should not Soames buy some of the pictures of Eric
Cobbley--her last lame duck?  And she promptly opened her attack:
Did Soames know his work?  It was so wonderful.  He was the coming
man.

Oh, yes, Soames knew his work.  It was in his view 'splashy,' and
would never get hold of the public.

June blazed up.

"Of course it won't; that's the last thing one would wish for.  I
thought you were a connoisseur, not a picture-dealer."

"Of course Soames is a connoisseur," Aunt Juley said hastily; "he
has wonderful taste--he can always tell beforehand what's going to
be successful."

"Oh!" gasped June, and sprang up from the bead-covered chair, "I
hate that standard of success.  Why can't people buy things because
they like them?"

"You mean," said Francie, "because you like them."

And in the slight pause young Nicholas was heard saying gently that
Violet (his fourth) was taking lessons in pastel, he didn't know if
they were any use.

"Well, good-bye, Auntie," said June; "I must get on," and kissing
her aunts, she looked defiantly round the room, said "Good-bye"
again, and went.  A breeze seemed to pass out with her, as if
everyone had sighed.

The third sensation came before anyone had time to speak:

"Mr. James Forsyte."

James came in using a stick slightly and wrapped in a fur coat
which gave him a fictitious bulk.

Everyone stood up.  James was so old; and he had not been at
Timothy's for nearly two years.

"It's hot in here," he said.

Soames divested him of his coat, and as he did so could not help
admiring the glossy way his father was turned out.  James sat down,
all knees, elbows, frock-coat, and long white whiskers.

"What's the meaning of that?" he said.

Though there was no apparent sense in his words, they all knew that
he was referring to June.  His eyes searched his son's face.

"I thought I'd come and see for myself.  What have they answered
Kruger?"

Soames took out an evening paper, and read the headline.

"'Instant action by our Government--state of war existing!'"

"Ah!" said James, and sighed.  "I was afraid they'd cut and run
like old Gladstone.  We shall finish with them this time."

All stared at him.  James!  Always fussy, nervous, anxious!  James
with his continual, 'I told you how it would be!' and his pessimism,
and his cautious investments.  There was something uncanny about
such resolution in this the oldest living Forsyte.

"Where's Timothy?" said James.  "He ought to pay attention to
this."

Aunt Juley said she didn't know; Timothy had not said much at lunch
to-day.  Aunt Hester rose and threaded her way out of the room, and
Francie said rather maliciously:

"The Boers are a hard nut to crack, Uncle James."

"H'm!" muttered James.  "Where do you get your information?  Nobody
tells me."

Young Nicholas remarked in his mild voice that Nick (his eldest)
was now going to drill regularly.

"Ah!" muttered James, and stared before him--his thoughts were on
Val.  "He's got to look after his mother," he said, "he's got no
time for drilling and that, with that father of his."  This cryptic
saying produced silence, until he spoke again.

"What did June want here?"  And his eyes rested with suspicion on
all of them in turn.  "Her father's a rich man now."  The
conversation turned on Jolyon, and when he had been seen last.  It
was supposed that he went abroad and saw all sorts of people now
that his wife was dead; his water-colours were on the line, and he
was a successful man.  Francie went so far as to say:

"I should like to see him again; he was rather a dear."

Aunt Juley recalled how he had gone to sleep on the sofa one day,
where James was sitting.  He had always been very amiable; what did
Soames think?

Knowing that Jolyon was Irene's trustee, all felt the delicacy of
this question, and looked at Soames with interest.  A faint pink
had come up in his cheeks.

"He's going grey," he said.

Indeed!  Had Soames seen him?  Soames nodded, and the pink
vanished.

James said suddenly: "Well--I don't know, I can't tell."

It so exactly expressed the sentiment of everybody present that
there was something behind everything, that nobody responded.  But
at this moment Aunt Hester returned.

"Timothy," she said in a low voice, "Timothy has bought a map, and
he's put in--he's put in three flags."

Timothy had ....!  A sigh went round the company.

If Timothy had indeed put in three flags already, well!--it showed
what the nation could do when it was roused.  The war was as good
as over.




CHAPTER XIII

JOLYON FINDS OUT WHERE HE IS


Jolyon stood at the window in Holly's old night nursery, converted
into a studio, not because it had a north light, but for its view
over the prospect away to the Grand Stand at Epsom.  He shifted to
the side window which overlooked the stableyard, and whistled down
to the dog Balthasar who lay for ever under the clock tower.  The
old dog looked up and wagged his tail.  'Poor old boy!'  thought
Jolyon, shifting back to the other window.

He had been restless all this week, since his attempt to prosecute
trusteeship, uneasy in his conscience which was ever acute,
disturbed in his sense of compassion which was easily excited, and
with a queer sensation as if his feeling for beauty had received
some definite embodiment.  Autumn was getting hold of the old
oak-tree, its leaves were browning.  Sunshine had been plentiful
and hot this summer.  As with trees, so with men's lives!  'I ought
to live long,' thought Jolyon; 'I'm getting mildewed for want of
heat.  If I can't work, I shall be off to Paris.'  But memory of
Paris gave him no pleasure.  Besides, how could he go?  He must
stay and see what Soames was going to do.  'I'm her trustee.  I
can't leave her unprotected,' he thought.  It had been striking him
as curious how very clearly he could still see Irene in her little
drawing-room which he had only twice entered.  Her beauty must have
a sort of poignant harmony!  No literal portrait would ever do her
justice; the essence of her was--ah I what?...  The noise of hoofs
called him back to the other window.  Holly was riding into the
yard on her long-tailed 'palfrey.'  She looked up and he waved to
her.  She had been rather silent lately; getting old, he supposed,
beginning to want her future, as they all did--youngsters!

Time was certainly the devil!  And with the feeling that to waste
this swift-travelling commodity was unforgivable folly, he took up
his brush.  But it was no use; he could not concentrate his eye--
besides, the light was going.  'I'll go up to town,' he thought.
In the hall a servant met him.

"A lady to see you, sir; Mrs. Heron."

Extraordinary coincidence!  Passing into the picture-gallery, as it
was still called, he saw Irene standing over by the window.

She came towards him saying:

"I've been trespassing; I came up through the coppice and garden.
I always used to come that way to see Uncle Jolyon."

"You couldn't trespass here," replied Jolyon; "history makes that
impossible.  I was just thinking of you."

Irene smiled.  And it was as if something shone through; not mere
spirituality--serener, completer, more alluring.

"History!" she answered; "I once told Uncle Jolyon that love was
for ever.  Well, it isn't.  Only aversion lasts."

Jolyon stared at her.  Had she got over Bosinney at last?

"Yes!" he said, "aversion's deeper than love or hate because it's a
natural product of the nerves, and we don't change them."

"I came to tell you that Soames has been to see me.  He said a
thing that frightened me.  He said: 'You are still my wife!'"

"What!" ejaculated Jolyon.  "You ought not to live alone."  And he
continued to stare at her, afflicted by the thought that where
Beauty was, nothing ever ran quite straight, which, no doubt, was
why so many people looked on it as immoral.

"What more?"

"He asked me to shake hands.

"Did you?"

"Yes.  When he came in I'm sure he didn't want to; he changed while
he was there."

"Ah! you certainly ought not to go on living there alone."

"I know no woman I could ask; and I can't take a lover to order,
Cousin Jolyon."

"Heaven forbid!" said Jolyon.  "What a damnable position!  Will you
stay to dinner?  No?  Well, let me see you back to town; I wanted
to go up this evening."

"Truly?"

"Truly.  I'll be ready in five minutes."

On that walk to the station they talked of pictures and music,
contrasting the English and French characters and the difference in
their attitude to Art.  But to Jolyon the colours in the hedges of
the long straight lane, the twittering of chaffinches who kept pace
with them, the perfume of weeds being already burned, the turn of
her neck, the fascination of those dark eyes bent on him now and
then, the lure of her whole figure, made a deeper impression than
the remarks they exchanged.  Unconsciously he held himself
straighter, walked with a more elastic step.

In the train he put her through a sort of catechism as to what she
did with her days.

Made her dresses, shopped, visited a hospital, played her piano,
translated from the French.

She had regular work from a publisher, it seemed, which
supplemented her income a little.  She seldom went out in the
evening.  "I've been living alone so long, you see, that I don't
mind it a bit.  I believe I'm naturally solitary."

"I don't believe that," said Jolyon.  "Do you know many people?"

"Very few."

At Waterloo they took a hansom, and he drove with her to the door
of her mansions.  Squeezing her hand at parting, he said:

"You know, you could always come to us at Robin Hill; you must let
me know everything that happens.  Good-bye, Irene."

"Good-bye," she answered softly.

Jolyon climbed back into his cab, wondering why he had not asked
her to dine and go to the theatre with him.  Solitary, starved,
hung-up life that she had!  "Hotch Potch Club," he said through the
trap-door.  As his hansom debouched on to the Embankment, a man in
top-hat and overcoat passed, walking quickly, so close to the wall
that he seemed to be scraping it.

'By Jove!' thought Jolyon; 'Soames himself!  What's he up to now?'
And, stopping the cab round the corner, he got out and retraced his
steps to where he could see the entrance to the mansions.  Soames
had halted in front of them, and was looking up at the light in her
windows.  'If he goes in,' thought Jolyon, 'what shall I do?  What
have I the right to do?'  What the fellow had said was true.  She
was still his wife, absolutely without protection from annoyance!
'Well, if he goes in,' he thought, 'I follow.'  And he began moving
towards the mansions.  Again Soames advanced; he was in the very
entrance now.  But suddenly he stopped, spun round on his heel, and
came back towards the river.  'What now?' thought Jolyon.  'In a
dozen steps he'll recognise me.'  And he turned tail.  His cousin's
footsteps kept pace with his own.  But he reached his cab, and got
in before Soames had turned the corner.  "Go on!" he said through
the trap.  Soames' figure ranged up alongside.

"Hansom!" he said.  "Engaged?  Hallo!"

"Hallo!" answered Jolyon.  "You?"

The quick suspicion on his cousin's face, white in the lamplight,
decided him.

"I can give you a lift," he said, "if you're going West."

"Thanks," answered Soames, and got in.

"I've been seeing Irene," said Jolyon when the cab had started.

"Indeed!"

"You went to see her yesterday yourself, I understand."


"I did," said Soames; "she's my wife, you know."

The tone, the half-lifted sneering lip, roused sudden anger in
Jolyon; but he subdued it.

"You ought to know best," he said, "but if you want a divorce it's
not very wise to go seeing her, is it?  One can't run with the hare
and hunt with the hounds?"

"You're very good to warn me," said Soames, "but I have not made up
my mind."

"She has," said Jolyon, looking straight before him; "you can't
take things up, you know, as they were twelve years ago."

"That remains to be seen."

"Look here!" said Jolyon, "she's in a damnable position, and I am
the only person with any legal say in her affairs."

"Except myself," retorted Soames, "who am also in a damnable
position.  Hers is what she made for herself; mine what she made
for me.  I am not at all sure that in her own interests I shan't
require her to return to me."

"What!" exclaimed Jolyon; and a shiver went through his whole body.

"I don't know what you may mean by 'what,'" answered Soames coldly;
"your say in her affairs is confined to paying out her income;
please bear that in mind.  In choosing not to disgrace her by a
divorce, I retained my rights, and, as I say, I am not at all sure
that I shan't require to exercise them."

"My God!" ejaculated Jolyon, and he uttered a short laugh.

"Yes," said Soames, and there was a deadly quality in his voice.
"I've not forgotten the nickname your father gave me, 'The man of
property'!  I'm not called names for nothing."

"This is fantastic," murmured Jolyon.  Well, the fellow couldn't
force his wife to live with him.  Those days were past, anyway!
And he looked around at Soames with the thought: 'Is he real, this
man?' But Soames looked very real, sitting square yet almost
elegant with the clipped moustache on his pale face, and a tooth
showing where a lip was lifted in a fried smile.  There was a long
silence, while Jolyon thought: 'Instead of helping her, I've made
things worse.'  Suddenly Soames said:

"It would be the best thing that could happen to her in many ways."

At those words such a turmoil began taking place in Jolyon that he
could barely sit still in the cab.  It was as if he were boxed up
with hundreds of thousands of his countrymen, boxed up with that
something in the national character which had always been to him
revolting, something which he knew to be extremely natural and yet
which seemed to him inexplicable--their intense belief in contracts
and vested rights, their complacent sense of virtue in the exaction
of those rights.  Here beside him in the cab was the very
embodiment, the corporeal sum as it were, of the possessive
instinct--his own kinsman, too!  It was uncanny and intolerable!
'But there's something more in it than that!' he thought with a
sick feeling.  'The dog, they say, returns to his vomit!  The sight
of her has reawakened something.  Beauty!  The devil's in it!'

"As I say," said Soames, "I have not made up my mind.  I shall be
obliged if you will kindly leave her quite alone."

Jolyon bit his lips; he who had always hated rows almost welcomed
the thought, of one now.

"I can give you no such promise," he said shortly.

"Very well," said Soames, "then we know where we are.  I'll get
down here."  And stopping the cab he got out without word or sign
of farewell.  Jolyon travelled on to his Club.

The first news of the war was being called in the streets, but he
paid no attention.  What could he do to help her?  If only his
father were alive!  He could have done so much!  But why could he
not do all that his father could have done?  Was he not old
enough?--turned fifty and twice married, with grown-up daughters
and a son.  'Queer,' he thought.  'If she were plain I shouldn't be
thinking twice about it.  Beauty is the devil, when you're sen-
sitive to it!'  And into the Club reading-room he went with a
disturbed heart.  In that very room he and Bosinney had talked one
summer afternoon; he well remembered even now the disguised and
secret lecture he had given that young man in the interests of
June, the diagnosis of the Forsytes he had hazarded; and how he had
wondered what sort of woman it was he was warning him against.  And
now!  He was almost in want of a warning himself.  'It's deuced
funny!'  he thought, 'really deuced funny!'




CHAPTER XIV

SOAMES DISCOVERS WHAT HE WANTS


It is so much easier to say, "Then we know where we are," than to
mean anything particular by the words.  And in saying them Soames
did but vent the jealous rankling of his instincts.  He got out of
the cab in a state of wary anger--with himself for not having seen
Irene, with Jolyon for having seen her; and now with his inability
to tell exactly what he wanted.

He had abandoned the cab because he could not bear to remain seated
beside his cousin, and walking briskly eastwards he thought: 'I
wouldn't trust that fellow Jolyon a yard.  Once outcast, always
outcast!'  The chap had a natural sympathy with--with--laxity (he
had shied at the word sin, because it was too melodramatic for use
by a Forsyte).

Indecision in desire was to him a new feeling.  He was like a child
between a promised toy and an old one which had been taken away
from him; and he was astonished at himself.  Only last Sunday
desire had seemed simple--just his freedom and Annette.  'I'll go
and dine there,' he thought.  To see her might bring back his
singleness of intention, calm his exasperation, clear his mind.

The restaurant was fairly full--a good many foreigners and folk
whom, from their appearance, he took to be literary or artistic.
Scraps of conversation came his way through the clatter of plates
and glasses.  He distinctly heard the Boers sympathised with, the
British Government blamed.  'Don't think much of their clientele,'
he thought.  He went stolidly through his dinner and special coffee
without making his presence known, and when at last he had
finished, was careful not to be seen going towards the sanctum of
Madame Lamotte.  They were, as he entered, having supper--such a
much nicer-looking supper than the dinner he had eaten that he felt
a kind of grief--and they greeted him with a surprise so seemingly
genuine that he thought with sudden suspicion: 'I believe they knew
I was here all the time.'  He gave Annette a look furtive and
searching.  So pretty, seemingly so candid; could she be angling
for him?  He turned to Madame Lamotte and said:

"I've been dining here."

Really!  If she had only known!  There were dishes she could have
recommended; what a pity!  Soames was confirmed in his suspicion.
'I must look out what I'm doing!' he thought sharply.

"Another little cup of very special coffee, monsieur; a liqueur,
Grand Marnier?" and Madame Lamotte rose to order these delicacies.

Alone with Annette Soames said, "Well, Annette?" with a defensive
little smile about his lips.

The girl blushed.  This, which last Sunday would have set his
nerves tingling, now gave him much the same feeling a man has when
a dog that he owns wriggles and looks at him.  He had a curious
sense of power, as if he could have said to her, 'Come and kiss
me,' and she would have come.  And yet--it was strange--but there
seemed another face and form in the room too; and the itch in his
nerves, was it for that--or for this?  He jerked his head towards
the restaurant and said: "You have some queer customers.  Do you
like this life?"

Annette looked up at him for a moment, looked down, and played with
her fork.

"No," she said, "I do not like it."

'I've got her,' thought Soames, 'if I want her.  But do I want
her?' She was graceful, she was pretty--very pretty; she was fresh,
she had taste of a kind.  His eyes travelled round the little room;
but the eyes of his mind went another journey--a half-light, and
silvery walls, a satinwood piano, a woman standing against it,
reined back as it were from him--a woman with white shoulders that
he knew, and dark eyes that he had sought to know, and hair like
dull dark amber.  And as in an artist who strives for the
unrealisable and is ever thirsty, so there rose in him at that
moment the thirst of the old passion he had never satisfied.

"Well," he said calmly, "you're young.  There's everything before
you."

Annette shook her head.

"I think sometimes there is nothing before me but hard work.  I am
not so in love with work as mother."

"Your mother is a wonder," said Soames, faintly mocking; "she will
never let failure lodge in her house."

Annette sighed.  "It must be wonderful to be rich."

"Oh!  You'll be rich some day," answered Soames, still with that
faint mockery; "don't be afraid."

Annette shrugged her shoulders.  "Monsieur is very kind."  And
between her pouting lips she put a chocolate.

'Yes, my dear,' thought Soames, 'they're very pretty.'

Madame Lamotte, with coffee and liqueur, put an end to that
colloquy.  Soames did not stay long.

Outside in the streets of Soho, which always gave him such a
feeling of property improperly owned, he mused.  If only Irene had
given him a son, he wouldn't now be squirming after women!  The
thought had jumped out of its little dark sentry-box in his inner
consciousness.  A son--something to look forward to, something to
make the rest of life worth while, something to leave himself to,
some perpetuity of self.  'If I had a son,' he thought bitterly,
'a proper legal son, I could make shift to go on as I used.  One
woman's much the same as another, after all.'  But as he walked he
shook his head.  No!  One woman was not the same as another.  Many
a time had he tried to think that in the old days of his thwarted
married life; and he had always failed.  He was failing now.  He
was trying to think Annette the same as that other.  But she was
not, she had not the lure of that old passion.  'And Irene's my
wife,' he thought, 'my legal wife.  I have done nothing to put her
away from me.  Why shouldn't she come back to me?  It's the right
thing, the lawful thing.  It makes no scandal, no disturbance.  If
it's disagreeable to her--but why should it be?  I'm not a leper,
and she--she's no longer in love!'  Why should he be put to the
shifts and the sordid disgraces and the lurking defeats of the
Divorce Court, when there she was like an empty house only waiting
to be retaken into use and possession by him who legally owned her?
To one so secretive as Soames the thought of reentry into quiet
possession of his own property with nothing given away to the world
was intensely alluring.  'No,' he mused, 'I'm glad I went to see
that girl.  I know now what I want most.  If only Irene will come
back I'll be as considerate as she wishes; she could live her own
life; but perhaps--perhaps she would come round to me.'  There was
a lump in his throat.  And doggedly along by the railings of the
Green Park, towards his father's house, he went, trying to tread on
his shadow walking before him in the brilliant moonlight.






PART II



CHAPTER I

THE THIRD GENERATION


Jolly Forsyte was strolling down High Street, Oxford, on a November
afternoon; Val Dartie was strolling up.  Jolly had just changed out
of boating flannels and was on his way to the 'Frying-pan,' to
which he had recently been elected.  Val had just changed out of
riding clothes and was on his way to the fire--a bookmaker's in
Cornmarket.

"Hallo!" said Jolly.

"Hallo!" replied Val.

The cousins had met but twice, Jolly, the second-year man, having
invited the freshman to breakfast; and last evening they had seen
each other again under somewhat exotic circumstances.

Over a tailor's in the Cornmarket resided one of those privileged
young beings called minors, whose inheritances are large, whose
parents are dead, whose guardians are remote, and whose instincts
are vicious.  At nineteen he had commenced one of those careers
attractive and inexplicable to ordinary mortals for whom a single
bankruptcy is good as a feast.  Already famous for having the only
roulette table then to be found in Oxford, he was anticipating his
expectations at a dazzling rate.  He out-crummed Crum, though of a
sanguine and rather beefy type which lacked the latter's
fascinating languor.  For Val it had been in the nature of baptism
to be taken there to play roulette; in the nature of confirmation
to get back into college, after hours, through a window whose bars
were deceptive.  Once, during that evening of delight, glancing up
from the seductive green before him, he had caught sight, through a
cloud of smoke, of his cousin standing opposite.  'Rouge gagne,
impair, et manque!'  He had not seen him again.

"Come in to the Frying-pan and have tea," said Jolly, and they went
in.

A stranger, seeing them together, would have noticed an unseizable
resemblance between these second cousins of the third generations
of Forsytes; the same bone formation in face, though Jolly's eyes
were darker grey, his hair lighter and more wavy.

"Tea and buttered buns, waiter, please," said Jolly.

"Have one of my cigarettes?" said Val.  "I saw you last night.  How
did you do?"

"I didn't play."

"I won fifteen quid."

Though desirous of repeating a whimsical comment on gambling he had
once heard his father make--'When you're fleeced you're sick, and
when you fleece you're sorry--Jolly contented himself with:

"Rotten game, I think; I was at school with that chap.  He's an
awful fool."

"Oh! I don't know," said Val, as one might speak in defence of a
disparaged god; "he's a pretty good sport."

They exchanged whiffs in silence.

"You met my people, didn't you?" said Jolly.  "They're coming up
to-morrow."

Val grew a little red.

"Really!  I can give you a rare good tip for the Manchester
November handicap."

"Thanks, I only take interest in the classic races."

"You can't make any money over them," said Val.

"I hate the ring," said Jolly; "there's such a row and stink.  I
like the paddock."

"I like to back my judgment,"' answered Val.

Jolly smiled; his smile was like his father's.

"I haven't got any.  I always lose money if I bet."

"You have to buy experience, of course."

"Yes, but it's all messed-up with doing people in the eye."

"Of course, or they'll do you--that's the excitement."

Jolly looked a little scornful.

"What do you do with yourself?  Row?"

"No--ride, and drive about.  I'm going to play polo next term, if I
can get my granddad to stump up."

"That's old Uncle James, isn't it?  What's he like?"

"Older than forty hills," said Val, "and always thinking he's going
to be ruined."

"I suppose my granddad and he were brothers."

"I don't believe any of that old lot were sportsmen," said Val;
they must have worshipped money."

"Mine didn't!" said Jolly warmly.

Val flipped the ash off his cigarette.

"Money's only fit to spend," he said; "I wish the deuce I had
more."

Jolly gave him that direct upward look of judgment which he had
inherited from old Jolyon: One didn't talk about money!  And again
there was silence, while they drank tea and ate the buttered buns.

"Where are your people going to stay?" asked Val, elaborately
casual.

"'Rainbow.'  What do you think of the war?"

"Rotten, so far.  The Boers aren't sports a bit.  Why don't they
come out into the open?"

"Why should they?  They've got everything against them except their
way of fighting.  I rather admire them."

"They can ride and shoot," admitted Val, "but they're a lousy lot.
Do you know Crum?"

"Of Merton?  Only by sight.  He's in that fast set too, isn't he?
Rather La-di-da and Brummagem."

Val said fixedly: "He's a friend of mine."

"Oh! Sorry!"  And they sat awkwardly staring past each other,
having pitched on their pet points of snobbery.  For Jolly was
forming himself unconsciously on a set whose motto was:

'We defy you to bore us.  Life isn't half long enough, and we're
going to talk faster and more crisply, do more and know more, and
dwell less on any subject than you can possibly imagine.  We are
"the best"--made of wire and whipcord.'  And Val was unconsciously
forming himself on a set whose motto was: 'We defy you to interest
or excite us.  We have had every sensation, or if we haven't, we
pretend we have.  We are so exhausted with living that no hours are
too small for us.  We will lose our shirts with equanimity.  We
have flown fast and are past everything.  All is cigarette smoke.
Bismillah!'  Competitive spirit, bone-deep in the English, was
obliging those two young Forsytes to have ideals; and at the close
of a century ideals are mixed.  The aristocracy had already in the
main adopted the 'jumping-Jesus' principle; though here and there
one like Crum--who was an 'honourable'--stood starkly languid for
that gambler's Nirvana which had been the summum bonum of the old
'dandies' and of 'the mashers' in the eighties.  And round Crum
were still gathered a forlorn hope of blue-bloods with a
plutocratic following.

But there was between the cousins another far less obvious
antipathy--coming from the unseizable family resemblance, which
each perhaps resented; or from some half-consciousness of that old
feud persisting still between their branches of the clan, formed
within them by odd words or half-hints dropped by their elders.
And Jolly, tinkling his teaspoon, was musing: 'His tie-pin and his
waistcoat and his drawl and his betting--good Lord!'

And Val, finishing his bun, was thinking: 'He's rather a young
beast!'

"I suppose you'll be meeting your people?" he said, getting up.
"I wish you'd tell them I should like to show them over B.N.C.--not
that there's anything much there--if they'd care to come."

"Thanks, I'll ask them."

"Would they lunch?  I've got rather a decent scout."

Jolly doubted if they would have time.

"You'll ask them, though?"

"Very good of you," said Jolly, fully meaning that they should not
go; but, instinctively polite, he added: "You'd better come and
have dinner with us to-morrow."

"Rather.  What time?"

"Seven-thirty."

"Dress?"

"No."  And they parted, a subtle antagonism alive within them.

Holly and her father arrived by a midday train.  It was her first
visit to the city of spires and dreams, and she was very silent,
looking almost shyly at the brother who was part of this wonderful
place.  After lunch she wandered, examining his household gods with
intense curiosity.  Jolly's sitting-room was panelled, and Art
represented by a set of Bartolozzi prints which had belonged to old
Jolyon, and by college photographs--of young men, live young men, a
little heroic, and to be compared with her memories of Val.  Jolyon
also scrutinised with care that evidence of his boy's character and
tastes.

Jolly was anxious that they should see him rowing, so they set
forth to the river.  Holly, between her brother and her father,
felt elated when heads were turned and eyes rested on her.  That
they might see him to the best advantage they left him at the Barge
and crossed the river to the towing-path.  Slight in build--for of
all the Forsytes only old Swithin and George were beefy--Jolly was
rowing 'Two' in a trial eight.  He looked very earnest and
strenuous.  With pride Jolyon thought him the best-looking boy of
the lot; Holly, as became a sister, was more struck by one or two
of the others, but would not have said so for the world.  The river
was bright that afternoon, the meadows lush, the trees still
beautiful with colour.  Distinguished peace clung around the old
city; Jolyon promised himself a day's sketching if the weather
held.  The Eight passed a second time, spurting home along the
Barges--Jolly's face was very set, so as not to show that he was
blown.  They returned across the river and waited for him.

"Oh!" said Jolly in the Christ Church meadows, "I had to ask that
chap Val Dartie to dine with us to-night.  He wanted to give you
lunch and show you B.N.C., so I thought I'd better; then you
needn't go.  I don't like him much."

Holly's rather sallow face had become suffused with pink.

"Why not?"

"Oh! I don't know.  He seems to me rather showy and bad form.  What
are his people like, Dad?  He's only a second cousin, isn't he?"

Jolyon took refuge in a smile.

"Ask Holly," he said; "she saw his uncle."

"I liked Val," Holly answered, staring at the ground before her;
"his uncle looked--awfully different."  She stole a glance at Jolly
from under her lashes.

"Did you ever," said Jolyon with whimsical intention, "hear our
family history, my dears?  It's quite a fairy tale.  The first
Jolyon Forsyte--at all events the first we know anything of, and
that would be your great-great-grandfather--dwelt in the land of
Dorset on the edge of the sea, being by profession an
'agriculturalist,' as your great-aunt put it, and the son of an
agriculturist--farmers, in fact; your grandfather used to call
them, 'Very small beer,'"  He looked at Jolly to see how his
lordliness was standing it, and with the other eye noted Holly's
malicious pleasure in the slight drop of her brother's face.

"We may suppose him thick and sturdy, standing for England as it
was before the Industrial Era began.  The second Jolyon Forsyte--
your great-grandfather, Jolly; better known as Superior Dosset
Forsyte--built houses, so the chronicle runs, begat ten children,
and migrated to London town.  It is known that he drank sherry.  We
may suppose him representing the England of Napoleon's wars, and
general unrest.  The eldest of his six sons was the third Jolyon,
your grandfather, my dears--tea merchant and chairman of companies,
one of the soundest Englishmen who ever lived--and to me the
dearest."  Jolyon's voice had lost its irony, and his son and
daughter gazed at him solemnly, "He was just and tenacious, tender
and young at heart.  You remember him, and I remember him.  Pass to
the others!  Your great-uncle James, that's young Val's grand-
father, had a son called Soames--whereby hangs a tale of no love
lost, and I don't think I'll tell it you.  James and the other
eight children of 'Superior Dosset,' of whom there are still five
alive, may be said to have represented Victorian England, with its
principles of trade and individualism at five per cent. and your
money back--if you know what that means.  At all events they've
turned thirty thousand pounds into a cool million between them in
the course of their long lives.  They never did a wild thing--
unless it was your great-uncle Swithin, who I believe was once
swindled at thimble-rig, and was called 'Four-in-hand Forsyte'
because he drove a pair.  Their day is passing, and their type, not
altogether for the advantage of the country.  They were pedestrian,
but they too were sound.  I am the fourth Jolyon Forsyte--a poor
holder of the name--"

"No, Dad," said Jolly, and Holly squeezed his hand.

"Yes," repeated Jolyon, "a poor specimen, representing, I'm afraid,
nothing but the end of the century, unearned income, amateurism,
and individual liberty--a different thing from individualism,
Jolly.  You are the fifth Jolyon Forsyte, old man, and you open the
ball of the new century."

As he spoke they turned in through the college gates, and Holly
said: "It's fascinating, Dad."

None of them quite knew what she meant.  Jolly was grave.

The Rainbow, distinguished, as only an Oxford hostel can be, for
lack of modernity, provided one small oak-panelled private sitting-
room, in which Holly sat to receive, white-frocked, shy, and alone,
when the only guest arrived.  Rather as one would touch a moth, Val
took her hand.  And wouldn't she wear this 'measly flower'?  It
would look ripping in her hair.  He removed a gardenia from his
coat.

"Oh!  No, thank you--I couldn't!"  But she took it and pinned it at
her neck, having suddenly remembered that word 'showy'!  Val's
buttonhole would give offence; and she so much wanted Jolly to like
him.  Did she realise that Val was at his best and quietest in her
presence, and was that, perhaps, half the secret of his attraction
for her?

"I never said anything about our ride, Val."

"Rather not!  It's just between us."

By the uneasiness of his hands and the fidgeting of his feet he was
giving her a sense of power very delicious; a soft feeling too--the
wish to make him happy.

"Do tell me about Oxford.  It must be ever so lovely."

Val admitted that it was frightfully decent to do what you liked;
the lectures were nothing; and there were some very good chaps.
"Only," he added, "of course I wish I was in town, and could come
down and see you."

Holly moved one hand shyly on her knee, and her glance dropped.

"You haven't forgotten," he said, suddenly gathering courage, "that
we're going mad-rabbiting together?"

Holly smiled.

"Oh!  That was only make-believe.  One can't do that sort of thing
after one's grown up, you know."

"Dash it!  cousins can," said Val.  "Next Long Vac.--it begins in
June, you know, and goes on for ever--we'll watch our chance."

But, though the thrill of conspiracy ran through her veins, Holly
shook her head.  "It won't come off," she murmured.

"Won't it!" said Val fervently; "who's going to stop it?  Not your
father or your brother."

At this moment Jolyon and Jolly came in; and romance fled into
Val's patent leather and Holly's white satin toes, where it itched
and tingled during an evening not conspicuous for open-heartedness.

Sensitive to atmosphere, Jolyon soon felt the latent antagonism
between the boys, and was puzzled by Holly; so he became un-
consciously ironical, which is fatal to the expansiveness of youth.
A letter, handed to him after dinner, reduced him to a silence
hardly broken till Jolly and Val rose to go.  He went out with
them, smoking his cigar, and walked with his son to the gates of
Christ Church.  Turning back, he took out the letter and read it
again beneath a lamp.


"DEAR JOLYON,

"Soames came again to-night--my thirty-seventh birthday.  You were
right, I mustn't stay here.  I'm going to-morrow to the Piedmont
Hotel, but I won't go abroad without seeing you.  I feel lonely and
down-hearted.

"Yours affectionately,

"IRENE."


He folded the letter back into his pocket and walked on, astonished
at the violence of his feelings.  What had the fellow said or done?

He turned, into High Street, down the Turf, and on among a maze of
spires and domes and long college fronts and walls, bright or
darkshadowed in the strong moonlight.  In this very heart of
England's gentility it was difficult to realise that a lonely woman
could be importuned or hunted, but what else could her letter mean?
Soames must have been pressing her to go back to him again, with
public opinion and the Law on his side, too!  'Eighteen-ninety-
nine!,' he thought, gazing at the broken glass shining on the top
of a villa garden wall; 'but when it comes to property we're still
a heathen people!  I'll go up to-morrow morning.  I dare say it'll
be best for her to go abroad.'  Yet the thought displeased him.
Why should Soames hunt her out of England!  Besides, he might
follow, and out there she would be still more helpless against the
attentions of her own husband!  'I must tread warily,' he thought;
'that fellow could make himself very nasty.  I didn't like his
manner in the cab the other night.'  His thoughts turned to his
daughter June.  Could she help?  Once on a time Irene had been her
greatest friend, and now she was a 'lame duck,' such as must appeal
to June's nature!  He determined to wire to his daughter to meet
him at Paddington Station.  Retracing his steps towards the Rainbow
he questioned his own sensations.  Would he be upsetting himself
over every woman in like case?  No! he would not.  The candour of
this conclusion discomfited him; and, finding that Holly had gone
up to bed, he sought his own room.  But he could not sleep, and sat
for a long time at his window, huddled in an overcoat, watching the
moonlight on the roofs.

Next door Holly too was awake, thinking of the lashes above and
below Val's eyes, especially below; and of what she could do to
make Jolly like him better.  The scent of the gardenia was strong
in her little bedroom, and pleasant to her.

And Val, leaning out of his first-floor window in B.N.C., was
gazing at a moonlit quadrangle without seeing it at all, seeing
instead Holly, slim and white-frocked, as she sat beside the fire
when he first went in.

But Jolly, in his bedroom narrow as a ghost, lay with a hand
beneath his cheek and dreamed he was with Val in one boat, rowing a
race against him, while his father was calling from the towpath:
'Two!  Get your hands away there, bless you!'




CHAPTER II

SOAMES PUTS IT TO THE TOUCH


Of all those radiant firms which emblazon with their windows the
West End of London, Gaves and Cortegal were considered by Soames
the most 'attractive' word just coming into fashion.  He had never
had his Uncle Swithin's taste in precious stones, and the
abandonment by Irene when she left his house in 1887 of all the
glittering things he had given her had disgusted him with this form
of invest-ment.  But he still knew a diamond when he saw one, and
during the week before her birthday he had taken occasion, on his
way into the Poultry or his way out therefrom, to dally a little
before the greater jewellers where one got, if not one's money's
worth, at least a certain cachet with the goods.

Constant cogitation since his drive with Jolyon had convinced him
more and more of the supreme importance of this moment in his life,
the supreme need for taking steps and those not wrong.  And,
alongside the dry and reasoned sense that it was now or never with
his self-preservation, now or never if he were to range himself and
found a family, went the secret urge of his senses roused by the
sight of her who had once been a passionately desired wife, and the
conviction that it was a sin against common sense and the decent
secrecy of Forsytes to waste the wife he had.

In an opinion on Winifred's case, Dreamer, Q.C.--he would much have
preferred Waterbuck, but they had made him a judge (so late in the
day as to rouse the usual suspicion of a political job)--had
advised that they should go forward and obtain restitution of
conjugal rights, a point which to Soames had never been in doubt.
When they had obtained a decree to that effect they must wait to
see if it was obeyed.  If not, it would constitute legal desertion,
and they should obtain evidence of misconduct and file their
petition for divorce.  All of which Soames knew perfectly well.
They had marked him ten and one.  This simplicity in his sister's
case only made him the more desperate about the difficulty in his
own.  Everything, in fact, was driving him towards the simple
solution of Irene's return.  If it were still against the grain
with her, had he not feelings to subdue, injury to forgive, pain to
forget?  He at least had never injured her, and this was a world of
compromise!  He could offer her so much more than she had now.  He
would be prepared to make a liberal settlement on her which could
not be upset.  He often scrutinised his image in these days.  He
had never been a peacock like that fellow Dartie, or fancied
himself a woman's man, but he had a certain belief in his own
appearance--not unjustly, for it was well-coupled and preserved,
neat, healthy, pale, unblemished by drink or excess of any kind.
The Forsyte jaw and the concentration of his face were, in his
eyes, virtues.  So far as he could tell there was no feature of him
which need inspire dislike.

Thoughts and yearnings, with which one lives daily, become natural,
even if far-fetched in their inception.  If he could only give
tangible proof enough of his determination to let bygones be
bygones, and to do all in his power to please her, why should she
not come back to him?

He entered Gaves and Cortegal's therefore, on the morning of
November the 9th, to buy a certain diamond brooch.  "Four
twenty-five and dirt cheap, sir, at the money.  It's a lady's
brooch."  There was that in his mood which made him accept without
demur.  And he went on into the Poultry with the flat green morocco
case in his breast pocket.  Several times that day he opened it to
look at the seven soft shining stones in their velvet oval nest.

"If the lady doesn't like it, sir, happy to exchange it any time.
But there's no fear of that."  If only there were not!  He got
through a vast amount of work, only soother of the nerves he knew.
A cablegram came while he was in the office with details from the
agent in Buenos Aires, and the name and address of a stewardess who
would be prepared to swear to what was necessary.  It was a timely
spur to Soames, with his rooted distaste for the washing of dirty
linen in public.  And when he set forth by Underground to Victoria
Station he received a fresh impetus towards the renewal of his
married life from the account in his evening paper of a fashionable
divorce suit.  The homing instinct of all true Forsytes in anxiety
and trouble, the corporate tendency which kept them strong and
solid, made him choose to dine at Park Lane.  He neither could nor
would breath a word to his people of his intention--too reticent
and proud--but the thought that at least they would be glad if they
knew, and wish him luck, was heartening.

James was in lugubrious mood, for the fire which the impudence of
Kruger's ultimatum had lit in him had been cold-watered by the poor
success of the last month, and the exhortations to effort in The
Times.  He didn't know where it would end.  Soames sought to cheer
him by the continual use of the word Buller.  But James couldn't
tell!  There was Colley--and he got stuck on that hill, and this
Ladysmith was down in a hollow, and altogether it looked to him a
'pretty kettle of fish'; he thought they ought to be sending the
sailors--they were the chaps, they did a lot of good in the Crimea.
Soames shifted the ground of consolation.  Winifred had heard from
Val that there had been a 'rag' and a bonfire on Guy Fawkes Day at
Oxford, and that he had escaped detection by blacking his face.

"Ah!" James muttered, "he's a clever little chap."  But he shook
his head shortly afterwards and remarked that he didn't know what
would become of him, and looking wistfully at his son, murmured on
that Soames had never had a boy.  He would have liked a grandson of
his own name.  And now--well, there it was!

Soames flinched.  He had not expected such a challenge to disclose
the secret in his heart.  And Emily, who saw him wince, said:

"Nonsense, James; don't talk like that!"

But James, not looking anyone in the face, muttered on.  There were
Roger and Nicholas and Jolyon; they all had grandsons.  And Swithin
and Timothy had never married.  He had done his best; but he would
soon be gone now.  And, as though he had uttered words of profound
consolation, he was silent, eating brains with a fork and a piece
of bread, and swallowing the bread.

Soames excused himself directly after dinner.  It was not really
cold, but he put on his fur coat, which served to fortify him
against the fits of nervous shivering to which he had been subject
all day.  Subconsciously, he knew that he looked better thus than
in an ordinary black overcoat.  Then, feeling the morocco case flat
against his heart, he sallied forth.  He was no smoker, but he lit
a cigarette, and smoked it gingerly as he walked along.  He moved
slowly down the Row towards Knightsbridge, timing himself to get to
Chelsea at nine-fifteen.  What did she do with herself evening
after evening in that little hole?  How mysterious women were!  One
lived alongside and knew nothing of them.  What could she have seen
in that fellow Bosinney to send her mad?  For there was madness
after all in what she had done--crazy moonstruck madness, in which
all sense of values had been lost, and her life and his life
ruined!  And for a moment he was filled with a sort of exaltation,
as though he were a man read of in a story who, possessed by the
Christian spirit, would restore to her all the prizes of existence,
forgiving and forgetting, and becoming  the godfather of her
future.  Under a tree opposite Knightsbridge Barracks, where the
moon-light struck down clear and white, he took out once more the
morocco case, and let the beams draw colour from those stones.
Yes, they were of the first water!  But, at the hard closing snap
of the case, another cold shiver ran through his nerves; and he
walked on faster, clenching his gloved hands in the pockets of his
coat, almost hoping she would not be in.  The thought of how
mysterious she was again beset him.  Dining alone there night after
night--in an evening dress, too, as if she were making believe to
be in society!  Playing the piano--to herself!  Not even a dog or
cat, so far as he had seen.  And that reminded him suddenly of the
mare he kept for station work at Mapledurham.  If ever he went to
the stable, there she was quite alone, half asleep, and yet, on her
home journeys going more freely than on her way out, as if longing
to be back and lonely in her stable!  'I would treat her well,' he
thought incoherently.  'I would be very careful.'  And all that
capacity for home life of which a mocking Fate seemed for ever to
have deprived him swelled suddenly in Soames, so that he dreamed
dreams opposite South Kensington Station.  In the King's Road a man
came slithering out of a public house playing a concertina.  Soames
watched him for a moment dance crazily on the pavement to his own
drawling jagged sounds, then crossed over to avoid contact with
this piece of drunken foolery.  A night in the lock-up!  What asses
people were!  But the man had noticed his movement of avoidance,
and streams of genial blasphemy followed him across the street.
'I hope they'll run him in,' thought Soames viciously.  'To have
ruffians like that about, with women out alone!'  A woman's figure
in front had induced this thought.  Her walk seemed oddly familiar,
and when she turned the corner for which he was bound, his heart
began to, beat.  He hastened on to the corner to make certain.
Yes!  It was Irene; he could not mistake her walk in that little
drab street.  She threaded two more turnings, and from the last
corner he saw her enter her block of flats.  To make sure of her
now, he ran those few paces, hurried up the stairs, and caught her
standing at her door.  He heard the latchkey in the lock, and
reached her side just as she turned round, startled, in the open
doorway.

"Don't be alarmed," he said, breathless.  "I happened to see you.
Let me come in a minute."

She had put her hand up to her breast, her face was colourless, her
eyes widened by alarm.  Then seeming to master herself, she
inclined her head, and said: "Very well."

Soames closed the door.  He, too, had need to recover, and when she
had passed into the sitting-room, waited a full minute, taking deep
breaths to still the beating of his heart.  At this moment, so
fraught with the future, to take out that morocco case seemed
crude.  Yet, not to take it out left him there before her with no
preliminary excuse for coming.  And in this dilemma he was seized
with impatience at all this paraphernalia of excuse and
justification.  This was a scene--it could be nothing else, and he
must face it.  He heard her voice, uncomfortably, pathetically
soft:

"Why have you come again?  Didn't you understand that I would
rather you did not?"

He noticed her clothes--a dark brown velvet corduroy, a sable boa,
a small round toque of the same.  They suited her admirably.  She
had money to spare for dress, evidently!  He said abruptly:

"It's your birthday.  I brought you this," and he held out to her
the green morocco case.

"Oh!  No-no!"

Soames pressed the clasp; the seven stones gleamed out on the pale
grey velvet.

"Why not?" he said.  "Just as a sign that you don't bear me ill-
feeling any longer."

"I couldn't."

Soames took it out of the case.

"Let me just see how it looks."

She shrank back.

He followed, thrusting his hand with the brooch in it against the
front of her dress.  She shrank again.

Soames dropped his hand.

"Irene," he said, "let bygones be bygones.  If I can, surely you
might.  Let's begin again, as if nothing had been.  Won't you?"
His voice was wistful, and his eyes, resting on her face, had in
them a sort of supplication.

She, who was standing literally with her back against the wall,
gave a little gulp, and that was all her answer.  Soames went on:

"Can you really want to live all your days half-dead in this little
hole?  Come back to me, and I'll give you all you want.  You shall
live your own life; I swear it."

He saw her face quiver ironically.

"Yes," he repeated, "but I mean it this time.  I'll only ask one
thing.  I just want--I just want a son.  Don't look like that!  I
want one.  It's hard."  His voice had grown hurried, so that he
hardly knew it for his own, and twice he jerked his head back as if
struggling for breath.  It was the sight of her eyes fixed on him,
dark with a sort of fascinated fright, which pulled him together
and changed that painful incoherence to anger.

"Is it so very unnatural?" he said between his teeth, "Is it
unnatural to want a child from one's own wife?  You wrecked our
life and put this blight on everything.  We go on only half alive,
and without any future.  Is it so very unflattering to you that in
spite of everything I--I still want you for my wife?  Speak, for
Goodness' sake! do speak."

Irene seemed to try, but did not succeed.

"I don't want to frighten you," said Soames more gently.  "Heaven
knows.  I only want you to see that I can't go on like this.  I
want you back.  I want you."

Irene raised one hand and covered the lower part of her face, but
her eyes never moved from his, as though she trusted in them to
keep him at bay.  And all those years, barren and bitter, since--
ah!  when?--almost since he had first known her, surged up in one
great wave of recollection in Soames; and a spasm that for his life
he could not control constricted his face.

"It's not too late," he said; "it's not--if you'll only believe
it."

Irene uncovered her lips, and both her hands made a writhing
gesture in front of her breast.  Soames seized them.

"Don't!" she said under her breath.  But he stood holding on to
them, trying to stare into her eyes which did not waver.  Then she
said quietly:

"I am alone here.  You won't behave again as you once behaved."

Dropping her hands as though they had been hot irons, he turned
away.  Was it possible that there could be such relentless
unforgiveness!  Could that one act of violent possession be still
alive within her?  Did it bar him thus utterly?  And doggedly he
said, without looking up:

"I am not going till you've answered me.  I am offering what few
men would bring themselves to offer, I want a--a reasonable
answer."

And almost with surprise he heard her say:

"You can't have a reasonable answer.  Reason has nothing to do with
it.  You can only have the brutal truth: I would rather die."

Soames stared at her.

"Oh!" he said.  And there intervened in him a sort of paralysis of
speech and movement, the kind of quivering which comes when a man
has received a deadly insult, and does not yet know how he is going
to take it, or rather what it is going to do with him.

"Oh!" he said again, "as bad as that?  Indeed!  You would rather
die.  That's pretty!"

"I am sorry.  You wanted me to answer.  I can't help the truth, can
I?"

At that queer spiritual appeal Soames turned for relief to
actuality.  He snapped the brooch back into its case and put it in
his pocket.

"The truth!" he said; "there's no such thing with women.  It's
nerves-nerves."

He heard the whisper:

"Yes; nerves don't lie.  Haven't you discovered that?" He was
silent, obsessed by the thought: 'I will hate this woman.  I will
hate her.'  That was the trouble!  If only he could!  He shot a
glance at her who stood unmoving against the wall with her head up
and her hands clasped, for all the world as if she were going to be
shot.  And he said quickly:

"I don't believe a word of it.  You have a lover.  If you hadn't,
you wouldn't be such a--such a little idiot."  He was conscious,
before the expression in her eyes, that he had uttered something of
a non-sequitur, and dropped back too abruptly into the verbal
freedom of his connubial days.  He turned away to the door.  But he
could not go out.  Something within him--that most deep and secret
Forsyte quality, the impossibility of letting go, the impossibility
of seeing the fantastic and forlorn nature of his own tenacity--
prevented him.  He turned about again, and there stood, with his
back against the door, as hers was against the wall opposite, quite
unconscious of anything ridiculous in this separation by the whole
width of the room.

"Do you ever think of anybody but yourself?" he said.

Irene's lips quivered; then she answered slowly:

"Do you ever think that I found out my mistake--my hopeless,
terrible mistake--the very first week of our marriage; that I went
on trying three years--you know I went on trying?  Was it for
myself?"

Soames gritted his teeth.  "God knows what it was.  I've never
understood you; I shall never understand you.  You had everything
you wanted; and you can have it again, and more.  What's the matter
with me?  I ask you a plain question: What is it?"  Unconscious of
the pathos in that enquiry, he went on passionately: "I'm not lame,
I'm not loathsome, I'm not a boor, I'm not a fool.  What is it?
What's the mystery about me?"

Her answer was a long sigh.

He clasped his hands with a gesture that for him was strangely full
of expression.  "When I came here to-night I was--I hoped--I meant
everything that I could to do away with the past, and start fair
again.  And you meet me with 'nerves,' and silence, and sighs.
There's nothing tangible.  It's like--it's like a spider's web."

"Yes."

That whisper from across the room maddened Soames afresh.

"Well, I don't choose to be in a spider's web.  I'll cut it."  He
walked straight up to her.  "Now!"  What he had gone up to her to
do he really did not know.  But when he was close, the old familiar
scent of her clothes suddenly affected him.  He put his hands on
her shoulders and bent forward to kiss her.  He kissed not her
lips, but a little hard line where the lips had been drawn in; then
his face was pressed away by her hands; he heard her say: "Oh!
No!"  Shame, compunction, sense of futility flooded his whole
being, he turned on his heel and went straight out.




CHAPTER III

VISIT TO IRENE


Jolyon found June waiting on the platform at Paddington.  She had
received his telegram while at breakfast.  Her abode--a studio and
two bedrooms in a St. John's Wood garden--had been selected by her
for the complete independence which it guaranteed.  Unwatched by
Mrs. Grundy, unhindered by permanent domestics, she could receive
lame ducks at any hour of day or night, and not seldom had a duck
without studio of its own made use of June's.  She enjoyed her
freedom, and possessed herself with a sort of virginal passion; the
warmth which she would have lavished on Bosinney, and of which--
given her Forsyte tenacity--he must surely have tired, she now
expended in championship of the underdogs and budding 'geniuses' of
the artistic world.  She lived, in fact, to turn ducks into the
swans she believed they were.  The very fervour of her protection
warped her judgments.  But she was loyal and liberal; her small
eager hand was ever against the oppressions of academic and
commercial opinion, and though her income was considerable, her
bank balance was often a minus quantity.

She had come to Paddington Station heated in her soul by a visit to
Eric Cobbley.  A miserable Gallery had refused to let that
straight-haired genius have his one-man show after all.  Its
impudent manager, after visiting his studio, had expressed the
opinion that it would only be a 'one-horse show from the selling
point of view.'  This crowning example of commercial cowardice
towards her favourite lame duck--and he so hard up, with a wife and
two children, that he had caused her account to be overdrawn--was
still making the blood glow in her small, resolute face, and her
red-gold hair to shine more than ever.  She gave her father a hug,
and got into a cab with him, having as many fish to fry with him as
he with her.  It became at once a question which would fry them
first.

Jolyon had reached the words: "My dear, I want you to come with
me," when, glancing at her face, he perceived by her blue eyes
moving from side to side--like the tail of a preoccupied cat that
she was not attending.  "Dad, is it true that I absolutely can't
get at any of my money?"

"Only the income, fortunately, my love."

"How perfectly beastly!  Can't it be done somehow?  There must be a
way.  I know I could buy a small Gallery for ten thousand pounds."

"A small Gallery," murmured Jolyon, "seems a modest desire.  But
your grandfather foresaw it."

"I think," cried June vigorously, "that all this care about money
is awful, when there's so much genius in the world simply crushed
out for want of a little.  I shall never marry and have children;
why shouldn't I be able to do some good instead of having it all
tied up in case of things which will never come off?"

"Our name is Forsyte, my dear," replied Jolyon in the ironical
voice to which his impetuous daughter had never quite grown
accustomed; "and Forsytes, you know, are people who so settle their
property that their grandchildren, in case they should die before
their parents, have to make wills leaving the property that will
only come to themselves when their parents die.  Do you follow
that?  Nor do I, but it's a fact, anyway; we live by the principle
that so long as there is a possibility of keeping wealth in the
family it must not go out; if you die unmarried, your money goes to
Jolly and Holly and their children if they marry.  Isn't it
pleasant to know that whatever you do you can none of you be
destitute?"

"But can't I borrow the money?"

Jolyon shook his head.  "You could rent a Gallery, no doubt, if you
could manage it out of your income."

June uttered a contemptuous sound.

"Yes; and have no income left to help anybody with."

"My dear child," murmured Jolyon, "wouldn't it come to the same
thing?"

"No," said June shrewdly, "I could buy for ten thousand; that would
only be four hundred a year.  But I should have to pay a thousand a
year rent, and that would only leave me five hundred.  If I had the
Gallery, Dad, think what I could do.  I could make Eric Cobbley's
name in no time, and ever so many others."

"Names worth making make themselves in time."

"When they're dead."

"Did you ever know anybody living, my dear, improved by having his
name made?"

"Yes, you," said June, pressing his arm.

Jolyon started.  'I?' he thought.  'Oh!  Ah!  Now she's going to
ask me to do something.  We take it out, we Forsytes, each in our
different ways.'

June came closer to him in the cab.

"Darling," she said, "you buy the Gallery, and I'll pay you four
hundred a year for it.  Then neither of us will be any the worse
off.  Besides, it's a splendid investment."

Jolyon wriggled.  "Don't you think," he said, "that for an artist
to buy a Gallery is a bit dubious?  Besides, ten thousand pounds is
a lump, and I'm not a commercial character."

June looked at him with admiring appraisement.

"Of course you're not, but you're awfully businesslike.  And I'm
sure we could make it pay.  It'll be a perfect way of scoring off
those wretched dealers and people."  And again she squeezed her
father's arm.

Jolyon's face expressed quizzical despair.

"Where is this desirable Gallery?  Splendidly situated, I suppose?"

"Just off Cork Street."

'Ah!'  thought Jolyon, 'I knew it was just off somewhere.  Now for
what I want out of her!'

"Well, I'll think of it, but not just now.  You remember Irene?  I
want you to come with me and see her.  Soames is after her again.
She might be safer if we could give her asylum somewhere."

The word asylum, which he had used by chance, was of all most
calculated to rouse June's interest.

"Irene!  I haven't seen her since!  Of course!  I'd love to help
her."

It was Jolyon's turn to squeeze her arm, in warm admiration for
this spirited, generous-hearted little creature of his begetting.

"Irene is proud," he said, with a sidelong glance, in sudden doubt
of June's discretion; "she's difficult to help.  We must tread
gently.  This is the place.  I wired her to expect us.  Let's send
up our cards."

"I can't bear Soames," said June as she got out; "he sneers at
everything that isn't successful"

Irene was in what was called the 'Ladies' drawing-room' of the
Piedmont Hotel.

Nothing if not morally courageous, June walked straight up to her
former friend, kissed her cheek, and the two settled down on a sofa
never sat on since the hotel's foundation.  Jolyon could see that
Irene was deeply affected by this simple forgiveness.

"So Soames has been worrying you?" he said.

"I had a visit from him last night; he wants me to go back to him."

"You're not going, of course?" cried June.

Irene smiled faintly and shook her head.  "But his position is
horrible," she murmured.

"It's his own fault; he ought to have divorced you when he could."

Jolyon remembered how fervently in the old days June had hoped
that no divorce would smirch her dead and faithless lover's name.

"Let us hear what Irene is going to do," he said.

Irene's lips quivered, but she spoke calmly.

"I'd better give him fresh excuse to get rid of me."

"How horrible!"   cried June.

"What else can I do?"

"Out of the question," said Jolyon very quietly, "sans amour."

He thought she was going to cry; but, getting up quickly, she half
turned her back on them, and stood regaining control of herself.

June said suddenly:

"Well, I shall go to Soames and tell him he must leave you alone.
What does he want at his age?"

"A child.  It's not unnatural"

"A child!" cried June scornfully.  "Of course!  To leave his money
to.  If he wants one badly enough let him take somebody and have
one; then you can divorce him, and he can marry her."

Jolyon perceived suddenly that he had made a mistake to bring June-
-her violent partizanship was fighting Soames' battle.

"It would be best for Irene to come quietly to us at Robin Hill,
and see how things shape."

"Of course," said June; "only...."

Irene looked full at Jolyon--in all his many attempts afterwards to
analyze that glance he never could succeed.

"No!  I should only bring trouble on you all.  I will go abroad."

He knew from her voice that this was final.  The irrelevant thought
flashed through him: 'Well, I could see her there.'  But he said:

"Don't you think you would be more helpless abroad, in case he
followed?"

"I don't know.  I can but try."

June sprang up and paced the room.  "It's all horrible," she said.
"Why should people be tortured and kept miserable and helpless year
after year by this disgusting sanctimonious law?"  But someone had
come into the room, and June came to a standstill.  Jolyon went up
to Irene:

"Do you want money?"  No.

"And would you like me to let your fiat?"

"Yes, Jolyon, please."

"When shall you be going?"

"To-morrow."

"You won't go back there in the meantime, will you?"  This he said
with an anxiety strange to himself.

"No; I've got all I want here."

"You'll send me your address?"

She put out her hand to him.  "I feel you're a rock."

"Built on sand," answered Jolyon, pressing her hand hard; "but it's
a pleasure to do anything, at any time, remember that.  And if you
change your mind....!  Come along, June; say good-bye."

June came from the window and flung her arms round Irene.

"Don't think of him," she said under her breath; "enjoy yourself,
and bless you!"

With a memory of tears in Irene's eyes, and of a smile on her lips,
they went away extremely silent, passing the lady who had
interrupted the interview and was turning over the papers on the
table.

Opposite the National Gallery June exclaimed:

"Of all undignified beasts and horrible laws!"

But Jolyon did not respond.  He had something of his father's
balance, and could see things impartially even when his emotions
were roused.  Irene was right; Soames' position was as bad or worse
than her own.  As for the law--it catered for a human nature of
which it took a naturally low view.  And, feeling that if he stayed
in his daughter's company he would in one way or another commit an
indiscretion, he told her he must catch his train back to Oxford;
and hailing a cab, left her to Turner's water-colours, with the
promise that he would think over that Gallery.

But he thought over Irene instead.  Pity, they said, was akin to
love!  If so he was certainly in danger of loving her, for he
pitied her profoundly.  To think of her drifting about Europe so
handicapped and lonely!  'I hope to goodness she'll keep her head!'
he thought; 'she might easily grow desperate.'  In fact, now that
she had cut loose from her poor threads of occupation, he couldn't
imagine how she would go on--so beautiful a creature, hopeless, and
fair game for anyone!  In his exasperation was more than a little
fear and jealousy.  Women did strange things when they were driven
into corners.  'I wonder what Soames will do now!'  he thought.  'A
rotten, idiotic state of things!  And I suppose they would say it
was her own fault.'  Very preoccupied and sore at heart, he got
into his train, mislaid his ticket, and on the platform at Oxford
took his hat off to a lady whose face he seemed to remember without
being able to put a name to her, not even when he saw her having
tea at the Rainbow.




CHAPTER IV

WHERE FORSYTES FEAR TO TREAD


Quivering from the defeat of his hopes, with the green morocco case
still flat against his heart, Soames revolved thoughts bitter as
death.  A spider's web!  Walking fast, and noting nothing in the
moonlight, he brooded over the scene he had been through, over the
memory of her figure rigid in his grasp.  And the more he brooded,
the more certain he became that she had a lover--her words, 'I
would sooner die!' were ridiculous if she had not.  Even if she had
never loved him, she had made no fuss until Bosinney came on the
scene.  No; she was in love again, or she would not have made that
melodramatic answer to his proposal, which in all the circumstances
was reasonable!  Very well!  That simplified matters.

'I'll take steps to know where I am,' he thought; 'I'll go to
Polteed's the first thing tomorrow morning.'

But even in forming that resolution he knew he would have trouble
with himself.  He had employed Polteed's agency several times in
the routine of his profession, even quite lately over Dartie's
case, but he had never thought it possible to employ them to watch
his own wife.

It was too insulting to himself!

He slept over that project and his wounded pride--or rather, kept
vigil.  Only while shaving did he suddenly remember that she called
herself by her maiden name of Heron.  Polteed would not know, at
first at all events, whose wife she was, would not look at him
obsequiously and leer behind his back.  She would just be the wife
of one of his clients.  And that would be true--for was he not his
own solicitor?

He was literally afraid not to put his design into execution at the
first possible moment, lest, after all, he might fail himself.  And
making Warmson bring him an early cup of coffee; he stole out of
the house before the hour of breakfast.  He walked rapidly to one
of those small West End streets where Polteed's and other firms
ministered to the virtues of the wealthier classes.  Hitherto he
had always had Polteed to see him in the Poultry; but he well knew
their address, and reached it at the opening hour.  In the outer
office, a room furnished so cosily that it might have been a
money-lender's, he was attended by a lady who might have been a
schoolmistress.

"I wish to see Mr. Claud Polteed.  He knows me--never mind my
name."

To keep everybody from knowing that he, Soames Forsyte, was reduced
to having his wife spied on, was the overpowering consideration.

Mr. Claud Polteed--so different from Mr. Lewis Polteed--was one of
those men with dark hair, slightly curved noses, and quick brown
eyes, who might be taken for Jews but are really Phoenicians; he
received Soames in a room hushed by thickness of carpet and
curtains.  It was, in fact, confidentially furnished, without trace
of document anywhere to be seen.

Greeting Soames deferentially, he turned the key in the only door
with a certain ostentation.

"If a client sends for me," he was in the habit of saying, "he
takes what precaution he likes.  If he comes here, we convince him
that we have no leakages.  I may safely say we lead in security, if
in nothing else...."  "Now, sir, what can I do for you?"

Soames' gorge had risen so that he could hardly speak.  It was
absolutely necessary to hide from this man that he had any but
professional interest in the matter; and, mechanically, his face
assumed its sideway smile.

"I've come to you early like this because there's not an hour to
lose"--if he lost an hour he might fail himself yet!  "Have you a
really trustworthy woman free?"

Mr. Polteed unlocked a drawer, produced a memorandum, ran his eyes
over it, and locked the drawer up again.

"Yes," he said; "the very woman."

Soames had seated himself and crossed his legs--nothing but a faint
flush, which might have been his normal complexion, betrayed him.

"Send her off at once, then, to watch a Mrs. Irene Heron of Flat C,
Truro Mansions, Chelsea, till further notice."

"Precisely," said Mr. Polteed; "divorce, I presume?" and he blew
into a speaking-tube.  "Mrs. Blanch in?  I shall want to speak to
her in ten minutes."

"Deal with any reports yourself," resumed Soames, "and send them to
me personally, marked confidential, sealed and registered.  My
client exacts the utmost secrecy."

Mr. Polteed smiled, as though saying, 'You are teaching your
grandmother, my dear sir; and his eyes slid over Soames' face for
one unprofessional instant.

"Make his mind perfectly easy," he said.  "Do you smoke?"

"No," said Soames.  "Understand me: Nothing may come of this.  If a
name gets out, or the watching is suspected, it may have very
serious consequences."

Mr. Polteed nodded.  "I can put it into the cipher category.  Under
that system a name is never mentioned; we work by numbers."

He unlocked another drawer and took out two slips of paper, wrote
on them, and handed one to Soames.

"Keep that, sir; it's your key.  I retain this duplicate.  The case
we'll call 7x.  The party watched will be 17; the watcher 19; the
Mansions 25; yourself--I should say, your firm--31; my firm 32,
myself 2.  In case you should have to mention your client in
writing I have called him 43; any person we suspect will be 47;
a second person 51.  Any special hint or instruction while we're
about it?"

"No," said Soames; "that is--every consideration compatible."

Again Mr. Polteed nodded.  "Expense?"

Soames shrugged.  "In reason," he answered curtly, and got up.
"Keep it entirely in your own hands."

"Entirely," said Mr. Polteed, appearing suddenly between him and
the door.  "I shall be seeing you in that other case before long.
Good morning, sir."  His eyes slid unprofessionally over Soames
once more, and he unlocked the door.

"Good morning," said Soames, looking neither to right nor left.

Out in the street he swore deeply, quietly, to himself.  A spider's
web, and to cut it he must use this spidery, secret, unclean
method, so utterly repugnant to one who regarded his private life
as his most sacred piece of property.  But the die was cast, he
could not go back.  And he went on into the Poultry, and locked
away the green morocco case and the key to that cipher destined to
make crystal-clear his domestic bankruptcy.

Odd that one whose life was spent in bringing to the public eye all
the private coils of property, the domestic disagreements of
others, should dread so utterly the public eye turned on his own;
and yet not odd, for who should know so well as he the whole
unfeeling process of legal regulation.

He worked hard all day.  Winifred was due at four o'clock; he was
to take her down to a conference in the Temple with Dreamer Q.C.,
and waiting for her he re-read the letter he  had caused her to
write the day of Dartie's departure, requiring him to return.


"DEAR MONTAGUE,

"I have received your letter with the news that you have left me
for ever and are on your way to Buenos Aires.  It has naturally
been a great shock.  I am taking this earliest opportunity of
writing to tell you that I am prepared to let bygones be bygones if
you will return to me at once.  I beg you to do so.  I am very much
upset, and will not say any more now.  I am sending this letter
registered to the address you left at your Club.  Please cable to
me.

"Your still affectionate wife,

"WINIFRED DARTIE."


Ugh!  What bitter humbug!  He remembered leaning over Winifred
while she copied what he had pencilled, and how she had said,
laying down her pen, "Suppose he comes, Soames!"  in such a strange
tone of voice, as if she did not know her own mind.  "He won't
come," he had answered, "till he's spent his money.  That's why we
must act at once."  Annexed to the copy of that letter was the
original of Dartie's drunken scrawl from the Iseeum Club.  Soames
could have wished it had not been so manifestly penned in liquor.
Just the sort of thing the Court would pitch on.  He seemed to hear
the Judge's voice say: "You took this seriously!  Seriously enough
to write him as you did?  Do you think he meant it?"  Never mind!
The fact was clear that Dartie had sailed and had not returned.
Annexed also was his cabled answer: "Impossible return.  Dartie."
Soames shook his head.  If the whole thing were not disposed of
within the next few months the fellow would turn up again like a
bad penny.  It saved a thousand a year at least to get rid of him,
besides all the worry to Winifred and his father.  'I must stiffen
Dreamer's back,' he thought; 'we must push it on.'

Winifred, who had adopted a kind of half-mourning which became her
fair hair and tall figure very well, arrived in James' barouche
drawn by James' pair.  Soames had not seen it in the City since his
father retired from business five years ago, and its incongruity
gave him a shock.  'Times are changing,' he thought; 'one doesn't
know what'll go next!'  Top hats even were scarcer.  He enquired
after Val.  Val, said Winifred, wrote that he was going to play
polo next term.  She thought he was in a very good set.  She added
with fashionably disguised anxiety: "Will there be much publicity
about my affair, Soames?  Must it be in the papers?  It's so bad
for him, and the girls."

With his own calamity all raw within him, Soames answered:

"The papers are a pushing lot; it's very difficult to keep things
out.  They pretend to be guarding the public's morals, and they
corrupt them with their beastly reports.  But we haven't got to
that yet.  We're only seeing Dreamer to-day on the restitution
question.  Of course he understands that it's to lead to a divorce;
but you must seem genuinely anxious to get Dartie back--you might
practice that attitude to-day."

Winifred sighed.

"Oh!  What a clown Monty's been!"   she said.

Soames gave her a sharp look.  It was clear to him that she could
not take her Dartie seriously, and would go back on the whole thing
if given half a chance.  His own instinct had been firm in this
matter from the first.  To save a little scandal now would only
bring on his sister and her children real disgrace and perhaps ruin
later on if Dartie were allowed to hang on to them, going down-hill
and spending the money James would leave his daughter.  Though it
was all tied up, that fellow would milk the settlements somehow,
and make his family pay through the nose to keep him out of
bankruptcy or even perhaps gaol!  They left the shining carriage,
with the shining horses and the shining-hatted servants on the
Embankment, and walked up to Dreamer Q.C.'s Chambers in Crown
Office Row.

"Mr. Bellby is here, sir," said the clerk; "Mr. Dreamer will be ten
minutes."

Mr. Bellby, the junior--not as junior as he might have been, for
Soames only employed barristers of established reputation; it was,
indeed, something of a mystery to him how barristers ever managed
to establish that which made him employ them--Mr. Bellby was
seated, taking a final glance through his papers.  He had come from
Court, and was in wig and gown, which suited a nose jutting out
like the handle of a tiny pump, his small shrewd blue eyes, and
rather protruding lower lip--no better man to supplement and
stiffen Dreamer.

The introduction to Winifred accomplished, they leaped the weather
and spoke of the war.  Soames interrupted suddenly:

"If he doesn't comply we can't bring proceedings for six months.  I
want to get on with the matter, Bellby."

Mr. Bellby, who had the ghost of an Irish brogue, smiled at
Winifred and murmured: "The Law's delays, Mrs. Dartie."

"Six months!" repeated Soames; "it'll drive it up to June!  We
shan't get the suit on till after the long vacation.  We must put
the screw on, Bellby"--he would have all his work cut out to keep
Winifred up to the scratch.

"Mr. Dreamer will see you now, sir."

They filed in, Mr. Bellby going first, and Soames escorting
Winifred after an interval of one minute by his watch.

Dreamer Q.C., in a gown but divested of wig, was standing before
the fire, as if this conference were in the nature of a treat; he
had the leathery, rather oily complexion which goes with great
learning, a considerable nose with glasses perched on it, and
little greyish whiskers; he luxuriated in the perpetual cocking of
one eye, and the concealment of his lower with his upper lip, which
gave a smothered turn to his speech.  He had a way, too, of coming
suddenly round the corner on the person he was talking to; this,
with a disconcerting tone of voice, and a habit of growling before
he began to speak--had secured a reputation second in Probate and
Divorce to very few.  Having listened, eye cocked, to Mr. Bellby's
breezy recapitulation of the facts, he growled, and said:

"I know all that;" and coming round the corner at Winifred,
smothered the words:

"We want to get him back, don't we, Mrs. Dartie?"

Soames interposed sharply:

"My sister's position, of course, is intolerable."

Dreamer growled.  "Exactly.  Now, can we rely on the cabled
refusal, or must we wait till after Christmas to give him a chance
to have written--that's the point, isn't it?"

"The sooner...."  Soames began.

"What do you say, Bellby?" said Dreamer, coming round his corner.

Mr. Bellby seemed to sniff the air like a hound.

"We won't be on till the middle of December.  We've no need to give
um more rope than that."

"No," said Soames, "why should my sister be incommoded by his
choosing to go"

"To Jericho!" said Dreamer, again coming round his corner; "quite
so.  People oughtn't to go to Jericho, ought they, Mrs. Dartie?"
And he raised his gown into a sort of fantail.  "I agree.  We can
go forward.  Is there anything more?"

"Nothing at present," said Soames meaningly; "I wanted you to see
my sister."

Dreamer growled softly: "Delighted.  Good evening!"  And let fall
the protection of his gown.

They filed out.  Winifred went down the stairs.  Soames lingered.
In spite of himself he was impressed by Dreamer.

"The evidence is all right, I think," he said to Bellby.  "Between
ourselves, if we don't get the thing through quick, we never may.
D'you think be understands that?"

"I'll make um," said Bellby.  "Good man though--good man."

Soames nodded and hastened after his sister.  He found her in a
draught, biting her lips behind her veil, and at once said:

"The evidence of the stewardess will be very complete."

Winifred's face hardened; she drew herself up, and they walked to
the carriage.  And, all through that silent drive back to Green
Street, the souls of both of them revolved a single thought: 'Why,
oh! why should I have to expose my misfortune to the public like
this?  Why have to employ spies to peer into my private troubles?
They were not of my making.'




CHAPTER V

JOLLY SITS IN JUDGMENT


The possessive instinct, which, so determinedly balked, was
animating two members of the Forsyte family towards riddance of
what they could no longer possess, was hardening daily in the
British body politic.  Nicholas, originally so doubtful concerning
a war which must affect property, had been heard to say that these
Boers were a pig-headed lot; they were causing a lot of expense,
and the sooner they had their lesson the better.  He would send out
Wolseley!  Seeing always a little further than other people--whence
the most considerable fortune of all the Forsytes--he had perceived
already that Buller was not the man--'a bull of a chap, who just
went butting, and if they didn't look out Ladysmith would fall.'
This was early in December, so that when Black Week came, he was
enabled to say to everybody: 'I told you so.'  During that week of
gloom such as no Forsyte could remember, very young Nicholas
attended so many drills in his corps, 'The Devil's Own,' that young
Nicholas consulted the family physician about his son's health and
was alarmed to find that he was perfectly sound.  The boy had only
just eaten his dinners and been called to the bar, at some expense,
and it was in a way a nightmare to his father and mother that he
should be playing with military efficiency at a time when military
efficiency in the civilian population might conceivably be wanted.
His grandfather, of course, pooh-poohed the notion, too thoroughly
educated in the feeling that no British war could be other than
little and professional, and profoundly distrustful of Imperial
commitments, by which, moreover, he stood to lose, for he owned De
Beers, now going down fast, more than a sufficient sacrifice on the
part of his grandson.

At Oxford, however, rather different sentiments prevailed.  The
inherent effervescence of conglomerate youth had, during the two
months of the term before Black Week, been gradually crystallising
out into vivid oppositions.  Normal adolescence, ever in England of
a conservative tendency though not taking things too seriously, was
vehement for a fight to a finish and a good licking for the Boers.
Of this larger faction Val Dartie was naturally a member.  Radical
youth, on the other hand, a small but perhaps more vocal body, was
for stopping the war and giving the Boers autonomy.  Until Black
Week, however, the groups were amorphous, without sharp edges, and
argument remained but academic.  Jolly was one of those who knew
not where he stood.  A streak of his grandfather old Jolyon's love
of justice prevented, him from seeing one side only.  Moreover, in
his set of 'the best' there was a 'jumping-Jesus' of extremely
advanced opinions and some personal magnetism.  Jolly wavered.  His
father, too, seemed doubtful in his views.  And though, as was
proper at the age of twenty, he kept a sharp eye on his father,
watchful for defects which might still be remedied, still that
father had an 'air' which gave a sort of glamour to his creed of
ironic tolerance.  Artists of course; were notoriously Hamlet-like,
and to this extent one must discount for one's father, even if one
loved him.  But Jolyon's original view, that to 'put your nose in
where you aren't wanted' (as the Uitlanders had done) 'and then
work the oracle till you get on top is not being quite the clean
potato,' had, whether founded in fact or no, a certain attraction
for his son, who thought a deal about gentility.  On the other hand
Jolly could not abide such as his set called 'cranks,' and Val's
set called 'smugs,' so that he was still balancing when the clock
of Black Week struck.  One--two--three, came those ominous repulses
at Stormberg, Magersfontein, Colenso.  The sturdy English soul
reacting after the first cried, 'Ah! but Methuen!' after the
second: 'Ah! but Buller!' then, in inspissated gloom, hardened.
And Jolly said to himself: 'No, damn it!  We've got to lick the
beggars now; I don't care whether we're right or wrong.'  And, if
he had known it, his father was thinking the same thought.

That next Sunday, last of the term, Jolly was bidden to wine with
'one of the best.'  After the second toast, 'Buller and damnation
to the Boers,' drunk--no heel taps--in the college Burgundy, he
noticed that Val Dartie, also a guest, was looking at him with a
grin and saying something to his neighbour.  He was sure it was
disparaging.  The last boy in the world to make himself conspicuous
or cause public disturbance, Jolly grew rather red and shut his
lips.  The queer hostility he had always felt towards his second-
cousin was strongly and suddenly reinforced.  'All right!'  he
thought, 'you wait, my friend!'  More wine than was good for him,
as the custom was, helped him to remember, when they all trooped
forth to a secluded spot, to touch Val on the arm.

"What did you say about me in there?"

"Mayn't I say what I like?"

"No."

"Well, I said you were a pro-Boer--and so you are!"

"You're a liar!"

"D'you want a row?"

"Of course, but not here; in the garden."

"All right.  Come on."

They went, eyeing each other askance, unsteady, and unflinching;
they climbed the garden railings.  The spikes on the top slightly
ripped Val's sleeve, and occupied his mind.  Jolly's mind was
occupied by the thought that they were going to fight in the
precincts of a college foreign to them both.  It was not the thing,
but never mind--the young beast!

They passed over the grass into very nearly darkness, and took off
their coats.

"You're not screwed, are you?" said Jolly suddenly.  "I can't fight
you if you're screwed."

"No more than you."

"All right then."

Without shaking hands, they put themselves at once into postures of
defence.  They had drunk too much for science, and so were
especially careful to assume correct attitudes, until Jolly smote
Val almost accidentally on the nose.  After that it was all a dark
and ugly scrimmage in the deep shadow of the old trees, with no one
to call 'time,' till, battered and blown, they unclinched and
staggered back from each other, as a voice said:

"Your names, young gentlemen?"

At this bland query spoken from under the lamp at the garden gate,
like some demand of a god, their nerves gave way, and snatching up
their coats, they ran at the railings, shinned up them, and made
for the secluded spot whence they had issued to the fight.  Here,
in dim light, they mopped their faces, and without a word walked,
ten paces apart, to the college gate.  They went out silently, Val
going towards the Broad along the Brewery, Jolly down the lane
towards the High.  His head, still fumed, was busy with regret that
he had not displayed more science, passing in review the counters
and knockout blows which he had not delivered.  His mind strayed on
to an imagined combat, infinitely unlike that which he had just
been through, infinitely gallant, with sash and sword, with thrust
and parry, as if he were in the pages of his beloved Dumas.  He
fancied himself La Mole, and Aramis, Bussy, Chicot, and D'Artagnan
rolled into one, but he quite failed to envisage Val as Coconnas,
Brissac, or Rochefort.  The fellow was just a confounded cousin who
didn't come up to Cocker.  Never mind!  He had given him one or
two.  'Pro-Boer!'  The word still rankled, and thoughts of en-
listing jostled his aching head; of riding over the veldt, firing
gallantly, while the Boers rolled over like rabbits.  And, turning
up his smarting eyes, he saw the stars shining between the house-
tops of the High, and himself lying out on the Karoo (whatever that
was) rolled in a blanket, with his rifle ready and his gaze fixed
on a glittering heaven.

He had a fearful 'head' next morning, which he doctored, as became
one of 'the best,' by soaking it in cold water, brewing strong
coffee which he could not drink, and only sipping a little Hock at
lunch.  The legend that 'some fool' had run into him round a corner
accounted for a bruise on his cheek.  He would on no account have
mentioned the fight, for; on second thoughts, it fell far short of
his standards.

The next day he went 'down,' and travelled through to Robin Hill.
Nobody was there but June and Holly, for his father had gone to
Paris.  He spent a restless and unsettled Vacation, quite out of
touch with either of his sisters.  June, indeed, was occupied with
lame ducks, whom, as a rule, Jolly could not stand, especially that
Eric Cobbley and his family, 'hopeless outsiders,' who were always
littering up the house in the Vacation.  And between Holly and
himself there was a strange division, as if she were beginning to
have opinions of her own, which was so--unnecessary.  He punched
viciously at a ball, rode furiously but alone in Richmond Park,
making a point of jumping the stiff, high hurdles put up to close
certain worn avenues of grass--keeping his nerve in, he called it.
Jolly was more afraid of being afraid than most boys are.  He
bought a rifle, too, and put a range up in the home field, shooting
across the pond into the kitchen--garden wall, to the peril of
gardeners, with the thought that some day, perhaps, he would enlist
and save South Africa for his country.  In fact, now that they were
appealing for Yeomanry recruits the boy was thoroughly upset.
Ought he to go?  None of 'the best,' so far as he knew--and he was
in correspondence with several--were thinking of joining.  If they
had been making a move he would have gone at once--very compet-
itive, and with a strong sense of form, he could not bear to be
left behind in anything--but to do it off his own bat might look
like 'swagger'; because of course it wasn't really necessary.
Besides, he did not want to go, for the other side of this young
Forsyte recoiled from leaping before he looked.  It was altogether
mixed pickles within him, hot and sickly pickles, and he became
quite unlike his serene and rather lordly self.

And then one day he saw that which moved him to uneasy wrath--two
riders, in a glade of the Park close to the Ham Gate, of whom she
on the left-hand was most assuredly Holly on her silver roan, and
he on the right-hand as assuredly that 'squirt' Val Dartie.  His
first impulse was to urge on his own horse and demand the meaning
of this portent, tell the fellow to 'bunk,' and take Holly home.
His second-to feel that he would look a fool if they refused.  He
reined his horse in behind a tree, then perceived that it was
equally impossible to spy on them.  Nothing for it but to go home
and await her coming!  Sneaking out with that young bounder!  He
could not consult with June, because she had gone up that morning
in the train of Eric Cobbley and his lot.  And his father was still
in 'that rotten Paris.'  He felt that this was emphatically one of
those moments for which he had trained himself, assiduously, at
school, where he and a boy called Brent had frequently set fire to
newspapers and placed them in the centre of their studies to
accustom them to coolness in moments of danger.  He did not feel at
all cool waiting in the stable-yard, idly stroking the dog
Balthasar, who queasy as an old fat monk, and sad in the absence of
his master, turned up his face, panting with gratitude for this
attention.  It was half an hour before Holly came, flushed and ever
so much prettier than she had any right to look.  He saw her look
at him quickly--guiltily of course--then followed her in, and,
taking her arm, conducted her into what had been their grand-
father's study.  The room, not much used now, was still vaguely
haunted for them both by a presence with which they associated
tenderness, large drooping white moustaches, the scent of cigar
smoke, and laughter.  Here Jolly, in the prime of his youth, before
he went to school at all, had been wont to wrestle with his grand-
father, who even at eighty had an irresistible habit of crooking
his leg.  Here Holly, perched on the arm of the great leather
chair, had stroked hair curving silvery over an ear into which she
would whisper secrets.  Through that window they had all three
sallied times without number to cricket on the lawn, and a
mysterious game called 'Wopsy-doozle,' not to be understood by
outsiders, which made old Jolyon very hot.  Here once on a warm
night Holly had appeared in her 'nighty,' having had a bad dream,
to have the clutch of it released.  And here Jolly, having begun
the day badly by introducing fizzy magnesia into Mademoiselle
Beauce's new-laid egg, and gone on to worse, had been sent down (in
the absence of his father) to the ensuing dialogue:

"Now, my boy, you mustn't go on like this."

"Well, she boxed my ears, Gran, so I only boxed hers, and then she
boxed mine again."

"Strike a lady?  That'll never do!  Have you begged her pardon?"

"Not yet."

"Then you must go and do it at once.  Come along."

"But she began it, Gran; and she had two to my one."

"My dear, it was an outrageous thing to do."

"Well, she lost her temper; and I didn't lose mine."

"Come along."

"You come too, then, Gran."

"Well--this time only."

And they had gone hand in hand.

Here--where the Waverley novels and Byron's works and Gibbon's
Roman Empire and Humboldt's Cosmos, and the bronzes on the
mantelpiece, and that masterpiece of the oily school, 'Dutch
Fishing-Boats at Sunset,' were fixed as fate, and for all sign of
change old Jolyon might have been sitting there still, with legs
crossed, in the arm chair, and domed forehead and deep eyes grave
above The Times--here they came, those two grandchildren.  And
Jolly said:

"I saw you and that fellow in the Park."

The sight of blood rushing into her cheeks gave him some
satisfaction; she ought to be ashamed!

"Well?" she said.

Jolly was surprised; he had expected more, or less.

"Do you know," he said weightily, "that he called me a pro-Boer
last term?  And I had to fight him."

"Who won?"

Jolly wished to answer: 'I should have,' but it seemed beneath him.

"Look here!" he said, "what's the meaning of it?  Without telling
anybody!"

"Why should I?  Dad isn't here; why shouldn't I ride with him?"

"You've got me to ride with.  I think he's an awful young rotter."

Holly went pale with anger.

"He isn't.  It's your own fault for not liking him."

And slipping past her brother she went out, leaving him staring at
the bronze Venus sitting on a tortoise, which had been shielded
from him so far by his sister's dark head under her soft felt
riding hat.  He felt queerly disturbed, shaken to his young
foundations.  A lifelong domination lay shattered round his feet.
He went up to the Venus and mechanically inspected the tortoise.

Why didn't he like Val Dartie?  He could not tell.  Ignorant of
family history, barely aware of that vague feud which had started
thirteen years before with Bosinney's defection from June in favour
of Soames' wife, knowing really almost nothing about Val he was at
sea.  He just did dislike him.  The question, however, was: What
should he do?  Val Dartie, it was true, was a second-cousin, but it
was not the thing for Holly to go about with him.  And yet to
'tell' of what he had chanced on was against his creed.  In this
dilemma he went and sat in the old leather chair and crossed his
legs.  It grew dark while he sat there staring out through the long
window at the old oak-tree, ample yet bare of leaves, becoming
slowly just a shape of deeper dark printed on the dusk.

'Grandfather!' he thought without sequence, and took out his watch.
He could not see the hands, but he set the repeater going.  'Five
o'clock!'  His grandfather's first gold hunter watch, butter-smooth
with age--all the milling worn from it, and dented with the mark of
many a fall.  The chime was like a little voice from out of that
golden age, when they first came from St.  John's Wood, London, to
this house--came driving with grandfather in his carriage, and
almost instantly took to the trees.  Trees to climb, and grand-
father watering the geranium-beds below!  What was to be done?
Tell Dad he must come home?  Confide in June?--only she was so--so
sudden!  Do nothing and trust to luck?  After all, the Vac.  would
soon be over.  Go up and see Val and warn him off?  But how get his
address?  Holly wouldn't give it him!  A maze of paths, a cloud of
possibilities!  He lit a cigarette.  When he had smoked it halfway
through his brow relaxed, almost as if some thin old hand had been
passed gently over it; and in his ear something seemed to whisper:
'Do nothing; be nice to Holly, be nice to her, my dear!'  And Jolly
heaved a sigh of contentment, blowing smoke through his,
nostrils....

But up in her room, divested of her habit, Holly was still
frowning.  'He is not--he is not!'  were the words which kept
forming on her lips.




CHAPTER VI

JOLYON IN TWO MINDS


A little private hotel over a well-known restaurant near the Gare
St. Lazare was Jolyon's haunt in Paris.  He hated his fellow
Forsytes abroad--vapid as fish out of water in their well-trodden
runs, the Opera, Rue de Rivoli, and Moulin Rouge.  Their air of
having come because they wanted to be somewhere else as soon as
possible annoyed him.  But no other Forsyte came near this haunt,
where he had a wood fire in his bedroom and the coffee was excel-
lent.  Paris was always to him more attractive in winter.  The
acrid savour from woodsmoke and chestnut-roasting braziers, the
sharpness of the wintry sunshine on bright rays, the open cafes
defying keen-aired winter, the self-contained brisk boulevard
crowds, all informed him that in winter Paris possessed a soul
which, like a migrant bird, in high summer flew away.

He spoke French well, had some friends, knew little places where
pleasant dishes could be met with, queer types observed.  He felt
philosophic in Paris, the edge of irony sharpened; life took on a
subtle, purposeless meaning, became a bunch of flavours tasted, a
darkness shot with shifting gleams of light.

When in the first week of December he decided to go to Paris, he
was far from admitting that Irene's presence was influencing him.
He had not been there two days before he owned that the wish to see
her had been more than half the reason.  In England one did not
admit what was natural.  He had thought it might be well to speak
to her about the letting of her flat and other matters, but in
Paris he at once knew better.  There was a glamour over the city.
On the third day he wrote to her, and received an answer which
procured him a pleasurable shiver of the nerves:


"MY DEAR JOLYON,

"It will be a happiness for me to see you.

" IRENE."


He took his way to her hotel on a bright day with a feeling such as
he had often had going to visit an adored picture.  No woman, so
far as he remembered, had ever inspired in him this special sen-
suous and yet impersonal sensation.  He was going to sit and feast
his eyes, and come away knowing her no better, but ready to go and
feast his eyes again to-morrow.  Such was his feeling, when in the
tarnished and ornate little lounge of a quiet hotel near the river
she came to him preceded by a small page-boy who uttered the word,
"Madame," and vanished.  Her face, her smile, the poise of her
figure, were just as he had pictured, and the expression of her
face said plainly: 'A friend!'

"Well," he said, "what news, poor exile?"

"None."

"Nothing from Soames?"

"Nothing."

"I have let the flat for you, and like a good steward I bring you
some money.  How do you like Paris?"

While he put her through this catechism, it seemed to him that he
had never seen lips so fine and sensitive, the lower lip curving
just a little upwards, the upper touched at one corner by the least
conceivable dimple.  It was like discovering a woman in what had
hitherto been a sort of soft and breathed-on statue, almost
impersonally admired.  She owned that to be alone in Paris was a
little difficult; and yet, Paris was so full of its own life that
it was often, she confessed, as innocuous as a desert.  Besides,
the English were not liked just now!

"That will hardly be your case," said Jolyon; "you should appeal to
the French."

"It has its disadvantages."

Jolyon nodded.

"Well, you must let me take you about while I'm here.  We'll start
to-morrow.  Come and dine at my pet restaurant; and we'll go to the
Opera-Comique."

It was the beginning of daily meetings.

Jolyon soon found that for those who desired a static condition of
the affections, Paris was at once the first and last place in which
to be friendly with a pretty woman.  Revelation was alighting like
a bird in his heart, singing: 'Elle est ton reve!  Elle est ton
reve!  Sometimes this seemed natural, sometimes ludicrous--a bad
case of elderly rapture.  Having once been ostracised by Society,
he had never since had any real regard for conventional morality;
but the idea of a love which she could never return--and how could
she at his age?--hardly mounted beyond his subconscious mind.  He
was full, too, of resentment, at the waste and loneliness of her
life.  Aware of being some comfort to her, and of the pleasure she
clearly took in their many little outings, he was amiably desirous
of doing and saying nothing to destroy that pleasure.  It was like
watching a starved plant draw up water, to see her drink--in his
companionship.  So far as they could tell, no one knew her address
except himself; she was unknown in Paris, and he but little known,
so that discretion seemed unnecessary in those walks, talks, visits
to concerts, picture-galleries, theatres, little dinners,
expeditions to Versailles, St. Cloud, even Fontainebleau.  And time
fled--one of those full months without past to it or future.  What
in his youth would certainly have been headlong passion, was now
perhaps as deep a feeling, but far gentler, tempered to protective
companionship by admiration, hopelessness, and a sense of chivalry-
-arrested in his veins at least so long as she was there, smiling
and happy in their friendship, and always to him more beautiful and
spiritually responsive: for her philosophy of life seemed to march
in admirable step with his own, conditioned by emotion more than by
reason, ironically mistrustful, susceptible to beauty, almost
passionately humane and tolerant, yet subject to instinctive
rigidities of which as a mere man he was less capable.  And during
all this companionable month he never quite lost that feeling with
which he had set out on the first day as if to visit an adored work
of art, a well-nigh impersonal desire.  The future--inexorable
pendant to the present he took care not to face, for fear of
breaking up his untroubled manner; but he made plans to renew this
time in places still more delightful, where the sun was hot and
there were strange things to see and paint.  The end came swiftly
on the 20th of January with a telegram:


"Have enlisted in Imperial Yeomanry.
JOLLY."


Jolyon received it just as he was setting out to meet her at the
Louvre.  It brought him up with a round turn.  While he was lotus-
eating here, his boy, whose philosopher and guide he ought to be,
had taken this great step towards danger, hardship, perhaps even
death.  He felt disturbed to the soul, realising suddenly how Irene
had twined herself round the roots of his being.  Thus threatened
with severance, the tie between them--for it had become a kind of
tie--no longer had impersonal quality.  The tranquil enjoyment of
things in common, Jolyon perceived, was gone for ever.  He saw his
feeling as it was, in the nature of an infatuation.  Ridiculous,
perhaps, but so real that sooner or later it must disclose itself.
And now, as it seemed to him, he could not, must not, make any such
disclosure.  The news of Jolly stood inexorably in the way.  He was
proud of this enlistment; proud of his boy for going off to fight
for the country; for on Jolyon's pro-Boerism, too, Black Week had
left its mark.  And so the end was reached before the beginning!
Well, luckily he had never made a sign!

When he came into the Gallery she was standing before the 'Virgin
of the Rocks,' graceful, absorbed, smiling and unconscious.  'Have
I to give up seeing that?' he thought.  'It's unnatural, so long as
she's willing that I should see her.'  He stood, unnoticed,
watching her, storing up the image of her figure, envying the
picture on which she was bending that long scrutiny.  Twice she
turned her head towards the entrance, and he thought: 'That's for
me!'  At last he went forward.

"Look!" he said.

She read the telegram, and he heard her sigh.

That sigh, too, was for him!  His position was really cruel!  To be
loyal to his son he must just shake her hand and go.  To be loyal
to the feeling in his heart he must at least tell her what that
feeling was.  Could she, would she understand the silence in which
he was gazing at that picture?

"I'm afraid I must go home at once," he said at last.  "I shall
miss all this awfully."

"So shall I; but, of course, you must go."

"Well!" said Jolyon holding out his hand.

Meeting her eyes, a flood of feeling nearly mastered him.

"Such is life!" he said.  "Take care of yourself, my dear!"

He had a stumbling sensation in his legs and feet, as if his brain
refused to steer him away from her.  From the doorway, he saw her
lift her hand and touch its fingers with her lips.  He raised his
hat solemnly, and did not look back again.




CHAPTER VII

DARTIE VERSUS DARTIE


The suit--Dartie versus Dartie--for restitution of those conjugal
rights concerning which Winifred was at heart so deeply undecided,
followed the laws of subtraction towards day of judgment.  This was
not reached before the Courts rose for Christmas, but the case was
third on the list when they sat again.  Winifred spent the
Christmas holidays a thought more fashionably than usual, with the
matter locked up in her low-cut bosom.  James was particularly
liberal to her that Christmas, expressing thereby his sympathy, and
relief, at the approaching dissolution of her marriage with that
'precious rascal,' which his old heart felt but his old lips could
not utter.

The disappearance of Dartie made the fall in Consols a
comparatively small matter; and as to the scandal--the real animus
he felt against that fellow, and the increasing lead which property
was attaining over reputation in a true Forsyte about to leave this
world, served to drug a mind from which all allusions to the matter
(except his own) were studiously kept.  What worried him as a
lawyer and a parent was the fear that Dartie might suddenly turn up
and obey the Order of the Court when made.  That would be a pretty
how-de-do!  The fear preyed on him in fact so much that, in
presenting Winifred with a large Christmas cheque, he said: "It's
chiefly for that chap out there; to keep him from coming back."  It
was, of course, to pitch away good money, but all in the nature of
insurance against that bankruptcy which would no longer hang over
him if only the divorce went through; and he questioned Winifred
rigorously until she could assure him that the money had been sent.
Poor woman!--it cost her many a pang to send what must find its way
into the vanity-bag of 'that creature!'  Soames, hearing of it,
shook his head.  They were not dealing with a Forsyte, reasonably
tenacious of his purpose.  It was very risky without knowing how
the land lay out there.  Still, it would look well with the Court;
and he would see that Dreamer brought it out.  "I wonder," he said
suddenly, "where that ballet goes after the Argentine"; never
omitting a chance of reminder; for he knew that Winifred still had
a weakness, if not for Dartie, at least for not laundering him in
public.  Though not good at showing admiration, he admitted that
she was behaving extremely well, with all her children at home
gaping like young birds for news of their father--Imogen just on
the point of coming out, and Val very restive about the whole
thing.  He felt that Val was the real heart of the matter to
Winifred, who certainly loved him beyond her other children.  The
boy could spoke the wheel of this divorce yet if he set his mind to
it.  And Soames was very careful to keep the proximity of the
preliminary proceedings from his nephew's ears.  He did more.  He
asked him to dine at the Remove, and over Val's cigar introduced
the subject which he knew to be nearest to his heart.

"I hear," he said, "that you want to play polo up at Oxford."

Val became less recumbent in his chair.

"Rather!" he said.

"Well," continued Soames, "that's a very expensive business.  Your
grandfather isn't likely to consent to it unless he can make sure
that he's not got any other drain on him."  And he paused to see
whether the boy understood his meaning.

Val's thick dark lashes concealed his eyes, but a slight grimace
appeared on his wide mouth, and he muttered:

"I suppose you mean my Dad!"

"Yes," said Soames; "I'm afraid it depends on whether he continues
to be a drag or not;" and said no more, letting the boy dream it
over.

But Val was also dreaming in those days of a silver-roan palfrey
and a girl riding it.  Though Crum was in town and an introduction
to Cynthia Dark to be had for the asking, Val did not ask; indeed,
he shunned Crum and lived a life strange even to himself, except in
so far as accounts with tailor and livery stable were concerned.
To his mother, his sisters, his young brother, he seemed to spend
this Vacation in 'seeing fellows,' and his evenings sleepily at
home.  They could not propose anything in daylight that did not
meet with the one response: "Sorry; I've got to see a fellow"; and
he was put to extraordinary shifts to get in and out of the house
unobserved in riding clothes; until, being made a member of the
Goat's Club, he was able to transport them there, where he could
change unregarded and slip off on his hack to Richmond Park.  He
kept his growing sentiment religiously to himself.  Not for a world
would he breathe to the 'fellows,' whom he was not 'seeing,'
anything so ridiculous from the point of view of their creed and
his.  But he could not help its destroying his other appetites.  It
was coming between him and the legitimate pleasures of youth at
last on its own in a way which must, he knew, make him a milksop in
the eyes of Crum.  All he cared for was to dress in his last-
created riding togs, and steal away to the Robin Hill Gate, where
presently the silver roan would come demurely sidling with its slim
and dark-haired rider, and in the glades bare of leaves they would
go off side by side, not talking very much, riding races sometimes,
and sometimes holding hands.  More than once of an evening, in a
moment of expansion, he had been tempted to tell his mother how
this shy sweet cousin had stolen in upon him and wrecked his
'life.'  But bitter experience, that all persons above thirty-five
were spoil-sports, prevented him.  After all, he supposed he would
have to go through with College, and she would have to 'come out,'
before they could be married; so why complicate things, so long as
he could see her?  Sisters were teasing and unsympathetic beings, a
brother worse, so there was no one to, confide in.  Ah!  And this
beastly divorce business!  What a misfortune to have a name which
other people hadn't!  If only he had been called Gordon or Scott or
Howard or something fairly common!  But Dartie--there wasn't
another in the directory!  One might as well have been named Morkin
for all the covert it afforded!  So matters went on, till one day
in the middle of January the silver-roan palfrey and its rider were
missing at the tryst.  Lingering in the cold, he debated whether he
should ride on to the house: But Jolly might be there, and the
memory of their dark encounter was still fresh within him.  One
could not be always fighting with her brother!  So he returned
dismally to town and spent an evening plunged in gloom.  At
breakfast next day he noticed that his mother had on an unfamiliar
dress and was wearing her hat.  The dress was black with a glimpse
of peacock blue, the hat black and large--she looked exceptionally
well.  But when after breakfast she said to him, "Come in here,
Val," and led the way to the drawing-room, he was at once beset by
qualms.  Winifred carefully shut the door and passed her
handkerchief over her lips; inhaling the violette de Parme with
which it had been soaked, Val thought: 'Has she found out about
Holly?'

Her voice interrupted

"Are you going to be nice to me, dear boy?" Val grinned doubtfully.

"Will you come with me this morning...."

"I've got to see...."  began Val, but something in her face stopped
him.  "I say," he said, "you don't mean ...."

"Yes, I have to go to the Court this morning."  Already!--that
d---d business which he had almost succeeded in forgetting, since
nobody ever mentioned it.  In self-commiseration he stood picking
little bits of skin off his fingers.  Then noticing that his
mother's lips were all awry, he said impulsively: "All right,
mother; I'll come.  The brutes!"   What brutes he did not know, but
the expression exactly summed up their joint feeling, and restored
a measure of equanimity.

"I suppose I'd better change into a 'shooter,"' he muttered,
escaping to his room.  He put on the 'shooter,' a higher collar, a
pearl pin, and his neatest grey spats, to a somewhat blasphemous
accompaniment.  Looking at himself in the glass, he said, "Well,
I'm damned if I'm going to show anything!" and went down.  He found
his grandfather's carriage at the door, and his mother in furs,
with the appearance of one going to a Mansion House Assembly.  They
seated themselves side by side in the closed barouche, and all the
way to the Courts of Justice Val made but one allusion to the
business in hand.  "There'll be nothing about those pearls, will
there?"

The little tufted white tails of Winifred's muff began to shiver.

"Oh, no," she said, "it'll be quite harmless to-day.  Your
grandmother wanted to come too, but I wouldn't let her.  I thought
you could take care of me.  You look so nice, Val.  Just pull your
coat collar up a little more at the back--that's right."

"If they bully you...."  began Val.

"Oh! they won't.  I shall be very cool.  It's the only way."

"They won't want me to give evidence or anything?"

"No, dear; it's all arranged."  And she patted his hand.  The
determined front she was putting on it stayed the turmoil in Val's
chest, and he busied himself in drawing his gloves off and on.  He
had taken what he now saw was the wrong pair to go with his spats;
they should have been grey, but were deerskin of a dark tan;
whether to keep them on or not he could not decide.  They arrived
soon after ten.  It was his first visit to the Law Courts, and the
building struck him at once.

"By Jove!" he said as they passed into the hall, "this'd make four
or five jolly good racket courts."

Soames was awaiting them at the foot of some stairs.

"Here you are!" he said, without shaking hands, as if the event had
made them too familiar for such formalities.  "It's Happerly
Browne, Court I.  We shall be on first."

A sensation such as he had known when going in to bat was playing
now in the top of Val's chest, but he followed his mother and uncle
doggedly, looking at no more than he could help, and thinking that
the place smelled 'fuggy.'  People seemed to be lurking everywhere,
and he plucked Soames by the sleeve.

"I say, Uncle, you're not going to let those beastly papers in, are
you?"

Soames gave him the sideway look which had reduced many to silence
in its time.

"In here," he said.  "You needn't take off your furs, Winifred."

Val entered behind them, nettled and with his head up.  In this
confounded hole everybody and there were a good many of them--
seemed sitting on everybody else's knee, though really divided from
each other by pews; and Val had a feeling that they might all slip
down together into the well.  This, however, was but a momentary
vision--of mahogany, and black gowns, and white blobs of wigs and
faces and papers, all rather secret and whispery--before he was
sitting next his mother in the front row, with his back to it all,
glad of her violette de Parme, and taking off his gloves for the
last time.  His mother was looking at him; he was suddenly
conscious that she had really wanted him there next to her, and
that he counted for something in this business.

All right!  He would show them!  Squaring his shoulders, he crossed
his legs and gazed inscrutably at his spats.  But just then an 'old
Johnny' in a gown and long wig, looking awfully like a funny
raddled woman, came through a door into the high pew opposite, and
he had to uncross his legs hastily, and stand up with everybody
else.

'Dartie versus Dartie!'

It seemed to Val unspeakably disgusting to have one's name called
out like this in public!  And, suddenly conscious that someone
nearly behind him had begun talking about his family, he screwed
his face round to see an old be-wigged buffer, who spoke as if he
were eating his own words--queer-looking old cuss, the sort of man
he had seen once or twice dining at Park Lane and punishing the
port; he knew now where they 'dug them up.'  All the same he found
the old buffer quite fascinating, and would have continued to stare
if his mother had not touched his arm.  Reduced to gazing before
him, he fixed his eyes on the Judge's face instead.  Why should
that old 'sportsman' with his sarcastic mouth and his quick-moving
eyes have the power to meddle with their private affairs--hadn't he
affairs of his own, just as many, and probably just as nasty?  And
there moved in Val, like an illness, all the deep-seated
individualism of his breed.  The voice behind him droned along:
"Differences about money matters--extravagance of the respondent"
(What a word!  Was that his father?) "strained situation--frequent
absences on the part of Mr. Dartie.  My client, very rightly, your
Ludship will agree, was anxious to check a course--but lead to
ruin--remonstrated--gambling at cards and on the racecourse--"
('That's right!' thought Val, 'pile it on!') "Crisis early in
October, when the respondent wrote her this letter from his Club."
Val sat up and his ears burned.  "I propose to read it with the
emendations necessary to the epistle of a gentleman who has been--
shall we say dining, me Lud?"

'Old brute!' thought Val, flushing deeper; 'you're not paid to make
jokes!'

"'You will not get the chance to insult me again in my own house.
I am leaving the country to-morrow.  It's played out'--an
expression, your Ludship, not unknown in the mouths of those who
have not met with conspicuous success."

'Sniggering owls!' thought Val, and his flush deepened.

"'I am tired of being insulted by you.'  My client will tell your
Ludship that these so-called insults consisted in her calling him
'the limit' a very mild expression, I venture to suggest, in all
the circumstances."

Val glanced sideways at his mother's impassive face, it had a
hunted look in the eyes.  'Poor mother,' he thought, and touched
her arm with his own.  The voice behind droned on.

"'I am going to live a new life.  M.  D.'"

"And next day, me Lud, the respondent left by the steamship
Tuscarora for Buenos Aires.  Since then we have nothing from him
but a cabled refusal in answer to the letter which my client wrote
the following day in great distress, begging him to return to her.
With your Ludship's permission.  I shall now put Mrs. Dartie in the
box."

When his mother rose, Val had a tremendous impulse to rise too and
say: 'Look here!  I'm going to see you jolly well treat her
decently.'  He subdued it, however; heard her saying, 'the truth,
the whole truth, and nothing but the truth,' and looked up.  She
made a rich figure of it, in her furs and large hat, with a slight
flush on her cheek-bones, calm, matter-of-fact; and he felt proud
of her thus confronting all these 'confounded lawyers.'  The
examination began.  Knowing that this was only the preliminary to
divorce, Val followed with a certain glee the questions framed so
as to give the impression that she really wanted his father back.
It seemed to him that they were 'foxing Old Bagwigs finely.'

And he received a most unpleasant jar when the Judge said suddenly:

"Now, why did your husband leave you--not because you called him
'the limit,' you know?"

Val saw his uncle lift his eyes to the witness box, without moving
his face; heard a shuffle of papers behind him; and instinct told
him that the issue was in peril.  Had Uncle Soames and the old
buffer behind made a mess of it?  His mother was speaking with a
slight drawl.

"No, my Lord, but it had gone on a long time."

"What had gone on?"

"Our differences about money."

"But you supplied the money.  Do you suggest that he left you to
better his position?"

'The brute!  The old brute, and nothing but the brute!'  thought
Val suddenly.  'He smells a rat he's trying to get at the pastry!'
And his heart stood still.  If--if he did, then, of course, he
would know that his mother didn't really want his father back.  His
mother spoke again, a thought more fashionably.

"No, my Lord, but you see I had refused to give him any more money.
It took him a long time to believe that, but he did at last--and
when he did...."

"I see, you had refused.  But you've sent him some since."

"My Lord, I wanted him back."

"And you thought that would bring him?"

"I don't know, my Lord, I acted on my father's advice."

Something in the Judge's face, in the sound of the papers behind
him, in the sudden crossing of his uncle's legs, told Val that she
had made just the right answer.  'Crafty!'  he thought; 'by Jove,
what humbug it all is!'

The Judge was speaking:

"Just one more question, Mrs. Dartie.  Are you still fond of your
husband?"

Val's hands, slack behind him, became fists.  What business had
that Judge to make things human suddenly?  To make his mother speak
out of her heart, and say what, perhaps, she didn't know herself,
before all these people!  It wasn't decent.  His mother answered,
rather low: "Yes, my Lord."  Val saw the Judge nod.  'Wish I could
take a cock-shy at your head!' he thought irreverently, as his
mother came back to her seat beside him.  Witnesses to his father's
departure and continued absence followed--one of their own maids
even, which struck Val as particularly beastly; there was more
talking, all humbug; and then the Judge pronounced the decree for
restitution, and they got up to go.  Val walked out behind his
mother, chin squared, eyelids drooped, doing his level best to
despise everybody.  His mother's voice in the corridor roused him
from an angry trance.

"You behaved beautifully, dear.  It was such a comfort to have you.
Your uncle and I are going to lunch."

"All right," said Val; "I shall have time to go and see that
fellow."  And, parting from them abruptly, he ran down the stairs
and out into the air.  He bolted into a hansom, and drove to the
Goat's Club.  His thoughts were on Holly and what he must do before
her brother showed her this thing in to-morrow's paper.

When Val had left them Soames and Winifred made their way to the
Cheshire Cheese.  He had suggested it as a meeting place with Mr.
Bellby.  At that early hour of noon they would have it to
themselves, and Winifred had thought it would be 'amusing' to see
this far-famed hostelry.  Having ordered a light repast, to the
consternation of the waiter, they awaited its arrival together with
that of Mr. Bellby, in silent reaction after the hour and a half's
suspense on the tenterhooks of publicity.  Mr. Bellby entered
presently, preceded by his nose, as cheerful as they were glum.
Well! they had got the decree of restitution, and what was the
matter with that!

"Quite," said Soames in a suitably low voice, "but we shall have to
begin again to get evidence.  He'll probably try the divorce--it
will look fishy if it comes out that we knew of misconduct from the
start.  His questions showed well enough that he doesn't like this
restitution dodge."

"Pho!" said Mr. Bellby cheerily, "he'll forget!  Why, man, he'll
have tried a hundred cases between now and then.  Besides, he's
bound by precedent to give ye your divorce, if the evidence is
satisfactory.  We won't let um know that Mrs. Dartie had knowledge
of the facts.  Dreamer did it very nicely--he's got a fatherly
touch about um!"

Soames nodded.

"And I compliment ye, Mrs. Dartie," went on Mr. Bellby; "ye've a
natural gift for giving evidence.  Steady as a rock."

Here the, waiter arrived with three plates balanced on one arm, and
the remark: "I 'urried up the pudden, sir.  You'll find plenty o'
lark in it to-day."

Mr. Bellby applauded his forethought with a dip of his nose.  But
Soames and Winifred looked with dismay at their light lunch of
graviffred brown masses, touching them gingerly with their forks in
the hope of distinguishing the bodies of the tasty little song-
givers.  Having begun, however, they found they were hungrier than
they thought, and finished the lot, with a glass of port apiece.
Conversation turned on the war.  Soames thought Ladysmith would
fall, and it might last a year.  Bellby thought it would be over by
the summer.  Both agreed that they wanted more men.  There was
nothing for it but complete victory, since it was now a question of
prestige.  Winifred brought things back to more solid ground by
saying that she did not want the divorce suit to come on till after
the summer holidays had begun at Oxford, then the boys would have
forgotten about it before Val had to go up again; the London season
too would be over.  The lawyers reassured her, an interval of six
months was necessary--after that the earlier the better.  People
were now beginning to come in, and they parted--Soames to the city,
Bellby to his chambers, Winifred in a hansom to Park Lane to let
her mother know how she had fared.  The issue had been so
satisfactory on the whole that it was considered advisable to tell
James, who never failed to say day after day that he didn't know
about Winifred's affair, he couldn't tell.  As his sands ran out;
the importance of mundane matters became increasingly grave to him,
as if he were feeling: 'I must make the most of it, and worry well;
I shall soon have nothing to worry about.'

He received the report grudgingly.  It was a new-fangled way of
going about things, and he didn't know!  But he gave Winifred a
cheque, saying:

"I expect you'll have a lot of expense.  That's a new hat you've
got on.  Why doesn't Val come and see us?"

Winifred promised to bring him to dinner soon.  And, going home,
she sought her bedroom where she could be alone.  Now that her
husband had been ordered back into her custody with a view to
putting him away from her for ever, she would try once more to find
out from her sore and lonely heart what she really wanted.




CHAPTER VIII

THE CHALLENGE


The morning had been misty, verging on frost, but the sun came out
while Val was jogging towards the Roehampton Gate, whence he would
canter on to the usual tryst.  His spirits were rising rapidly.
There had been nothing so very terrible in the morning's
proceedings beyond the general disgrace of violated privacy.  'If
we were engaged!'  he thought, 'what happens wouldn't matter.'  He
felt, indeed, like human society, which kicks and clamours at the
results of matrimony, and hastens to get married.  And he galloped
over the winter-dried grass of Richmond Park, fearing to be late.
But again he was alone at the trysting spot, and this second
defection on the part of Holly upset him dreadfully.  He could not
go back without seeing her to-day!  Emerging from the Park, he
proceeded towards Robin Hill.  He could not make up his mind for
whom to ask.  Suppose her father were back, or her sister or
brother were in!  He decided to gamble, and ask for them all first,
so that if he were in luck and they were not there, it would be
quite natural in the end to ask for Holly; while if any of them
were in--an 'excuse for a ride' must be his saving grace.

"Only Miss Holly is in, sir."

"Oh!  thanks.  Might I take my horse round to the stables?  And
would you say--her cousin, Mr. Val Dartie."

When he returned she was in the hall, very flushed and shy.  She
led him to the far end, and they sat down on a wide window-seat.

"I've been awfully anxious," said Val in a low voice.  "What's the
matter?"

"Jolly knows about our riding."

"Is he in?"

"No; but I expect he will be soon."

"Then!" cried Val, and diving forward, he seized her hand.  She
tried to withdraw it, failed, gave up the attempt, and looked at
him wistfully.

"First of all," he said, "I want to tell you something about my
family.  My Dad, you know, isn't altogether--I mean, he's left my
mother and they're trying to divorce him; so they've ordered him to
come back, you see.  You'll see that in the paper to-morrow."

Her eyes deepened in colour and fearful interest; her hand squeezed
his.  But the gambler in Val was roused now, and he hurried on:

"Of course there's nothing very much at present, but there will be,
I expect, before it's over; divorce suits are beastly, you know.  I
wanted to tell you, because--because--you ought to know--if--" and
he began to stammer, gazing at her troubled eyes, "if--if you're
going to be a darling and love me, Holly.  I love you--ever so; and
I want to be engaged."  He had done it in a manner so inadequate
that he could have punched his own head; and dropping on his knees,
he tried to get nearer to that soft, troubled face.  "You do love
me--don't you?  If you don't I...." There was a moment of silence
and suspense, so awful that he could hear the sound of a mowing-
machine far out on the lawn pretending there was grass to cut.
Then she swayed forward; her free hand touched his hair, and he
gasped: "Oh, Holly!"

Her answer was very soft: "Oh, Val!"

He had dreamed of this moment, but always in an imperative mood, as
the masterful young lover, and now he felt humble, touched,
trembly.  He was afraid to stir off his knees lest he should break
the spell; lest, if he did, she should shrink and deny her own
surrender--so tremulous was she in his grasp, with her eyelids
closed and his lips nearing them.  Her eyes opened, seemed to swim
a little; he pressed his lips to hers.  Suddenly he sprang up;
there had been footsteps, a sort of startled grunt.  He looked
round.  No one!  But the long curtains which barred off the outer
hall were quivering.

"My God!  Who was that?"

Holly too was on her feet.

"Jolly, I expect," she whispered.

Val clenched fists and resolution.

"All right!" he said, "I don't care a bit now we're engaged," and
striding towards the curtains, he drew them aside.  There at the
fireplace in the hall stood Jolly, with his back elaborately
turned.  Val went forward.  Jolly faced round on him.

"I beg your pardon for hearing," he said.

With the best intentions in the world, Val could not help admiring
him at that moment; his face was clear, his voice quiet, he looked
somehow distinguished, as if acting up to principle.

"Well!" Val said abruptly, "it's nothing to you."

"Oh!" said Jolly; "you come this way," and he crossed the hall.
Val followed.  At the study door he felt a touch on his arm;
Holly's voice said:

"I'm coming too."

"No," said Jolly.

"Yes," said Holly.

Jolly opened the door, and they all three went in.  Once in the
little room, they stood in a sort of triangle on three corners of
the worn Turkey carpet; awkwardly upright, not looking at each
other, quite incapable of seeing any humour in the situation.

Val broke the silence.

"Holly and I are engaged.",

Jolly stepped back and leaned against the lintel of the window.

"This is our house," he said; "I'm not going to insult you in it.
But my father's away.  I'm in charge of my sister.  You've taken
advantage of me.

"I didn't mean to," said Val hotly.

"I think you did," said Jolly.  "If you hadn't meant to, you'd have
spoken to me, or waited for my father to come back."

"There were reasons," said Val.

"What reasons?"

"About my family--I've just told her.  I wanted her to know before
things happen."

Jolly suddenly became less distinguished.

"You're kids," he said, "and you know you are.

"I am not a kid," said Val.

"You are--you're not twenty."

"Well, what are you?"

"I am twenty," said Jolly.

"Only just; anyway, I'm as good a man as you."

Jolly's face crimsoned, then clouded.  Some struggle was evidently
taking place in him; and Val and Holly stared at him, so clearly
was that struggle marked; they could even hear him breathing.  Then
his face cleared up and became oddly resolute.

"We'll see that," he said.  "I dare you to do what I'm going to
do."

"Dare me?"

Jolly smiled.  "Yes," he said, "dare you; and I know very well you
won't."

A stab of misgiving shot through Val; this was riding very blind.

"I haven't forgotten that you're a fire-eater," said Jolly slowly,
"and I think that's about all you are; or that you called me a
pro-Boer."

Val heard a gasp above the sound of his own hard breathing, and saw
Holly's face poked a little forward, very pale, with big eyes.

"Yes," went on Jolly with a sort of smile, "we shall soon see.  I'm
going to join the Imperial Yeomanry, and I dare you to do the same,
Mr. Val Dartie."

Val's head jerked on its stem.  It was like a blow between the
eyes, so utterly unthought of, so extreme and ugly in the midst of
his dreaming; and he looked at Holly with eyes grown suddenly,
touchingly haggard.

"Sit down!" said Jolly.  "Take your time!  Think it over well."
And he himself sat down on the arm of his grandfather's chair.

Val did not sit down; he stood with hands thrust deep into his
breeches' pockets-hands clenched and quivering.  The full awfulness
of this decision one way or the other knocked at his mind with
double knocks as of an angry postman.  If he did not take that
'dare' he was disgraced in Holly's eyes, and in the eyes of that
young enemy, her brute of a brother.  Yet if he took it, ah! then
all would vanish--her face, her eyes, her hair, her kisses just
begun!

"Take your time," said Jolly again; "I don't want to be unfair."

And they both looked at Holly.  She had recoiled against the
bookshelves reaching to the ceiling; her dark head leaned against
Gibbon's Roman Empire, her eyes in a sort of soft grey agony were
fixed on Val.  And he, who had not much gift of insight, had
suddenly a gleam of vision.  She would be proud of her brother--
that enemy!  She would be ashamed of him!  His hands came out of
his pockets as if lifted by a spring.

"All right!" he said.  "Done!"

Holly's face-oh! it was queer!  He saw her flush, start forward.
He had done the right thing--her face was shining with wistful
admiration.  Jolly stood up and made a little bow as who should
say: 'You've passed.'

"To-morrow, then," he said, "we'll go together."

Recovering from the impetus which had carried him to that decision,
Val looked at him maliciously from under his lashes.  'All right,'
he thought, 'one to you.  I shall have to join--but I'll get back
on you somehow.'  And he said with dignity: "I shall be ready."

"We'll meet at the main Recruiting Office, then," said Jolly, "at
twelve o'clock."  And, opening the window, he went out on to the
terrace, conforming to the creed which had made him retire when he
surprised them in the hall.

The confusion in the mind of Val thus left alone with her for whom
he had paid this sudden price was extreme.  The mood of 'showing-
off' was still, however, uppermost.  One must do the wretched thing
with an air.

"We shall get plenty of riding and shooting, anyway," he said;
"that's one comfort."  And it gave him a sort of grim pleasure to
hear the sigh which seemed to come from the bottom of her heart.

"Oh! the war'll soon be over," he said; "perhaps we shan't even
have to go out.  I don't care, except for you."  He would be out of
the way of that beastly divorce.  It was an ill-wind!  He felt her
warm hand slip into his.  Jolly thought he had stopped their loving
each other, did he?  He held her tightly round the waist, looking
at her softly through his lashes, smiling to cheer her up,
promising to come down and see her soon, feeling somehow six inches
taller and much more in command of her than he had ever dared feel
before.  Many times he kissed her before he mounted and rode back
to town.  So, swiftly, on the least provocation, does the
possessive instinct flourish and grow.




CHAPTER IX

DINNER AT JAMES'


Dinner parties were not now given at James' in Park Lane--to every
house the moment comes when Master or Mistress is no longer 'up to
it'; no more can nine courses be served to twenty mouths above
twenty fine white expanses; nor does the household cat any longer
wonder why she is suddenly shut up.

So with something like excitement Emily--who at seventy would still
have liked a little feast and fashion now and then--ordered dinner
for six instead of two, herself wrote a number of foreign words on
cards, and arranged the flowers--mimosa from the Riviera, and white
Roman hyacinths not from Rome.  There would only be, of course,
James and herself, Soames, Winifred, Val, and Imogen--but she liked
to pretend a little and dally in imagination with the glory of the
past.  She so dressed herself that James remarked:

"What are you putting on that thing for?  You'll catch cold."

But Emily knew that the necks of women are protected by love of
shining, unto fourscore years, and she only answered:

"Let me put you on one of those dickies I got you, James; then
you'll only have to change your trousers, and put on your velvet
coat, and there you'll be.  Val likes you to look nice."

"Dicky!" said James.  "You're always wasting your money on
something."

But he suffered the change to be made till his neck also shone,
murmuring vaguely:

"He's an extravagant chap, I'm afraid."

A little brighter in the eye, with rather more colour than usual in
his cheeks, he took his seat in the drawing-room to wait for the
sound of the front-door bell.

"I've made it a proper dinner party," Emily said comfortably; "I
thought it would be good practice for Imogen--she must get used to
it now she's coming out."

James uttered an indeterminate sound, thinking of Imogen as she
used to climb about his knee or pull Christmas crackers with him.

"She'll be pretty," he muttered, "I shouldn't wonder."

"She is pretty," said Emily; "she ought to make a good match."

"There you go," murmured James; "she'd much better stay at home and
look after her mother."  A second Dartie carrying off his pretty
granddaughter would finish him!  He had never quite forgiven Emily
for having been as much taken in by Montague Dartie as he himself
had been.

"Where's Warmson?" he said suddenly.  "I should like a glass of
Madeira to-night."

"There's champagne, James."

James shook his head.  "No body," he said; "I can't get any good
out of it."

Emily reached forward on her side of the fire and rang the bell.

"Your master would like a bottle of Madeira opened, Warmson."

"No, no!" said James, the tips of his ears quivering with
vehemence, and his eyes fixed on an object seen by him alone.
"Look here, Warmson, you go to the inner cellar, and on the middle
shelf of the end bin on the left you'll see seven bottles; take the
one in the centre, and don't shake it.  It's the last of the
Madeira I had from Mr. Jolyon when we came in here--never been
moved; it ought to be in prime condition still; but I don't know, I
can't tell."

"Very good, sir," responded the withdrawing Warmson.

"I was keeping it for our golden wedding," said James suddenly,
"but I shan't live three years at my age."

"Nonsense, James," said Emily, "don't talk like that."

"I ought to have got it up myself," murmured James, "he'll shake it
as likely as not."  And he sank into silent recollection of long
moments among the open gas-jets, the cobwebs and the good smell of
wine-soaked corks, which had been appetiser to so many feasts.  In
the wine from that cellar was written the history of the forty odd
years since he had come to the Park Lane house with his young
bride, and of the many generations of friends and acquaintances who
had passed into the unknown; its depleted bins preserved the record
of family festivity--all the marriages, births, deaths of his kith
and kin.  And when he was gone there it would be, and he didn't
know what would become of it.  It'd be drunk or spoiled, he
shouldn't wonder!

>From that deep reverie the entrance of his son dragged him,
followed very soon by that of Winifred and her two eldest.

They went down arm-in-arm--James with Imogen, the debutante,
because his pretty grandchild cheered him; Soames with Winifred;
Emily with Val, whose eyes lighting on the oysters brightened.
This was to be a proper full 'blowout' with 'fizz' and port!  And
he felt in need of it, after what he had done that day, as yet
undivulged.  After the first glass or two it became pleasant to
have this bombshell up his sleeve, this piece of sensational
patriotism, or example, rather, of personal daring, to display--for
his pleasure in what he had done for his Queen and Country was so
far entirely personal.  He was now a 'blood,' indissolubly
connected with guns and horses; he had a right to swagger--not, of
course, that he was going to.  He should just announce it quietly,
when there was a pause.  And, glancing down the menu, he determined
on 'Bombe aux fraises' as the proper moment; there would be a
certain solemnity while they were eating that.  Once or twice
before they reached that rosy summit of the dinner he was attacked
by remembrance that his grandfather was never told anything!
Still, the old boy was drinking Madeira, and looking jolly fit!
Besides, he ought to be pleased at this set-off to the disgrace of
the divorce.  The sight of his uncle opposite, too, was a sharp
incentive.  He was so far from being a sportsman that it would be
worth a lot to see his face.  Besides, better to tell his mother in
this way than privately, which might upset them both!  He was sorry
for her, but after all one couldn't be expected to feel much for
others when one had to part from Holly.

His grandfather's voice travelled to him thinly.  "Val, try a
little of the Madeira with your ice.  You won't get that up at
college."

Val watched the slow liquid filling his glass, the essential oil of
the old wine glazing the surface; inhaled its aroma, and thought:
'Now for it!'  It was a rich moment.  He sipped, and a gentle glow
spread in his veins, already heated.  With a rapid look round, he
said, "I joined the Imperial Yeomanry to-day, Granny," and emptied
his glass as though drinking the health of his own act.

"What!"  It was his mother's desolate little word.

"Young Jolly Forsyte and I went down there together."

"You didn't sign?" from Uncle Soames.

"Rather!  We go into camp on Monday."

"I say!" cried Imogen.

All looked at James.  He was leaning forward with his hand behind
his ear.

"What's that?" he said.  "What's he saying?  I can't hear."

Emily reached forward to pat Val's hand.

"It's only that Val has joined the Yeomanry, James; it's very nice
for him.  He'll look his best in uniform."

"Joined the--rubbish!" came from James, tremulously loud.  "You
can't see two yards before your nose.  He--he'll have to go out
there.  Why! he'll be fighting before he knows where he is."

Val saw Imogen's eyes admiring him, and his mother still and
fashionable with her handkerchief before her lips.

Suddenly his uncle spoke.

"You're under age."

"I thought of that," smiled Val; "I gave my age as twenty-one."

He heard his grandmother's admiring, "Well, Val, that was plucky of
you;" was conscious of Warmson deferentially filling his champagne
glass; and of his grandfather's voice moaning: "I don't know
what'll become of you if you go on like this."

Imogen was patting his shoulder, his uncle looking at him sidelong;
only his mother sat unmoving, till, affected by her stillness, Val
said:

"It's all right, you know; we shall soon have them on the run.  I
only hope I shall come in for something."

He felt elated, sorry, tremendously important all at once.  This
would show Uncle Soames, and all the Forsytes, how to be sportsmen.
He had certainly done something heroic and exceptional in giving
his age as twenty-one.

Emily's voice brought him back to earth.

"You mustn't have a second glass, James.  Warmson!"

"Won't they be astonished at Timothy's!" burst out Imogen.  "I'd
give anything to see their faces.  Do you have a sword, Val, or
only a popgun?"

"What made you?"

His uncle's voice produced a slight chill in the pit of Val's
stomach.  Made him?  How answer that?  He was grateful for his
grandmother's comfortable:

"Well, I think it's very plucky of Val.  I'm sure he'll make a
splendid soldier; he's just the figure for it.  We shall all be
proud of him."

"What had young Jolly Forsyte to do with it?  Why did you go
together?" pursued Soames, uncannily relentless.  "I thought you
weren't friendly with him?"

"I'm not," mumbled Val, "but I wasn't going to be beaten by him."
He saw his uncle look at him quite differently, as if approving.
His grandfather was nodding too, his grandmother tossing her head.
They all approved of his not being beaten by that cousin of his.
There must be a reason!  Val was dimly conscious of some disturbing
point outside his range of vision; as it might be, the unlocated
centre of a cyclone.  And, staring at his uncle's face, he had a
quite unaccountable vision of a woman with dark eyes, gold hair,
and a white neck, who smelt nice, and had pretty silken clothes
which he had liked feeling when he was quite small.  By Jove, yes!
Aunt Irene!  She used to kiss him, and he had bitten her arm once,
playfully, because he liked it--so soft.  His grandfather was
speaking:

"What's his father doing?"

"He's away in Paris," Val said, staring at the very queer
expression on his uncle's face, like--like that of a snarling dog.

"Artists!" said James.  The word coming from the very bottom of his
soul, broke up the dinner.

Opposite his mother in the cab going home, Val tasted the after-
fruits of heroism, like medlars over-ripe.

She only said, indeed, that he must go to his tailor's at once and
have his uniform properly made, and not just put up with what they
gave him.  But he could feel that she was very much upset.  It was
on his lips to console her with the spoken thought that he would be
out of the way of that beastly divorce, but the presence of Imogen,
and the knowledge that his mother would not be out of the way,
restrained him.  He felt aggrieved that she did not seem more proud
of him.  When Imogen had gone to bed, he risked the emotional.

"I'm awfully sorry to have to leave you, Mother."

"Well, I must make the best of it.  We must try and get you a
commission as soon as we can; then you won't have to rough it so.
Do you know any drill, Val?"

"Not a scrap."

"I hope they won't worry you much.  I must take you about to get
the things to-morrow.  Good-night; kiss me."

With that kiss, soft and hot, between his eyes, and those words, 'I
hope they won't worry you much,' in his ears, he sat down to a
cigarette, before a dying fire.  The heat was out of him--the glow
of cutting a dash.  It was all a damned heart-aching bore.  'I'll
be even with that chap Jolly,' he thought, trailing up the stairs,
past the room where his mother was biting her pillow to smother a
sense of desolation which was trying to make her sob.

And soon only one of the diners at James' was awake--Soames, in his
bedroom above his father's.

So that fellow Jolyon was in Paris--what was he doing there?
Hanging round Irene!  The last report from Polteed had hinted that
there might be something soon.  Could it be this?  That fellow,
with his beard and his cursed amused way of speaking--son of the
old man who had given him the nickname 'Man of Property,' and
bought the fatal house from him.  Soames had ever resented having
had to sell the house at Robin Hill; never forgiven his uncle for
having bought it, or his cousin for living in it.

Reckless of the cold, he threw his window up and gazed out across
the Park.  Bleak and dark the January night; little sound of
traffic; a frost coming; bare trees; a star or two.  'I'll see
Polteed to-morrow,' he thought.  'By God!  I'm mad, I think, to
want her still.  That fellow!  If...?  Um!  No!'




CHAPTER X

DEATH OF THE DOG BALTHASAR


Jolyon, who had crossed from Calais by night, arrived at Robin--
Hill on Sunday morning.  He had sent no word beforehand, so walked
up from the station, entering his domain by the coppice gate.
Coming to the log seat fashioned out of an old fallen trunk, he sat
down, first laying his overcoat on it.

'Lumbago!'  he thought; 'that's what love ends in at my time of
life!'  And suddenly Irene seemed very near, just as she had been
that day of rambling at Fontainebleau when they had sat on a log to
eat their lunch.  Hauntingly near!  Odour drawn out of fallen
leaves by the pale-filtering sunlight soaked his nostrils.  'I'm
glad it isn't spring,' he thought.  With the scent of sap, and the
song of birds, and the bursting of the blossoms, it would have been
unbearable!  'I hope I shall be over it by then, old fool that I
am!' and picking up his coat, he walked on into the field.  He
passed the pond and mounted the hill slowly.

Near the top a hoarse barking greeted him.  Up on the lawn above
the fernery he could see his old dog Balthasar.  The animal, whose
dim eyes took his master for a stranger, was warning the world
against him.  Jolyon gave his special whistle.  Even at that
distance of a hundred yards and more he could see the dawning
recognition in the obese brown-white body.  The old dog got off his
haunches, and his tail, close-curled over his back, began a feeble,
excited fluttering; he came waddling forward, gathered momentum,
and disappeared over the edge of the fernery.  Jolyon expected to
meet him at the wicket gate, but Balthasar was not there, and,
rather alarmed, he turned into the fernery.  On his fat side,
looking up with eyes already glazing, the old dog lay.

"What is it, my poor old man?" cried Jolyon.  Balthasar's curled
and fluffy tail just moved; his filming eyes seemed saying: "I
can't get up, master, but I'm glad to see you."

Jolyon knelt down; his eyes, very dimmed, could hardly see the
slowly ceasing heave of the dog's side.  He raised the head a
little--very heavy.

"What is it, dear man?  Where are you hurt?" The tail fluttered
once; the eyes lost the look of life.  Jolyon passed his hands all
over the inert warm bulk.  There was nothing--the heart had simply
failed in that obese body from the emotion of his master's return.
Jolyon could feel the muzzle, where a few whitish bristles grew,
cooling already against his lips.  He stayed for some minutes
kneeling; with his hand beneath the stiffening head.  The body was
very heavy when he bore it to the top of the field; leaves had
drifted there, and he strewed it with a covering of them; there was
no wind, and they would keep him from curious eyes until the
afternoon.  'I'll bury him myself,' he thought.  Eighteen years had
gone since he first went into the St. John's Wood house with that
tiny puppy in his pocket.  Strange that the old dog should die just
now!  Was it an omen?  He turned at the gate to look back at that
russet mound, then went slowly towards the house, very choky in the
throat.

June was at home; she had come down hotfoot on hearing the news of
Jolly's enlistment.  His patriotism had conquered her feeling for
the Boers.  The atmosphere of his house was strange and pocketty
when Jolyon came in and told them of the dog Balthasar's death.
The news had a unifying effect.  A link with the past had snapped--
the dog Balthasar!  Two of them could remember nothing before his
day; to June he represented the last years of her grandfather; to
Jolyon that life of domestic stress and aesthetic struggle before
he came again into the kingdom of his father's love and wealth!
And he was gone!

In the afternoon he and Jolly took picks and spades and went out to
the field.  They chose a spot close to the russet mound, so that
they need not carry him far, and, carefully cutting off the surface
turf, began to dig.  They dug in silence for ten minutes, and then
rested.

"Well, old man," said Jolyon, "so you thought you ought?"

"Yes," answered Jolly; "I don't want to a bit, of course."

How exactly those words represented Jolyon's own state of mind

"I admire you for it, old boy.  I don't believe I should have done
it at your age--too much of a Forsyte, I'm afraid.  But I suppose
the type gets thinner with each generation.  Your son, if you have
one, may be a pure altruist; who knows?"

"He won't be like me, then, Dad; I'm beastly selfish."

"No, my dear, that you clearly are not."  Jolly shook his head, and
they dug again.

"Strange life a dog's," said Jolyon suddenly: "The only four-footer
with rudiments of altruism and a sense of God!"

Jolly looked at his father.

"Do you believe in God, Dad?  I've never known."

At so searching a question from one to whom it was impossible to
make a light reply, Jolyon stood for a moment feeling his back
tried by the digging.

"What do you mean by God?" he said; "there are two irreconcilable
ideas of God.  There's the Unknowable Creative Principle--one
believes in That.  And there's the Sum of altruism in man naturally
one believes in That."

"I see.  That leaves out Christ, doesn't it?"

Jolyon stared.  Christ, the link between those two ideas!  Out of
the mouth of babes!  Here was orthodoxy scientifically explained at
last!  The sublime poem of the Christ life was man's attempt to
join those two irreconcilable conceptions of God.  And since the
Sum of human altruism was as much a part of the Unknowable Creative
Principle as anything else in Nature and the Universe, a worse link
might have been chosen after all!  Funny--how one went through life
without seeing it in that sort of way!

"What do you think, old man?" he said.

Jolly frowned.  "Of course, my first year we talked a good bit
about that sort of thing.  But in the second year one gives it up;
I don't know why--it's awfully interesting."

Jolyon remembered that he also had talked a good deal about it his
first year at Cambridge, and given it up in his second.

"I suppose," said Jolly, "it's the second God, you mean, that old
Balthasar had a sense of."

"Yes, or he would never have burst his poor old heart because of
something outside himself."

"But wasn't that just selfish emotion, really?"

Jolyon shook his head.  "No, dogs are not pure Forsytes, they love
something outside themselves."

Jolly smiled.

"Well, I think I'm one," he said.  "You know, I only enlisted
because I dared Val Dartie to."

"But why?"

"We bar each other," said Jolly shortly.

"Ah!" muttered Jolyon.  So the feud went on, unto the third
generation--this modern feud which had no overt expression?

'Shall I tell the boy about it?' he thought.  But to what end--if
he had to stop short of his own part?

And Jolly thought: 'It's for Holly to let him know about that chap.
If she doesn't, it means she doesn't want him told, and I should be
sneaking.  Anyway, I've stopped it.  I'd better leave well alone!'

So they dug on in silence, till Jolyon said:

"Now, old man, I think it's big enough."  And, resting on their
spades, they gazed down into the hole where a few leaves had
drifted already on a sunset wind.

"I can't bear this part of it," said Jolyon suddenly.

"Let me do it, Dad.  He never cared much for me."

Jolyon shook his head.

"We'll lift him very gently, leaves and all.  I'd rather not see
him again.  I'll take his head.  Now!"

With extreme care they raised the old dog's body, whose faded tan
and white showed here and there under the leaves stirred by the
wind.  They laid it, heavy, cold, and unresponsive, in the grave,
and Jolly spread more leaves over it, while Jolyon, deeply afraid
to show emotion before his son, began quickly shovelling the earth
on to that still shape.  There went the past!  If only there were a
joyful future to look forward to!  It was like stamping down earth
on one's own life.  They replaced the turf carefully on the smooth
little mound, and, grateful that they had spared each other's
feelings, returned to the house arm-in-arm.




CHAPTER XI

TIMOTHY STAYS THE ROT


On Forsyte 'Change news of the enlistment spread fast, together
with the report that June, not to be outdone, was going to become a
Red Cross nurse.  These events were so extreme, so subversive of
pure Forsyteism, as to have a binding effect upon the family, and
Timothy's was thronged next Sunday afternoon by members trying to
find out what they thought about it all, and exchange with each
other a sense of family credit.  Giles and Jesse Hayman would no
longer defend the coast but go to South Africa quite soon; Jolly
and Val would be following in April; as to June--well, you never
knew what she would really do.

The retirement from Spion Kop and the absence of any good news from
the seat of war imparted an air of reality to all this, clinched in
startling fashion by Timothy.  The youngest of the old Forsytes--
scarcely eighty, in fact popularly supposed to resemble their
father, 'Superior Dosset,' even in his best-known characteristic of
drinking Sherry--had been invisible for so many years that he was
almost mythical.  A long generation had elapsed since the risks of
a publisher's business had worked on his nerves at the age of
forty, so that he had got out with a mere thirty-five thousand
pounds in the world, and started to make his living by careful
investment.  Putting by every year, at compound interest, he had
doubled his capital in forty years without having once known what
it was like to shake in his shoes over money matters.  He was now
putting aside some two thousand a year, and, with the care he was
taking of himself, expected, so Aunt Hester said, to double his
capital again before he died.  What he would do with it then, with
his sisters dead and himself dead, was often mockingly queried by
free spirits such as Francie, Euphemia, or young Nicholas' second,
Christopher, whose spirit was so free that he had actually said he
was going on the stage.  All admitted, however, that this was best
known to Timothy himself, and possibly to Soames, who never
divulged a secret.

Those few Forsytes who had seen him reported a man of thick and
robust appearance, not very tall, with a brown-red complexion, grey
hair, and little of the refinement of feature with which most of
the Forsytes had been endowed by 'Superior Dosset's' wife, a woman
of some beauty and a gentle temperament.  It was known that he had
taken surprising interest in the war, sticking flags into a map
ever since it began, and there was uneasiness as to what would
happen if the English were driven into the sea, when it would be
almost impossible for him to put the flags in the right places.  As
to his knowledge of family movements or his views about them,
little was known, save that Aunt Hester was always declaring that
he was very upset.  It was, then, in the nature of a portent when
Forsytes, arriving on the Sunday after the evacuation of Spion Kop,
became conscious, one after the other, of a presence seated in the
only really comfortable armchair, back to the light, concealing the
lower part of his face with a large hand, and were greeted by the
awed voice of Aunt Hester:

"Your Uncle Timothy, my dear."

Timothy's greeting to them all was somewhat identical; and rather,
as it were, passed over by him than expressed:

"How de do?  How de do?  'Xcuse me gettin' up!"

Francie was present, and Eustace had come in his car; Winifred had
brought Imogen, breaking the ice of the restitution proceedings
with the warmth of family appreciation at Val's enlistment; and
Marian Tweetyman with the last news of Giles and Jesse.  These with
Aunt Juley and Hester, young Nicholas, Euphemia, and--of all
people!--George, who had come with Eustace in the car, constituted
an assembly worthy of the family's palmiest days.  There was not
one chair vacant in the whole of the little drawing-room, and
anxiety was felt lest someone else should arrive.

The constraint caused by Timothy's presence having worn off a
little, conversation took a military turn.  George asked Aunt Juley
when she was going out with the Red Cross, almost reducing her to a
state of gaiety; whereon he turned to Nicholas and said:

"Young Nick's a warrior bold, isn't he?  When's he going to don the
wild khaki?"

Young Nicholas, smiling with a sort of sweet deprecation, intimated
that of course his mother was very anxious.

"The Dromios are off, I hear," said George, turning to Marian
Tweetyman; "we shall all be there soon.  En avant, the Forsytes!
Roll, bowl, or pitch!  Who's for a cooler?"

Aunt Juley gurgled, George was so droll!  Should Hester get
Timothy's map?  Then he could show them all where they were.

At a sound from Timothy, interpreted as assent, Aunt Hester left
the room.

George pursued his image of the Forsyte advance, addressing Timothy
as Field Marshal; and Imogen, whom he had noted at once for 'a
pretty filly,'--as Vivandiere; and holding his top hat between his
knees, he began to beat it with imaginary drumsticks.  The
reception accorded to his fantasy was mixed.  All laughed--George
was licensed; but all felt that the family was being 'rotted'; and
this seemed to them unnatural, now that it was going to give five
of its members to the service of the Queen.  George might go too
far; and there was relief when he got up, offered his arm to Aunt
Juley, marched up to Timothy, saluted him, kissed his aunt with
mock passion, said, "Oh!  what a treat, dear papa!  Come on,
Eustace!" and walked out, followed by the grave and fastidious
Eustace, who had never smiled.

Aunt Juley's bewildered, "Fancy not waiting for the map!  You
mustn't mind him, Timothy.  He's so droll!" broke the hush, and
Timothy removed the hand from his mouth.

"I don't know what things are comin' to," he was heard to say.
"What's all this about goin' out there?  That's not the way to beat
those Boers."

Francie alone had the hardihood to observe: "What is, then, Uncle
Timothy?"

"All this new-fangled volunteerin' and expense--lettin' money out
of the country."

Just then Aunt Hester brought in the map, handling it like a baby
with eruptions.  With the assistance of Euphemia it was laid on the
piano, a small Colwood grand, last played on, it was believed, the
summer before Aunt Ann died, thirteen years ago.  Timothy rose.  He
walked over to the piano, and stood looking at his map while they
all gathered round.

"There you are," he said; "that's the position up to date; and very
poor it is.  H'm!"

"Yes," said Francie, greatly daring, "but how are you going to
alter it, Uncle Timothy, without more men?"

"Men!" said Timothy; "you don't want men--wastin' the country's
money.  You want a Napoleon, he'd settle it in a month."

"But if you haven't got him, Uncle Timothy?"

"That's their business," replied Timothy.  "What have we kept the
Army up for--to eat their heads off in time of peace!  They ought
to be ashamed of themselves, comin' on the country to help them
like this!  Let every man stick to his business, and we shall get
on."

And looking round him, he added almost angrily:

"Volunteerin', indeed!  Throwin' good money after bad!  We must
save!  Conserve energy that's the only way."  And with a prolonged
sound, not quite a sniff and not quite a snort, he trod on
Euphemia's toe, and went out, leaving a sensation and a faint scent
of barley-sugar behind him.

The effect of something said with conviction by one who has
evidently made a sacrifice to say it is ever considerable.  And the
eight Forsytes left behind, all women except young Nicholas, were
silent for a moment round the map.  Then Francie said:

"Really, I think he's right, you know.  After all, what is the Army
for?  They ought to have known.  It's only encouraging them."

"My dear!" cried Aunt Juley, "but they've been so progressive.
Think of their giving up their scarlet.  They were always so proud
of it.  And now they all look like convicts.  Hester and I were
saying only yesterday we were sure they must feel it very much.
Fancy what the Iron Duke would have said!"

"The new colour's very smart," said Winifred; "Val looks quite nice
in his."

Aunt Juley sighed.

"I do so wonder what Jolyon's boy is like.  To think we've never
seen him!  His father must be so proud of him."

"His father's in Paris," said Winifred.

Aunt Hester's shoulder was seen to mount suddenly, as if to ward
off her sister's next remark, for Juley's crumpled cheeks had
gushed.

"We had dear little Mrs. MacAnder here yesterday, just back from
Paris.  And whom d'you think she saw there in the street?  You'll
never guess."

"We shan't try, Auntie," said Euphemia.

"Irene!  Imagine!  After all this time; walking with a fair
beard...."

"Auntie! you'll kill me!  A fair beard...."

"I was going to say," said Aunt Juley severely, "a fair-bearded
gentleman.  And not a day older; she was always so pretty," she
added, with a sort of lingering apology.

"Oh! tell us about her, Auntie," cried Imogen; "I can just remember
her.  She's the skeleton in the family cupboard, isn't she?  And
they're such fun."

Aunt Hester sat down.  Really, Juley had done it now!

"She wasn't much of a skeleton as I remember her," murmured
Euphemia, "extremely well-covered."

"My dear!" said Aunt Juley, "what a peculiar way of putting it--not
very nice."

"No, but what was she like?" persisted Imogen.

"I'll tell you, my child," said Francie; "a kind of modern Venus,
very well-dressed."

Euphemia said sharply: "Venus was never dressed, and she had blue
eyes of melting sapphire."

At this juncture Nicholas took his leave.

"Mrs. Nick is awfully strict," said Francie with a laugh.

"She has six children," said Aunt Juley; "it's very proper she
should be careful."

"Was Uncle Soames awfully fond of her?" pursued the inexorable
Imogen, moving her dark luscious eyes from face to face.

Aunt Hester made a gesture of despair, just as Aunt Juley answered:

"Yes, your Uncle Soames was very much attached to her."

"I suppose she ran off with someone?"

"No, certainly not; that is--not precisely.'

"What did she do, then, Auntie?"

"Come along, Imogen," said Winifred, "we must be getting back."

But Aunt Juley interjected resolutely: "She--she didn't behave at
all well."

"Oh, bother!" cried Imogen; "that's as far as I ever get."

"Well, my dear," said Francie, "she had a love affair which ended
with the young man's death; and then she left your uncle.  I always
rather liked her."

"She used to give me chocolates," murmured Imogen, "and smell
nice."

"Of course!" remarked Euphemia.

"Not of course at all!" replied Francie, who used a particularly
expensive essence of gillyflower herself.

"I can't think what we are about," said Aunt Juley, raising her
hands, "talking of such things!"

"Was she divorced?" asked Imogen from the door.

"Certainly not," cried Aunt Juley; "that is--certainly not."

A sound was heard over by the far door.  Timothy had re-entered the
back drawing-room.  "I've come for my map," he said.  "Who's been
divorced?"

"No one, Uncle," replied Francie with perfect truth.

Timothy took his map off the piano.

"Don't let's have anything of that sort in the family," he said.
"All this enlistin's bad enough.  The country's breakin' up; I
don't know what we're comin' to."  He shook a thick finger at the
room: "Too many women nowadays, and they don't know what they
want."

So saying, he grasped the map firmly with both hands, and went out
as if afraid of being answered.

The seven women whom he had addressed broke into a subdued murmur,
out of which emerged Francie's, "Really, the Forsytes!" and Aunt
Juley's: "He must have his feet in mustard and hot water to-night,
Hester; will you tell Jane?  The blood has gone to his head again,
I'm afraid...."

That evening, when she and Hester were sitting alone after dinner,
she dropped a stitch in her crochet, and looked up:

"Hester, I can't think where I've heard that dear Soames wants
Irene to come back to him again.  Who was it told us that George
had made a funny drawing of him with the words, 'He won't be happy
till he gets it'?"

"Eustace," answered Aunt Hester from behind The Times; "he had it
in his pocket, but he wouldn't show it us."

Aunt Juley was silent, ruminating.  The clock ticked, The Times
crackled, the fire sent forth its rustling purr.  Aunt Juley
dropped another stitch.

"Hester," she said, "I have had such a dreadful thought."

"Then don't tell me," said Aunt Hester quickly.

"Oh!  but I must.  You can't think how dreadful" Her voice sank to
a whisper:

"Jolyon--Jolyon, they say, has a--has a fair beard, now."




CHAPTER XII

PROGRESS OF THE CHASE


Two days after the dinner at James', Mr. Polteed provided Soames
with food for thought.

"A gentleman," he said, consulting the key concealed in his left
hand, "47 as we say, has been paying marked attention to 17 during
the last month in Paris.  But at present there seems to have been
nothing very conclusive.  The meetings have all been in public
places, without concealment--restaurants, the Opera, the Comique,
the Louvre, Luxembourg Gardens, lounge of the hotel, and so forth.
She has not yet been traced to his rooms, nor vice versa.  They
went to Fontainebleau--but nothing of value.  In short, the
situation is promising, but requires patience."  And, looking up
suddenly, he added:

"One rather curious point--47 has the same name as--er--31!"

'The fellow knows I'm her husband,' thought Soames.

"Christian name--an odd one--Jolyon," continued Mr. Polteed.  "We
know his address in Paris and his residence here.  We don't wish,
of course, to be running a wrong hare."

"Go on with it, but be careful," said Soames doggedly.

Instinctive certainty that this detective fellow had fathomed his
secret made him all the more reticent.

"Excuse me," said Mr. Polteed, "I'll just see if there's anything
fresh in."

He returned with some letters.  Relocking the door, he glanced at
the envelopes.

"Yes, here's a personal one from 19 to myself."

"Well?" said Soames.

 "Um!" said Mr. Polteed, "she says: '47 left for England to-day.
Address on his baggage: Robin Hill.  Parted from 17 in Louvre
Gallery at 3.30; nothing very striking.  Thought it best to stay
and continue observation of 17.  You will deal with 47 in England
if you think desirable, no doubt.'"  And Mr. Polteed lifted an
unprofessional glance on Soames, as though he might be storing
material for a book on human nature after he had gone out of
business.  "Very intelligent woman, 19, and a wonderful make-up.
Not cheap, but earns her money well.  There's no suspicion of being
shadowed so far.  But after a time, as you know, sensitive people
are liable to get the feeling of it, without anything definite to
go on.  I should rather advise letting-up on 17, and keeping an eye
on 47.  We can't get at correspondence without great risk.  I
hardly advise that at this stage.  But you can tell your client
that it's looking up very well."  And again his narrowed eyes
gleamed at his taciturn customer.

"No," said Soames suddenly, "I prefer that you should keep the
watch going discreetly in Paris, and not concern yourself with this
end."

"Very well," replied Mr. Polteed, "we can do it.

"What--what is the manner between them?"

"I'll read you what she says," said Mr. Polteed, unlocking a bureau
drawer and taking out a file of papers; "she sums it up somewhere
confidentially.  Yes, here it is!  '17 very attractive--conclude
47, longer in the tooth' (slang for age, you know)--'distinctly
gone--waiting his time--17 perhaps holding off for terms,
impossible to say without knowing more.  But inclined to think on
the whole--doesn't know her mind--likely to act on impulse some
day.  Both have style.'"

"What does that mean?" said Soames between close lips.

"Well," murmured Mr. Polteed with a smile, showing many white
teeth, "an expression we use.  In other words, it's not likely to
be a weekend business--they'll come together seriously or not at
all."

"H'm!" muttered Soames, "that's all, is it?"

"Yes," said Mr. Polteed, "but quite promising."

'Spider!' thought Soames.  "Good-day!"

He walked into the Green Park that he might cross to Victoria
Station and take the Underground into the City.  For so late in
January it was warm; sunlight, through the haze, sparkled on the
frosty grass--an illumined cobweb of a day.

Little spiders--and great spiders!  And the greatest spinner of
all, his own tenacity, for ever wrapping its cocoon of threads
round any clear way out.  What was that fellow hanging round Irene
for?  Was it really as Polteed suggested?  Or was Jolyon but taking
compassion on her loneliness, as he would call it--sentimental
radical chap that he had always been?  If it were, indeed, as
Polteed hinted!  Soames stood still.  It could not be!  The fellow
was seven years older than himself, no better looking!  No richer!
What attraction had he?

'Besides, he's come back,' he thought; 'that doesn't look---I'll go
and see him!' and, taking out a card, he wrote:

"If you can spare half an hour some afternoon this week, I shall be
at the Connoisseurs any day between 5.30 and 6, or I could come to
the Hotch Potch if you prefer it.  I want to see you.--S. F."

He walked up St.  James's Street and confided it to the porter at
the Hotch Potch.

"Give Mr. Jolyon Forsyte this as soon as he comes in," he said, and
took one of the new motor cabs into the City....

Jolyon received that card the same afternoon, and turned his face
towards the Connoisseurs.  What did Soames want now?  Had he got
wind of Paris?  And stepping across St. James's Street, he
determined to make no secret of his visit.  'But it won't do,' he
thought, 'to let him know she's there, unless he knows already.'
In this complicated state of mind he was conducted to where Soames
was drinking tea in a small bay-window.

"No tea, thanks," said Jolyon, "but I'll go on smoking if I may."

The curtains were not yet drawn, though the lamps outside were
lighted; the two cousins sat waiting on each other.

"You've been in Paris, I hear," said Soames at last.

"Yes; just back."

"Young Val told me; he and your boy are going off, then?" Jolyon
nodded.

"You didn't happen to see Irene, I suppose.  It appears she's
abroad somewhere."

Jolyon wreathed himself in smoke before he answered: "Yes, I saw
her."

"How was she?"

"Very well."

There was another silence; then Soames roused himself in his chair.

"When I saw you last," he said, "I was in two minds.  We talked,
and you expressed your opinion.  I don't wish to reopen that
discussion.  I only wanted to say this: My position with her is
extremely difficult.  I don't want you to go using your influence
against me.  What happened is a very long time ago.  I'm going to
ask her to let bygones be bygones."

"You have asked her, you know," murmured Jolyon.

"The idea was new to her then; it came as a shock.  But the more
she thinks of it, the more she must see that it's the only way out
for both of us."

"That's not my impression of her state of mind," said Jolyon with
particular calm.  "And, forgive my saying, you misconceive the
matter if you think reason comes into it at all."

He saw his cousin's pale face grow paler--he had used, without
knowing it, Irene's own words.

"Thanks," muttered Soames, "but I see things perhaps more plainly
than you think.  I only want to be sure that you won't try to
influence her against me."

"I don't know what makes you think I have any influence," said
Jolyon; "but if I have I'm bound to use it in the direction of what
I think is her happiness.  I am what they call a 'feminist,' I
believe."

"Feminist!" repeated Soames, as if seeking to gain time.  "Does
that mean that you're against me?"

"Bluntly," said Jolyon, "I'm against any woman living with any man
whom she definitely dislikes.  It appears to me rotten."

"And I suppose each time you see her you put your opinions into her
mind."

"I am not likely to be seeing her."

"Not going back to Paris?"

"Not so far as I know," said Jolyon, conscious of the intent
watchfulness in Soames' face.

"Well, that's all I had to say.  Anyone who comes between man and
wife, you know, incurs heavy responsibility."

Jolyon rose and made him a slight bow.

"Good-bye," he said, and, without offering to shake hands, moved
away, leaving Soames staring after him.  'We Forsytes,' thought
Jolyon, hailing a cab, 'are very civilised.  With simpler folk that
might have come to a row.  If it weren't for my boy going to the
war....'  The war!  A gust of his old doubt swept over him.  A
precious war!  Domination of peoples or of women!  Attempts to
master and possess those who did not want you!  The negation of
gentle decency!  Possession, vested rights; and anyone 'agin' 'em--
outcast!  'Thank Heaven!'  he thought, 'I always felt "agin" 'em,
anyway!'  Yes!  Even before his first disastrous marriage he could
remember fuming over the bludgeoning of Ireland, or the matrimonial
suits of women trying to be free of men they loathed.  Parsons
would have it that freedom of soul and body were quite different
things!  Pernicious doctrine!  Body and soul could not thus be
separated.  Free will was the strength of any tie, and not its
weakness.  'I ought to have told Soames,' he thought, 'that I think
him comic.  Ah! but he's tragic, too!'   Was there anything,
indeed, more tragic in the world than a man enslaved by his own
possessive instinct, who couldn't see the sky for it, or even enter
fully into what another person felt!  'I must write and warn her,'
he thought; 'he's going to have another try.'  And all the way home
to Robin Hill he rebelled at the strength of that duty to his son
which prevented him from posting back to Paris....

But Soames sat long in his chair, the prey of a no less gnawing
ache--a jealous ache, as if it had been revealed to him that this
fellow held precedence of himself, and had spun fresh threads of
resistance to his way out.  'Does that mean that you're against
me?' he had got nothing out of that disingenuous question.
Feminist!  Phrasey fellow!  'I mustn't rush things,' he thought.
'I have some breathing space; he's not going back to Paris, unless
he was lying.  I'll let the spring come!'  Though how the spring
could serve him, save by adding to his ache, he could not tell.
And gazing down into the street, where figures were passing from
pool to pool of the light from the high lamps, he thought: 'Nothing
seems any good--nothing seems worth while.  I'm loney--that's the
trouble.'

He closed his eyes; and at once he seemed to see Irene, in a dark
street below a church--passing, turning her neck so that he caught
the gleam of her eyes and her white forehead under a little dark
hat, which had gold spangles on it and a veil hanging down behind.
He opened his eyes--so vividly he had seen her!  A woman was
passing below, but not she!  Oh no, there was nothing there!




CHAPTER XIII

HERE WE ARE AGAIN!'


Imogen's frocks for her first season exercised the judgment of her
mother and the purse of her grandfather all through the month of
March.  With Forsyte tenacity Winifred quested for perfection.  It
took her mind off the slowly approaching rite which would give her
a freedom but doubtfully desired; took her mind, too, off her boy
and his fast approaching departure for a war from which the news
remained disquieting.  Like bees busy on summer flowers, or bright
gadflies hovering and darting over spiky autumn blossoms, she and
her 'little daughter,' tall nearly as herself and with a bust
measurement not far inferior, hovered in the shops of Regent
Street, the establishments of Hanover Square and of Bond Street,
lost in consideration and the feel of fabrics.  Dozens of young
women of striking deportment and peculiar gait paraded before
Winifred and Imogen, draped in 'creations.'  The models--'Very new,
modom; quite the latest thing--' which those two reluctantly turned
down, would have filled a museum; the models which they were
obliged to have nearly emptied James' bank.  It was no good doing
things by halves, Winifred felt, in view of the need for making
this first and sole untarnished season a conspicuous success.
Their patience in trying the patience of those impersonal creatures
who swam about before them could alone have been displayed by such
as were moved by faith.  It was for Winifred a long prostration
before her dear goddess Fashion, fervent as a Catholic might make
before the Virgin; for Imogen an experience by no means too
unpleasant--she often looked so nice, and flattery was implicit
everywhere: in a word it was 'amusing.'

On the afternoon of the 20th of March, having, as it were, gutted
Skywards, they had sought refreshment over the way at Caramel and
Baker's, and, stored with chocolate frothed at the top with cream,
turned homewards through Berkeley Square of an evening touched with
spring.  Opening the door--freshly painted a light olive-green;
nothing neglected that year to give Imogen a good send-off--
Winifred passed towards the silver basket to see if anyone had
called, and suddenly her nostrils twitched.  What was that scent?

Imogen had taken up a novel sent from the library, and stood
absorbed.  Rather sharply, because of the queer feeling in her
breast, Winifred said:

"Take that up, dear, and have a rest before dinner."

Imogen, still reading, passed up the stairs.  Winifred heard the
door of her room slammed to, and drew a long savouring breath.  Was
it spring tickling her senses--whipping up nostalgia for her
'clown,' against all wisdom and outraged virtue?  A male scent!  A
faint reek of cigars and lavender-water not smelt since that early
autumn night six months ago, when she had called him 'the limit.'
Whence came it, or was it ghost of scent--sheer emanation from
memory?  She looked round her.  Nothing--not a thing, no tiniest
disturbance of her hall, nor of the diningroom.  A little day-dream
of a scent--illusory, saddening, silly!  In the silver basket were
new cards, two with 'Mr. and Mrs. Polegate Thom,' and one with 'Mr.
Polegate Thom' thereon; she sniffed them, but they smelled severe.
'I must be tired,' she thought, 'I'll go and lie down.'  Upstairs
the drawing-room was darkened, waiting for some hand to give it
evening light; and she passed on up to her bedroom.  This, too, was
half-curtained and dim, for it was six o'clock.  Winifred threw off
her coat--that scent again!--then stood, as if shot, transfixed
against the bed-rail.  Something dark had risen from the sofa in
the far corner.  A word of horror--in her family--escaped her:
"God!"

"It's I--Monty," said a voice.

Clutching the bed-rail, Winifred reached up and turned the switch
of the light hanging above her dressing-table.  He appeared just on
the rim of the light's circumference, emblazoned from the absence
of his watch-chain down to boots neat and sooty brown, but--yes!--
split at the toecap.  His chest and face were shadowy.  Surely he
was thin--or was it a trick of the light?  He advanced, lighted now
from toe-cap to the top of his dark head-surely a little grizzled!
His complexion had darkened, sallowed; his black moustache had lost
boldness, become sardonic; there were lines which she did not know
about his face.  There was no pin in his tie.  His suit--ah!--she
knew that--but how unpressed, unglossy!  She stared again at the
toe-cap of his boot.  Something big and relentless had been 'at
him,' had turned and twisted, raked and scraped him.  And she
stayed, not speaking, motionless, staring at that crack across the
toe.

"Well!" he said, "I got the order.  I'm back."

Winifred's bosom began to heave.  The nostalgia for her husband
which had rushed up with that scent was struggling with a deeper
jealousy than any she had felt yet.  There he was--a dark, and as
if harried, shadow of his sleek and brazen self!  What force had
done this to him--squeezed him like an orange to its dry rind!
That woman!

"I'm back," he said again.  "I've had a beastly time.  By God!  I
came steerage.  I've got nothing but what I stand up in, and that
bag."

"And who has the rest?" cried Winifred, suddenly alive.  "How dared
you come?  You knew it was just for divorce that you got that order
to come back.  Don't touch me!"

They held each to the rail of the big bed where they had spent so
many years of nights together.  Many times, yes--many times she had
wanted him back.  But now that he had come she was filled with this
cold and deadly resentment.  He put his hand up to his moustache;
but did not frizz and twist it in the old familiar way, he just
pulled it downwards.

"Gad!" he said: "If you knew the time I've had!"

"I'm glad I don't!"

"Are the kids all right?"

Winifred nodded.  "How did you get in?"

"With my key."

"Then the maids don't know.  You can't stay here, Monty."

He uttered a little sardonic laugh.

"Where then?"

"Anywhere."

"Well, look at me!  That--that damned...."

"If you mention her," cried Winifred, "I go straight out to Park
Lane and I don't come back."

Suddenly he did a simple thing, but so uncharacteristic that it
moved her.  He shut his eyes.  It was as if he had said: 'All
right!  I'm dead to the world!'

"You can have a room for the night," she said; "your things are
still here.  Only Imogen is at home."

He leaned back against the bed-rail.  "Well, it's in your hands,"
and his own made a writhing movement.  "I've been through it.  You
needn't hit too hard--it isn't worth while.  I've been frightened;
I've been frightened, Freddie."

That old pet name, disused for years and years, sent a shiver
through Winifred.

'What am I to do with him?' she thought.  'What in God's name am I
to do with him?'

"Got a cigarette?"

She gave him one from a little box she kept up there for when she
couldn't sleep at night, and lighted it.  With that action the
matter-of-fact side of her nature came to life again.

"Go and have a hot bath.  I'll put some clothes out for you in the
dressing-room.  We can talk later."

He nodded, and fixed his eyes on her--they looked half-dead, or was
it that the folds in the lids had become heavier?

'He's not the same,' she thought.  He would never be quite the same
again!  But what would he be?

"All right!"   he said, and went towards the door.  He even moved
differently, like a man who has lost illusion and doubts whether it
is worth while to move at all.

When he was gone, and she heard the water in the bath running, she
put out a complete set of garments on the bed in his dressing-room,
then went downstairs and fetched up the biscuit box and whisky.
Putting on her coat again, and listening a moment at the bathroom
door, she went down and out.  In the street she hesitated.  Past
seven o'clock!  Would Soames be at his Club or at Park Lane?  She
turned towards the latter.  Back!

Soames had always feared it--she had sometimes hoped it....  Back!
So like him--clown that he was--with this: 'Here we are again!' to
make fools of them all--of the Law, of Soames, of herself!

Yet to have done with the Law, not to have that murky cloud hanging
over her and the children!  What a relief!  Ah!  but how to accept
his return?  That 'woman' had ravaged him, taken from him passion
such as he had never bestowed on herself, such as she had not
thought him capable of.  There was the sting!  That selfish,
blatant 'clown' of hers, whom she herself had never really stirred,
had been swept and ungarnished by another woman!  Insulting!  Too
insulting!  Not right, not decent to take him back!  And yet she
had asked for him; the Law perhaps would make her now!  He was as
much her husband as ever--she had put herself out of court!  And
all he wanted, no doubt, was money--to keep him in cigars and
lavender-water!  That scent!  'After all, I'm not old,' she
thought, 'not old yet!'  But that woman who had reduced him to
those words: 'I've been through it.  I've been frightened--
frightened, Freddie!'  She neared her father's house, driven this
way and that, while all the time the Forsyte undertow was drawing
her to deep conclusion that after all he was her property, to be
held against a robbing world.  And so she came to James'.

"Mr. Soames?  In his room?  I'll go up; don't say I'm here."

Her brother was dressing.  She found him before a mirror, tying a
black bow with an air of despising its ends.

"Hullo!" he said, contemplating her in the glass; "what's wrong?"

"Monty!" said Winifred stonily.

Soames spun round.  "What!"

"Back!"

"Hoist," muttered Soames, "with our own petard.  Why the deuce
didn't you let me try cruelty?  I always knew it was too much risk
this way."

"Oh! Don't talk about that!  What shall I do?"

Soames answered, with a deep, deep sound.

"Well?" said Winifred impatiently.

"What has he to say for himself?"

"Nothing.  One of his boots is split across the toe."

Soames stared at her.

"Ah!" he said, "of course!  On his beam ends.  So--it begins again!
This'll about finish father."

"Can't we keep it from him?"

"Impossible.  He has an uncanny flair for anything that's
worrying."

And he brooded, with fingers hooked into his blue silk braces.
"There ought to be some way in law," he muttered, "to make him
safe."

"No," cried Winifred, "I won't be made a fool of again; I'd sooner
put up with him."

The two stared at each other.  Their hearts were full of feeling,
but they could give it no expression--Forsytes that they were.

"Where did you leave him?"

"In the bath," and Winifred gave a little bitter laugh.  "The only
thing he's brought back is lavender-water."

"Steady!" said Soames, "you're thoroughly upset.  I'll go back with
you."

"What's the use?"

"We ought to make terms with him."

"Terms!  It'll always be the same.  When he recovers--cards and
betting, drink and ....!"   She was silent, remembering the look on
her husband's face.  The burnt child--the burnt child.  Perhaps...!

"Recovers?" replied Soames: "Is he ill?"

"No; burnt out; that's all."

Soames took his waistcoat from a chair and put it on, he took his
coat and got into it, he scented his handkerchief with eau-de-
Cologne, threaded his watch-chain, and said: "We haven't any luck."

And in the midst of her own trouble Winifred was sorry for him, as
if in that little saying he had revealed deep trouble of his own.

"I'd like to see mother," she said.

"She'll be with father in their room.  Come down quietly to the
study.  I'll get her."

Winifred stole down to the little dark study, chiefly remarkable
for a Canaletto too doubtful to be placed elsewhere, and a fine
collection of Law Reports unopened for many years.  Here she stood,
with her back to maroon-coloured curtains close-drawn, staring at
the empty grate, till her mother came in followed by Soames.

"Oh! my poor dear!" said Emily: "How miserable you look in here!
This is too bad of him, really!"

As a family they had so guarded themselves from the expression of
all unfashionable emotion that it was impossible to go up and give
her daughter a good hug.  But there was comfort in her cushioned
voice, and her still dimpled shoulders under some rare black lace.
Summoning pride and the desire not to distress her mother, Winifred
said in her most off-hand voice:

"It's all right, Mother; no good fussing."

"I don't see," said Emily, looking at Soames, "why Winifred
shouldn't tell him that she'll prosecute him if he doesn't keep off
the premises.  He took her pearls; and if he's not brought them
back, that's quite enough."

Winifred smiled.  They would all plunge about with suggestions of
this and that, but she knew already what she would be doing, and
that was--nothing.  The feeling that, after all, she had won a sort
of victory, retained her property, was every moment gaining ground
in her.  No!  if she wanted to punish him, she could do it at home
without the world knowing.

" Well," said Emily, "come into the diningroom comfortably--you
must stay and have dinner with us.  Leave it to me to tell your
father."  And, as Winifred moved towards the door, she turned out
the light.  Not till then did they see the disaster in the
corridor.

There, attracted by light from a room never lighted, James was
standing with his duncoloured camel-hair shawl folded about him, so
that his arms were not free and his silvered head looked cut off
from his fashionably trousered legs as if by an expanse of desert.
He stood, inimitably stork-like, with an expression as if he saw
before him a frog too large to swallow.

"What's all this?" he said.  "Tell your father?  You never tell me
anything."

The moment found Emily without reply.  It was Winifred who went up
to him, and, laying one hand on each of his swathed, helpless arms,
said:

"Monty's not gone bankrupt, Father.  He's only come back."

They all three expected something serious to happen, and were glad
she had kept that grip of his arms, but they did not know the depth
of root in that shadowy old Forsyte.  Something wry occurred about
his shaven mouth and chin, something scratchy between those long
silvery whiskers.  Then he said with a sort of dignity: "He'll be
the death of me.  I knew how it would be."

"You mustn't worry, Father," said Winifred calmly.  "I mean to make
him behave."

"Ah!" said James.  "Here, take this thing off, I'm hot."  They
unwound the shawl.  He turned, and walked firmly to the dining-
room.

"I don't want any soup," he said to Warmson, and sat down in his
chair.  They all sat down too, Winifred still in her hat, while
Warmson laid the fourth place.  When he left the room, James said:
"What's he brought back?"

"Nothing, Father."

James concentrated his eyes on his own image in a tablespoon.
"Divorce!" he muttered; "rubbish!  What was I about?  I ought to
have paid him an allowance to stay out of England.  Soames you go
and propose it to him."

It seemed so right and simple a suggestion that even Winifred was
surprised when she said: "No, I'll keep him now he's back; he must
just behave--that's all."

They all looked at her.  It had always been known that Winifred had
pluck.

"Out there!" said James elliptically, "who knows what cut-throats!
You look for his revolver!  Don't go to bed without.  You ought to
have Warmson to sleep in the house.  I'll see him myself tomorrow."

They were touched by this declaration, and Emily said comfortably:
"That's right, James, we won't have any nonsense."

"Ah!" muttered James darkly, "I can't tell."

The advent of Warmson with fish diverted conversation.

When, directly after dinner, Winifred went over to kiss her father
good-night, he looked up with eyes so full of question and distress
that she put all the comfort she could into her voice.

"It's all right, Daddy, dear; don't worry.  I shan't need anyone--
he's quite bland.  I shall only be upset if you worry.  Good-night,
bless you!"

James repeated the words, "Bless you!" as if he did not quite know
what they meant, and his eyes followed her to the door.

She reached home before nine, and went straight upstairs.

Dartie was lying on the bed in his dressing-room, fully redressed
in a blue serge suit and pumps; his arms were crossed behind his
head, and an extinct cigarette drooped from his mouth.

Winifred remembered ridiculously the flowers in her window-boxes
after a blazing summer day; the way they lay, or rather stood--
parched, yet rested by the sun's retreat.  It was as if a little
dew had come already on her burnt-up husband.

He said apathetically: "I suppose you've been to Park Lane.  How's
the old man?"

Winifred could not help the bitter answer: "Not dead."

He winced, actually he winced.

"Understand, Monty," she said, "I will not have him worried.  If
you aren't going to behave yourself, you may go back, you may go
anywhere.  Have you had dinner?"

No.

"Would you like some?"

He shrugged his shoulders.

"Imogen offered me some.  I didn't want any."

Imogen!  In the plenitude of emotion Winifred had forgotten her.

"So you've seen her?  What did she say?"

"She gave me a kiss."

With mortification Winifred saw his dark sardonic face relaxed.
'Yes!' she thought, 'he cares for her, not for me a bit.'

Dartie's eyes were moving from side to side.

"Does she know about me?" he said.

It flashed through Winifred that here was the weapon she needed.
He minded their knowing!

"No.  Val knows.  The others don't; they only know you went away."

She heard him sigh with relief.

"But they shall know," she said firmly, "if you give me cause."

"All right!" he muttered, "hit me!  I'm down!"

Winifred went up to the bed.  "Look here, Monty!  I don't want to
hit you.  I don't want to hurt you.  I shan't allude to anything.
I'm not going to worry.  What's the use?" She was silent a moment.
"I can't stand any more, though, and I won't!  You'd better know.
You've made me suffer.  But I used to be fond of you.  For the sake
of that...."  She met the heavy-lidded gaze of his brown eyes with
the downward stare of her green-grey eyes; touched his hand
suddenly, turned her back, and went into her room.

She sat there a long time before her glass, fingering her rings,
thinking of this subdued dark man, almost a stranger to her, on the
bed in the other room; resolutely not 'worrying,' but gnawed by
jealousy of what he had been through, and now and again just
visited by pity.




CHAPTER XIV

OUTLANDISH NIGHT

Soames doggedly let the spring come--no easy task for one conscious
that time was flying, his birds in the bush no nearer the hand, no
issue from the web anywhere visible.  Mr. Polteed reported nothing,
except that his watch went on--costing a lot of money.  Val and his
cousin were gone to the war, whence came news more favourable;
Dartie was behaving himself so far; James had retained his health;
business prospered almost terribly--there was nothing to worry
Soames except that he was 'held up,' could make no step in any
direction.

He did not exactly avoid Soho, for he could not afford to let them
think that he had 'piped off,' as James would have put it--he might
want to 'pipe on' again at any minute.  But he had to be so
restrained and cautious that he would often pass the door of the
Restaurant Bretagne without going in, and wander out of the
purlieus of that region which always gave him the feeling of having
been possessively irregular.

He wandered thus one May night into Regent Street and the most
amazing crowd he had ever seen; a shrieking, whistling, dancing,
jostling, grotesque and formidably jovial crowd, with false noses
and mouth-organs, penny whistles and long feathers, every appanage
of idiocy, as it seemed to him.  Mafeking!  Of course, it had been
relieved!  Good!  But was that an excuse?  Who were these people,
what were they, where had they come from into the West End?  His
face was tickled, his ears whistled into.  Girls cried: 'Keep your
hair on, stucco!'  A youth so knocked off his top-hat that he
recovered it with difficulty.  Crackers were exploding beneath his
nose, between his feet.  He was bewildered, exasperated, offended.
This stream of people came from every quarter, as if impulse had
unlocked flood-gates, let flow waters of whose existence he had
heard, perhaps, but believed in never.  This, then, was the
populace, the innumerable living negation of gentility and
Forsyteism.  This was--egad!--Democracy!  It stank, yelled, was
hideous!  In the East End, or even Soho, perhaps--but here in
Regent Street, in Piccadilly!  What were, the police about!  In
1900, Soames, with his Forsyte thousands, had never seen the
cauldron with the lid off; and now looking into it, could hardly
believe his scorching eyes.  The whole thing was unspeakable!
These people had no restraint, they seemed to think him funny; such
swarms of them, rude, coarse, laughing--and what laughter!

Nothing sacred to them!  He shouldn't be surprised if they began to
break windows.  In Pall Mall, past those august dwellings, to enter
which people paid sixty pounds, this shrieking, whistling, dancing
dervish of a crowd was swarming.  From the Club windows his own
kind were looking out on them with regulated amusement.  They
didn't realise!  Why, this was serious--might come to anything!
The crowd was cheerful, but some day they would come in different
mood!  He remembered there had been a mob in the late eighties,
when he was at Brighton; they had smashed things and made speeches.
But more than dread, he felt a deep surprise.  They were hysterical
--it wasn't English!  And all about the relief of a little town as
big as--Watford, six thousand miles away.  Restraint, reserve!
Those qualities to him more dear almost than life, those
indispensable attributes of property and culture, where were they?
It wasn't English!  No, it wasn't English!  So Soames brooded,
threading his way on.  It was as if he had suddenly caught sight of
someone cutting the covenant 'for quiet possession' out of his
legal documents; or of a monster lurking and stalking out in the
future, casting its shadow before.  Their want of stolidity, their
want of reverence!  It was like discovering that nine-tenths of the
people of England were foreigners.  And if that were so--then,
anything might happen!

At Hyde Park Corner he ran into George Forsyte, very sunburnt from
racing, holding a false nose in his hand.

"Hallo, Soames!" he said, "have a nose!"

Soames responded with a pale smile.

"Got this from one of these sportsmen," went on George, who had
evidently been dining; "had to lay him out--for trying to bash my
hat.  I say, one of these days we shall have to fight these chaps,
they're getting so damned cheeky--all radicals and socialists.
They want our goods.  You tell Uncle James that, it'll make him
sleep."

'In vino veritas,' thought Soames, but he only nodded, and passed
on up Hamilton Place.  There was but a trickle of roysterers in
Park Lane, not very noisy.  And looking up at the houses he
thought: 'After all, we're the backbone of the country.  They won't
upset us easily.  Possession's nine points of the law.'

But, as he closed the door of his father's house behind him, all
that queer outlandish nightmare in the streets passed out of his
mind almost as completely as if, having dreamed it, he had awakened
in the warm clean morning comfort of his spring-mattressed bed.

Walking into the centre of the great empty drawing-room, he stood
still.

A wife!  Somebody to talk things over with.  One had a right!  Damn
it!  One had a right!






PART III


CHAPTER I

SOAMES IN PARIS


Soames had travelled little.  Aged nineteen he had made the 'petty
tour' with his father, mother, and Winifred--Brussels, the Rhine,
Switzerland, and home by way of Paris.  Aged twenty-seven, just
when he began to take interest in pictures, he had spent five hot
weeks in Italy, looking into the Renaissance not so much in it as
he had been led to expect--and a fortnight in Paris on his way
back, looking into himself, as became a Forsyte surrounded by
people so strongly self-centred and 'foreign' as the French.  His
knowledge of their language being derived from his public school,
he did not understand them when they spoke.  Silence he had found
better for all parties; one did not make a fool of oneself.  He had
disliked the look of the men's clothes, the closed-in cabs, the
theatres which looked like bee-hives, the Galleries which smelled
of beeswax.  He was too cautious and too shy to explore that side
of Paris supposed by Forsytes to constitute its attraction under
the rose; and as for a collector's bargain--not one to be had!  As
Nicholas might have put it--they were a grasping lot.  He had come
back uneasy, saying Paris was overrated.

When, therefore, in June of 1900 he went to Paris, it was but his
third attempt on the centre of civilisation.  This time, however,
the mountain was going to Mahomet; for he felt by now more deeply
civilised than Paris, and perhaps he really was.  Moreover, he had
a definite objective.  This was no mere genuflexion to a shrine of
taste and immorality, but the prosecution of his own legitimate
affairs.  He went, indeed, because things were getting past a joke.
The watch went on and on, and--nothing--nothing!  Jolyon had never
returned to Paris, and no one else was 'suspect!'  Busy with new
and very confidential matters, Soames was realising more than ever
how essential reputation is to a solicitor.  But at night and in
his leisure moments he was ravaged by the thought that time was
always flying and money flowing in, and his own future as much 'in
irons' as ever.  Since Mafeking night he had become aware that a
'young fool of a doctor' was hanging round Annette.  Twice he had
come across him--a cheerful young fool, not more than thirty.

Nothing annoyed Soames so much as cheerfulness--an indecent,
extravagant sort of quality, which had no relation to facts.  The
mixture of his desires and hopes was, in a word, becoming torture;
and lately the thought had come to him that perhaps Irene knew she
was being shadowed: It was this which finally decided him to go and
see for himself; to go and once more try to break down her
repugnance, her refusal to make her own and his path comparatively
smooth once more.  If he failed again--well, he would see what she
did with herself, anyway!

He went to an hotel in the Rue Caumartin, highly recommended to
Forsytes, where practically nobody spoke French.  He had formed no
plan.  He did not want to startle her; yet must contrive that she
had no chance to evade him by flight.  And next morning he set out
in bright weather.

Paris had an air of gaiety, a sparkle over its star-shape which
almost annoyed Soames.  He stepped gravely, his nose lifted a
little sideways in real curiosity.  He desired now to understand
things French.  Was not Annette French?  There was much to be got
out of his visit, if he could only get it.  In this laudable mood
and the Place de la Concorde he was nearly run down three times.
He came on the 'Cours la Reine,' where Irene's hotel was situated,
almost too suddenly, for he had not yet fixed on his procedure.
Crossing over to the river side, he noted the building, white and
cheerful-looking, with green sunblinds, seen through a screen of
plane-tree leaves.  And, conscious that it would be far better to
meet her casually in some open place than to risk a call, he sat
down on a bench whence he could watch the entrance.  It was not
quite eleven o'clock, and improbable that she had yet gone out.
Some pigeons were strutting and preening their feathers in the
pools of sunlight between the shadows of the plane-trees.  A
workman in a blue blouse passed, and threw them crumbs from the
paper which contained his dinner.  A 'bonne' coiffed with ribbon
shepherded two little girls with pig-tails and frilled drawers.  A
cab meandered by, whose cocher wore a blue coat and a black-glazed
hat.  To Soames a kind of affectation seemed to cling about it all,
a sort of picturesqueness which was out of date.  A theatrical
people, the French!  He lit one of his rare cigarettes, with a
sense of injury that Fate should be casting his life into out-
landish waters.  He shouldn't wonder if Irene quite enjoyed this
foreign life; she had never been properly English--even to look at!
And he began considering which of those windows could be hers under
the green sunblinds.  How could he word what he had come to say so
that it might pierce the defence of her proud obstinacy?  He threw
the fag-end of his cigarette at a pigeon, with the thought: 'I
can't stay here for ever twiddling my thumbs.  Better give it up
and call on her in the late afternoon.'  But he still sat on, heard
twelve strike, and then half-past.  'I'll wait till one,' he
thought, 'while I'm about it.'  But just then he started up, and
shrinkingly sat down again.  A woman had come out in a cream-
coloured frock, and was moving away under a fawn-coloured parasol.
Irene herself!  He waited till she was too far away to recognise
him, then set out after her.  She was strolling as though she had
no particular objective; moving, if he remembered rightly, toward
the Bois de Boulogne.  For half an hour at least he kept his
distance on the far side of the way till she had passed into the
Bois itself.  Was she going to meet someone after all?  Some
confounded Frenchman--one of those 'Bel Ami' chaps, perhaps, who
had nothing to do but hang about women--for he had read that book
with difficulty and a sort of disgusted fascination.  He followed
doggedly along a shady alley, losing sight of her now and then when
the path curved.  And it came back to him how, long ago, one night
in Hyde Park he had slid and sneaked from tree to tree, from seat
to seat, hunting blindly, ridiculously, in burning jealousy for her
and young Bosinney.  The path bent sharply, and, hurrying, he came
on her sitting in front of a small fountain--a little green-bronze
Niobe veiled in hair to her slender hips, gazing at the pool she
had wept: He came on her so suddenly that he was past before he
could turn and take off his hat.  She did not start up.  She had
always had great self-command--it was one of the things he most
admired in her, one of his greatest grievances against her, because
he had never been able to tell what she was thinking.  Had she
realised that he was following?  Her self-possession made him
angry; and, disdaining to explain his presence, he pointed to the
mournful little Niobe, and said:

"That's rather a good thing."

He could see, then, that she was struggling to preserve her
composure.

"I didn't want to startle you; is this one of your haunts?"

"Yes."

"A little lonely."  As he spoke, a lady, strolling by, paused to
look at the fountain and passed on.

Irene's eyes followed her.

"No," she said, prodding the ground with her parasol, "never
lonely.  One has always one's shadow."

Soames understood; and, looking at her hard, he exclaimed:

"Well, it's your own fault.  You can be free of it at any moment.
Irene, come back to me, and be free."

Irene laughed.

"Don't!" cried Soames, stamping his foot; "it's inhuman.  Listen!
Is there any condition I can make which will bring you back to me?
If I promise you a separate house--and just a visit now and then?"

Irene rose, something wild suddenly in her face and figure.

"None!  None!  None!  You may hunt me to the grave.  I will not
come."

Outraged and on edge, Soames recoiled.

"Don't make a scene!" he said sharply.  And they both stood
motionless, staring at the little Niobe, whose greenish flesh the
sunlight was burnishing.

"That's your last word, then," muttered Soames, clenching his
hands; "you condemn us both."

Irene bent her head.  "I can't come back.  Good-bye!"

A feeling of monstrous injustice flared up in Soames.

"Stop!" he said, "and listen to me a moment.  You gave me a sacred
vow--you came to me without a penny.  You had all I could give you.
You broke that vow without cause, you made me a by-word; you
refused me a child; you've left me in prison; you--you still move
me so that I want you--I want you.  Well, what do you think of
yourself?"

Irene turned, her face was deadly pale, her eyes burning dark.

"God made me as I am," she said; "wicked if you like--but not so
wicked that I'll give myself again to a man I hate."

The sunlight gleamed on her hair as she moved away, and seemed to
lay a caress all down her clinging cream-coloured frock.

Soames could neither speak nor move.  That word 'hate'--so extreme,
so primitive--made all the Forsyte in him tremble.  With a deep
imprecation he strode away from where she had vanished, and ran
almost into the arms of the lady sauntering back--the fool, the
shadowing fool!

He was soon dripping with perspiration, in the depths of the Bois.

'Well,' he thought, 'I need have no consideration for her now; she
has not a grain of it for me.  I'll show her this very day that
she's my wife still.'

But on the way home to his hotel, he was forced to the conclusion
that he did not know what he meant.  One could not make scenes in
public, and short of scenes in public what was there he could do?
He almost cursed his own thin-skinnedness.  She might deserve no
consideration; but he--alas! deserved some at his own hands.  And
sitting lunchless in the hall of his hotel, with tourists passing
every moment, Baedeker in hand, he was visited by black dejection.
In irons!  His whole life, with every natural instinct and every
decent yearning gagged and fettered, and all because Fate had
driven him seventeen years ago to set his heart upon this woman--so
utterly, that even now he had no real heart to set on any other!
Cursed was the day he had met her, and his eyes for seeing in her
anything but the cruel Venus she was!  And yet, still seeing her
with the sunlight on the clinging China crepe of her gown, he
uttered a little groan, so that a tourist who was passing, thought:
'Man in pain!  Let's see! what did I have for lunch?'

Later, in front of a cafe near the Opera, over a glass of cold tea
with lemon and a straw in it, he took the malicious resolution to
go and dine at her hotel.  If she were there, he would speak to
her; if she were not, he would leave a note.  He dressed carefully,
and wrote as follows:

"Your idyll with that fellow Jolyon Forsyte is known to me at all
events.  If you pursue it, understand that I will leave no stone
unturned to make things unbearable for him.  'S. F.'"

He sealed this note but did not address it, refusing to write the
maiden name which she had impudently resumed, or to put the word
Forsyte on the envelope lest she should tear it up unread.  Then he
went out, and made his way through the glowing streets, abandoned
to evening pleasure-seekers.  Entering her hotel, he took his seat
in a far corner of the dining-room whence he could see all
entrances and exits.  She was not there.  He ate little, quickly,
watchfully.  She did not come.  He lingered in the lounge over his
coffee, drank two liqueurs of brandy.  But still she did not come.
He went over to the keyboard and examined the names.  Number
twelve, on the first floor!  And he determined to take the note up
himself.  He mounted red-carpeted stairs, past a little salon;
eight-ten-twelve!  Should he knock, push the note under, or....?
He looked furtively round and turned the handle.  The door opened,
but into a little space leading to another door; he knocked on
that--no answer.  The door was locked.  It fitted very closely to
the floor; the note would not go under.  He thrust it back into his
pocket, and stood a moment listening.  He felt somehow certain that
she was not there.  And suddenly he came away, passing the little
salon down the stairs.  He stopped at the bureau and said:

"Will you kindly see that Mrs. Heron has this note?"

"Madame Heron left to-day, Monsieur--suddenly, about three o'clock.
There was illness in her family."

Soames compressed his lips.  "Oh!" he said; "do you know her
address?"

"Non, Monsieur.  England, I think."

Soames put the note back into his pocket and went out.  He hailed
an open horse-cab which was passing.

"Drive me anywhere!"

The man, who, obviously, did not understand, smiled, and waved his
whip.  And Soames was borne along in that little yellow-wheeled
Victoria all over star-shaped Paris, with here and there a pause,
and the question, "C'est par ici, Monsieur?" "No, go on," till the
man gave it up in despair, and the yellow-wheeled chariot continued
to roll between the tall, flat-fronted shuttered houses and plane-
tree avenues--a little Flying Dutchman of a cab.

'Like my life,' thought Soames, 'without object, on and on!'




CHAPTER II

IN THE WEB


Soames returned to England the following day, and on the third
morning received a visit from Mr. Polteed, who wore a flower and
carried a brown billycock hat.  Soames motioned him to a seat.

"The news from the war is not so bad, is it?" said Mr. Polteed.  "I
hope I see you well, sir."

"Thanks! quite."

Mr. Polteed leaned forward, smiled, opened his hand, looked into
it, and said softly:

"I think we've done your business for you at last."

"What?" ejaculated Soames.

"Nineteen reports quite suddenly what I think we shall be justified
in calling conclusive evidence," and Mr. Polteed paused.

"Well?"

"On the 10th instant, after witnessing an interview between 17 and
a party, earlier in the day, 19 can swear to having seen him coming
out of her bedroom in the hotel about ten o'clock in the evening.
With a little care in the giving of the evidence that will be
enough, especially as 17 has left Paris--no doubt with the party in
question.  In fact, they both slipped off, and we haven't got on to
them again, yet; but we shall--we shall.  She's worked hard under
very difficult circumstances, and I'm glad she's brought it off at
last."  Mr. Polteed took out a cigarette, tapped its end against
the table, looked at Soames, and put it back.  The expression on
his client's face was not encouraging.

"Who is this new person?" said Soames abruptly.

"That we don't know.  She'll swear to the fact, and she's got his
appearance pat."

Mr. Polteed took out a letter, and began reading:

"'Middle-aged, medium height, blue dittoes in afternoon, evening
dress at night, pale, dark hair, small dark moustache, flat cheeks,
good chin, grey eyes, small feet, guilty look....'"

Soames rose and went to the window.  He stood there in sardonic
fury.  Congenital idiot--spidery congenital idiot!  Seven months at
fifteen pounds a week--to be tracked down as his own wife's lover!
Guilty look!  He threw the window open.

"It's hot," he said, and came back to his seat:

Crossing his knees, he bent a supercilious glance on Mr. Polteed.

"I doubt if that's quite good enough," he said, drawling the words,
"with no name or address.  I think you may let that lady have a
rest, and take up our friend 47 at this end."  Whether Polteed had
spotted him he could not tell; but he had a mental vision of him in
the midst of his cronies dissolved in inextinguishable laughter.
'Guilty look!'  Damnation!

Mr. Polteed said in a tone of urgency, almost of pathos: "I assure
you we have put it through sometimes on less than that.  It's
Paris, you know.  Attractive woman living alone.  Why not risk it,
sir?  We might screw it up a peg."

Soames had sudden insight.  The fellow's professional zeal was
stirred: 'Greatest triumph of my career; got a man his divorce
through a visit to his own wife's bedroom!  Something to talk of
there, when I retire!'  And for one wild moment he thought: 'Why
not?'  After all, hundreds of men of medium height had small feet
and a guilty look!

"I'm not authorised to take any risk!" he said shortly.

Mr. Polteed looked up.

"Pity," he said, "quite a pity!  That other affair seemed very
costive."

Soames rose.

"Never mind that.  Please watch 47, and take care not to find a
mare's nest.  Good-morning!"

Mr. Polteed's eye glinted at the words 'mare's nest!'

"Very good.  You shall be kept informed."

And Soames was alone again.  The spidery, dirty, ridiculous
business!  Laying his arms on the table, he leaned his forehead on
them.  Full ten minutes he rested thus, till a managing clerk
roused him with the draft prospectus of a new issue of shares, very
desirable, in Manifold and Topping's.  That afternoon he left work
early and made his way to the Restaurant Bretagne.  Only Madame
Lamotte was in.  Would Monsieur have tea with her?

Soames bowed.

When they were seated at right angles to each other in the little
room, he said abruptly

"I want a talk with you, Madame."

The quick lift of her clear brown eyes told him that she had long
expected such words.

"I have to ask you something first: That young doctor--what's his
name?  Is there anything between him and Annette?"

Her whole personality had become, as it were, like jet--clear-cut,
black, hard, shining.

"Annette is young," she said; "so is monsieur le docteur.  Between
young people things move quickly; but Annette is a good daughter.
Ah! what a jewel of a nature!"

The least little smile twisted Soames' lips.

"Nothing definite, then?"

"But definite--no, indeed!  The young man is veree nice, but--what
would you?  There is no money at present."

She raised her willow-patterned tea-cup; Soames did the same.
Their eyes met.

"I am a married man," he said, "living apart from my wife for many
years.  I am seeking to divorce her."

Madame Lamotte put down her cup.  Indeed!  What tragic things there
were!  The entire absence of sentiment in her inspired a queer
species of contempt in Soames.

"I am a rich man," he added, fully conscious that the remark was
not in good taste.  "It is useless to say more at present, but I
think you understand."

Madame's eyes, so open that the whites showed above them, looked at
him very straight.

"Ah! ca--mais nous avons le temps!" was all she said.  "Another
little cup?" Soames refused, and, taking his leave, walked
westward.

He had got that off his mind; she would not let Annette commit
herself with that cheerful young ass until....!  But what chance of
his ever being able to say: 'I'm free.'  What chance?  The future
had lost all semblance of reality.  He felt like a fly, entangled
in cobweb filaments, watching the desirable freedom of the air with
pitiful eyes.

He was short of exercise, and wandered on to Kensington Gardens,
and down Queen's Gate towards Chelsea.  Perhaps she had gone back
to her flat.  That at all events he could find out.  For since that
last and most ignominious repulse his wounded self-respect had
taken refuge again in the feeling that she must have a lover.  He
arrived before the little Mansions at the dinner-hour.  No need to
enquire!  A grey-haired lady was watering the flower-boxes in her
window.  It was evidently let.  And he walked slowly past again,
along the river--an evening of clear, quiet beauty, all harmony and
comfort, except within his heart.




CHAPTER III

RICHMOND PARK


On the afternoon that Soames crossed to France a cablegram was
received by Jolyon at Robin Hill:

"Your son down with enteric no immediate danger will cable again."

It reached a household already agitated by the imminent departure
of June, whose berth was booked for the following day.  She was,
indeed, in the act of confiding Eric Cobbley and his family to her
father's care when the message arrived.

The resolution to become a Red Cross nurse, taken under stimulus of
Jolly's enlistment, had been loyally fulfilled with the irritation
and regret which all Forsytes feel at what curtails their
individual liberties.  Enthusiastic at first about the
'wonderfulness' of the work, she had begun after a month to feel
that she could train herself so much better than others could train
her.  And if Holly had not insisted on following her example, and
being trained too, she must inevitably have 'cried off.'  The
departure of Jolly and Val with their troop in April had further
stiffened her failing resolve.  But now, on the point of departure,
the thought of leaving Eric Cobbley, with a wife and two children,
adrift in the cold waters of an unappreciative world weighed on her
so that she was still in danger of backing out.  The reading of
that cablegram, with its disquieting reality, clinched the matter.
She saw herself already nursing Jolly--for of course they would let
her nurse her own brother!  Jolyon--ever wide and doubtful--had no
such hope.  Poor June!

Could any Forsyte of her generation grasp how rude and brutal life
was?  Ever since he knew of his boy's arrival at Cape Town the
thought of him had been a kind of recurrent sickness in Jolyon.  He
could not get reconciled to the feeling that Jolly was in danger
all the time.  The cablegram, grave though it was, was almost a
relief.  He was now safe from bullets, anyway.  And yet--this
enteric was a virulent disease!  The Times was full of deaths
therefrom.  Why could he not be lying out there in that up-country
hospital, and his boy safe at home?  The un-Forsytean selfsacrifice
of his three children, indeed, had quite bewildered Jolyon.  He
would eagerly change places with Jolly, because he loved his boy;
but no such personal motive was influencing them.  He could only
think that it marked the decline of the Forsyte type.

Late that afternoon Holly came out to him under the old oak-tree.
She had grown up very much during these last months of hospital
training away from home.  And, seeing her approach, he thought:
'She has more sense than June, child though she is; more wisdom.
Thank God she isn't going out.'  She had seated herself in the
swing, very silent and still.  'She feels this,' thought Jolyon,
'as much as I' and, seeing her eyes fixed on him, he said: "Don't
take it to heart too much, my child.  If he weren't ill, he might
be in much greater danger."

Holly got out of the swing.

"I want to tell you something, Dad.  It was through me that Jolly
enlisted and went out."

"How's that?"

"When you were away in Paris, Val Dartie and I fell in love.  We
used to ride in Richmond Park; we got engaged.  Jolly found it out,
and thought he ought to stop it; so he dared Val to enlist.  It was
all my fault, Dad; and I want to go out too.  Because if anything
happens to either of them I should feel awful.  Besides, I'm just
as much trained as June."

Jolyon gazed at her in a stupefaction that was tinged with irony.
So this was the answer to the riddle he had been asking himself;
and his three children were Forsytes after all.  Surely Holly might
have told him all this before!  But he smothered the sarcastic
sayings on his lips.  Tenderness to the young was perhaps the most
sacred article of his belief.  He had got, no doubt, what he
deserved.  Engaged!  So this was why he had so lost touch with her!
And to young Val Dartie--nephew of Soames--in the other camp!  It
was all terribly distasteful.  He closed his easel, and set his
drawing against the tree.

"Have you told June?"

"Yes; she says she'll get me into her cabin somehow.  It's a single
cabin; but one of us could sleep on the floor.  If you consent,
she'll go up now and get permission."

'Consent?' thought Jolyon.  'Rather late in the day to ask for
that!'  But again he checked himself.

"You're too young, my dear; they won't let you."

"June knows some people that she helped to go to Cape Town.  If
they won't let me nurse yet, I could stay with them and go on
training there.  Let me go, Dad!"

Jolyon smiled because he could have cried.

"I never stop anyone from doing anything," he said.

Holly flung her arms round his neck.

"Oh! Dad, you are the best in the world."

'That means the worst,' thought Jolyon.  If he had ever doubted his
creed of tolerance he did so then.

"I'm not friendly with Val's family," he said, "and I don't know
Val, but Jolly didn't like him."

Holly looked at the distance and said:

"I love him."

"That settles it," said Jolyon dryly, then catching the expression
on her face, he kissed her, with the thought: 'Is anything more
pathetic than the faith of the young?' Unless he actually forbade
her going it was obvious that he must make the best of it, so he
went up to town with June.  Whether due to her persistence, or the
fact that the official they saw was an old school friend of
Jolyon's, they obtained permission for Holly to share the single
cabin.  He took them to Surbiton station the following evening, and
they duly slid away from him, provided with money, invalid foods,
and those letters of credit without which Forsytes do not travel.

He drove back to Robin Hill under a brilliant sky to his late
dinner, served with an added care by servants trying to show him
that they sympathised, eaten with an added scrupulousness to show
them that he appreciated their sympathy.  But it was a real relief
to get to his cigar on the terrace of flag-stones--cunningly chosen
by young Bosinney for shape and colour--with night closing in
around him, so beautiful a night, hardly whispering in the trees,
and smelling so sweet that it made him ache.  The grass was
drenched with dew, and he kept to those flagstones, up and down,
till presently it began to seem to him that he was one of three,
not wheeling, but turning right about at each end, so that his
father was always nearest to the house, and his son always nearest
to the terrace edge.  Each had an arm lightly within his arm; he
dared not lift his hand to his cigar lest he should disturb them,
and it burned away, dripping ash on him, till it dropped from his
lips, at last, which were getting hot.  They left him then, and his
arms felt chilly.  Three Jolyons in one Jolyon they had walked.

He stood still, counting the sounds--a carriage passing on the
highroad, a distant train, the dog at Gage's farm, the whispering
trees, the groom playing on his penny whistle.  A multitude of
stars up there--bright and silent, so far off!  No moon as yet!
Just enough light to show him the dark flags and swords of the iris
flowers along the terrace edge--his favourite flower that had the
night's own colour on its curving crumpled petals.  He turned round
to the house.  Big, unlighted, not a soul beside himself to live in
all that part of it.  Stark loneliness!  He could not go on living
here alone.  And yet, so long as there was beauty, why should a man
feel lonely?  The answer--as to some idiot's riddle--was: Because
he did.  The greater the beauty, the greater the loneliness, for at
the back of beauty was harmony, and at the back of harmony was--
union.  Beauty could not comfort if the soul were out of it.  The
night, maddeningly lovely, with bloom of grapes on it in starshine,
and the breath of grass and honey coming from it, he could not
enjoy, while she who was to him the life of beauty, its embodiment
and essence, was cut off from him, utterly cut off now, he felt, by
honourable decency.

He made a poor fist of sleeping, striving too hard after that
resignation which Forsytes find difficult to reach, bred to their
own way and left so comfortably off by their fathers.  But after
dawn he dozed off, and soon was dreaming a strange dream.

He was on a stage with immensely high rich curtains--high as the
very stars--stretching in a semi--circle from footlights to
footlights.  He himself was very small, a little black restless
figure roaming up and down; and the odd thing was that he was not
altogether himself, but Soames as well, so that he was not only
experiencing but watching.  This figure of himself and Soames was
trying to find a way out through the curtains, which, heavy and
dark, kept him in.  Several times he had crossed in front of them
before he saw with delight a sudden narrow rift--a tall chink of
beauty the colour of iris flowers, like a glimpse of Paradise,
remote, ineffable.  Stepping quickly forward to pass into it, he
found the curtains closing before him.  Bitterly disappointed he--
or was it Soames?--moved on, and there was the chink again through
the parted curtains, which again closed too soon.  This went on and
on and he never got through till he woke with the word "Irene" on
his lips.  The dream disturbed him badly, especially that
identification of himself with Soames.

Next morning, finding it impossible to work, he spent hours riding
Jolly's horse in search of fatigue.  And on the second day he made
up his mind to move to London and see if he could not get
permission to follow his daughters to South Africa.  He had just
begun to pack the following morning when he received this letter:


"GREEN HOTEL,
"June 13.
" RICHMOND.

"MY DEAR JOLYON,

"You will be surprised to see how near I am to you.  Paris became
impossible--and I have come here to be within reach of your advice.
I would so love to see you again.  Since you left Paris I don't
think I have met anyone I could really talk to.  Is all well with
you and with your boy?  No one knows, I think, that I am here at
present.

"Always your friend,

"IRENE."


Irene within three miles of him!--and again in flight!  He stood
with a very queer smile on his lips.  This was more than he had
bargained for!

About noon he set out on foot across Richmond Park, and as he went
along, he thought: 'Richmond Park!  By Jove, it suits us Forsytes!'
Not that Forsytes lived there--nobody lived there save royalty,
rangers, and the deer--but in Richmond Park Nature was allowed to
go so far and no further, putting up a brave show of being natural,
seeming to say: 'Look at my instincts--they are almost passions,
very nearly out of hand, but not quite, of course; the very hub of
possession is to possess oneself.'  Yes! Richmond Park possessed
itself, even on that bright day of June, with arrowy cuckoos
shifting the tree-points of their calls, and the wood doves
announcing high summer.

The Green Hotel, which Jolyon entered at one o'clock, stood nearly
opposite that more famous hostelry, the Crown and Sceptre; it was
modest, highly respectable, never out of cold beef, gooseberry
tart, and a dowager or two, so that a carriage and pair was almost
always standing before the door.

In a room draped in chintz so slippery as to forbid all emotion,
Irene was sitting on a piano stool covered with crewel work,
playing 'Hansel and Gretel' out of an old score.  Above her on a
wall, not yet Morris-papered, was a print of the Queen on a pony,
amongst deer-hounds, Scotch. caps, and slain stags; beside her in a
pot on the window-sill was a white and rosy fuchsia.  The
Victorianism of the room almost talked; and in her clinging frock
Irene seemed to Jolyon like Venus emerging from the shell of the
past century.

"If the proprietor had eyes," he said, "he would show you the door;
you have broken through his decorations."  Thus lightly he
smothered up an emotional moment.  Having eaten cold beef, pickled
walnut, gooseberry tart, and drunk stone-bottle ginger-beer, they
walked into the Park, and light talk was succeeded by the silence
Jolyon had dreaded.

"You haven't told me about Paris," he said at last.

"No.  I've been shadowed for a long time; one gets used to that.
But then Soames came.  By the little Niobe--the same story; would I
go back to him?"

"Incredible!"

She had spoken without raising her eyes, but she looked up now.
Those dark eyes clinging to his said as no words could have: 'I
have come to an end; if you want me, here I am.'

For sheer emotional intensity had he ever--old as he was--passed
through such a moment?

The words: 'Irene, I adore you!' almost escaped him.  Then, with a
clearness of which he would not have believed mental vision
capable, he saw Jolly lying with a white face turned to a white
wall.

"My boy is very ill out there," he said quietly.

Irene slipped her arm through his.

"Let's walk on; I understand."

No miserable explanation to attempt!  She had understood!  And they
walked on among the bracken, knee-high already, between the
rabbitholes and the oak-trees, talking of Jolly.  He left her two
hours later at the Richmond Hill Gate, and turned towards home.

'She knows of my feeling for her, then,' he thought.  Of course!
One could not keep knowledge of that from such a woman!




CHAPTER IV

OVER THE RIVER


Jolly was tired to death of dreams.  They had left him now too wan
and weak to dream again; left him to lie torpid, faintly
remembering far-off things; just able to turn his eyes and gaze
through the window near his cot at the trickle of river running by
in the sands, at the straggling milk-bush of the Karoo beyond.  He
knew what the Karoo was now, even if he had not seen a Boer roll
over like a rabbit, or heard the whine of flying bullets.  This
pestilence had sneaked on him before he had smelled powder.  A
thirsty day and a rash drink, or perhaps a tainted fruit--who knew?
Not he, who had not even strength left to grudge the evil thing its
victory--just enough to know that there were many lying here with
him, that he was sore with frenzied dreaming; just enough to watch
that thread of river and be able to remember faintly those far-away
things....

The sun was nearly down.  It would be cooler soon.  He would have
liked to know the time--to feel his old watch, so butter-smooth, to
hear the repeater strike.  It would have been friendly, home-like.
He had not even strength to remember that the old watch was last
wound the day he began to lie here.  The pulse of his brain beat so
feebly that faces which came and went, nurse's, doctor's,
orderly's, were indistinguishable, just one indifferent face; and
the words spoken about him meant all the same thing, and that
almost nothing.  Those things he used to do, though far and faint,
were more distinct--walking past the foot of the old steps at
Harrow 'bill'--'Here, sir!  Here, sir!'--wrapping boots in the
Westminster Gazette, greenish paper, shining boots--grandfather
coming from somewhere dark--a smell of earth--the mushroom house!
Robin Hill!  Burying poor old Balthasar in the leaves!  Dad!
Home....

Consciousness came again with noticing that the river had no water
in it--someone was speaking too.  Want anything?  No.  What could
one want?  Too weak to want--only to hear his watch strike....

Holly!  She wouldn't bowl properly.  Oh!  Pitch them up!  Not
sneaks!...  'Back her, Two and Bow!'  He was Two!...  Consciousness
came once more with a sense of the violet dusk outside, and a
rising blood-red crescent moon.  His eyes rested on it fascinated;
in the long minutes of brain-nothingness it went moving up and
up....

"He's going, doctor!"   Not pack boots again?  Never?  'Mind your
form, Two!'  Don't cry!  Go quietly-over the river--sleep!...
Dark?  If somebody would--strike--his--watch!...




CHAPTER V

SOAMES ACTS


A sealed letter in the handwriting of Mr. Polteed remained unopened
in Soames' pocket throughout two hours of sustained attention to
the affairs of the 'New Colliery Company,' which, declining almost
from the moment of old Jolyon's retirement from the Chairmanship,
had lately run down so fast that there was now nothing for it but a
'winding-up.'  He took the letter out to lunch at his City Club,
sacred to him for the meals he had eaten there with his father in
the early seventies, when James used to like him to come and see
far himself the nature of his future life.

Here in a remote corner before a plate of roast mutton and mashed
potato, he read:


"DEAR SIR,

"In accordance with your suggestion we have duly taken the matter
up at the other end with gratifying results.  Observation of 47 has
enabled us to locate 17 at the Green Hotel, Richmond.  The two have
been observed to meet daily during the past week in Richmond Park.
Nothing absolutely crucial has so far been notified.  But in
conjunction with what we had from Paris at the beginning of the
year, I am confident we could now satisfy the Court.  We shall, of
course, continue to watch the matter until we hear from you.

"Very faithfully yours,

"CLAUD POLTEED."


Soames read it through twice and beckoned to the waiter:

"Take this away; it's cold."

"Shall I bring you some more, sir?"

"No.  Get me some coffee in the other room."

And, paying for what he had not eaten, he went out, passing two
acquaintances without sign of recognition.

'Satisfy the Court!' he thought, sitting at a little round marble
table with the coffee before him.  That fellow Jolyon!  He poured
out his coffee, sweetened and drank it.  He would disgrace him in
the eyes of his own children!  And rising, with that resolution hot
within him, he found for the first time the inconvenience of being
his own solicitor.  He could not treat this scandalous matter in
his own office.  He must commit the soul of his private dignity to
a stranger, some other professional dealer in family dishonour.
Who was there he could go to?  Linkman and Laver in Budge Row,
perhaps--reliable, not too conspicuous, only nodding acquaintances.
But before he saw them he must see Polteed again.  But at this
thought Soames had a moment of sheer weakness.  To part with his
secret?  How find the words?  How subject himself to contempt and
secret laughter?  Yet, after all, the fellow knew already--oh yes,
he knew!  And, feeling that he must finish with it now, he took a
cab into the West End.

In this hot weather the window of Mr. Polteed's room was positively
open, and the only precaution was a wire gauze, preventing the
intrusion of flies.  Two or three had tried to come in, and been
caught, so that they seemed to be clinging there with the intention
of being devoured presently.  Mr. Polteed, following the direction
of his client's eye, rose apologetically and closed the window.

'Posing ass!'  thought Soames.  Like all who fundamentally believe
in themselves he was rising to the occasion, and, with his little
sideway smile, he said: "I've had your letter.  I'm going to act.
I suppose you know who the lady you've been watching really is?"
Mr. Polteed's expression at that moment was a masterpiece.  It so
clearly said: 'Well, what do you think?  But mere professional
knowledge, I assure you--pray forgive it!'  He made a little half
airy movement with his hand, as who should say: 'Such things--such
things will happen to us all!'

"Very well, then," said Soames, moistening his lips: "there's no
need to say more.  I'm instructing Linkman and Laver of Budge Row
to act for me.  I don't want to hear your evidence, but kindly make
your report to them at five o'clock, and continue to observe the
utmost secrecy."

Mr. Polteed half closed his eyes, as if to comply at once.  "My
dear sir," he said.

"Are you convinced," asked Soames with sudden energy, "that there
is enough?"

The faintest movement occurred to Mr. Polteed's shoulders.

"You can risk it," he murmured; "with what we have, and human
nature, you can risk it."

Soames rose.  "You will ask for Mr. Linkman.  Thanks; don't get
up."  He could not bear Mr. Polteed to slide as usual between him
and the door.  In the sunlight of Piccadilly he wiped his forehead.
This had been the worst of it--he could stand the strangers better.
And he went back into the City to do what still lay before him.

That evening in Park Lane, watching his father dine, he was
overwhelmed by his old longing for a son--a son, to watch him eat
as he went down the years, to be taken on his knee as James on a
time had been wont to take him; a son of his own begetting, who
could understand him because he was the same flesh and blood--
understand, and comfort him, and become more rich and cultured than
himself because he would start even better off.  To get old--like
that thin, grey wiry-frail figure sitting there--and be quite alone
with possessions heaping up around him; to take no interest in
anything because it had no future and must pass away from him to
hands and mouths and eyes for whom he cared no jot!  No!  He would
force it through now, and  be free to marry, and have a son to care
for him before he grew to be like the old old man his father,
wistfully watching now his sweetbread, now his son.

In that mood he went up to bed.  But, lying warm between those fine
linen sheets of Emily's providing, he was visited by memories and
torture.  Visions of Irene, almost the solid feeling of her body,
beset him.  Why had he ever been fool enough to see her again, and
let this flood back on him so that it was pain to think of her with
that fellow--that stealing fellow.




CHAPTER VI

A SUMMER DAY


His boy was seldom absent from Jolyon's mind in the days which
followed the first walk with Irene in Richmond Park.  No further
news had come; enquiries at the War Office elicited nothing; nor
could he expect to hear from June and Holly for three weeks at
least.  In these days he felt how insufficient were his memories of
Jolly, and what an amateur of a father he had been.  There was not
a single memory in which anger played a part; not one
reconciliation, because there had never been a rupture; nor one
heart-to-heart confidence, not even when Jolly's mother died.
Nothing but half-ironical affection.  He had been too afraid of
committing himself in any direction, for fear of losing his
liberty, or interfering with that of his boy.

Only in Irene's presence had he relief, highly complicated by the
ever-growing perception of how divided he was between her and his
son.  With Jolly was bound up all that sense of continuity and
social creed of which he had drunk deeply in his youth and again
during his boy's public school and varsity life--all that sense of
not going back on what father and son expected of each other.  With
Irene was bound up all his delight in beauty and in Nature.  And he
seemed to know less and less which was the stronger within him.
>From such sentimental paralysis he was rudely awakened, however,
one afternoon, just as he was starting off to Richmond, by a young
man with a bicycle and a face oddly familiar, who came forward
faintly smiling.

"Mr. Jolyon Forsyte?  Thank you!"   Placing an envelope in Jolyon's
hand he wheeled off the path and rode away.  Bewildered, Jolyon
opened it.

"Admiralty Probate and Divorce, Forsyte v. Forsyte and Forsyte!"

A sensation of shame and disgust was followed by the instant
reaction 'Why, here's the very thing you want, and you don't like
it!'  But she must have had one too; and he must go to her at once.
He turned things over as he went along.  It was an ironical busi-
ness.  For, whatever the Scriptures said about the heart, it took
more than mere longings to satisfy the law.  They could perfectly
well defend this suit, or at least in good faith try to.  But the
idea of doing so revolted Jolyon.  If not her lover in deed he was
in desire, and he knew that she was ready to come to him.  Her face
had told him so.  Not that he exaggerated her feeling for him.  She
had had her grand passion, and he could not expect another from her
at his age.  But she had trust in him, affection for him, and must
feel that he would be a refuge.  Surely she would not ask him to
defend the suit, knowing that he adored her!  Thank Heaven she had
not that maddening British conscientiousness which refused
happiness for the sake of refusing!  She must rejoice at this
chance of being free after seventeen years of death in life!  As to
publicity, the fat was in the fire!  To defend the suit would not
take away the slur.  Jolyon had all the proper feeling of a Forsyte
whose privacy is threatened: If he was to be  hung by the Law, by
all means let it be for a sheep!  Moreover the notion of standing
in a witness box and swearing to the truth that no gesture, not
even a word of love had passed between them seemed to him more
degrading than to take the tacit stigma of being an adulterer--more
truly degrading, considering the feeling in his heart, and just as
bad and painful for his children.  The thought of explaining away,
if he could, before a judge and twelve average Englishmen, their
meetings in Paris, and the walks in Richmond Park, horrified him.
The brutality and hypocritical censoriousness of the whole process;
the probability that they would not be believed--the mere vision of
her, whom he looked on as the embodiment of Nature and of Beauty,
standing there before all those suspicious, gloating eyes was
hideous to him.  No, no!  To defend a suit only made a London
holiday, and sold the newspapers.  A thousand times better accept
what Soames and the gods had sent!

'Besides,' he thought honestly, 'who knows whether, even for my
boy's sake, I could have stood this state of things much longer?
Anyway, her neck will be out of chancery at last!'  Thus absorbed,
he was hardly conscious of the heavy heat.  The sky had become
overcast, purplish with little streaks of white.  A heavy heat-drop
plashed a little star pattern in the dust of the road as he entered
the Park.  'Phew!'  he thought, 'thunder!  I hope she's not come to
meet me; there's a ducking up there!'  But at that very minute he
saw Irene coming towards the Gate.  'We must scuttle back to Robin
Hill,' he thought.

The storm had passed over the Poultry at four o'clock, bringing
welcome distraction to the clerks in every office.  Soames was
drinking a cup of tea when a note was brought in to him:


"DEAR SIR,

"Forsyte v.  Forsyte and Forsyte

"In accordance with your instructions, we beg to inform you that we
personally served the respondent and co-respondent in this suit
to-day, at Richmond, and Robin Hill, respectively.
"Faithfully yours,

"LINKMAN AND LAVER."


For some minutes Soames stared at that note.  Ever since he had
given those instructions he had been tempted to annul them.  It was
so scandalous, such a general disgrace!  The evidence, too, what he
had heard of it, had never seemed to him conclusive; somehow, he
believed less and less that those two had gone all lengths.  But
this, of course, would drive them to it; and he suffered from the
thought.  That fellow to have her love, where he had failed!  Was
it too late?  Now that they had been brought up sharp by service of
this petition, had he not a lever with which he could force them
apart?  'But if I don't act at once,' he thought, 'it will be too
late, now they've had this thing.  I'll go and see him; I'll go
down!'

And, sick with nervous anxiety, he sent out for one of the
'new-fangled' motor-cabs.  It might take a long time to run that
fellow to ground, and Goodness knew what decision they might come
to after such a shock!  'If I were a theatrical ass,' he thought,
'I suppose I should be taking a horse-whip or a pistol or
something!'  He took instead a bundle of papers in the case of
'Magentie versus Wake,' intending to read them on the way down.  He
did not even open them, but sat quite still, jolted and jarred,
unconscious of the draught down the back of his neck, or the smell
of petrol.  He must be guided by the fellow's attitude; the great
thing was to keep his head!

London had already begun to disgorge its workers as he neared
Putney Bridge; the ant-heap was on the move outwards.  What a lot
of ants, all with a living to get, holding on by their eyelids in
the great scramble!  Perhaps for the first time in his life Soames
thought: 'I could let go if I liked!  Nothing could touch me; I
could snap my fingers, live as I wished--enjoy myself!'  No!  One
could not live as he had and just drop it all--settle down in
Capua, to spend the money and reputation he had made.  A man's life
was what he possessed and sought to possess.  Only fools thought
otherwise--fools, and socialists, and libertines!

The cab was passing villas now, going a great pace.  'Fifteen miles
an hour, I should think!' he mused; 'this'll take people out of
town to live!' and he thought of its bearing on the portions of
London owned by his father--he himself had never taken to that form
of investment, the gambler in him having all the outlet needed in
his pictures.  And the cab sped on, down the hill past Wimbledon
Common.  This interview!  Surely a man of fifty-two with grown-up
children, and hung on the line, would not be reckless.  'He won't
want to disgrace the family,' he thought; 'he was as fond of his
father as I am of mine, and they were brothers.  That woman brings
destruction--what is it in her?  I've never known.'  The cab
branched off, along the side of a wood, and he heard a late cuckoo
calling, almost the first he had heard that year.  He was now
almost opposite the site he had originally chosen for his house,
and which had been so unceremoniously rejected by Bosinney in
favour of his own choice.  He began passing his handkerchief over
his face and hands, taking deep breaths to give him steadiness.
'Keep one's head,' he thought, 'keep one's head!'

The cab turned in at the drive which might have been his own, and
the sound of music met him.  He had forgotten the fellow's
daughters.

"I may be out again directly," he said to the driver, "or I may be
kept some time"; and he rang the bell.

Following the maid through the curtains into the inner hall, he
felt relieved that the impact of this meeting would be broken by
June or Holly, whichever was playing in there, so that with
complete surprise he saw Irene at the piano, and Jolyon sitting in
an armchair listening.  They both stood up.  Blood surged into
Soames' brain, and all his resolution to be guided by this or that
left him utterly.  The look of 'his farmer forbears--dogged
Forsytes down by the sea, from 'Superior Dosset' back-grinned out
of his face.

"Very pretty!"   he said.

He heard the fellow murmur:

"This is hardly the place--we'll go to the study, if you don't
mind."  And they both passed him through the curtain opening.  In
the little room to which he followed them, Irene stood by the open
window, and the 'fellow' close to her by a big chair.  Soames
pulled the door to behind him with a slam; the sound carried him
back all those years to the day when he had shut out Jolyon--shut
him out for meddling with his affairs.

"Well," he said, "what have you to say for yourselves?"

The fellow had the effrontery to smile.

"What we have received to-day has taken away your right to ask.  I
should imagine you will be glad to have your neck out of chancery."

"Oh!" said Soames; "you think so!  I came to tell you that I'll
divorce her with every circumstance of disgrace to you both, unless
you swear to keep clear of each other from now on."

He was astonished at his fluency, because his mind was stammering
and his hands twitching.  Neither of them answered; but their faces
seemed to him as if contemptuous.

"Well," he said; "you--Irene?"

Her lips moved, but Jolyon laid his hand on her arm.

"Let her alone!" said Soames furiously.  "Irene, will you swear
it?"

"No."

"Oh! and you?"

"Still less."

"So then you're guilty, are you?"

"Yes, guilty."  It was Irene speaking in that serene voice, with
that unreached air which had maddened him so often; and, carried
beyond himself, he cried:

"You are a devil"

"Go out!  Leave this house, or I'll do you an injury."

That fellow to talk of injuries!  Did he know how near his throat
was to being scragged?

"A trustee," he said, "embezzling trust property!  A thief,
stealing his cousin's wife."

"Call me what you like.  You have chosen your part, we have chosen
ours.  Go out!"

If he had brought a weapon Soames might have used it at that
moment.

"I'll make you pay!" he said.

"I shall be very happy."

At that deadly turning of the meaning of his speech by the son of
him who had nicknamed him 'the man of property,' Soames stood
glaring.  It was ridiculous!

There they were, kept from violence by some secret force.  No blow
possible, no words to meet the case.  But he could not, did not
know how to turn and go away.  His eyes fastened on Irene's face--
the last time he would ever see that fatal face--the last time, no
doubt!

"You," he said suddenly, "I hope you'll treat him as you treated
me--that's all."

He saw her wince, and with a sensation not quite triumph, not quite
relief, he wrenched open the door, passed out through the hall, and
got into his cab.  He lolled against the cushion with his eyes
shut.  Never in his life had he been so near to murderous violence,
never so thrown away the restraint which was his second nature.  He
had a stripped and naked feeling, as if all virtue had gone out of
him--life meaningless, mind-striking work.  Sunlight streamed in on
him, but he felt cold.  The scene he had passed through had gone
from him already, what was before him would not materialise, he
could catch on to nothing; and he felt frightened, as if he had
been hanging over the edge of a precipice, as if with another turn
of the screw sanity would have failed him.  'I'm not fit for it,'
he thought; 'I mustn't--I'm not fit for it.'  The cab sped on, and
in mechanical procession trees, houses, people passed, but had no
significance.  'I feel very queer,' he thought; 'I'll take a
Turkish bath.--I've been very near to something.  It won't do.'
The cab whirred its way back over the bridge, up the Fulham Road,
along the Park.

"To the Hammam," said Soames.

Curious that on so warm a summer day, heat should be so comforting!
Crossing into the hot room he met George Forsyte coming out, red
and glistening.

"Hallo!" said George; "what are you training for?  You've not got
much superfluous."

Buffoon!  Soames passed him with his sideway smile.  Lying back,
rubbing his skin uneasily for the first signs of perspiration, he
thought: 'Let them laugh!  I won't feel anything!  I can't stand
violence!  It's not good for me!'




CHAPTER VII

A SUMMER NIGHT


Soames left dead silence in the little study.  "Thank you for that
good lie," said Jolyon suddenly.  "Come out--the air in here is not
what it was!"

In front of a long high southerly wall on which were trained
peach-trees the two walked up and down in silence.  Old Jolyon had
planted some cupressus-trees, at intervals, between this grassy
terrace and the dipping meadow full of buttercups and ox-eyed
daisies; for twelve years they had flourished, till their dark
spiral shapes had quite a look of Italy.  Birds fluttered softly in
the wet shrubbery; the swallows swooped past, with a steel-blue
sheen on their swift little bodies; the grass felt springy beneath
the feet, its green refreshed; butterflies chased each other.
After that painful scene the quiet of Nature was wonderfully
poignant.  Under the sun-soaked wall ran a narrow strip of
garden-bed full of mignonette and pansies, and from the bees came a
low hum in which all other sounds were set--the mooing of a cow
deprived of her calf, the calling of a cuckoo from an elm-tree at
the bottom of the meadow.  Who would have thought that behind them,
within ten miles, London began--that London of the Forsytes, with
its wealth, its misery; its dirt and noise; its jumbled stone isles
of beauty, its grey sea of hideous brick and stucco?  That London
which had seen Irene's early tragedy, and Jolyon's own hard days;
that web; that princely workhouse of the possessive instinct!

And while they walked Jolyon pondered those words: 'I hope you'll
treat him as you treated me.'  That would depend on himself.  Could
he trust himself?  Did Nature permit a Forsyte not to make a slave
of what he adored?  Could beauty be confided to him?  Or should she
not be just a visitor, coming when she would, possessed for moments
which passed, to return only at her own choosing?  'We are a breed
of spoilers!' thought Jolyon, 'close and greedy; the bloom of life
is not safe with us.  Let her come to me as she will, when she
will, not at all if she will not.  Let me be just her stand-by, her
perching-place; never-never her cage!'

She was the chink of beauty in his dream.  Was he to pass through
the curtains now and reach her?  Was the rich stuff of many
possessions, the close encircling fabric of the possessive instinct
walling in that little black figure of himself, and Soames--was it
to be rent so that he could pass through into his vision, find
there something not of the senses only?  'Let me,' he thought, 'ah!
let me only know how not to grasp and destroy!'

But at dinner there were plans to be made.  To-night she would go
back to the hotel, but tomorrow he would take her up to London.  He
must instruct his solicitor--Jack Herring.  Not a finger must be
raised to hinder the process of the Law.  Damages exemplary,
judicial strictures, costs, what they liked--let it go through at
the first moment, so that her neck might be out of chancery at
last!  To-morrow he would see Herring--they would go and see him
together.  And then--abroad, leaving no doubt, no difficulty about
evidence, making the lie she had told into the truth.  He looked
round at her; and it seemed to his adoring eyes that more than a
woman was sitting there.  The spirit of universal beauty, deep,
mysterious, which the old painters, Titian, Giorgione, Botticelli,
had known how to capture and transfer to the faces of their women--
this flying beauty seemed to him imprinted on her brow, her hair,
her lips, and in her eyes.

'And this is to be mine!'  he thought.  'It frightens me!'

After dinner they went out on to the terrace to have coffee.  They
sat there long, the evening was so lovely, watching the summer
night come very slowly on.  It was still warm and the air smelled
of lime blossom--early this summer.  Two bats were flighting with
the faint mysterious little noise they make.  He had placed the
chairs in front of the study window, and moths flew past to visit
the discreet light in there.  There was no wind, and not a whisper
in the old oak-tree twenty yards away!  The moon rose from behind
the copse, nearly full; and the two lights struggled, till
moonlight conquered, changing the colour and quality of all the
garden, stealing along the flagstones, reaching their feet,
climbing up, changing their faces.

"Well," said Jolyon at last, "you'll be tired, dear; we'd better
start.  The maid will show you Holly's room," and he rang the study
bell.  The maid who came handed him a telegram.  Watching her take
Irene away, he thought: 'This must have come an hour or more ago,
and she didn't bring it out to us!  That shows!  Well, we'll be
hung for a sheep soon!'  And, opening the telegram, he read:


"JOLYON FORSYTE, Robin Hill.--Your son passed painlessly away on
June 20th.  Deep sympathy"--some name unknown to him.


He dropped it, spun round, stood motionless.  The moon shone in on
him; a moth flew in his face.  The first day of all that he had not
thought almost ceaselessly of Jolly.  He went blindly towards the
window, struck against the old armchair--his father's--and sank
down on to the arm of it.  He sat there huddled' forward, staring
into the night.  Gone out like a candle flame; far from home, from
love, all by himself, in the dark!  His boy!  From a little chap
always so good to him--so friendly!  Twenty years old, and cut down
like grass--to have no life at all!  'I didn't really know him,' he
thought, 'and he didn't know me; but we loved each other.  It's
only love that matters.'

To die out there--lonely--wanting them--wanting home!  This seemed
to his Forsyte heart more painful, more pitiful than death itself.
No shelter, no protection, no love at the last!  And all the deeply
rooted clanship in him, the family feeling and essential clinging
to his own flesh and blood which had been so strong in old Jolyon
was so strong in all the Forsytes--felt outraged, cut, and torn by
his boy's lonely passing.  Better far if he had died in battle,
without time to long for them to come to him, to call out for them,
perhaps, in his delirium!

The moon had passed behind the oak-tree now, endowing it with
uncanny life, so that it seemed watching him--the oak-tree his boy
had been so fond of climbing, out of which he had once fallen and
hurt himself, and hadn't cried!

The door creaked.  He saw Irene come in, pick up the telegram and
read it.  He heard the faint rustle of her dress.  She sank on her
knees close to him, and he forced himself to smile at her.  She
stretched up her arms and drew his head down on her shoulder.  The
perfume and warmth of her encircled him; her presence gained slowly
his whole being.




CHAPTER VIII

JAMES IN WAITING


Sweated to serenity, Soames dined at the Remove and turned his face
toward Park Lane.  His father had been unwell lately.  This would
have to be kept from him!  Never till that moment had he realised
how much the dread of bringing James' grey hairs down with sorrow
to the grave had counted with him; how intimately it was bound up
with his own shrinking from scandal.  His affection for his father,
always deep, had increased of late years with the knowledge that
James looked on him as the real prop of his decline.  It seemed
pitiful that one who had been so careful all his life and done so
much for the family name--so that it was almost a byword for solid,
wealthy respectability--should at his last gasp have to see it in
all the newspapers.  This was like lending a hand to Death, that
final enemy of Forsytes.  'I must tell mother,' he thought, 'and
when it comes on, we must keep the papers from him somehow.  He
sees hardly anyone.'  Letting himself in with his latchkey, he was
beginning to ascend he stairs when he became conscious of commotion
on the second-floor landing.  His mother's voice was saying:

"Now, James, you'll catch cold.  Why can't you wait quietly?"

His father's answering

"Wait?  I'm always waiting.  Why doesn't he come in?"

"You can speak to him to-morrow morning, instead of making a guy of
yourself on the landing."

"He'll go up to bed, I shouldn't wonder.  I shan't sleep."

"Now come back to bed, James."

"Um!  I might die before to-morrow morning for all you can tell."

"You shan't have to wait till to-morrow morning; I'll go down and
bring him up.  Don't fuss!"

"There you go--always so cock-a-hoop.  He mayn't come in at all."

"Well, if he doesn't come in you won't catch him by standing out
here in your dressing-gown."

Soames rounded the last bend and came in sight of his father's tall
figure wrapped in a brown silk quilted gown, stooping over the
balustrade above.  Light fell on his silvery hair and whiskers,
investing his head with, a sort of halo.

"Here he is!" he heard him say in a voice which sounded injured,
and his mother's comfortable answer from the bedroom door:

"That's all right.  Come in, and I'll brush your hair."  James
extended a thin, crooked finger, oddly like the beckoning of a
skeleton, and passed through the doorway of his bedroom.

'What is it?' thought Soames.  'What has he got hold of now?'

His father was sitting before the dressing-table sideways to the
mirror, while Emily slowly passed two silver-backed brushes through
and through his hair.  She would do this several times a day, for
it had on him something of the effect produced on a cat by
scratching between its ears.

"There you are!" he said.  "I've been waiting."

Soames stroked his shoulder, and, taking up a silver button-hook,
examined the mark on it.

"Well," he said, "you're looking better."

James shook his head.

"I want to say something.  Your mother hasn't heard."  He announced
Emily's ignorance of what he hadn't told her, as if it were a
grievance.

"Your father's been in a great state all the evening.  I'm sure I
don't know what about."

The faint 'whisk-whisk' of the brushes continued the soothing of
her voice.

"No! you know nothing," said James.  "Soames can tell me."  And,
fixing his grey eyes, in which there was a look of strain,
uncomfortable to watch, on his son, he muttered:

"I'm getting on, Soames.  At my age I can't tell.  I might die any
time.  There'll be a lot of money.  There's Rachel and Cicely got
no children; and Val's out there--that chap his father will get
hold of all he can.  And somebody'll pick up Imogen, I shouldn't
wonder."

Soames listened vaguely--he had heard all this before.  Whish-
whish!  went the brushes.

"If that's all!"   said Emily.

"All!" cried James; "it's nothing.  I'm coming to that."  And again
his eyes strained pitifully at Soames.

"It's you, my boy," he said suddenly; "you ought to get a divorce."

That word, from those of all lips, was almost too much for Soames'
composure.  His eyes reconcentrated themselves quickly on the
buttonhook, and as if in apology James hurried on:

"I don't know what's become of her--they say she's abroad.  Your
Uncle Swithin used to admire her--he was a funny fellow."  (So he
always alluded to his dead twin-'The Stout and the Lean of it,'
they had been called.)  "She wouldn't be alone, I should say."  And
with that summing-up of the effect of beauty on human nature, he
was silent, watching his son with eyes doubting as a bird's.
Soames, too, was silent.  Whish-whish went the brushes.

"Come, James!  Soames knows best.  It's his 'business."

"Ah!" said James, and the word came from deep down; "but there's
all my money, and there's his--who's it to go to?  And when he dies
the name goes out."

Soames replaced the button-hook on the lace and pink silk of the
dressing-table coverlet.

"The name?" said Emily, "there are all the other Forsytes."

"As if that helped me," muttered James.  "I shall be in my grave,
and there'll be nobody, unless he marries again."

"You're quite right," said Soames quietly; "I'm getting a divorce."

James' eyes almost started from his head.

"What?" he cried.  "There! nobody tells me anything."

"Well," said Emily, "who would have imagined you wanted it?  My
dear boy, that is a surprise, after all these years."

"It'll be a scandal," muttered James, as if to himself; "but I
can't help that.  Don't brush so hard.  When'll it come on?"

"Before the Long Vacation; it's not defended."

James' lips moved in secret calculation.  "I shan't live to see my
grandson," he muttered.

Emily ceased brushing.  "Of course you will, James.  Soames will be
as quick as he can."

There was a long silence, till James reached out his arm.

"Here! let's have the eau-de-Cologne," and, putting it to his nose,
he moved his forehead in the direction of his son.  Soames bent
over and kissed that brow just where the hair began.  A relaxing
quiver passed over James' face, as though the wheels of anxiety
within were running down.

"I'll get to bed," he said; "I shan't want to see the papers when
that comes.  They're a morbid lot; I can't pay attention to them,
I'm too old."

Queerly affected, Soames went to the door; he heard his father say:

"Here, I'm tired.  I'll say a prayer in bed."

And his mother answering

"That's right, James; it'll be ever so much more comfy."




CHAPTER IX

OUT OF THE WEB


On Forsyte 'Change the announcement of Jolly's death, among a
batch of troopers, caused mixed sensation.  Strange to read that
Jolyon Forsyte (fifth of the name in direct descent) had died of
disease in the service of his country, and not be able to feel it
personally.  It revived the old grudge against his father for
having estranged himself.  For such was still the prestige of old
Jolyon that the other Forsytes could never quite feel, as might
have been expected, that it was they who had cut off his
descendants for irregularity.  The news increased, of course, the
interest and anxiety about Val; but then Val's name was Dartie, and
even if he were killed in battle or got the Victoria Cross, it
would not be at all the same as if his name were Forsyte.  Not even
casualty or glory to the Haymans would be really satisfactory.
Family pride felt defrauded.

How the rumour arose, then, that 'something very dreadful, my
dear,' was pending, no one, least of all Soames, could tell, secret
as he kept everything.  Possibly some eye had seen 'Forsyte v.
Forsyte and Forsyte,' in the cause list; and had added it to 'Irene
in Paris with a fair beard.'  Possibly some wall at Park Lane had
ears.  The fact remained that it was known--whispered among the
old, discussed among the young--that family pride must soon receive
a blow.

Soames, paying one, of his Sunday visits to Timothy's--paying it
with the feeling that after the suit came on he would be paying no
more--felt knowledge in the air as he came in.  Nobody, of course,
dared speak of it before him, but each of the four other Forsytes
present held their breath, aware that nothing could prevent Aunt
Juley from making them all uncomfortable.  She looked so piteously
at Soames, she checked herself on the point of speech so often,
that Aunt Hester excused herself and said she must go and bathe
Timothy's eye--he had a sty coming.  Soames, impassive, slightly
supercilious, did not stay long.  He went out with a curse stifled
behind his pale, just smiling lips.

Fortunately for the peace of his mind, cruelly tortured by the
coming scandal, he was kept busy day and night with plans for his
retirement--for he had come to that grim conclusion.  To go on
seeing all those people who had known him as a 'long-headed chap,'
an astute adviser--after that--no!  The fastidiousness and pride
which was so strangely, so inextricably blended in him with
possessive obtuseness, revolted against the thought.  He would
retire, live privately, go on buying pictures, make a great name as
a collector--after all, his heart was more in that than it had ever
been in Law.  In pursuance of this now fixed resolve, he had to get
ready to amalgamate his business with another firm without letting
people know, for that would excite curiosity and make humiliation
cast its shadow before.  He had pitched on the firm of Cuthcott,
Holliday and Kingson, two of whom were dead.  The full name after
the amalgamation would therefore be Cuthcott, Holliday, Kingson,
Forsyte, Bustard and Forsyte.  But after debate as to which of the
dead still had any influence with the living, it was decided to
reduce the title to Cuthcott, Kingson and Forsyte, of whom Kingson
would be the active and Soames the sleeping partner.  For leaving
his name, prestige, and clients behind him, Soames would receive
considerable value.

One night, as befitted a man who had arrived at so important a
stage of his career, he made a calculation of what he was worth,
and after writing off liberally for depreciation by the war, found
his value to be some hundred and thirty thousand pounds.  At his
father's death, which could not, alas, be delayed much longer, he
must come into at least another fifty thousand, and his yearly
expenditure at present just reached two.  Standing among his
pictures, he saw before him a future full of bargains earned by the
trained faculty of knowing better than other people.  Selling what
was about to decline, keeping what was still going up, and
exercising judicious insight into future taste, he would make a
unique collection, which at his death would pass to the nation
under the title 'Forsyte Bequest.'

If the divorce went through, he had determined on his line with
Madame Lamotte.  She had, he knew, but one real ambition--to live
on her 'renter' in Paris near her grandchildren.  He would buy the
goodwill of the Restaurant Bretagne at a fancy price.  Madame would
live like a Queen-Mother in Paris on the interest, invested as she
would know how.  (Incidentally Soames meant to put a capable
manager in her place, and make the restaurant pay good interest on
his money.  There were great possibilities in Soho.)  On Annette he
would promise to settle fifteen thousand pounds (whether designedly
or not), precisely the sum old Jolyon had settled on 'that woman.'

A letter from Jolyon's solicitor to his own had disclosed the fact
that 'those two' were in Italy.  And an opportunity had been duly
given for noting that they had first stayed at an hotel in London.
The matter was clear as daylight, and would be disposed of in half
an hour or so; but during that half-hour he, Soames, would go down
to hell; and after that half-hour all bearers of the Forsyte name
would feel the bloom was off the rose.  He had no illusions like
Shakespeare that roses by any other name would smell as sweet.  The
name was a possession, a concrete, unstained piece of property, the
value of which would be reduced some twenty per cent. at least.
Unless it were Roger, who had once refused to stand for Parliament,
and--oh, irony!--Jolyon, hung on the line, there had never been a
distinguished Forsyte.  But that very lack of distinction was the
name's greatest asset.  It was a private name, intensely
individual, and his own property; it had never been exploited for
good or evil by intrusive report.  He and each member of his family
owned it wholly, sanely, secretly, without any more interference
from the public than had been necessitated by their births, their
marriages, their deaths.  And during these weeks of waiting and
preparing to drop the Law, he conceived for that Law a bitter
distaste, so deeply did he resent its coming violation of his name,
forced on him by the need he felt to perpetuate that name in a
lawful manner.  The monstrous injustice of the whole thing excited
in him a perpetual suppressed fury.  He had asked no better than to
live in spotless domesticity, and now he must go into the witness
box, after all these futile, barren years, and proclaim his failure
to keep his wife--incur the pity, the amusement, the contempt of
his kind.  It was all upside down.  She and that fellow ought to be
the sufferers, and they--were in Italy!  In these weeks the Law he
had served so faithfully, looked on so reverently as the guardian
of all property, seemed to him quite pitiful.  What could be more
insane than to tell a man that he owned his wife, and punish him
when someone unlawfully took her away from him?  Did the Law not
know that a man's name was to him the apple of his eye, that it was
far harder to be regarded as cuckold than as seducer?  He actually
envied Jolyon the reputation of succeeding where he, Soames, had
failed.  The question of damages worried him, too.  He wanted to
make that fellow suffer, but he remembered his cousin's words, "I
shall be very happy," with the uneasy feeling that to claim damages
would make not Jolyon but himself suffer; he felt uncannily that
Jolyon would rather like to pay them--the chap was so loose.
Besides, to claim damages was not the thing to do.  The claim,
indeed, had been made almost mechanically; and as the hour drew
near Soames saw in it just another dodge of this insensitive and
topsy-turvy Law to make him ridiculous; so that people might sneer
and say: "Oh, yes, he got quite a good price for her!"   And he
gave instructions that his Counsel should state that the money
would be given to a Home for Fallen Women.  He was a long time
hitting off exactly the right charity; but, having pitched on it,
he used to wake up in the night and think: 'It won't do, too lurid;
it'll draw attention.  Something quieter--better taste.'  He did
not care for dogs, or he would have named them; and it was in
desperation at last--for his knowledge of charities was limited--
that he decided on the blind.  That could not be inappropriate, and
it would make the Jury assess the damages high.

A good many suits were dropping out of the list, which happened to
be exceptionally thin that summer, so that his case would be
reached before August.  As the day grew nearer, Winifred was his
only comfort.  She showed the fellow-feeling of one who had been
through the mill, and was the 'femme-sole' in whom he confided,
well knowing that she would not let Dartie into her confidence.
That ruffian would be only too rejoiced!  At the end of July, on
the afternoon before the case, he went in to see her.  They had not
yet been able to leave town, because Dartie had already spent their
summer holiday, and Winifred dared not go to her father for more
money while he was waiting not to be told anything about this
affair of Soames.

Soames found her with a letter in her hand.

"That from Val," he asked gloomily.  "What does he say?"

"He says he's married," said Winifred.

"Whom to, for Goodness' sake?"

Winifred looked up at him.

"To Holly Forsyte, Jolyon's daughter."

"What?"

"He got leave and did it.  I didn't even know he knew her.
Awkward, isn't it?"

Soames uttered a short laugh at that characteristic minimisation.

"Awkward!  Well, I don't suppose they'll hear about this till they
come back.  They'd better stay out there.  That fellow will give
her money."

"But I want Val back," said Winifred almost piteously; "I miss him,
he helps me to get on."

"I know," murmured Soames.  "How's Dartie behaving now?"

"It might be worse; but it's always money.  Would you like me to
come down to the Court to-morrow, Soames?"

Soames stretched out his hand for hers.  The gesture so betrayed
the loneliness in him that she pressed it between her two.

"Never mind, old boy.  You'll feel ever so much better when it's
all over."

"I don't know what I've done," said Soames huskily; "I never have.
It's all upside down.  I was fond of her; I've always been."

Winifred saw a drop of blood ooze out of his lip, and the sight
stirred her profoundly.

"Of course," she said, "it's been too bad of her all along!  But
what shall I do about this marriage of Val's, Soames?  I don't know
how to write to him, with this coming on.  You've seen that child.
Is she pretty?"

"Yes, she's pretty," said Soames.  "Dark--lady-like enough."

'That doesn't sound so bad,' thought Winifred.  'Jolyon had style.'

"It is a coil," she said.  "What will father say?

"Mustn't be told," said Soames.  "The war'll soon be over now,
you'd better let Val take to farming out there."

It was tantamount to saying that his nephew was lost.

"I haven't told Monty," Winifred murmured desolately.

The case was reached before noon next day, and was over in little
more than half an hour.  Soames--pale, spruce, sad-eyed in the
witness-box--had suffered so much beforehand that he took it all
like one dead.  The moment the decree nisi was pronounced he left
the Courts of Justice.

Four hours until he became public property!  'Solicitor's divorce
suit!'  A surly, dogged anger replaced that dead feeling within
him.  'Damn them all!' he thought; 'I won't run away.  I'll act as
if nothing had happened.'  And in the sweltering heat of Fleet
Street and Ludgate Hill he walked all the way to his City Club,
lunched, and went back to his office.  He worked there stolidly
throughout the afternoon.

On his way out he saw that his clerks knew, and answered their
involuntary glances with a look so sardonic that they were
immediately withdrawn.  In front of St. Paul's, he stopped to buy
the most gentlemanly of the evening papers.  Yes! there he was!
'Well-known solicitor's divorce.  Cousin co-respondent.  Damages
given to the blind'--so, they had got that in!  At every other
face, he thought: 'I wonder if you know!'  And suddenly he felt
queer, as if something were racing round in his head.

What was this?  He was letting it get hold of him!  He mustn't!  He
would be ill.  He mustn't think!  He would get down to the river
and row about, and fish.  'I'm not going to be laid up,' he
thought.

It flashed across him that he had something of importance to do
before he went out of town.  Madame Lamotte!  He must explain the
Law.  Another six months before he was really free!  Only he did
not want to see Annette!  And he passed his hand over the top of
his head--it was very hot.

He branched off through Covent Garden.  On this sultry day of late
July the garbage-tainted air of the old market offended him, and
Soho seemed more than ever the disenchanted home of rapscallionism.
Alone, the Restaurant Bretagne, neat, daintily painted, with its
blue tubs and the dwarf trees therein, retained an aloof and
Frenchified self-respect.  It was the slack hour, and pale trim
waitresses were preparing the little tables for dinner.  Soames
went through into the private part.  To his discomfiture Annette
answered his knock.  She, too, looked pale and dragged down by the
heat.

"You are quite a stranger," she said languidly.

Soames smiled.

"I haven't wished to be; I've been busy."

"Where's your mother, Annette?  I've got some news for her."

"Mother is not in."

It seemed to Soames that she looked at him in a queer way.  What
did she know?  How much had her mother told her?  The worry of
trying to make that out gave him an alarming feeling in the head.
He gripped the edge of the table, and dizzily saw Annette come
forward, her eyes clear with surprise.  He shut his own and said:

"It's all right.  I've had a touch of the sun, I think."  The sun!
What he had was a touch of 'darkness!  Annette's voice, French and
composed, said:

"Sit down, it will pass, then."  Her hand pressed his shoulder, and
Soames sank into a chair.  When the dark feeling dispersed, and he
opened his eyes, she was looking down at him.  What an inscrutable
and odd expression for a girl of twenty!

"Do you feel better?"

"It's nothing," said Soames.  Instinct told him that to be feeble
before her was not helping him--age was enough handicap without
that.  Will-power was his fortune with Annette, he had lost ground
these latter months from indecision--he could not afford to lose
any more.  He got up, and said:

"I'll write to your mother.  I'm going down to my river house for a
long holiday.  I want you both to come there presently and stay.
It's just at its best.  You will, won't you?"

"It will be veree nice."  A pretty little roll of that 'r' but no
enthusiasm.  And rather sadly he added:

"You're feeling the heat; too, aren't you, Annette?  It'll do you
good to be on the river.  Good-night."  Annette swayed forward.
There was a sort of compunction in the movement.

"Are you fit to go?  Shall I give you some coffee?"

"No," said Soames firmly.  "Give me your hand."

She held out her hand, and Soames raised it to his lips.  When he
looked up, her face wore again that strange expression.  'I can't
tell,' he thought, as he went out; 'but I mustn't think--I mustn't
worry:

But worry he did, walking toward Pall Mall.  English, not of her
religion, middle-aged, scarred as it were by domestic tragedy, what
had he to give her?  Only wealth, social position, leisure,
admiration!  It was much, but was it enough for a beautiful girl of
twenty?  He felt so ignorant about Annette.  He had, too, a curious
fear of the French nature of her mother and herself.  They knew so
well what they wanted.  They were almost Forsytes.  They would
never grasp a shadow and miss a substance

The tremendous effort it was to write a simple note to Madame
Lamotte when he reached his Club warned him still further that he
was at the end of his tether.


"MY DEAR MADAME (he said),

"You will see by the enclosed newspaper cutting that I obtained my
decree of divorce to-day.  By the English Law I shall not, however,
be free to marry again till the decree is confirmed six months
hence.  In the meanwhile I have the honor to ask to be considered a
formal suitor for the hand of your daughter.  I shall write again
in a few days and beg you both to come and stay at my river house.
"I am, dear Madame,
"Sincerely yours,

"SOAMES FORSYTE."


Having sealed and posted this letter, he went into the dining-room.
Three mouthfuls of soup convinced him that he could not eat; and,
causing a cab to be summoned, he drove to Paddington Station and
took the first train to Reading.  He reached his house just as the
sun went down, and wandered out on to the lawn.  The air was
drenched with the scent of pinks and picotees in his flower-
borders.  A stealing coolness came off the river.

Rest-peace!  Let a poor fellow rest!  Let not worry and shame and
anger chase like evil nightbirds in his head!  Like those doves
perched half-sleeping on their dovecot, like the furry creatures in
the woods on the far side, and the simple folk in their cottages,
like the trees and the river itself, whitening fast in twilight,
like the darkening cornflower-blue sky where stars were coming up--
let him cease from himself, and rest!




CHAPTER X

PASSING OF AN AGE



The marriage of Soames with Annette took place in Paris on the last
day of January, 1901, with such privacy that not even Emily was
told until it was accomplished.

The day after the wedding he brought her to one of those quiet
hotels in London where greater expense can be incurred for less
result than anywhere else under heaven.  Her beauty in the best
Parisian frocks was giving him more satisfaction than if he had
collected a perfect bit of china, or a jewel of a picture; he
looked forward to the moment when he would exhibit her in Park
Lane, in Green Street, and at Timothy's.

If some one had asked him in those days, "In confidence--are you in
love with this girl?" he would have replied: "In love?  What is
love?  If you mean do I feel to her as I did towards Irene in those
old days when I first met her and she would not have me; when I
sighed and starved after her and couldn't rest a minute until she
yielded--no!  If you mean do I admire her youth and prettiness, do
my senses ache a little when I see her moving about--yes!  Do I
think she will keep me straight, make me a creditable wife and a
good mother for my children?--again, yes!"

"What more do I need? and what more do three-quarters of the women
who are married get from the men who marry them?" And if the
enquirer had pursued his query, "And do you think it was fair to
have tempted this girl to give herself to you for life unless you
have really touched her heart?" he would have answered: "The French
see these things differently from us.  They look at marriage from
the point of view of establishments and children; and, from my own
experience, I am not at all sure that theirs is not the sensible
view.  I shall not expect this time more than I can get, or she can
give.  Years hence I shouldn't be surprised if I have trouble with
her; but I shall be getting old, I shall have children by then.  I
shall shut my eyes.  I have had my great passion; hers is perhaps
to come--I don't suppose it will be for me.  I offer her a great
deal, and I don't expect much in return, except children, or at
least a son.  But one thing I am sure of--she has very good sense!"

And if, insatiate, the enquirer had gone on, "You do not look,
then, for spiritual union in this marriage?" Soames would have
lifted his sideway smile, and rejoined: "That's as it may be.  If I
get satisfaction for my senses, perpetuation of myself; good taste
and good humour in the house; it is all I can expect at my age.  I
am not likely to be going out of my way towards any far-fetched
sentimentalism."  Whereon, the enquirer must in good taste have
ceased enquiry.

The Queen was dead, and the air of the greatest city upon earth
grey with unshed tears.  Fur-coated and top-hatted, with Annette
beside him in dark furs, Soames crossed Park Lane on the morning of
the funeral procession, to the rails in Hyde Park.  Little moved
though he ever was by public matters, this event, supremely
symbolical, this summing-up of a long rich period, impressed his
fancy.  In '37, when she came to the throne, 'Superior Dosset' was
still building houses to make London hideous; and James, a
stripling of twenty-six, just laying the foundations of his
practice in the Law.  Coaches still ran; men wore stocks, shaved
their upper lips, ate oysters out of barrels; 'tigers' swung behind
cabriolets; women said, 'La!' and owned no property; there were
manners in the land, and pigsties for the poor; unhappy devils were
hanged for little crimes, and Dickens had but just begun to write.
Well-nigh two generations had slipped by--of steamboats, railways,
telegraphs, bicycles, electric light, telephones, and now these
motorcars--of such accumulated wealth, that eight per cent. had
become three, and Forsytes were numbered by the thousand!  Morals
had changed, manners had changed, men had become monkeys twice-
removed, God had become Mammon--Mammon so respectable as to deceive
himself: Sixty-four years that favoured property, and had made the
upper middle class; buttressed, chiselled, polished it, till it was
almost indistinguishable in manners, morals, speech, appearance,
habit, and soul from the nobility.  An epoch which had gilded
individual liberty so that if a man had money, he was free in law
and fact, and if he had not money he was free in law and not in
fact.  An era which had canonised hypocrisy, so that to seem to be
respectable was to be.  A great Age, whose transmuting influence
nothing had escaped save the nature of man and the nature of the
Universe.

And to witness the passing of this Age, London--its pet and fancy--
was pouring forth her citizens through every gate into Hyde Park,
hub of Victorianism, happy hunting-ground of Forsytes.  Under the
grey heavens, whose drizzle just kept off, the dark concourse
gathered to see the show.  The 'good old'  Queen, full of years and
virtue, had emerged from her seclusion for the last time to make a
London holiday.  From Houndsditch, Acton, Ealing, Hampstead,
Islington, and Bethnal Green; from Hackney, Hornsey, Leytonstone,
Battersea, and Fulham; and from those green pastures where Forsytes
flourish--Mayfair and Kensington, St. James' and Belgravia,
Bayswater and Chelsea and the Regent's Park, the people swarmed
down on to the roads where death would presently pass with dusky
pomp and pageantry.  Never again would a Queen reign so long, or
people have a chance to see so much history buried for their money.
A pity the war dragged on, and that the Wreath of Victory could not
be laid upon her coffin!  All else would be there to follow and
commemorate--soldiers, sailors, foreign princes, half-masted
bunting, tolling bells, and above all the surging, great,
dark-coated crowd, with perhaps a simple sadness here and there
deep in hearts beneath black clothes put on by regulation.  After
all, more than a Queen was going to her rest, a woman who had
braved sorrow, lived well and wisely according to her lights.

Out in the crowd against the railings, with his arm hooked in
Annette's, Soames waited.  Yes!  the Age was passing!  What with
this Trade Unionism, and Labour fellows in the House of Commons,
with continental fiction, and something in the general feel of
everything, not to be expressed in words, things were very
different; he recalled the crowd on Mafeking night, and George
Forsyte saying: "They're all socialists, they want our goods."
Like James, Soames didn't know, he couldn't tell--with Edward on
the throne!  Things would never be as safe again as under good old
Viccy!  Convulsively he pressed his young wife's arm.  There, at
any rate, was something substantially his own, domestically certain
again at last; something which made property worth while--a real
thing once more.  Pressed close against her and trying to ward
others off, Soames was content.  The crowd swayed round them, ate
sandwiches and dropped crumbs; boys who had climbed the plane-trees
chattered above like monkeys, threw twigs and orange-peel.  It was
past time; they should be coming soon!  And, suddenly, a little
behind them to the left, he saw a tallish man with a soft hat and
short grizzling beard, and a tallish woman in a little round fur
cap and veil.  Jolyon and Irene talking, smiling at each other,
close together like Annette and himself!  They had not seen him;
and stealthily, with a very queer feeling in his heart, Soames
watched those two.  They looked happy!  What had they come here
for--inherently illicit creatures, rebels from the Victorian ideal?
What business had they in this crowd?  Each of them twice exiled by
morality--making a boast, as it were, of love and laxity!  He
watched them fascinated; admitting grudgingly even with his arm
thrust through Annette's that--that she--Irene--No! he would not
admit it; and he turned his eyes away.  He would not see them, and
let the old bitterness, the old longing rise up within him!  And
then Annette turned to him and said: "Those two people, Soames;
they know you, I am sure.  Who are they?"

Soames nosed sideways.

"What people?"

"There, you see them; just turning away.  They know you."

"No," Soames answered; "a mistake, my dear."

"A lovely face!  And how she walk!  Elle est tres distinguee!"

Soames looked then.  Into his life, out of his life she had walked
like that swaying and erect, remote, unseizable; ever eluding the
contact of his soul!  He turned abruptly from that receding
vision of the past.

"You'd better attend," he said, "they're coming now!"

But while he stood, grasping her arm, seemingly intent on the head
of the procession, he was quivering with the sense of always
missing something, with instinctive regret that he had not got them
both.

Slow came the music and the march, till, in silence, the long line
wound in through the Park gate.  He heard Annette whisper, "How sad
it is and beautiful!" felt the clutch of her hand as she stood up
on tiptoe; and the crowd's emotion gripped him.  There it was--the
bier of the Queen, coffin of the Age slow passing!  And as it went
by there came a murmuring groan from all the long line of those who
watched, a sound such as Soames had never heard, so unconscious,
primitive, deep and wild, that neither he nor any knew whether they
had joined in uttering it.  Strange sound, indeed!  Tribute of an
Age to its own death....  Ah!  Ah!....  The hold on life had
slipped.  That which had seemed eternal was gone!  The Queen--God
bless her!

It moved on with the bier, that travelling groan, as a fire moves
on over grass in a thin line; it kept step, and marched alongside
down the dense crowds mile after mile.  It was a human sound, and
yet inhuman, pushed out by animal subconsciousness, by intimate
knowledge of universal death and change.  None of us--none of us
can hold on for ever!

It left silence for a little--a very little time, till tongues
began, eager to retrieve interest in the show.  Soames lingered
just long enough to gratify Annette, then took her out of the Park
to lunch at his father's in Park Lane....

James had spent the morning gazing out of his bedroom window.  The
last show he would see, last of so many!  So she was gone!  Well,
she was getting an old woman.  Swithin and he had seen her crowned-
-slim slip of a girl, not so old as Imogen!  She had got very stout
of late.  Jolyon and he had seen her married to that German chap,
her husband--he had turned out all right before he died, and left
her with that son of his.  And he remembered the many evenings he
and his brothers and their cronies had wagged their heads over
their wine and walnuts and that fellow in his salad days.  And now
he had come to the throne.  They said he had steadied down--he
didn't know--couldn't tell!  He'd make the money fly still, he
shouldn't wonder.  What a lot of people out there!  It didn't seem
so very long since he and Swithin stood in the crowd outside
Westminster Abbey when she was crowned, and Swithin had taken him
to Cremorne afterwards--racketty chap, Swithin; no, it didn't seem
much longer ago than Jubilee Year, when he had joined with Roger in
renting a balcony in Piccadilly.

Jolyon, Swithin, Roger all gone, and he would be ninety in August!
And there was Soames married again to a French girl.  The French
were a queer lot, but they made good mothers, he had heard.  Things
changed!  They said this German Emperor was here for the funeral,
his telegram to old Kruger had been in shocking taste.  He should
not be surprised if that chap made trouble some day.  Change!  H'm!
Well, they must look after themselves when he was gone: he didn't
know where he'd be!  And now Emily had asked Dartie to lunch, with
Winifred and Imogen, to meet Soames' wife--she was always doing
something.  And there was Irene living with that fellow Jolyon,
they said.  He'd marry her now, he supposed.

'My brother Jolyon,' he thought, 'what would he have said to it
all?' And somehow the utter impossibility of knowing what his elder
brother, once so looked up to, would have said, so worried James
that he got up from his chair by the window, and began slowly,
feebly to pace the room.

'She was a pretty thing, too,' he thought; 'I was fond of her.
Perhaps Soames didn't suit her--I don't know--I can't tell.  We
never had any trouble with our wives.'  Women had changed
everything had changed!  And now the Queen was dead--well, there it
was!  A movement in the crowd brought him to a standstill at the
window, his nose touching the pane and whitening from the chill of
it.  They had got her as far as Hyde Park Corner--they were passing
now!  Why didn't Emily come up here where she could see, instead of
fussing about lunch.  He missed her at that moment--missed her!
Through the bare branches of the plane-trees he could just see the
procession, could see the hats coming off the people's heads--a lot
of them would catch colds, he shouldn't wonder!  A voice behind him
said:

"You've got a capital view here, James!"

"There you are!" muttered James; "why didn't you come before?  You
might have missed it!"

And he was silent, staring with all his might.

"What's the noise?" he asked suddenly.

"There's no noise," returned Emily; "what are you thinking of?--
they wouldn't cheer."

"I can hear it."

"Nonsense, James!"

No sound came through those double panes; what James heard was the
groaning in his own heart at sight of his Age passing.

"Don't you ever tell me where I'm buried," he said suddenly.  "I
shan't want to know."  And he turned from the window.  There she
went, the old Queen; she'd had a lot of anxiety--she'd be glad to
be out of it, he should think!

Emily took up the hair-brushes.

"There'll be just time to brush your head," she said, "before they
come.  You must look your best, James."

"Ah!" muttered James; "they say she's pretty."

The meeting with his new daughter-in-law took place in the
dining-room.  James was seated by the fire when she was brought in.
He placed, his hands on the arms of the chair and slowly raised
himself.  Stooping and immaculate in his frock-coat, thin as a line
in Euclid, he received Annette's hand in his; and the anxious eyes
of his furrowed face, which had lost its colour now, doubted above
her.  A little warmth came into them and into his cheeks, refracted
from her bloom.

"How are you?" he said.  "You've been to see the Queen, I suppose?
Did you have a good crossing?"

In this way he greeted her from whom he hoped for a grandson of his
name.

Gazing at him, so old, thin, white, and spotless, Annette murmured
something in French which James did not understand.

"Yes, yes," he said, "you want your lunch, I expect.  Soames, ring
the bell; we won't wait for that chap Dartie."  But just then they
arrived.  Dartie had refused to go out of his way to see 'the old
girl.'  With an early cocktail beside him, he had taken a 'squint'
from the smoking-room of the Iseeum, so that Winifred and Imogen
had been obliged to come back from the Park to fetch him thence.
His brown eyes rested on Annette with a stare of almost startled
satisfaction.  The second beauty that fellow Soames had picked up!
What women could see in him!  Well, she would play him the same
trick as the other, no doubt; but in the meantime he was a lucky
devil!  And he brushed up his moustache, having in nine months of
Green Street domesticity regained almost all his flesh and his
assurance.  Despite the comfortable efforts of Emily, Winifred's
composure, Imogen's enquiring friendliness, Dartie's showing-off,
and James' solicitude about her food, it was not, Soames felt, a
successful lunch for his bride.  He took her away very soon.

"That Monsieur Dartie," said Annette in the cab, "je n'aime pas ce
type-la!"

"No, by George!" said Soames.

"Your sister is veree amiable, and the girl is pretty.  Your father
is veree old.  I think your mother has trouble with him; I should
not like to be her."

Soames nodded at the shrewdness, the clear hard judgment in his
young wife; but it disquieted him a little.  The thought may have
just flashed through him, too: 'When I'm eighty she'll be
fifty-five, having trouble with me!'

"There's just one other house of my relations I must take you to,"
he said; "you'll find it funny, but we must get it over; and then
we'll dine and go to the theatre."

In this way he prepared her for Timothy's.  But Timothy's was
different.  They were delighted to see dear Soames after this long
long time; and so this was Annette!

"You are so pretty, my dear; almost too young and pretty for dear
Soames, aren't you?  But he's very attentive and careful--such a
good hush...."  Aunt Juley checked herself, and placed her lips
just under each of Annette's eyes--she afterwards described them to
Francie, who dropped in, as: "Cornflower-blue, so pretty, I quite
wanted to kiss them.  I must say dear Soames is a perfect
connoisseur.  In her French way, and not so very French either, I
think she's as pretty--though not so distinguished, not so
alluring--as Irene.  Because she was alluring, wasn't she? with
that white skin and those dark eyes, and that hair, couleur de--
what was it?  I always forget."

"Feuille morte," Francie prompted.

"Of course, dead leaves--so strange.  I remember when I was a girl,
before we came to London, we had a foxhound puppy--to 'walk' it was
called then; it had a tan top to its head and a white chest, and
beautiful dark brown eyes, and it was a lady."

"Yes, auntie," said Francie, "but I don't see the connection."

"Oh!" replied Aunt Juley, rather flustered, "it was so alluring,
and her eyes and hair, you know...."  She was silent, as if
surprised in some indelicacy.  "Feuille morte," she added suddenly;
"Hester--do remember that!"....

Considerable debate took place between the two sisters whether
Timothy should or should not be summoned to see Annette.

"Oh, don't bother!" said Soames.

"But it's no trouble, only of course Annette's being French might
upset him a little.  He was so scared about Fashoda.  I think
perhaps we had better not run the risk, Hester.  It's nice to have
her all to ourselves, isn't it?  And how are you, Soames?  Have you
quite got over your...."

Hester interposed hurriedly:

"What do you think of London, Annette?"

Soames, disquieted, awaited the reply.  It came, sensible,
composed: "Oh! I know London.  I have visited before."

He had never ventured to speak to her on the subject of the
restaurant.  The French had different notions about gentility, and
to shrink from connection with it might seem to her ridiculous; he
had waited to be married before mentioning it; and now he wished he
hadn't.

"And what part do you know best?" said Aunt Juley.

"Soho," said Annette simply.

Soames snapped his jaw.

"Soho?" repeated Aunt Juley; "Soho?"

'That'll go round the family,' thought Soames.

"It's very French, and interesting," he said.

"Yes," murmured Aunt Juley, "your Uncle Roger had some houses there
once; he was always having to turn the tenants out, I remember."

Soames changed the subject to Mapledurham.

"Of course," said Aunt Juley, "you will be going down there soon to
settle in.  We are all so looking forward to the time when Annette
has a dear little...."

"Juley!" cried Aunt Hester desperately, "ring tea!"

Soames dared not wait for tea, and took Annette away.

"I shouldn't mention Soho if I were you," he said in the cab.
"It's rather a shady part of London; and you're altogether above
that restaurant business now; I mean," he added, "I want you to
know nice people, and the English are fearful snobs."

Annette's clear eyes opened; a little smile came on her lips.

"Yes?" she said.

'H'm!' thought Soames, 'that's meant for me!' and he looked at her
hard.  'She's got good business instincts,' he thought.  'I must
make her grasp it once for all!'

"Look here, Annette!  it's very simple, only it wants
understanding.  Our professional and leisured classes still think
themselves a cut above our business classes, except of course the
very rich.  It may be stupid, but there it is, you see.  It isn't
advisable in England to let people know that you ran a restaurant
or kept a shop or were in any kind of trade.  It may have been
extremely creditable, but it puts a sort of label on you; you don't
have such a good time, or meet such nice people--that's all."

"I see," said Annette; "it is the same in France."

"Oh!" murmured Soames, at once relieved and taken aback.  "Of
course, class is everything, really."

"Yes," said Annette; "comme vous etes sage."

'That's all right,' thought Soames, watching her lips, 'only she's
pretty cynical.'  His knowledge of French was not yet such as to
make him grieve that she had not said 'tu.'  He slipped his arm
round her, and murmured with an effort:

"Et vous etes ma belle femme."

Annette went off into a little fit of laughter.

"Oh, non!" she said.  "Oh, non! ne parlez pas Francais, Soames.
What is that old lady, your aunt, looking forward to?"

Soames bit his lip.  "God knows!" he said; "she's always saying
something;" but he knew better than God.




CHAPTER XI

SUSPENDED ANIMATION


The war dragged on.  Nicholas had been heard to say that it would
cost three hundred millions if it cost a penny before they'd done
with it!  The income-tax was seriously threatened.  Still, there
would be South Africa for their money, once for all.  And though
the possessive instinct felt badly shaken at three o'clock in the
morning, it recovered by breakfast-time with the recollection that
one gets nothing in this world without paying for it.  So, on the
whole, people went about their business much as if there were no
war, no concentration camps, no slippery de Wet, no feeling on the
Continent, no anything unpleasant.  Indeed, the attitude of the
nation was typified by Timothy's map, whose animation was
suspended--for Timothy no longer moved the flags, and they could
not move themselves, not even backwards and forwards as they should
have done.

Suspended animation went further; it invaded Forsyte 'Change, and
produced a general uncertainty as to what was going to happen next.
The announcement in the marriage column of The Times, 'Jolyon
Forsyte to Irene, only daughter of the late Professor Heron,' had
occasioned doubt whether Irene had been justly described.  And yet,
on the whole, relief was felt that she had not been entered as
'Irene, late the wife,' or 'the divorced wife,' 'of Soames
Forsyte.'  Altogether, there had been a kind of sublimity from the
first about the way the family had taken that 'affair.'  As James
had phrased it, 'There it was!'  No use to fuss!  Nothing to be had
out of admitting that it had been a 'nasty jar'--in the phraseology
of the day.

But what would happen now that both Soames and Jolyon were married
again?  That was very intriguing.  George was known to have laid
Eustace six to four on a little Jolyon before a little Soames.
George was so droll!  It was rumoured, too, that he and Dartie had
a bet as to whether James would attain the age of ninety, though
which of them had backed James no one knew.

Early in May, Winifred came round to say that Val had been wounded
in the leg by a spent bullet, and was to be discharged.  His wife
was nursing him.  He would have a little limp--nothing to speak of.
He wanted his grandfather to buy him a farm out there where he
could breed horses.  Her father was giving Holly eight hundred a
year, so they could be quite comfortable, because his grandfather
would give Val five, he had said; but as to the farm, he didn't
know--couldn't tell: he didn't want Val to go throwing away his
money.

"But you know," said Winifred, "he must do something."

Aunt Hester thought that perhaps his dear grandfather was wise,
because if he didn't buy a farm it couldn't turn out badly.

"But Val loves horses," said Winifred.  "It'd be such an occupation
for him."

Aunt Juley thought that horses were very uncertain, had not
Montague found them so?

"Val's different," said Winifred; "he takes after me."

Aunt Juley was sure that dear Val was very clever.  "I always
remember," she added, "how he gave his bad penny to a beggar.  His
dear grandfather was so pleased.  He thought it showed such
presence of mind.  I remember his saying that he ought to go into
the Navy."

Aunt Hester chimed in: Did not Winifred think that it was much
better for the young people to be secure and not run any risk at
their age?

"Well," said Winifred, "if they were in London, perhaps; in London
it's amusing to do nothing.  But out there, of course, he'll simply
get bored to death."

Aunt Hester thought that it would be nice for him to work, if he
were quite sure not to lose by it.  It was not as if they had no
money.  Timothy, of course, had done so well by retiring.  Aunt
Juley wanted to know what Montague had said.

Winifred did not tell her, for Montague had merely remarked: "Wait
till the old man dies."

At this moment Francie was announced.  Her eyes were brimming with
a smile.

"Well," she said, "what do you think of it?"

"Of what, dear?"

"In The Times this morning."

"We haven't seen it, we always read it after dinner; Timothy has it
till then."

Francie rolled her eyes.

"Do you think you ought to tell us?" said Aunt Juley.  "What was
it?"

"Irene's had a son at Robin Hill."

Aunt Juley drew in her breath.  "But," she said, "they were only
married in March!"

"Yes, Auntie; isn't it interesting?"

"Well," said Winifred, "I'm glad.  I was sorry for Jolyon losing
his boy.  It might have been Val."

Aunt Juley seemed to go into a sort of dream.  "I wonder," she
murmured, "what dear Soames will think?  He has so wanted to have a
son himself.  A little bird has always told me that."

"Well," said Winifred, "he's going to--bar accidents."

Gladness trickled out of Aunt Juley's eyes.

"How delightful!" she said.  "When?"

"November."

Such a lucky month!  But she did wish it could be sooner.  It was a
long time for James to wait, at his age!

To wait!  They dreaded it for James, but they were used to it
themselves.  Indeed, it was their great distraction.  To wait!  For
The Times to read; for one or other of their nieces or nephews to
come in and cheer them up; for news of Nicholas' health; for that
decision of Christopher's about going on the stage; for information
concerning the mine of Mrs. MacAnder's nephew; for the doctor to
come about Hester's inclination to wake up early in the morning;
for books from the library which were always out; for Timothy to
have a cold; for a nice quiet warm day, not too hot, when they
could take a turn in Kensington Gardens.  To wait, one on each side
of the hearth in the drawing-room, for the clock between them to
strike; their thin, veined, knuckled hands plying knitting-needles
and crochet-hooks, their hair ordered to stop--like Canute's waves-
-from any further advance in colour.  To wait in their black silks
or satins for the Court to say that Hester might wear her dark
green, and Juley her darker maroon.  To wait, slowly turning over
and over, in their old minds the little joys and sorrows, events
and expectancies, of their little family world, as cows chew
patient cuds in a familiar field.  And this new event was so well
worth waiting for.  Soames had always been their pet, with his
tendency to give them pictures, and his almost weekly visits which
they missed so much, and his need for their sympathy evoked by the
wreck of his first marriage.  This new event--the birth of an heir
to Soames--was so important for him, and for his dear father, too,
that James might not have to die without some certainty about
things.  James did so dislike uncertainty; and with Montague, of
course, he could not feel really satisfied to leave no grand-
children but the young Darties.  After all, one's own name did
count!  And as James' ninetieth birthday neared they wondered what
precautions he was taking.  He would be the first of the Forsytes to
reach that age, and set, as it were, a new standard in holding on
to life.  That was so important, they felt, at their ages eighty-
seven and eighty-five; though they did not want to think of
themselves when they had Timothy, who was not yet eighty-two, to
think of.  There was, of course, a better world.  'In my Father's
house are many mansions' was one of Aunt Juley's favourite sayings-
-it always comforted her, with its suggestion of house property,
which had made the fortune of dear Roger.  The Bible was, indeed, a
great resource, and on very fine Sundays there was church in the
morning; and sometimes Juley would steal into Timothy's study when
she was sure he was out, and just put an open New Testament
casually among the books on his little table--he was a great
reader, of course, having been a publisher.  But she had noticed
that Timothy was always cross at dinner afterwards.  And Smither
had told her more than once that she had picked books off the floor
in doing the room.  Still, with all that, they did feel that heaven
could not be quite so cosy as the rooms in which they and Timothy
had been waiting so long.  Aunt Hester, especially, could not bear
the thought of the exertion.  Any change, or rather the thought of
a change--for there never was any--always upset her very much.
Aunt Juley, who had more spirit, sometimes thought it would be
quite exciting; she had so enjoyed that visit to Brighton the year
dear Susan died.  But then Brighton one knew was nice, and it was
so difficult to tell what heaven would be like, so on the whole she
was more than content to wait.

On the morning of James' birthday, August the 5th, they felt
extraordinary animation, and little notes passed between them by
the hand of Smither while they were having breakfast in their beds.
Smither must go round and take their love and little presents and
find out how Mr. James was, and whether he had passed a good night
with all the excitement.  And on the way back would Smither call in
at Green Street--it was a little out of her way, but she could take
the bus up Bond Street afterwards; it would be a nice little change
for her--and ask dear Mrs. Dartie to be sure and look in before she
went out of town.

All this Smither did--an undeniable servant trained many years ago
under Aunt Ann to a perfection not now procurable.  Mr. James, so
Mrs. James said, had passed an excellent night, he sent his love;
Mrs. James had said he was very funny and had complained that he
didn't know what all the fuss was about.  Oh! and Mrs. Dartie sent
her love, and she would come to tea.

Aunts Juley and Hester, rather hurt that their presents had not
received special mention--they forgot every year that James could
not bear to receive presents, 'throwing away their money on him,'
as he always called it--were 'delighted'; it showed that James was
in good spirits, and that was so important for him.  And they began
to wait for Winifred.  She came at four, bringing Imogen, and Maud,
just back from school, and 'getting such a pretty girl, too,' so
that it was extremely difficult to ask for news about Annette.
Aunt Juley, however, summoned courage to enquire whether Winifred
had heard anything, and if Soames was anxious.

"Uncle Soames is always anxious, Auntie," interrupted Imogen; "he
can't be happy now he's got it."

The words struck familiarly on Aunt Juley's ears.  Ah! yes; that
funny drawing of George's, which had not been shown them!  But what
did Imogen mean?  That her uncle always wanted more than he could
have?  It was not at all nice to think like that.

Imogen's voice rose clear and clipped:

"Imagine!  Annette's only two years older than me; it must be awful
for her, married to Uncle Soames."

Aunt Juley lifted her hands in horror.

"My dear," she said, "you don't know what you're talking about.
Your Uncle Soames is a match for anybody.  He's a very clever man,
and good-looking and wealthy, and most considerate and careful, and
not at all old, considering everything."

Imogen, turning her luscious glance from one to the other of the
'old dears,' only smiled.

"I hope," said Aunt Juley quite severely, "that you will marry as
good a man."

"I shan't marry a good man, Auntie," murmured Imogen; "they're
dull."

"If you go on like this," replied Aunt Juley, still very much
upset, "you won't marry anybody.  We'd better not pursue the
subject;" and turning to Winifred, she said: "How is Montague?"

That evening, while they were waiting for dinner, she murmured:

"I've told Smither to get up half a bottle of the sweet champagne,
Hester.  I think we ought to drink dear James' health, and--and the
health of Soames' wife; only, let's keep that quite secret.  I'll
Just say like this, 'And you know, Hester!'  and then we'll drink.
It might upset Timothy."

"It's more likely to upset us," said Aunt Nester.  "But we must, I
suppose; for such an occasion."

"Yes," said Aunt Juley rapturously, "it is an occasion!  Only fancy
if he has a dear little boy, to carry the family on!  I do feel it
so important, now that Irene has had a son.  Winifred says George
is calling Jolyon 'The Three-Decker,' because of his three
families, you know!  George is droll.  And fancy!  Irene is living
after all in the house Soames had built for them both.  It does
seem hard on dear Soames; and he's always been so regular."

That night in bed, excited and a little flushed still by her glass
of wine and the secrecy of the second toast, she lay with her
prayer-book opened flat, and her eyes fixed on a ceiling yellowed
by the light from her reading-lamp.  Young things!  It was so nice
for them all!  And she would be so happy if she could see dear
Soames happy.  But, of course, he must be now, in spite of what
Imogen had said.  He would have all that he wanted: property, and
wife, and children!  And he would live to a green old age, like his
dear father, and forget all about Irene and that dreadful case.  If
only she herself could be here to buy his children their first
rocking-horse!  Smither should choose it for her at the stores,
nice and dappled.  Ah! how Roger used to rock her until she fell
off!  Oh dear! that was a long time ago!  It was!  'In my Father's
house are many mansions--'A little scrattling noise caught her ear-
-'but no mice!'  she thought mechanically.  The noise increased.
There! it was a mouse!  How naughty of Smither to say there wasn't!
It would be eating through the wainscot before they knew where they
were, and they would have to have the builders in.  They were such
destructive things!  And she lay, with her eyes just moving,
following in her mind that little scrattling sound, and waiting for
sleep to release her from it.




CHAPTER XII

BIRTH OF A FORSYTE


Soames walked out of the garden door, crossed the lawn, stood on
the path above the river, turned round and walked back to the
garden door, without having realised that he had moved.  The sound
of wheels crunching the drive convinced him that time had passed,
and the doctor gone.  What, exactly, had he said?

"This is the position, Mr. Forsyte.  I can make pretty certain of
her life if I operate, but the baby will be born dead.  If I don't
operate, the baby will most probably be born alive, but it's a
great risk for the mother--a great risk.  In either case I don't
think she can ever have another child.  In her state she obviously
can't decide for herself, and we can't wait for her mother.  It's
for you to make the decision, while I'm getting what's necessary.
I shall be back within the hour."

The decision!  What a decision!  No time to get a specialist down!
No time for anything!

The sound of wheels died away, but Soames still stood intent; then,
suddenly covering his ears, he walked back to the river.  To come
before its time like this, with no chance to foresee anything, not
even to get her mother here!  It was for her mother to make that
decision, and she couldn't arrive from Paris till to-night!  If
only he could have understood the doctor's jargon, the medical
niceties, so as to be sure he was weighing the chances properly;
but they were Greek to him--like a legal problem to a layman.  And
yet he must decide!  He brought his hand away from his brow wet,
though the air was chilly.  These sounds which came from her room!
To go back there would only make it more difficult.  He must be
calm, clear.  On the one hand life, nearly certain, of his young
wife, death quite certain, of his child; and--no more children
afterwards!  On the other, death perhaps of his wife, nearly
certain life for the child; and--no more children afterwards!
Which to choose?....  It had rained this last fortnight--the river
was very full, and in the water, collected round the little
house-boat moored by his landing-stage, were many leaves from the
woods above, brought off by a frost.  Leaves fell, lives drifted
down--Death!  To decide about death!  And no one to give him a
hand.  Life lost was lost for good.  Let nothing go that you could
keep; for, if it went, you couldn't get it back.  It left you bare,
like those trees when they lost their leaves; barer and barer until
you, too, withered and came down.  And, by a queer somersault of
thought, he seemed to see not Annette lying up there behind that
window-pane on which the sun was shining, but Irene lying in their
bedroom in Montpellier Square, as it might conceivably have been
her fate to lie, sixteen years ago.  Would he have hesitated then?
Not a moment!  Operate, operate!  Make certain of her life!  No
decision--a mere instinctive cry for help, in spite of his know-
ledge, even then, that she did not love him!  But this!  Ah! there
was nothing overmastering in his feeling for Annette!  Many times
these last months, especially since she had been growing fright-
ened, he had wondered.  She had a will of her own, was selfish in
her French way.  And yet--so pretty!  What would she wish--to take
the risk.  'I know she wants the child,' he thought.  'If it's born
dead, and no more chance afterwards--it'll upset her terribly.  No
more chance!  All for nothing!  Married life with her for years and
years without a child.  Nothing to steady her!  She's too young.
Nothing to look forward to, for her--for me!  For me!'  He struck
his hands against his chest!  Why couldn't he think without
bringing himself in--get out of himself and see what he ought to
do?  The thought hurt him, then lost edge, as if it had come in
contact with a breastplate.  Out of oneself!  Impossible!  Out into
soundless, scentless, touchless, sightless space!  The very idea
was ghastly, futile!  And touching there the bedrock of reality,
the bottom of his Forsyte spirit, Soames rested for a moment.  When
one ceased, all ceased; it might go on, but there'd be nothing in
it!

He looked at his watch.  In half an hour the doctor would be back.
He must decide!  If against the operation and she died, how face
her mother and the doctor afterwards?  How face his own conscience?
It was his child that she was having.  If for the operation--then
he condemned them both to childlessness.  And for what else had he
married her but to have a lawful heir?  And his father--at death's
door, waiting for the news!  'It's cruel!' he thought; 'I ought
never to have such a thing to settle!  It's cruel!'  He turned
towards the house.  Some deep, simple way of deciding!  He took out
a coin, and put it back.  If he spun it, he knew he would not abide
by what came up!  He went into the dining-room, furthest away from
that room whence the sounds issued.  The doctor had said there was
a chance.  In here that chance seemed greater; the river did not
flow, nor the leaves fall.  A fire was burning.  Soames unlocked
the tantalus.  He hardly ever touched spirits, but now--he poured
himself out some whisky and drank it neat, craving a faster flow of
blood.  'That fellow Jolyon,' he thought; 'he had children already.
He has the woman I really loved; and now a son by her!  And I--I'm
asked to destroy my only child!  Annette can't die; it's not
possible.  She's strong!'

He was still standing sullenly at the sideboard when he heard the
doctor's carriage, and went out to him.  He had to wait for him to
come downstairs.

"Well, doctor?"

"The situation's the same.  Have you decided?"

"Yes," said Soames; "don't operate!"

"Not?  You understand--the risk's great?"

In Soames' set face nothing moved but the lips.

"You said there was a chance?"

"A chance, yes; not much of one."

"You say the baby must be born dead if you do?"

"Yes."

"Do you still think that in any case she can't have another?"

"One can't be absolutely sure, but it's most unlikely."

"She's strong," said Soames; "we'll take the risk."

The doctor looked at him very gravely.  "It's on your shoulders,"
he said; "with my own wife, I couldn't."

Soames' chin jerked up as if someone had hit him.

"Am I of any use up there?" he asked.

"No; keep away."

"I shall be in my picture-gallery, then; you know where."

The doctor nodded, and went upstairs.

Soames continued to stand, listening.  'By this time to-morrow,' he
thought, 'I may have her death on my hands.'  No!  it was unfair--
monstrous, to put it that way!  Sullenness dropped on him again,
and he went up to the gallery.  He stood at the window.  The wind
was in the north; it was cold, clear; very blue sky, heavy ragged
white clouds chasing across; the river blue, too, through the
screen of goldening trees; the woods all rich with colour, glowing,
burnished-an early autumn.  If it were his own life, would he be
taking that risk?  'But she'd take the risk of losing me,' he
thought, 'sooner than lose her child!  She doesn't really love me!'
What could one expect--a girl and French?  The one thing really
vital to them both, vital to their marriage and their futures, was
a child!  'I've been through a lot for this,' he thought, 'I'll
hold on--hold on.  There's a chance of keeping both--a chance!'
One kept till things were taken--one naturally kept!  He began
walking round the gallery.  He had made one purchase lately which
he knew was a fortune in itself, and he halted before it--a girl
with dull gold hair which looked like filaments of metal gazing at
a little golden monster she was holding in her hand.  Even at this
tortured moment he could just feel the extraordinary nature of the
bargain he had made--admire the quality of the table, the floor,
the chair, the girl's figure, the absorbed expression on her face,
the dull gold filaments of her hair, the bright gold of the little
monster.  Collecting pictures; growing richer, richer!  What use,
if....!  He turned his back abruptly on the picture, and went to
the window.  Some of his doves had flown up from their perches
round the dovecot, and were stretching their wings in the wind.  In
the clear sharp sunlight their whiteness almost flashed.  They flew
far, making a flung-up hieroglyphic against the sky.  Annette fed
the doves; it was pretty to see her.  They took it out of her hand;
they knew she was matter-of-fact.  A choking sensation came into
his throat.  She would not--could nod die!  She was too--too
sensible; and she was strong, really strong, like her mother, in
spite of her fair prettiness

It was already growing dark when at last he opened the door, and
stood listening.  Not a sound!  A milky twilight crept about the
stairway and the landings below.  He had turned back when a sound
caught his ear.  Peering down, he saw a black shape moving, and his
heart stood still.  What was it?  Death?  The shape of Death coming
from her door?  No!  only a maid without cap or apron.  She came to
the foot of his flight of stairs and said breathlessly:

"The doctor wants to see you, sir."

He ran down.  She stood flat against the wall to let him pass, and
said:

"Oh, Sir! it's over."

"Over?" said Soames, with a sort of menace; "what d'you mean?"

"It's born, sir."

He dashed up the four steps in front of him, and came suddenly on
the doctor in the dim passage.  The man was wiping his brow.

"Well?" he said; "quick!"

"Both living; it's all right, I think."

Soames stood quite still, covering his eyes.

"I congratulate you," he heard the doctor say; "it was touch and
go."

Soames let fall the hand which was covering his face.

"Thanks," he said; "thanks very much.  What is it?"

"Daughter--luckily; a son would have killed her--the head."

A daughter!

"The utmost care of both," he hearts the doctor say, "and we shall
do.  When does the mother come?"

"To-night, between nine and ten, I hope."

"I'll stay till then.  Do you want to see them?"

"Not now," said Soames; "before you go.  I'll have dinner sent up
to you."  And he went downstairs.

Relief unspeakable, and yet--a daughter!  It seemed to him unfair.
To have taken that risk--to have been through this agony--and what
agony!--for a daughter!  He stood before the blazing fire of wood
logs in the hall, touching it with his toe and trying to readjust
himself.  'My father!' he thought.  A bitter disappointment, no
disguising it!  One never got all one wanted in this life!  And
there was no other--at least, if there was, it was no use!

While he was standing there, a telegram was brought him.

"Come up at once, your father sinking fast.
--MOTHER."

He read it with a choking sensation.  One would have thought he
couldn't feel anything after these last hours, but he felt this.
Half-past seven, a train from Reading at nine, and madame's train,
if she had caught it, came in at eight-forty--he would meet that,
and go on.  He ordered the carriage, ate some dinner mechanically,
and went upstairs.  The doctor came out to him.

"They're sleeping."

"I won't go in," said Soames with relief.  "My father's dying; I
have to--go up.  Is it all right?"

The doctor's face expressed a kind of doubting admiration.  'If
they were all as unemotional' he might have been saying.

"Yes, I think you may go with an easy mind.  You'll be down soon?"

"To-morrow," said Soames.  "Here's the address."

The doctor seemed to hover on the verge of sympathy.

"Good-night!" said Soames abruptly, and turned away.  He put on his
fur coat.  Death!  It was a chilly business.  He smoked a cigarette
in the carriage--one of his rare cigarettes.  The night was windy
and flew on black wings; the carriage lights had to search out the
way.  His father!  That old, old man!  A comfortless night--to die!

The London train came in just as he reached the station, and Madame
Lamotte, substantial, dark-clothed, very yellow in the lamplight,
came towards the exit with a dressing-bag.

"This all you have?" asked Soames.

"But yes; I had not the time.  How is my little one?"

"Doing well--both.  A girl!"

"A girl!  What joy!  I had a frightful crossing!"

Her black bulk, solid, unreduced by the frightful crossing, climbed
into the brougham.

"And you, mon cher?"

"My father's dying," said Soames between his teeth.  "I'm going up.
Give my love to Annette."

"Tiens!"   murmured Madame Lamotte; "quel malheur!"

Soames took his hat off, and moved towards his train.  'The
French!'  he thought.




CHAPTER XIII

JAMES IS TOLD


A simple cold, caught in the room with double windows, where the
air and the people who saw him were filtered, as it were, the room
he had not left since the middle of September--and James was in
deep waters.  A little cold, passing his little strength and flying
quickly to his lungs.  "He mustn't catch cold," the doctor had
declared, and he had gone and caught it.  When he first felt it in
his throat he had said to his nurse--for he had one now--"There, I
knew how it would be, airing the room like that!"  For a whole day
he was highly nervous about himself and went in advance of all
precautions and remedies; drawing every breath with extreme care
and having his temperature taken every hour.  Emily was not
alarmed.

But next morning when she went in the nurse whispered: "He won't
have his temperature taken."

Emily crossed to the side of the bed where he was lying, and said
softly, "How do you feel, James?" holding the thermometer to his
lips.  James looked up at her.

"What's the good of that?" he murmured huskily; "I don't want to
know."

Then she was alarmed.  He breathed with difficulty, he looked
terribly frail, white, with faint red discolorations.  She had 'had
trouble' with him, Goodness knew; but he was James, had been James
for nearly fifty years; she couldn't remember or imagine life
without James--James, behind all his fussiness, his pessimism, his
crusty shell, deeply affectionate, really kind and generous to them
all!

All that day and the next he hardly uttered a word, but there was
in his eyes a noticing of everything done for him, a look on his
face which told her he was fighting; and she did not lose hope.
His very stillness, the way he conserved every little scrap of
energy, showed the tenacity with which he was fighting.  It touched
her deeply; and though her face was composed and comfortable in the
sick-room, tears ran down her cheeks when she was out of it.

About tea-time on the third day--she had just changed her dress,
keeping her appearance so as not to alarm him, because he noticed
everything--she saw a difference.  'It's no use; I'm tired,' was
written plainly across that white face, and when she went up to
him, he muttered: "Send for Soames."

"Yes, James," she said comfortably; "all right--at once."  And she
kissed his forehead.  A tear dropped there, and as she wiped it off
she saw that his eyes looked grateful.  Much upset, and without
hope now, she sent Soames the telegram.

When he entered out of the black windy night, the big house was
still as a grave.  Warmson's broad face looked almost narrow; he
took the fur coat with a sort of added care, saying:

"Will you have a glass of wine, sir?"

Soames shook his head, and his eyebrows made enquiry.

Warmson's lips twitched.  "He's asking for you, sir;" and suddenly
he blew his nose.  "It's a long time, sir," he said, "that I've
been with Mr. Forsyte--a long time."

Soames left him folding the coat, and began to mount the stairs.
This house, where he had been born and sheltered, had never seemed
to him so warm, and rich, and cosy, as during this last pilgrimage
to his father's room.  It was not his taste; but in its own sub-
stantial, lincrusta way it was the acme of comfort and security.
And the night was so dark and windy; the grave so cold and lonely

He paused outside the door.  No sound came from within.  He turned
the handle softly and was in the room before he was perceived.  The
light was shaded.  His mother and Winifred were sitting on the far
side of the bed; the nurse was moving away from the near side where
was an empty chair.  'For me!'  thought Soames.  As he moved from
the door his mother and sister rose, but he signed with his hand
and they sat down again.  He went up to the chair and stood looking
at his father.  James' breathing was as if strangled; his eyes were
closed.  And in Soames, looking on his father so worn and white and
wasted, listening to his strangled breathing, there rose a
passionate vehemence of anger against Nature, cruel, inexorable
Nature, kneeling on the chest of that wisp of a body, slowly
pressing out the breath, pressing out the life of the being who was
dearest to him in the world.  His father, of all men, had lived a
careful life, moderate, abstemious, and this was his reward--to
have life slowly, painfully squeezed out of him!  And, without
knowing that he spoke, he said: "It's cruel!"

He saw his mother cover her eyes and Winifred bow her face towards
the bed.  Women!  They put up with things so much.  better than
men.  He took a step nearer to his father.  For three days James
had not been shaved, and his lips and chin were covered with hair,
hardly more snowy than his forehead.  It softened his face, gave it
a queer look already not of this world.  His eyes opened.  Soames
went quite close and bent over.  The lips moved.

"Here I am, Father:"

"Um--what--what news?  They never tell...."  the voice died, and a
flood of emotion made Soames' face work so that he could not speak.
Tell him?--yes.  But what?  He made a great effort, got his lips
together, and said:

"Good news, dear, good--Annette, a son."

"Ah!"  It was the queerest sound, ugly, relieved, pitiful,
triumphant--like the noise a baby makes getting what it wants.  The
eyes closed, and that strangled sound of breathing began again.
Soames recoiled to the chair and stonily sat down.  The lie he had
told, based, as it were, on some deep, temperamental instinct that
after death James would not know the truth, had taken away all
power of feeling for the moment.  His arm brushed against
something.  It was his father's naked foot.  In the struggle to
breathe he had pushed it out from under the clothes.  Soames took
it in his hand, a cold foot, light and thin, white, very cold.
What use to put it back, to wrap up that which must be colder soon!
He warmed it mechanically with his hand, listening to his father's
laboured breathing; while the power of feeling rose again within
him.  A little sob, quickly smothered, came from Winifred, but his
mother sat unmoving with her eyes fixed on James.  Soames signed to
the nurse.

"Where's the doctor?" he whispered.

"He's been sent for."

"Can't you do anything to ease his breathing?"

"Only an injection; and he can't stand it.  The doctor said, while
he was fighting...."

"He's not fighting," whispered Soames, "he's being slowly
smothered.  It's awful."

James stirred uneasily, as if he knew what they were saying.
Soames rose and bent over him.  James feebly moved his two hands,
and Soames took them.

"He wants to be pulled up," whispered the nurse.

Soames pulled.  He thought he pulled gently, but a look almost of
anger passed over James' face.  The nurse plumped the pillows.
Soames laid the hands down, and bending over kissed his father's
forehead.  As he was raising himself again, James' eyes bent on him
a look which seemed to come from the very depths of what was left
within.  'I'm done, my boy,' it seemed to say, 'take care of them,
take care of yourself; take care--I leave it all to you.'

"Yes, Yes," Soames whispered, "yes, yes."

Behind him the nurse did he knew, not what, for his father made a
tiny movement of repulsion as if resenting that interference; and
almost at once his breathing eased away, became quiet; he lay very
still.  The strained expression on his face passed, a curious white
tranquillity took its place.  His eyelids quivered, rested; the
whole face rested; at ease.  Only by the faint puffing of his lips
could they tell that he was breathing.  Soames sank back on his
chair, and fell to cherishing the foot again.  He heard the nurse
quietly crying over there by the fire; curious that she, a
stranger, should be the only one of them who cried!  He heard the
quiet lick and flutter of the fire flames.  One more old Forsyte
going to his long rest--wonderful, they were!--wonderful how he had
held on!  His mother and Winifred were leaning forward, hanging on
the sight of James' lips.  But Soames bent sideways over the feet,
warming them both; they gave him comfort, colder and colder though
they grew.  Suddenly he started up; a sound, a dreadful sound such
as he had never heard, was coming from his father's lips, as if an
outraged heart had broken with a long moan.  What a strong heart,
to have uttered that farewell!  It ceased.  Soaines looked into the
face.  No motion; no breath!  Dead!  He kissed the brow, turned
round and went out of the room.  He ran upstairs to the bedroom,
his old bedroom, still kept for him; flung himself face down on the
bed, and broke into sobs which he stilled with the pillow....

A little later he went downstairs and passed into the room.  James
lay alone, wonderfully calm, free from shadow and anxiety, with the
gravity on his ravaged face which underlies great age, the worn
fine gravity of old coins.

Soames looked steadily at that face, at the fire, at all the room
with windows thrown open to the London night.

"Good-bye!" he whispered, and went out.




CHAPTER XIV

HIS


He had much to see to, that night and all next day.  A telegram at
breakfast reassured him about Annette, and he only caught the last
train back to Reading, with Emily's kiss on his forehead and in his
ears her words:

"I don't know what I should have done without you, my dear boy."

He reached his house at midnight.  The weather had changed, was
mild again, as though, having finished its work and sent a Forsyte
to his last account, it could relax.  A second telegram, received
at dinner-time, had confirmed the good news of Annette, and,
instead of going in, Soames passed down through the garden in the
moonlight to his houseboat.  He could sleep there quite well.
Bitterly tired, he lay down on the sofa in his fur coat and fell
asleep.  He woke soon after dawn and went on deck.  He stood
against the rail, looking west where the river swept round in a
wide curve under the woods.  In Soames, appreciation of natural
beauty was curiously like that of his farmer ancestors, a sense of
grievance if it wasn't there, sharpened, no doubt, and civilised,
by his researches among landscape painting.  But dawn has power to
fertilise the most matter-of-fact vision, and he was stirred.  It
was another world from the river he knew, under that remote cool
light; a world into which man had not entered, an unreal world,
like some strange shore sighted by discovery.  Its colour was not
the colour of convention, was hardly colour at all; its shapes were
brooding yet distinct; its silence stunning; it had no scent.  Why
it should move him he could not tell, unless it were that he felt
so alone in it, bare of all relationship and all possessions.  Into
such a world his father might be voyaging, for all resemblance it
had to the world he had left.  And Soames took refuge from it in
wondering what painter could have done it justice.  The white-grey
water was like--like the belly of a fish!  Was it possible that
this world on which he looked was all private property, except the
water--and even that was tapped!  No tree, no shrub, not a blade of
grass, not a bird or beast, not even a fish that was not owned.
And once on a time all this was jungle and marsh and water, and
weird creatures roamed and sported without human cognizance to give
them names; rotting luxuriance had rioted where those tall, care-
fully planted woods came down to the water, and marsh-misted reeds
on that far side had covered all the pasture.  Well! they had got
it under, kennelled it all up, labelled it, and stowed it in
lawyers' offices.  And a good thing too!  But once in a way, as
now, the ghost of the past came out to haunt and brood and whisper
to any human who chanced to be awake: 'Out of my unowned loneliness
you all came, into it some day you will all return.'

And Soames, who felt the chill and the eeriness of that world-new
to him and so very old: the world, unowned, visiting the scene of
its past--went down and made himself tea on a spirit-lamp.  When he
had drunk it, he took out writing materials and wrote two
paragraphs:

"On the 20th instant at his residence in Park Lane, James Forsyte,
in his ninety-first year.  Funeral at noon on the 24th at Highgate.
No flowers by request."

"On the 20th instant at The Shelter; Mapledurham, Annette, wife of
Soames Forsyte, of a daughter."  And underneath on the
blottingpaper he traced the word "son."

It was eight o'clock in an ordinary autumn world when he went
across to the house.  Bushes across the river stood round and
bright-coloured out of a milky haze; the wood-smoke went up blue
and straight; and his doves cooed, preening their feathers in the
sunlight.

He stole up to his dressing-room, bathed, shaved, put on fresh
linen and dark clothes.

Madame Lamotte was beginning her breakfast when he went down.

She looked at his clothes, said, "Don't tell me!" and pressed his
hand.  "Annette is prettee well.  But the doctor say she can never
have no more children.  You knew that?" Soames nodded.  "It's a
pity.  Mais la petite est adorable.  Du cafe?"

Soames got away from her as soon as he could.  She offended him--
solid, matter-of-fact, quick, clear--French.  He could not bear her
vowels, her 'r's'; he resented the way she had looked at him, as if
it were his fault that Annette could never bear him a son!  His
fault!  He even resented her cheap adoration of the daughter he had
not yet seen.

Curious how he jibbed away from sight of his wife and child!

One would have thought he must have rushed up at the first moment.
On the contrary, he had a sort of physical shrinking from it--
fastidious possessor that he was.  He was afraid of what Annette
was thinking of him, author of her agonies, afraid of the look of
the baby, afraid of showing his disappointment with the present
and--the future.

He spent an hour walking up and down the drawing-room before he
could screw his courage up to mount the stairs and knock on the
door of their room.

Madame Lamotte opened it.

"Ah!  At last you come!  Elle vous attend!"  She passed him, and
Soames went in with his noiseless step, his jaw firmly set, his
eyes furtive.

Annette was very pale and very pretty lying there.  The baby was
hidden away somewhere; he could not see it.  He went up to the bed,
and with sudden emotion bent and kissed her forehead.

"Here you are then, Soames," she said.  "I am not so bad now.  But
I suffered terribly, terribly.  I am glad I cannot have any more.
Oh! how I suffered!"

Soames stood silent, stroking her hand; words of endearment, of
sympathy, absolutely would not come; the thought passed through
him: 'An English girl wouldn't have said that!'  At this moment he
knew with certainty that he would never be near to her in spirit
and in truth, nor she to him.  He had collected her--that was all!
And Jolyon's words came rushing into his mind: "I should imagine
you will be glad to have your neck out of chancery."  Well, he had
got it out!  Had he got it in again?

"We must feed you up," he said, "you'll soon be strong."

"Don't you want to see baby, Soames?  She is asleep."

"Of course," said Soames, "very much."

He passed round the foot of the bed to the other side and stood
staring.  For the first moment what he saw was much what he had
expected to see--a baby.  But as he stared and the baby breathed
and made little sleeping movements with its tiny features, it
seemed to assume an individual shape, grew to be like a picture, a
thing he would know again; not repulsive, strangely bud-like and
touching.  It had dark hair.  He touched it with his finger, he
wanted to see its eyes.  They opened, they were dark--whether blue
or brown he could not tell.  The eyes winked, stared, they had a
sort of sleepy depth in them.  And suddenly his heart felt queer,
warm, as if elated.

"Ma petite fleur!" Annette said softly.

"Fleur," repeated Soames: "Fleur!  we'll call her that."

The sense of triumph and renewed possession swelled within him.

By God!  this--this thing was his!





End of Project Gutenberg Etext Indian Summer of a Forsyte, by Galsworthy






THE FORSYTE SAGA

VOLUME III--AWAKENING and TO LET

By John Galsworthy




AWAKENING


Through the massive skylight illuminating the hall at Robin Hill, the
July sunlight at five o'clock fell just where the broad stairway
turned; and in that radiant streak little Jon Forsyte stood, blue-
linen-suited.  His hair was shining, and his eyes, from beneath a
frown, for he was considering how to go downstairs, this last of
innumerable times, before the car brought his father and mother home.
Four at a time, and five at the bottom?  Stale!  Down the banisters?
But in which fashion?  On his face, feet foremost?  Very stale.  On
his stomach, sideways?  Paltry!  On his back, with his arms stretched
down on both sides?  Forbidden!  Or on his face, head foremost, in a
manner unknown as yet to any but himself?  Such was the cause of the
frown on the illuminated face of little Jon....

In that Summer of 1909 the simple souls who even then desired to
simplify the English tongue, had, of course, no cognizance of little
Jon, or they would have claimed him for a disciple.  But one can be
too simple in this life, for his real name was Jolyon, and his living
father and dead half-brother had usurped of old the other
shortenings, Jo and Jolly.  As a fact little Jon had done his best to
conform to convention and spell himself first Jhon, then John; not
till his father had explained the sheer necessity, had he spelled his
name Jon.

Up till now that father had possessed what was left of his heart by
the groom, Bob, who played the concertina, and his nurse "Da," who
wore the violet dress on Sundays, and enjoyed the name of Spraggins
in that private life lived at odd moments even by domestic servants.
His mother had only appeared to him, as it were in dreams, smelling
delicious, smoothing his forehead just before he fell asleep, and
sometimes docking his hair, of a golden brown colour.  When he cut
his head open against the nursery fender she was there to be bled
over; and when he had nightmare she would sit on his bed and cuddle
his head against her neck.  She was precious but remote, because "Da"
was so near, and there is hardly room for more than one woman at a
time in a man's heart.  With his father, too, of course, he had
special bonds of union; for little Jon also meant to be a painter
when he grew up--with the one small difference, that his father
painted pictures, and little Jon intended to paint ceilings and
walls, standing on a board between two step-ladders, in a dirty-white
apron, and a lovely smell of whitewash.  His father also took him
riding in Richmond Park, on his pony, Mouse, so-called because it was
so-coloured.

Little Jon had been born with a silver spoon in a mouth which was
rather curly and large.  He had never heard his father or his mother
speak in an angry voice, either to each other, himself, or anybody
else; the groom, Bob, Cook, Jane, Bella and the other servants, even
"Da," who alone restrained him in his courses, had special voices
when they talked to him.  He was therefore of opinion that the world
was a place of perfect and perpetual gentility and freedom.

A child of 1901, he had come to consciousness when his country, just
over that bad attack of scarlet fever, the Boer War, was preparing
for the Liberal revival of 1906.  Coercion was unpopular, parents had
exalted notions of giving their offspring a good time.  They spoiled
their rods, spared their children, and anticipated the results with
enthusiasm.  In choosing, moreover, for his father an amiable man of
fifty-two, who had already lost an only son, and for his mother a
woman of thirty-eight, whose first and only child he was, little Jon
had done well and wisely.  What had saved him from becoming a cross
between a lap dog and a little prig, had been his father's adoration
of his mother, for even little Jon could see that she was not merely
just his mother, and that he played second fiddle to her in his
father's heart: What he played in his mother's heart he knew not yet.
As for "Auntie" June, his half-sister (but so old that she had grown
out of the relationship) she loved him, of course, but was too
sudden.  His devoted "Da," too, had a Spartan touch.  His bath was
cold and his knees were bare; he was not encouraged to be sorry for
himself.  As to the vexed question of his education, little Jon
shared the theory of those who considered that children should not be
forced.  He rather liked the Mademoiselle who came for two hours
every morning to teach him her language, together with history,
geography and sums; nor were the piano lessons which his mother gave
him disagreeable, for she had a way of luring him from tune to tune,
never making him practise one which did not give him pleasure, so
that he remained eager to convert ten thumbs into eight fingers.
Under his father he learned to draw pleasure-pigs and other animals.
He was not a highly educated little boy.  Yet, on the whole, the
silver spoon stayed in his mouth without spoiling it, though "Da"
sometimes said that other children would do him a "world of good."

It was a disillusionment, then, when at the age of nearly seven she
held him down on his back, because he wanted to do something of which
she did not approve.  This first interference with the free
individualism of a Forsyte drove him almost frantic.  There was
something appalling in the utter helplessness of that position, and
the uncertainty as to whether it would ever come to an end.  Suppose
she never let him get up any more!  He suffered torture at the top of
his voice for fifty seconds.  Worse than anything was his perception
that "Da" had taken all that time to realise the agony of fear he was
enduring.  Thus, dreadfully, was revealed to him the lack of
imagination in the human being.

When he was let up he remained convinced that "Da" had done a
dreadful thing.  Though he did not wish to bear witness against her,
he had been compelled, by fear of repetition, to seek his mother and
say: "Mum, don't let 'Da' hold me down on my back again."

His mother, her hands held up over her head, and in them two plaits
of hair--"couleur de feuille morte," as little Jon had not yet
learned to call it--had looked at him with eyes like little bits of
his brown velvet tunic, and answered:

"No, darling, I won't."

She, being in the nature of a goddess, little Jon was satisfied;
especially when, from under the dining-table at breakfast, where he
happened to be waiting for a mushroom, he had overheard her say to
his father:

"Then, will you tell 'Da,' dear, or shall I?  She's so devoted to
him"; and his father's answer:

"Well, she mustn't show it that way.  I know exactly what it feels
like to be held down on one's back.  No Forsyte can stand it for a
minute."

Conscious that they did not know him to be under the table, little
Jon was visited by the quite new feeling of embarrassment, and stayed
where he was, ravaged by desire for the mushroom.

Such had been his first dip into the dark abysses of existence.
Nothing much had been revealed to him after that, till one day,
having gone down to the cow-house for his drink of milk fresh from
the cow, after Garratt had finished milking, he had seen Clover's
calf, dead.  Inconsolable, and followed by an upset Garratt, he had
sought "Da"; but suddenly aware that she was not the person he
wanted, had rushed away to find his father, and had run into the arms
of his mother.

"Clover's calf's dead!  Oh! Oh! It looked so soft!"

His mother's clasp, and her:

"Yes, darling, there, there!" had stayed his sobbing.  But if
Clover's calf could die, anything could--not only bees, flies,
beetles and chickens--and look soft like that!  This was appalling--
and soon forgotten!

The next thing had been to sit on a bumble bee, a poignant
experience, which his mother had understood much better than "Da";
and nothing of vital importance had happened after that till the year
turned; when, following a day of utter wretchedness, he had enjoyed a
disease composed of little spots, bed, honey in a spoon, and many
Tangerine oranges.  It was then that the world had flowered.  To
"Auntie" June he owed that flowering, for no sooner was he a little
lame duck than she came rushing down from London, bringing with her
the books which had nurtured her own Berserker spirit, born in the
noted year of 1869.  Aged, and of many colours, they were stored with
the most formidable happenings.  Of these she read to little Jon,
till he was allowed to read to himself; whereupon she whisked back to
London and left them with him in a heap.  Those books cooked his
fancy, till he thought and dreamed of nothing but midshipmen and
dhows, pirates, rafts, sandal-wood traders, iron horses, sharks,
battles, Tartars, Red Indians, balloons, North Poles and other
extravagant delights.  The moment he was suffered to get up, he
rigged his bed fore and aft, and set out from it in a narrow bath
across green seas of carpet, to a rock, which he climbed by means of
its mahogany drawer knobs, to sweep the horizon with his drinking
tumbler screwed to his eye, in search of rescuing sails.  He made a
daily raft out of the towel stand, the tea tray, and his pillows.  He
saved the juice from his French plums, bottled it in an empty
medicine bottle, and provisioned the raft with the rum that it
became; also with pemmican made out of little saved-up bits of
chicken sat on and dried at the fire; and with lime juice against
scurvy, extracted from the peel of his oranges and a little
economised juice.  He made a North Pole one morning from the whole of
his bedclothes except the bolster, and reached it in a birch-bark
canoe (in private life the fender), after a terrible encounter with a
polar bear fashioned from the bolster and four skittles dressed up in
"Da's" nightgown.  After that, his father, seeking to steady his
imagination, brought him Ivanboe, Bevis, a book about King Arthur,
and Tom Brown's Schooldays.  He read the first, and for three days
built, defended and stormed Front de Boeuf's castle, taking every
part in the piece except those of Rebecca and Rowena; with piercing
cries of: "En avant, de Bracy!" and similar utterances.  After
reading the book about King Arthur he became almost exclusively Sir
Lamorac de Galis, because, though there was very little about him, he
preferred his name to that of any other knight; and he rode his old
rocking-horse to death, armed with a long bamboo.  Bevis he found
tame; besides, it required woods and animals, of which he had none in
his nursery, except his two cats, Fitz and Puck Forsyte, who
permitted no liberties.  For Tom Brown he was as yet too young.
There was relief in the house when, after the fourth week, he was
permitted to go down and out.

The month being March the trees were exceptionally like the masts of
ships, and for little Jon that was a wonderful Spring, extremely hard
on his knees, suits, and the patience of "Da," who had the washing
and reparation of his clothes.  Every morning the moment his
breakfast was over, he could be viewed by his mother and father,
whose windows looked out that way, coming from the study, crossing
the terrace, climbing the old oak tree, his face resolute and his
hair bright.  He began the day thus because there was not time to go
far afield before his lessons.  The old tree's variety never staled;
it had mainmast, foremast, top-gallant mast, and he could always come
down by the halyards--or ropes of the swing.  After his lessons,
completed by eleven, he would go to the kitchen for a thin piece of
cheese, a biscuit and two French plums--provision enough for a jolly-
boat at least--and eat it in some imaginative way; then, armed to the
teeth with gun, pistols, and sword, he would begin the serious
climbing of the morning, encountering by the way innumerable slavers,
Indians, pirates, leopards, and bears.  He was seldom seen at that
hour of the day without a cutlass in his teeth (like Dick Needham)
amid the rapid explosion of copper caps.  And many were the gardeners
he brought down with yellow peas shot out of his little gun.  He
lived a life of the most violent action.

"Jon," said his father to his mother, under the oak tree, "is
terrible.  I'm afraid he's going to turn out a sailor, or something
hopeless.  Do you see any sign of his appreciating beauty?"

"Not the faintest."

"Well, thank heaven he's no turn for wheels or engines!  I can bear
anything but that.  But I wish he'd take more interest in Nature."

"He's imaginative, Jolyon."

"Yes, in a sanguinary way.  Does he love anyone just now?"

"No; only everyone.  There never was anyone born more loving or more
lovable than Jon."

"Being your boy, Irene."

At this moment little Jon, lying along a branch high above them,
brought them down with two peas; but that fragment of talk lodged,
thick, in his small gizzard.  Loving, lovable, imaginative,
sanguinary!

The leaves also were thick by now, and it was time for his birthday,
which, occurring every year on the twelfth of May, was always
memorable for his chosen dinner of sweetbread, mushrooms, macaroons,
and ginger beer.

Between that eighth birthday, however, and the afternoon when he
stood in the July radiance at the turning of the stairway, several
important things had happened.

"Da," worn out by washing his knees, or moved by that mysterious
instinct which forces even nurses to desert their nurslings, left the
very day after his birthday in floods of tears "to be married"--of
all things--"to a man."  Little Jon, from whom it had been kept, was
inconsolable for an afternoon.  It ought not to have been kept from
him!  Two large boxes of soldiers and some artillery, together with
The Young Buglers, which had been among his birthday presents,
cooperated with his grief in a sort of conversion, and instead of
seeking adventures in person and risking his own life, he began to
play imaginative games, in which he risked the lives of countless tin
soldiers, marbles, stones and beans.  Of these forms of "chair a
canon" he made collections, and, using them alternately, fought the
Peninsular, the Seven Years, the Thirty Years, and other wars, about
which he had been reading of late in a big History of Europe which
had been his grandfather's.  He altered them to suit his genius, and
fought them all over the floor in his day nursery, so that nobody
could come in, for fearing of disturbing Gustavus Adolphus, King of
Sweden, or treading on an army of Austrians.  Because of the sound of
the word he was passionately addicted to the Austrians, and finding
there were so few battles in which they were successful he had to
invent them in his games.  His favourite generals were Prince Eugene,
the Archduke Charles and Wallenstein.  Tilly and Mack ("music-hall
turns" he heard his father call them one day, whatever that might
mean) one really could not love very much, Austrian though they were.
For euphonic reasons, too, he doted on Turenne.

This phase, which caused his parents anxiety, because it kept him
indoors when he ought to have been out, lasted through May and half
of June, till his father killed it by bringing home to him Tom Sawyer
and Huckleberry Finn.  When he read those books something happened in
him, and he went out of doors again in passionate quest of a river.
There being none on the premises at Robin Hill, he had to make one
out of the pond, which fortunately had water lilies, dragonflies,
gnats, bullrushes, and three small willow trees.  On this pond, after
his father and Garratt had ascertained by sounding that it had a
reliable bottom and was nowhere more than two feet deep, he was
allowed a little collapsible canoe, in which he spent hours and hours
paddling, and lying down out of sight of Indian Joe and other
enemies.  On the shore of the pond, too, he built himself a wigwam
about four feet square, of old biscuit tins, roofed in by boughs.  In
this he would make little fires, and cook the birds he had not shot
with his gun, hunting in the coppice and fields, or the fish he did
not catch in the pond because there were none.  This occupied the
rest of June and that July, when his father and mother were away in
Ireland.  He led a lonely life of "make believe" during those five
weeks of summer weather, with gun, wigwam, water and canoe; and,
however hard his active little brain tried to keep the sense of
beauty away, she did creep in on him for a second now and then,
perching on the wing of a dragon-fly, glistening on the water lilies,
or brushing his eyes with her blue as he Jay on his back in ambush.

"Auntie" June, who had been left in charge, had a "grown-up" in the
house, with a cough and a large piece of putty which he was making
into a face; so she hardly ever came down to see him in the pond.
Once, however, she brought with her two other "grown-ups."  Little
Jon, who happened to have painted his naked self bright blue and
yellow in stripes out of his father's water-colour box, and put some
duck's feathers in his hair, saw them coming, and--ambushed himself
among the willows.  As he had foreseen, they came at once to his
wigwam and knelt down to look inside, so that with a blood-curdling
yell he was able to take the scalps of "Auntie" June and the woman
"grown-up" in an almost complete manner before they kissed him.  The
names of the two grown-ups were "Auntie" Holly and "Uncle" Val, who
had a brown face and a little limp, and laughed at him terribly.  He
took a fancy to "Auntie" Holly, who seemed to be a sister too; but
they both went away the same afternoon and he did not see them again.
Three days before his father and mother were to come home "Auntie"
June also went off in a great hurry, taking the "grown-up" who
coughed and his piece of putty; and Mademoiselle said: "Poor man, he
was veree ill.  I forbid you to go into his room, Jon."  Little Jon,
who rarely did things merely because he was told not to, refrained
from going, though he was bored and lonely.  In truth the day of the
pond was past, and he was filled to the brim of his soul with
restlessness and the want of something--not a tree, not a gun--
something soft.  Those last two days had seemed months in spite of
Cast Up by the Sea, wherein he was reading about Mother Lee and her
terrible wrecking bonfire.  He had gone up and down the stairs
perhaps a hundred times in those two days, and often from the day
nursery, where he slept now, had stolen into his mother's room,
looked at everything, without touching, and on into the dressing-
room; and standing on one leg beside the bath, like Slingsby, had
whispered:

"Ho, ho, ho!  Dog my cats!" mysteriously, to bring luck.  Then,
stealing back, he had opened his mother's wardrobe, and taken a long
sniff which seemed to bring him nearer to--he didn't know what.

He had done this just before he stood in the streak of sunlight,
debating in which of the several ways he should slide down the
banisters.  They all seemed silly, and in a sudden languor he began
descending the steps one by one.  During that descent he could
remember his father quite distinctly--the short grey beard, the deep
eyes twinkling, the furrow between them, the funny smile, the thin
figure which always seemed so tall to little Jon; but his mother he
couldn't see.  All that represented her was something swaying with
two dark eyes looking back at him; and the scent of her wardrobe.

Bella was in the hall, drawing aside the big curtains, and opening
the front door.  Little Jon said, wheedling

"Bella!"

"Yes, Master Jon."

"Do let's have tea under the oak tree when they come; I know they'd
like it best."

"You mean you'd like it best."

Little Jon considered.

"No, they would, to please me."

Bella smiled.  "Very well, I'll take it out if you'll stay quiet here
and not get into mischief before they come."

Little Jon sat down on the bottom step, and nodded.  Bella came
close, and looked him over.

"Get up!" she said.

Little Jon got up.  She scrutinized him behind; he was not green, and
his knees seemed clean.

"All right!" she said.  "My!  Aren't you brown?  Give me a kiss!"

And little Jon received a peck on his hair.

"What jam?" he asked.  "I'm so tired of waiting."

"Gooseberry and strawberry."

Num!  They were his favourites!

When she was gone he sat still for quite a minute.  It was quiet in
the big hall open to its East end so that he could see one of his
trees, a brig sailing very slowly across the upper lawn.  In the
outer hall shadows were slanting from the pillars.  Little Jon got
up, jumped one of them, and walked round the clump of iris plants
which filled the pool of grey-white marble in the centre.  The
flowers were pretty, but only smelled a very little.  He stood in the
open doorway and looked out.  Suppose!--suppose they didn't come!  He
had waited so long that he felt he could not bear that, and his
attention slid at once from such finality to the dust motes in the
bluish sunlight coming in: Thrusting his hand up, he tried to catch
some.  Bella ought to have dusted that piece of air!  But perhaps
they weren't dust--only what sunlight was made of, and he looked to
see whether the sunlight out of doors was the same.  It was not.  He
had said he would stay quiet in the hall, but he simply couldn't any
more; and crossing the gravel of the drive he lay down on the grass
beyond.  Pulling six daisies he named them carefully, Sir Lamorac,
Sir Tristram, Sir Lancelot, Sir Palimedes, Sir Bors, Sir Gawain, and
fought them in couples till only Sir Lamorac, whom he had selected
for a specially stout stalk, had his head on, and even he, after
three encounters, looked worn and waggly.  A beetle was moving slowly
in the grass, which almost wanted cutting.  Every blade was a small
tree, round whose trunk the beetle had to glide.  Little Jon
stretched out Sir Lamorac, feet foremost, and stirred the creature
up.  It scuttled painfully.  Little Jon laughed, lost interest, and
sighed.  His heart felt empty.  He turned over and lay on his back.
There was a scent of honey from the lime trees in flower, and in the
sky the blue was beautiful, with a few white clouds which looked and
perhaps tasted like lemon ice.  He could hear Bob playing: "Way down
upon de Suwannee ribber" on his concertina, and it made him nice and
sad.  He turned over again and put his ear to the ground--Indians
could hear things coming ever so far--but he could hear nothing--only
the concertina!  And almost instantly he did hear a grinding sound, a
faint toot.  Yes!  it was a car--coming--coming!  Up he jumped.
Should he wait in the porch, or rush upstairs, and as they came in,
shout: "Look!" and slide slowly down the banisters, head foremost?
Should he?  The car turned in at the drive.  It was too late!  And he
only waited, jumping up and down in his excitement.  The car came
quickly, whirred, and stopped.  His father got out, exactly like
life.  He bent down and little Jon bobbed up--they bumped.  His
father said

"Bless us!  Well, old man, you are brown!"  Just as he would; and the
sense of expectation--of something wanted--bubbled unextinguished in
little Jon.  Then, with a long, shy look he saw his mother, in a blue
dress, with a blue motor scarf over her cap and hair, smiling.  He
jumped as high as ever he could, twined his legs behind her back, and
hugged.  He heard her gasp, and felt her hugging back.  His eyes,
very dark blue just then, looked into hers, very dark brown, till her
lips closed on his eyebrow, and, squeezing with all his might, he
heard her creak and laugh, and say:

"You are strong, Jon!"

He slid down at that, and rushed into the hall, dragging her by the
hand.

While he was eating his jam beneath the oak tree, he noticed things
about his mother that he had never seemed to see before, her cheeks
for instance were creamy, there were silver threads in her dark goldy
hair, her throat had no knob in it like Bella's, and she went in and
out softly.  He noticed, too, some little lines running away from the
corners of her eyes, and a nice darkness under them.  She was ever so
beautiful, more beautiful than "Da" or Mademoiselle, or "Auntie" June
or even "Auntie" Holly, to whom he had taken a fancy; even more
beautiful than Bella, who had pink cheeks and came out too suddenly
in places.  This new beautifulness of his mother had a kind of
particular importance, and he ate less than he had expected to.

When tea was over his father wanted him to walk round the gardens.
He had a long conversation with his father about things in general,
avoiding his private life--Sir Lamorac, the Austrians, and the
emptiness he had felt these last three days, now so suddenly filled
up.  His father told him of a place called Glensofantrim, where he
and his mother had been; and of the little people who came out of the
ground there when it was very quiet.  Little Jon came to a halt, with
his heels apart.

"Do you really believe they do, Daddy?"  "No, Jon, but I thought you
might."

"Why?"

"You're younger than I; and they're fairies."  Little Jon squared the
dimple in his chin.

"I don't believe in fairies.  I never see any."  "Ha!" said his
father.

"Does Mum?"

His father smiled his funny smile.

"No; she only sees Pan."

"What's Pan?"

"The Goaty God who skips about in wild and beautiful places."

"Was he in Glensofantrim?"

"Mum said so."

Little Jon took his heels up, and led on.

"Did you see him?"

"No; I only saw Venus Anadyomene."

Little Jon reflected; Venus was in his book about the Greeks and
Trojans.  Then Anna was her Christian and Dyomene her surname?

But it appeared, on inquiry, that it was one word, which meant rising
from the foam.

"Did she rise from the foam in Glensofantrim?"

"Yes; every day."

"What is she like, Daddy?"

"Like Mum."

"Oh! Then she must be..." but he stopped at that, rushed at a wall,
scrambled up, and promptly scrambled down again.  The discovery that
his mother was beautiful was one which he felt must absolutely be
kept to himself.  His father's cigar, however, took so long to smoke,
that at last he was compelled to say:

"I want to see what Mum's brought home.  Do you mind, Daddy?"

He pitched the motive low, to absolve him from unmanliness, and was a
little disconcerted when his father looked at him right through,
heaved an important sigh, and answered:

"All right, old man, you go and love her."

He went, with a pretence of slowness, and then rushed, to make up.
He entered her bedroom from his own, the door being open.  She was
still kneeling before a trunk, and he stood close to her, quite
still.

She knelt up straight, and said:

"Well, Jon?"

"I thought I'd just come and see."

Having given and received another hug, he mounted the window-seat,
and tucking his legs up under him watched her unpack.  He derived a
pleasure from the operation such as he had not yet known, partly
because she was taking out things which looked suspicious, and partly
because he liked to look at her.  She moved differently from anybody
else, especially from Bella; she was certainly the refinedest-looking
person he had ever seen.  She finished the trunk at last, and knelt
down in front of him.

"Have you missed us, Jon?"

Little Jon nodded, and having thus admitted his feelings, continued
to nod.

"But you had 'Auntie' June?"

"Oh! she had a man with a cough."

His mother's face changed, and looked almost angry.  He added
hastily:

"He was a poor man, Mum; he coughed awfully; I--I liked him."

His mother put her hands behind his waist.

"You like everybody, Jon?"

Little Jon considered.

"Up to a point," he said: "Auntie June took me to church one Sunday."

"To church?  Oh!"

"She wanted to see how it would affect me."  "And did it?"

"Yes.  I came over all funny, so she took me home again very quick.
I wasn't sick after all.  I went to bed and had hot brandy and water,
and read The Boys of Beechwood.  It was scrumptious."

His mother bit her lip.

"When was that?"

"Oh! about--a long time ago--I wanted her to take me again, but she
wouldn't.  You and Daddy never go to church, do you?"

"No, we don't."

"Why don't you?"

His mother smiled.

"Well, dear, we both of us went when we were little.  Perhaps we went
when we were too little."

"I see," said little Jon, "it's dangerous."

"You shall judge for yourself about all those  things as you grow
up."

Little Jon replied in a calculating manner:

"I don't want to grow up, much.  I don't want  to go to school."  A
sudden overwhelming desire  to say something more, to say what he
really  felt, turned him red.  "I--I want to stay with you,  and be
your lover, Mum."

Then with an instinct to improve the situation, he added quickly   "I
don't want to go to bed to-night, either.  I'm simply tired of going
to bed, every night."

"Have you had any more nightmares?"

"Only about one.  May I leave the door open into your room to-night,
Mum?"

"Yes, just a little."  Little Jon heaved a sigh of satisfaction.

"What did you see in Glensofantrim?"

"Nothing but beauty, darling."

"What exactly is beauty?"

"What exactly is--Oh! Jon, that's a  poser."

"Can I see it, for instance?"   His mother got up, and sat beside
him.  "You do, every day.  The sky is beautiful, the  stars, and
moonlit nights, and then the birds, the flowers, the trees--they're
all beautiful.  Look out of the window--there's beauty for you, Jon."

"Oh! yes, that's the view.  Is that all?"

"All? no.  The sea is wonderfully beautiful, and the waves, with
their foam flying back."

"Did you rise from it every day, Mum?"

His mother smiled.  "Well, we bathed."

Little Jon suddenly reached out and caught her neck in his hands.

"I know," he said mysteriously, "you're it, really, and all the rest
is make-believe."

She sighed, laughed, said:  "Oh! Jon!"

Little Jon said critically:

"Do you think Bella beautiful, for instance?  I hardly do."

"Bella is young; that's something."

"But you look younger, Mum.  If you bump against Bella she hurts."

"I don't believe 'Da' was beautiful, when I come to think of it; and
Mademoiselle's almost ugly."

"Mademoiselle has a very nice face."  "Oh! yes; nice.  I love your
little rays, Mum."

"Rays?"

Little Jon put his finger to the outer corner of her eye.

"Oh! Those?  But they're a sign of age."

"They come when you smile."

"But they usen't to."

"Oh! well, I like them.  Do you love me, Mum?"

"I do--I do love you, darling."

"Ever so?"

"Ever so!"

"More than I thought you did?"

"Much--much more."

"Well, so do I; so that makes it even."

Conscious that he had never in his life so given himself away, he
felt a sudden reaction to the manliness of Sir Lamorac, Dick Needham,
Huck Finn, and other heroes.

"Shall I show you a thing or two?" he said; and slipping out of her
arms, he stood on his head.  Then, fired by her obvious admiration,
he mounted the bed, and threw himself head foremost from his feet on
to his back, without touching anything with his hands.  He did this
several times.

That evening, having inspected what they had brought, he stayed up to
dinner, sitting between them at the little round table they used when
they were alone.  He was extremely excited.  His mother wore a
French-grey dress, with creamy lace made out of little scriggly
roses, round her neck, which was browner than the lace.  He kept
looking at her, till at last his father's funny smile made him
suddenly attentive to his slice of pineapple.  It was later than he
had ever stayed up, when he went to bed.  His mother went up with
him, and he undressed very slowly so as to keep her there.  When at
last he had nothing on but his pyjamas, he said:

"Promise you won't go while I say my prayers!"

"I promise."

Kneeling down and plunging his face into the bed, little Jon hurried
up, under his breath, opening one eye now and then, to see her
standing perfectly still with a smile on her face.  "Our Father"--so
went his last prayer, "which art in heaven, hallowed be thy Mum, thy
Kingdom Mum--on Earth as it is in heaven, give us this day our daily
Mum and forgive us our trespasses on earth as it is in heaven and
trespass against us, for thine is the evil the power and the glory
for ever and ever.  Amum!  Look out!"  He sprang, and for a long
minute remained in her arms.  Once in bed, he continued to hold her
hand.

"You won't shut the door any more than that, will you?  Are you going
to be long, Mum?"

"I must go down and play to Daddy."

"Oh! well, I shall hear you."

"I hope not; you must go to sleep."

"I can sleep any night."

"Well, this is just a night like any other."

"Oh! no--it's extra special."

"On extra special nights one always sleeps soundest."

"But if I go to sleep, Mum, I shan't hear you come up."

"Well, when I do, I'll come in and give you a kiss, then if you're
awake you'll know, and if you're not you'll still know you've had
one."

Little Jon sighed, "All right!" he said: "I suppose I must put up
with that.  Mum?"

"Yes?"

"What was her name that Daddy believes in?  Venus Anna Diomedes?"

"Oh! my angel!  Anadyomene."

"Yes! but I like my name for you much better."

"What is yours, Jon?"

Little Jon answered shyly:

"Guinevere! it's out of the Round Table--I've only just thought
of it, only of course her hair was down."

His mother's eyes, looking past him, seemed to float.

"You won't forget to come, Mum?"

"Not if you'll go to sleep."

"That's a bargain, then."  And little Jon screwed up his eyes.

He felt her lips on his forehead, heard her footsteps; opened his
eyes to see her gliding through the doorway, and, sighing, screwed
them up again.

Then Time began.

For some ten minutes of it he tried loyally to sleep, counting a
great number of thistles in a row, "Da's" old recipe for bringing
slumber.  He seemed to have been hours counting.  It must, he
thought, be nearly time for her to come up now.  He threw the
bedclothes back.  "I'm hot!" he said, and his voice sounded funny in
the darkness, like someone else's.  Why didn't she come?  He sat up.
He must look!  He got out of bed, went to the window and pulled the
curtain a slice aside.  It wasn't dark, but he couldn't tell whether
because of daylight or the moon, which was very big.  It had a funny,
wicked face, as if laughing at him, and he did not want to look at
it.  Then, remembering that his mother had said moonlit nights were
beautiful, he continued to stare out in a general way.  The trees
threw thick shadows, the lawn looked like spilt milk, and a long,
long way he could see; oh! very far; right over the world, and it all
looked different and swimmy.  There was a lovely smell, too, in his
open window.

'I wish I had a dove like Noah!' he thought.


"The moony moon was round and bright,
It shone and shone and made it light."


After that rhyme, which came into his head all at once, he became
conscious of music, very soft-lovely!  Mum playing!  He bethought
himself of a macaroon he had, laid up in his chest of drawers, and,
getting it, came back to the window.  He leaned out, now munching,
now holding his jaws to hear the music better.  "Da" used to say that
angels played on harps in heaven; but it wasn't half so lovely as Mum
playing in the moony night, with him eating a macaroon.  A cockchafer
buzzed by, a moth flew in his face, the music stopped, and little Jon
drew his head in.  She must be coming!  He didn't want to be found
awake.  He got back into bed and pulled the clothes nearly over his
head; but he had left a streak of moonlight coming in.  It fell
across the floor, near the foot of the bed, and he watched it moving
ever so slowly towards him, as if it were alive.  The music began
again, but he could only just hear it now; sleepy music, pretty--
sleepy--music--sleepy--slee.....

And time slipped by, the music rose, fell, ceased; the moonbeam crept
towards his face.  Little Jon turned in his sleep till he lay on his
back, with one brown fist still grasping the bedclothes.  The corners
of his eyes twitched--he had begun to dream.  He dreamed he was
drinking milk out of a pan that was the moon, opposite a great black
cat which watched him with a funny smile like his father's.  He heard
it whisper: "Don't drink too much!" It was the cat's milk, of course,
and he put out his hand amicably to stroke the creature; but it was
no longer there; the pan had become a bed, in which he was lying, and
when he tried to get out he couldn't find the edge; he couldn't find
it--he--he--couldn't get out!  It was dreadful!

He whimpered in his sleep.  The bed had begun to go round too; it was
outside him and inside him; going round and round, and getting fiery,
and Mother Lee out of Cast up by the Sea was stirring it!  Oh! so
horrible she looked!  Faster and faster!--till he and the bed and
Mother Lee and the moon and the cat were all one wheel going round
and round and up and up--awful--awful--awful!

He shrieked.

A voice saying: "Darling, darling!" got through the wheel, and he
awoke, standing on his bed, with his eyes wide open.

There was his mother, with her hair like Guinevere's, and, clutching
her, he buried his face in it.

"Oh! oh!"

"It's all right, treasure.  You're awake now.  There!  There!  It's
nothing!"

But little Jon continued to say: "Oh! oh!"

Her voice went on, velvety in his ear:

"It was the moonlight, sweetheart, coming on your face."

Little Jon burbled into her nightgown

"You said it was beautiful.  Oh!"

"Not to sleep in, Jon.  Who let it in?  Did you draw the curtains?"

"I wanted to see the time; I--I looked out, I--I heard you playing,
Mum; I--I ate my macaroon."  But he was growing slowly comforted; and
the instinct to excuse his fear revived within him.

"Mother Lee went round in me and got all fiery," he mumbled.

"Well, Jon, what can you expect if you eat macaroons after you've
gone to bed?"

"Only one, Mum; it made the music ever so more beautiful.  I was
waiting for you--I nearly thought it was to-morrow."

"My ducky, it's only just eleven now."

Little Jon was silent, rubbing his nose on her neck.

"Mum, is Daddy in your room?"

"Not to-night."

"Can I come?"

"If you wish, my precious."

Half himself again, little Jon drew back.

"You look different, Mum; ever so younger."

"It's my hair, darling."

Little Jon laid hold of it, thick, dark gold, with a few silver
threads.

"I like it," he said: "I like you best of all like this."

Taking her hand, he had begun dragging her towards the door.  He shut
it as they passed, with a sigh of relief.

"Which side of the bed do you like, Mum?"

"The left side."

"All right."

Wasting no time, giving her no chance to change her mind, little Jon
got into the bed, which seemed much softer than his own.  He heaved
another sigh, screwed his head into the pillow and lay examining the
battle of chariots and swords and spears which always went on outside
blankets, where the little hairs stood up against the light.

"It wasn't anything, really, was it?" he said.

>From before her glass his mother answered:

"Nothing but the moon and your imagination heated up.  You mustn't
get so excited, Jon."

But, still not quite in possession of his nerves, little Jon answered
boastfully:

"I wasn't afraid, really, of course!"  And again he lay watching the
spears and chariots.  It all seemed very long.

"Oh! Mum, do hurry up!"

"Darling, I have to plait my hair."

"Oh! not to-night.  You'll only have to unplait it again to-morrow.
I'm sleepy now; if you don't come, I shan't be sleepy soon."

His mother stood up white and flowey before the winged mirror: he
could see three of her, with her neck turned and her hair bright
under the light, and her dark eyes smiling.  It was unnecessary, and
he said:

"Do come, Mum; I'm waiting."

"Very well, my love, I'll come."

Little Jon closed his eyes.  Everything was turning out most
satisfactory, only she must hurry up!  He felt the bed shake, she was
getting in.  And, still with his eyes closed, he said sleepily: "It's
nice, isn't it?"

He heard her voice say something, felt her lips touching his nose,
and, snuggling up beside her who lay awake and loved him with her
thoughts, he fell into the dreamless sleep, which rounded off his
past.






TO LET



"From out the fatal loins of those two foes
A pair of star-crossed lovers take their life."
                        --Romeo and Juliet.





TO CHARLES SCRIBNER





PART I

ENCOUNTER


Soames Forsyte emerged from the Knightsbridge Hotel, where he was
staying, in the afternoon of the 12th of May, 1920, with the
intention of visiting a collection of pictures in a Gallery off Cork
Street, and looking into the Future.  He walked.  Since the War he
never took a cab if he could help it.  Their drivers were, in his
view, an uncivil lot, though now that the War was over and supply
beginning to exceed demand again, getting more civil in accordance
with the custom of human nature.  Still, he had not forgiven them,
deeply identifying them with gloomy memories, and now, dimly, like
all members, of their class, with revolution.  The considerable
anxiety he had passed through during the War, and the more
considerable anxiety he had since undergone in the Peace, had
produced psychological consequences in a tenacious nature.  He had,
mentally, so frequently experienced ruin, that he had ceased to
believe in its material probability.  Paying away four thousand a
year in income and super tax, one could not very well be worse off!
A fortune of a quarter of a million, encumbered only by a wife and
one daughter, and very diversely invested, afforded substantial
guarantee even against that "wildcat notion" a levy on capital.  And
as to confiscation of war profits, he was entirely in favour of it,
for he had none, and "serve the beggars right!" The price of
pictures, moreover, had, if anything, gone up, and he had done better
with his collection since the War began than ever before.  Air-raids,
also, had acted beneficially on a spirit congenitally cautious, and
hardened a character already dogged.  To be in danger of being
entirely dispersed inclined one to be less apprehensive of the more
partial dispersions involved in levies and taxation, while the habit
of condemning the impudence of the Germans had led naturally to
condemning that of Labour, if not openly at least in the sanctuary of
his soul.

He walked.  There was, moreover, time to spare, for Fleur was to meet
him at the Gallery at four o'clock, and it was as yet but half-past
two.  It was good for him to walk--his liver was a little
constricted, and his nerves rather on edge.  His wife was always out
when she was in Town, and his daughter would flibberty-gibbet all
over the place like most young women since the War.  Still, he must
be thankful that she had been too young to do anything in that War
itself.  Not, of course, that he had not supported the War from its
inception, with all his soul, but between that and supporting it with
the bodies of his wife and daughter, there had been a gap fixed by
something old-fashioned within him which abhorred emotional
extravagance.  He had, for instance, strongly objected to Annette, so
attractive, and in 1914 only thirty-four, going to her native France,
her "chere patrie" as, under the stimulus of war, she had begun to
call it, to nurse her "braves poilus," forsooth!  Ruining her health
and her looks!  As if she were really a nurse!  He had put a stopper
on it.  Let her do needlework for them at home, or knit!  She had not
gone, therefore, and had never been quite the same woman since.  A
bad tendency of hers to mock at him, not openly, but in continual
little ways, had grown.  As for Fleur, the War had resolved the vexed
problem whether or not she should go to school.  She was better away
from her mother in her war mood, from the chance of air-raids, and
the impetus to do extravagant things; so he had placed her in a
seminary as far West as had seemed to him compatible with excellence,
and had missed her horribly.  Fleur!  He had never regretted the
somewhat outlandish name by which at her birth he had decided so
suddenly to call her--marked concession though it had been to the
French.  Fleur!  A pretty name--a pretty child!  But restless--too
restless; and wilful!  Knowing her power too over her father!  Soames
often reflected on the mistake it was to dote on his daughter.  To
get old and dote!  Sixty-five!  He was getting on; but he didn't feel
it, for, fortunately perhaps, considering Annette's youth and good
looks, his second marriage had turned out a cool affair.  He had
known but one real passion in his life--for that first wife of his--
Irene.  Yes, and that fellow, his cousin Jolyon, who had gone off
with her, was looking very shaky, they said.  No wonder, at seventy-
two, after twenty years of a third marriage!

Soames paused a moment in his march to lean over the railings of the
Row.  A suitable spot for reminiscence, half-way between that house
in Park Lane which had seen his birth and his parents' deaths, and
the little house in Montpellier Square where thirty-five years ago he
had enjoyed his first edition of matrimony.  Now, after twenty years
of his second edition, that old tragedy seemed to him like a previous
existence--which had ended when Fleur was born in place of the son he
had hoped for.  For many years he had ceased regretting, even
vaguely, the son who had not been born; Fleur filled the bill in his
heart.  After all, she bore his name; and he was not looking forward
at all to the time when she would change it.  Indeed, if he ever
thought of such a calamity, it was seasoned by the vague feeling that
he could make her rich enough to purchase perhaps and extinguish the
name of the fellow who married her--why not, since, as it seemed,
women were equal to men nowadays?  And Soames, secretly convinced
that they were not, passed his curved hand over his face vigorously,
till it reached the comfort of his chin.  Thanks to abstemious
habits, he had not grown fat and gabby; his nose was pale and thin,
his grey moustache close-clipped, his eyesight unimpaired.  A slight
stoop closened and corrected the expansion given to his face by the
heightening of his forehead in the recession of his grey hair.
Little change had Time wrought in the "warmest" of the young
Forsytes, as the last of the old Forsytes--Timothy-now in his hundred
and first year, would have phrased it.

The shade from the plane-trees fell on his neat Homburg hat; he had
given up top hats--it was no use attracting attention to wealth in
days like  these.  Plane-trees!  His thoughts travelled sharply to
Madrid--the Easter before the War, when, having to make up his mind
about that Goya picture, he had taken a voyage of discovery to study
the painter on his spot.  The fellow had impressed him--great range,
real genius!  Highly as the chap ranked, he would rank even higher
before they had finished with him.  The second Goya craze would be
greater even than the first; oh, yes!  And he had bought.  On that
visit he had--as never before--commissioned a copy of a fresco
painting called "La Vendimia," wherein was the figure of a girl with
an arm akimbo, who had reminded him of his daughter.  He had it now
in the Gallery at Mapledurham, and rather poor it was--you couldn't
copy Goya.  He would still look at it, however, if his daughter were
not there, for the sake of something irresistibly reminiscent in the
light, erect balance of the figure, the width between the arching
eyebrows, the eager dreaming of the dark eyes.  Curious that Fleur
should have dark eyes, when his own were grey--no pure Forsyte had
brown eyes--and her mother's blue!  But of course her grandmother
Lamotte's eyes were dark as treacle!

He began to walk on again toward Hyde Park Corner.  No greater change
in all England than in the Row!  Born almost within hail of it, he
could remember it from 1860 on.  Brought there as a child between the
crinolines to stare at tight-trousered dandies in whiskers, riding
with a cavalry seat; to watch the doffing of curly-brimmed and white
top hats; the leisurely air of it all, and the little bow-legged man
in a long red waistcoat who used to come among the fashion with dogs
on several strings, and try to sell one to his mother: King Charles
spaniels, Italian greyhounds, affectionate to her crinoline--you
never saw them now.  You saw no quality of any sort, indeed, just
working people sitting in dull rows with nothing to stare at but a
few young bouncing females in pot hats, riding astride, or desultory
Colonials charging up and down on dismal-looking hacks; with, here
and there, little girls on ponies, or old gentlemen jogging their
livers, or an orderly trying a great galumphing cavalry horse; no
thoroughbreds, no grooms, no bowing, no scraping, no gossip--nothing;
only the trees the same--the trees in--different to the generations
and declensions of mankind.  A democratic England--dishevelled,
hurried, noisy, and seemingly without an apex.  And that something
fastidious in the soul of Soames turned over within him.  Gone
forever, the close borough of rank and polish!  Wealth there was--oh,
yes!  wealth--he himself was a richer man than his father had ever
been; but manners, flavour, quality, all gone, engulfed in one vast,
ugly, shoulder-rubbing, petrol-smelling Cheerio.  Little half-beaten
pockets of gentility and caste lurking here and there, dispersed and
chetif, as Annette would say; but nothing ever again firm and
coherent to look up to.  And into this new hurly-burly of bad manners
and loose morals his daughter--flower of his life--was flung!  And
when those Labour chaps got power--if they ever did--the worst was
yet to come.

He passed out under the archway, at last no longer--thank goodness!--
disfigured by the gungrey of its search-light.  'They'd better put a
search-light on to where they're all going,' he thought, 'and light
up their precious democracy!' And he directed his steps along the
Club fronts of Piccadilly.  George Forsyte, of course, would be
sitting in the bay window of the Iseeum.  The chap was so big now
that he was there nearly all his time, like some immovable, sardonic,
humorous eye noting the decline of men and things.  And Soames
hurried, ever constitutionally uneasy beneath his cousin's glance.
George, who, as he had heard, had written a letter signed "Patriot"
in the middle of the War, complaining of the Government's hysteria in
docking the oats of race-horses.  Yes, there he was, tall, ponderous,
neat, clean-shaven, with his smooth hair, hardly thinned, smelling,
no doubt, of the best hair-wash, and a pink paper in his hand.  Well,
be didn't change!  And for perhaps the first time in his life Soames
felt a kind of sympathy tapping in his waistcoat for that sardonic
kinsman.  With his weight, his perfectly parted hair, and bull-like
gaze, he was a guarantee that the old order would take some shifting
yet.  He saw George move the pink paper as if inviting him to ascend-
-the chap must want to ask something about his property.  It was
still under Soames' control; for in the adoption of a sleeping
partnership at that painful period twenty years back when he had
divorced Irene, Soames had found himself almost insensibly retaining
control of all purely Forsyte affairs.

Hesitating for just a moment, he nodded and went in.  Since the death
of his brother-in-law Montague Dartie, in Paris, which no one had
quite known what to make of, except that it was certainly not
suicide--the Iseeum Club had seemed more respectable to Soames.
George, too, he knew, had sown the last of his wild oats, and was
committed definitely to the joys of the table, eating only of the
very best so as to keep his weight down, and owning, as he said,
"just one or two old screws to give me an interest in life."  He
joined his cousin, therefore, in the bay window without the
embarrassing sense of indiscretion he had been used to feel up there.
George put out a well-kept hand.

"Haven't seen you since the War," he said.  "How's your wife?"

"Thanks," said Soames coldly, "well enough."

Some hidden jest curved, for a moment, George's fleshy face, and
gloated from his eye.

"That Belgian chap, Profond," he said, "is a member here now.  He's a
rum customer."

"Quite!" muttered Soames.  "What did you want to see me about?"

"Old Timothy; he might go off the hooks at any moment.  I suppose
he's made his Will."

"Yes."

"Well, you or somebody ought to give him a look up--last of the old
lot; he's a hundred, you know.  They say he's like a rummy.  Where
are you goin' to put him?  He ought to have a pyramid by rights."

Soames shook his head.  "Highgate, the family vault."

"Well, I suppose the old girls would miss him, if he was anywhere
else.  They say he still takes an interest in food.  He might last
on, you know.  Don't we get anything for the old Forsytes?   Ten of
them--average age eighty-eight--I worked it out.  That ought to be
equal to triplets."

"Is that all?" said Soames, "I must be getting on."

'You unsociable devil,' George's eyes seemed to answer.  "Yes, that's
all: Look him up in his mausoleum--the old chap might want to
prophesy."  The grin died on the rich curves of his face, and he
added: "Haven't you attorneys invented a way yet of dodging this
damned income tax?  It hits the fixed inherited income like the very
deuce.  I used to have two thousand five hundred a year; now I've got
a beggarly fifteen hundred, and the price of living doubled."

"Ah!" murmured Soames, "the turf's in danger."

Over George's face moved a gleam of sardonic self-defence.

"Well," he said, "they brought me up to do nothing, and here I am in
the sear and yellow, getting poorer every day.  These Labour chaps
mean to have the lot before they've done.  What are you going to do
for a living when it comes?  I shall work a six-hour day teaching
politicians how to see a joke.  Take my tip, Soames; go into
Parliament, make sure of your four hundred--and employ me."

And, as Soames retired, he resumed his seat in the bay window.

Soames moved along Piccadilly deep in reflections excited by his
cousin's words.  He himself had always been a worker and a saver,
George always a drone and a spender; and yet, if confiscation once
began, it was he--the worker and the saver--who would be looted!
That was the negation of all virtue, the overturning of all Forsyte
principles.  Could civilization be built on any other?  He did not
think so.  Well, they wouldn't confiscate his pictures, for they
wouldn't know their worth.  But what would they be worth, if these
maniacs once began to milk capital?  A drug on the market.  'I don't
care about myself,' he thought; 'I could live on five hundred a year,
and never know the difference, at my age.'  But Fleur!  This fortune,
so widely invested, these treasures so carefully chosen and amassed,
were all for--her.  And if it should turn out that he couldn't give
or leave them to her--well, life had no meaning, and what was the use
of going in to look at this crazy, futuristic stuff with the view of
seeing whether it had any future?

Arriving at the Gallery off Cork Street, however, he paid his
shilling, picked up a catalogue, and entered.  Some ten persons were
prowling round.  Soames took steps and came on what looked to him
like a lamp-post bent by collision with a motor omnibus.  It was
advanced some three paces from the wall, and was described in his
catalogue as "Jupiter."  He examined it with curiosity, having
recently turned some of his attention to sculpture.  'If that's
Jupiter,' he thought, 'I wonder what Juno's like.'  And suddenly he
saw her, opposite.  She appeared to him like nothing so much as a
pump with two handles, lightly clad in snow.  He was still gazing at
her, when two of the prowlers halted on his left.  "Epatant!" he
heard one say.

"Jargon!" growled Soames to himself.

The other's boyish voice replied

"Missed it, old bean; he's pulling your leg.  When Jove and Juno
created he them, he was saying: 'I'll see how much these fools will
swallow.'  And they've lapped up the lot."

"You young duffer!  Vospovitch is an innovator.  Don't you see that
he's brought satire into sculpture?  The future of plastic art, of
music, painting, and even architecture, has set in satiric.  It was
bound to.  People are tired--the bottom's tumbled out of sentiment."

"Well, I'm quite equal to taking a little interest in beauty.  I was
through the War.  You've dropped your handkerchief, sir."

Soames saw a handkerchief held out in front of him.  He took it with
some natural suspicion, and approached it to his nose.  It had the
right scent--of distant Eau de Cologne--and his initials in a corner.
Slightly reassured, he raised his eyes to the young man's face.  It
had rather fawn-like ears, a laughing mouth, with half a toothbrush
growing out of it on each side, and small lively eyes, above a
normally dressed appearance.

"Thank you," he said; and moved by a sort of irritation, added: "Glad
to hear you like beauty; that's rare, nowadays."

"I dote on it," said the young man; "but you and I are the last of
the old guard, sir."

Soames smiled.

"If you really care for pictures," he said, "here's my card.  I can
show you some quite good ones any Sunday, if you're down the river
and care to look in."

"Awfully nice of you, sir.  I'll drop in like a bird.  My name's
Mont-Michael."  And he took off his hat.

Soames, already regretting his impulse, raised his own slightly in
response, with a downward look at the young man's companion, who had
a purple tie, dreadful little sluglike whiskers, and a scornful look-
-as if he were a poet!

It was the first indiscretion he had committed for so long that he
went and sat down in an alcove.  What had possessed him to give his
card to a rackety young fellow, who went about with a thing like
that?  And Fleur, always at the back of his thoughts, started out
like a filigree figure from a clock when the hour strikes.  On the
screen opposite the alcove was a large canvas with a great many
square tomato-coloured blobs on it, and nothing else, so far as
Soames could see from where he sat.  He looked at his catalogue: "No.
32 'The Future Town'--Paul Post."  'I suppose that's satiric too,' he
thought.  'What a thing!' But his second impulse was more cautious.
It did not do to condemn hurriedly.  There had been those stripey,
streaky creations of Monet's, which had turned out such trumps; and
then the stippled school; and Gauguin.  Why, even since the Post-
Impressionists there had been one or two painters not to be sneezed
at.  During the thirty-eight years of his connoisseur's life, indeed,
he had marked so many "movements," seen the tides of taste and
technique so ebb and flow, that there was really no telling anything
except that there was money to be made out of every change of
fashion.  This too might quite well be a case where one must subdue
primordial instinct, or lose the market.  He got up and stood before
the picture, trying hard to see it with the eyes of other people.
Above the tomato blobs was what he took to be a sunset, till some one
passing said: "He's got the airplanes wonderfully, don't you think!"
Below the tomato blobs was a band of white with vertical black
stripes, to which he could assign no meaning whatever, till some one
else came by, murmuring: "What expression he gets with his
foreground!"  Expression?  Of what?  Soames went back to his seat.
The thing was "rich," as his father would have said, and he wouldn't
give a damn for it.  Expression!  Ah! they were all Expressionists
now, he had heard, on the Continent.  So it was coming here too, was
it?  He remembered the first wave of influenza in 1887--or '8--
hatched in China, so they said.  He wondered where this--this
Expressionism had been hatched.  The thing was a regular disease!

He had become conscious of a woman and a youth standing between him
and the "Future Town."  Their backs were turned; but very suddenly
Soames put his catalogue before his face, and drawing his hat
forward, gazed through the slit between.  No mistaking that back,
elegant as ever though the hair above had gone grey.  Irene!  His
divorced wife--Irene!  And this, no doubt, was--her son--by that
fellow Jolyon Forsyte--their boy, six months older than his own girl!
And mumbling over in his mind the bitter days of his divorce, he rose
to get out of sight, but quickly sat down again.  She had turned her
head to speak to her boy; her profile was still so youthful that it
made her grey hair seem powdery, as if fancy-dressed; and her lips
were smiling as Soames, first possessor of them, had never seen them
smile.  Grudgingly he admitted her still beautiful and in figure
almost as young as ever.  And how that boy smiled back at her!
Emotion squeezed Soames' heart.  The sight infringed his sense of
justice.  He grudged her that boy's smile--it went beyond what Fleur
gave him, and it was undeserved.  Their son might have been his son;
Fleur might have been her daughter, if she had kept straight!  He
lowered his catalogue.  If she saw him, all the better!  A reminder
of her conduct in the presence of her son, who probably knew nothing
of it, would be a salutary touch from the finger of that Nemesis
which surely must soon or late visit her!  Then, half-conscious that
such a thought was extravagant for a Forsyte of his age, Soames took
out his watch.  Past four!  Fleur was late.  She had gone to his
niece Imogen Cardigan's, and there they would keep her smoking
cigarettes and gossiping, and that.  He heard the boy laugh, and say
eagerly: "I say, Mum, is this by one of Auntie June's lame ducks?"

"Paul Post--I believe it is, darling."

The word produced a little shock in Soames; he had never heard her
use it.  And then she saw him.  His eyes must have had in them
something of George Forsyte's sardonic look; for her gloved hand
crisped the folds of her frock, her eyebrows rose, her face went
stony.  She moved on.

"It is a caution," said the boy, catching her arm again.

Soames stared after them.  That boy was good-looking, with a Forsyte
chin, and eyes deep-grey, deep in; but with something sunny, like a
glass of old sherry spilled over him; his smile perhaps, his hair.
Better than they deserved--those two!  They passed from his view into
the next room, and Soames continued to regard the Future Town, but
saw it not.  A little smile snarled up his lips.  He was despising
the vehemence of his own feelings after all these years.  Ghosts!
And yet as one grew old--was there anything but what was ghost-like
left?  Yes, there was Fleur!  He fixed his eyes on the entrance.  She
was due; but she would keep him waiting, of course!  And suddenly he
became aware of a sort of human breeze--a short, slight form clad in
a sea-green djibbah with a metal belt and a fillet binding unruly
red-gold hair all streaked with grey.  She was talking to the Gallery
attendants, and something familiar riveted his gaze--in her eyes, her
chin, her hair, her spirit--something which suggested a thin Skye
terrier just before its dinner.  Surely June Forsyte!  His cousin
June--and coming straight to his recess!  She sat down beside him,
deep in thought, took out a tablet, and made a pencil note.  Soames
sat unmoving.  A confounded thing, cousinship!  "Disgusting!" he
heard her murmur; then, as if resenting the presence of an
overhearing stranger, she looked at him.  The worst had happened.

"Soames!"

Soames turned his head a very little.

"How are you?" he said.  "Haven't seen you for twenty years."

"No.  Whatever made you come here?"

"My sins," said Soames.  "What stuff!"

"Stuff?  Oh, yes--of course; it hasn't arrived yet.

"It never will," said Soames; "it must be making a dead loss."

"Of course it is."

"How d'you know?"

"It's my Gallery."

Soames sniffed from sheer surprise.

"Yours?  What on earth makes you run a show like this?"

"I don't treat Art as if it were grocery."

Soames pointed to the Future Town.  "Look at that!  Who's going to
live in a town like that, or with it on his walls?"

June contemplated the picture for a moment.

"It's a vision," she said.

"The deuce!"

There was silence, then June rose.  'Crazylooking creature!' he
thought.

"Well," he said, "you'll find your young stepbrother here with a
woman I used to know.  If you take my advice, you'll close this
exhibition."

June looked back at him.  "Oh! You Forsyte!" she said, and moved on.
About her light, fly-away figure, passing so suddenly away, was a
look of dangerous decisions.  Forsyte!  Of course, he was a Forsyte!
And so was she!  But from the time when, as a mere girl, she brought
Bosinney into his life to wreck it, he had never hit it off with June
and never would!  And here she was, unmarried to this day, owning a
Gallery!... And suddenly it came to Soames how little he knew now of
his own family.  The old aunts at Timothy's had been dead so many
years; there was no clearing-house for news.  What had they all done
in the War?  Young Roger's boy had been wounded, St. John Hayman's
second son killed; young Nicholas' eldest had got an O. B. E., or
whatever they gave them.  They had all joined up somehow, he
believed.  That boy of Jolyon's and Irene's, he supposed, had been
too young; his own generation, of course, too old, though Giles
Hayman had driven a car for the Red Cross--and Jesse Hayman been a
special constable--those "Dromios" had always been of a sporting
type!  As for himself, he had given a motor ambulance, read the
papers till he was sick of them, passed through much anxiety, bought
no clothes, lost seven pounds in weight; he didn't know what more he
could have done at his age.  Indeed, thinking it over, it struck him
that he and his family had taken this war very differently to that
affair with the Boers, which had been supposed to tax all the
resources of the Empire.  In that old war, of course, his nephew Val
Dartie had been wounded, that fellow Jolyon's first son had died of
enteric, "the Dromios" had gone out on horses, and June had been a
nurse; but all that had seemed in the nature of a portent, while in
this war everybody had done "their bit," so far as he could make out,
as a matter of course.  It seemed to show the growth of something or
other--or perhaps the decline of something else.  Had the Forsytes
become less individual, or more Imperial, or less provincial?  Or was
it simply that one hated Germans?...  Why didn't Fleur come, so that
he could get away?  He saw those three return together from the other
room and pass back along the far side of the screen.  The boy was
standing before the Juno now.  And, suddenly, on the other side of
her, Soames saw--his daughter, with eyebrows raised, as well they
might be.  He could see her eyes glint sideways at the boy, and the
boy look back at her.  Then Irene slipped her hand through his arm,
and drew him on.  Soames saw him glancing round, and Fleur looking
after them as the three went out.

A voice said cheerfully: "Bit thick, isn't it, sir?"

The young man who had handed him his handkerchief was again passing.
Soames nodded.

"I don't know what we're coming to."

"Oh! That's all right, sir," answered the young man cheerfully; "they
don't either."

Fleur's voice said: "Hallo, Father!  Here you are!" precisely as if
he had been keeping her waiting.

The young man, snatching off his hat, passed on.

"Well," said Soames, looking her up and down, "you're a punctual sort
of young woman!"

This treasured possession of his life was of medium height and
colour, with short, dark chestnut hair; her wide-apart brown eyes
were set in whites so clear that they glinted when they moved, and
yet in repose were almost dreamy under very white, black-lashed lids,
held over them in a sort of suspense.  She had a charming profile,
and nothing of her father in her face save a decided chin.  Aware
that his expression was softening as he looked at her, Soames frowned
to preserve the unemotionalism proper to a Forsyte.  He knew she was
only too inclined to take advantage of his weakness.

Slipping her hand under his arm, she said:

"Who was that?"

"He picked up my handkerchief.  We talked about the pictures."

"You're not going to buy that, Father?"

"No," said Soames grimly; "nor that Juno you've been looking at."

Fleur dragged at his arm.  "Oh! Let's go!  It's a ghastly show."

In the doorway they passed the young man called Mont and his partner.
But Soames had hung out a board marked "Trespassers will be
prosecuted," and he barely acknowledged the young fellow's salute.

"Well," he said in the street, "whom did you meet at Imogen's?"

"Aunt Winifred, and that Monsieur Profond."

"Oh!" muttered Soames; "that chap!  What does your aunt see in him?"

"I don't know.  He looks pretty deep--mother says she likes him."

Soames grunted.

"Cousin Val and his wife were there, too."

"What!" said Soames.  "I thought they were back in South Africa."

"Oh, no!  They've sold their farm.  Cousin Val is going to train
race-horses on the Sussex Downs.  They've got a jolly old manor-
house; they asked me down there."

Soames coughed: the news was distasteful to him.  "What's his wife
like now?"

"Very quiet, but nice, I think."

Soames coughed again.  "He's a rackety chap, your Cousin Val."

"Oh! no, Father; they're awfully devoted.  I promised to go--Saturday
to Wednesday next."

"Training race-horses!" said Soames.  It was extravagant, but not the
reason for his distaste.  Why the deuce couldn't his nephew have
stayed out in South Africa?  His own divorce had been bad enough,
without his nephew's marriage to the daughter of the co-respondent; a
half-sister too of June, and of that boy whom Fleur had just been
looking at from under the pump-handle.  If he didn't look out, she
would come to know all about that old disgrace!  Unpleasant things!
They were round him this afternoon like a swarm of bees!

"I don't like it!" he said.

"I want to see the race-horses," murmured Fleur; "and they've
promised I shall ride.  Cousin Val can't walk much, you know; but he
can ride perfectly.  He's going to show me their gallops."

"Racing!" said Soames.  "It's a pity the War didn't knock that on the
head.  He's taking after his father, I'm afraid."

"I don't know anything about his father."

"No," said Soames, grimly.  "He took an interest in horses and broke
his neck in Paris, walking down-stairs.  Good riddance for your
aunt."  He frowned, recollecting the inquiry into those stairs which
he had attended in Paris six years ago, because.  Montague Dartie
could not attend it himself--perfectly normal stairs in a house where
they played baccarat.  Either his winnings or the way he had
celebrated them had gone to his brother-in-law's head.  The French
procedure had been very loose; he had had a lot of trouble
with it.

A sound from Fleur distracted his attention.  "Look! The people who
were in the Gallery with us."

"What people?" muttered Soames, who knew perfectly well.

"I think that woman's beautiful."

"Come into this pastry-cook's," said Soames abruptly, and tightening
his grip on her arm he turned into a confectioner's.  It was--for
him--a surprising thing to do, and he said rather anxiously: "What
will you have?"

"Oh! I don't want anything.  I had a cocktail and a tremendous
lunch."

"We must have something now we're here," muttered Soames, keeping
hold of her arm.

"Two teas," he said; "and two of those nougat things."

But no sooner was his body seated than his soul sprang up.  Those
three--those three were coming in!  He heard Irene say something to
her boy, and his answer:

"Oh! no, Mum; this place is all right.  My stunt."  And the three sat
down.

At that moment, most awkward of his existence, crowded with ghosts
and shadows from his past, in presence of the only two women he had
ever loved--his divorced wife and his daughter by her successor--
Soames was not so much afraid of them as of his cousin June.  She
might make a scene--she might introduce those two children--she was
capable of anything.  He bit too hastily at the nougat, and it stuck
to his plate.  Working at it with his finger, he glanced at Fleur.
She was masticating dreamily, but her eyes were on the boy.  The
Forsyte in him said: "Think, feel, and you're done for!"  And he
wiggled his finger desperately.  Plate!  Did Jolyon wear a plate?
Did that woman wear a plate?  Time had been when he had seen her
wearing nothing!  That was something, anyway, which had never been
stolen from him.  And she knew it, though she might sit there calm
and self-possessed, as if she had never been his wife.  An acid
humour stirred in his Forsyte blood; a subtle pain divided by hair's
breadth from pleasure.  If only June did not suddenly bring her
hornets about his ears!  The boy was talking.

"Of course, Auntie June"--so he called his half-sister "Auntie," did
he?--well, she must be fifty, if she was a day!--" it's jolly good of
you to encourage them.  Only--hang it all!"  Soames stole a glance.
Irene's startled eyes were bent watchfully on her boy.  She--she had
these devotions--for Bosinney--for that boy's father--for this boy!
He touched Fleur's arm, and said:

"Well, have you had enough?"

"One more, Father, please."

She would be sick!  He went to the counter to pay.  When he turned
round again he saw Fleur standing near the door, holding a
handkerchief which the boy had evidently just handed to her.

"F. F.," he heard her say.  "Fleur Forsyte--it's mine all right.
Thank you ever so."

Good God!  She had caught the trick from what he'd told her in the
Gallery--monkey!

"Forsyte?  Why--that's my name too.  Perhaps we're cousins."

"Really!  We must be.  There aren't any others.  I live at
Mapledurham; where do you?"

"Robin Hill."

Question and answer had been so rapid that all was over before he
could lift a finger.  He saw Irene's face alive with startled
feeling, gave the slightest shake of his head, and slipped his arm
through Fleur's.

"Come along!" he said.

She did not move.

"Didn't you hear, Father?  Isn't it queer--our name's the same.  Are
we cousins?"

"What's that?" he said.  "Forsyte?  Distant, perhaps."

"My name's Jolyon, sir.  Jon, for short."

"Oh! Ah!" said Soames.  "Yes.  Distant.  How are you?  Very good of
you.  Good-bye!"

He moved on.

"Thanks awfully," Fleur was saying.  "Au revoir!"

"Au revoir!" he heard the boy reply.




II

FINE FLEUR FORSYTE


Emerging from the "pastry-cook's," Soames' first impulse was to vent
his nerves by saying to his daughter: 'Dropping your hand-kerchief!'
to which her reply might well be: 'I picked that up from you!' His
second impulse therefore was to let sleeping dogs lie.  But she would
surely question him.  He gave her a sidelong look, and found she was
giving him the same.  She said softly:

"Why don't you like those cousins, Father?"  Soames lifted the corner
of his lip.

"What made you think that?"

"Cela se voit."

'That sees itself!'  What a way of putting it!  After twenty years of
a French wife Soames had still little sympathy with her language; a
theatrical affair and connected in his mind with all the refinements
of domestic irony.

"How?" he asked.

"You must know them; and you didn't make a sign.  I saw them looking
at you."

"I've never seen the boy in my life," replied Soames with perfect
truth.

"No; but you've seen the others, dear."

Soames gave her another look.  What had she picked up?  Had her Aunt
Winifred, or Imogen, or Val Dartie and his wife, been talking?  Every
breath of the old scandal had been carefully kept from her at home,
and Winifred warned many times that he wouldn't have a whisper of it
reach her for the world.  So far as she ought to know, he had never
been married before.  But her dark eyes, whose southern glint and
clearness often almost frightened him, met his with perfect
innocence.

"Well," he said, "your grandfather and his brother had a quarrel.
The two families don't know each other."

"How romantic!"

'Now, what does she mean by that?' he thought.  The word was to him
extravagant and dangerous--it was as if she had said: "How jolly!"

"And they'll continue not to know each, other," he added, but
instantly regretted the challenge in those words.  Fleur was smiling.
In this age, when young people prided themselves on going their own
ways and paying no attention to any sort of decent prejudice, he had
said the very thing to excite her wilfulness.  Then, recollecting the
expression on Irene's face, he breathed again.

"What sort of a quarrel?" he heard Fleur say.

"About a house.  It's ancient history for you.  Your grandfather died
the day you were born.  He was ninety."

"Ninety?  Are there many Forsytes besides those in the Red Book?"

"I don't know," said Soames.  "They're all dispersed now.  The old
ones are dead, except Timothy."

Fleur clasped her hands.

"Timothy?  Isn't that delicious?"

"Not at all," said Soames.  It offended him that she should think
"Timothy" delicious--a kind of insult to his breed.  This new
generation mocked at anything solid and tenacious.  "You go and see
the old boy.  He might want to prophesy."  Ah!  If Timothy could see
the disquiet England of his great-nephews and great-nieces, he would
certainly give tongue.  And involuntarily he glanced up at the
Iseeum; yes--George was still in the window, with the same pink paper
in his hand.

"Where is Robin Hill, Father?"

Robin Hill!  Robin Hill, round which all that tragedy had centred!
What did she want to know for?

"In Surrey," he muttered; "not far from Richmond.  Why?"

"Is the house there?"

"What house?"

"That they quarrelled about."

"Yes.  But what's all that to do with you?  We're going home to-
morrow--you'd better be thinking about your frocks."

"Bless you!  They're all thought about.  A family feud?  It's like
the Bible, or Mark Twain--awfully exciting.  What did you do in the
feud, Father?"

"Never you mind."

"Oh! But if I'm to keep it up?"

"Who said you were to keep it up?"

"You, darling."

"I?  I said it had nothing to do with you."

"Just what I think, you know; so that's all right."

She was too sharp for him; fine, as Annette sometimes called her.
Nothing for it but to distract her attention.

"There's a bit of rosaline point in here," he said, stopping before a
shop, "that I thought you might like."

When he had paid for it and they had resumed their progress, Fleur
said:

"Don't you think that boy's mother is the most beautiful woman of her
age you've ever seen?"

Soames shivered.  Uncanny, the way she stuck to it!

"I don't know that I noticed her."

"Dear, I saw the corner of your eye."

"You see everything--and a great deal more, it seems to me!"

"What's her husband like?  He must be your first cousin, if your
fathers were brothers."

"Dead, for all I know," said Soames, with sudden vehemence.  "I
haven't seen him for twenty years."

"What was he?"

"A painter."

"That's quite jolly."

The words: "If you want to please me you'll put those people out of
your head," sprang to Soames' lips, but he choked them back--he must
not let her see his feelings.

"He once insulted me," he said.

Her quick eyes rested on his face.

"I see!  You didn't avenge it, and it rankles.  Poor Father!  You let
me have a go!"

It was really like lying in the dark with a mosquito hovering above
his face.  Such pertinacity in Fleur was new to him, and, as they
reached the hotel, he said grimly:

"I did my best.  And that's enough about these people.  I'm going up
till dinner."

"I shall sit here."

With a parting look at her extended in a chair--a look half-
resentful, half-adoring--Soames moved into the lift and was
transported to their suite on the fourth floor.  He stood by the
window of the sitting-room which gave view over Hyde Park, and
drummed a finger on its pane.  His feelings were confused, tetchy,
troubled.  The throb of that old wound, scarred over by Time and new
interests, was mingled with displeasure and anxiety, and a slight
pain in his chest where that nougat stuff had disagreed.  Had Annette
come in?  Not that she was any good to him in such a difficulty.
Whenever she had questioned him about his first marriage, he had
always shut her up; she knew nothing of it, save that it had been the
great passion of his life, and his marriage with herself but domestic
makeshift.  She had always kept the grudge of that up her sleeve, as
it were, and used it commercially.  He listened.  A sound--the vague
murmur of a woman's movements--was coming through the door.  She was
in.  He tapped.

"Who?"

"I," said Soames.

She had been changing her frock, and was still imperfectly clothed; a
striking figure before her glass.  There was a certain magnificence
about her arms, shoulders, hair, which had darkened since he first
knew her, about the turn of her neck, the silkiness of her garments,
her dark-lashed, greyblue eyes--she was certainly as handsome at
forty as she had ever been.  A fine possession, an excellent
housekeeper, a sensible and affectionate enough mother.  If only she
weren't always so frankly cynical about the relations between them!
Soames, who had no more real affection for her than she had for him,
suffered from a kind of English grievance in that she had never
dropped even the thinnest veil of sentiment over their partnership.
Like most of his countrymen and women, he held the view that marriage
should be based on mutual love, but that when from a marriage love
had disappeared, or, been found never to have really existed--so that
it was manifestly not based on love--you must not admit it.  There it
was, and the love was not--but there you were, and must continue to
be!  Thus you had it both ways, and were not tarred with cynicism,
realism, and immorality like the French.  Moreover, it was necessary
in the interests of property.  He knew that she knew that they both
knew there was no love between them, but he still expected her not to
admit in words or conduct such a thing, and he could never understand
what she meant when she talked of the hypocrisy of the English.  He
said:

"Whom have you got at 'The Shelter' next week?"

Annette went on touching her lips delicately with salve--he always
wished she wouldn't do that.

"Your sister Winifred, and the Car-r-digans"--she took up a tiny
stick of black--"and Prosper Profond."

"That Belgian chap?  Why him?"

Annette turned her neck lazily, touched one eyelash, and said:

"He amuses Winifred."

"I want some one to amuse Fleur; she's restive."

"R-restive?" repeated Annette.  "Is it the first time you see that,
my friend?  She was born r-restive, as you call it."

Would she never get that affected roll out of her r's?

He touched the dress she had taken off, and asked:

"What have you been doing?"

Annette looked at him, reflected in her glass.  Her just-brightened
lips smiled, rather full, rather ironical.

"Enjoying myself," she said.

"Oh!" answered Soames glumly.  "Ribbandry, I suppose."

It was his word for all that incomprehensible running in and out of
shops that women went in for.  "Has Fleur got her summer dresses?"

"You don't ask if I have mine."

"You don't care whether I do or not."

"Quite right.  Well, she has; and I have mine--terribly expensive."

"H'm!" said Soames.  "What does that chap Profond do in England?"

Annette raised the eyebrows she had just finished.

"He yachts."

"Ah!" said Soames; "he's a sleepy chap."

"Sometimes," answered Annette, and her face had a sort of quiet
enjoyment.  "But sometimes very amusing."

"He's got a touch of the tar-brush about him."

Annette stretched herself.

"Tar-brush?" she said.  "What is that?  His mother was Armenienne."

"That's it, then," muttered Soames.  "Does he know anything about
pictures?"

"He knows about everything--a man of the world."

"Well, get some one for Fleur.  I want to distract her.  She's going
off on Saturday to Val Dartie and his wife; I don't like it."

"Why not?"

Since the reason could not be explained without going into family
history, Soames merely answered:

"Racketing about.  There's too much of it."

"I like that little Mrs. Val; she is very quiet and clever."

"I know nothing of her except--This thing's new."  And Soames took
up a creation from the bed.

Annette received it from him.

"Would you hook me?" she said.

Soames hooked.  Glancing once over her shoulder into the glass, he
saw the expression on her face, faintly amused, faintly contemptuous,
as much as to say: "Thanks!  You will never learn!"  No, thank God,
he wasn't a Frenchman!  He finished with a jerk, and the words: "It's
too low here."  And he went to the door, with the wish to get away
from her and go down to Fleur again.

Annette stayed a powder-puff, and said with startling suddenness

"Que to es grossier!"

He knew the expression--he had reason to.  The first time she had
used it he had thought it meant "What a grocer you are!" and had not
known whether to be relieved or not when better informed.  He
resented the word--he was not coarse!  If he was coarse, what was
that chap in the room beyond his, who made those horrible noises in
the morning when he cleared his throat, or those people in the Lounge
who thought it well-bred to say nothing but what the whole world
could hear at the top of their voices--quacking inanity!  Coarse,
because he had said her dress was low!  Well, so it was!  He went out
without reply.

Coming into the Lounge from the far end, he at once saw Fleur where
he had left her.  She sat with crossed knees, slowly balancing a foot
in silk stocking and grey shoe, sure sign that she was dreaming.  Her
eyes showed it too--they went off like that sometimes.  And then, in
a moment, she would come to life, and be as quick and restless as a
monkey.  And she knew so much, so self-assured, and not yet nineteen.
What was that odious word?  Flapper!  Dreadful young creatures--
squealing and squawking and showing their legs!  The worst of them
bad dreams, the best of them powdered angels!  Fleur was not a
flapper, not one of those slangy, ill-bred young females.  And yet
she was frighteningly self-willed, and full of life, and determined
to enjoy it.  Enjoy!  The word brought no puritan terror to Soames;
but it brought the terror suited to his temperament.  He had always
been afraid to enjoy to-day for fear he might not enjoy tomorrow so
much.  And it was terrifying to feel that his daughter was divested
of that safeguard.  The very way she sat in that chair showed it--
lost in her dream.  He had never been lost in a dream himself--there
was nothing to be had out of it; and where she got it from he did not
know!  Certainly not from Annette!  And yet Annette, as a young girl,
when he was hanging about her, had once had a flowery look.  Well,
she had lost it now!

Fleur rose from her chair-swiftly, restlessly; and flung herself down
at a writing-table.  Seizing ink and writing paper, she began to
write as if she had not time to breathe before she got her letter
written.  And suddenly she saw him.  The air of desperate absorption
vanished, she smiled, waved a kiss, made a pretty face as if she were
a little puzzled and a little bored.

Ah!  She was "fine"--"fine!"




III

AT ROBIN HILL


Jolyon Forsyte had spent his boy's nineteenth birthday at Robin Hill,
quietly going into his affairs.  He did everything quietly now,
because his heart was in a poor way, and, like all his family, he
disliked the idea of dying.  He had never realised how much till one
day, two years ago, he had gone to his doctor about certain symptoms,
and been told:

"At any moment, on any overstrain."

He had taken it with a smile--the natural Forsyte reaction against an
unpleasant truth.  But with an increase of symptoms in the train on
the way home, he had realised to the full the sentence hanging over
him.  To leave Irene, his boy, his home, his work--though he did
little enough work now!  To leave them for unknown darkness, for the
unimaginable state, for such nothingness that he would not even be
conscious of wind stirring leaves above his grave, nor of the scent
of earth and grass.  Of such nothingness that, however hard he might
try to conceive it, he never could, and must still hover on the hope
that he might see again those he loved!  To realise this was to
endure very poignant spiritual anguish.  Before he reached home that
day he had determined to keep it from Irene.  He would have to be
more careful than man had ever been, for the least thing would give
it away and make her as wretched as himself, almost.  His doctor had
passed him sound in other respects, and seventy was nothing of an
age--he would last a long time yet, if he could.

Such a conclusion, followed out for nearly two years, develops to the
full the subtler side of character.  Naturally not abrupt, except
when nervously excited, Jolyon had become control incarnate.  The sad
patience of old people who cannot exert themselves was masked by a
smile which his lips preserved even in private.  He devised
continually all manner of cover to conceal his enforced lack of
exertion.

Mocking himself for so doing, he counterfeited conversion to the
Simple Life; gave up wine and cigars, drank a special kind of coffee
with no coffee in it.  In short, he made himself as safe as a Forsyte
in his condition could, under the rose of his mild irony.  Secure
from discovery, since his wife and son had gone up to Town, he had
spent the fine May day quietly arranging his papers, that he might
die to-morrow without inconveniencing any one, giving in fact a final
polish to his terrestrial state.  Having docketed and enclosed it in
his father's old Chinese cabinet, he put the key into an envelope,
wrote the words outside: "Key of the Chinese cabinet, wherein will be
found the exact state of me, J. F.," and put it in his breast-
pocket, where it would be always about him, in case of accident.
Then, ringing for tea, he went out to have it under the old oak-tree.

All are under sentence of death; Jolyon, whose sentence was but a
little more precise and pressing, had become so used to it that he
thought habitually, like other people, of other things.  He thought
of his son now.

Jon was nineteen that day, and Jon had come of late to a decision.
Educated neither at Eton like his father, nor at Harrow, like his
dead half-brother, but at one of those establishments which, designed
to avoid the evil and contain the good of the Public School system,
may or may not contain the evil and avoid the good, Jon had left in
April perfectly ignorant of whit he wanted to become.  The War, which
had promised to go on for ever, had ended just as he was about to
join the Army, six months before his time.  It had taken him ever
since to get used to the idea that he could now choose for himself.
He had held with his father several discussions, from which, under a
cheery show of being ready for anything--except, of course, the
Church, Army, Law, Stage, Stock Exchange, Medicine, Business, and
Engineering--Jolyon had gathered rather clearly that Jon wanted to go
in for nothing.  He himself had felt exactly like that at the same
age.  With him that pleasant vacuity had soon been ended by an early
marriage, and its unhappy consequences.  Forced to become an
underwriter at Lloyd's, he had regained prosperity before his
artistic talent had outcropped.  But having--as the simple say--
"learned" his boy to draw pigs and other animals, he knew that Jon
would never be a painter, and inclined to the conclusion that his
aversion from everything else meant that he was going to be a writer.
Holding, however, the view that experience was necessary even for
that profession, there seemed to Jolyon nothing in the meantime, for
Jon, but University, travel, and perhaps the eating of dinners for
the Bar.  After that one would see, or more probably one would not.
In face of these proffered allurements, however, Jon had remained
undecided.

Such discussions with his son had confirmed in Jolyon a doubt whether
the world had really changed.  People said that it was a new age.
With the profundity of one not too long for any age, Jolyon perceived
that under slightly different surfaces the era was precisely what it
had been.  Mankind was still divided into two species: The few who
had "speculation" in their souls, and the many who had none, with a
belt of hybrids like himself in the middle.  Jon appeared to have
speculation; it seemed to his father a bad lookout.

With something deeper, therefore, than his usual smile, he had heard
the boy say, a fortnight ago: "I should like to try farming, Dad; if
it won't cost you too much.  It seems to be about the only sort of
life that doesn't hurt anybody; except art, and of course that's out
of the question for me."

Jolyon subdued his smile, and answered:

"All right; you shall skip back to where we were under the first
Jolyon in 1760.  It'll prove the cycle theory, and incidentally, no
doubt, you may grow a better turnip than he did."

A little dashed, Jon had answered:

"But don't you think it's a good scheme, Dad?"

"'Twill serve, my dear; and if you should really take to it, you'll
do more good than most men, which is little enough."

To himself, however, he had said: 'But he won't take to it.  I give
him four years.  Still, it's healthy, and harmless.'

After turning the matter over and consulting with Irene, he wrote to
his daughter, Mrs. Val Dartie, asking if they knew of a farmer near
them on the Downs who would take Jon as an apprentice.  Holly's
answer had been enthusiastic.  There was an excellent man quite
close; she and Val would love Jon to live with them.

The boy was due to go to-morrow.

Sipping weak tea with lemon in it, Jolyon gazed through the leaves of
the old oak-tree at that view which had appeared to him desirable for
thirty-two years.  The tree beneath which he sat seemed not a day
older!  So young, the little leaves of brownish gold; so old, the
whitey-grey-green of its thick rough trunk.  A tree of memories,
which would live on hundreds of years yet, unless some barbarian cut
it down--would see old England out at the pace things were going!  He
remembered a night three years before, when, looking from his window,
with his arm close round Irene, he had watched a German aeroplane
hovering, it seemed, right over the old tree.  Next day they had
found a bomb hole in a field on Gage's farm.  That was before he knew
that he was under sentence of death.  He could almost have wished the
bomb had finished him.  It would have saved a lot of hanging about,
many hours of cold fear in the pit of his stomach.  He had counted on
living to the normal Forsyte age of eighty-five or more, when Irene
would be seventy.  As it was, she would miss him.  Still there was
Jon, more important in her life than himself; Jon, who adored his
mother.

Under that tree, where old Jolyon--waiting for Irene to come to him
across the lawn--had breathed his last, Jolyon wondered, whimsically,
whether, having put everything in such perfect order, he had not
better close his own eyes and drift away.  There was something
undignified in o parasitically clinging on to the effortless close of
a life wherein he regretted two things only--the long division
between his father and himself when he was young, and the lateness of
his union o with Irene.

>From where he sat he could see a cluster of apple-trees in blossom.
Nothing in Nature moved him so much as fruit-trees in blossom; and
his heart ached suddenly because he might never see them flower
again.  Spring!  Decidedly no man ought to have to die while his
heart was still young enough to love beauty!  Blackbirds sang
recklessly in the shrubbery, swallows were flying high, the leaves
above him glistened; and over the fields was every imaginable tint of
early foliage, burnished by the level sunlight, away to where the
distant "smoke-bush" blue was trailed along the horizon.  Irene's
flowers in their narrow beds had startling individuality that
evening, little deep assertions of gay life.  Only Chinese and
Japanese painters, and perhaps Leonardo, had known how to get that
startling little ego into each painted flower, and bird, and beast--
the ego, yet the sense of species, the universality of life as well.
They were the fellows!  'I've made nothing that will live!' thought
Jolyon; 'I've been an amateur--a mere lover, not a creator.  Still, I
shall leave Jon behind me when I go.'   What luck that the boy had
not been caught by that ghastly war!  He might so easily have been
killed, like poor Jolly twenty years ago out in the Transvaal.  Jon
would do something some day--if the Age didn't spoil him--an
imaginative chap!  His whim to take up farming was but a bit of
sentiment, and about as likely to last.  And just then he saw them
coming up the field: Irene and the boy; walking from the station,
with their arms linked.  And getting up, he strolled down through the
new rose garden to meet them....

Irene came into his room that night and sat down by the window.  She
sat there without speaking till he said:

"What is it, my love?"

"We had an encounter to-day."

"With whom?"

"Soames."

Soames!  He had kept that name out of his thoughts these last two
years; conscious that it was bad for him.  And, now, his heart moved
in a disconcerting manner, as if it had side-slipped within his
chest.

Irene went on quietly:

"He and his daughter were in the Gallery, and afterward at the
confectioner's where we had tea."

Jolyon went over and put his hand on her shoulder.

"How did he look?"

"Grey; but otherwise much the same."

"And the daughter?"

"Pretty.  At least, Jon thought so."

Jolyon's heart side-slipped again.  His wife's face had a strained
and puzzled look.


"You didn't-?" he began.

"No; but Jon knows their name.  The girl dropped her handkerchief and
he picked it up."

Jolyon sat down on his bed.  An evil chance!

"June was with you.  Did she put her foot into it?"

"No; but it was all very queer and strained, and Jon could see it
was."

Jolyon drew a long breath, and said:

"I've often wondered whether we've been right to keep it from him.
He'll find out some day."

"The later the better, Jolyon; the young have such cheap, hard
judgment.  When you were nineteen what would you have thought of your
mother if she had done what I have?"

Yes!  There it was!  Jon worshipped his mother; and knew nothing of
the tragedies, the inexorable necessities of life, nothing of the
prisoned grief in an unhappy marriage, nothing of jealousy or
passion--knew nothing at all, as yet!

"What have you told him?" he said at last.

"That they were relations, but we didn't know them; that you had
never cared much for your family, or they for you.  I expect he will
be asking you."

Jolyon smiled.  "This promises to take the place of air-raids," he
said.  "After all, one misses them."

Irene looked up at him.

"We've known it would come some day."

He answered her with sudden energy:

"I could never stand seeing Jon blame you.  He shan't do that, even
in thought.  He has imagination; and he'll understand if it's put to
him properly.  I think I had better tell him before he gets to know
otherwise."

"Not yet, Jolyon."

That was like her--she had no foresight, and never went to meet
trouble.  Still--who knew?--she might be right.  It was ill going
against a mother's instinct.  It might be well to let the boy go on,
if possible, till experience had given him some touchstone by which
he could judge the values of that old tragedy; till love, jealousy,
longing, had deepened his charity.  All the same, one must take
precautions--every precaution possible!  And, long after Irene had
left him, he lay awake turning over those precautions.  He must write
to Holly, telling her that Jon knew nothing as yet of family history.
Holly was discreet, she would make sure of her husband, she would see
to it!  Jon could take the letter with him when he went to-morrow.

And so the day on which he had put the polish on his material estate
died out with the chiming of the stable clock; and another began for
Jolyon in the shadow of a spiritual disorder which could not be so
rounded off and polished....

But Jon, whose room had once been his day nursery, lay awake too, the
prey of a sensation disputed by those who have never known it, "love
at first sight!"  He had felt it beginning in him with the glint of
those dark eyes gazing into his athwart the Juno--a conviction that
this was his 'dream'; so that what followed had seemed to him at once
natural and miraculous.  Fleur! Her name alone was almost enough for
one who was terribly susceptible to the charm of words.  In a
homoeopathic Age, when boys and girls were co-educated, and mixed up
in early life till sex was almost abolished, Jon was singularly old-
fashioned.  His modern school took boys only, and his holidays had
been spent at Robin Hill with boy friends, or his parents alone.  He
had never, therefore, been inoculated against the germs of love by
small doses of the poison.  And now in the dark his temperature was
mounting fast.  He lay awake, featuring Fleur--as they called it--
recalling her words, especially that "Au revoir!" so soft and
sprightly.

He was still so wide awake at dawn that he got up, slipped on tennis
shoes, trousers, and a sweater, and in silence crept downstairs and
out through the study window.  It was just light; there was a smell
of grass.  'Fleur!' he thought; 'Fleur!'  It was mysteriously white
out of doors, with nothing awake except the birds just beginning to
chirp.  'I'll go down into the coppice,' he thought.  He ran down
through the fields, reached the pond just as the sun rose, and passed
into the coppice.  Bluebells carpeted the ground there; among the
larch-trees there was mystery--the air, as it were, composed of that
romantic quality.  Jon sniffed its freshness, and stared at the
bluebells in the sharpening light.  Fleur!  It rhymed with her!  And
she lived at Mapleduram--a jolly name, too, on the river somewhere.
He could find it in the atlas presently.  He would write to her.  But
would she answer?  Oh! She must.  She had said "Au revoir!"  Not
good-bye!  What luck that she had dropped her handkerchief!  He would
never have known her but for that.  And the more he thought of that
handkerchief, the more amazing his luck seemed.  Fleur!  It certainly
rhymed with her!  Rhythm thronged his head; words jostled to be
joined together; he was on the verge of a poem.

Jon remained in this condition for more than half an hour, then
returned to the house, and getting a ladder, climbed in at his
bedroom window out of sheer exhilaration.  Then, remembering that the
study window was open, he went down and shut it, first removing the
ladder, so as to obliterate all traces of his feeling.  The thing was
too deep to be revealed to mortal soul-even-to his mother.




IV

THE MAUSOLEUM


There are houses whose souls have passed into the limbo of Time,
leaving their bodies in the limbo of London.  Such was not quite the
condition of "Timothy's" on the Bayswater Road, for Timothy's soul
still had one foot in Timothy Forsyte's body, and Smither kept the
atmosphere unchanging, of camphor and port wine and house whose
windows are only opened to air it twice a day.

To Forsyte imagination that house was now a sort of Chinese pill-box,
a series of layers in the last of which was Timothy.  One did not
reach him, or so it was reported by members of the family who, out of
old-time habit or absentmindedness, would drive up once in a blue
moon and ask after their surviving uncle.  Such were Francie, now
quite emancipated from God (she frankly avowed atheism), Euphemia,
emancipated from old Nicholas, and Winifred Dartie from her "man of
the world."  But, after all, everybody was emancipated now, or said
they were--perhaps not quite the same thing!

When Soames, therefore, took it on his way to Paddington station on
the morning after that encounter, it was hardly with the expectation
of seeing Timothy in the flesh.  His heart made a faint demonstration
within him while he stood in full south sunlight on the newly
whitened doorstep of that little house where four Forsytes had once
lived, and now but one dwelt on like a winter fly; the house into
which Soames had come and out of which he had gone times without
number, divested of, or burdened with, fardels of family gossip; the
house of the "old people" of another century, another age.

The sight of Smither--still corseted up to the armpits because the
new fashion which came in as they were going out about 1903 had never
been considered "nice" by Aunts Juley and Hester--brought a pale
friendliness to Soames' lips; Smither, still faithfully arranged to
old pattern in every detail, an invaluable servant--none such left--
smiling back at him, with the words: "Why! it's Mr. Soames, after all
this time!  And how are you, sir?  Mr. Timothy will be so pleased to
know you've been."

"How is he?"

"Oh! he keeps fairly bobbish for his age, sir; but of course he's a
wonderful man.  As I said to Mrs. Dartie when she was here last: It
would please Miss Forsyte and Mrs. Juley and Miss Hester to see how
he relishes a baked apple still.  But he's quite deaf.  And a mercy,
I always think.  For what we should have done with him in the air-
raids, I don't know."

"Ah!" said Soames.  "What did you do with him?"

"We just left him in his bed, and had the bell run down into the
cellar, so that Cook and I could hear him if he rang.  It would never
have done to let him know there was a war on.  As I said to Cook, 'If
Mr. Timothy rings, they may do what they like--I'm going up.  My dear
mistresses would have a fit if they could see him ringing and nobody
going to him.'  But he slept through them all beautiful.  And the one
in the daytime he was having his bath.  It was a mercy, because he
might have noticed the people in the street all looking up--he often
looks out of the window."

"Quite!" murmured Soames.  Smither was getting garrulous!  "I just
want to look round and see if there's anything to be done."

"Yes, sir.  I don't think there's anything except a smell of mice in
the dining-room that we don't know how to get rid of.  It's funny
they should be there, and not a crumb, since Mr. Timothy took to not
coming down, just before the War.  But they're nasty little things;
you never know where they'll take you next."

"Does he leave his bed?"--

"Oh! yes, sir; he takes nice exercise between his bed and the window
in the morning, not to risk a change of air.  And he's quite
comfortable in himself; has his Will out every day regular.  It's a
great consolation to him--that."

"Well, Smither, I want to see him, if I can; in case he has anything
to say to me."

Smither coloured up above her corsets.

"It will be an occasion!" she said.  "Shall I take you round the
house, sir, while I send Cook to break it to him?"

"No, you go to him," said Soames.  "I can go round the house by
myself."

One could not confess to sentiment before another, and Soames felt
that he was going to be sentimental nosing round those rooms so
saturated with the past.  When Smither, creaking with excitement, had
left him, Soames entered the dining-room and sniffed.  In his opinion
it wasn't mice, but incipient wood-rot, and he examined the
panelling.  Whether it was worth a coat of paint, at Timothy's age,
he was not sure.  The room had always been the most modern in the
house; and only a faint smile curled Soames' lips and nostrils.
Walls of a rich green surmounted the oak dado; a heavy metal
chandelier hung by a chain from a ceiling divided by imitation beams.
The pictures had been bought by Timothy, a bargain, one day at
Jobson's sixty years ago--three Snyder "still lifes," two faintly
coloured drawings of a boy and a girl, rather charming, which bore
the initials "J. R."--Timothy had always believed they might turn out
to be Joshua Reynolds, but Soames, who admired them, had discovered
that they were only John Robinson; and a doubtful Morland of a white
pony being shod.  Deep-red plush curtains, ten high-backed dark
mahogany chairs with deep-red plush seats, a Turkey carpet, and a
mahogany dining-table as large as the room was small, such was an
apartment which Soames could remember unchanged in soul or body since
he was four years old.  He looked especially at the two drawings, and
thought: 'I shall buy those at the sale.'

>From the dining-room he passed into Timothy's study.  He did not
remember ever having been in that room.  It was lined from floor to
ceiling with volumes, and he looked at them with curiosity.  One wall
seemed devoted to educational books, which Timothy's firm had
published two generations back-sometimes as many as twenty copies of
one book.  Soames read their titles and shuddered.  The middle wall
had precisely the same books as used to be in the library at his own
father's in Park Lane, from which he deduced the fancy that James and
his youngest brother had gone out together one day and bought a brace
of small libraries.  The third wall he approached with more
excitement.  Here, surely, Timothy's own taste would be found.  It
was.  The books were dummies.  The fourth wall was all heavily
curtained window.  And turned toward it was a large chair with a
mahogany reading-stand attached, on which a yellowish and folded copy
of The Times, dated July 6, 1914, the day Timothy first failed to
come down, as if in preparation for the War, seemed waiting for him
still.  In a corner stood a large globe of that world never visited
by Timothy, deeply convinced of the unreality of everything but
England, and permanently upset by the sea, on which he had been very
sick one Sunday afternoon in 1836, out of a pleasure boat off the
pier at Brighton, with Juley and Hester, Swithin and Hatty Chessman;
all due to Swithin, who was always taking things into his head, and
who, thank goodness, had been sick too.  Soames knew all about it,
having heard the tale fifty times at least from one or other of them.
He went up to the globe, and gave it a spin; it emitted a faint creak
and moved about an inch, bringing into his purview a daddy-long-legs
which had died on it in latitude 44.

'Mausoleum!' he thought.  'George was right!'  And he went out and up
the stairs.  On the half-landing he stopped before the case of
stuffed humming-birds which had delighted his childhood.  They looked
not a day older, suspended on wires above pampas-grass.  If the case
were opened the birds would not begin to hum, but the whole thing
would crumble, he suspected.  It wouldn't be worth putting that into
the sale!  And suddenly he was caught by a memory of Aunt Ann--dear
old Aunt Ann--holding him by the hand in front of that case and
saying: "Look, Soamey!  Aren't they bright and pretty, dear little
humming-birds!"  Soames remembered his own answer: "They don't hum,
Auntie."  He must have been six, in a black velveteen suit with a
light-blue collar-he remembered that suit well!  Aunt Ann with her
ringlets, and her spidery kind hands, and her grave old aquiline
smile--a fine old lady, Aunt Ann!  He moved on up to the drawing-room
door.  There on each side of it were the groups of miniatures.  Those
he would certainly buy in!  The miniatures of his four aunts, one of
his Uncle Swithin adolescent, and one of his Uncle Nicholas as a boy.
They had all been painted by a young lady friend of the family at a
time, 1830, about, when miniatures were considered very genteel, and
lasting too, painted as they were on ivory.  Many a time had he heard
the tale of that young lady: "Very talented, my dear; she had quite a
weakness for Swithin, and very soon after she went into a consumption
and died: so like Keats--we often spoke of it."

Well, there they were!  Ann, Juley, Hester, Susan--quite a small
child; Swithin, with sky-blue eyes, pink cheeks, yellow curls, white
waistcoat-large as life; and Nicholas, like Cupid with an eye on
heaven.  Now he came to think of it, Uncle Nick had always been
rather like that--a wonderful man to the last.  Yes, she must have
had talent, and miniatures always had a certain back-watered cachet
of their own, little subject to the currents of competition on
aesthetic Change.  Soames opened the drawing-room door.  The room was
dusted, the furniture uncovered, the curtains drawn back, precisely
as if his aunts still dwelt there patiently waiting.  And a thought
came to him: When Timothy died--why not?  Would it not be almost a
duty to preserve this house--like Carlyle's--and put up a tablet, and
show it?  "Specimen of mid-Victorian abode--entrance, one shilling,
with catalogue."  After all, it was the completest thing, and perhaps
the deadest in the London of to-day.  Perfect in its special taste
and culture, if, that is, he took down and carried over to his own
collection the four Barbizon pictures he had given them.  The still
sky-blue walls, tile green curtains patterned with red flowers and
ferns; the crewel-worked fire-screen before the cast-iron grate; the
mahogany cupboard with glass windows, full of little knickknacks; the
beaded footstools; Keats, Shelley, Southey, Cowper, Coleridge,
Byron's Corsair (but nothing else), and the Victorian poets in a
bookshelf row; the marqueterie cabinet lined with dim red plush, full
of family relics: Hester's first fan; the buckles of their mother's
father's shoes; three bottled scorpions; and one very yellow
elephant's tusk, sent home from India by Great-uncle Edgar Forsyte,
who had been in jute; a yellow bit of paper propped up, with spidery
writing on it, recording God knew what!  And the pictures crowding on
the walls--all water-colours save those four Barbizons looking like
tile foreigners they were, and doubtful customers at that--pictures
bright and illustrative, "Telling the Bees," "Hey for the Ferry!" and
two in the style of Frith, all thimblerig and crinolines, given them
by Swithin.  Oh! many, many pictures at which Soames had gazed a
thousand times in supercilious fascination; a marvellous collection
of bright, smooth gilt frames.

And the boudoir-grand piano, beautifully dusted, hermetically sealed
as ever; and Aunt Juley's album of pressed seaweed on it.  And the
gilt-legged chairs, stronger than they looked.  And on one side of
the fireplace the sofa of crimson silk, where Aunt Ann, and after her
Aunt Juley, had been wont to sit, facing the light and bolt upright.
And on the other side of the fire the one really easy chair, back to
the light, for Aunt Hester.  Soames screwed up his eyes; he seemed to
see them sitting there.  Ah!  and the atmosphere--even now, of too
many stuffs and washed lace curtains, lavender in bags, and dried
bees' wings.  'No,' he thought, 'there's nothing like it left; it
ought to be preserved.'  And, by George, they might laugh at it, but
for a standard of gentle life never departed from, for fastidiousness
of skin and eye and nose and feeling, it beat to-day hollow--to-day
with its Tubes and cars, its perpetual smoking, its cross-legged,
bare-necked girls visible up to the knees and down to the waist if
you took the trouble (agreeable to the satyr within each Forsyte but
hardly his idea of a lady), with their feet, too, screwed round the
legs of their chairs while they ate, and their "So longs," and their
"Old Beans," and their laughter--girls who gave him the shudders
whenever he thought of Fleur in contact with them; and the hard-eyed,
capable, older women who managed life and gave him the shudders too.
No! his old aunts, if they never opened their minds, their eyes, or
very much their windows, at least had manners, and a standard, and
reverence for past and future.

With rather a choky feeling he closed the door and went tiptoeing up-
stairs.  He looked in at a place on the way: H'm! in perfect order of
the eighties, with a sort of yellow oilskin paper on the walls.  At
the top of the stairs he hesitated between four doors.  Which of them
was Timothy's?  And he listened.  A sound, as of a child slowly
dragging a hobby-horse about, came to his ears.  That must be
Timothy!  He tapped, and a door was opened by Smither, very red in
the face.

Mr. Timothy was taking his walk, and she had not been able to get him
to attend.  If Mr. Soames would come into the back-room, he could see
him through the door.

Soames went into the back-room and stood watching.

The last of the old Forsytes was on his feet, moving with the most
impressive slowness, and an air of perfect concentration on his own
affairs, backward and forward between the foot of his bed and the
window, a distance of some twelve feet.  The lower part of his square
face, no longer clean-shaven, was covered with snowy beard clipped as
short as it could be, and his chin looked as broad as his brow where
the hair was also quite white, while nose and cheeks and brow were a
good yellow.  One hand held a stout stick, and the other grasped the
skirt of his Jaeger dressing-gown, from under which could be seen his
bed-socked ankles and feet thrust into Jaeger slippers.  The
expression on his face was that of a crossed child, intent on
something that he has not got.  Each time he turned he stumped the
stick, and then dragged it, as if to show that he could do without
it:

"He still looks strong," said Soames under his breath.

"Oh! yes, sir.  You should see him take his bath--it's wonderful; he
does enjoy it so."

Those quite loud words gave Soames an insight.  Timothy had resumed
his babyhood.

"Does he take any interest in things generally?" he said, also loud.

"Oh I yes, sir; his food and his Will.  It's quite a sight to see him
turn it over and over, not to read it, of course; and every now and
then he asks the price of Consols, and I write it on a slate for him-
very large.  Of course, I always write the same, what they were when
he last took notice, in 1914.  We got the doctor to forbid him to
read the paper when the War broke out.  Oh! he did take on about that
at first.  But he soon came round, because he knew it tired him; and
he's a wonder to conserve energy as he used to call it when my dear
mistresses were alive, bless their hearts!  How he did go on at them
about that; they were always so active, if you remember, Mr. Soames."

"What would happen if I were to go in?" asked Soames: "Would he
remember me?  I made his Will, you know, after Miss Hester died in
1907."

"Oh! that, sir," replied Smither doubtfully, "I couldn't take on me
to say.  I think he might; he really is a wonderful man for his age."

Soames moved into the doorway, and waiting for Timothy to turn, said
in a loud voice: "Uncle Timothy!"

Timothy trailed back half-way, and halted.

"Eh?" he said.

"Soames," cried Soames at the top of his voice, holding out his hand,
"Soames Forsyte!"

"No!" said Timothy, and stumping his stick loudly on the floor, he
continued his walk.

"It doesn't seem to work," said Soames.

"No, sir," replied Smither, rather crestfallen; "you see, he hasn't
finished his walk.  It always was one thing at a time with him.  I
expect he'll ask me this afternoon if you came about the gas, and a
pretty job I shall have to make him understand."

"Do you think he ought to have a man about him?"

Smither held up her hands.  "A man!  Oh! no.  Cook and me can manage
perfectly.  A strange man about would send him crazy in no time.  And
my mistresses wouldn't like the idea of a man in the house.  Besides,
we're so--proud of him."

"I suppose the doctor comes?"

"Every morning.  He makes special terms for such a quantity, and Mr.
Timothy's so used, he doesn't take a bit of notice, except to put out
his tongue."

"Well," said Soames, turning away, "it's rather sad and painful to
me."

"Oh! sir," returned Smither anxiously, "you mustn't think that.  Now
that he can't worry about things, he quite enjoys his life, really he
does.  As I say to Cook, Mr. Timothy is more of a man than he ever
was.  You see, when he's not walkin', or takin' his bath, he's
eatin', and when he's not eatin', he's sleepin'; and there it is.
There isn't an ache or a care about him anywhere."

"Well," said Soames, "there's something in that.  I'll go down.  By
the way, let me see his Will."

"I should have to take my time about that, sir; he keeps it under his
pillow, and he'd see me, while he's active."

"I only want to know if it's the one I made," said Soames; "you take
a look at its date some time, and let me know."

"Yes, sir; but I'm sure it's the same, because me and Cook witnessed,
you remember, and there's our names on it still, and we've only done
it once."

"Quite," said Soames.  He did remember.  Smither and Jane had been
proper witnesses, having been left nothing in the Will that they
might have no interest in Timothy's death.  It had been--he fully
admitted--an almost improper precaution, but Timothy had wished it,
and, after all, Aunt Hester had provided for them amply.

"Very well," he said; "good-bye, Smither.  Look after him, and if he
should say anything at any time, put it down, and let me know."

"Oh I yes, Mr. Soames; I'll be sure to do that.  It's been such a
pleasant change to see you.  Cook will be quite excited when I tell
her."

Soames shook her hand and went down-stairs.  He stood for fully two
minutes by the hat-stand whereon he had hung his hat so many times.
'So it all passes,' he was thinking; 'passes and begins again.  Poor
old chap!'  And he listened, if perchance the sound of Timothy
trailing his hobby-horse might come down the well of the stairs; or
some ghost of an old face show over the bannisters, and an old voice
say: 'Why, it's dear Soames, and we were only saying that we hadn't
seen him for a week!'

Nothing--nothing!  Just the scent of camphor, and dust-motes in a
sunbeam through the fanlight over the door.  The little old house!  A
mausoleum!  And, turning on his heel, he went out, and caught his
train.




V

THE NATIVE HEATH


          "His foot's upon his native heath,
          His name's--Val Dartie."

With some such feeling did Val Dartie, in the fortieth year of his
age, set out that same Thursday morning very early from the old
manor-house he had taken on the north side of the Sussex Downs.  His
destination was Newmarket, and he had not been there since the autumn
of 1899, when he stole over from Oxford for the Cambridgeshire.  He
paused at the door to give his wife a kiss, and put a flask of port
into his pocket.

"Don't overtire your leg, Val, and don't bet too much."

With the pressure of her chest against his own, and her eyes looking
into his, Val felt both leg and pocket safe.  He should be moderate;
Holly was always right--she had a natural aptitude.  It did not seem
so remarkable to him, perhaps, as it might to others, that--half
Dartie as he was--he should have been perfectly faithful to his young
first cousin during the twenty years since he married her
romantically out in the Boer War; and faithful without any feeling of
sacrifice or boredom--she was so quick, so slyly always a little in
front of his mood.  Being first cousins they had decided, rather
needlessly, to have no children; and, though a little sallower, she
had kept her looks, her slimness, and the colour of her dark hair.
Val particularly admired the life of her own she carried on, besides
carrying on his, and riding better every year.  She kept up her
music, she read an awful lot--novels, poetry, all sorts of stuff.
Out on their farm in Cape colony she had looked after all the
"nigger" babies and women in a miraculous manner.  She was, in fact,
clever; yet made no fuss about it, and had no "side."  Though not
remarkable for humility, Val had come to have the feeling that she
was his superior, and he did not grudge it--a great tribute.  It
might be noted that he never looked at Holly without her knowing of
it, but that she looked at him sometimes unawares.

He had kissed her in the porch because he should not be doing so on
the platform, though she was going to the station with him, to drive
the car back.  Tanned and wrinkled by Colonial weather and the wiles
inseparable from horses, and handicapped by the leg which, weakened
in the Boer War, had probably saved his life in the War just past,
Val was still much as he had been in the days of his courtship; his
smile as wide and charming, his eyelashes, if anything, thicker and
darker, his eyes screwed up under them, as bright a grey, his
freckles rather deeper, his hair a little grizzled at the sides.  He
gave the impression of one who has lived actively with horses in a
sunny climate.

Twisting the car sharp round at the gate, he said:

"When is young Jon coming?"

"To-day."

"Is there anything you want for him?  I could bring it down on
Saturday."

"No; but you might come by the same train as Fleur--one-forty."

Val gave the Ford full rein; he still drove like a man in a new
country on bad roads, who refuses to compromise, and expects heaven
at every hole.

"That's a young woman who knows her way about," he said.  "I say, has
it struck you?"

"Yes," said Holly.

"Uncle Soames and your Dad--bit awkward, isn't it?"

"She won't know, and he won't know, and nothing must be said, of
course.  It's only for five days, Val."

"Stable secret!  Righto!"  If Holly thought it safe, it was.
Glancing slyly round at him, she said: "Did you notice how
beautifully she asked herself?"

"No!"

"Well, she did.  What do you think of her, Val?"

"Pretty and clever; but she might run out at any corner if she got
her monkey up, I should say."

"I'm wondering," Holly murmured, "whether she is the modern young
woman.  One feels at sea coming home into all this."

"You?  You get the hang of things so quick."

Holly slid her hand into his coat-pocket.

"You keep one in the know," said Val encouraged.  "What do you think
of that Belgian fellow, Profond?"

"I think he's rather 'a good devil.'"

Val grinned.

"He seems to me a queer fish for a friend of our family.  In fact,
our family is in pretty queer waters, with Uncle Soames marrying a
Frenchwoman, and your Dad marrying Soames's first.  Our grandfathers
would have had fits!"

"So would anybody's, my dear."

"This car," Val said suddenly, "wants rousing; she doesn't get her
hind legs under her uphill.  I shall have to give her her head on the
slope if I'm to catch that train."

There was that about horses which had prevented him from ever really
sympathising with a car, and the running of the Ford under his
guidance compared with its running under that of Holly was always
noticeable.  He caught the train.

"Take care going home; she'll throw you down if she can.  Good-bye,
darling."

"Good-bye," called Holly, and kissed her hand.

In the train, after quarter of an hour's indecision between thoughts
of Holly, his morning paper, the look of the bright day, and his dim
memory of Newmarket, Val plunged into the recesses of a small square
book, all names, pedigrees, tap-roots, and notes about the make and
shape of horses.  The Forsyte in him was bent on the acquisition of a
certain strain of blood, and he was subduing resolutely as yet the
Dartie hankering for a Nutter.  On getting back to England, after the
profitable sale of his South African farm and stud, and observing
that the sun seldom shone, Val had said to himself: "I've absolutely
got to have an interest in life, or this country will give me the
blues.  Hunting's not enough, I'll breed and I'll train."  With just
that extra pinch of shrewdness and decision imparted by long
residence in a new country, Val had seen the weak point of modern
breeding.  They were all hypnotised by fashion and high price.  He
should buy for looks, and let names go hang!  And here he was
already, hypnotised by the prestige of a certain strain of blood!
Half-consciously, he thought: 'There's something in this damned
climate which makes one go round in a ring.  All the same, I must
have a strain of Mayfly blood.'

In this mood he reached the Mecca of his hopes.  It was one of those
quiet meetings favourable to such as wish to look into horses, rather
than into the mouths of bookmakers; and Val clung to the paddock.
His twenty years of Colonial life, divesting him of the dandyism in
which he had been bred, had left him the essential neatness of the
horseman, and given him a queer and rather blighting eye over what he
called "the silly haw-haw" of some Englishmen, the "flapping
cockatoory" of some English-women--Holly had none of that and Holly
was his model.  Observant, quick, resourceful, Val went straight to
the heart of a transaction, a horse, a drink; and he was on his way
to the heart of a Mayfly filly, when a slow voice said at his elbow:

"Mr. Val Dartie?  How's Mrs. Val Dartie?  She's well, I hope."  And
he saw beside him the Belgian he had met at his sister Imogen's.

"Prosper Profond--I met you at lunch," said the voice.

"How are you?" murmured Val.

"I'm very well," replied Monsieur Profond, smiling with a certain
inimitable slowness.  "A good devil," Holly had called him.  Well!
He looked a little like a devil, with his dark, clipped, pointed
beard; a sleepy one though, and good-humoured, with fine eyes,
unexpectedly intelligent.

"Here's a gentleman wants to know you--cousin of yours--Mr. George
Forsyde."

Val saw a large form, and a face clean-shaven, bull-like, a little
lowering, with sardonic humour bubbling behind a full grey eye; he
remembered it dimly from old days when he would dine with his father
at the Iseeum Club.

"I used to go racing with your father," George was saying: "How's the
stud?  Like to buy one of my screws?"

Val grinned, to hide the sudden feeling that the bottom had fallen
out of breeding.  They believed in nothing over here, not even in
horses.  George Forsyte, Prosper Profond!  The devil himself was not
more disillusioned than those two.

"Didn't know you were a racing man," he said to Monsieur Profond.

"I'm not.  I don't care for it.  I'm a yachtin' man.  I don't care
for yachtin' either, but I like to see my friends.  I've got some
lunch, Mr. Val Dartie, just a small lunch, if you'd like to 'ave
some; not much--just a small one--in my car."

"Thanks," said Val; "very good of you.  I'll come along in about
quarter of an hour."

"Over there.  Mr. Forsyde's comin'," and Monsieur Profond "poinded"
with a yellow-gloved finger; "small car, with a small lunch"; he
moved on, groomed, sleepy, and remote, George Forsyte following,
neat, huge, and with his jesting air.

Val remained gazing at the Mayfly filly.  George Forsyte, of course,
was an old chap, but this Profond might be about his own age; Val
felt extremely young, as if the Mayfly filly were a toy at which
those two had laughed.  The animal had lost reality.

"That 'small' mare"--he seemed to hear the voice of Monsieur Profond-
-"what do you see in her?--we must all die!"

And George Forsyte, crony of his father, racing still!  The Mayfly
strain--was it any better than any other?  He might just as well have
a flutter with his money instead.

"No, by gum!" he muttered suddenly, "if it's no good breeding horses,
it's no good doing anything.  What did I come for?  I'll buy her."

He stood back and watched the ebb of the paddock visitors toward the
stand.  Natty old chips, shrewd portly fellows, Jews, trainers
looking as if they had never been guilty of seeing a horse in their
lives; tall, flapping, languid women, or brisk, loud-voiced women;
young men with an air as if trying to take it seriously--two or three
of them with only one arm.

'Life over here's a game!'  thought Val.  'Muffin bell rings, horses
run, money changes hands; ring again, run again, money changes back.'

But, alarmed at his own philosophy, he went to the paddock gate to
watch the Mayfly filly canter down.  She moved well; and he made his
way over to the "small" car.  The "small" lunch was the sort a man
dreams of but seldom gets; and when it was concluded Monsieur Profond
walked back with him to the paddock.

"Your wife's a nice woman," was his surprising remark.

"Nicest woman I know," returned Val dryly.

"Yes," said Monsieur Profond; "she has a nice face.  I admire nice
women."

Val looked at him suspiciously, but something kindly and direct in
the heavy diabolism of his companion disarmed him for the moment.

"Any time you like to come on my yacht, I'll give her a small
cruise."

"Thanks," said Val, in arms again, "she hates the sea."

"So do I," said Monsieur Profond.

"Then why do you yacht?"

The Belgian's eyes smiled.  "Oh! I don't know.  I've done everything;
it's the last thing I'm doin'."

"It must be d-d expensive.  I should want more reason than that."

Monsieur Prosper Profond raised his eyebrows, and puffed out a heavy
lower lip.

"I'm an easy-goin' man," he said.

"Were you in the War?" asked Val.

"Ye-es.  I've done that too.  I was gassed; it was a small bit
unpleasant."  He smiled with a deep and sleepy air of prosperity, as
if he had caught it from his name.

Whether his saying "small" when he ought to have said "little" was
genuine mistake or affectation Val could not decide; the fellow was
evidently capable of anything.

Among the ring of buyers round the Mayfly filly who had won her race,
Monsieur Profond said:

"You goin' to bid?"

Val nodded.  With this sleepy Satan at his elbow, he felt in need of
faith.  Though placed above the ultimate blows of Providence by the
forethought of a grand-father who had tied him up a thousand a year
to which was added the thousand a year tied up for Holly by her
grand-father, Val was not flush of capital that he could touch,
having spent most of what he had realised from his South African farm
on his establishment in Sussex.  And very soon he was thinking: 'Dash
it! she's going beyond me!'  His limit-six hundred-was exceeded; he
dropped out of the bidding.  The Mayfly filly passed under the hammer
at seven hundred and fifty guineas.  He was turning away vexed when
the slow voice of Monsieur Profond said in his ear:

"Well, I've bought that small filly, but I don't want her; you take
her and give her to your wife."

Val looked at the fellow with renewed suspicion, but the good humour
in his eyes was such that he really could not take offence.

"I made a small lot of money in the War," began Monsieur Profond in
answer to that look.  "I 'ad armament shares.  I like to give it
away.  I'm always makin' money.  I want very small lot myself.  I
like my friends to 'ave it."

"I'll buy her of you at the price you gave," said Val with sudden
resolution.

"No," said Monsieur Profond.  "You take her.  I don' want her."

"Hang it! one doesn't--"

"Why not?" smiled Monsieur Profond.  "I'm a friend of your family."

"Seven hundred and fifty guineas is not a box of cigars," said Val
impatiently.

"All right; you keep her for me till I want her, and do what you like
with her."

"So long as she's yours," said Val.  "I don't mind that."

"That's all right," murmured Monsieur Profond, and moved away.

Val watched; he might be "a good devil," but then again he might not.
He saw him rejoin George Forsyte, and thereafter saw him no more.

He spent those nights after racing at his mother's house in Green
Street.

Winifred Dartie at sixty-two was marvellously preserved, considering
the three-and-thirty years during which she had put up with Montague
Dartie, till almost happily released by a French staircase.  It was
to her a vehement satisfaction to have her favourite son back from
South Africa after all this time, to feel him so little changed, and
to have taken a fancy to his wife.  Winifred, who in the late
seventies, before her marriage, had been in the vanguard of freedom,
pleasure, and fashion, confessed her youth outclassed by the
donzellas of the day.  They seemed, for instance, to regard marriage
as an incident, and Winifred sometimes regretted that she had not
done the same; a second, third, fourth incident might have secured
her a partner of less dazzling inebriety; though, after all, he had
left her Val, Imogen, Maud, Benedict (almost a colonel and unharmed
by the War)--none of whom had been divorced as yet.  The steadiness of
her children often amazed one who remembered their father; but, as
she was fond of believing, they were really all Forsytes, favouring
herself, with the exception, perhaps, of Imogen.  Her brother's
"little girl" Fleur frankly puzzled Winifred.  The child was as
restless as any of these modern young women--"She's a small flame in
a draught," Prosper Profond had said one day after dinner--but she
did not flop, or talk at the top of her voice.  The steady Forsyteism
in Winifred's own character instinctively resented the feeling in the
air, the modern girl's habits and her motto: "All's much of a
muchness!  Spend, to-morrow we shall be poor!"  She found it a saving
grace in Fleur that, having set her heart on a thing, she had no
change of heart until she got it--though--what happened after, Fleur
was, of course, too young to have made evident.  The child was a
"very pretty little thing," too, and quite a credit to take about,
with her mother's French taste and gift for wearing clothes;
everybody turned to look at Fleur--great consideration to Winifred, a
lover of the style and distinction which had so cruelly deceived her
in the case of Montague Dartie.

In discussing her with Val, at breakfast on Saturday morning,
Winifred dwelt on the family skeleton.

"That little affair of your father-in-law and your Aunt Irene, Val--
it's old as the hills, of course, Fleur need know nothing about it--
making a fuss.  Your Uncle Soames is very particular about that.  So
you'll be careful."

"Yes!  But it's dashed awkward--Holly's young half-brother is coming
to live with us while he learns farming.  He's there already."

"Oh!" said Winifred.  "That is a gaff!  What is he like?"

"Only saw him once--at Robin Hill, when we were home in 1909; he was
naked and painted blue and yellow in stripes--a jolly little chap."

Winifred thought that "rather nice," and added comfortably: "Well,
Holly's sensible; she'll know how to deal with it.  I shan't tell
your uncle.  It'll only bother him.  It's a great comfort to have you
back, my dear boy, now that I'm getting on."

"Getting on!  Why!  you're as young as ever.  That chap Profond,
Mother, is he all right?"

"Prosper Profond!  Oh! the most amusing man I know."

Val grunted, and recounted the story of the Mayfly filly.

"That's so like him," murmured Winifred.  "He does all sorts of
things."

"Well," said Val shrewdly, "our family haven't been too lucky with
that kind of cattle; they're too light-hearted for us."

It was true, and Winifred's blue study lasted a full minute before
she answered:

"Oh! well!  He's a foreigner, Val; one must make allowances."

"All right, I'll use his filly and make it up to him, somehow."

And soon after he gave her his blessing, received a kiss, and left
her for his bookmaker's, the Iseeum Club, and Victoria station.




VI

JON


Mrs. Val Dartie, after twenty years of South Africa, had fallen
deeply in love, fortunately with something of her own, for the object
of her passion was the prospect in front of her windows, the cool
clear light on the green Downs.  It was England again, at last!
England more beautiful than she had dreamed.  Chance had, in fact,
guided the Val Darties to a spot where the South Downs had real charm
when the sun shone.  Holly had enough of her father's eye to
apprehend the rare quality of their outlines and chalky radiance; to
go up there by the ravine-like lane and wander along toward
Chanctonbury or Amberley, was still a delight which she hardly
attempted to share with Val, whose admiration of Nature was confused
by a Forsyte's instinct for getting something out of it, such as the
condition of the turf for his horses' exercise.

Driving the Ford home with a certain humouring, smoothness, she
promised herself that the first use she would make of Jon would be to
take him up there, and show him "the view" under this May-day sky.

She was looking forward to her young half-brother with a motherliness
not exhausted by Val.  A three-day visit to Robin Hill, soon after
their arrival home, had yielded no sight of him--he was still at
school; so that her recollection, like Val's, was of a little sunny-
haired boy, striped blue and yellow, down by the pond.

Those three days at Robin Hill had been exciting, sad, embarrassing.
Memories of her dead brother, memories of Val's courtship; the ageing
of her father, not seen for twenty years, something funereal in his
ironic gentleness which did not escape one who had much subtle
instinct; above all, the presence of her stepmother, whom she could
still vaguely remember as the "lady in grey" of days when she was
little and grandfather alive and Mademoiselle Beauce so cross because
that intruder gave her music lessons--all these confused and
tantalised a spirit which had longed to find Robin Hill untroubled.
But Holly was adept at keeping things to herself, and all had seemed
to go quite well.

Her father had kissed her when she left him, with lips which she was
sure had trembled.

"Well, my dear," he said, "the War hasn't changed Robin Hill, has it?
If only you could have brought Jolly back with you!  I say, can you
stand this spiritualistic racket?  When the oak-tree dies, it dies,
I'm afraid."

>From the warmth of her embrace he probably divined that he had let
the cat out of the bag, for he rode off at once on irony.

"Spiritualism--queer word, when the more they manifest the more they
prove that they've got hold of matter."

"How?" said Holly.

"Why!  Look at their photographs of auric presences.  You must have
something material for light and shade to fall on before you can take
a photograph.  No, it'll end in our calling all matter spirit, or all
spirit matter--I don't know which."

"But don't you believe in survival, Dad?"

Jolyon had looked at her, and the sad whimsicality of his face
impressed her deeply.

"Well, my dear, I should like to get something out of death.  I've
been looking into it a bit.  But for the life of me I can't find
anything that telepathy, sub-consciousness, and emanation from the
storehouse of this world can't account for just as well.  Wish I
could!  Wishes father thought but they don't breed evidence."
Holly had pressed her lips again to his forehead with the feeling
that it confirmed his theory that all matter was becoming spirit--his
brow felt, somehow, so insubstantial.

But the most poignant memory of that little visit had been watching,
unobserved, her stepmother reading to herself a letter from Jon.  It
was--she decided--the prettiest sight she had ever seen.  Irene, lost
as it were in the letter of her boy, stood at a window where the
light fell on her face and her fine grey hair; her lips were moving,
smiling, her dark eyes laughing, dancing, and the hand which did not
hold the letter was pressed against her breast.  Holly withdrew as
from a vision of perfect love, convinced that Jon must be nice.

When she saw him coming out of the station with a kit-bag in either
hand, she was confirmed in her predisposition.  He was a little like
Jolly, that long-lost idol of her childhood, but eager-looking and
less formal, with deeper eyes and brighter-coloured hair, for he wore
no hat; altogether a very interesting "little" brother!

His tentative politeness charmed one who was accustomed to assurance
in the youthful manner; he was disturbed because she was to drive him
home, instead of his driving her.  Shouldn't he have a shot?  They
hadn't a car at Robin Hill since the War, of course, and he had only
driven once, and landed up a bank, so she oughtn't to mind his
trying.  His laugh, soft and infectious, was very attractive, though
that word, she had heard, was now quite old-fashioned.  When they
reached the house he pulled out a crumpled letter which she read
while he was washing--a quite short letter, which must have cost her
father many a pang to write.


"MY DEAR,

"You and Val will not forget, I trust, that Jon knows nothing of
family history.  His mother and I think he is too young at present.
The boy is very dear, and the apple of her eye.  Verbum sapientibus.
your loving father,

"J. F."


That was all; but it renewed in Holly an uneasy regret that Fleur was
coming.

After tea she fulfilled that promise to herself and took Jon up the
hill.  They had a long talk, sitting above an old chalk-pit grown
over with brambles and goosepenny.  Milkwort and liverwort starred
the green slope, the larks sang, and thrushes in the brake, and now
and then a gull flighting inland would wheel very white against the
paling sky, where the vague moon was coming up.  Delicious fragrance
came to them, as if little invisible creatures were running and
treading scent out of the blades of grass.

Jon, who had fallen silent, said rather suddenly:

"I say, this is wonderful!  There's no fat on it at all.  Gull's
flight and sheep-bells"

"'Gull's flight and sheep-bells'!  You're a poet, my dear!"

Jon sighed.

"Oh, Golly!  No go!"

"Try!  I used to at your age."

"Did you?  Mother says 'try' too; but I'm so rotten.  Have you any of
yours for me to see?"

"My dear," Holly murmured, "I've been married nineteen years.  I only
wrote verses when I wanted to be."

"Oh!" said Jon, and turned over on his face: the one cheek she could
see was a charming colour.  Was Jon "touched in the wind," then, as
Val would have called it?  Already?  But, if so, all the better, he
would take no notice of young Fleur.  Besides, on Monday he would
begin his farming.  And she smiled.  Was it Burns who followed the
plough, or only Piers Plowman?  Nearly every young man and most young
women seemed to be poets now, judging from the number of their books
she had read out in South Africa, importing them from Hatchus and
Bumphards; and quite good--oh! quite; much better than she had been
herself!  But then poetry had only really come in since her day--with
motor-cars.  Another long talk after dinner over a wood fire in the
low hall, and there seemed little left to know about Jon except
anything of real importance.  Holly parted from him at his bedroom
door, having seen twice over that he had everything, with the
conviction that she would love him, and Val would like him.  He was
eager, but did not gush; he was a splendid listener, sympathetic,
reticent about himself.  He evidently loved their father, and adored
his mother.  He liked riding, rowing, and fencing better than games.
He saved moths from candles, and couldn't bear spiders, but put them
out of doors in screws of paper sooner than kill them.  In a word, he
was amiable.  She went to sleep, thinking that he would suffer
horribly if anybody hurt him; but who would hurt him?

Jon, on the other hand, sat awake at his window with a bit of paper
and a pencil, writing his first "real poem" by the light of a candle
because there was not enough moon to see by, only enough to make the
night seem fluttery and as if engraved on silver.  Just the night for
Fleur to walk, and turn her eyes, and lead on-over the hills and far
away.  And Jon, deeply furrowed in his ingenuous brow, made marks on
the paper and rubbed them out and wrote them in again, and did all
that was necessary for the completion of a work of art; and he had a
feeling such as the winds of Spring must have, trying their first
songs among the coming blossom.  Jon was one of those boys (not many)
in whom a home-trained love of beauty had survived school life.  He
had had to keep it to himself, of course, so that not even the
drawing-master knew of it; but it was there, fastidious and clear
within him.  And his poem seemed to him as lame and stilted as the
night was winged.  But he kept it, all the same.  It was a "beast,"
but better than nothing as an expression of the inexpressible.  And
he thought with a sort of discomfiture: 'I shan't be able to show it
to Mother.'  He slept terribly well, when he did sleep, overwhelmed
by novelty.




VII

FLEUR


To avoid the awkwardness of questions which could not be answered,
all that had been told Jon was:

"There's a girl coming down with Val for the week-end."

For the same reason, all that had been told Fleur was: "We've got a
youngster staying with us."

The two yearlings, as Val called them in his thoughts, met therefore
in a manner which for unpreparedness left nothing to be desired.
They were thus introduced by Holly:

"This is Jon, my little brother; Fleur's a cousin of ours, Jon."

Jon, who was coming in through a French window out of strong
sunlight, was so confounded by the providential nature of this
miracle, that he had time to hear Fleur say calmly: "Oh, how do you
do?" as if he had never seen her, and to understand dimly from the
quickest imaginable little movement of her head that he never had
seen her.  He bowed therefore over her hand in an intoxicated manner,
and became more silent than the grave.  He knew better than to speak.
Once in his early life, surprised reading by a nightlight, he had
said fatuously "I was just turning over the leaves, Mum," and his
mother had replied: "Jon, never tell stories, because of your face
nobody will ever believe them."

The saying had permanently undermined the confidence necessary to the
success of spoken untruth.  He listened therefore to Fleur's swift
and rapt allusions to the jolliness of everything, plied her with
scones and jam, and got away as soon as might be.  They say that in
delirium tremens you see a fixed object, preferably dark, which
suddenly changes shape and position.  Jon saw the fixed object; it
had dark eyes and passably dark hair, and changed its position, but
never its shape.  The knowledge that between him and that object
there was already a secret understanding (however impossible to
understand) thrilled him so that he waited feverishly, and began to
copy out his poem--which of course he would never dare to--show her--
till the sound of horses' hoofs roused him, and, leaning from his
window, he saw her riding forth with Val.  It was clear that she
wasted no time, but the sight filled him with grief.  He wasted his.
If he had not bolted, in his fearful ecstasy, he might have been
asked to go too.  And from his window he sat and watched them
disappear, appear again in the chine of the road, vanish, and emerge
once more for a minute clear on the outline of the Down.  'Silly
brute!' he thought; 'I always miss my chances.'

Why couldn't he be self-confident and ready?  And, leaning his chin
on his hands, he imagined the ride he might have had with her.  A
week-end was but a week-end, and he had missed three hours of it.
Did he know any one except himself who would have been such a flat?
He did not.

He dressed for dinner early, and was first down.  He would miss no
more.  But he missed Fleur, who came down last.  He sat opposite her
at dinner, and it was terrible--impossible to say anything for fear
of saying the wrong thing, impossible to keep his eyes fixed on her
in the only natural way; in sum, impossible to treat normally one
with whom in fancy he had already been over the hills and far away;
conscious, too, all the time, that he must seem to her, to all of
them, a dumb gawk.  Yes, it was terrible!  And she was talking so
well--swooping with swift wing this way and that.  Wonderful how she
had learned an art which he found so disgustingly difficult.  She
must think him hopeless indeed!

His sister's eyes, fixed on him with a certain astonishment, obliged
him at last to look at Fleur; but instantly her eyes, very wide and
eager, seeming to say, "Oh! for goodness' sake!" obliged him to look
at Val, where a grin obliged him to look at his cutlet--that, at
least, had no eyes, and no grin, and he ate it hastily.

"Jon is going to be a farmer," he heard Holly say; "a farmer and a
poet."

He glanced up reproachfully, caught the comic lift of her eyebrow
just like their father's, laughed, and felt better.

Val recounted the incident of Monsieur Prosper Profond; nothing could
have been more favourable, for, in relating it, he regarded Holly,
who in turn regarded him, while Fleur seemed to be regarding with a
slight frown some thought of her own, and Jon was really free to look
at her at last.  She had on a white frock, very simple and well made;
her arms were bare, and her hair had a white rose in it.  In just
that swift moment of free vision, after such intense discomfort, Jon
saw her sublimated, as one sees in the dark a slender white fruit-
tree; caught her like a verse of poetry flashed before the eyes of
the mind, or a tune which floats out in the distance and dies.
He wondered giddily how old she was--she seemed so much more self-
possessed and experienced than himself.  Why mustn't he say they had
met?  He remembered suddenly his mother's face; puzzled, hurt-
looking, when she answered: "Yes, they're relations, but we don't
know them."  Impossible that his mother, who loved beauty, should not
admire Fleur if she did know her.

Alone with Val after dinner, he sipped port deferentially and
answered the advances of this new-found brother-in-law.  As to riding
(always the first consideration with Val) he could have the young
chestnut, saddle and unsaddle it himself, and generally look after it
when he brought it in.  Jon said he was accustomed to all that at
home, and saw that he had gone up one in his host's estimation.

"Fleur," said Val, "can't ride much yet, but she's keen.  Of course,
her father doesn't know a horse from a cart-wheel.  Does your Dad
ride?"

"He used to; but now he's--you know, he's--"He stopped, so hating the
word "old."  His father was old, and yet not old; no--never!

"Quite," muttered Val.  "I used to know your brother up at Oxford,
ages ago, the one who died in the Boer War.  We had a fight in New
College Gardens.  That was a queer business," he added, musing; "a
good deal came out of it."

Jon's eyes opened wide; all was pushing him toward historical
research, when his sister's voice said gently from the doorway:

"Come along, you two," and he rose, his heart pushing him toward
something far more modern.

Fleur having declared that it was "simply too wonderful to stay
indoors," they all went out.  Moonlight was frosting the dew, and an
old sundial threw a long shadow.  Two box hedges at right angles,
dark and square, barred off the orchard.  Fleur turned through that
angled opening.

"Come on!" she called.  Jon glanced at the others, and followed.  She
was running among the trees like a ghost.  All was lovely and
foamlike above her, and there was a scent of old trunks, and of
nettles.  She vanished.  He thought he had lost her, then almost ran
into her standing quite still.

"Isn't it jolly?" she cried, and Jon answered:

"Rather!"

She reached up, twisted off a blossom and, twirling it in her
fingers, said:

"I suppose I can call you Jon?"

"I should think so just."

"All right!  But you know there's a feud between our families?"

Jon stammered: "Feud?  Why?"

"It's ever so romantic and silly.  That's why I pretended we hadn't
met.  Shall we get up early to-morrow morning and go for a walk
before breakfast and have it out?  I hate being slow about things,
don't you?"

Jon murmured a rapturous assent.

"Six o'clock, then.  I think your mother's beautiful"

Jon said fervently: "Yes, she is."

"I love all kinds of beauty," went on Fleur, "when it's exciting.  I
don't like Greek things a bit."

"What!  Not Euripides?"

"Euripides?  Oh! no, I can't bear Greek plays; they're so long.  I
think beauty's always swift.  I like to look at one picture, for
instance, and then run off.  I can't bear a lot of things together.
Look!"  She held up her blossom in the moonlight.  "That's better
than all the orchard, I think."

And, suddenly, with her other hand she caught Jon's.

"Of all things in the world, don't you think caution's the most
awful?  Smell the moonlight!"

She thrust the blossom against his face; Jon agreed giddily that of
all things in the world caution was the worst, and bending over,
kissed the hand which held his.

"That's nice and old-fashioned," said Fleur calmly.  "You're
frightfully silent, Jon.  Still I like silence when it's swift."  She
let go his hand.  "Did you think I dropped my handkerchief on
purpose?"

"No!" cried Jon, intensely shocked.

"Well, I did, of course.  Let's get back, or they'll think we're
doing this on purpose too."  And again she ran like a ghost among the
trees.  Jon followed, with love in his heart, Spring in his heart,
and over all the moonlit white unearthly blossom.  They came out
where they had gone in, Fleur walking demurely.

"It's quite wonderful in there," she said dreamily to Holly.

Jon preserved silence, hoping against hope that she might be thinking
it swift.

She bade him a casual and demure good-night, which made him think he
had been dreaming....

In her bedroom Fleur had flung off her gown, and, wrapped in a
shapeless garment, with the white flower still in her hair, she
looked like a mousme, sitting cross-legged on her bed, writing by
candlelight.


"DEAREST CHERRY,

"I believe I'm in love.  I've got it in the neck, only the feeling is
really lower down.  He's a second cousin-such a child, about six
months older and ten years younger than I am.  Boys always fall in
love with their seniors, and girls with their juniors or with old men
of forty.  Don't laugh, but his eyes are the truest things I ever
saw; and he's quite divinely silent!  We had a most romantic first
meeting in London under the Vospovitch Juno.  And now he's sleeping
in the next room and the moonlight's on the blossom; and to-morrow
morning, before anybody's awake, we're going to walk off into Down
fairyland.  There's a feud between our families, which makes it
really exciting.  Yes! and I may have to use subterfuge and come on
you for invitations--if so, you'll know why!  My father doesn't want
us to know each other, but I can't help that.  Life's too short.
He's got the most beautiful mother, with lovely silvery hair and a
young face with dark eyes.  I'm staying with his sister--who married
my cousin; it's all mixed up, but I mean to pump her to-morrow.
We've often talked about love being a spoil-sport; well, that's all
tosh, it's the beginning of sport, and the sooner you feel it, my
dear, the better for you.

"Jon (not simplified spelling, but short for Jolyon, which is a name
in my family, they say) is the sort that lights up and goes out;
about five feet ten, still growing, and I believe he's going to be a
poet.  If you laugh at me I've done with you forever.  I perceive all
sorts of difficulties, but you know when I really want a thing I get
it.  One of the chief effects of love is that you see the air sort of
inhabited, like seeing a face in the moon; and you feel--you feel
dancey and soft at the same time, with a funny sensation--like a
continual first sniff of orange--blossom--Just above your stays.
This is my first, and I feel as if it were going to be my last, which
is absurd, of course, by all the laws of Nature and morality.  If you
mock me I will smite you, and if you tell anybody I will never
forgive you.  So much so, that I almost don't think I'll send this
letter.  Anyway, I'll sleep over it.  So good-night, my Cherry--oh!
"Your,

"FLEUR."



VIII

IDYLL ON GRASS

When those two young Forsytes emerged from the chine lane, and set
their faces east toward the sun, there was not a cloud in heaven, and
the Downs were dewy.  They had come at a good bat up the slope and
were a little out of breath; if they had anything to say they did not
say it, but marched in the early awkwardness of unbreakfasted morning
under the songs of the larks.  The stealing out had been fun, but
with the freedom of the tops the sense of conspiracy ceased, and gave
place to dumbness.

"We've made one blooming error," said Fleur, when they had gone half
a mile.  "I'm hungry."

Jon produced a stick of chocolate.  They shared it and their tongues
were loosened.  They discussed the nature of their homes and previous
existences, which had a kind of fascinating unreality up on that
lonely height.  There remained but one thing solid in Jon's past--his
mother; but one thing solid in Fleur's--her father; and of these
figures, as though seen in the distance with disapproving faces, they
spoke little.

The Down dipped and rose again toward Chanctonbury Ring; a sparkle of
far sea came into view, a sparrow-hawk hovered in the sun's eye so
that the blood-nourished brown of his wings gleamed nearly red.  Jon
had a passion for birds, and an aptitude for sitting very still to
watch them; keen-sighted, and with a memory for what interested him,
on birds he was almost worth listening to.  But in Chanctonbury Ring
there were none--its great beech temple was empty of life, and almost
chilly at this early hour; they came out willingly again into the sun
on the far side.  It was Fleur's turn now.  She spoke of dogs, and
the way people treated them.  It was wicked to keep them on chains!
She would like to flog people who did that.  Jon was astonished to
find her so humanitarian.  She knew a dog, it seemed, which some
farmer near her home kept chained up at the end of his chicken run,
in all weathers, till it had almost lost its voice from barking!

"And the misery is," she said vehemently, "that if the poor thing
didn't bark at every one who passes it wouldn't be kept there.  I do
think men are cunning brutes.  I've let it go twice, on the sly; it's
nearly bitten me both times, and then it goes simply mad with joy;
but it always runs back home at last, and they chain it up again.  If
I had my way, I'd chain that man up."  Jon saw her teeth and her eyes
gleam.  "I'd brand him on his forehead with the word 'Brute'; that
would teach him!"

Jon agreed that it would be a good remedy.

"It's their sense of property," he said, "which makes people chain
things.  The last generation thought of nothing but property; and
that's why there was the War."

"Oh!" said Fleur, "I never thought of that.  Your people and mine
quarrelled about property.  And anyway we've all got it--at least, I
suppose your people have."

"Oh! yes, luckily; I don't suppose I shall be any good at making
money."

"If you were, I don't believe I should like you."

Jon slipped his hand tremulously under her arm.  Fleur looked
straight before her and chanted:

"Jon, Jon, the farmer's son,
Stole a pig, and away he run!"

Jon's arm crept round her waist.

"This is rather sudden," said Fleur calmly; "do you often do it?"

Jon dropped his arm.  But when she laughed his arm stole back again;
and Fleur began to sing:

"O who will oer the downs so free,
O who will with me ride?
O who will up and follow me---"

"Sing, Jon!"

Jon sang.  The larks joined in, sheep-bells, and an early morning
church far away over in Steyning.  They went on from tune to tune,
till Fleur said:

"My God!  I am hungry now!"

"Oh! I am sorry!"

She looked round into his face.

"Jon, you're rather a darling."

And she pressed his hand against her waist.  Jon almost reeled from
happiness.  A yellow-and-white dog coursing a hare startled them
apart.  They watched the two vanish down the slope, till Fleur said
with a sigh: "He'll never catch it, thank goodness!  What's the time?
Mine's stopped.  I never wound it."

Jon looked at his watch.  "By Jove!" he said, "mine's stopped; too."

They walked on again, but only hand in hand.

"If the grass is dry," said Fleur, "let's sit down for half a
minute."

Jon took off his coat, and they shared it.

"Smell!  Actually wild thyme!"

With his arm round her waist again, they sat some minutes in silence.

"We are goats!" cried Fleur, jumping up; "we shall be most fearfully
late, and look so silly, and put them on their guard.  Look here, Jon
We only came out to get an appetite for breakfast, and lost our way.
See?"

"Yes," said Jon.

"It's serious; there'll be a stopper put on us.  Are you a good
liar?"

"I believe not very; but I can try."

Fleur frowned.

"You know," she said, "I realize that they don't mean us to be
friends."

"Why not?"

"I told you why."

"But that's silly."

"Yes; but you don't know my father!"

"I suppose he's fearfully fond of you."

"You see, I'm an only child.  And so are you--of your mother.  Isn't
it a bore?  There's so much expected of one.  By the time they've
done expecting, one's as good as dead."

"Yes," muttered Jon, "life's beastly short.  One wants to live
forever, and know everything."

"And love everybody?"

"No," cried Jon; "I only want to love once--you."

"Indeed!  You're coming on!  Oh! Look!  There's the chalk-pit; we
can't be very far now.  Let's run."

Jon followed, wondering fearfully if he had offended her.

The chalk-pit was full of sunshine and the murmuration of bees.
Fleur flung back her hair.

"Well," she said, "in case of accidents, you may give me one kiss,
Jon," and she pushed her cheek forward.  With ecstasy he kissed that
hot soft cheek.

"Now, remember!  We lost our way; and leave it to me as much as you
can.  I'm going to be rather beastly to you; it's safer; try and be
beastly to me!"

Jon shook his head.  "That's impossible."

"Just to please me; till five o'clock, at all events."

"Anybody will be able to see through it," said Jon gloomily.

"Well, do your best.  Look!  There they are!  Wave your hat!  Oh! you
haven't got one.  Well, I'll cooee!  Get a little away from me, and
look sulky."

Five minutes later, entering the house and doing his utmost to look
sulky, Jon heard her clear voice in the dining-room:

"Oh! I'm simply ravenous!  He's going to be a farmer--and he loses
his way!  The boy's an idiot!"




IX

GOYA


Lunch was over and Soames mounted to the picture-gallery in his house
near Mapleduram.  He had what Annette called "a grief."  Fleur was
not yet home.  She had been expected on Wednesday; had wired that it
would be Friday; and again on Friday that it would be Sunday
afternoon; and here were her aunt, and her cousins the Cardigans, and
this fellow Profond, and everything flat as a pancake for the want of
her.  He stood before his Gauguin--sorest point of his collection.
He had bought the ugly great thing with two early Matisses before the
War, because there was such a fuss about those Post-Impressionist
chaps.  He was wondering whether Profond would take them off his
hands--the fellow seemed not to know what to do with his money--when
he heard his sister's voice say: "I think that's a horrid thing,
Soames," and saw that Winifred had followed him up.

"Oh! you do?" he said dryly; "I gave five hundred for it."

"Fancy!  Women aren't made like that even if they are black."

Soames uttered a glum laugh.  "You didn't come up to tell me that."

"No.  Do you know that Jolyon's boy is staying with Val and his
wife?"

Soames spun round.

"What?"

"Yes," drawled Winifred; "he's gone to live with them there while he
learns farming."

Soames had turned away, but her voice pursued him as he walked up and
down.  "I warned Val that neither of them was to be spoken to about
old matters."

"Why didn't you tell me before?"

Winifred shrugged her substantial shoulders.

"Fleur does what she likes.  You've always spoiled her.  Besides, my
dear boy, what's the harm?"

"The harm!" muttered Soames.  "Why, she--" he checked himself.  The
Juno, the handkerchief, Fleur's eyes, her questions, and now this
delay in her return--the symptoms seemed to him so sinister that,
faithful to his nature, he could not part with them.

"I think you take too much care," said Winifred.  "If I were you, I
should tell her of that old matter.  It's no good thinking that girls
in these days are as they used to be.  Where they pick up their
knowledge I can't tell, but they seem to know everything."

Over Soames' face, closely composed, passed a sort of spasm, and
Winifred added hastily:

"If you don't like to speak of it, I could for you."

Soames shook his head.  Unless there was absolute necessity the
thought that his adored daughter should learn of that old scandal
hurt his pride too much.

"No," he said, "not yet.  Never if I can help it.

"Nonsense, my dear.  Think what people are!"

"Twenty years is a long time," muttered Soames.  "Outside our family,
who's likely to remember?"

Winifred was silenced.  She inclined more and more to that peace and
quietness of which Montague Dartie had deprived her in her youth.
And, since pictures always depressed her, she soon went down again.

Soames passed into the corner where, side by side, hung his real Goya
and the copy of the fresco "La Vendimia."  His acquisition of the
real Goya rather beautifully illustrated the cobweb of vested
interests and passions which mesh the bright-winged fly of human
life.  The real Goya's noble owner's ancestor had come into
possession of it during some Spanish war--it was in a word loot.  The
noble owner had remained in ignorance of its value until in the
nineties an enterprising critic discovered that a Spanish painter
named Goya was a genius.  It was only a fair Goya, but almost unique
in England, and the noble owner became a marked man.  Having many
possessions and that aristocratic culture which, independent of mere
sensuous enjoyment, is founded on the sounder principle that one must
know everything and be fearfully interested in life, he had fully
intended to keep an article which contributed to his reputation while
he was alive, and to leave it to the nation after he was dead.
Fortunately for Soames, the House of Lords was violently attacked in
1909, and the noble owner became alarmed and angry.  'If,' he said to
himself, 'they think they can have it both ways they are very much
mistaken.  So long as they leave me in quiet enjoyment the nation can
have some of my pictures at my death.  But if the nation is going to
bait me, and rob me like this, I'm damned if I won't sell the lot.
They can't have my private property and my public spirit-both.'  He
brooded in this fashion for several months till one morning, after
reading the speech of a certain statesman, he telegraphed to his
agent to come down and bring Bodkin.  On going over the collection
Bodkin, than whose opinion on market values none was more sought,
pronounced that with a free hand to sell to America, Germany, and
other places where there was an interest in art, a lot more money
could be made than by selling in England.  The noble owner's public
spirit--he said--was well known but the pictures were unique.  The
noble owner put this opinion in his pipe and smoked it for a year.
At the end of that time he read another speech by the same statesman,
and telegraphed to his agents: "Give Bodkin a free hand."  It was at
this juncture that Bodkin conceived the idea which salved the Goya
and two other unique pictures for the native country of the noble
owner.  With one hand Bodkin proffered the pictures to the foreign
market, with the other he formed a list of private British
collectors.  Having obtained what he considered the highest possible
bids from across the seas, he submitted pictures and bids to the
private British collectors, and invited them, of their public spirit,
to outbid.  In three instances (including the Goya) out of twenty-one
he was successful.  And why?  One of the private collectors made
buttons--he had made so many that he desired that his wife should be
called Lady "Buttons."  He therefore bought a unique picture at great
cost, and gave it to the nation.  It was "part," his friends said,
"of his general game."  The second of the private collectors was an
Americophobe, and bought an unique picture to "spite the damned
Yanks."  The third of the private collectors was Soames, who--more
sober than either of the, others--bought after a visit to Madrid,
because he was certain that Goya was still on the up grade.  Goya was
not booming at the moment, but he would come again; and, looking at
that portrait, Hogarthian, Manetesque in its directness, but with its
own queer sharp beauty of paint, he was perfectly satisfied still
that he had made no error, heavy though the price had been--heaviest
he had ever paid.  And next to it was hanging the copy of "La
Vendimia."  There she was--the little wretch-looking back at him in
her dreamy mood, the mood he loved best because he felt so much safer
when she looked like that.

He was still gazing when the scent of a cigar impinged on his
nostrils, and a voice said:

"Well, Mr. Forsyde, what you goin' to do with this small lot?"

That Belgian chap, whose mother-as if Flemish blood were not enough--
had been Armenian!  Subduing a natural irritation, he said:

"Are you a judge of pictures?"

"Well, I've got a few myself."

"Any Post-Impressionists?"

"Ye-es, I rather like them."

"What do you think of this?" said Soames, pointing to the Gauguin.

Monsieur Profond protruded his lower lip and short pointed beard.

"Rather fine, I think," he said; "do you want to sell it?"

Soames checked his instinctive "Not particularly"--he would not
chaffer with this alien.

"Yes," he said.

"What do you want for it?"

"What I gave."

"All right," said Monsieur Profond.  "I'll be glad to take that small
picture.  Post-Impressionists--they're awful dead, but they're
amusin'.  I don' care for pictures much, but I've got some, just a
small lot."

"What do you care for?"

Monsieur Profond shrugged his shoulders.

"Life's awful like a lot of monkeys scramblin' for empty nuts."

"You're young," said Soames.  If the fellow must make a
generalization, he needn't suggest that the forms of property lacked
solidity!

"I don' worry," replied Monsieur Profond smiling; "we're born, and we
die.  Half the world's starvin'.  I feed a small lot of babies out in
my mother's country; but what's the use?  Might as well throw my
money in the river."

Soames looked at him, and turned back toward his Goya.  He didn't
know what the fellow wanted.

"What shall I make my cheque for?" pursued Monsieur Profond.

"Five hundred," said Soames shortly; "but I don't want you to take it
if you don't care for it more than that."

"That's all right," said Monsieur Profond; "I'll be 'appy to 'ave
that picture."

He wrote a cheque with a fountain-pen heavily chased with gold.
Soames watched the process uneasily.  How on earth had the fellow
known that he wanted to sell that picture?  Monsieur Profond held out
the cheque.

"The English are awful funny about pictures," he said.  "So are the
French, so are my people.  They're all awful funny."

"I don't understand you," said Soames stiffly.

"It's like hats," said Monsieur Profond enigmatically, "small or
large, turnin' up or down--just the fashion.  Awful funny."  And,
smiling, he drifted out of the gallery again, blue and solid like the
smoke of his excellent cigar.

Soames had taken the cheque, feeling as if the intrinsic value of
ownership had been called in question.  'He's a cosmopolitan,' he
thought, watching Profond emerge from under the verandah with
Annette, and saunter down the lawn toward the river.  What his wife
saw in the fellow he didn't know, unless it was that he could speak
her language; and there passed in Soames what Monsieur Profond would
have called a "small doubt" whether Annette was not too handsome to
be walking with any one so "cosmopolitan."  Even at that distance he
could see the blue fumes from Profond's cigar wreath out in the quiet
sunlight; and his grey buckskin shoes, and his grey hat--the fellow
was a dandy!  And he could see the quick turn of his wife's head, so
very straight on her desirable neck and shoulders.  That turn of her
neck always seemed to him a little too showy, and in the "Queen of
all I survey" manner--not quite distinguished.  He watched them walk
along the path at the bottom of the garden.  A young man in flannels
joined them down there--a Sunday caller no doubt, from up the river.
He went back to his Goya.  He was still staring at that replica of
Fleur, and worrying over Winifred's news, when his wife's voice said:

"Mr. Michael Mont, Soames.  You invited him to see your pictures."

There was the cheerful young man of the Gallery off Cork Street!

"Turned up, you see, sir; I live only four miles from Pangbourne.
Jolly day, isn't it?"

Confronted with the results of his expansiveness, Soames scrutinized
his visitor.  The young man's mouth was excessively large and curly--
he seemed always grinning.  Why didn't he grow the rest of those
idiotic little moustaches, which made him look like a music-hall
buffoon?  What on earth were young men about, deliberately lowering
their class with these tooth-brushes, or little slug whiskers?  Ugh!
Affected young idiots!  In other respects he was presentable, and his
flannels very clean.

"Happy to see you!" he said.

The young man, who had been turning his head from side to side,
became transfixed.  "I say!" he said, "'some' picture!"

Soames saw, with mixed sensations, that he had addressed the remark
to the Goya copy.

"Yes," he said dryly, "that's not a Goya.  It's a copy.  I had it
painted because it reminded me of my daughter."

"By Jove!  I thought I knew the face, sir.  Is she here?"

The frankness of his interest almost disarmed Soames.

"She'll be in after tea," he said.  "Shall we go round the pictures?"

And Soames began that round which never tired him.  He had not
anticipated much intelligence from one who had mistaken a copy for an
original, but as they passed from section to section, period to
period, he was startled by the young man's frank and relevant
remarks.  Natively shrewd himself, and even sensuous beneath his
mask, Soames had not spent thirty-eight years over his one hobby
without knowing something more about pictures than their market
values.  He was, as it were, the missing link between the artist and
the commercial public.  Art for art's sake and all that, of course,
was cant.  But aesthetics and good taste were necessary.  The
appreciation of enough persons of good taste was what gave a work of
art its permanent market value, or in other words made it "a work of
art."  There was no real cleavage.  And he was sufficiently
accustomed to sheep-like and unseeing visitors, to be intrigued by
one who did not hesitate to say of Mauve: "Good old haystacks!" or of
James Maris: "Didn't he just paint and paper 'em!  Mathew was the
real swell, sir; you could dig into his surfaces!"  It was after the
young man had whistled before a Whistler, with the words, "D'you
think he ever really saw a naked woman, sir?" that Soames remarked:

"What are you, Mr. Mont, if I may ask?"

"I, sir?  I was going to be a painter, but the War knocked that.
Then in the trenches, you know, I used to dream of the Stock
Exchange, snug and warm and just noisy enough.  But the Peace knocked
that, shares seem off, don't they?  I've only been demobbed about a
year.  What do you recommend, sir?"

"Have you got money?"

"Well," answered the young man, "I've got a father; I kept him alive
during the War, so he's bound to keep me alive now.  Though, of
course, there's the question whether he ought to be allowed to hang
on to his property.  What do you think about that, sir?"

Soames, pale and defensive, smiled.

"The old man has fits when I tell him he may have to work yet.  He's
got land, you know; it's a fatal disease."

"This is my real Goya," said Soames dryly.

"By George!  He was a swell.  I saw a Goya in Munich once that bowled
me middle stump.  A most evil-looking old woman in the most gorgeous
lace.  He made no compromise with the public taste.  That old boy was
'some' explosive; he must have smashed up a lot of convention in his
day.  Couldn't he just paint!  He makes Velasquez stiff, don't you
think?"

"I have no Velasquez," said Soames.

The young man stared.  "No," he said; "only nations or profiteers can
afford him, I suppose.  I say, why shouldn't all the bankrupt nations
sell their Velasquez and Titians and other swells to the profiteers
by force, and then pass a law that any one who holds a picture by an
Old Master--see schedule--must hang it in a public gallery?  There
seems something in that."

"Shall we go down to tea?" said Soames.

The young man's ears seemed to droop on his skull.  'He's not dense,'
thought Soames, following him off the premises.

Goya, with his satiric and surpassing precision, his original "line,"
and the daring of his light and shade, could have reproduced to
admiration the group assembled round Annette's tea-tray in the ingle-
nook below.  He alone, perhaps, of painters would have done justice
to the sunlight filtering through a screen of creeper, to the lovely
pallor of brass, the old cut glasses, the thin slices of lemon in
pale amber tea; justice to Annette in her black lacey dress; there
was something of the fair Spaniard in her beauty, though it lacked
the spirituality of that rare type; to Winifred's grey-haired,
corseted solidity; to Soames, of a certain grey and flat-cheeked
distinction; to the vivacious Michael Mont, pointed in ear and eye;
to Imogen, dark, luscious of glance, growing a little stout; to
Prosper Profond, with his expression as who should say, "Well, Mr.
Goya, what's the use of paintin' this small party?" finally, to Jack
Cardigan, with his shining stare and tanned sanguinity betraying the
moving principle: "I'm English, and I live to be fit."

Curious, by the way, that Imogen, who as a girl had declared solemnly
one day at Timothy's that she would never marry a good man--they were
so dull--should have married Jack Cardigan, in whom health had so
destroyed all traces of original sin, that she might have retired to
rest with ten thousand other Englishmen without knowing the
difference from the one she had chosen to repose beside.  "Oh!" she
would say of him, in her "amusing" way, "Jack keeps himself so
fearfully fit; he's never had a day's illness in his life.  He went
right through the War without a finger-ache.  You really can't
imagine how fit he is!"  Indeed, he was so "fit" that he couldn't see
when she was flirting, which was such a comfort in a way.  All the
same she was quite fond of him, so far as one could be of a sports-
machine, and of the two little Cardigans made after his pattern.  Her
eyes just then were comparing him maliciously with Prosper Profond.
There was no "small" sport or game which Monsieur Profond had not
played at too, it seemed, from skittles to tarpon-fishing, and worn
out every one.  Imogen would sometimes wish that they had worn out
Jack, who continued to play at them and talk of them with the simple
zeal of a school-girl learning hockey; at the age of Great-uncle
Timothy she well knew that Jack would be playing carpet golf in her
bedroom, and "wiping somebody's eye."

He was telling them now how he had "pipped the pro--a charmin'
fellow, playin' a very good game," at the last hole this morning; and
how he had pulled down to Caversham since lunch, and trying to incite
Prosper Profond to play him a set of tennis after tea--do him good-
"keep him fit.

"But what's the use of keepin' fit?" said Monsieur Profond.

"Yes, sir," murmured Michael Mont, "what do you keep fit for?"

"Jack," cried Imogen, enchanted, "what do you keep fit for?"

Jack Cardigan stared with all his health.  The questions were like
the buzz of a mosquito, and he put up his hand to wipe them away.
During the War, of course, he had kept fit to kill Germans; now that
it was over he either did not know, or shrank in delicacy from
explanation of his moving principle.

"But he's right," said Monsieur Profond unexpectedly, "there's
nothin' left but keepin' fit."

The saying, too deep for Sunday afternoon, would have passed
unanswered, but for the mercurial nature of young Mont.

"Good!" he cried.  "That's the great discovery of the War.  We all
thought we were progressing--now we know we're only changing."

"For the worse," said Monsieur Profond genially.

"How you are cheerful, Prosper!" murmured Annette.

"You come and play tennis!" said Jack Cardigan; "you've got the hump.
We'll soon take that down.  D'you play, Mr. Mont?"

"I hit the ball about, sir."

At this juncture Soames rose, ruffled in that deep instinct of
preparation for the future which guided his existence.

"When Fleur comes--" he heard Jack Cardigan say.

Ah! and why didn't she come?  He passed through drawing-room, hall,
and porch out on to the drive, and stood there listening for the car.
All was still and Sundayfied; the lilacs in full flower scented the
air.  There were white clouds, like the feathers of ducks gilded by
the sunlight.  Memory of the day when Fleur was born, and he had
waited in such agony with her life and her mother's balanced in his
hands, came to him sharply.  He had saved her then, to be the flower
of his life.  And now! was she going to give him trouble--pain--give
him trouble?  He did not like the look of things!  A blackbird broke
in on his reverie with an evening song--a great big fellow up in that
acacia-tree.  Soames had taken quite an interest in his birds of late
years; he and Fleur would walk round and watch them; her eyes were
sharp as needles, and she knew every nest.  He saw her dog, a
retriever, lying on the drive in a patch of sunlight, and called to
him.  "Hallo, old fellow-waiting for her too!"  The dog came slowly
with a grudging tail, and Soames mechanically laid a pat on his head.
The dog, the bird, the lilac, all were part of Fleur for him; no
more, no less.  'Too fond of her!' he thought, 'too fond!'  He was
like a man uninsured, with his ships at sea.  Uninsured again--as in
that other time, so long ago, when he would wander dumb and jealous
in the wilderness of London, longing for that woman--his first wife--
the mother of this infernal boy.  Ah!  There was the car at last!  It
drew up, it had luggage, but no Fleur.

"Miss Fleur is walking up, sir, by the towing-path."

Walking all those miles?  Soames stared.  The man's face had the
beginning of a smile on it.  What was he grinning at?  And very
quickly he turned, saying, "All right, Sims!" and went into the
house.  He mounted to the picture-gallery once more.  He had from
there a view of the river bank, and stood with his eyes fixed on it,
oblivious of the fact that it would be an hour at least before her
figure showed there.  Walking up! And that fellow's grin!  The boy--!
He turned abruptly from the window.  He couldn't spy on her.  If she
wanted to keep things from him--she must; he could not spy on her.
His heart felt empty, and bitterness mounted from it into his very
mouth.  The staccato shouts of Jack Cardigan pursuing the ball, the
laugh of young Mont rose in the stillness and came in.  He hoped they
were making that chap Profond run.  And the girl in "La Vendimia"
stood with her arm akimbo arid her dreamy eyes looking past him.
'I've done all I could for you,' he thought, 'since you were no
higher than my knee.  You aren't going to--to--hurt me, are you?'

But the Goya copy answered not, brilliant in colour just beginning to
tone down.  'There's no real life in it,' thought Soames.  'Why
doesn't she come?'




X

TRIO


Among those four Forsytes of the third, and, as one might say, fourth
generation, at Wansdon under the Downs, a week-end prolonged unto the
ninth day had stretched the crossing threads of tenacity almost to
snapping-point.  Never had Fleur been so "fine," Holly so watchful,
Val so stable-secretive, Jon so silent and disturbed.  What he
learned of farming in that week might have been balanced on the point
of a penknife and puffed off.  He, whose nature was essentially
averse from intrigue, and whose adoration of Fleur disposed him to
think that any need for concealing it was "skittles," chafed and
fretted, yet obeyed, taking what relief he could in the few moments
when they were alone.  On Thursday, while they were standing in the
bay window of the drawing-room, dressed for dinner, she said to him:

"Jon, I'm going home on Sunday by the 3.40 from Paddington; if you
were to go home on Saturday you could come up on Sunday and take me
down, and just get back here by the last train, after.  You were
going home anyway, weren't you?"

Jon nodded.

"Anything to be with you," he said; "only why need I pretend--"

Fleur slipped her little finger into his palm:

"You have no instinct, Jon; you must leave things to me.  It's
serious about our people.  We've simply got to be secret at present,
if we want to be together."  The door was opened, and she added
loudly: "You are a duffer, Jon."

Something turned over within Jon; he could not bear this subterfuge
about a feeling so natural, so overwhelming, and so sweet.

On Friday night about eleven he had packed his bag, and was leaning
out of his window, half miserable, and half lost in a dream of
Paddington station, when he heard a tiny sound, as of a finger-nail
tapping on his door.  He rushed to it and listened.  Again the sound.
It was a nail.  He opened.  Oh! What a lovely thing came in!

"I wanted to show you my fancy dress," it said, and struck an
attitude at the foot of his bed.

Jon drew a long breath and leaned against the door.  The apparition
wore white muslin on its head, a fichu round its bare neck over a
wine-coloured dress, fulled out below its slender waist.

It held one arm akimbo, and the other raised, right-angled, holding a
fan which touched its head.

"This ought to be a basket of grapes," it whispered, "but I haven't
got it here.  It's my Goya dress.  And this is the attitude in the
picture.  Do you like it?"

"It's a dream."

The apparition pirouetted.  "Touch it, and see."

Jon knelt down and took the skirt reverently.

"Grape colour," came the whisper, "all grapes--La Vendimia--the
vintage."

Jon's fingers scarcely touched each side of the waist; he looked up,
with adoring eyes.

"Oh! Jon," it whispered; bent, kissed his forehead, pirouetted again,
and, gliding out, was gone.

Jon stayed on his knees, and his head fell forward against the bed.
How long he stayed like that he did not know.  The little noises--of
the tapping nail, the feet, the skirts rustling--as in a dream--went
on about him; and before his closed eyes the figure stood and smiled
and whispered, a faint perfume of narcissus lingering in the air.
And his forehead where it had been kissed had a little cool place
between the brows, like the imprint of a flower.  Love filled his
soul, that love of boy for girl which knows so little, hopes so much,
would not brush the down off for the world, and must become in time a
fragrant memory--a searing passion--a humdrum mateship--or, once in
many times, vintage full and sweet with sunset colour on the grapes.

Enough has been said about Jon Forsyte here and in another place to
show what long marches lay between him and his great-great-
grandfather, the first Jolyon, in Dorset down by the sea.  Jon was
sensitive as a girl, more sensitive than nine out of ten girls of the
day; imaginative as one of his half-sister June's "lame duck"
painters; affectionate as a son of his father and his mother
naturally would be.  And yet, in his inner tissue, there was
something of the old founder of his family, a secret tenacity of
soul, a dread of showing his feelings, a determination not to know
when he was beaten.  Sensitive, imaginative, affectionate boys get a
bad time at school, but Jon had instinctively kept his nature dark,
and been but normally unhappy there.  Only with his mother had he, up
till then, been absolutely frank and natural; and when he went home
to Robin Hill that Saturday his heart was heavy because Fleur had
said that he must not be frank and natural with her from whom he had
never yet kept anything, must not even tell her that they had met
again, unless he found that she knew already.  So intolerable did
this seem to him that he was very near to telegraphing an excuse and
staying up in London.  And the first thing his mother said to him
was:

"So you've had our little friend of the confectioner's there, Jon.
What is she like on second thoughts?"

With relief, and a high colour, Jon answered:

"Oh! awfully jolly, Mum."

Her arm pressed his.

Jon had never loved her so much as in that minute which seemed to
falsify Fleur's fears and to release his soul.  He turned to look at
her, but something in her smiling face--something which only he
perhaps would have caught--stopped the words bubbling up in him.
Could fear go with a smile?  If so, there was fear in her face.  And
out of Jon tumbled quite other words, about farming, Holly, and the
Downs.  Talking fast, he waited for her to come back to Fleur.  But
she did not.  Nor did his father mention her, though of course he,
too, must know.  What deprivation, and killing of reality was in his
silence about Fleur--when he was so full of her; when his mother was
so full of Jon, and his father so full of his mother!  And so the
trio spent the evening of that Saturday.

After dinner his mother played; she seemed to play all the things he
liked best, and he sat with one knee clasped, and his hair standing
up where his fingers had run through it.  He gazed at his mother
while she played, but he saw Fleur--Fleur in the moonlit orchard,
Fleur in the sunlit gravel-pit, Fleur in that fancy dress, swaying,
whispering, stooping, kissing his forehead.  Once, while he listened,
he forgot himself and glanced at his father in that other easy chair.
What was Dad looking like that for?  The expression on his face was
so sad and puzzling.  It filled him with a sort of remorse, so that
he got up and went and sat on the arm of his father's chair.  From
there he could not see his face; and again he saw Fleur--in his
mother's hands, slim and white on the keys, in the profile of her
face and her powdery hair; and down the long room in the open window
where the May night walked outside.

When he went up to bed his mother came into his room.  She stood at
the window, and said:

"Those cypresses your grandfather planted down there have done
wonderfully.  I always think they look beautiful under a dropping
moon.  I wish you had known your grandfather, Jon."

"Were you married to father when he was alive?" asked Jon suddenly.

"No, dear; he died in '92--very old--eighty-five, I think."

"Is Father like him?"

"A little, but more subtle, and not quite so solid."

"I know, from grandfather's portrait; who painted that?"

"One of June's 'lame ducks.'  But it's quite good."

Jon slipped his hand through his mother's arm.  "Tell me about the
family quarrel, Mum."

He felt her arm quivering.  "No, dear; that's for your Father some
day, if he thinks fit."

"Then it was serious," said Jon, with a catch in his breath.

"Yes."  And there was a silence, during which neither knew whether
the arm or the hand within it were quivering most.

"Some people," said Irene softly, "think the moon on her back is
evil; to me she's always lovely.  Look at those cypress shadows!
Jon, Father says we may go to Italy, you and I, for two months.
Would you like?"

Jon took his hand from under her arm; his sensation was so sharp and
so confused.  Italy with his mother!  A fortnight ago it would have
been perfection; now it filled him with dismay; he felt that the
sudden suggestion had to do with Fleur.  He stammered out:

"Oh! yes; only--I don't know.  Ought I--now I've just begun?  I'd
like to think it over."

Her voice answered, cool and gentle:

"Yes, dear; think it over.  But better now than when you've begun
farming seriously.  Italy with you!  It would be nice!"

Jon put his arm round her waist, still slim and firm as a girl's.

"Do you think you ought to leave Father?" he said feebly, feeling
very mean.

"Father suggested it; he thinks you ought to see Italy at least
before you settle down to anything."

The sense of meanness died in Jon; he knew, yes--he knew--that his
father and his mother were not speaking frankly, no more than he
himself.  They wanted to keep him from Fleur.  His heart hardened.
And, as if she felt that process going on, his mother said:

"Good-night, darling.  Have a good sleep and think it over.  But it
would be lovely!"

She pressed him to her so quickly that he did not see her face.  Jon
stood feeling exactly as he used to when he was a naughty little boy;
sore because he was not loving, and because he was justified in his
own eyes.

But Irene, after she had stood a moment in her own room, passed
through the dressing-room between it and her husband's.

"Well?"

"He will think it over, Jolyon."

Watching her lips that wore a little drawn smile, Jolyon said
quietly:

"You had better let me tell him, and have done with it.  After all,
Jon has the instincts of a gentleman.  He has only to understand--"

"Only!  He can't understand; that's impossible."

"I believe I could have at his age."

Irene caught his hand.  "You were always more of a realist than Jon;
and never so innocent."

"That's true," said Jolyon.  "It's queer, isn't it?  You and I would
tell our stories to the world without a particle of shame; but our
own boy stumps us."

"We've never cared whether the world approves or not."

"Jon would not disapprove of us!"

"Oh! Jolyon, yes.  He's in love, I feel he's in love.  And he'd say:
'My mother once married without love!  How could she have!'  It'll
seem to him a crime!  And so it was!"

Jolyon took her hand, and said with a wry smile:

"Ah! why on earth are we born young?  Now, if only we were born old
and grew younger year by year, we should understand how things
happen, and drop all our cursed intolerance.  But you know if the boy
is really in love, he won't forget, even if he goes to Italy.  We're
a tenacious breed; and he'll know by instinct why he's being sent.
Nothing will really cure him but the shock of being told."

"Let me try, anyway."

Jolyon stood a moment without speaking.  Between this devil and this
deep sea--the pain of a dreaded disclosure and the grief of losing
his wife for two months--he secretly hoped for the devil; yet if she
wished for the deep sea he must put up with it.  After all, it would
be training for that departure from which there would be no return.
And, taking her in his arms, he kissed her eyes, and said:

"As you will, my love."




XI

DUET


That "small" emotion, love, grows amazingly when threatened with
extinction.  Jon reached Paddington station half an hour before his
time and a full week after, as it seemed to him.  He stood at the
appointed bookstall, amid a crowd of Sunday travellers, in a Harris
tweed suit exhaling, as it were, the emotion of his thumping heart.
He read the names of the novels on the book-stall, and bought one at
last, to avoid being regarded with suspicion by the book-stall clerk.
It was called "The Heart of the Trail!" which must mean something,
though it did not seem to.  He also bought "The Lady's Mirror" and
"The Landsman."  Every minute was an hour long, and full of horrid
imaginings.  After nineteen had passed, he saw her with a bag and a
porter wheeling her luggage.  She came swiftly; she came cool.  She
greeted him as if he were a brother.

"First class," she said to the porter, "corner seats; opposite."

Jon admired her frightful self-possession.

"Can't we get a carriage to ourselves," he whispered.

"No good; it's a stopping train.  After Maidenhead perhaps.  Look
natural, Jon."

Jon screwed his features into a scowl.  They got in--with two other
beasts!--oh! heaven!  He tipped the porter unnaturally, in his
confusion.  The brute deserved nothing for putting them in there, and
looking as if he knew all about it into the bargain.

Fleur hid herself behind "The Lady's Mirror."  Jon imitated her
behind "The Landsman."  The train started.  Fleur let "The Lady's
Mirror" fall and leaned forward.

"Well?" she said.

"It's seemed about fifteen days."

She nodded, and Jon's face lighted up at once.

"Look natural," murmured Fleur, and went off into a bubble of
laughter.  It hurt him.  How could he look natural with Italy hanging
over him?  He had meant to break it to her gently, but now he blurted
it out.

"They want me to go to Italy with Mother for two months."

Fleur drooped her eyelids; turned a little pale, and bit her lips.
"Oh!" she said.  It was all, but it was much.

That "Oh!" was like the quick drawback of the wrist in fencing ready
for riposte.  It came.

"You must go!"

"Go?" said Jon in a strangled voice.

"Of course."

"But--two months--it's ghastly."

"No," said Fleur, "six weeks.  You'll have forgotten me by then.
We'll meet in the National Gallery the day after you get back."

Jon laughed.

"But suppose you've forgotten me," he muttered into the noise of the
train.

Fleur shook her head.

"Some other beast--" murmured Jon.

Her foot touched his.

"No other beast," she said, lifting "The Lady's Mirror."

The train stopped; two passengers got out, and one got in.

'I shall die,' thought Jon, 'if we're not alone at all.'

The train went on; and again Fleur leaned forward.

"I never let go," she said; "do you?"

Jon shook his head vehemently.

"Never!" he said.  "Will you write to me?"

"No; but you can--to my Club."

She had a Club; she was wonderful!

"Did you pump Holly?" he muttered.

"Yes, but I got nothing.  I didn't dare pump hard."

"What can it be?" cried Jon.

"I shall find out all right."

A long silence followed till Fleur said: "This is Maidenhead; stand
by, Jon!"

The train stopped.  The remaining passenger got out.  Fleur drew down
her blind.

"Quick!" she cried.  "Hang out!  Look as much of a beast as you can."

Jon blew his nose, and scowled; never in all his life had he scowled
like that!  An old lady recoiled, a young one tried the handle.  It
turned, but the door would not open.  The train moved, the young lady
darted to another carriage.

"What luck!" cried Jon.  "It Jammed."

"Yes," said Fleur; "I was holding it."

The train moved out, and Jon fell on his knees.

"Look out for the corridor," she whispered; "and--quick!"

Her lips met his.  And though their kiss only lasted perhaps ten
seconds, Jon's soul left his body and went so far beyond, that, when
he was again sitting opposite that demure figure, he was pale as
death.  He heard her sigh, and the sound seemed to him the most
precious he had ever heard--an exquisite declaration that he meant
something to her.

"Six weeks isn't really long," she said; "and you can easily make it
six if you keep your head out there, and never seem to think of me."

Jon gasped.

"This is just what's really wanted, Jon, to convince them, don't you
see?  If we're just as bad when you come back they'll stop being
ridiculous about it.  Only, I'm sorry it's not Spain; there's a girl
in a Goya picture at Madrid who's like me, Father says.  Only she
isn't--we've got a copy of her."

It was to Jon like a ray of sunshine piercing through a fog.  "I'll
make it Spain," he said, "Mother won't mind; she's never been there.
And my Father thinks a lot of Goya."

"Oh! yes, he's a painter--isn't he?"

"Only water-colour," said Jon, with honesty.

"When we come to Reading, Jon, get out first and go down to Caversham
lock and wait for me.  I'll send the car home and we'll walk by the
towing-path."

Jon seized her hand in gratitude, and they sat silent, with the world
well lost, and one eye on the corridor.  But the train seemed to run
twice as fast now, and its sound was almost lost in that of Jon's
sighing.

"We're getting near," said Fleur; "the towing-path's awfully exposed.
One more!  Oh! Jon, don't forget me."

Jon answered with his kiss.  And very soon, a flushed, distracted-
looking youth could have been seen--as they say--leaping from the
train and hurrying along the platform, searching his pockets for his
ticket.

When at last she rejoined him on the towing-path a little beyond
Caversham lock he had made an effort, and regained some measure of
equanimity.  If they had to part, he would not make a scene!  A
breeze by the bright river threw the white side of the willow leaves
up into the sunlight, and followed those two with its faint rustle.

"I told our chauffeur that I was train-giddy," said Fleur.  "Did you
look pretty natural as you went out?"

"I don't know.  What is natural?"

"It's natural to you to look seriously happy.  When I first saw you I
thought you weren't a bit like other people."

"Exactly what I thought when I saw you.  I knew at once I should
never love anybody else."

Fleur laughed.

"We're absurdly young.  And love's young dream is out of date, Jon.
Besides, it's awfully wasteful.  Think of all the fun you might have.
You haven't begun, even; it's a shame, really.  And there's me.  I
wonder!"

Confusion came on Jon's spirit.  How could she say such things just
as they were going to part?

"If you feel like that," he said, "I can't go.  I shall tell Mother
that I ought to try and work.  There's always the condition of the
world!"

"The condition of the world!"

Jon thrust his hands deep into his pockets.

"But there is," he said; "think of the people starving!"

Fleur shook her head.  "No, no, I never, never will make myself
miserable for nothing."

"Nothing!  But there's an awful state of things, and of course one
ought to help."

"Oh! yes, I know all that.  But you can't help people, Jon; they're
hopeless.  When you pull them out they only get into another hole.
Look at them, still fighting and plotting and struggling, though
they're dying in heaps all the time.  Idiots!"

"Aren't you sorry for them?"

"Oh! sorry--yes, but I'm not going to make myself unhappy about it;
that's no good."

And they were silent, disturbed by this first glimpse of each other's
natures.

"I think people are brutes and idiots," said Fleur stubbornly.

"I think they're poor wretches," said Jon.  It was as if they had
quarrelled--and at this supreme and awful moment, with parting
visible out there in that last gap of the willows!

"Well, go and help your poor wretches, and don't think of me."

Jon stood still.  Sweat broke out on his forehead, and his limbs
trembled.  Fleur too had stopped, and was frowning at the river.

"I must believe in things," said Jon with a sort of agony; "we're all
meant to enjoy life."

Fleur laughed.  "Yes; and that's what you won't do, if you don't take
care.  But perhaps your idea of enjoyment is to make yourself
wretched.  There are lots of people like that, of course."

She was pale, her eyes had darkened, her lips had thinned.  Was it
Fleur thus staring at the water?  Jon had an unreal feeling as if he
were passing through the scene in a book where the lover has to
choose between love and duty.  But just then she looked round at him.
Never was anything so intoxicating as that vivacious look.  It acted
on him exactly as the tug of a chain acts on a dog--brought him up to
her with his tail wagging and his tongue out.

"Don't let's be silly," she said, "time's too short.  Look, Jon, you
can just see where I've got to cross the river.  There, round the
bend, where the woods begin."

Jon saw a gable, a chimney or two, a patch of wall through the trees-
-and felt his heart sink.

"I mustn't dawdle any more.  It's no good going beyond the next
hedge, it gets all open.  Let's get on to it and say good-bye."

They went side by side, hand in hand, silently toward the hedge,
where the may-flower, both pink and white, was in full bloom.

"My Club's the 'Talisman,' Stratton Street, Piccadilly.  Letters
there will be quite safe, and I'm almost always up once a week."

Jon nodded.  His face had become extremely set, his eyes stared
straight before him.

"To-day's the twenty-third of May," said Fleur; "on the ninth of July
I shall be in front of the 'Bacchus and Ariadne' at three o'clock;
will you?"

"I will."

"If you feel as bad as I it's all right.  Let those people pass!"

A man and woman airing their children went by strung out in Sunday
fashion.

The last of them passed the wicket gate.

"Domesticity!" said Fleur, and blotted herself against the hawthorn
hedge.  The blossom sprayed out above her head, and one pink cluster
brushed her cheek.  Jon put up his hand jealously to keep it off.

"Good-bye, Jon."  For a second they stood with hands hard clasped.
Then their lips met for the third time, and when they parted Fleur
broke away and fled through the wicket gate.  Jon stood where she had
left him, with his forehead against that pink cluster.  Gone!  For an
eternity--for seven weeks all but two days!  And here he was, wasting
the last sight of her!  He rushed to the gate.  She was walking
swiftly on the heels of the straggling children.  She turned her
head, he saw her hand make a little flitting gesture; then she sped
on, and the trailing family blotted her out from his view.

The words of a comic song--

        "Paddington groan-worst ever known--
        He gave a sepulchral Paddington groan--"

came into his head, and he sped incontinently back to Reading
station.  All the way up to London and down to Wansdon he sat with
"The Heart of the Trail" open on his knee, knitting in his head a
poem so full of feeling that it would not rhyme.




XII

CAPRICE


Fleur sped on.  She had need of rapid motion; she was late, and
wanted all her wits about her when she got in.  She passed the
islands, the station, and hotel, and was about to take the ferry,
when she saw a skiff with a young man standing up in it, and holding
to the bushes.

"Miss Forsyte," he said; "let me put you across.  I've come on
purpose."

She looked at him in blank amazement.

"It's all right, I've been having tea with your people.  I thought
I'd save you the last bit.  It's on my way, I'm just off back to
Pangbourne.  My name's Mont.  I saw you at the picture-gallery--you
remember--when your father invited me to see his pictures."

"Oh!" said Fleur; "yes--the handkerchief."

To this young man she owed Jon; and, taking his hand, she stepped
down into the skiff.  Still emotional, and a little out of breath,
she sat silent; not so the young man.  She had never heard any one
say so much in so short a time.  He told her his age, twenty-four;
his weight, ten stone eleven; his place of residence, not far away;
described his sensations under fire, and what it felt like to be
gassed; criticized the Juno, mentioned his own conception of that
goddess; commented on the Goya copy, said Fleur was not too awfully
like it; sketched in rapidly the condition of England; spoke of
Monsieur Profond--or whatever his name was--as "an awful sport";
thought her father had some "ripping" pictures and some rather "dug-
up"; hoped he might row down again and take her on the river because
he was quite trustworthy; inquired her opinion of Tchekov, gave her
his own; wished they could go to the Russian ballet together some
time--considered the name Fleur Forsyte simply topping; cursed his
people for giving him the name of Michael on the top of Mont;
outlined his father, and said that if she wanted a good book she
should read "Job"; his father was rather like Job while Job still had
land.

"But Job didn't have land," Fleur murmured; "he only had flocks and
herds and moved on."

"Ah!" answered Michael Mont, "I wish my gov'nor would move on.  Not
that I want his land.  Land's an awful bore in these days, don't you
think?"

"We never have it in my family," said Fleur.  "We have everything
else.  I believe one of my great-uncles once had a sentimental farm
in Dorset, because we came from there originally, but it cost him
more than it made him happy."

"Did he sell it?"

"No; he kept it."

"Why?"

"Because nobody would buy it."

"Good for the old boy!"

"No, it wasn't good for him.  Father says it soured him.  His name
was Swithin."

"What a corking name!"

"Do you know that we're getting farther off, not nearer?  This river
flows."

"Splendid!" cried Mont, dipping his sculls vaguely; "it's good to
meet a girl who's got wit."

"But better to meet a young man who's got it in the plural."

Young Mont raised a hand to tear his hair.

"Look out!" cried Fleur.  "Your scull!"

"All right!  It's thick enough to bear a scratch."

"Do you mind sculling?" said Fleur severely.  "I want to get in."

"Ah!" said Mont; "but when you get in, you see, I shan't see you any
more to-day.  Fini, as the French girl said when she jumped on her
bed after saying her prayers.  Don't you bless the day that gave you
a French mother, and a name like yours?"

"I like my name, but Father gave it me.  Mother wanted me called
Marguerite."

"Which is absurd.  Do you mind calling me M. M.  and letting me call
you F. F.?  It's in the spirit of the age."

"I don't mind anything, so long as I get in."

Mont caught a little crab, and answered: "That was a nasty one!"

"Please row."

"I am."  And he did for several strokes, looking at her with rueful
eagerness.  "Of course, you know," he ejaculated, pausing, "that I
came to see you, not your father's pictures."

Fleur rose.

"If you don't row, I shall get out and swim."

"Really and truly?  Then I could come in after you."

"Mr. Mont, I'm late and tired; please put me on shore at once."

When she stepped out on to the garden landing-stage he rose, and
grasping his hair with both hands, looked at her.

Fleur smiled.

"Don't!" cried the irrepressible Mont.  "I know you're going to say:
'Out, damned hair!'"

Fleur whisked round, threw him a wave of her hand.  "Good-bye, Mr.
M.M.!" she called, and was gone among the rose-trees.  She looked at
her wrist-watch and the windows of the house.  It struck her as
curiously uninhabited.  Past six!  The pigeons were just gathering to
roost, and sunlight slanted on the dovecot, on their snowy feathers,
and beyond in a shower on the top boughs of the woods.  The click of
billiard-balls came from the ingle-nook--Jack Cardigan, no doubt; a
faint rustling, too, from an eucalyptus-tree, startling Southerner in
this old English garden.  She reached the verandah and was passing
in, but stopped at the sound of voices from the drawing-room to her
left.  Mother!  Monsieur Profond!  From behind the verandah screen
which fenced the ingle-nook she heard these words:

"I don't, Annette."

Did Father know that he called her mother "Annette"?  Always on the
side of her Father--as children are ever on one side or the other in
houses where relations are a little strained--she stood, uncertain.
Her mother was speaking in her low, pleasing, slightly metallic
voice--one word she caught: "Demain."  And Profond's answer: "All
right."  Fleur frowned.  A little sound came out into the stillness.
Then Profond's voice: "I'm takin' a small stroll."

Fleur darted through the window into the morning-room.  There he came
from the drawing-room, crossing the verandah, down the lawn; and the
click of billiard-balls which, in listening for other sounds, she had
ceased to hear, began again.  She shook herself, passed into the
hall, and opened the drawing-room door.  Her mother was sitting on
the sofa between the windows, her knees crossed, her head resting on
a cushion, her lips half parted, her eyes half closed.  She looked
extraordinarily handsome.

"Ah!  Here you are, Fleur!  Your father is beginning to fuss."

"Where is he?"

"In the picture-gallery.  Go up!"

"What are you going to do to-morrow, Mother?"

"To-morrow?  I go up to London with your aunt."

"I thought you might be.  Will you get me a quite plain parasol?"
What colour?"

"Green.  They're all going back, I suppose."

"Yes, all; you will console your father.  Kiss me, then."

Fleur crossed the room, stooped, received a kiss on her forehead, and
went out past the impress of a form on the sofa-cushions in the other
corner.  She ran up-stairs.

Fleur was by no means the old-fashioned daughter who demands the
regulation of her parents' lives in accordance with the standard
imposed upon herself.  She claimed to regulate her own life, not
those of others; besides, an unerring instinct for what was likely to
advantage her own case was already at work.  In a disturbed domestic
atmosphere the heart she had set on Jon would have a better chance.
None the less was she offended, as a flower by a crisping wind.  If
that man had really been kissing her mother it was--serious, and her
father ought to know.  "Demain!"  "All right!"  And her mother going
up to Town!  She turned into her bedroom and hung out of the window
to cool her face, which had suddenly grown very hot.  Jon must be at
the station by now!  What did her father know about Jon?  Probably
everything--pretty nearly!

She changed her dress, so as to look as if she had been in some time,
and ran up to the gallery.

Soames was standing stubbornly still before his Alfred Stevens--the
picture he loved best.  He did not turn at the sound of the door, but
she knew he had heard, and she knew he was hurt.  She came up softly
behind him, put her arms round his neck, and poked her face over his
shoulder till her cheek lay against his.  It was an advance which had
never yet failed, but it failed her now, and she augured the worst.
"Well," he said stonily, "so you've come!"

"Is that all," murmured Fleur, "from a bad parent?" And she rubbed
her cheek against his.

Soames shook his head so far as that was possible.

"Why do you keep me on tenterhooks like this, putting me off and
off?"

"Darling, it was very harmless."

"Harmless!  Much you know what's harmless and what isn't."

Fleur dropped her arms.

"Well, then, dear, suppose you tell me; and be quite frank about it."

And she went over to the window-seat.

Her father had turned from his picture, and was staring at his feet.
He looked very grey.  'He has nice small feet,' she thought, catching
his eye, at once averted from her.

"You're my only comfort," said Soames suddenly, "and you go on like
this."

Fleur's heart began to beat.

"Like what, dear?"

Again Soames gave her a look which, but for the affection in it,
might have been called furtive.

"You know what I told you," he said.  "I don't choose to have
anything to do with that branch of our family."

"Yes, ducky, but I don't know why I shouldn't."

Soames turned on his heel.

"I'm not going into the reasons," he said; "you ought to trust me,
Fleur!"

The way he spoke those words affected Fleur, but she thought of Jon,
and was silent, tapping her foot against the wainscot.  Unconsciously
she had assumed a modern attitude, with one leg twisted in and out of
the other, with her chin on one bent wrist, her other arm across her
chest, and its hand hugging her elbow; there was not a line of her
that was not involuted, and yet--in spite of all--she retained a
certain grace.

"You knew my wishes," Soames went on, "and yet you stayed on there
four days.  And I suppose that boy came with you to-day."

Fleur kept her eyes on him.

"I don't ask you anything," said Soames; "I make no inquisition where
you're concerned."

Fleur suddenly stood up, leaning out at the window with her chin on
her hands.  The sun had sunk behind trees, the pigeons were perched,
quite still, on the edge of the dove-cot; the click of the billiard-
balls mounted, and a faint radiance shone out below where Jack
Cardigan had turned the light up.

"Will it make you any happier," she said suddenly, "if I promise you
not to see him for say--the next six weeks?" She was not prepared for
a sort of tremble in the blankness of his voice.

"Six weeks?  Six years--sixty years more like.  Don't delude
yourself, Fleur; don't delude yourself!"

Fleur turned in alarm.

"Father, what is it?"

Soames came close enough to see her face.

"Don't tell me," he said, "that you're foolish enough to have any
feeling beyond caprice.  That would be too much!"  And he laughed.

Fleur, who had never heard him laugh like that, thought: 'Then it is
deep!  Oh! what is it?'  And putting her hand through his arm she
said lightly:

"No, of course; caprice.  Only, I like my caprices and I don't like
yours, dear."

"Mine!" said Soames bitterly, and turned away.

The light outside had chilled, and threw a chalky whiteness on the
river.  The trees had lost all gaiety of colour.  She felt a sudden
hunger for Jon's face, for his hands, and the feel of his lips again
on hers.  And pressing her arms tight across her breast she forced
out a little light laugh.

"O la! la!  What a small fuss! as Profond would say.  Father, I don't
like that man."

She saw him stop, and take something out of his breast pocket.

"You don't?" he said.  "Why?"

"Nothing," murmured Fleur; "just caprice!"

"No," said Soames; "not caprice!" And he tore what was in his hands
across.  "You're right.  I don't like him either!"

"Look!" said Fleur softly.  "There he goes!  I hate his shoes; they
don't make any noise."

Down in the failing light Prosper Profond moved, his hands in his
side pockets, whistling softly in his beard; he stopped, and glanced
up at the sky, as if saying: "I don't think much of that small moon."

Fleur drew back.  "Isn't he a great cat?" she whispered; and the
sharp click of the billiard-balls rose, as if Jack Cardigan had
capped the cat, the moon, caprice, and tragedy with: "In off the
red!"

Monsieur Profond had resumed his stroll, to a teasing little tune in
his beard.  What was it?  Oh! yes, from "Rigoletto": "Donna a
mobile."  Just what he would think!  She squeezed her father's arm.

"Prowling!" she muttered, as he turned the corner of the house.  It
was past that disillusioned moment which divides the day and night-
still and lingering and warm, with hawthorn scent and lilac scent
clinging on the riverside air.  A blackbird suddenly burst out.  Jon
would be in London by now; in the Park perhaps, crossing the
Serpentine, thinking of her!  A little sound beside her made her turn
her eyes; her father was again tearing the paper in his hands.  Fleur
saw it was a cheque.

"I shan't sell him my Gauguin," he said.  "I don't know what your
aunt and Imogen see in him."

"Or Mother."

"Your mother!" said Soames.

'Poor Father!' she thought.  'He never looks happy--not really happy.
I don't want to make him worse, but of course I shall have to, when
Jon comes back.  Oh! well, sufficient unto the night!'

"I'm going to dress," she said.

In her room she had a fancy to put on her "freak" dress.  It was of
gold tissue with little trousers of the same, tightly drawn in at the
ankles, a page's cape slung from the shoulders, little gold shoes,
and a gold-winged Mercury helmet; and all over her were tiny gold
bells, especially on the helmet; so that if she shook her head she
pealed.  When she was dressed she felt quite sick because Jon could
not see her; it even seemed a pity that the sprightly young man
Michael Mont would not have a view.  But the gong had sounded, and
she went down.

She made a sensation in the drawing-room.  Winifred thought it "Most
amusing."  Imogen was enraptured.  Jack Cardigan called it
"stunning," "ripping," "topping," and "corking."

Monsieur Profond, smiling with his eyes, said: "That's a nice small
dress!"  Her mother, very handsome in black, sat looking at her, and
said nothing.  It remained for her father to apply the test of common
sense.  "What did you put on that thing for?  You're not going to
dance."

Fleur spun round, and the bells pealed.

"Caprice!"

Soames stared at her, and, turning away, gave his arm to Winifred.
Jack Cardigan took her mother.  Prosper Profond took Imogen.  Fleur
went in by herself, with her bells jingling....

The "small" moon had soon dropped down, and May night had fallen soft
and warm, enwrapping with its grape-bloom colour and its scents the
billion caprices, intrigues, passions, longings, and regrets of men
and women.  Happy was Jack Cardigan who snored into Imogen's white
shoulder, fit as a flea; or Timothy in his "mausoleum," too old for
anything but baby's slumber.  For so many lay awake, or dreamed,
teased by the criss-cross of the world.

The dew fell and the flowers closed; cattle grazed on in the river
meadows, feeling with their tongues for the grass they could not see;
and the sheep on the Downs lay quiet as stones.  Pheasants in the
tall trees of the Pangbourne woods, larks on their grassy nests above
the gravel-pit at Wansdon, swallows in the eaves at Robin Hill, and
the sparrows of Mayfair, all made a dreamless night of it, soothed by
the lack of wind.  The Mayfly filly, hardly accustomed to her new
quarters, scraped at her straw a little; and the few night-flitting
things--bats, moths, owls--were vigorous in the warm darkness; but
the peace of night lay in the brain of all day-time Nature,
colourless and still.  Men and women, alone, riding the hobby-horses
of anxiety or love, burned their wavering tapers of dream and thought
into the lonely hours.

Fleur, leaning out of her window, heard the hall clock's muffled
chime of twelve, the tiny splash of a fish, the sudden shaking of an
aspen's leaves in the puffs of breeze that rose along the river, the
distant rumble of a night train, and time and again the sounds which
none can put a name to in the darkness, soft obscure expressions of
uncatalogued emotions from man and beast, bird and machine, or,
maybe, from departed Forsytes, Darties, Cardigans, taking night
strolls back into a world which had once suited their embodied
spirits.  But Fleur heeded not these sounds; her spirit, far from
disembodied, fled with swift wing from railway-carriage to flowery
hedge, straining after Jon, tenacious of his forbidden image, and the
sound of his voice, which was taboo.  And she crinkled her nose,
retrieving from the perfume of the riverside night that moment when
his hand slipped between the mayflowers and her cheek.  Long she
leaned out in her freak dress, keen to burn her wings at life's
candle; while the moths brushed her cheeks on their pilgrimage to the
lamp on her dressing-table, ignorant that in a Forsyte's house there
is no open flame.  But at last even she felt sleepy, and, forgetting
her bells, drew quickly in.

Through the open window of his room, alongside Annette's, Soames,
wakeful too, heard their thin faint tinkle, as it might be shaken
from stars, or the dewdrops falling from a flower, if one could hear
such sounds.

'Caprice!' he thought.  'I can't tell.  She's wilful.  What shall I
do?  Fleur!'

And long into the "small" night he brooded.






PART II



I

MOTHER AND SON


To say that Jon Forsyte accompanied his mother to Spain unwillingly
would scarcely have been adequate.  He went as a well-natured dog
goes for a walk with its mistress, leaving a choice mutton-bone on
the lawn.  He went looking back at it.  Forsytes deprived of their
mutton-bones are wont to sulk.  But Jon had little sulkiness in his
composition.  He adored his mother, and it was his first travel.
Spain had become Italy by his simply saying: "I'd rather go to Spain,
Mum; you've been to Italy so many times; I'd like it new to both of
us."

The fellow was subtle besides being naive.  He never forgot that he
was going to shorten the proposed two months into six weeks, and must
therefore show no sign of wishing to do so.  For one with so enticing
a mutton-bone and so fixed an idea, he made a good enough travelling
companion, indifferent to where or when he arrived, superior to food,
and thoroughly appreciative of a country strange to the most
travelled Englishman.  Fleur's wisdom in refusing to write to him was
profound, for he reached each new place entirely without hope or
fever, and could concentrate immediate attention on the donkeys and
tumbling bells, the priests, patios, beggars, children, crowing
cocks, sombreros, cactus-hedges, old high white villages, goats,
olive-trees, greening plains, singing birds in tiny cages,
watersellers, sunsets, melons, mules, great churches, pictures, and
swimming grey-brown mountains of a fascinating land.

It was already hot, and they enjoyed an absence of their compatriots.
Jon, who, so far as he knew, had no blood in him which was not
English, was often innately unhappy in the presence of his own
countrymen.  He felt they had no nonsense about them, and took a more
practical view of things than himself.  He confided to his mother
that he must be an unsociable beast--it was jolly to be away from
everybody who could talk about the things people did talk about.  To
which Irene had replied simply:

"Yes, Jon, I know."

In this isolation he had unparalleled opportunities of appreciating
what few sons can apprehend, the whole-heartedness of a mother's
love.  Knowledge of something kept from her made him, no doubt,
unduly sensitive; and a Southern people stimulated his admiration for
her type of beauty, which he had been accustomed to hear called
Spanish, but which he now perceived to be no such thing.  Her beauty
was neither English, French, Spanish, nor Italian--it was special!
He appreciated, too, as never before, his mother's subtlety of
instinct.  He could not tell, for instance, whether she had noticed
his absorption in that Goya picture, "La Vendimia," or whether she
knew that he had slipped back there after lunch and again next
morning, to stand before it full half an hour, a second and third
time.  It was not Fleur, of course, but like enough to give him
heartache--so dear to lovers--remembering her standing at the foot of
his bed with her hand held above her head.  To keep a postcard
reproduction of this picture in his pocket and slip it out to look at
became for Jon one of those bad habits which soon or late disclose
themselves to eyes sharpened by love, fear, or jealousy.  And his
mother's were sharpened by all three.  In Granada he was fairly
caught, sitting on a sun-warmed stone bench in a little battlemented
garden on the Alhambra hill, whence he ought to have been looking at
the view.  His mother, he had thought, was examining the potted
stocks between the polled acacias, when her voice said:

"Is that your favourite Goya, Jon?"

He checked, too late, a movement such as he might have made at school
to conceal some surreptitious document, and answered: "Yes."

"It certainly is most charming; but I think I prefer the 'Quitasol'
Your father would go crazy about Goya; I don't believe he saw them
when he was in Spain in '92."

In '92--nine years before he had been born!  What had been the
previous existences of his father and his mother?  If they had a
right to share in his future, surely he had a right to share in their
pasts.  He looked up at her.  But something in her face--a look of
life hard-lived, the mysterious impress of emotions, experience, and
suffering-seemed, with its incalculable depth, its purchased
sanctity, to make curiosity impertinent.  His mother must have had a
wonderfully interesting life; she was so beautiful, and so--so--but
he could not frame what he felt about her.  He got up, and stood
gazing down at the town, at the plain all green with crops, and the
ring of mountains glamorous in sinking sunlight.  Her life was like
the past of this old Moorish city, full, deep, remote--his own life
as yet such a baby of a thing, hopelessly ignorant and innocent!
They said that in those mountains to the West, which rose sheer from
the blue-green plain, as if out of a sea, Phoenicians had dwelt--a
dark, strange, secret race, above the land!  His mother's life was as
unknown to him, as secret, as that Phoenician past was to the town
down there, whose cocks crowed and whose children played and
clamoured so gaily, day in, day out.  He felt aggrieved that she
should know all about him and he nothing about her except that she
loved him and his father, and was beautiful.  His callow ignorance--
he had not even had the advantage of the War, like nearly everybody
else!--made him small in his own eyes.

That night, from the balcony of his bedroom, he gazed down on the
roof of the town--as if inlaid with honeycomb of jet, ivory, and
gold; and, long after, he lay awake, listening to the cry of the
sentry as the hours struck, and forming in his head these lines:

     "Voice in the night crying, down in the old sleeping
     Spanish city darkened under her white stars!

     "What says the voice-its clear-lingering anguish?
     Just the watchman, telling his dateless tale of safety?
     Just a road-man, flinging to the moon his song?

     "No!  Tis one deprived, whose lover's heart is weeping,
     Just his cry: 'How long?'"

The word "deprived" seemed to him cold and unsatisfactory, but
"bereaved" was too final, and no other word of two syllables short-
long came to him, which would enable him to keep "whose lover's heart
is weeping."  It was past two by the time he had finished it, and
past three before he went to sleep, having said it over to himself at
least twenty-four times.  Next day he wrote it out and enclosed it in
one of those letters to Fleur which he always finished before he went
down, so as to have his mind free and companionable.

About noon that same day, on the tiled terrace of their hotel, he
felt a sudden dull pain in the back of his head, a queer sensation in
the eyes, and sickness.  The sun had touched him too affectionately.
The next three days were passed in semi-darkness, and a dulled,
aching indifference to all except the feel of ice on his forehead and
his mother's smile.  She never moved from his room, never relaxed her
noiseless vigilance, which seemed to Jon angelic.  But there were
moments when he was extremely sorry for himself, and wished terribly
that Fleur could see him.  Several times he took a poignant imaginary
leave of her and of the earth, tears oozing out of his eyes.  He even
prepared the message he would send to her by his mother--who would
regret to her dying day that she had ever sought to separate them--
his poor mother!  He was not slow, however, in perceiving that he had
now his excuse for going home.

Toward half-past six each evening came a "gasgacha" of bells--a
cascade of tumbling chimes, mounting from the city below and falling
back chime on chime.  After listening to them on the fourth day he
said suddenly:

"I'd like to be back in England, Mum, the sun's too hot."

"Very well, darling.  As soon as you're fit to travel"  And at once
he felt better, and--meaner.

They had been out five weeks when they turned toward home.  Jon's
head was restored to its pristine clarity, but he was confined to a
hat lined by his mother with many layers of orange and green silk and
he still walked from choice in the shade.  As the long struggle of
discretion between them drew to its close, he wondered more and more
whether she could see his eagerness to get back to that which she had
brought him away from.  Condemned by Spanish Providence to spend a
day in Madrid between their trains, it was but natural to go again to
the Prado.  Jon was elaborately casual this time before his Goya
girl.  Now that he was going back to her, he could afford a lesser
scrutiny.  It was his mother who lingered before the picture, saying:

"The face and the figure of the girl are exquisite."

Jon heard her uneasily.  Did she understand?  But he felt once more
that he was no match for her in self-control and subtlety.  She
could, in some supersensitive way, of which he had not the secret,
feel the pulse of his thoughts; she knew by instinct what he hoped
and feared and wished.  It made him terribly uncomfortable and
guilty, having, beyond most boys, a conscience.  He wished she would
be frank with him, he almost hoped for an open struggle.  But none
came, and steadily, silently, they travelled north.  Thus did he
first learn how much better than men women play a waiting game.  In
Paris they had again to pause for a day.  Jon was grieved because it
lasted two, owing to certain matters in connection with a dressmaker;
as if his mother, who looked beautiful in anything, had any need of
dresses!  The happiest moment of his travel was that when he stepped
on to the Folkestone boat.

Standing by the bulwark rail, with her arm in his, she said

"I'm afraid you haven't enjoyed it much, Jon.  But you've been very
sweet to me."

Jon squeezed her arm.

"Oh I yes, I've enjoyed it awfully-except for my head lately."

And now that the end had come, he really had, feeling a sort of
glamour over the past weeks--a kind of painful pleasure, such as he
had tried to screw into those lines about the voice in the night
crying; a feeling such as he had known as a small boy listening
avidly to Chopin, yet wanting to cry.  And he wondered why it was
that he couldn't say to her quite simply what she had said to him:

"You were very sweet to me."  Odd--one never could be nice and
natural like that!  He substituted the words: "I expect we shall be
sick."

They were, and reached London somewhat attenuated, having been away
six weeks and two days, without a single allusion to the subject
which had hardly ever ceased to occupy their minds.




II

FATHERS AND DAUGHTERS


Deprived of his wife and son by the Spanish adventure, Jolyon found
the solitude at Robin Hill intolerable.  A philosopher when he has
all that he wants is different from a philosopher when he has not.
Accustomed, however, to the idea, if not to the reality of
resignation, he would perhaps have faced it out but for his daughter
June.  He was a "lame duck" now, and on her conscience.  Having
achieved--momentarily--the rescue of an etcher in low circumstances,
which she happened to have in hand, she appeared at Robin Hill a
fortnight after Irene and Jon had gone.  June was living now in a
tiny house with a big studio at Chiswick.  A Forsyte of the best
period, so far as the lack of responsibility was concerned, she had
overcome the difficulty of a reduced income in a manner satisfactory
to herself and her father.  The rent of the Gallery off Cork Street
which he had bought for her and her increased income tax happening to
balance, it had been quite simpl--she no longer paid him the rent.
The Gallery might be expected now at any time, after eighteen years
of barren usufruct, to pay its way, so that she was sure her father
would not feel it.  Through this device she still had twelve hundred
a year, and by reducing what she ate, and, in place of two Belgians
in a poor way, employing one Austrian in a poorer, practically the
same surplus for the relief of genius.  After three days at Robin
Hill she carried her father back with her to Town.  In those three
days she had stumbled on the secret he had kept for two years, and
had instantly decided to cure him.  She knew, in fact, the very man.
He had done wonders with.  Paul Post--that painter a little in
advance of Futurism; and she was impatient with her father because
his eyebrows would go up, and because he had heard of neither.  Of
course, if he hadn't "faith" he would never get well!  It was absurd
not to have faith in the man who had healed Paul Post so that he had
only just relapsed, from having overworked, or overlived, himself
again.  The great thing about this healer was that he relied on
Nature.  He had made a special study of the symptoms of Nature--when
his patient failed in any natural symptom he supplied the poison
which caused it--and there you were!  She was extremely hopeful.  Her
father had clearly not been living a natural life at Robin Hill, and
she intended to provide the symptoms.  He was--she felt--out of touch
with the times, which was not natural; his heart wanted stimulating.
In the little Chiswick house she and the Austrian--a grateful soul,
so devoted to June for rescuing her that she was in danger of decease
from overwork--stimulated Jolyon in all sorts of ways, preparing him
for his cure.  But they could not keep his eyebrows down; as, for
example, when the Austrian woke him at eight o'clock just as he was
going to sleep, or June took The Times away from him, because it was
unnatural to read "that stuff" when he ought to be taking an interest
in "life."  He never failed, indeed, to be astonished at her
resource, especially in the evenings.  For his benefit, as she
declared, though he suspected that she also got something out of it,
she assembled the Age so far as it was satellite to genius; and with
some solemnity it would move up and down the studio before him in the
Fox-trot, and that more mental form of dancing--the One-step--which
so pulled against the music, that Jolyon's eyebrows would be almost
lost in his hair from wonder at the strain it must impose on the
dancer's will-power.  Aware that, hung on the line in the Water
Colour Society, he was a back number to those with any pretension to
be called artists, he would sit in the darkest corner he could find,
and wonder about rhythm, on which so long ago he had been raised.
And when June brought some girl or young man up to him, he would rise
humbly to their level so far as that was possible, and think: 'Dear
me!  This is very dull for them!'  Having his father's perennial
sympathy with Youth, he used to get very tired from entering into
their points of view.  But it was all stimulating, and he never
failed in admiration of his daughter's indomitable spirit.  Even
genius itself attended these gatherings now and then, with its nose
on one side; and June always introduced it to her father.  This, she
felt, was exceptionally good for him, for genius was a natural
symptom he had never had--fond as she was of him.

Certain as a man can be that she was his own daughter, he often
wondered whence she got herself--her red-gold hair, now greyed into a
special colour; her direct, spirited face, so different from his own
rather folded and subtilised countenance, her little lithe figure,
when he and most of the Forsytes were tall.  And he would dwell on
the origin of species, and debate whether she might be Danish or
Celtic.  Celtic, he thought, from her pugnacity, and her taste in
fillets and djibbahs.  It was not too much to say that he preferred
her to the Age with which she was surrounded, youthful though, for
the greater part, it was.  She took, however, too much interest in
his teeth, for he still had some of those natural symptoms.  Her
dentist at once found "Staphylococcus aureus present in pure culture"
(which might cause boils, of course), and wanted to take out all the
teeth he had and supply him with two complete sets of unnatural
symptoms.  Jolyon's native tenacity was roused, and in the studio
that evening he developed his objections.  He had never had any
boils, and his own teeth would last his time.  Of course--June
admitted--they would last his time if he didn't have them out!  But
if he had more teeth he would have a better heart and his time would
be longer.  His recalcitrance--she said--was a symptom of his whole
attitude; he was taking it lying down.  He ought to be fighting.
When was he going to see the man who had cured Paul Post?  Jolyon was
very sorry, but the fact was he was not going to see him.  June
chafed.  Pondridge--she said--the healer, was such a fine man, and he
had such difficulty in making two ends meet, and getting his theories
recognised.  It was just such indifference and prejudice as her
father manifested which was keeping him back.  It would be so
splendid for both of them!

"I perceive," said Jolyon, "that you are trying to kill two birds
with one stone."

"To cure, you mean!" cried June.

"My dear, it's the same thing."

June protested.  It was unfair to say that without a trial.

Jolyon thought he might not have the chance, of saying it after.

"Dad!" cried June, "you're hopeless."

"That," said Jolyon, "is a fact, but I wish to remain hopeless as
long as possible.  I shall let sleeping dogs lie, my child.  They are
quiet at present."

"That's not giving science a chance," cried June.  "You've no idea
how devoted Pondridge is.  He puts his science before everything."

"Just," replied Jolyon, puffing the mild cigarette to which he was
reduced, "as Mr. Paul Post puts his art, eh?  Art for Art's sake--
Science for the sake of Science.  I know those enthusiastic egomaniac
gentry.  They vivisect you without blinking.  I'm enough of a Forsyte
to give them the go-by, June."

"Dad," said June, "if you only knew how old-fashioned that sounds!
Nobody can afford to be half-hearted nowadays."

"I'm afraid," murmured Jolyon, with his smile, "that's the only
natural symptom with which Mr. Pondridge need not supply me.  We are
born to be extreme or to be moderate, my dear; though, if you'll
forgive my saying so, half the people nowadays who believe they're
extreme are really very moderate.  I'm getting on as well as I can
expect, and I must leave it at that."

June was silent, having experienced in her time the inexorable
character of her father's amiable obstinacy so far as his own freedom
of action was concerned.

How he came to let her know why Irene had taken Jon to Spain puzzled
Jolyon, for he had little confidence in her discretion.  After she
had brooded on the news, it brought a rather sharp discussion, during
which he perceived to the full the fundamental opposition between her
active temperament and his wife's passivity.  He even gathered that a
little soreness still remained from that generation-old struggle
between them over the body of Philip Bosinney, in which the passive
had so signally triumphed over the active principle.

According to June, it was foolish and even cowardly to hide the past
from Jon.  Sheer opportunism, she called it.

"Which," Jolyon put in mildly, "is the working principle of real
life, my dear."

"Oh!" cried June, "you don't really defend her for not telling Jon,
Dad.  If it were left to you, you would."

"I might, but simply because I know he must find out, which will be
worse than if we told him."

"Then why don't you tell him?  It's just sleeping dogs again."

"My dear," said Jolyon, "I wouldn't for the world go against Irene's
instinct.  He's her boy."

"Yours too," cried June.

"What is a man's instinct compared with a mother's?"

"Well, I think it's very weak of you."

"I dare say," said Jolyon, "I dare say."

And that was all she got from him; but the matter rankled in her
brain.  She could not bear sleeping dogs.  And there stirred in her a
tortuous impulse to push the matter toward decision.  Jon ought to be
told, so that either his feeling might be nipped in the bud, or,
flowering in spite of the past, come to fruition.  And she determined
to see Fleur, and judge for herself.  When June determined on
anything, delicacy became a somewhat minor consideration.  After all,
she was Soames' cousin, and they were both interested in pictures.
She would go and tell him that he ought to buy a Paul Post, or
perhaps a piece of sculpture by Boris Strumolowski, and of course she
would say nothing to her father.  She went on the following Sunday,
looking so determined that she had some difficulty in getting a cab
at Reading station.  The river country was lovely in those days of
her own month, and June ached at its loveliness.  She who had passed
through this life without knowing what union was had a love of
natural beauty which was almost madness.  And when she came to that
choice spot where Soames had pitched his tent, she dismissed her cab,
because, business over, she wanted to revel in the bright water and
the woods.  She appeared at his front door, therefore, as a mere
pedestrian, and sent in her card.  It was in June's character to know
that when her nerves were fluttering she was doing something worth
while.  If one's nerves did not flutter, she was taking the line of
least resistance, and knew that nobleness was not obliging her.  She
was conducted to a drawing-room, which, though not in her style,
showed every mark of fastidious elegance.  Thinking, 'Too much taste-
-too many knick-knacks,' she saw in an old lacquer-framed mirror the
figure of a girl coming in from the verandah.  Clothed in white, and
holding some white roses in her hand, she had, reflected in that
silvery-grey pool of glass, a vision-like appearance, as if a pretty
ghost had come out of the green garden.

"How do you do?" said June, turning round.  "I'm a cousin of your
father's."

"Oh, yes; I saw you in that confectioner's."

"With my young stepbrother.  Is your father in?"

"He will be directly.  He's only gone for a little walk."

June slightly narrowed her blue eyes, and lifted her decided chin.

"Your name's Fleur, isn't it?  I've heard of you from Holly.  What do
you think of Jon?"

The girl lifted the roses in her hand, looked at them, and answered
calmly:

"He's quite a nice boy."

"Not a bit like Holly or me, is he?"

"Not a bit."

'She's cool,' thought June.

And suddenly the girl said: "I wish you'd tell me why our families
don't get on?"

Confronted with the question she had advised her father to answer,
June was silent; whether because this girl was trying to get
something out of her, or simply because what one would do
theoretically is not always what one will do when
it comes to the point.

"You know," said the girl, "the surest way to make people find out
the worst is to keep them ignorant.  My father's told me it was a
quarrel about property.  But I don't believe it; we've both got
heaps.  They wouldn't have been so bourgeois as all that."

June flushed.  The word applied to her grandfather and father
offended her.

"My grandfather," she said, "was very generous, and my father is,
too; neither of them was in the least bourgeois."

"Well, what was it then?" repeated the girl: Conscious that this
young Forsyte meant having what she wanted, June at once determined
to prevent her, and to get something for herself instead.

"Why do you want to know?"

The girl smelled at her roses.  "I only want to know because they
won't tell me."

"Well, it was about property, but there's more than one kind."

"That makes it worse.  Now I really must know."

June's small and resolute face quivered.  She was wearing a round
cap, and her hair had fluffed out under it.  She looked quite young
at that moment, rejuvenated by encounter.

"You know," she said, "I saw you drop your handkerchief.  Is there
anything between you and Jon?  Because, if so, you'd better drop that
too."

The girl grew paler, but she smiled.

"If there were, that isn't the way to make me."

At the gallantry of that reply, June held out her hand.

"I like you; but I don't like your father; I never have.  We may as
well be frank."

"Did you come down to tell him that?"

June laughed.  "No; I came down to see you."

"How delightful of you."

This girl could fence.

"I'm two and a half times your age," said June, "but I quite
sympathize.  It's horrid not to have one's own way."

The girl smiled again.  "I really think you might tell me."

How the child stuck to her point

"It's not my secret.  But I'll see what I can do, because I think
both you and Jon ought to be told.  And now I'll say good-bye."

"Won't you wait and see Father?"

June shook her head.  "How can I get over to the other side?"

"I'll row you across."

"Look!" said June impulsively, "next time you're in London, come and
see me.  This is where I live.  I generally have young people in the
evening.  But I shouldn't tell your father that you're coming."

The girl nodded.

Watching her scull the skiff across, June thought: 'She's awfully
pretty and well made.  I never thought Soames would have a daughter
as  pretty as this.  She and Jon would make a lovely couple.

The instinct to couple, starved within herself,  was always at work
in June.  She stood watching  Fleur row back; the girl took her hand
off a scull  to wave farewell, and June walked languidly on between
the meadows and the river, with an ache in her heart.  Youth to
youth, like the dragon-flies chasing each other, and love like the
sun warming them through and through.  Her  youth!  So long ago--when
Phil and she--And since?  Nothing--no one had been quite what she had
wanted.  And so she had missed it all.  But  what a coil was round
those two young things, if they really were in love, as Holly would
have it--as her father, and Irene, and Soames himself seemed to
dread.  What a coil, and what a barrier!  And the itch for the
future, the contempt, as it were, for what was overpast, which forms
the active principle, moved in the heart of one who ever believed
that what one wanted was more important than what other people did
not want.  From the bank, awhile, in the warm summer stillness, she
watched the water-lily plants and willow leaves, the fishes rising;
sniffed the scent of grass and meadow-sweet, wondering how she could
force everybody to be happy.  Jon and Fleur!  Two little lame ducks--
charming callow yellow little ducks!  A great pity!  Surely something
could be done!  One must not take such situations lying down.  She
walked on, and reached a station, hot and cross.

That evening, faithful to the impulse toward direct action, which
made many people avoid her, she said to her father:

"Dad, I've been down to see young Fleur.  I think she's very
attractive.  It's no good hiding our heads under our wings, is it?"

The startled Jolyon set down his barley-water, and began crumbling
his bread.

"It's what you appear to be doing," he said.  "Do you realise whose
daughter she is?"

"Can't the dead past bury its dead?"

Jolyon rose.

"Certain things can never be buried."

"I disagree," said June.  "It's that which stands in the way of all
happiness and progress.  You don't understand the Age, Dad.  It's got
no use for outgrown things.  Why do you think it matters so terribly
that Jon should know about his mother?  Who pays any attention to
that sort of thing now?  The marriage laws are just as they were when
Soames and Irene couldn't get a divorce, and you had to come in.
We've moved, and they haven't.  So nobody cares.  Marriage without a
decent chance of relief is only a sort of slave-owning; people
oughtn't to own each other.  Everybody sees that now.  If Irene broke
such laws, what does it matter?"

"It's not for me to disagree there," said Jolyon; "but that's all
quite beside the mark.  This is a matter of human feeling."

"Of course it is," cried June, "the human feeling of those two young
things."

"My dear," said Jolyon with gentle exasperation; "you're talking
nonsense."

"I'm not.  If they prove to be really fond of each other, why should
they be made unhappy because of the past?"

"You haven't lived that past.  I have--through the feelings of my
wife; through my own nerves and my imagination, as only one who is
devoted can."

June, too, rose, and began to wander restlessly.

"If," she said suddenly, "she were the daughter of Philip Bosinney, I
could understand you better.  Irene loved him, she never loved
Soames."

Jolyon uttered a deep sound-the sort of noise an Italian peasant
woman utters to her mule.  His heart had begun beating furiously, but
he paid no attention to it, quite carried away by his feelings.

"That shows how little you understand.  Neither I nor Jon, if I know
him, would mind a love-past.  It's the brutality of a union without
love.  This girl is the daughter of the man who once owned Jon's
mother as a negro-slave was owned.  You can't lay that ghost; don't
try to, June!  It's asking us to see Jon joined to the flesh and
blood of the man who possessed Jon's mother against her will.  It's
no good mincing words; I want it clear once for all.  And now I
mustn't talk any more, or I shall have to sit up with this all
night."  And, putting his hand over his heart, Jolyon turned his back
on his daughter and stood looking at the river Thames.

June, who by nature never saw a hornet's nest until she had put her
head into it, was seriously alarmed.  She came and slipped her arm
through his.  Not convinced that he was right, and she herself wrong,
because that was not natural to her, she was yet profoundly impressed
by the obvious fact that the subject was very bad for him.  She
rubbed her cheek against his shoulder, and said nothing.

After taking her elderly cousin across, Fleur did not land at once,
but pulled in among the reeds, into the sunshine.  The peaceful
beauty of the afternoon seduced for a little one not much given to
the vague and poetic.  In the field beyond the bank where her skiff
lay up, a machine drawn by a grey horse was turning an early field of
hay.  She watched the grass cascading over and behind the light
wheels with fascination--it looked so cool and fresh.  The click and
swish blended with the rustle of the willows and the poplars, and the
cooing of a wood-pigeon, in a true river song.  Alongside, in the
deep green water, weeds, like yellow snakes, were writhing and nosing
with the current; pied cattle on the farther side stood in the shade
lazily swishing their tails.  It was an afternoon to dream.  And she
took out Jon's letters--not flowery effusions, but haunted in their
recital of things seen and done by a longing very agreeable to her,
and all ending "Your devoted J."  Fleur was not sentimental, her
desires were ever concrete and concentrated, but what poetry there
was in the daughter of Soames and Annette had certainly in those
weeks of waiting gathered round her memories of Jon.  They all
belonged to grass and blossom, flowers and running water.  She
enjoyed him in the scents absorbed by her crinkling nose.  The stars
could persuade her that she was standing beside him in the centre of
the map of Spain; and of an early morning the dewy cobwebs, the hazy
sparkle and promise of the day down in the garden, were Jon
personified to her.

Two white swans came majestically by, while she was reading his
letters, followed by their brood of six young swans in a line, with
just so much water between each tail and head, a flotilla of grey
destroyers.  Fleur thrust her letters back, got out her sculls, and
pulled up to the landing-stage.  Crossing the lawn, she wondered
whether she should tell her father of June's visit.  If he learned of
it from the butler, he might think it odd if she did not.  It gave
her, too, another chance to startle out of him the reason of the
feud.  She went, therefore, up the road to meet him.

Soames had gone to look at a patch of ground on which the Local
Authorities were proposing to erect a Sanatorium for people with weak
lungs.  Faithful to his native individualism, he took no part in
local affairs, content to pay the rates which were always going up.
He could not, however, remain indifferent to this new and dangerous
scheme.  The site was not half a mile from his own house.  He was
quite of opinion that the country should stamp out tuberculosis; but
this was not the place.  It should be done farther away.  He took,
indeed, an attitude common to all true Forsytes, that disability of
any sort in other people was not his affair, and the State should do
its business without prejudicing in any way the natural advantages
which he had acquired or inherited.  Francie, the most free-spirited
Forsyte of his generation (except perhaps that fellow Jolyon) had
once asked him in her malicious way: "Did you ever see the name
Forsyte in a subscription list, Soames?  "That was as it might be,
but a Sanatorium would depreciate the neighbourhood, and he should
certainly sign the petition which was being got up against it.
Returning with this decision fresh within him, he saw Fleur coming.

She was showing him more affection of late, and the quiet time down
here with her in this summer weather had been making him feel quite
young; Annette was always running up to Town for one thing or
another, so that he had Fleur to himself almost as much as he could
wish.  To be sure, young Mont had formed a habit of appearing on his
motor-cycle almost every other day.  Thank goodness, the young fellow
had shaved off his half-toothbrushes, and no longer looked like a
mountebank!  With a girl friend of Fleur's who was staying in the
house, and a neighbouring youth or so, they made two couples after
dinner, in the hall, to the music of the electric pianola, which
performed Fox-trots unassisted, with a surprised shine on its
expressive surface.  Annette, even, now and then passed gracefully up
and down in the arms of one or other of the young men.  And Soames,
coming to the drawing-room door, would lift his nose a little
sideways, and watch them, waiting to catch a smile from Fleur; then
move back to his chair by the drawing-room hearth, to peruse The
Times or some other collector's price list.  To his ever-anxious eyes
Fleur showed no signs of remembering that caprice of hers.

When she reached him on the dusty road, he slipped his hand within
her arm.

"Who, do you think, has been to see you, Dad?  She couldn't wait!
Guess!"

"I never guess," said Soames uneasily.  "Who?"

"Your cousin, June Forsyte."

Quite unconsciously Soames gripped her arm.  "What did she want?"

"I don't know.  But it was rather breaking through the feud, wasn't
it?"

"Feud?  What feud?"

"The one that exists in your imagination, dear."

Soames dropped her arm.  Was she mocking, or trying to draw him on?

"I suppose she wanted me to buy a picture," he said at last.

"I don't think so.  Perhaps it was just family affection."

"She's only a first cousin once removed," muttered Soames.

"And the daughter of your enemy."

"What d'you mean by that?"

"I beg your pardon, dear; I thought he was."

"Enemy!" repeated Soames.  "It's ancient history.  I don't know where
you get your notions."

"From June Forsyte."

It had come to her as an inspiration that if he thought she knew, or
were on the edge of knowledge, he would tell her.

Soames was startled, but she had underrated his caution and tenacity.

"If you know," he said coldly, "why do you plague me?"

Fleur saw that she had overreached herself.

"I don't want to plague you, darling.  As you say, why want to know
more?  Why want to know anything of that 'small' mystery--Je m'en
fiche, as Profond says?"

"That chap!" said Soames profoundly.

That chap, indeed, played a considerable, if invisible, part this
summer--for he had not turned up again.  Ever since the Sunday when
Fleur had drawn attention to him prowling on the lawn, Soames had
thought of him a good deal, and always in connection with Annette,
for no reason, except that she was looking handsomer than for some
time past.  His possessive instinct, subtle, less formal, more
elastic since the War, kept all misgiving underground.  As one looks
on some American river, quiet and pleasant, knowing that an alligator
perhaps is lying in the mud with his snout just raised and
indistinguishable from a snag of wood--so Soames looked on the river
of his own existence, subconscious of Monsieur Profond, refusing to
see more than the suspicion of his snout.  He had at this epoch in
his life practically all he wanted, and was as nearly happy as his
nature would permit.  His senses were at rest; his affections found
all the vent they needed in his daughter; his collection was well
known, his money well invested; his health excellent, save for a
touch of liver now and again; he had not yet begun to worry seriously
about what would happen after death, inclining to think that nothing
would happen.  He resembled one of his own gilt-edged securities, and
to knock the gilt off by seeing anything he could avoid seeing would
be, he felt instinctively, perverse and retrogressive.  Those two
crumpled rose-leaves, Fleur's caprice and Monsieur Profond's snout,
would level away if he lay on them industriously.

That evening Chance, which visits the lives of even the best-invested
Forsytes, put a clue into Fleur's hands.  Her father came down to
dinner without a handkerchief, and had occasion to blow his nose.

"I'll get you one, dear," she had said, and ran upstairs.  In the
sachet where she sought for it--an old sachet of very faded silk--
there were two compartments: one held handkerchiefs; the other was
buttoned, and contained something flat and hard.  By some childish
impulse Fleur unbuttoned it.  There was a frame and in it a
photograph of herself as a little girl.  She gazed at it, fascinated,
as one is by one's own presentment.  It slipped under her fidgeting
thumb, and she saw that another photograph was behind.  She pressed
her own down further, and perceived a face, which she seemed to know,
of a young woman, very good-looking, in a very old style of evening
dress.  Slipping her own photograph up over it again, she took out a
handkerchief and went down.  Only on the stairs did she identify that
face.  Surely--surely Jon's mother!  The conviction came as a shock.
And she stood still in a flurry of thought.  Why, of course!  Jon's
father had married the woman her father had wanted to marry, had
cheated him out of her, perhaps.  Then, afraid of showing by her
manner that she had lighted on his secret, she refused to think
further, and, shaking out the silk handkerchief, entered the dining-
room.

"I chose the softest, Father."

"H'm!" said Soames; "I only use those after a cold.  Never mind!"

That evening passed for Fleur in putting two and two together;
recalling the look on her father's face in the confectioner's shop--a
look strange and coldly intimate, a queer look.  He must have loved
that woman very much to have kept her photograph all this time, in
spite of having lost her.  Unsparing and matter-of-fact, her mind
darted to his relations with her own mother.  Had he ever really
loved her?  She thought not.  Jon was the son of the woman he had
really loved.  Surely, then, he ought not to mind his daughter loving
him; it only wanted getting used to.  And a sigh of sheer relief was
caught in the folds of her nightgown slipping over her head.




III

MEETINGS


Youth only recognises Age by fits and starts.  Jon, for one, had
never really seen his father's age till he came back from Spain.  The
face of the fourth Jolyon, worn by waiting, gave him quite a shock--
it looked so wan and old.  His father's mask had been forced awry by
the emotion of the meeting, so that the boy suddenly realised how
much he must have felt their absence.  He summoned to his aid the
thought: 'Well, I didn't want to go!'  It was out of date for Youth
to defer to Age.  But Jon was by no means typically modern.  His
father had always been "so jolly" to him, and to feel that one meant
to begin again at once the conduct which his father had suffered six
weeks' loneliness to cure was not agreeable.

At the question, "Well, old man, how did the great Goya strike you?"
his conscience pricked him badly.  The great Goya only existed
because he had created a face which resembled Fleur's.

On the night of their return, he went to bed full of compunction; but
awoke full of anticipation.  It was only the fifth of July, and no
meeting was fixed with Fleur until the ninth.  He was to have three
days at home before going back to farm.  Somehow he must contrive to
see her!

In the lives of men an inexorable rhythm, caused by the need for
trousers, not even the fondest parents can deny.  On the second day,
therefore, Jon went to Town, and having satisfied his conscience by
ordering what was indispensable in Conduit Street, turned his face
toward Piccadilly.  Stratton Street, where her Club was, adjoined
Devonshire House.  It would be the merest chance that she should be
at her Club.  But he dawdled down Bond Street with a beating heart,
noticing the superiority of all other young men to himself.  They
wore their clothes with such an air; they had assurance; they were
old.  He was suddenly overwhelmed by the conviction that Fleur must
have forgotten him.  Absorbed in his own feeling for her all these
weeks, he had mislaid that possibility.  The corners of his mouth
drooped, his hands felt clammy.  Fleur with the pick of youth at the
beck of her smile-Fleur incomparable!  It was an evil moment.  Jon,
however, had a great idea that one must be able to face anything.
And he braced himself with that dour refection in front of a bric-a-
brac shop.  At this high-water mark of what was once the London
season, there was nothing to mark it out from any other except a grey
top hat or two, and the sun.  Jon moved on, and turning the corner
into Piccadilly, ran into Val Dartie moving toward the Iseeum Club,
to which he had just been elected.

"Hallo!  young man!  Where are you off to?"

Jon gushed.  "I've just been to my tailor's."

Val looked him up and down.  "That's good!  I'm going in here to
order some cigarettes; then come and have some lunch."

Jon thanked him.  He might get news of her from Val!

The condition of England, that nightmare of its Press and Public men,
was seen in different perspective within the tobacconist's which they
now entered.

"Yes, sir; precisely the cigarette I used to supply your father with.
Bless me!  Mr. Montague Dartie was a customer here from--let me see--
the year Melton won the Derby.  One of my very best customers he
was."  A faint smile illumined the tobacconist's face.  "Many's the
tip he's given me, to be sure!  I suppose he took a couple of hundred
of these every week, year in, year out, and never changed his
cigarette.  Very affable gentleman, brought me a lot of custom.  I
was sorry he met with that accident.  One misses an old customer like
him."

Val smiled.  His father's decease had closed an account which had
been running longer, probably, than any other; and in a ring of smoke
puffed out from that time-honoured cigarette he seemed to see again
his father's face, dark, good-looking, moustachioed, a little puffy,
in the only halo it had earned.  His father had his fame here,
anyway--a man who smoked two hundred cigarettes a week, who could
give tips, and run accounts for ever!  To his tobacconist a hero!
Even that was some distinction to inherit!

"I pay cash," he said; "how much?"

"To his son, sir, and cash--ten and six.  I shall never forget Mr.
Montague Dartie.  I've known him stand talkin' to me half an hour.
We don't get many like him now, with everybody in such a hurry.  The
War was bad for manners, sir--it was bad for manners.  You were in
it, I see."

"No," said Val, tapping his knee, "I got this in the war before.
Saved my life, I expect.  Do you want any cigarettes, Jon?"

Rather ashamed, Jon murmured, "I don't smoke, you know," and saw the
tobacconist's lips twisted, as if uncertain whether to say "Good
God!" or "Now's your chance, sir!"

"That's right," said Val; "keep off it while you can.  You'll want it
when you take a knock.  This is really the same tobacco, then?"

"Identical, sir; a little dearer, that's all.  Wonderful staying
power--the British Empire, I always say."

"Send me down a hundred a week to this address, and invoice it
monthly.  Come on, Jon."

Jon entered the Iseeum with curiosity.  Except to lunch now and then
at the Hotch-Potch with his father, he had never been in a London
Club.  The Iseeum, comfortable and unpretentious, did not move, could
not, so long as George Forsyte sat on its Committee, where his
culinary acumen was almost the controlling force.  The Club had made
a stand against the newly rich, and it had taken all George Forsyte's
prestige, and praise of him as a "good sportsman," to bring in
Prosper Profond.

The two were lunching together when the half-brothers-in-law entered
the dining-room, and attracted by George's forefinger, sat down at
their table, Val with his shrewd eyes and charming smile, Jon with
solemn lips and an attractive shyness in his glance.  There was an
air of privilege around that corner table, as though past masters
were eating there.  Jon was fascinated by the hypnotic atmosphere.
The waiter, lean in the chaps, pervaded with such free-masonical
deference.  He seemed to hang on George Forsyte's lips, to watch the
gloat in his eye with a kind of sympathy, to follow the movements of
the heavy club-marked silver fondly.  His liveried arm and
confidential voice alarmed Jon, they came so secretly over his
shoulder.

Except for George's "Your grandfather tipped me once; he was a deuced
good judge of a cigar!" neither he nor the other past master took any
notice of him, and he was grateful for this.  The talk was all about
the breeding, points, and prices of horses, and he listened to it
vaguely at first, wondering how it was possible to retain so much
knowledge in a head.  He could not take his eyes off the dark past
master--what he said was so deliberate and discouraging--such heavy,
queer, smiled-out words.  Jon was thinking of butterflies, when he
heard him say:

"I want to see Mr. Soames Forsyde take an interest in 'orses."

"Old Soames!  He's too dry a file!"

With all his might Jon tried not to grow red, while the dark past
master went on.

"His daughter's an attractive small girl.  Mr. Soames Forsyde is a
bit old-fashioned.  I want to see him have a pleasure some day."
George Forsyte grinned.

"Don't you worry; he's not so miserable as he looks.  He'll never
show he's enjoying anything--they might try and take it from him.
Old Soames!  Once bit, twice shy!"

"Well, Jon," said Val, hastily, "if you've finished, we'll go and
have coffee."

"Who were those?" Jon asked, on the stairs.  "I didn't quite---"

"Old George Forsyte is a first cousin of your father's and of my
Uncle Soames.  He's always been here.  The other chap, Profond, is a
queer fish.  I think he's hanging round Soames' wife, if you ask me!"

Jon looked at him, startled.  "But that's awful," he said: "I mean--
for Fleur."

"Don't suppose Fleur cares very much; she's very up-to-date."

"Her mother!"

"You're very green, Jon."

Jon grew red.  "Mothers," he stammered angrily, "are different."

"You're right," said Val suddenly; "but things aren't what they were
when I was your age.  There's a 'To-morrow we die' feeling.  That's
what old George meant about my Uncle Soames.  He doesn't mean to die
to-morrow."

Jon said, quickly: "What's the matter between him and my father?"

"Stable secret, Jon.  Take my advice, and bottle up.  You'll do no
good by knowing.  Have a liqueur?"

Jon shook his head.

"I hate the way people keep things from one," he muttered, "and then
sneer at one for being green."

"Well, you can ask Holly.  If she won't tell you, you'll believe it's
for your own good, I suppose."

Jon got up.  "I must go now; thanks awfully for the lunch."

Val smiled up at him half-sorry, and yet amused.  The boy looked so
upset.

"All right!  See you on Friday."

"I don't know," murmured Jon.

And he did not.  This conspiracy of silence made him desperate.  It
was humiliating to be treated like a child!  He retraced his moody
steps to Stratton Street.  But he would go to her Club now, and find
out the worst!  To his enquiry the reply was that Miss Forsyte was
not in the Club. She might be in perhaps later.  She was often in on
Monday--they could not say.  Jon said he would call again, and,
crossing into the Green Park, flung himself down under a tree.  The
sun was bright, and a breeze fluttered the leaves of the young lime-
tree beneath which he lay; but his heart ached.  Such darkness seemed
gathered round his happiness.  He heard Big Ben chime "Three" above
the traffic.  The sound moved something in him, and, taking out a
piece of paper, he began to scribble on it with a pencil.  He had
jotted a stanza, and was searching the grass for another verse, when
something hard touched his shoulder-a green parasol.  There above him
stood Fleur!

"They told me you'd been, and were coming back.  So I thought you
might be out here; and you are--it's rather wonderful!"

"Oh, Fleur!  I thought you'd have forgotten me."

"When I told you that I shouldn't!"

Jon seized her arm.

"It's too much luck!  Let's get away from this side."  He almost
dragged her on through that too thoughtfully regulated Park, to find
some cover where they could sit and hold each other's hands.

"Hasn't anybody cut in?" he said, gazing round at her lashes, in
suspense above her cheeks.

"There is a young idiot, but he doesn't count."

Jon felt a twitch of compassion for the-young idiot.

"You know I've had sunstroke; I didn't tell you."

"Really!  Was it interesting?"

"No.  Mother was an angel.  Has anything happened to you?"

"Nothing.  Except that I think I've found out what's wrong between
our families, Jon."

His heart began beating very fast.

"I believe my father wanted to marry your mother, and your father got
her instead."

"Oh!"

"I came on a photo of her; it was in a frame behind a photo of me.
Of course, if he was very fond of her, that would have made him
pretty mad, wouldn't it?"

Jon thought for a minute.  "Not if she loved my father best."

"But suppose they were engaged?"

"If we were engaged, and you found you loved somebody better, I might
go cracked, but I shouldn't grudge it you."

"I should.  You mustn't ever do that with me, Jon.

"My God!  Not much!"

"I don't believe that he's ever really cared for my mother."

Jon was silent.  Val's words--the two past masters in the Club!

"You see, we don't know," went on Fleur; "it may have been a great
shock.  She may have behaved badly to him.  People do."

"My mother wouldn't."

Fleur shrugged her shoulders.  "I don't think we know much about our
fathers and mothers.  We just see them in the light of the way they
treat us; but they've treated other people, you know, before we were
born-plenty, I expect.  You see, they're both old. Look at your
father, with three separate families!"

"Isn't there any place," cried Jon, "in all this beastly London where
we can be alone?"

"Only a taxi."

"Let's get one, then."

When they were installed, Fleur asked suddenly: "Are you going back
to Robin Hill?  I should like to see where you live, Jon.  I'm
staying with my aunt for the night, but I could get back in time for
dinner.  I wouldn't come to the house, of course."

Jon gazed at her enraptured.

"Splendid! I can show it you from the copse, we shan't meet anybody.
There's a train at four."

The god of property and his Forsytes great and small, leisured,
official, commercial, or professional, like the working classes,
still worked their seven hours a day, so that those two of the fourth
generation travelled down to Robin Hill in an empty first-class
carriage, dusty and sun-warmed, of that too early train.  They
travelled in blissful silence, holding each other's hands.

At the station they saw no one except porters, and a villager or two
unknown to Jon, and walked out up the lane, which smelled of dust and
honeysuckle.

For Jon--sure of her now, and without separation before him--it was a
miraculous dawdle, more wonderful than those on the Downs, or along
the river Thames.  It was love-in-a-mist--one of those illumined
pages of Life, where every word and smile, and every light touch they
gave each other were as little gold and red and blue butterflies and
flowers and birds scrolled in among the text--a happy communing,
without afterthought, which lasted thirty-seven minutes.  They
reached the coppice at the milking hour.  Jon would not take her as
far as the farmyard; only to where she could see the field leading up
to the gardens, and the house beyond.  They turned in among the
larches, and suddenly, at the winding of the path, came on Irene,
sitting on an old log seat.

There are various kinds of shocks: to the vertebrae; to the nerves;
to moral sensibility; and, more potent and permanent, to personal
dignity.  This last was the shock Jon received, coming thus on his
mother.  He became suddenly conscious that he was doing an indelicate
thing.  To have brought Fleur down openly--yes!  But to sneak her in
like this!  Consumed with shame, he put on a front as brazen as his
nature would permit.

Fleur was smiling, a little defiantly; his mother's startled face was
changing quickly to the impersonal and gracious.  It was she who
uttered the first words:

"I'm very glad to see you.  It was nice of Jon to think of bringing
you down to us."

"We weren't coming to the house," Jon blurted out.  "I just wanted
Fleur to see where I lived."

His mother said quietly:

"Won't you come up and have tea?"

Feeling that he had but aggravated his breach of breeding, he heard
Fleur answer:

"Thanks very much; I have to get back to dinner.  I met Jon by
accident, and we thought it would be rather jolly just to see his
home."

How self-possessed she was!

"Of course; but you must have tea.  We'll send you down to the
station.  My husband will enjoy seeing you."

The expression of his mother's eyes, resting on him for a moment,
cast Jon down level with the ground--a true worm.  Then she led on,
and Fleur followed her.  He felt like a child, trailing after those
two, who were talking so easily about Spain and Wansdon, and the
house up there beyond the trees and the grassy slope.  He watched the
fencing of their eyes, taking each other in--the two beings he loved
most in the world.

He could see his father sitting under the oaktree; and suffered in
advance all the loss of caste he must go through in the eyes of that
tranquil figure, with his knees crossed, thin, old, and elegant;
already he could feel the faint irony which would come into his voice
and smile.

"This is Fleur Forsyte, Jolyon; Jon brought her down to see the
house.  Let's have tea at once--she has to catch a train.  Jon, tell
them, dear, and telephone to the Dragon for a car."

To leave her alone with them was strange, and yet, as no doubt his
mother had foreseen, the least of evils at the moment; so he ran up
into the house.  Now he would not see Fleur alone again--not for a
minute, and they had arranged no further meeting!  When he returned
under cover of the maids and teapots, there was not a trace of
awkwardness beneath the tree; it was all within himself, but not the
less for that.  They were talking of the Gallery off Cork Street.

"We back numbers," his father was saying, "are awfully anxious to
find out why we can't appreciate the new stuff; you and Jon must tell
us."

"It's supposed to be satiric, isn't it?" said Fleur.

He saw his father's smile.

"Satiric?  Oh! I think it's more than that.  What do you say, Jon?"

"I don't know at all," stammered Jon.  His father's face had a sudden
grimness.

"The young are tired of us, our gods and our ideals.  Off with their
heads, they say--smash their idols!  And let's get back to-nothing!
And, by Jove, they've done it!  Jon's a poet.  He'll be going in,
too, and stamping on what's left of us.  Property, beauty, sentiment-
-all smoke.  We mustn't own anything nowadays, not even our feelings.
They stand in the way of--Nothing."

Jon listened, bewildered, almost outraged by his father's words,
behind which he felt a meaning that he could not reach.  He didn't
want to stamp on anything!

"Nothing's the god of to-day," continued Jolyon; "we're back where
the Russians were sixty years ago, when they started Nihilism."

"No, Dad," cried Jon suddenly, "we only want to live, and we don't
know how, because of the Past--that's all!"

"By George!" said Jolyon, "that's profound, Jon.  Is it your own?
The Past!  Old ownerships, old passions, and their aftermath.  Let's
have cigarettes."

Conscious that his mother had lifted her hand to her lips, quickly,
as if to hush something, Jon handed the cigarettes.  He lighted his
father's and Fleur's, then one for himself.  Had he taken the knock
that Val had spoken of?  The smoke was blue when he had not puffed,
grey when he had; he liked the sensation in his nose, and the sense
of equality it gave him.  He was glad no one said: "So you've begun!"
He felt less young.

Fleur looked at her watch, and rose.  His mother went with her into
the house.  Jon stayed with his father, puffing at the cigarette.

"See her into the car, old man," said Jolyon; "and when she's gone,
ask your mother to come back to me."

Jon went.  He waited in the hall.  He saw her into the car.  There
was no chance for any word; hardly for a pressure of the hand.  He
waited all that evening for something to be said to him.  Nothing was
said.  Nothing might have happened.  He went up to bed, and in the
mirror on his dressing-table met himself.  He did not speak, nor did
the image; but both looked as if they thought the more.




IV

IN GREEN STREET


Uncertain whether the impression that Prosper Profond was dangerous
should be traced to his attempt to give Val the Mayfly filly; to a
remark of Fleur's: "He's like the hosts of Midian--he prowls and
prowls around"; to his preposterous inquiry of Jack Cardigan: "What's
the use of keepin' fit?" or, more simply, to the fact that he was a
foreigner, or alien as it was now called.  Certain, that Annette was
looking particularly handsome, and that Soames--had sold him a
Gauguin and then torn up the cheque, so that Monsieur Profond himself
had said: "I didn't get that small picture I bought from Mr.
Forsyde."

However suspiciously regarded, he still frequented Winifred's
evergreen little house in Green Street, with a good-natured
obtuseness which no one mistook for naiv ete, a word hardly
applicable to Monsieur Prosper Profond.  Winifred still found him
"amusing," and would write him little notes saying: "Come and have a
'jolly' with us"--it was breath of life to her to keep up with the
phrases of the day.

The mystery, with which all felt him to be surrounded, was due to his
having done, seen, heard, and known everything, and found nothing in
it--which was unnatural.  The English type of disillusionment was
familiar enough to Winifred, who had always moved in fashionable
circles.  It gave a certain cachet or distinction, so that one got
something out of it.  But to see nothing in anything, not as a pose,
but because there was nothing in anything, was not English; and that
which was not English one could not help secretly feeling dangerous,
if not precisely bad form.  It was like having the mood which the War
had left, seated--dark, heavy, smiling, indifferent--in your Empire
chair; it was like listening to that mood talking through thick pink
lips above a little diabolic beard.  It was, as Jack Cardigan
expressed it--for the English character at large--"a bit too thick"--
for if nothing was really worth getting excited about, there were
always games, and one could make it so!  Even Winifred, ever a
Forsyte at heart, felt that there was nothing to be had out of such a
mood of disillusionment, so that it really ought not to be there.
Monsieur Profond, in fact, made the mood too plain in a country which
decently veiled such realities.

When Fleur, after her hurried return from Robin Hill, came down to
dinner that evening, the mood was standing at the window of
Winifred's little drawing-room, looking out into Green Street, with
an air of seeing nothing in it.  And Fleur gazed promptly into the
fireplace with an air of seeing a fire which was not there.

Monsieur Profond came from the window.  He was in full fig, with a
white waistcoat and a white flower in his buttonhole.

"Well, Miss Forsyde," he said, "I'm awful pleased to see you.  Mr.
Forsyde well?  I was sayin' to-day I want to see him have some
pleasure.  He worries."

"You think so?" said Fleur shortly.

"Worries," repeated Monsieur Profond, burring the r's.

Fleur spun round.  "Shall I tell you," she said, "what would give him
pleasure?"  But the words, "To hear that you had cleared out," died
at the expression on his face.  All his fine white teeth were
showing.

"I was hearin' at the Club to-day about his old trouble."
Fleur opened her eyes.  "What do you mean?"

Monsieur Profond moved his sleek head as if to minimize his
statement.

"Before you were born," he said; "that small business."

Though conscious that he had cleverly diverted her from his own share
in her father's worry, Fleur was unable to withstand a rush of
nervous curiosity.  "Tell me what you heard."

"Why!" murmured Monsieur Profond, "you know all that."

"I expect I do.  But I should like to know that you haven't heard it
all wrong."

"His first wife," murmured Monsieur Profond.

Choking back the words, "He was never married before," she said:
"Well, what about her?"

"Mr. George Forsyde was tellin' me about your father's first wife
marryin' his cousin Jolyon afterward.  It was a small bit unpleasant,
I should think.  I saw their boy--nice boy!"

Fleur looked up.  Monsieur Profond was swimming, heavily diabolical,
before her.  That--the reason!  With the most heroic effort of her
life so far, she managed to arrest that swimming figure.  She could
not tell whether he had noticed.  And just then Winifred came in.

"Oh! here you both are already; Imogen and I have had the most
amusing afternoon at the Babies' bazaar."

"What babies?" said Fleur mechanically.

"The 'Save the Babies.'  I got such a bargain, my dear.  A piece of
old Armenian work--from before the Flood.  I want your opinion on it,
Prosper."

"Auntie," whispered Fleur suddenly.

At the tone in the girl's voice Winifred closed in on her.'

"What's the matter?  Aren't you well?"

Monsieur Profond had withdrawn into the window, where he was
practically out of hearing.

"Auntie, he-he told me that father has been married before.  Is it
true that he divorced her, and she married Jon Forsyte's father?"

Never in all the life of the mother of four little Darties had
Winifred felt more seriously embarrassed.  Her niece's face was so
pale, her eyes so dark, her voice so whispery and strained.

"Your father didn't wish you to hear," she said, with all the aplomb
she could muster.  "These things will happen.  I've often told him he
ought to let you know."

"Oh!" said Fleur, and that was all, but it made Winifred pat her
shoulder--a firm little shoulder, nice and white!  She never could
help an appraising eye and touch in the matter of her niece, who
would have to be married, of course--though not to that boy Jon.

"We've forgotten all about it years and years ago," she said
comfortably.  "Come and have dinner!"

"No, Auntie.  I don't feel very well.  May I go upstairs?"

"My dear!" murmured Winifred, concerned, "you're not taking this to
heart?  Why, you haven't properly come out yet!  That boy's a child!"

"What boy?  I've only got a headache.  But I can't stand that man to-
night."

"Well, well," said Winifred, "go and lie down.  I'll send you some
bromide, and I shall talk to Prosper Profond.  What business had he
to gossip?  Though I must say I think it's much better you should
know."

Fleur smiled.  "Yes," she said, and slipped from the room.

She went up with her head whirling, a dry sensation in her throat, a
guttered frightened feeling in her breast.  Never in her life as yet
had she suffered from even momentary fear that she would not get what
she had set her heart on.  The sensations of the afternoon had been
full and poignant, and this gruesome discovery coming on the top of
them had really made her head ache.  No wonder her father had hidden
that photograph, so secretly behind her own-ashamed of having kept
it!  But could he hate Jon's mother and yet keep her photograph?  She
pressed her hands over her forehead, trying to see things clearly.
Had they told Jon--had her visit to Robin Hill forced them to tell
him?  Everything now turned on that!  She knew, they all knew,
except--perhaps--Jon!

She walked up and down, biting her lip and thinking desperately hard.
Jon loved his mother.  If they had told him, what would he do?  She
could not tell.  But if they had not told him, should she not--could
she not get him for herself--get married to him, before he knew?  She
searched her memories of Robin Hill.  His mother's face so passive--
with its dark eyes and as if powdered hair, its reserve, its smile--
baffled her; and his father's--kindly, sunken, ironic.  Instinctively
she felt they would shrink from telling Jon, even now, shrink from
hurting him--for of course it would hurt him awfully to know!

Her aunt must be made not to tell her father that she knew.  So long
as neither she herself nor Jon were supposed to know, there was still
a chance--freedom to cover one's tracks, and get what her heart was
set on.  But she was almost overwhelmed by her isolation.  Every
one's hand was against her--every one's!  It was as Jon had said--he
and she just wanted to live and the past was in their way, a past
they hadn't shared in, and didn't understand!  Oh! What a shame!  And
suddenly she thought of June.  Would she help them?  For somehow June
had left on her the impression that she would be sympathetic with
their love, impatient of obstacle.  Then, instinctively, she thought:
'I won't give anything away, though, even to her.  I daren't.  I mean
to have Jon; against them all.'

Soup was brought up to her, and one of Winifred's pet headache
cachets.  She swallowed both.  Then Winifred herself appeared.  Fleur
opened her campaign with the words:

"You know, Auntie, I do wish people wouldn't think I'm in love with
that boy.  Why, I've hardly seen him!"

Winifred, though experienced, was not "fine."  She accepted the
remark with considerable relief.  Of course, it was not pleasant for
the girl to hear of the family scandal, and she set herself to
minimise the matter, a task for which she was eminently qualified,
"raised" fashionably under a comfortable mother and a father whose
nerves might not be shaken, and for many years the wife of Montague
Dartie.  Her description was a masterpiece of understatement.
Fleur's father's first wife had been very foolish.  There had been a
young man who had got run over, and she had left Fleur's father.
Then, years after, when it might all have come--right again, she had
taken up with their cousin Jolyon; and, of course, her father had
been obliged to have a divorce.  Nobody remembered anything of it
now, except just the family.  And, perhaps, it had all turned out for
the best; her father had Fleur; and Jolyon and Irene had been quite
happy, they said, and their boy was a nice boy.  "Val having Holly,
too, is a sort of plaster, don't you know?"  With these soothing
words, Winifred patted her niece's shoulder; thought: 'She's a nice,
plump little thing!' and went back to Prosper Profond, who, in spite
of his indiscretion, was very "amusing" this evening.

For some minutes after her aunt had gone Fleur remained under
influence of bromide material and spiritual.  But then reality came
back.  Her aunt had left out all that mattered--all the feeling, the
hate, the love, the unforgivingness of passionate hearts.  She, who
knew so little of life, and had touched only the fringe of love, was
yet aware by instinct that words have as little relation to fact and
feeling as coin to the bread it buys.  'Poor Father!' she thought.
'Poor me!  Poor Jon!  But I don't care, I mean to have him!'  From
the window of her darkened room she saw "that man" issue from the
door below and "prowl" away.  If he and her mother--how would that
affect her chance?  Surely it must make her father cling to her more
closely, so that he would consent in the end to anything she wanted,
or become reconciled the sooner to what she did without his
knowledge.

She took some earth from the flower-box in the window, and with all
her might flung it after that disappearing figure.  It fell short,
but the action did her good.

And a little puff of air came up from Green Street, smelling of
petrol, not sweet.




V

PURELY FORSYTE AFFAIRS


Soames, coming up to the City, with the intention of calling in at
Green Street at the end of his day and taking Fleur back home with
him, suffered from rumination.  Sleeping partner that he was, he
seldom visited the City now, but he still had a room of his own at
Cuthcott, Kingson and Forsyte's, and one special clerk and a half
assigned to the management of purely Forsyte affairs.  They were
somewhat in flux just now--an auspicious moment for the disposal of
house property.  And Soames was unloading the estates of his father
and Uncle Roger, and to some extent of his Uncle Nicholas.  His
shrewd and matter-of-course probity in all money concerns had made
him something of an autocrat in connection with these trusts.  If
Soames thought this or thought that, one had better save oneself the
bother of thinking too.  He guaranteed, as it were, irresponsibility
to numerous Forsytes of the third and fourth generations.  His fellow
trustees, such as his cousins Roger or Nicholas, his cousins-in-law
Tweetyman and Spender, or his sister Cicely's husband, all trusted
him; he signed first, and where he signed first they signed after,
and nobody was a penny the worse.  Just now they were all a good many
pennies the better, and Soames was beginning to see the close of
certain trusts, except for distribution of the income from securities
as gilt-edged as was compatible with the period.

Passing the more feverish parts of the City toward the most perfect
backwater in London, he ruminated.  Money was extraordinarily tight;
and morality extraordinarily loose!  The War had done it.  Banks were
not lending; people breaking contracts all over the place.  There was
a feeling in the air and a look on faces that he did not like.  The
country seemed in for a spell of gambling and bankruptcies.  There
was satisfaction in the thought that neither he nor his trusts had an
investment which could be affected by anything less maniacal than
national repudiation or a levy on capital.  If Soames had faith, it
was in what he called "English common sense"--or the power to have
things, if not one way then another.  He might--like his father James
before him--say he didn't know what things were coming to, but he
never in his heart believed they were.  If it rested with him, they
wouldn't--and, after all, he was only an Englishman like any other,
so quietly tenacious of what he had that he knew he would never
really part with it without something more or less equivalent in
exchange.  His mind was essentially equilibristic in material
matters, and his way of putting the national situation difficult to
refute in a world composed of human beings.  Take his own case, for
example!  He was well off.  Did that do anybody harm?  He did not eat
ten meals a day; he ate no more than, perhaps not so much as, a poor
man.  He spent no money on vice; breathed no more air, used no more
water to speak of than the mechanic or the porter.  He certainly had
pretty things about him, but they had given employment in the making,
and somebody must use them.  He bought pictures, but Art must be
encouraged.  He was, in fact, an accidental channel through which
money flowed, employing labour.  What was there objectionable in
that?  In his charge money was in quicker and more useful flux than
it would be in charge of the State and a lot of slow-fly money-
sucking officials.  And as to what he saved each year--it was just as
much in flux as what he didn't save, going into Water Board or
Council Stocks, or something sound and useful.  The State paid him no
salary for being trustee of his own or other people's money he did
all that for nothing.  Therein lay the whole case against
nationalisation--owners of private property were unpaid, and yet had
every incentive to quicken up the flux.  Under nationalisation--just
the opposite!  In a country smarting from officialism he felt that he
had a strong case.

It particularly annoyed him, entering that backwater of perfect
peace, to think that a lot of unscrupulous Trusts and Combinations
had been cornering the market in goods of all kinds, and keeping
prices at an artificial height.  Such abusers of the individualistic
system were the ruffians who caused all the trouble, and it was some
satisfaction to see them getting into a stew at fast lest the whole
thing might come down with a run--and land them in the soup.

The offices of Cuthcott, Kingson and Forsyte occupied the ground and
first floors of a house on the right-hand side; and, ascending to his
room, Soames thought: 'Time we had a coat of paint.'

His old clerk Gradman was seated, where he always was, at a huge
bureau with countless pigeonholes.  Half-the-clerk stood beside him,
with a broker's note recording investment of the proceeds from sale
of the Bryanston Square house, in Roger Forsyte's estate.  Soames
took it, and said:

"Vancouver City Stock.  H'm.  It's down today!"

With a sort of grating ingratiation old Gradman answered him:

"Ye-es; but everything's down, Mr. Soames."  And half-the-clerk
withdrew.

Soames skewered the document on to a number of other papers and hung
up his hat.

"I want to look at my Will and Marriage Settlement, Gradman."

Old Gradman, moving to the limit of his swivel chair, drew out two
drafts from the bottom lefthand drawer.  Recovering his body, he
raised his grizzle-haired face, very red from stooping.

"Copies, Sir."

Soames took them.  It struck him suddenly how like Gradman was to the
stout brindled yard dog they had been wont to keep on his chain at
The Shelter, till one day Fleur had come and insisted it should be
let loose, so that it had at once bitten the cook and been destroyed.
If you let Gradman off his chain, would he bite the cook?

Checking this frivolous fancy, Soames unfolded his Marriage
Settlement.  He had not looked at it for over eighteen years, not
since he remade his Will when his father died and Fleur was born.  He
wanted to see whether the words "during coverture" were in.  Yes,
they were--odd expression, when you thought of it, and derived
perhaps from horse-breeding!  Interest on fifteen thousand pounds
(which he paid her without deducting income tax) so long as she
remained his wife, and afterward during widowhood "dum casta"--old-
fashioned and rather pointed words, put in to insure the conduct of
Fleur's mother.  His Will made it up to an annuity of a thousand
under the same conditions.  All right!  He returned the copies to
Gradman, who took them without looking up, swung the chair, restored
the papers to their drawer, and went on casting up.

"Gradman! I don't like the condition of the country; there are a lot
of people about without any common sense.  I want to find a way by
which I can safeguard Miss Fleur against anything which might arise."

Gradman wrote the figure "2" on his blotting-paper.

"Ye-es," he said; "there's a nahsty spirit."

"The ordinary restraint against anticipation doesn't meet the case."

"Nao," said Gradman.

"Suppose those Labour fellows come in, or worse!  It's these people
with fixed ideas who are the danger.  Look at Ireland!"

"Ah!" said Gradman.

"Suppose I were to make a settlement on her at once with myself as
beneficiary for life, they couldn't take anything but the interest
from me, unless of course they alter the law."

Gradman moved his head and smiled.

"Ah!" he said, "they wouldn't do tha-at!"

"I don't know," muttered Soames; "I don't trust them."

"It'll take two years, sir, to be valid against death duties."

Soames sniffed.  Two years!  He was only sixty-five!

"That's not the point.  Draw a form of settlement that passes all my
property to Miss Fleur's children in equal shares, with antecedent
life-interests first to myself and then to her without power of
anticipation, and add a clause that in the event of anything
happening to divert her life-interest, that interest passes to the
trustees, to apply for her benefit, in their absolute discretion."

Gradman grated: "Rather extreme at your age, sir; you lose control."

"That's my business," said Soames sharply.

Gradman wrote on a piece of paper: "Life-interest--anticipation--
divert interest--absolute discretion...." and said:

"What trustees?  There's young Mr. Kingson; he's a nice steady young
fellow."

"Yes, he might do for one.  I must have three.  There isn't a Forsyte
now who appeals to me."

"Not young Mr. Nicholas?  He's at the Bar.  We've given 'im briefs."

"He'll never set the Thames on fire," said Soames.

A smile oozed out on Gradman's face, greasy from countless mutton-
chops, the smile of a man who sits all day.

"You can't expect it, at his age, Mr. Soames."

"Why?  What is he?  Forty?"

"Ye-es, quite a young fellow."

"Well, put him in; but I want somebody who'll take a personal
interest.  There's no one that I can see."

"What about Mr. Valerius, now he's come home?"

"Val Dartie?  With that father?"

"We-ell," murmured Gradman, "he's been dead seven years--the Statute
runs against him."

"No," said Soames.  "I don't like the connection."  He rose.  Gradman
said suddenly:

"If they were makin' a levy on capital, they could come on the
trustees, sir.  So there you'd be just the same.  I'd think it over,
if I were you."

"That's true," said Soames.  "I will.  What have you done about that
dilapidation notice in Vere Street?"

"I 'aven't served it yet.  The party's very old.  She won't want to
go out at her age."

"I don't know.  This spirit of unrest touches every one."

"Still, I'm lookin' at things broadly, sir.  She's eighty-one."

"Better serve it," said Soames, "and see what she says.  Oh! and Mr.
Timothy?  Is everything in order in case of--"

"I've got the inventory of his estate all ready; had the furniture
and pictures valued so that we know what reserves to put on.  I shall
be sorry when he goes, though.  Dear me!  It is a time since I first
saw Mr. Timothy!"

"We can't live for ever," said Soames, taking down his hat.

"Nao," said Gradman; "but it'll be a pity--the last of the old
family!  Shall I take up the matter of that nuisance in Old Compton
Street?  Those organs--they're nahsty things."

"Do.  I must call for Miss Fleur and catch the four o'clock.  Good-
day, Gradman."

"Good-day, Mr. Soames.  I hope Miss Fleur--"

"Well enough, but gads about too much."

"Ye-es," grated Gradman; "she's young."

Soames went out, musing: "Old Gradman!  If he were younger I'd put
him in the trust.  There's nobody I can depend on to take a real
interest."

Leaving the bilious and mathematical exactitude, the preposterous
peace of that backwater, he thought suddenly: 'During coverture!  Why
can't they exclude fellows like Profond, instead of a lot of hard-
working Germans?' and was surprised at the depth of uneasiness which
could provoke so unpatriotic a thought.  But there it was!  One never
got a moment of real peace.  There was always something at the back
of everything!  And he made his way toward Green Street.

Two hours later by his watch, Thomas Gradman, stirring in his swivel
chair, closed the last drawer of his bureau, and putting into his
waistcoat pocket a bunch of keys so fat that they gave him a
protuberance on the liver side, brushed his old top hat round with
his sleeve, took his umbrella, and descended.  Thick, short, and
buttoned closely into his old frock coat, he walked toward Covent
Garden market.  He never missed that daily promenade to the Tube for
Highgate, and seldom some critical transaction on the way in
connection with vegetables and fruit.  Generations might be born, and
hats might change, wars be fought, and Forsytes fade away, but Thomas
Gradman, faithful and grey, would take his daily walk and buy his
daily vegetable.  Times were not what they were, and his son had lost
a leg, and they never gave him those nice little plaited baskets to
carry the stuff in now, and these Tubes were convenient things--still
he mustn't complain; his health was good considering his time of
life, and after fifty-four years in the Law he was getting a round
eight hundred a year and a little worried of late, because it was
mostly collector's commission on the rents, and with all this
conversion of Forsyte property going on, it looked like drying up,
and the price of living still so high; but it was no good worrying--"
The good God made us all"--as he was in the habit of saying; still,
house property in London--he didn't know what Mr. Roger or Mr. James
would say if they could see it being sold like this--seemed to show a
lack of faith; but Mr. Soames--he worried.  Life and lives in being
and twenty-one years after--beyond that you couldn't go; still, he
kept his health wonderfully--and Miss Fleur was a pretty little
thing--she was; she'd marry; but lots of people had no children
nowadays--he had had his first child at twenty-two; and Mr. Jolyon,
married while he was at Cambridge, had his child the same year--
gracious Peter!  That was back in '69, a long time before old Mr.
Jolyon--fine judge of property--had taken his Will away from Mr.
James--dear, yes!  Those were the days when they were buyin' property
right and left, and none of this khaki and fallin' over one another
to get out of things; and cucumbers at twopence; and a melon--the old
melons, that made your mouth water!  Fifty years since he went into
Mr. James' office, and Mr. James had said to him: "Now, Gradman,
you're only a shaver--you pay attention, and you'll make your five
hundred a year before you've done."  And he had, and feared God, and
served the Forsytes, and kept a vegetable diet at night.  And, buying
a copy of John Bull--not that he approved of it, an extravagant
affair--he entered the Tube elevator with his mere brown-paper
parcel, and was borne down into the bowels of the earth.




VI

SOAMES' PRIVATE LIFE


On his way to Green Street it occurred to Soames that he ought to go
into Dumetrius' in Suffolk Street about the possibility of the
Bolderby Old Crome.  Almost worth while to have fought the war to
have the Bolderby Old Crome, as it were, in flux!  Old Bolderby had
died, his son and grandson had been killed--a cousin was coming into
the estate, who meant to sell it, some said because of the condition
of England, others said because he had asthma.

If Dumetrius once got hold of it the price would become prohibitive;
it was necessary for Soames to find out whether Dumetrius had got it,
before he tried to get it himself.  He therefore confined himself to
discussing with Dumetrius whether Monticellis would come again now
that it was the fashion for a picture to be anything except a
picture; and the future of Johns, with a side-slip into Buxton
Knights.  It was only when leaving that he added: "So they're not
selling the Bolderby Old Crome, after all?  "In sheer pride of racial
superiority, as he had calculated would be the case, Dumetrius
replied:

"Oh! I shall get it, Mr. Forsyte, sir!"

The flutter of his eyelid fortified Soames in a resolution to write
direct to the new Bolderby, suggesting that the only dignified way of
dealing with an Old Crome was to avoid dealers.  He therefore said,
"Well, good-day!" and went, leaving Dumetrius the wiser.

At Green Street he found that Fleur was out and would be all the
evening; she was staying one more night in London.  He cabbed on
dejectedly, and caught his train.

He reached his house about six o'clock.  The air was heavy, midges
biting, thunder about.  Taking his letters he went up to his
dressing-room to cleanse himself of London.

An uninteresting post.  A receipt, a bill for purchases on behalf of
Fleur.  A circular about an exhibition of etchings.  A letter
beginning:

"SIR,
"I feel it my duty..."

That would be an appeal or something unpleasant.  He looked at once
for the signature.  There was none! Incredulously he turned the page
over and examined each corner.  Not being a public man, Soames had
never yet had an anonymous letter, and his first impulse was to tear
it up, as a dangerous thing; his second to read it, as a thing still
more dangerous.

"SIR,
"I feel it my duty to inform you that having no interest in the
matter your lady is carrying on with a foreigner--"

Reaching that word Soames stopped mechanically and examined the
postmark.  So far as he could pierce the impenetrable disguise in
which the Post Office had wrapped it, there was something with a
"sea" at the end and a "t" in it.  Chelsea?  No! Battersea?  Perhaps!
He read on.

"These foreigners are all the same.  Sack the lot.  This one meets
your lady twice a week.  I know it of my own knowledge--and to see an
Englishman put on goes against the grain.  You watch it and see if
what I say isn't true.  I shouldn't meddle if it wasn't a dirty
foreigner that's in it.  Yours obedient."

The sensation with which Soames dropped the letter was similar to
that he would have had entering his bedroom and finding it full of
black-beetles.  The meanness of anonymity gave a shuddering obscenity
to the moment.  And the worst of it was that this shadow had been at
the back of his mind ever since the Sunday evening when Fleur had
pointed down at Prosper Profond strolling on the lawn, and said:
"Prowling cat!"  Had he not in connection therewith, this very day,
perused his Will and Marriage Settlement?  And now this anonymous
ruffian, with nothing to gain, apparently, save the venting of his
spite against foreigners, had wrenched it out of the obscurity in
which he had hoped and wished it would remain.  To have such
knowledge forced on him, at his time of life, about Fleur's mother I
He picked the letter up from the carpet, tore it across, and then,
when it hung together by just the fold at the back, stopped tearing,
and reread it.  He was taking at that moment one of the decisive
resolutions of his life.  He would not be forced into another
scandal.  No!  However he decided to deal with this matter--and it
required the most far-sighted and careful consideration he would do
nothing that might injure Fleur. That resolution taken, his mind
answered the helm again, and he made his ablutions.  His hands
trembled as he dried them.  Scandal he would not have, but something
must be done to stop this sort of thing!  He went into his wife's
room and stood looking around him.  The idea of searching for
anything which would incriminate, and entitle him to hold a menace
over her, did not even come to him.  There would be nothing--she was
much too practical.  The idea of having her watched had been
dismissed before it came--too well he remembered his previous
experience of that.  No!  He had nothing but this torn-up letter from
some anonymous ruffian, whose impudent intrusion into his private
life he so violently resented.  It was repugnant to him to make use
of it, but he might have to.  What a mercy Fleur was not at home to-
night!  A tap on the door broke up his painful cogitations.

"Mr. Michael Mont, sir, is in the drawing-room.  Will you see him?"

"No," said Soames; "yes.  I'll come down."

Anything that would take his mind off for a few minutes!

Michael Mont in flannels stood on the verandah smoking a cigarette.
He threw it away as Soames came up, and ran his hand through his
hair.

Soames' feeling toward this young man was singular.  He was no doubt
a rackety, irresponsible young fellow according to old standards, yet
somehow likeable, with his extraordinarily cheerful way of blurting
out his opinions.

"Come in," he said; "have you had tea?"

Mont came in.

"I thought Fleur would have been back, sir; but I'm glad she isn't.
The fact is, I--I'm fearfully gone on her; so fearfully gone that I
thought you'd better know.  It's old-fashioned, of course, coming to
fathers first, but I thought you'd forgive that.  I went to my own
Dad, and he says if I settle down he'll see me through.  He rather
cottons to the idea, in fact.  I told him about your Goya."

"Oh!" said Soames, inexpressibly dry.  "He rather cottons?"

"Yes, sir; do you?"

Soames smiled faintly.

"You see," resumed Mont, twiddling his straw hat, while his hair,
ears, eyebrows, all seemed to stand up from excitement, "when you've
been through the War you can't help being in a hurry."

"To get married; and unmarried afterward," said Soames slowly.

"Not from Fleur, sir.  Imagine, if you were me!"

Soames cleared his throat.  That way of putting it was forcible
enough.

"Fleur's too young," he said.

"Oh! no, sir.  We're awfully old nowadays.  My Dad seems to me a
perfect babe; his thinking apparatus hasn't turned a hair.  But he's
a Baronight, of course; that keeps him back."

"Baronight," repeated Soames; "what may that be?"

"Bart, sir.  I shall be a Bart some day.  But I shall live it down,
you know."

"Go away and live this down," said Soames.

Young Mont said imploringly: "Oh! no, sir.  I simply must hang
around, or I shouldn't have a dog's chance.  You'll let Fleur do what
she likes, I suppose, anyway.  Madame passes me."

"Indeed!" said Soames frigidly.

"You don't really bar me, do you?" and the young man looked so
doleful that Soames smiled.

"You may think you're very old," he said; "but you strike me as
extremely young.  To rattle ahead of everything is not a proof of
maturity."

"All right, sir; I give you our age.  But to show you I mean
business--I've got a job."

"Glad to hear it."

"Joined a publisher; my governor is putting up the stakes."

Soames put his hand over his mouth--he had so very nearly said: "God
help the publisher!"  His grey eyes scrutinised the agitated young
man.

"I don't dislike you, Mr. Mont, but Fleur is everything to me:
Everything--do you understand?"

"Yes, sir, I know; but so she is to me."

"That's as may be.  I'm glad you've told me, however.  And now I
think there's nothing more to be said."

"I know it rests with her, sir."

"It will rest with her a long time, I hope."

"You aren't cheering," said Mont suddenly.

"No," said Soames, "my experience of life has not made me anxious to
couple people in a hurry.  Good-night, Mr. Mont.  I shan't tell Fleur
what you've said."

"Oh!" murmured Mont blankly; "I really could knock my brains out for
want of her.  She knows that perfectly well."

"I dare say."  And Soames held out his hand.  A distracted squeeze, a
heavy sigh, and soon after sounds from the young man's motor-cycle
called up visions of flying dust and broken bones.

'The younger generation!' he thought heavily, and went out on to the
lawn.  The gardeners had been mowing, and there was still the smell
of fresh-cut grass--the thundery air kept all scents close to earth.
The sky was of a purplish hue--the poplars black.  Two or three boats
passed on the river, scuttling, as it were, for shelter before the
storm.  'Three days' fine weather,' thought Soames, 'and then a
storm!'  Where was Annette?  With that chap, for all he knew--she was
a young woman!  Impressed with the queer charity of that thought, he
entered the summerhouse and sat down.  The fact was--and he admitted
it--Fleur was so much to him that his wife was very little--very
little; French--had never been much more than a mistress, and he was
getting indifferent to that side of things!  It was odd how, with all
this ingrained care for moderation and secure investment, Soames ever
put his emotional eggs into one basket.  First Irene--now Fleur.  He
was dimly conscious of it, sitting there, conscious of its odd
dangerousness.  It had brought him to wreck and scandal once, but
now--now it should save him!  He cared so much for Fleur that he
would have no further scandal.  If only he could get at that
anonymous letter-writer, he would teach him not to meddle and stir up
mud at the bottom of water which he wished should remain stagnant!...
A distant flash, a low rumble, and large drops of rain spattered on
the thatch above him.  He remained indifferent, tracing a pattern
with his finger on the dusty surface of a little rustic table.
Fleur's future! 'I want fair sailing for her,' he thought.  'Nothing
else matters at my time of life.'  A lonely business--life!  What you
had you never could keep to yourself!  As you warned one off, you let
another in.  One could make sure of nothing!  He reached up and
pulled a red rambler rose from a cluster which blocked the window.
Flowers grew and dropped--Nature was a queer thing!  The thunder
rumbled and crashed, travelling east along a river, the paling
flashes flicked his eyes; the poplar tops showed sharp and dense
against the sky, a heavy shower rustled and rattled and veiled in the
little house wherein he sat, indifferent, thinking.

When the storm was over, he left his retreat and went down the wet
path to the river bank.

Two swans had come, sheltering in among the reeds.  He knew the birds
well, and stood watching the dignity in the curve of those white
necks and formidable snake-like heads.  'Not dignified--what I have
to do!' he thought.  And yet it must be tackled, lest worse befell.
Annette must be back by now from wherever she had gone, for it was
nearly dinner-time, and as the moment for seeing her approached, the
difficulty of knowing what to say and how to say it had increased.  A
new and scaring thought occurred to him.  Suppose she wanted her
liberty to marry this fellow!  Well, if she did, she couldn't have
it.  He had not married her for that.  The image of Prosper Profond
dawdled before him reassuringly.  Not a marrying man!  No, no!  Anger
replaced that momentary scare.  'He had better not come my way,' he
thought.  The mongrel represented---!  But what did Prosper Profond
represent?  Nothing that mattered surely.  And yet something real
enough in the world--unmorality let off its chain, disillusionment on
the prowl!  That expression Annette had caught from him: "Je m'en
fiche!  "A fatalistic chap!  A continental--a cosmopolitan--a product
of the age!  If there were condemnation more complete, Soames felt
that he did not know it.

The swans had turned their heads, and were looking past him into some
distance of their own.  One of them uttered a little hiss, wagged its
tail, turned as if answering to a rudder, and swam away.  The other
followed.  Their white bodies, their stately necks, passed out of his
sight, and he went toward the house.

Annette was in the drawing-room, dressed for dinner, and he thought
as he went up-stairs 'Handsome is as handsome does.'  Handsome!
Except for remarks about the curtains in the drawing-room, and the
storm, there was practically no conversation during a meal
distinguished by exactitude of quantity and perfection of quality.
Soames drank nothing.  He followed her into the drawing-room
afterward, and found her smoking a cigarette on the sofa between the
two French windows.  She was leaning back, almost upright, in a low
black frock, with her knees crossed and her blue eyes half-closed;
grey-blue smoke issued from her red, rather full lips, a fillet bound
her chestnut hair, she wore the thinnest silk stockings, and shoes
with very high heels showing off her instep.  A fine piece in any
room!  Soames, who held that torn letter in a hand thrust deep into
the side-pocket of his dinner-jacket, said:

"I'm going to shut the window; the damp's lifting in."

He did so, and stood looking at a David Cox adorning the cream-
panelled wall close by.

What was she thinking of?  He had never understood a woman in his
life--except Fleur--and Fleur not always!  His heart beat fast.  But
if he meant to do it, now was the moment.  Turning from the David
Cox, he took out the torn letter.

"I've had this."

Her eyes widened, stared at him, and hardened.

Soames handed her the letter.

"It's torn, but you can read it."  And he turned back to the David
Cox--a sea-piece, of good tone--but without movement enough.  'I
wonder what that chap's doing at this moment?' he thought.  'I'll
astonish him yet.'  Out of the corner of his eye he saw Annette
holding the letter rigidly; her eyes moved from side to side under
her darkened lashes and frowning darkened eyes.  She dropped the
letter, gave a little shiver, smiled, and said:

"Dirrty!"

"I quite agree," said Soames; "degrading.  Is it true?"

A tooth fastened on her red lower lip.  "And what if it were?"

She was brazen!

"Is that all you have to say?"

"No."


"Well, speak out!"

"What is the good of talking?"

Soames said icily: "So you admit it?"

"I admit nothing.  You are a fool to ask.  A man like you should not
ask.  It is dangerous."

Soames made a tour of the room, to subdue his rising anger.

"Do you remember," he said, halting in front of her, "what you were
when I married you?  Working at accounts in a restaurant."

"Do you remember that I was not half your age?"

Soames broke off the hard encounter of their eyes, and went back to
the David Cox.

"I am not going to bandy words.  I require you to give up this--
friendship.  I think of the matter entirely as it affects Fleur."

"Ah!--Fleur!"

"Yes," said Soames stubbornly; "Fleur.  She is your child as well as
mine."

"It is kind to admit that!"

"Are you going to do what I say?"

"I refuse to tell you."

"Then I must make you."

Annette smiled.

"No, Soames," she said.  "You are helpless.  Do not say things that
you will regret."

Anger swelled the veins on his forehead.  He opened his mouth to vent
that emotion, and could not.  Annette went on:

"There shall be no more such letters, I promise you.  That is
enough."

Soames writhed.  He had a sense of being treated like a child by this
woman who had deserved he did not know what.

"When two people have married, and lived like us, Soames, they had
better be quiet about each other.  There are things one does not drag
up into the light for people to laugh at.  You will be quiet, then;
not for my sake for your own.  You are getting old; I am not, yet.
You have made me ver-ry practical"

Soames, who had passed through all the sensations of being choked,
repeated dully:

"I require you to give up this friendship."

"And if I do not?"

"Then--then I will cut you out of my Will."

Somehow it did not seem to meet the case.  Annette laughed.

"You will live a long time, Soames."

"You--you are a bad woman," said Soames suddenly.

Annette shrugged her shoulders.

"I do not think so.  Living with you has killed things in me, it is
true; but I am not a bad woman.  I am sensible--that is all.  And so
will you be when you have thought it over."

"I shall see this man," said Soames sullenly, "and warn him off."

"Mon cher, you are funny.  You do not want me, you have as much of me
as you want; and you wish the rest of me to be dead.  I admit
nothing, but I am not going to be dead, Soames, at my age; so you had
better be quiet, I tell you.  I myself will make no scandal; none.
Now, I am not saying any more, whatever you do."

She reached out, took a French novel off a little table, and opened
it.  Soames watched her, silenced by the tumult of his feelings.  The
thought of that man was almost making him want her, and this was a
revelation of their relationship, startling to one little given to
introspective philosophy.  Without saying another word he went out
and up to the picture-gallery.  This came of marrying a Frenchwoman!
And yet, without her there would have been no Fleur! She had served
her purpose.

'She's right,' he thought; 'I can do nothing.  I don't even know that
there's anything in it.'  The instinct of self-preservation warned
him to batten down his hatches, to smother the fire with want of air.
Unless one believed there was something in a thing, there wasn't.

That night he went into her room.  She received him in the most
matter-of-fact way, as if there had been no scene between them.  And
he returned to his own room with a curious sense of peace.  If one
didn't choose to see, one needn't.  And he did not choose--in future
he did not choose.  There was nothing to be gained by it--nothing!
Opening the drawer he took from the sachet a handkerchief, and the
framed photograph of Fleur.  When he had looked at it a little he
slipped it down, and there was that other one--that old one of Irene.
An owl hooted while he stood in his window gazing at it.  The owl
hooted, the red climbing roses seemed to deepen in colour, there came
a scent of lime-blossom.  God!  That had been a different thing!
Passion--Memory!  Dust!




VII

JUNE TAKES A HAND


One who was a sculptor, a Slav, a sometime resident in New York,
an egoist, and impecunious, was to be found of an evening in June
Forsyte's studio on the bank of the Thames at Chiswick.  On the
evening of July 6, Boris Strumolowski--several of whose works were on
show there because they were as yet too advanced to be on show
anywhere else--had begun well, with that aloof and rather Christ-like
silence which admirably suited his youthful, round, broad cheek-boned
countenance framed in bright hair banged like a girl's.  June had
known him three weeks, and he still seemed to her the principal
embodiment of genius, and hope of the future; a sort of Star of the
East which had strayed into an unappreciative West.  Until that
evening he had conversationally confined himself to recording his
impressions of the United States, whose dust he had just shaken from
off his feet--a country, in his opinion, so barbarous in every way
that he had sold practically nothing there, and become an object of
suspicion to the police; a country, as he said, without a race of its
own, without liberty, equality, or fraternity, without principles,
traditions, taste, without--in a word--a soul.  He had left it for
his own good, and come to the only other country where he could live
well.  June had dwelt unhappily on him in her lonely moments,
standing before his creations--frightening, but powerful and symbolic
once they had been explained!  That he, haloed by bright hair like an
early Italian painting, and absorbed in his genius to the exclusion
of all else--the only sign of course by which real genius could be
told--should still be a "lame duck" agitated her warm heart almost to
the exclusion of Paul Post.  And she had begun to take steps to clear
her Gallery, in order to fill it with Strumolowski masterpieces.  She
had at once encountered trouble.  Paul Post had kicked; Vospovitch
had stung.  With all the emphasis of a genius which she did not as
yet deny them, they had demanded another six weeks at least of her
Gallery.  The American stream, still flowing in, would soon be
flowing out.  The American stream was their right, their only hope,
their salvation--since nobody in this "beastly" country cared for
Art.  June had yielded to the demonstration.  After all Boris would
not mind their having the full benefit of an American stream, which
he himself so violently despised.

This evening she had put that to Boris with nobody else present,
except Hannah Hobdey, the mediaeval black-and-whitist, and Jimmy
Portugal, editor of the Neo-Artist.  She had put it to him with that
sudden confidence which continual contact with the neo-artistic world
had never been able to dry up in her warm and generous nature.  He
had not broken his Christ-like silence, however, for more than two
minutes before she began to move her blue eyes from side to side, as
a cat moves its tail.  This--he said--was characteristic of England,
the most selfish country in the world; the country which sucked the
blood of other countries; destroyed the brains and hearts of
Irishmen, Hindus, Egyptians, Boers, and Burmese, all the best races
in the world; bullying, hypocritical England!  This was what he had
expected, coming to, such a country, where the climate was all fog,
and the people all tradesmen perfectly blind to Art, and sunk in
profiteering and the grossest materialism.  Conscious that Hannah
Hobdey was murmuring, "Hear, hear!" and Jimmy Portugal sniggering,
June grew crimson, and suddenly rapped out:

"Then why did you ever come?  We didn't ask you."

The remark was so singularly at variance with all she had led him to
expect from her, that Strumolowski stretched out his hand and took a
cigarette.

"England never wants an idealist," he said.

But in June something primitively English was thoroughly upset; old
Jolyon's sense of justice had risen, as it were, from bed.  "You come
and sponge on us," she said, "and then abuse us.  If you think that's
playing the game, I don't."

She now discovered that which others had discovered before her--the
thickness of hide beneath which the sensibility of genius is
sometimes veiled.  Strumolowski's young and ingenuous face became the
incarnation of a sneer.

"Sponge, one does not sponge, one takes what is owing--a tenth part
of what is owing.  You will repent to say that, Miss Forsyte."

"Oh, no," said June, "I shan't."

"Ah!  We know very well, we artists--you take us to get what you can
out of us.  I want nothing from you"--and he blew out a cloud of
June's smoke.

Decision rose in an icy puff from the turmoil of insulted shame
within her.  "Very well, then, you can take your things away."

And, almost in the same moment, she thought: 'Poor boy!  He's only
got a garret, and probably not a taxi fare.  In front of these
people, too; it's positively disgusting!'

Young Strumolowski shook his head violently; his hair, thick, smooth,
close as a golden plate, did not fall off.

"I can live on nothing," he said shrilly; "I have often had to for
the sake of my Art.  It is you bourgeois who force us to spend
money."

The words hit June like a pebble, in the ribs.  After all she had
done for Art, all her identification with its troubles and lame
ducks.  She was struggling for adequate words when the door was
opened, and her Austrian murmured:

"A young lady, gnadiges Fraulein."

"Where?"

"In the little meal-room."

With a glance at Boris Strumolowski, at Hannah Hobdey, at Jimmy
Portugal, June said nothing, and went out, devoid of equanimity.
Entering the "little meal-room," she perceived the young lady to be
Fleur--looking very pretty, if pale.  At this disenchanted moment a
little lame duck of her own breed was welcome to June, so
homoeopathic by instinct.

The girl must have come, of course, because of Jon; or, if not, at
least to get something out of her.  And June felt just then that to
assist somebody was the only bearable thing.

"So you've remembered to come," she said.

"Yes.  What a jolly little duck of a house!  But please don't let me
bother you, if you've got people."

"Not at all," said June.  "I want to let them stew in their own juice
for a bit.  Have you come about Jon?"

"You said you thought we ought to be told.  Well, I've found out."

"Oh!" said June blankly.  "Not nice, is it?"

They were standing one on each side of the little bare table at which
June took her meals.  A vase on it was full of Iceland poppies; the
girl raised her hand and touched them with a gloved finger.  To her
new-fangled dress, frilly about the hips and tight below the knees,
June took a sudden liking--a charming colour, flax-blue.

'She makes a picture,' thought June.  Her little room, with its
whitewashed walls, its floor and hearth of old pink brick, its black
paint, and latticed window athwart which the last of the sunlight was
shining, had never looked so charming, set off by this young figure,
with the creamy, slightly frowning face.  She remembered with sudden
vividness how nice she herself had looked in those old days when her
heart was set on Philip Bosinney, that dead lover, who had broken
from her to destroy for ever Irene's allegiance to this girl's
father.  Did Fleur know of that, too?

"Well," she said, "what are you going to do?"

It was some seconds before Fleur answered.

"I don't want Jon to suffer.  I must see him once more to put an end
to it."

"You're going to put an end to it!"

"What else is there to do?"

The girl seemed to June, suddenly, intolerably spiritless.

"I suppose you're right," she muttered.  "I know my father thinks so;
but--I should never have done it myself.  I can't take things lying
down."

How poised and watchful that girl looked; how unemotional her voice
sounded!

"People will assume that I'm in love."

"Well, aren't you?"

Fleur shrugged her shoulders.  'I might have known it,' thought June;
'she's Soames' daughter--fish!  And yet--he!'

"What do you want me to do then?" she said with a sort of disgust.

"Could I see Jon here to-morrow on his way down to Holly's?  He'd
come if you sent him a line to-night.  And perhaps afterward you'd
let them know quietly at Robin Hill that it's all over, and that they
needn't tell Jon about his mother."

"All right!" said June abruptly.  "I'll write now, and you can post
it.  Half-past two tomorrow.  I shan't be in, myself."

She sat down at the tiny bureau which filled one corner.  When she
looked round with the finished note Fleur was still touching the
poppies with her gloved finger.

June licked a stamp.  "Well, here it is.  If you're not in love, of
course, there's no more to be said.  Jon's lucky."

Fleur took the note.  "Thanks awfully!"

'Cold-blooded little baggage!'  thought June.  Jon, son of her
father, to love, and not to be loved by the daughter of--Soames!  It
was humiliating!

"Is that all?"

Fleur nodded; her frills shook and trembled as she swayed toward the
door.

"Good-bye!"

"Good-bye!...  Little piece of fashion!" muttered June, closing the
door.  "That family!"  And she marched back toward her studio.  Boris
Strumolowski had regained his Christ-like silence and Jimmy Portugal
was damning everybody, except the group in whose behalf he ran the
Neo-Artist.  Among the condemned were Eric Cobbley, and several other
"lame-duck" genii who at one time or another had held first place in
the repertoire of June's aid and adoration.  She experienced a sense
of futility and disgust, and went to the window to let the river-wind
blow those squeaky words away.

But when at length Jimmy Portugal had finished, and gone with Hannah
Hobdey, she sat down and mothered young Strumolowski for half an
hour, promising him a month, at least, of the American stream; so
that he went away with his halo in perfect order.  'In spite of all,'
June thought, 'Boris is wonderful'




VIII

THE BIT BETWEEN THE TEETH


To know that your hand is against every one's is--for some natures--
to experience a sense of moral release.  Fleur felt no remorse when
she left June's house.  Reading condemnatory resentment in her little
kinswoman's blue eyes-she was glad that she had fooled her, despising
June because that elderly idealist had not seen what she was after.

End it, forsooth!  She would soon show them all that she was only
just beginning.  And she smiled to herself on the top of the bus
which carried her back to Mayfair.  But the smile died, squeezed out
by spasms of anticipation and anxiety.  Would she be able to manage
Jon?  She had taken the bit between her teeth, but could she make him
take it too?  She knew the truth and the real danger of delay--he
knew neither; therein lay all the difference in the world.

'Suppose I tell him,' she thought; 'wouldn't it really be safer?'
This hideous luck had no right to spoil their love; he must see that!
They could not let it!  People always accepted an accomplished fact
in time!  From that piece of philosophy--profound enough at her age--
she passed to another consideration less philosophic.  If she
persuaded Jon to a quick and secret marriage, and he found out
afterward that she had known the truth.  What then?  Jon hated
subterfuge.  Again, then, would it not be better to tell him?  But
the memory of his mother's face kept intruding on that impulse.
Fleur was afraid.  His mother had power over him; more power perhaps
than she herself.  Who could tell?  It was too great a risk.  Deep-
sunk in these instinctive calculations she was carried on past Green
Street as far as the Ritz Hotel.  She got down there, and walked back
on the Green Park side.  The storm had washed every tree; they still
dripped.  Heavy drops fell on to her frills, and to avoid them she
crossed over under the eyes of the Iseeum Club.  Chancing to look up
she saw Monsieur Profond with a tall stout man in the bay window.
Turning into Green Street she heard her name called, and saw "that
prowler" coming up.  He took off his hat--a glossy "bowler" such as
she particularly detested.

"Good evenin'!  Miss Forsyde.  Isn't there a small thing I can do for
you?"

"Yes, pass by on the other side."

"I say!  Why do you dislike me?"

"Do I?"

"It looks like it."

"Well, then, because you make me feel life isn't worth living."

Monsieur Profond smiled.

"Look here, Miss Forsyde, don't worry.  It'll be all right.  Nothing
lasts."

"Things do last," cried Fleur; "with me anyhow--especially likes and
dislikes."

"Well, that makes me a bit un'appy."

"I should have thought nothing could ever make you happy or unhappy."

"I don't like to annoy other people.  I'm goin' on my yacht."

Fleur looked at him, startled.

"Where?"

"Small voyage to the South Seas or somewhere," said Monsieur Profond.

Fleur suffered relief and a sense of insult.  Clearly he meant to
convey that he was breaking with her mother.  How dared he have
anything to break, and yet how dared he break it?

"Good-night, Miss Forsyde!  Remember me to Mrs. Dartie.  I'm not so
bad really.  Good-night!"  Fleur left him standing there with his hat
raised.  Stealing a look round, she saw him stroll--immaculate and
heavy--back toward his Club.

'He can't even love with conviction,' she thought.  'What will Mother
do?'

Her dreams that night were endless and uneasy; she rose heavy and
unrested, and went at once to the study of Whitaker's Almanac.  A
Forsyte is instinctively aware that facts are the real crux of any
situation.  She might conquer Jon's prejudice, but without exact
machinery to complete their desperate resolve, nothing would happen.
>From the invaluable tome she learned that they must each be twenty-
one; or some one's consent would be necessary, which of course was
unobtainable; then she became lost in directions concerning licenses,
certificates, notices, districts, coming finally to the word
"perjury."   But that was nonsense!  Who would really mind their
giving wrong ages in order to be married for love!  She ate hardly
any breakfast, and went back to Whitaker.  The more she studied the
less sure she became; till, idly turning the pages, she came to
Scotland.  People could be married there without any of this
nonsense.  She had only to go and stay there twenty-one days, then
Jon could come, and in front of two people they could declare
themselves married.  And what was more--they would be!  It was far
the best way; and at once she ran over her schoolfellows.  There was
Mary Lambe who lived in Edinburgh and was "quite a sport!"

She had a brother too.  She could stay with Mary Lambe, who with her
brother would serve for witnesses.  She well knew that some girls
would think all this unnecessary, and that all she and Jon need do
was to go away together for a weekend and then say to their people:
"We are married by Nature, we must now be married by Law."  But Fleur
was Forsyte enough to feel such a proceeding dubious, and to dread
her father's face when he heard of it.  Besides, she did not believe
that Jon would do it; he had an opinion of her such as she could not
bear to diminish.  No!  Mary Lambe was preferable, and it was just
the time of year to go to Scotland.  More at ease now she packed,
avoided her aunt, and took a bus to Chiswick.  She was too early, and
went on to Kew Gardens.  She found no peace among its flower-beds,
labelled trees, and broad green spaces, and having lunched off
anchovy-paste sandwiches and coffee, returned to Chiswick and rang
June's bell.  The Austrian admitted her to the "little meal-room."
Now that she knew what she and Jon were up against, her longing for
him had increased tenfold, as if he were a toy with sharp edges or
dangerous paint such as they had tried to take from her as a child.
If she could not have her way, and get Jon for good and all, she felt
like dying of privation.  By hook or crook she must and would get
him!  A round dim mirror of very old glass hung over the pink brick
hearth.  She stood looking at herself reflected in it, pale, and
rather dark under the eyes; little shudders kept passing through her
nerves.  Then she heard the bell ring, and, stealing to the window,
saw him standing on the doorstep smoothing his hair and lips, as if
he too were trying to subdue the fluttering of his nerves.

She was sitting on one of the two rush-seated chairs, with her back
to the door, when he came in, and she said at once

"Sit down, Jon, I want to talk seriously."

Jon sat on the table by her side, and without looking at him she went
on:

"If you don't want to lose me, we must get married."

Jon gasped.

"Why?  Is there anything new?"

"No, but I felt it at Robin Hill, and among my people."

"But--" stammered Jon, "at Robin Hill--it was all smooth--and they've
said nothing to me."

"But they mean to stop us.  Your mother's face was enough.  And my
father's."

"Have you seen him since?"

Fleur nodded.  What mattered a few supplementary lies?

"But," said Jon eagerly, "I can't see how they can feel like that
after all these years."

Fleur looked up at him.

"Perhaps you don't love me enough."
"Not love you enough!  Why--!"

"Then make sure of me."

"Without telling them?"

"Not till after."

Jon was silent.  How much older he looked than on that day, barely
two months ago, when she first saw him--quite two years older!

"It would hurt Mother awfully," he said.

Fleur drew her hand away.

"You've got to choose."

Jon slid off the table on to his knees.

"But why not tell them?  They can't really stop us, Fleur!"

"They can!  I tell you, they can."

"How?"

"We're utterly dependent--by putting money pressure, and all sorts of
other pressure.  I'm not patient, Jon."

"But it's deceiving them."

Fleur got up.

"You can't really love me, or you wouldn't hesitate.  'He either
fears his fate too much!'"

Lifting his hands to her waist, Jon forced her to sit down again.
She hurried on:

"I've planned it all out.  We've only to go to Scotland.  When we're
married they'll soon come round.  People always come round to facts.
Don't you see, Jon?"

"But to hurt them so awfully!"

So he would rather hurt her than those people of his!  "All right,
then; let me go!"

Jon got up and put his back against the door.

"I expect you're right," he said slowly; "but I want to think it
over."

She could see that he was seething with feelings he wanted to
express; but she did not mean to help him.  She hated herself at this
moment and almost hated him.  Why had she to do all the work to
secure their love?  It wasn't fair.  And then she saw his eyes,
adoring and distressed.

"Don't look like that!  I only don't want to lose you, Jon."

"You can't lose me so long as you want me."

"Oh, yes, I can."

Jon put his hands on her shoulders.

"Fleur, do you know anything you haven't told me?"

It was the point-blank question she had dreaded.  She looked straight
at him, and answered: "No."  She had burnt her boats; but what did it
matter, if she got him?  He would forgive her.  And throwing her arms
round his neck, she kissed him on the lips.  She was winning!  She
felt it in the beating of his heart against her, in the closing of
his eyes.  "I want to make sure!  I want to make sure!" she
whispered.  "Promise!"

Jon did not answer.  His face had the stillness of extreme trouble.
At last he said:

"It's like hitting them.  I must think a little, Fleur.  I really
must."

Fleur slipped out of his arms.

"Oh! Very well!" And suddenly she burst into tears of disappointment,
shame, and overstrain.  Followed five minutes of acute misery.  Jon's
remorse and tenderness knew no bounds; but he did not promise.
Despite her will to cry, "Very well, then, if you don't love me
enough-goodbye!" she dared not.  From birth accustomed to her own
way, this check from one so young, so tender, so devoted, baffled and
surprised her.  She wanted to push him away from her, to try what
anger and coldness would do, and again she dared not.  The knowledge
that she was scheming to rush him blindfold into the irrevocable
weakened everything--weakened the sincerity of pique, and the
sincerity of passion; even her kisses had not the lure she wished for
them.  That stormy little meeting ended inconclusively.

"Will you some tea, gnadiges Fraulein?"

Pushing Jon from her, she cried out:

"No-no, thank you!  I'm just going."

And before he could prevent her she was gone.

She went stealthily, mopping her gushed, stained cheeks, frightened,
angry, very miserable.  She had stirred Jon up so fearfully, yet
nothing definite was promised or arranged!  But the more uncertain
and hazardous the future, the more "the will to have" worked its
tentacles into the flesh of her heart--like some burrowing tick!

No one was at Green Street.  Winifred had gone with Imogen to see a
play which some said was allegorical, and others "very exciting,
don't you know."  It was because of what others said that Winifred
and Imogen had gone.  Fleur went on to Paddington.  Through the
carriage the air from the brick-kilns of West Drayton and the late
hayfields fanned her still gushed cheeks.  Flowers had seemed to be
had for the picking; now they were all thorned and prickled.  But the
golden flower within the crown of spikes seemed to her tenacious
spirit all the fairer and more desirable.




IX

THE FAT IN THE FIRE


On reaching home Fleur found an atmosphere so peculiar that it
penetrated even the perplexed aura of her own private life.  Her
mother was inaccessibly entrenched in a brown study; her father
contemplating fate in the vinery.  Neither of them had a word to
throw to a dog.  'Is it because of me?' thought Fleur.  'Or because
of Profond?'  To her mother she said:

"What's the matter with Father?"

Her mother answered with a shrug of her shoulders.

To her father:

"What's the matter with Mother?"

Her father answered:

"Matter?  What should be the matter?" and gave her a sharp look.

"By the way," murmured Fleur, "Monsieur Profond is going a 'small'
voyage on his yacht, to the South Seas."

Soames examined a branch on which no grapes were growing.

"This vine's a failure," he said.  "I've had young Mont here.  He
asked me something about you."

"Oh! How do you like him, Father?"

"He--he's a product--like all these young people."

"What were you at his age, dear?"

Soames smiled grimly.

"We went to work, and didn't play about--flying and motoring, and
making love."

"Didn't you ever make love?"

She avoided looking at him while she said that, but she saw him well
enough.  His pale face had reddened, his eyebrows, where darkness was
still mingled with the grey, had come close together.

"I had no time or inclination to philander."

"Perhaps you had a grand passion."

Soames looked at her intently.

"Yes--if you want to know--and much good it did me."  He moved away,
along by the hot-water pipes.  Fleur tiptoed silently after him.

"Tell me about it, Father!"

Soames became very still.

"What should you want to know about such things, at your age?"

"Is she alive?"

He nodded.

"And married?" Yes."

"It's Jon Forsyte's mother, isn't it?  And she was your wife first."

It was said in a flash of intuition.  Surely his opposition came from
his anxiety that she should not know of that old wound to his pride.
But she was startled.  To see some one so old and calm wince as if
struck, to hear so sharp a note of pain in his voice!

"Who told you that?  If your aunt!  I can't bear the affair talked
of."

"But, darling," said Fleur, softly, "it's so long ago."

"Long ago or not, I...."

Fleur stood stroking his arm.

"I've tried to forget," he said suddenly; "I don't wish to be
reminded."  And then, as if venting some long and secret irritation,
he added: "In these days people don't understand.  Grand passion,
indeed!  No one knows what it is."

"I do," said Fleur, almost in a whisper.

Soames, who had turned his back on her, spun round.

"What are you talking of--a child like you!"

"Perhaps I've inherited it, Father."

"What?"

"For her son, you see."

He was pale as a sheet, and she knew that she was as bad.  They stood
staring at each other in the steamy heat, redolent of the mushy scent
of earth, of potted geranium, and of vines coming along fast.

"This is crazy," said Soames at last, between dry lips.

Scarcely moving her own, she murmured:

"Don't be angry, Father.  I can't help it."

But she could see he wasn't angry; only scared, deeply scared.

"I thought that foolishness," he stammered, "was all forgotten."

"Oh, no!  It's ten times what it was."

Soames kicked at the hot-water pipe.  The hapless movement touched
her, who had no fear of her father--none.

"Dearest!" she said.  "What must be, must, you know."

"Must!" repeated Soames.  "You don't know what you're talking of.
Has that boy been told?"

The blood rushed into her cheeks.

"Not yet."

He had turned from her again, and, with one shoulder a little raised,
stood staring fixedly at a joint in the pipes.

"It's most distasteful to me," he said suddenly; "nothing could be
more so.  Son of that fellow!  It's--it's--perverse!"

She had noted, almost unconsciously, that he did not say "son of that
woman," and again her intuition began working.

Did the ghost of that grand passion linger in some corner of his
heart?

She slipped her hand under his arm.

"Jon's father is quite ill and old; I saw him."

"You--?"

"Yes, I went there with Jon; I saw them both."

"Well, and what did they say to you?"

"Nothing.  They were very polite."

"They would be."  He resumed his contemplation of the pipe-joint, and
then said suddenly:

"I must think this over--I'll speak to you again to-night."

She knew this was final for the moment, and stole away, leaving him
still looking at the pipe-joint.  She wandered into the fruit-garden,
among the raspberry and currant bushes, without impetus to pick and
eat.  Two months ago--she was light-hearted!  Even two days ago--
light-hearted, before Prosper Profond told her.  Now she felt tangled
in a web-of passions, vested rights, oppressions and revolts, the
ties of love and hate.  At this dark moment of discouragement there
seemed, even to her hold-fast nature, no way out.  How deal with it--
how sway and bend things to her will, and get her heart's desire?
And, suddenly, round the corner of the high box hedge, she came plump
on her mother, walking swiftly, with an open letter in her hand.  Her
bosom was heaving, her eyes dilated, her cheeks flushed.  Instantly
Fleur thought: 'The yacht!  Poor Mother!'

Annette gave her a wide startled look, and said:

"J'ai la migraine."

"I'm awfully sorry, Mother."

"Oh, yes!  you and your father--sorry!"

"But, Mother--I am.  I know what it feels like."

Annette's startled eyes grew wide, till the whites showed above them.

"Poor innocent!" she said.

Her mother--so self-possessed, and commonsensical--to look and speak
like this!  It was all frightening!  Her father, her mother, herself!
And only two months back they had seemed to have everything they
wanted in this world.

Annette crumpled the letter in her hand.  Fleur knew that she must
ignore the sight.

"Can't I do anything for your head, Mother?"

Annette shook that head and walked on, swaying her hips.

'It's cruel,' thought Fleur, 'and I was glad!  That man!  What do men
come prowling for, disturbing everything!  I suppose he's tired of
her.  What business has he to be tired of my mother?  What business!'
And at that thought, so natural and so peculiar, she uttered a little
choked laugh.

She ought, of course, to be delighted, but what was there to be
delighted at?  Her father didn't really care!  Her mother did,
perhaps?  She entered the orchard, and sat down under a cherry-tree.
A breeze sighed in the higher boughs; the sky seen through their
green was very blue and very white in cloud--those heavy white clouds
almost always present in river landscape.  Bees, sheltering out of
the wind, hummed softly, and over the lush grass fell the thick shade
from those fruit-trees planted by her father five-and-twenty, years
ago.  Birds were almost silent, the cuckoos had ceased to sing, but
wood-pigeons were cooing.  The breath and drone and cooing of high
summer were not for long a sedative to her excited nerves.  Crouched
over her knees she began to scheme.  Her father must be made to back
her up.  Why should he mind so long as she was happy?  She had not
lived for nearly nineteen years without knowing that her future was
all he really cared about.  She had, then, only to convince him that
her future could not be happy without Jon.  He thought it a mad
fancy.  How foolish the old were, thinking they could tell what the
young felt!  Had not he confessed that he--when young--had loved with
a grand passion?  He ought to understand!  'He piles up his money for
me,' she thought; 'but what's the use, if I'm not going to be happy?'
Money, and all it bought, did not bring happiness.  Love only brought
that.  The ox-eyed daisies in this orchard, which gave it such a
moony look sometimes, grew wild and happy, and had their hour.  'They
oughtn't to have called me Fleur,' she mused, 'if they didn't mean me
to have my hour, and be happy while it lasts.'  Nothing real stood in
the way, like poverty, or disease--sentiment only, a ghost from the
unhappy past!  Jon was right.  They wouldn't let you live, these old
people!  They made mistakes, committed crimes, and wanted their
children to go on paying!  The breeze died away; midges began to
bite.  She got up, plucked a piece of honeysuckle, and went in.

It was hot that night.  Both she and her mother had put on thin, pale
low frocks.  The dinner flowers were pale.  Fleur was struck with the
pale look of everything; her father's face, her mother's shoulders;
the pale panelled walls, the pale grey velvety carpet, the lamp-
shade, even the soup was pale.  There was not one spot of colour in
the room, not even wine in the pale glasses, for no one drank it.
What was not pale was black--her father's clothes, the butler's
clothes, her retriever stretched out exhausted in the window, the
curtains black with a cream pattern.  A moth came in, and that was
pale.  And silent was that half-mourning dinner in the heat.

Her father called her back as she was following her mother out.

She sat down beside him at the table, and, unpinning the pale
honeysuckle, put it to her nose.

"I've been thinking," he said.

"Yes, dear?"

"It's extremely painful for me to talk, but there's no help for it.
I don't know if you understand how much you are to me I've never
spoken of it, I didn't think it necessary; but--but you're
everything.  Your mother--" he paused, staring at his finger-bowl of
Venetian glass.

"Yes?"'

"I've only you to look to.  I've never had--never wanted anything
else, since you were born."

"I know," Fleur murmured.

Soames moistened his lips.

"You may think this a matter I can smooth over and arrange for you.
You're mistaken.  I'm helpless."

Fleur did not speak.

"Quite apart from my own feelings," went on Soames with more
resolution, "those two are not amenable to anything I can say.  They-
-they hate me, as people always hate those whom they have injured."
"But he--Jon--"

"He's their flesh and blood, her only child.  Probably he means to
her what you mean to me.  It's a deadlock."

"No," cried Fleur, "no, Father!"

Soames leaned back, the image of pale patience, as if resolved on the
betrayal of no emotion.

"Listen!" he said.  "You're putting the feelings of two months--two
months--against the feelings of thirty-five years!  What chance do
you think you have?  Two months--your very first love affair, a
matter of half a dozen meetings, a few walks and talks, a few kisses-
-against, against what you can't imagine, what no one could who
hasn't been through it.  Come, be reasonable, Fleur! It's midsummer
madness!"

Fleur tore the honeysuckle into little, slow bits.

"The madness is in letting the past spoil it all.

"What do we care about the past?  It's our lives, not yours."

Soames raised his hand to his forehead, where suddenly she saw
moisture shining.

"Whose child are you?" he said.  "Whose child is he?  The present is
linked with the past, the future with both.  There's no getting away
from that."

She had never heard philosophy pass those lips before.  Impressed
even in her agitation, she leaned her elbows on the table, her chin
on her hands.

"But, Father, consider it practically.  We want each other.  There's
ever so much money, and nothing whatever in the way but sentiment.
Let's bury the past, Father."

His answer was a sigh.

"Besides," said Fleur gently, "you can't prevent us."

"I don't suppose," said Soames, "that if left to myself I should try
to prevent you; I must put up with things, I know, to keep your
affection.  But it's not I who control this matter.  That's what I
want you to realise before it's too late.  If you go on thinking you
can get your way and encourage this feeling, the blow will be much
heavier when you find you can't."

"Oh!" cried Fleur, "help me, Father; you can help me, you know."

Soames made a startled movement of negation.  "I?" he said bitterly.
"Help?  I am the impediment--the just cause and impediment--isn't
that the jargon?  You have my blood in your veins."

He rose.

"Well, the fat's in the fire.  If you persist in your wilfulness
you'll have yourself to blame.  Come!  Don't be foolish, my child--my
only child!"

Fleur laid her forehead against his shoulder.

All was in such turmoil within her.  But no good to show it!  No good
at all!  She broke away from him, and went out into the twilight,
distraught, but unconvinced.  All was indeterminate and vague within
her, like the shapes and shadows in the garden, except--her will to
have.  A poplar pierced up into the dark-blue sky and touched a white
star there.  The dew wetted her shoes, and chilled her bare
shoulders.  She went down to the river bank, and stood gazing at a
moonstreak on the darkening water.  Suddenly she smelled tobacco
smoke, and a white figure emerged as if created by the moon.  It was
young Mont in flannels, standing in his boat.  She heard the tiny
hiss of his cigarette extinguished in the water.

"Fleur," came his voice, "don't be hard on a poor devil!  I've been
waiting hours."

"For what?"

"Come in my boat!"

"Not I."

"Why not?"

"I'm not a water-nymph."

"Haven't you any romance in you?  Don't be modern, Fleur!"

He appeared on the path within a yard of her.

"Go away!"

"Fleur, I love you.  Fleur!"

Fleur uttered a short laugh.

"Come again," she said, "when I haven't got my wish."

"What is your wish?"

"Ask another."

"Fleur," said Mont, and his voice sounded strange, "don't mock me!
Even vivisected dogs are worth decent treatment before they're cut up
for good."

Fleur shook her head; but her lips were trembling.

"Well, you shouldn't make me jump.  Give me a cigarette."

Mont gave her one, lighted it, and another for himself.

"I don't want to talk rot," he said, "but please imagine all the rot
that all the lovers that ever were have talked, and all my special
rot thrown in."

"Thank you, I have imagined it.  Good-night!"  They stood for a
moment facing each other in the shadow of an acacia-tree with very
moonlit blossoms, and the smoke from their cigarettes mingled in the
air between them.

"Also ran: 'Michael Mont'?" he said.  Fleur turned abruptly toward
the house.  On the lawn she stopped to look back.  Michael Mont was
whirling his arms above him; she could see them dashing at his head;
then waving at the moonlit blossoms of the acacia.  His voice just
reached her.  "Jolly-jolly!"  Fleur shook herself.  She couldn't help
him, she had too much trouble of her own!  On the verandah she
stopped very suddenly again.  Her mother was sitting in the drawing-
room at her writing bureau, quite alone.  There was nothing
remarkable in the expression of her face except its utter immobility.
But she looked desolate!  Fleur went upstairs.  At the door of her
room she paused.  She could hear her father walking up and down, up
and down the picture-gallery.

'Yes,' she thought, jolly!  Oh, Jon!'




X

DECISION


When Fleur left him Jon stared at the Austrian.  She was a thin woman
with a dark face and the concerned expression of one who has watched
every little good that life once had slip from her, one by one.
"No tea?" she said.

Susceptible to the disappointment in her voice, Jon murmured:

"No, really; thanks."

"A lil cup--it ready.  A lil cup and cigarette."

Fleur was gone!  Hours of remorse and indecision lay before him!  And
with a heavy sense of disproportion he smiled, and said:

"Well--thank you!"

She brought in a little pot of tea with two little cups, and a silver
box of cigarettes on a little tray.

"Sugar?  Miss Forsyte has much sugar--she buy my sugar, my friend's
sugar also.  Miss Forsyte is a veree kind lady.  I am happy to serve
her.  You her brother?"

"Yes," said Jon, beginning to puff the second cigarette of his life.

"Very young brother," said the Austrian, with a little anxious smile,
which reminded him of the wag of a dog's tail.

"May I give you some?" he said.  "And won't you sit down, please?"

The Austrian shook her head.

"Your father a very nice old man--the most nice old man I ever see.
Miss Forsyte tell me all about him.  Is he better?"

Her words fell on Jon like a reproach.  "Oh Yes, I think he's all
right."

"I like to see him again," said the Austrian, putting a hand on her
heart; "he have veree kind heart."

"Yes," said Jon.  And again her words seemed to him a reproach.

"He never give no trouble to no one, and smile so gentle."

"Yes, doesn't he?"

"He look at Miss Forsyte so funny sometimes.  I tell him all my
story; he so sympatisch.  Your mother--she nice and well?"

"Yes, very."

"He have her photograph on his dressing-table.  Veree beautiful"

Jon gulped down his tea.  This woman, with her concerned face and her
reminding words, was like the first and second murderers.

"Thank you," he said; "I must go now.  May--may I leave this with
you?"

He put a ten-shilling note on the tray with a doubting hand and
gained the door.  He heard the Austrian gasp, and hurried out.  He
had just time to catch his train, and all the way to Victoria looked
at every face that passed, as lovers will, hoping against hope.  On
reaching Worthing he put his luggage into the local train, and set
out across the Downs for Wansdon, trying to walk off his aching
irresolution.  So long as he went full bat, he could enjoy the beauty
of those green slopes, stopping now and again to sprawl on the grass,
admire the perfection of a wild rose or listen to a lark's song.  But
the war of motives within him was but postponed--the longing for
Fleur, and the hatred of deception.  He came to the old chalk-pit
above Wansdon with his mind no more made up than when he started.  To
see both sides of a question vigorously was at once Jon's strength
and weakness.  He tramped in, just as the first dinner-bell rang.
His things had already been brought up.  He had a hurried bath and
came down to find Holly alone--Val had gone to Town and would not be
back till the last train.

Since Val's advice to him to ask his sister what was the matter
between the two families, so much had happened--Fleur's disclosure in
the Green Park, her visit to Robin Hill, to-day's meeting--that there
seemed nothing to ask.  He talked of Spain, his sunstroke, Val's
horses, their father's health.  Holly startled him by saying that she
thought their father not at all well.  She had been twice to Robin
Hill for the week-end.  He had seemed fearfully languid, sometimes
even in pain, but had always refused to talk about himself.

"He's awfully dear and unselfish--don't you think, Jon?"

Feeling far from dear and unselfish himself, Jon answered: "Rather!"

"I think, he's been a simply perfect father, so long as I can
remember."

"Yes," answered Jon, very subdued.

"He's never interfered, and he's always seemed to understand.  I
shall never forget his letting me go to South Africa in the Boer War
when I was in love with Val."

"That was before he married Mother, wasn't it?" said Jon suddenly.

"Yes.  Why?"

"Oh! nothing.  Only, wasn't she engaged to Fleur's father first?"

Holly put down the spoon she was using, and raised her eyes.  Her
stare was circumspect.  What did the boy know?  Enough to make it
better to tell him?  She could not decide.  He looked strained and
worried, altogether older, but that might be the sunstroke.

"There was something," she said.  "Of course we were out there, and
got no news of anything."  She could not take the risk.

It was not her secret.  Besides, she was in the dark about his
feelings now.  Before Spain she had made sure he was in love; but
boys were boys; that was seven weeks ago, and all Spain between.

She saw that he knew she was putting him off, and added:

"Have you heard anything of Fleur?"

"Yes."

His face told her, then, more than the most elaborate explanations.
So he had not forgotten!

She said very quietly: "Fleur is awfully attractive, Jon, but you
know--Val and I don't really like her very much."

"Why?"

"We think she's got rather a 'having' nature."

"'Having'?  I don't know what you mean.  She--she--" he pushed his
dessert plate away, got up, and went to the window.

Holly, too, got up, and put her arm round his waist.

"Don't be angry, Jon dear.  We can't all see people in the same
light, can we?  You know, I believe each of us only has about one or
two people who can see the best that's in us, and bring it out.  For
you I think it's your mother.  I once saw her looking at a letter of
yours; it was wonderful to see her face.  I think she's the most
beautiful woman I ever saw--Age doesn't seem to touch her."

Jon's face softened; then again became tense.  Everybody--everybody
was against him and Fleur!  It all strengthened the appeal of her
words: "Make sure of me--marry me, Jon!"

Here, where he had passed that wonderful week with her--the tug of
her enchantment, the ache in his heart increased with every minute
that she was not there to make the room, the garden, the very air
magical.  Would he ever be able to live down here, not seeing her?
And he closed up utterly, going early to bed.  It would not make him
healthy, wealthy, and wise, but it closeted him with memory of Fleur
in her fancy frock.  He heard Val's arrival--the Ford discharging
cargo, then the stillness of the summer night stole back--with only
the bleating of very distant sheep, and a night-Jar's harsh purring.
He leaned far out.  Cold moon--warm air--the Downs like silver!
Small wings, a stream bubbling, the rambler roses!  God--how empty
all of it without her!  In the Bible it was written: Thou shalt leave
father and mother and cleave to--Fleur!

Let him have pluck, and go and tell them!  They couldn't stop him
marrying her--they wouldn't want to stop him when they knew how he
felt.  Yes!  He would go! Bold and open--Fleur was wrong!

The night-jar ceased, the sheep were silent; the only sound in the
darkness was the bubbling of the stream.  And Jon in his bed slept,
freed from the worst of life's evils--indecision.




XI

TIMOTHY PROPHESIES


On the day of the cancelled meeting at the National Gallery began the
second anniversary of the resurrection of England's pride and glory--
or, more shortly, the top hat.  "Lord's"--that festival which the
War had driven from the field--raised its light and dark blue flags
for the second time, displaying almost every feature of a glorious
past.  Here, in the luncheon interval, were all species of female and
one species of male hat, protecting the multiple types of face
associated with "the classes."  The observing Forsyte might discern
in the free or unconsidered seats a certain number of the squash-
hatted, but they hardly ventured on the grass; the old school--or
schools--could still rejoice that the proletariat was not yet paying
the necessary half-crown.  Here was still a close borough, the only
one left on a large scale--for the papers were about to estimate the
attendance at ten thousand.  And the ten thousand, all animated by
one hope, were asking each other one question: "Where are you
lunching?"  Something wonderfully uplifting and reassuring in that
query and the sight of so many people like themselves voicing it!
What reserve power in the British realm--enough pigeons, lobsters,
lamb, salmon mayonnaise, strawberries, and bottles of champagne to
feed the lot!  No miracle in prospect--no case of seven loaves and a
few fishes--faith rested on surer foundations.  Six thousand top
hats, four thousand parasols would be doffed and furled, ten thousand
mouths all speaking the same English would be filled.  There was life
in the old dog yet!  Tradition!  And again Tradition!  How strong and
how elastic!  Wars might rage, taxation prey, Trades Unions take
toll, and Europe perish of starvation; but the ten thousand would be
fed; and, within their ring fence, stroll upon green turf, wear their
top hats, and meet--themselves.  The heart was sound, the pulse still
regular.  E-ton!  E-ton!  Har-r-o-o-o-w!

Among the many Forsytes, present on a hunting-ground theirs, by
personal prescriptive right, or proxy, was Soames with his wife and
daughter.  He had not been at either school, he took no interest in
cricket, but he wanted Fleur to show her frock, and he wanted to wear
his top hat parade it again in peace and plenty among his peers.  He
walked sedately with Fleur between him and Annette.  No women
equalled them, so far as he could see.  They could walk, and hold
themselves up; there was substance in their good looks; the modern
woman had no build, no chest, no anything!  He remembered suddenly
with what intoxication of pride he had walked round with Irene in the
first years of his first marriage.  And how they used to lunch on the
drag which his mother would make his father have, because it was so
"chic"--all drags and carriages in those days, not these lumbering
great Stands!  And how consistently Montague Dartie had drunk too
much.  He supposed that people drank too much still, but there was
not the scope for it there used to be.  He remembered George Forsyte-
-whose brothers Roger and Eustace had been at Harrow and Eton--
towering up on the top of the drag waving a light-blue flag with one
hand and a dark-blue flag with the other, and shouting "Etroow-
Harrton!"  Just when everybody was silent, like the buffoon he had
always been; and Eustace got up to the nines below, too dandified to
wear any colour or take any notice.  H'm!  Old days, and Irene in
grey silk shot with palest green.  He looked, sideways, at Fleur's
face.  Rather colourless-no light, no eagerness!  That love affair
was preying on her--a bad business!  He looked beyond, at his wife's
face, rather more touched up than usual, a little disdainful--not
that she had any business to disdain, so far as he could see.  She
was taking Profond's defection with curious quietude; or was his
"small" voyage just a blind?  If so, he should refuse to see it!
Having promenaded round the pitch and in front of the pavilion, they
sought Winifred's table in the Bedouin Club tent.  This Club--a new
"cock and hen"--had been founded in the interests of travel, and of a
gentleman with an old Scottish name, whose father had somewhat
strangely been called Levi.  Winifred had joined, not because she had
travelled, but because instinct told her that a Club with such a name
and such a founder was bound to go far; if one didn't join at once
one might never have the chance.  Its tent, with a text from the
Koran on an orange ground, and a small green camel embroidered over
the entrance, was the most striking on the ground.  Outside it they
found Jack Cardigan in a dark blue tie (he had once played for
Harrow), batting with a Malacca cane to show how that fellow ought to
have hit that ball.  He piloted them in.  Assembled in Winifred's
corner were Imogen, Benedict with his young wife, Val Dartie without
Holly, Maud and her husband, and, after Soames and his two were
seated, one empty place.

"I'm expecting Prosper," said Winifred, "but he's so busy with his
yacht."

Soames stole a glance.  No movement in his wife's face!  Whether that
fellow were coming or not, she evidently knew all about it.  It did
not escape him that Fleur, too, looked at her mother.  If Annette
didn't respect his feelings, she might think of Fleur's!  The
conversation, very desultory, was syncopated by Jack Cardigan talking
about "mid-off."  He cited all the "great mid-offs" from the
beginning of time, as if they had been a definite racial entity in
the composition of the British people.  Soames had finished his
lobster, and was beginning on pigeon-pie, when he heard the words,
"I'm a small bit late, Mrs. Dartie," and saw that there was no longer
any empty place.  That fellow was sitting between Annette and Imogen.
Soames ate steadily on, with an occasional word to Maud and Winifred.
Conversation buzzed around him.  He heard the voice of Profond say:

"I think you're mistaken, Mrs. Forsyde; I'll--I'll bet Miss Forsyde
agrees with me."

"In what?" came Fleur's clear voice across the table.

"I was sayin', young gurls are much the same as they always were--
there's very small difference."

"Do you know so much about them?"


That sharp reply caught the ears of all, and Soames moved uneasily on
his thin green chair.

"Well, I don't know, I think they want their own small way, and I
think they always did."

"Indeed!"

"Oh, but--Prosper," Winifred interjected comfortably, "the girls in
the streets--the girls  who've been in munitions, the little flappers
in  the shops; their manners now really quite hit you in the eye."

At the word "hit" Jack Cardigan stopped his disquisition; and in the
silence Monsieur Profond  said:

"It was inside before, now it's outside; that's  all."

"But their morals!" cried Imogen.

"Just as moral as they ever were, Mrs. Cardigan, but they've got more
opportunity."

The saying, so cryptically cynical, received a  little laugh from
Imogen, a slight opening of Jack Cardigan's mouth, and a creak from
Soames' chair.

Winifred said: "That's too bad, Prosper."

"What do you say, Mrs. Forsyde; don't you think human nature's always
the same?"

Soames subdued a sudden longing to get up and kick the fellow.  He
heard his wife reply:

"Human nature is not the same in England as anywhere else."  That was
her confounded mockery!

"Well, I don't know much about this small country"--'No, thank God!'
thought Soames--"but I should say the pot was boilin' under the lid
everywhere.  We all want pleasure, and we always did."

Damn the fellow!  His cynicism was--was outrageous!

When lunch was over they broke up into couples for the digestive
promenade.  Too proud to notice, Soames knew perfectly that Annette
and that fellow had gone prowling round together.  Fleur was with
Val; she had chosen him, no doubt, because he knew that boy.  He
himself had Winifred for partner.  They walked in the bright,
circling stream, a little flushed and sated, for some minutes, till
Winifred sighed:

"I wish we were back forty years, old boy!"

Before the eyes of her spirit an interminable procession of her own
"Lord's" frocks was passing, paid for with the money of her father,
to save a recurrent crisis.  "It's been very amusing, after all.
Sometimes I even wish Monty was back.  What do you think of people
nowadays, Soames?"

"Precious little style.  The thing began to go to pieces with
bicycles and motor-cars; the War has finished it."

"I wonder what's coming?" said Winifred in a voice dreamy from
pigeon-pie.  "I'm not at all sure we shan't go back to crinolines and
pegtops.  Look at that dress!"

Soames shook his head.

"There's money, but no faith in things.  We don't lay by for the
future.  These youngsters--it's all a short life and a merry one with
them."

"There's a hat!" said Winifred.  "I don't know--when you come to
think of the people killed and all that in the War, it's rather
wonderful, I think.  There's no other country--Prosper says the rest
are all bankrupt, except America; and of course her men always took
their style in dress from us."

"Is that chap," said Soames, "really going to the South Seas?"

"Oh! one never knows where Prosper's going!"

"He's a sign of the times," muttered Soames, "if you like."

Winifred's hand gripped his arm.

"Don't turn your head," she said in a low voice, "but look to your
right in the front row of the Stand."

Soames looked as best he could under that limitation.  A man in a
grey top hat, grey-bearded, with thin brown, folded cheeks, and a
certain elegance of posture, sat there with a woman in a lawn-
coloured frock, whose dark eyes were fixed on himself.  Soames looked
quickly at his feet.  How funnily feet moved, one after the other
like that!  Winifred's voice said in his ear:

"Jolyon looks very ill; but he always had style.  She doesn't change-
-except her hair."

"Why did you tell Fleur about that business?"

"I didn't; she picked it up.  I always knew she would."

"Well, it's a mess.  She's set her heart upon their boy."

"The little wretch," murmured Winifred.  "She tried to take me in
about that.  What shall you do, Soames?"

"Be guided by events."

They moved on, silent, in the almost solid crowd.

"Really," said Winifred suddenly; "it almost seems like Fate.  Only
that's so old-fashioned.  Look! there are George and Eustace!"

George Forsyte's lofty bulk had halted before them.

"Hallo, Soames!" he said.  "Just met Profond and your wife.  You'll
catch 'em if you put on pace.  Did you ever go to see old Timothy?"

Soames nodded, and the streams forced them apart.

"I always liked old George," said Winifred.  "He's so droll."

"I never did," said Soames.  "Where's your seat?  I shall go to mine.
Fleur may be back there."

Having seen Winifred to her seat, he regained his own, conscious of
small, white, distant figures running, the click of the bat, the
cheers and counter-cheers.  No Fleur, and no Annette!  You could
expect nothing of women nowadays!  They had the vote.  They were
"emancipated," and much good it was doing them!  So Winifred would go
back, would she, and put up with Dartie all over again?  To have the
past once more--to be sitting here as he had sat in '83 and '84,
before he was certain that his marriage with Irene had gone all
wrong, before her antagonism had become so glaring that with the best
will in the world he could not overlook it.  The sight of her with
that fellow had brought all memory back.  Even now he could not
understand why she had been so impracticable.  She could love other
men; she had it in her!  To himself, the one person she ought to have
loved, she had chosen to refuse her heart.  It seemed to him,
fantastically, as he looked back, that all this modern relaxation of
marriage--though its forms and laws were the same as when he married
her--that all this modern looseness had come out of her revolt; it
seemed to him, fantastically, that she had started it, till all
decent ownership of anything had gone, or was on the point of going.
All came from her!  And now--a pretty state of things!  Homes!  How
could you have them without mutual ownership?  Not that he had ever
had a real home!  But had that been his fault?  He had done his best.
And his rewards were--those two sitting in that Stand, and this
affair of Fleur's!

And overcome by loneliness he thought: 'Shan't wait any longer!  They
must find their own way back to the hotel--if they mean to come!'
Hailing a cab outside the ground, he said:

"Drive me to the Bayswater Road."  His old aunts had never failed
him.  To them he had meant an ever-welcome visitor.  Though they were
gone, there, still, was Timothy!

Smither was standing in the open doorway.

"Mr. Soames!  I was just taking the air.  Cook will be so pleased."

"How is Mr. Timothy?"

"Not himself at all these last few days, sir; he's been talking a
great deal.  Only this morning he was saying: 'My brother James, he's
getting old.'  His mind wanders, Mr. Soames, and then he will talk of
them.  He troubles about their investments.  The other day he said:
'There's my brother Jolyon won't look at Consols'--he seemed quite
down about it.  Come in, Mr. Soames, come in!  It's such a pleasant
change!"

"Well," said Soames, "just for a few minutes."

"No," murmured Smither in the hall, where the air had the singular
freshness of the outside day, "we haven't been very satisfied with
him, not all this week.  He's always been one to leave a titbit to
the end; but ever since Monday he's been eating it first.  If you
notice a dog, Mr. Soames, at its dinner, it eats the meat first.
We've always thought it such a good sign of Mr. Timothy at his age to
leave it to the last, but now he seems to have lost all his self-
control; and, of course, it makes him leave the rest.  The doctor
doesn't make anything of it, but"--Smither shook her head--"he seems
to think he's got to eat it first, in case he shouldn't get to it.
That and his talking makes us anxious."

"Has he said anything important?"

"I shouldn't like to say that, Mr. Soames; but he's turned against
his Will.  He gets quite pettish--and after having had it out every
morning for years, it does seem funny.  He said the other day: 'They
want my money.'  It gave me such a turn, because, as I said to him,
nobody wants his money, I'm sure.  And it does seem a pity he should
be thinking about money at his time of life.  I took my courage in my
'ands.  'You know, Mr. Timothy,' I said, 'my dear mistress'--that's
Miss Forsyte, Mr. Soames, Miss Ann that trained me--'she never
thought about money,' I said, 'it was all character with her.'  He
looked at me, I can't tell you how funny, and he said quite dry:
'Nobody wants my character.'  Think of his saying a thing like that!
But sometimes he'll say something as sharp and sensible as anything."

Soames, who had been staring at an old print by the hat-rack,
thinking, 'That's got value!'  murmured: "I'll go up and see him,
Smither."

"Cook's with him," answered Smither above her corsets; "she will be
pleased to see you."

He mounted slowly, with the thought: 'Shan't care to live to be that
age.'

On the second floor, he paused, and tapped.  The door was opened, and
he saw the round homely face of a woman about sixty.

"Mr. Soames!" she said: "Why!  Mr. Soames!"

Soames nodded.  "All right, Cook!" and entered.

Timothy was propped up in bed, with his hands joined before his
chest, and his eyes fixed on the ceiling, where a fly was standing
upside down.  Soames stood at the foot of the bed, facing him.

"Uncle Timothy," he said, raising his voice.  "Uncle Timothy!"

Timothy's eyes left the fly, and levelled themselves on his visitor.
Soames could see his pale tongue passing over his darkish lips.

"Uncle Timothy," he said again, "is there anything I can do for you?
Is there anything you'd like to say?"

"Ha!" said Timothy.

"I've come to look you up and see that everything's all right."

Timothy nodded.  He seemed trying to get used to the apparition
before him.

"Have you got everything you want?"

"No," said Timothy.

"Can I get you anything?"

"No," said Timothy.

"I'm Soames, you know; your nephew, Soames Forsyte.  Your brother
James' son."

Timothy nodded.

"I shall be delighted to do anything I can for you."

Timothy beckoned.  Soames went close to him:

"You--" said Timothy in a voice which seemed to have outlived tone,
"you tell them all from me--you tell them all--" and his finger
tapped on Soames' arm, "to hold on--hold on--Consols are goin' up,"
and he nodded thrice.

"All right!" said Soames; "I will."

"Yes," said Timothy, and, fixing his eyes again on the ceiling, he
added: "That fly!"

Strangely moved, Soames looked at the Cook's pleasant fattish face,
all little puckers from staring at fires.

"That'll do him a world of good, sir," she said.

A mutter came from Timothy, but he was clearly speaking to himself,
and Soames went out with the cook.

"I wish I could make you a pink cream, Mr. Soames, like in old days;
you did so relish them.  Good-bye, sir; it has been a pleasure."

"Take care of him, Cook, he is old."

And, shaking her crumpled hand, he went down-stairs.  Smither was
still taking the air in the doorway.

"What do you think of him, Mr. Soames?"

"H'm!" Soames murmured: "He's lost touch."

"Yes," said Smither, "I was afraid you'd think that coming fresh out
of the world to see him like."

"Smither," said Soames, "we're all indebted to you."

"Oh, no, Mr. Soames, don't say that!  It's a pleasure--he's such a
wonderful man."

"Well, good-bye!" said Soames, and got into his taxi.

'Going up!' he thought; 'going up!'

Reaching the hotel at Knightsbridge he went to their sitting-room,
and rang for tea.  Neither of them were in.  And again that sense of
loneliness came over him.  These hotels.  What monstrous great places
they were now!  He could remember when there was nothing bigger than
Long's or Brown's, Morley's or the Tavistock, and the heads that were
shaken over the Langham and the Grand.  Hotels and Clubs--Clubs and
Hotels; no end to them now!  And Soames, who had just been watching
at Lord's a miracle of tradition and continuity, fell into reverie
over the changes in that London where he had been born five-and-sixty
years before.  Whether Consols were going up or not, London had
become a terrific property.  No such property in the world, unless it
were New York!  There was a lot of hysteria in the papers nowadays;
but any one who, like himself, could remember London sixty years ago,
and see it now, realised the fecundity and elasticity of wealth.
They had only to keep their heads, and go at it steadily.  Why! he
remembered cobblestones, and stinking straw on the floor of your cab.
And old Timothy--what could be not have told them, if he had kept his
memory!  Things were unsettled, people in a funk or in a hurry, but
here were London and the Thames, and out there the British Empire,
and the ends of the earth.  "Consols are goin' up!"  He should n't be
a bit surprised.  It was the breed that counted.  And all that was
bull-dogged in Soames stared for a moment out of his grey eyes, till
diverted by the print of a Victorian picture on the walls.  The hotel
had bought three dozen of that little lot!  The old hunting or
"Rake's Progress" prints in the old inns were worth looking at--but
this sentimental stuff--well, Victorianism had gone!  "Tell them to
hold on!" old Timothy had said.  But to what were they to hold on in
this modern welter of the "democratic principle"?  Why, even privacy
was threatened!  And at the thought that privacy might perish, Soames
pushed back his teacup and went to the window.  Fancy owning no more
of Nature than the crowd out there owned of the flowers and trees and
waters of Hyde Park!  No, no! Private possession underlay everything
worth having.  The world had slipped its sanity a bit, as dogs now
and again at full moon slipped theirs and went off for a night's
rabbiting; but the world, like the dog, knew where its bread was
buttered and its bed warm, and would come back sure enough to the
only home worth having--to private ownership.  The world was in its
second childhood for the moment, like old Timothy--eating its titbit
first!

He heard a sound behind him, and saw that his wife and daughter had
come in.

"So you're back!" he said.

Fleur did not answer; she stood for a moment looking at him and her
mother, then passed into her bedroom.  Annette poured herself out a
cup of tea.

"I am going to Paris, to my mother, Soames."  "Oh! To your mother?"

"Yes."

"For how long?"

"I do not know."

"And when are you going?"

"On Monday."

Was she really going to her mother?  Odd, how indifferent he felt!
Odd, how clearly she had perceived the indifference he would feel so
long as there was no scandal.  And suddenly between her and himself
he saw distinctly the face he had seen that afternoon--Irene's.

"Will you want money?"

"Thank you; I have enough."

"Very well.  Let us know when you are coming back."

Annette put down the cake she was fingering, and, looking up through
darkened lashes, said:

"Shall I give Maman any message?"

"My regards."

Annette stretched herself, her hands on her waist, and said in
French:

"What luck that you have never loved me, Soames!"  Then rising, she
too left the room.  Soames was glad she had spoken it in French--it
seemed to require no dealing with.  Again that other face--pale,
dark-eyed, beautiful still!  And there stirred far down within him
the ghost of warmth, as from sparks lingering beneath a mound of
flaky ash.  And Fleur infatuated with her boy!  Queer chance!  Yet,
was there such a thing as chance?  A man went down a street, a brick
fell on his head.  Ah! that was chance, no doubt.  But this!
"Inherited," his girl had said.  She--she was "holding on"!






PART III


I

OLD JOLYON WALKS


Twofold impulse had made Jolyon say to his wife at breakfast
"Let's go up to Lord's!"

"Wanted"--something to abate the anxiety in which those two had lived
during the sixty hours since Jon had brought Fleur down.  "Wanted"--
too, that which might assuage the pangs of memory in one who knew he
might lose them any day!

Fifty-eight years ago Jolyon had become an Eton boy, for old Jolyon's
whim had been that he should be canonised at the greatest possible
expense.  Year after year he had gone to Lord's from Stanhope Gate
with a father whose youth in the eighteen-twenties had been passed
without polish in the game of cricket.  Old Jolyon would speak quite
openly of swipes, full tosses, half and three-quarter balls; and
young Jolyon with the guileless snobbery of youth had trembled lest
his sire should be overheard.  Only in this supreme matter of cricket
he had been nervous, for his father--in Crimean whiskers then--had
ever impressed him as the beau ideal.  Though never canonised
himself, Old Jolyon's natural fastidiousness and balance had saved
him from the errors of the vulgar.  How delicious, after howling in a
top hat and a sweltering heat, to go home with his father in a hansom
cab, bathe, dress, and forth to the "Disunion" Club, to dine off
white bait, cutlets, and a tart, and go--two "swells," old and young,
in lavender kid gloves--to the opera or play.  And on Sunday, when
the match was over, and his top hat duly broken, down with his father
in a special hansom to the "Crown and Sceptre," and the terrace above
the river--the golden sixties when the world was simple, dandies
glamorous, Democracy not born, and the books of Whyte Melville coming
thick and fast.

A generation later, with his own boy, Jolly, Harrow-buttonholed with
corn-flowers--by old Jolyon's whim his grandson had been canonised at
a trifle less expense--again Jolyon had experienced the heat and
counter-passions of the day, and come back to the cool and the
strawberry beds of Robin Hill, and billiards after dinner, his boy
making the most heart-breaking flukes and trying to seem languid and
grown-up.  Those two days each year he and his son had been alone
together in the world, one on each side--and Democracy just born!

And so, he had unearthed a grey top hat, borrowed a tiny bit of
light-blue ribbon from Irene, and gingerly, keeping cool, by car and
train and taxi, had reached Lord's Ground.  There, beside her in a
lawn-coloured frock with narrow black edges, he had watched the game,
and felt the old thrill stir within him.

When Soames passed, the day was spoiled.  Irene's face was distorted
by compression of the lips.  No good to go on sitting here with
Soames or perhaps his daughter recurring in front of them, like
decimals.  And he said:

"Well, dear, if you've had enough--let's go!"

That evening Jolyon felt exhausted.  Not wanting her to see him thus,
he waited till she had begun to play, and stole off to the little
study.  He opened the long window for air, and the door, that he
might still hear her music drifting in; and, settled in his father's
old armchair, closed his eyes, with his head against the worn brown
leather.  Like that passage of the Cesar Franck Sonata--so had been
his life with her, a divine third movement.  And now this business of
Jon's--this bad business!  Drifted to the edge of consciousness, he
hardly knew if it were in sleep that he smelled the scent of a cigar,
and seemed to see his father in the blackness before his closed eyes.
That shape formed, went, and formed again; as if in the very chair
where he himself was sitting, he saw his father, black-coated, with.
knees crossed, glasses balanced between thumb and finger; saw the big
white moustaches, and the deep eyes looking up below a dome of
forehead and seeming to search his own, seeming to speak.  "Are you
facing it, Jo?  It's for you to decide.  She's only a woman!"  Ah!
how well he knew his father in that phrase; how all the Victorian Age
came up with it!  And his answer "No, I've funked it--funked hurting
her and Jon and myself.  I've got a heart; I've funked it."  But the
old eyes, so much older, so much younger than his own, kept at it;
"It's your wife, your son; your past.  Tackle it, my boy!"  Was it a
message from walking spirit; or but the instinct of his sire living
on within him?  And again came that scent of cigar smoke-from the old
saturated leather.  Well! he would tackle it, write to Jon, and put
the whole thing down in black and white!  And suddenly he breathed
with difficulty, with a sense of suffocation, as if his heart were
swollen.  He got up and went out into the air.  The stars were very
bright.  He passed along the terrace round the corner of the house,
till, through the window of the music-room, he could see Irene at the
piano, with lamp-light falling on her powdery hair; withdrawn into
herself she seemed, her dark eyes staring straight before her, her
hands idle.  Jolyon saw her raise those hands and clasp them over her
breast.  'It's Jon, with her,' he thought; 'all Jon! I'm dying out of
her--it's natural!'

And, careful not to be seen, he stole back.

Next day, after a bad night, he sat down to his task.  He wrote with
difficulty and many erasures.


"MY DEAREST BOY,

"You are old enough to understand how very difficult it is for elders
to give themselves away to their young.  Especially when--like your
mother and myself, though I shall never think of her as anything but
young--their hearts are altogether set on him to whom they must
confess.  I cannot say we are conscious of having sinned exactly--
people in real life very seldom are, I believe--but most persons
would say we had, and at all events our conduct, righteous or not,
has found us out.  The truth is, my dear, we both have pasts, which
it is now my task to make known to you, because they so grievously
and deeply affect your future.  Many, very many years ago, as far
back indeed as 1883, when she was only twenty, your mother had the
great and lasting misfortune to make an unhappy marriage--no, not
with me, Jon.  Without money of her own, and with only a stepmother--
closely related to Jezebel--she was very unhappy in her home life.
It was Fleur's father that she married, my cousin Soames Forsyte.  He
had pursued her very tenaciously and to do him justice was deeply in
love with her.  Within a week she knew the fearful mistake she had
made.  It was not his fault; it was her error of judgment--her
misfortune."

So far Jolyon had kept some semblance of irony, but now his subject
carried him away.

"Jon, I want to explain to you if I can--and it's very hard--how it
is that an unhappy marriage such as this can so easily come about.
You will of course say: 'If she didn't really love him how could she
ever have married him?'  You would be right if it were not for one or
two rather terrible considerations.  From this initial mistake of
hers all the subsequent trouble, sorrow, and tragedy have come, and
so I must make it clear to you if I can.  You see, Jon, in those days
and even to this day--indeed, I don't see, for all the talk of
enlightenment, how it can well be otherwise--most girls are married
ignorant of the sexual side of life.  Even if they know what it means
they have not experienced it.  That's the crux.  It is this actual
lack of experience, whatever verbal knowledge they have, which makes
all the difference and all the trouble.  In a vast number of
marriages-and your mother's was one--girls are not and cannot be
certain whether they love the man they marry or not; they do not know
until after that act of union which makes the reality of marriage.
Now, in many, perhaps in most doubtful cases, this act cements and
strengthens the attachment, but in other cases, and your mother's
was one, it is a revelation of mistake, a destruction of such
attraction as there was.  There is nothing more tragic in a woman's
life than such a revelation, growing daily, nightly clearer.
Coarse-grained and unthinking people are apt to laugh at such a
mistake, and say, 'What a fuss about nothing!'  Narrow and self-
righteous people, only capable of judging the lives of others by
their own, are apt to condemn those who make this tragic error, to
condemn them for life to the dungeons they have made for themselves.
You know the expression: 'She has made her bed, she must lie on it!'
It is a hard-mouthed saying, quite unworthy of a gentleman or lady in
the best sense of those words; and I can use no stronger
condemnation.  I have not been what is called a moral man, but I wish
to use no words to you, my dear, which will make you think lightly of
ties or contracts into which you enter.  Heaven forbid!  But with the
experience of a life behind me I do say that those who condemn the
victims of these tragic mistakes, condemn them and hold out no hands
to help them, are inhuman, or rather they would be if they had the
understanding to know what they are doing.  But they haven't!  Let
them go!  They are as much anathema to me as I, no doubt, am to them.
I have had to say all this, because I am going to put you into a
position to judge your mother, and you are very young, without
experience of what life is.  To go on with the story.  After three
years of effort to subdue her shrinking--I was going to say her
loathing and it's not too strong a word, for shrinking soon becomes
loathing under such circumstances--three years of what to a
sensitive, beauty-loving nature like your mother's, Jon, was torment,
she met a young man who fell in love with her.  He was the architect
of this very house that we live in now, he was building it for her
and Fleur's father to live in, a new prison to hold her, in place of
the one she inhabited with him in London.  Perhaps that fact played
some part in what came of it.  But in any case she, too, fell in love
with him.  I know it's not necessary to explain to you that one does
not precisely choose with whom one will fall in love.  It comes.
Very well!  It came.  I can imagine--though she never said much to me
about it--the struggle that then took place in her, because, Jon, she
was brought up strictly and was not light in her ideas--not at all.
However, this was an overwhelming feeling, and it came to pass that
they loved in deed as well as in thought.  Then came a fearful
tragedy.  I must tell you of it because if I don't you will never
understand the real situation that you have now to face.  The man
whom she had married--Soames Forsyte, the father of Fleur one night,
at the height of her passion for this young man, forcibly reasserted
his rights over her.  The next day she met her lover and told him of
it.  Whether he committed suicide or whether he was accidentally run
over in his distraction, we never knew; but so it was.  Think of your
mother as she was that evening when she heard of his death.  I
happened to see her.  Your grandfather sent me to help her if I
could.  I only just saw her, before the door was shut against me by
her husband.  But I have never forgotten her face, I can see it now.
I was not in love with her then, not for twelve years after, but I
have never for gotten.  My dear boy--it is not easy to write like
this.  But you see, I must.  Your mother is wrapped up in you,
utterly, devotedly.  I don't wish to write harshly of Soames Forsyte.
I don't think harshly of him.  I have long been sorry for him;
perhaps I was sorry even then.  As the world judges she was in error,
he within his rights.  He loved her--in his way.  She was his
property.  That is the view he holds of life--of human feelings and
hearts--property.  It's not his fault--so was he born.  To me it is a
view that has always been abhorrent--so was I born!  Knowing you as I
do, I feel it cannot be otherwise than abhorrent to you.  Let me go
on with the story.  Your mother fled from his house that night; for
twelve years she lived quietly alone without companionship of any
sort, until in 1899 her husband--you see, he was still her husband,
for he did not attempt to divorce her, and she of course had no right
to divorce him--became conscious, it seems, of the want of children,
and commenced a long attempt to induce her to go back to him and give
him a child.  I was her trustee then, under your Grandfather's Will,
and I watched this going on.  While watching, I became attached to
her, devotedly attached.  His pressure increased, till one day she
came to me here and practically put herself under my protection.  Her
husband, who was kept informed of all her movements, attempted to
force us apart by bringing a divorce suit, or possibly he really
meant it, I don't know; but anyway our names were publicly joined.
That decided us, and we became united in fact.  She was divorced,
married me, and you were born.  We have lived in perfect happiness,
at least I have, and I believe your mother also.  Soames, soon after
the divorce, married Fleur's mother, and she was born.  That is the
story, Jon.  I have told it you, because by the affection which we
see you have formed for this man's daughter you are blindly moving
toward what must utterly destroy your mother's happiness, if not your
own.  I don't wish to speak of myself, because at my age there's no
use supposing I shall cumber the ground much longer, besides, what I
should suffer would be mainly on her account, and on yours.  But what
I want you to realise is that feelings of horror and aversion such as
those can never be buried or forgotten. They are alive in her to-day.
Only yesterday at Lord's we happened to see Soames Forsyte.  Her
face, if you had seen it, would have convinced you.  The idea that
you should marry his daughter is a nightmare to her, Jon.  I have
nothing to say against Fleur save that she is his daughter.  But your
children, if you married her, would be the grandchildren of Soames,
as much as of your mother, of a man who once owned your mother as a
man might own a slave.  Think what that would mean.  By such a
marriage you enter the camp which held your mother prisoner and
wherein she ate her heart out.  You are just on the threshold of
life, you have only known this girl two months, and however deeply
you think you love her, I appeal to you to break it off at once.
Don't give your mother this rankling pain and humiliation during the
rest of her life.  Young though she will always seem to me, she is
fifty-seven.  Except for us two she has no one in the world.  She
will soon have only you.  Pluck up your spirit, Jon, and break away.
Don't put this cloud and barrier between you.  Don't break her heart!
Bless you, my dear boy, and again forgive me for all the pain this
letter must bring you--we tried to spare it you, but Spain--it seems-
--was no good.

"Ever your devoted father

"JOLYON FORSYTE."


Having finished his confession, Jolyon sat with a thin cheek on his
hand, re-reading.  There were things in it which hurt him so much,
when he thought of Jon reading them, that he nearly tore the letter
up.  To speak of such things at all to a boy--his own boy--to speak
of them in relation to his own wife and the boy's own mother, seemed
dreadful to the reticence of his Forsyte soul.  And yet without
speaking of them how make Jon understand the reality, the deep
cleavage, the ineffaceable scar?  Without them, how justify this
stiffing of the boy's love?  He might just as well not write at all!

He folded the confession, and put it in his pocket.  It was--thank
Heaven!--Saturday; he had till Sunday evening to think it over; for
even if posted now it could not reach Jon till Monday.  He felt a
curious relief at this delay, and at the fact that, whether sent or
not, it was written.

In the rose garden, which had taken the place of the old fernery, he
could see Irene snipping and pruning, with a little basket on her
arm.  She was never idle, it seemed to him, and he envied her now
that he himself was idle nearly all his time.  He went down to her.
She held up a stained glove and smiled.  A piece of lace tied under
her chin concealed her hair, and her oval face with its still dark
brows looked very young.

"The green-fly are awful this year, and yet it's cold.  You look
tired, Jolyon."

Jolyon took the confession from his pocket.  "I've been writing this.
I think you ought to see it?"

"To Jon?"  Her whole face had changed, in that instant, becoming
almost haggard.

"Yes; the murder's out."

He gave it to her, and walked away among the roses.  Presently,
seeing that she had finished reading and was standing quite still
with the sheets of the letter against her skirt, he came back to her.

"Well?"

"It's wonderfully put.  I don't see how it could be put better.
Thank you, dear."

"Is there anything you would like left out?"

She shook her head.

"No; he must know all, if he's to understand."

"That's what I thought, but--I hate it!"

He had the feeling that he hated it more than she--to him sex was so
much easier to mention between man and woman than between man and
man; and she had always been more natural and frank, not deeply
secretive like his Forsyte self.

"I wonder if he will understand, even now, Jolyon?  He's so young;
and he shrinks from the physical."

"He gets that shrinking from my father, he was as fastidious as a
girl in all such matters.  Would it be better to rewrite the whole
thing, and just say you hated Soames?"

Irene shook her head.

"Hate's only a word.  It conveys nothing.  No, better as it is."

"Very well.  It shall go to-morrow."

She raised her face to his, and in sight of the big house's many
creepered windows, he kissed her.




II

CONFESSION


Late that same afternoon, Jolyon had a nap in the old armchair.
Face down on his knee was La Rotisserie de la Refine Pedauque, and
just before he fell asleep he had been thinking: 'As a people shall
we ever really like the French?  Will they ever really like us!'  He
himself had always liked the French, feeling at home with their wit,
their taste, their cooking.  Irene and he had paid many visits to
France before the War, when Jon had been at his private school.  His
romance with her had begun in Paris--his last and most enduring
romance.  But the French--no Englishman could like them who could not
see them in some sort with the detached aesthetic eye!  And with that
melancholy conclusion he had nodded off.

When he woke he saw Jon standing between him and the window.  The boy
had evidently come in from the garden and was waiting for him to
wake.  Jolyon smiled, still half asleep.  How nice the chap looked--
sensitive, affectionate, straight!  Then his heart gave a nasty jump;
and a quaking sensation overcame him.  Jon!  That confession!  He
controlled himself with an effort.  "Why, Jon, where did you spring
from?"

Jon bent over and kissed his forehead.

Only then he noticed the look on the boy's face.

"I came home to tell you something, Dad."

With all his might Jolyon tried to get the better of the jumping,
gurgling sensations within his chest.

"Well, sit down, old man.  Have you seen your mother?"

"No."  The boy's flushed look gave place to pallor; he sat down on
the arm of the old chair, as, in old days, Jolyon himself used to sit
beside his own father, installed in its recesses.  Right up to the
time of the rupture in their relations he had been wont to perch
there--had he now reached such a moment with his own son?  All his
life he had hated scenes like poison, avoided rows, gone on his own
way quietly and let others go on theirs.  But now--it seemed--at the
very end of things, he had a scene before him more painful than any
he had avoided.  He drew a visor down over his emotion, and waited
for his son to speak.

"Father," said Jon slowly, "Fleur and I are engaged."

'Exactly!' thought Jolyon, breathing with difficulty.

"I know that you and Mother don't like the idea.  Fleur says that
Mother was engaged to her father before you married her.  Of course I
don't know what happened, but it must be ages ago.  I'm devoted to
her, Dad, and she says she is to me."

Jolyon uttered a queer sound, half laugh, half groan.

"You are nineteen, Jon, and I am seventy-two.  How are we to
understand each other in a matter like this, eh?"

"You love Mother, Dad; you must know what we feel.  It isn't fair to
us to let old things spoil our happiness, is it?"

Brought face to face with his confession, Jolyon resolved to do
without it if by any means he could.  He laid his hand on the boy's
arm.

"Look, Jon! I might put you off with talk about your both being too
young and not knowing your own minds, and all that, but you wouldn't
listen, besides, it doesn't meet the case--Youth, unfortunately,
cures itself.  You talk lightly about 'old things like that,' knowing
nothing--as you say truly--of what happened.  Now, have I ever given
you reason to doubt my love for you, or my word?"

At a less anxious moment he might have been amused by the conflict
his words aroused--the boy's eager clasp, to reassure him on these
points, the dread on his face of what that reassurance would bring
forth; but he could only feel grateful for the squeeze.

"Very well, you can believe what I tell you.  If you don't give up
this love affair, you will make Mother wretched to the end of her
days.  Believe me, my dear, the past, whatever it was, can't be
buried--it can't indeed."

Jon got off the arm of the chair.

'The girl'--thought Jolyon--'there she goes--starting up before him--
life itself--eager, pretty, loving!'

"I can't, Father; how can I--just because you say that?  Of course, I
can't!"

"Jon, if you knew the story you would give this up without
hesitation; you would have to!  Can't you believe me?"

"How can you tell what I should think?  Father, I love her better
than anything in the world."

Jolyon's face twitched, and he said with painful slowness:

"Better than your mother, Jon?"

>From the boy's face, and his clenched fists Jolyon realised the
stress and struggle he was going through.

"I don't know," he burst out, "I don't know!  But to give Fleur up
for nothing--for something I don't understand, for something that I
don't believe can really matter half so much, will make me--make me"

"Make you feel us unjust, put a barrier--yes.  But that's better than
going on with this."

"I can't.  Fleur loves me, and I love her.  You want me to trust you;
why don't you trust me, Father?  We wouldn't want to know anything--
we wouldn't let it make any difference.  It'll only make us both love
you and Mother all the more."

Jolyon put his hand into his breast pocket, but brought it out again
empty, and sat, clucking his tongue against his teeth.

"Think what your mother's been to you, Jon!  She has nothing but you;
I shan't last much longer."

"Why not?  It isn't fair to--Why not?"

"Well," said Jolyon, rather coldly, "because the doctors tell me I
shan't; that's all."

"Oh, Dad!" cried Jon, and burst into tears.

This downbreak of his son, whom he had not seen cry since he was ten,
moved Jolyon terribly.  He recognised to the full how fearfully soft
the boy's heart was, how much he would suffer in this business, and
in life generally.  And he reached out his hand helplessly--not
wishing, indeed not daring to get up.

"Dear man," he said, "don't--or you'll make me!"

Jon smothered down his paroxysm, and stood with face averted, very
still.

'What now?' thought Jolyon.  'What can I say to move him?'

"By the way, don't speak of that to Mother," he said; "she has enough
to frighten her with this affair of yours.  I know how you feel.
But, Jon, you know her and me well enough to be sure we wouldn't wish
to spoil your happiness lightly.  Why, my dear boy, we don't care for
anything but your happiness--at least, with me it's just yours and
Mother's and with her just yours.  It's all the future for you both
that's at stake."

Jon turned.  His face was deadly pale; his eyes, deep in his head,
seemed to burn.

"What is it?  What is it?  Don't keep me like this!"

Jolyon, who knew that he was beaten, thrust his hand again into his
breast pocket, and sat for a full minute, breathing with difficulty,
his eyes closed.  The thought passed through his mind: 'I've had a
good long innings--some pretty bitter moments--this is the worst!'
Then he brought his hand out with the letter, and said with a sort of
fatigue: "Well, Jon, if you hadn't come to-day, I was going to send
you this.  I wanted to spare you--I wanted to spare your mother and
myself, but I see it's no good.  Read it, and I think I'll go into
the garden."  He reached forward to get up.

Jon, who had taken the letter, said quickly, "No, I'll go"; and was
gone.

Jolyon sank back in his chair.  A blue-bottle chose that moment to
come buzzing round him with a sort of fury; the sound was homely,
better than nothing....  Where had the boy gone to read his letter?
The wretched letter--the wretched story!  A cruel business--cruel to
her--to Soames--to those two children--to himself!...  His heart
thumped and pained him.  Life--its loves--its work--its beauty--its
aching, and--its end!  A good time; a fine time in spite of all;
until--you regretted that you had ever been born.  Life--it wore you
down, yet did not make you want to die--that was the cunning evil!
Mistake to have a heart!  Again the blue-bottle came buzzing--
bringing in all the heat and hum and scent of summer--yes, even the
scent--as of ripe fruits, dried grasses, sappy shrubs, and the
vanilla breath of cows.  And out there somewhere in the fragrance Jon
would be reading that letter, turning and twisting its pages in his
trouble, his bewilderment and trouble--breaking his heart about it!
The thought made Jolyon acutely miserable.  Jon was such a tender-
hearted chap, affectionate to his bones, and conscientious, too--it
was so unfair, so damned unfair!  He remembered Irene saying to him
once: "Never was any one born more loving and lovable than Jon."
Poor little Jon!  His world gone up the spout, all of a summer
afternoon!  Youth took things so hard!  And stirred, tormented by
that vision of Youth taking things hard, Jolyon got out of his chair,
and went to the window.  The boy was nowhere visible.  And he passed
out.  If one could take any help to him now--one must!

He traversed the shrubbery, glanced into the walled garden--no Jon!
Nor where the peaches and the apricots were beginning to swell and
colour.  He passed the Cupressus trees, dark and spiral, into the
meadow.  Where had the boy got to?  Had he rushed down to the
coppice--his old hunting-ground?  Jolyon crossed the rows of hay.
They would cock it on Monday and be carrying the day after, if rain
held off.  Often they had crossed this field together--hand in hand,
when Jon was a little chap.  Dash it!  The golden age was over by the
time one was ten!  He came to the pond, where flies and gnats were
dancing over a bright reedy surface; and on into the coppice.  It was
cool there, fragrant of larches.  Still no Jon!  He called.  No
answer!  On the log seat he sat down, nervous, anxious, forgetting
his own physical sensations.  He had been wrong to let the
boy get away with that letter; he ought to have kept him under his
eye from the start!  Greatly troubled, he got up to retrace his
steps.  At the farm-buildings he called again, and looked into the
dark cow-house.  There in the cool, and the scent of vanilla and
ammonia, away from flies, the three Alderneys were chewing the quiet
cud; just milked, waiting for evening, to be turned out again into
the lower field.  One turned a lazy head, a lustrous eye; Jolyon
could see the slobber on its grey lower lip.  He saw everything with
passionate clearness, in the agitation of his nerves--all that in his
time he had adored and tried to paint--wonder of light and shade and
colour.  No wonder the legend put Christ into a manger--what more
devotional than the eyes and moon-white horns of a chewing cow in the
warm dusk!  He called again.  No answer!  And he hurried away out of
the coppice, past the pond, up the hill.  Oddly ironical--now he came
to think of it--if Jon had taken the gruel of his discovery down in
the coppice where his mother and Bosinney in those old days had made
the plunge of acknowledging their love.  Where he himself, on the log
seat the Sunday morning he came back from Paris, had realised to the
full that Irene had become the world to him.  That would have been
the place for Irony to tear the veil from before the eyes of Irene's
boy!  But he was not here!  Where had he got to?  One must find the
poor chap!

A gleam of sun had come, sharpening to his hurrying senses all the
beauty of the afternoon, of the tall trees and lengthening shadows,
of the blue, and the white clouds, the scent of the hay, and the
cooing of the pigeons; and the flower shapes standing tall.  He came
to the rosery, and the beauty of the roses in that sudden sunlight
seemed to him unearthly.  "Rose, you Spaniard!"  Wonderful three
words!  There she had stood by that bush of dark red roses; had stood
to read and decide that Jon must know it all!  He knew all now!  Had
she chosen wrong?  He bent and sniffed a rose, its petals brushed his
nose and trembling lips; nothing so soft as a rose-leaf's velvet,
except her neck--Irene!  On across the lawn he went, up the slope, to
the oak-tree.  Its top alone was glistening, for the sudden sun was
away over the house; the lower shade was thick, blessedly cool--he
was greatly overheated.  He paused a minute with his hand on the rope
of the swing--Jolly, Holly--Jon!  The old swing!  And suddenly, he
felt horribly--deadly ill.  'I've over done it!' he thought: 'by
Jove! I've overdone it--after all!'  He staggered up toward the
terrace, dragged himself up the steps, and fell against the wall of
the house.  He leaned there gasping, his face buried in the honey-
suckle that he and she had taken such trouble with that it might
sweeten the air which drifted in.  Its fragrance mingled with awful
pain.  'My love!' he thought; 'the boy!'  And with a great effort he
tottered in through the long window, and sank into old Jolyon's
chair.  The book was there, a pencil in it; he caught it up,
scribbled a word on the open page....  His hand dropped....  So it
was like this--was it?...

There was a great wrench; and darkness....




III

IRENE


When Jon rushed away with the letter in his hand, he ran along the
terrace and round the corner of the house, in fear and confusion.
Leaning against the creepered wall he tore open the letter.  It was
long--very long!  This added to his fear, and he began reading.  When
he came to the words: "It was Fleur's father that she married,"
everything seemed to spin before him.  He was close to a window, and
entering by it, he passed, through music-room and hall, up to his
bedroom.  Dipping his face in cold water, he sat on his bed, and went
on reading, dropping each finished page on the bed beside him.  His
father's writing was easy to read--he knew it so well, though he had
never had a letter from him one quarter so long.  He read with a dull
feeling--imagination only half at work.  He best grasped, on that
first reading, the pain his father must have had in writing such a
letter.  He let the last sheet fall, and in a sort of mental, moral
helplessness began to read the first again.  It all seemed to him
disgusting--dead and disgusting.  Then, suddenly, a hot wave of
horrified emotion tingled through him.  He buried his face in his
hands.  His mother!  Fleur's father!  He took up the letter again,
and read on mechanically.  And again came the feeling that it was all
dead and disgusting; his own love so different!  This letter said his
mother--and her father!  An awful letter!

Property!  Could there be men who looked on women as their property?
Faces seen in street and countryside came thronging up before him--
red, stock-fish faces; hard, dull faces; prim, dry faces; violent
faces; hundreds, thousands of them!  How could he know what men who
had such faces thought and did?  He held his head in his hands and
groaned.  His mother!  He caught up the letter and read on again:
"horror and aversion-alive in her to-day....  your children....
grandchildren....  of a man who once owned your mother as a man might
own a slave...."  He got up from his bed.  This cruel shadowy past,
lurking there to murder his love and Fleur's, was true, or his father
could never have written it.  'Why didn't they tell me the first
thing,' he thought, 'the day I first saw Fleur?  They knew "I'd seen
her.  They were afraid, and--now--I've--got it!'  Overcome by misery
too acute for thought or reason, he crept into a dusky corner of the
room and sat down on the floor.  He sat there, like some unhappy
little animal.  There was comfort in dusk, and the floor--as if he
were back in those days when he played his battles sprawling all over
it.  He sat there huddled, his hair ruffled, his hands clasped round
his knees, for how long he did not know.  He was wrenched from his
blank wretchedness by the sound of the door opening from his mother's
room.  The blinds were down over the windows of his room, shut up in
his absence, and from where he sat he could only hear a rustle, her
footsteps crossing, till beyond the bed he saw her standing before
his dressing-table.  She had something in her hand. He hardly
breathed, hoping she would not see him, and go away.  He saw her
touch things on the table as if they had some virtue in them, then
face the window-grey from head to foot like a ghost.  The least turn
of her head, and she must see him!  Her lips moved: "Oh! Jon!"  She
was speaking to herself; the tone of her voice troubled Jon's heart.
He saw in her hand a little photograph.  She held it toward the
light, looking at it--very small.  He knew it--one of himself as a
tiny boy, which she always kept in her bag.  His heart beat fast.
And, suddenly as if she had heard it, she turned her eyes and saw
him.  At the gasp she gave, and the movement of her hands pressing
the photograph against her breast, he said:

"Yes, it's me."

She moved over to the bed, and sat down on it, quite close to him,
her hands still clasping her breast, her feet among the sheets of the
letter which had slipped to the floor.  She saw them, and her hands
grasped the edge of the bed.  She sat very upright, her dark eyes
fixed on him.  At last she spoke.

"Well, Jon, you know, I see."

"Yes."

"You've seen Father?"

"Yes."

There was a long silence, till she said:

"Oh! my darling!"

"It's all right."  The emotions in him were so, violent and so mixed
that he dared not move--resentment, despair, and yet a strange
yearning for the comfort of her hand on his forehead.

"What are you going to do?"

"I don't know."

There was another long silence, then she got up.  She stood a moment,
very still, made a little movement with her hand, and said: "My
darling boy, my most darling boy, don't think of me--think of
yourself," and, passing round the foot of the bed, went back into her
room.

Jon turned--curled into a sort of ball, as might a hedgehog--into the
corner made by the two walls.

He must have been twenty minutes there before a cry roused him.  It
came from the terrace below.  He got up, scared.  Again came the cry:
"Jon!"  His mother was calling!  He ran out and down the stairs,
through the empty dining-room into the study.  She was kneeling
before the old armchair, and his father was lying back quite white,
his head on his breast, one of his hands resting on an open book,
with a pencil clutched in it--more strangely still than anything he
had ever seen.  She looked round wildly, and said:

"Oh! Jon--he's dead--he's dead!"

Jon flung himself down, and reaching over the arm of the chair, where
he had lately been sitting, put his lips to the forehead.  Icy cold!
How could--how could Dad be dead, when only an hour ago--!  His
mother's arms were round the knees; pressing her breast against them.
"Why--why wasn't I with him?" he heard her whisper.  Then he saw the
tottering word "Irene" pencilled on the open page, and broke down
himself.  It was his first sight of human death, and its unutterable
stillness blotted from him all other emotion; all else, then, was but
preliminary to this!  All love and life, and joy, anxiety, and
sorrow, all movement, light and beauty, but a beginning to this
terrible white stillness.  It made a dreadful mark on him; all seemed
suddenly little, futile, short.  He mastered himself at last, got up,
and raised her.

"Mother! don't cry--Mother!"

Some hours later, when all was done that had to be, and his mother
was lying down, he saw his father alone, on the bed, covered with a
white sheet.  He stood for a long time gazing at that face which had
never looked angry--always whimsical, and kind.  "To be kind and keep
your end up--there's nothing else in it," he had once heard his
father say.  How wonderfully Dad had acted up to that philosophy!  He
understood now that his father had known for a long time past that
this would come suddenly--known, and not said a word.  He gazed with
an awed and passionate reverence.  The loneliness of it--just to
spare his mother and himself!  His own trouble seemed small while he
was looking at that face.  The word scribbled on the page!  The
farewell word!  Now his mother had no one but himself!  He went up
close to the dead face--not changed at all, and yet completely
changed.  He had heard his father say once that he did not believe in
consciousness surviving death, or that if it did it might be just
survival till the natural age limit of the body had been reached--the
natural term of its inherent vitality; so that if the body were
broken by accident, excess, violent disease, consciousness might
still persist till, in the course of Nature uninterfered with, it
would naturally have faded out.  It had struck him because he had
never heard any one else suggest it.  When the heart failed like
this--surely it was not quite natural!  Perhaps his father's
consciousness was in the room with him.  Above the bed hung a picture
of his father's father.  Perhaps his consciousness, too, was still
alive; and his brother's--his half-brother, who had died in the
Transvaal.  Were they all gathered round this bed?  Jon kissed the
forehead, and stole back to his own room.  The door between it and
his mother's was ajar; she had evidently been in--everything was
ready for him, even some biscuits and hot milk, and the letter no
longer on the floor.  He ate and drank, watching the last light fade.
He did not try to see into the future--just stared at the dark
branches of the oak-tree, level with his window, and felt as if life
had stopped.  Once in the night, turning in his heavy sleep, he was
conscious of something white and still, beside his bed, and started
up.

His mother's voice said:

"It's only I, Jon dear!"  Her hand pressed his forehead gently back;
her white figure disappeared.

Alone!  He fell heavily asleep again, and dreamed he saw his mother's
name crawling on his bed.




IV

SOAMES COGITATES


The announcement in The Times of his cousin Jolyon's death affected
Soames quite simply.  So that chap was gone!  There had never been a
time in their two lives when love had not been lost between them.
That quick-blooded sentiment hatred had run its course long since in
Soames' heart, and he had refused to allow any recrudescence, but he
considered this early decease a piece of poetic justice.  For twenty
years the fellow had enjoyed the reversion of his wife and house,
and--he was dead!  The obituary notice, which appeared a little
later, paid Jolyon--he thought--too much attention.  It spoke of that
"diligent and agreeable painter whose work we have come to look on as
typical of the best late-Victorian water-colour art."  Soames, who
had almost mechanically preferred Mole, Morpin, and Caswell Baye, and
had always sniffed quite audibly when he came to one of his cousin's
on the line, turned The Times with a crackle.

He had to go up to Town that morning on Forsyte affairs, and was
fully conscious of Gradman's glance sidelong over his spectacles.
The old clerk had about him an aura of regretful congratulation.  He
smelled, as it were, of old days.  One could almost hear him
thinking: "Mr. Jolyon, ye-es--just my age, and gone--dear, dear!  I
dare say she feels it.  She was a mice-lookin' woman.  Flesh is
flesh!  They've given 'im a notice in the papers.  Fancy!"  His
atmosphere in fact caused Soames to handle certain leases and
conversions with exceptional swiftness.

"About that settlement on Miss Fleur, Mr. Soames?"

"I've thought better of that," answered Soames shortly.

"Ah!  I'm glad of that.  I thought you were a little hasty.  The
times do change."

How this death would affect Fleur had begun to trouble Soames.  He
was not certain that she knew of it--she seldom looked at the paper,
never at the births, marriages, and deaths.

He pressed matters on, and made his way to Green Street for lunch.
Winifred was almost doleful.  Jack Cardigan had broken a splashboard,
so far as one could make out, and would not be "fit" for some time.
She could not get used to the idea.

"Did Profond ever get off?" he said suddenly.

"He got off," replied Winifred, "but where--I don't know."

Yes, there it was--impossible to tell anything!  Not that he wanted
to know.  Letters from Annette were coming from Dieppe, where she and
her mother were staying.

"You saw that fellow's death, I suppose?"

"Yes," said Winifred.  "I'm sorry for--for his children.  He was very
amiable."  Soames uttered a rather queer sound.  A suspicion of the
old deep truth--that men were judged in this world rather by what
they were than by what they did--crept and knocked resentfully at the
back doors of his mind.

"I know there was a superstition to that effect," he muttered.

"One must do him justice now he's dead."

"I should like to have done him justice before," said Soames; "but I
never had the chance.  Have you got a 'Baronetage' here?"

"Yes; in that bottom row."

Soames took out a fat red book, and ran over the leaves.

"Mont-Sir Lawrence, 9th Bt., cr. 1620, e. s. of Geoffrey, 8th Bt.,
and Lavinia, daur. of Sir Charles Muskham, Bt., of Muskham Hall,
Shrops: marr. 1890 Emily, daur. of Conway Charwell, Esq., of
Condaford Grange, co. Oxon; 1 son, heir Michael Conway, b. 1895, 2
daurs. Residence: Lippinghall Manor, Folwell, Bucks.  Clubs: Snooks':
Coffee House: Aeroplane.  See BidIicott."

"H'm!" he said.  "Did you ever know a publisher?"

"Uncle Timothy."

"Alive, I mean."

"Monty knew one at his Club.  He brought him here to dinner once.
Monty was always thinking of writing a book, you know, about how to
make money on the turf.  He tried to interest that man."

"Well?"

"He put him on to a horse--for the Two Thousand.  We didn't see him
again.  He was rather smart, if I remember."

"Did it win?"

"No; it ran last, I think.  You know Monty really was quite clever in
his way."

"Was he?" said Soames.  "Can you see any connection between a sucking
baronet and publishing?"

"People do all sorts of things nowadays," replied Winifred.  "The
great stunt seems not to be idle--so different from our time.  To do
nothing was the thing then.  But I suppose it'll come again."

"This young Mont that I'm speaking of is very sweet on Fleur.  If it
would put an end to that other affair I might encourage it."

"Has he got style?" asked Winifred.

"He's no beauty; pleasant enough, with some scattered brains.
There's a good deal of land, I believe.  He seems genuinely attached.
But I don't know."

"No," murmured Winifred; "it's--very difficult.  I always found it
best to do nothing.  It is such a bore about Jack; now we shan't get
away till after Bank Holiday.  Well, the people are always amusing, I
shall go into the Park and watch them."

"If I were you," said Soames, "I should have a country cottage, and
be out of the way of holidays and strikes when you want."

"The country bores me," answered Winifred, "and I found the railway
strike quite exciting."

Winifred had always been noted for sang-froid.

Soames took his leave.  All the way down to Reading he debated
whether he should tell Fleur of that boy's father's death.  It did
not alter the situation except that he would be independent now, and
only have his mother's opposition to encounter.  He would come into a
lot of money, no doubt, and perhaps the house--the house built for
Irene and himself--the house whose architect had wrought his domestic
ruin.  His daughter--mistress of that house!  That would be poetic
justice!  Soames uttered a little mirthless laugh.  He had designed
that house to re-establish his failing union, meant it for the seat
of his descendants, if he could have induced Irene to give him one!
Her son and Fleur!  Their children would be, in some sort, offspring
of the union between himself and her!

The theatricality in that thought was repulsive to his sober sense.
And yet--it would be the easiest and wealthiest way out of the
impasse, now that Jolyon was gone.  The juncture of two Forsyte
fortunes had a kind of conservative charm.  And she--Irene-would be
linked to him once more.  Nonsense!  Absurd!  He put the notion from
his head.

On arriving home he heard the click of billiard-balls, and through
the window saw young Mont sprawling over the table.  Fleur, with her
cue akimbo, was watching with a smile.  How pretty she looked!  No
wonder that young fellow was out of his mind about her.  A title--
land!  There was little enough in land, these days; perhaps less in a
title.  The old Forsytes had always had a kind of contempt for
titles, rather remote and artificial things--not worth the money they
cost, and having to do with the Court.  They had all had that feeling
in differing measure--Soames remembered.  Swithin, indeed, in his
most expansive days had once attended a Levee.  He had come away
saying he shouldn't go again--"all that small fry."  It was suspected
that he had looked too big in knee-breeches.  Soames remembered how
his own mother had wished to be presented because of the fashionable
nature of the performance, and how his father had put his foot down
with unwonted decision.  What did she want with that peacocking--
wasting time and money; there was nothing in it!

The instinct which had made and kept the English Commons the chief
power in the State, a feeling that their own world was good enough
and a little better than any other because it was their world, had
kept the old Forsytes singularly free of "flummery," as Nicholas had
been wont to call it when he had the gout.  Soames' generation, more
self-conscious and ironical, had been saved by a sense of Swithin in
knee-breeches.  While the third and the fourth generation, as it
seemed to him, laughed at everything.

However, there was no harm in the young fellow's being heir to a
title and estate--a thing one couldn't help.  He entered quietly, as
Mont missed his shot.  He noted the young man's eyes, fixed on Fleur
bending over in her turn; and the adoration in them almost touched
him.

She paused with the cue poised on the bridge of her slim hand, and
shook her crop of short dark chestnut hair.

"I shall never do it."

"'Nothing venture.'"

"All right."  The cue struck, the ball rolled.  "There!"

"Bad luck!  Never mind!"

Then they saw him, and Soames said:

"I'll mark for you."

He sat down on the raised seat beneath the marker, trim and tired,
furtively studying those two young faces.  When the game was over
Mont came up to him.

"I've started in, sir.  Rum game, business, isn't it?  I suppose you
saw a lot of human nature as a solicitor."

"I did."

"Shall I tell you what I've noticed: People are quite on the wrong
tack in offering less than they can afford to give; they ought to
offer more, and work backward."

Soames raised his eyebrows.

"Suppose the more is accepted?"

"That doesn't matter a little bit," said Mont; "it's much more paying
to abate a price than to increase it.  For instance, say we offer an
author good terms--he naturally takes them.  Then we go into it, find
we can't publish at a decent profit and tell him so.  He's got
confidence in us because we've been generous to him, and he comes
down like a lamb, and bears us no malice.  But if we offer him poor
terms at the start, he doesn't take them, so we have to advance them
to get him, and he thinks us damned screws into the bargain.

"Try buying pictures on that system," said Soames; "an offer accepted
is a contract--haven't you learned that?"

Young Mont turned his head to where Fleur was standing in the window.

"No," he said, "I wish I had.  Then there's another thing.  Always
let a man off a bargain if he wants to be let off."

"As advertisement?" said Soames dryly.

"Of course it is; but I meant on principle."

"Does your firm work on those lines?"

"Not yet," said Mont, "but it'll come."

"And they will go."

"No, really, sir.  I'm making any number of observations, and they
all confirm my theory.  Human nature is consistently underrated in
business, people do themselves out of an awful lot of pleasure and
profit by that.  Of course, you must be perfectly genuine and open,
but that's easy if you feel it.  The more human and generous you are
the better chance you've got in business."

Soames rose.

"Are you a partner?"

"Not for six months, yet."

"The rest of the firm had better make haste and retire."

Mont laughed.

"You'll see," he said.  "There's going to be a big change.  The
possessive principle has got its shutters up."

"What?" said Soames.

"The house is to let!  Good-bye, sir; I'm off now."

Soames watched his daughter give her hand, saw her wince at the
squeeze it received, and distinctly heard the young man's sigh as he
passed out.  Then she came from the window, trailing her finger along
the mahogany edge of the billiard-table.  Watching her, Soames knew
that she was going to ask him something.  Her finger felt round the
last pocket, and she looked up.

"Have you done anything to stop Jon writing to me, Father?"

Soames shook his head.

"You haven't seen, then?" he said.  "His father died just a week ago
to-day."

"Oh!"

In her startled, frowning face he saw the instant struggle to
apprehend what this would mean.

"Poor Jon!  Why didn't you tell me, Father?"

"I never know!" said Soames slowly; "you don't confide in me."

"I would, if you'd help me, dear."

"Perhaps I shall."

Fleur clasped her hands.  "Oh! darling--when one wants a thing
fearfully, one doesn't think of other people.  Don't be angry with
me."

Soames put out his hand, as if pushing away an aspersion.

"I'm cogitating," he said.  What on earth had made him use a word
like that!  "Has young Mont been bothering you again?"

Fleur smiled.  "Oh! Michael!  He's always bothering; but he's such a
good sort--I don't mind him."

"Well," said Soames, "I'm tired; I shall go and have a nap before
dinner."

He went up to his picture-gallery, lay down on the couch there, and
closed his eyes.  A terrible responsibility this girl of his--whose
mother was--ah! what was she?  A terrible responsibility!  Help her--
how could he help her?  He could not alter the fact that he was her
father.  Or that Irene--!  What was it young Mont had said--some
nonsense about the possessive instinct--shutters up--To let?  Silly!

The sultry air, charged with a scent of meadow-sweet, of river and
roses, closed on his senses, drowsing them.




V

THE FIXED IDEA


"The fixed idea," which has outrun more constables than any other form
of human disorder, has never more speed and stamina than when it
takes the avid guise of love.  To hedges and ditches, and doors, to
humans without ideas fixed or otherwise, to perambulators and the
contents sucking their fixed ideas, even to the other sufferers from
this fast malady--the fixed idea of love pays no attention.  It runs
with eyes turned inward to its own light, oblivious of all other
stars.  Those with the fixed ideas that human happiness depends on
their art, on vivisecting dogs, on hating foreigners, on paying
supertax, on remaining Ministers, on making wheels go round, on
preventing their neighbours from being divorced, on conscientious
objection, Greek roots, Church dogma, paradox and superiority to
everybody else, with other forms of ego-mania--all are unstable
compared with him or her whose fixed idea is the possession of some
her or him.  And though Fleur, those chilly summer days, pursued the
scattered life of a little Forsyte whose frocks are paid for, and
whose business is pleasure, she was--as Winifred would have said in
the latest fashion of speech--"honest to God" indifferent to it all.
She wished and wished for the moon, which sailed in cold skies above
the river or the Green Park when she went to Town.  She even kept
Jon's letters, covered with pink silk, on her heart, than which in
days when corsets were so low, sentiment so despised, and chests so
out of fashion, there could, perhaps, have been no greater proof of
the fixity of her idea.

After hearing of his father's death, she wrote to Jon, and received
his answer three days later on her return from a river picnic.  It
was his first letter since their meeting at June's.  She opened it
with misgiving, and read it with dismay.

"Since I saw you I've heard everything about the past.  I won't tell
it you--I think you knew when we met at June's.  She says you did.
If you did, Fleur, you ought to have told me.  I expect you only
heard your father's side of it.  I have heard my mother's.  It's
dreadful.  Now that she's so sad I can't do anything to hurt her
more.  Of course, I long for you all day, but I don't believe now
that we shall ever come together--there's something too strong
pulling us apart."

So!  Her deception had found her out.  But Jon--she felt--had
forgiven that.  It was what he said of his mother which caused the
guttering in her heart and the weak sensation in her legs.

Her first impulse was to reply--her second, not to reply.  These
impulses were constantly renewed in the days which followed, while
desperation grew within her.  She was not her father's child for
nothing.  The tenacity which had at once made and undone Soames was
her backbone, too, frilled and embroidered by French grace and
quickness.  Instinctively she conjugated the verb "to have" always
with the pronoun "I."  She concealed, however, all signs of her
growing desperation, and pursued such river pleasures as the winds
and rain of a disagreeable July permitted, as if she had no care in
the world; nor did any "sucking baronet" ever neglect the business of
a publisher more consistently than her attendant spirit, Michael
Mont.

To Soames she was a puzzle.  He was almost deceived by this careless
gaiety.  Almost--because he did not fail to mark her eyes often fixed
on nothing, and the film of light shining from her bedroom window
late at night.  What was she thinking and brooding over into small
hours when she ought to have been asleep?  But he dared not ask what
was in her mind; and, since that one little talk in the billiard-
room, she said nothing to him.

In this taciturn condition of affairs it chanced that Winifred
invited them to lunch and to go afterward to "a most amusing little
play, 'The Beggar's Opera'" and would they bring a man to make four?
Soames, whose attitude toward theatres was to go to nothing,
accepted, because Fleur's attitude was to go to everything.  They
motored up, taking Michael Mont, who, being in his seventh heaven,
was found by Winifred "very amusing."  "The Beggar's Opera" puzzled
Soames.  The people were very unpleasant, the whole thing very
cynical.  Winifred was "intrigued"--by the dresses.  The music, too,
did not displease her.  At the Opera, the night before, she had
arrived too early for the Russian Ballet, and found the stage
occupied by singers, for a whole hour pale or apoplectic from terror
lest by some dreadful inadvertence they might drop into a tune.
Michael Mont was enraptured with the whole thing.  And all three
wondered what Fleur was thinking of it.  But Fleur was not thinking
of it.  Her fixed idea stood on the stage and sang with Polly
Peachum, mimed with Filch, danced with Jenny Diver, postured with
Lucy Lockit, kissed, trolled, and cuddled with Macheath.  Her lips
might smile, her hands applaud, but the comic old masterpiece made no
more impression on her than if it had been pathetic, like a modern
"Revue."  When they embarked in the car to return, she ached because
Jon was not sitting next her instead of Michael Mont.  When, at some
jolt, the young man's arm touched hers as if by accident, she only
thought: 'If that were Jon's arm!'  When his cheerful voice, tempered
by her proximity, murmured above the sound of the car's progress, she
smiled and answered, thinking: 'If that were Jon's voice!' and when
once he said, "Fleur, you look a perfect angel in that dress!" she
answered, "Oh, do you like it? thinking, 'If only Jon could see it!'

During this drive she took a resolution.  She would go to Robin Hill
and see him--alone; she would take the car, without word beforehand
to him or to her father.  It was nine days since his letter, and she
could wait no longer.  On Monday she would go!  The decision made her
well disposed toward young Mont.  With something to look forward to
she could afford to tolerate and respond.  He might stay to dinner;
propose to her as usual; dance with her, press her hand, sigh--do
what he liked.  He was only a nuisance when he interfered with her
fixed idea.  She was even sorry for him so far as it was possible to
be sorry for anybody but herself just now.  At dinner he seemed to
talk more wildly than usual about what he called "the death of the
close borough"--she paid little attention, but her father seemed
paying a good deal, with the smile on his face which meant
opposition, if not anger.

"The younger generation doesn't think as you do, sir; does it,
Fleur?"

Fleur shrugged her shoulders--the younger generation was just Jon,
and she did not know what he was thinking.

"Young people will think as I do when they're my age, Mr. Mont.
Human nature doesn't change."

"I admit that, sir; but the forms of thought change with the times.
The pursuit of self-interest is a form of thought that's going out."

"Indeed!  To mind one's own business is not a form of thought, Mr.
Mont, it's an instinct."

Yes, when Jon was the business!

"But what is one's business, sir?  That's the point.  Everybody's
business is going to be one's business.  Isn't it, Fleur?"

Fleur only smiled.

"If not," added young Mont, "there'll be blood."

"People have talked like that from time immemorial"

"But you'll admit, sir, that the sense of property is dying out?"

"I should say increasing among those who have none."

"Well, look at me!  I'm heir to an entailed estate.  I don't want the
thing; I'd cut the entail to-morrow."

"You're not married, and you don't know what you're talking about."

Fleur saw the young man's eyes turn rather piteously upon her.

"Do you really mean that marriage--?" he began.

"Society is built on marriage," came from between her father's close
lips; "marriage and its consequences.  Do you want to do away with
it?"

Young Mont made a distracted gesture.  Silence brooded over the
dinner table, covered with spoons bearing the Forsyte crest--a
pheasant proper--under the electric light in an alabaster globe.  And
outside, the river evening darkened, charged with heavy moisture and
sweet scents.

'Monday,' thought Fleur; 'Monday!'




VI

DESPERATE


The weeks which followed the death of his father were sad and empty
to the only Jolyon Forsyte left.  The necessary forms and ceremonies-
-the reading of the Will, valuation of the estate, distribution of
the legacies--were enacted over the head, as it were, of one not yet
of age.  Jolyon was cremated.  By his special wish no one attended
that ceremony, or wore black for him.  The succession of his
property, controlled to some extent by old Jolyon's Will, left his
widow in possession of Robin Hill, with two thousand five hundred
pounds a year for life.  Apart from this the two Wills worked
together in some complicated way to insure that each of Jolyon's
three children should have an equal share in their grandfather's and
father's property in the future as in the present, save only that
Jon, by virtue of his sex, would have control of his capital when he
was twenty-one, while June and Holly would only have the spirit of
theirs, in order that their children might have the body after them.
If they had no children, it would all come to Jon if he outlived
them; and since June was fifty, and Holly nearly forty, it was
considered in Lincoln's Inn Fields that but for the cruelty of income
tax, young Jon would be as warm a man as his grandfather when he
died.  All this was nothing to Jon, and little enough to his mother.
It was June who did everything needful for one who had left his
affairs in perfect order.  When she had gone, and those two were
alone again in the great house, alone with death drawing them
together, and love driving them apart, Jon passed very painful days
secretly disgusted and disappointed with himself.  His mother would
look at him with such a patient sadness which yet had in it an
instinctive pride, as if she were reserving her defence.  If she
smiled he was angry that his answering smile should be so grudging
and unnatural.  He did not judge or condemn her; that was all too
remote--indeed, the idea of doing so had never come to him.  No! he
was grudging and unnatural because he couldn't have what he wanted be
cause of her.  There was one alleviation--much to do in connection
with his father's career, which could not be safely entrusted to
June, though she had offered to undertake it.  Both Jon and his
mother had felt that if she took his portfolios, unexhibited drawings
and unfinished matter, away with her, the work would encounter such
icy blasts from Paul Post and other frequenters of her studio, that
it would soon be frozen out even of her warm heart.  On its old-
fashioned plane and of its kind the work was good, and they could not
bear the thought of its subjection to ridicule.  A one-man exhibition
of his work was the least testimony they could pay to one they had
loved; and on preparation for this they spent many hours together.
Jon came to have a curiously increased respect for his father.  The
quiet tenacity with which he had converted a mediocre talent into
something really individual was disclosed by these researches.  There
was a great mass of work with a rare continuity of growth in depth
and reach of vision.  Nothing certainly went very deep, or reached
very high--but such as the work was, it was thorough, conscientious,
and complete.  And, remembering his father's utter absence of "side"
or self-assertion, the chaffing humility with which he had always
spoken of his own efforts, ever calling himself "an amateur," Jon
could not help feeling that he had never really known his father.  To
 take himself seriously, yet never bore others by letting them know
that he did so, seemed to have been his ruling principle.  There was
something in this which appealed to the boy, and made him heartily
endorse his mother's comment: "He had true refinement; he couldn't
help thinking of others, whatever he did.  And when he took a
resolution which went counter, he did it with the minimum of
defiance--not like the Age, is it?  Twice in his life he had to go
against everything; and yet it never made him bitter."  Jon saw tears
running down her face, which she at once turned away from him.  She
was so quiet about her loss that sometimes he had thought she didn't
feel it much.  Now, as he looked at her, he felt how far he fell
short of the reserve power and dignity in both his father and his
mother.  And, stealing up to her, he put his arm round her waist.
She kissed him swiftly, but with a sort of passion, and went out of
the room.

The studio, where they had been sorting and labelling, had once been
Holly's schoolroom, devoted to her silkworms, dried lavender, music,
and other forms of instruction.  Now, at the end of July, despite its
northern and eastern aspects, a warm and slumberous air came in
between the long-faded lilac linen curtains.  To redeem a little the
departed glory, as of a field that is golden and gone, clinging to a
room which its master has left, Irene had placed on the paint-stained
table a bowl of red roses.  This, and Jolyon's favourite cat, who
still clung to the deserted habitat, were the pleasant spots in that
dishevelled, sad workroom.  Jon, at the north window, sniffing air
mysteriously scented with warm strawberries, heard a car drive up.
The lawyers again about some nonsense!  Why did that scent so make
one ache?  And where did it come from--there were no strawberry beds
on this side of the house.  Instinctively he took a crumpled sheet of
paper from his pocket, and wrote down some broken words.  A warmth
began spreading in his chest; he rubbed the palms of his hands
together.  Presently he had jotted this:

"If I could make a little song
A little song to soothe my heart!
I'd make it all of little things
The plash of water, rub of wings,
The puffing-off of dandies crown,
The hiss of raindrop spilling down,
The purr of cat, the trill of bird,
And ev'ry whispering I've heard
>From willy wind in leaves and grass,
And all the distant drones that pass.
A song as tender and as light
As flower, or butterfly in flight;
And when I saw it opening,
I'd let it fly and sing!"

He was still muttering it over to himself at the window, when he
heard his name called, and, turning round, saw Fleur.  At that
amazing apparition, he made at first no movement and no sound, while
her clear vivid glance ravished his heart.  Then he went forward to
the table, saying, "How nice of you to come!" and saw her flinch as
if he had thrown something at her.

"I asked for you," she said, "and they showed me up here.  But I can
go away again."

Jon clutched the paint-stained table.  Her face and figure in its
frilly frock photographed itself with such startling vividness upon
his eyes, that if she had sunk through the floor he must still have
seen her.

"I know I told you a lie, Jon.  But I told it out of love."

"Yes, oh! yes! That's nothing!"

"I didn't answer your letter.  What was the use--there wasn't
anything to answer.  I wanted to see you instead."  She held out both
her hands, and Jon grasped them across the table.  He tried to say
something, but all his attention was given to trying not to hurt her
hands.  His own felt so hard and hers so soft.  She said almost
defiantly:

"That old story--was it so very dreadful?"

"Yes."  In his voice, too, there was a note of defiance.

She dragged her hands away.  "I didn't think in these days boys were
tied to their mothers' apron-strings."

Jon's chin went up as if he had been struck.

"Oh! I didn't mean it, Jon.  What a horrible thing to say!"  Swiftly
she came close to him.  "Jon, dear; I didn't mean it."

"All right."

She had put her two hands on his shoulder, and her forehead down on
them; the brim of her hat touched his neck, and he felt it quivering.
But, in a sort of paralysis, he made no response.  She let go of his
shoulder and drew away.

"Well, I'll go, if you don't want me.  But I never thought you'd have
given me up."

"I haven't," cried Jon, coming suddenly to life.  "I can't.  I'll try
again."

Her eyes gleamed, she swayed toward him.  "Jon--I love you!  Don't
give me up!  If you do, I don't know what--I feel so desperate.  What
does it matter--all that past-compared with this?"

She clung to him.  He kissed her eyes, her cheeks, her lips.  But
while he kissed her he saw, the sheets of that letter fallen down on
the floor of his bedroom--his father's white dead face--his mother
kneeling before it.  Fleur's whispered, "Make her!  Promise! Oh! Jon,
try!" seemed childish in his ear.  He felt curiously old.

"I promise!" he muttered.  "Only, you don't understand."

"She wants to spoil our lives, just because--"

"Yes, of what?"

Again that challenge in his voice, and she did not answer.  Her arms
tightened round him, and he returned her kisses; but even while he
yielded, the poison worked in him, the poison of the letter.  Fleur
did not know, she did not understand--she misjudged his mother; she
came from the enemy's camp!  So lovely, and he loved her so--yet,
even in her embrace, he could not help the memory of Holly's words:
"I think she has a 'having' nature," and his mother's "My darling
boy, don't think of me--think of yourself!"

When she was gone like a passionate dream, leaving her image on his
eyes, her kisses on his lips, such an ache in his heart, Jon leaned
in the window, listening to the car bearing her away.  Still the
scent as of warm strawberries, still the little summer sounds that
should make his song; still all the promise of youth and happiness in
sighing, floating, fluttering July--and his heart torn; yearning
strong in him; hope high in him yet with its eyes cast down, as if
ashamed.  The miserable task before him!  If Fleur was desperate, so
was he--watching the poplars swaying, the white clouds passing, the
sunlight on the grass.

He waited till evening, till after their almost silent dinner, till
his mother had played to him and still he waited, feeling that she
knew what he was waiting to say.  She kissed him and went up-stairs,
and still he lingered, watching the moonlight and the moths, and that
unreality of colouring which steals along and stains a summer night.
And he would have given anything to be back again in the past--barely
three months back; or away forward, years, in the future.  The
present with this dark cruelty of a decision, one way or the other,
seemed impossible.  He realised now so much more keenly what his
mother felt than he had at first; as if the story in that letter had
been a poisonous germ producing a kind of fever of partisanship, so
that he really felt there were two camps, his mother's and his--
Fleur's and her father's.  It might be a dead thing, that old tragic
ownership and enmity, but dead things were poisonous till time had
cleaned them away.  Even his love felt tainted, less illusioned, more
of the earth, and with a treacherous lurking doubt lest Fleur, like
her father, might want to own; not articulate, just a stealing haunt,
horribly unworthy, which crept in and about the ardour of his
memories, touched with its tarnishing breath the vividness and grace
of that charmed face and figure--a doubt, not real enough to convince
him of its presence, just real enough to deflower a perfect faith.
And perfect faith, to Jon, not yet twenty, was essential.  He still
had Youth's eagerness to give with both hands, to take with neither--
to give lovingly to one who had his own impulsive generosity.  Surely
she had!  He got up from the window-seat and roamed in the big grey
ghostly room, whose walls were hung with silvered canvas.  This house
his father said in that death-bed letter--had been built for his
mother to live in--with Fleur's father!  He put out his hand in the
half-dark, as if to grasp the shadowy hand of the dead.  He clenched,
trying to feel the thin vanished fingers of his father; to squeeze
them, and reassure him that he-he was on his father's side.  Tears,
prisoned within him, made his eyes feel dry and hot.  He went back to
the window.  It was warmer, not so eerie, more comforting outside,
where the moon hung golden, three days off full; the freedom of the
night was comforting.  If only Fleur and he had met on some desert
island without a past--and Nature for their house!  Jon had still his
high regard for desert islands, where breadfruit grew, and the water
was blue above the coral.  The night was deep, was free--there was
enticement in it; a lure, a promise, a refuge from entanglement, and
love!  Milksop tied to his mother's...! His cheeks burned.  He shut
the window, drew curtains over it, switched off the lighted sconce,
and went up-stairs.

The door of his room was open, the light turned up; his mother, still
in her evening gown, was standing at the window.  She turned and
said:

"Sit down, Jon; let's talk."  She sat down on the window-seat, Jon on
his bed.  She had her profile turned to him, and the beauty and grace
of her figure, the delicate line of the brow, the nose, the neck, the
strange and as it were remote refinement of her, moved him.  His
mother never belonged to her surroundings.  She came into them from
somewhere--as it were!  What was she going to say to him, who had in
his heart such things to say to her?

"I know Fleur came to-day.  I'm not surprised."  It was as though she
had added: "She is her father's daughter!"  And Jon's heart hardened.
Irene went on quietly:

"I have Father's letter.  I picked it up that night and kept it.
Would you like it back, dear?"

Jon shook his head.

"I had read it, of course, before he gave it to you.  It didn't quite
do justice to my criminality."

'Mother!" burst from Jon's lips.

"He put it very sweetly, but I know that in marrying Fleur's father
without love I did a dreadful thing.  An unhappy marriage, Jon, can
play such havoc with other lives besides one's own.  You are
fearfully young, my darling, and fearfully loving.  Do you think you
can possibly be happy with this girl?"

Staring at her dark eyes, darker now from pain, Jon answered

"Yes; oh!  yes--if you could be."

Irene smiled.

"Admiration of beauty and longing for possession are not love.  If
yours were another case like mine, Jon--where the deepest things are
stifled; the flesh joined, and the spirit at war!"

"Why should it, Mother?  You think she must be like her father, but
she's not.  I've seen him."

Again the smile came on Irene's lips, and in Jon something wavered;
there was such irony and experience in that smile.

"You are a giver, Jon; she is a taker."

That unworthy doubt, that haunting uncertainty again!  He said with
vehemence:

"She isn't--she isn't.  It's only because I can't bear to make you
unhappy, Mother, now that Father--"  He thrust his fists against his
forehead.

Irene got up.

"I told you that night, dear, not to mind me.  I meant it.  Think of
yourself and your own happiness!  I can stand what's left--I've
brought it on myself."

Again the word "Mother!" burst from Jon's lips.

She came over to him and put her hands over his.

"Do you feel your head, darling?"

Jon shook it.  What he felt was in his chest--a sort of tearing
asunder of the tissue there, by the two loves.

"I shall always love you the same, Jon, whatever you do.  You won't
lose anything."  She smoothed his hair gently, and walked away.

He heard the door shut; and, rolling over on the bed, lay, stifling
his breath, with an awful held-up feeling within him.




VII

EMBASSY


Enquiring for her at tea time Soames learned that Fleur had been out
in the car since two.  Three hours!  Where had she gone?  Up to
London without a word to him?  He had never become quite reconciled
with cars.  He had embraced them in principle--like the born
empiricist, or Forsyte, that he was--adopting each symptom of
progress as it came along with: "Well, we couldn't do without them
now."  But in fact he found them tearing, great, smelly things.
Obliged by Annette to have one--a Rollhard with pearl-grey cushions,
electric light, little mirrors, trays for the ashes of cigarettes,
flower vases--all smelling of petrol and stephanotis--he regarded it
much as he used to regard his brother-in-law, Montague Dartie.  The
thing typified all that was fast, insecure, and subcutaneously oily
in modern life.  As modern life became faster, looser, younger,
Soames was becoming older, slower, tighter, more and more in thought
and language like his father James before him.  He was almost aware
of it himself.  Pace and progress pleased him less and less; there
was an ostentation, too, about a car which he considered provocative
in the prevailing mood of Labour.  On one occasion that fellow Sims
had driven over the only vested interest of a working man.  Soames
had not forgotten the behaviour of its master, when not many people
would have stopped to put up with it.  He had been sorry for the dog,
and quite prepared to take its part against the car, if that ruffian
hadn't been so outrageous.  With four hours fast becoming five, and
still no Fleur, all the old car-wise feelings he had experienced in
person and by proxy balled within him, and sinking sensations
troubled the pit of his stomach.  At seven he telephoned to Winifred
by trunk call.  No!  Fleur had not been to Green Street.  Then where
was she?  Visions of his beloved daughter rolled up in her pretty
frills, all blood and dust-stained, in some hideous catastrophe,
began to haunt him.  He went to her room and spied among her things.
She had taken nothing--no dressing-case, no Jewellery.  And this, a
relief in one sense, increased his fears of an accident.  Terrible to
be helpless when his loved one was missing, especially when he
couldn't bear fuss or publicity of any kind!  What should he do if
she were not back by nightfall?

At a quarter to eight he heard the car.  A great weight lifted from
off his heart; he hurried down.  She was getting out--pale and tired-
looking, but nothing wrong.  He met her in the hall.

"You've frightened me.  Where have you been?"

"To Robin Hill.  I'm sorry, dear.  I had to go; I'll tell you
afterward."  And, with a flying kiss, she ran up-stairs.

Soames waited in the drawing-room.  To Robin Hill!  What did that
portend?

It was not a subject they could discuss at dinner--consecrated to the
susceptibilities of the butler.  The agony of nerves Soames had been
through, the relief he felt at her safety, softened his power to
condemn what she had done, or resist what she was going to do; he
waited in a relaxed stupor for her revelation.  Life was a queer
business.  There he was at sixty-five and no more in command of
things than if he had not spent forty years in building up security-
always something one couldn't get on terms with!  In the pocket of
his dinner-jacket was a letter from Annette.  She was coming back in
a fortnight.  He knew nothing of what she had been doing out there.
And he was glad that he did not.  Her absence had been a relief.  Out
of sight was out of mind!  And now she was coming back.  Another
worry!  And the Bolderby Old Crome was gone--Dumetrius had got it--
all because that anonymous letter had put it out of his thoughts.  He
furtively remarked the strained look on his daughter's face, as if
she too were gazing at a picture that she couldn't buy.  He almost
wished the War back.  Worries didn't seem, then, quite so worrying.
>From the caress in her voice, the look on her face, he became certain
that she wanted something from him, uncertain whether it would be
wise of him to give it her.  He pushed his savoury away uneaten, and
even joined her in a cigarette.

After dinner she set the electric piano-player going.  And he augured
the worst when she sat down on a cushion footstool at his knee, and
put her hand on his.

"Darling, be nice to me.  I had to see Jon--he wrote to me.  He's
going to try what he can do with his mother.  But I've been thinking.
It's really in your hands, Father.  If you'd persuade her that it
doesn't mean renewing the past in any way!  That I shall stay yours,
and Jon will stay hers; that you need never see him or her, and she
need never see you or me!  Only you could persuade her, dear, because
only you could promise.  One can't promise for other people.  Surely
it wouldn't be too awkward for you to see her just this once now that
Jon's father is dead?"

"Too awkward?" Soames repeated.  "The whole thing's preposterous."

"You know," said Fleur, without looking up, "you wouldn't mind seeing
her, really."

Soames was silent.  Her words had expressed a truth too deep for him
to admit.  She slipped her fingers between his own--hot, slim, eager,
they clung there.  This child of his would corkscrew her way into a
brick wall!

"What am I to do if you won't, Father?" she said very softly.

"I'll do anything for your happiness," said Soanies; "but this isn't
for your happiness."

"Oh! it is; it is!"

"It'll only stir things up," he said grimly.

"But they are stirred up.  The thing is to quiet them.  To make her
feel that this is just our lives, and has nothing to do with yours or
hers.  You can do it, Father, I know you can."

"You know a great deal, then," was Soames' glum answer.

"If you will, Jon and I will wait a year--two years if you like."

"It seems to me," murmured Soames, "that you care nothing about what
I feel."

Fleur pressed his hand against her cheek.

"I do, darling.  But you wouldn't like me to be awfully miserable."

How she wheedled to get her ends!  And trying with all his might to
think she really cared for him--he was not sure--not sure.  All she
cared for was this boy!  Why should he help her to get this boy, who
was killing her affection for himself?  Why should he?  By the laws
of the Forsytes it was foolish!  There was nothing to be had out of
it--nothing!  To give her to that boy!  To pass her into the enemy's
camp, under the influence of the woman who had injured him so deeply!
Slowly--inevitably--he would lose this flower of his life!  And
suddenly he was conscious that his hand was wet.  His heart gave a
little painful jump.  He couldn't bear her to cry.  He put his other
hand quickly over hers, and a tear dropped on that, too.  He couldn't
go on like this!  "Well, well," he said, "I'll think it over, and do
what I can.  Come, come!"  If she must have it for her happiness--she
must; he couldn't refuse to help her.  And lest she should begin to
thank him he got out of his chair and went up to the piano-player--
making that noise!  It ran down, as he reached it, with a faint buzz.
That musical box of his nursery days: "The Harmonious Blacksmith,"
"Glorious Port"--the thing had always made him miserable when his
mother set it going on Sunday afternoons.  Here it was again--the
same thing, only larger, more expensive, and now it played "The Wild,
Wild Women," and "The Policeman's Holiday," and he was no longer in
black velvet with a sky blue collar.  'Profond's right,' he thought,
'there's nothing in it!  We're all progressing to the grave!'  And
with that surprising mental comment he walked out.

He did not see Fleur again that night.  But, at breakfast, her eyes
followed him about with an appeal he could not escape--not that he
intended to try.  No!  He had made up his mind to the nerve-racking
business.  He would go to Robin Hill--to that house of memories.
Pleasant memory--the last!  Of going down to keep that boy's father
and Irene apart by threatening divorce.  He had often thought, since,
that it had clinched their union.  And, now, he was going to clinch
the union of that boy with his girl.  'I don't know what I've done,'
he thought, 'to have such things thrust on me!'  He went up by train
and down by train, and from the station walked by the long rising
lane, still very much as he remembered it over thirty years ago.
Funny--so near London!  Some one evidently was holding on to the land
there.  This speculation soothed him, moving between the high hedges
slowly, so as not to get overheated, though the day was chill enough.
After all was said and done there was something real about land, it
didn't shift.  Land, and good pictures!  The values might fluctuate a
bit, but on the whole they were always going up--worth holding on to,
in a world where there was such a lot of unreality, cheap building,
changing fashions, such a "Here to-day and gone to-morrow" spirit.
The French were right, perhaps, with their peasant proprietorship,
though he had no opinion of the French.  One's bit of land!
Something solid in it!  He had heard peasant proprietors described as
a pig-headed lot; had heard young Mont call his father a pigheaded
Morning Poster--disrespectful young devil.  Well, there were worse
things than being pig-headed or reading the Morning Post.  There was
Profond and his tribe, and all these Labour chaps, and loud-mouthed
politicians and 'wild, wild women'!  A lot of worse things!  And
suddenly Soames became conscious of feeling weak, and hot, and shaky.
Sheer nerves at the meeting before him!  As Aunt Juley might have
said--quoting "Superior Dosset"--his nerves were "in a proper
fautigue."  He could see the house now among its trees, the house he
had watched being built, intending it for himself and this woman,
who, by such strange fate, had lived in it with another after all!
He began to think of Dumetrius, Local Loans, and other forms of
investment.  He could not afford to meet her with his nerves all
shaking; he who represented the Day of Judgment for her on earth as
it was in heaven; he, legal ownership, personified, meeting lawless
beauty, incarnate.  His dignity demanded impassivity during this
embassy designed to link their offspring, who, if she had behaved
herself, would have been brother and sister.  That wretched tune,
"The Wild, Wild Women," kept running in his head, perversely, for
tunes did not run there as a rule.  Passing the poplars in front of
the house, he thought: 'How they've grown; I had them planted!'
A maid answered his ring.

"Will you say--Mr. Forsyte, on a very special matter."

If she realised who he was, quite probably she would not see him.
'By George!' he thought, hardening as the tug came.  'It's a topsy-
turvy affair!'

The maid came back.  "Would the gentleman state his business,
please?"

"Say it concerns Mr. Jon," said Soames.

And once more he was alone in that hall with the pool of grey-white
marble designed by her first lover.  Ah! she had been a bad lot--had
loved two men, and not himself!  He must remember that when he came
face to face with her once more.  And suddenly he saw her in the
opening chink between the long heavy purple curtains, swaying, as if
in hesitation; the old perfect poise and line, the old startled dark-
eyed gravity, the old calm defensive voice: "Will you come in,
please?"

He passed through that opening.  As in the picture-gallery and the
confectioner's shop, she seemed to him still beautiful.  And this was
the first time--the very first--since he married her seven-and-thirty
years ago, that he was speaking to her without the legal right to
call her his.  She was not wearing black--one of that fellow's
radical notions, he supposed.

"I apologise for coming," he said glumly; "but this business must be
settled one way or the other."

"Won't you sit down?"

"No, thank you."

Anger at his false position, impatience of ceremony between them,
mastered him, and words came tumbling out:

"It's an infernal mischance; I've done my best to discourage it.  I
consider my daughter crazy, but I've got into the habit of indulging
her; that's why I'm here.  I suppose you're fond of your son."

"Devotedly."

"Well?"

"It rests with him."

He had a sense of being met and baffled.  Always--always she had
baffled him, even in those old first married days.

"It's a mad notion," he said.

"It is."

"If you had only--!  Well--they might have been--" he did not finish
that sentence "brother and sister and all this saved," but he saw her
shudder as if he had, and stung by the sight he crossed over to the
window.  Out there the trees had not grown--they couldn't, they were
old

"So far as I'm concerned," he said, "you may make your mind easy.  I
desire to see neither you nor your son if this marriage comes about.
Young people in these days are--are unaccountable.  But I can't bear
to see my daughter unhappy.  What am I to say to her when I go back?"

"Please say to her as I said to you, that it rests with Jon."

"You don't oppose it?"

"With all my heart; not with my lips."

Soames stood, biting his finger.

"I remember an evening--" he said suddenly; and was silent.  What was
there--what was there in this woman that would not fit into the four
corners of his hate or condemnation?  "Where is he--your son?"

"Up in his father's studio, I think."

"Perhaps you'd have him down."

He watched her ring the bell, he watched the maid come in.

"Please tell Mr. Jon that I want him."

"If it rests with him," said Soames hurriedly, when the maid was
gone, "I suppose I may take it for granted that this unnatural
marriage will take place; in that case there'll be formalities.  Whom
do I deal with--Herring's?"

Irene nodded.

"You don't propose to live with them?"

Irene shook her head.

"What happens to this house?"

"It will be as Jon wishes."

"This house," said Soames suddenly: "I had hopes when I began it.  If
they live in it--their children!  They say there's such a thing as
Nemesis.  Do you believe in it?"

"Yes."

"Oh! You do!"

He had come back from the window, and was standing close to her, who,
in the curve of her grand piano, was, as it were, embayed.

"I'm not likely to see you again," he said slowly.  "Will you shake
hands"--his lip quivered, the words came out jerkily--"and let the
past die."  He held out his hand.  Her pale face grew paler, her eyes
so dark, rested immovably on his, her hands remained clasped in front
of her.  He heard a sound and turned.  That boy was standing in the
opening of the curtains.  Very queer he looked, hardly recognisable
as the young fellow he had seen in the Gallery off Cork Street--very
queer; much older, no youth in the face at all--haggard, rigid, his
hair ruffled, his eyes deep in his head.  Soames made an effort, and
said with a lift of his lip, not quite a smile nor quite a sneer:

"Well, young man!  I'm here for my daughter; it rests with you, it
seems--this matter.  Your mother leaves it in your hands."

The boy continued staring at his mother's face, and made no answer.

"For my daughter's sake I've brought myself to come," said Soames.
"What am I to say to her when I go back?"

Still looking at his mother, the boy said, quietly:

"Tell Fleur that it's no good, please; I must do as my father wished
before he died."

"Jon!"

"It's all right, Mother."

In a kind of stupefaction Soames looked from one to the other; then,
taking up hat and umbrella which he had put down on a chair, he
walked toward the curtains.  The boy stood aside for him to go by.
He passed through and heard the grate of the rings as the curtains
were drawn behind him.  The sound liberated something in his chest.

'So that's that!'  he thought, and passed out of the front door.




VIII

THE DARK TUNE


As Soames walked away from the house at Robin Hill the sun broke
through the grey of that chill afternoon, in smoky radiance.  So
absorbed in landscape painting that he seldom looked seriously for
effects of Nature out of doors--he was struck by that moody
effulgence--it mourned with a triumph suited to his own feeling.
Victory in defeat.  His embassy had come to naught.  But he was rid
of those people, had regained his daughter at the expense of--her
happiness.  What would Fleur say to him?  Would she believe he had
done his best?  And under that sunlight faring on the elms, hazels,
hollies of the lane and those unexploited fields, Soames felt dread.
She would be terribly upset!  He must appeal to her pride.  That boy
had given her up, declared part and lot with the woman who so long
ago had given her father up!  Soames clenched his hands.  Given him
up, and why?  What had been wrong with him?  And once more he felt
the malaise of one who contemplates himself as seen by another--like
a dog who chances on his refection in a mirror and is intrigued and
anxious at the unseizable thing.

Not in a hurry to get home, he dined in town at the Connoisseurs.
While eating a pear it suddenly occurred to him that, if he had not
gone down to Robin Hill, the boy might not have so decided.  He
remembered the expression on his face while his mother was refusing
the hand he had held out.  A strange, an awkward thought!  Had Fleur
cooked her own goose by trying to make too sure?

He reached home at half-past nine.  While the car was passing in at
one drive gate he heard the grinding sputter of a motor-cycle passing
out by the other.  Young Mont, no doubt, so Fleur had not been
lonely.  But he went in with a sinking heart.  In the cream-panelled
drawing-room she was sitting with her elbows on her knees, and her
chin on her clasped hands, in front of a white camellia plant which
filled the fireplace.  That glance at her before she saw him renewed
his dread.  What was she seeing among those white camellias?

"Well, Father!"

Soames shook his head.  His tongue failed him.  This was murderous
work!  He saw her eyes dilate, her lips quivering.

"What?  What?  Quick, Father!"

"My dear," said Soames, "I--I did my best, but--" And again he shook
his head.

Fleur ran to him, and put a hand on each of his shoulders.

"She?"

"No," muttered Soames; "he. I was to tell you that it was no use; he
must do what his father wished before he died."  He caught her by the
waist.  "Come, child, don't let them hurt you.  They're not worth
your little finger."

Fleur tore herself from his grasp.

"You didn't you--couldn't have tried.  You--you betrayed me, Father!"

Bitterly wounded, Soames gazed at her passionate figure writhing
there in front of him.

"You didn't try--you didn't--I was a fool!  Iwon't believe he could--
he ever could!  Only yesterday he--!  Oh! why did I ask you?"

"Yes," said Soames, quietly, "why did you?  I swallowed my feelings;
I did my best for you, against my judgment--and this is my reward.
Good-night!"

With every nerve in his body twitching he went toward the door.

Fleur darted after him.

"He gives me up?  You mean that?  Father!"

Soames turned and forced himself to answer:

"Yes."

"Oh!" cried Fleur.  "What did you--what could you have done in those
old days?"

The breathless sense of really monstrous injustice cut the power of
speech in Soames' throat.  What had he done!  What had they done to
him!

And with quite unconscious dignity he put his hand on his breast, and
looked at her.

"It's a shame!" cried Fleur passionately.

Soames went out.  He mounted, slow and icy, to his picture gallery,
and paced among his treasures.  Outrageous!  Oh!  Outrageous!  She
was spoiled!  Ah! and who had spoiled her?  He stood still before the
Goya copy.  Accustomed to her own way in everything.  Flower of his
life!  And now that she couldn't have it!  He turned to the window
for some air.  Daylight was dying, the moon rising, gold behind the
poplars!  What sound was that?  Why!  That piano thing!  A dark tune,
with a thrum and a throb!  She had set it going--what comfort could
she get from that?  His eyes caught movement down there beyond the
lawn, under the trellis of rambler roses and young acacia-trees,
where the moonlight fell.  There she was, roaming up and down.  His
heart gave a little sickening jump.  What would she do under this
blow?  How could he tell?  What did he know of her--he had only loved
her all his life--looked on her as the apple of his eye!  He knew
nothing--had no notion.  There she was--and that dark tune--and the
river gleaming in the moonlight!

'I must go out,' he thought.

He hastened down to the drawing-room, lighted just as he had left it,
with the piano thrumming out that waltz, or fox-trot, or whatever
they called it in these days, and passed through on to the verandah.

Where could he watch, without her seeing him?  And he stole down
through the fruit garden to the boat-house.  He was between her and
the river now, and his heart felt lighter.  She was his daughter, and
Annette's--she wouldn't do anything foolish; but there it was--he
didn't know!  From the boat house window he could see the last acacia
and the spin of her skirt when she turned in her restless march.
That tune had run down at last--thank goodness!  He crossed the floor
and looked through the farther window at the water slow-flowing past
the lilies.  It made little bubbles against them, bright where a
moon-streak fell.  He remembered suddenly that early morning when he
had slept on the house-boat after his father died, and she had just
been born--nearly nineteen years ago!  Even now he recalled the
unaccustomed world when he woke up, the strange feeling it had given
him.  That day the second passion of his life began--for this girl of
his, roaming under the acacias.  What a comfort she had been to him!
And all the soreness and sense of outrage left him.  If he could make
her happy again, he didn't care!  An owl flew, queeking, queeking; a
bat flitted by; the moonlight brightened and broadened on the water.
How long was she going to roam about like this!  He went back to the
window, and suddenly saw her coming down to the bank.  She stood
quite close, on the landing-stage.  And Soames watched, clenching his
hands.  Should he speak to her?  His excitement was intense.  The
stillness of her figure, its youth, its absorption in despair, in
longing, in--itself.  He would always remember it, moonlit like that;
and the faint sweet reek of the river and the shivering of the willow
leaves.  She had everything in the world that he could give her,
except the one thing that she could not have because of him!  The
perversity of things hurt him at that moment, as might a fish-bone in
his throat.

Then, with an infinite relief, he saw her turn back toward the house.
What could he give her to make amends?  Pearls, travel, horses, other
young men--anything she wanted--that he might lose the memory of her
young figure lonely by the water!  There!  She had set that tune
going again!  Why--it was a mania!  Dark, thrumming, faint,
travelling from the house.  It was as though she had said: "If I
can't have something to keep me going, I shall die of this!"  Soames
dimly understood.  Well, if it helped her, let her keep it thrumming
on all night!  And, mousing back through the fruit garden, he
regained the verandah.  Though he meant to go in and speak to her
now, he still hesitated, not knowing what to say, trying hard to
recall how it felt to be thwarted in love.  He ought to know, ought
to remember--and he could not!  Gone--all real recollection; except
that it had hurt him horribly.  In this blankness he stood passing
his handkerchief over hands and lips, which were very dry.  By
craning his head he could just see Fleur, standing with her back to
that piano still grinding out its tune, her arms tight crossed on her
breast, a lighted cigarette between her lips, whose smoke half veiled
her face.  The expression on it was strange to Soames, the eyes shone
and stared, and every feature was alive with a sort of wretched scorn
and anger.  Once or twice he had seen Annette look like that--the
face was too vivid, too naked, not his daughter's at that moment.
And he dared not go in, realising the futility of any attempt at
consolation.  He sat down in the shadow of the ingle-nook.

Monstrous trick, that Fate had played him!  Nemesis!  That old
unhappy marriage!  And in God's name-why?  How was he to know, when
he wanted Irene so violently, and she consented to be his, that she
would never love him?  The tune died and was renewed, and died again,
and still Soames sat in the shadow, waiting for he knew not what.
The fag of Fleur's cigarette, flung through the window, fell on the
grass; he watched it glowing, burning itself out.  The moon had freed
herself above the poplars, and poured her unreality on the garden.
Comfortless light, mysterious, withdrawn--like the beauty of that
woman who had never loved him--dappling the nemesias and the stocks
with a vesture not of earth.  Flowers!  And his flower so unhappy!
Ah!  Why could one not put happiness into Local Loans, gild its
edges, insure it against going down?

Light had ceased to flow out now from the drawing-room window.  All
was silent and dark in there.  Had she gone up?  He rose, and,
tiptoeing, peered in.  It seemed so!  He entered.  The verandah kept
the moonlight out; and at first he could see nothing but the outlines
of furniture blacker than the darkness.  He groped toward the farther
window to shut it.  His foot struck a chair, and he heard a gasp.
There she was, curled and crushed into the corner of the sofa!  His
hand hovered.  Did she want his consolation?  He stood, gazing at
that ball of crushed frills and hair and graceful youth, trying to
burrow its way out of sorrow.  How leave her there?  At last he
touched her hair, and said:

"Come, darling, better go to bed.  I'll make it up to you, somehow."
How fatuous!  But what could he have said?




IX

UNDER THE OAK-TREE


When their visitor had disappeared Jon and his mother stood without
speaking, till he said suddenly:

"I ought to have seen him out."

But Soames was already walking down the drive, and Jon went upstairs
to his father's studio, not trusting himself to go back.

The expression on his mother's face confronting the man she had once
been married to, had sealed a resolution growing within him ever
since she left him the night before.  It had put the finishing touch
of reality.  To marry Fleur would be to hit his mother in the face;
to betray his dead father!  It was no good!  Jon had the least
resentful of natures.  He bore his parents no grudge in this hour of
his distress.  For one so young there was a rather strange power in
him of seeing things in some sort of proportion.  It was worse for
Fleur, worse for his mother even, than it was for him.  Harder than
to give up was to be given up, or to be the cause of some one you
loved giving up for you.  He must not, would not behave grudgingly!
While he stood watching the tardy sunlight, he had again that sudden
vision of the world which had come to him the night before.  Sea on
sea, country on country, millions on millions of people, all with
their own lives, energies, joys, griefs, and suffering--all with
things they had to give up, and separate struggles for existence.
Even though he might be willing to give up all else for the one thing
he couldn't have, he would be a fool to think his feelings mattered
much in so vast a world, and to behave like a cry-baby or a cad.  He
pictured the people who had nothing--the millions who had given up
life in the War, the millions whom the War had left with life and
little else; the hungry children he had read of, the shattered men;
people in prison, every kind of unfortunate.  And--they did not help
him much.  If one had to miss a meal, what comfort in the knowledge
that many others had to miss it too?  There was more distraction in
the thought of getting away out into this vast world of which he knew
nothing yet.  He could not go on staying here, walled in and
sheltered, with everything so slick and comfortable, and nothing to
do but brood and think what might have been. He could not go back to
Wansdon, and the memories of Fleur.  If he saw her again he could not
trust himself; and if he stayed here or went back there, he would
surely see her.  While they were within reach of each other that must
happen.  To go far away and quickly was the only thing to do.  But,
however much he loved his mother, he did not want to go away with
her.  Then feeling that was brutal, he made up his mind desperately
to propose that they should go to Italy.  For two hours in that
melancholy room he tried to master himself, then dressed solemnly for
dinner.

His mother had done the same.  They ate little, at some length, and
talked of his father's catalogue.  The show was arranged for October,
and beyond clerical detail there was nothing more to do.

After dinner she put on a cloak and they went out; walked a little,
talked a little, till they were standing silent at last beneath the
oak-tree.  Ruled by the thought: 'If I show anything, I show all,'
Jon put his arm through hers and said quite casually:

"Mother, let's go to Italy."

Irene pressed his arm, and said as casually:

"It would be very nice; but I've been thinking you ought to see and
do more than you would if I were with you."

"But then you'd be alone."

"I was once alone for more than twelve years.  Besides, I should like
to be here for the opening of Father's show."

Jon's grip tightened round her arm; he was not deceived.

"You couldn't stay here all by yourself; it's too big."

"Not here, perhaps.  In London, and I might go to Paris, after the
show opens.  You ought to have a year at least, Jon, and see the
world."

"Yes, I'd like to see the world and rough it.  But I don't want to
leave you all alone."

"My dear, I owe you that at least.  If it's for your good, it'll be
for mine.  Why not start tomorrow?  You've got your passport."

"Yes; if I'm going it had better be at once.  Only--Mother--if--if I
wanted to stay out somewhere--America or anywhere, would you mind
coming presently?"

"Wherever and whenever you send for me.  But don't send until you
really want me."

Jon drew a deep breath.

"I feel England's choky."

They stood a few minutes longer under the oak-tree--looking out to
where the grand stand at Epsom was veiled in evening.  The branches
kept the moonlight from them, so that it only fell everywhere else--
over the fields and far away, and on the windows of the creepered
house behind, which soon would be to let.




X

FLEUR'S WEDDING


The October paragraphs describing the wedding of Fleur Forsyte to
Michael Mont hardly conveyed the symbolic significance of this event.
In the union of the great-granddaughter of "Superior Dosset" with the
heir of a ninth baronet was the outward and visible sign of that
merger of class in class which buttresses the political stability of
a realm.  The time had come when the Forsytes might resign their
natural resentment against a "flummery" not theirs by birth, and
accept it as the still more natural due of their possessive
instincts.  Besides, they had to mount to make room for all those so
much more newly rich.  In that quiet but tasteful ceremony in Hanover
Square, and afterward among the furniture in Green Street, it had
been impossible for those not in the know to distinguish the Forsyte
troop from the Mont contingent--so far away was "Superior Dosset"
now.  Was there, in the crease of his trousers, the expression of his
moustache, his accent, or the shine on his top-hat, a pin to choose
between Soames and the ninth baronet himself?  Was not Fleur as self-
possessed, quick, glancing, pretty, and hard as the likeliest
Muskham, Mont, or Charwell filly present?  If anything, the Forsytes
had it in dress and looks and manners.  They had become "upper class"
and now their name would be formally recorded in the Stud Book, their
money joined to land.  Whether this was a little late in the day, and
those rewards of the possessive instinct, lands and money, destined
for the melting-pot--was still a question so moot that it was not
mooted.  After all, Timothy had said Consols were goin' up.  Timothy,
the last, the missing link; Timothy, in extremis on the Bayswater
Road--so Francie had reported.  It was whispered, too, that this
young Mont was a sort of socialist--strangely wise of him, and in the
nature of insurance, considering the days they lived in.  There was
no uneasiness on that score.  The landed classes produced that sort
of amiable foolishness at times, turned to safe uses and confined to
theory.  As George remarked to his sister Francie: "They'll soon be
having puppies--that'll give him pause."

The church with white flowers and something blue in the middle of the
East window looked extremely chaste, as though endeavouring to
counteract the somewhat lurid phraseology of a Service calculated to
keep the thoughts of all on puppies.  Forsytes, Haymans, Tweetymans,
sat in the left aisle; Monts, Charwells; Muskhams in the right; while
a sprinkling of Fleur's fellow-sufferers at school, and of Mont's
fellow-sufferers in, the War, gaped indiscriminately from either
side, and three maiden ladies, who had dropped in on their way from
Skyward's brought up the rear, together with two Mont retainers and
Fleur's old nurse.  In the unsettled state of the country as full a
house as could be expected.

Mrs. Val Dartie, who sat with her husband in the third row, squeezed
his hand more than once during the performance.  To her, who knew the
plot of this tragi-comedy, its most dramatic moment was well-nigh
painful.  'I wonder if Jon knows by instinct,' she thought--Jon, out
in British Columbia.  She had received a letter from him only that
morning which had made her smile and say:

"Jon's in British Columbia, Val, because he wants to be in
California.  He thinks it's too nice there."

"Oh!" said Val, "so he's beginning to see a joke again."

"He's bought some land and sent for his mother."

"What on earth will she do out there?"

"All she cares about is Jon.  Do you still think it a happy release?"

Val's shrewd eyes narrowed to grey pin-points between their dark
lashes.

"Fleur wouldn't have suited him a bit.  She's not bred right."

"Poor little Fleur!" sighed Holly.  Ah! it was strange--this
marriage.  The young man, Mont, had caught her on the rebound, of
course, in the reckless mood of one whose ship has just gone down.
Such a plunge could not but be--as Val put it--an outside chance.
There was little to be told from the back view of her young cousin's
veil, and Holly's eyes reviewed the general aspect of this Christian
wedding.  She, who had made a love-match which had been successful,
had a horror of unhappy marriages.  This might not be one in the end-
-but it was clearly a toss-up; and to consecrate a toss-up in this
fashion with manufactured unction before a crowd of fashionable free-
thinkers--for who thought otherwise than freely, or not at all, when
they were "dolled" up--seemed to her as near a sin as one could find
in an age which had abolished them.  Her eyes wandered from the
prelate in his robes (a Charwell-the Forsytes had not as yet produced
a prelate) to Val, beside her, thinking--she was certain--of the
Mayfly filly at fifteen to one for the Cambridgeshire.  They passed
on and caught the profile of the ninth baronet, in counterfeitment of
the kneeling process.  She could just see the neat ruck above his
knees where he had pulled his trousers up, and thought: 'Val's
forgotten to pull up his!'  Her eyes passed to the pew in front of
her, where Winifred's substantial form was gowned with passion, and
on again to Soames and Annette kneeling side by side.  A little smile
came on her lips--Prosper Profond, back from the South Seas of the
Channel, would be kneeling too, about six rows behind.  Yes!  This
was a funny "small" business, however it turned out; still it was in
a proper church and would be in the proper papers to-morrow morning.

They had begun a hymn; she could hear the ninth baronet across the
aisle, singing of the hosts of Midian.  Her little finger touched
Val's thumb--they were holding the same hymn-book--and a tiny thrill
passed through her, preserved--from twenty years ago.  He stooped and
whispered:

"I say, d'you remember the rat?"  The rat at their wedding in Cape
Colony, which had cleaned its whiskers behind the table at the
Registrar's!  And between her little and third forgers she squeezed
his thumb hard.

The hymn was over, the prelate had begun to deliver his discourse.
He told them of the dangerous times they lived in, and the awful
conduct of the House of Lords in connection with divorce.  They were
all soldiers--he said--in the trenches under the poisonous gas of the
Prince of Darkness, and must be manful.  The purpose of marriage was
children, not mere sinful happiness.

An imp danced in Holly's eyes--Val's eyelashes were meeting.
Whatever happened; he must not snore.  Her finger and thumb closed on
his thigh till he stirred uneasily.

The discourse was over, the danger past.  They were signing in the
vestry; and general relaxation had set in.

A voice behind her said:

"Will she stay the course?"

"Who's that?" she whispered.

"Old George Forsyte!"

Holly demurely scrutinized one of whom she had often heard.  Fresh
from South Africa, and ignorant of her kith and kin, she never saw
one without an almost childish curiosity.  He was very big, and very
dapper; his eyes gave her a funny feeling of having no particular
clothes.

"They're off!" she heard him say.

They came, stepping from the chancel.  Holly looked first in young
Mont's face.  His lips and ears were twitching, his eyes, shifting
from his feet to the hand within his arm, stared suddenly before them
as if to face a firing party.  He gave Holly the feeling that he was
spiritually intoxicated.  But Fleur!  Ah!  That was different.  The
girl was perfectly composed, prettier than ever, in her white robes
and veil over her banged dark chestnut hair; her eyelids hovered
demure over her dark hazel eyes.  Outwardly, she seemed all there.
But inwardly, where was she?  As those two passed, Fleur raised her
eyelids--the restless glint of those clear whites remained on Holly's
vision as might the flutter of caged bird's wings.

In Green Street Winifred stood to receive, just a little less
composed than usual.  Soames' request for the use of her house had
come on her at a deeply psychological moment.  Under the influence of
a remark of Prosper Profond, she had begun to exchange her Empire for
Expressionistic furniture.  There were the most amusing arrangements,
with violet, green, and orange blobs and scriggles, to be had at
Mealard's.  Another month and the change would have been complete.
Just now, the very "intriguing" recruits she had enlisted, did not
march too well with the old guard.  It was as if her regiment were
half in khaki, half in scarlet and bearskins.  But her strong and
comfortable character made the best of it in a drawing-room which
typified, perhaps, more perfectly than she imagined, the semi-
bolshevized imperialism of her country.  After all, this was a day of
merger, and you couldn't have too much of it!  Her eyes travelled
indulgently among her guests.  Soames had gripped the back of a buhl
chair; young Mont was behind that "awfully amusing" screen, which no
one as yet had been able to explain to her.  The ninth baronet had
shied violently at a round scarlet table, inlaid under glass with
blue Australian butteries' wings, and was clinging to her Louis-
Quinze cabinet; Francie Forsyte had seized the new mantel-board,
finely carved with little purple grotesques on an ebony ground;
George, over by the old spinet, was holding a little sky-blue book as
if about to enter bets; Prosper Profond was twiddling the knob of the
open door, black with peacock-blue panels; and Annette's hands, close
by, were grasping her own waist; two Muskhams clung to the balcony
among the plants, as if feeling ill; Lady Mont, thin and brave-
looking, had taken up her long-handled glasses and was gazing at the
central light shade, of ivory and orange dashed with deep magenta, as
if the heavens had opened.  Everybody, in fact, seemed holding on to
something.  Only Fleur, still in her bridal dress, was detached from
all support, flinging her words and glances to left and right.

The room was full of the bubble and the squeak of conversation.
Nobody could hear anything that anybody said; which seemed of little
consequence, since no one waited for anything so slow as an answer.
Modern conversation seemed to Winifred so different from the days of
her prime, when a drawl was all the vogue.  Still it was "amusing,"
which, of course, was all that mattered.  Even the Forsytes were
talking with extreme rapidity--Fleur and Christopher, and Imogen, and
young Nicholas's youngest, Patrick.  Soames, of course, was silent;
but George, by the spinet, kept up a running commentary, and Francie,
by her mantel-shelf.  Winifred drew nearer to the ninth baronet.  He
seemed to promise a certain repose; his nose was fine and drooped a
little, his grey moustaches too; and she said, drawling through her
smile:

"It's rather nice, isn't it?"

His reply shot out of his smile like a snipped bread pellet

"D'you remember, in Frazer, the tribe that buries the bride up to the
waist?"

He spoke as fast as anybody!  He had dark lively little eyes, too,
all crinkled round like a Catholic priest's.  Winifred felt suddenly
he might say things she would regret.

"They're always so amusing--weddings," she murmured, and moved on to
Soames.  He was curiously still, and Winifred saw at once what was
dictating his immobility.  To his right was George Forsyte, to his
left Annette and Prosper Profond.  He could not move without either
seeing those two together, or the reflection of them in George
Forsyte's japing eyes.  He was quite right not to be taking notice.

"They say Timothy's sinking;" he said glumly.

"Where will you put him, Soames?"

"Highgate."  He counted on his fingers.  "It'll make twelve of them
there, including wives.  How do you think Fleur looks?"

"Remarkably well."

Soames nodded.  He had never seen her look prettier, yet he could not
rid himself of the impression that this business was unnatural--
remembering still that crushed figure burrowing into the corner of
the sofa.  From that night to this day he had received from her no
confidences.  He knew from his chauffeur that she had made one more
attempt on Robin Hill and drawn blank--an empty house, no one at
home.  He knew that she had received a letter, but not what was in
it, except that it had made her hide herself and cry.  He had
remarked that she looked at him sometimes when she thought he wasn't
noticing, as if she were wondering still what he had done--forsooth--
to make those people hate him so.  Well, there it was!  Annette had
come back, and things had worn on through the summer--very miserable,
till suddenly Fleur had said she was going to marry young Mont.  She
had shown him a little more affection when she told him that.  And he
had yielded--what was the good of opposing it?  God knew that he had
never wished to thwart her in anything!  And the young man seemed
quite delirious about her.  No doubt she was in a reckless mood, and
she was young, absurdly young.  But if he opposed her, he didn't know
what she would do; for all he could tell she might want to take up a
profession, become a doctor or solicitor, some nonsense.  She had no
aptitude for painting, writing, music, in his view the legitimate
occupations of unmarried women, if they must do something in these
days.  On the whole, she was safer married, for he could see too well
how feverish and restless she was at home.  Annette, too, had been in
favour of it--Annette, from behind the veil of his refusal to know
what she was about, if she was about anything.  Annette had said:
"Let her marry this young man. He is a nice boy--not so highty-
flighty as he seems."  Where she got her expressions, he didn't know-
-but her opinion soothed his doubts.  His wife, whatever her conduct,
had clear eyes and an almost depressing amount of common sense.  He
had settled fifty thousand on Fleur, taking care that there was no
cross settlement in case it didn't turn out well.  Could it turn out
well?  She had not got over that other boy--he knew.  They were to go
to Spain for the honeymoon.  He would be even lonelier when she was
gone.  But later, perhaps, she would forget, and turn to him again!
Winifred's voice broke on his reverie.

"Why!  Of all wonders-June!"

There, in a djibbah--what things she wore!--with her hair straying
from under a fillet, Soames saw his cousin, and Fleur going forward
to greet her.  The two passed from their view out on to the stairway.

"Really," said Winifred, "she does the most impossible things!  Fancy
her coming!"

"What made you ask her?" muttered Soames.

"Because I thought she wouldn't accept, of course."

Winifred had forgotten that behind conduct lies the main trend of
character; or, in other words, omitted to remember that Fleur was now
a "lame duck."

On receiving her invitation, June had first thought, 'I wouldn't go
near them for the world!' and then, one morning, had awakened from a
dream of Fleur waving to her from a boat with a wild unhappy gesture.
And she had changed her mind.

When Fleur came forward and said to her, "Do come up while I'm
changing my dress," she had followed up the stairs.  The girl led the
way into Imogen's old bedroom, set ready for her toilet.

June sat down on the bed, thin and upright, like a little spirit in
the sear and yellow.  Fleur locked the door.

The girl stood before her divested of her wedding dress.  What a
pretty thing she was

"I suppose you think me a fool," she said, with quivering lips, "when
it was to have been Jon.  But what does it matter?  Michael wants me,
and I don't care.  It'll get me away from home."  Diving her hand
into the frills on her breast, she brought out a letter.  "Jon wrote
me this."

June read:  "Lake Okanagen, British Columbia.  I'm not coming back to
England.  Bless you always.  Jon."

"She's made safe, you see," said Fleur.

June handed back the letter.

"That's not fair to Irene," she said, "she always told Jon he could
do as he wished."

Fleur smiled bitterly.  "Tell me, didn't she spoil your life too?"
June looked up.  "Nobody can spoil a life, my dear.  That's nonsense.
Things happen, but we bob up."

With a sort of terror she saw the girl sink on her knees and bury her
face in the djibbah.  A strangled sob mounted to June's ears.

"It's all right--all right," she murmured, "Don't!  There, there!"

But the point of the girl's chin was pressed ever closer into her
thigh, and the sound was dreadful of her sobbing.

Well, well!  It had to come.  She would feel better afterward!  June
stroked the short hair of that shapely head; and all the scattered
mother-sense in her focussed itself and passed through the tips of
her fingers into the girl's brain.

"Don't sit down under it, my dear," she said at last.  "We can't
control life, but we can fight it.  Make the best of things.  I've
had to.  I held on, like you; and I cried, as you're crying now.  And
look at me!"

Fleur raised her head; a sob merged suddenly into a little choked
laugh.  In truth it was a thin and rather wild and wasted spirit she
was looking at, but it had brave eyes.

"All right!" she said.  "I'm sorry.  I shall forget him, I suppose,
if I fly fast and far enough."

And, scrambling to her feet, she went over to the wash-stand.

June watched her removing with cold water the traces of emotion.
Save for a little becoming pinkness there was nothing left when she
stood before the mirror.  June got off the bed and took a pin-cushion
in her hand.  To put two pins into the wrong places was all the vent
she found for sympathy.

"Give me a kiss," she said when Fleur was ready, and dug her chin
into the girl's warm cheek.

"I want a whiff," said Fleur; "don't wait."

June left her, sitting on the bed with a cigarette between her lips
and her eyes half closed, and went down-stairs.  In the doorway of
the drawing-room stood Soames as if unquiet at his daughter's
tardiness.  June tossed her head and passed down on to the half-
landing.  Her cousin Francie was standing there.

"Look!" said June, pointing with her chin at Soames.  "That man's
fatal!"

"How do you mean," said Francie, "fatal?"

June did not answer her.  "I shan't wait to see them off," she said.
"Good-bye!"

"Good-bye!" said Francie, and her eyes, of a Celtic grey, goggled.
That old feud!  Really, it was quite romantic!

Soames, moving to the well of the staircase, saw June go, and drew a
breath of satisfaction.  Why didn't Fleur come?  They would miss
their train.  That train would bear her away from him, yet he could
not help fidgeting at the thought that they would lose it.  And then
she did come, running down in her tan-coloured frock and black velvet
cap, and passed him into the drawing-room.  He saw her kiss her
mother, her aunt, Val's wife, Imogen, and then come forth, quick and
pretty as ever.  How would she treat him at this last moment of her
girlhood?  He couldn't hope for much!

Her lips pressed the middle of his cheek.

"Daddy!" she said, and was past and gone!  Daddy!  She hadn't called
him that for years.  He drew a long breath and followed slowly down.
There was all the folly with that confetti stuff and the rest of it
to go through with yet.  But he would like just to catch her smile,
if she leaned out, though they would hit her in the eye with the
shoe, if they didn't take care.  Young Mont's voice said fervently in
his ear:

"Good-bye, sir; and thank you!  I'm so fearfully bucked."

"Good-bye," he said; "don't miss your train."

He stood on the bottom step but three, whence he could see above the
heads--the silly hats and heads.  They were in the car now; and there
was that stuff, showering, and there went the shoe.  A flood of
something welled up in Soames, and--he didn't know--he couldn't see!




XI

THE LAST OF THE OLD FORSYTES

When they came to prepare that terrific symbol Timothy Forsyte--the
one pure individualist left, the only man who hadn't heard of the
Great War--they found him wonderful--not even death had undermined
his soundness.

To Smither and Cook that preparation came like final evidence of what
they had never believed possible--the end of the old Forsyte family
on earth.  Poor Mr. Timothy must now take a harp and sing in the
company of Miss Forsyte, Mrs. Julia, Miss Hester; with Mr. Jolyon,
Mr. Swithin, Mr. James, Mr. Roger, and Mr. Nicholas of the party.
Whether Mrs. Hayman would be there was more doubtful, seeing that she
had been cremated.  Secretly Cook thought that Mr. Timothy would be
upset--he had always been so set against barrel organs.  How many
times had she not said: "Drat the thing!  There it is again!
Smither, you'd better run up and see what you can do."  And in her
heart she would so have enjoyed the tunes, if she hadn't known that
Mr. Timothy would ring the bell in a minute and say: "Here, take him
a halfpenny and tell him to move on."  Often they had been obliged to
add threepence of their own before the man would go--Timothy had ever
underrated the value of emotion.  Luckily he had taken the organs for
blue-bottles in his last years, which had been a comfort, and they
had been able to enjoy the tunes.  But a harp!  Cook wondered.  It
was a change!  And Mr. Timothy had never liked change.  But she did
not speak of this to Smither, who did so take a line of her own in
regard to heaven that it quite put one about sometimes.

She cried while Timothy was being prepared, and they all had sherry
afterward out of the yearly Christmas bottle, which would not be
needed now.  Ah! dear!  She had been there five-and-forty years and
Smither three-and-forty!  And now they would be going to a tiny house
in Tooting, to live on their savings and what Miss Hester had so
kindly left them--for to take fresh service after the glorious past--
No!  But they would like just to see Mr. Soames again, and Mrs.
Dartie, and Miss Francie, and Miss Euphemia.  And even if they had to
take their own cab, they felt they must go to the funeral.  For six
years Mr. Timothy had been their baby, getting younger and younger
every day, till at last he had been too young to live.

They spent the regulation hours of waiting in polishing and dusting,
in catching the one mouse left, and asphyxiating the last beetle so
as to leave it nice, discussing with each other what they would buy
at the sale.  Miss Ann's workbox; Miss Juley's (that is Mrs. Julia's)
seaweed album; the fire-screen Miss Hester had crewelled; and Mr.
Timothy's hair--little golden curls, glued into a black frame.  Oh!
they must have those--only the price of things had gone up so!

It fell to Soames to issue invitations for the funeral.  He had them
drawn up by Gradman in his office--only blood relations, and no
flowers.  Six carriages were ordered.  The Will would be read
afterward at the house.

He arrived at eleven o'clock to see that all was ready.  At a quarter
past old Gradman came in black gloves and crape on his hat.  He and
Soames stood in the drawing-room waiting.  At half-past eleven the
carriages drew up in a long row.  But no one else appeared.  Gradman
said:

"It surprises me, Mr. Soames.  I posted them myself."

"I don't know," said Soames; "he'd lost touch with the family."
Soames had often noticed in old days how much more neighbourly his
family were to the dead than to the living.  But, now, the way they
had flocked to Fleur's wedding and abstained from Timothy's funeral,
seemed to show some vital change.  There might, of course, be another
reason; for Soames felt that if he had not known the contents of
Timothy's Will, he might have stayed away himself through delicacy.
Timothy had left a lot of money, with nobody in particular to leave
it to.  They mightn't like to seem to expect something.

At twelve o'clock the procession left the door; Timothy alone in the
first carriage under glass.  Then Soames alone; then Gradman alone;
then Cook and Smither together.  They started at a walk, but were
soon trotting under a bright sky.  At the entrance to Highgate
Cemetery they were delayed by service in the Chapel.  Soames would
have liked to stay outside in the sunshine.  He didn't believe a word
of it; on the other hand, it was a form of insurance which could not
safely be neglected, in case there might be something in it after
all.

They walked up two and two--he and Gradman, Cook and Smither--to the
family vault.  It was not very distinguished for the funeral of the
last old Forsyte.

He took Gradman into his carriage on the way back to the Bayswater
Road with a certain glow in his heart.  He had a surprise in pickle
for the old chap who had served the Forsytes four-and-fifty years-a
treat that was entirely his doing.  How well he remembered saying to
Timothy the day--after Aunt Hester's funeral: "Well; Uncle Timothy,
there's Gradman.  He's taken a lot of trouble for the family.  What
do you say to leaving him five thousand?" and his surprise, seeing
the difficulty there had been in getting Timothy to leave anything,
when Timothy had nodded.  And now the old chap would be as pleased as
Punch, for Mrs. Gradman, he knew, had a weak heart, and their son had
lost a leg in the War.  It was extraordinarily gratifying to Soames
to have left him five thousand pounds of Timothy's money.  They sat
down together in the little drawing-room, whose walls--like a vision
of heaven--were sky-blue and gold with every picture-frame
unnaturally bright, and every speck of dust removed from every piece
of furniture, to read that little masterpiece--the Will of Timothy.
With his back to the light in Aunt Hester's chair, Soames faced
Gradman with his face to the light, on Aunt Ann's sofa; and, crossing
his legs, began:

"This is the last Will and Testament of me Timothy Forsyte of The
Bower Bayswater Road, London I appoint my nephew Soames Forsyte of
The Shelter Mapleduram and Thomas Gradman of 159 Folly Road Highgate
(hereinafter called my Trustees) to be the trustees and executors of
this my Will To the said Soames Forsyte I leave the sum of one
thousand pounds free of legacy duty and to the said Thomas Gradman I
leave the sum of five thousand pounds free of legacy duty."

Soames paused.  Old Gradman was leaning forward, convulsively
gripping a stout black knee with each of his thick hands; his mouth
had fallen open so that the gold fillings of three teeth gleamed; his
eyes were blinking, two tears rolled slowly out of them.  Soames read
hastily on.

"All the rest of my property of whatsoever description I bequeath to
my Trustees upon Trust to convert and hold the same upon the
following trusts namely To pay thereout all my debts funeral expenses
and outgoings of any kind in connection with my Will and to hold the
residue thereof in trust for that male lineal descendant of my father
Jolyon Forsyte by his marriage with Ann Pierce who after the decease
of all lineal descendants whether male or female of my said father by
his said marriage in being at the time of my death shall last attain
the age of twenty-one years absolutely it being my desire that my
property shall be nursed to the extreme limit permitted by the laws
of England for the benefit of such male lineal descendant as
aforesaid."

Soames read the investment and attestation clauses, and, ceasing,
looked at Gradman.  The old fellow was wiping his brow with a large
handkerchief, whose brilliant colour supplied a sudden festive tinge
to the proceedings.

"My word, Mr. Soames!" he said, and it was clear that the lawyer in
him had utterly wiped out the man: "My word!  Why, there are two
babies now, and some quite young children--if one of them lives to be
eighty--it's not a great age--and add twenty-one--that's a hundred
years; and Mr. Timothy worth a hundred and fifty thousand pound net
if he's worth a penny.  Compound interest at five per cent. doubles
you in fourteen years.  In fourteen years three hundred thousand-six
hundred thousand in twenty-eight--twelve hundred thousand in forty-
two--twenty-four hundred thousand in fifty-six--four million eight
hundred thousand in seventy--nine million six hundred thousand in
eighty-four--Why, in a hundred years it'll be twenty million!  And we
shan't live to use it!  It is a Will!"

Soames said dryly: "Anything may happen.  The State might take the
lot; they're capable of anything in these days."

"And carry five," said Gradman to himself.  "I forgot--Mr. Timothy's
in Consols; we shan't get more than two per cent. with this income
tax.  To be on the safe side, say eight millions.  Still, that's a
pretty penny."

Soames rose and handed him the Will.  "You're going into the City.
Take care of that, and do what's necessary.  Advertise; but there are
no debts.  When's the sale?"

"Tuesday week," said Gradman.  "Life or lives in bein' and twenty-one
years afterward--it's a long way off.  But I'm glad he's left it in
the family...."

The sale--not at Jobson's, in view of the Victorian nature of the
effects--was far more freely attended than the funeral, though not by
Cook and Smither, for Soames had taken it on himself to give them
their heart's desires.  Winifred was present, Euphemia, and Francie,
and Eustace had come in his car.  The miniatures, Barbizons, and J.
R. drawings had been bought in by Soames; and relics of no marketable
value were set aside in an off-room for members of the family who
cared to have mementoes.  These were the only restrictions upon
bidding characterised by an almost tragic languor.  Not one piece of
furniture, no picture or porcelain figure appealed to modern taste.
The humming birds had fallen like autumn leaves when taken from where
they had not hummed for sixty years.  It was painful to Soames to see
the chairs his aunts had sat on, the little grand piano they had
practically never played, the books whose outsides they had gazed at,
the china they had dusted, the curtains they had drawn, the hearth-
rug which had warmed their feet; above all, the beds they had lain
and died in--sold to little dealers, and the housewives of Fulham.
And yet--what could one do?  Buy them and stick them in a lumber-
room?  No; they had to go the way of all flesh and furniture, and be
worn out.  But when they put up Aunt Ann's sofa and were going to
knock it down for thirty shillings, he cried out, suddenly: "Five
pounds!"  The sensation was considerable, and the sofa his.

When that little sale was over in the fusty saleroom, and those
Victorian ashes scattered, he went out into the misty October
sunshine feeling as if cosiness had died out of the world, and the
board "To Let" was up, indeed.  Revolutions on the horizon; Fleur in
Spain; no comfort in Annette; no Timothy's on the Bayswater Road.  In
the irritable desolation of his soul he went into the Goupenor
Gallery.  That chap Jolyon's watercolours were on view there.  He
went in to look down his nose at them--it might give him some faint
satisfaction.  The news had trickled through from June to Val's wife,
from her to Val, from Val to his mother, from her to Soames, that the
house--the fatal house at Robin Hill--was for sale, and Irene going
to join her boy out in British Columbia, or some such place.  For one
wild moment the thought had come to Soames: 'Why shouldn't I buy it
back?  I meant it for my!'  No sooner come than gone.  Too lugubrious
a triumph; with too many humiliating memories for himself and Fleur.
She would never live there after what had happened.  No, the place
must go its way to some peer or profiteer.  It had been a bone of
contention from the first, the shell of the feud; and with the woman
gone, it was an empty shell.  "For Sale or To Let."  With his mind's
eye he could see that board raised high above the ivied wall which he
had built.

He passed through the first of the two rooms in the Gallery.  There
was certainly a body of work!  And now that the fellow was dead it
did not seem so trivial.  The drawings were pleasing enough, with
quite a sense of atmosphere, and something individual in the brush
work.  'His father and my father; he and I; his child and mine!'
thought Soames.  So it had gone on!  And all about that woman!
Softened by the events of the past week, affected by the melancholy
beauty of the autumn day, Soames came nearer than he had ever been to
realisation of that truth--passing the understanding of a Forsyte
pure--that the body of Beauty has a spiritual essence, uncapturable
save by a devotion which thinks not of self.  After all, he was near
that truth in his devotion to his daughter; perhaps that made him
understand a little how he had missed the prize.  And there, among
the drawings of his kinsman, who had attained to that which he had
found beyond his reach, he thought of him and her with a tolerance
which surprised him.  But he did not buy a drawing.

Just as he passed the seat of custom on his return to the outer air
he met with a contingency which had not been entirely absent from his
mind when he went into the Gallery--Irene, herself, coming in.  So
she had not gone yet, and was still paying farewell visits to that
fellow's remains!  He subdued the little involuntary leap of his
subconsciousness, the mechanical reaction of his senses to the charm
of this once-owned woman, and passed her with averted eyes.  But when
he had gone by he could not for the life of him help looking back.
This, then, was finality--the heat and stress of his life, the
madness and the longing thereof, the only defeat he had known, would
be over when she faded from his view this time; even such memories
had their own queer aching value.

She, too, was looking back.  Suddenly she lifted her gloved hand, her
lips smiled faintly, her dark eyes seemed to speak.  It was the turn
of Soames to make no answer to that smile and that little farewell
wave; he went out into the fashionable street quivering from head to
foot.  He knew what she had meant to say: "Now that I am going for
ever out of the reach of you and yours--forgive me; I wish you well."
That was the meaning; last sign of that terrible reality--passing
morality, duty, common sense--her aversion from him who had owned her
body, but had never touched her spirit or her heart.  It hurt; yes--
more than if she had kept her mask unmoved, her hand unlifted.

Three days later, in that fast-yellowing October, Soames took a taxi-
cab to Highgate Cemetery and mounted through its white forest to the
Forsyte vault.  Close to the cedar, above catacombs and columbaria,
tall, ugly, and individual, it looked like an apex of the competitive
system.  He could remember a discussion wherein Swithin had advocated
the addition to its face of the pheasant proper.  The proposal had
been rejected in favour of a wreath in stone, above the stark words:
"The family vault of Jolyon Forsyte: 1850."  It was in good order.
All trace of the recent interment had been removed, and its sober
grey gloomed reposefully in the sunshine.  The whole family lay there
now, except old Jolyon's wife, who had gone back under a contract to
her own family vault in Suffolk; old Jolyon himself lying at Robin
Hill; and Susan Hayman, cremated so that none knew where she might
be.  Soames gazed at it with satisfaction--massive, needing little
attention; and this was important, for he was well aware that no one
would attend to it when he himself was gone, and he would have to be
looking out for lodgings soon.  He might have twenty years before
him, but one never knew.  Twenty years without an aunt or uncle, with
a wife of whom one had better not know anything, with a daughter gone
from home.  His mood inclined to melancholy and retrospection.

This cemetery was full, they said--of people with extraordinary
names, buried in extraordinary taste.  Still, they had a fine view up
here, right over London.  Annette had once given him a story to read
by that Frenchman, Maupassant, most lugubrious concern, where all the
skeletons emerged from their graves one night, and all the pious
inscriptions on the stones were altered to descriptions of their
sins.  Not a true story at all.  He didn't know about the French, but
there was not much real harm in English people except their teeth and
their taste, which was certainly deplorable.  "The family vault of
Jolyon Forsyte: 1850."  A lot of people had been buried here since
then--a lot of English life crumbled to mould and dust!  The boom of
an airplane passing under the gold-tinted clouds caused him to lift
his eyes.  The deuce of a lot of expansion had gone on.  But it all
came back to a cemetery--to a name and a date on a tomb.  And he
thought with a curious pride that he and his family had done little
or nothing to help this feverish expansion.  Good solid middlemen,
they had gone to work with dignity to manage and possess.  "Superior
Dosset," indeed, had built in a dreadful, and Jolyon painted in a
doubtful, period, but so far as he remembered not another of them all
had soiled his hands by creating anything--unless you counted Val
Dartie and his horse-breeding.  Collectors, solicitors, barristers,
merchants, publishers, accountants, directors, land agents, even
soldiers--there they had been!  The country had expanded, as it were,
in spite of them.  They had checked, controlled, defended, and taken
advantage of the process and when you considered how "Superior
Dosset" had begun life with next to nothing, and his lineal
descendants already owned what old Gradman estimated at between a
million and a million and a half, it was not so bad!  And yet he
sometimes felt as if the family bolt was shot, their possessive
instinct dying out.  They seemed unable to make money--this fourth
generation; they were going into art, literature, farming, or the
army; or just living on what was left them--they had no push and no
tenacity.  They would die out if they didn't take care.

Soames turned from the vault and faced toward the breeze.  The air up
here would be delicious if only he could rid his nerves of the
feeling that mortality was in it.  He gazed restlessly at the crosses
and the urns, the angels, the "immortelles," the flowers, gaudy or
withering; and suddenly he noticed a spot which seemed so different
from anything else up there that he was obliged to walk the few
necessary yards and look at it.  A sober corner, with a massive
queer-shaped cross of grey rough-hewn granite, guarded by four dark
yew-trees.  The spot was free from the pressure of the other graves,
having a little box-hedged garden on the far side, and in front a
goldening birch-tree.  This oasis in the desert of conventional
graves appealed to the aesthetic sense of Soames, and he sat down
there in the sunshine.  Through those trembling gold birch leaves he
gazed out at London, and yielded to the waves of memory.  He thought
of Irene in Montpellier Square, when her hair was rusty-golden and
her white shoulders his--Irene, the prize of his love-passion,
resistant to his ownership.  He saw Bosinney's body lying in that
white mortuary, and Irene sitting on the sofa looking at space with
the eyes of a dying bird.  Again he thought of her by the little
green Niobe in the Bois de Boulogne, once more rejecting him.  His
fancy took him on beside his drifting river on the November day when
Fleur was to be born, took him to the dead leaves floating on the
green-tinged water and the snake-headed weed for ever swaying and
nosing, sinuous, blind, tethered.  And on again to the window opened
to the cold starry night above Hyde Park, with his father lying dead.
His fancy darted to that picture of "the future town," to that boy's
and Fleur's first meeting; to the bluish trail of Prosper Profond's
cigar, and Fleur in the window pointing down to where the fellow
prowled.  To the sight of Irene and that dead fellow sitting side by
side in the stand at Lord's.  To her and that boy at Robin Hill.  To
the sofa, where Fleur lay crushed up in the corner; to her lips
pressed into his cheek, and her farewell "Daddy."  And suddenly he
saw again Irene's grey-gloved hand waving its last gesture of
release.

He sat there a long time dreaming his career, faithful to the scut of
his possessive instinct, warming himself even with its failures.

"To Let"--the Forsyte age and way of life, when a man owned his soul,
his investments, and his woman, without check or question.  And now
the State had, or would have, his investments, his woman had herself,
and God knew who had his soul.  "To Let"--that sane and simple creed!

The waters of change were foaming in, carrying the promise of new
forms only when their destructive flood should have passed its full.
He sat there, subconscious of them, but with his thoughts resolutely
set on the past--as a man might ride into a wild night with his face
to the tail of his galloping horse.  Athwart the Victorian dykes the
waters were rolling on property, manners, and morals, on melody and
the old forms of art--waters bringing to his mouth a salt taste as of
blood, lapping to the foot of this Highgate Hill where Victorianism
lay buried.  And sitting there, high up on its most individual spot,
Soames--like a figure of Investment--refused their restless sounds.
Instinctively he would not fight them--there was in him too much
primeval wisdom, of Man the possessive animal.  They would quiet down
when they had fulfilled their tidal fever of dispossessing and
destroying; when the creations and the properties of others were
sufficiently broken and defected--they would lapse and ebb, and fresh
forms would rise based on an instinct older than the fever of change-
-the instinct of Home.

"Je m'en fiche," said Prosper Profond.  Soames did not say "Je m'en
fiche"--it was French, and the fellow was a thorn in his side--but
deep down he knew that change was only the interval of death between
two forms of life, destruction necessary to make room for fresher
property.  What though the board was up, and cosiness to let?--some
one would come along and take it again some day.

And only one thing really troubled him, sitting there--the melancholy
craving in his heart--because the sun was like enchantment on his
face and on the clouds and on the golden birch leaves, and the wind's
rustle was so gentle, and the yewtree green so dark, and the sickle
of a moon pale in the sky.

He might wish and wish and never get it--the beauty and the loving in
the world!





End of this Project Gutenberg Etext of Volume 3 of The Forsyte Saga,
AWAKENING and TO LET, by John Galsworthy.






THE DARK FLOWER

by John Galsworthy

[This etext was prepared by Donald Lainson, charlie@idirect.com.]



"Take the flower from my breast, I pray thee,
 Take the flower too from out my tresses;
 And then go hence, for see, the night is fair,
 The stars rejoice to watch thee on thy way."
 --From "The Bard of the Dimbovitza."



THE DARK FLOWER


Part I

Spring


I


He walked along Holywell that afternoon of early June with his
short gown drooping down his arms, and no cap on his thick dark
hair.  A youth of middle height, and built as if he had come of two
very different strains, one sturdy, the other wiry and light.  His
face, too, was a curious blend, for, though it was strongly formed,
its expression was rather soft and moody.  His eyes--dark grey,
with a good deal of light in them, and very black lashes--had a way
of looking beyond what they saw, so that he did not seem always to
be quite present; but his smile was exceedingly swift, uncovering
teeth as white as a negro's, and giving his face a peculiar
eagerness.  People stared at him a little as he passed--since in
eighteen hundred and eighty he was before his time in not wearing a
cap.  Women especially were interested; they perceived that he took
no notice of them, seeming rather to be looking into distance, and
making combinations in his soul.

Did he know of what he was thinking--did he ever know quite
definitely at that time of his life, when things, especially those
beyond the immediate horizon, were so curious and interesting?--the
things he was going to see and do when he had got through Oxford,
where everybody was 'awfully decent' to him and 'all right' of
course, but not so very interesting.

He was on his way to his tutor's to read an essay on Oliver
Cromwell; and under the old wall, which had once hedged in the
town, he took out of his pocket a beast.  It was a small tortoise,
and, with an extreme absorption, he watched it move its little
inquiring head, feeling it all the time with his short, broad
fingers, as though to discover exactly how it was made.  It was
mighty hard in the back!  No wonder poor old Aeschylus felt a bit
sick when it fell on his head!  The ancients used it to stand the
world on--a pagoda world, perhaps, of men and beasts and trees,
like that carving on his guardian's Chinese cabinet.  The Chinese
made jolly beasts and trees, as if they believed in everything
having a soul, and not only being just fit for people to eat or
drive or make houses of.  If only the Art School would let him
model things 'on his own,' instead of copying and copying--it was
just as if they imagined it would be dangerous to let you think out
anything for yourself!

He held the tortoise to his waistcoat, and let it crawl, till,
noticing that it was gnawing the corner of his essay, he put it
back into his pocket.  What would his tutor do if he were to know
it was there?--cock his head a little to one side, and say: "Ah!
there are things, Lennan, not dreamed of in my philosophy!"  Yes,
there were a good many not dreamed of by 'old Stormer,' who seemed
so awfully afraid of anything that wasn't usual; who seemed always
laughing at you, for fear that you should laugh at him.  There were
lots of people in Oxford like that.  It was stupid.  You couldn't
do anything decent if you were afraid of being laughed at!  Mrs.
Stormer wasn't like that; she did things because--they came into
her head.  But then, of course, she was Austrian, not English, and
ever so much younger than old Stormer.

And having reached the door of his tutor's house, he rang the
bell. . . .


II


When Anna Stormer came into the study she found her husband
standing at the window with his head a little on one side--a tall,
long-legged figure in clothes of a pleasant tweed, and wearing a
low turn-over collar (not common in those days) and a blue silk
tie, which she had knitted, strung through a ring.  He was humming
and gently tapping the window-pane with his well-kept finger-nails.
Though celebrated for the amount of work he got through, she never
caught him doing any in this house of theirs, chosen because it was
more than half a mile away from the College which held the 'dear
young clowns,' as he called them, of whom he was tutor.

He did not turn--it was not, of course, his habit to notice what
was not absolutely necessary--but she felt that he was aware of
her.  She came to the window seat and sat down.  He looked round at
that, and said: "Ah!"

It was a murmur almost of admiration, not usual from him, since,
with the exception of certain portions of the classics, it was
hardly his custom to admire.  But she knew that she was looking her
best sitting there, her really beautiful figure poised, the sun
shining on her brown hair, and brightening her deep-set, ice-green
eyes under their black lashes.  It was sometimes a great comfort to
her that she remained so good-looking.  It would have been an added
vexation indeed to have felt that she ruffled her husband's
fastidiousness.  Even so, her cheekbones were too high for his
taste, symbols of that something in her character which did not go
with his--the dash of desperation, of vividness, that lack of a
certain English smoothness, which always annoyed him.

"Harold!"--she would never quite flatten her r's--"I want to go to
the mountains this year."

The mountains!  She had not seen them since that season at San
Martino di Castrozza twelve years ago, which had ended in her
marrying him.

"Nostalgia!"

"I don't know what that means--I am homesick.  Can we go?"

"If you like--why not?  But no leading up the Cimone della Pala for
ME!"

She knew what he meant by that.  No romance.  How splendidly he had
led that day!  She had almost worshipped him.  What blindness!
What distortion!  Was it really the same man standing there with
those bright, doubting eyes, with grey already in his hair?  Yes,
romance was over!  And she sat silent, looking out into the street--
that little old street into which she looked day and night.  A
figure passed out there, came to the door, and rang.

She said softly: "Here is Mark Lennan!"

She felt her husband's eyes rest on her just for a moment, knew
that he had turned, heard him murmur: "Ah, the angel clown!"  And,
quite still, she waited for the door to open.  There was the boy,
with his blessed dark head, and his shy, gentle gravity, and his
essay in his hand.

"Well, Lennan, and how's old Noll?  Hypocrite of genius, eh?  Draw
up; let's get him over!"

Motionless, from her seat at the window, she watched those two
figures at the table--the boy reading in his queer, velvety bass
voice; her husband leaning back with the tips of his fingers
pressed together, his head a little on one side, and that faint,
satiric smile which never reached his eyes.  Yes, he was dozing,
falling asleep; and the boy, not seeing, was going on.  Then he
came to the end and glanced up.  What eyes he had!  Other boys
would have laughed; but he looked almost sorry.  She heard him
murmur: "I'm awfully sorry, sir."

"Ah, Lennan, you caught me!  Fact is, term's fagged me out.  We're
going to the mountains.  Ever been to the mountains?  What--never!
You should come with us, eh?  What do you say, Anna?  Don't you
think this young man ought to come with us?"

She got up, and stood staring at them both.  Had she heard aright?

Then she answered--very gravely:

"Yes; I think he ought."

"Good; we'll get HIM to lead up the Cimone della Pala!"


III


When the boy had said good-bye, and she had watched him out into
the street, Anna stood for a moment in the streak of sunlight that
came in through the open door, her hands pressed to cheeks which
were flaming.  Then she shut the door and leaned her forehead
against the window-pane, seeing nothing.  Her heart beat very fast;
she was going over and over again the scene just passed through.
This meant so much more than it had seemed to mean. . . .

Though she always had Heimweh, and especially at the end of the
summer term, this year it had been a different feeling altogether
that made her say to her husband: "I want to go to the mountains!"

For twelve years she had longed for the mountains every summer, but
had not pleaded for them; this year she had pleaded, but she did
not long for them.  It was because she had suddenly realized the
strange fact that she did not want to leave England, and the reason
for it, that she had come and begged to go.  Yet why, when it was
just to get away from thought of this boy, had she said: "Yes, I
think he ought to come!"  Ah! but life for her was always a strange
pull between the conscientious and the desperate; a queer, vivid,
aching business!  How long was it now since that day when he first
came to lunch, silent and shy, and suddenly smiling as if he were
all lighted up within--the day when she had said to her husband
afterwards: "Ah, he's an angel!"  Not yet a year--the beginning of
last October term, in fact.  He was different from all the other
boys; not that he was a prodigy with untidy hair, ill-fitting
clothes, and a clever tongue; but because of something--something--
Ah! well--different; because he was--he; because she longed to take
his head between her hands and kiss it.  She remembered so well the
day that longing first came to her.  She was giving him tea, it was
quite early in the Easter term; he was stroking her cat, who always
went to him, and telling her that he meant to be a sculptor, but
that his guardian objected, so that, of course, he could not start
till he was of age.  The lamp on the table had a rose-coloured
shade; he had been rowing--a very cold day--and his face was
glowing; generally it was rather pale.  And suddenly he smiled, and
said: "It's rotten waiting for things, isn't it?"  It was then she
had almost stretched out her hands to draw his forehead to her
lips.  She had thought then that she wanted to kiss him, because it
would have been so nice to be his mother--she might just have been
his mother, if she had married at sixteen.  But she had long known
now that she wanted to kiss, not his forehead, but his lips.  He
was there in her life--a fire in a cold and unaired house; it had
even become hard to understand that she could have gone on all
these years without him.  She had missed him so those six weeks of
the Easter vacation, she had revelled so in his three queer little
letters, half-shy, half-confidential; kissed them, and worn them in
her dress!  And in return had written him long, perfectly correct
epistles in her still rather quaint English.  She had never let him
guess her feelings; the idea that he might shocked her
inexpressibly.  When the summer term began, life seemed to be all
made up of thoughts of him.  If, ten years ago, her baby had lived,
if its cruel death--after her agony--had not killed for good her
wish to have another; if for years now she had not been living with
the knowledge that she had no warmth to expect, and that love was
all over for her; if life in the most beautiful of all old cities
had been able to grip her--there would have been forces to check
this feeling.  But there was nothing in the world to divert the
current.  And she was so brimful of life, so conscious of vitality
running to sheer waste.  Sometimes it had been terrific, that
feeling within her, of wanting to live--to find outlet for her
energy.  So many hundreds of lonely walks she had taken during all
these years, trying to lose herself in Nature--hurrying alone,
running in the woods, over the fields, where people did not come,
trying to get rid of that sense of waste, trying once more to feel
as she had felt when a girl, with the whole world before her.  It
was not for nothing that her figure was superb, her hair so bright
a brown, her eyes so full of light.  She had tried many
distractions.  Work in the back streets, music, acting, hunting;
given them up one after the other; taken to them passionately
again.  They had served in the past.  But this year they had not
served. . . .  One Sunday, coming from confession unconfessed, she
had faced herself.  It was wicked.  She would have to kill this
feeling--must fly from this boy who moved her so!  If she did not
act quickly, she would be swept away.  And then the thought had
come: Why not?  Life was to be lived--not torpidly dozed through in
this queer cultured place, where age was in the blood!  Life was
for love--to be enjoyed!  And she would be thirty-six next month!
It seemed to her already an enormous age.  Thirty-six!  Soon she
would be old, actually old--and never have known passion!  The
worship, which had made a hero of the distinguished-looking
Englishman, twelve years older than herself, who could lead up the
Cimone della Pala, had not been passion.  It might, perhaps, have
become passion if he had so willed.  But he was all form, ice,
books.  Had he a heart at all, had he blood in his veins?  Was
there any joy of life in this too beautiful city and these people
who lived in it--this place where even enthusiasms seemed to be
formal and have no wings, where everything was settled and
sophisticated as the very chapels and cloisters?  And yet, to have
this feeling for a boy--for one almost young enough to be her son!
It was so--shameless!  That thought haunted her, made her flush in
the dark, lying awake at night.  And desperately she would pray--
for she was devout--pray to be made pure, to be given the holy
feelings of a mother, to be filled simply with the sweet sense that
she could do everything, suffer anything for him, for his good.
After these long prayers she would feel calmed, drowsy, as though
she had taken a drug.  For hours, perhaps, she would stay like
that.  And then it would all come over her again.  She never
thought of his loving her; that would be--unnatural.  Why should he
love her?  She was very humble about it.  Ever since that Sunday,
when she avoided the confessional, she had brooded over how to make
an end--how to get away from a longing that was too strong for her.
And she had hit on this plan--to beg for the mountains, to go back
to where her husband had come into her life, and try if this
feeling would not die.  If it did not, she would ask to be left out
there with her own people, away from this danger.  And now the
fool--the blind fool--the superior fool--with his satiric smile,
his everlasting patronage, had driven her to overturn her own plan.
Well, let him take the consequences; she had done her best!  She
would have this one fling of joy, even if it meant that she must
stay out there, and never see the boy again!

Standing in her dusky hall, where a faint scent of woodrot crept
out into the air, whenever windows and doors were closed, she was
all tremulous with secret happiness.  To be with him among her
mountains, to show him all those wonderful, glittering or tawny
crags, to go with him to the top of them and see the kingdoms of
the world spread out below; to wander with him in the pine woods,
on the Alps in all the scent of the trees and the flowers, where
the sun was hot!  The first of July; and it was only the tenth of
June!  Would she ever live so long?  They would not go to San
Martino this time, rather to Cortina--some new place that had no
memories!

She moved from the window, and busied herself with a bowl of
flowers.  She had heard that humming sound which often heralded her
husband's approach, as though warning the world to recover its good
form before he reached it.  In her happiness she felt kind and
friendly to him.  If he had not meant to give her joy, he had
nevertheless given it!  He came downstairs two at a time, with that
air of not being a pedagogue, which she knew so well; and, taking
his hat off the stand, half turned round to her.

"Pleasant youth, young Lennan; hope he won't bore us out there!"

His voice seemed to have an accent of compunction, to ask pardon
for having issued that impulsive invitation.  And there came to her
an overwhelming wish to laugh.  To hide it, to find excuse for it,
she ran up to him, and, pulling his coat lapels till his face was
within reach, she kissed the tip of his nose.  And then she
laughed.  And he stood looking at her, with his head just a little
on one side, and his eyebrows just a little raised.


IV


When young Mark heard a soft tapping at his door, though out of
bed, he was getting on but dreamily--it was so jolly to watch the
mountains lying out in this early light like huge beasts.  That one
they were going up, with his head just raised above his paws,
looked very far away out there!  Opening the door an inch, he
whispered:

"Is it late?"

"Five o'clock; aren't you ready?"

It was awfully rude of him to keep her waiting!  And he was soon
down in the empty dining-room, where a sleepy maid was already
bringing in their coffee.  Anna was there alone.  She had on a
flax-blue shirt, open at the neck, a short green skirt, and a grey-
green velvety hat, small, with one black-cock's feather.  Why could
not people always wear such nice things, and be as splendid-
looking!  And he said:

"You do look jolly, Mrs. Stormer!"

She did not answer for so long that he wondered if it had been rude
to say that.  But she DID look so strong, and swift, and happy-
looking.

Down the hill, through a wood of larch-trees, to the river, and
across the bridge, to mount at once by a path through hay-fields.
How could old Stormer stay in bed on such a morning!  The peasant
girls in their blue linen skirts were already gathering into
bundles what the men had scythed.  One, raking at the edge of a
field, paused and shyly nodded to them.  She had the face of a
Madonna, very calm and grave and sweet, with delicate arched brows--
a face it was pure pleasure to see.  The boy looked back at her.
Everything to him, who had never been out of England before, seemed
strange and glamorous.  The chalets, with their long wide burnt-
brown wooden balconies and low-hanging eaves jutting far beyond the
walls; these bright dresses of the peasant women; the friendly
little cream-coloured cows, with blunt, smoke-grey muzzles.  Even
the feel in the air was new, that delicious crisp burning warmth
that lay so lightly as it were on the surface of frozen stillness;
and the special sweetness of all places at the foot of mountains--
scent of pine-gum, burning larch-wood, and all the meadow flowers
and grasses.  But newest of all was the feeling within him--a sort
of pride, a sense of importance, a queer exhilaration at being
alone with her, chosen companion of one so beautiful.

They passed all the other pilgrims bound the same way--stout square
Germans with their coats slung through straps, who trailed behind
them heavy alpenstocks, carried greenish bags, and marched stolidly
at a pace that never varied, growling, as Anna and the boy went by:
"Aber eilen ist nichts!"

But those two could not go fast enough to keep pace with their
spirits.  This was no real climb--just a training walk to the top
of the Nuvolau; and they were up before noon, and soon again
descending, very hungry.  When they entered the little dining-room
of the Cinque Torre Hutte, they found it occupied by a party of
English people, eating omelettes, who looked at Anna with faint
signs of recognition, but did not cease talking in voices that all
had a certain half-languid precision, a slight but brisk pinching
of sounds, as if determined not to tolerate a drawl, and yet to
have one.  Most of them had field-glasses slung round them, and
cameras were dotted here and there about the room.  Their faces
were not really much alike, but they all had a peculiar drooping
smile, and a particular lift of the eyebrows, that made them seem
reproductions of a single type.  Their teeth, too, for the most
part were a little prominent, as though the drooping of their
mouths had forced them forward.  They were eating as people eat who
distrust the lower senses, preferring not to be compelled to taste
or smell.

"From our hotel," whispered Anna; and, ordering red wine and
schnitzels, she and the boy sat down.  The lady who seemed in
command of the English party inquired now how Mr. Stormer was--he
was not laid up, she hoped.  No?  Only lazy?  Indeed!  He was a
great climber, she believed.  It seemed to the boy that this lady
somehow did not quite approve of them.  The talk was all maintained
between her, a gentleman with a crumpled collar and puggaree, and a
short thick-set grey-bearded man in a dark Norfolk jacket.  If any
of the younger members of the party spoke, the remark was received
with an arch lifting of the brows, and drooping of the lids, as who
should say: "Ah!  Very promising!"

"Nothing in my life has given me greater pain than to observe the
aptitude of human nature for becoming crystallized."  It was the
lady in command who spoke, and all the young people swayed their
faces up and down, as if assenting.  How like they were, the boy
thought, to guinea-fowl, with their small heads and sloping
shoulders and speckly grey coats!

"Ah! my dear lady"--it was the gentleman with the crumpled collar--
"you novelists are always girding at the precious quality of
conformity.  The sadness of our times lies in this questioning
spirit.  Never was there more revolt, especially among the young.
To find the individual judging for himself is a grave symptom of
national degeneration.  But this is not a subject--"

"Surely, the subject is of the most poignant interest to all young
people."  Again all the young ones raised their faces and moved
them slightly from side to side.

"My dear lady, we are too prone to let the interest that things
arouse blind our judgment in regard to the advisability of
discussing them.  We let these speculations creep and creep until
they twine themselves round our faith and paralyze it."

One of the young men interjected suddenly: "Madre"--and was silent.

"I shall not, I think"--it was the lady speaking--"be accused of
licence when I say that I have always felt that speculation is only
dangerous when indulged in by the crude intelligence.  If culture
has nothing to give us, then let us have no culture; but if culture
be, as I think it, indispensable, then we must accept the dangers
that culture brings."

Again the young people moved their faces, and again the younger of
the two young men said: "Madre--"

"Dangers?  Have cultured people dangers?"

Who had spoken thus?  Every eyebrow was going up, every mouth was
drooping, and there was silence.  The boy stared at his companion.
In what a strange voice she had made that little interjection!
There seemed a sort of flame, too, lighted in her eyes.  Then the
little grey-bearded man said, and his rather whispering voice
sounded hard and acid:

"We are all human, my dear madam."

The boy felt his heart go thump at Anna's laugh.  It was just as if
she had said: "Ah! but not you--surely!"  And he got up to follow
her towards the door.

The English party had begun already talking--of the weather.

The two walked some way from the 'hut' in silence, before Anna
said:

"You didn't like me when I laughed?"

"You hurt their feelings, I think."

"I wanted to--the English Grundys!  Ah! don't be cross with me!
They WERE English Grundys, weren't they--every one?"

She looked into his face so hard, that he felt the blood rush to
his cheeks, and a dizzy sensation of being drawn forward.

"They have no blood, those people!  Their voices, their
supercilious eyes that look you up and down!  Oh!  I've had so much
of them!  That woman with her Liberalism, just as bad as any.  I
hate them all!"

He would have liked to hate them, too, since she did; but they had
only seemed to him amusing.

"They aren't human.  They don't FEEL!  Some day you'll know them.
They won't amuse you then!"

She went on, in a quiet, almost dreamy voice:

"Why do they come here?  It's still young and warm and good out
here.  Why don't they keep to their Culture, where no one knows
what it is to ache and feel hunger, and hearts don't beat.  Feel!"

Disturbed beyond measure, the boy could not tell whether it was in
her heart or in his hand that the blood was pulsing so.  Was he
glad or sorry when she let his hand go?

"Ah, well!  They can't spoil this day.  Let's rest."

At the edge of the larch-wood where they sat, were growing numbers
of little mountain pinks, with fringed edges and the sweetest scent
imaginable; and she got up presently to gather them.  But he stayed
where he was, and odd sensations stirred in him.  The blue of the
sky, the feathery green of the larch-trees, the mountains, were no
longer to him what they had been early that morning.

She came back with her hands full of the little pinks, spread her
fingers and let them drop.  They showered all over his face and
neck.  Never was so wonderful a scent; never such a strange feeling
as they gave him.  They clung to his hair, his forehead, his eyes,
one even got caught on the curve of his lips; and he stared up at
her through their fringed petals.  There must have been something
wild in his eyes then, something of the feeling that was stinging
his heart, for her smile died; she walked away, and stood with her
face turned from him.  Confused, and unhappy, he gathered the
strewn flowers; and not till he had collected every one did he get
up and shyly take them to her, where she still stood, gazing into
the depths of the larch-wood.


V


What did he know of women, that should make him understand?  At his
public school he had seen none to speak to; at Oxford, only this
one.  At home in the holidays, not any, save his sister Cicely.
The two hobbies of their guardian, fishing, and the antiquities of
his native county, rendered him averse to society; so that his
little Devonshire manor-house, with its black oak panels and its
wild stone-walled park along the river-side was, from year's end to
year's end, innocent of all petticoats, save those of Cicely and
old Miss Tring, the governess.  Then, too, the boy was shy.  No,
there was nothing in his past, of not yet quite nineteen years, to
go by.  He was not of those youths who are always thinking of
conquests.  The very idea of conquest seemed to him vulgar, mean,
horrid.  There must be many signs indeed before it would come into
his head that a woman was in love with him, especially the one to
whom he looked up, and thought so beautiful.  For before all beauty
he was humble, inclined to think himself a clod.  It was the part
of life which was always unconsciously sacred, and to be approached
trembling.  The more he admired, the more tremulous and diffident
he became.  And so, after his one wild moment, when she plucked
those sweet-scented blossoms and dropped them over him, he felt
abashed; and walking home beside her he was quieter than ever,
awkward to the depths of his soul.

If there were confusion in his heart which had been innocent of
trouble, what must there have been in hers, that for so long had
secretly desired the dawning of that confusion?  And she, too, was
very silent.

Passing a church with open door in the outskirts of the village,
she said:

"Don't wait for me--I want to go in here a little."

In the empty twilight within, one figure, a countrywoman in her
black shawl, was kneeling--marvellously still.  He would have liked
to stay.  That kneeling figure, the smile of the sunlight filtering
through into the half darkness!  He lingered long enough to see
Anna, too, go down on her knees in the stillness.  Was she praying?
Again he had the turbulent feeling with which he had watched her
pluck those flowers.  She looked so splendid kneeling there!  It
was caddish to feel like that, when she was praying, and he turned
quickly away into the road.  But that sharp, sweet stinging
sensation did not leave him.  He shut his eyes to get rid of her
image--and instantly she became ten times more visible, his feeling
ten times stronger.  He mounted to the hotel; there on the terrace
was his tutor.  And oddly enough, the sight of him at that moment
was no more embarrassing than if it had been the hotel concierge.
Stormer did not somehow seem to count; did not seem to want you to
count him.  Besides, he was so old--nearly fifty!

The man who was so old was posed in a characteristic attitude--
hands in the pockets of his Norfolk jacket, one shoulder slightly
raised, head just a little on one side, as if preparing to quiz
something.  He spoke as Lennan came up, smiling--but not with his
eyes.

"Well, young man, and what have you done with my wife?"

"Left her in a church, sir."

"Ah!  She will do that!  Has she run you off your legs?  No?  Then
let's walk and talk a little."

To be thus pacing up and down and talking with her husband seemed
quite natural, did not even interfere with those new sensations,
did not in the least increase his shame for having them.  He only
wondered a little how she could have married him--but so little!
Quite far and academic was his wonder--like his wonder in old days
how his sister could care to play with dolls.  If he had any other
feeling, it was just a longing to get away and go down the hill
again to the church.  It seemed cold and lonely after all that long
day with her--as if he had left himself up there, walking along
hour after hour, or lying out in the sun beside her.  What was old
Stormer talking about?  The difference between the Greek and Roman
views of honour.  Always in the past--seemed to think the present
was bad form.  And he said:

"We met some English Grundys, sir, on the mountain."

"Ah, yes!  Any particular brand?"

"Some advanced, and some not; but all the same, I think, really."

"I see.  Grundys, I think you said?"

"Yes, sir, from this hotel.  It was Mrs. Stormer's name for them.
They were so very superior."

"Quite."

There was something unusual in the tone of that little word.  And
the boy stared--for the first time there seemed a real man standing
there.  Then the blood rushed up into his cheeks, for there she
was!  Would she come up to them?  How splendid she was looking,
burnt by the sun, and walking as if just starting!  But she passed
into the hotel without turning her head their way.  Had he
offended, hurt her?  He made an excuse, and got away to his room.

In the window from which that same morning he had watched the
mountains lying out like lions in the dim light, he stood again,
and gazed at the sun dropping over the high horizon.  What had
happened to him?  He felt so different, so utterly different.  It
was another world.  And the most strange feeling came on him, as of
the flowers falling again all over his face and neck and hands, the
tickling of their soft-fringed edges, the stinging sweetness of
their scent.  And he seemed to hear her voice saying: "Feel!" and
to feel her heart once more beating under his hand.


VI


Alone with that black-shawled figure in the silent church, Anna did
not pray.  Resting there on her knees, she experienced only the
sore sensation of revolt.  Why had Fate flung this feeling into her
heart, lighted up her life suddenly, if God refused her its
enjoyment?  Some of the mountain pinks remained clinging to her
belt, and the scent of them, crushed against her, warred with the
faint odour of age and incense.  While they were there, with their
enticement and their memories, prayer would never come.  But did
she want to pray?  Did she desire the mood of that poor soul in her
black shawl, who had not moved by one hair's breadth since she had
been watching her, who seemed resting her humble self so utterly,
letting life lift from her, feeling the relief of nothingness?  Ah,
yes! what would it be to have a life so toilsome, so little
exciting from day to day and hour to hour, that just to kneel there
in wistful stupor was the greatest pleasure one could know?  It was
beautiful to see her, but it was sad.  And there came over Anna a
longing to go up to her neighbour and say: "Tell me your troubles;
we are both women."  She had lost a son, perhaps, some love--or
perhaps not really love, only some illusion.  Ah!  Love. . . .  Why
should any spirit yearn, why should any body, full of strength and
joy, wither slowly away for want of love?  Was there not enough in
this great world for her, Anna, to have a little?  She would not
harm him, for she would know when he had had enough of her; she
would surely have the pride and grace then to let him go.  For, of
course, he would get tired of her.  At her age she could never hope
to hold a boy more than a few years--months, perhaps.  But would
she ever hold him at all?  Youth was so hard--it had no heart!  And
then the memory of his eyes came back--gazing up, troubled, almost
wild--when she had dropped on him those flowers.  That memory
filled her with a sort of delirium.  One look from her then, one
touch, and he would have clasped her to him.  She was sure of it,
yet scarcely dared to believe what meant so much.  And suddenly the
torment that she must go through, whatever happened, seemed to her
too brutal and undeserved!  She rose.  Just one gleam of sunlight
was still slanting through the doorway; it failed by a yard or so
to reach the kneeling countrywoman, and Anna watched.  Would it
steal on and touch her, or would the sun pass down behind the
mountains, and it fade away?  Unconscious of that issue, the black-
shawled figure knelt, never moving.  And the beam crept on.  "If it
touches her, then he will love me, if only for an hour; if it fades
out too soon--"  And the beam crept on.  That shadowy path of
light, with its dancing dust-motes, was it indeed charged with
Fate--indeed the augury of Love or Darkness?  And, slowly moving,
it mounted, the sun sinking; it rose above that bent head, hovered
in a golden mist, passed--and suddenly was gone.

Unsteadily, seeing nothing plain, Anna walked out of the church.
Why she passed her husband and the boy on the terrace without a
look she could not quite have said--perhaps because the tortured
does not salute her torturers.  When she reached her room she felt
deadly tired, and lying down on her bed, almost at once fell
asleep.

She was wakened by a sound, and, recognizing the delicate 'rat-tat'
of her husband's knock, did not answer, indifferent whether he came
in or no.  He entered noiselessly.  If she did not let him know she
was awake, he would not wake her.  She lay still and watched him
sit down astride of a chair, cross his arms on its back, rest his
chin on them, and fix his eyes on her.  Through her veil of
eyelashes she had unconsciously contrived that his face should be
the one object plainly seen--the more intensely visualized, because
of this queer isolation.  She did not feel at all ashamed of this
mutual fixed scrutiny, in which she had such advantage.  He had
never shown her what was in him, never revealed what lay behind
those bright satiric eyes.  Now, perhaps, she would see!  And she
lay, regarding him with the intense excited absorption with which
one looks at a tiny wildflower through a magnifying-lens, and
watches its insignificance expanded to the size and importance of a
hothouse bloom.  In her mind was this thought: He is looking at me
with his real self, since he has no reason for armour against me
now.  At first his eyes seemed masked with their customary
brightness, his whole face with its usual decorous formality; then
gradually he became so changed that she hardly knew him.  That
decorousness, that brightness, melted off what lay behind, as
frosty dew melts off grass.  And her very soul contracted within
her, as if she had become identified with what he was seeing--a
something to be passed over, a very nothing.  Yes, his was the face
of one looking at what was unintelligible, and therefore
negligible; at that which had no soul; at something of a different
and inferior species and of no great interest to a man.  His face
was like a soundless avowal of some conclusion, so fixed and
intimate that it must surely emanate from the very core of him--be
instinctive, unchangeable.  This was the real he!  A man despising
women!  Her first thought was: And he's married--what a fate!  Her
second: If he feels that, perhaps thousands of men do!  Am I and
all women really what they think us?  The conviction in his stare--
its through-and-through conviction--had infected her; and she gave
in to it for the moment, crushed.  Then her spirit revolted with
such turbulence, and the blood so throbbed in her, that she could
hardly lie still.  How dare he think her like that--a nothing, a
bundle of soulless inexplicable whims and moods and sensuality?  A
thousand times, No!  It was HE who was the soulless one, the dry,
the godless one; who, in his sickening superiority, could thus deny
her, and with her all women!  That stare was as if he saw her--a
doll tricked out in garments labelled soul, spirit, rights,
responsibilities, dignity, freedom--all so many words.  It was
vile, it was horrible, that he should see her thus!  And a really
terrific struggle began in her between the desire to get up and cry
this out, and the knowledge that it would be stupid, undignified,
even mad, to show her comprehension of what he would never admit or
even understand that he had revealed to her.  And then a sort of
cynicism came to her rescue.  What a funny thing was married life--
to have lived all these years with him, and never known what was at
the bottom of his heart!  She had the feeling now that, if she went
up to him and said: "I am in love with that boy!" it would only
make him droop the corners of his mouth and say in his most satiric
voice: "Really!  That is very interesting!"--would not change in
one iota his real thoughts of her; only confirm him in the
conviction that she was negligible, inexplicable, an inferior
strange form of animal, of no real interest to him.

And then, just when she felt that she could not hold herself in any
longer, he got up, passed on tiptoe to the door, opened it
noiselessly, and went out.

The moment he had gone, she jumped up.  So, then, she was linked to
one for whom she, for whom women, did not, as it were, exist!  It
seemed to her that she had stumbled on knowledge of almost sacred
importance, on the key of everything that had been puzzling and
hopeless in their married life.  If he really, secretly, whole-
heartedly despised her, the only feeling she need have for one so
dry, so narrow, so basically stupid, was just contempt.  But she
knew well enough that contempt would not shake what she had seen in
his face; he was impregnably walled within his clever, dull
conviction of superiority.  He was for ever intrenched, and she
would always be only the assailant.  Though--what did it matter,
now?

Usually swift, almost careless, she was a long time that evening
over her toilette.  Her neck was very sunburnt, and she lingered,
doubtful whether to hide it with powder, or accept her gipsy
colouring.  She did accept it, for she saw that it gave her eyes,
so like glacier ice, under their black lashes, and her hair, with
its surprising glints of flame colour, a peculiar value.

When the dinner-bell rang she passed her husband's door without, as
usual, knocking, and went down alone.

In the hall she noticed some of the English party of the mountain
hut.  They did not greet her, conceiving an immediate interest in
the barometer; but she could feel them staring at her very hard.
She sat down to wait, and at once became conscious of the boy
coming over from the other side of the room, rather like a person
walking in his sleep.  He said not a word.  But how he looked!  And
her heart began to beat.  Was this the moment she had longed for?
If it, indeed, had come, dared she take it?  Then she saw her
husband descending the stairs, saw him greet the English party,
heard the intoning of their drawl.  She looked up at the boy, and
said quickly: "Was it a happy day?"  It gave her such delight to
keep that look on his face, that look as if he had forgotten
everything except just the sight of her.  His eyes seemed to have
in them something holy at that moment, something of the wonder-
yearning of Nature and of innocence.  It was dreadful to know that
in a moment that look must be gone; perhaps never to come back on
his face--that look so precious!  Her husband was approaching now!
Let him see, if he would!  Let him see that someone could adore--
that she was not to everyone a kind of lower animal.  Yes, he must
have seen the boy's face; and yet his expression never changed.  He
noticed nothing!  Or was it that he disdained to notice?


VII


Then followed for young Lennan a strange time, when he never knew
from minute to minute whether he was happy--always trying to be
with her, restless if he could not be, sore if she talked with and
smiled at others; yet, when he was with her, restless too,
unsatisfied, suffering from his own timidity.

One wet morning, when she was playing the hotel piano, and he
listening, thinking to have her to himself, there came a young
German violinist--pale, and with a brown, thin-waisted coat,
longish hair, and little whiskers--rather a beast, in fact.  Soon,
of course, this young beast was asking her to accompany him--as if
anyone wanted to hear him play his disgusting violin!  Every word
and smile that she gave him hurt so, seeing how much more
interesting than himself this foreigner was!  And his heart grew
heavier and heavier, and he thought: If she likes him I ought not
to mind--only, I DO mind!  How can I help minding?  It was hateful
to see her smiling, and the young beast bending down to her.  And
they were talking German, so that he could not tell what they were
saying, which made it more unbearable.  He had not known there
could be such torture.

And then he began to want to hurt her, too.  But that was mean--
besides, how could he hurt her?  She did not care for him.  He was
nothing to her--only a boy.  If she really thought him only a boy,
who felt so old--it would be horrible.  It flashed across him that
she might be playing that young violinist against him!  No, she
never would do that!  But the young beast looked just the sort that
might take advantage of her smiles.  If only he WOULD do something
that was not respectful, how splendid it would be to ask him to
come for a walk in the woods, and, having told him why, give him a
thrashing.  Afterwards, he would not tell her, he would not try to
gain credit by it.  He would keep away till she wanted him back.
But suddenly the thought of what he would feel if she really meant
to take this young man as her friend in place of him became so
actual, so poignant, so horribly painful, that he got up abruptly
and went towards the door.  Would she not say a word to him before
he got out of the room, would she not try and keep him?  If she did
not, surely it would be all over; it would mean that anybody was
more to her than he.  That little journey to the door, indeed,
seemed like a march to execution.  Would she not call after him?
He looked back.  She was smiling.  But HE could not smile; she had
hurt him too much!  Turning his head away, he went out, and dashed
into the rain bareheaded.  The feeling of it on his face gave him a
sort of dismal satisfaction.  Soon he would be wet through.
Perhaps he would get ill.  Out here, far away from his people, she
would have to offer to nurse him; and perhaps--perhaps in his
illness he would seem to her again more interesting than that young
beast, and then--Ah! if only he could be ill!

He mounted rapidly through the dripping leaves towards the foot of
the low mountain that rose behind the hotel.  A trail went up there
to the top, and he struck into it, going at a great pace.  His
sense of injury began dying away; he no longer wanted to be ill.
The rain had stopped, the sun came out; he went on, up and up.  He
would get to the top quicker than anyone ever had!  It was
something he could do better than that young beast.  The pine-trees
gave way to stunted larches, and these to pine scrub and bare
scree, up which he scrambled, clutching at the tough bushes,
terribly out of breath, his heart pumping, the sweat streaming into
his eyes.  He had no feeling now but wonder whether he would get to
the top before he dropped, exhausted.  He thought he would die of
the beating of his heart; but it was better to die than to stop and
be beaten by a few yards.  He stumbled up at last on to the little
plateau at the top.  For full ten minutes he lay there on his face
without moving, then rolled over.  His heart had given up that
terrific thumping; he breathed luxuriously, stretched out his arms
along the steaming grass--felt happy.  It was wonderful up here,
with the sun burning hot in a sky clear-blue already.  How tiny
everything looked below--hotel, trees, village, chalets--little toy
things!  He had never before felt the sheer joy of being high up.
The rain-clouds, torn and driven in huge white shapes along the
mountains to the South, were like an army of giants with chariots
and white horses hurrying away.  He thought suddenly: "Suppose I
had died when my heart pumped so!  Would it have mattered the least
bit?  Everything would be going on just the same, the sun shining,
the blue up there the same; and those toy things down in the
valley."  That jealousy of his an hour ago, why--it was nothing--he
himself nothing!  What did it matter if she were nice to that
fellow in the brown coat?  What did anything matter when the whole
thing was so big--and he such a tiny scrap of it?

On the edge of the plateau, to mark the highest point, someone had
erected a rude cross, which jutted out stark against the blue sky.
It looked cruel somehow, sagged all crooked, and out of place up
here; a piece of bad manners, as if people with only one idea had
dragged it in, without caring whether or no it suited what was
around it.  One might just as well introduce one of these rocks
into that jolly dark church where he had left her the other day, as
put a cross up here.

A sound of bells, and of sniffing and scuffling, roused him; a
large grey goat had come up and was smelling at his hair--the
leader of a flock, that were soon all round him, solemnly curious,
with their queer yellow oblong-pupilled eyes, and their quaint
little beards and tails.  Awfully decent beasts--and friendly!
What jolly things to model!  He lay still (having learnt from the
fisherman, his guardian, that necessary habit in the presence of
all beasts), while the leader sampled the flavour of his neck.  The
passage of that long rough tongue athwart his skin gave him an
agreeable sensation, awakened a strange deep sense of comradeship.
He restrained his desire to stroke the creature's nose.  It
appeared that they now all wished to taste his neck; but some were
timid, and the touch of their tongues simply a tickle, so that he
was compelled to laugh, and at that peculiar sound they withdrew
and gazed at him.  There seemed to be no one with them; then, at a
little distance, quite motionless in the shade of a rock, he spied
the goatherd, a boy about his own age.  How lonely he must be up
here all day!  Perhaps he talked to his goats.  He looked as if he
might.  One would get to have queer thoughts up here, get to know
the rocks, and clouds, and beasts, and what they all meant.  The
goatherd uttered a peculiar whistle, and something, Lennan could
not tell exactly what, happened among the goats--a sort of "Here,
Sir!" seemed to come from them.  And then the goatherd moved out
from the shade and went over to the edge of the plateau, and two of
the goats that were feeding there thrust their noses into his hand,
and rubbed themselves against his legs.  The three looked beautiful
standing there together on the edge against the sky. . . .

That night, after dinner, the dining-room was cleared for dancing,
so that the guests might feel freedom and gaiety in the air.  And,
indeed, presently, a couple began sawing up and down over the
polished boards, in the apologetic manner peculiar to hotel guests.
Then three pairs of Italians suddenly launched themselves into
space--twirling and twirling, and glaring into each other's eyes;
and some Americans, stimulated by their precept, began airily
backing and filling.  Two of the 'English Grundys' with carefully
amused faces next moved out.  To Lennan it seemed that they all
danced very well, better than he could.  Did he dare ask HER?  Then
he saw the young violinist go up, saw her rise and take his arm and
vanish into the dancing-room; and leaning his forehead against a
window-pane, with a sick, beaten feeling, he stayed, looking out
into the moonlight, seeing nothing.  He heard his name spoken; his
tutor was standing beside him.

"You and I, Lennan, must console each other.  Dancing's for the
young, eh?"

Fortunately it was the boy's instinct and his training not to show
his feelings; to be pleasant, though suffering.

"Yes, sir.  Jolly moonlight, isn't it, out there?"

"Ah! very jolly; yes.  When I was your age I twirled the light
fantastic with the best.  But gradually, Lennan, one came to see it
could not be done without a partner--there was the rub!  Tell me--
do you regard women as responsible beings?  I should like to have
your opinion on that."

It was, of course, ironical--yet there was something in those
words--something!

"I think it's you, sir, who ought to give me yours."

"My dear Lennan--my experience is a mere nothing!"

That was meant for unkindness to her!  He would not answer.  If
only Stormer would go away!  The music had stopped.  They would be
sitting out somewhere, talking!  He made an effort, and said:

"I was up the hill at the back this morning, where the cross is.
There were some jolly goats."

And suddenly he saw her coming.  She was alone--flushed, smiling;
it struck him that her frock was the same colour as the moonlight.

"Harold, will you dance?"

He would say 'Yes,' and she would be gone again!  But his tutor
only made her a little bow, and said with that smile of his:

"Lennan and I have agreed that dancing is for the young."

"Sometimes the old must sacrifice themselves.  Mark, will you
dance?"

Behind him he heard his tutor murmur:

"Ah!  Lennan--you betray me!"

That little silent journey with her to the dancing-room was the
happiest moment perhaps that he had ever known.  And he need not
have been so much afraid about his dancing.  Truly, it was not
polished, but it could not spoil hers, so light, firm, buoyant!  It
was wonderful to dance with her.  Only when the music stopped and
they sat down did he know how his head was going round.  He felt
strange, very strange indeed.  He heard her say:

"What is it, dear boy?  You look so white!"

Without quite knowing what he did, he bent his face towards the
hand that she had laid on his sleeve, then knew no more, having
fainted.


VIII


Growing boy--over-exertion in the morning!  That was all!  He was
himself very quickly, and walked up to bed without assistance.
Rotten of him!  Never was anyone more ashamed of his little
weakness than this boy.  Now that he was really a trifle
indisposed, he simply could not bear the idea of being nursed at
all or tended.  Almost rudely he had got away.  Only when he was in
bed did he remember the look on her face as he left her.  How
wistful and unhappy, seeming to implore him to forgive her!  As if
there were anything to forgive!  As if she had not made him
perfectly happy when she danced with him!  He longed to say to her:
"If I might be close to you like that one minute every day, then I
don't mind all the rest!"  Perhaps he would dare say that to-
morrow.  Lying there he still felt a little funny.  He had
forgotten to close the ribs of the blinds, and moonlight was
filtering in; but he was too idle, too drowsy to get up now and do
it.  They had given him brandy, rather a lot--that perhaps was the
reason he felt so queer; not ill, but mazy, as if dreaming, as if
he had lost the desire ever to move again.  Just to lie there, and
watch the powdery moonlight, and hear faraway music throbbing down
below, and still feel the touch of her, as in the dance she swayed
against him, and all the time to have the scent about him of
flowers!  His thoughts were dreams, his dreams thoughts--all
precious unreality.  And then it seemed to him that the moonlight
was gathered into a single slip of pallor--there was a thrumming, a
throbbing, and that shape of moonlight moved towards him.  It came
so close that he felt its warmth against his brow; it sighed,
hovered, drew back soundless, and was gone.  He must have fallen
then into dreamless sleep. . . .

What time was it when he was awakened by that delicate 'rat-tat' to
see his tutor standing in the door-way with a cup of tea?

Was young Lennan all right?  Yes, he was perfectly all right--would
be down directly!  It was most frightfully good of Mr. Stormer to
come!  He really didn't want anything.

Yes, yes; but the maimed and the halt must be attended to!

His face seemed to the boy very kind just then--only to laugh at
him a very little--just enough.  And it was awfully decent of him
to have come, and to stand there while he drank the tea.  He was
really all right, but for a little headache.  Many times while he
was dressing he stood still, trying to remember.  That white slip
of moonlight?  Was it moonlight?  Was it part of a dream; or was
it, could it have been she, in her moonlight-coloured frock?  Why
had he not stayed awake?  He would not dare to ask her, and now
would never know whether the vague memory of warmth on his brow had
been a kiss.

He breakfasted alone in the room where they had danced.  There were
two letters for him.  One from his guardian enclosing money, and
complaining of the shyness of the trout; the other from his sister.
The man she was engaged to--he was a budding diplomat, attached to
the Embassy at Rome--was afraid that his leave was going to be
curtailed.  They would have to be married at once.  They might even
have to get a special licence.  It was lucky Mark was coming back
so soon.  They simply MUST have him for best man.  The only
bridesmaid now would be Sylvia. . . .  Sylvia Doone?  Why, she was
only a kid!  And the memory of a little girl in a very short
holland frock, with flaxen hair, pretty blue eyes, and a face so
fair that you could almost see through it, came up before him.  But
that, of course, was six years ago; she would not still be in a
frock that showed her knees, or wear beads, or be afraid of bulls
that were never there.  It was stupid being best man--they might
have got some decent chap!  And then he forgot all--for there was
SHE, out on the terrace.  In his rush to join her he passed several
of the 'English Grundys,' who stared at him askance.  Indeed, his
conduct of the night before might well have upset them.  An Oxford
man, fainting in an hotel!  Something wrong there! . . .

And then, when he reached her, he did find courage.

"Was it really moonlight?"

"All moonlight."

"But it was warm!"

And, when she did not answer that, he had within him just the same
light, intoxicated feeling as after he had won a race at school.

But now came a dreadful blow.  His tutor's old guide had suddenly
turned up, after a climb with a party of Germans.  The war-horse
had been aroused in Stormer.  He wished to start that afternoon for
a certain hut, and go up a certain peak at dawn next day.  But
Lennan was not to go.  Why not?  Because of last night's faint; and
because, forsooth, he was not some stupid thing they called 'an
expert.'  As if--!  Where she could go he could!  This was to treat
him like a child.  Of course he could go up this rotten mountain.
It was because she did not care enough to take him!  She did not
think him man enough!  Did she think that he could not climb what--
her husband--could?  And if it were dangerous SHE ought not to be
going, leaving him behind--that was simply cruel!  But she only
smiled, and he flung away from her, not having seen that all this
grief of his only made her happy.

And that afternoon they went off without him.  What deep, dark
thoughts he had then!  What passionate hatred of his own youth!
What schemes he wove, by which she might come back, and find him
gone-up some mountain far more dangerous and fatiguing!  If people
did not think him fit to climb with, he would climb by himself.
That, anyway, everyone admitted, was dangerous.  And it would be
her fault.  She would be sorry then.  He would get up, and be off
before dawn; he put his things out ready, and filled his flask.
The moonlight that evening was more wonderful than ever, the
mountains like great ghosts of themselves.  And she was up there at
the hut, among them!  It was very long before he went to sleep,
brooding over his injuries--intending not to sleep at all, so as to
be ready to be off at three o'clock.  At NINE o'clock he woke.  His
wrath was gone; he only felt restless and ashamed.  If, instead of
flying out, he had made the best of it, he could have gone with
them as far as the hut, could have stayed the night there.  And now
he cursed himself for being such a fool and idiot.  Some little of
that idiocy he could, perhaps, retrieve.  If he started for the hut
at once, he might still be in time to meet them coming down, and
accompany them home.  He swallowed his coffee, and set off.  He
knew the way at first, then in woods lost it, recovered the right
track again at last, but did not reach the hut till nearly two
o'clock.  Yes, the party had made the ascent that morning--they had
been seen, been heard jodelling on the top.  Gewiss!  Gewiss!  But
they would not come down the same way.  Oh, no!  They would be
going home down to the West and over the other pass.  They would be
back in house before the young Herr himself.

He heard this, oddly, almost with relief.  Was it the long walk
alone, or being up there so high?  Or simply that he was very
hungry?  Or just these nice friendly folk in the hut, and their
young daughter with her fresh face, queer little black cloth sailor
hat with long ribbons, velvet bodice, and perfect simple manners;
or the sight of the little silvery-dun cows, thrusting their broad
black noses against her hand?  What was it that had taken away from
him all his restless feeling, made him happy and content? . . .  He
did not know that the newest thing always fascinates the puppy in
its gambols! . . .  He sat a long while after lunch, trying to draw
the little cows, watching the sun on the cheek of that pretty
maiden, trying to talk to her in German.  And when at last he said:
"Adieu!" and she murmured "Kuss die Hand.  Adieu!" there was quite
a little pang in his heart. . . .  Wonderful and queer is the heart
of a man! . . .  For all that, as he neared home he hastened, till
he was actually running.  Why had he stayed so long up there?  She
would be back--she would expect to see him; and that young beast of
a violinist would be with her, perhaps, instead!  He reached the
hotel just in time to rush up and dress, and rush down to dinner.
Ah!  They were tired, no doubt--were resting in their rooms.  He
sat through dinner as best he could; got away before dessert, and
flew upstairs.  For a minute he stood there doubtful; on which door
should he knock?  Then timidly he tapped on hers.  No answer!  He
knocked loud on his tutor's door.  No answer!  They were not back,
then.  Not back?  What could that mean?  Or could it be that they
were both asleep?  Once more he knocked on her door; then
desperately turned the handle, and took a flying glance.  Empty,
tidy, untouched!  Not back!  He turned and ran downstairs again.
All the guests were streaming out from dinner, and he became
entangled with a group of 'English Grundys' discussing a climbing
accident which had occurred in Switzerland.  He listened, feeling
suddenly quite sick.  One of them, the short grey-bearded Grundy
with the rather whispering voice, said to him: "All alone again to-
night?  The Stormers not back?"  Lennan did his best to answer, but
something had closed his throat; he could only shake his head.

"They had a guide, I think?" said the 'English Grundy.'

This time Lennan managed to get out: "Yes, sir."

"Stormer, I fancy, is quite an expert!" and turning to the lady
whom the young 'Grundys' addressed as 'Madre' he added:

"To me the great charm of mountain-climbing was always the freedom
from people--the remoteness."

The mother of the young 'Grundys,' looking at Lennan with her half-
closed eyes, answered:

"That, to me, would be the disadvantage; I always like to be mixing
with my own kind."

The grey-bearded 'Grundy' murmured in a muffled voice:

"Dangerous thing, that, to say--in an hotel!"

And they went on talking, but of what Lennan no longer knew, lost
in this sudden feeling of sick fear.  In the presence of these
'English Grundys,' so superior to all vulgar sensations, he could
not give vent to his alarm; already they viewed him as unsound for
having fainted.  Then he grasped that there had begun all round him
a sort of luxurious speculation on what might have happened to the
Stormers.  The descent was very nasty; there was a particularly bad
traverse.  The 'Grundy,' whose collar was not now crumpled, said he
did not believe in women climbing.  It was one of the signs of the
times that he most deplored.  The mother of the young 'Grundys'
countered him at once: In practice she agreed that they were out of
place, but theoretically she could not see why they should not
climb.  An American standing near threw all into confusion by
saying he guessed that it might be liable to develop their
understandings.  Lennan made for the front door.  The moon had just
come up over in the South, and exactly under it he could see their
mountain.  What visions he had then!  He saw her lying dead, saw
himself climbing down in the moonlight and raising her still-
living, but half-frozen, form from some perilous ledge.  Even that
was almost better than this actuality of not knowing where she was,
or what had happened.  People passed out into the moonlight,
looking curiously at his set face staring so fixedly.  One or two
asked him if he were anxious, and he answered: "Oh no, thanks!"
Soon there would have to be a search party.  How soon?  He would,
he must be, of it!  They should not stop him this time.  And
suddenly he thought: Ah, it is all because I stayed up there this
afternoon talking to that girl, all because I forgot HER!

And then he heard a stir behind him.  There they were, coming down
the passage from a side door--she in front with her alpenstock and
rucksack--smiling.  Instinctively he recoiled behind some plants.
They passed.  Her sunburned face, with its high cheek-bones and its
deep-set eyes, looked so happy; smiling, tired, triumphant.
Somehow he could not bear it, and when they were gone by he stole
out into the wood and threw himself down in shadow, burying his
face, and choking back a horrible dry sobbing that would keep
rising in his throat.


IX


Next day he was happy; for all the afternoon he lay out in the
shade of that same wood at her feet, gazing up through larch-
boughs.  It was so wonderful, with nobody but Nature near.  Nature
so alive, and busy, and so big!

Coming down from the hut the day before, he had seen a peak that
looked exactly like the figure of a woman with a garment over her
head, the biggest statue in the world; from further down it had
become the figure of a bearded man, with his arm bent over his
eyes.  Had she seen it?  Had she noticed how all the mountains in
moonlight or very early morning took the shape of beasts?  What he
wanted most in life was to be able to make images of beasts and
creatures of all sorts, that were like--that had--that gave out the
spirit of--Nature; so that by just looking at them one could have
all those jolly feelings one had when one was watching trees, and
beasts, and rocks, and even some sorts of men--but not 'English
Grundys.'

So he was quite determined to study Art?

Oh yes, of course!

He would want to leave--Oxford, then!

No, oh no!  Only some day he would have to.

She answered: "Some never get away!"

And he said quickly: "Of course, I shall never want to leave Oxford
while you are there."

He heard her draw her breath in sharply.

"Oh yes, you will!  Now help me up!"  And she led the way back to
the hotel.

He stayed out on the terrace when she had gone in, restless and
unhappy the moment he was away from her.  A voice close by said:

"Well, friend Lennan--brown study, or blue devils, which?"

There, in one of those high wicker chairs that insulate their
occupants from the world, he saw his tutor leaning back, head a
little to one side, and tips of fingers pressed together.  He
looked like an idol sitting there inert, and yet--yesterday he had
gone up that mountain!

"Cheer up!  You will break your neck yet!  When I was your age, I
remember feeling it deeply that I was not allowed to risk the lives
of others."

Lennan stammered out:

"I didn't think of that; but I thought where Mrs. Stormer could go,
I could."

"Ah!  For all our admiration we cannot quite admit--can we, when it
comes to the point?"

The boy's loyalty broke into flame:

"It's not that.  I think Mrs. Stormer as good as any man--only--
only--"

"Not quite so good as you, eh?"

"A hundred times better, sir."

Stormer smiled.  Ironic beast!

"Lennan," he said, "distrust hyperbole."

"Of course, I know I'm no good at climbing," the boy broke out
again; "but--but--I thought where she was allowed to risk her life,
I ought to be!"

"Good!  I like that."  It was said so entirely without irony for
once, that the boy was disconcerted.

"You are young, Brother Lennan," his tutor went on.  "Now, at what
age do you consider men develop discretion?  Because, there is just
one thing always worth remembering--women have none of that better
part of valour."

"I think women are the best things in the world," the boy blurted
out.

"May you long have that opinion!"  His tutor had risen, and was
ironically surveying his knees.  "A bit stiff!" he said.  "Let me
know when you change your views!"

"I never shall, sir."

"Ah, ah!  Never is a long word, Lennan.  I am going to have some
tea;" and gingerly he walked away, quizzing, as it were, with a
smile, his own stiffness.

Lennan remained where he was, with burning cheeks.  His tutor's
words again had seemed directed against her.  How could a man say
such things about women!  If they were true, he did not want to
know; if they were not true, it was wicked to say them.  It must be
awful never to have generous feelings; always to have to be
satirical.  Dreadful to be like the 'English Grundys'; only
different, of course, because, after all, old Stormer was much more
interesting and intelligent--ever so much more; only, just as
'superior.'  "Some never get away!"  Had she meant--from that
superiority?  Just down below were a family of peasants scything
and gathering in the grass.  One could imagine her doing that, and
looking beautiful, with a coloured handkerchief over her head; one
could imagine her doing anything simple--one could not imagine old
Stormer doing anything but what he did do.  And suddenly the boy
felt miserable, oppressed by these dim glimmerings of lives
misplaced.  And he resolved that he would not be like Stormer when
he was old!  No, he would rather be a regular beast than be like
that! . . .

When he went to his room to change for dinner he saw in a glass of
water a large clove carnation.  Who had put it there?  Who could
have put it there--but she?  It had the same scent as the mountain
pinks she had dropped over him, but deeper, richer--a scent moving,
dark, and sweet.  He put his lips to it before he pinned it into
his coat.

There was dancing again that night--more couples this time, and a
violin beside the piano; and she had on a black frock.  He had
never seen her in black.  Her face and neck were powdered over
their sunburn.  The first sight of that powder gave him a faint
shock.  He had not somehow thought that ladies ever put on powder.
But if SHE did--then it must be right!  And his eyes never left
her.  He saw the young German violinist hovering round her, even
dancing with her twice; watched her dancing with others, but all
without jealousy, without troubling; all in a sort of dream.  What
was it?  Had he been bewitched into that queer state, bewitched by
the gift of that flower in his coat?  What was it, when he danced
with her, that kept him happy in her silence and his own?  There
was no expectation in him of anything that she would say, or do--no
expectation, no desire.  Even when he wandered out with her on to
the terrace, even when they went down the bank and sat on a bench
above the fields where the peasants had been scything, he had still
no feeling but that quiet, dreamy adoration.  The night was black
and dreamy too, for the moon was still well down behind the
mountains.  The little band was playing the next waltz; but he sat,
not moving, not thinking, as if all power of action and thought had
been stolen out of him.  And the scent of the flower in his coat
rose, for there was no wind.  Suddenly his heart stopped beating.
She had leaned against him, he felt her shoulder press his arm, her
hair touch his cheek.  He closed his eyes then, and turned his face
to her.  He felt her lips press his mouth with a swift, burning
kiss.  He sighed, stretched out his arms.  There was nothing there
but air.  The rustle of her dress against the grass was all!  The
flower--it, too, was gone.


X


Not one minute all that night did Anna sleep.  Was it remorse that
kept her awake, or the intoxication of memory?  If she felt that
her kiss had been a crime, it was not against her husband or
herself, but against the boy--the murder of illusion, of something
sacred.  But she could not help feeling a delirious happiness too,
and the thought of trying to annul what she had done did not even
occur to her.

He was ready, then, to give her a little love!  Ever so little,
compared to hers, but still a little!  There could be no other
meaning to that movement of his face with the closed eyes, as if he
would nestle it down on her breast.

Was she ashamed of her little manoeuvres of these last few days--
ashamed of having smiled at the young violinist, of that late
return from the mountain climb, of the flower she had given him, of
all the conscious siege she had laid since the evening her husband
came in and sat watching her, without knowing that she saw him?
No; not really ashamed!  Her remorse rose only from the kiss.  It
hurt to think of that, because it was death, the final extinction
of the mother-feeling in her; the awakening of--who knew what--in
the boy!  For if she was mysterious to him, what was he not to her,
with his eagerness, and his dreaminess, his youthful warmth, his
innocence!  What if it had killed in him trust, brushed off the
dew, tumbled a star down?  Could she forgive herself for that?
Could she bear it if she were to make him like so many other boys,
like that young violinist; just a cynical youth, looking on women
as what they called 'fair game'?  But COULD she make him into such--
would he ever grow like that?  Oh!  surely not; or she would not
have loved him from the moment she first set eyes on him and spoke
of him as 'an angel.'

After that kiss--that crime, if it were one--in the dark she had
not known what he had done, where gone--perhaps wandering, perhaps
straight up to his room.  Why had she refrained, left him there,
vanished out of his arms?  This she herself hardly understood.  Not
shame; not fear; reverence perhaps--for what?  For love--for the
illusion, the mystery, all that made love beautiful; for youth, and
the poetry of it; just for the sake of the black still night
itself, and the scent of that flower--dark flower of passion that
had won him to her, and that she had stolen back, and now wore all
night long close to her neck, and in the morning placed withered
within her dress.  She had been starved so long, and so long waited
for that moment--it was little wonder if she did not clearly know
why she had done just this, and not that!

And now how should she meet him, how first look into his eyes?
Would they have changed?  Would they no longer have the straight
look she so loved?  It would be for her to lead, to make the
future.  And she kept saying to herself: I am not going to be
afraid.  It is done.  I will take what life offers!  Of her husband
she did not think at all.

But the first moment she saw the boy, she knew that something from
outside, and untoward, had happened since that kiss.  He came up to
her, indeed, but he said nothing, stood trembling all over and
handed her a telegram that contained these words: "Come back at
once Wedding immediate Expect you day after to-morrow.  Cicely."
The words grew indistinct even as she read them, and the boy's face
all blurred.  Then, making an effort, she said quietly:

"Of course, you must go.  You cannot miss your only sister's
wedding."

Without protest he looked at her; and she could hardly bear that
look--it seemed to know so little, and ask so much.  She said: "It
is nothing--only a few days.  You will come back, or we will come
to you."

His face brightened at once.

"Will you really come to us soon, at once--if they ask you?  Then I
don't mind--I--I--"  And then he stopped, choking.

She said again:

"Ask us.  We will come."

He seized her hand; pressed and pressed it in both his own, then
stroked it gently, and said:

"Oh!  I'm hurting it!"

She laughed, not wishing to cry.

In a few minutes he would have to start to catch the only train
that would get him home in time.

She went and helped him to pack.  Her heart felt like lead, but,
not able to bear that look on his face again, she kept cheerfully
talking of their return, asking about his home, how to get to it,
speaking of Oxford and next term.  When his things were ready she
put her arms round his neck, and for a moment pressed him to her.
Then she escaped.  Looking back from his door, she saw him standing
exactly as when she had withdrawn her arms.  Her cheeks were wet;
she dried them as she went downstairs.  When she felt herself safe,
she went out on the terrace.  Her husband was there, and she said
to him:

"Will you come with me into the town?  I want to buy some things."

He raised his eyebrows, smiled dimly, and followed her.  They
walked slowly down the hill into the long street of the little
town.  All the time she talked of she knew not what, and all the
time she thought: His carriage will pass--his carriage will pass!

Several carriages went jingling by.  At last he came.  Sitting
there, and staring straight before him, he did not see them.  She
heard her husband say:

"Hullo!  Where is our young friend Lennan off to, with his luggage--
looking like a lion cub in trouble?"

She answered in a voice that she tried to make clear and steady:

"There must be something wrong; or else it is his sister's
wedding."

She felt that her husband was gazing at her, and wondered what her
face was like; but at that moment the word "Madre!" sounded close
in her ear and they were surrounded by a small drove of 'English
Grundys.'


XI


That twenty mile drive was perhaps the worst part of the journey
for the boy.  It is always hard to sit still and suffer.

When Anna left him the night before, he had wandered about in the
dark, not knowing quite where he went.  Then the moon came up, and
he found himself sitting under the eave of a barn close to a chalet
where all was dark and quiet; and down below him the moon-whitened
valley village--its roofs and spires and little glamorous unreal
lights.

In his evening suit, his dark ruffled hair uncovered, he would have
made a quaint spectacle for the owners of that chalet, if they had
chanced to see him seated on the hay-strewn boards against their
barn, staring before him with such wistful rapture.  But they were
folk to whom sleep was precious. . . .

And now it was all snatched away from him, relegated to some
immensely far-off future.  Would it indeed be possible to get his
guardian to ask them down to Hayle?  And would they really come?
His tutor would surely never care to visit a place right away in
the country--far from books and everything!  He frowned, thinking
of his tutor, but it was with perplexity--no other feeling.  And
yet, if he could not have them down there, how could he wait the
two whole months till next term began!  So went his thoughts, round
and round, while the horses jogged, dragging him further and
further from her.

It was better in the train; the distraction of all the strange
crowd of foreigners, the interest of new faces and new country; and
then sleep--a long night of it, snoozed up in his corner,
thoroughly fagged out.  And next day more new country, more new
faces; and slowly, his mood changing from ache and bewilderment to
a sense of something promised, delightful to look forward to.  Then
Calais at last, and a night-crossing in a wet little steamer, a
summer gale blowing spray in his face, waves leaping white in a
black sea, and the wild sound of the wind.  On again to London, the
early drive across the town, still sleepy in August haze; an
English breakfast--porridge, chops, marmalade.  And, at last, the
train for home.  At all events he could write to her, and tearing a
page out of his little sketch-book, he began:


"I am writing in the train, so please forgive this joggly writing--"


Then he did not know how to go on, for all that he wanted to say
was such as he had never even dreamed of writing--things about his
feelings which would look horrible in words; besides, he must not
put anything that might not be read, by anyone, so what was there
to say?


"It has been such a long journey," he wrote at last, "away from the
Tyrol;" (he did not dare even to put "from you,") "I thought it
would never end.  But at last it has--very nearly.  I have thought
a great deal about the Tyrol.  It was a lovely time--the loveliest
time I have ever had.  And now it's over, I try to console myself
by thinking of the future, but not the immediate future--THAT is
not very enjoyable.  I wonder how the mountains are looking to-day.
Please give my love to them, especially the lion ones that come and
lie out in the moonlight--you will not recognize them from this"--
then followed a sketch.  "And this is the church we went to, with
someone kneeling.  And this is meant for the 'English Grundys,'
looking at someone who is coming in very late with an alpenstock--
only, I am better at the 'English Grundys' than at the person with
the alpenstock.  I wish I were the 'English Grundys' now, still in
the Tyrol.  I hope I shall get a letter from you soon; and that it
will say you are getting ready to come back.  My guardian will be
awfully keen for you to come and stay with us.  He is not half bad
when you know him, and there will be his sister, Mrs. Doone, and
her daughter left there after the wedding.  It will be simply
disgusting if you and Mr. Stormer don't come.  I wish I could write
all I feel about my lovely time in the Tyrol, but you must please
imagine it."


And just as he had not known how to address her, so he could not
tell how to subscribe himself, and only put "Mark Lennan."

He posted the letter at Exeter, where he had some time to wait; and
his mind moved still more from past to future.  Now that he was
nearing home he began to think of his sister.  In two days she
would be gone to Italy; he would not see her again for a long time,
and a whole crowd of memories began to stretch out hands to him.
How she and he used to walk together in the walled garden, and on
the sunk croquet ground; she telling him stories, her arm round his
neck, because she was two years older, and taller than he in those
days.  Their first talk each holidays, when he came back to her;
the first tea--with unlimited jam--in the old mullion-windowed,
flower-chintzed schoolroom, just himself and her and old Tingle
(Miss Tring, the ancient governess, whose chaperonage would now be
gone), and sometimes that kid Sylvia, when she chanced to be
staying there with her mother.  Cicely had always understood him
when he explained to her how inferior school was, because nobody
took any interest in beasts or birds except to kill them; or in
drawing, or making things, or anything decent.  They would go off
together, rambling along the river, or up the park, where
everything looked so jolly and wild--the ragged oak-trees, and huge
boulders, of whose presence old Godden, the coachman, had said: "I
can't think but what these ha' been washed here by the Flood, Mast'
Mark!"  These and a thousand other memories beset his conscience
now.  And as the train drew closer to their station, he eagerly
made ready to jump out and greet her.  There was the honeysuckle
full out along the paling of the platform over the waiting-room;
wonderful, this year--and there was she, standing alone on the
platform.  No, it was not Cicely!  He got out with a blank
sensation, as if those memories had played him false.  It was a
girl, indeed, but she only looked about sixteen, and wore a
sunbonnet that hid her hair and half her face.  She had on a blue
frock, and some honeysuckle in her waist-belt.  She seemed to be
smiling at him, and expecting him to smile at her; and so he did
smile.  She came up to him then, and said:

"I'm Sylvia."

He answered: "Oh! thanks awfully--it was awfully good of you to
come and meet me."

"Cicely's so busy.  It's only the T-cart.  Have you got much
luggage?"

She took up his hold-all, and he took it from her; she took his
bag, and he took it from her; then they went out to the T-cart.  A
small groom stood there, holding a silver-roan cob with a black
mane and black swish tail.

She said: "D'you mind if I drive, because I'm learning."

And he answered: "Oh, no! rather not."

She got up; he noticed that her eyes looked quite excited.  Then
his portmanteau came out and was deposited with the other things
behind; and he got up beside her.

She said: "Let go, Billy."

The roan rushed past the little groom, whose top boots seemed to
twinkle as he jumped up behind.  They whizzed round the corner from
the station yard, and observing that her mouth was just a little
open as though this had disconcerted her, he said:

"He pulls a bit."

"Yes--but isn't he perfectly sweet?"

"He IS rather decent."

Ah! when SHE came, he would drive her; they would go off alone in
the T-cart, and he would show her all the country round.

He was re-awakened by the words:

"Oh! I know he's going to shy!"  At once there was a swerve.  The
roan was cantering.

They had passed a pig.

"Doesn't he look lovely now?  Ought I to have whipped him when he
shied?"

"Rather not."

"Why?"

"Because horses are horses, and pigs are pigs; it's natural for
horses to shy at them."

"Oh!"

He looked up at her then, sidelong.  The curve of her cheek and
chin looked very soft, and rather jolly.

"I didn't know you, you know!" he said.  "You've grown up so
awfully."

"I knew you at once.  Your voice is still furry."

There was another silence, till she said:

"He does pull, rather--doesn't he, going home?"

"Shall I drive?"

"Yes, please."

He stood up and took the reins, and she slipped past under them in
front of him; her hair smelt exactly like hay, as she was softly
bumped against him.

She kept regarding him steadily with very blue eyes, now that she
was relieved of driving.

"Cicely was afraid you weren't coming," she said suddenly.  "What
sort of people are those old Stormers?"

He felt himself grow very red, choked something down, and answered:

"It's only he that's old.  She's not more than about thirty-five."

"That IS old."

He restrained the words: "Of course it's old to a kid like you!"
And, instead, he looked at her.  Was she exactly a kid?  She seemed
quite tall (for a girl) and not very thin, and there was something
frank and soft about her face, and as if she wanted you to be nice
to her.

"Is she very pretty?"

This time he did not go red, such was the disturbance that question
made in him.  If he said: "Yes," it was like letting the world know
his adoration; but to say anything less would be horrible,
disloyal.  So he did say: "Yes," listening hard to the tone of his
own voice.

"I thought she was.  Do you like her very much?"  Again he
struggled with that thing in his throat, and again said: "Yes."

He wanted to hate this girl, yet somehow could not--she looked so
soft and confiding.  She was staring before her now, her lips still
just parted, so evidently THAT had not been because of Bolero's
pulling; they were pretty all the same, and so was her short,
straight little nose, and her chin, and she was awfully fair.  His
thoughts flew back to that other face--so splendid, so full of
life.  Suddenly he found himself unable to picture it--for the
first time since he had started on his journey it would not come
before him.

"Oh!  Look!"

Her hand was pulling at his arm.  There in the field over the hedge
a buzzard hawk was dropping like a stone.

"Oh, Mark!  Oh!  Oh!  It's got it!"

She was covering her face with both her hands, and the hawk, with a
young rabbit in its claws, was sailing up again.  It looked so
beautiful that he did not somehow feel sorry for the rabbit; but he
wanted to stroke and comfort her, and said:

"It's all right, Sylvia; it really is.  The rabbit's dead already,
you know.  And it's quite natural."

She took her hands away from a face that looked just as if she were
going to cry.

"Poor little rabbit!  It was such a little one!"


XII


On the afternoon of the day following he sat in the smoking-room
with a prayer book in his hand, and a frown on his forehead,
reading the Marriage Service.  The book had been effectively
designed for not spoiling the figure when carried in a pocket.  But
this did not matter, for even if he could have read the words, he
would not have known what they meant, seeing that he was thinking
how he could make a certain petition to a certain person sitting
just behind at a large bureau with a sliding top, examining
artificial flies.

He fixed at last upon this form:

"Gordy!"  (Why Gordy no one quite knew now--whether because his
name was George, or by way of corruption from Guardian.)  "When Cis
is gone it'll be rather awful, won't it?"

"Not a bit."

Mr. Heatherley was a man of perhaps sixty-four, if indeed guardians
have ages, and like a doctor rather than a squire; his face square
and puffy, his eyes always half-closed, and his curly mouth using
bluntly a voice of that refined coarseness peculiar to people of
old family.

"But it will, you know!"

"Well, supposin' it is?"

"I only wondered if you'd mind asking Mr. and Mrs. Stormer to come
here for a little--they were awfully kind to me out there."

"Strange man and woman!  My dear fellow!"

"Mr. Stormer likes fishing."

"Does he?  And what does she like?"

Very grateful that his back was turned, the boy said:

"I don't know--anything--she's awfully nice."

"Ah!  Pretty?"

He answered faintly:

"I don't know what YOU call pretty, Gordy."

He felt, rather than saw, his guardian scrutinizing him with those
half-closed eyes under their gouty lids.

"All right; do as you like.  Have 'em here and have done with it,
by all means."

Did his heart jump?  Not quite; but it felt warm and happy, and he
said:

"Thanks awfully, Gordy.  It's most frightfully decent of you," and
turned again to the Marriage Service.  He could make out some of
it.  In places it seemed to him fine, and in other places queer.
About obeying, for instance.  If you loved anybody, it seemed
rotten to expect them to obey you.  If you loved them and they
loved you, there couldn't ever be any question of obeying, because
you would both do the things always of your own accord.  And if
they didn't love you, or you them, then--oh! then it would be
simply too disgusting for anything, to go on living with a person
you didn't love or who didn't love you.  But of course SHE didn't
love his tutor.  Had she once?  Those bright doubting eyes, that
studiously satiric mouth came very clearly up before him.  You
could not love them; and yet--he was really very decent.  A feeling
as of pity, almost of affection, rose in him for his remote tutor.
It was queer to feel so, since the last time they had talked
together out there, on the terrace, he had not felt at all like
that.

The noise of the bureau top sliding down aroused him; Mr.
Heatherley was closing in the remains of the artificial flies.
That meant he would be going out to fish.  And the moment he heard
the door shut, Mark sprang up, slid back the bureau top, and began
to write his letter.  It was hard work.


"DEAR MRS. STORMER,

"My guardian wishes me to beg you and Mr. Stormer to pay us a visit
as soon as you come back from the Tyrol.  Please tell Mr. Stormer
that only the very best fishermen--like him--can catch our trout;
the rest catch our trees.  This is me catching our trees (here
followed a sketch).  My sister is going to be married to-morrow,
and it will be disgusting afterwards unless you come.  So do come,
please.  And with my very best greetings,

"I am,

"Your humble servant,

"M. LENNAN."


When he had stamped this production and dropped it in the letter-
box, he had the oddest feeling, as if he had been let out of
school; a desire to rush about, to frolic.  What should he do?
Cis, of course, would be busy--they were all busy about the
wedding.  He would go and saddle Bolero, and jump him in the park;
or should he go down along the river and watch the jays?  Both
seemed lonely occupations.  And he stood in the window--dejected.
At the age of five, walking with his nurse, he had been overheard
remarking: "Nurse, I want to eat a biscuit--ALL THE WAY I want to
eat a biscuit!" and it was still rather so with him perhaps--all
the way he wanted to eat a biscuit.  He bethought him then of his
modelling, and went out to the little empty greenhouse where he
kept his masterpieces.  They seemed to him now quite horrible--and
two of them, the sheep and the turkey, he marked out for summary
destruction.  The idea occurred to him that he might try and model
that hawk escaping with the little rabbit; but when he tried, no
nice feeling came, and flinging the things down he went out.  He
ran along the unweeded path to the tennis ground--lawn tennis was
then just coming in.  The grass looked very rough.  But then,
everything about that little manor house was left rather wild and
anyhow; why, nobody quite knew, and nobody seemed to mind.  He
stood there scrutinizing the condition of the ground.  A sound of
humming came to his ears.  He got up on the wall.  There was Sylvia
sitting in the field, making a wreath of honeysuckle.  He stood
very quiet and listened.  She looked pretty--lost in her tune.
Then he slid down off the wall, and said gently:

"Hallo!"

She looked round at him, her eyes very wide open.

"Your voice is jolly, Sylvia!"

"Oh, no!"

"It is.  Come and climb a tree!"

"Where?"

"In the park, of course."

They were some time selecting the tree, many being too easy for
him, and many too hard for her; but one was found at last, an oak
of great age, and frequented by rooks.  Then, insisting that she
must be roped to him, he departed to the house for some blind-cord.
The climb began at four o'clock--named by him the ascent of the
Cimone della Pala.  He led the momentous expedition, taking a hitch
of the blind-cord round a branch before he permitted her to move.
Two or three times he was obliged to make the cord fast and return
to help her, for she was not an 'expert'; her arms seemed soft, and
she was inclined to straddle instead of trusting to one foot.  But
at last they were settled, streaked indeed with moss, on the top
branch but two.  They rested there, silent, listening to the rooks
soothing an outraged dignity.  Save for this slowly subsiding
demonstration it was marvellously peaceful and remote up there,
half-way to a blue sky thinly veiled from them by the crinkled
brown-green leaves.  The peculiar dry mossy smell of an oak-tree
was disturbed into the air by the least motion of their feet or
hands against the bark.  They could hardly see the ground, and all
around, other gnarled trees barred off any view.

He said:

"If we stay up here till it's dark we might see owls."

"Oh, no!  Owls are horrible!"

"What!  They're LOVELY--especially the white ones."

"I can't stand their eyes, and they squeak so when they're
hunting."

"Oh!  but that's so jolly, and their eyes are beautiful."

"They're always catching mice and little chickens; all sorts of
little things."

"But they don't mean to; they only want them to eat.  Don't you
think things are jolliest at night?"

She slipped her arm in his.

"No; I don't like the dark."

"Why not?  It's splendid--when things get mysterious."  He dwelt
lovingly on that word.

"I don't like mysterious things.  They frighten you."

"Oh, Sylvia!"

"No, I like early morning--especially in spring, when it's
beginning to get leafy."

"Well, of course."

She was leaning against him, for safety, just a little; and
stretching out his arm, he took good hold of the branch to make a
back for her.  There was a silence.  Then he said:

"If you could only have one tree, which would you have?"

"Not oaks.  Limes--no--birches.  Which would you?"

He pondered.  There were so many trees that were perfect.  Birches
and limes, of course; but beeches and cypresses, and yews, and
cedars, and holm-oaks--almost, and plane-trees; then he said
suddenly:

"Pines; I mean the big ones with reddish stems and branches pretty
high up."

"Why?"

Again he pondered.  It was very important to explain exactly why;
his feelings about everything were concerned in this.  And while he
mused she gazed at him, as if surprised to see anyone think so
deeply.  At last he said:

"Because they're independent and dignified and never quite cold,
and their branches seem to brood, but chiefly because the ones I
mean are generally out of the common where you find them.  You
know--just one or two, strong and dark, standing out against the
sky."

"They're TOO dark."

It occurred to him suddenly that he had forgotten larches.  They,
of course, could be heavenly, when you lay under them and looked up
at the sky, as he had that afternoon out there.  Then he heard her
say:

"If I could only have one flower, I should have lilies of the
valley, the small ones that grow wild and smell so jolly."

He had a swift vision of another flower, dark--very different, and
was silent.

"What would you have, Mark?"  Her voice sounded a little hurt.
"You ARE thinking of one, aren't you?"

He said honestly:

"Yes, I am."

"Which?"

"It's dark, too; you wouldn't care for it a bit."

"How d'you know?"

"A clove carnation."

"But I do like it--only--not very much."

He nodded solemnly.

"I knew you wouldn't."

Then a silence fell between them.  She had ceased to lean against
him, and he missed the cosy friendliness of it.  Now that their
voices and the cawings of the rooks had ceased, there was nothing
heard but the dry rustle of the leaves, and the plaintive cry of a
buzzard hawk hunting over the little tor across the river.  There
were nearly always two up there, quartering the sky.  To the boy it
was lovely, that silence--like Nature talking to you--Nature always
talked in silences.  The beasts, the birds, the insects, only
really showed themselves when you were still; you had to be awfully
quiet, too, for flowers and plants, otherwise you couldn't see the
real jolly separate life there was in them.  Even the boulders down
there, that old Godden thought had been washed up by the Flood,
never showed you what queer shapes they had, and let you feel close
to them, unless you were thinking of nothing else.  Sylvia, after
all, was better in that way than he had expected.  She could keep
quiet (he had thought girls hopeless); she was gentle, and it was
rather jolly to watch her.  Through the leaves there came the faint
far tinkle of the tea-bell.

She said: "We must get down."

It was much too jolly to go in, really.  But if she wanted her tea--
girls always wanted tea!  And, twisting the cord carefully round
the branch, he began to superintend her descent.  About to follow,
he heard her cry:

"Oh, Mark!  I'm stuck--I'm stuck!  I can't reach it with my foot!
I'm swinging!"  And he saw that she WAS swinging by her hands and
the cord.

"Let go; drop on to the branch below--the cord'll hold you straight
till you grab the trunk."

Her voice mounted piteously:

"I can't--I really can't--I should slip!"

He tied the cord, and slithered hastily to the branch below her;
then, bracing himself against the trunk, he clutched her round the
waist and knees; but the taut cord held her up, and she would not
come to anchor.  He could not hold her and untie the cord, which
was fast round her waist.  If he let her go with one hand, and got
out his knife, he would never be able to cut and hold her at the
same time.  For a moment he thought he had better climb up again
and slack off the cord, but he could see by her face that she was
getting frightened; he could feel it by the quivering of her body.

"If I heave you up," he said, "can you get hold again above?"  And,
without waiting for an answer, he heaved.  She caught hold
frantically.

"Hold on just for a second."

She did not answer, but he saw that her face had gone very white.
He snatched out his knife and cut the cord.  She clung just for
that moment, then came loose into his arms, and he hauled her to
him against the trunk.  Safe there, she buried her face on his
shoulder.  He began to murmur to her and smooth her softly, with
quite a feeling of its being his business to smooth her like this,
to protect her.  He knew she was crying, but she let no sound
escape, and he was very careful not to show that he knew, for fear
she should feel ashamed.  He wondered if he ought to kiss her.  At
last he did, on the top of her head, very gently.  Then she put up
her face and said she was a beast.  And he kissed her again on an
eyebrow.

After that she seemed all right, and very gingerly they descended
to the ground, where shadows were beginning to lengthen over the
fern and the sun to slant into their eyes.


XIII


The night after the wedding the boy stood at the window of his
pleasant attic bedroom, with one wall sloping, and a faint smell of
mice.  He was tired and excited, and his brain, full of pictures.
This was his first wedding, and he was haunted by a vision of his
sister's little white form, and her face with its starry eyes.  She
was gone--his no more!  How fearful the Wedding March had sounded
on that organ--that awful old wheezer; and the sermon!  One didn't
want to hear that sort of thing when one felt inclined to cry.
Even Gordy had looked rather boiled when he was giving her away.
With perfect distinctness he could still see the group before the
altar rails, just as if he had not been a part of it himself.  Cis
in her white, Sylvia in fluffy grey; his impassive brother-in-law's
tall figure; Gordy looking queer in a black coat, with a very
yellow face, and eyes still half-closed.  The rotten part of it all
had been that you wanted to be just FEELING, and you had to be
thinking of the ring, and your gloves, and whether the lowest
button of your white waistcoat was properly undone.  Girls could do
both, it seemed--Cis seemed to be seeing something wonderful all
the time, and Sylvia had looked quite holy.  He himself had been
too conscious of the rector's voice, and the sort of professional
manner with which he did it all, as if he were making up a
prescription, with directions how to take it.  And yet it was all
rather beautiful in a kind of fashion, every face turned one way,
and a tremendous hush--except for poor old Godden's blowing of his
nose with his enormous red handkerchief; and the soft darkness up
in the roof, and down in the pews; and the sunlight brightening the
South windows.  All the same, it would have been much jollier just
taking hands by themselves somewhere, and saying out before God
what they really felt--because, after all, God was everything,
everywhere, not only in stuffy churches.  That was how HE would
like to be married, out of doors on a starry night like this, when
everything felt wonderful all round you.  Surely God wasn't half as
small as people seemed always making Him--a sort of superior man a
little bigger than themselves!  Even the very most beautiful and
wonderful and awful things one could imagine or make, could only be
just nothing to a God who had a temple like the night out there.
But then you couldn't be married alone, and no girl would ever like
to be married without rings and flowers and dresses, and words that
made it all feel small and cosy!  Cis might have, perhaps, only she
wouldn't, because of not hurting other people's feelings; but
Sylvia--never--she would be afraid.  Only, of course, she was
young!  And the thread of his thoughts broke--and scattered like
beads from a string.

Leaning out, and resting his chin on his hands, he drew the night
air into his lungs.  Honeysuckle, or was it the scent of lilies
still?  The stars all out, and lots of owls to-night--four at
least.  What would night be like without owls and stars?  But that
was it--you never could think what things would be like if they
weren't just what and where they were.  You never knew what was
coming, either; and yet, when it came, it seemed as if nothing else
ever could have come.  That was queer-you could do anything you
liked until you'd done it, but when you HAD done it, then you knew,
of course, that you must always have had to . . .  What was that
light, below and to the left?  Whose room?  Old Tingle's--no, the
little spare room--Sylvia's!  She must be awake, then!  He leaned
far out, and whispered in the voice she had said was still furry:

"Sylvia!"

The light flickered, he could just see her head appear, with hair
all loose, and her face turning up to him.  He could only half see,
half imagine it, mysterious, blurry; and he whispered:

"Isn't this jolly?"

The whisper travelled back:

"Awfully."

"Aren't you sleepy?"

"No; are you?"

"Not a bit.  D'you hear the owls?"

"Rather."

"Doesn't it smell good?"

"Perfect.  Can you see me?"

"Only just, not too much.  Can you?"

"I can't see your nose.  Shall I get the candle?"

"No--that'd spoil it.  What are you sitting on?"

"The window sill."

"It doesn't twist your neck, does it?"

"No--o--only a little bit."

"Are you hungry?"

"Yes."

"Wait half a shake.  I'll let down some chocolate in my big bath
towel; it'll swing along to you--reach out."

A dim white arm reached out.

"Catch!  I say, you won't get cold?"

"Rather not."

"It's too jolly to sleep, isn't it?"

"Mark!"

"Yes."

"Which star is yours?  Mine is the white one over the top branch of
the big sycamore, from here."

"Mine is that twinkling red one over the summer house.  Sylvia!"

"Yes."

"Catch!"

"Oh!  I couldn't--what was it?"

"Nothing."

"No, but what WAS it?"

"Only my star.  It's caught in your hair."

"Oh!"

"Listen!"

Silence, then, until her awed whisper:

"What?"

And his floating down, dying away:

"CAVE!"

What had stirred--some window opened?  Cautiously he spied along
the face of the dim house.  There was no light anywhere, nor any
shifting blur of white at her window below.  All was dark, remote--
still sweet with the scent of something jolly.  And then he saw
what that something was.  All over the wall below his window white
jessamine was in flower--stars, not only in the sky.  Perhaps the
sky was really a field of white flowers; and God walked there, and
plucked the stars. . . .

The next morning there was a letter on his plate when he came down
to breakfast.  He couldn't open it with Sylvia on one side of him,
and old Tingle on the other.  Then with a sort of anger he did open
it.  He need not have been afraid.  It was written so that anyone
might have read; it told of a climb, of bad weather, said they were
coming home.  Was he relieved, disturbed, pleased at their coming
back, or only uneasily ashamed?  She had not got his second letter
yet.  He could feel old Tingle looking round at him with those
queer sharp twinkling eyes of hers, and Sylvia regarding him quite
frankly.  And conscious that he was growing red, he said to
himself: 'I won't!'  And did not.  In three days they would be at
Oxford.  Would they come on here at once?  Old Tingle was speaking.
He heard Sylvia answer: "No, I don't like 'bopsies.'  They're so
hard!"  It was their old name for high cheekbones.  Sylvia
certainly had none, her cheeks went softly up to her eyes.

"Do you, Mark?"

He said slowly:

"On some people."

"People who have them are strong-willed, aren't they?"

Was SHE--Anna--strong-willed?  It came to him that he did not know
at all what she was.

When breakfast was over and he had got away to his old greenhouse,
he had a strange, unhappy time.  He was a beast, he had not been
thinking of her half enough!  He took the letter out, and frowned
at it horribly.  Why could he not feel more?  What was the matter
with him?  Why was he such a brute--not to be thinking of her day
and night?  For long he stood, disconsolate, in the little dark
greenhouse among the images of his beasts, the letter in his hand.

He stole out presently, and got down to the river unobserved.
Comforting--that crisp, gentle sound of water; ever so comforting
to sit on a stone, very still, and wait for things to happen round
you.  You lost yourself that way, just became branches, and stones,
and water, and birds, and sky.  You did not feel such a beast.
Gordy would never understand why he did not care for fishing--one
thing trying to catch another--instead of watching and
understanding what things were.  You never got to the end of
looking into water, or grass or fern; always something queer and
new.  It was like that, too, with yourself, if you sat down and
looked properly--most awfully interesting to see things working in
your mind.

A soft rain had begun to fall, hissing gently on the leaves, but he
had still a boy's love of getting wet, and stayed where he was, on
the stone.  Some people saw fairies in woods and down in water, or
said they did; that did not seem to him much fun.  What was really
interesting was noticing that each thing was different from every
other thing, and what made it so; you must see that before you
could draw or model decently.  It was fascinating to see your
creatures coming out with shapes of their very own; they did that
without your understanding how.  But this vacation he was no good--
couldn't draw or model a bit!

A jay had settled about forty yards away, and remained in full
view, attending to his many-coloured feathers.  Of all things,
birds were the most fascinating!  He watched it a long time, and
when it flew on, followed it over the high wall up into the park.
He heard the lunch-bell ring in the far distance, but did not go
in.  So long as he was out there in the soft rain with the birds
and trees and other creatures, he was free from that unhappy
feeling of the morning.  He did not go back till nearly seven,
properly wet through, and very hungry.

All through dinner he noticed that Sylvia seemed to be watching
him, as if wanting to ask him something.  She looked very soft in
her white frock, open at the neck; and her hair almost the colour
of special moonlight, so goldy-pale; and he wanted her to
understand that it wasn't a bit because of her that he had been out
alone all day.  After dinner, when they were getting the table
ready to play 'red nines,' he did murmur:

"Did you sleep last night--after?"

She nodded fervently to that.

It was raining really hard now, swishing and dripping out in the
darkness, and he whispered:

"Our stars would be drowned to-night."

"Do you really think we have stars?"

"We might.  But mine's safe, of course; your hair IS jolly,
Sylvia."

She gazed at him, very sweet and surprised.


XIV


Anna did not receive the boy's letter in the Tyrol.  It followed
her to Oxford.  She was just going out when it came, and she took
it up with the mingled beatitude and almost sickening tremor that a
lover feels touching the loved one's letter.  She would not open it
in the street, but carried it all the way to the garden of a
certain College, and sat down to read it under the cedar-tree.
That little letter, so short, boyish, and dry, transported her
halfway to heaven.  She was to see him again at once, not to wait
weeks, with the fear that he would quite forget her!  Her husband
had said at breakfast that Oxford without 'the dear young clowns'
assuredly was charming, but Oxford 'full of tourists and other
strange bodies' as certainly was not.  Where should they go?  Thank
heaven, the letter could be shown him!  For all that, a little stab
of pain went through her that there was not one word which made it
unsuitable to show.  Still, she was happy.  Never had her favourite
College garden seemed so beautiful, with each tree and flower so
cared for, and the very wind excluded; never had the birds seemed
so tame and friendly.  The sun shone softly, even the clouds were
luminous and joyful.  She sat a long time, musing, and went back
forgetting all she had come out to do.  Having both courage and
decision, she did not leave the letter to burn a hole in her
corsets, but gave it to her husband at lunch, looking him in the
face, and saying carelessly:

"Providence, you see, answers your question."

He read it, raised his eyebrows, smiled, and, without looking up,
murmured:

"You wish to prosecute this romantic episode?"

Did he mean anything--or was it simply his way of putting things?

"I naturally want to be anywhere but here."

"Perhaps you would like to go alone?"

He said that, of course, knowing she could not say: Yes.  And she
answered simply: "No."

"Then let us both go--on Monday.  I will catch the young man's
trout; thou shalt catch--h'm!--he shall catch--What is it he
catches--trees?  Good!  That's settled."

And, three days later, without another word exchanged on the
subject, they started.

Was she grateful to him?  No.  Afraid of him?  No.  Scornful of
him?  Not quite.  But she was afraid of HERSELF, horribly.  How
would she ever be able to keep herself in hand, how disguise from
these people that she loved their boy?  It was her desperate mood
that she feared.  But since she so much wanted all the best for him
that life could give, surely she would have the strength to do
nothing that might harm him.  Yet she was afraid.

He was there at the station to meet them, in riding things and a
nice rough Norfolk jacket that she did not recognize, though she
thought she knew his clothes by heart; and as the train came slowly
to a standstill the memory of her last moment with him, up in his
room amid the luggage that she had helped to pack, very nearly
overcame her.  It seemed so hard to have to meet him coldly,
formally, to have to wait--who knew how long--for a minute with him
alone!  And he was so polite, so beautifully considerate, with all
the manners of a host; hoping she wasn't tired, hoping Mr. Stormer
had brought his fishing-rod, though they had lots, of course, they
could lend him; hoping the weather would be fine; hoping that they
wouldn't mind having to drive three miles, and busying himself
about their luggage.  All this when she just wanted to take him in
her arms and push his hair back from his forehead, and look at him!

He did not drive with them--he had thought they would be too
crowded--but followed, keeping quite close in the dust to point out
the scenery, mounted on a 'palfrey,' as her husband called the roan
with the black swish tail.

This countryside, so rich and yet a little wild, the independent-
looking cottages, the old dark cosy manor-house, all was very new
to one used to Oxford, and to London, and to little else of
England.  And all was delightful.  Even Mark's guardian seemed to
her delightful.  For Gordy, when absolutely forced to face an
unknown woman, could bring to the encounter a certain bluff
ingratiation.  His sister, too, Mrs. Doone, with her faded
gentleness, seemed soothing.

When Anna was alone in her room, reached by an unexpected little
stairway, she stood looking at its carved four-poster bed and the
wide lattice window with chintz curtains, and the flowers in a blue
bowl.  Yes, all was delightful.  And yet!  What was it?  What had
she missed?  Ah, she was a fool to fret!  It was only his anxiety
that they should be comfortable, his fear that he might betray
himself.  Out there those last few days--his eyes!  And now!  She
brooded earnestly over what dress she should put on.  She, who
tanned so quickly, had almost lost her sunburn in the week of
travelling and Oxford.  To-day her eyes looked tired, and she was
pale.  She was not going to disdain anything that might help.  She
had reached thirty-six last month, and he would be nineteen to-
morrow!  She decided on black.  In black she knew that her neck
looked whiter, and the colour of her eyes and hair stranger.  She
put on no jewellery, did not even pin a rose at her breast, took
white gloves.  Since her husband did not come to her room, she went
up the little stairway to his.  She surprised him ready dressed,
standing by the fireplace, smiling faintly.  What was he thinking
of, standing there with that smile?  Was there blood in him at all?

He inclined his head slightly and said:

"Good!  Chaste as the night!  Black suits you.  Shall we find our
way down to these savage halls?"

And they went down.

Everyone was already there, waiting.  A single neighbouring squire
and magistrate, by name Trusham, had been bidden, to make numbers
equal.

Dinner was announced; they went in.  At the round table in a
dining-room, all black oak, with many candles, and terrible
portraits of departed ancestors, Anna sat between the magistrate
and Gordy.  Mark was opposite, between a quaint-looking old lady
and a young girl who had not been introduced, a girl in white, with
very fair hair and very white skin, blue eyes, and lips a little
parted; a daughter evidently of the faded Mrs. Doone.  A girl like
a silvery moth, like a forget-me-not!  Anna found it hard to take
her eyes away from this girl's face; not that she admired her
exactly; pretty she was--yes; but weak, with those parted lips and
soft chin, and almost wistful look, as if her deep-blue half-eager
eyes were in spite of her.  But she was young--so young!  That was
why not to watch her seemed impossible.  "Sylvia Doone?"  Indeed!
Yes.  A soft name, a pretty name--and very like her!  Every time
her eyes could travel away from her duty to Squire Trusham, and to
Gordy (on both of whom she was clearly making an impression), she
gazed at this girl, sitting there by the boy, and whenever those
two young things smiled and spoke together she felt her heart
contract and hurt her.  Was THIS why that something had gone out of
his eyes?  Ah, she was foolish!  If every girl or woman the boy
knew was to cause such a feeling in her, what would life be like?
And her will hardened against her fears.  She was looking brilliant
herself; and she saw that the girl in her turn could not help
gazing at her eagerly, wistfully, a little bewildered--hatefully
young.  And the boy?  Slowly, surely, as a magnet draws, Anna could
feel that she was drawing him, could see him stealing chances to
look at her.  Once she surprised him full.  What troubled eyes!  It
was not the old adoring face; yet she knew from its expression that
she could make him want her--make him jealous--easily fire him with
her kisses, if she would.

And the dinner wore to an end.  Then came the moment when the girl
and she must meet under the eyes of the mother, and that sharp,
quaint-looking old governess.  It would be a hard moment, that!
And it came--a hard moment and a long one, for Gordy sat full span
over his wine.  But Anna had not served her time beneath the gaze
of upper Oxford for nothing; she managed to be charming, full of
interest and questions in her still rather foreign accent.  Miss
Doone--soon she became Sylvia--must show her all the treasures and
antiquities.  Was it too dark to go out just to look at the old
house by night?  Oh, no.  Not a bit.  There were goloshes in the
hall.  And they went, the girl leading, and talking of Anna knew
not what, so absorbed was she in thinking how for a moment, just a
moment, she could contrive to be with the boy alone.

It was not remarkable, this old house, but it was his home--might
some day perhaps be his.  And houses at night were strangely alive
with their window eyes.

"That is my room," the girl said, "where the jessamine is--you can
just see it.  Mark's is above--look, under where the eave hangs
out, away to the left.  The other night--"

"Yes; the other night?"

"Oh, I don't--!  Listen.  That's an owl.  We have heaps of owls.
Mark likes them.  I don't, much."

Always Mark!

"He's awfully keen, you see, about all beasts and birds--he models
them.  Shall I show you his workshop?--it's an old greenhouse.
Here, you can see in."

There through the glass Anna indeed could just see the boy's quaint
creations huddling in the dark on a bare floor, a grotesque company
of small monsters.  She murmured:

"Yes, I see them, but I won't really look unless he brings me
himself."

"Oh, he's sure to.  They interest him more than anything in the
world."

For all her cautious resolutions Anna could not for the life of her
help saying:

"What, more than you?"

The girl gave her a wistful stare before she answered:

"Oh! I don't count much."

Anna laughed, and took her arm.  How soft and young it felt!  A
pang went through her heart, half jealous, half remorseful.

"Do you know," she said, "that you are very sweet?"

The girl did not answer.

"Are you his cousin?"

"No.  Gordy is only Mark's uncle by marriage; my mother is Gordy's
sister--so I'm nothing."

Nothing!

"I see--just what you English call 'a connection.'"

They were silent, seeming to examine the night; then the girl said:

"I wanted to see you awfully.  You're not like what I thought."

"Oh!  And what DID you think?"

"I thought you would have dark eyes, and Venetian red hair, and not
be quite so tall.  Of course, I haven't any imagination."

They were at the door again when the girl said that, and the hall
light was falling on her; her slip of a white figure showed clear.
Young--how young she looked!  Everything she said--so young!

And Anna murmured: "And you are--more than I thought, too."

Just then the men came out from the dining-room; her husband with
the look on his face that denoted he had been well listened to;
Squire Trusham laughing as a man does who has no sense of humour;
Gordy having a curly, slightly asphyxiated air; and the boy his
pale, brooding look, as though he had lost touch with his
surroundings.  He wavered towards her, seemed to lose himself, went
and sat down by the old governess.  Was it because he did not dare
to come up to her, or only because he saw the old lady sitting
alone?  It might well be that.

And the evening, so different from what she had dreamed of, closed
in.  Squire Trusham was gone in his high dog-cart, with his famous
mare whose exploits had entertained her all through dinner.  Her
candle had been given her; she had said good-night to all but Mark.
What should she do when she had his hand in hers?  She would be
alone with him in that grasp, whose strength no one could see.  And
she did not know whether to clasp it passionately, or to let it go
coolly back to its owner; whether to claim him or to wait.  But she
was unable to help pressing it feverishly.  At once in his face she
saw again that troubled look; and her heart smote her.  She let it
go, and that she might not see him say good-night to the girl,
turned and mounted to her room.

Fully dressed, she flung herself on the bed, and there lay, her
handkerchief across her mouth, gnawing at its edges.


XV


Mark's nineteenth birthday rose in grey mist, slowly dropped its
veil to the grass, and shone clear and glistening.  He woke early.
From his window he could see nothing in the steep park but the soft
blue-grey, balloon-shaped oaks suspended one above the other among
the round-topped boulders.  It was in early morning that he always
got his strongest feeling of wanting to model things; then and
after dark, when, for want of light, it was no use.  This morning
he had the craving badly, and the sense of not knowing how weighed
down his spirit.  His drawings, his models--they were all so bad,
so fumbly.  If only this had been his twenty-first birthday, and he
had his money, and could do what he liked.  He would not stay in
England.  He would be off to Athens, or Rome, or even to Paris, and
work till he COULD do something.  And in his holidays he would
study animals and birds in wild countries where there were plenty
of them, and you could watch them in their haunts.  It was stupid
having to stay in a place like Oxford; but at the thought of what
Oxford meant, his roaming fancy, like a bird hypnotized by a hawk,
fluttered, stayed suspended, and dived back to earth.  And that
feeling of wanting to make things suddenly left him.  It was as
though he had woken up, his real self; then--lost that self again.
Very quietly he made his way downstairs.  The garden door was not
shuttered, not even locked--it must have been forgotten overnight.
Last night!  He had never thought he would feel like this when she
came--so bewildered, and confused; drawn towards her, but by
something held back.  And he felt impatient, angry with himself,
almost with her.  Why could he not be just simply happy, as this
morning was happy?  He got his field-glasses and searched the
meadow that led down to the river.  Yes, there were several rabbits
out.  With the white marguerites and the dew cobwebs, it was all
moon-flowery and white; and the rabbits being there made it
perfect.  He wanted one badly to model from, and for a moment was
tempted to get his rook rifle--but what was the good of a dead
rabbit--besides, they looked so happy!  He put the glasses down and
went towards his greenhouse to get a drawing block, thinking to sit
on the wall and make a sort of Midsummer Night's Dream sketch of
flowers and rabbits.  Someone was there, bending down and doing
something to his creatures.  Who had the cheek?  Why, it was
Sylvia--in her dressing-gown!  He grew hot, then cold, with anger.
He could not bear anyone in that holy place!  It was hateful to
have his things even looked at; and she--she seemed to be fingering
them.  He pulled the door open with a jerk, and said: "What are you
doing?"  He was indeed so stirred by righteous wrath that he hardly
noticed the gasp she gave, and the collapse of her figure against
the wall.  She ran past him, and vanished without a word.  He went
up to his creatures and saw that she had placed on the head of each
one of them a little sprig of jessamine flower.  Why!  It was
idiotic!  He could see nothing at first but the ludicrousness of
flowers on the heads of his beasts!  Then the desperation of this
attempt to imagine something graceful, something that would give
him pleasure touched him; for he saw now that this was a birthday
decoration.  From that it was only a second before he was horrified
with himself.  Poor little Sylvia!  What a brute he was!  She had
plucked all that jessamine, hung out of her window and risked
falling to get hold of it; and she had woken up early and come down
in her dressing-gown just to do something that she thought he would
like!  Horrible--what he had done!  Now, when it was too late, he
saw, only too clearly, her startled white face and quivering lips,
and the way she had shrunk against the wall.  How pretty she had
looked in her dressing-gown with her hair all about her, frightened
like that!  He would do anything now to make up to her for having
been such a perfect beast!  The feeling, always a little with him,
that he must look after her--dating, no doubt, from days when he
had protected her from the bulls that were not there; and the
feeling of her being so sweet and decent to him always; and some
other feeling too--all these suddenly reached poignant climax.  He
simply must make it up to her!  He ran back into the house and
stole upstairs.  Outside her room he listened with all his might,
but could hear nothing; then tapped softly with one nail, and,
putting his mouth to the keyhole, whispered: "Sylvia!"  Again and
again he whispered her name.  He even tried the handle, meaning to
open the door an inch, but it was bolted.  Once he thought he heard
a noise like sobbing, and this made him still more wretched.  At
last he gave it up; she would not come, would not be consoled.  He
deserved it, he knew, but it was very hard.  And dreadfully
dispirited he went up to his room, took a bit of paper, and tried
to write:


"DEAREST SYLVIA,

"It was most awfully sweet of you to put your stars on my beasts.
It was just about the most sweet thing you could have done.  I am
an awful brute, but, of course, if I had only known what you were
doing, I should have loved it.  Do forgive me; I deserve it, I
know--only it IS my birthday.

"Your sorrowful

"MARK."


He took this down, slipped it under her door, tapped so that she
might notice it, and stole away.  It relieved his mind a little,
and he went downstairs again.

Back in the greenhouse, sitting on a stool, he ruefully
contemplated those chapletted beasts.  They consisted of a crow, a
sheep, a turkey, two doves, a pony, and sundry fragments.  She had
fastened the jessamine sprigs to the tops of their heads by a tiny
daub of wet clay, and had evidently been surprised trying to put a
sprig into the mouth of one of the doves, for it hung by a little
thread of clay from the beak.  He detached it and put it in his
buttonhole.  Poor little Sylvia! she took things awfully to heart.
He would be as nice as ever he could to her all day.  And,
balancing on his stool, he stared fixedly at the wall against which
she had fallen back; the line of her soft chin and throat seemed
now to be his only memory.  It was very queer how he could see
nothing but that, the way the throat moved, swallowed--so white, so
soft.  And HE had made it go like that!  It seemed an unconscionable
time till breakfast.

As the hour approached he haunted the hall, hoping she might be
first down.  At last he heard footsteps, and waited, hidden behind
the door of the empty dining-room, lest at sight of him she should
turn back.  He had rehearsed what he was going to do--bend down and
kiss her hand and say: "Dulcinea del Toboso is the most beautiful
lady in the world, and I the most unfortunate knight upon the
earth," from his favourite passage out of his favourite book, 'Don
Quixote.'  She would surely forgive him then, and his heart would
no longer hurt him.  Certainly she could never go on making him so
miserable if she knew his feelings!  She was too soft and gentle
for that.  Alas! it was not Sylvia who came; but Anna, fresh from
sleep, with her ice-green eyes and bright hair; and in sudden
strange antipathy to her, that strong, vivid figure, he stood dumb.
And this first lonely moment, which he had so many times in fancy
spent locked in her arms, passed without even a kiss; for quickly
one by one the others came.  But of Sylvia only news through Mrs.
Doone that she had a headache, and was staying in bed.  Her present
was on the sideboard, a book called 'Sartor Resartus.'  "Mark--from
Sylvia, August 1st, 1880," together with Gordy's cheque, Mrs.
Doone's pearl pin, old Tingle's 'Stones of Venice,' and one other
little parcel wrapped in tissue-paper--four ties of varying shades
of green, red, and blue, hand-knitted in silk--a present of how
many hours made short by the thought that he would wear the produce
of that clicking.  He did not fail in outer gratitude, but did he
realize what had been knitted into those ties?  Not then.

Birthdays, like Christmas days, were made for disenchantment.
Always the false gaiety of gaiety arranged--always that pistol to
the head: 'Confound you! enjoy yourself!'  How could he enjoy
himself with the thought of Sylvia in her room, made ill by his
brutality!  The vision of her throat working, swallowing her grief,
haunted him like a little white, soft spectre all through the long
drive out on to the moor, and the picnic in the heather, and the
long drive home--haunted him so that when Anna touched or looked at
him he had no spirit to answer, no spirit even to try and be with
her alone, but almost a dread of it instead.

And when at last they were at home again, and she whispered:

"What is it?  What have I done?" he could only mutter:

"Nothing!  Oh, nothing!  It's only that I've been a brute!"

At that enigmatic answer she might well search his face.

"Is it my husband?"

He could answer that, at all events.

"Oh, no!"

"What is it, then?  Tell me."

They were standing in the inner porch, pretending to examine the
ancestral chart--dotted and starred with dolphins and little full-
rigged galleons sailing into harbours--which always hung just
there.

"Tell me, Mark; I don't like to suffer!"

What could he say, since he did not know himself?  He stammered,
tried to speak, could not get anything out.

"Is it that girl?"

Startled, he looked away, and said:

"Of course not."

She shivered, and went into the house.  But he stayed, staring at
the chart with a dreadful stirred-up feeling--of shame and
irritation, pity, impatience, fear, all mixed.  What had he done,
said, lost?  It was that horrid feeling of when one has not been
kind and not quite true, yet might have been kinder if one had been
still less true.  Ah! but it was all so mixed up.  It felt all
bleak, too, and wintry in him, as if he had suddenly lost
everybody's love.  Then he was conscious of his tutor.

"Ah! friend Lennan--looking deeply into the past from the less
romantic present?  Nice things, those old charts.  The dolphins are
extremely jolly."

It was difficult to remember not to be ill-mannered then.  Why did
Stormer jeer like that?  He just managed to answer:

"Yes, sir; I wish we had some now."

"There are so many moons we wish for, Lennan, and they none of them
come tumbling down."

The voice was almost earnest, and the boy's resentment fled.  He
felt sorry, but why he did not know.

"In the meantime," he heard his tutor say, "let us dress for
dinner."

When he came down to the drawing-room, Anna in her moonlight-
coloured frock was sitting on the sofa talking to--Sylvia.  He kept
away from them; they could neither of them want him.  But it did
seem odd to him, who knew not too much concerning women, that she
could be talking so gaily, when only half an hour ago she had said:
"Is it that girl?"

He sat next her at dinner.  Again it was puzzling that she should
be laughing so serenely at Gordy's stories.  Did the whispering in
the porch, then, mean nothing?  And Sylvia would not look at him;
he felt sure that she turned her eyes away simply because she knew
he was going to look in her direction.  And this roused in him a
sore feeling--everything that night seemed to rouse that feeling--
of injustice; he was cast out, and he could not tell why.  He had
not meant to hurt either of them!  Why should they both want to
hurt him so?  And presently there came to him a feeling that he did
not care: Let them treat him as they liked!  There were other
things besides love!  If they did not want him--he did not want
them!  And he hugged this reckless, unhappy, don't-care feeling to
him with all the abandonment of youth.

But even birthdays come to an end.  And moods and feelings that
seem so desperately real die in the unreality of sleep.


XVI


If to the boy that birthday was all bewildered disillusionment, to
Anna it was verily slow torture; SHE found no relief in thinking
that there were things in life other than love.  But next morning
brought readjustment, a sense of yesterday's extravagance, a
renewal of hope.  Impossible surely that in one short fortnight she
had lost what she had made so sure of!  She had only to be
resolute.  Only to grasp firmly what was hers.  After all these
empty years was she not to have her hour?  To sit still meekly and
see it snatched from her by a slip of a soft girl?  A thousand
times, no!  And she watched her chance.  She saw him about noon
sally forth towards the river, with his rod.  She had to wait a
little, for Gordy and his bailiff were down there by the tennis
lawn, but they soon moved on.  She ran out then to the park gate.
Once through that she felt safe; her husband, she knew, was working
in his room; the girl somewhere invisible; the old governess still
at her housekeeping; Mrs. Doone writing letters.  She felt full of
hope and courage.  This old wild tangle of a park, that she had not
yet seen, was beautiful--a true trysting-place for fauns and
nymphs, with its mossy trees and boulders and the high bracken.
She kept along under the wall in the direction of the river, but
came to no gate, and began to be afraid that she was going wrong.
She could hear the river on the other side, and looked for some
place where she could climb and see exactly where she was.  An old
ash-tree tempted her.  Scrambling up into its fork, she could just
see over.  There was the little river within twenty yards, its
clear dark water running between thick foliage.  On its bank lay a
huge stone balanced on another stone still more huge.  And with his
back to this stone stood the boy, his rod leaning beside him.  And
there, on the ground, her arms resting on her knees, her chin on
her hands, that girl sat looking up.  How eager his eyes now--how
different from the brooding eyes of yesterday!

"So, you see, that was all.  You might forgive me, Sylvia!"

And to Anna it seemed verily as if those two young faces formed
suddenly but one--the face of youth.

If she had stayed there looking for all time, she could not have
had graven on her heart a vision more indelible.  Vision of Spring,
of all that was gone from her for ever!  She shrank back out of the
fork of the old ash-tree, and, like a stricken beast, went
hurrying, stumbling away, amongst the stones and bracken.  She ran
thus perhaps a quarter of a mile, then threw up her arms, fell down
amongst the fern, and lay there on her face.  At first her heart
hurt her so that she felt nothing but that physical pain.  If she
could have died!  But she knew it was nothing but breathlessness.
It left her, and that which took its place she tried to drive away
by pressing her breast against the ground, by clutching the stalks
of the bracken--an ache, an emptiness too dreadful!  Youth to
youth!  He was gone from her--and she was alone again!  She did not
cry.  What good in crying?  But gusts of shame kept sweeping
through her; shame and rage.  So this was all she was worth!  The
sun struck hot on her back in that lair of tangled fern, where she
had fallen; she felt faint and sick.  She had not known till now
quite what this passion for the boy had meant to her; how much of
her very belief in herself was bound up with it; how much clinging
to her own youth.  What bitterness!  One soft slip of a white girl--
one YOUNG thing--and she had become as nothing!  But was that
true?  Could she not even now wrench him back to her with the
passion that this child knew nothing of!  Surely!  Oh, surely!  Let
him but once taste the rapture she could give him!  And at that
thought she ceased clutching at the bracken stalks, lying as still
as the very stones around her.  Could she not?  Might she not, even
now?  And all feeling, except just a sort of quivering, deserted
her--as if she had fallen into a trance.  Why spare this girl?  Why
falter?  She was first!  He had been hers out there.  And she still
had the power to draw him.  At dinner the first evening she had
dragged his gaze to her, away from that girl--away from youth, as a
magnet draws steel.  She could still bind him with chains that for
a little while at all events he would not want to break!  Bind him?
Hateful word!  Take him, hankering after what she could not give
him--youth, white innocence, Spring?  It would be infamous,
infamous!  She sprang up from the fern, and ran along the hillside,
not looking where she went, stumbling among the tangled growth, in
and out of the boulders, till she once more sank breathless on to a
stone.  It was bare of trees just here, and she could see, across
the river valley, the high larch-crowned tor on the far side.  The
sky was clear--the sun bright.  A hawk was wheeling over that hill;
far up, very near the blue!  Infamous!  She could not do that!
Could not drug him, drag him to her by his senses, by all that was
least high in him, when she wished for him all the finest things
that life could give, as if she had been his mother.  She could
not.  It would be wicked!  In that moment of intense spiritual
agony, those two down there in the sun, by the grey stone and the
dark water, seemed guarded from her, protected.  The girl's white
flower-face trembling up, the boy's gaze leaping down!  Strange
that a heart which felt that, could hate at the same moment that
flower-face, and burn to kill with kisses that eagerness in the
boy's eyes.  The storm in her slowly passed.  And she prayed just
to feel nothing.  It was natural that she should lose her hour!
Natural that her thirst should go unslaked, and her passion never
bloom; natural that youth should go to youth, this boy to his own
kind, by the law of--love.  The breeze blowing down the valley
fanned her cheeks, and brought her a faint sensation of relief.
Nobility!  Was it just a word?  Or did those that gave up happiness
feel noble?

She wandered for a long time in the park.  Not till late afternoon
did she again pass out by the gate, through which she had entered,
full of hope.  She met no one before she reached her room; and
there, to be safe, took refuge in her bed.  She dreaded only lest
the feeling of utter weariness should leave her.  She wanted no
vigour of mind or body till she was away from here.  She meant
neither to eat nor drink; only to sleep, if she could.  To-morrow,
if there were any early train, she could be gone before she need
see anyone; her husband must arrange.  As to what he would think,
and she could say--time enough to decide that.  And what did it
matter?  The one vital thing now was not to see the boy, for she
could not again go through hours of struggle like those.  She rang
the bell, and sent the startled maid with a message to her husband.
And while she waited for him to come, her pride began revolting.
She must not let him see.  That would be horrible.  And slipping
out of bed she got a handkerchief and the eau-de-Cologne flask, and
bandaged her forehead.  He came almost instantly, entering in his
quick, noiseless way, and stood looking at her.  He did not ask
what was the matter, but simply waited.  And never before had she
realized so completely how he began, as it were, where she left
off; began on a plane from which instinct and feeling were as
carefully ruled out as though they had been blasphemous.  She
summoned all her courage, and said: "I went into the park; the sun
must have been too hot.  I should like to go home to-morrow, if you
don't mind.  I can't bear not feeling well in other people's
houses."

She was conscious of a smile flickering over his face; then it grew
grave.

"Ah!" he said; "yes.  The sun, a touch of that will last some days.
Will you be fit to travel, though?"

She had a sudden conviction that he knew all about it, but that--
since to know all about it was to feel himself ridiculous--he had
the power of making himself believe that he knew nothing.  Was this
fine of him, or was it hateful?

She closed her eyes and said:

"My head is bad, but I SHALL be able.  Only I don't want a fuss
made.  Could we go by a train before they are down?"

She heard him say:

"Yes.  That will have its advantages."

There was not the faintest sound now, but of course he was still
there.  In that dumb, motionless presence was all her future.  Yes,
that would be her future--a thing without feeling, and without
motion.  A fearful curiosity came on her to look at it.  She opened
her gaze.  He was still standing just as he had been, his eyes
fixed on her.  But one hand, on the edge of his coat pocket--out of
the picture, as it were--was nervously closing and unclosing.  And
suddenly she felt pity.  Not for her future--which must be like
that; but for him.  How dreadful to have grown so that all emotion
was exiled--how dreadful!  And she said gently:

"I am sorry, Harold."

As if he had heard something strange and startling, his eyes
dilated in a curious way, he buried that nervous hand in his
pocket, turned, and went out.


XVII


When young Mark came on Sylvia by the logan-stone, it was less
surprising to him than if he had not known she was there--having
watched her go.  She was sitting, all humped together, brooding
over the water, her sunbonnet thrown back; and that hair, in which
his star had caught, shining faint-gold under the sun.  He came on
her softly through the grass, and, when he was a little way off,
thought it best to halt.  If he startled her she might run away,
and he would not have the heart to follow.  How still she was, lost
in her brooding!  He wished he could see her face.  He spoke at
last, gently:

"Sylvia! . . .  Would you mind?"

And, seeing that she did not move, he went up to her.  Surely she
could not still be angry with him!

"Thanks most awfully for that book you gave me--it looks splendid!"

She made no answer.  And leaning his rod against the stone, he
sighed.  That silence of hers seemed to him unjust; what was it she
wanted him to say or do?  Life was not worth living, if it was to
be all bottled up like this.

"I never meant to hurt you.  I hate hurting people.  It's only that
my beasts are so bad--I can't bear people to see them--especially
you--I want to please you--I do really.  So, you see, that was all.
You MIGHT forgive me, Sylvia!"

Something over the wall, a rustling, a scattering in the fern--
deer, no doubt!  And again he said eagerly, softly:

"You might be nice to me, Sylvia; you really might."

Very quickly, turning her head away, she said:

"It isn't that any more.  It's--it's something else."

"What else?"

"Nothing--only, that I don't count--now--"

He knelt down beside her.  What did she mean?  But he knew well
enough.

"Of course, you count!  Most awfully!  Oh, don't be unhappy!  I
hate people being unhappy.  Don't be unhappy, Sylvia!"  And he
began gently to stroke her arm.  It was all strange and troubled
within him; one thing only plain--he must not admit anything!  As
if reading that thought, her blue eyes seemed suddenly to search
right into him.  Then she pulled some blades of grass, and began
plaiting them.

"SHE counts."

Ah!  He was not going to say: She doesn't!  It would be caddish to
say that.  Even if she didn't count--Did she still?--it would be
mean and low.  And in his eyes just then there was the look that
had made his tutor compare him to a lion cub in trouble.

Sylvia was touching his arm.

"Mark!"

"Yes."

"Don't!"

He got up and took his rod.  What was the use?  He could not stay
there with her, since he could not--must not speak.

"Are you going?"

"Yes."

"Are you angry?  PLEASE don't be angry with me."

He felt a choke in his throat, bent down to her hand, and kissed
it; then shouldered his rod, and marched away.  Looking back once,
he saw her still sitting there, gazing after him, forlorn, by that
great stone.  It seemed to him, then, there was nowhere he could
go; nowhere except among the birds and beasts and trees, who did
not mind even if you were all mixed up and horrible inside.  He lay
down in the grass on the bank.  He could see the tiny trout moving
round and round the stones; swallows came all about him, flying
very low; a hornet, too, bore him company for a little.  But he
could take interest in nothing; it was as if his spirit were in
prison.  It would have been nice, indeed, to be that water, never
staying, passing, passing; or wind, touching everything, never
caught.  To be able to do nothing without hurting someone--that was
what was so ghastly.  If only one were like a flower, that just
sprang up and lived its life all to itself, and died.  But whatever
he did, or said now, would be like telling lies, or else being
cruel.  The only thing was to keep away from people.  And yet how
keep away from his own guests?

He went back to the house for lunch, but both those guests were
out, no one seemed quite to know where.  Restless, unhappy,
puzzled, he wandered round and about all the afternoon.  Just
before dinner he was told of Mrs. Stormer's not being well, and
that they would be leaving to-morrow.  Going--after three days!
That plunged him deeper into his strange and sorrowful confusion.
He was reduced now to a complete brooding silence.  He knew he was
attracting attention, but could not help it.  Several times during
dinner he caught Gordy's eyes fixed on him, from under those puffy
half-closed lids, with asphyxiated speculation.  But he simply
COULD not talk--everything that came into his mind to say seemed
false.  Ah! it was a sad evening--with its glimmering vision into
another's sore heart, its confused gnawing sense of things broken,
faith betrayed; and yet always the perplexed wonder--"How could I
have helped it?"  And always Sylvia's wistful face that he tried
not to look at.

He stole out, leaving Gordy and his tutor still over their wine,
and roamed about the garden a long time, listening sadly to the
owls.  It was a blessing to get upstairs, though of course he would
not sleep.

But he did sleep, all through a night of many dreams, in the last
of which he was lying on a mountain side, Anna looking down into
his eyes, and bending her face to his.  He woke just as her lips
touched him.  Still under the spell of that troubling dream, he
became conscious of the sound of wheels and horses' hoofs on the
gravel, and sprang out of bed.  There was the waggonette moving
from the door, old Godden driving, luggage piled up beside him, and
the Stormers sitting opposite each other in the carriage.  Going
away like that--having never even said good-bye!  For a moment he
felt as people must when they have unwittingly killed someone--
utterly stunned and miserable.  Then he dashed into his clothes.
He would not let her go thus!  He would--he must--see her again!
What had he done that she should go like this?  He rushed
downstairs.  The hall was empty; nineteen minutes to eight!  The
train left at eight o'clock.  Had he time to saddle Bolero?  He
rushed round to the stables; but the cob was out, being shoed.  He
would--he must get there in time.  It would show her anyway that he
was not quite a cad.  He walked till the drive curved, then began
running hard.  A quarter of a mile, and already he felt better, not
so miserable and guilty; it was something to feel you had a tough
job in hand, all your work cut out--something to have to think of
economizing strength, picking out the best going, keeping out of
the sun, saving your wind uphill, flying down any slope.  It was
cool still, and the dew had laid the dust; there was no traffic and
scarcely anyone to look back and gape as he ran by.  What he would
do, if he got there in time--how explain this mad three-mile run--
he did not think.  He passed a farm that he knew was just half-way.
He had left his watch.  Indeed, he had put on only his trousers,
shirt, and Norfolk jacket; no tie, no hat, not even socks under his
tennis shoes, and he was as hot as fire, with his hair flying back--
a strange young creature indeed for anyone to meet.  But he had
lost now all feeling, save the will to get there.  A flock of sheep
came out of a field into the lane.  He pushed through them somehow,
but they lost him several seconds.  More than a mile still; and he
was blown, and his legs beginning to give!  Downhill indeed they
went of their own accord, but there was the long run-in, quite
level; and he could hear the train, now slowly puffing its way
along the valley.  Then, in spite of exhaustion, his spirit rose.
He would not go in looking like a scarecrow, utterly done, and make
a scene.  He must pull himself together at the end, and stroll in--
as if he had come for fun.  But how--seeing that at any moment he
felt he might fall flat in the dust, and stay there for ever!  And,
as he ran, he made little desperate efforts to mop his face, and
brush his clothes.  There were the gates, at last--two hundred
yards away.  The train, he could hear no longer.  It must be
standing in the station.  And a sob came from his overdriven lungs.
He heard the guard's whistle as he reached the gates.  Instead of
making for the booking-office, he ran along the paling, where an
entrance to the goods'-shed was open, and dashing through he fell
back against the honeysuckle.  The engine was just abreast of him;
he snatched at his sleeve and passed it over his face, to wipe the
sweat away.  Everything was blurred.  He must see--surely he had
not come in time just not to see!  He pushed his hands over his
forehead and hair, and spied up dizzily at the slowly passing
train.  She was there, at a window!  Standing, looking out!  He
dared not step forward, for fear of falling, but he put out his
hand--She saw him.  Yes, she saw him!  Wasn't she going to make a
sign?  Not one?  And suddenly he saw her tear at her dress, pluck
something out, and throw it.  It fell close to his feet.  He did
not pick it up--he wanted to see her face till she was gone.  It
looked wonderful--very proud, and pale.  She put her hand up to her
lips.  Then everything went blurred again and when he could see
once more, the train had vanished.  But at his feet was what she
had thrown.  He picked it up!  All dry and dark, it was the flower
she had given him in the Tyrol, and stolen back from his
buttonhole.

Creeping out, past the goods'-shed, he made his way to a field, and
lay down with his face pressed to that withered thing which still
had its scent. . . .


The asphyxiated speculation in his guardian's eyes had not been
without significance.  Mark did not go back to Oxford.  He went
instead to Rome--to live in his sister's house, and attend a school
of sculpture.  That was the beginning of a time when nothing
counted except his work.

To Anna he wrote twice, but received no answer.  From his tutor he
had one little note:


"MY DEAR LENNAN,

"So!  You abandon us for Art?  Ah! well--it was your moon, if I
remember--one of them.  A worthy moon--a little dusty in these
days--a little in her decline--but to you no doubt a virgin
goddess, whose hem, etc.

"We shall retain the friendliest memories of you in spite of your
defection.

"Once your tutor and still your friend,

"HAROLD STORMER."


After that vacation it was long--very long before he saw Sylvia
again.



PART II

SUMMER


I


Gleam of a thousand lights; clack and mutter of innumerable voices,
laughter, footsteps; hiss and rumble of passing trains taking
gamblers back to Nice or Mentone; fevered wailing from the violins
of four fiddlers with dark-white skins outside the cafe; and above,
around, beyond, the dark sky, and the dark mountains, and the dark
sea, like some great dark flower to whose heart is clinging a
jewelled beetle.  So was Monte Carlo on that May night of 1887.

But Mark Lennan, at one of the little marble-topped tables, was in
too great maze and exaltation of spirit and of senses to be
conscious of its glare and babel, even of its beauty.  He sat so
very still that his neighbours, with the instinctive aversion of
the human creature to what is too remote from its own mood, after
one good stare, turned their eyes away, as from something
ludicrous, almost offensive.

He was lost, indeed, in memory of the minutes just gone by.  For it
had come at last, after all these weeks of ferment, after all this
strange time of perturbation.

Very stealthily it had been creeping on him, ever since that chance
introduction nearly a year ago, soon after he settled down in
London, following those six years of Rome and Paris.  First the
merest friendliness, because she was so nice about his work; then
respectful admiration, because she was so beautiful; then pity,
because she was so unhappy in her marriage.  If she had been happy,
he would have fled.  The knowledge that she had been unhappy long
before he knew her had kept his conscience still.  And at last one
afternoon she said: "Ah! if you come out there too!"  Marvelously
subtle, the way that one little outslipped saying had worked in
him, as though it had a life of its own--like a strange bird that
had flown into the garden of his heart, and established itself with
its new song and flutterings, its new flight, its wistful and ever
clearer call.  That and one moment, a few days later in her London
drawing-room, when he had told her that he WAS coming, and she did
not, could not, he felt, look at him.  Queer, that nothing
momentous said, done--or even left undone--had altered all the
future!

And so she had gone with her uncle and aunt, under whose wing one
might be sure she would meet with no wayward or exotic happenings.
And he had received from her this little letter:


"HOTEL COEUR D'OR,

"MONTE CARLO.

"MY DEAR MARK,

"We've arrived.  It is so good to be in the sun.  The flowers are
wonderful.  I am keeping Gorbio and Roquebrune till you come.

"Your friend,

"OLIVE CRAMIER."


That letter was the single clear memory he had of the time between
her going and his following.  He received it one afternoon, sitting
on an old low garden wall with the spring sun shining on him
through apple-trees in blossom, and a feeling as if all the desire
of the world lay before him, and he had but to stretch out his arms
to take it.

Then confused unrest, all things vague; till at the end of his
journey he stepped out of the train at Beaulieu with a furiously
beating heart.  But why?  Surely he had not expected her to come
out from Monte Carlo to meet him!

A week had gone by since then in one long effort to be with her and
appear to others as though he did not greatly wish to be; two
concerts, two walks with her alone, when all that he had said
seemed as nothing said, and all her sayings but ghosts of what he
wished to hear; a week of confusion, day and night, until, a few
minutes ago, her handkerchief had fallen from her glove on to the
dusty road, and he had picked it up and put it to his lips.
Nothing could take away the look she had given him then.  Nothing
could ever again separate her from him utterly.  She had confessed
in it to the same sweet, fearful trouble that he himself was
feeling.  She had not spoken, but he had seen her lips part, her
breast rise and fall.  And HE had not spoken.  What was the use of
words?

He felt in the pocket of his coat.  There, against his fingers, was
that wisp of lawn and lace, soft, yet somehow alive; and stealthily
he took it out.  The whole of her, with her fragrance, seemed
pressed to his face in the touch of that lawn border, roughened by
little white stars.  More secretly than ever he put it back; and
for the first time looked round.  These people!  They belonged to a
world that he had left.  They gave him the same feeling that her
uncle and aunt had given him just now, when they said good-night,
following her into their hotel.  That good Colonel, that good Mrs.
Ercott!  The very concretion of the world he had been brought up
in, of the English point of view; symbolic figures of health,
reason, and the straight path, on which at that moment, seemingly,
he had turned his back.  The Colonel's profile, ruddy through its
tan, with grey moustache guiltless of any wax, his cheery, high-
pitched: "Good-night, young Lennan!"  His wife's curly smile, her
flat, cosy, confidential voice--how strange and remote they had
suddenly become!  And all these people here, chattering, drinking--
how queer and far away!  Or was it just that he was queer and
remote to them?

And getting up from his table, he passed the fiddlers with the
dark-white skins, out into the Place.


II


He went up the side streets to the back of her hotel, and stood by
the railings of the garden--one of those hotel gardens which exist
but to figure in advertisements, with its few arid palms, its paths
staring white between them, and a fringe of dusty lilacs and
mimosas.

And there came to him the oddest feeling--that he had been there
before, peering through blossoms at those staring paths and
shuttered windows.  A scent of wood-smoke was abroad, and some dry
plant rustled ever so faintly in what little wind was stirring.
What was there of memory in this night, this garden?  Some dark
sweet thing, invisible, to feel whose presence was at once ecstasy,
and the irritation of a thirst that will not be quenched.

And he walked on.  Houses, houses!  At last he was away from them,
alone on the high road, beyond the limits of Monaco.  And walking
thus through the night he had thoughts that he imagined no one had
ever had before him.  The knowledge that she loved him had made
everything seem very sacred and responsible.  Whatever he did, he
must not harm her.  Women were so helpless!

For in spite of six years of art in Rome and Paris, he still had a
fastidious reverence for women.  If she had loved her husband she
would have been safe enough from him; but to be bound to a
companionship that she gave unwillingly--this had seemed to him
atrocious, even before he loved her.  How could any husband ask
that?  Have so little pride--so little pity?  The unpardonable
thing!  What was there to respect in such a marriage?  Only, he
must not do her harm!  But now that her eyes had said, I love you!--
What then?  It was simply miraculous to know THAT, under the stars
of this warm Southern night, burning its incense of trees and
flowers!

Climbing up above the road, he lay down.  If only she were there
beside him!  The fragrance of the earth not yet chilled, crept to
his face; and for just a moment it seemed to him that she did come.
If he could keep her there for ever in that embrace that was no
embrace--in that ghostly rapture, on this wild fragrant bed that no
lovers before had ever pressed, save the creeping things, and the
flowers; save sunlight and moonlight with their shadows; and the
wind kissing the earth! . . .

Then she was gone; his hands touched nothing but the crumbled pine
dust, and the flowers of the wild thyme fallen into sleep.

He stood on the edge of the little cliff, above the road between
the dark mountains and the sea black with depth.  Too late for any
passer-by; as far from what men thought and said and did as the
very night itself with its whispering warmth.  And he conjured up
her face, making certain of it--the eyes, clear and brown, and wide
apart; the close, sweet mouth; the dark hair; the whole flying
loveliness.

Then he leaped down into the road, and ran--one could not walk,
feeling this miracle, that no one had ever felt before, the miracle
of love.


III


In their most reputable hotel 'Le Coeur d'Or,' long since
remodelled and renamed, Mrs. Ercott lay in her brass-bound bed
looking by starlight at the Colonel in his brass-bound bed.  Her
ears were carefully freed from the pressure of her pillow, for she
thought she heard a mosquito.  Companion for thirty years to one
whose life had been feverishly punctuated by the attentions of
those little beasts, she had no love for them.  It was the one
subject on which perhaps her imagination was stronger than her
common sense.  For in fact there was not, and could not be, a
mosquito, since the first thing the Colonel did, on arriving at any
place farther South than Parallel 46 of latitude, was to open the
windows very wide, and nail with many tiny tacks a piece of
mosquito netting across that refreshing space, while she held him
firmly by the coat-tails.  The fact that other people did not so
secure their windows did not at all trouble the Colonel, a true
Englishman, who loved to act in his own way, and to think in the
ways of other people.  After that they would wait till night came,
then burn a peculiar little lamp with a peculiar little smell, and,
in the full glare of the gaslight, stand about on chairs, with
slippers, and their eyes fixed on true or imaginary beasts.  Then
would fall little slaps, making little messes, and little joyous or
doleful cries would arise: "I've got that one!"  "Oh, John, I
missed him!"  And in the middle of the room, the Colonel, in
pyjamas, and spectacles (only worn in very solemn moments, low down
on his nose), would revolve slowly, turning his eyes, with that
look in them of out-facing death which he had so long acquired, on
every inch of wall and ceiling, till at last he would say: "Well,
Dolly, that's the lot!"  At which she would say: "Give me a kiss,
dear!" and he would kiss her, and get into his bed.

There was, then, no mosquito, save that general ghost of him which
lingered in the mind of one devoted to her husband.  Spying out his
profile, for he was lying on his back, she refrained from saying:
"John, are you awake?"  A whiffling sound was coming from a nose,
to which--originally straight--attention to military duties had
given a slight crook, half an inch below the level of grizzled
eyebrows raised a little, as though surprised at the sounds
beneath.  She could hardly see him, but she thought: "How good he
looks!"  And, in fact, he did.  It was the face of a man incapable
of evil, having in its sleep the candour of one at heart a child--
that simple candour of those who have never known how to seek
adventures of the mind, and have always sought adventures of the
body.  Then somehow she did say:

"John!  Are you asleep?"

The Colonel, instantly alive, as at some old-time attack, answered:

"Yes."

"That poor young man!"

"Which?"

"Mark Lennan.  Haven't you seen?"

"What?"

"My dear, it was under your nose.  But you never do see these
things!"

The Colonel slowly turned his head.  His wife was an imaginative
woman!  She had always been so.  Dimly he perceived that something
romantic was about to come from her.  But with that almost
professional gentleness of a man who has cut the heads and arms off
people in his time, he answered:

"What things?"

"He picked up her handkerchief."

"Whose?"

"Olive's.  He put it in his pocket.  I distinctly saw him."

There was silence; then Mrs. Ercott's voice rose again, impersonal,
far away.

"What always astonishes me about young people is the way they think
they're not seen--poor dears!"

Still there was silence.

"John!  Are you thinking?"

For a considerable sound of breathing, not mere whiffling now, was
coming from the Colonel--to his wife a sure sign.

And indeed he WAS thinking.  Dolly was an imaginative woman, but
something told him that in this case she might not be riding past
the hounds.

Mrs. Ercott raised herself.  He looked more good than ever; a
little perplexed frown had climbed up with his eyebrows and got
caught in the wrinkles across his forehead.

"I'm very fond of Olive," he said.

Mrs. Ercott fell back on her pillows.  In her heart there was just
that little soreness natural to a woman over fifty, whose husband
has a niece.

"No doubt," she murmured.

Something vague moved deep down in the Colonel; he stretched out
his hand.  In that strip of gloom between the beds it encountered
another hand, which squeezed it rather hard.

He said: "Look here, old girl!" and there was silence.

Mrs. Ercott in her turn was thinking.  Her thoughts were flat and
rapid like her voice, but had that sort of sentiment which
accompanies the mental exercise of women with good hearts.  Poor
young man!  And poor Olive!  But was a woman ever to be pitied,
when she was so pretty as that!  Besides, when all was said and
done, she had a fine-looking man for husband; in Parliament, with a
career, and fond of her--decidedly.  And their little house in
London, so close to Westminster, was a distinct dear; and nothing
could be more charming than their cottage by the river.  Was Olive,
then, to be pitied?  And yet--she was not happy.  It was no good
pretending that she was happy.  All very well to say that such
things were within one's control, but if you read novels at all,
you knew they weren't.  There was such a thing as incompatibility.
Oh yes!  And there was the matter of difference in their ages!
Olive was twenty-six, Robert Cramier forty-two.  And now this young
Mark Lennan was in love with her.  What if she were in love with
him!  John would realize then, perhaps, that the young flew to the
young.  For men--even the best, like John, were funny!  She would
never dream of feeling for any of her nephews as John clearly felt
for Olive.

The Colonel's voice broke in on her thoughts.

"Nice young fellow--Lennan!  Great pity!  Better sheer off--if he's
getting--"

And, rather suddenly, she answered:

"Suppose he can't!"

"Can't?"

"Did you never hear of a 'grande passion'?"

The Colonel rose on his elbow.  This was another of those occasions
that showed him how, during the later years of his service in
Madras and Upper Burmah, when Dolly's health had not been equal to
the heat, she had picked up in London a queer way of looking at
things--as if they were not--not so right or wrong as--as he felt
them to be.  And he repeated those two French words in his own way,
adding:

"Isn't that just what I'm saying?  The sooner he stands clear, the
better."

But Mrs. Ercott, too, sat up.

"Be human," she said.

The Colonel experienced the same sensation as when one suddenly
knows that one is not digesting food.  Because young Lennan was in
danger of getting into a dishonourable fix, he was told to be
human!  Really, Dolly was--!  The white blur of her new boudoir cap
suddenly impinged on his consciousness.  Surely she was not
getting--un-English!  At her time of life!

"I'm thinking of Olive," he said; "I don't want her worried with
that sort of thing."

"Perhaps Olive can manage for herself.  In these days it doesn't do
to interfere with love."

"Love!" muttered the Colonel.  "What?  Phew!"

If one's own wife called this--this sort of--thing, love--then, why
had he been faithful to her--in very hot climates--all these years?
A sense of waste, and of injustice, tried to rear its head against
all the side of him that attached certain meanings to certain
words, and acted up to them.  And this revolt gave him a feeling,
strange and so unpleasant.  Love!  It was not a word to use thus
loosely!  Love led to marriage; this could not lead to marriage,
except through--the Divorce Court.  And suddenly the Colonel had a
vision of his dead brother Lindsay, Olive's father, standing there
in the dark, with his grave, clear-cut, ivory-pale face, under the
black hair supposed to be derived from a French ancestress who had
escaped from the massacre of St. Bartholomew.  Upright fellow
always, Lindsay--even before he was made bishop!  Queer somehow
that Olive should be his daughter.  Not that she was not upright;
not at all!  But she was soft!  Lindsay was not!  Imagine him
seeing that young fellow putting her handkerchief in his pocket.
But had young Lennan really done such a thing?  Dolly was
imaginative!  He had mistaken it probably for his own; if he had
chanced to blow his nose, he would have realized.  For, coupled
with the almost child-like candour of his mind, the Colonel had
real administrative vigour, a true sense of practical values; an
ounce of illustration was always worth to him a pound of theory!
Dolly was given to riding off on theories.  Thank God! she never
acted on 'em!

He said gently:

"My dear!  Young Lennan may be an artist and all that, but he's a
gentleman!  I know old Heatherley, his guardian.  Why I introduced
him to Olive myself!"

"What has that to do with it?  He's in love with her."

One of the countless legion that hold a creed taken at face value,
into whose roots and reasons they have never dreamed of going, the
Colonel was staggered.  Like some native on an island surrounded by
troubled seas, which he has stared at with a certain contemptuous
awe all his life, but never entered, he was disconcerted by thus
being asked to leave the shore.  And by his own wife!

Indeed, Mrs. Ercott had not intended to go so far; but there was in
her, as in all women whose minds are more active than their
husbands', a something worrying her always to go a little farther
than she meant.  With real compunction she heard the Colonel say:

"I must get up and drink some water."

She was out of bed in a moment.  "Not without boiling!"

She had seriously troubled him, then!  Now he would not sleep--the
blood went to his head so quickly.  He would just lie awake, trying
not to disturb her.  She could not bear him not to disturb her.  It
seemed so selfish of her!  She ought to have known that the whole
subject was too dangerous to discuss at night.

She became conscious that he was standing just behind her; his
figure in its thin covering looked very lean, his face strangely
worn.

"I'm sorry you put that idea into my head!" he said.  "I'm fond of
Olive."

Again Mrs. Ercott felt that jealous twinge, soon lost this time in
the motherliness of a childless woman for her husband.  He must not
be troubled!  He should not be troubled.  And she said:

"The water's boiling!  Now sip a good glass slowly, and get into
bed, or I'll take your temperature!"

Obediently the Colonel took from her the glass, and as he sipped,
she put her hand up and stroked his head.


IV


In the room below them the subject of their discussion was lying
very wide awake.  She knew that she had betrayed herself, made
plain to Mark Lennan what she had never until now admitted to
herself.  But the love-look, which for the life of her she could
not keep back, had been followed by a feeling of having 'lost
caste.'  For, hitherto, the world of women had been strictly
divided by her into those who did and those who did not do such
things; and to be no longer quite sure to which half she belonged
was frightening.  But what was the good of thinking, of being
frightened?--it could not lead to anything.  Yesterday she had not
known this would come; and now she could not guess at to-morrow!
To-night was enough!  To-night with its swimming loveliness!  Just
to feel!  To love, and to be loved!

A new sensation for her--as different from those excited by the
courtships of her girlhood, or by her marriage, as light from
darkness.  For she had never been in love, not even with her
husband.  She knew it now.  The sun was shining in a world where
she had thought there was none.  Nothing could come of it.  But the
sun was shining; and in that sunshine she must warm herself a
little.

Quite simply she began to plan what he and she would do.  There
were six days left.  They had not yet been to Gorbio, nor to
Castellar--none of those long walks or rides they had designed to
do for the beauty of them.  Would he come early to-morrow?  What
could they do together?  No one should know what these six days
would be to her--not even he.  To be with him, watch his face, hear
his voice, and now and then just touch him!  She could trust
herself to show no one.  And then, it would be--over!  Though, of
course, she would see him again in London.

And, lying there in the dark, she thought of their first meeting,
one Sunday morning, in Hyde Park.  The Colonel religiously observed
Church Parade, and would even come all the way down to Westminster,
from his flat near Knightsbridge, in order to fetch his niece up to
it.  She remembered how, during their stroll, he had stopped
suddenly in front of an old gentleman with a puffy yellow face and
eyes half open.

"Ah!  Mr. Heatherley--you up from Devonshire?  How's your nephew--
the--er--sculptor?"

And the old gentleman, glaring a little, as it seemed to her, from
under his eyelids and his grey top hat, had answered: "Colonel
Ercott, I think?  Here's the fellow himself--Mark!"  And a young
man had taken off his hat.  She had only noticed at first that his
dark hair grew--not long--but very thick; and that his eyes were
very deep-set.  Then she saw him smile; it made his face all eager,
yet left it shy; and she decided that he was nice.  Soon after, she
had gone with the Ercotts to see his 'things'; for it was, of
course, and especially in those days, quite an event to know a
sculptor--rather like having a zebra in your park.  The Colonel had
been delighted and a little relieved to find that the 'things' were
nearly all of beasts and birds.  "Very interestin'" to one full of
curious lore about such, having in his time killed many of them,
and finding himself at the end of it with a curious aversion to
killing any more--which he never put into words.

Acquaintanceship had ripened fast after that first visit to his
studio, and now it was her turn to be relieved that Mark Lennan
devoted himself almost entirely to beasts and birds instead of to
the human form, so-called divine.  Ah! yes--she would have
suffered; now that she loved him, she saw that.  At all events she
could watch his work and help it with sympathy.  That could not be
wrong. . . .

She fell asleep at last, and dreamed that she was in a boat alone
on the river near her country cottage, drifting along among spiky
flowers like asphodels, with birds singing and flying round her.
She could move neither face nor limbs, but that helpless feeling
was not unpleasant, till she became conscious that she was drawing
nearer and nearer to what was neither water nor land, light nor
darkness, but simply some unutterable feeling.  And then she saw,
gazing at her out of the rushes on the banks, a great bull head.
It moved as she moved--it was on both sides of her, yet all the
time only one head.  She tried to raise her hands and cover her
eyes, but could not--and woke with a sob. . . .  It was light.

Nearly six o'clock already!  Her dream made her disinclined to
trust again to sleep.  Sleep was a robber now--of each minute of
these few days!  She got up, and looked out.  The morning was fine,
the air warm already, sweet with dew, and heliotrope nailed to the
wall outside her window.  She had but to open her shutters and walk
into the sun.  She dressed, took her sunshade, stealthily slipped
the shutters back, and stole forth.  Shunning the hotel garden,
where the eccentricity of her early wandering might betray the
condition of her spirit, she passed through into the road toward
the Casino.  Without perhaps knowing it, she was making for where
she had sat with him yesterday afternoon, listening to the band.
Hatless, but defended by her sunshade, she excited the admiration
of the few connoisseurs as yet abroad, strolling in blue blouses to
their labours; and this simple admiration gave her pleasure.  For
once she was really conscious of the grace in her own limbs,
actually felt the gentle vividness of her own face, with its nearly
black hair and eyes, and creamy skin--strange sensation, and very
comforting!

In the Casino gardens she walked more slowly, savouring the
aromatic trees, and stopping to bend and look at almost every
flower; then, on the seat, where she had sat with him yesterday,
she rested.  A few paces away were the steps that led to the
railway-station, trodden upwards eagerly by so many, day after day,
night after night, and lightly or sorrowfully descended.  Above
her, two pines, a pepper-tree, and a palm mingled their shade--so
fantastic the jumbling of trees and souls in this strange place!
She furled her sunshade and leaned back.  Her gaze, free and
friendly, passed from bough to bough.  Against the bright sky,
unbesieged as yet by heat or dust, they had a spiritual look, lying
sharp and flat along the air.  She plucked a cluster of pinkish
berries from the pepper-tree, crushing and rubbing them between her
hands to get their fragrance.  All these beautiful and sweet things
seemed to be a part of her joy at being loved, part of this sudden
summer in her heart.  The sky, the flowers, that jewel of green-
blue sea, the bright acacias, were nothing in the world but love.

And those few who passed, and saw her sitting there under the
pepper-tree, wondered no doubt at the stillness of this dame bien
mise, who had risen so early.


V


In the small hours, which so many wish were smaller, the Colonel
had awakened, with the affair of the handkerchief swelling visibly.
His niece's husband was not a man that he had much liking for--a
taciturn fellow, with possibly a bit of the brute in him, a man who
rather rode people down; but, since Dolly and he were in charge of
Olive, the notion that young Lennan was falling in love with her
under their very noses was alarming to one naturally punctilious.
It was not until he fell asleep again, and woke in full morning
light, that the remedy occurred to him.  She must be taken out of
herself!  Dolly and he had been slack; too interested in this queer
place, this queer lot of people!  They had neglected her, left her
to. . .  Boys and girls!--One ought always to remember.  But it was
not too late.  She was old Lindsay's daughter; would not forget
herself.  Poor old Lindsay--fine fellow; bit too much, perhaps, of
the--Huguenot in him!  Queer, those throw-backs!  Had noticed in
horses, time and again--white hairs about the tail, carriage of the
head--skip generations and then pop out.  And Olive had something
of his look--the same ivory skin, same colour of eyes and hair!
Only she was not severe, like her father, not exactly!  And once
more there shot through the Colonel a vague dread, as of a
trusteeship neglected.  It disappeared, however, in his bath.

He was out before eight o'clock, a thin upright figure in hard
straw hat and grey flannel clothes, walking with the indescribable
loose poise of the soldier Englishman, with that air, different
from the French, German, what not, because of shoulders ever
asserting, through their drill, the right to put on mufti; with
that perfectly quiet and modest air of knowing that, whatever might
be said, there was only one way of wearing clothes and moving legs.
And, as he walked, he smoothed his drooping grey moustache,
considering how best to take his niece out of herself.  He passed
along by the Terrace, and stood for a moment looking down at the
sea beyond the pigeon-shooting ground.  Then he moved on round
under the Casino into the gardens at the back.  A beautiful spot!
Wonderful care they had taken with the plants!  It made him think a
little of Tushawore, where his old friend the Rajah--precious old
rascal!--had gardens to his palace rather like these.  He paced
again to the front.  It was nice and quiet in the early mornings,
with the sea down there, and nobody trying to get the better of
anybody else.  There were fellows never happy unless they were
doing someone in the eye.  He had known men who would ride at the
devil himself, make it a point of honour to swindle a friend out of
a few pounds!  Odd place this 'Monte'--sort of a Garden of Eden
gone wrong.  And all the real, but quite inarticulate love of
Nature, which had supported the Colonel through deserts and
jungles, on transports at sea, and in mountain camps, awoke in the
sweetness of these gardens.  His dear mother!  He had never
forgotten the words with which she had shown him the sunset through
the coppice down at old Withes Norton, when he was nine years old:
"That is beauty, Jack!  Do you feel it, darling?"  He had not felt
it at the time--not he; a thick-headed, scampering youngster.  Even
when he first went to India he had had no eye for a sunset.  The
rising generation were different.  That young couple, for instance,
under the pepper-tree, sitting there without a word, just looking
at the trees.  How long, he wondered, had they been sitting like
that?  And suddenly something in the Colonel leaped; his steel-
coloured eyes took on their look of out-facing death.  Choking down
a cough, he faced about, back to where he had stood above the
pigeon-shooting ground. . . .  Olive and that young fellow!  An
assignation!  At this time in the morning!  The earth reeled.  His
brother's child--his favourite niece!  The woman whom he most
admired--the woman for whom his heart was softest.  Leaning over
the stone parapet, no longer seeing either the smooth green of the
pigeon-shooting ground, or the smooth blue of the sea beyond, he
was moved, distressed, bewildered beyond words.  Before breakfast!
That was the devil of it!  Confession, as it were, of everything.
Moreover, he had seen their hands touching on the seat.  The blood
rushed up to his face; he had seen, spied out, what was not
intended for his eyes.  Nice position--that!  Dolly, too, last
night, had seen.  But that was different.  Women might see things--
it was expected of them.  But for a man--a--a gentleman!  The
fullness of his embarrassment gradually disclosed itself.  His
hands were tied.  Could he even consult Dolly?  He had a feeling of
isolation, of utter solitude.  Nobody--not anybody in the world--
could understand his secret and intense discomfort.  To take up a
position--the position he was bound to take up, as Olive's nearest
relative and protector, and--what was it--chaperon, by the aid of
knowledge come at in such a way, however unintentionally!  Never in
all his days in the regiment--and many delicate matters affecting
honour had come his way--had he had a thing like this to deal with.
Poor child!  But he had no business to think of her like that.  No,
indeed!  She had not behaved--as--And there he paused, curiously
unable to condemn her.  Suppose they got up and came that way!

He took his hands off the stone parapet, and made for his hotel.
His palms were white from the force of his grip.  He said to
himself as he went along: "I must consider the whole question
calmly; I must think it out."  This gave him relief.  With young
Lennan, at all events, he could be angry.  But even there he found,
to his dismay, no finality of judgment.  And this absence of
finality, so unwonted, distressed him horribly.  There was
something in the way the young man had been sitting there beside
her--so quiet, so almost timid--that had touched him.  This was
bad, by Jove--very bad!  The two of them, they made, somehow, a
nice couple!  Confound it!  This would not do!  The chaplain of the
little English church, passing at this moment, called out, "Fine
morning, Colonel Ercott."  The Colonel saluted, and did not answer.
The greeting at the moment seemed to him paltry.  No morning could
be fine that contained such a discovery.  He entered the hotel,
passed into the dining-room, and sat down.  Nobody was there.  They
all had their breakfast upstairs, even Dolly.  Olive alone was in
the habit of supporting him while he ate an English breakfast.  And
suddenly he perceived that he was face to face already with this
dreadful situation.  To have breakfast without, as usual, waiting
for her, seemed too pointed.  She might be coming in at any minute
now.  To wait for her, and have it, without showing anything--how
could he do that?

He was conscious of a faint rustling behind him.  There she was,
and nothing decided.  In this moment of hopeless confusion the
Colonel acted by pure instinct, rose, patted her cheek, and placed
a chair.

"Well, my dear," he said; "hungry?"

She was looking very dainty, very soft.  That creamy dress showed
off her dark hair and eyes, which seemed somehow to be--flying off
somewhere; yes--it was queer, but that was the only way to put it.
He got no reassurance, no comfort, from the sight of her.  And
slowly he stripped the skin from the banana with which he always
commenced breakfast.  One might just as well be asked to shoot a
tame dove or tear a pretty flower to pieces as be expected to take
her to task, even if he could, in honour.  And he sought refuge in
the words:

"Been out?"  Then could have bitten his tongue off.  Suppose she
answered: "No."

But she did not so answer.  The colour came into her cheeks,
indeed, but she nodded: "It's so lovely!"

How pretty she looked saying that!  He had put himself out of court
now--could never tell her what he had seen, after setting, as it
were, that trap for her; and presently he asked:

"Got any plans to-day?"

She answered, without flinching in the least:

"Mark Lennan and I were going to take mules from Mentone up to
Gorbio."

He was amazed at her steadiness--never, to his knowledge, having
encountered a woman armoured at every point to preserve a love that
flies against the world.  How tell what was under her smile!  And
in confusion of feeling that amounted almost to pain he heard her
say:

"Will you and Aunt Dolly come?"

Between sense of trusteeship and hatred of spoiling sport; between
knowledge of the danger she was in and half-pitying admiration at
the sight of her; between real disapproval of an illicit and
underhand business (what else was it, after all?) and some dim
perception that here was something he did not begin to be able to
fathom--something that perhaps no one but those two themselves
could deal with--between these various extremes he was lost indeed.
And he stammered out:

"I must ask your aunt; she's--she's not very good on a mule."

Then, in an impulse of sheer affection, he said with startling
suddenness: "My dear, I've often meant to ask, are you happy at
home?"

"At home?"

There was something sinister about the way she repeated that, as if
the word "home" were strange to her.

She drank her coffee and got up; and the Colonel felt afraid of
her, standing there--afraid of what she was going to tell him.  He
grew very red.  But, worse than all, she said absolutely nothing;
only shrugged her shoulders with a little smile that went to his
heart.


VI


On the wild thyme, under the olives below the rock village of
Gorbio, with their mules cropping at a little distance, those two
sat after their lunch, listening to the cuckoos.  Since their
uncanny chance meeting that morning in the gardens, when they sat
with their hands just touching, amazed and elated by their own good
fortune, there was not much need to say what they felt, to break
with words this rapture of belonging to each other--so shyly, so
wildly, so, as it were, without reality.  They were like epicures
with old wine in their glasses, not yet tired of its fragrance and
the spell of anticipation.

And so their talk was not of love, but, in that pathetic way of
star-crossed lovers, of the things they loved; leaving out--each
other.

It was the telling of her dream that brought the words from him at
last; but she drew away, and answered:

"It can't--it mustn't be!"

Then he just clung to her hand; and presently, seeing that her eyes
were wet, took courage enough to kiss her cheek.

Trembling and fugitive indeed that first passage of their love.
Not much of the conquering male in him, nor in her of the ordinary
enchantress.

And then they went, outwardly sober enough, riding their mules down
the stony slopes back to Mentone.

But in the grey, dusty railway-carriage when she had left him, he
was like a man drugged, staring at where she had sat opposite.

Two hours later, at dinner in her hotel, between her and Mrs.
Ercott, with the Colonel opposite, he knew for the first time what
he was faced with.  To watch every thought that passed within him,
lest it should by the slightest sign betray him; to regulate and
veil every look and every word he spoke to her; never for a second
to forget that these other persons were actual and dangerous, not
merely the insignificant and grotesque shadows that they seemed.
It would be perhaps for ever a part of his love for her to seem not
to love her.  He did not dare dream of fulfilment.  He was to be
her friend, and try to bring her happiness--burn and long for her,
and not think about reward.  This was his first real overwhelming
passion--so different to the loves of spring--and he brought to it
all that naivete, that touching quality of young Englishmen, whose
secret instinct it is to back away from the full nature of love,
even from admitting that it has that nature.  They two were to
love, and--not to love!  For the first time he understood a little
of what that meant.  A few stolen adoring minutes now and then,
and, for the rest, the presence of a world that must be deceived.
Already he had almost a hatred of that orderly, brown-faced
Colonel, with his eyes that looked so steady and saw nothing; of
that flat, kindly lady, who talked so pleasantly throughout dinner,
saying things that he had to answer without knowing what they
signified.  He realized, with a sense of shock, that he was
deprived of all interests in life but one; not even his work had
any meaning apart from HER.  It lit no fire within him to hear Mrs.
Ercott praise certain execrable pictures in the Royal Academy,
which she had religiously visited the day before leaving home.  And
as the interminable meal wore on, he began even to feel grief and
wonder that Olive could be so smiling, so gay, and calm; so, as it
seemed to him, indifferent to this intolerable impossibility of
exchanging even one look of love.  Did she really love him--could
she love him, and show not one little sign of it?  And suddenly he
felt her foot touch his own.  It was the faintest sidelong,
supplicating pressure, withdrawn at once, but it said: 'I know what
you are suffering; I, too, but I love you.'  Characteristically, he
felt that it cost her dear to make use of that little primitive
device of common loves; the touch awoke within him only chivalry.
He would burn for ever sooner than cause her the pain of thinking
that he was not happy.

After dinner, they sat out on a balcony.  The stars glowed above
the palms; a frog was croaking.  He managed to draw his chair so
that he could look at her unseen.  How deep, and softly dark her
eyes, when for a second they rested on his!  A moth settled on her
knee--a cunning little creature, with its hooded, horned owl's
face, and tiny black slits of eyes!  Would it have come so
confidingly to anyone but her?  The Colonel knew its name--he had
collected it.  Very common, he said.  The interest in it passed;
but Lennan stayed, bent forward, gazing at that silk-covered knee.

The voice of Mrs. Ercott, sharper than its wont, said: "What day
does Robert say he wants you back, my dear?"

He managed to remain gazing at the moth, even to take it gently
from her knee, while he listened to her calm answer.

"Tuesday, I believe."

Then he got up, and let the moth fly into the darkness; his hands
and lips were trembling, and he was afraid of their being seen.  He
had never known, had not dreamed, of such a violent, sick feeling.
That this man could thus hale her home at will!  It was grotesque,
fantastic, awful, but--it was true!  Next Tuesday she would journey
back away from him to be again at the mercy of her Fate!  The pain
of this thought made him grip the railing, and grit his teeth, to
keep himself from crying out.  And another thought came to him: I
shall have to go about with this feeling, day and night, and keep
it secret.

They were saying good-night; and he had to smirk and smile, and
pretend--to her above all--that he was happy, and he could see that
she knew it was pretence.

Then he was alone, with the feeling that he had failed her at the
first shot; torn, too, between horror of what he suddenly saw
before him, and longing to be back in her presence at any cost. . . .
And all this on the day of that first kiss which had seemed to
him to make her so utterly his own.

He sat down on a bench facing the Casino.  Neither the lights, nor
the people passing in and out, not even the gipsy bandsmen's music,
distracted his thoughts for a second.  Could it be less than
twenty-four hours since he had picked up her handkerchief, not
thirty yards away?  In that twenty-four hours he seemed to have
known every emotion that man could feel.  And in all the world
there was now not one soul to whom he could speak his real
thoughts--not even to her, because from her, beyond all, he must
keep at any cost all knowledge of his unhappiness.  So this was
illicit love--as it was called!  Loneliness, and torture!  Not
jealousy--for her heart was his; but amazement, outrage, fear.
Endless lonely suffering!  And nobody, if they knew, would care, or
pity him one jot!

Was there really, then, as the ancients thought, a Daemon that
liked to play with men, as men liked to stir an earwig and turn it
over and put a foot on it in the end?

He got up and made his way towards the railway-station.  There was
the bench where she had been sitting when he came on her that very
morning.  The stars in their courses had seemed to fight for them
then; but whether for joy he no longer knew.  And there on the seat
were still the pepper berries she had crushed and strewn.  He broke
off another bunch and bruised them.  That scent was the ghost of
sacred minutes when her hand lay against his own.  The stars in
their courses--for joy or sorrow!


VII


There was no peace now for Colonel and Mrs. Ercott.  They felt
themselves conspirators, and of conspiracy they had never had the
habit.  Yet how could they openly deal with anxieties which had
arisen solely from what they had chanced secretly to see?  What was
not intended for one's eyes and ears did not exist; no canon of
conduct could be quite so sacred.  As well defend the opening of
another person's letters as admit the possibility of making use of
adventitious knowledge.  So far tradition, and indeed character,
made them feel at one, and conspire freely.  But they diverged on a
deeper plane.  Mrs. Ercott had SAID, indeed, that here was
something which could not be controlled; the Colonel had FELT it--a
very different thing!  Less tolerant in theory, he was touched at
heart; Mrs. Ercott, in theory almost approving--she read that
dangerous authoress, George Eliot--at heart felt cold towards her
husband's niece.  For these reasons they could not in fact conspire
without, in the end, saying suddenly: "Well, it's no good talking
about it!" and almost at once beginning to talk about it again.

In proposing to her that mule, the Colonel had not had time, or,
rather, not quite conviction enough as to his line of action, to
explain so immediately the new need for her to sit upon it.  It was
only when, to his somewhat strange relief, she had refused the
expedition, and Olive had started without them, that he told her of
the meeting in the Gardens, of which he had been witness.  She then
said at once that if she had known she would, of course, have put
up with anything in order to go; not because she approved of
interfering, but because they must think of Robert!  And the
Colonel had said: "D--n the fellow!"  And there the matter had
rested for the moment, for both of them were, wondering a little
which fellow it was that he had damned.  That indeed was the
trouble.  If the Colonel had not cared so much about his niece, and
had liked, instead of rather disliking Cramier; if Mrs. Ercott had
not found Mark Lennan a 'nice boy,' and had not secretly felt her
husband's niece rather dangerous to her peace of mind; if, in few
words, those three had been puppets made of wood and worked by law,
it would have been so much simpler for all concerned.  It was the
discovery that there was a personal equation in such matters,
instead of just a simple rule of three, which disorganized the
Colonel and made him almost angry; which depressed Mrs. Ercott and
made her almost silent. . . .  These two good souls had stumbled on
a problem which has divided the world from birth.  Shall cases be
decided on their individual merits, or according to formal codes?

Beneath an appearance and a vocabulary more orthodox than ever, the
Colonel's allegiance to Authority and the laws of Form was really
shaken; he simply could not get out of his head the sight of those
two young people sitting side by side, nor the tone of Olive's
voice, when she had repeated his regrettable words about happiness
at home.

If only the thing had not been so human!  If only she had been
someone else's niece, it would clearly have been her duty to remain
unhappy.  As it was, the more he thought, the less he knew what to
think.  A man who had never had any balance to speak of at his
bank, and from the nomadic condition of his life had no exaggerated
feeling for a settled social status--deeming Society in fact rather
a bore--he did not unduly exaggerate the worldly dangers of this
affair; neither did he honestly believe that she would burn in
everlasting torment if she did not succeed in remaining true to
'that great black chap,' as he secretly called Cramier.  His
feeling was simply that it was an awful pity; a sort of unhappy
conviction that it was not like the women of his family to fall
upon such ways; that his dead brother would turn in his grave; in
two words that it was 'not done.'  Yet he was by no means of those
who, giving latitude to women in general, fall with whips on those
of their own family who take it.  On the contrary, believing that
'Woman in general' should be stainless to the world's eye, he was
inclined to make allowance for any individual woman that he knew
and loved.  A suspicion he had always entertained, that Cramier was
not by breeding 'quite the clean potato' may insensibly have
influenced him just a little.  He had heard indeed that he was not
even entitled to the name of Cramier, but had been adopted by a
childless man, who had brought him up and left him a lot of money.
There was something in this that went against the grain of the
childless Colonel.  He had never adopted, nor been adopted by
anyone himself.  There was a certain lack about a man who had been
adopted, of reasonable guarantee--he was like a non-vintage wine,
or a horse without a pedigree; you could not quite rely on what he
might do, having no tradition in his blood.  His appearance, too,
and manner somehow lent colour to this distrust.  A touch of the
tar-brush somewhere, and a stubborn, silent, pushing fellow.  Why
on earth had Olive ever married him!  But then women were such
kittle cattle, poor things! and old Lindsay, with his vestments and
his views on obedience, must have been a Tartar as a father, poor
old chap!  Besides, Cramier, no doubt, was what most women would
call good-looking; more taking to the eye than such a quiet fellow
as young Lennan, whose features were rather anyhow, though pleasant
enough, and with a nice smile--the sort of young man one could not
help liking, and who certainly would never hurt a fly!  And
suddenly there came the thought: Why should he not go to young
Lennan and put it to him straight?  That he was in love with Olive?
Not quite--but the way to do it would come to him.  He brooded long
over this idea, and spoke of it to Mrs. Ercott, while shaving, the
next morning.  Her answer: "My dear John, bosh!" removed his last
doubt.

Without saying where he was going, he strolled out the moment after
breakfast--and took a train to Beaulieu.  At the young man's hotel
he sent in his card, and was told that this Monsieur had already
gone out for the day.  His mood of marching straight up to the guns
thus checked, he was left pensive and distraught.  Not having seen
Beaulieu (they spoke of it then as a coming place), he made his way
up an incline.  That whole hillside was covered with rose-trees.
Thousands of these flowers were starring the lower air, and the
strewn petals of blown and fallen roses covered the light soil.
The Colonel put his nose to blossoms here and there, but they had
little scent, as if they knew that the season was already over.  A
few blue-bloused peasants were still busy among them.  And suddenly
he came on young Lennan himself, sitting on a stone and dabbing
away with his fingers at a lump of putty stuff.  The Colonel
hesitated.  Apart from obvious reasons for discomfiture, he had
that feeling towards Art common to so many of his caste.  It was
not work, of course, but it was very clever--a mystery to him how
anyone could do it!  On seeing him, Lennan had risen, dropping his
handkerchief over what he was modelling--but not before the Colonel
had received a dim impression of something familiar.  The young man
was very red--the Colonel, too, was conscious suddenly of the heat.
He held out his hand.

"Nice quiet place this," he stammered; "never seen it before.  I
called at your hotel."

Now that he had his chance, he was completely at a loss.  The sight
of the face emerging from that lump of 'putty stuff' had quite
unnerved him.  The notion of this young man working at it up here
all by himself, just because he was away an hour or two from the
original, touched him.  How on earth to say what he had come to
say?  It was altogether different from what he had thought.  And it
suddenly flashed through him--Dolly was right!  She's always right--
hang it!

"You're busy," he said; "I mustn't interrupt you."

"Not at all, sir.  It was awfully good of you to look me up."

The Colonel stared.  There was something about young Lennan that he
had not noticed before; a 'Don't take liberties with me!' look that
made things difficult.  But still he lingered, staring wistfully at
the young man, who stood waiting with such politeness.  Then a safe
question shot into his mind:

"Ah!  And when do you go back to England?  We're off on Tuesday."

While he spoke, a puff of wind lifted the handkerchief from the
modelled face.  Would the young fellow put it back?  He did not.
And the Colonel thought:

"It would have been bad form.  He knew I wouldn't take advantage.
Yes!  He's a gentleman!"

Lifting his hand to the salute, he said: "Well, I must be getting
back.  See you at dinner perhaps?"  And turning on his heel he
marched away.

The remembrance of that face in the 'putty stuff' up there by the
side of the road accompanied him home.  It was bad--it was serious!
And the sense that he counted for nothing in all of it grew and
grew in him.  He told no one of where he had been. . . .

When the Colonel turned with ceremony and left him, Lennan sat down
again on the flat stone, took up his 'putty stuff,' and presently
effaced that image.  He sat still a long time, to all appearance
watching the little blue butterflies playing round the red and
tawny roses.  Then his fingers began to work, feverishly shaping a
head; not of a man, not of a beast, but a sort of horned, heavy
mingling of the two.  There was something frenetic in the movement
of those rather short, blunt-ended fingers, as though they were
strangling the thing they were creating.


VIII


In those days, such as had served their country travelled, as
befitted Spartans, in ordinary first-class carriages, and woke in
the morning at La Roche or some strange-sounding place, for paler
coffee and the pale brioche.  So it was with Colonel and Mrs.
Ercott and their niece, accompanied by books they did not read,
viands they did not eat, and one somnolent Irishman returning from
the East.  In the disposition of legs there was the usual
difficulty, no one quite liking to put them up, and all ultimately
doing so, save Olive.  More than once during that night the
Colonel, lying on the seat opposite, awoke and saw her sitting,
withdrawn into her corner, with eyes still open.  Staring at that
little head which he admired so much, upright and unmoving, in its
dark straw toque against the cushion, he would become suddenly
alert.  Kicking the Irishman slightly in the effort, he would slip
his legs down, bend across to her in the darkness, and, conscious
of a faint fragrance as of violets, whisper huskily: "Anything I
can do for you, my dear?"  When she had smiled and shaken her head,
he would retreat, and after holding his breath to see if Dolly were
asleep, would restore his feet, slightly kicking the Irishman.
After one such expedition, for full ten minutes he remained awake,
wondering at her tireless immobility.  For indeed she was spending
this night entranced, with the feeling that Lennan was beside her,
holding her hand in his.  She seemed actually to feel the touch of
his finger against the tiny patch of her bare palm where the glove
opened.  It was wonderful, this uncanny communion in the dark
rushing night--she would not have slept for worlds!  Never before
had she felt so close to him, not even when he had kissed her that
once under the olives; nor even when at the concert yesterday his
arm pressed hers; and his voice whispered words she heard so
thirstily.  And that golden fortnight passed and passed through her
on an endless band of reminiscence.  Its memories were like
flowers, such scent and warmth and colour in them; and of all, none
perhaps quite so poignant as the memory of the moment, at the door
of their carriage, when he said, so low that she just heard: "Good-
bye, my darling!"

He had never before called her that.  Not even his touch on her
cheek under the olives equalled the simple treasure of that word.
And above the roar and clatter of the train, and the snoring of the
Irishman, it kept sounding in her ears, hour after dark hour.  It
was perhaps not wonderful, that through all that night she never
once looked the future in the face--made no plans, took no stock of
her position; just yielded to memory, and to the half-dreamed
sensation of his presence close beside her.  Whatever might come
afterwards, she was his this night.  Such was the trance that gave
to her the strange, soft, tireless immobility which so moved her
Uncle whenever he woke up.

In Paris they drove from station to station in a vehicle unfit for
three--'to stretch their legs'--as the Colonel said.  Since he saw
in his niece no signs of flagging, no regret, his spirits were
rising, and he confided to Mrs. Ercott in the buffet at the Gare du
Nord, when Olive had gone to wash, that he did not think there was
much in it, after all, looking at the way she'd travelled.

But Mrs. Ercott answered:

"Haven't you ever noticed that Olive never shows what she does not
want to?  She has not got those eyes for nothing."

"What eyes?"

"Eyes that see everything, and seem to see nothing."

Conscious that something was hurting her, the Colonel tried to take
her hand.

But Mrs. Ercott rose quickly, and went where he could not follow.

Thus suddenly deserted, the Colonel brooded, drumming on the little
table.  What now!  Dolly was unjust!  Poor Dolly!  He was as fond
of her as ever!  Of course!  How could he help Olive's being young--
and pretty; how could he help looking after her, and wanting to
save her from this mess!  Thus he sat wondering, dismayed by the
unreasonableness of women.  It did not enter his head that Mrs.
Ercott had been almost as sleepless as his niece, watching through
closed eyes every one of those little expeditions of his, and
saying to herself: "Ah!  He doesn't care how I travel!"

She returned serene enough, concealing her 'grief,' and soon they
were once more whirling towards England.

But the future had begun to lay its hand on Olive; the spell of the
past was already losing power; the sense that it had all been a
dream grew stronger every minute.  In a few hours she would re-
enter the little house close under the shadow of that old Wren
church, which reminded her somehow of childhood, and her austere
father with his chiselled face.  The meeting with her husband!  How
go through that!  And to-night!  But she did not care to
contemplate to-night.  And all those to-morrows wherein there was
nothing she had to do of which it was reasonable to complain, yet
nothing she could do without feeling that all the friendliness and
zest and colour was out of life, and she a prisoner.  Into those
to-morrows she felt she would slip back, out of her dream; lost,
with hardly perhaps an effort.  To get away to the house on the
river, where her husband came only at weekends, had hitherto been a
refuge; only she would not see Mark there--unless--!  Then, with
the thought that she would, must still see him sometimes, all again
grew faintly glamorous.  If only she did see him, what would the
rest matter?  Never again as it had before!

The Colonel was reaching down her handbag; his cheery: "Looks as if
it would be rough!" aroused her.  Glad to be alone, and tired
enough now, she sought the ladies' cabin, and slept through the
crossing, till the voice of the old stewardess awakened her:
"You've had a nice sleep.  We're alongside, miss."  Ah! if she were
but THAT now!  She had been dreaming that she was sitting in a
flowery field, and Lennan had drawn her up by the hands, with the
words: "We're here, my darling!"

On deck, the Colonel, laden with bags, was looking back for her,
and trying to keep a space between him and his wife.  He signalled
with his chin.  Threading her way towards him, she happened to look
up.  By the rails of the pier above she saw her husband.  He was
leaning there, looking intently down; his tall broad figure made
the people on each side of him seem insignificant.  The clean-
shaved, square-cut face, with those almost epileptic, forceful
eyes, had a stillness and intensity beside which the neighbouring
faces seemed to disappear.  She saw him very clearly, even noting
the touch of silver in his dark hair, on each side under his straw
hat; noting that he seemed too massive for his neat blue suit.  His
face relaxed; he made a little movement of one hand.  Suddenly it
shot through her: Suppose Mark had travelled with them, as he had
wished to do?  For ever and ever now, that dark massive creature,
smiling down at her, was her enemy; from whom she must guard and
keep herself if she could; keep, at all events, each one of her
real thoughts and hopes!  She could have writhed, and cried out;
instead, she tightened her grip on the handle of her bag, and
smiled.  Though so skilled in knowledge of his moods, she felt, in
his greeting, his fierce grip of her shoulders, the smouldering of
some feeling the nature of which she could not quite fathom.  His
voice had a grim sincerity: "Glad you're back--thought you were
never coming!"  Resigned to his charge, a feeling of sheer physical
faintness so beset her that she could hardly reach the compartment
he had reserved.  It seemed to her that, for all her foreboding,
she had not till this moment had the smallest inkling of what was
now before her; and at his muttered: "Must we have the old fossils
in?" she looked back to assure herself that her Uncle and Aunt were
following.  To avoid having to talk, she feigned to have travelled
badly, leaning back with closed eyes, in her corner.  If only she
could open them and see, not this square-jawed face with its intent
gaze of possession, but that other with its eager eyes humbly
adoring her.  The interminable journey ended all too soon.  She
clung quite desperately to the Colonel's hand on the platform at
Charing Cross.  When his kind face vanished she would be lost
indeed!  Then, in the closed cab, she heard her husband's: "Aren't
you going to kiss me?" and submitted to his embrace.

She tried so hard to think: What does it matter?  It's not I, not
my soul, my spirit--only my miserable lips!

She heard him say: "You don't seem too glad to see me!"  And then:
"I hear you had young Lennan out there.  What was HE doing?"

She felt the turmoil of sudden fear, wondered whether she was
showing it, lost it in unnatural alertness--all in the second
before she answered: "Oh! just a holiday."

Some seconds passed, and then he said:

"You didn't mention him in your letters."

She answered coolly: "Didn't I?  We saw a good deal of him."

She knew that he was looking at her--an inquisitive, half-menacing
regard.  Why--oh, why!--could she not then and there cry out: "And
I love him--do you hear?--I love him!"  So awful did it seem to be
denying her love with these half lies!  But it was all so much more
grim and hopeless than even she had thought.  How inconceivable,
now, that she had ever given herself up to this man for life!  If
only she could get away from him to her room, and scheme and think!
For his eyes never left her, travelling over her with their
pathetic greed, their menacing inquiry, till he said: "Well, it's
not done you any harm.  You look very fit."  But his touch was too
much even for her self-command, and she recoiled as if he had
struck her.

"What's the matter?  Did I hurt you?"

It seemed to her that he was jeering--then realized as vividly that
he was not.  And the full danger to her, perhaps to Mark himself,
of shrinking from this man, striking her with all its pitiable
force, she made a painful effort, slipped her hand under his arm,
and said: "I'm very tired.  You startled me."

But he put her hand away, and turning his face, stared out of the
window.  And so they reached their home.

When he had left her alone, she remained where she was standing, by
her wardrobe, without sound or movement, thinking: What am I going
to do?  How am I going to live?


IX


When Mark Lennan, travelling through from Beaulieu, reached his
rooms in Chelsea, he went at once to the little pile of his
letters, twice hunted through them, then stood very still, with a
stunned, sick feeling.  Why had she not sent him that promised
note?  And now he realized--though not yet to the full--what it
meant to be in love with a married woman.  He must wait in this
suspense for eighteen hours at least, till he could call, and find
out what had happened to prevent her, till he could hear from her
lips that she still loved him.  The chilliest of legal lovers had
access to his love, but he must possess a soul that was on fire, in
this deadly patience, for fear of doing something that might
jeopardize her.  Telegraph?  He dared not.  Write?  She would get
it by the first post; but what could he say that was not dangerous,
if Cramier chanced to see?  Call?  Still more impossible till three
o'clock, at very earliest, to-morrow.  His gaze wandered round the
studio.  Were these household gods, and all these works of his,
indeed the same he had left twenty days ago?  They seemed to exist
now only in so far as she might come to see them--come and sit in
such a chair, and drink out of such a cup, and let him put this
cushion for her back, and that footstool for her feet.  And so
vividly could he see her lying back in that chair looking across at
him, that he could hardly believe she had never yet sat there.  It
was odd how--without any resolution taken, without admission that
their love could not remain platonic, without any change in their
relations, save one humble kiss and a few whispered words--
everything was changed.  A month or so ago, if he had wanted, he
would have gone at once calmly to her house.  It would have seemed
harmless, and quite natural.  Now it was impossible to do openly
the least thing that strict convention did not find desirable.
Sooner or later they would find him stepping over convention, and
take him for what he was not--a real lover!  A real lover!  He
knelt down before the empty chair and stretched out his arms.  No
substance--no warmth--no fragrance--nothing!  Longing that passed
through air, as the wind through grass.

He went to the little round window, which overlooked the river.
The last evening of May; gloaming above the water, dusk resting in
the trees, and the air warm!  Better to be out, and moving in the
night, out in the ebb and flow of things, among others whose hearts
were beating, than stay in this place that without her was so cold
and meaningless.

Lamps--the passion-fruit of towns--were turning from pallor to full
orange, and the stars were coming out.  Half-past nine!  At ten
o'clock, and not before, he would walk past her house.  To have
this something to look forward to, however furtive and barren,
helped.  But on a Saturday night there would be no sitting at the
House.  Cramier would be at home; or they would both be out; or
perhaps have gone down to their river cottage.  Cramier!  What
cruel demon had presided over that marring of her life!  Why had he
never met her till after she had bound herself to this man!  From a
negative contempt for one who was either not sensitive enough to
recognize that his marriage was a failure, or not chivalrous enough
to make that failure bear as little hardly as possible on his wife,
he had come already to jealous hatred as of a monster.  To be face
to face with Cramier in a mortal conflict could alone have
satisfied his feeling. . . .  Yet he was a young man by nature
gentle!

His heart beat desperately as he approached that street--one of
those little old streets, so beautiful, that belonged to a vanished
London.  It was very narrow, there was no shelter; and he thought
confusedly of what he could say, if met in this remote backwater
that led nowhere.  He would tell some lie, no doubt.  Lies would
now be his daily business.  Lies and hatred, those violent things
of life, would come to seem quite natural, in the violence of his
love.

He stood a moment, hesitating, by the rails of the old church.
Black, white-veined, with shadowy summits, in that half darkness,
it was like some gigantic vision.  Mystery itself seemed modelled
there.  He turned and walked quickly down the street close to the
houses on the further side.  The windows of her house were lighted!
So, she was not away!  Dim light in the dining-room, lights in the
room above--her bedroom, doubtless.  Was there no way to bring her
to the window, no way his spirit could climb up there and beckon
hers out to him?  Perhaps she was not there, perhaps it was but a
servant taking up hot water.  He was at the end of the street by
now, but to leave without once more passing was impossible.  And
this time he went slowly, his head down, feigning abstraction,
grudging every inch of pavement, and all the time furtively
searching that window with the light behind the curtains.  Nothing!
Once more he was close to the railings of the church, and once more
could not bring himself to go away.  In the little, close, deserted
street, not a soul was moving, not even a cat or dog; nothing alive
but many discreet, lighted windows.  Like veiled faces, showing no
emotion, they seemed to watch his indecision.  And he thought: "Ah,
well!  I dare say there are lots like me.  Lots as near, and yet as
far away!  Lots who have to suffer!"  But what would he not have
given for the throwing open of those curtains.  Then, suddenly
scared by an approaching figure, he turned and walked away.


X


At three o'clock next day he called.

In the middle of her white drawing-room, whose latticed window ran
the whole length of one wall, stood a little table on which was a
silver jar full of early larkspurs, evidently from her garden by
the river.  And Lennan waited, his eyes fixed on those blossoms so
like to little blue butterflies and strange-hued crickets, tethered
to the pale green stems.  In this room she passed her days, guarded
from him.  Once a week, at most, he would be able to come there--
once a week for an hour or two of the hundred and sixty-eight hours
that he longed to be with her.

And suddenly he was conscious of her.  She had come in without
sound, and was standing by the piano, so pale, in her cream-white
dress, that her eyes looked jet black.  He hardly knew that face,
like a flower closed against cold.

What had he done?  What had happened in these five days to make her
like this to him?  He took her hands and tried to kiss them; but
she said quickly:

"He's in!"

At that he stood silent, looking into that face, frozen to a
dreadful composure, on the breaking up of which his very life
seemed to depend.  At last he said:

"What is it?  Am I nothing to you, after all?"

But as soon as he had spoken he saw that he need not have asked,
and flung his arms round her.  She clung to him with desperation;
then freed herself, and said:

"No, no; let's sit down quietly!"

He obeyed, half-divining, half-refusing to admit all that lay
behind that strange coldness, and this desperate embrace; all the
self-pity, and self-loathing, shame, rage, and longing of a married
woman for the first time face to face with her lover in her
husband's house.

She seemed now to be trying to make him forget her strange
behaviour; to be what she had been during that fortnight in the
sunshine.  But, suddenly, just moving her lips, she said:

"Quick!  When can we see each other?  I will come to you to tea--
to-morrow," and, following her eyes, he saw the door opening, and
Cramier coming in.  Unsmiling, very big in the low room, he crossed
over to them, and offered his hand to Lennan; then drawing a low
chair forward between their two chairs, sat down.

"So you're back," he said.  "Have a good time?"

"Thanks, yes; very."

"Luck for Olive you were there; those places are dull holes."

"It was luck for me."

"No doubt."  And with those words he turned to his wife.  His
elbows rested along the arms of his chair, so that his clenched
palms were upwards; it was as if he knew that he was holding those
two, gripped one in each hand.

"I wonder," he said slowly, "that fellows like you, with nothing in
the world to tie them, ever sit down in a place like London.  I
should have thought Rome or Paris were your happy hunting-grounds."
In his voice, in those eyes of his, a little bloodshot, with their
look of power, in his whole attitude, there was a sort of muffled
menace, and contempt, as though he were thinking: "Step into my
path, and I will crush you!"

And Lennan thought:

"How long must I sit here?"  Then, past that figure planted solidly
between them, he caught a look from her, swift, sure, marvellously
timed--again and again--as if she were being urged by the very
presence of this danger.  One of those glances would surely--surely
be seen by Cramier.  Is there need for fear that a swallow should
dash itself against the wall over which it skims?  But he got up,
unable to bear it longer.

"Going?"  That one suave word had an inimitable insolence.

He could hardly see his hand touching Cramier's heavy fist.  Then
he realized that she was standing so that their faces when they
must say good-bye could not be seen.  Her eyes were smiling, yet
imploring; her lips shaped the word: "To-morrow!"  And squeezing
her hand desperately, he got away.

He had never dreamed that to see her in the presence of the man who
owned her would be so terrible.  For a moment he thought that he
must give her up, give up a love that would drive him mad.

He climbed on to an omnibus travelling West.  Another twenty-four
hours of starvation had begun.  It did not matter at all what he
did with them.  They were simply so much aching that had to be got
through somehow--so much aching; and what relief at the end?  An
hour or two with her, desperately holding himself in.

Like most artists, and few Englishmen, he lived on feelings rather
than on facts; so, found no refuge in decisive resolutions.  But he
made many--the resolution to give her up; to be true to the ideal
of service for no reward; to beseech her to leave Cramier and come
to him--and he made each many times.

At Hyde Park Corner he got down, and went into the Park, thinking
that to walk would help him.

A great number of people were sitting there, taking mysterious
anodyne, doing the right thing; to avoid them, he kept along the
rails, and ran almost into the arms of Colonel and Mrs. Ercott, who
were coming from the direction of Knightsbridge, slightly flushed,
having lunched and talked of 'Monte' at the house of a certain
General.

They greeted him with the surprise of those who had said to each
other many times: "That young man will come rushing back!"  It was
very nice--they said--to run across him.  When did he arrive?  They
had thought he was going on to Italy--he was looking rather tired.
They did not ask if he had seen her--being too kind, and perhaps
afraid that he would say 'Yes,' which would be embarrassing; or
that he would say 'No,' which would be still more embarrassing when
they found that he ought to have said 'Yes.'  Would he not come and
sit with them a little--they were going presently to see how Olive
was?  Lennan perceived that they were warning him.  And, forcing
himself to look at them very straight, he said: "I have just been
there."

Mrs. Ercott phrased her impressions that same evening: "He looks
quite hunted, poor young man!  I'm afraid there's going to be
fearful trouble there.  Did you notice how quickly he ran away from
us?  He's thin, too; if it wasn't for his tan, he'd look really
ill.  The boy's eyes are so pathetic; and he used to have such a
nice smile in them."

The Colonel, who was fastening her hooks, paused in an operation
that required concentration.

"It's a thousand pities," he muttered, "that he hasn't any work to
do.  That puddling about with clay or whatever he does is no good
at all."  And slowly fastening one hook, he unhooked several
others.

Mrs. Ercott went on:

"And I saw Olive, when she thought I wasn't looking; it was just as
if she'd taken off a mask.  But Robert Cramier will never put up
with it.  He's in love with her still; I watched him.  It's tragic,
John."

The Colonel let his hands fall from the hooks.

"If I thought that," he said, "I'd do something."

"If you could, it would not be tragic."

The Colonel stared.  There was always SOMETHING to be done.

"You read too many novels," he said, but without spirit.

Mrs. Ercott smiled, and made no answer to an aspersion she had
heard before.


XI


When Lennan reached his rooms again after that encounter with the
Ercotts, he found in his letterbox a visiting card: "Mrs. Doone"
"Miss Sylvia Doone," and on it pencilled the words: "Do come and
see us before we go down to Hayle--Sylvia."  He stared blankly at
the round handwriting he knew so well.

Sylvia!  Nothing perhaps could have made so plain to him how in
this tornado of his passion the world was drowned.  Sylvia!  He had
almost forgotten her existence; and yet, only last year, after he
definitely settled down in London, he had once more seen a good
deal of her; and even had soft thoughts of her again--with her
pale-gold hair, her true look, her sweetness.  Then they had gone
for the winter to Algiers for her mother's health.

When they came back, he had already avoided seeing her, though that
was before Olive went to Monte Carlo, before he had even admitted
his own feeling.  And since--he had not once thought of her.  Not
once!  The world had indeed vanished.  "Do come and see us--
Sylvia."  The very notion was an irritation.  No rest from aching
and impatience to be had that way.

And then the idea came to him: Why not kill these hours of waiting
for to-morrow's meeting by going on the river passing by her
cottage?  There was still one train that he could catch.

He reached the village after dark, and spent the night at the inn;
got up early next morning, took a boat, and pulled down-stream.
The bluffs of the opposite bank were wooded with high trees.  The
sun shone softly on their leaves, and the bright stream was ruffled
by a breeze that bent all the reeds and slowly swayed the water-
flowers.  One thin white line of wind streaked the blue sky.  He
shipped his sculls and drifted, listening to the wood-pigeons,
watching the swallows chasing.  If only she were here!  To spend
one long day thus, drifting with the stream!  To have but one such
rest from longing!  Her cottage, he knew, lay on the same side as
the village, and just beyond an island.  She had told him of a
hedge of yew-trees, and a white dovecote almost at the water's
edge.  He came to the island, and let his boat slide into the
backwater.  It was all overgrown with willow-trees and alders, dark
even in this early morning radiance, and marvellously still.  There
was no room to row; he took the boathook and tried to punt, but the
green water was too deep and entangled with great roots, so that he
had to make his way by clawing with the hook at branches.  Birds
seemed to shun this gloom, but a single magpie crossed the one
little clear patch of sky, and flew low behind the willows.  The
air here had a sweetish, earthy odour of too rank foliage; all
brightness seemed entombed.  He was glad to pass out again under a
huge poplar-tree into the fluttering gold and silver of the
morning.  And almost at once he saw the yew-hedge at the border of
some bright green turf, and a pigeon-house, high on its pole,
painted cream-white.  About it a number of ring-doves and snow-
white pigeons were perched or flying; and beyond the lawn he could
see the dark veranda of a low house, covered by wistaria just going
out of flower.  A drift of scent from late lilacs, and new-mown
grass, was borne out to him, together with the sound of a mowing-
machine, and the humming of many bees.  It was beautiful here, and
seemed, for all its restfulness, to have something of that flying
quality he so loved about her face, about the sweep of her hair,
the quick, soft turn of her eyes--or was that but the darkness of
the yew-trees, the whiteness of the dovecote, and the doves
themselves, flying?

He lay there a long time quietly beneath the bank, careful not to
attract the attention of the old gardener, who was methodically
pushing his machine across and across the lawn.  How he wanted her
with him then!  Wonderful that there could be in life such beauty
and wild softness as made the heart ache with the delight of it,
and in that same life grey rules and rigid barriers--coffins of
happiness!  That doors should be closed on love and joy!  There was
not so much of it in the world!  She, who was the very spirit of
this flying, nymph-like summer, was untimely wintered-up in bleak
sorrow.  There was a hateful unwisdom in that thought; it seemed so
grim and violent, so corpse-like, gruesome, narrow and extravagant!
What possible end could it serve that she should be unhappy!  Even
if he had not loved her, he would have hated her fate just as much--
all such stories of imprisoned lives had roused his anger even as
a boy.

Soft white clouds--those bright angels of the river, never very
long away--had begun now to spread their wings over the woods; and
the wind had dropped so that the slumbrous warmth and murmuring of
summer gathered full over the water.  The old gardener had finished
his job of mowing, and came with a little basket of grain to feed
the doves.  Lennan watched them going to him, the ring-doves, very
dainty, and capricious, keeping to themselves.  In place of that
old fellow, he was really seeing HER, feeding from her hands those
birds of Cypris.  What a group he could have made of her with them
perching and flying round her!  If she were his, what could he not
achieve--to make her immortal--like the old Greeks and Italians,
who, in their work, had rescued their mistresses from Time! . . .

He was back in his rooms in London two hours before he dared begin
expecting her.  Living alone there but for a caretaker who came
every morning for an hour or two, made dust, and departed, he had
no need for caution.  And when he had procured flowers, and the
fruits and cakes which they certainly would not eat--when he had
arranged the tea-table, and made the grand tour at least twenty
times, he placed himself with a book at the little round window, to
watch for her approach.  There, very still, he sat, not reading a
word, continually moistening his dry lips and sighing, to relieve
the tension of his heart.  At last he saw her coming.  She was
walking close to the railings of the houses, looking neither to
right nor left.  She had on a lawn frock, and a hat of the palest
coffee-coloured straw, with a narrow black velvet ribbon.  She
crossed the side street, stopped for a second, gave a swift look
round, then came resolutely on.  What was it made him love her so?
What was the secret of her fascination?  Certainly, no conscious
enticements.  Never did anyone try less to fascinate.  He could not
recall one single little thing that she had done to draw him to
her.  Was it, perhaps, her very passivity, her native pride that
never offered or asked anything, a sort of soft stoicism in her
fibre; that and some mysterious charm, as close and intimate as
scent was to a flower?

He waited to open till he heard her footstep just outside.  She
came in without a word, not even looking at him.  And he, too, said
not a word till he had closed the door, and made sure of her.  Then
they turned to each other.  Her breast was heaving a little, under
her thin frock, but she was calmer than he, with that wonderful
composure of pretty women in all the passages of love, as who
should say: This is my native air!

They stood and looked at each other, as if they could never have
enough, till he said at last:

"I thought I should die before this moment came.  There isn't a
minute that I don't long for you so terribly that I can hardly
live."

"And do you think that I don't long for you?"

"Then come to me!"

She looked at him mournfully and shook her head.

Well, he had known that she would not.  He had not earned her.
What right had he to ask her to fly against the world, to brave
everything, to have such faith in him--as yet?  He had no heart to
press his words, beginning then to understand the paralyzing truth
that there was no longer any resolving this or that; with love like
his he had ceased to be a separate being with a separate will.  He
was entwined with her, could act only if her will and his were one.
He would never be able to say to her: 'You must!'  He loved her too
much.  And she knew it.  So there was nothing for it but to forget
the ache, and make the hour happy.  But how about that other truth--
that in love there is no pause, no resting? . . .  With any
watering, however scant, the flower will grow till its time comes
to be plucked. . . .  This oasis in the desert--these few minutes
with her alone, were swept through and through with a feverish
wind.  To be closer!  How not try to be that?  How not long for her
lips when he had but her hand to kiss?  And how not be poisoned
with the thought that in a few minutes she would leave him and go
back to the presence of that other, who, even though she loathed
him, could see and touch her when he would?  She was leaning back
in the very chair where in fancy he had seen her, and he only dared
sit at her feet and look up.  And this, which a week ago would have
been rapture, was now almost torture, so far did it fall short of
his longing.  It was torture, too, to keep his voice in tune with
the sober sweetness of her voice.  And bitterly he thought: How can
she sit there, and not want me, as I want her?  Then at a touch of
her fingers on his hair, he lost control, and kissed her lips.  Her
surrender lasted only for a second.

"No, no--you must not!"

That mournful surprise sobered him at once.

He got up, stood away from her, begged to be forgiven.

And, when she was gone, he sat in the chair where she had sat.
That clasp of her, the kiss he had begged her to forget--to
forget!--nothing could take that from him.  He had done wrong; had
startled her, had fallen short of chivalry!  And yet--a smile of
utter happiness would cling about his lips.  His fastidiousness,
his imagination almost made him think that this was all he wanted.
If he could close his eyes, now, and pass out, before he lost that
moment of half-fulfilment!

And, the smile still on his lips, he lay back watching the flies
wheeling and chasing round the hanging-lamp.  Sixteen of them there
were, wheeling and chasing--never still!


XII


When, walking from Lennan's studio, Olive reentered her dark little
hall, she approached its alcove and glanced first at the hat-stand.
They were all there--the silk hat, the bowler, the straw!  So he
was in!  And within each hat, in turn, she seemed to see her
husband's head--with the face turned away from her--so distinctly
as to note the leathery look of the skin of his cheek and neck.
And she thought: "I pray that he will die!  It is wicked, but I
pray that he will die!"  Then, quietly, that he might not hear, she
mounted to her bedroom.  The door into his dressing-room was open,
and she went to shut it.  He was standing there at the window.

"Ah!  You're in!  Been anywhere?"

"To the National Gallery."

It was the first direct lie she had ever told him, and she was
surprised to feel neither shame nor fear, but rather a sense of
pleasure at defeating him.  He was the enemy, all the more the
enemy because she was still fighting against herself, and, so
strangely, in his behalf.

"Alone?"

"Yes."

"Rather boring, wasn't it?  I should have thought you'd have got
young Lennan to take you there."

"Why?"

By instinct she had seized on the boldest answer; and there was
nothing to be told from her face.  If he were her superior in
strength, he was her inferior in quickness.

He lowered his eyes, and said:

"His line, isn't it?"

With a shrug she turned away and shut the door.  She sat down on
the edge of her bed, very still.  In that little passage of wits
she had won, she could win in many such; but the full hideousness
of things had come to her.  Lies! lies!  That was to be her life!
That; or to say farewell to all she now cared for, to cause despair
not only in herself, but in her lover, and--for what?  In order
that her body might remain at the disposal of that man in the next
room--her spirit having flown from him for ever.  Such were the
alternatives, unless those words: "Then come to me," were to be
more than words.  Were they?  Could they be?  They would mean such
happiness if--if his love for her were more than a summer love?
And hers for him?  Was it--were they--more than summer loves?  How
know?  And, without knowing, how give such pain to everyone?  How
break a vow she had thought herself quite above breaking?  How make
such a desperate departure from all the traditions and beliefs in
which she had been brought up!  But in the very nature of passion
is that which resents the intrusion of hard and fast decisions. . . .
And suddenly she thought: If our love cannot stay what it is,
and if I cannot yet go to him for always, is there not still
another way?

She got up and began to dress for dinner.  Standing before her
glass she was surprised to see that her face showed no signs of the
fears and doubts that were now her comrades.  Was it because,
whatever happened, she loved and was beloved!  She wondered how she
had looked when he kissed her so passionately; had she shown her
joy before she checked him?

In her garden by the river were certain flowers that, for all her
care, would grow rank and of the wrong colour--wanting a different
soil.  Was she, then, like those flowers of hers?  Ah!  Let her but
have her true soil, and she would grow straight and true enough!

Then in the doorway she saw her husband.  She had never, till to-
day, quite hated him; but now she did, with a real blind horrible
feeling.  What did he want of her standing there with those eyes
fixed on her--those forceful eyes, touched with blood, that seemed
at once to threaten, covet, and beseech!  She drew her wrapper
close round her shoulders.  At that he came up and said:

"Look at me, Olive!"

Against instinct and will she obeyed, and he went on:

"Be careful!  I say, be careful!"

Then he took her by the shoulders, and raised her up to him.  And,
quite unnerved, she stood without resisting.

"I want you," he said; "I mean to keep you."

Then, suddenly letting her go, he covered his eyes with his hands.
That frightened her most--it was so unlike him.  Not till now had
she understood between what terrifying forces she was balancing.
She did not speak, but her face grew white.  From behind those
hands he uttered a sound, not quite like a human noise, turned
sharply, and went out.  She dropped back into the chair before her
mirror, overcome by the most singular feeling she had ever known;
as if she had lost everything, even her love for Lennan, and her
longing for his love.  What was it all worth, what was anything
worth in a world like this?  All was loathsome, herself loathsome!
All was a void!  Hateful, hateful, hateful!  It was like having no
heart at all!  And that same evening, when her husband had gone
down to the House, she wrote to Lennan:


"Our love must never turn to earthiness as it might have this
afternoon.  Everything is black and hopeless.  HE suspects.  For
you to come here is impossible, and too dreadful for us both.  And
I have no right to ask you to be furtive, I can't bear to think of
you like that, and I can't bear it myself.  I don't know what to do
or say.  Don't try to see me yet.  I must have time, I must think."


XIII


Colonel Ercott was not a racing man, but he had in common with
others of his countrymen a religious feeling in the matter of the
Derby.  His remembrances of it went back to early youth, for he had
been born and brought up almost within sound of the coaching-road
to Epsom.  Every Derby and Oaks day he had gone out on his pony to
watch the passing of the tall hats and feathers of the great, and
the pot-hats and feathers of the lowly; and afterwards, in the
fields at home, had ridden races with old Lindsay, finishing
between a cow that judged and a clump of bulrushes representing the
Grand Stand.

But for one reason or another he had never seen the great race, and
the notion that it was his duty to see it had now come to him.  He
proposed this to Mrs. Ercott with some diffidence.  She read so
many books--he did not quite know whether she would approve.
Finding that she did, he added casually:

"And we might take Olive."

Mrs. Ercott answered dryly:

"You know the House of Commons has a holiday?"

The Colonel murmured:

"Oh! I don't want that chap!"

"Perhaps," said Mrs. Ercott, "you would like Mark Lennan."

The Colonel looked at her most dubiously.  Dolly could talk of it
as a tragedy, and a--a grand passion, and yet make a suggestion
like that!  Then his wrinkles began slowly to come alive, and he
gave her waist a squeeze.

Mrs. Ercott did not resist that treatment.

"Take Olive alone," she said.  "I don't really care to go."

When the Colonel went to fetch his niece he found her ready, and
very half-heartedly he asked for Cramier.  It appeared she had not
told him.

Relieved, yet somewhat disconcerted, he murmured:

"He won't mind not going, I suppose?"

"If he went, I should not."

At this quiet answer the Colonel was beset again by all his fears.
He put his white 'topper' down, and took her hand.

"My dear," he said, "I don't want to intrude upon your feelings;
but--but is there anything I can do?  It's dreadful to see things
going unhappily with you!"  He felt his hand being lifted, her face
pressed against it; and, suffering acutely, with his other hand,
cased in a bright new glove, he smoothed her arm.  "We'll have a
jolly good day, sweetheart," he said, "and forget all about it."

She gave the hand a kiss and turned away.  And the Colonel vowed to
himself that she should not be unhappy--lovely creature that she
was, so delicate, and straight, and fine in her pearly frock.  And
he pulled himself together, brushing his white 'topper' vigorously
with his sleeve, forgetting that this kind of hat has no nap.

And so he was tenderness itself on the journey down, satisfying all
her wants before she had them, telling her stories of Indian life,
and consulting her carefully as to which horse they should back.
There was the Duke's, of course, but there was another animal that
appealed to him greatly.  His friend Tabor had given him the tip--
Tabor, who had the best Arabs in all India--and at a nice price.  A
man who practically never gambled, the Colonel liked to feel that
his fancy would bring him in something really substantial--if it
won; the idea that it could lose not really troubling him.
However, they would see it in the paddock, and judge for
themselves.  The paddock was the place, away from all the dust and
racket--Olive would enjoy the paddock!  Once on the course, they
neglected the first race; it was more important, the Colonel
thought, that they should lunch.  He wanted to see more colour in
her cheeks, wanted to see her laugh.  He had an invitation to his
old regiment's drag, where the champagne was sure to be good.  And
he was so proud of her--would not have missed those young fellows'
admiration of her for the world; though to take a lady amongst them
was, in fact, against the rules.  It was not, then, till the second
race was due to start that they made their way into the paddock.
Here the Derby horses were being led solemnly, attended each by a
little posse of persons, looking up their legs and down their ribs
to see whether they were worthy of support, together with a few who
liked to see a whole horse at a time.  Presently they found the
animal which had been recommended to the Colonel.  It was a
chestnut, with a starred forehead, parading in a far corner.  The
Colonel, who really loved a horse, was deep in admiration.  He
liked its head and he liked its hocks; above all, he liked its eye.
A fine creature, all sense and fire--perhaps just a little straight
in the shoulder for coming down the hill!  And in the midst of his
examination he found himself staring at his niece.  What breeding
the child showed, with her delicate arched brows, little ears, and
fine, close nostrils; and the way she moved--so sure and springy.
She was too pretty to suffer!  A shame!  If she hadn't been so
pretty that young fellow wouldn't have fallen in love with her.  If
she weren't so pretty--that husband of hers wouldn't--!  And the
Colonel dropped his gaze, startled by the discovery he had stumbled
on.  If she hadn't been so pretty!  Was that the meaning of it all?
The cynicism of his own reflection struck him between wind and
water.  And yet something in himself seemed to confirm it somehow.
What then?  Was he to let them tear her in two between them,
destroying her, because she was so pretty?  And somehow this
discovery of his--that passion springs from worship of beauty and
warmth, of form and colour--disturbed him horribly, for he had no
habit of philosophy.  The thought seemed to him strangely crude,
even immoral.  That she should be thus between two ravening
desires--a bird between two hawks, a fruit between two mouths!  It
was a way of looking at things that had never before occurred to
him.  The idea of a husband clutching at his wife, the idea of that
young man who looked so gentle, swooping down on her; and the idea
that if she faded, lost her looks, went off, their greed, indeed,
any man's, would die away--all these horrible ideas hurt him the
more for the remarkable suddenness with which they had come to him.
A tragic business!  Dolly had said so.  Queer and quick--were
women!  But his resolution that the day was to be jolly soon
recurred to him, and he hastily resumed inspection of his fancy.
Perhaps they ought to have a ten-pound note on it, and they had
better get back to the Stand!  And as they went the Colonel saw,
standing beneath a tree at a little distance, a young man that he
could have sworn was Lennan.  Not likely for an artist chap to be
down here!  But it WAS undoubtedly young Lennan, brushed-up, in a
top-hat.  Fortunately, however, his face was not turned in their
direction.  He said nothing to Olive, not wishing--especially after
those unpleasant thoughts--to take responsibility, and he kept her
moving towards the gate, congratulating himself that his eyes had
been so sharp.  In the crush there he was separated from her a
little, but she was soon beside him again; and more than ever he
congratulated himself that nothing had occurred to upset her and
spoil the day.  Her cheeks were warm enough now, her dark eyes
glowing.  She was excited no doubt by thoughts of the race, and of
the 'tenner' he was going to put on for her.

He recounted the matter afterwards to Mrs. Ercott.  "That chestnut
Tabor put me on to finished nowhere--couldn't get down the hill--
knew it wouldn't the moment I set eyes on it.  But the child
enjoyed herself.  Wish you'd been there, my dear!"  Of his deeper
thoughts and of that glimpse of young Lennan he did not speak, for
on the way home an ugly suspicion had attacked him.  Had the young
fellow, after all, seen and managed to get close to her in the
crush at the paddock gateway?


XIV


That letter of hers fanned the flame in Lennan as nothing had yet
fanned it.  Earthiness!  Was it earthiness to love as he did?  If
so, then not for all the world would he be otherwise than earthy.
In the shock of reading it, he crossed his Rubicon, and burned his
boats behind him.  No more did the pale ghost, chivalrous devotion,
haunt him.  He knew now that he could not stop short.  Since she
asked him, he must not, of course, try to see her just yet.  But
when he did, then he would fight for his life; the thought that she
might be meaning to slip away from him was too utterly unbearable.
But she could not be meaning that!  She would never be so cruel!
Ah! she would--she must come to him in the end!  The world, life
itself, would be well lost for love of her!

Thus resolved, he was even able to work again; and all that Tuesday
he modelled at a big version of the fantastic, bull-like figure he
had conceived after the Colonel left him up on the hillside at
Beaulieu.  He worked at it with a sort of evil joy.  Into this
creature he would put the spirit of possession that held her from
him.  And while his fingers forced the clay, he felt as if he had
Cramier's neck within his grip.  Yet, now that he had resolved to
take her if he could, he had not quite the same hatred.  After all,
this man loved her too, could not help it that she loathed him;
could not help it that he had the disposition of her, body and
soul!

June had come in with skies of a blue that not even London glare
and dust could pale.  In every square and park and patch of green
the air simmered with life and with the music of birds swaying on
little boughs.  Piano organs in the streets were no longer wistful
for the South; lovers already sat in the shade of trees.

To remain indoors, when he was not working, was sheer torture; for
he could not read, and had lost all interest in the little
excitements, amusements, occupations that go to make up the normal
life of man.  Every outer thing seemed to have dropped off,
shrivelled, leaving him just a condition of the spirit, a state of
mind.

Lying awake he would think of things in the past, and they would
mean nothing--all dissolved and dispersed by the heat of this
feeling in him.  Indeed, his sense of isolation was so strong that
he could not even believe that he had lived through the facts which
his memory apprehended.  He had become one burning mood--that, and
nothing more.

To be out, especially amongst trees, was the only solace.

And he sat for a long time that evening under a large lime-tree on
a knoll above the Serpentine.  There was very little breeze, just
enough to keep alive a kind of whispering.  What if men and women,
when they had lived their gusty lives, became trees!  What if
someone who had burned and ached were now spreading over him this
leafy peace--this blue-black shadow against the stars?  Or were the
stars, perhaps, the souls of men and women escaped for ever from
love and longing?  He broke off a branch of the lime and drew it
across his face.  It was not yet in flower, but it smelled lemony
and fresh even here in London.  If only for a moment he could
desert his own heart, and rest with the trees and stars!

No further letter came from her next morning, and he soon lost his
power to work.  It was Derby Day.  He determined to go down.
Perhaps she would be there.  Even if she were not, he might find
some little distraction in the crowd and the horses.  He had seen
her in the paddock long before the Colonel's sharp eyes detected
him; and, following in the crush, managed to touch her hand in the
crowded gateway, and whisper: "To-morrow, the National Gallery, at
four o'clock--by the Bacchus and Ariadne.  For God's sake!"  Her
gloved hand pressed his hard; and she was gone.  He stayed in the
paddock, too happy almost to breathe. . . .

Next day, while waiting before that picture, he looked at it with
wonder.  For there seemed his own passion transfigured in the
darkening star-crowned sky, and the eyes of the leaping god.  In
spirit, was he not always rushing to her like that?  Minutes
passed, and she did not come.  What should he do if she failed him?
Surely die of disappointment and despair. . . .  He had little
enough experience as yet of the toughness of the human heart; how
life bruises and crushes, yet leaves it beating. . . .  Then, from
an unlikely quarter, he saw her coming.

They walked in silence down to the quiet rooms where the Turner
watercolours hung.  No one, save two Frenchmen and an old official,
watched them passing slowly before those little pictures, till they
came to the end wall, and, unseen, unheard by any but her, he could
begin!

The arguments he had so carefully rehearsed were all forgotten;
nothing left but an incoherent pleading.  Life without her was not
life; and they had only one life for love--one summer.  It was all
dark where she was not--the very sun itself was dark.  Better to
die than to live such false, broken lives, apart from each other.
Better to die at once than to live wanting each other, longing and
longing, and watching each other's sorrow.  And all for the sake of
what?  It maddened, killed him, to think of that man touching her
when he knew she did but hate him.  It shamed all manhood; it could
not be good to help such things to be.  A vow when the spirit of it
was gone was only superstition; it was wicked to waste one's life
for the sake of that.  Society--she knew, she must know--only cared
for the forms, the outsides of things.  And what did it matter what
Society thought?  It had no soul, no feeling, nothing.  And if it
were said they ought to sacrifice themselves for the sake of
others, to make things happier in the world, she must know that was
only true when love was light and selfish; but not when people
loved as they did, with all their hearts and souls, so that they
would die for each other any minute, so that without each other
there was no meaning in anything.  It would not help a single soul,
for them to murder their love and all the happiness of their lives;
to go on in a sort of living death.  Even if it were wrong, he
would rather do that wrong, and take the consequences!  But it was
not, it COULD not be wrong, when they felt like that!

And all the time that he was pouring forth those supplications, his
eyes searched and searched her face.  But there only came from her:
"I don't know--I can't tell--if only I knew!"  And then he was
silent, stricken to the heart; till, at a look or a touch from her,
he would break out again: "You do love me--you do; then what does
anything else matter?"

And so it went on and on that summer afternoon, in the deserted
room meant for such other things, where the two Frenchmen were too
sympathetic, and the old official too drowsy, to come.  Then it all
narrowed to one fierce, insistent question:

"What is it--WHAT is it you're afraid of?"

But to that, too, he got only the one mournful answer, paralyzing
in its fateful monotony.

"I don't know--I can't tell!"

It was awful to go on thus beating against this uncanny, dark,
shadowy resistance; these unreal doubts and dreads, that by their
very dumbness were becoming real to him, too.  If only she could
tell him what she feared!  It could not be poverty--that was not
like her--besides, he had enough for both.  It could not be loss of
a social position, which was but irksome to her!  Surely it was not
fear that he would cease to love her!  What was it?  In God's name--
what?

To-morrow--she had told him--she was to go down, alone, to the
river-house; would she not come now, this very minute, to him
instead?  And they would start off--that night, back to the South
where their love had flowered.  But again it was: "I can't!  I
don't know--I must have time!"  And yet her eyes had that brooding
love-light.  How COULD she hold back and waver?  But, utterly
exhausted, he did not plead again; did not even resist when she
said: "You must go, now; and leave me to get back!  I will write.
Perhaps--soon--I shall know."  He begged for, and took one kiss;
then, passing the old official, went quickly up and out.


XV


He reached his rooms overcome by a lassitude that was not, however,
quite despair.  He had made his effort, failed--but there was still
within him the unconquerable hope of the passionate lover. . . .
As well try to extinguish in full June the beating of the heart of
summer; deny to the flowers their deepening hues, or to winged life
its slumbrous buzzing, as stifle in such a lover his conviction of
fulfilment. . . .

He lay down on a couch, and there stayed a long time quite still,
his forehead pressed against the wall.  His will was already
beginning to recover for a fresh attempt.  It was merciful that she
was going away from Cramier, going to where he had in fancy watched
her feed her doves.  No laws, no fears, not even her commands could
stop his fancy from conjuring her up by day and night.  He had but
to close his eyes, and she was there.

A ring at the bell, repeated several times, roused him at last to
go to the door.  His caller was Robert Cramier.  And at sight of
him, all Lennan's lethargy gave place to a steely feeling.  What
had brought him here?  Had he been spying on his wife?  The old
longing for physical combat came over him.  Cramier was perhaps
fifteen years his senior, but taller, heavier, thicker.  Chances,
then, were pretty equal!

"Won't you come in?" he said.

"Thanks."

The voice had in it the same mockery as on Sunday; and it shot
through him that Cramier had thought to find his wife here.  If so,
he did not betray it by any crude look round.  He came in with his
deliberate step, light and well-poised for so big a man.

"So this," he said, "is where you produce your masterpieces!
Anything great since you came back?"

Lennan lifted the cloths from the half-modelled figure of his bull-
man.  He felt malicious pleasure in doing that.  Would Cramier
recognize himself in this creature with the horn-like ears, and
great bossed forehead?  If this man who had her happiness beneath
his heel had come here to mock, he should at all events get what he
had come to give.  And he waited.

"I see.  You are giving the poor brute horns!"

If Cramier had seen, he had dared to add a touch of cynical humour,
which the sculptor himself had never thought of.  And this even
evoked in the young man a kind of admiring compunction.

"Those are not horns," he said gently; "only ears."

Cramier lifted a hand and touched the edge of his own ear.

"Not quite like that, are they--human ears?  But I suppose you
would call this symbolic.  What, if I may ask, does it represent?"

All the softness in Lennan vanished.

"If you can't gather that from looking, it must be a failure."

"Not at all.  If I am right, you want something for it to tread on,
don't you, to get your full effect?"

Lennan touched the base of the clay.

"The broken curve here"--then, with sudden disgust at this fencing,
was silent.  What had the man come for?  He must want something.
And, as if answering, Cramier said:

"To pass to another subject--you see a good deal of my wife.  I
just wanted to tell you that I don't very much care that you
should.  It is as well to be quite frank, I think."

Lennan bowed.

"Is that not," he said, "perhaps rather a matter for HER decision?"

That heavy figure--those threatening eyes!  The whole thing was
like a dream come true!

"I do not feel it so.  I am not one of those who let things drift.
Please understand me.  You come between us at your peril."

Lennan kept silence for a moment, then he said quietly:

"Can one come between two people who have ceased to have anything
in common?"

The veins in Cramier's forehead were swollen, his face and neck had
grown crimson.  And Lennan thought with strange elation: Now he's
going to hit me!  He could hardly keep his hands from shooting out
and seizing in advance that great strong neck.  If he could
strangle, and have done with him!

But, quite suddenly, Cramier turned on his heel.  "I have warned
you," he said, and went.

Lennan took a long breath.  So!  That was over, and he knew where
he was.  If Cramier had struck out, he would surely have seized his
neck and held on till life was gone.  Nothing should have shaken
him off.  In fancy he could see himself swaying, writhing, reeling,
battered about by those heavy fists, but always with his hands on
the thick neck, squeezing out its life.  He could feel, absolutely
feel, the last reel and stagger of that great bulk crashing down,
dragging him with it, till it lay upturned, still.  He covered his
eyes with his hands. . . .  Thank God!  The fellow had not hit out!

He went to the door, opened it, and stood leaning against the door-
post.  All was still and drowsy out there in that quiet backwater
of a street.  Not a soul in sight!  How still, for London!  Only
the birds.  In a neighbouring studio someone was playing Chopin.
Queer!  He had almost forgotten there was such a thing as Chopin.
A mazurka!  Spinning like some top thing, round and round--weird
little tune! . . .  Well, and what now?  Only one thing certain.
Sooner give up life than give her up!  Far sooner!  Love her,
achieve her--or give up everything, and drown to that tune going on
and on, that little dancing dirge of summer!


XVI


At her cottage Olive stood often by the river.

What lay beneath all that bright water--what strange, deep,
swaying, life so far below the ruffling of wind, and the shadows of
the willow trees?  Was love down there, too?  Love between sentient
things, where it was almost dark; or had all passion climbed up to
rustle with the reeds, and float with the water-flowers in the
sunlight?  Was there colour?  Or had colour been drowned?  No scent
and no music; but movement there would be, for all the dim groping
things bending one way to the current--movement, no less than in
the aspen-leaves, never quite still, and the winged droves of the
clouds.  And if it were dark down there, it was dark, too, above
the water; and hearts ached, and eyes just as much searched for
that which did not come.

To watch it always flowing by to the sea; never looking back, never
swaying this way or that; drifting along, quiet as Fate--dark, or
glamorous with the gold and moonlight of these beautiful days and
nights, when every flower in her garden, in the fields, and along
the river banks, was full of sweet life; when dog-roses starred the
lanes, and in the wood the bracken was nearly a foot high.

She was not alone there, though she would much rather have been;
two days after she left London her Uncle and Aunt had joined her.
It was from Cramier they had received their invitation.  He himself
had not yet been down.

Every night, having parted from Mrs. Ercott and gone up the wide
shallow stairs to her room, she would sit down at the window to
write to Lennan, one candle beside her--one pale flame for comrade,
as it might be his spirit.  Every evening she poured out to him her
thoughts, and ended always: "Have patience!"  She was still waiting
for courage to pass that dark hedge of impalpable doubts and fears
and scruples, of a dread that she could not make articulate even to
herself.  Having finished, she would lean out into the night.  The
Colonel, his black figure cloaked against the dew, would be pacing
up and down the lawn, with his good-night cigar, whose fiery spark
she could just discern; and, beyond, her ghostly dove-house; and,
beyond, the river--flowing.  Then she would clasp herself close--
afraid to stretch out her arms, lest she should be seen.

Each morning she rose early, dressed, and slipped away to the
village to post her letter.  From the woods across the river wild
pigeons would be calling--as though Love itself pleaded with her
afresh each day.  She was back well before breakfast, to go up to
her room and come down again as if for the first time.  The
Colonel, meeting her on the stairs, or in the hall, would say: "Ah,
my dear! just beaten you!  Slept well?"  And, while her lips
touched his cheek, slanted at the proper angle for uncles, he never
dreamed that she had been three miles already through the dew.

Now that she was in the throes of an indecision, whose ending, one
way or the other, must be so tremendous, now that she was in the
very swirl, she let no sign at all escape her; the Colonel and even
his wife were deceived into thinking that after all no great harm
had been done.  It was grateful to them to think so, because of
that stewardship at Monte Carlo, of which they could not render too
good account.  The warm sleepy days, with a little croquet and a
little paddling on the river, and much sitting out of doors, when
the Colonel would read aloud from Tennyson, were very pleasant.  To
him--if not to Mrs. Ercott--it was especially jolly to be out of
Town 'this confounded crowded time of year.'  And so the days of
early June went by, each finer than the last.

And then Cramier came down, without warning on a Friday evening.
It was hot in London . . . the session dull. . . .  The Jubilee
turning everything upside down. . . .  They were lucky to be out of
Town!

A silent dinner--that!

Mrs. Ercott noticed that he drank wine like water, and for minutes
at a time fixed his eyes, that looked heavy as if he had not been
sleeping, not on his wife's face but on her neck.  If Olive really
disliked and feared him--as John would have it--she disguised her
feelings very well!  For so pale a woman she was looking brilliant
that night.  The sun had caught her cheeks, perhaps.  That black
low-cut frock suited her, with old Milanese-point lace matching her
skin so well, and one carnation, of darkest red, at her breast.
Her eyes were really sometimes like black velvet.  It suited pale
women to have those eyes, that looked so black at night!  She was
talking, too, and laughing more than usual.  One would have said: A
wife delighted to welcome her husband!  And yet there was
something--something in the air, in the feel of things--the
lowering fixity of that man's eyes, or--thunder coming, after all
this heat!  Surely the night was unnaturally still and dark, hardly
a breath of air, and so many moths out there, passing the beam of
light, like little pale spirits crossing a river!  Mrs. Ercott
smiled, pleased at that image.  Moths!  Men were like moths; there
were women from whom they could not keep away.  Yes, there was
something about Olive that drew men to her.  Not meretricious--to
do her justice, not that at all; but something soft, and-fatal;
like one of these candle-flames to the poor moths.  John's eyes
were never quite as she knew them when he was looking at Olive; and
Robert Cramier's--what a queer, drugged look they had!  As for that
other poor young fellow--she had never forgotten his face when they
came on him in the Park!

And when after dinner they sat on the veranda, they were all more
silent still, just watching, it seemed, the smoke of their
cigarettes, rising quite straight, as though wind had been
withdrawn from the world.  The Colonel twice endeavoured to speak
about the moon: It ought to be up by now!  It was going to be full.

And then Cramier said: "Put on that scarf thing, Olive, and come
round the garden with me."

Mrs. Ercott admitted to herself now that what John said was true.
Just one gleam of eyes, turned quickly this way and that, as a bird
looks for escape; and then Olive had got up and quietly gone with
him down the path, till their silent figures were lost to sight.

Disturbed to the heart, Mrs. Ercott rose and went over to her
husband's chair.  He was frowning, and staring at his evening shoe
balanced on a single toe.  He looked up at her and put out his
hand.  Mrs. Ercott gave it a squeeze; she wanted comfort.

The Colonel spoke:

"It's heavy to-night, Dolly.  I don't like the feel of it."


XVII


They had passed without a single word spoken, down through the
laurels and guelder roses to the river bank; then he had turned to
the right, and gone along it under the dove-house, to the yew-
trees.  There he had stopped, in the pitch darkness of that
foliage.  It seemed to her dreadfully still; if only there had been
the faintest breeze, the faintest lisping of reeds on the water,
one bird to make a sound; but nothing, nothing save his breathing,
deep, irregular, with a quiver in it.  What had he brought her here
for?  To show her how utterly she was his?  Was he never going to
speak, never going to say whatever it was he had in mind to say?
If only he would not touch her!

Then he moved, and a stone dislodged fell with a splash into the
water.  She could not help a little gasp.  How black the river
looked!  But slowly, beyond the dim shape of the giant poplar, a
shiver of light stole outwards across the blackness from the far
bank--the moon, whose rim she could now see rising, of a thick gold
like a coin, above the woods.  Her heart went out to that warm
light.  At all events there was one friendly inhabitant of this
darkness.

Suddenly she felt his hands on her waist.  She did not move, her
heart beat too furiously; but a sort of prayer fluttered up from it
against her lips.  In the grip of those heavy hands was such
quivering force!

His voice sounded very husky and strange: "Olive, this can't go on.
I suffer.  My God!  I suffer!"

A pang went through her, a sort of surprise.  Suffer!  She might
wish him dead, but she did not want him to suffer--God knew!  And
yet, gripped by those hands, she could not say: I am sorry!

He made a sound that was almost a groan, and dropped on his knees.
Feeling herself held fast, she tried to push his forehead back from
her waist.  It was fiery hot; and she heard him mutter: "Have
mercy!  Love me a little!"  But the clutch of his hands, never
still on the thin silk of her dress, turned her faint.  She tried
to writhe away, but could not; stood still again, and at last found
her voice.

"Mercy?  Can I MAKE myself love?  No one ever could since the world
began.  Please, please get up.  Let me go!"

But he was pulling her down to him so that she was forced on to her
knees on the grass, with her face close to his.  A low moaning was
coming from him.  It was horrible--so horrible!  And he went on
pleading, the words all confused, not looking in her face.  It
seemed to her that it would never end, that she would never get
free of that grip, away from that stammering, whispering voice.
She stayed by instinct utterly still, closing her eyes.  Then she
felt his gaze for the first time that evening on her face, and
realized that he had not dared to look until her eyes were closed,
for fear of reading what was in them.  She said very gently:

"Please let me go.  I think I'm going to faint."

He relaxed the grip of his arms; she sank down and stayed unmoving
on the grass.  After such utter stillness that she hardly knew
whether he were there or not, she felt his hot hand on her bare
shoulder.  Was it all to begin again?  She shrank down lower still,
and a little moan escaped her.  He let her go suddenly, and, when
at last she looked up, was gone.

She got to her feet trembling, and moved quickly from under the
yew-trees.  She tried to think--tried to understand exactly what
this portended for her, for him, for her lover.  But she could not.
There was around her thoughts the same breathless darkness that
brooded over this night.  Ah! but to the night had been given that
pale-gold moon-ray, to herself nothing, no faintest gleam; as well
try to pierce below the dark surface of that water!

She passed her hands over her face, and hair, and dress.  How long
had it lasted?  How long had they been out here?  And she began
slowly moving back towards the house.  Thank God!  She had not
yielded to fear or pity, not uttered falsities, not pretended she
could love him, and betrayed her heart.  That would have been the
one unbearable thing to have been left remembering!  She stood long
looking down, as if trying to see the future in her dim flower-
beds; then, bracing herself, hurried to the house.  No one was on
the veranda, no one in the drawing-room.  She looked at the clock.
Nearly eleven.  Ringing for the servant to shut the windows, she
stole up to her room.  Had her husband gone away as he had come?
Or would she presently again be face to face with that dread, the
nerve of which never stopped aching now, dread of the night when he
was near?  She determined not to go to bed, and drawing a long
chair to the window, wrapped herself in a gown, and lay back.

The flower from her dress, miraculously uncrushed in those dark
minutes on the grass, she set in water beside her at the window--
Mark's favourite flower, he had once told her; it was a comfort,
with its scent, and hue, and memory of him.

Strange that in her life, with all the faces seen, and people
known, she had not loved one till she had met Lennan!  She had even
been sure that love would never come to her; had not wanted it--
very much; had thought to go on well enough, and pass out at the
end, never having known, or much cared to know, full summer.  Love
had taken its revenge on her now for all slighted love offered her
in the past; for the one hated love that had to-night been on its
knees to her.  They said it must always come once to every man and
woman--this witchery, this dark sweet feeling, springing up, who
knew how or why?  She had not believed, but now she knew.  And
whatever might be coming, she would not have this different.  Since
all things changed, she must change and get old and be no longer
pretty for him to look at, but this in her heart could not change.
She felt sure of that.  It was as if something said: This is for
ever, beyond life, beyond death, this is for ever!  He will be
dust, and you dust, but your love will live!  Somewhere--in the
woods, among the flowers, or down in the dark water, it will haunt!
For it only you have lived! . . .  Then she noticed that a slender
silvery-winged thing, unlike any moth she had ever seen, had
settled on her gown, close to her neck.  It seemed to be sleeping,
so delicate and drowsy, having come in from the breathless dark,
thinking, perhaps, that her whiteness was a light.  What dim memory
did it rouse; something of HIM, something HE had done--in darkness,
on a night like this.  Ah, yes! that evening after Gorbio, the
little owl-moth on her knee!  He had touched her when he took that
cosy wan velvet-eyed thing off her!

She leaned out for air.  What a night!--whose stars were hiding in
the sheer heavy warmth; whose small, round, golden moon had no
transparency!  A night like a black pansy with a little gold heart.
And silent!  For, of the trees, that whispered so much at night,
not even the aspens had voice.  The unstirring air had a dream-
solidity against her cheeks.  But in all the stillness, what
sentiency, what passion--as in her heart!  Could she not draw HIM
to her from those woods, from that dark gleaming river, draw him
from the flowers and trees and the passion-mood of the sky--draw
him up to her waiting here, so that she was no more this craving
creature, but one with him and the night!  And she let her head
droop down on her hands.

All night long she stayed there at the window.  Sometimes dozing in
the chair; once waking with a start, fancying that her husband was
bending over her.  Had he been--and stolen away?  And the dawn
came; dew-grey, filmy and wistful, woven round each black tree, and
round the white dove-cot, and falling scarf-like along the river.
And the chirrupings of birds stirred among leaves as yet invisible.

She slept then.


XVIII


When she awoke once more, in daylight, smiling, Cramier was
standing beside her chair.  His face, all dark and bitter, had the
sodden look of a man very tired.

"So!" he said: "Sleeping this way doesn't spoil your dreams.  Don't
let me disturb them.  I am just going back to Town."

Like a frightened bird, she stayed, not stirring, gazing at his
back as he leaned in the window, till, turning round on her again,
he said:

"But remember this: What I can't have, no one else shall!  Do you
understand?  No one else!"  And he bent down close, repeating: "Do
you understand--you bad wife!"

Four years' submission to a touch she shrank from; one long effort
not to shrink!  Bad wife!  Not if he killed her would she answer
now!

"Do you hear?" he said once more: "Make up your mind to that.  I
mean it."

He had gripped the arms of her chair, till she could feel it quiver
beneath her.  Would he drive his fist into her face that she
managed to keep still smiling?  But there only passed into his eyes
an expression which she could not read.

"Well," he said, "you know!" and walked heavily towards the door.

The moment he had gone she sprang up: Yes, she was a bad wife!  A
wife who had reached the end of her tether.  A wife who hated
instead of loving.  A wife in prison!  Bad wife!  Martyrdom, then,
for the sake of a faith in her that was lost already, could be but
folly.  If she seemed bad and false to him, there was no longer
reason to pretend to be otherwise.  No longer would she, in the
words of the old song:--'sit and sigh--pulling bracken, pulling
bracken.'  No more would she starve for want of love, and watch the
nights throb and ache, as last night had throbbed and ached, with
the passion that she might not satisfy.

And while she was dressing she wondered why she did not look tired.
To get out quickly!  To send her lover word at once to hasten to
her while it was safe--that she might tell him she was coming to
him out of prison!  She would telegraph for him to come that
evening with a boat, opposite the tall poplar.  She and her Aunt
and Uncle were to go to dinner at the Rectory, but she would plead
headache at the last minute.  When the Ercotts had gone she would
slip out, and he and she would row over to the wood, and be
together for two hours of happiness.  And they must make a clear
plan, too--for to-morrow they would begin their life together.  But
it would not be safe to send that message from the village; she
must go down and over the bridge to the post-office on the other
side, where they did not know her.  It was too late now before
breakfast.  Better after, when she could slip away, knowing for
certain that her husband had gone.  It would still not be too late
for her telegram--Lennan never left his rooms till the midday post
which brought her letters.

She finished dressing, and knowing that she must show no trace of
her excitement, sat quite still for several minutes, forcing
herself into languor.  Then she went down.  Her husband had
breakfasted and gone.  At everything she did, and every word she
spoke, she was now smiling with a sort of wonder, as if she were
watching a self, that she had abandoned like an old garment,
perform for her amusement.  It even gave her no feeling of remorse
to think she was going to do what would be so painful to the good
Colonel.  He was dear to her--but it did not matter.  She was past
all that.  Nothing mattered--nothing in the world!  It amused her
to believe that her Uncle and Aunt misread her last night's walk in
the dark garden, misread her languor and serenity.  And at the
first moment possible she flew out, and slipped away under cover of
the yew-trees towards the river.  Passing the spot where her
husband had dragged her down to him on her knees in the grass, she
felt a sort of surprise that she could ever have been so terrified.
What was he?  The past--nothing!  And she flew on.  She noted
carefully the river bank opposite the tall poplar.  It would be
quite easy to get down from there into a boat.  But they would not
stay in that dark backwater.  They would go over to the far side
into those woods from which last night the moon had risen, those
woods from which the pigeons mocked her every morning, those woods
so full of summer.  Coming back, no one would see her landing; for
it would be pitch dark in the backwater.  And, while she hurried,
she looked back across her shoulder, marking where the water,
entering, ceased to be bright.  A dragon-fly brushed her cheek; she
saw it vanish where the sunlight failed.  How suddenly its happy
flight was quenched in that dark shade, as a candle flame blown
out.  The tree growth there was too thick--the queer stumps and
snags had uncanny shapes, as of monstrous creatures, whose eyes
seemed to peer out at you.  She shivered.  She had seen those
monsters with their peering eyes somewhere.  Ah!  In her dream at
Monte Carlo of that bull-face staring from the banks, while she
drifted by, unable to cry out.  No!  The backwater was not a happy
place--they would not stay there a single minute.  And more swiftly
than ever she flew on along the path.  Soon she had crossed the
bridge, sent off her message, and returned.  But there were ten
hours to get through before eight o'clock, and she did not hurry
now.  She wanted this day of summer to herself alone, a day of
dreaming till he came; this day for which all her life till now had
been shaping her--the day of love.  Fate was very wonderful!  If
she had ever loved before; if she had known joy in her marriage--
she could never have been feeling what she was feeling now, what
she well knew she would never feel again.  She crossed a new-mown
hayfield, and finding a bank, threw herself down on her back among
its uncut grasses.  Far away at the other end men were scything.
It was all very beautiful--the soft clouds floating, the clover-
stalks pushing themselves against her palms, and stems of the tall
couch grass cool to her cheeks; little blue butterflies; a lark,
invisible; the scent of the ripe hay; and the gold-fairy arrows of
the sun on her face and limbs.  To grow and reach the hour of
summer; all must do that!  That was the meaning of Life!  She had
no more doubts and fears.  She had no more dread, no bitterness,
and no remorse for what she was going to do.  She was doing it
because she must. . . .  As well might grass stay its ripening
because it shall be cut down!  She had, instead, a sense of
something blessed and uplifting.  Whatever Power had made her
heart, had placed within it this love.  Whatever it was, whoever it
was, could not be angry with her!

A wild bee settled on her arm, and she held it up between her and
the sun, so that she might enjoy its dusky glamour.  It would not
sting her--not to-day!  The little blue butterflies, too, kept
alighting on her, who lay there so still.  And the love-songs of
the wood-pigeons never ceased, nor the faint swish of scything.

At last she rose to make her way home.  A telegram had come saying
simply: "Yes."  She read it with an unmoved face, having resorted
again to her mask of languor.  Toward tea-time she confessed to
headache, and said she would lie down.  Up there in her room she
spent those three hours writing--writing as best she could all she
had passed through in thought and feeling, before making her
decision.  It seemed to her that she owed it to herself to tell her
lover how she had come to what she had never thought to come to.
She put what she had written in an envelope and sealed it.  She
would give it to him, that he might read and understand, when she
had shown him with all of her how she loved him.  It would pass the
time for him, until to-morrow--until they set out on their new life
together.  For to-night they would make their plans, and to-morrow
start.

At half-past seven she sent word that her headache was too bad to
allow her to go out.  This brought a visit from Mrs. Ercott: The
Colonel and she were so distressed; but perhaps Olive was wise not
to exert herself!  And presently the Colonel himself spoke,
lugubriously through the door: Not well enough to come?  No fun
without her!  But she mustn't on any account strain herself!  No,
no!

Her heart smote her at that.  He was always so good to her.

At last, watching from the corridor, she saw them sally forth down
the drive--the Colonel a little in advance, carrying his wife's
evening shoes.  How nice he looked--with his brown face, and his
grey moustache; so upright, and concerned with what he had in hand!

There was no languor in her now.  She had dressed in white, and now
she took a blue silk cloak with a hood, and caught up the flower
that had so miraculously survived last night's wearing and pinned
it at her breast.  Then making sure no servant was about, she
slipped downstairs and out.  It was just eight, and the sun still
glistened on the dove-cot.  She kept away from that lest the birds
should come fluttering about her, and betray her by cooing.  When
she had nearly reached the tow-path, she stopped affrighted.
Surely something had moved, something heavy, with a sound of broken
branches.  Was it the memory of last night come on her again; or,
indeed, someone there?  She walked back a few steps.  Foolish
alarm!  In the meadow beyond a cow was brushing against the hedge.
And, stealing along the grass, out on to the tow-path, she went
swiftly towards the poplar.


XIX


A hundred times in these days of her absence Lennan had been on the
point of going down, against her orders, just to pass the house,
just to feel himself within reach, to catch a glimpse of her,
perhaps, from afar.  If his body haunted London, his spirit had
passed down on to that river where he had drifted once already,
reconnoitring.  A hundred times--by day in fancy, and by night in
dreams--pulling himself along by the boughs, he stole down that dim
backwater, till the dark yews and the white dove-cot came into
view.

For he thought now only of fulfilment.  She was wasting cruelly
away!  Why should he leave her where she was?  Leave her to profane
herself and all womanhood in the arms of a man she hated?

And on that day of mid-June, when he received her telegram, it was
as if he had been handed the key of Paradise.

Would she--could she mean to come away with him that very night?
He would prepare for that at all events.  He had so often in mind
faced this crisis in his affairs, that now it only meant
translating into action what had been carefully thought out.  He
packed, supplied himself liberally with money, and wrote a long
letter to his guardian.  It would hurt the old man--Gordy was over
seventy now--but that could not be helped.  He would not post it
till he knew for certain.

After telling how it had all come about, he went on thus: "I know
that to many people, and perhaps to you, Gordy, it will seem very
wrong, but it does not to me, and that is the simple truth.
Everybody has his own views on such things, I suppose; and as I
would not--on my honour, Gordy--ever have held or wished to hold,
or ever will hold in marriage or out of marriage, any woman who
does not love me, so I do not think it is acting as I would resent
others acting towards me, to take away from such unhappiness this
lady for whom I would die at any minute.  I do not mean to say that
pity has anything to do with it--I thought so at first, but I know
now that it is all swallowed up in the most mighty feeling I have
ever had or ever shall have.  I am not a bit afraid of conscience.
If God is Universal Truth, He cannot look hardly upon us for being
true to ourselves.  And as to people, we shall just hold up our
heads; I think that they generally take you at your own valuation.
But, anyway, Society does not much matter.  We shan't want those
who don't want us--you may be sure.  I hope he will divorce her
quickly--there is nobody much to be hurt by that except you and
Cis; but if he doesn't--it can't be helped.  I don't think she has
anything; but with my six hundred, and what I can make, even if we
have to live abroad, we shall be all right for money.  You have
been awfully good to me always, Gordy, and I am very grieved to
hurt you, and still more sorry if you think I am being ungrateful;
but when one feels as I do--body and soul and spirit--there isn't
any question; there wouldn't be if death itself stood in the way.
If you receive this, we shall be gone together; I will write to you
from wherever we pitch our tent, and, of course, I shall write to
Cicely.  But will you please tell Mrs. Doone and Sylvia, and give
them my love if they still care to have it.  Good-bye, dear Gordy.
I believe you would have done the same, if you had been I.  Always
your affectionate--MARK."

In all those preparations he forgot nothing, employing every minute
of the few hours in a sort of methodic exaltation.  The last thing
before setting out he took the damp cloths off his 'bull-man.'
Into the face of the monster there had come of late a hungry,
yearning look.  The artist in him had done his work that
unconscious justice; against his will had set down the truth.  And,
wondering whether he would ever work at it again, he redamped the
cloths and wrapped it carefully.

He did not go to her village, but to one five or six miles down the
river--it was safer, and the row would steady him.  Hiring a skiff,
he pulled up stream.  He travelled very slowly to kill time,
keeping under the far bank.  And as he pulled, his very heart
seemed parched with nervousness.  Was it real that he was going to
her, or only some fantastic trick of Fate, a dream from which he
would wake to find himself alone again?  He passed the dove-cot at
last, and kept on till he could round into the backwater and steal
up under cover to the poplar.  He arrived a few minutes before
eight o'clock, turned the boat round, and waited close beneath the
bank, holding to a branch, and standing so that he could see the
path.  If a man could die from longing and anxiety, surely Lennan
must have died then!

All wind had failed, and the day was fallen into a wonderful still
evening.  Gnats were dancing in the sparse strips of sunlight that
slanted across the dark water, now that the sun was low.  From the
fields, bereft of workers, came the scent of hay and the heavy
scent of meadow-sweet; the musky odour of the backwater was
confused with them into one brooding perfume.  No one passed.  And
sounds were few and far to that wistful listener, for birds did not
sing just there.  How still and warm was the air, yet seemed to
vibrate against his cheeks as though about to break into flame.
That fancy came to him vividly while he stood waiting--a vision of
heat simmering in little pale red flames.  On the thick reeds some
large, slow, dusky flies were still feeding, and now and then a
moorhen a few yards away splashed a little, or uttered a sharp,
shrill note.  When she came--if she did come!--they would not stay
here, in this dark earthy backwater; he would take her over to the
other side, away to the woods!  But the minutes passed, and his
heart sank.  Then it leaped up.  Someone was coming--in white, with
bare head, and something blue or black flung across her arm.  It
was she!  No one else walked like that!  She came very quickly.
And he noticed that her hair looked like little wings on either
side of her brow, as if her face were a white bird with dark wings,
flying to love!  Now she was close, so close that he could see her
lips parted, and her eyes love-lighted--like nothing in the world
but darkness wild with dew and starlight.  He reached up and lifted
her down into the boat, and the scent of some flower pressed
against his face seemed to pierce into him and reach his very
heart, awakening the memory of something past, forgotten.  Then,
seizing the branches, snapping them in his haste, he dragged the
skiff along through the sluggish water, the gnats dancing in his
face.  She seemed to know where he was taking her, and neither of
them spoke a single word, while he pulled out into the open, and
over to the far bank.

There was but one field between them and the wood--a field of young
wheat, with a hedge of thorn and alder.  And close to that hedge
they set out, their hands clasped.  They had nothing to say yet--
like children saving up.  She had put on her cloak to hide her
dress, and its silk swished against the silvery blades of the
wheat.  What had moved her to put on this blue cloak?  Blue of the
sky, and flowers, of birds' wings, and the black-burning blue of
the night!  The hue of all holy things!  And how still it was in
the late gleam of the sun!  Not one little sound of beast or bird
or tree; not one bee humming!  And not much colour--only the starry
white hemlocks and globe-campion flowers, and the low-flying
glamour of the last warm light on the wheat.


XX


. . . Now over wood and river the evening drew in fast.  And first
the swallows, that had looked as if they would never stay their
hunting, ceased; and the light, that had seemed fastened above the
world, for all its last brightenings, slowly fell wingless and
dusky.

The moon would not rise till ten!  And all things waited.  The
creatures of night were slow to come forth after that long bright
summer's day, watching for the shades of the trees to sink deeper
and deeper into the now chalk-white water; watching for the chalk-
white face of the sky to be masked with velvet.  The very black-
plumed trees themselves seemed to wait in suspense for the grape-
bloom of night.  All things stared, wan in that hour of passing
day--all things had eyes wistful and unblessed.  In those moments
glamour was so dead that it was as if meaning had abandoned the
earth.  But not for long.  Winged with darkness, it stole back; not
the soul of meaning that had gone, but a witch-like and brooding
spirit harbouring in the black trees, in the high dark spears of
the rushes, and on the grim-snouted snags that lurked along the
river bank.  Then the owls came out, and night-flying things.  And
in the wood there began a cruel bird-tragedy--some dark pursuit in
the twilight above the bracken; the piercing shrieks of a creature
into whom talons have again and again gone home; and mingled with
them, hoarse raging cries of triumph.  Many minutes they lasted,
those noises of the night, sound-emblems of all the cruelty in the
heart of Nature; till at last death appeased that savagery.  And
any soul abroad, that pitied fugitives, might once more listen, and
not weep. . . .

Then a nightingale began to give forth its long liquid gurgling;
and a corn-crake churred in the young wheat.  Again the night
brooded, in the silent tops of the trees, in the more silent depths
of the water.  It sent out at long intervals a sigh or murmur, a
tiny scuttling splash, an owl's hunting cry.  And its breath was
still hot and charged with heavy odour, for no dew was falling. . . .


XXI


It was past ten when they came out from the wood.  She had wanted
to wait for the moon to rise; not a gold coin of a moon as last
night, but ivory pale, and with a gleaming radiance level over the
fern, and covering the lower boughs, as it were, with a drift of
white blossom.

Through the wicket gate they passed once more beside the moon-
coloured wheat, which seemed of a different world from that world
in which they had walked but an hour and a half ago.

And in Lennan's heart was a feeling such as a man's heart can only
know once in all his life--such humble gratitude, and praise, and
adoration of her who had given him her all.  There should be
nothing for her now but joy--like the joy of this last hour.  She
should never know less happiness!  And kneeling down before her at
the water's edge he kissed her dress, and hands, and feet, which
to-morrow would be his forever.

Then they got into the boat.

The smile of the moonlight glided over each ripple, and reed, and
closing water-lily; over her face, where the hood had fallen back
from her loosened hair; over one hand trailing the water, and the
other touching the flower at her breast; and, just above her
breath, she said:

"Row, my dear love; it's late!"

Dipping his sculls, he shot the skiff into the darkness of the
backwater. . . .

What happened then he never knew, never clearly--in all those after
years.  A vision of her white form risen to its feet, bending
forward like a creature caught, that cannot tell which way to
spring; a crashing shock, his head striking something hard!
Nothingness!  And then--an awful, awful struggle with roots and
weeds and slime, a desperate agony of groping in that pitchy
blackness, among tree-stumps, in dead water that seemed to have no
bottom--he and that other, who had leaped at them in the dark with
his boat, like a murdering beast; a nightmare search more horrible
than words could tell, till in a patch of moonlight on the bank
they laid her, who for all their efforts never stirred. . . .
There she lay all white, and they two crouched at her head and
feet--like dark creatures of the woods and waters over that which
with their hunting they had slain.

How long they stayed there, not once looking at each other, not
once speaking, not once ceasing to touch with their hands that dead
thing--he never knew.  How long in the summer night, with its
moonlight and its shadows quivering round them, and the night wind
talking in the reeds!

And then the most enduring of all sentient things had moved in him
again; so that he once more felt. . . .  Never again to see those
eyes that had loved him with their light!  Never again to kiss her
lips!  Frozen--like moonlight to the earth, with the flower still
clinging at her breast.  Thrown out on the bank like a plucked
water-lily!  Dead?  No, no!  Not dead!  Alive in the night--alive
to him--somewhere!  Not on this dim bank, in this hideous
backwater, with that dark dumb creature who had destroyed her!  Out
there on the river--in the wood of their happiness--somewhere
alive! . . .  And, staggering up past Cramier, who never moved, he
got into his boat, and like one demented pulled out into the
stream.

But once there in the tide, he fell huddled forward, motionless
above his oars. . . .

And the moonlight flooded his dark skiff drifting down.  And the
moonlight effaced the ripples on the water that had stolen away her
spirit.  Her spirit mingled now with the white beauty and the
shadows, for ever part of the stillness and the passion of a summer
night; hovering, floating, listening to the rustle of the reeds,
and the whispering of the woods; one with the endless dream--that
spirit passing out, as all might wish to pass, in the hour of
happiness.



PART III

AUTUMN


I


When on that November night Lennan stole to the open door of his
dressing-room, and stood watching his wife asleep, Fate still
waited for an answer.

A low fire was burning--one of those fires that throw faint shadows
everywhere, and once and again glow so that some object shines for
a moment, some shape is clearly seen.  The curtains were not quite
drawn, and a plane-tree branch with leaves still hanging, which had
kept them company all the fifteen years they had lived there, was
moving darkly in the wind, now touching the glass with a frail tap,
as though asking of him, who had been roaming in that wind so many
hours, to let it in.  Unfailing comrades--London plane-trees!

He had not dared hope that Sylvia would be asleep.  It was merciful
that she was, whichever way the issue went--that issue so cruel.
Her face was turned towards the fire, and one hand rested beneath
her cheek.  So she often slept.  Even when life seemed all at sea,
its landmarks lost, one still did what was customary.  Poor tender-
hearted thing--she had not slept since he told her, forty-eight
hours, that seemed such years, ago!  With her flaxen hair, and her
touching candour, even in sleep, she looked like a girl lying
there, not so greatly changed from what she had been that summer of
Cicely's marriage down at Hayle.  Her face had not grown old in all
those twenty-eight years.  There had been till now no special
reason why it should.  Thought, strong feeling, suffering, those
were what changed faces; Sylvia had never thought very deeply,
never suffered much, till now.  And was it for him, who had been
careful of her--very careful on the whole, despite man's
selfishness, despite her never having understood the depths of him--
was it for him of all people to hurt her so, to stamp her face
with sorrow, perhaps destroy her utterly?

He crept a little farther in and sat down in the arm-chair beyond
the fire.  What memories a fire gathered into it, with its flaky
ashes, its little leaf-like flames, and that quiet glow and
flicker!  What tale of passions!  How like to a fire was a man's
heart!  The first young fitful leapings, the sudden, fierce,
mastering heat, the long, steady sober burning, and then--that last
flaming-up, that clutch back at its own vanished youth, the final
eager flight of flame, before the ashes wintered it to nothing!
Visions and memories he saw down in the fire, as only can be seen
when a man's heart, by the agony of long struggle, has been
stripped of skin, and quivers at every touch.  Love!  A strange
haphazard thing was love--so spun between ecstacy and torture!  A
thing insidious, irresponsible, desperate.  A flying sweetness,
more poignant than anything on earth, more dark in origin and
destiny.  A thing without reason or coherence.  A man's love-life--
what say had he in the ebb and flow of it?  No more than in the
flights of autumn birds, swooping down, alighting here and there,
passing on.  The loves one left behind--even in a life by no means
vagabond in love, as men's lives went!  The love that thought the
Tyrol skies would fall if he were not first with a certain lady.
The love whose star had caught in the hair of Sylvia, now lying
there asleep.  A so-called love--that half-glamorous, yet sordid
little meal of pleasure, which youth, however sensitive, must eat,
it seems, some time or other with some young light of love--a
glimpse of life that beforehand had seemed much and had meant
little, save to leave him disillusioned with himself and sorry for
his partner.  And then the love that he could not, even after
twenty years, bear to remember; that all-devouring summer passion,
which in one night had gained all and lost all terribly, leaving on
his soul a scar that could never be quite healed, leaving his
spirit always a little lonely, haunted by the sense of what might
have been.  Of his share in that night of tragedy--that 'terrible
accident on the river'--no one had ever dreamed.  And then the long
despair which had seemed the last death of love had slowly passed,
and yet another love had been born--or rather born again, pale,
sober, but quite real; the fresh springing-up of a feeling long
forgotten, of that protective devotion of his boyhood.  He still
remembered the expression on Sylvia's face when he passed her by
chance in Oxford Street, soon after he came back from his four
years of exile in the East and Rome--that look, eager, yet
reproachful, then stoically ironic, as if saying: 'Oh, no! after
forgetting me four years and more--you can't remember me now!'  And
when he spoke, the still more touching pleasure in her face.  Then
uncertain months, with a feeling of what the end would be; and then
their marriage.  Happy enough--gentle, not very vivid, nor
spiritually very intimate--his work always secretly as remote from
her as when she had thought to please him by putting jessamine
stars on the heads of his beasts.  A quiet successful union, not
meaning, he had thought, so very much to him nor so very much to
her--until forty-eight hours ago he told her; and she had shrunk,
and wilted, and gone all to pieces.  And what was it he had told
her?

A long story--that!

Sitting there by the fire, with nothing yet decided, he could see
it all from the start, with its devilish, delicate intricacy, its
subtle slow enchantment spinning itself out of him, out of his own
state of mind and body, rather than out of the spell cast over him,
as though a sort of fatal force, long dormant, were working up
again to burst into dark flower. . . .


II


Yes, it had begun within him over a year ago, with a queer unhappy
restlessness, a feeling that life was slipping, ebbing away within
reach of him, and his arms never stretched out to arrest it.  It
had begun with a sort of long craving, stilled only when he was
working hard--a craving for he knew not what, an ache which was
worst whenever the wind was soft.

They said that about forty-five was a perilous age for a man--
especially for an artist.  All the autumn of last year he had felt
this vague misery rather badly.  It had left him alone most of
December and January, while he was working so hard at his group of
lions; but the moment that was finished it had gripped him hard
again.  In those last days of January he well remembered wandering
about in the parks day after day, trying to get away from it.  Mild
weather, with a scent in the wind!  With what avidity he had
watched children playing, the premature buds on the bushes,
anything, everything young--with what an ache, too, he had been
conscious of innumerable lives being lived round him, and loves
loved, and he outside, unable to know, to grasp, to gather them;
and all the time the sands of his hourglass running out!  A most
absurd and unreasonable feeling for a man with everything he
wanted, with work that he loved, quite enough money, and a wife so
good as Sylvia--a feeling that no Englishman of forty-six, in
excellent health, ought for a moment to have been troubled with.  A
feeling such as, indeed, no Englishman ever admitted having--so
that there was not even, as yet, a Society for its suppression.
For what was this disquiet feeling, but the sense that he had had
his day, would never again know the stir and fearful joy of falling
in love, but only just hanker after what was past and gone!  Could
anything be more reprehensible in a married man?

It was--yes--the last day of January, when, returning from one of
those restless rambles in Hyde Park, he met Dromore.  Queer to
recognize a man hardly seen since school-days.  Yet unmistakably,
Johnny Dromore, sauntering along the rails of Piccadilly on the
Green Park side, with that slightly rolling gait of his thin,
horseman's legs, his dandified hat a little to one side, those
strange, chaffing, goggling eyes, that look, as if making a
perpetual bet.  Yes--the very same teasing, now moody, now
reckless, always astute Johnny Dromore, with a good heart beneath
an outside that seemed ashamed of it.  Truly to have shared a room
at school--to have been at College together, were links
mysteriously indestructible.

"Mark Lennan!  By gum! haven't seen you for ages.  Not since you
turned out a full-blown--what d'you call it?  Awfully glad to meet
you, old chap!"  Here was the past indeed, long vanished in feeling
and thought and all; and Lennan's head buzzed, trying to find some
common interest with this hunting, racing man-about-town.

Johnny Dromore come to life again--he whom the Machine had stamped
with astute simplicity by the time he was twenty-two, and for ever
after left untouched in thought and feeling--Johnny Dromore, who
would never pass beyond the philosophy that all was queer and
freakish which had not to do with horses, women, wine, cigars,
jokes, good-heartedness, and that perpetual bet; Johnny Dromore,
who, somewhere in him, had a pocket of depth, a streak of hunger,
that was not just Johnny Dromore.

How queer was the sound of that jerky talk!

"You ever see old Fookes now?  Been racin' at all?  You live in
Town?  Remember good old Blenker?"  And then silence, and then
another spurt: "Ever go down to 'Bambury's?'  Ever go racin'? . . .
Come on up to my 'digs.'  You've got nothin' to do."  No persuading
Johnny Dromore that a 'what d'you call it' could have anything to
do.  "Come on, old chap.  I've got the hump.  It's this damned east
wind."

Well he remembered it, when they shared a room at 'Bambury's'--that
hump of Johnny Dromore's, after some reckless spree or bout of
teasing.

And down that narrow bye-street of Piccadilly he had gone, and up
into those 'digs' on the first floor, with their little dark hall,
their Van Beers' drawing and Vanity Fair cartoons, and prints of
racehorses, and of the old Nightgown Steeplechase; with the big
chairs, and all the paraphernalia of Race Guides and race-glasses,
fox-masks and stags'-horns, and hunting-whips.  And yet, something
that from the first moment struck him as not quite in keeping,
foreign to the picture--a little jumble of books, a vase of
flowers, a grey kitten.

"Sit down, old chap.  What'll you drink?"

Sunk into the recesses of a marvellous chair, with huge arms of
tawny leather, he listened and spoke drowsily.  'Bambury's,'
Oxford, Gordy's clubs--dear old Gordy, gone now!--things long
passed by; they seemed all round him once again.  And yet, always
that vague sense, threading this resurrection, threading the smoke
of their cigars, and Johnny Dromore's clipped talk--of something
that did not quite belong.  Might it be, perhaps, that sepia
drawing--above the 'Tantalus' on the oak sideboard at the far end--
of a woman's face gazing out into the room?  Mysteriously unlike
everything else, except the flowers, and this kitten that was
pushing its furry little head against his hand.  Odd how a single
thing sometimes took possession of a room, however remote in
spirit!  It seemed to reach like a shadow over Dromore's
outstretched limbs, and weathered, long-nosed face, behind his huge
cigar; over the queer, solemn, chaffing eyes, with something
brooding in the depths of them.

"Ever get the hump?  Bally awful, isn't it?  It's getting old.
We're bally old, you know, Lenny!"  Ah!  No one had called him
'Lenny' for twenty years.  And it was true; they were unmentionably
old.

"When a fellow begins to feel old, you know, it's time he went
broke--or something; doesn't bear sittin' down and lookin' at.
Come out to 'Monte' with me!"

'Monte!'  That old wound, never quite healed, started throbbing at
the word, so that he could hardly speak his: "No, I don't care for
'Monte.'"

And, at once, he saw Dromore's eyes probing, questioning:

"You married?"

"Yes."

"Never thought of you as married!"

So Dromore did think of him.  Queer!  He never thought of Johnny
Dromore.

"Winter's bally awful, when you're not huntin'.  You've changed a
lot; should hardly have known you.  Last time I saw you, you'd just
come back from Rome or somewhere.  What's it like bein' a--a
sculptor?  Saw something of yours once.  Ever do things of horses?"

Yes; he had done a 'relief' of ponies only last year.

"You do women, too, I s'pose?"

"Not often."

The eyes goggled slightly.  Quaint, that unholy interest!  Just
like boys, the Johnny Dromores--would never grow up, no matter how
life treated them.  If Dromore spoke out his soul, as he used to
speak it out at 'Bambury's,' he would say: 'You get a pull there;
you have a bally good time, I expect.'  That was the way it took
them; just a converse manifestation of the very same feeling
towards Art that the pious Philistines had, with their deploring
eyebrows and their 'peril to the soul.'  Babes all!  Not a
glimmering of what Art meant--of its effort, and its yearnings!

"You make money at it?"

"Oh, yes."

Again that appreciative goggle, as who should say: 'Ho! there's
more in this than I thought!'

A long silence, then, in the dusk with the violet glimmer from
outside the windows, the fire flickering in front of them, the grey
kitten purring against his neck, the smoke of their cigars going
up, and such a strange, dozing sense of rest, as he had not known
for many days.  And then--something, someone at the door, over by
the sideboard!  And Dromore speaking in a queer voice:

"Come in, Nell!  D'you know my daughter?"

A hand took Lennan's, a hand that seemed to waver between the
aplomb of a woman of the world, and a child's impulsive warmth.
And a voice, young, clipped, clear, said:

"How d'you do?  She's rather sweet, isn't she--my kitten?"

Then Dromore turned the light up.  A figure fairly tall, in a grey
riding-habit, stupendously well cut; a face not quite so round as a
child's nor so shaped as a woman's, blushing slightly, very calm;
crinkly light-brown hair tied back with a black ribbon under a neat
hat; and eyes like those eyes of Gainsborough's 'Perdita'--slow,
grey, mesmeric, with long lashes curling up, eyes that draw things
to them, still innocent.

And just on the point of saying: "I thought you'd stepped out of
that picture"--he saw Dromore's face, and mumbled instead:

"So it's YOUR kitten?"

"Yes; she goes to everybody.  Do you like Persians?  She's all fur
really.  Feel!"

Entering with his fingers the recesses of the kitten, he said:

"Cats without fur are queer."

"Have you seen one without fur?"

"Oh, yes!  In my profession we have to go below fur--I'm a
sculptor."

"That must be awfully interesting."

What a woman of the world!  But what a child, too!  And now he
could see that the face in the sepia drawing was older altogether--
lips not so full, look not so innocent, cheeks not so round, and
something sad and desperate about it--a face that life had rudely
touched.  But the same eyes it had--and what charm, for all its
disillusionment, its air of a history!  Then he noticed, fastened
to the frame, on a thin rod, a dust-coloured curtain, drawn to one
side.  The self-possessed young voice was saying:

"Would you mind if I showed you my drawings?  It would be awfully
good of you.  You could tell me about them."  And with dismay he
saw her open a portfolio.  While he scrutinized those schoolgirl
drawings, he could feel her looking at him, as animals do when they
are making up their minds whether or no to like you; then she came
and stood so close that her arm pressed his.  He redoubled his
efforts to find something good about the drawings.  But in truth
there was nothing good.  And if, in other matters, he could lie
well enough to save people's feelings, where Art was concerned he
never could; so he merely said:

"You haven't been taught, you see."

"Will you teach me?"

But before he could answer, she was already effacing that naive
question in her most grown-up manner.

"Of course I oughtn't to ask.  It would bore you awfully."

After that he vaguely remembered Dromore's asking if he ever rode
in the Row; and those eyes of hers following him about; and her
hand giving his another childish squeeze.  Then he was on his way
again down the dimly-lighted stairs, past an interminable array of
Vanity Fair cartoons, out into the east wind.


III


Crossing the Green Park on his way home, was he more, or less,
restless?  Difficult to say.  A little flattered, certainly, a
little warmed; yet irritated, as always when he came into contact
with people to whom the world of Art was such an amusing unreality.
The notion of trying to show that child how to draw--that feather-
pate, with her riding and her kitten; and her 'Perdita' eyes!
Quaint, how she had at once made friends with him!  He was a little
different, perhaps, from what she was accustomed to.  And how
daintily she spoke!  A strange, attractive, almost lovely child!
Certainly not more than seventeen--and--Johnny Dromore's daughter!

The wind was bitter, the lamps bright among the naked trees.
Beautiful always--London at night, even in January, even in an east
wind, with a beauty he never tired of.  Its great, dark, chiselled
shapes, its gleaming lights, like droves of flying stars come to
earth; and all warmed by the beat and stir of innumerable lives--
those lives that he ached so to know and to be part of.

He told Sylvia of his encounter.  Dromore!  The name struck her.
She had an old Irish song, 'The Castle of Dromore,' with a queer,
haunting refrain.

It froze hard all the week, and he began a life-size group of their
two sheep-dogs.  Then a thaw set in with that first south-west
wind, which brings each February a feeling of Spring such as is
never again recaptured, and men's senses, like sleepy bees in the
sun, go roving.  It awakened in him more violently than ever the
thirst to be living, knowing, loving--the craving for something
new.  Not this, of course, took him back to Dromore's rooms; oh,
no! just friendliness, since he had not even told his old room-mate
where he lived, or said that his wife would be glad to make his
acquaintance, if he cared to come round.  For Johnny Dromore had
assuredly not seemed too happy, under all his hard-bitten air.
Yes! it was but friendly to go again.

Dromore was seated in his long arm-chair, a cigar between his lips,
a pencil in his hand, a Ruff's Guide on his knee; beside him was a
large green book.  There was a festive air about him, very
different from his spasmodic gloom of the other day; and he
murmured without rising:

"Halo, old man!--glad to see you.  Take a pew.  Look here!
Agapemone--which d'you think I ought to put her to--San Diavolo or
Ponte Canet?--not more than four crosses of St. Paul.  Goin' to get
a real good one from her this time!"

He, who had never heard these sainted names, answered:

"Oh! Ponte Canet, without doubt.  But if you're working I'll come
in another time."

"Lord! no!  Have a smoke.  I'll just finish lookin' out their
blood--and take a pull."

And so Lennan sat down to watch those researches, wreathed in cigar
smoke and punctuated by muttered expletives.  They were as sacred
and absorbing, no doubt, as his own efforts to create in clay; for
before Dromore's inner vision was the perfect racehorse--he, too,
was creating.  Here was no mere dodge for making money, but a
process hallowed by the peculiar sensation felt when one rubbed the
palms of the hands together, the sensation that accompanied all
creative achievement.  Once only Dromore paused to turn his head
and say:

"Bally hard, gettin' a taproot right!"

Real Art!  How well an artist knew that desperate search after the
point of balance, the central rivet that must be found before a
form would come to life. . . .  And he noted that to-day there was
no kitten, no flowers, no sense at all of an extraneous presence--
even the picture was curtained.  Had the girl been just a dream--a
fancy conjured up by his craving after youth?

Then he saw that Dromore had dropped the large green book, and was
standing before the fire.

"Nell took to you the other day.  But you always were a lady's man.
Remember the girl at Coaster's?"

Coaster's tea-shop, where he would go every afternoon that he had
money, just for the pleasure of looking shyly at a face.  Something
beautiful to look at--nothing more!  Johnny Dromore would no better
understand that now than when they were at 'Bambury's.'  Not the
smallest good even trying to explain!  He looked up at the goggling
eyes; he heard the bantering voice:

"I say--you ARE goin' grey.  We're bally old, Lenny!  A fellow gets
old when he marries."

And he answered:

"By the way, I never knew that YOU had been."

From Dromore's face the chaffing look went, like a candle-flame
blown out; and a coppery flush spread over it.  For some seconds he
did not speak, then, jerking his head towards the picture, he
muttered gruffly:

"Never had the chance of marrying, there; Nell's 'outside.'"

A sort of anger leaped in Lennan; why should Dromore speak that
word as if he were ashamed of his own daughter?  Just like his
sort--none so hidebound as men-about-town!  Flotsam on the tide of
other men's opinions; poor devils adrift, without the one true
anchorage of their own real feelings!  And doubtful whether Dromore
would be pleased, or think him gushing, or even distrustful of his
morality, he said:

"As for that, it would only make any decent man or woman nicer to
her.  When is she going to let me teach her drawing?"

Dromore crossed the room, drew back the curtain of the picture, and
in a muffled voice, said:

"My God, Lenny!  Life's unfair.  Nell's coming killed her mother.
I'd rather it had been me--bar chaff!  Women have no luck."

Lennan got up from his comfortable chair.  For, startled out of the
past, the memory of that summer night, when yet another woman had
no luck, was flooding his heart with its black, inextinguishable
grief.  He said quietly:

"The past IS past, old man."

Dromore drew the curtain again across the picture, and came back to
the fire.  And for a full minute he stared into it.

"What am I to do with Nell?  She's growing up."

"What have you done with her so far?"

"She's been at school.  In the summer she goes to Ireland--I've got
a bit of an old place there.  She'll be eighteen in July.  I shall
have to introduce her to women, and all that.  It's the devil!
How?  Who?"

Lennan could only murmur: "My wife, for one."

He took his leave soon after.  Johnny Dromore!  Bizarre guardian
for that child!  Queer life she must have of it, in that bachelor's
den, surrounded by Ruff's Guides!  What would become of her?
Caught up by some young spark about town; married to him, no doubt--
her father would see to the thoroughness of that, his standard of
respectability was evidently high!  And after--go the way, maybe,
of her mother--that poor thing in the picture with the alluring,
desperate face.  Well!  It was no business of his!


IV


No business of his!  The merest sense of comradeship, then, took
him once more to Dromore's after that disclosure, to prove that the
word 'outside' had no significance save in his friend's own fancy;
to assure him again that Sylvia would be very glad to welcome the
child at any time she liked to come.

When he had told her of that little matter of Nell's birth, she had
been silent a long minute, looking in his face, and then had said:
"Poor child!  I wonder if SHE knows!  People are so unkind, even
nowadays!"  He could not himself think of anyone who would pay
attention to such a thing, except to be kinder to the girl; but in
such matters Sylvia was the better judge, in closer touch with
general thought.  She met people that he did not--and of a more
normal species.

It was rather late when he got to Dromore's diggings on that third
visit.

"Mr. Dromore, sir," the man said--he had one of those strictly
confidential faces bestowed by an all-wise Providence on servants
in the neighbourhood of Piccadilly--"Mr. Dromore, sir, is not in.
But he will be almost sure to be in to dress.  Miss Nell is in,
sir."

And there she was, sitting at the table, pasting photographs into
an album--lonely young creature in that abode of male middle-age!
Lennan stood, unheard, gazing at the back of her head, with its
thick crinkly-brown hair tied back on her dark-red frock.  And, to
the confidential man's soft:

"Mr. Lennan, miss," he added a softer: "May I come in?"

She put her hand into his with intense composure.

"Oh, yes, do! if you don't mind the mess I'm making;" and, with a
little squeeze of the tips of his fingers, added: "Would it bore
you to see my photographs?"

And down they sat together before the photographs--snapshots of
people with guns or fishing-rods, little groups of schoolgirls,
kittens, Dromore and herself on horseback, and several of a young
man with a broad, daring, rather good-looking face.  "That's
Oliver--Oliver Dromore--Dad's first cousin once removed.  Rather
nice, isn't he?  Do you like his expression?"

Lennan did not know.  Not her second cousin; her father's first
cousin once removed!  And again there leaped in him that
unreasoning flame of indignant pity.

"And how about drawing?  You haven't come to be taught yet."

She went almost as red as her frock.

"I thought you were only being polite.  I oughtn't to have asked.
Of course, I want to awfully--only I know it'll bore you."

"It won't at all."

She looked up at that.  What peculiar languorous eyes they were!

"Shall I come to-morrow, then?"

"Any day you like, between half-past twelve and one."

"Where?"

He took out a card.

"Mark Lennan--yes--I like your name.  I liked it the other day.
It's awfully nice!"

What was in a name that she should like him because of it?  His
fame as a sculptor--such as it was--could have nothing to do with
that, for she would certainly not know of it.  Ah! but there was a
lot in a name--for children.  In his childhood what fascination
there had been in the words macaroon, and Spaniard, and Carinola,
and Aldebaran, and Mr. McCrae.  For quite a week the whole world
had been Mr. McCrae--a most ordinary friend of Gordy's.

By whatever fascination moved, she talked freely enough now--of her
school; of riding and motoring--she seemed to love going very fast;
about Newmarket--which was 'perfect'; and theatres--plays of the
type that Johnny Dromore might be expected to approve; these
together with 'Hamlet' and 'King Lear' were all she had seen.
Never was a girl so untouched by thought, or Art--yet not stupid,
having, seemingly, a certain natural good taste; only, nothing,
evidently, had come her way.  How could it--'Johnny Dromore duce,
et auspice Johnny Dromore!'  She had been taken, indeed, to the
National Gallery while at school.  And Lennan had a vision of eight
or ten young maidens trailing round at the skirts of one old
maiden, admiring Landseer's dogs, giggling faintly at Botticelli's
angels, gaping, rustling, chattering like young birds in a
shrubbery.

But with all her surroundings, this child of Johnny Dromoredom was
as yet more innocent than cultured girls of the same age.  If those
grey, mesmeric eyes of hers followed him about, they did so
frankly, unconsciously.  There was no minx in her, so far.

An hour went by, and Dromore did not come.  And the loneliness of
this young creature in her incongruous abode began telling on
Lennan's equanimity.

What did she do in the evenings?

"Sometimes I go to the theatre with Dad, generally I stay at home."

"And then?"

"Oh!  I just read, or talk French."

"What?  To yourself?"

"Yes, or to Oliver sometimes, when he comes in."

So Oliver came in!

"How long have you known Oliver?"

"Oh! ever since I was a child."

He wanted to say: And how long is that?  But managed to refrain,
and got up to go instead.  She caught his sleeve and said:

"You're not to go!"  Saying that she looked as a dog will, going to
bite in fun, her upper lip shortened above her small white teeth
set fast on her lower lip, and her chin thrust a little forward.  A
glimpse of a wilful spirit!  But as soon as he had smiled, and
murmured:

"Ah! but I must, you see!" she at once regained her manners, only
saying rather mournfully: "You don't call me by my name.  Don't you
like it?"

"Nell?"

"Yes.  It's really Eleanor, of course.  DON'T you like it?"

If he had detested the name, he could only have answered: "Very
much."

"I'm awfully glad!  Good-bye."

When he got out into the street, he felt terribly like a man who,
instead of having had his sleeve touched, has had his heart plucked
at.  And that warm, bewildered feeling lasted him all the way home.

Changing for dinner, he looked at himself with unwonted attention.
Yes, his dark hair was still thick, but going distinctly grey;
there were very many lines about his eyes, too, and those eyes,
still eager when they smiled, were particularly deepset, as if life
had forced them back.  His cheekbones were almost 'bopsies' now,
and his cheeks very thin and dark, and his jaw looked too set and
bony below the almost black moustache.  Altogether a face that life
had worn a good deal, with nothing for a child to take a fancy to
and make friends with, that he could see.

Sylvia came in while he was thus taking stock of himself, bringing
a freshly-opened flask of eau-de-Cologne.  She was always bringing
him something--never was anyone so sweet in those ways.  In that
grey, low-cut frock, her white, still prettiness and pale-gold
hair, so little touched by Time, only just fell short of real
beauty for lack of a spice of depth and of incisiveness, just as
her spirit lacked he knew not what of poignancy.  He would not for
the world have let her know that he ever felt that lack.  If a man
could not hide little rifts in the lute from one so good and humble
and affectionate, he was not fit to live.

She sang 'The Castle of Dromore' again that night with its queer
haunting lilt.  And when she had gone up, and he was smoking over
the fire, the girl in her dark-red frock seemed to come, and sit
opposite with her eyes fixed on his, just as she had been sitting
while they talked.  Dark red had suited her!  Suited the look on
her face when she said:

"You're not to go!"  Odd, indeed, if she had not some devil in her,
with that parentage!


V


Next day they had summoned him from the studio to see a peculiar
phenomenon--Johnny Dromore, very well groomed, talking to Sylvia
with unnatural suavity, and carefully masking the goggle in his
eyes!  Mrs. Lennan ride?  Ah!  Too busy, of course.  Helped Mark
with his--er--No!  Really!  Read a lot, no doubt?  Never had any
time for readin' himself--awful bore not having time to read!  And
Sylvia listening and smiling, very still and soft.

What had Dromore come for?  To spy out the land, discover why
Lennan and his wife thought nothing of the word 'outside'--whether,
in fact, their household was respectable. . . .  A man must always
look twice at 'what-d'you-call-ems,' even if they have shared his
room at school! . . .  To his credit, of course, to be so careful
of his daughter, at the expense of time owed to the creation of the
perfect racehorse!  On the whole he seemed to be coming to the
conclusion that they might be useful to Nell in the uncomfortable
time at hand when she would have to go about; seemed even to be
falling under the spell of Sylvia's transparent goodness--
abandoning his habitual vigilance against being scored off in
life's perpetual bet; parting with his armour of chaff.  Almost a
relief, indeed, once out of Sylvia's presence, to see that
familiar, unholy curiosity creeping back into his eyes, as though
they were hoping against parental hope to find something--er--
amusing somewhere about that mysterious Mecca of good times--a
'what-d'you-call-it's' studio.  Delicious to watch the conflict
between relief and disappointment.  Alas! no model--not even a
statue without clothes; nothing but portrait heads, casts of
animals, and such-like sobrieties--absolutely nothing that could
bring a blush to the cheek of the young person, or a glow to the
eyes of a Johnny Dromore.

With what curious silence he walked round and round the group of
sheep-dogs, inquiring into them with that long crinkled nose of
his!  With what curious suddenness, he said: "Damned good!  You
wouldn't do me one of Nell on horseback?"  With what dubious
watchfulness he listened to the answer:

"I might, perhaps, do a statuette of her; if I did, you should have
a cast."

Did he think that in some way he was being outmanoeuvered?  For he
remained some seconds in a sort of trance before muttering, as
though clinching a bet:

"Done!  And if you want to ride with her to get the hang of it, I
can always mount you."

When he had gone, Lennan remained staring at his unfinished sheep-
dogs in the gathering dusk.  Again that sense of irritation at
contact with something strange, hostile, uncomprehending!  Why let
these Dromores into his life like this?  He shut the studio, and
went back to the drawing-room.  Sylvia was sitting on the fender,
gazing at the fire, and she edged along so as to rest against his
knees.  The light from a candle on her writing-table was shining on
her hair, her cheek, and chin, that years had so little altered.  A
pretty picture she made, with just that candle flame, swaying
there, burning slowly, surely down the pale wax--candle flame, of
all lifeless things most living, most like a spirit, so bland and
vague, one would hardly have known it was fire at all.  A drift of
wind blew it this way and that: he got up to shut the window, and
as he came back; Sylvia said:

"I like Mr. Dromore.  I think he's nicer than he looks."

"He's asked me to make a statuette of his daughter on horseback."

"And will you?"

"I don't know."

"If she's really so pretty, you'd better."

"Pretty's hardly the word--but she's not ordinary."

She turned round, and looked up at him, and instinctively he felt
that something difficult to answer was coming next.

"Mark."

"Yes."

"I wanted to ask you: Are you really happy nowadays?"

"Of course.  Why not?"

What else to be said?  To speak of those feelings of the last few
months--those feelings so ridiculous to anyone who had them not--
would only disturb her horribly.

And having received her answer, Sylvia turned back to the fire,
resting silently against his knees. . . .


Three days later the sheep-dogs suddenly abandoned the pose into
which he had lured them with such difficulty, and made for the
studio door.  There in the street was Nell Dromore, mounted on a
narrow little black horse with a white star, a white hoof, and
devilish little goat's ears, pricked, and very close together at
the tips.

"Dad said I had better ride round and show you Magpie.  He's not
very good at standing still.  Are those your dogs?  What darlings!"

She had slipped her knee already from the pummel, and slid down;
the sheep-dogs were instantly on their hind-feet, propping
themselves against her waist.  Lennan held the black horse--a
bizarre little beast, all fire and whipcord, with a skin like
satin, liquid eyes, very straight hocks, and a thin bang-tail
reaching down to them.  The little creature had none of those
commonplace good looks so discouraging to artists.

He had forgotten its rider, till she looked up from the dogs, and
said: "Do you like him?  It IS nice of you to be going to do us."

When she had ridden away, looking back until she turned the corner,
he tried to lure the two dogs once more to their pose.  But they
would sit no more, going continually to the door, listening and
sniffing; and everything felt disturbed and out of gear.

That same afternoon at Sylvia's suggestion he went with her to call
on the Dromores.

While they were being ushered in he heard a man's voice rather
high-pitched speaking in some language not his own; then the girl:

"No, no, Oliver.  'Dans l'amour il y a toujours un qui aime, et
l'autre qui se laisse aimer.'"

She was sitting in her father's chair, and on the window-sill they
saw a young man lolling, who rose and stood stock-still, with an
almost insolent expression on his broad, good-looking face.  Lennan
scrutinized him with interest--about twenty-four he might be,
rather dandified, clean-shaved, with crisp dark hair and wide-set
hazel eyes, and, as in his photograph, a curious look of daring.
His voice, when he vouchsafed a greeting, was rather high and not
unpleasant, with a touch of lazy drawl.

They stayed but a few minutes, and going down those dimly lighted
stairs again, Sylvia remarked:

"How prettily she said good-bye--as if she were putting up her face
to be kissed!  I think she's lovely.  So does that young man.  They
go well together."

Rather abruptly Lennan answered:

"Ah!  I suppose they do."


VI


She came to them often after that, sometimes alone, twice with
Johnny Dromore, sometimes with young Oliver, who, under Sylvia's
spell, soon lost his stand-off air.  And the statuette was begun.
Then came Spring in earnest, and that real business of life--the
racing of horses 'on the flat,' when Johnny Dromore's genius was no
longer hampered by the illegitimate risks of 'jumpin'.'  He came to
dine with them the day before the first Newmarket meeting.  He had
a soft spot for Sylvia, always saying to Lennan as he went away:
"Charmin' woman--your wife!"  She, too, had a soft spot for him,
having fathomed the utter helplessness of this worldling's wisdom,
and thinking him pathetic.

After he was gone that evening, she said:

"Ought we to have Nell to stay with us while you're finishing her?
She must be very lonely now her father's so much away."

It was like Sylvia to think of that; but would it be pleasure or
vexation to have in the house this child with her quaint grown-
upness, her confiding ways, and those 'Perdita' eyes?  In truth he
did not know.

She came to them with touching alacrity--very like a dog, who, left
at home when the family goes for a holiday, takes at once to those
who make much of it.

And she was no trouble, too well accustomed to amuse herself; and
always quaint to watch, with her continual changes from child to
woman of the world.  A new sensation, this--of a young creature in
the house.  Both he and Sylvia had wanted children, without luck.
Twice illness had stood in the way.  Was it, perhaps, just that
little lack in her--that lack of poignancy, which had prevented her
from becoming a mother?  An only child herself, she had no nieces
or nephews; Cicely's boys had always been at school, and now were
out in the world.  Yes, a new sensation, and one in which Lennan's
restless feelings seemed to merge and vanish.

Outside the hours when Nell sat to him, he purposely saw but little
of her, leaving her to nestle under Sylvia's wing; and this she
did, as if she never wanted to come out.  Thus he preserved his
amusement at her quaint warmths, and quainter calmness, his
aesthetic pleasure in watching her, whose strange, half-hypnotized,
half-hypnotic gaze, had a sort of dreamy and pathetic lovingness,
as if she were brimful of affections that had no outlet.

Every morning after 'sitting' she would stay an hour bent over her
own drawing, which made practically no progress; and he would often
catch her following his movements with those great eyes of hers,
while the sheep-dogs would lie perfectly still at her feet,
blinking horribly--such was her attraction.  His birds also, a
jackdaw and an owl, who had the run of the studio, tolerated her as
they tolerated no other female, save the housekeeper.  The jackdaw
would perch on her and peck her dress; but the owl merely engaged
her in combats of mesmeric gazing, which never ended in victory for
either.

Now that she was with them, Oliver Dromore began to haunt the
house, coming at all hours, on very transparent excuses.  She
behaved to him with extreme capriciousness, sometimes hardly
speaking, sometimes treating him like a brother; and in spite of
all his nonchalance, the poor youth would just sit glowering, or
gazing out his adoration, according to her mood.

One of these July evenings Lennan remembered beyond all others.  He
had come, after a hard day's work, out from his studio into the
courtyard garden to smoke a cigarette and feel the sun on his cheek
before it sank behind the wall.  A piano-organ far away was
grinding out a waltz; and on an hydrangea tub, under the drawing-
room window, he sat down to listen.  Nothing was visible from
there, save just the square patch of a quite blue sky, and one soft
plume of smoke from his own kitchen chimney; nothing audible save
that tune, and the never-ending street murmur.  Twice birds flew
across--starlings.  It was very peaceful, and his thoughts went
floating like the smoke of his cigarette, to meet who-knew-what
other thoughts--for thoughts, no doubt, had little swift lives of
their own; desired, found their mates, and, lightly blending, sent
forth offspring.  Why not?  All things were possible in this
wonder-house of a world.  Even that waltz tune, floating away,
would find some melody to wed, and twine with, and produce a fresh
chord that might float in turn to catch the hum of a gnat or fly,
and breed again.  Queer--how everything sought to entwine with
something else!  On one of the pinkish blooms of the hydrangea he
noted a bee--of all things, in this hidden-away garden of tiles and
gravel and plants in tubs!  The little furry, lonely thing was
drowsily clinging there, as if it had forgotten what it had come
for--seduced, maybe, like himself, from labour by these last rays
of the sun.  Its wings, close-furled, were glistening; its eyes
seemed closed.  And the piano-organ played on, a tune of yearning,
waiting, yearning. . . .


Then, through the window above his head, he heard Oliver Dromore--a
voice one could always tell, pitched high, with its slight drawl--
pleading, very softly at first, then insistent, imperious; and
suddenly Nell's answering voice:

"I won't, Oliver!  I won't!  I won't!"

He rose to go out of earshot.  Then a door slammed, and he saw her
at the window above him, her waist on a level with his head;
flushed, with her grey eyes ominously bright, her full lips parted.
And he said:

"What is it, Nell?"

She leaned down and caught his hand; her touch was fiery hot.

"He kissed me!  I won't let him--I won't kiss him!"

Through his head went a medley of sayings to soothe children that
are hurt; but he felt unsteady, unlike himself.  And suddenly she
knelt, and put her hot forehead against his lips.

It was as if she had really been a little child, wanting the place
kissed to make it well.


VII


After that strange outburst, Lennan considered long whether he
should speak to Oliver.  But what could he say, from what
standpoint say it, and--with that feeling?  Or should he speak to
Dromore?  Not very easy to speak on such a subject to one off whose
turf all spiritual matters were so permanently warned.  Nor somehow
could he bring himself to tell Sylvia; it would be like violating a
confidence to speak of the child's outburst and that quivering
moment, when she had kneeled and put her hot forehead to his lips
for comfort.  Such a disclosure was for Nell herself to make, if
she so wished.

And then young Oliver solved the difficulty by coming to the studio
himself next day.  He entered with 'Dromore' composure, very well
groomed, in a silk hat, a cut-away black coat and charming lemon-
coloured gloves; what, indeed, the youth did, besides belonging to
the Yeomanry and hunting all the winter, seemed known only to
himself.  He made no excuse for interrupting Lennan, and for some
time sat silently smoking his cigarette, and pulling the ears of
the dogs.  And Lennan worked on, waiting.  There was always
something attractive to him in this young man's broad, good-looking
face, with its crisp dark hair, and half-insolent good humour, now
so clouded.

At last Oliver got up, and went over to the unfinished 'Girl on the
Magpie Horse.'  Turning to it so that his face could not be seen,
he said:

"You and Mrs. Lennan have been awfully kind to me; I behaved rather
like a cad yesterday.  I thought I'd better tell you.  I want to
marry Nell, you know."

Lennan was glad that the young man's face was so religiously
averted.  He let his hands come to anchor on what he was working at
before he answered: "She's only a child, Oliver;" and then,
watching his fingers making an inept movement with the clay, was
astonished at himself.

"She'll be eighteen this month," he heard Oliver say.  "If she once
gets out--amongst people--I don't know what I shall do.  Old
Johnny's no good to look after her."

The young man's face was very red; he was forgetting to hide it
now.  Then it went white, and he said through clenched teeth: "She
sends me mad!  I don't know how not to--If I don't get her, I
shall shoot myself.  I shall, you know--I'm that sort.  It's her
eyes.  They draw you right out of yourself--and leave you--"  And
from his gloved hand the smoked-out cigarette-end fell to the
floor.  "They say her mother was like that.  Poor old Johnny!
D'you think I've got a chance, Mr. Lennan?  I don't mean now, this
minute; I know she's too young."

Lennan forced himself to answer.

"I dare say, my dear fellow, I dare say.  Have you talked with my
wife?"

Oliver shook his head.

"She's so good--I don't think she'd quite understand my sort of
feeling."

A queer little smile came up on Lennan's lips.

"Ah, well!" he said, "you must give the child time.  Perhaps when
she comes back from Ireland, after the summer."

The young man answered moodily:

"Yes.  I've got the run of that, you know.  And I shan't be able to
keep away."  He took up his hat.  "I suppose I oughtn't to have
come and bored you about this, but Nell thinks such a lot of you;
and, you being different to most people--I thought you wouldn't
mind."  He turned again at the door.  "It wasn't gas what I said
just now--about not getting her.  Fellows say that sort of thing,
but I mean it."

He put on that shining hat and went.

And Lennan stood, staring at the statuette.  So!  Passion broke
down even the defences of Dromoredom.  Passion!  Strange hearts it
chose to bloom in!

'Being different to most people--I thought you wouldn't mind'!  How
had this youth known that Sylvia would not understand passion so
out of hand as this?  And what had made it clear that he (Lennan)
would?  Was there, then, something in his face?  There must be!
Even Johnny Dromore--most reticent of creatures--had confided to
him that one hour of his astute existence, when the wind had swept
him out to sea!

Yes!  And that statuette would never be any good, try as he might.
Oliver was right--it was her eyes!  How they had smoked--in their
childish anger--if eyes could be said to smoke, and how they had
drawn and pleaded when she put her face to his in her still more
childish entreaty!  If they were like this now, what would they be
when the woman in her woke?  Just as well not to think of her too
much!  Just as well to work, and take heed that he would soon be
forty-seven!  Just as well that next week she would be gone to
Ireland!

And the last evening before she went they took her to see "Carmen"
at the Opera.  He remembered that she wore a nearly high white
frock, and a dark carnation in the ribbon tying her crinkly hair,
that still hung loose.  How wonderfully entranced she sat, drunk on
that opera that he had seen a score of times; now touching his arm,
now Sylvia's, whispering questions: "Who's that?"  "What's coming
now?"  The Carmen roused her to adoration, but Don Jose was 'too
fat in his funny little coat,' till, in the maddened jealousy of
the last act, he rose superior.  Then, quite lost in excitement,
she clutched Lennan's arm; and her gasp, when Carmen at last fell
dead, made all their neighbours jump.  Her emotion was far more
moving than that on the stage; he wanted badly to stroke, and
comfort her and say: "There, there, my dear, it's only make-
believe!"  And, when it was over, and the excellent murdered lady
and her poor fat little lover appeared before the curtain, finally
forgetting that she was a woman of the world, she started forward
in her seat and clapped, and clapped.  Fortunate that Johnny
Dromore was not there to see!  But all things coming to an end,
they had to get up and go.  And, as they made their way out to the
hall, Lennan felt a hot little finger crooked into his own, as if
she simply must have something to squeeze.  He really did not know
what to do with it.  She seemed to feel this half-heartedness, soon
letting it go.  All the way home in the cab she was silent.  With
that same abstraction she ate her sandwiches and drank her
lemonade; took Sylvia's kiss, and, quite a woman of the world once
more, begged that they would not get up to see her off--for she was
to go at seven in the morning, to catch the Irish mail.  Then,
holding out her hand to Lennan, she very gravely said:

"Thanks most awfully for taking me to-night.  Good-bye!"

He stayed full half an hour at the window, smoking.  No street lamp
shone just there, and the night was velvety black above the plane-
trees.  At last, with a sigh, he shut up, and went tiptoe-ing
upstairs in darkness.  Suddenly in the corridor the white wall
seemed to move at him.  A warmth, a fragrance, a sound like a tiny
sigh, and something soft was squeezed into his hand.  Then the wall
moved back, and he stood listening--no sound, no anything!  But in
his dressing-room he looked at the soft thing in his hand.  It was
the carnation from her hair.  What had possessed the child to give
him that?  Carmen!  Ah!  Carmen!  And gazing at the flower, he held
it away from him with a sort of terror; but its scent arose.  And
suddenly he thrust it, all fresh as it was, into a candle-flame,
and held it, burning, writhing, till it blackened to velvet.  Then
his heart smote him for so cruel a deed.  It was still beautiful,
but its scent was gone.  And turning to the window he flung it far
out into the darkness.


VIII


Now that she was gone, it was curious how little they spoke of her,
considering how long she had been with them.  And they had from her
but one letter written to Sylvia, very soon after she left, ending:
"Dad sends his best respects, please; and with my love to you and
Mr. Lennan, and all the beasts.--NELL.

"Oliver is coming here next week.  We are going to some races."

It was difficult, of course, to speak of her, with that episode of
the flower, too bizarre to be told--the sort of thing Sylvia would
see out of all proportion--as, indeed, any woman might.  Yet--what
had it really been, but the uncontrolled impulse of an emotional
child longing to express feelings kindled by the excitement of that
opera?  What but a child's feathery warmth, one of those flying
peeps at the mystery of passion that young things take?  He could
not give away that pretty foolishness.  And because he would not
give it away, he was more than usually affectionate to Sylvia.

They had made no holiday plans, and he eagerly fell in with her
suggestion that they should go down to Hayle.  There, if anywhere,
this curious restlessness would leave him.  They had not been down
to the old place for many years; indeed, since Gordy's death it was
generally let.

They left London late in August.  The day was closing in when they
arrived.  Honeysuckle had long been improved away from that station
paling, against which he had stood twenty-nine years ago, watching
the train carrying Anna Stormer away.  In the hired fly Sylvia
pressed close to him, and held his hand beneath the ancient dust-
rug.  Both felt the same excitement at seeing again this old home.
Not a single soul of the past days would be there now--only the
house and the trees, the owls and the stars; the river, park, and
logan stone!  It was dark when they arrived; just their bedroom and
two sitting-rooms had been made ready, with fires burning, though
it was still high summer.  The same old execrable Heatherleys
looked down from the black oak panellings.  The same scent of
apples and old mice clung here and there about the dark corridors
with their unexpected stairways.  It was all curiously unchanged,
as old houses are when they are let furnished.

Once in the night he woke.  Through the wide-open, uncurtained
windows the night was simply alive with stars, such swarms of them
swinging and trembling up there; and, far away, rose the
melancholy, velvet-soft hooting of an owl.

Sylvia's voice, close to him, said:

"Mark, that night when your star caught in my hair?  Do you
remember?"

Yes, he remembered.  And in his drowsy mind just roused from
dreams, there turned and turned the queer nonsensical refrain: "I
never--never--will desert Mr. Micawber. . . ."

A pleasant month that--of reading, and walking with the dogs the
country round, of lying out long hours amongst the boulders or
along the river banks, watching beasts and birds.

The little old green-house temple of his early masterpieces was
still extant, used now to protect watering pots.  But no vestige of
impulse towards work came to him down there.  He was marking time;
not restless, not bored, just waiting--but for what, he had no
notion.  And Sylvia, at any rate, was happy, blooming in these old
haunts, losing her fairness in the sun; even taking again to a
sunbonnet, which made her look extraordinarily young.  The trout
that poor old Gordy had so harried were left undisturbed.  No gun
was fired; rabbits, pigeons, even the few partridges enjoyed those
first days of autumn unmolested.  The bracken and leaves turned
very early, so that the park in the hazy September sunlight had an
almost golden hue.  A gentle mellowness reigned over all that
holiday.  And from Ireland came no further news, save one picture
postcard with the words: "This is our house.--NELL."

In the last week of September they went back to London.  And at
once there began in him again that restless, unreasonable aching--
that sense of being drawn away out of himself; so that he once more
took to walking the Park for hours, over grass already strewn with
leaves, always looking--craving--and for what?

At Dromore's the confidential man did not know when his master
would be back; he had gone to Scotland with Miss Nell after the St.
Leger.  Was Lennan disappointed?  Not so--relieved, rather.  But
his ache was there all the time, feeding on its secrecy and
loneliness, unmentionable feeling that it was.  Why had he not
realized long ago that youth was over, passion done with, autumn
upon him?  How never grasped the fact that 'Time steals away'?
And, as before, the only refuge was in work.  The sheep--dogs and
'The Girl on the Magpie Horse' were finished.  He began a fantastic
'relief'--a nymph peering from behind a rock, and a wild-eyed man
creeping, through reeds, towards her.  If he could put into the
nymph's face something of this lure of Youth and Life and Love that
was dragging at him, into the man's face the state of his own
heart, it might lay that feeling to rest.  Anything to get it out
of himself!  And he worked furiously, laboriously, all October,
making no great progress. . . .  What could he expect when Life was
all the time knocking with that muffled tapping at his door?

It was on the Tuesday, after the close of the last Newmarket
meeting, and just getting dusk, when Life opened the door and
walked in.  She wore a dark-red dress, a new one, and surely her
face--her figure--were very different from what he had remembered!
They had quickened and become poignant.  She was no longer a child--
that was at once plain.  Cheeks, mouth, neck, waist--all seemed
fined, shaped; the crinkly, light-brown hair was coiled up now
under a velvet cap; only the great grey eyes seemed quite the same.
And at sight of her his heart gave a sort of dive and flight, as if
all its vague and wistful sensations had found their goal.

Then, in sudden agitation, he realized that his last moment with
this girl--now a child no longer--had been a secret moment of
warmth and of emotion; a moment which to her might have meant, in
her might have bred, feelings that he had no inkling of.  He tried
to ignore that fighting and diving of his heart, held out his hand,
and murmured:

"Ah, Nell!  Back at last!  You've grown."  Then, with a sensation
of every limb gone weak, he felt her arms round his neck, and
herself pressed against him.  There was time for the thought to
flash through him: This is terrible!  He gave her a little
convulsive squeeze--could a man do less?--then just managed to push
her gently away, trying with all his might to think: She's a child!
It's nothing more than after Carmen!  She doesn't know what I am
feeling!  But he was conscious of a mad desire to clutch her to
him.  The touch of her had demolished all his vagueness, made
things only too plain, set him on fire.

He said uncertainly:

"Come to the fire, my child, and tell me all about it."

If he did not keep to the notion that she was just a child, his
head would go.  Perdita--'the lost one'!  A good name for her,
indeed, as she stood there, her eyes shining in the firelight--more
mesmeric than ever they had been!  And, to get away from the lure
of those eyes, he bent down and raked the grate, saying:

"Have you seen Sylvia?"  But he knew that she had not, even before
she gave that impatient shrug.  Then he pulled himself together,
and said:

"What has happened to you, child?"

"I'm not a child."

"No, we've both grown older.  I was forty-seven the other day."

She caught his hand--Heavens! how supple she was!--and murmured:

"You're not old a bit; you're quite young."  At his wits' end, with
his heart thumping, but still keeping his eyes away from her, he
said:

"Where is Oliver?"

She dropped his hand at that.

"Oliver?  I hate him!"

Afraid to trust himself near her, he had begun walking up and down.
And she stood, following him with her gaze--the firelight playing
on her red frock.  What extraordinary stillness!  What power she
had developed in these few months!  Had he let her see that he felt
that power?  And had all this come of one little moment in a dark
corridor, of one flower pressed into his hand?  Why had he not
spoken to her roughly then--told her she was a romantic little
fool?  God knew what thoughts she had been feeding on!  But who
could have supposed--who dreamed--?  And again he fixed his mind
resolutely on that thought: She's a child--only a child!

"Come!" he said: "tell me all about your time in Ireland?"

"Oh! it was just dull--it's all been dull away from you."

It came out without hesitancy or shame, and he could only murmur:

"Ah! you've missed your drawing!"

"Yes.  Can I come to-morrow?"

That was the moment to have said: No!  You are a foolish child, and
I an elderly idiot!  But he had neither courage nor clearness of
mind enough; nor--the desire.  And, without answering, he went
towards the door to turn up the light.

"Oh, no! please don't!  It's so nice like this!"

The shadowy room, the bluish dusk painted on all the windows, the
fitful shining of the fire, the pallor and darkness of the dim
casts and bronzes, and that one glowing figure there before the
hearth!  And her voice, a little piteous, went on:

"Aren't you glad I'm back?  I can't see you properly out there."

He went back into the glow, and she gave a little sigh of
satisfaction.  Then her calm young voice said, ever so distinctly:

"Oliver wants me to marry him, and I won't, of course."

He dared not say: Why not?  He dared not say anything.  It was too
dangerous.  And then followed those amazing words: "You know why,
don't you?  Of course you do."

It was ridiculous, almost shameful to understand their meaning.
And he stood, staring in front of him, without a word; humility,
dismay, pride, and a sort of mad exultation, all mixed and seething
within him in the queerest pudding of emotion.  But all he said
was:

"Come, my child; we're neither of us quite ourselves to-night.
Let's go to the drawing-room."


IX


Back in the darkness and solitude of the studio, when she was gone,
he sat down before the fire, his senses in a whirl.  Why was he not
just an ordinary animal of a man that could enjoy what the gods had
sent?  It was as if on a November day someone had pulled aside the
sober curtains of the sky and there in a chink had been April
standing--thick white blossom, a purple cloud, a rainbow, grass
vivid green, light flaring from one knew not where, and such a
tingling passion of life on it all as made the heart stand still!
This, then, was the marvellous, enchanting, maddening end of all
that year of restlessness and wanting!  This bit of Spring suddenly
given to him in the midst of Autumn.  Her lips, her eyes, her hair;
her touching confidence; above all--quite unbelievable--her love.
Not really love perhaps, just childish fancy.  But on the wings of
fancy this child would fly far, too far--all wistfulness and warmth
beneath that light veneer of absurd composure.

To live again--to plunge back into youth and beauty--to feel Spring
once more--to lose the sense of all being over, save just the sober
jogtrot of domestic bliss; to know, actually to know, ecstasy
again, in the love of a girl; to rediscover all that youth yearns
for, and feels, and hopes, and dreads, and loves.  It was a
prospect to turn the head even of a decent man. . . .

By just closing his eyes he could see her standing there with the
firelight glow on her red frock; could feel again that marvellous
thrill when she pressed herself against him in the half-innocent,
seducing moment when she first came in; could feel again her eyes
drawing--drawing him!  She was a witch, a grey-eyed, brown-haired
witch--even unto her love of red.  She had the witch's power of
lighting fever in the veins.  And he simply wondered at himself,
that he had not, as she stood there in the firelight, knelt, and
put his arms round her and pressed his face against her waist.  Why
had he not?  But he did not want to think; the moment thought began
he knew he must be torn this way and that, tossed here and there
between reason and desire, pity and passion.  Every sense struggled
to keep him wrapped in the warmth and intoxication of this
discovery that he, in the full of Autumn, had awakened love in
Spring.  It was amazing that she could have this feeling; yet there
was no mistake.  Her manner to Sylvia just now had been almost
dangerously changed; there had been a queer cold impatience in her
look, frightening from one who but three months ago had been so
affectionate.  And, going away, she had whispered, with that old
trembling-up at him, as if offering to be kissed: "I may come,
mayn't I?  And don't be angry with me, please; I can't help it."  A
monstrous thing at his age to let a young girl love him--compromise
her future!  A monstrous thing by all the canons of virtue and
gentility!  And yet--what future?--with that nature--those eyes--
that origin--with that father, and that home?  But he would not--
simply must not think!

Nevertheless, he showed the signs of thought, and badly; for after
dinner Sylvia, putting her hand on his forehead, said:

"You're working too hard, Mark.  You don't go out enough."

He held those fingers fast.  Sylvia!  No, indeed he must not think!
But he took advantage of her words, and said that he would go out
and get some air.

He walked at a great pace--to keep thought away--till he reached
the river close to Westminster, and, moved by sudden impulse,
seeking perhaps an antidote, turned down into that little street
under the big Wren church, where he had never been since the summer
night when he lost what was then more to him than life.  There SHE
had lived; there was the house--those windows which he had stolen
past and gazed at with such distress and longing.  Who lived there
now?  Once more he seemed to see that face out of the past, the
dark hair, and dark soft eyes, and sweet gravity; and it did not
reproach him.  For this new feeling was not a love like that had
been.  Only once could a man feel the love that passed all things,
the love before which the world was but a spark in a draught of
wind; the love that, whatever dishonour, grief, and unrest it might
come through, alone had in it the heart of peace and joy and
honour.  Fate had torn that love from him, nipped it off as a sharp
wind nips off a perfect flower.  This new feeling was but a fever,
a passionate fancy, a grasping once more at Youth and Warmth.  Ah,
well! but it was real enough!  And, in one of those moments when a
man stands outside himself, seems to be lifted away and see his own
life twirling, Lennan had a vision of a shadow driven here and
there; a straw going round and round; a midge in the grip of a mad
wind.  Where was the home of this mighty secret feeling that sprang
so suddenly out of the dark, and caught you by the throat?  Why did
it come now and not then, for this one and not that other?  What
did man know of it, save that it made him spin and hover--like a
moth intoxicated by a light, or a bee by some dark sweet flower;
save that it made of him a distraught, humble, eager puppet of its
fancy?  Had it not once already driven him even to the edge of
death; and must it now come on him again with its sweet madness,
its drugging scent?  What was it?  Why was it?  Why these
passionate obsessions that could not decently be satisfied?  Had
civilization so outstripped man that his nature was cramped into
shoes too small--like the feet of a Chinese woman?  What was it?
Why was it?

And faster than ever he walked away.

Pall Mall brought him back to that counterfeit presentment of the
real--reality.  There, in St. James's Street, was Johnny Dromore's
Club; and, again moved by impulse, he pushed open its swing door.
No need to ask; for there was Dromore in the hall, on his way from
dinner to the card-room.  The glossy tan of hard exercise and good
living lay on his cheeks as thick as clouted cream.  His eyes had
the peculiar shine of superabundant vigour; a certain sub-festive
air in face and voice and movements suggested that he was going to
make a night of it.  And the sardonic thought flashed through
Lennan: Shall I tell him?

"Hallo, old chap!  Awfully glad to see you!  What you doin' with
yourself?  Workin' hard?  How's your wife?  You been away?  Been
doin' anything great?"  And then the question that would have given
him his chance, if he had liked to be so cruel:

"Seen Nell?"

"Yes, she came round this afternoon."

"What d'you think of her?  Comin' on nicely, isn't she?"

That old query, half furtive and half proud, as much as to say: 'I
know she's not in the stud-book, but, d--n it, I sired her!'  And
then the old sudden gloom, which lasted but a second, and gave way
again to chaff.

Lennan stayed very few minutes.  Never had he felt farther from his
old school-chum.

No.  Whatever happened, Johnny Dromore must be left out.  It was a
position he had earned with his goggling eyes, and his astute
philosophy; from it he should not be disturbed.

He passed along the railings of the Green Park.  On the cold air of
this last October night a thin haze hung, and the acrid fragrance
from little bonfires of fallen leaves.  What was there about that
scent of burned-leaf smoke that had always moved him so?  Symbol of
parting!--that most mournful thing in all the world.  For what
would even death be, but for parting?  Sweet, long sleep, or new
adventure.  But, if a man loved others--to leave them, or be left!
Ah! and it was not death only that brought partings!

He came to the opening of the street where Dromore lived.  She
would be there, sitting by the fire in the big chair, playing with
her kitten, thinking, dreaming, and--alone!  He passed on at such a
pace that people stared; till, turning the last corner for home, he
ran almost into the arms of Oliver Dromore.

The young man was walking with unaccustomed indecision, his fur
coat open, his opera-hat pushed up on his crisp hair.  Dark under
the eyes, he had not the proper gloss of a Dromore at this season
of the year.

"Mr. Lennan!  I've just been round to you."

And Lennan answered dazedly:

"Will you come in, or shall I walk your way a bit?"

"I'd rather--out here, if you don't mind."

So in silence they went back into the Square.  And Oliver said:

"Let's get over by the rails."

They crossed to the railings of the Square's dark garden, where
nobody was passing.  And with every step Lennan's humiliation grew.
There was something false and undignified in walking with this
young man who had once treated him as a father confessor to his
love for Nell.  And suddenly he perceived that they had made a
complete circuit of the Square garden without speaking a single
word.

"Yes?" he said.

Oliver turned his face away.

"You remember what I told you in the summer.  Well, it's worse now.
I've been going a mucker lately in all sorts of ways to try and get
rid of it.  But it's all no good.  She's got me!"

And Lennan thought: You're not alone in that!  But he kept silence.
His chief dread was of saying something that he would remember
afterwards as the words of Judas.

Then Oliver suddenly burst out:

"Why can't she care?  I suppose I'm nothing much, but she's known
me all her life, and she used to like me.  There's something--I
can't make out.  Could you do anything for me with her?"

Lennan pointed across the street.

"In every other one of those houses, Oliver," he said, "there's
probably some creature who can't make out why another creature
doesn't care.  Passion comes when it will, goes when it will; and
we poor devils have no say in it."

"What do you advise me, then?"

Lennan had an almost overwhelming impulse to turn on his heel and
leave the young man standing there.  But he forced himself to look
at his face, which even then had its attraction--perhaps more so
than ever, so pallid and desperate it was.  And he said slowly,
staring mentally at every word:

"I'm not up to giving you advice.  The only thing I might say is:
One does not press oneself where one isn't wanted; all the same--
who knows?  So long as she feels you're there, waiting, she might
turn to you at any moment.  The more chivalrous you are, Oliver,
the more patiently you wait, the better chance you have."

Oliver took those words of little comfort without flinching.  "I
see," he said.  "Thanks!  But, my God! it's hard.  I never could
wait."  And with that epigram on himself, holding out his hand, he
turned away.

Lennan went slowly home, trying to gauge exactly how anyone who
knew all would judge him.  It was a little difficult in this affair
to keep a shred of dignity.

Sylvia had not gone up, and he saw her looking at him anxiously.
The one strange comfort in all this was that his feeling for her,
at any rate, had not changed.  It seemed even to have deepened--to
be more real to him.

How could he help staying awake that night?  How could he help
thinking, then?  And long time he lay, staring at the dark.

As if thinking were any good for fever in the veins!


X


Passion never plays the game.  It, at all events, is free from
self-consciousness, and pride; from dignity, nerves, scruples,
cant, moralities; from hypocrisies, and wisdom, and fears for
pocket, and position in this world and the next.  Well did the old
painters limn it as an arrow or a wind!  If it had not been as
swift and darting, Earth must long ago have drifted through space
untenanted--to let. . . .

After that fevered night Lennan went to his studio at the usual
hour and naturally did not do a stroke of work.  He was even
obliged to send away his model.  The fellow had been his
hairdresser, but, getting ill, and falling on dark days, one
morning had come to the studio, to ask with manifest shame if his
head were any good.  After having tested his capacity for standing
still, and giving him some introductions, Lennan had noted him
down: "Five feet nine, good hair, lean face, something tortured and
pathetic.  Give him a turn if possible."  The turn had come, and
the poor man was posing in a painful attitude, talking, whenever
permitted, of the way things had treated him, and the delights of
cutting hair.  This morning he took his departure with the simple
pleasure of one fully paid for services not rendered.

And so, walking up and down, up and down, the sculptor waited for
Nell's knock.  What would happen now?  Thinking had made nothing
clear.  Here was offered what every warm-blooded man whose Spring
is past desires--youth and beauty, and in that youth a renewal of
his own; what all men save hypocrites and Englishmen would even
admit that they desired.  And it was offered to one who had neither
religious nor moral scruples, as they are commonly understood.  In
theory he could accept.  In practice he did not as yet know what he
could do.  One thing only he had discovered during the night's
reflections: That those who scouted belief in the principle of
Liberty made no greater mistake than to suppose that Liberty was
dangerous because it made a man a libertine.  To those with any
decency, the creed of Freedom was--of all--the most enchaining.
Easy enough to break chains imposed by others, fling his cap over
the windmill, and cry for the moment at least: I am unfettered,
free!  Hard, indeed, to say the same to his own unfettered Self!
Yes, his own Self was in the judgment-seat; by his own verdict and
decision he must abide.  And though he ached for the sight of her,
and his will seemed paralyzed--many times already he had thought:
It won't do!  God help me!

Then twelve o'clock had come, and she had not.  Would 'The Girl on
the Magpie Horse' be all he would see of her to-day--that
unsatisfying work, so cold, and devoid of witchery?  Better have
tried to paint her--with a red flower in her hair, a pout on her
lips, and her eyes fey, or languorous.  Goya could have painted
her!

And then, just as he had given her up, she came.

After taking one look at his face, she slipped in ever so quietly,
like a very good child. . . .  Marvellous the instinct and finesse
of the young when they are women! . . .  Not a vestige in her of
yesterday's seductive power; not a sign that there had been a
yesterday at all--just confiding, like a daughter.  Sitting there,
telling him about Ireland, showing him the little batch of drawings
she had done while she was away.  Had she brought them because she
knew they would make him feel sorry for her?  What could have been
less dangerous, more appealing to the protective and paternal side
of him than she was that morning; as if she only wanted what her
father and her home could not give her--only wanted to be a sort of
daughter to him!

She went away demurely, as she had come, refusing to stay to lunch,
manifestly avoiding Sylvia.  Only then he realized that she must
have taken alarm from the look of strain on his face, been afraid
that he would send her away; only then perceived that, with her
appeal to his protection, she had been binding him closer, making
it harder for him to break away and hurt her.  And the fevered
aching began again--worse than ever--the moment he lost sight of
her.  And more than ever he felt in the grip of something beyond
his power to fight against; something that, however he swerved, and
backed, and broke away, would close in on him, find means to bind
him again hand and foot.

In the afternoon Dromore's confidential man brought him a note.
The fellow, with his cast-down eyes, and his well-parted hair,
seemed to Lennan to be saying: "Yes, sir--it is quite natural that
you should take the note out of eyeshot, sir--BUT I KNOW;
fortunately, there is no necessity for alarm--I am strictly
confidential."

And this was what the note contained:


"You promised to ride with me once--you DID promise, and you never
have.  Do please ride with me to-morrow; then you will get what you
want for the statuette instead of being so cross with it.  You can
have Dad's horse--he has gone to Newmarket again, and I'm so
lonely.  Please--to-morrow, at half-past two--starting from here.
--NELL."


To hesitate in view of those confidential eyes was not possible; it
must be 'Yes' or 'No'; and if 'No,' it would only mean that she
would come in the morning instead.  So he said:

"Just say 'All right!'"

"Very good, sir."  Then from the door: "Mr. Dromore will be away
till Saturday, sir."

Now, why had the fellow said that?  Curious how this desperate
secret feeling of his own made him see sinister meaning in this
servant, in Oliver's visit of last night--in everything.  It was
vile--this suspiciousness!  He could feel, almost see, himself
deteriorating already, with this furtive feeling in his soul.  It
would soon be written on his face!  But what was the use of
troubling?  What would come, would--one way or the other.

And suddenly he remembered with a shock that it was the first of
November--Sylvia's birthday!  He had never before forgotten it.  In
the disturbance of that discovery he was very near to going and
pouring out to her the whole story of his feelings.  A charming
birthday present, that would make!  Taking his hat, instead, he
dashed round to the nearest flower shop.  A Frenchwoman kept it.

What had she?

What did Monsieur desire?  "Des oeillets rouges?  J'en ai de bien
beaux ce soir."

No--not those.  White flowers!

"Une belle azalee?"

Yes, that would do--to be sent at once--at once!

Next door was a jeweller's.  He had never really known if Sylvia
cared for jewels, since one day he happened to remark that they
were vulgar.  And feeling that he had fallen low indeed, to be
trying to atone with some miserable gewgaw for never having thought
of her all day, because he had been thinking of another, he went in
and bought the only ornament whose ingredients did not make his
gorge rise, two small pear-shaped black pearls, one at each end of
a fine platinum chain.  Coming out with it, he noticed over the
street, in a clear sky fast deepening to indigo, the thinnest slip
of a new moon, like a bright swallow, with wings bent back, flying
towards the ground.  That meant--fine weather!  If it could only be
fine weather in his heart!  And in order that the azalea might
arrive first, he walked up and down the Square which he and Oliver
had patrolled the night before.

When he went in, Sylvia was just placing the white azalea in the
window of the drawing-room; and stealing up behind her he clasped
the little necklet round her throat.  She turned round and clung to
him.  He could feel that she was greatly moved.  And remorse
stirred and stirred in him that he was betraying her with his kiss.

But, even while he kissed her, he was hardening his heart.


XI


Next day, still following the lead of her words about fresh air and
his tired look, he told her that he was going to ride, and did not
say with whom.  After applauding his resolution, she was silent for
a little--then asked:

"Why don't you ride with Nell?"

He had already so lost his dignity, that he hardly felt disgraced
in answering:

"It might bore her!"

"Oh, no; it wouldn't bore her."

Had she meant anything by that?  And feeling as if he were fencing
with his own soul, he said:

"Very well, I will."

He had perceived suddenly that he did not know his wife, having
always till now believed that it was she who did not quite know
him.

If she had not been out at lunch-time, he would have lunched out
himself--afraid of his own face.  For feverishness in sick persons
mounts steadily with the approach of a certain hour.  And surely
his face, to anyone who could have seen him being conveyed to
Piccadilly, would have suggested a fevered invalid rather than a
healthy, middle-aged sculptor in a cab.

The horses were before the door--the little magpie horse, and a
thoroughbred bay mare, weeded from Dromore's racing stable.  Nell,
too, was standing ready, her cheeks very pink, and her eyes very
bright.  She did not wait for him to mount her, but took the aid of
the confidential man.  What was it that made her look so perfect on
that little horse--shape of limb, or something soft and fiery in
her spirit that the little creature knew of?

They started in silence, but as soon as the sound of hoofs died on
the tan of Rotten Row, she turned to him.

"It was lovely of you to come!  I thought you'd be afraid--you ARE
afraid of me."

And Lennan thought: You're right!

"But please don't look like yesterday.  To-day's too heavenly.  Oh!
I love beautiful days, and I love riding, and--"  She broke off and
looked at him.  'Why can't you just be nice to me'--she seemed to
be saying--'and love me as you ought!'  That was her power--the
conviction that he did, and ought to love her; that she ought to
and did love him.  How simple!

But riding, too, is a simple passion; and simple passions distract
each other.  It was a treat to be on that bay mare.  Who so to be
trusted to ride the best as Johnny Dromore?

At the far end of the Row she cried out: "Let's go on to Richmond
now," and trotted off into the road, as if she knew she could do
with him what she wished.  And, following meekly, he asked himself:
Why?  What was there in her to make up to him for all that he was
losing--his power of work, his dignity, his self-respect?  What was
there?  Just those eyes, and lips, and hair?

And as if she knew what he was thinking, she looked round and
smiled.

So they jogged on over the Bridge and across Barnes Common into
Richmond Park.

But the moment they touched turf, with one look back at him, she
was off.  Had she all the time meant to give him this breakneck
chase--or had the loveliness of that Autumn day gone to her head--
blue sky and coppery flames of bracken in the sun, and the beech
leaves and the oak leaves; pure Highland colouring come South for
once.

When in the first burst he had tested the mare's wind, this chase
of her, indeed, was sheer delight.  Through glades, over fallen
tree-trunks, in bracken up to the hocks, out across the open, past
a herd of amazed and solemn deer, over rotten ground all rabbit-
burrows, till just as he thought he was up to her, she slipped away
by a quick turn round trees.  Mischief incarnate, but something
deeper than mischief, too!  He came up with her at last, and leaned
over to seize her rein.  With a cut of her whip that missed his
hand by a bare inch, and a wrench, she made him shoot past, wheeled
in her tracks, and was off again like an arrow, back amongst the
trees--lying right forward under the boughs, along the neck of her
little horse.  Then out from amongst the trees she shot downhill.
Right down she went, full tilt, and after her went Lennan, lying
back, and expecting the bay mare to come down at every stride.
This was her idea of fun!  She switched round at the bottom and
went galloping along the foot of the hill; and he thought: Now I've
got her!  She could not break back up that hill, and there was no
other cover for fully half a mile.

Then he saw, not thirty yards in front, an old sandpit; and Great
God! she was going straight at it!  And shouting frantically, he
reined his mare outwards.  But she only raised her whip, cut the
magpie horse over the flank, and rode right on.  He saw that little
demon gather its feet and spring--down, down, saw him pitch,
struggle, sink--and she, flung forward, roll over and lie on her
back.  He felt nothing at the moment, only had that fixed vision of
a yellow patch of sand, the blue sky, a rook flying, and her face
upturned.  But when he came on her she was on her feet, holding the
bridle of her dazed horse.  No sooner did he touch her, than she
sank down.  Her eyes were closed, but he could feel that she had
not fainted; and he just held her, and kept pressing his lips to
her eyes and forehead.  Suddenly she let her head fall back, and
her lips met his.  Then opening her eyes, she said: "I'm not hurt,
only--funny.  Has Magpie cut his knees?"

Not quite knowing what he did, he got up to look.  The little horse
was cropping at some grass, unharmed--the sand and fern had saved
his knees.  And the languid voice behind him said: "It's all right--
you can leave the horses.  They'll come when I call."

Now that he knew she was unhurt, he felt angry.  Why had she
behaved in this mad way--given him this fearful shock?  But in that
same languid voice she went on: "Don't be cross with me.  I thought
at first I'd pull up, but then I thought: 'If I jump he can't help
being nice'--so I did--Don't leave off loving me because I'm not
hurt, please."

Terribly moved, he sat down beside her, took her hands in his, and
said:

"Nell!  Nell! it's all wrong--it's madness!"

"Why?  Don't think about it!  I don't want you to think--only to
love me."

"My child, you don't know what love is!"

For answer she only flung her arms round his neck; then, since he
held back from kissing her, let them fall again, and jumped up.

"Very well.  But I love you.  You can think of THAT--you can't
prevent me!"  And without waiting for help, she mounted the magpie
horse from the sand-heap where they had fallen.

Very sober that ride home!  The horses, as if ashamed of their mad
chase, were edging close to each other, so that now and then his
arm would touch her shoulder.  He asked her once what she had felt
while she was jumping.

"Only to be sure my foot was free.  It was rather horrid coming
down, thinking of Magpie's knees;" and touching the little horse's
goat-like ears, she added softly: "Poor dear!  He'll be stiff to-
morrow."

She was again only the confiding, rather drowsy, child.  Or was it
that the fierceness of those past moments had killed his power of
feeling?  An almost dreamy hour--with the sun going down, the lamps
being lighted one by one--and a sort of sweet oblivion over
everything!

At the door, where the groom was waiting, Lennan would have said
good-bye, but she whispered: "Oh, no, please!  I AM tired now--you
might help me up a little."

And so, half carrying her, he mounted past the Vanity Fair
cartoons, and through the corridor with the red paper and the Van
Beers' drawings, into the room where he had first seen her.

Once settled back in Dromore's great chair, with the purring kitten
curled up on her neck, she murmured:

"Isn't it nice?  You can make tea; and we'll have hot buttered
toast."

And so Lennan stayed, while the confidential man brought tea and
toast; and, never once looking at them, seemed to know all that had
passed, all that might be to come.

Then they were alone again, and, gazing down at her stretched out
in that great chair, Lennan thought:

"Thank God that I'm tired too--body and soul!"

But suddenly she looked up at him, and pointing to the picture that
to-day had no curtain drawn, said:

"Do you think I'm like her?  I made Oliver tell me about--myself
this summer.  That's why you needn't bother.  It doesn't matter
what happens to me, you see.  And I don't care--because you can
love me, without feeling bad about it.  And you will, won't you?"

Then, with her eyes still on his face, she went on quickly:

"Only we won't talk about that now, will we?  It's too cosy.  I AM
nice and tired.  Do smoke!"

But Lennan's fingers trembled so that he could hardly light that
cigarette.  And, watching them, she said: "Please give me one.  Dad
doesn't like my smoking."

The virtue of Johnny Dromore!  Yes!  It would always be by proxy!
And he muttered:

"How do you think he would like to know about this afternoon,
Nell?"

"I don't care."  Then peering up through the kitten's fur she
murmured: "Oliver wants me to go to a dance on Saturday--it's for a
charity.  Shall I?"

"Of course; why not?"

"Will YOU come?"

"I?"

"Oh, do!  You must!  It's my very first, you know.  I've got an
extra ticket."

And against his will, his judgment--everything, Lennan answered:
"Yes."

She clapped her hands, and the kitten crawled down to her knees.

When he got up to go, she did not move, but just looked up at him;
and how he got away he did not know.

Stopping his cab a little short of home, he ran, for he felt cold
and stiff, and letting himself in with his latch-key, went straight
to the drawing-room.  The door was ajar, and Sylvia standing at the
window.  He heard her sigh; and his heart smote him.  Very still,
and slender, and lonely she looked out there, with the light
shining on her fair hair so that it seemed almost white.  Then she
turned and saw him.  He noticed her throat working with the effort
she made not to show him anything, and he said:

"Surely you haven't been anxious!  Nell had a bit of a fall--
jumping into a sandpit.  She's quite mad sometimes.  I stayed to
tea with her--just to make sure she wasn't really hurt."  But as he
spoke he loathed himself; his voice sounded so false.

She only answered: "It's all right, dear," but he saw that she kept
her eyes--those blue, too true eyes--averted, even when she kissed
him.

And so began another evening and night and morning of fever,
subterfuge, wariness, aching.  A round of half-ecstatic torment,
out of which he seemed no more able to break than a man can break
through the walls of a cell. . . .

Though it live but a day in the sun, though it drown in tenebrous
night, the dark flower of passion will have its hour. . . .


XII


To deceive undoubtedly requires a course of training.  And,
unversed in this art, Lennan was fast finding it intolerable to
scheme and watch himself, and mislead one who had looked up to him
ever since they were children.  Yet, all the time, he had a feeling
that, since he alone knew all the circumstances of his case, he
alone was entitled to blame or to excuse himself.  The glib
judgments that moralists would pass upon his conduct could be
nothing but the imbecilities of smug and pharisaic fools--of those
not under this drugging spell--of such as had not blood enough,
perhaps, ever to fall beneath it!

The day after the ride Nell had not come, and he had no word from
her.  Was she, then, hurt, after all?  She had lain back very
inertly in that chair!  And Sylvia never asked if he knew how the
girl was after her fall, nor offered to send round to inquire.  Did
she not wish to speak of her, or had she simply--not believed?
When there was so much he could not talk of it seemed hard that
just what happened to be true should be distrusted.  She had not
yet, indeed, by a single word suggested that she felt he was
deceiving her, but at heart he knew that she was not deceived. . . .
Those feelers of a woman who loves--can anything check their
delicate apprehension? . . .

Towards evening, the longing to see the girl--a sensation as if she
were calling him to come to her--became almost insupportable; yet,
whatever excuse he gave, he felt that Sylvia would know where he
was going.  He sat on one side of the fire, she on the other, and
they both read books; the only strange thing about their reading
was, that neither of them ever turned a leaf.  It was 'Don Quixote'
he read, the page which had these words: "Let Altisidora weep or
sing, still I am Dulcinea's and hers alone, dead or alive, dutiful
and unchanged, in spite of all the necromantic powers in the
world."  And so the evening passed.  When she went up to bed, he
was very near to stealing out, driving up to the Dromores' door,
and inquiring of the confidential man; but the thought of the
confounded fellow's eyes was too much for him, and he held out.  He
took up Sylvia's book, De Maupassant's 'Fort comme la mort'--open
at the page where the poor woman finds that her lover has passed
away from her to her own daughter.  And as he read, the tears
rolled down his cheek.  Sylvia!  Sylvia!  Were not his old
favourite words from that old favourite book still true?  "Dulcinea
del Toboso is the most beautiful woman in the world, and I the most
unfortunate knight upon the earth.  It were unjust that such
perfection should suffer through my weakness.  No, pierce my body
with your lance, knight, and let my life expire with my honour. . . ."
Why could he not wrench this feeling from his heart, banish
this girl from his eyes?  Why could he not be wholly true to her
who was and always had been wholly true to him?  Horrible--this
will-less, nerveless feeling, this paralysis, as if he were a
puppet moved by a cruel hand.  And, as once before, it seemed to
him that the girl was sitting there in Sylvia's chair in her dark
red frock, with her eyes fixed on him.  Uncannily vivid--that
impression! . . .  A man could not go on long with his head in
Chancery like this, without becoming crazed!

It was growing dusk on Saturday afternoon when he gave up that
intolerable waiting and opened the studio door to go to Nell.  It
was now just two days since he had seen or heard of her.  She had
spoken of a dance for that very night--of his going to it.  She
MUST be ill!

But he had not taken six steps when he saw her coming.  She had on
a grey furry scarf, hiding her mouth, making her look much older.
The moment the door was shut she threw it off, went to the hearth,
drew up a little stool, and, holding her hands out to the fire,
said:

"Have you thought about me?  Have you thought enough now?"

And he answered: "Yes, I've thought, but I'm no nearer."

"Why?  Nobody need ever know you love me.  And if they did, I
wouldn't care."

Simple!  How simple!  Glorious, egoistic youth!

He could not speak of Sylvia to this child--speak of his married
life, hitherto so dignified, so almost sacred.  It was impossible.
Then he heard her say:

"It can't be wrong to love YOU!  I don't care if it is wrong," and
saw her lips quivering, and her eyes suddenly piteous and scared,
as if for the first time she doubted of the issue.  Here was fresh
torment!  To watch an unhappy child.  And what was the use of even
trying to make clear to her--on the very threshold of life--the
hopeless maze that he was wandering in!  What chance of making her
understand the marsh of mud and tangled weeds he must drag through
to reach her.  "Nobody need know."  So simple!  What of his heart
and his wife's heart?  And, pointing to his new work--the first man
bewitched by the first nymph--he said:

"Look at this, Nell!  That nymph is you; and this man is me."  She
got up, and came to look.  And while she was gazing he greedily
drank her in.  What a strange mixture of innocence and sorcery!
What a wonderful young creature to bring to full knowledge of love
within his arms!  And he said: "You had better understand what you
are to me--all that I shall never know again; there it is in that
nymph's face.  Oh, no! not YOUR face.  And there am I struggling
through slime to reach you--not MY face, of course."

She said: "Poor face!" then covered her own.  Was she going to cry,
and torture him still more?  But, instead, she only murmured: "But
you HAVE reached me!" swayed towards him, and put her lips to his.

He gave way then.  From that too stormy kiss of his she drew back
for a second, then, as if afraid of her own recoil, snuggled close
again.  But the instinctive shrinking of innocence had been enough
for Lennan--he dropped his arms and said:

"You must go, child."

Without a word she picked up her fur, put it on, and stood waiting
for him to speak.  Then, as he did not, she held out something
white.  It was the card for the dance.

"You said you were coming?"

And he nodded.  Her eyes and lips smiled at him; she opened the
door, and, still with that slow, happy smile, went out. . . .

Yes, he would be coming; wherever she was, whenever she wanted
him! . . .

His blood on fire, heedless of everything but to rush after
happiness, Lennan spent those hours before the dance.  He had told
Sylvia that he would be dining at his Club--a set of rooms owned by
a small coterie of artists in Chelsea.  He had taken this
precaution, feeling that he could not sit through dinner opposite
her and then go out to that dance--and Nell!  He had spoken of a
guest at the Club, to account for evening dress--another lie, but
what did it matter?  He was lying all the time, if not in words, in
action--must lie, indeed, to save her suffering!

He stopped at the Frenchwoman's flower shop.

"Que desirez-vous, monsieur?  Des oeillets rouges--j'en ai de bien
beaux, ce soir."

Des oeillets rouges?  Yes, those to-night!  To this address.  No
green with them; no card!

How strange the feeling--with the die once cast for love--of
rushing, of watching his own self being left behind!

In the Brompton Road, outside a little restaurant, a thin musician
was playing on a violin.  Ah! and he knew this place; he would go
in there, not to the Club--and the fiddler should have all he had
to spare, for playing those tunes of love.  He turned in.  He had
not been there since the day before that night on the river, twenty
years ago.  Never since; and yet it was not changed.  The same
tarnished gilt, and smell of cooking; the same macaroni in the same
tomato sauce; the same Chianti flasks; the same staring, light-blue
walls wreathed with pink flowers.  Only the waiter different--
hollow-cheeked, patient, dark of eye.  He, too, should be well
tipped!  And that poor, over-hatted lady, eating her frugal meal--
to her, at all events, a look of kindness.  For all desperate
creatures he must feel, this desperate night!  And suddenly he
thought of Oliver.  Another desperate one!  What should he say to
Oliver at this dance--he, aged forty-seven, coming there without
his wife!  Some imbecility, such as: 'Watching the human form
divine in motion,' 'Catching sidelights on Nell for the statuette'--
some cant; it did not matter!  The wine was drawn, and he must
drink!

It was still early when he left the restaurant--a dry night, very
calm, not cold.  When had he danced last?  With Olive Cramier,
before he knew he loved her.  Well, THAT memory could not be
broken, for he would not dance to-night!  Just watch, sit with the
girl a few minutes, feel her hand cling to his, see her eyes turned
back to him; and--come away!  And then--the future!  For the wine
was drawn!  The leaf of a plane-tree, fluttering down, caught on
his sleeve.  Autumn would soon be gone, and after Autumn--only
Winter!  She would have done with him long before he came to
Winter.  Nature would see to it that Youth called for her, and
carried her away.  Nature in her courses!  But just to cheat Nature
for a little while!  To cheat Nature--what greater happiness!

Here was the place with red-striped awning, carriages driving away,
loiterers watching.  He turned in with a beating heart.  Was he
before her?  How would she come to this first dance?  With Oliver
alone?  Or had some chaperon been found?  To have come because she--
this child so lovely, born 'outside'--might have need of
chaperonage, would have been some comfort to dignity, so wistful,
so lost as his.  But, alas! he knew he was only there because he
could not keep away!

Already they were dancing in the hall upstairs; but not she, yet;
and he stood leaning against the wall where she must pass.  Lonely
and out of place he felt; as if everyone must know why he was
there.  People stared, and he heard a girl ask: "Who's that against
the wall with the hair and dark moustache?"--and her partner
murmuring his answer, and her voice again: "Yes, he looks as if he
were seeing sand and lions."  For whom, then, did they take him?
Thank heaven!  They were all the usual sort.  There would be no one
that he knew.  Suppose Johnny Dromore himself came with Nell!  He
was to be back on Saturday!  What could he say, then?  How meet
those doubting, knowing eyes, goggling with the fixed philosophy
that a man has but one use for woman?  God! and it would be true!
For a moment he was on the point of getting his coat and hat, and
sneaking away.  That would mean not seeing her till Monday; and he
stood his ground.  But after to-night there must be no more such
risks--their meetings must be wisely planned, must sink
underground.  And then he saw her at the foot of the stairs in a
dress of a shell-pink colour, with one of his flowers in her light-
brown hair and the others tied to the handle of a tiny fan.  How
self-possessed she looked, as if this were indeed her native
element--her neck and arms bare, her cheeks a deep soft pink, her
eyes quickly turning here and there.  She began mounting the
stairs, and saw him.  Was ever anything so lovely as she looked
just then?  Behind her he marked Oliver, and a tall girl with red
hair, and another young man.  He moved deliberately to the top of
the stairs on the wall side, so that from behind they should not
see her face when she greeted him.  She put the little fan with the
flowers to her lips; and, holding out her hand, said, quick and low:

"The fourth, it's a polka; we'll sit out, won't we?"

Then swaying a little, so that her hair and the flower in it almost
touched his face, she passed, and there in her stead stood Oliver.

Lennan had expected one of his old insolent looks, but the young
man's face was eager and quite friendly.

"It was awfully good of you to come, Mr. Lennan.  Is Mrs. Lennan--"

And Lennan murmured:

"She wasn't able; she's not quite--" and could have sunk into the
shining floor.  Youth with its touching confidence, its eager
trust!  This was the way he was fulfilling his duty towards Youth!

When they had passed into the ballroom he went back to his position
against the wall.  They were dancing Number Three; his time of
waiting, then, was drawing to a close.  From where he stood he
could not see the dancers--no use to watch her go round in someone
else's arms.

Not a true waltz--some French or Spanish pavement song played in
waltz time; bizarre, pathetic, whirling after its own happiness.
That chase for happiness!  Well, life, with all its prizes and its
possibilities, had nothing that quite satisfied--save just the
fleeting moments of passion!  Nothing else quite poignant enough to
be called pure joy!  Or so it seemed to him.

The waltz was over.  He could see her now, on a rout seat against
the wall with the other young man, turning her eyes constantly as
if to make sure that he was still standing there.  What subtle fuel
was always being added to the fire by that flattery of her
inexplicable adoration--of those eyes that dragged him to her, yet
humbly followed him, too!  Five times while she sat there he saw
the red-haired girl or Oliver bring men up; saw youths cast longing
glances; saw girls watching her with cold appraisement, or with a
touching, frank delight.  From the moment that she came in, there
had been, in her father's phrase, 'only one in it.'  And she could
pass all this by, and still want him.  Incredible!

At the first notes of the polka he went to her.  It was she who
found their place of refuge--a little alcove behind two palm-
plants.  But sitting there, he realized, as never before, that
there was no spiritual communion between him and this child.  She
could tell him her troubles or her joys; he could soothe or
sympathize; but never would the gap between their natures and their
ages be crossed.  His happiness was only in the sight and touch of
her.  But that, God knew, was happiness enough--a feverish, craving
joy, like an overtired man's thirst, growing with the drink on
which it tries to slake itself.  Sitting there, in the scent of
those flowers and of some sweet essence in her hair, with her
fingers touching his, and her eyes seeking his, he tried loyally
not to think of himself, to grasp her sensations at this her first
dance, and just help her to enjoyment.  But he could not--
paralyzed, made drunk by that insensate longing to take her in his
arms and crush her to him as he had those few hours back.  He could
see her expanding like a flower, in all this light, and motion, and
intoxicating admiration round her.  What business had he in her
life, with his dark hunger after secret hours; he--a coin worn thin
already--a destroyer of the freshness and the glamour of her youth
and beauty!

Then, holding up the flowers, she said:

"Did you give me these because of the one I gave you?"

"Yes."

"What did you do with that?"

"Burned it."

"Oh! but why?"

"Because you are a witch--and witches must be burned with all their
flowers."

"Are you going to burn me?"

He put his hand on her cool arm.

"Feel!  The flames are lighted."

"You may!  I don't care!"

She took his hand and laid her cheek against it; yet, to the music,
which had begun again, the tip of her shoe was already beating
time.  And he said:

"You ought to be dancing, child."

"Oh, no!  Only it's a pity you don't want to."

"Yes!  Do you understand that it must all be secret--underground?"

She covered his lips with the fan, and said: "You're not to think;
you're not to think--never!  When can I come?"

"I must find the best way.  Not to-morrow.  Nobody must know, Nell--
for your sake--for hers--nobody!"

She nodded, and repeated with a soft, mysterious wisdom: "Nobody."
And then, aloud: "Here's Oliver!  It was awfully good of you to
come.  Good-night!"

And as, on Oliver's arm, she left their little refuge, she looked
back.

He lingered--to watch her through this one dance.  How they made
all the other couples sink into insignificance, with that something
in them both that was better than mere good looks--that something
not outre or eccentric, but poignant, wayward.  They went well
together, those two Dromores--his dark head and her fair head; his
clear, brown, daring eyes, and her grey, languorous, mesmeric eyes.
Ah!  Master Oliver was happy now, with her so close to him!  It was
not jealousy that Lennan felt.  Not quite--one did not feel jealous
of the young; something very deep--pride, sense of proportion, who
knew what--prevented that.  She, too, looked happy, as if her soul
were dancing, vibrating with the music and the scent of the
flowers.  He waited for her to come round once more, to get for a
last time that flying glance turned back; then found his coat and
hat and went.


XIII


Outside, he walked a few steps, then stood looking back at the
windows of the hall through some trees, the shadows of whose
trunks, in the light of a street lamp, were spilled out along the
ground like the splines of a fan.  A church clock struck eleven.
For hours yet she would be there, going round and round in the arms
of Youth!  Try as he might he could never recapture for himself the
look that Oliver's face had worn--the look that was the symbol of
so much more than he himself could give her.  Why had she come into
his life--to her undoing, and his own?  And the bizarre thought
came to him: If she were dead should I really care?  Should I not
be almost glad?  If she were dead her witchery would be dead, and I
could stand up straight again and look people in the face!  What
was this power that played with men, darted into them, twisted
their hearts to rags; this power that had looked through her eyes
when she put her fan, with his flowers, to her lips?

The thrumming of the music ceased; he walked away.

It must have been nearly twelve when he reached home.  Now, once
more, would begin the gruesome process of deception--flinching of
soul, and brazening of visage.  It would be better when the whole
thievish business was irretrievably begun and ordered in its secret
courses!

There was no light in the drawing-room, save just the glow of the
fire.  If only Sylvia might have gone to bed!  Then he saw her,
sitting motionless out there by the uncurtained window.

He went over to her, and began his hateful formula:

"I'm afraid you've been lonely.  I had to stay rather late.  A dull
evening."  And, since she did not move or answer, but just sat
there very still and white, he forced himself to go close, bend
down to her, touch her cheek; even to kneel beside her.  She looked
round then; her face was quiet enough, but her eyes were strangely
eager.  With a pitiful little smile she broke out:

"Oh, Mark!  What is it--what is it?  Anything is better than this!"

Perhaps it was the smile, perhaps her voice or eyes--but something
gave way in Lennan.  Secrecy, precaution went by the board.  Bowing
his head against her breast, he poured it all out, while they
clung, clutched together in the half dark like two frightened
children.  Only when he had finished did he realize that if she had
pushed him away, refused to let him touch her, it would have been
far less piteous, far easier to bear, than her wan face and her
hands clutching him, and her words: "I never thought--you and I--
oh! Mark--you and I--"  The trust in their life together, in
himself, that those words revealed!  Yet, not greater than he had
had--still had!  She could not understand--he had known that she
could never understand; it was why he had fought so for secrecy,
all through.  She was taking it as if she had lost everything; and
in his mind she had lost nothing.  This passion, this craving for
Youth and Life, this madness--call it what one would--was something
quite apart, not touching his love and need of her.  If she would
only believe that!  Over and over he repeated it; over and over
again perceived that she could not take it in.  The only thing she
saw was that his love had gone from her to another--though that was
not true!  Suddenly she broke out of his arms, pushing him from
her, and cried: "That girl--hateful, horrible, false!"  Never had
he seen her look like this, with flaming spots in her white cheeks,
soft lips and chin distorted, blue eyes flaming, breast heaving, as
if each breath were drawn from lungs that received no air.  And
then, as quickly, the fire went out of her; she sank down on the
sofa; covering her face with her arms, rocking to and fro.  She did
not cry, but a little moan came from her now and then.  And each
one of those sounds was to Lennan like the cry of something he was
murdering.  At last he went and sat down on the sofa by her and
said:

"Sylvia!  Sylvia!  Don't! oh! don't!"  And she was silent, ceasing
to rock herself; letting him smooth and stroke her.  But her face
she kept hidden, and only once she spoke, so low that he could
hardly hear: "I can't--I won't keep you from her."  And with the
awful feeling that no words could reach or soothe the wound in that
tender heart, he could only go on stroking and kissing her hands.

It was atrocious--horrible--this that he had done!  God knew that
he had not sought it--the thing had come on him.  Surely even in
her misery she could see that!  Deep down beneath his grief and
self-hatred, he knew, what neither she nor anyone else could know--
that he could not have prevented this feeling, which went back to
days before he ever saw the girl--that no man could have stopped
that feeling in himself.  This craving and roving was as much part
of him as his eyes and hands, as overwhelming and natural a longing
as his hunger for work, or his need of the peace that Sylvia gave,
and alone could give him.  That was the tragedy--it was all sunk
and rooted in the very nature of a man.  Since the girl had come
into their lives he was no more unfaithful to his wife in thought
than he had been before.  If only she could look into him, see him
exactly as he was, as, without part or lot in the process, he had
been made--then she would understand, and even might not suffer;
but she could not, and he could never make it plain.  And solemnly,
desperately, with a weary feeling of the futility of words, he went
on trying: Could she not see?  It was all a thing outside him--a
craving, a chase after beauty and life, after his own youth!  At
that word she looked at him:

"And do you think I don't want my youth back?"

He stopped.

For a woman to feel that her beauty--the brightness of her hair and
eyes, the grace and suppleness of her limbs--were slipping from her
and from the man she loved!  Was there anything more bitter?--or
any more sacred duty than not to add to that bitterness, not to
push her with suffering into old age, but to help keep the star of
her faith in her charm intact!

Man and woman--they both wanted youth again; she, that she might
give it all to him; he, because it would help him towards
something--new!  Just that world of difference!

He got up, and said:

"Come, dear, let's try and sleep."

He had not once said that he could give it up.  The words would not
pass his lips, though he knew she must be conscious that he had not
said them, must be longing to hear them.  All he had been able to
say was:

"So long as you want me, you shall never lose me" . . . and, "I
will never keep anything from you again."

Up in their room she lay hour after hour in his arms, quite
unresentful, but without life in her, and with eyes that, when his
lips touched them, were always wet.

What a maze was a man's heart, wherein he must lose himself every
minute!  What involved and intricate turnings and turnings on
itself; what fugitive replacement of emotion by emotion!  What
strife between pities and passions; what longing for peace! . . .

And in his feverish exhaustion, which was almost sleep, Lennan
hardly knew whether it was the thrum of music or Sylvia's moaning
that he heard; her body or Nell's within his arms. . . .

But life had to be lived, a face preserved against the world,
engagements kept.  And the nightmare went on for both of them,
under the calm surface of an ordinary Sunday.  They were like
people walking at the edge of a high cliff, not knowing from step
to step whether they would fall; or like swimmers struggling for
issue out of a dark whirlpool.

In the afternoon they went together to a concert; it was just
something to do--something that saved them for an hour or two from
the possibility of speaking on the one subject left to them.  The
ship had gone down, and they were clutching at anything that for a
moment would help to keep them above water.

In the evening some people came to supper; a writer and two
painters, with their wives.  A grim evening--never more so than
when the conversation turned on that perennial theme--the freedom,
spiritual, mental, physical, requisite for those who practise Art.
All the stale arguments were brought forth, and had to be joined in
with unmoved faces.  And for all their talk of freedom, Lennan
could see the volte-face his friends would be making, if they only
knew.  It was not 'the thing' to seduce young girls--as if,
forsooth, there were freedom in doing only what people thought 'the
thing'!  Their cant about the free artist spirit experiencing
everything, would wither the moment it came up against a canon of
'good form,' so that in truth it was no freer than the bourgeois
spirit, with its conventions; or the priest spirit, with its cry of
'Sin!'  No, no!  To resist--if resistance were possible to this
dragging power--maxims of 'good form,' dogmas of religion and
morality, were no help--nothing was any help, but some feeling
stronger than passion itself.  Sylvia's face, forced to smile!--
that, indeed was a reason why they should condemn him!  None of
their doctrines about freedom could explain that away--the harm,
the death that came to a man's soul when he made a loving, faithful
creature suffer.

But they were gone at last--with their "Thanks so much!" and their
"Delightful evening!"

And those two were face to face for another night.

He knew that it must begin all over again--inevitable, after the
stab of that wretched argument plunged into their hearts and turned
and turned all the evening.

"I won't, I mustn't keep you starved, and spoil your work.  Don't
think of me, Mark!  I can bear it!"

And then a breakdown worse than the night before.  What genius,
what sheer genius Nature had for torturing her creatures!  If
anyone had told him, even so little as a week ago, that he could
have caused such suffering to Sylvia--Sylvia, whom as a child with
wide blue eyes and a blue bow on her flaxen head he had guarded
across fields full of imaginary bulls; Sylvia, in whose hair his
star had caught; Sylvia, who day and night for fifteen years had
been his devoted wife; whom he loved and still admired--he would
have given him the lie direct.  It would have seemed incredible,
monstrous, silly.  Had all married men and women such things to go
through--was this but a very usual crossing of the desert?  Or was
it, once for all, shipwreck? death--unholy, violent death--in a
storm of sand?

Another night of misery, and no answer to that question yet.

He had told her that he would not see Nell again without first
letting her know.  So, when morning came, he simply wrote the
words: "Don't come today!"--showed them to Sylvia, and sent them by
a servant to Dromore's.

Hard to describe the bitterness with which he entered his studio
that morning.  In all this chaos, what of his work?  Could he ever
have peace of mind for it again?  Those people last night had
talked of 'inspiration of passion, of experience.'  In pleading
with her he had used the words himself.  She--poor soul!--had but
repeated them, trying to endure them, to believe them true.  And
were they true?  Again no answer, or certainly none that he could
give.  To have had the waters broken up; to be plunged into
emotion; to feel desperately, instead of stagnating--some day he
might be grateful--who knew?  Some day there might be fair country
again beyond this desert, where he could work even better than
before.  But just now, as well expect creative work from a
condemned man.  It seemed to him that he was equally destroyed
whether he gave Nell up, and with her, once for all, that roving,
seeking instinct, which ought, forsooth, to have been satisfied,
and was not; or whether he took Nell, knowing that in doing so he
was torturing a woman dear to him!  That was as far as he could see
to-day.  What he would come to see in time God only knew!  But:
'Freedom of the Spirit!'  That was a phrase of bitter irony indeed!
And, there, with his work all round him, like a man tied hand and
foot, he was swept by such a feeling of exasperated rage as he had
never known.  Women!  These women!  Only let him be free of both,
of all women, and the passions and pities they aroused, so that his
brain and his hands might live and work again!  They should not
strangle, they should not destroy him!

Unfortunately, even in his rage, he knew that flight from them both
could never help him.  One way or the other the thing would have to
be fought through.  If it had been a straight fight even; a clear
issue between passion and pity!  But both he loved, and both he
pitied.  There was nothing straight and clear about it anywhere; it
was all too deeply rooted in full human nature.  And the appalling
sense of rushing ceaselessly from barrier to barrier began really
to affect his brain.

True, he had now and then a lucid interval of a few minutes, when
the ingenious nature of his own torments struck him as supremely
interesting and queer; but this was not precisely a relief, for it
only meant, as in prolonged toothache, that his power of feeling
had for a moment ceased.  A very pretty little hell indeed!

All day he had the premonition, amounting to certainty, that Nell
would take alarm at those three words he had sent her, and come in
spite of them.  And yet, what else could he have written?  Nothing
save what must have alarmed her more, or plunged him deeper.  He
had the feeling that she could follow his moods, that her eyes
could see him everywhere, as a cat's eyes can see in darkness.
That feeling had been with him, more or less, ever since the last
evening of October, the evening she came back from her summer--
grown-up.  How long ago?  Only six days--was it possible?  Ah, yes!
She knew when her spell was weakening, when the current wanted, as
it were, renewing.  And about six o'clock--dusk already--without
the least surprise, with only a sort of empty quivering, he heard
her knock.  And just behind the closed door, as near as he could
get to her, he stood, holding his breath.  He had given his word to
Sylvia--of his own accord had given it.  Through the thin wood of
the old door he could hear the faint shuffle of her feet on the
pavement, moved a few inches this way and that, as though
supplicating the inexorable silence.  He seemed to see her head,
bent a little forward listening.  Three times she knocked, and each
time Lennan writhed.  It was so cruel!  With that seeing-sense of
hers she must know he was there; his very silence would be telling
her--for his silence had its voice, its pitiful breathless sound.
Then, quite distinctly, he heard her sigh, and her footsteps move
away; and covering his face with his hands he rushed to and fro in
the studio, like a madman.

No sound of her any more!  Gone!  It was unbearable; and, seizing
his hat, he ran out.  Which way?  At random he ran towards the
Square.  There she was, over by the railings; languidly,
irresolutely moving towards home.


XIV


But now that she was within reach, he wavered; he had given his
word--was he going to break it?  Then she turned, and saw him; and
he could not go back.  In the biting easterly wind her face looked
small, and pinched, and cold, but her eyes only the larger, the
more full of witchery, as if beseeching him not to be angry, not to
send her away.

"I had to come; I got frightened.  Why did you write such a tiny
little note?"

He tried to make his voice sound quiet and ordinary.

"You must be brave, Nell.  I have had to tell her."

She clutched at his arm; then drew herself up, and said in her
clear, clipped voice:

"Oh!  I suppose she hates me, then!"

"She is terribly unhappy."

They walked a minute, that might have been an hour, without a word;
not round the Square, as he had walked with Oliver, but away from
the house.  At last she said in a half-choked voice: "I only want a
little bit of you."

And he answered dully: "In love, there are no little bits--no
standing still."

Then, suddenly, he felt her hand in his, the fingers lacing,
twining restlessly amongst his own; and again the half-choked voice
said:

"But you WILL let me see you sometimes!  You must!"

Hardest of all to stand against was this pathetic, clinging,
frightened child.  And, not knowing very clearly what he said, he
murmured:

"Yes--yes; it'll be all right.  Be brave--you must be brave, Nell.
It'll all come right."

But she only answered:

"No, no!  I'm not brave.  I shall do something."

Her face looked just as when she had ridden at that gravel pit.
Loving, wild, undisciplined, without resource of any kind--what
might she not do?  Why could he not stir without bringing disaster
upon one or other?  And between these two, suffering so because of
him, he felt as if he had lost his own existence.  In quest of
happiness, he had come to that!

Suddenly she said:

"Oliver asked me again at the dance on Saturday.  He said you had
told him to be patient.  Did you?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

"I was sorry for him."

She let his hand go.

"Perhaps you would like me to marry him."

Very clearly he saw those two going round and round over the
shining floor.

"It would be better, Nell."

She made a little sound--of anger or dismay.

"You don't REALLY want me, then?"

That was his chance.  But with her arm touching his, her face so
pale and desperate, and those maddening eyes turned to him, he
could not tell that lie, and answered:

"Yes--I want you, God knows!"

At that a sigh of content escaped her, as if she were saying to
herself: 'If he wants me he will not let me go.'  Strange little
tribute to her faith in love and her own youth!

They had come somehow to Pall Mall by now.  And scared to find
himself so deep in the hunting-ground of the Dromores, Lennan
turned hastily towards St. James's Park, that they might cross it
in the dark, round to Piccadilly.  To be thus slinking out of the
world's sight with the daughter of his old room-mate--of all men in
the world the last perhaps that he should do this to!  A nice
treacherous business!  But the thing men called honour--what was
it, when her eyes were looking at him and her shoulder touching
his?

Since he had spoken those words, "Yes, I want you," she had been
silent--fearful perhaps to let other words destroy their comfort.
But near the gate by Hyde Park Corner she put her hand again into
his, and again her voice, so clear, said:

"I don't want to hurt anybody, but you WILL let me come sometimes--
you will let me see you--you won't leave me all alone, thinking
that I'll never see you again?"

And once more, without knowing what he answered, Lennan murmured:

"No, no!  It'll be all right, dear--it'll all come right.  It must--
and shall."

Again her fingers twined amongst his, like a child's.  She seemed
to have a wonderful knowledge of the exact thing to say and do to
keep him helpless.  And she went on:

"I didn't try to love you--it isn't wrong to love--it wouldn't hurt
her.  I only want a little of your love."

A little--always a little!  But he was solely bent on comforting
her now.  To think of her going home, and sitting lonely,
frightened, and unhappy, all the evening, was dreadful.  And
holding her fingers tight, he kept on murmuring words of would-be
comfort.

Then he saw that they were out in Piccadilly.  How far dared he go
with her along the railings before he said good-bye?  A man was
coming towards them, just where he had met Dromore that first fatal
afternoon nine months ago; a man with a slight lurch in his walk
and a tall, shining hat a little on one side.  But thank Heaven!--
it was not Dromore--only one somewhat like him, who in passing
stared sphinx-like at Nell.  And Lennan said:

"You must go home now, child; we mustn't be seen together."

For a moment he thought she was going to break down, refuse to
leave him.  Then she threw up her head, and for a second stood like
that, quite motionless, looking in his face.  Suddenly stripping
off her glove, she thrust her warm, clinging hand into his.  Her
lips smiled faintly, tears stood in her eyes; then she drew her
hand away and plunged into the traffic.  He saw her turn the corner
of her street and disappear.  And with the warmth of that
passionate little hand still stinging his palm, he almost ran
towards Hyde Park.

Taking no heed of direction, he launched himself into its dark
space, deserted in this cold, homeless wind, that had little sound
and no scent, travelling its remorseless road under the grey-black
sky.

The dark firmament and keen cold air suited one who had little need
of aids to emotion--one who had, indeed, but the single wish to get
rid, if he only could, of the terrible sensation in his head, that
bruised, battered, imprisoned feeling of a man who paces his cell--
never, never to get out at either end.  Without thought or
intention he drove his legs along; not running, because he knew
that he would have to stop the sooner.  Alas! what more comic
spectacle for the eyes of a good citizen than this married man of
middle age, striding for hours over those dry, dark, empty
pastures--hunted by passion and by pity, so that he knew not even
whether he had dined!  But no good citizen was abroad of an autumn
night in a bitter easterly wind.  The trees were the sole witnesses
of this grim exercise--the trees, resigning to the cold blast their
crinkled leaves that fluttered past him, just a little lighter than
the darkness.  Here and there his feet rustled in the drifts,
waiting their turn to serve the little bonfires, whose scent still
clung in the air.  A desperate walk, in this heart of London--round
and round, up and down, hour after hour, keeping always in the
dark; not a star in the sky, not a human being spoken to or even
clearly seen, not a bird or beast; just the gleam of the lights far
away, and the hoarse muttering of the traffic!  A walk as lonely as
the voyage of the human soul is lonely from birth to death with
nothing to guide it but the flickering glow from its own frail
spirit lighted it knows not where. . . .

And, so tired that he could hardly move his legs, but free at last
of that awful feeling in his head--free for the first time for days
and days--Lennan came out of the Park at the gate where he had gone
in, and walked towards his home, certain that tonight, one way or
the other, it would be decided. . . .


XV


This then--this long trouble of body and of spirit--was what he
remembered, sitting in the armchair beyond his bedroom fire,
watching the glow, and Sylvia sleeping there exhausted, while the
dark plane-tree leaves tap-tapped at the window in the autumn wind;
watching, with the uncanny certainty that, he would not pass the
limits of this night without having made at last a decision that
would not alter.  For even conflict wears itself out; even
indecision has this measure set to its miserable powers of torture,
that any issue in the end is better than the hell of indecision
itself.  Once or twice in those last days even death had seemed to
him quite tolerable; but now that his head was clear and he had
come to grips, death passed out of his mind like the shadow that it
was.  Nothing so simple, extravagant, and vain could serve him.
Other issues had reality; death--none.  To leave Sylvia, and take
this young love away; there was reality in that, but it had always
faded as soon as it shaped itself; and now once more it faded.  To
put such a public and terrible affront on a tender wife whom he
loved, do her to death, as it were, before the world's eyes--and
then, ever remorseful, grow old while the girl was still young?  He
could not.  If Sylvia had not loved him, yes; or, even if he had
not loved her; or if, again, though loving him she had stood upon
her rights--in any of those events he might have done it.  But to
leave her whom he did love, and who had said to him so generously:
"I will not hamper you--go to her"--would be a black atrocity.
Every memory, from their boy-and-girl lovering to the desperate
clinging of her arms these last two nights--memory with its
innumerable tentacles, the invincible strength of its countless
threads, bound him to her too fast.  What then?  Must it come,
after all, to giving up the girl?  And sitting there, by that warm
fire, he shivered.  How desolate, sacrilegious, wasteful to throw
love away; to turn from the most precious of all gifts; to drop and
break that vase!  There was not too much love in the world, nor too
much warmth and beauty--not, anyway, for those whose sands were
running out, whose blood would soon be cold.

Could Sylvia not let him keep both her love and the girl's?  Could
she not bear that?  She had said she could; but her face, her eyes,
her voice gave her the lie, so that every time he heard her his
heart turned sick with pity.  This, then, was the real issue.
Could he accept from her such a sacrifice, exact a daily misery,
see her droop and fade beneath it?  Could he bear his own happiness
at such a cost?  Would it be happiness at all?  He got up from the
chair and crept towards her.  She looked very fragile sleeping
there!  The darkness below her closed eyelids showed cruelly on
that too fair skin; and in her flax-coloured hair he saw what he
had never noticed--a few strands of white.  Her softly opened lips,
almost colourless, quivered with her uneven breathing; and now and
again a little feverish shiver passed up as from her heart.  All
soft and fragile!  Not much life, not much strength; youth and
beauty slipping!  To know that he who should be her champion
against age and time would day by day be placing one more mark upon
her face, one more sorrow in her heart!  That he should do this--
they both going down the years together!

As he stood there holding his breath, bending to look at her, that
slurring swish of the plane-tree branch, flung against and against
the window by the autumn wind, seemed filling the whole world.
Then her lips moved in one of those little, soft hurrying whispers
that unhappy dreamers utter, the words all blurred with their
wistful rushing.

And he thought: I, who believe in bravery and kindness; I, who hate
cruelty--if I do this cruel thing, what shall I have to live for;
how shall I work; how bear myself?  If I do it, I am lost--an
outcast from my own faith--a renegade from all that I believe in.

And, kneeling there close to that face so sad and lonely, that
heart so beaten even in its sleep, he knew that he could not do it--
knew it with sudden certainty, and a curious sense of peace.
Over!--the long struggle--over at last!  Youth with youth, summer
to summer, falling leaf with falling leaf!  And behind him the fire
flickered, and the plane-tree leaves tap-tapped.

He rose, and crept away stealthily downstairs into the drawing-
room, and through the window at the far end out into the courtyard,
where he had sat that day by the hydrangea, listening to the piano-
organ.  Very dark and cold and eerie it was there, and he hurried
across to his studio.  There, too, it was cold, and dark, and
eerie, with its ghostly plaster presences, stale scent of
cigarettes, and just one glowing ember of the fire he had left when
he rushed out after Nell--those seven hours ago.

He went first to the bureau, turned up its lamp, and taking out
some sheets of paper, marked on them directions for his various
works; for the statuette of Nell, he noted that it should be taken
with his compliments to Mr. Dromore.  He wrote a letter to his
banker directing money to be sent to Rome, and to his solicitor
telling him to let the house.  He wrote quickly.  If Sylvia woke,
and found him still away, what might she not think?  He took a last
sheet.  Did it matter what he wrote, what deliberate lie, if it
helped Nell over the first shock?


"DEAR NELL,

"I write this hastily in the early hours, to say that we are called
out to Italy to my only sister, who is very ill.  We leave by the
first morning boat, and may be away some time.  I will write again.
Don't fret, and God bless you.

"M. L."


He could not see very well as he wrote.  Poor, loving, desperate
child!  Well, she had youth and strength, and would soon have--
Oliver!  And he took yet another sheet.


"DEAR OLIVER,

"My wife and I are obliged to go post-haste to Italy.  I watched
you both at the dance the other night.  Be very gentle with Nell;
and--good luck to you!  But don't say again that I told you to be
patient; it is hardly the way to make her love you.

"M. LENNAN."


That, then, was all--yes, all!  He turned out the little lamp, and
groped towards the hearth.  But one thing left.  To say good-bye!
To her, and Youth, and Passion!--to the only salve for the aching
that Spring and Beauty bring--the aching for the wild, the
passionate, the new, that never quite dies in a man's heart.  Ah!
well, sooner or later, all men had to say good-bye to that.  All
men--all men!

He crouched down before the hearth.  There was no warmth in that
fast-blackening ember, but it still glowed like a dark-red flower.
And while it lived he crouched there, as though it were that to
which he was saying good-bye.  And on the door he heard the girl's
ghostly knocking.  And beside him--a ghost among the ghostly
presences--she stood.  Slowly the glow blackened, till the last
spark had faded out.

Then by the glimmer of the night he found his way back, softly as
he had come, to his bedroom.

Sylvia was still sleeping; and, to watch for her to wake, he sat
down again by the fire, in silence only stirred by the frail tap-
tapping of those autumn leaves, and the little catch in her
breathing now and then.  It was less troubled than when he had bent
over her before, as though in her sleep she knew.  He must not miss
the moment of her waking, must be beside her before she came to
full consciousness, to say: "There, there!  It's all over; we are
going away at once--at once."  To be ready to offer that quick
solace, before she had time to plunge back into her sorrow, was an
island in this black sea of night, a single little refuge point for
his bereaved and naked being.  Something to do--something fixed,
real, certain.  And yet another long hour before her waking, he sat
forward in the chair, with that wistful eagerness, his eyes fixed
on her face, staring through it at some vision, some faint,
glimmering light--far out there beyond--as a traveller watches a
star. . . .





End of The Project Gutenberg Etext The Dark Flower, by John Galsworthy






THE FREELANDS

by JOHN GALSWORTHY

[This etext was prepared by Donald Lainson, charlie@idirect.com.]


"Liberty's a glorious feast."--Burns.


PROLOGUE


One early April afternoon, in a Worcestershire field, the only
field in that immediate landscape which was not down in grass, a
man moved slowly athwart the furrows, sowing--a big man of heavy
build, swinging his hairy brown arm with the grace of strength.  He
wore no coat or hat; a waistcoat, open over a blue-checked cotton
shirt, flapped against belted corduroys that were somewhat the
color of his square, pale-brown face and dusty hair.  His eyes were
sad, with the swimming yet fixed stare of epileptics; his mouth
heavy-lipped, so that, but for the yearning eyes, the face would
have been almost brutal.  He looked as if he suffered from silence.
The elm-trees bordering the field, though only just in leaf, showed
dark against a white sky.  A light wind blew, carrying already a
scent from the earth and growth pushing up, for the year was early.
The green Malvern hills rose in the west; and not far away,
shrouded by trees, a long country house of weathered brick faced to
the south.  Save for the man sowing, and some rooks crossing from
elm to elm, no life was visible in all the green land.  And it was
quiet--with a strange, a brooding tranquillity.  The fields and
hills seemed to mock the scars of road and ditch and furrow scraped
on them, to mock at barriers of hedge and wall--between the green
land and white sky was a conspiracy to disregard those small
activities.  So lonely was it, so plunged in a ground-bass of
silence; so much too big and permanent for any figure of man.

Across and across the brown loam the laborer doggedly finished out
his task; scattered the few last seeds into a corner, and stood
still.  Thrushes and blackbirds were just beginning that even-song
whose blitheness, as nothing else on earth, seems to promise youth
forever to the land.  He picked up his coat, slung it on, and,
heaving a straw bag over his shoulder, walked out on to the grass-
bordered road between the elms.

"Tryst!  Bob Tryst!"

At the gate of a creepered cottage amongst fruit-trees, high above
the road, a youth with black hair and pale-brown face stood beside
a girl with frizzy brown hair and cheeks like poppies.

"Have you had that notice?"

The laborer answered slowly:

"Yes, Mr. Derek.  If she don't go, I've got to."

"What a d--d shame!"

The laborer moved his head, as though he would have spoken, but no
words came.

"Don't do anything, Bob.  We'll see about that."

"Evenin', Mr. Derek.  Evenin', Miss Sheila," and the laborer moved
on.

The two at the wicket gate also turned away.  A black-haired woman
dressed in blue came to the wicket gate in their place.  There
seemed no purpose in her standing there; it was perhaps an evening
custom, some ceremony such as Moslems observe at the muezzin-call.
And any one who saw her would have wondered what on earth she might
be seeing, gazing out with her dark glowing eyes above the white,
grass-bordered roads stretching empty this way and that between the
elm-trees and green fields; while the blackbirds and thrushes
shouted out their hearts, calling all to witness how hopeful and
young was life in this English countryside. . . .


CHAPTER I


Mayday afternoon in Oxford Street, and Felix Freeland, a little
late, on his way from Hampstead to his brother John's house in
Porchester Gardens.  Felix Freeland, author, wearing the very first
gray top hat of the season.  A compromise, that--like many other
things in his life and works--between individuality and the
accepted view of things, aestheticism and fashion, the critical
sense and authority.  After the meeting at John's, to discuss the
doings of the family of his brother Morton Freeland--better known
as Tod--he would perhaps look in on the caricatures at the English
Gallery, and visit one duchess in Mayfair, concerning the George
Richard Memorial.  And so, not the soft felt hat which really
suited authorship, nor the black top hat which obliterated
personality to the point of pain, but this gray thing with
narrowish black band, very suitable, in truth, to a face of a pale
buff color, to a moustache of a deep buff color streaked with a few
gray hairs, to a black braided coat cut away from a buff-colored
waistcoat, to his neat boots--not patent leather--faintly buffed
with May-day dust.  Even his eyes, Freeland gray, were a little
buffed over by sedentary habit, and the number of things that he
was conscious of.  For instance, that the people passing him were
distressingly plain, both men and women; plain with the particular
plainness of those quite unaware of it.  It struck him forcibly,
while he went along, how very queer it was that with so many plain
people in the country, the population managed to keep up even as
well as it did.  To his wonderfully keen sense of defect, it seemed
little short of marvellous.  A shambling, shoddy crew, this crowd
of shoppers and labor demonstrators!  A conglomeration of
hopelessly mediocre visages!  What was to be done about it?  Ah!
what indeed!--since they were evidently not aware of their own
dismal mediocrity.  Hardly a beautiful or a vivid face, hardly a
wicked one, never anything transfigured, passionate, terrible, or
grand.  Nothing Greek, early Italian, Elizabethan, not even beefy,
beery, broad old Georgian.  Something clutched-in, and squashed-out
about it all--on that collective face something of the look of a
man almost comfortably and warmly wrapped round by a snake at the
very beginning of its squeeze.  It gave Felix Freeland a sort of
faint excitement and pleasure to notice this.  For it was his
business to notice things, and embalm them afterward in ink.  And
he believed that not many people noticed it, so that it contributed
in his mind to his own distinction, which was precious to him.
Precious, and encouraged to be so by the press, which--as he well
knew--must print his name several thousand times a year.  And yet,
as a man of culture and of principle, how he despised that kind of
fame, and theoretically believed that a man's real distinction lay
in his oblivion of the world's opinion, particularly as expressed
by that flighty creature, the Fourth Estate.  But here again, as in
the matter of the gray top hat, he had instinctively compromised,
taking in press cuttings which described himself and his works,
while he never failed to describe those descriptions--good, bad,
and indifferent--as 'that stuff,' and their writers as 'those
fellows.'

Not that it was new to him to feel that the country was in a bad
way.  On the contrary, it was his established belief, and one for
which he was prepared to furnish due and proper reasons.  In the
first place he traced it to the horrible hold Industrialism had in
the last hundred years laid on the nation, draining the peasantry
from 'the Land'; and in the second place to the influence of a
narrow and insidious Officialism, sapping the independence of the
People.

This was why, in going to a conclave with his brother John, high in
Government employ, and his brother Stanley, a captain of industry,
possessor of the Morton Plough Works, he was conscious of a certain
superiority in that he, at all events, had no hand in this
paralysis which was creeping on the country.

And getting more buff-colored every minute, he threaded his way on,
till, past the Marble Arch, he secured the elbow-room of Hyde Park.
Here groups of young men, with chivalrous idealism, were jeering at
and chivying the broken remnants of a suffrage meeting.  Felix
debated whether he should oppose his body to their bodies, his
tongue to theirs, or whether he should avert his consciousness and
hurry on; but, that instinct which moved him to wear the gray top
hat prevailing, he did neither, and stood instead, looking at them
in silent anger, which quickly provoked endearments--such as: "Take
it off," or "Keep it on," or "What cheer, Toppy!" but nothing more
acute.  And he meditated: Culture!  Could culture ever make
headway among the blind partisanships, the hand-to-mouth mentality,
the cheap excitements of this town life?  The faces of these
youths, the tone of their voices, the very look of their bowler
hats, said: No!  You could not culturalize the impermeable texture
of their vulgarity.  And they were the coming manhood of the
nation--this inexpressibly distasteful lot of youths!  The country
had indeed got too far away from 'the Land.'  And this essential
towny commonness was not confined to the classes from which these
youths were drawn.  He had even remarked it among his own son's
school and college friends--an impatience of discipline, an
insensibility to everything but excitement and having a good time,
a permanent mental indigestion due to a permanent diet of tit-bits.
What aspiration they possessed seemed devoted to securing for
themselves the plums of official or industrial life.  His boy Alan,
even, was infected, in spite of home influences and the atmosphere
of art in which he had been so sedulously soaked.  He wished to
enter his Uncle Stanley's plough works, seeing in it a 'soft
thing.'

But the last of the woman-baiters had passed by now, and, conscious
that he was really behind time, Felix hurried on. . . .


In his study--a pleasant room, if rather tidy--John Freeland was
standing before the fire smoking a pipe and looking thoughtfully at
nothing.  He was, in fact, thinking, with that continuity
characteristic of a man who at fifty has won for himself a place of
permanent importance in the Home Office.  Starting life in the
Royal Engineers, he still preserved something of a military look
about his figure, and grave visage with steady eyes and drooping
moustache (both a shade grayer than those of Felix), and a forehead
bald from justness and knowing where to lay his hand on papers.
His face was thinner, his head narrower, than his brother's, and he
had acquired a way of making those he looked at doubt themselves
and feel the sudden instability of all their facts.  He was--as has
been said--thinking.  His brother Stanley had wired to him that
morning: "Am motoring up to-day on business; can you get Felix to
come at six o'clock and talk over the position at Tod's?"  What
position at Tod's?  He had indeed heard something vague--of those
youngsters of Tod's, and some fuss they were making about the
laborers down there.  He had not liked it.  Too much of a piece
with the general unrest, and these new democratic ideas that were
playing old Harry with the country!  For in his opinion the country
was in a bad way, partly owing to Industrialism, with its rotting
effect upon physique; partly to this modern analytic
Intellectualism, with its destructive and anarchic influence on
morals.  It was difficult to overestimate the mischief of those two
factors; and in the approaching conference with his brothers, one
of whom was the head of an industrial undertaking, and the other a
writer, whose books, extremely modern, he never read, he was
perhaps vaguely conscious of his own cleaner hands.  Hearing a car
come to a halt outside, he went to the window and looked out.  Yes,
it was Stanley! . . .


Stanley Freeland, who had motored up from Becket--his country
place, close to his plough works in Worcestershire--stood a moment
on the pavement, stretching his long legs and giving directions to
his chauffeur.  He had been stopped twice on the road for not-
exceeding the limit as he believed, and was still a little ruffled.
Was it not his invariable principle to be moderate in speed as in
all other things?  And his feeling at the moment was stronger even
than usual, that the country was in a bad way, eaten up by
officialism, with its absurd limitations of speed and the liberty
of the subject, and the advanced ideas of these new writers and
intellectuals, always talking about the rights and sufferings of
the poor.  There was no progress along either of those roads.  He
had it in his heart, as he stood there on the pavement, to say
something pretty definite to John about interference with the
liberty of the subject, and he wouldn't mind giving old Felix a rap
about his precious destructive doctrines, and continual girding at
the upper classes, vested interests, and all the rest of it.  If he
had something to put in their place that would be another matter.
Capital and those who controlled it were the backbone of the
country--what there was left of the country, apart from these d--d
officials and aesthetic fellows!  And with a contraction of his
straight eyebrows above his straight gray eyes, straight blunt
nose, blunter moustaches, and blunt chin, he kept a tight rein on
his blunt tongue, not choosing to give way even to his own anger.

Then, perceiving Felix coming--'in a white topper, by Jove!'--he
crossed the pavement to the door; and, tall, square, personable,
rang the bell.


CHAPTER II


"Well, what's the matter at Tod's?"

And Felix moved a little forward in his chair, his eyes fixed with
interest on Stanley, who was about to speak.

"It's that wife of his, of course.  It was all very well so long as
she confined herself to writing, and talk, and that Land Society,
or whatever it was she founded, the one that snuffed out the other
day; but now she's getting herself and those two youngsters mixed up
in our local broils, and really I think Tod's got to be spoken to."

"It's impossible for a husband to interfere with his wife's
principles."  So Felix.

"Principles!"  The word came from John.

"Certainly!  Kirsteen's a woman of great character; revolutionary
by temperament.  Why should you expect her to act as you would act
yourselves?"

When Felix had said that, there was a silence.

Then Stanley muttered: "Poor old Tod!"

Felix sighed, lost for a moment in his last vision of his youngest
brother.  It was four years ago now, a summer evening--Tod standing
between his youngsters Derek and Sheila, in a doorway of his white,
black-timbered, creepered cottage, his sunburnt face and blue eyes
the serenest things one could see in a day's march!

"Why 'poor'?" he said.  "Tod's much happier than we are.  You've
only to look at him."

"Ah!" said Stanley suddenly.  "D'you remember him at Father's
funeral?--without his hat, and his head in the clouds.  Fine-
lookin' chap, old Tod--pity he's such a child of Nature."

Felix said quietly:

"If you'd offered him a partnership, Stanley--it would have been
the making of him."

"Tod in the plough works?  My hat!"

Felix smiled.  At sight of that smile, Stanley grew red, and John
refilled his pipe.  It is always the devil to have a brother more
sarcastic than oneself!

"How old are those two?" John said abruptly.

"Sheila's twenty, Derek nineteen."

"I thought the boy was at an agricultural college?"

"Finished."

"What's he like?"

"A black-haired, fiery fellow, not a bit like Tod."

John muttered: "That's her Celtic blood.  Her father, old Colonel
Moray, was just that sort; by George, he was a regular black
Highlander.  What's the trouble exactly?"

It was Stanley who answered: "That sort of agitation business is
all very well until it begins to affect your neighbors; then it's
time it stopped.  You know the Mallorings who own all the land
round Tod's.  Well, they've fallen foul of the Mallorings over what
they call injustice to some laborers.  Questions of morality
involved.  I don't know all the details.  A man's got notice to
quit over his deceased wife's sister; and some girl or other in
another cottage has kicked over--just ordinary country incidents.
What I want is that Tod should be made to see that his family
mustn't quarrel with his nearest neighbors in this way.  We know
the Mallorings well, they're only seven miles from us at Becket.
It doesn't do; sooner or later it plays the devil all round.  And
the air's full of agitation about the laborers and 'the Land,' and
all the rest of it--only wants a spark to make real trouble."

And having finished this oration, Stanley thrust his hands deep
into his pockets, and jingled the money that was there.

John said abruptly:

"Felix, you'd better go down."

Felix was sitting back, his eyes for once withdrawn from his
brothers' faces.

"Odd," he said, "really odd, that with a perfectly unique person
like Tod for a brother, we only see him once in a blue moon."

"It's because he IS so d--d unique."

Felix got up and gravely extended his hand to Stanley.

"By Jove," he said, "you've spoken truth."  And to John he added:
"Well, I WILL go, and let you know the upshot."

When he had departed, the two elder brothers remained for some
moments silent, then Stanley said:

"Old Felix is a bit tryin'!  With the fuss they make of him in the
papers, his head's swelled!"

John did not answer.  One could not in so many words resent one's
own brother being made a fuss of, and if it had been for something
real, such as discovering the source of the Black River, conquering
Bechuanaland, curing Blue-mange, or being made a Bishop, he would
have been the first and most loyal in his appreciation; but for the
sort of thing Felix made up--Fiction, and critical, acid,
destructive sort of stuff, pretending to show John Freeland things
that he hadn't seen before--as if Felix could!--not at all the
jolly old romance which one could read well enough and enjoy till
it sent you to sleep after a good day's work.  No! that Felix
should be made a fuss of for such work as that really almost hurt
him.  It was not quite decent, violating deep down one's sense of
form, one's sense of health, one's traditions.  Though he would not
have admitted it, he secretly felt, too, that this fuss was
dangerous to his own point of view, which was, of course, to him
the only real one.  And he merely said:

"Will you stay to dinner, Stan?"


CHAPTER III


If John had those sensations about Felix, so--when he was away from
John--had Felix about himself.  He had never quite grown out of the
feeling that to make himself conspicuous in any way was bad form.
In common with his three brothers he had been through the mills of
gentility--those unique grinding machines of education only found
in his native land.  Tod, to be sure, had been publicly sacked at
the end of his third term, for climbing on to the headmaster's roof
and filling up two of his chimneys with football pants, from which
he had omitted to remove his name.  Felix still remembered the
august scene--the horrid thrill of it, the ominous sound of that:
"Freeland minimus!" the ominous sight of poor little Tod emerging
from his obscurity near the roof of the Speech Room, and descending
all those steps.  How very small and rosy he had looked, his bright
hair standing on end, and his little blue eyes staring up very hard
from under a troubled frown.  And the august hand holding up those
sooty pants, and the august voice: "These appear to be yours,
Freeland minimus.  Were you so good as to put them down my
chinmeys?"  And the little piping, "Yes, sir."

"May I ask why, Freeland minimus?"

"I don't know, sir."

"You must have had some reason, Freeland minimus?"

"It was the end of term, sir."

"Ah!  You must not come back here, Freeland minimus.  You are too
dangerous, to yourself, and others.  Go to your place."

And poor little Tod ascending again all those steps, cheeks more
terribly rosy than ever, eyes bluer, from under a still more
troubled frown; little mouth hard set; and breathing so that you
could hear him six forms off.  True, the new Head had been goaded
by other outrages, the authors of which had not omitted to remove
their names; but the want of humor, the amazing want of humor!  As
if it had not been a sign of first-rate stuff in Tod!  And to this
day Felix remembered with delight the little bubbling hiss that he
himself had started, squelched at once, but rippling out again
along the rows like tiny scattered lines of fire when a
conflagration is suppressed.  Expulsion had been the salvation of
Tod!  Or--his damnation?  Which?  God would know, but Felix was not
certain.  Having himself been fifteen years acquiring 'Mill'
philosophy, and another fifteen years getting rid of it, he had now
begun to think that after all there might be something in it.  A
philosophy that took everything, including itself, at face value,
and questioned nothing, was sedative to nerves too highly strung by
the continual examination of the insides of oneself and others,
with a view to their alteration.  Tod, of course, having been sent
to Germany after his expulsion, as one naturally would be, and then
put to farming, had never properly acquired 'Mill' manner, and
never sloughed it off; and yet he was as sedative a man as you
could meet.

Emerging from the Tube station at Hampstead, he moved toward home
under a sky stranger than one might see in a whole year of
evenings.  Between the pine-trees on the ridge it was opaque and
colored like pinkish stone, and all around violent purple with
flames of the young green, and white spring blossom lit against it.
Spring had been dull and unimaginative so far, but this evening it
was all fire and gathered torrents; Felix wondered at the waiting
passion of that sky.

He reached home just as those torrents began to fall.

The old house, beyond the Spaniard's Road, save for mice and a
faint underlying savor of wood-rot in two rooms, well satisfied the
aesthetic sense.  Felix often stood in his hall, study, bedroom,
and other apartments, admiring the rich and simple glow of them--
admiring the rarity and look of studied negligence about the
stuffs, the flowers, the books, the furniture, the china; and then
quite suddenly the feeling would sweep over him: "By George, do I
really own all this, when my ideal is 'bread and water, and on
feast days a little bit of cheese'?"  True, he was not to blame for
the niceness of his things--Flora did it; but still--there they
were, a little hard to swallow for an epicurean.  It might, of
course, have been worse, for if Flora had a passion for collecting,
it was a very chaste one, and though what she collected cost no
little money, it always looked as if it had been inherited, and--as
everybody knows--what has been inherited must be put up with,
whether it be a coronet or a cruet-stand.

To collect old things, and write poetry!  It was a career; one
would not have one's wife otherwise.  She might, for instance, have
been like Stanley's wife, Clara, whose career was wealth and
station; or John's wife, Anne, whose career had been cut short; or
even Tod's wife, Kirsteen, whose career was revolution.  No--a wife
who had two, and only two children, and treated them with
affectionate surprise, who was never out of temper, never in a
hurry, knew the points of a book or play, could cut your hair at a
pinch; whose hand was dry, figure still good, verse tolerable, and--
above all--who wished for no better fate than Fate had given her--
was a wife not to be sneezed at.  And Felix never had.  He had
depicted so many sneezing wives and husbands in his books, and knew
the value of a happy marriage better perhaps than any one in
England.  He had laid marriage low a dozen times, wrecked it on all
sorts of rocks, and had the greater veneration for his own, which
had begun early, manifested every symptom of ending late, and in
the meantime walked down the years holding hands fast, and by no
means forgetting to touch lips.

Hanging up the gray top hat, he went in search of her.  He found
her in his dressing-room, surrounded by a number of little bottles,
which she was examining vaguely, and putting one by one into an
'inherited' waste-paper basket.  Having watched her for a little
while with a certain pleasure, he said:

"Yes, my dear?"

Noticing his presence, and continuing to put bottles into the
basket, she answered:

"I thought I must--they're what dear Mother's given us."

There they lay--little bottles filled with white and brown fluids,
white and blue and brown powders; green and brown and yellow
ointments; black lozenges; buff plasters; blue and pink and purple
pills.  All beautifully labelled and corked.

And he said in a rather faltering voice:

"Bless her!  How she does give her things away!  Haven't we used
ANY?"

"Not one.  And they have to be cleared away before they're stale,
for fear we might take one by mistake."

"Poor Mother!"

"My dear, she's found something newer than them all by now."

Felix sighed.

"The nomadic spirit.  I have it, too!"

And a sudden vision came to him of his mother's carved ivory face,
kept free of wrinkles by sheer will-power, its firm chin, slightly
aquiline nose, and measured brows; its eyes that saw everything so
quickly, so fastidiously, its compressed mouth that smiled sweetly,
with a resolute but pathetic acceptation.  Of the piece of fine
lace, sometimes black, sometimes white, over her gray hair.  Of her
hands, so thin now, always moving a little, as if all the composure
and care not to offend any eye by allowing Time to ravage her face,
were avenging themselves in that constant movement.  Of her figure,
that was short but did not seem so, still quick-moving, still
alert, and always dressed in black or gray.  A vision of that
exact, fastidious, wandering spirit called Frances Fleeming
Freeland--that spirit strangely compounded of domination and
humility, of acceptation and cynicism; precise and actual to the
point of desert dryness; generous to a point that caused her family
to despair; and always, beyond all things, brave.

Flora dropped the last little bottle, and sitting on the edge of
the bath let her eyebrows rise.  How pleasant was that impersonal
humor which made her superior to other wives!

"You--nomadic?  How?"

"Mother travels unceasingly from place to place, person to person,
thing to thing.  I travel unceasingly from motive to motive, mind
to mind; my native air is also desert air--hence the sterility of
my work."

Flora rose, but her eyebrows descended.

"Your work," she said, "is not sterile."

"That, my dear," said Felix, "is prejudice."  And perceiving that
she was going to kiss him, he waited without annoyance.  For a
woman of forty-two, with two children and three books of poems--and
not knowing which had taken least out of her--with hazel-gray eyes,
wavy eyebrows darker than they should have been, a glint of red in
her hair; wavy figure and lips; quaint, half-humorous indolence,
quaint, half-humorous warmth--was she not as satisfactory a woman
as a man could possibly have married!

"I have got to go down and see Tod," he said.  "I like that wife of
his; but she has no sense of humor.  How much better principles are
in theory than in practice!"

Flora repeated softly, as if to herself:

"I'm glad I have none."  She was at the window leaning out, and
Felix took his place beside her.  The air was full of scent from
wet leaves, alive with the song of birds thanking the sky.
Suddenly he felt her arm round his ribs; either it or they--which,
he could not at the moment tell--seemed extraordinarily soft. . . .


Between Felix and his young daughter, Nedda, there existed the only
kind of love, except a mother's, which has much permanence--love
based on mutual admiration.  Though why Nedda, with her starry
innocence, should admire him, Felix could never understand, not
realizing that she read his books, and even analyzed them for
herself in the diary which she kept religiously, writing it when
she ought to have been asleep.  He had therefore no knowledge of
the way his written thoughts stimulated the ceaseless questioning
that was always going on within her; the thirst to know why this
was and that was not.  Why, for instance, her heart ached so some
days and felt light and eager other days?  Why, when people wrote
and talked of God, they seemed to know what He was, and she never
did?  Why people had to suffer; and the world be black to so many
millions?  Why one could not love more than one man at a time?
Why--a thousand things?  Felix's books supplied no answers to these
questions, but they were comforting; for her real need as yet was
not for answers, but ever for more questions, as a young bird's
need is for opening its beak without quite knowing what is coming
out or going in.  When she and her father walked, or sat, or went
to concerts together, their talk was neither particularly intimate
nor particularly voluble; they made to each other no great
confidences.  Yet each was certain that the other was not bored--a
great thing; and they squeezed each other's little fingers a good
deal--very warming.  Now with his son Alan, Felix had a continual
sensation of having to keep up to a mark and never succeeding--a
feeling, as in his favorite nightmare, of trying to pass an
examination for which he had neglected to prepare; of having to
preserve, in fact, form proper to the father of Alan Freeland.
With Nedda he had a sense of refreshment; the delight one has on a
spring day, watching a clear stream, a bank of flowers, birds
flying.  And Nedda with her father--what feeling had she?  To be
with him was like a long stroking with a touch of tickle in it; to
read his books, a long tickle with a nice touch of stroking now and
then when one was not expecting it.

That night after dinner, when Alan had gone out and Flora into a
dream, she snuggled up alongside her father, got hold of his little
finger, and whispered:

"Come into the garden, Dad; I'll put on goloshes.  It's an awfully
nice moon."

The moon indeed was palest gold behind the pines, so that its
radiance was a mere shower of pollen, just a brushing of white
moth-down over the reeds of their little dark pond, and the black
blur of the flowering currant bushes.  And the young lime-trees,
not yet in full leaf, quivered ecstatically in that moon-witchery,
still letting fall raindrops of the past spring torrent, with soft
hissing sounds.  A real sense in the garden, of God holding his
breath in the presence of his own youth swelling, growing,
trembling toward perfection!  Somewhere a bird--a thrush, they
thought--mixed in its little mind as to night and day, was queerly
chirruping.  And Felix and his daughter went along the dark wet
paths, holding each other's arms, not talking much.  For, in him,
very responsive to the moods of Nature, there was a flattered
feeling, with that young arm in his, of Spring having chosen to
confide in him this whispering, rustling hour.  And in Nedda was so
much of that night's unutterable youth--no wonder she was silent!
Then, somehow--neither responsible--they stood motionless.  How
quiet it was, but for a distant dog or two, and the stilly
shivering-down of the water drops, and the far vibration of the
million-voiced city!  How quiet and soft and fresh!  Then Nedda
spoke:

"Dad, I do so want to know everything."

Not rousing even a smile, with its sublime immodesty, that
aspiration seemed to Felix infinitely touching.  What less could
youth want in the very heart of Spring?  And, watching her face put
up to the night, her parted lips, and the moon-gleam fingering her
white throat, he answered:

"It'll all come soon enough, my pretty!"

To think that she must come to an end like the rest, having found
out almost nothing, having discovered just herself, and the
particle of God that was within her!  But he could not, of course,
say this.

"I want to FEEL.  Can't I begin?"

How many millions of young creatures all the world over were
sending up that white prayer to climb and twine toward the stars,
and--fall to earth again!  And nothing to be answered, but:

"Time enough, Nedda!"

"But, Dad, there are such heaps of things, such heaps of people,
and reasons, and--and life; and I know nothing.  Dreams are the
only times, it seems to me, that one finds out anything."

"As for that, my child, I am exactly in your case.  What's to be
done for us?"

She slid her hand through his arm again.

"Don't laugh at me!"

"Heaven forbid!  I meant it.  You're finding out much quicker than
I.  It's all folk-music to you still; to me Strauss and the rest of
the tired stuff.  The variations my mind spins--wouldn't I just
swap them for the tunes your mind is making?"

"I don't seem making tunes at all.  I don't seem to have anything
to make them of.  Take me down to see 'the Tods,' Dad!"

Why not?  And yet--!  Just as in this spring night Felix felt so
much, so very much, lying out there behind the still and moony
dark, such marvellous holding of breath and waiting sentiency, so
behind this innocent petition, he could not help the feeling of a
lurking fatefulness.  That was absurd.  And he said: "If you wish
it, by all means.  You'll like your Uncle Tod; as to the others, I
can't say, but your aunt is an experience, and experiences are what
you want, it seems."

Fervently, without speech, Nedda squeezed his arm.


CHAPTER IV


Stanley Freeland's country house, Becket, was almost a show place.
It stood in its park and pastures two miles from the little town of
Transham and the Morton Plough Works; close to the ancestral home
of the Moretons, his mother's family--that home burned down by
Roundheads in the Civil War.  The site--certain vagaries in the
ground--Mrs. Stanley had caused to be walled round, and consecrated
so to speak with a stone medallion on which were engraved the aged
Moreton arms--arrows and crescent moons in proper juxtaposition.
Peacocks, too--that bird 'parlant,' from the old Moreton crest--
were encouraged to dwell there and utter their cries, as of
passionate souls lost in too comfortable surroundings.

By one of those freaks of which Nature is so prodigal, Stanley--
owner of this native Moreton soil--least of all four Freeland
brothers, had the Moreton cast of mind and body.  That was why he
made so much more money than the other three put together, and had
been able, with the aid of Clara's undoubted genius for rank and
station, to restore a strain of Moreton blood to its rightful
position among the county families of Worcestershire.  Bluff and
without sentiment, he himself set little store by that, smiling up
his sleeve--for he was both kindly and prudent--at his wife who had
been a Tomson.  It was not in Stanley to appreciate the peculiar
flavor of the Moretons, that something which in spite of their
naivete and narrowness, had really been rather fine.  To him, such
Moretons as were left were 'dry enough sticks, clean out of it.'
They were of a breed that was already gone, the simplest of all
country gentlemen, dating back to the Conquest, without one
solitary conspicuous ancestor, save the one who had been physician
to a king and perished without issue--marrying from generation to
generation exactly their own equals; living simple, pious,
parochial lives; never in trade, never making money, having a
tradition and a practice of gentility more punctilious than the so-
called aristocracy; constitutionally paternal and maternal to their
dependents, constitutionally so convinced that those dependents and
all indeed who were not 'gentry,' were of different clay, that they
were entirely simple and entirely without arrogance, carrying with
them even now a sort of Early atmosphere of archery and home-made
cordials, lavender and love of clergy, together with frequent use
of the word 'nice,' a peculiar regularity of feature, and a
complexion that was rather parchmenty.  High Church people and
Tories, naturally, to a man and woman, by sheer inbred absence of
ideas, and sheer inbred conviction that nothing else was nice; but
withal very considerate of others, really plucky in bearing their
own ills; not greedy, and not wasteful.

Of Becket, as it now was, they would not have approved at all.  By
what chance Edmund Moreton (Stanley's mother's grandfather), in the
middle of the eighteenth century, had suddenly diverged from family
feeling and ideals, and taken that 'not quite nice' resolution to
make ploughs and money, would never now be known.  The fact
remained, together with the plough works.  A man apparently of
curious energy and character, considering his origin, he had
dropped the E from his name, and--though he continued the family
tradition so far as to marry a Fleeming of Worcestershire, to be
paternal to his workmen, to be known as Squire, and to bring his
children up in the older Moreton 'niceness'--he had yet managed to
make his ploughs quite celebrated, to found a little town, and die
still handsome and clean-shaved at the age of sixty-six.  Of his
four sons, only two could be found sufficiently without the E to go
on making ploughs.  Stanley's grandfather, Stuart Morton, indeed,
had tried hard, but in the end had reverted to the congenital
instinct for being just a Moreton.  An extremely amiable man, he
took to wandering with his family, and died in France, leaving one
daughter--Frances, Stanley's mother--and three sons, one of whom,
absorbed in horses, wandered to Australia and was killed by falling
from them; one of whom, a soldier, wandered to India, and the
embraces of a snake; and one of whom wandered into the embraces of
the Holy Roman Church.

The Morton Plough Works were dry and dwindling when Stanley's
father, seeking an opening for his son, put him and money into
them.  From that moment they had never looked back, and now brought
Stanley, the sole proprietor, an income of full fifteen thousand
pounds a year.  He wanted it.  For Clara, his wife, had that energy
of aspiration which before now has raised women to positions of
importance in the counties which are not their own, and caused,
incidentally, many acres to go out of cultivation.  Not one plough
was used on the whole of Becket, not even a Morton plough--these
indeed were unsuitable to English soil and were all sent abroad.
It was the corner-stone of his success that Stanley had completely
seen through the talked-of revival of English agriculture, and
sedulously cultivated the foreign market.  This was why the Becket
dining-room could contain without straining itself large quantities
of local magnates and celebrities from London, all deploring the
condition of 'the Land,' and discussing without end the regrettable
position of the agricultural laborer.  Except for literary men and
painters, present in small quantities to leaven the lump, Becket
was, in fact, a rallying point for the advanced spirits of Land
Reform--one of those places where they were sure of being well done
at week-ends, and of congenial and even stimulating talk about the
undoubted need for doing something, and the designs which were
being entertained upon 'the Land' by either party.  This very heart
of English country that the old Moretons in their paternal way had
so religiously farmed, making out of its lush grass and waving corn
a simple and by no means selfish or ungenerous subsistence, was now
entirely lawns, park, coverts, and private golf course, together
with enough grass to support the kine which yielded that continual
stream of milk necessary to Clara's entertainments and children,
all female, save little Francis, and still of tender years.  Of
gardeners, keepers, cow-men, chauffeurs, footmen, stablemen--full
twenty were supported on those fifteen hundred acres that formed
the little Becket demesne.  Of agricultural laborers proper--that
vexed individual so much in the air, so reluctant to stay on 'the
Land,' and so difficult to house when he was there, there were
fortunately none, so that it was possible for Stanley, whose wife
meant him to 'put up' for the Division, and his guests, who were
frequently in Parliament, to hold entirely unbiassed and impersonal
views upon the whole question so long as they were at Becket.

It was beautiful there, too, with the bright open fields hedged
with great elms, and that ever-rich serenity of its grass and
trees.  The white house, timbered with dark beams in true
Worcestershire fashion, and added-to from time to time, had
preserved, thanks to a fine architect, an old-fashioned air of
spacious presidency above its gardens and lawns.  On the long
artificial lake, with innumerable rushy nooks and water-lilies and
coverture of leaves floating flat and bright in the sun, the half-
tame wild duck and shy water-hens had remote little worlds, and
flew and splashed when all Becket was abed, quite as if the human
spirit, with its monkey-tricks and its little divine flame, had not
yet been born.

Under the shade of a copper-beech, just where the drive cut through
into its circle before the house, an old lady was sitting that
afternoon on a campstool.  She was dressed in gray alpaca, light
and cool, and had on her iron-gray hair a piece of black lace.  A
number of Hearth and Home and a little pair of scissors, suspended
by an inexpensive chain from her waist, rested on her knee, for she
had been meaning to cut out for dear Felix a certain recipe for
keeping the head cool; but, as a fact, she sat without doing so,
very still, save that, now and then, she compressed her pale fine
lips, and continually moved her pale fine hands.  She was evidently
waiting for something that promised excitement, even pleasure, for
a little rose-leaf flush had quavered up into a face that was
colored like parchment; and her gray eyes under regular and still-
dark brows, very far apart, between which there was no semblance of
a wrinkle, seemed noting little definite things about her, almost
unwillingly, as an Arab's or a Red Indian's eyes will continue to
note things in the present, however their minds may be set on the
future.  So sat Frances Fleeming Freeland (nee Morton) waiting for
the arrival of her son Felix and her grandchildren Alan and Nedda.

She marked presently an old man limping slowly on a stick toward
where the drive debouched, and thought at once: "He oughtn't to be
coming this way.  I expect he doesn't know the way round to the
back.  Poor man, he's very lame.  He looks respectable, too."  She
got up and went toward him, remarking that his face with nice gray
moustaches was wonderfully regular, almost like a gentleman's, and
that he touched his dusty hat with quite old-fashioned courtesy.
And smiling--her smile was sweet but critical--she said: "You'll
find the best way is to go back to that little path, and past the
greenhouses.  Have you hurt your leg?"

"My leg's been like that, m'm, fifteen year come Michaelmas."

"How did it happen?"

"Ploughin'.  The bone was injured; an' now they say the muscle's
dried up in a manner of speakin'."

"What do you do for it?  The very best thing is this."

From the recesses of a deep pocket, placed where no one else wore
such a thing, she brought out a little pot.

"You must let me give it you.  Put it on when you go to bed, and
rub it well in; you'll find it act splendidly."

The old man took the little pot with dubious reverence.

"Yes, m'm," he said; "thank you, m'm."

"What is your name?"

"Gaunt."

"And where do you live?"

"Over to Joyfields, m'm."

"Joyfields--another of my sons lives there--Mr. Morton Freeland.
But it's seven miles."

"I got a lift half-way."

"And have you business at the house?"  The old man was silent; the
downcast, rather cynical look of his lined face deepened.  And
Frances Freeland thought: 'He's overtired.  They must give him some
tea and an egg.  What can he want, coming all this way?  He's
evidently not a beggar.'

The old man who was not a beggar spoke suddenly:

"I know the Mr. Freeland at Joyfields.  He's a good gentleman,
too."

"Yes, he is.  I wonder I don't know you."

"I'm not much about, owin' to my leg.  It's my grand-daughter in
service here, I come to see."

"Oh, yes!  What is her name?"

"Gaunt her name is."

"I shouldn't know her by her surname."

"Alice."

"Ah! in the kitchen; a nice, pretty girl.  I hope you're not in
trouble."

Again the old man was silent, and again spoke suddenly:

"That's as you look at it, m'm," he said.  "I've got a matter of a
few words to have with her about the family.  Her father he
couldn't come, so I come instead."

"And how are you going to get back?"

"I'll have to walk, I expect, without I can pick up with a cart."

Frances Freeland compressed her lips.  "With that leg you should
have come by train."

The old man smiled.

"I hadn't the fare like," he said.  "I only gets five shillin's a
week, from the council, and two o' that I pays over to my son."

Frances Freeland thrust her hand once more into that deep pocket,
and as she did so she noticed that the old man's left boot was
flapping open, and that there were two buttons off his coat.  Her
mind was swiftly calculating: "It is more than seven weeks to
quarter day.  Of course I can't afford it, but I must just give him
a sovereign."

She withdrew her hand from the recesses of her pocket and looked at
the old man's nose.  It was finely chiselled, and the same yellow
as his face.  "It looks nice, and quite sober," she thought.  In
her hand was her purse and a boot-lace.  She took out a sovereign.

"Now, if I give you this," she said, "you must promise me not to
spend any of it in the public-house.  And this is for your boot.
And you must go back by train.  And get those buttons sewn on your
coat.  And tell cook, from me, please, to give you some tea and an
egg."  And noticing that he took the sovereign and the boot-lace
very respectfully, and seemed altogether very respectable, and not
at all coarse or beery-looking, she said:

"Good-by; don't forget to rub what I gave you into your leg every
night and every morning," and went back to her camp-stool.  Sitting
down on it with the scissors in her hand, she still did not cut out
that recipe, but remained as before, taking in small, definite
things, and feeling with an inner trembling that dear Felix and
Alan and Nedda would soon be here; and the little flush rose again
in her cheeks, and again her lips and hands moved, expressing and
compressing what was in her heart.  And close behind her, a
peacock, straying from the foundations of the old Moreton house,
uttered a cry, and moved slowly, spreading its tail under the low-
hanging boughs of the copper-beeches, as though it knew those dark
burnished leaves were the proper setting for its 'parlant'
magnificence.


CHAPTER V


The day after the little conference at John's, Felix had indeed
received the following note:


"DEAR FELIX:

"When you go down to see old Tod, why not put up with us at Becket?
Any time will suit, and the car can take you over to Joyfields when
you like.  Give the pen a rest.  Clara joins in hoping you'll come,
and Mother is still here.  No use, I suppose, to ask Flora.

"Yours ever,

"STANLEY."


During the twenty years of his brother's sojourn there Felix had
been down to Becket perhaps once a year, and latterly alone; for
Flora, having accompanied him the first few times, had taken a firm
stand.

"My dear," she said, "I feel all body there."

Felix had rejoined:

"No bad thing, once in a way."

But Flora had remained firm.  Life was too short!  She did not get
on well with Clara.  Neither did Felix feel too happy in his
sister-in-law's presence; but the gray top-hat instinct had kept
him going there, for one ought to keep in touch with one's
brothers.

He replied to Stanley:


"DEAR STANLEY:

"Delighted; if I may bring my two youngsters.  We'll arrive to-
morrow at four-fifty.

"Yours affectionately,

"FELIX."


Travelling with Nedda was always jolly; one could watch her eyes
noting, inquiring, and when occasion served, have one's little
finger hooked in and squeezed.  Travelling with Alan was
convenient, the young man having a way with railways which Felix
himself had long despaired of acquiring.  Neither of the children
had ever been at Becket, and though Alan was seldom curious, and
Nedda too curious about everything to be specially so about this,
yet Felix experienced in their company the sensations of a new
adventure.

Arrived at Transham, that little town upon a hill which the Morton
Plough Works had created, they were soon in Stanley's car, whirling
into the sleepy peace of a Worcestershire afternoon.  Would this
young bird nestling up against him echo Flora's verdict: 'I feel
all body there!' or would she take to its fatted luxury as a duck
to water?  And he said: "By the way, your aunt's 'Bigwigs' set in
on a Saturday.  Are you for staying and seeing the lions feed, or
do we cut back?"

From Alan he got the answer he expected:

"If there's golf or something, I suppose we can make out all
right."  From Nedda: "What sort of Bigwigs are they, Dad?"

"A sort you've never seen, my dear."

"Then I should like to stay.  Only, about dresses?"

"What war paint have you?"

"Only two white evenings.  And Mums gave me her Mechlin."

"'Twill serve."

To Felix, Nedda in white 'evenings' was starry and all that man
could desire.

"Only, Dad, do tell me about them, beforehand."

"My dear, I will.  And God be with you.  This is where Becket
begins."

The car had swerved into a long drive between trees not yet full-
grown, but decorously trying to look more than their twenty years.
To the right, about a group of older elms, rooks were in commotion,
for Stanley's three keepers' wives had just baked their annual rook
pies, and the birds were not yet happy again.  Those elms had stood
there when the old Moretons walked past them through corn-fields to
church of a Sunday.  Away on the left above the lake, the little
walled mound had come in view.  Something in Felix always stirred
at sight of it, and, squeezing Nedda's arm, he said:

"See that silly wall?  Behind there Granny's ancients lived.  Gone
now--new house--new lake--new trees--new everything."

But he saw from his little daughter's calm eyes that the sentiment
in him was not in her.

"I like the lake," she said.  "There's Granny--oh, and a peacock!"

His mother's embrace, with its frail energy, and the pressure of
her soft, dry lips, filled Felix always with remorse.  Why could he
not give the simple and direct expression to his feeling that she
gave to hers?  He watched those lips transferred to Nedda, heard
her say: "Oh, my darling, how lovely to see you!  Do you know this
for midge-bites?"  A hand, diving deep into a pocket, returned with
a little silver-coated stick having a bluish end.  Felix saw it
rise and hover about Nedda's forehead, and descend with two little
swift dabs.  "It takes them away at once."

"Oh, but Granny, they're not midge-bites; they're only from my
hat!"

"It doesn't matter, darling; it takes away anything like that."

And he thought: 'Mother is really wonderful!'

At the house the car had already disgorged their luggage.  Only one
man, but he absolutely the butler, awaited them, and they entered,
at once conscious of Clara's special pot-pourri.  Its fragrance
steamed from blue china, in every nook and crevice, a sort of
baptism into luxury.  Clara herself, in the outer morning-room,
smelled a little of it.  Quick and dark of eye, capable, comely,
perfectly buttoned, one of those women who know exactly how not to
be superior to the general taste of the period.  In addition to
that great quality she was endowed with a fine nose, an instinct
for co-ordination not to be excelled, and a genuine love of making
people comfortable; so that it was no wonder that she had risen in
the ranks of hostesses, till her house was celebrated for its ease,
even among those who at their week-ends liked to feel 'all body.'
In regard to that characteristic of Becket, not even Felix in his
ironies had ever stood up to Clara; the matter was too delicate.
Frances Freeland, indeed--not because she had any philosophic
preconceptions on the matter, but because it was 'not nice, dear,
to be wasteful' even if it were only of rose-leaves, or to 'have
too much decoration,' such as Japanese prints in places where they
hum--sometimes told her daughter-in-law frankly what was wrong,
without, however, making the faintest impression upon Clara, for
she was not sensitive, and, as she said to Stanley, it was 'only
Mother.'

When they had drunk that special Chinese tea, all the rage, but
which no one really liked, in the inner morning, or afternoon room--
for the drawing-rooms were too large to be comfortable except at
week-ends--they went to see the children, a special blend of
Stanley and Clara, save the little Francis, who did not seem to be
entirely body.  Then Clara took them to their rooms.  She lingered
kindly in Nedda's, feeling that the girl could not yet feel quite
at home, and looking in the soap-dish lest she might not have the
right verbena, and about the dressing-table to see that she had
pins and scent, and plenty of 'pot-pourri,' and thinking: 'The
child is pretty--a nice girl, not like her mother.'  Explaining
carefully how, because of the approaching week-end, she had been
obliged to put her in 'a very simple room' where she would be
compelled to cross the corridor to her bath, she asked her if she
had a quilted dressing-gown, and finding that she had not, left her
saying she would send one--and could she do her frocks up, or
should Sirrett come?

Abandoned, the girl stood in the middle of the room, so far more
'simple' than she had ever slept in, with its warm fragrance of
rose-leaves and verbena, its Aubusson carpet, white silk-quilted
bed, sofa, cushioned window-seat, dainty curtains, and little
nickel box of biscuits on little spindly table.  There she stood
and sniffed, stretched herself, and thought: 'It's jolly--only, it
smells too much!' and she went up to the pictures, one by one.
They seemed to go splendidly with the room, and suddenly she felt
homesick.  Ridiculous, of course!  Yet, if she had known where her
father's room was, she would have run out to it; but her memory was
too tangled up with stairs and corridors--to find her way down to
the hall again was all she could have done.

A maid came in now with a blue silk gown very thick and soft.
Could she do anything for Miss Freeland?  No, thanks, she could
not; only, did she know where Mr. Freeland's room was?

"Which Mr. Freeland, miss, the young or the old?"

"Oh, the old!"  Having said which, Nedda felt unhappy; her Dad was
not old!  "No, miss; but I'll find out.  It'll be in the walnut
wing!"  But with a little flutter at the thought of thus setting
people to run about wings, Nedda murmured: "Oh! thanks, no; it
doesn't matter."

She settled down now on the cushion of the window-seat, to look out
and take it all in, right away to that line of hills gone blue in
the haze of the warm evening.  That would be Malvern; and there,
farther to the south, the 'Tods' lived.  'Joyfields!'  A pretty
name!  And it was lovely country all round; green and peaceful,
with its white, timbered houses and cottages.  People must be very
happy, living here--happy and quiet like the stars and the birds;
not like the crowds in London thronging streets and shops and
Hampstead Heath; not like the people in all those disgruntled
suburbs that led out for miles where London ought to have stopped
but had not; not like the thousands and thousands of those poor
creatures in Bethnal Green, where her slum work lay.  The natives
here must surely be happy.  Only, were there any natives?  She had
not seen any.  Away to the right below her window were the first
trees of the fruit garden; for many of them Spring was over, but
the apple-trees had just come into blossom, and the low sun shining
through a gap in some far elms was slanting on their creamy pink,
christening them--Nedda thought--with drops of light; and lovely
the blackbirds' singing sounded in the perfect hush!  How wonderful
to be a bird, going where you would, and from high up in the air
seeing everything; flying down a sunbeam, drinking a raindrop,
sitting on the very top of a tall tree, running in grass so high
that you were hidden, laying little perfect blue-green eggs, or
pure-gray speckly ones; never changing your dress, yet always
beautiful.  Surely the spirit of the world was in the birds and the
clouds, roaming, floating, and in the flowers and trees that never
smelled anything but sweet, never looked anything but lovely, and
were never restless.  Why was one restless, wanting things that did
not come--wanting to feel and know, wanting to love, and be loved?
And at that thought which had come to her so unexpectedly--a
thought never before shaped so definitely--Nedda planted her arms
on the window-sill, with sleeves fallen down, and let her hands
meet cup-shaped beneath her chin.  Love!  To have somebody with
whom she could share everything--some one to whom and for whom she
could give up--some one she could protect and comfort--some one who
would bring her peace.  Peace, rest--from what?  Ah! that she could
not make clear, even to herself.  Love!  What would love be like?
Her father loved her, and she loved him.  She loved her mother; and
Alan on the whole was jolly to her--it was not that.  What was it--
where was it--when would it come and wake her, and kiss her to
sleep, all in one?  Come and fill her as with the warmth and color,
the freshness, light, and shadow of this beautiful May evening,
flood her as with the singing of those birds, and the warm light
sunning the apple blossoms.  And she sighed.  Then--as with all
young things whose attention after all is but as the hovering of a
butterfly--her speculation was attracted to a thin, high-shouldered
figure limping on a stick, away from the house, down one of the
paths among the apple-trees.  He wavered, not knowing, it seemed,
his way.  And Nedda thought: 'Poor old man, how lame he is!'  She
saw him stoop, screened, as he evidently thought, from sight, and
take something very small from his pocket.  He gazed, rubbed it,
put it back; what it was she could not see.  Then pressing his hand
down, he smoothed and stretched his leg.  His eyes seemed closed.
So a stone man might have stood!  Till very slowly he limped on,
passing out of sight.  And turning from the window, Nedda began
hurrying into her evening things.

When she was ready she took a long time to decide whether to wear
her mother's lace or keep it for the Bigwigs.  But it was so nice
and creamy that she simply could not take it off, and stood turning
and turning before the glass.  To stand before a glass was silly
and old-fashioned; but Nedda could never help it, wanting so badly
to be nicer to look at than she was, because of that something that
some day was coming!

She was, in fact, pretty, but not merely pretty--there was in her
face something alive and sweet, something clear and swift.  She had
still that way of a child raising its eyes very quickly and looking
straight at you with an eager innocence that hides everything by
its very wonder; and when those eyes looked down they seemed
closed--their dark lashes were so long.  Her eyebrows were wide
apart, arching with a slight angle, and slanting a little down
toward her nose.  Her forehead under its burnt-brown hair was
candid; her firm little chin just dimpled.  Altogether, a face
difficult to take one's eyes off.  But Nedda was far from vain, and
her face seemed to her too short and broad, her eyes too dark and
indeterminate, neither gray nor brown.  The straightness of her
nose was certainly comforting, but it, too, was short.  Being
creamy in the throat and browning easily, she would have liked to
be marble-white, with blue dreamy eyes and fair hair, or else like
a Madonna.  And was she tall enough?  Only five foot five.  And her
arms were too thin.  The only things that gave her perfect
satisfaction were her legs, which, of course, she could not at the
moment see; they really WERE rather jolly!  Then, in a panic,
fearing to be late, she turned and ran out, fluttering into the
maze of stairs and corridors.


CHAPTER VI


Clara, Mrs. Stanley Freeland, was not a narrow woman either in mind
or body; and years ago, soon indeed after she married Stanley, she
had declared her intention of taking up her sister-in-law,
Kirsteen, in spite of what she had heard were the woman's
extraordinary notions.  Those were the days of carriages, pairs,
coachmen, grooms, and, with her usual promptitude, ordering out the
lot, she had set forth.  It is safe to say she had never forgotten
that experience.

Imagine an old, white, timbered cottage with a thatched roof, and
no single line about it quite straight.  A cottage crazy with age,
buried up to the thatch in sweetbrier, creepers, honeysuckle, and
perched high above crossroads.  A cottage almost unapproachable for
beehives and their bees--an insect for which Clara had an aversion.
Imagine on the rough, pebbled approach to the door of this cottage
(and Clara had on thin shoes) a peculiar cradle with a dark-eyed
baby that was staring placidly at two bees sleeping on a coverlet
made of a rough linen such as Clara had never before seen.  Imagine
an absolutely naked little girl of three, sitting in a tub of
sunlight in the very doorway.  Clara had turned swiftly and closed
the wicket gate between the pebbled pathway and the mossed steps
that led down to where her coachman and her footman were sitting
very still, as was the habit of those people.  She had perceived at
once that she was making no common call.  Then, with real courage
she had advanced, and, looking down at the little girl with a
fearful smile, had tickled the door with the handle of her green
parasol.  A woman younger than herself, a girl, indeed, appeared in
a low doorway.  She had often told Stanley since that she would
never forget her first sight (she had not yet had another) of Tod's
wife.  A brown face and black hair, fiery gray eyes, eyes all
light, under black lashes, and "such a strange smile"; bare, brown,
shapely arms and neck in a shirt of the same rough, creamy linen,
and, from under a bright blue skirt, bare, brown, shapely ankles
and feet!  A voice so soft and deadly that, as Clara said: "What
with her eyes, it really gave me the shivers.  And, my dear," she
had pursued, "white-washed walls, bare brick floors, not a picture,
not a curtain, not even a fire-iron.  Clean--oh, horribly!  They
must be the most awful cranks.  The only thing I must say that was
nice was the smell.  Sweetbrier, and honey, coffee, and baked
apples--really delicious.  I must try what I can do with it.  But
that woman--girl, I suppose she is--stumped me.  I'm sure she'd
have cut my head off if I'd attempted to open my mouth on ordinary
topics.  The children were rather ducks; but imagine leaving them
about like that amongst the bees.  'Kirsteen!'  She looked it.
Never again!  And Tod I didn't see at all; I suppose he was mooning
about amongst his creatures."

It was the memory of this visit, now seventeen years ago, that had
made her smile so indulgently when Stanley came back from the
conference.  She had said at once that they must have Felix to
stay, and for her part she would be only too glad to do anything
she could for those poor children of Tod's, even to asking them to
Becket, and trying to civilize them a little. . . .  "But as for
that woman, there'll be nothing to be done with her, I can assure
you.  And I expect Tod is completely under her thumb."

To Felix, who took her in to dinner, she spoke feelingly and in a
low voice.  She liked Felix, in spite of his wife, and respected
him--he had a name.  Lady Malloring--she told him--the Mallorings
owned, of course, everything round Joyfields--had been telling her
that of late Tod's wife had really become quite rabid over the land
question.  'The Tods' were hand in glove with all the cottagers.
She, Clara, had nothing to say against any one who sympathized with
the condition of the agricultural laborer; quite the contrary.
Becket was almost, as Felix knew--though perhaps it wasn't for her
to say so--the centre of that movement; but there were ways of
doing things, and one did so deprecate women like this Kirsteen--
what an impossibly Celtic name!--putting her finger into any pie
that really was of national importance.  Nothing could come of
anything done that sort of way.  If Felix had any influence with
Tod it would be a mercy to use it in getting those poor young
creatures away from home, to mix a little with people who took a
sane view of things.  She would like very much to get them over to
Becket, but with their notions it was doubtful whether they had
evening clothes!  She had, of course, never forgotten that naked
mite in the tub of sunlight, nor the poor baby with its bees and
its rough linen.  Felix replied deferentially--he was invariably
polite, and only just ironic enough, in the houses of others--that
he had the very greatest respect for Tod, and that there could be
nothing very wrong with the woman to whom Tod was so devoted.  As
for the children, his own young people would get at them and learn
all about what was going on in a way that no fogey like himself
could.  In regard to the land question, there were, of course, many
sides to that, and he, for one, would not be at all sorry to
observe yet another.  After all, the Tods were in real contact with
the laborers, and that was the great thing.  It would be very
interesting.

Yes, Clara quite saw all that, but--and here she sank her voice so
that there was hardly any left--as Felix was going over there, she
really must put him au courant with the heart of this matter.  Lady
Malloring had told her the whole story.  It appeared there were two
cases: A family called Gaunt, an old man, and his son, who had two
daughters--one of them, Alice, quite a nice girl, was kitchen-maid
here at Becket, but the other sister--Wilmet--well! she was one of
those girls that, as Felix must know, were always to be found in
every village.  She was leading the young men astray, and Lady
Malloring had put her foot down, telling her bailiff to tell the
farmer for whom Gaunt worked that he and his family must go, unless
they sent the girl away somewhere.  That was one case.  And the
other was of a laborer called Tryst, who wanted to marry his
deceased wife's sister.  Of course, whether Mildred Malloring was
not rather too churchy and puritanical--now that a deceased wife's
sister was legal--Clara did not want to say; but she was
undoubtedly within her rights if she thought it for the good of the
village.  This man, Tryst, was a good workman, and his farmer had
objected to losing him, but Lady Malloring had, of course, not
given way, and if he persisted he would get put out.  All the
cottages about there were Sir Gerald Malloring's, so that in both
cases it would mean leaving the neighborhood.  In regard to village
morality, as Felix knew, the line must be drawn somewhere.

Felix interrupted quietly:

"I draw it at Lady Malloring."

"Well, I won't argue that with you.  But it really is a scandal
that Tod's wife should incite her young people to stir up the
villagers.  Goodness knows where that mayn't lead!  Tod's cottage
and land, you see, are freehold, the only freehold thereabouts; and
his being a brother of Stanley's makes it particularly awkward for
the Mallorings."

"Quite so!" murmured Felix.

"Yes, but my dear Felix, when it comes to infecting those simple
people with inflated ideas of their rights, it's serious,
especially in the country.  I'm told there's really quite a violent
feeling.  I hear from Alice Gaunt that the young Tods have been
going about saying that dogs are better off than people treated in
this fashion, which, of course, is all nonsense, and making far too
much of a small matter.  Don't you think so?"

But Felix only smiled his peculiar, sweetish smile, and answered:

"I'm glad to have come down just now."

Clara, who did not know that when Felix smiled like that he was
angry, agreed.

"Yes," she said; "you're an observer.  You will see the thing in
right perspective."

"I shall endeavor to.  What does Tod say?"

"Oh!  Tod never seems to say anything.  At least, I never hear of
it."

Felix murmured:

"Tod is a well in the desert."

To which deep saying Clara made no reply, not indeed understanding
in the least what it might signify.

That evening, when Alan, having had his fill of billiards, had left
the smoking-room and gone to bed, Felix remarked to Stanley:

"I say, what sort of people are these Mallorings?"

Stanley, who was settling himself for the twenty minutes of
whiskey, potash, and a Review, with which he commonly composed his
mind before retiring, answered negligently:

"The Mallorings?  Oh! about the best type of landowner we've got."

"What exactly do you mean by that?"

Stanley took his time to answer, for below his bluff good-nature he
had the tenacious, if somewhat slow, precision of an English man of
business, mingled with a certain mistrust of 'old Felix.'

"Well," he said at last, "they build good cottages, yellow brick,
d--d ugly, I must say; look after the character of their tenants;
give 'em rebate of rent if there's a bad harvest; encourage stock-
breedin', and machinery--they've got some of my ploughs, but the
people don't like 'em, and, as a matter of fact, they're right--
they're not made for these small fields; set an example goin' to
church; patronize the Rifle Range; buy up the pubs when they can,
and run 'em themselves; send out jelly, and let people over their
place on bank holidays.  Dash it all, I don't know what they don't
do.  Why?"

"Are they liked?"

"Liked?  No, I should hardly think they were liked; respected, and
all that.  Malloring's a steady fellow, keen man on housing, and a
gentleman; she's a bit too much perhaps on the pious side.  They've
got one of the finest Georgian houses in the country.  Altogether
they're what you call 'model.'"

"But not human."

Stanley slightly lowered the Review and looked across it at his
brother.  It was evident to him that 'old Felix' was in one of his
free-thinking moods.

"They're domestic," he said, "and fond of their children, and
pleasant neighbors.  I don't deny that they've got a tremendous
sense of duty, but we want that in these days."

"Duty to what?"

Stanley raised his level eyebrows.  It was a stumper.  Without
great care he felt that he would be getting over the border into
the uncharted land of speculation and philosophy, wandering on
paths that led him nowhere.

"If you lived in the country, old man," he said, "you wouldn't ask
that sort of question."

"You don't imagine," said Felix, "that you or the Mallorings live
in the country?  Why, you landlords are every bit as much town
dwellers as I am--thought, habit, dress, faith, souls, all town
stuff.  There IS no 'country' in England now for us of the 'upper
classes.'  It's gone.  I repeat: Duty to what?"

And, rising, he went over to the window, looking out at the moonlit
lawn, overcome by a sudden aversion from more talk.  Of what use
were words from a mind tuned in one key to a mind tuned in another?
And yet, so ingrained was his habit of discussion, that he promptly
went on:

"The Mallorings, I've not the slightest doubt, believe it their
duty to look after the morals of those who live on their property.
There are three things to be said about that: One--you can't make
people moral by adopting the attitude of the schoolmaster.  Two--it
implies that they consider themselves more moral than their
neighbors.  Three--it's a theory so convenient to their security
that they would be exceptionally good people if they did not adopt
it; but, from your account, they are not so much exceptionally as
just typically good people.  What you call their sense of duty,
Stanley, is really their sense of self-preservation coupled with
their sense of superiority."

"H'm!" said Stanley; "I don't know that I quite follow you."

"I always hate an odor of sanctity.  I'd prefer them to say
frankly: 'This is my property, and you'll jolly well do what I tell
you, on it.'"

"But, my dear chap, after all, they really ARE superior."

"That," said Felix, "I emphatically question.  Put your Mallorings
to earn their living on fifteen to eighteen shillings a week, and
where would they be?  The Mallorings have certain virtues, no
doubt, natural to their fortunate environment, but of the primitive
virtues of patience, hardihood, perpetual, almost unconscious self-
sacrifice, and cheerfulness in the face of a hard fate, they are no
more the equals of the people they pretend to be superior to than I
am your equal as a man of business."

"Hang it!" was Stanley's answer, "what a d--d old heretic you are!"

Felix frowned.  "Am I?  Be honest!  Take the life of a Malloring
and take it at its best; see how it stands comparison in the
ordinary virtues with those of an averagely good specimen of a
farm-laborer.  Your Malloring is called with a cup of tea, at, say,
seven o'clock, out of a nice, clean, warm bed; he gets into a bath
that has been got ready for him; into clothes and boots that have
been brushed for him; and goes down to a room where there's a fire
burning already if it's a cold day, writes a few letters, perhaps,
before eating a breakfast of exactly what he likes, nicely prepared
for him, and reading the newspaper that best comforts his soul;
when he has eaten and read, he lights his cigar or his pipe and
attends to his digestion in the most sanitary and comfortable
fashion; then in his study he sits down to steady direction of
other people, either by interview or by writing letters, or what
not.  In this way, between directing people and eating what he
likes, he passes the whole day, except that for two or three hours,
sometimes indeed seven or eight hours, he attends to his physique
by riding, motoring, playing a game, or indulging in a sport that
he has chosen for himself.  And, at the end of all that, he
probably has another bath that has been made ready for him, puts on
clean clothes that have been put out for him, goes down to a good
dinner that has been cooked for him, smokes, reads, learns, and
inwardly digests, or else plays cards, billiards, and acts host
till he is sleepy, and so to bed, in a clean, warm bed, in a clean,
fresh room.  Is that exaggerated?"

"No; but when you talk of his directing other people, you forget
that he is doing what they couldn't."

"He may be doing what they couldn't; but ordinary directive ability
is not born in a man; it's acquired by habit and training.  Suppose
fortune had reversed them at birth, the Gaunt or Tryst would by now
have it and the Malloring would not.  The accident that they were
not reversed at birth has given the Malloring a thousandfold
advantage."

"It's no joke directing things," muttered Stanley.

"No work is any joke; but I just put it to you: Simply as work,
without taking in the question of reward, would you dream for a
minute of swapping your work with the work of one of your workmen?
No.  Well, neither would a Malloring with one of his Gaunts.  So
that, my boy, for work which is intrinsically more interesting and
pleasurable, the Malloring gets a hundred to a thousand times more
money."

"All this is rank socialism, my dear fellow."

"No; rank truth.  Now, to take the life of a Gaunt.  He gets up
summer and winter much earlier out of a bed that he cannot afford
time or money to keep too clean or warm, in a small room that
probably has not a large enough window; into clothes stiff with
work and boots stiff with clay; makes something hot for himself,
very likely brings some of it to his wife and children; goes out,
attending to his digestion crudely and without comfort; works with
his hands and feet from half past six or seven in the morning till
past five at night, except that twice he stops for an hour or so
and eats simple things that he would not altogether have chosen to
eat if he could have had his will.  He goes home to a tea that has
been got ready for him, and has a clean-up without assistance,
smokes a pipe of shag, reads a newspaper perhaps two days old, and
goes out again to work for his own good, in his vegetable patch, or
to sit on a wooden bench in an atmosphere of beer and 'baccy.'  And
so, dead tired, but not from directing other people, he drowses
himself to early lying again in his doubtful bed.  Is that
exaggerated?"

"I suppose not, but he--"

"Has his compensations: Clean conscience--freedom from worry--
fresh air, all the rest of it!  I know.  Clean conscience granted,
but so has your Malloring, it would seem.  Freedom from worry--yes,
except when a pair of boots is wanted, or one of the children is
ill; then he has to make up for lost time with a vengeance.  Fresh
air--and wet clothes, with a good chance of premature rheumatism.
Candidly, which of those two lives demands more of the virtues on
which human life is founded--courage and patience, hardihood and
self-sacrifice?  And which of two men who have lived those two
lives well has most right to the word 'superior'?"

Stanley dropped the Review and for fully a minute paced the room
without reply.  Then he said:

"Felix, you're talking flat revolution."

Felix, who, faintly smiling, had watched him up and down, up and
down the Turkey carpet, answered:

"Not so.  I am by no means a revolutionary person, because with all
the good-will in the world I have been unable to see how upheavals
from the bottom, or violence of any sort, is going to equalize
these lives or do any good.  But I detest humbug, and I believe
that so long as you and your Mallorings go on blindly dosing
yourselves with humbug about duty and superiority, so long will you
see things as they are not.  And until you see things as they are,
purged of all that sickening cant, you will none of you really move
to make the conditions of life more and ever more just.  For, mark
you, Stanley, I, who do not believe in revolution from the bottom,
the more believe that it is up to us in honour to revolutionize
things from the top!"

"H'm!" said Stanley; "that's all very well; but the more you give
the more they want, till there's no end to it."

Felix stared round that room, where indeed one was all body.

"By George," he said, "I've yet to see a beginning.  But, anyway,
if you give in a grudging spirit, or the spirit of a schoolmaster,
what can you expect?  If you offer out of real good-will, so it is
taken."  And suddenly conscious that he had uttered a constructive
phrase, Felix cast down his eyes, and added:

"I am going to my clean, warm bed.  Good night, old man!"

When his brother had taken up his candlestick and gone, Stanley,
uttering a dubious sound, sat down on the lounge, drank deep out of
his tumbler, and once more took up his Review.


CHAPTER VII


The next day Stanley's car, fraught with Felix and a note from
Clara, moved swiftly along the grass-bordered roads toward
Joyfields.  Lying back on the cushioned seat, the warm air flying
at his face, Felix contemplated with delight his favorite
countryside.  Certainly this garden of England was very lovely, its
greenness, trees, and large, pied, lazy cattle; its very emptiness
of human beings even was pleasing.

Nearing Joyfields he noted the Mallorings' park and their long
Georgian house, carefully fronting south.  There, too, was the pond
of what village there was, with the usual ducks on it; and three
well-remembered cottages in a row, neat and trim, of the old,
thatched sort, but evidently restored.  Out of the door of one of
them two young people had just emerged, going in the same direction
as the car.  Felix passed them and turned to look.  Yes, it was
they!  He stopped the car.  They were walking, with eyes straight
before them, frowning.  And Felix thought: 'Nothing of Tod in
either of them; regular Celts!'

The girl's vivid, open face, crisp, brown, untidy hair, cheeks
brimful of color, thick lips, eyes that looked up and out as a Skye
terrier's eyes look out of its shagginess--indeed, her whole figure
struck Felix as almost frighteningly vital; and she walked as if
she despised the ground she covered.  The boy was even more
arresting.  What a strange, pale-dark face, with its black,
uncovered hair, its straight black brows; what a proud, swan's-
eyed, thin-lipped, straight-nosed young devil, marching like a very
Highlander; though still rather run-up, from sheer youthfulness!
They had come abreast of the car by now, and, leaning out, he said:

"You don't remember me, I'm afraid!"  The boy shook his head.
Wonderful eyes he had!  But the girl put out her hand.

"Of course, Derek; it's Uncle Felix."

They both smiled now, the girl friendly, the boy rather drawn back
into himself.  And feeling strangely small and ill at ease, Felix
murmured:

"I'm going to see your father.  Can I give you a lift home?"

The answer came as he expected:

"No, thanks."  Then, as if to tone it down, the girl added:

"We've got something to do first.  You'll find him in the orchard."

She had a ringing voice, full of warmth.  Lifting his hat, Felix
passed on.  They WERE a couple!  Strange, attractive, almost
frightening.  Kirsteen had brought his brother a formidable little
brood.

Arriving at the cottage, he went up its mossy stones and through
the wicket gate.  There was little change, indeed, since the days
of Clara's visit, save that the beehives had been moved farther
out.  Nor did any one answer his knock; and mindful of the girl's
words, "You'll find him in the orchard," he made his way out among
the trees.  The grass was long and starred with petals.  Felix
wandered over it among bees busy with the apple-blossom.  At the
very end he came on his brother, cutting down a pear-tree.  Tod was
in shirt-sleeves, his brown arms bare almost to the shoulders.  How
tremendous the fellow was!  What resounding and terrific blows he
was dealing!  Down came the tree, and Tod drew his arm across his
brow.  This great, burnt, curly-headed fellow was more splendid to
look upon than even Felix had remembered, and so well built that
not a movement of his limbs was heavy.  His cheek-bones were very
broad and high; his brows thick and rather darker than his bright
hair, so that his deep-set, very blue eyes seemed to look out of a
thicket; his level white teeth gleamed from under his tawny
moustache, and his brown, unshaven cheeks and jaw seemed covered
with gold powder.  Catching sight of Felix, he came forward.

"Fancy," he said, "old Gladstone spending his leisure cutting down
trees--of all melancholy jobs!"

Felix did not quite know what to answer, so he put his arm within
his brother's.  Tod drew him toward the tree.

"Sit down!" he said.  Then, looking sorrowfully at the pear-tree,
he murmured:

"Seventy years--and down in seven minutes.  Now we shall burn it.
Well, it had to go.  This is the third year it's had no blossom."

His speech was slow, like that of a man accustomed to think aloud.
Felix admired him askance.  "I might live next door," he thought,
"for all the notice he's taken of my turning up!"

"I came over in Stanley's car," he said.  "Met your two coming
along--fine couple they are!"

"Ah!" said Tod.  And there was something in the way he said it that
was more than a mere declaration of pride or of affection.  Then he
looked at Felix.

"What have you come for, old man?"

Felix smiled.  Quaint way to put it!

"For a talk."

"Ah!" said Tod, and he whistled.

A largish, well-made dog with a sleek black coat, white underneath,
and a black tail white-tipped, came running up, and stood before
Tod, with its head rather to one side and its yellow-brown eyes
saying: 'I simply must get at what you're thinking, you know.'

"Go and tell your mistress to come--Mistress!"

The dog moved his tail, lowered it, and went off.

"A gypsy gave him to me," said Tod; "best dog that ever lived."

"Every one thinks that of his own dog, old man."

"Yes," said Tod; "but this IS."

"He looks intelligent."

"He's got a soul," said Tod.  "The gypsy said he didn't steal him,
but he did."

"Do you always know when people aren't speaking the truth, then?"

"Yes."

At such a monstrous remark from any other man, Felix would have
smiled; but seeing it was Tod, he only asked: "How?"

"People who aren't speaking the truth look you in the face and
never move their eyes."

"Some people do that when they are speaking the truth."

"Yes; but when they aren't, you can see them struggling to keep
their eyes straight.  A dog avoids your eye when he's something to
conceal; a man stares at you.  Listen!"

Felix listened and heard nothing.

"A wren"; and, screwing up his lips, Tod emitted a sound: "Look!"

Felix saw on the branch of an apple-tree a tiny brown bird with a
little beak sticking out and a little tail sticking up.  And he
thought: 'Tod's hopeless!'

"That fellow," said Tod softly, "has got his nest there just behind
us."  Again he emitted the sound.  Felix saw the little bird move
its head with a sort of infinite curiosity, and hop twice on the
branch.

"I can't get the hen to do that," Tod murmured.

Felix put his hand on his brother's arm--what an arm!

"Yes," he said; "but look here, old man--I really want to talk to
you."

Tod shook his head.  "Wait for her," he said.

Felix waited.  Tod was getting awfully eccentric, living this
queer, out-of-the-way life with a cranky woman year after year;
never reading anything, never seeing any one but tramps and animals
and villagers.  And yet, sitting there beside his eccentric brother
on that fallen tree, he had an extraordinary sense of rest.  It
was, perhaps, but the beauty and sweetness of the day with its
dappling sunlight brightening the apple-blossoms, the wind-flowers,
the wood-sorrel, and in the blue sky above the fields those clouds
so unimaginably white.  All the tiny noises of the orchard, too,
struck on his ear with a peculiar meaning, a strange fulness, as if
he had never heard such sounds before.  Tod, who was looking at the
sky, said suddenly:

"Are you hungry?"

And Felix remembered that they never had any proper meals, but,
when hungry, went to the kitchen, where a wood-fire was always
burning, and either heated up coffee, and porridge that was already
made, with boiled eggs and baked potatoes and apples, or devoured
bread, cheese, jam, honey, cream, tomatoes, butter, nuts, and
fruit, that were always set out there on a wooden table, under a
muslin awning; he remembered, too, that they washed up their own
bowls and spoons and plates, and, having finished, went outside and
drew themselves a draught of water.  Queer life, and deuced
uncomfortable--almost Chinese in its reversal of everything that
every one else was doing.

"No," he said, "I'm not."

"I am.  Here she is."

Felix felt his heart beating--Clara was not alone in being
frightened of this woman.  She was coming through the orchard with
the dog; a remarkable-looking woman--oh, certainly remarkable!  She
greeted him without surprise and, sitting down close to Tod, said:
"I'm glad to see you."

Why did this family somehow make him feel inferior?  The way she
sat there and looked at him so calmly!  Still more the way she
narrowed her eyes and wrinkled her lips, as if rather malicious
thoughts were rising in her soul!  Her hair, as is the way of fine,
soft, almost indigo-colored hair, was already showing threads of
silver; her whole face and figure thinner than he had remembered.
But a striking woman still--with wonderful eyes!  Her dress--Felix
had scanned many a crank in his day--was not so alarming as it had
once seemed to Clara; its coarse-woven, deep-blue linen and needle-
worked yoke were pleasing to him, and he could hardly take his gaze
from the kingfisher-blue band or fillet that she wore round that
silver-threaded black hair.

He began by giving her Clara's note, the wording of which he had
himself dictated:


"DEAR KIRSTEEN:

"Though we have not seen each other for so long, I am sure you will
forgive my writing.  It would give us so much pleasure if you and
the two children would come over for a night or two while Felix and
his young folk are staying with us.  It is no use, I fear, to ask
Tod; but of course if he would come, too, both Stanley and myself
would be delighted.

"Yours cordially,

"CLARA FREELAND."


She read it, handed it to Tod, who also read it and handed it to
Felix.  Nobody said anything.  It was so altogether simple and
friendly a note that Felix felt pleased with it, thinking: 'I
expressed that well!'

Then Tod said: "Go ahead, old man!  You've got something to say
about the youngsters, haven't you?"

How on earth did he know that?  But then Tod HAD a sort of queer
prescience.

"Well," he brought out with an effort, "don't you think it's a pity
to embroil your young people in village troubles?  We've been
hearing from Stanley--"

Kirsteen interrupted in her calm, staccato voice with just the
faintest lisp:

"Stanley would not understand."

She had put her arm through Tod's, but never removed her eyes from
her brother-in-law's face.

"Possibly," said Felix, "but you must remember that Stanley, John,
and myself represent ordinary--what shall we say--level-headed
opinion."

"With which we have nothing in common, I'm afraid."

Felix glanced from her to Tod.  The fellow had his head on one side
and seemed listening to something in the distance.  And Felix felt
a certain irritation.

"It's all very well," he said, "but I think you really have got to
look at your children's future from a larger point of view.  You
don't surely want them to fly out against things before they've had
a chance to see life for themselves."

She answered:

"The children know more of life than most young people.  They've
seen it close to, they've seen its realities.  They know what the
tyranny of the countryside means."

"Yes, yes," said Felix, "but youth is youth."

"They are not too young to know and feel the truth."

Felix was impressed.  How those narrowing eyes shone!  What
conviction in that faintly lisping voice!

'I am a fool for my pains,' he thought, and only said:

"Well, what about this invitation, anyway?"

"Yes; it will be just the thing for them at the moment."

The words had to Felix a somewhat sinister import.  He knew well
enough that she did not mean by them what others would have meant.
But he said: "When shall we expect them?  Tuesday, I suppose, would
be best for Clara, after her weekend.  Is there no chance of you
and Tod?"

She quaintly wrinkled her lips into not quite a smile, and
answered:

"Tod shall say.  Do you hear, Tod?"

"In the meadow.  It was there yesterday--first time this year."

Felix slipped his arm through his brother's.

"Quite so, old man."

"What?" said Tod.  "Ah! let's go in.  I'm awfully hungry." . . .

Sometimes out of a calm sky a few drops fall, the twigs rustle, and
far away is heard the muttering of thunder; the traveller thinks:
'A storm somewhere about.'  Then all once more is so quiet and
peaceful that he forgets he ever had that thought, and goes on his
way careless.

So with Felix returning to Becket in Stanley's car.  That woman's
face, those two young heathens--the unconscious Tod!

There was mischief in the air above that little household.  But
once more the smooth gliding of the cushioned car, the soft peace
of the meadows so permanently at grass, the churches, mansions,
cottages embowered among their elms, the slow-flapping flight of
the rooks and crows lulled Felix to quietude, and the faint far
muttering of that thunder died away.

Nedda was in the drive when he returned, gazing at a nymph set up
there by Clara.  It was a good thing, procured from Berlin, well
known for sculpture, and beginning to green over already, as though
it had been there a long time--a pretty creature with shoulders
drooping, eyes modestly cast down, and a sparrow perching on her
head.

"Well, Dad?"

"They're coming."

"When?"

"On Tuesday--the youngsters, only."

"You might tell me a little about them."

But Felix only smiled.  His powers of description faltered before
that task; and, proud of those powers, he did not choose to subject
them to failure.


CHAPTER VIII


Not till three o'clock that Saturday did the Bigwigs begin to come.
Lord and Lady Britto first from Erne by car; then Sir Gerald and
Lady Malloring, also by car from Joyfields; an early afternoon
train brought three members of the Lower House, who liked a round
of golf--Colonel Martlett, Mr. Sleesor, and Sir John Fanfar--with
their wives; also Miss Bawtrey, an American who went everywhere;
and Moorsome, the landscape-painter, a short, very heavy man who
went nowhere, and that in almost perfect silence, which he
afterward avenged.  By a train almost sure to bring no one else
came Literature in Public Affairs, alone, Henry Wiltram, whom some
believed to have been the very first to have ideas about the land.
He was followed in the last possible train by Cuthcott, the
advanced editor, in his habitual hurry, and Lady Maude Ughtred in
her beauty.  Clara was pleased, and said to Stanley, while
dressing, that almost every shade of opinion about the land was
represented this week-end.  She was not, she said, afraid of
anything, if she could keep Henry Wiltram and Cuthcott apart.  The
House of Commons men would, of course, be all right.  Stanley
assented: "They'll be 'fed up' with talk.  But how about Britto--he
can sometimes be very nasty, and Cuthcott's been pretty rough on
him, in his rag."

Clara had remembered that, and she was putting Lady Maude on one
side of Cuthcott, and Moorsome on the other, so that he would be
quite safe at dinner, and afterward--Stanley must look out!

"What have you done with Nedda?" Stanley asked.

"Given her to Colonel Martlett, with Sir John Fanfar on the other
side; they both like something fresh."  She hoped, however, to
foster a discussion, so that they might really get further this
week-end; the opportunity was too good to throw away.

"H'm!" Stanley murmured.  "Felix said some very queer things the
other night.  He, too, might make ructions."

Oh, no!--Clara persisted--Felix had too much good taste.  She
thought that something might be coming out of this occasion,
something as it were national, that would bear fruit.  And watching
Stanley buttoning his braces, she grew enthusiastic.  For, think
how splendidly everything was represented!  Britto, with his view
that the thing had gone too far, and all the little efforts we
might make now were no good, with Canada and those great spaces to
outbid anything we could do; though she could not admit that he was
right, there was a lot in what he said; he had great gifts--and
some day might--who knew?  Then there was Sir John--Clara pursued--
who was almost the father of the new Tory policy: Assist the
farmers to buy their own land.  And Colonel Martlett, representing
the older Tory policy of: What the devil would happen to the
landowners if they did?  Secretly (Clara felt sure) he would never
go into a lobby to support that.  He had said to her: 'Look at my
brother James's property; if we bring this policy in, and the
farmers take advantage, his house might stand there any day without
an acre round it.'  Quite true--it might.  The same might even
happen to Becket.

Stanley grunted.

Exactly!--Clara went on: And that was the beauty of having got the
Mallorings; theirs was such a steady point of view, and she was not
sure that they weren't right, and the whole thing really a question
of model proprietorship.

"H'm!" Stanley muttered.  "Felix will have his knife into that."

Clara did not think that mattered.  The thing was to get
everybody's opinion.  Even Mr. Moorsome's would be valuable--if he
weren't so terrifically silent, for he must think a lot, sitting
all day, as he did, painting the land.

"He's a heavy ass," said Stanley.

Yes; but Clara did not wish to be narrow.  That was why it was so
splendid to have got Mr. Sleesor.  If anybody knew the Radical mind
he did, and he could give full force to what one always felt was at
the bottom of it--that the Radicals' real supporters were the urban
classes; so that their policy must not go too far with 'the Land,'
for fear of seeming to neglect the towns.  For, after all, in the
end it was out of the pockets of the towns that 'the Land' would
have to be financed, and nobody really could expect the towns to
get anything out of it.  Stanley paused in the adjustment of his
tie; his wife was a shrewd woman.

"You've hit it there," he said.  "Wiltram will give it him hot on
that, though."

Of course, Clara assented.  And it was magnificent that they had
got Henry Wiltram, with his idealism and his really heavy corn tax;
not caring what happened to the stunted products of the towns--and
they truly were stunted, for all that the Radicals and the half-
penny press said--till at all costs we could grow our own food.
There was a lot in that.

"Yes," Stanley muttered, "and if he gets on to it, shan't I have a
jolly time of it in the smoking-room?  I know what Cuthcott's like
with his shirt out."

Clara's eyes brightened; she was very curious herself to see Mr.
Cuthcott with his--that is, to hear him expound the doctrine he was
always writing up, namely, that 'the Land' was gone and, short of
revolution, there was nothing for it but garden cities.  She had
heard he was so cutting and ferocious that he really did seem as if
he hated his opponents.  She hoped he would get a chance--perhaps
Felix could encourage him.

"What about the women?" Stanley asked suddenly.  "Will they stand a
political powwow?  One must think of them a bit."

Clara had.  She was taking a farewell look at herself in the far-
away mirror through the door into her bedroom.  It was a mistake--
she added--to suppose that women were not interested in 'the Land.'
Lady Britto was most intelligent, and Mildred Malloring knew every
cottage on her estate.

"Pokes her nose into 'em often enough," Stanley muttered.

Lady Fanfar again, and Mrs. Sleesor, and even Hilda Martlett, were
interested in their husbands, and Miss Bawtrey, of course,
interested in everything.  As for Maude Ughtred, all talk would be
the same to her; she was always week-ending.  Stanley need not
worry--it would be all right; some real work would get done, some
real advance be made.  So saying, she turned her fine shoulders
twice, once this way and once that, and went out.  She had never
told even Stanley her ambition that at Becket, under her aegis,
should be laid the foundation-stone of the real scheme, whatever it
might be, that should regenerate 'the Land.'  Stanley would only
have laughed; even though it would be bound to make him Lord
Freeland when it came to be known some day. . . .

To the eyes and ears of Nedda that evening at dinner, all was new
indeed, and all wonderful.  It was not that she was unaccustomed to
society or to conversation, for to their house at Hampstead many
people came, uttering many words, but both the people and the words
were so very different.  After the first blush, the first
reconnaissance of the two Bigwigs between whom she sat, her eyes
WOULD stray and her ears would only half listen to them.  Indeed,
half her ears, she soon found out, were quite enough to deal with
Colonel Martlett and Sir John Fanfar.  Across the azaleas she let
her glance come now and again to anchor on her father's face, and
exchanged with him a most enjoyable blink.  She tried once or twice
to get through to Alan, but he was always eating; he looked very
like a young Uncle Stanley this evening.

What was she feeling?  Short, quick stabs of self-consciousness as
to how she was looking; a sort of stunned excitement due to sheer
noise and the number of things offered to her to eat and drink;
keen pleasure in the consciousness that Colonel Martlett and Sir
John Fanfar and other men, especially that nice one with the
straggly moustache who looked as if he were going to bite, glanced
at her when they saw she wasn't looking.  If only she had been
quite certain that it was not because they thought her too young to
be there!  She felt a sort of continual exhilaration, that this was
the great world--the world where important things were said and
done, together with an intense listening expectancy, and a sense
most unexpected and almost frightening, that nothing important was
being said or would be done.  But this she knew to be impudent.  On
Sunday evenings at home people talked about a future existence,
about Nietzsche, Tolstoy, Chinese pictures, post-impressionism, and
would suddenly grow hot and furious about peace, and Strauss,
justice, marriage, and De Maupassant, and whether people were
losing their souls through materialism, and sometimes one of them
would get up and walk about the room.  But to-night the only words
she could catch were the names of two politicians whom nobody
seemed to approve of, except that nice one who was going to bite.
Once very timidly she asked Colonel Martlett whether he liked
Strauss, and was puzzled by his answer: "Rather; those 'Tales of
Hoffmann' are rippin', don't you think?  You go to the opera much?"
She could not, of course, know that the thought which instantly
rose within her was doing the governing classes a grave injustice--
almost all of whom save Colonel Martlett knew that the 'Tales of
Hoffmann' were by one Offenbach.  But beyond all things she felt
she would never, never learn to talk as they were all talking--so
quickly, so continuously, so without caring whether everybody or
only the person they were talking to heard what they said.  She had
always felt that what you said was only meant for the person you
said it to, but here in the great world she must evidently not say
anything that was not meant for everybody, and she felt terribly
that she could not think of anything of that sort to say.  And
suddenly she began to want to be alone.  That, however, was surely
wicked and wasteful, when she ought to be learning such a
tremendous lot; and yet, what was there to learn?  And listening
just sufficiently to Colonel Martlett, who was telling her how
great a man he thought a certain general, she looked almost
despairingly at the one who was going to bite.  He was quite silent
at that moment, gazing at his plate, which was strangely empty.
And Nedda thought: 'He has jolly wrinkles about his eyes, only they
might be heart disease; and I like the color of his face, so nice
and yellow, only that might be liver.  But I DO like him--I wish
I'd been sitting next to him; he looks real.'  From that thought,
of the reality of a man whose name she did not know, she passed
suddenly into the feeling that nothing else of this about her was
real at all, neither the talk nor the faces, not even the things
she was eating.  It was all a queer, buzzing dream.  Nor did that
sensation of unreality cease when her aunt began collecting her
gloves, and they trooped forth to the drawing-room.  There, seated
between Mrs. Sleesor and Lady Britto, with Lady Malloring opposite,
and Miss Bawtrey leaning over the piano toward them, she pinched
herself to get rid of the feeling that, when all these were out of
sight of each other, they would become silent and have on their
lips a little, bitter smile.  Would it be like that up in their
bedrooms, or would it only be on her (Nedda's) own lips that this
little smile would come?  It was a question she could not answer;
nor could she very well ask it of any of these ladies.  She looked
them over as they sat there talking and felt very lonely.  And
suddenly her eyes fell on her grandmother.  Frances Freeland was
seated halfway down the long room in a sandalwood chair, somewhat
insulated by a surrounding sea of polished floor.  She sat with a
smile on her lips, quite still, save for the continual movement of
her white hands on her black lap.  To her gray hair some lace of
Chantilly was pinned with a little diamond brooch, and hung behind
her delicate but rather long ears.  And from her shoulders was
depended a silvery garment, of stuff that looked like the mail
shirt of a fairy, reaching the ground on either side.  A tacit
agreement had evidently been come to, that she was incapable of
discussing 'the Land' or those other subjects such as the French
murder, the Russian opera, the Chinese pictures, and the doings of
one, L---- , whose fate was just then in the air, so that she sat
alone.

And Nedda thought: 'How much more of a lady she looks than anybody
here!  There's something deep in her to rest on that isn't in the
Bigwigs; perhaps it's because she's of a different generation.'
And, getting up, she went over and sat down beside her on a little
chair.

Frances Freeland rose at once and said:

"Now, my darling, you can't be comfortable in that tiny chair.  You
must take mine."

"Oh, no, Granny; please!"

"Oh, yes; but you must!  It's so comfortable, and I've simply been
longing to sit in the chair you're in.  Now, darling, to please
me!"

Seeing that a prolonged struggle would follow if she did not get
up, Nedda rose and changed chairs.

"Do you like these week-ends, Granny?"

Frances Freeland seemed to draw her smile more resolutely across
her face.  With her perfect articulation, in which there was,
however, no trace of bigwiggery, she answered:

"I think they're most interesting, darling.  It's so nice to see
new people.  Of course you don't get to know them, but it's very
amusing to watch, especially the head-dresses!"  And sinking her
voice: "Just look at that one with the feather going straight up;
did you ever see such a guy?" and she cackled with a very gentle
archness.  Gazing at that almost priceless feather, trying to reach
God, Nedda felt suddenly how completely she was in her
grandmother's little camp; how entirely she disliked bigwiggery.

Frances Freeland's voice brought her round.

"Do you know, darling, I've found the most splendid thing for
eyebrows?  You just put a little on every night and it keeps them
in perfect order.  I must give you my little pot."

"I don't like grease, Granny."

"Oh! but this isn't grease, darling.  It's a special thing; and you
only put on just the tiniest touch."

Diving suddenly into the recesses of something, she produced an
exiguous round silver box.  Prizing it open, she looked over her
shoulder at the Bigwigs, then placed her little finger on the
contents of the little box, and said very softly:

"You just take the merest touch, and you put it on like that, and
it keeps them together beautifully.  Let me!  Nobody'll see!"

Quite well understanding that this was all part of her
grandmother's passion for putting the best face upon things, and
having no belief in her eyebrows, Nedda bent forward; but in a
sudden flutter of fear lest the Bigwigs might observe the
operation, she drew back, murmuring: "Oh, Granny, darling!  Not
just now!"

At that moment the men came in, and, under cover of the necessary
confusion, she slipped away into the window.

It was pitch-black outside, with the moon not yet up.  The bloomy,
peaceful dark out there!  Wistaria and early roses, clustering in,
had but the ghost of color on their blossoms.  Nedda took a rose in
her fingers, feeling with delight its soft fragility, its coolness
against her hot palm.  Here in her hand was a living thing, here
was a little soul!  And out there in the darkness were millions
upon millions of other little souls, of little flame-like or
coiled-up shapes alive and true.

A voice behind her said:

"Nothing nicer than darkness, is there?"

She knew at once it was the one who was going to bite; the voice
was proper for him, having a nice, smothery sound.  And looking
round gratefully, she said:

"Do you like dinner-parties?"

It was jolly to watch his eyes twinkle and his thin cheeks puff
out.  He shook his head and muttered through that straggly
moustache:

"You're a niece, aren't you?  I know your father.  He's a big man."

Hearing those words spoken of her father, Nedda flushed.

"Yes, he is," she said fervently.

Her new acquaintance went on:

"He's got the gift of truth--can laugh at himself as well as
others; that's what makes him precious.  These humming-birds here
to-night couldn't raise a smile at their own tomfoolery to save
their silly souls."

He spoke still in that voice of smothery wrath, and Nedda thought:
'He IS nice!'

"They've been talking about 'the Land'"--he raised his hands and
ran them through his palish hair--"'the Land!'  Heavenly Father!
'The Land!'  Why!  Look at that fellow!"

Nedda looked and saw a man, like Richard Coeur de Lion in the
history books, with a straw-colored moustache just going gray.

"Sir Gerald Malloring--hope he's not a friend of yours!  Divine
right of landowners to lead 'the Land' by the nose!  And our friend
Britto!"

Nedda, following his eyes, saw a robust, quick-eyed man with a
suave insolence in his dark, clean-shaved face.

"Because at heart he's just a supercilious ruffian, too cold-
blooded to feel, he'll demonstrate that it's no use to feel--waste
of valuable time--ha! valuable!--to act in any direction.  And
that's a man they believe things of.  And poor Henry Wiltram, with
his pathetic: 'Grow our own food--maximum use of the land as food-
producer, and let the rest take care of itself!'  As if we weren't
all long past that feeble individualism; as if in these days of
world markets the land didn't stand or fall in this country as a
breeding-ground of health and stamina and nothing else.  Well, well!"

"Aren't they really in earnest, then?" asked Nedda timidly.

"Miss Freeland, this land question is a perfect tragedy.  Bar one
or two, they all want to make the omelette without breaking eggs;
well, by the time they begin to think of breaking them, mark me--
there'll be no eggs to break.  We shall be all park and suburb.
The real men on the land, what few are left, are dumb and helpless;
and these fellows here for one reason or another don't mean
business--they'll talk and tinker and top-dress--that's all.  Does
your father take any interest in this?  He could write something
very nice."

"He takes interest in everything," said Nedda.  "Please go on, Mr.--
Mr.--"  She was terribly afraid he would suddenly remember that
she was too young and stop his nice, angry talk.

"Cuthcott.  I'm an editor, but I was brought up on a farm, and know
something about it.  You see, we English are grumblers, snobs to
the backbone, want to be something better than we are; and
education nowadays is all in the direction of despising what is
quiet and humdrum.  We never were a stay-at-home lot, like the
French.  That's at the back of this business--they may treat it as
they like, Radicals or Tories, but if they can't get a fundamental
change of opinion into the national mind as to what is a sane and
profitable life; if they can't work a revolution in the spirit of
our education, they'll do no good.  There'll be lots of talk and
tinkering, tariffs and tommy-rot, and, underneath, the land-bred
men dying, dying all the time.  No, madam, industrialism and vested
interests have got us!  Bar the most strenuous national heroism,
there's nothing for it now but the garden city!"

"Then if we WERE all heroic, 'the Land' could still be saved?"

Mr. Cuthcott smiled.

"Of course we might have a European war or something that would
shake everything up.  But, short of that, when was a country ever
consciously and homogeneously heroic--except China with its opium?
When did it ever deliberately change the spirit of its education,
the trend of its ideas; when did it ever, of its own free will, lay
its vested interests on the altar; when did it ever say with a
convinced and resolute heart: 'I will be healthy and simple before
anything.  I will not let the love of sanity and natural conditions
die out of me!'  When, Miss Freeland, when?"

And, looking so hard at Nedda that he almost winked, he added:

"You have the advantage of me by thirty years.  You'll see what I
shall not--the last of the English peasant.  Did you ever read
'Erewhon,' where the people broke up their machines?  It will take
almost that sort of national heroism to save what's left of him,
even."

For answer, Nedda wrinkled her brows horribly.  Before her there
had come a vision of the old, lame man, whose name she had found
out was Gaunt, standing on the path under the apple-trees, looking
at that little something he had taken from his pocket.  Why she
thought of him thus suddenly she had no idea, and she said quickly:

"It's awfully interesting.  I do so want to hear about 'the Land.'
I only know a little about sweated workers, because I see something
of them."

"It's all of a piece," said Mr. Cuthcott; "not politics at all, but
religion--touches the point of national self-knowledge and faith,
the point of knowing what we want to become and of resolving to
become it.  Your father will tell you that we have no more idea of
that at present than a cat of its own chemical composition.  As for
these good people here to-night--I don't want to be disrespectful,
but if they think they're within a hundred miles of the land
question, I'm a--I'm a Jingo--more I can't say."

And, as if to cool his head, he leaned out of the window.

"Nothing is nicer than darkness, as I said just now, because you
can only see the way you MUST go instead of a hundred and fifty
ways you MIGHT.  In darkness your soul is something like your own;
in daylight, lamplight, moonlight, never."

Nedda's spirit gave a jump; he seemed almost at last to be going to
talk about the things she wanted, above all, to find out.  Her
cheeks went hot, she clenched her hands and said resolutely:

"Mr. Cuthcott, do you believe in God?"

Mr. Cuthcott made a queer, deep little noise; it was not a laugh,
however, and it seemed as if he knew she could not bear him to look
at her just then.

"H'm!" he said.  "Every one does that--according to their natures.
Some call God IT, some HIM, some HER, nowadays--that's all.  You
might as well ask--do I believe that I'm alive?"

"Yes," said Nedda, "but which do YOU call God?"

As she asked that, he gave a wriggle, and it flashed through her:
'He must think me an awful enfant terrible!'  His face peered round
at her, queer and pale and puffy, with nice, straight eyes; and she
added hastily:

"It isn't a fair question, is it?  Only you talked about darkness,
and the only way--so I thought--"

"Quite a fair question.  My answer is, of course: 'All three'; but
the point is rather: Does one wish to make even an attempt to
define God to oneself?  Frankly, I don't!  I'm content to feel that
there is in one some kind of instinct toward perfection that one
will still feel, I hope, when the lights are going out; some kind
of honour forbidding one to let go and give up.  That's all I've
got; I really don't know that I want more."

Nedda clasped her hands.

"I like that," she said; "only--what is perfection, Mr. Cuthcott?"

Again he emitted that deep little sound.

"Ah!" he repeated, "what is perfection?  Awkward, that--isn't it?"

"Is it"--Nedda rushed the words out--"is it always to be sacrificing
yourself, or is it--is it always to be--to be expressing yourself?"

"To some--one; to some--the other; to some--half one, half the
other."

"But which is it to me?"

"Ah! that you've got to find out for yourself.  There's a sort of
metronome inside us--wonderful, sell-adjusting little machine; most
delicate bit of mechanism in the world--people call it conscience--
that records the proper beat of our tempos.  I guess that's all we
have to go by."

Nedda said breathlessly:

"Yes; and it's frightfully hard, isn't it?"

"Exactly," Mr. Cuthcott answered.  "That's why people devised
religions and other ways of having the thing done second-hand.  We
all object to trouble and responsibility if we can possibly avoid
it.  Where do you live?"

"In Hampstead."

"Your father must be a stand-by, isn't he?"

"Oh, yes; Dad's splendid; only, you see, I AM a good deal younger
than he.  There was just one thing I was going to ask you.  Are
these very Bigwigs?"

Mr. Cuthcott turned to the room and let his screwed-up glance
wander.  He looked just then particularly as if he were going to
bite.

"If you take 'em at their own valuation: Yes.  If at the
country's: So-so.  If at mine: Ha!  I know what you'd like to
ask: Should I be a Bigwig in THEIR estimation?  Not I!  As you
knock about, Miss Freeland, you'll find out one thing--all
bigwiggery is founded on: Scratch my back, and I'll scratch yours.
Seriously, these are only tenpenny ones; but the mischief is, that
in the matter of 'the Land,' the men who really are in earnest are
precious scarce.  Nothing short of a rising such as there was in
1832 would make the land question real, even for the moment.  Not
that I want to see one--God forbid!  Those poor doomed devils were
treated worse than dogs, and would be again."

Before Nedda could pour out questions about the rising in 1832,
Stanley's voice said:

"Cuthcott, I want to introduce you!"

Her new friend screwed his eyes up tighter and, muttering
something, put out his hand to her.

"Thank you for our talk.  I hope we shall meet again.  Any time you
want to know anything--I'll be only too glad.  Good night!"

She felt the squeeze of his hand, warm and dry, but rather soft, as
of a man who uses a pen too much; saw him following her uncle
across the room, with his shoulders a little hunched, as if
preparing to inflict, and ward off, blows.  And with the thought:
'He must be jolly when he gives them one!' she turned once more to
the darkness, than which he had said there was nothing nicer.  It
smelled of new-mown grass, was full of little shiverings of leaves,
and all colored like the bloom of a black grape.  And her heart
felt soothed.


CHAPTER IX


". . . When I first saw Derek I thought I should never feel
anything but shy and hopeless.  In four days, only in four days,
the whole world is different. . . .  And yet, if it hadn't been for
that thunder-storm, I shouldn't have got over being shy in time.
He has never loved anybody--nor have I.  It can't often be like
that--it makes it solemn.  There's a picture somewhere--not a good
one, I know--of a young Highlander being taken away by soldiers
from his sweetheart.  Derek is fiery and wild and shy and proud and
dark--like the man in that picture.  That last day along the hills--
along and along--with the wind in our faces, I could have walked
forever; and then Joyfields at the end!  Their mother's wonderful;
I'm afraid of her.  But Uncle Tod is a perfect dear.  I never saw
any one before who noticed so many things that I didn't, and
nothing that I did.  I am sure he has in him what Mr. Cuthcott said
we were all losing--the love of simple, natural conditions.  And
then, THE moment, when I stood with Derek at the end of the
orchard, to say good-by.  The field below covered with those moony-
white flowers, and the cows all dark and sleepy; the holy feeling
down there was wonderful, and in the branches over our heads, too,
and the velvety, starry sky, and the dewiness against one's face,
and the great, broad silence--it was all worshipping something, and
I was worshipping--worshipping happiness.  I WAS happy, and I think
HE was.  Perhaps I shall never be so happy again.  When he kissed
me I didn't think the whole world had so much happiness in it.  I
know now that I'm not cold a bit; I used to think I was.  I believe
I could go with him anywhere, and do anything he wanted.  What
would Dad think?  Only the other day I was saying I wanted to know
everything.  One only knows through love.  It's love that makes the
world all beautiful--makes it like those pictures that seem to be
wrapped in gold, makes it like a dream--no, not like a dream--like
a wonderful tune.  I suppose that's glamour--a goldeny, misty,
lovely feeling, as if my soul were wandering about with his--not in
my body at all.  I want it to go on and on wandering--oh! I don't
want it back in my body, all hard and inquisitive and aching!  I
shall never know anything so lovely as loving him and being loved.
I don't want anything more--nothing!  Stay with me, please--
Happiness!  Don't go away and leave me! . . .  They frighten me,
though; he frightens me--their idealism; wanting to do great
things, and fight for justice.  If only I'd been brought up more
like that--but everything's been so different.  It's their mother,
I think, even more than themselves.  I seem to have grown up just
looking on at life as at a show; watching it, thinking about it,
trying to understand--not living it at all.  I must get over that;
I will.  I believe I can tell the very moment I began to love him.
It was in the schoolroom the second evening.  Sheila and I were
sitting there just before dinner, and he came, in a rage, looking
splendid.  'That footman put out everything just as if I were a
baby--asked me for suspenders to fasten on my socks; hung the
things on a chair in order, as if I couldn't find out for myself
what to put on first; turned the tongues of my shoes out!--curled
them over!'  Then Derek looked at me and said: 'Do they do that for
you?--And poor old Gaunt, who's sixty-six and lame, has three
shillings a week to buy him everything.  Just think of that!  If we
had the pluck of flies--'  And he clenched his fists.  But Sheila
got up, looked hard at me, and said: 'That'll do, Derek.'  Then he
put his hand on my arm and said: 'It's only Cousin Nedda!'  I began
to love him then; and I believe he saw it, because I couldn't take
my eyes away.  But it was when Sheila sang 'The Red Sarafan,' after
dinner, that I knew for certain.  'The Red Sarafan'--it's a
wonderful song, all space and yearning, and yet such calm--it's the
song of the soul; and he was looking at me while she sang.  How can
he love me?  I am nothing--no good for anything!  Alan calls him a
'run-up kid, all legs and wings.'  Sometimes I hate Alan; he's
conventional and stodgy--the funny thing is that he admires Sheila.
She'll wake him up; she'll stick pins into him.  No, I don't want
Alan hurt--I want every one in the world to be happy, happy--as I
am. . . .  The next day was the thunder-storm.  I never saw
lightning so near--and didn't care a bit.  If he were struck I knew
I should be; that made it all right.  When you love, you don't
care, if only the something must happen to you both.  When it was
over, and we came out from behind the stack and walked home through
the fields, all the beasts looked at us as if we were new and had
never been seen before; and the air was ever so sweet, and that
long, red line of cloud low down in the purple, and the elm-trees
so heavy and almost black.  He put his arm round me, and I let
him. . . .  It seems an age to wait till they come to stay with us
next week.  If only Mother likes them, and I can go and stay at
Joyfields.  Will she like them?  It's all so different to what it
would be if they were ordinary.  But if he were ordinary I
shouldn't love him; it's because there's nobody like him.  That
isn't a loverish fancy--you only have to look at him against Alan
or Uncle Stanley or even Dad.  Everything he does is so different;
the way he walks, and the way he stands drawn back into himself,
like a stag, and looks out as if he were burning and smouldering
inside; even the way he smiles.  Dad asked me what I thought of
him!  That was only the second day.  I thought he was too proud,
then.  And Dad said: 'He ought to be in a Highland regiment; pity--
great pity!'  He is a fighter, of course.  I don't like fighting,
but if I'm not ready to, he'll stop loving me, perhaps.  I've got
to learn.  O Darkness out there, help me!  And Stars, help me!  O
God, make me brave, and I will believe in you forever!  If you are
the spirit that grows in things in spite of everything, until
they're like the flowers, so perfect that we laugh and sing at
their beauty, grow in me, too; make me beautiful and brave; then I
shall be fit for him, alive or dead; and that's all I want.  Every
evening I shall stand in spirit with him at the end of that orchard
in the darkness, under the trees above the white flowers and the
sleepy cows, and perhaps I shall feel him kiss me again. . . .  I'm
glad I saw that old man Gaunt; it makes what they feel more real to
me.  He showed me that poor laborer Tryst, too, the one who mustn't
marry his wife's sister, or have her staying in the house without
marrying her.  Why should people interfere with others like that?
It does make your blood boil!  Derek and Sheila have been brought
up to be in sympathy with the poor and oppressed.  If they had
lived in London they would have been even more furious, I expect.
And it's no use my saying to myself 'I don't know the laborer, I
don't know his hardships,' because he is really just the country
half of what I do know and see, here in London, when I don't hide
my eyes.  One talk showed me how desperately they feel; at night,
in Sheila's room, when we had gone up, just we four.  Alan began
it; they didn't want to, I could see; but he was criticising what
some of those Bigwigs had said--the 'Varsity makes boys awfully
conceited.  It was such a lovely night; we were all in the big,
long window.  A little bat kept flying past; and behind the copper-
beech the moon was shining on the lake.  Derek sat in the
windowsill, and when he moved he touched me.  To be touched by him
gives me a warm shiver all through.  I could hear him gritting his
teeth at what Alan said--frightfully sententious, just like a
newspaper: 'We can't go into land reform from feeling, we must go
into it from reason.'  Then Derek broke out: 'Walk through this
country as we've walked; see the pigsties the people live in; see
the water they drink; see the tiny patches of ground they have; see
the way their roofs let in the rain; see their peeky children; see
their patience and their hopelessness; see them working day in and
day out, and coming on the parish at the end!  See all that, and
then talk about reason!  Reason!  It's the coward's excuse, and the
rich man's excuse, for doing nothing.  It's the excuse of the man
who takes jolly good care not to see for fear that he may come to
feel!  Reason never does anything, it's too reasonable.  The thing
is to act; then perhaps reason will be jolted into doing
something.'  But Sheila touched his arm, and he stopped very
suddenly.  She doesn't trust us.  I shall always be being pushed
away from him by her.  He's just twenty, and I shall be eighteen in
a week; couldn't we marry now at once?  Then, whatever happened, I
couldn't be cut off from him.  If I could tell Dad, and ask him to
help me!  But I can't--it seems desecration to talk about it, even
to Dad.  All the way up in the train to-day, coming back home, I
was struggling not to show anything; though it's hateful to keep
things from Dad.  Love alters everything; it melts up the whole
world and makes it afresh.  Love is the sun of our spirits, and
it's the wind.  Ah, and the rain, too! But I won't think of
that! . . .  I wonder if he's told Aunt Kirsteen! . . ."


CHAPTER X


While Nedda sat, long past midnight, writing her heart out in her
little, white, lilac-curtained room of the old house above the
Spaniard's Road, Derek, of whom she wrote, was walking along the
Malvern hills, hurrying upward in the darkness.  The stars were his
companions; though he was no poet, having rather the fervid temper
of the born swordsman, that expresses itself in physical ecstasies.
He had come straight out from a stormy midnight talk with Sheila.
What was he doing--had been the burden of her cry--falling in love
just at this moment when they wanted all their wits and all their
time and strength for this struggle with the Mallorings?  It was
foolish, it was weak; and with a sweet, soft sort of girl who could
be no use.  Hotly he had answered: What business was it of hers?
As if one fell in love when one wished!  She didn't know--her blood
didn't run fast enough!  Sheila had retorted, "I've more blood in
my big toe than Nedda in all her body!  A lot of use you'll be,
with your heart mooning up in London!"  And crouched together on
the end of her bed, gazing fixedly up at him through her hair, she
had chanted mockingly: "Here we go gathering wool and stars--wool
and stars--wool and stars!"

He had not deigned to answer, but had gone out, furious with her,
striding over the dark fields, scrambling his way through the
hedges toward the high loom of the hills.  Up on the short grass in
the cooler air, with nothing between him and those swarming stars,
he lost his rage.  It never lasted long--hers was more enduring.
With the innate lordliness of a brother he already put it down to
jealousy.  Sheila was hurt that he should want any one but her; as
if his love for Nedda would make any difference to their resolution
to get justice for Tryst and the Gaunts, and show those landed
tyrants once for all that they could not ride roughshod.

Nedda! with her dark eyes, so quick and clear, so loving when they
looked at him!  Nedda, soft and innocent, the touch of whose lips
had turned his heart to something strange within him, and wakened
such feelings of chivalry!  Nedda!  To see whom for half a minute
he felt he would walk a hundred miles.

This boy's education had been administered solely by his mother
till he was fourteen, and she had brought him up on mathematics,
French, and heroism.  His extensive reading of history had been
focussed on the personality of heroes, chiefly knights errant, and
revolutionaries.  He had carried the worship of them to the
Agricultural College, where he had spent four years; and a rather
rough time there had not succeeded in knocking romance out of him.
He had found that you could not have such beliefs comfortably
without fighting for them, and though he ended his career with the
reputation of a rebel and a champion of the weak, he had had to
earn it.  To this day he still fed himself on stories of rebellions
and fine deeds.  The figures of Spartacus, Montrose, Hofer,
Garibaldi, Hampden, and John Nicholson, were more real to him than
the people among whom he lived, though he had learned never to
mention--especially not to the matter-of-fact Sheila--his
encompassing cloud of heroes; but, when he was alone, he pranced a
bit with them, and promised himself that he too would reach the
stars.  So you may sometimes see a little, grave boy walking
through a field, unwatched as he believes, suddenly fling his feet
and his head every which way.  An active nature, romantic, without
being dreamy and book-loving, is not too prone to the attacks of
love; such a one is likely to survive unscathed to a maturer age.
But Nedda had seduced him, partly by the appeal of her touchingly
manifest love and admiration, and chiefly by her eyes, through
which he seemed to see such a loyal, and loving little soul
looking.  She had that indefinable something which lovers know that
they can never throw away.  And he had at once made of her,
secretly, the crown of his active romanticism--the lady waiting for
the spoils of his lance.  Queer is the heart of a boy--strange its
blending of reality and idealism!

Climbing at a great pace, he reached Malvern Beacon just as it came
dawn, and stood there on the top, watching.  He had not much
aesthetic sense; but he had enough to be impressed by the slow
paling of the stars over space that seemed infinite, so little were
its dreamy confines visible in the May morning haze, where the
quivering crimson flags and spears of sunrise were forging up in a
march upon the sky.  That vision of the English land at dawn, wide
and mysterious, hardly tallied with Mr. Cuthcott's view of a future
dedicate to Park and Garden City.  While Derek stood there gazing,
the first lark soared up and began its ecstatic praise.  Save for
that song, silence possessed all the driven dark, right out to the
Severn and the sea, and the fastnesses of the Welsh hills, and the
Wrekin, away in the north, a black point in the gray.  For a moment
dark and light hovered and clung together.  Would victory wing back
into night or on into day?  Then, as a town is taken, all was over
in one overmastering rush, and light proclaimed.  Derek tightened
his belt and took a bee-line down over the slippery grass.  He
meant to reach the cottage of the laborer Tryst before that early
bird was away to the fields.  He meditated as he went.  Bob Tryst
was all right!  If they only had a dozen or two like him!  A dozen
or two whom they could trust, and who would trust each other and
stand firm to form the nucleus of a strike, which could be timed
for hay harvest.  What slaves these laborers still were!  If only
they could be relied on, if only they would stand together!
Slavery!  It WAS slavery; so long as they could be turned out of
their homes at will in this fashion.  His rebellion against the
conditions of their lives, above all against the manifold petty
tyrannies that he knew they underwent, came from use of his eyes
and ears in daily contact with a class among whom he had been more
or less brought up.  In sympathy with, and yet not of them, he had
the queer privilege of feeling their slights as if they were his
own, together with feelings of protection, and even of contempt
that they should let themselves be slighted.  He was near enough to
understand how they must feel; not near enough to understand why,
feeling as they did, they did not act as he would have acted.  In
truth, he knew them no better than he should.

He found Tryst washing at his pump.  In the early morning light the
big laborer's square, stubborn face, with its strange, dog-like
eyes, had a sodden, hungry, lost look.  Cutting short ablutions
that certainly were never protracted, he welcomed Derek, and
motioned him to pass into the kitchen.  The young man went in, and
perched himself on the window-sill beside a pot of Bridal Wreath.
The cottage was one of the Mallorings', and recently repaired.  A
little fire was burning, and a teapot of stewed tea sat there
beside it.  Four cups and spoons and some sugar were put out on a
deal table, for Tryst was, in fact, brewing the morning draught of
himself and children, who still lay abed up-stairs.  The sight made
Derek shiver and his eyes darken.  He knew the full significance of
what he saw.

"Did you ask him again, Bob?"

"Yes, I asked 'im."

"What did he say?"

"Said as orders was plain.  'So long as you lives there,' he says,
'along of yourself alone, you can't have her come back.'"

"Did you say the children wanted looking after badly?  Did you make
it clear?  Did you say Mrs. Tryst wished it, before she--"

"I said that."

"What did he say then?"

"'Sorry for you, m'lad, but them's m'lady's orders, an' I can't go
contrary.  I don't wish to go into things,' he says; 'you know
better'n I how far 'tis gone when she was 'ere before; but seein'
as m'lady don't never give in to deceased wife's sister marryin',
if she come back 'tis certain to be the other thing.  So, as that
won't do neither, you go elsewhere,' he says."

Having spoken thus at length, Tryst lifted the teapot and poured
out the dark tea into the three cups.

"Will 'ee have some, sir?"

Derek shook his head.

Taking the cups, Tryst departed up the narrow stairway.  And Derek
remained motionless, staring at the Bridal Wreath, till the big man
came down again and, retiring into a far corner, sat sipping at his
own cup.

"Bob," said the boy suddenly, "do you LIKE being a dog; put to what
company your master wishes?"

Tryst set his cup down, stood up, and crossed his thick arms--the
swift movement from that stolid creature had in it something
sinister; but he did not speak.

"Do you like it, Bob?"

"I'll not say what I feels, Mr. Derek; that's for me.  What I
does'll be for others, p'raps."

And he lifted his strange, lowering eyes to Derek's.  For a full
minute the two stared, then Derek said:

"Look out, then; be ready!" and, getting off the sill, he went out.

On the bright, slimy surface of the pond three ducks were quietly
revelling in that hour before man and his damned soul, the dog,
rose to put the fear of God into them.  In the sunlight, against
the green duckweed, their whiteness was truly marvellous; difficult
to believe that they were not white all through.  Passing the three
cottages, in the last of which the Gaunts lived, he came next to
his own home, but did not turn in, and made on toward the church.
It was a very little one, very old, and had for him a curious
fascination, never confessed to man or beast.  To his mother, and
Sheila, more intolerant, as became women, that little, lichened,
gray stone building was the very emblem of hypocrisy, of a creed
preached, not practised; to his father it was nothing, for it was
not alive, and any tramp, dog, bird, or fruit-tree meant far more.
But in Derek it roused a peculiar feeling, such as a man might have
gazing at the shores of a native country, out of which he had been
thrown for no fault of his own--a yearning deeply muffled up in
pride and resentment.  Not infrequently he would come and sit
brooding on the grassy hillock just above the churchyard.  Church-
going, with its pageantry, its tradition, dogma, and demand for
blind devotion, would have suited him very well, if only blind
devotion to his mother had not stood across that threshold; he
could not bring himself to bow to that which viewed his rebellious
mother as lost.  And yet the deep fibres of heredity from her
papistic Highland ancestors, and from old pious Moretons, drew him
constantly to this spot at times when no one would be about.  It
was his enemy, this little church, the fold of all the instincts
and all the qualities against which he had been brought up to
rebel; the very home of patronage and property and superiority; the
school where his friends the laborers were taught their place!  And
yet it had that queer, ironical attraction for him.  In some such
sort had his pet hero Montrose rebelled, and then been drawn
despite himself once more to the side of that against which he had
taken arms.

While he leaned against the rail, gazing at that ancient edifice,
he saw a girl walk into the churchyard at the far end, sit down on
a gravestone, and begin digging a little hole in the grass with the
toe of her boot.  She did not seem to see him, and at his ease he
studied her face, one of those broad, bright English country faces
with deep-set rogue eyes and red, thick, soft lips, smiling on
little provocation.  In spite of her disgrace, in spite of the fact
that she was sitting on her mother's grave, she did not look
depressed.  And Derek thought: 'Wilmet Gaunt is the jolliest of
them all!  She isn't a bit a bad girl, as they say; it's only that
she must have fun.  If they drive her out of here, she'll still
want fun wherever she is; she'll go to a town and end up like those
girls I saw in Bristol.'  And the memory of those night girls, with
their rouged faces and cringing boldness, came back to him with
horror.

He went across the grass toward her.

She looked round as he came, and her face livened.

"Well, Wilmet?"

"You're an early bird, Mr. Derek."

"Haven't been to bed."

"Oh!"

"Been up Malvern Beacon to see the sun rise."

"You're tired, I expect!"

"No."

"Must be fine up there.  You'd see a long ways from there; near to
London I should think.  Do you know London, Mr. Derek?"

"No."

"They say 'tis a funny place, too."  Her rogue eyes gleamed from
under a heavy frown.  "It'd not be all 'Do this' an' 'Do that'; an'
'You bad girl' an' 'You little hussy!' in London.  They say there's
room for more'n one sort of girl there."

"All towns are beastly places, Wilmet."

Again her rogue's eyes gleamed.  "I don' know so much about that,
Mr. Derek.  I'm going where I won't be chivied about and pointed
at, like what I am here."

"Your dad's stuck to you; you ought to stick to him."

"Ah, Dad!  He's losin' his place for me, but that don't stop his
tongue at home.  'Tis no use to nag me--nag me.  Suppose one of
m'lady's daughters had a bit of fun--they say there's lots as do--
I've heard tales--there'd be none comin' to chase her out of her
home.  'No, my girl, you can't live here no more, endangerin' the
young men.  You go away.  Best for you's where they'll teach you to
be'ave.  Go on!  Out with you!  I don't care where you go; but you
just go!'  'Tis as if girls were all pats o' butter--same square,
same pattern on it, same weight, an' all."

Derek had come closer; he put his hand down and gripped her arm.
Her eloquence dried up before the intentness of his face, and she
just stared up at him.

"Now, look here, Wilmet; you promise me not to scoot without
letting us know.  We'll get you a place to go to.  Promise."

A little sheepishly the rogue-girl answered:

"I promise; only, I'm goin'."

Suddenly she dimpled and broke into her broad smile.

"Mr. Derek, d'you know what they say--they say you're in love.  You
was seen in th' orchard.  Ah! 'tis all right for you and her!  But
if any one kiss and hug ME, I got to go!"

Derek drew back among the graves, as if he had been struck with a
whip.

She looked up at him with coaxing sweetness.

"Don't you mind me, Mr. Derek, and don't you stay here neither.  If
they saw you here with me, they'd say: 'Aw--look!  Endangerin'
another young man--poor young man!'  Good mornin', Mr. Derek!"

The rogue eyes followed him gravely, then once more began examining
the grass, and the toe of her boot again began kicking a little
hole.  But Derek did not look back.


CHAPTER XI


It is in the nature of men and angels to pursue with death such
birds as are uncommon, such animals as are rare; and Society had no
use for one like Tod, so uncut to its pattern as to be practically
unconscious of its existence.  Not that he had deliberately turned
his back on anything; he had merely begun as a very young man to
keep bees.  The better to do that he had gone on to the cultivation
of flowers and fruit, together with just enough farming as kept his
household in vegetables, milk, butter, and eggs.  Living thus
amongst insects, birds, cows, and the peace of trees, he had become
queer.  His was not a very reflective mind, it distilled but slowly
certain large conclusions, and followed intently the minute
happenings of his little world.  To him a bee, a bird, a flower, a
tree was well-nigh as interesting as a man; yet men, women, and
especially children took to him, as one takes to a Newfoundland
dog, because, though capable of anger, he seemed incapable of
contempt, and to be endowed with a sort of permanent wonder at
things.  Then, too, he was good to look at, which counts for more
than a little in the scales of our affections; indeed, the slight
air of absence in his blue eyes was not chilling, as is that which
portends a wandering of its owner on his own business.  People
recognized that it meant some bee or other in that bonnet, or
elsewhere, some sound or scent or sight of life, suddenly
perceived--always of life!  He had often been observed gazing with
peculiar gravity at a dead flower, bee, bird, or beetle, and, if
spoken to at such a moment, would say, "Gone!" touching a wing or
petal with his finger.  To conceive of what happened after death
did not apparently come within the few large conclusions of his
reflective powers.  That quaint grief of his in the presence of the
death of things that were not human had, more than anything,
fostered a habit among the gentry and clergy of the neighborhood of
drawing up the mouth when they spoke of him, and slightly raising
the shoulders.  For the cottagers, to be sure, his eccentricity
consisted rather in his being a 'gentleman,' yet neither eating
flesh, drinking wine, nor telling them how they ought to behave
themselves, together with the way he would sit down on anything and
listen to what they had to tell him, without giving them the
impression that he was proud of himself for doing so.  In fact, it
was the extraordinary impression he made of listening and answering
without wanting anything either for himself or for them, that they
could not understand.  How on earth it came about that he did not
give them advice about their politics, religion, morals, or
monetary states, was to them a never-ending mystery; and though
they were too well bred to shrug their shoulders, there did lurk in
their dim minds the suspicion that 'the good gentleman,' as they
called him, was 'a tiddy-bit off.'  He had, of course, done many
practical little things toward helping them and their beasts, but
always, as it seemed, by accident, so that they could never make up
their minds afterward whether he remembered having done them,
which, in fact, he probably did not; and this seemed to them
perhaps the most damning fact of all about his being--well, about
his being--not quite all there.  Another worrying habit he had,
too, that of apparently not distinguishing between them and any
tramps or strangers who might happen along and come across him.
This was, in their eyes, undoubtedly a fault; for the village was,
after all, their village, and he, as it were, their property.  To
crown all, there was a story, full ten years old now, which had
lost nothing in the telling, of his treatment of a cattle-drover.
To the village it had an eerie look, that windmill-like rage let
loose upon a man who, after all, had only been twisting a bullock's
tail and running a spiked stick into its softer parts, as any
drover might.  People said--the postman and a wagoner had seen the
business, raconteurs born, so that the tale had perhaps lost
nothing--that he had positively roared as he came leaping down into
the lane upon the man, a stout and thick-set fellow, taken him up
like a baby, popped him into a furzebush, and held him there.
People said that his own bare arms had been pricked to the very
shoulder from pressing the drover down into that uncompromising
shrub, and the man's howls had pierced the very heavens.  The
postman, to this day, would tell how the mere recollection of
seeing it still made him sore all over.  Of the words assigned to
Tod on this occasion, the mildest and probably most true were: "By
the Lord God, if you treat a beast like that again, I'll cut your
liver out, you hell-hearted sweep!"

The incident, which had produced a somewhat marked effect in regard
to the treatment of animals all round that neighborhood, had never
been forgotten, nor in a sense forgiven.  In conjunction with the
extraordinary peace and mildness of his general behavior, it had
endowed Tod with mystery; and people, especially simple folk,
cannot bring themselves to feel quite at home with mystery.
Children only--to whom everything is so mysterious that nothing can
be--treated him as he treated them, giving him their hands with
confidence.  But children, even his own, as they grew up, began to
have a little of the village feeling toward Tod; his world was not
theirs, and what exactly his world was they could not grasp.
Possibly it was the sense that they partook of his interest and
affection too much on a level with any other kind of living thing
that might happen to be about, which discomfited their
understanding.  They held him, however, in a certain reverence.

That early morning he had already done a good two hours' work in
connection with broad beans, of which he grew, perhaps, the best in
the whole county, and had knocked off for a moment, to examine a
spider's web.  This marvellous creation, which the dew had visited
and clustered over, as stars over the firmament, was hung on the
gate of the vegetable garden, and the spider, a large and active
one, was regarding Tod with the misgiving natural to its species.
Intensely still Tod stood, absorbed in contemplation of that bright
and dusty miracle.  Then, taking up his hoe again, he went back to
the weeds that threatened his broad beans.  Now and again he
stopped to listen, or to look at the sky, as is the way of
husbandmen, thinking of nothing, enjoying the peace of his muscles.

"Please, sir, father's got into a fit again."

Two little girls were standing in the lane below.  The elder, who
had spoken in that small, anxious voice, had a pale little face
with pointed chin; her hair, the color of over-ripe corn, hung
fluffy on her thin shoulders, her flower-like eyes, with something
motherly in them already, were the same hue as her pale-blue,
almost clean, overall.  She had her smaller, chubbier sister by the
hand, and, having delivered her message, stood still, gazing up at
Tod, as one might at God.  Tod dropped his hoe.

"Biddy come with me; Susie go and tell Mrs. Freeland, or Miss
Sheila."

He took the frail little hand of the elder Tryst and ran.  They ran
at the child's pace, the one so very massive, the other such a
whiff of flesh and blood.

"Did you come at once, Biddy?"

"Yes, sir."

"Where was he taken?"

"In the kitchen--just as I was cookin' breakfast."

"Ah! Is it a bad one?"

"Yes, sir, awful bad--he's all foamy."

"What did you do for it?"

"Susie and me turned him over, and Billy's seein' he don't get his
tongue down his throat--like what you told us, and we ran to you.
Susie was frightened, he hollered so."

Past the three cottages, whence a woman at a window stared in amaze
to see that queer couple running, past the pond where the ducks,
whiter than ever in the brightening sunlight, dived and circled
carelessly, into the Tryst kitchen.  There on the brick floor lay
the distressful man, already struggling back out of epilepsy, while
his little frightened son sat manfully beside him.

"Towels, and hot water, Biddy!"

With extraordinary calm rapidity the small creature brought what
might have been two towels, a basin, and the kettle; and in silence
she and Tod steeped his forehead.

"Eyes look better, Biddy?"

"He don't look so funny now, sir."

Picking up that form, almost as big as his own, Tod carried it up
impossibly narrow stairs and laid it on a dishevelled bed.

"Phew!  Open the window, Biddy."

The small creature opened what there was of window.

"Now, go down and heat two bricks and wrap them in something, and
bring them up."

Tryst's boots and socks removed, Tod rubbed the large, warped feet.
While doing this he whistled, and the little boy crept up-stairs
and squatted in the doorway, to watch and listen.  The morning air
overcame with its sweetness the natural odor of that small room,
and a bird or two went flirting past.  The small creature came back
with the bricks, wrapped in petticoats of her own, and, placing
them against the soles of her father's feet, she stood gazing at
Tod, for all the world like a little mother dog with puppies.

"You can't go to school to-day, Biddy."

"Is Susie and Billy to go?"

"Yes; there's nothing to be frightened of now.  He'll be nearly all
right by evening.  But some one shall stay with you."

At this moment Tryst lifted his hand, and the small creature went
and stood beside him, listening to the whispering that emerged from
his thick lips.

"Father says I'm to thank you, please."

"Yes.  Have you had your breakfasts?"

The small creature and her smaller brother shook their heads.

"Go down and get them."

Whispering and twisting back, they went, and by the side of the bed
Tod sat down.  In Tryst's eyes was that same look of dog-like
devotion he had bent on Derek earlier that morning.  Tod stared out
of the window and gave the man's big hand a squeeze.  Of what did
he think, watching a lime-tree outside, and the sunlight through
its foliage painting bright the room's newly whitewashed wall,
already gray-spotted with damp again; watching the shadows of the
leaves playing in that sunlight?  Almost cruel, that lovely shadow
game of outside life so full and joyful, so careless of man and
suffering; too gay almost, too alive!  Of what did he think,
watching the chase and dart of shadow on shadow, as of gray
butterflies fluttering swift to the sack of flowers, while beside
him on the bed the big laborer lay? . . .

When Kirsteen and Sheila came to relieve him of that vigil he went
down-stairs.  There in the kitchen Biddy was washing up, and Susie
and Billy putting on their boots for school.  They stopped to gaze
at Tod feeling in his pockets, for they knew that things sometimes
happened after that.  To-day there came out two carrots, some lumps
of sugar, some cord, a bill, a pruning knife, a bit of wax, a bit
of chalk, three flints, a pouch of tobacco, two pipes, a match-box
with a single match in it, a six-pence, a necktie, a stick of
chocolate, a tomato, a handkerchief, a dead bee, an old razor, a
bit of gauze, some tow, a stick of caustic, a reel of cotton, a
needle, no thimble, two dock leaves, and some sheets of yellowish
paper.  He separated from the rest the sixpence, the dead bee, and
what was edible.  And in delighted silence the three little Trysts
gazed, till Biddy with the tip of one wet finger touched the bee.

"Not good to eat, Biddy."

At those words, one after the other, cautiously, the three little
Trysts smiled.  Finding that Tod smiled too, they broadened, and
Billy burst into chuckles.  Then, clustering in the doorway,
grasping the edibles and the sixpence, and consulting with each
other, they looked long after his big figure passing down the road.


CHAPTER XII


Still later, that same morning, Derek and Sheila moved slowly up
the Mallorings' well-swept drive.  Their lips were set, as though
they had spoken the last word before battle, and an old cock
pheasant, running into the bushes close by, rose with a whir and
skimmed out toward his covert, scared, perhaps, by something
uncompromising in the footsteps of those two.

Only when actually under the shelter of the porch, which some folk
thought enhanced the old Greek-temple effect of the Mallorings'
house, Derek broke through that taciturnity:

"What if they won't?"

"Wait and see; and don't lose your head, Derek."  The man who stood
there when the door opened was tall, grave, wore his hair in
powder, and waited without speech.

"Will you ask Sir Gerald and Lady Malloring if Miss Freeland and
Mr. Derek Freeland could see them, please; and will you say the
matter is urgent?"

The man bowed, left them, and soon came back.

"My lady will see you, miss; Sir Gerald is not in.  This way."

Past the statuary, flowers, and antlers of the hall, they traversed
a long, cool corridor, and through a white door entered a white
room, not very large, and very pretty.  Two children got up as they
came in and flapped out past them like young partridges, and Lady
Malloring rose from her writing-table and came forward, holding out
her hand.  The two young Freelands took it gravely.  For all their
hostility they could not withstand the feeling that she would think
them terrible young prigs if they simply bowed.  And they looked
steadily at one with whom they had never before been at quite such
close quarters.  Lady Malloring, who had originally been the
Honorable Mildred Killory, a daughter of Viscount Silport, was
tall, slender, and not very striking, with very fair hair going
rather gray; her expression in repose was pleasant, a little
anxious; only by her eyes was the suspicion awakened that she was a
woman of some character.  They had that peculiar look of belonging
to two worlds, so often to be met with in English eyes, a look of
self-denying aspiration, tinctured with the suggestion that denial
might not be confined to self.

In a quite friendly voice she said:

"Can I do anything for you?"  And while she waited for an answer
her glance travelled from face to face of the two young people,
with a certain curiosity.  After a silence of several seconds,
Sheila answered:

"Not for us, thank you; for others, you can."

Lady Malloring's eyebrows rose a little, as if there seemed to her
something rather unjust in those words--'for others.'

"Yes?" she said.

Sheila, whose hands were clenched, and whose face had been fiery
red, grew suddenly almost white.

"Lady Malloring, will you please let the Gaunts stay in their
cottage and Tryst's wife's sister come to live with the children
and him?"

Lady Malloring raised one hand; the motion, quite involuntary,
ended at the tiny cross on her breast.  She said quietly:

"I'm afraid you don't understand."

"Yes," said Sheila, still very pale, "we understand quite well.  We
understand that you are acting in what you believe to be the
interests of morality.  All the same, won't you?  Do!"

"I'm very sorry, but I can't."

"May we ask why?"

Lady Malloring started, and transferred her glance to Derek.

"I don't know," she said with a smile, "that I am obliged to
account for my actions to you two young people.  Besides, you must
know why, quite well."

Sheila put out her hand.

"Wilmet Gaunt will go to the bad if you turn them out."

"I am afraid I think she has gone to the bad already, and I do not
mean her to take others there with her.  I am sorry for poor Tryst,
and I wish he could find some nice woman to marry; but what he
proposes is impossible."

The blood had flared up again in Sheila's cheeks; she was as red as
the comb of a turkey-cock.

"Why shouldn't he marry his wife's sister?  It's legal, now, and
you've no right to stop it."

Lady Malloring bit her lips; she looked straight and hard at
Sheila.

"I do not stop it; I have no means of stopping it.  Only, he cannot
do it and live in one of our cottages.  I don't think we need
discuss this further."

"I beg your pardon--"

The words had come from Derek.  Lady Malloring paused in her walk
toward the bell.  With his peculiar thin-lipped smile the boy went
on:

"We imagined you would say no; we really came because we thought it
fair to warn you that there may be trouble."

Lady Malloring smiled.

"This is a private matter between us and our tenants, and we should
be so glad if you could manage not to interfere."

Derek bowed, and put his hand within his sister's arm.  But Sheila
did not move; she was trembling with anger.

"Who are you," she suddenly burst out, "to dispose of the poor,
body and soul?  Who are you, to dictate their private lives?  If
they pay their rent, that should be enough for you."

Lady Malloring moved swiftly again toward the bell.  She paused
with her hand on it, and said:

"I am sorry for you two; you have been miserably brought up!"

There was a silence; then Derek said quietly:

"Thank you; we shall remember that insult to our people.  Don't
ring, please; we're going."

In a silence if anything more profound than that of their approach,
the two young people retired down the drive.  They had not yet
learned--most difficult of lessons--how to believe that people
could in their bones differ from them.  It had always seemed to
them that if only they had a chance of putting directly what they
thought, the other side must at heart agree, and only go on saying
they didn't out of mere self-interest.  They came away, therefore,
from this encounter with the enemy a little dazed by the discovery
that Lady Malloring in her bones believed that she was right.  It
confused them, and heated the fires of their anger.

They had shaken off all private dust before Sheila spoke.

"They're all like that--can't see or feel--simply certain they're
superior!  It makes--it makes me hate them!  It's terrible,
ghastly."  And while she stammered out those little stabs of
speech, tears of rage rolled down her cheeks.

Derek put his arm round her waist.

"All right!  No good groaning; let's think seriously what to do."

There was comfort to the girl in that curiously sudden reversal of
their usual attitudes.

"Whatever's done," he went on, "has got to be startling.  It's no
good pottering and protesting, any more."  And between his teeth he
muttered: "'Men of England, wherefore plough?' . . ."


In the room where the encounter had taken place Mildred Malloring
was taking her time to recover.  From very childhood she had felt
that the essence of her own goodness, the essence of her duty in
life, was the doing of 'good' to others; from very childhood she
had never doubted that she was in a position to do this, and that
those to whom she did good, although they might kick against it as
inconvenient, must admit that it WAS their 'good.'  The thought:
'They don't admit that I am superior!' had never even occurred to
her, so completely was she unselfconscious, in her convinced
superiority.  It was hard, indeed, to be flung against such
outspoken rudeness.  It shook her more than she gave sign of, for
she was not by any means an insensitive woman--shook her almost to
the point of feeling that there was something in the remonstrance
of those dreadful young people.  Yet, how could there be, when no
one knew better than she that the laborers on the Malloring estate
were better off than those on nine out of ten estates; better paid
and better housed, and--better looked after in their morals.  Was
she to give up that?--when she knew that she WAS better able to
tell what was good for them than they were themselves.  After all,
without stripping herself naked of every thought, experience, and
action since her birth, how could she admit that she was not better
able?  And slowly, in the white room with the moss-green carpet,
she recovered, till there was only just a touch of soreness left,
at the injustice implicit in their words.  Those two had been
'miserably brought up,' had never had a chance of finding their
proper place, of understanding that they were just two callow young
things, for whom Life had some fearful knocks in store.  She could
even feel now that she had meant that saying: 'I am sorry for you
two!'  She WAS sorry for them, sorry for their want of manners and
their point of view, neither of which they could help, of course,
with a mother like that.  For all her gentleness and sensibility,
there was much practical directness about Mildred Malloring; for
her, a page turned was a page turned, an idea absorbed was never
disgorged; she was of religious temperament, ever trimming her
course down the exact channel marked out with buoys by the Port
Authorities, and really incapable of imagining spiritual wants in
others that could not be satisfied by what satisfied herself.  And
this pathetic strength she had in common with many of her fellow
creatures in every class.  Sitting down at the writing-table from
which she had been disturbed, she leaned her thin, rather long,
gentle, but stubborn face on her hand, thinking.  These Gaunts were
a source of irritation in the parish, a kind of open sore.  It
would be better if they could be got rid of before quarter day, up
to which she had weakly said they might remain.  Far better for
them to go at once, if it could be arranged.  As for the poor
fellow Tryst, thinking that by plunging into sin he could improve
his lot and his poor children's, it was really criminal of those
Freelands to encourage him.  She had refrained hitherto from
seriously worrying Gerald on such points of village policy--his
hands were so full; but he must now take his part.  And she rang
the bell.

"Tell Sir Gerald I'd like to see him, please, as soon as he gets
back."

"Sir Gerald has just come in, my lady."

"Now, then!"

Gerald Malloring--an excellent fellow, as could be seen from his
face of strictly Norman architecture, with blue stained-glass
windows rather deep set in--had only one defect: he was not a poet.
Not that this would have seemed to him anything but an advantage,
had he been aware of it.  His was one of those high-principled
natures who hold that breadth is synonymous with weakness.  It may
be said without exaggeration that the few meetings of his life with
those who had a touch of the poet in them had been exquisitely
uncomfortable.  Silent, almost taciturn by nature, he was a great
reader of poetry, and seldom went to sleep without having digested
a page or two of Wordsworth, Milton, Tennyson, or Scott.  Byron,
save such poems as 'Don Juan' or 'The Waltz,' he could but did not
read, for fear of setting a bad example.  Burns, Shelley, and Keats
he did not care for.  Browning pained him, except by such things
as: 'How They Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix' and the
'Cavalier Tunes'; while of 'Omar Khayyam' and 'The Hound of Heaven'
he definitely disapproved.  For Shakespeare he had no real liking,
though he concealed this, from humility in the face of accepted
opinion.  His was a firm mind, sure of itself, but not self-
assertive.  His points were so good, and he had so many of them,
that it was only when he met any one touched with poetry that his
limitations became apparent; it was rare, however, and getting more
so every year, for him to have this unpleasant experience.

When summoned by his wife, he came in with a wrinkle between his
straight brows; he had just finished a morning's work on a drainage
scheme, like the really good fellow that he was.  She greeted him
with a little special smile.  Nothing could be friendlier than the
relations between these two.  Affection and trust, undeviating
undemonstrativeness, identity of feeling as to religion, children,
property; and, in regard to views on the question of sex, a really
strange unanimity, considering that they were man and woman.

"It's about these Gaunts, Gerald.  I feel they must go at once.
They're only creating bad feeling by staying till quarter day.  I
have had the young Freelands here."

"Those young pups!"

"Can't it be managed?"

Malloring did not answer hastily.  He had that best point of the
good Englishman, a dislike to being moved out of a course of
conduct by anything save the appeal of his own conscience.

"I don't know," he said, "why we should alter what we thought was
just.  Must give him time to look round and get a job elsewhere."

"I think the general state of feeling demands it.  It's not fair to
the villagers to let the Freelands have such a handle for
agitating.  Labor's badly wanted everywhere; he can't have any
difficulty in getting a place, if he likes."

"No.  Only, I rather admire the fellow for sticking by his girl,
though he is such a 'land-lawyer.'  I think it's a bit harsh to
move him suddenly."

"So did I, till I saw from those young furies what harm it's doing.
They really do infect the cottagers.  You know how discontent
spreads.  And Tryst--they're egging him on, too."

Malloring very thoughtfully filled a pipe.  He was not an alarmist;
if anything, he erred on the side of not being alarmed until it was
all over and there was no longer anything to be alarmed at!  His
imagination would then sometimes take fire, and he would say that
such and such, or so and so, was dangerous.

"I'd rather go and have a talk with Freeland," he said.  "He's
queer, but he's not at all a bad chap."

Lady Malloring rose, and took one of his real-leather buttons in
her hand.

"My dear Gerald, Mr. Freeland doesn't exist."

"Don't know about that; a man can always come to life, if he likes,
in his own family."

Lady Malloring was silent.  It was true.  For all their unanimity
of thought and feeling, for all the latitude she had in domestic
and village affairs, Gerald had a habit of filling his pipe with
her decisions.  Quite honestly, she had no objection to their
becoming smoke through HIS lips, though she might wriggle just a
little.  To her credit, she did entirely carry out in her life her
professed belief that husbands should be the forefronts of their
wives.  For all that, there burst from her lips the words:

"That Freeland woman!  When I think of the mischief she's always
done here, by her example and her irreligion--I can't forgive her.
I don't believe you'll make any impression on Mr. Freeland; he's
entirely under her thumb."

Smoking slowly, and looking just over the top of his wife's head,
Malioring answered:

"I'll have a try; and don't you worry!"

Lady Malloring turned away.  Her soreness still wanted salve.

"Those two young people," she murmured, "said some very unpleasant
things to me.  The boy, I believe, might have some good in him, but
the girl is simply terrible."

"H'm!  I think just the reverse, you know."

"They'll come to awful grief if they're not brought up sharp.  They
ought to be sent to the colonies to learn reality."

Malloring nodded.

"Come out, Mildred, and see how they're getting on with the new
vinery."  And they went out together through the French window.

The vinery was of their own designing, and of extraordinary
interest.  In contemplation of its lofty glass and aluminium-cased
pipes the feeling of soreness left her.  It was very pleasant,
standing with Gerald, looking at what they had planned together;
there was a soothing sense of reality about that visit, after the
morning's happening, with its disappointment, its reminder of
immorality and discontent, and of folk ungrateful for what was done
for their good.  And, squeezing her husband's arm, she murmured:

"It's really exactly what we thought it would be, Gerald!"


CHAPTER XIII


About five o'clock of that same afternoon, Gerald Malloring went to
see Tod.  An open-air man himself, who often deplored the long
hours he was compelled to spend in the special atmosphere of the
House of Commons, he rather envied Tod his existence in this
cottage, crazed from age, and clothed with wistaria, rambler roses,
sweetbrier, honeysuckle, and Virginia creeper.  Freeland had, in
his opinion, quite a jolly life of it--the poor fellow not being
able, of course, to help having a cranky wife and children like
that.  He pondered, as he went along, over a talk at Becket, when
Stanley, still under the influence of Felix's outburst, had uttered
some rather queer sayings.  For instance, he had supposed that they
(meaning, apparently, himself and Malloring) WERE rather unable to
put themselves in the position of these Trysts and Gaunts.  He
seemed to speak of them as one might speak generically of Hodge,
which had struck Malloring as singular, it not being his habit to
see anything in common between an individual case, especially on
his own estate, and the ethics of a general proposition.  The place
for general propositions was undoubtedly the House of Commons,
where they could be supported one way or the other, out of blue
books.  He had little use for them in private life, where
innumerable things such as human nature and all that came into
play.  He had stared rather hard at his host when Stanley had
followed up that first remark with: "I'm bound to say, I shouldn't
care to have to get up at half past five, and go out without a
bath!"  What that had to do with the land problem or the regulation
of village morality Malloring had been unable to perceive.  It all
depended on what one was accustomed to; and in any case threw no
light on the question, as to whether or not he was to tolerate on
his estate conduct of which his wife and himself distinctly
disapproved.  At the back of national life there was always this
problem of individual conduct, especially sexual conduct--without
regularity in which, the family, as the unit of national life, was
gravely threatened, to put it on the lowest ground.  And he did not
see how to bring it home to the villagers that they had got to be
regular, without making examples now and then.

He had hoped very much to get through his call without coming
across Freeland's wife and children, and was greatly relieved to
find Tod, seated on a window-sill in front of his cottage, smoking,
and gazing apparently at nothing.  In taking the other corner of
the window-sill, the thought passed through his mind that Freeland
was really a very fine-looking fellow.  Tod was, indeed, about
Malloring's own height of six feet one, with the same fairness and
straight build of figure and feature.  But Tod's head was round and
massive, his hair crisp and uncut; Malloring's head long and
narrow, his hair smooth and close-cropped.  Tod's eyes, blue and
deep-set, seemed fixed on the horizon, Malloring's, blue and deep-
set, on the nearest thing they could light on.  Tod smiled, as it
were, without knowing; Malloring seemed to know what he was smiling
at almost too well.  It was comforting, however, that Freeland was
as shy and silent as himself, for this produced a feeling that
there could not be any real difference between their points of
view.  Perceiving at last that if he did not speak they would
continue sitting there dumb till it was time for him to go,
Malloring said:

"Look here, Freeland; about my wife and yours and Tryst and the
Gaunts, and all the rest of it!  It's a pity, isn't it?  This is a
small place, you know.  What's your own feeling?"

Tod answered:

"A man has only one life."

Malloring was a little puzzled.

"In this world.  I don't follow."

"Live and let live."

A part of Malloring undoubtedly responded to that curt saying, a
part of him as strongly rebelled against it; and which impulse he
was going to follow was not at first patent.

"You see, YOU keep apart," he said at last.  "You couldn't say that
so easily if you had, like us, to take up the position in which we
find ourselves."

"Why take it up?"

Malloring frowned.  "How would things go on?"

"All right," said Tod.

Malloring got up from the sill.  This was 'laisser-faire' with a
vengeance!  Such philosophy had always seemed to him to savor
dangerously of anarchism.  And yet twenty years' experience as a
neighbor had shown him that Tod was in himself perhaps the most
harmless person in Worcestershire, and held in a curious esteem by
most of the people about.  He was puzzled, and sat down again.

"I've never had a chance to talk things over with you," he said.
"There are a good few people, Freeland, who can't behave
themselves; we're not bees, you know!"

He stopped, having an uncomfortable suspicion that his hearer was
not listening.

"First I've heard this year," said Tod.

For all the rudeness of that interruption, Malloring felt a stir of
interest.  He himself liked birds.  Unfortunately, he could hear
nothing but the general chorus of their songs.

"Thought they'd gone," murmured Tod.

Malloring again got up.  "Look here, Freeland," he said, "I wish
you'd give your mind to this.  You really ought not to let your
wife and children make trouble in the village."

Confound the fellow!  He was smiling; there was a sort of twinkle
in his smile, too, that Malloring found infectious!

"No, seriously," he said, "you don't know what harm you mayn't do."

"Have you ever watched a dog looking at a fire?" asked Tod.

"Yes, often; why?"

"He knows better than to touch it."

"You mean you're helpless?  But you oughtn't to be."

The fellow was smiling again!

"Then you don't mean to do anything?"

Tod shook his head.

Malloring flushed.  "Now, look here, Freeland," he said, "forgive
my saying so, but this strikes me as a bit cynical.  D'you think I
enjoy trying to keep things straight?"

Tod looked up.

"Birds," he said, "animals, insects, vegetable life--they all eat
each other more or less, but they don't fuss about it."

Malloring turned abruptly and went down the path.  Fuss!  He never
fussed.  Fuss!  The word was an insult, addressed to him!  If there
was one thing he detested more than another, whether in public or
private life, it was 'fussing.'  Did he not belong to the League
for Suppression of Interference with the Liberty of the Subject?
Was he not a member of the party notoriously opposed to fussy
legislation?  Had any one ever used the word in connection with
conduct of his, before?  If so, he had never heard them.  Was it
fussy to try and help the Church to improve the standard of morals
in the village?  Was it fussy to make a simple decision and stick
to it?  The injustice of the word really hurt him.  And the more it
hurt him, the slower and more dignified and upright became his
march toward his drive gate.

'Wild geese' in the morning sky had been forerunners; very heavy
clouds were sweeping up from the west, and rain beginning to fall.
He passed an old man leaning on the gate of a cottage garden and
said: "Good evening!"

The old man touched his hat but did not speak.

"How's your leg, Gaunt?"

"'Tis much the same, Sir Gerald."

"Rain coming makes it shoot, I expect."

"It do."

Malloring stood still.  The impulse was on him to see if, after
all, the Gaunts' affair could not be disposed of without turning
the old fellow and his son out.

"Look here!" he said; "about this unfortunate business.  Why don't
you and your son make up your minds without more ado to let your
granddaughter go out to service?  You've been here all your lives;
I don't want to see you go."

The least touch of color invaded the old man's carved and grayish
face.

"Askin' your pardon," he said, "my son sticks by his girl, and I
sticks by my son!"

"Oh! very well; you know your own business, Gaunt.  I spoke for
your good."

A faint smile curled the corners of old Gaunt's mouth downward
beneath his gray moustaches.

"Thank you kindly," he said.

Malloring raised a finger to his cap and passed on.  Though he felt
a longing to stride his feelings off, he did not increase his pace,
knowing that the old man's eyes were following him.  But how pig-
headed they were, seeing nothing but their own point of view!
Well, he could not alter his decision.  They would go at the June
quarter--not a day before, nor after.

Passing Tryst's cottage, he noticed a 'fly' drawn up outside, and
its driver talking to a woman in hat and coat at the cottage
doorway.  She avoided his eye.

'The wife's sister again!' he thought.  'So that fellow's going to
be an ass, too?  Hopeless, stubborn lot!'  And his mind passed on
to his scheme for draining the bottom fields at Cantley Bromage.
This village trouble was too small to occupy for long the mind of
one who had so many duties. . . .

Old Gaunt remained at the gate watching till the tall figure passed
out of sight, then limped slowly down the path and entered his
son's cottage.  Tom Gaunt, not long in from work, was sitting in
his shirtsleeves, reading the paper--a short, thick-set man with
small eyes, round, ruddy cheeks, and humorous lips indifferently
concealed by a ragged moustache.  Even in repose there was about
him something talkative and disputatious.  He was clearly the kind
of man whose eyes and wit would sparkle above a pewter pot.  A good
workman, he averaged out an income of perhaps eighteen shillings a
week, counting the two shillings' worth of vegetables that he grew.
His erring daughter washed for two old ladies in a bungalow, so
that with old Gaunt's five shillings from the parish, the total
resources of this family of five, including two small boys at
school, was seven and twenty shillings a week.  Quite a sum!  His
comparative wealth no doubt contributed to the reputation of Tom
Gaunt, well known as local wag and disturber of political meetings.
His method with these gatherings, whether Liberal or Tory, had a
certain masterly simplicity.  By interjecting questions that could
not be understood, and commenting on the answers received, he
insured perpetual laughter, with the most salutary effects on the
over-consideration of any political question, together with a
tendency to make his neighbors say: "Ah! Tom Gaunt, he's a proper
caution, he is!"  An encomium dear to his ears.  What he seriously
thought about anything in this world, no one knew; but some
suspected him of voting Liberal, because he disturbed their
meetings most.  His loyalty to his daughter was not credited to
affection.  It was like Tom Gaunt to stick his toes in and kick--
the Quality, for choice.  To look at him and old Gaunt, one would
not have thought they could be son and father, a relationship
indeed ever dubious.  As for his wife, she had been dead twelve
years.  Some said he had joked her out of life, others that she had
gone into consumption.  He was a reader--perhaps the only one in
all the village, and could whistle like a blackbird.  To work hard,
but without too great method, to drink hard, but with perfect
method, and to talk nineteen to the dozen anywhere except at home--
was his mode of life.  In a word, he was a 'character.'

Old Gaunt sat down in a wooden rocking-chair, and spoke.

"Sir Gerald 'e've a-just passed."

"Sir Gerald 'e can goo to hell.  They'll know un there, by 'is
little ears."

"'E've a-spoke about us stoppin'; so as Mettie goes out to
sarvice."

"'E've a-spoke about what 'e don't know 'bout, then.  Let un do
what they like, they can't put Tom Gaunt about; he can get work
anywhere--Tom Gaunt can, an' don't you forget that, old man."

The old man, placing his thin brown hands on his knees, was silent.
And thoughts passed through and through him.  'If so be as Tom
goes, there'll be no one as'll take me in for less than three bob a
week.  Two bob a week, that's what I'll 'ave to feed me--Two bob a
week--two bob a week!  But if so be's I go with Tom, I'll 'ave to
reg'lar sit down under he for me bread and butter.'  And he
contemplated his son.

"Where are you goin', then?" he said.

Tom Gaunt rustled the greenish paper he was reading, and his
little, hard gray eyes fixed his father.

"Who said I was going?"

Old Gaunt, smoothing and smoothing the lined, thin cheeks of the
parchmenty, thin-nosed face that Frances Freeland had thought to be
almost like a gentleman's, answered: "I thart you said you was
goin'."

"You think too much, then--that's what 'tis.  You think too much,
old man."

With a slight deepening of the sardonic patience in his face, old
Gaunt rose, took a bowl and spoon down from a shelf, and very
slowly proceeded to make himself his evening meal.  It consisted of
crusts of bread soaked in hot water and tempered with salt, pepper,
onion, and a touch of butter.  And while he waited, crouched over
the kettle, his son smoked his grayish clay and read his greenish
journal; an old clock ticked and a little cat purred without
provocation on the ledge of the tight-closed window.  Then the door
opened and the rogue-girl appeared.  She shook her shoulders as
though to dismiss the wetting she had got, took off her turn-down,
speckly, straw hat, put on an apron, and rolled up her sleeves.
Her arms were full and firm and red; the whole of her was full and
firm.  From her rosy cheeks to her stout ankles she was
superabundant with vitality, the strangest contrast to her shadowy,
thin old grandfather.  About the preparation of her father's tea
she moved with a sort of brooding stolidity, out of which would
suddenly gleam a twinkle of rogue-sweetness, as when she stopped to
stroke the little cat or to tickle the back of her grandfather's
lean neck in passing.  Having set the tea, she stood by the table
and said slowly: "Tea's ready, father.  I'm goin' to London."

Tom Gaunt put down his pipe and journal, took his seat at the
table, filled his mouth with sausage, and said: "You're goin' where
I tell you."

"I'm goin' to London."

Tom Gaunt stayed the morsel in one cheek and fixed her with his
little, wild boar's eye.

"Ye're goin' to catch the stick," he said.  "Look here, my girl,
Tom Gaunt's been put about enough along of you already.  Don't you
make no mistake."

"I'm goin' to London," repeated the rogue-girl stolidly.  "You can
get Alice to come over."

"Oh!  Can I?  Ye're not goin' till I tell you.  Don't you think
it!"

"I'm goin'.  I saw Mr. Derek this mornin'.  They'll get me a place
there."

Tom Gaunt remained with his fork as it were transfixed.  The effort
of devising contradiction to the chief supporters of his own
rebellion was for the moment too much for him.  He resumed
mastication.

"You'll go where I want you to go; and don't you think you can tell
me where that is."

In the silence that ensued the only sound was that of old Gaunt
supping at his crusty-broth.  Then the rogue-girl went to the
window and, taking the little cat on her breast, sat looking out
into the rain.  Having finished his broth, old Gaunt got up, and,
behind his son's back, he looked at his granddaughter and thought:

'Goin' to London!  'Twud be best for us all.  WE shudn' need to be
movin', then.  Goin' to London!'  But he felt desolate.


CHAPTER XIV


When Spring and first love meet in a girl's heart, then the birds
sing.

The songs that blackbirds and dusty-coated thrushes flung through
Nedda's window when she awoke in Hampstead those May mornings
seemed to have been sung by herself all night.  Whether the sun
were flashing on the leaves, or rain-drops sieving through on a
sou'west wind, the same warmth glowed up in her the moment her eyes
opened.  Whether the lawn below were a field of bright dew, or dry
and darkish in a shiver of east wind, her eyes never grew dim all
day; and her blood felt as light as ostrich feathers.

Stormed by an attack of his cacoethes scribendi, after those few
blank days at Becket, Felix saw nothing amiss with his young
daughter.  The great observer was not observant of things that
other people observed.  Neither he nor Flora, occupied with matters
of more spiritual importance, could tell, offhand, for example, on
which hand a wedding-ring was worn.  They had talked enough of
Becket and the Tods to produce the impression on Flora's mind that
one day or another two young people would arrive in her house on a
visit; but she had begun a poem called 'Dionysus at the Well,' and
Felix himself had plunged into a satiric allegory entitled 'The
Last of the Laborers.'  Nedda, therefore, walked alone; but at her
side went always an invisible companion.  In that long, imaginary
walking-out she gave her thoughts and the whole of her heart, and
to be doing this never surprised her, who, before, had not given
them whole to anything.  A bee knows the first summer day and
clings intoxicated to its flowers; so did Nedda know and cling.
She wrote him two letters and he wrote her one.  It was not poetry;
indeed, it was almost all concerned with Wilmet Gaunt, asking Nedda
to find a place in London where the girl could go; but it ended
with the words:


"Your lover,

"DEREK."


This letter troubled Nedda.  She would have taken it at once to
Felix or to Flora if it had not been for the first words, "Dearest
Nedda," and those last three.  Except her mother, she instinctively
distrusted women in such a matter as that of Wilmet Gaunt, feeling
they would want to know more than she could tell them, and not be
too tolerant of what they heard.  Casting about, at a loss, she
thought suddenly of Mr. Cuthcott.

At dinner that day she fished round carefully.  Felix spoke of him
almost warmly.  What Cuthcott could have been doing at Becket, of
all places, he could not imagine--the last sort of man one expected
to see there; a good fellow, rather desperate, perhaps, as men of
his age were apt to get if they had too many women, or no woman,
about them.

Which, said Nedda, had Mr. Cuthcott?

Oh!  None.  How had he struck Nedda?  And Felix looked at his
little daughter with a certain humble curiosity.  He always felt
that the young instinctively knew so much more than he did.

"I liked him awfully.  He was like a dog."

"Ah!" said Felix, "he IS like a dog--very honest; he grins and runs
about the city, and might be inclined to bay the moon."

'I don't mind that,' Nedda thought, 'so long as he's not
"superior."'

"He's very human," Felix added.

And having found out that he lived in Gray's Inn, Nedda thought: 'I
will; I'll ask him.'

To put her project into execution, she wrote this note:


"DEAR MR. CUTHCOTT:

"You were so kind as to tell me you wouldn't mind if I bothered you
about things.  I've got a very bothery thing to know what to do
about, and I would be so glad of your advice.  It so happens that I
can't ask my father and mother.  I hope you won't think me very
horrible, wasting your time.  And please say no, if you'd rather.

"Yours sincerely,

"NEDDA FREELAND."


The answer came:


"DEAR MISS FREELAND:

"Delighted.  But if very bothery, better save time and ink, and
have a snack of lunch with me to-morrow at the Elgin restaurant,
close to the British Museum.  Quiet and respectable.  No flowers by
request.  One o'clock.

"Very truly yours,

"GILES CUTHCOTT."


Putting on 'no flowers' and with a fast-beating heart, Nedda, went
on her first lonely adventure.  To say truth she did not know in
the least how ever she was going to ask this almost strange man
about a girl of doubtful character.  But she kept saying to
herself: 'I don't care--he has nice eyes.'  And her spirit would
rise as she got nearer, because, after all, she was going to find
things out, and to find things out was jolly.  The new warmth and
singing in her heart had not destroyed, but rather heightened, her
sense of the extraordinary interest of all things that be.  And
very mysterious to her that morning was the kaleidoscope of Oxford
Street and its innumerable girls, and women, each going about her
business, with a life of her own that was not Nedda's.  For men she
had little use just now, they had acquired a certain insignificance,
not having gray-black eyes that smoked and flared, nor Harris tweed
suits that smelled delicious.  Only once on her journey from Oxford
Circus she felt the sense of curiosity rise in her, in relation to
a man, and this was when she asked a policeman at Tottenham Court
Road, and he put his head down fully a foot to listen to her.  So
huge, so broad, so red in the face, so stolid, it seemed wonderful
to her that he paid her any attention!  If he were a human being,
could she really be one, too?  But that, after all, was no more
odd than everything.  Why, for instance, the spring flowers in
that woman's basket had been born; why that high white cloud
floated over; why and what was Nedda Freeland?

At the entrance of the little restaurant she saw Mr. Cuthcott
waiting.  In a brown suit, with his pale but freckled face, and his
gnawed-at, sandy moustache, and his eyes that looked out and
beyond, he was certainly no beauty.  But Nedda thought: 'He's even
nicer than I remembered, and I'm sure he knows a lot.'

At first, to be sitting opposite to him, in front of little plates
containing red substances and small fishes, was so exciting that
she simply listened to his rapid, rather stammering voice
mentioning that the English had no idea of life or cookery, that
God had so made this country by mistake that everything, even the
sun, knew it.  What, however, would she drink?  Chardonnet?  It
wasn't bad here.

She assented, not liking to confess that she did not know what
Chardonnet might be, and hoping it was some kind of sherbet.  She
had never yet drunk wine, and after a glass felt suddenly extremely
strong.

"Well," said Mr. Cuthcott, and his eyes twinkled, "what's your
botheration?  I suppose you want to strike out for yourself.  MY
daughters did that without consulting me."

"Oh!  Have you got daughters?"

"Yes--funny ones; older than you."

"That's why you understand, then"

Mr. Cuthcott smiled.  "They WERE a liberal education!"

And Nedda thought: 'Poor Dad, I wonder if I am!'

"Yes," Mr. Cuthcott murmured, "who would think a gosling would ever
become a goose?"

"Ah!" said Nedda eagerly, "isn't it wonderful how things grow?"

She felt his eyes suddenly catch hold of hers.

"You're in love!" he said.

It seemed to her a great piece of luck that he had found that out.
It made everything easy at once, and her words came out pell-mell.

"Yes, and I haven't told my people yet.  I don't seem able.  He's
given me something to do, and I haven't much experience."

A funny little wriggle passed over Mr. Cuthcott's face.  "Yes, yes;
go on!  Tell us about it."

She took a sip from her glass, and the feeling that he had been
going to laugh passed away.

"It's about the daughter of a laborer, down there in Worcestershire,
where he lives, not very far from Becket.  He's my cousin, Derek,
the son of my other uncle at Joyfields.  He and his sister feel
most awfully strongly about the laborers."

"Ah!" said Mr. Cuthcott, "the laborers!  Queer how they're in the
air, all of a sudden."

"This girl hasn't been very good, and she has to go from the
village, or else her family have.  He wants me to find a place for
her in London."

"I see; and she hasn't been very good?"

"Not very."  She knew that her cheeks were flushing, but her eyes
felt steady, and seeing that his eyes never moved, she did not
mind.  She went on:

"It's Sir Gerald Malloring's estate.  Lady Malloring--won't--"

She heard a snap.  Mr. Cuthcott's mouth had closed.

"Oh!" he said, "say no more!"

'He CAN bite nicely!' she thought.

Mr. Cuthcott, who had begun lightly thumping the little table with
his open hand, broke out suddenly:

"That petty bullying in the country!  I know it!  My God!  Those
prudes, those prisms!  They're the ruination of half the girls on
the--"  He looked at Nedda and stopped short.  "If she can do any
kind of work, I'll find her a place.  In fact, she'd better come,
for a start, under my old housekeeper.  Let your cousin know; she
can turn up any day.  Name?  Wilmet Gaunt?  Right you are!"  He
wrote it on his cuff.

Nedda rose to her feet, having an inclination to seize his hand, or
stroke his head, or something.  She subsided again with a fervid
sigh, and sat exchanging with him a happy smile.  At last she said:

"Mr. Cuthcott, is there any chance of things like that changing?"

"Changing?"  He certainly had grown paler, and was again lightly
thumping the table.  "Changing?  By gum!  It's got to change!  This
d--d pluto-aristocratic ideal!  The weed's so grown up that it's
choking us.  Yes, Miss Freeland, whether from inside or out I don't
know yet, but there's a blazing row coming.  Things are going to be
made new before long."

Under his thumps the little plates had begun to rattle and leap.
And Nedda thought: 'I DO like him.'

But she said anxiously:

"You believe there's something to be done, then?  Derek is simply
full of it; I want to feel like that, too, and I mean to."

His face grew twinkly; he put out his hand.  And wondering a little
whether he meant her to, Nedda timidly stretched forth her own and
grasped it.

"I like you," he said.  "Love your cousin and don't worry."

Nedda's eyes slipped into the distance.

"But I'm afraid for him.  If you saw him, you'd know."

"One's always afraid for the fellows that are worth anything.
There was another young Freeland at your uncle's the other night--"

"My brother Alan!"

"Oh! your brother?  Well, I wasn't afraid for him, and it seemed a
pity.  Have some of this; it's about the only thing they do well
here."

"Oh, thank you, no.  I've had a lovely lunch.  Mother and I
generally have about nothing."  And clasping her hands she added:

"This is a secret, isn't it, Mr. Cuthcott?"

"Dead."

He laughed and his face melted into a mass of wrinkles.  Nedda
laughed also and drank up the rest of her wine.  She felt blissful.

"Yes," said Mr. Cuthcott, "there's nothing like loving.  How long
have you been at it?"

"Only five days, but it's everything."

Mr. Cuthcott sighed.  "That's right.  When you can't love, the only
thing is to hate."

"Oh!" said Nedda.

Mr. Cuthcott again began banging on the little table.  "Look at
them, look at them!"  His eyes wandered angrily about the room,
wherein sat some few who had passed though the mills of gentility.
"What do they know of life?  Where are their souls and sympathies?
They haven't any.  I'd like to see their blood flow, the silly
brutes."

Nedda looked at them with alarm and curiosity.  They seemed to her
somewhat like everybody she knew.  She said timidly: "Do you think
OUR blood ought to flow, too?"

Mr. Cuthcott relapsed into twinkles.  "Rather!  Mine first!"

'He IS human!' thought Nedda.  And she got up: "I'm afraid I ought
to go now.  It's been awfully nice.  Thank you so very much.  Good-
by!"

He shook her firm little hand with his frail thin one, and stood
smiling till the restaurant door cut him off from her view.

The streets seemed so gorgeously full of life now that Nedda's head
swam.  She looked at it all with such absorption that she could not
tell one thing from another.  It seemed rather long to the
Tottenham Court Road, though she noted carefully the names of all
the streets she passed, and was sure she had not missed it.  She
came at last to one called POULTRY.  'Poultry!' she thought; 'I
should have remembered that--Poultry?'  And she laughed.  It was so
sweet and feathery a laugh that the driver of an old four-wheeler
stopped his horse.  He was old and anxious-looking, with a gray
beard and deep folds in his red cheeks.

"Poultry!" she said.  "Please, am I right for the Tottenham Court
Road?"

The old man answered: "Glory, no, miss; you're goin' East!"

'East!' thought Nedda; 'I'd better take him.'  And she got in.  She
sat in the four-wheeler, smiling.  And how far this was due to
Chardonnet she did not consider.  She was to love and not worry.
It was wonderful!  In this mood she was put down, still smiling, at
the Tottenham Court Road Tube, and getting out her purse she
prepared to pay the cabman.  The fare would be a shilling, but she
felt like giving him two.  He looked so anxious and worn, in spite
of his red face.  He took them, looked at her, and said: "Thank
you, miss; I wanted that."

"Oh!" murmured Nedda, "then please take this, too.  It's all I
happen to have, except my Tube fare."

The old man took it, and water actually ran along his nose.

"God bless yer!" he said.  And taking up his whip, he drove off
quickly.

Rather choky, but still glowing, Nedda descended to her train.  It
was not till she was walking to the Spaniard's Road that a cloud
seemed to come over her sky, and she reached home dejected.

In the garden of the Freelands' old house was a nook shut away by
berberis and rhododendrons, where some bees were supposed to make
honey, but, knowing its destination, and belonging to a union, made
no more than they were obliged.  In this retreat, which contained a
rustic bench, Nedda was accustomed to sit and read; she went there
now.  And her eyes began filling with tears.  Why must the poor old
fellow who had driven her look so anxious and call on God to bless
her for giving him that little present?  Why must people grow old
and helpless, like that Grandfather Gaunt she had seen at Becket?
Why was there all the tyranny that made Derek and Sheila so wild?
And all the grinding poverty that she herself could see when she
went with her mother to their Girls' Club, in Bethnal Green?  What
was the use of being young and strong if nothing happened, nothing
was really changed, so that one got old and died seeing still the
same things as before?  What was the use even of loving, if love
itself had to yield to death?  The trees!  How they grew from tiny
seeds to great and beautiful things, and then slowly, slowly dried
and decayed away to dust.  What was the good of it all?  What
comfort was there in a God so great and universal that he did not
care to keep her and Derek alive and loving forever, and was not
interested enough to see that the poor old cab-driver should not be
haunted day and night with fear of the workhouse for himself and an
old wife, perhaps?  Nedda's tears fell fast, and how far THIS was
Chardonnet no one could tell.

Felix, seeking inspiration from the sky in regard to 'The Last of
the Laborers,' heard a noise like sobbing, and, searching, found
his little daughter sitting there and crying as if her heart would
break.  The sight was so unusual and so utterly disturbing that he
stood rooted, quite unable to bring her help.  Should he sneak
away?  Should he go for Flora?  What should he do?  Like many men
whose work keeps them centred within themselves, he instinctively
avoided everything likely to pain or trouble him; for this reason,
when anything did penetrate those mechanical defences he became
almost strangely tender.  Loath, for example, to believe that any
one was ill, if once convinced of it, he made so good a nurse that
Flora, at any rate, was in the habit of getting well with
suspicious alacrity.  Thoroughly moved now, he sat down on the
bench beside Nedda, and said:

"My darling!"

She leaned her forehead against his arm and sobbed the more.

Felix waited, patting her far shoulder gently.

He had often dealt with such situations in his books, and now that
one had come true was completely at a loss.  He could not even
begin to remember what was usually said or done, and he only made
little soothing noises.

To Nedda this tenderness brought a sudden sharp sense of guilt and
yearning.  She began:

"It's not because of that I'm crying, Dad, but I want you to know
that Derek and I are in love."

The words: 'You!  What!  In those few days!' rose, and got as far
as Felix's teeth; he swallowed them and went on patting her
shoulder.  Nedda in love!  He felt blank and ashy.  That special
feeling of owning her more than any one else, which was so warming
and delightful, so really precious--it would be gone!  What right
had she to take it from him, thus, without warning!  Then he
remembered how odious he had always said the elderly were, to spoke
the wheels of youth, and managed to murmur:

"Good luck to you, my pretty!"

He said it, conscious that a father ought to be saying:

'You're much too young, and he's your cousin!'  But what a father
ought to say appeared to him just then both sensible and
ridiculous.  Nedda rubbed her cheek against his hand.

"It won't make any difference, Dad, I promise you!"

And Felix thought: 'Not to you, only to me!'  But he said:

"Not a scrap, my love!  What WERE you crying about?"

"About the world; it seems so heartless."

And she told him about the water that had run along the nose of the
old four-wheeler man.

But while he seemed to listen, Felix thought: 'I wish to God I were
made of leather; then I shouldn't feel as if I'd lost the warmth
inside me.  I mustn't let her see.  Fathers ARE queer--I always
suspected that.  There goes my work for a good week!'  Then he
answered:

"No, my dear, the world is not heartless; it's only arranged
according to certain necessary contraries: No pain, no pleasure; no
dark, no light, and the rest of it.  If you think, it couldn't be
arranged differently."

As he spoke a blackbird came running with a chuckle from underneath
the berberis, looked at them with alarm, and ran back.  Nedda
raised her face.

"Dad, I mean to do something with my life!"

Felix answered:

"Yes.  That's right."

But long after Nedda had fallen into dreams that night, he lay
awake, with his left foot enclosed between Floras', trying to
regain that sense of warmth which he knew he must never confess to
having lost.


CHAPTER XV


Flora took the news rather with the air of a mother-dog that says
to her puppy: "Oh, very well, young thing!  Go and stick your teeth
in it and find out for yourself!"  Sooner or later this always
happened, and generally sooner nowadays.  Besides, she could not
help feeling that she would get more of Felix, to her a matter of
greater importance than she gave sign of.  But inwardly the news
had given her a shock almost as sharp as that felt by him.  Was she
really the mother of one old enough to love?  Was the child that
used to cuddle up to her in the window-seat to be read to, gone
from her; that used to rush in every morning at all inconvenient
moments of her toilet; that used to be found sitting in the dark on
the stairs, like a little sleepy owl, because, for-sooth, it was so
'cosey'?

Not having seen Derek, she did not as yet share her husband's
anxiety on that score, though his description was dubious:

"Upstanding young cockerel, swinging his sporran and marching to
pipes--a fine spurn about him!  Born to trouble, if I know
anything, trying to sweep the sky with his little broom!"

"Is he a prig?"

"No-o.  There's simplicity about his scorn, and he seems to have
been brought up on facts, not on literature, like most of these
young monkeys.  The cousinship I don't think matters; Kirsteen
brings in too strong an out-strain.  He's HER son, not Tod's.  But
perhaps," he added, sighing, "it won't last."

Flora shook her head.  "It will last!" she said; "Nedda's deep."

And if Nedda held, so would Fate; no one would throw Nedda over!
They naturally both felt that.  'Dionysus at the Well,' no less
than 'The Last of the Laborers,' had a light week of it.

Though in a sense relieved at having parted with her secret, Nedda
yet felt that she had committed desecration.  Suppose Derek should
mind her people knowing!

On the day that he and Sheila were to come, feeling she could not
trust herself to seem even reasonably calm, she started out,
meaning to go to the South Kensington Museum and wander the time
away there; but once out-of-doors the sky seemed what she wanted,
and, turning down the hill on the north side, she sat down under a
gorse bush.  Here tramps, coming in to London, passed the night
under the stars; here was a vision, however dim, of nature.  And
nature alone could a little soothe her ecstatic nerves.

How would he greet her?  Would he be exactly as he was when they
stood at the edge of Tod's orchard, above the dreamy, darkening
fields, joining hands and lips, moved as they had never been moved
before?

May blossom was beginning to come out along the hedge of the
private grounds that bordered that bit of Cockney Common, and from
it, warmed by the sun, the scent stole up to her.  Familiar, like
so many children of the cultured classes, with the pagan and fairy-
tales of nature, she forgot them all the moment she was really by
herself with earth and sky.  In their breadth, their soft and
stirring continuity, they rejected bookish fancy, and woke in her
rapture and yearning, a sort of long delight, a never-appeased
hunger.  Crouching, hands round knees, she turned her face to get
the warmth of the sun, and see the white clouds go slowly by, and
catch all the songs that the birds sang.  And every now and then
she drew a deep breath.  It was true what Dad had said: There was
no real heartlessness in nature.  It was warm, beating, breathing.
And if things ate each other, what did it matter?  They had lived
and died quickly, helping to make others live.  The sacred swing
and circle of it went on forever, full and harmonious under the
lighted sky, under the friendly stars.  It was wonderful to be
alive!  And all done by love.  Love!  More, more, more love!  And
then death, if it must come!  For, after all, to Nedda death was so
far away, so unimaginably dim and distant, that it did not really
count.

While she sat, letting her fingers, that were growing slowly black,
scrabble the grass and fern, a feeling came on her of a Presence, a
creature with wings above and around, that seemed to have on its
face a long, mysterious smile of which she, Nedda, was herself a
tiny twinkle.  She would bring Derek here.  They two would sit
together and let the clouds go over them, and she would learn all
that he really thought, and tell him all her longings and fears;
they would be silent, too, loving each other too much to talk.  She
made elaborate plans of what they were to do and see, beginning
with the East End and the National Gallery, and ending with sunrise
from Parliament Hill; but she somehow knew that nothing would
happen as she had designed.  If only the first moment were not
different from what she hoped!

She sat there so long that she rose quite stiff, and so hungry that
she could not help going home and stealing into the kitchen.  It
was three o'clock, and the old cook, as usual, asleep in an
armchair, with her apron thrown up between her face and the fire.
What would Cookie say if she knew?  In that oven she had been
allowed to bake in fancy perfect little doll loaves, while Cookie
baked them in reality.  Here she had watched the mysterious making
of pink cream, had burned countless 'goes' of toffy, and cocoanut
ice; and tasted all kinds of loveliness.  Dear old Cookie!
Stealing about on tiptoe, seeking what she might devour, she found
four small jam tarts and ate them, while the cook snored softly.
Then, by the table, that looked so like a great loaf-platter, she
stood contemplating cook.  Old darling, with her fat, pale, crumply
face!  Hung to the dresser, opposite, was a little mahogany
looking-glass tilted forward.  Nedda could see herself almost down
to her toes.  'I mean to be prettier than I am!' she thought,
putting her hands on her waist.  'I wonder if I can pull them in a
bit!'  Sliding her fingers under her blouse, she began to pull at
certain strings.  They would not budge.  They were loose, yes,
really too comfortable.  She would have to get the next size
smaller!  And dropping her chin, she rubbed it on the lace edging
of her chest, where it felt warm and smelled piny.  Had Cookie ever
been in love?  Her gray hairs were coming, poor old duck!  The
windows, where a protection of wire gauze kept out the flies, were
opened wide, and the sun shone in and dimmed the fire.  The kitchen
clock ticked like a conscience; a faint perfume of frying-pan and
mint scented the air.  And, for the first time since this new
sensation of love had come to her, Nedda felt as if a favorite
book, read through and done with, were dropping from her hands.
The lovely times in that kitchen, in every nook of that old house
and garden, would never come again!  Gone!  She felt suddenly cast
down to sadness.  They HAD been lovely times!  To be deserting in
spirit all that had been so good to her--it seemed like a crime!
She slid down off the table and, passing behind the cook, put her
arms round those substantial sides.  Without meaning to, out of
sheer emotion, she pressed them somewhat hard, and, as from a
concertina emerges a jerked and drawn-out chord, so from the cook
came a long, quaking sound; her apron fell, her body heaved, and
her drowsy, flat, soft voice, greasy from pondering over dishes,
murmured:

"Ah, Miss Nedda! it's you, my dear!  Bless your pretty 'eart."

But down Nedda's cheeks, behind her, rolled two tears.

"Cookie, oh, Cookie!"  And she ran out. . . .

And the first moment?  It was like nothing she had dreamed of.
Strange, stiff!  One darting look, and then eyes down; one
convulsive squeeze, then such a formal shake of hot, dry hands, and
off he had gone with Felix to his room, and she with Sheila to
hers, bewildered, biting down consternation, trying desperately to
behave 'like a little lady,' as her old nurse would have put it--
before Sheila, especially, whose hostility she knew by instinct she
had earned.  All that evening, furtive watching, formal talk, and
underneath a ferment of doubt and fear and longing.  All a mistake!
An awful mistake!  Did he love her?  Heaven!  If he did not, she
could never face any one again.  He could not love her!  His eyes
were like those of a swan when its neck is drawn up and back in
anger.  Terrible--having to show nothing, having to smile at
Sheila, at Dad, and Mother!  And when at last she got to her room,
she stood at the window and at first simply leaned her forehead
against the glass and shivered.  What had she done?  Had she
dreamed it all--dreamed that they had stood together under those
boughs in the darkness, and through their lips exchanged their
hearts?  She must have dreamed it!  Dreamed that most wonderful,
false dream!  And the walk home in the thunder-storm, and his arm
round her, and her letters, and his letter--dreamed it all!  And
now she was awake!  From her lips came a little moan, and she sank
down huddled, and stayed there ever so long, numb and chilly.
Undress--go to bed?  Not for the world.  By the time the morning
came she had got to forget that she had dreamed.  For very shame
she had got to forget that; no one should see.  Her cheeks and ears
and lips were burning, but her body felt icy cold.  Then--what time
she did not know at all--she felt she must go out and sit on the
stairs.  They had always been her comforters, those wide, shallow,
cosey stairs.  Out and down the passage, past all their rooms--his
the last--to the dark stairs, eerie at night, where the scent of
age oozed out of the old house.  All doors below, above, were
closed; it was like looking down into a well, to sit with her head
leaning against the banisters.  And silent, so silent--just those
faint creakings that come from nowhere, as it might be the
breathing of the house.  She put her arms round a cold banister and
hugged it hard.  It hurt her, and she embraced it the harder.  The
first tears of self-pity came welling up, and without warning a
great sob burst out of her.  Alarmed at the sound, she smothered
her mouth with her arm.  No good; they came breaking out!  A door
opened; all the blood rushed to her heart and away from it, and
with a little dreadful gurgle she was silent.  Some one was
listening.  How long that terrible listening lasted she had no
idea; then footsteps, and she was conscious that it was standing in
the dark behind her.  A foot touched her back.  She gave a little
gasp.  Derek's voice whispered hoarsely:

"What?  Who are you?"

And, below her breath, she answered: "Nedda."

His arms wrenched her away from the banister, his voice in her ear
said:

"Nedda, darling, Nedda!"

But despair had sunk too deep; she could only quiver and shake and
try to drive sobbing out of her breath.  Then, most queer, not his
words, nor the feel of his arms, comforted her--any one could
pity!--but the smell and the roughness of his Norfolk jacket.  So
he, too, had not been in bed; he, too, had been unhappy!  And,
burying her face in his sleeve, she murmured:

"Oh, Derek!  Why?"

"I didn't want them all to see.  I can't bear to give it away.
Nedda, come down lower and let's love each other!"

Softly, stumbling, clinging together, they went down to the last
turn of the wide stairs.  How many times had she not sat there, in
white frocks, her hair hanging down as now, twisting the tassels of
little programmes covered with hieroglyphics only intelligible to
herself, talking spasmodically to spasmodic boys with budding
'tails,' while Chinese lanterns let fall their rose and orange
light on them and all the other little couples as exquisitely
devoid of ease.  Ah! it was worth those hours of torture to sit
there together now, comforting each other with hands and lips and
whisperings.  It was more, as much more than that moment in the
orchard, as sun shining after a Spring storm is more than sun in
placid mid-July.  To hear him say: "Nedda, I love you!" to feel it
in his hand clasped on her heart was much more, now that she knew
how difficult it was for him to say or show it, except in the dark
with her alone.  Many a long day they might have gone through
together that would not have shown her so much of his real heart as
that hour of whispering and kisses.

He had known she was unhappy, and yet he couldn't!  It had only
made him more dumb!  It was awful to be like that!  But now that
she knew, she was glad to think that it was buried so deep in him
and kept for her alone.  And if he did it again she would just know
that it was only shyness and pride.  And he was not a brute and a
beast, as he insisted.  But suppose she had chanced not to come
out!  Would she ever have lived through the night?  And she shivered.

"Are you cold, darling?  Put on my coat."

It was put on her in spite of all effort to prevent him.  Never was
anything so warm, so delicious, wrapping her in something more than
Harris tweed.  And the hall clock struck--Two!

She could just see his face in the glimmer that filtered from the
skylight at the top.  And she felt that he was learning her,
learning all that she had to give him, learning the trust that was
shining through her eyes.  There was just enough light for them to
realize the old house watching from below and from above--a glint
on the dark floor there, on the dark wall here; a blackness that
seemed to be inhabited by some spirit, so that their hands clutched
and twitched, when the tiny, tiny noises of Time, playing in wood
and stone, clicked out.

That stare of the old house, with all its knowledge of lives past,
of youth and kisses spent and gone, of hopes spun and faiths
abashed, the old house cynical, stirred in them desire to clutch
each other close and feel the thrill of peering out together into
mystery that must hold for them so much of love and joy and
trouble!  And suddenly she put her fingers to his face, passed them
softly, clingingly, over his hair, forehead, eyes, traced the sharp
cheek-bones down to his jaw, round by the hard chin up to his lips,
over the straight bone of his nose, lingering, back, to his eyes
again.

"Now, if I go blind, I shall know you.  Give me one kiss, Derek.
You MUST be tired."

Buried in the old dark house that kiss lasted long; then,
tiptoeing--she in front--pausing at every creak, holding breath,
they stole up to their rooms.  And the clock struck--Three!


CHAPTER XVI


Felix (nothing if not modern) had succumbed already to the feeling
that youth ruled the roost.  Whatever his misgivings, his and
Flora's sense of loss, Nedda must be given a free hand!  Derek gave
no outward show of his condition, and but for his little daughter's
happy serenity Felix would have thought as she had thought that
first night.  He had a feeling that his nephew rather despised one
so soaked in mildness and reputation as Felix Freeland; and he got
on better with Sheila, not because she was milder, but because she
was devoid of that scornful tang which clung about her brother.
No!  Sheila was not mild.  Rich-colored, downright of speech, with
her mane of short hair, she was a no less startling companion.  The
smile of Felix had never been more whimsically employed than during
that ten-day visit.  The evening John Freeland came to dinner was
the highwater mark of his alarmed amusement.  Mr. Cuthcott, also
bidden, at Nedda's instigation, seemed to take a mischievous
delight in drawing out those two young people in face of their
official uncle.  The pleasure of the dinner to Felix--and it was
not too great--was in watching Nedda's face.  She hardly spoke, but
how she listened!  Nor did Derek say much, but what he did say had
a queer, sarcastic twinge about it.

"An unpleasant young man," was John's comment afterward.  "How the
deuce did he ever come to be Tod's son?  Sheila, of course, is one
of these hot-headed young women that make themselves a nuisance
nowadays, but she's intelligible.  By the way, that fellow
Cuthcott's a queer chap!"

One subject of conversation at dinner had been the morality of
revolutionary violence.  And the saying that had really upset John
had been Derek's: "Conflagration first--morality afterward!"  He
had looked at his nephew from under brows which a constant need for
rejecting petitions to the Home Office had drawn permanently down
and in toward the nose, and made no answer.

To Felix these words had a more sinister significance.  With his
juster appreciation both of the fiery and the official points of
view, his far greater insight into his nephew than ever John would
have, he saw that they were more than a mere arrow of controversy.
And he made up his mind that night that he would tackle his nephew
and try to find out exactly what was smouldering within that crisp,
black pate.

Following him into the garden next morning, he said to himself: 'No
irony--that's fatal.  Man to man--or boy to boy--whichever it is!'
But, on the garden path, alongside that young spread-eagle, whose
dark, glowering, self-contained face he secretly admired, he merely
began:

"How do you like your Uncle John?"

"He doesn't like me, Uncle Felix."

Somewhat baffled, Felix proceeded:

"I say, Derek, fortunately or unfortunately, I've some claim now to
a little knowledge of you.  You've got to open out a bit to me.
What are you going to do with yourself in life?  You can't support
Nedda on revolution."

Having drawn this bow at a venture, he paused, doubtful of his
wisdom.  A glance at Derek's face confirmed his doubt.  It was
closer than ever, more defiant.

"There's a lot of money in revolution, Uncle Felix--other
people's."

Dash the young brute!  There was something in him!  He swerved off
to a fresh line.

"How do you like London?"

"I don't like it.  But, Uncle Felix, don't you wish YOU were seeing
it for the first time?  What books you'd write!"

Felix felt that unconscious thrust go 'home.'  Revolt against
staleness and clipped wings, against the terrible security of his
too solid reputation, smote him.

"What strikes you most about it, then?" he asked.

"That it ought to be jolly well blown up.  Everybody seems to know
that, too--they look it, anyway, and yet they go on as if it
oughtn't."

"Why ought it to be blown up?"

"Well, what's the good of anything while London and all these other
big towns are sitting on the country's chest?  England must have
been a fine place once, though!"

"Some of us think it a fine place still."

"Of course it is, in a way.  But anything new and keen gets sat on.
England's like an old tom-cat by the fire: too jolly comfortable
for anything!"

At this support to his own theory that the country was going to the
dogs, owing to such as John and Stanley, Felix thought: 'Out of the
mouths of babes!'  But he merely said: "You're a cheerful young
man!"

"It's got cramp," Derek muttered; "can't even give women votes.
Fancy my mother without a vote!  And going to wait till every
laborer is off the land before it attends to them.  It's like the
port you gave us last night, Uncle Felix, wonderful crust!"

"And what is to be your contribution to its renovation?"

Derek's face instantly resumed its peculiar defiant smile, and
Felix thought: 'Young beggar!  He's as close as wax.'  After their
little talk, however, he had more understanding of his nephew.  His
defiant self-sufficiency seemed more genuine. . . .

In spite of his sensations when dining with Felix, John Freeland
(little if not punctilious) decided that it was incumbent on him to
have the 'young Tods' to dinner, especially since Frances Freeland
had come to stay with him the day after the arrival of those two
young people at Hampstead.  She had reached Porchester Gardens
faintly flushed from the prospect of seeing darling John, with one
large cane trunk, and a hand-bag of a pattern which the man in the
shop had told her was the best thing out.  It had a clasp which had
worked beautifully in the shop, but which, for some reason, on the
journey had caused her both pain and anxiety.  Convinced, however,
that she could cure it and open the bag the moment she could get to
that splendid new pair of pincers in her trunk, which a man had
only yesterday told her were the latest, she still felt that she
had a soft thing, and dear John must have one like it if she could
get him one at the Stores to-morrow.

John, who had come away early from the Home Office, met her in that
dark hall, to which he had paid no attention since his young wife
died, fifteen years ago.  Embracing him, with a smile of love
almost timorous from intensity, Frances Freeland looked him up and
down, and, catching what light there was gleaming on his temples,
determined that she had in her bag, as soon as she could get it
open, the very thing for dear John's hair.  He had such a nice
moustache, and it was a pity he was getting bald.  Brought to her
room, she sat down rather suddenly, feeling, as a fact, very much
like fainting--a condition of affairs to which she had never in the
past and intended never in the future to come, making such a fuss!
Owing to that nice new patent clasp, she had not been able to get
at her smelling-salts, nor the little flask of brandy and the one
hard-boiled egg without which she never travelled; and for want of
a cup of tea her soul was nearly dying within her.  Dear John would
never think she had not had anything since breakfast (she travelled
always by a slow train, disliking motion), and she would not for
the world let him know--so near dinner-time, giving a lot of
trouble!  She therefore stayed quite quiet, smiling a little, for
fear he might suspect her.  Seeing John, however, put her bag down
in the wrong place, she felt stronger.

"No, darling--not there--in the window."

And while he was changing the position of the bag, her heart
swelled with joy because his back was so straight, and with the
thought: 'What a pity the dear boy has never married again!  It
does so keep a man from getting moony!'  With all that writing and
thinking he had to do, such important work, too, it would have been
so good for him, especially at night.  She would not have expressed
it thus in words--that would not have been quite nice--but in
thought Frances Freeland was a realist.

When he was gone, and she could do as she liked, she sat stiller
than ever, knowing by long experience that to indulge oneself in
private only made it more difficult not to indulge oneself in
public.  It really was provoking that this nice new clasp should go
wrong just this once, and that the first time it was used!  And she
took from her pocket a tiny prayer-book, and, holding it to the
light, read the eighteenth psalm--it was a particularly good one,
that never failed her when she felt low--she used no glasses, and
up to the present had avoided any line between the brows, knowing
it was her duty to remain as nice as she could to look at, so as
not to spoil the pleasure of people round about her.  Then saying
to herself firmly, "I do not, I WILL not want any tea--but I shall
be glad of dinner!" she rose and opened her cane trunk.  Though she
knew exactly where they were, she was some time finding the
pincers, because there were so many interesting things above them,
each raising a different train of thought.  A pair of field-
glasses, the very latest--the man had said--for darling Derek; they
would be so useful to keep his mind from thinking about things that
it was no good thinking about.  And for dear Flora (how wonderful
that she could write poetry--poetry!) a really splendid, and
perfectly new, little pill.  She herself had already taken two, and
they had suited her to perfection.  For darling Felix a new kind of
eau de cologne, made in Worcester, because that was the only scent
he would use.  For her pet Nedda, a piece of 'point de Venise' that
she really could not be selfish enough to keep any longer,
especially as she was particularly fond of it.  For Alan, a new
kind of tin-opener that the dear boy would like enormously; he was
so nice and practical.  For Sheila, such a nice new novel by Mr.
and Mrs. Whirlingham--a bright, wholesome tale, with such a good
description of quite a new country in it--the dear child was so
clever, it would be a change for her.  Then, actually resting on
the pincers, she came on her pass-book, recently made up,
containing little or no balance, just enough to get darling John
that bag like hers with the new clasp, which would be so handy for
his papers when he went travelling.  And having reached the
pincers, she took them in her hand, and sat down again to be quite
quiet a moment, with her still-dark eyelashes resting on her ivory
cheeks and her lips pressed to a colorless line; for her head swam
from stooping over.  In repose, with three flies circling above her
fine gray hair, she might have served a sculptor for a study of the
stoic spirit.  Then, going to the bag, her compressed lips
twitching, her gray eyes piercing into its clasp with a kind of
distrustful optimism, she lifted the pincers and tweaked it hard.

If the atmosphere of that dinner, to which all six from Hampstead
came, was less disturbed than John anticipated, it was due to his
sense of hospitality, and to every one's feeling that controversy
would puzzle and distress Granny.  That there were things about
which people differed, Frances Freeland well knew, but that they
should so differ as to make them forget to smile and have good
manners would not have seemed right to her at all.  And of this, in
her presence, they were all conscious; so that when they had
reached the asparagus there was hardly anything left that could by
any possibility be talked about.  And this--for fear of seeming
awkward--they at once proceeded to discuss, Flora remarking that
London was very full.  John agreed.

Frances Freeland, smiling, said:

"It's so nice for Derek and Sheila to be seeing it like this for
the first time."

Sheila said:

"Why?  Isn't it always as full as this?"

John answered:

"In August practically empty.  They say a hundred thousand people,
at least, go away."

"Double!" remarked Felix.

"The figures are variously given.  My estimate--"

"One in sixty.  That shows you!"

At this interruption of Derek's John frowned slightly.  "What does
it show you?" he said.

Derek glanced at his grandmother.

"Oh, nothing!"

"Of course it shows you," exclaimed Sheila, "what a heartless great
place it is.  All 'the world' goes out of town, and 'London's
empty!'  But if you weren't told so you'd never know the
difference."

Derek muttered: "I think it shows more than that."

Under the table Flora was touching John's foot warningly; Nedda
attempting to touch Derek's; Felix endeavoring to catch John's eye;
Alan trying to catch Sheila's; John biting his lip and looking
carefully at nothing.  Only Frances Freeland was smiling and gazing
lovingly at dear Derek, thinking he would be so handsome when he
had grown a nice black moustache.  And she said:

"Yes, dear.  What were you going to say?"

Derek looked up.

"Do you really want it, Granny?"

Nedda murmured across the table: "No, Derek."

Frances Freeland raised her brows quizzically.  She almost looked
arch.

"But of course I do, darling.  I want to hear immensely.  It's so
interesting."

"Derek was going to say, Mother"--every one at once looked at
Felix, who had thus broken in--"that all we West-End people--John
and I and Flora and Stanley, and even you--all we people born in
purple and fine linen, are so accustomed to think we're all that
matters, that when we're out of London there's nobody in it.  He
meant to say that this is appalling enough, but that what is still
more appalling is the fact that we really ARE all that matters, and
that if people try to disturb us, we can, and jolly well will, take
care they don't disturb us long.  Is that what you meant, Derek?"

Derek turned a rather startled look on Felix.

"What he meant to say," went on Felix, "was, that age and habit,
vested interests, culture and security sit so heavy on this
country's chest, that aspiration may wriggle and squirm but will
never get from under.  That, for all we pretend to admire
enthusiasm and youth, and the rest of it, we push it out of us just
a little faster than it grows up.  Is that what you meant, Derek?"

"You'll try to, but you won't succeed!"

"I'm afraid we shall, and with a smile, too, so that you won't see
us doing it."

"I call that devilish."

"I call it natural.  Look at a man who's growing old; notice how
very gracefully and gradually he does it.  Take my hair--your aunt
says she can't tell the difference from month to month.  And there
it is, or rather isn't--little by little."

Frances Freeland, who during Felix's long speech had almost closed
her eyes, opened them, and looked piercingly at the top of his
head.

"Darling," she said, "I've got the very thing for it.  You must
take some with you when you go tonight.  John is going to try it."

Checked in the flow of his philosophy, Felix blinked like an owl
surprised.

"Mother," he said, "YOU only have the gift of keeping young."

"Oh! my dear, I'm getting dreadfully old.  I have the greatest
difficulty in keeping awake sometimes when people are talking.  But
I mean to fight against it.  It's so dreadfully rude, and ugly,
too; I catch myself sometimes with my mouth open."

Flora said quietly: "Granny, I have the very best thing for that--
quite new!"

A sweet but rather rueful smile passed over Frances Freeland's
face.  "Now," she said, "you're chaffing me," and her eyes looked
loving.

It is doubtful if John understood the drift of Felix's exordium, it
is doubtful if he had quite listened--he having so much to not
listen to at the Home Office that the practice was growing on him.
A vested interest to John was a vested interest, culture was
culture, and security was certainly security--none of them were
symbols of age.  Further, the social question--at least so far as
it had to do with outbreaks of youth and enthusiasm--was too
familiar to him to have any general significance whatever.  What
with women, labor people, and the rest of it, he had no time for
philosophy--a dubious process at the best.  A man who had to get
through so many daily hours of real work did not dissipate his
energy in speculation.  But, though he had not listened to Felix's
remarks, they had ruffled him.  There is no philosophy quite so
irritating as that of a brother!  True, no doubt, that the country
was in a bad way, but as to vested interests and security, that was
all nonsense!  The guilty causes were free thought and industrialism.

Having seen them all off to Hampstead, he gave his mother her good-
night kiss.  He was proud of her, a wonderful woman, who always put
a good face on everything!  Even her funny way of always having
some new thing or other to do you good--even that was all part of
her wanting to make the best of things.  She never lost her 'form'!

John worshipped that kind of stoicism which would die with its head
up rather than live with its tail down.  Perhaps the moment of
which he was most proud in all his life was that, when, at the
finish of his school mile, he overheard a vulgar bandsman say: "I
like that young ----'s running; he breathes through his ---- nose."
At that moment, if he had stooped to breathe through his mouth, he
must have won; as it was he had lost in great distress and perfect
form.

When, then, he had kissed Frances Freeland, and watched her ascend
the stairs, breathless because she WOULD breathe through her nose
to the very last step, he turned into his study, lighted his pipe,
and sat down to a couple of hours of a report upon the forces of
constabulary available in the various counties, in the event of any
further agricultural rioting, such as had recently taken place on a
mild scale in one or two districts where there was still Danish
blood.  He worked at the numbers steadily, with just that
engineer's touch of mechanical invention which had caused him to be
so greatly valued in a department where the evolution of twelve
policemen out of ten was constantly desired.  His mastery of
figures was highly prized, for, while it had not any of that
flamboyance which has come from America and the game of poker, it
possessed a kind of English optimism, only dangerous when, as
rarely happened, it was put to the test.  He worked two full pipes
long, and looked at the clock.  Twelve!  No good knocking off just
yet!  He had no liking for bed this many a long year, having, from
loyalty to memory and a drier sense of what became one in the Home
Department, preserved his form against temptations of the flesh.
Yet, somehow, to-night he felt no spring, no inspiration, in his
handling of county constabulary.  A kind of English stolidity about
them baffled him--ten of them remained ten.  And leaning that
forehead, whose height so troubled Frances Freeland, on his neat
hand, he fell to brooding.  Those young people with everything
before them!  Did he envy them?  Or was he glad of his own age?
Fifty!  Fifty already; a fogey!  An official fogey!  For all the
world like an umbrella, that every day some one put into a stand
and left there till it was time to take it out again.  Neatly
rolled, too, with an elastic and button!  And this fancy, which had
never come to him before, surprised him.  One day he, too, would
wear out, slit all up his seams, and they would leave him at home,
or give him away to the butler.

He went to the window.  A scent of--of May, or something!  And
nothing in sight save houses just like his own!  He looked up at
the strip of sky privileged to hang just there.  He had got a bit
rusty with his stars.  There, however, certainly was Venus.  And he
thought of how he had stood by the ship's rail on that honeymoon
trip of his twenty years ago, giving his young wife her first
lesson in counting the stars.  And something very deep down, very
mossed and crusted over in John's heart, beat and stirred, and hurt
him.  Nedda--he had caught her looking at that young fellow just as
Anne had once looked at him, John Freeland, now an official fogey,
an umbrella in a stand.  There was a policeman!  How ridiculous the
fellow looked, putting one foot before the other, flirting his
lantern and trying the area gates!  This confounded scent of
hawthorn--could it be hawthorn?--got here into the heart of London!
The look in that girl's eyes!  What was he about, to let them make
him feel as though he could give his soul for a face looking up
into his own, for a breast touching his, and the scent of a woman's
hair.  Hang it!  He would smoke a cigarette and go to bed!  He
turned out the light and began to mount the stairs; they creaked
abominably--the felt must be wearing out.  A woman about the place
would have kept them quiet.  Reaching the landing of the second
floor, he paused a moment from habit, to look down into the dark
hall.  A voice, thin, sweet, almost young, said:

"Is that you, darling?"  John's heart stood still.  What--was that?
Then he perceived that the door of the room that had been his
wife's was open, and remembered that his mother was in there.

"What!  Aren't you asleep, Mother?"

Frances Freeland's voice answered cheerfully: "Oh, no, dear; I'm
never asleep before two.  Come in."

John entered.  Propped very high on her pillows, in perfect
regularity, his mother lay.  Her carved face was surmounted by a
piece of fine lace, her thin, white fingers on the turnover of the
sheet moved in continual interlocking, her lips smiled.

"There's something you must have," she said.  "I left my door open
on purpose.  Give me that little bottle, darling."

John took from a small table by the bed a still smaller bottle.
Frances Freeland opened it, and out came three tiny white globules.

"Now," she said, "pop them in!  You've no idea how they'll send you
to sleep!  They're the most splendid things; perfectly harmless.
Just let them rest on the tongue and swallow!"

John let them rest--they were sweetish--and swallowed.

"How is it, then," he said, "that you never go to sleep before
two?"

Frances Freeland corked the little bottle, as if enclosing within
it that awkward question.

"They don't happen to act with me, darling; but that's nothing.
It's the very thing for any one who has to sit up so late," and her
eyes searched his face.  Yes--they seemed to say--I know you
pretend to have work; but if you only had a dear little wife!

"I shall leave you this bottle when I go.  Kiss me."

John bent down, and received one of those kisses of hers that had
such sudden vitality in the middle of them, as if her lips were
trying to get inside his cheek.  From the door he looked back.  She
was smiling, composed again to her stoic wakefulness.

"Shall I shut the door, Mother?"

"Please, darling."

With a little lump in his throat John closed the door.


CHAPTER XVII


The London which Derek had said should be blown up was at its
maximum of life those May days.  Even on this outer rampart of
Hampstead, people, engines, horses, all had a touch of the spring
fever; indeed, especially on this rampart of Hampstead was there
increase of the effort to believe that nature was not dead and
embalmed in books.  The poets, painters, talkers who lived up there
were at each other all the time in their great game of make-
believe.  How could it be otherwise, when there was veritably
blossom on the trees and the chimneys were ceasing to smoke?  How
otherwise, when the sun actually shone on the ponds?  But the four
young people (for Alan joined in--hypnotized by Sheila) did not
stay in Hampstead.  Chiefly on top of tram and 'bus they roamed the
wilderness.  Bethnal Green and Leytonstone, Kensington and Lambeth,
St. James's and Soho, Whitechapel, Shoreditch, West Ham, and
Piccadilly, they traversed the whole ant-heap at its most ebullient
moment.  They knew their Whitman and their Dostoievsky sufficiently
to be aware that they ought to love and delight in everything--in
the gentleman walking down Piccadilly with a flower in his
buttonhole, and in the lady sewing that buttonhole in Bethnal
Green; in the orator bawling himself hoarse close to the Marble
Arch, the coster loading his barrow in Covent Garden; and in Uncle
John Freeland rejecting petitions in Whitehall.  All these things,
of course, together with the long lines of little gray houses in
Camden Town, long lines of carts with bobtail horses rattling over
Blackfriars' Bridge, long smells drifting behind taxicabs--all
these things were as delightful and as stimulating to the soul as
the clouds that trailed the heavens, the fronds of the lilac, and
Leonardo's Cartoon in the Diploma Gallery.  All were equal
manifestations of that energy in flower known as 'Life.'  They knew
that everything they saw and felt and smelled OUGHT equally to make
them long to catch creatures to their hearts and cry: Hosanna!  And
Nedda and Alan, bred in Hampstead, even knew that to admit that
these things did not all move them in the same way would be
regarded as a sign of anaemia.  Nevertheless--most queerly--these
four young people confessed to each other all sorts of sensations
besides that 'Hosanna' one.  They even confessed to rage and pity
and disgust one moment, and to joy and dreams the next, and they
differed greatly as to what excited which.  It was truly odd!  The
only thing on which they did seem to agree was that they were
having 'a thundering good time.'  A sort of sense of "Blow
everything!" was in their wings, and this was due not to the fact
that they were thinking of and loving and admiring the little gray
streets and the gentleman in Piccadilly--as, no doubt, in
accordance with modern culture, they should have been--but to the
fact that they were loving and admiring themselves, and that
entirely without the trouble of thinking about it at all.  The
practice, too, of dividing into couples was distinctly precious to
them, for, though they never failed to start out together, they
never failed to come home two by two.  In this way did they put to
confusion Whitman and Dostoievsky, and all the other thinkers in
Hampstead.  In the daytime they all, save Alan, felt that London
ought to be blown up; but at night it undermined their philosophies
so that they sat silent on the tops of their respective 'buses,
with arms twined in each other's.  For then a something seemed to
have floated up from that mass of houses and machines, of men and
trees, and to be hovering above them, violet-colored, caught
between the stars and the lights, a spirit of such overpowering
beauty that it drenched even Alan in a kind of awe.  After all, the
huge creature that sat with such a giant's weight on the country's
chest, the monster that had spoiled so many fields and robbed so
many lives of peace and health, could fly at night upon blue and
gold and purple wings, murmur a passionate lullaby, and fall into
deep sleep!

One such night they went to the gallery at the opera, to supper at
an oyster-shop, under Alan's pilotage, and then set out to walk
back to Hampstead, timing themselves to catch the dawn.  They had
not gone twenty steps up Southampton Row before Alan and Sheila
were forty steps in front.  A fellow-feeling had made Derek and
Nedda stand to watch an old man who walked, tortuous, extremely
happy, bidding them all come.  And when they moved on, it was very
slowly, just keeping sight of the others across the lumbered
dimness of Covent Garden, where tarpaulin-covered carts and barrows
seemed to slumber under the blink of lamps and watchmen's lanterns.
Across Long Acre they came into a street where there was not a soul
save the two others, a long way ahead.  Walking with his arm
tightly laced with hers, touching her all down one side, Derek felt
that it would be glorious to be attacked by night-birds in this
dark, lonely street, to have a splendid fight and drive them off,
showing himself to Nedda for a man, and her protector.  But nothing
save one black cat came near, and that ran for its life.  He bent
round and looked under the blue veil-thing that wrapped Nedda's
head.  Her face seemed mysteriously lovely, and her eyes, lifted so
quickly, mysteriously true.  She said:

"Derek, I feel like a hill with the sun on it!"

"I feel like that yellow cloud with the wind in it."

"I feel like an apple-tree coming into blossom."

"I feel like a giant."

"I feel like a song."

"I feel I could sing you."

"On a river, floating along."

"A wide one, with great plains on each side, and beasts coming down
to drink, and either the sun or a yellow moon shining, and some one
singing, too, far off."

"The Red Sarafan."

"Let's run!"

From that yellow cloud sailing in moonlight a spurt of rain had
driven into their faces, and they ran as fast as their blood was
flowing, and the raindrops coming down, jumping half the width of
the little dark streets, clutching each other's arms.  And peering
round into her face, so sweet and breathless, into her eyes, so
dark and dancing, he felt he could run all night if he had her
there to run beside him through the dark.  Into another street they
dashed, and again another, till she stopped, panting.

"Where are we now?"

Neither knew.  A policeman put them right for Portland Place.  Half
past one!  And it would be dawn soon after three!  They walked
soberly again now into the outer circle of Regent's Park; talked
soberly, too, discussing sublunary matters, and every now and then,
their arms, round each other, gave little convulsive squeezes.  The
rain had stopped and the moon shone clear; by its light the trees
and flowers were clothed in colors whose blood had spilled away;
the town's murmur was dying, the house lights dead already.  They
came out of the park into a road where the latest taxis were
rattling past; a face, a bare neck, silk hat, or shirt-front
gleamed in the window-squares, and now and then a laugh came
floating through.  They stopped to watch them from under the low-
hanging branches of an acacia-tree, and Derek, gazing at her face,
still wet with rain, so young and round and soft, thought: 'And she
loves me!'  Suddenly she clutched him round the neck, and their
lips met.

They talked not at all for a long time after that kiss, walking
slowly up the long, empty road, while the whitish clouds sailed
across the dark river of the sky and the moon slowly sank.  This
was the most delicious part of all that long walk home, for the
kiss had made them feel as though they had no bodies, but were just
two spirits walking side by side.  This is its curious effect
sometimes in first love between the very young. . . .


Having sent Flora to bed, Felix was sitting up among his books.
There was no need to do this, for the young folk had latch-keys,
but, having begun the vigil, he went on with it, a volume about
Eastern philosophies on his knee, a bowl of narcissus blooms,
giving forth unexpected whiffs of odor, beside him.  And he sank
into a long reverie.

Could it be said--as was said in this Eastern book--that man's life
was really but a dream; could that be said with any more truth than
it had once been said, that he rose again in his body, to perpetual
life?  Could anything be said with truth, save that we knew
nothing?  And was that not really what had always been said by man--
that we knew nothing, but were just blown over and about the world
like soughs of wind, in obedience to some immortal, unknowable
coherence!  But had that want of knowledge ever retarded what was
known as the upward growth of man?  Had it ever stopped man from
working, fighting, loving, dying like a hero if need were?  Had
faith ever been anything but embroidery to an instinctive heroism,
so strong that it needed no such trappings?  Had faith ever been
anything but anodyne, or gratification of the aesthetic sense?  Or
had it really body and substance of its own?  Was it something
absolute and solid, that he--Felix Freeland--had missed?  Or again,
was it, perhaps, but the natural concomitant of youth, a naive
effervescence with which thought and brooding had to part?  And,
turning the page of his book, he noticed that he could no longer
see to read, the lamp had grown too dim, and showed but a
decorative glow in the bright moonlight flooding through the study
window.  He got up and put another log on the fire, for these last
nights of May were chilly.

Nearly three!  Where were these young people?  Had he been asleep,
and they come in?  Sure enough, in the hall Alan's hat and Sheila's
cloak--the dark-red one he had admired when she went forth--were
lying on a chair.  But of the other two--nothing!  He crept up-
stairs.  Their doors were open.  They certainly took their time--
these young lovers.  And the same sore feeling which had attacked
Felix when Nedda first told him of her love came on him badly in
that small of the night when his vitality was lowest.  All the
hours she had spent clambering about him, or quietly resting on his
knee with her head tucked in just where his arm and shoulder met,
listening while he read or told her stories, and now and again
turning those clear eyes of hers wide open to his face, to see if
he meant it; the wilful little tugs of her hand when they two went
exploring the customs of birds, or bees, or flowers; all her
'Daddy, I love yous!' and her rushes to the front door, and long
hugs when he came back from a travel; all those later crookings of
her little finger in his, and the times he had sat when she did not
know it, watching her, and thinking: 'That little creature, with
all that's before her, is my very own daughter to take care of, and
share joy and sorrow with. . . .'  Each one of all these seemed to
come now and tweak at him, as the songs of blackbirds tweak the
heart of one who lies, unable to get out into the Spring.  His lamp
had burned itself quite out; the moon was fallen below the clump of
pines, and away to the north-east something stirred in the stain
and texture of the sky.  Felix opened the window.  What peace out
there!  The chill, scentless peace of night, waiting for dawn's
renewal of warmth and youth.  Through that bay window facing north
he could see on one side the town, still wan with the light of its
lamps, on the other the country, whose dark bloom was graying fast.
Suddenly a tiny bird twittered, and Felix saw his two truants
coming slowly from the gate across the grass, his arm round her
shoulders, hers round his waist.  With their backs turned to him,
they passed the corner of the house, across where the garden sloped
away.  There they stood above the wide country, their bodies
outlined against a sky fast growing light, evidently waiting for
the sun to rise.  Silent they stood, while the birds, one by one,
twittered out their first calls.  And suddenly Felix saw the boy
fling his hand up into the air.  The Sun!  Far away on the gray
horizon was a flare of red!


CHAPTER XVIII


The anxieties of the Lady Mallorings of this life concerning the
moral welfare of their humbler neighbors are inclined to march in
front of events.  The behavior in Tryst's cottage was more correct
than it would have been in nine out of ten middle or upper class
demesnes under similar conditions.  Between the big laborer and
'that woman,' who, since the epileptic fit, had again come into
residence, there had passed nothing whatever that might not have
been witnessed by Biddy and her two nurslings.  For love is an
emotion singularly dumb and undemonstrative in those who live the
life of the fields; passion a feeling severely beneath the thumb of
a propriety born of the age-long absence of excitants,
opportunities, and the aesthetic sense; and those two waited,
almost as a matter of course, for the marriage which was forbidden
them in this parish.  The most they did was to sit and look at one
another.

On the day of which Felix had seen the dawn at Hampstead, Sir
Gerald's agent tapped on the door of Tryst's cottage, and was
answered by Biddy, just in from school for the midday meal.

"Your father home, my dear?"

"No, sir; Auntie's in."

"Ask your auntie to come and speak to me."

The mother-child vanished up the narrow stairs, and the agent
sighed.  A strong-built, leathery-skinned man in a brown suit and
leggings, with a bristly little moustache and yellow whites to his
eyes, he did not, as he had said to his wife that morning, 'like
the job a little bit.'  And while he stood there waiting, Susie and
Billy emerged from the kitchen and came to stare at him.  The agent
returned that stare till a voice behind him said: "Yes, sir?"

'That woman' was certainly no great shakes to look at: a fresh,
decent, faithful sort of body!  And he said gruffly: "Mornin',
miss.  Sorry to say my orders are to make a clearance here.  I
suppose Tryst didn't think we should act on it, but I'm afraid I've
got to put his things out, you know.  Now, where are you all going;
that's the point?"

"I shall go home, I suppose; but Tryst and the children--we don't
know."

The agent tapped his leggings with a riding-cane.  "So you've been
expecting it!" he said with relief.  "That's right."  And, staring
down at the mother-child, he added: "Well, what d'you say, my dear;
you look full of sense, you do!"

Biddy answered: "I'll go and tell Mr. Freeland, sir."

"Ah!  You're a bright maid.  He'll know where to put you for the
time bein'.  Have you had your dinner?"

"No, sir; it's just ready."

"Better have it--better have it first.  No hurry.  What've you got
in the pot that smells so good?"

"Bubble and squeak, sir."

"Bubble and squeak!  Ah!"  And with those words the agent withdrew
to where, in a farm wagon drawn up by the side of the road, three
men were solemnly pulling at their pipes.  He moved away from them
a little, for, as he expressed it to his wife afterward: "Look bad,
you know, look bad--anybody seeing me!  Those three little children--
that's where it is!  If our friends at the Hall had to do these jobs
for themselves, there wouldn't be any to do!"

Presently, from his discreet distance, he saw the mother-child
going down the road toward Tod's, in her blue 'pinny' and corn-
colored hair.  Nice little thing!  Pretty little thing, too!  Pity,
great pity!  And he went back to the cottage.  On his way a thought
struck him so that he well-nigh shivered.  Suppose the little thing
brought back that Mrs. Freeland, the lady who always went about in
blue, without a hat!  Phew!  Mr. Freeland--he was another sort; a
bit off, certainly--harmless, quite harmless!  But that lady!  And
he entered the cottage.  The woman was washing up; seemed a
sensible body.  When the two kids cleared off to school he could go
to work and get it over; the sooner the better, before people came
hanging round.  A job of this kind sometimes made nasty blood!  His
yellowish eyes took in the nature of the task before him.  Funny
jam-up they did get about them, to be sure!  Every blessed little
thing they'd ever bought, and more, too!  Have to take precious
good care nothing got smashed, or the law would be on the other
leg!  And he said to the woman:

"Now, miss, can I begin?"

"I can't stop you, sir."

'No,' he thought, 'you can't stop me, and I blamed well wish you
could!'  But he said: "Got an old wagon out here.  Thought I'd save
him damage by weather or anything; we'll put everything in that,
and run it up into the empty barn at Marrow and leave it.  And
there they'll be for him when he wants 'em."

The woman answered: "You're very kind, I'm sure."

Perceiving that she meant no irony, the agent produced a sound from
somewhere deep and went out to summon his men.

With the best intentions, however, it is not possible, even in
villages so scattered that they cannot be said to exist, to do
anything without every one's knowing; and the work of 'putting out'
the household goods of the Tryst family, and placing them within
the wagon, was not an hour in progress before the road in front of
the cottage contained its knot of watchers.  Old Gaunt first,
alone--for the rogue-girl had gone to Mr. Cuthcott's and Tom Gaunt
was at work.  The old man had seen evictions in his time, and
looked on silently, with a faint, sardonic grin.  Four children, so
small that not even school had any use for them as yet, soon
gathered round his legs, followed by mothers coming to retrieve
them, and there was no longer silence.  Then came two laborers, on
their way to a job, a stone-breaker, and two more women.  It was
through this little throng that the mother-child and Kirsteen
passed into the fast-being-gutted cottage.

The agent was standing by Tryst's bed, keeping up a stream of
comment to two of his men, who were taking that aged bed to pieces.
It was his habit to feel less when he talked more; but no one could
have fallen into a more perfect taciturnity than he when he saw
Kirsteen coming up those narrow stairs.  In so small a space as
this room, where his head nearly touched the ceiling, was it fair
to be confronted by that lady--he put it to his wife that same
evening--"Was it fair?"  He had seen a mother wild duck look like
that when you took away its young--snaky fierce about the neck, and
its dark eye!  He had seen a mare, going to bite, look not half so
vicious!  "There she stood, and--let me have it?--not a bit!  Too
much the lady for that, you know!--Just looked at me, and said very
quiet: 'Ah! Mr. Simmons, and are you really doing this?' and put
her hand on that little girl of his.  'Orders are orders, ma'am!'
What could I say?  'Ah!' she said, 'yes, orders are orders, but
they needn't be obeyed.'  'As to that, ma'am,' I said--mind you,
she's a lady; you can't help feeling that 'I'm a working man, the
same as Tryst here; got to earn my living.'  'So have slave-
drivers, Mr. Simmons.'  'Every profession,' I said, 'has got its
dirty jobs, ma'am.  And that's a fact.'  'And will have,' she said,
'so long as professional men consent to do the dirty work of their
employers.'  'And where should I be, I should like to know,' I
said, 'if I went on that lay?  I've got to take the rough with the
smooth.'  'Well,' she said, 'Mr. Freeland and I will take Tryst and
the little ones in at present.'  Good-hearted people, do a lot for
the laborers, in their way.  All the same, she's a bit of a vixen.
Picture of a woman, too, standin' there; shows blood, mind you!
Once said, all over--no nagging.  She took the little girl off with
her.  And pretty small I felt, knowing I'd got to finish that job,
and the folk outside gettin' nastier all the time--not sayin' much,
of course, but lookin' a lot!"  The agent paused in his recital and
gazed fixedly at a bluebottle crawling up the windowpane.
Stretching out his thumb and finger, he nipped it suddenly and
threw it in the grate.  "Blest if that fellow himself didn't turn
up just as I was finishing.  I was sorry for the man, you know.
There was his home turned out-o'-doors.  Big man, too!  'You
blanky-blank!' he says; 'if I'd been here you shouldn't ha' done
this!'  Thought he was goin' to hit me.  'Come, Tryst!' I said,
'it's not my doing, you know!'  'Ah!' he said, 'I know that; and
it'll be blanky well the worse for THEM!'  Rough tongue; no class
of man at all, he is!  'Yes,' he said, 'let 'em look out; I'll be
even with 'em yet!'  'None o' that!' I told him; 'you know which
side the law's buttered.  I'm making it easy for you, too, keeping
your things in the wagon, ready to shift any time!'  He gave me a
look--he's got very queer eyes, swimmin', sad sort of eyes, like a
man in liquor--and he said: 'I've been here twenty years,' he said.
'My wife died here.'  And all of a sudden he went as dumb as a
fish.  Never let his eyes off us, though, while we finished up the
last of it; made me feel funny, seein' him glowering like that all
the time.  He'll savage something over this, you mark my words!"
Again the agent paused, and remained as though transfixed, holding
that face of his, whose yellow had run into the whites of the eyes,
as still as wood.  "He's got some feeling for the place, I
suppose," he said suddenly; "or maybe they've put it into him about
his rights; there's plenty of 'em like that.  Well, anyhow, nobody
likes his private affairs turned inside out for every one to gape
at.  I wouldn't myself."  And with that deeply felt remark the
agent put out his leathery-yellow thumb and finger and nipped a
second bluebottle. . . .

While the agent was thus recounting to his wife the day's doings,
the evicted Tryst sat on the end of his bed in a ground-floor room
of Tod's cottage.  He had taken off his heavy boots, and his feet,
in their thick, soiled socks, were thrust into a pair of Tod's
carpet slippers.  He sat without moving, precisely as if some one
had struck him a blow in the centre of the forehead, and over and
over again he turned the heavy thought: 'They've turned me out o'
there--I done nothing, and they turned me out o' there!  Blast
them--they turned me out o' there!' . . .

In the orchard Tod sat with a grave and puzzled face, surrounded by
the three little Trysts.  And at the wicket gate Kirsteen, awaiting
the arrival of Derek and Sheila--summoned home by telegram--stood
in the evening glow, her blue-clad figure still as that of any
worshipper at the muezzin-call.


CHAPTER XIX


"A fire, causing the destruction of several ricks and an empty
cowshed, occurred in the early morning of Thursday on the home farm
of Sir Gerald Malloring's estate in Worcestershire.  Grave
suspicions of arson are entertained, but up to the present no
arrest has been made.  The authorities are in doubt whether the
occurrence has any relation with recent similar outbreaks in the
eastern counties."


So Stanley read at breakfast, in his favorite paper; and the little
leader thereon:


"The outbreak of fire on Sir Gerald Malloring's Worcestershire
property may or may not have any significance as a symptom of
agrarian unrest.  We shall watch the upshot with some anxiety.
Certain it is that unless the authorities are prepared to deal
sharply with arson, or other cases of deliberate damage to the
property of landlords, we may bid good-by to any hope of
ameliorating the lot of the laborer"

--and so on.

If Stanley had risen and paced the room there would have been a
good deal to be said for him; for, though he did not know as much
as Felix of the nature and sentiments of Tod's children, he knew
enough to make any but an Englishman uneasy.  The fact that he went
on eating ham, and said to Clara, "Half a cup!" was proof positive
of that mysterious quality called phlegm which had long enabled his
country to enjoy the peace of a weedy duck-pond.

Stanley, a man of some intelligence--witness his grasp of the
secret of successful plough-making (none for the home market!)--had
often considered this important proposition of phlegm.  People said
England was becoming degenerate and hysterical, growing soft, and
nervous, and towny, and all the rest of it.  In his view there was
a good deal of bosh about that!  "Look," he would say, "at the
weight that chauffeurs put on!  Look at the House of Commons, and
the size of the upper classes!"  If there were growing up little
shrill types of working men and Socialists, and new women, and
half-penny papers, and a rather larger crop of professors and long-
haired chaps--all the better for the rest of the country!  The
flesh all these skimpy ones had lost, solid people had put on.  The
country might be suffering a bit from officialism, and the tendency
of modern thought, but the breed was not changing.  John Bull was
there all right under his moustache.  Take it off and clap on
little side-whiskers, and you had as many Bulls as you liked, any
day.  There would be no social upheaval so long as the climate was
what it was!  And with this simple formula, and a kind of very
deep-down throaty chuckle, he would pass to a subject of more
immediate importance.  There was something, indeed, rather masterly
in his grasp of the fact that rain might be trusted to put out any
fire--give it time.  And he kept a special vessel in a special
corner which recorded for him faithfully the number of inches that
fell; and now and again he wrote to his paper to say that there
were more inches in his vessel than there had been "for thirty
years."  His conviction that the country was in a bad way was
nothing but a skin affection, causing him local irritation rather
than affecting the deeper organs of his substantial body.

He did not readily confide in Clara concerning his own family,
having in a marked degree the truly domestic quality of thinking it
superior to his wife's.  She had been a Tomson, not one of THE
Tomsons, and it was quite a question whether he or she were trying
to forget that fact the faster.  But he did say to her as he was
getting into the car:

"It's just possible I might go round by Tod's on my way home.  I
want a run."

She answered: "Be careful what you say to that woman.  I don't want
her here by any chance.  The young ones were quite bad enough."

And when he had put in his day at the works he did turn the nose of
his car toward Tod's.  Travelling along grass-bordered roads, the
beauty of this England struck his not too sensitive spirit and made
him almost gasp.  It was that moment of the year when the
countryside seems to faint from its own loveliness, from the
intoxication of its scents and sounds.  Creamy-white may, splashed
here and there with crimson, flooded the hedges in breaking waves
of flower-foam; the fields were all buttercup glory; every tree had
its cuckoo, calling; every bush its blackbird or thrush in full
even-song.  Swallows were flying rather low, and the sky, whose
moods they watch, had the slumberous, surcharged beauty of a long,
fine day, with showers not far away.  Some orchards were still in
blossom, and the great wild bees, hunting over flowers and grasses
warm to their touch, kept the air deeply murmurous.  Movement,
light, color, song, scent, the warm air, and the fluttering leaves
were confused, till one had almost become the other.

And Stanley thought, for he was not rhapsodic 'Wonderful pretty
country!  The way everything's looked after--you never see it
abroad!'

But the car, a creature with little patience for natural beauty,
had brought him to the crossroads and stood, panting slightly,
under the cliff-bank whereon grew Tod's cottage, so loaded now with
lilac, wistaria, and roses that from the road nothing but a peak or
two of the thatched roof could be seen.

Stanley was distinctly nervous.  It was not a weakness his face and
figure were very capable of showing, but he felt that dryness of
mouth and quivering of chest which precede adventures of the soul.
Advancing up the steps and pebbled path, which Clara had trodden
once, just nineteen years ago, and he himself but three times as
yet in all, he cleared his throat and said to himself: 'Easy, old
man!  What is it, after all?  She won't bite!'  And in the very
doorway he came upon her.

What there was about this woman to produce in a man of common sense
such peculiar sensations, he no more knew after seeing her than
before.  Felix, on returning from his visit, had said, "She's like
a Song of the Hebrides sung in the middle of a programme of English
ballads."  The remark, as any literary man's might, had conveyed
nothing to Stanley, and that in a far-fetched way.  Still, when she
said: "Will you come in?" he felt heavier and thicker than he had
ever remembered feeling; as a glass of stout might feel coming
across a glass of claret.  It was, perhaps, the gaze of her eyes,
whose color he could not determine, under eyebrows that waved in
the middle and twitched faintly, or a dress that was blue, with the
queerest effect of another color at the back of it, or perhaps the
feeling of a torrent flowing there under a coat of ice, that might
give way in little holes, so that your leg went in but not the
whole of you.  Something, anyway, made him feel both small and
heavy--that awkward combination for a man accustomed to associate
himself with cheerful but solid dignity.  In seating himself by
request at a table, in what seemed to be a sort of kitchen, he
experienced a singular sensation in the legs, and heard her say, as
it might be to the air:

"Biddy, dear, take Susie and Billy out."

And thereupon a little girl with a sad and motherly face came
crawling out from underneath the table, and dropped him a little
courtesy.  Then another still smaller girl came out, and a very
small boy, staring with all his eyes.

All these things were against Stanley, and he felt that if he did
not make it quite clear that he was there he would soon not know
where he was.

"I came," he said, "to talk about this business up at Malloring's."
And, encouraged by having begun, he added: "Whose kids were those?"

A level voice with a faint lisp answered him:

"They belong to a man called Tryst; he was turned out of his
cottage on Wednesday because his dead wife's sister was staying
with him, so we've taken them in.  Did you notice the look on the
face of the eldest?"

Stanley nodded.  In truth, he had noticed something, though what he
could not have said.

"At nine years old she has to do the housework and be a mother to
the other two, besides going to school.  This is all because Lady
Malloring has conscientious scruples about marriage with a deceased
wife's sister."

'Certainly'--thought Stanley--'that does sound a bit thick!'  And
he asked:

"Is the woman here, too?"

"No, she's gone home for the present."

He felt relief.

"I suppose Malloring's point is," he said, "whether or not you're
to do what you like with your own property.  For instance, if you
had let this cottage to some one you thought was harming the
neighborhood, wouldn't you terminate his tenancy?"

She answered, still in that level voice:

"Her action is cowardly, narrow, and tyrannical, and no amount of
sophistry will make me think differently."

Stanley felt precisely as if one of his feet had gone through the
ice into water so cold that it seemed burning hot!  Sophistry!  In
a plain man like himself!  He had always connected the word with
Felix.  He looked at her, realizing suddenly that the association
of his brother's family with the outrage on Malloring's estate was
probably even nearer than he had feared.

"Look here, Kirsteen!" he said, uttering the unlikely name with
resolution, for, after all, she was his sister-in-law: "Did this
fellow set fire to Malloring's ricks?"

He was aware of a queer flash, a quiver, a something all over her
face, which passed at once back to its intent gravity.

"We have no reason to suppose so.  But tyranny produces revenge, as
you know."

Stanley shrugged his shoulders.  "It's not my business to go into
the rights and wrongs of what's been done.  But, as a man of the
world and a relative, I do ask you to look after your youngsters
and see they don't get into a mess.  They're an inflammable young
couple--young blood, you know!"

Having made this speech, Stanley looked down, with a feeling that
it would give her more chance.

"You are very kind," he heard her saying in that quiet, faintly
lisping voice; "but there are certain principles involved."

And, suddenly, his curious fear of this woman took shape.
Principles!  He had unconsciously been waiting for that word, than
which none was more like a red rag to him.

"What principles can possibly be involved in going against the law?"

"And where the law is unjust?"

Stanley was startled, but he said: "Remember that your principles,
as you call them, may hurt other people besides yourself; Tod and
your children most of all.  How is the law unjust, may I ask?"

She had been sitting at the table opposite, but she got up now and
went to the hearth.  For a woman of forty-two--as he supposed she
would be--she was extraordinarily lithe, and her eyes, fixed on him
from under those twitching, wavy brows, had a curious glow in their
darkness.  The few silver threads in the mass of her over-fine
black hair seemed to give it extra vitality.  The whole of her had
a sort of intensity that made him profoundly uncomfortable.  And he
thought suddenly: 'Poor old Tod!  Fancy having to go to bed with
that woman!'

Without raising her voice, she began answering his question.

"These poor people have no means of setting law in motion, no means
of choosing where and how they will live, no means of doing
anything except just what they are told; the Mallorings have the
means to set the law in motion, to choose where and how to live,
and to dictate to others.  That is why the law is unjust.  With
every independent pound a year, this equal law of yours--varies!"

"Phew!" said Stanley.  "That's a proposition!"

"I give you a simple case.  If I had chosen not to marry Tod but to
live with him in free love, we could have done it without
inconvenience.  We have some independent income; we could have
afforded to disregard what people thought or did.  We could have
bought (as we did buy) our piece of land and our cottage, out of
which we could not have been turned.  Since we don't care for
society, it would have made absolutely no difference to our present
position.  But Tryst, who does not even want to defy the law--what
happens to him?  What happens to hundreds of laborers all over the
country who venture to differ in politics, religion, or morals from
those who own them?"

'By George!' thought Stanley, 'it's true, in a way; I never looked
at it quite like that.'  But the feeling that he had come to
persuade her to be reasonable, and the deeply rooted Englishry of
him, conspired to make him say:

"That's all very well; but, you see, it's only a necessary incident
of property-holding.  You can't interfere with plain rights."

"You mean--an evil inherent in property-holding?"

"If you like; I don't split words.  The lesser of two evils.
What's your remedy?  You don't want to abolish property; you've
confessed that property gives YOU your independence!"

Again that curious quiver and flash!

"Yes; but if people haven't decency enough to see for themselves
how the law favors their independence, they must be shown that it
doesn't pay to do to others as they would hate to be done by."

"And you wouldn't try reasoning?"

"They are not amenable to reason."

Stanley took up his hat.

"Well, I think some of us are.  I see your point; but, you know,
violence never did any good; it isn't--isn't English."

She did not answer.  And, nonplussed thereby, he added lamely: "I
should have liked to have seen Tod and your youngsters.  Remember
me to them.  Clara sent her regards"; and, looking round the room
in a rather lost way, he held out his hand.

He had an impression of something warm and dry put into it, with
even a little pressure.

Back in the car, he said to his chauffeur, "Go home the other way,
Batter, past the church."

The vision of that kitchen, with its brick floor, its black oak
beams, bright copper pans, the flowers on the window-sill, the
great, open hearth, and the figure of that woman in her blue dress
standing before it, with her foot poised on a log, clung to his
mind's eye with curious fidelity.  And those three kids, popping
out like that--proof that the whole thing was not a rather bad
dream!  'Queer business!' he thought; 'bad business!  That woman's
uncommonly all there, though.  Lot in what she said, too.  Where
the deuce should we all be if there were many like her!'  And
suddenly he noticed, in a field to the right, a number of men
coming along the hedge toward the road--evidently laborers.  What
were they doing?  He stopped the car.  There were fifteen or twenty
of them, and back in the field he could see a girl's red blouse,
where a little group of four still lingered.  'By George!' he
thought, 'those must be the young Tods going it!'  And, curious to
see what it might mean, Stanley fixed his attention on the gate
through which the men were bound to come.  First emerged a fellow
in corduroys tied below the knee, with long brown moustaches
decorating a face that, for all its haggardness, had a jovial look.
Next came a sturdy little red-faced, bow-legged man in shirt-
sleeves rolled up, walking alongside a big, dark fellow with a cap
pushed up on his head, who had evidently just made a joke.  Then
came two old men, one of whom was limping, and three striplings.
Another big man came along next, in a little clearance, as it were,
between main groups.  He walked heavily, and looked up lowering at
the car.  The fellow's eyes were queer, and threatening, and sad--
giving Stanley a feeling of discomfort.  Then came a short, square
man with an impudent, loquacious face and a bit of swagger in his
walk.  He, too, looked up at Stanley and made some remark which
caused two thin-faced fellows with him to grin sheepishly.  A spare
old man, limping heavily, with a yellow face and drooping gray
moustaches, walked next, alongside a warped, bent fellow, with
yellowish hair all over his face, whose expression struck Stanley
as half-idiotic.  Then two more striplings of seventeen or so,
whittling at bits of sticks; an active, clean-shorn chap with
drawn-in cheeks; and, last of all, a small man by himself, without
a cap on a round head covered with thin, light hair, moving at a
'dot-here, dot-there' walk, as though he had beasts to drive.

Stanley noted that all--save the big man with the threatening, sad
eyes, the old, yellow-faced man with a limp, and the little man who
came out last, lost in his imaginary beasts--looked at the car
furtively as they went their ways.  And Stanley thought: 'English
peasant!  Poor devil!  Who is he?  What is he?  Who'd miss him if
he did die out?  What's the use of all this fuss about him?  He's
done for!  Glad I've nothing to do with him at Becket, anyway!
"Back to the land!"  "Independent peasantry!"  Not much!  Shan't
say that to Clara, though; knock the bottom out of her week-ends!'
And to his chauffeur he muttered:

"Get on, Batter!"

So, through the peace of that country, all laid down in grass,
through the dignity and loveliness of trees and meadows, this May
evening, with the birds singing under a sky surcharged with warmth
and color, he sped home to dinner.


CHAPTER XX


But next morning, turning on his back as it came dawn, Stanley
thought, with the curious intensity which in those small hours so
soon becomes fear: 'By Jove!  I don't trust that woman a yard!  I
shall wire for Felix!'  And the longer he lay on his back, the more
the conviction bored a hole in him.  There was a kind of fever in
the air nowadays, that women seemed to catch, as children caught
the measles.  What did it all mean?  England used to be a place to
live in.  One would have thought an old country like this would
have got through its infantile diseases!  Hysteria!  No one gave in
to that.  Still, one must look out!  Arson was about the limit!
And Stanley had a vision, suddenly, of his plough-works in flames.
Why not?  The ploughs were not for the English market.  Who knew
whether these laboring fellows mightn't take that as a grievance,
if trouble began to spread?  This somewhat far-fetched notion,
having started to burrow, threw up a really horrid mole-hill on
Stanley.  And it was only the habit, in the human mind, of saying
suddenly to fears: Stop!  I'm tired of you! that sent him to sleep
about half past four.

He did not, however, neglect to wire to Felix:


"If at all possible, come down again at once; awkward business at
Joyfields."


Nor, on the charitable pretext of employing two old fellows past
ordinary work, did he omit to treble his night-watchman. . .

On Wednesday, the day of which he had seen the dawn rise, Felix had
already been startled, on returning from his constitutional, to
discover his niece and nephew in the act of departure.  All the
explanation vouchsafed had been: "Awfully sorry, Uncle Felix;
Mother's wired for us."  Save for the general uneasiness which
attended on all actions of that woman, Felix would have felt
relieved at their going.  They had disturbed his life, slipped
between him and Nedda!  So much so that he did not even expect her
to come and tell him why they had gone, nor feel inclined to ask
her.  So little breaks the fine coherence of really tender ties!
The deeper the quality of affection, the more it 'starts and
puffs,' and from sheer sensitive feeling, each for the other,
spares attempt to get back into touch!

His paper--though he did not apply to it the word 'favorite,'
having that proper literary feeling toward all newspapers, that
they took him in rather than he them--gave him on Friday morning
precisely the same news, of the rick-burning, as it gave to Stanley
at breakfast and to John on his way to the Home Office.  To John,
less in the know, it merely brought a knitting of the brow and a
vague attempt to recollect the numbers of the Worcestershire
constabulary.  To Felix it brought a feeling of sickness.  Men
whose work in life demands that they shall daily whip their nerves,
run, as a rule, a little in advance of everything.  And goodness
knows what he did not see at that moment.  He said no word to
Nedda, but debated with himself and Flora what, if anything, was to
be done.  Flora, whose sense of humor seldom deserted her, held the
more comfortable theory that there was nothing to be done as yet.
Soon enough to cry when milk was spilled!  He did not agree, but,
unable to suggest a better course, followed her advice.  On
Saturday, however, receiving Stanley's wire, he had much difficulty
in not saying to her, "I told you so!"  The question that agitated
him now was whether or not to take Nedda with him.  Flora said:
"Yes.  The child will be the best restraining influence, if there
is really trouble brewing!"  Some feeling fought against this in
Felix, but, suspecting it to be mere jealousy, he decided to take
her.  And, to the girl's rather puzzled delight, they arrived at
Becket that day in time for dinner.  It was not too reassuring to
find John there, too.  Stanley had also wired to him.  The matter
must indeed be serious!

The usual week-end was in progress.  Clara had made one of her
greatest efforts.  A Bulgarian had providentially written a book in
which he showed, beyond doubt, that persons fed on brown bread,
potatoes, and margarine, gave the most satisfactory results of all.
It was a discovery of the first value as a topic for her dinner-
table--seeming to solve the whole vexed problem of the laborers
almost at one stroke.  If they could only be got to feed themselves
on this perfect programme, what a saving of the situation!  On
those three edibles, the Bulgarian said--and he had been well
translated--a family of five could be maintained at full efficiency
for a shilling per day.  Why! that would leave nearly eight
shillings a week, in many cases more, for rent, firing, insurance,
the man's tobacco, and the children's boots.  There would be no
more of that terrible pinching by the mothers, to feed the husband
and children properly, of which one heard so much; no more
lamentable deterioration in our stock!  Brown bread, potatoes,
margarine--quite a great deal could be provided for seven
shillings!  And what was more delicious than a well-baked potato
with margarine of good quality?  The carbohydrates--or was it
hybocardrates--ah, yes! the kybohardrates--would be present in
really sufficient quantity!  Little else was talked of all through
dinner at her end of the table.  Above the flowers which Frances
Freeland always insisted on arranging--and very charmingly--when
she was there--over bare shoulders and white shirt-fronts, those
words bombed and rebombed.  Brown bread, potatoes, margarine,
carbohydrates, calorific!  They mingled with the creaming sizzle of
champagne, with the soft murmur of well-bred deglutition.  White
bosoms heaved and eyebrows rose at them.  And now and again some
Bigwig versed in science murmured the word 'Fats.'  An agricultural
population fed to the point of efficiency without disturbance of
the existing state of things!  Eureka!  If only into the bargain
they could be induced to bake their own brown bread and cook their
potatoes well!  Faces flushed, eyes brightened, and teeth shone.
It was the best, the most stimulating, dinner ever swallowed in
that room.  Nor was it until each male guest had eaten, drunk, and
talked himself into torpor suitable to the company of his wife,
that the three brothers could sit in the smoking-room together,
undisturbed.

When Stanley had described his interview with 'that woman,' his
glimpse of the red blouse, and the laborers' meeting, there was a
silence before John said:

"It might be as well if Tod would send his two youngsters abroad
for a bit."

Felix shook his head.

"I don't think he would, and I don't think they'd go.  But we might
try to get those two to see that anything the poor devils of
laborers do is bound to recoil on themselves, fourfold.  I
suppose," he added, with sudden malice, "a laborers' rising would
have no chance?"

Neither John nor Stanley winced.

"Rising?  Why should they rise?"

"They did in '32."

"In '32!" repeated John.  "Agriculture had its importance then.
Now it has none.  Besides, they've no cohesion, no power, like the
miners or railway men.  Rising?  No chance, no earthly!  Weight of
metal's dead against it."

Felix smiled.

"Money and guns!  Guns and money!  Confess with me, brethren, that
we're glad of metal."

John stared and Stanley drank off his whiskey and potash.  Felix
really was a bit 'too thick' sometimes.  Then Stanley said:

"Wonder what Tod thinks of it all.  Will you go over, Felix, and
advise that our young friends be more considerate to these poor
beggars?"

Felix nodded.  And with 'Good night, old man' all round, and no
shaking of the hands, the three brothers dispersed.

But behind Felix, as he opened his bedroom door, a voice whispered:

"Dad!"  And there, in the doorway of the adjoining room, was Nedda
in her dressing-gown.

"Do come in for a minute.  I've been waiting up.  You ARE late."

Felix followed her into her room.  The pleasure he would once have
had in this midnight conspiracy was superseded now, and he stood
blinking at her gravely.  In that blue gown, with her dark hair
falling on its lace collar and her face so round and childish, she
seemed more than ever to have defrauded him.  Hooking her arm in
his, she drew him to the window; and Felix thought: 'She just wants
to talk to me about Derek.  Dog in the manger that I am!  Here goes
to be decent!'  So he said:

"Well, my dear?"

Nedda pressed his hand with a little coaxing squeeze.

"Daddy, darling, I do love you!"

And, though Felix knew that she had grasped what he was feeling, a
sort of warmth spread in him.  She had begun counting his fingers
with one of her own, sitting close beside him.  The warmth in Felix
deepened, but he thought: 'She must want a good deal out of me!'
Then she began:

"Why did we come down again?  I know there's something wrong!  It's
hard not to know, when you're anxious."  And she sighed.  That
little sigh affected Felix.

"I'd always rather know the truth, Dad.  Aunt Clara said something
about a fire at the Mallorings'."

Felix stole a look at her.  Yes!  There was a lot in this child of
his!  Depth, warmth, and strength to hold to things.  No use to
treat her as a child!  And he answered:

"My dear, there's really nothing beyond what you know--our young
man and Sheila are hotheads, and things over there are working up a
bit.  We must try and smooth them down."

"Dad, ought I to back him whatever he does?"

What a question!  The more so that one cannot answer superficially
the questions of those whom one loves.

"Ah!" he said at last.  "I don't know yet.  Some things it's not
your duty to do; that's certain.  It can't be right to do things
simply because he does them--THAT'S not real--however fond one is."

"No; I feel that.  Only, it's so hard to know what I do really
think--there's always such a lot trying to make one feel that only
what's nice and cosey is right!"

And Felix thought: 'I've been brought up to believe that only
Russian girls care for truth.  It seems I was wrong.  The saints
forbid I should be a stumbling-block to my own daughter searching
for it!  And yet--where's it all leading?  Is this the same child
that told me only the other night she wanted to know everything?
She's a woman now!  So much for love!'  And he said:

"Let's go forward quietly, without expecting too much of ourselves."

"Yes, Dad; only I distrust myself so."

"No one ever got near the truth who didn't."

"Can we go over to Joyfields to-morrow?  I don't think I could bear
a whole day of Bigwigs and eating, with this hanging--"

"Poor Bigwigs!  All right!  We'll go.  And now, bed; and think of
nothing!"

Her whisper tickled his ear:

"You are a darling to me, Dad!"

He went out comforted.

And for some time after she had forgotten everything he leaned out
of his window, smoking cigarettes, and trying to see the body and
soul of night.  How quiet she was--night, with her mystery, bereft
of moon, in whose darkness seemed to vibrate still the song of the
cuckoos that had been calling so all day!  And whisperings of
leaves communed with Felix.


CHAPTER XXI


What Tod thought of all this was, perhaps, as much of an enigma to
Tod as to his three brothers, and never more so than on that Sunday
morning when two police constables appeared at his door with a
warrant for the arrest of Tryst.  After regarding them fixedly for
full thirty seconds, he said, "Wait!" and left them in the doorway.

Kirsteen was washing breakfast things which had a leadless glaze,
and Tryst's three children, extremely tidy, stood motionless at the
edge of the little scullery, watching.

When she had joined him in the kitchen Tod shut the door.

"Two policemen," he said, "want Tryst.  Are they to have him?"

In the life together of these two there had, from the very start,
been a queer understanding as to who should decide what.  It had
become by now so much a matter of instinct that combative
consultations, which bulk so large in married lives, had no place
in theirs.  A frowning tremor passed over her face.

"I suppose they must.  Derek is out.  Leave it to me, Tod, and take
the tinies into the orchard."

Tod took the three little Trysts to the very spot where Derek and
Nedda had gazed over the darkening fields in exchanging that first
kiss, and, sitting on the stump of the apple-tree he had cut down,
he presented each of them with an apple.  While they ate, he
stared.  And his dog stared at him.  How far there worked in Tod
the feelings of an ordinary man watching three small children whose
only parent the law was just taking into its charge it would be
rash to say, but his eyes were extremely blue and there was a frown
between them.

"Well, Biddy?" he said at last.

Biddy did not reply; the habit of being a mother had imposed on
her, together with the gravity of her little, pale, oval face, a
peculiar talent for silence.  But the round-cheeked Susie said:

"Billy can eat cores."

After this statement, silence was broken only by munching, till Tod
remarked:

"What makes things?"

The children, having the instinct that he had not asked them, but
himself, came closer.  He had in his hand a little beetle.

"This beetle lives in rotten wood; nice chap, isn't he?"

"We kill beetles; we're afraid of them."  So Susie.

They were now round Tod so close that Billy was standing on one of
his large feet, Susie leaning her elbows on one of his broad knees,
and Biddy's slender little body pressed against his huge arm.

"No," said Tod; "beetles are nice chaps."

"The birds eats them," remarked Billy.

"This beetle," said Tod, "eats wood.  It eats through trees and the
trees get rotten."

Biddy spoke:

"Then they don't give no more apples."  Tod put the beetle down and
Billy got off his foot to tread on it.  When he had done his best
the beetle emerged and vanished in the grass.  Tod, who had offered
no remonstrance, stretched out his hand and replaced Billy on his
foot.

"What about my treading on you, Billy?" he said.

"Why?"

"I'm big and you're little."

On Billy's square face came a puzzled defiance.  If he had not been
early taught his station he would evidently have found some
poignant retort.  An intoxicated humblebee broke the silence by
buzzing into Biddy's fluffed-out, corn-gold hair.  Tod took it off
with his hand.

"Lovely chap, isn't he?"

The children, who had recoiled, drew close again, while the drunken
bee crawled feebly in the cage of Tod's large hand.

"Bees sting," said Biddy; "I fell on a bee and it stang me!"

"You stang it first," said Tod.  "This chap wouldn't sting--not for
worlds.  Stroke it!"

Biddy put out her little, pale finger but stayed it a couple of
inches from the bee.

"Go on," said Tod.

Opening her mouth a little, Biddy went on and touched the bee.

"It's soft," she said.  "Why don't it buzz?"

"I want to stroke it, too," said Susie.  And Billy stamped a little
on Tod's foot.

"No," said Tod; "only Biddy."

There was perfect silence till the dog, rising, approached its
nose, black with a splash of pinky whiteness on the end of the
bridge, as if to love the bee.

"No," said Tod.  The dog looked at him, and his yellow-brown eyes
were dark with anxiety.

"It'll sting the dog's nose," said Biddy, and Susie and Billy came
yet closer.

It was at this moment, when the heads of the dog, the bee, Tod,
Biddy, Susie, and Billy might have been contained within a noose
three feet in diameter, that Felix dismounted from Stanley's car
and, coming from the cottage, caught sight of that little idyll
under the dappled sunlight, green, and blossom.  It was something
from the core of life, out of the heartbeat of things--like a rare
picture or song, the revelation of the childlike wonder and
delight, to which all other things are but the supernumerary
casings--a little pool of simplicity into which fever and yearning
sank and were for a moment drowned.  And quite possibly he would
have gone away without disturbing them if the dog had not growled
and wagged his tail.

But when the children had been sent down into the field he
experienced the usual difficulty in commencing a talk with Tod.
How far was his big brother within reach of mere unphilosophic
statements; how far was he going to attend to facts?

"We came back yesterday," he began; "Nedda and I.  You know all
about Derek and Nedda, I suppose?"

Tod nodded.

"What do you think of it?"

"He's a good chap."

"Yes," murmured Felix, "but a firebrand.  This business at
Malloring's--what's it going to lead to, Tod?  We must look out,
old man.  Couldn't you send Derek and Sheila abroad for a bit?"

"Wouldn't go."

"But, after all, they're dependent on you."

"Don't say that to them; I should never see them again."

Felix, who felt the instinctive wisdom of that remark, answered
helplessly:

"What's to be done, then?"

"Sit tight."  And Tod's hand came down on Felix's shoulder.

"But suppose they get into real trouble?  Stanley and John don't
like it; and there's Mother."  And Felix added, with sudden heat,
"Besides, I can't stand Nedda being made anxious like this."

Tod removed his hand.  Felix would have given a good deal to have
been able to see into the brain behind the frowning stare of those
blue eyes.

"Can't help by worrying.  What must be, will.  Look at the birds!"

The remark from any other man would have irritated Felix
profoundly; coming from Tod, it seemed the unconscious expression
of a really felt philosophy.  And, after all, was he not right?
What was this life they all lived but a ceaseless worrying over
what was to come?  Was not all man's unhappiness caused by nervous
anticipations of the future?  Was not that the disease, and the
misfortune, of the age; perhaps of all the countless ages man had
lived through?

With an effort he recalled his thoughts from that far flight.  What
if Tod had rediscovered the secret of the happiness that belonged
to birds and lilies of the field--such overpowering interest in the
moment that the future did not exist?  Why not?  Were not the only
minutes when he himself was really happy those when he lost himself
in work, or love?  And why were they so few?  For want of pressure
to the square moment.  Yes!  All unhappiness was fear and lack of
vitality to live the present fully.  That was why love and fighting
were such poignant ecstasies--they lived their present to the full.
And so it would be almost comic to say to those young people: Go
away; do nothing in this matter in which your interest and your
feelings are concerned!  Don't have a present, because you've got
to have a future!  And he said:

"I'd give a good deal for your power of losing yourself in the
moment, old boy!"

"That's all right," said Tod.  He was examining the bark of a tree,
which had nothing the matter with it, so far as Felix could see;
while his dog, who had followed them, carefully examined Tod.  Both
were obviously lost in the moment.  And with a feeling of defeat
Felix led the way back to the cottage.

In the brick-floored kitchen Derek was striding up and down; while
around him, in an equilateral triangle, stood the three women,
Sheila at the window, Kirsteen by the open hearth, Nedda against
the wall opposite.  Derek exclaimed at once:

"Why did you let them, Father?  Why didn't you refuse to give him
up?"

Felix looked at his brother.  In the doorway, where his curly head
nearly touched the wood, Tod's face was puzzled, rueful.  He did
not answer.

"Any one could have said he wasn't here.  We could have smuggled
him away.  Now the brutes have got him!  I don't know that, though--"
And he made suddenly for the door.

Tod did not budge.  "No," he said.

Derek turned; his mother was at the other door; at the window, the
two girls.

The comedy of this scene, if there be comedy in the face of grief,
was for the moment lost on Felix.

'It's come,' he thought.  'What now?'

Derek had flung himself down at the table and was burying his head
in his hands.  Sheila went up to him.

"Don't be a fool, Derek."

However right and natural that remark, it seemed inadequate.

And Felix looked at Nedda.  The blue motor scarf she had worn had
slipped off her dark head; her face was white; her eyes, fixed
immovably on Derek, seemed waiting for him to recognize that she
was there.  The boy broke out again:

"It was treachery!  We took him in; and now we've given him up.
They wouldn't have touched US if we'd got him away.  Not they!"

Felix literally heard the breathing of Tod on one side of him and
of Kirsteen on the other.  He crossed over and stood opposite his
nephew.

"Look here, Derek," he said; "your mother was quite right.  You
might have put this off for a day or two; but it was bound to come.
You don't know the reach of the law.  Come, my dear fellow!  It's
no good making a fuss, that's childish--the thing is to see that
the man gets every chance."

Derek looked up.  Probably he had not yet realized that his uncle
was in the room; and Felix was astonished at his really haggard
face; as if the incident had bitten and twisted some vital in his
body.

"He trusted us."

Felix saw Kirsteen quiver and flinch, and understood why they had
none of them felt quite able to turn their backs on that display of
passion.  Something deep and unreasoning was on the boy's side;
something that would not fit with common sense and the habits of
civilized society; something from an Arab's tent or a Highland
glen.  Then Tod came up behind and put his hands on his son's
shoulders.

"Come!" he said; "milk's spilt."

"All right!" said Derek gruffly, and he went to the door.

Felix made Nedda a sign and she slipped out after him.


CHAPTER XXII


Nedda, her blue head-gear trailing, followed along at the boy's
side while he passed through the orchard and two fields; and when
he threw himself down under an ash-tree she, too, subsided, waiting
for him to notice her.

"I am here," she said at last.

At that ironic little speech Derek sat up.

"It'll kill him," he said.

"But--to burn things, Derek!  To light horrible cruel flames, and
burn things, even if they aren't alive!"

Derek said through his teeth:

"It's I who did it!  If I'd never talked to him he'd have been like
the others.  They were taking him in a cart, like a calf."

Nedda got possession of his hand and held it tight.

That was a bitter and frightening hour under the faintly rustling
ash-tree, while the wind sprinkled over her flakes of the may
blossom, just past its prime.  Love seemed now so little a thing,
seemed to have lost warmth and power, seemed like a suppliant
outside a door.  Why did trouble come like this the moment one felt
deeply?

The church bell was tolling; they could see the little congregation
pass across the churchyard into that weekly dream they knew too
well.  And presently the drone emerged, mingling with the voices
outside, of sighing trees and trickling water, of the rub of wings,
birds' songs, and the callings of beasts everywhere beneath the sky.

In spite of suffering because love was not the first emotion in his
heart, the girl could only feel he was right not to be loving her;
that she ought to be glad of what was eating up all else within
him.  It was ungenerous, unworthy, to want to be loved at such a
moment.  Yet she could not help it!  This was her first experience
of the eternal tug between self and the loved one pulled in the
hearts of lovers.  Would she ever come to feel happy when he was
just doing what he thought was right?  And she drew a little away
from him; then perceived that unwittingly she had done the right
thing, for he at once tried to take her hand again.  And this was
her first lesson, too, in the nature of man.  If she did not give
her hand, he wanted it!  But she was not one of those who calculate
in love; so she gave him her hand at once.  That went to his heart;
and he put his arm round her, till he could feel the emotion under
those stays that would not be drawn any closer.  In this nest
beneath the ash-tree they sat till they heard the organ wheeze and
the furious sound of the last hymn, and saw the brisk coming-forth
with its air of, 'Thank God!  And now, to eat!' till at last there
was no stir again about the little church--no stir at all save that
of nature's ceaseless thanksgiving. . . .

Tod, his brown face still rueful, had followed those two out into
the air, and Sheila had gone quickly after him.  Thus left alone
with his sister-in-law, Felix said gravely:

"If you don't want the boy to get into real trouble, do all you can
to show him that the last way in the world to help these poor
fellows is to let them fall foul of the law.  It's madness to light
flames you can't put out.  What happened this morning?  Did the man
resist?"

Her face still showed how bitter had been her mortification, and he
was astonished that she kept her voice so level and emotionless.

"No.  He went with them quite quietly.  The back door was open; he
could have walked out.  I did not advise him to.  I'm glad no one
saw his face except myself.  You see," she added, "he's devoted to
Derek, and Derek knows it; that's why he feels it so, and will feel
it more and more.  The boy has a great sense of honour, Felix."

Under that tranquillity Felix caught the pain and yearning in her
voice.  Yes!  This woman really felt and saw.  She was not one of
those who make disturbance with their brains and powers of
criticism; rebellion leaped out from the heat in her heart.  But he
said:

"Is it right to fan this flame?  Do you think any good end is being
served?"  Waiting for her answer, he found himself gazing at the
ghost of dark down on her upper lip, wondering that he had never
noticed it before.

Very low, as if to herself, she said:

"I would kill myself to-day if I didn't believe that tyranny and
injustice must end."

"In our time?"

"Perhaps not."

"Are you content to go on working for an Utopia that you will never
see?"

"While our laborers are treated and housed more like dogs than
human beings, while the best life under the sun--because life on
the soil might be the best life--is despised and starved, and made
the plaything of people's tongues, neither I nor mine are going to
rest."

The admiration she inspired in Felix at that moment was mingled
with a kind of pity.  He said impressively:

"Do you know the forces you are up against?  Have you looked into
the unfathomable heart of this trouble?  Understood the tug of the
towns, the call of money to money; grasped the destructive
restlessness of modern life; the abysmal selfishness of people when
you threaten their interests; the age-long apathy of those you want
to help?  Have you grasped all these?"

"And more!"

Felix held out his hand.  "Then," he said, "you are truly brave!"

She shook her head.

"It got bitten into me very young.  I was brought up in the
Highlands among the crofters in their worst days.  In some ways the
people here are not so badly off, but they're still slaves."

"Except that they can go to Canada if they want, and save old
England."

She flushed.  "I hate irony."

Felix looked at her with ever-increasing interest; she certainly
was of the kind that could be relied on to make trouble.

"Ah!" he murmured.  "Don't forget that when we can no longer smile
we can only swell and burst.  It IS some consolation to reflect
that by the time we've determined to do something really effectual
for the ploughmen of England there'll be no ploughmen left!"

"I cannot smile at that."

And, studying her face, Felix thought, 'You're right there!  You'll
get no help from humor.' . . .

Early that afternoon, with Nedda between them, Felix and his nephew
were speeding toward Transham.

The little town--a hamlet when Edmund Moreton dropped the E from
his name and put up the works which Stanley had so much enlarged--
had monopolized by now the hill on which it stood.  Living entirely
on its ploughs, it yet had but little of the true look of a British
factory town, having been for the most part built since ideas came
into fashion.  With its red roofs and chimneys, it was only
moderately ugly, and here and there an old white, timbered house
still testified to the fact that it had once been country.  On this
fine Sunday afternoon the population were in the streets, and
presented all that long narrow-headedness, that twist and
distortion of feature, that perfect absence of beauty in face,
figure, and dress, which is the glory of the Briton who has been
for three generations in a town.  'And my great-grandfather'--
thought Felix--'did all this!  God rest his soul!'

At a rather new church on the very top they halted, and went in to
inspect the Morton memorials.  There they were, in dedicated
corners.  'Edmund and his wife Catherine'--'Charles Edmund and his
wife Florence'--'Maurice Edmund and his wife Dorothy.'  Clara had
set her foot down against 'Stanley and his wife Clara' being in the
fourth; her soul was above ploughs, and she, of course, intended to
be buried at Becket, as Clara, dowager Lady Freeland, for her
efforts in regard to the land.  Felix, who had a tendency to note
how things affected other people, watched Derek's inspection of
these memorials and marked that they excited in him no tendency to
ribaldry.  The boy, indeed, could hardly be expected to see in them
what Felix saw--an epitome of the great, perhaps fatal, change that
had befallen his native country; a record of the beginning of that
far-back fever, whose course ran ever faster, which had emptied
country into town and slowly, surely, changed the whole spirit of
life.  When Edmund Moreton, about 1780, took the infection
disseminated by the development of machinery, and left the farming
of his acres to make money, that thing was done which they were all
now talking about trying to undo, with their cries of: "Back to the
land!  Back to peace and sanity in the shade of the elms!  Back to
the simple and patriarchal state of feeling which old documents
disclose.  Back to a time before these little squashed heads and
bodies and features jutted every which way; before there were long
squashed streets of gray houses; long squashed chimneys emitting
smoke-blight; long squashed rows of graves; and long squashed
columns of the daily papers.  Back to well-fed countrymen who could
not read, with Common rights, and a kindly feeling for old
'Moretons,' who had a kindly feeling for them!"  Back to all that?
A dream!  Sirs!  A dream!  There was nothing for it now, but--
progress!  Progress!  On with the dance!  Let engines rip, and the
little, squash-headed fellows with them! Commerce, literature,
religion, science, politics, all taking a hand; what a glorious
chance had money, ugliness, and ill will!  Such were the
reflections of Felix before the brass tablet:


                 "IN LOVING MEMORY OF
                     EDMUND MORTON
                         AND
                   HIS DEVOTED WIFE
                      CATHERINE.

           AT REST IN THE LORD.  A.D., 1816."


From the church they went about their proper business, to interview
a Mr. Pogram, of the firm of Pogram & Collet, solicitors, in whose
hands the interests of many citizens of Transham and the country
round were almost securely deposited.  He occupied, curiously
enough, the house where Edmund Morton himself had lived, conducting
his works on the one hand and the squirearchy of the parish on the
other.  Incorporated now into the line of a long, loose street, it
still stood rather apart from its neighbors, behind some large
shrubs and trees of the holmoak variety.

Mr. Pogram, who was finishing his Sunday after-lunch cigar, was a
short, clean-shaved man with strong cheeks and those rather lustful
gray-blue eyes which accompany a sturdy figure.  He rose when they
were introduced, and, uncrossing his fat little thighs, asked what
he could do for them.

Felix propounded the story of the arrest, so far as might be, in
words of one syllable, avoiding the sentimental aspect of the
question, and finding it hard to be on the side of disorder, as any
modern writer might.  There was something, however, about Mr.
Pogram that reassured him.  The small fellow looked a fighter--
looked as if he would sympathize with Tryst's want of a woman about
him.  The tusky but soft-hearted little brute kept nodding his
round, sparsely covered head while he listened, exuding a smell of
lavender-water, cigars, and gutta-percha.  When Felix ceased he
said, rather dryly:

"Sir Gerald Malloring?  Yes.  Sir Gerald's country agents, I rather
think, are Messrs. Porter of Worcester.  Quite so."

And a conviction that Mr. Pogram thought they should have been
Messrs. Pogram & Collet of Transham confirmed in Felix the feeling
that they had come to the right man.

"I gather," Mr. Pogram said, and he looked at Nedda with a glance
from which he obviously tried to remove all earthly desires, "that
you, sir, and your nephew wish to go and see the man.  Mrs. Pogram
will be delighted to show Miss Freeland our garden.  Your great-
grandfather, sir, on the mother's side, lived in this house.
Delighted to meet you; often heard of your books; Mrs. Pogram has
read one--let me see--'The Bannister,' was it?"

"'The Balustrade,'" Felix answered gently.

Mr. Pogram rang the bell.  "Quite so," he said.  "Assizes are just
over so that he can't come up for trial till August or September;
pity--great pity!  Bail in cases of arson--for a laborer, very
doubtful!  Ask your mistress to come, please."

There entered a faded rose of a woman on whom Mr. Pogram in his
time had evidently made a great impression.  A vista of two or
three little Pograms behind her was hastily removed by the maid.
And they all went into the garden.

"Through here," said Mr. Pogram, coming to a side door in the
garden wall, "we can make a short cut to the police station.  As we
go along I shall ask you one or two blunt questions."  And he
thrust out his under lip:

"For instance, what's your interest in this matter?"

Before Felix could answer, Derek had broken in:

"My uncle has come out of kindness.  It's my affair, sir.  The man
has been tyrannously treated."

Mr. Pogram cocked his eye.  "Yes, yes; no doubt, no doubt!  He's
not confessed, I understand?"

"No; but--"

Mr. Pogram laid a finger on his lips.

"Never say die; that's what we're here for.  So," he went on,
"you're a rebel; Socialist, perhaps.  Dear me!  Well, we're all of
us something, nowadays--I'm a humanitarian myself.  Often say to
Mrs. Pogram--humanity's the thing in this age--and so it is!  Well,
now, what line shall we take?"  And he rubbed his hands.  "Shall we
have a try at once to upset what evidence they've got?  We should
want a strong alibi.  Our friends here will commit if they can--
nobody likes arson.  I understand he was sleeping in your cottage.
His room, now?  Was it on the ground floor?"

"Yes; but--"

Mr. Pogram frowned, as who should say: Ah!  Be careful!  "He had
better reserve his defence and give us time to turn round," he said
rather shortly.

They had arrived at the police station and after a little parley
were ushered into the presence of Tryst.

The big laborer was sitting on the stool in his cell, leaning back
against the wall, his hands loose and open at his sides.  His gaze
passed at once from Felix and Mr. Pogram, who were in advance, to
Derek; and the dumb soul seemed suddenly to look through, as one
may see all there is of spirit in a dog reach out to its master.
This was the first time Felix had seen him who had caused already
so much anxiety, and that broad, almost brutal face, with the
yearning fidelity in its tragic eyes, made a powerful impression on
him.  It was the sort of face one did not forget and might be glad
of not remembering in dreams.  What had put this yearning spirit
into so gross a frame, destroying its solid coherence?  Why could
not Tryst have been left by nature just a beer-loving serf, devoid
of grief for his dead wife, devoid of longing for the nearest he
could get to her again, devoid of susceptibility to this young
man's influence?  And the thought of all that was before the mute
creature, sitting there in heavy, hopeless patience, stung Felix's
heart so that he could hardly bear to look him in the face.

Derek had taken the man's thick, brown hand; Felix could see with
what effort the boy was biting back his feelings.

"This is Mr. Pogram, Bob.  A solicitor who'll do all he can for
you."

Felix looked at Mr. Pogram.  The little man was standing with arms
akimbo; his face the queerest mixture of shrewdness and compassion,
and he was giving off an almost needlessly strong scent of gutta-
percha.

"Yes, my man," he said, "you and I are going to have a talk when
these gentlemen have done with you," and, turning on his heel, he
began to touch up the points of his little pink nails with a
penknife, in front of the constable who stood outside the cell
door, with his professional air of giving a man a chance.

Invaded by a feeling, apt to come to him in Zoos, that he was
watching a creature who had no chance to escape being watched,
Felix also turned; but, though his eyes saw not, his ears could not
help hearing.

"Forgive me, Bob!  It's I who got you into this!"

"No, sir; naught to forgive.  I'll soon be back, and then they'll
see!"

By the reddening of Mr. Pogram's ears Felix formed the opinion that
the little man, also, could hear.

"Tell her not to fret, Mr. Derek.  I'd like a shirt, in case I've
got to stop.  The children needn' know where I be; though I an't
ashamed."

"It may be a longer job than you think, Bob."

In the silence that followed Felix could not help turning.  The
laborer's eyes were moving quickly round his cell, as if for the
first time he realized that he was shut up; suddenly he brought
those big hands of his together and clasped them between his knees,
and again his gaze ran round the cell.  Felix heard the clearing of
a throat close by, and, more than ever conscious of the scent of
gutta-percha, grasped its connection with compassion in the heart
of Mr. Pogram.  He caught Derek's muttered, "Don't ever think we're
forgetting you, Bob," and something that sounded like, "And don't
ever say you did it."  Then, passing Felix and the little lawyer,
the boy went out.  His head was held high, but tears were running
down his cheeks.  Felix followed.

A bank of clouds, gray-white, was rising just above the red-tiled
roofs, but the sun still shone brightly.  And the thought of the
big laborer sitting there knocked and knocked at Felix's heart
mournfully, miserably.  He had a warmer feeling for his young
nephew than he had ever had.  Mr. Pogram rejoined them soon, and
they walked on together,

"Well?" said Felix.

Mr. Pogram answered in a somewhat grumpy voice:

"Not guilty, and reserve defence.  You have influence, young man!
Dumb as a waiter.  Poor devil!"  And not another word did he say
till they had re-entered his garden.

Here the ladies, surrounded by many little Pograms, were having
tea.  And seated next the little lawyer, whose eyes were fixed on
Nedda, Felix was able to appreciate that in happier mood he exhaled
almost exclusively the scent of lavender-water and cigars.


CHAPTER XXIII


On their way back to Becket, after the visit to Tryst, Felix and
Nedda dropped Derek half-way on the road to Joyfields.  They found
that the Becket household already knew of the arrest.  Woven into a
dirge on the subject of 'the Land,' the last town doings, and
adventures on golf courses, it formed the genial topic of the
dinner-table; for the Bulgarian with his carbohydrates was already
a wonder of the past.  The Bigwigs of this week-end were quite a
different lot from those of three weeks ago, and comparatively
homogeneous, having only three different plans for settling the
land question, none of which, fortunately, involved any more real
disturbance of the existing state of things than the potato, brown-
bread plan, for all were based on the belief held by the
respectable press, and constructive portions of the community, that
omelette can be made without breaking eggs.  On one thing alone,
the whole house party was agreed--the importance of the question.
Indeed, a sincere conviction on this point was like the card one
produces before one is admitted to certain functions.  No one came
to Becket without it; or, if he did, he begged, borrowed, or stole
it the moment he smelled Clara's special pot-pourri in the hall;
and, though he sometimes threw it out of the railway-carriage
window in returning to town, there was nothing remarkable about
that.  The conversational debauch of the first night's dinner--and,
alas! there were only two even at Becket during a week-end--had
undoubtedly revealed the feeling, which had set in of late, that
there was nothing really wrong with the condition of the
agricultural laborer, the only trouble being that the unreasonable
fellow did not stay on the land.  It was believed that Henry
Wiltram, in conjunction with Colonel Martlett, was on the point of
promoting a policy for imposing penalties on those who attempted to
leave it without good reason, such reason to be left to the
discretion of impartial district boards, composed each of one
laborer, one farmer, and one landowner, decision going by favor of
majority.  And though opinion was rather freely expressed that,
since the voting would always be two to one against, this might
trench on the liberty of the subject, many thought that the
interests of the country were so much above this consideration that
something of the sort would be found, after all, to be the best
arrangement.  The cruder early notions of resettling the land by
fostering peasant proprietorship, with habitable houses and
security of tenure, were already under a cloud, since it was more
than suspected that they would interfere unduly with the game laws
and other soundly vested interests.  Mere penalization of those who
(or whose fathers before them) had at great pains planted so much
covert, enclosed so much common, and laid so much country down in
grass was hardly a policy for statesmen.  A section of the guests,
and that perhaps strongest because most silent, distinctly favored
this new departure of Henry Wiltram's.  Coupled with his swinging
corn tax, it was indubitably a stout platform.

A second section of the guests spoke openly in favor of Lord
Settleham's policy of good-will.  The whole thing, they thought,
must be voluntary, and they did not see any reason why, if it were
left to the kindness and good intentions of the landowner, there
should be any land question at all.  Boards would be formed in
every county on which such model landowners as Sir Gerald
Malloring, or Lord Settleham himself, would sit, to apply the
principles of goodwill.  Against this policy the only criticism was
levelled by Felix.  He could have agreed, he said, if he had not
noticed that Lord Settleham, and nearly all landowners, were
thoroughly satisfied with their existing good-will and averse to
any changes in their education that might foster an increase of it.
If--he asked--landowners were so full of good-will, and so
satisfied that they could not be improved in that matter, why had
they not already done what was now proposed, and settled the land
question?  He himself believed that the land question, like any
other, was only capable of settlement through improvement in the
spirit of all concerned, but he found it a little difficult to
credit Lord Settleham and the rest of the landowners with sincerity
in the matter so long as they were unconscious of any need for
their own improvement.  According to him, they wanted it both ways,
and, so far as he could see, they meant to have it!

His use of the word sincere, in connection with Lord Settleham, was
at once pounced on.  He could not know Lord Settleham--one of the
most sincere of men.  Felix freely admitted that he did not, and
hastened to explain that he did not question the--er--parliamentary
sincerity of Lord Settleham and his followers.  He only ventured to
doubt whether they realized the hold that human nature had on them.
His experience, he said, of the houses where they had been bred,
and the seminaries where they had been trained, had convinced him
that there was still a conspiracy on foot to blind Lord Settleham
and those others concerning all this; and, since they were
themselves part of the conspiracy, there was very little danger of
their unmasking it.  At this juncture Felix was felt to have
exceeded the limit of fair criticism, and only that toleration
toward literary men of a certain reputation, in country houses, as
persons brought there to say clever and irresponsible things,
prevented people from taking him seriously.

The third section of the guests, unquestionably more static than
the others, confined themselves to pointing out that, though the
land question was undoubtedly serious, nothing whatever would
result from placing any further impositions upon landowners.  For,
after all, what was land?  Simply capital invested in a certain
way, and very poorly at that.  And what was capital?  Simply a
means of causing wages to be paid.  And whether they were paid to
men who looked after birds and dogs, loaded your guns, beat your
coverts, or drove you to the shoot, or paid to men who ploughed and
fertilized the land, what did it matter?  To dictate to a man to
whom he was to pay wages was, in the last degree, un-English.
Everybody knew the fate which had come, or was coming, upon
capital.  It was being driven out of the country by leaps and
bounds--though, to be sure, it still perversely persisted in
yielding every year a larger revenue by way of income tax.  And it
would be dastardly to take advantage of land just because it was
the only sort of capital which could not fly the country in times
of need.  Stanley himself, though--as became a host--he spoke
little and argued not at all, was distinctly of this faction; and
Clara sometimes felt uneasy lest her efforts to focus at Becket all
interest in the land question should not quite succeed in
outweighing the passivity of her husband's attitude.  But, knowing
that it is bad policy to raise the whip too soon, she trusted to
her genius to bring him 'with one run at the finish,' as they say,
and was content to wait.

There was universal sympathy with the Mallorings.  If a model
landlord like Malloring had trouble with his people, who--who
should be immune?  Arson!  It was the last word!  Felix, who
secretly shared Nedda's horror of the insensate cruelty of flames,
listened, nevertheless, to the jubilation that they had caught the
fellow, with profound disturbance.  For the memory of the big
laborer seated against the wall, his eyes haunting round his cell,
quarrelled fiercely with his natural abhorrence of any kind of
violence, and his equally natural dislike of what brought anxiety
into his own life--and the life, almost as precious, of his little
daughter.  Scarcely a word of the evening's conversation but gave
him in high degree the feeling: How glib all this is, how far from
reality!  How fatted up with shell after shell of comfort and
security!  What do these people know, what do they realize, of the
pressure and beat of raw life that lies behind--what do even I, who
have seen this prisoner, know?  For us it's as simple as killing a
rat that eats our corn, or a flea that sucks our blood.  Arson!
Destructive brute--lock him up!  And something in Felix said: For
order, for security, this may be necessary.  But something also
said: Our smug attitude is odious!

He watched his little daughter closely, and several times marked
the color rush up in her face, and once could have sworn he saw
tears in her eyes.  If the temper of this talk were trying to him,
hardened at a hundred dinner-tables, what must it be to a young and
ardent creature!  And he was relieved to find, on getting to the
drawing-room, that she had slipped behind the piano and was
chatting quietly with her Uncle John. . . .

As to whether this or that man liked her, Nedda perhaps was not
more ignorant than other women; and she had noted a certain warmth
and twinkle in Uncle John's eyes the other evening, a certain
rather jolly tendency to look at her when he should have been
looking at the person to whom he was talking; so that she felt
toward him a trustful kindliness not altogether unmingled with a
sense that he was in that Office which controls the destinies of
those who 'get into trouble.'  The motives even of statesmen, they
say, are mixed; how much more so, then, of girls in love!  Tucked
away behind a Steinway, which instinct told her was not for use,
she looked up under her lashes at her uncle's still military figure
and said softly:

"It was awfully good of you to come, too, Uncle John."

And John, gazing down at that round, dark head, and those slim,
pretty, white shoulders, answered:

"Not at all--very glad to get a breath of fresh air."

And he stealthily tightened his white waistcoat--a rite neglected
of late; the garment seemed to him at the moment unnecessarily
loose.

"You have so much experience, Uncle.  Do you think violent
rebellion is ever justifiable?"

"I do not."

Nedda sighed.  "I'm glad you think that," she murmured, "because I
don't think it is, either.  I do so want you to like Derek, Uncle
John, because--it's a secret from nearly every one--he and I are
engaged."

John jerked his head up a little, as though he had received a
slight blow.  The news was not palatable.  He kept his form,
however, and answered:

"Oh!  Really!  Ah!"

Nedda said still more softly: "Please don't judge him by the other
night; he wasn't very nice then, I know."

John cleared his throat.

Instinct warned her that he agreed, and she said rather sadly:

"You see, we're both awfully young.  It must be splendid to have
experience."

Over John's face, with its double line between the brows, its
double line in the thin cheeks, its single firm line of mouth
beneath a gray moustache, there passed a little grimace.

"As to being young," he said, "that'll change for the--er--better
only too fast."

What was it in this girl that reminded him of that one with whom he
had lived but two years, and mourned fifteen?  Was it her youth?
Was it that quick way of lifting her eyes, and looking at him with
such clear directness?  Or the way her hair grew?  Or what?

"Do you like the people here, Uncle John?"

The question caught John, as it were, between wind and water.
Indeed, all her queries seemed to be trying to incite him to those
wide efforts of mind which bring into use the philosophic nerve;
and it was long since he had generalized afresh about either things
or people, having fallen for many years past into the habit of
reaching his opinions down out of some pigeonhole or other.  To
generalize was a youthful practice that one took off as one takes
certain garments off babies when they come to years of discretion.
But since he seemed to be in for it, he answered rather shortly:
"Not at all."

Nedda sighed again.

"Nor do I.  They make me ashamed of myself."

John, whose dislike of the Bigwigs was that of the dogged worker of
this life for the dogged talkers, wrinkled his brows:

"How's that?"

"They make me feel as if I were part of something heavy sitting on
something else, and all the time talking about how to make things
lighter for the thing it's sitting on."

A vague recollection of somebody--some writer, a dangerous one--
having said something of this sort flitted through John.

"Do YOU think England is done for, Uncle--I mean about 'the Land'?"

In spite of his conviction that 'the country was in a bad way,'
John was deeply, intimately shocked by that simple little question.
Done for!  Never!  Whatever might be happening underneath, there
must be no confession of that.  No! the country would keep its
form.  The country would breathe through its nose, even if it did
lose the race.  It must never know, or let others know, even if it
were beaten.  And he said:

"What on earth put that into your head?"

"Only that it seems funny, if we're getting richer and richer, and
yet all the time farther and farther away from the life that every
one agrees is the best for health and happiness.  Father put it
into my head, making me look at the little, towny people in
Transham this afternoon.  I know I mean to begin at once to learn
about farm work."

"You?"  This pretty young thing with the dark head and the pale,
slim shoulders!  Farm work!  Women were certainly getting queer.
In his department he had almost daily evidence of that!

"I should have thought art was more in your line!"

Nedda looked up at him; and he was touched by that look, so
straight and young.

"It's this.  I don't believe Derek will be able to stay in England.
When you feel very strongly about things it must be awfully
difficult to."

In bewilderment John answered:

"Why!  I should have said this was the country of all others for
movements, and social work, and--and--cranks--" he paused.

"Yes; but those are all for curing the skin, and I suppose we're
really dying of heart disease, aren't we?  Derek feels that,
anyway, and, you see, he's not a bit wise, not even patient--so I
expect he'll have to go.  I mean to be ready, anyway."

And Nedda got up.  "Only, if he does something rash, don't let them
hurt him, Uncle John, if you can help it."

John felt her soft fingers squeezing his almost desperately, as if
her emotions had for the moment got out of hand.  And he was moved,
though he knew that the squeeze expressed feeling for his nephew,
not for himself.  When she slid away out of the big room all
friendliness seemed to go out with her, and very soon after he
himself slipped away to the smoking-room.  There he was alone, and,
lighting a cigar, because he still had on his long-tailed coat
which did not go with that pipe he would so much have preferred, he
stepped out of the French window into the warm, dark night.  He
walked slowly in his evening pumps up a thin path between
columbines and peonies, late tulips, forget-me-nots, and pansies
peering up in the dark with queer, monkey faces.  He had a love for
flowers, rather starved for a long time past, and, strangely, liked
to see them, not in the set and orderly masses that should
seemingly have gone with his character, but in wilder beds, where
one never knew what flower was coming next.  Once or twice he
stopped and bent down, ascertaining which kind it was, living its
little life down there, then passed on in that mood of stammering
thought which besets men of middle age who walk at night--a mood
caught between memory of aspirations spun and over, and vision of
aspirations that refuse to take shape.  Why should they, any more--
what was the use?  And turning down another path he came on
something rather taller than himself, that glowed in the darkness
as though a great moon, or some white round body, had floated to
within a few feet of the earth.  Approaching, he saw it for what it
was--a little magnolia-tree in the full of its white blossoms.
Those clustering flower-stars, printed before him on the dark coat
of the night, produced in John more feeling than should have been
caused by a mere magnolia-tree; and he smoked somewhat furiously.
Beauty, seeking whom it should upset, seemed, like a girl, to
stretch out arms and say: "I am here!"  And with a pang at heart,
and a long ash on his cigar, between lips that quivered oddly, John
turned on his heel and retraced his footsteps to the smoking-room.
It was still deserted.  Taking up a Review, he opened it at an
article on 'the Land,' and, fixing his eyes on the first page, did
not read it, but thought: 'That child!  What folly!  Engaged!  H'm!
To that young--!  Why, they're babes!  And what is it about her
that reminds me--reminds me--What is it?  Lucky devil, Felix--to
have her for daughter!  Engaged!  The little thing's got her
troubles before her.  Wish I had!  By George, yes--wish I had!'
And with careful fingers he brushed off the ash that had fallen on
his lapel. . . .

The little thing who had her troubles before her, sitting in her
bedroom window, had watched his white front and the glowing point
of his cigar passing down there in the dark, and, though she did
not know that they belonged to him, had thought: 'There's some one
nice, anyway, who likes being out instead of in that stuffy
drawing-room, playing bridge, and talking, talking.'  Then she felt
ashamed of her uncharitableness.  After all, it was wrong to think
of them like that.  They did it for rest after all their hard work;
and she--she did not work at all!  If only Aunt Kirsteen would let
her stay at Joyfields, and teach her all that Sheila knew!  And
lighting her candles, she opened her diary to write.

"Life," she wrote, "is like looking at the night.  One never knows
what's coming, only suspects, as in the darkness you suspect which
trees are what, and try to see whether you are coming to the edge
of anything. . . .  A moth has just flown into my candle before I
could stop it!  Has it gone quite out of the world?  If so, why
should it be different for us?  The same great Something makes all
life and death, all light and dark, all love and hate--then why one
fate for one living thing, and the opposite for another?  But
suppose there IS nothing after death--would it make me say: 'I'd
rather not live'?  It would only make me delight more in life of
every kind.  Only human beings brood and are discontented, and
trouble about future life.  While Derek and I were sitting in that
field this morning, a bumblebee flew to the bank and tucked its
head into the grass and went to sleep, just tired out with flying
and working at its flowers; it simply snoozed its head down and
went off.  We ought to live every minute to the utmost, and when
we're tired out, tuck in our heads and sleep. . . .  If only Derek
is not brooding over that poor man!  Poor man--all alone in the
dark, with months of misery before him!  Poor soul!  Oh! I am sorry
for all the unhappiness of people!  I can't bear to think of it.  I
simply can't."  And dropping her pen, Nedda went again to her
window and leaned out.  So sweet the air smelled that it made her
ache with delight to breathe it in.  Each leaf that lived out
there, each flower, each blade of grass, were sworn to conspiracy
of perfume.  And she thought: 'They MUST all love each other; it
all goes together so beautifully!'  Then, mingled with the incense
of the night, she caught the savor of woodsmoke.  It seemed to make
the whole scent even more delicious, but she thought, bewildered:
'Smoke!  Cruel fire--burning the wood that once grew leaves like
those.  Oh! it IS so mixed!'  It was a thought others have had
before her.


CHAPTER XXIV


To see for himself how it fared with the big laborer at the hands
of Preliminary Justice, Felix went into Transham with Stanley the
following morning.  John having departed early for town, the
brothers had not further exchanged sentiments on the subject of
what Stanley called 'the kick-up at Joyfields.'  And just as night
will sometimes disperse the brooding moods of nature, so it had
brought to all three the feeling: 'Haven't we made too much of
this?  Haven't we been a little extravagant, and aren't we rather
bored with the whole subject?'  Arson was arson; a man in prison
more or less was a man in prison more or less!  This was especially
Stanley's view, and he took the opportunity to say to Felix: "Look
here, old man, the thing is, of course, to see it in proportion."

It was with this intention, therefore, that Felix entered the
building where the justice of that neighborhood was customarily
dispensed.  It was a species of small hall, somewhat resembling a
chapel, with distempered walls, a platform, and benches for the
public, rather well filled that morning--testimony to the stir the
little affair had made.  Felix, familiar with the appearance of
London police courts, noted the efforts that had been made to
create resemblance to those models of administration.  The justices
of the peace, hastily convoked and four in number, sat on the
platform, with a semicircular backing of high gray screens and a
green baize barrier in front of them, so that their legs and feet
were quite invisible.  In this way had been preserved the really
essential feature of all human justice--at whose feet it is well
known one must not look!  Their faces, on the contrary, were
entirely exposed to view, and presented that pleasing variety of
type and unanimity of expression peculiar to men keeping an open
mind.  Below them, with his face toward the public, was placed a
gray-bearded man at a table also covered with green baize, that
emblem of authority.  And to the side, at right angles, raised into
the air, sat a little terrier of a man, with gingery, wired hair,
obviously the more articulate soul of these proceedings.  As Felix
sat down to worship, he noticed Mr. Pogram at the green baize
table, and received from the little man a nod and the faintest
whiff of lavender and gutta-percha.  The next moment he caught
sight of Derek and Sheila, screwed sideways against one of the
distempered walls, looking, with their frowning faces, for all the
world like two young devils just turned out of hell.  They did not
greet him, and Felix set to work to study the visages of Justice.
They impressed him, on the whole, more favorably than he had
expected.  The one to his extreme left, with a gray-whiskered face,
was like a large and sleepy cat of mature age, who moved not,
except to write a word now and then on the paper before him, or to
hand back a document.  Next to him, a man of middle age with bald
forehead and dark, intelligent eyes seemed conscious now and again
of the body of the court, and Felix thought: 'You have not been a
magistrate long.'  The chairman, who sat next, with the moustache
of a heavy dragoon and gray hair parted in the middle, seemed, on
the other hand, oblivious of the public, never once looking at
them, and speaking so that they could not hear him, and Felix
thought: 'You have been a magistrate too long.'  Between him and
the terrier man, the last of the four wrote diligently, below a
clean, red face with clipped white moustache and little peaked
beard.  And Felix thought: 'Retired naval!'  Then he saw that they
were bringing in Tryst.  The big laborer advanced between two
constables, his broad, unshaven face held high, and his lowering
eyes, through which his strange and tragical soul seemed looking,
turned this way and that.  Felix, who, no more than any one else,
could keep his gaze off the trapped creature, felt again all the
sensations of the previous afternoon.

"Guilty? or, Not guilty?"  As if repeating something learned by
heart, Tryst answered: "Not guilty, sir."  And his big hands, at
his sides, kept clenching and unclenching.  The witnesses, four in
number, began now to give their testimony.  A sergeant of police
recounted how he had been first summoned to the scene of burning,
and afterward arrested Tryst; Sir Gerald's agent described the
eviction and threats uttered by the evicted man; two persons, a
stone-breaker and a tramp, narrated that they had seen him going in
the direction of the rick and barn at five o'clock, and coming away
therefrom at five-fifteen.  Punctuated by the barking of the
terrier clerk, all this took time, during which there passed
through Felix many thoughts.  Here was a man who had done a wicked,
because an antisocial, act; the sort of act no sane person could
defend; an act so barbarous, stupid, and unnatural that the very
beasts of the field would turn noses away from it!  How was it,
then, that he himself could not feel incensed?  Was it that in
habitually delving into the motives of men's actions he had lost
the power of dissociating what a man did from what he was; had come
to see him, with his thoughts, deeds, and omissions, as a coherent
growth?  And he looked at Tryst.  The big laborer was staring with
all his soul at Derek.  And, suddenly, he saw his nephew stand up--
tilt his dark head back against the wall--and open his mouth to
speak.  In sheer alarm Felix touched Mr. Pogram on the arm.  The
little square man had already turned; he looked at that moment
extremely like a frog.

"Gentlemen, I wish to say--"

"Who are you?  Sit down!"  It was the chairman, speaking for the
first time in a voice that could be heard.

"I wish to say that he is not responsible.  I--"

"Silence!  Silence, sir!  Sit down!"

Felix saw his nephew waver, and Sheila pulling at his sleeve; then,
to his infinite relief, the boy sat down.  His sallow face was red;
his thin lips compressed to a white line.  And slowly under the
eyes of the whole court he grew deadly pale.

Distracted by fear that the boy might make another scene, Felix
followed the proceedings vaguely.  They were over soon enough:
Tryst committed, defence reserved, bail refused--all as Mr. Pogram
had predicted.

Derek and Sheila had vanished, and in the street outside, idle at
this hour of a working-day, were only the cars of the four
magistrates; two or three little knots of those who had been in
court, talking of the case; and in the very centre of the street,
an old, dark-whiskered man, lame, and leaning on a stick.

"Very nearly being awkward," said the voice of Mr. Pogram in his
ear.  "I say, do you think--no hand himself, surely no real hand
himself?"

Felix shook his head violently.  If the thought had once or twice
occurred to him, he repudiated it with all his force when shaped by
another's mouth--and such a mouth, so wide and rubbery!

"No, no!  Strange boy!  Extravagant sense of honour--too sensitive,
that's all!"

"Quite so," murmured Mr. Pogram soothingly.  "These young people!
We live in a queer age, Mr. Freeland.  All sorts of ideas about,
nowadays.  Young men like that--better in the army--safe in the
army.  No ideas there!"

"What happens now?" said Felix.

"Wait!" said Mr. Pogram.  "Nothing else for it--wait.  Three
months--twiddle his thumbs.  Bad system!  Rotten!"

"And suppose in the end he's proved innocent?"

Mr. Pogram shook his little round head, whose ears were very red.

"Ah!" he said: "Often say to my wife: 'Wish I weren't a
humanitarian!'  Heart of india-rubber--excellent thing--the
greatest blessing.  Well, good-morning!  Anything you want to say
at any time, let me know!"  And exhaling an overpowering whiff of
gutta-percha, he grasped Felix's hand and passed into a house on
the door of which was printed in brazen letters: "Edward Pogram,
James Collet.  Solicitors.  Agents."

On leaving the little humanitarian, Felix drifted back toward the
court.  The cars were gone, the groups dispersed; alone, leaning on
his stick, the old, dark-whiskered man stood like a jackdaw with a
broken wing.  Yearning, at that moment, for human intercourse,
Felix went up to him.

"Fine day," he said.

"Yes, sir, 'tis fine enough."  And they stood silent, side by side.
The gulf fixed by class and habit between soul and human soul
yawned before Felix as it had never before.  Stirred and troubled,
he longed to open his heart to this old, ragged, dark-eyed,
whiskered creature with the game leg, who looked as if he had
passed through all the thorns and thickets of hard and primitive
existence; he longed that the old fellow should lay bare to him his
heart.  And for the life of him he could not think of any mortal
words which might bridge the unreal gulf between them.  At last he
said:

"You a native here?"

"No, sir.  From over Malvern way.  Livin' here with my darter,
owin' to my leg.  Her 'usband works in this here factory."

"And I'm from London," Felix said.

"Thart you were.  Fine place, London, they say!"

Felix shook his head.  "Not so fine as this Worcestershire of
yours."

The old man turned his quick, dark gaze.  "Aye!" he said,
"people'll be a bit nervy-like in towns, nowadays.  The country be
a good place for a healthy man, too; I don't want no better place
than the country--never could abide bein' shut in."

"There aren't so very many like you, judging by the towns."

The old man smiled--that smile was the reverse of a bitter tonic
coated with sweet stuff to make it palatable.

"'Tes the want of a life takes 'em," he said.  "There's not a many
like me.  There's not so many as can't do without the smell of the
earth.  With these 'ere newspapers--'tesn't taught nowadays.  The
boys and gells they goes to school, and 'tes all in favor of the
towns there.  I can't work no more; I'm 's good as gone meself; but
I feel sometimes I'll 'ave to go back.  I don't like the streets,
an' I guess 'tes worse in London."

"Ah!  Perhaps," Felix said, "there are more of us like you than you
think."

Again the old man turned his dark, quick glance.

"Well, an' I widden say no to that, neither.  I've seen 'em
terrible homesick.  'Tes certain sure there's lots would never go,
ef 'twasn't so mortial hard on the land.  'Tisn't a bare livin',
after that.  An' they're put upon, right and left they're put upon.
'Tes only a man here and there that 'as something in 'im too
strong.  I widden never 'ave stayed in the country ef 'twasn't that
I couldn't stand the town life.  'Tes like some breeds o' cattle--
you take an' put 'em out o' their own country, an' you 'ave to take
an' put 'em back again.  Only some breeds, though.  Others they
don' mind where they go.  Well, I've seen the country pass in my
time, as you might say; where you used to see three men you only
see one now."

"Are they ever going back onto the land?"

"They tark about it.  I read my newspaper reg'lar.  In some places
I see they're makin' unions.  That an't no good."

"Why?"

The old man smiled again.

"Why!  Think of it!  The land's different to anythin' else--that's
why!  Different work, different hours, four men's work to-day and
one's to-morrow.  Work land wi' unions, same as they've got in this
'ere factory, wi' their eight hours an' their do this an' don' do
that?  No!  You've got no weather in factories, an' such-like.  On
the land 'tes a matter o' weather.  On the land a man must be ready
for anythin' at any time; you can't work it no other way.  'Tes
along o' God's comin' into it; an' no use pullin' this way an'
that.  Union says to me: You mustn't work after hours.  Hoh!  I've
'ad to set up all night wi' ship an' cattle hundreds o' times, an'
no extra for it.  'Tes not that way they'll do any good to keep
people on the land.  Oh, no!"

"How, then?"

"Well, you'll want new laws, o' course, to prevent farmers an'
landowners takin' their advantage; you want laws to build new
cottages; but mainly 'tes a case of hands together; can't be no
other--the land's so ticklish.  If 'tesn't hands together, 'tes
nothing.  I 'ad a master once that was never content so long's we
wasn't content.  That farm was better worked than any in the
parish."

"Yes, but the difficulty is to get masters that can see the other
side; a man doesn't care much to look at home."

The old man's dark eyes twinkled.

'No; an' when 'e does, 'tes generally to say: 'Lord, an't I right,
an' an't they wrong, just?'  That's powerful customary!"

"It is," said Felix; "God bless us all!"

"Ah!  You may well say that, sir; an' we want it, too.  A bit more
wages wouldn't come amiss, neither.  An' a bit more freedom; 'tes a
man's liberty 'e prizes as well as money."

"Did you hear about this arson case?"

The old man cast a glance this way and that before he answered in a
lower voice:

"They say 'e was put out of his cottage.  I've seen men put out for
votin' Liberal; I've seen 'em put out for free-thinkin'; all sorts
o' things I seen em put out for.  'Tes that makes the bad blood.  A
man wants to call 'is soul 'is own, when all's said an' done.  An'
'e can't, not in th' old country, unless 'e's got the dibs."

"And yet you never thought of emigrating?"

"Thart of it--ah! thart of it hundreds o' times; but some'ow cudden
never bring mysel' to the scratch o' not seein' th' Beacon any
more.  I can just see it from 'ere, you know.  But there's not so
many like me, an' gettin' fewer every day."

"Yes," murmured Felix, "that I believe."

"'Tes a 'and-made piece o' goods--the land!  You has to be fond of
it, same as of your missis and yer chillen.  These poor pitiful
fellows that's workin' in this factory, makin' these here Colonial
ploughs--union's all right for them--'tes all mechanical; but a man
on the land, 'e's got to put the land first, whether 'tes his own
or some one else's, or he'll never do no good; might as well go for
a postman, any day.  I'm keepin' of you, though, with my tattle!"

In truth, Felix had looked at the old man, for the accursed
question had begun to worry him: Ought he or not to give the lame
old fellow something?  Would it hurt his feelings?  Why could he
not say simply: 'Friend, I'm better off than you; help me not to
feel so unfairly favored'?  Perhaps he might risk it.  And, diving
into his trousers pockets, he watched the old man's eyes.  If they
followed his hand, he would risk it.  But they did not.
Withdrawing his hand, he said:

"Have a cigar?"

The old fellow's dark face twinkled.

"I don' know," he said, "as I ever smoked one; but I can have a
darned old try!"

"Take the lot," said Felix, and shuffled into the other's pocket
the contents of his cigar-case.  "If you get through one, you'll
want the rest.  They're pretty good."

"Ah!" said the old man.  "Shuldn' wonder, neither."

"Good-by.  I hope your leg will soon be better."

"Thank 'ee, sir.  Good-by, thank 'ee!"

Looking back from the turning, Felix saw him still standing there
in the middle of the empty street.

Having undertaken to meet his mother, who was returning this
afternoon to Becket, he had still two hours to put away, and
passing Mr. Pogram's house, he turned into a path across a clover-
field and sat down on a stile.  He had many thoughts, sitting at
the foot of this little town--which his great-grandfather had
brought about.  And chiefly he thought of the old man he had been
talking to, sent there, as it seemed to him, by Providence, to
afford a prototype for his 'The Last of the Laborers.'  Wonderful
that the old fellow should talk of loving 'the Land,' whereon he
must have toiled for sixty years or so, at a number of shillings
per week, that would certainly not buy the cigars he had shovelled
into that ragged pocket.  Wonderful!  And yet, a marvellous sweet
thing, when all was said--this land!  Changing its sheen and
texture, the feel of its air, its very scent, from day to day.
This land with myriad offspring of flowers and flying folk; the
majestic and untiring march of seasons: Spring and its wistful
ecstasy of saplings, and its yearning, wild, wind-loosened heart;
gleam and song, blossom and cloud, and the swift white rain; each
upturned leaf so little and so glad to flutter; each wood and field
so full of peeping things!  Summer!  Ah!  Summer, when on the
solemn old trees the long days shone and lingered, and the glory of
the meadows and the murmur of life and the scent of flowers
bewildered tranquillity, till surcharge of warmth and beauty
brooded into dark passion, and broke!  And Autumn, in mellow haze
down on the fields and woods; smears of gold already on the
beeches, smears of crimson on the rowans, the apple-trees still
burdened, and a flax-blue sky well-nigh merging with the misty air;
the cattle browsing in the lingering golden stillness; not a breath
to fan the blue smoke of the weed-fires--and in the fields no one
moving--who would disturb such mellow peace?  And Winter!  The long
spaces, the long dark; and yet--and yet, what delicate loveliness
of twig tracery; what blur of rose and brown and purple caught in
the bare boughs and in the early sunset sky!  What sharp dark
flights of birds in the gray-white firmament!  Who cared what
season held in its arms this land that had bred them all!

Not wonderful that into the veins of those who nursed it, tending,
watching its perpetual fertility, should be distilled a love so
deep and subtle that they could not bear to leave it, to abandon
its hills, and greenness, and bird-songs, and all the impress of
their forefathers throughout the ages.

Like so many of his fellows--cultured moderns, alien to the larger
forms of patriotism, that rich liquor brewed of maps and figures,
commercial profit, and high-cockalorum, which served so perfectly
to swell smaller heads--Felix had a love of his native land
resembling love for a woman, a kind of sensuous chivalry, a passion
based on her charm, on her tranquillity, on the power she had to
draw him into her embrace, to make him feel that he had come from
her, from her alone, and into her alone was going back.  And this
green parcel of his native land, from which the half of his blood
came, and that the dearest half, had a potency over his spirit that
he might well be ashamed of in days when the true Briton was a
town-bred creature with a foot of fancy in all four corners of the
globe.  There was ever to him a special flavor about the elm-girt
fields, the flowery coppices, of this country of the old Moretons,
a special fascination in its full, white-clouded skies, its grass-
edged roads, its pied and creamy cattle, and the blue-green loom of
the Malvern hills.  If God walked anywhere for him, it was surely
here.  Sentiment!  Without sentiment, without that love, each for
his own corner, 'the Land' was lost indeed!  Not if all Becket blew
trumpets till kingdom came, would 'the Land' be reformed, if they
lost sight of that!  To fortify men in love for their motherland,
to see that insecurity, grinding poverty, interference, petty
tyranny, could no longer undermine that love--this was to be,
surely must be, done!  Monotony?  Was that cry true?  What work now
performed by humble men was less monotonous than work on the land?
What work was even a tenth part so varied?  Never quite the same
from day to day: Now weeding, now hay, now roots, now hedging; now
corn, with sowing, reaping, threshing, stacking, thatching; the
care of beasts, and their companionship; sheep-dipping, shearing,
wood-gathering, apple-picking, cider-making; fashioning and tarring
gates; whitewashing walls; carting; trenching--never, never two
days quite the same!  Monotony!  The poor devils in factories, in
shops, in mines; poor devils driving 'busses, punching tickets,
cleaning roads; baking; cooking; sewing; typing!  Stokers; machine-
tenders; brick-layers; dockers; clerks!  Ah! that great company
from towns might well cry out: Monotony!  True, they got their
holidays; true, they had more social life--a point that might well
be raised at Becket: Holidays and social life for men on the soil!
But--and suddenly Felix thought of the long, long holiday that was
before the laborer Tryst.  'Twiddle his thumbs'--in the words of
the little humanitarian--twiddle his thumbs in a space twelve feet
by seven!  No sky to see, no grass to smell, no beast to bear him
company; no anything--for, what resources in himself had this poor
creature?  No anything, but to sit with tragic eyes fixed on the
wall before him for eighty days and eighty nights, before they
tried him.  And then--not till then--would his punishment for that
moment's blind revenge for grievous wrong begin!  What on this
earth of God's was more disproportioned, and wickedly extravagant,
more crassly stupid, than the arrangements of his most perfect
creature, man?  What a devil was man, who could yet rise to such
sublime heights of love and heroism!  What a ferocious brute, the
most ferocious and cold-blooded brute that lived!  Of all creatures
most to be stampeded by fear into a callous torturer!  'Fear'--
thought Felix--'fear!  Not momentary panic, such as makes our
brother animals do foolish things; conscious, calculating fear,
paralyzing the reason of our minds and the generosity of our
hearts.  A detestable thing Tryst has done, a hateful act; but his
punishment will be twentyfold as hateful!'

And, unable to sit and think of it, Felix rose and walked on
through the fields. . . .


CHAPTER XXV


He was duly at Transham station in time for the London train, and,
after a minute consecrated to looking in the wrong direction, he
saw his mother already on the platform with her bag, an air-
cushion, and a beautifully neat roll.

'Travelling third!' he thought.  'Why will she do these things?'

Slightly flushed, she kissed Felix with an air of abstraction.

"How good of you to meet me, darling!"

Felix pointed in silence to the crowded carriage from which she had
emerged.  Frances Freeland looked a little rueful.  "It would have
been delightful," she said.  "There was a dear baby there and, of
course, I couldn't have the window down, so it WAS rather hot."

Felix, who could just see the dear baby, said dryly:

"So that's how you go about, is it?  Have you had any lunch?"

Frances Freeland put her hand under his arm.  "Now, don't fuss,
darling!  Here's sixpence for the porter.  There's only one trunk--
it's got a violet label.  Do you know them?  They're so useful.
You see them at once.  I must get you some."

"Let me take those things.  You won't want this cushion.  I'll let
the air out."

"I'm afraid you won't be able, dear.  It's quite the best screw
I've ever come across--a splendid thing; I can't get it undone."

"Ah!" said Felix.  "And now we may as well go out to the car!"

He was conscious of a slight stoppage in his mother's footsteps and
rather a convulsive squeeze of her hand on his arm.  Looking at her
face, he discovered it occupied with a process whose secret he
could not penetrate, a kind of disarray of her features, rapidly
and severely checked, and capped with a resolute smile.  They had
already reached the station exit, where Stanley's car was snorting.
Frances Freeland looked at it, then, mounting rather hastily, sat,
compressing her lips.

When they were off, Felix said:

"Would you like to stop at the church and have a look at the
brasses to your grandfather and the rest of them?"

His mother, who had slipped her hand under his arm again, answered:

"No, dear; I've seen them.  The church is not at all beautiful.  I
like the old church at Becket so much better; it is such a pity
your great-grandfather was not buried there."

She had never quite got over the lack of 'niceness' about those
ploughs.

Going, as was the habit of Stanley's car, at considerable speed,
Felix was not at first certain whether the peculiar little squeezes
his arm was getting were due to the bounds of the creature under
them or to some cause more closely connected with his mother, and
it was not till they shaved a cart at the turning of the Becket
drive that it suddenly dawned on him that she was in terror.  He
discovered it in looking round just as she drew her smile over a
spasm of her face and throat.  And, leaning out of the car, he
said:

"Drive very slowly, Batter; I want to look at the trees."

A little sigh rewarded him.  Since SHE had said nothing, He said
nothing, and Clara's words in the hall seemed to him singularly
tactless:

"Oh! I meant to have reminded you, Felix, to send the car back and
take a fly.  I thought you knew that Mother's terrified of motors."
And at his mother's answer:

"Oh! no; I quite enjoyed it, dear," he thought: 'Bless her heart!
She IS a stoic!'

Whether or no to tell her of the 'kick-up at Joyfields' exercised
his mind.  The question was intricate, for she had not yet been
informed that Nedda and Derek were engaged, and Felix did not feel
at liberty to forestall the young people.  That was their business.
On the other hand, she would certainly glean from Clara a garbled
understanding of the recent events at Joyfields, if she were not
first told of them by himself.  And he decided to tell her, with
the natural trepidation of one who, living among principles and
theories, never quite knew what those, for whom each fact is
unrelated to anything else under the moon, were going to think.
Frances Freeland, he knew well, kept facts and theories especially
unrelated, or, rather, modified her facts to suit her theories,
instead of, like Felix, her theories to suit her facts.  For
example, her instinctive admiration for Church and State, her
instinctive theory that they rested on gentility and people who
were nice, was never for a moment shaken when she saw a half-
starved baby of the slums.  Her heart would impel her to pity and
feed the poor little baby if she could, but to correlate the
creature with millions of other such babies, and those millions
with the Church and State, would not occur to her.  And if Felix
made an attempt to correlate them for her she would look at him and
think: 'Dear boy!  How good he is!  I do wish he wouldn't let that
line come in his forehead; it does so spoil it!'  And she would
say: "Yes, darling, I know, it's very sad; only I'm NOT clever."
And, if a Liberal government chanced to be in power, would add: "Of
course, I do think this Government is dreadful.  I MUST show you a
sermon of the dear Bishop of Walham.  I cut it out of the 'Daily
Mystery.'  He puts things so well--he always has such nice ideas."

And Felix, getting up, would walk a little and sit down again too
suddenly.  Then, as if entreating him to look over her want of
'cleverness,' she would put out a hand that, for all its whiteness,
had never been idle and smooth his forehead.  It had sometimes
touched him horribly to see with what despair she made attempts to
follow him in his correlating efforts, and with what relief she
heard him cease enough to let her say: "Yes, dear; only, I must
show you this new kind of expanding cork.  It's simply splendid.
It bottles up everything!"  And after staring at her just a moment
he would acquit her of irony.  Very often after these occasions he
had thought, and sometimes said: "Mother, you're the best
Conservative I ever met."  She would glance at him then, with a
special loving doubtfulness, at a loss as to whether or no he had
designed to compliment her.

When he had given her half an hour to rest he made his way to the
blue corridor, where a certain room was always kept for her, who
never occupied it long enough at a time to get tired of it.  She
was lying on a sofa in a loose gray cashmere gown.  The windows
were open, and the light breeze just moved in the folds of the
chintz curtains and stirred perfume from a bowl of pinks--her
favorite flowers.  There was no bed in this bedroom, which in all
respects differed from any other in Clara's house, as though the
spirit of another age and temper had marched in and dispossessed
the owner.  Felix had a sensation that one was by no means all body
here.  On the contrary.  There was not a trace of the body
anywhere; as if some one had decided that the body was not quite
nice.  No bed, no wash-stand, no chest of drawers, no wardrobe, no
mirror, not even a jar of Clara's special pot-pourri.  And Felix
said:

"This can't be your bedroom, Mother?"

Frances Freeland answered, with a touch of deprecating quizzicality:

"Oh yes, darling.  I must show you my arrangements."  And she rose.
"This," she said, "you see, goes under there, and that under here;
and that again goes under this.  Then they all go under that, and
then I pull this.  It's lovely."

"But why?" said Felix.

"Oh! but don't you see?  It's so nice; nobody can tell.  And it
doesn't give any trouble."

"And when you go to bed?"

"Oh! I just pop my clothes into this and open that.  And there I
am.  It's simply splendid."

"I see," said Felix.  "Do you think I might sit down, or shall I go
through?"

Frances Freeland loved him with her eyes, and said:

"Naughty boy!"

And Felix sat down on what appeared to be a window-seat.

"Well," he said, with slight uneasiness, for she was hovering, "I
think you're wonderful."

Frances Freeland put away an impeachment that she evidently felt to
be too soft.

"Oh! but it's all so simple, darling."  And Felix saw that she had
something in her hand, and mind.

"This is my little electric brush.  It'll do wonders with your
hair.  While you sit there, I'll just try it."

A clicking and a whirring had begun to occur close to his ear, and
something darted like a gadfly at his scalp.

"I came to tell you something serious, Mother."

"Yes, darling; it'll be simply lovely to hear it; and you mustn't
mind this, because it really is a first-rate thing--quite new."

Now, how is it, thought Felix, that any one who loves the new as
she does, when it's made of matter, will not even look at it when
it's made of mind?  And, while the little machine buzzed about his
head, he proceeded to detail to her the facts of the state of
things that existed at Joyfields.

When he had finished, she said:

"Now, darling, bend down a little."

Felix bent down.  And the little machine began severely tweaking
the hairs on the nape of his neck.  He sat up again rather suddenly.

Frances Freeland was contemplating the little machine.

"How very provoking!  It's never done that before!"

"Quite so!" Felix murmured.  "But about Joyfields?"

"Oh, my dear, it IS such a pity they don't get on with those
Mallorings!  I do think it sad they weren't brought up to go to
church."

Felix stared, not knowing whether to be glad or sorry that his
recital had not roused within her the faintest suspicion of
disaster.  How he envied her that single-minded power of not seeing
further than was absolutely needful!  And suddenly he thought: 'She
really is wonderful!  With her love of church, how it must hurt her
that we none of us go, not even John!  And yet she never says a
word.  There really is width about her; a power of accepting the
inevitable.  Never was woman more determined to make the best of a
bad job.  It's a great quality!'  And he heard her say:

"Now, darling, if I give you this, you must promise me to use it
every morning.  You'll find you'll soon have a splendid crop of
little young hairs."

"I know," he said gloomily; "but they won't come to anything.  Age
has got my head, Mother, just as it's got 'the Land's.'"

"Oh, nonsense!  You must go on with it, that's all!"

Felix turned so that he could look at her.  She was moving round
the room now, meticulously adjusting the framed photographs of her
family that were the only decoration of the walls.  How formal,
chiselled, and delicate her face, yet how almost fanatically
decisive!  How frail and light her figure, yet how indomitably
active!  And the memory assailed him of how, four years ago, she
had defeated double pneumonia without having a doctor, simply by
lying on her back.  'She leaves trouble,' he thought, 'until it's
under her nose, then simply tells it that it isn't there.  There's
something very English about that.'

She was chasing a bluebottle now with a little fan made of wire,
and, coming close to Felix, said:

"Have you seen these, darling?  You've only to hit the fly and it
kills him at once."

"But do you ever hit the fly?"

"Oh, yes!"  And she waved the fan at the bluebottle, which avoided
it without seeming difficulty.

"I can't bear hurting them, but I DON'T like flies.  There!"

The bluebottle flew out of the window behind Felix and in at the
one that was not behind him.  He rose.

"You ought to rest before tea, Mother."

He felt her searching him with her eyes, as if trying desperately
to find something she might bestow upon or do for him.

"Would you like this wire--"

With a feeling that he was defrauding love, he turned and fled.
She would never rest while he was there!  And yet there was that in
her face which made him feel a brute to go.

Passing out of the house, sunk in its Monday hush, no vestige of a
Bigwig left, Felix came to that new-walled mound where the old
house of the Moretons had been burned 'by soldiers from Tewkesbury
and Gloucester,' as said the old chronicles dear to the heart of
Clara.  And on the wall he sat him down.  Above, in the uncut
grass, he could see the burning blue of a peacock's breast, where
the heraldic bird stood digesting grain in the repose of perfect
breeding, and below him gardeners were busy with the gooseberries.
'Gardeners and the gooseberries of the great!' he thought.  'Such
is the future of our Land.'  And he watched them.  How methodically
they went to work!  How patient and well-done-for they looked!
After all, was it not the ideal future?  Gardeners, gooseberries,
and the great!  Each of the three content in that station of life
into which--!  What more could a country want?  Gardeners,
gooseberries, and the great!  The phrase had a certain hypnotic
value.  Why trouble?  Why fuss?  Gardeners, gooseberries, and the
great!  A perfect land!  A land dedicate to the week-end!
Gardeners, goose--!  And suddenly he saw that he was not alone.
Half hidden by the angle of the wall, on a stone of the
foundations, carefully preserved and nearly embedded in the nettles
which Clara had allowed to grow because they added age to the
appearance, was sitting a Bigwig.  One of the Settleham faction, he
had impressed Felix alike by his reticence, the steady sincerity of
his gray eyes, a countenance that, beneath a simple and delicate
urbanity, had still in it something of the best type of schoolboy.
'How comes he to have stayed?' he mused.  'I thought they always
fed and scattered!'  And having received an answer to his
salutation, he moved across and said:

"I imagined you'd gone."

"I've been having a look round.  It's very jolly here.  My
affections are in the North, but I suppose this is pretty well the
heart of England."

"Near 'the big song,'" Felix answered.  "There'll never be anything
more English than Shakespeare, when all's said and done."  And he
took a steady, sidelong squint at his companion.  'This is another
of the types I've been looking for,' he reflected.  The peculiar
'don't-quite-touch-me' accent of the aristocrat--and of those who
would be--had almost left this particular one, as though he
secretly aspired to rise superior and only employed it in the
nervousness of his first greetings.  'Yes,' thought Felix, 'he's
just about the very best we can do among those who sit upon 'the
Land.'  I would wager there's not a better landlord nor a better
fellow in all his class, than this one.  He's chalks away superior
to Malloring, if I know anything of faces--would never have turned
poor Tryst out.  If this exception were the rule!  And yet--!  Does
he, can he, go quite far enough to meet the case?  If not--what
hope of regeneration from above?  Would he give up his shooting?
Could he give up feeling he's a leader?  Would he give up his town
house and collecting whatever it is he collects?  Could he let
himself sink down and merge till he was just unseen leaven of good-
fellowship and good-will, working in the common bread?'  And
squinting at that sincere, clean, charming, almost fine face, he
answered himself unwillingly: 'He could not!'  And suddenly he knew
that he was face to face with the tremendous question which soon or
late confronts all thinkers.  Sitting beside him--was the highest
product of the present system!  With its charm, humanity, courage,
chivalry up to a point, its culture, and its cleanliness, this
decidedly rare flower at the end of a tall stalk, with dark and
tortuous roots and rank foliage, was in a sense the sole
justification of power wielded from above.  And was it good enough?
Was it quite good enough?  Like so many other thinkers, Felix
hesitated to reply.  If only merit and the goods of this world
could be finally divorced!  If the reward of virtue were just men's
love and an unconscious self-respect!  If only 'to have nothing'
were the highest honour!  And yet, to do away with this beside him
and put in its place--What?  No kiss-me-quick change had a chance
of producing anything better.  To scrap the long growth of man and
start afresh was but to say: 'Since in the past the best that man
has done has not been good enough, I have a perfect faith in him
for the future!'  No!  That was a creed for archangels and other
extremists.  Safer to work on what we had!  And he began:

"Next door to this estate I'm told there's ten thousand acres
almost entirely grass and covert, owned by Lord Baltimore, who
lives in Norfolk, London, Cannes, and anywhere else that the whim
takes him.  He comes down here twice a year to shoot.  The case is
extremely common.  Surely it spells paralysis.  If land is to be
owned at all in such great lumps, owners ought at least to live on
the lumps, and to pass very high examinations as practical farmers.
They ought to be the life and soul, the radiating sun, of their
little universes; or else they ought to be cleared out.  How expect
keen farming to start from such an example?  It really looks to me
as if the game laws would have to go."  And he redoubled his
scrutiny of the Bigwig's face.  A little furrow in its brow had
deepened visibly, but nodding, he said:

"The absentee landlord is a curse, of course.  I'm afraid I'm a bit
of a one myself.  And I'm bound to say--though I'm keen on
shooting--if the game laws were abolished, it might do a lot."

"YOU wouldn't move in that direction, I suppose?"

The Bigwig smiled--charming, rather whimsical, that smile.

"Honestly, I'm not up to it.  The spirit, you know, but the flesh--!
My line is housing and wages, of course."

'There it is,' thought Felix.  'Up to a point, they'll move--not up
to THE point.  It's all fiddling.  One won't give up his shooting;
another won't give up his power; a third won't give up her week-
ends; a fourth won't give up his freedom.  Our interest in the
thing is all lackadaisical, a kind of bun-fight of pet notions.
There's no real steam.'  And abruptly changing the subject, he
talked of pictures to the pleasant Bigwig in the sleepy afternoon.
Of how this man could paint, and that man couldn't.  And in the
uncut grass the peacock slowly moved, displaying his breast of
burning blue; and below, the gardeners worked among the gooseberries.


CHAPTER XXVI


Nedda, borrowing the bicycle of Clara's maid, Sirrett, had been
over to Joyfields, and only learned on her return of her
grandmother's arrival.  In her bath before dinner there came to her
one of those strategic thoughts that even such as are no longer
quite children will sometimes conceive.  She hurried desperately
into her clothes, and, ready full twenty minutes before the gong
was due to sound, made her way to her grandmother's room.  Frances
Freeland had just pulled THIS, and, to her astonishment, THAT had
not gone in properly.  She was looking at it somewhat severely,
when she heard Nedda's knock.  Drawing a screen temporarily over
the imperfection, she said: "Come in!"

The dear child looked charming in her white evening dress with one
red flower in her hair; and while she kissed her, she noted that
the neck of her dress was just a little too open to be quite nice,
and at once thought: 'I've got the very thing for that.'

Going to a drawer that no one could have suspected of being there,
she took from it a little diamond star.  Getting delicate but firm
hold of the Mechlin at the top of the frock, she popped it in, so
that the neck was covered at least an inch higher, and said:

"Now, ducky, you're to keep that as a little present.  You've no
idea how perfectly it suits you just like this."  And having
satisfied for the moment her sense of niceness and that continual
itch to part with everything she had, she surveyed her
granddaughter, lighted up by that red flower, and said:

"How sweet you look!"

Nedda, looking down past cheeks colored by pleasure at the new
little star on a neck rather browned by her day in the sun,
murmured:

"Oh, Granny! it's much too lovely!  You mustn't give it to me!"

These were moments that Frances Freeland loved best in life; and,
with the untruthfulness in which she only indulged when she gave
things away, or otherwise benefited her neighbors with or without
their will, she added: "It's quite wasted; I never wear it myself."
And, seeing Nedda's smile, for the girl recollected perfectly
having admired it during dinner at Uncle John's, and at Becket
itself, she said decisively, "So that's that!" and settled her down
on the sofa.  But just as she was thinking, 'I have the very thing
for the dear child's sunburn,' Nedda said: "Granny, dear, I've been
meaning to tell you--Derek and I are engaged."

For the moment Frances Freeland could do nothing but tremulously
interlace her fingers.

"Oh, but, darling," she said very gravely, "have you thought?"

"I think of nothing else, Granny."

"But has he thought?"

Nedda nodded.

Frances Freeland sat staring straight before her.  Nedda and Derek,
Derek and Nedda!  The news was almost unintelligible; those two
were still for her barely more than little creatures to be tucked
up at night.  Engaged!  Marriage!  Between those who were both as
near to her, almost, as her own children had been!  The effort was
for the moment quite too much for her, and a sort of pain disturbed
her heart.  Then the crowning principle of her existence came a
little to her aid.  No use in making a fuss; must put the best face
on it, whether it were going to come to anything or not!  And she
said:

"Well, darling, I don't know, I'm sure.  I dare say it's very
lovely for you.  But do you think you've seen enough of him?"

Nedda gave her a swift look, then dropped her lashes, so that her
eyes seemed closed.  Snuggling up, she said:

"No, Granny, I do wish I could see more; if only I could go and
stay with them a little!"

And as she planted that dart of suggestion, the gong sounded.

In Frances Freeland, lying awake till two, as was her habit, the
suggestion grew.  To this growth not only her custom of putting the
best face on things, but her incurable desire to make others happy,
and an instinctive sympathy with love-affairs, all contributed;
moreover, Felix had said something about Derek's having been
concerned in something rash.  If darling Nedda were there it would
occupy his mind and help to make him careful.  Never dilatory in
forming resolutions, she decided to take the girl over with her on
the morrow.  Kirsteen had a dear little spare room, and Nedda
should take her bag.  It would be a nice surprise for them all.
Accordingly, next morning, not wanting to give any trouble, she
sent Thomas down to the Red Lion, where they had a comfortable fly,
with a very steady, respectable driver, and ordered it to come at
half past two.  Then, without saying anything to Clara, she told
Nedda to be ready to pop in her bag, trusting to her powers of
explaining everything to everybody without letting anybody know
anything.  Little difficulties of this sort never bunkered her; she
was essentially a woman of action.  And on the drive to Joyfields
she stilled the girl's quavering with:

"It's all right, darling; it'll be very nice for them."

She was perhaps the only person in the world who was not just a
little bit afraid of Kirsteen.  Indeed, she was constitutionally
unable to be afraid of anything, except motor-cars, and, of course,
earwigs, and even them one must put up with.  Her critical sense
told her that this woman in blue was just like anybody else,
besides her father had been the colonel of a Highland regiment,
which was quite nice, and one must put the best face on her.

In this way, pointing out the beauty of each feature of the
scenery, and not permitting herself or Nedda to think about the
bag, they drove until they came to Joyfields.

Kirsteen alone was in, and, having sent Nedda into the orchard to
look for her uncle, Frances Freeland came at once to the point.  It
was so important, she thought, that darling Nedda should see more
of dear Derek.  They were very young, and if she could stay for a
few weeks, they would both know their minds so much better.  She
had made her bring her bag, because she knew dear Kirsteen would
agree with her; and it would be so nice for them all.  Felix had
told her about that poor man who had done this dreadful thing, and
she thought that if Nedda were here it would be a distraction.  She
was a very good child, and quite useful in the house.  And while
she was speaking she watched Kirsteen, and thought: 'She is very
handsome, and altogether ladylike; only it is such a pity she wears
that blue thing in her hair--it makes her so conspicuous.'  And
rather unexpectedly she said:

"Do you know, dear, I believe I know the very thing to keep your
hair from getting loose.  It's such lovely hair.  And this is quite
a new thing, and doesn't show at all; invented by a very nice
hairdresser in Worcester.  It's simplicity itself.  Do let me show
you!"  Quickly going over, she removed the kingfisher-blue fillet,
and making certain passes with her fingers through the hair,
murmured:

"It's so beautifully fine; it seems such a pity not to show it all,
dear.  Now look at yourself!"  And from the recesses of her pocket
she produced a little mirror.  "I'm sure Tod will simply love it
like that.  It'll be such a nice change for him."

Kirsteen, with just a faint wrinkling of her lips and eyebrows,
waited till she had finished.  Then she said:

"Yes, Mother, dear, I'm sure he will," and replaced the fillet.  A
patient, half-sad, half-quizzical smile visited Frances Freeland's
lips, as who should say: 'Yes, I know you think that I'm a fuss-
box, but it really is a pity that you wear it so, darling!'

At sight of that smile, Kirsteen got up and kissed her gravely on
the forehead.

When Nedda came back from a fruitless search for Tod, her bag was
already in the little spare bedroom and Frances Freeland gone.  The
girl had never yet been alone with her aunt, for whom she had a
fervent admiration not unmixed with awe.  She idealized her, of
course, thinking of her as one might think of a picture or statue,
a symbolic figure, standing for liberty and justice and the redress
of wrong.  Her never-varying garb of blue assisted the girl's
fancy, for blue was always the color of ideals and aspiration--was
not blue sky the nearest one could get to heaven--were not blue
violets the flowers of spring?  Then, too, Kirsteen was a woman
with whom it would be quite impossible to gossip or small-talk;
with her one could but simply and directly say what one felt, and
only that over things which really mattered.  And this seemed to
Nedda so splendid that it sufficed in itself to prevent the girl
from saying anything whatever.  She longed to, all the same,
feeling that to be closer to her aunt meant to be closer to Derek.
Yet, with all, she knew that her own nature was very different;
this, perhaps, egged her on, and made her aunt seem all the more
exciting.  She waited breathless till Kirsteen said:

"Yes, you and Derek must know each other better.  The worst kind of
prison in the world is a mistaken marriage."

Nedda nodded fervently.  "It must be.  But I think one knows, Aunt
Kirsteen!"

She felt as if she were being searched right down to the soul
before the answer came:

"Perhaps.  I knew myself.  I have seen others who did--a few.  I
think you might."

Nedda flushed from sheer joy.  "I could never go on if I didn't
love.  I feel I couldn't, even if I'd started."

With another long look through narrowing eyes, Kirsteen answered:

"Yes.  You would want truth.  But after marriage truth is an
unhappy thing, Nedda, if you have made a mistake."

"It must be dreadful.  Awful."

"So don't make a mistake, my dear--and don't let him."

Nedda answered solemnly:

"I won't--oh, I won't!"

Kirsteen had turned away to the window, and Nedda heard her say
quietly to herself:

"'Liberty's a glorious feast!'"

Trembling all over with the desire to express what was in her,
Nedda stammered:

"I would never keep anything that wanted to be free--never, never!
I would never try to make any one do what they didn't want to!"

She saw her aunt smile, and wondered whether she had said anything
exceptionally foolish.  But it was not foolish--surely not--to say
what one really felt.

"Some day, Nedda, all the world will say that with you.  Until then
we'll fight those who won't say it.  Have you got everything in
your room you want?  Let's come and see."

To pass from Becket to Joyfields was really a singular experience.
At Becket you were certainly supposed to do exactly what you liked,
but the tyranny of meals, baths, scents, and other accompaniments
of the 'all-body' regime soon annihilated every impulse to do
anything but just obey it.  At Joyfields, bodily existence was a
kind of perpetual skirmish, a sort of grudged accompaniment to a
state of soul.  You might be alone in the house at any meal-time.
You might or might not have water in your jug.  And as to baths,
you had to go out to a little white-washed shed at the back, with a
brick floor, where you pumped on yourself, prepared to shout out,
"Halloo! I'm here!" in case any one else came wanting to do the
same.  The conditions were in fact almost perfect for seeing more
of one another.  Nobody asked where you were going, with whom
going, or how going.  You might be away by day or night without
exciting curiosity or comment.  And yet you were conscious of a
certain something always there, holding the house together; some
principle of life, or perhaps--just a woman in blue.  There, too,
was that strangest of all phenomena in an English home--no game
ever played, outdoors or in.

The next fortnight, while the grass was ripening, was a wonderful
time for Nedda, given up to her single passion--of seeing more of
him who so completely occupied her heart.  She was at peace now
with Sheila, whose virility forbade that she should dispute pride
of place with this soft and truthful guest, so evidently immersed
in rapture.  Besides, Nedda had that quality of getting on well
with her own sex, found in those women who, though tenacious, are
not possessive; who, though humble, are secretly very self-
respecting; who, though they do not say much about it, put all
their eggs in one basket; above all, who disengage, no matter what
their age, a candid but subtle charm.

But that fortnight was even more wonderful for Derek, caught
between two passions--both so fervid.  For though the passion of
his revolt against the Mallorings did not pull against his passion
for Nedda, they both tugged at him.  And this had one curious
psychological effect.  It made his love for Nedda more actual, less
of an idealization.  Now that she was close to him, under the same
roof, he felt the full allurement of her innocent warmth; he would
have been cold-blooded indeed if he had not taken fire, and, his
pride always checking the expression of his feelings, they glowed
ever hotter underneath.

Yet, over those sunshiny days there hung a shadow, as of something
kept back, not shared between them; a kind of waiting menace.
Nedda learned of Kirsteen and Sheila all the useful things she
could; the evenings she passed with Derek, those long evenings of
late May and early June, this year so warm and golden.  They walked
generally in the direction of the hills.  A favorite spot was a
wood of larches whose green shoots had not yet quite ceased to
smell of lemons.  Tall, slender things those trees, whose stems and
dried lower branch-growth were gray, almost sooty, up to the
feathery green of the tops, that swayed and creaked faintly in a
wind, with a soughing of their branches like the sound of the sea.
From the shelter of those Highland trees, rather strange in such a
countryside, they two could peer forth at the last sunlight gold-
powdering the fringed branches, at the sunset flush dyeing the sky
above the Beacon; watch light slowly folding gray wings above the
hay-fields and the elms; mark the squirrels scurry along, and the
pigeons' evening flight.  A stream ran there at the edge, and
beech-trees grew beside it.  In the tawny-dappled sand bed of that
clear water, and the gray-green dappled trunks of those beeches
with their great, sinuous, long-muscled roots, was that something
which man can never tame or garden out of the land: the strength of
unconquerable fertility--the remote deep life in Nature's heart.
Men and women had their spans of existence; those trees seemed as
if there forever!  From generation to generation lovers might come
and, looking on this strength and beauty, feel in their veins the
sap of the world.  Here the laborer and his master, hearing the
wind in the branches and the water murmuring down, might for a
brief minute grasp the land's unchangeable wild majesty.  And on
the far side of that little stream was a field of moon-colored
flowers that had for Nedda a strange fascination.  Once the boy
jumped across and brought her back a handkerchief full.  They were
of two kinds: close to the water's edge the marsh orchis, and
farther back, a small marguerite.  Out of this they made a crown of
the alternate flowers, and a girdle for her waist.  That was an
evening of rare beauty, and warm enough already for an early chafer
to go blooming in the dusk.  An evening when they wandered with
their arms round each other a long time, silent, stopping to listen
to an owl; stopping to point out each star coming so shyly up in
the gray-violet of the sky.  And that was the evening when they had
a strange little quarrel, sudden as a white squall on a blue sea,
or the tiff of two birds shooting up in a swift spiral of attack
and then--all over.  Would he come to-morrow to see her milking?
He could not.  Why?  He could not; he would be out.  Ah! he never
told her where he went; he never let her come with him among the
laborers like Sheila.

"I can't; I'm pledged not."

"Then you don't trust me!"

"Of course I trust you; but a promise is a promise.  You oughtn't
to ask me, Nedda."

"No; but I would never have promised to keep anything from you."

"You don't understand."

"Oh! yes, I do.  Love doesn't mean the same to you that it does to me."

"How do you know what it means to me?"

"I couldn't have a secret from you."

"Then you don't count honour."

"Honour only binds oneself!"

"What d'you mean by that?"

"I include you--you don't include me in yourself, that's all."

"I think you're very unjust.  I was obliged to promise; it doesn't
only concern myself."

Then silent, motionless, a yard apart, they looked fiercely at each
other, their hearts stiff and sore, and in their brains no glimmer
of perception of anything but tragedy.  What more tragic than to
have come out of an elysium of warm arms round each other, to this
sudden hostility!  And the owl went on hooting, and the larches
smelled sweet!  And all around was the same soft dusk wherein the
flowers in her hair and round her waist gleamed white!  But for
Nedda the world had suddenly collapsed.  Tears rushed into her eyes;
she shook her head and turned away, hiding them passionately. . . .
A full minute passed, each straining to make no sound and catch
the faintest sound from the other, till in her breathing there was
a little clutch.  His fingers came stealing round, touched her
cheeks, and were wetted.  His arms suddenly squeezed all breath
out of her; his lips fastened on hers.  She answered those lips
with her own desperately, bending her head back, shutting her wet
eyes.  And the owl hooted, and the white flowers fell into the dusk
off her hair and waist.

After that, they walked once more enlaced, avoiding with what
perfect care any allusion to the sudden tragedy, giving themselves
up to the bewildering ecstasy that had started throbbing in their
blood with that kiss, longing only not to spoil it.  And through
the sheltering larch wood their figures moved from edge to edge,
like two little souls in paradise, unwilling to come forth.

After that evening love had a poignancy it had not quite had
before; at once deeper, sweeter, tinged for both of them with the
rich darkness of passion, and with discovery that love does not
mean a perfect merger of one within another.  For both felt
themselves in the right over that little quarrel.  The boy that he
could not, must not, resign what was not his to resign; feeling
dimly, without being quite able to shape the thought even to
himself, that a man has a life of action into which a woman cannot
always enter, with which she cannot always be identified.  The girl
feeling that she did not want any life into which he did not enter,
so that it was hard that he should want to exclude her from
anything.  For all that, she did not try again to move him to let
her into the secret of his plans of revolt and revenge, and
disdained completely to find them out from Sheila or her aunt.

And the grass went on ripening.  Many and various as the breeds of
men, or the trees of a forest, were the stalks that made up that
greenish jungle with the waving, fawn-colored surface; of rye-grass
and brome-grass, of timothy, plantain, and yarrow; of bent-grass
and quake-grass, foxtail, and the green-hearted trefoil; of
dandelion, dock, musk-thistle, and sweet-scented vernal.

On the 10th of June Tod began cutting his three fields; the whole
family, with Nedda and the three Tryst children, working like
slaves.  Old Gaunt, who looked to the harvests to clothe him for
the year, came to do his share of raking, and any other who could
find some evening hours to spare.  The whole was cut and carried in
three days of glorious weather.

The lovers were too tired the last evening of hay harvest to go
rambling, and sat in the orchard watching the moon slide up through
the coppice behind the church.  They sat on Tod's log, deliciously
weary, in the scent of the new-mown hay, while moths flitted gray
among the blue darkness of the leaves, and the whitened trunks of
the apple-trees gleamed ghostly.  It was very warm; a night of
whispering air, opening all hearts.  And Derek said:

"You'll know to-morrow, Nedda."

A flutter of fear overtook her.  What would she know?


CHAPTER XXVII


On the 13th of June Sir Gerald Malloring, returning home to dinner
from the House of Commons, found on his hall table, enclosed in a
letter from his agent, the following paper:


"We, the undersigned laborers on Sir Gerald Malloring's estate, beg
respectfully to inform him that we consider it unjust that any
laborer should be evicted from his cottage for any reason connected
with private life, or social or political convictions.  And we
respectfully demand that, before a laborer receives notice to quit
for any such reason, the case shall be submitted to all his fellow
laborers on the estate; and that in the future he shall only
receive such notice if a majority of his fellow laborers record
their votes in favor of the notice being given.  In the event of
this demand being refused, we regretfully decline to take any hand
in getting in the hay on Sir Gerald Malloring's estate."


Then followed ninety-three signatures, or signs of the cross with
names printed after them.

The agent's letter which enclosed this document mentioned that the
hay was already ripe for cutting; that everything had been done to
induce the men to withdraw the demand, without success, and that
the farmers were very much upset.  The thing had been sprung on
them, the agent having no notion that anything of the sort was on
foot.  It had been very secretly, very cleverly, managed; and, in
the agent's opinion, was due to Mr. Freeland's family.  He awaited
Sir Gerald's instructions.  Working double tides, with luck and
good weather, the farmers and their families might perhaps save
half of the hay.

Malloring read this letter twice, and the enclosure three times,
and crammed them deep down into his pocket.

It was pre-eminently one of those moments which bring out the
qualities of Norman blood.  And the first thing he did was to look
at the barometer.  It was going slowly down.  After a month of
first-class weather it would not do that without some sinister
intention.  An old glass, he believed in it implicitly.  He tapped,
and it sank further.  He stood there frowning.  Should he consult
his wife?  General friendliness said: Yes!  A Norman instinct of
chivalry, and perhaps the deeper Norman instinct, that, when it
came to the point, women were too violent, said, No!  He went up-
stairs three at a time, and came down two.  And all through dinner
he sat thinking it over, and talking as if nothing had happened; so
that he hardly spoke.  Three-quarters of the hay at stake, if it
rained soon!  A big loss to the farmers, a further reduction in
rents already far too low.  Should he grin and bear it, and by
doing nothing show these fellows that he could afford to despise
their cowardly device?  For it WAS cowardly to let his grass get
ripe and play it this low trick!  But if he left things unfought
this time, they would try it on again with the corn--not that there
was much of that on the estate of a man who only believed in corn
as a policy.

Should he make the farmers sack the lot and get in other labor?
But where?  Agricultural laborers were made, not born.  And it took
a deuce of a lot of making, at that!  Should he suspend wages till
they withdrew their demand?  That might do--but he would still lose
the hay.  The hay!  After all, anybody, pretty well, could make
hay; it was the least skilled of all farm work, so long as the
farmers were there to drive the machines and direct.  Why not act
vigorously?  And his jaws set so suddenly on a piece of salmon that
he bit his tongue.  The action served to harden a growing purpose.
So do small events influence great!  Suspend those fellows' wages,
get down strike-breakers, save the hay!  And if there were a row--
well, let there be a row!  The constabulary would have to act.  It
was characteristic of his really Norman spirit that the notion of
agreeing to the demand, or even considering whether it were just,
never once came into his mind.  He was one of those, comprising
nowadays nearly all his class, together with their press, who
habitually referred to his country as a democratic power, a
champion of democracy--but did not at present suspect the meaning
of the word; nor, to say truth, was it likely they ever would.
Nothing, however, made him more miserable than indecision.  And so,
now that he was on the point of deciding, and the decision promised
vigorous consequences, he felt almost elated.  Closing his jaws
once more too firmly, this time on lamb, he bit his tongue again.
It was impossible to confess what he had done, for two of his
children were there, expected to eat with that well-bred detachment
which precludes such happenings; and he rose from dinner with his
mind made up.  Instead of going back to the House of Commons, he
went straight to a strike-breaking agency.  No grass should grow
under the feet of his decision!  Thence he sought the one post-
office still open, despatched a long telegram to his agent, another
to the chief constable of Worcestershire; and, feeling he had done
all he could for the moment, returned to the 'House,' where they
were debating the rural housing question.  He sat there, paying
only moderate attention to a subject on which he was acknowledged
an authority.  To-morrow, in all probability, the papers would have
got hold of the affair!  How he loathed people poking their noses
into his concerns!  And suddenly he was assailed, very deep down,
by a feeling with which in his firmness he had not reckoned--a sort
of remorse that he was going to let a lot of loafing blackguards
down onto his land, to toss about his grass, and swill their
beastly beer above it.  And all the real love he had for his fields
and coverts, all the fastidiousness of an English gentleman, and,
to do him justice, the qualms of a conscience telling him that he
owed better things than this to those born on his estate, assaulted
him in force.  He sat back in his seat, driving his long legs hard
against the pew in front.  His thick, wavy, still brown hair was
beautifully parted above the square brow that frowned over deep-set
eyes and a perfectly straight nose.  Now and again he bit into a
side of his straw-colored moustache, or raised a hand and twisted
the other side.  Without doubt one of the handsomest and perhaps
the most Norman-looking man in the whole 'House.'  There was a
feeling among those round him that he was thinking deeply.  And so
he was.  But he had decided, and he was not a man who went back on
his decisions.

Morning brought even worse sensations.  Those ruffians that he had
ordered down--the farmers would never consent to put them up!  They
would have to camp.  Camp on his land!  It was then that for two
seconds the thought flashed through him: Ought I to have considered
whether I could agree to that demand?  Gone in another flash.  If
there was one thing a man could not tolerate, it was dictation!
Out of the question!  But perhaps he had been a little hasty about
strike-breakers.  Was there not still time to save the situation
from that, if he caught the first train?  The personal touch was
everything.  If he put it to the men on the spot, with these
strike-breakers up his sleeve, surely they must listen!  After all,
they were his own people.  And suddenly he was overcome with
amazement that they should have taken such a step.  What had got
into them?  Spiritless enough, as a rule, in all conscience; the
sort of fellows who hadn't steam even to join the miniature rifle-
range that he had given them!  And visions of them, as he was
accustomed to pass them in the lanes, slouching along with their
straw bags, their hoes, and their shamefaced greetings, passed
before him.  Yes!  It was all that fellow Freeland's family!  The
men had been put up to it--put up to it!  The very wording of their
demand showed that!  Very bitterly he thought of the unneighborly
conduct of that woman and her cubs.  It was impossible to keep it
from his wife!  And so he told her.  Rather to his surprise, she
had no scruples about the strike-breakers.  Of course, the hay must
be saved!  And the laborers be taught a lesson!  All the
unpleasantness he and she had gone through over Tryst and that
Gaunt girl must not go for nothing!  It must never be said or
thought that the Freeland woman and her children had scored over
them!  If the lesson were once driven home, they would have no
further trouble.

He admired her firmness, though with a certain impatience.  Women
never quite looked ahead; never quite realized all the consequences
of anything.  And he thought: 'By George!  I'd no idea she was so
hard!  But, then, she always felt more strongly about Tryst and
that Gaunt girl than I did.'

In the hall the glass was still going down.  He caught the 9.15,
wiring to his agent to meet him at the station, and to the
impresario of the strike-breakers to hold up their departure until
he telegraphed.  The three-mile drive up from the station, fully
half of which was through his own land, put him in possession of
all the agent had to tell: Nasty spirit abroad--men dumb as fishes--
the farmers, puzzled and angry, had begun cutting as best they
could.  Not a man had budged.  He had seen young Mr. and Miss
Freeland going about.  The thing had been worked very cleverly.  He
had suspected nothing--utterly unlike the laborers as he knew them.
They had no real grievance, either!  Yes, they were going on with
all their other work--milking, horses, and that; it was only the
hay they wouldn't touch.  Their demand was certainly a very funny
one--very funny--had never heard of anything like it.  Amounted
almost to security of tenure.  The Tryst affair no doubt had done
it!  Malloring cut him short:

"Till they've withdrawn this demand, Simmons, I can't discuss that
or anything."

The agent coughed behind his hand.

Naturally!  Only perhaps there might be a way of wording it that
would satisfy them.  Never do to really let them have such
decisions in their hands, of course!

They were just passing Tod's.  The cottage wore its usual air of
embowered peace.  And for the life of him Malloring could not
restrain a gesture of annoyance.

On reaching home he sent gardeners and grooms in all directions
with word that he would be glad to meet the men at four o'clock at
the home farm.  Much thought, and interviews with several of the
farmers, who all but one--a shaky fellow at best--were for giving
the laborers a sharp lesson, occupied the interval.  Though he had
refused to admit the notion that the men could be chicaned, as his
agent had implied, he certainly did wonder a little whether a
certain measure of security might not in some way be guaranteed,
which would still leave him and the farmers a free hand.  But the
more he meditated on the whole episode, the more he perceived how
intimately it interfered with the fundamental policy of all good
landowners--of knowing what was good for their people better than
those people knew themselves.

As four o'clock approached, he walked down to the home farm.  The
sky was lightly overcast, and a rather chill, draughty, rustling
wind had risen.  Resolved to handle the men with the personal
touch, he had discouraged his agent and the farmers from coming to
the conference, and passed the gate with the braced-up feeling of
one who goes to an encounter.  In that very spick-and-span farmyard
ducks were swimming leisurely on the greenish pond, white pigeons
strutting and preening on the eaves of the barn, and his keen eye
noted that some tiles were out of order up there.  Four o'clock!
Ah, here was a fellow coming!  And instinctively he crisped his
hands that were buried in his pockets, and ran over to himself his
opening words.  Then, with a sensation of disgust, he saw that the
advancing laborer was that incorrigible 'land lawyer' Gaunt.  The
short, square man with the ruffled head and the little bright-gray
eyes saluted, uttered an "Afternoon, Sir Gerald!" in his teasing
voice, and stood still.  His face wore the jeering twinkle that had
disconcerted so many political meetings.  Two lean fellows, rather
alike, with lined faces and bitten, drooped moustaches, were the
next to come through the yard gate.  They halted behind Gaunt,
touching their forelocks, shuffling a little, and looking sidelong
at each other.  And Malloring waited.  Five past four!  Ten past!
Then he said:

"D'you mind telling the others that I'm here?"

Gaunt answered:

"If so be as you was waitin' for the meetin', I fancy as 'ow you've
got it, Sir Gerald!"

A wave of anger surged up in Malloring, dyeing his face brick-red.
So!  He had come all that way with the best intentions--to be
treated like this; to meet this 'land lawyer,' who, he could see,
was only here to sharpen his tongue, and those two scarecrow-
looking chaps, who had come to testify, no doubt, to his
discomfiture.  And he said sharply:

"So that's the best you can do to meet me, is it?"

Gaunt answered imperturbably:

"I think it is, Sir Gerald."

"Then you've mistaken your man."

"I don't think so, Sir Gerald."

Without another look Malloring passed the three by, and walked back
to the house.  In the hall was the agent, whose face clearly showed
that he had foreseen this defeat.  Malloring did not wait for him
to speak.

"Make arrangements.  The strike-breakers will be down by noon to-
morrow.  I shall go through with it now, Simmons, if I have to
clear the whole lot out.  You'd better go in and see that they're
ready to send police if there's any nonsense.  I'll be down again
in a day or two."  And, without waiting for reply, he passed into
his study.  There, while the car was being got ready, he stood in
the window, very sore; thinking of what he had meant to do;
thinking of his good intentions; thinking of what was coming to the
country, when a man could not even get his laborers to come and
hear what he had to say.  And a sense of injustice, of anger, of
bewilderment, harrowed his very soul.


CHAPTER XXVIII


For the first two days of this new 'kick-up,' that 'fellow
Freeland's' family undoubtedly tasted the sweets of successful
mutiny.  The fellow himself alone shook his head.  He, like Nedda,
had known nothing, and there was to him something unnatural and
rather awful in this conduct toward dumb crops.

From the moment he heard of it he hardly spoke, and a perpetual
little frown creased a brow usually so serene.  In the early
morning of the day after Malloring went back to town, he crossed
the road to a field where the farmer, aided by his family and one
of Malloring's gardeners, was already carrying the hay; and, taking
up a pitchfork, without a word to anybody, he joined in the work.
The action was deeper revelation of his feeling than any
expostulation, and the young people watched it rather aghast.

"It's nothing," Derek said at last; "Father never has understood,
and never will, that you can't get things without fighting.  He
cares more for trees and bees and birds than he does for human
beings."

"That doesn't explain why he goes over to the enemy, when it's only
a lot of grass."

Kirsteen answered:

"He hasn't gone over to the enemy, Sheila.  You don't understand
your father; to neglect the land is sacrilege to him.  It feeds us--
he would say--we live on it; we've no business to forget that but
for the land we should all be dead."

"That's beautiful," said Nedda quickly; "and true."

Sheila answered angrily:

"It may be true in France with their bread and wine.  People don't
live off the land here; they hardly eat anything they grow
themselves.  How can we feel like that when we're all brought up on
mongrel food?  Besides, it's simply sentimental, when there are
real wrongs to fight about."

"Your father is not sentimental, Sheila.  It's too deep with him
for that, and too unconscious.  He simply feels so unhappy about
the waste of that hay that he can't keep his hands off it."

Derek broke in: "Mother's right.  And it doesn't matter, except
that we've got to see that the men don't follow his example.
They've a funny feeling about him."

Kirsteen shook her head.

"You needn't be afraid.  He's always been too strange to them!"

"Well, I'm going to stiffen their backs.  Coming Sheila?"  And they
went.

Left, as she seemed always to be in these days of open mutiny,
Nedda said sadly:

"What is coming, Aunt Kirsteen?"

Her aunt was standing in the porch, looking straight before her; a
trail of clematis had drooped over her fine black hair down on to
the blue of her linen dress.  She answered, without turning:

"Have you ever seen, on jubilee nights, bonfire to bonfire, from
hill to hill, to the end of the land?  This is the first lighted."

Nedda felt something clutch her heart.  What was that figure in
blue?  Priestess?  Prophetess?  And for a moment the girl felt
herself swept into the vision those dark glowing eyes were seeing;
some violent, exalted, inexorable, flaming vision.  Then something
within her revolted, as though one had tried to hypnotize her into
seeing what was not true; as though she had been forced for the
moment to look, not at what was really there, but at what those
eyes saw projected from the soul behind them.  And she said quietly:

"I don't believe, Aunt Kirsteen.  I don't really believe.  I think
it must go out."

Kirsteen turned.

"You are like your father," she said--"a doubter."

Nedda shook her head.

"I can't persuade myself to see what isn't there.  I never can,
Aunt Kirsteen."

Without reply, save a quiver of her brows, Kirsteen went back into
the house.  And Nedda stayed on the pebbled path before the
cottage, unhappy, searching her own soul.  Did she fail to see
because she was afraid to see, because she was too dull to see; or
because, as she had said, there was really nothing there--no flames
to leap from hill to hill, no lift, no tearing in the sky that hung
over the land?  And she thought: 'London--all those big towns,
their smoke, the things they make, the things we want them to make,
that we shall always want them to make.  Aren't they there?  For
every laborer who's a slave Dad says there are five town workers
who are just as much slaves!  And all those Bigwigs with their
great houses, and their talk, and their interest in keeping things
where they are!  Aren't they there?  I don't--I can't believe
anything much can happen, or be changed.  Oh! I shall never see
visions, and dream dreams!'  And from her heart she sighed.

In the meantime Derek and Sheila were going their round on
bicycles, to stiffen the backs of the laborers.  They had hunted
lately, always in a couple, desiring no complications, having
decided that it was less likely to provoke definite assault and
opposition from the farmers.  To their mother was assigned all
correspondence; to themselves the verbal exhortations, the personal
touch.  It was past noon, and they were already returning, when
they came on the char-a-bancs containing the head of the strike-
breaking column.  The two vehicles were drawn up opposite the gate
leading to Marrow Farm, and the agent was detaching the four men
destined to that locality, with their camping-gear.  By the open
gate the farmer stood eying his new material askance.  Dejected
enough creatures they looked--poor devils picked up at ten pound
the dozen, who, by the mingled apathy and sheepish amusement on
their faces, might never have seen a pitchfork, or smelled a field
of clover, in their lives.

The two young Freelands rode slowly past; the boy's face scornfully
drawn back into itself; the girl's flaming scarlet.

"Don't take notice," Derek said; "we'll soon stop that."

And they had gone another mile before he added:

"We've got to make our round again; that's all."

The words of Mr. Pogram, 'You have influence, young man,' were
just.  There was about Derek the sort of quality that belongs to
the good regimental officer; men followed and asked themselves why
the devil they had, afterward.  And if it be said that no worse
leader than a fiery young fool can be desired for any movement, it
may also be said that without youth and fire and folly there is
usually no movement at all.

Late in the afternoon they returned home, dead beat.  That evening
the farmers and their wives milked the cows, tended the horses, did
everything that must be done, not without curses.  And next morning
the men, with Gaunt and a big, dark fellow, called Tulley, for
spokesmen, again proffered their demand.  The agent took counsel
with Malloring by wire.  His answer, "Concede nothing," was
communicated to the men in the afternoon, and received by Gaunt
with the remark: "I thart we should be hearin' that.  Please to
thank Sir Gerald.  The men concedes their gratitood." . . .

That night it began to rain.  Nedda, waking, could hear the heavy
drops pattering on the sweetbrier and clematis thatching her open
window.  The scent of rain-cooled leaves came in drifts, and it
seemed a shame to sleep.  She got up; put on her dressing-gown, and
went to thrust her nose into that bath of dripping sweetness.  Dark
as the clouds had made the night, there was still the faint light
of a moon somewhere behind.  The leaves of the fruit-trees joined
in the long, gentle hissing, and now and again rustled and sighed
sharply; a cock somewhere, as by accident, let off a single crow.
There were no stars.  All was dark and soft as velvet.  And Nedda
thought: 'The world is dressed in living creatures!  Trees,
flowers, grass, insects, ourselves--woven together--the world is
dressed in life!  I understand Uncle Tod's feeling!  If only it
would rain till they have to send these strike-breakers back
because there's no hay worth fighting about!'  Suddenly her heart
beat fast.  The wicket gate had clicked.  There was something
darker than the darkness coming along the path!  Scared, but with
all protective instinct roused, she leaned out, straining to see.
A faint grating sound from underneath came up to her.  A window
being opened!  And she flew to her door.  She neither barred it,
however, nor cried out, for in that second it had flashed across
her: 'Suppose it's he!  Gone out to do something desperate, as
Tryst did!'  If it were, he would come up-stairs and pass her door,
going to his room.  She opened it an inch, holding her breath.  At
first, nothing!  Was it fancy?  Or was some one noiselessly rifling
the room down-stairs?  But surely no one would steal of Uncle Tod,
who, everybody knew, had nothing valuable.  Then came a sound as of
bootless feet pressing the stairs stealthily!  And the thought
darted through her, 'If it isn't he, what shall I do?'  And then--
'What shall I do--if it IS!'

Desperately she opened the door, clasping her hands on the place
whence her heart had slipped down to her bare feet.  But she knew
it was he before she heard him whisper: "Nedda!" and, clutching him
by the sleeve, she drew him in and closed the door.  He was wet
through, dripping; so wet that the mere brushing against him made
her skin feel moist through its thin coverings.

"Where have you been?  What have you been doing?  Oh, Derek!"

There was just light enough to see his face, his teeth, the whites
of his eyes.

"Cutting their tent-ropes in the rain.  Hooroosh!"

It was such a relief that she just let out a little gasping "Oh!"
and leaned her forehead against his coat.  Then she felt his wet
arms round her, his wet body pressed to hers, and in a second he
was dancing with her a sort of silent, ecstatic war dance.
Suddenly he stopped, went down on his knees, pressing his face to
her waist, and whispering: "What a brute, what a brute!  Making her
wet!  Poor little Nedda!"

Nedda bent over him; her hair covered his wet head, her hands
trembled on his shoulders.  Her heart felt as if it would melt
right out of her; she longed so to warm and dry him with herself.
And, in turn, his wet arms clutched her close, his wet hands could
not keep still on her.  Then he drew back, and whispering: "Oh,
Nedda! Nedda!" fled out like a dark ghost.  Oblivious that she was
damp from head to foot, Nedda stood swaying, her eyes closed and
her lips just open; then, putting out her arms, she drew them
suddenly in and clasped herself. . . .

When she came down to breakfast the next morning, he had gone out
already, and Uncle Tod, too; her aunt was writing at the bureau.
Sheila greeted her gruffly, and almost at once went out.  Nedda
swallowed coffee, ate her egg, and bread and honey, with a heavy
heart.  A newspaper lay open on the table; she read it idly till
these words caught her eye:


"The revolt which has paralyzed the hay harvest on Sir Gerald
Malloring's Worcestershire estate and led to the introduction of
strike-breakers, shows no sign of abatement.  A very wanton spirit
of mischief seems to be abroad in this neighborhood.  No reason can
be ascertained for the arson committed a short time back, nor for
this further outbreak of discontent.  The economic condition of the
laborers on this estate is admittedly rather above than below the
average."


And at once she thought: '"Mischief!"  What a shame!'  Were people,
then, to know nothing of the real cause of the revolt--nothing of
the Tryst eviction, the threatened eviction of the Gaunts?  Were
they not to know that it was on principle, and to protest against
that sort of petty tyranny to the laborers all over the country,
that this rebellion had been started?  For liberty! only simple
liberty not to be treated as though they had no minds or souls of
their own--weren't the public to know that?  If they were allowed
to think that it was all wanton mischief--that Derek was just a
mischief-maker--it would be dreadful!  Some one must write and make
this known?  Her father?  But Dad might think it too personal--his
own relations!  Mr. Cuthcott!  Into whose household Wilmet Gaunt
had gone.  Ah! Mr. Cuthcott who had told her that he was always at
her service!  Why not?  And the thought that she might really do
something at last to help made her tingle all over.  If she
borrowed Sheila's bicycle she could catch the nine-o'clock train to
London, see him herself, make him do something, perhaps even bring
him back with her!  She examined her purse.  Yes, she had money.
She would say nothing, here, because, of course, he might refuse!
At the back of her mind was the idea that, if a real newspaper took
the part of the laborers, Derek's position would no longer be so
dangerous; he would be, as it were, legally recognized, and that,
in itself, would make him more careful and responsible.  Whence she
got this belief in the legalizing power of the press it is
difficult to say, unless that, reading newspapers but seldom, she
still took them at their own valuation, and thought that when they
said: "We shall do this," or "We must do that," they really were
speaking for the country, and that forty-five millions of people
were deliberately going to do something, whereas, in truth, as was
known to those older than Nedda, they were speaking, and not too
conclusively at that, for single anonymous gentlemen in a hurry who
were not going to do anything.  She knew that the press had power,
great power--for she was always hearing that--and it had not
occurred to her as yet to examine the composition of that power so
as to discover that, while the press certainly had a certain
monopoly of expression, and that same 'spirit of body' which makes
police constables swear by one another, it yet contained within its
ring fence the sane and advisable futility of a perfectly balanced
contradiction; so that its only functions, practically speaking,
were the dissemination of news, seven-tenths of which would have
been happier in obscurity; and--'irritation of the Dutch!'  Not, of
course, that the press realized this; nor was it probable that any
one would tell it, for it had power--great power.

She caught her train--glowing outwardly from the speed of her ride,
and inwardly from the heat of adventure and the thought that at
last she was being of some use.

The only other occupants of her third-class compartment were a
friendly looking man, who might have been a sailor or other
wanderer on leave, and his thin, dried-up, black-clothed cottage
woman of an old mother.  They sat opposite each other.  The son
looked at his mother with beaming eyes, and she remarked: "An' I
says to him, says I, I says, 'What?' I says; so 'e says to me, he
says, 'Yes,' he says; 'that's what I say,' he says."  And Nedda
thought: 'What an old dear!  And the son looks nice too; I do like
simple people.'

They got out at the first stop and she journeyed on alone.  Taking
a taxicab from Paddington, she drove toward Gray's Inn.  But now
that she was getting close she felt very nervous.  How expect a
busy man like Mr. Cuthcott to spare time to come down all that way?
It would be something, though, if she could get him even to
understand what was really happening, and why; so that he could
contradict that man in the other paper.  It must be wonderful to be
writing, daily, what thousands and thousands of people read!  Yes!
It must be a very sacred-feeling life!  To be able to say things in
that particularly authoritative way which must take such a lot of
people in--that is, make such a lot of people think in the same
way!  It must give a man a terrible sense of responsibility, make
him feel that he simply must be noble, even if he naturally wasn't.
Yes! it must be a wonderful profession, and only fit for the
highest!  In addition to Mr. Cuthcott, she knew as yet but three
young journalists, and those all weekly.

At her timid ring the door was opened by a broad-cheeked girl,
enticingly compact in apron and black frock, whose bright color,
thick lips, and rogue eyes came of anything but London.  It flashed
across Nedda that this must be the girl for whose sake she had
faced Mr. Cuthcott at the luncheon-table!  And she said: "Are you
Wilmet Gaunt?"

The girl smiled till her eyes almost disappeared, and answered:
"Yes, miss."

"I'm Nedda Freeland, Miss Sheila's cousin.  I've just come from
Joyfields.  How are you getting on?"

"Fine, thank you, miss.  Plenty of life here."

Nedda thought: 'That's what Derek said of her.  Bursting with life!
And so she is.'  And she gazed doubtfully at the girl, whose prim
black dress and apron seemed scarcely able to contain her.

"Is Mr. Cuthcott in?"

"No, miss; he'll be down at the paper.  Two hundred and five
Floodgate Street."

'Oh!' thought Nedda with dismay; 'I shall never venture there!'
And glancing once more at the girl, whose rogue slits of eyes, deep
sunk between check-bones and brow, seemed to be quizzing her and
saying: 'You and Mr. Derek--oh! I know!' she went sadly away.  And
first she thought she would go home to Hampstead, then that she
would go back to the station, then: 'After all, why shouldn't I go
and try?  They can't eat me.  I will!'

She reached her destination at the luncheon-hour, so that the
offices of the great evening journal were somewhat deserted.
Producing her card, she was passed from hand to hand till she
rested in a small bleak apartment where a young woman was typing
fast.  She longed to ask her how she liked it, but did not dare.
The whole atmosphere seemed to her charged with a strenuous
solemnity, as though everything said, 'We have power--great power.'
And she waited, sitting by the window which faced the street.  On
the buildings opposite she could read the name of another great
evening journal.  Why, it was the one which had contained the
paragraph she had read at breakfast!  She had bought a copy of it
at the station.  Its temperament, she knew, was precisely opposed
to that of Mr. Cuthcott's paper.  Over in that building, no doubt
there would be the same strenuously loaded atmosphere, so that if
they opened the windows on both sides little puffs of power would
meet in mid-air, above the heads of the passers-by, as might the
broadsides of old three-deckers, above the green, green sea.

And for the first time an inkling of the great comic equipoise in
Floodgate Street and human affairs stole on Nedda's consciousness.
They puffed and puffed, and only made smoke in the middle!  That
must be why Dad always called them: 'Those fellows!'  She had
scarcely, however, finished beginning to think these thoughts when
a handbell sounded sharply in some adjoining room, and the young
woman nearly fell into her typewriter.  Readjusting her balance,
she rose, and, going to the door, passed out in haste.  Through the
open doorway Nedda could see a large and pleasant room, whose walls
seemed covered with prints of men standing in attitudes such that
she was almost sure they were statesmen; and, at a table in the
centre, the back of Mr. Cuthcott in a twiddly chair, surrounded by
sheets of paper reposing on the floor, shining like autumn leaves
on a pool of water.  She heard his voice, smothery, hurried, but
still pleasant, say: "Take these, Miss Mayne, take these!  Begin on
them, begin!  Confound it!  What's the time?"  And the young
woman's voice: "Half past one, Mr. Cuthcott!"  And a noise from Mr.
Cuthcott's throat that sounded like an adjuration to the Deity not
to pass over something.  Then the young woman dipped and began
gathering those leaves of paper, and over her comely back Nedda had
a clear view of Mr. Cuthcott hunching one brown shoulder as though
warding something off, and of one of his thin hands ploughing up
and throwing back his brown hair on one side, and heard the sound
of his furiously scratching pen.  And her heart pattered; it was so
clear that he was 'giving them one' and had no time for her.  And
involuntarily she looked at the windows beyond him to see if there
were any puffs of power issuing therefrom.  But they were closed.
She saw the young woman rise and come back toward her, putting the
sheets of paper in order; and, as the door was closing, from the
twiddly chair a noise that seemed to couple God with the
condemnation of silly souls.  When the young woman was once more at
the typewriter she rose and said: "Have you given him my card yet?"

The young woman looked at her surprised, as if she had broken some
rule of etiquette, and answered: "No."

"Then don't, please.  I can see that he's too busy.  I won't wait."

The young woman abstractedly placed a sheet of paper in her typewriter.

"Very well," she said.  "Good morning!"

And before Nedda reached the door she heard the click-click of the
machine, reducing Mr. Cuthcott to legibility.

'I was stupid to come,' she thought.  'He must be terribly
overworked.  Poor man!  He does say lovely things!'  And,
crestfallen, she went along the passages, and once more out into
Floodgate Street.  She walked along it frowning, till a man who was
selling newspapers said as she passed: "Mind ye don't smile, lydy!"

Seeing that he was selling Mr. Cuthcott's paper, she felt for a
coin to buy one, and, while searching, scrutinized the newsvender's
figure, almost entirely hidden by the words:


      GREAT HOUSING SCHEME

      HOPE FOR THE MILLION!


on a buff-colored board; while above it, his face, that had not
quite blood enough to be scorbutic, was wrapped in the expression
of those philosophers to whom a hope would be fatal.  He was, in
fact, just what he looked--a street stoic.  And a dim perception of
the great social truth: "The smell of half a loaf is not better
than no bread!" flickered in Nedda's brain as she passed on.  Was
that what Derek was doing with the laborers--giving them half the
smell of a liberty that was not there?  And a sudden craving for
her father came over her.  He--he only, was any good, because he,
only, loved her enough to feel how distracted and unhappy she was
feeling, how afraid of what was coming.  So, making for a Tube
station, she took train to Hampstead. . . .

It was past two, and Felix, on the point of his constitutional.  He
had left Becket the day after Nedda's rather startling removal to
Joyfields, and since then had done his level best to put the whole
Tryst affair, with all its somewhat sinister relevance to her life
and his own, out of his mind as something beyond control.  He had
but imperfectly succeeded.

Flora, herself not too present-minded, had in these days occasion
to speak to him about the absent-minded way in which he fulfilled
even the most domestic duties, and Alan was always saying to him,
"Buck up, Dad!"  With Nedda's absorption into the little Joyfields
whirlpool, the sun shone but dimly for Felix.  And a somewhat
febrile attention to 'The Last of the Laborers' had not brought it
up to his expectations.  He fluttered under his buff waistcoat when
he saw her coming in at the gate.  She must want something of him!
For to this pitch of resignation, as to his little daughter's love
for him, had he come!  And if she wanted something of him, things
would be going wrong again down there!  Nor did the warmth of her
embrace, and her: "Oh! Dad, it IS nice to see you!" remove that
instinctive conviction; though delicacy, born of love, forbade him
to ask her what she wanted.  Talking of the sky and other matters,
thinking how pretty she was looking, he waited for the new,
inevitable proof that youth was first, and a mere father only
second fiddle now.  A note from Stanley had already informed him of
the strike.  The news had been something of a relief.  Strikes, at
all events, were respectable and legitimate means of protest, and
to hear that one was in progress had not forced him out of his
laborious attempt to believe the whole affair only a mole-hill.  He
had not, however, heard of the strike-breakers, nor had he seen any
newspaper mention of the matter; and when she had shown him the
paragraph; recounted her visit to Mr. Cuthcott, and how she had
wanted to take him back with her to see for himself--he waited a
moment, then said almost timidly: "Should I be of any use, my
dear?"  She flushed and squeezed his hand in silence; and he knew
he would.

When he had packed a handbag and left a note for Flora, he rejoined
her in the hall.

It was past seven when they reached their destination, and, taking
the station 'fly,' drove slowly up to Joyfields, under a showery
sky.


CHAPTER XXIX


When Felix and Nedda reached Tod's cottage, the three little
Trysts, whose activity could never be quite called play, were all
the living creatures about the house.

"Where is Mrs. Freeland, Biddy?"

"We don't know; a man came, and she went."

"And Miss Sheila?"

"She went out in the mornin'.  And Mr. Freeland's gone."

Susie added: "The dog's gone, too."

"Then help me to get some tea."

"Yes."

With the assistance of the mother-child, and the hindrance of Susie
and Billy, Nedda made and laid tea, with an anxious heart.  The
absence of her aunt, who so seldom went outside the cottage,
fields, and orchard, disturbed her; and, while Felix refreshed
himself, she fluttered several times on varying pretexts to the
wicket gate.

At her third visit, from the direction of the church, she saw
figures coming on the road--dark figures carrying something,
followed by others walking alongside.  What sun there had been had
quite given in to heavy clouds; the light was dull, the elm-trees
dark; and not till they were within two hundred yards could Nedda
make out that these were figures of policemen.  Then, alongside
that which they were carrying, she saw her aunt's blue dress.  WHAT
were they carrying like that?  She dashed down the steps, and
stopped.  No!  If it were HE they would bring him in!  She rushed
back again, distracted.  She could see now a form stretched on a
hurdle.  It WAS he!

"Dad!  Quick!"

Felix came, startled at that cry, to find his little daughter on
the path wringing her hands and flying back to the wicket gate.
They were close now.  She saw them begin to mount the steps, those
behind raising their arms so that the hurdle should be level.
Derek lay on his back, with head and forehead swathed in wet blue
linen, torn from his mother's skirt; and the rest of his face very
white.  He lay quite still, his clothes covered with mud.
Terrified, Nedda plucked at Kirsteen's sleeve.

"What is it?"

"Concussion!"  The stillness of that blue-clothed figure, so calm
beside her, gave her strength to say quietly:

"Put him in my room, Aunt Kirsteen; there's more air there!"  And
she flew up-stairs, flinging wide her door, making the bed ready,
snatching her night things from the pillow; pouring out cold water,
sprinkling the air with eau de cologne.  Then she stood still.
Perhaps, they would not bring him there?  Yes, they were coming up.
They brought him in, and laid him on the bed.  She heard one say:
"Doctor'll be here directly, ma'am.  Let him lie quiet."  Then she
and his mother were alone beside him.

"Undo his boots," said Kirsteen.

Nedda's fingers trembled, and she hated them for fumbling so, while
she drew off those muddy boots.  Then her aunt said softly: "Hold
him up, dear, while I get his things off."

And, with a strange rapture that she was allowed to hold him thus,
she supported him against her breast till he was freed and lying
back inert.  Then, and only then, she whispered:

"How long before he--?"

Kirsteen shook her head; and, slipping her arm round the girl,
murmured: "Courage, Nedda!"

The girl felt fear and love rush up desperately to overwhelm her.
She choked them back, and said quite quietly: "I will.  I promise.
Only let me help nurse him!"

Kirsteen nodded.  And they sat down to wait.

That quarter of an hour was the longest of her life.  To see him
thus, living, yet not living, with the spirit driven from him by a
cruel blow, perhaps never to come back!  Curious, how things still
got themselves noticed when all her faculties were centred in
gazing at his face.  She knew that it was raining again; heard the
swish and drip, and smelled the cool wet perfume through the scent
of the eau de cologne that she had spilled.  She noted her aunt's
arm, as it hovered, wetting the bandage; the veins and rounded
whiteness from under the loose blue sleeve slipped up to the elbow.
One of his feet lay close to her at the bed's edge; she stole her
hand beneath the sheet.  That foot felt very cold, and she grasped
it tight.  If only she could pass life into him through her hot
hand.  She heard the ticking of her little travelling-clock, and
was conscious of flies wheeling close up beneath the white ceiling,
of how one by one they darted at each other, making swift zigzags
in the air.  And something in her she had not yet known came
welling up, softening her eyes, her face, even the very pose of her
young body--the hidden passion of a motherliness, that yearned so
to 'kiss the place,' to make him well, to nurse and tend, restore
and comfort him.  And with all her might she watched the movements
of those rounded arms under the blue sleeves--how firm and exact
they were, how soft and quiet and swift, bathing the dark head!
Then from beneath the bandage she caught sight suddenly of his
eyes.  And her heart turned sick.  Oh, they were not quite closed!
As if he hadn't life enough to close them!  She bit into her lip to
stop a cry.  It was so terrible to see them without light.  Why did
not that doctor come?  Over and over and over again within her the
prayer turned: Let him live!  Oh, let him live!

The blackbirds out in the orchard were tuning up for evening.  It
seemed almost dreadful they should be able to sing like that.  All
the world was going on just the same!  If he died, the world would
have no more light for her than there was now in his poor eyes--and
yet it would go on the same!  How was that possible?  It was not
possible, because she would die too!  She saw her aunt turn her
head like a startled animal; some one was coming up the stairs!  It
was the doctor, wiping his wet face--a young man in gaiters.  How
young--dreadfully young!  No; there was a little gray at the sides
of his hair!  What would he say?  And Nedda sat with hands tight
clenched in her lap, motionless as a young crouching sphinx.  An
interminable testing, and questioning, and answer!  Never smoked--
never drank--never been ill!  The blow--ah, here!  Just here!
Concussion--yes!  Then long staring into the eyes, the eyelids
lifted between thumb and finger.  And at last (how could he talk so
loud!  Yet it was a comfort too--he would not talk like that if
Derek were going to die!)--Hair cut shorter--ice--watch him like a
lynx!  This and that, if he came to.  Nothing else to be done.  And
then those blessed words:

"But don't worry too much.  I think it'll be all right."  She could
not help a little sigh escaping her clenched teeth.

The doctor was looking at her.  His eyes were nice.

"Sister?"

"Cousin."

"Ah!  Well, I'll get back now, and send you out some ice, at once."

More talk outside the door.  Nedda, alone with her lover, crouched
forward on her knees, and put her lips to his.  They were not so
cold as his foot, and the first real hope and comfort came to her.
Watch him like a lynx--wouldn't she?  But how had it all happened?
And where was Sheila? and Uncle Tod?

Her aunt had come back and was stroking her shoulder.  There had
been fighting in the barn at Marrow Farm.  They had arrested
Sheila.  Derek had jumped down to rescue her and struck his head
against a grindstone.  Her uncle had gone with Sheila.  They would
watch, turn and turn about.  Nedda must go now and eat something,
and get ready to take the watch from eight to midnight.

Following her resolve to make no fuss, the girl went out.  The
police had gone.  The mother-child was putting her little folk to
bed; and in the kitchen Felix was arranging the wherewithal to eat.
He made her sit down and kept handing things; watching like a cat
to see that she put them in her mouth, in the way from which only
Flora had suffered hitherto; he seemed so anxious and unhappy, and
so awfully sweet, that Nedda forced herself to swallow what she
thought would never go down a dry and choky throat.  He kept coming
up and touching her shoulder or forehead.  Once he said:

"It's all right, you know, my pet; concussion often takes two
days."

Two days with his eyes like that!  The consolation was not so vivid
as Felix might have wished; but she quite understood that he was
doing his best to give it.  She suddenly remembered that he had no
room to sleep in.  He must use Derek's.  No!  That, it appeared,
was to be for her when she came off duty.  Felix was going to have
an all-night sitting in the kitchen.  He had been looking forward
to an all-night sitting for many years, and now he had got his
chance.  It was a magnificent opportunity--"without your mother, my
dear, to insist on my sleeping."  And staring at his smile, Nedda
thought: 'He's like Granny--he comes out under difficulties.  If
only I did!'

The ice arrived by motor-cycle just before her watch began.  It was
some comfort to have that definite thing to see to.  How timorous
and humble are thoughts in a sick-room, above all when the sick are
stretched behind the muffle of unconsciousness, withdrawn from the
watcher by half-death!  And yet, for him or her who loves, there is
at least the sense of being alone with the loved one, of doing all
that can be done; and in some strange way of twining hearts with
the exiled spirit.  To Nedda, sitting at his feet, and hardly ever
turning eyes away from his still face, it sometimes seemed that the
flown spirit was there beside her.  And she saw into his soul in
those hours of watching, as one looking into a stream sees the
leopard-like dapple of its sand and dark-strewn floor, just reached
by sunlight.  She saw all his pride, courage, and impatience, his
reserve, and strange unwilling tenderness, as she had never seen
them.  And a queer dreadful feeling moved her that in some previous
existence she had looked at that face dead on a field of battle,
frowning up at the stars.  That was absurd--there were no previous
existences!  Or was it prevision of what would come some day?

When, at half past nine, the light began to fail, she lighted two
candles in tall, thin, iron candlesticks beside her.  They burned
without flicker, those spires of yellow flame, slowly conquering
the dying twilight, till in their soft radiance the room was full
of warm dusky shadows, the night outside ever a deeper black.  Two
or three times his mother came, looked at him, asked her if she
should stay, and, receiving a little silent shake of the head, went
away again.  At eleven o'clock, when once more she changed the ice-
cap, his eyes had still no lustre, and for a moment her courage
failed her utterly.  It seemed to her that he could never win back,
that death possessed the room already, possessed those candle-
flames, the ticking of the clock, the dark, dripping night,
possessed her heart.  Could he be gone before she had been his!
Gone!  Where?  She sank down on her knees, covering her eyes.  What
good to watch, if he were never coming back!  A long time--it
seemed hours--passed thus, with the feeling growing deeper in her
that no good would come while she was watching.  And behind the
barrier of her hands she tried desperately to rally courage.  If
things were--they were!  One must look them in the face!  She took
her hands away.  His eyes!  Was it light in them?  Was it?  They
were seeing--surely they saw.  And his lips made the tiniest
movement.  In that turmoil of exultation she never knew how she
managed to continue kneeling there, with her hands on his.  But all
her soul shone down to him out of her eyes, and drew and drew at
his spirit struggling back from the depths of him.  For many
minutes that struggle lasted; then he smiled.  It was the feeblest
smile that ever was on lips, but it made the tears pour down
Nedda's cheeks and trickle off on to his hands.  Then, with a
stoicism that she could not believe in, so hopelessly unreal it
seemed, so utterly the negation of the tumult within her, she
settled back again at his feet to watch and not excite him.  And
still his lips smiled that faint smile, and his opened eyes grew
dark and darker with meaning.

So at midnight Kirsteen found them.


CHAPTER XXX


In the early hours of his all-night sitting Felix had first only
memories, and then Kirsteen for companion.

"I worry most about Tod," she said.  "He had that look in his face
when he went off from Marrow Farm.  He might do something terrible
if they ill-treat Sheila.  If only she has sense enough to see and
not provoke them."

"Surely she will," Felix murmured.

"Yes, if she realizes.  But she won't, I'm afraid.  Even I have
only known him look like that three times.  Tod is so gentle--
passion stores itself in him; and when it comes, it's awful.  If he
sees cruelty, he goes almost mad.  Once he would have killed a man
if I hadn't got between them.  He doesn't know what he's doing at
such moments.  I wish--I wish he were back.  It's hard one can't
pierce through, and see him."

Gazing at her eyes so dark and intent, Felix thought: 'If YOU can't
pierce through--none can.'

He learned the story of the disaster.

Early that morning Derek had assembled twenty of the strongest
laborers, and taken them a round of the farms to force the strike-
breakers to desist.  There had been several fights, in all of which
the strike-breakers had been beaten.  Derek himself had fought
three times.  In the afternoon the police had come, and the
laborers had rushed with Derek and Sheila, who had joined them,
into a barn at Marrow Farm, barred it, and thrown mangolds at the
police, when they tried to force an entrance.  One by one the
laborers had slipped away by a rope out of a ventilation-hole high
up at the back, and they had just got Sheila down when the police
appeared on that side, too.  Derek, who had stayed to the last,
covering their escape with mangolds, had jumped down twenty feet
when he saw them taking Sheila, and, pitching forward, hit his head
against a grindstone.  Then, just as they were marching Sheila and
two of the laborers away, Tod had arrived and had fallen in
alongside the policemen--he and the dog.  It was then she had seen
that look on his face.

Felix, who had never beheld his big brother in Berserk mood, could
offer no consolation; nor had he the heart to adorn the tale, and
inflict on this poor woman his reflection: 'This, you see, is what
comes of the ferment you have fostered.  This is the reward of
violence!'  He longed, rather, to comfort her; she seemed so lonely
and, in spite of all her stoicism, so distraught and sad.  His
heart went out, too, to Tod.  How would he himself have felt,
walking by the side of policemen whose arms were twisted in
Nedda's!  But so mixed are the minds of men that at this very
moment there was born within him the germ of a real revolt against
the entry of his little daughter into this family of hotheads.  It
was more now than mere soreness and jealousy; it was fear of a
danger hitherto but sniffed at, but now only too sharply savored.

When she left him to go up-stairs, Felix stayed consulting the dark
night.  As ever, in hours of ebbed vitality, the shapes of fear and
doubt grew clearer and more positive; they loomed huge out there
among the apple-trees, where the drip-drip of the rain made music.
But his thoughts were still nebulous, not amounting to resolve.  It
was no moment for resolves--with the boy lying up there between the
tides of chance; and goodness knew what happening to Tod and
Sheila.  The air grew sharper; he withdrew to the hearth, where a
wood fire still burned, gray ash, red glow, scent oozing from it.
And while he crouched there, blowing it with bellows, he heard soft
footsteps, and saw Nedda standing behind him transformed.

But in the midst of all his glad sympathy Felix could not help
thinking: 'Better for you, perhaps, if he had never returned from
darkness!'

She came and crouched down by him.

"Let me sit with you, Dad.  It smells so good."

"Very well; but you must sleep."

"I don't believe I'll ever want to sleep again."

And at the glow in her Felix glowed too.  What is so infectious as
delight?  They sat a long time talking, as they had not talked
since the first fatal visit to Becket.  Of how love, and mountains,
works of art, and doing things for others were the only sources of
happiness; except scents, and lying on one's back looking through
tree-tops at the sky; and tea, and sunlight, flowers, and hard
exercise; oh, and the sea!  Of how, when things went hard, one
prayed--but what did one pray to?  Was it not to something in
oneself?  It was of no use to pray to the great mysterious Force
that made one thing a cabbage, and the other a king; for That could
obviously not be weak-minded enough to attend.  And gradually
little pauses began to creep into their talk; then a big pause, and
Nedda, who would never want to sleep again, was fast asleep.

Felix watched those long, dark lashes resting on her cheeks; the
slow, soft rise of her breast; the touching look of trust and
goodness in that young face abandoned to oblivion after these hours
of stress; watched the little tired shadows under the eyes, the
tremors of the just-parted lips.  And, getting up, stealthy as a
cat, he found a light rug, and ever more stealthily laid it over
her.  She stirred at that, smiled up at him, and instantly went off
again.  And he thought: 'Poor little sweetheart, she WAS tired!'
And a passionate desire to guard her from trials and troubles came
on him.

At four o'clock Kirsteen slipped in again, and whispered: "She made
me promise to come for her.  How pretty she looks, sleeping!"

"Yes," Felix answered; "pretty and good!"

Nedda raised her head, stared up at her aunt, and a delighted smile
spread over her face.  "Is it time again?  How lovely!"  Then,
before either could speak or stop her, she was gone.

"She is more in love," Kirsteen murmured, "than I ever saw a girl
of her age."

"She is more in love," Felix answered, "than is good to see."

"She is not truer than Derek is."

"That may be, but she will suffer from him."

"Women who love must always suffer."

Her cheeks were sunken, shadowy; she looked very tired.  When she
had gone to get some sleep, Felix restored the fire and put on a
kettle, meaning to make himself some coffee.  Morning had broken,
clear and sparkling after the long rain, and full of scent and
song.  What glory equalled this early morning radiance, the dewy
wonder of everything!  What hour of the day was such a web of youth
and beauty as this, when all the stars from all the skies had
fallen into the grass!  A cold nose was thrust into his hand, and
he saw beside him Tod's dog.  The animal was wet, and lightly moved
his white-tipped tail; while his dark-yellow eyes inquired of Felix
what he was going to give a dog to eat.  Then Felix saw his brother
coming in.  Tod's face was wild and absent as a man with all his
thoughts turned on something painful in the distance.  His ruffled
hair had lost its brightness; his eyes looked as if driven back
into his head; he was splashed with mud, and wet from head to foot.
He walked up to the hearth without a word.

"Well, old man?" said Felix anxiously.

Tod looked at him, but did not answer.

"Come," said Felix; "tell us!"

"Locked up," said Tod in a voice unlike his own.  "I didn't knock
them down."

"Heavens!  I should hope not."

"I ought to have."

Felix put his hand within his brother's arm.

"They twisted her arms; one of them pushed her from behind.  I
can't understand it.  How was it I didn't?  I can't understand."

"I can," said Felix.  "They were the Law.  If they had been mere
men you'd have done it, fast enough."

"I can't understand," Tod repeated.  "I've been walking ever since."

Felix stroked his shoulder.

"Go up-stairs, old man.  Kirsteen's anxious."

Tod sat down and took his boots off.

"I can't understand," he said once more.  Then, without another
word, or even a look at Felix, he went out and up the stairs.

And Felix thought: 'Poor Kirsteen!  Ah, well--they're all about as
queer, one as the other!  How to get Nedda out of it?'

And, with that question gnawing at him, he went out into the
orchard.  The grass was drenching wet, so he descended to the road.
Two wood-pigeons were crooning to each other, truest of all sounds
of summer; there was no wind, and the flies had begun humming.  In
the air, cleared of dust, the scent of hay was everywhere.  What
about those poor devils of laborers, now?  They would get the sack
for this! and he was suddenly beset with a feeling of disgust.
This world where men, and women too, held what they had, took what
they could; this world of seeing only one thing at a time; this
world of force, and cunning, of struggle, and primitive appetites;
of such good things, too, such patience, endurance, heroism--and
yet at heart so unutterably savage!

He was very tired; but it was too wet to sit down, so he walked on.
Now and again he passed a laborer going to work; but very few in
all those miles, and they quite silent.  'Did they ever really
whistle?' Felix thought.  'Were they ever jolly ploughmen?  Or was
that always a fiction?  Surely, if they can't give tongue this
morning, they never can!'  He crossed a stile and took a slanting
path through a little wood.  The scent of leaves and sap, the
dapple of sunlight--all the bright early glow and beauty struck him
with such force that he could have cried out in the sharpness of
sensation.  At that hour when man was still abed and the land lived
its own life, how full and sweet and wild that life seemed, how in
love with itself!  Truly all the trouble in the world came from the
manifold disharmonies of the self-conscious animal called Man!

Then, coming out on the road again, he saw that he must be within a
mile or two of Becket; and finding himself suddenly very hungry,
determined to go there and get some breakfast.


CHAPTER XXXI


Duly shaved with one of Stanley's razors, bathed, and breakfasted,
Felix was on the point of getting into the car to return to
Joyfields when he received a message from his mother: Would he
please go up and see her before he went?

He found her looking anxious and endeavoring to conceal it.

Having kissed him, she drew him to her sofa and said: "Now,
darling, come and sit down here, and tell me all about this
DREADFUL business."  And taking up an odorator she blew over him a
little cloud of scent.  "It's quite a new perfume; isn't it
delicious?"

Felix, who dreaded scent, concealed his feelings, sat down, and
told her.  And while he told her he was conscious of how
pathetically her fastidiousness was quivering under those gruesome
details--fighting with policemen, fighting with common men, prison--
FOR A LADY; conscious too of her still more pathetic effort to put
a good face on it.  When he had finished she remained so perfectly
still, with lips so hard compressed, that he said:

"It's no good worrying, Mother."

Frances Freeland rose, pulled something hard, and a cupboard
appeared.  She opened it, and took out a travelling-bag.

"I must go back with you at once," she said.

"I don't think it's in the least necessary, and you'll only knock
yourself up."

"Oh, nonsense, darling!  I must."

Knowing that further dissuasion would harden her determination,
Felix said: "I'm going in the car."

"That doesn't matter.  I shall be ready in ten minutes.  Oh! and do
you know this?  It's splendid for taking lines out under the eyes!"
She was holding out a little round box with the lid off.  "Just wet
your finger with it, and dab it gently on."

Touched by this evidence of her deep desire that he should put as
good a face on it as herself, Felix dabbed himself under the eyes.

"That's right.  Now, wait for me, dear; I shan't be a minute.  I've
only to get my things.  They'll all go splendidly in this little bag."

In a quarter of an hour they had started.  During that journey
Frances Freeland betrayed no sign of tremor.  She was going into
action, and, therefore, had no patience with her nerves.

"Are you proposing to stay, Mother?" Felix hazarded; "because I
don't think there's a room for you."

"Oh! that's nothing, darling.  I sleep beautifully in a chair.  It
suits me better than lying down."  Felix cast up his eyes, and made
no answer.

On arriving, they found that the doctor had been there, expressed
his satisfaction, and enjoined perfect quiet.  Tod was on the point
of starting back to Transham, where Sheila and the two laborers
would be brought up before the magistrates.  Felix and Kirsteen
took hurried counsel.  Now that Mother, whose nursing was beyond
reproach, had come, it would be better if they went with Tod.  All
three started forthwith in the car.

Left alone, Frances Freeland took her bag--a noticeably old one,
without any patent clasp whatever, so that she could open it--went
noiselessly upstairs, tapped on Derek's door, and went in.  A faint
but cheerful voice remarked: "Halloo, Granny!"

Frances Freeland went up to the bed, smiled down on him ineffably,
laid a finger on his lips, and said, in the stillest voice: "You
mustn't talk, darling!"  Then she sat down in the window with her
bag beside her.  Half a tear had run down her nose, and she had no
intention that it should be seen.  She therefore opened her bag,
and, having taken out a little bottle, beckoned Nedda.

"Now, darling," she whispered, "you must just take one of these.
It's nothing new; they're what my mother used to give me at your
age.  And for one hour you must go out and get some fresh air, and
then you can come back."

"Must I, Granny?"

"Yes; you must keep up your strength.  Kiss me."

Nedda kissed a cheek that seemed extraordinarily smooth and soft,
received a kiss in the middle of her own, and, having stayed a
second by the bed, looking down with all her might, went out.

Frances Freeland, in the window, wasted no thoughts, but began to
run over in her mind the exact operations necessary to defeat this
illness of darling Derek's.  Her fingers continually locked and
interlocked themselves with fresh determinations; her eyes, fixed
on imaginary foods, methods of washing, and ways of keeping him
quiet, had an almost fanatical intensity.  Like a good general she
marshalled her means of attack and fixed them in perfect order.
Now and then she gazed into her bag, making quite sure that she had
everything, and nothing that was new-fangled or liable to go wrong.
For into action she never brought any of those patent novelties
that delighted her soul in times of peace.  For example, when she
herself had pneumonia and no doctor, for two months, it was well
known that she had lain on her back, free from every kind of
remedy, employing only courage, nature, and beef tea, or some such
simple sustenance.

Having now made her mental dispositions, she got up without sound
and slipped off a petticoat that she suspected of having rustled a
little when she came in; folding and popping it where it could not
be suspected any more, she removed her shoes and put on very old
velvet slippers.  She walked in these toward the bed, listening to
find out whether she could hear herself, without success.  Then,
standing where she could see when his eyes opened, she began to
take stock.  That pillow wasn't very comfortable!  A little table
was wanted on both sides, instead of on one.  There was no
odorator, and she did not see one of those arrangements!  All these
things would have to be remedied.

Absorbed in this reconnoitring, she failed to observe that darling
Derek was looking at her through eyelashes that were always so nice
and black.  He said suddenly, in that faint and cheerful voice:

"All right, Granny; I'm going to get up to-morrow."

Frances Freeland, whose principle it was that people should always
be encouraged to believe themselves better than they were,
answered.  "Yes, darling, of course; you'll be up in no time.
It'll be delightful to see you in a chair to-morrow.  But you
mustn't talk."

Derek sighed, closed his eyes, and went off into a faint.

It was in moments such as these that Frances Freeland was herself.
Her face flushed a little and grew terribly determined.  Conscious
that she was absolutely alone in the house, she ran to her bag,
took out her sal volatile, applied it vigorously to his nose, and
poured a little between his lips.  She did other things to him, and
not until she had brought him round, and the best of it was already
made, did she even say to herself: 'It's no use fussing; I must
make the best of it.'

Then, having discovered that he felt quite comfortable--as he said--
she sat down in a chair to fan him and tremble vigorously.  She
would not have allowed that movement of her limbs if it had in any
way interfered with the fanning.  But since, on the contrary, it
seemed to be of assistance, she certainly felt it a relief; for,
whatever age her spirit might be, her body was seventy-three.

And while she fanned she thought of Derek as a little, black-
haired, blazing-gray-eyed slip of a sallow boy, all little thin
legs and arms moving funnily like a foal's.  He had been such a
dear, gentlemanlike little chap.  It was dreadful he should be
forgetting himself so, and getting into such trouble.  And her
thoughts passed back beyond him to her own four little sons, among
whom she had been so careful not to have a favorite, but to love
them all equally.  And she thought of how their holland suits wore
out, especially in the elastic, and got green behind, almost before
they were put on; and of how she used to cut their hairs, spending
at least three-quarters of an hour on each, because she had never
been quick at it, while they sat so good--except Stanley, and
darling Tod, who WOULD move just as she had got into the comb
particularly nice bits of his hair, always so crisp and difficult!
And of how she had cut off Felix's long golden curls when he was
four, and would have cried over it, if crying hadn't always been
silly!  And of how beautifully they had all had their measles
together, so that she had been up with them day and night for about
a fortnight.  And of how it was a terrible risk with Derek and
darling Nedda, not at all a wise match, she was afraid.  And yet,
if they really were attached, of course one must put the best face
on it!  And how lovely it would be to see another little baby some
day; and what a charming little mother Nedda would make--if only
the dear child would do her hair just a little differently!  And
she perceived that Derek was asleep--and one of her own legs, from
the knee down.  She would certainly have bad pins and needles if
she did not get up; but, since she would not wake him for the
world, she must do something else to cure it.  And she hit upon
this plan.  She had only to say, 'Nonsense, you haven't anything of
the sort!' and it was sure to go away.  She said this to her leg,
but, being a realist, she only made it feel like a pin-cushion.
She knew, however, that she had only to persevere, because it would
never do to give in.  She persevered, and her leg felt as if red-
hot needles were being stuck in it.  Then, for the life of her, she
could not help saying a little psalm.  The sensation went away and
left her leg quite dead.  She would have no strength in it at all
when she got up.  But that would be easily cured, when she could
get to her bag, with three globules of nux vomica--and darling
Derek must not be waked up for anything!  She waited thus till
Nedda came back, and then said, "Sssh!"

He woke at once, so that providentially she was able to get up,
and, having stood with her weight on one leg for five minutes, so
as to be quite sure she did not fall, she crossed back to the
window, took her nux vomica, and sat down with her tablets to note
down the little affairs she would require, while Nedda took her
place beside the bed, to fan him.  Having made her list, she went
to Nedda and whispered that she was going down to see about one or
two little things, and while she whispered she arranged the dear
child's hair.  If only she would keep it just like that, it would
be so much more becoming!  And she went down-stairs.

Accustomed to the resources of Stanley's establishment, or at least
to those of John's and Felix's, and of the hotels she stayed at,
she felt for a moment just a little nonplussed at discovering at
her disposal nothing but three dear little children playing with a
dog, and one bicycle.  For a few seconds she looked at the latter
hard.  If only it had been a tricycle!  Then, feeling certain that
she could not make it into one, she knew that she must make the
best of it, especially as, in any case, she could not have used it,
for it would never do to leave darling Nedda alone in the house.
She decided therefore to look in every room to see if she could
find the things she wanted.  The dog, who had been attracted by
her, left the children and came too, and the children, attracted by
the dog, followed; so they all five went into a room on the ground
floor.  It was partitioned into two by a screen; in one portion was
a rough camp bedstead, and in the other two dear little child's
beds, that must once have been Derek's and Sheila's, and one still
smaller, made out of a large packing-case.  The eldest of the
little children said:

"That's where Billy sleeps, Susie sleeps here, and I sleeps there;
and our father sleeped in here before he went to prison."  Frances
Freeland experienced a shock.  To prison!  The idea of letting
these little things know such a thing as that!  The best face had
so clearly not been put on it that she decided to put it herself.

"Oh, not to prison, dear!  Only into a house in the town for a
little while."

It seemed to her quite dreadful that they should know the truth--it
was simply necessary to put it out of their heads.  That dear
little girl looked so old already, such a little mother!  And, as
they stood about her, she gazed piercingly at their heads.  They
were quite clean.

The second dear little thing said:

"We like bein' here; we hope Father won't be comin' back from
prison for a long time, so as we can go on stayin' here.  Mr.
Freeland gives us apples."

The failure of her attempt to put a nicer idea into their heads
disconcerted Frances Freeland for a moment only.  She said:

"Who told you he was in prison?"

Biddy answered slowly: "Nobody didn't tell us; we picked it up."

"Oh, but you should never pick things up!  That's not at all nice.
You don't know what harm they may do you."

Billy replied: "We picked up a dead cat yesterday.  It didn't
scratch a bit, it didn't."

And Biddy added: "Please, what is prison like?"

Pity seized on Frances Freeland for these little derelicts, whose
heads and pinafores and faces were so clean.  She pursed her lips
very tight and said:

"Hold out your hands, all of you."

Three small hands were held out, and three small pairs of gray-blue
eyes looked up at her.  From the recesses of her pocket she drew
forth her purse, took from it three shillings, and placed one in
the very centre of each palm.  The three small hands closed; two
small grave bodies dipped in little courtesies; the third remained
stock-still, but a grin spread gradually on its face from ear to ear.

"What do you say?" said Frances Freeland.

"Thank you."

"Thank you--what?"

"Thank you, ma'am."

"That's right.  Now run away and play a nice game in the orchard."

The three turned immediately and went.  A sound of whispering rose
busily outside.  Frances Freeland, glancing through the window, saw
them unlatching the wicket gate.  Sudden alarm seized her.  She put
out her head and called.  Biddy came back.

"You mustn't spend them all at once."

Biddy shook her head.

"No.  Once we had a shillin', and we were sick.  We're goin' to
spend three pennies out of one shillin' every day, till they're
gone."

"And aren't you going to put any by for a rainy day?"

"No."

Frances Freeland did not know what to answer.  Dear little things!

The dear little things vanished.

In Tod's and Kirsteen's room she found a little table and a pillow,
and something that might do, and having devised a contrivance by
which this went into that and that into this and nothing whatever
showed, she conveyed the whole very quietly up near dear Derek's
room, and told darling Nedda to go down-stairs and look for
something that she knew she would not find, for she could not think
at the moment of any better excuse.  When the child had gone, she
popped this here, and popped that there.  And there she was!  And
she felt better.  It was no use whatever to make a fuss about that
aspect of nursing which was not quite nice.  One just put the best
face upon it, quietly did what was necessary, and pretended that it
was not there.  Kirsteen had not seen to things quite as she should
have.  But then dear Kirsteen was so clever.

Her attitude, indeed, to that blue bird, who had alighted now
twenty-one years ago in the Freeland nest, had always, after the
first few shocks, been duly stoical.  For, however her
fastidiousness might jib at neglect of the forms of things, she was
the last woman not to appreciate really sterling qualities.  Though
it was a pity dear Kirsteen did expose her neck and arms so that
they had got quite brown, a pity that she never went to church and
had brought up the dear children not to go, and to have ideas that
were not quite right about 'the Land,' still she was emphatically a
lady, and devoted to dear Tod, and very good.  And her features
were so regular, and she had such a good color, and was so slim and
straight in the back, that she was always a pleasure to look at.
And if she was not quite so practical as she might have been, that
was not everything; and she would never get stout, as there was
every danger of Clara doing.  So that from the first she had always
put a good face on her.  Derek's voice interrupted her thoughts:

"I'm awfully thirsty, Granny."

"Yes, darling.  Don't move your head; and just let me pop in some
of this delicious lemonade with a spoon."

Nedda, returning, found her supporting his head with one hand,
while with the other she kept popping in the spoon, her soul
smiling at him lovingly through her lips and eyes.


CHAPTER XXXII


Felix went back to London the afternoon of Frances Freeland's
installation, taking Sheila with him.  She had been 'bound over to
keep the peace'--a task which she would obviously be the better
able to accomplish at a distance.  And, though to take charge of
her would be rather like holding a burning match till there was no
match left, he felt bound to volunteer.

He left Nedda with many misgivings; but had not the heart to wrench
her away.

The recovery of a young man who means to get up to-morrow is not so
rapid when his head, rather than his body, is the seat of trouble.
Derek's temperament was against him.  He got up several times in
spirit, to find that his body had remained in bed.  And this did
not accelerate his progress.  It had been impossible to dispossess
Frances Freeland from command of the sick-room; and, since she was
admittedly from experience and power of paying no attention to her
own wants, the fittest person for the position, there she remained,
taking turn and turn about with Nedda, and growing a little whiter,
a little thinner, more resolute in face, and more loving in her
eyes, from day to day.  That tragedy of the old--the being laid
aside from life before the spirit is ready to resign, the feeling
that no one wants you, that all those you have borne and brought up
have long passed out on to roads where you cannot follow, that even
the thought-life of the world streams by so fast that you lie up in
a backwater, feebly, blindly groping for the full of the water, and
always pushed gently, hopelessly back; that sense that you are
still young and warm, and yet so furbelowed with old thoughts and
fashions that none can see how young and warm you are, none see how
you long to rub hearts with the active, how you yearn for something
real to do that can help life on, and how no one will give it you!
All this--this tragedy--was for the time defeated.  She was, in
triumph, doing something real for those she loved and longed to do
things for.  She had Sheila's room.

For a week at least Derek asked no questions, made no allusion to
the mutiny, not even to the cause of his own disablement.  It had
been impossible to tell whether the concussion had driven coherent
recollection from his mind, or whether he was refraining from an
instinct of self-preservation, barring such thoughts as too
exciting.  Nedda dreaded every day lest he should begin.  She knew
that the questions would fall on her, since no answer could
possibly be expected from Granny except: "It's all right, darling,
everything's going on perfectly--only you mustn't talk!"

It began the last day of June, the very first day that he got up.

"They didn't save the hay, did they?"

Was he fit to hear the truth?  Would he forgive her if she did not
tell it?  If she lied about this, could she go on lying to his
other questions?  When he discovered, later, would not the effect
undo the good of lies now?  She decided to lie; but, when she
opened her lips, simply could not, with his eyes on her; and said
faintly: "Yes, they did."

His face contracted.  She slipped down at once and knelt beside his
chair.  He said between his teeth:

"Go on; tell me.  Did it all collapse?"

She could only stroke his hands and bow her head.

"I see.  What's happened to them?"

Without looking up, she murmured:

"Some have been dismissed; the others are working again all right."

"All right!"

She looked up then so pitifully that he did not ask her anything
more.  But the news put him back a week.  And she was in despair.
The day he got up again he began afresh:

"When are the assizes?"

"The 7th of August."

"Has anybody been to see Bob Tryst?"

"Yes; Aunt Kirsteen has been twice."

Having been thus answered, he was quiet for a long time.  She had
slipped again out of her chair to kneel beside him; it seemed the
only place from which she could find courage for her answers.  He
put his hand, that had lost its brown, on her hair.  At that she
plucked up spirit to ask:

"Would you like me to go and see him?"

He nodded.

"Then, I will--to-morrow."

"Don't ever tell me what isn't true, Nedda!  People do; that's why
I didn't ask before."

She answered fervently:

"I won't!  Oh, I won't!"

She dreaded this visit to the prison.  Even to think of those
places gave her nightmare.  Sheila's description of her night in a
cell had made her shiver with horror.  But there was a spirit in
Nedda that went through with things; and she started early the next
day, refusing Kirsteen's proffered company.

The look of that battlemented building, whose walls were pierced
with emblems of the Christian faith, turned her heartsick, and she
stood for several minutes outside the dark-green door before she
could summon courage to ring the bell.

A stout man in blue, with a fringe of gray hair under his peaked
cap, and some keys dangling from a belt, opened, and said:

"Yes, miss?"

Being called 'miss' gave her a little spirit, and she produced the
card she had been warming in her hand.

"I have come to see a man called Robert Tryst, waiting for trial at
the assizes."

The stout man looked at the card back and front, as is the way of
those in doubt, closed the door behind her, and said:

"Just a minute, miss."

The shutting of the door behind her sent a little shiver down
Nedda's spine; but the temperature of her soul was rising, and she
looked round.  Beyond the heavy arch, beneath which she stood, was
a courtyard where she could see two men, also in blue, with peaked
caps.  Then, to her left, she became conscious of a shaven-headed
noiseless being in drab-gray clothes, on hands and knees, scrubbing
the end of a corridor.  Her tremor at the stealthy ugliness of this
crouching figure yielded at once to a spasm of pity.  The man gave
her a look, furtive, yet so charged with intense penetrating
curiosity that it seemed to let her suddenly into innumerable
secrets.  She felt as if the whole life of people shut away in
silence and solitude were disclosed to her in the swift,
unutterably alive look of this noiseless kneeling creature, riving
out of her something to feed his soul and body on.  That look
seemed to lick its lips.  It made her angry, made her miserable,
with a feeling of pity she could hardly bear.  Tears, too startled
to flow, darkened her eyes.  Poor man!  How he must hate her, who
was free, and all fresh from the open world and the sun, and people
to love and talk to!  The 'poor man' scrubbed on steadily, his ears
standing out from his shaven head; then, dragging his knee-mat
skew-ways, he took the chance to look at her again.  Perhaps
because his dress and cap and stubble of hair and even the color of
his face were so drab-gray, those little dark eyes seemed to her
the most terribly living things she had ever seen.  She felt that
they had taken her in from top to toe, clothed and unclothed, taken
in the resentment she had felt and the pity she was feeling; they
seemed at once to appeal, to attack, and to possess her ravenously,
as though all the starved instincts in a whole prisoned world had
rushed up and for a second stood outside their bars.  Then came the
clank of keys, the eyes left her as swiftly as they had seized her,
and he became again just that stealthy, noiseless creature
scrubbing a stone floor.  And, shivering, Nedda thought:

'I can't bear myself here--me with everything in the world I want--
and these with nothing!'

But the stout janitor was standing by her again, together with
another man in blue, who said:

"Now, miss; this way, please!"

And down that corridor they went.  Though she did not turn, she
knew well that those eyes were following, still riving something
from her; and she heaved a sigh of real relief when she was round a
corner.  Through barred windows that had no glass she could see
another court, where men in the same drab-gray clothes printed with
arrows were walking one behind the other, making a sort of moving
human hieroglyphic in the centre of the concrete floor.  Two
warders with swords stood just outside its edge.  Some of those
walking had their heads up, their chests expanded, some slouched
along with heads almost resting on their chests; but most had their
eyes fixed on the back of the neck of the man in front; and there
was no sound save the tramp of feet.

Nedda put her hand to her throat.  The warder beside her said in a
chatty voice:

"That's where the 'ards takes their exercise, miss.  You want to
see a man called Tryst, waitin' trial, I think.  We've had a woman
here to see him, and a lady in blue, once or twice."

"My aunt."

"Ah! just so.  Laborer, I think--case of arson.  Funny thing; never
yet found a farm-laborer that took to prison well."

Nedda shivered.  The words sounded ominous.  Then a little flame
lit itself within her.

"Does anybody ever 'take to' prison?"

The warder uttered a sound between a grunt and chuckle.

"There's some has a better time here than they have out, any day.
No doubt about it--they're well fed here."

Her aunt's words came suddenly into Nedda's mind: 'Liberty's a
glorious feast!'  But she did not speak them.

"Yes," the warder proceeded, "some o' them we get look as if they
didn't have a square meal outside from one year's end to the other.
If you'll just wait a minute, miss, I'll fetch the man down to you."

In a bare room with distempered walls, and bars to a window out of
which she could see nothing but a high brick wall, Nedda waited.
So rapid is the adjustment of the human mind, so quick the blunting
of human sensation, that she had already not quite the passion of
pitiful feeling which had stormed her standing under that archway.
A kind of numbness gripped her nerves.  There were wooden forms in
this room, and a blackboard, on which two rows of figures had been
set one beneath the other, but not yet added up.

The silence at first was almost deathly.  Then it was broken by a
sound as of a heavy door banged, and the shuffling tramp of
marching men--louder, louder, softer--a word of command--still
softer, and it died away.  Dead silence again!  Nedda pressed her
hands to her breast.  Twice she added up those figures on the
blackboard; each time the number was the same.  Ah, there was a
fly--two flies!  How nice they looked, moving, moving, chasing each
other in the air.  Did flies get into the cells?  Perhaps not even
a fly came there--nothing more living than walls and wood!  Nothing
living except what was inside oneself!  How dreadful!  Not even a
clock ticking, not even a bird's song!  Silent, unliving, worse
than in this room!  Something pressed against her leg.  She started
violently and looked down.  A little cat!  Oh, what a blessed
thing!  A little sandy, ugly cat!  It must have crept in through
the door.  She was not locked in, then, anyway!  Thus far had
nerves carried her already!  Scrattling the little cat's furry
pate, she pulled herself together.  She would not tremble and be
nervous.  It was disloyal to Derek and to her purpose, which was to
bring comfort to poor Tryst.  Then the door was pushed open, and
the warder said:

"A quarter of an hour, miss.  I'll be just outside."

She saw a big man with unshaven cheeks come in, and stretched out
her hand.

"I am Mr. Derek's cousin, going to be married to him.  He's been
ill, but he's getting well again now.  We knew you'd like to hear."
And she thought: 'Oh!  What a tragic face!  I can't bear to look at
his eyes!'

He took her hand, said, "Thank you, miss," and stood as still as ever.

"Please come and sit down, and we can talk."

Tryst moved to a form and took his seat thereon, with his hands
between his knees, as if playing with an imaginary cap.  He was
dressed in an ordinary suit of laborer's best clothes, and his
stiff, dust-colored hair was not cut particularly short.  The
cheeks of his square-cut face had fallen in, the eyes had sunk
back, and the prominence thus given to his cheek and jawbones and
thick mouth gave his face a savage look--only his dog-like,
terribly yearning eyes made Nedda feel so sorry that she simply
could not feel afraid.

"The children are such dears, Mr. Tryst.  Billy seems to grow every
day.  They're no trouble at all, and quite happy.  Biddy's
wonderful with them."

"She's a good maid."  The thick lips shaped the words as though
they had almost lost power of speech.

"Do they let you see the newspapers we send?  Have you got
everything you want?"

For a minute he did not seem to be going to answer; then, moving
his head from side to side, he said:

"Nothin' I want, but just get out of here."

Nedda murmured helplessly:

"It's only a month now to the assizes.  Does Mr. Pogram come to see
you?"

"Yes, he comes.  He can't do nothin'!"

"Oh, don't despair!  Even if they don't acquit you, it'll soon be
over.  Don't despair!"  And she stole her hand out and timidly
touched his arm.  She felt her heart turning over and over, he
looked so sad.

He said in that stumbling, thick voice:

"Thank you kindly.  I must get out.  I won't stand long of it--not
much longer.  I'm not used to it--always been accustomed to the
air, an' bein' about, that's where 'tis.  But don't you tell him,
miss.  You say I'm goin' along all right.  Don't you tell him what
I said.  'Tis no use him frettin' over me.  'Twon' do me no good."

And Nedda murmured:

"No, no; I won't tell him."

Then suddenly came the words she had dreaded:

"D'you think they'll let me go, miss?"

"Oh, yes, I think so--I hope so!"  But she could not meet his eyes,
and hearing him grit his boot on the floor knew he had not believed
her.

He said slowly:

"I never meant to do it when I went out that mornin'.  It came on
me sudden, lookin' at the straw."

Nedda gave a little gasp.  Could that man outside hear?

Tryst went on: "If they don't let me go, I won' stand it.  'Tis too
much for a man.  I can't sleep, I can't eat, nor nothin'.  I won'
stand it.  It don' take long to die, if you put your mind to it."

Feeling quite sick with pity, Nedda got up and stood beside him;
and, moved by an uncontrollable impulse, she lifted one of his
great hands and clasped it in both her own.  "Oh, try and be brave
and look forward!  You're going to be ever so happy some day."

He gave her a strange long stare.

"Yes, I'll be happy some day.  Don' you never fret about me."

And Nedda saw that the warder was standing in the doorway.

"Sorry, miss, time's up."

Without a word Tryst rose and went out.

Nedda was alone again with the little sandy cat.  Standing under
the high-barred window she wiped her cheeks, that were all wet.
Why, why must people suffer so?  Suffer so slowly, so horribly?
What were men made of that they could go on day after day, year
after year, watching others suffer?

When the warder came back to take her out, she did not trust
herself to speak, or even to look at him.  She walked with hands
tight clenched, and eyes fixed on the ground.  Outside the prison
door she drew a long, long breath.  And suddenly her eyes caught
the inscription on the corner of a lane leading down alongside the
prison wall--"Love's Walk"!


CHAPTER XXXIII


Peremptorily ordered by the doctor to the sea, but with
instructions to avoid for the present all excitement, sunlight, and
color, Derek and his grandmother repaired to a spot well known to
be gray, and Nedda went home to Hampstead.  This was the last week
in July.  A fortnight spent in the perfect vacuity of an English
watering-place restored the boy wonderfully.  No one could be
better trusted than Frances Freeland to preserve him from looking
on the dark side of anything, more specially when that thing was
already not quite nice.  Their conversation was therefore free from
allusion to the laborers, the strike, or Bob Tryst.  And Derek
thought the more.  The approaching trial was hardly ever out of his
mind.  Bathing, he would think of it; sitting on the gray jetty
looking over the gray sea, he would think of it.  Up the gray
cobbled streets and away on the headlands, he would think of it.
And, so as not to have to think of it, he would try to walk himself
to a standstill.  Unfortunately the head will continue working when
the legs are at rest.  And when he sat opposite to her at meal-
times, Frances Freeland would gaze piercingly at his forehead and
muse: 'The dear boy looks much better, but he's getting a little
line between his brows--it IS such a pity!'  It worried her, too,
that the face he was putting on their little holiday together was
not quite as full as she could have wished--though the last thing
in the world she could tolerate were really fat cheeks, those signs
of all that her stoicism abhorred, those truly unforgivable marks
of the loss of 'form.'  He struck her as dreadfully silent, too,
and she would rack her brains for subjects that would interest him,
often saying to herself: 'If only I were clever!'  It was natural
he should think of dear Nedda, but surely it was not that which
gave him the little line.  He must be brooding about those other
things.  He ought not to be melancholy like this and let anything
prevent the sea from doing him good.  The habit--hard-learned by
the old, and especially the old of her particular sex--of not
wishing for the moon, or at all events of not letting others know
that you are wishing for it, had long enabled Frances Freeland to
talk cheerfully on the most indifferent subjects whether or no her
heart were aching.  One's heart often did ache, of course, but it
simply didn't do to let it interfere, making things uncomfortable
for others.  And once she said to him: "You know, darling, I think
it would be so nice for you to take a little interest in politics.
They're very absorbing when you once get into them.  I find my
paper most enthralling.  And it really has very good principles."

"If politics did anything for those who most need things done,
Granny--but I can't see that they do."

She thought a little, then, making firm her lips, said:

"I don't think that's quite just, darling, there are a great many
politicians who are very much looked up to--all the bishops, for
instance, and others whom nobody could suspect of self-seeking."

"I didn't mean that politicians were self-seeking, Granny; I meant
that they're comfortable people, and the things that interest them
are those that interest comfortable people.  What have they done
for the laborers, for instance?"

"Oh, but, darling! they're going to do a great deal.  In my paper
they're continually saying that."

"Do you believe it?"

"I'm sure they wouldn't say so if they weren't.  There's quite a
new plan, and it sounds most sensible.  And so I don't think,
darling, that if I were you I should make myself unhappy about all
that kind of thing.  They must know best.  They're all so much
older than you.  And you're getting quite a little line between
your eyes."

Derek smiled.

"All right, Granny; I shall have a big one soon."

 Frances Freeland smiled, too, but shook her head.

"Yes; and that's why I really think you ought to take interest in
politics."

"I'd rather take interest in you, Granny.  You're very jolly to
look at."

Frances Freeland raised her brows.

"I?  My dear, I'm a perfect fright nowadays."

Thus pushing away what her stoicism and perpetual aspiration to an
impossibly good face would not suffer her to admit, she added:

"Where would you like to drive this afternoon?"

For they took drives in a small victoria, Frances Freeland holding
her sunshade to protect him from the sun whenever it made the
mistake of being out.

On August the fourth he insisted that he was well and must go back
home.  And, though to bring her attendance on him to an end was a
grief, she humbly admitted that he must be wanting younger company,
and, after one wistful attempt, made no further bones.  The
following day they travelled.

On getting home he found that the police had been to see little
Biddy Tryst, who was to be called as a witness.  Tod would take her
over on the morning of the trial.  Derek did not wait for this, but
on the day before the assizes repacked his bag and went off to the
Royal Charles Hostel at Worcester.  He slept not at all that night,
and next morning was early at the court, for Tryst's case would be
the first.  Anxiously he sat watching all the queer and formal
happenings that mark the initiation of the higher justice--the
assemblage of the gentlemen in wigs; the sifting, shifting,
settling of clerks, and ushers, solicitors, and the public; the
busy indifference, the cheerful professionalism of it all.  He saw
little Mr. Pogram come in, more square and rubbery than ever, and
engage in conclave with one of the bewigged.  The smiles, shrugs,
even the sharp expressions on that barrister's face; the way he
stood, twisting round, one hand wrapped in his gown, one foot on
the bench behind; it was all as if he had done it hundreds of times
before and cared not the snap of one of his thin, yellow fingers.
Then there was a sudden hush; the judge came in, bowed, and took
his seat.  And that, too, seemed so professional.  Haunted by the
thought of him to whom this was almost life and death, the boy was
incapable of seeing how natural it was that they should not all
feel as he did.

The case was called and Tryst brought in.  Derek had once more to
undergo the torture of those tragic eyes fixed on him.  Round that
heavy figure, that mournful, half-brutal, and half-yearning face,
the pleadings, the questions, the answers buzzed, bringing out
facts with damning clearness, yet leaving the real story of that
early morning as hidden as if the court and all were but gibbering
figures of air.  The real story of Tryst, heavy and distraught,
rising and turning out from habit into the early haze on the
fields, where his daily work had lain, of Tryst brooding, with the
slow, the wrathful incoherence that centuries of silence in those
lonely fields had passed into the blood of his forebears and
himself.  Brooding, in the dangerous disproportion that enforced
continence brings to certain natures, loading the brain with
violence till the storm bursts and there leap out the lurid, dark
insanities of crime.  Brooding, while in the air flies chased each
other, insects crawled together in the grass, and the first
principle of nature worked everywhere its sane fulfilment.  They
might talk and take evidence as they would, be shrewd and sharp
with all the petty sharpness of the Law; but the secret springs
would still lie undisclosed, too natural and true to bear the light
of day.  The probings and eloquence of justice would never paint
the picture of that moment of maniacal relief, when, with jaw
hanging loose, eyes bulging in exultation of revenge, he had struck
those matches with his hairy hands and let them flare in the straw,
till the little red flames ran and licked, rustled and licked, and
there was nothing to do but watch them lick and burn.  Nor of that
sudden wildness of dumb fear that rushed into the heart of the
crouching creature, changing the madness of his face to palsy.  Nor
of the recoil from the burning stack; those moments empty with
terror.  Nor of how terror, through habit of inarticulate,
emotionless existence, gave place again to brute stolidity.  And
so, heavily back across the dewy fields, under the larks' songs,
the cooings of pigeons, the hum of wings, and all the unconscious
rhythm of ageless Nature.  No!  The probings of Justice could never
reach the whole truth.  And even Justice quailed at its own
probings when the mother-child was passed up from Tod's side into
the witness-box and the big laborer was seen to look at her and she
at him.  She seemed to have grown taller; her pensive little face
and beautifully fluffed-out corn-brown hair had an eerie beauty,
perched up there in the arid witness-box, as of some small figure
from the brush of Botticelli.

"Your name, my dear?"

"Biddy Tryst."

"How old?"

"Ten next month, please."

"Do you remember going to live at Mr. Freeland's cottage?"

"Yes, sir."

"And do you remember the first night?"

"Yes, sir."

"Where did you sleep, Biddy?"

"Please, sir, we slept in a big room with a screen.  Billy and
Susie and me; and father behind the screen."

"And where was the room?"

"Down-stairs, sir."

"Now, Biddy, what time did you wake up the first morning?"

"When Father got up."

"Was that early or late?"

"Very early."

"Would you know the time?"

"No, sir."

"But it was very early; how did you know that?"

"It was a long time before we had any breakfast."

"And what time did you have breakfast?"

"Half past six by the kitchen clock."

"Was it light when you woke up?"

"Yes, sir."

"When Father got up, did he dress or did he go to bed again?"

"He hadn't never undressed, sir."

"Then did he stay with you or did he go out?"

"Out, sir."

"And how long was it before he came back?"

"When I was puttin' on Billy's boots."

"What had you done in between?"

"Helped Susie and dressed Billy."

"And how long does that take you generally?"

"Half an hour, sir."

"I see.  What did Father look like when he came in, Biddy?"

The mother-child paused.  For the first time it seemed to dawn on
her that there was something dangerous in these questions.  She
twisted her small hands before her and gazed at her father.

The judge said gently:

"Well, my child?"

"Like he does now, sir."

"Thank you, Biddy."

That was all; the mother-child was suffered to step down and take
her place again by Tod.  And in the silence rose the short and
rubbery report of little Mr. Pogram blowing his nose.  No evidence
given that morning was so conclusive, actual, terrible as that
unconscious: "Like he does now, sir."  That was why even Justice
quailed a little at its own probings.

From this moment the boy knew that Tryst's fate was sealed.  What
did all those words matter, those professional patterings one way
and the other; the professional jeers: 'My friend has told you
this' and 'My friend will tell you that.'  The professional
steering of the impartial judge, seated there above them all; the
cold, calculated rhapsodies about the heinousness of arson; the
cold and calculated attack on the characters of the stone-breaker
witness and the tramp witness; the cold and calculated patter of
the appeal not to condemn a father on the evidence of his little
child; the cold and calculated outburst on the right of every man
to be assumed innocent except on overwhelming evidence such as did
not here exist.  The cold and calculated balancing of pro and con;
and those minutes of cold calculation veiled from the eyes of the
court.  Even the verdict: 'Guilty'; even the judgment: 'Three
years' penal servitude.'  All nothing, all superfluity to the boy
supporting the tragic gaze of Tryst's eyes and making up his mind
to a desperate resort.

"Three years' penal servitude!"  The big laborer paid no more
attention to those words than to any others spoken during that
hour's settlement of his fate.  True, he received them standing, as
is the custom, fronting the image of Justice, from whose lips they
came.  But by no single gesture did he let any one see the dumb
depths of his soul.  If life had taught him nothing else, it had
taught him never to express himself.  Mute as any bullock led into
the slaughtering-house, with something of a bullock's dulled and
helpless fear in his eyes, he passed down and away between his
jailers.  And at once the professional noises rose, and the
professional rhapsodists, hunching their gowns, swept that little
lot of papers into their pink tape, and, turning to their
neighbors, smiled, and talked, and jerked their eyebrows.


CHAPTER XXXIV


The nest on the Spaniard's Road had not been able to contain Sheila
long.  There are certain natures, such as that of Felix, to whom
the claims and exercise of authority are abhorrent, who refuse to
exercise it themselves and rage when they see it exercised over
others, but who somehow never come into actual conflict with it.
There are other natures, such as Sheila's, who do not mind in the
least exercising authority themselves, but who oppose it vigorously
when they feel it coming near themselves or some others.  Of such
is the kingdom of militancy.  Her experience with the police had
sunk deep into her soul.  They had not, as a fact, treated her at
all badly, which did not prevent her feeling as if they had
outraged in her the dignity of woman.  She arrived, therefore, in
Hampstead seeing red even where red was not.  And since,
undoubtedly, much real red was to be seen, there was little other
color in the world or in her cheeks those days.  Long disagreements
with Alan, to whom she was still a magnet but whose Stanley-like
nature stood firm against the blandishments of her revolting
tongue, drove her more and more toward a decision the seeds of
which had, perhaps, been planted during her former stay among the
breezy airs of Hampstead.

Felix, coming one day into his wife's study--for the house knew not
the word drawing-room--found Flora, with eyebrows lifted up and
smiling lips, listening to Sheila proclaiming the doctrine that it
was impossible not to live 'on one's own.'  Nothing else--Felix
learned--was compatible with dignity, or even with peace of mind.
She had, therefore, taken a back room high up in a back street, in
which she was going to live perfectly well on ten shillings a week;
and, having thirty-two pounds saved up, she would be all right for
a year, after which she would be able to earn her living.  The
principle she purposed to keep before her eyes was that of
committing herself to nothing which would seriously interfere with
her work in life.  Somehow, it was impossible to look at this girl,
with her glowing cheeks and her glowing eyes, and her hair frizzy
from ardor, and to distrust her utterances.  Yes!  She would
arrive, if not where she wanted, at all events somewhere; which,
after all, was the great thing.  And in fact she did arrive the
very next day in the back room high up in the back street, and
neither Tod's cottage nor the house on the Spaniard's Road saw more
than flying gleams of her, thenceforth.

Another by-product, this, of that little starting episode, the
notice given to Tryst!  Strange how in life one little incident,
one little piece of living stress, can attract and gather round it
the feelings, thoughts, actions of people whose lives run far and
wide away therefrom.  But episodes are thus potent only when
charged with a significance that comes from the clash of the
deepest instincts.

During the six weeks which had elapsed between his return home from
Joyfields and the assizes, Felix had much leisure to reflect that
if Lady Malloring had not caused Tryst to be warned that he could
not marry his deceased wife's sister and continue to stay on the
estate--the lives of Felix himself, his daughter, mother, brother,
brother's wife, their son and daughter, and in less degree of his
other brothers, would have been free of a preoccupation little
short of ludicrous in proportion to the face value of the cause.
But he had leisure, too, to reflect that in reality the issue
involved in that tiny episode concerned human existence to its
depths--for, what was it but the simple, all-important question of
human freedom?  The simple, all-important issue of how far men and
women should try to rule the lives of others instead of trying only
to rule their own, and how far those others should allow their
lives to be so ruled?  This it was which gave that episode its
power of attracting and affecting the thoughts, feelings, actions
of so many people otherwise remote.  And though Felix was paternal
enough to say to himself nearly all the time, 'I can't let Nedda
get further into this mess!' he was philosopher enough to tell
himself, in the unfatherly balance of his hours, that the mess was
caused by the fight best of all worth fighting--of democracy
against autocracy, of a man's right to do as he likes with his life
if he harms not others; of 'the Land' against the fetterers of 'the
Land.'  And he was artist enough to see how from that little
starting episode the whole business had sprung--given, of course,
the entrance of the wilful force called love.  But a father,
especially when he has been thoroughly alarmed, gives the artist
and philosopher in him short shrift.

Nedda came home soon after Sheila went, and to the eyes of Felix
she came back too old and thoughtful altogether.  How different a
girl from the Nedda who had so wanted 'to know everything' that
first night of May!  What was she brooding over, what planning, in
that dark, round, pretty head?  At what resolve were those clear
eyes so swiftly raised to look?  What was going on within, when her
breast heaved so, without seeming cause, and the color rushed up in
her cheeks at a word, as though she had been so far away that the
effort of recall was alone enough to set all her veins throbbing.
And yet Felix could devise no means of attack on her infatuation.
For a man cannot cultivate the habit of never interfering and then
suddenly throw it over; least of all when the person to be
interfered with is his pet and only daughter.

Flora, not of course in the swim of those happenings at Joyflelds,
could not be got to take the matter very seriously.  In fact--
beyond what concerned Felix himself and poetry--the matter that she
did take seriously had yet to be discovered.  Hers was one of those
semi-detached natures particularly found in Hampstead.  When
exhorted to help tackle the question, she could only suggest that
Felix should take them all abroad when he had finished 'The Last of
the Laborers.'  A tour, for instance, in Norway and Sweden, where
none of them had ever been, and perhaps down through Finland into
Russia.

Feeling like one who squirts on a burning haystack with a garden
syringe, Felix propounded this scheme to his little daughter.  She
received it with a start, a silence, a sort of quivering all over,
as of an animal who scents danger.  She wanted to know when, and
being told--'not before the middle of August', relapsed into her
preoccupation as if nothing had been said.  Felix noted on the hall
table one afternoon a letter in her handwriting, addressed to a
Worcester newspaper, and remarked thereafter that she began to
receive this journal daily, obviously with a view to reports of the
coming assizes.  Once he tried to break through into her
confidence.  It was August Bank Holiday, and they had gone out on
to the heath together to see the people wonderfully assembled.
Coming back across the burnt-up grass, strewn with paper bags,
banana peel, and the cores of apples, he hooked his hand into her
arm.

"What is to be done with a child that goes about all day thinking
and thinking and not telling anybody what she is thinking?"

She smiled round at him and answered:

"I know, Dad.  She IS a pig, isn't she?"

This comparison with an animal of proverbial stubbornness was not
encouraging.  Then his hand was squeezed to her side and he heard
her murmur:

"I wonder if all daughters are such beasts!"

He understood well that she had meant: 'There is only one thing I
want--one thing I mean to have--one thing in the world for me now!'

And he said soberly:

"We can't expect anything else."

"Oh, Daddy!" she answered, but nothing more.

Only four days later she came to his study with a letter, and a
face so flushed and troubled that he dropped his pen and got up in
alarm.

"Read this, Dad!  It's impossible!  It's not true!  It's terrible!
Oh!  What am I to do?"

The letter ran thus, in a straight, boyish handwriting:


"ROYAL CHARLES HOSTEL,

"WORCESTER, Aug. 7th.

"MY NEDDA,

"I have just seen Bob tried.  They have given him three years'
penal.  It was awful to sit there and watch him.  He can never
stand it.  It was awful to watch him looking at ME.  It's no good.
I'm going to give myself up.  I must do it.  I've got everything
ready; they'll have to believe me and squash his sentence.  You
see, but for me it would never have been done.  It's a matter of
honour.  I can't let him suffer any more.  This isn't impulse.
I've been meaning to do it for some time, if they found him guilty.
So in a way, it's an immense relief.  I'd like to have seen you
first, but it would only distress you, and I might not have been
able to go through with it after.  Nedda, darling, if you still
love me when I get out, we'll go to New Zealand, away from this
country where they bully poor creatures like Bob.  Be brave!  I'll
write to-morrow, if they let me.

"Your

"Derek."


The first sensation in Felix on reading this effusion was poignant
recollection of the little lawyer's look after Derek had made the
scene at Tryst's committal and of his words: 'Nothing in it, is
there?'  His second thought: 'Is this the cutting of the knot that
I've been looking for?'  His third, which swept all else away: 'My
poor little darling!  What business has that boy to hurt her again
like this!'

He heard her say:

"Tryst told me himself he did it, Dad!  He told me when I went to
see him in the prison.  Honour doesn't demand what isn't true!  Oh,
Dad, help me!"

Felix was slow in getting free from the cross currents of
reflection.  "He wrote this last night," he said dismally.  "He may
have done it already.  We must go and see John."

Nedda clasped her hands.  "Ah!  Yes!"

And Felix had not the heart to add what he was thinking: 'Not that
I see what good he can do!'  But, though sober reason told him
this, it was astonishingly comforting to be going to some one who
could be relied on to see the facts of the situation without any of
that 'flimflam' with which imagination is accustomed to surround
them.  "And we'll send Derek a wire for what it's worth."

They went at once to the post-office, Felix composing this message
on the way: 'Utterly mistaken chivalry you have no right await our
arrival Felix Freeland.'  He handed it to her to read, and passed
it under the brass railing to the clerk, not without the feeling of
shame due from one who uses the word chivalry in a post-office.

On the way to the Tube station he held her arm tightly, but whether
to impart courage or receive it he could not have said, so strung-
up in spirit did he feel her.  With few words exchanged they
reached Whitehall.  Marking their card 'Urgent,' they were received
within ten minutes.

John was standing in a high, white room, smelling a little of
papers and tobacco, and garnished solely by five green chairs, a
table, and a bureau with an immense number of pigeonholes, whereat
he had obviously been seated.  Quick to observe what concerned his
little daughter, Felix noted how her greeting trembled up at her
uncle and how a sort of warmth thawed for the moment the regularity
of his brother's face.  When they had taken two of the five green
chairs and John was back at his bureau, Felix handed over the
letter.  John read it and looked at Nedda.  Then taking a pipe out
of his pocket, which he had evidently filled before they came in,
he lighted it and re-read the letter.  Then, looking very straight
at Nedda, he said:

"Nothing in it?  Honour bright, my dear!"

"No, Uncle John, nothing.  Only that he fancies his talk about
injustice put it into Tryst's head."

John nodded; the girl's face was evidence enough for him.

"Any proof?"

"Tryst himself told me in the prison that he did it.  He said it
came on him suddenly, when he saw the straw."

A pause followed before John said:

"Good!  You and I and your father will go down and see the police."

Nedda lifted her hands and said breathlessly:

"But, Uncle!  Dad!  Have I the right?  He says--honour.  Won't it
be betraying him?"

Felix could not answer, but with relief he heard John say:

"It's not honorable to cheat the law."

"No; but he trusted me or he wouldn't have written."

John answered slowly:

"I think your duty's plain, my dear.  The question for the police
will be whether or not to take notice of this false confession.
For us to keep the knowledge that it's false from them, under the
circumstances, is clearly not right.  Besides being, to my mind,
foolish."

For Felix to watch this mortal conflict going on in the soul of his
daughter--that soul which used to seem, perhaps even now seemed,
part of himself; to know that she so desperately wanted help for
her decision, and to be unable to give it, unable even to trust
himself to be honest--this was hard for Felix.  There she sat,
staring before her; and only her tight-clasped hands, the little
movements of her lips and throat, showed the struggle going on in
her.

"I couldn't, without seeing him; I MUST see him first, Uncle!"

John got up and went over to the window; he, too, had been affected
by her face.

"You realize," he said, "that you risk everything by that.  If he's
given himself up, and they've believed him, he's not the sort to
let it fall through.  You cut off your chance if he won't let you
tell.  Better for your father and me to see him first, anyway."
And Felix heard a mutter that sounded like: 'Confound him!'

Nedda rose.  "Can we go at once, then, Uncle?"

With a solemnity that touched Felix, John put a hand on each side
of her face, raised it, and kissed her on the forehead.

"All right!" he said.  "Let's be off!"

A silent trio sought Paddington in a taxi-cab, digesting this
desperate climax of an affair that sprang from origins so small.

In Felix, contemplating his daughter's face, there was profound
compassion, but also that family dismay, that perturbation of self-
esteem, which public scandal forces on kinsmen, even the most
philosophic.  He felt exasperation against Derek, against Kirsteen,
almost even against Tod, for having acquiesced passively in the
revolutionary bringing-up which had brought on such a disaster.
War against injustice; sympathy with suffering; chivalry!  Yes!
But not quite to the point whence they recoiled on his daughter,
his family, himself!  The situation was impossible!  He was fast
resolving that, whether or no they saved Derek from this quixotry,
the boy should not have Nedda.  And already his eyes found
difficulty in meeting hers.

They secured a compartment to themselves and, having settled down
in corners, began mechanically unfolding evening journals.  For
after all, whatever happens, one must read the papers!  Without
that, life would indeed be insupportable!  Felix had bought Mr.
Cuthcott's, but, though he turned and turned the sheets, they
seemed to have no sense till these words caught his eyes:
"Convict's tragic death!  Yesterday afternoon at Worcester, while
being conveyed from the assize court back to prison, a man named
Tryst, sentenced to three years' penal servitude for arson,
suddenly attacked the warders in charge of him and escaped.  He ran
down the street, hotly pursued, and, darting out into the traffic,
threw himself under a motor-car going at some speed.  The car
struck him on the head, and the unfortunate man was killed on the
spot.  No reason whatever can be assigned for this desperate act.
He is known, however, to have suffered from epilepsy, and it is
thought an attack may have been coming on him at the time."

When Felix had read these words he remained absolutely still,
holding that buff-colored paper before his face, trying to decide
what he must do now.  What was the significance--exactly the
significance of this?  Now that Tryst was dead, Derek's quixotic
action had no meaning.  But had he already 'confessed'?  It seemed
from this account that the suicide was directly after the trial;
even before the boy's letter to Nedda had been written.  He must
surely have heard of it since and given up his mad idea!  He leaned
over, touched John on the knee, and handed him the paper.  John
read the paragraph, handed it back; and the two brothers stared
fixedly at each other.  Then Felix made the faintest movement of
his head toward his daughter, and John nodded.  Crossing to Nedda,
Felix hooked his arm in hers and said:

"Just look at this, my child."

Nedda read, started to her feet, sank back, and cried out:

"Poor, poor man!  Oh, Dad!  Poor man!"

Felix felt ashamed.  Though Tryst's death meant so much relief to
her, she felt first this rush of compassion; he himself, to whom it
meant so much less relief, had felt only that relief.

"He said he couldn't stand it; he told me that.  But I never
thought--Oh!  Poor man!"  And, burying her face against his arm,
she gave way.

Petrified, and conscious that John at the far end of the carriage
was breathing rather hard, Felix could only stroke her arm till at
last she whispered:

"There's nobody now for Derek to save.  Oh, if you'd seen that poor
man in prison, Dad!"

And the only words of comfort Felix could find were:

"My child, there are thousands and thousands of poor prisoners and
captives!"

In a truce to agitation they spent the rest of that three hours'
journey, while the train rattled and rumbled through the quiet,
happy-looking land.


CHAPTER XXXV


It was tea-time when they reached Worcester, and at once went up to
the Royal Charles Hostel.  A pretty young woman in the office there
informed them that the young gentleman had paid his bill and gone
out about ten o'clock; but had left his luggage.  She had not seen
him come in.  His room was up that little staircase at the end of
the passage.  There was another entrance that he might have come in
at.  The 'Boots' would take them.

Past the hall stuffed with furniture and decorated with the stags'
heads and battle-prints common to English county-town hotels, they
followed the 'Boots' up five red-carpeted steps, down a dingy green
corridor, to a door at the very end.  There was no answer to their
knock.  The dark little room, with striped walls, and more battle-
prints, looked out on a side street and smelled dusty.  On a shiny
leather sofa an old valise, strapped-up ready for departure, was
reposing with Felix's telegram, unopened, deposited thereon.
Writing on his card, "Have come down with Nedda.  F. F.," and
laying it on the telegram, in case Derek should come in by the side
entrance, Felix and Nedda rejoined John in the hall.

To wait in anxiety is perhaps the hardest thing in life; tea,
tobacco, and hot baths perhaps the only anodynes.  These, except
the baths, they took.  Without knowing what had happened, neither
John nor Felix liked to make inquiry at the police station, nor did
they care to try and glean knowledge from the hotel people by
questions that might lead to gossip.  They could but kick their
heels till it became reasonably certain that Derek was not coming
back.  The enforced waiting increased Felix's exasperation.
Everything Derek did seemed designed to cause Nedda pain.  To watch
her sitting there, trying resolutely to mask her anxiety, became
intolerable.  At last he got up and said to John:

"I think we'd better go round there," and, John nodding, he added:
"Wait here, my child.  One of us'll come back at once and tell you
anything we hear."

She gave them a grateful look and the two brothers went out.  They
had not gone twenty yards when they met Derek striding along, pale,
wild, unhappy-looking.  When Felix touched him on the arm, he
started and stared blankly at his uncle.

"We've seen about Tryst," Felix said: "You've not done anything?"

Derek shook his head.

"Good!  John, tell Nedda that, and stay with her a bit.  I want to
talk to Derek.  We'll go in the other way."  He put his hand under
the boy's arm and turned him down into the side street.  When they
reached the gloomy little bedroom Felix pointed to the telegram.

"From me.  I suppose the news of his death stopped you?"

"Yes."  Derek opened the telegram, dropped it, and sat down beside
his valise on the shiny sofa.  He looked positively haggard.

Taking his stand against the chest of drawers, Felix said quietly:

"I'm going to have it out with you, Derek.  Do you understand what
all this means to Nedda?  Do you realize how utterly unhappy you're
making her?  I don't suppose you're happy yourself--"

The boy's whole figure writhed.

"Happy!  When you've killed some one you don't think much of
happiness--your own or any one's!"

Startled in his turn, Felix said sharply:

"Don't talk like that.  It's monomania."

Derek laughed.  "Bob Tryst's dead--through me!  I can't get out of
that."

Gazing at the boy's tortured face, Felix grasped the gruesome fact
that this idea amounted to obsession.

"Derek," he said, "you've dwelt on this till you see it out of all
proportion.  If we took to ourselves the remote consequences of all
our words we should none of us survive a week.  You're overdone.
You'll see it differently to-morrow."

Derek got up to pace the room.

"I swear I would have saved him.  I tried to do it when they
committed him at Transham."  He looked wildly at Felix.  "Didn't I?
You were there; you heard!"

"Yes, yes; I heard."

"They wouldn't let me then.  I thought they mightn't find him
guilty here--so I let it go on.  And now he's dead.  You don't know
how I feel!"

His throat was working, and Felix said with real compassion:

"My dear boy!  Your sense of honour is too extravagant altogether.
A grown man like poor Tryst knew perfectly what he was doing."

"No.  He was like a dog--he did what he thought was expected of
him.  I never meant him to burn those ricks."

"Exactly!  No one can blame you for a few wild words.  He might
have been the boy and you the man by the way you take it!  Come!"

Derek sat down again on the shiny sofa and buried his head in his
hands.

"I can't get away from him.  He's been with me all day.  I see him
all the time."

That the boy was really haunted was only too apparent.  How to
attack this mania?  If one could make him feel something else!  And
Felix said:

"Look here, Derek!  Before you've any right to Nedda you've got to
find ballast.  That's a matter of honour, if you like."

Derek flung up his head as if to escape a blow.  Seeing that he had
riveted him, Felix pressed on, with some sternness:

"A man can't serve two passions.  You must give up this championing
the weak and lighting flames you can't control.  See what it leads
to!  You've got to grow and become a man.  Until then I don't trust
my daughter to you."

The boy's lips quivered; a flush darkened his face, ebbed, and left
him paler than ever.

Felix felt as if he had hit that face.  Still, anything was better
than to leave him under this gruesome obsession!  Then, to his
consternation, Derek stood up and said:

"If I go and see his body at the prison, perhaps he'll leave me
alone a little!"

Catching at that, as he would have caught at anything, Felix said:

"Good!  Yes!  Go and see the poor fellow; we'll come, too."

And he went out to find Nedda.

By the time they reached the street Derek had already started, and
they could see him going along in front.  Felix racked his brains
to decide whether he ought to prepare her for the state the boy was
in.  Twice he screwed himself up to take the plunge, but her face--
puzzled, as though wondering at her lover's neglect of her--stopped
him.  Better say nothing!

Just as they reached the prison she put her hand on his arm:

"Look, Dad!"

And Felix read on the corner of the prison lane those words:
'Love's Walk'!

Derek was waiting at the door.  After some difficulty they were
admitted and taken down the corridor where the prisoner on his
knees had stared up at Nedda, past the courtyard where those others
had been pacing out their living hieroglyphic, up steps to the
hospital.  Here, in a white-washed room on a narrow bed, the body
of the big laborer lay, wrapped in a sheet.

"We bury him Friday, poor chap!  Fine big man, too!"  And at the
warder's words a shudder passed through Felix.  The frozen
tranquillity of that body!

As the carved beauty of great buildings, so is the graven beauty of
death, the unimaginable wonder of the abandoned thing lying so
quiet, marvelling at its resemblance to what once lived!  How
strange this thing, still stamped by all that it had felt, wanted,
loved, and hated, by all its dumb, hard, commonplace existence!
This thing with the calm, pathetic look of one who asks of his own
fled spirit: Why have you abandoned me?

Death!  What more wonderful than a dead body--that still perfect
work of life, for which life has no longer use!  What more
mysterious than this sight of what still is, yet is not!

Below the linen swathing the injured temples, those eyes were
closed through which such yearning had looked forth.  From that
face, where the hair had grown faster than if it had been alive,
death's majesty had planed away the aspect of brutality, removed
the yearning, covering all with wistful acquiescence.  Was his
departed soul coherent?  Where was it?  Did it hover in this room,
visible still to the boy?  Did it stand there beside what was left
of Tryst the laborer, that humblest of all creatures who dared to
make revolt--serf, descendant of serfs, who, since the beginning,
had hewn wood, drawn water, and done the will of others?  Or was it
winged, and calling in space to the souls of the oppressed?

This body would go back to the earth that it had tended, the wild
grass would grow over it, the seasons spend wind and rain forever
above it.  But that which had held this together--the inarticulate,
lowly spirit, hardly asking itself why things should be, faithful
as a dog to those who were kind to it, obeying the dumb instinct of
a violence that in his betters would be called 'high spirit,'
where--Felix wondered--where was it?

And what were they thinking--Nedda and that haunted boy--so
motionless?  Nothing showed on their faces, nothing but a sort of
living concentration, as if they were trying desperately to pierce
through and see whatever it was that held this thing before them in
such awful stillness.  Their first glimpse of death; their first
perception of that terrible remoteness of the dead!  No wonder they
seemed to be conjured out of the power of thought and feeling!

Nedda was first to turn away.  Walking back by her side, Felix was
surprised by her composure.  The reality of death had not been to
her half so harrowing as the news of it.  She said softly:

"I'm glad to have seen him like that; now I shall think of him--at
peace; not as he was that other time."

Derek rejoined them, and they went in silence back to the hotel.
But at the door she said:

"Come with me to the cathedral, Derek; I can't go in yet!"

To Felix's dismay the boy nodded, and they turned to go.  Should he
stop them?  Should he go with them?  What should a father do?  And,
with a heavy sigh, he did nothing but retire into the hotel.


CHAPTER XXXVI


It was calm, with a dark-blue sky, and a golden moon, and the
lighted street full of people out for airing.  The great cathedral,
cutting the heavens with its massive towers, was shut.  No means of
getting in; and while they stood there looking up the thought came
into Nedda's mind: Where would they bury poor Tryst who had killed
himself?  Would they refuse to bury that unhappy one in a
churchyard?  Surely, the more unhappy and desperate he was, the
kinder they ought to be to him!

They turned away down into a little lane where an old, white,
timbered cottage presided ghostly at the corner.  Some church
magnate had his garden back there; and it was quiet, along the
waving line of a high wall, behind which grew sycamores spreading
close-bunched branches, whose shadows, in the light of the corner
lamps, lay thick along the ground this glamourous August night.  A
chafer buzzed by, a small black cat played with its tail on some
steps in a recess.  Nobody passed.

The girl's heart was beating fast.  Derek's face was so strange and
strained.  And he had not yet said one word to her.  All sorts of
fears and fancies beset her till she was trembling all over.

"What is it?" she said at last.  "You haven't--you haven't stopped
loving me, Derek?"

"No one could stop loving you."

"What is it, then?  Are you thinking of poor Tryst?"

With a catch in his throat and a sort of choked laugh he answered:

"Yes."

"But it's all over.  He's at peace."

"Peace!"  Then, in a queer, dead voice, he added: "I'm sorry,
Nedda.  It's beastly for you.  But I can't help it."

What couldn't he help?  Why did he keep her suffering like this--
not telling her?  What was this something that seemed so terribly
between them?  She walked on silently at his side, conscious of the
rustling of the sycamores, of the moonlit angle of the church
magnate's house, of the silence in the lane, and the gliding of
their own shadows along the wall.  What was this in his face, his
thoughts, that she could not reach!  And she cried out:

"Tell me!  Oh, tell me, Derek!  I can go through anything with
you!"

"I can't get rid of him, that's all.  I thought he'd go when I'd
seen him there.  But it's no good!"

Terror got hold of her then.  She peered at his face--very white
and haggard.  There seemed no blood in it.  They were going down-
hill now, along the blank wall of a factory; there was the river in
front, with the moonlight on it and boats drawn up along the bank.
From a chimney a scroll of black smoke was flung out across the
sky, and a lighted bridge glowed above the water.  They turned away
from that, passing below the dark pile of the cathedral.  Here
couples still lingered on benches along the river-bank, happy in
the warm night, under the August moon!  And on and on they walked
in that strange, miserable silence, past all those benches and
couples, out on the river-path by the fields, where the scent of
hay-stacks, and the freshness from the early stubbles and the
grasses webbed with dew, overpowered the faint reek of the river
mud.  And still on and on in the moonlight that haunted through the
willows.  At their footsteps the water-rats scuttled down into the
water with tiny splashes; a dog barked somewhere a long way off; a
train whistled; a frog croaked.  From the stubbles and second crops
of sun-baked clover puffs of warm air kept stealing up into the
chillier air beneath the willows.  Such moonlit nights never seem
to sleep.  And there was a kind of triumph in the night's smile, as
though it knew that it ruled the river and the fields, ruled with
its gleams the silent trees that had given up all rustling.
Suddenly Derek said:

"He's walking with us!  Look!  Over there!"

And for a second there did seem to Nedda a dim, gray shape moving
square and dogged, parallel with them at the stubble edges.
Gasping out:

"Oh, no; don't frighten me!  I can't bear it tonight!"  She hid her
face against his shoulder like a child.  He put his arm round her
and she pressed her face deep into his coat.  This ghost of Bob
Tryst holding him away from her!  This enemy!  This uncanny
presence!  She pressed closer, closer, and put her face up to his.
It was wonderfully lonely, silent, whispering, with the moongleams
slipping through the willow boughs into the shadow where they
stood.  And from his arms warmth stole through her!  Closer and
closer she pressed, not quite knowing what she did, not quite
knowing anything but that she wanted him never to let her go;
wanted his lips on hers, so that she might feel his spirit pass,
away from what was haunting it, into hers, never to escape.  But
his lips did not come to hers.  They stayed drawn back, trembling,
hungry-looking, just above her lips.  And she whispered:

"Kiss me!"

She felt him shudder in her arms, saw his eyes darken, his lips
quiver and quiver, as if he wanted them to, but they would not.
What was it?  Oh, what was it?  Wasn't he going to kiss her--not to
kiss her?  And while in that unnatural pause they stood, their
heads bent back among the moongleams and those willow shadows,
there passed through Nedda such strange trouble as she had never
known.  Not kiss her!  Not kiss her!  Why didn't he?  When in her
blood and in the night all round, in the feel of his arms, the
sight of his hungry lips, was something unknown, wonderful,
terrifying, sweet!  And she wailed out:

"I want you--I don't care--I want you!"  She felt him sway, reel,
and clutch her as if he were going to fall, and all other feeling
vanished in the instinct of the nurse she had already been to him.
He was ill again!  Yes, he was ill!  And she said:

"Derek--don't!  It's all right.  Let's walk on quietly!"

She got his arm tightly in hers and drew him along toward home.  By
the jerking of that arm, the taut look on his face, she could feel
that he did not know from step to step whether he could stay
upright.  But she herself was steady and calm enough, bent on
keeping emotion away, and somehow getting him back along the river-
path, abandoned now to the moon and the bright, still spaces of the
night and the slow-moving, whitened water.  Why had she not felt
from the first that he was overwrought and only fit for bed?

Thus, very slowly, they made their way up by the factory again into
the lane by the church magnate's garden, under the branches of the
sycamores, past the same white-faced old house at the corner, to
the high street where some few people were still abroad.

At the front door of the hotel stood Felix, looking at his watch,
disconsolate as an old hen.  To her great relief he went in quickly
when he saw them coming.  She could not bear the thought of talk
and explanation.  The one thing was to get Derek to bed.  All the
time he had gone along with that taut face; and now, when he sat
down on the shiny sofa in the little bedroom, he shivered so
violently that his teeth chattered.  She rang for a hot bottle and
brandy and hot water.  When he had drunk he certainly shivered
less, professed himself all right, and would not let her stay.  She
dared not ask, but it did seem as if the physical collapse had
driven away, for the time at all events, that ghostly visitor, and,
touching his forehead with her lips--very motherly--so that he
looked up and smiled at her--she said in a matter-of-fact voice:

"I'll come back after a bit and tuck you up," and went out.

Felix was waiting in the hall, at a little table on which stood a
bowl of bread and milk.  He took the cover off it for her without a
word.  And while she supped he kept glancing at her, trying to make
up his mind to words.  But her face was sealed.  And all he said was:

"Your uncle's gone to Becket for the night.  I've got you a room
next mine, and a tooth-brush, and some sort of comb.  I hope you'll
be able to manage, my child."

Nedda left him at the door of his room and went into her own.
After waiting there ten minutes she stole out again.  It was all
quiet, and she went resolutely back down the stairs.  She did not
care who saw her or what they thought.  Probably they took her for
Derek's sister; but even if they didn't she would not have cared.
It was past eleven, the light nearly out, and the hall in the
condition of such places that await a morning's renovation.  His
corridor, too, was quite dark.  She opened the door without sound
and listened, till his voice said softly:

"All right, little angel; I'm not asleep."

And by a glimmer of moonlight, through curtains designed to keep
out nothing, she stole up to the bed.  She could just see his face,
and eyes looking up at her with a sort of adoration.  She put her
hand on his forehead and whispered: "Are you comfy?"

He murmured back: "Yes, quite comfy."

Kneeling down, she laid her face beside his on the pillow.  She
could not help doing that; it made everything seem holy, cuddley,
warm.  His lips touched her nose.  Her eyes, for just that instant,
looked up into his, that were very dark and soft; then she got up.

"Would you like me to stay till you're asleep?"

"Yes; forever.  But I shouldn't exactly sleep.  Would you?"

In the darkness Nedda vehemently shook her head.  Sleep!  No!  She
would not sleep!

"Good night, then!"

"Good night, little dark angel!"

"Good night!"  With that last whisper she slipped back to the door
and noiselessly away.


CHAPTER XXXVII


It was long before she closed her eyes, spending the hours in fancy
where still less she would have slept.  But when she did drop off
she dreamed that he and she were alone upon a star, where all the
trees were white, the water, grass, birds, everything, white, and
they were walking arm in arm, among white flowers.  And just as she
had stooped to pick one--it was no flower, but--Tryst's white-
banded face!  She woke with a little cry.

She was dressed by eight and went at once to Derek's room.  There
was no answer to her knock, and in a flutter of fear she opened the
door.  He had gone--packed, and gone.  She ran back to the hall.
There was a note for her in the office, and she took it out of
sight to read.  It said:


"He came back this morning.  I'm going home by the first train.  He
seems to want me to do something.

"DEREK."


Came back!  That thing--that gray thing that she, too, had seemed
to see for a moment in the fields beside the river!  And he was
suffering again as he had suffered yesterday!  It was awful.  She
waited miserably till her father came down.  To find that he, too,
knew of this trouble was some relief.  He made no objection when
she begged that they should follow on to Joyfields.  Directly after
breakfast they set out.  Once on her way to Derek again, she did
not feel so frightened.  But in the train she sat very still,
gazing at her lap, and only once glanced up from under those long
lashes.

"Can you understand it, Dad?"

Felix, not much happier than she, answered:

"The man had something queer about him.  Besides Derek's been ill,
don't forget that.  But it's too bad for you, Nedda.  I don't like
it; I don't like it."

"I can't be parted from him, Dad.  That's impossible."

Felix was silenced by the vigor of those words.

"His mother can help, perhaps," he said.

Ah!  If his mother would help--send him away from the laborers, and
all this!

Up from the station they took the field paths, which cut off quite
a mile.  The grass and woods were shining brightly, peacefully in
the sun; it seemed incredible that there should be heartburnings
about a land so smiling, that wrongs and miseries should haunt
those who lived and worked in these bright fields.  Surely in this
earthly paradise the dwellers were enviable, well-nourished souls,
sleek and happy as the pied cattle that lifted their inquisitive
muzzles!  Nedda tried to stroke the nose of one--grayish, blunt,
moist.  But the creature backed away from her hand, snuffling, and
its cynical, soft eyes with chestnut lashes seemed warning the girl
that she belonged to the breed that might be trusted to annoy.

In the last fields before the Joyfields crossroads they came up
with a little, square, tow-headed man, without coat or cap, who had
just driven some cattle in and was returning with his dog, at a
'dot-here dot-there' walk, as though still driving them.  He gave
them a look rather like that of the bullock Nedda had tried to
stroke.  She knew he must be one of the Malloring men, and longed
to ask him questions; but he, too, looked shy and distrustful, as
if he suspected that they wanted something out of him.  She
summoned up courage, however, to say: "Did you see about poor Bob
Tryst?"

"I 'eard tell.  'E didn' like prison.  They say prison takes the
'eart out of you.  'E didn' think o' that."  And the smile that
twisted the little man's lips seemed to Nedda strange and cruel, as
if he actually found pleasure in the fate of his fellow.  All she
could find to answer was:

"Is that a good dog?"

The little man looked down at the dog trotting alongside with
drooped tail, and shook his head:

'E's no good wi' beasts--won't touch 'em!"  Then, looking up
sidelong, he added surprisingly:

"Mast' Freeland 'e got a crack on the head, though!"  Again there
was that satisfied resentment in his voice and the little smile
twisting his lips.  Nedda felt more lost than ever.

They parted at the crossroads and saw him looking back at them as
they went up the steps to the wicket gate.  Amongst a patch of
early sunflowers, Tod, in shirt and trousers, was surrounded by his
dog and the three small Trysts, all apparently engaged in studying
the biggest of the sunflowers, where a peacock-butterfly and a bee
were feeding, one on a gold petal, the other on the black heart.
Nedda went quickly up to them and asked:

"Has Derek come, Uncle Tod?"

Tod raised his eyes.  He did not seem in the least surprised to see
her, as if his sky were in the habit of dropping his relatives at
ten in the morning.

"Gone out again," he said.

Nedda made a sign toward the children.

"Have you heard, Uncle Tod?"

Tod nodded and his blue eyes, staring above the children's heads,
darkened.

"Is Granny still here?"

Again Tod nodded.

Leaving Felix in the garden, Nedda stole upstairs and tapped on
Frances Freeland's door.

She, whose stoicism permitted her the one luxury of never coming
down to breakfast, had just made it for herself over a little
spirit-lamp.  She greeted Nedda with lifted eyebrows.

"Oh, my darling!  Where HAVE you come from?  You must have my nice
cocoa!  Isn't this the most perfect lamp you ever saw?  Did you
ever see such a flame?  Watch!"

She touched the spirit-lamp and what there was of flame died out.

"Now, isn't that provoking?  It's really a splendid thing, quite a
new kind.  I mean to get you one.  Now, drink your cocoa; it's
beautifully hot."

"I've had breakfast, Granny."

Frances Freeland gazed at her doubtfully, then, as a last resource,
began to sip the cocoa, of which, in truth, she was badly in want.

"Granny, will you help me?"

"Of course, darling.  What is it?"

"I do so want Derek to forget all about this terrible business."

Frances Freeland, who had unscrewed the top of a little canister,
answered:

"Yes, dear, I quite agree.  I'm sure it's best for him.  Open your
mouth and let me pop in one of these delicious little plasmon
biscuits.  They're perfect after travelling.  Only," she added
wistfully, "I'm afraid he won't pay any attention to me."

"No, but you could speak to Aunt Kirsteen; it's for her to stop him."

One of her most pathetic smiles came over Frances Freeland's face.

"Yes, I could speak to her.  But, you see, I don't count for
anything.  One doesn't when one gets old."

"Oh, Granny, you do!  You count for a lot; every one admires you
so.  You always seem to have something that--that other people
haven't got.  And you're not a bit old in spirit."

Frances Freeland was fingering her rings; she slipped one off.

"Well," she said, "it's no good thinking about that, is it?  I've
wanted to give you this for ages, darling; it IS so uncomfortable
on my finger.  Now, just let me see if I can pop it on!"

Nedda recoiled.

"Oh, Granny!" she said.  "You ARE--!" and vanished.

There was still no one in the kitchen, and she sat down to wait for
her aunt to finish her up-stairs duties.

Kirsteen came down at last, in her inevitable blue dress, betraying
her surprise at this sudden appearance of her niece only by a
little quivering of her brows.  And, trembling with nervousness,
Nedda took her plunge, pouring out the whole story--of Derek's
letter; their journey down; her father's talk with him; the visit
to Tryst's body; their walk by the river; and of how haunted and
miserable he was.  Showing the little note he had left that
morning, she clasped her hands and said:

"Oh, Aunt Kirsteen, make him happy again!  Stop that awful haunting
and keep him from all this!"

Kirsteen had listened, with one foot on the hearth in her favorite
attitude.  When the girl had finished she said quietly:

"I'm not a witch, Nedda!"

"But if it wasn't for you he would never have started.  And now
that poor Tryst's dead he would leave it alone.  I'm sure only you
can make him lose that haunted feeling."

Kirsteen shook her head.

"Listen, Nedda!" she said slowly, as though weighing each word.  "I
should like you to understand.  There's a superstition in this
country that people are free.  Ever since I was a girl your age
I've known that they are not; no one is free here who can't pay for
freedom.  It's one thing to see, another to feel this with your
whole being.  When, like me, you have an open wound, which
something is always inflaming, you can't wonder, can you, that
fever escapes into the air.  Derek may have caught the infection of
my fever--that's all!  But I shall never lose that fever, Nedda--
never!"

"But, Aunt Kirsteen, this haunting is dreadful.  I can't bear to
see it."

"My dear, Derek is very highly strung, and he's been ill.  It's in
my family to see things.  That'll go away."

Nedda said passionately:

"I don't believe he'll ever lose it while he goes on here, tearing
his heart out.  And they're trying to get me away from him.  I know
they are!"

Kirsteen turned; her eyes seemed to blaze.

"They?  Ah!  Yes!  You'll have to fight if you want to marry a
rebel, Nedda!"

Nedda put her hands to her forehead, bewildered.  "You see, Nedda,
rebellion never ceases.  It's not only against this or that
injustice, it's against all force and wealth that takes advantage
of its force and wealth.  That rebellion goes on forever.  Think
well before you join in."

Nedda turned away.  Of what use to tell her to think when 'I won't--
I can't be parted from him!' kept every other thought paralyzed.
And she pressed her forehead against the cross-bar of the window,
trying to find better words to make her appeal again.  Out there
above the orchard the sky was blue, and everything light and gay,
as the very butterflies that wavered past.  A motor-car seemed to
have stopped in the road close by; its whirring and whizzing was
clearly audible, mingled with the cooings of pigeons and a robin's
song.  And suddenly she heard her aunt say:

"You have your chance, Nedda!  Here they are!"

Nedda turned.  There in the doorway were her Uncles John and
Stanley coming in, followed by her father and Uncle Tod.

What did this mean?  What had they come for?  And, disturbed to the
heart, she gazed from one to the other.  They had that curious look
of people not quite knowing what their reception will be like, yet
with something resolute, almost portentous, in their mien.  She saw
John go up to her aunt and hold out his hand.

"I dare say Felix and Nedda have told you about yesterday," he
said.  "Stanley and I thought it best to come over."  Kirsteen
answered:

"Tod, will you tell Mother who's here?"

Then none of them seemed to know quite what to say, or where to
look, till Frances Freeland, her face all pleased and anxious, came
in.  When she had kissed them they all sat down.  And Nedda, at the
window, squeezed her hands tight together in her lap.

"We've come about Derek," John said.

"Yes," broke in Stanley.  "For goodness' sake, Kirsteen, don't
let's have any more of this!  Just think what would have happened
yesterday if that poor fellow hadn't providentially gone off the
hooks!"

"Providentially!"

"Well, it was.  You see to what lengths Derek was prepared to go.
Hang it all!  We shouldn't have been exactly proud of a felon in
the family."

Frances Freeland, who had been lacing and unlacing her fingers,
suddenly fixed her eyes on Kirsteen.

"I don't understand very well, darling, but I am sure that whatever
dear John says will be wise and right.  You must remember that he
is the eldest and has a great deal of experience."

Kirsteen bent her head.  If there was irony in the gesture, it was
not perceived by Frances Freeland.

"It can't be right for dear Derek, or any gentleman, to go against
the law of the land or be mixed up with wrong-doing in any way.  I
haven't said anything, but I HAVE felt it very much.  Because--it's
all been not quite nice, has it?"

Nedda saw her father wince.  Then Stanley broke in again:

"Now that the whole thing's done with, do, for Heaven's sake, let's
have a little peace!"

At that moment her aunt's face seemed wonderful to Nedda; so quiet,
yet so burningly alive.

"Peace!  There is no peace in this world.  There is death, but no
peace!"  And, moving nearer to Tod, she rested her hand on his
shoulder, looking, as it seemed to Nedda, at something far away,
till John said:

"That's hardly the point, is it?  We should be awfully glad to know
that there'll be no more trouble.  All this has been very worrying.
And now the cause seems to be--removed."

There was always a touch of finality in John's voice.  Nedda saw
that all had turned to Kirsteen for her answer.

"If those up and down the land who profess belief in liberty will
cease to filch from the helpless the very crust of it, the cause
will be removed."

"Which is to say--never!"

At those words from Felix, Frances Freeland, gazing first at him
and then at Kirsteen, said in a pained voice:

"I don't think you ought to talk like that, Kirsteen, dear.  Nobody
who's at all nice means to be unkind.  We're all forgetful
sometimes.  I know I often forget to be sympathetic.  It vexes me
dreadfully!"

"Mother, don't defend tyranny!"

"I'm sure it's often from the best motives, dear."

"So is rebellion."

"Well, I don't understand about that, darling.  But I do think,
with dear John, it's a great pity.  It will be a dreadful drawback
to Derek if he has to look back on something that he regrets when
he's older.  It's always best to smile and try to look on the
bright side of things and not be grumbly-grumbly!"

After that little speech of Frances Freeland's there was a silence
that Nedda thought would last forever, till her aunt, pressing
close to Tod's shoulder, spoke.

"You want me to stop Derek.  I tell you all what I've just told
Nedda.  I don't attempt to control Derek; I never have.  For
myself, when I see a thing I hate I can't help fighting against it.
I shall never be able to help that.  I understand how you must
dislike all this; I know it must be painful to you, Mother.  But
while there is tyranny in this land, to laborers, women, animals,
anything weak and helpless, so long will there be rebellion against
it, and things will happen that will disturb you."

Again Nedda saw her father wince.  But Frances Freeland, bending
forward, fixed her eyes piercingly on Kirsteen's neck, as if she
were noticing something there more important than that about
tyranny!

Then John said very gravely:

"You seem to think that we approve of such things being done to the
helpless!"

"I know that you disapprove."

"With the masterly inactivity," Felix said suddenly, in a voice
more bitter than Nedda had ever heard from him, "of authority,
money, culture, and philosophy.  With the disapproval that lifts no
finger--winking at tyrannies lest worse befall us.  Yes, WE--
brethren--we--and so we shall go on doing.  Quite right, Kirsteen!"

"No.  The world is changing, Felix, changing!"

But Nedda had started up.  There at the door was Derek.


CHAPTER XXXVIII


Derek, who had slept the sleep of the dead, having had none for two
nights, woke thinking of Nedda hovering above him in the dark; of
her face laid down beside him on the pillow.  And then, suddenly,
up started that thing, and stood there, haunting him!  Why did it
come?  What did it want of him?  After writing the little note to
Nedda, he hurried to the station and found a train about to start.
To see and talk with the laborers; to do something, anything to
prove that this tragic companion had no real existence!  He went
first to the Gaunts' cottage.  The door, there, was opened by the
rogue-girl, comely and robust as ever, in a linen frock, with her
sleeves rolled up, and smiling broadly at his astonishment.

"Don't be afraid, Mr. Derek; I'm only here for the week-end, just
to tiddy up a bit.  'Tis all right in London.  I wouldn't come back
here, I wouldn't--not if you was to give me--" and she pouted her
red lips.

"Where's your father, Wilmet?"

"Over in Willey's Copse cuttin' stakes.  I hear you've been ill,
Mr. Derek.  You do look pale.  Were you very bad?"  And her eyes
opened as though the very thought of illness was difficult for her
to grasp.  "I saw your young lady up in London.  She's very pretty.
Wish you happiness, Mr. Derek.  Grandfather, here's Mr. Derek!"

The face of old Gaunt, carved, cynical, yellow, appeared above her
shoulder.  There he stood, silent, giving Derek no greeting.  And
with a sudden miserable feeling the boy said:

"I'll go and find him.  Good-by, Wilmet!"

"Good-by, Mr. Derek.  'Tis quiet enough here now; there's changes."

Her rogue face twinkled again, and, turning her chin, she rubbed it
on her plump shoulder, as might a heifer, while from behind her
Grandfather Gaunt's face looked out with a faint, sardonic grin.

Derek, hurrying on to Willey's Copse, caught sight, along a far
hedge, of the big dark laborer, Tulley, who had been his chief
lieutenant in the fighting; but, whether the man heard his hail or
no, he continued along the hedgeside without response and vanished
over a stile.  The field dipped sharply to a stream, and at the
crossing Derek came suddenly on the little 'dot-here dot-there'
cowherd, who, at Derek's greeting, gave him an abrupt "Good day!"
and went on with his occupation of mending a hurdle.  Again that
miserable feeling beset the boy, and he hastened on.  A sound of
chopping guided him.  Near the edge of the coppice Tom Gaunt was
lopping at some bushes.  At sight of Derek he stopped and stood
waiting, his loquacious face expressionless, his little, hard eye
cocked.

"Good morning, Tom.  It's ages since I saw you."

"Ah, 'tis a proper long time!  You 'ad a knock."

Derek winced; it was said as if he had been disabled in an affair
in which Gaunt had neither part nor parcel.  Then, with a great
effort, the boy brought out his question:

"You've heard about poor Bob?"

"Yaas; 'tis the end of HIM."

Some meaning behind those words, the unsmiling twist of that hard-
bitten face, the absence of the 'sir' that even Tom Gaunt generally
gave him, all seemed part of an attack.  And, feeling as if his
heart were being squeezed, Derek looked straight into his face.

"What's the matter, Tom?"

"Matter!  I don' know as there's anything the matter, ezactly!"

"What have I done?  Tell me!"

Tom Gaunt smiled; his little, gray eyes met Derek's full.

"'Tisn't for a gentleman to be held responsible."

"Come!" Derek cried passionately.  "What is it?  D'you think I
deserted you, or what?  Speak out, man!"

Abating nothing of his stare and drawl, Gaunt answered:

"Deserted?  Oh, dear no!  Us can't afford to do no more dyin' for
you--that's all!"

"For me!  Dying!  My God!  D'you think I wouldn't have--?  Oh!
Confound you!"

"Aye!  Confounded us you 'ave!  Hope you're satisfied!"

Pale as death and quivering all over, Derek answered:

"So you think I've just been frying fish of my own?"

Tom Gaunt, emitted a little laugh.

"I think you've fried no fish at all.  That's what I think.  And no
one else does, neither, if you want to know--except poor Bob.
You've fried his fish, sure enough!"

Stung to the heart, the boy stood motionless.  A pigeon was cooing;
the sappy scent from the lopped bushes filled all the sun-warmed air.

"I see!" he said.  "Thanks, Tom; I'm glad to know."

Without moving a muscle, Tom Gaunt answered:

"Don't mention it!" and resumed his lopping.

Derek turned and walked out of the little wood.  But when he had
put a field between him and the sound of Gaunt's bill-hook, he lay
down and buried his face in the grass, chewing at its green blades,
scarce dry of dew, and with its juicy sweetness tasting the full of
bitterness.  And the gray shade stalked out again, and stood there
in the warmth of the August day, with its scent and murmur of full
summer, while the pigeons cooed and dandelion fluff drifted by. . . .

When, two hours later, he entered the kitchen at home, of the
company assembled Frances Freeland alone retained equanimity enough
to put up her face to be kissed.

"I'm so thankful you've come back in time to see your uncles,
darling.  Your Uncle John thinks, and we all agree, that to
encourage those poor laborers to do things which are not nice is--
is--you know what I mean, darling!"

Derek gave a bitter little laugh.

"Criminal, Granny!  Yes, and puppyish!  I've learned all that."

The sound of his voice was utterly unlike his own, and Kirsteen,
starting forward, put her arm round him.

"It's all right, Mother.  They've chucked me."

At that moment, when all, save his mother, wanted so to express
their satisfaction, Frances Freeland alone succeeded.

"I'm so glad, darling!"

Then John rose and, holding out his hand to his nephew, said:

"That's the end of the trouble, then, Derek?"

"Yes.  And I beg your pardon, Uncle John; and all--Uncle Stanley,
Uncle Felix; you, Dad; Granny."

They had all risen now.  The boy's face gave them--even John, even
Stanley--a choke in the throat.  Frances Freeland suddenly took
their arms and went to the door; her other two sons followed.  And
quietly they all went out.

Derek, who had stayed perfectly still, staring past Nedda into a
corner of the room, said:

"Ask him what he wants, Mother."

Nedda smothered down a cry.  But Kirsteen, tightening her clasp of
him and looking steadily into that corner, answered:

"Nothing, my boy.  He's quite friendly.  He only wants to be with
you for a little."

"But I can't do anything for him."

"He knows that."

"I wish he wouldn't, Mother.  I can't be more sorry than I have been."

Kirsteen's face quivered.

"My dear, it will go quite soon.  Love Nedda!  See!  She wants you!"

Derek answered in the same quiet voice:

"Yes, Nedda is the comfort.  Mother, I want to go away--away out of
England--right away."

Nedda rushed and flung her arms round him.

"I, too, Derek; I, too!"


That evening Felix came out to the old 'fly,' waiting to take him
from Joyfields to Becket.  What a sky!  All over its pale blue a
far-up wind had drifted long, rosy clouds, and through one of them
the half-moon peered, of a cheese-green hue; and, framed and barred
by the elm-trees, like some roseate, stained-glass window, the
sunset blazed.  In a corner of the orchard a little bonfire had
been lighted, and round it he could see the three small Trysts
dropping armfuls of leaves and pointing at the flames leaping out
of the smoulder.  There, too, was Tod's big figure, motionless, and
his dog sitting on its haunches, with head poked forward, staring
at those red tongues of flame.  Kirsteen had come with him to the
wicket gate.  He held her hand long in his own and pressed it hard.
And while that blue figure, turned to the sunset, was still
visible, he screwed himself back to look.

They had been in painful conclave, as it seemed to Felix, all day,
coming to the decision that those two young things should have
their wish, marry, and go out to New Zealand.  The ranch of Cousin
Alick Morton (son of that brother of Frances Freeland, who,
absorbed in horses, had wandered to Australia and died in falling
from them) had extended a welcome to Derek.  Those two would have a
voyage of happiness--see together the red sunsets in the
Mediterranean, Pompeii, and the dark ants of men swarming in
endless band up and down with their coal-sacks at Port Said; smell
the cinnamon gardens of Colombo; sit up on deck at night and watch
the stars. . . .  Who could grudge it them?  Out there youth and
energy would run unchecked.  For here youth had been beaten!

On and on the old 'fly' rumbled between the shadowy fields.  'The
world is changing, Felix--changing!'  Was that defeat of youth,
then, nothing?  Under the crust of authority and wealth, culture
and philosophy--was the world really changing; was liberty truly
astir, under that sky in the west all blood; and man rising at long
last from his knees before the God of force?  The silent, empty
fields darkened, the air gathered dewy thickness, and the old 'fly'
rumbled and rolled as slow as fate.  Cottage lamps were already
lighted for the evening meal.  No laborer abroad at this hour!  And
Felix thought of Tryst, the tragic fellow--the moving, lonely
figure; emanation of these solitary fields, shade of the departing
land!  One might well see him as that boy saw him, silent, dogged,
in a gray light such as this now clinging above the hedgerows and
the grass!

The old 'fly' turned into the Becket drive.  It had grown dark now,
save for the half-moon; the last chafer was booming by, and a bat
flitting, a little, blind, eager bat, through the quiet trees.  He
got out to walk the last few hundred yards.  A lovely night, silent
below her stars--cool and dark, spread above field after field,
wood on wood, for hundreds of miles on every side.  Night covering
his native land.  The same silence had reigned out there, the same
perfume stolen up, the same star-shine fallen, for millions of
years in the past, and would for millions of years to come.  Close
to where the half-moon floated, a slow, narrow, white cloud was
passing--curiously shaped.  At one end of it Felix could see
distinctly the form of a gleaming skull, with dark sky showing
through its eyeholes, cheeks, and mouth.  A queer phenomenon;
fascinating, rather ghastly!  It grew sharper in outline, more
distinct.  One of those sudden shudders, that seize men from the
crown of the head to the very heels, passed down his back.  He shut
his eyes.  And, instead, there came up before him Kirsteen's blue-
clothed figure turned to the sunset glow.  Ah!  Better to see that
than this skull above the land!  Better to believe her words: 'The
world is changing, Felix--changing!'





End of The Project Gutenberg Etext of The Freelands, by John Galsworthy






BEYOND

by JOHN GALSWORTHY

[This etext was prepared by Donald Lainson, charlie@idirect.com.]


"Che faro senza--!"



To THOMAS HARDY



BEYOND


Part I


I


At the door of St. George's registry office, Charles Clare Winton
strolled forward in the wake of the taxi-cab that was bearing his
daughter away with "the fiddler fellow" she had married.  His sense
of decorum forbade his walking with Nurse Betty--the only other
witness of the wedding.  A stout woman in a highly emotional
condition would have been an incongruous companion to his slim,
upright figure, moving with just that unexaggerated swing and
balance becoming to a lancer of the old school, even if he has been
on the retired list for sixteen years.

Poor Betty!  He thought of her with irritated sympathy--she need
not have given way to tears on the door-step.  She might well feel
lost now Gyp was gone, but not so lost as himself!  His pale-gloved
hand--the one real hand he had, for his right hand had been
amputated at the wrist--twisted vexedly at the small, grizzling
moustache lifting itself from the corners of his firm lips.  On
this grey February day he wore no overcoat; faithful to the
absolute, almost shamefaced quietness of that wedding, he had not
even donned black coat and silk hat, but wore a blue suit and a
hard black felt.  The instinct of a soldier and hunting man to
exhibit no sign whatever of emotion did not desert him this dark
day of his life; but his grey-hazel eyes kept contracting, staring
fiercely, contracting again; and, at moments, as if overpowered by
some deep feeling, they darkened and seemed to draw back in his
head.  His face was narrow and weathered and thin-cheeked, with a
clean-cut jaw, small ears, hair darker than the moustache, but
touched at the side wings with grey--the face of a man of action,
self-reliant, resourceful.  And his bearing was that of one who has
always been a bit of a dandy, and paid attention to "form," yet
been conscious sometimes that there were things beyond.  A man,
who, preserving all the precision of a type, yet had in him a
streak of something that was not typical.  Such often have tragedy
in their pasts.

Making his way towards the park, he turned into Mount Street.
There was the house still, though the street had been very
different then--the house he had passed, up and down, up and down
in the fog, like a ghost, that November afternoon, like a cast-out
dog, in such awful, unutterable agony of mind, twenty-three years
ago, when Gyp was born.  And then to be told at the door--he, with
no right to enter, he, loving as he believed man never loved woman--
to be told at the door that SHE was dead--dead in bearing what he
and she alone knew was their child!  Up and down in the fog, hour
after hour, knowing her time was upon her; and at last to be told
that!  Of all fates that befall man, surely the most awful is to
love too much.

Queer that his route should take him past the very house to-day,
after this new bereavement!  Accursed luck--that gout which had
sent him to Wiesbaden, last September!  Accursed luck that Gyp had
ever set eyes on this fellow Fiorsen, with his fatal fiddle!
Certainly not since Gyp had come to live with him, fifteen years
ago, had he felt so forlorn and fit for nothing.  To-morrow he
would get back to Mildenham and see what hard riding would do.
Without Gyp--to be without Gyp!  A fiddler!  A chap who had never
been on a horse in his life!  And with his crutch-handled cane he
switched viciously at the air, as though carving a man in two.

His club, near Hyde Park Corner, had never seemed to him so
desolate.  From sheer force of habit he went into the card-room.
The afternoon had so darkened that electric light already burned,
and there were the usual dozen of players seated among the shaded
gleams falling decorously on dark-wood tables, on the backs of
chairs, on cards and tumblers, the little gilded coffee-cups, the
polished nails of fingers holding cigars.  A crony challenged him
to piquet.  He sat down listless.  That three-legged whist--bridge--
had always offended his fastidiousness--a mangled short cut of a
game!  Poker had something blatant in it.  Piquet, though out of
fashion, remained for him the only game worth playing--the only
game which still had style.  He held good cards and rose the winner
of five pounds that he would willingly have paid to escape the
boredom of the bout.  Where would they be by now?  Past Newbury;
Gyp sitting opposite that Swedish fellow with his greenish
wildcat's eyes.  Something furtive, and so foreign, about him!  A
mess--if he were any judge of horse or man!  Thank God he had tied
Gyp's money up--every farthing!  And an emotion that was almost
jealousy swept him at the thought of the fellow's arms round his
soft-haired, dark-eyed daughter--that pretty, willowy creature, so
like in face and limb to her whom he had loved so desperately.

Eyes followed him when he left the card-room, for he was one who
inspired in other men a kind of admiration--none could say exactly
why.  Many quite as noted for general good sportsmanship attracted
no such attention.  Was it "style," or was it the streak of
something not quite typical--the brand left on him by the past?

Abandoning the club, he walked slowly along the railings of
Piccadilly towards home, that house in Bury Street, St. James's,
which had been his London abode since he was quite young--one of
the few in the street that had been left untouched by the general
passion for puffing down and building up, which had spoiled half
London in his opinion.

A man, more silent than anything on earth, with the soft, quick,
dark eyes of a woodcock and a long, greenish, knitted waistcoat,
black cutaway, and tight trousers strapped over his boots, opened
the door.

"I shan't go out again, Markey.  Mrs. Markey must give me some
dinner.  Anything'll do."

Markey signalled that he had heard, and those brown eyes under
eyebrows meeting and forming one long, dark line, took his master
in from head to heel.  He had already nodded last night, when his
wife had said the gov'nor would take it hard.  Retiring to the back
premises, he jerked his head toward the street and made a motion
upward with his hand, by which Mrs. Markey, an astute woman,
understood that she had to go out and shop because the gov'nor was
dining in.  When she had gone, Markey sat down opposite Betty,
Gyp's old nurse.  The stout woman was still crying in a quiet way.
It gave him the fair hump, for he felt inclined to howl like a dog
himself.  After watching her broad, rosy, tearful face in silence
for some minutes, he shook his head, and, with a gulp and a tremor
of her comfortable body, Betty desisted.  One paid attention to
Markey.

Winton went first into his daughter's bedroom, and gazed at its
emptied silken order, its deserted silver mirror, twisting
viciously at his little moustache.  Then, in his sanctum, he sat
down before the fire, without turning up the light.  Anyone looking
in, would have thought he was asleep; but the drowsy influence of
that deep chair and cosy fire had drawn him back into the long-ago.
What unhappy chance had made him pass HER house to-day!


Some say there is no such thing as an affinity, no case--of a man,
at least--made bankrupt of passion by a single love.  In theory, it
may be so; in fact, there are such men--neck-or-nothing men, quiet
and self-contained, the last to expect that nature will play them
such a trick, the last to desire such surrender of themselves, the
last to know when their fate is on them.  Who could have seemed to
himself, and, indeed, to others, less likely than Charles Clare
Winton to fall over head and ears in love when he stepped into the
Belvoir Hunt ballroom at Grantham that December evening, twenty-
four years ago?  A keen soldier, a dandy, a first-rate man to
hounds, already almost a proverb in his regiment for coolness and
for a sort of courteous disregard of women as among the minor
things of life--he had stood there by the door, in no hurry to
dance, taking a survey with an air that just did not give an
impression of "side" because it was not at all put on.  And--
behold!--SHE had walked past him, and his world was changed for
ever.  Was it an illusion of light that made her whole spirit seem
to shine through a half-startled glance?  Or a little trick of
gait, a swaying, seductive balance of body; was it the way her hair
waved back, or a subtle scent, as of a flower?  What was it?  The
wife of a squire of those parts, with a house in London.  Her name?
It doesn't matter--she has been long enough dead.  There was no
excuse--not an ill-treated woman; an ordinary, humdrum marriage, of
three years standing; no children.  An amiable good fellow of a
husband, fifteen years older than herself, inclined already to be
an invalid.  No excuse!  Yet, in one month from that night, Winton
and she were lovers, not only in thought but in deed.  A thing so
utterly beyond "good form" and his sense of what was honourable and
becoming in an officer and gentleman that it was simply never a
question of weighing pro and con, the cons had it so completely.
And yet from that first evening, he was hers, she his.  For each of
them the one thought was how to be with the other.  If so--why did
they not at least go off together?  Not for want of his beseeching.
And no doubt, if she had survived Gyp's birth, they would have
gone.  But to face the prospect of ruining two men, as it looked to
her, had till then been too much for that soft-hearted creature.
Death stilled her struggle before it was decided.  There are women
in whom utter devotion can still go hand in hand with a doubting
soul.  Such are generally the most fascinating; for the power of
hard and prompt decision robs women of mystery, of the subtle
atmosphere of change and chance.  Though she had but one part in
four of foreign blood, she was not at all English.  But Winton was
English to his back-bone, English in his sense of form, and in that
curious streak of whole-hearted desperation that will break form to
smithereens in one department and leave it untouched in every other
of its owner's life.  To have called Winton a "crank" would never
have occurred to any one--his hair was always perfectly parted; his
boots glowed; he was hard and reticent, accepting and observing
every canon of well-bred existence.  Yet, in that, his one
infatuation, he was as lost to the world and its opinion as the
longest-haired lentil-eater of us all.  Though at any moment during
that one year of their love he would have risked his life and
sacrificed his career for a whole day in her company, he never, by
word or look, compromised her.  He had carried his punctilious
observance of her "honour" to a point more bitter than death,
consenting, even, to her covering up the tracks of their child's
coming.  Paying that gambler's debt was by far the bravest deed of
his life, and even now its memory festered.

To this very room he had come back after hearing she was dead; this
very room which he had refurnished to her taste, so that even now,
with its satinwood chairs, little dainty Jacobean bureau, shaded
old brass candelabra, divan, it still had an air exotic to
bachelordom.  There, on the table, had been a letter recalling him
to his regiment, ordered on active service.  If he had realized
what he would go through before he had the chance of trying to lose
his life out there, he would undoubtedly have taken that life,
sitting in this very chair before the fire--the chair sacred to her
and memory.  He had not the luck he wished for in that little war--
men who don't care whether they live or die seldom have.  He
secured nothing but distinction.  When it was over, he went on,
with a few more lines in his face, a few more wrinkles in his
heart, soldiering, shooting tigers, pig-sticking, playing polo,
riding to hounds harder than ever; giving nothing away to the
world; winning steadily the curious, uneasy admiration that men
feel for those who combine reckless daring with an ice-cool manner.
Since he was less of a talker even than most of his kind, and had
never in his life talked of women, he did not gain the reputation
of a woman-hater, though he so manifestly avoided them.  After six
years' service in India and Egypt, he lost his right hand in a
charge against dervishes, and had, perforce, to retire, with the
rank of major, aged thirty-four.  For a long time he had hated the
very thought of the child--his child, in giving birth to whom the
woman he loved had died.  Then came a curious change of feeling;
and for three years before his return to England, he had been in
the habit of sending home odds and ends picked up in the bazaars,
to serve as toys.  In return, he had received, twice annually at
least, a letter from the man who thought himself Gyp's father.
These letters he read and answered.  The squire was likable, and
had been fond of HER; and though never once had it seemed possible
to Winton to have acted otherwise than he did, he had all the time
preserved a just and formal sense of the wrong he had done this
man.  He did not experience remorse, but he had always an irksome
feeling as of a debt unpaid, mitigated by knowledge that no one had
ever suspected, and discounted by memory of the awful torture he
had endured to make sure against suspicion.

When, plus distinction and minus his hand, he was at last back in
England, the squire had come to see him.  The poor man was failing
fast from Bright's disease.  Winton entered again that house in
Mount Street with an emotion, to stifle which required more courage
than any cavalry charge.  But one whose heart, as he would have put
it, is "in the right place" does not indulge the quaverings of his
nerves, and he faced those rooms where he had last seen her, faced
that lonely little dinner with her husband, without sign of
feeling.  He did not see little Ghita, or Gyp, as she had nicknamed
herself, for she was already in her bed; and it was a whole month
before he brought himself to go there at an hour when he could see
the child if he would.  The fact is, he was afraid.  What would the
sight of this little creature stir in him?  When Betty, the nurse,
brought her in to see the soldier gentleman with "the leather
hand," who had sent her those funny toys, she stood calmly staring
with her large, deep-brown eyes.  Being seven, her little brown-
velvet frock barely reached the knees of her thin, brown-stockinged
legs planted one just in front of the other, as might be the legs
of a small brown bird; the oval of her gravely wondering face was
warm cream colour without red in it, except that of the lips, which
were neither full nor thin, and had a little tuck, the tiniest
possible dimple at one corner.  Her hair of warm dark brown had
been specially brushed and tied with a narrow red ribbon back from
her forehead, which was broad and rather low, and this added to her
gravity.  Her eyebrows were thin and dark and perfectly arched; her
little nose was perfectly straight, her little chin in perfect
balance between round and point.  She stood and stared till Winton
smiled.  Then the gravity of her face broke, her lips parted, her
eyes seemed to fly a little.  And Winton's heart turned over within
him--she was the very child of her that he had lost!  And he said,
in a voice that seemed to him to tremble:

"Well, Gyp?"

"Thank you for my toys; I like them."

He held out his hand, and she gravely put her small hand into it.
A sense of solace, as if some one had slipped a finger in and
smoothed his heart, came over Winton.  Gently, so as not to startle
her, he raised her hand a little, bent, and kissed it.  It may have
been from his instant recognition that here was one as sensitive as
child could be, or the way many soldiers acquire from dealing with
their men--those simple, shrewd children--or some deeper
instinctive sense of ownership between them; whatever it was, from
that moment, Gyp conceived for him a rushing admiration, one of
those headlong affections children will sometimes take for the most
unlikely persons.

He used to go there at an hour when he knew the squire would be
asleep, between two and five.  After he had been with Gyp, walking
in the park, riding with her in the Row, or on wet days sitting in
her lonely nursery telling stories, while stout Betty looked on
half hypnotized, a rather queer and doubting look on her
comfortable face--after such hours, he found it difficult to go to
the squire's study and sit opposite him, smoking.  Those interviews
reminded him too much of past days, when he had kept such desperate
check on himself--too much of the old inward chafing against the
other man's legal ownership--too much of the debt owing.  But
Winton was triple-proofed against betrayal of feeling.  The squire
welcomed him eagerly, saw nothing, felt nothing, was grateful for
his goodness to the child.  Well, well!  He had died in the
following spring.  And Winton found that he had been made Gyp's
guardian and trustee.  Since his wife's death, the squire had
muddled his affairs, his estate was heavily mortgaged; but Winton
accepted the position with an almost savage satisfaction, and, from
that moment, schemed deeply to get Gyp all to himself.  The Mount
Street house was sold; the Lincolnshire place let.  She and Nurse
Betty were installed at his own hunting-box, Mildenham.  In this
effort to get her away from all the squire's relations, he did not
scruple to employ to the utmost the power he undoubtedly had of
making people feel him unapproachable.  He was never impolite to
any of them; he simply froze them out.  Having plenty of money
himself, his motives could not be called in question.  In one year
he had isolated her from all except stout Betty.  He had no qualms,
for Gyp was no more happy away from him than he from her.  He had
but one bad half-hour.  It came when he had at last decided that
she should be called by his name, if not legally at least by
custom, round Mildenham.  It was to Markey he had given the order
that Gyp was to be little Miss Winton for the future.  When he came
in from hunting that day, Betty was waiting in his study.  She
stood in the centre of the emptiest part of that rather dingy room,
as far as possible away from any good or chattel.  How long she had
been standing there, heaven only knew; but her round, rosy face was
confused between awe and resolution, and she had made a sad mess of
her white apron.  Her blue eyes met Winton's with a sort of
desperation.

"About what Markey told me, sir.  My old master wouldn't have liked
it, sir."

Touched on the raw by this reminder that before the world he had
been nothing to the loved one, that before the world the squire,
who had been nothing to her, had been everything, Winton said
icily:

"Indeed!  You will be good enough to comply with my wish, all the
same."

The stout woman's face grew very red.  She burst out, breathless:

"Yes, sir; but I've seen what I've seen.  I never said anything,
but I've got eyes.  If Miss Gyp's to take your name, sir, then
tongues'll wag, and my dear, dead mistress--"

But at the look on his face she stopped, with her mouth open.

"You will be kind enough to keep your thoughts to yourself.  If any
word or deed of yours gives the slightest excuse for talk--you go.
Understand me, you go, and you never see Gyp again!  In the
meantime you will do what I ask.  Gyp is my adopted daughter."

She had always been a little afraid of him, but she had never seen
that look in his eyes or heard him speak in that voice.  And she
bent her full moon of a face and went, with her apron crumpled as
apron had never been, and tears in her eyes.  And Winton, at the
window, watching the darkness gather, the leaves flying by on a
sou'-westerly wind, drank to the dregs a cup of bitter triumph.  He
had never had the right to that dead, forever-loved mother of his
child.  He meant to have the child.  If tongues must wag, let them!
This was a defeat of all his previous precaution, a deep victory of
natural instinct.  And his eyes narrowed and stared into the
darkness.


II


In spite of his victory over all human rivals in the heart of Gyp,
Winton had a rival whose strength he fully realized perhaps for the
first time now that she was gone, and he, before the fire, was
brooding over her departure and the past.  Not likely that one of
his decisive type, whose life had so long been bound up with swords
and horses, would grasp what music might mean to a little girl.
Such ones, he knew, required to be taught scales, and "In a Cottage
near a Wood" with other melodies.  He took care not to go within
sound of them, so that he had no conception of the avidity with
which Gyp had mopped up all, and more than all, her governess could
teach her.  He was blind to the rapture with which she listened to
any stray music that came its way to Mildenham--to carols in the
Christmas dark, to certain hymns, and one special "Nunc Dimittis"
in the village church, attended with a hopeless regularity; to the
horn of the hunter far out in the quivering, dripping coverts; even
to Markey's whistling, which was full and strangely sweet.

He could share her love of dogs and horses, take an anxious
interest in her way of catching bumblebees in the hollow of her
hand and putting them to her small, delicate ears to hear them
buzz, sympathize with her continual ravages among the flowerbeds,
in the old-fashioned garden, full of lilacs and laburnums in
spring, pinks, roses, cornflowers in summer, dahlias and sunflowers
in autumn, and always a little neglected and overgrown, a little
squeezed in, and elbowed by the more important surrounding
paddocks.  He could sympathize with her attempts to draw his
attention to the song of birds; but it was simply not in him to
understand how she loved and craved for music.  She was a cloudy
little creature, up and down in mood--rather like a brown lady
spaniel that she had, now gay as a butterfly, now brooding as
night.  Any touch of harshness she took to heart fearfully.  She
was the strangest compound of pride and sell-disparagement; the
qualities seemed mixed in her so deeply that neither she nor any
one knew of which her cloudy fits were the result.  Being so
sensitive, she "fancied" things terribly.  Things that others did
to her, and thought nothing of, often seemed to her conclusive
evidence that she was not loved by anybody, which was dreadfully
unjust, because she wanted to love everyone--nearly.  Then suddenly
she would feel: "If they don't love me, I don't care.  I don't want
anything of anybody!"  Presently, all would blow away just like a
cloud, and she would love and be gay, until something fresh,
perhaps not at all meant to hurt her, would again hurt her
horribly.  In reality, the whole household loved and admired her.
But she was one of those delicate-treading beings, born with a skin
too few, who--and especially in childhood--suffer from themselves
in a world born with a skin too many.

To Winton's extreme delight, she took to riding as a duck to water,
and knew no fear on horseback.  She had the best governess he could
get her, the daughter of an admiral, and, therefore, in distressed
circumstances; and later on, a tutor for her music, who came twice
a week all the way from London--a sardonic man who cherished for
her even more secret admiration than she for him.  In fact, every
male thing fell in love with her at least a little.  Unlike most
girls, she never had an epoch of awkward plainness, but grew like a
flower, evenly, steadily.  Winton often gazed at her with a sort of
intoxication; the turn of her head, the way those perfectly shaped,
wonderfully clear brown eyes would "fly," the set of her straight,
round neck, the very shaping of her limbs were all such poignant
reminders of what he had so loved.  And yet, for all that likeness
to her mother, there was a difference, both in form and character.
Gyp had, as it were, an extra touch of "breeding," more chiselling
in body, more fastidiousness in soul, a little more poise, a little
more sheer grace; in mood, more variance, in mind, more clarity
and, mixed with her sweetness, a distinct spice of scepticism which
her mother had lacked.

In modern times there are no longer "toasts," or she would have
been one with both the hunts.  Though delicate in build, she was
not frail, and when her blood was up would "go" all day, and come
in so bone-tired that she would drop on to the tiger skin before
the fire, rather than face the stairs.  Life at Mildenham was
lonely, save for Winton's hunting cronies, and they but few, for
his spiritual dandyism did not gladly suffer the average country
gentleman and his frigid courtesy frightened women.

Besides, as Betty had foreseen, tongues did wag--those tongues of
the countryside, avid of anything that might spice the tedium of
dull lives and brains.  And, though no breath of gossip came to
Winton's ears, no women visited at Mildenham.  Save for the
friendly casual acquaintanceships of churchyard, hunting-field, and
local race-meetings, Gyp grew up knowing hardly any of her own sex.
This dearth developed her reserve, kept her backward in sex-
perception, gave her a faint, unconscious contempt for men--
creatures always at the beck and call of her smile, and so easily
disquieted by a little frown--gave her also a secret yearning for
companions of her own gender.  Any girl or woman that she did
chance to meet always took a fancy to her, because she was so nice
to them, which made the transitory nature of these friendships
tantalizing.  She was incapable of jealousies or backbiting.  Let
men beware of such--there is coiled in their fibre a secret
fascination!

Gyp's moral and spiritual growth was not the sort of subject that
Winton could pay much attention to.  It was pre-eminently a matter
one did not talk about.  Outward forms, such as going to church,
should be preserved; manners should be taught her by his own
example as much as possible; beyond this, nature must look after
things.  His view had much real wisdom.  She was a quick and
voracious reader, bad at remembering what she read; and though she
had soon devoured all the books in Winton's meagre library,
including Byron, Whyte-Melville, and Humboldt's "Cosmos," they had
not left too much on her mind.  The attempts of her little
governess to impart religion were somewhat arid of result, and the
interest of the vicar, Gyp, with her instinctive spice of
scepticism soon put into the same category as the interest of all
the other males she knew.  She felt that he enjoyed calling her "my
dear" and patting her shoulder, and that this enjoyment was enough
reward for his exertions.

Tucked away in that little old dark manor house, whose stables
alone were up to date--three hours from London, and some thirty
miles from The Wash, it must be confessed that her upbringing
lacked modernity.  About twice a year, Winton took her up to town
to stay with his unmarried sister Rosamund in Curzon Street.  Those
weeks, if they did nothing else, increased her natural taste for
charming clothes, fortified her teeth, and fostered her passion for
music and the theatre.  But the two main nourishments of the modern
girl--discussion and games--she lacked utterly.  Moreover, those
years of her life from fifteen to nineteen were before the social
resurrection of 1906, and the world still crawled like a winter fly
on a window-pane.  Winton was a Tory, Aunt Rosamund a Tory,
everybody round her a Tory.  The only spiritual development she
underwent all those years of her girlhood was through her headlong
love for her father.  After all, was there any other way in which
she could really have developed?  Only love makes fruitful the
soul.  The sense of form that both had in such high degree
prevented much demonstration; but to be with him, do things for
him, to admire, and credit him with perfection; and, since she
could not exactly wear the same clothes or speak in the same
clipped, quiet, decisive voice, to dislike the clothes and voices
of other men--all this was precious to her beyond everything.  If
she inherited from him that fastidious sense of form, she also
inherited his capacity for putting all her eggs in one basket.  And
since her company alone gave him real happiness, the current of
love flowed over her heart all the time.  Though she never realized
it, abundant love FOR somebody was as necessary to her as water
running up the stems of flowers, abundant love FROM somebody as
needful as sunshine on their petals.  And Winton's somewhat
frequent little runs to town, to Newmarket, or where not, were
always marked in her by a fall of the barometer, which recovered as
his return grew near.

One part of her education, at all events, was not neglected--
cultivation of an habitual sympathy with her poorer neighbours.
Without concerning himself in the least with problems of sociology,
Winton had by nature an open hand and heart for cottagers, and
abominated interference with their lives.  And so it came about
that Gyp, who, by nature also never set foot anywhere without
invitation, was always hearing the words: "Step in, Miss Gyp";
"Step in, and sit down, lovey," and a good many words besides from
even the boldest and baddest characters.  There is nothing like a
soft and pretty face and sympathetic listening for seducing the
hearts of "the people."

So passed the eleven years till she was nineteen and Winton forty-
six.  Then, under the wing of her little governess, she went to the
hunt-ball.  She had revolted against appearing a "fluffy miss,"
wanting to be considered at once full-fledged; so that her dress,
perfect in fit, was not white but palest maize-colour, as if she
had already been to dances.  She had all Winton's dandyism, and
just so much more as was appropriate to her sex.  With her dark
hair, wonderfully fluffed and coiled, waving across her forehead,
her neck bare for the first time, her eyes really "flying," and a
demeanour perfectly cool--as though she knew that light and
movement, covetous looks, soft speeches, and admiration were her
birthright--she was more beautiful than even Winton had thought
her.  At her breast she wore some sprigs of yellow jasmine procured
by him from town--a flower of whose scent she was very fond, and
that he had never seen worn in ballrooms.  That swaying, delicate
creature, warmed by excitement, reminded him, in every movement and
by every glance of her eyes, of her whom he had first met at just
such a ball as this.  And by the carriage of his head, the twist of
his little moustache, he conveyed to the world the pride he was
feeling.

That evening held many sensations for Gyp--some delightful, one
confused, one unpleasant.  She revelled in her success.  Admiration
was very dear to her.  She passionately enjoyed dancing, loved
feeling that she was dancing well and giving pleasure.  But, twice
over, she sent away her partners, smitten with compassion for her
little governess sitting there against the wall--all alone, with no
one to take notice of her, because she was elderly, and roundabout,
poor darling!  And, to that loyal person's horror, she insisted on
sitting beside her all through two dances.  Nor would she go in to
supper with anyone but Winton.  Returning to the ballroom on his
arm, she overheard an elderly woman say: "Oh, don't you know?  Of
course he really IS her father!" and an elderly man answer: "Ah,
that accounts for it--quite so!"  With those eyes at the back of
the head which the very sensitive possess, she could see their
inquisitive, cold, slightly malicious glances, and knew they were
speaking of her.  And just then her partner came for her.

"Really IS her father!"  The words meant TOO much to be grasped
this evening of full sensations.  They left a little bruise
somewhere, but softened and anointed, just a sense of confusion at
the back of her mind.  And very soon came that other sensation, so
disillusioning, that all else was crowded out.  It was after a
dance--a splendid dance with a good-looking man quite twice her
age.  They were sitting behind some palms, he murmuring in his
mellow, flown voice admiration for her dress, when suddenly he bent
his flushed face and kissed her bare arm above the elbow.  If he
had hit her he could not have astonished or hurt her more.  It
seemed to her innocence that he would never have done such a thing
if she had not said something dreadful to encourage him.  Without a
word she got up, gazed at him a moment with eyes dark from pain,
shivered, and slipped away.  She went straight to Winton.  From her
face, all closed up, tightened lips, and the familiar little droop
at their corners, he knew something dire had happened, and his eyes
boded ill for the person who had hurt her; but she would say
nothing except that she was tired and wanted to go home.  And so,
with the little faithful governess, who, having been silent
perforce nearly all the evening, was now full of conversation, they
drove out into the frosty night.  Winton sat beside the chauffeur,
smoking viciously, his fur collar turned up over his ears, his eyes
stabbing the darkness, under his round, low-drawn fur cap.  Who had
dared upset his darling?  And, within the car, the little governess
chattered softly, and Gyp, shrouded in lace, in her dark corner sat
silent, seeing nothing but the vision of that insult.  Sad end to a
lovely night!

She lay awake long hours in the darkness, while a sort of coherence
was forming in her mind.  Those words: "Really IS her father!" and
that man's kissing of her bare arm were a sort of revelation of
sex-mystery, hardening the consciousness that there was something
at the back of her life.  A child so sensitive had not, of course,
quite failed to feel the spiritual draughts around her; but
instinctively she had recoiled from more definite perceptions.  The
time before Winton came was all so faint--Betty, toys, short
glimpses of a kind, invalidish man called "Papa."  As in that word
there was no depth compared with the word "Dad" bestowed on Winton,
so there had been no depth in her feelings towards the squire.
When a girl has no memory of her mother, how dark are many things!
None, except Betty, had ever talked of her mother.  There was
nothing sacred in Gyp's associations, no faiths to be broken by any
knowledge that might come to her; isolated from other girls, she
had little realisation even of the conventions.  Still, she
suffered horribly, lying there in the dark--from bewilderment, from
thorns dragged over her skin, rather than from a stab in the heart.
The knowledge of something about her conspicuous, doubtful,
provocative of insult, as she thought, grievously hurt her
delicacy.  Those few wakeful hours made a heavy mark.  She fell
asleep at last, still all in confusion, and woke up with a
passionate desire to KNOW.  All that morning she sat at her piano,
playing, refusing to go out, frigid to Betty and the little
governess, till the former was reduced to tears and the latter to
Wordsworth.  After tea she went to Winton's study, that dingy
little room where he never studied anything, with leather chairs
and books which--except "Mr. Jorrocks," Byron, those on the care of
horses, and the novels of Whyte-Melville--were never read; with
prints of superequine celebrities, his sword, and photographs of
Gyp and of brother officers on the walls.  Two bright spots there
were indeed--the fire, and the little bowl that Gyp always kept
filled with flowers.

When she came gliding in like that, a slender, rounded figure, her
creamy, dark-eyed, oval face all cloudy, she seemed to Winton to
have grown up of a sudden.  He had known all day that something was
coming, and had been cudgelling his brains finely.  From the
fervour of his love for her, he felt an anxiety that was almost
fear.  What could have happened last night--that first night of her
entrance into society--meddlesome, gossiping society!  She slid
down to the floor against his knee.  He could not see her face,
could not even touch her; for she had settled down on his right
side.  He mastered his tremors and said:

"Well, Gyp--tired?"

"No."

"A little bit?"

"No."

"Was it up to what you thought, last night?"

"Yes."

The logs hissed and crackled; the long flames ruffled in the
chimney-draught; the wind roared outside--then, so suddenly that it
took his breath away:

"Dad, are you really and truly my father?"

When that which one has always known might happen at last does
happen, how little one is prepared!  In the few seconds before an
answer that could in no way be evaded, Winton had time for a tumult
of reflection.  A less resolute character would have been caught by
utter mental blankness, then flung itself in panic on "Yes" or
"No."  But Winton was incapable of losing his head; he would not
answer without having faced the consequences of his reply.  To be
her father was the most warming thing in his life; but if he avowed
it, how far would he injure her love for him?  What did a girl
know?  How make her understand?  What would her feeling be about
her dead mother?  How would that dead loved one feel?  What would
she have wished?

It was a cruel moment.  And the girl, pressed against his knee,
with face hidden, gave him no help.  Impossible to keep it from
her, now that her instinct was roused!  Silence, too, would answer
for him.  And clenching his hand on the arm of his chair, he said:

"Yes, Gyp; your mother and I loved each other."  He felt a quiver
go through her, would have given much to see her face.  What, even
now, did she understand?  Well, it must be gone through with, and
he said:

"What made you ask?"

She shook her head and murmured:

"I'm glad."

Grief, shock, even surprise would have roused all his loyalty to
the dead, all the old stubborn bitterness, and he would have frozen
up against her.  But this acquiescent murmur made him long to
smooth it down.

"Nobody has ever known.  She died when you were born.  It was a
fearful grief to me.  If you've heard anything, it's just gossip,
because you go by my name.  Your mother was never talked about.
But it's best you should know, now you're grown up.  People don't
often love as she and I loved.  You needn't be ashamed."

She had not moved, and her face was still turned from him.  She
said quietly:

"I'm not ashamed.  Am I very like her?"

"Yes; more than I could ever have hoped."

Very low she said:

"Then you don't love me for myself?"

Winton was but dimly conscious of how that question revealed her
nature, its power of piercing instinctively to the heart of things,
its sensitive pride, and demand for utter and exclusive love.  To
things that go too deep, one opposes the bulwark of obtuseness.
And, smiling, he simply said:

"What do you think?"

Then, to his dismay, he perceived that she was crying--struggling
against it so that her shoulder shook against his knee.  He had
hardly ever known her cry, not in all the disasters of unstable
youth, and she had received her full meed of knocks and tumbles.
He could only stroke that shoulder, and say:

"Don't cry, Gyp; don't cry!"

She ceased as suddenly as she had begun, got up, and, before he too
could rise, was gone.

That evening, at dinner, she was just as usual.  He could not
detect the slightest difference in her voice or manner, or in her
good-night kiss.  And so a moment that he had dreaded for years was
over, leaving only the faint shame which follows a breach of
reticence on the spirits of those who worship it.  While the old
secret had been quite undisclosed, it had not troubled him.
Disclosed, it hurt him.  But Gyp, in those twenty-four hours, had
left childhood behind for good; her feeling toward men had
hardened.  If she did not hurt them a little, they would hurt her!
The sex-instinct had come to life.  To Winton she gave as much love
as ever, even more, perhaps; but the dew was off.


III


The next two years were much less solitary, passed in more or less
constant gaiety.  His confession spurred Winton on to the
fortification of his daughter's position.  He would stand no
nonsense, would not have her looked on askance.  There is nothing
like "style" for carrying the defences of society--only, it must be
the genuine thing.  Whether at Mildenham, or in London under the
wing of his sister, there was no difficulty.  Gyp was too pretty,
Winton too cool, his quietness too formidable.  She had every
advantage.  Society only troubles itself to make front against the
visibly weak.

The happiest time of a girl's life is that when all appreciate and
covet her, and she herself is free as air--a queen of hearts, for
none of which she hankers; or, if not the happiest, at all events
it is the gayest time.  What did Gyp care whether hearts ached for
her--she knew not love as yet, perhaps would never know the pains
of unrequited love.  Intoxicated with life, she led her many
admirers a pretty dance, treating them with a sort of bravura.  She
did not want them to be unhappy, but she simply could not take them
seriously.  Never was any girl so heart-free.  She was a queer
mixture in those days, would give up any pleasure for Winton, and
most for Betty or her aunt--her little governess was gone--but of
nobody else did she seem to take account, accepting all that was
laid at her feet as the due of her looks, her dainty frocks, her
music, her good riding and dancing, her talent for amateur
theatricals and mimicry.  Winton, whom at least she never failed,
watched that glorious fluttering with quiet pride and satisfaction.
He was getting to those years when a man of action dislikes
interruption of the grooves into which his activity has fallen.  He
pursued his hunting, racing, card-playing, and his very stealthy
alms and services to lame ducks of his old regiment, their
families, and other unfortunates--happy in knowing that Gyp was
always as glad to be with him as he to be with her.  Hereditary
gout, too, had begun to bother him.

The day that she came of age they were up in town, and he summoned
her to the room, in which he now sat by the fire recalling all
these things, to receive an account of his stewardship.  He had
nursed her greatly embarrassed inheritance very carefully till it
amounted to some twenty thousand pounds.  He had never told her of
it--the subject was dangerous, and, since his own means were ample,
she had not wanted for anything.  When he had explained exactly
what she owned, shown her how it was invested, and told her that
she must now open her own banking account, she stood gazing at the
sheets of paper, whose items she had been supposed to understand,
and her face gathered the look which meant that she was troubled.
Without lifting her eyes she asked:

"Does it all come from--him?"

He had not expected that, and flushed under his tan.

"No; eight thousand of it was your mother's."

Gyp looked at him, and said:

"Then I won't take the rest--please, Dad."

Winton felt a sort of crabbed pleasure.  What should be done with
that money if she did not take it, he did not in the least know.
But not to take it was like her, made her more than ever his
daughter--a kind of final victory.  He turned away to the window
from which he had so often watched for her mother.  There was the
corner she used to turn!  In one minute, surely she would be
standing there, colour glowing in her cheeks, her eyes soft behind
her veil, her breast heaving a little with her haste, waiting for
his embrace.  There she would stand, drawing up her veil.  He
turned round.  Difficult to believe it was not she!  And he said:

"Very well, my love.  But you will take the equivalent from me
instead.  The other can be put by; some one will benefit some day!"

At those unaccustomed words, "My love," from his undemonstrative
lips, the colour mounted in her cheeks and her eyes shone.  She
threw her arms round his neck.

She had her fill of music in those days, taking piano lessons from
a Monsieur Harmost, a grey-haired native of Liege, with mahogany
cheeks and the touch of an angel, who kept her hard at it and
called her his "little friend."  There was scarcely a concert of
merit that she did not attend or a musician of mark whose playing
she did not know, and, though fastidiousness saved her from
squirming in adoration round the feet of those prodigious
performers, she perched them all on pedestals, men and women alike,
and now and then met them at her aunt's house in Curzon Street.

Aunt Rosamund, also musical, so far as breeding would allow, stood
for a good deal to Gyp, who had built up about her a romantic story
of love wrecked by pride from a few words she had once let drop.
She was a tall and handsome woman, a year older than Winton, with a
long, aristocratic face, deep-blue, rather shining eyes, a
gentlemanly manner, warm heart, and one of those indescribable, not
unmelodious drawls that one connects with an unshakable sense of
privilege.  She, in turn, was very fond of Gyp; and what passed
within her mind, by no means devoid of shrewdness, as to their real
relationship, remained ever discreetly hidden.  She was, so far
again as breeding would allow, something of a humanitarian and
rebel, loving horses and dogs, and hating cats, except when they
had four legs.  The girl had just that softness which fascinates
women who perhaps might have been happier if they had been born
men.  Not that Rosamund Winton was of an aggressive type--she
merely had the resolute "catch hold of your tail, old fellow"
spirit so often found in Englishwomen of the upper classes.  A
cheery soul, given to long coats and waistcoats, stocks, and a
crutch-handled stick, she--like her brother--had "style," but more
sense of humour--valuable in musical circles!  At her house, the
girl was practically compelled to see fun as well as merit in all
those prodigies, haloed with hair and filled to overflowing with
music and themselves.  And, since Gyp's natural sense of the
ludicrous was extreme, she and her aunt could rarely talk about
anything without going into fits of laughter.

Winton had his first really bad attack of gout when Gyp was twenty-
two, and, terrified lest he might not be able to sit a horse in
time for the opening meets, he went off with her and Markey to
Wiesbaden.  They had rooms in the Wilhelmstrasse, overlooking the
gardens, where leaves were already turning, that gorgeous
September.  The cure was long and obstinate, and Winton badly
bored.  Gyp fared much better.  Attended by the silent Markey, she
rode daily on the Neroberg, chafing at regulations which reduced
her to specified tracks in that majestic wood where the beeches
glowed.  Once or even twice a day she went to the concerts in the
Kurhaus, either with her father or alone.

The first time she heard Fiorsen play she was alone.  Unlike most
violinists, he was tall and thin, with great pliancy of body and
swift sway of movement.  His face was pale, and went strangely with
hair and moustache of a sort of dirt-gold colour, and his thin
cheeks with very broad high cheek-bones had little narrow scraps of
whisker.  Those little whiskers seemed to Gyp awful--indeed, he
seemed rather awful altogether--but his playing stirred and swept
her in the most uncanny way.  He had evidently remarkable
technique; and the emotion, the intense wayward feeling of his
playing was chiselled by that technique, as if a flame were being
frozen in its swaying.  When he stopped, she did not join in the
tornado of applause, but sat motionless, looking up at him.  Quite
unconstrained by all those people, he passed the back of his hand
across his hot brow, shoving up a wave or two of that queer-
coloured hair; then, with a rather disagreeable smile, he made a
short supple bow or two.  And she thought, "What strange eyes he
has--like a great cat's!"  Surely they were green; fierce, yet shy,
almost furtive--mesmeric!  Certainly the strangest man she had ever
seen, and the most frightening.  He seemed looking straight at her;
and, dropping her gaze, she clapped.  When she looked again, his
face had lost that smile for a kind of wistfulness.  He made
another of those little supple bows straight at her--it seemed to
Gyp--and jerked his violin up to his shoulder.  "He's going to play
to me," she thought absurdly.  He played without accompaniment a
little tune that seemed to twitch the heart.  When he finished,
this time she did not look up, but was conscious that he gave one
impatient bow and walked off.

That evening at dinner she said to Winton:

"I heard a violinist to-day, Dad, the most wonderful playing--
Gustav Fiorsen.  Is that Swedish, do you think--or what?"

Winton answered:

"Very likely.  What sort of a bounder was he to look at?  I used to
know a Swede in the Turkish army--nice fellow, too."

"Tall and thin and white-faced, with bumpy cheek-bones, and hollows
under them, and queer green eyes.  Oh, and little goldy side-
whiskers."

"By Jove!  It sounds the limit."

Gyp murmured, with a smile:

"Yes; I think perhaps he is."

She saw him next day in the gardens.  They were sitting close to
the Schiller statue, Winton reading The Times, to whose advent he
looked forward more than he admitted, for he was loath by
confessions of boredom to disturb Gyp's manifest enjoyment of her
stay.  While perusing the customary comforting animadversions on
the conduct of those "rascally Radicals" who had just come into
power, and the account of a Newmarket meeting, he kept stealing
sidelong glances at his daughter.

Certainly she had never looked prettier, daintier, shown more
breeding than she did out here among these Germans with their thick
pasterns, and all the cosmopolitan hairy-heeled crowd in this God-
forsaken place!  The girl, unconscious of his stealthy regalement,
was letting her clear eyes rest, in turn, on each figure that
passed, on the movements of birds and dogs, watching the sunlight
glisten on the grass, burnish the copper beeches, the lime-trees,
and those tall poplars down there by the water.  The doctor at
Mildenham, once consulted on a bout of headache, had called her
eyes "perfect organs," and certainly no eyes could take things in
more swiftly or completely.  She was attractive to dogs, and every
now and then one would stop, in two minds whether or no to put his
nose into this foreign girl's hand.  From a flirtation of eyes with
a great Dane, she looked up and saw Fiorsen passing, in company
with a shorter, square man, having very fashionable trousers and a
corseted waist.  The violinist's tall, thin, loping figure was
tightly buttoned into a brownish-grey frock-coat suit; he wore a
rather broad-brimmed, grey, velvety hat; in his buttonhole was a
white flower; his cloth-topped boots were of patent leather; his
tie was bunched out at the ends over a soft white-linen shirt--
altogether quite a dandy!  His most strange eyes suddenly swept
down on hers, and he made a movement as if to put his hand to his
hat.

'Why, he remembers me,' thought Gyp.  That thin-waisted figure with
head set just a little forward between rather high shoulders, and
its long stride, curiously suggested a leopard or some lithe
creature.  He touched his short companion's arm, muttered
something, turned round, and came back.  She could see him staring
her way, and knew he was coming simply to look at her.  She knew,
too, that her father was watching.  And she felt that those
greenish eyes would waver before his stare--that stare of the
Englishman of a certain class, which never condescends to be
inquisitive.  They passed; Gyp saw Fiorsen turn to his companion,
slightly tossing back his head in their direction, and heard the
companion laugh.  A little flame shot up in her.

Winton said:

"Rum-looking Johnnies one sees here!"

"That was the violinist I told you of--Fiorsen."

"Oh!  Ah!"  But he had evidently forgotten.

The thought that Fiorsen should have picked her out of all that
audience for remembrance subtly flattered her vanity.  She lost her
ruffled feeling.  Though her father thought his dress awful, it was
really rather becoming.  He would not have looked as well in proper
English clothes.  Once, at least, during the next two days, she
noticed the short, square young man who had been walking with him,
and was conscious that he followed her with his eyes.

And then a certain Baroness von Maisen, a cosmopolitan friend of
Aunt Rosamund's, German by marriage, half-Dutch, half-French by
birth, asked her if she had heard the Swedish violinist, Fiorsen.
He would be, she said, the best violinist of the day, if--and she
shook her head.  Finding that expressive shake unquestioned, the
baroness pursued her thoughts:

"Ah, these musicians!  He wants saving from himself.  If he does
not halt soon, he will be lost.  Pity!  A great talent!"

Gyp looked at her steadily and asked:

"Does he drink, then?"

"Pas mal!  But there are things besides drink, ma chere."

Instinct and so much life with Winton made the girl regard it as
beneath her to be shocked.  She did not seek knowledge of life, but
refused to shy away from it or be discomfited; and the baroness, to
whom innocence was piquant, went on:

"Des femmes--toujours des femmes!  C'est grand dommage.  It will
spoil his spirit.  His sole chance is to find one woman, but I pity
her; sapristi, quelle vie pour elle!"

Gyp said calmly:

"Would a man like that ever love?"

The baroness goggled her eyes.

"I have known such a man become a slave.  I have known him running
after a woman like a lamb while she was deceiving him here and
there.  On ne peut jamais dire.  Ma belle, il y a des choses que
vous ne savez pas encore."  She took Gyp's hand.  "And yet, one
thing is certain.  With those eyes and those lips and that figure,
YOU have a time before you!"

Gyp withdrew her hand, smiled, and shook her head; she did not
believe in love.

"Ah, but you will turn some heads!  No fear! as you English say.
There is fatality in those pretty brown eyes!"

A girl may be pardoned who takes as a compliment the saying that
her eyes are fatal.  The words warmed Gyp, uncontrollably light-
hearted in these days, just as she was warmed when people turned to
stare at her.  The soft air, the mellowness of this gay place, much
music, a sense of being a rara avis among people who, by their
heavier type, enhanced her own, had produced in her a kind of
intoxication, making her what the baroness called "un peu folle."
She was always breaking into laughter, having that precious feeling
of twisting the world round her thumb, which does not come too
often in the life of one who is sensitive.  Everything to her just
then was either "funny" or "lovely."  And the baroness, conscious
of the girl's chic, genuinely attracted by one so pretty, took care
that she saw all the people, perhaps more than all, that were
desirable.

To women and artists, between whom there is ever a certain kinship,
curiosity is a vivid emotion.  Besides, the more a man has
conquered, the more precious field he is for a woman's conquest.
To attract a man who has attracted many, what is it but a proof
that one's charm is superior to that of all those others?  The
words of the baroness deepened in Gyp the impression that Fiorsen
was "impossible," but secretly fortified the faint excitement she
felt that he should have remembered her out of all that audience.
Later on, they bore more fruit than that.  But first came that
queer incident of the flowers.

Coming in from a ride, a week after she had sat with Winton under
the Schiller statue, Gyp found on her dressing-table a bunch of
Gloire de Dijon and La France roses.  Plunging her nose into them,
she thought: "How lovely!  Who sent me these?"  There was no card.
All that the German maid could say was that a boy had brought them
from a flower shop "fur Fraulein Vinton"; it was surmised that they
came from the baroness.  In her bodice at dinner, and to the
concert after, Gyp wore one La France and one Gloire de Dijon--a
daring mixture of pink and orange against her oyster-coloured
frock, which delighted her, who had a passion for experiments in
colour.  They had bought no programme, all music being the same to
Winton, and Gyp not needing any.  When she saw Fiorsen come
forward, her cheeks began to colour from sheer anticipation.

He played first a minuet by Mozart; then the Cesar Franck sonata;
and when he came back to make his bow, he was holding in his hand a
Gloire de Dijon and a La France rose.  Involuntarily, Gyp raised
her hand to her own roses.  His eyes met hers; he bowed just a
little lower.  Then, quite naturally, put the roses to his lips as
he was walking off the platform.  Gyp dropped her hand, as if it
had been stung.  Then, with the swift thought: "Oh, that's
schoolgirlish!" she contrived a little smile.  But her cheeks were
flushing.  Should she take out those roses and let them fall?  Her
father might see, might notice Fiorsen's--put two and two together!
He would consider she had been insulted.  Had she?  She could not
bring herself to think so.  It was too pretty a compliment, as if
he wished to tell her that he was playing to her alone.  The
baroness's words flashed through her mind: "He wants saving from
himself.  Pity!  A great talent!"  It WAS a great talent.  There
must be something worth saving in one who could play like that!
They left after his last solo.  Gyp put the two roses carefully
back among the others.

Three days later, she went to an afternoon "at home" at the
Baroness von Maisen's.  She saw him at once, over by the piano,
with his short, square companion, listening to a voluble lady, and
looking very bored and restless.  All that overcast afternoon,
still and with queer lights in the sky, as if rain were coming, Gyp
had been feeling out of mood, a little homesick.  Now she felt
excited.  She saw the short companion detach himself and go up to
the baroness; a minute later, he was brought up to her and
introduced--Count Rosek.  Gyp did not like his face; there were
dark rings under the eyes, and he was too perfectly self-possessed,
with a kind of cold sweetness; but he was very agreeable and
polite, and spoke English well.  He was--it seemed--a Pole, who
lived in London, and seemed to know all that was to be known about
music.  Miss Winton--he believed--had heard his friend Fiorsen
play; but not in London?  No?  That was odd; he had been there some
months last season.  Faintly annoyed at her ignorance, Gyp
answered:

"Yes; but I was in the country nearly all last summer."

"He had a great success.  I shall take him back; it is best for his
future.  What do you think of his playing?"

In spite of herself, for she did not like expanding to this
sphinxlike little man, Gyp murmured:

"Oh, simply wonderful, of course!"

He nodded, and then rather suddenly said, with a peculiar little
smile:

"May I introduce him?  Gustav--Miss Winton!"

Gyp turned.  There he was, just behind her, bowing; and his eyes
had a look of humble adoration which he made no attempt whatever to
conceal.  Gyp saw another smile slide over the Pole's lips; and she
was alone in the bay window with Fiorsen.  The moment might well
have fluttered a girl's nerves after his recognition of her by the
Schiller statue, after that episode of the flowers, and what she
had heard of him.  But life had not yet touched either her nerves
or spirit; she only felt amused and a little excited.  Close to, he
had not so much that look of an animal behind bars, and he
certainly was in his way a dandy, beautifully washed--always an
important thing--and having some pleasant essence on his
handkerchief or hair, of which Gyp would have disapproved if he had
been English.  He wore a diamond ring also, which did not somehow
seem bad form on that particular little finger.  His height, his
broad cheek-bones, thick but not long hair, the hungry vitality of
his face, figure, movements, annulled those evidences of
femininity.  He was male enough, rather too male.  Speaking with a
queer, crisp accent, he said:

"Miss Winton, you are my audience here.  I play to you--only to you."

Gyp laughed.

"You laugh at me; but you need not.  I play for you because I
admire you.  I admire you terribly.  If I sent you those flowers,
it was not to be rude.  It was my gratitude for the pleasure of
your face."  His voice actually trembled.  And, looking down, Gyp
answered:

"Thank you.  It was very kind of you.  I want to thank you for your
playing.  It is beautiful--really beautiful!"

He made her another little bow.

"When I go back to London, will you come and hear me?"

"I should think any one would go to hear you, if they had the
chance."

He gave a short laugh.

"Bah!  Here, I do it for money; I hate this place.  It bores me--
bores me!  Was that your father sitting with you under the statue?"

Gyp nodded, suddenly grave.  She had not forgotten the slighting
turn of his head.

He passed his hand over his face, as if to wipe off its expression.

"He is very English.  But you--of no country--you belong to all!"

Gyp made him an ironical little bow.

"No; I should not know your country--you are neither of the North
nor of the South.  You are just Woman, made to be adored.  I came
here hoping to meet you; I am extremely happy.  Miss Winton, I am
your very devoted servant."

He was speaking very fast, very low, with an agitated earnestness
that surely could not be put on.  But suddenly muttering: "These
people!" he made her another of his little bows and abruptly
slipped away.  The baroness was bringing up another man.  The chief
thought left by that meeting was: "Is that how he begins to
everyone?"  She could not quite believe it.  The stammering
earnestness of his voice, those humbly adoring looks!  Then she
remembered the smile on the lips of the little Pole, and thought:
"But he must know I'm not silly enough just to be taken in by
vulgar flattery!"

Too sensitive to confide in anyone, she had no chance to ventilate
the curious sensations of attraction and repulsion that began
fermenting in her, feelings defying analysis, mingling and
quarrelling deep down in her heart.  It was certainly not love, not
even the beginning of that; but it was the kind of dangerous
interest children feel in things mysterious, out of reach, yet
within reach, if only they dared!  And the tug of music was there,
and the tug of those words of the baroness about salvation--the
thought of achieving the impossible, reserved only for the woman of
supreme charm, for the true victress.  But all these thoughts and
feelings were as yet in embryo.  She might never see him again!
And she certainly did not know whether she even wanted to.


IV


Gyp was in the habit of walking with Winton to the Kochbrunnen,
where, with other patient-folk, he was required to drink slowly for
twenty minutes every morning.  While he was imbibing she would sit
in a remote corner of the garden, and read a novel in the Reclam
edition, as a daily German lesson.

She was sitting there, the morning after the "at-home" at the
Baroness von Maisen's, reading Turgenev's "Torrents of Spring,"
when she saw Count Rosek sauntering down the path with a glass of
the waters in his hand.  Instant memory of the smile with which he
had introduced Fiorsen made her take cover beneath her sunshade.
She could see his patent-leathered feet, and well-turned, peg-top-
trousered legs go by with the gait of a man whose waist is
corseted.  The certainty that he wore those prerogatives of
womanhood increased her dislike.  How dare men be so effeminate?
Yet someone had told her that he was a good rider, a good fencer,
and very strong.  She drew a breath of relief when he was past,
and, for fear he might turn and come back, closed her little book
and slipped away.  But her figure and her springing step were more
unmistakable than she knew.

Next morning, on the same bench, she was reading breathlessly the
scene between Gemma and Sanin at the window, when she heard
Fiorsen's voice, behind her, say:

"Miss Winton!"

He, too, held a glass of the waters in one hand, and his hat in the
other.

"I have just made your father's acquaintance.  May I sit down a
minute?"

Gyp drew to one side on the bench, and he sat down.

"What are you reading?"

"A story called 'Torrents of Spring.'"

"Ah, the finest ever written!  Where are you?"

"Gemma and Sanin in the thunderstorm."

"Wait!  You have Madame Polozov to come!  What a creation!  How old
are you, Miss Winton?"

"Twenty-two."

"You would be too young to appreciate that story if you were not
YOU.  But you know much--by instinct.  What is your Christian name--
forgive me!"

"Ghita."

"Ghita?  Not soft enough."

"I am always called Gyp."

"Gyp--ah, Gyp!  Yes; Gyp!"

He repeated her name so impersonally that she could not be angry.

"I told your father I have had the pleasure of meeting you.  He was
very polite."

Gyp said coldly:

"My father is always polite."

"Like the ice in which they put champagne."

Gyp smiled; she could not help it.

And suddenly he said:

"I suppose they have told you that I am a mauvais sujet."  Gyp
inclined her head.  He looked at her steadily, and said: "It is
true.  But I could be better--much."

She wanted to look at him, but could not.  A queer sort of
exultation had seized on her.  This man had power; yet she had
power over him.  If she wished she could make him her slave, her
dog, chain him to her.  She had but to hold out her hand, and he
would go on his knees to kiss it.  She had but to say, "Come," and
he would come from wherever he might be.  She had but to say, "Be
good," and he would be good.  It was her first experience of power;
and it was intoxicating.  But--but!  Gyp could never be self-
confident for long; over her most victorious moments brooded the
shadow of distrust.  As if he read her thought, Fiorsen said:

"Tell me to do something--anything; I will do it, Miss Winton."

"Then--go back to London at once.  You are wasting yourself here,
you know.  You said so!"

He looked at her, bewildered and upset, and muttered:

"You have asked me the one thing I can't do, Miss--Miss Gyp!"

"Please--not that; it's like a servant!"

"I AM your servant!"

"Is that why you won't do what I ask you?"

"You are cruel."

Gyp laughed.

He got up and said, with sudden fierceness:

"I am not going away from you; do not think it."  Bending with the
utmost swiftness, he took her hand, put his lips to it, and turned
on his heel.

Gyp, uneasy and astonished, stared at her hand, still tingling from
the pressure of his bristly moustache.  Then she laughed again--it
was just "foreign" to have your hand kissed--and went back to her
book, without taking in the words.


Was ever courtship more strange than that which followed?  It is
said that the cat fascinates the bird it desires to eat; here the
bird fascinated the cat, but the bird too was fascinated.  Gyp
never lost the sense of having the whip-hand, always felt like one
giving alms, or extending favour, yet had a feeling of being unable
to get away, which seemed to come from the very strength of the
spell she laid on him.  The magnetism with which she held him
reacted on herself.  Thoroughly sceptical at first, she could not
remain so.  He was too utterly morose and unhappy if she did not
smile on him, too alive and excited and grateful if she did.  The
change in his eyes from their ordinary restless, fierce, and
furtive expression to humble adoration or wistful hunger when they
looked at her could never have been simulated.  And she had no lack
of chance to see that metamorphosis.  Wherever she went, there he
was.  If to a concert, he would be a few paces from the door,
waiting for her entrance.  If to a confectioner's for tea, as
likely as not he would come in.  Every afternoon he walked where
she must pass, riding to the Neroberg.

Except in the gardens of the Kochbrunnen, when he would come up
humbly and ask to sit with her five minutes, he never forced his
company, or tried in any way to compromise her.  Experience, no
doubt, served him there; but he must have had an instinct that it
was dangerous with one so sensitive.  There were other moths, too,
round that bright candle, and they served to keep his attentions
from being too conspicuous.  Did she comprehend what was going on,
understand how her defences were being sapped, grasp the danger to
retreat that lay in permitting him to hover round her?  Not really.
It all served to swell the triumphant intoxication of days when she
was ever more and more in love with living, more and more conscious
that the world appreciated and admired her, that she had power to
do what others couldn't.

Was not Fiorsen, with his great talent, and his dubious reputation,
proof of that?  And he excited her.  Whatever else one might be in
his moody, vivid company, one would not be dull.  One morning, he
told her something of his life.  His father had been a small
Swedish landowner, a very strong man and a very hard drinker; his
mother, the daughter of a painter.  She had taught him the violin,
but died while he was still a boy.  When he was seventeen he had
quarrelled with his father, and had to play his violin for a living
in the streets of Stockholm.  A well-known violinist, hearing him
one day, took him in hand.  Then his father had drunk himself to
death, and he had inherited the little estate.  He had sold it at
once--"for follies," as he put it crudely.  "Yes, Miss Winton; I
have committed many follies, but they are nothing to those I shall
commit the day I do not see you any more!"  And, with that
disturbing remark, he got up and left her.  She had smiled at his
words, but within herself she felt excitement, scepticism,
compassion, and something she did not understand at all.  In those
days, she understood herself very little.

But how far did Winton understand, how far see what was going on?
He was a stoic; but that did not prevent jealousy from taking
alarm, and causing him twinges more acute than those he still felt
in his left foot.  He was afraid of showing disquiet by any
dramatic change, or he would have carried her off a fortnight at
least before his cure was over.  He knew too well the signs of
passion.  That long, loping, wolfish fiddling fellow with the broad
cheekbones and little side-whiskers (Good God!) and greenish eyes
whose looks at Gyp he secretly marked down, roused his complete
distrust.  Perhaps his inbred English contempt for foreigners and
artists kept him from direct action.  He COULD not take it quite
seriously.  Gyp, his fastidious perfect Gyp, succumbing, even a
little to a fellow like that!  Never!  His jealous affection, too,
could not admit that she would neglect to consult him in any doubt
or difficulty.  He forgot the sensitive secrecy of girls, forgot
that his love for her had ever shunned words, her love for him
never indulged in confidences.  Nor did he see more than a little
of what there was to see, and that little was doctored by Fiorsen
for his eyes, shrewd though they were.  Nor was there in all so
very much, except one episode the day before they left, and of that
he knew nothing.

That last afternoon was very still, a little mournful.  It had
rained the night before, and the soaked tree-trunks, the soaked
fallen leaves gave off a faint liquorice-like perfume.  In Gyp
there was a feeling, as if her spirit had been suddenly emptied of
excitement and delight.  Was it the day, or the thought of leaving
this place where she had so enjoyed herself?  After lunch, when
Winton was settling his accounts, she wandered out through the long
park stretching up the valley.  The sky was brooding-grey, the
trees were still and melancholy.  It was all a little melancholy,
and she went on and on, across the stream, round into a muddy lane
that led up through the outskirts of a village, on to the higher
ground whence she could return by the main road.  Why must things
come to an end?  For the first time in her life, she thought of
Mildenham and hunting without enthusiasm.  She would rather stay in
London.  There she would not be cut off from music, from dancing,
from people, and all the exhilaration of being appreciated.  On the
air came the shrilly, hollow droning of a thresher, and the sound
seemed exactly to express her feelings.  A pigeon flew over, white
against the leaden sky; some birch-trees that had gone golden
shivered and let fall a shower of drops.  It was lonely here!  And,
suddenly, two little boys bolted out of the hedge, nearly upsetting
her, and scurried down the road.  Something had startled them.
Gyp, putting up her face to see, felt on it soft pin-points of
rain.  Her frock would be spoiled, and it was one she was fond of--
dove-coloured, velvety, not meant for weather.  She turned for
refuge to the birch-trees.  It would be over directly, perhaps.
Muffled in distance, the whining drone of that thresher still came
travelling, deepening her discomfort.  Then in the hedge, whence
the boys had bolted down, a man reared himself above the lane, and
came striding along toward her.  He jumped down the bank, among the
birch-trees.  And she saw it was Fiorsen--panting, dishevelled,
pale with heat.  He must have followed her, and climbed straight up
the hillside from the path she had come along in the bottom, before
crossing the stream.  His artistic dandyism had been harshly
treated by that scramble.  She might have laughed; but, instead,
she felt excited, a little scared by the look on his hot, pale
face.  He said, breathlessly:

"I have caught you.  So you are going to-morrow, and never told me!
You thought you would slip away--not a word for me!  Are you always
so cruel?  Well, I will not spare you, either!"

Crouching suddenly, he took hold of her broad ribbon sash, and
buried his face in it.  Gyp stood trembling--the action had not
stirred her sense of the ridiculous.  He circled her knees with his
arms.

"Oh, Gyp, I love you--I love you--don't send me away--let me be
with you!  I am your dog--your slave.  Oh, Gyp, I love you!"

His voice moved and terrified her.  Men had said "I love you"
several times during those last two years, but never with that
lost-soul ring of passion, never with that look in the eyes at once
fiercely hungry and so supplicating, never with that restless,
eager, timid touch of hands.  She could only murmur:

"Please get up!"

But he went on:

"Love me a little, only a little--love me!  Oh, Gyp!"

The thought flashed through Gyp: 'To how many has he knelt, I
wonder?'  His face had a kind of beauty in its abandonment--the
beauty that comes from yearning--and she lost her frightened
feeling.  He went on, with his stammering murmur: "I am a prodigal,
I know; but if you love me, I will no longer be.  I will do great
things for you.  Oh, Gyp, if you will some day marry me!  Not now.
When I have proved.  Oh, Gyp, you are so sweet--so wonderful!"

His arms crept up till he had buried his face against her waist.
Without quite knowing what she did, Gyp touched his hair, and said
again:

"No; please get up."

He got up then, and standing near, with his hands hard clenched at
his sides, whispered:

"Have mercy!  Speak to me!"

She could not.  All was strange and mazed and quivering in her, her
spirit straining away, drawn to him, fantastically confused.  She
could only look into his face with her troubled, dark eyes.  And
suddenly she was seized and crushed to him.  She shrank away,
pushing him back with all her strength.  He hung his head, abashed,
suffering, with eyes shut, lips trembling; and her heart felt again
that quiver of compassion.  She murmured:

"I don't know.  I will tell you later--later--in England."

He bowed, folding his arms, as if to make her feel safe from him.
And when, regardless of the rain, she began to move on, he walked
beside her, a yard or so away, humbly, as though he had never
poured out those words or hurt her lips with the violence of his
kiss.

Back in her room, taking off her wet dress, Gyp tried to remember
what he had said and what she had answered.  She had not promised
anything.  But she had given him her address, both in London and
the country.  Unless she resolutely thought of other things, she
still felt the restless touch of his hands, the grip of his arms,
and saw his eyes as they were when he was kissing her; and once
more she felt frightened and excited.

He was playing at the concert that evening--her last concert.  And
surely he had never played like that--with a despairing beauty, a
sort of frenzied rapture.  Listening, there came to her a feeling--
a feeling of fatality--that, whether she would or no, she could not
free herself from him.


V


Once back in England, Gyp lost that feeling, or very nearly.  Her
scepticism told her that Fiorsen would soon see someone else who
seemed all he had said she was!  How ridiculous to suppose that he
would stop his follies for her, that she had any real power over
him!  But, deep down, she did not quite believe this.  It would
have wounded her belief in herself too much--a belief so subtle and
intimate that she was not conscious of it; belief in that something
about her which had inspired the baroness to use the word
"fatality."

Winton, who breathed again, hurried her off to Mildenham.  He had
bought her a new horse.  They were in time for the last of the
cubbing.  And, for a week at least, the passion for riding and the
sight of hounds carried all before it.  Then, just as the real
business of the season was beginning, she began to feel dull and
restless.  Mildenham was dark; the autumn winds made dreary noises.
Her little brown spaniel, very old, who seemed only to have held on
to life just for her return, died.  She accused herself terribly
for having left it so long when it was failing.  Thinking of all
the days Lass had been watching for her to come home--as Betty,
with that love of woeful recital so dear to simple hearts, took
good care to make plain--she felt as if she had been cruel.  For
events such as these, Gyp was both too tender-hearted and too hard
on herself.  She was quite ill for several days.  The moment she
was better, Winton, in dismay, whisked her back to Aunt Rosamund,
in town.  He would lose her company, but if it did her good, took
her out of herself, he would be content.  Running up for the week-
end, three days later, he was relieved to find her decidedly
perked-up, and left her again with the easier heart.

It was on the day after he went back to Mildenham that she received
a letter from Fiorsen, forwarded from Bury Street.  He was--it
said--just returning to London; he had not forgotten any look she
had ever given him, or any word she had spoken.  He should not rest
till he could see her again.  "For a long time," the letter ended,
"before I first saw you, I was like the dead--lost.  All was bitter
apples to me.  Now I am a ship that comes from the whirlpools to a
warm blue sea; now I see again the evening star.  I kiss your
hands, and am your faithful slave--Gustav Fiorsen."  These words,
which from any other man would have excited her derision, renewed
in Gyp that fluttered feeling, the pleasurable, frightened sense
that she could not get away from his pursuit.

She wrote in answer to the address he gave her in London, to say
that she was staying for a few days in Curzon Street with her aunt,
who would be glad to see him if he cared to come in any afternoon
between five and six, and signed herself "Ghita Winton."  She was
long over that little note.  Its curt formality gave her
satisfaction.  Was she really mistress of herself--and him; able to
dispose as she wished?  Yes; and surely the note showed it.

It was never easy to tell Gyp's feelings from her face; even Winton
was often baffled.  Her preparation of Aunt Rosamund for the
reception of Fiorsen was a masterpiece of casualness.  When he duly
came, he, too, seemed doubly alive to the need for caution, only
gazing at Gyp when he could not be seen doing so.  But, going out,
he whispered: "Not like this--not like this; I must see you alone--
I must!"  She smiled and shook her head.  But bubbles had come back
to the wine in her cup.

That evening she said quietly to Aunt Rosamund:

"Dad doesn't like Mr. Fiorsen--can't appreciate his playing, of
course."

And this most discreet remark caused Aunt Rosamund, avid--in a
well-bred way--of music, to omit mention of the intruder when
writing to her brother.  The next two weeks he came almost every
day, always bringing his violin, Gyp playing his accompaniments,
and though his hungry stare sometimes made her feel hot, she would
have missed it.

But when Winton next came up to Bury Street, she was in a quandary.
To confess that Fiorsen was here, having omitted to speak of him in
her letters?  Not to confess, and leave him to find it out from
Aunt Rosamund?  Which was worse?  Seized with panic, she did
neither, but told her father she was dying for a gallop.  Hailing
that as the best of signs, he took her forthwith back to Mildenham.
And curious were her feelings--light-hearted, compunctious, as of
one who escapes yet knows she will soon be seeking to return.  The
meet was rather far next day, but she insisted on riding to it,
since old Pettance, the superannuated jockey, charitably employed
as extra stable help at Mildenham, was to bring on her second
horse.  There was a good scenting-wind, with rain in the offing,
and outside the covert they had a corner to themselves--Winton
knowing a trick worth two of the field's at-large.  They had
slipped there, luckily unseen, for the knowing were given to
following the one-handed horseman in faded pink, who, on his bang-
tailed black mare, had a knack of getting so well away.  One of the
whips, a little dark fellow with smouldery eyes and sucked-in
weathered cheeks, dashed out of covert, rode past, saluting, and
dashed in again.  A jay came out with a screech, dived, and doubled
back; a hare made off across the fallow--the light-brown lopping
creature was barely visible against the brownish soil.  Pigeons,
very high up, flew over and away to the next wood.  The shrilling
voices of the whips rose from the covert-depths, and just a whimper
now and then from the hounds, swiftly wheeling their noses among
the fern and briers.

Gyp, crisping her fingers on the reins, drew-in deep breaths.  It
smelled so sweet and soft and fresh under that sky, pied of blue,
and of white and light-grey swift-moving clouds--not half the wind
down here that there was up there, just enough to be carrying off
the beech and oak leaves, loosened by frost two days before.  If
only a fox would break this side, and they could have the first
fields to themselves!  It was so lovely to be alone with hounds!
One of these came trotting out, a pretty young creature, busy and
unconcerned, raising its tan-and-white head, its mild reproachful
deep-brown eyes, at Winton's, "Loo-in Trix!"  What a darling!  A
burst of music from the covert, and the darling vanished among the
briers.

Gyp's new brown horse pricked its ears.  A young man in a grey
cutaway, buff cords, and jack-boots, on a low chestnut mare, came
slipping round the covert.  Oh--did that mean they were all coming?
Impatiently she glanced at this intruder, who raised his hat a
little and smiled.  That smile, faintly impudent, was so
infectious, that Gyp was melted to a slight response.  Then she
frowned.  He had spoiled their lovely loneliness.  Who was he?  He
looked unpardonably serene and happy sitting there.  She did not
remember his face at all, yet there was something familiar about
it.  He had taken his hat off--a broad face, very well cut, and
clean-shaved, with dark curly hair, extraordinary clear eyes, a
bold, cool, merry look.  Where had she seen somebody like him?

A tiny sound from Winton made her turn her head.  The fox--stealing
out beyond those further bushes!  Breathless, she fixed her eyes on
her father's face.  It was hard as steel, watching.  Not a sound,
not a quiver, as if horse and man had turned to metal.  Was he
never going to give the view-halloo?  Then his lips writhed, and
out it came.  Gyp cast a swift smile of gratitude at the young man
for having had taste and sense to leave that to her father, and
again he smiled at her.  There were the first hounds streaming out--
one on the other--music and feather!  Why didn't Dad go?  They
would all be round this way in a minute!

Then the black mare slid past her, and, with a bound, her horse
followed.  The young man on the chestnut was away on the left.
Only the hunts-man and one whip--beside their three selves!
Glorious!  The brown horse went too fast at that first fence and
Winton called back: "Steady, Gyp!  Steady him!"  But she couldn't;
and it didn't matter.  Grass, three fields of grass!  Oh, what a
lovely fox--going so straight!  And each time the brown horse rose,
she thought: "Perfect!  I CAN ride!  Oh, I am happy!"  And she
hoped her father and the young man were looking.  There was no
feeling in the world like this, with a leader like Dad, hounds
moving free, good going, and the field distanced.  Better than
dancing; better--yes, better than listening to music.  If one could
spend one's life galloping, sailing over fences; if it would never
stop!  The new horse was a darling, though he DID pull.

She crossed the next fence level with the young man, whose low
chestnut mare moved with a stealthy action.  His hat was crammed
down now, and his face very determined, but his lips still had
something of that smile.  Gyp thought: "He's got a good seat--very
strong, only he looks like 'thrusting.'  Nobody rides like Dad--so
beautifully quiet!"  Indeed, Winton's seat on a horse was
perfection, all done with such a minimum expenditure.  The hounds
swung round in a curve.  Now she was with them, really with them!
What a pace--cracking!  No fox could stand this long!

And suddenly she caught sight of him, barely a field ahead,
scurrying desperately, brush down; and the thought flashed through
her: 'Oh! don't let's catch you.  Go on, fox; go on!  Get away!'
Were they really all after that little hunted red thing--a hundred
great creatures, horses and men and women and dogs, and only that
one little fox!  But then came another fence, and quickly another,
and she lost feelings of shame and pity in the exultation of flying
over them.  A minute later the fox went to earth within a few
hundred yards of the leading hound, and she was glad.  She had been
in at deaths before--horrid!  But it had been a lovely gallop.
And, breathless, smiling rapturously, she wondered whether she
could mop her face before the field came up, without that young man
noticing.

She could see him talking to her father, and taking out a wisp of a
handkerchief that smelled of cyclamen, she had a good scrub round.
When she rode up, the young man raised his hat, and looking full at
her said: "You did go!"  His voice, rather high-pitched, had in it
a spice of pleasant laziness.  Gyp made him an ironical little bow,
and murmured: "My new horse, you mean."  He broke again into that
irrepressible smile, but, all the same, she knew that he admired
her.  And she kept thinking: 'Where HAVE I seen someone like him?'

They had two more runs, but nothing like that first gallop.  Nor
did she again see the young man, whose name--it seemed--was
Summerhay, son of a certain Lady Summerhay at Widrington, ten miles
from Mildenham.

All that long, silent jog home with Winton in fading daylight, she
felt very happy--saturated with air and elation.  The trees and
fields, the hay-stacks, gates, and ponds beside the lanes grew dim;
lights came up in the cottage windows; the air smelled sweet of
wood smoke.  And, for the first time all day, she thought of
Fiorsen, thought of him almost longingly.  If he could be there in
the cosy old drawing-room, to play to her while she lay back--
drowsing, dreaming by the fire in the scent of burning cedar logs--
the Mozart minuet, or that little heart-catching tune of Poise,
played the first time she heard him, or a dozen other of the things
he played unaccompanied!  That would be the most lovely ending to
this lovely day.  Just the glow and warmth wanting, to make all
perfect--the glow and warmth of music and adoration!

And touching the mare with her heel, she sighed.  To indulge
fancies about music and Fiorsen was safe here, far away from him;
she even thought she would not mind if he were to behave again as
he had under the birch-trees in the rain at Wiesbaden.  It was so
good to be adored.  Her old mare, ridden now six years, began the
series of contented snuffles that signified she smelt home.  Here
was the last turn, and the loom of the short beech-tree avenue to
the house--the old manor-house, comfortable, roomy, rather dark,
with wide shallow stairs.  Ah, she was tired; and it was drizzling
now.  She would be nicely stiff to-morrow.  In the light coming
from the open door she saw Markey standing; and while fishing from
her pocket the usual lumps of sugar, heard him say: "Mr. Fiorsen,
sir--gentleman from Wiesbaden--to see you."

Her heart thumped.  What did this mean?  Why had he come?  How had
he dared?  How could he have been so treacherous to her?  Ah, but
he was ignorant, of course, that she had not told her father.  A
veritable judgment on her!  She ran straight in and up the stairs.
The voice of Betty, "Your bath's ready, Miss Gyp," roused her.  And
crying, "Oh, Betty darling, bring me up my tea!" she ran into the
bathroom.  She was safe there; and in the delicious heat of the
bath faced the situation better.

There could be only one meaning.  He had come to ask for her.  And,
suddenly, she took comfort.  Better so; there would be no more
secrecy from Dad!  And he would stand between her and Fiorsen if--
if she decided not to marry him.  The thought staggered her.  Had
she, without knowing it, got so far as this?  Yes, and further.  It
was all no good; Fiorsen would never accept refusal, even if she
gave it!  But, did she want to refuse?

She loved hot baths, but had never stayed in one so long.  Life was
so easy there, and so difficult outside.  Betty's knock forced her
to get out at last, and let her in with tea and the message.  Would
Miss Gyp please to go down when she was ready?


VI


Winton was staggered.  With a glance at Gyp's vanishing figure, he
said curtly to Markey, "Where have you put this gentleman?"  But
the use of the word "this" was the only trace he showed of his
emotions.  In that little journey across the hall he entertained
many extravagant thoughts.  Arrived at the study, he inclined his
head courteously enough, waiting for Fiorsen to speak.  The
"fiddler," still in his fur-lined coat, was twisting a squash hat
in his hands.  In his own peculiar style he was impressive.  But
why couldn't he look you in the face; or, if he did, why did he
seem about to eat you?

"You knew I was returned to London, Major Winton?"

Then Gyp had been seeing the fellow without letting him know!  The
thought was chill and bitter to Winton.  He must not give her away,
however, and he simply bowed.  He felt that his visitor was afraid
of his frigid courtesy; and he did not mean to help him over that
fear.  He could not, of course, realize that this ascendancy would
not prevent Fiorsen from laughing at him behind his back and acting
as if he did not exist.  No real contest, in fact, was possible
between men moving on such different planes, neither having the
slightest respect for the other's standards or beliefs.

Fiorsen, who had begun to pace the room, stopped, and said with
agitation:

"Major Winton, your daughter is the most beautiful thing on earth.
I love her desperately.  I am a man with a future, though you may
not think it.  I have what future I like in my art if only I can
marry her.  I have a little money, too--not much; but in my violin
there is all the fortune she can want."

Winton's face expressed nothing but cold contempt.  That this
fellow should take him for one who would consider money in
connection with his daughter simply affronted him.

Fiorsen went on:

"You do not like me--that is clear.  I saw it the first moment.
You are an English gentleman"--he pronounced the words with a sort
of irony--"I am nothing to you.  Yet, in MY world, I am something.
I am not an adventurer.  Will you permit me to beg your daughter to
be my wife?"  He raised his hands that still held the hat;
involuntarily they had assumed the attitude of prayer.

For a second, Winton realized that he was suffering.  That weakness
went in a flash, and he said frigidly:

"I am obliged to you, sir, for coming to me first.  You are in my
house, and I don't want to be discourteous, but I should be glad if
you would be good enough to withdraw and take it that I shall
certainly oppose your wish as best I can."

The almost childish disappointment and trouble in Fiorsen's face
changed quickly to an expression fierce, furtive, mocking; and then
shifted to despair.

"Major Winton, you have loved; you must have loved her mother.  I
suffer!"

Winton, who had turned abruptly to the fire, faced round again.

"I don't control my daughter's affections, sir; she will do as she
wishes.  I merely say it will be against my hopes and judgment if
she marries you.  I imagine you've not altogether waited for my
leave.  I was not blind to the way you hung about her at Wiesbaden,
Mr. Fiorsen."

Fiorsen answered with a twisted, miserable smile:

"Poor wretches do what they can.  May I see her?  Let me just see
her."

Was it any good to refuse?  She had been seeing the fellow already
without his knowledge, keeping from him--HIM--all her feelings,
whatever they were.  And he said:

"I'll send for her.  In the meantime, perhaps you'll have some
refreshment?"

Fiorsen shook his head, and there followed half an hour of acute
discomfort.  Winton, in his mud-stained clothes before the fire,
supported it better than his visitor.  That child of nature, after
endeavouring to emulate his host's quietude, renounced all such
efforts with an expressive gesture, fidgeted here, fidgeted there,
tramped the room, went to the window, drew aside the curtains and
stared out into the dark; came back as if resolved again to
confront Winton; then, baffled by that figure so motionless before
the fire, flung himself down in an armchair, and turned his face to
the wall.  Winton was not cruel by nature, but he enjoyed the
writhings of this fellow who was endangering Gyp's happiness.
Endangering?  Surely not possible that she would accept him!  Yet,
if not, why had she not told him?  And he, too, suffered.

Then she came.  He had expected her to be pale and nervous; but Gyp
never admitted being naughty till she had been forgiven.  Her
smiling face had in it a kind of warning closeness.  She went up to
Fiorsen, and holding out her hand, said calmly:

"How nice of you to come!"

Winton had the bitter feeling that he--he--was the outsider.  Well,
he would speak plainly; there had been too much underhand doing.

"Mr. Fiorsen has done us the honour to wish to marry you.  I've
told him that you decide such things for yourself.  If you accept
him, it will be against my wish, naturally."

While he was speaking, the glow in her cheeks deepened; she looked
neither at him nor at Fiorsen.  Winton noted the rise and fall of
the lace on her breast.  She was smiling, and gave the tiniest
shrug of her shoulders.  And, suddenly smitten to the heart, he
walked stiffly to the door.  It was evident that she had no use for
his guidance.  If her love for him was not worth to her more than
this fellow!  But there his resentment stopped.  He knew that he
could not afford wounded feelings; could not get on without her.
Married to the greatest rascal on earth, he would still be standing
by her, wanting her companionship and love.  She represented too
much in the present and--the past.  With sore heart, indeed, he
went down to dinner.

Fiorsen was gone when he came down again.  What the fellow had
said, or she had answered, he would not for the world have asked.
Gulfs between the proud are not lightly bridged.  And when she came
up to say good-night, both their faces were as though coated with
wax.

In the days that followed, she gave no sign, uttered no word in any
way suggesting that she meant to go against his wishes.  Fiorsen
might not have existed, for any mention made of him.  But Winton
knew well that she was moping, and cherishing some feeling against
himself.  And this he could not bear.  So, one evening, after
dinner, he said quietly:

"Tell me frankly, Gyp; do you care for that chap?"

She answered as quietly:

"In a way--yes."

"Is that enough?"

"I don't know, Dad."

Her lips had quivered; and Winton's heart softened, as it always
did when he saw her moved.  He put his hand out, covered one of
hers, and said:

"I shall never stand in the way of your happiness, Gyp.  But it
must BE happiness.  Can it possibly be that?  I don't think so.
You know what they said of him out there?"

"Yes."

He had not thought she knew.  And his heart sank.

"That's pretty bad, you know.  And is he of our world at all?"

Gyp looked up.

"Do you think I belong to 'our world,' Dad?"

Winton turned away.  She followed, slipping her hand under his arm.

"I didn't mean to hurt.  But it's true, isn't it?  I don't belong
among society people.  They wouldn't have me, you know--if they
knew about what you told me.  Ever since that I've felt I don't
belong to them.  I'm nearer him.  Music means more to me than
anything!"

Winton gave her hand a convulsive grip.  A sense of coming defeat
and bereavement was on him.

"If your happiness went wrong, Gyp, I should be most awfully cut
up."

"But why shouldn't I be happy, Dad?"

"If you were, I could put up with anyone.  But, I tell you, I can't
believe you would be.  I beg you, my dear--for God's sake, make
sure.  I'll put a bullet into the man who treats you badly."

Gyp laughed, then kissed him.  But they were silent.  At bedtime he
said:

"We'll go up to town to-morrow."

Whether from a feeling of the inevitable, or from the forlorn hope
that seeing more of the fellow might be the only chance of curing
her--he put no more obstacles in the way.

And the queer courtship began again.  By Christmas she had
consented, still under the impression that she was the mistress,
not the slave--the cat, not the bird.  Once or twice, when Fiorsen
let passion out of hand and his overbold caresses affronted her,
she recoiled almost with dread from what she was going toward.
But, in general, she lived elated, intoxicated by music and his
adoration, withal remorseful that she was making her father sad.
She was but little at Mildenham, and he, in his unhappiness, was
there nearly all the time, riding extra hard, and leaving Gyp with
his sister.  Aunt Rosamund, though under the spell of Fiorsen's
music, had agreed with her brother that Fiorsen was "impossible."
But nothing she said made any effect on Gyp.  It was new and
startling to discover in this soft, sensitive girl such a vein of
stubbornness.  Opposition seemed to harden her resolution.  And the
good lady's natural optimism began to persuade her that Gyp would
make a silk purse out of that sow's ear yet.  After all, the man
was a celebrity in his way!

It was settled for February.  A house with a garden was taken in
St. John's Wood.  The last month went, as all such last months go,
in those intoxicating pastimes, the buying of furniture and
clothes.  If it were not for that, who knows how many engagement
knots would slip!


And to-day they had been married.  To the last, Winton had hardly
believed it would come to that.  He had shaken the hand of her
husband and kept pain and disappointment out of his face, knowing
well that he deceived no one.  Thank heaven, there had been no
church, no wedding-cake, invitations, congratulations, fal-lals of
any kind--he could never have stood them.  Not even Rosamund--who
had influenza--to put up with!

Lying back in the recesses of that old chair, he stared into the
fire.

They would be just about at Torquay by now--just about.  Music!
Who would have thought noises made out of string and wood could
have stolen her away from him?  Yes, they would be at Torquay by
now, at their hotel.  And the first prayer Winton had uttered for
years escaped his lips:

"Let her be happy!  Let her be happy!"

Then, hearing Markey open the door, he closed his eyes and feigned
sleep.


Part II


I


When a girl first sits opposite the man she has married, of what
does she think?  Not of the issues and emotions that lie in wait.
They are too overwhelming; she would avoid them while she can.  Gyp
thought of her frock, a mushroom-coloured velvet cord.  Not many
girls of her class are married without "fal-lals," as Winton had
called them.  Not many girls sit in the corner of their reserved
first-class compartments without the excitement of having been
supreme centre of the world for some flattering hours to buoy them
up on that train journey, with no memories of friends' behaviour,
speech, appearance, to chat of with her husband, so as to keep
thought away.  For Gyp, her dress, first worn that day, Betty's
breakdown, the faces, blank as hats, of the registrar and clerk,
were about all she had to distract her.  She stole a look at her
husband, clothed in blue serge, just opposite.  Her husband!  Mrs.
Gustav Fiorsen!  No!  People might call her that; to herself, she
was Ghita Winton.  Ghita Fiorsen would never seem right.  And, not
confessing that she was afraid to meet his eyes, but afraid all the
same, she looked out of the window.  A dull, bleak, dismal day; no
warmth, no sun, no music in it--the Thames as grey as lead, the
willows on its banks forlorn.

Suddenly she felt his hand on hers.  She had not seen his face like
that before--yes; once or twice when he was playing--a spirit
shining though.  She felt suddenly secure.  If it stayed like that,
then!--His hand rested on her knee; his face changed just a little;
the spirit seemed to waver, to be fading; his lips grew fuller.  He
crossed over and sat beside her.  Instantly she began to talk about
their house, where they were going to put certain things--presents
and all that.  He, too, talked of the house; but every now and then
he glanced at the corridor, and muttered.  It was pleasant to feel
that the thought of her possessed him through and through, but she
was tremulously glad of that corridor.  Life is mercifully made up
of little things!  And Gyp was always able to live in the moment.
In the hours they had spent together, up to now, he had been like a
starved man snatching hasty meals; now that he had her to himself
for good, he was another creature altogether--like a boy out of
school, and kept her laughing nearly all the time.

Presently he got down his practise violin, and putting on the mute,
played, looking at her over his shoulder with a droll smile.  She
felt happy, much warmer at heart, now.  And when his face was
turned away, she looked at him.  He was so much better looking now
than when he had those little whiskers.  One day she had touched
one of them and said: "Ah! if only these wings could fly!"  Next
morning they had flown.  His face was not one to be easily got used
to; she was not used to it yet, any more than she was used to his
touch.  When it grew dark, and he wanted to draw down the blinds,
she caught him by the sleeve, and said:

"No, no; they'll know we're honeymooners!"

"Well, my Gyp, and are we not?"

But he obeyed; only, as the hours went on, his eyes seemed never to
let her alone.

At Torquay, the sky was clear and starry; the wind brought whiffs
of sea-scent into their cab; lights winked far out on a headland;
and in the little harbour, all bluish dark, many little boats
floated like tame birds.  He had put his arm round her, and she
could feel his hand resting on her heart.  She was grateful that he
kept so still.  When the cab stopped and they entered the hall of
the hotel, she whispered:

"Don't let's let them see!"

Still, mercifully, little things!  Inspecting the three rooms,
getting the luggage divided between dressing-room and bedroom,
unpacking, wondering which dress to put on for dinner, stopping to
look out over the dark rocks and the sea, where the moon was coming
up, wondering if she dared lock the door while she was dressing,
deciding that it would be silly; dressing so quickly, fluttering
when she found him suddenly there close behind her, beginning to do
up her hooks.  Those fingers were too skilful!  It was the first
time she had thought of his past with a sort of hurt pride and
fastidiousness.  When he had finished, he twisted her round, held
her away, looked at her from head to foot, and said below his
breath:

"Mine!"

Her heart beat fast then; but suddenly he laughed, slipped his arm
about her, and danced her twice round the room.  He let her go
demurely down the stairs in front of him, saying:

"They shan't see--my Gyp.  Oh, they shan't see!  We are old married
people, tired of each other--very!"

At dinner it amused him at first--her too, a little--to keep up
this farce of indifference.  But every now and then he turned and
stared at some inoffensive visitor who was taking interest in them,
with such fierce and genuine contempt that Gyp took alarm; whereon
he laughed.  When she had drunk a little wine and he had drunk a
good deal, the farce of indifference came to its end.  He talked at
a great rate now, slying nicknaming the waiters and mimicking the
people around--happy thrusts that made her smile but shiver a
little, lest they should be heard or seen.  Their heads were close
together across the little table.  They went out into the lounge.
Coffee came, and he wanted her to smoke with him.  She had never
smoked in a public room.  But it seemed stiff and "missish" to
refuse--she must do now as his world did.  And it was another
little thing; she wanted little things, all the time wanted them.
She drew back a window-curtain, and they stood there side by side.
The sea was deep blue beneath bright stars, and the moon shone
through a ragged pine-tree on a little headland.  Though she stood
five feet six in her shoes, she was only up to his mouth.  He
sighed and said: "Beautiful night, my Gyp!"  And suddenly it struck
her that she knew nothing of what was in him, and yet he was her
husband!  "Husband"--funny word, not pretty!  She felt as a child
opening the door of a dark room, and, clutching his arm, said:

"Look!  There's a sailing-boat.  What's it doing out there at
night?"  Another little thing!  Any little thing!

Presently he said:

"Come up-stairs!  I'll play to you."

Up in their sitting-room was a piano, but--not possible; to-morrow
they would have to get another.  To-morrow!  The fire was hot, and
he took off his coat to play.  In one of his shirt-sleeves there
was a rent.  She thought, with a sort of triumph: 'I shall mend
that!'  It was something definite, actual--a little thing.  There
were lilies in the room that gave a strong, sweet scent.  He
brought them up to her to sniff, and, while she was sniffing,
stooped suddenly and kissed her neck.  She shut her eyes with a
shiver.  He took the flowers away at once, and when she opened her
eyes again, his violin was at his shoulder.  For a whole hour he
played, and Gyp, in her cream-coloured frock, lay back, listening.
She was tired, not sleepy.  It would have been nice to have been
sleepy.  Her mouth had its little sad tuck or dimple at the corner;
her eyes were deep and dark--a cloudy child.  His gaze never left
her face; he played and played, and his own fitful face grew
clouded.  At last he put away the violin, and said:

"Go to bed, Gyp; you're tired."

Obediently she got up and went into the bedroom.  With a sick
feeling in her heart, and as near the fire as she could get, she
undressed with desperate haste, and got to bed.  An age--it seemed--
she lay there shivering in her flimsy lawn against the cold
sheets, her eyes not quite closed, watching the flicker of the
firelight.  She did not think--could not--just lay stiller than the
dead.  The door creaked.  She shut her eyes.  Had she a heart at
all?  It did not seem to beat.  She lay thus, with eyes shut, till
she could bear it no longer.  By the firelight she saw him
crouching at the foot of the bed; could just see his face--like a
face--a face--where seen?  Ah yes!--a picture--of a wild man
crouching at the feet of Iphigenia--so humble, so hungry--so lost
in gazing.  She gave a little smothered sob and held out her hand.


II


Gyp was too proud to give by halves.  And in those early days she
gave Fiorsen everything except--her heart.  She earnestly desired
to give that too; but hearts only give themselves.  Perhaps if the
wild man in him, maddened by beauty in its power, had not so ousted
the spirit man, her heart might have gone with her lips and the
rest of her.  He knew he was not getting her heart, and it made
him, in the wildness of his nature and the perversity of a man, go
just the wrong way to work, trying to conquer her by the senses,
not the soul.

Yet she was not unhappy--it cannot be said she was unhappy, except
for a sort of lost feeling sometimes, as if she were trying to
grasp something that kept slipping, slipping away.  She was glad to
give him pleasure.  She felt no repulsion--this was man's nature.
Only there was always that feeling that she was not close.  When he
was playing, with the spirit-look on his face, she would feel:
'Now, now, surely I shall get close to him!'  But the look would
go; how to keep it there she did not know, and when it went, her
feeling went too.

Their little suite of rooms was at the very end of the hotel, so
that he might play as much as he wished.  While he practised in the
mornings she would go into the garden, which sloped in rock-
terraces down to the sea.  Wrapped in fur, she would sit there with
a book.  She soon knew each evergreen, or flower that was coming
out--aubretia, and laurustinus, a little white flower whose name
was uncertain, and one star-periwinkle.  The air was often soft;
the birds sang already and were busy with their weddings, and
twice, at least, spring came in her heart--that wonderful feeling
when first the whole being scents new life preparing in the earth
and the wind--the feeling that only comes when spring is not yet,
and one aches and rejoices all at once.  Seagulls often came over
her, craning down their greedy bills and uttering cries like a
kitten's mewing.

Out here she had feelings, that she did not get with him, of being
at one with everything.  She did not realize how tremendously she
had grown up in these few days, how the ground bass had already
come into the light music of her life.  Living with Fiorsen was
opening her eyes to much beside mere knowledge of "man's nature";
with her perhaps fatal receptivity, she was already soaking up the
atmosphere of his philosophy.  He was always in revolt against
accepting things because he was expected to; but, like most
executant artists, he was no reasoner, just a mere instinctive
kicker against the pricks.  He would lose himself in delight with a
sunset, a scent, a tune, a new caress, in a rush of pity for a
beggar or a blind man, a rush of aversion from a man with large
feet or a long nose, of hatred for a woman with a flat chest or an
expression of sanctimony.  He would swing along when he was
walking, or dawdle, dawdle; he would sing and laugh, and make her
laugh too till she ached, and half an hour later would sit staring
into some pit of darkness in a sort of powerful brooding of his
whole being.  Insensibly she shared in this deep drinking of
sensation, but always gracefully, fastidiously, never losing sense
of other people's feelings.

In his love-raptures, he just avoided setting her nerves on edge,
because he never failed to make her feel his enjoyment of her
beauty; that perpetual consciousness, too, of not belonging to the
proper and respectable, which she had tried to explain to her
father, made her set her teeth against feeling shocked.  But in
other ways he did shock her.  She could not get used to his utter
oblivion of people's feelings, to the ferocious contempt with which
he would look at those who got on his nerves, and make half-audible
comments, just as he had commented on her own father when he and
Count Rosek passed them, by the Schiller statue.  She would visibly
shrink at those remarks, though they were sometimes so
excruciatingly funny that she had to laugh, and feel dreadful
immediately after.  She saw that he resented her shrinking; it
seemed to excite him to run amuck the more.  But she could not help
it.  Once she got up and walked away.  He followed her, sat on the
floor beside her knees, and thrust his head, like a great cat,
under her hand.

"Forgive me, my Gyp; but they are such brutes.  Who could help it?
Now tell me--who could, except my Gyp?"  And she had to forgive
him.  But, one evening, when he had been really outrageous during
dinner, she answered:

"No; I can't.  It's you that are the brute.  You WERE a brute to
them!"

He leaped up with a face of furious gloom and went out of the room.
It was the first time he had given way to anger with her.  Gyp sat
by the fire, very disturbed; chiefly because she was not really
upset at having hurt him.  Surely she ought to be feeling miserable
at that!

But when, at ten o'clock, he had not come back, she began to
flutter in earnest.  She had said a dreadful thing!  And yet, in
her heart, she did not take back her judgment.  He really HAD been
a brute.  She would have liked to soothe herself by playing, but it
was too late to disturb people, and going to the window, she looked
out over the sea, feeling beaten and confused.  This was the first
time she had given free rein to her feeling against what Winton
would have called his "bounderism."  If he had been English, she
would never have been attracted by one who could trample so on
other people's feelings.  What, then, had attracted her?  His
strangeness, wildness, the mesmeric pull of his passion for her,
his music!  Nothing could spoil that in him.  The sweep, the surge,
and sigh in his playing was like the sea out there, dark, and surf-
edged, beating on the rocks; or the sea deep-coloured in daylight,
with white gulls over it; or the sea with those sinuous paths made
by the wandering currents, the subtle, smiling, silent sea, holding
in suspense its unfathomable restlessness, waiting to surge and
spring again.  That was what she wanted from him--not his embraces,
not even his adoration, his wit, or his queer, lithe comeliness
touched with felinity; no, only that in his soul which escaped
through his fingers into the air and dragged at her soul.  If, when
he came in, she were to run to him, throw her arms round his neck,
make herself feel close, lose herself in him!  Why not?  It was her
duty; why not her delight, too?  But she shivered.  Some instinct
too deep for analysis, something in the very heart of her nerves
made her recoil, as if she were afraid, literally scared of letting
herself go, of loving--the subtlest instinct of self-preservation
against something fatal; against being led on beyond--yes, it was
like that curious, instinctive sinking which some feel at the mere
sight of a precipice, a dread of going near, lest they should be
drawn on and over by resistless attraction.

She passed into their bedroom and began slowly to undress.  To go
to bed without knowing where he was, what doing, thinking, seemed
already a little odd; and she sat brushing her hair slowly with the
silver-backed brushes, staring at her own pale face, whose eyes
looked so very large and dark.  At last there came to her the
feeling: "I can't help it!  I don't care!"  And, getting into bed,
she turned out the light.  It seemed queer and lonely; there was no
fire.  And then, without more ado, she slept.

She had a dream of being between Fiorsen and her father in a
railway-carriage out at sea, with the water rising higher and
higher, swishing and sighing.  Awakening always, like a dog, to
perfect presence of mind, she knew that he was playing in the
sitting-room, playing--at what time of night?  She lay listening to
a quivering, gibbering tune that she did not know.  Should she be
first to make it up, or should she wait for him?  Twice she half
slipped out of bed, but both times, as if fate meant her not to
move, he chose that moment to swell out the sound, and each time
she thought: 'No, I can't.  It's just the same now; he doesn't care
how many people he wakes up.  He does just what he likes, and cares
nothing for anyone.'  And covering her ears with her hands, she
continued to lie motionless.

When she withdrew her hands at last, he had stopped.  Then she
heard him coming, and feigned sleep.  But he did not spare even
sleep.  She submitted to his kisses without a word, her heart
hardening within her--surely he smelled of brandy!  Next morning he
seemed to have forgotten it all.  But Gyp had not.  She wanted
badly to know what he had felt, where he had gone, but was too
proud to ask.

She wrote twice to her father in the first week, but afterwards,
except for a postcard now and then, she never could.  Why tell him
what she was doing, in company of one whom he could not bear to
think of?  Had he been right?  To confess that would hurt her pride
too much.  But she began to long for London.  The thought of her
little house was a green spot to dwell on.  When they were settled
in, and could do what they liked without anxiety about people's
feelings, it would be all right perhaps.  When he could start again
really working, and she helping him, all would be different.  Her
new house, and so much to do; her new garden, and fruit-trees
coming into blossom!  She would have dogs and cats, would ride when
Dad was in town.  Aunt Rosamund would come, friends, evenings of
music, dances still, perhaps--he danced beautifully, and loved it,
as she did.  And his concerts--the elation of being identified with
his success!  But, above all, the excitement of making her home as
dainty as she could, with daring experiments in form and colour.
And yet, at heart she knew that to be already looking forward,
banning the present, was a bad sign.

One thing, at all events, she enjoyed--sailing.  They had blue days
when even the March sun was warm, and there was just breeze enough.
He got on excellently well with the old salt whose boat they used,
for he was at his best with simple folk, whose lingo he could
understand about as much as they could understand his.

In those hours, Gyp had some real sensations of romance.  The sea
was so blue, the rocks and wooded spurs of that Southern coast so
dreamy in the bright land-haze.  Oblivious of "the old salt," he
would put his arm round her; out there, she could swallow down her
sense of form, and be grateful for feeling nearer to him in spirit.
She made loyal efforts to understand him in these weeks that were
bringing a certain disillusionment.  The elemental part of marriage
was not the trouble; if she did not herself feel passion, she did
not resent his.  When, after one of those embraces, his mouth
curled with a little bitter smile, as if to say, "Yes, much you
care for me," she would feel compunctious and yet aggrieved.  But
the trouble lay deeper--the sense of an insuperable barrier; and
always that deep, instinctive recoil from letting herself go.  She
could not let herself be known, and she could not know him.  Why
did his eyes often fix her with a stare that did not seem to see
her?  What made him, in the midst of serious playing, break into
some furious or desolate little tune, or drop his violin?  What
gave him those long hours of dejection, following the maddest
gaiety?  Above all, what dreams had he in those rare moments when
music transformed his strange pale face?  Or was it a mere physical
illusion--had he any dreams?  "The heart of another is a dark
forest"--to all but the one who loves.

One morning, he held up a letter.

"Ah, ha!  Paul Rosek went to see our house.  'A pretty dove's
nest!' he calls it."

The memory of the Pole's sphinxlike, sweetish face, and eyes that
seemed to know so many secrets, always affected Gyp unpleasantly.
She said quietly:

"Why do you like him, Gustav?"

"Like him?  Oh, he is useful.  A good judge of music, and--many
things."

"I think he is hateful."

Fiorsen laughed.

"Hateful?  Why hateful, my Gyp?  He is a good friend.  And he
admires you--oh, he admires you very much!  He has success with
women.  He always says, 'J'ai une technique merveilleuse pour
seduire une femme'"

Gyp laughed.

"Ugh!  He's like a toad, I think."

"Ah, I shall tell him that!  He will be flattered."

"If you do; if you give me away--I--"

He jumped up and caught her in his arms; his face was so comically
compunctious that she calmed down at once.  She thought over her
words afterwards and regretted them.  All the same, Rosek was a
sneak and a cold sensualist, she was sure.  And the thought that he
had been spying at their little house tarnished her anticipations
of homecoming.

They went to Town three days later.  While the taxi was skirting
Lord's Cricket-ground, Gyp slipped her hand into Fiorsen's.  She
was brimful of excitement.  The trees were budding in the gardens
that they passed; the almond-blossom coming--yes, really coming!
They were in the road now.  Five, seven, nine--thirteen!  Two more!
There it was, nineteen, in white figures on the leaf-green
railings, under the small green lilac buds; yes, and their almond-
blossom was out, too!  She could just catch a glimpse over those
tall railings of the low white house with its green outside
shutters.  She jumped out almost into the arms of Betty, who stood
smiling all over her broad, flushed face, while, from under each
arm peered forth the head of a black devil, with pricked ears and
eyes as bright as diamonds.

"Betty!  What darlings!"

"Major Winton's present, my dear--ma'am!"

Giving the stout shoulders a hug, Gyp seized the black devils, and
ran up the path under the trellis, while the Scotch-terrier pups,
squeezed against her breast, made confused small noises and licked
her nose and ears.  Through the square hall she ran into the
drawing-room, which opened out on to the lawn; and there, in the
French window, stood spying back at the spick-and-span room, where
everything was, of course, placed just wrong.  The colouring,
white, ebony, and satinwood, looked nicer even than she had hoped.
Out in the garden--her own garden--the pear-trees were thickening,
but not in blossom yet; a few daffodils were in bloom along the
walls, and a magnolia had one bud opened.  And all the time she
kept squeezing the puppies to her, enjoying their young, warm,
fluffy savour, and letting them kiss her.  She ran out of the
drawing-room, up the stairs.  Her bedroom, the dressing-room, the
spare room, the bathroom--she dashed into them all.  Oh, it was
nice to be in your own place, to be--Suddenly she felt herself
lifted off the ground from behind, and in that undignified
position, her eyes flying, she turned her face till he could reach
her lips.


III

To wake, and hear the birds at early practise, and feel that winter
is over--is there any pleasanter moment?

That first morning in her new house, Gyp woke with the sparrow, or
whatever the bird which utters the first cheeps and twitters, soon
eclipsed by so much that is more important in bird-song.  It seemed
as if all the feathered creatures in London must be assembled in
her garden; and the old verse came into her head:


     "All dear Nature's children sweet
      Lie at bride and bridegroom's feet,
      Blessing their sense.
      Not a creature of the air,
      Bird melodious or bird fair,
      Be absent hence!"


She turned and looked at her husband.  He lay with his head
snoozled down into the pillow, so that she could only see his
thick, rumpled hair.  And a shiver went through her, exactly as if
a strange man were lying there.  Did he really belong to her, and
she to him--for good?  And was this their house--together?  It all
seemed somehow different, more serious and troubling, in this
strange bed, of this strange room, that was to be so permanent.
Careful not to wake him, she slipped out and stood between the
curtains and the window.  Light was all in confusion yet; away low
down behind the trees, the rose of dawn still clung.  One might
almost have been in the country, but for the faint, rumorous noises
of the town beginning to wake, and that film of ground-mist which
veils the feet of London mornings.  She thought: "I am mistress in
this house, have to direct it all--see to everything!  And my pups!
Oh, what do they eat?"

That was the first of many hours of anxiety, for she was very
conscientious.  Her fastidiousness desired perfection, but her
sensitiveness refused to demand it of others--especially servants.
Why should she harry them?

Fiorsen had not the faintest notion of regularity.  She found that
he could not even begin to appreciate her struggles in
housekeeping.  And she was much too proud to ask his help, or
perhaps too wise, since he was obviously unfit to give it.  To live
like the birds of the air was his motto.  Gyp would have liked
nothing better; but, for that, one must not have a house with three
servants, several meals, two puppy-dogs, and no great experience of
how to deal with any of them.

She spoke of her difficulties to no one and suffered the more.
With Betty--who, bone-conservative, admitted Fiorsen as hardly as
she had once admitted Winton--she had to be very careful.  But her
great trouble was with her father.  Though she longed to see him,
she literally dreaded their meeting.  He first came--as he had been
wont to come when she was a tiny girl--at the hour when he thought
the fellow to whom she now belonged would most likely be out.  Her
heart beat, when she saw him under the trellis.  She opened the
door herself, and hung about him so that his shrewd eyes should not
see her face.  And she began at once to talk of the puppies, whom
she had named Don and Doff.  They were perfect darlings; nothing
was safe from them; her slippers were completely done for; they had
already got into her china-cabinet and gone to sleep there!  He
must come and see all over.

Hooking her arm into his, and talking all the time, she took him
up-stairs and down, and out into the garden, to the studio, or
music-room, at the end, which had an entrance to itself on to a
back lane.  This room had been the great attraction.  Fiorsen could
practice there in peace.  Winton went along with her very quietly,
making a shrewd comment now and then.  At the far end of the
garden, looking over the wall, down into that narrow passage which
lay between it and the back of another garden he squeezed her arm
suddenly and said:

"Well, Gyp, what sort of a time?"

The question had come at last.

"Oh, rather lovely--in some ways."  But she did not look at him,
nor he at her.  "See, Dad!  The cats have made quite a path there!"

Winton bit his lips and turned from the wall.  The thought of that
fellow was bitter within him.  She meant to tell him nothing, meant
to keep up that lighthearted look--which didn't deceive him a bit!

"Look at my crocuses!  It's really spring today!"

It was.  Even a bee or two had come.  The tiny leaves had a
transparent look, too thin as yet to keep the sunlight from passing
through them.  The purple, delicate-veined crocuses, with little
flames of orange blowing from their centres, seemed to hold the
light as in cups.  A wind, without harshness, swung the boughs; a
dry leaf or two still rustled round here and there.  And on the
grass, and in the blue sky, and on the almond-blossom was the first
spring brilliance.  Gyp clasped her hands behind her head.

"Lovely--to feel the spring!"

And Winton thought: 'She's changed!'  She had softened, quickened--
more depth of colour in her, more gravity, more sway in her body,
more sweetness in her smile.  But--was she happy?

A voice said:

"Ah, what a pleasure!"

The fellow had slunk up like the great cat he was.  And it seemed
to Winton that Gyp had winced.

"Dad thinks we ought to have dark curtains in the music-room,
Gustav."

Fiorsen made a bow.

"Yes, yes--like a London club."

Winton, watching, was sure of supplication in her face.  And,
forcing a smile, he said:

"You seem very snug here.  Glad to see you again.  Gyp looks
splendid."

Another of those bows he so detested!  Mountebank!  Never, never
would he be able to stand the fellow!  But he must not, would not,
show it.  And, as soon as he decently could, he went, taking his
lonely way back through this region, of which his knowledge was
almost limited to Lord's Cricket-ground, with a sense of doubt and
desolation, an irritation more than ever mixed with the resolve to
be always at hand if the child wanted him.

He had not been gone ten minutes before Aunt Rosamund appeared,
with a crutch-handled stick and a gentlemanly limp, for she, too,
indulged her ancestors in gout.  A desire for exclusive possession
of their friends is natural to some people, and the good lady had
not known how fond she was of her niece till the girl had slipped
off into this marriage.  She wanted her back, to go about with and
make much of, as before.  And her well-bred drawl did not quite
disguise this feeling.

Gyp could detect Fiorsen subtly mimicking that drawl; and her ears
began to burn.  The puppies afforded a diversion--their points,
noses, boldness, and food, held the danger in abeyance for some
minutes.  Then the mimicry began again.  When Aunt Rosamund had
taken a somewhat sudden leave, Gyp stood at the window of her
drawing-room with the mask off her face.  Fiorsen came up, put his
arm round her from behind, and said with a fierce sigh:

"Are they coming often--these excellent people?"

Gyp drew back from him against the wall.

"If you love me, why do you try to hurt the people who love me
too?"

"Because I am jealous.  I am jealous even of those puppies."

"And shall you try to hurt them?"

"If I see them too much near you, perhaps I shall."

"Do you think I can be happy if you hurt things because they love
me?"

He sat down and drew her on to his knee.  She did not resist, but
made not the faintest return to his caresses.  The first time--the
very first friend to come into her own new home!  It was too much!

Fiorsen said hoarsely:

"You do not love me.  If you loved me, I should feel it through
your lips.  I should see it in your eyes.  Oh, love me, Gyp!  You
shall!"

But to say to Love: "Stand and deliver!" was not the way to touch
Gyp.  It seemed to her mere ill-bred stupidity.  She froze against
him in soul, all the more that she yielded her body.  When a woman
refuses nothing to one whom she does not really love, shadows are
already falling on the bride-house.  And Fiorsen knew it; but his
self-control about equalled that of the two puppies.

Yet, on the whole, these first weeks in her new home were happy,
too busy to allow much room for doubting or regret.  Several
important concerts were fixed for May.  She looked forward to these
with intense eagerness, and pushed everything that interfered with
preparation into the background.  As though to make up for that
instinctive recoil from giving her heart, of which she was always
subconscious, she gave him all her activities, without calculation
or reserve.  She was ready to play for him all day and every day,
just as from the first she had held herself at the disposal of his
passion.  To fail him in these ways would have tarnished her
opinion of herself.  But she had some free hours in the morning,
for he had the habit of lying in bed till eleven, and was never
ready for practise before twelve.  In those early hours she got
through her orders and her shopping--that pursuit which to so many
women is the only real "sport"--a chase of the ideal; a pitting of
one's taste and knowledge against that of the world at large; a
secret passion, even in the beautiful, for making oneself and one's
house more beautiful.  Gyp never went shopping without that faint
thrill running up and down her nerves.  She hated to be touched by
strange fingers, but not even that stopped her pleasure in turning
and turning before long mirrors, while the saleswoman or man, with
admiration at first crocodilic and then genuine, ran the tips of
fingers over those curves, smoothing and pinning, and uttering the
word, "moddam."

On other mornings, she would ride with Winton, who would come for
her, leaving her again at her door after their outings.  One day,
after a ride in Richmond Park, where the horse-chestnuts were just
coming into flower, they had late breakfast on the veranda of a
hotel before starting for home.  Some fruit-trees were still in
blossom just below them, and the sunlight showering down from a
blue sky brightened to silver the windings of the river, and to
gold the budding leaves of the oak-trees.  Winton, smoking his
after-breakfast cigar, stared down across the tops of those trees
toward the river and the wooded fields beyond.  Stealing a glance
at him, Gyp said very softly:

"Did you ever ride with my mother, Dad?"

"Only once--the very ride we've been to-day.  She was on a black
mare; I had a chestnut--"  Yes, in that grove on the little hill,
which they had ridden through that morning, he had dismounted and
stood beside her.

Gyp stretched her hand across the table and laid it on his.

"Tell me about her, dear.  Was she beautiful?"

"Yes."

"Dark?  Tall?"

"Very like you, Gyp.  A little--a little"--he did not know how to
describe that difference--"a little more foreign-looking perhaps.
One of her grandmothers was Italian, you know."

"How did you come to love her?  Suddenly?"

"As suddenly as"--he drew his hand away and laid it on the veranda
rail--"as that sun came on my hand."

Gyp said quietly, as if to herself:

"Yes; I don't think I understand that--yet."

Winton drew breath through his teeth with a subdued hiss.

"Did she love you at first sight, too?"

He blew out a long puff of smoke.

"One easily believes what one wants to--but I think she did.  She
used to say so."

"And how long?"

"Only a year."

Gyp said very softly:

"Poor darling Dad."  And suddenly she added: "I can't bear to think
I killed her--I can't bear it!"

Winton got up in the discomfort of these sudden confidences; a
blackbird, startled by the movement, ceased his song.  Gyp said in
a hard voice:

"No; I don't want to have any children."

"Without that, I shouldn't have had you, Gyp."

"No; but I don't want to have them.  And I don't--I don't want to
love like that.  I should be afraid."

Winton looked at her for a long time without speaking, his brows
drawn down, frowning, puzzled, as though over his own past.

"Love," he said, "it catches you, and you're gone.  When it comes,
you welcome it, whether it's to kill you or not.  Shall we start
back, my child?"

When she got home, it was not quite noon.  She hurried over her
bath and dressing, and ran out to the music-room.  Its walls had
been hung with Willesden scrim gilded over; the curtains were
silver-grey; there was a divan covered with silver-and-gold stuff,
and a beaten brass fireplace.  It was a study in silver, and gold,
save for two touches of fantasy--a screen round the piano-head,
covered with brilliantly painted peacocks' tails, and a blue
Persian vase, in which were flowers of various hues of red.

Fiorsen was standing at the window in a fume of cigarette smoke.
He did not turn round.  Gyp put her hand within his arm, and said:

"So sorry, dear.  But it's only just half-past twelve."

His face was as if the whole world had injured him.

"Pity you came back!  Very nice, riding, I'm sure!"

Could she not go riding with her own father?  What insensate
jealousy and egomania!  She turned away, without a word, and sat
down at the piano.  She was not good at standing injustice--not
good at all!  The scent of brandy, too, was mixed with the fumes of
his cigarette.  Drink in the morning was so ugly--really horrid!
She sat at the piano, waiting.  He would be like this till he had
played away the fumes of his ill mood, and then he would come and
paw her shoulders and put his lips to her neck.  Yes; but it was
not the way to behave, not the way to make her love him.  And she
said suddenly:

"Gustav; what exactly have I done that you dislike?"

"You have had a father."

Gyp sat quite still for a few seconds, and then began to laugh.  He
looked so like a sulky child, standing there.  He turned swiftly on
her and put his hand over her mouth.  She looked up over that hand
which smelled of tobacco.  Her heart was doing the grand ecart
within her, this way in compunction, that way in resentment.  His
eyes fell before hers; he dropped his hand.

"Well, shall we begin?" she said.

He answered roughly: "No," and went out into the garden.

Gyp was left dismayed, disgusted.  Was it possible that she could
have taken part in such a horrid little scene?  She remained
sitting at the piano, playing over and over a single passage,
without heeding what it was.


IV


So far, they had seen nothing of Rosek at the little house.  She
wondered if Fiorsen had passed on to him her remark, though if he
had, he would surely say he hadn't; she had learned that her
husband spoke the truth when convenient, not when it caused him
pain.  About music, or any art, however, he could be implicitly
relied on; and his frankness was appalling when his nerves were
ruffled.

But at the first concert she saw Rosek's unwelcome figure on the
other side of the gangway, two rows back.  He was talking to a
young girl, whose face, short and beautifully formed, had the
opaque transparency of alabaster.  With her round blue eyes fixed
on him, and her lips just parted, she had a slightly vacant look.
Her laugh, too, was just a little vacant.  And yet her features
were so beautiful, her hair so smooth and fair, her colouring so
pale and fine, her neck so white and round, the poise of her body
so perfect that Gyp found it difficult to take her glance away.
She had refused her aunt's companionship.  It might irritate
Fiorsen and affect his playing to see her with "that stiff English
creature."  She wanted, too, to feel again the sensations of
Wiesbaden.  There would be a kind of sacred pleasure in knowing
that she had helped to perfect sounds which touched the hearts and
senses of so many listeners.  She had looked forward to this
concert so long.  And she sat scarcely breathing, abstracted from
consciousness of those about her, soft and still, radiating warmth
and eagerness.

Fiorsen looked his worst, as ever, when first coming before an
audience--cold, furtive, defensive, defiant, half turned away, with
those long fingers tightening the screws, touching the strings.  It
seemed queer to think that only six hours ago she had stolen out of
bed from beside him.  Wiesbaden!  No; this was not like Wiesbaden!
And when he played she had not the same emotions.  She had heard
him now too often, knew too exactly how he produced those sounds;
knew that their fire and sweetness and nobility sprang from
fingers, ear, brain--not from his soul.  Nor was it possible any
longer to drift off on those currents of sound into new worlds, to
hear bells at dawn, and the dews of evening as they fell, to feel
the divinity of wind and sunlight.  The romance and ecstasy that at
Wiesbaden had soaked her spirit came no more.  She was watching for
the weak spots, the passages with which he had struggled and she
had struggled; she was distracted by memories of petulance, black
moods, and sudden caresses.  And then she caught his eye.  The look
was like, yet how unlike, those looks at Wiesbaden.  It had the old
love-hunger, but had lost the adoration, its spiritual essence.
And she thought: 'Is it my fault, or is it only because he has me
now to do what he likes with?'  It was all another disillusionment,
perhaps the greatest yet.  But she kindled and flushed at the
applause, and lost herself in pleasure at his success.  At the
interval, she slipped out at once, for her first visit to the
artist's room, the mysterious enchantment of a peep behind the
scenes.  He was coming down from his last recall; and at sight of
her his look of bored contempt vanished; lifting her hand, he
kissed it.  Gyp felt happier than she had since her marriage.  Her
eyes shone, and she whispered:

"Beautiful!"

He whispered back:

"So!  Do you love me, Gyp?"

She nodded.  And at that moment she did, or thought so.

Then people began to come; amongst them her old music-master,
Monsieur Harmost, grey and mahogany as ever, who, after a
"Merveilleux," "Tres fort" or two to Fiorsen, turned his back on
him to talk to his old pupil.

So she had married Fiorsen--dear, dear!  That was extraordinary,
but extraordinary!  And what was it like, to be always with him--a
little funny--not so?  And how was her music?  It would be spoiled
now.  Ah, what a pity!  No?  She must come to him, then; yes, come
again.  All the time he patted her arm, as if playing the piano,
and his fingers, that had the touch of an angel, felt the firmness
of her flesh, as though debating whether she were letting it
deteriorate.  He seemed really to have missed "his little friend,"
to be glad at seeing her again; and Gyp, who never could withstand
appreciation, smiled at him.  More people came.  She saw Rosek
talking to her husband, and the young alabaster girl standing
silent, her lips still a little parted, gazing up at Fiorsen.  A
perfect figure, though rather short; a dovelike face, whose
exquisitely shaped, just-opened lips seemed to be demanding sugar-
plums.  She could not be more than nineteen.  Who was she?

A voice said almost in her ear:

"How do you do, Mrs. Fiorsen?  I am fortunate to see you again at
last."

She was obliged to turn.  If Gustav had given her away, one would
never know it from this velvet-masked creature, with his suave
watchfulness and ready composure, who talked away so smoothly.
What was it that she so disliked in him?  Gyp had acute instincts,
the natural intelligence deep in certain natures not over
intellectual, but whose "feelers" are too delicate to be deceived.
And, for something to say, she asked:

"Who is the girl you were talking to, Count Rosek?  Her face is so
lovely."

He smiled, exactly the smile she had so disliked at Wiesbaden;
following his glance, she saw her husband talking to the girl,
whose lips at that moment seemed more than ever to ask for
sugar-plums.

"A young dancer, Daphne Wing--she will make a name.  A dove flying!
So you admire her, Madame Gyp?"

Gyp said, smiling:

"She's very pretty--I can imagine her dancing beautifully."

"Will you come one day and see her?  She has still to make her
debut."

Gyp answered:

"Thank you.  I don't know.  I love dancing, of course."

"Good!  I will arrange it."

And Gyp thought: "No, no!  I don't want to have anything to do with
you!  Why do I not speak the truth?  Why didn't I say I hate
dancing?"

Just then a bell sounded; people began hurrying away.  The girl
came up to Rosek.

"Miss Daphne Wing--Mrs. Fiorsen."

Gyp put out her hand with a smile--this girl was certainly a
picture.  Miss Daphne Wing smiled, too, and said, with the
intonation of those who have been carefully corrected of an accent:

"Oh, Mrs. Fiorsen, how beautifully your husband plays--doesn't he?"

It was not merely the careful speech but something lacking when the
perfect mouth moved--spirit, sensibility, who could say?  And Gyp
felt sorry, as at blight on a perfect flower.  With a friendly nod,
she turned away to Fiorsen, who was waiting to go up on to the
platform.  Was it at her or at the girl he had been looking?  She
smiled at him and slid away.  In the corridor, Rosek, in
attendance, said:

"Why not this evening?  Come with Gustav to my rooms.  She shall
dance to us, and we will all have supper.  She admires you, Madame
Gyp.  She will love to dance for you."

Gyp longed for the simple brutality to say: "I don't want to come.
I don't like you!"  But all she could manage was:

"Thank you.  I--I will ask Gustav."

Once in her seat again, she rubbed the cheek that his breath had
touched.  A girl was singing now--one of those faces that Gyp
always admired, reddish-gold hair, blue eyes--the very antithesis
of herself--and the song was "The Bens of Jura," that strange
outpouring from a heart broken by love:


     "And my heart reft of its own sun--"


Tears rose in her eyes, and the shiver of some very deep response
passed through her.  What was it Dad had said: "Love catches you,
and you're gone!"

She, who was the result of love like that, did not want to love!

The girl finished singing.  There was little applause.  Yet she had
sung beautifully; and what more wonderful song in the world?  Was
it too tragic, too painful, too strange--not "pretty" enough?  Gyp
felt sorry for her.  Her head ached now.  She would so have liked
to slip away when it was all over.  But she had not the needful
rudeness.  She would have to go through with this evening at
Rosek's and be gay.  And why not?  Why this shadow over everything?
But it was no new sensation, that of having entered by her own free
will on a life which, for all effort, would not give her a feeling
of anchorage or home.  Of her own accord she had stepped into the
cage!

On the way to Rosek's rooms, she disguised from Fiorsen her
headache and depression.  He was in one of his boy-out-of-school
moods, elated by applause, mimicking her old master, the idolatries
of his worshippers, Rosek, the girl dancer's upturned expectant
lips.  And he slipped his arm round Gyp in the cab, crushing her
against him and sniffing at her cheek as if she had been a flower.

Rosek had the first floor of an old-time mansion in Russell Square.
The smell of incense or some kindred perfume was at once about one;
and, on the walls of the dark hall, electric light burned, in jars
of alabaster picked up in the East.  The whole place was in fact a
sanctum of the collector's spirit.  Its owner had a passion for
black--the walls, divans, picture-frames, even some of the tilings
were black, with glimmerings of gold, ivory, and moonlight.  On a
round black table there stood a golden bowl filled with moonlight-
coloured velvety "palm" and "honesty"; from a black wall gleamed
out the ivory mask of a faun's face; from a dark niche the little
silver figure of a dancing girl.  It was beautiful, but deathly.
And Gyp, though excited always by anything new, keenly alive to
every sort of beauty, felt a longing for air and sunlight.  It was
a relief to get close to one of the black-curtained windows, and
see the westering sun shower warmth and light on the trees of the
Square gardens.  She was introduced to a Mr. and Mrs. Gallant, a
dark-faced, cynical-looking man with clever, malicious eyes, and
one of those large cornucopias of women with avid blue stares.  The
little dancer was not there.  She had "gone to put on nothing,"
Rosek informed them.

He took Gyp the round of his treasures, scarabs, Rops drawings,
death-masks, Chinese pictures, and queer old flutes, with an air of
displaying them for the first time to one who could truly
appreciate.  And she kept thinking of that saying, "Une technique
merveilleuse."  Her instinct apprehended the refined bone-
viciousness of this place, where nothing, save perhaps taste, would
be sacred.  It was her first glimpse into that gilt-edged bohemia,
whence the generosities, the elans, the struggles of the true
bohemia are as rigidly excluded as from the spheres where bishops
moved.  But she talked and smiled; and no one could have told that
her nerves were crisping as if at contact with a corpse.  While
showing her those alabaster jars, her host had laid his hand softly
on her wrist, and in taking it away, he let his fingers, with a
touch softer than a kitten's paw, ripple over the skin, then put
them to his lips.  Ah, there it was--the--the TECHNIQUE!  A
desperate desire to laugh seized her.  And he saw it--oh, yes, he
saw it!  He gave her one look, passed that same hand over his
smooth face, and--behold!--it showed as before, unmortified,
unconscious.  A deadly little man!

When they returned to the salon, as it was called, Miss Daphne Wing
in a black kimono, whence her face and arms emerged more like
alabaster than ever, was sitting on a divan beside Fiorsen.  She
rose at once and came across to Gyp.

"Oh, Mrs. Fiorsen"--why did everything she said begin with "Oh"--
"isn't this room lovely?  It's perfect for dancing.  I only brought
cream, and flame-colour; they go so beautifully with black."

She threw back her kimono for Gyp to inspect her dress--a girdled
cream-coloured shift, which made her ivory arms and neck seem more
than ever dazzling; and her mouth opened, as if for a sugar-plum of
praise.  Then, lowering her voice, she murmured:

"Do you know, I'm rather afraid of Count Rosek."

"Why?"

"Oh, I don't know; he's so critical, and smooth, and he comes up so
quietly.  I do think your husband plays wonderfully.  Oh, Mrs.
Fiorsen, you are beautiful, aren't you?"  Gyp laughed.  "What would
you like me to dance first?  A waltz of Chopin's?"

"Yes; I love Chopin."

"Then I shall.  I shall dance exactly what you like, because I do
admire you, and I'm sure you're awfully sweet.  Oh, yes; you are; I
can see that!  And I think your husband's awfully in love with you.
I should be, if I were a man.  You know, I've been studying five
years, and I haven't come out yet.  But now Count Rosek's going to
back me, I expect it'll be very soon.  Will you come to my first
night?  Mother says I've got to be awfully careful.  She only let
me come this evening because you were going to be here.  Would you
like me to begin?"

She slid across to Rosek, and Gyp heard her say:

"Oh, Mrs. Fiorsen wants me to begin; a Chopin waltz, please.  The
one that goes like this."

Rosek went to the piano, the little dancer to the centre of the
room.  Gyp sat down beside Fiorsen.

Rosek began playing, his eyes fixed on the girl, and his mouth
loosened from compression in a sweetish smile.  Miss Daphne Wing
was standing with her finger-tips joined at her breast--a perfect
statue of ebony and palest wax.  Suddenly she flung away the black
kimono.  A thrill swept Gyp from head to foot.  She COULD dance--
that common little girl!  Every movement of her round, sinuous
body, of her bare limbs, had the ecstasy of natural genius,
controlled by the quivering balance of a really fine training.  "A
dove flying!"  So she was.  Her face had lost its vacancy, or
rather its vacancy had become divine, having that look--not lost
but gone before--which dance demands.  Yes, she was a gem, even if
she had a common soul.  Tears came up in Gyp's eyes.  It was so
lovely--like a dove, when it flings itself up in the wind,
breasting on up, up--wings bent back, poised.  Abandonment,
freedom--chastened, shaped, controlled!

When, after the dance, the girl came and sat down beside her, she
squeezed her hot little hand, but the caress was for her art, not
for this moist little person with the lips avid of sugar-plums.

"Oh, did you like it?  I'm so glad.  Shall I go and put on my
flame-colour, now?"

The moment she was gone, comment broke out freely.  The dark and
cynical Gallant thought the girl's dancing like a certain
Napierkowska whom he had seen in Moscow, without her fire--the
touch of passion would have to be supplied.  She wanted love!
Love!  And suddenly Gyp was back in the concert-hall, listening to
that other girl singing the song of a broken heart.


     "Thy kiss, dear love--
      Like watercress gathered fresh from cool streams."


Love! in this abode--of fauns' heads, deep cushions, silver dancing
girls!  Love!  She had a sudden sense of deep abasement.  What was
she, herself, but just a feast for a man's senses?  Her home, what
but a place like this?  Miss Daphne Wing was back again.  Gyp
looked at her husband's face while she was dancing.  His lips!  How
was it that she could see that disturbance in him, and not care?
If she had really loved him, to see his lips like that would have
hurt her, but she might have understood perhaps, and forgiven.  Now
she neither quite understood nor quite forgave.


And that night, when he kissed her, she murmured:

"Would you rather it were that girl--not me?"

"That girl!  I could swallow her at a draft.  But you, my Gyp--I
want to drink for ever!"

Was that true?  IF she had loved him--how good to hear!


V


After this, Gyp was daily more and more in contact with high
bohemia, that curious composite section of society which embraces
the neck of music, poetry, and the drama.  She was a success, but
secretly she felt that she did not belong to it, nor, in truth, did
Fiorsen, who was much too genuine a bohemian, and artist, and
mocked at the Gallants and even the Roseks of this life, as he
mocked at Winton, Aunt Rosamund, and their world.  Life with him
had certainly one effect on Gyp; it made her feel less and less a
part of that old orthodox, well-bred world which she had known
before she married him; but to which she had confessed to Winton
she had never felt that she belonged, since she knew the secret of
her birth.  She was, in truth, much too impressionable, too avid of
beauty, and perhaps too naturally critical to accept the dictates
of their fact-and-form-governed routine; only, of her own accord,
she would never have had initiative enough to step out of its
circle.  Loosened from those roots, unable to attach herself to
this new soil, and not spiritually leagued with her husband, she
was more and more lonely.  Her only truly happy hours were those
spent with Winton or at her piano or with her puppies.  She was
always wondering at what she had done, longing to find the deep,
the sufficient reason for having done it.  But the more she sought
and longed, the deeper grew her bewilderment, her feeling of being
in a cage.  Of late, too, another and more definite uneasiness had
come to her.

She spent much time in her garden, where the blossoms had all
dropped, lilac was over, acacias coming into bloom, and blackbirds
silent.

Winton, who, by careful experiment, had found that from half-past
three to six there was little or no chance of stumbling across his
son-in-law, came in nearly every day for tea and a quiet cigar on
the lawn.  He was sitting there with Gyp one afternoon, when Betty,
who usurped the functions of parlour-maid whenever the whim moved
her, brought out a card on which were printed the words, "Miss
Daphne Wing."

"Bring her out, please, Betty dear, and some fresh tea, and
buttered toast--plenty of buttered toast; yes, and the chocolates,
and any other sweets there are, Betty darling."

Betty, with that expression which always came over her when she was
called "darling," withdrew across the grass, and Gyp said to her
father:

"It's the little dancer I told you of, Dad.  Now you'll see
something perfect.  Only, she'll be dressed.  It's a pity."

She was.  The occasion had evidently exercised her spirit.  In warm
ivory, shrouded by leaf-green chiffon, with a girdle of tiny
artificial leaves, and a lightly covered head encircled by other
green leaves, she was somewhat like a nymph peering from a bower.
If rather too arresting, it was charming, and, after all, no frock
could quite disguise the beauty of her figure.  She was evidently
nervous.

"Oh, Mrs. Fiorsen, I thought you wouldn't mind my coming.  I did so
want to see you again.  Count Rosek said he thought I might.  It's
all fixed for my coming-out.  Oh, how do you do?"  And with lips
and eyes opening at Winton, she sat down in the chair he placed for
her.  Gyp, watching his expression, felt inclined to laugh.  Dad,
and Daphne Wing!  And the poor girl so evidently anxious to make a
good impression!  Presently she asked:

"Have you been dancing at Count Rosek's again lately?"

"Oh, yes, haven't you--didn't you--I--"  And she stopped.

The thought flashed through Gyp, 'So Gustav's been seeing her, and
hasn't told me!'  But she said at once:

"Ah, yes, of course; I forgot.  When is the night of your coming-
out?"

"Next Friday week.  Fancy!  The Octagon.  Isn't it splendid?
They've given me such a good engagement.  I do so want you and Mr.
Fiorsen to come, though!"

Gyp, smiling, murmured:

"Of course we will.  My father loves dancing, too; don't you, Dad?"

Winton took his cigar from his mouth.

"When it's good," he said, urbanely.

"Oh, mine IS good; isn't it, Mrs. Fiorsen?  I mean, I HAVE worked--
ever since I was thirteen, you know.  I simply love it.  I think
YOU would dance beautifully, Mrs. Fiorsen.  You've got such a
perfect figure.  I simply love to see you walk."

Gyp flushed, and said:

"Do have one of these, Miss Wing--they've got whole raspberries
inside."

The little dancer put one in her mouth.

"Oh, but please don't call me Miss Wing!  I wish you'd call me
Daphne.  Mr. Fior--everybody does."

Conscious of her father's face, Gyp murmured:

"It's a lovely name.  Won't you have another?  These are apricot."

"They're perfect.  You know, my first dress is going to be all
orange-blossom; Mr. Fiorsen suggested that.  But I expect he told
you.  Perhaps you suggested it really; did you?"  Gyp shook her
head.  "Count Rosek says the world is waiting for me--"  She paused
with a sugar-plum halfway to her lips, and added doubtfully: "Do
you think that's true?"

Gyp answered with a soft: "I hope so."

"He says I'm something new.  It would be nice to think that.  He
has great taste; so has Mr. Fiorsen, hasn't he?"

Conscious of the compression in the lips behind the smoke of her
father's cigar, and with a sudden longing to get up and walk away,
Gyp nodded.

The little dancer placed the sweet in her mouth, and said
complacently:

"Of course he has; because he married you."

Then, seeming to grow conscious of Winton's eyes fixed so intently
on her, she became confused, swallowed hastily, and said:

"Oh, isn't it lovely here--like the country!  I'm afraid I must go;
it's my practice-time.  It's so important for me not to miss any
now, isn't it?"  And she rose.

Winton got up, too.  Gyp saw the girl's eyes, lighting on his rigid
hand, grow round and rounder; and from her, walking past the side
of the house, the careful voice floated back:

"Oh, I do hope--"  But what, could not be heard.

Sinking back in her chair, Gyp sat motionless.  Bees were murmurous
among her flowers, pigeons murmurous among the trees; the sunlight
warmed her knees, and her stretched-out feet through the openwork
of her stockings.  The maid's laughter, the delicious growling of
the puppies at play in the kitchen came drifting down the garden,
with the distant cry of a milkman up the road.  All was very
peaceful.  But in her heart were such curious, baffled emotions,
such strange, tangled feelings.  This moment of enlightenment
regarding the measure of her husband's frankness came close on the
heels of the moment fate had chosen for another revelation, for
clinching within her a fear felt for weeks past.  She had said to
Winton that she did not want to have a child.  In those conscious
that their birth has caused death or even too great suffering,
there is sometimes this hostile instinct.  She had not even the
consolation that Fiorsen wanted children; she knew that he did not.
And now she was sure one was coming.  But it was more than that.
She had not reached, and knew she could not reach, that point of
spirit-union which alone makes marriage sacred, and the sacrifices
demanded by motherhood a joy.  She was fairly caught in the web of
her foolish and presumptuous mistake!  So few months of marriage--
and so sure that it was a failure, so hopeless for the future!  In
the light of this new certainty, it was terrifying.  A hard,
natural fact is needed to bring a yearning and bewildered spirit to
knowledge of the truth.  Disillusionment is not welcome to a
woman's heart; the less welcome when it is disillusionment with
self as much as with another.  Her great dedication--her scheme of
life!  She had been going to--what?--save Fiorsen from himself!  It
was laughable.  She had only lost herself.  Already she felt in
prison, and by a child would be all the more bound.  To some women,
the knowledge that a thing must be brings assuagement of the
nerves.  Gyp was the opposite of those.  To force her was the way
to stiver up every contrary emotion.  She might will herself to
acquiesce, but--one cannot change one's nature.

And so, while the pigeons cooed and the sunlight warmed her feet,
she spent the bitterest moments of her life--so far.  Pride came to
her help.  She had made a miserable mess of it, but no one must
know--certainly not her father, who had warned her so desperately!
She had made her bed, and she would have to lie on it.

When Winton came back, he found her smiling, and said:

"I don't see the fascination, Gyp."

"Don't you think her face really rather perfect?"

"Common."

"Yes; but that drops off when she's dancing."

Winton looked at her from under half-closed eyelids.

"With her clothes?  What does Fiorsen think of her?"

Gyp smiled.

"Does he think of her?  I don't know."

She could feel the watchful tightening of his face.  And suddenly
he said:

"Daphne Wing!  By George!"

The words were a masterpiece of resentment and distrust.  His
daughter in peril from--such as that!

After he was gone Gyp sat on till the sun had quite vanished and
the dew was stealing through her thin frock.  She would think of
anything, anybody except herself!  To make others happy was the way
to be happy--or so they said.  She would try--must try.  Betty--so
stout, and with that rheumatism in her leg--did she ever think of
herself?  Or Aunt Rosamund, with her perpetual rescuings of lost
dogs, lame horses, and penniless musicians?  And Dad, for all his
man-of-the-world ways, was he not always doing little things for
the men of his old regiment, always thinking of her, too, and what
he could do to give her pleasure?  To love everybody, and bring
them happiness!  Was it not possible?  Only, people were hard to
love, different from birds and beasts and flowers, to love which
seemed natural and easy.

She went up to her room and began to dress for dinner.  Which of
her frocks did he like best?  The pale, low-cut amber, or that
white, soft one, with the coffee-dipped lace?  She decided on the
latter.  Scrutinizing her supple, slender image in the glass, a
shudder went through her.  That would all go; she would be like
those women taking careful exercise in the streets, who made her
wonder at their hardihood in showing themselves.  It wasn't fair
that one must become unsightly, offensive to the eye, in order to
bring life into the world.  Some women seemed proud to be like
that.  How was that possible?  She would never dare to show herself
in the days coming.

She finished dressing and went downstairs.  It was nearly eight,
and Fiorsen had not come in.  When the gong was struck, she turned
from the window with a sigh, and went in to dinner.  That sigh had
been relief.  She ate her dinner with the two pups beside her, sent
them off, and sat down at her piano.  She played Chopin--studies,
waltzes, mazurkas, preludes, a polonaise or two.  And Betty, who
had a weakness for that composer, sat on a chair by the door which
partitioned off the back premises, having opened it a little.  She
wished she could go and take a peep at her "pretty" in her white
frock, with the candle-flames on each side, and those lovely lilies
in the vase close by, smelling beautiful.  And one of the maids
coming too near, she shooed her angrily away.

It grew late.  The tray had been brought up; the maids had gone to
bed.  Gyp had long stopped playing, had turned out, ready to go up,
and, by the French window, stood gazing out into the dark.  How
warm it was--warm enough to draw forth the scent of the jessamine
along the garden wall!  Not a star.  There always seemed so few
stars in London.  A sound made her swing round.  Something tall was
over there in the darkness, by the open door.  She heard a sigh,
and called out, frightened:

"Is that you, Gustav?"

He spoke some words that she could not understand.  Shutting the
window quickly, she went toward him.  Light from the hall lit up
one side of his face and figure.  He was pale; his eyes shone
strangely; his sleeve was all white.  He said thickly:

"Little ghost!" and then some words that must be Swedish.  It was
the first time Gyp had ever come to close quarters with
drunkenness.  And her thought was simply: 'How awful if anybody
were to see--how awful!'  She made a rush to get into the hall and
lock the door leading to the back regions, but he caught her frock,
ripping the lace from her neck, and his entangled fingers clutched
her shoulder.  She stopped dead, fearing to make a noise or pull
him over, and his other hand clutched her other shoulder, so that
he stood steadying himself by her.  Why was she not shocked,
smitten to the ground with grief and shame and rage?  She only
felt: "What am I to do?  How get him upstairs without anyone
knowing?"  And she looked up into his face--it seemed to her so
pathetic with its shining eyes and its staring whiteness that she
could have burst into tears.  She said gently:

"Gustav, it's all right.  Lean on me; we'll go up."

His hands, that seemed to have no power or purpose, touched her
cheeks, mechanically caressing.  More than disgust, she felt that
awful pity.  Putting her arm round his waist, she moved with him
toward the stairs.  If only no one heard; if only she could get him
quietly up!  And she murmured:

"Don't talk; you're not well.  Lean on me hard."

He seemed to make a big effort; his lips puffed out, and with an
expression of pride that would have been comic if not so tragic, he
muttered something.

Holding him close with all her strength, as she might have held one
desperately loved, she began to mount.  It was easier than she had
thought.  Only across the landing now, into the bedroom, and then
the danger would be over.  Done!  He was lying across the bed, and
the door shut.  Then, for a moment, she gave way to a fit of
shivering so violent that she could hear her teeth chattering yet
could not stop them.  She caught sight of herself in the big
mirror.  Her pretty lace was all torn; her shoulders were red where
his hands had gripped her, holding himself up.  She threw off her
dress, put on a wrapper, and went up to him.  He was lying in a
sort of stupor, and with difficulty she got him to sit up and lean
against the bed-rail.  Taking off his tie and collar, she racked
her brains for what to give him.  Sal volatile!  Surely that must
be right.  It brought him to himself, so that he even tried to kiss
her.  At last he was in bed, and she stood looking at him.  His
eyes were closed; he would not see if she gave way now.  But she
would not cry--she would not.  One sob came--but that was all.
Well, there was nothing to be done now but get into bed too.  She
undressed, and turned out the light.  He was in a stertorous sleep.
And lying there, with eyes wide open, staring into the dark, a
smile came on her lips--a very strange smile!  She was thinking of
all those preposterous young wives she had read of, who, blushing,
trembling, murmur into the ears of their young husbands that they
"have something--something to tell them!"


VI


Looking at Fiorsen, next morning, still sunk in heavy sleep, her
first thought was: 'He looks exactly the same.'  And, suddenly, it
seemed queer to her that she had not been, and still was not,
disgusted.  It was all too deep for disgust, and somehow, too
natural.  She took this new revelation of his unbridled ways
without resentment.  Besides, she had long known of this taste of
his--one cannot drink brandy and not betray it.

She stole noiselessly from bed, noiselessly gathered up his boots
and clothes all tumbled on to a chair, and took them forth to the
dressing-room.  There she held the garments up to the early light
and brushed them, then, noiseless, stole back to bed, with needle
and thread and her lace.  No one must know; not even he must know.
For the moment she had forgotten that other thing so terrifically
important.  It came back to her, very sudden, very sickening.  So
long as she could keep it secret, no one should know that either--
he least of all.

The morning passed as usual; but when she came to the music-room at
noon, she found that he had gone out.  She was just sitting down to
lunch when Betty, with the broad smile which prevailed on her moon-
face when someone had tickled the right side of her, announced:

"Count Rosek."

Gyp got up, startled.

"Say that Mr. Fiorsen is not in, Betty.  But--but ask if he will
come and have some lunch, and get a bottle of hock up, please."

In the few seconds before her visitor appeared, Gyp experienced the
sort of excitement one has entering a field where a bull is
grazing.

But not even his severest critics could accuse Rosek of want of
tact.  He had hoped to see Gustav, but it was charming of her to
give him lunch--a great delight!

He seemed to have put off, as if for her benefit, his corsets, and
some, at all events, of his offending looks--seemed simpler, more
genuine.  His face was slightly browned, as if, for once, he had
been taking his due of air and sun.  He talked without cynical
submeanings, was most appreciative of her "charming little house,"
and even showed some warmth in his sayings about art and music.
Gyp had never disliked him less.  But her instincts were on the
watch.  After lunch, they went out across the garden to see the
music-room, and he sat down at the piano.  He had the deep,
caressing touch that lies in fingers of steel worked by a real
passion for tone.  Gyp sat on the divan and listened.  She was out
of his sight there; and she looked at him, wondering.  He was
playing Schumann's Child Music.  How could one who produced such
fresh idyllic sounds have sinister intentions?  And presently she
said:

"Count Rosek!"

"Madame?"

"Will you please tell me why you sent Daphne Wing here yesterday?"

"I send her?"

"Yes."

But instantly she regretted having asked that question.  He had
swung round on the music-stool and was looking full at her.  His
face had changed.

"Since you ask me, I thought you should know that Gustav is seeing
a good deal of her."

He had given the exact answer she had divined.

"Do you think I mind that?"

A flicker passed over his face.  He got up and said quietly:

"I am glad that you do not."

"Why glad?"

She, too, had risen.  Though he was little taller than herself, she
was conscious suddenly of how thick and steely he was beneath his
dapper garments, and of a kind of snaky will-power in his face.
Her heart beat faster.

He came toward her and said:

"I am glad you understand that it is over with Gustav--finished--"
He stopped dead, seeing at once that he had gone wrong, and not
knowing quite where.  Gyp had simply smiled.  A flush coloured his
cheeks, and he said:

"He is a volcano soon extinguished.  You see, I know him.  Better
you should know him, too.  Why do you smile?"

"Why is it better I should know?"

He went very pale, and said between his teeth:

"That you may not waste your time; there is love waiting for you."

But Gyp still smiled.

"Was it from love of me that you made him drunk last night?"

His lips quivered.

"Gyp!"  Gyp turned.  But with the merest change of front, he had
put himself between her and the door.  "You never loved him.  That
is my excuse.  You have given him too much already--more than he is
worth.  Ah!  God!  I am tortured by you; I am possessed."

He had gone white through and through like a flame, save for his
smouldering eyes.  She was afraid, and because she was afraid, she
stood her ground.  Should she make a dash for the door that opened
into the little lane and escape that way?  Then suddenly he seemed
to regain control; but she could feel that he was trying to break
through her defences by the sheer intensity of his gaze--by a kind
of mesmerism, knowing that he had frightened her.

Under the strain of this duel of eyes, she felt herself beginning
to sway, to get dizzy.  Whether or no he really moved his feet, he
seemed coming closer inch by inch.  She had a horrible feeling--as
if his arms were already round her.

With an effort, she wrenched her gaze from his, and suddenly his
crisp hair caught her eyes.  Surely--surely it was curled with
tongs!  A kind of spasm of amusement was set free in her heart,
and, almost inaudibly, the words escaped her lips: "Une technique
merveilleuse!"  His eyes wavered; he uttered a little gasp; his
lips fell apart.  Gyp walked across the room and put her hand on
the bell.  She had lost her fear.  Without a word, he turned, and
went out into the garden.  She watched him cross the lawn.  Gone!
She had beaten him by the one thing not even violent passions can
withstand--ridicule, almost unconscious ridicule.  Then she gave
way and pulled the bell with nervous violence.  The sight of the
maid, in her trim black dress and spotless white apron, coming from
the house completed her restoration.  Was it possible that she had
really been frightened, nearly failing in that encounter, nearly
dominated by that man--in her own house, with her own maids down
there at hand?  And she said quietly:

"I want the puppies, please."

"Yes, ma'am."

Over the garden, the day brooded in the first-gathered warmth of
summer.  Mid-June of a fine year.  The air was drowsy with hum and
scent.

And Gyp, sitting in the shade, while the puppies rolled and
snapped, searched her little world for comfort and some sense of
safety, and could not find it; as if there were all round her a hot
heavy fog in which things lurked, and where she kept erect only by
pride and the will not to cry out that she was struggling and
afraid.


Fiorsen, leaving his house that morning, had walked till he saw a
taxi-cab.  Leaning back therein, with hat thrown off, he caused
himself to be driven rapidly, at random.  This was one of his
habits when his mind was not at ease--an expensive idiosyncrasy,
ill-afforded by a pocket that had holes.  The swift motion and
titillation by the perpetual close shaving of other vehicles were
sedative to him.  He needed sedatives this morning.  To wake in his
own bed without the least remembering how he had got there was no
more new to him than to many another man of twenty-eight, but it
was new since his marriage.  If he had remembered even less he
would have been more at ease.  But he could just recollect standing
in the dark drawing-room, seeing and touching a ghostly Gyp quite
close to him.  And, somehow, he was afraid.  And when he was
afraid--like most people--he was at his worst.

If she had been like all the other women in whose company he had
eaten passion-fruit, he would not have felt this carking
humiliation.  If she had been like them, at the pace he had been
going since he obtained possession of her, he would already have
"finished," as Rosek had said.  And he knew well enough that he had
not "finished."  He might get drunk, might be loose-ended in every
way, but Gyp was hooked into his senses, and, for all that he could
not get near her, into his spirit.  Her very passivity was her
strength, the secret of her magnetism.  In her, he felt some of
that mysterious sentiency of nature, which, even in yielding to
man's fevers, lies apart with a faint smile--the uncapturable smile
of the woods and fields by day or night, that makes one ache with
longing.  He felt in her some of the unfathomable, soft, vibrating
indifference of the flowers and trees and streams, of the rocks, of
birdsongs, and the eternal hum, under sunshine or star-shine.  Her
dark, half-smiling eyes enticed him, inspired an unquenchable
thirst.  And his was one of those natures which, encountering
spiritual difficulty, at once jib off, seek anodynes, try to
bandage wounded egoism with excess--a spoiled child, with the
desperations and the inherent pathos, the something repulsive and
the something lovable that belong to all such.  Having wished for
this moon, and got her, he now did not know what to do with her,
kept taking great bites at her, with a feeling all the time of
getting further and further away.  At moments, he desired revenge
for his failure to get near her spiritually, and was ready to
commit follies of all kinds.  He was only kept in control at all by
his work.  For he did work hard; though, even there, something was
lacking.  He had all the qualities of making good, except the moral
backbone holding them together, which alone could give him his
rightful--as he thought--pre-eminence.  It often surprised and
vexed him to find that some contemporary held higher rank than
himself.

Threading the streets in his cab, he mused:

"Did I do anything that really shocked her last night?  Why didn't
I wait for her this morning and find out the worst?"  And his lips
twisted awry--for to find out the worst was not his forte.
Meditation, seeking as usual a scapegoat, lighted on Rosek.  Like
most egoists addicted to women, he had not many friends.  Rosek was
the most constant.  But even for him, Fiorsen had at once the
contempt and fear that a man naturally uncontrolled and yet of
greater scope has for one of less talent but stronger will-power.
He had for him, too, the feeling of a wayward child for its nurse,
mixed with the need that an artist, especially an executant artist,
feels for a connoisseur and patron with well-lined pockets.

'Curse Paul!' he thought.  'He must know--he does know--that brandy
of his goes down like water.  Trust him, he saw I was getting
silly!  He had some game on.  Where did I go after?  How did I get
home?'  And again: 'Did I hurt Gyp?'  If the servants had seen--
that would be the worst; that would upset her fearfully!  And he
laughed.  Then he had a fresh access of fear.  He didn't know her,
never knew what she was thinking or feeling, never knew anything
about her.  And he thought angrily: 'That's not fair!  I don't hide
myself from her.  I am as free as nature; I let her see everything.
What did I do?  That maid looked very queerly at me this morning!'
And suddenly he said to the driver: "Bury Street, St. James's."  He
could find out, at all events, whether Gyp had been to her
father's.  The thought of Winton ever afflicted him; and he changed
his mind several times before the cab reached that little street,
but so swiftly that he had not time to alter his instructions to
the driver.  A light sweat broke out on his forehead while he was
waiting for the door to be opened.

"Mrs. Fiorsen here?"

"No, sir."

"Not been here this morning?"

"No, sir."

He shrugged away the thought that he ought to give some explanation
of his question, and got into the cab again, telling the man to
drive to Curzon Street.  If she had not been to "that Aunt
Rosamund" either it would be all right.  She had not.  There was no
one else she would go to.  And, with a sigh of relief, he began to
feel hungry, having had no breakfast.  He would go to Rosek's,
borrow the money to pay his cab, and lunch there.  But Rosek was
not in.  He would have to go home to get the cab paid.  The driver
seemed to eye him queerly now, as though conceiving doubts about
the fare.

Going in under the trellis, Fiorsen passed a man coming out, who
held in his hand a long envelope and eyed him askance.

Gyp, who was sitting at her bureau, seemed to be adding up the
counterfoils in her cheque-book.  She did not turn round, and
Fiorsen paused.  How was she going to receive him?

"Is there any lunch?" he said.

She reached out and rang the bell.  He felt sorry for himself.  He
had been quite ready to take her in his arms and say: "Forgive me,
little Gyp; I'm sorry!"

Betty answered the bell.

"Please bring up some lunch for Mr. Fiorsen."

He heard the stout woman sniff as she went out.  She was a part of
his ostracism.  And, with sudden rage, he said:

"What do you want for a husband--a bourgeois who would die if he
missed his lunch?"

Gyp turned round to him and held out her cheque-book.

"I don't in the least mind about meals; but I do about this."  He
read on the counterfoil:

"Messrs. Travers & Sanborn, Tailors, Account rendered: L54 35s.
7d."  "Are there many of these, Gustav?"

Fiorsen had turned the peculiar white that marked deep injury to
his sell-esteem.  He said violently:

"Well, what of that?  A bill!  Did you pay it?  You have no
business to pay my bills."

"The man said if it wasn't paid this time, he'd sue you."  Her lips
quivered.  "I think owing money is horrible.  It's undignified.
Are there many others?  Please tell me!"

"I shall not tell you.  What is it to you?"

"It is a lot to me.  I have to keep this house and pay the maids
and everything, and I want to know how I stand.  I am not going to
make debts.  That's hateful."

Her face had a hardness that he did not know.  He perceived dimly
that she was different from the Gyp of this hour yesterday--the
last time when, in possession of his senses, he had seen or spoken
to her.  The novelty of her revolt stirred him in strange ways,
wounded his self-conceit, inspired a curious fear, and yet excited
his senses.  He came up to her, said softly:

"Money!  Curse money!  Kiss me!"  With a certain amazement at the
sheer distaste in her face, he heard her say:

"It's childish to curse money.  I will spend all the income I have;
but I will not spend more, and I will not ask Dad."

He flung himself down in a chair.

"Ho!  Ho!  Virtue!"

"No--pride."

He said gloomily:

"So you don't believe in me.  You don't believe I can earn as much
as I want--more than you have--any time?  You never have believed
in me."

"I think you earn now as much as you are ever likely to earn."

"That is what you think!  I don't want money--your money!  I can
live on nothing, any time.  I have done it--often."

"Hssh!"

He looked round and saw the maid in the doorway.

"Please, sir, the driver says can he have his fare, or do you want
him again?  Twelve shillings."

Fiorsen stared at her a moment in the way that--as the maid often
said--made you feel like a silly.

"No.  Pay him."

The girl glanced at Gyp, answered: "Yes, sir," and went out.

Fiorsen laughed; he laughed, holding his sides.  It was droll
coming on the top of his assertion, too droll!  And, looking up at
her, he said:

"That was good, wasn't it, Gyp?"

But her face had not abated its gravity; and, knowing that she was
even more easily tickled by the incongruous than himself, he felt
again that catch of fear.  Something was different.  Yes; something
was really different.

"Did I hurt you last night?"

She shrugged her shoulders and went to the window.  He looked at
her darkly, jumped up, and swung out past her into the garden.
And, almost at once, the sound of his violin, furiously played in
the music-room, came across the lawn.

Gyp listened with a bitter smile.  Money, too!  But what did it
matter?  She could not get out of what she had done.  She could
never get out.  Tonight he would kiss her; and she would pretend it
was all right.  And so it would go on and on!  Well, it was her own
fault.  Taking twelve shillings from her purse, she put them aside
on the bureau to give the maid.  And suddenly she thought: 'Perhaps
he'll get tired of me.  If only he would get tired!'  That was a
long way the furthest she had yet gone.


VII


They who have known the doldrums--how the sails of the listless
ship droop, and the hope of escape dies day by day--may understand
something of the life Gyp began living now.  On a ship, even
doldrums come to an end.  But a young woman of twenty-three, who
has made a mistake in her marriage, and has only herself to blame,
looks forward to no end, unless she be the new woman, which Gyp was
not.  Having settled that she would not admit failure, and clenched
her teeth on the knowledge that she was going to have a child, she
went on keeping things sealed up even from Winton.  To Fiorsen, she
managed to behave as usual, making material life easy and pleasant
for him--playing for him, feeding him well, indulging his
amorousness.  It did not matter; she loved no one else.  To count
herself a martyr would be silly!  Her malaise, successfully
concealed, was deeper--of the spirit; the subtle utter
discouragement of one who has done for herself, clipped her own
wings.

As for Rosek, she treated him as if that little scene had never
taken place.  The idea of appealing to her husband in a difficulty
was gone for ever since the night he came home drunk.  And she did
not dare to tell her father.  He would--what would he not do?  But
she was always on her guard, knowing that Rosek would not forgive
her for that dart of ridicule.  His insinuations about Daphne Wing
she put out of mind, as she never could have if she had loved
Fiorsen.  She set up for herself the idol of pride, and became its
faithful worshipper.  Only Winton, and perhaps Betty, could tell
she was not happy.  Fiorsen's debts and irresponsibility about
money did not worry her much, for she paid everything in the house--
rent, wages, food, and her own dress--and had so far made ends
meet; and what he did outside the house she could not help.

So the summer wore on till concerts were over, and it was supposed
to be impossible to stay in London.  But she dreaded going away.
She wanted to be left quiet in her little house.  It was this which
made her tell Fiorsen her secret one night, after the theatre.  He
had begun to talk of a holiday, sitting on the edge of the settee,
with a glass in his hand and a cigarette between his lips.  His
cheeks, white and hollow from too much London, went a curious dull
red; he got up and stared at her.  Gyp made an involuntary movement
with her hands.

"You needn't look at me.  It's true."

He put down glass and cigarette and began to tramp the room.  And
Gyp stood with a little smile, not even watching him.  Suddenly he
clasped his forehead and broke out:

"But I don't want it; I won't have it--spoiling my Gyp."  Then
quickly going up to her with a scared face: "I don't want it; I'm
afraid of it.  Don't have it."

In Gyp's heart came the same feeling as when he had stood there
drunk, against the wall--compassion, rather than contempt of his
childishness.  And taking his hand she said:

"All right, Gustav.  It shan't bother you.  When I begin to get
ugly, I'll go away with Betty till it's over."

He went down on his knees.

"Oh, no!  Oh, no!  Oh, no!  My beautiful Gyp!"

And Gyp sat like a sphinx, for fear that she too might let slip
those words: "Oh, no!"

The windows were open, and moths had come in.  One had settled on
the hydrangea plant that filled the hearth.  Gyp looked at the
soft, white, downy thing, whose head was like a tiny owl's against
the bluish petals; looked at the purple-grey tiles down there, and
the stuff of her own frock, in the shaded gleam of the lamps.  And
all her love of beauty rebelled, called up by his: "Oh, no!"  She
would be unsightly soon, and suffer pain, and perhaps die of it, as
her own mother had died.  She set her teeth, listening to that
grown-up child revolting against what he had brought on her, and
touched his hand, protectingly.

It interested, even amused her this night and next day to watch his
treatment of the disconcerting piece of knowledge.  For when at
last he realized that he had to acquiesce in nature, he began, as
she had known he would, to jib away from all reminder of it.  She
was careful not to suggest that he should go away without her,
knowing his perversity.  But when he proposed that she should come
to Ostend with him and Rosek, she answered, after seeming
deliberation, that she thought she had better not--she would rather
stay at home quite quietly; but he must certainly go and get a good
holiday.

When he was really gone, peace fell on Gyp--peace such as one
feels, having no longer the tight, banded sensations of a fever.
To be without that strange, disorderly presence in the house!  When
she woke in the sultry silence of the next morning, she utterly
failed to persuade herself that she was missing him, missing the
sound of his breathing, the sight of his rumpled hair on the
pillow, the outline of his long form under the sheet.  Her heart
was devoid of any emptiness or ache; she only felt how pleasant and
cool and tranquil it was to lie there alone.  She stayed quite late
in bed.  It was delicious, with window and door wide open and the
puppies running in and out, to lie and doze off, or listen to the
pigeons' cooing, and the distant sounds of traffic, and feel in
command once more of herself, body and soul.  Now that she had told
Fiorsen, she had no longer any desire to keep her condition secret.
Feeling that it would hurt her father to learn of it from anyone
but herself, she telephoned to tell him she was alone, and asked if
she might come to Bury Street and dine with him.

Winton had not gone away, because, between Goodwood and Doncaster
there was no racing that he cared for; one could not ride at this
time of year, so might just as well be in London.  In fact, August
was perhaps the pleasantest of all months in town; the club was
empty, and he could sit there without some old bore buttonholing
him.  Little Boncarte, the fencing-master, was always free for a
bout--Winton had long learned to make his left hand what his right
hand used to be; the Turkish baths in Jermyn Street were nearly
void of their fat clients; he could saunter over to Covent Garden,
buy a melon, and carry it home without meeting any but the most
inferior duchesses in Piccadilly; on warm nights he could stroll
the streets or the parks, smoking his cigar, his hat pushed back to
cool his forehead, thinking vague thoughts, recalling vague
memories.  He received the news that his daughter was alone and
free from that fellow with something like delight.  Where should he
dine her?  Mrs. Markey was on her holiday.  Why not Blafard's?
Quiet---small rooms--not too respectable--quite fairly cool--good
things to eat.  Yes; Blafard's!

When she drove up, he was ready in the doorway, his thin brown face
with its keen, half-veiled eyes the picture of composure, but
feeling at heart like a schoolboy off for an exeat.  How pretty she
was looking--though pale from London--her dark eyes, her smile!
And stepping quickly to the cab, he said:

"No; I'm getting in--dining at Blafard's, Gyp--a night out!"

It gave him a thrill to walk into that little restaurant behind
her; and passing through its low red rooms to mark the diners turn
and stare with envy--taking him, perhaps, for a different sort of
relation.  He settled her into a far corner by a window, where she
could see the people and be seen.  He wanted her to be seen; while
he himself turned to the world only the short back wings of his
glossy greyish hair.  He had no notion of being disturbed in his
enjoyment by the sight of Hivites and Amorites, or whatever they
might be, lapping champagne and shining in the heat.  For,
secretly, he was living not only in this evening but in a certain
evening of the past, when, in this very corner, he had dined with
her mother.  HIS face then had borne the brunt; hers had been
turned away from inquisition.  But he did not speak of this to Gyp.

She drank two full glasses of wine before she told him her news.
He took it with the expression she knew so well--tightening his
lips and staring a little upward.  Then he said quietly:

"When?"

"November, Dad."

A shudder, not to be repressed, went through Winton.  The very
month!  And stretching his hand across the table, he took hers and
pressed it tightly.

"It'll be all right, child; I'm glad."

Clinging to his hand, Gyp murmured:

"I'm not; but I won't be frightened--I promise."

Each was trying to deceive the other; and neither was deceived.
But both were good at putting a calm face on things.  Besides, this
was "a night out"--for her, the first since her marriage--of
freedom, of feeling somewhat as she used to feel with all before
her in a ballroom of a world; for him, the unfettered resumption of
a dear companionship and a stealthy revel in the past.  After his,
"So he's gone to Ostend?" and his thought: 'He would!' they never
alluded to Fiorsen, but talked of horses, of Mildenham--it seemed
to Gyp years since she had been there--of her childish escapades.
And, looking at him quizzically, she asked:

"What were you like as a boy, Dad?  Aunt Rosamund says that you
used to get into white rages when nobody could go near you.  She
says you were always climbing trees, or shooting with a catapult,
or stalking things, and that you never told anybody what you didn't
want to tell them.  And weren't you desperately in love with your
nursery-governess?"

Winton smiled.  How long since he had thought of that first
affection.  Miss Huntley!  Helena Huntley--with crinkly brown hair,
and blue eyes, and fascinating frocks!  He remembered with what
grief and sense of bitter injury he heard in his first school-
holidays that she was gone.  And he said:

"Yes, yes.  By Jove, what a time ago!  And my father's going off to
India.  He never came back; killed in that first Afghan business.
When I was fond, I WAS fond.  But I didn't feel things like you--
not half so sensitive.  No; not a bit like you, Gyp."

And watching her unconscious eyes following the movements of the
waiters, never staring, but taking in all that was going on, he
thought: 'Prettiest creature in the world!'

"Well," he said: "What would you like to do now--drop into a
theatre or music-hall, or what?"

Gyp shook her head.  It was so hot.  Could they just drive, and
then perhaps sit in the park?  That would be lovely.  It had gone
dark, and the air was not quite so exhausted--a little freshness of
scent from the trees in the squares and parks mingled with the
fumes of dung and petrol.  Winton gave the same order he had given
that long past evening: "Knightsbridge Gate."  It had been a hansom
then, and the night air had blown in their faces, instead of as now
in these infernal taxis, down the back of one's neck.  They left
the cab and crossed the Row; passed the end of the Long Water, up
among the trees.  There, on two chairs covered by Winton's coat,
they sat side by side.  No dew was falling yet; the heavy leaves
hung unstirring; the air was warm, sweet-smelling.  Blotted against
trees or on the grass were other couples darker than the darkness,
very silent.  All was quiet save for the never-ceasing hum of
traffic.  From Winton's lips, the cigar smoke wreathed and curled.
He was dreaming.  The cigar between his teeth trembled; a long ash
fell.  Mechanically he raised his hand to brush it off--his right
hand!  A voice said softly in his ear:

"Isn't it delicious, and warm, and gloomy black?"

Winton shivered, as one shivers recalled from dreams; and,
carefully brushing off the ash with his left hand, he answered:

"Yes; very jolly.  My cigar's out, though, and I haven't a match."

Gyp's hand slipped through his arm.

"All these people in love, and so dark and whispery--it makes a
sort of strangeness in the air.  Don't you feel it?"

Winton murmured:

"No moon to-night!"

Again they were silent.  A puff of wind ruffled the leaves; the
night, for a moment, seemed full of whispering; then the sound of a
giggle jarred out and a girl's voice:

"Oh!  Chuck it, 'Arry."

Gyp rose.

"I feel the dew now, Dad.  Can we walk on?"

They went along paths, so as not to wet her feet in her thin shoes.
And they talked.  The spell was over; the night again but a common
London night; the park a space of parching grass and gravel; the
people just clerks and shop-girls walking out.


VIII


Fiorsen's letters were the source of one long smile to Gyp.  He
missed her horribly; if only she were there!--and so forth--blended
in the queerest way with the impression that he was enjoying
himself uncommonly.  There were requests for money, and careful
omission of any real account of what he was doing.  Out of a
balance running rather low, she sent him remittances; this was her
holiday, too, and she could afford to pay for it.  She even sought
out a shop where she could sell jewelry, and, with a certain
malicious joy, forwarded him the proceeds.  It would give him and
herself another week.

One night she went with Winton to the Octagon, where Daphne Wing
was still performing.  Remembering the girl's squeaks of rapture at
her garden, she wrote next day, asking her to lunch and spend a
lazy afternoon under the trees.

The little dancer came with avidity.  She was pale, and droopy from
the heat, but happily dressed in Liberty silk, with a plain turn-
down straw hat.  They lunched off sweetbreads, ices, and fruit, and
then, with coffee, cigarettes, and plenty of sugar-plums, settled
down in the deepest shade of the garden, Gyp in a low wicker chair,
Daphne Wing on cushions and the grass.  Once past the exclamatory
stage, she seemed a great talker, laying bare her little soul with
perfect liberality.  And Gyp--excellent listener--enjoyed it, as
one enjoys all confidential revelations of existences very
different from one's own, especially when regarded as a superior
being.

"Of course I don't mean to stay at home any longer than I can help;
only it's no good going out into life"--this phrase she often used--
"till you know where you are.  In my profession, one has to be so
careful.  Of course, people think it's worse than it is; father
gets fits sometimes.  But you know, Mrs. Fiorsen, home's awful.  We
have mutton--you know what mutton is--it's really awful in your
bedroom in hot weather.  And there's nowhere to practise.  What I
should like would be a studio.  It would be lovely, somewhere down
by the river, or up here near you.  That WOULD be lovely.  You
know, I'm putting by.  As soon as ever I have two hundred pounds, I
shall skip.  What I think would be perfectly lovely would be to
inspire painters and musicians.  I don't want to be just a common
'turn'--ballet business year after year, and that; I want to be
something rather special.  But mother's so silly about me; she
thinks I oughtn't to take any risks at all.  I shall never get on
that way.  It IS so nice to talk to you, Mrs. Fiorsen, because
you're young enough to know what I feel; and I'm sure you'd never
be shocked at anything.  You see, about men:  Ought one to marry,
or ought one to take a lover?  They say you can't be a perfect
artist till you've felt passion.  But, then, if you marry, that
means mutton over again, and perhaps babies, and perhaps the wrong
man after all.  Ugh!  But then, on the other hand, I don't want to
be raffish.  I hate raffish people--I simply hate them.  What do
you think?  It's awfully difficult, isn't it?"

Gyp, perfectly grave, answered:

"That sort of thing settles itself.  I shouldn't bother beforehand."

Miss Daphne Wing buried her perfect chin deeper in her hands, and
said meditatively:

"Yes; I rather thought that, too; of course I could do either now.
But, you see, I really don't care for men who are not
distinguished.  I'm sure I shall only fall in love with a really
distinguished man.  That's what you did--isn't it?--so you MUST
understand.  I think Mr. Fiorsen is wonderfully distinguished."

Sunlight, piercing the shade, suddenly fell warm on Gyp's neck
where her blouse ceased, and fortunately stilled the medley of
emotion and laughter a little lower down.  She continued to look
gravely at Daphne Wing, who resumed:

"Of course, Mother would have fits if I asked her such a question,
and I don't know what Father would do.  Only it is important, isn't
it?  One may go all wrong from the start; and I do really want to
get on.  I simply adore my work.  I don't mean to let love stand in
its way; I want to make it help, you know.  Count Rosek says my
dancing lacks passion.  I wish you'd tell me if you think it does.
I should believe YOU."

Gyp shook her head.

"I'm not a judge."

Daphne Wing looked up reproachfully.

"Oh, I'm sure you are!  If I were a man, I should be passionately
in love with you.  I've got a new dance where I'm supposed to be a
nymph pursued by a faun; it's so difficult to feel like a nymph
when you know it's only the ballet-master.  Do you think I ought to
put passion into that?  You see, I'm supposed to be flying all the
time; but it would be much more subtle, wouldn't it, if I could
give the impression that I wanted to be caught.  Don't you think
so?"

Gyp said suddenly:

"Yes, I think it WOULD do you good to be in love."

Miss Daphne's mouth fell a little open; her eyes grew round.  She
said:

"You frightened me when you said that.  You looked so different--
so--intense."

A flame indeed had leaped up in Gyp.  This fluffy, flabby talk of
love set her instincts in revolt.  She did not want to love; she
had failed to fall in love.  But, whatever love was like, it did
not bear talking about.  How was it that this little suburban girl,
when she once got on her toes, could twirl one's emotions as she
did?

"D'you know what I should simply revel in?" Daphne Wing went on:
"To dance to you here in the garden some night.  It must be
wonderful to dance out of doors; and the grass is nice and hard
now.  Only, I suppose it would shock the servants.  Do they look
out this way?"  Gyp shook her head.  "I could dance over there in
front of the drawing-room window.  Only it would have to be
moonlight.  I could come any Sunday.  I've got a dance where I'm
supposed to be a lotus flower--that would do splendidly.  And
there's my real moonlight dance that goes to Chopin.  I could bring
my dresses, and change in the music-room, couldn't I?"  She
wriggled up, and sat cross-legged, gazing at Gyp, and clasping her
hands.  "Oh, may I?"

Her excitement infected Gyp.  A desire to give pleasure, the
queerness of the notion, and her real love of seeing this girl
dance, made her say:

"Yes; next Sunday."

Daphne Wing got up, made a rush, and kissed her.  Her mouth was
soft, and she smelled of orange blossom; but Gyp recoiled a little--
she hated promiscuous kisses.  Somewhat abashed, Miss Daphne hung
her head, and said:

"You did look so lovely; I couldn't help it, really."

And Gyp gave her hand the squeeze of compunction.

They went indoors, to try over the music of the two dances; and
soon after Daphne Wing departed, full of sugar-plums and hope.

She arrived punctually at eight o'clock next Sunday, carrying an
exiguous green linen bag, which contained her dresses.  She was
subdued, and, now that it had come to the point, evidently a little
scared.  Lobster salad, hock, and peaches restored her courage.
She ate heartily.  It did not apparently matter to her whether she
danced full or empty; but she would not smoke.

"It's bad for the--"  She checked herself.

When they had finished supper, Gyp shut the dogs into the back
premises; she had visions of their rending Miss Wing's draperies,
or calves.  Then they went into the drawing-room, not lighting up,
that they might tell when the moonlight was strong enough outside.
Though it was the last night of August, the heat was as great as
ever--a deep, unstirring warmth; the climbing moon shot as yet but
a thin shaft here and there through the heavy foliage.  They talked
in low voices, unconsciously playing up to the nature of the
escapade.  As the moon drew up, they stole out across the garden to
the music-room.  Gyp lighted the candles.

"Can you manage?"

Miss Daphne had already shed half her garments.

"Oh, I'm so excited, Mrs. Fiorsen!  I do hope I shall dance well."

Gyp stole back to the house; it being Sunday evening, the servants
had been easily disposed of.  She sat down at the piano, turning
her eyes toward the garden.  A blurred white shape flitted suddenly
across the darkness at the far end and became motionless, as it
might be a white-flowering bush under the trees.  Miss Daphne had
come out, and was waiting for the moon.  Gyp began to play.  She
pitched on a little Sicilian pastorale that the herdsmen play on
their pipes coming down from the hills, softly, from very far,
rising, rising, swelling to full cadence, and failing, failing away
again to nothing.  The moon rose over the trees; its light flooded
the face of the house, down on to the grass, and spread slowly back
toward where the girl stood waiting.  It caught the border of
sunflowers along the garden wall with a stroke of magical,
unearthly colour--gold that was not gold.

Gyp began to play the dance.  The pale blurr in the darkness
stirred.  The moonlight fell on the girl now, standing with arms
spread, holding out her drapery--a white, winged statue.  Then,
like a gigantic moth she fluttered forth, blanched and noiseless
flew over the grass, spun and hovered.  The moonlight etched out
the shape of her head, painted her hair with pallid gold.  In the
silence, with that unearthly gleam of colour along the sunflowers
and on the girl's head, it was as if a spirit had dropped into the
garden and was fluttering to and fro, unable to get out.

A voice behind Gyp said: "My God!  What's this?  An angel?"

Fiorsen was standing hall-way in the darkened room staring out into
the garden, where the girl had halted, transfixed before the
window, her eyes as round as saucers, her mouth open, her limbs
rigid with interest and affright.  Suddenly she turned and,
gathering her garment, fled, her limbs gleaming in the moonlight.

And Gyp sat looking up at the apparition of her husband.  She could
just see his eyes straining after that flying nymph.  Miss Daphne's
faun!  Why, even his ears were pointed!  Had she never noticed
before, how like a faun he was?  Yes--on her wedding-night!  And
she said quietly:

"Daphne Wing was rehearsing her new dance.  So you're back!  Why
didn't you let me know?  Are you all right--you look splendid!"

Fiorsen bent down and clutched her by the shoulders.

"My Gyp!  Kiss me!"

But even while his lips were pressed on hers, she felt rather than
saw his eyes straying to the garden, and thought, "He would like to
be kissing that girl!"

The moment he had gone to get his things from the cab, she slipped
out to the music-room.

Miss Daphne was dressed, and stuffing her garments into the green
linen bag.  She looked up, and said piteously:

"Oh!  Does he mind?  It's awful, isn't it?"

Gyp strangled her desire to laugh.

"It's for you to mind."

"Oh, I don't, if you don't!  How did you like the dance?"

"Lovely!  When you're ready--come along!"

"Oh, I think I'd rather go home, please!  It must seem so funny!"

"Would you like to go by this back way into the lane?  You turn to
the right, into the road."

"Oh, yes; please.  It would have been better if he could have seen
the dance properly, wouldn't it?  What will he think?"

Gyp smiled, and opened the door into the lane.  When she returned,
Fiorsen was at the window, gazing out.  Was it for her or for that
flying nymph?


IX


September and October passed.  There were more concerts, not very
well attended.  Fiorsen's novelty had worn off, nor had his playing
sweetness and sentiment enough for the big Public.  There was also
a financial crisis.  It did not seem to Gyp to matter.  Everything
seemed remote and unreal in the shadow of her coming time.  Unlike
most mothers to be, she made no garments, no preparations of any
kind.  Why make what might never be needed?  She played for Fiorsen
a great deal, for herself not at all, read many books--poetry,
novels, biographies--taking them in at the moment, and forgetting
them at once, as one does with books read just to distract the
mind.  Winton and Aunt Rosamund, by tacit agreement, came on
alternate afternoons.  And Winton, almost as much under that shadow
as Gyp herself, would take the evening train after leaving her, and
spend the next day racing or cub-hunting, returning the morning of
the day after to pay his next visit.  He had no dread just then
like that of an unoccupied day face to face with anxiety.

Betty, who had been present at Gyp's birth, was in a queer state.
The obvious desirability of such events to one of motherly type
defrauded by fate of children was terribly impinged on by that old
memory, and a solicitude for her "pretty" far exceeding what she
would have had for a daughter of her own.  What a peony regards as
a natural happening to a peony, she watches with awe when it
happens to the lily.  That other single lady of a certain age, Aunt
Rosamund, the very antithesis to Betty--a long, thin nose and a
mere button, a sense of divine rights and no sense of rights at
all, a drawl and a comforting wheeze, length and circumference,
decision and the curtsey to providence, humour and none, dyspepsia,
and the digestion of an ostrich, with other oppositions--Aunt
Rosamund was also uneasy, as only one could be who disapproved
heartily of uneasiness, and habitually joked and drawled it into
retirement.

But of all those round Gyp, Fiorsen gave the most interesting
display.  He had not even an elementary notion of disguising his
state of mind.  And his state of mind was weirdly, wistfully
primitive.  He wanted Gyp as she had been.  The thought that she
might never become herself again terrified him so at times that he
was forced to drink brandy, and come home only a little less far
gone than that first time.  Gyp had often to help him go to bed.
On two or three occasions, he suffered so that he was out all
night.  To account for this, she devised the formula of a room at
Count Rosek's, where he slept when music kept him late, so as not
to disturb her.  Whether the servants believed her or not, she
never knew.  Nor did she ever ask him where he went--too proud, and
not feeling that she had the right.

Deeply conscious of the unaesthetic nature of her condition, she
was convinced that she could no longer be attractive to one so
easily upset in his nerves, so intolerant of ugliness.  As to
deeper feelings about her--had he any?  He certainly never gave
anything up, or sacrificed himself in any way.  If she had loved,
she felt she would want to give up everything to the loved one; but
then--she would never love!  And yet he seemed frightened about
her.  It was puzzling!  But perhaps she would not be puzzled much
longer about that or anything; for she often had the feeling that
she would die.  How could she be going to live, grudging her fate?
What would give her strength to go through with it?  And, at times,
she felt as if she would be glad to die.  Life had defrauded her,
or she had defrauded herself of life.  Was it really only a year
since that glorious day's hunting when Dad and she, and the young
man with the clear eyes and the irrepressible smile, had slipped
away with the hounds ahead of all the field--the fatal day Fiorsen
descended from the clouds and asked for her?  An overwhelming
longing for Mildenham came on her, to get away there with her
father and Betty.

She went at the beginning of November.

Over her departure, Fiorsen behaved like a tired child that will
not go to bed.  He could not bear to be away from her, and so
forth; but when she had gone, he spent a furious bohemian evening.
At about five, he woke with "an awful cold feeling in my heart," as
he wrote to Gyp next day--"an awful feeling, my Gyp; I walked up
and down for hours" (in reality, half an hour at most).  "How shall
I bear to be away from you at this time?  I feel lost."  Next day,
he found himself in Paris with Rosek.  "I could not stand," he
wrote, "the sight of the streets, of the garden, of our room.  When
I come back I shall stay with Rosek.  Nearer to the day I will
come; I must come to you."  But Gyp, when she read the letter, said
to Winton: "Dad, when it comes, don't send for him.  I don't want
him here."

With those letters of his, she buried the last remnants of her
feeling that somewhere in him there must be something as fine and
beautiful as the sounds he made with his violin.  And yet she felt
those letters genuine in a way, pathetic, and with real feeling of
a sort.

From the moment she reached Mildenham, she began to lose that
hopelessness about herself; and, for the first time, had the
sensation of wanting to live in the new life within her.  She first
felt it, going into her old nursery, where everything was the same
as it had been when she first saw it, a child of eight; there was
her old red doll's house, the whole side of which opened to display
the various floors; the worn Venetian blinds, the rattle of whose
fall had sounded in her ears so many hundred times; the high
fender, near which she had lain so often on the floor, her chin on
her hands, reading Grimm, or "Alice in Wonderland," or histories of
England.  Here, too, perhaps this new child would live amongst the
old familiars.  And the whim seized her to face her hour in her old
nursery, not in the room where she had slept as a girl.  She would
not like the daintiness of that room deflowered.  Let it stay the
room of her girlhood.  But in the nursery--there was safety,
comfort!  And when she had been at Mildenham a week, she made Betty
change her over.

No one in that house was half so calm to look at in those days as
Gyp.  Betty was not guiltless of sitting on the stairs and crying
at odd moments.  Mrs. Markey had never made such bad soups.  Markey
so far forgot himself as frequently to talk.  Winton lamed a horse
trying an impossible jump that he might get home the quicker, and,
once back, was like an unquiet spirit.  If Gyp were in the room, he
would make the pretence of wanting to warm his feet or hand, just
to stroke her shoulder as he went back to his chair.  His voice, so
measured and dry, had a ring in it, that too plainly disclosed the
anxiety of his heart.  Gyp, always sensitive to atmosphere, felt
cradled in all the love about her.  Wonderful that they should all
care so much!  What had she done for anyone, that people should be
so sweet--he especially, whom she had so grievously distressed by
her wretched marriage?  She would sit staring into the fire with
her wide, dark eyes, unblinking as an owl's at night--wondering
what she could do to make up to her father, whom already once she
had nearly killed by coming into life.  And she began to practise
the bearing of the coming pain, trying to project herself into this
unknown suffering, so that it should not surprise from her cries
and contortions.

She had one dream, over and over again, of sinking and sinking into
a feather bed, growing hotter and more deeply walled in by that
which had no stay in it, yet through which her body could not fall
and reach anything more solid.  Once, after this dream, she got up
and spent the rest of the night wrapped in a blanket and the eider-
down, on the old sofa, where, as a child, they had made her lie
flat on her back from twelve to one every day.  Betty was aghast at
finding her there asleep in the morning.  Gyp's face was so like
the child-face she had seen lying there in the old days, that she
bundled out of the room and cried bitterly into the cup of tea.  It
did her good.  Going back with the tea, she scolded her "pretty"
for sleeping out there, with the fire out, too!

But Gyp only said:

"Betty, darling, the tea's awfully cold!  Please get me some more!"


X


From the day of the nurse's arrival, Winton gave up hunting.  He
could not bring himself to be out of doors for more than half an
hour at a time.  Distrust of doctors did not prevent him having ten
minutes every morning with the old practitioner who had treated Gyp
for mumps, measles, and the other blessings of childhood.  The old
fellow--his name was Rivershaw--was a most peculiar survival.  He
smelled of mackintosh, had round purplish cheeks, a rim of hair
which people said he dyed, and bulging grey eyes slightly
bloodshot.  He was short in body and wind, drank port wine, was
suspected of taking snuff, read The Times, spoke always in a husky
voice, and used a very small brougham with a very old black horse.
But he had a certain low cunning, which had defeated many ailments,
and his reputation for assisting people into the world stood
extremely high.  Every morning punctually at twelve, the crunch of
his little brougham's wheels would be heard.  Winton would get up,
and, taking a deep breath, cross the hall to the dining-room,
extract from a sideboard a decanter of port, a biscuit-canister,
and one glass.  He would then stand with his eyes fixed on the
door, till, in due time, the doctor would appear, and he could say:

"Well, doctor?  How is she?"

"Nicely; quite nicely."

"Nothing to make one anxious?"

The doctor, puffing out his cheeks, with eyes straying to the
decanter, would murmur:

"Cardiac condition, capital--a little--um--not to matter.  Taking
its course.  These things!"

And Winton, with another deep breath, would say:

"Glass of port, doctor?"

An expression of surprise would pass over the doctor's face.

"Cold day--ah, perhaps--"  And he would blow his nose on his
purple-and-red bandanna.

Watching him drink his port, Winton would mark:

"We can get you at any time, can't we?"

And the doctor, sucking his lips, would answer:

"Never fear, my dear sir!  Little Miss Gyp--old friend of mine.  At
her service day and night.  Never fear!"

A sensation of comfort would pass through Winton, which would last
quite twenty minutes after the crunching of the wheels and the
mingled perfumes of him had died away.

In these days, his greatest friend was an old watch that had been
his father's before him; a gold repeater from Switzerland, with a
chipped dial-plate, and a case worn wondrous thin and smooth--a
favourite of Gyp's childhood.  He would take it out about every
quarter of an hour, look at its face without discovering the time,
finger it, all smooth and warm from contact with his body, and put
it back.  Then he would listen.  There was nothing whatever to
listen to, but he could not help it.  Apart from this, his chief
distraction was to take a foil and make passes at a leather
cushion, set up on the top of a low bookshelf.  In these
occupations, varied by constant visits to the room next the
nursery, where--to save her the stairs--Gyp was now established,
and by excursions to the conservatory to see if he could not find
some new flower to take her, he passed all his time, save when he
was eating, sleeping, or smoking cigars, which he had constantly to
be relighting.

By Gyp's request, they kept from him knowledge of when her pains
began.  After that first bout was over and she was lying half
asleep in the old nursery, he happened to go up.  The nurse--a
bonny creature--one of those free, independent, economic agents
that now abound--met him in the sitting-room.  Accustomed to the
"fuss and botheration of men" at such times, she was prepared to
deliver him a little lecture.  But, in approaching, she became
affected by the look on his face, and, realizing somehow that she
was in the presence of one whose self-control was proof, she simply
whispered:

"It's beginning; but don't be anxious--she's not suffering just
now.  We shall send for the doctor soon.  She's very plucky"; and
with an unaccustomed sensation of respect and pity she repeated:
"Don't be anxious, sir."

"If she wants to see me at any time, I shall be in my study.  Save
her all you can, nurse."

The nurse was left with a feeling of surprise at having used the
word "Sir"; she had not done such a thing since--since--!  And,
pensive, she returned to the nursery, where Gyp said at once:

"Was that my father?  I didn't want him to know."

The nurse answered mechanically:

"That's all right, my dear."

"How long do you think before--before it'll begin again, nurse?
I'd like to see him."

The nurse stroked her hair.

"Soon enough when it's all over and comfy.  Men are always fidgety."

Gyp looked at her, and said quietly:

"Yes.  You see, my mother died when I was born."

The nurse, watching those lips, still pale with pain, felt a queer
pang.  She smoothed the bed-clothes and said:

"That's nothing--it often happens--that is, I mean,--you know it
has no connection whatever."

And seeing Gyp smile, she thought: 'Well, I am a fool.'

"If by any chance I don't get through, I want to be cremated; I
want to go back as quick as I can.  I can't bear the thought of the
other thing.  Will you remember, nurse?  I can't tell my father
that just now; it might upset him.  But promise me."

And the nurse thought: 'That can't be done without a will or
something, but I'd better promise.  It's a morbid fancy, and yet
she's not a morbid subject, either.'  And she said:

"Very well, my dear; only, you're not going to do anything of the
sort.  That's flat."

Gyp smiled again, and there was silence, till she said:

"I'm awfully ashamed, wanting all this attention, and making people
miserable.  I've read that Japanese women quietly go out somewhere
by themselves and sit on a gate."

The nurse, still busy with the bedclothes, murmured abstractedly:

"Yes, that's a very good way.  But don't you fancy you're half the
trouble most of them are.  You're very good, and you're going to
get on splendidly."  And she thought: 'Odd!  She's never once
spoken of her husband.  I don't like it for this sort--too perfect,
too sensitive; her face touches you so!'

Gyp murmured again:

"I'd like to see my father, please; and rather quick."

The nurse, after one swift look, went out.

Gyp, who had clinched her hands under the bedclothes, fixed her
eyes on the window.  November!  Acorns and the leaves--the nice,
damp, earthy smell!  Acorns all over the grass.  She used to drive
the old retriever in harness on the lawn covered with acorns and
the dead leaves, and the wind still blowing them off the trees--in
her brown velvet--that was a ducky dress!  Who was it had called
her once "a wise little owl," in that dress?  And, suddenly, her
heart sank.  The pain was coming again.  Winton's voice from the
door said:

"Well, my pet?"

"It was only to see how you are.  I'm all right.  What sort of a
day is it?  You'll go riding, won't you?  Give my love to the
horses.  Good-bye, Dad; just for now."

Her forehead was wet to his lips.

Outside, in the passage, her smile, like something actual on the
air, preceded him--the smile that had just lasted out.  But when he
was back in the study, he suffered--suffered!  Why could he not
have that pain to bear instead?

The crunch of the brougham brought his ceaseless march over the
carpet to an end.  He went out into the hall and looked into the
doctor's face--he had forgotten that this old fellow knew nothing
of his special reason for deadly fear.  Then he turned back into
his study.  The wild south wind brought wet drift-leaves whirling
against the panes.  It was here that he had stood looking out into
the dark, when Fiorsen came down to ask for Gyp a year ago.  Why
had he not bundled the fellow out neck and crop, and taken her
away?--India, Japan--anywhere would have done!  She had not loved
that fiddler, never really loved him.  Monstrous--monstrous!  The
full bitterness of having missed right action swept over Winton,
and he positively groaned aloud.  He moved from the window and went
over to the bookcase; there in one row were the few books he ever
read, and he took one out.  "Life of General Lee."  He put it back
and took another, a novel of Whyte Melville's: "Good for Nothing."
Sad book--sad ending!  The book dropped from his hand and fell with
a flump on the floor.  In a sort of icy discovery, he had seen his
life as it would be if for a second time he had to bear such loss.
She must not--could not die!  If she did--then, for him--!  In old
times they buried a man with his horse and his dog, as if at the
end of a good run.  There was always that!  The extremity of this
thought brought relief.  He sat down, and, for a long time, stayed
staring into the fire in a sort of coma.  Then his feverish fears
began again.  Why the devil didn't they come and tell him
something, anything--rather than this silence, this deadly solitude
and waiting?  What was that?  The front door shutting.  Wheels?
Had that hell-hound of an old doctor sneaked off?  He started up.
There at the door was Markey, holding in his hand some cards.
Winton scanned them.

"Lady Summerhay; Mr. Bryan Summerhay.  I said, 'Not at home,' sir."

Winton nodded.

"Well?"

"Nothing at present.  You have had no lunch, sir."

"What time is it?"

"Four o'clock."

"Bring in my fur coat and the port, and make the fire up.  I want
any news there is."

Markey nodded.

Odd to sit in a fur coat before a fire, and the day not cold!  They
said you lived on after death.  He had never been able to feel that
SHE was living on.  SHE lived in Gyp.  And now if Gyp--!  Death--
your own--no great matter!  But--for her!  The wind was dropping
with the darkness.  He got up and drew the curtains.

It was seven o'clock when the doctor came down into the hall, and
stood rubbing his freshly washed hands before opening the study
door.  Winton was still sitting before the fire, motionless, shrunk
into his fur coat.  He raised himself a little and looked round
dully.

The doctor's face puckered, his eyelids drooped half-way across his
bulging eyes; it was his way of smiling.  "Nicely," he said;
"nicely--a girl.  No complications."

Winton's whole body seemed to swell, his lips opened, he raised his
hand.  Then, the habit of a lifetime catching him by the throat, he
stayed motionless.  At last he got up and said:

"Glass of port, doctor?"

The doctor spying at him above the glass thought: 'This is "the
fifty-two."  Give me "the sixty-eight"--more body.'

After a time, Winton went upstairs.  Waiting in the outer room he
had a return of his cold dread.  "Perfectly successful--the patient
died from exhaustion!"  The tiny squawking noise that fell on his
ears entirely failed to reassure him.  He cared nothing for that
new being.  Suddenly he found Betty just behind him, her bosom
heaving horribly.

"What is it, woman?  Don't!"

She had leaned against his shoulder, appearing to have lost all
sense of right and wrong, and, out of her sobbing, gurgled:

"She looks so lovely--oh dear, she looks so lovely!"

Pushing her abruptly from him, Winton peered in through the just-
opened door.  Gyp was lying extremely still, and very white; her
eyes, very large, very dark, were fastened on her baby.  Her face
wore a kind of wonder.  She did not see Winton, who stood stone-
quiet, watching, while the nurse moved about her business behind a
screen.  This was the first time in his life that he had seen a
mother with her just-born baby.  That look on her face--gone right
away somewhere, right away--amazed him.  She had never seemed to
like children, had said she did not want a child.  She turned her
head and saw him.  He went in.  She made a faint motion toward the
baby, and her eyes smiled.  Winton looked at that swaddled speckled
mite; then, bending down, he kissed her hand and tiptoed away.

At dinner he drank champagne, and benevolence towards all the world
spread in his being.  Watching the smoke of his cigar wreathe about
him, he thought: 'Must send that chap a wire.'  After all, he was a
fellow being--might be suffering, as he himself had suffered only
two hours ago.  To keep him in ignorance--it wouldn't do!  And he
wrote out the form--


     "All well, a daughter.--WINTON,"


and sent it out with the order that a groom should take it in that
night.

Gyp was sleeping when he stole up at ten o'clock.

He, too, turned in, and slept like a child.


XI


Returning the next afternoon from the first ride for several days,
Winton passed the station fly rolling away from the drive-gate with
the light-hearted disillusionment peculiar to quite empty vehicles.

The sight of a fur coat and broad-brimmed hat in the hall warned
him of what had happened.

"Mr. Fiorsen, sir; gone up to Mrs. Fiorsen."

Natural, but a d--d bore!  And bad, perhaps, for Gyp.  He asked:

"Did he bring things?"

"A bag, sir."

"Get a room ready, then."

To dine tete-a-tete with that fellow!

Gyp had passed the strangest morning in her life, so far.  Her baby
fascinated her, also the tug of its lips, giving her the queerest
sensation, almost sensual; a sort of meltedness, an infinite
warmth, a desire to grip the little creature right into her--which,
of course, one must not do.  And yet, neither her sense of humour
nor her sense of beauty were deceived.  It was a queer little
affair with a tuft of black hair, in grace greatly inferior to a
kitten.  Its tiny, pink, crisped fingers with their infinitesimal
nails, its microscopic curly toes, and solemn black eyes--when they
showed, its inimitable stillness when it slept, its incredible
vigour when it fed, were all, as it were, miraculous.  Withal, she
had a feeling of gratitude to one that had not killed nor even hurt
her so very desperately--gratitude because she had succeeded,
performed her part of mother perfectly--the nurse had said so--she,
so distrustful of herself!  Instinctively she knew, too, that this
was HER baby, not his, going "to take after her," as they called
it.  How it succeeded in giving that impression she could not tell,
unless it were the passivity, and dark eyes of the little creature.
Then from one till three they had slept together with perfect
soundness and unanimity.  She awoke to find the nurse standing by
the bed, looking as if she wanted to tell her something.

"Someone to see you, my dear."

And Gyp thought: 'He!  I can't think quickly; I ought to think
quickly--I want to, but I can't.'  Her face expressed this, for the
nurse said at once:

"I don't think you're quite up to it yet."

Gyp answered:

"Yes.  Only, not for five minutes, please."

Her spirit had been very far away, she wanted time to get it back
before she saw him--time to know in some sort what she felt now;
what this mite lying beside her had done for her and him.  The
thought that it was his, too--this tiny, helpless being--seemed
unreal.  No, it was not his!  He had not wanted it, and now that
she had been through the torture it was hers, not his--never his.
The memory of the night when she first yielded to the certainty
that the child was coming, and he had come home drunk, swooped on
her, and made her shrink and shudder and put her arm round her
baby.  It had not made any difference.  Only--Back came the old
accusing thought, from which these last days she had been free:
'But I married him--I chose to marry him.  I can't get out of
that!'  And she felt as if she must cry out to the nurse: "Keep him
away; I don't want to see him.  Oh, please, I'm tired."  She bit
the words back.  And presently, with a very faint smile, said:

"Now, I'm ready."

She noticed first what clothes he had on--his newest suit, dark
grey, with little lighter lines--she had chosen it herself; that
his tie was in a bow, not a sailor's knot, and his hair brighter
than usual--as always just after being cut; and surely the hair was
growing down again in front of his ears.  Then, gratefully, almost
with emotion, she realized that his lips were quivering, his whole
face quivering.  He came in on tiptoe, stood looking at her a
minute, then crossed very swiftly to the bed, very swiftly knelt
down, and, taking her hand, turned it over and put his face to it.
The bristles of his moustache tickled her palm; his nose flattened
itself against her fingers, and his lips kept murmuring words into
the hand, with the moist warm touch of his lips.  Gyp knew he was
burying there all his remorse, perhaps the excesses he had
committed while she had been away from him, burying the fears he
had felt, and the emotion at seeing her so white and still.  She
felt that in a minute he would raise a quite different face.  And
it flashed through her: "If I loved him I wouldn't mind what he
did--ever!  Why don't I love him?  There's something loveable.  Why
don't I?"

He did raise his face; his eyes lighted on the baby, and he
grinned.

"Look at this!" he said.  "Is it possible?  Oh, my Gyp, what a
funny one!  Oh, oh, oh!"  He went off into an ecstasy of smothered
laughter; then his face grew grave, and slowly puckered into a sort
of comic disgust.  Gyp too had seen the humours of her baby, of its
queer little reddish pudge of a face, of its twenty-seven black
hairs, and the dribble at its almost invisible mouth; but she had
also seen it as a miracle; she had felt it, and there surged up
from her all the old revolt and more against his lack of
consideration.  It was not a funny one--her baby!  It was not ugly!
Or, if it were, she was not fit to be told of it.  Her arm
tightened round the warm bundled thing against her.  Fiorsen put
his finger out and touched its cheek.

"It IS real--so it is.  Mademoiselle Fiorsen.  Tk, tk!"

The baby stirred.  And Gyp thought: 'If I loved I wouldn't even
mind his laughing at my baby.  It would be different.'

"Don't wake her!" she whispered.  She felt his eyes on her, knew
that his interest in the baby had ceased as suddenly as it came,
that he was thinking, "How long before I have you in my arms
again?"  He touched her hair.  And, suddenly, she had a fainting,
sinking sensation that she had never yet known.  When she opened
her eyes again, the economic agent was holding something beneath
her nose and making sounds that seemed to be the words: "Well, I am
a d--d fool!" repeatedly expressed.  Fiorsen was gone.

Seeing Gyp's eyes once more open, the nurse withdrew the ammonia,
replaced the baby, and saying: "Now go to sleep!" withdrew behind
the screen.  Like all robust personalities, she visited on others
her vexations with herself.  But Gyp did not go to sleep; she gazed
now at her sleeping baby, now at the pattern of the wall-paper,
trying mechanically to find the bird caught at intervals amongst
its brown-and-green foliage--one bird in each alternate square of
the pattern, so that there was always a bird in the centre of four
other birds.  And the bird was of green and yellow with a red beak.


On being turned out of the nursery with the assurance that it was
"all right--only a little faint," Fiorsen went down-stairs
disconsolate.  The atmosphere of this dark house where he was a
stranger, an unwelcome stranger, was insupportable.  He wanted
nothing in it but Gyp, and Gyp had fainted at his touch.  No wonder
he felt miserable.  He opened a door.  What room was this?  A
piano!  The drawing-room.  Ugh!  No fire--what misery!  He recoiled
to the doorway and stood listening.  Not a sound.  Grey light in
the cheerless room; almost dark already in the hall behind him.
What a life these English lived--worse than the winter in his old
country home in Sweden, where, at all events, they kept good fires.
And, suddenly, all his being revolted.  Stay here and face that
father--and that image of a servant!  Stay here for a night of
this!  Gyp was not his Gyp, lying there with that baby beside her,
in this hostile house.  Smothering his footsteps, he made for the
outer hall.  There were his coat and hat.  He put them on.  His
bag?  He could not see it.  No matter!  They could send it after
him.  He would write to her--say that her fainting had upset him--
that he could not risk making her faint again--could not stay in
the house so near her, yet so far.  She would understand.  And
there came over him a sudden wave of longing.  Gyp!  He wanted her.
To be with her!  To look at her and kiss her, and feel her his own
again!  And, opening the door, he passed out on to the drive and
strode away, miserable and sick at heart.  All the way to the
station through the darkening lanes, and in the railway carriage
going up, he felt that aching wretchedness.  Only in the lighted
street, driving back to Rosek's, did he shake it off a little.  At
dinner and after, drinking that special brandy he nearly lost it;
but it came back when he went to bed, till sleep relieved him with
its darkness and dreams.


XII


Gyp's recovery proceeded at first with a sure rapidity which
delighted Winton.  As the economic agent pointed out, she was
beautifully made, and that had a lot to do with it!

Before Christmas Day, she was already out, and on Christmas morning
the old doctor, by way of present, pronounced her fit and ready to
go home when she liked.  That afternoon, she was not so well, and
next day back again upstairs.  Nothing seemed definitely wrong,
only a sort of desperate lassitude; as if the knowledge that to go
back was within her power, only needing her decision, had been too
much for her.  And since no one knew her inward feelings, all were
puzzled except Winton.  The nursing of her child was promptly
stopped.

It was not till the middle of January that she said to him.

"I must go home, Dad."

The word "home" hurt him, and he only answered:

"Very well, Gyp; when?"

"The house is quite ready.  I think I had better go to-morrow.
He's still at Rosek's.  I won't let him know.  Two or three days
there by myself first would be better for settling baby in."

"Very well; I'll take you up."

He made no effort to ascertain her feelings toward Fiorsen.  He
knew too well.

They travelled next day, reaching London at half-past two.  Betty
had gone up in the early morning to prepare the way.  The dogs had
been with Aunt Rosamund all this time.  Gyp missed their greeting;
but the installation of Betty and the baby in the spare room that
was now to be the nursery, absorbed all her first energies.  Light
was just beginning to fail when, still in her fur, she took a key
of the music-room and crossed the garden, to see how all had fared
during her ten weeks' absence.  What a wintry garden!  How
different from that languorous, warm, moonlit night when Daphne
Wing had come dancing out of the shadow of the dark trees.  How
bare and sharp the boughs against the grey, darkening sky--and not
a song of any bird, not a flower!  She glanced back at the house.
Cold and white it looked, but there were lights in her room and in
the nursery, and someone just drawing the curtains.  Now that the
leaves were off, one could see the other houses of the road, each
different in shape and colour, as is the habit of London houses.
It was cold, frosty; Gyp hurried down the path.  Four little
icicles had formed beneath the window of the music-room.  They
caught her eye, and, passing round to the side, she broke one off.
There must be a fire in there, for she could see the flicker
through the curtains not quite drawn.  Thoughtful Ellen had been
airing it!  But, suddenly, she stood still.  There was more than a
fire in there!  Through the chink in the drawn curtains she had
seen two figures seated on the divan.  Something seemed to spin
round in her head.  She turned to rush away.  Then a kind of
superhuman coolness came to her, and she deliberately looked in.
He and Daphne Wing!  His arm was round her neck.  The girl's face
riveted her eyes.  It was turned a little back and up, gazing at
him, the lips parted, the eyes hypnotized, adoring; and her arm
round him seemed to shiver--with cold, with ecstasy?

Again that something went spinning through Gyp's head.  She raised
her hand.  For a second it hovered close to the glass.  Then, with
a sick feeling, she dropped it and turned away.

Never!  Never would she show him or that girl that they could hurt
her!  Never!  They were safe from any scene she would make--safe in
their nest!  And blindly, across the frosty grass, through the
unlighted drawing-room, she went upstairs to her room, locked the
door, and sat down before the fire.  Pride raged within her.  She
stuffed her handkerchief between her teeth and lips; she did it
unconsciously.  Her eyes felt scorched from the fire-flames, but
she did not trouble to hold her hand before them.

Suddenly she thought: 'Suppose I HAD loved him?' and laughed.  The
handkerchief dropped to her lap, and she looked at it with wonder--
it was blood-stained.  She drew back in the chair, away from the
scorching of the fire, and sat quite still, a smile on her lips.
That girl's eyes, like a little adoring dog's--that girl, who had
fawned on her so!  She had got her "distinguished man"!  She sprang
up and looked at herself in the glass; shuddered, turned her back
on herself, and sat down again.  In her own house!  Why not here--
in this room?  Why not before her eyes?  Not yet a year married!
It was almost funny--almost funny!  And she had her first calm
thought: 'I am free.'

But it did not seem to mean anything, had no value to a spirit so
bitterly stricken in its pride.  She moved her chair closer to the
fire again.  Why had she not tapped on the window?  To have seen
that girl's face ashy with fright!  To have seen him--caught--
caught in the room she had made beautiful for him, the room where
she had played for him so many hours, the room that was part of the
house that she paid for!  How long had they used it for their
meetings--sneaking in by that door from the back lane?  Perhaps
even before she went away--to bear his child!  And there began in
her a struggle between mother instinct and her sense of outrage--a
spiritual tug-of-war so deep that it was dumb, unconscious--to
decide whether her baby would be all hers, or would have slipped
away from her heart, and be a thing almost abhorrent.

She huddled nearer the fire, feeling cold and physically sick.  And
suddenly the thought came to her: 'If I don't let the servants know
I'm here, they might go out and see what I saw!'  Had she shut the
drawing-room window when she returned so blindly?  Perhaps already--!
In a fever, she rang the bell, and unlocked the door.  The maid
came up.

"Please shut the drawing-room, window, Ellen; and tell Betty I'm
afraid I got a little chill travelling.  I'm going to bed.  Ask her
if she can manage with baby."  And she looked straight into the
girl's face.  It wore an expression of concern, even of
commiseration, but not that fluttered look which must have been
there if she had known.

"Yes, m'm; I'll get you a hot-water bottle, m'm.  Would you like a
hot bath and a cup of hot tea at once?"

Gyp nodded.  Anything--anything!  And when the maid was gone, she
thought mechanically: 'A cup of hot tea!  How quaint!  What should
it be but hot?'

The maid came back with the tea; she was an affectionate girl, full
of that admiring love servants and dogs always felt for Gyp,
imbued, too, with the instinctive partisanship which stores itself
one way or the other in the hearts of those who live in houses
where the atmosphere lacks unity.  To her mind, the mistress was
much too good for him--a foreigner--and such 'abits!  Manners--he
hadn't any!  And no good would come of it.  Not if you took her
opinion!

"And I've turned the water in, m'm.  Will you have a little mustard
in it?"

Again Gyp nodded.  And the girl, going downstairs for the mustard,
told cook there was "that about the mistress that makes you quite
pathetic."  The cook, who was fingering her concertina, for which
she had a passion, answered:

"She 'ides up her feelin's, same as they all does.  Thank 'eaven
she haven't got that drawl, though, that 'er old aunt 'as--always
makes me feel to want to say, 'Buck up, old dear, you ain't 'alf so
precious as all that!'"

And when the maid Ellen had taken the mustard and gone, she drew
out her concertina to its full length and, with cautionary
softness, began to practise "Home, Sweet Home!"

To Gyp, lying in her hot bath, those muffled strains just mounted,
not quite as a tune, rather as some far-away humming of large
flies.  The heat of the water, the pungent smell of the mustard,
and that droning hum slowly soothed and drowsed away the vehemence
of feeling.  She looked at her body, silver-white in the yellowish
water, with a dreamy sensation.  Some day she, too, would love!
Strange feeling she had never had before!  Strange, indeed, that it
should come at such a moment, breaking through the old instinctive
shrinking.  Yes; some day love would come to her.  There floated
before her brain the adoring look on Daphne Wing's face, the shiver
that had passed along her arm, and pitifulness crept into her
heart--a half-bitter, half-admiring pitifulness.  Why should she
grudge--she who did not love?  The sounds, like the humming of
large flies, grew deeper, more vibrating.  It was the cook, in her
passion swelling out her music on the phrase,


     "Be it ne-e-ver so humble,
      There's no-o place like home!"



XIII


That night, Gyp slept peacefully, as though nothing had happened,
as though there were no future at all before her.  She woke into
misery.  Her pride would never let her show the world what she had
discovered, would force her to keep an unmoved face and live an
unmoved life.  But the struggle between mother-instinct and revolt
was still going on within her.  She was really afraid to see her
baby, and she sent word to Betty that she thought it would be safer
if she kept quite quiet till the afternoon.

She got up at noon and stole downstairs.  She had not realized how
violent was her struggle over HIS child till she was passing the
door of the room where it was lying.  If she had not been ordered
to give up nursing, that struggle would never have come.  Her heart
ached, but a demon pressed her on and past the door.  Downstairs
she just pottered round, dusting her china, putting in order the
books which, after house-cleaning, the maid had arranged almost too
carefully, so that the first volumes of Dickens and Thackeray
followed each other on the top shell, and the second volumes
followed each other on the bottom shelf.  And all the time she
thought dully: 'Why am I doing this?  What do I care how the place
looks?  It is not my home.  It can never be my home!'

For lunch she drank some beef tea, keeping up the fiction of her
indisposition.  After that, she sat down at her bureau to write.
Something must be decided!  There she sat, her forehead on her
hand, and nothing came--not one word--not even the way to address
him; just the date, and that was all.  At a ring of the bell she
started up.  She could not see anybody!  But the maid only brought
a note from Aunt Rosamund, and the dogs, who fell frantically on
their mistress and instantly began to fight for her possession.
She went on her knees to separate them, and enjoin peace and good-
will, and their little avid tongues furiously licked her cheeks.
Under the eager touch of those wet tongues the band round her brain
and heart gave way; she was overwhelmed with longing for her baby.
Nearly a day since she had seen her--was it possible?  Nearly a day
without sight of those solemn eyes and crinkled toes and fingers!
And followed by the dogs, she went upstairs.

The house was invisible from the music-room; and, spurred on by
thought that, until Fiorsen knew she was back, those two might be
there in each other's arms any moment of the day or night, Gyp
wrote that evening:


"DEAR GUSTAV,--We are back.--GYP."


What else in the world could she say?  He would not get it till he
woke about eleven.  With the instinct to take all the respite she
could, and knowing no more than before how she would receive his
return, she went out in the forenoon and wandered about all day
shopping and trying not to think.  Returning at tea-time, she went
straight up to her baby, and there heard from Betty that he had
come, and gone out with his violin to the music-room.

Bent over the child, Gyp needed all her self-control--but her self-
control was becoming great.  Soon, the girl would come fluttering
down that dark, narrow lane; perhaps at this very minute her
fingers were tapping at the door, and he was opening it to murmur,
"No; she's back!"  Ah, then the girl would shrink!  The rapid
whispering--some other meeting-place!  Lips to lips, and that look
on the girl's face; till she hurried away from the shut door, in
the darkness, disappointed!  And he, on that silver-and-gold divan,
gnawing his moustache, his eyes--catlike---staring at the fire!
And then, perhaps, from his violin would come one of those swaying
bursts of sound, with tears in them, and the wind in them, that had
of old bewitched her!  She said:

"Open the window just a little, Betty dear--it's hot."

There it was, rising, falling!  Music!  Why did it so move one even
when, as now, it was the voice of insult!  And suddenly she
thought: "He will expect me to go out there again and play for him.
But I will not, never!"

She put her baby down, went into her bedroom, and changed hastily
into a teagown for the evening, ready to go downstairs.  A little
shepherdess in china on the mantel-shelf attracted her attention,
and she took it in her hand.  She had bought it three and more
years ago, when she first came to London, at the beginning of that
time of girl-gaiety when all life seemed a long cotillion, and she
its leader.  Its cool daintiness made it seem the symbol of another
world, a world without depths or shadows, a world that did not
feel--a happy world!

She had not long to wait before he tapped on the drawing-room
window.  She got up from the tea-table to let him in.  Why do faces
gazing in through glass from darkness always look hungry--
searching, appealing for what you have and they have not?  And
while she was undoing the latch she thought: 'What am I going to
say?  I feel nothing!'  The ardour of his gaze, voice, hands seemed
to her so false as to be almost comic; even more comically false
his look of disappointment when she said:

"Please take care; I'm still brittle!"  Then she sat down again and
asked:

"Will you have some tea?"

"Tea!  I have you back, and you ask me if I will have tea Gyp!  Do
you know what I have felt like all this time?  No; you don't know.
You know nothing of me--do you?"

A smile of sheer irony formed on her lips--without her knowing it
was there.  She said:

"Have you had a good time at Count Rosek's?"  And, without her
will, against her will, the words slipped out: "I'm afraid you've
missed the music-room!"

His stare wavered; he began to walk up and down.

"Missed!  Missed everything!  I have been very miserable, Gyp.
You've no idea how miserable.  Yes, miserable, miserable,
miserable!"  With each repetition of that word, his voice grew
gayer.  And kneeling down in front of her, he stretched his long
arms round her till they met behind her waist: "Ah, my Gyp!  I
shall be a different being, now."

And Gyp went on smiling.  Between that, and stabbing these false
raptures to the heart, there seemed to be nothing she could do.
The moment his hands relaxed, she got up and said:

"You know there's a baby in the house?"

He laughed.

"Ah, the baby!  I'd forgotten.  Let's go up and see it."

Gyp answered:

"You go."

She could feel him thinking: 'Perhaps it will make her nice to me!'
He turned suddenly and went.

She stood with her eyes shut, seeing the divan in the music-room
and the girl's arm shivering.  Then, going to the piano, she began
with all her might to play a Chopin polonaise.

That evening they dined out, and went to "The Tales of Hoffmann."
By such devices it was possible to put off a little longer what she
was going to do.  During the drive home in the dark cab, she shrank
away into her corner, pretending that his arm would hurt her dress;
her exasperated nerves were already overstrung.  Twice she was on
the very point of crying out: "I am not Daphne Wing!"  But each
time pride strangled the words in her throat.  And yet they would
have to come.  What other reason could she find to keep him from
her room?

But when in her mirror she saw him standing behind her--he had
crept into the bedroom like a cat--fierceness came into her.  She
could see the blood rush up in her own white face, and, turning
round she said:

"No, Gustav, go out to the music-room if you want a companion."

He recoiled against the foot of the bed and stared at her
haggardly, and Gyp, turning back to her mirror, went on quietly
taking the pins out of her hair.  For fully a minute she could see
him leaning there, moving his head and hands as though in pain.
Then, to her surprise, he went.  And a vague feeling of compunction
mingled with her sense of deliverance.  She lay awake a long time,
watching the fire-glow brighten and darken on the ceiling, tunes
from "The Tales of Hoffmann" running in her head; thoughts and
fancies crisscrossing in her excited brain.  Falling asleep at
last, she dreamed she was feeding doves out of her hand, and one of
them was Daphne Wing.  She woke with a start.  The fire still
burned, and by its light she saw him crouching at the foot of the
bed, just as he had on their wedding-night--the same hungry
yearning in his face, and an arm outstretched.  Before she could
speak, he began:

"Oh, Gyp, you don't understand!  All that is nothing--it is only
you I want--always.  I am a fool who cannot control himself.
Think!  It's a long time since you went away from me."

Gyp said, in a hard voice:

"I didn't want to have a child."

He said quickly:

"No; but now you have it you are glad.  Don't be unmerciful, my
Gyp!  It is like you to be merciful.  That girl--it is all over--I
swear--I promise."

His hand touched her foot through the soft eiderdown.  Gyp thought:
'Why does he come and whine to me like this?  He has no dignity--
none!'  And she said:

"How can you promise?  You have made the girl love you.  I saw her
face."

He drew his hand back.

"You saw her?"

"Yes."

He was silent, staring at her.  Presently he began again:

"She is a little fool.  I do not care for the whole of her as much
as I care for your one finger.  What does it matter what one does
in that way if one does not care?  The soul, not the body, is
faithful.  A man satisfies appetite--it is nothing."

Gyp said:

"Perhaps not; but it is something when it makes others miserable."

"Has it made you miserable, my Gyp?"

His voice had a ring of hope.  She answered, startled:

"I?  No--her."

"Her?  Ho!  It is an experience for her--it is life.  It will do
her no harm."

"No; nothing will do anybody harm if it gives you pleasure."

At that bitter retort, he kept silence a long time, now and then
heaving a long sigh.  His words kept sounding in her heart: "The
soul, not the body, is faithful."  Was he, after all, more faithful
to her than she had ever been, could ever be--who did not love, had
never loved him?  What right had she to talk, who had married him
out of vanity, out of--what?

And suddenly he said:

"Gyp!  Forgive!"

She uttered a sigh, and turned away her face.

He bent down against the eider-down.  She could hear him drawing
long, sobbing breaths, and, in the midst of her lassitude and
hopelessness, a sort of pity stirred her.  What did it matter?  She
said, in a choked voice:

"Very well, I forgive."


XIV


The human creature has wonderful power of putting up with things.
Gyp never really believed that Daphne Wing was of the past.  Her
sceptical instinct told her that what Fiorsen might honestly mean
to do was very different from what he would do under stress of
opportunity carefully put within his reach.

Since her return, Rosek had begun to come again, very careful not
to repeat his mistake, but not deceiving her at all.  Though his
self-control was as great as Fiorsen's was small, she felt he had
not given up his pursuit of her, and would take very good care that
Daphne Wing was afforded every chance of being with her husband.
But pride never let her allude to the girl.  Besides, what good to
speak of her?  They would both lie--Rosek, because he obviously saw
the mistaken line of his first attack; Fiorsen, because his
temperament did not permit him to suffer by speaking the truth.

Having set herself to endure, she found she must live in the
moment, never think of the future, never think much of anything.
Fortunately, nothing so conduces to vacuity as a baby.  She gave
herself up to it with desperation.  It was a good baby, silent,
somewhat understanding.  In watching its face, and feeling it warm
against her, Gyp succeeded daily in getting away into the hypnotic
state of mothers, and cows that chew the cud.  But the baby slept a
great deal, and much of its time was claimed by Betty.  Those
hours, and they were many, Gyp found difficult.  She had lost
interest in dress and household elegance, keeping just enough to
satisfy her fastidiousness; money, too, was scarce, under the drain
of Fiorsen's irregular requirements.  If she read, she began almost
at once to brood.  She was cut off from the music-room, had not
crossed its threshold since her discovery.  Aunt Rosamund's efforts
to take her into society were fruitless--all the effervescence was
out of that, and, though her father came, he never stayed long for
fear of meeting Fiorsen.  In this condition of affairs, she turned
more and more to her own music, and one morning, after she had come
across some compositions of her girlhood, she made a resolution.
That afternoon she dressed herself with pleasure, for the first
time for months, and sallied forth into the February frost.

Monsieur Edouard Harmost inhabited the ground floor of a house in
the Marylebone Road.  He received his pupils in a large back room
overlooking a little sooty garden.  A Walloon by extraction, and of
great vitality, he grew old with difficulty, having a soft corner
in his heart for women, and a passion for novelty, even for new
music, that was unappeasable.  Any fresh discovery would bring a
tear rolling down his mahogany cheeks into his clipped grey beard,
the while he played, singing wheezily to elucidate the wondrous
novelty; or moved his head up and down, as if pumping.

When Gyp was shown into this well-remembered room he was seated,
his yellow fingers buried in his stiff grey hair, grieving over a
pupil who had just gone out.  He did not immediately rise, but
stared hard at Gyp.

"Ah," he said, at last, "my little old friend!  She has come back!
Now that is good!"  And, patting her hand he looked into her face,
which had a warmth and brilliance rare to her in these days.  Then,
making for the mantelpiece, he took therefrom a bunch of Parma
violets, evidently brought by his last pupil, and thrust them under
her nose.  "Take them, take them--they were meant for me.  Now--how
much have you forgotten?  Come!"  And, seizing her by the elbow, he
almost forced her to the piano.  "Take off your furs.  Sit down!"

And while Gyp was taking off her coat, he fixed on her his
prominent brown eyes that rolled easily in their slightly blood-
shot whites, under squared eyelids and cliffs of brow.  She had on
what Fiorsen called her "humming-bird" blouse--dark blue, shot with
peacock and old rose, and looked very warm and soft under her fur
cap.  Monsieur Harmost's stare seemed to drink her in; yet that
stare was not unpleasant, having in it only the rather sad yearning
of old men who love beauty and know that their time for seeing it
is getting short.

"Play me the 'Carnival,'" he said.  "We shall soon see!"

Gyp played.  Twice he nodded; once he tapped his fingers on his
teeth, and showed her the whites of his eyes--which meant: "That
will have to be very different!"  And once he grunted.  When she
had finished, he sat down beside her, took her hand in his, and,
examining the fingers, began:

"Yes, yes, soon again!  Spoiling yourself, playing for that
fiddler!  Trop sympathique!  The back-bone, the back-bone--we shall
improve that.  Now, four hours a day for six weeks--and we shall
have something again."

Gyp said softly:

"I have a baby, Monsieur Harmost."

Monsieur Harmost bounded.

"What!  That is a tragedy!"  Gyp shook her head.  "You like it?  A
baby!  Does it not squall?"

"Very little."

"Mon Dieu!  Well, well, you are still as beautiful as ever.  That
is something.  Now, what can you do with this baby?  Could you get
rid of it a little?  This is serious.  This is a talent in danger.
A fiddler, and a baby!  C'est beaucoup!  C'est trop!"

Gyp smiled.  And Monsieur Harmost, whose exterior covered much
sensibility, stroked her hand.

"You have grown up, my little friend," he said gravely.  "Never
mind; nothing is wasted.  But a baby!"  And he chirruped his lips.
"Well; courage!  We shall do things yet!"

Gyp turned her head away to hide the quiver of her lips.  The scent
of latakia tobacco that had soaked into things, and of old books
and music, a dark smell, like Monsieur Harmost's complexion; the
old brown curtains, the sooty little back garden beyond, with its
cat-runs, and its one stunted sumach tree; the dark-brown stare of
Monsieur Harmost's rolling eyes brought back that time of
happiness, when she used to come week after week, full of gaiety
and importance, and chatter away, basking in his brusque admiration
and in music, all with the glamourous feeling that she was making
him happy, and herself happy, and going to play very finely some
day.

The voice of Monsieur Harmost, softly gruff, as if he knew what she
was feeling, increased her emotion; her breast heaved under the
humming-bird blouse, water came into her eyes, and more than ever
her lips quivered.  He was saying:

"Come, come!  The only thing we cannot cure is age.  You were right
to come, my child.  Music is your proper air.  If things are not
all what they ought to be, you shall soon forget.  In music--in
music, we can get away.  After all, my little friend, they cannot
take our dreams from us--not even a wife, not even a husband can do
that.  Come, we shall have good times yet!"

And Gyp, with a violent effort, threw off that sudden weakness.
From those who serve art devotedly there radiates a kind of
glamour.  She left Monsieur Harmost that afternoon, infected by his
passion for music.  Poetic justice--on which all homeopathy is
founded--was at work to try and cure her life by a dose of what had
spoiled it.  To music, she now gave all the hours she could spare.
She went to him twice a week, determining to get on, but uneasy at
the expense, for monetary conditions were ever more embarrassed.
At home, she practised steadily and worked hard at composition.
She finished several songs and studies during the spring and
summer, and left still more unfinished.  Monsieur Harmost was
tolerant of these efforts, seeming to know that harsh criticism or
disapproval would cut her impulse down, as frost cuts the life of
flowers.  Besides, there was always something fresh and individual
in her things.  He asked her one day:

"What does your husband think of these?"

Gyp was silent a moment.

"I don't show them to him."

She never had; she instinctively kept back the knowledge that she
composed, dreading his ruthlessness when anything grated on his
nerves, and knowing that a breath of mockery would wither her
belief in herself, frail enough plant already.  The only person,
besides her master, to whom she confided her efforts was--strangely
enough--Rosek.  But he had surprised her one day copying out some
music, and said at once: "I knew.  I was certain you composed.  Ah,
do play it to me!  I am sure you have talent."  The warmth with
which he praised that little "caprice" was surely genuine; and she
felt so grateful that she even played him others, and then a song
for him to sing.  From that day, he no longer seemed to her odious;
she even began to have for him a certain friendliness, to be a
little sorry, watching him, pale, trim, and sphinx-like, in her
drawing-room or garden, getting no nearer to the fulfilment of his
desire.  He had never again made love to her, but she knew that at
the least sign he would.  His face and his invincible patience made
him pathetic to her.  Women such as Gyp cannot actively dislike
those who admire them greatly.  She consulted him about Fiorsen's
debts.  There were hundreds of pounds owing, it seemed, and, in
addition, much to Rosek himself.  The thought of these debts
weighed unbearably on her.  Why did he, HOW did he get into debt
like this?  What became of the money he earned?  His fees, this
summer, were good enough.  There was such a feeling of degradation
about debt.  It was, somehow, so underbred to owe money to all
sorts of people.  Was it on that girl, on other women, that he
spent it all?  Or was it simply that his nature had holes in every
pocket?

Watching Fiorsen closely, that spring and early summer, she was
conscious of a change, a sort of loosening, something in him had
given way--as when, in winding a watch, the key turns on and on,
the ratchet being broken.  Yet he was certainly working hard--
perhaps harder than ever.  She would hear him, across the garden,
going over and over a passage, as if he never would be satisfied.
But his playing seemed to her to have lost its fire and sweep; to
be stale, and as if disillusioned.  It was all as though he had
said to himself: "What's the use?"  In his face, too, there was a
change.  She knew--she was certain that he was drinking secretly.
Was it his failure with her?  Was it the girl?  Was it simply
heredity from a hard-drinking ancestry?

Gyp never faced these questions.  To face them would mean useless
discussion, useless admission that she could not love him, useless
asseveration from him about the girl, which she would not believe,
useless denials of all sorts.  Hopeless!

He was very irritable, and seemed especially to resent her music
lessons, alluding to them with a sort of sneering impatience.  She
felt that he despised them as amateurish, and secretly resented it.
He was often impatient, too, of the time she gave to the baby.  His
own conduct with the little creature was like all the rest of him.
He would go to the nursery, much to Betty's alarm, and take up the
baby; be charming with it for about ten minutes, then suddenly dump
it back into its cradle, stare at it gloomily or utter a laugh, and
go out.  Sometimes, he would come up when Gyp was there, and after
watching her a little in silence, almost drag her away.

Suffering always from the guilty consciousness of having no love
for him, and ever more and more from her sense that, instead of
saving him she was, as it were, pushing him down-hill--ironical
nemesis for vanity!--Gyp was ever more and more compliant to his
whims, trying to make up.  But this compliance, when all the time
she felt further and further away, was straining her to breaking-
point.  Hers was a nature that goes on passively enduring till
something snaps; after that--no more.

Those months of spring and summer were like a long spell of
drought, when moisture gathers far away, coming nearer, nearer,
till, at last, the deluge bursts and sweeps the garden.


XV


The tenth of July that year was as the first day of summer.  There
had been much fine weather, but always easterly or northerly; now,
after a broken, rainy fortnight, the sun had come in full summer
warmth with a gentle breeze, drifting here and there scent of the
opening lime blossom.  In the garden, under the trees at the far
end, Betty sewed at a garment, and the baby in her perambulator had
her seventh morning sleep.  Gyp stood before a bed of pansies and
sweet peas.  How monkeyish the pansies' faces!  The sweet peas,
too, were like tiny bright birds fastened to green perches swaying
with the wind.  And their little green tridents, growing out from
the queer, flat stems, resembled the antennae of insects.  Each of
these bright frail, growing things had life and individuality like
herself!

The sound of footsteps on the gravel made her turn.  Rosek was
coming from the drawing-room window.  Rather startled, Gyp looked
at him over her shoulder.  What had brought him at eleven o'clock
in the morning?  He came up to her, bowed, and said:

"I came to see Gustav.  He's not up yet, it seems.  I thought I
would speak to you first.  Can we talk?"

Hesitating just a second, Gyp drew off her gardening-gloves:

"Of course!  Here?  Or in the drawing-room?"

Rosek answered:

"In the drawing-room, please."

A faint tremor passed through her, but she led the way, and seated
herself where she could see Betty and the baby.  Rosek stood
looking down at her; his stillness, the sweetish gravity of his
well-cut lips, his spotless dandyism stirred in Gyp a kind of
unwilling admiration.

"What is it?" she said.

"Bad business, I'm afraid.  Something must be done at once.  I have
been trying to arrange things, but they will not wait.  They are
even threatening to sell up this house."

With a sense of outrage, Gyp cried:

"Nearly everything here is mine."

Rosek shook his head.

"The lease is in his name--you are his wife.  They can do it, I
assure you."  A sort of shadow passed over his face, and he added:
"I cannot help him any more--just now."

Gyp shook her head quickly.

"No--of course!  You ought not to have helped him at all.  I can't
bear--"  He bowed, and she stopped, ashamed.  "How much does he owe
altogether?"

"About thirteen hundred pounds.  It isn't much, of course.  But
there is something else--"

"Worse?"

Rosek nodded.

"I am afraid to tell you; you will think again perhaps that I am
trying to make capital out of it.  I can read your thoughts, you
see.  I cannot afford that you should think that, this time."

Gyp made a little movement as though putting away his words.

"No; tell me, please."

Rosek shrugged his shoulders.

"There is a man called Wagge, an undertaker--the father of someone
you know--"

"Daphne Wing?"

"Yes.  A child is coming.  They have made her tell.  It means the
cancelling of her engagements, of course--and other things."

Gyp uttered a little laugh; then she said slowly:

"Can you tell me, please, what this Mr.--Wagge can do?"

Again Rosek shrugged his shoulders.

"He is rabid--a rabid man of his class is dangerous.  A lot of
money will be wanted, I should think--some blood, perhaps."

He moved swiftly to her, and said very low:

"Gyp, it is a year since I told you of this.  You did not believe
me then.  I told you, too, that I loved you.  I love you more, now,
a hundred times!  Don't move!  I am going up to Gustav."

He turned, and Gyp thought he was really going; but he stopped and
came back past the line of the window.  The expression of his face
was quite changed, so hungry that, for a moment, she felt sorry for
him.  And that must have shown in her face, for he suddenly caught
at her, and tried to kiss her lips; she wrenched back, and he could
only reach her throat, but that he kissed furiously.  Letting her
go as suddenly, he bent his head and went out without a look.

Gyp stood wiping his kisses off her throat with the back of her
hand, dumbly, mechanically thinking: "What have I done to be
treated like this?  What HAVE I done?"  No answer came.  And such
rage against men flared up that she just stood there, twisting her
garden-gloves in her hands, and biting the lips he would have
kissed.  Then, going to her bureau, she took up her address book
and looked for the name: Wing, 88, Frankland Street, Fulham.
Unhooking her little bag from off the back of the chair, she put
her cheque-book into it.  Then, taking care to make no sound, she
passed into the hall, caught up her sunshade, and went out, closing
the door without noise.

She walked quickly toward Baker Street.  Her gardening-hat was
right enough, but she had come out without gloves, and must go into
the first shop and buy a pair.  In the choosing of them, she forgot
her emotions for a minute.  Out in the street again, they came back
as bitterly as ever.  And the day was so beautiful--the sun bright,
the sky blue, the clouds dazzling white; from the top of her 'bus
she could see all its brilliance.  There rose up before her the
memory of the man who had kissed her arm at the first ball.  And
now--this!  But, mixed with her rage, a sort of unwilling
compassion and fellow feeling kept rising for that girl, that
silly, sugar-plum girl, brought to such a pass by--her husband.
These feelings sustained her through that voyage to Fulham.  She
got down at the nearest corner, walked up a widish street of narrow
grey houses till she came to number eighty-eight.  On that newly
scrubbed step, waiting for the door to open, she very nearly turned
and fled.  What exactly had she come to do?

The door was opened by a servant in an untidy frock.  Mutton!  The
smell of mutton--there it was, just as the girl had said!

"Is Miss--Miss Daphne Wing at home?"

In that peculiar "I've given it up" voice of domestics in small
households, the servant answered:

"Yes; Miss Disey's in.  D'you want to see 'er?  What nyme?"

Gyp produced her card.  The maid looked at it, at Gyp, and at two
brown-painted doors, as much as to say, "Where will you have it?"
Then, opening the first of them, she said:

"Tyke a seat, please; I'll fetch her."

Gyp went in.  In the middle of what was clearly the dining-room,
she tried to subdue the tremor of her limbs and a sense of nausea.
The table against which her hand rested was covered with red baize,
no doubt to keep the stains of mutton from penetrating to the wood.
On the mahogany sideboard reposed a cruet-stand and a green dish of
very red apples.  A bamboo-framed talc screen painted with white
and yellow marguerites stood before a fireplace filled with pampas-
grass dyed red.  The chairs were of red morocco, the curtains a
brownish-red, the walls green, and on them hung a set of Landseer
prints.  The peculiar sensation which red and green in
juxtaposition produce on the sensitive was added to Gyp's distress.
And, suddenly, her eyes lighted on a little deep-blue china bowl.
It stood on a black stand on the mantel-piece, with nothing in it.
To Gyp, in this room of red and green, with the smell of mutton
creeping in, that bowl was like the crystallized whiff of another
world.  Daphne Wing--not Daisy Wagge--had surely put it there!
And, somehow, it touched her--emblem of stifled beauty, emblem of
all that the girl had tried to pour out to her that August
afternoon in her garden nearly a year ago.  Thin Eastern china,
good and really beautiful!  A wonder they allowed it to pollute
this room!

A sigh made her turn round.  With her back against the door and a
white, scared face, the girl was standing.  Gyp thought: 'She has
suffered horribly.'  And, going impulsively up to her, she held out
her hand.

Daphne Wing sighed out: "Oh, Mrs. Fiorsen!" and, bending over that
hand, kissed it.  Gyp saw that her new glove was wet.  Then the
girl relapsed, her feet a little forward, her head a little
forward, her back against the door.  Gyp, who knew why she stood
thus, was swept again by those two emotions--rage against men, and
fellow feeling for one about to go through what she herself had
just endured.

"It's all right," she said, gently; "only, what's to be done?"

Daphne Wing put her hands up over her white face and sobbed.  She
sobbed so quietly but so terribly deeply that Gyp herself had the
utmost difficulty not to cry.  It was the sobbing of real despair
by a creature bereft of hope and strength, above all, of love--the
sort of weeping which is drawn from desolate, suffering souls only
by the touch of fellow feeling.  And, instead of making Gyp glad or
satisfying her sense of justice, it filled her with more rage
against her husband--that he had taken this girl's infatuation for
his pleasure and then thrown her away.  She seemed to see him
discarding that clinging, dove-fair girl, for cloying his senses
and getting on his nerves, discarding her with caustic words, to
abide alone the consequences of her infatuation.  She put her hand
timidly on that shaking shoulder, and stroked it.  For a moment the
sobbing stopped, and the girl said brokenly:

"Oh, Mrs. Fiorsen, I do love him so!"  At those naive words, a
painful wish to laugh seized on Gyp, making her shiver from head to
foot.  Daphne Wing saw it, and went on: "I know--I know--it's
awful; but I do--and now he--he--"  Her quiet but really dreadful
sobbing broke out again.  And again Gyp began stroking and stroking
her shoulder.  "And I have been so awful to you!  Oh, Mrs. Fiorsen,
do forgive me, please!"

All Gyp could find to answer, was:

"Yes, yes; that's nothing!  Don't cry--don't cry!"

Very slowly the sobbing died away, till it was just a long
shivering, but still the girl held her hands over her face and her
face down.  Gyp felt paralyzed.  The unhappy girl, the red and
green room, the smell of mutton--creeping!

At last, a little of that white face showed; the lips, no longer
craving for sugar-plums, murmured:

"It's you he--he--really loves all the time.  And you don't love
him--that's what's so funny--and--and--I can't understand it.  Oh,
Mrs. Fiorsen, if I could see him--just see him!  He told me never
to come again; and I haven't dared.  I haven't seen him for three
weeks--not since I told him about IT.  What shall I do?  What shall
I do?"

His being her own husband seemed as nothing to Gyp at that moment.
She felt such pity and yet such violent revolt that any girl should
want to crawl back to a man who had spurned her.  Unconsciously,
she had drawn herself up and pressed her lips together.  The girl,
who followed every movement, said piteously:

"I don't seem to have any pride.  I don't mind what he does to me,
or what he says, if only I can see him."

Gyp's revolt yielded to her pity.  She said:

"How long before?"

"Three months."

Three months--and in this state of misery!

"I think I shall do something desperate.  Now that I can't dance,
and THEY know, it's too awful!  If I could see him, I wouldn't mind
anything.  But I know--I know he'll never want me again.  Oh, Mrs.
Fiorsen, I wish I was dead!  I do!"

A heavy sigh escaped Gyp, and, bending suddenly, she kissed the
girl's forehead.  Still that scent of orange blossom about her skin
or hair, as when she asked whether she ought to love or not; as
when she came, moth-like, from the tree-shade into the moonlight,
spun, and fluttered, with her shadow spinning and fluttering before
her.  Gyp turned away, feeling that she must relieve the strain.
and pointing to the bowl, said:

"YOU put that there, I'm sure.  It's beautiful."

The girl answered, with piteous eagerness:

"Oh, would you like it?  Do take it.  Count Rosek gave it me."  She
started away from the door.  "Oh, that's papa.  He'll be coming in!"

Gyp heard a man clear his throat, and the rattle of an umbrella
falling into a stand; the sight of the girl wilting and shrinking
against the sideboard steadied her.  Then the door opened, and Mr.
Wagge entered.  Short and thick, in black frock coat and trousers,
and a greyish beard, he stared from one to the other.  He looked
what he was, an Englishman and a chapelgoer, nourished on sherry
and mutton, who could and did make his own way in the world.  His
features, coloured, as from a deep liverishness, were thick, like
his body, and not ill-natured, except for a sort of anger in his
small, rather piggy grey eyes.  He said in a voice permanently
gruff, but impregnated with a species of professional ingratiation:

"Ye-es?  Whom 'ave I--?"

"Mrs. Fiorsen."

"Ow!"  The sound of his breathing could be heard distinctly; he
twisted a chair round and said:

"Take a seat, won't you?"

Gyp shook her head.

In Mr. Wagge's face a kind of deference seemed to struggle with
some more primitive emotion.  Taking out a large, black-edged
handkerchief, he blew his nose, passed it freely over his visage,
and turning to his daughter, muttered:

"Go upstairs."

The girl turned quickly, and the last glimpse of her white face
whipped up Gyp's rage against men.  When the door was shut, Mr.
Wagge cleared his throat; the grating sound carried with it the
suggestion of enormously thick linings.

He said more gruffly than ever:

"May I ask what 'as given us the honour?"

"I came to see your daughter."

His little piggy eyes travelled from her face to her feet, to the
walls of the room, to his own watch-chain, to his hands that had
begun to rub themselves together, back to her breast, higher than
which they dared not mount.  Their infinite embarrassment struck
Gyp.  She could almost hear him thinking: 'Now, how can I discuss
it with this attractive young female, wife of the scoundrel who's
ruined my daughter?  Delicate-that's what it is!'  Then the words
burst hoarsely from him.

"This is an unpleasant business, ma'am.  I don't know what to say.
Reelly I don't.  It's awkward; it's very awkward."

Gyp said quietly:

"Your daughter is desperately unhappy; and that can't be good for
her just now."

Mr. Wagge's thick figure seemed to writhe.  "Pardon me, ma'am," he
spluttered, "but I must call your husband a scoundrel.  I'm sorry
to be impolite, but I must do it.  If I had 'im 'ere, I don't know
that I should be able to control myself--I don't indeed."  Gyp made
a movement of her gloved hands, which he seemed to interpret as
sympathy, for he went on in a stream of husky utterance: "It's a
delicate thing before a lady, and she the injured party; but one
has feelings.  From the first I said this dancin' was in the face
of Providence; but women have no more sense than an egg.  Her
mother she would have it; and now she's got it!  Career, indeed!
Pretty career!  Daughter of mine!  I tell you, ma'am, I'm angry;
there's no other word for it--I'm angry.  If that scoundrel comes
within reach of me, I shall mark 'im--I'm not a young man, but I
shall mark 'im.  An' what to say to you, I'm sure I don't know.
That my daughter should be'ave like that!  Well, it's made a
difference to me.  An' now I suppose her name'll be dragged in the
mud.  I tell you frankly I 'oped you wouldn't hear of it, because
after all the girl's got her punishment.  And this divorce-court--
it's not nice--it's a horrible thing for respectable people.  And,
mind you, I won't see my girl married to that scoundrel, not if you
do divorce 'im.  No; she'll have her disgrace for nothing."

Gyp, who had listened with her head a little bent, raised it
suddenly, and said:

"There'll be no public disgrace, Mr. Wagge, unless you make it
yourself.  If you send Daphne--Daisy--quietly away somewhere till
her trouble's over, no one need know anything."

Mr. Wagge, whose mouth had opened slightly, and whose breathing
could certainly have been heard in the street, took a step forward
and said:

"Do I understand you to say that you're not goin' to take
proceedings, ma'am?"

Gyp shuddered, and shook her head.

Mr. Wagge stood silent, slightly moving his face up and down.

"Well," he said, at length, "it's more than she deserves; but I
don't disguise it's a relief to me.  And I must say, in a young
lady like you, and--and handsome, it shows a Christian spirit."
Again Gyp shivered, and shook her head.  "It does.  You'll allow me
to say so, as a man old enough to be your father--and a regular
attendant."

He held out his hand.  Gyp put her gloved hand into it.

"I'm very, very sorry.  Please be nice to her."

Mr. Wagge recoiled a little, and for some seconds stood ruefully
rubbing his hands together and looking from side to side.

"I'm a domestic man," he said suddenly.  "A domestic man in a
serious line of life; and I never thought to have anything like
this in my family--never!  It's been--well, I can't tell you what
it's been!"

Gyp took up her sunshade.  She felt that she must get away; at any
moment he might say something she could not bear--and the smell of
mutton rising fast!

"I am sorry," she said again; "good-bye"; and moved past him to the
door.  She heard him breathing hard as he followed her to open it,
and thought: 'If only--oh! please let him be silent till I get
outside!'  Mr. Wagge passed her and put his hand on the latch of
the front door.  His little piggy eyes scanned her almost timidly.

"Well," he said, "I'm very glad to have the privilege of your
acquaintance; and, if I may say so, you 'ave--you 'ave my 'earty
sympathy.  Good-day."

The door once shut behind her, Gyp took a long breath and walked
swiftly away.  Her cheeks were burning; and, with a craving for
protection, she put up her sunshade.  But the girl's white face
came up again before her, and the sound of her words:

"Oh, Mrs. Fiorsen, I wish I was dead!  I DO!"


XVI


Gyp walked on beneath her sunshade, making unconsciously for the
peace of trees.  Her mind was a whirl of impressions--Daphne Wing's
figure against the door, Mr. Wagge's puggy grey-bearded
countenance, the red pampas-grass, the blue bowl, Rosek's face
swooping at her, her last glimpse of her baby asleep under the
trees!

She reached Kensington Gardens, turned into that walk renowned for
the beauty of its flowers and the plainness of the people who
frequent it, and sat down on a bench.  It was near the luncheon-
hour; nursemaids, dogs, perambulators, old gentlemen--all were
hurrying a little toward their food.  They glanced with critical
surprise at this pretty young woman, leisured and lonely at such an
hour, trying to find out what was wrong with her, as one naturally
does with beauty--bow legs or something, for sure, to balance a
face like that!  But Gyp noticed none of them, except now and again
a dog which sniffed her knees in passing.  For months she had
resolutely cultivated insensibility, resolutely refused to face
reality; the barrier was forced now, and the flood had swept her
away.  "Proceedings!" Mr. Wagge had said.  To those who shrink from
letting their secret affairs be known even by their nearest
friends, the notion of a public exhibition of troubles simply never
comes, and it had certainly never come to Gyp.  With a bitter smile
she thought: 'I'm better off than she is, after all!  Suppose I
loved him, too?  No, I never--never--want to love.  Women who love
suffer too much.'

She sat on that bench a long time before it came into her mind that
she was due at Monsieur Harmost's for a music lesson at three
o'clock.  It was well past two already; and she set out across the
grass.  The summer day was full of murmurings of bees and flies,
cooings of blissful pigeons, the soft swish and stir of leaves, and
the scent of lime blossom under a sky so blue, with few white
clouds slow, and calm, and full.  Why be unhappy?  And one of those
spotty spaniel dogs, that have broad heads, with frizzy topknots,
and are always rascals, smelt at her frock and moved round and
round her, hoping that she would throw her sunshade on the water
for him to fetch, this being in his view the only reason why
anything was carried in the hand.

She found Monsieur Harmost fidgeting up and down the room, whose
opened windows could not rid it of the smell of latakia.

"Ah," he said, "I thought you were not coming!  You look pale; are
you not well?  Is it the heat?  Or"--he looked hard into her face--
"has someone hurt you, my little friend?"  Gyp shook her head.
"Ah, yes," he went on irritably; "you tell me nothing; you tell
nobody nothing!  You close up your pretty face like a flower at
night.  At your age, my child, one should make confidences; a
secret grief is to music as the east wind to the stomach.  Put off
your mask for once."  He came close to her.  "Tell me your
troubles.  It is a long time since I have been meaning to ask.
Come!  We are only once young; I want to see you happy."

But Gyp stood looking down.  Would it be relief to pour her soul
out?  Would it?  His brown eyes questioned her like an old dog's.
She did not want to hurt one so kind.  And yet--impossible!

Monsieur Harmost suddenly sat down at the piano.  Resting his hands
on the keys, he looked round at her, and said:

"I am in love with you, you know.  Old men can be very much in
love, but they know it is no good--that makes them endurable.
Still, we like to feel of use to youth and beauty; it gives us a
little warmth.  Come; tell me your grief!"  He waited a moment,
then said irritably: "Well, well, we go to music then!"

It was his habit to sit by her at the piano corner, but to-day he
stood as if prepared to be exceptionally severe.  And Gyp played,
whether from overexcited nerves or from not having had any lunch,
better than she had ever played.  The Chopin polonaise in A flat,
that song of revolution, which had always seemed so unattainable,
went as if her fingers were being worked for her.  When she had
finished, Monsieur Harmost, bending forward, lifted one of her
hands and put his lips to it.  She felt the scrub of his little
bristly beard, and raised her face with a deep sigh of satisfaction.
A voice behind them said mockingly:

"Bravo!"

There, by the door, stood Fiorsen.

"Congratulations, madame!  I have long wanted to see you under the
inspiration of your--master!"

Gyp's heart began to beat desperately.  Monsieur Harmost had not
moved.  A faint grin slowly settled in his beard, but his eyes were
startled.

Fiorsen kissed the back of his own hand.

"To this old Pantaloon you come to give your heart.  Ho--what a
lover!"

Gyp saw the old man quiver; she sprang up and cried:

"You brute!"

Fiorsen ran forward, stretching out his arms toward Monsieur
Harmost, as if to take him by the throat.

The old man drew himself up.  "Monsieur," he said, "you are
certainly drunk."

Gyp slipped between, right up to those outstretched hands till she
could feel their knuckles against her.  Had he gone mad?  Would he
strangle her?  But her eyes never moved from his, and his began to
waver; his hands dropped, and, with a kind of moan, he made for the
door.

Monsieur Harmost's voice behind her said:

"Before you go, monsieur, give me some explanation of this
imbecility!"

Fiorsen spun round, shook his fist, and went out muttering.  They
heard the front door slam.  Gyp turned abruptly to the window, and
there, in her agitation, she noticed little outside things as one
does in moments of bewildered anger.  Even into that back yard,
summer had crept.  The leaves of the sumach-tree were glistening;
in a three-cornered little patch of sunlight, a black cat with a
blue ribbon round its neck was basking.  The voice of one hawking
strawberries drifted melancholy from a side street.  She was
conscious that Monsieur Harmost was standing very still, with a
hand pressed to his mouth, and she felt a perfect passion of
compunction and anger.  That kind and harmless old man--to be so
insulted!  This was indeed the culmination of all Gustav's
outrages!  She would never forgive him this!  For he had insulted
her as well, beyond what pride or meekness could put up with.  She
turned, and, running up to the old man, put both her hands into
his.

"I'm so awfully sorry.  Good-bye, dear, dear Monsieur Harmost; I
shall come on Friday!"  And, before he could stop her, she was
gone.

She dived into the traffic; but, just as she reached the pavement
on the other side, felt her dress plucked and saw Fiorsen just
behind her.  She shook herself free and walked swiftly on.  Was he
going to make a scene in the street?  Again he caught her arm.  She
stopped dead, faced round on him, and said, in an icy voice:

"Please don't make scenes in the street, and don't follow me like
this.  If you want to talk to me, you can--at home."

Then, very calmly, she turned and walked on.  But he was still
following her, some paces off.  She did not quicken her steps, and
to the first taxicab driver that passed she made a sign, and
saying:

"Bury Street--quick!" got in.  She saw Fiorsen rush forward, too
late to stop her.  He threw up his hand and stood still, his face
deadly white under his broad-brimmed hat.  She was far too angry
and upset to care.

From the moment she turned to the window at Monsieur Harmost's, she
had determined to go to her father's.  She would not go back to
Fiorsen; and the one thought that filled her mind was how to get
Betty and her baby.  Nearly four!  Dad was almost sure to be at his
club.  And leaning out, she said: "No; Hyde Park Corner, please."

The hall porter, who knew her, after calling to a page-boy: "Major
Winton--sharp, now!" came specially out of his box to offer her a
seat and The Times.

Gyp sat with it on her knee, vaguely taking in her surroundings--a
thin old gentleman anxiously weighing himself in a corner, a white-
calved footman crossing with a tea-tray; a number of hats on pegs;
the green-baize board with its white rows of tapelike paper, and
three members standing before it.  One of them, a tall, stout,
good-humoured-looking man in pince-nez and a white waistcoat,
becoming conscious, removed his straw hat and took up a position
whence, without staring, he could gaze at her; and Gyp knew,
without ever seeming to glance at him, that he found her to his
liking.  She saw her father's unhurried figure passing that little
group, all of whom were conscious now, and eager to get away out of
this sanctum of masculinity, she met him at the top of the low
steps, and said:

"I want to talk to you, Dad."

He gave her a quick look, selected his hat, and followed to the
door.  In the cab, he put his hand on hers and said:

"Now, my dear?"

But all she could get out was:

"I want to come back to you.  I can't go on there.  It's--it's--
I've come to an end."

His hand pressed hers tightly, as if he were trying to save her the
need for saying more.  Gyp went on:

"I must get baby; I'm terrified that he'll try to keep her, to get
me back."

"Is he at home?"

"I don't know.  I haven't told him that I'm going to leave him."

Winton looked at his watch and asked:

"Does the baby ever go out as late as this?"

"Yes; after tea.  It's cooler."

"I'll take this cab on, then.  You stay and get the room ready for
her.  Don't worry, and don't go out till I return."

And Gyp thought: 'How wonderful of him not to have asked a single
question.'

The cab stopped at the Bury Street door.  She took his hand, put it
to her cheek, and got out.  He said quietly:

"Do you want the dogs?"

"Yes--oh, yes!  He doesn't care for them."

"All right.  There'll be time to get you in some things for the
night after I come back.  I shan't run any risks to-day.  Make Mrs.
Markey give you tea."

Gyp watched the cab gather way again, saw him wave his hand; then,
with a deep sigh, half anxiety, half relief, she rang the bell.


XVII


When the cab debouched again into St. James' Street, Winton gave
the order: "Quick as you can!"  One could think better going fast!
A little red had come into his brown cheeks; his eyes under their
half-drawn lids had a keener light; his lips were tightly closed;
he looked as he did when a fox was breaking cover.  Gyp could do no
wrong, or, if she could, he would stand by her in it as a matter of
course.  But he was going to take no risks--make no frontal attack.
Time for that later, if necessary.  He had better nerves than most
people, and that kind of steely determination and resource which
makes many Englishmen of his class formidable in small operations.
He kept his cab at the door, rang, and asked for Gyp, with a kind
of pleasure in his ruse.

"She's not in yet, sir.  Mr. Fiorsen's in."

"Ah!  And baby?"

"Yes, sir."

"I'll come in and see her.  In the garden?"

"Yes, sir."

"Dogs there, too?"

"Yes, sir.  And will you have tea, please, sir?"

"No, thanks."  How to effect this withdrawal without causing
gossip, and yet avoid suspicion of collusion with Gyp?  And he
added: "Unless Mrs. Fiorsen comes in."

Passing out into the garden, he became aware that Fiorsen was at
the dining-room window watching him, and decided to make no sign
that he knew this.  The baby was under the trees at the far end,
and the dogs came rushing thence with a fury which lasted till they
came within scent of him.  Winton went leisurely up to the
perambulator, and, saluting Betty, looked down at his grandchild.
She lay under an awning of muslin, for fear of flies, and was
awake.  Her solemn, large brown eyes, already like Gyp's, regarded
him with gravity.  Clucking to her once or twice, as is the custom,
he moved so as to face the house.  In this position, he had Betty
with her back to it.  And he said quietly:

"I'm here with a message from your mistress, Betty.  Keep your
head; don't look round, but listen to me.  She's at Bury Street and
going to stay there; she wants you and baby and the dogs."  The
stout woman's eyes grew round and her mouth opened.  Winton put his
hand on the perambulator.  "Steady, now!  Go out as usual with this
thing.  It's about your time; and wait for me at the turning to
Regent's Park.  I'll come on in my cab and pick you all up.  Don't
get flurried; don't take anything; do exactly as you usually would.
Understand?"

It is not in the nature of stout women with babies in their charge
to receive such an order without question.  Her colour, and the
heaving of that billowy bosom made Winton add quickly:

"Now, Betty, pull yourself together; Gyp wants you.  I'll tell you
all about it in the cab."

The poor woman, still heaving vaguely, could only stammer:

"Yes, sir.  Poor little thing!  What about its night-things?  And
Miss Gyp's?"

Conscious of that figure still at the window, Winton made some
passes with his fingers at the baby, and said:

"Never mind them.  As soon as you see me at the drawing-room
window, get ready and go.  Eyes front, Betty; don't look round;
I'll cover your retreat!  Don't fail Gyp now.  Pull yourself
together."

With a sigh that could have been heard in Kensington, Betty
murmured: "Very well, sir; oh dear!" and began to adjust the
strings of her bonnet.  With nods, as if he had been the recipient
of some sage remarks about the baby, Winton saluted, and began his
march again towards the house.  He carefully kept his eyes to this
side and to that, as if examining the flowers, but noted all the
same that Fiorsen had receded from the window.  Rapid thought told
him that the fellow would come back there to see if he were gone,
and he placed himself before a rose-bush, where, at that
reappearance, he could make a sign of recognition.  Sure enough, he
came; and Winton quietly raising his hand to the salute passed on
through the drawing-room window.  He went quickly into the hall,
listened a second, and opened the dining-room door.  Fiorsen was
pacing up and down, pale and restless.  He came to a standstill and
stared haggardly at Winton, who said:

"How are you?  Gyp not in?"

"No."

Something in the sound of that "No" touched Winton with a vague--a
very vague--compunction.  To be left by Gyp!  Then his heart
hardened again.  The fellow was a rotter--he was sure of it, had
always been sure.

"Baby looks well," he said.

Fiorsen turned and began to pace up and down again.

"Where is Gyp?  I want her to come in.  I want her."

Winton took out his watch.

"It's not late."  And suddenly he felt a great aversion for the
part he was playing.  To get the baby; to make Gyp safe--yes!  But,
somehow, not this pretence that he knew nothing about it.  He
turned on his heel and walked out.  It imperilled everything; but
he couldn't help it.  He could not stay and go on prevaricating
like this.  Had that woman got clear?  He went back into the
drawing-room.  There they were--just passing the side of the house.
Five minutes, and they would be down at the turning.  He stood at
the window, waiting.  If only that fellow did not come in!  Through
the partition wall he could hear him still tramping up and down the
dining-room.  What a long time a minute was!  Three had gone when
he heard the dining-room door opened, and Fiorsen crossing the hall
to the front door.  What was he after, standing there as if
listening?  And suddenly he heard him sigh.  It was just such a
sound as many times, in the long-past days, had escaped himself,
waiting, listening for footsteps, in parched and sickening anxiety.
Did this fellow then really love--almost as he had loved?  And in
revolt at spying on him like this, he advanced and said:

"Well, I won't wait any longer."

Fiorsen started; he had evidently supposed himself alone.  And
Winton thought: 'By Jove! he does look bad!'

"Good-bye!" he said; but the words: "Give my love to Gyp," perished
on their way up to his lips.

"Good-bye!" Fiorsen echoed.  And Winton went out under the trellis,
conscious of that forlorn figure still standing at the half-opened
door.  Betty was nowhere in sight; she must have reached the
turning.  His mission had succeeded, but he felt no elation.  Round
the corner, he picked up his convoy, and, with the perambulator
hoisted on to the taxi, journeyed on at speed.  He had said he
would explain in the cab, but the only remark he made was:

"You'll all go down to Mildenham to-morrow."

And Betty, who had feared him ever since their encounter so many
years ago, eyed his profile, without daring to ask questions.
Before he reached home, Winton stopped at a post-office, and sent
this telegram:


"Gyp and the baby are with me letter follows.--WINTON."


It salved a conscience on which that fellow's figure in the doorway
weighed; besides, it was necessary, lest Fiorsen should go to the
police.  The rest must wait till he had talked with Gyp.

There was much to do, and it was late before they dined, and not
till Markey had withdrawn could they begin their talk.

Close to the open windows where Markey had placed two hydrangea
plants--just bought on his own responsibility, in token of silent
satisfaction--Gyp began.  She kept nothing back, recounting the
whole miserable fiasco of her marriage.  When she came to Daphne
Wing and her discovery in the music-room, she could see the glowing
end of her father's cigar move convulsively.  That insult to his
adored one seemed to Winton so inconceivable that, for a moment, he
stopped her recital by getting up to pace the room.  In her own
house--her own house!  And--after that, she had gone on with him!
He came back to his chair and did not interrupt again, but his
stillness almost frightened her.

Coming to the incidents of the day itself, she hesitated.  Must she
tell him, too, of Rosek--was it wise, or necessary?  The all-or-
nothing candour that was part of her nature prevailed, and she went
straight on, and, save for the feverish jerking of his evening
shoe, Winton made no sign.  When she had finished, he got up and
slowly extinguished the end of his cigar against the window-sill;
then looking at her lying back in her chair as if exhausted, he
said: "By God!" and turned his face away to the window.

At that hour before the theatres rose, a lull brooded in the London
streets; in this quiet narrow one, the town's hum was only broken
by the clack of a half-drunken woman bickering at her man as they
lurched along for home, and the strains of a street musician's
fiddle, trying to make up for a blank day.  The sound vaguely
irritated Winton, reminding him of those two damnable foreigners by
whom she had been so treated.  To have them at the point of a sword
or pistol--to teach them a lesson!  He heard her say:

"Dad, I should like to pay his debts.  Then things would be as they
were when I married him."

He emitted an exasperated sound.  He did not believe in heaping
coals of fire.

"I want to make sure, too, that the girl is all right till she's
over her trouble.  Perhaps I could use some of that--that other
money, if mine is all tied up?"

It was sheer anger, not disapproval of her impulse, that made him
hesitate; money and revenge would never be associated in his mind.
Gyp went on:

"I want to feel as if I'd never let him marry me.  Perhaps his
debts are all part of that--who knows?  Please!"

Winton looked at her.  How like--when she said that "Please!"  How
like--her figure sunk back in the old chair, and the face lifted in
shadow!  A sort of exultation came to him.  He had got her back--
had got her back!


XVIII


Fiorsen's bedroom was--as the maid would remark--"a proper pigsty"--
until he was out of it and it could be renovated each day.  He had
a talent for disorder, so that the room looked as if three men
instead of one had gone to bed in it.  Clothes and shoes, brushes,
water, tumblers, breakfast-tray, newspapers, French novels, and
cigarette-ends--none were ever where they should have been; and the
stale fumes from the many cigarettes he smoked before getting up
incommoded anyone whose duty it was to take him tea and shaving-
water.  When, on that first real summer day, the maid had brought
Rosek up to him, he had been lying a long time on his back,
dreamily watching the smoke from his cigarette and four flies
waltzing in the sunlight that filtered through the green sun-
blinds.  This hour, before he rose, was his creative moment, when
he could best see the form of music and feel inspiration for its
rendering.  Of late, he had been stale and wretched, all that side
of him dull; but this morning he felt again the delicious stir of
fancy, that vibrating, half-dreamy state when emotion seems so
easily to find shape and the mind pierces through to new
expression.  Hearing the maid's knock, and her murmured: "Count
Rosek to see you, sir," he thought: 'What the devil does he want?'
A larger nature, drifting without control, in contact with a
smaller one, who knows his own mind exactly, will instinctively be
irritable, though he may fail to grasp what his friend is after.

And pushing the cigarette-box toward Rosek, he turned away his
head.  It would be money he had come about, or--that girl!  That
girl--he wished she was dead!  Soft, clinging creature!  A baby!
God!  What a fool he had been--ah, what a fool!  Such absurdity!
Unheard of!  First Gyp--then her!  He had tried to shake the girl
off.  As well try to shake off a burr!  How she clung!  He had been
patient--oh, yes--patient and kind, but how go on when one was
tired--tired of her--and wanting only Gyp, only his own wife?  That
was a funny thing!  And now, when, for an hour or two, he had
shaken free of worry, had been feeling happy--yes, happy--this
fellow must come, and stand there with his face of a sphinx!  And
he said pettishly:

"Well, Paul! sit down.  What troubles have you brought?"

Rosek lit a cigarette but did not sit down.  He struck even Fiorsen
by his unsmiling pallor.

"You had better look out for Mr. Wagge, Gustav; he came to me
yesterday.  He has no music in his soul."

Fiorsen sat up.

"Satan take Mr. Wagge!  What can he do?"

"I am not a lawyer, but I imagine he can be unpleasant--the girl is
young."

Fiorsen glared at him, and said:

"Why did you throw me that cursed girl?"

Rosek answered, a little too steadily:

"I did not, my friend."

"What!  You did.  What was your game?  You never do anything
without a game.  You know you did.  Come; what was your game?"

"You like pleasure, I believe."

Fiorsen said violently:

"Look here: I have done with your friendship--you are no friend to
me.  I have never really known you, and I should not wish to.  It
is finished.  Leave me in peace."

Rosek smiled.

"My dear, that is all very well, but friendships are not finished
like that.  Moreover, you owe me a thousand pounds."

"Well, I will pay it."  Rosek's eyebrows mounted.  "I will.  Gyp
will lend it to me."

"Oh!  Is Gyp so fond of you as that?  I thought she only loved her
music-lessons."

Crouching forward with his knees drawn up, Fiorsen hissed out:

"Don't talk of Gyp!  Get out of this!  I will pay you your thousand
pounds."

Rosek, still smiling, answered:

"Gustav, don't be a fool!  With a violin to your shoulder, you are
a man.  Without--you are a child.  Lie quiet, my friend, and think
of Mr. Wagge.  But you had better come and talk it over with me.
Good-bye for the moment.  Calm yourself."  And, flipping the ash
off his cigarette on to the tray by Fiorsen's elbow, he nodded and
went.

Fiorsen, who had leaped out of bed, put his hand to his head.  The
cursed fellow!  Cursed be every one of them--the father and the
girl, Rosek and all the other sharks!  He went out on to the
landing.  The house was quite still below.  Rosek had gone--good
riddance!  He called, "Gyp!"  No answer.  He went into her room.
Its superlative daintiness struck his fancy.  A scent of cyclamen!
He looked out into the garden.  There was the baby at the end, and
that fat woman.  No Gyp!  Never in when she was wanted.  Wagge!  He
shivered; and, going back into his bedroom, took a brandy-bottle
from a locked cupboard and drank some.  It steadied him; he locked
up the cupboard again, and dressed.

Going out to the music-room, he stopped under the trees to make
passes with his fingers at the baby.  Sometimes he felt that it was
an adorable little creature, with its big, dark eyes so like Gyp's.
Sometimes it excited his disgust--a discoloured brat.  This
morning, while looking at it, he thought suddenly of the other that
was coming--and grimaced.  Catching Betty's stare of horrified
amazement at the face he was making at her darling, he burst into a
laugh and turned away into the music-room.

While he was keying up his violin, Gyp's conduct in never having
come there for so long struck him as bitterly unjust.  The girl--
who cared about the wretched girl?  As if she made any real
difference!  It was all so much deeper than that.  Gyp had never
loved him, never given him what he wanted, never quenched his
thirst of her!  That was the heart of it.  No other woman he had
ever had to do with had been like that--kept his thirst unquenched.
No; he had always tired of them before they tired of him.  She gave
him nothing really--nothing!  Had she no heart or did she give it
elsewhere?  What was that Paul had said about her music-lessons?
And suddenly it struck him that he knew nothing, absolutely
nothing, of where she went or what she did.  She never told him
anything.  Music-lessons?  Every day, nearly, she went out, was
away for hours.  The thought that she might go to the arms of
another man made him put down his violin with a feeling of actual
sickness.  Why not?  That deep and fearful whipping of the sexual
instinct which makes the ache of jealousy so truly terrible was at
its full in such a nature as Fiorsen's.  He drew a long breath and
shuddered.  The remembrance of her fastidious pride, her candour,
above all her passivity cut in across his fear.  No, not Gyp!

He went to a little table whereon stood a tantalus, tumblers, and a
syphon, and pouring out some brandy, drank.  It steadied him.  And
he began to practise.  He took a passage from Brahms' violin
concerto and began to play it over and over.  Suddenly, he found he
was repeating the same flaws each time; he was not attending.  The
fingering of that thing was ghastly!  Music-lessons!  Why did she
take them?  Waste of time and money--she would never be anything
but an amateur!  Ugh!  Unconsciously, he had stopped playing.  Had
she gone there to-day?  It was past lunch-time.  Perhaps she had
come in.

He put down his violin and went back to the house.  No sign of her!
The maid came to ask if he would lunch.  No!  Was the mistress to
be in?  She had not said.  He went into the dining-room, ate a
biscuit, and drank a brandy and soda.  It steadied him.  Lighting a
cigarette, he came back to the drawing-room and sat down at Gyp's
bureau.  How tidy!  On the little calendar, a pencil-cross was set
against to-day--Wednesday, another against Friday.  What for?
Music-lessons!  He reached to a pigeon-hole, and took out her
address-book.  "H--Harmost, 305A, Marylebone Road," and against it
the words in pencil, "3 P.M."

Three o'clock.  So that was her hour!  His eyes rested idly on a
little old coloured print of a Bacchante, with flowing green scarf,
shaking a tambourine at a naked Cupid, who with a baby bow and
arrow in his hands, was gazing up at her.  He turned it over; on
the back was written in a pointed, scriggly hand, "To my little
friend.--E. H."  Fiorsen drew smoke deep down into his lungs,
expelled it slowly, and went to the piano.  He opened it and began
to play, staring vacantly before him, the cigarette burned nearly
to his lips.  He went on, scarcely knowing what he played.  At last
he stopped, and sat dejected.  A great artist?  Often, nowadays, he
did not care if he never touched a violin again.  Tired of standing
up before a sea of dull faces, seeing the blockheads knock their
silly hands one against the other!  Sick of the sameness of it all!
Besides--besides, were his powers beginning to fail?  What was
happening to him of late?

He got up, went into the dining-room, and drank some brandy.  Gyp
could not bear his drinking.  Well, she shouldn't be out so much--
taking music-lessons.  Music-lessons!  Nearly three o'clock.  If he
went for once and saw what she really did--Went, and offered her
his escort home!  An attention.  It might please her.  Better,
anyway, than waiting here until she chose to come in with her face
all closed up.  He drank a little more brandy--ever so little--took
his hat and went.  Not far to walk, but the sun was hot, and he
reached the house feeling rather dizzy.  A maid-servant opened the
door to him.

"I am Mr. Fiorsen.  Mrs. Fiorsen here?"

"Yes, sir; will you wait?"

Why did she look at him like that?  Ugly girl!  How hateful ugly
people were!  When she was gone, he reopened the door of the
waiting-room, and listened.

Chopin!  The polonaise in A flat.  Good!  Could that be Gyp?  Very
good!  He moved out, down the passage, drawn on by her playing, and
softly turned the handle.  The music stopped.  He went in.


When Winton had left him, an hour and a half later that afternoon,
Fiorsen continued to stand at the front door, swaying his body to
and fro.  The brandy-nurtured burst of jealousy which had made him
insult his wife and old Monsieur Harmost had died suddenly when Gyp
turned on him in the street and spoke in that icy voice; since then
he had felt fear, increasing every minute.  Would she forgive?  To
one who always acted on the impulse of the moment, so that he
rarely knew afterward exactly what he had done, or whom hurt, Gyp's
self-control had ever been mysterious and a little frightening.
Where had she gone?  Why did she not come in?  Anxiety is like a
ball that rolls down-hill, gathering momentum.  Suppose she did not
come back!  But she must--there was the baby--their baby!

For the first time, the thought of it gave him unalloyed
satisfaction.  He left the door, and, after drinking a glass to
steady him, flung himself down on the sofa in the drawing-room.
And while he lay there, the brandy warm within him, he thought: 'I
will turn over a new leaf; give up drink, give up everything, send
the baby into the country, take Gyp to Paris, Berlin, Vienna, Rome--
anywhere out of this England, anywhere, away from that father of
hers and all these stiff, dull folk!  She will like that--she loves
travelling!'  Yes, they would be happy!  Delicious nights--
delicious days--air that did not weigh you down and make you feel
that you must drink--real inspiration--real music!  The acrid wood-
smoke scent of Paris streets, the glistening cleanness of the
Thiergarten, a serenading song in a Florence back street, fireflies
in the summer dusk at Sorrento--he had intoxicating memories of
them all!  Slowly the warmth of the brandy died away, and, despite
the heat, he felt chill and shuddery.  He shut his eyes, thinking
to sleep till she came in.  But very soon he opened them, because--
a thing usual with him of late--he saw such ugly things--faces,
vivid, changing as he looked, growing ugly and uglier, becoming all
holes--holes--horrible holes--Corruption--matted, twisted, dark
human-tree-roots of faces!  Horrible!  He opened his eyes, for when
he did that, they always went.  It was very silent.  No sound from
above.  No sound of the dogs.  He would go up and see the baby.

While he was crossing the hall, there came a ring.  He opened the
door himself.  A telegram!  He tore the envelope.


"Gyp and the baby are with me letter follows.--WINTON."


He gave a short laugh, shut the door in the boy's face, and ran up-
stairs; why--heaven knew!  There was nobody there now!  Nobody!
Did it mean that she had really left him--was not coming back?  He
stopped by the side of Gyp's bed, and flinging himself forward, lay
across it, burying his face.  And he sobbed, as men will, unmanned
by drink.  Had he lost her?  Never to see her eyes closing and
press his lips against them!  Never to soak his senses in her
loveliness!  He leaped up, with the tears still wet on his face.
Lost her?  Absurd!  That calm, prim, devilish Englishman, her
father--he was to blame--he had worked it all--stealing the baby!

He went down-stairs and drank some brandy.  It steadied him a
little.  What should he do?  "Letter follows."  Drink, and wait?
Go to Bury Street?  No.  Drink!  Enjoy himself!

He laughed, and, catching up his hat, went out, walking furiously
at first, then slower and slower, for his head began to whirl, and,
taking a cab, was driven to a restaurant in Soho.  He had eaten
nothing but a biscuit since his breakfast, always a small matter,
and ordered soup and a flask of their best Chianti--solids he could
not face.  More than two hours he sat, white and silent,
perspiration on his forehead, now and then grinning and flourishing
his fingers, to the amusement and sometimes the alarm of those
sitting near.  But for being known there, he would have been
regarded with suspicion.  About half-past nine, there being no more
wine, he got up, put a piece of gold on the table, and went out
without waiting for his change.

In the streets, the lamps were lighted, but daylight was not quite
gone.  He walked unsteadily, toward Piccadilly.  A girl of the town
passed and looked up at him.  Staring hard, he hooked his arm in
hers without a word; it steadied him, and they walked on thus
together.  Suddenly he said:

"Well, girl, are you happy?"  The girl stopped and tried to
disengage her arm; a rather frightened look had come into her dark-
eyed powdered face.  Fiorsen laughed, and held it firm.  "When the
unhappy meet, they walk together.  Come on!  You are just a little
like my wife.  Will you have a drink?"

The girl shook her head, and, with a sudden movement, slipped her
arm out of this madman's and dived away like a swallow through the
pavement traffic.  Fiorsen stood still and laughed with his head
thrown back.  The second time to-day.  SHE had slipped from his
grasp.  Passers looked at him, amazed.  The ugly devils!  And with
a grimace, he turned out of Piccadilly, past St. James's Church,
making for Bury Street.  They wouldn't let him in, of course--not
they!  But he would look at the windows; they had flower-boxes--
flower-boxes!  And, suddenly, he groaned aloud--he had thought of
Gyp's figure busy among the flowers at home.  Missing the right
turning, he came in at the bottom of the street.  A fiddler in the
gutter was scraping away on an old violin.  Fiorsen stopped to
listen.  Poor devil!  "Pagliacci!"  Going up to the man--dark,
lame, very shabby, he took out some silver, and put his other hand
on the man's shoulder.

"Brother," he said, "lend me your fiddle.  Here's money for you.
Come; lend it to me.  I am a great violinist."

"Vraiment, monsieur!"

"Ah!  Vraiment!  Voyons!  Donnez--un instant--vous verrez."

The fiddler, doubting but hypnotized, handed him the fiddle; his
dark face changed when he saw this stranger fling it up to his
shoulder and the ways of his fingers with bow and strings.  Fiorsen
had begun to walk up the street, his eyes searching for the flower-
boxes.  He saw them, stopped, and began playing "Che faro?"  He
played it wonderfully on that poor fiddle; and the fiddler, who had
followed at his elbow, stood watching him, uneasy, envious, but a
little entranced.  Sapristi!  This tall, pale monsieur with the
strange face and the eyes that looked drunk and the hollow chest,
played like an angel!  Ah, but it was not so easy as all that to
make money in the streets of this sacred town!  You might play like
forty angels and not a copper!  He had begun another tune--like
little pluckings at your heart--tres joli--tout a fait ecoeurant!
Ah, there it was--a monsieur as usual closing the window, drawing
the curtains!  Always same thing!  The violin and the bow were
thrust back into his hands; and the tall strange monsieur was off
as if devils were after him--not badly drunk, that one!  And not a
sou thrown down!  With an uneasy feeling that he had been involved
in something that he did not understand, the lame, dark fiddler
limped his way round the nearest corner, and for two streets at
least did not stop.  Then, counting the silver Fiorsen had put into
his hand and carefully examining his fiddle, he used the word,
"Bigre!" and started for home.



XIX


Gyp hardly slept at all.  Three times she got up, and, stealing to
the door, looked in at her sleeping baby, whose face in its new bed
she could just see by the night-light's glow.  The afternoon had
shaken her nerves.  Nor was Betty's method of breathing while
asleep conducive to the slumber of anything but babies.  It was so
hot, too, and the sound of the violin still in her ears.  By that
little air of Poise, she had known for certain it was Fiorsen; and
her father's abrupt drawing of the curtains had clinched that
certainty.  If she had gone to the window and seen him, she would
not have been half so deeply disturbed as she was by that echo of
an old emotion.  The link which yesterday she thought broken for
good was reforged in some mysterious way.  The sobbing of that old
fiddle had been his way of saying, "Forgive me; forgive!"  To leave
him would have been so much easier if she had really hated him; but
she did not.  However difficult it may be to live with an artist,
to hate him is quite as difficult.  An artist is so flexible--only
the rigid can be hated.  She hated the things he did, and him when
he was doing them; but afterward again could hate him no more than
she could love him, and that was--not at all.  Resolution and a
sense of the practical began to come back with daylight.  When
things were hopeless, it was far better to recognize it and harden
one's heart.

Winton, whose night had been almost as sleepless--to play like a
beggar in the street, under his windows, had seemed to him the
limit!--announced at breakfast that he must see his lawyer, make
arrangements for the payment of Fiorsen's debts, and find out what
could be done to secure Gyp against persecution.  Some deed was
probably necessary; he was vague on all such matters.  In the
meantime, neither Gyp nor the baby must go out.  Gyp spent the
morning writing and rewriting to Monsieur Harmost, trying to
express her chagrin, but not saying that she had left Fiorsen.

Her father came back from Westminster quiet and angry.  He had with
difficulty been made to understand that the baby was Fiorsen's
property, so that, if the fellow claimed it, legally they would be
unable to resist.  The point opened the old wound, forced him to
remember that his own daughter had once belonged to another--
father.  He had told the lawyer in a measured voice that he would
see the fellow damned first, and had directed a deed of separation
to be prepared, which should provide for the complete payment of
Fiorsen's existing debts on condition that he left Gyp and the baby
in peace.  After telling Gyp this, he took an opportunity of going
to the extempore nursery and standing by the baby's cradle.  Until
then, the little creature had only been of interest as part of Gyp;
now it had for him an existence of its own--this tiny, dark-eyed
creature, lying there, watching him so gravely, clutching his
finger.  Suddenly the baby smiled--not a beautiful smile, but it
made on Winton an indelible impression.

Wishing first to settle this matter of the deed, he put off going
down to Mildenham; but "not trusting those two scoundrels a yard"--
for he never failed to bracket Rosek and Fiorsen--he insisted that
the baby should not go out without two attendants, and that Gyp
should not go out alone.  He carried precaution to the point of
accompanying her to Monsieur Harmost's on the Friday afternoon, and
expressed a wish to go in and shake hands with the old fellow.  It
was a queer meeting.  Those two had as great difficulty in finding
anything to say as though they were denizens of different planets.
And indeed, there ARE two planets on this earth!  When, after a
minute or so of the friendliest embarrassment, he had retired to
wait for her, Gyp sat down to her lesson.

Monsieur Harmost said quietly:

"Your letter was very kind, my little friend--and your father is
very kind.  But, after all, it was a compliment your husband paid
me."  His smile smote Gyp; it seemed to sum up so many
resignations.  "So you stay again with your father!"  And, looking
at her very hard with his melancholy brown eyes, "When will you
find your fate, I wonder?"

"Never!"

Monsieur Harmost's eyebrows rose.

"Ah," he said, "you think!  No, that is impossible!"  He walked
twice very quickly up and down the room; then spinning round on his
heel, said sharply: "Well, we must not waste your father's time.
To work."

Winton's simple comment in the cab on the way home was:

"Nice old chap!"

At Bury Street, they found Gyp's agitated parlour-maid.  Going to
do the music-room that morning, she had "found the master sitting
on the sofa, holding his head, and groaning awful.  He's not been
at home, ma'am, since you--you went on your visit, so I didn't know
what to do.  I ran for cook and we got him up to bed, and not
knowing where you'd be, ma'am, I telephoned to Count Rosek, and he
came--I hope I didn't do wrong--and he sent me down to see you.
The doctor says his brain's on the touch and go, and he keeps
askin' for you, ma'am.  So I didn't know what to do."

Gyp, pale to the lips, said:

"Wait here a minute, Ellen," and went into the dining-room.  Winton
followed.  She turned to him at once, and said:

"Oh, Dad, what am I to do?  His brain!  It would be too awful to
feel I'd brought that about."

Winton grunted.  Gyp went on:

"I must go and see.  If it's really that, I couldn't bear it.  I'm
afraid I must go, Dad."

Winton nodded.

"Well, I'll come too," he said.  "The girl can go back in the cab
and say we're on the way."

Taking a parting look at her baby, Gyp thought bitterly: 'My fate?
THIS is my fate, and no getting out of it!'  On the journey, she
and Winton were quite silent--but she held his hand tight.  While
the cook was taking up to Rosek the news of their arrival, Gyp
stood looking out at her garden.  Two days and six hours only since
she had stood there above her pansies; since, at this very spot,
Rosek had kissed her throat!  Slipping her hand through Winton's
arm, she said:

"Dad, please don't make anything of that kiss.  He couldn't help
himself, I suppose.  What does it matter, too?"

A moment later Rosek entered.  Before she could speak, Winton was
saying:

"Thank you for letting us know, sir.  But now that my daughter is
here, there will be no further need for your kind services.  Good-
day!"

At the cruel curtness of those words, Gyp gave the tiniest start
forward.  She had seen them go through Rosek's armour as a sword
through brown paper.  He recovered himself with a sickly smile,
bowed, and went out.  Winton followed--precisely as if he did not
trust him with the hats in the hall.  When the outer door was shut,
he said:

"I don't think he'll trouble you again."

Gyp's gratitude was qualified by a queer compassion.  After all,
his offence had only been that of loving her.

Fiorsen had been taken to her room, which was larger and cooler
than his own; and the maid was standing by the side of the bed with
a scared face.  Gyp signed to her to go.  He opened his eyes
presently:

"Gyp!  Oh!  Gyp!  Is it you?  The devilish, awful things I see--
don't go away again!  Oh, Gyp!"  With a sob he raised himself and
rested his forehead against her.  And Gyp felt--as on the first
night he came home drunk--a merging of all other emotions in the
desire to protect and heal.

"It's all right, all right," she murmured.  "I'm going to stay.
Don't worry about anything.  Keep quite quiet, and you'll soon be
well."

In a quarter of an hour, he was asleep.  His wasted look went to
her heart, and that expression of terror which had been coming and
going until he fell asleep!  Anything to do with the brain was so
horrible!  Only too clear that she must stay--that his recovery
depended on her.  She was still sitting there, motionless, when the
doctor came, and, seeing him asleep, beckoned her out.  He looked a
kindly man, with two waistcoats, the top one unbuttoned; and while
he talked, he winked at Gyp involuntarily, and, with each wink, Gyp
felt that he ripped the veil off one more domestic secret.  Sleep
was the ticket--the very ticket for him!  Had something on his
mind--yes!  And--er--a little given to--brandy?  Ah! all that must
stop!  Stomach as well as nerves affected.  Seeing things--nasty
things--sure sign.  Perhaps not a very careful life before
marriage.  And married--how long?  His kindly appreciative eyes
swept Gyp from top to toe.  Year and a half!  Quite so!  Hard
worker at his violin, too?  No doubt!  Musicians always a little
inclined to be immoderate--too much sense of beauty--burn the
candle at both ends!  She must see to that.  She had been away, had
she not--staying with her father?  Yes.  But--no one like a wife
for nursing.  As to treatment?  Well!  One would shove in a dash of
what he would prescribe, night and morning.  Perfect quiet.  No
stimulant.  A little cup of strong coffee without milk, if he
seemed low.  Keep him in bed at present.  No worry; no excitement.
Young man still.  Plenty of vitality.  As to herself, no undue
anxiety.  To-morrow they would see whether a night nurse would be
necessary.  Above all, no violin for a month, no alcohol--in every
way the strictest moderation!  And with a last and friendliest
wink, leaning heavily on that word "moderation," he took out a
stylographic pen, scratched on a leaf of his note-book, shook Gyp's
hand, smiled whimsically, buttoned his upper waistcoat, and
departed.

Gyp went back to her seat by the bed.  Irony!  She whose only
desire was to be let go free, was mainly responsible for his
breakdown!  But for her, there would be nothing on his mind, for he
would not be married!  Brooding morbidly, she asked herself--his
drinking, debts, even the girl--had she caused them, too?  And when
she tried to free him and herself--this was the result!  Was there
something fatal about her that must destroy the men she had to do
with?  She had made her father unhappy, Monsieur Harmost--Rosek,
and her husband!  Even before she married, how many had tried for
her love, and gone away unhappy!  And, getting up, she went to a
mirror and looked at herself long and sadly.


XX


Three days after her abortive attempt to break away, Gyp, with much
heart-searching, wrote to Daphne Wing, telling her of Fiorsen's
illness, and mentioning a cottage near Mildenham, where--if she
liked to go--she would be quite comfortable and safe from all
curiosity, and finally begging to be allowed to make good the
losses from any broken dance-contracts.

Next morning, she found Mr. Wagge with a tall, crape-banded hat in
his black-gloved hands, standing in the very centre of her drawing-
room.  He was staring into the garden, as if he had been vouchsafed
a vision of that warm night when the moonlight shed its ghostly
glamour on the sunflowers, and his daughter had danced out there.
She had a perfect view of his thick red neck in its turndown
collar, crossed by a black bow over a shiny white shirt.  And,
holding out her hand, she said:

"How do you do, Mr. Wagge?  It was kind of you to come."

Mr. Wagge turned.  His pug face wore a downcast expression.

"I hope I see you well, ma'am.  Pretty place you 'ave 'ere.  I'm
fond of flowers myself.  They've always been my 'obby."

"They're a great comfort in London, aren't they?"

"Ye-es; I should think you might grow the dahlia here."  And having
thus obeyed the obscure instincts of savoir faire, satisfied some
obscurer desire to flatter, he went on: "My girl showed me your
letter.  I didn't like to write; in such a delicate matter I'd
rather be vivey vocey.  Very kind, in your position; I'm sure I
appreciate it.  I always try to do the Christian thing myself.
Flesh passes; you never know when you may have to take your turn.
I said to my girl I'd come and see you."

"I'm very glad.  I hoped perhaps you would."

Mr. Wagge cleared his throat, and went on, in a hoarser voice:

"I don't want to say anything harsh about a certain party in your
presence, especially as I read he's indisposed, but really I hardly
know how to bear the situation.  I can't bring myself to think of
money in relation to that matter; all the same, it's a serious loss
to my daughter, very serious loss.  I've got my family pride to
think of.  My daughter's name, well--it's my own; and, though I say
it, I'm respected--a regular attendant--I think I told you.
Sometimes, I assure you, I feel I can't control myself, and it's
only that--and you, if I may say so, that keeps me in check."

During this speech, his black-gloved hands were clenching and
unclenching, and he shifted his broad, shining boots.  Gyp gazed at
them, not daring to look up at his eyes thus turning and turning
from Christianity to shekels, from his honour to the world, from
his anger to herself.  And she said:

"Please let me do what I ask, Mr. Wagge.  I should be so unhappy if
I mightn't do that little something."

Mr. Wagge blew his nose.

"It's a delicate matter," he said.  "I don't know where my duty
lays.  I don't, reelly."

Gyp looked up then.

"The great thing is to save Daisy suffering, isn't it?"

Mr. Wagge's face wore for a moment an expression of affront, as if
from the thought: 'Sufferin'!  You must leave that to her father!'
Then it wavered; the curious, furtive warmth of the attracted male
came for a moment into his little eyes; he averted them, and
coughed.  Gyp said softly:

"To please me."

Mr. Wagge's readjusted glance stopped in confusion at her waist.
He answered, in a voice that he strove to make bland:

"If you put it in that way, I don't reelly know 'ow to refuse; but
it must be quite between you and me--I can't withdraw my attitude."

Gyp murmured:

"No, of course.  Thank you so much; and you'll let me know about
everything later.  I mustn't take up your time now."  And she held
out her hand.

Mr. Wagge took it in a lingering manner.

"Well, I HAVE an appointment," he said; "a gentleman at Campden
Hill.  He starts at twelve.  I'm never late.  GOOD-morning."

When she had watched his square, black figure pass through the
outer gate, busily rebuttoning those shining black gloves, she went
upstairs and washed her face and hands.


For several days, Fiorsen wavered; but his collapse had come just
in time, and with every hour the danger lessened.  At the end of a
fortnight of a perfectly white life, there remained nothing to do
in the words of the doctor but "to avoid all recurrence of the
predisposing causes, and shove in sea air!"  Gyp had locked up all
brandy--and violins; she could control him so long as he was tamed
by his own weakness.  But she passed some very bitter hours before
she sent for her baby, Betty, and the dogs, and definitely took up
life in her little house again.  His debts had been paid, including
the thousand pounds to Rosek, and the losses of Daphne Wing.  The
girl had gone down to that cottage where no one had ever heard of
her, to pass her time in lonely grief and terror, with the aid of a
black dress and a gold band on her third finger.

August and the first half of September were spent near Bude.
Fiorsen's passion for the sea, a passion Gyp could share, kept him
singularly moderate and free from restiveness.  He had been
thoroughly frightened, and such terror is not easily forgotten.
They stayed in a farmhouse, where he was at his best with the
simple folk, and his best could be charming.  He was always trying
to get his "mermaid," as he took to calling Gyp, away from the
baby, getting her away to himself, along the grassy cliffs and
among the rocks and yellow sands of that free coast.  His delight
was to find every day some new nook where they could bathe, and dry
themselves by sitting in the sun.  And very like a mermaid she was,
on a seaweedy rock, with her feet close together in a little pool,
her fingers combing her drowned hair, and the sun silvering her wet
body.  If she had loved him, it would have been perfect.  But
though, close to nature like this--there are men to whom towns are
poison--he was so much more easy to bear, even to like, her heart
never opened to him, never fluttered at his voice, or beat more
quickly under his kisses.  One cannot regulate these things.  The
warmth in her eyes when they looked at her baby, and the coolness
when they looked at him, was such that not even a man, and he an
egoist, could help seeing; and secretly he began to hate that tiny
rival, and she began to notice that he did.

As soon as the weather broke, he grew restless, craving his violin,
and they went back to town, in robust health--all three.  During
those weeks, Gyp had never been free of the feeling that it was
just a lull, of forces held up in suspense, and the moment they
were back in their house, this feeling gathered density and
darkness, as rain gathers in the sky after a fine spell.  She had
often thought of Daphne Wing, and had written twice, getting in
return one naive and pathetic answer:


'DEAR MRS. FIORSEN,

'Oh, it is kind of you to write, because I know what you must be
feeling about me; and it was so kind of you to let me come here.  I
try not to think about things, but of course I can't help it; and I
don't seem to care what happens now.  Mother is coming down here
later on.  Sometimes I lie awake all night, listening to the wind.
Don't you think the wind is the most melancholy thing in the world?
I wonder if I shall die?  I hope I shall.  Oh, I do, really!  Good-
bye, dear Mrs. Fiorsen.  I shall never forgive myself about you.

'Your grateful,

'DAPHNE WING.'


The girl had never once been mentioned between her and Fiorsen
since the night when he sat by her bed, begging forgiveness; she
did not know whether he ever gave the little dancer and her trouble
a thought, or even knew what had become of her.  But now that the
time was getting near, Gyp felt more and more every day as if she
must go down and see her.  She wrote to her father, who, after a
dose of Harrogate with Aunt Rosamund, was back at Mildenham.
Winton answered that the nurse was there, and that there seemed to
be a woman, presumably the mother, staying with her, but that he
had not of course made direct inquiry.  Could not Gyp come down?
He was alone, and cubbing had begun.  It was like him to veil his
longings under such dry statements.  But the thought of giving him
pleasure, and of a gallop with hounds fortified intensely her
feeling that she ought to go.  Now that baby was so well, and
Fiorsen still not drinking, she might surely snatch this little
holiday and satisfy her conscience about the girl.  Since the
return from Cornwall, she had played for him in the music-room just
as of old, and she chose the finish of a morning practice to say:

"Gustav, I want to go to Mildenham this afternoon for a week.
Father's lonely."

He was putting away his violin, but she saw his neck grow red.

"To him?  No.  He will steal you as he stole the baby.  Let him
have the baby if he likes.  Not you.  No."

Gyp, who was standing by the piano, kept silence at this unexpected
outburst, but revolt blazed up in her.  She never asked him
anything; he should not refuse this.  He came up behind and put his
arms round her.

"My Gyp, I want you here--I am lonely, too.  Don't go away."

She tried to force his arms apart, but could not, and her anger
grew.  She said coldly:

"There's another reason why I must go."

"No, no!  No good reason--to take you from me."

"There is!  The girl who is just going to have your child is
staying near Mildenham, and I want to see how she is."

He let go of her then, and recoiling against the divan, sat down.
And Gyp thought: 'I'm sorry.  I didn't mean to--but it serves him
right.'

He muttered, in a dull voice:

"Oh, I hoped she was dead."

"Yes!  For all you care, she might be.  I'm going, but you needn't
be afraid that I shan't come back.  I shall be back to-day week; I
promise."

He looked at her fixedly.

"Yes.  You don't break your promises; you will not break it."  But,
suddenly, he said again: "Gyp, don't go!"

"I must."

He got up and caught her in his arms.

"Say you love me, then!"

But she could not.  It was one thing to put up with embraces, quite
another to pretend that.  When at last he was gone, she sat
smoothing her hair, staring before her with hard eyes, thinking:
"Here--where I saw him with that girl!  What animals men are!"


Late that afternoon, she reached Mildenham.  Winton met her at the
station.  And on the drive up, they passed the cottage where Daphne
Wing was staying.  It stood in front of a small coppice, a
creepered, plain-fronted, little brick house, with a garden still
full of sunflowers, tenanted by the old jockey, Pettance, his
widowed daughter, and her three small children.  "That talkative
old scoundrel," as Winton always called him, was still employed in
the Mildenham stables, and his daughter was laundress to the
establishment.  Gyp had secured for Daphne Wing the same free,
independent, economic agent who had watched over her own event; the
same old doctor, too, was to be the presiding deity.  There were no
signs of life about the cottage, and she would not stop, too eager
to be at home again, to see the old rooms, and smell the old savour
of the house, to get to her old mare, and feel its nose nuzzling
her for sugar.  It was so good to be back once more, feeling strong
and well and able to ride.  The smile of the inscrutable Markey at
the front door was a joy to her, even the darkness of the hall,
where a gleam of last sunlight fell across the skin of Winton's
first tiger, on which she had so often sunk down dead tired after
hunting.  Ah, it was nice to be at home!

In her mare's box, old Pettance was putting a last touch to
cleanliness.  His shaven, skin-tight, wicked old face, smiled
deeply.  He said in honeyed tones:

"Good evenin', miss; beautiful evenin', ma'am!"  And his little
burning brown eyes, just touched by age, regarded her lovingly.

"Well, Pettance, how are you?  And how's Annie, and how are the
children?  And how's this old darling?"

"Wonderful, miss; artful as a kitten.  Carry you like a bird to-
morrow, if you're goin' out."

"How are her legs?"

And while Gyp passed her hand down those iron legs, the old mare
examined her down the back of her neck.

"They 'aven't filled not once since she come in--she was out all
July and August; but I've kept 'er well at it since, in 'opes you
might be comin'."

"They feel splendid."  And, still bending down, Gyp asked: "And how
is your lodger--the young lady I sent you?"

"Well, ma'am, she's very young, and these very young ladies they
get a bit excited, you know, at such times; I should say she've
never been--"  With obvious difficulty he checked the words, "to an
'orse before!"  "Well, you must expect it.  And her mother, she's a
dreadful funny one, miss.  She does needle me!  Oh, she puts my
back up properly!  No class, of course--that's where it is.  But
this 'ere nurse--well, you know, miss, she won't 'ave no nonsense;
so there we are.  And, of course, you're bound to 'ave 'ighsteria,
a bit--losin' her 'usband as young as that."

Gyp could feel his wicked old smile even before she raised herself.
But what did it matter if he did guess?  She knew he would keep a
stable secret.

"Oh, we've 'ad some pretty flirts--up and cryin', dear me!  I
sleeps in the next room--oh, yes, at night-time--when you're a
widder at that age, you can't expect nothin' else.  I remember when
I was ridin' in Ireland for Captain O'Neill, there was a young
woman--"

Gyp thought: 'I mustn't let him get off--or I shall be late for
dinner,' and she said:

"Oh, Pettance, who bought the young brown horse?"

"Mr. Bryn Summer'ay, ma'am, over at Widrington, for an 'unter, and
'ack in town, miss."

"Summerhay?  Ah!"  With a touch of the whip to her memory, Gyp
recalled the young man with the clear eyes and teasing smile, on
the chestnut mare, the bold young man who reminded her of somebody,
and she added:

"That'll be a good home for him, I should think."

"Oh, yes, miss; good 'ome--nice gentleman, too.  He come over here
to see it, and asked after you.  I told 'im you was a married lady
now, miss.  'Ah,' he said; 'she rode beautiful!'  And he remembered
the 'orse well.  The major, he wasn't 'ere just then, so I let him
try the young un; he popped 'im over a fence or two, and when he
come back he says, 'Well, I'm goin' to have 'im.'  Speaks very
pleasant, an' don't waste no time--'orse was away before the end of
the week.  Carry 'im well; 'e's a strong rider, too, and a good
plucked one, but bad 'ands, I should say."

"Yes, Pettance; I must go in now.  Will you tell Annie I shall be
round to-morrow, to see her?"

"Very good, miss.  'Ounds meets at Filly Cross, seven-thirty.
You'll be goin' out?"

"Rather.  Good-night."

Flying back across the yard, Gyp thought: "'She rode beautiful!'
How jolly!  I'm glad he's got my horse."


XXI


Still glowing from her morning in the saddle, Gyp started out next
day at noon on her visit to the "old scoundrel's" cottage.  It was
one of those lingering mellow mornings of late September, when the
air, just warmed through, lifts off the stubbles, and the hedgerows
are not yet dried of dew.  The short cut led across two fields, a
narrow strip of village common, where linen was drying on gorse
bushes coming into bloom, and one field beyond; she met no one.
Crossing the road, she passed into the cottage-garden, where
sunflowers and Michaelmas daisies in great profusion were tangled
along the low red-brick garden-walls, under some poplar trees
yellow-flecked already.  A single empty chair, with a book turned
face downward, stood outside an open window.  Smoke wreathing from
one chimney was the only sign of life.  But, standing undecided
before the half-open door, Gyp was conscious, as it were, of too
much stillness, of something unnatural about the silence.  She was
just raising her hand to knock when she heard the sound of
smothered sobbing.  Peeping through the window, she could just see
a woman dressed in green, evidently Mrs. Wagge, seated at a table,
crying into her handkerchief.  At that very moment, too, a low
moaning came from the room above.  Gyp recoiled; then, making up
her mind, she went in and knocked at the room where the woman in
green was sitting.  After fully half a minute, it was opened, and
Mrs. Wagge stood there.  The nose and eyes and cheeks of that
thinnish, acid face were red, and in her green dress, and with her
greenish hair (for it was going grey and she put on it a yellow
lotion smelling of cantharides), she seemed to Gyp just like one of
those green apples that turn reddish so unnaturally in the sun.
She had rubbed over her face, which shone in streaks, and her
handkerchief was still crumpled in her hand.  It was horrible to
come, so fresh and glowing, into the presence of this poor woman,
evidently in bitter sorrow.  And a desperate desire came over Gyp
to fly.  It seemed dreadful for anyone connected with him who had
caused this trouble to be coming here at all.  But she said as
softly as she could:

"Mrs. Wagge?  Please forgive me--but is there any news?  I am--It
was I who got Daphne down here."

The woman before her was evidently being torn this way and that,
but at last she answered, with a sniff:

"It--it--was born this morning--dead."  Gyp gasped.  To have gone
through it all for that!  Every bit of mother-feeling in her
rebelled and sorrowed; but her reason said: Better so!  Much
better!  And she murmured:

"How is she?"

Mrs. Wagge answered, with profound dejection:

"Bad--very bad.  I don't know I'm sure what to say--my feelings are
all anyhow, and that's the truth.  It's so dreadfully upsetting
altogether."

"Is my nurse with her?"

"Yes; she's there.  She's a very headstrong woman, but capable, I
don't deny.  Daisy's very weak.  Oh, it IS upsetting!  And now I
suppose there'll have to be a burial.  There really seems no end to
it.  And all because of--of that man."  And Mrs. Wagge turned away
again to cry into her handkerchief.

Feeling she could never say or do the right thing to the poor lady,
Gyp stole out.  At the bottom of the stairs, she hesitated whether
to go up or no.  At last, she mounted softly.  It must be in the
front room that the bereaved girl was lying--the girl who, but a
year ago, had debated with such naive self-importance whether or
not it was her duty to take a lover.  Gyp summoned courage to tap
gently.  The economic agent opened the door an inch, but, seeing
who it was, slipped her robust and handsome person through into the
corridor.

"You, my dear!" she said in a whisper.  "That's nice!"

"How is she?"

"Fairly well--considering.  You know about it?"

"Yes; can I see her?"

"I hardly think so.  I can't make her out.  She's got no spirit,
not an ounce.  She doesn't want to get well, I believe.  It's the
man, I expect."  And, looking at Gyp with her fine blue eyes, she
asked: "Is that it?  Is he tired of her?"

Gyp met her gaze better than she had believed possible.

"Yes, nurse."

The economic agent swept her up and down.  "It's a pleasure to look
at you.  You've got quite a colour, for you.  After all, I believe
it MIGHT do her good to see you.  Come in!"

Gyp passed in behind her, and stood gazing, not daring to step
forward.  What a white face, with eyes closed, with fair hair still
damp on the forehead, with one white hand lying on the sheet above
her heart!  What a frail madonna of the sugar-plums!  On the whole
of that bed the only colour seemed the gold hoop round the wedding-
finger.

The economic agent said very quietly:

"Look, my dear; I've brought you a nice visitor."

Daphne Wing's eyes and lips opened and closed again.  And the awful
thought went through Gyp: 'Poor thing!  She thought it was going to
be him, and it's only me!'  Then the white lips said:

"Oh, Mrs. Fiorsen, it's you--it is kind of you!"  And the eyes
opened again, but very little, and differently.

The economic agent slipped away.  Gyp sat down by the bed and
timidly touched the hand.

Daphne Wing looked at her, and two tears slowly ran down her
cheeks.

"It's over," she said just audibly, "and there's nothing now--it
was dead, you know.  I don't want to live.  Oh, Mrs. Fiorsen, why
can't they let me die, too?"

Gyp bent over and kissed the hand, unable to bear the sight of
those two slowly rolling tears.  Daphne Wing went on:

"You ARE good to me.  I wish my poor little baby hadn't--"

Gyp, knowing her own tears were wetting that hand, raised herself
and managed to get out the words:

"Bear up!  Think of your work!"

"Dancing!  Ho!"  She gave the least laugh ever heard.  "It seems so
long ago."

"Yes; but now it'll all come back to you again, better than ever."

Daphne Wing answered by a feeble sigh.

There was silence.  Gyp thought: 'She's falling asleep.'

With eyes and mouth closed like that, and all alabaster white, the
face was perfect, purged of its little commonnesses.  Strange freak
that this white flower of a face could ever have been produced by
Mr. and Mrs. Wagge!

Daphne Wing opened her eyes and said:

"Oh! Mrs. Fiorsen, I feel so weak.  And I feel much more lonely
now.  There's nothing anywhere."

Gyp got up; she felt herself being carried into the mood of the
girl's heart, and was afraid it would be seen.  Daphne Wing went
on:

"Do you know, when nurse said she'd brought a visitor, I thought it
was him; but I'm glad now.  If he had looked at me like he did--I
couldn't have borne it."

Gyp bent down and put her lips to the damp forehead.  Faint, very
faint, there was still the scent of orange-blossom.

When she was once more in the garden, she hurried away; but instead
of crossing the fields again, turned past the side of the cottage
into the coppice behind.  And, sitting down on a log, her hands
pressed to her cheeks and her elbows to her breast, she stared at
the sunlit bracken and the flies chasing each other over it.  Love!
Was it always something hateful and tragic that spoiled lives?
Criss-cross!  One darting on another, taking her almost before she
knew she was seized, then darting away and leaving her wanting to
be seized again.  Or darting on her, who, when seized, was fatal to
the darter, yet had never wanted to be seized.  Or darting one on
the other for a moment, then both breaking away too soon.  Did
never two dart at each other, seize, and cling, and ever after be
one?  Love!  It had spoiled her father's life, and Daphne Wing's;
never came when it was wanted; always came when it was not.
Malevolent wanderer, alighting here, there; tiring of the spirit
before it tired of the body; or of the body before it tired of the
spirit.  Better to have nothing to do with it--far better!  If one
never loved, one would never feel lonely--like that poor girl.  And
yet!  No--there was no "and yet."  Who that was free would wish to
become a slave?  A slave--like Daphne Wing!  A slave--like her own
husband to his want of a wife who did not love him.  A slave like
her father had been--still was, to a memory.  And watching the
sunlight on the bracken, Gyp thought: 'Love!  Keep far from me.  I
don't want you.  I shall never want you!'


Every morning that week she made her way to the cottage, and every
morning had to pass through the hands of Mrs. Wagge.  The good lady
had got over the upsetting fact that Gyp was the wife of that
villain, and had taken a fancy to her, confiding to the economic
agent, who confided it to Gyp, that she was "very distangey--and
such pretty eyes, quite Italian."  She was one of those numberless
persons whose passion for distinction was just a little too much
for their passionate propriety.  It was that worship of distinction
which had caused her to have her young daughter's talent for
dancing fostered.  Who knew to what it might lead in these days?
At great length she explained to Gyp the infinite care with which
she had always "brought Daisy up like a lady--and now this is the
result."  And she would look piercingly at Gyp's hair or ears, at
her hands or her instep, to see how it was done.  The burial
worried her dreadfully.  "I'm using the name of Daisy Wing; she was
christened 'Daisy' and the Wing's professional, so that takes them
both in, and it's quite the truth.  But I don't think anyone would
connect it, would they?  About the father's name, do you think I
might say the late Mr. Joseph Wing, this once?  You see, it never
was alive, and I must put something if they're not to guess the
truth, and that I couldn't bear; Mr. Wagge would be so distressed.
It's in his own line, you see.  Oh, it is upsetting!"

Gyp murmured desperately:

"Oh! yes, anything."

Though the girl was so deathly white and spiritless, it soon became
clear that she was going to pull through.  With each day, a little
more colour and a little more commonness came back to her.  And Gyp
felt instinctively that she would, in the end, return to Fulham
purged of her infatuation, a little harder, perhaps a little deeper.

Late one afternoon toward the end of her week at Mildenham, Gyp
wandered again into the coppice, and sat down on that same log.  An
hour before sunset, the light shone level on the yellowing leaves
all round her; a startled rabbit pelted out of the bracken and
pelted back again, and, from the far edge of the little wood, a jay
cackled harshly, shifting its perch from tree to tree.  Gyp thought
of her baby, and of that which would have been its half-brother;
and now that she was so near having to go back to Fiorsen, she knew
that she had not been wise to come here.  To have been in contact
with the girl, to have touched, as it were, that trouble, had made
the thought of life with him less tolerable even than it was
before.  Only the longing to see her baby made return seem
possible.  Ah, well--she would get used to it all again!  But the
anticipation of his eyes fixed on her, then sliding away from the
meeting with her eyes, of all--of all that would begin again,
suddenly made her shiver.  She was very near to loathing at that
moment.  He, the father of her baby!  The thought seemed ridiculous
and strange.  That little creature seemed to bind him to her no
more than if it were the offspring of some chance encounter, some
pursuit of nymph by faun.  No!  It was hers alone.  And a sudden
feverish longing to get back to it overpowered all other thought.
This longing grew in her so all night that at breakfast she told
her father.  Swallowing down whatever his feeling may have been, he
said:

"Very well, my child; I'll come up with you."

Putting her into the cab in London, he asked:

"Have you still got your key of Bury Street?  Good!  Remember, Gyp--
any time day or night--there it is for you."

She had wired to Fiorsen from Mildenham that she was coming, and
she reached home soon after three.  He was not in, and what was
evidently her telegram lay unopened in the hall.  Tremulous with
expectation, she ran up to the nursery.  The pathetic sound of some
small creature that cannot tell what is hurting it, or why, met her
ears.  She went in, disturbed, yet with the half-triumphant
thought: 'Perhaps that's for me!'

Betty, very flushed, was rocking the cradle, and examining the
baby's face with a perplexed frown.  Seeing Gyp, she put her hand
to her side, and gasped:

"Oh, be joyful!  Oh, my dear!  I AM glad.  I can't do anything with
baby since the morning.  Whenever she wakes up, she cries like
that.  And till to-day she's been a little model.  Hasn't she!
There, there!"

Gyp took up the baby, whose black eyes fixed themselves on her
mother in a momentary contentment; but, at the first movement, she
began again her fretful plaint.  Betty went on:

"She's been like that ever since this morning.  Mr. Fiorsen's been
in more than once, ma'am, and the fact is, baby don't like it.  He
stares at her so.  But this morning I thought--well--I thought:
'You're her father.  It's time she was getting used to you.'  So I
let them be a minute; and when I came back--I was only just across
to the bathroom--he was comin' out lookin' quite fierce and white,
and baby--oh, screamin'!  And except for sleepin', she's hardly
stopped cryin' since."

Pressing the baby to her breast, Gyp sat very still, and queer
thoughts went through her mind.

"How has he been, Betty?" she said.

Betty plaited her apron; her moon-face was troubled.

"Well," she said, "I think he's been drinkin'.  Oh, I'm sure he
has--I've smelt it about him.  The third day it began.  And night
before last he came in dreadfully late--I could hear him staggerin'
about, abusing the stairs as he was comin' up.  Oh dear--it IS a
pity!"

The baby, who had been still enough since she lay in her mother's
lap, suddenly raised her little voice again.  Gyp said:

"Betty, I believe something hurts her arm.  She cries the moment
she's touched there.  Is there a pin or anything?  Just see.  Take
her things off.  Oh--look!"

Both the tiny arms above the elbow were circled with dark marks, as
if they had been squeezed by ruthless fingers.  The two women
looked at each other in horror; and under her breath Gyp said:
"He!"

She had flushed crimson; her eyes filled but dried again almost at
once.  And, looking at her face, now gone very pale, and those lips
tightened to a line, Betty stopped in her outburst of ejaculation.
When they had wrapped the baby's arm in remedies and cotton-wool,
Gyp went into her bedroom, and, throwing herself down on her bed,
burst into a passion of weeping, smothering it deep in her pillow.

It was the crying of sheer rage.  The brute!  Not to have control
enough to stop short of digging his claws into that precious mite!
Just because the poor little thing cried at that cat's stare of
his!  The brute!  The devil!  And he would come to her and whine
about it, and say: "My Gyp, I never meant--how should I know I was
hurting?  Her crying was so--Why should she cry at me?  I was
upset!  I wasn't thinking!"  She could hear him pleading and
sighing to her to forgive him.  But she would not--not this time!
He had hurt a helpless thing once too often.  Her fit of crying
ceased, and she lay listening to the tick of the clock, and
marshalling in her mind a hundred little evidences of his
malevolence toward her baby--his own baby.  How was it possible?
Was he really going mad?  And a fit of such chilly shuddering
seized her that she crept under the eider down to regain warmth.
In her rage, she retained enough sense of proportion to understand
that he had done this, just as he had insulted Monsieur Harmost and
her father--and others--in an ungovernable access of nerve-
irritation; just as, perhaps, one day he would kill someone.  But
to understand this did not lessen her feeling.  Her baby!  Such a
tiny thing!  She hated him at last; and she lay thinking out the
coldest, the cruellest, the most cutting things to say.  She had
been too long-suffering.

But he did not come in that evening; and, too upset to eat or do
anything, she went up to bed at ten o'clock.  When she had
undressed, she stole across to the nursery; she had a longing to
have the baby with her--a feeling that to leave her was not safe.
She carried her off, still sleeping, and, locking her doors, got
into bed.  Having warmed a nest with her body for the little
creature, she laid it there; and then for a long time lay awake,
expecting every minute to hear him return.  She fell asleep at
last, and woke with a start.  There were vague noises down below or
on the stairs.  It must be he!  She had left the light on in her
room, and she leaned over to look at the baby's face.  It was still
sleeping, drawing its tiny breaths peacefully, little dog-shivers
passing every now and then over its face.  Gyp, shaking back her
dark plaits of hair, sat up by its side, straining her ears.

Yes; he WAS coming up, and, by the sounds, he was not sober.  She
heard a loud creak, and then a thud, as if he had clutched at the
banisters and fallen; she heard muttering, too, and the noise of
boots dropped.  Swiftly the thought went through her: 'If he were
quite drunk, he would not have taken them off at all;--nor if he
were quite sober.  Does he know I'm back?'  Then came another
creak, as if he were raising himself by support of the banisters,
and then--or was it fancy?--she could hear him creeping and
breathing behind the door.  Then--no fancy this time--he fumbled at
the door and turned the handle.  In spite of his state, he must
know that she was back, had noticed her travelling-coat or seen the
telegram.  The handle was tried again, then, after a pause, the
handle of the door between his room and hers was fiercely shaken.
She could hear his voice, too, as she knew it when he was flown
with drink, thick, a little drawling.

"Gyp--let me in--Gyp!"

The blood burned up in her cheeks, and she thought: 'No, my friend;
you're not coming in!'

After that, sounds were more confused, as if he were now at one
door, now at the other; then creakings, as if on the stairs again,
and after that, no sound at all.

For fully half an hour, Gyp continued to sit up, straining her
ears.  Where was he?  What doing?  On her over-excited nerves, all
sorts of possibilities came crowding.  He must have gone downstairs
again.  In that half-drunken state, where would his baffled
frenzies lead him?  And, suddenly, she thought that she smelled
burning.  It went, and came again; she got up, crept to the door,
noiselessly turned the key, and, pulling it open a few inches,
sniffed.

All was dark on the landing.  There was no smell of burning out
there.  Suddenly, a hand clutched her ankle.  All the blood rushed
from her heart; she stifled a scream, and tried to pull the door
to.  But his arm and her leg were caught between, and she saw the
black mass of his figure lying full-length on its face.  Like a
vice, his hand held her; he drew himself up on to his knees, on to
his feet, and forced his way through.  Panting, but in utter
silence, Gyp struggled to drive him out.  His drunken strength
seemed to come and go in gusts, but hers was continuous, greater
than she had ever thought she had, and she panted:

"Go! go out of my room--you--you--wretch!"

Then her heart stood still with horror, for he had slued round to
the bed and was stretching his hands out above the baby.  She heard
him mutter:

"Ah-h-h!--YOU--in my place--YOU!"

Gyp flung herself on him from behind, dragging his arms down, and,
clasping her hands together, held him fast.  He twisted round in
her arms and sat down on the bed.  In that moment of his collapse,
Gyp snatched up her baby and fled out, down the dark stairs,
hearing him stumbling, groping in pursuit.  She fled into the
dining-room and locked the door.  She heard him run against it and
fall down.  Snuggling her baby, who was crying now, inside her
nightgown, next to her skin for warmth, she stood rocking and
hushing it, trying to listen.  There was no more sound.  By the
hearth, whence a little heat still came forth from the ashes, she
cowered down.  With cushions and the thick white felt from the
dining-table, she made the baby snug, and wrapping her shivering
self in the table-cloth, sat staring wide-eyed before her--and
always listening.  There were sounds at first, then none.  A long,
long time she stayed like that, before she stole to the door.  She
did not mean to make a second mistake.  She could hear the sound of
heavy breathing.  And she listened to it, till she was quite
certain that it was really the breathing of sleep.  Then stealthily
she opened, and looked.  He was over there, lying against the
bottom chair, in a heavy, drunken slumber.  She knew that sleep so
well; he would not wake from it.

It gave her a sort of evil pleasure that they would find him like
that in the morning when she was gone.  She went back to her baby
and, with infinite precaution, lifted it, still sleeping, cushion
and all, and stole past him up the stairs that, under her bare
feet, made no sound.  Once more in her locked room, she went to the
window and looked out.  It was just before dawn; her garden was
grey and ghostly, and she thought: 'The last time I shall see you.
Good-bye!'

Then, with the utmost speed, she did her hair and dressed.  She was
very cold and shivery, and put on her fur coat and cap.  She hunted
out two jerseys for the baby, and a certain old camel's-hair shawl.
She took a few little things she was fondest of and slipped them
into her wrist-bag with her purse, put on her hat and a pair of
gloves.  She did everything very swiftly, wondering, all the time,
at her own power of knowing what to take.  When she was quite
ready, she scribbled a note to Betty to follow with the dogs to
Bury Street, and pushed it under the nursery door.  Then, wrapping
the baby in the jerseys and shawl, she went downstairs.  The dawn
had broken, and, from the long narrow window above the door with
spikes of iron across it, grey light was striking into the hall.
Gyp passed Fiorsen's sleeping figure safely, and, for one moment,
stopped for breath.  He was lying with his back against the wall,
his head in the hollow of an arm raised against a stair, and his
face turned a little upward.  That face which, hundreds of times,
had been so close to her own, and something about this crumpled
body, about his tumbled hair, those cheek-bones, and the hollows
beneath the pale lips just parted under the dirt-gold of his
moustache--something of lost divinity in all that inert figure--
clutched for a second at Gyp's heart.  Only for a second.  It was
over, this time!  No more--never again!  And, turning very
stealthily, she slipped her shoes on, undid the chain, opened the
front door, took up her burden, closed the door softly behind her,
and walked away.



Part III


I


Gyp was going up to town.  She sat in the corner of a first-class
carriage, alone.  Her father had gone up by an earlier train, for
the annual June dinner of his old regiment, and she had stayed to
consult the doctor concerning "little Gyp," aged nearly nineteen
months, to whom teeth were making life a burden.

Her eyes wandered from window to window, obeying the faint
excitement within her.  All the winter and spring, she had been at
Mildenham, very quiet, riding much, and pursuing her music as best
she could, seeing hardly anyone except her father; and this
departure for a spell of London brought her the feeling that comes
on an April day, when the sky is blue, with snow-white clouds, when
in the fields the lambs are leaping, and the grass is warm for the
first time, so that one would like to roll in it.  At Widrington, a
porter entered, carrying a kit-bag, an overcoat, and some golf-
clubs; and round the door a little group, such as may be seen at
any English wayside station, clustered, filling the air with their
clean, slightly drawling voices.  Gyp noted a tall woman whose
blonde hair was going grey, a young girl with a fox-terrier on a
lead, a young man with a Scotch terrier under his arm and his back
to the carriage.  The girl was kissing the Scotch terrier's head.

"Good-bye, old Ossy!  Was he nice!  Tumbo, keep DOWN!  YOU'RE not
going!"

"Good-bye, dear boy!  Don't work too hard!"

The young man's answer was not audible, but it was followed by
irrepressible gurgles and a smothered:

"Oh, Bryan, you ARE--Good-bye, dear Ossy!"  "Good-bye!"  "Good-
bye!"  The young man who had got in, made another unintelligible
joke in a rather high-pitched voice, which was somehow familiar,
and again the gurgles broke forth.  Then the train moved.  Gyp
caught a side view of him, waving his hat from the carriage window.
It was her acquaintance of the hunting-field--the "Mr. Bryn
Summer'ay," as old Pettance called him, who had bought her horse
last year.  Seeing him pull down his overcoat, to bank up the old
Scotch terrier against the jolting of the journey, she thought: 'I
like men who think first of their dogs.'  His round head, with
curly hair, broad brow, and those clean-cut lips, gave her again
the wonder: 'Where HAVE I seen someone like him?'  He raised the
window, and turned round.

"How would you like--Oh, how d'you do!  We met out hunting.  You
don't remember me, I expect."

"Yes; perfectly.  And you bought my horse last summer.  How is he?"

"In great form.  I forgot to ask what you called him; I've named
him Hotspur--he'll never be steady at his fences.  I remember how
he pulled with you that day."

They were silent, smiling, as people will in remembrance of a good
run.

Then, looking at the dog, Gyp said softly:

"HE looks rather a darling.  How old?"

"Twelve.  Beastly when dogs get old!"

There was another little silence while he contemplated her steadily
with his clear eyes.

"I came over to call once--with my mother; November the year before
last.  Somebody was ill."

"Yes--I."

"Badly?"

Gyp shook her head.

"I heard you were married--"  The little drawl in his voice had
increased, as though covering the abruptness of that remark.  Gyp
looked up.

"Yes; but my little daughter and I live with my father again."
What "came over" her--as they say--to be so frank, she could not
have told.

He said simply:

"Ah!  I've often thought it queer I've never seen you since.  What
a run that was!"

"Perfect!  Was that your mother on the platform?"

"Yes--and my sister Edith.  Extraordinary dead-alive place,
Widrington; I expect Mildenham isn't much better?"

"It's very quiet, but I like it."

"By the way, I don't know your name now?"

"Fiorsen."

"Oh, yes!  The violinist.  Life's a bit of a gamble, isn't it?"

Gyp did not answer that odd remark, did not quite know what to make
of this audacious young man, whose hazel eyes and lazy smile were
queerly lovable, but whose face in repose had such a broad gravity.
He took from his pocket a little red book.

"Do you know these?  I always take them travelling.  Finest things
ever written, aren't they?"

The book--Shakespeare's Sonnets--was open at that which begins:


     "Let me not to the marriage of true minds
        Admit impediments.  Love is not love
      Which alters when it alteration finds,
        Or bends with the remover to remove--"


Gyp read on as far as the lines:


     "Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
        Within his bending sickle's compass come.
      Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks
        But bears it out even to the edge of doom--"


and looked out of the window.  The train was passing through a
country of fields and dykes, where the sun, far down in the west,
shone almost level over wide, whitish-green space, and the spotted
cattle browsed or stood by the ditches, lazily flicking their
tufted tails.  A shaft of sunlight flowed into the carriage, filled
with dust motes; and, handing the little book back through that
streak of radiance, she said softly:

"Yes; that's wonderful.  Do you read much poetry?"

"More law, I'm afraid.  But it is about the finest thing in the
world, isn't it?"

"No; I think music."

"Are you a musician?"

"Only a little."

"You look as if you might be."

"What?  A little?"

"No; I should think you had it badly."

"Thank you.  And you haven't it at all?"

"I like opera."

"The hybrid form--and the lowest!"

"That's why it suits me.  Don't you like it, though?"

"Yes; that's why I'm going up to London."

"Really?  Are you a subscriber?"

"This season."

"So am I.  Jolly--I shall see you."

Gyp smiled.  It was so long since she had talked to a man of her
own age, so long since she had seen a face that roused her
curiosity and admiration, so long since she had been admired.  The
sun-shaft, shifted by a westward trend of the train, bathed her
from the knees up; and its warmth increased her light-hearted sense
of being in luck--above her fate, instead of under it.

Astounding how much can be talked of in two or three hours of a
railway journey!  And what a friendly after-warmth clings round
those hours!  Does the difficulty of making oneself heard provoke
confidential utterance?  Or is it the isolation or the continual
vibration that carries friendship faster and further than will a
spasmodic acquaintanceship of weeks?  But in that long talk he was
far the more voluble.  There was, too, much of which she could not
speak.  Besides, she liked to listen.  His slightly drawling voice
fascinated her--his audacious, often witty way of putting things,
and the irrepressible bubble of laughter that would keep breaking
from him.  He disclosed his past, such as it was, freely--public-
school and college life, efforts at the bar, ambitions, tastes,
even his scrapes.  And in this spontaneous unfolding there was
perpetual flattery; Gyp felt through it all, as pretty women will,
a sort of subtle admiration.  Presently he asked her if she played
piquet.

"Yes; I play with my father nearly every evening."

"Shall we have a game, then?"

She knew he only wanted to play because he could sit nearer, joined
by the evening paper over their knees, hand her the cards after
dealing, touch her hand by accident, look in her face.  And this
was not unpleasant; for she, in turn, liked looking at his face,
which had what is called "charm"--that something light and
unepiscopal, entirely lacking to so many solid, handsome, admirable
faces.

But even railway journeys come to an end; and when he gripped her
hand to say good-bye, she gave his an involuntary little squeeze.
Standing at her cab window, with his hat raised, the old dog under
his arm, and a look of frank, rather wistful, admiration on his
face, he said:

"I shall see you at the opera, then, and in the Row perhaps; and I
may come along to Bury Street, some time, mayn't I?"

Nodding to those friendly words, Gyp drove off through the sultry
London evening.  Her father was not back from the dinner, and she
went straight to her room.  After so long in the country, it seemed
very close in Bury Street; she put on a wrapper and sat down to
brush the train-smoke out of her hair.

For months after leaving Fiorsen, she had felt nothing but relief.
Only of late had she begun to see her new position, as it was--that
of a woman married yet not married, whose awakened senses have
never been gratified, whose spirit is still waiting for unfoldment
in love, who, however disillusioned, is--even if in secret from
herself--more and more surely seeking a real mate, with every hour
that ripens her heart and beauty.  To-night--gazing at her face,
reflected, intent and mournful, in the mirror--she saw that
position more clearly, in all its aridity, than she had ever seen
it.  What was the use of being pretty?  No longer use to anyone!
Not yet twenty-six, and in a nunnery!  With a shiver, but not of
cold, she drew her wrapper close.  This time last year she had at
least been in the main current of life, not a mere derelict.  And
yet--better far be like this than go back to him whom memory
painted always standing over her sleeping baby, with his arms
stretched out and his fingers crooked like claws.

After that early-morning escape, Fiorsen had lurked after her for
weeks, in town, at Mildenham, followed them even to Scotland, where
Winton had carried her off.  But she had not weakened in her
resolution a second time, and suddenly he had given up pursuit, and
gone abroad.  Since then--nothing had come from him, save a few
wild or maudlin letters, written evidently during drinking-bouts.
Even they had ceased, and for four months she had heard no word.
He had "got over" her, it seemed, wherever he was--Russia, Sweden--
who knew--who cared?

She let the brush rest on her knee, thinking again of that walk
with her baby through empty, silent streets, in the early misty
morning last October, of waiting dead-tired outside here, on the
pavement, ringing till they let her in.  Often, since, she had
wondered how fear could have worked her up to that weird departure.
She only knew that it had not been unnatural at the time.  Her
father and Aunt Rosamund had wanted her to try for a divorce, and
no doubt they had been right.  But her instincts had refused, still
refused to let everyone know her secrets and sufferings--still
refused the hollow pretence involved, that she had loved him when
she never had.  No, it had been her fault for marrying him without
love--


     "Love is not love
      Which alters when it alteration finds!"


What irony--giving her that to read--if her fellow traveller had
only known!

She got up from before the mirror, and stood looking round her
room, the room she had always slept in as a girl.  So he had
remembered her all this time!  It had not seemed like meeting a
stranger.  They were not strangers now, anyway.  And, suddenly, on
the wall before her, she saw his face; or, if not, what was so like
that she gave a little gasp.  Of course!  How stupid of her not to
have known at once!  There, in a brown frame, hung a photograph of
the celebrated Botticelli or Masaccio "Head of a Young Man" in the
National Gallery.  She had fallen in love with it years ago, and on
the wall of her room it had been ever since.  That broad face, the
clear eyes, the bold, clean-cut mouth, the audacity--only, the live
face was English, not Italian, had more humour, more "breeding,"
less poetry--something "old Georgian" about it.  How he would laugh
if she told him he was like that peasant acolyte with fluffed-out
hair, and a little ruching round his neck!  And, smiling, Gyp
plaited her own hair and got into bed.

But she could not sleep; she heard her father come in and go up to
his room, heard the clocks strike midnight, and one, and two, and
always the dull roar of Piccadilly.  She had nothing over her but a
sheet, and still it was too hot.  There was a scent in the room, as
of honeysuckle.  Where could it come from?  She got up at last, and
went to the window.  There, on the window-sill, behind the
curtains, was a bowl of jessamine.  Her father must have brought it
up for her--just like him to think of that!

And, burying her nose in those white blossoms, she was visited by a
memory of her first ball--that evening of such delight and
disillusionment.  Perhaps Bryan Summerhay had been there--all that
time ago!  If he had been introduced to her then, if she had
happened to dance with him instead of with that man who had kissed
her arm, might she not have felt different toward all men?  And if
he had admired her--and had not everyone, that night--might she not
have liked, perhaps more than liked, him in return?  Or would she
have looked on him as on all her swains before she met Fiorsen, so
many moths fluttering round a candle, foolish to singe themselves,
not to be taken seriously?  Perhaps she had been bound to have her
lesson, to be humbled and brought low!

Taking a sprig of jessamine and holding it to her nose, she went up
to that picture.  In the dim light, she could just see the outline
of the face and the eyes gazing at her.  The scent of the blossom
penetrated her nerves; in her heart, something faintly stirred, as
a leaf turns over, as a wing flutters.  And, blossom and all, she
clasped her hands over her breast, where again her heart quivered
with that faint, shy tremor.

It was late, no--early, when she fell asleep and had a strange
dream.  She was riding her old mare through a field of flowers.
She had on a black dress, and round her head a crown of bright,
pointed crystals; she sat without saddle, her knee curled up,
perched so lightly that she hardly felt the mare's back, and the
reins she held were long twisted stems of honeysuckle.  Singing as
she rode, her eyes flying here and there, over the field, up to the
sky, she felt happier, lighter than thistledown.  While they raced
along, the old mare kept turning her head and biting at the
honeysuckle flowers; and suddenly that chestnut face became the
face of Summerhay, looking back at her with his smile.  She awoke.
Sunlight, through the curtains where she had opened them to find
the flowers, was shining on her.


II


Very late that same night, Summerhay came out of the little Chelsea
house, which he inhabited, and walked toward the river.  In certain
moods men turn insensibly toward any space where nature rules a
little--downs, woods, waters--where the sky is free to the eye and
one feels the broad comradeship of primitive forces.  A man is
alone when he loves, alone when he dies; nobody cares for one so
absorbed, and he cares for nobody, no--not he!  Summerhay stood by
the river-wall and looked up at the stars through the plane-tree
branches.  Every now and then he drew a long breath of the warm,
unstirring air, and smiled, without knowing that he smiled.  And he
thought of little, of nothing; but a sweetish sensation beset his
heart, a kind of quivering lightness his limbs.  He sat down on a
bench and shut his eyes.  He saw a face--only a face.  The lights
went out one by one in the houses opposite; no cabs passed now, and
scarce a passenger was afoot, but Summerhay sat like a man in a
trance, the smile coming and going on his lips; and behind him the
air that ever stirs above the river faintly moved with the tide
flowing up.

It was nearly three, just coming dawn, when he went in, and,
instead of going to bed, sat down to a case in which he was junior
on the morrow, and worked right on till it was time to ride before
his bath and breakfast.  He had one of those constitutions, not
uncommon among barristers--fostered perhaps by ozone in the Courts
of Law--that can do this sort of thing and take no harm.  Indeed,
he worked best in such long spurts of vigorous concentration.  With
real capacity and a liking for his work, this young man was
certainly on his way to make a name; though, in the intervals of
energy, no one gave a more complete impression of imperturbable
drifting on the tides of the moment.  Altogether, he was rather a
paradox.  He chose to live in that little Chelsea house which had a
scrap of garden rather than in the Temple or St. James's, because
he often preferred solitude; and yet he was an excellent companion,
with many friends, who felt for him the affectionate distrust
inspired by those who are prone to fits and starts of work and
play, conviviality and loneliness.  To women, he was almost
universally attractive.  But if he had scorched his wings a little
once or twice, he had kept heart-free on the whole.  He was, it
must be confessed, a bit of a gambler, the sort of gambler who gets
in deep, and then, by a plucky, lucky plunge, gets out again, until
some day perhaps--he stays there.  His father, a diplomatist, had
been dead fifteen years; his mother was well known in the semi-
intellectual circles of society.  He had no brothers, two sisters,
and an income of his own.  Such was Bryan Summerhay at the age of
twenty-six, his wisdom-teeth to cut, his depths unplumbed.

When he started that morning for the Temple, he had still a feeling
of extraordinary lightness in his limbs, and he still saw that
face--its perfect regularity, its warm pallor, and dark smiling
eyes rather wide apart, its fine, small, close-set ears, and the
sweep of the black-brown hair across the low brow.  Or was it
something much less definite he saw--an emanation or expression, a
trick, a turn, an indwelling grace, a something that appealed, that
turned, and touched him?  Whatever it was, it would not let him be,
and he did not desire that it should.  For this was in his
character; if he saw a horse that he liked, he put his money on
whatever it ran; if charmed by an opera, he went over and over
again; if by a poem, he almost learned it by heart.  And while he
walked along the river--his usual route--he had queer and
unaccustomed sensations, now melting, now pugnacious.  And he felt
happy.

He was rather late, and went at once into court.  In wig and gown,
that something "old Georgian" about him was very visible.  A
beauty-spot or two, a full-skirted velvet coat, a sword and snuff-
box, with that grey wig or its equivalent, and there would have
been a perfect eighteenth-century specimen of the less bucolic
stamp--the same strong, light build, breadth of face, brown pallor,
clean and unpinched cut of lips, the same slight insolence and
devil-may-caredom, the same clear glance, and bubble of vitality.
It was almost a pity to have been born so late.

Except that once or twice he drew a face on blotting-paper and
smeared it over, he remained normally attentive to his "lud" and
the matters in hand all day, conducted without error the
examination of two witnesses and with terror the cross-examination
of one; lunched at the Courts in perfect amity with the sucking
barrister on the other side of the case, for they had neither, as
yet, reached that maturity which enables an advocate to call his
enemy his "friend," and treat him with considerable asperity.
Though among his acquaintances Summerhay always provoked badinage,
in which he was scarcely ever defeated, yet in chambers and court,
on circuit, at his club, in society or the hunting-field, he had an
unfavourable effect on the grosser sort of stories.  There are men--
by no means strikingly moral--who exercise this blighting
influence.  They are generally what the French call "spirituel,"
and often have rather desperate love-affairs which they keep very
closely to themselves.

When at last in chambers, he had washed off that special reek of
clothes, and parchment, far-away herrings, and distemper, which
clings about the law, dipping his whole curly head in water, and
towelling vigorously, he set forth alone along the Embankment, his
hat tilted up, smoking a cigar.  It was nearly seven.  Just this
time yesterday he had got into the train, just this time yesterday
turned and seen the face which had refused to leave him since.
Fever recurs at certain hours, just so did the desire to see her
mount within him, becoming an obsession, because it was impossible
to gratify it.  One could not call at seven o'clock!  The idea of
his club, where at this time of day he usually went, seemed flat
and stale, until he remembered that he might pass up Bury Street to
get to it.  But, near Charing Cross, a hand smote him on the
shoulder, and the voice of one of his intimates said:

"Halo, Bryan!"

Odd, that he had never noticed before how vacuous this fellow was--
with his talk of politics, and racing, of this ass and that ass--
subjects hitherto of primary importance!  And, stopping suddenly,
he drawled out:

"Look here, old chap, you go on; see you at the club--presently."

"Why?  What's up?"

With his lazy smile, Summerhay answered:

"'There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,'" and turned
on his heel.

When his friend had disappeared, he resumed his journey toward Bury
Street.  He passed his boot shop, where, for some time, he had been
meaning to order two pairs, and went by thinking: 'I wonder where
SHE goes for things.'  Her figure came to him so vividly--sitting
back in that corner, or standing by the cab, her hand in his.  The
blood rushed up in his cheeks.  She had been scented like flowers,
and--and a rainy wind!  He stood still before a plate-glass window,
in confusion, and suddenly muttered aloud: "Damn it!  I believe I
am!"  An old gentleman, passing, turned so suddenly, to see what he
was, that he ricked his neck.

But Summerhay still stood, not taking in at all the reflected image
of his frowning, rueful face, and of the cigar extinct between his
lips.  Then he shook his head vigorously and walked on.  He walked
faster, his mind blank, as it is sometimes for a short space after
a piece of sell-revelation that has come too soon for adjustment or
even quite for understanding.  And when he began to think, it was
irritably and at random.  He had come to Bury Street, and, while he
passed up it, felt a queer, weak sensation down the back of his
legs.  No flower-boxes this year broke the plain front of Winton's
house, and nothing whatever but its number and the quickened
beating of his heart marked it out for Summerhay from any other
dwelling.  The moment he turned into Jermyn Street, that beating of
the heart subsided, and he felt suddenly morose.  He entered his
club at the top of St. James' Street and passed at once into the
least used room.  This was the library; and going to the French
section, he took down "The Three Musketeers" and seated himself in
a window, with his back to anyone who might come in.  He had taken
this--his favourite romance, feeling in want of warmth and
companionship; but he did not read.  From where he sat he could
throw a stone to where she was sitting perhaps; except for walls he
could almost reach her with his voice, could certainly see her.
This was imbecile!  A woman he had only met twice.  Imbecile!  He
opened the book--


     "Oh, no; it is an ever-fixed mark
       That looks on tempests and is never shaken.
     It is the star to every wandering bark,
       Whose worth's unknown altho' its height be taken."


"Point of five!  Three queens--three knaves!  Do you know that
thing of Dowson's: 'I have been faithful to thee, Cynara, in my
fashion'?  Better than any Verlaine, except 'Les sanglots longs.'
What have you got?"

"Only quart to the queen.  Do you like the name 'Cynara'?"

"Yes; don't you?"

"Cynara!  Cynara!  Ye-es--an autumn, rose-petal, whirling, dead-
leaf sound."

"Good!  Pipped.  Shut up, Ossy--don't snore!"

"Ah, poor old dog!  Let him.  Shuffle for me, please.  Oh! there
goes another card!"  Her knee was touching his--! . . .

The book had dropped--Summerhay started.

Dash it!  Hopeless!  And, turning round in that huge armchair, he
snoozed down into its depths.  In a few minutes, he was asleep.  He
slept without a dream.

It was two hours later when the same friend, seeking distraction,
came on him, and stood grinning down at that curly head and face
which just then had the sleepy abandonment of a small boy's.
Maliciously he gave the chair a little kick.

Summerhay stirred, and thought: 'What!  Where am I?'

In front of the grinning face, above him, floated another, filmy,
charming.  He shook himself, and sat up.  "Oh, damn you!"

"Sorry, old chap!"

"What time is it?"

"Ten o'clock."

Summerhay uttered an unintelligible sound, and, turning over on the
other arm, pretended to snooze down again.  But he slept no more.
Instead, he saw her face, heard her voice, and felt again the touch
of her warm, gloved hand.


III


At the opera, that Friday evening, they were playing "Cavalleria"
and "Pagliacci"--works of which Gyp tolerated the first and loved
the second, while Winton found them, with "Faust" and "Carmen,"
about the only operas he could not sleep through.

Women's eyes, which must not stare, cover more space than the eyes
of men, which must not stare, but do; women's eyes have less
method, too, seeing all things at once, instead of one thing at a
time.  Gyp had seen Summerhay long before he saw her; seen him come
in and fold his opera hat against his white waistcoat, looking
round, as if for--someone.  Her eyes criticized him in this new
garb--his broad head, and its crisp, dark, shining hair, his air of
sturdy, lazy, lovable audacity.  He looked well in evening clothes.
When he sat down, she could still see just a little of his profile;
and, vaguely watching the stout Santuzza and the stouter Turiddu,
she wondered whether, by fixing her eyes on him, she could make him
turn and see her.  Just then he did see her, and his face lighted
up.  She smiled back.  Why not?  She had not so many friends
nowadays.  But it was rather startling to find, after that exchange
of looks, that she at once began to want another.  Would he like
her dress?  Was her hair nice?  She wished she had not had it
washed that morning.  But when the interval came, she did not look
round, until his voice said:

"How d'you do, Major Winton?  Oh, how d'you do?"

Winton had been told of the meeting in the train.  He was pining
for a cigarette, but had not liked to desert his daughter.  After a
few remarks, he got up and said:

"Take my pew a minute, Summerhay, I'm going to have a smoke."

He went out, thinking, not for the first time by a thousand: 'Poor
child, she never sees a soul!  Twenty-five, pretty as paint, and
clean out of the running.  What the devil am I to do about her?'

Summerhay sat down.  Gyp had a queer feeling, then, as if the house
and people vanished, and they two were back again in the railway-
carriage--alone together.  Ten minutes to make the most of!  To
smile and talk, and enjoy the look in his eyes, the sound of his
voice and laugh.  To laugh, too, and be warm and nice to him.  Why
not?  They were friends.  And, presently, she said, smiling:

"Oh, by the way, there's a picture in the National Gallery, I want
you to look at."

"Yes?  Which?  Will you take me?"

"If you like."

"To-morrow's Saturday; may I meet you there?  What time?  Three?"

Gyp nodded.  She knew she was flushing, and, at that moment, with
the warmth in her cheeks and the smile in her eyes, she had the
sensation, so rare and pleasant, of feeling beautiful.  Then he was
gone!  Her father was slipping back into his stall; and, afraid of
her own face, she touched his arm, and murmured:

"Dad, do look at that head-dress in the next row but one; did you
ever see anything so delicious!"

And while Winton was star-gazing, the orchestra struck up the
overture to "Pagliacci."  Watching that heart-breaking little plot
unfold, Gyp had something more than the old thrill, as if for the
first time she understood it with other than her aesthetic sense.
Poor Nedda! and poor Canio!  Poor Silvio!  Her breast heaved, and
her eyes filled with tears.  Within those doubled figures of the
tragi-comedy she seemed to see, to feel that passionate love--too
swift, too strong, too violent, sweet and fearful within them.


 "Thou hast my heart, and I am thine for ever--
  To-night and for ever I am thine!
  What is there left to me?  What have I but a heart that is broken?"


And the clear, heart-aching music mocking it all, down to those
last words:

La commedia e finita!

While she was putting on her cloak, her eyes caught Summerhay's.
She tried to smile--could not, gave a shake of her head, slowly
forced her gaze away from his, and turned to follow Winton.


At the National Gallery, next day, she was not late by coquetry,
but because she had changed her dress at the last minute, and
because she was afraid of letting him think her eager.  She saw him
at once standing under the colonnade, looking by no means
imperturbable, and marked the change in his face when he caught
sight of her, with a little thrill.  She led him straight up into
the first Italian room to contemplate his counterfeit.  A top hat
and modern collar did not improve the likeness, but it was there
still.

"Well!  Do you like it?"

"Yes.  What are you smiling at?"

"I've had a photograph of that, ever since I was fifteen; so you
see I've known you a long time."

He stared.

"Great Scott!  Am I like that?  All right; I shall try and find YOU
now."

But Gyp shook her head.

"No.  Come and look at my very favourite picture 'The Death of
Procris.'  What is it makes one love it so?  Procris is out of
drawing, and not beautiful; the faun's queer and ugly.  What is it--
can you tell?"

Summerhay looked not at the picture, but at her.  In aesthetic
sense, he was not her equal.  She said softly:

"The wonder in the faun's face, Procris's closed eyes; the dog, and
the swans, and the pity for what might have been!"

Summerhay repeated:

"Ah, for what might have been!  Did you enjoy 'Pagliacci'?"

Gyp shivered.

"I think I felt it too much."

"I thought you did.  I watched you."

"Destruction by--love--seems such a terrible thing!  Now show me
your favourites.  I believe I can tell you what they are, though."

"Well?"

"The 'Admiral,' for one."

"Yes.  What others?"

"The two Bellini's."

"By Jove, you ARE uncanny!"

Gyp laughed.

"You want decision, clarity, colour, and fine texture.  Is that
right?  Here's another of MY favourites."

On a screen was a tiny "Crucifixion" by da Messina--the thinnest of
high crosses, the thinnest of simple, humble, suffering Christs,
lonely, and actual in the clear, darkened landscape.

"I think that touches one more than the big, idealized sort.  One
feels it WAS like that.  Oh!  And look--the Francesca's!  Aren't
they lovely?"

He repeated:

"Yes; lovely!"  But his eyes said: "And so are you."

They spent two hours among those endless pictures, talking a little
of art and of much besides, almost as alone as in the railway
carriage.  But, when she had refused to let him walk back with her,
Summerhay stood stock-still beneath the colonnade.  The sun
streamed in under; the pigeons preened their feathers; people
passed behind him and down there in the square, black and tiny
against the lions and the great column.  He took in nothing of all
that.  What was it in her?  She was like no one he had ever known--
not one!  Different from girls and women in society as--Simile
failed.  Still more different from anything in the half-world he
had met!  Not the new sort--college, suffrage!  Like no one!  And
he knew so little of her!  Not even whether she had ever really
been in love.  Her husband--where was he; what was he to her?  "The
rare, the mute, the inexpressive She!"  When she smiled; when her
eyes--but her eyes were so quick, would drop before he could see
right into them!  How beautiful she had looked, gazing at that
picture--her favourite, so softly, her lips just smiling!  If he
could kiss them, would he not go nearly mad?  With a deep sigh, he
moved down the wide, grey steps into the sunlight.  And London,
throbbing, overflowing with the season's life, seemed to him empty.
To-morrow--yes, to-morrow he could call!


IV


After that Sunday call, Gyp sat in the window at Bury Street close
to a bowl of heliotrope on the window-sill.  She was thinking over
a passage of their conversation.

"Mrs. Fiorsen, tell me about yourself."

"Why?  What do you want to know?"

"Your marriage?"

"I made a fearful mistake--against my father's wish.  I haven't
seen my husband for months; I shall never see him again if I can
help it.  Is that enough?"

"And you love him?"

"No."

"It must be like having your head in chancery.  Can't you get it
out?"

"No."

"Why?"

"Divorce-court!  Ugh!  I couldn't!"

"Yes, I know--it's hellish!"

Was he, who gripped her hand so hard and said that, really the same
nonchalant young man who had leaned out of the carriage window,
gurgling with laughter?  And what had made the difference?  She
buried her face in the heliotrope, whose perfume seemed the memory
of his visit; then, going to the piano, began to play.  She played
Debussy, McDowell, Ravel; the chords of modern music suited her
feelings just then.  And she was still playing when her father came
in.  During these last nine months of his daughter's society, he
had regained a distinct measure of youthfulness, an extra twist in
his little moustache, an extra touch of dandyism in his clothes,
and the gloss of his short hair.  Gyp stopped playing at once, and
shut the piano.

"Mr. Summerhay's been here, Dad.  He was sorry to miss you."

There was an appreciable pause before Winton answered:

"My dear, I doubt it."

And there passed through Gyp the thought that she could never again
be friends with a man without giving that pause.  Then, conscious
that her father was gazing at her, she turned and said:

"Well, was it nice in the Park?"

"Thirty years ago they were all nobs and snobs; now God himself
doesn't know what they are!"

"But weren't the flowers nice?"

"Ah--and the trees, and the birds--but, by Jove, the humans do
their best to dress the balance!"

"What a misanthrope you're getting!"

"I'd like to run a stud for two-leggers; they want proper breeding.
What sort of a fellow is young Summerhay?  Not a bad face."

She answered impassively:

"Yes; it's so alive."

In spite of his self-control, she could always read her father's
thoughts quicker than he could read hers, and knew that he was
struggling between the wish that she should have a good time and
the desire to convey some kind of warning.  He said, with a sigh:

"What does a young man's fancy turn to in summer, Gyp?"


Women who have subtle instincts and some experience are able to
impose their own restraint on those who, at the lifting of a hand,
would become their lovers.  From that afternoon on, Gyp knew that a
word from her would change everything; but she was far from
speaking it.  And yet, except at week-ends, when she went back to
her baby at Mildenham, she saw Summerhay most days--in the Row, at
the opera, or at Bury Street.  She had a habit of going to St.
James's Park in the late afternoon and sitting there by the water.
Was it by chance that he passed one day on his way home from
chambers, and that, after this, they sat there together constantly?
Why make her father uneasy--when there was nothing to be uneasy
about--by letting him come too often to Bury Street?  It was so
pleasant, too, out there, talking calmly of many things, while in
front of them the small ragged children fished and put the fishes
into clear glass bottles, to eat, or watch on rainy days, as is the
custom of man with the minor works of God.

So, in nature, when the seasons are about to change, the days pass,
tranquil, waiting for the wind that brings in the new.  And was it
not natural to sit under the trees, by the flowers and the water,
the pigeons and the ducks, that wonderful July?  For all was
peaceful in Gyp's mind, except, now and then, when a sort of
remorse possessed her, a sort of terror, and a sort of troubling
sweetness.


V


Summerhay did not wear his heart on his sleeve, and when, on the
closing-day of term, he left his chambers to walk to that last
meeting, his face was much as usual under his grey top hat.  But,
in truth, he had come to a pretty pass.  He had his own code of
what was befitting to a gentleman.  It was perhaps a trifle "old
Georgian," but it included doing nothing to distress a woman.  All
these weeks he had kept himself in hand; but to do so had cost him
more than he liked to reflect on.  The only witness of his
struggles was his old Scotch terrier, whose dreams he had disturbed
night after night, tramping up and down the long back-to-front
sitting-room of his little house.  She knew--must know--what he was
feeling.  If she wanted his love, she had but to raise her finger;
and she had not raised it.  When he touched her, when her dress
disengaged its perfume or his eyes traced the slow, soft movement
of her breathing, his head would go round, and to keep calm and
friendly had been torture.

While he could see her almost every day, this control had been just
possible; but now that he was about to lose her--for weeks--his
heart felt sick within him.  He had been hard put to it before the
world.  A man passionately in love craves solitude, in which to
alternate between fierce exercise and that trance-like stillness
when a lover simply aches or is busy conjuring her face up out of
darkness or the sunlight.  He had managed to do his work, had been
grateful for having it to do; but to his friends he had not given
attention enough to prevent them saying: "What's up with old
Bryan?"  Always rather elusive in his movements, he was now too
elusive altogether for those who had been accustomed to lunch,
dine, dance, and sport with him.  And yet he shunned his own
company--going wherever strange faces, life, anything distracted
him a little, without demanding real attention.  It must be
confessed that he had come unwillingly to discovery of the depth of
his passion, aware that it meant giving up too much.  But there are
women who inspire feeling so direct and simple that reason does not
come into play; and he had never asked himself whether Gyp was
worth loving, whether she had this or that quality, such or such
virtue.  He wanted her exactly as she was; and did not weigh her in
any sort of balance.  It is possible for men to love passionately,
yet know that their passion is but desire, possible for men to love
for sheer spiritual worth, feeling that the loved one lacks this or
that charm.

Summerhay's love had no such divided consciousness.  About her
past, too, he dismissed speculation.  He remembered having heard in
the hunting-field that she was Winton's natural daughter; even then
it had made him long to punch the head of that covertside scandal-
monger.  The more there might be against the desirability of loving
her, the more he would love her; even her wretched marriage only
affected him in so far as it affected her happiness.  It did not
matter--nothing mattered except to see her and be with her as much
as she would let him.  And now she was going to the sea for a
month, and he himself--curse it!--was due in Perthshire to shoot
grouse.  A month!

He walked slowly along the river.  Dared he speak?  At times, her
face was like a child's when it expects some harsh or frightening
word.  One could not hurt her--impossible!  But, at times, he had
almost thought she would like him to speak.  Once or twice he had
caught a slow soft glance--gone the moment he had sight of it.

He was before his time, and, leaning on the river parapet, watched
the tide run down.  The sun shone on the water, brightening its
yellowish swirl, and little black eddies--the same water that had
flowed along under the willows past Eynsham, past Oxford, under the
church at Clifton, past Moulsford, past Sonning.  And he thought:
'My God!  To have her to myself one day on the river--one whole
long day!'  Why had he been so pusillanimous all this time?  He
passed his hand over his face.  Broad faces do not easily grow
thin, but his felt thin to him, and this gave him a kind of morbid
satisfaction.  If she knew how he was longing, how he suffered!  He
turned away, toward Whitehall.  Two men he knew stopped to bandy a
jest.  One of them was just married.  They, too, were off to
Scotland for the twelfth.  Pah!  How stale and flat seemed that
which till then had been the acme of the whole year to him!  Ah,
but if he had been going to Scotland WITH HER!  He drew his breath
in with a sigh that nearly removed the Home Office.

Oblivious of the gorgeous sentries at the Horse Guards, oblivious
of all beauty, he passed irresolute along the water, making for
their usual seat; already, in fancy, he was sitting there, prodding
at the gravel, a nervous twittering in his heart, and that eternal
question: Dare I speak? asking itself within him.  And suddenly he
saw that she was before him, sitting there already.  His heart gave
a jump.  No more craning--he WOULD speak!

She was wearing a maize-coloured muslin to which the sunlight gave
a sort of transparency, and sat, leaning back, her knees crossed,
one hand resting on the knob of her furled sunshade, her face half
hidden by her shady hat.  Summerhay clenched his teeth, and went
straight up to her.

"Gyp!  No, I won't call you anything else.  This can't go on!  You
know it can't.  You know I worship you!  If you can't love me, I've
got to break away.  All day, all night, I think and dream of
nothing but you.  Gyp, do you want me to go?"

Suppose she said: "Yes, go!"  She made a little movement, as if in
protest, and without looking at him, answered very low:

"Of course I don't want you to go.  How could I?"

Summerhay gasped.

"Then you DO love me?"

She turned her face away.

"Wait, please.  Wait a little longer.  When we come back I'll tell
you: I promise!"

"So long?"

"A month.  Is that long?  Please!  It's not easy for me."  She
smiled faintly, lifted her eyes to him just for a second.  "Please
not any more now."

That evening at his club, through the bluish smoke of cigarette
after cigarette, he saw her face as she had lifted it for that one
second; and now he was in heaven, now in hell.


VI


The verandahed bungalow on the South Coast, built and inhabited by
an artist friend of Aunt Rosamund's, had a garden of which the
chief feature was one pine-tree which had strayed in advance of the
wood behind.  The little house stood in solitude, just above a low
bank of cliff whence the beach sank in sandy ridges.  The verandah
and thick pine wood gave ample shade, and the beach all the sun and
sea air needful to tan little Gyp, a fat, tumbling soul, as her
mother had been at the same age, incurably fond and fearless of
dogs or any kind of beast, and speaking words already that required
a glossary.

At night, Gyp, looking from her bedroom through the flat branches
of the pine, would get a feeling of being the only creature in the
world.  The crinkled, silvery sea, that lonely pine-tree, the cold
moon, the sky dark corn-flower blue, the hiss and sucking rustle of
the surf over the beach pebbles, even the salt, chill air, seemed
lonely.  By day, too--in the hazy heat when the clouds merged,
scarce drifting, into the blue, and the coarse sea-grass tufts
hardly quivered, and sea-birds passed close above the water with
chuckle and cry--it all often seemed part of a dream.  She bathed,
and grew as tanned as her little daughter, a regular Gypsy, in her
broad hat and linen frocks; and yet she hardly seemed to be living
down here at all, for she was never free of the memory of that last
meeting with Summerhay.  Why had he spoken and put an end to their
quiet friendship, and left her to such heart-searchings all by
herself?  But she did not want his words unsaid.  Only, how to know
whether to recoil and fly, or to pass beyond the dread of letting
herself go, of plunging deep into the unknown depths of love--of
that passion, whose nature for the first time she had tremulously
felt, watching "Pagliacci"--and had ever since been feeling and
trembling at!  Must it really be neck or nothing?  Did she care
enough to break through all barriers, fling herself into midstream?
When they could see each other every day, it was so easy to live
for the next meeting--not think of what was coming after.  But now,
with all else cut away, there was only the future to think about--
hers and his.  But need she trouble about his?  Would he not just
love her as long as he liked?

Then she thought of her father--still faithful to a memory--and
felt ashamed.  Some men loved on--yes--even beyond death!  But,
sometimes, she would think: 'Am I a candle-flame again?  Is he just
going to burn himself?  What real good can I be to him--I, without
freedom, and with my baby, who will grow up?'  Yet all these
thoughts were, in a way, unreal.  The struggle was in herself, so
deep that she could hardly understand it; as might be an effort to
subdue the instinctive dread of a precipice.  And she would feel a
kind of resentment against all the happy life round her these
summer days--the sea-birds, the sunlight, and the waves; the white
sails far out; the calm sun-steeped pine-trees; her baby, tumbling
and smiling and softly twittering; and Betty and the other
servants--all this life that seemed so simple and untortured.

To the one post each day she looked forward terribly.  And yet his
letters, which began like hers: "My dear friend," might have been
read by anyone--almost.  She spent a long time over her answers.
She was not sleeping well; and, lying awake, she could see his face
very distinct before her closed eyes--its teasing, lazy smile, its
sudden intent gravity.  Once she had a dream of him, rushing past
her down into the sea.  She called, but, without turning his head,
he swam out further, further, till she lost sight of him, and woke
up suddenly with a pain in her heart.  "If you can't love me, I've
got to break away!"  His face, his flung-back head reminded her too
sharply of those words.  Now that he was away from her, would he
not feel that it was best to break, and forget her?  Up there, he
would meet girls untouched by life--not like herself.  He had
everything before him; could he possibly go on wanting one who had
nothing before her?  Some blue-eyed girl with auburn hair--that
type so superior to her own--would sweep, perhaps had already swept
him, away from her!  What then?  No worse than it used to be?  Ah,
so much worse that she dared not think of it!

Then, for five days, no letter came.  And, with each blank morning,
the ache in her grew--a sharp, definite ache of longing and
jealousy, utterly unlike the mere feeling of outraged pride when
she had surprised Fiorsen and Daphne Wing in the music-room--a
hundred years ago, it seemed.  When on the fifth day the postman
left nothing but a bill for little Gyp's shoes, and a note from
Aunt Rosamund at Harrogate, where she had gone with Winton for the
annual cure, Gyp's heart sank to the depths.  Was this the end?
And, with a blind, numb feeling, she wandered out into the wood,
where the fall of the pine-needles, season after season, had made
of the ground one soft, dark, dust-coloured bed, on which the
sunlight traced the pattern of the pine boughs, and ants rummaged
about their great heaped dwellings.

Gyp went along till she could see no outer world for the grey-brown
tree-stems streaked with gum-resin; and, throwing herself down on
her face, dug her elbows deep into the pine dust.  Tears, so rare
with her, forced their way up, and trickled slowly to the hands
whereon her chin rested.  No good--crying!  Crying only made her
ill; crying was no relief.  She turned over on her back and lay
motionless, the sunbeams warm on her cheeks.  Silent here, even at
noon!  The sough of the calm sea could not reach so far; the flies
were few; no bird sang.  The tall bare pine stems rose up all round
like columns in a temple roofed with the dark boughs and sky.
Cloud-fleeces drifted slowly over the blue.  There should be peace--
but in her heart there was none!

A dusky shape came padding through the trees a little way off,
another--two donkeys loose from somewhere, who stood licking each
other's necks and noses.  Those two humble beasts, so friendly,
made her feel ashamed.  Why should she be sorry for herself, she
who had everything in life she wanted--except love--the love she
had thought she would never want?  Ah, but she wanted it now,
wanted it at last with all her being!

With a shudder, she sprang up; the ants had got to her, and she had
to pick them off her neck and dress.  She wandered back towards the
beach.  If he had truly found someone to fill his thoughts, and
drive her out, all the better for him; she would never, by word or
sign, show him that she missed, and wanted him--never!  She would
sooner die!

She came out into the sunshine.  The tide was low; and the wet
foreshore gleamed with opal tints; there were wandering tracks on
the sea, as of great serpents winding their way beneath the
surface; and away to the west the archwayed, tawny rock that cut
off the line of coast was like a dream-shape.  All was dreamy.
And, suddenly her heart began beating to suffocation and the colour
flooded up in her cheeks.  On the edge of the low cliff bank, by
the side of the path, Summerhay was sitting!

He got up and came toward her.  Putting her hands up to her glowing
face, she said:

"Yes; it's me.  Did you ever see such a gipsified object?  I
thought you were still in Scotland.  How's dear Ossy?"  Then her
self-possession failed, and she looked down.

"It's no good, Gyp.  I must know."

It seemed to Gyp that her heart had given up beating; she said
quietly: "Let's sit down a minute"; and moved under the cliff bank
where they could not be seen from the house.  There, drawing the
coarse grass blades through her fingers, she said, with a shiver:

"I didn't try to make you, did I?  I never tried."

"No; never."

"It's wrong."

"Who cares?  No one could care who loves as I do.  Oh, Gyp, can't
you love me?  I know I'm nothing much."  How quaint and boyish!
"But it's eleven weeks to-day since we met in the train.  I don't
think I've had one minute's let-up since."

"Have you tried?"

"Why should I, when I love you?"

Gyp sighed; relief, delight, pain--she did not know.

"Then what is to be done?  Look over there--that bit of blue in the
grass is my baby daughter.  There's her--and my father--and--"

"And what?"

"I'm afraid--afraid of love, Bryan!"

At that first use of his name, Summerhay turned pale and seized her
hand.

"Afraid--how--afraid?"

Gyp said very low:

"I might love too much.  Don't say any more now.  No; don't!  Let's
go in and have lunch."  And she got up.

He stayed till tea-time, and not a word more of love did he speak.
But when he was gone, she sat under the pine-tree with little Gyp
on her lap.  Love!  If her mother had checked love, she herself
would never have been born.  The midges were biting before she went
in.  After watching Betty give little Gyp her bath, she crossed the
passage to her bedroom and leaned out of the window.  Could it have
been to-day she had lain on the ground with tears of despair
running down on to her hands?  Away to the left of the pine-tree,
the moon had floated up, soft, barely visible in the paling sky.  A
new world, an enchanted garden!  And between her and it--what was
there?

That evening she sat with a book on her lap, not reading; and in
her went on the strange revolution which comes in the souls of all
women who are not half-men when first they love--the sinking of 'I'
into 'Thou,' the passionate, spiritual subjection, the intense,
unconscious giving-up of will, in preparation for completer union.

She slept without dreaming, awoke heavy and oppressed.  Too languid
to bathe, she sat listless on the beach with little Gyp all the
morning.  Had she energy or spirit to meet him in the afternoon by
the rock archway, as she had promised?  For the first time since
she was a small and naughty child, she avoided the eyes of Betty.
One could not be afraid of that stout, devoted soul, but one could
feel that she knew too much.  When the time came, after early tea,
she started out; for if she did not go, he would come, and she did
not want the servants to see him two days running.

This last day of August was warm and still, and had a kind of
beneficence--the corn all gathered in, the apples mellowing, robins
singing already, a few slumberous, soft clouds, a pale blue sky, a
smiling sea.  She went inland, across the stream, and took a
footpath back to the shore.  No pines grew on that side, where the
soil was richer--of a ruddy brown.  The second crops of clover were
already high; in them humblebees were hard at work; and, above, the
white-throated swallows dipped and soared.  Gyp gathered a bunch of
chicory flowers.  She was close above the shore before she saw him
standing in the rock archway, looking for her across the beach.
After the hum of the bees and flies, it was very quiet here--only
the faintest hiss of tiny waves.  He had not yet heard her coming,
and the thought flashed through her: 'If I take another step, it is
for ever!  She stood there scarcely breathing, the chicory flowers
held before her lips.  Then she heard him sigh, and, moving quickly
forward, said:

"Here I am."

He turned round, seized her hand, and, without a word, they passed
through the archway.  They walked on the hard sand, side by side,
till he said:

"Let's go up into the fields."

They scrambled up the low cliff and went along the grassy top to a
gate into a stubble field.  He held it open for her, but, as she
passed, caught her in his arms and kissed her lips as if he would
never stop.  To her, who had been kissed a thousand times, it was
the first kiss.  Deadly pale, she fell back from him against the
gate; then, her lips still quivering, her eyes very dark, she
looked at him distraught with passion, drunk on that kiss.  And,
suddenly turning round to the gate, she laid her arms on the top
bar and buried her face on them.  A sob came up in her throat that
seemed to tear her to bits, and she cried as if her heart would
break.  His timid despairing touches, his voice close to her ear:

"Gyp, Gyp!  My darling!  My love!  Oh, don't, Gyp!" were not of the
least avail; she could not stop.  That kiss had broken down
something in her soul, swept away her life up to that moment, done
something terrible and wonderful.  At last, she struggled out:

"I'm sorry--so sorry!  Don't--don't look at me!  Go away a little,
and I'll--I'll be all right."

He obeyed without a word, and, passing through the gate, sat down
on the edge of the cliff with his back to her, looking out over the
sea.

Gripping the wood of the old grey gate till it hurt her hands, Gyp
gazed at the chicory flowers and poppies that had grown up again in
the stubble field, at the butterflies chasing in the sunlight over
the hedge toward the crinkly foam edging the quiet sea till they
were but fluttering white specks in the blue.

But when she had rubbed her cheeks and smoothed her face, she was
no nearer to feeling that she could trust herself.  What had
happened in her was too violent, too sweet, too terrifying.  And
going up to him she said:

"Let me go home now by myself.  Please, let me go, dear.
To-morrow!"

Summerhay looked up.

"Whatever you wish, Gyp--always!"

He pressed her hand against his cheek, then let it go, and, folding
his arms tight, resumed his meaningless stare at the sea.  Gyp
turned away.  She crossed back to the other side of the stream, but
did not go in for a long time, sitting in the pine wood till the
evening gathered and the stars crept out in a sky of that mauve-
blue which the psychic say is the soul-garment colour of the good.

Late that night, when she had finished brushing her hair, she
opened her window and stepped out on to the verandah.  How warm!
How still!  Not a sound from the sleeping house--not a breath of
wind!  Her face, framed in her hair, her hands, and all her body,
felt as if on fire.  The moon behind the pine-tree branches was
filling every cranny of her brain with wakefulness.  The soft
shiver of the wellnigh surfless sea on a rising tide, rose, fell,
rose, fell.  The sand cliff shone like a bank of snow.  And all was
inhabited, as a moonlit night is wont to be, by a magical Presence.
A big moth went past her face, so close that she felt the flutter
of its wings.  A little night beast somewhere was scruttling in
bushes or the sand.  Suddenly, across the wan grass the shadow of
the pine-trunk moved.  It moved--ever so little--moved!  And,
petrified--Gyp stared.  There, joined to the trunk, Summerhay was
standing, his face just visible against the stem, the moonlight on
one cheek, a hand shading his eyes.  He moved that hand, held it
out in supplication.  For long--how long--Gyp did not stir, looking
straight at that beseeching figure.  Then, with a feeling she had
never known, she saw him coming.  He came up to the verandah and
stood looking up at her.  She could see all the workings of his
face--passion, reverence, above all amazement; and she heard his
awed whisper:

"Is it you, Gyp?  Really you?  You look so young--so young!"


VII


From the moment of surrender, Gyp passed straight into a state the
more enchanted because she had never believed in it, had never
thought that she could love as she now loved.  Days and nights went
by in a sort of dream, and when Summerhay was not with her, she was
simply waiting with a smile on her lips for the next hour of
meeting.  Just as she had never felt it possible to admit the world
into the secrets of her married life, so, now she did not consider
the world at all.  Only the thought of her father weighed on her
conscience.  He was back in town.  And she felt that she must tell
him.  When Summerhay heard this he only said: "All right, Gyp,
whatever you think best."

And two days before her month at the bungalow was up, she went,
leaving Betty and little Gyp to follow on the last day.  Winton,
pale and somewhat languid, as men are when they have been cured,
found her when he came in from the club.  She had put on evening
dress, and above the pallor of her shoulders, her sunwarmed face
and throat had almost the colour of a nectarine.  He had never seen
her look like that, never seen her eyes so full of light.  And he
uttered a quiet grunt of satisfaction.  It was as if a flower,
which he had last seen in close and elegant shape, had bloomed in
full perfection.  She did not meet his gaze quite steadily and all
that evening kept putting her confession off and off.  It was not
easy--far from easy.  At last, when he was smoking his "go-to-bed"
cigarette, she took a cushion and sank down on it beside his chair,
leaning against his knee, where her face was hidden from him, as on
that day after her first ball, when she had listened to HIS
confession.  And she began:

"Dad, do you remember my saying once that I didn't understand what
you and my mother felt for each other?"  Winton did not speak;
misgiving had taken possession of him.  Gyp went on: "I know now
how one would rather die than give someone up."

Winton drew his breath in sharply:

"Who?  Summerhay?"

"Yes; I used to think I should never be in love, but you knew
better."

Better!

In disconsolate silence, he thought rapidly: 'What's to be done?
What can I do?  Get her a divorce?'

Perhaps because of the ring in her voice, or the sheer seriousness
of the position, he did not feel resentment as when he lost her to
Fiorsen.  Love!  A passion such as had overtaken her mother and
himself!  And this young man?  A decent fellow, a good rider--
comprehensible!  Ah, if the course had only been clear!  He put his
hand on her shoulder and said:

"Well, Gyp, we must go for the divorce, then, after all."

She shook her head.

"It's too late.  Let HIM divorce me, if he only will!"

Winton needed all his self-control at that moment.  Too late?
Already!  Sudden recollection that he had not the right to say a
word alone kept him silent.  Gyp went on:

"I love him, with every bit of me.  I don't care what comes--
whether it's open or secret.  I don't care what anybody thinks."

She had turned round now, and if Winton had doubt of her feeling,
he lost it.  This was a Gyp he had never seen!  A glowing, soft,
quick-breathing creature, with just that lithe watchful look of the
mother cat or lioness whose whelps are threatened.  There flashed
through him a recollection of how, as a child, with face very
tense, she would ride at fences that were too big.  At last he
said:

"I'm sorry you didn't tell me sooner."

"I couldn't.  I didn't know.  Oh, Dad, I'm always hurting you!
Forgive me!"

She was pressing his hand to her cheek that felt burning hot.  And
he thought: "Forgive!  Of course I forgive.  That's not the point;
the point is--"

And a vision of his loved one talked about, besmirched, bandied
from mouth to mouth, or else--for her what there had been for him,
a hole-and-corner life, an underground existence of stealthy
meetings kept dark, above all from her own little daughter.  Ah,
not that!  And yet--was not even that better than the other, which
revolted to the soul his fastidious pride in her, roused in advance
his fury against tongues that would wag, and eyes that would wink
or be uplifted in righteousness?  Summerhay's world was more or
less his world; scandal, which--like all parasitic growths--
flourishes in enclosed spaces, would have every chance.  And, at
once, his brain began to search, steely and quick, for some way
out; and the expression as when a fox broke covert, came on his
face.

"Nobody knows, Gyp?"

"No; nobody."

That was something!  With an irritation that rose from his very
soul, he muttered:

"I can't stand it that you should suffer, and that fellow Fiorsen
go scot-free.  Can you give up seeing Summerhay while we get you a
divorce?  We might do it, if no one knows.  I think you owe it to
me, Gyp."

Gyp got up and stood by the window a long time without answering.
Winton watched her face.  At last she said:

"I couldn't.  We might stop seeing each other; it isn't that.  It's
what I should feel.  I shouldn't respect myself after; I should
feel so mean.  Oh, Dad, don't you see?  He really loved me in his
way.  And to pretend!  To make out a case for myself, tell about
Daphne Wing, about his drinking, and baby; pretend that I wanted
him to love me, when I got to hate it and didn't care really
whether he was faithful or not--and knowing all the while that I've
been everything to someone else!  I couldn't.  I'd much rather let
him know, and ask him to divorce me."

Winton replied:

"And suppose he won't?"

"Then my mind would be clear, anyway; and we would take what we
could."

"And little Gyp?"

Staring before her as if trying to see into the future, she said
slowly:

"Some day, she'll understand, as I do.  Or perhaps it will be all
over before she knows.  Does happiness ever last?"

And, going up to him, she bent over, kissed his forehead, and went
out.  The warmth from her lips, and the scent of her remained with
Winton like a sensation wafted from the past.

Was there then nothing to be done--nothing?  Men of his stamp do
not, as a general thing, see very deep even into those who are
nearest to them; but to-night he saw his daughter's nature more
fully perhaps than ever before.  No use to importune her to act
against her instincts--not a bit of use!  And yet--how to sit and
watch it all--watch his own passion with its ecstasy and its heart-
burnings re-enacted with her--perhaps for many years?  And the old
vulgar saying passed through his mind: "What's bred in the bone
will come out in the meat."  Now she had given, she would give with
both hands--beyond measure--beyond!--as he himself, as her mother
had given!  Ah, well, she was better off than his own loved one had
been.  One must not go ahead of trouble, or cry over spilled milk!


VIII


Gyp had a wakeful night.  The question she herself had raised, of
telling Fiorsen, kept her thoughts in turmoil.  Was he likely to
divorce her if she did?  His contempt for what he called 'these
bourgeois morals,' his instability, the very unpleasantness, and
offence to his vanity--all this would prevent him.  No; he would
not divorce her, she was sure, unless by any chance he wanted legal
freedom, and that was quite unlikely.  What then would be gained?
Ease for her conscience?  But had she any right to ease her
conscience if it brought harm to her lover?  And was it not
ridiculous to think of conscience in regard to one who, within a
year of marriage, had taken to himself a mistress, and not even
spared the home paid for and supported by his wife?  No; if she
told Fiorsen, it would only be to salve her pride, wounded by doing
what she did not avow.  Besides, where was he?  At the other end of
the world for all she knew.

She came down to breakfast, dark under the eyes and no whit
advanced toward decision.  Neither of them mentioned their last
night's talk, and Gyp went back to her room to busy herself with
dress, after those weeks away.  It was past noon when, at a muffled
knock, she found Markey outside her door.

"Mr. Fiorsen, m'm."

Gyp beckoned him in, and closed the door.

"In the hall, m'm--slipped in when I answered the bell; short of
shoving, I couldn't keep him out."

Gyp stood full half a minute before she said:

"Is my father in?"

"No, m'm; the major's gone to the fencin'-club."

"What did you say?"

"Said I would see.  So far as I was aware, nobody was in.  Shall I
have a try to shift him, m'm?"

With a faint smile Gyp shook her head.

"Say no one can see him."

Markey's woodcock eyes, under their thin, dark, twisting brows,
fastened on her dolefully; he opened the door to go.  Fiorsen was
standing there, and, with a quick movement, came in.  She saw
Markey raise his arms as if to catch him round the waist, and said
quietly:

"Markey--wait outside, please."

When the door was shut, she retreated against her dressing-table
and stood gazing at her husband, while her heart throbbed as if it
would leap through its coverings.

He had grown a short beard, his cheeks seemed a little fatter, and
his eyes surely more green; otherwise, he looked much as she
remembered him.  And the first thought that passed through her was:
'Why did I ever pity him?  He'll never fret or drink himself to
death--he's got enough vitality for twenty men.'

His face, which had worn a fixed, nervous smile, grew suddenly
grave as her own, and his eyes roved round the room in the old
half-fierce, half-furtive way.

"Well, Gyp," he said, and his voice shook a little: "At last!
Won't you kiss me?"

The question seemed to Gyp idiotic; and suddenly she felt quite
cool.

"If you want to speak to my father, you must come later; he's out."

Fiorsen gave one of his fierce shrugs.

"Is it likely?  Look, Gyp!  I returned from Russia yesterday.  I
was a great success, made a lot of money out there.  Come back to
me!  I will be good--I swear it!  Now I have seen you again, I
can't be without you.  Ah, Gyp, come back to me!  And see how good
I will be.  I will take you abroad, you and the bambina.  We will
go to Rome--anywhere you like--live how you like.  Only come back
to me!"

Gyp answered stonily:

"You are talking nonsense."

"Gyp, I swear to you I have not seen a woman--not one fit to put
beside you.  Oh, Gyp, be good to me once more.  This time I will
not fail.  Try me!  Try me, my Gyp!"

Only at this moment of his pleading, whose tragic tones seemed to
her both false and childish, did Gyp realize the strength of the
new feeling in her heart.  And the more that feeling throbbed
within her, the harder her face and her voice grew.  She said:

"If that is all you came to say--please go.  I will never come back
to you.  Once for all, understand, PLEASE."

The silence in which he received her words, and his expression,
impressed her far more than his appeal; with one of his stealthy
movements he came quite close, and, putting his face forward till
it almost touched her, said:

"You are my wife.  I want you back.  I must have you back.  If you
do not come, I will kill either you or myself."

And suddenly she felt his arms knotted behind her back, crushing
her to him.  She stilled a scream; then, very swiftly, took a
resolve, and, rigid in his arms, said:

"Let go; you hurt me.  Sit down quietly.  I will tell you
something."

The tone of her voice made him loosen his grasp and crane back to
see her face.  Gyp detached his arms from her completely, sat down
on an old oak chest, and motioned him to the window-seat.  Her
heart thumped pitifully; cold waves of almost physical sickness
passed through and through her.  She had smelt brandy in his breath
when he was close to her.  It was like being in the cage of a wild
beast; it was like being with a madman!  The remembrance of him
with his fingers stretched out like claws above her baby was so
vivid at that moment that she could scarcely see him as he was,
sitting there quietly, waiting for what she was going to say.  And
fixing her eyes on him, she said softly:

"You say you love me, Gustav.  I tried to love you, too, but I
never could--never from the first.  I tried very hard.  Surely you
care what a woman feels, even if she happens to be your wife."

She could see his face quiver; and she went on:

"When I found I couldn't love you, I felt I had no right over you.
I didn't stand on my rights.  Did I?"

Again his face quivered, and again she hurried on:

"But you wouldn't expect me to go all through my life without ever
feeling love--you who've felt it so many times?"  Then, clasping
her hands tight, with a sort of wonder at herself, she murmured: "I
AM in love.  I've given myself."

He made a queer, whining sound, covering his face.  And the
beggar's tag: "'Ave a feelin' 'eart, gentleman--'ave a feelin'
'eart!" passed idiotically through Gyp's mind.  Would he get up and
strangle her?  Should she dash to the door--escape?  For a long,
miserable moment, she watched him swaying on the window-seat, with
his face covered.  Then, without looking at her, he crammed a
clenched hand up against his mouth, and rushed out.

Through the open door, Gyp had a glimpse of Markey's motionless
figure, coming to life as Fiorsen passed.  She drew a long breath,
locked the door, and lay down on her bed.  Her heart beat
dreadfully.  For a moment, something had checked his jealous rage.
But if on this shock he began to drink, what might not happen?  He
had said something wild.  And she shuddered.  But what right had he
to feel jealousy and rage against her?  What right?  She got up and
went to the glass, trembling, mechanically tidying her hair.
Miraculous that she had come through unscathed!

Her thoughts flew to Summerhay.  They were to meet at three o'clock
by the seat in St. James's Park.  But all was different, now;
difficult and dangerous!  She must wait, take counsel with her
father.  And yet if she did not keep that tryst, how anxious he
would be--thinking that all sorts of things had happened to her;
thinking perhaps--oh, foolish!--that she had forgotten, or even
repented of her love.  What would she herself think, if he were to
fail her at their first tryst after those days of bliss?  Certainly
that he had changed his mind, seen she was not worth it, seen that
a woman who could give herself so soon, so easily, was one to whom
he could not sacrifice his life.

In this cruel uncertainty, she spent the next two hours, till it
was nearly three.  If she did not go out, he would come on to Bury
Street, and that would be still more dangerous.  She put on her hat
and walked swiftly towards St. James's Palace.  Once sure that she
was not being followed, her courage rose, and she passed rapidly
down toward the water.  She was ten minutes late, and seeing him
there, walking up and down, turning his head every few seconds so
as not to lose sight of the bench, she felt almost lightheaded from
joy.  When they had greeted with that pathetic casualness of lovers
which deceives so few, they walked on together past Buckingham
Palace, up into the Green Park, beneath the trees.  During this
progress, she told him about her father; but only when they were
seated in that comparative refuge, and his hand was holding hers
under cover of the sunshade that lay across her knee, did she speak
of Fiorsen.

He tightened his grasp of her hand; then, suddenly dropping it,
said:

"Did he touch you, Gyp?"

Gyp heard that question with a shock.  Touch her!  Yes!  But what
did it matter?

He made a little shuddering sound; and, wondering, mournful, she
looked at him.  His hands and teeth were clenched.  She said
softly:

"Bryan!  Don't!  I wouldn't let him kiss me."

He seemed to have to force his eyes to look at her.

"It's all right," he said, and, staring before him, bit his nails.

Gyp sat motionless, cut to the heart.  She was soiled, and spoiled
for him!  Of course!  And yet a sense of injustice burned in her.
Her heart had never been touched; it was his utterly.  But that was
not enough for a man--he wanted an untouched body, too.  That she
could not give; he should have thought of that sooner, instead of
only now.  And, miserably, she, too, stared before her, and her
face hardened.

A little boy came and stood still in front of them, regarding her
with round, unmoving eyes.  She was conscious of a slice of bread
and jam in his hand, and that his mouth and cheeks were smeared
with red.  A woman called out: "Jacky!  Come on, now!" and he was
hauled away, still looking back, and holding out his bread and jam
as though offering her a bite.  She felt Summerhay's arm slipping
round her.

"It's over, darling.  Never again--I promise you!"

Ah, he might promise--might even keep that promise.  But he would
suffer, always suffer, thinking of that other.  And she said:

"You can only have me as I am, Bryan.  I can't make myself new for
you; I wish I could--oh, I wish I could!"

"I ought to have cut my tongue out first!  Don't think of it!  Come
home to me and have tea--there's no one there.  Ah, do, Gyp--come!"

He took her hands and pulled her up.  And all else left Gyp but the
joy of being close to him, going to happiness.


IX


Fiorsen, passing Markey like a blind man, made his way out into the
street, but had not gone a hundred yards before he was hurrying
back.  He had left his hat.  The servant, still standing there,
handed him that wide-brimmed object and closed the door in his
face.  Once more he moved away, going towards Piccadilly.  If it
had not been for the expression on Gyp's face, what might he not
have done?  And, mixed with sickening jealousy, he felt a sort of
relief, as if he had been saved from something horrible.  So she
had never loved him!  Never at all?  Impossible!  Impossible that a
woman on whom he had lavished such passion should never have felt
passion for him--never any!  Innumerable images of her passed
before him--surrendering, always surrendering.  It could not all
have been pretence!  He was not a common man--she herself had said
so; he had charm--or, other women thought so!  She had lied; she
must have lied, to excuse herself!

He went into a cafe and asked for a fine champagne.  They brought
him a carafe, with the measures marked.  He sat there a long time.
When he rose, he had drunk nine, and he felt better, with a kind of
ferocity that was pleasant in his veins and a kind of nobility that
was pleasant in his soul.  Let her love, and be happy with her
lover!  But let him get his fingers on that fellow's throat!  Let
her be happy, if she could keep her lover from him!  And suddenly,
he stopped in his tracks, for there on a sandwich-board just in
front of him were the words: "Daphne Wing.  Pantheon.  Daphne Wing.
Plastic Danseuse.  Poetry of Motion.  To-day at three o'clock.
Pantheon.  Daphne Wing."

Ah, SHE had loved him--little Daphne!  It was past three.  Going
in, he took his place in the stalls, close to the stage, and stared
before him, with a sort of bitter amusement.  This was irony
indeed!  Ah--and here she came!  A Pierrette--in short, diaphanous
muslin, her face whitened to match it; a Pierrette who stood slowly
spinning on her toes, with arms raised and hands joined in an arch
above her glistening hair.

Idiotic pose!  Idiotic!  But there was the old expression on her
face, limpid, dovelike.  And that something of the divine about her
dancing smote Fiorsen through all the sheer imbecility of her
posturings.  Across and across she flitted, pirouetting, caught up
at intervals by a Pierrot in black tights with a face as whitened
as her own, held upside down, or right end up with one knee bent
sideways, and the toe of a foot pressed against the ankle of the
other, and arms arched above her.  Then, with Pierrot's hands
grasping her waist, she would stand upon one toe and slowly
twiddle, lifting her other leg toward the roof, while the trembling
of her form manifested cunningly to all how hard it was; then, off
the toe, she capered out to the wings, and capered back, wearing on
her face that divine, lost, dovelike look, while her perfect legs
gleamed white up to the very thigh-joint.  Yes; on the stage she
was adorable!  And raising his hands high, Fiorsen clapped and
called out: "Brava!"  He marked the sudden roundness of her eyes, a
tiny start--no more.  She had seen him.  'Ah!  Some don't forget
me!' he thought.

And now she came on for her second dance, assisted this time only
by her own image reflected in a little weedy pool about the middle
of the stage.  From the programme Fiorsen read, "Ophelia's last
dance," and again he grinned.  In a clinging sea-green gown, cut
here and there to show her inevitable legs, with marguerites and
corn-flowers in her unbound hair, she circled her own reflection,
languid, pale, desolate; then slowly gaining the abandon needful to
a full display, danced with frenzy till, in a gleam of limelight,
she sank into the apparent water and floated among paper water-
lilies on her back.  Lovely she looked there, with her eyes still
open, her lips parted, her hair trailing behind.  And again Fiorsen
raised his hands high to clap, and again called out: 'Brava!'  But
the curtain fell, and Ophelia did not reappear.  Was it the sight
of him, or was she preserving the illusion that she was drowned?
That "arty" touch would be just like her.

Averting his eyes from two comedians in calico, beating each other
about the body, he rose with an audible "Pish!" and made his way
out.  He stopped in the street to scribble on his card, "Will you
see me?--G. F." and took it round to the stage-door.  The answer
came back:

"Miss Wing will see you m a minute, sir."

And leaning against the distempered wall of the draughty corridor,
a queer smile on his face, Fiorsen wondered why the devil he was
there, and what the devil she would say.

When he was admitted, she was standing with her hat on, while her
"dresser" buttoned her patent-leather shoes.  Holding out her hand
above the woman's back, she said:

"Oh, Mr. Fiorsen, how do you do?"

Fiorsen took the little moist hand; and his eyes passed over her,
avoiding a direct meeting with her eyes.  He received an impression
of something harder, more self-possessed, than he remembered.  Her
face was the same, yet not the same; only her perfect, supple
little body was as it had been.  The dresser rose, murmured: "Good-
afternoon, miss," and went.

Daphne Wing smiled faintly.

"I haven't seen you for a long time, have I?"

"No; I've been abroad.  You dance as beautifully as ever."

"Oh, yes; it hasn't hurt my dancing."

With an effort, he looked her in the face.  Was this really the
same girl who had clung to him, cloyed him with her kisses, her
tears, her appeals for love--just a little love?  Ah, but she was
more desirable, much more desirable than he had remembered!  And he
said:

"Give me a kiss, little Daphne!"

Daphne Wing did not stir; her white teeth rested on her lower lip;
she said:

"Oh, no, thank you!  How is Mrs. Fiorsen?"

Fiorsen turned abruptly.

"There is none."

"Oh, has she divorced you?"

"No.  Stop talking of her; stop talking, I say!"

Daphne Wing, still motionless in the centre of her little crowded
dressing-room said, in a matter-of-fact voice:

"You are polite, aren't you?  It's funny; I can't tell whether I'm
glad to see you.  I had a bad time, you know; and Mrs. Fiorsen was
an angel.  Why do you come to see me now?"

Exactly!  Why had he come?  The thought flashed through him:
'She'll help me to forget.'  And he said:

"I was a great brute to you, Daphne.  I came to make up, if I can."

"Oh, no; you can't make up--thank you!"  A shudder ran through her,
and she began drawing on her gloves.  "You taught me a lot, you
know.  I ought to be quite grateful.  Oh, you've grown a little
beard!  D'you think that improves you?  It makes you look rather
like Mephistopheles, I think."

Fiorsen stared fixedly at that perfectly shaped face, where a
faint, underdone pink mingled with the fairness of the skin.  Was
she mocking him?  Impossible!  She looked too matter of fact.

"Where do you live now?" he said.

"I'm on my own, in a studio.  You can come and see it, if you
like."

"With pleasure."

"Only, you'd better understand.  I've had enough of love."

Fiorsen grinned.

"Even for another?" he said.

Daphne Wing answered calmly:

"I wish you would treat me like a lady."

Fiorsen bit his lip, and bowed.

"May I have the pleasure of giving you some tea?"

"Yes, thank you; I'm very hungry.  I don't eat lunch on matinee-
days; I find it better not.  Do you like my Ophelia dance?"

"It's artificial."

"Yes, it IS artificial--it's done with mirrors and wire netting,
you know.  But do I give you the illusion of being mad?"  Fiorsen
nodded.  "I'm so glad.  Shall we go?  I do want my tea."

She turned round, scrutinized herself in the glass, touched her hat
with both hands, revealing, for a second, all the poised beauty of
her figure, took a little bag from the back of a chair, and said:

"I think, if you don't mind going on, it's less conspicuous.  I'll
meet you at Ruffel's--they have lovely things there.  Au revoir."

In a state of bewilderment, irritation, and queer meekness, Fiorsen
passed down Coventry Street, and entering the empty Ruffel's, took
a table near the window.  There he sat staring before him, for the
sudden vision of Gyp sitting on that oaken chest, at the foot of
her bed, had blotted the girl clean out.  The attendant coming to
take his order, gazed at his pale, furious face, and said
mechanically:

"What can I get you, please?"

Looking up, Fiorsen saw Daphne Wing outside, gazing at the cakes in
the window.  She came in.

"Oh, here you are!  I should like iced coffee and walnut cake, and
some of those marzipan sweets--oh, and some whipped cream with my
cake.  Do you mind?"  And, sitting down, she fixed her eyes on his
face and asked:

"Where have you been abroad?"

"Stockholm, Budapest, Moscow, other places."

"How perfect!  Do you think I should make a success in Budapest or
Moscow?"

"You might; you are English enough."

"Oh!  Do you think I'm very English?"

"Utterly.  Your kind of--"  But even he was not quite capable of
finishing that sentence--"your kind of vulgarity could not be
produced anywhere else."  Daphne Wing finished it for him:

"My kind of beauty?"

Fiorsen grinned and nodded.

"Oh, I think that's the nicest thing you ever said to me!  Only, of
course, I should like to think I'm more of the Greek type--pagan,
you know."

She fell silent, casting her eyes down.  Her profile at that
moment, against the light, was very pure and soft in line.  And he
said:

"I suppose you hate me, little Daphne?  You ought to hate me."

Daphne Wing looked up; her round, blue-grey eyes passed over him
much as they had been passing over the marzipan.

"No; I don't hate you--now.  Of course, if I had any love left for
you, I should.  Oh, isn't that Irish?  But one can think anybody a
rotter without hating them, can't one?"

Fiorsen bit his lips.

"So you think me a 'rotter'?"

Daphne Wing's eyes grew rounder.

"But aren't you?  You couldn't be anything else--could you?--with
the sort of things you did."

"And yet you don't mind having tea with me?"

Daphne Wing, who had begun to eat and drink, said with her mouth
full:

"You see, I'm independent now, and I know life.  That makes you
harmless."

Fiorsen stretched out his hand and seized hers just where her
little warm pulse was beating very steadily.  She looked at it,
changed her fork over, and went on eating with the other hand.
Fiorsen drew his hand away as if he had been stung.

"Ah, you HAVE changed--that is certain!"

"Yes; you wouldn't expect anything else, would you?  You see, one
doesn't go through that for nothing.  I think I was a dreadful
little fool--"  She stopped, with her spoon on its way to her
mouth--"and yet--"

"I love you still, little Daphne."

She slowly turned her head toward him, and a faint sigh escaped
her.

"Once I would have given a lot to hear that."

And turning her head away again, she picked a large walnut out of
her cake and put it in her mouth.

"Are you coming to see my studio?  I've got it rather nice and new.
I'm making twenty-five a week; my next engagement, I'm going to get
thirty.  I should like Mrs. Fiorsen to know--Oh, I forgot; you
don't like me to speak of her!  Why not?  I wish you'd tell me!"
Gazing, as the attendant had, at his furious face, she went on: "I
don't know how it is, but I'm not a bit afraid of you now.  I used
to be.  Oh, how is Count Rosek?  Is he as pale as ever?  Aren't you
going to have anything more?  You've had hardly anything.  D'you
know what I should like--a chocolate eclair and a raspberry ice-
cream soda with a slice of tangerine in it."

When she had slowly sucked up that beverage, prodding the slice of
tangerine with her straws, they went out and took a cab.  On that
journey to her studio, Fiorsen tried to possess himself of her
hand, but, folding her arms across her chest, she said quietly:

"It's very bad manners to take advantage of cabs."  And,
withdrawing sullenly into his corner, he watched her askance.  Was
she playing with him?  Or had she really ceased to care the snap of
a finger?  It seemed incredible.  The cab, which had been threading
the maze of the Soho streets, stopped.  Daphne Wing alighted,
proceeded down a narrow passage to a green door on the right, and,
opening it with a latch-key, paused to say:

"I like it's being in a little sordid street--it takes away all
amateurishness.  It wasn't a studio, of course; it was the back
part of a paper-maker's.  Any space conquered for art is something,
isn't it?"  She led the way up a few green-carpeted stairs, into a
large room with a skylight, whose walls were covered in Japanese
silk the colour of yellow azaleas.  Here she stood for a minute
without speaking, as though lost in the beauty of her home: then,
pointing to the walls, she said:

"It took me ages, I did it all myself.  And look at my little
Japanese trees; aren't they dickies?"  Six little dark abortions of
trees were arranged scrupulously on a lofty window-sill, whence the
skylight sloped.  She added suddenly: "I think Count Rosek would
like this room.  There's something bizarre about it, isn't there?
I wanted to surround myself with that, you know--to get the bizarre
note into my work.  It's so important nowadays.  But through there
I've got a bedroom and a bathroom and a little kitchen with
everything to hand, all quite domestic; and hot water always on.
My people are SO funny about this room.  They come sometimes, and
stand about.  But they can't get used to the neighbourhood; of
course it IS sordid, but I think an artist ought to be superior to
that."

Suddenly touched, Fiorsen answered gently:

"Yes, little Daphne."

She looked at him, and another tiny sigh escaped her.

"Why did you treat me like you did?" she said.  "It's such a pity,
because now I can't feel anything at all."  And turning, she
suddenly passed the back of her hand across her eyes.  Really moved
by that, Fiorsen went towards her, but she had turned round again,
and putting out her hand to keep him off, stood shaking her head,
with half a tear glistening on her eyelashes.

"Please sit down on the divan," she said.  "Will you smoke?  These
are Russians."  And she took a white box of pink-coloured
cigarettes from a little golden birchwood table.  "I have
everything Russian and Japanese so far as I can; I think they help
more than anything with atmosphere.  I've got a balalaika; you
can't play on it, can you?  What a pity!  If only I had a violin!
I SHOULD have liked to hear you play again."  She clasped her
hands: "Do you remember when I danced to you before the fire?"

Fiorsen remembered only too well.  The pink cigarette trembled in
his fingers, and he said rather hoarsely:

"Dance to me now, Daphne!"

She shook her head.

"I don't trust you a yard.  Nobody would--would they?"

Fiorsen started up.

"Then why did you ask me here?  What are you playing at, you
little--"  At sight of her round, unmoving eyes, he stopped.  She
said calmly:

"I thought you'd like to see that I'd mastered my fate--that's all.
But, of course, if you don't, you needn't stop."

Fiorsen sank back on the divan.  A conviction that everything she
said was literal had begun slowly to sink into him.  And taking a
long pull at that pink cigarette he puffed the smoke out with a
laugh.

"What are you laughing at?"

"I was thinking, little Daphne, that you are as great an egoist as I."

"I want to be.  It's the only thing, isn't it?"

Fiorsen laughed again.

"You needn't worry.  You always were."

She had seated herself on an Indian stool covered with a bit of
Turkish embroidery, and, joining her hands on her lap, answered
gravely:

"No; I think I wasn't, while I loved you.  But it didn't pay, did
it?"

Fiorsen stared at her.

"It has made a woman of you, Daphne.  Your face is different.  Your
mouth is prettier for my kisses--or the want of them.  All over,
you are prettier."  Pink came up in Daphne Wing's cheeks.  And,
encouraged by that flush, he went on warmly: "If you loved me now,
I should not tire of you.  Oh, you can believe me!  I--"

She shook her head.

"We won't talk about love, will we?  Did you have a big triumph in
Moscow and St. Petersburg?  It must be wonderful to have really
great triumphs!"

Fiorsen answered gloomily:

"Triumphs?  I made a lot of money."

Daphne Wing purred:

"Oh, I expect you're very happy."

Did she mean to be ironic?

"I'm miserable."

He got up and went towards her.  She looked up in his face.

"I'm sorry if you're miserable.  I know what it feels like."

"You can help me not to be.  Little Daphne, you can help me to
forget."  He had stopped, and put his hands on her shoulders.
Without moving Daphne Wing answered:

"I suppose it's Mrs. Fiorsen you want to forget, isn't it?"

"As if she were dead.  Ah, let it all be as it was, Daphne!  You
have grown up; you are a woman, an artist, and you--"

Daphne Wing had turned her head toward the stairs.

"That was the bell," she said.  "Suppose it's my people?  It's just
their time!  Oh, isn't that awkward?"

Fiorsen dropped his grasp of her and recoiled against the wall.
There with his head touching one of the little Japanese trees, he
stood biting his fingers.  She was already moving toward the door.

"My mother's got a key, and it's no good putting you anywhere,
because she always has a good look round.  But perhaps it isn't
them.  Besides, I'm not afraid now; it makes a wonderful difference
being on one's own."

She disappeared.  Fiorsen could hear a woman's acid voice, a man's,
rather hoarse and greasy, the sound of a smacking kiss.  And, with
a vicious shrug, he stood at bay.  Trapped!  The little devil!  The
little dovelike devil!  He saw a lady in a silk dress, green shot
with beetroot colour, a short, thick gentleman with a round,
greyish beard, in a grey suit, having a small dahlia in his
buttonhole, and, behind them, Daphne Wing, flushed, and very round-
eyed.  He took a step, intending to escape without more ado.  The
gentleman said:

"Introduce us, Daisy.  I didn't quite catch--Mr. Dawson?  How do
you do, sir?  One of my daughter's impresarios, I think.  'Appy to
meet you, I'm sure."

Fiorsen took a long breath, and bowed.  Mr. Wagge's small piggy
eyes had fixed themselves on the little trees.

"She's got a nice little place here for her work--quiet and
unconventional.  I hope you think well of her talent, sir?  You
might go further and fare worse, I believe."

Again Fiorsen bowed.

"You may be proud of her," he said; "she is the rising star."

Mr. Wagge cleared his throat.

"Ow," he said; "ye'es!  From a little thing, we thought she had
stuff in her.  I've come to take a great interest in her work.
It's not in my line, but I think she's a sticker; I like to see
perseverance.  Where you've got that, you've got half the battle of
success.  So many of these young people seem to think life's all
play.  You must see a lot of that in your profession, sir."

"Robert!"

A shiver ran down Fiorsen's spine.

"Ye-es?"

"The name was not DAWson!"

There followed a long moment.  On the one side was that vinegary
woman poking her head forward like an angry hen, on the other,
Daphne Wing, her eyes rounder and rounder, her cheeks redder and
redder, her lips opening, her hands clasped to her perfect breast,
and, in the centre, that broad, grey-bearded figure, with reddening
face and angry eyes and hoarsening voice:

"You scoundrel!  You infernal scoundrel!"  It lurched forward,
raising a pudgy fist.  Fiorsen sprang down the stairs and wrenched
open the door.  He walked away in a whirl of mortification.  Should
he go back and take that pug-faced vulgarian by the throat?  As for
that minx!  But his feelings about HER were too complicated for
expression.  And then--so dark and random are the ways of the mind--
his thoughts darted back to Gyp, sitting on the oaken chest,
making her confession; and the whips and stings of it scored him
worse than ever.


X


That same evening, standing at the corner of Bury Street, Summerhay
watched Gyp going swiftly to her father's house.  He could not
bring himself to move while there was still a chance to catch a
glimpse of her face, a sign from her hand.  Gone!  He walked away
with his head down.  The more blissful the hours just spent, the
greater the desolation when they are over.  Of such is the nature
of love, as he was now discerning.  The longing to have her always
with him was growing fast.  Since her husband knew--why wait?
There would be no rest for either of them in an existence of
meetings and partings like this, with the menace of that fellow.
She must come away with him at once--abroad--until things had
declared themselves; and then he must find a place where they could
live and she feel safe and happy.  He must show he was in dead
earnest, set his affairs in order.  And he thought: 'No good doing
things by halves.  Mother must know.  The sooner the better.  Get
it over--at once!'  And, with a grimace of discomfort, he set out
for his aunt's house in Cadogan Gardens, where his mother always
stayed when she was in town.

Lady Summerhay was in the boudoir, waiting for dinner and reading a
book on dreams.  A red-shaded lamp cast a mellow tinge over the
grey frock, over one reddish cheek and one white shoulder.  She was
a striking person, tall and well built, her very blonde hair only
just turning grey, for she had married young and been a widow
fifteen years--one of those women whose naturally free spirits have
been netted by association with people of public position.  Bubbles
were still rising from her submerged soul, but it was obvious that
it would not again set eyes on the horizon.  With views neither
narrow nor illiberal, as views in society go, she judged everything
now as people of public position must--discussion, of course, but
no alteration in one's way of living.  Speculation and ideas did
not affect social usage.  The countless movements in which she and
her friends were interested for the emancipation and benefit of
others were, in fact, only channels for letting off her superfluous
goodwill, conduit-pipes, for the directing spirit bred in her.  She
thought and acted in terms of the public good, regulated by what
people of position said at luncheon and dinner.  And it was surely
not her fault that such people must lunch and dine.  When her son
had bent and kissed her, she held up the book to him and said:

"Well, Bryan, I think this man's book disgraceful; he simply runs
his sex-idea to death.  Really, we aren't all quite so obsessed as
that.  I do think he ought to be put in his own lunatic asylum."

Summerhay, looking down at her gloomily, answered:

"I've got bad news for you, Mother."

Lady Summerhay closed the book and searched his face with
apprehension.  She knew that expression.  She knew that poise of
his head, as if butting at something.  He looked like that when he
came to her in gambling scrapes.  Was this another?  Bryan had
always been a pickle.  His next words took her breath away.

"The people at Mildenham, Major Winton and his daughter--you know.
Well, I'm in love with her--I'm--I'm her lover."

Lady Summerhay uttered a gasp.

"But--but--Bryan--"

"That fellow she married drinks.  He's impossible.  She had to
leave him a year ago, with her baby--other reasons, too.  Look
here, Mother: This is hateful, but you'd got to know.  I can't talk
of her.  There's no chance of a divorce."  His voice grew higher.
"Don't try to persuade me out of it.  It's no good."

Lady Summerhay, from whose comely face a frock, as it were, had
slipped, clasped her hands together on the book.

Such a swift descent of "life" on one to whom it had for so long
been a series of "cases" was cruel, and her son felt this without
quite realizing why.  In the grip of his new emotions, he still
retained enough balance to appreciate what an abominably desolate
piece of news this must be to her, what a disturbance and
disappointment.  And, taking her hand, he put it to his lips.

"Cheer up, Mother!  It's all right.  She's happy, and so am I."

Lady Summerhay could only press her hand against his kiss, and
murmur:

"Yes; that's not everything, Bryan.  Is there--is there going to be
a scandal?"

"I don't know.  I hope not; but, anyway, HE knows about it."

"Society doesn't forgive."

Summerhay shrugged his shoulders.

"Awfully sorry for YOU, Mother."

"Oh, Bryan!"

This repetition of her plaint jarred his nerves.

"Don't run ahead of things.  You needn't tell Edith or Flo.  You
needn't tell anybody.  We don't know what'll happen yet."

But in Lady Summerhay all was too sore and blank.  This woman she
had never seen, whose origin was doubtful, whose marriage must have
soiled her, who was some kind of a siren, no doubt.  It really was
too hard!  She believed in her son, had dreamed of public position
for him, or, rather, felt he would attain it as a matter of course.
And she said feebly:

"This Major Winton is a man of breeding, isn't he?"

"Rather!"  And, stopping before her, as if he read her thoughts, he
added: "You think she's not good enough for me?  She's good enough
for anyone on earth.  And she's the proudest woman I've ever met.
If you're bothering as to what to do about her--don't!  She won't
want anything of anybody--I can tell you that.  She won't accept
any crumbs."

"That's lucky!" hovered on Lady Summerhay's lips; but, gazing at
her son, she became aware that she stood on the brink of a downfall
in his heart.  Then the bitterness of her disappointment rising up
again, she said coldly:

"Are you going to live together openly?"

"Yes; if she will."

"You don't know yet?"

"I shall--soon."

Lady Summerhay got up, and the book on dreams slipped off her lap
with a thump.  She went to the fireplace, and stood there looking
at her son.  He had altered.  His merry look was gone; his face was
strange to her.  She remembered it like that, once in the park at
Widrington, when he lost his temper with a pony and came galloping
past her, sitting back, his curly hair stivered up like a little
demon's.  And she said sadly:

"You can hardly expect me to like it for you, Bryan, even if she is
what you say.  And isn't there some story about--"

"My dear mother, the more there is against her, the more I shall
love her--that's obvious."

Lady Summerhay sighed again.

"What is this man going to do?  I heard him play once."

"I don't know.  Nothing, I dare say.  Morally and legally, he's out
of court.  I only wish to God he WOULD bring a case, and I could
marry her; but Gyp says he won't."

Lady Summerhay murmured:

"Gyp?  Is that her name?"  And a sudden wish, almost a longing, not
a friendly one, to see this woman seized her.  "Will you bring her
to see me?  I'm alone here till Wednesday."

"I'll ask her, but I don't think she'll come."  He turned his head
away.  "Mother, she's wonderful!"

An unhappy smile twisted Lady Summerhay's lips.  No doubt!
Aphrodite herself had visited her boy.  Aphrodite!  And--afterward?
She asked desolately:

"Does Major Winton know?"

"Yes."

"What does he say to it?"

"Say?  What can anyone say?  From your point of view, or his, it's
rotten, of course.  But in her position, anything's rotten."

At that encouraging word, the flood-gates gave way in Lady
Summerhay, and she poured forth a stream of words.

"Oh, my dear, can't you pull up?  I've seen so many of these
affairs go wrong.  It really is not for nothing that law and
conventions are what they are--believe me!  Really, Bryan,
experience does show that the pressure's too great.  It's only once
in a way--very exceptional people, very exceptional circumstances.
You mayn't think now it'll hamper you, but you'll find it will--
most fearfully.  It's not as if you were a writer or an artist, who
can take his work where he likes and live in a desert if he wants.
You've got to do yours in London, your whole career is bound up
with society.  Do think, before you go butting up against it!  It's
all very well to say it's no affair of anyone's, but you'll find it
is, Bryan.  And then, can you--can you possibly make her happy in
the long-run?"

She stopped at the expression on his face.  It was as if he were
saying: "I have left your world.  Talk to your fellows; all this is
nothing to me."

"Look here, Mother: you don't seem to understand.  I'm devoted--
devoted so that there's nothing else for me."

"How long will that last, Bryan?  You mean bewitched."

Summerhay said, with passion:

"I don't.  I mean what I said.  Good-night!"  And he went to the
door.

"Won't you stay to dinner, dear?"

But he was gone, and the full of vexation, anxiety, and
wretchedness came on Lady Summerhay.  It was too hard!  She went
down to her lonely dinner, desolate and sore.  And to the book on
dreams, opened beside her plate, she turned eyes that took in
nothing.


Summerhay went straight home.  The lamps were brightening in the
early-autumn dusk, and a draughty, ruffling wind flicked a yellow
leaf here and there from off the plane trees.  It was just the
moment when evening blue comes into the colouring of the town--that
hour of fusion when day's hard and staring shapes are softening,
growing dark, mysterious, and all that broods behind the lives of
men and trees and houses comes down on the wings of illusion to
repossess the world--the hour when any poetry in a man wells up.
But Summerhay still heard his mother's, "Oh, Bryan!" and, for the
first time, knew the feeling that his hand was against everyone's.
There was a difference already, or so it seemed to him, in the
expression of each passer-by.  Nothing any more would be a matter
of course; and he was of a class to whom everything has always been
a matter of course.  Perhaps he did not realize this clearly yet;
but he had begun to take what the nurses call "notice," as do those
only who are forced on to the defensive against society.

Putting his latch-key into the lock, he recalled the sensation with
which, that afternoon, he had opened to Gyp for the first time--
half furtive, half defiant.  It would be all defiance now.  This
was the end of the old order!  And, lighting a fire in his sitting-
room, he began pulling out drawers, sorting and destroying.  He
worked for hours, burning, making lists, packing papers and
photographs.  Finishing at last, he drank a stiff whisky and soda,
and sat down to smoke.  Now that the room was quiet, Gyp seemed to
fill it again with her presence.  Closing his eyes, he could see
her there by the hearth, just as she stood before they left,
turning her face up to him, murmuring: "You won't stop loving me,
now you're so sure I love you?"  Stop loving her!  The more she
loved him, the more he would love her.  And he said aloud: "By God!
I won't!"  At that remark, so vehement for the time of night, the
old Scotch terrier, Ossian, came from his corner and shoved his
long black nose into his master's hand.

"Come along up, Ossy!  Good dog, Oss!"  And, comforted by the
warmth of that black body beside him in the chair, Summerhay fell
asleep in front of the fire smouldering with blackened fragments of
his past.


XI


Though Gyp had never seemed to look round she had been quite
conscious of Summerhay still standing where they had parted,
watching her into the house in Bury Street.  The strength of her
own feeling surprised her, as a bather in the sea is surprised,
finding her feet will not touch bottom, that she is carried away
helpless--only, these were the waters of ecstasy.

For the second night running, she hardly slept, hearing the clocks
of St. James's strike, and Big Ben boom, hour after hour.  At
breakfast, she told her father of Fiorsen's reappearance.  He
received the news with a frown and a shrewd glance.

"Well, Gyp?"

"I told him."

His feelings, at that moment, were perhaps as mixed as they had
ever been--curiosity, parental disapproval, to which he knew he was
not entitled, admiration of her pluck in letting that fellow know,
fears for the consequences of this confession, and, more than all,
his profound disturbance at knowing her at last launched into the
deep waters of love.  It was the least of these feelings that found
expression.

"How did he take it?"

"Rushed away.  The only thing I feel sure of is that he won't
divorce me."

"No, by George; I don't suppose even he would have that impudence!"
And Winton was silent, trying to penetrate the future.  "Well," he
said suddenly, "it's on the knees of the gods then.  But be
careful, Gyp."

About noon, Betty returned from the sea, with a solemn, dark-eyed,
cooing little Gyp, brown as a roasted coffee-berry.  When she had
been given all that she could wisely eat after the journey, Gyp
carried her off to her own room, undressed her for sheer delight of
kissing her from head to foot, and admiring her plump brown legs,
then cuddled her up in a shawl and lay down with her on the bed.  A
few sleepy coos and strokings, and little Gyp had left for the land
of Nod, while her mother lay gazing at her black lashes with a kind
of passion.  She was not a child-lover by nature; but this child of
her own, with her dark softness, plump delicacy, giving
disposition, her cooing voice, and constant adjurations to "dear
mum," was adorable.  There was something about her insidiously
seductive.  She had developed so quickly, with the graceful
roundness of a little animal, the perfection of a flower.  The
Italian blood of her great-great-grandmother was evidently
prepotent in her as yet; and, though she was not yet two years old,
her hair, which had lost its baby darkness, was already curving
round her neck and waving on her forehead.  One of her tiny brown
hands had escaped the shawl and grasped its edge with determined
softness.  And while Gyp gazed at the pinkish nails and their
absurdly wee half-moons, at the sleeping tranquillity stirred by
breathing no more than a rose-leaf on a windless day, her lips grew
fuller, trembled, reached toward the dark lashes, till she had to
rein her neck back with a jerk to stop such self-indulgence.
Soothed, hypnotized, almost in a dream, she lay there beside her
baby.

That evening, at dinner, Winton said calmly:

"Well, I've been to see Fiorsen, and warned him off.  Found him at
that fellow Rosek's."  Gyp received the news with a vague sensation
of alarm.  "And I met that girl, the dancer, coming out of the
house as I was going in--made it plain I'd seen her, so I don't
think he'll trouble you."

An irresistible impulse made her ask:

"How was she looking, Dad?"

Winton smiled grimly.  How to convey his impression of the figure
he had seen coming down the steps--of those eyes growing rounder
and rounder at sight of him, of that mouth opening in an: "Oh!"

"Much the same.  Rather flabbergasted at seeing me, I think.  A
white hat--very smart.  Attractive in her way, but common, of
course.  Those two were playing the piano and fiddle when I went
up.  They tried not to let me in, but I wasn't to be put off.
Queer place, that!"

Gyp smiled.  She could see it all so well.  The black walls, the
silver statuettes, Rops drawings, scent of dead rose-leaves and
pastilles and cigarettes--and those two by the piano--and her
father so cool and dry!

"One can't stand on ceremony with fellows like that.  I hadn't
forgotten that Polish chap's behaviour to you, my dear."

Through Gyp passed a quiver of dread, a vague return of the
feelings once inspired by Rosek.

"I'm almost sorry you went, Dad.  Did you say anything very--"

"Did I?  Let's see!  No; I think I was quite polite."  He added,
with a grim, little smile: "I won't swear I didn't call one of them
a ruffian.  I know they said something about my presuming on being
a cripple."

"Oh, darling!"

"Yes; it was that Polish chap--and so he is!"

Gyp murmured:

"I'd almost rather it had been--the other."  Rosek's pale, suave
face, with the eyes behind which there were such hidden things, and
the lips sweetish and restrained and sensual--he would never
forgive!  But Winton only smiled again, patting her arm.  He was
pleased with an encounter which had relieved his feelings.

Gyp spent all that evening writing her first real love-letter.  But
when, next afternoon at six, in fulfilment of its wording, she came
to Summerhay's little house, her heart sank; for the blinds were
down and it had a deserted look.  If he had been there, he would
have been at the window, waiting.  Had he, then, not got her
letter, not been home since yesterday?  And that chill fear which
besets lovers' hearts at failure of a tryst smote her for the first
time.  In the three-cornered garden stood a decayed statue of a
naked boy with a broken bow--a sparrow was perching on his greenish
shoulder; sooty, heart-shaped lilac leaves hung round his head, and
at his legs the old Scotch terrier was sniffing.  Gyp called:
"Ossian!  Ossy!" and the old dog came, wagging his tail feebly.

"Master!  Where is your master, dear?"

Ossian poked his long nose into her calf, and that gave her a
little comfort.  She passed, perforce, away from the deserted house
and returned home; but all manner of frightened thoughts beset her.
Where had he gone?  Why had he gone?  Why had he not let her know?
Doubts--those hasty attendants on passion--came thronging, and
scepticism ran riot.  What did she know of his life, of his
interests, of him, except that he said he loved her?  Where had he
gone?  To Widrington, to some smart house-party, or even back to
Scotland?  The jealous feelings that had so besieged her at the
bungalow when his letters ceased came again now with redoubled
force.  There must be some woman who, before their love began, had
claim on him, or some girl that he admired.  He never told her of
any such--of course, he would not!  She was amazed and hurt by her
capacity for jealousy.  She had always thought she would be too
proud to feel jealousy--a sensation so dark and wretched and
undignified, but--alas!--so horribly real and clinging.

She had said she was not dining at home; so Winton had gone to his
club, and she was obliged to partake of a little trumped-up lonely
meal.  She went up to her room after it, but there came on her such
restlessness that presently she put on her things and slipped out.
She went past St. James's Church into Piccadilly, to the further,
crowded side, and began to walk toward the park.  This was foolish;
but to do a foolish thing was some relief, and she went along with
a faint smile, mocking her own recklessness.  Several women of the
town--ships of night with sails set--came rounding out of side
streets or down the main stream, with their skilled, rapid-seeming
slowness.  And at the discomfited, half-hostile stares on their
rouged and powdered faces, Gyp felt a wicked glee.  She was
disturbing, hurting them--and she wanted to hurt.

Presently, a man, in evening dress, with overcoat thrown open,
gazed pointblank into her face, and, raising his hat, ranged up
beside her.  She walked straight on, still with that half-smile,
knowing him puzzled and fearfully attracted.  Then an insensate
wish to stab him to the heart made her turn her head and look at
him.  At the expression on her face, he wilted away from her, and
again she felt that wicked glee at having hurt him.

She crossed out into the traffic, to the park side, and turned back
toward St. James's; and now she was possessed by profound, black
sadness.  If only her lover were beside her that beautiful evening,
among the lights and shadows of the trees, in the warm air!  Why
was he not among these passers-by?  She who could bring any casual
man to her side by a smile could not conjure up the only one she
wanted from this great desert of a town!  She hurried along, to get
in and hide her longing.  But at the corner of St. James's Street,
she stopped.  That was his club, nearly opposite.  Perhaps he was
there, playing cards or billiards, a few yards away, and yet as in
another world.  Presently he would come out, go to some music-hall,
or stroll home thinking of her--perhaps not even thinking of her!
Another woman passed, giving her a furtive glance.  But Gyp felt no
glee now.  And, crossing over, close under the windows of the club,
she hurried home.  When she reached her room, she broke into a
storm of tears.  How could she have liked hurting those poor women,
hurting that man--who was only paying her a man's compliment, after
all?  And with these tears, her jealous, wild feelings passed,
leaving only her longing.

Next morning brought a letter.  Summerhay wrote from an inn on the
river, asking her to come down by the eleven o'clock train, and he
would meet her at the station.  He wanted to show her a house that
he had seen; and they could have the afternoon on the river!  Gyp
received this letter, which began: "My darling!" with an ecstasy
that she could not quite conceal.  And Winton, who had watched her
face, said presently:

"I think I shall go to Newmarket, Gyp.  Home to-morrow evening."

In the train on the way down, she sat with closed eyes, in a sort
of trance.  If her lover had been there holding her in his arms, he
could not have seemed nearer.

She saw him as the train ran in; but they met without a hand-clasp,
without a word, simply looking at each other and breaking into
smiles.

A little victoria "dug up"--as Summerhay said--"horse, driver and
all," carried them slowly upward.  Under cover of the light rugs
their hands were clasped, and they never ceased to look into each
other's faces, except for those formal glances of propriety which
deceive no one.

The day was beautiful, as only early September days can be--when
the sun is hot, yet not too hot, and its light falls in a silken
radiance on trees just losing the opulent monotony of summer, on
silvery-gold reaped fields, silvery-green uplands, golden mustard;
when shots ring out in the distance, and, as one gazes, a leaf
falls, without reason, as it would seem.  Presently they branched
off the main road by a lane past a clump of beeches and drew up at
the gate of a lonely house, built of very old red brick, and
covered by Virginia creeper just turning--a house with an ingle-
nook and low, broad chimneys.  Before it was a walled, neglected
lawn, with poplars and one large walnut-tree.  The sunlight seemed
to have collected in that garden, and there was a tremendous hum of
bees.  Above the trees, the downs could be seen where racehorses,
they said, were trained.  Summerhay had the keys of the house, and
they went in.  To Gyp, it was like a child's "pretending"--to
imagine they were going to live there together, to sort out the
rooms and consecrate each.  She would not spoil this perfect day by
argument or admission of the need for a decision.  And when he
asked:

"Well, darling, what do you think of it?" she only answered:

"Oh, lovely, in a way; but let's go back to the river and make the
most of it."

They took boat at 'The Bowl of Cream,' the river inn where
Summerhay was staying.  To him, who had been a rowing man at
Oxford, the river was known from Lechlade to Richmond; but Gyp had
never in her life been on it, and its placid magic, unlike that of
any other river in the world, almost overwhelmed her.  On this
glistening, windless day, to drift along past the bright, flat
water-lily leaves over the greenish depths, to listen to the
pigeons, watch the dragon-flies flitting past, and the fish leaping
lazily, not even steering, letting her hand dabble in the water,
then cooling her sun-warmed cheek with it, and all the time gazing
at Summerhay, who, dipping his sculls gently, gazed at her--all
this was like a voyage down some river of dreams, the very
fulfilment of felicity.  There is a degree of happiness known to
the human heart which seems to belong to some enchanted world--a
bright maze into which, for a moment now and then, we escape and
wander.  To-day, he was more than ever like her Botticelli "Young
Man," with his neck bare, and his face so clear-eyed and broad and
brown.  Had she really had a life with another man?  And only a
year ago?  It seemed inconceivable!

But when, in the last backwater, he tied the boat up and came to
sit with her once more, it was already getting late, and the vague
melancholy of the now shadowy river was stealing into her.  And,
with a sort of sinking in her heart, she heard him begin:

"Gyp, we MUST go away together.  We can never stand it going on
apart, snatching hours here and there."

Pressing his hand to her cheeks, she murmured:

"Why not, darling?  Hasn't this been perfect?  What could we ever
have more perfect?  It's been paradise itself!"

"Yes; but to be thrown out every day!  To be whole days and nights
without you! Gyp, you must--you must!  What is there against it?
Don't you love me enough?"

She looked at him, and then away into the shadows.

"Too much, I think.  It's tempting Providence to change.  Let's go
on as we are, Bryan.  No; don't look like that--don't be angry!"

"Why are you afraid?  Are you sorry for our love?"

"No; but let it be like this.  Don't let's risk anything."

"Risk?  Is it people--society--you're afraid of?  I thought YOU
wouldn't care."

Gyp smiled.

"Society?  No; I'm not afraid of that."

"What, then?  Of me?"

"I don't know.  Men soon get tired.  I'm a doubter, Bryan, I can't
help it."

"As if anyone could get tired of you!  Are you afraid of yourself?"

Again Gyp smiled.

"Not of loving too little, I told you."

"How can one love too much?"

She drew his head down to her.  But when that kiss was over, she
only said again:

"No, Bryan; let's go on as we are.  I'll make up to you when I'm
with you.  If you were to tire of me, I couldn't bear it."

For a long time more he pleaded--now with anger, now with kisses,
now with reasonings; but, to all, she opposed that same tender,
half-mournful "No," and, at last, he gave it up, and, in dogged
silence, rowed her to the village, whence she was to take train
back.  It was dusk when they left the boat, and dew was falling.
Just before they reached the station, she caught his hand and
pressed it to her breast.

"Darling, don't be angry with me!  Perhaps I will--some day."

And, in the train, she tried to think herself once more in the
boat, among the shadows and the whispering reeds and all the quiet
wonder of the river.


XII


On reaching home she let herself in stealthily, and, though she had
not had dinner, went up at once to her room.  She was just taking
off her blouse when Betty entered, her round face splotched with
red, and tears rolling down her cheeks.

"Betty!  What is it?"

"Oh, my dear, where HAVE you been?  Such a dreadful piece of news!
They've stolen her!  That wicked man--your husband--he took her
right out of her pram--and went off with her in a great car--he and
that other one!  I've been half out of my mind!"  Gyp stared
aghast.  "I hollered to a policeman.  'He's stolen her--her father!
Catch them!' I said.  'However shall I face my mistress?'"  She
stopped for breath, then burst out again.  "'He's a bad one,' I
said.  'A foreigner!  They're both foreigners!'  'Her father?' he
said.  'Well, why shouldn't he?  He's only givin' her a joy ride.
He'll bring her back, never you fear.'  And I ran home--I didn't
know where you were.  Oh dear!  The major away and all--what was I
to do?  I'd just turned round to shut the gate of the square
gardens, and I never saw him till he'd put his great long arm over
the pram and snatched her out."  And, sitting on the bed, she gave
way utterly.

Gyp stood still.  Nemesis for her happiness?  That vengeful wretch,
Rosek!  This was his doing.  And she said:

"Oh, Betty, she must be crying!"

A fresh outburst of moans was the only answer.  Gyp remembered
suddenly what the lawyer had said over a year ago--it had struck
her with terror at the time.  In law, Fiorsen owned and could claim
her child.  She could have got her back, then, by bringing a
horrible case against him, but now, perhaps, she had no chance.
Was it her return to Fiorsen that they aimed at--or the giving up
of her lover?  She went over to her mirror, saying:

"We'll go at once, Betty, and get her back somehow.  Wash your
face."

While she made ready, she fought down those two horrible fears--of
losing her child, of losing her lover; the less she feared, the
better she could act, the more subtly, the swifter.  She remembered
that she had somewhere a little stiletto, given her a long time
ago.  She hunted it out, slipped off its red-leather sheath, and,
stabbing the point into a tiny cork, slipped it beneath her blouse.
If they could steal her baby, they were capable of anything.  She
wrote a note to her father, telling him what had happened, and
saying where she had gone.  Then, in a taxi, they set forth.  Cold
water and the calmness of her mistress had removed from Betty the
main traces of emotion; but she clasped Gyp's hand hard and gave
vent to heavy sighs.

Gyp would not think.  If she thought of her little one crying, she
knew she would cry, too.  But her hatred for those who had dealt
this cowardly blow grew within her.  She took a resolution and said
quietly:

"Mr. Summerhay, Betty.  That's why they've stolen our darling.  I
suppose you know he and I care for each other.  They've stolen her
so as to make me do anything they like."

A profound sigh answered her.

Behind that moon-face with the troubled eyes, what conflict was in
progress--between unquestioning morality and unquestioning belief
in Gyp, between fears for her and wishes for her happiness, between
the loyal retainer's habit of accepting and the old nurse's feeling
of being in charge?  She said faintly:

"Oh dear!  He's a nice gentleman, too!"  And suddenly, wheezing it
out with unexpected force: "To say truth, I never did hold you was
rightly married to that foreigner in that horrible registry place--
no music, no flowers, no blessin' asked, nor nothing.  I cried me
eyes out at the time."

Gyp said quietly:

"No; Betty, I never was.  I only thought I was in love."  A
convulsive squeeze and creaking, whiffling sounds heralded a fresh
outburst.  "Don't cry; we're just there.  Think of our darling!"

The cab stopped.  Feeling for her little weapon, she got out, and
with her hand slipped firmly under Betty's arm, led the way
upstairs.  Chilly shudders ran down her spine--memories of Daphne
Wing and Rosek, of that large woman--what was her name?--of many
other faces, of unholy hours spent up there, in a queer state,
never quite present, never comfortable in soul; memories of late
returnings down these wide stairs out to their cab, of Fiorsen
beside her in the darkness, his dim, broad-cheekboned face moody in
the corner or pressed close to hers.  Once they had walked a long
way homeward in the dawn, Rosek with them, Fiorsen playing on his
muted violin, to the scandal of the policemen and the cats.  Dim,
unreal memories!  Grasping Betty's arm more firmly, she rang the
bell.  When the man servant, whom she remembered well, opened the
door, her lips were so dry that they could hardly form the words:

"Is Mr. Fiorsen in, Ford?"

"No, ma'am; Mr. Fiorsen and Count Rosek went into the country this
afternoon.  I haven't their address at present."  She must have
turned white, for she could hear the man saying: "Anything I can
get you, ma'am?"

"When did they start, please?"

"One o'clock, ma'am--by car.  Count Rosek was driving himself.  I
should say they won't be away long--they just had their bags with
them."  Gyp put out her hand helplessly; she heard the servant say
in a concerned voice: "I could let you know the moment they return,
ma'am, if you'd kindly leave me your address."

Giving her card, and murmuring:

"Thank you, Ford; thank you very much," she grasped Betty's arm
again and leaned heavily on her going down the stairs.

It was real, black fear now.  To lose helpless things--children--
dogs--and know for certain that one cannot get to them, no matter
what they may be suffering!  To be pinned down to ignorance and
have in her ears the crying of her child--this horror, Gyp suffered
now.  And nothing to be done!  Nothing but to go to bed and wait--
hardest of all tasks!  Mercifully--thanks to her long day in the
open--she fell at last into a dreamless sleep, and when she was
called, there was a letter from Fiorsen on the tray with her tea.


"Gyp:

"I am not a baby-stealer like your father.  The law gives me the
right to my own child.  But swear to give up your lover, and the
baby shall come back to you at once.  If you do not give him up, I
will take her away out of England.  Send me an answer to this post-
office, and do not let your father try any tricks upon me.

"GUSTAV FIORSEN."


Beneath was written the address of a West End post-office.

When Gyp had finished reading, she went through some moments of
such mental anguish as she had never known, but--just as when Betty
first told her of the stealing--her wits and wariness came quickly
back.  Had he been drinking when he wrote that letter?  She could
almost fancy that she smelled brandy, but it was so easy to fancy
what one wanted to.  She read it through again--this time, she felt
almost sure that it had been dictated to him.  If he had composed
the wording himself, he would never have resisted a gibe at the
law, or a gibe at himself for thus safeguarding her virtue.  It was
Rosek's doing.  Her anger flamed up anew.  Since they used such
mean, cruel ways, why need she herself be scrupulous?  She sprang
out of bed and wrote:


"How COULD you do such a brutal thing?  At all events, let the
darling have her nurse.  It's not like you to let a little child
suffer.  Betty will be ready to come the minute you send for her.
As for myself, you must give me time to decide.  I will let you
know within two days.

"GYP."


When she had sent this off, and a telegram to her father at
Newmarket, she read Fiorsen's letter once more, and was more than
ever certain that it was Rosek's wording.  And, suddenly, she
thought of Daphne Wing, whom her father had seen coming out of
Rosek's house.  Through her there might be a way of getting news.
She seemed to see again the girl lying so white and void of hope
when robbed by death of her own just-born babe.  Yes; surely it was
worth trying.

An hour later, her cab stopped before the Wagges' door in Frankland
Street.  But just as she was about to ring the bell, a voice from
behind her said:

"Allow me; I have a key.  What may I--Oh, it's you!"  She turned.
Mr. Wagge, in professional habiliments, was standing there.  "Come
in; come in," he said.  "I was wondering whether perhaps we
shouldn't be seeing you after what's transpired."

Hanging his tall black hat, craped nearly to the crown, on a knob
of the mahogany stand, he said huskily:

"I DID think we'd seen the last of that," and opened the dining-
room door.  "Come in, ma'am.  We can put our heads together better
in here."

In that too well remembered room, the table was laid with a stained
white cloth, a cruet-stand, and bottle of Worcestershire sauce.
The little blue bowl was gone, so that nothing now marred the
harmony of red and green.  Gyp said quickly:

"Doesn't Daph--Daisy live at home, then, now?"

The expression on Mr. Wagge's face was singular; suspicion, relief,
and a sort of craftiness were blended with that furtive admiration
which Gyp seemed always to excite in him.

"Do I understand that you--er--"

"I came to ask if Daisy would do something for me."

Mr. Wagge blew his nose.

"You didn't know--" he began again.

"Yes; I dare say she sees my husband, if that's what you mean; and
I don't mind--he's nothing to me now."

Mr. Wagge's face became further complicated by the sensations of a
husband.

"Well," he said, "it's not to be wondered at, perhaps, in the
circumstances.  I'm sure I always thought--"

Gyp interrupted swiftly.

"Please, Mr. Wagge--please!  Will you give me Daisy's address?"

Mr. Wagge remained a moment in deep thought; then he said, in a
gruff, jerky voice:

"Seventy-three Comrade Street, So'o.  Up to seeing him there on
Tuesday, I must say I cherished every hope.  Now I'm sorry I didn't
strike him--he was too quick for me--"  He had raised one of his
gloved hands and was sawing it up and down.  The sight of that
black object cleaving the air nearly made Gyp scream, her nerves
were so on edge.  "It's her blasted independence--I beg pardon--but
who wouldn't?" he ended suddenly.

Gyp passed him.

"Who wouldn't?" she heard his voice behind her.  "I did think she'd
have run straight this time--"  And while she was fumbling at the
outer door, his red, pudgy face, with its round grey beard,
protruded almost over her shoulder.  "If you're going to see her, I
hope you'll--"

Gyp was gone.  In her cab she shivered.  Once she had lunched with
her father at a restaurant in the Strand.  It had been full of Mr.
Wagges.  But, suddenly, she thought: 'It's hard on him, poor man!'


XIII


Seventy-three Comrade Street, Soho, was difficult to find; but,
with the aid of a milk-boy, Gyp discovered the alley at last, and
the right door.  There her pride took sudden alarm, and but for the
milk-boy's eyes fixed on her while he let out his professional
howl, she might have fled.  A plump white hand and wrist emerging
took the can, and Daphne Wing's voice said:

"Oh, where's the cream?"

"Ain't got none."

"Oh!  I told you always--two pennyworth at twelve o'clock."

"Two penn'orth."  The boy's eyes goggled.

"Didn't you want to speak to her, miss?"  He beat the closing door.
"Lidy wants to speak to you!  Good-mornin', miss."

The figure of Daphne Wing in a blue kimono was revealed.  Her eyes
peered round at Gyp.

"Oh!" she said.

"May I come in?"

"Oh, yes!  Oh, do!  I've been practising.  Oh, I am glad to see
you!"

In the middle of the studio, a little table was laid for two.
Daphne Wing went up to it, holding in one hand the milk-can and in
the other a short knife, with which she had evidently been opening
oysters.  Placing the knife on the table, she turned round to Gyp.
Her face was deep pink, and so was her neck, which ran V-shaped
down into the folds of her kimono.  Her eyes, round as saucers, met
Gyp's, fell, met them again.  She said:

"Oh, Mrs. Fiorsen, I am glad!  I really am.  I wanted you so much
to see my room--do you like it?  How DID you know where I was?"
She looked down and added: "I think I'd better tell you.  Mr.
Fiorsen came here, and, since then, I've seen him at Count Rosek's--
and--and--"

"Yes; but don't trouble to tell me, please."

Daphne Wing hurried on.

"Of course, I'm quite mistress of myself now."  Then, all at once,
the uneasy woman-of-the-world mask dropped from her face and she
seized Gyp's hand.  "Oh, Mrs. Fiorsen, I shall never be like you!"

With a little shiver, Gyp said:

"I hope not."  Her pride rushed up in her.  How could she ask this
girl anything?  She choked back that feeling, and said stonily: "Do
you remember my baby?  No, of course; you never saw her.  HE and
Count Rosek have just taken her away from me."

Daphne Wing convulsively squeezed the hand of which she had
possessed herself.

"Oh, what a wicked thing!  When?"

"Yesterday afternoon."

"Oh, I AM glad I haven't seen him since!  Oh, I DO think that was
wicked!  Aren't you dreadfully distressed?"  The least of smiles
played on Gyp's mouth.  Daphne Wing burst forth: "D'you know--I
think--I think your self-control is something awful.  It frightens
me.  If my baby had lived and been stolen like that, I should have
been half dead by now."

Gyp answered stonily as ever:

"Yes; I want her back, and I wondered--"

Daphne Wing clasped her hands.

"Oh, I expect I can make him--"  She stopped, confused, then added
hastily: "Are you sure you don't mind?"

"I shouldn't mind if he had fifty loves.  Perhaps he has."

Daphne Wing uttered a little gasp; then her teeth came down rather
viciously on her lower lip.

"I mean him to do what I want now, not what he wants me.  That's
the only way when you love.  Oh, don't smile like that, please; you
do make me feel so--uncertain."

"When are you going to see him next?"

Daphne Wing grew very pink.

"I don't know.  He might be coming in to lunch.  You see, it's not
as if he were a stranger, is it?"  Casting up her eyes a little,
she added: "He won't even let me speak your name; it makes him mad.
That's why I'm sure he still loves you; only, his love is so
funny."  And, seizing Gyp's hand: "I shall never forget how good
you were to me.  I do hope you--you love somebody else."  Gyp
pressed those damp, clinging fingers, and Daphne Wing hurried on:
"I'm sure your baby's a darling.  How you must be suffering!  You
look quite pale.  But it isn't any good suffering.  I learned that."

Her eyes lighted on the table, and a faint ruefulness came into
them, as if she were going to ask Gyp to eat the oysters.

Gyp bent forward and put her lips to the girl's forehead.

"Good-bye.  My baby would thank you if she knew."

And she turned to go.  She heard a sob.  Daphne Wing was crying;
then, before Gyp could speak, she struck herself on the throat, and
said, in a strangled voice:

"Tha--that's idiotic!  I--I haven't cried since--since, you know.
I--I'm perfect mistress of myself; only, I--only--I suppose you
reminded me--I NEVER cry!"

Those words and the sound of a hiccough accompanied Gyp down the
alley to her cab.

When she got back to Bury Street, she found Betty sitting in the
hall with her bonnet on.  She had not been sent for, nor had any
reply come from Newmarket.  Gyp could not eat, could settle to
nothing.  She went up to her bedroom to get away from the servants'
eyes, and went on mechanically with a frock of little Gyp's she had
begun on the fatal morning Fiorsen had come back.  Every other
minute she stopped to listen to sounds that never meant anything,
went a hundred times to the window to look at nothing.  Betty, too,
had come upstairs, and was in the nursery opposite; Gyp could hear
her moving about restlessly among her household gods.  Presently,
those sounds ceased, and, peering into the room, she saw the stout
woman still in her bonnet, sitting on a trunk, with her back
turned, uttering heavy sighs.  Gyp stole back into her own room
with a sick, trembling sensation.  If--if her baby really could not
be recovered except by that sacrifice!  If that cruel letter were
the last word, and she forced to decide between them!  Which would
she give up?  Which follow--her lover or her child?

She went to the window for air--the pain about her heart was
dreadful.  And, leaning there against the shutter, she felt quite
dizzy from the violence of a struggle that refused coherent thought
or feeling, and was just a dumb pull of instincts, both so terribly
strong--how terribly strong she had not till then perceived.

Her eyes fell on the picture that reminded her of Bryan; it seemed
now to have no resemblance--none.  He was much too real, and loved,
and wanted.  Less than twenty-four hours ago, she had turned a deaf
ear to his pleading that she should go to him for ever.  How funny!
Would she not rush to him now--go when and where he liked?  Ah, if
only she were back in his arms!  Never could she give him up--
never!  But then in her ears sounded the cooing words, "Dear mum!"
Her baby--that tiny thing--how could she give her up, and never
again hold close and kiss that round, perfect little body, that
grave little dark-eyed face?

The roar of London came in through the open window.  So much life,
so many people--and not a soul could help!  She left the window and
went to the cottage-piano she had there, out of Winton's way.  But
she only sat with arms folded, looking at the keys.  The song that
girl had sung at Fiorsen's concert--song of the broken heart--came
back to her.

No, no; she couldn't--couldn't!  It was to her lover she would
cling.  And tears ran down her cheeks.

A cab had stopped below, but not till Betty came rushing in did she
look up.


XIV


When, trembling all over, she entered the dining-room, Fiorsen was
standing by the sideboard, holding the child.

He came straight up and put her into Gyp's arms.

"Take her," he said, "and do what you will.  Be happy."

Hugging her baby, close to the door as she could get, Gyp answered
nothing.  Her heart was in such a tumult that she could not have
spoken a word to save her life; relieved, as one dying of thirst by
unexpected water; grateful, bewildered, abashed, yet instinctively
aware of something evanescent and unreal in his altruism.  Daphne
Wing!  What bargain did this represent?

Fiorsen must have felt the chill of this instinctive vision, for he
cried out:

"Yes!  You never believed in me; you never thought me capable of
good!  Why didn't you?"

Gyp bent her face over her baby to hide the quivering of her lips.

"I am sorry--very, very sorry."

Fiorsen came closer and looked into her face.

"By God, I am afraid I shall never forget you--never!"

Tears had come into his eyes, and Gyp watched them, moved,
troubled, but still deeply mistrusting.

He brushed his hand across his face; and the thought flashed
through her: 'He means me to see them!  Ah, what a cynical wretch I
am!'

Fiorsen saw that thought pass, and muttering suddenly:

"Good-bye, Gyp!  I am not all bad.  I AM NOT!"  He tore the door
open and was gone.

That passionate "I am not!" saved Gyp from a breakdown.  No; even
at his highest pitch of abnegation, he could not forget himself.

Relief, if overwhelming, is slowly realized; but when, at last,
what she had escaped and what lay before her were staring full in
each other's face, it seemed to her that she must cry out, and tell
the whole world of her intoxicating happiness.  And the moment
little Gyp was in Betty's arms, she sat down and wrote to
Summerhay:


"DARLING,

"I've had a fearful time.  My baby was stolen by him while I was
with you.  He wrote me a letter saying that he would give her back
to me if I gave you up.  But I found I couldn't give you up, not
even for my baby.  And then, a few minutes ago, he brought her--
none the worse.  Tomorrow we shall all go down to Mildenham; but
very soon, if you still want me, I'll come with you wherever you
like.  My father and Betty will take care of my treasure till we
come back; and then, perhaps, the old red house we saw--after all.
Only--now is the time for you to draw back.  Look into the future--
look far!  Don't let any foolish pity--or honour--weigh with you;
be utterly sure, I do beseech you.  I can just bear it now if I
know it's for your good.  But afterward it'll be too late.  It
would be the worst misery of all if I made you unhappy.  Oh, make
sure--make sure!  I shall understand.  I mean this with every bit
of me.  And now, good-night, and perhaps--good-bye.

"Your

"GYP."


She read it over and shivered.  Did she really mean that she could
bear it if he drew back--if he did look far, far into the future,
and decided that she was not worth the candle?  Ah, but better now--
than later.

She closed and sealed the letter, and sat down to wait for her
father.  And she thought: 'Why does one have a heart?  Why is there
in one something so much too soft?'


Ten days later, at Mildenham station, holding her father's hand,
Gyp could scarcely see him for the mist before her eyes.  How good
he had been to her all those last days, since she told him that she
was going to take the plunge!  Not a word of remonstrance or
complaint.

"Good-bye, my love!  Take care of yourself; wire from London, and
again from Paris."  And, smiling up at her, he added: "He has luck;
I had none."

The mist became tears, rolled down, fell on his glove.

"Not too long out there, Gyp!"

She pressed her wet cheek passionately to his.  The train moved,
but, so long as she could see, she watched him standing on the
platform, waving his grey hat, then, in her corner, sat down,
blinded with tears behind her veil.  She had not cried when she
left him the day of her fatal marriage; she cried now that she was
leaving him to go to her incredible happiness.

Strange!  But her heart had grown since then.



PART IV


I


Little Gyp, aged nearly four and a half that first of May, stood at
the edge of the tulip border, bowing to two hen turkeys who were
poking their heads elegantly here and there among the flowers.  She
was absurdly like her mother, the same oval-shaped face, dark
arched brows, large and clear brown eyes; but she had the modern
child's open-air look; her hair, that curled over at the ends, was
not allowed to be long, and her polished brown legs were bare to
the knees.

"Turkeys!  You aren't good, are you?  Come ON!"  And, stretching
out her hands with the palms held up, she backed away from the
tulip-bed.  The turkeys, trailing delicately their long-toed feet
and uttering soft, liquid interrogations, moved after her in hopes
of what she was not holding in her little brown hands.  The sun,
down in the west, for it was past tea-time, slanted from over the
roof of the red house, and painted up that small procession--the
deep blue frock of little Gyp, the glint of gold in the chestnut of
her hair; the daisy-starred grass; the dark birds with translucent
red dewlaps, and checkered tails and the tulip background, puce and
red and yellow.  When she had lured them to the open gate, little
Gyp raised herself, and said:

"Aren't you duffies, dears?  Shoo!"  And on the tails of the
turkeys she shut the gate.  Then she went to where, under the
walnut-tree--the one large tree of that walled garden--a very old
Scotch terrier was lying, and sitting down beside him, began
stroking his white muzzle, saying:

"Ossy, Ossy, do you love me?"

Presently, seeing her mother in the porch, she jumped up, and
crying out: "Ossy--Ossy!  Walk!" rushed to Gyp and embraced her
legs, while the old Scotch terrier slowly followed.

Thus held prisoner, Gyp watched the dog's approach.  Nearly three
years had changed her a little.  Her face was softer, and rather
more grave, her form a little fuller, her hair, if anything,
darker, and done differently--instead of waving in wings and being
coiled up behind, it was smoothly gathered round in a soft and
lustrous helmet, by which fashion the shape of her head was better
revealed.

"Darling, go and ask Pettance to put a fresh piece of sulphur in
Ossy's water-bowl, and to cut up his meat finer.  You can give
Hotspur and Brownie two lumps of sugar each; and then we'll go
out."  Going down on her knees in the porch, she parted the old
dog's hair, and examined his eczema, thinking: "I must rub some
more of that stuff in to-night.  Oh, ducky, you're not smelling
your best!  Yes; only--not my face!"

A telegraph-boy was coming from the gate.  Gyp opened the missive
with the faint tremor she always felt when Summerhay was not with
her.


"Detained; shall be down by last train; need not come up to-morrow.--
BRYAN."


When the boy was gone, she stooped down and stroked the old dog's
head.

"Master home all day to-morrow, Ossy--master home!"

A voice from the path said, "Beautiful evenin', ma'am."

The "old scoundrel," Pettance, stiffer in the ankle-joints, with
more lines in his gargoyle's face, fewer stumps in his gargoyle's
mouth, more film over his dark, burning little eyes, was standing
before her, and, behind him, little Gyp, one foot rather before the
other, as Gyp had been wont to stand, waited gravely.

"Oh, Pettance, Mr. Summerhay will be at home all to-morrow, and
we'll go a long ride: and when you exercise, will you call at the
inn, in case I don't go that way, and tell Major Winton I expect
him to dinner to-night?"

"Yes, ma'am; and I've seen the pony for little Miss Gyp this
morning, ma'am.  It's a mouse pony, five year old, sound, good
temper, pretty little paces.  I says to the man: 'Don't you come it
over me,' I says; 'I was born on an 'orse.  Talk of twenty pounds,
for that pony!  Ten, and lucky to get it!'  'Well,' he says,
'Pettance, it's no good to talk round an' round with you.
Fifteen!' he says.  'I'll throw you one in,' I says, 'Eleven!  Take
it or leave it.'  'Ah!' he says, 'Pettance, YOU know 'ow to buy an
'orse.  All right,' he says; 'twelve!'  She's worth all of fifteen,
ma'am, and the major's passed her.  So if you likes to have 'er,
there she is!"

Gyp looked at her little daughter, who had given one excited hop,
but now stood still, her eyes flying up at her mother and her lips
parted; and she thought: "The darling!  She never begs for
anything!"

"Very well, Pettance; buy her."

The "old scoundrel" touched his forelock:

"Yes, ma'am--very good, ma'am.  Beautiful evenin', ma'am."  And,
withdrawing at his gait of one whose feet are at permanent right
angles to the legs, he mused: 'And that'll be two in my pocket.'

Ten minutes later Gyp, little Gyp, and Ossian emerged from the
garden gate for their evening walk.  They went, not as usual, up to
the downs, but toward the river, making for what they called "the
wild."  This was an outlying plot of neglected ground belonging to
their farm, two sedgy meadows, hedged by banks on which grew oaks
and ashes.  An old stone linhay, covered to its broken thatch by a
huge ivy bush, stood at the angle where the meadows met.  The spot
had a strange life to itself in that smooth, kempt countryside of
cornfields, grass, and beech-clumps; it was favoured by beasts and
birds, and little Gyp had recently seen two baby hares there.  From
an oak-tree, where the crinkled leaves were not yet large enough to
hide him, a cuckoo was calling and they stopped to look at the grey
bird till he flew off.  The singing and serenity, the green and
golden oaks and ashes, the flowers--marsh-orchis, ladies' smocks,
and cuckoo-buds, starring the rushy grass--all brought to Gyp that
feeling of the uncapturable spirit which lies behind the forms of
nature, the shadowy, hovering smile of life that is ever vanishing
and ever springing again out of death.  While they stood there
close to the old linhay a bird came flying round them in wide
circles, uttering shrill cries.  It had a long beak and long,
pointed wings, and seemed distressed by their presence.  Little Gyp
squeezed her mother's hand.

"Poor bird!  Isn't it a poor bird, mum?"

"Yes, dear, it's a curlew--I wonder what's the matter with it.
Perhaps its mate is hurt."

"What is its mate?"

"The bird it lives with."

"It's afraid of us.  It's not like other birds.  Is it a real bird,
mum?  Or one out of the sky?"

"I think it's real.  Shall we go on and see if we can find out
what's the matter?"

"Yes."

They went on into the sedgy grass and the curlew continued to
circle, vanishing and reappearing from behind the trees, always
uttering those shrill cries.  Little Gyp said:

"Mum, could we speak to it?  Because we're not going to hurt
nothing, are we?"

"Of course not, darling!  But I'm afraid the poor bird's too wild.
Try, if you like.  Call to it: 'Courlie!  Courlie!"'

Little Gyp's piping joined the curlew's cries and other bird-songs
in the bright shadowy quiet of the evening till Gyp said:

"Oh, look; it's dipping close to the ground, over there in that
corner--it's got a nest!  We won't go near, will we?"

Little Gyp echoed in a hushed voice:

"It's got a nest."

They stole back out of the gate close to the linhay, the curlew
still fighting and crying behind them.

"Aren't we glad the mate isn't hurt, mum?"

Gyp answered with a shiver:

"Yes, darling, fearfully glad.  Now then, shall we go down and ask
Grandy to come up to dinner?"

Little Gyp hopped.  And they went toward the river.

At "The Bowl of Cream," Winton had for two years had rooms, which
he occupied as often as his pursuits permitted.  He had refused to
make his home with Gyp, desiring to be on hand only when she wanted
him; and a simple life of it he led in those simple quarters,
riding with her when Summerhay was in town, visiting the cottagers,
smoking cigars, laying plans for the defence of his daughter's
position, and devoting himself to the whims of little Gyp.  This
moment, when his grandchild was to begin to ride, was in a manner
sacred to one for whom life had scant meaning apart from horses.
Looking at them, hand in hand, Gyp thought: 'Dad loves her as much
as he loves me now--more, I think.'

Lonely dinner at the inn was an infliction which he studiously
concealed from Gyp, so he accepted their invitation without
alacrity, and they walked on up the hill, with little Gyp in the
middle, supported by a hand on each side.

The Red House contained nothing that had been in Gyp's married home
except the piano.  It had white walls, furniture of old oak, and
for pictures reproductions of her favourites.  "The Death of
Procris" hung in the dining-room.  Winton never failed to
scrutinize it when he came in to a meal--that "deuced rum affair"
appeared to have a fascination for him.  He approved of the dining-
room altogether; its narrow oak "last supper" table made gay by a
strip of blue linen, old brick hearth, casement windows hung with
flowered curtains--all had a pleasing austerity, uncannily redeemed
to softness.  He got on well enough with Summerhay, but he enjoyed
himself much more when he was there alone with his daughter.  And
this evening he was especially glad to have her to himself, for she
had seemed of late rather grave and absent-minded.  When dinner was
over and they were undisturbed, he said:

"It must be pretty dull for you, my dear, sometimes.  I wish you
saw more people."

"Oh no, Dad."

Watching her smile, he thought: 'That's not sour grapes"--What is
the trouble, then?'

"I suppose you've not heard anything of that fellow Fiorsen
lately?"

"Not a word.  But he's playing again in London this season, I see."

"Is he?  Ah, that'll cheer them."  And he thought: 'It's not that,
then.  But there's something--I'll swear!'

"I hear that Bryan's going ahead.  I met a man in town last week
who spoke of him as about the most promising junior at the bar."

"Yes; he's doing awfully well."  And a sound like a faint sigh
caught his ears.  "Would you say he's changed much since you knew
him, Dad?"

"I don't know--perhaps a little less jokey."

"Yes; he's lost his laugh."

It was very evenly and softly said, yet it affected Winton.

"Can't expect him to keep that," he answered, "turning people
inside out, day after day--and most of them rotten.  By George,
what a life!"

But when he had left her, strolling back in the bright moonlight,
he reverted to his suspicions and wished he had said more directly:
"Look here, Gyp, are you worrying about Bryan--or have people been
making themselves unpleasant?"

He had, in these last three years, become unconsciously inimical to
his own class and their imitators, and more than ever friendly to
the poor--visiting the labourers, small farmers, and small
tradesmen, doing them little turns when he could, giving their
children sixpences, and so forth.  The fact that they could not
afford to put on airs of virtue escaped him; he perceived only that
they were respectful and friendly to Gyp and this warmed his heart
toward them in proportion as he grew exasperated with the two or
three landed families, and that parvenu lot in the riverside
villas.

When he first came down, the chief landowner--a man he had known
for years--had invited him to lunch.  He had accepted with the
deliberate intention of finding out where he was, and had taken the
first natural opportunity of mentioning his daughter.  She was, he
said, devoted to her flowers; the Red House had quite a good
garden.  His friend's wife, slightly lifting her brows, had
answered with a nervous smile: "Oh! yes; of course--yes."  A
silence had, not unnaturally, fallen.  Since then, Winton had
saluted his friend and his friend's wife with such frigid
politeness as froze the very marrow in their bones.  He had not
gone there fishing for Gyp to be called on, but to show these
people that his daughter could not be slighted with impunity.
Foolish of him, for, man of the world to his fingertips, he knew
perfectly well that a woman living with a man to whom she was not
married could not be recognized by people with any pretensions to
orthodoxy; Gyp was beyond even the debatable ground on which stood
those who have been divorced and are married again.  But even a man
of the world is not proof against the warping of devotion, and
Winton was ready to charge any windmill at any moment on her
behalf.

Outside the inn door, exhaling the last puffs of his good-night
cigarette, he thought: 'What wouldn't I give for the old days, and
a chance to wing some of these moral upstarts!'


II


The last train was not due till eleven-thirty, and having seen that
the evening tray had sandwiches, Gyp went to Summerhay's study, the
room at right angles to the body of the house, over which was their
bedroom.  Here, if she had nothing to do, she always came when he
was away, feeling nearer to him.  She would have been horrified if
she had known of her father's sentiments on her behalf.  Her
instant denial of the wish to see more people had been quite
genuine.  The conditions of her life, in that respect, often seemed
to her ideal.  It was such a joy to be free of people one did not
care two straws about, and of all empty social functions.
Everything she had now was real--love, and nature, riding, music,
animals, and poor people.  What else was worth having?  She would
not have changed for anything.  It often seemed to her that books
and plays about the unhappiness of women in her position were all
false.  If one loved, what could one want better?  Such women, if
unhappy, could have no pride; or else could not really love!  She
had recently been reading "Anna Karenina," and had often said to
herself: "There's something not true about it--as if Tolstoy wanted
to make us believe that Anna was secretly feeling remorse.  If one
loves, one doesn't feel remorse.  Even if my baby had been taken
away, I shouldn't have felt remorse.  One gives oneself to love--or
one does not."

She even derived a positive joy from the feeling that her love
imposed a sort of isolation; she liked to be apart--for him.
Besides, by her very birth she was outside the fold of society, her
love beyond the love of those within it--just as her father's love
had been.  And her pride was greater than theirs, too.  How could
women mope and moan because they were cast out, and try to scratch
their way back where they were not welcome?  How could any woman do
that?  Sometimes, she wondered whether, if Fiorsen died, she would
marry her lover.  What difference would it make?  She could not
love him more.  It would only make him feel, perhaps, too sure of
her, make it all a matter of course.  For herself, she would rather
go on as she was.  But for him, she was not certain, of late had
been less and less certain.  He was not bound now, could leave her
when he tired!  And yet--did he perhaps feel himself more bound
than if they were married--unfairly bound?  It was this thought--
barely more than the shadow of a thought--which had given her, of
late, the extra gravity noticed by her father.

In that unlighted room with the moonbeams drifting in, she sat down
at Summerhay's bureau, where he often worked too late at his cases,
depriving her of himself.  She sat there resting her elbows on the
bare wood, crossing her finger-tips, gazing out into the moonlight,
her mind drifting on a stream of memories that seemed to have
beginning only from the year when he came into her life.  A smile
crept out on her face, and now and then she uttered a little sigh
of contentment.

So many memories, nearly all happy!  Surely, the most adroit work
of the jeweller who put the human soul together was his provision
of its power to forget the dark and remember sunshine.  The year
and a half of her life with Fiorsen, the empty months that followed
it were gone, dispersed like mist by the radiance of the last three
years in whose sky had hung just one cloud, no bigger than a hand,
of doubt whether Summerhay really loved her as much as she loved
him, whether from her company he got as much as the all she got
from his.  She would not have been her distrustful self if she
could have settled down in complacent security; and her mind was
ever at stretch on that point, comparing past days and nights with
the days and nights of the present.  Her prevision that, when she
loved, it would be desperately, had been fulfilled.  He had become
her life.  When this befalls one whose besetting strength and
weakness alike is pride--no wonder that she doubts.

For their Odyssey they had gone to Spain--that brown un-European
land of "lyrio" flowers, and cries of "Agua!" in the streets, where
the men seem cleft to the waist when they are astride of horses,
under their wide black hats, and the black-clothed women with
wonderful eyes still look as if they missed their Eastern veils.
It had been a month of gaiety and glamour, last days of September
and early days of October, a revel of enchanted wanderings in the
streets of Seville, of embraces and laughter, of strange scents and
stranger sounds, of orange light and velvety shadows, and all the
warmth and deep gravity of Spain.  The Alcazar, the cigarette-
girls, the Gipsy dancers of Triana, the old brown ruins to which
they rode, the streets, and the square with its grave talkers
sitting on benches in the sun, the water-sellers and the melons;
the mules, and the dark ragged man out of a dream, picking up the
ends of cigarettes, the wine of Malaga, burnt fire and honey!
Seville had bewitched them--they got no further.  They had come
back across the brown uplands of Castile to Madrid and Goya and
Velasquez, till it was time for Paris, before the law-term began.
There, in a queer little French hotel--all bedrooms, and a lift,
coffee and carved beds, wood fires, and a chambermaid who seemed
all France, and down below a restaurant, to which such as knew
about eating came, with waiters who looked like monks, both fat and
lean--they had spent a week.  Three special memories of that week
started up in the moonlight before Gyp's eyes:  The long drive in
the Bois among the falling leaves of trees flashing with colour in
the crisp air under a brilliant sky.  A moment in the Louvre before
the Leonardo "Bacchus," when--his "restored" pink skin forgotten--
all the world seemed to drop away while she listened, with the
listening figure before her, to some mysterious music of growing
flowers and secret life.  And that last most disconcerting memory,
of the night before they returned.  They were having supper after
the theatre in their restaurant, when, in a mirror she saw three
people come in and take seats at a table a little way behind--
Fiorsen, Rosek, and Daphne Wing!  How she managed to show no sign
she never knew!  While they were ordering, she was safe, for Rosek
was a gourmet, and the girl would certainly be hungry; but after
that, she knew that nothing could save her being seen--Rosek would
mark down every woman in the room!  Should she pretend to feel
faint and slip out into the hotel?  Or let Bryan know?  Or sit
there laughing and talking, eating and drinking, as if nothing were
behind her?

Her own face in the mirror had a flush, and her eyes were bright.
When they saw her, they would see that she was happy, safe in her
love.  Her foot sought Summerhay's beneath the table.  How splendid
and brown and fit he looked, compared with those two pale, towny
creatures!  And he was gazing at her as though just discovering her
beauty.  How could she ever--that man with his little beard and his
white face and those eyes--how could she ever!  Ugh!  And then, in
the mirror, she saw Rosek's dark-circled eyes fasten on her and
betray their recognition by a sudden gleam, saw his lips
compressed, and a faint red come up in his cheeks.  What would he
do?  The girl's back was turned--her perfect back--and she was
eating.  And Fiorsen was staring straight before him in that moody
way she knew so well.  All depended on that deadly little man, who
had once kissed her throat.  A sick feeling seized on Gyp.  If her
lover knew that within five yards of him were those two men!  But
she still smiled and talked, and touched his foot.  Rosek had seen
that she was conscious--was getting from it a kind of satisfaction.
She saw him lean over and whisper to the girl, and Daphne Wing
turning to look, and her mouth opening for a smothered "Oh!"  Gyp
saw her give an uneasy glance at Fiorsen, and then begin again to
eat.  Surely she would want to get away before he saw.  Yes; very
soon she rose.  What little airs of the world she had now--quite
mistress of the situation!  The wrap must be placed exactly on her
shoulders; and how she walked, giving just one startled look back
from the door.  Gone!  The ordeal over!  And Gyp said:

"Let's go up, darling."

She felt as if they had both escaped a deadly peril--not from
anything those two could do to him or her, but from the cruel ache
and jealousy of the past, which the sight of that man would have
brought him.

Women, for their age, are surely older than men--married women, at
all events, than men who have not had that experience.  And all
through those first weeks of their life together, there was a kind
of wise watchfulness in Gyp.  He was only a boy in knowledge of
life as she saw it, and though his character was so much more
decided, active, and insistent than her own, she felt it lay with
her to shape the course and avoid the shallows and sunken rocks.
The house they had seen together near the river, under the
Berkshire downs, was still empty; and while it was being got ready,
they lived at a London hotel.  She had insisted that he should tell
no one of their life together.  If that must come, she wanted to be
firmly settled in, with little Gyp and Betty and the horses, so
that it should all be for him as much like respectable married life
as possible.  But, one day, in the first week after their return,
while in her room, just back from a long day's shopping, a card was
brought up to her: "Lady Summerhay."  Her first impulse was to be
"not at home"; her second, "I'd better face it.  Bryan would wish
me to see her!"  When the page-boy was gone, she turned to the
mirror and looked at herself doubtfully.  She seemed to know
exactly what that tall woman whom she had seen on the platform
would think of her--too soft, not capable, not right for him!--not
even if she were legally his wife.  And touching her hair, laying a
dab of scent on her eyebrows, she turned and went downstairs
fluttering, but outwardly calm enough.

In the little low-roofed inner lounge of that old hotel, whose
rooms were all "entirely renovated," Gyp saw her visitor standing
at a table, rapidly turning the pages of an illustrated magazine,
as people will when their minds are set upon a coming operation.
And she thought: 'I believe she's more frightened than I am!'

Lady Summerhay held out a gloved hand.

"How do you do?" she said.  "I hope you'll forgive my coming."

Gyp took the hand.

"Thank you.  It was very good of you.  I'm sorry Bryan isn't in
yet.  Will you have some tea?"

"I've had tea; but do let's sit down.  How do you find the hotel?"

"Very nice."

On a velvet lounge that had survived the renovation, they sat side
by side, screwed round toward each other.

"Bryan's told me what a pleasant time you had abroad.  He's looking
very well, I think.  I'm devoted to him, you know."

Gyp answered softly:

"Yes, you must be."  And her heart felt suddenly as hard as flint.

Lady Summerhay gave her a quick look.

"I--I hope you won't mind my being frank--I've been so worried.
It's an unhappy position, isn't it?"  Gyp did not answer, and she
hurried on.  "If there's anything I can do to help, I should be so
glad--it must be horrid for you."

Gyp said very quietly:

"Oh! no.  I'm perfectly happy--couldn't be happier."  And she
thought: 'I suppose she doesn't believe that.'

Lady Summerhay was looking at her fixedly.

"One doesn't realize these things at first--neither of you will,
till you see how dreadfully Society can cold-shoulder."

Gyp made an effort to control a smile.

"One can only be cold-shouldered if one puts oneself in the way of
it.  I should never wish to see or speak to anyone who couldn't
take me just for what I am.  And I don't really see what difference
it will make to Bryan; most men of his age have someone,
somewhere."  She felt malicious pleasure watching her visitor jib
and frown at the cynicism of that soft speech; a kind of hatred had
come on her of this society woman, who--disguise it as she would--
was at heart her enemy, who regarded her, must regard her, as an
enslaver, as a despoiler of her son's worldly chances, a Delilah
dragging him down.  She said still more quietly: "He need tell no
one of my existence; and you can be quite sure that if ever he
feels he's had enough of me, he'll never be troubled by the sight
of me again."

And she got up.  Lady Summerhay also rose.

"I hope you don't think--I really am only too anxious to--"

"I think it's better to be quite frank.  You will never like me, or
forgive me for ensnaring Bryan.  And so it had better be, please,
as it would be if I were just his common mistress.  That will be
perfectly all right for both of us.  It was very good of you to
come, though.  Thank you--and good-bye."

Lady Summerhay literally faltered with speech and hand.

With a malicious smile, Gyp watched her retirement among the little
tables and elaborately modern chairs till her tall figure had
disappeared behind a column.  Then she sat down again on the
lounge, pressing her hands to her burning ears.  She had never till
then known the strength of the pride-demon within her; at the
moment, it was almost stronger than her love.  She was still
sitting there, when the page-boy brought her another card--her
father's.  She sprang up saying:

"Yes, here, please."

Winton came in all brisk and elated at sight of her after this long
absence; and, throwing her arms round his neck, she hugged him
tight.  He was doubly precious to her after the encounter she had
just gone though.  When he had given her news of Mildenham and
little Gyp, he looked at her steadily, and said:

"The coast'll be clear for you both down there, and at Bury Street,
whenever you like to come, Gyp.  I shall regard this as your real
marriage.  I shall have the servants in and make that plain."

A row like family prayers--and Dad standing up very straight,
saying in his dry way: "You will be so good in future as to
remember--"  "I shall be obliged if you will," and so on; Betty's
round face pouting at being brought in with all the others;
Markey's soft, inscrutable; Mrs. Markey's demure and goggling; the
maids' rabbit-faces; old Pettance's carved grin the film lifting
from his little burning eyes: "Ha! Mr. Bryn Summer'ay; he bought
her orse, and so she's gone to 'im!"  And she said:

"Darling, I don't know!  It's awfully sweet of you.  We'll see
later."

Winton patted her hand.  "We must stand up to 'em, you know, Gyp.
You mustn't get your tail down."

Gyp laughed.

"No, Dad; never!"

That same night, across the strip of blackness between their beds,
she said:

"Bryan, promise me something!"

"It depends.  I know you too well."

"No; it's quite reasonable, and possible.  Promise!"

"All right; if it is."

"I want you to let me take the lease of the Red House--let it be
mine, the whole thing--let me pay for everything there."

"Reasonable!  What's the point?"

"Only that I shall have a proper home of my own.  I can't explain,
but your mother's coming to-day made me feel I must."

"My child, how could I possibly live on YOU there?  It's absurd!"

"You can pay for everything else; London--travelling--clothes, if
you like.  We can make it square up.  It's not a question of money,
of course.  I only want to feel that if, at any moment, you don't
need me any more, you can simply stop coming."

"I think that's brutal, Gyp."

"No, no; so many women lose men's love because they seem to claim
things of them.  I don't want to lose yours that way--that's all."

"That's silly, darling!"

"It's not.  Men--and women, too--always tug at chains.  And when
there is no chain--"

"Well then; let me take the house, and you can go away when you're
tired of me."  His voice sounded smothered, resentful; she could
hear him turning and turning, as if angry with his pillows.  And
she murmured:

"No; I can't explain.  But I really mean it."

"We're just beginning life together, and you talk as if you want to
split it up.  It hurts, Gyp, and that's all about it."

She said gently:

"Don't be angry, dear."

"Well!  Why don't you trust me more?"

"I do.  Only I must make as sure as I can."

The sound came again of his turning and turning.

"I can't!"

Gyp said slowly:

"Oh!  Very well!"

A dead silence followed, both lying quiet in the darkness, trying
to get the better of each other by sheer listening.  An hour
perhaps passed before he sighed, and, feeling his lips on hers, she
knew that she had won.


III


There, in the study, the moonlight had reached her face; an owl was
hooting not far away, and still more memories came--the happiest of
all, perhaps--of first days in this old house together.

Summerhay damaged himself out hunting that first winter.  The
memory of nursing him was strangely pleasant, now that it was two
years old.  For convalescence they had gone to the Pyrenees--
Argeles in March, all almond-blossom and snows against the blue--a
wonderful fortnight.  In London on the way back they had their
first awkward encounter.  Coming out of a theatre one evening, Gyp
heard a woman's voice, close behind, say: "Why, it's Bryan!  What
ages!"  And his answer defensively drawled out:

"Halo!  How are you, Diana?"

"Oh, awfully fit.  Where are you, nowadays?  Why don't you come and
see us?"

Again the drawl:

"Down in the country.  I will, some time.  Good-bye."

A tall woman or girl--red-haired, with one of those wonderful white
skins that go therewith; and brown--yes, brown eyes; Gyp could see
those eyes sweeping her up and down with a sort of burning-live
curiosity.  Bryan's hand was thrust under her arm at once.

"Come on, let's walk and get a cab."

As soon as they were clear of the crowd, she pressed his hand to
her breast, and said:

"Did you mind?"

"Mind?  Of course not.  It's for you to mind."

"Who was it?"

"A second cousin.  Diana Leyton."

"Do you know her very well?"

"Oh yes--used to."

"And do you like her very much?"

"Rather!"

He looked round into her face, with laughter bubbling up behind his
gravity.  Ah, but could one tease on such a subject as their love?
And to this day the figure of that tall girl with the burning-white
skin, the burning-brown eyes, the burning-red hair was not quite a
pleasant memory to Gyp.  After that night, they gave up all attempt
to hide their union, going to whatever they wished, whether they
were likely to meet people or not.  Gyp found that nothing was so
easily ignored as Society when the heart was set on other things.
Besides, they were seldom in London, and in the country did not
wish to know anyone, in any case.  But she never lost the feeling
that what was ideal for her might not be ideal for him.  He ought
to go into the world, ought to meet people.  It would not do for
him to be cut off from social pleasures and duties, and then some
day feel that he owed his starvation to her.  To go up to London,
too, every day was tiring, and she persuaded him to take a set of
residential chambers in the Temple, and sleep there three nights a
week.  In spite of all his entreaties, she herself never went to
those chambers, staying always at Bury Street when she came up.  A
kind of superstition prevented her; she would not risk making him
feel that she was hanging round his neck.  Besides, she wanted to
keep herself desirable--so little a matter of course that he would
hanker after her when he was away.  And she never asked him where
he went or whom he saw.  But, sometimes, she wondered whether he
could still be quite faithful to her in thought, love her as he
used to; and joy would go down behind a heavy bank of clouds, till,
at his return, the sun came out again.  Love such as hers--
passionate, adoring, protective, longing to sacrifice itself, to
give all that it had to him, yet secretly demanding all his love in
return--for how could a proud woman love one who did not love her?--
such love as this is always longing for a union more complete than
it is likely to get in a world where all things move and change.
But against the grip of this love she never dreamed of fighting
now.  From the moment when she knew she must cling to him rather
than to her baby, she had made no reservations; all her eggs were
in one basket, as her father's had been before her--all!

The moonlight was shining full on the old bureau and a vase of
tulips standing there, giving those flowers colour that was not
colour, and an unnamed look, as if they came from a world which no
human enters.  It glinted on a bronze bust of old Voltaire, which
she had bought him for a Christmas present, so that the great
writer seemed to be smiling from the hollows of his eyes.  Gyp
turned the bust a little, to catch the light on its far cheek; a
letter was disclosed between it and the oak.  She drew it out
thinking: 'Bless him!  He uses everything for paper-weights'; and,
in the strange light, its first words caught her eyes:


"DEAR BRYAN,

"But I say--you ARE wasting yourself--"


She laid it down, methodically pushing it back under the bust.
Perhaps he had put it there on purpose!  She got up and went to the
window, to check the temptation to read the rest of that letter and
see from whom it was.  No!  She did not admit that she was tempted.
One did not read letters.  Then the full import of those few words
struck into her: "Dear Bryan.  But I say--you ARE wasting
yourself."  A letter in a chain of correspondence, then!  A woman's
hand; but not his mother's, nor his sisters'--she knew their
writings.  Who had dared to say he was wasting himself?  A letter
in a chain of letters!  An intimate correspondent, whose name she
did not know, because--he had not told her!  Wasting himself--on
what?--on his life with her down here?  And was he?  Had she
herself not said that very night that he had lost his laugh?  She
began searching her memory.  Yes, last Christmas vacation--that
clear, cold, wonderful fortnight in Florence, he had been full of
fun.  It was May now.  Was there no memory since--of his old
infectious gaiety?  She could not think of any.  "But I say--you
ARE wasting yourself."  A sudden hatred flared up in her against
the unknown woman who had said that thing--and fever, running
through her veins, made her ears burn.  She longed to snatch forth
and tear to pieces the letter, with its guardianship of which that
bust seemed mocking her; and she turned away with the thought:
'I'll go and meet him; I can't wait here.'

Throwing on a cloak she walked out into the moonlit garden, and
went slowly down the whitened road toward the station.  A magical,
dewless night!  The moonbeams had stolen in to the beech clump,
frosting the boles and boughs, casting a fine ghostly grey over the
shadow-patterned beech-mast.  Gyp took the short cut through it.
Not a leaf moved in there, no living thing stirred; so might an
earth be where only trees inhabited!  She thought: 'I'll bring him
back through here.'  And she waited at the far corner of the clump,
where he must pass, some little distance from the station.  She
never gave people unnecessary food for gossip--any slighting of her
irritated him, she was careful to spare him that.  The train came
in; a car went whizzing by, a cyclist, then the first foot-
passenger, at a great pace, breaking into a run.  She saw that it
was he, and, calling out his name, ran back into the shadow of the
trees.  He stopped dead in his tracks, then came rushing after her.
That pursuit did not last long, and, in his arms, Gyp said:

"If you aren't too hungry, darling, let's stay here a little--it's
so wonderful!"

They sat down on a great root, and leaning against him, looking up
at the dark branches, she said:

"Have you had a hard day?"

"Yes; got hung up by a late consultation; and old Leyton asked me
to come and dine."

Gyp felt a sensation as when feet happen on ground that gives a
little.

"The Leytons--that's Eaton Square, isn't it?  A big dinner?"

"No.  Only the old people, and Bertie and Diana."

"Diana?  That's the girl we met coming out of the theatre, isn't
it?"

"When?  Oh--ah--what a memory, Gyp!"

"Yes; it's good for things that interest me."

"Why?  Did she interest you?"

Gyp turned and looked into his face.

"Yes.  Is she clever?"

"H'm!  I suppose you might call her so."

"And in love with you?"

"Great Scott!  Why?"

"Is it very unlikely?  I am."

He began kissing her lips and hair.  And, closing her eyes, Gyp
thought: 'If only that's not because he doesn't want to answer!'
Then, for some minutes, they were silent as the moonlit beech
clump.

"Answer me truly, Bryan.  Do you never--never--feel as if you were
wasting yourself on me?"

She was certain of a quiver in his grasp; but his face was open and
serene, his voice as usual when he was teasing.

"Well, hardly ever!  Aren't you funny, dear?"

"Promise me faithfully to let me know when you've had enough of me.
Promise!"

"All right!  But don't look for fulfilment in this life."

"I'm not so sure."

"I am."

Gyp put up her lips, and tried to drown for ever in a kiss the
memory of those words: "But I say--you ARE wasting yourself."


IV


Summerhay, coming down next morning, went straight to his bureau;
his mind was not at ease.  "Wasting yourself!"  What had he done
with that letter of Diana's?  He remembered Gyp's coming in just as
he finished reading it.  Searching the pigeonholes and drawers,
moving everything that lay about, he twitched the bust--and the
letter lay disclosed.  He took it up with a sigh of relief:


"DEAR BRYAN,

"But I say--you ARE wasting yourself.  Why, my dear, of course!
'Il faut se faire valoir!'  You have only one foot to put forward;
the other is planted in I don't know what mysterious hole.  One
foot in the grave--at thirty!  Really, Bryan!  Pull it out.
There's such a lot waiting for you.  It's no good your being hoity-
toity, and telling me to mind my business.  I'm speaking for
everyone who knows you.  We all feel the blight on the rose.
Besides, you always were my favourite cousin, ever since I was five
and you a horrid little bully of ten; and I simply hate to think of
you going slowly down instead of quickly up.  Oh!  I know 'D--n the
world!'  But--are you?  I should have thought it was 'd--ning' you!
Enough!  When are you coming to see us?  I've read that book.  The
man seems to think love is nothing but passion, and passion always
fatal.  I wonder!  Perhaps you know.

"Don't be angry with me for being such a grandmother.

"Au revoir.

"Your very good cousin,

"DIANA LEYTON."


He crammed the letter into his pocket, and sat there, appalled.  It
must have lain two days under that bust!  Had Gyp seen it?  He
looked at the bronze face; and the philosopher looked back from the
hollows of his eyes, as if to say: "What do you know of the human
heart, my boy--your own, your mistress's, that girl's, or anyone's?
A pretty dance the heart will lead you yet!  Put it in a packet,
tie it round with string, seal it up, drop it in a drawer, lock the
drawer!  And to-morrow it will be out and skipping on its
wrappings.  Ho!  Ho!"  And Summerhay thought: 'You old goat.  You
never had one!'  In the room above, Gyp would still be standing as
he had left her, putting the last touch to her hair--a man would be
a scoundrel who, even in thought, could--"Hallo!" the eyes of the
bust seemed to say.  "Pity!  That's queer, isn't it?  Why not pity
that red-haired girl, with the skin so white that it burns you, and
the eyes so brown that they burn you--don't they?"  Old Satan!  Gyp
had his heart; no one in the world would ever take it from her!

And in the chair where she had sat last night conjuring up
memories, he too now conjured.  How he had loved her, did love her!
She would always be what she was and had been to him.  And the
sage's mouth seemed to twist before him with the words: "Quite so,
my dear!  But the heart's very funny--very--capacious!"  A tiny
sound made him turn.

Little Gyp was standing in the doorway.

"Hallo!" he said.

"Hallo, Baryn!"  She came flying to him, and he caught her up so
that she stood on his knees with the sunlight shining on her
fluffed out hair.

"Well, Gipsy!  Who's getting a tall girl?"

"I'm goin' to ride."

"Ho, ho!"

"Baryn, let's do Humpty-Dumpty!"

"All right; come on!"  He rose and carried her upstairs.

Gyp was still doing one of those hundred things which occupy women
for a quarter of an hour after they are "quite ready," and at
little Gyp's shout of, "Humpty!" she suspended her needle to watch
the sacred rite.

Summerhay had seated himself on the foot-rail of the bed, rounding
his arms, sinking his neck, blowing out his cheeks to simulate an
egg; then, with an unexpectedness that even little Gyp could always
see through, he rolled backward on to the bed.

And she, simulating "all the king's horses," tried in vain to put
him up again.  This immemorial game, watched by Gyp a hundred
times, had to-day a special preciousness.  If he could be so
ridiculously young, what became of her doubts?  Looking at his face
pulled this way and that, lazily imperturbable under the pommelings
of those small fingers, she thought: 'And that girl dared to say he
was WASTING HIMSELF!'  For in the night conviction had come to her
that those words were written by the tall girl with the white skin,
the girl of the theatre--the Diana of his last night's dinner.
Humpty-Dumpty was up on the bed-rail again for the finale; all the
king's horses were clasped to him, making the egg more round, and
over they both went with shrieks and gurgles.  What a boy he was!
She would not--no, she would not brood and spoil her day with him.

But that afternoon, at the end of a long gallop on the downs, she
turned her head away and said suddenly:

"Is she a huntress?"

"Who?"

"Your cousin--Diana."

In his laziest voice, he answered:

"I suppose you mean--does she hunt me?"

She knew that tone, that expression on his face, knew he was angry;
but could not stop herself.

"I did."

"So you're going to become jealous, Gyp?"

It was one of those cold, naked sayings that should never be spoken
between lovers--one of those sayings at which the heart of the one
who speaks sinks with a kind of dismay, and the heart of the one
who hears quivers.  She cantered on.  And he, perforce, after her.
When she reined in again, he glanced into her face and was afraid.
It was all closed up against him.  And he said softly:

"I didn't mean that, Gyp."

But she only shook her head.  He HAD meant it--had wanted to hurt
her!  It didn't matter--she wouldn't give him the chance again.
And she said:

"Look at that long white cloud, and the apple-green in the sky--
rain to-morrow.  One ought to enjoy any fine day as if it were the
last."

Uneasy, ashamed, yet still a little angry, Summerhay rode on beside
her.

That night, she cried in her sleep; and, when he awakened her,
clung to him and sobbed out:

"Oh! such a dreadful dream!  I thought you'd left off loving me!"

For a long time he held and soothed her.  Never, never!  He would
never leave off loving her!

But a cloud no broader than your hand can spread and cover the
whole day.


V


The summer passed, and always there was that little patch of
silence in her heart, and in his.  The tall, bright days grew
taller, slowly passed their zenith, slowly shortened.  On Saturdays
and Sundays, sometimes with Winton and little Gyp, but more often
alone, they went on the river.  For Gyp, it had never lost the
magic of their first afternoon upon it--never lost its glamour as
of an enchanted world.  All the week she looked forward to these
hours of isolation with him, as if the surrounding water secured
her not only against a world that would take him from her, if it
could, but against that side of his nature, which, so long ago she
had named "old Georgian."  She had once adventured to the law
courts by herself, to see him in his wig and gown.  Under that
stiff grey crescent on his broad forehead, he seemed so hard and
clever--so of a world to which she never could belong, so of a
piece with the brilliant bullying of the whole proceeding.  She had
come away feeling that she only possessed and knew one side of him.
On the river, she had that side utterly--her lovable, lazy,
impudently loving boy, lying with his head in her lap, plunging in
for a swim, splashing round her; or with his sleeves rolled up, his
neck bare, and a smile on his face, plying his slow sculls down-
stream, singing, "Away, my rolling river," or puffing home like a
demon in want of his dinner.  It was such a blessing to lose for a
few hours each week this growing consciousness that she could never
have the whole of him.  But all the time the patch of silence grew,
for doubt in the heart of one lover reacts on the heart of the
other.

When the long vacation came, she made an heroic resolve.  He must
go to Scotland, must have a month away from her, a good long rest.
And while Betty was at the sea with little Gyp, she would take her
father to his cure.  She held so inflexibly to this resolve, that,
after many protests, he said with a shrug:

"Very well, I will then--if you're so keen to get rid of me."

"Keen to get rid!"  When she could not bear to be away from him!
But she forced her feeling back, and said, smiling:

"At last!  There's a good boy!"  Anything!  If only it would bring
him back to her exactly as he had been.  She asked no questions as
to where, or to whom, he would go.


Tunbridge Wells, that charming purgatory where the retired prepare
their souls for a more permanent retirement, was dreaming on its
hills in long rows of adequate villas.  Its commons and woods had
remained unscorched, so that the retired had not to any extent
deserted it, that August, for the sea.  They still shopped in the
Pantiles, strolled the uplands, or flourished their golf-clubs in
the grassy parks; they still drank tea in each other's houses and
frequented the many churches.  One could see their faces, as it
were, goldened by their coming glory, like the chins of children by
reflection from buttercups.  From every kind of life they had
retired, and, waiting now for a more perfect day, were doing their
utmost to postpone it.  They lived very long.

Gyp and her father had rooms in a hotel where he could bathe and
drink the waters without having to climb three hills.  This was the
first cure she had attended since the long-past time at Wiesbaden.
Was it possible that was only six years ago?  She felt so utterly,
so strangely different!  Then life had been sparkling sips of every
drink, and of none too much; now it was one long still draft, to
quench a thirst that would not be quenched.

During these weeks she held herself absolutely at her father's
disposal, but she lived for the post, and if, by any chance, she
did not get her daily letter, her heart sank to the depths.  She
wrote every day, sometimes twice, then tore up that second letter,
remembering for what reason she had set herself to undergo this
separation.  During the first week, his letters had a certain
equanimity; in the second week they became ardent; in the third,
they were fitful--now beginning to look forward, now moody and
dejected; and they were shorter.  During this third week Aunt
Rosamund joined them.  The good lady had become a staunch supporter
of Gyp's new existence, which, in her view, served Fiorsen right.
Why should the poor child's life be loveless?  She had a definitely
low opinion of men, and a lower of the state of the marriage-laws;
in her view, any woman who struck a blow in that direction was
something of a heroine.  And she was oblivious of the fact that Gyp
was quite guiltless of the desire to strike a blow against the
marriage-laws, or anything else.  Aunt Rosamund's aristocratic and
rebellious blood boiled with hatred of what she called the "stuffy
people" who still held that women were men's property.  It had made
her specially careful never to put herself in that position.

She had brought Gyp a piece of news.

"I was walking down Bond Street past that tea-and-tart shop, my
dear--you know, where they have those special coffee-creams, and
who should come out of it but Miss Daphne Wing and our friend
Fiorsen; and pretty hangdog he looked.  He came up to me, with his
little lady watching him like a lynx.  Really, my dear, I was
rather sorry for him; he'd got that hungry look of his; she'd been
doing all the eating, I'm sure.  He asked me how you were.  I told
him, 'Very well.'

"'When you see her,' he said, 'tell her I haven't forgotten her,
and never shall.  But she was quite right; this is the sort of lady
that I'm fit for.'  And the way he looked at that girl made me feel
quite uncomfortable.  Then he gave me one of his little bows; and
off they went, she as pleased as Punch.  I really was sorry for
him."

Gyp said quietly:

"Ah!  you needn't have been, Auntie; he'll always be able to be
sorry for himself."

A little shocked at her niece's cynicism, Aunt Rosamund was silent.
The poor lady had not lived with Fiorsen!

That same afternoon, Gyp was sitting in a shelter on the common, a
book on her knee--thinking her one long thought: 'To-day is
Thursday--Monday week!  Eleven days--still!'--when three figures
came slowly toward her, a man, a woman, and what should have been a
dog.  English love of beauty and the rights of man had forced its
nose back, deprived it of half its ears, and all but three inches
or so of tail.  It had asthma--and waddled in disillusionment.  A
voice said:

"This'll do, Maria.  We can take the sun 'ere."

But for that voice, with the permanent cold hoarseness caught
beside innumerable graves, Gyp might not have recognized Mr. Wagge,
for he had taken off his beard, leaving nothing but side-whiskers,
and Mrs. Wagge had filled out wonderfully.  They were some time
settling down beside her.

"You sit here, Maria; you won't get the sun in your eyes."

"No, Robert; I'll sit here.  You sit there."

"No, YOU sit there."

"No, I will.  Come, Duckie!"

But the dog, standing stockily on the pathway was gazing at Gyp,
while what was left of its broad nose moved from side to side.  Mr.
Wagge followed the direction of its glance.

"Oh!" he said, "oh, this is a surprise!"  And fumbling at his straw
hat, he passed his other hand over his sleeve and held it out to
Gyp.  It felt almost dry, and fatter than it had been.  While she
was shaking it, the dog moved forward and sat down on her feet.
Mrs. Wagge also extended her hand, clad in a shiny glove.

"This is a--a--pleasure," she murmured.  "Who WOULD have thought of
meeting you!  Oh, don't let Duckie sit against your pretty frock!
Come, Duckie!"

But Duckie did not move, resting his back against Gyp's shin-bones.
Mr. Wagge, whose tongue had been passing over a mouth which she saw
to its full advantage for the first time, said abruptly:

"You 'aven't come to live here, 'ave you?"

"Oh no!  I'm only with my father for the baths."

"Ah, I thought not, never havin' seen you.  We've been retired here
ourselves a matter of twelve months.  A pretty spot."

"Yes; lovely, isn't it?"

"We wanted nature.  The air suits us, though a bit--er--too irony,
as you might say.  But it's a long-lived place.  We were quite a
time lookin' round."

Mrs. Wagge added in her thin voice:

"Yes--we'd thought of Wimbledon, you see, but Mr. Wagge liked this
better; he can get his walk, here; and it's more--select, perhaps.
We have several friends.  The church is very nice."

Mr. Wagge's face assumed an uncertain expression.  He said bluffly:

"I was always a chapel man; but--I don't know how it is--there's
something in a place like this that makes church seem more--more
suitable; my wife always had a leaning that way.  I never conceal
my actions."

Gyp murmured:

"It's a question of atmosphere, isn't it?"

Mr. Wagge shook his head.

"No; I don't hold with incense--we're not 'Igh Church.  But how are
YOU, ma'am?  We often speak of you.  You're looking well."

His face had become a dusky orange, and Mrs. Wagge's the colour of
a doubtful beetroot.  The dog on Gyp's feet stirred, snuffled,
turned round, and fell heavily against her legs again.  She said
quietly:

"I was hearing of Daisy only to-day.  She's quite a star now, isn't
she?"

Mrs. Wagge sighed.  Mr. Wagge looked away and answered:

"It's a sore subject.  There she is, making her forty and fifty
pound a week, and run after in all the papers.  She's a success--no
doubt about it.  And she works.  Saving a matter of fifteen 'undred
a year, I shouldn't be surprised.  Why, at my best, the years the
influenza was so bad, I never cleared a thousand net.  No, she's a
success."

Mrs. Wagge added:

"Have you seen her last photograph--the one where she's standing
between two hydrangea-tubs?  It was her own idea."

Mr. Wagge mumbled suddenly:

"I'm always glad to see her when she takes a run down in a car.
But I've come here for quiet after the life I've led, and I don't
want to think about it, especially before you, ma'am.  I don't--
that's a fact."

A silence followed, during which Mr. and Mrs. Wagge looked at their
feet, and Gyp looked at the dog.

"Ah!--here you are!"  It was Winton, who had come up from behind
the shelter, and stood, with eyebrows slightly raised.  Gyp could
not help a smile.  Her father's weathered, narrow face, half-veiled
eyes, thin nose, little crisp, grey moustache that did not hide his
firm lips, his lean, erect figure, the very way he stood, his thin,
dry, clipped voice were the absolute antithesis of Mr. Wagge's
thickset, stoutly planted form, thick-skinned, thick-featured face,
thick, rather hoarse yet oily voice.  It was as if Providence had
arranged a demonstration of the extremes of social type.  And she
said:

"Mr. and Mrs. Wagge--my father."

Winton raised his hat.  Gyp remained seated, the dog Duckie being
still on her feet.

"'Appy to meet you, sir.  I hope you have benefit from the waters.
They're supposed to be most powerful, I believe."

"Thank you--not more deadly than most.  Are you drinking them?"

Mr. Wagge smiled.

"Nao!" he said, "we live here."

"Indeed!  Do you find anything to do?"

"Well, as a fact, I've come here for rest.  But I take a Turkish
bath once a fortnight--find it refreshing; keeps the pores of the
skin acting."

Mrs. Wagge added gently:

"It seems to suit my husband wonderfully."

Winton murmured:

"Yes.  Is this your dog?  Bit of a philosopher, isn't he?"

Mrs. Wagge answered:

"Oh, he's a naughty dog, aren't you, Duckie?"

The dog Duckie, feeling himself the cynosure of every eye, rose and
stood panting into Gyp's face.  She took the occasion to get up.

"We must go, I'm afraid.  Good-bye.  It's been very nice to meet
you again.  When you see Daisy, will you please give her my love?"

Mrs. Wagge unexpectedly took a handkerchief from her reticule.  Mr.
Wagge cleared his throat heavily.  Gyp was conscious of the dog
Duckie waddling after them, and of Mrs. Wagge calling, "Duckie,
Duckie!" from behind her handkerchief.

Winton said softly:

"So those two got that pretty filly!  Well, she didn't show much
quality, when you come to think of it.  She's still with our
friend, according to your aunt."

Gyp nodded.

"Yes; and I do hope she's happy."

"HE isn't, apparently.  Serves him right."

Gyp shook her head.

"Oh no, Dad!"

"Well, one oughtn't to wish any man worse than he's likely to get.
But when I see people daring to look down their noses at you--by
Jove!  I get--"

"Darling, what does that matter?"

Winton answered testily:

"It matters very much to me--the impudence of it!"  His mouth
relaxed in a grim little smile: "Ah, well--there's not much to
choose between us so far as condemning our neighbours goes.
'Charity Stakes--also ran, Charles Clare Winton, the Church, and
Mrs. Grundy.'"

They opened out to each other more in those few days at Tunbridge
Wells than they had for years.  Whether the process of bathing
softened his crust, or the air that Mr. Wagge found "a bit--er--too
irony, as you might say," had upon Winton the opposite effect, he
certainly relaxed that first duty of man, the concealment of his
spirit, and disclosed his activities as he never had before--how
such and such a person had been set on his feet, so and so sent out
to Canada, this man's wife helped over her confinement, that man's
daughter started again after a slip.  And Gyp's child-worship of
him bloomed anew.

On the last afternoon of their stay, she strolled out with him
through one of the long woods that stretched away behind their
hotel.  Excited by the coming end of her self-inflicted penance,
moved by the beauty among those sunlit trees, she found it
difficult to talk.  But Winton, about to lose her, was quite
loquacious.  Starting from the sinister change in the racing-world--
so plutocratic now, with the American seat, the increase of
bookmaking owners, and other tragic occurrences--he launched forth
into a jeremiad on the condition of things in general.  Parliament,
he thought, especially now that members were paid, had lost its
self-respect; the towns had eaten up the country; hunting was
threatened; the power and vulgarity of the press were appalling;
women had lost their heads; and everybody seemed afraid of having
any "breeding."  By the time little Gyp was Gyp's age, they would
all be under the thumb of Watch Committees, live in Garden Cities,
and have to account for every half-crown they spent, and every
half-hour of their time; the horse, too, would be an extinct
animal, brought out once a year at the lord-mayor's show.  He
hoped--the deuce--he might not be alive to see it.  And suddenly he
added: "What do you think happens after death, Gyp?"

They were sitting on one of those benches that crop up suddenly in
the heart of nature.  All around them briars and bracken were just
on the turn; and the hum of flies, the vague stir of leaves and
life formed but a single sound.  Gyp, gazing into the wood,
answered:

"Nothing, Dad.  I think we just go back."

"Ah--My idea, too!"

Neither of them had ever known what the other thought about it
before!

Gyp murmured:


     "La vie est vaine--
      Un peu d'amour,
      Un peu de haine,
        Et puis bonjour!"


Not quite a grunt or quite a laugh emerged from the depths of
Winton, and, looking up at the sky, he said:

"And what they call 'God,' after all, what is it?  Just the very
best you can get out of yourself--nothing more, so far as I can
see.  Dash it, you can't imagine anything more than you can
imagine.  One would like to die in the open, though, like Whyte-
Melville.  But there's one thing that's always puzzled me, Gyp.
All one's life one's tried to have a single heart.  Death comes,
and out you go!  Then why did one love, if there's to be no meeting
after?"

"Yes; except for that, who would care?  But does the wanting to
meet make it any more likely, Dad?  The world couldn't go on
without love; perhaps loving somebody or something with all your
heart is all in itself."

Winton stared; the remark was a little deep.

"Ye-es," he said at last.  "I often think the religious johnnies
are saving their money to put on a horse that'll never run after
all.  I remember those Yogi chaps in India.  There they sat, and
this jolly world might rot round them for all they cared--they
thought they were going to be all right themselves, in Kingdom
Come.  But suppose it doesn't come?"

Gyp murmured with a little smile:

"Perhaps they were trying to love everything at once."

"Rum way of showing it.  And, hang it, there are such a lot of
things one can't love!  Look at that!"  He pointed upwards.
Against the grey bole of a beech-tree hung a board, on which were
the freshly painted words:


                   PRIVATE

        TRESPASSERS WILL BE PROSECUTED


"That board is stuck up all over this life and the next.  Well, WE
won't give them the chance to warn us off, Gyp."

Slipping her hand through his arm, she pressed close up to him.

"No, Dad; you and I will go off with the wind and the sun, and the
trees and the waters, like Procris in my picture."


VI


The curious and complicated nature of man in matters of the heart
is not sufficiently conceded by women, professors, clergymen,
judges, and other critics of his conduct.  And naturally so, since
they all have vested interests in his simplicity.  Even journalists
are in the conspiracy to make him out less wayward than he is, and
dip their pens in epithets, if his heart diverges inch or ell.

Bryan Summerhay was neither more curious nor more complicated than
those of his own sex who would condemn him for getting into the
midnight express from Edinburgh with two distinct emotions in his
heart--a regretful aching for the girl, his cousin, whom he was
leaving behind, and a rapturous anticipation of the woman whom he
was going to rejoin.  How was it possible that he could feel both
at once?  "Against all the rules," women and other moralists would
say.  Well, the fact is, a man's heart knows no rules.  And he
found it perfectly easy, lying in his bunk, to dwell on memories of
Diana handing him tea, or glancing up at him, while he turned the
leaves of her songs, with that enticing mockery in her eyes and
about her lips; and yet the next moment to be swept from head to
heel by the longing to feel Gyp's arms around him, to hear her
voice, look in her eyes, and press his lips on hers.  If, instead
of being on his way to rejoin a mistress, he had been going home to
a wife, he would not have felt a particle more of spiritual
satisfaction, perhaps not so much.  He was returning to the
feelings and companionship that he knew were the most deeply
satisfying spiritually and bodily he would ever have.  And yet he
could ache a little for that red-haired girl, and this without any
difficulty.  How disconcerting!  But, then, truth is.

From that queer seesawing of his feelings, he fell asleep, dreamed
of all things under the sun as men only can in a train, was
awakened by the hollow silence in some station, slept again for
hours, it seemed, and woke still at the same station, fell into a
sound sleep at last that ended at Willesden in broad daylight.
Dressing hurriedly, he found he had but one emotion now, one
longing--to get to Gyp.  Sitting back in his cab, hands deep-thrust
into the pockets of his ulster, he smiled, enjoying even the smell
of the misty London morning.  Where would she be--in the hall of
the hotel waiting, or upstairs still?

Not in the hall!  And asking for her room, he made his way to its
door.

She was standing in the far corner motionless, deadly pale,
quivering from head to foot; and when he flung his arms round her,
she gave a long sigh, closing her eyes.  With his lips on hers, he
could feel her almost fainting; and he too had no consciousness of
anything but that long kiss.

Next day, they went abroad to a little place not far from Fecamp,
in that Normandy countryside where all things are large--the
people, the beasts, the unhedged fields, the courtyards of the
farms guarded so squarely by tall trees, the skies, the sea, even
the blackberries large.  And Gyp was happy.  But twice there came
letters, in that too-well-remembered handwriting, which bore a
Scottish postmark.  A phantom increases in darkness, solidifies
when seen in mist.  Jealousy is rooted not in reason, but in the
nature that feels it--in her nature that loved desperately, felt
proudly.  And jealousy flourishes on scepticism.  Even if pride
would have let her ask, what good?  She would not have believed the
answers.  Of course he would say--if only out of pity--that he
never let his thoughts rest on another woman.  But, after all, it
was only a phantom.  There were many hours in those three weeks
when she felt he really loved her, and so--was happy.

They went back to the Red House at the end of the first week in
October.  Little Gyp, home from the sea, was now an almost
accomplished horsewoman.  Under the tutelage of old Pettance, she
had been riding steadily round and round those rough fields by the
linhay which they called "the wild," her firm brown legs astride of
the mouse-coloured pony, her little brown face, with excited, dark
eyes, very erect, her auburn crop of short curls flopping up and
down on her little straight back.  She wanted to be able to "go out
riding" with Grandy and Mum and Baryn.  And the first days were
spent by them all more or less in fulfilling her new desires.  Then
term began, and Gyp sat down again to the long sharing of Summerhay
with his other life.


VII


One afternoon at the beginning of November, the old Scotch terrier,
Ossian, lay on the path in the pale sunshine.  He had lain there
all the morning since his master went up by the early train.
Nearly sixteen years old, he was deaf now and disillusioned, and
every time that Summerhay left him, his eyes seemed to say: "You
will leave me once too often!"  The blandishments of the other nice
people about the house were becoming to him daily less and less a
substitute for that which he felt he had not much time left to
enjoy; nor could he any longer bear a stranger within the gate.
From her window, Gyp saw him get up and stand with his back ridged,
growling at the postman, and, fearing for the man's calves, she
hastened out.

Among the letters was one in that dreaded hand writing marked
"Immediate," and forwarded from his chambers.  She took it up, and
put it to her nose.  A scent--of what?  Too faint to say.  Her
thumb nails sought the edge of the flap on either side.  She laid
the letter down.  Any other letter, but not that--she wanted to
open it too much.  Readdressing it, she took it out to put with the
other letters.  And instantly the thought went through her: 'What a
pity!  If I read it, and there was nothing!'  All her restless,
jealous misgivings of months past would then be set at rest!  She
stood, uncertain, with the letter in her hand.  Ah--but if there
WERE something!  She would lose at one stroke her faith in him, and
her faith in herself--not only his love but her own self-respect.
She dropped the letter on the table.  Could she not take it up to
him herself?  By the three o'clock slow train, she could get to him
soon after five.  She looked at her watch.  She would just have
time to walk down.  And she ran upstairs.  Little Gyp was sitting
on the top stair--her favourite seat--looking at a picture-book.

"I'm going up to London, darling.  Tell Betty I may be back to-
night, or perhaps I may not.  Give me a good kiss."

Little Gyp gave the good kiss, and said:

"Let me see you put your hat on, Mum."

While Gyp was putting on hat and furs, she thought: "I shan't take
a bag; I can always make shift at Bury Street if--"  She did not
finish the thought, but the blood came up in her cheeks.  "Take
care of Ossy, darling!"  She ran down, caught up the letter, and
hastened away to the station.  In the train, her cheeks still
burned.  Might not this first visit to his chambers be like her old
first visit to the little house in Chelsea?  She took the letter
out.  How she hated that large, scrawly writing for all the
thoughts and fears it had given her these past months!  If that
girl knew how much anxiety and suffering she had caused, would she
stop writing, stop seeing him?  And Gyp tried to conjure up her
face, that face seen only for a minute, and the sound of that
clipped, clear voice but once heard--the face and voice of one
accustomed to have her own way.  No!  It would only make her go on
all the more.  Fair game, against a woman with no claim--but that
of love.  Thank heaven she had not taken him away from any woman--
unless--that girl perhaps thought she had!  Ah!  Why, in all these
years, had she never got to know his secrets, so that she might
fight against what threatened her?  But would she have fought?  To
fight for love was degrading, horrible!  And yet--if one did not?
She got up and stood at the window of her empty carriage.  There
was the river--and there--yes, the very backwater where he had
begged her to come to him for good.  It looked so different, bare
and shorn, under the light grey sky; the willows were all polled,
the reeds cut down.  And a line from one of his favourite sonnets
came into her mind:


     "Bare ruined choirs where late the sweet birds sang."


Ah, well!  Time enough to face things when they came.  She would
only think of seeing him!  And she put the letter back to burn what
hole it liked in the pocket of her fur coat.

The train was late; it was past five, already growing dark, when
she reached Paddington and took a cab to the Temple.  Strange to be
going there for the first time--not even to know exactly where
Harcourt Buildings were.  At Temple Lane, she stopped the cab and
walked down that narrow, ill-lighted, busy channel into the heart
of the Great Law.

"Up those stone steps, miss; along the railin', second doorway."
Gyp came to the second doorway and in the doubtful light
scrutinized the names.  "Summerhay--second floor."  She began to
climb the stairs.  Her heart beat fast.  What would he say?  How
greet her?  Was it not absurd, dangerous, to have come?  He would
be having a consultation perhaps.  There would be a clerk or
someone to beard, and what name could she give?  On the first floor
she paused, took out a blank card, and pencilled on it:


     "Can I see you a minute?--G."


Then, taking a long breath to quiet her heart, she went on up.
There was the name, and there the door.  She rang--no one came;
listened--could hear no sound.  All looked so massive and bleak and
dim--the iron railings, stone stairs, bare walls, oak door.  She
rang again.  What should she do?  Leave the letter?  Not see him
after all--her little romance all come to naught--just a chilly
visit to Bury Street, where perhaps there would be no one but Mrs.
Markey, for her father, she knew, was at Mildenham, hunting, and
would not be up till Sunday!  And she thought: 'I'll leave the
letter, go back to the Strand, have some tea, and try again.'

She took out the letter, with a sort of prayer pushed it through
the slit of the door, heard it fall into its wire cage; then slowly
descended the stairs to the outer passage into Temple Lane.  It was
thronged with men and boys, at the end of the day's work.  But when
she had nearly reached the Strand, a woman's figure caught her eye.
She was walking with a man on the far side; their faces were turned
toward each other.  Gyp heard their voices, and, faint, dizzy,
stood looking back after them.  They passed under a lamp; the light
glinted on the woman's hair, on a trick of Summerhay's, the lift of
one shoulder, when he was denying something; she heard his voice,
high-pitched.  She watched them cross, mount the stone steps she
had just come down, pass along the railed stone passage, enter the
doorway, disappear.  And such horror seized on her that she could
hardly walk away.

"Oh no!  Oh no!  Oh no!"  So it went in her mind--a kind of
moaning, like that of a cold, rainy wind through dripping trees.
What did it mean?  Oh, what did it mean?  In this miserable tumult,
the only thought that did not come to her was that of going back to
his chambers.  She hurried away.  It was a wonder she was not run
over, for she had no notion what she was doing, where going, and
crossed the streets without the least attention to traffic.  She
came to Trafalgar Square, and stood leaning against its parapet in
front of the National Gallery.  Here she had her first coherent
thought:  So that was why his chambers had been empty!  No clerk--
no one!  That they might be alone.  Alone, where she had dreamed of
being alone with him!  And only that morning he had kissed her and
said, "Good-bye, treasure!"  A dreadful little laugh got caught in
her throat, confused with a sob.  Why--why had she a heart?  Down
there, against the plinth of one of the lions, a young man leaned,
with his arms round a girl, pressing her to him.  Gyp turned away
from the sight and resumed her miserable wandering.  She went up
Bury Street.  No light; not any sign of life!  It did not matter;
she could not have gone in, could not stay still, must walk!  She
put up her veil to get more air, feeling choked.

The trees of the Green Park, under which she was passing now, had
still a few leaves, and they gleamed in the lamplight copper-
coloured as that girl's hair.  All sorts of torturing visions came
to her.  Those empty chambers!  She had seen one little minute of
their intimacy.  A hundred kisses might have passed between them--a
thousand words of love!  And he would lie to her.  Already he had
acted a lie!  She had not deserved that.  And this sense of the
injustice done her was the first relief she felt--this definite
emotion of a mind clouded by sheer misery.  She had not deserved
that he should conceal things from her.  She had not had one
thought or look for any man but him since that night down by the
sea, when he came to her across the garden in the moonlight--not
one thought--and never would!  Poor relief enough!  She was in Hyde
Park now, wandering along a pathway which cut diagonally across the
grass.  And with more resolution, more purpose, she began searching
her memory for signs, proofs of WHEN he had changed to her.  She
could not find them.  He had not changed in his ways to her; not at
all.  Could one act love, then?  Act passion, or--horrible
thought!--when he kissed her nowadays, was he thinking of that
girl?

She heard the rustling of leaves behind.  A youth was following her
along the path, some ravening youth, whose ungoverned breathing had
a kind of pathos in it.  Heaven!  What irony!  She was too
miserable to care, hardly even knew when, in the main path again,
she was free from his pursuit.  Love!  Why had it such possession
of her, that a little thing--yes, a little thing--only the sight of
him with another, should make her suffer so?  She came out on the
other side of the park.  What should she do?  Crawl home, creep
into her hole, and lie there stricken!  At Paddington she found a
train just starting and got in.  There were other people in the
carriage, business men from the city, lawyers, from that--place
where she had been.  And she was glad of their company, glad of the
crackle of evening papers and stolid faces giving her looks of
stolid interest from behind them, glad to have to keep her mask on,
afraid of the violence of her emotion.  But one by one they got
out, to their cars or their constitutionals, and she was left alone
to gaze at darkness and the deserted river just visible in the
light of a moon smothered behind the sou'westerly sky.  And for one
wild moment she thought: 'Shall I open the door and step out--one
step--peace!'

She hurried away from the station.  It was raining, and she drew up
her veil to feel its freshness on her hot face.  There was just
light enough for her to see the pathway through the beech clump.
The wind in there was sighing, soughing, driving the dark boughs,
tearing off the leaves, little black wet shapes that came whirling
at her face.  The wild melancholy in that swaying wood was too much
for Gyp; she ran, thrusting her feet through the deep rustling
drifts of leaves not yet quite drenched.  They clung all wet round
her thin stockings, and the rainy wind beat her forehead.  At the
edge, she paused for breath, leaning against the bole of a beech,
peering back, where the wild whirling wind was moaning and tearing
off the leaves.  Then, bending her head to the rain, she went on in
the open, trying to prepare herself to show nothing when she
reached home.

She got in and upstairs to her room, without being seen.  If she
had possessed any sedative drug she would have taken it.  Anything
to secure oblivion from this aching misery!  Huddling before the
freshly lighted fire, she listened to the wind driving through the
poplars; and once more there came back to her the words of that
song sung by the Scottish girl at Fiorsen's concert:


     "And my heart reft of its own sun,
      Deep lies in death-torpor cold and grey."


Presently she crept into bed, and at last fell asleep.

She woke next morning with the joyful thought: 'It's Saturday;
he'll be down soon after lunch!'  And then she remembered.  Ah, no!
It was too much!  At the pang of that remembrance, it was as if a
devil entered into her--a devil of stubborn pride, which grew
blacker with every hour of that morning.  After lunch, that she
might not be in when he came, she ordered her mare, and rode up on
the downs alone.  The rain had ceased, but the wind still blew
strong from the sou'west, and the sky was torn and driven in
swathes of white and grey to north, south, east, and west, and
puffs of what looked like smoke scurried across the cloud banks and
the glacier-blue rifts between.  The mare had not been out the day
before, and on the springy turf stretched herself in that
thoroughbred gallop which bears a rider up, as it were, on air,
till nothing but the thud of hoofs, the grass flying by, the
beating of the wind in her face betrayed to Gyp that she was
moving.  For full two miles they went without a pull, only stopped
at last by the finish of the level.  From there, one could see far--
away over to Wittenham Clumps across the Valley, and to the high
woods above the river in the east--away, in the south and west,
under that strange, torn sky, to a whole autumn land, of whitish
grass, bare fields, woods of grey and gold and brown, fast being
pillaged.  But all that sweep of wind, and sky, freshness of rain,
and distant colour could not drive out of Gyp's heart the hopeless
aching and the devil begotten of it.


VIII


There are men who, however well-off--either in money or love--must
gamble.  Their affections may be deeply rooted, but they cannot
repulse fate when it tantalizes them with a risk.

Summerhay, who loved Gyp, was not tired of her either physically or
mentally, and even felt sure he would never tire, had yet dallied
for months with this risk which yesterday had come to a head.  And
now, taking his seat in the train to return to her, he felt
unquiet; and since he resented disquietude, he tried defiantly to
think of other things, but he was very unsuccessful.  Looking back,
it was difficult for him to tell when the snapping of his defences
had begun.  A preference shown by one accustomed to exact
preference is so insidious.  The girl, his cousin, was herself a
gambler.  He did not respect her as he respected Gyp; she did not
touch him as Gyp touched him, was not--no, not half--so deeply
attractive; but she had--confound her! the power of turning his
head at moments, a queer burning, skin-deep fascination, and, above
all, that most dangerous quality in a woman--the lure of an
imperious vitality.  In love with life, she made him feel that he
was letting things slip by.  And since to drink deep of life was
his nature, too--what chance had he of escape?  Far-off cousinhood
is a dangerous relationship.  Its familiarity is not great enough
to breed contempt, but sufficient to remove those outer defences to
intimacy, the conquest of which, in other circumstances, demands
the conscious effort which warns people whither they are going.

Summerhay had not realized the extent of the danger, but he had
known that it existed, especially since Scotland.  It would be
interesting--as the historians say--to speculate on what he would
have done, if he could have foretold what would happen.  But he had
certainly not foretold the crisis of yesterday evening.  He had
received a telegram from her at lunch-time, suggesting the
fulfilment of a jesting promise, made in Scotland, that she should
have tea with him and see his chambers--a small and harmless
matter.  Only, why had he dismissed his clerk so early?  That is
the worst of gamblers--they will put a polish on the risks they
run.  He had not reckoned, perhaps, that she would look so pretty,
lying back in his big Oxford chair, with furs thrown open so that
her white throat showed, her hair gleaming, a smile coming and
going on her lips; her white hand, with polished nails, holding
that cigarette; her brown eyes, so unlike Gyp's, fixed on him; her
slim foot with high instep thrust forward in transparent stocking.
Not reckoned that, when he bent to take her cup, she would put out
her hands, draw his head down, press her lips to his, and say: "Now
you know!"  His head had gone round, still went round, thinking of
it!  That was all.  A little matter--except that, in an hour, he
would be meeting the eyes of one he loved much more.  And yet--the
poison was in his blood; a kiss so cut short--by what--what counter
impulse?--leaving him gazing at her without a sound, inhaling that
scent of hers--something like a pine wood's scent, only sweeter,
while she gathered up her gloves, fastened her furs, as if it had
been he, not she, who had snatched that kiss.  But her hand had
pressed his arm against her as they went down the stairs.  And
getting into her cab at the Temple Station, she had looked back at
him with a little half-mocking smile of challenge and comradeship
and promise.  The link would be hard to break--even if he wanted
to.  And yet nothing would come of it!  Heavens, no!  He had never
thought!  Marriage!  Impossible!  Anything else--even more
impossible!  When he got back to his chambers, he had found in the
box the letter, which her telegram had repeated, readdressed by Gyp
from the Red House.  And a faint uneasiness at its having gone down
there passed through him.  He spent a restless evening at the club,
playing cards and losing; sat up late in his chambers over a case;
had a hard morning's work, and only now that he was nearing Gyp,
realized how utterly he had lost the straightforward simplicity of
things.

When he reached the house and found that she had gone out riding
alone, his uneasiness increased.  Why had she not waited as usual
for him to ride with her?  And he paced up and down the garden,
where the wind was melancholy in the boughs of the walnut-tree that
had lost all its leaves.  Little Gyp was out for her walk, and only
poor old Ossy kept him company.  Had she not expected him by the
usual train?  He would go and try to find out.  He changed and went
to the stables.  Old Pettance was sitting on a corn-bin, examining
an aged Ruff's Guide, which contained records of his long-past
glory, scored under by a pencil: "June Stakes:  Agility.  E.
Pettance 3rd."  "Tidport Selling H'Cap:  Dorothea, E. Pettance, o."
"Salisbury Cup:  Also ran Plum Pudding, E. Pettance," with other
triumphs.  He got up, saying:

"Good-afternoon, sir; windy afternoon, sir.  The mistress 'as been
gone out over two hours, sir.  She wouldn't take me with 'er."

"Hurry up, then, and saddle Hotspur."

"Yes, sir; very good, sir."

Over two hours!  He went up on to the downs, by the way they
generally came home, and for an hour he rode, keeping a sharp
lookout for any sign of her.  No use; and he turned home, hot and
uneasy.  On the hall table were her riding-whip and gloves.  His
heart cleared, and he ran upstairs.  She was doing her hair and
turned her head sharply as he entered.  Hurrying across the room he
had the absurd feeling that she was standing at bay.  She drew
back, bent her face away from him, and said:

"No!  Don't pretend!  Anything's better than pretence!"

He had never seen her look or speak like that--her face so hard,
her eyes so stabbing!  And he recoiled dumbfounded.

"What's the matter, Gyp?"

"Nothing.  Only--don't pretend!"  And, turning to the glass, she
went on twisting and coiling up her hair.

She looked lovely, flushed from her ride in the wind, and he had a
longing to seize her in his arms.  But her face stopped him.  With
fear and a sort of anger, he said:

"You might explain, I think."

An evil little smile crossed her face.

"YOU can do that.  I am in the dark."

"I don't in the least understand what you mean."

"Don't you?"  There was something deadly in her utter disregard of
him, while her fingers moved swiftly about her dark, shining hair--
something so appallingly sudden in this hostility that Summerhay
felt a peculiar sensation in his head, as if he must knock it
against something.  He sat down on the side of the bed.  Was it
that letter?  But how?  It had not been opened.  He said:

"What on earth has happened, Gyp, since I went up yesterday?  Speak
out, and don't keep me like this!"

She turned and looked at him.

"Don't pretend that you're upset because you can't kiss me!  Don't
be false, Bryan!  You know it's been pretence for months."

Summerhay's voice grew high.

"I think you've gone mad.  I don't know what you mean."

"Oh, yes, you do.  Did you get a letter yesterday marked
'Immediate'?"

Ah!  So it WAS that!  To meet the definite, he hardened, and said
stubbornly:

"Yes; from Diana Leyton.  Do you object?"

"No; only, how do you think it got back to you from here so
quickly?"

He said dully:

"I don't know.  By post, I suppose."

"No; I put it in your letter-box myself--at half-past five."

Summerhay's mind was trained to quickness, and the full
significance of those words came home to him at once.  He stared at
her fixedly.

"I suppose you saw us, then."

"Yes."

He got up, made a helpless movement, and said:

"Oh, Gyp, don't!  Don't be so hard!  I swear by--"

Gyp gave a little laugh, turned her back, and went on coiling at
her hair.  And again that horrid feeling that he must knock his
head against something rose in Summerhay.  He said helplessly:

"I only gave her tea.  Why not?  She's my cousin.  It's nothing!
Why should you think the worst of me?  She asked to see my
chambers.  Why not?  I couldn't refuse."

"Your EMPTY chambers?  Don't, Bryan--it's pitiful!  I can't bear to
hear you."

At that lash of the whip, Summerhay turned and said:

"It pleases you to think the worst, then?"

Gyp stopped the movement of her fingers and looked round at him.

"I've always told you you were perfectly free.  Do you think I
haven't felt it going on for months?  There comes a moment when
pride revolts--that's all.  Don't lie to me, PLEASE!"

"I am not in the habit of lying."  But still he did not go.  That
awful feeling of encirclement, of a net round him, through which he
could not break--a net which he dimly perceived even in his
resentment to have been spun by himself, by that cursed intimacy,
kept from her all to no purpose--beset him more closely every
minute.  Could he not make her see the truth, that it was only her
he REALLY loved?  And he said:

"Gyp, I swear to you there's nothing but one kiss, and that was
not--"

A shudder went through her from head to foot; she cried out:

"Oh, please go away!"

He went up to her, put his hands on her shoulders, and said:

"It's only you I really love.  I swear it!  Why don't you believe
me?  You must believe me.  You can't be so wicked as not to.  It's
foolish--foolish!  Think of our life--think of our love--think of
all--"  Her face was frozen; he loosened his grasp of her, and
muttered: "Oh, your pride is awful!"

"Yes, it's all I've got.  Lucky for you I have it.  You can go to
her when you like."

"Go to her!  It's absurd--I couldn't--If you wish, I'll never see
her again."

She turned away to the glass.

"Oh, don't!  What IS the use?"

Nothing is harder for one whom life has always spoiled than to find
his best and deepest feelings disbelieved in.  At that moment,
Summerhay meant absolutely what he said.  The girl was nothing to
him!  If she was pursuing him, how could he help it?  And he could
not make Gyp believe it!  How awful!  How truly terrible!  How
unjust and unreasonable of her!  And why?  What had he done that
she should be so unbelieving--should think him such a shallow
scoundrel?  Could he help the girl's kissing him?  Help her being
fond of him?  Help having a man's nature?  Unreasonable, unjust,
ungenerous!  And giving her a furious look, he went out.

He went down to his study, flung himself on the sofa and turned his
face to the wall.  Devilish!  But he had not been there five
minutes before his anger seemed childish and evaporated into the
chill of deadly and insistent fear.  He was perceiving himself up
against much more than a mere incident, up against her nature--its
pride and scepticism--yes--and the very depth and singleness of her
love.  While she wanted nothing but him, he wanted and took so much
else.  He perceived this but dimly, as part of that feeling that he
could not break through, of the irritable longing to put his head
down and butt his way out, no matter what the obstacles.  What was
coming?  How long was this state of things to last?  He got up and
began to pace the room, his hands clasped behind him, his head
thrown back; and every now and then he shook that head, trying to
free it from this feeling of being held in chancery.  And then
Diana!  He had said he would not see her again.  But was that
possible?  After that kiss--after that last look back at him!  How?
What could he say--do?  How break so suddenly?  Then, at memory of
Gyp's face, he shivered.  Ah, how wretched it all was!  There must
be some way out--some way!  Surely some way out!  For when first,
in the wood of life, fatality halts, turns her dim dark form among
the trees, shows her pale cheek and those black eyes of hers, shows
with awful swiftness her strange reality--men would be fools indeed
who admitted that they saw her!


IX


Gyp stayed in her room doing little things--as a woman will when
she is particularly wretched--sewing pale ribbons into her
garments, polishing her rings.  And the devil that had entered into
her when she woke that morning, having had his fling, slunk away,
leaving the old bewildered misery.  She had stabbed her lover with
words and looks, felt pleasure in stabbing, and now was bitterly
sad.  What use--what satisfaction?  How by vengeful prickings cure
the deep wound, disperse the canker in her life?  How heal herself
by hurting him whom she loved so?  If he came up again now and made
but a sign, she would throw herself into his arms.  But hours
passed, and he did not come, and she did not go down--too truly
miserable.  It grew dark, but she did not draw the curtains; the
sight of the windy moonlit garden and the leaves driving across
brought a melancholy distraction.  Little Gyp came in and prattled.
There was a tree blown down, and she had climbed on it; they had
picked up two baskets of acorns, and the pigs had been so greedy;
and she had been blown away, so that Betty had had to run after
her.  And Baryn was walking in the study; he was so busy he had
only given her one kiss.

When she was gone, Gyp opened the window and let the wind full into
her face.  If only it would blow out of her heart this sickening
sense that all was over, no matter how he might pretend to love her
out of pity!  In a nature like hers, so doubting and self-
distrustful, confidence, once shaken to the roots, could never be
restored.  A proud nature that went all lengths in love could never
be content with a half-love.  She had been born too doubting,
proud, and jealous, yet made to love too utterly.  She--who had
been afraid of love, and when it came had fought till it swept her
away; who, since then, had lived for love and nothing else, who
gave all, and wanted all--knew for certain and for ever that she
could not have all.

It was "nothing" he had said!  Nothing!  That for months he had
been thinking at least a little of another woman besides herself.
She believed what he had told her, that there had been no more than
a kiss--but was it nothing that they had reached that kiss?  This
girl--this cousin--who held all the cards, had everything on her
side--the world, family influence, security of life; yes, and more,
so terribly much more--a man's longing for the young and
unawakened.  This girl he could marry!  It was this thought which
haunted her.  A mere momentary outbreak of man's natural wildness
she could forgive and forget--oh, yes!  It was the feeling that it
was a girl, his own cousin, besieging him, dragging him away, that
was so dreadful.  Ah, how horrible it was--how horrible!  How, in
decent pride, keep him from her, fetter him?

She heard him come up to his dressing-room, and while he was still
there, stole out and down.  Life must go on, the servants be
hoodwinked, and so forth.  She went to the piano and played,
turning the dagger in her heart, or hoping forlornly that music
might work some miracle.  He came in presently and stood by the
fire, silent.

Dinner, with the talk needful to blinding the household--for what
is more revolting than giving away the sufferings of the heart?--
was almost unendurable and directly it was over, they went, he to
his study, she back to the piano.  There she sat, ready to strike
the notes if anyone came in; and tears fell on the hands that
rested in her lap.  With all her soul she longed to go and clasp
him in her arms and cry: "I don't care--I don't care!  Do what you
like--go to her--if only you'll love me a little!"  And yet to
love--a LITTLE!  Was it possible?  Not to her!

In sheer misery she went upstairs and to bed.  She heard him come
up and go into his dressing-room--and, at last, in the firelight
saw him kneeling by her.

"Gyp!"

She raised herself and threw her arms round him.  Such an embrace a
drowning woman might have given.  Pride and all were abandoned in
an effort to feel him close once more, to recover the irrecoverable
past.  For a long time she listened to his pleading, explanations,
justifications, his protestations of undying love--strange to her
and painful, yet so boyish and pathetic.  She soothed him, clasping
his head to her breast, gazing out at the flickering fire.  In that
hour, she rose to a height above herself.  What happened to her own
heart did not matter so long as he was happy, and had all that he
wanted with her and away from her--if need be, always away from her.

But, when he had gone to sleep, a terrible time began; for in the
small hours, when things are at their worst, she could not keep
back her weeping, though she smothered it into the pillow.  It woke
him, and all began again; the burden of her cry: "It's gone!" the
burden of his: "It's NOT--can't you see it isn't?"  Till, at last,
that awful feeling that he must knock his head against the wall
made him leap up and tramp up and down like a beast in a cage--the
cage of the impossible.  For, as in all human tragedies, both were
right according to their natures.  She gave him all herself, wanted
all in return, and could not have it.  He wanted her, the rest
besides, and no complaining, and could not have it.  He did not
admit impossibility; she did.

At last came another of those pitying lulls till he went to sleep
in her arms.  Long she lay awake, staring at the darkness,
admitting despair, trying to find how to bear it, not succeeding.
Impossible to cut his other life away from him--impossible that,
while he lived it, this girl should not be tugging him away from
her.  Impossible to watch and question him.  Impossible to live
dumb and blind, accepting the crumbs left over, showing nothing.
Would it have been better if they had been married?  But then it
might have been the same--reversed; perhaps worse!  The roots were
so much deeper than that.  He was not single-hearted and she was.
In spite of all that he said, she knew he didn't really want to
give up that girl.  How could he?  Even if the girl would let him
go!  And slowly there formed within her a gruesome little plan to
test him.  Then, ever so gently withdrawing her arms, she turned
over and slept, exhausted.

Next morning, remorselessly carrying out that plan, she forced
herself to smile and talk as if nothing had happened, watching the
relief in his face, his obvious delight at the change, with a
fearful aching in her heart.  She waited till he was ready to go
down, and then, still smiling, said:

"Forget all about yesterday, darling.  Promise me you won't let it
make any difference.  You must keep up your friendship; you mustn't
lose anything.  I shan't mind; I shall be quite happy."  He knelt
down and leaned his forehead against her waist.  And, stroking his
hair, she repeated: "I shall only be happy if you take everything
that comes your way.  I shan't mind a bit."  And she watched his
face that had lost its trouble.

"Do you really mean that?"

"Yes; really!"

"Then you do see that it's nothing, never has been anything--
compared with you--never!"

He had accepted her crucifixion.  A black wave surged into her
heart.

"It would be so difficult and awkward for you to give up that
intimacy.  It would hurt your cousin so."

She saw the relief deepen in his face and suddenly laughed.  He got
up from his knees and stared at her.

"Oh, Gyp, for God's sake don't begin again!"

But she went on laughing; then, with a sob, turned away and buried
her face in her hands.  To all his prayers and kisses she answered
nothing, and breaking away from him, she rushed toward the door.  A
wild thought possessed her.  Why go on?  If she were dead, it would
be all right for him, quiet--peaceful, quiet--for them all!  But he
had thrown himself in the way.

"Gyp, for heaven's sake!  I'll give her up--of course I'll give her
up.  Do--do--be reasonable!  I don't care a finger-snap for her
compared with you!"

And presently there came another of those lulls that both were
beginning to know were mere pauses of exhaustion.  They were
priceless all the same, for the heart cannot go on feeling at that
rate.

It was Sunday morning, the church-bells ringing, no wind, a lull in
the sou'westerly gale--one of those calms that fall in the night
and last, as a rule, twelve or fifteen hours, and the garden all
strewn with leaves of every hue, from green spotted with yellow to
deep copper.

Summerhay was afraid; he kept with her all the morning, making all
sorts of little things to do in her company.  But he gradually lost
his fear, she seemed so calm now, and his was a nature that bore
trouble badly, ever impatient to shake it off.  And then, after
lunch, the spirit-storm beat up again, with a swiftness that showed
once more how deceptive were those lulls, how fearfully deep and
lasting the wound.  He had simply asked her whether he should try
to match something for her when he went up, to-morrow.  She was
silent a moment, then answered:

"Oh, no, thanks; you'll have other things to do; people to see!"

The tone of her voice, the expression on her face showed him, with
a fresh force of revelation, what paralysis had fallen on his life.
If he could not reconvince her of his love, he would be in
perpetual fear--that he might come back and find her gone, fear
that she might even do something terrible to herself.  He looked at
her with a sort of horror, and, without a word, went out of the
room.  The feeling that he must hit his head against something was
on him once more, and once more he sought to get rid of it by
tramping up and down.  Great God!  Such a little thing, such
fearful consequences!  All her balance, her sanity almost,
destroyed.  Was what he had done so very dreadful?  He could not
help Diana loving him!

In the night, Gyp had said: "You are cruel.  Do you think there is
any man in the world that I wouldn't hate the sight of if I knew
that to see him gave you a moment's pain?"  It was true--he felt it
was true.  But one couldn't hate a girl simply because she loved
you; at least he couldn't--not even to save Gyp pain.  That was not
reasonable, not possible.  But did that difference between a man
and a woman necessarily mean that Gyp loved him so much more than
he loved her?  Could she not see things in proportion?  See that a
man might want, did want, other friendships, even passing moments
of passion, and yet could love her just the same?  She thought him
cruel, called him cruel--what for?  Because he had kissed a girl
who had kissed him; because he liked talking to her, and--yes,
might even lose his head with her.  But cruel!  He was not!  Gyp
would always be first with him.  He must MAKE her see--but how?
Give up everything?  Give up--Diana?  (Truth is so funny--it will
out even in a man's thoughts!)  Well, and he could!  His feeling
was not deep--that was God's truth!  But it would be difficult,
awkward, brutal to give her up completely!  It could be done,
though, sooner than that Gyp should think him cruel to her.  It
could be--should be done!

Only, would it be any use?  Would she believe?  Would she not
always now be suspecting him when he was away from her, whatever he
did?  Must he then sit down here in inactivity?  And a gust of
anger with her swept him.  Why should she treat him as if he were
utterly unreliable?  Or--was he?  He stood still.  When Diana had
put her arms round his neck, he could no more have resisted
answering her kiss than he could now fly through the window and
over those poplar trees.  But he was not a blackguard, not cruel,
not a liar!  How could he have helped it all?  The only way would
have been never to have answered the girl's first letter, nearly a
year ago.  How could he foresee?  And, since then, all so gradual,
and nothing, really, or almost nothing.  Again the surge of anger
swelled his heart.  She must have read the letter which had been
under that cursed bust of old Voltaire all those months ago.  The
poison had been working ever since!  And in sudden fury at that
miserable mischance, he drove his fist into the bronze face.  The
bust fell over, and Summerhay looked stupidly at his bruised hand.
A silly thing to do!  But it had quenched his anger.  He only saw
Gyp's face now--so pitifully unhappy.  Poor darling!  What could he
do?  If only she would believe!  And again he had the sickening
conviction that whatever he did would be of no avail.  He could
never get back, was only at the beginning, of a trouble that had no
end.  And, like a rat in a cage, his mind tried to rush out of this
entanglement now at one end, now at the other.  Ah, well!  Why
bruise your head against walls?  If it was hopeless--let it go!
And, shrugging his shoulders, he went out to the stables, and told
old Pettance to saddle Hotspur.  While he stood there waiting, he
thought: 'Shall I ask her to come?'  But he could not stand another
bout of misery--must have rest!  And mounting, he rode up towards
the downs.

Hotspur, the sixteen-hand brown horse, with not a speck of white,
that Gyp had ridden hunting the day she first saw Summerhay, was
nine years old now.  His master's two faults as a horseman--a habit
of thrusting, and not too light hands--had encouraged his rather
hard mouth, and something had happened in the stables to-day to put
him into a queer temper; or perhaps he felt--as horses will--the
disturbance raging within his rider.  At any rate, he gave an
exhibition of his worst qualities, and Summerhay derived perverse
pleasure from that waywardness.  He rode a good hour up there;
then, hot, with aching arms--for the brute was pulling like the
devil!--he made his way back toward home and entered what little
Gyp called "the wild," those two rough sedgy fields with the linhay
in the corner where they joined.  There was a gap in the hedge-
growth of the bank between them, and at this he put Hotspur at
speed.  The horse went over like a bird; and for the first time
since Diana's kiss Summerhay felt a moment's joy.  He turned him
round and sent him at it again, and again Hotspur cleared it
beautifully.  But the animal's blood was up now.  Summerhay could
hardly hold him.  Muttering: "Oh, you BRUTE, don't pull!" he jagged
the horse's mouth.  There darted into his mind Gyp's word: "Cruel!"
And, viciously, in one of those queer nerve-crises that beset us
all, he struck the pulling horse.

They were cantering toward the corner where the fields joined, and
suddenly he was aware that he could no more hold the beast than if
a steam-engine had been under him.  Straight at the linhay Hotspur
dashed, and Summerhay thought: "My God!  He'll kill himself!"
Straight at the old stone linhay, covered by the great ivy bush.
Right at it--into it!  Summerhay ducked his head.  Not low enough--
the ivy concealed a beam!  A sickening crash!  Torn backward out of
the saddle, he fell on his back in a pool of leaves and mud.  And
the horse, slithering round the linhay walls, checked in his own
length, unhurt, snorting, frightened, came out, turning his wild
eyes on his master, who never stirred, then trotted back into the
field, throwing up his head.


X


When, at her words, Summerhay went out of the room, Gyp's heart
sank.  All the morning she had tried so hard to keep back her
despairing jealousy, and now at the first reminder had broken down
again.  It was beyond her strength!  To live day after day knowing
that he, up in London, was either seeing that girl or painfully
abstaining from seeing her!  And then, when he returned, to be to
him just what she had been, to show nothing--would it ever be
possible?  Hardest to bear was what seemed to her the falsity of
his words, maintaining that he still really loved her.  If he did,
how could he hesitate one second?  Would not the very thought of
the girl be abhorrent to him?  He would have shown that, not merely
said it among other wild things.  Words were no use when they
contradicted action.  She, who loved with every bit of her, could
not grasp that a man can really love and want one woman and yet, at
the same time, be attracted by another.

That sudden fearful impulse of the morning to make away with
herself and end it for them both recurred so vaguely that it hardly
counted in her struggles; the conflict centred now round the
question whether life would be less utterly miserable if she
withdrew from him and went back to Mildenham.  Life without him?
That was impossible!  Life with him?  Just as impossible, it
seemed!  There comes a point of mental anguish when the
alternatives between which one swings, equally hopeless, become
each so monstrous that the mind does not really work at all, but
rushes helplessly from one to the other, no longer trying to
decide, waiting on fate.  So in Gyp that Sunday afternoon, doing
little things all the time--mending a hole in one of his gloves,
brushing and applying ointment to old Ossy, sorting bills and
letters.

At five o'clock, knowing little Gyp must soon be back from her
walk, and feeling unable to take part in gaiety, she went up and
put on her hat.  She turned from contemplation of her face with
disgust.  Since it was no longer the only face for him, what was
the use of beauty?  She slipped out by the side gate and went down
toward the river.  The lull was over; the south-west wind had begun
sighing through the trees again, and gorgeous clouds were piled up
from the horizon into the pale blue.  She stood by the river
watching its grey stream, edged by a scum of torn-off twigs and
floating leaves, watched the wind shivering through the spoiled
plume-branches of the willows.  And, standing there, she had a
sudden longing for her father; he alone could help her--just a
little--by his quietness, and his love, by his mere presence.

She turned away and went up the lane again, avoiding the inn and
the riverside houses, walking slowly, her head down.  And a thought
came, her first hopeful thought.  Could they not travel--go round
the world?  Would he give up his work for that--that chance to
break the spell?  Dared she propose it?  But would even that be
anything more than a putting-off?  If she was not enough for him
now, would she not be still less, if his work were cut away?
Still, it was a gleam, a gleam in the blackness.  She came in at
the far end of the fields they called "the wild."  A rose-leaf hue
tinged the white cloud-banks, which towered away to the east beyond
the river; and peeping over that mountain-top was the moon, fleecy
and unsubstantial in the flax-blue sky.  It was one of nature's
moments of wild colour.  The oak-trees above the hedgerows had not
lost their leaves, and in the darting, rain-washed light from the
setting sun, had a sheen of old gold with heart of ivy-green; the
hail-stripped beeches flamed with copper; the russet tufts of the
ash-trees glowed.  And past Gyp, a single leaf blown off, went
soaring, turning over and over, going up on the rising wind, up--
up, higher--higher into the sky, till it was lost--away.

The rain had drenched the long grass, and she turned back.  At the
gate beside the linhay, a horse was standing.  It whinnied.
Hotspur, saddled, bridled, with no rider!  Why?  Where--then?
Hastily she undid the latch, ran through, and saw Summerhay lying
in the mud--on his back, with eyes wide-open, his forehead and hair
all blood.  Some leaves had dropped on him.  God!  O God!  His eyes
had no sight, his lips no breath; his heart did not beat; the
leaves had dropped even on his face--in the blood on his poor head.
Gyp raised him--stiffened, cold as ice!  She gave one cry, and
fell, embracing his dead, stiffened body with all her strength,
kissing his lips, his eyes, his broken forehead; clasping, warming
him, trying to pass life into him; till, at last, she, too, lay
still, her lips on his cold lips, her body on his cold body in the
mud and the fallen leaves, while the wind crept and rustled in the
ivy, and went over with the scent of rain.  Close by, the horse,
uneasy, put his head down and sniffed at her, then, backing away,
neighed, and broke into a wild gallop round the field. . . .

Old Pettance, waiting for Summerhay's return to stable-up for the
night, heard that distant neigh and went to the garden gate,
screwing up his little eyes against the sunset.  He could see a
loose horse galloping down there in "the wild," where no horse
should be, and thinking: "There now; that artful devil's broke away
from the guv'nor!  Now I'll 'ave to ketch 'im!" he went back, got
some oats, and set forth at the best gait of his stiff-jointed
feet.  The old horseman characteristically did not think of
accidents.  The guv'nor had got off, no doubt, to unhitch that
heavy gate--the one you had to lift.  That 'orse--he was a
masterpiece of mischief!  His difference with the animal still
rankled in a mind that did not easily forgive.

Half an hour later, he entered the lighted kitchen shaking and
gasping, tears rolling down his furrowed cheeks into the corners of
his gargoyle's mouth, and panted out:

"O, my Gord!  Fetch the farmer--fetch an 'urdle!  O my Gord!
Betty, you and cook--I can't get 'er off him.  She don't speak.  I
felt her--all cold.  Come on, you sluts--quick!  O my Gord!  The
poor guv'nor!  That 'orse must 'a' galloped into the linhay and
killed him.  I've see'd the marks on the devil's shoulder where he
rubbed it scrapin' round the wall.  Come on--come on!  Fetch an
'urdle or she'll die there on him in the mud.  Put the child to bed
and get the doctor, and send a wire to London, to the major, to
come sharp.  Oh, blarst you all--keep your 'eads!  What's the good
o' howlin' and blubberin'!"

In the whispering corner of those fields, light from a lantern and
the moon fell on the old stone linhay, on the ivy and the broken
gate, on the mud, the golden leaves, and the two quiet bodies
clasped together.  Gyp's consciousness had flown; there seemed no
difference between them.  And presently, over the rushy grass, a
procession moved back in the wind and the moonlight--two hurdles,
two men carrying one, two women and a man the other, and, behind,
old Pettance and the horse.


XI


When Gyp recovered a consciousness, whose flight had been
mercifully renewed with morphia, she was in her bed, and her first
drowsy movement was toward her mate.  With eyes still closed, she
turned, as she was wont, and put out her hand to touch him before
she dozed off again.  There was no warmth, no substance; through
her mind, still away in the mists of morphia, the thoughts passed
vague and lonely: 'Ah, yes, in London!'  And she turned on her
back.  London!  Something--something up there!  She opened her
eyes.  So the fire had kept in all night!  Someone was in a chair
there, or--was she dreaming!  And suddenly, without knowing why,
she began breathing hurriedly in little half-sobbing gasps.  The
figure moved, turned her face in the firelight.  Betty!  Gyp closed
her eyes.  An icy sweat had broken out all over her.  A dream!  In
a whisper, she said:

"Betty!"

The muffled answer came.

"Yes, my darlin'."

"What is it?"

No answer; then a half-choked, "Don't 'ee think--don't 'ee think!
Your Daddy'll be here directly, my sweetie!"

Gyp's eyes, wide open, passed from the firelight and that rocking
figure to the little chink of light that was hardly light as yet,
coming in at one corner of the curtain.  She was remembering.  Her
tongue stole out and passed over her lips; beneath the bedclothes
she folded both her hands tight across her heart.  Then she was not
dead with him--not dead!  Not gone back with him into the ground--
not--And suddenly there flickered in her a flame of maniacal
hatred.  They were keeping her alive!  A writhing smile forced its
way up on to her parched lips.

"Betty, I'm so thirsty--so thirsty.  Get me a cup of tea."

The stout form heaved itself from the chair and came toward the
bed.

"Yes, my lovey, at once.  It'll do you good.  That's a brave girl."

"Yes."

The moment the door clicked to, Gyp sprang up.  Her veins throbbed;
her whole soul was alive with cunning.  She ran to the wardrobe,
seized her long fur coat, slipped her bare feet into her slippers,
wound a piece of lace round her head, and opened the door.  All
dark and quiet!  Holding her breath, stifling the sound of her
feet, she glided down the stairs, slipped back the chain of the
front door, opened it, and fled.  Like a shadow she passed across
the grass, out of the garden gate, down the road under the black
dripping trees.  The beginning of light was mixing its grey hue
into the darkness; she could just see her feet among the puddles on
the road.  She heard the grinding and whirring of a motor-car on
its top gear approaching up the hill, and cowered away against the
hedge.  Its light came searching along, picking out with a
mysterious momentary brightness the bushes and tree-trunks, making
the wet road gleam.  Gyp saw the chauffeur turn his head back at
her, then the car's body passed up into darkness, and its tail-
light was all that was left to see.  Perhaps that car was going to
the Red House with her father, the doctor, somebody, helping to
keep her alive!  The maniacal hate flared up in her again; she flew
on.  The light grew; a man with a dog came out of a gate she had
passed, and called "Hallo!"  She did not turn her head.  She had
lost her slippers, and ran with bare feet, unconscious of stones,
or the torn-off branches strewing the road, making for the lane
that ran right down to the river, a little to the left of the inn,
the lane of yesterday, where the bank was free.

She turned into the lane; dimly, a hundred or more yards away, she
could see the willows, the width of lighter grey that was the
river.  The river--"Away, my rolling river!"--the river--and the
happiest hours of all her life!  If he were anywhere, she would
find him there, where he had sung, and lain with his head on her
breast, and swum and splashed about her; where she had dreamed, and
seen beauty, and loved him so!  She reached the bank.  Cold and
grey and silent, swifter than yesterday, the stream was flowing by,
its dim far shore brightening slowly in the first break of dawn.
And Gyp stood motionless, drawing her breath in gasps after her
long run; her knees trembled; gave way.  She sat down on the wet
grass, clasping her arms round her drawn-up legs, rocking herself
to and fro, and her loosened hair fell over her face.  The blood
beat in her ears; her heart felt suffocated; all her body seemed on
fire, yet numb.  She sat, moving her head up and down--as the head
of one moves that is gasping her last--waiting for breath--breath
and strength to let go life, to slip down into the grey water.  And
that queer apartness from self, which is the property of fever,
came on her, so that she seemed to see herself sitting there,
waiting, and thought: 'I shall see myself dead, floating among the
reeds.  I shall see the birds wondering above me!'  And, suddenly,
she broke into a storm of dry sobbing, and all things vanished from
her, save just the rocking of her body, the gasping of her breath,
and the sound of it in her ears.  Her boy--her boy--and his poor
hair!  "Away, my rolling river!"  Swaying over, she lay face down,
clasping at the wet grass and the earth.

The sun rose, laid a pale bright streak along the water, and hid
himself again.  A robin twittered in the willows; a leaf fell on
her bare ankle.


Winton, who had been hunting on Saturday, had returned to town on
Sunday by the evening tram, and gone straight to his club for some
supper.  There falling asleep over his cigar, he had to be awakened
when they desired to close the club for the night.  It was past two
when he reached Bury Street and found a telegram.


"Something dreadful happened to Mr. Summerhay.  Come quick.--
BETTY."


Never had he so cursed the loss of his hand as during the time that
followed, when Markey had to dress, help his master, pack bags, and
fetch a taxi equipped for so long a journey.  At half-past three
they started.  The whole way down, Winton, wrapped in his fur coat,
sat a little forward on his seat, ready to put his head through the
window and direct the driver.  It was a wild night, and he would
not let Markey, whose chest was not strong, go outside to act as
guide.  Twice that silent one, impelled by feelings too strong even
for his respectful taciturnity, had spoken.

"That'll be bad for Miss Gyp, sir."

"Bad, yes--terrible."

And later:

"D'you think it means he's dead, sir?"

Winton answered sombrely:

"God knows, Markey!  We must hope for the best."

Dead!  Could Fate be cruel enough to deal one so soft and loving
such a blow?  And he kept saying to himself: "Courage.  Be ready
for the worst.  Be ready."

But the figures of Betty and a maid at the open garden gate, in the
breaking darkness, standing there wringing their hands, were too
much for his stoicism.  Leaping out, he cried:

"What is it, woman?  Quick!"

"Oh, sir!  My dear's gone.  I left her a moment to get her a cup of
tea.  And she's run out in the cold!"

Winton stood for two seconds as if turned to stone.  Then, taking
Betty by the shoulder, he asked quietly:

"What happened to HIM?"

Betty could not answer, but the maid said:

"The horse killed him at that linhay, sir, down in 'the wild.'  And
the mistress was unconscious till quarter of an hour ago."

"Which way did she go?"

"Out here, sir; the door and the gate was open--can't tell which
way."

Through Winton flashed one dreadful thought:  The river!

"Turn the cab round!  Stay in, Markey!  Betty and you, girl, go
down to 'the wild,' and search there at once.  Yes?  What is it?"

The driver was leaning out.

"As we came up the hill, sir, I see a lady or something in a long
dark coat with white on her head, against the hedge."

"Right!  Drive down again sharp, and use your eyes."

At such moments, thought is impossible, and a feverish use of every
sense takes its place.  But of thought there was no need, for the
gardens of villas and the inn blocked the river at all but one
spot.  Winton stopped the car where the narrow lane branched down
to the bank, and jumping out, ran.  By instinct he ran silently on
the grass edge, and Markey, imitating, ran behind.  When he came in
sight of a black shape lying on the bank, he suffered a moment of
intense agony, for he thought it was just a dark garment thrown
away.  Then he saw it move, and, holding up his hand for Markey to
stand still, walked on alone, tiptoeing in the grass, his heart
swelling with a sort of rapture.  Stealthily moving round between
that prostrate figure and the water, he knelt down and said, as
best he could, for the husk in his throat:

"My darling!"

Gyp raised her head and stared at him.  Her white face, with eyes
unnaturally dark and large, and hair falling all over it, was
strange to him--the face of grief itself, stripped of the wrappings
of form.  And he knew not what to do, how to help or comfort, how
to save.  He could see so clearly in her eyes the look of a wild
animal at the moment of its capture, and instinct made him say:

"I lost her just as cruelly, Gyp."

He saw the words reach her brain, and that wild look waver.
Stretching out his arm, he drew her close to him till her cheek was
against his, her shaking body against him, and kept murmuring:

"For my sake, Gyp; for my sake!"

When, with Markey's aid, he had got her to the cab, they took her,
not back to the house, but to the inn.  She was in high fever, and
soon delirious.  By noon, Aunt Rosamund and Mrs. Markey, summoned
by telegram, had arrived; and the whole inn was taken lest there
should be any noise to disturb her.

At five o'clock, Winton was summoned downstairs to the little so-
called reading-room.  A tall woman was standing at the window,
shading her eyes with the back of a gloved hand.  Though they had
lived so long within ten miles of each other he only knew Lady
Summerhay by sight, and he waited for the poor woman to speak
first.  She said in a low voice:

"There is nothing to say; only, I thought I must see you.  How is
she?"

"Delirious."

They stood in silence a full minute, before she whispered:

"My poor boy!  Did you see him--his forehead?"  Her lips quivered.
"I will take him back home."  And tears rolled, one after the
other, slowly down her flushed face under her veil.  Poor woman!
Poor woman!  She had turned to the window, passing her handkerchief
up under the veil, staring out at the little strip of darkening
lawn, and Winton, too, stared out into that mournful daylight.  At
last, he said:

"I will send you all his things, except--except anything that might
help my poor girl."

She turned quickly.

"And so it's ended like this!  Major Winton, is there anything
behind--were they really happy?"

Winton looked straight at her and answered:

"Ah, too happy!"

Without a quiver, he met those tear-darkened, dilated eyes
straining at his; with a heavy sigh, she once more turned away,
and, brushing her handkerchief across her face, drew down her veil.

It was not true--he knew from the mutterings of Gyp's fever--but no
one, not even Summerhay's mother, should hear a whisper if he could
help it.  At the door, he murmured:

"I don't know whether my girl will get through, or what she will do
after.  When Fate hits, she hits too hard.  And you! Good-bye."

Lady Summerhay pressed his outstretched hand.

"Good-bye," she said, in a strangled voice.  "I wish you--good-
bye."  Then, turning abruptly, she hastened away.

Winton went back to his guardianship upstairs.

In the days that followed, when Gyp, robbed of memory, hung between
life and death, Winton hardly left her room, that low room with
creepered windows whence the river could be seen, gliding down
under the pale November sunshine or black beneath the stars.  He
would watch it, fascinated, as one sometimes watches the relentless
sea.  He had snatched her as by a miracle from that snaky river.

He had refused to have a nurse.  Aunt Rosamund and Mrs. Markey were
skilled in sickness, and he could not bear that a strange person
should listen to those delirious mutterings.  His own part of the
nursing was just to sit there and keep her secrets from the others--
if he could.  And he grudged every minute away from his post.  He
would stay for hours, with eyes fixed on her face.  No one could
supply so well as he just that coherent thread of the familiar, by
which the fevered, without knowing it, perhaps find their way a
little in the dark mazes where they wander.  And he would think of
her as she used to be--well and happy--adopting unconsciously the
methods of those mental and other scientists whom he looked upon as
quacks.

He was astonished by the number of inquiries, even people whom he
had considered enemies left cards or sent their servants, forcing
him to the conclusion that people of position are obliged to
reserve their human kindness for those as good as dead.  But the
small folk touched him daily by their genuine concern for her whose
grace and softness had won their hearts.  One morning he received a
letter forwarded from Bury Street.


"DEAR MAJOR WINTON,

"I have read a paragraph in the paper about poor Mr. Summerhay's
death.  And, oh, I feel so sorry for her!  She was so good to me; I
do feel it most dreadfully.  If you think she would like to know
how we all feel for her, you would tell her, wouldn't you?  I do
think it's cruel.

"Very faithfully yours,

"DAPHNE WING."


So they knew Summerhay's name--he had not somehow expected that.
He did not answer, not knowing what to say.

During those days of fever, the hardest thing to bear was the sound
of her rapid whisperings and mutterings--incoherent phrases that
said so little and told so much.  Sometimes he would cover his
ears, to avoid hearing of that long stress of mind at which he had
now and then glimpsed.  Of the actual tragedy, her wandering spirit
did not seem conscious; her lips were always telling the depth of
her love, always repeating the dread of losing his; except when
they would give a whispering laugh, uncanny and enchanting, as at
some gleam of perfect happiness.  Those little laughs were worst of
all to hear; they never failed to bring tears into his eyes.  But
he drew a certain gruesome comfort from the conclusion slowly
forced on him, that Summerhay's tragic death had cut short a
situation which might have had an even more tragic issue.  One
night in the big chair at the side of her bed, he woke from a doze
to see her eyes fixed on him.  They were different; they saw, were
her own eyes again.  Her lips moved.

"Dad."

"Yes, my pet."

"I remember everything."

At that dreadful little saying, Winton leaned forward and put his
lips to her hand, that lay outside the clothes.

"Where is he buried?"

"At Widrington."

"Yes."

It was rather a sigh than a word and, raising his head, Winton saw
her eyes closed again.  Now that the fever had gone, the white
transparency of her cheeks and forehead against the dark lashes and
hair was too startling.  Was it a living face, or was its beauty
that of death?

He bent over.  She was breathing--asleep.


XII


The return to Mildenham was made by easy stages nearly two months
after Summerhay's death, on New Year's day--Mildenham, dark,
smelling the same, full of ghosts of the days before love began.
For little Gyp, more than five years old now, and beginning to
understand life, this was the pleasantest home yet.  In watching
her becoming the spirit of the place, as she herself had been when
a child, Gyp found rest at times, a little rest.  She had not
picked up much strength, was shadowy as yet, and if her face was
taken unawares, it was the saddest face one could see.  Her chief
preoccupation was not being taken unawares.  Alas!  To Winton, her
smile was even sadder.  He was at his wits' end about her that
winter and spring.  She obviously made the utmost effort to keep
up, and there was nothing to do but watch and wait.  No use to
force the pace.  Time alone could heal--perhaps.  Meanwhile, he
turned to little Gyp, so that they became more or less inseparable.

Spring came and passed.  Physically, Gyp grew strong again, but
since their return to Mildenham, she had never once gone outside
the garden, never once spoken of The Red House, never once of
Summerhay.  Winton had hoped that warmth and sunlight would bring
some life to her spirit, but it did not seem to.  Not that she
cherished her grief, appeared, rather, to do all in her power to
forget and mask it.  She only had what used to be called a broken
heart.  Nothing to be done.  Little Gyp, who had been told that
"Baryn" had gone away for ever, and that she must "never speak of
him for fear of making Mum sad," would sometimes stand and watch
her mother with puzzled gravity.  She once remarked uncannily to
Winton:

"Mum doesn't live with us, Grandy; she lives away somewhere, I
think.  Is it with Baryn?"

Winton stared, and answered:

"Perhaps it is, sweetheart; but don't say that to anybody but me.
Don't ever talk of Baryn to anyone else."

"Yes, I know; but where is he, Grandy?"

What could Winton answer?  Some imbecility with the words "very
far" in it; for he had not courage to broach the question of death,
that mystery so hopelessly beyond the grasp of children, and of
himself--and others.

He rode a great deal with the child, who, like her mother before
her, was never so happy as in the saddle; but to Gyp he did not
dare suggest it.  She never spoke of horses, never went to the
stables, passed all the days doing little things about the house,
gardening, and sitting at her piano, sometimes playing a little,
sometimes merely looking at the keys, her hands clasped in her lap.
This was early in the fateful summer, before any as yet felt the
world-tremors, or saw the Veil of the Temple rending and the
darkness beginning to gather.  Winton had no vision of the coif
above the dark eyes of his loved one, nor of himself in a strange
brown garb, calling out old familiar words over barrack-squares.
He often thought: 'If only she had something to take her out of
herself!'

In June he took his courage in both hands and proposed a visit to
London.  To his surprise, she acquiesced without hesitation.  They
went up in Whit-week.  While they were passing Widrington, he
forced himself to an unnatural spurt of talk; and it was not till
fully quarter of an hour later that, glancing stealthily round his
paper, he saw her sitting motionless, her face turned to the fields
and tears rolling down it.  And he dared not speak, dared not try
to comfort her.  She made no sound, the muscles of her face no
movement; only, those tears kept rolling down.  And, behind his
paper, Winton's eyes narrowed and retreated; his face hardened till
the skin seemed tight drawn over the bones, and every inch of him
quivered.

The usual route from the station to Bury Street was "up," and the
cab went by narrow by-streets, town lanes where the misery of the
world is on show, where ill-looking men, draggled and over-driven
women, and the jaunty ghosts of little children in gutters and on
doorsteps proclaim, by every feature of their clay-coloured faces
and every movement of their unfed bodies, the post-datement of the
millennium; where the lean and smutted houses have a look of
dissolution indefinitely put off, and there is no more trace of
beauty than in a sewer.  Gyp, leaning forward, looked out, as one
does after a long sea voyage; Winton felt her hand slip into his
and squeeze it hard.

That evening after dinner--in the room he had furnished for her
mother, where the satinwood chairs, the little Jacobean bureau, the
old brass candelabra were still much as they had been just on
thirty years ago--she said:

"Dad, I've been thinking.  Would you mind if I could make a sort of
home at Mildenham where poor children could come to stay and get
good air and food?  There are such thousands of them."

Strangely moved by this, the first wish he had heard her express
since the tragedy, Winton took her hand, and, looking at it as if
for answer to his question, said:

"My dear, are, you strong enough?"

"Quite.  There's nothing wrong with me now except here."  She drew
his hand to her and pressed it against her heart.  "What's given,
one can't get back.  I can't help it; I would if I could.  It's
been so dreadful for you.  I'm so sorry."  Winton made an
unintelligible sound, and she went on: "If I had them to see after,
I shouldn't be able to think so much; the more I had to do the
better.  Good for our gipsy-bird, too, to have them there.  I
should like to begin it at once."

Winton nodded.  Anything that she felt could do her good--anything!

"Yes, yes," he said; "I quite see--you could use the two old
cottages to start with, and we can easily run up anything you
want."

"Only let me do it all, won't you?"

At that touch of her old self, Winton smiled.  She should do
everything, pay for everything, bring a whole street of children
down, if it would give her any comfort!

"Rosamund'll help you find 'em," he muttered.  "She's first-rate at
all that sort of thing."  Then, looking at her fixedly, he added:
"Courage, my soul; it'll all come back some day."

Gyp forced herself to smile.  Watching her, he understood only too
well the child's saying: "Mum lives away somewhere, I think."

Suddenly, she said, very low:

"And yet I wouldn't have been without it."

She was sitting, her hands clasped in her lap, two red spots high
in her cheeks, her eyes shining strangely, the faint smile still on
her lips.  And Winton, staring with narrowed eyes, thought: 'Love!
Beyond measure--beyond death--it nearly kills.  But one wouldn't
have been without it.  Why?'


Three days later, leaving Gyp with his sister, he went back to
Mildenham to start the necessary alterations in the cottages.  He
had told no one he was coming, and walked up from the station on a
perfect June day, bright and hot.  When he turned through the drive
gate, into the beech-tree avenue, the leaf-shadows were thick on
the ground, with golden gleams of the invincible sunlight thrusting
their way through.  The grey boles, the vivid green leaves, those
glistening sun-shafts through the shade entranced him, coming from
the dusty road.  Down in the very middle of the avenue, a small,
white figure was standing, as if looking out for him.  He heard a
shrill shout.

"Oh, Grandy, you've come back--you've come back!  What FUN!"

Winton took her curls in his hand, and, looking into her face,
said:

"Well, my gipsy-bird, will you give me one of these?"

Little Gyp looked at him with flying eyes, and, hugging his legs,
answered furiously:

"Yes; because I love you.  PULL!"





End of The Project Gutenberg Etext of Beyond, by John Galsworthy






[Spelling conforms to the original: "s's" instead of our "z's"; and
"c's" where we would have "s's"; and "...our" as in colour and
flavour; many interesting double consonants; etc.]





VILLA RUBEIN AND OTHER STORIES


Contents:
     Villa Rubein
     A Man of Devon
     A Knight
     Salvation of a Forsyte
     The Silence



PREFACE


Writing not long ago to my oldest literary friend, I expressed in a
moment of heedless sentiment the wish that we might have again one of
our talks of long-past days, over the purposes and methods of our
art.  And my friend, wiser than I, as he has always been, replied
with this doubting phrase "Could we recapture the zest of that old
time?"

I would not like to believe that our faith in the value of
imaginative art has diminished, that we think it less worth while to
struggle for glimpses of truth and for the words which may pass them
on to other eyes; or that we can no longer discern the star we tried
to follow; but I do fear, with him, that half a lifetime of endeavour
has dulled the exuberance which kept one up till morning discussing
the ways and means of aesthetic achievement.  We have discovered,
perhaps with a certain finality, that by no talk can a writer add a
cubit to his stature, or change the temperament which moulds and
colours the vision of life he sets before the few who will pause to
look at it.  And so--the rest is silence, and what of work we may
still do will be done in that dogged muteness which is the lot of
advancing years.

Other times, other men and modes, but not other truth.  Truth, though
essentially relative, like Einstein's theory, will never lose its
ever-new and unique quality-perfect proportion; for Truth, to the
human consciousness at least, is but that vitally just relation of
part to whole which is the very condition of life itself.  And the
task before the imaginative writer, whether at the end of the last
century or all these aeons later, is the presentation of a vision
which to eye and ear and mind has the implicit proportions of Truth.

I confess to have always looked for a certain flavour in the writings
of others, and craved it for my own, believing that all true vision
is so coloured by the temperament of the seer, as to have not only
the just proportions but the essential novelty of a living thing for,
after all, no two living things are alike.  A work of fiction should
carry the hall mark of its author as surely as a Goya, a Daumier, a
Velasquez, and a Mathew Maris, should be the unmistakable creations
of those masters.  This is not to speak of tricks and manners which
lend themselves to that facile elf, the caricaturist, but of a
certain individual way of seeing and feeling.  A young poet once said
of another and more popular poet: "Oh! yes, but be cuts no ice.
"And, when one came to think of it, he did not; a certain flabbiness
of spirit, a lack of temperament, an absence, perhaps, of the ironic,
or passionate, view, insubstantiated his work; it had no edge--just a
felicity which passed for distinction with the crowd.

Let me not be understood to imply that a novel should be a sort of
sandwich, in which the author's mood or philosophy is the slice of
ham.  One's demand is for a far more subtle impregnation of flavour;
just that, for instance, which makes De Maupassant a more poignant
and fascinating writer than his master Flaubert, Dickens and
Thackeray more living and permanent than George Eliot or Trollope.
It once fell to my lot to be the preliminary critic of a book on
painting, designed to prove that the artist's sole function was the
impersonal elucidation of the truths of nature.  I was regretfully
compelled to observe that there were no such things as the truths of
Nature, for the purposes of art, apart from the individual vision of
the artist.  Seer and thing seen, inextricably involved one with the
other, form the texture of any masterpiece; and I, at least, demand
therefrom a distinct impression of temperament.  I never saw, in the
flesh, either De Maupassant or Tchekov--those masters of such
different methods entirely devoid of didacticism--but their work
leaves on me a strangely potent sense of personality.  Such subtle
intermingling of seer with thing seen is the outcome only of long and
intricate brooding, a process not too favoured by modern life, yet
without which we achieve little but a fluent chaos of clever
insignificant impressions, a kind of glorified journalism, holding
much the same relation to the deeply-impregnated work of Turgenev,
Hardy, and Conrad, as a film bears to a play.

Speaking for myself, with the immodesty required of one who hazards
an introduction to his own work, I was writing fiction for five years
before I could master even its primary technique, much less achieve
that union of seer with thing seen, which perhaps begins to show
itself a little in this volume--binding up the scanty harvests of
1899, 1900, and 1901--especially in the tales: "A Knight," and
"Salvation of a Forsyte."  Men, women, trees, and works of fiction--
very tiny are the seeds from which they spring.  I used really to see
the "Knight"--in 1896, was it?--sitting in the "Place" in front of
the Casino at Monte Carlo; and because his dried-up elegance, his
burnt straw hat, quiet courtesy of attitude, and big dog, used to
fascinate and intrigue me, I began to imagine his life so as to
answer my own questions and to satisfy, I suppose, the mood I was in.
I never spoke to him, I never saw him again.  His real story, no
doubt, was as different from that which I wove around his figure as
night from day.

As for Swithin, wild horses will not drag from me confession of where
and when I first saw the prototype which became enlarged to his bulky
stature.  I owe Swithin much, for he first released the satirist in
me, and is, moreover, the only one of my characters whom I killed
before I gave him life, for it is in "The Man of Property" that
Swithin Forsyte more memorably lives.

Ranging beyond this volume, I cannot recollect writing the first
words of "The Island Pharisees"--but it would be about August, 1901.
Like all the stories in "Villa Rubein," and, indeed, most of my
tales, the book originated in the curiosity, philosophic reflections,
and unphilosophic emotions roused in me by some single figure in real
life.  In this case it was Ferrand, whose real name, of course, was
not Ferrand, and who died in some "sacred institution" many years ago
of a consumption brought on by the conditions of his wandering life.
If not "a beloved," he was a true vagabond, and I first met him in
the Champs Elysees, just as in "The Pigeon" he describes his meeting
with Wellwyn.  Though drawn very much from life, he did not in the
end turn out very like the Ferrand of real life--the, figures of
fiction soon diverge from their prototypes.

The first draft of "The Island Pharisees" was buried in a drawer;
when retrieved the other day, after nineteen years, it disclosed a
picaresque string of anecdotes told by Ferrand in the first person.
These two-thirds of a book were laid to rest by Edward Garnett's
dictum that its author was not sufficiently within Ferrand's skin;
and, struggling heavily with laziness and pride, he started afresh in
the skin of Shelton.  Three times be wrote that novel, and then it
was long in finding the eye of Sydney Pawling, who accepted it for
Heinemann's in 1904.  That was a period of ferment and transition
with me, a kind of long awakening to the home truths of social
existence and national character.  The liquor bubbled too furiously
for clear bottling.  And the book, after all, became but an
introduction to all those following novels which depict--somewhat
satirically--the various sections of English "Society" with a more or
less capital "S."

Looking back on the long-stretched-out body of one's work, it is
interesting to mark the endless duel fought within a man between the
emotional and critical sides of his nature, first one, then the
other, getting the upper hand, and too seldom fusing till the result
has the mellowness of full achievement.  One can even tell the nature
of one's readers, by their preference for the work which reveals more
of this side than of that.  My early work was certainly more
emotional than critical.  But from 1901 came nine years when the
critical was, in the main, holding sway.  From 1910 to 1918 the
emotional again struggled for the upper hand; and from that time on
there seems to have been something of a "dead beat."  So the conflict
goes, by what mysterious tides promoted, I know not.

An author must ever wish to discover a hapless member of the Public
who, never yet having read a word of his writing, would submit to the
ordeal of reading him right through from beginning to end.  Probably
the effect could only be judged through an autopsy, but in the remote
case of survival, it would interest one so profoundly to see the
differences, if any, produced in that reader's character or outlook
over life.  This, however, is a consummation which will remain
devoutly to be wished, for there is a limit to human complaisance.
One will never know the exact measure of one's infecting power; or
whether, indeed, one is not just a long soporific.

A writer they say, should not favouritize among his creations; but
then a writer should not do so many things that be does.  This
writer, certainly, confesses to having favourites, and of his novels
so far be likes best: The Forsyte Series; "The Country House";
"Fraternity"; "The Dark Flower"; and "Five Tales"; believing these to
be the works which most fully achieve fusion of seer with thing seen,
most subtly disclose the individuality of their author, and best
reveal such of truth as has been vouchsafed to him.

JOHN GALSWORTHY.




TO

MY SISTER

BLANCHE LILIAN SAUTER




VILLA RUBEIN




I

Walking along the river wall at Botzen, Edmund Dawney said to Alois
Harz: "Would you care to know the family at that pink house, Villa
Rubein?"

Harz answered with a smile:

"Perhaps."

"Come with me then this afternoon."

They had stopped before an old house with a blind, deserted look,
that stood by itself on the wall; Harz pushed the door open.

"Come in, you don't want breakfast yet.  I'm going to paint the river
to-day."

He ran up the bare broad stairs, and Dawney followed leisurely, his
thumbs hooked in the armholes of his waistcoat, and his head thrown
back.

In the attic which filled the whole top story, Harz had pulled a
canvas to the window.  He was a young man of middle height, square
shouldered, active, with an angular face, high cheek-bones, and a
strong, sharp chin.  His eyes were piercing and steel-blue, his
eyebrows very flexible, nose long and thin with a high bridge; and
his dark, unparted hair fitted him like a cap.  His clothes looked as
if he never gave them a second thought.

This room, which served for studio, bedroom, and sitting-room, was
bare and dusty.  Below the window the river in spring flood rushed
down the valley, a stream, of molten bronze.  Harz dodged before the
canvas like a fencer finding his distance; Dawney took his seat on a
packingcase.

"The snows have gone with a rush this year," he drawled.  "The Talfer
comes down brown, the Eisack comes down blue; they flow into the
Etsch and make it green; a parable of the Spring for you, my
painter."

Harz mixed his colours.

"I've no time for parables," he said, "no time for anything.  If I
could be guaranteed to live to ninety-nine, like Titian--he had a
chance.  Look at that poor fellow who was killed the other day!  All
that struggle, and then--just at the turn!"

He spoke English with a foreign accent; his voice was rather harsh,
but his smile very kindly.

Dawney lit a cigarette.

"You painters," he said, "are better off than most of us.  You can
strike out your own line.  Now if I choose to treat a case out of the
ordinary way and the patient dies, I'm ruined."

"My dear Doctor--if I don't paint what the public likes, I starve;
all the same I'm going to paint in my own way; in the end I shall
come out on top."

"It pays to work in the groove, my friend, until you've made your
name; after that--do what you like, they'll lick your boots all the
same."

"Ah, you don't love your work."

Dawney answered slowly: "Never so happy as when my hands are full.
But I want to make money, to get known, to have a good time, good
cigars, good wine.  I hate discomfort.  No, my boy, I must work it on
the usual lines; I don't like it, but I must lump it.  One starts in
life with some notion of the ideal--it's gone by the board with me.
I've got to shove along until I've made my name, and then, my little
man--then--"

"Then you'll be soft!  "You pay dearly for that first period!"

"Take my chance of that; there's no other way."

"Make one!"

"Humph!"

Harz poised his brush, as though it were a spear:

"A man must do the best in him.  If he has to suffer--let him!"

Dawney stretched his large soft body; a calculating look had come
into his eyes.

"You're a tough little man!" he said.

"I've had to be tough."

Dawney rose; tobacco smoke was wreathed round his unruffled hair.

"Touching Villa Rubein," he said, "shall I call for you?  It's a
mixed household, English mostly--very decent people."

"No, thank you.  I shall be painting all day.  Haven't time to know
the sort of people who expect one to change one's clothes."

"As you like; ta-to!"  And, puffing out his chest, Dawney vanished
through a blanket looped across the doorway.

Harz set a pot of coffee on a spirit-lamp, and cut himself some
bread.  Through the window the freshness of the morning came; the
scent of sap and blossom and young leaves; the scent of earth, and
the mountains freed from winter; the new flights and songs of birds;
all the odorous, enchanted, restless Spring.

There suddenly appeared through the doorway a white rough-haired
terrier dog, black-marked about the face, with shaggy tan eyebrows.
He sniffed at Harz, showed the whites round his eyes, and uttered a
sharp bark.  A young voice called:

"Scruff! Thou naughty dog!"  Light footsteps were heard on the
stairs; from the distance a thin, high voice called:

"Greta! You mustn't go up there!"

A little girl of twelve, with long fair hair under a wide-brimmed
hat, slipped in.

Her blue eyes opened wide, her face flushed up.  That face was not
regular; its cheek-bones were rather prominent, the nose was
flattish; there was about it an air, innocent, reflecting, quizzical,
shy.

"Oh!" she said.

Harz smiled: "Good-morning!  This your dog?"

She did not answer, but looked at him with soft bewilderment; then
running to the dog seized him by the collar.

"Scr-ruff! Thou naughty dog-the baddest dog!"  The ends of her hair
fell about him; she looked up at Harz, who said:

"Not at all!  Let me give him some bread."

"Oh no! You must not--I will beat him--and tell him he is bad; then
he shall not do such things again.  Now he is sulky; he looks so
always when he is sulky.  Is this your home?"

"For the present; I am a visitor."

"But I think you are of this country, because you speak like it."

"Certainly, I am a Tyroler."

"I have to talk English this morning, but I do not like it very much-
-because, also I am half Austrian, and I like it best; but my sister,
Christian, is all English.  Here is Miss Naylor; she shall be very
angry with me."

And pointing to the entrance with a rosy-tipped forefinger, she again
looked ruefully at Harz.

There came into the room with a walk like the hopping of a bird an
elderly, small lady, in a grey serge dress, with narrow bands of
claret-coloured velveteen; a large gold cross dangled from a steel
chain on her chest; she nervously twisted her hands, clad in black
kid gloves, rather white about the seams.

Her hair was prematurely grey; her quick eyes brown; her mouth
twisted at one corner; she held her face, kind-looking, but long and
narrow, rather to one side, and wore on it a look of apology.  Her
quick sentences sounded as if she kept them on strings, and wanted to
draw them back as soon as she had let them forth.

"Greta, how can, you do such things?  I don't know what your father
would say!  I am sure I don't know how to--so extraordinary--"

"Please!" said Harz.

"You must come at once--so very sorry--so awkward!"  They were
standing in a ring: Harz with his eyebrows working up and down; the
little lady fidgeting her parasol; Greta, flushed and pouting, her
eyes all dewy, twisting an end of fair hair round her finger.

"Oh, look!"  The coffee had boiled over.  Little brown streams
trickled spluttering from the pan; the dog, with ears laid back and
tail tucked in, went scurrying round the room.  A feeling of
fellowship fell on them at once.

"Along the wall is our favourite walk, and Scruff--so awkward, so
unfortunate--we did not think any one lived here--the shutters are
cracked, the paint is peeling off so dreadfully.  Have you been long
in Botzen?  Two months?  Fancy!  You are not English?  You are
Tyrolese?  But you speak English so well--there for seven years?
Really?  So fortunate!--It is Greta's day for English."

Miss Naylor's eyes darted bewildered glances at the roof where the
crossing of the beams made such deep shadows; at the litter of
brushes, tools, knives, and colours on a table made out of packing-
cases; at the big window, innocent of glass, and flush with the
floor, whence dangled a bit of rusty chain--relic of the time when
the place had been a store-loft; her eyes were hastily averted from
an unfnished figure of the nude.

Greta, with feet crossed, sat on a coloured blanket, dabbling her
fnger in a little pool of coffee, and gazing up at Harz.  And he
thought: 'I should like to paint her like that.  "A forget-me-not."'

He took out his chalks to make a sketch of her.

"Shall you show me?" cried out Greta, scrambling to her feet.

"'Will,' Greta--'will'; how often must I tell you?  I think we should
be going--it is very late--your father--so very kind of you, but I
think we should be going.  Scruff!"   Miss Naylor gave the floor two
taps.  The terrier backed into a plaster cast which came down on his
tail, and sent him flying through the doorway.  Greta followed
swiftly, crying:

"Ach! poor Scrufee!"

Miss Naylor crossed the room; bowing, she murmured an apology, and
also disappeared.

Harz was left alone, his guests were gone; the little girl with the
fair hair and the eyes like forget-me-nots, the little lady with
kindly gestures and bird-like walk, the terrier.  He looked round
him; the room seemed very empty.  Gnawing his moustache, he muttered
at the fallen cast.

Then taking up his brush, stood before his picture, smiling and
frowning.  Soon he had forgotten it all in his work.




II

It was early morning four days later, and Harz was loitering
homewards.  The shadows of the clouds passing across the vines were
vanishing over the jumbled roofs and green-topped spires of the town.
A strong sweet wind was blowing from the mountains, there was a stir
in the branches of the trees, and flakes of the late blossom were
drifting down.  Amongst the soft green pods of a kind of poplar
chafers buzzed, and numbers of their little brown bodies were strewn
on the path.

He passed a bench where a girl sat sketching.  A puff of wind whirled
her drawing to the ground; Harz ran to pick it up.  She took it from
him with a bow; but, as he turned away, she tore the sketch across.

"Ah!" he said; "why did you do that?"

This girl, who stood with a bit of the torn sketch in either hand,
was slight and straight; and her face earnest and serene.  She gazed
at Harz with large, clear, greenish eyes; her lips and chin were
defiant, her forehead tranquil.

"I don't like it."

"Will you let me look at it?  I am a painter."

"It isn't worth looking at, but--if you wish--"

He put the two halves of the sketch together.

"You see!" she said at last; "I told you."

Harz did not answer, still looking at the sketch.  The girl frowned.

Harz asked her suddenly:

"Why do you paint?"

She coloured, and said:

"Show me what is wrong."

"I cannot show you what is wrong, there is nothing wrong--but why do
you paint?"

"I don't understand."

Harz shrugged his shoulders.

"You've no business to do that," said the girl in a hurt voice; "I
want to know."

"Your heart is not in it," said Harz.

She looked at him, startled; her eyes had grown thoughtful.

"I suppose that is it.  There are so many other things--"

"There should be nothing else," said Harz.

She broke in: "I don't want always to be thinking of myself.
Suppose--"

"Ah! When you begin supposing!"

The girl confronted him; she had torn the sketch again.

"You mean that if it does not matter enough, one had better not do it
at all.  I don't know if you are right--I think you are."

There was the sound of a nervous cough, and Harz saw behind him his
three visitors--Miss Naylor offering him her hand; Greta, flushed,
with a bunch of wild flowers, staring intently in his face; and the
terrier, sniffing at his trousers.

Miss Naylor broke an awkward silence.

"We wondered if you would still be here, Christian.  I am sorry to
interrupt you--I was not aware that you knew Mr. Herr--"

"Harz is my name--we were just talking"

"About my sketch.  Oh, Greta, you do tickle!  Will you come and have
breakfast with us to-day, Herr Harz?  It's our turn, you know."

Harz, glancing at his dusty clothes, excused himself.

But Greta in a pleading voice said: "Oh! do come!  Scruff likes you.
It is so dull when there is nobody for breakfast but ourselves."

Miss Naylor's mouth began to twist.  Harz hurriedly broke in:

"Thank you.  I will come with pleasure; you don't mind my being
dirty?"

"Oh no! we do not mind; then we shall none of us wash, and afterwards
I shall show you my rabbits."

Miss Naylor, moving from foot to foot, like a bird on its perch,
exclaimed:

"I hope you won't regret it, not a very good meal--the girls are so
impulsive--such informal invitation; we shall be very glad."

But Greta pulled softly at her sister's sleeve, and Christian,
gathering her things, led the way.

Harz followed in amazement; nothing of this kind had come into his
life before.  He kept shyly glancing at the girls; and, noting the
speculative innocence in Greta's eyes, he smiled.  They soon came to
two great poplar-trees, which stood, like sentinels, one on either
side of an unweeded gravel walk leading through lilac bushes to a
house painted dull pink, with green-shuttered windows, and a roof of
greenish slate.  Over the door in faded crimson letters were written
the words, "Villa Rubein."

"That is to the stables," said Greta, pointing down a path, where
some pigeons were sunning themselves on a wall.  "Uncle Nic keeps his
horses there: Countess and Cuckoo--his horses begin with C, because
of Chris--they are quite beautiful.  He says he could drive them to
Kingdom-Come and they would not turn their hair.  Bow, and say 'Good-
morning' to our house!"

Harz bowed.

"Father said all strangers should, and I think it brings good luck."
>From the doorstep she looked round at Harz, then ran into the house.

A broad, thick-set man, with stiff, brushed-up hair, a short, brown,
bushy beard parted at the chin, a fresh complexion, and blue glasses
across a thick nose, came out, and called in a bluff voice:

"Ha! my good dears, kiss me quick--prrt!  How goes it then this
morning?  A good walk, hein?"  The sound of many loud rapid kisses
followed.

"Ha, Fraulein, good!"  He became aware of Harz's figure standing in
the doorway: "Und der Herr?"

Miss Naylor hurriedly explained.

"Good!  An artist!  Kommen Sie herein, I am delight.  You will
breakfast?  I too--yes, yes, my dears--I too breakfast with you this
morning.  I have the hunter's appetite."

Harz, looking at him keenly, perceived him to be of middle height and
age, stout, dressed in a loose holland jacket, a very white, starched
shirt, and blue silk sash; that he looked particularly clean, had an
air of belonging to Society, and exhaled a really fine aroma of
excellent cigars and the best hairdresser's essences.

The room they entered was long and rather bare; there was a huge map
on the wall, and below it a pair of globes on crooked supports,
resembling two inflated frogs erect on their hind legs.  In one
corner was a cottage piano, close to a writing-table heaped with
books and papers; this nook, sacred to Christian, was foreign to the
rest of the room, which was arranged with supernatural neatness.  A
table was laid for breakfast, and the sun-warmed air came in through
French windows.

The meal went merrily; Herr Paul von Morawitz was never in such
spirits as at table.  Words streamed from him.  Conversing with Harz,
he talked of Art as who should say: "One does not claim to be a
connoisseur--pas si bete--still, one has a little knowledge, que
diable!"  He recommended him a man in the town who sold cigars that
were "not so very bad."  He consumed porridge, ate an omelette; and
bending across to Greta gave her a sounding kiss, muttering: "Kiss me
quick!"--an expression he had picked up in a London music-hall, long
ago, and considered chic.  He asked his daughters' plans, and held
out porridge to the terrier, who refused it with a sniff.

"Well," he said suddenly, looking at Miss Naylor, "here is a
gentleman who has not even heard our names!"

The little lady began her introductions in a breathless voice.

"Good!"  Herr Paul said, puffing out his lips: "Now we know each
other!" and, brushing up the ends of his moustaches, he carried off
Harz into another room, decorated with pipe-racks, prints of dancing-
girls, spittoons, easy-chairs well-seasoned by cigar smoke, French
novels, and newspapers.

The household at Villa Rubein was indeed of a mixed and curious
nature.  Cut on both floors by corridors, the Villa was divided into
four divisions; each of which had its separate inhabitants, an
arrangement which had come about in the following way:

When old Nicholas Treffry died, his estate, on the boundary of
Cornwall, had been sold and divided up among his three surviving
children--Nicholas, who was much the eldest, a partner in the well-
known firm of Forsyte and Treffry, teamen, of the Strand; Constance,
married to a man called Decie; and Margaret, at her father's death
engaged to the curate of the parish, John Devorell, who shortly
afterwards became its rector.  By his marriage with Margaret Treffry
the rector had one child called Christian.  Soon after this he came
into some property, and died, leaving it unfettered to his widow.
Three years went by, and when the child was six years old, Mrs.
Devorell, still young and pretty, came to live in London with her
brother Nicholas.  It was there that she met Paul von Morawitz--the
last of an old Czech family, who had lived for many hundred years on
their estates near Budweiss.  Paul had been left an orphan at the age
of ten, and without a solitary ancestral acre.  Instead of acres, he
inherited the faith that nothing was too good for a von Morawitz.  In
later years his savoir faire enabled him to laugh at faith, but it
stayed quietly with him all the same.  The absence of acres was of no
great consequence, for through his mother, the daughter of a banker
in Vienna, he came into a well-nursed fortune.  It befitted a von
Morawitz that he should go into the Cavalry, but, unshaped for
soldiering, he soon left the Service; some said he had a difference
with his Colonel over the quality of food provided during some
manoeuvres; others that he had retired because his chargers did not
fit his legs, which were, indeed, rather round.

He had an admirable appetite for pleasure; a man-about-town's life
suited him.  He went his genial, unreflecting, costly way in Vienna,
Paris, London.  He loved exclusively those towns, and boasted that he
was as much at home in one as in another.  He combined exuberant
vitality with fastidiousness of palate, and devoted both to the
acquisition of a special taste in women, weeds, and wines; above all
he was blessed with a remarkable digestion.  He was thirty when he
met Mrs. Devorell; and she married him because he was so very
different from anybody she had ever seen.  People more dissimilar
were never mated.  To Paul--accustomed to stage doors--freshness,
serene tranquillity, and obvious purity were the baits; he had run
through more than half his fortune, too, and the fact that she had
money was possibly not overlooked.  Be that as it may, he was fond of
her; his heart was soft, he developed a domestic side.

Greta was born to them after a year of marriage.  The instinct of the
"freeman" was, however, not dead in Paul; he became a gambler.  He
lost the remainder of his fortune without being greatly disturbed.
When he began to lose his wife's fortune too things naturally became
more difficult.  Not too much remained when Nicholas Treffry stepped
in, and caused his sister to settle what was left on her daughters,
after providing a life-interest for herself and Paul.  Losing his
supplies, the good man had given up his cards.  But the instinct of
the "freeman" was still living in his breast; he took to drink.  He
was never grossly drunk, and rarely very sober.  His wife sorrowed
over this new passion; her health, already much enfeebled, soon broke
down.  The doctors sent her to the Tyrol.  She seemed to benefit by
this, and settled down at Botzen.  The following year, when Greta was
just ten, she died.  It was a shock to Paul.  He gave up excessive
drinking; became a constant smoker, and lent full rein to his natural
domesticity.  He was fond of both the girls, but did not at all
understand them; Greta, his own daughter, was his favourite.  Villa
Rubein remained their home; it was cheap and roomy.  Money, since
Paul became housekeeper to himself, was scarce.

About this time Mrs. Decie, his wife's sister, whose husband had died
in the East, returned to England; Paul invited her to come and live
with them.  She had her own rooms, her own servant; the arrangement
suited Paul--it was economically sound, and there was some one always
there to take care of the girls.  In truth he began to feel the
instinct of the "freeman" rising again within him; it was pleasant to
run over to Vienna now and then; to play piquet at a Club in Gries,
of which he was the shining light; in a word, to go "on the tiles" a
little.  One could not always mourn--even if a woman were an angel;
moreover, his digestion was as good as ever.

The fourth quarter of this Villa was occupied by Nicholas Treffry,
whose annual sojourn out of England perpetually surprised himself.
Between him and his young niece, Christian, there existed, however, a
rare sympathy; one of those affections between the young and old,
which, mysteriously born like everything in life, seems the only end
and aim to both, till another feeling comes into the younger heart.

Since a long and dangerous illness, he had been ordered to avoid the
English winter, and at the commencement of each spring he would
appear at Botzen, driving his own horses by easy stages from the
Italian Riviera, where he spent the coldest months.  He always stayed
till June before going back to his London Club, and during all that
time he let no day pass without growling at foreigners, their habits,
food, drink, and raiment, with a kind of big dog's growling that did
nobody any harm.  The illness had broken him very much; he was
seventy, but looked more.  He had a servant, a Luganese, named
Dominique, devoted to him.  Nicholas Treffry had found him overworked
in an hotel, and had engaged him with the caution: "Look--here,
Dominique! I swear!"  To which Dominique, dark of feature, saturnine
and ironical, had only replied: "Tres biens, M'sieur!"




III

Harz and his host sat in leather chairs; Herr Paul's square back was
wedged into a cushion, his round legs crossed.  Both were smoking,
and they eyed each other furtively, as men of different stamp do when
first thrown together.  The young artist found his host extremely new
and disconcerting; in his presence he felt both shy and awkward.
Herr Paul, on the other hand, very much at ease, was thinking
indolently:

'Good-looking young fellow--comes of the people, I expect, not at all
the manner of the world; wonder what he talks about.'

Presently noticing that Harz was looking at a photograph, he said:
"Ah! yes! that was a woman!  They are not to be found in these days.
She could dance, the little Coralie!  Did you ever see such arms?
Confess that she is beautiful, hein?"

"She has individuality," said Harz.  "A fine type!"

Herr Paul blew out a cloud of smoke.

"Yes," he murmured, "she was fine all over!"  He had dropped his
eyeglasses, and his full brown eyes, with little crow's-feet at the
corners, wandered from his visitor to his cigar.

'He'd be like a Satyr if he wasn't too clean,' thought Harz.  'Put
vine leaves in his hair, paint him asleep, with his hands crossed,
so!'

"When I am told a person has individuality," Herr Paul was saying in
a rich and husky voice, "I generally expect boots that bulge, an
umbrella of improper colour; I expect a creature of 'bad form' as
they say in England; who will shave some days and some days will not
shave; who sometimes smells of India-rubber, and sometimes does not
smell, which is discouraging!"

"You do not approve of individuality?" said Harz shortly.

"Not if it means doing, and thinking, as those who know better do not
do, or think."

"And who are those who know better?"

"Ah! my dear, you are asking me a riddle?  Well, then--Society, men
of birth, men of recognised position, men above eccentricity, in a
word, of reputation."

Harz looked at him fixedly.  "Men who haven't the courage of their
own ideas, not even the courage to smell of India-rubber; men who
have no desires, and so can spend all their time making themselves
flat!"

Herr Paul drew out a red silk handkerchief and wiped his beard.  "I
assure you, my dear," he said, "it is easier to be flat; it is more
respectable to be flat.  Himmel! why not, then, be flat?"

"Like any common fellow?"

"Certes; like any common fellow--like me, par exemple!"  Herr Paul
waved his hand.  When he exercised unusual tact, he always made use
of a French expression.

Harz flushed.  Herr Paul followed up his victory.  "Come, come!" he
said.  "Pass me my men of repute! que diable! we are not anarchists."

"Are you sure?" said Harz.

Herr Paul twisted his moustache.  "I beg your pardon," he said
slowly.  But at this moment the door was opened; a rumbling voice
remarked: "Morning, Paul.  Who's your visitor?"  Harz saw a tall,
bulky figure in the doorway.

"Come in,"' called out Herr Paul.  "Let me present to you a new
acquaintance, an artist: Herr Harz--Mr. Nicholas Treffry.  Psumm
bumm! All this introducing is dry work."  And going to the sideboard
he poured out three glasses of a light, foaming beer.

Mr. Treffry waved it from him: "Not for me," he said: "Wish I could!
They won't let me look at it."  And walking over, to the window with
a heavy tread, which trembled like his voice, he sat down.  There was
something in his gait like the movements of an elephant's hind legs.
He was very tall (it was said, with the customary exaggeration of
family tradition, that there never had been a male Treffry under six
feet in height), but now he stooped, and had grown stout.  There was
something at once vast and unobtrusive about his personality.

He wore a loose brown velvet jacket, and waistcoat, cut to show a
soft frilled shirt and narrow black ribbon tie; a thin gold chain was
looped round his neck and fastened to his fob.  His heavy cheeks had
folds in them like those in a bloodhound's face.  He wore big,
drooping, yellow-grey moustaches, which he had a habit of sucking,
and a goatee beard.  He had long loose ears that might almost have
been said to gap.  On his head there was a soft black hat, large in
the brim and low in the crown.  His grey eyes, heavy-lidded, twinkled
under their bushy brows with a queer, kind cynicism.  As a young man
he had sown many a wild oat; but he had also worked and made money in
business; he had, in fact, burned the candle at both ends; but he had
never been unready to do his fellows a good turn.  He had a passion
for driving, and his reckless method of pursuing this art had caused
him to be nicknamed: "The notorious Treffry."

Once, when he was driving tandem down a hill with a loose rein, the
friend beside him had said: "For all the good you're doing with those
reins, Treffry, you might as well throw them on the horses' necks."

"Just so," Treffry had answered.  At the bottom of the hill they had
gone over a wall into a potato patch.  Treffry had broken several
ribs; his friend had gone unharmed.

He was a great sufferer now, but, constitutionally averse to being
pitied, he had a disconcerting way of humming, and this, together
with the shake in his voice, and his frequent use of peculiar
phrases, made the understanding of his speech depend at times on
intuition rather than intelligence.

The clock began to strike eleven.  Harz muttered an excuse, shook
hands with his host, and bowing to his new acquaintance, went away.
He caught a glimpse of Greta's face against the window, and waved his
hand to her.  In the road he came on Dawney, who was turning in
between the poplars, with thumbs as usual hooked in the armholes of
his waistcoat.

"Hallo!" the latter said.

"Doctor!" Harz answered slyly; "the Fates outwitted me, it seems."

"Serve you right," said Dawney, "for your confounded egoism! Wait
here till I come out, I shan't be many minutes."

But Harz went on his way.  A cart drawn by cream-coloured oxen was
passing slowly towards the bridge.  In front of the brushwood piled
on it two peasant girls were sitting with their feet on a mat of
grass--the picture of contentment.

"I'm wasting my time!" he thought.  "I've done next to nothing in two
months.  Better get back to London!  That girl will never make a
painter!"  She would never make a painter, but there was something in
her that he could not dismiss so rapidly.  She was not exactly
beautiful, but she was sympathetic.  The brow was pleasing, with
dark-brown hair softly turned back, and eyes so straight and shining.
The two sisters were very different!  The little one was innocent,
yet mysterious; the elder seemed as clear as crystal!

He had entered the town, where the arcaded streets exuded their
peculiar pungent smell of cows and leather, wood-smoke, wine-casks,
and drains.  The sound of rapid wheels over the stones made him turn
his head.  A carriage drawn by red-roan horses was passing at a great
pace.  People stared at it, standing still, and looking alarmed.  It
swung from side to side and vanished round a corner.  Harz saw Mr.
Nicholas Treffry in a long, whitish dust-coat; his Italian servant,
perched behind, was holding to the seat-rail, with a nervous grin on
his dark face.

'Certainly,' Harz thought, 'there's no getting away from these people
this morning--they are everywhere.'

In his studio he began to sort his sketches, wash his brushes, and
drag out things he had accumulated during his two months' stay.  He
even began to fold his blanket door.  But suddenly he stopped.  Those
two girls!  Why not try?  What a picture!  The two heads, the sky,
and leaves!  Begin to-morrow!  Against that window--no, better at the
Villa!  Call the picture--Spring...!




IV

The wind, stirring among trees and bushes, flung the young leaves
skywards.  The trembling of their silver linings was like the joyful
flutter of a heart at good news.  It was one of those Spring mornings
when everything seems full of a sweet restlessness--soft clouds
chasing fast across the sky; soft scents floating forth and dying;
the notes of birds, now shrill and sweet, now hushed in silences; all
nature striving for something, nothing at peace.

Villa Rubein withstood the influence of the day, and wore its usual
look of rest and isolation.  Harz sent in his card, and asked to see
"der Herr."  The servant, a grey-eyed, clever-looking Swiss with no
hair on his face, came back saying:

"Der Herr, mein Herr, is in the Garden gone."  Harz followed him.

Herr Paul, a small white flannel cap on his head, gloves on his
hands, and glasses on his nose, was watering a rosebush, and humming
the serenade from Faust.

This aspect of the house was very different from the other.  The sun
fell on it, and over a veranda creepers clung and scrambled in long
scrolls.  There was a lawn, with freshly mown grass; flower-beds were
laid out, and at the end of an avenue of young acacias stood an
arbour covered with wisteria.

In the east, mountain peaks--fingers of snow--glittered above the
mist.  A grave simplicity lay on that scene, on the roofs and spires,
the valleys and the dreamy hillsides, with their yellow scars and
purple bloom, and white cascades, like tails of grey horses swishing
in the wind.

Herr Paul held out his hand: "What can we do for you?" he said.

"I have to beg a favour," replied Harz.  "I wish to paint your
daughters.  I will bring the canvas here--they shall have no trouble.
I would paint them in the garden when they have nothing else to do."

Herr Paul looked at him dubiously--ever since the previous day he had
been thinking: 'Queer bird, that painter--thinks himself the devil of
a swell!  Looks a determined fellow too!'  Now--staring in the
painter's face--it seemed to him, on the whole, best if some one else
refused this permission.

"With all the pleasure, my dear sir," he said.  "Come, let us ask
these two young ladies!" and putting down his hose, he led the way
towards the arbour, thinking: 'You'll be disappointed, my young
conqueror, or I'm mistaken.'

Miss Naylor and the girls were sitting in the shade, reading La
Fontaine's fables.  Greta, with one eye on her governess, was
stealthily cutting a pig out of orange peel.

"Ah! my dear dears!" began Herr Paul, who in the presence of Miss
Naylor always paraded his English.  "Here is our friend, who has a
very flattering request to make; he would paint you, yes--both
together, alfresco, in the air, in the sunshine, with the birds, the
little birds!"

Greta, gazing at Harz, gushed deep pink, and furtively showed him her
pig.

Christian said: "Paint us?  Oh no!"

She saw Harz looking at her, and added, slowly: "If you really wish
it, I suppose we could!" then dropped her eyes.

"Ah!" said Herr Paul raising his brows till his glasses fell from his
nose: "And what says Gretchen?  Does she want to be handed up to
posterities a little peacock along with the other little birds?"

Greta, who had continued staring at the painter, said: "Of--course--
I--want--to--be."

"Prrt!" said Herr Paul, looking at Miss Naylor.  The little lady
indeed opened her mouth wide, but all that came forth was a tiny
squeak, as sometimes happens when one is anxious to say something,
and has not arranged beforehand what it shall be.

The affair seemed ended; Harz heaved a sigh of satisfaction.  But
Herr Paul had still a card to play.

"There is your Aunt," he said; "there are things to be considered--
one must certainly inquire--so, we shall see."  Kissing Greta loudly
on both cheeks, he went towards the house.

"What makes you want to paint us?" Christian asked, as soon as he was
gone.

"I think it very wrong," Miss Naylor blurted out.

"Why?" said Harz, frowning.

"Greta is so young--there are lessons--it is such a waste of time!"

His eyebrows twitched: "Ah! You think so!"

"I don't see why it is a waste of time," said Christian quietly;
"there are lots of hours when we sit here and do nothing."

"And it is very dull," put in Greta, with a pout.

"You are rude, Greta," said Miss Naylor in a little rage, pursing her
lips, and taking up her knitting.

"I think it seems always rude to speak the truth," said Greta.  Miss
Naylor looked at her in that concentrated manner with which she was
in the habit of expressing displeasure.

But at this moment a servant came, and said that Mrs. Decie would be
glad to see Herr Harz.  The painter made them a stiff bow, and
followed the servant to the house.  Miss Naylor and the two girls
watched his progress with apprehensive eyes; it was clear that he had
been offended.

Crossing the veranda, and passing through an open window hung with
silk curtains, Hart entered a cool dark room.  This was Mrs. Decie's
sanctum, where she conducted correspondence, received her visitors,
read the latest literature, and sometimes, when she had bad
headaches, lay for hours on the sofa, with a fan, and her eyes
closed.  There was a scent of sandalwood, a suggestion of the East, a
kind of mystery, in here, as if things like chairs and tables were
not really what they seemed, but something much less commonplace.

The visitor looked twice, to be quite sure of anything; there were
many plants, bead curtains, and a deal of silverwork and china.

Mrs. Decie came forward in the slightly rustling silk which--whether
in or out of fashion--always accompanied her.  A tall woman, over
fifty, she moved as if she had been tied together at the knees.  Her
face was long, with broad brows, from which her sandy-grey hair was
severely waved back; she had pale eyes, and a perpetual, pale,
enigmatic smile.  Her complexion had been ruined by long residence in
India, and might unkindly have been called fawn-coloured.  She came
close to Harz, keeping her eyes on his, with her head bent slightly
forward.

"We are so pleased to know you," she said, speaking in a voice which
had lost all ring.  "It is charming to find some one in these parts
who can help us to remember that there is such a thing as Art.  We
had Mr. C--- here last autumn, such a charming fellow.  He was so
interested in the native customs and dresses.  You are a subject
painter, too, I think?  Won't you sit down?"

She went on for some time, introducing painters' names, asking
questions, skating round the edge of what was personal.  And the
young man stood before her with a curious little smile fixed on his
lips.  'She wants to know whether I'm worth powder and shot,' he
thought.

"You wish to paint my nieces?" Mrs. Decie said at last, leaning back
on her settee.

"I wish to have that honour," Harz answered with a bow.

"And what sort of picture did you think of?"

"That," said Harz, "is in the future.  I couldn't tell you."  And he
thought: 'Will she ask me if I get my tints in Paris, like the woman
Tramper told me of?'

The perpetual pale smile on Mrs. Decie's face seemed to invite his
confidence, yet to warn him that his words would be sucked in
somewhere behind those broad fine brows, and carefully sorted.  Mrs.
Decie, indeed, was thinking: 'Interesting young man, regular
Bohemian--no harm in that at his age; something Napoleonic in his
face; probably has no dress clothes.  Yes, should like to see more of
him!'  She had a fine eye for points of celebrity; his name was
unfamiliar, would probably have been scouted by that famous artist
Mr. C---, but she felt her instinct urging her on to know him.  She
was, to do her justice, one of those "lion" finders who seek the
animal for pleasure, not for the glory it brings them; she had the
courage of her instincts--lion-entities were indispensable to her,
but she trusted to divination to secure them; nobody could foist a
"lion" on her.

"It will be very nice.  You will stay and have some lunch?  The
arrangements here are rather odd.  Such a mixed household--but there
is always lunch at two o'clock for any one who likes, and we all dine
at seven.  You would have your sittings in the afternoons, perhaps?
I should so like to see your sketches.  You are using the old house
on the wall for studio; that is so original of you!"

Harz would not stay to lunch, but asked if he might begin work that
afternoon; he left a little suffocated by the sandalwood and sympathy
of this sphinx-like woman.

Walking home along the river wall, with the singing of the larks and
thrushes, the rush of waters, the humming of the chafers in his ears,
he felt that he would make something fine of this subject.  Before
his eyes the faces of the two girls continually started up, framed by
the sky, with young leaves guttering against their cheeks.




V

Three days had passed since Harz began his picture, when early in the
morning, Greta came from Villa Rubein along the river dyke and sat
down on a bench from which the old house on the wall was visible.
She had not been there long before Harz came out.

"I did not knock," said Greta, "because you would not have heard, and
it is so early, so I have been waiting for you a quarter of an hour."

Selecting a rosebud, from some flowers in her hand, she handed it to
him.  "That is my first rosebud this year," she said; "it is for you
because you are painting me.  To-day I am thirteen, Herr Harz; there
is not to be a sitting, because it is my birthday; but, instead, we
are all going to Meran to see the play of Andreas Hofer.  You are to
come too, please; I am here to tell you, and the others shall be here
directly."

Harz bowed: "And who are the others?"

"Christian, and Dr. Edmund, Miss Naylor, and Cousin Teresa.  Her
husband is ill, so she is sad, but to-day she is going to forget
that.  It is not good to be always sad, is it, Herr Harz?"

He laughed: "You could not be."

Greta answered gravely: "Oh yes, I could.  I too am often sad.  You
are making fun.  You are not to make fun to-day, because it is my
birthday.  Do you think growing up is nice, Herr Harz ?"

"No, Fraulein Greta, it is better to have all the time before you."

They walked on side by side.

"I think," said Greta, "you are very much afraid of losing time.
Chris says that time is nothing."

"Time is everything," responded Harz.

"She says that time is nothing, and thought is everything," Greta
murmured, rubbing a rose against her cheek, "but I think you cannot
have a thought unless you have the time to think it in.  There are
the others!  Look!"

A cluster of sunshades on the bridge glowed for a moment and was lost
in shadow.

"Come," said Harz, "let's join them!"

At Meran, under Schloss Tirol, people were streaming across the
meadows into the open theatre.  Here were tall fellows in mountain
dress, with leather breeches, bare knees, and hats with eagles'
feathers; here were fruit-sellers, burghers and their wives,
mountebanks, actors, and every kind of visitor.  The audience, packed
into an enclosure of high boards, sweltered under the burning sun.
Cousin Teresa, tall and thin, with hard, red cheeks, shaded her
pleasant eyes with her hand.

The play began.  It depicted the rising in the Tyrol of 1809: the
village life, dances and yodelling; murmurings and exhortations, the
warning beat of drums; then the gathering, with flintlocks,
pitchforks, knives; the battle and victory; the homecoming, and
festival.  Then the second gathering, the roar of cannon; betrayal,
capture, death.  The impassive figure of the patriot Andreas Hofer
always in front, black-bearded, leathern-girdled, under the blue sky,
against a screen of mountains.

Harz and Christian sat behind the others.  He seemed so intent on the
play that she did not speak, but watched his face, rigid with a kind
of cold excitement; he seemed to be transported by the life passing
before them.  Something of his feeling seized on her; when the play
was over she too was trembling.  In pushing their way out they became
separated from the others.

"There's a short cut to the station here," said Christian; "let's go
this way."

The path rose a little; a narrow stream crept alongside the meadow,
and the hedge was spangled with wild roses.  Christian kept glancing
shyly at the painter.  Since their meeting on the river wall her
thoughts had never been at rest.  This stranger, with his keen face,
insistent eyes, and ceaseless energy, had roused a strange feeling in
her; his words had put shape to something in her not yet expressed.
She stood aside at a stile to make way for some peasant boys, dusty
and rough-haired, who sang and whistled as they went by.

"I was like those boys once," said Harz.

Christian turned to him quickly.  "Ah! that was why you felt the
play, so much."

"It's my country up there.  I was born amongst the mountains.  I
looked after the cows, and slept in hay-cocks, and cut the trees in
winter.  They used to call me a 'black sheep,' a 'loafer' in my
village."

"Why?"

"Ah! why?  I worked as hard as any of them.  But I wanted to get
away.  Do you think I could have stayed there all my life?"

Christian's eyes grew eager.

"If people don't understand what it is you want to do, they always
call you a loafer!" muttered Harz.

"But you did what you meant to do in spite of them," Christian said.

For herself it was so hard to finish or decide.  When in the old days
she told Greta stories, the latter, whose instinct was always for the
definite, would say: "And what came at the end, Chris?  Do finish it
this morning!" but Christian never could.  Her thoughts were deep,
vague, dreamy, invaded by both sides of every question.  Whatever she
did, her needlework, her verse-making, her painting, all had its
charm; but it was not always what it was intended for at the
beginning.  Nicholas Treffry had once said of her: "When Chris starts
out to make a hat, it may turn out an altar-cloth, but you may bet it
won't be a hat."  It was her instinct to look for what things meant;
and this took more than all her time.  She knew herself better than
most girls of nineteen, but it was her reason that had informed her,
not her feelings.  In her sheltered life, her heart had never been
ruffled except by rare fits of passion--"tantrums" old Nicholas
Treffry dubbed them--at what seemed to her mean or unjust.

"If I were a man," she said, "and going to be great, I should have
wanted to begin at the very bottom as you did."

"Yes," said Harz quickly, "one should be able to feel everything."

She did not notice how simply he assumed that he was going to be
great.  He went on, a smile twisting his mouth unpleasantly beneath
its dark moustache

"Not many people think like you! It's a crime not to have been born a
gentleman."

"That's a sneer," said Christian; "I didn't think you would have
sneered!"

"It is true.  What is the use of pretending that it isn't?"

"It may be true, but it is finer not to say it!"

"By Heavens!" said Harz, striking one hand into the other, "if more
truth were spoken there would not be so many shams."

Christian looked down at him from her seat on the stile.

"You are right all the same, Fraulein Christian," he added suddenly;
"that's a very little business.  Work is what matters, and trying to
see the beauty in the world."

Christian's face changed.  She understood, well enough, this craving
after beauty.  Slipping down from the stile, she drew a slow deep
breath.

"Yes!" she said.  Neither spoke for some time, then Harz said shyly:

"If you and Fraulein Greta would ever like to come and see my studio,
I should be so happy.  I would try and clean it up for you!"

"I should like to come.  I could learn something.  I want to learn."

They were both silent till the path joined the road.

"We must be in front of the others; it's nice to be in front--let's
dawdle.  I forgot--you never dawdle, Herr Harz."

"After a big fit of work, I can dawdle against any one; then I get
another fit of work--it's like appetite."

"I'm always dawdling," answered Christian.

By the roadside a peasant woman screwed up her sun-dried face, saying
in a low voice: "Please, gracious lady, help me to lift this basket!"

Christian stooped, but before she could raise it, Harz hoisted it up
on his back.

"All right," he nodded; "this good lady doesn't mind."

The woman, looking very much ashamed, walked along by Christian; she
kept rubbing her brown hands together, and saying; "Gracious lady, I
would not have wished.  It is heavy, but I would not have wished."

"I'm sure he'd rather carry it," said Christian.

They had not gone far along the road, however, before the others
passed them in a carriage, and at the strange sight Miss Naylor could
be seen pursing her lips; Cousin Teresa nodding pleasantly; a smile
on Dawney's face; and beside him Greta, very demure.  Harz began to
laugh.

"What are you laughing at?" asked Christian.

"You English are so funny.  You mustn't do this here, you mustn't do
that there, it's like sitting in a field of nettles.  If I were to
walk with you without my coat, that little lady would fall off her
seat."  His laugh infected Christian; they reached the station
feeling that they knew each other better.

The sun had dipped behind the mountains when the little train steamed
down the valley.  All were subdued, and Greta, with a nodding head,
slept fitfully.  Christian, in her corner, was looking out of the
window, and Harz kept studying her profile.

He tried to see her eyes.  He had remarked indeed that, whatever
their expression, the brows, arched and rather wide apart, gave them
a peculiar look of understanding.  He thought of his picture.  There
was nothing in her face to seize on, it was too sympathetic, too much
like light.  Yet her chin was firm, almost obstinate.

The train stopped with a jerk; she looked round at him.  It was as
though she had said: "You are my friend."

At Villa Rubein, Herr Paul had killed the fatted calf for Greta's
Fest.  When the whole party were assembled, he alone remained
standing; and waving his arm above the cloth, cried: "My dears! Your
happiness!  There are good things here--Come!"  And with a sly look,
the air of a conjurer producing rabbits, he whipped the cover off the
soup tureen:

"Soup-turtle, fat, green fat!"  He smacked his lips.

No servants were allowed, because, as Greta said to Harz:

"It is that we are to be glad this evening."

Geniality radiated from Herr Paul's countenance, mellow as a bowl of
wine.  He toasted everybody, exhorting them to pleasure.

Harz passed a cracker secretly behind Greta's head, and Miss Naylor,
moved by a mysterious impulse, pulled it with a sort of gleeful
horror; it exploded, and Greta sprang off her chair.  Scruff, seeing
this, appeared suddenly on the sideboard with his forelegs in a plate
of soup; without moving them, he turned his head, and appeared to
accuse the company of his false position.  It was the signal for
shrieks of laughter.  Scruff made no attempt to free his forelegs;
but sniffed the soup, and finding that nothing happened, began to lap
it.

"Take him out! Oh! take him out!" wailed Greta, "he shall be ill!"

"Allons! Mon cher!" cried Herr Paul, "c'est magnifique, mais, vous
savez, ce nest guere la guerre!"  Scruff, with a wild spring, leaped
past him to the ground.

"Ah!" cried Miss Naylor, "the carpet!"  Fresh moans of mirth shook
the table; for having tasted the wine of laughter, all wanted as much
more as they could get.  When Scruff and his traces were effaced,
Herr Paul took a ladle in his hand.

"I have a toast," he said, waving it for silence; "a toast we will
drink all together from our hearts; the toast of my little daughter,
who to-day has thirteen years become; and there is also in our
hearts," he continued, putting down the ladle and suddenly becoming
grave, "the thought of one who is not today with us to see this
joyful occasion; to her, too, in this our happiness we turn our
hearts and glasses because it is her joy that we should yet be
joyful.  I drink to my little daughter; may God her shadow bless!"

All stood up, clinking their glasses, and drank: then, in the hush
that followed, Greta, according to custom, began to sing a German
carol; at the end of the fourth line she stopped, abashed.

Heir Paul blew his nose loudly, and, taking up a cap that had fallen
from a cracker, put it on.

Every one followed his example, Miss Naylor attaining the distinction
of a pair of donkey's ears, which she wore, after another glass of
wine, with an air of sacrificing to the public good.

At the end of supper came the moment for the offering of gifts.  Herr
Paul had tied a handkerchief over Greta's eyes, and one by one they
brought her presents.  Greta, under forfeit of a kiss, was bound to
tell the giver by the feel of the gift.  Her swift, supple little
hands explored noiselessly; and in every case she guessed right.

Dawney's present, a kitten, made a scene by clawing at her hair.

"That is Dr. Edmund's," she cried at once.  Christian saw that Harz
had disappeared, but suddenly he came back breathless, and took his
place at the end of the rank of givers.

Advancing on tiptoe, he put his present into Greta's hands.  It was a
small bronze copy of a Donatello statue.

"Oh, Herr Harz!" cried Greta; "I saw it in the studio that day.  It
stood on the table, and it is lovely."

Mrs. Decie, thrusting her pale eyes close to it, murmured:
"Charming!"

Mr. Treffry took it in his forgers.

"Rum little toad!  Cost a pot of money, I expect!"  He eyed Harz
doubtfully.

They went into the next room now, and Herr Paul, taking Greta's
bandage, transferred it to his own eyes.

"Take care--take care, all!" he cried; "I am a devil of a catcher,"
and, feeling the air cautiously, he moved forward like a bear about
to hug.  He caught no one.  Christian and Greta whisked under his
arms and left him grasping at the air.  Mrs. Decie slipped past with
astonishing agility.  Mr. Treffry, smoking his cigar, and barricaded
in a corner, jeered: "Bravo, Paul!  The active beggar!  Can't he run!
Go it, Greta!"

At last Herr Paul caught Cousin Teresa, who, fattened against the
wall, lost her head, and stood uttering tiny shrieks.

Suddenly Mrs. Decie started playing The Blue Danube.  Herr Paul
dropped the handkerchief, twisted his moustache up fiercely, glared
round the room, and seizing Greta by the waist, began dancing
furiously, bobbing up and down like a cork in lumpy water.  Cousin
Teresa followed suit with Miss Naylor, both very solemn, and dancing
quite different steps.  Harz, went up to Christian.

"I can't dance," he said, "that is, I have only danced once, but--if
you would try with me!"

She put her hand on his arm, and they began.  She danced, light as a
feather, eyes shining, feet flying, her body bent a little forward.
It was not a great success at first, but as soon as the time had got
into Harz's feet, they went swinging on when all the rest had
stopped.  Sometimes one couple or another slipped through the window
to dance on the veranda, and came whirling in again.  The lamplight
glowed on the girls' white dresses; on Herr Paul's perspiring face.
He constituted in himself a perfect orgy, and when the music stopped
flung himself, full length, on the sofa gasping out:

"My God!  But, my God!"

Suddenly Christian felt Harz cling to her arm.

Glowing and panting she looked at him.

"Giddy!" he murmured: "I dance so badly; but I'll soon learn."

Greta clapped her hands: "Every evening we will dance, every evening
we will dance."

Harz looked at Christian; the colour had deepened in her face.

"I'll show you how they dance in my village, feet upon the ceiling!"
And running to Dawney, he said:

"Hold me here!  Lift me--so!  Now, on--two," he tried to swing his
feet above his head, but, with an "Ouch!" from Dawney, they
collapsed, and sat abruptly on the floor.  This untimely event
brought the evening to an end.  Dawney left, escorting Cousin Teresa,
and Harz strode home humming The Blue Danube, still feeling
Christian's waist against his arm.

In their room the two girls sat long at the window to cool themselves
before undressing.

"Ah!" sighed Greta, "this is the happiest birthday I have had."

Cristian too thought: 'I have never been so happy in my life as I
have been to-day.  I should like every day to be like this!'  And she
leant out into the night, to let the air cool her cheeks.

"Chris!" said Greta some days after this, "Miss Naylor danced last
evening; I think she shall have a headache to-day.  There is my
French and my history this morning."

"Well, I can take them."

"That is nice; then we can talk.  I am sorry about the headache.  I
shall give her some of my Eau de Cologne."

Miss Naylor's headaches after dancing were things on which to
calculate.  The girls carried their books into the arbour; it was a
showery day, and they had to run for shelter through the raindrops
and sunlight.

"The French first, Chris!"  Greta liked her French, in which she was
not far inferior to Christian; the lesson therefore proceeded in an
admirable fashion.  After one hour exactly by her watch
(Mr. Treffry's birthday present loved and admired at least once every
hour) Greta rose.

"Chris, I have not fed my rabbits."

"Be quick! there's not much time for history."

Greta vanished.  Christian watched the bright water dripping from the
roof; her lips were parted in a smile.  She was thinking of something
Harz had said the night before.  A discussion having been started as
to whether average opinion did, or did not, safeguard Society, Harz,
after sitting silent, had burst out: "I think one man in earnest is
better than twenty half-hearted men who follow tamely; in the end he
does Society most good."

Dawney had answered: "If you had your way there would be no Society."

"I hate Society because it lives upon the weak."

"Bah!" Herr Paul chimed in; "the weak goes to the wall; that is as
certain as that you and I are here."

"Let them fall against the wall," cried Harz; "don't push them
there...."

Greta reappeared, walking pensively in the rain.

"Bino," she said, sighing, "has eaten too much.  I remember now, I
did feed them before.  Must we do the history, Chris?"

"Of course!"

Greta opened her book, and put a finger in the page.  "Herr Harz is
very kind to me," she said.  "Yesterday he brought a bird which had.
come into his studio with a hurt wing; he brought it very gently in
his handkerchief--he is very kind, the bird was not even frightened
of him.  You did not know about that, Chris?"

Chris flushed a little, and said in a hurt voice

"I don't see what it has to--do with me."

"No," assented Greta.

Christian's colour deepened.  "Go on with your history, Greta."

"Only," pursued Greta, "that he always tells you all about things,
Chris."

"He doesn't! How can you say that!"

"I think he does, and it is because you do not make him angry.  It is
very easy to make him angry; you have only to think differently, and
he shall be angry at once."

"You are a little cat!" said Christian; "it isn't true, at all.  He
hates shams, and can't bear meanness; and it is mean to cover up
dislikes and pretend that you agree with people."

"Papa says that he thinks too much about himself."

"Father!" began Christian hotly; biting her lips she stopped, and
turned her wrathful eyes on Greta.

"You do not always show your dislikes, Chris."

"I?  What has that to do with it?  Because one is a coward that
doesn't make it any better, does it?"

"I think that he has a great many dislikes," murmured Greta.

"I wish you would attend to your own faults, and not pry into other
people's," and pushing the book aside, Christian gazed in front of
her.

Some minutes passed, then Greta leaning over, rubbed a cheek against
her shoulder.

"I am very sorry, Chris--I only wanted to be talking.  Shall I read
some history?"

"Yes," said Christian coldly.

"Are you angry with me, Chris?"

There was no answer.  The lingering raindrops pattered down on the
roof.  Greta pulled at her sister's sleeve.

"Look, Chris!" she said.  "There is Herr Harz!"

Christian looked up, dropped her eyes again, and said: "Will you go
on with the history, Greta?"

Greta sighed.

"Yes, I will--but, oh! Chris, there is the luncheon gong!" and she
meekly closed the book.

During the following weeks there was a "sitting" nearly every
afternoon.  Miss Naylor usually attended them; the little lady was,
to a certain extent, carried past objection.  She had begun to take
an interest in the picture, and to watch the process out of the
corner of her eye; in the depths of her dear mind, however, she never
quite got used to the vanity and waste of time; her lips would move
and her knitting-needles click in suppressed remonstrances.

What Harz did fast he did best; if he had leisure he "saw too much,"
loving his work so passionately that he could never tell exactly when
to stop.  He hated to lay things aside, always thinking: "I can get
it better."  Greta was finished, but with Christian, try as he would,
he was not satisfied; from day to day her face seemed to him to
change, as if her soul were growing.

There were things too in her eyes that he could neither read nor
reproduce.

Dawney would often stroll out to them after his daily visit, and
lying on the grass, his arms crossed behind his head, and a big cigar
between his lips, would gently banter everybody.  Tea came at five
o'clock, and then Mrs. Decie appeared armed with a magazine or novel,
for she was proud of her literary knowledge.  The sitting was
suspended; Harz, with a cigarette, would move between the table and
the picture, drinking his tea, putting a touch in here and there; he
never sat down till it was all over for the day.  During these
"rests" there was talk, usually ending in discussion.  Mrs. Decie was
happiest in conversations of a literary order, making frequent use of
such expressions as: "After all, it produces an illusion--does
anything else matter?"  "Rather a poseur, is he not?"  "A question,
that, of temperament," or "A matter of the definition of words"; and
other charming generalities, which sound well, and seem to go far,
and are pleasingly irrefutable.  Sometimes the discussion turned on
Art--on points of colour or technique; whether realism was quite
justified; and should we be pre-Raphaelites?  When these discussions
started, Christian's eyes would grow bigger and clearer, with a sort
of shining reasonableness; as though they were trying to see into the
depths.  And Harz would stare at them.  But the look in those eyes
eluded him, as if they had no more meaning than Mrs. Decie's, which,
with their pale, watchful smile, always seemed saying: "Come, let us
take a little intellectual exercise."

Greta, pulling Scruff's ears, would gaze up at the speakers; when the
talk was over, she always shook herself.  But if no one came to the
"sittings," there would sometimes be very earnest, quick talk,
sometimes long silences.

One day Christian said: "What is your religion?"

Harz finished the touch he was putting on the canvas, before he
answered: "Roman Catholic, I suppose; I was baptised in that Church."

"I didn't mean that.  Do you believe in a future life?"

"Christian," murmured Greta, who was plaiting blades of grass, "shall
always want to know what people think about a future life; that is so
funny!"

"How can I tell?" said Harz; "I've never really thought of it--never
had the time."

"How can you help thinking?" Christian said: "I have to--it seems to
me so awful that we might come to an end."

She closed her book, and it slipped off her lap.  She went on: "There
must be a future life, we're so incomplete.  What's the good of your
work, for instance?  What's the use of developing if you have to
stop?"

"I don't know," answered Harz.  "I don't much care.  All I know is,
I've got to work."

"But why?"

"For happiness--the real happiness is fighting--the rest is nothing.
If you have finished a thing, does it ever satisfy you?  You look
forward to the next thing at once; to wait is wretched!"

Christian clasped her hands behind her neck; sunlight flickered
through the leaves on to the bosom of her dress.

"Ah! Stay like that!" cried Harz.

She let her eyes rest on his face, swinging her foot a little.

"You work because you must; but that's not enough.  Why do you feel
you must?  I want to know what's behind.  When I was travelling with
Aunt Constance the winter before last we often talked--I've heard her
discuss it with her friends.  She says we move in circles till we
reach Nirvana.  But last winter I found I couldn't talk to her; it
seemed as if she never really meant anything.  Then I started
reading--Kant and Hegel--"

"Ah!" put in Harz, "if they would teach me to draw better, or to see
a new colour in a flower, or an expression in a face, I would read
them all."

Christian leaned forward: "It must be right to get as near truth as
possible; every step gained is something.  You believe in truth;
truth is the same as beauty--that was what you said--you try to paint
the truth, you always see the beauty.  But how can we know truth,
unless we know what is at the root of it?"

"I--think," murmured Greta, sotto voce, "you see one way--and he sees
another--because--you are not one person."

"Of course!" said Christian impatiently, "but why--"

A sound of humming interrupted her.

Nicholas Treffry was coming from the house, holding the Times in one
hand, and a huge meerschaum pipe in the other.

"Aha!" he said to Harz: "how goes the picture?" and he lowered
himself into a chair.

"Better to-day, Uncle?" said Christian softly.

Mr. Treffry growled.  "Confounded humbugs, doctors!" he said.  "Your
father used to swear by them; why, his doctor killed him--made him
drink such a lot of stuff!"

"Why then do you have a doctor, Uncle Nic?" asked Greta.

Mr. Treffry looked at her; his eyes twinkled.  "I don't know, my
dear.  If they get half a chance, they won't let go of you!"

There had been a gentle breeze all day, but now it had died away; not
a leaf quivered, not a blade of grass was stirring; from the house
were heard faint sounds as of some one playing on a pipe.  A
blackbird came hopping down the path.

"When you were a boy, did you go after birds' nests, Uncle Nic?"
Greta whispered.

"I believe you, Greta."  The blackbird hopped into the shrubbery.

"You frightened him, Uncle Nic!  Papa says that at Schloss Konig,
where he lived when he was young, he would always be after jackdaws'
nests."

"Gammon, Greta.  Your father never took a jackdaw's nest, his legs
are much too round!"

"Are you fond of birds, Uncle Nic?"

"Ask me another, Greta!  Well, I s'pose so."

"Then why did you go bird-nesting?  I think it is cruel"

Mr. Treffry coughed behind his paper: "There you have me, Greta," he
remarked.

Harz began to gather his brushes: "Thank you," he said, "that's all I
can do to-day."

"Can I look?" Mr. Treffry inquired.

"Certainly!"

Uncle Nic got up slowly, and stood in front of the picture.  "When
it's for sale," he said at last, "I'll buy it."

Harz bowed; but for some reason he felt annoyed, as if he had been
asked to part with something personal.

"I thank you," he said.  A gong sounded.

"You'll stay and have a snack with us?" said Mr. Treffry; "the
doctor's stopping."  Gathering up his paper, he moved off to the
house with his hand on Greta's shoulder, the terrier running in
front.  Harz and Christian were left alone.  He was scraping his
palette, and she was sitting with her elbows resting on her knees;
between them, a gleam of sunlight dyed the path golden.  It was
evening already; the bushes and the flowers, after the day's heat,
were breathing out perfume; the birds had started their evensong.

"Are you tired of sitting for your portrait, Fraulein Christian?"

Christian shook her head.

"I shall get something into it that everybody does not see--something
behind the surface, that will last."

Christian said slowly: "That's like a challenge.  You were right when
you said fighting is happiness--for yourself, but not for me.  I'm a
coward.  I hate to hurt people, I like them to like me.  If you had
to do anything that would make them hate you, you would do it all the
same, if it helped your work; that's fine--it's what I can't do.
It's--it's everything.  Do you like Uncle Nic?"

The young painter looked towards the house, where under the veranda
old Nicholas Treffry was still in sight; a smile came on his lips.

"If I were the finest painter in the world, he wouldn't think
anything of me for it, I'm afraid; but if I could show him handfuls
of big cheques for bad pictures I had painted, he would respect me."

She smiled, and said: "I love him."

"Then I shall like him," Harz answered simply.

She put her hand out, and her fingers met his.  "We shall be late,"
she said, glowing, and catching up her book: "I'm always late!"




VII

There was one other guest at dinner, a well-groomed person with pale,
fattish face, dark eyes, and hair thin on the temples, whose clothes
had a military cut.  He looked like a man fond of ease, who had gone
out of his groove, and collided with life.  Herr Paul introduced him
as Count Mario Sarelli.

Two hanging lamps with crimson shades threw a rosy light over the
table, where, in the centre stood a silver basket, full of irises.
Through the open windows the garden was all clusters of black foliage
in the dying light.  Moths fluttered round the lamps; Greta,
following them with her eyes, gave quite audible sighs of pleasure
when they escaped.  Both girls wore white, and Harz, who sat opposite
Christian, kept looking at her, and wondering why he had not painted
her in that dress.

Mrs. Decie understood the art of dining--the dinner, ordered by Herr
Paul, was admirable; the servants silent as their, shadows; there was
always a hum of conversation.

Sarelli, who sat on her right hand, seemed to partake of little
except olives, which he dipped into a glass of sherry.  He turned his
black, solemn eyes silently from face to face, now and then asking
the meaning of an English word.  After a discussion on modern Rome,
it was debated whether or no a criminal could be told by the
expression of his face.

"Crime," said Mrs. Decie, passing her hand across her brow--"crime is
but the hallmark of strong individuality."

Miss Naylor, gushing rather pink, stammered: "A great crime must show
itself--a murder.  Why, of course!"

"If that were so," said Dawney, "we should only have to look about
us--no more detectives."

Miss Naylor rejoined with slight severity: "I cannot conceive that
such a thing can pass the human face by, leaving no impression!"

Harz said abruptly: "There are worse things than murder."

"Ah! par exemple!" said Sarelli.

There was a slight stir all round the table.

"Verry good," cried out Herr Paul, "a vot' sante, cher."

Miss Naylor shivered, as if some one had put a penny down her back;
and Mrs. Decie, leaning towards Harz, smiled like one who has made a
pet dog do a trick.  Christian alone was motionless, looking
thoughtfully at Harz.

"I saw a man tried for murder once," he said, "a murder for revenge;
I watched the judge, and I thought all the time: 'I'd rather be that
murderer than you; I've never seen a meaner face; you crawl through
life; you're not a criminal, simply because you haven't the
courage.'"

In the dubious silence following the painter's speech, Mr. Treffry
could distinctly be heard humming.  Then Sarelli said: "What do you
say to anarchists, who are not men, but savage beasts, whom I would
tear to pieces!"

"As to that," Harz answered defiantly, "it maybe wise to hang them,
but then there are so many other men that it would be wise to hang."

"How can we tell what they went through; what their lives were?"
murmured Christian.

Miss Naylor, who had been rolling a pellet of bread, concealed it
hastily.  "They are--always given a chance to--repent--I believe,"
she said.

"For what they are about to receive," drawled Dawney.

Mrs. Decie signalled with her fan: "We are trying to express the
inexpressible--shall we go into the garden?"

All rose; Harz stood by the window, and in passing, Christian looked
at him.

He sat down again with a sudden sense of loss.  There was no white
figure opposite now.  Raising his eyes he met Sarelli's.  The Italian
was regarding him with a curious stare.

Herr Paul began retailing apiece of scandal he had heard that
afternoon.

"Shocking affair!" he said; "I could never have believed it of her!
B--- is quite beside himself.  Yesterday there was a row, it seems!"

"There has been one every day for months," muttered Dawney.

"But to leave without a word, and go no one knows where!  B--- is
'viveur' no doubt, mais, mon Dieu, que voulezvous?  She was always a
poor, pale thing.  Why! when my---" he flourished his cigar; "I was
not always---what I should have been---one lives in a world of flesh
and blood---we are not all angels---que diable!  But this is a very
vulgar business.  She goes off; leaves everything---without a word;
and B---is very fond of her.  These things are not done!" the
starched bosom of his shirt seemed swollen by indignation.

Mr. Treffry, with a heavy hand on the table, eyed him sideways.
Dawney said slowly:

"B--- is a beast; I'm sorry for the poor woman; but what can she do
alone?"

"There is, no doubt, a man," put in Sarelli.

Herr Paul muttered: "Who knows?"

"What is B--- going to do?" said Dawney.

"Ah!" said Herr Paul.  "He is fond of her.  He is a chap of
resolution, he will get her back.  He told me: 'Well, you know, I
shall follow her wherever she goes till she comes back.'  He will do
it, he is a determined chap; he will follow her wherever she goes."

Mr. Treffry drank his wine off at a gulp, and sucked his moustache in
sharply.

"She was a fool to marry him," said Dawney; "they haven't a point in
common; she hates him like poison, and she's the better of the two.
But it doesn't pay a woman to run off like that.  B--- had better
hurry up, though.  What do you think, sir?" he said to Mr. Treffry.

"Eh?" said Mr. Treffry; "how should I know?  Ask Paul there, he's one
of your moral men, or Count Sarelli."

The latter said impassively: "If I cared for her I should very likely
kill her--if not--" he shrugged his shoulders.

Harz, who was watching, was reminded of his other words at dinner,
"wild beasts whom I would tear to pieces."  He looked with interest
at this quiet man who said these extremely ferocious things, and
thought: 'I should like to paint that fellow.'

Herr Paul twirled his wine-glass in his fingers.  "There are family
ties," he said, "there is society, there is decency; a wife should be
with her husband.  B--- will do quite right.  He must go after her;
she will not perhaps come back at first; he will follow her; she will
begin to think, 'I am helpless--I am ridiculous!'  A woman is soon
beaten.  They will return.  She is once more with her husband--
Society will forgive, it will be all right."

"By Jove, Paul," growled Mr. Treffry, "wonderful power of argument!"

"A wife is a wife," pursued Herr Paul; "a man has a right to her
society."

"What do you say to that, sir?" asked Dawney.

Mr. Treffry tugged at his beard: "Make a woman live with you, if she
don't want to?  I call it low."

"But, my dear," exclaimed Herr Paul, "how should you know?  You have
not been married."

"No, thank the Lord!" Mr. Treffry replied.

"But looking at the question broadly, sir," said Dawney; "if a
husband always lets his wife do as she likes, how would the thing
work out?  What becomes of the marriage tie?"

"The marriage tie," growled Mr. Treffry, "is the biggest thing there
is!  But, by Jove, Doctor, I'm a Dutchman if hunting women ever
helped the marriage tie!"

"I am not thinking of myself," Herr Paul cried out, "I think of the
community.  There are rights."

"A decent community never yet asked a man to tread on his self-
respect.  If I get my fingers skinned over my marriage, which I
undertake at my own risk, what's the community to do with it?  D'you
think I'm going to whine to it to put the plaster on?  As to rights,
it'd be a deuced sight better for us all if there wasn't such a fuss
about 'em.  Leave that to women!  I don't give a tinker's damn for
men who talk about their rights in such matters."

Sarelli rose.  "But your honour," he said, "there is your honour!"

Mr. Treffry stared at him.

"Honour!  If huntin' women's your idea of honour, well--it isn't
mine."

"Then you'd forgive her, sir, whatever happened," Dawney said.

"Forgiveness is another thing.  I leave that to your sanctimonious
beggars.  But, hunt a woman!  Hang it, sir, I'm not a cad!" and
bringing his hand down with a rattle, he added: "This is a subject
that don't bear talking of."

Sarelli fell back in his seat, twirling his moustaches fiercely.
Harz, who had risen, looked at Christian's empty place.

'If I were married!' he thought suddenly.

Herr Paul, with a somewhat vinous glare, still muttered, "But your
duty to the family!"

Harz slipped through the window.  The moon was like a wonderful white
lantern in the purple sky; there was but a smoulder of stars.
Beneath the softness of the air was the iciness of the snow; it made
him want to run and leap.  A sleepy beetle dropped on its back; he
turned it over and watched it scurry across the grass.

Someone was playing Schumann's Kinderscenen.  Harz stood still to
listen.  The notes came twining, weaving round his thoughts; the
whole night seemed full of girlish voices, of hopes and fancies,
soaring away to mountain heights--invisible, yet present.  Between
the stems of the acacia-trees he could see the flicker of white
dresses, where Christian and Greta were walking arm in arm.  He went
towards them; the blood flushed up in his face, he felt almost
surfeited by some sweet emotion.  Then, in sudden horror, he stood
still.  He was in love!  With nothing done with everything before
him!  He was going to bow down to a face!  The flicker of the dresses
was no longer visible.  He would not be fettered, he would stamp it
out!  He turned away; but with each step, something seemed to jab at
his heart.

Round the corner of the house, in the shadow of the wall, Dominique,
the Luganese, in embroidered slippers, was smoking a long cherry-wood
pipe, leaning against a tree--Mephistopheles in evening clothes.
Harz went up to him.

"Lend me a pencil, Dominique."

"Bien, M'sieu."

Resting a card against the tree Harz wrote to Mrs. Decie: "Forgive
me, I am obliged to go away.  In a few days I shall hope to return,
and finish the picture of your nieces."

He sent Dominique for his hat.  During the man's absence he was on
the point of tearing up the card and going back into the house.

When the Luganese returned he thrust the card into his hand, and
walked out between the tall poplars, waiting, like ragged ghosts,
silver with moonlight.




VIII

Harz walked away along the road.  A dog was howling.  The sound
seemed too appropriate.  He put his fingers to his ears, but the
lugubrious noise passed those barriers, and made its way into his
heart.  Was there nothing that would put an end to this emotion?  It
was no better in the old house on the wall; he spent the night
tramping up and down.

Just before daybreak he slipped out with a knapsack, taking the road
towards Meran.

He had not quite passed through Gries when he overtook a man walking
in the middle of the road and leaving a trail of cigar smoke behind
him.

"Ah! my friend," the smoker said, "you walk early; are you going my
way?"

It was Count Sarelli.  The raw light had imparted a grey tinge to his
pale face, the growth of his beard showed black already beneath the
skin; his thumbs were hooked in the pockets of a closely buttoned
coat, he gesticulated with his fingers.

"You are making a journey?" he said, nodding at the knapsack.  "You
are early--I am late; our friend has admirable kummel--I have drunk
too much.  You have not been to bed, I think?  If there is no sleep
in one's bed it is no good going to look for it.  You find that?  It
is better to drink kummel...!  Pardon!  You are doing the right
thing: get away!  Get away as fast as possible!  Don't wait, and let
it catch you!"

Harz stared at him amazed.

"Pardon!" Sarelli said again, raising his hat, "that girl--the white
girl--I saw.  You do well to get away!" he swayed a little as he
walked.  "That old fellow--what is his name-Trrreffr-ry!  What ideas
of honour!"  He mumbled: "Honour is an abstraction!  If a man is not
true to an abstraction, he is a low type; but wait a minute!"

He put his hand to his side as though in pain.

The hedges were brightening with a faint pinky glow; there was no
sound on the long, deserted road, but that of their footsteps;
suddenly a bird commenced to chirp, another answered--the world
seemed full of these little voices.

Sarelli stopped.

"That white girl," he said, speaking with rapidity.  "Yes! You do
well! get away!  Don't let it catch you!  I waited, it caught me--
what happened?  Everything horrible--and now--kummel!"  Laughing a
thick laugh, he gave a twirl to his moustache, and swaggered on.

"I was a fine fellow--nothing too big for Mario Sarelli; the regiment
looked to me.  Then she came--with her eyes and her white dress,
always white, like this one; the little mole on her chin, her hands
for ever moving--their touch as warm as sunbeams.  Then, no longer
Sarelli this, and that!  The little house close to the ramparts!  Two
arms, two eyes, and nothing here," he tapped his breast, "but flames
that made ashes quickly--in her, like this ash--!" he flicked the
white flake off his cigar.  "It's droll!  You agree, hein?  Some day
I shall go back and kill her.  In the meantime--kummel!"

He stopped at a house close to the road, and stood still, his teeth
bared in a grin.

"But I bore you," he said.  His cigar, flung down, sputtered forth
its sparks on the road in front of Harz.  "I live here--good-morning!
You are a man for work--your honour is your Art!  I know, and you are
young!  The man who loves flesh better than his honour is a low type
--I am a low type.  I! Mario Sarelli, a low type! I love flesh better
than my honour!"

He remained swaying at the gate with the grin fixed on his face; then
staggered up the steps, and banged the door.  But before Harz had
walked on, he again appeared, beckoning, in the doorway.  Obeying an
impulse, Harz went in.

"We will make a night of it," said Sarelli; "wine, brandy, kummel?  I
am virtuous--kummel it must be for me!"

He sat down at a piano, and began to touch the keys.  Harz poured out
some wine.  Sarelli nodded.

"You begin with that?  Allegro--piu--presto!

"Wine--brandy--kummel!" he quickened the time of the tune: "it is not
too long a passage, and this"--he took his hands off the keys--"comes
after."

Harz smiled.

"Some men do not kill themselves," he said.

Sarelli, who was bending and swaying to the music of a tarantella,
broke off, and letting his eyes rest on the painter, began playing
Schumann's Kinderscenen.  Harz leaped to his feet.

"Stop that!" he cried.

"It pricks you?" said Sarelli suavely; "what do you think of this?"
he played again, crouching over the piano, and making the notes sound
like the crying of a wounded animal.

"For me!" he said, swinging round, and rising.

"Your health!  And so you don't believe in suicide, but in murder?
The custom is the other way; but you don't believe in customs?
Customs are only for Society?"  He drank a glass of kummel.  "You do
not love Society?"

Harz looked at him intently; he did not want to quarrel.

"I am not too fond of other people's thoughts," he said at last; "I
prefer to think my own.

"And is Society never right?  That poor Society!"

"Society!  What is Society--a few men in good coats?  What has it
done for me?"

Sarelli bit the end off a cigar.

"Ah!" he said; "now we are coming to it.  It is good to be an artist,
a fine bantam of an artist; where other men have their dis-ci-pline,
he has his, what shall we say--his mound of roses?"

The painter started to his feet.

"Yes," said Sarelli, with a hiccough, "you are a fine fellow!"

"And you are drunk!" cried Harz.

"A little drunk--not much, not enough to matter!"

Harz broke into laughter.  It was crazy to stay there listening to
this mad fellow.  What had brought him in?  He moved towards the
door.

"Ah!" said Sarelli, "but it is no good going to bed--let us talk.  I
have a lot to say--it is pleasant to talk to anarchists at times."

Full daylight was already coming through the chinks of the shutters.

"You are all anarchists, you painters, you writing fellows.  You live
by playing ball with facts.  Images--nothing solid--hein?  You're all
for new things too, to tickle your nerves.  No discipline!  True
anarchists, every one of you!"

Harz poured out another glass of wine and drank it off.  The man's
feverish excitement was catching.

"Only fools," he replied, "take things for granted.  As for
discipline, what do you aristocrats, or bourgeois know of discipline?
Have you ever been hungry?  Have you ever had your soul down on its
back?"

"Soul on its back?  That is good!"

"A man's no use," cried Harz, "if he's always thinking of what others
think; he must stand on his own legs."

"He must not then consider other people?"

"Not from cowardice anyway."

Sarelli drank.

"What would you do," he said, striking his chest, "if you had a
devil-here?  Would you go to bed?"

A sort of pity seized on Harz.  He wanted to say something that would
be consoling but could find no words; and suddenly he felt disgusted.
What link was there between him and this man; between his love and
this man's love?

"Harz!" muttered Sarelli; "Harz means 'tar,' hein?  Your family is
not an old one?"

Harz glared, and said: "My father is a peasant."

Sarelli lifted the kummel bottle and emptied it into his glass, with
a steady hand.

"You're honest--and we both have devils.  I forgot; I brought you in
to see a picture!"

He threw wide the shutters; the windows were already open, and a rush
of air came in.

"Ah!" he said, sniffing, "smells of the earth, nicht wahr, Herr
Artist?  You should know--it belongs to your father....  Come, here's
my picture; a Correggio!  What do you think of it?"

"It is a copy."

"You think?"

"I know."

"Then you have given me the lie, Signor," and drawing out his
handkerchief Sarelli flicked it in the painter's face.

Harz turned white.

"Duelling is a good custom!" said Sarelli.  "I shall have the honour
to teach you just this one, unless you are afraid.  Here are pistols-
-this room is twenty feet across at least, twenty feet is no bad
distance."

And pulling out a drawer he took two pistols from a case, and put
them on the table.

"The light is good--but perhaps you are afraid."

"Give me one!" shouted the infuriated painter; "and go to the devil
for a fool"

"One moment!" Sarelli murmured: "I will load them, they are more
useful loaded."

Harz leaned out of the window; his head was in a whirl.  'What on
earth is happening?' he thought.  'He's mad--or I am!  Confound him!
I'm not going to be killed!'  He turned and went towards the table.
Sarelli's head was sunk on his arms, he was asleep.  Harz
methodically took up the pistols, and put them back into the drawer.
A sound made him turn his head; there stood a tall, strong young
woman in a loose gown caught together on her chest.  Her grey eyes
glanced from the painter to the bottles, from the bottles to the
pistol-case.  A simple reasoning, which struck Harz as comic.

"It is often like this," she said in the country patois; "der Herr
must not be frightened."

Lifting the motionless Sarelli as if he were a baby, she laid him on
a couch.

"Ah!" she said, sitting down and resting her elbow on the table; "he
will not wake!"

Harz bowed to her; her patient figure, in spite of its youth and
strength, seemed to him pathetic.  Taking up his knapsack, he went
out.

The smoke of cottages rose straight; wisps of mist were wandering
about the valley, and the songs of birds dropping like blessings.
All over the grass the spiders had spun a sea of threads that bent
and quivered to the pressure of the air, like fairy tight-ropes.

All that day he tramped.

Blacksmiths, tall stout men with knotted muscles, sleepy eyes, and
great fair beards, came out of their forges to stretch and wipe their
brows, and stare at him.

Teams of white oxen, waiting to be harnessed, lashed their tails
against their flanks, moving their heads slowly from side to side in
the heat.  Old women at chalet doors blinked and knitted.

The white houses, with gaping caves of storage under the roofs, the
red church spire, the clinking of hammers in the forges, the slow
stamping of oxen-all spoke of sleepy toil, without ideas or ambition.
Harz knew it all too well; like the earth's odour, it belonged to
him, as Sarelli had said.

Towards sunset coming to a copse of larches, he sat down to rest.  It
was very still, but for the tinkle of cowbells, and, from somewhere
in the distance, the sound of dropping logs.

Two barefooted little boys came from the wood, marching earnestly
along, and looking at Harz as if he were a monster.  Once past him,
they began to run.

'At their age,' he thought, 'I should have done the same.'  A hundred
memories rushed into his mind.

He looked down at the village straggling below--white houses with
russet tiles and crowns of smoke, vineyards where the young leaves
were beginning to unfold, the red-capped spire, a thread of bubbling
stream, an old stone cross.  He had been fourteen years struggling up
from all this; and now just as he had breathing space, and the time
to give himself wholly to his work--this weakness was upon him!
Better, a thousand times, to give her up!

In a house or two lights began to wink; the scent of wood smoke
reached him, the distant chimes of bells, the burring of a stream.




IX

Next day his one thought was to get back to work.  He arrived at the
studio in the afternoon, and, laying in provisions, barricaded the
lower door.  For three days he did not go out; on the fourth day he
went to Villa Rubein....

Schloss Runkelstein--grey, blind, strengthless--still keeps the
valley.  The windows which once, like eyes, watched men and horses
creeping through the snow, braved the splutter of guns and the gleam
of torches, are now holes for the birds to nest in.  Tangled creepers
have spread to the very summits of the walls.  In the keep, instead
of grim men in armour, there is a wooden board recording the history
of the castle and instructing visitors on the subject of
refreshments.  Only at night, when the cold moon blanches everything,
the castle stands like the grim ghost of its old self, high above the
river.

After a long morning's sitting the girls had started forth with Harz
and Dawney to spend the afternoon at the ruin; Miss Naylor, kept at
home by headache, watched them depart with words of caution against
sunstroke, stinging nettles, and strange dogs.

Since the painter's return Christian and he had hardly spoken to each
other.  Below the battlement on which they sat, in a railed gallery
with little tables, Dawney and Greta were playing dominoes, two
soldiers drinking beer, and at the top of a flight of stairs the
Custodian's wife sewing at a garment.  Christian said suddenly: "I
thought we were friends."

"Well, Fraulein Christian, aren't we?"

"You went away without a word; friends don't do that."

Harz bit his lips.

"I don't think you care," she went on with a sort of desperate haste,
"whether you hurt people or not.  You have been here all this time
without even going to see your father and mother."

"Do you think they would want to see me?"

Christian looked up.

"It's all been so soft for you," he said bitterly; "you don't
understand."

He turned his head away, and then burst out: "I'm proud to come
straight from the soil--I wouldn't have it otherwise; but they are of
'the people,' everything is narrow with them--they only understand
what they can see and touch."

"I'm sorry I spoke like that," said Christian softly; "you've never
told me about yourself."

There was something just a little cruel in the way the painter looked
at her, then seeming to feel compunction, he said quickly: "I always
hated--the peasant life--I wanted to get away into the world; I had a
feeling in here--I wanted--I don't know what I wanted!  I did run
away at last to a house-painter at Meran.  The priest wrote me a
letter from my father--they threw me off; that's all."

Christian's eyes were very bright, her lips moved, like the lips of a
child listening to a story.

"Go on," she said.

"I stayed at Meran two years, till I'd learnt all I could there, then
a brother of my mother's helped me to get to Vienna; I was lucky
enough to find work with a man who used to decorate churches.  We
went about the country together.  Once when he was ill I painted the
roof of a church entirely by myself; I lay on my back on the scaffold
boards all day for a week--I was proud of that roof."  He paused.

"When did you begin painting pictures?"

"A friend asked me why I didn't try for the Academie.  That started
me going to the night schools; I worked every minute--I had to get my
living as well, of course, so I worked at night.

"Then when the examination came, I thought I could do nothing--it was
just as if I had never had a brush or pencil in my hand.  But the
second day a professor in passing me said, 'Good! Quite good!'  That
gave me courage.  I was sure I had failed though; but I was second
out of sixty."

Christian nodded.

"To work in the schools after that I had to give up my business, of
course.  There was only one teacher who ever taught me anything; the
others all seemed fools.  This man would come and rub out what you'd
done with his sleeve.  I used to cry with rage--but I told him I
could only learn from him, and he was so astonished that he got me
into his class."

"But how did you live without money?" asked Christian.

His face burned with a dark flush.  "I don't know how I lived; you
must have been through these things to know, you would never
understand."

"But I want to understand, please."

"What do you want me to tell you?  How I went twice a week to eat
free dinners!  How I took charity!  How I was hungry!  There was a
rich cousin of my mother's--I used to go to him.  I didn't like it.
But if you're starving in the winter"

Christian put out her hand.

"I used to borrow apronsful of coals from other students who were as
poor--but I never went to the rich students."

The flush had died out of his face.

"That sort of thing makes you hate the world!  You work till you
stagger; you're cold and hungry; you see rich people in their
carriages, wrapped in furs, and all the time you want to do something
great.  You pray for a chance, any chance; nothing comes to the poor!
It makes you hate the world."

Christian's eyes filled with tears.  He went on:

"But I wasn't the only one in that condition; we used to meet.
Garin, a Russian with a brown beard and patches of cheek showing
through, and yellow teeth, who always looked hungry.  Paunitz, who
came from sympathy!  He had fat cheeks and little eyes, and a big
gold chain--the swine! And little Misek.  It was in his room we met,
with the paper peeling off the walls, and two doors with cracks in
them, so that there was always a draught.  We used to sit on his bed,
and pull the dirty blankets over us for warmth; and smoke--tobacco
was the last thing we ever went without.  Over the bed was a Virgin
and Child--Misek was a very devout Catholic; but one day when he had
had no dinner and a dealer had kept his picture without paying him,
he took the image and threw it on the floor before our eyes; it
broke, and he trampled on the bits.  Lendorf was another, a heavy
fellow who was always puffing out his white cheeks and smiting
himself, and saying: 'Cursed society!'  And Schonborn, an aristocrat
who had quarrelled with his family.  He was the poorest of us all;
but only he and I would ever have dared to do anything--they all knew
that!"

Christian listened with awe.  "Do you mean?" she said, "do you mean,
that you--?"

"You see! you're afraid of me at once.  It's impossible even for you
to understand.  It only makes you afraid.  A hungry man living on
charity, sick with rage and shame, is a wolf even to you!"

Christian looked straight into his eyes.

"That's not true.  If I can't understand, I can feel.  Would you be
the same now if it were to come again?"

"Yes, it drives me mad even now to think of people fatted with
prosperity, sneering and holding up their hands at poor devils who
have suffered ten times more than the most those soft animals could
bear.  I'm older; I've lived--I know things can't be put right by
violence--nothing will put things right, but that doesn't stop my
feeling."

"Did you do anything?  You must tell me all now."

"We talked--we were always talking."

"No, tell me everything!"

Unconsciously she claimed, and he seemed unconsciously to admit her
right to this knowledge.

"There's not much to tell.  One day we began talking in low voices--
Garin began it; he had been in some affair in Russia.  We took an
oath; after that we never raised our voices.  We had a plan.  It was
all new to me, and I hated the whole thing--but I was always hungry,
or sick from taking charity, and I would have done anything.  They
knew that; they used to look at me and Schonborn; we knew that no one
else had any courage.  He and I were great friends, but we never
talked of that; we tried to keep our minds away from the thought of
it.  If we had a good day and were not so hungry, it seemed
unnatural; but when the day had not been good--then it seemed natural
enough.  I wasn't afraid, but I used to wake up in the night; I hated
the oath we had taken, I hated every one of those fellows; the thing
was not what I was made for, it wasn't my work, it wasn't my nature,
it was forced on me--I hated it, but sometimes I was like a madman."

"Yes, yes," she murmured.

"All this time I was working at the Academie, and learning all I
could....  One evening that we met, Paunitz was not there.  Misek was
telling us how the thing had been arranged.  Schonborn and I looked
at each other--it was warm--perhaps we were not hungry--it was
springtime, too, and in the Spring it's different.  There is
something."

Christian nodded.

"While we were talking there came a knock at the door.  Lendorf put
his eye to the keyhole, and made a sign.  The police were there.
Nobody said anything, but Misek crawled under the bed; we all
followed; and the knocking grew louder and louder.  In the wall at
the back of the bed was a little door into an empty cellar.  We crept
through.  There was a trap-door behind some cases, where they used to
roll barrels in.  We crawled through that into the back street.  We
went different ways."

He paused, and Christian gasped.

"I thought I would get my money, but there was a policeman before my
door.  They had us finely.  It was Paunitz; if I met him even now I
should wring his neck.  I swore I wouldn't be caught, but I had no
idea where to go.  Then I thought of a little Italian barber who used
to shave me when I had money for a shave; I knew he would help.  He
belonged to some Italian Society; he often talked to me, under his
breath, of course.  I went to him.  He was shaving himself before
going to a ball.  I told him what had happened; it was funny to see
him put his back against the door.  He was very frightened,
understanding this sort of thing better than I did--for I was only
twenty then.  He shaved my head and moustache and put me on a fair
wig.  Then he brought me macaroni, and some meat, to eat.  He gave me
a big fair moustache, and a cap, and hid the moustache in the lining.
He brought me a cloak of his own, and four gulden.  All the time he
was extremely frightened, and kept listening, and saying: 'Eat!'

"When I had done, he just said: 'Go away, I refuse to know anything
more of you.'

"I thanked him and went out.  I walked about all that night; for I
couldn't think of anything to do or anywhere to go.  In the morning I
slept on a seat in one of the squares.  Then I thought I would go to
the Gallerien; and I spent the whole day looking at the pictures.
When the Galleries were shut I was very tired, so I went into a cafe,
and had some beer.  When I came out I sat on the same seat in the
Square.  I meant to wait till dark and then walk out of the city and
take the train at some little station, but while I was sitting there
I went to sleep.  A policeman woke me.  He had my wig in his hand.

"'Why do you wear a wig?' he said.

"I answered: 'Because I am bald.'

"'No,' he said, 'you're not bald, you've been shaved.  I can feel the
hair coming.'

"He put his finger on my head.  I felt reckless and laughed.

"'Ah!' he said, 'you'll come with me and explain all this; your nose
and eyes are looked for.'

"I went with him quietly to the police-station...."

Harz seemed carried away by his story.  His quick dark face worked,
his steel-grey eyes stared as though he were again passing through
all these long-past emotions.

The hot sun struck down; Christian drew herself together, sitting
with her hands clasped round her knees.




X

"I didn't care by then what came of it.  I didn't even think what I
was going to say.  He led me down a passage to a room with bars
across the windows and long seats, and maps on the walls.  We sat and
waited.  He kept his eye on me all the time; and I saw no hope.
Presently the Inspector came.  'Bring him in here,' he said; I
remember feeling I could kill him for ordering me about!  We went
into the next room.  It had a large clock, a writing-table, and a
window, without bars, looking on a courtyard.  Long policemen's coats
and caps were hanging from some pegs.  The Inspector told me to take
off my cap.  I took it off, wig and all.  He asked me who I was, but
I refused to answer.  Just then there was a loud sound of voices in
the room we had come from.  The Inspector told the policeman to look
after me, and went to see what it was.  I could hear him talking.  He
called out: 'Come here, Becker!'  I stood very quiet, and Becker went
towards the door.  I heard the Inspector say: 'Go and find Schwartz,
I will see after this fellow.'  The policeman went, and the Inspector
stood with his back to me in the half-open door, and began again to
talk to the man in the other room.  Once or twice he looked round at
me, but I stood quiet all the time.  They began to disagree, and
their voices got angry.  The Inspector moved a little into the other
room.  'Now!' I thought, and slipped off my cloak.  I hooked off a
policeman's coat and cap, and put them on.  My heart beat till I felt
sick.  I went on tiptoe to the window.  There was no one outside, but
at the entrance a man was holding some horses.  I opened the window a
little and held my breath.  I heard the Inspector say: 'I will report
you for impertinence!' and slipped through the window.  The coat came
down nearly to my heels, and the cap over my eyes.  I walked up to
the man with the horses, and said: 'Good-evening.'  One of the horses
had begun to kick, and he only grunted at me.  I got into a passing
tram; it was five minutes to the West Bahnhof; I got out there.
There was a train starting; they were shouting 'Einsteigen!'  I ran.
The collector tried to stop me.  I shouted: 'Business--important!'
He let me by.  I jumped into a carriage.  The train started."

He paused, and Christian heaved a sigh.

Harz went on, twisting a twig of ivy in his hands: "There was another
man in the carriage reading a paper.  Presently I said to him, 'Where
do we stop first?'  'St. Polten.'  Then I knew it was the Munich
express--St. Polten, Amstetten, Linz, and Salzburg--four stops before
the frontier.  The man put down his paper and looked at me; he had a
big fair moustache and rather shabby clothes.  His looking at me
disturbed me, for I thought every minute he would say: 'You're no
policeman!'  And suddenly it came into my mind that if they looked
for me in this train, it would be as a policeman!--they would know,
of course, at the station that a policeman had run past at the last
minute.  I wanted to get rid of the coat and cap, but the man was
there, and I didn't like to move out of the carriage for other people
to notice.  So I sat on.  We came to St. Polten at last.  The man in
my carriage took his bag, got out, and left his paper on the seat.
We started again; I breathed at last, and as soon as I could took the
cap and coat and threw them out into the darkness.  I thought: 'I
shall get across the frontier now.'  I took my own cap out and found
the moustache Luigi gave me; rubbed my clothes as clean as possible;
stuck on the moustache, and with some little ends of chalk in my
pocket made my eyebrows light; then drew some lines in my face to
make it older, and pulled my cap well down above my wig.  I did it
pretty well--I was quite like the man who had got out.  I sat in his
corner, took up his newspaper, and waited for Amstetten.  It seemed a
tremendous time before we got there.  From behind my paper I could
see five or six policemen on the platform, one quite close.  He
opened the door, looked at me, and walked through the carriage into
the corridor.  I took some tobacco and rolled up a cigarette, but it
shook, "Harz lifted the ivy twig, "like this.  In a minute the
conductor and two more policemen came.  'He was here,' said the
conductor, 'with this gentleman.'  One of them looked at me, and
asked: 'Have you seen a policeman travelling on this train?'  'Yes,'
I said.  'Where?'  'He got out at St.  Polten.'  The policeman asked
the conductor: 'Did you see him get out there?'  The conductor shook
his head.  I said: 'He got out as the train was moving.'  'Ah!' said
the policeman, 'what was he like?'  'Rather short, and no moustache.
Why?'  'Did you notice anything unusual?'  'No,' I said, 'only that
he wore coloured trousers.  What's the matter?'  One policeman said
to the other: 'That's our man!  Send a telegram to St. Polten; he has
more than an hour's start.'  He asked me where I was going.  I told
him: 'Linz.'  'Ah!' he said, 'you'll have to give evidence; your name
and address please?'  'Josef Reinhardt, 17 Donau Strasse.'  He wrote
it down.  The conductor said: 'We are late, can we start?'  They shut
the door.  I heard them say to the conductor: 'Search again at Linz,
and report to the Inspector there.'  They hurried on to the platform,
and we started.  At first I thought I would get out as soon as the
train had left the station.  Then, that I should be too far from the
frontier; better to go on to Linz and take my chance there.  I sat
still and tried not to think.

"After a long time, we began to run more slowly.  I put my head out
and could see in the distance a ring of lights hanging in the
blackness.  I loosened the carriage door and waited for the train to
run slower still; I didn't mean to go into Linz like a rat into a
trap.  At last I could wait no longer; I opened the door, jumped and
fell into some bushes.  I was not much hurt, but bruised, and the
breath knocked out of me.  As soon as I could, I crawled out.  It was
very dark.  I felt heavy and sore, and for some time went stumbling
in and out amongst trees.  Presently I came to a clear space; on one
side I could see the town's shape drawn in lighted lamps, and on the
other a dark mass, which I think was forest; in the distance too was
a thin chain of lights.  I thought: 'They must be the lights of a
bridge.'  Just then the moon came out, and I could see the river
shining below.  It was cold and damp, and I walked quickly.  At last
I came out on a road, past houses and barking dogs, down to the river
bank; there I sat against a shed and went to sleep.  I woke very
stiff.  It was darker than before; the moon was gone.  I could just
see the river.  I stumbled on, to get through the town before dawn.
It was all black shapes-houses and sheds, and the smell of the river,
the smell of rotting hay, apples, tar, mud, fish; and here and there
on a wharf a lantern.  I stumbled over casks and ropes and boxes; I
saw I should never get clear--the dawn had begun already on the other
side.  Some men came from a house behind me.  I bent, and crept
behind some barrels.  They passed along the wharf; they seemed to
drop into the river.  I heard one of them say: 'Passau before night.'
I stood up and saw they had walked on board a steamer which was lying
head up-stream, with some barges in tow.  There was a plank laid to
the steamer, and a lantern at the other end.  I could hear the
fellows moving below deck, getting up steam.  I ran across the plank
and crept to the end of the steamer.  I meant to go with them to
Passau!  The rope which towed the barges was nearly taut; and I knew
if I could get on to the barges I should be safe.  I climbed down on
this rope and crawled along.  I was desperate, I knew they'd soon be
coming up, and it was getting light.  I thought I should fall into
the water several times, but I got to the barge at last.  It was
laden with straw.  There was nobody on board.  I was hungry and
thirsty--I looked for something to eat; there was nothing but the
ashes of a fire and a man's coat.  I crept into the straw.  Soon a
boat brought men, one for each barge, and there were sounds of steam.
As soon as we began moving through the water, I fell asleep.  When I
woke we were creeping through a heavy mist.  I made a little hole in
the straw and saw the bargeman.  He was sitting by a fire at the
barge's edge, so that the sparks and smoke blew away over the water.
He ate and drank with both hands, and funny enough he looked in the
mist, like a big bird flapping its wings; there was a good smell of
coffee, and I sneezed.  How the fellow started!  But presently he
took a pitchfork and prodded the straw.  Then I stood up.  I couldn't
help laughing, he was so surprised--a huge, dark man, with a great
black beard.  I pointed to the fire and said 'Give me some, brother!'
He pulled me out of the straw; I was so stiff, I couldn't move.  I
sat by the fire, and ate black bread and turnips, and drank coffee;
while he stood by, watching me and muttering.  I couldn't understand
him well--he spoke a dialect from Hungary.  He asked me: How I got
there--who I was--where I was from?  I looked up in his face, and he
looked down at me, sucking his pipe.  He was a big man, he lived
alone on the river, and I was tired of telling lies, so I told him
the whole thing.  When I had done he just grunted.  I can see him now
standing over me, with the mist hanging in his beard, and his great
naked arms.  He drew me some water, and I washed and showed him my
wig and moustache, and threw them overboard.  All that day we lay out
on the barge in the mist, with our feet to the fire, smoking; now and
then he would spit into the ashes and mutter into his beard.  I shall
never forget that day.  The steamer was like a monster with fiery
nostrils, and the other barges were dumb creatures with eyes, where
the fires were; we couldn't see the bank, but now and then a bluff
and high trees, or a castle, showed in the mist.  If I had only had
paint and canvas that day!"  He sighed.

"It was early Spring, and the river was in flood; they were going to
Regensburg to unload there, take fresh cargo, and back to Linz.  As
soon as the mist began to clear, the bargeman hid me in the straw.
At Passau was the frontier; they lay there for the night, but nothing
happened, and I slept in the straw.  The next day I lay out on the
barge deck; there was no mist, but I was free--the sun shone gold on
the straw and the green sacking; the water seemed to dance, and I
laughed--I laughed all the time, and the barge man laughed with me.
A fine fellow he was!  At Regensburg I helped them to unload; for
more than a week we worked; they nicknamed me baldhead, and when it
was all over I gave the money I earned for the unloading to the big
bargeman.  We kissed each other at parting.  I had still three of the
gulden that Luigi gave me, and I went to a house-painter and got work
with him.  For six months I stayed there to save money; then I wrote
to my mother's cousin in Vienna, and told him I was going to London.
He gave me an introduction to some friends there.  I went to Hamburg,
and from there to London in a cargo steamer, and I've never been back
till now."




XI

After a minute's silence Christian said in a startled voice: "They
could arrest you then!"

Harz laughed.

"If they knew; but it's seven years ago."

"Why did you come here, when it's so dangerous?"

"I had been working too hard, I wanted to see my country--after seven
years, and when it's forbidden!  But I'm ready to go back now."  He
looked down at her, frowning.

"Had you a hard time in London, too?"

"Harder, at first--I couldn't speak the language.  In my profession
it's hard work to get recognised, it's hard work to make a living.
There are too many whose interest it is to keep you down--I shan't
forget them."

"But every one is not like that?"

"No; there are fine fellows, too.  I shan't forget them either.  I
can sell my pictures now; I'm no longer weak, and I promise you I
shan't forget.  If in the future I have power, and I shall have
power--I shan't forget."

A shower of fine gravel came rattling on the wall.  Dawney was
standing below them with an amused expression on his upturned face.

"Are you going to stay there all night?" he asked.  "Greta and I have
bored each other."

"We're coming," called Christian hastily.

On the way back neither spoke a word, but when they reached the
Villa, Harz took her hand, and said: "Fraulein Christian, I can't do
any more with your picture.  I shan't touch it again after this."

She made no answer, but they looked at each other, and both seemed to
ask, to entreat, something more; then her eyes fell.  He dropped her
hand, and saying, "Good-night," ran after Dawney.

In the corridor, Dominique, carrying a dish of fruit, met the
sisters; he informed them that Miss Naylor had retired to bed; that
Herr Paul would not be home to dinner; his master was dining in his
room; dinner would be served for Mrs. Decie and the two young ladies
in a quarter of an hour: "And the fish is good to-night; little
trouts! try them, Signorina!" He moved on quickly, softly, like a
cat, the tails of his dress-coat flapping, and the heels of his white
socks gleaming.

Christian ran upstairs.  She flew about her room, feeling that if she
once stood still it would all crystallise in hard painful thought,
which motion alone kept away.  She washed, changed her dress and
shoes, and ran down to her uncle's room.  Mr. Treffry had just
finished dinner, pushed the little table back, and was sitting in his
chair, with his glasses on his nose, reading the Tines.  Christian
touched his forehead with her lips.

"Glad to see you, Chris.  Your stepfather's out to dinner, and I
can't stand your aunt when she's in one of her talking moods--bit of
a humbug, Chris, between ourselves; eh, isn't she?" His eyes
twinkled.

Christian smiled.  There was a curious happy restlessness in her that
would not let her keep still.

"Picture finished?" Mr. Treffry asked suddenly, taking up the paper
with a crackle.  "Don't go and fall in love with the painter, Chris."

Christian was still enough now.

'Why not?' she thought.  'What should you know about him?  Isn't he
good enough for me?'  A gong sounded.

"There's your dinner," Mr. Treffry remarked.

With sudden contrition she bent and kissed him.

But when she had left the room Mr. Treffry put down the Times and
stared at the door, humming to himself, and thoughtfully fingering
his chin.

Christian could not eat; she sat, indifferent to the hoverings of
Dominique, tormented by uneasy fear and longings.  She answered Mrs.
Decie at random.  Greta kept stealing looks at her from under her
lashes.

"Decided characters are charming, don't you think so, Christian?"
Mrs. Decie said, thrusting her chin a little forward, and modelling
the words.  "That is why I like Mr. Harz so much; such an immense
advantage for a man to know his mind.  You have only to look at that
young man to see that he knows what he wants, and means to have it."

Christian pushed her plate away.  Greta, flushing, said abruptly:
"Doctor Edmund is not a decided character, I think.  This afternoon
he said: 'Shall I have some beer-yes, I shall--no, I shall not'; then
he ordered the beer, so, when it came, he gave it to the soldiers."

Mrs. Decie turned her enigmatic smile from one girl to the other.

When dinner was over they went into her room.  Greta stole at once to
the piano, where her long hair fell almost to the keys; silently she
sat there fingering the notes, smiling to herself, and looking at her
aunt, who was reading Pater's essays.  Christian too had taken up a
book, but soon put it down--of several pages she had not understood a
word.  She went into the garden and wandered about the lawn, clasping
her hands behind her head.  The air was heavy; very distant thunder
trembled among the mountains, flashes of summer lightning played over
the trees; and two great moths were hovering about a rosebush.
Christian watched their soft uncertain rushes.  Going to the little
summer-house she flung herself down on a seat, and pressed her hands
to her heart.

There was a strange and sudden aching there.  Was he going from her?
If so, what would be left?  How little and how narrow seemed the
outlook of her life--with the world waiting for her, the world of
beauty, effort, self-sacrifice, fidelity!  It was as though a flash
of that summer lightning had fled by, singeing her, taking from her
all powers of flight, burning off her wings, as off one of those pale
hovering moths.  Tears started up, and trickled down her face.
'Blind!' she thought; 'how could I have been so blind?'

Some one came down the path.

"Who's there?" she cried.

Harz stood in the doorway.

"Why did you come out?" he said.  "Ah! why did you come out?"  He
caught her hand; Christian tried to draw it from him, and to turn her
eyes away, but she could not.  He flung himself down on his knees,
and cried: "I love you!"

In a rapture of soft terror Christian bent her forehead down to his
hand.

"What are you doing?" she heard him say.  "Is it possible that you
love me?" and she felt his kisses on her hair.

"My sweet! it will be so hard for you; you are so little, so little,
and so weak."  Clasping his hand closer to her face, she murmured: "I
don't care."

There was a long, soft silence, that seemed to last for ever.
Suddenly she threw her arms round his neck and kissed him.

"Whatever comes!" she whispered, and gathering her dress, escaped
from him into the darkness.




XII

Christian woke next morning with a smile.  In her attitudes, her
voice, her eyes, there was a happy and sweet seriousness, as if she
were hugging some holy thought.  After breakfast she took a book and
sat in the open window, whence she could see the poplar-trees
guarding the entrance.  There was a breeze; the roses close by kept
nodding to her; the cathedral bells were in full chime; bees hummed
above the lavender; and in the sky soft clouds were floating like
huge, white birds.

The sounds of Miss Naylor's staccato dictation travelled across the
room, and Greta's sighs as she took it down, one eye on her paper,
one eye on Scruff, who lay with a black ear flapped across his paw,
and his tan eyebrows quivering.  He was in disgrace, for Dominique,
coming on him unawares, had seen him "say his prayers" before a
pudding, and take the pudding for reward.

Christian put her book down gently, and slipped through the window.
Harz was coming in from the road.  "I am all yours!" she whispered.
His fingers closed on hers, and he went into the house.

She slipped back, took up her book, and waited.  It seemed long
before he came out, but when he did he waved her back, and hurried
on; she had a glimpse of his face, white to the lips.  Feeling faint
and sick, she flew to her stepfather's room.

Herr Paul was standing in a corner with the utterly disturbed
appearance of an easy-going man, visited by the unexpected.  His fine
shirt-front was crumpled as if his breast had heaved too suddenly
under strong emotion; his smoked eyeglasses dangled down his back;
his fingers were embedded in his beard.  He was fixing his eye on a
spot in the floor as though he expected it to explode and blow them
to fragments.  In another corner Mrs. Decie, with half-closed eyes,
was running her finger-tips across her brow.

"What have you said to him?" cried Christian.

Herr Paul regarded her with glassy eyes.

"Mein Gott!" he said.  "Your aunt and I!"

"What have you said to him?" repeated Christian.

"The impudence!  An anarchist!  A beggar!"

"Paul!" murmured Mrs. Decie.

"The outlaw!  The fellow!"  Herr Paul began to stride about the room.

Quivering from head to foot, Christian cried: "How dared you?" and
ran from the room, pushing aside Miss Naylor and Greta, who stood
blanched and frightened in the doorway.

Herr Paul stopped in his tramp, and, still with his eyes fixed on the
floor, growled:

"A fine thing-hein?  What's coming?  Will you please tell me?  An
anarchist--a beggar!"

"Paul!" murmured Mrs. Decie.

"Paul!  Paul!  And you!" he pointed to Miss Naylor--"Two women with
eyes!--hein!"

"There is nothing to be gained by violence," Mrs. Decie murmured,
passing her handkerchief across her lips.  Miss Naylor, whose thin
brown cheeks had flushed, advanced towards him.

"I hope you do not--"she said; "I am sure there was nothing that I
could have prevented--I should be glad if that were understood."
And, turning with some dignity, the little lady went away, closing
the door behind her.

"You hear!" Herr Paul said, violently sarcastic: "nothing she could
have prevented!  Enfin! Will you please tell me what I am to do?"

"Men of the world"--whose philosophy is a creature of circumstance
and accepted things--find any deviation from the path of their
convictions dangerous, shocking, and an intolerable bore.  Herr Paul
had spent his life laughing at convictions; the matter had but to
touch him personally, and the tap of laughter was turned off.  That
any one to whom he was the lawful guardian should marry other than a
well-groomed man, properly endowed with goods, properly selected, was
beyond expression horrid.  From his point of view he had great excuse
for horror; and he was naturally unable to judge whether he had
excuse for horror from other points of view.  His amazement had in it
a spice of the pathetic; he was like a child in the presence of a
thing that he absolutely could not understand.  The interview had
left him with a sense of insecurity which he felt to be particularly
unfair.

The door was again opened, and Greta flew in, her cheeks flushed, her
hair floating behind her, and tears streaming down her cheeks.

"Papa!" she cried, "you have been cruel to Chris.  The door is
locked; I can hear her crying--why have you been cruel?"  Without
waiting to be answered, she flew out again.

Herr Paul seized his hair with both his hands: "Good!  Very good!  My
own child, please!  What next then?"

Mrs. Decie rose from her chair languidly.  "My head is very bad," she
said, shading her eyes and speaking in low tones: "It is no use
making a fuss--nothing can come of this--he has not a penny.
Christian will have nothing till you die, which will not be for a
long time yet, if you can but avoid an apoplectic fit!"

At these last words Herr Paul gave a start of real disgust.  "Hum!"
he muttered; it was as if the world were bent on being brutal to him.
Mrs. Decie continued:

"If I know anything of this young man, he will not come here again,
after the words you have spoken.  As for Christian--you had better
talk to Nicholas.  I am going to lie down."

Herr Paul nervously fingered the shirt-collar round his stout, short
neck.

"Nicholas!  Certainly--a good idea.  Quelle diable d'afaire!"

'French!' thought Mrs. Decie; 'we shall soon have peace.  Poor
Christian!  I'm sorry!  After all, these things are a matter of time
and opportunity.'  This consoled her a good deal.

But for Christian the hours were a long nightmare of grief and shame,
fear and anger.  Would he forgive?  Would he be true to her?  Or
would he go away without a word?  Since yesterday it was as if she
had stepped into another world, and lost it again.  In place of that
new feeling, intoxicating as wine, what was coming?  What bitter;
dreadful ending?

A rude entrance this into the life of facts, and primitive emotions!

She let Greta into her room after a time, for the child had begun
sobbing; but she would not talk, and sat hour after hour at the
window with the air fanning her face, and the pain in her eyes turned
to the sky and trees.  After one or two attempts at consolation,
Greta sank on the floor, and remained there, humbly gazing at her
sister in a silence only broken when Christian cleared her throat of
tears, and by the song of birds in the garden.  In the afternoon she
slipped away and did not come back again.

After his interview with Mr. Treffry, Herr Paul took a bath, perfumed
himself with precision, and caused it to be clearly understood that,
under circumstances such as these, a man's house was not suited for a
pig to live in.  He shortly afterwards went out to the Kurbaus, and
had not returned by dinner-time.

Christian came down for dinner.  There were crimson spots in her
cheeks, dark circles round her eyes; she behaved, however, as though
nothing had happened.  Miss Naylor, affected by the kindness of her
heart and the shock her system had sustained, rolled a number of
bread pills, looking at each as it came, with an air of surprise, and
concealing it with difficulty.  Mr. Treffry was coughing, and when he
talked his voice seemed to rumble even more than usual.  Greta was
dumb, trying to catch Christian's eye; Mrs. Decie alone seemed at
ease.  After dinner Mr. Treffry went off to his room, leaning heavily
on Christian's shoulder.  As he sank into his chair, he said to her:

"Pull yourself together, my dear!" Christian did not answer him.

Outside his room Greta caught her by the sleeve.

"Look!" she whispered, thrusting a piece of paper into Christian's
hand.  "It is to me from Dr. Edmund, but you must read it."

Christian opened the note, which ran as follows:


"MY PHILOSOPHER AND FRIEND,--I received your note, and went to our
friend's studio; he was not in, but half an hour ago I stumbled on
him in the Platz.  He is not quite himself; has had a touch of the
sun--nothing serious: I took him to my hotel, where he is in bed.  If
he will stay there he will be all right in a day or two.  In any case
he shall not elude my clutches for the present.

"My warm respects to Mistress Christian.--Yours in friendship and
philosophy,

"EDMUND DAWNEY."


Christian read and re-read this note, then turned to Greta.

"What did you say to Dr. Dawney?"

Greta took back the piece of paper, and replied: "I said:

"'DEAR DR. EDMUND,--We are anxious about Herr Harz.  We think he is
perhaps not very well to-day.  We (I and Christian) should like to
know.  You can tell us.  Please shall you?  GRETA.'

"That is what I said."

Christian dropped her eyes.  "What made you write?"

Greta gazed at her mournfully: "I thought--O Chris! come into the
garden.  I am so hot, and it is so dull without you!"

Christian bent her head forward and rubbed her cheek against Greta's,
then without another word ran upstairs and locked herself into her
room.  The child stood listening; hearing the key turn in the lock,
she sank down on the bottom step and took Scruff in her arms.

Half an hour later Miss Naylor, carrying a candle, found her there
fast asleep, with her head resting on the terrier's back, and tear
stains on her cheeks....

Mrs. Decie presently came out, also carrying a candle, and went to
her brother's room.  She stood before his chair, with folded hands.

"Nicholas, what is to be done?"

Mr. Treffry was pouring whisky into a glass.

"Damn it, Con!" he answered; "how should I know?"

"There's something in Christian that makes interference dangerous.  I
know very well that I've no influence with her at all."

"You're right there, Con," Mr. Treffry replied.

Mrs. Decie's pale eyes, fastened on his face, forced him to look up.

"I wish you would leave off drinking whisky and attend to me.  Paul
is an element--"

"Paul," Mr. Treffry growled, "is an ass!"

"Paul," pursued Mrs. Decie, "is an element of danger in the
situation; any ill-timed opposition of his might drive her to I don't
know what.  Christian is gentle, she is 'sympathetic' as they say;
but thwart her, and she is as obstinate as....

"You or I!  Leave her alone!"

"I understand her character, but I confess that I am at a loss what
to do."

"Do nothing!"  He drank again.

Mrs. Decie took up the candle.

"Men!" she said with a mysterious intonation; shrugging her
shoulders, she walked out.

Mr. Treffry put down his glass.

'Understand?' he thought; 'no, you don't, and I don't.  Who
understands a young girl?  Vapourings, dreams, moonshine I....  What
does she see in this painter fellow?  I wonder!'  He breathed
heavily.  'By heavens! I wouldn't have had this happen for a hundred
thousand pounds!'




XIII

For many hours after Dawney had taken him to his hotel, Harz was
prostrate with stunning pains in the head and neck.  He had been all
day without food, exposed to burning sun, suffering violent emotion.
Movement of any sort caused him such agony that he could only lie in
stupor, counting the spots dancing before, his eyes.  Dawney did
everything for him, and Harz resented in a listless way the intent
scrutiny of the doctor's calm, black eyes.

Towards the end of the second day he was able to get up; Dawney found
him sitting on the bed in shirt and trousers.

"My son," he said, "you had better tell me what the trouble is--it
will do your stubborn carcase good."

"I must go back to work," said Harz.

"Work!" said Dawney deliberately: "you couldn't, if you tried."

"I must."

"My dear fellow, you couldn't tell one colour from another."

"I must be doing something; I can't sit here and think."

Dawney hooked his thumbs into his waistcoat: "You won't see the sun
for three days yet, if I can help it."

Harz got up.

"I'm going to my studio to-morrow," he said.  "I promise not to go
out.  I must be where I can see my work.  If I can't paint, I can
draw; I can feel my brushes, move my things about.  I shall go mad if
I do nothing."

Dawney took his arm, and walked him up and down.

"I'll let you go," he said, "but give me a chance!  It's as much to
me to put you straight as it is to you to paint a decent picture.
Now go to bed; I'll have a carriage for you to-morrow morning."

Harz sat down on the bed again, and for a long time stayed without
moving, his eyes fixed on the floor.  The sight of him, so desperate
and miserable, hurt the young doctor.

"Can you get to bed by yourself?" he asked at last.

Harz nodded.

"Then, good-night, old chap!" and Dawney left the room.

He took his hat and turned towards the Villa.  Between the poplars he
stopped to think.  The farther trees were fret-worked black against
the lingering gold of the sunset; a huge moth, attracted by the tip
of his cigar, came fluttering in his face.  The music of a concertina
rose and fell, like the sighing of some disillusioned spirit.  Dawney
stood for several minutes staring at the house.

He was shown to Mrs. Decie's room.  She was holding a magazine before
her eyes, and received him with as much relief as philosophy
permitted.

"You are the very person I wanted to see," she said.

He noticed that the magazine she held was uncut.

"You are a young man," pursued Mrs. Decie, "but as my doctor I have a
right to your discretion."

Dawney smiled; the features of his broad, clean-shaven face looked
ridiculously small on such occasions, but his eyes retained their air
of calculation.

"That is so," he answered.

"It is about this unfortunate affair.  I understand that Mr. Harz is
with you.  I want you to use your influence to dissuade him from
attempting to see my niece."

"Influence!" said Dawney; "you know Harz!"

Mrs. Decie's voice hardened.

"Everybody," she said, "has his weak points.  This young man is open
to approach from at least two quarters--his pride is one, his work an
other.  I am seldom wrong in gauging character; these are his vital
spots, and they are of the essence of this matter.  I'm sorry for
him, of course--but at his age, and living a man's life, these
things--"  Her smile was extra pale.  "I wish you could give me
something for my head.  It's foolish to worry.  Nerves of course!
But I can't help it!  You know my opinion, Dr. Dawney.  That young
man will go far if he remains unfettered; he will make a name.  You
will be doing him a great service if you could show him the affair as
it really is--a drag on him, and quite unworthy of his pride!  Do
help me!  You are just the man to do it!"

Dawney threw up his head as if to shake off this impeachment; the
curve of his chin thus displayed was imposing in its fulness;
altogether he was imposing, having an air of capability.

She struck him, indeed, as really scared; it was as if her mask of
smile had become awry, and failed to cover her emotion; and he was
puzzled, thinking, 'I wouldn't have believed she had it in her....'
"It's not an easy business," he said; "I'll think it over."

"Thank you!" murmured Mrs. Decie.  "You are most kind."

Passing the schoolroom, he looked in through the open door.
Christian was sitting there.  The sight of her face shocked him, it
was so white, so resolutely dumb.  A book lay on her knees; she was
not reading, but staring before her.  He thought suddenly: 'Poor
thing!  If I don't say something to her, I shall be a brute!'

"Miss Devorell," he said: "You can reckon on him."

Christian tried to speak, but her lips trembled so that nothing came
forth.

"Good-night," said Dawney, and walked out....

Three days later Harz was sitting in the window of his studio.  It
was the first day he had found it possible to work, and now, tired
out, he stared through the dusk at the slowly lengthening shadows of
the rafters.  A solitary mosquito hummed, and two house sparrows, who
had built beneath the roof, chirruped sleepily.  Swallows darted by
the window, dipping their blue wings towards the quiet water; a hush
had stolen over everything.  He fell asleep.

He woke, with a dim impression of some near presence.  In the pale
glimmer from innumerable stars, the room was full of shadowy shapes.
He lit his lantern.  The flame darted forth, bickered, then slowly
lit up the great room.

"Who's there?"

A rustling seemed to answer.  He peered about, went to the doorway,
and drew the curtain.  A woman's cloaked figure shrank against the
wall.  Her face was buried in her hands; her arms, from which the
cloak fell back, were alone visible.

"Christian?"

She ran past him, and when he had put the lantern down, was standing
at the window.  She turned quickly to him.  "Take me away from here!
Let me come with you!"

"Do you mean it?"

"You said you wouldn't give me up!"

"You know what you are doing?"

She made a motion of assent.

"But you don't grasp what this means.  Things to bear that you know
nothing of--hunger perhaps!  Think, even hunger!  And your people
won't forgive--you'll lose everything."

She shook her head.

"I must choose--it's one thing or the other.  I can't give you up!
I should be afraid!"

"But, dear; how can you come with me?  We can't be married here."

"I am giving my life to you."

"You are too good for me," said Harz.  "The life you're going into--
may be dark, like that!" he pointed to the window.

A sound of footsteps broke the hush.  They could see a figure on the
path below.  It stopped, seemed to consider, vanished.  They heard
the sounds of groping hands, of a creaking door, of uncertain feet on
the stairs.

Harz seized her hand.

"Quick!" he whispered; "behind this canvas!"

Christian was trembling violently.  She drew her hood across her
face.  The heavy breathing and ejaculations of the visitor were now
plainly audible.

"He's there!  Quick!  Hide!"

She shook her head.

With a thrill at his heart, Harz kissed her, then walked towards the
entrance.  The curtain was pulled aside.

It was Herr Paul, holding a cigar in one hand, his hat in the other,
and breathing hard.

"Pardon!" he said huskily, "your stairs are steep, and dark! mais en,
fin! nous voila!  I have ventured to come for a talk."  His glance
fell on the cloaked figure in the shadow.

"Pardon! A thousand pardons!  I had no idea!  I beg you to forgive
this indiscretion!  I may take it you resign pretensions then?  You
have a lady here--I have nothing more to say; I only beg a million
pardons for intruding.  A thousand times forgive me!  Good-night!"

He bowed and turned to go.  Christian stepped forward, and let the
hood fall from her head.

"It's I!"

Herr Paul pirouetted.

"Good God!" he stammered, dropping cigar and hat.  "Good God!"

The lantern flared suddenly, revealing his crimson, shaking cheeks.

"You came here, at night!  You, the daughter of my wife!"  His eyes
wandered with a dull glare round the room.

"Take care!" cried Harz: "If you say a word against her---"

The two men stared at each other's eyes.  And without warning, the
lantern flickered and went out.  Christian drew the cloak round her
again.  Herr Paul's voice broke the silence; he had recovered his
self-possession.

"Ah! ah!" he said: "Darkness! Tant mieux!  The right thing for what
we have to say.  Since we do not esteem each other, it is well not to
see too much."

"Just so," said Harz.

Christian had come close to them.  Her pale face and great shining
eyes could just be seen through the gloom.

Herr Paul waved his arm; the gesture was impressive, annihilating.

"This is a matter, I believe, between two men," he said, addressing
Harz.  "Let us come to the point.  I will do you the credit to
suppose that you have a marriage in view.  You know, perhaps, that
Miss Devorell has no money till I die?"

"Yes."

"And I am passably young! You have money, then?"

"No."

"In that case, you would propose to live on air?"

"No, to work; it has been done before."

"It is calculated to increase hunger!  You are prepared to take Miss
Devorell, a young lady accustomed to luxury, into places like--this!"
he peered about him, "into places that smell of paint, into the
milieu of 'the people,' into the society of Bohemians--who knows? of
anarchists, perhaps?"

Harz clenched his hands: "I will answer no more questions."

"In that event, we reach the ultimatum," said Herr Paul.  "Listen,
Herr Outlaw!  If you have not left the country by noon to-morrow, you
shall be introduced to the police!"

Christian uttered a cry.  For a minute in the gloom the only sound
heard was the short, hard breathing of the two men.

Suddenly Harz cried: "You coward, I defy you!"

"Coward!" Herr Paul repeated.  "That is indeed the last word.  Look
to yourself, my friend!"

Stooping and fumbling on the floor, he picked up his hat.  Christian
had already vanished; the sound of her hurrying footsteps was
distinctly audible at the top of the dark stairs.  Herr Paul stood
still a minute.

"Look to yourself, my dear friend!" he said in a thick voice, groping
for the wall.  Planting his hat askew on his head, he began slowly to
descend the stairs.




XV

Nicholas Treffry sat reading the paper in his room by the light of a
lamp with a green shade; on his sound foot the terrier Scruff was
asleep and snoring lightly--the dog habitually came down when Greta
was in bed, and remained till Mr. Treffry, always the latest member
of the household, retired to rest.

Through the long window a little river of light shone out on the
veranda tiles, and, flowing past, cut the garden in two.

There was the sound of hurried footsteps, a rustling of draperies;
Christian, running through the window, stood before him.

Mr. Treffry dropped his paper, such a fury of passion and alarm shone
in the girl's eyes.

"Chris! What is it?"

"Hateful!"

"Chris!"

"Oh! Uncle!  He's insulted, threatened!  And I love his little finger
more than all the, world!"

Her passionate voice trembled, her eyes were shining.

Mr. Treffry's profound discomfort found vent in the gruff words: "Sit
down!"

"I'll never speak to Father again!  Oh! Uncle! I love him!"

Quiet in the extremity of his disturbance, Mr. Treffry leaned forward
in his chair, rested his big hands on its arms, and stared at her.

Chris!  Here was a woman he did not know!  His lips moved under the
heavy droop of his moustache.  The girl's face had suddenly grown
white.  She sank down on her knees, and laid her cheek against his
hand.  He felt it wet; and a lump rose in his throat.  Drawing his
hand away, he stared at it, and wiped it with his sleeve.

"Don't cry!" he said.

She seized it again and clung to it; that clutch seemed to fill him
with sudden rage.

"What's the matter?  How the devil can I do anything if you don't
tell me?"

She looked up at him.  The distress of the last days, the passion and
fear of the last hour, the tide of that new life of the spirit and
the flesh, stirring within her, flowed out in a stream of words.

When she had finished, there was so dead a silence that the
fluttering of a moth round the lamp could be heard plainly.

Mr. Treffry raised himself, crossed the room, and touched the bell.
"Tell the groom," he said to Dominique, "to put the horses to, and
have 'em round at once; bring my old boots; we drive all night...."

His bent figure looked huge, body and legs outlined by light, head
and shoulders towering into shadow.  "He shall have a run for his
money!" he said.  His eyes stared down sombrely at his niece.  "It's
more than he deserves!--it's more than you deserve, Chris.  Sit down
there and write to him; tell him to put himself entirely in my
hands."  He turned his back on her, and went into his bedroom.

Christian rose, and sat down at the writing-table.  A whisper
startled her.  It came from Dominique, who was holding out a pair of
boots.

"M'mselle Chris, what is this?--to run about all night?"  But
Christian did not answer.

"M'mselle Chris, are you ill?"  Then seeing her face, he slipped away
again.

She finished her letter and went out to the carriage.  Mr. Treffry
was seated under the hood.

"Shan't want you," he called out to the groom, "Get up, Dominique."

Christian thrust her letter into his hand.  "Give him that," she
said, clinging to his arm with sudden terror.  "Oh! Uncle! do take
care!"

"Chris, if I do this for you--"  They looked wistfully at one
another.  Then, shaking his head, Mr. Treffry gathered up the reins.

"Don't fret, my dear, don't fret!  Whoa, mare!"

The carriage with a jerk plunged forward into darkness, curved with a
crunch of wheels, and vanished, swinging between the black
treepillars at the entrance....

Christian stood, straining to catch the failing sound of the hoofs.

Down the passage came a flutter of white garments; soft limbs were
twined about her, some ends of hair fell on her face.

"What is it, Chris?  Where have you been?  Where is Uncle Nic going?
Tell me!"

Christian tore herself away.  "I don't know," she cried, "I know
nothing!"

Greta stroked her face.  "Poor Chris!" she murmured.  Her bare feet
gleamed, her hair shone gold against her nightdress.  "Come to bed,
poor Chris!"

Christian laughed.  "You little white moth!  Feel how hot I am!
You'll burn your wings!"

Harz had lain down, fully dressed.  He was no longer angry, but felt
that he would rather die than yield.  Presently he heard footsteps
coming up the stairs.

"M'sieu!"

It was the voice of Dominique, whose face, illumined by a match, wore
an expression of ironical disgust.

"My master," he said, "makes you his compliments; he says there is no
time to waste.  You are to please come and drive with him!"

"Your master is very kind.  Tell him I'm in bed."

"Ah, M'sieu," said Dominique, grimacing, "I must not go back with
such an answer.  If you would not come, I was to give you this."

Harz broke the seal and read Christian's letter.

"I will come," he said.

A clock was striking as they went out through the gate.  From within
the dark cave of the phaeton hood Mr. Treffry said gruffly: "Come
along, sir!"

Harz flung his knapsack in, and followed.

His companion's figure swayed, the whiplash slid softly along the
flank of the off horse, and, as the carriage rattled forward, Mr.
Treffry called out, as if by afterthought: "Hallo, Dominique!"
Dominque's voice, shaken and ironical, answered from behind: "M'
v'la, M'sieu!"

In the long street of silent houses, men sitting in the lighted cafes
turned with glasses at their lips to stare after the carriage.  The
narrow river of the sky spread suddenly to a vast, limpid ocean
tremulous with stars.  They had turned into the road for Italy.

Mr. Treffry took a pull at his horses.  "Whoa, mare! Dogged does it!"
and the near horse, throwing up her head, whinnied; a fleck of foam
drifted into Harz's face.

The painter had come on impulse; because Christian had told him to,
not of his own free will.  He was angry with himself, wounded in
self-esteem, for having allowed any one to render him this service.
The smooth swift movement through velvet blackness splashed on either
hand with the flying lamp-light; the strong sweet air blowing in his
face-air that had kissed the tops of mountains and stolen their
spirit; the snort and snuffle of the horses, and crisp rattling of
their hoofs--all this soon roused in him another feeling.  He looked
at Mr. Treffry's profile, with its tufted chin; at the grey road
adventuring in darkness; at the purple mass of mountains piled above
it.  All seemed utterly unreal.

As if suddenly aware that he had a neighbour, Mr. Treffry turned his
head.  "We shall do better than this presently," he said, "bit of a
slope coming.  Haven't had 'em out for three days.  Whoa-mare!
Steady!"

"Why are you taking this trouble for me?" asked Harz.

"I'm an old chap, Mr. Harz, and an old chap may do a stupid thing
once in a while!"

"You are very good," said Harz, "but I want no favours."

Mr. Treffry stared at him.

"Just so," he said drily, "but you see there's my niece to be thought
of.  Look here!  We're not at the frontier yet, Mr. Harz, by forty
miles; it's long odds we don't get there--so, don't spoil sport!"  He
pointed to the left.

Harz caught the glint of steel.  They were already crossing the
railway.  The sigh of the telegraph wires fluttered above them.

"Hear 'em," said Mr. Treffry, "but if we get away up the mountains,
we'll do yet!"  They had begun to rise, the speed slackened.  Mr.
Treffry rummaged out a flask.

"Not bad stuff, Mr. Harz--try it.  You won't?  Mother's milk!  Fine
night, eh?"  Below them the valley was lit by webs of milky mist like
the glimmer of dew on grass.

These two men sitting side by side--unlike in face, age, stature,
thought, and life--began to feel drawn towards each other, as if, in
the rolling of the wheels, the snorting of the horses, the huge dark
space, the huge uncertainty, they had found something they could
enjoy in common.  The, steam from the horses' flanks and nostrils
enveloped them with an odour as of glue.

"You smoke, Mr. Harz?"

Harz took the proffered weed, and lighted it from the glowing tip of
Mr. Treffry's cigar, by light of which his head and hat looked like
some giant mushroom.  Suddenly the wheels jolted on a rubble of loose
stones; the carriage was swung sideways.  The scared horses,
straining asunder, leaped forward, and sped downwards, in the
darkness.

Past rocks, trees, dwellings, past a lighted house that gleamed and
vanished.  With a clink and clatter, a flirt of dust and pebbles, and
the side lamps throwing out a frisky orange blink, the carriage
dashed down, sinking and rising like a boat crossing billows.  The
world seemed to rock and sway; to dance up, and be flung flat again.
Only the stars stood still.

Mr. Treffry, putting on the brake, muttered apologetically: "A little
out o'hand!"

Suddenly with a headlong dive, the carriage swayed as if it would fly
in pieces, slithered along, and with a jerk steadied itself.  Harz
lifted his voice in a shout of pure excitement.  Mr. Treffry let out
a short shaky howl, and from behind there rose a wail.  But the hill
was over and the startled horses were cantering with a free, smooth
motion.  Mr. Treffry and Harz looked at each other.




XVII

Mr. Treffry said with a sort of laugh: "Near go, eh?  You drive?  No?
That's a pity!  Broken most of my bones at the game--nothing like
it!"  Each felt a kind of admiration for the other that he had not
felt before.  Presently Mr. Treffry began: "Look here, Mr. Harz, my
niece is a slip of a thing, with all a young girl's notions!  What
have you got to give her, eh?  Yourself?  That's surely not enough;
mind this--six months after marriage we all turn out much the same--a
selfish lot!  Not to mention this anarchist affair!

"You're not of her blood, nor of her way of life, nor anything--it's
taking chances--and--" his hand came down on the young man's knee,
"I'm fond of her, you see."

"If you were in my place," said Harz, "would you give her up?"

Mr. Treffry groaned.  "Lord knows!"

"Men have made themselves before now.  For those who don't believe in
failure, there's no such thing.  Suppose she does suffer a little?
Will it do her any harm?  Fair weather love is no good."

Mr. Treffry sighed.

"Brave words, sir!  You'll pardon me if I'm too old to understand 'em
when they're used about my niece."

He pulled the horses up, and peered into the darkness.  "We're going
through this bit quietly; if they lose track of us here so much the
better.  Dominique! put out the lamps.  Soho, my beauties!"  The
horses paced forward at a walk the muffled beat of their hoofs in the
dust hardly broke the hush.  Mr. Treffry pointed to the left: "It'll
be another thirty-five miles to the frontier."

They passed the whitewashed houses, and village church with its
sentinel cypress-trees.  A frog was croaking in a runlet; there was a
faint spicy scent of lemons.  But nothing stirred.

It was wood now on either side, the high pines, breathing their
fragrance out into the darkness, and, like ghosts amongst them, the
silver stems of birch-trees.

Mr. Treffry said gruffly: "You won't give her up?  Her happiness
means a lot to me."

"To you!" said Harz: "to him!  And I am nothing!  Do you think I
don't care for her happiness?  Is it a crime for me to love her?"

"Almost, Mr. Harz--considering...."

"Considering that I've no money!  Always money!"

To this sneer Mr. Treffry made no answer, clucking to his horses.

"My niece was born and bred a lady," he said at last.  "I ask you
plainly What position have you got to give her?"

"If she marries me," said Harz, "she comes into my world.  You think
that I'm a common...."

Mr. Treffry shook his head: "Answer my question, young man."

But the painter did not answer it, and silence fell.

A light breeze had sprung up; the whispering in the trees, the
rolling of the wheels in this night progress, the pine-drugged air,
sent Harz to sleep.  When he woke it was to the same tune, varied by
Mr. Treffry's uneasy snoring; the reins were hanging loose, and,
peering out, he saw Dominique shuffling along at the horses' heads.
He joined him, and, one on each side, they plodded up and up.  A haze
had begun to bathe the trees, the stars burnt dim, the air was
colder.  Mr. Treffry woke coughing.  It was like some long nightmare,
this interminable experience of muffled sounds and shapes, of
perpetual motion, conceived, and carried out in darkness.  But
suddenly the day broke.  Heralded by the snuffle of the horses, light
began glimmering over a chaos of lines and shadows, pale as mother-
o'-pearl.  The stars faded, and in a smouldering zigzag the dawn fled
along the mountain tops, flinging out little isles of cloud.  From a
lake, curled in a hollow like a patch of smoke, came the cry of a
water-bird.  A cuckoo started a soft mocking; and close to the
carriage a lark flew up.  Beasts and men alike stood still, drinking
in the air-sweet with snows and dew, and vibrating faintly with the
running of the water and the rustling of the leaves.

The night had played sad tricks with Mr. Nicholas Treffry; his hat
was grey with dust; his cheeks brownish-purple, there were heavy
pouches beneath his eyes, which stared painfully.

"We'll call a halt," he said, "and give the gees their grub, poor
things.  Can you find some water, Mr. Harz?  There's a rubber bucket
in behind.

"Can't get about myself this morning; make that lazy fellow of mine
stir his stumps."

Harz saw that he had drawn off one of his boots, and stretched the
foot out on a cushion.

"You're not fit to go farther," he said; "you're ill."

"Ill!" replied Mr. Treffry; "not a bit of it!"

Harz looked at him, then catching up the bucket, made off in search
of water.  When he came back the horses were feeding from an india-
rubber trough slung to the pole; they stretched their heads towards
the bucket, pushing aside each other's noses.

The flame in the east had died, but the tops of the larches were
bathed in a gentle radiance; and the peaks ahead were like amber.
Everywhere were threads of water, threads of snow, and little threads
of dewy green, glistening like gossamer.

Mr. Treffry called out: "Give me your arm, Mr. Harz; I'd like to
shake the reefs out of me.  When one comes to stand over at the
knees, it's no such easy matter, eh?"  He groaned as he put his foot
down, and gripped the young man's shoulder as in a vise.  Presently
he lowered himself on to a stone.

"'All over now!' as Chris would say when she was little; nasty temper
she had too--kick and scream on the floor!  Never lasted long
though....  'Kiss her! take her up! show her the pictures!'  Amazing
fond of pictures Chris was!"  He looked dubiously at Harz; then took
a long pull at his flask.  "What would the doctor say?  Whisky at
four in the morning!  Well!  Thank the Lord Doctors aren't always
with us."  Sitting on the stone, with one hand pressed against his
side, and the other tilting up the flask, he was grey from head to
foot.

Harz had dropped on to another stone.  He, too, was worn out by the
excitement and fatigue, coming so soon after his illness.  His head
was whirling, and the next thing he remembered was a tree walking at
him, turning round, yellow from the roots up; everything seemed
yellow, even his own feet.  Somebody opposite to him was jumping up
and down, a grey bear--with a hat--Mr. Treffry!  He cried: "Ha-
alloo!"  And the figure seemed to fall and disappear....

When Harz came to himself a hand was pouring liquor into his mouth,
and a wet cloth was muffled round his brows; a noise of humming and
hoofs seemed familiar.  Mr. Treffry loomed up alongside, smoking a
cigar; he was muttering: "A low trick, Paul--bit of my mind!"  Then,
as if a curtain had been snatched aside, the vision before Harz
cleared again.  The carriage was winding between uneven, black-eaved
houses, past doorways from which goats and cows were coming out, with
bells on their necks.  Black-eyed boys, and here and there a drowsy
man with a long, cherry-stemmed pipe betwen his teeth, stood aside to
stare.

Mr. Treffry seemed to have taken a new lease of strength; like an
angry old dog, he stared from side to side.  "My bone!" he seemed to
say: "let's see who's going to touch it!"

The last house vanished, glowing in the early sunshine, and the
carriage with its trail of dust became entombed once more in the
gloom of tall trees, along a road that cleft a wilderness of
mossgrown rocks, and dewy stems, through which the sun had not yet
driven paths.

Dominique came round to them, bearing appearance of one who has seen
better days, and a pot of coffee brewed on a spirit lamp.  Breakfast
--he said--was served!

The ears of the horses were twitching with fatigue.  Mr. Treffry said
sadly: "If I can see this through, you can.  Get on, my beauties!"

As soon as the sun struck through the trees, Mr. Treffry's strength
ebbed again.  He seemed to suffer greatly; but did not complain.
They had reached the pass at last, and the unchecked sunlight was
streaming down with a blinding glare.

"Jump up!" Mr. Treffry cried out.  "We'll make a finish of it!" and
he gave the reins a jerk.  The horses flung up their heads, and the
bleak pass with its circling crown of jagged peaks soon slipped away.

Between the houses on the very top, they passed at a slow trot; and
soon began slanting down the other side.  Mr. Treffry brought them to
a halt where a mule track joined the road.

"That's all I can do for you; you'd better leave me here," he said.
"Keep this track down to the river--go south--you'll be in Italy in a
couple of hours.  Get rail at Feltre.  Money?  Yes?  Well!"  He held
out his hand; Harz gripped it.

"Give her up, eh?"

Harz shook his head.

"No?  Then it's 'pull devil, pull baker,' between us.  Good-bye, and
good luck to you!"  And mustering his strength for a last attempt at
dignity, Mr. Treffry gathered up the reins.

Harz watched his figure huddled again beneath the hood.  The carriage
moved slowly away.




XVIII

At Villa Rubein people went about, avoiding each other as if detected
in conspiracy.  Miss Naylor, who for an inscrutable reason had put on
her best frock, a purple, relieved at the chest with bird's-eye blue,
conveyed an impression of trying to count a chicken which ran about
too fast.  When Greta asked what she had lost she was heard to
mutter: "Mr.--Needlecase."

Christian, with big circles round her eyes, sat silent at her little
table.  She had had no sleep.  Herr Paul coming into the room about
noon gave her a furtive look and went out again; after this he went
to his bedroom, took off all his clothes, flung them passionately one
by one into a footbath, and got into bed.

"I might be a criminal!" he muttered to himself, while the buttons of
his garments rattled on the bath.

"Am I her father?  Have I authority?  Do I know the world?  Bssss!  I
might be a frog!"

Mrs. Decie, having caused herself to be announced, found him smoking
a cigar, and counting the flies on the ceiling.

"If you have really done this, Paul," she said in a restrained voice,
"you have done a very unkind thing, and what is worse, you have made
us all ridiculous.  But perhaps you have not done it?"

"I have done it," cried Herr Paul, staring dreadfully: "I have done
it, I tell you, I have done it--"

"Very well, you have done it--and why, pray?  What conceivable good
was there in it?  I suppose you know that Nicholas has driven him to
the frontier?  Nicholas is probably more dead than alive by this
time; you know his state of health."

Herr Paul's fingers ploughed up his beard.

"Nicholas is mad--and the girl is mad!  Leave me alone!  I will not
be made angry; do you understand?  I will not be worried--I am not
fit for it."  His prominent brown eyes stared round the room, as if
looking for a way of escape.

"If I may prophesy, you will be worried a good deal," said Mrs. Decie
coldly, "before you have finished with this affair."

The anxious, uncertain glance which Herr Paul gave her at these words
roused an unwilling feeling of compunction in her.

"You are not made for the outraged father of the family," she said.
"You had better give up the attitude, Paul; it does not suit you."

Herr Paul groaned.

"I suppose it is not your fault," she added.

Just then the door was opened, and Fritz, with an air of saying the
right thing, announced:

"A gentleman of the police to see you, sir."

Herr Paul bounded.

"Keep him out!" he cried.

Mrs. Decie, covering her lips, disappeared with a rustling of silk;
in her place stood a stiff man in blue....

Thus the morning dragged itself away without any one being able to
settle to anything, except Herr Paul, who was settled in bed.  As was
fitting in a house that had lost its soul, meals were neglected, even
by the dog.

About three o'clock a telegram came for Christian, containing these
words: "All right; self returns to-morrow.  Treffry."  After reading
it she put on her hat and went out, followed closely by Greta, who,
when she thought that she would not be sent away, ran up from behind
and pulled her by the sleeve.

"Let me come, Chris--I shall not talk."

The two girls walked on together.  When they had gone some distance
Christian said:

"I'm going to get his pictures, and take charge of them!"

"Oh!" said Greta timidly.

"If you are afraid," said Christian, "you had better go back home."

"I am not afraid, Chris," said Greta meekly.

Neither girl spoke again till they had taken the path along the wall.
Over the tops of the vines the heat was dancing.

"The sun-fairies are on the vines!" murmured Greta to herself.

At the old house they stopped, and Christian, breathing quickly,
pushed the door; it was immovable.

"Look!" said Greta, "they have screwed it!"  She pointed out three
screws with a rosy-tipped forefinger.

Christian stamped her foot.

"We mustn't stand here," she said; "let's sit on that bench and
think."

"Yes," murmured Greta, "let us think."  Dangling an end of hair, she
regarded Christian with her wide blue eyes.

"I can't make any plan," Christian cried at last, "while you stare at
me like that."

"I was thinking," said Greta humbly, "if they have screwed it up,
perhaps we shall screw it down again; there is the big screw-driver
of Fritz."

"It would take a long time; people are always passing."

"People do not pass in the evening," murmured Greta, "because the
gate at our end is always shut."

Christian rose.

"We will come this evening, just before the gate is shut."

"But, Chris, how shall we get back again?"

"I don't know; I mean to have the pictures."

"It is not a high gate," murmured Greta.

After dinner the girls went to their room, Greta bearing with her the
big screw-driver of Fritz.  At dusk they slipped downstairs and out.

They arrived at the old house, and stood, listening, in the shadow of
the doorway.  The only sounds were those of distant barking dogs, and
of the bugles at the barracks.

"Quick!" whispered Christian; and Greta, with all the strength of her
small hands, began to turn the screws.  It was some time before they
yielded; the third was very obstinate, till Christian took the screw-
driver and passionately gave the screw a starting twist.

"It is like a pig--that one," said Greta, rubbing her wrists
mournfully.

The opened door revealed the gloom of the dank rooms and twisting
staircase, then fell to behind them with a clatter.

Greta gave a little scream, and caught her sister's dress.

"It is dark," she gasped; "O Chris! it is dark!"

Christian groped for the bottom stair, and Greta felt her arm
shaking.

"Suppose there is a man to keep guard!  O Chris! suppose there are
bats!"

"You are a baby!" Christian answered in a trembling voice.  "You had
better go home!"

Greta choked a little in the dark.

"I am--not--going home, but I'm afraid of bats.  O Chris! aren't you
afraid?"

"Yes," said Christian, "but I'm going to have the pictures."

Her cheeks were burning; she was trembling all over.  Having found
the bottom step she began to mount with Greta clinging to her skirts.

The haze above inspired a little courage in the child, who, of all
things, hated darkness.  The blanket across the doorway of the loft
had been taken down, there was nothing to veil the empty room.

"Nobody here, you see," said Christian.

"No-o," whispered Greta, running to the window, and clinging to the
wall, like one of the bats she dreaded.

"But they have been here!" cried Christian angrily.  "They have
broken this."  She pointed to the fragments of a plaster cast that
had been thrown down.

Out of the corner she began to pull the canvases set in rough, wooden
frames, dragging them with all her strength.

"Help me!" she cried; "it will be dark directly."

They collected a heap of sketches and three large pictures, piling
them before the window, and peering at them in the failing light.

Greta said ruefully:

"O Chris! they are heavy ones; we shall never carry them, and the
gate is shut now!"

Christian took a pointed knife from the table.

"I shall cut them out of the frames," she said.  "Listen!  What's
that?"

It was the sound of whistling, which stopped beneath the window.  The
girls, clasping each other's hands, dropped on their knees.

"Hallo!" cried a voice.

Greta crept to the window, and, placing her face level with the
floor, peered over.

"It is only Dr. Edmund; he doesn't know, then," she whispered; "I
shall call him; he is going away!" cried Christian catching her
sister's

"Don't!" cried Christian catching her sister's dress.

"He would help us," Greta said reproachfully, "and it would not be so
dark if he were here."

Christian's cheeks were burning.

"I don't choose," she said, and began handling the pictures, feeling
their edges with her knife.

"Chris!  Suppose anybody came?"

"The door is screwed," Christian answered absently.

"O Chris!  We screwed it unscrewed; anybody who wishes shall come!"

Christian, leaning her chin in her hands, gazed at her thoughtfully.

"It will take a long time to cut these pictures out carefully; or,
perhaps I can get them out without cutting.  You must screw me up and
go home.  In the morning you must come early, when the gate is open,
unscrew me again, and help carry the pictures."

Greta did not answer at once.  At last she shook her head violently.

"I am afraid," she gasped.

"We can't both stay here all night," said Christian; "if any one
comes to our room there will be nobody to answer.  We can't lift
these pictures over the gate.  One of us must go back; you can climb
over the gate--there is nothing to be afraid of"

Greta pressed her hands together.

"Do you want the pictures badly, Chris?"

Christian nodded.

"Very badly?"

"Yes--yes--yes!"

Greta remained sitting where she was, shivering violently, as a
little animal shivers when it scents danger.  At last she rose.

"I am going," she said in a despairing voice.  At the doorway she
turned.

"If Miss Naylor shall ask me where you are, Chris, I shall be telling
her a story."

Christian started.

"I forgot that--O Greta, I am sorry! I will go instead."

Greta took another step--a quick one.

"I shall die if I stay here alone," she said; "I can tell her that
you are in bed; you must go to bed here, Chris, so it shall be true
after all."

Christian threw her arms about her.

"I am so sorry, darling; I wish I could go instead.  But if you have
to tell a lie, I would tell a straight one."

"Would you?" said Greta doubtfully.

"Yes."

"I think," said Greta to herself, beginning to descend the stairs, "I
think I will tell it in my way."  She shuddered and went on groping
in the darkness.

Christian listened for the sound of the screws.  It came slowly,
threatening her with danger and solitude.

Sinking on her knees she began to work at freeing the canvas of a
picture.  Her heart throbbed distressfully; at the stir of wind-
breath or any distant note of clamour she stopped, and held her
breathing.  No sounds came near.  She toiled on, trying only to think
that she was at the very spot where last night his arms had been
round her.  How long ago it seemed!  She was full of vague terror,
overmastered by the darkness, dreadfully alone.  The new glow of
resolution seemed suddenly to have died down in her heart, and left
her cold.

She would never be fit to be his wife, if at the first test her
courage failed! She set her teeth; and suddenly she felt a kind of
exultation, as if she too were entering into life, were knowing
something within herself that she had never known before.  Her
fingers hurt, and the pain even gave pleasure; her cheeks were
burning; her breath came fast.  They could not stop her now!  This
feverish task in darkness was her baptism into life.  She finished;
and rolling the pictures very carefully, tied them with cord.  She
had done something for him!  Nobody could take that from her!  She
had a part of him!  This night had made him hers!  They might do
their worst!  She lay down on his mattress and soon fell asleep....

She was awakened by Scruff's tongue against her face.  Greta was
standing by her side.

"Wake up, Chris!  The gate is open!"

In the cold early light the child seemed to glow with warmth and
colour; her eyes were dancing.

"I am not afraid now; Scruff and I sat up all night, to catch the
morning--I--think it was fun; and O Chris!" she ended with a rueful
gleam in her eyes, "I told it."

Christian hugged her.

"Come--quick! There is nobody about.  Are those the pictures?"

Each supporting an end, the girls carried the bundle downstairs, and
set out with their corpse-like burden along the wall-path between the
river and the vines.




XIX

Hidden by the shade of rose-bushes Greta lay stretched at length,
cheek on arm, sleeping the sleep of the unrighteous.  Through the
flowers the sun flicked her parted lips with kisses, and spilled the
withered petals on her.  In a denser islet of shade, Scruff lay
snapping at a fly.  His head lolled drowsily in the middle of a snap,
and snapped in the middle of a loll.

At three o'clock Miss Naylor too came out, carrying a basket and pair
of scissors.  Lifting her skirts to avoid the lakes of water left by
the garden hose, she stopped in front of a rose-bush, and began to
snip off the shrivelled flowers.  The little lady's silvered head and
thin, brown face sustained the shower of sunlight unprotected, and
had a gentle dignity in their freedom.

Presently, as the scissors flittered in and out of the leaves, she,
began talking to herself.

"If girls were more like what they used to be, this would not have
happened.  Perhaps we don't understand; it's very easy to forget."
Burying her nose and lips in a rose, she sniffed.  "Poor dear girl!
It's such a pity his father is--a--"

"A farmer," said a sleepy voice behind the rosebush.

Miss Naylor leaped.  "Greta! How you startled me!  A farmer--that is-
-an--an agriculturalist!"

"A farmer with vineyards--he told us, and he is not ashamed.  Why is
it a pity, Miss Naylor?"

Miss Naylor's lips looked very thin.

"For many reasons, of which you know nothing."

"That is what you always say," pursued the sleepy voice; "and that is
why, when I am to be married, there shall also be a pity."

"Greta!" Miss Naylor cried, "it is not proper for a girl of your age
to talk like that."

"Why?" said Greta.  "Because it is the truth?"

Miss Naylor made no reply to this, but vexedly cut off a sound rose,
which she hastily picked up and regarded with contrition.  Greta
spoke again:

"Chris said: 'I have got the pictures, I shall tell her'; but I shall
tell you instead, because it was I that told the story."

Miss Naylor stared, wrinkling her nose, and holding the scissors wide
apart....

"Last night," said Greta slowly, "I and Chris went to his studio and
took his pictures, and so, because the gate was shut, I came back to
tell it; and when you asked me where Chris was, I told it; because
she was in the studio all night, and I and Scruff sat up all night,
and in the morning we brought the pictures, and hid them under our
beds, and that is why--we--are--so--sleepy."

Over the rose-bush Miss Naylor peered down at her; and though she was
obliged to stand on tiptoe this did not altogether destroy her
dignity.

"I am surprised at you, Greta; I am surprised at Christian, more
surprised at Christian.  The world seems upside down."

Greta, a sunbeam entangled in her hair, regarded her with
inscrutable, innocent eyes.

"When you were a girl, I think you would be sure to be in love," she
murmured drowsily.

Miss Naylor, flushing deeply, snipped off a particularly healthy bud.

"And so, because you are not married, I think--"

The scissors hissed.

Greta nestled down again.  "I think it is wicked to cut off all the
good buds," she said, and shut her eyes.

Miss Naylor continued to peer across the rosebush; but her thin face,
close to the glistening leaves, had become oddly soft, pink, and
girlish.  At a deeper breath from Greta, the little lady put down her
basket, and began to pace the lawn, followed dubiously by Scruff.  It
was thus that Christian came on them.

Miss Naylor slipped her arm into the girl's and though she made no
sound, her lips kept opening and shutting, like the beak of a bird
contemplating a worm.

Christian spoke first:

"Miss Naylor, I want to tell you please--"

"Oh, my dear!  I know; Greta has been in the confessional before
you."  She gave the girl's arm a squeeze.  "Isn't it a lovely day?
Did you ever see 'Five Fingers' look so beautiful?"  And she pointed
to the great peaks of the Funffingerspitze glittering in the sun like
giant crystals.

"I like them better with clouds about them."

"Well," agreed Miss Naylor nervously, "they certainly are nicer with
clouds about them.  They look almost hot and greasy, don't they....
My dear!" she went on, giving Christian's arm a dozen little
squeezes, "we all of us--that is, we all of us--"

Christian turned her eyes away.

"My dear," Miss Naylor tried again, "I am far--that is, I mean, to
all of us at some time or another--and then you see--well--it is
hard!"

Christian kissed the gloved hand resting on her arm.  Miss Naylor
bobbed her head; a tear trickled off her nose.

"Do let us wind your skein of woof!" she said with resounding gaiety.

Some half-hour later Mrs. Decie called Christian to her room.

"My dear!" she said; "come here a minute; I have a message for you."

Christian went with an odd, set look about her mouth.

Her aunt was sitting, back to the light, tapping a bowl of goldfish
with the tip of a polished finger-nail; the room was very cool.  She
held a letter out.  "Your uncle is not coming back tonight."

Christian took the letter.  It was curtly worded, in a thin, toppling
hand:

"DEAR CON--Can't get back to-night.  Sending Dominique for things.
Tell Christian to come over with him for night if possible.--Yr.
aff. brother,       NICLS. TREFFRY."

"Dominique has a carriage here," said Mrs. Decie.  "You will have
nice time to catch the train.  Give my love to your uncle.  You must
take Barbi with you, I insist on that."  She rose from her chair and
held Christian's hand: "My dear!  You look very tired--very!  Almost
ill.  I don't like to see you look like that.  Come!"  She thrust her
pale lips forward, and kissed the girl's paler cheek.

Then as Christian left the room she sank back in her chair, with
creases in her forehead, and began languidly to cut a magazine.
'Poor Christian!' she thought, 'how hardly she does take it! I am
sorry for her; but perhaps it's just as well, as things are turning
out.  Psychologically it is interesting!'

Christian found her things packed, and the two servants waiting.  In
a few minutes they were driving to the station.  She made Dominique
take the seat opposite.

"Well?" she asked him.

Dominique's eyebrows twitched, he smiled deprecatingly.

"M'mselle, Mr. Treffry told me to hold my tongue."

"But you can tell me, Dominique; Barbi can't understand."

"To you, then, M'mselle," said Dominique, as one who accepts his
fate; "to you, then, who will doubtless forget all that I shall tell
you--my master is not well; he has terrible pain here; he has a
cough; he is not well at all; not well at all."

A feeling of dismay seized on the girl.

"We were a caravan for all that night," Dominique resumed.  "In the
morning by noon we ceased to be a caravan; Signor Harz took a mule
path; he will be in Italy--certainly in Italy.  As for us, we stayed
at San Martino, and my master went to bed.  It was time; I had much
trouble with his clothes, his legs were swollen.  In the afternoon
came a signor of police, on horseback, red and hot; I persuaded him
that we were at Paneveggio, but as we were not, he came back angry--
Mon Die! as angry as a cat.  It was not good to meet him--when he was
with my master I was outside.  There was much noise.  I do not know
what passed, but at last the signor came out through the door, and
went away in a hurry."  Dominique's features were fixed in a sardonic
grin; he rubbed the palm of one hand with the finger of the other.
"Mr. Treffry made me give him whisky afterwards, and he had no money
to pay the bill--that I know because I paid it.  Well, M'mselle, to-
day he would be dressed and very slowly we came as far as Auer; there
he could do no more, so went to bed.  He is not well at all."

Christian was overwhelmed by forebodings; the rest of the journey was
made in silence, except when Barbi, a country girl, filled with the
delirium of railway travel, sighed: "Ach! gnadige Fraulein!" looking
at Christian with pleasant eyes.

At once, on arriving at the little hostel, Christian went to see her
uncle.  His room was darkened, and smelt of beeswax.

"Ah! Chris," he said, "glad to see you."

In a blue flannel gown, with a rug over his feet, he was lying on a
couch lengthened artificially by chairs; the arm he reached out
issued many inches from its sleeve, and showed the corded veins of
the wrist.  Christian, settling his pillows, looked anxiously into
his eyes.

"I'm not quite the thing, Chris," said Mr. Treffry.  "Somehow, not
quite the thing.  I'll come back with you to-morrow."

"Let me send for Dr. Dawney, Uncle?"

"No--no!  Plenty of him when I get home.  Very good young fellow, as
doctors go, but I can't stand his puddin's--slops and puddin's, and
all that trumpery medicine on the top.  Send me Dominique, my dear--
I'll put myself to rights a bit!"  He fingered his unshaven cheek,
and clutched the gown together on his chest.  "Got this from the
landlord.  When you come back we'll have a little talk!"

He was asleep when she came into the room an hour later.  Watching
his uneasy breathing, she wondered what it was that he was going to
say.

He looked ill!  And suddenly she realised that her thoughts were not
of him....  When she was little he would take her on his back; he had
built cocked hats for her and paper boats; had taught her to ride;
slid her between his knees; given her things without number; and
taken his payment in kisses.  And now he was ill, and she was not
thinking of him!  He had been all that was most dear to her, yet
before her eyes would only come the vision of another.

Mr. Treffry woke suddenly.  "Not been asleep, have I?  The beds here
are infernal hard."

"Uncle Nic, won't you give me news of him?"

Mr. Treffry looked at her, and Christian could not bear that look.

"He's safe into Italy; they aren't very keen after him, it's so long
ago; I squared 'em pretty easily.  Now, look here, Chris!"

Christian came close; he took her hand.

"I'd like to see you pull yourself together.  'Tisn't so much the
position; 'tisn't so much the money; because after all there's always
mine--"  Christian shook her head.  "But," he went on with shaky
emphasis, "there's the difference of blood, and that's a serious
thing; and there's this anarch--this political affair; and there's
the sort of life, an' that's a serious thing; but--what I'm coming to
is this, Chris--there's the man!"

Christian drew away her hand.  Mr. Treffry went on:

"Ah! yes.  I'm an old chap and fond of you, but I must speak out what
I think.  He's got pluck, he's strong, he's in earnest; but he's got
a damned hot temper, he's an egotist, and--he's not the man for you.
If you marry him, as sure as I lie here, you'll be sorry for it.
You're not your father's child for nothing; nice fellow as ever
lived, but soft as butter.  If you take this chap, it'll be like
mixing earth and ironstone, and they don't blend!"  He dropped his
head back on the pillows, and stretching out his hand, repeated
wistfully: "Take my word for it, my dear, he's not the man for you."

Christian, staring at the wall beyond, said quietly: "I can't take
any one's word for that."

"Ah!" muttered Mr. Treffry, "you're obstinate enough, but obstinacy
isn't strength.

"You'll give up everything to him, you'll lick his shoes; and you'll
never play anything but second fiddle in his life.  He'll always be
first with himself, he and his work, or whatever he calls painting
pictures; and some day you'll find that out.  You won't like it, and
I don't like it for you, Chris, and that's flat."

He wiped his brow where the perspiration stood in beads.

Christian said: "You don't understand; you don't believe in him; you
don't see!  If I do come after his work--if I do give him everything,
and he can't give all back--I don't care!  He'll give what he can; I
don't want any more.  If you're afraid of the life for me, uncle, if
you think it'll be too hard--"

Mr. Treffry bowed his head.  "I do, Chris."

"Well, then, I hate to be wrapped in cotton wool; I want to breathe.
If I come to grief, it's my own affair; nobody need mind."

Mr. Treffry's fngers sought his beard.  "Ah! yes.  Just so!"

Christian sank on her knees.

"Oh! Uncle! I'm a selfish beast!"

Mr. Treffry laid his hand against her cheek.  "I think I could do
with a nap," he said.

Swallowing a lump in her throat, she stole out of the room.

By a stroke of Fate Mr. Treffry's return to Villa Rubein befell at
the psychological moment when Herr Paul, in a suit of rather too
bright blue, was starting for Vienna.

As soon as he saw the carriage appear between the poplars he became
as pensive as a boy caught in the act of stealing cherries.  Pitching
his hatbox to Fritz, he recovered himself, however, in time to
whistle while Mr. Treffry was being assisted into the house.  Having
forgotten his anger, he was only anxious now to smooth out its after
effects; in the glances he cast at Christian and his brother-in-law
there was a kind of shamed entreaty which seemed to say: "For
goodness' sake, don't worry me about that business again! Nothing's
come of it, you see!"

He came forward: "Ah! Mon cher!  So you return; I put off my
departure, then.  Vienna must wait for me--that poor Vienna!"

But noticing the extreme feebleness of Mr. Treffry's advance, he
exclaimed with genuine concern:

"What is it?  You're ill?  My God!"  After disappearing for five
minutes, he came back with a whitish liquid in a glass.

"There!" he said, "good for the gout--for a cough--for everything!"

Mr. Treffry sniffed, drained the glass, and sucked his moustache.

"Ah!" he said.  "No doubt!  But it's uncommonly like gin, Paul."
Then turning to Christian, he said: "Shake hands, you two!"

Christian looked from one to the other, and at last held out her hand
to Herr Paul, who brushed it with his moustache, gazing after her as
she left the room with a queer expression.

"My dear!" he began, "you support her in this execrable matter?  You
forget my position, you make me ridiculous.  I have been obliged to
go to bed in my own house, absolutely to go to bed, because I was in
danger of becoming funny."

"Look here, Paul!" Mr. Treffry said gruffly, "if any one's to bully
Chris, it's I."

"In that case," returned Herr Paul sarcastically, "I will go to
Vienna."

"You may go to the devil!" said Mr. Treffry; "and I'll tell you what-
-in my opinion it was low to set the police on that young chap; a
low, dirty trick."

Herr Paul divided his beard carefully in two, took his seat on the
very edge of an arm-chair, and placing his hands on his parted knees,
said:

"I have regretted it since--mais, que diable!  He called me a coward-
-it is very hot weather!--there were drinks at the Kurhaus--I am her
guardian--the affair is a very beastly one--there were more drinks--I
was a little enfin!"  He shrugged his shoulders.  "Adieu, my dear; I
shall be some time in Vienna; I need rest!"  He rose and went to the
door; then he turned, and waved his cigar.  "Adieu! Be good; get
well!  I will buy you some cigars up there."  And going out, he shut
the door on any possibility of answer.

Mr. Treffry lay back amongst his cushions.  The clock ticked; pigeons
cooed on the veranda; a door opened in the distance, and for a moment
a treble voice was heard.  Mr. Treffry's head drooped forward; across
his face, gloomy and rugged, fell a thin line of sunlight.

The clock suddenly stopped ticking, and outside, in mysterious
accord, the pigeons rose with a great fluttering of wings, and flew
off'.  Mr. Treffry made a startled, heavy movement.  He tried to get
on to his feet and reach the bell, but could not, and sat on the side
of the couch with drops of sweat rolling off his forehead, and his
hands clawing his chest.  There was no sound at all throughout the
house.  He looked about him, and tried to call, but again could not.
He tried once more to reach the bell, and, failing, sat still, with a
thought that made him cold.

"I'm done for," he muttered.  "By George! I believe I'm done for this
time!"  A voice behind him said:

"Can we have a look at you, sir?"

"Ah! Doctor, bear a hand, there's a good fellow."

Dawney propped him against the cushions, and loosened his shirt.
Receiving no answer to his questions, he stepped alarmed towards the
bell.  Mr. Treffry stopped him with a sign.

"Let's hear what you make of me," he said.

When Dawney had examined him, he asked:

"Well?"

"Well," answered Dawney slowly, "there's trouble, of course."

Mr. Treffry broke out with a husky whisper: "Out with it, Doctor;
don't humbug me."

Dawney bent down, and took his wrist.

"I don't know how you've got into this state, sir," he said with the
brusqueness of emotion.  "You're in a bad way.  It's the old trouble;
and you know what that means as well as I.  All I can tell you is,
I'm going to have a big fight with it.  It shan't be my fault,
there's my hand on that."

Mr. Treffry lay with his eyes fixed on the ceiling; at last he said:

"I want to live."

"Yes--yes."

"I feel better now; don't make a fuss about it.  It'll be very
awkward if I die just now.  Patch me up, for the sake of my niece."

Dawney nodded.  "One minute, there are a few things I want," and he
went out.

A moment later Greta stole in on tiptoe.  She bent over till her hair
touched Mr. Treffry's face.

"Uncle Nic!" she whispered.  He opened his eyes.

"Hallo, Greta!"

"I have come to bring you my love, Uncle Nic, and to say good-bye.
Papa says that I and Scruff and Miss Naylor are going to Vienna with
him; we have had to pack in half an hour; in five minutes we are
going to Vienna, and it is my first visit there, Uncle Nic."

"To Vienna!" Mr. Treffry repeated slowly.  "Don't have a guide,
Greta; they're humbugs."

"No, Uncle Nic," said Greta solemnly.

"Draw the curtains, old girl, let's have a look at you.  Why, you're
as smart as ninepence!"

"Yes," said Greta with a sigh, touching the buttons of her cape,
"because I am going to Vienna; but I am sorry to leave you, Uncle
Nic."

"Are you, Greta?"

"But you will have Chris, and you are fonder of Chris than of me,
Uncle Nic."

"I've known her longer."

"Perhaps when you've known me as long as Chris, you shall be as fond
of me."

"When I've known you as long--may be."

"While I am gone, Uncle Nic, you are to get well, you are not very
well, you know."

"What put that into your head?"

"If you were well you would be smoking a cigar--it is just three
o'clock.  This kiss is for myself, this is for Scruff, and this is
for Miss Naylor."

She stood upright again; a tremulous, joyful gravity was in her eyes
and on her lips.

"Good-bye, my dear; take care of yourselves; and don't you have a
guide, they're humbugs."

"No, Uncle Nic.  There is the carriage!  To Vienna, Uncle Nic!"  The
dead gold of her hair gleamed in the doorway.  Mr. Treffry raised
himself upon his elbow.

"Give us one more, for luck!"

Greta ran back.

"I love you very much!" she said, and kissing him, backed slowly,
then, turning, flew out like a bird.

Mr. Treffry fixed his eyes on the shut door.





XXI

After many days of hot, still weather, the wind had come, and whirled
the dust along the parched roads.  The leaves were all astir, like
tiny wings.  Round Villa Rubein the pigeons cooed uneasily, all the
other birds were silent.  Late in the afternoon Christian came out on
the veranda, reading a letter:

"DEAR CHRIS,--We are here now six days, and it is a very large place
with many churches.  In the first place then we have been to a great
many, but the nicest of them is not St. Stephan's Kirche, it is
another, but I do not remember the name.  Papa is out nearly all the
night; he says he is resting here, so he is not able to come to the
churches with us, but I do not think he rests very much.  The day
before yesterday we, that is, Papa, I, and Miss Naylor, went to an
exhibition of pictures.  It was quite beautiful and interesting (Miss
Naylor says it is not right to say 'quite' beautiful, but I do not
know what other word could mean 'quite' except the word 'quite,'
because it is not exceedingly and not extremely).  And O Chris! there
was one picture painted by him; it was about a ship without masts--
Miss Naylor says it is a barge, but I do not know what a barge is--on
fire, and, floating down a river in a fog.  I think it is extremely
beautiful.  Miss Naylor says it is very impressionistick--what is
that?  and Papa said 'Puh!' but he did not know it was painted by
Herr Harz, so I did not tell him.

"There has also been staying at our hotel that Count Sarelli who came
one evening to dinner at our house, but he is gone away now.  He sat
all day in the winter garden reading, and at night he went out with
Papa.  Miss Naylor says he is unhappy, but I think he does not take
enough exercise; and O Chris! one day he said to me, 'That is your
sister, Mademoiselle, that young lady in the white dress?  Does she
always wear white dresses?' and I said to him: 'It is not always a
white dress; in the picture, it is green, because the picture is
called "Spring.'"  But I did not tell him the colours of all your
dresses because he looked so tired.  Then he said to me: 'She is very
charming.'  So I tell you this, Chris, because I think you shall like
to know.  Scruff' has a sore toe; it is because he has eaten too much
meat.

"It is not nice without you, Chris, and Miss Naylor says I am
improving my mind here, but I do not think it shall improve very
much, because at night I like it always best, when the shops are
lighted and the carriages are driving past; then I am wanting to
dance.  The first night Papa said he would take me to the theatre,
but yesterday he said it was not good for me; perhaps to-morrow he
shall think it good for me again.

"Yesterday we have been in the Prater, and saw many people, and some
that Papa knew; and then came the most interesting part of all,
sitting under the trees in the rain for two hours because we could
not get a carriage (very exciting).

"There is one young lady here, only she is not any longer very young,
who knew Papa when he was a boy.  I like her very much; she shall
soon know me quite to the bottom and is very kind.

"The ill husband of Cousin Teresa who went with us to Meran and lost
her umbrella and Dr. Edmund was so sorry about it, has been very much
worse, so she is not here but in Baden.  I wrote to her but have no
news, so I do not know whether he is still living or not, at any rate
he can't get well again so soon (and I don't think he ever shall).  I
think as the weather is very warm you and Uncle Nic are sitting much
out of doors.  I am sending presents to you all in a wooden box and
screwed very firm, so you shall have to use again the big screw-
driver of Fritz.  For Aunt Constance, photographs; for Uncle Nic, a
green bird on a stand with a hole in the back of the bird to put his
ashes in; it is a good green and not expensif please tell him,
because he does not like expensif presents (Miss Naylor says the bird
has an inquiring eye--it is a parrat); for you, a little brooch of
turquoise because I like them best; for Dr. Edmund a machine to weigh
medicines in because he said he could not get a good one in Botzen;
this is a very good one, the shopman told me so, and is the most
expensif of all the presents--so that is all my money, except two
gulden.  If Papa shall give me some more, I shall buy for Miss Naylor
a parasol, because it is useful and the handle of hers is 'wobbley'
(that is one of Dr. Edmund's words and I like it).

"Good-bye for this time.  Greta sends you her kiss.

"P. S.--Miss Naylor has read all this letter (except about the parasol)
and there are several things she did not want me to put, so I have
copied it without the things, but at the last I have kept that copy
myself, so that is why this is smudgy and several words are not spelt
well, but all the things are here."

Christian read, smiling, but to finish it was like dropping a
talisman, and her face clouded.  A sudden draught blew her hair
about, and from within, Mr. Treffry's cough mingled with the soughing
of the wind; the sky was fast blackening.  She went indoors, took a
pen and began to write:


"MY FRIEND,--Why haven't you written to me?  It is so, long to wait.
Uncle says you are in Italy--it is dreadful not to know for certain.
I feel you would have written if you could; and I can't help thinking
of all the things that may have happened.  I am unhappy.  Uncle Nic
is ill; he will not confess it, that is his way; but he is very ill.
Though perhaps you will never see this, I must write down all my
thoughts.  Sometimes I feel that I am brutal to be always thinking
about you, scheming how to be with you again, when he is lying there
so ill.  How good he has always been to me; it is terrible that love
should pull one apart so.  Surely love should be beautiful, and
peaceful, instead of filling me with bitter, wicked thoughts.  I love
you--and I love him; I feel as if I were torn in two.  Why should it
be so?  Why should the beginning of one life mean the ending of
another, one love the destruction of another?  I don't understand.
The same spirit makes me love you and him, the same sympathy, the
same trust--yet it sometimes seems as if I were a criminal in loving
you.  You know what he thinks--he is too honest not to have shown
you.  He has talked to me; he likes you in a way, but you are a
foreigner--he says-your life is not my life.  'He is not the man for
you!'  Those were his words.  And now he doesn't talk to me, but when
I am in the room he looks at me--that's worse--a thousand times; when
he talks it rouses me to fight--when it's his eyes only, I'm a coward
at once; I feel I would do anything, anything, only not to hurt him.
Why can't he see?  Is it because he's old and we are young?  He may
consent, but he will never, never see; it will always hurt him.

"I want to tell you everything; I have had worse thoughts than these-
-sometimes I have thought that I should never have the courage to
face the struggle which you have to face.  Then I feel quite broken;
it is like something giving way in me.  Then I think of you, and it
is over; but it has been there, and I am ashamed--I told you I was a
coward.  It's like the feeling one would have going out into a storm
on a dark night, away from a warm fire--only of the spirit not the
body--which makes it worse.  I had to tell you this; you mustn't
think of it again, I mean to fight it away and forget that it has
ever been there.  But Uncle Nic--what am I to do?  I hate myself
because I am young, and he is old and weak--sometimes I seem even to
hate him.  I have all sorts of thoughts, and always at the end of
them, like a dark hole at the end of a passage, the thought that I
ought to give you up.  Ought I?  Tell me.  I want to know, I want to
do what is right; I still want to do that, though sometimes I think I
am all made of evil.

"Do you remember once when we were talking, you said: 'Nature always
has an answer for every question; you cannot get an answer from laws,
conventions, theories, words, only from Nature.'  What do you say to
me now; do you tell me it is Nature to come to you in spite of
everything, and so, that it must be right?  I think you would; but
can it be Nature to do something which will hurt terribly one whom I
love and who loves me?  If it is--Nature is cruel.  Is that one of
the 'lessons of life'?  Is that what Aunt Constance means when she
says: 'If life were not a paradox, we could not get on at all'?  I am
beginning to see that everything has its dark side; I never believed
that before.

"Uncle Nic dreads the life for me; he doesn't understand (how should
he?--he has always had money) how life can be tolerable without money
--it is horrible that the accident of money should make such
difference in our lives.  I am sometimes afraid myself, and I can't
outface that fear in him; he sees the shadow of his fear in me--his
eyes seem to see everything that is in me now; the eyes of old people
are the saddest things in the world.  I am writing like a wretched
coward, but you will never see this letter I suppose, and so it
doesn't matter; but if you do, and I pray that you may--well, if I am
only worth taking at my best, I am not worth taking at all.  I want
you to know the worst of me--you, and no one else.

"With Uncle Nic it is not as with my stepfather; his opposition only
makes me angry, mad, ready to do anything, but with Uncle Nic I feel
so bruised--so sore.  He said: 'It is not so much the money, because
there is always mine.'  I could never do a thing he cannot bear, and
take his money, and you would never let me.  One knows very little of
anything in the world till trouble comes.  You know how it is with
flowers and trees; in the early spring they look so quiet and self-
contained; then all in a moment they change--I think it must be like
that with the heart.  I used to think I knew a great deal, understood
why and how things came about; I thought self-possession and reason
so easy; now I know nothing.  And nothing in the world matters but to
see you and hide away from that look in Uncle Nic's eyes.  Three
months ago I did not know you, now I write like this.  Whatever I
look at, I try to see as you would see; I feel, now you are away even
more than when you were with me, what your thoughts would be, how you
would feel about this or that.  Some things you have said seem always
in my mind like lights--"

A slanting drift of rain was striking the veranda tiles with a cold,
ceaseless hissing.  Christian shut the window, and went into her
uncle's room.

He was lying with closed eyes, growling at Dominique, who moved about
noiselessly, putting the room ready for the night.  When he had
finished, and with a compassionate bow had left the room, Mr. Treffry
opened his eyes, and said:

"This is beastly stuff of the doctor's, Chris, it puts my monkey up;
I can't help swearing after I've taken it; it's as beastly as a
vulgar woman's laugh, and I don't know anything beastlier than that!"

"I have a letter from Greta, Uncle Nic; shall I read it?"

He nodded, and Christian read the letter, leaving out the mention of
Harz, and for some undefined reason the part about Sarelli.

"Ay!" said Mr. Treffry with a feeble laugh, "Greta and her money!
Send her some more, Chris.  Wish I were a youngster again; that's a
beast of a proverb about a dog and his day.  I'd like to go fishing
again in the West Country!  A fine time we had when we were
youngsters.  You don't get such times these days.  'Twasn't often the
fishing-smacks went out without us.  We'd watch their lights from our
bedroom window; when they were swung aboard we were out and down to
the quay before you could say 'knife.'  They always waited for us;
but your Uncle Dan was the favourite, he was the chap for luck.  When
I get on my legs, we might go down there, you and I?  For a bit, just
to see?  What d'you say, old girl?"

Their eyes met.

"I'd like to look at the smack lights going to sea on a dark night;
pity you're such a duffer in a boat--we might go out with them.  Do
you a power of good!  You're not looking the thing, my dear."

His voice died wistfully, and his glance, sweeping her face, rested
on her hands, which held and twisted Greta's letter.  After a minute
or two of silence he boomed out again with sudden energy:

"Your aunt'll want to come and sit with me, after dinner; don't let
her, Chris, I can't stand it.  Tell her I'm asleep--the doctor'll be
here directly; ask him to make up some humbug for you--it's his
business."

He was seized by a violent fit of pain which seemed to stab his
breath away, and when it was over signed that he would be left alone.
Christian went back to her letter in the other room, and had written
these words, when the gong summoned her to dinner:

"I'm like a leaf in the wind, I put out my hand to one thing, and
it's seized and twisted and flung aside.  I want you--I want you; if
I could see you I think I should know what to do--"




XXII

The rain drove with increasing fury.  The night was very black.
Nicholas Treffry slept heavily.  By the side of his bed the night-
lamp cast on to the opposite wall a bright disc festooned by the
hanging shadow of the ceiling.  Christian was leaning over him.  For
the moment he filled all her heart, lying there, so helpless. Fearful
of waking him she slipped into the sitting-room.  Outside the window
stood a man with his face pressed to the pane.  Her heart thumped;
she went up and unlatched the window.  It was Harz, with the rain
dripping off him.  He let fall his hat and cape.

"You!" she said, touching his sleeve.  "You!  You!"

He was sodden with wet, his face drawn and tired; a dark growth of
beard covered his cheeks and chin.

"Where is your uncle?" he said; "I want to see him."

She put her hand up to his lips, but he caught it and covered it with
kisses.

"He's asleep--ill--speak gently!"

"I came to him first," he muttered.

Christian lit the lamp; and he looked at her hungrily without a word.

"It's not possible to go on like this; I came to tell your uncle so.
He is a man.  As for the other, I want to have nothing to do with
him!  I came back on foot across the mountains.  It's not possible to
go on like this, Christian."

She handed him her letter.  He held it to the light, clearing his
brow of raindrops.  When he had read to the last word he gave it her
back, and whispered: "Come!"

Her lips moved, but she did not speak.

"While this goes on I can't work; I can do nothing.  I can't--I won't
bargain with my work; if it's to be that, we had better end it.  What
are we waiting for?  Sooner or later we must come to this.  I'm sorry
that he's ill, God knows!  But that changes nothing.  To wait is
tying me hand and foot--it's making me afraid!  Fear kills!  It will
kill you!  It kills work, and I must work, I can't waste time--I
won't!  I will sooner give you up."  He put his hands on her
shoulders.  "I love you!  I want you!  Look in my eyes and see if you
dare hold back!"

Christian stood with the grip of his strong hands on her shoulders,
without a movement or sign.  Her face was very white.  And suddenly
he began to kiss that pale, still face, to kiss its eyes and lips, to
kiss it from its chin up to its hair; and it stayed pale, as a white
flower, beneath those kisses--as a white flower, whose stalk the
fingers bend back a little.

There was a sound of knocking on the wall; Mr. Treffry called feebly.
Christian broke away from Harz.

"To-morrow!" he whispered, and picking up his hat and cloak, went out
again into the rain.




XXIII

It was not till morning that Christian fell into a troubled sleep.
She dreamed that a voice was calling her, and she was filled with a
helpless, dumb dream terror.

When she woke the light was streaming in; it was Sunday, and the
cathedral bells were chiming.  Her first thought was of Harz.  One
step, one moment of courage!  Why had she not told her uncle?  If he
had only asked!  But why--why should she tell him?  When it was over
and she was gone, he would see that all was for the best.

Her eyes fell on Greta's empty bed.  She sprang up, and bending over,
kissed the pillow.  'She will mind at first; but she's so young!
Nobody will really miss me, except Uncle Nic!'  She stood along while
in the window without moving.  When she was dressed she called out to
her maid:

"Bring me some milk, Barbi; I'm going to church."

"Ach! gnadiges Frdulein, will you no breakfast have?"

"No thank you, Barbi."

"Liebes Fraulein, what a beautiful morning after the rain it has
become!  How cool!  It is for you good--for the colour in your
cheeks; now they will bloom again!" and Barbi stroked her own well-
coloured cheeks.

Dominique, sunning himself outside with a cloth across his arm, bowed
as she passed, and smiled affectionately:

"He is better this morning, M'mselle.  We march--we are getting on.
Good news will put the heart into you."

Christian thought: 'How sweet every one is to-day!'

Even the Villa seemed to greet her, with the sun aslant on it; and
the trees, trembling and weeping golden tears.  At the cathedral she
was early for the service, but here and there were figures on their
knees; the faint, sickly odour of long-burnt incense clung in the
air; a priest moved silently at the far end.  She knelt, and when at
last she rose the service had begun.  With the sound of the intoning
a sense of peace came to her--the peace of resolution.  For good or
bad she felt that she had faced her fate.

She went out with a look of quiet serenity and walked home along the
dyke.  Close to Harz's studio she sat down.  Now--it was her own; all
that had belonged to him, that had ever had a part in him.

An old beggar, who had been watching her, came gently from behind.
"Gracious lady!" he said, peering at her eyes, "this is the lucky day
for you.  I have lost my luck."

Christian opened her purse, there was only one coin in it, a gold
piece; the beggar's eyes sparkled.

She thought suddenly: 'It's no longer mine; I must begin to be
careful,' but she felt ashamed when she looked at the old man.

"I am sorry," she said; "yesterday I would have given you this, but--
but now it's already given."

He seemed so old and poor--what could she give him?  She unhooked a
little silver brooch at her throat.  "You will get something for
that," she said; "it's better than nothing.  I am very sorry you are
so old and poor."

The beggar crossed himself.  "Gracious lady," he muttered, "may you
never want!"

Christian hurried on; the rustling of leaves soon carried the words
away.  She did not feel inclined to go in, and crossing the bridge
began to climb the hill.  There was a gentle breeze, drifting the
clouds across the sun; lizards darted out over the walls, looked at
her, and whisked away.

The sunshine, dappling through the tops of trees, gashed down on a
torrent.  The earth smelt sweet, the vineyards round the white farms
glistened; everything seemed to leap and dance with sap and life; it
was a moment of Spring in midsummer.  Christian walked on, wondering
at her own happiness.

'Am I heartless?' she thought.  'I am going to leave him--I am going
into life; I shall have to fight now, there'll be no looking back.'

The path broke away and wound down to the level of the torrent; on
the other side it rose again, and was lost among trees.  The woods
were dank; she hastened home.

In her room she began to pack, sorting and tearing up old letters.
'Only one thing matters,' she thought; 'singleness of heart; to see
your way, and keep to it with all your might.'

She looked up and saw Barbi standing before her with towels in her
hands, and a scared face.

"Are you going a journey, gnadiges Fraulein?"

"I am going away to be married, Barbi," said Christian at last;
"don't speak of it to any one, please."

Barbi leant a little forward with the towels clasped to the blue
cotton bosom of her dress.

"No, no!  I will not speak.  But, dear Fraulein, that is a big
matter; have you well thought?"

"Thought, Barbi?  Have I not!"

"But, dear Fraulein, will you be rich?"

"No! I shall be as poor as you."

"Ach! dear God! that is terrible.  Katrina, my sister, she is
married; she tells me all her life; she tells me it is very hard, and
but for the money in her stocking it would be harder.  Dear Fraulein,
think again!  And is he good?  Sometimes they are not good."

"He is good," said Christian, rising; "it is all settled!" and she
kissed Barbi on the cheek.

"You are crying, liebes Fraulein!  Think yet again, perhaps it is not
quite all settled; it is not possible that a maiden should not a way
out leave?"

Christian smiled.  "I don't do things that way, Barbi."

Barbi hung the towels on the horse, and crossed herself.

Mr. Treffry's gaze was fixed on a tortoise-shell butterfly fluttering
round the ceiling.  The insect seemed to fascinate him, as things
which move quickly always fascinate the helpless.  Christian came
softly in.

"Couldn't stay in bed, Chris," he called out with an air of guilt.
"The heat was something awful.  The doctor piped off in a huff, just
because o' this."  He motioned towards a jug of claret-cup and a pipe
on the table by his elbow.  "I was only looking at 'em."

Christian, sitting down beside him, took up a fan.

"If I could get out of this heat--" he said, and closed his eyes.

'I must tell him,' she thought; 'I can't slink away.'

"Pour me out some of that stuff, Chris."

She reached for the jug.  Yes! She must tell him! Her heart sank.

Mr. Treffry took a lengthy draught.  "Broken my promise; don't
matter--won't hurt any one but me."  He took up the pipe and pressed
tobacco into it.  "I've been lying here with this pain going right
through me, and never a smoke!  D'you tell me anything the parsons
say can do me half the good of this pipe?"  He leaned back, steeped
in a luxury of satisfaction.  He went on, pursuing a private train of
thought: "Things have changed a lot since my young days.  When I was
a youngster, a young fellow had to look out for peck and perch--he
put the future in his pocket.  He did well or not, according as he
had stuff in him.  Now he's not content with that, it seems--trades
on his own opinion of himself; thinks he is what he says he's going
to be."

"You are unjust," said Christian.

Mr. Treffry grunted.  "Ah, well! I like to know where I am.  If I
lend money to a man, I like to know whether he's going to pay it
back; I may not care whether he does or not, but I like to know.  The
same with other things.  I don't care what a man has--though, mind
you, Chris, it's not a bad rule that measures men by the balance at
their banks; but when it comes to marriage, there's a very simple
rule, What's not enough for one is not enough for two.  You can't
talk black white, or bread into your mouth.  I don't care to speak
about myself, as you know, Chris, but I tell you this--when I came to
London I wanted to marry--I hadn't any money, and I had to want.
When I had the money--but that's neither here nor there!"  He
frowned, fingering his pipe.

"I didn't ask her, Chris; I didn't think it the square thing; it
seems that's out of fashion!"

Christian's cheeks were burning.

"I think a lot while I lie here," Mr. Treffry went on; "nothing much
else to do.  What I ask myself is this: What do you know about what's
best for you?  What do you know of life?  Take it or leave it, life's
not all you think; it's give and get all the way, a fair start is
everything."

Christian thought: 'Will he never see?'

Mr. Treffry went on:

"I get better every day, but I can't last for ever.  It's not
pleasant to lie here and know that when I'm gone there'll be no one
to keep a hand on the check string!"

"Don't talk like that, dear!" Christian murmured.

"It's no use blinking facts, Chris.  I've lived a long time in the
world; I've seen things pretty well as they are; and now there's not
much left for me to think about but you."

"But, Uncle, if you loved him, as I do, you couldn't tell me to be
afraid!  It's cowardly and mean to be afraid.  You must have
forgotten!"

Mr. Treffry closed his eyes.

"Yes," he said; "I'm old."

The fan had dropped into Christian's lap; it rested on her white
frock like a large crimson leaf; her eyes were fixed on it.

Mr. Treffry looked at her.  "Have you heard from him?" he asked with
sudden intuition.

"Last night, in that room, when you thought I was talking to
Dominique--"

The pipe fell from his hand.

"What!" he stammered: "Back?"

Christian, without looking up, said:

"Yes, he's back; he wants me--I must go to him, Uncle."

There was a long silence.

"You must go to him?" he repeated.

She longed to fling herself down at his knees, but he was so still,
that to move seemed impossible; she remained silent, with folded
hands.

Mr. Treffry spoke:

"You'll let me know--before--you--go.  Goodnight!"

Christian stole out into the passage.  A bead curtain rustled in the
draught; voices reached her.

"My honour is involved, or I would give the case up."

"He is very trying, poor Nicholas!  He always had that peculiar
quality of opposition; it has brought him to grief a hundred times.
There is opposition in our blood; my family all have it.  My eldest
brother died of it; with my poor sister, who was as gentle as a lamb,
it took the form of doing the right thing in the wrong place.  It is
a matter of temperament, you see.  You must have patience."

"Patience," repeated Dawney's voice, "is one thing; patience where
there is responsibility is another.  I've not had a wink of sleep
these last two nights."

There was a faint, shrill swish of silk.

"Is he so very ill?"

Christian held her breath.  The answer came at last.

"Has he made his will?  With this trouble in the side again, I tell
you plainly, Mrs. Decie, there's little or no chance."

Christian put her hands up to her ears, and ran out into the air.
What was she about to do, then--to leave him dying!

On the following day Harz was summoned to the Villa.  Mr. Treffry had
just risen, and was garbed in a dressing-suit, old and worn, which
had a certain air of magnificence.  His seamed cheeks were newly
shaved.

"I hope I see you well," he said majestically.

Thinking of the drive and their last parting, Harz felt sorry and
ashamed.  Suddenly Christian came into the room; she stood for a
moment looking at him; then sat down.

"Chris!" said Mr. Treffry reproachfully.  She shook her head, and did
not move; mournful and intent, her eyes seemed full of secret
knowledge.

Mr. Treffry spoke:

"I've no right to blame you, Mr. Harz, and Chris tells me you came to
see me first, which is what I would have expected of you; but you
shouldn't have come back."

"I came back, sir, because I found I was obliged.  I must speak out."

"I ask nothing better," Mr. Treffry replied.

Harz looked again at Christian; but she made no sign, sitting with
her chin resting on her hands.

"I have come for her," he said; "I can make my living--enough for
both of us.  But I can't wait."

"Why?"

Harz made no answer.

Mr. Treffry boomed out again: "Why?  Isn't she worth waiting for?
Isn't she worth serving for?"

"I can't expect you to understand me," the painter said.  "My art is
my life to me.  Do you suppose that if it wasn't I should ever have
left my village; or gone through all that I've gone through, to get
as far even as I am?  You tell me to wait.  If my thoughts and my
will aren't free, how can I work?  I shan't be worth my salt.  You
tell me to go back to England--knowing she is here, amongst you who
hate me, a thousand miles away.  I shall know that there's a death
fight going on in her and outside her against me--you think that I
can go on working under these conditions.  Others may be able, I am
not.  That's the plain truth.  If I loved her less--"

There was a silence, then Mr. Treffry said:

"It isn't fair to come here and ask what you're asking.  You don't
know what's in the future for you, you don't know that you can keep a
wife.  It isn't pleasant, either, to think you can't hold up your
head in your own country."

Harz turned white.

"Ah! you bring that up again!" he broke out.  "Seven years ago I was
a boy and starving; if you had been in my place you would have done
what I did.  My country is as much to me as your country is to you.
I've been an exile seven years, I suppose I shall always be I've had
punishment enough; but if you think I am a rascal, I'll go and give
myself up."  He turned on his heel.

"Stop!  I beg your pardon!  I never meant to hurt you.  It isn't easy
for me to eat my words," Mr. Treffry said wistfully, "let that count
for something."  He held out his hand.

Harz came quickly back and took it.  Christian's gaze was never for a
moment withdrawn; she seemed trying to store up the sight of him
within her.  The light darting through the half-closed shutters gave
her eyes a strange, bright intensity, and shone in the folds of her
white dress like the sheen of birds' wings.

Mr. Treffry glanced uneasily about him.  "God knows I don't want
anything but her happiness," he said.  "What is it to me if you'd
murdered your mother?  It's her I'm thinking of."

"How can you tell what is happiness to her?  You have your own ideas
of happiness--not hers, not mine.  You can't dare to stop us, sir!"

"Dare?" said Mr. Treffry.  "Her father gave her over to me when she
was a mite of a little thing; I've known her all her life.  I've--
I've loved her--and you come here with your 'dare'!"  His hand
dragged at his beard, and shook as though palsied.

A look of terror came into Christian's face.

"All right, Chris! I don't ask for quarter, and I don't give it!"

Harz made a gesture of despair.

"I've acted squarely by you, sir," Mr. Treffry went on, "I ask the
same of you.  I ask you to wait, and come like an honest man, when
you can say, 'I see my way--here's this and that for her.'  What
makes this art you talk of different from any other call in life?  It
doesn't alter facts, or give you what other men have no right to
expect.  It doesn't put grit into you, or keep your hands clean, or
prove that two and two make five."

Harz answered bitterly:

"You know as much of art as I know of money.  If we live a thousand
years we shall never understand each other.  I am doing what I feel
is best for both of us."

Mr. Treffry took hold of the painter's sleeve.

"I make you an offer," he said.  "Your word not to see or write to
her for a year!  Then, position or not, money or no money, if she'll
have you, I'll make it right for you."

"I could not take your money."

A kind of despair seemed suddenly to seize on Mr. Nicholas Treffry.
He rose, and stood towering over them.

"All my life--" he said; but something seemed to click deep down in
his throat, and he sank back in his seat.

"Go!" whispered Christian, "go!" But Mr. Treffry found his voice
again: "It's for the child to say.  Well, Chris!"

Christian did not speak.

It was Harz who broke the silence.  He pointed to Mr. Treffry.

"You know I can't tell you to come with--that, there.  Why did you
send for me?"  And, turning, he went out.

Christian sank on her knees, burying her face in her hands.  Mr.
Treffry pressed his handkerchief with a stealthy movement to his
mouth.  It was dyed crimson with the price of his victory.




XXVI

A telegram had summoned Herr Paul from Vienna.  He had started
forthwith, leaving several unpaid accounts to a more joyful
opportunity, amongst them a chemist's bill, for a wonderful quack
medicine of which he brought six bottles.

He came from Mr. Treffry's room with tears rolling down his cheeks,
saying:

"Poor Nicholas!  Poor Nicholas!  Il n'a pas de chance!"

It was difficult to find any one to listen; the women were scared and
silent, waiting for the orders that were now and then whispered
through the door.  Herr Paul could not bear this silence, and talked
to his servant for half an hour, till Fritz also vanished to fetch
something from the town.  Then in despair Herr Paul went to his room.

It was hard not to be allowed to help--it was hard to wait!  When the
heart was suffering, it was frightful!  He turned and, looking
furtively about him, lighted a cigar.  Yes, it came to every one--at
some time or other; and what was it, that death they talked of?  Was
it any worse than life?  That frightful jumble people made for
themselves!  Poor Nicholas!  After all, it was he that had the luck!

His eyes filled with tears, and drawing a penknife from his pocket,
he began to stab it into the stuffing of his chair.  Scruff, who sat
watching the chink of light under the door, turned his head, blinked
at him, and began feebly tapping with a claw.

It was intolerable, this uncertainty--to be near, and yet so far, was
not endurable!

Herr Paul stepped across the room.  The dog, following, threw his
black-marked muzzle upwards with a gruff noise, and went back to the
door.  His master was holding in his hand a bottle of champagne.

Poor Nicholas!  He had chosen it.  Herr Paul drained a glass.

Poor Nicholas!  The prince of fellows, and of what use was one?  They
kept him away from Nicholas!

Herr Paul's eyes fell on the terrier.  "Ach! my dear," he said, "you
and I, we alone are kept away!"

He drained a second glass.

What was it?  This life!  Froth-like that! He tossed off a third
glass.  Forget!  If one could not help, it was better to forget!

He put on his hat.  Yes.  There was no room for him there!  He was
not wanted!

He finished the bottle, and went out into the passage.  Scruff ran
and lay down at Mr. Treffry's door.  Herr Paul looked at him.  "Ach!"
he said, tapping his chest, "ungrateful hound!"  And opening the
front door he went out on tiptoe....

Late that afternoon Greta stole hatless through the lilac bushes; she
looked tired after her night journey, and sat idly on a chair in the
speckled shadow of a lime-tree.

'It is not like home,' she thought; 'I am unhappy.  Even the birds
are silent, but perhaps that is because it is so hot.  I have never
been sad like this--for it is not fancy that I am sad this time, as
it is sometimes.  It is in my heart like the sound the wind makes
through a wood, it feels quite empty in my heart.  If it is always
like this to be unhappy, then I am sorry for all the unhappy things
in the world; I am sorrier than I ever was before.'

A shadow fell on the grass, she raised her eyes, and saw Dawney.

"Dr. Edmund!" she whispered.

Dawney turned to her; a heavy furrow showed between his brows.  His
eyes, always rather close together, stared painfully.

"Dr. Edmund," Greta whispered, "is it true?"

He took her hand, and spread his own palm over it.

"Perhaps," he said; "perhaps not.  We must hope."

Greta looked up, awed.

"They say he is dying."

"We have sent for the best man in Vienna."

Greta shook her head.

"But you are clever, Dr. Edmund; and you are afraid."

"He is brave," said Dawney; "we must all be brave, you know.  You
too!"

"Brave?" repeated Greta; "what is it to be brave?  If it is not to
cry and make a fuss--that I can do.  But if it is not to be sad in
here," she touched her breast, "that I cannot do, and it shall not be
any good for me to try."

"To be brave is to hope; don't give up hope, dear."

"No," said Greta, tracing the pattern of the sunlight on her skirt.
"But I think that when we hope, we are not brave, because we are
expecting something for ourselves.  Chris says that hope is prayer,
and if it is prayer, then all the time we are hoping, we are asking
for something, and it is not brave to ask for things."

A smile curved Dawney's mouth.

"Go on, Philosopher!" he said.  "Be brave in your own way, it will be
just as good as anybody else's."

"What are you going to do to be brave, Dr. Edmund?"

"I?  Fight!  If only we had five years off his life!"

Greta watched him as he walked away.

"I shall never be brave," she mourned; "I shall always be wanting to
be happy."  And, kneeling down, she began to disentangle a fly,
imprisoned in a cobweb.  A plant of hemlock had sprung up in the long
grass by her feet.  Greta thought, dismayed: 'There are weeds!'

It seemed but another sign of the death of joy.

'But it's very beautiful,' she thought, 'the blossoms are like stars.
I am not going to pull it up.  I will leave it; perhaps it will
spread all through the garden; and if it does I do not care, for now
things are not like they used to be and I do not, think they ever
shall be again.'




XXVII

The days went by; those long, hot days, when the heat haze swims up
about ten of the forenoon, and, as the sun sinks level with the
mountains, melts into golden ether which sets the world quivering
with sparkles.

At the lighting of the stars those sparkles die, vanishing one by one
off the hillsides; evening comes flying down the valleys, and life
rests under her cool wings.  The night falls; and the hundred little
voices of the night arise.

It was near grape-gathering, and in the heat the fight for Nicholas
Treffry's life went on, day in, day out, with gleams of hope and
moments of despair.  Doctors came, but after the first he refused to
see them.

"No," he said to Dawney--"throwing away money.  If I pull through it
won't be because of them."

For days together he would allow no one but Dawney, Dominique, and
the paid nurse in the room.

"I can stand it better," he said to Christian, "when I don't see any
of you; keep away, old girl, and let me get on with it!"

To have been able to help would have eased the tension of her nerves,
and the aching of her heart.  At his own request they had moved his
bed into a corner so that he might face the wall.  There he would lie
for hours together, not speaking a word, except to ask for drink.

Sometimes Christian crept in unnoticed, and sat watching, with her
arms tightly folded across her breast.  At night, after Greta was
asleep, she would toss from side to side, muttering feverish prayers.
She spent hours at her little table in the schoolroom, writing
letters to Harz that were never sent.  Once she wrote these words: "I
am the most wicked of all creatures--I have even wished that he may
die!"  A few minutes afterwards Miss Naylor found her with her head
buried on her arms.  Christian sprang up; tears were streaming down
her cheeks.  "Don't touch me!" she cried, and rushed away.  Later,
she stole into her uncle's room, and sank down on the floor beside
the bed.  She sat there silently, unnoticed all the evening.  When
night came she could hardly be persuaded to leave the room.

One day Mr. Treffry expressed a wish to see Herr Paul; it was a long
while before the latter could summon courage to go in.

"There's a few dozen of the Gordon sherry at my Chambers, in London,
Paul," Mr. Treffry said; "I'd be glad to think you had 'em.  And my
man, Dominique, I've made him all right in my will, but keep your eye
on him; he's a good sort for a foreigner, and no chicken, but sooner
or later, the women'll get hold of him.  That's all I had to say.
Send Chris to me."

Herr Paul stood by the bedside speechless.  Suddenly he blurted out.

"Ah! my dear!  Courage!  We are all mortal.  You will get well!"  All
the morning he walked about quite inconsolable.  "It was frightful to
see him, you know, frightful!  An iron man could not have borne it."

When Christian came to him, Mr. Treffry raised himself and looked at
her a long while.

His wistful face was like an accusation.  But that very afternoon the
news came from the sickroom that he was better, having had no pain
for several hours.

Every one went about with smiles lurking in their eyes, and ready to
break forth at a word.  In the kitchen Barbi burst out crying, and,
forgetting to toss the pan, spoiled a Kaiser-Schmarn she was making.
Dominique was observed draining a glass of Chianti, and solemnly
casting forth the last drops in libation.  An order was given for tea
to be taken out under the acacias, where it was always cool; it was
felt that something in the nature of high festival was being held.
Even Herr Paul was present; but Christian did not come.  Nobody spoke
of illness; to mention it might break the spell.

Miss Naylor, who had gone into the house, came back, saying:

"There is a strange man standing over there by the corner of the
house."

"Really!" asked Mrs. Decie; "what does he want?"

Miss Naylor reddened.  "I did not ask him.  I--don't--know--whether
he is quite respectable.  His coat is buttoned very close, and he--
doesn't seem--to have a--collar."

"Go and see what he wants, dear child," Mrs. Decie said to Greta.

"I don't know--I really do not know--" began Miss Naylor; "he has
very--high--boots," but Greta was already on her way, with hands
clasped behind her, and demure eyes taking in the stranger's figure.

"Please?" she said, when she was close to him.

The stranger took his cap off with a jerk.

"This house has no bells," he said in a nasal voice; "it has a
tendency to discourage one."

"Yes," said Greta gravely, "there is a bell, but it does not ring
now, because my uncle is so ill."

"I am very sorry to hear that.  I don't know the people here, but I
am very sorry to hear that.

"I would be glad to speak a few words to your sister, if it is your
sister that I want."

And the stranger's face grew very red.

"Is it," said Greta, "that you are a friend of Herr Harz?  If you are
a friend of his, you will please come and have some tea, and while
you are having tea I will look for Chris."

Perspiration bedewed the stranger's forehead.

"Tea?  Excuse me!  I don't drink tea."

"There is also coffee," Greta said.

The stranger's progress towards the arbour was so slow that Greta
arrived considerably before him.

"It is a friend of Herr Harz," she whispered; "he will drink coffee.
I am going to find Chris."

"Greta!" gasped Miss Naylor.

Mrs. Decie put up her hand.

"Ah!" she said, "if it is so, we must be very nice to him for
Christian's sake."

Miss Naylor's face grew soft.

"Ah, yes!" she said; "of course."

"Bah!" muttered Herr Paul, "that recommences.'

"Paul!" murmured Mrs. Decie, "you lack the elements of wisdom."

Herr Paul glared at the approaching stranger.

Mrs. Decie had risen, and smilingly held out her hand.

"We are so glad to know you; you are an artist too, perhaps?  I take
a great interest in art, and especially in that school which Mr. Harz
represents."

The stranger smiled.

"He is the genuine article, ma'am," he said.  "He represents no
school, he is one of that kind whose corpses make schools."

"Ah!" murmured Mrs. Decie, "you are an American.  That is so nice.
Do sit down!  My niece will soon be here."

Greta came running back.

"Will you come, please?" she said.  "Chris is ready."

Gulping down his coffee, the stranger included them all in a single
bow, and followed her.

"Ach!" said Herr Paul, "garcon tres chic, celui-la!"

Christian was standing by her little table.  The stranger began.

"I am sending Mr. Harz's things to England; there are some pictures
here.  He would be glad to have them."

A flood of crimson swept over her face.

"I am sending them to London," the stranger repeated; "perhaps you
could give them to me to-day."

"They are ready; my sister will show you."

Her eyes seemed to dart into his soul, and try to drag something from
it.  The words rushed from her lips

"Is there any message for me?"

The stranger regarded her curiously.

"No," he stammered, "no! I guess not.  He is well....  I wish...." He
stopped; her white face seemed to flash scorn, despair, and entreaty
on him all at once.  And turning, she left him standing there.




XXVII

When Christian went that evening to her uncle's room he was sitting
up in bed, and at once began to talk.  "Chris," he said, "I can't
stand this dying by inches.  I'm going to try what a journey'll do
for me.  I want to get back to the old country.  The doctor's
promised.  There's a shot in the locker yet!  I believe in that young
chap; he's stuck to me like a man....  It'll be your birthday, on
Tuesday, old girl, and you'll be twenty.  Seventeen years since your
father died.  You've been a lot to me....  A parson came here today.
That's a bad sign.  Thought it his duty!  Very civil of him!
I wouldn't see him, though.  If there's anything in what they tell
you, I'm not going to sneak in at this time o' day.  There's one
thing that's rather badly on my mind.  I took advantage of Mr. Harz
with this damned pitifulness of mine.  You've a right to look at me
as I've seen you sometimes when you thought I was asleep.  If I
hadn't been ill he'd never have left you.  I don't blame you, Chris--
not I!  You love me?  I know that, my dear.  But one's alone when it
comes to the run-in.  Don't cry!  Our minds aren't Sunday-school
books; you're finding it out, that's all!"  He sighed and turned
away.

The noise of sun-blinds being raised vibrated through the house.  A
feeling of terror seized on the girl; he lay so still, and yet the
drawing of each breath was a fight.  If she could only suffer in his
place!  She went close, and bent over him.

"It's air we want, both you and I!" he muttered.  Christian beckoned
to the nurse, and stole out through the window.

A regiment was passing in the road; she stood half-hidden amongst the
lilac bushes watching.  The poplar leaves drooped lifeless and almost
black above her head, the dust raised by the soldiers' feet hung in
the air; it seemed as if in all the world no freshness and no life
were stirring.  The tramp of feet died away.  Suddenly within arm's
length of her a man appeared, his stick shouldered like a sword.  He
raised his hat.

"Good-evening!  You do not remember me?  Sarelli.  Pardon! You looked
like a ghost standing there.  How badly those fellows marched!  We
hang, you see, on the skirts of our profession and criticise; it is
all we are fit for."  His black eyes, restless and malevolent like a
swan's, seemed to stab her face.  "A fine evening!  Too hot.  The
storm is wanted; you feel that?  It is weary waiting for the storm;
but after the storm, my dear young lady, comes peace."  He smiled,
gently, this time, and baring his head again, was lost to view in the
shadow of the trees.

His figure had seemed to Christian like the sudden vision of a
threatening, hidden force.  She thrust out her hands, as though to
keep it off.

No use; it was within her, nothing could keep it away!  She went to
Mrs. Decie's room, where her aunt and Miss Naylor were conversing in
low tones.  To hear their voices brought back the touch of this world
of everyday which had no part or lot in the terrifying powers within
her.

Dawney slept at the Villa now.  In the dead of night he was awakened
by a light flashed in his eyes.  Christian was standing there, her
face pale and wild with terror, her hair falling in dark masses on
her shoulders.

"Save him!  Save him!" she cried.  "Quick! The bleeding!"

He saw her muffle her face in her white sleeves, and seizing the
candle, leaped out of bed and rushed away.

The internal haemorrhage had come again, and Nicholas Treffry wavered
between life and death.  When it had ceased, he sank into a sort of
stupor.  About six o'clock he came back to consciousness; watching
his eyes, they could see a mental struggle taking place within him.
At last he singled Christian out from the others by a sign.

"I'm beat, Chris," he whispered.  "Let him know, I want to see him."

His voice grew a little stronger.  "I thought that I could see it
through--but here's the end."  He lifted his hand ever so little, and
let it fall again.  When told a little later that a telegram had been
sent to Harz his eyes expressed satisfaction.

Herr Paul came down in ignorance of the night's events.  He stopped
in front of the barometer and tapped it, remarking to Miss Naylor:
"The glass has gone downstairs; we shall have cool weather--it will
still go well with him!"

When, with her brown face twisted by pity and concern, she told him
that it was a question of hours, Herr Paul turned first purple, then
pale, and sitting down, trembled violently.  "I cannot believe it,"
he exclaimed almost angrily.  "Yesterday he was so well!  I cannot
believe it!  Poor Nicholas!  Yesterday he spoke to me!"  Taking Miss
Naylor's hand, he clutched it in his own.  "Ah!" he cried, letting it
go suddenly, and striking at his forehead, "it is too terrible; only
yesterday he spoke to me of sherry.  Is there nobody, then, who can
do good?"

"There is only God," replied Miss Naylor softly.

"God?" said Herr Paul in a scared voice.

"We--can--all--pray to Him," Miss Naylor murmured; little spots of
colour came into her cheeks.  "I am going to do it now."

Herr Paul raised her hand and kissed it.

"Are you?" he said; "good! I too."  He passed through his study door,
closed it carefully behind him, then for some unknown reason set his
back against it.  Ugh! Death! It came to all! Some day it would come
to him.  It might come tomorrow!  One must pray!

The day dragged to its end.  In the sky clouds had mustered, and,
crowding close on one another, clung round the sun, soft, thick,
greywhite, like the feathers on a pigeon's breast.  Towards evening
faint tremblings were felt at intervals, as from the shock of
immensely distant earthquakes.

Nobody went to bed that night, but in the morning the report was the
same: "Unconscious--a question of hours."  Once only did he recover
consciousness, and then asked for Harz.  A telegram had come from
him, he was on the way.  Towards seven of the evening the long-
expected storm broke in a sky like ink.  Into the valleys and over
the crests of mountains it seemed as though an unseen hand were
spilling goblets of pale wine, darting a sword-blade zigzag over
trees, roofs, spires, peaks, into the very firmament, which answered
every thrust with great bursts of groaning.  Just beyond the veranda
Greta saw a glowworm shining, as it might be a tiny bead of the
fallen lightning.  Soon the rain covered everything.  Sometimes a jet
of light brought the hilltops, towering, dark, and hard, over the
house, to disappear again behind the raindrops and shaken leaves.
Each breath drawn by the storm was like the clash of a thousand
cymbals; and in his room Mr. Treffry lay unconscious of its fury.

Greta had crept in unobserved; and sat curled in a corner, with
Scruff in her arms, rocking slightly to and fro.  When Christian
passed, she caught her skirt, and whispered: "It is your birthday,
Chris!"

Mr. Treffry stirred.

"What's that?  Thunder?--it's cooler.  Where am I?  Chris!"

Dawney signed for her to take his place.

"Chris!" Mr. Treffry said.  "It's near now."  She bent across him,
and her tears fell on his forehead.

"Forgive!" she whispered; "love me!"

He raised his finger, and touched her cheek.

For an hour or more he did not speak, though once or twice he moaned,
and faintly tightened his pressure on her fingers.  The storm had
died away, but very far off the thunder was still muttering.

His eyes opened once more, rested on her, and passed beyond, into
that abyss dividing youth from age, conviction from conviction, life
from death.

At the foot of the bed Dawney stood covering his face; behind him
Dominique knelt with hands held upwards; the sound of Greta's
breathing, soft in sleep, rose and fell in the stillness.




XXIX

One afternoon in March, more than three years after Mr. Treffry's
death, Christian was sitting at the window of a studio in St. John's
Wood.  The sky was covered with soft, high clouds, through which
shone little gleams of blue.  Now and then a bright shower fell,
sprinkling the trees, where every twig was curling upwards as if
waiting for the gift of its new leaves.  And it seemed to her that
the boughs thickened and budded under her very eyes; a great
concourse of sparrows had gathered on those boughs, and kept raising
a shrill chatter.  Over at the far side of the room Harz was working
at a picture.

On Christian's face was the quiet smile of one who knows that she has
only to turn her eyes to see what she wishes to see; of one whose
possessions are safe under her hand.  She looked at Harz with that
possessive smile.  But as into the brain of one turning in his bed
grim fancies will suddenly leap up out of warm nothingness, so there
leaped into her mind the memory of that long ago dawn, when he had
found her kneeling by Mr. Treffry's body.  She seemed to see again
the dead face, so gravely quiet, and furrowless.  She seemed to see
her lover and herself setting forth silently along the river wall
where they had first met; sitting down, still silent, beneath the
poplar-tree where the little bodies of the chafers had lain strewn in
the Spring.  To see the trees changing from black to grey, from grey
to green, and in the dark sky long white lines of cloud, lighting to
the south like birds; and, very far away, rosy peaks watching the
awakening of the earth.  And now once again, after all that time,
she felt her spirit shrink away from his; as it had shrunk in that
hour, when she had seemed hateful to herself.  She remembered the
words she had spoken: "I have no heart left.  You've torn it in two
between you.  Love is all self--I wanted him to die."  She remembered
too the raindrops on the vines like a million tiny lamps, and the
throstle that began singing.  Then, as dreams die out into warm
nothingness, recollection vanished, and the smile came back to her
lips.

She took out a letter.

"....O Chris!  We are really coming; I seem to be always telling it
to myself, and I have told Scruff many times, but he does not care,
because he is getting old.  Miss Naylor says we shall arrive for
breakfast, and that we shall be hungry, but perhaps she will not be
very hungry, if it is rough.  Papa said to me: 'Je serai
inconsolable, mais inconsolable!'  But I think he will not be,
because he is going to Vienna.  When we are come, there will be
nobody at Villa Rubein; Aunt Constance has gone a fortnight ago to
Florence.  There is a young man at her hotel; she says he will be one
of the greatest playwriters in England, and she sent me a play of his
to read; it was only a little about love, I did not like it very
much....  O Chris! I think I shall cry when I see you.  As I am quite
grown up, Miss Naylor is not to come back with me; sometimes she is
sad, but she will be glad to see you, Chris.  She seems always sadder
when it is Spring.  Today I walked along the wall; the little green
balls of wool are growing on the poplars already, and I saw one
chafer; it will not be long before the cherry blossom comes; and I
felt so funny, sad and happy together, and once I thought that I had
wings and could fly away up the valley to Meran--but I had none, so I
sat on the bench where we sat the day we took the pictures, and I
thought and thought; there was nothing came to me in my thoughts, but
all was sweet and a little noisy, and rather sad; it was like the
buzzing of the chafer, in my head; and now I feel so tired and all my
blood is running up and down me.  I do not mind, because I know it is
the Spring.

"Dominique came to see us the other day; he is very well, and is half
the proprietor of the Adler Hotel, at Meran; he is not at all
different, and he asked about you and about Alois--do you know,
Chris, to myself I call him Herr Harz, but when I have seen him this
time I shall call him Alois in my heart also.

"I have a letter from Dr. Edmund; he is in London, so perhaps you
have seen him, only he has a great many patients and some that he has
'hopes of killing soon'! especially one old lady, because she is
always wanting him to do things for her, and he is never saying 'No,'
so he does not like her.  He says that he is getting old.  When I
have finished this letter I am going to write and tell him that
perhaps he shall see me soon, and then I think he will be very sad.
Now that the Spring is come there are more flowers to take to Uncle
Nic's grave, and every day, when I am gone, Barbi is to take them so
that he shall not miss you, Chris, because all the flowers I put
there are for you.

"I am buying some toys without paint on for my niece."

"O Chris! this will be the first baby that I have known."

"I am only to stay three weeks with you, but I think when I am once
there I shall be staying longer.  I send a kiss for my niece, and to
Herr Harz, my love--that is the last time I shall call him Herr Harz;
and to you, Chris, all the joy that is in my heart.--Your loving

"GRETA."


Christian rose, and, turning very softly, stood, leaning her elbows
on the back of a high seat, looking at her husband.

In her eyes there was a slow, clear, faintly smiling, yet yearning
look, as though this strenuous figure bent on its task were seen for
a moment as something apart, and not all the world to her.

"Tired?" asked Harz, putting his lips to her hand.

"No, it's only--what Greta says about the Spring; it makes one want
more than one has got."

Slipping her hand away, she went back to the window.  Harz stood,
looking after her; then, taking up his palette, again began painting.

In the world, outside, the high soft clouds flew by; the trees seemed
thickening and budding.

And Christian thought:

'Can we never have quite enough?'


December 1890.







TO

MY FATHER



A MAN OF DEVON


I

"MOOR, 20th July.

.......It is quiet here, sleepy, rather--a farm is never quiet; the
sea, too, is only a quarter of a mile away, and when it's windy, the
sound of it travels up the combe; for distraction, you must go four
miles to Brixham or five to Kingswear, and you won't find much then.
The farm lies in a sheltered spot, scooped, so to speak, high up the
combe side--behind is a rise of fields, and beyond, a sweep of down.
You have the feeling of being able to see quite far, which is
misleading, as you soon find out if you walk.  It is true Devon
country-hills, hollows, hedge-banks, lanes dipping down into the
earth or going up like the sides of houses, coppices, cornfields, and
little streams wherever there's a place for one; but the downs along
the cliff, all gorse and ferns, are wild.  The combe ends in a sandy
cove with black rock on one side, pinkish cliffs away to the headland
on the other, and a coastguard station.  Just now, with the harvest
coming on, everything looks its richest, the apples ripening, the
trees almost too green.  It's very hot, still weather; the country
and the sea seem to sleep in the sun.  In front of the farm are half-
a-dozen pines that look as if they had stepped out of another land,
but all round the back is orchard as lush, and gnarled, and orthodox
as any one could wish.  The house, a long, white building with three
levels of roof, and splashes of brown all over it, looks as if it
might be growing down into the earth.  It was freshly thatched two
years ago--and that's all the newness there is about it; they say the
front door, oak, with iron knobs, is three hundred years old at
least.  You can touch the ceilings with your hand.  The windows
certainly might be larger--a heavenly old place, though, with a
flavour of apples, smoke, sweetbriar, bacon, honeysuckle, and age,
all over it.

The owner is a man called John Ford, about seventy, and seventeen
stone in weight--very big, on long legs, with a grey, stubbly beard,
grey, watery eyes, short neck and purplish complexion; he is
asthmatic, and has a very courteous, autocratic manner.  His clothes
are made of Harris tweed--except on Sundays, when he puts on black--a
seal ring, and a thick gold cable chain.  There's nothing mean or
small about John Ford; I suspect him of a warm heart, but he doesn't
let you know much about him.  He's a north-country man by birth, and
has been out in New Zealand all his life.  This little Devonshire
farm is all he has now.  He had a large "station" in the North
Island, and was much looked up to, kept open house, did everything,
as one would guess, in a narrow-minded, large-handed way.  He came to
grief suddenly; I don't quite know how.  I believe his only son lost
money on the turf, and then, unable to face his father, shot himself;
if you had seen John Ford, you could imagine that.  His wife died,
too, that year.  He paid up to the last penny, and came home, to live
on this farm.  He told me the other night that he had only one
relation in the world, his granddaughter, who lives here with him.
Pasiance Voisey--old spelling for Patience, but they pronounce, it
Pash-yence--is sitting out here with me at this moment on a sort of
rustic loggia that opens into the orchard.  Her sleeves are rolled
up, and she's stripping currants, ready for black currant tea.  Now
and then she rests her elbows on the table, eats a berry, pouts her
lips, and, begins again.  She has a round, little face; a long,
slender body; cheeks like poppies; a bushy mass of black-brown hair,
and dark-brown, almost black, eyes; her nose is snub; her lips quick,
red, rather full; all her motions quick and soft.  She loves bright
colours.  She's rather like a little cat; sometimes she seems all
sympathy, then in a moment as hard as tortoise-shell.  She's all
impulse; yet she doesn't like to show her feelings; I sometimes
wonder whether she has any.  She plays the violin.

It's queer to see these two together, queer and rather sad.  The old
man has a fierce tenderness for her that strikes into the very roots
of him.  I see him torn between it, and his cold north-country horror
of his feelings; his life with her is an unconscious torture to him.
She's a restless, chafing thing, demure enough one moment, then
flashing out into mocking speeches or hard little laughs.  Yet she's
fond of him in her fashion; I saw her kiss him once when he was
asleep.  She obeys him generally--in a way as if she couldn't breathe
while she was doing it.  She's had a queer sort of education--
history, geography, elementary mathematics, and nothing else; never
been to school; had a few lessons on the violin, but has taught
herself most of what she knows.  She is well up in the lore of birds,
flowers, and insects; has three cats, who follow her about; and is
full of pranks.  The other day she called out to me, "I've something
for you.  Hold out your hand and shut your eyes!"  It was a large,
black slug!  She's the child of the old fellow's only daughter, who
was sent home for schooling at Torquay, and made a runaway match with
one Richard Voisey, a yeoman farmer, whom she met in the hunting-
field.  John Ford was furious--his ancestors, it appears, used to
lead ruffians on the Cumberland side of the Border--he looked on
"Squire" Rick Voisey as a cut below him.  He was called "Squire," as
far as I can make out, because he used to play cards every evening
with a parson in the neighbourhood who went by the name of "Devil"
Hawkins.  Not that the Voisey stock is to be despised.  They have had
this farm since it was granted to one Richard Voysey by copy dated
8th September, 13 Henry VIII.  Mrs. Hopgood, the wife of the bailiff-
-a dear, quaint, serene old soul with cheeks like a rosy, withered
apple, and an unbounded love of Pasiance--showed me the very
document.

"I kape it," she said.  "Mr. Ford be tu proud--but other folks be
proud tu.  'Tis a pra-aper old fam'ly: all the women is Margery,
Pasiance, or Mary; all the men's Richards an' Johns an' Rogers; old
as they apple-trees."

Rick Voisey was a rackety, hunting fellow, and "dipped" the old farm
up to its thatched roof.  John Ford took his revenge by buying up the
mortgages, foreclosing, and commanding his daughter and Voisey to go
on living here rent free; this they dutifully did until they were
both killed in a dog-cart accident, eight years ago.  Old Ford's
financial smash came a year later, and since then he's lived here
with Pasiance.  I fancy it's the cross in her blood that makes her so
restless, and irresponsible: if she had been all a native she'd have
been happy enough here, or all a stranger like John Ford himself, but
the two strains struggling for mastery seem to give her no rest.
You'll think this a far-fetched theory, but I believe it to be the
true one.  She'll stand with lips pressed together, her arms folded
tight across her narrow chest, staring as if she could see beyond the
things round her; then something catches her attention, her eyes will
grow laughing, soft, or scornful all in a minute! She's eighteen,
perfectly fearless in a boat, but you can't get her to mount a horse-
-a sore subject with her grandfather, who spends most of his day on a
lean, half-bred pony, that carries him like a feather, for all his
weight.

They put me up here as a favour to Dan Treffry; there's an
arrangement of L. s. d. with Mrs. Hopgood in the background.  They
aren't at all well off; this is the largest farm about, but it
doesn't bring them in much.  To look at John Ford, it seems
incredible he should be short of money--he's too large.

We have family prayers at eight, then, breakfast--after that freedom
for writing or anything else till supper and evening prayers.  At
midday one forages for oneself.  On Sundays, two miles to church
twice, or you get into John Ford's black books....  Dan Treffry
himself is staying at Kingswear.  He says he's made his pile; it
suits him down here--like a sleep after years of being too wide-
awake; he had a rough time in New Zealand, until that mine made his
fortune.  You'd hardly remember him; he reminds me of his uncle, old
Nicholas Treffry; the same slow way of speaking, with a hesitation,
and a trick of repeating your name with everything he says; left-
handed too, and the same slow twinkle in his eyes.  He has a dark,
short beard, and red-brown cheeks; is a little bald on the temples,
and a bit grey, but hard as iron.  He rides over nearly every day,
attended by a black spaniel with a wonderful nose and a horror of
petticoats.  He has told me lots of good stories of John Ford in the
early squatter's times; his feats with horses live to this day; and
he was through the Maori wars; as Dan says, "a man after Uncle Nic's
own heart."

They are very good friends, and respect each other; Dan has a great
admiration for the old man, but the attraction is Pasiance.  He talks
very little when she's in the room, but looks at her in a sidelong,
wistful sort of way.  Pasiance's conduct to him would be cruel in any
one else, but in her, one takes it with a pinch of salt.  Dan goes
off, but turns up again as quiet and dogged as you please.

Last night, for instance, we were sitting in the loggia after supper.
Pasiance was fingering the strings of her violin, and suddenly Dan (a
bold thing for him) asked her to play.

"What!" she said, "before men?  No, thank you!"

"Why not?"

"Because I hate them."

Down came John Ford's hand on the wicker table: "You forget yourself!
Go to bed!"

She gave Dan a look, and went; we could hear her playing in her
bedroom; it sounded like a dance of spirits; and just when one
thought she had finished, out it would break again like a burst of
laughter.  Presently, John Ford begged our pardons ceremoniously, and
stumped off indoors.  The violin ceased; we heard his voice growling
at her; down he came again.  Just as he was settled in his chair
there was a soft swish, and something dark came falling through the
apple boughs.  The violin!  You should have seen his face!  Dan would
have picked the violin up, but the old man stopped him.  Later, from
my bedroom window, I saw John Ford come out and stand looking at the
violin.  He raised his foot as if to stamp on it.  At last he picked
it up, wiped it carefully, and took it in....

My room is next to hers.  I kept hearing her laugh, a noise too as if
she were dragging things about the room.  Then I fell asleep, but
woke with a start, and went to the window for a breath of fresh air.
Such a black, breathless night!  Nothing to be seen but the twisted,
blacker branches; not the faintest stir of leaves, no sound but
muffled grunting from the cowhouse, and now and then a faint sigh.  I
had the queerest feeling of unrest and fear, the last thing to expect
on such a night.  There is something here that's disturbing; a sort
of suppressed struggle.  I've never in my life seen anything so
irresponsible as this girl, or so uncompromising as the old man; I
keep thinking of the way he wiped that violin.  It's just as if a
spark would set everything in a blaze.  There's a menace of tragedy--
or--perhaps it's only the heat, and too much of Mother Hopgood's
crame....




II

"Tuesday.

......I've made a new acquaintance.  I was lying in the orchard, and
presently, not seeing me, he came along--a man of middle height, with
a singularly good balance, and no lumber--rather old blue clothes, a
flannel shirt, a dull red necktie, brown shoes, a cap with a leather
peak pushed up on the forehead.  Face long and narrow, bronzed with a
kind of pale burnt-in brownness; a good forehead.  A brown moustache,
beard rather pointed, blackening about the cheeks; his chin not
visible, but from the beard's growth must be big; mouth I should
judge sensuous.  Nose straight and blunt; eyes grey, with an upward
look, not exactly frank, because defiant; two parallel furrows down
each cheek, one from the inner corner of the eye, one from the
nostril; age perhaps thirty-five.  About the face, attitude,
movements, something immensely vital, adaptable, daring, and
unprincipled.

He stood in front of the loggia, biting his fingers, a kind of
nineteenth-century buccaneer, and I wondered what he was doing in
this galley. They say you can tell a man of Kent or a Somersetshire
man; certainly you can tell a Yorkshire man, and this fellow could
only have been a man of Devon, one of the two main types found in
this county.  He whistled; and out came Pasiance in a geranium-
coloured dress, looking like some tall poppy--you know the slight
droop of a poppy's head, and the way the wind sways its stem.... She
is a human poppy, her fuzzy dark hair is like a poppy's lustreless
black heart, she has a poppy's tantalising attraction and repulsion,
something fatal, or rather fateful.  She came walking up to my new
friend, then caught sight of me, and stopped dead.

"That," she said to me, "is Zachary Pearse.  This," she said to him,
"is our lodger."  She said it with a wonderful soft malice.  She
wanted to scratch me, and she scratched.  Half an hour later I was in
the yard, when up came this fellow Pearse.

"Glad to know you," he said, looking thoughtfully at the pigs.

"You're a writer, aren't you?"

"A sort of one," I said.

"If by any chance," he said suddenly, "you're looking for a job, I
could put something in your way.  Walk down to the beach with me, and
I'll tell you; my boat's at anchor, smartest little craft in these
parts."

It was very hot, and I had no desire whatever to go down to the
beach--I went, all the same.  We had not gone far when John Ford and
Dan Treffry came into the lane.  Our friend seemed a little
disconcerted, but soon recovered himself.  We met in the middle of
the lane, where there was hardly room to pass.  John Ford, who looked
very haughty, put on his pince-nez and stared at Pearse.

"Good-day!" said Pearse; "fine weather!  I've been up to ask Pasiance
to come for a sail.  Wednesday we thought, weather permitting; this
gentleman's coming.  Perhaps you'll come too, Mr. Treffry.  You've
never seen my place.  I'll give you lunch, and show you my father.
He's worth a couple of hours' sail any day."  It was said in such an
odd way that one couldn't resent his impudence.  John Ford was seized
with a fit of wheezing, and seemed on the eve of an explosion; he
glanced at me, and checked himself.

"You're very good," he said icily; "my granddaughter has other things
to do.  You, gentlemen, will please yourselves"; and, with a very
slight bow, he went stumping on to the house.  Dan looked at me, and
I looked at him.

"You'll come?" said Pearse, rather wistfully.  Dan stammered: "Thank
you, Mr. Pearse; I'm a better man on a horse than in a boat, but--
thank you."  Cornered in this way, he's a shy, soft-hearted being.
Pearse smiled his thanks.  "Wednesday, then, at ten o'clock; you
shan't regret it."

"Pertinacious beggar!" I heard Dan mutter in his beard; and found
myself marching down the lane again by Pearse's side.  I asked him
what he was good enough to mean by saying I was coming, without
having asked me.  He answered, unabashed:

"You see, I'm not friends with the old man; but I knew he'd not be
impolite to you, so I took the liberty."

He has certainly a knack of turning one's anger to curiosity.  We
were down in the combe now; the tide was running out, and the sand
all little, wet, shining ridges.  About a quarter of a mile out lay a
cutter, with her tan sail half down, swinging to the swell.  The
sunlight was making the pink cliffs glow in the most wonderful way;
and shifting in bright patches over the sea like moving shoals of
goldfish.  Pearse perched himself on his dinghy, and looked out under
his hand.  He seemed lost in admiration.

"If we could only net some of those spangles," he said, "an' make
gold of 'em!  No more work then."

"It's a big job I've got on," he said presently; "I'll tell you about
it on Wednesday. I want a journalist."

"But I don't write for the papers," I said; "I do other sort of work.
My game is archaeology."

"It doesn't matter," he said, "the more imagination the better.  It'd
be a thundering good thing for you."

His assurance was amazing, but it was past supper-time, and hunger
getting the better of my curiosity, I bade him good-night. When I
looked back, he was still there, on the edge of his boat, gazing at
the sea.  A queer sort of bird altogether, but attractive somehow.

Nobody mentioned him that evening; but once old Ford, after staring a
long time at Pasiance, muttered a propos of nothing, "Undutiful
children!"  She was softer than usual; listening quietly to our talk,
and smiling when spoken to.  At bedtime she went up to her grand-
father, without waiting for the usual command, "Come and kiss me,
child."

Dan did not stay to supper, and he has not been here since.  This
morning I asked Mother Hopgood who Zachary Pearse was.  She's a true
Devonian; if there's anything she hates, it is to be committed to a
definite statement.  She ambled round her answer, and at last told me
that he was "son of old Cap'en Jan Pearse to Black Mill.  'Tes an old
family to Dartymouth an' Plymouth," she went on in a communicative
outburst.  "They du say Francis Drake tuke five o' they Pearses with
'en to fight the Spaniards.  At least that's what I've heard Mr.
Zachary zay; but Ha-apgood can tell yu."  Poor Hopgood, the amount of
information she saddles him with in the course of the day!  Having
given me thus to understand that she had run dry, she at once went
on:

"Cap'en Jan Pearse made a dale of ventures.  He's old now--they du
say nigh an 'undred.  Ha-apgood can tell yu."

"But the son, Mrs. Hopgood?"

Her eyes twinkled with sudden shrewdness: She hugged herself
placidly.

"An' what would yu take for dinner to-day?  There's duck; or yu might
like 'toad in the hole,' with an apple tart; or then, there's--Well!
we'll see what we can du like."  And off she went, without waiting
for my answer.

To-morrow is Wednesday.  I shan't be sorry to get another look at
this fellow Pearse....





III

"Friday, 29th July.

.......Why do you ask me so many questions, and egg me on to write
about these people instead of minding my business?  If you really
want to hear, I'll tell you of Wednesday's doings.

It was a splendid morning; and Dan turned up, to my surprise--though
I might have known that when he says a thing, he does it.  John Ford
came out to shake hands with him, then, remembering why he had come,
breathed loudly, said nothing, and went in again.  Nothing was to be
seen of Pasiance, and we went down to the beach together.

"I don't like this fellow Pearse, George," Dan said to me on the way;
"I was fool enough to say I'd go, and so I must, but what's he after?
Not the man to do things without a reason, mind you."

I remarked that we should soon know.

"I'm not so sure--queer beggar; I never look at him without thinking
of a pirate."

The cutter lay in the cove as if she had never moved.  There too was
Zachary Pearse seated on the edge of his dinghy.

"A five-knot breeze," he said, "I'll run you down in a couple of
hours."  He made no inquiry about Pasiance, but put us into his
cockleshell and pulled for the cutter.  A lantern-Jawed fellow, named
Prawle, with a spiky, prominent beard, long, clean-shaven upper lip,
and tanned complexion--a regular hard-weather bird--received us.

The cutter was beautifully clean; built for a Brixham trawler, she
still had her number--DH 113--uneffaced.  We dived into a sort of
cabin, airy, but dark, fitted with two bunks and a small table, on
which stood some bottles of stout; there were lockers, too, and pegs
for clothes.  Prawle, who showed us round, seemed very proud of a
steam contrivance for hoisting sails.  It was some minutes before we
came on deck again; and there, in the dinghy, being pulled towards
the cutter, sat Pasiance.

"If I'd known this," stammered Dan, getting red, "I wouldn't have
come."  She had outwitted us, and there was nothing to be done.

It was a very pleasant sail.  The breeze was light from the south-
east, the sun warm, the air soft.  Presently Pasiance began singing:

"Columbus is dead and laid in his grave,
Oh! heigh-ho! and laid in his grave;
Over his head the apple-trees wave
Oh! heigh-ho! the apple-trees wave....

"The apples are ripe and ready to fall,
Oh! heigh-ho! and ready to fall;
There came an old woman and gathered them all,
Oh! heigh-ho! and gathered them all....

"The apples are gathered, and laid on the shelf,
Oh! heigh-ho! and laid on the shelf;
If you want any more, you must sing for yourself,
Oh! heigh-ho! and sing for yourself."


Her small, high voice came to us in trills and spurts, as the wind
let it, like the singing of a skylark lost in the sky.  Pearse went
up to her and whispered something.  I caught a glimpse of her face
like a startled wild creature's; shrinking, tossing her hair,
laughing, all in the same breath.  She wouldn't sing again, but
crouched in the bows with her chin on her hands, and the sun
falling on one cheek, round, velvety, red as a peach....

We passed Dartmouth, and half an hour later put into a little wooded
bay.  On a low reddish cliff was a house hedged round by pine-trees.
A bit of broken jetty ran out from the bottom of the cliff.  We
hooked on to this, and landed.  An ancient, fish-like man came
slouching down and took charge of the cutter.  Pearse led us towards
the house, Pasiance following mortally shy all of a sudden.

The house had a dark, overhanging thatch of the rush reeds that grow
in the marshes hereabouts; I remember nothing else remarkable.  It
was neither old, nor new; neither beautiful, nor exactly ugly;
neither clean, nor entirely squalid; it perched there with all its
windows over the sea, turning its back contemptuously on the land.

Seated in a kind of porch, beside an immense telescope, was a very
old man in a panama hat, with a rattan cane.  His pure-white beard
and moustache, and almost black eyebrows, gave a very singular,
piercing look to his little, restless, dark-grey eyes; all over his
mahogany cheeks and neck was a network of fine wrinkles.  He sat
quite upright, in the full sun, hardly blinking.

"Dad!" said Zachary, "this is Pasiance Voisey."  The old man turned
his eyes on her and muttered, "How do you do, ma'am?" then took no
further notice.  And Pasiance, who seemed to resent this, soon
slipped away and went wandering about amongst the pines.  An old
woman brought some plates and bottles and laid them casually on a
table; and we sat round the figure of old Captain Pearse without a
word, as if we were all under a spell.

Before lunch there was a little scene between Zachary Pearse and Dan,
as to which of them should summon Pasiance.  It ended in both going,
and coming back without her.  She did not want any lunch, would stay
where she was amongst the pines.

For lunch we had chops, wood-pigeons, mushrooms, and mulberry
preserve, and drank wonderful Madeira out of common wine-glasses.  I
asked the old man where he got it; he gave me a queer look, and
answered with a little bow:

"Stood me in tu shillin' the bottle, an' the country got nothing out
of it, sir.  In the early Thirties; tu shillin' the bottle; there's
no such wine nowadays and," he added, looking at Zachary, "no such
men."

Zachary smiled and said: "You did nothing so big, dad, as what I'm
after, now!"

The old man's eyes had a sort of disdain in them.

"You're going far, then, in the Pied Witch, Zack?"

"I am," said Zachary.

"And where might yu be goin' in that old trampin' smut factory?"

"Morocco."

"Heu!" said the old man, "there's nothing there; I know that coast,
as I know the back o' my hand."  He stretched out a hand covered with
veins and hair.

Zachary began suddenly to pour out a flood of words:

"Below Mogador--a fellow there--friend of mine--two years ago now.
Concessions--trade-gunpowder--cruisers--feuds--money--chiefs--Gatling
guns--Sultan--rifles--rebellion--gold."  He detailed a reckless,
sordid, bold scheme, which, on the pivot of a trading venture, was
intended to spin a whole wheel of political convulsions.

"They'll never let you get there," said old Pearse.

"Won't they?" returned Zachary.  "Oh yes, they will, an' when I
leave, there'll be another dynasty, and I'll be a rich man."

"Yu'll never leave," answered the old man.

Zachary took out a sheet of paper covered with figures.  He had
worked the whole thing out.  So much--equipment, so much--trade, so
much--concessions, so much--emergencies.  "My last mag!" he ended, "a
thousand short; the ship's ready, and if I'm not there within a month
my chance is as good as gone."

This was the pith of his confidences--an appeal for money, and we all
looked as men will when that crops up.

"Mad!"  muttered the old man, looking at the sea.

"No," said Zachary.  That one word was more eloquent than all the
rest of his words put together.  This fellow is no visionary.  His
scheme may be daring, and unprincipled, but--he knows very well what
he's about.

"Well!" said old Pearse, "you shall have five 'undred of my money, if
it's only to learn what yu're made of.  Wheel me in!"  Zachary
wheeled him into the house, but soon came back.

"The old man's cheque for five hundred pounds!" he said, holding it
up.  "Mr. Treffry, give me another, and you shall have a third of the
profits."

I expected Dan to give a point-blank refusal.  But he only asked:

"Would that clear you for starting?"

"With that," said Zachary, "I can get to sea in a fortnight."

"Good!" Dan said slowly.  "Give me a written promise!  To sea in
fourteen days and my fair share on the five hundred pounds--no more--
no less."

Again I thought Pearse would have jumped at this, but he leaned his
chin on his hand, and looked at Dan, and Dan looked at him.  While
they were staring at each other like this, Pasiance came up with a
kitten.

"See!" she said, "isn't it a darling?"  The kitten crawled and clawed
its way up behind her neck.  I saw both men's eyes as they looked at
Pasiance, and suddenly understood what they were at.  The kitten
rubbed itself against Pasiance's cheek, overbalanced, and fell,
clawing, down her dress.  She caught it up and walked away.  Some
one, I don't know which of us, sighed, and Pearse cried "Done!"

The bargain had been driven.

"Good-bye, Mr. Pearse," said Dan; "I guess that's all I'm wanted
for.  I'll find my pony waiting in the village.  George, you'll see
Pasiance home?"

We heard the hoofs of his pony galloping down the road; Pearse
suddenly excused himself, and disappeared.

This venture of his may sound romantic and absurd, but it's matter-
of-fact enough.  He's after L. s. d.!  Shades of Drake, Raleigh,
Hawkins, Oxenham!  The worm of suspicion gnaws at the rose of
romance.  What if those fellows, too, were only after L. s. d....?

I strolled into the pine-wood.  The earth there was covered like a
bee's body with black and gold stripes; there was the blue sea below,
and white, sleepy clouds, and bumble-bees booming above the heather;
it was all softness, a summer's day in Devon.  Suddenly I came on
Pearse standing at the edge of the cliff with Pasiance sitting in a
little hollow below, looking up at him.  I heard him say:

"Pasiance--Pasiance!" The sound of his voice, and the sight of her
soft, wondering face made me furious.  What business has she with
love, at her age?  What business have they with each other?

He told me presently that she had started off for home, and drove me
to the ferry, behind an old grey pony.  On the way he came back to
his offer of the other day.

"Come with me," he said.  "It doesn't do to neglect the Press; you
can see the possibilities.  It's one of the few countries left.  If I
once get this business started you don't know where it's going to
stop.  You'd have free passage everywhere, and whatever you like in
reason."

I answered as rudely as I could--but by no means as rudely as I
wanted--that his scheme was mad.  As a matter of fact, it's much too
sane for me; for, whatever the body of a scheme, its soul is the
fibre of the schemer.

"Think of it," he urged, as if he could see into me.  "You can make
what you like of it.  Press paragraphs, of course.  But that's
mechanical; why, even I could do it, if I had time.  As for the rest,
you'll be as free--as free as a man."

There, in five words of one syllable, is the kernel of this fellow
Pearse--"As free as a man!"  No rule, no law, not even the mysterious
shackles that bind men to their own self-respects!  "As free as a
man!"  No ideals; no principles; no fixed star for his worship; no
coil he can't slide out of!  But the fellow has the tenacity of one
of the old Devon mastiffs, too.  He wouldn't take "No" for an answer.

"Think of it," he said; "any day will do--I've got a fortnight....
Look! there she is!  "I thought that he meant Pasiance; but it was an
old steamer, sluggish and black in the blazing sun of mid-stream,
with a yellow-and-white funnel, and no sign of life on her decks.

"That's her--the Pied Witch! Do her twelve knots; you wouldn't think
it!  Well! good-evening!  You'd better come.  A word to me at any
time.  I'm going aboard now."

As I was being ferried across I saw him lolling in the stern-sheets
of a little boat, the sun crowning his straw hat with glory.

I came on Pasiance, about a mile up the road, sitting in the hedge.
We walked on together between the banks--Devonshire banks, as high as
houses, thick with ivy and ferns, bramble and hazel boughs, and
honeysuckle.

"Do you believe in a God?" she said suddenly.

"Grandfather's God is simply awful.  When I'm playing the fiddle, I
can feel God; but grandfather's is such a stuffy God--you know what I
mean: the sea, the wind, the trees, colours too--they make one feel.
But I don't believe that life was meant to 'be good' in.  Isn't there
anything better than being good?  When I'm 'good,' I simply feel
wicked."  She reached up, caught a flower from the hedge, and slowly
tore its petals.

"What would you do," she muttered, "if you wanted a thing, but were
afraid of it?  But I suppose you're never afraid!" she added, mocking
me.  I admitted that I was sometimes afraid, and often afraid of
being afraid.

"That's nice!  I'm not afraid of illness, nor of grandfather, nor of
his God; but--I want to be free.  If you want a thing badly, you're
afraid about it."

I thought of Zachary Pearse's words, "free as a man."

"Why are you looking at me like that?" she said.

I stammered: "What do you mean by freedom?"

"Do you know what I shall do to-night?" she answered.  "Get out of my
window by the apple-tree, and go to the woods, and play!"

We were going down a steep lane, along the side of a wood, where
there's always a smell of sappy leaves, and the breath of the cows
that come close to the hedge to get the shade.

There was a cottage in the bottom, and a small boy sat outside
playing with a heap of dust.

"Hallo, Johnny!" said Pasiance.  "Hold your leg out and show this man
your bad place!"  The small boy undid a bandage round his bare and
dirty little leg, and proudly revealed a sore.

"Isn't it nasty?" cried Pasiance ruefully, tying up the bandage
again; "poor little feller!  Johnny, see what I've brought you!"  She
produced from her pocket a stick of chocolate, the semblance of a
soldier made of sealing-wax and worsted, and a crooked sixpence.

It was a new glimpse of her.  All the way home she was telling me the
story of little Johnny's family; when she came to his mother's death,
she burst out: "A beastly shame, wasn't it, and they're so poor; it
might just as well have been somebody else.  I like poor people, but
I hate rich ones--stuck-up beasts."

Mrs. Hopgood was looking over the gate, with her cap on one side, and
one of Pasiance's cats rubbing itself against her skirts.  At the
sight of us she hugged herself.

"Where's grandfather?" asked Pasiance.  The old lady shook her head.

"Is it a row?"  Mrs. Hopgood wriggled, and wriggled, and out came:

"Did you get yure tay, my pretty?  No?  Well, that's a pity; yu'll be
falin' low-like."

Pasiance tossed her head, snatched up the cat, and ran indoors.  I
remained staring at Mrs. Hopgood.

"Dear-dear," she clucked," poor lamb.  So to spake it's--" and she
blurted out suddenly, "chuckin' full of wra-ath, he is.  Well,
there!"

My courage failed that evening.  I spent it at the coastguard
station, where they gave me bread and cheese and some awful cider.  I
passed the kitchen as I came back.  A fire was still burning there,
and two figures, misty in the darkness, flitted about with stealthy
laughter like spirits afraid of being detected in a carnal-meal.
They were Pasiance and Mrs. Hopgood; and so charming was the smell of
eggs and bacon, and they had such an air of tender enjoyment of this
dark revel, that I stifled many pangs, as I crept hungry up to bed.

In the middle of the night I woke and heard what I thought was
screaming; then it sounded like wind in trees, then like the distant
shaking of a tambourine, with the high singing of a human voice.
Suddenly it stopped--two long notes came wailing out like sobs--then
utter stillness; and though I listened for an hour or more there was
no other sound ....




IV

"4th August.

......For three days after I wrote last, nothing at all happened
here.  I spent the mornings on the cliff reading, and watching the
sun-sparks raining on the sea.  It's grand up there with the gorse
all round, the gulls basking on the rocks, the partridges calling in
the corn, and now and then a young hawk overhead.  The afternoons I
spent out in the orchard.  The usual routine goes on at the farm all
the time--cow-milking, bread-baking, John Ford riding in and out,
Pasiance in her garden stripping lavender, talking to the farm hands;
and the smell of clover, and cows and hay; the sound of hens and pigs
and pigeons, the soft drawl of voices, the dull thud of the farm
carts; and day by day the apples getting redder.  Then, last Monday,
Pasiance was away from sunrise till sunset--nobody saw her go--nobody
knew where she had gone.  It was a wonderful, strange day, a sky of
silver-grey and blue, with a drift of wind-clouds, all the trees
sighing a little, the sea heaving in a long, low swell, the animals
restless, the birds silent, except the gulls with their old man's
laughter and kitten's mewing.

A something wild was in the air; it seemed to sweep across the downs
and combe, into the very house, like a passionate tune that comes
drifting to your ears when you're sleepy.  But who would have thought
the absence of that girl for a few hours could have wrought such
havoc!  We were like uneasy spirits; Mrs. Hopgood's apple cheeks
seemed positively to wither before one's eyes.  I came across a
dairymaid and farm hand discussing it stolidly with very downcast
faces.  Even Hopgood, a hard-bitten fellow with immense shoulders,
forgot his imperturbability so far as to harness his horse, and
depart on what he assured me was "just a wild-guse chaace."  It was
long before John Ford gave signs of noticing that anything was wrong,
but late in the afternoon I found him sitting with his hands on his
knees, staring straight before him.  He rose heavily when he saw me,
and stalked out.  In the evening, as I was starting for the
coastguard station to ask for help to search the cliff, Pasiance
appeared, walking as if she could hardly drag one leg after the
other.  Her cheeks were crimson; she was biting her lips to keep
tears of sheer fatigue out of her eyes.  She passed me in the doorway
without a word.  The anxiety he had gone through seemed to forbid the
old man from speaking.  He just came forward, took her face in his
hands, gave it a great kiss, and walked away.  Pasiance dropped on
the floor in the dark passage, and buried her face on her arms.
"Leave me alone!" was all she would say.  After a bit she dragged
herself upstairs.  Presently Mrs. Hopgood came to me.

"Not a word out of her--an' not a bite will she ate, an' I had a pie
all ready--scrumptious.  The good Lord knows the truth--she asked for
brandy; have you any brandy, sir?  Ha-apgood'e don't drink it, an'
Mister Ford 'e don't allaow for anything but caowslip wine."

I had whisky.

The good soul seized the flask, and went off hugging it.  She
returned it to me half empty.

"Lapped it like a kitten laps milk.  I misdaoubt it's straong, poor
lamb, it lusened 'er tongue praaperly.  'I've a-done it,' she says to
me, 'Mums-I've a-done it,' an' she laughed like a mad thing; and
then, sir, she cried, an' kissed me, an' pusshed me thru the door.
Gude Lard! What is 't she's a-done...?"

It rained all the next day and the day after.  About five o'clock
yesterday the rain ceased; I started off to Kingswear on Hopgood's
nag to see Dan Treffry.  Every tree, bramble, and fern in the lanes
was dripping water; and every bird singing from the bottom of his
heart.  I thought of Pasiance all the time.  Her absence that day was
still a mystery; one never ceased asking oneself what she had done.
There are people who never grow up--they have no right to do things.
Actions have consequences--and children have no business with
consequences.

Dan was out.  I had supper at the hotel, and rode slowly home.  In
the twilight stretches of the road, where I could touch either bank
of the lane with my whip, I thought of nothing but Pasiance and her
grandfather; there was something in the half light suited to wonder
and uncertainty.  It had fallen dark before I rode into the straw-
yard.  Two young bullocks snuffled at me, a sleepy hen got up and ran
off with a tremendous shrieking.  I stabled the horse, and walked
round to the back.  It was pitch black under the apple-trees, and the
windows were all darkened.  I stood there a little, everything
smelled so delicious after the rain; suddenly I had the uncomfortable
feeling that I was being watched.  Have you ever felt like that on a
dark night?  I called out at last: "Is any one there?"  Not a sound!
I walked to the gate-nothing!  The trees still dripped with tiny,
soft, hissing sounds, but that was all.  I slipped round to the
front, went in, barricaded the door, and groped up to bed.  But I
couldn't sleep.  I lay awake a long while; dozed at last, and woke
with a jump.  A stealthy murmur of smothered voices was going on
quite close somewhere.  It stopped.  A minute passed; suddenly came
the soft thud as of something falling.  I sprang out of bed and
rushed to the window.  Nothing--but in the distance something that
sounded like footsteps.  An owl hooted; then clear as crystal, but
quite low, I heard Pasiance singing in her room:

"The apples are ripe and ready to fall.
Oh! heigh-ho! and ready to fall."

I ran to her door and knocked.

"What is it?" she cried.

"Is anything the matter?"

"Matter?"

"Is anything the matter?"

"Ha-ha-ha-ha!  Good-night!" then quite low, I heard her catch her
breath, hard, sharply.  No other answer, no other sound.

I went to bed and lay awake for hours....

This evening Dan came; during supper he handed Pasiance a roll of
music; he had got it in Torquay.  The shopman, he said, had told him
that it was a "corker."

It was Bach's "Chaconne."  You should have seen her eyes shine, her
fingers actually tremble while she turned over the pages.  Seems odd
to think of her worshipping at the shrine of Bach as odd as to think
of a wild colt running of its free will into the shafts; but that's
just it with her you can never tell.  "Heavenly!" she kept saying.

John Ford put down his knife and fork.

"Heathenish stuff!" he muttered, and suddenly thundered out,
"Pasiance!"

She looked up with a start, threw the music from her, and resumed her
place.

During evening prayers, which follow every night immediately on food,
her face was a study of mutiny.  She went to bed early.  It was
rather late when we broke up--for once old Ford had been talking of
his squatter's life.  As we came out, Dan held up his hand.  A dog
was barking.  "It's Lass," he said.  "She'll wake Pasiance."

The spaniel yelped furiously.  Dan ran out to stop her.  He was soon
back.

"Somebody's been in the orchard, and gone off down to the cove."  He
ran on down the path.  I, too, ran, horribly uneasy.  In front,
through the darkness, came the spaniel's bark; the lights of the
coastguard station faintly showed.  I was first on the beach; the dog
came to me at once, her tail almost in her mouth from apology.  There
was the sound of oars working in rowlocks; nothing visible but the
feathery edges of the waves.  Dan said behind, "No use!  He's gone."
His voice sounded hoarse, like that of a man choking with passion.

"George," he stammered, "it's that blackguard.  I wish I'd put a
bullet in him."  Suddenly a light burned up in the darkness on the
sea, seemed to swing gently, and vanished.  Without another word we
went back up the hill.  John Ford stood at the gate motionless,
indifferent--nothing had dawned on him as yet.  I whispered to Dan,
"Let it alone!"

"No," he said, "I'm going to show you."  He struck a match, and
slowly hunted the footsteps in the wet grass of the orchard.  "Look--
here!"

He stopped under Pasiance's window and swayed the match over the
ground.  Clear as daylight were the marks of some one who had jumped
or fallen.  Dan held the match over his head.

"And look there!" he said.  The bough of an apple-tree below the
window was broken.  He blew the match out.

I could see the whites of his eyes, like an angry animal's.

"Drop it, Dan!" I said.

He turned on his heel suddenly, and stammered out, "You're right."

But he had turned into John Ford's arms.

The old man stood there like some great force, darker than the
darkness, staring up at the window, as though stupefied.  We had not
a word to say.  He seemed unconscious of our presence.  He turned
round, and left us standing there.

"Follow him!" said Dan.  "Follow him--by God! it's not safe."

We followed.  Bending, and treading heavily, he went upstairs.  He
struck a blow on Pasiance's door.  "Let me in!" he said.  I drew Dan
into my bedroom.  The key was slowly turned, her door was flung open,
and there she stood in her dressing-gown, a candle in her hand, her
face crimson, and oh! so young, with its short, crisp hair and round
cheeks.  The old man--like a giant in front of her--raised his hands,
and laid them on her shoulders.

"What's this?  You--you've had a man in your room?"

Her eyes did not drop.

"Yes," she said.  Dan gave a groan.

"Who?"

"Zachary Pearse," she answered in a voice like a bell.

He gave her one awful shake, dropped his hands, then raised them as
though to strike her.  She looked him in the eyes; his hands dropped,
and he too groaned.  As far as I could see, her face never moved.

"I'm married to him," she said, "d' you hear?  Married to him.  Go
out of my room!"  She dropped the candle on the floor at his feet,
and slammed the door in his face.  The old man stood for a minute as
though stunned, then groped his way downstairs.

"Dan," I said, "is it true?"

"Ah!" he answered, "it's true; didn't you hear her?"

I was glad I couldn't see his face.

"That ends it," he said at last; "there's the old man to think of."

"What will he do?"

"Go to the fellow this very night."  He seemed to have no doubt.
Trust one man of action to know another.

I muttered something about being an outsider--wondered if there was
anything I could do to help.

"Well," he said slowly, "I don't know that I'm anything but an
outsider now; but I'll go along with him, if he'll have me."

He went downstairs.  A few minutes later they rode out from the
straw-yard.  I watched them past the line of hayricks, into the
blacker shadows of the pines, then the tramp of hoofs began to fail
in the darkness, and at last died away.

I've been sitting here in my bedroom writing to you ever since, till
my candle's almost gone.  I keep thinking what the end of it is to
be; and reproaching myself for doing nothing.  And yet, what could I
have done?  I'm sorry for her--sorrier than I can say.  The night is
so quiet--I haven't heard a sound; is she asleep, awake, crying,
triumphant?

It's four o'clock; I've been asleep.

They're back.  Dan is lying on my bed.  I'll try and tell you his
story as near as I can, in his own words.

"We rode," he said, "round the upper way, keeping out of the lanes,
and got to Kingswear by half-past eleven.  The horse-ferry had
stopped running, and we had a job to find any one to put us over.  We
hired the fellow to wait for us, and took a carriage at the 'Castle.'
Before we got to Black Mill it was nearly one, pitch-dark.  With the
breeze from the southeast, I made out he should have been in an hour
or more.  The old man had never spoken to me once: and before we got
there I had begun to hope we shouldn't find the fellow after all.  We
made the driver pull up in the road, and walked round and round,
trying to find the door.  Then some one cried, 'Who are you ?'

"'John Ford.'

"'What do you want?' It was old Pearse.

"'To see Zachary Pearse.'

"The long window out of the porch where we sat the other day was
open, and in we went.  There was a door at the end of the room, and a
light coming through.  John Ford went towards it; I stayed out in the
dark.

"'Who's that with you?'

"'Mr. Treffry.'

"'Let him come in!' I went in.  The old fellow was in bed, quite
still on his pillows, a candle by his side; to look at him you'd
think nothing of him but his eyes were alive.  It was queer being
there with those two old men!"

Dan paused, seemed to listen, then went on doggedly.

"'Sit down, gentleman,' said old Pearse.  'What may you want to see
my son for?'  John Ford begged his pardon, he had something to say,
he said, that wouldn't wait.

"They were very polite to one another," muttered Dan ....

"'Will you leave your message with me?' said Pearse.

"'What I have to say to your son is private.'

"'I'm his father.'

"'I'm my girl's grandfather; and her only stand-by.'

"'Ah!' muttered old Pearse, 'Rick Voisey's daughter?'

"'I mean to see your son.'

"Old Pearse smiled.  Queer smile he's got, sort of sneering sweet.

"'You can never tell where Zack may be,' he said.  'You think I want
to shield him.  You're wrong; Zack can take care of himself.'

"'Your son's here!' said John Ford.  'I know.'  Old Pearse gave us a
very queer look.

"'You come into my house like thieves in the night,' he said, 'and
give me the lie, do you?'

"'Your son came to my child's room like a thief in the night; it's
for that I want to see him,' and then," said Dan, "there was a long
silence.  At last Pearse said:

"'I don't understand; has he played the blackguard?'

"John Ford answered, 'He's married her, or, before God, I'd kill
him.'

"Old Pearse seemed to think this over, never moving on his pillows.
'You don't know Zack,' he said; 'I'm sorry for you, and I'm sorry for
Rick Voisey's daughter; but you don't know Zack.'

"'Sorry!' groaned out John Ford; 'he's stolen my child, and I'll
punish him.'

"'Punish!' cried old Pearse, 'we don't take punishment, not in my
family.'

"'Captain Jan Pearse, as sure as I stand here, you and your breed
will get your punishment of God.'  Old Pearse smiled.

"'Mr. John Ford, that's as may be; but sure as I lie here we won't
take it of you.  You can't punish unless you make to feel, and that
you can't du.'"

And that is truth!

Dan went on again:

"'You won't tell me where your son is!' but old Pearse never blinked.

"'I won't,' he said, 'and now you may get out.  I lie here an old man
alone, with no use to my legs, night on night, an' the house open;
any rapscallion could get in; d' ye think I'm afraid of you?'

"We were beat; and walked out without a word.  But that old man; I've
thought of him a lot--ninety-two, and lying there.  Whatever he's
been, and they tell you rum things of him, whatever his son may be,
he's a man.  It's not what he said, nor that there was anything to be
afraid of just then, but somehow it's the idea of the old chap lying
there.  I don't ever wish to see a better plucked one...."

We sat silent after that; out of doors the light began to stir among
the leaves.  There were all kinds of rustling sounds, as if the world
were turning over in bed.

Suddenly Dan said:

"He's cheated me.  I paid him to clear out and leave her alone.
D' you think she's asleep?"  He's made no appeal for sympathy, he'd
take pity for an insult; but he feels it badly.

"I'm tired as a cat," he said at last, and went to sleep on my bed.

It's broad daylight now; I too am tired as a cat....




V

"Saturday, 6th August.

.......I take up my tale where I left off yesterday....  Dan and I
started as soon as we could get Mrs. Hopgood to give us coffee.  The
old lady was more tentative, more undecided, more pouncing, than I
had ever seen her.  She was manifestly uneasy: Ha-apgood--who "don't
slape "don't he, if snores are any criterion--had called out in the
night, "Hark to th' 'arses' 'oofs!"  Had we heard them?  And where
might we be going then?  'Twas very earrly to start, an' no
breakfast.  Haapgood had said it was goin' to shaowerr.  Miss
Pasiance was not to 'er violin yet, an' Mister Ford 'e kept 'is room.
Was it?--would there be--?  "Well, an' therr's an 'arvest bug; 'tis
some earrly for they!"  Wonderful how she pounces on all such
creatures, when I can't even see them.  She pressed it absently
between finger and thumb, and began manoeuvring round another way.
Long before she had reached her point, we had gulped down our coffee,
and departed.  But as we rode out she came at a run, holding her
skirts high with either hand, raised her old eyes bright and anxious
in their setting of fine wrinkles, and said:

"'Tidden sorrow for her?"

A shrug of the shoulders was all the answer she got.  We rode by the
lanes; through sloping farmyards, all mud and pigs, and dirty straw,
and farmers with clean-shaven upper lips and whiskers under the chin;
past fields of corn, where larks were singing.  Up or down, we didn't
draw rein till we came to Dan's hotel.

There was the river gleaming before us under a rainbow mist that
hallowed every shape.  There seemed affinity between the earth and
the sky.  I've never seen that particular soft unity out of Devon.
And every ship, however black or modern, on those pale waters, had
the look of a dream ship.  The tall green woods, the red earth, the
white houses, were all melted into one opal haze.  It was raining,
but the sun was shining behind.  Gulls swooped by us--ghosts of the
old greedy wanderers of the sea.

We had told our two boatmen to pull us out to the Pied Witch!  They
started with great resolution, then rested on their oars.

"The Pied Witch, zurr?" asked one politely; "an' which may her be?"

That's the West countryman all over!  Never say you "nay," never lose
an opportunity, never own he doesn't know, or can't do anything--
independence, amiability, and an eye to the main chance.  We
mentioned Pearse's name.

"Capt'n Zach'ry Pearse!"  They exchanged a look half-amused, half-
admiring.

"The Zunflaower, yu mane.  That's her.  Zunflaower, ahoy!"  As we
mounted the steamer's black side I heard one say:

"Pied Witch!  A pra-aper name that--a dandy name for her!"  They
laughed as they made fast.

The mate of the Sunflower, or Pied Witch, or whatever she was called,
met us--a tall young fellow in his shirtsleeves, tanned to the roots
of his hair, with sinewy, tattooed arms, and grey eyes, charred round
the rims from staring at weather.

"The skipper is on board," he said.  "We're rather busy, as you see.
Get on with that, you sea-cooks," he bawled at two fellows who were
doing nothing.  All over the ship, men were hauling, splicing, and
stowing cargo.

"To-day's Friday: we're off on Wednesday with any luck.  Will you
come this way?"  He led us down the companion to a dark hole which he
called the saloon.  "Names?  What! are you Mr. Treffry?  Then we're
partners!"  A schoolboy's glee came on his face.

"Look here!" he said; "I can show you something," and he unlocked the
door of a cabin.  There appeared to be nothing in it but a huge piece
of tarpaulin, which depended, bulging, from the topmost bunk.  He
pulled it up.  The lower bunk had been removed, and in its place was
the ugly body of a dismounted Gatling gun.

"Got six of them," he whispered, with unholy mystery, through which
his native frankness gaped out.  "Worth their weight in gold out
there just now, the skipper says.  Got a heap of rifles, too, and
lots of ammunition.  He's given me a share.  This is better than the
P. and O., and playing deck cricket with the passengers.  I'd made up
my mind already to chuck that, and go in for plantin' sugar, when I
ran across the skipper.  Wonderful chap, the skipper!  I'll go and
tell him.  He's been out all night; only came aboard at four bells;
having a nap now, but he won't mind that for you."

Off he went.  I wondered what there was in Zachary Pearse to attract
a youngster of this sort; one of the customary twelve children of
some country parson, no doubt-burning to shoot a few niggers, and for
ever frank and youthful.

He came back with his hands full of bottles.

"What'll you drink?  The skipper'll be here in a jiffy.  Excuse my
goin' on deck.  We're so busy."

And in five minutes Zachary Pearse did come.  He made no attempt to
shake hands, for which I respected him.  His face looked worn, and
more defiant than usual.

"Well, gentlemen?" he said.

"We've come to ask what you're going to do?" said Dan.

"I don't know," answered Pearse, "that that's any of your business."

Dan's little eyes were like the eyes of an angry pig.

"You've got five hundred pounds of mine," he said; "why do you think
I gave it you?"

Zachary bit his fingers.

"That's no concern of mine," he said.  "I sail on Wednesday.  Your
money's safe."

"Do you know what I think of you?" said Dan.

"No, and you'd better not tell me!"  Then, with one of his peculiar
changes, he smiled: "As you like, though."

Dan's face grew very dark.  "Give me a plain answer," he said: "What
are you going to do about her?"

Zachary looked up at him from under his brows.

"Nothing."

"Are you cur enough to deny that you've married her?"

Zachary looked at him coolly.  "Not at all," he said.

"What in God's name did you do it for?"

"You've no monopoly in the post of husband, Mr.  Treffry."

"To put a child in that position!  Haven't you the heart of a man?
What d' ye come sneaking in at night for?  By Gad!  Don't you know
you've done a beastly thing?"

Zachary's face darkened, he clenched his fists.  Then he seemed to
shut his anger into himself.

"You wanted me to leave her to you," he sneered.  "I gave her my
promise that I'd take her out there, and we'd have gone off on
Wednesday quietly enough, if you hadn't come and nosed the whole
thing out with your infernal dog.  The fat's in the fire!  There's no
reason why I should take her now.  I'll come back to her a rich man,
or not at all."

"And in the meantime?" I slipped in.

He turned to me, in an ingratiating way.

"I would have taken her to save the fuss--I really would--it's not my
fault the thing's come out.  I'm on a risky job.  To have her with me
might ruin the whole thing; it would affect my nerve.  It isn't safe
for her."

"And what's her position to be," I said, "while you're away?  Do you
think she'd have married you if she'd known you were going to leave
her like this?  You ought to give up this business.

"You stole her.  Her life's in your hands; she's only a child!"

A quiver passed over his face; it showed that he was suffering.

"Give it up!" I urged.

"My last farthing's in it," he sighed; "the chance of a lifetime."

He looked at me doubtfully, appealingly, as if for the first time in
his life he had been given a glimpse of that dilemma of consequences
which his nature never recognises.  I thought he was going to give
in.  Suddenly, to my horror, Dan growled, "Play the man!"

Pearse turned his head.  "I don't want your advice anyway," he said;
"I'll not be dictated to."

"To your last day," said Dan, "you shall answer to me for the way you
treat her."

Zachary smiled.

"Do you see that fly?" he said.  "Wel--I care for you as little as
this," and he flicked the fly off his white trousers.  "Good-
morning...!"

The noble mariners who manned our boat pulled lustily for the shore,
but we had hardly shoved off' when a storm of rain burst over the
ship, and she seemed to vanish, leaving a picture on my eyes of the
mate waving his cap above the rail, with his tanned young face bent
down at us, smiling, keen, and friendly.

...... We reached the shore drenched, angry with ourselves, and with
each other; I started sulkily for home.

As I rode past an orchard, an apple, loosened by the rainstorm, came
down with a thud.

"The apples were ripe and ready to fall,
Oh! heigh-ho! and ready to fall."

I made up my mind to pack, and go away.  But there's a strangeness, a
sort of haunting fascination in it all.  To you, who don't know the
people, it may only seem a piece of rather sordid folly.  But it
isn't the good, the obvious, the useful that puts a spell on us in
life.  It's the bizarre, the dimly seen, the mysterious for good or
evil.

The sun was out again when I rode up to the farm; its yellow thatch
shone through the trees as if sheltering a store of gladness and good
news.  John Ford himself opened the door to me.

He began with an apology, which made me feel more than ever an
intruder; then he said:

"I have not spoken to my granddaughter--I waited to see Dan Treffry."

He was stern and sad-eyed, like a man with a great weight of grief on
his shoulders.  He looked as if he had not slept; his dress was out
of order, he had not taken his clothes off, I think.  He isn't a man
whom you can pity.  I felt I had taken a liberty in knowing of the
matter at all.  When I told him where we had been, he said:

"It was good of you to take this trouble.  That you should have had
to!  But since such things have come to pass--" He made a gesture
full of horror.  He gave one the impression of a man whose pride was
struggling against a mortal hurt.  Presently he asked:

"You saw him, you say?  He admitted this marriage?  Did he give an
explanation?"

I tried to make Pearse's point of view clear.  Before this old man,
with his inflexible will and sense of duty, I felt as if I held a
brief for Zachary, and must try to do him justice.

"Let me understand," he said at last.  "He stole her, you say, to
make sure; and deserts her within a fortnight."

"He says he meant to take her--"

"Do you believe that?"

Before I could answer, I saw Pasiance standing at the window.  How
long she had been there I don't know.

"Is it true that he is going to leave me behind?" she cried out.

I could only nod.

"Did you hear him your own self?"

"Yes."

She stamped her foot.

"But he promised! He promised!"

John Ford went towards her.

"Don't touch me, grandfather!  I hate every one!  Let him do what he
likes, I don't care."

John Ford's face turned quite grey.

"Pasiance," he said, "did you want to leave me so much?"

She looked straight at us, and said sharply:

"What's the good of telling stories.  I can't help its hurting you."

"What did you think you would find away from here?"

She laughed.

"Find?  I don't know--nothing; I wouldn't be stifled anyway.  Now I
suppose you'll shut me up because I'm a weak girl, not strong like
men!"

"Silence!" said John Ford; "I will make him take you."

"You shan't!" she cried; "I won't let you.  He's free to do as he
likes.  He's free--I tell you all, everybody--free!"

She ran through the window, and vanished.

John Ford made a movement as if the bottom had dropped out of his
world.  I left him there.

I went to the kitchen, where Hopgood was sitting at the table, eating
bread and cheese.  He got up on seeing me, and very kindly brought me
some cold bacon and a pint of ale.

"I thart I shude be seeing yu, zurr," he said between his bites;
"Therr's no thart to 'atin' 'bout the 'ouse to-day.  The old wumman's
puzzivantin' over Miss Pasiance.  Young girls are skeery critters"--
he brushed his sleeve over his broad, hard jaws, and filled a pipe
"specially when it's in the blood of 'em.  Squire Rick Voisey werr a
dandy; an' Mistress Voisey--well, she werr a nice lady tu, but"--
rolling the stem of his pipe from corner to corner of his mouth--"she
werr a pra-aper vixen."

Hopgood's a good fellow, and I believe as soft as he looks hard, but
he's not quite the sort with whom one chooses to talk over a matter
like this.  I went upstairs, and began to pack, but after a bit
dropped it for a book, and somehow or other fell asleep.

I woke, and looked at my watch; it was five o'clock.  I had been
asleep four hours.  A single sunbeam was slanting across from one of
my windows to the other, and there was the cool sound of milk
dropping into pails; then, all at once, a stir as of alarm, and heavy
footsteps.

I opened my door.  Hopgood and a coast-guardsman were carrying
Pasiance slowly up the stairs.  She lay in their arms without moving,
her face whiter than her dress, a scratch across the forehead, and
two or three drops there of dried blood.  Her hands were clasped, and
she slowly crooked and stiffened out her fingers.  When they turned
with her at the stair top, she opened her lips, and gasped, "All
right, don't put me down.  I can bear it."  They passed, and, with a
half-smile in her eyes, she said something to me that I couldn't
catch; the door was shut, and the excited whispering began again
below.  I waited for the men to come out, and caught hold of Hopgood.
He wiped the sweat off his forehead.

"Poor young thing!" he said.  "She fell--down the cliffs--'tis her
back--coastguard saw her 'twerr they fetched her in.  The Lord 'elp
her mebbe she's not broken up much!  An' Mister Ford don't know!  I'm
gwine for the doctor."

There was an hour or more to wait before he came; a young fellow;
almost a boy.  He looked very grave, when he came out of her room.

"The old woman there fond of her?  nurse her well...?  Fond as a
dog!--good!  Don't know--can't tell for certain!  Afraid it's the
spine, must have another opinion!  What a plucky girl!  Tell Mr. Ford
to have the best man he can get in Torquay--there's C---.  I'll be
round the first thing in the morning.  Keep her dead quiet.  I've
left a sleeping draught; she'll have fever tonight."

John Ford came in at last.  Poor old man!  What it must have cost him
not to go to her for fear of the excitement!  How many times in the
next few hours didn't I hear him come to the bottom of the stairs;
his heavy wheezing, and sighing; and the forlorn tread of his feet
going back!  About eleven, just as I was going to bed, Mrs. Hopgood
came to my door.

"Will yu come, sir," she said; "she's asking for yu.  Naowt I can zay
but what she will see yu; zeems crazy, don't it?"  A tear trickled
down the old lady's cheek.  "Du 'ee come; 'twill du 'err 'arm mebbe,
but I dunno--she'll fret else."

I slipped into the room.  Lying back on her pillows, she was
breathing quickly with half-closed eyes.  There was nothing to show
that she had wanted me, or even knew that I was there.  The wick of
the candle, set by the bedside, had been snuffed too short, and gave
but a faint light; both window and door stood open, still there was
no draught, and the feeble little flame burned quite still, casting a
faint yellow stain on the ceiling like the refection from a buttercup
held beneath a chin.  These ceilings are far too low!  Across the
wide, squat window the apple branches fell in black stripes which
never stirred.  It was too dark to see things clearly.  At the foot
of the bed was a chest, and there Mrs. Hopgood had sat down, moving
her lips as if in speech.  Mingled with the half-musty smell of age;
there were other scents, of mignonette, apples, and some sweet-
smelling soap.  The floor had no carpet, and there was not one single
dark object except the violin, hanging from a nail over the bed.  A
little, round clock ticked solemnly.

"Why won't you give me that stuff, Mums?" Pasiance said in a faint,
sharp voice.  "I want to sleep."

"Have you much pain?" I asked.

"Of course I have; it's everywhere."

She turned her face towards me.

"You thought I did it on purpose, but you're wrong.  If I had, I'd
have done it better than this.  I wouldn't have this brutal pain."
She put her fingers over her eyes.  "It's horrible to complain!  Only
it's so bad!  But I won't again--promise."

She took the sleeping draught gratefully, making a face, like a child
after a powder.

"How long do you think it'll be before I can play again?  Oh! I
forgot--there are other things to think about."  She held out her
hand to me.  "Look at my ring.  Married--isn't it funny?  Ha, ha!
Nobody will ever understand--that's funny too!  Poor Gran!  You see,
there wasn't any reason--only me.  That's the only reason I'm telling
you now; Mums is there--but she doesn't count; why don't you count,
Mums?"

The fever was fighting against the draught; she had tossed the
clothes back from her throat, and now and then raised one thin arm a
little, as if it eased her; her eyes had grown large, and innocent
like a child's; the candle, too, had flared, and was burning clearly.

"Nobody is to tell him--nobody at all; promise...!  If I hadn't
slipped, it would have been different.  What would have happened
then?  You can't tell; and I can't--that's funny!  Do you think I
loved him?  Nobody marries without love, do they?  Not quite without
love, I mean.  But you see I wanted to be free, he said he'd take me;
and now he's left me after all!  I won't be left, I can't!  When I
came to the cliff--that bit where the ivy grows right down--there was
just the sea there, underneath; so I thought I would throw myself
over and it would be all quiet; and I climbed on a ledge, it looked
easier from there, but it was so high, I wanted to get back; and then
my foot slipped; and now it's all pain.  You can't think much, when
you're in pain."

>From her eyes I saw that she was dropping off.

"Nobody can take you away from-yourself.  He's not to be told--not
even--I don't--want you--to go away, because--"But her eyes closed,
and she dropped off to sleep.

They don't seem to know this morning whether she is better or
worse....




VI

"Tuesday, 9th August.

It seems more like three weeks than three days since I wrote.  The
time passes slowly in a sickhouse...!  The doctors were here this
morning, they give her forty hours.  Not a word of complaint has
passed her lips since she knew.  To see her you would hardly think
her ill; her cheeks have not had time to waste or lose their colour.
There is not much pain, but a slow, creeping numbness....  It was
John Ford's wish that she should be told.  She just turned her head
to the wall and sighed; then to poor old Mrs. Hopgood, who was crying
her heart out: "Don't cry, Mums, I don't care."

When they had gone, she asked for her violin.  She made them hold it
for her, and drew the bow across the strings; but the notes that came
out were so trembling and uncertain that she dropped the bow and
broke into a passion of sobbing.  Since then, no complaint or moan of
any kind....

But to go back.  On Sunday, the day after I wrote, as I was coming
from a walk, I met a little boy making mournful sounds on a tin
whistle.

"Coom ahn!" he said, "the Miss wahnts t' zee yu."

I went to her room.  In the morning she had seemed better, but now
looked utterly exhausted.  She had a letter in her hand.

"It's this," she said.  "I don't seem to understand it.  He wants me
to do something--but I can't think, and my eyes feel funny.  Read it
to me, please."

The letter was from Zachary.  I read it to her in a low voice, for
Mrs. Hopgood was in the room, her eyes always fixed on Pasiance above
her knitting.  When I'd finished, she made me read it again, and yet
again.  At first she seemed pleased, almost excited, then came a
weary, scornful look, and before I'd finished the third time she was
asleep.  It was a remarkable letter, that seemed to bring the man
right before one's eyes.  I slipped it under her fingers on the bed-
clothes, and went out.  Fancy took me to the cliff where she had
fallen.  I found the point of rock where the cascade of ivy flows
down the cliff; the ledge on which she had climbed was a little to my
right--a mad place.  It showed plainly what wild emotions must have
been driving her!  Behind was a half-cut cornfield with a fringe of
poppies, and swarms of harvest insects creeping and flying; in the
uncut corn a landrail kept up a continual charring.  The sky was blue
to the very horizon, and the sea wonderful, under that black wild
cliff stained here and there with red.  Over the dips and hollows of
the fields great white clouds hung low down above the land.  There
are no brassy, east-coast skies here; but always sleepy, soft-shaped
clouds, full of subtle stir and change.  Passages of Zachary's
Pearse's letter kept rising to my lips.  After all he's the man that
his native place, and life, and blood have made him.  It is useless
to expect idealists where the air is soft and things good to look on
(the idealist grows where he must create beauty or comfort for
himself); useless to expect a man of law and order, in one whose
fathers have stared at the sea day and night for a thousand years--
the sea, full of its promises of unknown things, never quite the
same, a slave to its own impulses.  Man is an imitative animal....

"Life's hard enough," he wrote, "without tying yourself down.  Don't
think too hardly of me!  Shall I make you happier by taking you into
danger?  If I succeed you'll be a rich woman; but I shall fail if
you're with me.  To look at you makes me soft.  At sea a man dreams
of all the good things on land, he'll dream of the heather, and
honey--you're like that; and he'll dream of the apple-trees, and the
grass of the orchards--you're like that; sometimes he only lies on
his back and wishes--and you're like that, most of all like that...."

When I was reading those words I remember a strange, soft, half-
scornful look came over Pasiance's face; and once she said, "But
that's all nonsense, isn't it...?"

Then followed a long passage about what he would gain if he
succeeded, about all that he was risking, the impossibility of
failure, if he kept his wits about him.  "It's only a matter of two
months or so," he went on; "stay where you are, dear, or go to my
Dad.  He'll be glad to have you.  There's my mother's room.  There's
no one to say 'No' to your fiddle there; you can play it by the sea;
and on dark nights you'll have the stars dancing to you over the
water as thick as bees.  I've looked at them often, thinking of
you...."

Pasiance had whispered to me, "Don't read that bit," and afterwards I
left it out....  Then the sensuous side of him shows up: "When I've
brought this off, there's the whole world before us.  There are
places I can take you to.  There's one I know, not too warm and not
too cold, where you can sit all day in the shade and watch the
creepers, and the cocoa-palms, still as still; nothing to do or care
about; all the fruits you can think of; no noise but the parrots and
the streams, and a splash when a nigger dives into a water-hole.
Pasiance, we'll go there!  With an eighty-ton craft there's no sea we
couldn't know.  The world's a fine place for those who go out to take
it; there's lots of unknown stuff' in it yet.  I'll fill your lap, my
pretty, so full of treasures that you shan't know yourself.  A man
wasn't meant to sit at home...."

Throughout this letter--for all its real passion--one could feel how
the man was holding to his purpose--the rather sordid purpose of this
venture.  He's unconscious of it; for he is in love with her; but he
must be furthering his own ends.  He is vital--horribly vital!  I
wonder less now that she should have yielded.

What visions hasn't he dangled before her.  There was physical
attraction, too--I haven't forgotten the look I saw on her face at
Black Mill.  But when all's said and done, she married him, because
she's Pasiance Voisey, who does things and wants "to get back."  And
she lies there dying; not he nor any other man will ever take her
away.  It's pitiful to think of him tingling with passion, writing
that letter to this doomed girl in that dark hole of a saloon.  "I've
wanted money," he wrote, "ever since I was a little chap sitting in
the fields among the cows....  I want it for you now, and I mean to
have it.  I've studied the thing two years; I know what I know....

"The moment this is in the post I leave for London.  There are a
hundred things to look after still; I can't trust myself within reach
of you again till the anchor's weighed.  When I re-christened her the
Pied Witch, I thought of you--you witch to me...."

There followed a solemn entreaty to her to be on the path leading to
the cove at seven o'clock on Wednesday evening (that is, to-morrow)
when he would come ashore and bid her good-bye.  It was signed, "Your
loving husband, Zachary Pearse...."

I lay at the edge of that cornfield a long time; it was very
peaceful.  The church bells had begun to ring.  The long shadows came
stealing out from the sheaves; woodpigeons rose one by one, and
flapped off to roost; the western sky was streaked with red, and all
the downs and combe bathed in the last sunlight.  Perfect harvest
weather; but oppressively still, the stillness of suspense....

Life at the farm goes on as usual.  We have morning and evening
prayers.  John Ford reads them fiercely, as though he were on the eve
of a revolt against his God.  Morning and evening he visits her,
comes out wheezing heavily, and goes to his own room; I believe, to
pray.  Since this morning I haven't dared meet him.  He is a strong
old man--but this will break him up....




VII

"KINGSWEAR, Saturday, 13th August.

It's over--I leave here to-morrow, and go abroad.

A quiet afternoon--not a breath up in the churchyard!  I was there
quite half an hour before they came.  Some red cows had strayed into
the adjoining orchard, and were rubbing their heads against the
railing.  While I stood there an old woman came and drove them away;
afterwards, she stooped and picked up the apples that had fallen
before their time.

"The apples are ripe and ready to fall,
Oh! heigh-ho! and ready to fall;
There came an old woman and gathered them all,
Oh! heigh-ho! and gathered them all."

......They brought Pasiance very simply--no hideous funeral
trappings, thank God--the farm hands carried her, and there was no
one there but John Ford, the Hopgoods, myself, and that young doctor.
They read the service over her grave.  I can hear John Ford's "Amen!"
now.  When it was over he walked away bareheaded in the sun, without
a word.  I went up there again this evening, and wandered amongst the
tombstones.  "Richard Voisey," "John, the son of Richard and
Constance Voisey," "Margery Voisey," so many generations of them in
that corner; then "Richard Voisey and Agnes his wife," and next to it
that new mound on which a sparrow was strutting and the shadows of
the apple-trees already hovering.

I will tell you the little left to tell....

On Wednesday afternoon she asked for me again.

"It's only till seven," she whispered.  "He's certain to come then.
But if I--were to die first--then tell him--I'm sorry for him.  They
keep saying: 'Don't talk--don't talk!' Isn't it stupid?  As if I
should have any other chance!  There'll be no more talking after to-
night!  Make everybody come, please--I want to see them all.  When
you're dying you're freer than any other time--nobody wants you to do
things, nobody cares what you say....  He promised me I should do
what I liked if I married him--I never believed that really--but now
I can do what I like; and say all the things I want to."  She lay
back silent; she could not after all speak the inmost thoughts that
are in each of us, so sacred that they melt away at the approach of
words.

I shall remember her like that--with the gleam of a smile in her
half-closed eyes, her red lips parted--such a quaint look of mockery,
pleasure, regret, on her little round, upturned face; the room white,
and fresh with flowers, the breeze guttering the apple-leaves against
the window.  In the night they had unhooked the violin and taken it
away; she had not missed it....  When Dan came, I gave up my place to
him.  He took her hand gently in his great paw, without speaking.

"How small my hand looks there," she said, "too small."  Dan put it
softly back on the bedclothes and wiped his forehead.  Pasiance cried
in a sharp whisper: "Is it so hot in here?  I didn't know."  Dan bent
down, put his lips to her fingers and left the room.

The afternoon was long, the longest I've ever spent.  Sometimes she
seemed to sleep, sometimes whispered to herself about her mother, her
grandfather, the garden, or her cats--all sorts of inconsequent,
trivial, even ludicrous memories seemed to throng her mind--never
once, I think, did she speak of Zachary, but, now and then, she asked
the time....  Each hour she grew visibly weaker.  John Ford sat by
her without moving, his heavy breathing was often the only sound;
sometimes she rubbed her fingers on his hand, without speaking.  It
was a summary of their lives together.  Once he prayed aloud for her
in a hoarse voice; then her pitiful, impatient eyes signed to me.

"Quick," she whispered, "I want him; it's all so--cold."

I went out and ran down the path towards the cove.

Leaning on a gate stood Zachary, an hour before his time; dressed in
the same old blue clothes and leather-peaked cap as on the day when I
saw him first.  He knew nothing of what had happened.  But at a
quarter of the truth, I'm sure he divined the whole, though he would
not admit it to himself.  He kept saying, "It can't be.  She'll be
well in a few days--a sprain! D' you think the sea-voyage....  Is she
strong enough to be moved now at once?"

It was painful to see his face, so twisted by the struggle between
his instinct and his vitality.  The sweat poured down his forehead.
He turned round as we walked up the path, and pointed out to sea.
There was his steamer.  "I could get her on board in no time.
Impossible!  What is it, then?  Spine?  Good God!  The doctors....
Sometimes they'll do wonders!"  It was pitiful to see his efforts to
blind himself to the reality.

"It can't be, she's too young.  We're walking very slow."  I told him
she was dying.

For a second I thought he was going to run away.  Then he jerked up
his head, and rushed on towards the house.  At the foot of the
staircase he gripped me by the shoulder.

"It's not true!" he said; "she'll get better now I'm here.  I'll
stay.  Let everything go.  I'll stay."

"Now's the time," I said, "to show you loved her.  Pull yourself
together, man!"  He shook all over.

"Yes!" was all he answered.  We went into her room.  It seemed
impossible she was going to die; the colour was bright in her cheeks,
her lips trembling and pouted as if she had just been kissed, her
eyes gleaming, her hair so dark and crisp, her face so young....

Half an hour later I stole to the open door of her room.  She was
still and white as the sheets of her bed.  John Ford stood at the
foot; and, bowed to the level of the pillows, his head on his
clenched fists, sat Zachary.  It was utterly quiet.  The guttering of
the leaves had ceased.  When things have come to a crisis, how little
one feels--no fear, no pity, no sorrow, rather the sense, as when a
play is over, of anxiety to get away!

Suddenly Zachary rose, brushed past me without seeing, and ran
downstairs.

Some hours later I went out on the path leading to the cove.  It was
pitch-black; the riding light of the Pied Witch was still there,
looking no bigger than a firefly.  Then from in front I heard
sobbing--a man's sobs; no sound is quite so dreadful.  Zachary Pearse
got up out of the bank not ten paces off.

I had no heart to go after him, and sat down in the hedge.  There was
something subtly akin to her in the fresh darkness of the young
night; the soft bank, the scent of honeysuckle, the touch of the
ferns and brambles.  Death comes to all of us, and when it's over
it's over; but this blind business--of those left behind

A little later the ship whistled twice; her starboard light gleamed
faintly--and that was all....




VIII

"TORQUAY, 30th October.

....Do you remember the letters I wrote you from Moor Farm nearly
three years ago?  To-day I rode over there.  I stopped at Brixham on
the way for lunch, and walked down to the quay.  There had been a
shower--but the sun was out again, shining on the sea, the brown-red
sails, and the rampart of slate roofs.

A trawler was lying there, which had evidently been in a collision.
The spiky-bearded, thin-lipped fellow in torn blue jersey and sea-
boots who was superintending the repairs, said to me a little
proudly:

"Bane in collision, zurr; like to zee over her?"  Then suddenly
screwing up his little blue eyes, he added:

"Why, I remembers yu.  Steered yu along o' the young lady in this yer
very craft."

It was Prawle, Zachary Pearse's henchman.

"Yes," he went on, "that's the cutter."

"And Captain Pearse?"

He leant his back against the quay, and spat.  "He was a pra-aper
man; I never zane none like 'en."

"Did you do any good out there?"

Prawle gave me a sharp glance.

"Gude?  No, t'was arrm we done, vrom ztart to finish--had trouble all
the time.  What a man cude du, the skipper did.  When yu caan't du
right, zome calls it 'Providence'!  'Tis all my eye an' Betty Martin!
What I zay es, 'tis these times, there's such a dale o' folk, a dale
of puzzivantin' fellers; the world's to small."

With these words there flashed across me a vision of Drake crushed
into our modern life by the shrinkage of the world; Drake caught in
the meshes of red tape, electric wires, and all the lofty appliances
of our civilization.  Does a type survive its age; live on into times
that have no room for it?  The blood is there--and sometimes there's
a throw-back....  All fancy!  Eh?

"So," I said, "you failed?"

Prawle wriggled.

"I wudden' goo for to zay that, zurr--'tis an ugly word.  Da-am!" he
added, staring at his boots, "'twas thru me tu.  We were along among
the haythen, and I mus' nades goo for to break me leg.  The capt'n he
wudden' lave me.  'One Devon man,' he says to me, 'don' lave
anotherr.'  We werr six days where we shuld ha' been tu; when we got
back to the ship a cruiser had got her for gun-runnin'."

"And what has become of Captain Pearse?"

Prawle answered, "Zurr, I belave 'e went to China, 'tis onsartin."

"He's not dead?"

Prawle looked at me with a kind of uneasy anger.

"Yu cudden' kell 'en!  'Tis true, mun 'll die zome day.  But therr's
not a one that'll show better zport than Capt'n Zach'ry Pearse."

I believe that; he will be hard to kill.  The vision of him comes up,
with his perfect balance, defiant eyes, and sweetish smile; the way
the hair of his beard crisped a little, and got blacker on the
cheeks; the sort of desperate feeling he gave, that one would never
get the better of him, that he would never get the better of himself.

I took leave of Prawle and half a crown.  Before I was off the quay I
heard him saying to a lady, "Bane in collision, marm!  Like to zee
over her?"

After lunch I rode on to Moor.  The old place looked much the same;
but the apple-trees were stripped of fruit, and their leaves
beginning to go yellow and fall.  One of Pasiance's cats passed me in
the orchard hunting a bird, still with a ribbon round its neck.  John
Ford showed me all his latest improvements, but never by word or sign
alluded to the past.  He inquired after Dan, back in New Zealand now,
without much interest; his stubbly beard and hair have whitened; he
has grown very stout, and I noticed that his legs are not well under
control; he often stops to lean on his stick.  He was very ill last
winter; and sometimes, they say, will go straight off to sleep in the
middle of a sentence.

I managed to get a few minutes with the Hopgoods.  We talked of
Pasiance sitting in the kitchen under a row of plates, with that
clinging smell of wood-smoke, bacon, and age bringing up memories, as
nothing but scents can.  The dear old lady's hair, drawn so nicely
down her forehead on each side from the centre of her cap, has a few
thin silver lines; and her face is a thought more wrinkled.  The
tears still come into her eyes when she talks of her "lamb."

Of Zachary I heard nothing, but she told me of old Pearse's death.

"Therr they found 'en, zo to spake, dead--in th' sun; but Ha-apgood
can tell yu," and Hopgood, ever rolling his pipe, muttered something,
and smiled his wooden smile.

He came to see me off from the straw-yard.  "'Tis like death to the
varrm, zurr," he said, putting all the play of his vast shoulders
into the buckling of my girths.  "Mister Ford--well!  And not one of
th' old stock to take it when 'e's garn....  Ah! it werr cruel; my
old woman's never been hersel' since.  Tell 'ee what 'tis--don't du
t' think to much."

I went out of my way to pass the churchyard.  There were flowers,
quite fresh, chrysanthemums, and asters; above them the white stone,
already stained:

        "PASIANCE

        "WIFE OF ZACHARY PEARSE

        "'The Lord hath given, and the Lord hath taken away.'"

The red cows were there too; the sky full of great white clouds, some
birds whistling a little mournfully, and in the air the scent of
fallen leaves....

May, 1900.






A KNIGHT



TO

MY MOTHER




A KNIGHT




I

At Monte Carlo, in the spring of the year 189-, I used to notice an
old fellow in a grey suit and sunburnt straw hat with a black ribbon.
Every morning at eleven o'clock, he would come down to the Place,
followed by a brindled German boarhound, walk once or twice round it,
and seat himself on a bench facing the casino.  There he would remain
in the sun, with his straw hat tilted forward, his thin legs apart,
his brown hands crossed between them, and the dog's nose resting on
his knee.  After an hour or more he would get up, and, stooping a
little from the waist, walk slowly round the Place and return up
hill.  Just before three, he would come down again in the same
clothes and go into the casino, leaving the dog outside.

One afternoon, moved by curiosity, I followed him.  He passed through
the hall without looking at the gambling-rooms, and went into the
concert.  It became my habit after that to watch for him.  When he
sat in the Place I could see him from the window of my room.  The
chief puzzle to me was the matter of his nationality.

His lean, short face had a skin so burnt that it looked like leather;
his jaw was long and prominent, his chin pointed, and he had hollows
in his cheeks.  There were wrinkles across his forehead; his eyes
were brown; and little white moustaches were brushed up from the
corners of his lips.  The back of his head bulged out above the lines
of his lean neck and high, sharp shoulders; his grey hair was cropped
quite close.  In the Marseilles buffet, on the journey out, I had met
an Englishman, almost his counterpart in features--but somehow very
different!  This old fellow had nothing of the other's alert,
autocratic self-sufficiency.  He was quiet and undemonstrative,
without looking, as it were, insulated against shocks and foreign
substances.  He was certainly no Frenchman.  His eyes, indeed, were
brown, but hazel-brown, and gentle--not the red-brown sensual eye of
the Frenchman.  An American?  But was ever an American so passive?  A
German?  His moustache was certainly brushed up, but in a modest,
almost pathetic way, not in the least Teutonic.  Nothing seemed to
fit him.  I gave him up, and named him "the Cosmopolitan."

Leaving at the end of April, I forgot him altogether.  In the same
month, however, of the following year I was again at Monte Carlo, and
going one day to the concert found myself seated next this same old
fellow.  The orchestra was playing Meyerbeer's "Prophete," and my
neighbour was asleep, snoring softly.  He was dressed in the same
grey suit, with the same straw hat (or one exactly like it) on his
knees, and his hands crossed above it.  Sleep had not disfigured
him--his little white moustache was still brushed up, his lips
closed; a very good and gentle expression hovered on his face.  A
curved mark showed on his right temple, the scar of a cut on the side
of his neck, and his left hand was covered by an old glove, the
little forger of which was empty.  He woke up when the march was over
and brisked up his moustache.

The next thing on the programme was a little thing by Poise from Le
joli Gilles, played by Mons. Corsanego on the violin.  Happening to
glance at my old neighbour, I saw a tear caught in the hollow of his
cheek, and another just leaving the corner of his eye; there was a
faint smile on his lips.  Then came an interval; and while orchestra
and audience were resting, I asked him if he were fond of music.  He
looked up without distrust, bowed, and answered in a thin, gentle
voice: "Certainly.  I know nothing about it, play no instrument,
could never sing a note; but fond of it!  Who would not be?"  His
English was correct enough, but with an emphasis not quite American
nor quite foreign.  I ventured to remark that he did not care for
Meyerbeer.  He smiled.

"Ah!" he said, "I was asleep?  Too bad of me.  He is a little noisy--
I know so little about music.  There is Bach, for instance.  Would
you believe it, he gives me no pleasure?  A great misfortune to be no
musician!"  He shook his head.

I murmured, "Bach is too elevating for you perhaps."

"To me," he answered, "any music I like is elevating.  People say
some music has a bad effect on them.  I never found any music that
gave me a bad thought--no--no--quite the opposite; only sometimes, as
you see, I go to sleep.  But what a lovely instrument the violin!"
A faint flush came on his parched cheeks.  "The human soul that has
left the body.  A curious thing, distant bugles at night have given
me the same feeling."  The orchestra was now coming back, and,
folding his hands, my neighbour turned his eyes towards them.  When
the concert was over we came out together.  Waiting at the entrance
was his dog.

"You have a beautiful dog!"

"Ah! yes.  Freda.  mia cara, da su mano!"  The dog squatted on her
haunches, and lifted her paw in the vague, bored way of big dogs when
requested to perform civilities.  She was a lovely creature--the
purest brindle, without a speck of white, and free from the
unbalanced look of most dogs of her breed.

"Basta! basta!"  He turned to me apologetically.  "We have agreed to
speak Italian; in that way I keep up the language; astonishing the
number of things that dog will understand!"  I was about to take my
leave, when he asked if I would walk a little way with him--"If you
are free, that is."  We went up the street with Freda on the far side
of her master.

"Do you never 'play' here?" I asked him.

"Play?  No.  It must be very interesting; most exciting, but as a
matter of fact, I can't afford it.  If one has very little, one is
too nervous."

He had stopped in front of a small hairdresser's shop.  "I live
here," he said, raising his hat again.  "Au revoir!--unless I can
offer you a glass of tea.  It's all ready.  Come! I've brought you
out of your way; give me the pleasure!"

I have never met a man so free from all self-consciousness, and yet
so delicate and diffident the combination is a rare one.  We went up
a steep staircase to a room on the second floor.  My companion threw
the shutters open, setting all the flies buzzing.  The top of a
plane-tree was on a level with the window, and all its little brown
balls were dancing, quite close, in the wind.  As he had promised, an
urn was hissing on a table; there was also a small brown teapot, some
sugar, slices of lemon, and glasses.  A bed, washstand, cupboard, tin
trunk, two chairs, and a small rug were all the furniture.  Above the
bed a sword in a leather sheath was suspended from two nails.  The
photograph of a girl stood on the closed stove.  My host went to the
cupboard and produced a bottle, a glass, and a second spoon.  When
the cork was drawn, the scent of rum escaped into the air.  He
sniffed at it and dropped a teaspoonful into both glasses.

"This is a trick I learned from the Russians after Plevna; they had
my little finger, so I deserved something in exchange."  He looked
round; his eyes, his whole face, seemed to twinkle.  "I assure you it
was worth it--makes all the difference.  Try!"  He poured off the
tea.

"Had you a sympathy with the Turks?"

"The weaker side--"  He paused abruptly, then added: "But it was not
that."  Over his face innumerable crow's-feet had suddenly appeared,
his eyes twitched; he went on hurriedly, "I had to find something to
do just then--it was necessary."  He stared into his glass; and it
was some time before I ventured to ask if he had seen much fighting.

"Yes," he replied gravely, "nearly twenty years altogether; I was one
of Garibaldi's Mille in '60."

"Surely you are not Italian?"

He leaned forward with his hands on his knees.  "I was in Genoa at
that time learning banking; Garibaldi was a wonderful man!  One could
not help it."  He spoke quite simply.  "You might say it was like
seeing a little man stand up to a ring of great hulking fellows; I
went, just as you would have gone, if you'd been there.  I was not
long with them--our war began; I had to go back home."  He said this
as if there had been but one war since the world began.  "In '60," he
mused, "till '65.  Just think of it!  The poor country.  Why, in my
State, South Carolina--I was through it all--nobody could be spared
there--we were one to three."

"I suppose you have a love of fighting?"

"H'm!" he said, as if considering the idea for the first time.
"Sometimes I fought for a living, and sometimes--because I was
obliged; one must try to be a gentleman.  But won't you have some
more?"

I refused more tea and took my leave, carrying away with me a picture
of the old fellow looking down from the top of the steep staircase,
one hand pressed to his back, the other twisting up those little
white moustaches, and murmuring, "Take care, my dear sir, there's a
step there at the corner."

"To be a gentleman!"  I repeated in the street, causing an old French
lady to drop her parasol, so that for about two minutes we stood
bowing and smiling to each other, then separated full of the best
feeling.




II

A week later I found myself again seated next him at a concert.  In
the meantime I had seen him now and then, but only in passing.  He
seemed depressed.  The corners of his lips were tightened, his tanned
cheeks had a greyish tinge, his eyes were restless; and, between two
numbers of the programme, he murmured, tapping his fingers on his
hat, "Do you ever have bad days?  Yes?  Not pleasant, are they?"

Then something occurred from which all that I have to tell you
followed.  There came into the concert-hall the heroine of one of
those romances, crimes, follies, or irregularities, call it what you
will, which had just attracted the "world's" stare.  She passed us
with her partner, and sat down in a chair a few rows to our right.
She kept turning her head round, and at every turn I caught the gleam
of her uneasy eyes.  Some one behind us said: "The brazen baggage!"

My companion turned full round, and glared at whoever it was who had
spoken.  The change in him was quite remarkable.  His lips were drawn
back from his teeth; he frowned; the scar on his temple had reddened.

"Ah!" he said to me.  "The hue and cry!  Contemptible!  How I hate
it!  But you wouldn't understand--! "he broke off, and slowly
regained his usual air of self-obliteration; he even seemed ashamed,
and began trying to brush his moustaches higher than ever, as if
aware that his heat had robbed them of neatness.

"I'm not myself, when I speak of such matters," he said suddenly; and
began reading his programme, holding it upside down.  A minute later,
however, he said in a peculiar voice: "There are people to be found
who object to vivisecting animals; but the vivisection of a woman,
who minds that?  Will you tell me it's right, that because of some
tragedy like this--believe me, it is always a tragedy--we should hunt
down a woman?  That her fellow-women should make an outcast of her?
That we, who are men, should make a prey of her?  If I thought
that...."  Again he broke off, staring very hard in front of him.
"It is we who make them what they are; and even if that is not so--
why! if I thought there was a woman in the world I could not take my
hat off to--I--I--couldn't sleep at night."  He got up from his seat,
put on his old straw hat with trembling fingers, and, without a
glance back, went out, stumbling over the chair-legs.

I sat there, horribly disturbed; the words, "One must try to be a
gentleman!" haunting me.  When I came out, he was standing by the
entrance with one hand on his hip and the other on his dog.  In that
attitude of waiting he was such a patient figure; the sun glared down
and showed the threadbare nature of his clothes and the thinness of
his brown hands, with their long forgers and nails yellow from
tobacco.  Seeing me he came up the steps again, and raised his hat.

"I am glad to have caught you; please forget all that."  I asked if
he would do me the honour of dining at my hotel.

"Dine?" he repeated with the sort of smile a child gives if you offer
him a box of soldiers; "with the greatest pleasure.  I seldom dine
out, but I think I can muster up a coat.  Yes--yes--and at what time
shall I come?  At half-past seven, and your hotel is--?  Good! I
shall be there.  Freda, mia cara, you will be alone this evening.
You do not smoke caporal, I fear.  I find it fairly good; though it
has too much bite."  He walked off with Freda, puffing at his thin
roll of caporal.

Once or twice he stopped, as if bewildered or beset by some sudden
doubt or memory; and every time he stopped, Freda licked his hand.
They disappeared round the corner of the street, and I went to my
hotel to see about dinner.  On the way I met Jules le Ferrier, and
asked him to come too.

"My faith, yes!" he said, with the rosy pessimism characteristic of
the French editor.  "Man must dine!"

At half-past six we assembled.  My "Cosmopolitan" was in an old
frock-coat braided round the edges, buttoned high and tight, defining
more than ever the sharp lines of his shoulders and the slight kink
of his back; he had brought with him, too, a dark-peaked cap of
military shape, which he had evidently selected as more fitting to
the coat than a straw hat.  He smelled slightly of some herb.

We sat down to dinner, and did not rise for two hours.  He was a
charming guest, praised everything he ate--not with commonplaces, but
in words that made you feel it had given him real pleasure.  At
first, whenever Jules made one of his caustic remarks, he looked
quite pained, but suddenly seemed to make up his mind that it was
bark, not bite; and then at each of them he would turn to me and say,
"Aha! that's good--isn't it?"  With every glass of wine he became
more gentle and more genial, sitting very upright, and tightly
buttoned-in; while the little white wings of his moustache seemed
about to leave him for a better world.

In spite of the most leading questions, however, we could not get him
to talk about himself, for even Jules, most cynical of men, had
recognised that he was a hero of romance.  He would answer gently and
precisely, and then sit twisting his moustaches, perfectly
unconscious that we wanted more.  Presently, as the wine went a
little to his head, his thin, high voice grew thinner, his cheeks
became flushed, his eyes brighter; at the end of dinner he said: "I
hope I have not been noisy."

We assured him that he had not been noisy enough.  "You're laughing
at me," he answered.  "Surely I've been talking all the time!"

"Mon Dieu!" said Jules, "we have been looking for some fables of your
wars; but nothing--nothing, not enough to feed a frog!"

The old fellow looked troubled.

"To be sure!" he mused.  "Let me think! there is that about Colhoun
at Gettysburg; and there's the story of Garibaldi and the Miller."
He plunged into a tale, not at all about himself, which would have
been extremely dull, but for the conviction in his eyes, and the way
he stopped and commented.  "So you see," he ended, "that's the sort
of man Garibaldi was!  I could tell you another tale of him."
Catching an introspective look in Jules's eye, however, I proposed
taking our cigars over to the cafe opposite.

"Delightful!" the old fellow said: "We shall have a band and the
fresh air, and clear consciences for our cigars.  I cannot like this
smoking in a room where there are ladies dining."

He walked out in front of us, smoking with an air of great enjoyment.
Jules, glowing above his candid shirt and waistcoat, whispered to me,
"Mon cher Georges, how he is good!" then sighed, and added darkly:
"The poor man!"

We sat down at a little table.  Close by, the branches of a plane-
tree rustled faintly; their leaves hung lifeless, speckled like the
breasts of birds, or black against the sky; then, caught by the
breeze, fluttered suddenly.

The old fellow sat, with head thrown back, a smile on his face,
coming now and then out of his enchanted dreams to drink coffee,
answer our questions, or hum the tune that the band was playing.  The
ash of his cigar grew very long.  One of those bizarre figures in
Oriental garb, who, night after night, offer their doubtful wares at
a great price, appeared in the white glare of a lamp, looked with a
furtive smile at his face, and glided back, discomfited by its
unconsciousness.  It was a night for dreams!  A faint, half-eastern
scent in the air, of black tobacco and spice; few people as yet at
the little tables, the waiters leisurely, the band soft!  What was he
dreaming of, that old fellow, whose cigar-ash grew so long?  Of
youth, of his battles, of those things that must be done by those who
try to be gentlemen; perhaps only of his dinner; anyway of something
gilded in vague fashion as the light was gilding the branches of the
plane-tree.

Jules pulled my sleeve: "He sleeps."  He had smilingly dropped off;
the cigar-ash--that feathery tower of his dreams--had broken and
fallen on his sleeve.  He awoke, and fell to dusting it.

The little tables round us began to fill.  One of the bandsmen played
a czardas on the czymbal.  Two young Frenchmen, talking loudly, sat
down at the adjoining table.  They were discussing the lady who had
been at the concert that afternoon.

"It's a bet," said one of them, "but there's the present man.  I take
three weeks, that's enough 'elle est declassee; ce n'est que le
premier pas--'"

My old friend's cigar fell on the table.  "Monsieur," he stammered,
"you speak of a lady so, in a public place?"

The young man stared at him.  "Who is this person?" he said to his
companion.

My guest took up Jules's glove that lay on the table; before either
of us could raise a finger, he had swung it in the speaker's face.
"Enough!" he said, and, dropping the glove, walked away.

We all jumped to our feet.  I left Jules and hurried after him.  His
face was grim, his eyes those of a creature who has been struck on a
raw place.  He made a movement of his fingers which said plainly.
"Leave me, if you please!"

I went back to the cafe.  The two young men had disappeared, so had
Jules, but everything else was going on just as before; the bandsman
still twanging out his czardas; the waiters serving drinks; the
orientals trying to sell their carpets.  I paid the bill, sought out
the manager, and apologised.  He shrugged his shoulders, smiled and
said: "An eccentric, your friend, nicht wahr?"  Could he tell me
where M. Le Ferrier was?  He could not.  I left to look for Jules;
could not find him, and returned to my hotel disgusted.  I was sorry
for my old guest, but vexed with him too; what business had he to
carry his Quixotism to such an unpleasant length?  I tried to read.
Eleven o'clock struck; the casino disgorged a stream of people; the
Place seemed fuller of life than ever; then slowly it grew empty and
quite dark.  The whim seized me to go out.  It was a still night,
very warm, very black.  On one of the seats a man and woman sat
embraced, on another a girl was sobbing, on a third--strange sight--a
priest dozed.  I became aware of some one at my side; it was my old
guest.

"If you are not too tired," he said, "can you give me ten minutes?"

"Certainly; will you come in?"

"No, no; let us go down to the Terrace.  I shan't keep you long."

He did not speak again till we reached a seat above the pigeon-
shooting grounds; there, in a darkness denser for the string of
lights still burning in the town, we sat down.

"I owe you an apology," he said; "first in the afternoon, then again
this evening--your guest--your friend's glove!  I have behaved as no
gentleman should."  He was leaning forward with his hands on the
handle of a stick.  His voice sounded broken and disturbed.

"Oh!" I muttered.  "It's nothing!"'

"You are very good," he sighed; "but I feel that I must explain.  I
consider I owe this to you, but I must tell you I should not have the
courage if it were not for another reason.  You see I have no
friend."  He looked at me with an uncertain smile.  I bowed, and a
minute or two later he began....




III

"You will excuse me if I go back rather far.  It was in '74, when I
had been ill with Cuban fever.  To keep me alive they had put me on
board a ship at Santiago, and at the end of the voyage I found myself
in London.  I had very little money; I knew nobody.  I tell you, sir,
there are times when it's hard for a fighting man to get anything to
do.  People would say to me: 'Afraid we've nothing for a man like you
in our business.'  I tried people of all sorts; but it was true--I
had been fighting here and there since '60, I wasn't fit for
anything--"  He shook his head.  "In the South, before the war, they
had a saying, I remember, about a dog and a soldier having the same
value.  But all this has nothing to do with what I have to tell you."
He sighed again and went on, moistening his lips: "I was walking
along the Strand one day, very disheartened, when I heard my name
called.  It's a queer thing, that, in a strange street.  By the way,"
he put in with dry ceremony, "you don't know my name, I think: it is
Brune--Roger Brune.  At first I did not recognise the person who
called me.  He had just got off an omnibus--a square-shouldered man
with heavy moustaches, and round spectacles.  But when he shook my
hand I knew him at once.  He was a man called Dalton, who was taken
prisoner at Gettysburg; one of you Englishmen who came to fight with
us--a major in the regiment where I was captain.  We were comrades
during two campaigns.  If I had been his brother he couldn't have
seemed more pleased to see me.  He took me into a bar for the sake of
old times.  The drink went to my head, and by the time we reached
Trafalgar Square I was quite unable to walk.  He made me sit down on
a bench. I was in fact--drunk.  It's disgraceful to be drunk, but
there was some excuse.  Now I tell you, sir" (all through his story
he was always making use of that expression, it seemed to infuse
fresh spirit into him, to help his memory in obscure places, to give
him the mastery of his emotions; it was like the piece of paper a
nervous man holds in his hand to help him through a speech), "there
never was a man with a finer soul than my friend Dalton.  He was not
clever, though he had read much; and sometimes perhaps he was too
fond of talking.  But he was a gentleman; he listened to me as if I
had been a child; he was not ashamed of me--and it takes a gentleman
not to be ashamed of a drunken man in the streets of London; God
knows what things I said to him while we were sitting there!  He took
me to his home and put me to bed himself; for I was down again with
fever."  He stopped, turned slightly from me, and put his hand up to
his brow.  "Well, then it was, sir, that I first saw her.  I am not
a poet and I cannot tell you what she seemed to me.  I was delirious,
but I always knew when she was there.  I had dreams of sunshine and
cornfields, of dancing waves at sea, young trees--never the same
dreams, never anything for long together; and when I had my senses I
was afraid to say so for fear she would go away.  She'd be in the
corner of the room, with her hair hanging about her neck, a bright
gold colour; she never worked and never read, but sat and talked to
herself in a whisper, or looked at me for a long time together out of
her blue eyes, a little frown between them, and her upper lip closed
firm on her lower lip, where she had an uneven tooth.  When her
father came, she'd jump up and hang on to his neck until he groaned,
then run away, but presently come stealing back on tiptoe.  I used to
listen for her footsteps on the stairs, then the knock, the door
flung back or opened quietly--you never could tell which; and her
voice, with a little lisp, 'Are you better today, Mr. Brune?  What
funny things you say when you're delirious!  Father says you've been
in heaps of battles!"'

He got up, paced restlessly to and fro, and sat down again.  "I
remember every word as if it were yesterday, all the things she said,
and did; I've had a long time to think them over, you see.  Well, I
must tell you, the first morning that I was able to get up, I missed
her.  Dalton came in her place, and I asked him where she was.  'My
dear fellow,' he answered, 'I've sent Eilie away to her old nurse's
inn down on the river; she's better there at this time of year.'  We
looked at each other, and I saw that he had sent her away because he
didn't trust me.  I was hurt by this.  Illness spoils one.  He was
right, he was quite right, for all he knew about me was that I could
fight and had got drunk; but I am very quick-tempered.  I made up my
mind at once to leave him.  But I was too weak--he had to put me to
bed again.  The very next morning he came and proposed that I should
go into partnership with him.  He kept a fencing-school and pistol-
gallery.  It seemed like the finger of God; and perhaps it was--who
knows?"  He fell into a reverie, and taking out his caporal, rolled
himself a cigarette; having lighted it, he went on suddenly: "There,
in the room above the school, we used to sit in the evenings, one on
each side of the grate.  The room was on the second floor,
I remember, with two windows, and a view of nothing but the houses
opposite.  The furniture was covered up with chintz.  The things on
the bookshelf were never disturbed, they were Eilie's--half-broken
cases with butterflies, a dead frog in a bottle, a horse-shoe covered
with tinfoil, some shells too, and a cardboard box with three
speckled eggs in it, and these words written on the lid: 'Missel-
thrush from Lucy's tree--second family, only one blown.'"  He smoked
fiercely, with puffs that were like sharp sighs.

"Dalton was wrapped up in her.  He was never tired of talking to me
about her, and I was never tired of hearing.  We had a number of
pupils; but in the evening when we sat there, smoking--our talk would
sooner or later--come round to her.  Her bedroom opened out of that
sitting--room; he took me in once and showed me a narrow little room
the width of a passage, fresh and white, with a photograph of her
mother above the bed, and an empty basket for a dog or cat."  He
broke off with a vexed air, and resumed sternly, as if trying to bind
himself to the narration of his more important facts: "She was then
fifteen--her mother had been dead twelve years--a beautiful, face,
her mother's; it had been her death that sent Dalton to fight with
us.  Well, sir, one day in August, very hot weather, he proposed a
run into the country, and who should meet us on the platform when we
arrived but Eilie, in a blue sun-bonnet and frock-flax blue, her
favourite colour.  I was angry with Dalton for not telling me that we
should see her; my clothes were not quite--my hair wanted cutting.
It was black then, sir," he added, tracing a pattern in the darkness
with his stick.  "She had a little donkey-cart; she drove, and, while
we walked one on each side, she kept looking at me from under her
sunbonnet.  I must tell you that she never laughed--her eyes danced,
her cheeks would go pink, and her hair shake about on her neck, but
she never laughed. Her old nurse, Lucy, a very broad, good woman, had
married the proprietor of the inn in the village there.  I have never
seen anything like that inn: sweethriar up to the roof!  And the
scent--I am very susceptible to scents!"  His head drooped, and the
cigarette fell from his hand. A train passing beneath sent up a
shower of sparks.  He started, and went on: "We had our lunch in the
parlour--I remember that room very well, for I spent the happiest
days of my life afterwards in that inn....  We went into a meadow
after lunch, and my friend Dalton fell asleep.  A wonderful thing
happened then.  Eilie whispered to me, 'Let's have a jolly time.'
She took me for the most glorious walk.  The river was close by.
A lovely stream, your river Thames, so calm and broad; it is like the
spirit of your people.  I was bewitched; I forgot my friend, I
thought of nothing but how to keep her to myself.  It was such a day!
There are days that are the devil's, but that was truly one of God's.
She took me to a little pond under an elm-tree, and we dragged it, we
two, an hour, for a kind of tiny red worm to feed some creature that
she had.  We found them in the mud, and while she was bending over,
the curls got in her eyes.  If you could have seen her then, I think,
sir, you would have said she was like the first sight of spring....
We had tea afterwards, all together, in the long grass under some
fruit-trees.  If I had the knack of words, there are things that I
could say."  He bent, as though in deference to those unspoken
memories.  "Twilight came on while we were sitting there. A wonderful
thing is twilight in the country!  It became time for us to go.
There was an avenue of trees close by--like a church with a window at
the end, where golden light came through.  I walked up and down it
with her.  'Will you come again?' she whispered, and suddenly she
lifted up her face to be kissed. I kissed her as if she were a little
child.  And when we said good-bye, her eyes were looking at me across
her father's shoulder, with surprise and sorrow in them.  'Why do you
go away?' they seemed to say....  But I must tell you," he went on
hurriedly, "of a thing that happened before we had gone a hundred
yards.  We were smoking our pipes, and I, thinking of her--when out
she sprang from the hedge and stood in front of us.  Dalton cried
out, 'What are you here for again, you mad girl?'  She rushed up to
him and hugged him; but when she looked at me, her face was quite
different--careless, defiant, as one might say--it hurt me.  I
couldn't understand it, and what one doesn't understand frightens
one."




IV

"Time went on.  There was no swordsman, or pistol-shot like me in
London, they said.  We had as many pupils as we liked--it was the
only part of my life when I have been able to save money.  I had no
chance to spend it.  We gave lessons all day, and in the evening were
too tired to go out.  That year I had the misfortune to lose my dear
mother.  I became a rich man--yes, sir, at that time I must have had
not less than six hundred a year.

"It was a long time before I saw Eilie again.  She went abroad to
Dresden with her father's sister to learn French and German.  It was
in the autumn of 1875 when she came back to us.  She was seventeen
then--a beautiful young creature."  He paused, as if to gather his
forces for description, and went on.

"Tall, as a young tree, with eyes like the sky.  I would not say she
was perfect, but her imperfections were beautiful to me.  What is it
makes you love--ah! sir, that is very hidden and mysterious.  She had
never lost the trick of closing her lips tightly when she remembered
her uneven tooth.  You may say that was vanity, but in a young girl--
and which of us is not vain, eh?  'Old men and maidens, young men and
children!'

"As I said, she came back to London to her little room, and in the
evenings was always ready with our tea.  You mustn't suppose she was
housewifely; there is something in me that never admired
housewifeliness--a fine quality, no doubt, still--" He sighed.

"No," he resumed, "Eilie was not like that, for she was never quite
the same two days together.  I told you her eyes were like the sky--
that was true of all of her.  In one thing, however, at that time,
she always seemed the same--in love for her father.  For me!  I don't
know what I should have expected; but my presence seemed to have the
effect of making her dumb; I would catch her looking at me with a
frown, and then, as if to make up to her own nature--and a more
loving nature never came into this world, that I shall maintain to my
dying day--she would go to her father and kiss him.  When I talked
with him she pretended not to notice, but I could see her face grow
cold and stubborn.  I am not quick; and it was a long time before I
understood that she was jealous, she wanted him all to herself.  I've
often wondered how she could be his daughter, for he was the very
soul of justice and a slow man too--and she was as quick as a bird.
For a long time after I saw her dislike of me, I refused to believe
it--if one does not want to believe a thing there are always reasons
why it should not seem true, at least so it is with me, and I suppose
with all selfish men.

"I spent evening after evening there, when, if I had not thought only
of myself, I should have kept away.  But one day I could no longer be
blind.

"It was a Sunday in February.  I always had an invitation on Sundays
to dine with them in the middle of the day.  There was no one in the
sitting-room; but the door of Eilie's bedroom was open.  I heard her
voice: 'That man, always that man!'  It was enough for me, I went
down again without coming in, and walked about all day.

"For three weeks I kept away.  To the school of course I came as
usual, but not upstairs.  I don't know what I told Dalton--it did not
signify what you told him, he always had a theory of his own, and was
persuaded of its truth--a very single-minded man, sir.

"But now I come to the most wonderful days of my life.  It was an
early spring that year.  I had fallen away already from my
resolution, and used to slink up--seldom, it's true--and spend the
evening with them as before.  One afternoon I came up to the sitting-
room; the light was failing--it was warm, and the windows were open.
In the air was that feeling which comes to you once a year, in the
spring, no matter where you may be, in a crowded street, or alone in
a forest; only once--a feeling like--but I cannot describe it.

"Eilie was sitting there.  If you don't know, sir, I can't tell you
what it means to be near the woman one loves.  She was leaning on the
windowsill, staring down into the street.  It was as though she might
be looking out for some one.  I stood, hardly breathing.  She turned
her head, and saw me.  Her eyes were strange.  They seemed to ask me
a question.  But I couldn't have spoken for the world.  I can't tell
you what I felt--I dared not speak, or think, or hope.  I have been
in nineteen battles--several times in positions of some danger, when
the lifting of a finger perhaps meant death; but I have never felt
what I was feeling at that moment.  I knew something was coming; and
I was paralysed with terror lest it should not come!"  He drew a long
breath.

"The servant came in with a light and broke the spell.  All that
night I lay awake and thought of how she had looked at me, with the
colour coming slowly up in her cheeks

"It was three days before I plucked up courage to go again; and then
I felt her eyes on me at once--she was making a 'cat's cradle' with a
bit of string, but I could see them stealing up from her hands to my
face.  And she went wandering about the room, fingering at
everything.  When her father called out: 'What's the matter with you,
Elie?' she stared at him like a child caught doing wrong.  I looked
straight at her then, she tried to look at me, but she couldn't; and
a minute later she went out of the room.  God knows what sort of
nonsense I talked--I was too happy.

"Then began our love.  I can't tell you of that time.  Often and
often Dalton said to me: 'What's come to the child?  Nothing I can do
pleases her.'  All the love she had given him was now for me; but he
was too simple and straight to see what was going on.  How many times
haven't I felt criminal towards him!  But when you're happy, with the
tide in your favour, you become a coward at once...."




V

"Well, sir," he went on, "we were married on her eighteenth birthday.
It was a long time before Dalton became aware of our love.  But one
day he said to me with a very grave look:

"'Eilie has told me, Brune; I forbid it.  She's too young, and
you're--too old!' I was then forty-five, my hair as black and thick
as a rook's feathers, and I was strong and active.  I answered him:
'We shall be married within a month!'  We parted in anger.  It was a
May night, and I walked out far into the country.  There's no remedy
for anger, or, indeed, for anything, so fine as walking.  Once I
stopped--it was on a common, without a house or light, and the stars
shining like jewels.  I was hot from walking, I could feel the blood
boiling in my veins--I said to myself 'Old, are you?' And I laughed
like a fool.  It was the thought of losing her--I wished to believe
myself angry, but really I was afraid; fear and anger in me are very
much the same.  A friend of mine, a bit of a poet, sir, once called
them 'the two black wings of self.'  And so they are, so they are...!
The next morning I went to Dalton again, and somehow I made him
yield.  I'm not a philosopher, but it has often seemed to me that no
benefit can come to us in this life without an equal loss somewhere,
but does that stop us?  No, sir, not often....

"We were married on the 3oth of June 1876, in the parish church.  The
only people present were Dalton, Lucy, and Lucy's husband--a big,
red-faced fellow, with blue eyes and a golden beard parted in two.
It had been arranged that we should spend the honeymoon down at their
inn on the river.  My wife, Dalton and I, went to a restaurant for
lunch.  She was dressed in grey, the colour of a pigeon's feathers."
He paused, leaning forward over the crutch handle of his stick;
trying to conjure up, no doubt, that long-ago image of his young
bride in her dress "the colour of a pigeon's feathers," with her blue
eyes and yellow hair, the little frown between her brows, the firmly
shut red lips, opening to speak the words, "For better, for worse,
for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health."

"At that time, sir," he went on suddenly, "I was a bit of a dandy.  I
wore, I remember, a blue frock-coat, with white trousers, and a grey
top hat.  Even now I should always prefer to be well dressed....

"We had an excellent lunch, and drank Veuve Clicquot, a wine that you
cannot get in these days!  Dalton came with us to the railway
station.  I can't bear partings; and yet, they must come.

"That evening we walked out in the cool under the aspen-trees.  What
should I remember in all my life if not that night--the young
bullocks snuffling in the gateways--the campion flowers all lighted
up along the hedges--the moon with a halo-bats, too, in and out among
the stems, and the shadows of the cottages as black and soft as that
sea down there.  For a long time we stood on the river-bank beneath a
lime-tree.  The scent of the lime flowers!  A man can only endure
about half his joy; about half his sorrow.  Lucy and her husband," he
went on, presently, "his name was Frank Tor--a man like an old
Viking, who ate nothing but milk, bread, and fruit--were very good to
us!  It was like Paradise in that inn--though the commissariat, I am
bound to say, was limited.  The sweethriar grew round our bedroom
windows; when the breeze blew the leaves across the opening--it was
like a bath of perfume.  Eilie grew as brown as a gipsy while we were
there.  I don't think any man could have loved her more than I did.
But there were times when my heart stood still; it didn't seem as if
she understood how much I loved her.  One day, I remember, she coaxed
me to take her camping.  We drifted down-stream all the afternoon,
and in the evening pulled into the reeds under the willow-boughs and
lit a fire for her to cook by--though, as a matter of fact, our
provisions were cooked already--but you know how it is; all the
romance was in having a real fire.  'We won't pretend,' she kept
saying.  While we were eating our supper a hare came to our clearing-
-a big fellow--how surprised he looked!  'The tall hare,' Eilie
called him.  After that we sat by the ashes and watched the shadows,
till at last she roamed away from me.  The time went very slowly; I
got up to look for her.  It was past sundown.  I called and called.
It was a long time before I found her--and she was like a wild thing,
hot and flushed, her pretty frock torn, her hands and face scratched,
her hair down, like some beautiful creature of the woods.  If one
loves, a little thing will scare one.  I didn't think she had noticed
my fright; but when we got back to the boat she threw her arms round
my neck, and said, 'I won't ever leave you again!'

"Once in the night I woke--a water-hen was crying, and in the
moonlight a kingfisher flew across.  The wonder on the river--the
wonder of the moon and trees, the soft bright mist, the stillness! It
was like another world, peaceful, enchanted, far holier than ours.
It seemed like a vision of the thoughts that come to one--how seldom!
and go if one tries to grasp them.  Magic--poetry-sacred!"  He was
silent a minute, then went on in a wistful voice: "I looked at her,
sleeping like a child, with her hair loose, and her lips apart, and I
thought: 'God do so to me, if ever I bring her pain!'  How was I to
understand her? the mystery and innocence of her soul!  The river has
had all my light and all my darkness, the happiest days, and the
hours when I've despaired; and I like to think of it, for, you know,
in time bitter memories fade, only the good remain....  Yet the good
have their own pain, a different kind of aching, for we shall never
get them back.  Sir," he said, turning to me with a faint smile,
"it's no use crying over spilt milk....  In the neighbourhood of
Lucy's inn, the Rose and Maybush--Can you imagine a prettier name?  I
have been all over the world, and nowhere found names so pretty as in
the English country.  There, too, every blade of grass; and flower,
has a kind of pride about it; knows it will be cared for; and all the
roads, trees, and cottages, seem to be certain that they will live
for ever....  But I was going to tell you: Half a mile from the inn
was a quiet old house which we used to call the 'Convent'--though I
believe it was a farm.  We spent many afternoons there, trespassing
in the orchard--Eilie was fond of trespassing; if there were a long
way round across somebody else's property, she would always take it.
We spent our last afternoon in that orchard, lying in the long grass.
I was reading Childe Harold for the first time--a wonderful, a
memorable poem!  I was at that passage--the bull-fight--you remember:

"'Thrice sounds the clarion; lo! the signal falls,
The din expands, and expectation mute'--

"when suddenly Eilie said: 'Suppose I were to leave off loving you?'
It was as if some one had struck me in the face.  I jumped up, and
tried to take her in my arms, but she slipped away; then she turned,
and began laughing softly.  I laughed too.  I don't know why...."




VI

"We went back to London the next day; we lived quite close to the
school, and about five days a week Dalton came to dine with us.  He
would have come every day, if he had not been the sort of man who
refuses to consult his own pleasure.  We had more pupils than ever.
In my leisure I taught my wife to fence.  I have never seen any one
so lithe and quick; or so beautiful as she looked in her fencing
dress, with embroidered shoes.

"I was completely happy.  When a man has obtained his desire he
becomes careless and self-satisfied; I was watchful, however, for I
knew that I was naturally a selfish man.  I studied to arrange my
time and save my money, to give her as much pleasure as I could.
What she loved best in the world just then was riding.  I bought a
horse for her, and in the evenings of the spring and summer we rode
together; but when it was too dark to go out late, she would ride
alone, great distances, sometimes spend the whole day in the saddle,
and come back so tired she could hardly walk upstairs--I can't say
that I liked that.  It made me nervous, she was so headlong--but I
didn't think it right to interfere with her.  I had a good deal of
anxiety about money, for though I worked hard and made more than
ever, there never seemed enough.  I was anxious to save--I hoped, of
course--but we had no child, and this was a trouble to me.  She grew
more beautiful than ever, and I think was happy.  Has it ever struck
you that each one of us lives on the edge of a volcano?  There is, I
imagine, no one who has not some affection or interest so strong that
he counts the rest for nothing, beside it.  No doubt a man may live
his life through without discovering that.  But some of us--!  I am
not complaining; what is--is."  He pulled the cap lower over his
eyes, and clutched his hands firmly on the top of his stick.  He was
like a man who rushes his horse at some hopeless fence, unwilling to
give himself time, for fear of craning at the last moment.  "In the
spring of '78, a new pupil came to me, a young man of twenty-one who
was destined for the army.  I took a fancy to him, and did my best to
turn him into a good swordsman; but there was a kind of perverse
recklessness in him; for a few minutes one would make a great
impression, then he would grow utterly careless.  'Francis,' I would
say, 'if I were you I should be ashamed.'  'Mr. Brune,' he would
answer, 'why should I be ashamed?  I didn't make myself.'  God knows,
I wish to do him justice, he had a heart--one day he drove up in a
cab, and brought in his poor dog, who had been run over, and was
dying: For half an hour he shut himself up with its body, we could
hear him sobbing like a child; he came out with his eyes all red, and
cried: 'I know where to find the brute who drove over him,' and off
he rushed.  He had beautiful Italian eyes; a slight figure, not very
tall; dark hair, a little dark moustache; and his lips were always a
trifle parted--it was that, and his walk, and the way he drooped his
eyelids, which gave him a peculiar, soft, proud look.  I used to tell
him that he'd never make a soldier!  'Oh!' he'd answer, 'that'll be
all right when the time comes!  He believed in a kind of luck that
was to do everything for him, when the time came.  One day he came in
as I was giving Eilie her lesson.  This was the first time they saw
each other.  After that he came more often, and sometimes stayed to
dinner with us.  I won't deny, sir, that I was glad to welcome him; I
thought it good for Eilie.  Can there be anything more odious," he
burst out, "than such a self-complacent blindness?  There are people
who say, 'Poor man, he had such faith!'  Faith, sir!  Conceit!  I was
a fool--in this world one pays for folly....

"The summer came; and one Saturday in early June, Eilie, I, and
Francis--I won't tell you his other name--went riding.  The night had
been wet; there was no dust, and presently the sun came out--a
glorious day!  We rode a long way.  About seven o'clock we started
back-slowly, for it was still hot, and there was all the cool of
night before us.  It was nine o'clock when we came to Richmond Park.
A grand place, Richmond Park; and in that half-light wonderful, the
deer moving so softly, you might have thought they were spirits.  We
were silent too--great trees have that effect on me....

"Who can say when changes come?  Like a shift of the wind, the old
passes, the new is on you.  I am telling you now of a change like
that.  Without a sign of warning, Eilie put her horse into a gallop.
'What are you doing?' I shouted.  She looked back with a smile, then
he dashed past me too.  A hornet might have stung them both: they
galloped over fallen trees, under low hanging branches, up hill and
down.  I had to watch that madness!  My horse was not so fast.  I
rode like a demon; but fell far behind.  I am not a man who takes
things quietly.  When I came up with them at last, I could not speak
for rage.  They were riding side by side, the reins on the horses'
necks, looking in each other's faces.  'You should take care,' I
said.  'Care!' she cried; 'life is not all taking care!'  My anger
left me.  I dropped behind, as grooms ride behind their mistresses...
Jealousy!  No torture is so ceaseless or so black....  In those
minutes a hundred things came up in me--a hundred memories, true,
untrue, what do I know?  My soul was poisoned.  I tried to reason
with myself.  It was absurd to think such things!  It was unmanly....
Even if it were true, one should try to be a gentleman!  But I found
myself laughing; yes, sir, laughing at that word."  He spoke faster,
as if pouring his heart out not to a live listener, but to the night.
"I could not sleep that night.  To lie near her with those thoughts
in my brain was impossible!  I made an excuse, and sat up with some
papers.  The hardest thing in life is to see a thing coming and be
able to do nothing to prevent it.  What could I do?  Have you noticed
how people may become utter strangers without a word?  It only needs
a thought....  The very next day she said: 'I want to go to Lucy's.'
'Alone?'  'Yes.'  I had made up my mind by then that she must do just
as she wished.  Perhaps I acted wrongly; I do not know what one ought
to do in such a case; but before she went I said to her: 'Eilie, what
is it?'  'I don't know,' she answered; and I kissed her--that was
all....  A month passed; I wrote to her nearly every day, and I had
short letters from her, telling me very little of herself.  Dalton
was a torture to me, for I could not tell him; he had a conviction
that she was going to become a mother.  'Ah, Brune!' he said, 'my
poor wife was just like that.'  Life, sir, is a somewhat ironical
affair...!  He--I find it hard to speak his name--came to the school
two or three times a week.  I used to think I saw a change, a purpose
growing up through his recklessness; there seemed a violence in him
as if he chafed against my blade.  I had a kind of joy in feeling I
had the mastery, and could toss the iron out of his hand any minute
like a straw.  I was ashamed, and yet I gloried in it.  Jealousy is a
low thing, sir--a low, base thing!  When he asked me where my wife
was, I told him; I was too proud to hide it.  Soon after that he came
no more to the school.

"One morning, when I could bear it no longer, I wrote, and said I was
coming down.  I would not force myself on her, but I asked her to
meet me in the orchard of the old house we called the Convent.  I
asked her to be there at four o'clock.  It has always been my, belief
that a man must neither beg anything of a woman, nor force anything
from her.  Women are generous--they will give you what they can.  I
sealed my letter, and posted it myself.  All the way down I kept on
saying to myself, 'She must come--surely she will come!'"




VII

"I was in high spirits, but the next moment trembled like a man with
ague.  I reached the orchard before my time.  She was not there.  You
know what it is like to wait?  I stood still and listened; I went to
the point whence I could see farthest; I said to myself, 'A watched
pot never boils; if I don't look for her she will come.'  I walked up
and down with my eyes on the ground.  The sickness of it!  A hundred
times I took out my watch.... Perhaps it was fast, perhaps hers was
slow--I can't tell you a thousandth part of my hopes and fears.
There was a spring of water, in one corner.  I sat beside it, and
thought of the last time I had been there--and something seemed to
burst in me.  It was five o'clock before I lost all hope; there comes
a time when you're glad that hope is dead, it means rest.  'That's
over,' you say, 'now I can act.'  But what was I to do?  I lay down
with my face to the ground; when one's in trouble, it's the only
thing that helps--something to press against and cling to that can't
give way.  I lay there for two hours, knowing all the time that I
should play the coward.  At seven o'clock I left the orchard and went
towards the inn; I had broken my word, but I felt happy.... I should
see her--and, sir, nothing--nothing seemed to matter beside that.
Tor was in the garden snipping at his roses.  He came up, and I could
see that he couldn't look me in the face.  'Where's my wife?' I said.
He answered, 'Let's get Lucy.'  I ran indoors.  Lucy met me with two
letters; the first--my own--unopened; and the second, this:

"'I have left you.  You were good to me, but now--it is no use.
          EILIE.'"

"She told me that a boy had brought a letter for my wife the day
before, from a young gentleman in a boat.  When Lucy delivered it she
asked, 'Who is he, Miss Eilie?  What will Mr. Brune say?'  My wife
looked at her angrily, but gave her no answer--and all that day she
never spoke.  In the evening she was gone, leaving this note on the
bed....  Lucy cried as if her heart would break.  I took her by the
shoulders and put her from the room; I couldn't bear the noise.  I
sat down and tried to think.  While I was sitting there Tor came in
with a letter.  It was written on the notepaper of an inn twelve
miles up the river: these were the words.

"'Eilie is mine.  I am ready to meet you where you like.'"

He went on with a painful evenness of speech.  "When I read those
words, I had only one thought--to reach them; I ran down to the
river, and chose out the lightest boat.  Just as I was starting, Tor
came running.  'You dropped this letter, sir,' be said.  'Two pair of
arms are better than one.'  He came into the boat.  I took the sculls
and I pulled out into the stream.  I pulled like a madman; and that
great man, with his bare arms crossed, was like a huge, tawny bull
sitting there opposite me.  Presently he took my place, and I took
the rudder lines.  I could see his chest, covered with hair, heaving
up and down, it gave me a sort of comfort--it meant that we were
getting nearer.  Then it grew dark, there was no moon, I could barely
see the bank; there's something in the dark which drives one into
oneself.  People tell you there comes a moment when your nature is
decided--'saved' or 'lost' as they call it--for good or evil.  That
is not true, your self is always with you, and cannot be altered;
but, sir, I believe that in a time of agony one finds out what are
the things one can do, and what are those one cannot.  You get to
know yourself, that's all.  And so it was with me.  Every thought and
memory and passion was so clear and strong!  I wanted to kill him.  I
wanted to kill myself.  But her--no!  We are taught that we possess
our wives, body and soul, we are brought up in that faith, we are
commanded to believe it--but when I was face to face with it, those
words had no meaning; that belief, those commands, they were without
meaning to me, they were--vile.  Oh yes, I wanted to find comfort in
them, I wanted to hold on to them--but I couldn't.  You may force a
body; how can you force a soul?  No, no--cowardly!  But I wanted to--
I wanted to kill him and force her to come back to me!  And then,
suddenly, I felt as if I were pressing right on the most secret nerve
of my heart.  I seemed to see her face, white and quivering, as if
I'd stamped my heel on it.  They say this world is ruled by force; it
may be true--I know I have a weak spot in me....  I couldn't bear it.
At last I Jumped to my feet and shouted out, 'Turn the boat round!'
Tor looked up at me as if I had gone mad.  And I had gone mad.  I
seized the boat-hook and threatened him; I called him fearful names.
'Sir,' he said, 'I don't take such names from any one!'  'You'll take
them from me,' I shouted; 'turn the boat round, you idiot, you hound,
you fish!...'  I have a terrible temper, a perfect curse to me.  He
seemed amazed, even frightened; he sat down again suddenly and pulled
the boat round.  I fell on the seat, and hid my face.  I believe the
moon came up; there must have been a mist too, for I was cold as
death.  In this life, sir, we cannot hide our faces--but by degrees
the pain of wounds grows less.  Some will have it that such blows are
mortal; it is not so.  Time is merciful.

"In the early morning I went back to London.  I had fever on me--and
was delirious.  I dare say I should have killed myself if I had not
been so used to weapons--they and I were too old friends, I suppose--
I can't explain.  It was a long while before I was up and about.
Dalton nursed me through it; his great heavy moustache had grown
quite white.  We never mentioned her; what was the good?  There were
things to settle of course, the lawyer--this was unspeakably
distasteful to me.  I told him it was to be as she wished, but the
fellow would come to me, with his--there, I don't want to be unkind.
I wished him to say it was my fault, but he said--I remember his
smile now--he said, that was impossible, would be seen through,
talked of collusion--I don't understand these things, and what's
more, I can't bear them, they are--dirty.

"Two years later, when I had come back to London, after the Russo-
Turkish war, I received a letter from her.  I have it here."  He took
an old, yellow sheet of paper out of a leathern pockethook, spread it
in his fingers, and sat staring at it.  For some minutes he did not
speak.

"In the autumn of that same year she died in childbirth.  He had
deserted her.  Fortunately for him, he was killed on the Indian
frontier, that very year.  If she had lived she would have been
thirty-two next June; not a great age....  I know I am what they call
a crank; doctors will tell you that you can't be cured of a bad
illness, and be the same man again.  If you are bent, to force
yourself straight must leave you weak in another place.  I must and
will think well of women--everything done, and everything said
against them is a stone on her dead body.  Could you sit, and listen
to it?"  As though driven by his own question, he rose, and paced up
and down.  He came back to the seat at last.

"That, sir, is the reason of my behaviour this afternoon, and again
this evening.  You have been so kind, I wanted!--wanted to tell you.
She had a little daughter--Lucy has her now.  My friend Dalton is
dead; there would have been no difficulty about money, but, I am
sorry to say, that he was swindled--disgracefully.  It fell to me to
administer his affairs--he never knew it, but he died penniless; he
had trusted some wretched fellows--had an idea they would make his
fortune.  As I very soon found, they had ruined him.  It was
impossible to let Lucy--such a dear woman--bear that burden.  I have
tried to make provision; but, you see," he took hold of my sleeve,
"I, too, have not been fortunate; in fact, it's difficult to save a
great deal out of L 190 a year; but the capital is perfectly safe--
and I get L 47, 10s. a quarter, paid on the nail.  I have often been
tempted to reinvest at a greater rate of interest, but I've never
dared.  Anyway, there are no debts--I've been obliged to make a rule
not to buy what I couldn't pay for on the spot....  Now I am really
plaguing you--but I wanted to tell you--in case-anything should
happen to me."  He seemed to take a sudden scare, stiffened, twisted
his moustache, and muttering, "Your great kindness! Shall never
forget!" turned hurriedly away.

He vanished; his footsteps, and the tap of his stick grew fainter and
fainter.  They died out.  He was gone.  Suddenly I got up and
hastened after him.  I soon stopped--what was there to say?




VIII

The following day I was obliged to go to Nice, and did not return
till midnight.  The porter told me that Jules le Ferrier had been to
see me.  The next morning, while I was still in bed, the door was
opened, and Jules appeared.  His face was very pale; and the moment
he stood still drops of perspiration began coursing down his cheeks.

"Georges!" he said, "he is dead.  There, there!  How stupid you look!
My man is packing.  I have half an hour before the train; my evidence
shall come from Italy.  I have done my part, the rest is for you.
Why did you have that dinner?  The Don Quixote!  The idiot!  The poor
man!  Don't move!  Have you a cigar?  Listen!  When you followed him,
I followed the other two.  My infernal curiosity!  Can you conceive a
greater folly?  How fast they walked, those two! feeling their
cheeks, as if he had struck them both, you know; it was funny.  They
soon saw me, for their eyes were all round about their heads; they
had the mark of a glove on their cheeks."  The colour began to come
back, into Jules's face; he gesticulated with his cigar and became
more and more dramatic.  "They waited for me.  'Tiens!' said one,
'this gentleman was with him.  My friend's name is M. Le Baron de---.
The man who struck him was an odd-looking person; kindly inform me
whether it is possible for my friend to meet him?'  Eh!" commented
Jules, "he was offensive!  Was it for me to give our dignity away?
'Perfectly, monsieur!'  I answered.  'In that case,' he said, 'please
give me his name and ad dress....  I could not remember his name, and
as for the address, I never knew it...!  I reflected. 'That,' I said,
'I am unable to do, for special reasons.'  'Aha!' he said, 'reasons
that will prevent our fighting him, I suppose?  'On the contrary,' I
said.  'I will convey your request to him; I may mention that I have
heard he is the best swordsman and pistol-shot in Europe.  Good-
night!'  I wished to give them something to dream of, you
understand....  Patience, my dear!  Patience!  I was, coming to you,
but I thought I would let them sleep on it--there was plenty of time!
But yesterday morning I came into the Place, and there he was on the
bench, with a big dog.  I declare to you he blushed like a young
girl.  'Sir,' he said, 'I was hoping to meet you; last evening I made
a great disturbance.  I took an unpardonable liberty'--and he put in
my hand an envelope.  My friend, what do you suppose it contained--a
pair of gloves!  Senor Don Punctilioso, hein?  He was the devil, this
friend of yours; he fascinated me with his gentle eyes and his white
moustachettes, his humility, his flames--poor man...!  I told him I
had been asked to take him a challenge.  'If anything comes of it,' I
said, 'make use of me!'  'Is that so?' he said.  'I am most grateful
for your kind offer.  Let me see--it is so long since I fought a
duel.  The sooner it's over the better.  Could you arrange to-morrow
morning?  Weapons?  Yes; let them choose.'  You see, my friend, there
was no hanging back here; nous voila en train."

Jules took out his watch.  "I have sixteen minutes.  It is lucky for
you that you were away yesterday, or you would be in my shoes now.  I
fixed the place, right hand of the road to Roquebrune, just by the
railway cutting, and the time--five-thirty of the morning.  It was
arranged that I should call for him.  Disgusting hour; I have not
been up so early since I fought Jacques Tirbaut in '85.  At five
o'clock I found him ready and drinking tea with rum in it--singular
man! he made me have some too, brrr!  He was shaved, and dressed in
that old frock-coat.  His great dog jumped into the carriage, but he
bade her get out, took her paws on his shoulders, and whispered in
her ear some Italian words; a charm, hein! and back she went, the
tail between the legs.  We drove slowly, so as not to shake his arm.
He was more gay than I.  All the way he talked to me of you: how kind
you were! how good you had been to him!  'You do not speak of
yourself!' I said.  'Have you no friends, nothing to say?  Sometimes
an accident will happen!'  'Oh!' he answered, 'there is no danger;
but if by any chance--well, there is a letter in my pocket.'  'And if
you should kill him?' I said.  'But I shall not,' he answered slyly:
'do you think I am going to fire at him?  No, no; he is too young.'
'But,' I said, 'I--'I am not going to stand that!'  'Yes,' he
replied, 'I owe him a shot; but there is no danger--not the least
danger.'  We had arrived; already they were there.  Ah bah!  You know
the preliminaries, the politeness--this duelling, you know, it is
absurd, after all.  We placed them at twenty paces.  It is not a bad
place.  There are pine-trees round, and rocks; at that hour it was
cool and grey as a church.  I handed him the pistol.  How can I
describe him to you, standing there, smoothing the barrel with his
fingers!  'What a beautiful thing a good pistol!' he said.  'Only a
fool or a madman throws away his life,' I said.  'Certainly,' he
replied, 'certainly; but there is no danger,' and he regarded me,
raising his moustachette.

"There they stood then, back to back, with the mouths of their
pistols to the sky.  'Un!' I cried, 'deux! tirez!' They turned, I
saw the smoke of his shot go straight up like a prayer; his pistol
dropped.  I ran to him.  He looked surprised, put out his hand, and
fell into my arms.  He was dead.  Those fools came running up.  'What
is it?' cried one.  I made him a bow.  'As you see,' I said; 'you
have made a pretty shot.  My friend fired in the air.  Messieurs, you
had better breakfast in Italy.'  We carried him to the carriage, and
covered him with a rug; the others drove for the frontier.  I brought
him to his room.  Here is his letter."  Jules stopped; tears were
running down his face.  "He is dead; I have closed his eyes.  Look
here, you know, we are all of us cads--it is the rule; but this--
this, perhaps, was the exception."  And without another word he
rushed away....

Outside the old fellow's lodging a dismounted cocher was standing
disconsolate in the sun. "How was I to know they were going to fight
a duel?" he burst out on seeing me.  "He had white hair--I call you
to witness he had white hair.  This is bad for me: they will ravish
my licence.  Aha! you will see--this is bad for me!"  I gave him the
slip and found my way upstairs.  The old fellow was alone, lying on
the bed, his feet covered with a rug as if he might feel cold; his
eyes were closed, but in this sleep of death, he still had that air
of faint surprise.  At full length, watching the bed intently, Freda
lay, as she lay nightly when he was really asleep.  The shutters were
half open; the room still smelt slightly of rum.  I stood for a long
time looking at the face: the little white fans of moustache brushed
upwards even in death, the hollows in his cheeks, the quiet of his
figure; he was like some old knight....  The dog broke the spell.
She sat up, and resting her paws on the bed, licked his face.  I went
downstairs--I couldn't bear to hear her howl.  This was his letter to
me, written in a pointed handwriting:

"MY DEAR SIR,--Should you read this, I shall be gone.  I am ashamed
to trouble you--a man should surely manage so as not to give trouble;
and yet I believe you will not consider me importunate.  If, then,
you will pick up the pieces of an old fellow, I ask you to have my
sword, the letter enclosed in this, and the photograph that stands on
the stove buried with me.  My will and the acknowledgments of my
property are between the leaves of the Byron in my tin chest; they
should go to Lucy Tor--address thereon.  Perhaps you will do me the
honour to retain for yourself any of my books that may give you
pleasure.  In the Pilgrim's Progress you will find some excellent
recipes for Turkish coffee, Italian and Spanish dishes, and washing
wounds.  The landlady's daughter speaks Italian, and she would, I
know, like to have Freda; the poor dog will miss me.  I have read of
old Indian warriors taking their horses and dogs with them to the
happy hunting-grounds.  Freda would come--noble animals are dogs! She
eats once a day--a good large meal--and requires much salt.  If you
have animals of your own, sir, don't forget--all animals require
salt.  I have no debts, thank God!  The money in my pockets would
bury me decently--not that there is any danger.  And I am ashamed to
weary you with details--the least a man can do is not to make a fuss-
-and yet he must be found ready.--Sir, with profound gratitude, your
servant,

"ROGER BRUNE."


Everything was as he had said.  The photograph on the stove was that
of a young girl of nineteen or twenty, dressed in an old-fashioned
style, with hair gathered backward in a knot.  The eyes gazed at you
with a little frown, the lips were tightly closed; the expression of
the face was eager, quick, wilful, and, above all, young.

The tin trunk was scented with dry fragments of some herb, the
history of which in that trunk man knoweth not....  There were a few
clothes, but very few, all older than those he usually wore.  Besides
the Byron and Pilgrim's Progress were Scott's Quentin Durward,
Captain Marryat's Midshipman Easy, a pocket Testament, and a long and
frightfully stiff book on the art of fortifying towns, much thumbed,
and bearing date 1863.  By far the most interesting thing I found,
however, was a diary, kept down to the preceding Christmas.  It was a
pathetic document, full of calculations of the price of meals;
resolutions to be careful over this or that; doubts whether he must
not give up smoking; sentences of fear that Freda had not enough to
eat.  It appeared that he had tried to live on ninety pounds a year,
and send the other hundred pounds home to Lucy for the child; in this
struggle he was always failing, having to send less than the amount-
the entries showed that this was a nightmare to him.  The last words,
written on Christmas Day, were these "What is the use of writing
this, since it records nothing but failure!"

The landlady's daughter and myself were at the funeral.  The same
afternoon I went into the concert-room, where I had spoken to him
first.  When I came out Freda was lying at the entrance, looking into
the faces of every one that passed, and sniffing idly at their heels.
Close by the landlady's daughter hovered, a biscuit in her hand, and
a puzzled, sorry look on her face.

September 1900.






TO

MY BROTHER

HUBERT GALSWORTHY




SALVATION OF A FORSYTE




I

Swithin Forsyte lay in bed.  The corners of his mouth under his white
moustache drooped towards his double chin.  He panted:

"My doctor says I'm in a bad way, James."

His twin-brother placed his hand behind his ear.  "I can't hear you.
They tell me I ought to take a cure.  There's always a cure wanted
for something.  Emily had a cure."

Swithin replied: "You mumble so.  I hear my man, Adolph.  I trained
him....  You ought to have an ear-trumpet.  You're getting very
shaky, James."

There was silence; then James Forsyte, as if galvanised, remarked: "I
s'pose you've made your will.  I s'pose you've left your money to the
family; you've nobody else to leave it to.  There was Danson died the
other day, and left his money to a hospital"

The hairs of Swithin's white moustache bristled.  "My fool of a
doctor told me to make my will," he said, "I hate a fellow who tells
you to make your will.  My appetite's good; I ate a partridge last
night.  I'm all the better for eating.  He told me to leave off
champagne!  I eat a good breakfast.  I'm not eighty.  You're the same
age, James.  You look very shaky."

James Forsyte said: "You ought to have another opinion.  Have Blank;
he's the first man now.  I had him for Emily; cost me two hundred
guineas.  He sent her to Homburg; that's the first place now.  The
Prince was there--everybody goes there."

Swithin Forsyte answered: "I don't get any sleep at night, now I
can't get out; and I've bought a new carriage--gave a pot of money
for it.  D' you ever have bronchitis?  They tell me champagne's
dangerous; it's my belief I couldn't take a better thing."

James Forsyte rose.

"You ought to have another opinion.  Emily sent her love; she would
have come in, but she had to go to Niagara.  Everybody goes there;
it's the place now.  Rachel goes every morning: she overdoes it--
she'll be laid up one of these days.  There's a fancy ball there to-
night; the Duke gives the prizes."

Swithin Forsyte said angrily: "I can't get things properly cooked
here; at the club I get spinach decently done."  The bed-clothes
jerked at the tremor of his legs.

James Forsyte replied: "You must have done well with Tintos; you must
have made a lot of money by them.  Your ground-rents must be falling
in, too.  You must have any amount you don't know what to do with."
He mouthed the words, as if his lips were watering.

Swithin Forsyte glared.  "Money!" he said; "my doctor's bill's
enormous."

James Forsyte stretched out a cold, damp hand "Goodbye! You ought to
have another opinion.  I can't keep the horses waiting: they're a new
pair--stood me in three hundred.  You ought to take care of yourself.
I shall speak to Blank about you.  You ought to have him--everybody
says he's the first man.  Good-bye!"

Swithin Forsyte continued to stare at the ceiling.  He thought: 'A
poor thing, James! a selfish beggar!  Must be worth a couple of
hundred thousand!'  He wheezed, meditating on life....

He was ill and lonely.  For many years he had been lonely, and for
two years ill; but as he had smoked his first cigar, so he would live
his life-stoutly, to its predestined end.  Every day he was driven to
the club; sitting forward on the spring cushions of a single
brougham, his hands on his knees, swaying a little, strangely solemn.
He ascended the steps into that marble hall--the folds of his chin
wedged into the aperture of his collar--walking squarely with a
stick.  Later he would dine, eating majestically, and savouring his
food, behind a bottle of champagne set in an ice-pail--his waistcoat
defended by a napkin, his eyes rolling a little or glued in a stare
on the waiter.  Never did he suffer his head or back to droop, for it
was not distinguished so to do.

Because he was old and deaf, he spoke to no one; and no one spoke to
him.  The club gossip, an Irishman, said to each newcomer: "Old
Forsyte!  Look at 'um!  Must ha' had something in his life to sour
'um!"  But Swithin had had nothing in his life to sour him.

For many days now he had lain in bed in a room exuding silver,
crimson, and electric light, smelling of opopanax and of cigars.  The
curtains were drawn, the firelight gleamed; on a table by his bed
were a jug of barley-water and the Times.  He made an attempt to
read, failed, and fell again to thinking.  His face with its square
chin, looked like a block of pale leather bedded in the pillow.  It
was lonely!  A woman in the room would have made all the difference!
Why had he never married?  He breathed hard, staring froglike at the
ceiling; a memory had come into his mind.  It was a long time ago--
forty odd years--but it seemed like yesterday....

It happened when he was thirty-eight, for the first and only time in
his life travelling on the Continent, with his twin-brother James and
a man named Traquair.  On the way from Germany to Venice, he had
found himself at the Hotel Goldene Alp at Salzburg.  It was late
August, and weather for the gods: sunshine on the walls and the
shadows of the vine-leaves, and at night, the moonlight, and again on
the walls the shadows of the vine-leaves.  Averse to the suggestions
of other people, Swithin had refused to visit the Citadel; he had
spent the day alone in the window of his bedroom, smoking a
succession of cigars, and disparaging the appearance of the passers-
by.  After dinner he was driven by boredom into the streets.  His
chest puffed out like a pigeon's, and with something of a pigeon's
cold and inquiring eye, he strutted, annoyed at the frequency of
uniforms, which seemed to him both needless and offensive.  His
spleen rose at this crowd of foreigners, who spoke an unintelligible
language, wore hair on their faces, and smoked bad tobacco.  'A queer
lot!' he thought.  The sound of music from a cafe attracted him; he
walked in, vaguely moved by a wish for the distinction of adventure,
without the trouble which adventure usually brought with it; spurred
too, perhaps, by an after-dinner demon.  The cafe was the bier-halle
of the 'Fifties, with a door at either end, and lighted by a large
wooden lantern.  On a small dais three musicians were fiddling.
Solitary men, or groups, sat at some dozen tables, and the waiters
hurried about replenishing glasses; the air was thick with smoke.
Swithin sat down.  "Wine!" he said sternly.  The astonished waiter
brought him wine.  Swithin pointed to a beer glass on the table.
"Here!" he said, with the same ferocity.  The waiter poured out the
wine.  'Ah!' thought Swithin, 'they can understand if they like.'  A
group of officers close by were laughing; Swithin stared at them
uneasily.  A hollow cough sounded almost in his ear.  To his left a
man sat reading, with his elbows on the corners of a journal, and his
gaunt shoulders raised almost to his eyes.  He had a thin, long nose,
broadening suddenly at the nostrils; a black-brown beard, spread in a
savage fan over his chest; what was visible of the face was the
colour of old parchment.  A strange, wild, haughty-looking creature!
Swithin observed his clothes with some displeasure--they were the
clothes of a journalist or strolling actor.  And yet he was
impressed.  This was singular.  How could he be impressed by a fellow
in such clothes!  The man reached out a hand, covered with black
hairs, and took up a tumbler that contained a dark-coloured fluid.
'Brandy!' thought Swithin.  The crash of a falling chair startled
him--his neighbour had risen.  He was of immense height, and very
thin; his great beard seemed to splash away from his mouth; he was
glaring at the group of officers, and speaking.  Swithin made out two
words: "Hunde! Deutsche Hunde!" 'Hounds! Dutch hounds!' he thought:
'Rather strong!'  One of the officers had jumped up, and now drew his
sword.  The tall man swung his chair up, and brought it down with a
thud.  Everybody round started up and closed on him.  The tall man
cried out, "To me, Magyars!"

Swithin grinned.  The tall man fighting such odds excited his
unwilling admiration; he had a momentary impulse to go to his
assistance.  'Only get a broken nose!' he thought, and looked for a
safe corner.  But at that moment a thrown lemon struck him on the
jaw.  He jumped out of his chair and rushed at the officers.  The
Hungarian, swinging his chair, threw him a look of gratitude--Swithin
glowed with momentary admiration of himself.  A sword blade grazed
his--arm; he felt a sudden dislike of the Hungarian.  'This is too
much,' he thought, and, catching up a chair, flung it at the wooden
lantern.  There was a crash--faces and swords vanished.  He struck a
match, and by the light of it bolted for the door.  A second later he
was in the street.




II

A voice said in English, "God bless you, brother!"

Swithin looked round, and saw the tall Hungarian holding out his
hand.  He took it, thinking, 'What a fool I've been!'  There was
something in the Hungarian's gesture which said, "You are worthy of
me!"

It was annoying, but rather impressive.  The man seemed even taller
than before; there was a cut on his cheek, the blood from which was
trickling down his beard.  "You English!" he said.  "I saw you stone
Haynau--I saw you cheer Kossuth.  The free blood of your people cries
out to us."  He looked at Swithin.  "You are a big man, you have a
big soul--and strong, how you flung them down! Ha!"  Swithin had an
impulse to take to his heels.  "My name," said the Hungarian, "is
Boleskey.  You are my friend."  His English was good.

'Bulsh-kai-ee, Burlsh-kai-ee,' thought Swithin; 'what a devil of a
name!'  "Mine," he said sulkily, "is Forsyte."

The Hungarian repeated it.

"You've had a nasty jab on the cheek," said Swithin; the sight of the
matted beard was making him feel sick.  The Hungarian put his fingers
to his cheek, brought them away wet, stared at them, then with an
indifferent air gathered a wisp of his beard and crammed it against
the cut.

"Ugh!" said Swithin.  "Here! Take my handkerchief!"

The Hungarian bowed.  "Thank you!" he said; "I couldn't think of it!
Thank you a thousand times!"

"Take it!" growled Swithin; it seemed to him suddenly of the first
importance.  He thrust the handkerchief into the Hungarian's hand,
and felt a pain in his arm.  'There!' he thought, 'I've strained a
muscle.'

The Hungarian kept muttering, regardless of passers-by, "Swine! How
you threw them over!  Two or three cracked heads, anyway--the
cowardly swine!"

"Look here!" said Swithin suddenly; "which is my way to the Goldene
Alp?"

The Hungarian replied, "But you are coming with me, for a glass of
wine?"

Swithin looked at the ground.  'Not if I know it!' he thought.

"Ah!" said the Hungarian with dignity, "you do not wish for my
friendship!"

'Touchy beggar!' thought Swithin.  "Of course," he stammered, "if you
put it in that way--"

The Hungarian bowed, murmuring, "Forgive me!"

They had not gone a dozen steps before a youth, with a beardless face
and hollow cheeks, accosted them.  "For the love of Christ,
gentlemen," he said, "help me!"

"Are you a German?" asked Boleskey.

"Yes," said the youth.

"Then you may rot!"

"Master, look here!" Tearing open his coat, the youth displayed his
skin, and a leather belt drawn tight round it.  Again Swithin felt
that desire to take to his heels.  He was filled with horrid
forebodings--a sense of perpending intimacy with things such as no
gentleman had dealings with.

The Hungarian crossed himself.  "Brother," he said to the youth,
"come you in!"

Swithin looked at them askance, and followed.  By a dim light they
groped their way up some stairs into a large room, into which the
moon was shining through a window bulging over the street.  A lamp
burned low; there was a smell of spirits and tobacco, with a faint,
peculiar scent, as of rose leaves.  In one corner stood a czymbal, in
another a great pile of newspapers.  On the wall hung some old-
fashioned pistols, and a rosary of yellow beads.  Everything was
tidily arranged, but dusty.  Near an open fireplace was a table with
the remains of a meal.  The ceiling, floor, and walls were all of
dark wood.  In spite of the strange disharmony, the room had a sort
of refinement.  The Hungarian took a bottle out of a cupboard and,
filling some glasses, handed one to Swithin.  Swithin put it gingerly
to his nose.  'You never know your luck! Come!' he thought, tilting
it slowly into his mouth.  It was thick, too sweet, but of a fine
flavour.

"Brothers!" said the Hungarian, refilling, "your healths!"

The youth tossed off his wine.  And Swithin this time did the same;
he pitied this poor devil of a youth now.  "Come round to-morrow!" he
said, "I'll give you a shirt or two."  When the youth was gone,
however, he remembered with relief that he had not given his address.

'Better so,' he reflected.  'A humbug, no doubt.'

"What was that you said to him?" he asked of the Hungarian.

"I said," answered Boleskey, "'You have eaten and drunk; and now you
are my enemy!'"

"Quite right!" said Swithin, "quite right! A beggar is every man's
enemy."

"You do not understand," the Hungarian replied politely.  "While he
was a beggar--I, too, have had to beg" (Swithin thought, 'Good God!
this is awful!'), "but now that he is no longer hungry, what is he
but a German?  No Austrian dog soils my floors!"

His nostrils, as it seemed to Swithin, had distended in an unpleasant
fashion; and a wholly unnecessary raucousness invaded his voice.  "I
am an exile--all of my blood are exiles.  Those Godless dogs!"
Swithin hurriedly assented.

As he spoke, a face peeped in at the door.

"Rozsi!" said the Hungarian.  A young girl came in.  She was rather
short, with a deliciously round figure and a thick plait of hair.
She smiled, and showed her even teeth; her little, bright, wide-set
grey eyes glanced from one man to the other.  Her face was round,
too, high in the cheekbones, the colour of wild roses, with brows
that had a twist-up at the corners.  With a gesture of alarm, she put
her hand to her cheek, and called, "Margit!"  An older girl appeared,
taller, with fine shoulders, large eyes, a pretty mouth, and what
Swithin described to himself afterwards as a "pudding" nose.  Both
girls, with little cooing sounds, began attending to their father's
face.

Swithin turned his back to them.  His arm pained him.

'This is what comes of interfering,' he thought sulkily; 'I might
have had my neck broken!' Suddenly a soft palm was placed in his, two
eyes, half-fascinated, half-shy, looked at him; then a voice called,
"Rozsi!" the door was slammed, he was alone again with the Hungarian,
harassed by a sense of soft disturbance.

"Your daughter's name is Rosy?" he said; "we have it in England--from
rose, a flower."

"Rozsi (Rozgi)," the Hungarian replied; "your English is a hard
tongue, harder than French, German, or Czechish, harder than Russian,
or Roumanian--I know no more."

"What?" said Swithin, "six languages?"  Privately he thought, 'He
knows how to lie, anyway.'

"If you lived in a country like mine," muttered the Hungarian, "with
all men's hands against you!  A free people--dying--but not dead!"

Swithin could not imagine what he was talking of.  This man's face,
with its linen bandage, gloomy eyes, and great black wisps of beard,
his fierce mutterings, and hollow cough, were all most unpleasant.
He seemed to be suffering from some kind of mental dog-bite.  His
emotion indeed appeared so indecent, so uncontrolled and open, that
its obvious sincerity produced a sort of awe in Swithin.  It was like
being forced to look into a furnace.  Boleskey stopped roaming up and
down.  "You think it's over?" he said; "I tell you, in the breast of
each one of us Magyars there is a hell.  What is sweeter than life?
What is more sacred than each breath we draw?  Ah! my country!"
These words were uttered so slowly, with such intense mournfulness,
that Swithin's jaw relaxed; he converted the movement to a yawn.

"Tell me," said Boleskey, "what would you do if the French conquered
you?"

Swithin smiled.  Then suddenly, as though something had hurt him, he
grunted, "The 'Froggies'?  Let 'em try!"

"Drink!" said Boleskey--"there is nothing like it"; he filled
Swithin's glass.  "I will tell you my story."

Swithin rose hurriedly.  "It's late," he said.  "This is good stuff,
though; have you much of it?"

"It is the last bottle."

"What?" said Swithin; "and you gave it to a beggar?"

"My name is Boleskey--Stefan," the Hungarian said, raising his head;
"of the Komorn Boleskeys."  The simplicity of this phrase--as who
shall say: What need of further description?--made an impression on
Swithin; he stopped to listen.  Boleskey's story went on and on.
"There were many abuses," boomed his deep voice, "much wrong done--
much cowardice.  I could see clouds gathering--rolling over our
plains.  The Austrian wished to strangle the breath of our mouths--to
take from us the shadow of our liberty--the shadow--all we had.  Two
years ago--the year of '48, when every man and boy answered the great
voice--brother, a dog's life!--to use a pen when all of your blood
are fighting, but it was decreed for me!  My son was killed; my
brothers taken--and myself was thrown out like a dog--I had written
out my heart, I had written out all the blood that was in my body!"
He seemed to tower, a gaunt shadow of a man, with gloomy, flickering
eyes staring at the wall.

Swithin rose, and stammered, "Much obliged--very interesting."
Boleskey made no effort to detain him, but continued staring at the
wall.  "Good-night!" said Swithin, and stamped heavily downstairs.




III

When at last Swithin reached the Goldene Alp, he found his brother
and friend standing uneasily at the door.  Traquair, a prematurely
dried-up man, with whiskers and a Scotch accent, remarked, "Ye're
airly, man!"  Swithin growled something unintelligible, and swung up
to bed.  He discovered a slight cut on his arm.  He was in a savage
temper--the elements had conspired to show him things he did not want
to see; yet now and then a memory of Rozsi, of her soft palm in his,
a sense of having been stroked and flattered, came over him.  During
breakfast next morning his brother and Traquair announced their
intention of moving on.  James Forsyte, indeed, remarked that it was
no place for a "collector," since all the "old" shops were in the
hands of Jews or very grasping persons--he had discovered this at
once.  Swithin pushed his cup aside.  "You may do what you like," he
said, "I'm staying here."

James Forsyte replied, tumbling over his own words: "Why! what do you
want to stay here for?  There's nothing for you to do here--there's
nothing to see here, unless you go up the Citadel, an' you won't do
that."

Swithin growled, "Who says so?"  Having gratified his perversity, he
felt in a better temper.  He had slung his arm in a silk sash, and
accounted for it by saying he had slipped.  Later he went out and
walked on to the bridge.  In the brilliant sunshine spires were
glistening against the pearly background of the hills; the town had a
clean, joyous air.  Swithin glanced at the Citadel and thought,
'Looks a strong place! Shouldn't wonder if it were impregnable!'  And
this for some occult reason gave him pleasure.  It occurred to him
suddenly to go and look for the Hungarian's house.

About noon, after a hunt of two hours, he was gazing about him
blankly, pale with heat, but more obstinate than ever, when a voice
above him called, "Mister!" He looked up and saw Rozsi.  She was
leaning her round chin on her round hand, gazing down at him with her
deepset, clever eyes.  When Swithin removed his hat, she clapped her
hands.  Again he had the sense of being admired, caressed.  With a
careless air, that sat grotesquely on his tall square person, he
walked up to the door; both girls stood in the passage.  Swithin felt
a confused desire to speak in some foreign tongue.  "Maam'selles," he
began, "er--bong jour-er, your father--pare, comment?"

"We also speak English," said the elder girl; "will you come in,
please?"

Swithin swallowed a misgiving, and entered.  The room had a worn
appearance by daylight, as if it had always been the nest of tragic
or vivid lives.  He sat down, and his eyes said: "I am a stranger,
but don't try to get the better of me, please--that is impossible."
The girls looked at him in silence.  Rozsi wore a rather short skirt
of black stuff, a white shirt, and across her shoulders an
embroidered yoke; her sister was dressed in dark green, with a coral
necklace; both girls had their hair in plaits.  After a minute Rozsi
touched the sleeve of his hurt arm.

"It's nothing!" muttered Swithin.

"Father fought with a chair, but you had no chair," she said in a
wondering voice.

He doubled the fist of his sound arm and struck a blow at space.  To
his amazement she began to laugh.  Nettled at this, he put his hand
beneath the heavy table and lifted it.  Rozsi clapped her hands.  "Ah
I now I see--how strong you are!"  She made him a curtsey and whisked
round to the window.  He found the quick intelligence of her eyes
confusing; sometimes they seemed to look beyond him at something
invisible--this, too, confused him.  From Margit he learned that they
had been two years in England, where their father had made his living
by teaching languages; they had now been a year in Salzburg.

"We wait," suddenly said.  Rozsi; and Margit, with a solemn face,
repeated, "We wait."

Swithin's eyes swelled a little with his desire to see what they were
waiting for.  How queer they were, with their eyes that gazed beyond
him!  He looked at their figures.  'She would pay for dressing,' he
thought, and he tried to imagine Rozsi in a skirt with proper
flounces, a thin waist, and hair drawn back over her ears.  She would
pay for dressing, with that supple figure, fluffy hair, and little
hands!  And instantly his own hands, face, and clothes disturbed him.
He got up, examined the pistols on the wall, and felt resentment at
the faded, dusty room.  'Smells like a pot-house!' he thought.  He
sat down again close to Rozsi.

"Do you love to dance?" she asked; "to dance is to live.  First you
hear the music--how your feet itch!  It is wonderful!  You begin
slow, quick--quicker; you fly--you know nothing--your feet are in the
air.  It is wonderful!"

A slow flush had mounted into Swithin's face.

"Ah!" continued Rozsi, her eyes fixed on him, "when I am dancing--out
there I see the plains--your feet go one--two--three--quick, quick,
quick, quicker--you fly."

She stretched herself, a shiver seemed to pass all down her.
"Margit! dance!" and, to Swithin's consternation, the two girls--
their hands on each other's shoulders--began shuffling their feet and
swaying to and fro.  Their heads were thrown back, their eyes half-
closed; suddenly the step quickened, they swung to one side, then to
the other, and began whirling round in front of him.  The sudden
fragrance of rose leaves enveloped him.  Round they flew again.
While they were still dancing, Boleskey came into the room.  He
caught Swithin by both hands.

"Brother, welcome! Ah! your arm is hurt! I do not forget."  His
yellow face and deep-set eyes expressed a dignified gratitude.  "Let
me introduce to you my friend Baron Kasteliz."

Swithin bowed to a man with a small forehead, who had appeared
softly, and stood with his gloved hands touching his waist.  Swithin
conceived a sudden aversion for this catlike man.  About Boleskey
there was that which made contempt impossible--the sense of
comradeship begotten in the fight; the man's height; something lofty
and savage in his face; and an obscure instinct that it would not pay
to show distaste; but this Kasteliz, with his neat jaw, low brow, and
velvety, volcanic look, excited his proper English animosity.  "Your
friends are mine," murmured Kasteliz.  He spoke with suavity, and
hissed his s's.  A long, vibrating twang quavered through the room.
Swithin turned and saw Rozsi sitting at the czymbal; the notes rang
under the little hammers in her hands, incessant, metallic, rising
and falling with that strange melody.  Kasteliz had fixed his glowing
eyes on her; Boleskey, nodding his head, was staring at the floor;
Margit, with a pale face, stood like a statue.

'What can they see in it?' thought Swithin; 'it's not a tune.'  He
took up his hat.  Rozsi saw him and stopped; her lips had parted with
a faintly dismayed expression.  His sense of personal injury
diminished; he even felt a little sorry for her.  She jumped up from
her seat and twirled round with a pout.  An inspiration seized on
Swithin.  "Come and dine with me," he said to Boleskey, "to-morrow--
the Goldene Alp--bring your friend."  He felt the eyes of the whole
room on him--the Hungarian's fine eyes; Margit's wide glance; the
narrow, hot gaze of Kasteliz; and lastly--Rozsi's.  A glow of
satisfaction ran down his spine.  When he emerged into the street
he thought gloomily, 'Now I've done it!' And not for some paces did
he look round; then, with a forced smile, turned and removed his hat
to the faces at the window.

Notwithstanding this moment of gloom, however, he was in an exalted
state all day, and at dinner kept looking at his brother and Traquair
enigmatically.  'What do they know of life?' he thought; 'they might
be here a year and get no farther.'  He made jokes, and pinned the
menu to the waiter's coat-tails.  "I like this place," he said, "I
shall spend three weeks here."  James, whose lips were on the point
of taking in a plum, looked at him uneasily.




IV

On the day of the dinner Swithin suffered a good deal.  He reflected
gloomily on Boleskey's clothes.  He had fixed an early hour--there
would be fewer people to see them.  When the time approached he
attired himself with a certain neat splendour, and though his arm was
still sore, left off the sling....

Nearly three hours afterwards he left the Goldene Alp between his
guests.  It was sunset, and along the riverbank the houses stood out,
unsoftened by the dusk; the streets were full of people hurrying
home.  Swithin had a hazy vision of empty bottles, of the ground
before his feet, and the accessibility of all the world.  Dim
recollections of the good things he had said, of his brother and
Traquair seated in the background eating ordinary meals with
inquiring, acid visages, caused perpetual smiles to break out on his
face, and he steered himself stubbornly, to prove that he was a
better man than either' of his guests.  He knew, vaguely, that he was
going somewhere with an object; Rozsi's face kept dancing before him,
like a promise.  Once or twice he gave Kasteliz a glassy stare.
Towards Boleskey, on the other hand, he felt quite warm, and recalled
with admiration the way he had set his glass down empty, time after
time.  'I like to see him take his liquor,' he thought; 'the fellow's
a gentleman, after all.'  Boleskey strode on, savagely inattentive to
everything; and Kasteliz had become more like a cat than ever.  It
was nearly dark when they reached a narrow street close to the
cathedral.  They stopped at a door held open by an old woman.  The
change from the fresh air to a heated corridor, the noise of the door
closed behind him, the old woman's anxious glances, sobered Swithin.

"I tell her," said Boleskey, "that I reply for you as for my son."

Swithin was angry.  What business had this man to reply for him!

They passed into a large room, crowded with men all women; Swithin
noticed that they all looked fit him.  He stared at them in turn--
they seemed of all classes, some in black coats or silk dresses,
others in the clothes of work-people; one man, a cobbler, still wore
his leather apron, as if he had rushed there straight from his work.
Laying his hand on Swithin's arm, Boleskey evidently began explaining
who he was; hands were extended, people beyond reach bowed to him.
Swithin acknowledged the greetings with a stiff motion of his head;
then seeing other people dropping into seats, he, too, sat down.
Some one whispered his name--Margit and Rozsi were just behind him.

"Welcome!" said Margit; but Swithin was looking at Rozsi.  Her face
was so alive and quivering!  'What's the excitement all about?' he
thought.  'How pretty she looks!'  She blushed, drew in her hands
with a quick tense movement, and gazed again beyond him into the
room.  'What is it?' thought Swithin; he had a longing to lean back
and kiss her lips.  He tried angrily to see what she was seeing in
those faces turned all one way.

Boleskey rose to speak.  No one moved; not a sound could be heard but
the tone of his deep voice.  On and on he went, fierce and solemn,
and with the rise of his voice, all those faces-fair or swarthy--
seemed to be glowing with one and the same feeling.  Swithin felt the
white heat in those faces--it was not decent!  In that whole speech
he only understood the one word--"Magyar" which came again and again.
He almost dozed off at last.  The twang of a czymbal woke him.
'What?' he thought, 'more of that infernal music!' Margit, leaning
over him, whispered: "Listen! Racoczy! It is forbidden!" Swithin saw
that Rozsi was no longer in her seat; it was she who was striking
those forbidden notes.  He looked round--everywhere the same unmoving
faces, the same entrancement, and fierce stillness.  The music
sounded muffled, as if it, too, were bursting its heart in silence.
Swithin felt within him a touch of panic.  Was this a den of tigers?
The way these people listened, the ferocity of their stillness, was
frightful...!  He gripped his chair and broke into a perspiration;
was there no chance to get away?  'When it stops,' he thought,
'there'll be a rush!'  But there was only a greater silence.  It
flashed across him that any hostile person coming in then would be
torn to pieces.  A woman sobbed.  The whole thing was beyond words
unpleasant.  He rose, and edged his way furtively towards the
doorway.  There was a cry of "Police!"  The whole crowd came pressing
after him.  Swithin would soon have been out, but a little behind he
caught sight of Rozsi swept off her feet.  Her frightened eyes
angered him.  'She doesn't deserve it,' he thought sulkily; 'letting
all this loose!' and forced his way back to her.  She clung to him,
and a fever went stealing through his veins; he butted forward at the
crowd, holding her tight.  When they were outside he let her go.

"I was afraid," she said.

"Afraid!" muttered Swithin; "I should think so."  No longer touching
her, he felt his grievance revive.

"But you are so strong," she murmured.

"This is no place for you," growled Swithin, "I'm going to see you
home."

"Oh!" cried Rozsi; "but papa and--Margit!"

"That's their look-out!" and he hurried her away.

She slid her hand under his arm; the soft curves of her form brushed
him gently, each touch only augmented his ill-humour.  He burned with
a perverse rage, as if all the passions in him were simmering and
ready to boil over; it was as if a poison were trying to work its way
out of him, through the layers of his stolid flesh.  He maintained a
dogged silence; Rozsi, too, said nothing, but when they reached the
door, she drew her hand away.

"You are angry!" she said.

"Angry," muttered Swithin; "no! How d'you make that out?"  He had a
torturing desire to kiss her.

"Yes, you are angry," she repeated; "I wait here for papa and
Margit."

Swithin also waited, wedged against the wall.  Once or twice, for his
sight was sharp, he saw her steal a look at him, a beseeching look,
and hardened his heart with a kind of pleasure.  After five minutes
Boleskey, Margit, and Kasteliz appeared.  Seeing Rozsi they broke
into exclamations of relief, and Kasteliz, with a glance at Swithin,
put his lips to her hand.  Rozsi's look said, "Wouldn't you like to
do that?"  Swithin turned short on his heel, and walked away.




V

All night he hardly slept, suffering from fever, for the first time
in his life.  Once he jumped out of bed, lighted a candle, and going
to the glass, scrutinised himself long and anxiously.  After this he
fell asleep, but had frightful dreams.  His first thought when he
woke was, 'My liver's out of order!' and, thrusting his head into
cold water, he dressed hastily and went out.  He soon left the house
behind.  Dew covered everything; blackbirds whistled in the bushes;
the air was fresh and sweet.  He had not been up so early since he
was a boy.  Why was he walking through a damp wood at this hour of
the morning?  Something intolerable and unfamiliar must have sent him
out.  No fellow in his senses would do such a thing!  He came to a
dead stop, and began unsteadily to walk back.  Regaining the hotel,
he went to bed again, and dreamed that in some wild country he was
living in a room full of insects, where a housemaid--Rozsi--holding a
broom, looked at him with mournful eyes.  There seemed an unexplained
need for immediate departure; he begged her to forward his things;
and shake them out carefully before she put them into the trunk.  He
understood that the charge for sending would be twenty-two shillings,
thought it a great deal, and had the horrors of indecision.  "No," he
muttered, "pack, and take them myself."  The housemaid turned
suddenly into a lean creature; and he awoke with a sore feeling in
his heart.

His eye fell on his wet boots.  The whole thing was scaring, and
jumping up, he began to throw his clothes into his trunks.  It was
twelve o'clock before he went down, and found his brother and
Traquair still at the table arranging an itinerary; he surprised them
by saying that he too was coming; and without further explanation set
to work to eat.  James had heard that there were salt-mines in the
neighbourhood--his proposal was to start, and halt an hour or so on
the road for their inspection; he said: "Everybody'll ask you if
you've seen the salt-mines: I shouldn't like to say I hadn't seen the
salt-mines.  What's the good, they'd say, of your going there if you
haven't seen the salt-mines?"  He wondered, too, if they need fee the
second waiter--an idle chap!

A discussion followed; but Swithin ate on glumly, conscious that his
mind was set on larger affairs.  Suddenly on the far side of the
street Rozsi and her sister passed, with little baskets on their
arms.  He started up, and at that moment Rozsi looked round--her face
was the incarnation of enticement, the chin tilted, the lower lip
thrust a little forward, her round neck curving back over her
shoulder.  Swithin muttered, "Make your own arrangements--leave me
out!" and hurried from the room, leaving James beside himself with
interest and alarm.

When he reached the street, however, the girls had disappeared.  He
hailed a carriage.  "Drive!" he called to the man, with a flourish of
his stick, and as soon as the wheels had begun to clatter on the
stones he leaned back, looking sharply to right and left.  He soon
had to give up thought of finding them, but made the coachman turn
round and round again.  All day he drove about, far into the country,
and kept urging the driver to use greater speed.  He was in a strange
state of hurry and elation.  Finally, he dined at a little country
inn; and this gave the measure of his disturbance--the dinner was
atrocious.

Returning late in the evening he found a note written by Traquair.
"Are you in your senses, man?" it asked; "we have no more time to
waste idling about here.  If you want to rejoin us, come on to
Danielli's Hotel, Venice."  Swithin chuckled when he read it, and
feeling frightfully tired, went to bed and slept like a log.




VI

Three weeks later he was still in Salzburg, no longer at the Goldene
Alp, but in rooms over a shop near the Boleskeys'.  He had spent a
small fortune in the purchase of flowers.  Margit would croon over
them, but Rozsi, with a sober "Many tanks!" as if they were her
right, would look long at herself in the glass, and pin one into her
hair.  Swithin ceased to wonder; he ceased to wonder at anything they
did.  One evening he found Boleskey deep in conversation with a pale,
dishevelled-looking person.

"Our friend Mr. Forsyte--Count D....," said Boleskey.

Swithin experienced a faint, unavoidable emotion; but looking at the
Count's trousers, he thought: 'Doesn't look much like one!'  And with
an ironic bow to the silent girls, he turned, and took his hat.  But
when he had reached the bottom of the dark stairs he heard footsteps.
Rozsi came running down, looked out at the door, and put her hands up
to her breast as if disappointed; suddenly with a quick glance round
she saw him.  Swithin caught her arm.  She slipped away, and her face
seemed to bubble with defiance or laughter; she ran up three steps,
stopped, looked at him across her shoulder, and fled on up the
stairs.  Swithin went out bewildered and annoyed.

'What was she going to say to me?' he kept thinking.  During these
three weeks he had asked himself all sorts of questions: whether he
were being made a fool of; whether she were in love with him; what he
was doing there, and sometimes at night, with all his candles burning
as if he wanted light, the breeze blowing on him through the window,
his cigar, half-smoked, in his hand, he sat, an hour or more, staring
at the wall.  'Enough of this!' he thought every morning.  Twice he
packed fully--once he ordered his travelling carriage, but
countermanded it the following day.  What definitely he hoped,
intended, resolved, he could not have said.  He was always thinking
of Rozsi, he could not read the riddle in her face--she held him in a
vice, notwithstanding that everything about her threatened the very
fetishes of his existence.  And Boleskey!  Whenever he looked at him
he thought, 'If he were only clean?' and mechanically fingered his
own well-tied cravatte.  To talk with the fellow, too, was like being
forced to look at things which had no place in the light of day.
Freedom, equality, self-sacrifice!

'Why can't he settle down at some business,' he thought, 'instead of
all this talk?' Boleskey's sudden diffidences, self-depreciation,
fits of despair, irritated him.  "Morbid beggar!" he would mutter;
"thank God I haven't a thin skin."  And proud too!  Extraordinary!
An impecunious fellow like that!  One evening, moreover, Boleskey had
returned home drunk.  Swithin had hustled him away into his bedroom,
helped him to undress, and stayed until he was asleep.  'Too much of
a good thing!' he thought, 'before his own daughters, too!'  It was
after this that he ordered his travelling carriage.  The other
occasion on which he packed was one evening, when not only Boleskey,
but Rozsi herself had picked chicken bones with her fingers.

Often in the mornings he would go to the Mirabell Garden to smoke his
cigar; there, in stolid contemplation of the statues--rows of half-
heroic men carrying off half-distressful females--he would spend an
hour pleasantly, his hat tilted to keep the sun off his nose.  The
day after Rozsi had fled from him on the stairs, he came there as
usual.  It was a morning of blue sky and sunlight glowing on the old
prim garden, on its yew-trees, and serio-comic statues, and walls
covered with apricots and plums.  When Swithin approached his usual
seat, who should be sitting there but Rozsi

"Good-morning," he stammered; "you knew this was my seat then?"

Rozsi looked at the ground.  "Yes," she answered.

Swithin felt bewildered.  "Do you know," he said, "you treat me very
funnily?"

To his surprise Rozsi put her little soft hand down and touched his;
then, without a word, sprang up and rushed away.  It took him a
minute to recover.  There were people present; he did not like to
run, but overtook her on the bridge, and slipped her hand beneath his
arm.

"You shouldn't have done that," he said; "you shouldn't have run away
from me, you know."

Rozsi laughed.  Swithin withdrew his arm; a desire to shake her
seized him.  He walked some way before he said, "Will you have the
goodness to tell me what you came to that seat for?"

Rozsi flashed a look at him.  "To-morrow is the fete," she answered.

Swithin muttered, "Is that all?"

"If you do not take us, we cannot go."

"Suppose I refuse," he said sullenly, "there are plenty of others."

Rozsi bent her head, scurrying along.  "No," she murmured, "if you do
not go--I do not wish."

Swithin drew her hand back within his arm.  How round and soft it
was!  He tried to see her face.  When she was nearly home he said
goodbye, not wishing, for some dark reason, to be seen with her.  He
watched till she had disappeared; then slowly retraced his steps to
the Mirabell Garden.  When he came to where she had been sitting, he
slowly lighted his cigar, and for a long time after it was smoked out
remained there in the silent presence of the statues.




VII

A crowd of people wandered round the booths, and Swithin found
himself obliged to give the girls his arms.  'Like a little Cockney
clerk!' he thought.  His indignation passed unnoticed; they talked,
they laughed, each sight and sound in all the hurly-burly seemed to
go straight into their hearts.  He eyed them ironically--their eager
voices, and little coos of sympathy seemed to him vulgar.  In the
thick of the crowd he slipped his arm out of Margit's, but, just as
he thought that he was free, the unwelcome hand slid up again.  He
tried again, but again Margit reappeared, serene, and full of
pleasant humour; and his failure this time appeared to him in a comic
light.  But when Rozsi leaned across him, the glow of her round
cheek, her curving lip, the inscrutable grey gleam of her eyes, sent
a thrill of longing through him.  He was obliged to stand by while
they parleyed with a gipsy, whose matted locks and skinny hands
inspired him with a not unwarranted disgust.  "Folly!" he muttered,
as Rozsi held out her palm.  The old woman mumbled, and shot a
malignant look at him.  Rozsi drew back her hand, and crossed
herself.  'Folly!' Swithin thought again; and seizing the girls'
arms, he hurried them away.

"What did the old hag say?" he asked.

Rozsi shook her head.

"You don't mean that you believe?"

Her eyes were full of tears.  "The gipsies are wise," she murmured.

"Come, what did she tell you?"

This time Rozsi looked hurriedly round, and slipped away into the
crowd.  After a hunt they found her, and Swithin, who was scared,
growled: "You shouldn't do such things--it's not respectable."

On higher ground, in the centre of a clear space, a military band was
playing.  For the privilege of entering this charmed circle Swithin
paid three kronen, choosing naturally the best seats.  He ordered
wine, too, watching Rozsi out of the corner of his eye as he poured
it out.  The protecting tenderness of yesterday was all lost in this
medley.  It was every man for himself, after all!  The colour had
deepened again in her cheeks, she laughed, pouting her lips.
Suddenly she put her glass aside.  "Thank you, very much," she said,
"it is enough!"

Margit, whose pretty mouth was all smiles, cried, "Lieber Gott! is it
not good-life?"  It was not a question Swithin could undertake to
answer.  The band began to play a waltz.  "Now they will dance.
Lieber Gott! and are the lights not wonderful?"  Lamps were
flickering beneath the trees like a swarm of fireflies.  There was a
hum as from a gigantic beehive.  Passers-by lifted their faces, then
vanished into the crowd; Rozsi stood gazing at them spellbound, as if
their very going and coming were a delight.

The space was soon full of whirling couples.  Rozsi's head began to
beat time.  "O Margit!" she whispered.

Swithin's face had assumed a solemn, uneasy expression.  A man
raising his hat, offered his arm to Margit.  She glanced back across
her shoulder to reassure Swithin.  "It is a friend," she said.

Swithin looked at Rozsi--her eyes were bright, her lips tremulous.
He slipped his hand along the table and touched her fingers.  Then
she flashed a look at him--appeal, reproach, tenderness, all were
expressed in it.  Was she expecting him to dance?  Did she want to
mix with the rift-raff there; wish him to make an exhibition of
himself in this hurly-burly?  A voice said, "Good-evening!"  Before
them stood Kasteliz, in a dark coat tightly buttoned at the waist.

"You are not dancing, Rozsi Kozsanony?" (Miss Rozsi).  "Let me, then,
have the pleasure."  He held out his arm.  Swithin stared in front of
him.  In the very act of going she gave him a look that said as plain
as words: "Will you not?"  But for answer he turned his eyes away,
and when he looked again she was gone.  He paid the score and made
his way into the crowd.  But as he went she danced by close to him,
all flushed and panting.  She hung back as if to stop him, and he
caught the glistening of tears.  Then he lost sight of her again.  To
be deserted the first minute he was alone with her, and for that
jackanapes with the small head and the volcanic glances!  It was too
much!  And suddenly it occurred to him that she was alone with
Kasteliz--alone at night, and far from home.  'Well,' he thought,
'what do I care?' and shouldered his way on through the crowd.  It
served him right for mixing with such people here.  He left the fair,
but the further he went, the more he nursed his rage, the more
heinous seemed her offence, the sharper grew his jealousy.  "A
beggarly baron!" was his thought.

A figure came alongside--it was Boleskey.  One look showed Swithin
his condition.  Drunk again!  This was the last straw!

Unfortunately Boleskey had recognised him.  He seemed violently
excited.  "Where--where are my daughters?" he began.

Swithin brushed past, but Boleskey caught his arm.  "Listen--
brother!" he said; "news of my country!  After to-morrow...."

"Keep it to yourself!" growled Swithin, wrenching his arm free.  He
went straight to his lodgings, and, lying on the hard sofa of his
unlighted sitting-room, gave himself up to bitter thoughts.  But in
spite of all his anger, Rozsi's supply-moving figure, with its
pouting lips, and roguish appealing eyes, still haunted him.




VIII

Next morning there was not a carriage to be had, and Swithin was
compelled to put off his departure till the morrow.  The day was grey
and misty; he wandered about with the strained, inquiring look of a
lost dog in his eyes.

Late in the afternoon he went back to his lodgings.  In a corner of
the sitting-room stood Rozsi.  The thrill of triumph, the sense of
appeasement, the emotion, that seized on him, crept through to his
lips in a faint smile.  Rozsi made no sound, her face was hidden by
her hands.  And this silence of hers weighed on Swithin.  She was
forcing him to break it.  What was behind her hands?  His own face
was visible!  Why didn't she speak?  Why was she here?  Alone?  That
was not right surely.

Suddenly Rozsi dropped her hands; her flushed face was quivering--it
seemed as though a word, a sign, even, might bring a burst of tears.

He walked over to the window.  'I must give her time!' he thought;
then seized by unreasoning terror at this silence, spun round, and
caught her by the arms.  Rozsi held back from him, swayed forward and
buried her face on his breast....

Half an hour later Swithin was pacing up and down his room.  The
scent of rose leaves had not yet died away.  A glove lay on the
floor; he picked it up, and for a long time stood weighing it in his
hand.  All sorts of confused thoughts and feelings haunted him.  It
was the purest and least selfish moment of his life, this moment
after she had yielded.  But that pure gratitude at her fiery, simple
abnegation did not last; it was followed by a petty sense of triumph,
and by uneasiness.  He was still weighing the little glove in his
hand, when he had another visitor.  It was Kasteliz.

"What can I do for you?" Swithin asked ironically.

The Hungarian seemed suffering from excitement.  Why had Swithin left
his charges the night before?  What excuse had he to make?  What sort
of conduct did he call this?

Swithin, very like a bull-dog at that moment, answered: What business
was it of his?

The business of a gentleman!  What right had the Englishman to pursue
a young girl?

"Pursue?" said Swithin; "you've been spying, then?"

"Spying--I--Kasteliz--Maurus Johann--an insult!"

"Insult!" sneered Swithin; "d'you mean to tell me you weren't in the
street just now?"

Kasteliz answered with a hiss, "If you do not leave the city I will
make you, with my sword--do you understand?"

"And if you do not leave my room I will throw you out of the window!"

For some minutes Kasteliz spoke in pure Hungarian while Swithin
waited, with a forced smile and a fixed look in his eye.  He did not
understand Hungarian.

"If you are still in the city to-morrow evening," said Kasteliz at
last in English, "I will spit you in the street."

Swithin turned to the window and watched his visitor's retiring back
with a queer mixture of amusement, stubbornness, and anxiety.
'Well,' he thought, 'I suppose he'll run me through!'  The thought
was unpleasant; and it kept recurring, but it only served to harden
his determination.  His head was busy with plans for seeing Rozsi;
his blood on fire with the kisses she had given him.




IX

Swithin was long in deciding to go forth next day.  He had made up
his mind not to go to Rozsi till five o'clock.  'Mustn't make myself
too cheap,' he thought.  It was a little past that hour when he at
last sallied out, and with a beating heart walked towards Boleskey's.
He looked up at the window, more than half expecting to see Rozsi
there; but she was not, and he noticed with faint surprise that the
window was not open; the plants, too, outside, looked singularly
arid.  He knocked.  No one came.  He beat a fierce tatto.  At last
the door was opened by a man with a reddish beard, and one of those
sardonic faces only to be seen on shoemakers of Teutonic origin.

"What do you want, making all this noise?" he asked in German.

Swithin pointed up the stairs.  The man grinned, and shook his head.

"I want to go up," said Swithin.

The cobbler shrugged his shoulders, and Swithin rushed upstairs.  The
rooms were empty.  The furniture remained, but all signs of life were
gone.  One of his own bouquets, faded, stood in a glass; the ashes of
a fire were barely cold; little scraps of paper strewed the hearth;
already the room smelt musty.  He went into the bedrooms, and with a
feeling of stupefaction stood staring at the girls' beds, side by
side against the wall.  A bit of ribbon caught his eye; he picked it
up and put it in his pocket--it was a piece of evidence that she had
once existed.  By the mirror some pins were dropped about; a little
powder had been spilled.  He looked at his own disquiet face and
thought, 'I've been cheated!'

The shoemaker's voice aroused him.  "Tausend Teufel!  Eilen Sie, nur!
Zeit is Geld!  Kann nich' Langer warten!"  Slowly he descended.

"Where have they gone?" asked Swithin painfully.  "A pound for every
English word you speak.  A pound!" and he made an O with his fingers.

The corners of the shoemaker's lips curled.  "Geld! Mf!  Eilen Sie,
nur!"

But in Swithin a sullen anger had begun to burn.  "If you don't tell
me," he said, "it'll be the worse for you."

"Sind ein komischer Kerl!" remarked the shoemaker.  "Hier ist meine
Frau!"

A battered-looking woman came hurrying down the passage, calling out
in German, "Don't let him go!"

With a snarling sound the shoemaker turned his back, and shambled
off.

The woman furtively thrust a letter into Swithin's hand, and
furtively waited.

The letter was from Rozsi.

"Forgive me"--it ran--"that I leave you and do not say goodbye.  To-
day our father had the call from our dear Father-town so long
awaited.  In two hours we are ready.  I pray to the Virgin to keep
you ever safe, and that you do not quite forget me.--Your
unforgetting good friend,  ROZSI"

When Swithin read it his first sensation was that of a man sinking in
a bog; then his obstinacy stiffened.  'I won't be done,' he thought.
Taking out a sovereign he tried to make the woman comprehend that she
could earn it, by telling him where they had gone.  He got her
finally to write the words out in his pocket-book, gave her the
sovereign, and hurried to the Goldene Alp, where there was a waiter
who spoke English.  The translation given him was this:

"At three o'clock they start in a carriage on the road to Linz--they
have bad horses--the Herr also rides a white horse."

Swithin at once hailed a carriage and started at full gallop on the
road to Linz.  Outside the Mirabell Garden he caught sight of
Kasteliz and grinned at him.  'I've sold him anyway,' he thought;
'for all their talk, they're no good, these foreigners!'

His spirits rose, but soon fell again.  What chance had he of
catching them?  They had three hours' start!  Still, the roads were
heavy from the rain of the last two nights--they had luggage and bad
horses; his own were good, his driver bribed--he might overtake them
by ten o'clock! But did he want to?  What a fool he had been not to
bring his luggage; he would then have had a respectable position.
What a brute he would look without a change of shirt, or anything to
shave with!  He saw himself with horror, all bristly, and in soiled
linen.  People would think him mad.  'I've given myself away,'
flashed across him, 'what the devil can I say to them?' and he stared
sullenly at the driver's back.  He read Rozsi's letter again; it had
a scent of her.  And in the growing darkness, jolted by the swinging
of the carriage, he suffered tortures from his prudence, tortures
from his passion.

It grew colder and dark.  He turned the collar of his coat up to his
ears.  He had visions of Piccadilly.  This wild-goose chase appeared
suddenly a dangerous, unfathomable business.  Lights, fellowship,
security!  'Never again!' he brooded; 'why won't they let me alone?'
But it was not clear whether by 'they' he meant the conventions, the
Boleskeys, his passions, or those haunting memories of Rozsi.  If he
had only had a bag with him!  What was he going to say?  What was he
going to get by this?  He received no answer to these questions.  The
darkness itself was less obscure than his sensations.  From time to
time he took out his watch.  At each village the driver made
inquiries.  It was past ten when he stopped the carriage with a jerk.
The stars were bright as steel, and by the side of the road a reedy
lake showed in the moonlight.  Swithin shivered.  A man on a horse
had halted in the centre of the road.  "Drive on!" called Swithin,
with a stolid face.  It turned out to be Boleskey, who, on a gaunt
white horse, looked like some winged creature.  He stood where he
could bar the progress of the carriage, holding out a pistol.

'Theatrical beggar!' thought Swithin, with a nervous smile.  He made
no sign of recognition.  Slowly Boleskey brought his lean horse up to
the carriage.  When he saw who was within he showed astonishment and
joy.

"You?" he cried, slapping his hand on his attenuated thigh, and
leaning over till his beard touched Swithin.  "You have come?  You
followed us?"

"It seems so," Swithin grunted out.

"You throw in your lot with us.  Is it possible?  You--you are a
knight-errant then!"

"Good God!" said Swithin.  Boleskey, flogging his dejected steed,
cantered forward in the moonlight.  He came back, bringing an old
cloak, which he insisted on wrapping round Swithin's shoulders.  He
handed him, too, a capacious flask.

"How cold you look!" he said.  "Wonderful! Wonderful! you English!"
His grateful eyes never left Swithin for a moment.  They had come up
to the heels of the other carriage now, but Swithin, hunched in the
cloak, did not try to see what was in front of him.  To the bottom of
his soul he resented the Hungarian's gratitude.  He remarked at last,
with wasted irony:

"You're in a hurry, it seems!"

"If we had wings," Boleskey answered, "we would use them."

"Wings!" muttered Swithin thickly; "legs are good enough for me."




X

Arrived at the inn where they were to pass the night, Swithin waited,
hoping to get into the house without a "scene," but when at last he
alighted the girls were in the doorway, and Margit greeted him with
an admiring murmur, in which, however, he seemed to detect irony.
Rozsi, pale and tremulous, with a half-scared look, gave him her
hand, and, quickly withdrawing it, shrank behind her sister.  When
they had gone up to their room Swithin sought Boleskey.  His spirits
had risen remarkably.  "Tell the landlord to get us supper," he said;
"we'll crack a bottle to our luck."  He hurried on the landlord's
preparations.  The window of the, room faced a wood, so near that he
could almost touch the trees.  The scent from the pines blew in on
him.  He turned away from that scented darkness, and began to draw
the corks of winebottles.  The sound seemed to conjure up Boleskey.
He came in, splashed all over, smelling slightly of stables; soon
after, Margit appeared, fresh and serene, but Rozsi did not come.

"Where is your sister?" Swithin said.  Rozsi, it seemed, was tired.
"It will do her good to eat," said Swithin.  And Boleskey, murmuring,
"She must drink to our country," went out to summon her, Margit
followed him, while Swithin cut up a chicken.  They came back without
her.  She had "a megrim of the spirit."

Swithin's face fell.  "Look here!" he said, "I'll go and try.  Don't
wait for me."

"Yes," answered Boleskey, sinking mournfully into a chair; "try,
brother, try-by all means, try."

Swithin walked down the corridor with an odd, sweet, sinking
sensation in his chest; and tapped on Rozsi's door.  In a minute, she
peeped forth, with her hair loose, and wondering eyes.

"Rozsi," he stammered, "what makes you afraid of me, now?"

She stared at him, but did not answer.

"Why won't you come?"

Still she did not speak, but suddenly stretched out to him her bare
arm.  Swithin pressed his face to it.  With a shiver, she whispered
above him, "I will come," and gently shut the door.

Swithin stealthily retraced his steps, and paused a minute outside
the sitting-room to regain his self-control.

The sight of Boleskey with a bottle in his hand steadied him.

"She is coming," he said.  And very soon she did come, her thick hair
roughly twisted in a plait.

Swithin sat between the girls; but did not talk, for he was really
hungry.  Boleskey too was silent, plunged in gloom; Rozsi was dumb;
Margit alone chattered.

"You will come to our Father-town?  We shall have things to show you.
Rozsi, what things we will show him!"  Rozsi, with a little appealing
movement of her hands, repeated, "What things we will show you!"  She
seemed suddenly to find her voice, and with glowing cheeks, mouths
full, and eyes bright as squirrels', they chattered reminiscences of
the "dear Father-town," of "dear friends," of the "dear home."

'A poor place!' Swithin could not help thinking.  This enthusiasm
seemed to him common; but he was careful to assume a look of
interest, feeding on the glances flashed at him from Rozsi's restless
eyes.

As the wine waned Boleskey grew more and more gloomy, but now and
then a sort of gleaming flicker passed over his face.  He rose to his
feet at last.

"Let us not forget," he said, "that we go perhaps to ruin, to death;
in the face of all this we go, because our country needs--in this
there is no credit, neither to me nor to you, my daughters; but for
this noble Englishman, what shall we say?  Give thanks to God for a
great heart.  He comes--not for country, not for fame, not for money,
but to help the weak and the oppressed.  Let us drink, then, to him;
let us drink again and again to heroic Forsyte!"  In the midst of the
dead silence, Swithin caught the look of suppliant mockery in Rozsi's
eyes.  He glanced at the Hungarian.  Was he laughing at him?  But
Boleskey, after drinking up his wine, had sunk again into his seat;
and there suddenly, to the surprise of all, he began to snore.
Margit rose and, bending over him like a mother, murmured: "He is
tired--it is the ride!"  She raised him in her strong arms, and
leaning on her shoulder Boleskey staggered from the room.  Swithin
and Rozsi were left alone.  He slid his hand towards her hand that
lay so close, on the rough table-cloth.  It seemed to await his
touch.  Something gave way in him, and words came welling up; for the
moment he forgot himself, forgot everything but that he was near her.
Her head dropped on his shoulder, he breathed the perfume of her
hair.  "Good-night!" she whispered, and the whisper was like a kiss;
yet before he could stop her she was gone.  Her footsteps died away
in the passage, but Swithin sat gazing intently at a single bright
drop of spilt wine quivering on the table's edge.  In that moment
she, in her helplessness and emotion, was all in all to him--his life
nothing; all the real things--his conventions, convictions, training,
and himself--all seemed remote, behind a mist of passion and strange
chivalry.  Carefully with a bit of bread he soaked up the bright
drop; and suddenly he thought: 'This is tremendous!'  For a long time
he stood there in the window, close to the dark pine-trees.





XI

In the early morning he awoke, full of the discomfort of this strange
place and the medley of his dreams.  Lying, with his nose peeping
over the quilt, he was visited by a horrible suspicion.  When he
could bear it no longer, he started up in bed.  What if it were all a
plot to get him to marry her?  The thought was treacherous, and
inspired in him a faint disgust.  Still, she might be ignorant of it!
But was she so innocent?  What innocent girl would have come to his
room like that?  What innocent girl?  Her father, who pretended to be
caring only for his country?  It was not probable that any man was
such a fool; it was all part of the game-a scheming rascal!
Kasteliz, too--his threats!  They intended him to marry her!  And the
horrid idea was strengthened by his reverence for marriage.  It was
the proper, the respectable condition; he was genuinely afraid of
this other sort of liaison--it was somehow too primitive!  And yet
the thought of that marriage made his blood run cold.  Considering
that she had already yielded, it would be all the more monstrous!
With the cold, fatal clearness of the morning light he now for the
first time saw his position in its full bearings.  And, like a fish
pulled out of water, he gasped at what was disclosed.  Sullen
resentment against this attempt to force him settled deep into his
soul.

He seated himself on the bed, holding his head in his hands, solemnly
thinking out what such marriage meant.  In the first place it meant
ridicule, in the next place ridicule, in the last place ridicule.
She would eat chicken bones with her fingers--those fingers his lips
still burned to kiss.  She would dance wildly with other men.  She
would talk of her "dear Father-town," and all the time her eyes would
look beyond him, some where or other into some d--d place he knew
nothing of.  He sprang up and paced the room, and for a moment
thought he would go mad.

They meant him to marry her!  Even she--she meant him to marry her!
Her tantalising inscrutability; her sudden little tendernesses; her
quick laughter; her swift, burning kisses; even the movements of her
hands; her tears--all were evidence against her.  Not one of these
things that Nature made her do counted on her side, but how they
fanned his longing, his desire, and distress!  He went to the glass
and tried to part his hair with his fingers, but being rather fine,
it fell into lank streaks.  There was no comfort to be got from it.
He drew his muddy boots on.  Suddenly he thought: 'If I could see her
alone, I could arrive at some arrangement!'  Then, with a sense of
stupefaction, he made the discovery that no arrangement could
possibly be made that would not be dangerous, even desperate.  He
seized his hat, and, like a rabbit that has been fired at, bolted
from the room.  He plodded along amongst the damp woods with his head
down, and resentment and dismay in his heart.  But, as the sun rose,
and the air grew sweet with pine scent, he slowly regained a sort of
equability.  After all, she had already yielded; it was not as if...!
And the tramp of his own footsteps lulled him into feeling that it
would all come right.

'Look at the thing practically,' he thought.  The faster he walked
the firmer became his conviction that he could still see it through.
He took out his watch--it was past seven--he began to hasten back.
In the yard of the inn his driver was harnessing the horses; Swithin
went up to him.

"Who told you to put them in?" he asked.

The driver answered, "Der Herr."

Swithin turned away.  'In ten minutes,' he thought, 'I shall be in
that carriage again, with this going on in my head!  Driving away
from England, from all I'm used to-driving to-what?'  Could he face
it?  Could he face all that he had been through that morning; face it
day after day, night after night?  Looking up, he saw Rozsi at her
open window gazing down at him; never had she looked sweeter, more
roguish.  An inexplicable terror seized on him; he ran across the
yard and jumped into his carriage.  "To Salzburg!" he cried; "drive
on!"  And rattling out of the yard without a look behind, he flung a
sovereign at the hostler.  Flying back along the road faster even
than he had come, with pale face, and eyes blank and staring like a
pug-dog's, Swithin spoke no single word; nor, till he had reached the
door of his lodgings, did he suffer the driver to draw rein.




XII

Towards evening, five days later, Swithin, yellow and travel-worn,
was ferried in a gondola to Danielli's Hotel.  His brother, who was
on the steps, looked at him with an apprehensive curiosity.

"Why, it's you!" he mumbled.  "So you've got here safe?"

"Safe?" growled Swithin.

James replied, "I thought you wouldn't leave your friends!"  Then,
with a jerk of suspicion, "You haven't brought your friends?"

"What friends?" growled Swithin.

James changed the subject.  "You don't look the thing," he said.

"Really!" muttered Swithin; "what's that to you?"

He appeared at dinner that night, but fell asleep over his coffee.
Neither Traquair nor James asked him any further question, nor did
they allude to Salzburg; and during the four days which concluded the
stay in Venice Swithin went about with his head up, but his eyes
half-closed like a dazed man.  Only after they had taken ship at
Genoa did he show signs of any healthy interest in life, when,
finding that a man on board was perpetually strumming, he locked the
piano up and pitched the key into the sea.

That winter in London he behaved much as usual, but fits of
moroseness would seize on him, during which he was not pleasant to
approach.

One evening when he was walking with a friend in Piccadilly, a girl
coming from a side-street accosted him in German.  Swithin, after
staring at her in silence for some seconds, handed her a five-pound
note, to the great amazement of his friend; nor could he himself have
explained the meaning of this freak of generosity.

Of Rozsi he never heard again....

This, then, was the substance of what he remembered as he lay ill in
bed.  Stretching out his hand he pressed the bell.  His valet
appeared, crossing the room like a cat; a Swede, who had been with
Swithin many years; a little man with a dried face and fierce
moustache, morbidly sharp nerves, and a queer devotion to his master.

Swithin made a feeble gesture.  "Adolf," he said, "I'm very bad."

"Yes, sir!"

"Why do you stand there like a cow?" asked Swithin; "can't you see
I'm very bad?"

"Yes, sir!"  The valet's face twitched as though it masked the dance
of obscure emotions.

"I shall feel better after dinner.  What time is it?"

"Five o'clock."

"I thought it was more.  The afternoons are very long."

"Yes, sir!" Swithin sighed, as though he had expected the consolation
of denial.

"Very likely I shall have a nap.  Bring up hot water at half-past six
and shave me before dinner."

The valet moved towards the door.  Swithin raised himself.

"What did Mr. James say to you?"

"He said you ought to have another doctor; two doctors, he said,
better than one.  He said, also, he would look in again on his way
'home.'"

Swithin grunted, "Umph! What else did he say?"

"He said you didn't take care of yourself."

Swithin glared.

"Has anybody else been to see me?"

The valet turned away his eyes.  "Mrs. Thomas Forsyte came last
Monday fortnight."

"How long have I been ill?"

"Five weeks on Saturday."

"Do you think I'm very bad?"

Adolf's face was covered suddenly with crow's-feet.  "You have no
business to ask me question like that!  I am not paid, sir, to answer
question like that."

Swithin said faintly: "You're a peppery fool!  Open a bottle of
champagne!"

Adolf took a bottle of champagne--from a cupboard and held nippers to
it.  He fixed his eyes on Swithin.  "The doctor said--"

"Open the bottle!"

"It is not--"

"Open the bottle--or I give you warning."

Adolf removed the cork.  He wiped a glass elaborately, filled it, and
bore it scrupulously to the bedside.  Suddenly twirling his
moustaches, he wrung his hands, and burst out: "It is poison."

Swithin grinned faintly.  "You foreign fool!" he said.  "Get out!"

The valet vanished.

'He forgot himself!' thought Swithin.  Slowly he raised the glass,
slowly put it back, and sank gasping on his pillows.  Almost at once
he fell asleep.

He dreamed that he was at his club, sitting after dinner in the
crowded smoking-room, with its bright walls and trefoils of light.
It was there that he sat every evening, patient, solemn, lonely, and
sometimes fell asleep, his square, pale old face nodding to one side.
He dreamed that he was gazing at the picture over the fireplace, of
an old statesman with a high collar, supremely finished face, and
sceptical eyebrows--the picture, smooth, and reticent as sealing-wax,
of one who seemed for ever exhaling the narrow wisdom of final
judgments.  All round him, his fellow members were chattering.  Only
he himself, the old sick member, was silent.  If fellows only knew
what it was like to sit by yourself and feel ill all the time!  What
they were saying he had heard a hundred times.  They were talking of
investments, of cigars, horses, actresses, machinery.  What was that?
A foreign patent for cleaning boilers?  There was no such thing;
boilers couldn't be cleaned, any fool knew that!  If an Englishman
couldn't clean a boiler, no foreigner could clean one.  He appealed
to the old statesman's eyes.  But for once those eyes seemed
hesitating, blurred, wanting in finality.  They vanished.  In their
place were Rozsi's little deep-set eyes, with their wide and far-off
look; and as he gazed they seemed to grow bright as steel, and to
speak to him.  Slowly the whole face grew to be there, floating on
the dark background of the picture; it was pink, aloof, unfathomable,
enticing, with its fluffy hair and quick lips, just as he had last
seen it.  "Are you looking for something?" she seemed to say: "I
could show you."

"I have everything safe enough," answered Swithin, and in his sleep
he groaned.

He felt the touch of fingers on his forehead.  'I'm dreaming,' he
thought in his dream.

She had vanished; and far away, from behind the picture, came a sound
of footsteps.

Aloud, in his sleep, Swithin muttered: "I've missed it."

Again he heard the rustling of those light footsteps, and close in
his ear a sound, like a sob.  He awoke; the sob was his own.  Great
drops of perspiration stood on his forehead.  'What is it?' he
thought; 'what have I lost?'  Slowly his mind travelled over his
investments; he could not think of any single one that was unsafe.
What was it, then, that he had lost?  Struggling on his pillows, he
clutched the wine-glass.  His lips touched the wine.  'This isn't the
"Heidseck"!' he thought angrily, and before the reality of that
displeasure all the dim vision passed away.  But as he bent to drink,
something snapped, and, with a sigh, Swithin Forsyte died above the
bubbles....

When James Forsyte came in again on his way home, the valet,
trembling took his hat and stick.

"How's your master?"

"My master is dead, sir!"

"Dead!  He can't be!  I left him safe an hour ago."

On the bed Swithin's body was doubled like a sack; his hand still
grasped the glass.

James Forsyte paused.  "Swithin!" he said, and with his hand to his
ear he waited for an answer; but none came, and slowly in the glass a
last bubble rose and burst.

December 1900.







To

MY SISTER

MABEL EDITH REYNOLDS





THE SILENCE

I

In a car of the Naples express a mining expert was diving into a bag
for papers.  The strong sunlight showed the fine wrinkles on his
brown face and the shabbiness of his short, rough beard.  A newspaper
cutting slipped from his fingers; he picked it up, thinking: 'How the
dickens did that get in here?'  It was from a colonial print of three
years back; and he sat staring, as if in that forlorn slip of yellow
paper he had encountered some ghost from his past.

These were the words he read: "We hope that the setback to
civilisation, the check to commerce and development, in this
promising centre of our colony may be but temporary; and that capital
may again come to the rescue.  Where one man was successful, others
should surely not fail?  We are convinced that it only needs...."
And the last words: "For what can be sadder than to see the forest
spreading its lengthening shadows, like symbols of defeat, over the
untenanted dwellings of men; and where was once the merry chatter of
human voices, to pass by in the silence...."

On an afternoon, thirteen years before, he had been in the city of
London, at one of those emporiums where mining experts perch, before
fresh flights, like sea-gulls on some favourite rock.  A clerk said
to him: "Mr. Scorrier, they are asking for you downstairs--Mr.
Hemmings of the New Colliery Company."

Scorrier took up the speaking tube.  "Is that you, Mr. Scorrier?  I
hope you are very well, sir, I am--Hemmings--I am--coming up."

In two minutes he appeared, Christopher Hemmings, secretary of the
New Colliery Company, known in the City-behind his back--as "Down-by-
the-starn" Hemmings.  He grasped Scorrier's hand--the gesture was
deferential, yet distinguished.  Too handsome, too capable, too
important, his figure, the cut of his iron-grey beard, and his
intrusively fine eyes, conveyed a continual courteous invitation to
inspect their infallibilities.  He stood, like a City "Atlas," with
his legs apart, his coat-tails gathered in his hands, a whole globe
of financial matters deftly balanced on his nose.  "Look at me!" he
seemed to say.  "It's heavy, but how easily I carry it.  Not the man
to let it down, Sir !"

"I hope I see you well, Mr. Scorrier," he began.  "I have come round
about our mine.  There is a question of a fresh field being opened
up--between ourselves, not before it's wanted.  I find it difficult
to get my Board to take a comprehensive view.  In short, the question
is: Are you prepared to go out for us, and report on it?  The fees
will be all right."  His left eye closed.  "Things have been very--
er--dicky; we are going to change our superintendent.  I have got
little Pippin--you know little Pippin?"

Scorrier murmured, with a feeling of vague resentment: "Oh yes.  He's
not a mining man!"

Hemmings replied: "We think that he will do."  'Do you?' thought
Scorrier; 'that's good of you!'

He had not altogether shaken off a worship he had felt for Pippin--
"King" Pippin he was always called, when they had been boys at the
Camborne Grammar-school.  "King" Pippin! the boy with the bright
colour, very bright hair, bright, subtle, elusive eyes, broad
shoulders, little stoop in the neck, and a way of moving it quickly
like a bird; the boy who was always at the top of everything, and
held his head as if looking for something further to be the top of.
He remembered how one day "King" Pippin had said to him in his soft
way, "Young Scorrie, I'll do your sums for you"; and in answer to his
dubious, "Is that all right?" had replied, "Of course--I don't want
you to get behind that beast Blake, he's not a Cornishman" (the beast
Blake was an Irishman not yet twelve).  He remembered, too, an
occasion when "King" Pippin with two other boys fought six louts and
got a licking, and how Pippin sat for half an hour afterwards, all
bloody, his head in his hands, rocking to and fro, and weeping tears
of mortification; and how the next day he had sneaked off by himself,
and, attacking the same gang, got frightfully mauled a second time.

Thinking of these things he answered curtly: "When shall I start?"

"Down-by-the-starn" Hemmings replied with a sort of fearful
sprightliness: "There's a good fellow!  I will send instructions; so
glad to see you well."  Conferring on Scorrier a look--fine to the
verge of vulgarity--he withdrew.  Scorrier remained, seated; heavy
with insignificance and vague oppression, as if he had drunk a
tumbler of sweet port.

A week later, in company with Pippin, he was on board a liner.

The "King" Pippin of his school-days was now a man of forty-four.  He
awakened in Scorrier the uncertain wonder with which men look
backward at their uncomplicated teens; and staggering up and down the
decks in the long Atlantic roll, he would steal glances at his
companion, as if he expected to find out from them something about
himself.  Pippin had still "King" Pippin's bright, fine hair, and
dazzling streaks in his short beard; he had still a bright colour and
suave voice, and what there were of wrinkles suggested only
subtleties of humour and ironic sympathy.  From the first, and
apparently without negotiation, he had his seat at the captain's
table, to which on the second day Scorrier too found himself
translated, and had to sit, as he expressed it ruefully, "among the
big-wigs."

During the voyage only one incident impressed itself on Scorrier's
memory, and that for a disconcerting reason.  In the forecastle were
the usual complement of emigrants.  One evening, leaning across the
rail to watch them, he felt a touch on his arm; and, looking round,
saw Pippin's face and beard quivering in the lamplight.  "Poor
people!" he said.  The idea flashed on Scorrier that he was like some
fine wire sound-recording instrument.

'Suppose he were to snap!' he thought.  Impelled to justify this
fancy, he blurted out: "You're a nervous chap.  The way you look at
those poor devils!"

Pippin hustled him along the deck.  "Come, come, you took me off my
guard," he murmured, with a sly, gentle smile, "that's not fair."

He found it a continual source of wonder that Pippin, at his age,
should cut himself adrift from the associations and security of
London life to begin a new career in a new country with dubious
prospect of success.  'I always heard he was doing well all round,'
he thought; 'thinks he'll better himself, perhaps.  He's a true
Cornishman.'

The morning of arrival at the mines was grey and cheerless; a cloud
of smoke, beaten down by drizzle, clung above the forest; the wooden
houses straggled dismally in the unkempt semblance of a street,
against a background of endless, silent woods.  An air of blank
discouragement brooded over everything; cranes jutted idly over empty
trucks; the long jetty oozed black slime; miners with listless faces
stood in the rain; dogs fought under their very legs.  On the way to
the hotel they met no one busy or serene except a Chinee who was
polishing a dish-cover.

The late superintendent, a cowed man, regaled them at lunch with his
forebodings; his attitude toward the situation was like the food,
which was greasy and uninspiring.  Alone together once more, the two
newcomers eyed each other sadly.

"Oh dear!" sighed Pippin.  "We must change all this, Scorrier; it
will never do to go back beaten.  I shall not go back beaten; you
will have to carry me on my shield;" and slyly: "Too heavy, eh?  Poor
fellow!"  Then for a long time he was silent, moving his lips as if
adding up the cost.  Suddenly he sighed, and grasping Scorrier's arm,
said: "Dull, aren't I?  What will you do?  Put me in your report,
'New Superintendent--sad, dull dog--not a word to throw at a cat!'"
And as if the new task were too much for him, he sank back in
thought.  The last words he said to Scorrier that night were: "Very
silent here.  It's hard to believe one's here for life.  But I feel I
am.  Mustn't be a coward, though!" and brushing his forehead, as
though to clear from it a cobweb of faint thoughts, he hurried off.

Scorrier stayed on the veranda smoking.  The rain had ceased, a few
stars were burning dimly; even above the squalor of the township the
scent of the forests, the interminable forests, brooded.  There
sprang into his mind the memory of a picture from one of his
children's fairy books--the picture of a little bearded man on
tiptoe, with poised head and a great sword, slashing at the castle of
a giant.  It reminded him of Pippin.  And suddenly, even to Scorrier-
-whose existence was one long encounter with strange places--the
unseen presence of those woods, their heavy, healthy scent, the
little sounds, like squeaks from tiny toys, issuing out of the gloomy
silence, seemed intolerable, to be shunned, from the mere instinct of
self-preservation.  He thought of the evening he had spent in the
bosom of "Down-by-the-starn" Hemmings' family, receiving his last
instructions--the security of that suburban villa, its discouraging
gentility; the superior acidity of the Miss Hemmings; the noble names
of large contractors, of company promoters, of a peer, dragged with
the lightness of gun-carriages across the conversation; the autocracy
of Hemmings, rasped up here and there, by some domestic
contradiction.  It was all so nice and safe--as if the whole thing
had been fastened to an anchor sunk beneath the pink cabbages of the
drawing-room carpet!  Hemmings, seeing him off the premises, had said
with secrecy: "Little Pippin will have a good thing.  We shall make
his salary L----.  He'll be a great man-quite a king.  Ha-ha!"

Scorrier shook the ashes from his pipe.  'Salary!' he thought,
straining his ears; 'I wouldn't take the place for five thousand
pounds a year.  And yet it's a fine country,' and with ironic
violence he repeated, 'a dashed fine country!'

Ten days later, having finished his report on the new mine, he stood
on the jetty waiting to go abroad the steamer for home.

"God bless you!" said Pippin.  "Tell them they needn't be afraid; and
sometimes when you're at home think of me, eh?"

Scorrier, scrambling on board, had a confused memory of tears in his
eyes, and a convulsive handshake.




II

It was eight years before the wheels of life carried Scorrier back to
that disenchanted spot, and this time not on the business of the New
Colliery Company.  He went for another company with a mine some
thirty miles away.  Before starting, however, he visited Hemmings.
The secretary was surrounded by pigeon-holes and finer than ever;
Scorrier blinked in the full radiance of his courtesy.  A little man
with eyebrows full of questions, and a grizzled beard, was seated in
an arm-chair by the fire.

"You know Mr. Booker," said Hemmings--"one of my directors.  This is
Mr. Scorrier, sir--who went out for us."

These sentences were murmured in a way suggestive of their uncommon
value.  The director uncrossed his legs, and bowed.  Scorrier also
bowed, and Hemmings, leaning back, slowly developed the full
resources of his waistcoat.

"So you are going out again, Scorrier, for the other side?  I tell
Mr. Scorrier, sir, that he is going out for the enemy.  Don't find
them a mine as good as you found us, there's a good man."

The little director asked explosively: "See our last dividend?
Twenty per cent; eh, what?"

Hemmings moved a finger, as if reproving his director.  "I will not
disguise from you," he murmured, "that there is friction between us
and--the enemy; you know our position too well--just a little too
well, eh?  'A nod's as good as a wink.'"

His diplomatic eyes flattered Scorrier, who passed a hand over his
brow--and said: "Of course."

"Pippin doesn't hit it off with them.  Between ourselves, he's a
leetle too big for his boots.  You know what it is when a man in his
position gets a sudden rise!"

Scorrier caught himself searching on the floor for a sight of
Hemmings' boots; he raised his eyes guiltily.  The secretary
continued: "We don't hear from him quite as often as we should like,
in fact."

To his own surprise Scorrier murmured: "It's a silent place!"

The secretary smiled.  "Very good!  Mr. Scorrier says, sir, it's a
silent place; ha-ha! I call that very good!"  But suddenly a secret
irritation seemed to bubble in him; he burst forth almost violently:
"He's no business to let it affect him; now, has he?  I put it to
you, Mr. Scorrier, I put it to you, sir!"

But Scorrier made no reply, and soon after took his leave: he had
been asked to convey a friendly hint to Pippin that more frequent
letters would be welcomed.  Standing in the shadow of the Royal
Exchange, waiting to thread his way across, he thought: 'So you must
have noise, must you--you've got some here, and to spare....'

On his arrival in the new world he wired to Pippin asking if he might
stay with him on the way up country, and received the answer: "Be
sure and come."

A week later he arrived (there was now a railway) and found Pippin
waiting for him in a phaeton.  Scorrier would not have known the
place again; there was a glitter over everything, as if some one had
touched it with a wand.  The tracks had given place to roads, running
firm, straight, and black between the trees under brilliant sunshine;
the wooden houses were all painted; out in the gleaming harbour
amongst the green of islands lay three steamers, each with a fleet of
busy boats; and here and there a tiny yacht floated, like a sea-bird
on the water.  Pippin drove his long-tailed horses furiously; his
eyes brimmed with subtle kindness, as if according Scorrier a
continual welcome.  During the two days of his stay Scorrier never
lost that sense of glamour.  He had every opportunity for observing
the grip Pippin had over everything.  The wooden doors and walls of
his bungalow kept out no sounds.  He listened to interviews between
his host and all kinds and conditions of men.  The voices of the
visitors would rise at first--angry, discontented, matter-of-fact,
with nasal twang, or guttural drawl; then would come the soft patter
of the superintendent's feet crossing and recrossing the room.  Then
a pause, the sound of hard breathing, and quick questions--the
visitor's voice again, again the patter, and Pippin's ingratiating
but decisive murmurs.  Presently out would come the visitor with an
expression on his face which Scorrier soon began to know by heart, a
kind of pleased, puzzled, helpless look, which seemed to say, "I've
been done, I know--I'll give it to myself when I'm round the corner."

Pippin was full of wistful questions about "home."  He wanted to talk
of music, pictures, plays, of how London looked, what new streets
there were, and, above all, whether Scorrier had been lately in the
West Country.  He talked of getting leave next winter, asked whether
Scorrier thought they would "put up with him at home"; then, with the
agitation which had alarmed Scorrier before, he added: "Ah! but I'm
not fit for home now.  One gets spoiled; it's big and silent here.
What should I go back to?  I don't seem to realise."

Scorrier thought of Hemmings.  "'Tis a bit cramped there, certainly,"
he muttered.

Pippin went on as if divining his thoughts.  "I suppose our friend
Hemmings would call me foolish; he's above the little weaknesses of
imagination, eh?  Yes; it's silent here.  Sometimes in the evening I
would give my head for somebody to talk to--Hemmings would never give
his head for anything, I think.  But all the same, I couldn't face
them at home.  Spoiled!"  And slyly he murmured: "What would the
Board say if they could hear that?"

Scorrier blurted out: "To tell you the truth, they complain a little
of not hearing from you."

Pippin put out a hand, as if to push something away.  "Let them try
the life here!" he broke out; "it's like sitting on a live volcano--
what with our friends, 'the enemy,' over there; the men; the American
competition.  I keep it going, Scorrier, but at what a cost--at what
a cost!"

"But surely--letters?"

Pippin only answered: "I try--I try!"

Scorrier felt with remorse and wonder that he had spoken the truth.
The following day he left for his inspection, and while in the camp
of "the enemy" much was the talk he heard of Pippin.

"Why!" said his host, the superintendent, a little man with a face
somewhat like an owl's, "d'you know the name they've given him down
in the capital--'the King'--good, eh?  He's made them 'sit up' all
along this coast.  I like him well enough--good--hearted man,
shocking nervous; but my people down there can't stand him at any
price.  Sir, he runs this colony.  You'd think butter wouldn't melt
in that mouth of his; but he always gets his way; that's what riles
'em so; that and the success he's making of his mine.  It puzzles me;
you'd think he'd only be too glad of a quiet life, a man with his
nerves.  But no, he's never happy unless he's fighting, something
where he's got a chance to score a victory.  I won't say he likes it,
but, by Jove, it seems he's got to do it.  Now that's funny!  I'll
tell you one thing, though shouldn't be a bit surprised if he broke
down some day; and I'll tell you another," he added darkly, "he's
sailing very near the wind, with those large contracts that he makes.
I wouldn't care to take his risks.  Just let them have a strike, or
something that shuts them down for a spell--and mark my words, sir--
it'll be all up with them.  But," he concluded confidentially, "I
wish I had his hold on the men; it's a great thing in this country.
Not like home, where you can go round a corner and get another gang.
You have to make the best you can out of the lot you have; you won't,
get another man for love or money without you ship him a few hundred
miles."  And with a frown he waved his arm over the forests to
indicate the barrenness of the land.

Scorrier finished his inspection and went on a shooting trip into the
forest.  His host met him on his return.  "Just look at this!" he
said, holding out a telegram.  "Awful, isn't it?" His face expressed
a profound commiseration, almost ludicrously mixed with the ashamed
contentment that men experience at the misfortunes of an enemy.

The telegram, dated the day before, ran thus "Frightful explosion New
Colliery this morning, great loss of life feared."

Scorrier had the bewildered thought: 'Pippin will want me now.'

He took leave of his host, who called after him: "You'd better wait
for a steamer!  It's a beastly drive!"

Scorrier shook his head.  All night, jolting along a rough track cut
through the forest, he thought of Pippin.  The other miseries of this
calamity at present left him cold; he barely thought of the smothered
men; but Pippin's struggle, his lonely struggle with this hydra-
headed monster, touched him very nearly.  He fell asleep and dreamed
of watching Pippin slowly strangled by a snake; the agonised, kindly,
ironic face peeping out between two gleaming coils was so horribly
real, that he awoke.  It was the moment before dawn: pitch-black
branches barred the sky; with every jolt of the wheels the gleams
from the lamps danced, fantastic and intrusive, round ferns and tree-
stems, into the cold heart of the forest.  For an hour or more
Scorrier tried to feign sleep, and hide from the stillness, and
overmastering gloom of these great woods.  Then softly a whisper of
noises stole forth, a stir of light, and the whole slow radiance of
the morning glory.  But it brought no warmth; and Scorrier wrapped
himself closer in his cloak, feeling as though old age had touched
him.

Close on noon he reached the township.  Glamour seemed still to hover
over it.  He drove on to the mine.  The winding-engine was turning,
the pulley at the top of the head-gear whizzing round; nothing looked
unusual.  'Some mistake!' he thought.  He drove to the mine
buildings, alighted, and climbed to the shaft head.  Instead of the
usual rumbling of the trolleys, the rattle of coal discharged over
the screens, there was silence.  Close by, Pippin himself was
standing, smirched with dirt.  The cage, coming swift and silent from
below, shot open its doors with a sharp rattle.  Scorrier bent
forward to look.  There lay a dead man, with a smile on his face.

"How many?" he whispered.

Pippin answered: "Eighty-four brought up--forty-seven still below,"
and entered the man's name in a pocket-book.

An older man was taken out next; he too was smiling--there had been
vouchsafed to him, it seemed, a taste of more than earthly joy.  The
sight of those strange smiles affected Scorrier more than all the
anguish or despair he had seen scored on the faces of other dead men.
He asked an old miner how long Pippin had been at work.

"Thirty hours.  Yesterday he wer' below; we had to nigh carry mun up
at last.  He's for goin' down again, but the chaps won't lower mun;"
the old man gave a sigh.  "I'm waiting for my boy to come up, I am."

Scorrier waited too--there was fascination about those dead, smiling
faces.  The rescuing of these men who would never again breathe went
on and on.  Scorrier grew sleepy in the sun.  The old miner woke him,
saying: "Rummy stuff this here chokedamp; see, they all dies drunk!"
The very next to be brought up was the chief engineer.  Scorrier had
known him quite well, one of those Scotsmen who are born at the age
of forty and remain so all their lives.  His face--the only one that
wore no smile--seemed grieving that duty had deprived it of that last
luxury.  With wide eyes and drawn lips he had died protesting.

Late in the afternoon the old miner touched Scorrier's arm, and said:
"There he is--there's my boy!"  And he departed slowly, wheeling the
body on a trolley.

As the sun set, the gang below came up.  No further search was
possible till the fumes had cleared.  Scorrier heard one man say:
"There's some we'll never get; they've had sure burial"

Another answered him: "'Tis a gude enough bag for me!"  They passed
him, the whites of their eyes gleaming out of faces black as ink.

Pippin drove him home at a furious pace, not uttering a single word.
As they turned into the main street, a young woman starting out
before the horses obliged Pippin to pull up.  The glance he bent on
Scorrier was ludicrously prescient of suffering.  The woman asked for
her husband.  Several times they were stopped thus by women asking
for their husbands or sons.  "This is what I have to go through,"
Pippin whispered.

When they had eaten, he said to Scorrier: "It was kind of you to come
and stand by me!  They take me for a god, poor creature that I am.
But shall I ever get the men down again?  Their nerve's shaken.  I
wish I were one of those poor lads, to die with a smile like that!"

Scorrier felt the futility of his presence.  On Pippin alone must be
the heat and burden.  Would he stand under it, or would the whole
thing come crashing to the ground?  He urged him again and again to
rest, but Pippin only gave him one of his queer smiles.  "You don't
know how strong I am!" he said.




IV

He himself slept heavily; and, waking at dawn, went down.  Pippin was
still at his desk; his pen had dropped; he was asleep.  The ink was
wet; Scorrier's eye caught the opening words:

"GENTLEMEN,--Since this happened I have not slept...."

He stole away again with a sense of indignation that no one could be
dragged in to share that fight.  The London Board-room rose before
his mind.  He imagined the portentous gravity of Hemmings; his face
and voice and manner conveying the impression that he alone could
save the situation; the six directors, all men of commonsense and
certainly humane, seated behind large turret-shaped inkpots; the
concern and irritation in their voices, asking how it could have
happened; their comments: "An awful thing!"  "I suppose Pippin is
doing the best he can!"  "Wire him on no account to leave the mine
idle!"  "Poor devils!"  "A fund?  Of course, what ought we to give?"
He had a strong conviction that nothing of all this would disturb the
commonsense with which they would go home and eat their mutton.  A
good thing too; the less it was taken to heart the better!  But
Scorrier felt angry.  The fight was so unfair!  A fellow all nerves--
with not a soul to help him!  Well, it was his own lookout!  He had
chosen to centre it all in himself, to make himself its very soul.
If he gave way now, the ship must go down!  By a thin thread,
Scorrier's hero-worship still held.  'Man against nature,' he
thought, 'I back the man.'  The struggle in which he was so powerless
to give aid, became intensely personal to him, as if he had engaged
his own good faith therein.

The next day they went down again to the pit-head; and Scorrier
himself descended.  The fumes had almost cleared, but there were some
places which would never be reached.  At the end of the day all but
four bodies had been recovered.  "In the day o' judgment," a miner
said, "they four'll come out of here."  Those unclaimed bodies
haunted Scorrier.  He came on sentences of writing, where men waiting
to be suffocated had written down their feelings.  In one place, the
hour, the word "Sleepy," and a signature.  In another, "A. F.--done
for."  When he came up at last Pippin was still waiting, pocket-book
in hand; they again departed at a furious pace.

Two days later Scorrier, visiting the shaft, found its neighbourhood
deserted--not a living thing of any sort was there except one
Chinaman poking his stick into the rubbish.  Pippin was away down the
coast engaging an engineer; and on his return, Scorrier had not the
heart to tell him of the desertion.  He was spared the effort, for
Pippin said: "Don't be afraid--you've got bad news?  The men have
gone on strike."

Scorrier sighed.  "Lock, stock, and barrel"

"I thought so--see what I have here!" He put before Scorrier a
telegram:

"At all costs keep working--fatal to stop--manage this somehow.--
HEMMINGS."

Breathing quickly, he added: "As if I didn't know! 'Manage this
somehow'--a little hard!"

"What's to be done?" asked Scorrier.

"You see I am commanded!" Pippin answered bitterly.  "And they're
quite right; we must keep working--our contracts!  Now I'm down--not
a soul will spare me!"

The miners' meeting was held the following day on the outskirts of
the town.  Pippin had cleared the place to make a public recreation-
ground--a sort of feather in the company's cap; it was now to be the
spot whereon should be decided the question of the company's life or
death.

The sky to the west was crossed by a single line of cloud like a bar
of beaten gold; tree shadows crept towards the groups of men; the
evening savour, that strong fragrance of the forest, sweetened the
air.  The miners stood all round amongst the burnt tree-stumps, cowed
and sullen.  They looked incapable of movement or expression.  It was
this dumb paralysis that frightened Scorrier.  He watched Pippin
speaking from his phaeton, the butt of all those sullen, restless
eyes.  Would he last out?  Would the wires hold?  It was like the
finish of a race.  He caught a baffled look on Pippin's face, as if
he despaired of piercing that terrible paralysis.  The men's eyes had
begun to wander.  'He's lost his hold,' thought Scorrier; 'it's all
up!'

A miner close beside him muttered: "Look out!"

Pippin was leaning forward, his voice had risen, the words fell like
a whiplash on the faces of the crowd: "You shan't throw me over; do
you think I'll give up all I've done for you?  I'll make you the
first power in the colony!  Are you turning tail at the first shot?
You're a set of cowards, my lads!"

Each man round Scorrier was listening with a different motion of the
hands--one rubbed them, one clenched them, another moved his closed
fist, as if stabbing some one in the back.  A grisly-bearded, beetle-
browed, twinkling-eyed old Cornishman muttered: "A'hm not troublin'
about that."  It seemed almost as if Pippin's object was to get the
men to kill him; they had gathered closer, crouching for a rush.
Suddenly Pippin's voice dropped to a whisper: "I'm disgraced
Men, are you going back on me?"

The old miner next Scorrier called out suddenly: "Anny that's
Cornishmen here to stand by the superintendent?"  A group drew
together, and with murmurs and gesticulation the meeting broke up.

In the evening a deputation came to visit Pippin; and all night long
their voices and the superintendent's footsteps could be heard.  In
the morning, Pippin went early to the mine.  Before supper the
deputation came again; and again Scorrier had to listen hour after
hour to the sound of voices and footsteps till he fell asleep.  Just
before dawn he was awakened by a light.  Pippin stood at his bedside.
"The men go down to-morrow," he said: "What did I tell you?  Carry me
home on my shield, eh?"

In a week the mine was in full work.




V

Two years later, Scorrier heard once more of Pippin.  A note from
Hemmings reached him asking if he could make it convenient to attend
their Board meeting the following Thursday.  He arrived rather before
the appointed time.  The secretary received him, and, in answer to
inquiry, said: "Thank you, we are doing well--between ourselves, we
are doing very well."

"And Pippin?"

The secretary frowned.  "Ah, Pippin! We asked you to come on his
account.  Pippin is giving us a lot of trouble.  We have not had a
single line from him for just two years!"  He spoke with such a sense
of personal grievance that Scorrier felt quite sorry for him.  "Not a
single line," said Hemmings, "since that explosion--you were there at
the time, I remember!  It makes it very awkward; I call it personal
to me."

"But how--" Scorrier began.

"We get--telegrams.  He writes to no one, not even to his family.
And why?  Just tell me why?  We hear of him; he's a great nob out
there.  Nothing's done in the colony without his finger being in the
pie.  He turned out the last Government because they wouldn't grant
us an extension for our railway--shows he can't be a fool.  Besides,
look at our balance-sheet!"

It turned out that the question on which Scorrier's opinion was
desired was, whether Hemmings should be sent out to see what was the
matter with the superintendent.  During the discussion which.
ensued, he was an unwilling listener to strictures on Pippin's
silence.  "The explosion," he muttered at last, "a very trying time!"

Mr. Booker pounced on him.  "A very trying time!  So it was--to all
of us.  But what excuse is that--now, Mr. Scorrier, what excuse is
that?"

Scorrier was obliged to admit that it was none.

"Business is business--eh, what?"

Scorrier, gazing round that neat Board-room, nodded.  A deaf
director, who had not spoken for some months, said with sudden
fierceness: "It's disgraceful!"  He was obviously letting off the
fume of long-unuttered disapprovals.  One perfectly neat, benevolent
old fellow, however, who had kept his hat on, and had a single vice--
that of coming to the Board-room with a brown paper parcel tied up
with string--murmured: "We must make all allowances," and started an
anecdote about his youth.  He was gently called to order by his
secretary.  Scorrier was asked for his opinion.  He looked at
Hemmings.  "My importance is concerned," was written all over the
secretary's face.  Moved by an impulse of loyalty to Pippin, Scorrier
answered, as if it were all settled: "Well, let me know when you are
starting, Hemmings--I should like the trip myself."

As he was going out, the chairman, old Jolyon Forsyte, with a grave,
twinkling look at Hemmings, took him aside.  "Glad to hear you say
that about going too, Mr. Scorrier; we must be careful--Pippin's such
a good fellow, and so sensitive; and our friend there--a bit heavy in
the hand, um?"

Scorrier did in fact go out with Hemmings.  The secretary was sea-
sick, and his prostration, dignified but noisy, remained a memory for
ever; it was sonorous and fine--the prostration of superiority; and
the way in which he spoke of it, taking casual acquaintances into the
caves of his experience, was truly interesting.

Pippin came down to the capital to escort them, provided for their
comforts as if they had been royalty, and had a special train to take
them to the mines.

He was a little stouter, brighter of colour, greyer of beard, more
nervous perhaps in voice and breathing.  His manner to Hemmings was
full of flattering courtesy; but his sly, ironical glances played on
the secretary's armour like a fountain on a hippopotamus.  To
Scorrier, however, he could not show enough affection:

The first evening, when Hemmings had gone to his room, he jumped up
like a boy out of school.  "So I'm going to get a wigging," he said;
"I suppose I deserve it; but if you knew--if you only knew...! Out
here they've nicknamed me 'the King'--they say I rule the colony.
It's myself that I can't rule"; and with a sudden burst of passion
such as Scorrier had never seen in him: "Why did they send this man
here?  What can he know about the things that I've been through?"  In
a moment he calmed down again.  "There! this is very stupid; worrying
you like this!" and with a long, kind look into Scorrier's face, he
hustled him off to bed.

Pippin did not break out again, though fire seemed to smoulder behind
the bars of his courteous irony.  Intuition of danger had evidently
smitten Hemmings, for he made no allusion to the object of his visit.
There were moments when Scorrier's common-sense sided with Hemmings--
these were moments when the secretary was not present.

'After all,' he told himself, 'it's a little thing to ask--one letter
a month.  I never heard of such a case.'  It was wonderful indeed how
they stood it!  It showed how much they valued Pippin!  What was the
matter with him?  What was the nature of his trouble?  One glimpse
Scorrier had when even Hemmings, as he phrased it, received "quite a
turn."  It was during a drive back from the most outlying of the
company's trial mines, eight miles through the forest.  The track led
through a belt of trees blackened by a forest fire.  Pippin was
driving.  The secretary seated beside him wore an expression of faint
alarm, such as Pippin's driving was warranted to evoke from almost
any face.  The sky had darkened strangely, but pale streaks of light,
coming from one knew not where, filtered through the trees.  No
breath was stirring; the wheels and horses' hoofs made no sound on
the deep fern mould.  All around, the burnt tree-trunks, leafless and
jagged, rose like withered giants, the passages between them were
black, the sky black, and black the silence.  No one spoke, and
literally the only sound was Pippin's breathing.  What was it that
was so terrifying?  Scorrier had a feeling of entombment; that nobody
could help him; the feeling of being face to face with Nature; a
sensation as if all the comfort and security of words and rules had
dropped away from him.  And-nothing happened.  They reached home and
dined.

During dinner he had again that old remembrance of a little man
chopping at a castle with his sword.  It came at a moment when Pippin
had raised his hand with the carving-knife grasped in it to answer
some remark of Hemmings' about the future of the company.  The
optimism in his uplifted chin, the strenuous energy in his whispering
voice, gave Scorrier a more vivid glimpse of Pippin's nature than he
had perhaps ever had before.  This new country, where nothing but
himself could help a man--that was the castle!  No wonder Pippin was
impatient of control, no wonder he was out of hand, no wonder he was
silent--chopping away at that!  And suddenly he thought: 'Yes, and
all the time one knows, Nature must beat him in the end!'

That very evening Hemmings delivered himself of his reproof.  He had
sat unusually silent; Scorrier, indeed, had thought him a little
drunk, so portentous was his gravity; suddenly, however he rose.  It
was hard on a man, he said, in his position, with a Board (he spoke
as of a family of small children), to be kept so short of
information.  He was actually compelled to use his imagination to
answer the shareholders' questions.  This was painful and
humiliating; he had never heard of any secretary having to use his
imagination!  He went further--it was insulting!  He had grown grey
in the service of the company.  Mr. Scorrier would bear him out when
he said he had a position to maintain--his name in the City was a
high one; and, by George! he was going to keep it a high one; he
would allow nobody to drag it in the dust--that ought clearly to be
understood.  His directors felt they were being treated like
children; however that might be, it was absurd to suppose that he
(Hemmings) could be treated like a child...!  The secretary paused;
his eyes seemed to bully the room.

"If there were no London office," murmured Pippin, "the shareholders
would get the same dividends."

Hemmings gasped.  "Come!" he said, "this is monstrous!"

"What help did I get from London when I first came here?  What help
have I ever had?"

Hemmings swayed, recovered, and with a forced smile replied that, if
this were true, he had been standing on his head for years; he did
not believe the attitude possible for such a length of time;
personally he would have thought that he too had had a little
something to say to the company's position, but no matter...!  His
irony was crushing....  It was possible that Mr. Pippin hoped to
reverse the existing laws of the universe with regard to limited
companies; he would merely say that he must not begin with a company
of which he (Hemmings) happened to be secretary.  Mr. Scorrier had
hinted at excuses; for his part, with the best intentions in the
world, he had great difficulty in seeing them.  He would go further--
he did not see them!  The explosion...!  Pippin shrank so visibly
that Hemmings seemed troubled by a suspicion that he had gone too
far.

"We know," he said, "that it was trying for you...."

"Trying!" "burst out Pippin.

"No one can say," Hemmings resumed soothingly, "that we have not
dealt liberally."  Pippin made a motion of the head.  "We think we
have a good superintendent; I go further, an excellent
superintendent.  What I say is: Let's be pleasant!  I am not making
an unreasonable request!"  He ended on a fitting note of jocularity;
and, as if by consent, all three withdrew, each to his own room,
without another word.

In the course of the next day Pippin said to Scorrier: "It seems I
have been very wicked.  I must try to do better"; and with a touch of
bitter humour, "They are kind enough to think me a good
superintendent, you see!  After that I must try hard."

Scorrier broke in: "No man could have done so much for them;" and,
carried away by an impulse to put things absolutely straight, went on
"But, after all, a letter now and then--what does it amount to?"

Pippin besieged him with a subtle glance.  "You too?" he said--
"I must indeed have been a wicked man!" and turned away.

Scorrier felt as if he had been guilty of brutality; sorry for
Pippin, angry with himself; angry with Pippin, sorry for himself.  He
earnestly desired to see the back of Hemmings.  The secretary
gratified the wish a few days later, departing by steamer with
ponderous expressions of regard and the assurance of his goodwill.

Pippin gave vent to no outburst of relief, maintaining a courteous
silence, making only one allusion to his late guest, in answer to a
remark of Scorrier:

"Ah! don't tempt me! mustn't speak behind his back."

A month passed, and Scorrier still--remained Pippin's guest.  As each
mail-day approached he experienced a queer suppressed excitement.  On
one of these occasions Pippin had withdrawn to his room; and when
Scorrier went to fetch him to dinner he found him with his head
leaning on his hands, amid a perfect fitter of torn paper.  He looked
up at Scorrier.

"I can't do it," he said, "I feel such a hypocrite; I can't put
myself into leading-strings again.  Why should I ask these people,
when I've settled everything already?  If it were a vital matter they
wouldn't want to hear--they'd simply wire, 'Manage this somehow!'"

Scorrier said nothing, but thought privately 'This is a mad
business!'  What was a letter?  Why make a fuss about a letter?  The
approach of mail-day seemed like a nightmare to the superintendent;
he became feverishly nervous like a man under a spell; and, when the
mail had gone, behaved like a respited criminal.  And this had been
going on two years!  Ever since that explosion.  Why, it was
monomania!

One day, a month after Hemmings' departure, Pippin rose early from
dinner; his face was flushed, he had been drinking wine.  "I won't be
beaten this time," he said, as he passed Scorrier.  The latter could
hear him writing in the next room, and looked in presently to say
that he was going for a walk.  Pippin gave him a kindly nod.

It was a cool, still evening: innumerable stars swarmed in clusters
over the forests, forming bright hieroglyphics in the middle heavens,
showering over the dark harbour into the sea.  Scorrier walked
slowly.  A weight seemed lifted from his mind, so entangled had he
become in that uncanny silence.  At last Pippin had broken through
the spell.  To get that, letter sent would be the laying of a
phantom, the rehabilitation of commonsense.  Now that this silence
was in the throes of being broken, he felt curiously tender towards
Pippin, without the hero-worship of old days, but with a queer
protective feeling.  After all, he was different from other men.  In
spite of his feverish, tenacious energy, in spite of his ironic
humour, there was something of the woman in him!  And as for this
silence, this horror of control--all geniuses had "bees in their
bonnets," and Pippin was a genius in his way!

He looked back at the town.  Brilliantly lighted it had a thriving
air-difficult to believe of the place he remembered ten years back;
the sounds of drinking, gambling, laughter, and dancing floated to
his ears.  'Quite a city!' he thought.

With this queer elation on him he walked slowly back along the
street, forgetting that he was simply an oldish mining expert, with a
look of shabbiness, such as clings to men who are always travelling,
as if their "nap" were for ever being rubbed off.  And he thought of
Pippin, creator of this glory.

He had passed the boundaries of the town, and had entered the forest.
A feeling of discouragement instantly beset him.  The scents and
silence, after the festive cries and odours of the town, were
undefinably oppressive.  Notwithstanding, he walked a long time,
saying to himself that he would give the letter every chance.  At
last, when he thought that Pippin must have finished, he went back to
the house.

Pippin had finished.  His forehead rested on the table, his arms hung
at his sides; he was stone-dead!  His face wore a smile, and by his
side lay an empty laudanum bottle.

The letter, closely, beautifully written, lay before him.  It was a
fine document, clear, masterly, detailed, nothing slurred, nothing
concealed, nothing omitted; a complete review of the company's
position; it ended with the words: "Your humble servant, RICHARD
PIPPIN."

Scorrier took possession of it.  He dimly understood that with those
last words a wire had snapped.  The border-line had been overpassed;
the point reached where that sense of proportion, which alone makes
life possible, is lost.  He was certain that at the moment of his
death Pippin could have discussed bimetallism, or any intellectual
problem, except the one problem of his own heart; that, for some
mysterious reason, had been too much for him.  His death had been the
work of a moment of supreme revolt--a single instant of madness on a
single subject!  He found on the blotting-paper, scrawled across the
impress of the signature, "Can't stand it!"  The completion of that
letter had been to him a struggle ungraspable by Scorrier.  Slavery?
Defeat?  A violation of Nature?  The death of justice?  It were
better not to think of it!  Pippin could have told--but he would
never speak again.  Nature, at whom, unaided, he had dealt so many
blows, had taken her revenge...!

In the night Scorrier stole down, and, with an ashamed face, cut off
a lock of the fine grey hair.  'His daughter might like it!' he
thought....

He waited till Pippin was buried, then, with the letter in his
pocket, started for England.

He arrived at Liverpool on a Thursday morning, and travelling to
town, drove straight to the office of the company.  The Board were
sitting.  Pippin's successor was already being interviewed.  He
passed out as Scorrier came in, a middle-aged man with a large, red
beard, and a foxy, compromising face.  He also was a Cornishman.
Scorrier wished him luck with a very heavy heart.

As an unsentimental man, who had a proper horror of emotion, whose
living depended on his good sense, to look back on that interview
with the Board was painful.  It had excited in him a rage of which he
was now heartily ashamed.  Old Jolyon Forsyte, the chairman, was not
there for once, guessing perhaps that the Board's view of this death
would be too small for him; and little Mr. Booker sat in his place.
Every one had risen, shaken hands with Scorrier, and expressed
themselves indebted for his coming.  Scorrier placed Pippin's letter
on the table, and gravely the secretary read out to his Board the
last words of their superintendent.  When he had finished, a director
said, "That's not the letter of a madman!"  Another answered: "Mad as
a hatter; nobody but a madman would have thrown up such a post."
Scorrier suddenly withdrew.  He heard Hemmings calling after him.
"Aren't you well, Mr. Scorrier?  aren't you well, sir?"

He shouted back: "Quite sane, I thank you....

The Naples "express" rolled round the outskirts of the town.
Vesuvius shone in the sun, uncrowned by smoke.  But even as Scorrier
looked, a white puff went soaring up.  It was the footnote to his
memories.

February 1901.




End of this Project Gutenberg Etext of VILLA RUBEIN AND OTHER STORIES
by John Galsworthy.






SAINTS PROGRESS

By John Galsworthy




PART I



I

Such a day made glad the heart.  All the flags of July were waving;
the sun and the poppies flaming; white butterflies spiring up and
twining, and the bees busy on the snapdragons.  The lime-trees were
coming into flower.  Tall white lilies in the garden beds already
rivaled the delphiniums; the York and Lancaster roses were full-blown
round their golden hearts.  There was a gentle breeze, and a swish
and stir and hum rose and fell above the head of Edward Pierson,
coming back from his lonely ramble over Tintern Abbey.  He had
arrived at Kestrel, his brother Robert's home on the bank of the Wye
only that morning, having stayed at Bath on the way down; and now he
had got his face burnt in that parti-coloured way peculiar to the
faces of those who have been too long in London.  As he came along
the narrow, rather overgrown avenue, the sound of a waltz thrummed
out on a piano fell on his ears, and he smiled, for music was the
greatest passion he had.  His dark grizzled hair was pushed back off
his hot brow, which he fanned with his straw hat.  Though not broad,
that brow was the broadest part of a narrow oval face whose length
was increased by a short, dark, pointed beard--a visage such as
Vandyk might have painted, grave and gentle, but for its bright grey
eyes, cinder-lashed.  and crow's-footed, and its strange look of not
seeing what was before it.  He walked quickly, though he was tired
and hot; tall, upright, and thin, in a grey parsonical suit, on whose
black kerseymere vest a little gold cross dangled.

Above his brother's house, whose sloping garden ran down to the
railway line and river, a large room had been built out apart.
Pierson stood where the avenue forked, enjoying the sound of the
waltz, and the cool whipping of the breeze in the sycamores and
birches.  A man of fifty, with a sense of beauty, born and bred in
the country, suffers fearfully from nostalgia during a long unbroken
spell of London; so that his afternoon in the old Abbey had been
almost holy.  He had let his senses sink into the sunlit greenery of
the towering woods opposite; he had watched the spiders and the
little shining beetles, the flycatchers, and sparrows in the ivy;
touched the mosses and the lichens; looked the speedwells in the eye;
dreamed of he knew not what.  A hawk had been wheeling up there above
the woods, and he had been up there with it in the blue.  He had
taken a real spiritual bath, and washed the dusty fret of London off
his soul.

For a year he had been working his parish single-handed--no joke--
for his curate had gone for a chaplain; and this was his first real
holiday since the war began, two years ago; his first visit, too, to
his brother's home.  He looked down at the garden, and up at the
trees of the avenue.  Bob had found a perfect retreat after his
quarter of a century in Ceylon.  Dear old Bob!  And he smiled at the
thought of his elder brother, whose burnt face and fierce grey
whiskers somewhat recalled a Bengal tiger; the kindest fellow that
ever breathed!  Yes, he had found a perfect home for Thirza and
himself.  And Edward Pierson sighed.  He too had once had a perfect
home, a perfect wife; the wound of whose death, fifteen years ago,
still bled a little in his heart.  Their two daughters, Gratian and
Noel, had not "taken after" her; Gratian was like his own mother, and
Noel's fair hair and big grey eyes always reminded him of his cousin
Leila, who--poor thing!--had made that sad mess of her life, and now,
he had heard, was singing for a living, in South Africa.  Ah!  What a
pretty girl she had been

Drawn by that eternal waltz tune he reached the doorway of the music-
room.  A chintz curtain hung there, and to the sound of feet slipping
on polished boards, he saw his daughter Noel waltzing slowly in the
arms of a young officer in khaki: Round and round they went,
circling, backing, moving sideways with curious steps which seemed to
have come in recently, for he did not recognise them.  At the piano
sat his niece Eve, with a teasing smile on her rosy face.  But it was
at his young daughter that Edward Pierson looked.  Her eyes were
half-closed, her cheeks rather pale, and her fair hair, cut quite
short, curled into her slim round neck.  Quite cool she seemed,
though the young man in whose arms she was gliding along looked fiery
hot; a handsome boy, with blue eyes and a little golden down on the
upper lip of his sunny red-cheeked face.  Edward Pierson thought:
'Nice couple!' And had a moment's vision of himself and Leila,
dancing at that long-ago Cambridge May Week--on her seventeenth
birthday, he remembered, so that she must have been a year younger
than Nollie was now!  This would be the young man she had talked of
in her letters during the last three weeks.  Were they never going to
stop?

He passed into view of those within, and said:

"Aren't you very hot, Nollie?"

She blew him a kiss; the young man looked startled and self-
conscious, and Eve called out:

"It's a bet, Uncle.  They've got to dance me down."

Pierson said mildly:

"A bet?  My dears!"

Noel murmured over her shoulder:

"It's all right, Daddy!"  And the young man gasped:

"She's bet us one of her puppies against one of mine, sir!"

Pierson sat down, a little hypnotized by the sleepy strumming, the
slow giddy movement of the dancers, and those half-closed swimming
eyes of his young daughter, looking at him over her shoulder as she
went by.  He sat with a smile on his lips.  Nollie was growing up!
Now that Gratian was married, she had become a great responsibility.
If only his dear wife had lived!  The smile faded from his lips; he
looked suddenly very tired.  The struggle, physical and spiritual, he
had been through, these fifteen years, sometimes weighed him almost
to the ground: Most men would have married again, but he had always
felt it would be sacrilege.  Real unions were for ever, even though
the Church permitted remarriage.

He watched his young daughter with a mixture of aesthetic pleasure
and perplexity.  Could this be good for her?  To go on dancing
indefinitely with one young man could that possibly be good for her?
But they looked very happy; and there was so much in young creatures
that he did not understand.  Noel, so affectionate, and dreamy,
seemed sometimes possessed of a little devil.  Edward Pierson was
naif; attributed those outbursts of demonic possession to the loss of
her mother when she was such a mite; Gratian, but two years older,
had never taken a mother's place.  That had been left to himself, and
he was more or less conscious of failure.

He sat there looking up at her with a sort of whimsical distress.
And, suddenly, in that dainty voice of hers, which seemed to spurn
each word a little, she said:

"I'm going to stop!" and, sitting down beside him, took up his hat to
fan herself.

Eve struck a triumphant chord.  "Hurrah I've won!"

The young man muttered:

"I say, Noel, we weren't half done!"

"I know; but Daddy was getting bored, weren't you, dear?  This is
Cyril Morland."

Pierson shook the young man's hand.

"Daddy, your nose is burnt!"

"My dear; I know."

"I can give you some white stuff for it.  You have to sleep with it
on all night.  Uncle and Auntie both use it."

"Nollie!"

"Well, Eve says so.  If you're going to bathe, Cyril, look out for
that current!"

The young man, gazing at her with undisguised adoration, muttered:

"Rather!"  and went out.

Noel's eyes lingered after him; Eve broke a silence.

"If you're going to have a bath before tea, Nollie, you'd better
hurry up."

"All right.  Was it jolly in the Abbey, Daddy?"

"Lovely; like a great piece of music."

"Daddy always puts everything into music.  You ought to see it by
moonlight; it's gorgeous then.  All right, Eve; I'm coming."  But she
did not get up, and when Eve was gone, cuddled her arm through her
father's and murmured:

"What d'you think of Cyril?"

"My dear, how can I tell?  He seems a nice-looking young man."

"All right, Daddy; don't strain yourself.  It's jolly down here,
isn't it?"  She got up, stretched herself a little, and moved away,
looking like a very tall child, with her short hair curling in round
her head.

Pierson, watching her vanish past the curtain, thought: 'What a
lovely thing she is!' And he got up too, but instead of following,
went to the piano, and began to play Mendelssohn's Prelude and Fugue
in E minor.  He had a fine touch, and played with a sort of dreamy
passion.  It was his way out of perplexities, regrets, and longings;
a way which never quite failed him.

At Cambridge, he had intended to take up music as a profession, but
family tradition had destined him for Holy Orders, and an emotional
Church revival of that day had caught him in its stream.  He had
always had private means, and those early years before he married had
passed happily in an East-End parish.  To have not only opportunity
but power to help in the lives of the poor had been fascinating;
simple himself, the simple folk of his parish had taken hold of his
heart.  When, however, he married Agnes Heriot, he was given a parish
of his own on the borders of East and West, where he had been ever
since, even after her death had nearly killed him.  It was better to
go on where work and all reminded him of one whom he had resolved
never to forget in other ties.  But he knew that his work had not the
zest it used to have in her day, or even before her day.  It may well
be doubted whether he, who had been in Holy Orders twenty-six years,
quite knew now what he believed.  Everything had become
circumscribed, and fixed, by thousands of his own utterances; to have
taken fresh stock of his faith, to have gone deep into its roots,
would have been like taking up the foundations of a still-standing
house.  Some men naturally root themselves in the inexpressible--for
which one formula is much the same as another; though Edward Pierson,
gently dogmatic, undoubtedly preferred his High-Church statement of
the inexpressible to that of, say, the Zoroastrians.  The subtleties
of change, the modifications by science, left little sense of
inconsistency or treason on his soul.  Sensitive, charitable, and
only combative deep down, he instinctively avoided discussion on
matters where he might hurt others or they hurt him.  And, since
explanation was the last thing which o could be expected of one who
did not base himself on Reason, he had found but scant occasion ever
to examine anything.  Just as in the old Abbey he had soared off into
the infinite with the hawk, the beetles, and the grasses, so now, at
the piano, by these sounds of his own making, he was caught away
again into emotionalism, without realising that he was in one of his,
most religious moods.

"Aren't you coming to tea, Edward?"

The woman standing behind him, in a lilac-coloured gown, had one of
those faces which remain innocent to the end of the chapter, in spite
of the complete knowledge of life which appertains to mothers.  In
days of suffering and anxiety, like these of the great war, Thirza
Pierson was a valuable person.  Without ever expressing an opinion on
cosmic matters, she reconfirmed certain cosmic truths, such as that
though the whole world was at war, there was such a thing as peace;
that though all the sons of mothers were being killed, there remained
such a thing as motherhood; that while everybody was living for the
future, the present still existed.  Her tranquil, tender, matter-of-
fact busyness, and the dew in her eyes, had been proof against
twenty-three years of life on a tea-plantation in the hot part of
Ceylon; against Bob Pierson; against the anxiety of having two sons
at the front, and the confidences of nearly every one she came
across.  Nothing disturbed her.  She was like a painting of
"Goodness" by an Old Master, restored by Kate Greenaway.  She never
went to meet life, but when it came, made the best of it.  This was
her secret, and Pierson always felt rested in her presence.

He rose, and moved by her side, over the lawn, towards the big tree
at the bottom of the garden.

"How d'you think Noel is looking, Edward?"

"Very pretty.  That young man, Thirza?"

"Yes; I'm afraid he's over head and ears in love with her."

At the dismayed sound he uttered, she slipped her soft round arm
within his.  "He's going to the front soon, poor boy!"

"Have they talked to you?"

"He has.  Nollie hasn't yet."

"Nollie is a queer child, Thirza."

"Nollie is a darling, but rather a desperate character, Edward."

Pierson sighed.

In a swing under the tree, where the tea-things were set out, the
"rather desperate character" was swaying.  "What a picture she is!"
he said, and sighed again.

The voice of his brother came to them,--high and steamy, as though
corrupted by the climate of Ceylon:

"You incorrigible dreamy chap, Ted!  We've eaten all the raspberries.
Eve, give him some jam; he must be dead!  Phew! the heat!  Come on,
my dear, and pour out his tea.  Hallo, Cyril!  Had a good bathe?  By
George, wish my head was wet!  Squattez-vous down over there, by
Nollie; she'll swing, and keep the flies off you."

"Give me a cigarette, Uncle Bob--"

"What!  Your father doesn't--"

"Just for the flies.  You don't mind, Daddy?"

"Not if it's necessary, my dear."

Noel smiled, showing her upper teeth, and her eyes seemed to swim
under their long lashes.

"It isn't necessary, but it's nice."

"Ah, ha!" said Bob Pierson.  "Here you are, Nollie!"

But Noel shook her head.  At that moment she struck her father as
startlingly grown-up-so composed, swaying above that young man at her
feet, whose sunny face was all adoration.  'No longer a child!' he
thought.  'Dear Nollie!'




II


1

Awakened by that daily cruelty, the advent of hot water, Edward
Pierson lay in his chintz-curtained room, fancying himself back in
London.  A wild bee hunting honey from the bowl of flowers on the
window-sill, and the scent of sweetbrier, shattered that illusion.
He drew the curtain, and, kneeling on the window-seat thrust his head
out into the morning.  The air was intoxicatingly sweet.  Haze clung
over the river and the woods beyond; the lawn sparkled with dew, and
two wagtails strutted in the dewy sunshine.  'Thank God for
loveliness!' he thought.  'Those poor boys at the front!'  And
kneeling with his elbows on the sill, he began to say his prayers.
The same feeling which made him beautify his church, use vestments,
good music, and incense, filled him now.  God was in the loveliness
of His world, as well as in His churches.  One could worship Him in a
grove of beech trees, in a beautiful garden, on a high hill, by the
banks of a bright river.  God was in the rustle of the leaves, and
the hum of a bee, in the dew on the grass, and the scent of flowers;
God was in everything!  And he added to his usual prayer this
whisper: "I give Thee thanks for my senses, O Lord.  In all of us,
keep them bright, and grateful for beauty."  Then he remained
motionless, prey to a sort of happy yearning very near, to
melancholy.  Great beauty ever had that effect on him.  One could
capture so little of it--could never enjoy it enough!  Who was it had
said not long ago: "Love of beauty is really only the sex instinct,
which nothing but complete union satisfies."  Ah!  yes, George--
Gratian's husband.  George Laird!  And a little frown came between
his brows, as though at some thorn in the flesh.  Poor George!  But
then, all doctors were materialists at heart--splendid fellows,
though; a fine fellow, George, working himself to death out there in
France.  One must not take them too seriously.  He plucked a bit of
sweetbrier and put it to his nose, which still retained the shine of
that bleaching ointment Noel had insisted on his using.  The sweet
smell of those little rough leaves stirred up an acute aching.  He
dropped them, and drew back.  No longings, no melancholy; one ought
to be out, this beautiful morning!

It was Sunday; but he had not to take three Services and preach at
least one sermon; this day of rest was really to be his own, for
once.  It was almost disconcerting; he had so long felt like the cab
horse who could not be taken out of the shafts lest he should fall
down.  He dressed with extraordinary deliberation, and had not quite
finished when there came a knock on his door, and Noel's voice said:
"Can I come in, Daddy?"

In her flax-blue frock, with a Gloire de Dijon rose pinned where it
met on her faintly browned neck, she seemed to her father a perfect
vision of freshness.

"Here's a letter from Gratian; George has been sent home ill, and
he's gone to our house.  She's got leave from her hospital to come
home and nurse him."

Pierson read the letter.  "Poor George!"

"When are you going to let me be a nurse, Daddy?"

"We must wait till you're eighteen, Nollie."

"I could easily say I was.  It's only a month; and I look much more."

Pierson smiled.

"Don't I?"

"You might be anything from fifteen to twenty-five, my dear,
according as you behave."

"I want to go out as near the front as possible."

Her head was poised so that the sunlight framed her face, which was
rather broad--the brow rather too broad--under the waving light-brown
hair, the nose short and indeterminate; cheeks still round from
youth, almost waxen-pale, and faintly hollowed under the eyes.  It
was her lips, dainty yet loving, and above all her grey eyes, big and
dreamily alive, which made her a swan.  He could not imagine her in
nurse's garb.

"This is new, isn't it, Nollie?"

"Cyril Morland's sisters are both out; and he'll be going soon.
Everybody goes."

"Gratian hasn't got out yet: It takes a long time to get trained."

"I know; all the more reason to begin."

She got up, looked at him, looked at her hands, seemed about to
speak, but did not.  A little colour had come into her cheeks.  Then,
obviously making conversation, she asked:

"Are you going to church?  It's worth anything to hear Uncle Bob read
the Lessons, especially when he loses his place.  No; you're not to
put on your long coat till just before church time.  I won't have
it!"

Obediently Pierson resigned his long coat.

"Now, you see, you can have my rose.  Your nose is better!"  She
kissed his nose, and transferred her rose to the buttonhole of his
short coat.  "That's all.  Come along!"  And with her arm through
his, they went down.  But he knew she had come to say something which
she had not said.



2

Bob Pierson, in virtue of greater wealth than the rest of the
congregation, always read the Lessons, in his high steamy voice, his
breathing never adjusted to the length of any period.  The
congregation, accustomed, heard nothing peculiar; he was the
necessary gentry with the necessary finger in the pie.  It was his
own family whom he perturbed.  In the second row, Noel, staring
solemnly at the profile of her father in the front row, was thinking:
'Poor Daddy!  His eyes look as if they were coming out.  Oh, Daddy!
Smile! or it'll hurt you!'  Young Morland beside her, rigid in his
tunic, was thinking: 'She isn't thinking of me!'  And just then her
little finger crooked into his.  Edward Pierson was thinking: 'Oh! My
dear old Bob! Oh!'  And, beside him, Thirza thought: 'Poor dear Ted I
how nice for him to be having a complete rest!  I must make him eat
he's so thin!'  And Eve was thinking: 'Oh, Father! Mercy!'  But Bob
Pierson was thinking: 'Cheer oh!  Only another three verses!'  Noel's
little finger unhooked itself, but her eyes stole round to young
Morland's eyes, and there was a light in them which lingered through
the singing and the prayers.  At last, in the reverential rustle of
the settling congregation, a surpliced figure mounted the pulpit.

"I come not to bring Peace, but a sword."

Pierson looked up.  He felt deep restfulness.  There was a pleasant
light in this church; the hum of a country bluebottle made all the
difference to the quality of silence.  No critical thought stirred
within him, nor any excitement.  He was thinking: 'Now I shall hear
something for my good; a fine text; when did I preach from it last?'
Turned a little away from the others, he saw nothing but the
preacher's homely face up there above the carved oak; it was so long
since he had been preached to, so long since he had had a rest!  The
words came forth, dropped on his forehead, penetrated, met something
which absorbed them, and disappeared.  'A good plain sermon!' he
thought.  'I suppose I'm stale; I don't seem--'  "Let us not, dear
brethren," droned the preacher's earnest voice, "think that our dear
Lord, in saying that He brought a sword, referred to a physical
sword.  It was the sword of the spirit to which He was undoubtedly
referring, that bright sword of the spirit which in all ages has
cleaved its way through the fetters imposed on men themselves by
their own desires, imposed by men on other men in gratification of
their ambitions, as we have had so striking an example in the
invasion by our cruel enemies of a little neighbouring country which
had done them no harm.  Dear brethren, we may all bring swords."
Pierson's chin jerked; he raised his hand quickly and passed it over
his face.  'All bring swords,' he thought, 'swords--I wasn't asleep--
surely!'  "But let us be sure that our swords are bright; bright with
hope, and bright with faith, that we may see them flashing among the
carnal desires of this mortal life, carving a path for us towards
that heavenly kingdom where alone is peace, perfect peace.  Let us
pray."

Pierson did not shut his eyes; he opened them as he fell on his
knees.  In the seat behind, Noel and young Morland had also fallen on
their knees their faces covered each with a single hand; but her left
hand and his right hung at their sides.  They prayed a little longer
than any others and, on rising, sang the hymn a little louder.



3

No paper came on Sundays--not even the local paper, which had so long
and so nobly done its bit with headlines to win the war.  No news
whatever came, of men blown up, to enliven the hush of the hot July
afternoon, or the sense of drugging--which followed Aunt Thirza's
Sunday lunch.  Some slept, some thought they were awake; but Noel and
young Morland walked upward through the woods towards a high common
of heath and furze, crowned by what was known as Kestrel rocks.
Between these two young people no actual word of love had yet been
spoken.  Their lovering had advanced by glance and touch alone.

Young Morland was a school and college friend of the two Pierson boys
now at the front.  He had no home of his own, for his parents were
dead; and this was not his first visit to Kestrel.  Arriving three
weeks ago, for his final leave before he should go out, he had found
a girl sitting in a little wagonette outside the station, and had
known his fate at once.  But who knows when Noel fell in love?  She
was--one supposes--just ready for that sensation.  For the last two
years she had been at one of those high-class finishing
establishments where, in spite of the healthy curriculum, perhaps
because of it, there is ever an undercurrent of interest in the
opposing sex; and not even the gravest efforts to eliminate instinct
are quite successful.  The disappearance of every young male thing
into the maw of the military machine put a premium on instinct.  The
thoughts of Noel and her school companions were turned, perforce, to
that which, in pre-war freedom of opportunity they could afford to
regard as of secondary interest.  Love and Marriage and Motherhood,
fixed as the lot of women by the countless ages, were threatened for
these young creatures.  They not unnaturally pursued what they felt
to be receding.

When young Morland showed, by following her about with his eyes, what
was happening to him, Noel was pleased.  From being pleased, she
became a little excited; from being excited she became dreamy.  Then,
about a week before her father's arrival, she secretly began to
follow the young man about with her eyes; became capricious too, and
a little cruel.  If there had been another young man to favour--but
there was not; and she favoured Uncle Bob's red setter.  Cyril
Morland grew desperate.  During those three days the demon her father
dreaded certainly possessed her.  And then, one evening, while they
walked back together from the hay-fields, she gave him a sidelong
glance; and he gasped out: "Oh! Noel, what have I done?"  She caught
his hand, and gave it a quick squeeze.  What a change!  What blissful
alteration ever since!

Through the wood young Morland mounted silently, screwing himself up
to put things to the touch.  Noel too mounted silently, thinking: 'I
will kiss him if he kisses me!'  Eagerness, and a sort of languor,
were running in her veins; she did not look at him from under her
shady hat.  Sun light poured down through every chink in the foliage;
made the greenness of the steep wood marvellously vivid and alive;
flashed on beech leaves, ash leaves, birch leaves; fell on the ground
in little runlets; painted bright patches on trunks and grass, the
beech mast, the ferns; butterflies chased each other in that
sunlight, and myriads of ants and gnats and flies seemed possessed by
a frenzy of life.  The whole wood seemed possessed, as if the
sunshine were a happy Being which had come to dwell therein.  At a
half-way spot, where the trees opened and they could see, far below
them, the gleam of the river, she sat down on the bole of a beech-
tree, and young Morland stood looking at her.  Why should one face
and not an other, this voice and not that, make a heart beat; why
should a touch from one hand awaken rapture, and a touch from another
awaken nothing?  He knelt down and pressed his lips to her foot.  Her
eyes grew very bright; but she got up and ran on--she had not
expected him to kiss her foot.  She heard him hurrying after her, and
stopped, leaning against a birch trunk.  He rushed to her, and,
without a word spoken, his lips were on her lips.  The moment in
life, which no words can render, had come for them.  They had found
their enchanted spot, and they moved no further, but sat with their
arms round each other, while the happy Being of the wood watched.  A
marvellous speeder-up of Love is War.  What might have taken six
months, was thus accomplished in three weeks.

A short hour passed, then Noel said:

"I must tell Daddy, Cyril.  I meant to tell him something this
morning, only I thought I'd better wait, in case you didn't."

Morland answered: "Oh, Noel!"  It was the staple of his conversation
while they sat there.

Again a short hour passed, and Morland said:

"I shall go off my chump if we're not married before I go out."

"How long does it take?"

"No time, if we hurry up.  I've got six days before I rejoin, and
perhaps the Chief will give me another week, if I tell him."

"Poor Daddy!  Kiss me again; a long one."

When the long one was over, she said:

"Then I can come and be near you till you go out?  Oh, Cyril!"

"Oh, Noel!"

"Perhaps you won't go so soon.  Don't go if you can help it!"

"Not if I can help it, darling; but I shan't be able."

"No, of course not; I know."

Young Morland clutched his hair.  "Everyone's in the same boat, but
it can't last for ever; and now we're engaged we can be together all
the time till I've got the licence or whatever it is.  And then--!"

"Daddy won't like our not being married in a church; but I don't
care!"

Looking down at her closed eyes, and their lashes resting on her
cheeks, young Morland thought:

'My God! I'm in heaven!'

Another short hour passed before she freed herself.

"We must go, Cyril.  Kiss me once more!"

It was nearly dinner-time, and they ran down.



4

Edward Pierson, returning from the Evening Service, where he had read
the Lessons, saw them in the distance, and compressed his lips.
Their long absence had vexed him.  What ought he to do?  In the
presence of Love's young dream, he felt strange and helpless.  That
night, when he opened the door of his room, he saw Noel on the
window-seat, in her dressing-gown, with the moonlight streaming in on
her.

"Don't light up, Daddy; I've got something to say."

She took hold of the little gold cross on his vest, and turned it
over.

"I'm engaged to Cyril; we want to be married this week."

It was exactly as if someone had punched him in the ribs; and at the
sound he made she hurried on:

"You see, we must be; he may be going out any day."

In the midst of his aching consternation, he admitted a kind of
reason in her words.  But he said:

"My dear, you're only a child.  Marriage is the most serious thing in
life; you've only known him three weeks."

"I know all that, Daddy" her voice sounded so ridiculously calm; "but
we can't afford to wait.  He might never come back, you see, and then
I should have missed him."

"But, Noel, suppose he never did come back; it would only be much
worse for you."

She dropped the little cross, and took hold of his hand, pressing it
against her heart.  But still her voice was calm:

"No; much better, Daddy; you think I don't know my own feelings, but
I do,"'

The man in Pierson softened; the priest hardened.

"Nollie, true marriage is the union of souls; and for that, time is
wanted.  Time to know that you feel and think the same, and love the
same things."

"Yes, I know; but we do."

"You can't tell that, my dear; no one could in three weeks."

"But these aren't ordinary times, are they?  People have to do things
in a hurry.  Oh, Daddy!  Be an angel!  Mother would have understood,
and let me, I know!"

Pierson drew away his hand; the words hurt, from reminder of his
loss, from reminder of the poor substitute he was.

"Look, Nollie!"  he said.  "After all these years since she left us,
I'm as lonely as ever, because we were really one.  If you marry this
young man without knowing more of your own hearts than you can in
such a little time, you may regret it dreadfully; you may find it
turn out, after all, nothing but a little empty passion; or again, if
anything happens to him before you've had any real married life
together, you'll have a much greater grief and sense of loss to put
up with than if you simply stay engaged till after the war.  Besides,
my child, you're much too young."

She sat so still that he looked at her in alarm.  "But I must!"

He bit his lips, and said sharply: "You can't, Nollie!"

She got up, and before he could stop her, was gone.  With the closing
of the door, his anger evaporated, and distress took its place.  Poor
child!  What to do with this wayward chicken just out of the egg, and
wanting to be full-fledged at once?  The thought that she would be
lying miserable, crying, perhaps, beset him so that he went out into
the passage and tapped on her door.  Getting no answer, he went in.
It was dark but for a streak of moonlight, and in that he saw her,
lying on her bed, face down; and stealing up laid his hand on her
head.  She did not move; and, stroking her hair, he said gently:

"Nollie dear, I didn't mean to be harsh.  If I were your mother, I
should know how to make you see, but I'm only an old bumble-daddy."

She rolled over, scrambling into a cross-legged posture on the bed.
He could see her eyes shining.  But she did not speak; she seemed to
know that in silence was her strength.

He said with a sort of despair:

"You must let me talk it over with your aunt.  She has a lot of good
sense."

"Yes."

He bent over and kissed her hot forehead.

"Good night, my dear; don't cry.  Promise me!"

She nodded, and lifted her face; he felt her hot soft lips on his
forehead, and went away a little comforted.

But Noel sat on her bed, hugging her knees, listening to the night,
to the emptiness and silence; each minute so much lost of the little,
little time left, that she might have been with him.




III

Pierson woke after a troubled and dreamful night, in which he had
thought himself wandering in heaven like a lost soul.

After regaining his room last night nothing had struck him more
forcibly than the needlessness of his words: "Don't cry, Nollie!"
for he had realised with uneasiness that she had not been near
crying.  No; there was in her some emotion very different from the
tearful.  He kept seeing her cross-legged figure on the bed in that
dim light; tense, enigmatic, almost Chinese; kept feeling the
feverish touch of her lips.  A good girlish burst of tears would have
done her good, and been a guarantee.  He had the uncomfortable
conviction that his refusal had passed her by, as if unspoken.  And,
since he could not go and make music at that time of night, he had
ended on his knees, in a long search for guidance, which was not
vouchsafed him.

The culprits were demure at breakfast; no one could have told that
for the last hour they had been sitting with their arms round each
other, watching the river flow by, talking but little, through lips
too busy.  Pierson pursued his sister-in-law to the room where she
did her flowers every morning.  He watched her for a minute dividing
ramblers from pansies, cornflowers from sweet peas, before he said:

"I'm very troubled, Thirza.  Nollie came to me last night.  Imagine!
They want to get married--those two!"

Accepting life as it came, Thirza showed no dismay, but her cheeks
grew a little pinker, and her eyes a little rounder.  She took up a
sprig of mignonette, and said placidly:

"Oh, my dear!"

"Think of it, Thirza--that child!  Why, it's only a year or two since
she used to sit on my knee and tickle my face with her hair."

Thirza went on arranging her flowers.

"Noel is older than you think, Edward; she is more than her age.  And
real married life wouldn't begin for them till after--if it ever
began."

Pierson experienced a sort of shock.  His sister-in-law's words
seemed criminally light-hearted.

"But--but--" he stammered; "the union, Thirza!  Who can tell what
will happen before they come together again!"

She looked at his quivering face, and said gently:

"I know, Edward; but if you refuse, I should be afraid, in these
days, of what Noel might do.  I told you there's a streak of
desperation in her."

"Noel will obey me."

"I wonder!  There are so many of these war marriages now."

Pierson turned away.

"I think they're dreadful.  What do they mean--Just a momentary
gratification of passion.  They might just as well not be."

"They mean pensions, as a rule," said Thirza calmly.

"Thirza, that is cynical; besides, it doesn't affect this case.  I
can't bear to think of my little Nollie giving herself for a moment
which may come to nothing, or may turn out the beginning of an
unhappy marriage.  Who is this boy--what is he?  I know nothing of
him.  How can I give her to him--it's impossible!  If they had been
engaged some time and I knew something of him--yes, perhaps; even at
her age.  But this hasty passionateness--it isn't right, it isn't
decent.  I don't understand, I really don't--how a child like that
can want it.  The fact is, she doesn't know what she's asking, poor
little Nollie.  She can't know the nature of marriage, and she can't
realise its sacredness.  If only her mother were here!  Talk to her,
Thirza; you can say things that I can't!"

Thirza looked after the retreating figure.  In spite of his cloth,
perhaps a little because of it, he seemed to her like a child who had
come to show her his sore finger.  And, having finished the
arrangement of her flowers, she went out to find her niece.  She had
not far to go; for Noel was standing in the hall, quite evidently
lying in wait.  They went out together to the avenue.

The girl began at once:

"It isn't any use talking to me, Auntie; Cyril is going to get a
license."

"Oh!  So you've made up your minds?"

"Quite."

"Do you think that's fair by me, Nollie?  Should I have asked him
here if I'd thought this was going to happen?"

Noel only smiled.

"Have you the least idea what marriage means?"

Noel nodded.

"Really?"

"Of course.  Gratian is married.  Besides, at school--"

"Your father is dead against it.  This is a sad thing for him.  He's
a perfect saint, and you oughtn't to hurt him.  Can't you wait, at
least till Cyril's next leave?"

"He might never have one, you see."

The heart of her whose boys were out there too, and might also never
have another leave; could not but be responsive to those words.  She
looked at her niece, and a dim appreciation of this revolt of life
menaced by death, of youth threatened with extinction, stirred in
her.  Noel's teeth were clenched, her lips drawn back, and she was
staring in front of her.

"Daddy oughtn't to mind.  Old people haven't to fight, and get
killed; they oughtn't to mind us taking what we can.  They've had
their good time."

It was such a just little speech that Thirza answered:

"Yes; perhaps he hasn't quite realised that."

"I want to make sure of Cyril, Auntie; I want everything I can have
with him while there's the chance.  I don't think it's much to ask,
when perhaps I'll never have any more of him again."

Thirza slipped her hand through the girl's arm.

"I understand," she said.  "Only, Nollie, suppose, when all this is
over, and we breathe and live naturally once more, you found you'd
made a mistake?"

Noel shook her head.  "I haven't."

"We all think that, my dear; but thousands of mistakes are made by
people who no more dream they're making them than you do now; and
then it's a very horrible business.  It would be especially horrible
for you; your father believes heart and soul in marriage being for
ever."

"Daddy's a darling; but I don't always believe what he believes, you
know.  Besides, I'm not making a mistake, Auntie! I love Cyril ever
so."

Thirza gave her waist a squeeze.

"You mustn't make a mistake.  We love you too much, Nollie.  I wish
we had Gratian here."

"Gratian would back me up," said Noel; "she knows what the war is.
And you ought to, Auntie.  If Rex or Harry wanted to be married, I'm
sure you'd never oppose them.  And they're no older than Cyril.  You
must understand what it means to me Auntie dear, to feel that we
belong to each other properly before--before it all begins for him,
and--and there may be no more.  Daddy doesn't realise.  I know he's
awfully good, but--he's forgotten."

"My dear, I think he remembers only too well.  He was desperately
attached to your mother."

Noel clenched her hands.

"Was he?  Well, so am I to Cyril, and he to me.  We wouldn't be
unreasonable if it wasn't--wasn't necessary.  Talk, to Cyril, Auntie;
then you'll understand.  There he is; only, don't keep him long,
because I want him.  Oh! Auntie; I want him so badly!"

She turned; and slipped back into the house; and Thirza, conscious of
having been decoyed to this young man, who stood there with his arms
folded, like Napoleon before a battle, smiled and said:

"Well, Cyril, so you've betrayed me!"

Even in speaking she was conscious of the really momentous change in
this sunburnt, blue-eyed, lazily impudent youth since the day he
arrived, three weeks ago, in their little wagonette.  He took her
arm, just as Noel had, and made her sit down beside him on the rustic
bench, where he had evidently been told to wait.

"You see, Mrs.  Pierson," he said, "it's not as if Noel were an
ordinary girl in an ordinary time, is it?  Noel is the sort of girl
one would knock one's brains out for; and to send me out there
knowing that I could have been married to her and wasn't, will take
all the heart out of me.  Of course I mean to come back, but chaps do
get knocked over, and I think it's cruel that we can't take what we
can while we can.  Besides, I've got money; and that would be hers
anyway.  So, do be a darling, won't you?"  He put his arm round her
waist, just as if he had been her son, and her heart, which wanted
her own boys so badly, felt warmed within her.

"You see, I don't know Mr. Pierson, but he seems awfully gentle and
jolly, and if he could see into me he wouldn't mind, I know.  We
don't mind risking our lives and all that, but we do think we ought
to have the run of them while we're alive.  I'll give him my dying
oath or anything, that I could never change towards Noel, and she'll
do the same.  Oh!  Mrs.  Pierson, do be a jolly brick, and put in a
word for me, quick!  We've got so few days!"

"But, my dear boy," said Thirza feebly, "do you think it's fair to
such a child as Noel?"

"Yes, I do.  You don't understand; she's simply had to grow up.  She
is grown-up--all in this week; she's quite as old as I am, really--
and I'm twenty-two.  And you know it's going to be--it's got to be
--a young world, from now on; people will begin doing things much
earlier.  What's the use of pretending it's like what it was, and
being cautious, and all that?  If I'm going to be killed, I think
we've got a right to be married first; and if I'm not, then what does
it matter?"

"You've known each other twenty-one days, Cyril."

"No; twenty-one years!  Every day's a year when   Oh!  Mrs.  Pierson,
this isn't like you, is it?  You never go to meet trouble, do you?"

At that shrewd remark, Thirza put her hand on the hand which still
clasped her waist, and pressed it closer.

"Well, my dear," she said softly, "we must see what can be done."

Cyril Morland kissed her cheek.  "I will bless you for ever," he
said.  "I haven't got any people, you know, except my two sisters."

And something like tears started up on Thirza's eyelashes.  They
seemed to her like the babes in the wood--those two!




IV

1

In the dining-room of her father's house in that old London Square
between East and West, Gratian Laird, in the outdoor garb of a nurse,
was writing a telegram: "Reverend Edward Pierson, Kestrel, Tintern,
Monmouthshire.  George terribly ill.  Please come if you can.
Gratian."  Giving it to a maid, she took off her long coat and sat
down for a moment.  She had been travelling all night, after a full
day's work, and had only just arrived, to find her husband between
life and death.  She was very different from Noel; not quite so tall,
but of a stronger build; with dark chestnut-coloured hair, clear
hazel eyes, and a broad brow.  The expression of her face was
earnest, with a sort of constant spiritual enquiry; and a singularly
truthful look: She was just twenty; and of the year that she had been
married, had only spent six weeks with her husband; they had not even
a house of their own as yet.  After resting five minutes, she passed
her hand vigorously over her face, threw back her head, and walked up
stairs to the room where he lay.  He was not conscious, and there was
nothing to be done but sit and watch him.

'If he dies,' she thought, 'I shall hate God for His cruelty.  I have
had six weeks with George; some people have sixty years.' She fixed
her eyes on his face, short and broad, with bumps of "observation" on
the brows.  He had been sunburnt.  The dark lashes of his closed eyes
lay on deathly yellow cheeks; his thick hair grew rather low on his
broad forehead.  The lips were just open and showed strong white
teeth.  He had a little clipped moustache, and hair had grown on his
clean-cut jaw.  His pyjama jacket had fallen open.  Gratian drew it
close.  It was curiously still, for a London day, though the window
was wide open.  Anything to break this heavy stupor, which was not
only George's, but her own, and the very world's!  The cruelty of it
--when she might be going to lose him for ever, in a few hours or
days!  She thought of their last parting.  It had not been very
loving, had come too soon after one of those arguments they were
inclined to have, in which they could not as yet disagree with
suavity.  George had said there was no future life for the
individual; she had maintained there was.  They had grown hot and
impatient.  Even in the cab on the way to his train they had pursued
the wretched discussion, and the last kiss had been from lips on lips
yet warm from disagreement.

Ever since, as if in compunction, she had been wavering towards his
point of view; and now, when he was perhaps to solve the problem--
find out for certain--she had come to feel that if he died, she would
never see him after.  It was cruel that such a blight should have
come on her belief at this, of all moments.

She laid her hand on his.  It was warm, felt strong, although so
motionless and helpless.  George was so vigorous, so alive, and
strong-willed; it seemed impossible that life might be going to play
him false.  She recalled the unflinching look of his steel-bright
eyes, his deep, queerly vibrating voice, which had no trace of self-
consciousness or pretence.  She slipped her hand on to his heart, and
began very slowly, gently rubbing it.  He, as doctor, and she, as
nurse, had both seen so much of death these last two years!  Yet it
seemed suddenly as if she had never seen death, and that the young
faces she had seen, empty and white, in the hospital wards, had just
been a show.  Death would appear to her for the first time, if this
face which she loved were to be drained for ever of light and colour
and movement and meaning.

A humblebee from the Square Garden boomed in and buzzed idly round
the room.  She caught her breath in a little sob....



2

Pierson received that telegram at midday, returning from a lonely
walk after his talk with Thirza.  Coming from Gratian so self-
reliant--it meant the worst.  He prepared at once to catch the next
train.  Noel was out, no one knew where: so with a sick feeling he
wrote:

"DEAREST CHILD,

"I am going up to Gratian; poor George is desperately ill.  If it
goes badly you should be with your sister.  I will wire to-morrow
morning early.  I leave you in your aunt's hands, my dear.  Be
reasonable and patient.  God bless you.

"Your devoted

"DADDY."


He was alone in his third-class compartment, and, leaning forward,
watched the ruined Abbey across the river till it was out of sight.
Those old monks had lived in an age surely not so sad as this.  They
must have had peaceful lives, remote down here, in days when the
Church was great and lovely, and men laid down their lives for their
belief in her, and built everlasting fanes to the glory of God!  What
a change to this age of rush and hurry, of science, trade, material
profit, and this terrible war!  He tried to read his paper, but it
was full of horrors and hate.  'When will it end?' he thought.  And
the train with its rhythmic jolting seemed grinding out the answer:
"Never--never!"

At Chepstow a soldier got in, followed by a woman with a very flushed
face and curious, swimmy eyes; her hair was in disorder, and her lip
bleeding, as if she had bitten it through.  The soldier, too, looked
strained and desperate.  They sat down, far apart, on the seat
opposite.  Pierson, feeling that he was in their way, tried to hide
himself behind his paper; when he looked again, the soldier had taken
off his tunic and cap and was leaning out of the window.  The woman,
on the seat's edge, sniffing and wiping her face, met his glance with
resentful eyes, then, getting up, she pulled the man's sleeve.

"Sit dahn; don't 'ang out o' there."

The soldier flung himself back on the seat and looked at Pierson.

"The wife an' me's 'ad a bit of a row," he said companionably.  "Gits
on me nerves; I'm not used to it.  She was in a raid, and 'er nerves
are all gone funny; ain't they, old girl?  Makes me feel me 'ead.
I've been wounded there, you know; can't stand much now.  I might do
somethin' if she was to go on like this for long."

Pierson looked at the woman, but her eyes still met his resentfully.
The soldier held out a packet of cigarettes.  "Take one," he said.
Pierson took one and, feeling that the soldier wanted him to speak,
murmured: "We all have these troubles with those we're fond of; the
fonder we are of people, the more we feel them, don't we?  I had one
with my daughter last night."

"Ah!"  said the soldier; "that's right.  The wife and me'll make it
up.  'Ere, come orf it, old girl."

>From behind his paper he soon became conscious of the sounds of
reconciliation--reproaches because someone had been offered a drink,
kisses mixed with mild slappings, and abuse.  When they got out at
Bristol the soldier shook his hand warmly, but the woman still gave
him her resentful stare, and he thought dreamily: 'The war!  How it
affects everyone!'  His carriage was invaded by a swarm of soldiers,
and the rest of the journey was passed in making himself small.  When
at last he reached home, Gratian met him in the hall.

"Just the same.  The doctor says we shall know in a few hours now.
How sweet of you to come!  You must be tired, in this heat.  It was
dreadful to spoil your holiday."

"My dear!  As if   May I go up and see him?"

George Laird was still lying in that stupor.  And Pierson stood
gazing down at him compassionately.  Like most parsons, he had a wide
acquaintance with the sick and dying; and one remorseless fellowship
with death.  Death!  The commonest thing in the world, now--commoner
than life!  This young doctor must have seen many die in these last
two years, saved many from death; and there he lay, not able to lift
a finger to save himself.  Pierson looked at his daughter; what a
strong, promising young couple they were!  And putting his arm round
her, he led her away to the sofa, whence they could see the sick man.

"If he dies, Dad--" she whispered.

"He will have died for the Country, my love, as much as ever our
soldiers do."

"I know; but that's no comfort.  I've been watching here all day;
I've been thinking; men will be just as brutal afterwards--more
brutal.  The world will go on the same."

"We must hope not.  Shall we pray, Gracie?"

Gratian shook her head.

"If I could believe that the world--if I could believe anything!
I've lost the power, Dad; I don't even believe in a future life.  If
George dies, we shall never meet again."

Pierson stared at her without a word.

Gratian went on: "The last time we talked, I was angry with George
because he laughed at my belief; now that I really want belief, I
feel that he was right."

Pierson said tremulously:

"No, no, my dear; it's only that you're overwrought.  God in His
mercy will give you back belief."

"There is no God, Dad"

"My darling child, what are you saying?"

"No God who can help us; I feel it.  If there were any God who could
take part in our lives, alter anything without our will, knew or
cared what we did--He wouldn't let the world go on as it does."

"But, my dear, His purposes are inscrutable.  We dare not say He
should not do this or that, or try to fathom to what ends He is
working."

"Then He's no good to us.  It's the same as if He didn't exist.  Why
should I pray for George's life to One whose ends are just His own?
I know George oughtn't to die.  If there's a God who can help, it
will be a wicked shame if George dies; if there's a God who can help,
it's a wicked shame when babies die, and all these millions of poor
boys.  I would rather think there's no God than a helpless or a
wicked God--"

Her father had suddenly thrown up his hands to his ears.  She moved
closer, and put her arm round him.

"Dad dear, I'm sorry.  I didn't mean to hurt you."

Pierson pressed her face down to his shoulder; and said in a dull
voice:

"What do you think would have happened to me, Gracie, if I had lost
belief when your mother died?  I have never lost belief.  Pray God I
never shall!"

Gratian murmured:

"George would not wish me to pretend I believe--he would want me to
be honest.  If I'm not honest, I shan't deserve that he should live.
I don't believe, and I can't pray."

"My darling, you're overtired."

"No, Dad."  She raised her head from his shoulder and, clasping her
hands round her knees, looked straight before her.  "We can only help
ourselves; and I can only bear it if I rebel."

Pierson sat with trembling lips, feeling that nothing he could say
would touch her just then.  The sick man's face was hardly visible
now in the twilight, and Gratian went over to his bed.  She stood
looking down at him a long time.

"Go and rest, Dad; the doctor's coming again at eleven.  I'll call
you if I want anything.  I shall lie down a little, beside him."

Pierson kissed her, and went out.  To lie there beside him would be
the greatest comfort she could get.  He went to the bare narrow
little room he had occupied ever since his wife died; and, taking off
his boots, walked up and down, with a feeling of almost crushing
loneliness.  Both his daughters in such trouble, and he of no use to
them!  It was as if Life were pushing him utterly aside!  He felt
confused, helpless, bewildered.  Surely if Gratian loved George, she
had not left God's side, whatever she might say.  Then, conscious of
the profound heresy of this thought, he stood still at the open
window.

Earthly love--heavenly love; was there any analogy between them?

>From the Square Gardens the indifferent whisper of the leaves
answered; and a newsvendor at the far end, bawling his nightly tale
of murder.



3

George Laird passed the crisis of his illness that night, and in the
morning was pronounced out of danger.  He had a splendid
constitution, and--Scotsman on his father's side--a fighting
character.  He came back to life very weak, but avid of recovery; and
his first words were: "I've been hanging over the edge, Gracie!"

A very high cliff, and his body half over, balancing; one inch, the
merest fraction of an inch more, and over he would have gone.  Deuced
rum sensation!  But not so horrible as it would have been in real
life.  With the slip of that last inch he felt he would have passed
at once into oblivion, without the long horror of a fall.  So this
was what it was for all the poor fellows he had seen slip in the past
two years!  Mercifully, at the end, one was not alive enough to be
conscious of what one was leaving, not alive enough even to care.  If
he had been able to take in the presence of his young wife, able to
realise that he was looking at her face, touching her for the last
time--it would have been hell; if he had been up to realising
sunlight, moonlight, the sound of the world's life outside, the
softness of the bed he lay on--it would have meant the most poignant
anguish of defraudment.  Life was a rare good thing, and to be
squashed out of it with your powers at full, a wretched mistake in
Nature's arrangements, a wretched villainy on the part of Man--for
his own death, like all those other millions of premature deaths,
would have been due to the idiocy and brutality of men!  He could
smile now, with Gratian looking down at him, but the experience had
heaped fuel on a fire which had always smouldered in his doctor's
soul against that half emancipated breed of apes, the human race.
Well, now he would get a few days off from his death-carnival!  And
he lay, feasting his returning senses on his wife.  She made a pretty
nurse, and his practised eye judged her a good one--firm and quiet.

George Laird was thirty.  At the opening of the war he was in an
East-End practice, and had volunteered at once for service with the
Army.  For the first nine months he had been right up in the thick of
it.  A poisoned arm; rather than the authorities, had sent him home.
During that leave he married Gratian.  He had known the Piersons some
time; and, made conscious of the instability of life, had resolved to
marry her at the first chance he got.  For his father-in-law he had
respect and liking, ever mixed with what was not quite contempt and
not quite pity.  The blend of authority with humility, cleric with
dreamer, monk with artist, mystic with man of action, in Pierson,
excited in him an interested, but often irritated, wonder.  He saw
things so differently himself, and had little of the humorous
curiosity which enjoys what is strange simply because it is strange.
They could never talk together without soon reaching a point when he
wanted to say: "If we're not to trust our reason and our senses for
what they're worth, sir--will you kindly tell me what we are to
trust?  How can we exert them to the utmost in some matters, and in
others suddenly turn our backs on them?"  Once, in one of their
discussions, which often bordered on acrimony, he had expounded
himself at length.

"I grant," he had said, "that there's a great ultimate Mystery, that
we shall never know anything for certain about the origin of life and
the principle of the Universe; but why should we suddenly shut up our
enquiring apparatus and deny all the evidence of our reason--say,
about the story of Christ, or the question of a future life, or our
moral code?  If you want me to enter a temple of little mysteries,
leaving my reason and senses behind--as a Mohammedan leaves his
shoes--it won't do to say to me simply: 'There it is! Enter!' You
must show me the door; and you can't!  And I'll tell you why, sir.
Because in your brain there's a little twist which is not in mine, or
the lack of a little twist which is in mine.  Nothing more than that
divides us into the two main species of mankind, one of whom
worships, and one of whom doesn't.  Oh, yes! I know; you won't admit
that, because it makes your religions natural instead of what you
call supernatural.  But I assure you there's nothing more to it.
Your eyes look up or they look down--they never look straight before
them.  Well, mine do just the opposite."

That day Pierson had been feeling very tired, and though to meet this
attack was vital, he had been unable to meet it.  His brain had
stammered.  He had turned a little away, leaning his cheek on his
hand, as if to cover that momentary break in his defences.  Some days
later he had said:

"I am able now to answer your questions, George.  I think I can make
you understand."

Laird had answered: "All right, sir; go ahead."

"You begin by assuming that the human reason is the final test of all
things.  What right have you to assume that?  Suppose you were an
ant.  You would take your ant's reason as the final test, wouldn't
you?  Would that be the truth?"  And a smile had fixed itself on his
lips above his little grave beard.

George Laird also had smiled.

"That seems a good point, sir," he said, "until you recognise that I
don't take, the human reason as final test in any absolute sense.  I
only say it's the highest test we can apply; and that, behind that
test all is quite dark and unknowable."

"Revelation, then, means nothing to you?"

"Nothing, sir."

"I don't think we can usefully go on, George."

"I don't think we can, sir.  In talking with you, I always feel like
fighting a man with one hand tied behind his back."

"And I, perhaps, feel that I am arguing with one who was blind from
birth."

For all that, they had often argued since; but never without those
peculiar smiles coming on their faces.  Still, they respected each
other, and Pierson had not opposed his daughter's marriage to this
heretic, whom he knew to be an honest and trustworthy man.  It had
taken place before Laird's arm was well, and the two had snatched a
month's honeymoon before he went back to France, and she to her
hospital in Manchester.  Since then, just one February fortnight by
the sea had been all their time together....

In the afternoon he had asked for beef tea, and, having drunk a cup,
said:

"I've got something to tell your father."

But warned by the pallor of his smiling lips, Gratian answered:

"Tell me first, George."

"Our last talk, Gracie; well--there's nothing--on the other side.  I
looked over; it's as black as your hat."

Gratian shivered.

"I know.  While you were lying here last night, I told father."

He squeezed her hand, and said: "I also want to tell him."

"Dad will say the motive for life is gone."

"I say it leaps out all the more, Gracie.  What a mess we make of it
--we angel-apes!  When shall we be men, I wonder?  You and I, Gracie,
will fight for a decent life for everybody.  No hands-upping about
that!  Bend down!  It's good to touch you again; everything's good.
I'm going to have a sleep...."

After the relief of the doctor's report in the early morning Pierson
had gone through a hard struggle.  What should he wire to Noel?  He
longed to get her back home, away from temptation to the burning
indiscretion of this marriage.  But ought he to suppress reference to
George's progress?  Would that be honest?  At last he sent this
telegram: "George out of danger but very weak.  Come up."
By the afternoon post, however, he received a letter from Thirza:

"I have had two long talks with Noel and Cyril.  It is impossible to
budge them.  And I really think, dear Edward, that it will be a
mistake to oppose it rigidly.  He may not go out as soon as we think.
How would it be to consent to their having banns published?--that
would mean another three weeks anyway, and in absence from each other
they might be influenced to put it off.  I'm afraid this is the only
chance, for if you simply forbid it, I feel they will run off and get
married somewhere at a registrar's."

Pierson took this letter out with him into the Square Garden, for
painful cogitation.  No man can hold a position of spiritual
authority for long years without developing the habit of judgment.
He judged Noel's conduct to be headlong and undisciplined, and the
vein of stubbornness in his character fortified the father and the
priest within him.  Thirza disappointed him; she did not seem to see
the irretrievable gravity of this hasty marriage.  She seemed to look
on it as something much lighter than it was, to consider that it
might be left to Chance, and that if Chance turned out unfavourable,
there would still be a way out.  To him there would be no way out.
He looked up at the sky, as if for inspiration.  It was such a
beautiful day, and so bitter to hurt his child, even for her good!
What would her mother have advised?  Surely Agnes had felt at least
as deeply as himself the utter solemnity of marriage!  And, sitting
there in the sunlight, he painfully hardened his heart.  He must do
what he thought right, no matter what the consequences.  So he went
in and wrote that he could not agree, and wished Noel to come back
home at once.




V

1

But on the same afternoon, just about that hour, Noel was sitting on
the river-bank with her arms folded tight across her chest, and by
her side Cyril Morland, with despair in his face, was twisting a
telegram "Rejoin tonight.  Regiment leaves to-morrow."

What consolation that a million such telegrams had been read and
sorrowed over these last two years!  What comfort that the sun was
daily blotted dim for hundreds of bright eyes; the joy of life poured
out and sopped up by the sands of desolation!

"How long have we got, Cyril?"

"I've engaged a car from the Inn, so I needn't leave till midnight.
I've packed already, to have more time."

"Let's have it to ourselves, then.  Let's go off somewhere.  I've got
some chocolate."

Morland answered miserably:

"I can send the car up here for my things, and have it pick me up at
the Inn, if you'll say goodbye to them for me, afterwards.  We'll
walk down the line, then we shan't meet anyone."

And in the bright sunlight they walked hand in hand on each side of a
shining rail.  About six they reached the Abbey.

"Let's get a boat," said Noel.  "We can come back here when it's
moonlight.  I know a way of getting in, after the gate's shut."

They hired a boat, rowed over to the far bank, and sat on the stern
seat, side by side under the trees where the water was stained deep
green by the high woods.  If they talked, it was but a word of love
now and then, or to draw each other's attention to a fish, a bird, a
dragon-fly.  What use making plans--for lovers the chief theme?
Longing paralysed their brains.  They could do nothing but press
close to each other, their hands enlaced, their lips meeting now and
then.  On Noel's face was a strange fixed stillness, as if she were
waiting--expecting!  They ate their chocolates.  The sun set, dew
began to fall; the river changed, and grew whiter; the sky paled to
the colour of an amethyst; shadows lengthened, dissolved slowly.  It
was past nine already; a water-rat came out, a white owl flew over
the river, towards the Abbey.  The moon had come up, but shed no
light as yet.  They saw no beauty in all this--too young, too
passionate, too unhappy.

Noel said: "When she's over those trees, Cyril, let's go.  It'll be
half dark."

They waited, watching the moon, which crept with infinite slowness up
and up, brightening ever so little every minute.

"Now!"  said Noel.  And Morland rowed across.

They left the boat, and she led the way past an empty cottage, to a
shed with a roof sloping up to the Abbey's low outer wall.

"We can get over here," she whispered.

They clambered up, and over, to a piece of grassy courtyard, and
passed on to an inner court, under the black shadow of the high
walls.

"What's the time?"  said Noel.

"Half-past ten."

"Already!  Let's sit here in the dark, and watch for the moon."

They sat down close together.  Noel's face still had on it that
strange look of waiting; and Morland sat obedient, with his hand on
her heart, and his own heart beating almost to suffocation.  They
sat, still as mice, and the moon crept up.  It laid a first vague
greyness on the high wall, which spread slowly down, and brightened
till the lichen and the grasses up there were visible; then crept on,
silvering the dark above their heads.  Noel pulled his sleeve, and
whispered: "See!"  There came the white owl, soft as a snowflake,
drifting across in that unearthly light, as if flying to the moon.
And just then the top of the moon itself looked over the wall, a
shaving of silvery gold.  It grew, became a bright spread fan, then
balanced there, full and round, the colour of pale honey.

"Ours!" Noel whispered.



2

>From the side of the road Noel listened till the sound of the car was
lost in the folds of the valley.  She did not cry, but passed her
hands over her face, and began to walk home, keeping to the shadow of
the trees.  How many years had been added to her age in those six
hours since the telegram came!  Several times in that mile and a half
she stepped into a patch of brighter moonlight, to take out and kiss
a little photograph, then slip it back next her heart, heedless that
so warm a place must destroy any effigy.  She felt not the faintest
compunction for the recklessness of her love--it was her only comfort
against the crushing loneliness of the night.  It kept her up, made
her walk on with a sort of pride, as if she had got the best of Fate.
He was hers for ever now, in spite of anything that could be done.
She did not even think what she would say when she got in.  She came
to the avenue, and passed up it still in a sort of dream.  Her uncle
was standing before the porch; she could hear his mutterings.  She
moved out of the shadow of the trees, went straight up to him, and,
looking in his perturbed face, said calmly:

"Cyril asked me to say good-bye to you all, Uncle.  Good night!"

"But, I say, Nollie look here you !"

She had passed on.  She went up to her room.  There, by the door, her
aunt was standing, and would have kissed her.  She drew back:

"No, Auntie.  Not to-night!"  And, slipping by, she locked her door.

Bob and Thirza Pierson, meeting in their own room, looked at each
other askance.  Relief at their niece's safe return was confused by
other emotions.  Bob Pierson expressed his first:

"Phew!  I was beginning to think we should w have to drag the river.
What girls are coming to!"

"It's the war, Bob."

"I didn't like her face, old girl.  I don't know what it was, but I
didn't like her face."

Neither did Thirza, but she would not admit it, and encourage Bob to
take it to heart.  He took things so hardly, and with such a noise!

She only said: "Poor young things!  I suppose it will be a relief to
Edward!"

"I love Nollie!" said Bob Pierson suddenly.  "She's an affectionate
creature.  D-nit, I'm sorry about this.  It's not so bad for young
Morland; he's got the excitement--though I shouldn't like to be
leaving Nollie, if I were young again.  Thank God, neither of our
boys is engaged.  By George! when I think of them out there, and
myself here, I feel as if the top of my head would come off.  And
those politician chaps spouting away in every country--how they can
have the cheek!"

Thirza looked at him anxiously.

"And no dinner!" he said suddenly.  "What d'you think they've been
doing with themselves ?"

"Holding each other's hands, poor dears!  D'you know what time it is,
Bob?  Nearly one o'clock."

"Well, all I can say is, I've had a wretched evening.  Get to bed,
old girl.  You'll be fit for nothing."

He was soon asleep, but Thirza lay awake, not exactly worrying, for
that was not her nature, but seeing Noel's face, pale, languid,
passionate, possessed by memory.




VI

1

Noel reached her father's house next day late in the afternoon.
There was a letter in the hall for her.  She tore it open, and read:

"MY DARLING LOVE,

"I got back all right, and am posting this at once to tell you we
shall pass through London, and go from Charing Cross, I expect about
nine o'clock to-night.  I shall look out for you, there, in case you
are up in time.  Every minute I think of you, and of last night.  Oh!
Noel!

"Your devoted lover,
"C."


She looked at the wrist-watch which, like every other little patriot,
she possessed.  Past seven!  If she waited, Gratian or her father
would seize on her.

"Take my things up, Dinah.  I've got a headache from travelling; I'm
going to walk it off.  Perhaps I shan't be in till past nine or so.
Give my love to them all."

"Oh, Miss Noel, you can't,--"

But Noel was gone.  She walked towards Charing Cross; and, to kill
time, went into a restaurant and had that simple repast, coffee and a
bun, which those in love would always take if Society did not
forcibly feed them on other things.  Food was ridiculous to her.  She
sat there in the midst of a perfect hive of creatures eating
hideously.  The place was shaped like a modern prison, having tiers
of gallery round an open space, and in the air was the smell of
viands and the clatter of plates and the music of a band.  Men in
khaki everywhere, and Noel glanced from form to form to see if by
chance one might be that which represented, for her, Life and the
British Army.  At half-past eight she went out and made her way:
through the crowd, still mechanically searching "khaki" for what she
wanted; and it was perhaps fortunate that there was about her face
and walk something which touched people.  At the station she went up
to an old porter, and, putting a shilling into his astonished hand,
asked him to find out for her whence Morland's regiment would start.
He came back presently, and said:

"Come with me, miss."

Noel went.  He was rather lame, had grey whiskers, and a ghostly thin
resemblance to her uncle Bob, which perhaps had been the reason why
she had chosen him.  64

"Brother goin' out, miss?"

Noel nodded.

"Ah!  It's a crool war.  I shan't be sorry when it's over.  Goin' out
and comin' in, we see some sad sights 'ere.  Wonderful spirit they've
got, too.  I never look at the clock now but what I think: 'There you
go, slow-coach!  I'd like to set you on to the day the boys come
back!'  When I puts a bag in: 'Another for 'ell" I thinks.  And so it
is, miss, from all I can 'ear.  I've got a son out there meself.
It's 'ere they'll come along.  You stand quiet and keep a lookout,
and you'll get a few minutes with him when he's done with 'is men.  I
wouldn't move, if I were you; he'll come to you, all right--can't
miss you, there."  And, looking at her face, he thought: 'Astonishin'
what a lot o' brothers go.  Wot oh!  Poor little missy!  A little
lady, too.  Wonderful collected she is.  It's 'ard!'  And trying to
find something consoling to say, he mumbled out: "You couldn't be in
a better place for seen'im off.  Good night, miss; anything else I
can do for you?"

"No, thank you; you're very kind."

He looked back once or twice at her blue-clad figure standing very
still.  He had left her against a little oasis of piled-up empty
milk-cans, far down the platform where a few civilians in similar
case were scattered.  The trainway was empty as yet.  In the grey
immensity of the station and the turmoil of its noise, she felt
neither lonely nor conscious of others waiting; too absorbed in the
one thought of seeing him and touching him again.  The empty train
began backing in, stopped, and telescoped with a series of little
clattering bangs, backed on again, and subsided to rest.  Noel turned
her eyes towards the station arch ways.  Already she felt tremulous,
as though the regiment were sending before it the vibration of its
march.

She had not as yet seen a troop-train start, and vague images of
brave array, of a flag fluttering, and the stir of drums, beset her.
Suddenly she saw a brown swirling mass down there at the very edge,
out of which a thin brown trickle emerged towards her; no sound of
music, no waved flag.  She had a longing to rush down to the barrier,
but remembering the words of the porter, stayed where she was, with
her hands tightly squeezed together.  The trickle became a stream, a
flood, the head of which began to reach her.  With a turbulence of
voices, sunburnt men, burdened up to the nose, passed, with rifles
jutting at all angles; she strained her eyes, staring into that
stream as one might into a walking wood, to isolate a single tree.
Her head reeled with the strain of it, and the effort to catch his
voice among the hubbub of all those cheery, common, happy-go-lucky
sounds.  Some who saw her clucked their tongues, some went by silent,
others seemed to scan her as though she might be what they were
looking for.  And ever the stream and the hubbub melted into the
train, and yet came pouring on.  And still she waited motionless,
with an awful fear.  How could he ever find her, or she him?  Then
she saw that others of those waiting had found their men.  And the
longing to rush up and down the platform almost overcame her; but
still she waited.  And suddenly she saw him with two other officer
boys, close to the carriages, coming slowly down towards her.  She
stood with her eyes fixed on his face; they passed, and she nearly
cried out.  Then he turned, broke away from the other two, and came
straight to her.  He had seen her before she had seen him.  He was
very flushed, had a little fixed frown between his blue eyes and a
set jaw.  They stood looking at each other, their hands hard gripped;
all the emotion of last night welling up within them, so that to
speak would have been to break down.  The milk-cans formed a kind of
shelter, and they stood so close together that none could see their
faces.  Noel was the first to master her power of speech; her words
came out, dainty as ever, through trembling lips:

"Write to me as much as ever you can, Cyril.  I'm going to be a nurse
at once.  And the first leave you get, I shall come to you--don't
forget."

"Forget!  Move a little back, darling; they can't see us here.  Kiss
me!"  She moved back, thrust her face forward so that he need not
stoop, and put her lips up to his.  Then, feeling that she might
swoon and fall over among the cans, she withdrew her mouth, leaving
her forehead against his lips.  He murmured:

"Was it all right when you got in last night?"

"Yes; I said good-bye for you."

"Oh!  Noel--I've been afraid--I oughtn't--I oughtn't--"

"Yes, yes; nothing can take you from me now."

"You have got pluck.  More than!"

Along whistle sounded.  Morland grasped her hands convulsively:

"Good-bye, my little wife!  Don't fret.  Goodbye!  I must go.  God
bless you, Noel!"

"I love you."

They looked at each other, just another moment, then she took her
hands from his and stood back in the shadow of the milk-cans, rigid,
following him with her eyes till he was lost in the train.

Every carriage window was full of those brown figures and red-brown
faces, hands were waving vaguely, voices calling vaguely, here and
there one cheered; someone leaning far out started to sing: "If auld
acquaintance--"  But Noel stood quite still in the shadow of the
milk-cans, her lips drawn in, her hands hard clenched in front of
her; and young Morland at his window gazed back at her.



2

How she came to be sitting in Trafalgar Square she did not know.
Tears had formed a mist between her and all that seething, summer-
evening crowd.  Her eyes mechanically followed the wandering search-
lights, those new milky ways, quartering the heavens and leading
nowhere.  All was wonderfully beautiful, the sky a deep dark blue,
the moonlight whitening the spire of St. Martin's, and everywhere
endowing the great blacked-out buildings with dream-life.  Even the
lions had come to life, and stared out over this moonlit desert of
little human figures too small to be worth the stretching out of a
paw.  She sat there, aching dreadfully, as if the longing of every
bereaved heart in all the town had settled in her.  She felt it
tonight a thousand times worse; for last night she had been drugged
on the new sensation of love triumphantly fulfilled.  Now she felt as
if life had placed her in the corner of a huge silent room, blown out
the flame of joy, and locked the door.  A little dry sob came from
her.  The hay-fields and Cyril, with shirt unbuttoned at the neck,
pitching hay and gazing at her while she dabbled her fork in the thin
leavings.  The bright river, and their boat grounded on the shallows,
and the swallows flitting over them.  And that long dance, with the
feel of his hand between her shoulder-blades!  Memories so sweet and
sharp that she almost cried out.  She saw again their dark grassy
courtyard in the Abbey, and the white owl flying over them.  The
white owl!  Flying there again to-night, with no lovers on the grass
below!  She could only picture Cyril now as a brown atom in that
swirling brown flood of men, flowing to a huge brown sea.  Those
cruel minutes on the platform, when she had searched and searched the
walking wood for her, one tree, seemed to have burned themselves into
her eyes.  Cyril was lost, she could not single him out, all blurred
among those thousand other shapes.  And suddenly she thought: 'And I
--I'm lost to him; he's never seen me at home, never seen me in
London; he won't be able to imagine me.  It's all in the past, only
the past--for both of us.  Is there anybody so unhappy?'  And the
town's voices-wheels, and passing feet, whistles, talk, laughter-
seemed to answer callously: 'Not one.'  She looked at her wrist-
watch; like his, it had luminous hands: 'Half-past ten' was
greenishly imprinted there.  She got up in dismay.  They would think
she was lost, or run over, or something silly!  She could not find an
empty taxi, and began to walk, uncertain of her way at night.  At
last she stopped a policeman, and said:

"Which is the way towards Bloomsbury, please?  I can't find a taxi."
The man looked at her, and took time to think it over; then he said:

"They're linin' up for the theatres," and looked at her again.
Something seemed to move in his mechanism:

"I'm goin' that way, miss.  If you like, you can step along with me."
Noel stepped along.

"The streets aren't what they ought to be," the policeman said.
"What with the darkness, and the war turning the girls heads--you'd
be surprised the number of them that comes out.  It's the soldiers,
of course."

Noel felt her cheeks burning.

"I daresay you wouldn't have noticed it," the policeman went on: "but
this war's a funny thing.  The streets are gayer and more crowded at
night than I've ever seen them; it's a fair picnic all the time.
What we're goin' to settle down to when peace comes, I don't know.  I
suppose you find it quiet enough up your way, miss?"

"Yes," said Noel; "quite quiet."

"No soldiers up in Bloomsbury.  You got anyone in the Army, miss?"

Noel nodded.

"Ah!  It's anxious times for ladies.  What with the Zeps, and their
brothers and all in France, it's 'arassin'.  I've lost a brother
meself, and I've got a boy out there in the Garden of Eden; his
mother carries on dreadful about him.  What we shall think of it when
it's all over, I can't tell.  These Huns are a wicked tough lot!"

Noel looked at him; a tall man, regular and orderly, with one of
those perfectly decent faces so often seen in the London police.

"I'm sorry you've lost someone," she said.  "I haven't lost anyone
very near, yet."

"Well, let's 'ope you won't, miss.  These times make you feel for
others, an' that's something.  I've noticed a great change in folks
you'd never think would feel for anyone.  And yet I've seen some
wicked things too; we do, in the police.  Some of these English wives
of aliens, and 'armless little German bakers, an' Austrians, and
what-not: they get a crool time.  It's their misfortune, not their
fault, that's what I think; and the way they get served--well, it
makes you ashamed o' bein' English sometimes--it does straight: And
the women are the worst.  I said to my wife only last night, I said:
'They call themselves Christians,' I said, 'but for all the charity
that's in 'em they might as well be Huns.' She couldn't see it-not
she!'  Well, why do they drop bombs?' she says.  'What!'  I said,
'those English wives and bakers drop bombs?  Don't be silly,' I said.
'They're as innocent as we.'  It's the innocent that gets punished
for the guilty.  'But they're all spies,' she says.  'Oh!' I said,
'old lady!  Now really!  At your time of life!'  But there it is; you
can't get a woman to see reason.  It's readin' the papers.  I often
think they must be written by women--beggin' your pardon, miss--but
reely, the 'ysterics and the 'atred--they're a fair knockout.  D'you
find much hatred in your household, miss?"

Noel shook her head.  "No; my father's a clergyman, you see."

"Ah!"  said the policeman.  And in the glance he bestowed on her
could be seen an added respect.

"Of course," he went on, "you're bound to have a sense of justice
against these Huns; some of their ways of goin' on have been above
the limit.  But what I always think is--of course I don't say these
things--no use to make yourself unpopular--but to meself I often
think: Take 'em man for man, and you'd find 'em much the same as we
are, I daresay.  It's the vicious way they're brought up, of actin'
in the mass, that's made 'em such a crool lot.  I see a good bit of
crowds in my profession, and I've a very low opinion of them.  Crowds
are the most blunderin' blighted things that ever was.  They're like
an angry woman with a bandage over her eyes, an' you can't have
anything more dangerous than that.  These Germans, it seems, are
always in a crowd.  They get a state o' mind read out to them by Bill
Kaser and all that bloody-minded lot, an' they never stop to think
for themselves."

"I suppose they'd be shot if they did," said Noel.

"Well, there is that," said the policeman reflectively.  "They've
brought discipline to an 'igh pitch, no doubt.  An' if you ask me,"--
he lowered his voice till it was almost lost in his chin-strap,
"we'll be runnin' 'em a good second 'ere, before long.  The things we
'ave to protect now are gettin' beyond a joke.  There's the City
against lights, there's the streets against darkness, there's the
aliens, there's the aliens' shops, there's the Belgians, there's the
British wives, there's the soldiers against the women, there's the
women against the soldiers, there's the Peace Party, there's 'orses
against croolty, there's a Cabinet Minister every now an' then; and
now we've got these Conchies.  And, mind you, they haven't raised our
pay; no war wages in the police.  So far as I can see, there's only
one good result of the war--the burglaries are off.  But there again,
you wait a bit and see if we don't have a prize crop of 'm, or my
name's not 'Arris."

"You must have an awfully exciting life!"  said Noel.

The policeman looked down at her sideways, without lowering his face,
as only a policeman can, and said indulgently:

"We're used to it, you see; there's no excitement in what you're used
to.  They find that in the trenches, I'm told.  Take our seamen--
there's lots of 'em been blown up over and over again, and there they
go and sign on again next day.  That's where the Germans make their
mistake!  England in war-time!  I think a lot, you know, on my go;
you can't 'elp it--the mind will work--an' the more I think, the more
I see the fightin' spirit in the people.  We don't make a fuss about
it like Bill Kaser.  But you watch a little shopman, one o' those
fellows who's had his house bombed; you watch the way he looks at the
mess--sort of disgusted.  You watch his face, and you see he's got
his teeth into it.  You watch one of our Tommies on 'is crutches,
with the sweat pourin' off his forehead an' 'is eyes all strainy,
stumpin' along--that gives you an idea!  I pity these Peace fellows,
reely I pity them; they don't know what they're up against.  I expect
there's times when you wish you was a man, don't you, miss?  I'm sure
there's times when I feel I'd like to go in the trenches.  That's the
worst o' my job; you can't be a human bein'--not in the full sense of
the word.  You mustn't let your passions rise, you mustn't drink, you
mustn't talk; it's a narrow walk o' life.  Well, here you are, miss;
your Square's the next turnin' to the right.  Good night and thank
you for your conversation."

Noel held out her hand.  "Good night!"  she said.

The policeman took her hand with a queer, flattered embarrassment.

"Good night, miss," he said again.  "I see you've got a trouble; and
I'm sure I hope it'll turn out for the best."

Noel gave his huge hand a squeeze; her eyes had filled with tears,
and she turned quickly up towards the Square, where a dark figure was
coming towards her, in whom she recognised her father.  His face was
worn and harassed; he walked irresolutely, like a man who has lost
something.

"Nollie!" he said.  "Thank God!"  In his voice was an infinite
relief.  "My child, where have you been?"

"It's all right, Daddy.  Cyril has just gone to the front.  I've been
seeing him off from Charing Cross."

Pierson slipped his arm round her.  They entered the house without
speaking....



3

By the rail of his transport, as far--about two feet--as he could get
from anyone, Cyril Morland stood watching Calais, a dream city,
brighten out of the heat and grow solid.  He could hear the guns
already, the voice of his new life-talking in the distance.  It came
with its strange excitement into a being held by soft and marvellous
memories, by one long vision of Noel and the moonlit grass, under the
dark Abbey wall.  This moment of passage from wonder to wonder was
quite too much for a boy unused to introspection, and he stood
staring stupidly at Calais, while the thunder of his new life came
rolling in on that passionate moonlit dream.




VII

After the emotions of those last three days Pierson woke with the
feeling a ship must have when it makes landfall.  Such reliefs are
natural, and as a rule delusive; for events are as much the parents
of the future as they were the children of the past.  To be at home
with both his girls, and resting--for his holiday would not be over
for ten days--was like old times.  Now George was going on so well
Gratian would be herself again; now Cyril Morland was gone Noel would
lose that sudden youthful love fever.  Perhaps in two or three days
if George continued to progress, one might go off with Noel somewhere
for one's last week.  In the meantime the old house, wherein was
gathered so much remembrance of happiness and pain, was just as
restful as anywhere else, and the companionship of his girls would be
as sweet as on any of their past rambling holidays in Wales or
Ireland.  And that first morning of perfect idleness--for no one knew
he was back in London--pottering, and playing the piano in the homely
drawing-room where nothing to speak of was changed since his wife's
day, was very pleasant.  He had not yet seen the girls, for Noel did
not come down to breakfast, and Gratian was with George.

Discovery that there was still a barrier between him and them came
but slowly in the next two days.  He would not acknowledge it, yet it
was there, in their voices, in their movements--rather an absence of
something old than the presence of something new.  It was as if each
had said to him: "We love you, but you are not in our secrets--and
you must not be, for you would try to destroy them."  They showed no
fear of him, but seemed to be pushing him unconsciously away, lest he
should restrain or alter what was very dear to them.  They were both
fond of him, but their natures had set foot on definitely diverging
paths.  The closer the affection, the more watchful they were against
interference by that affection.  Noel had a look on her face, half
dazed, half proud, which touched, yet vexed him.  What had he done to
forfeit her confidence--surely she must see how natural and right his
opposition had been!  He made one great effort to show the real
sympathy he felt for her.  But she only said: "I can't talk of Cyril,
Daddy; I simply can't!"  And he, who easily shrank into his shell,
could not but acquiesce in her reserve.

With Gratian it was different.  He knew that an encounter was before
him; a struggle between him and her husband--for characteristically
he set the change in her, the defection of her faith, down to George,
not to spontaneous thought and feeling in herself.  He dreaded and
yet looked forward to this encounter.  It came on the third day, when
Laird was up, lying on that very sofa where Pierson had sat listening
to Gratian's confession of disbelief.  Except for putting in his head
to say good morning, he had not yet seen his son-in-law: The young
doctor could not look fragile, the build of his face, with that law
and those heavy cheekbones was too much against it, but there was
about him enough of the look of having come through a hard fight to
give Pierson's heart a squeeze.

"Well, George," he said, "you gave us a dreadful fright!  I thank
God's mercy."  With that half-mechanical phrase he had flung an
unconscious challenge.  Laird looked up whimsically.

"So you really think God merciful, sir?"

"Don't let us argue, George; you're not strong enough."

"Oh!  I'm pining for something to bite on."

Pierson looked at Gratian, and said softly:

"God's mercy is infinite, and you know it is."

Laird also looked at Gratian, before he answered:

"God's mercy is surely the amount of mercy man has succeeded in
arriving at.  How much that is, this war tells you, sir."

Pierson flushed.  "I don't follow you," he said painfully.  "How can
you say such things, when you yourself are only just   No; I refuse
to argue, George; I refuse."

Laird stretched out his hand to his wife, who came to him, and stood
clasping it with her own. "Well, I'm going to argue," he said; "I'm
simply bursting with it.  I challenge you, sir, to show me where
there's any sign of altruistic pity, except in man.  Mother love
doesn't count--mother and child are too much one."

The curious smile had come already, on both their faces.

"My dear George, is not man the highest work of God, and mercy the
highest quality in man?"

"Not a bit.  If geological time be taken as twenty-four hours, man's
existence on earth so far equals just two seconds of it; after a few
more seconds, when man has been frozen off the earth, geological time
will stretch for as long again, before the earth bumps into
something, and be comes nebula once more.  God's hands haven't been
particularly full, sir, have they--two seconds out of twenty-four
hours--if man is His pet concern?  And as to mercy being the highest
quality in, man, that's only a modern fashion of talking.  Man's
highest quality is the sense of proportion, for that's what keeps him
alive; and mercy, logically pursued, would kill him off.  It's a sort
of a luxury or by-product."

"George!  You can have no music in your soul!  Science is such a
little thing, if you could only see."

"Show me a bigger, sir."

"Faith."

"In what?"

"In what has been revealed to us."

"Ah!  There it is again!  By whom--how?

"By God Himself--through our Lord."

A faint flush rose in Laird's yellow face, and his eyes brightened.

"Christ," he said; "if He existed, which some people, as you know,
doubt, was a very beautiful character; there have been others.  But
to ask us to believe in His supernaturalness or divinity at this time
of day is to ask us to walk through the world blindfold.  And that's
what you do, don't you?"

Again Pierson looked at his daughter's face.  She was standing quite
still, with her eyes fixed on her husband.  Somehow he was aware that
all these words of the sick man's were for her benefit.  Anger, and a
sort of despair rose within him, and he said painfully:

"I cannot explain.  There are things that I can't make clear, because
you are wilfully blind to all that I believe in.  For what do you
imagine we are fighting this great war, if it is not to reestablish
the belief in love as the guiding principle of life?"

Laird shook his head.  "We are fighting to redress a balance, which
was in danger of being lost."

"The balance of power?"

"Heavens!--no!  The balance of philosophy."

Pierson smiled.  "That sounds very clever, George; but again, I don't
follow you."

"The balance between the sayings: 'Might is Right,' and 'Right is
Might.'  They're both half-truth, but the first was beating the other
out of the field.  All the rest of it is cant, you know.  And by the
way, sir, your Church is solid for punishment of the evildoer.
Where's mercy there?  Either its God is not merciful, or else it
doesn't believe in its God."

"Just punishment does not preclude mercy, George."

"It does in Nature."

"Ah!  Nature, George--always Nature.  God transcends Nature."

"Then why does He give it a free rein?  A man too fond of drink, or
women--how much mercy does he get from Nature?  His overindulgence
brings its exact equivalent of penalty; let him pray to God as much
as he likes--unless he alters his ways he gets no mercy.  If he does
alter his ways, he gets no mercy either; he just gets Nature's due
reward.  We English who have neglected brain and education--how much
mercy are we getting in this war?  Mercy's a man-made ornament,
disease, or luxury--call it what you will.  Except that, I've nothing
to say against it.  On the contrary, I am all for it."

Once more Pierson looked at his daughter.  Something in her face hurt
him--the silent intensity with which she was hanging on her husband's
words, the eager search of her eyes.  And he turned to the door,
saying:

"This is bad for you, George."

He saw Gratian put her hand on her husband's forehead, and thought--
jealously: 'How can I save my poor girl from this infidelity?  Are my
twenty years of care to go for nothing, against this modern spirit?'

Down in his study, the words went through his mind: "Holy, holy,
holy, Merciful and Mighty!"  And going to the little piano in the
corner, he opened it, and began playing the hymn.  He played it
softly on the shabby keys of this thirty-year old friend, which had
been with him since College days; and sang it softly in his worn
voice.

A sound made him look up.  Gratian had come in.  She put her hand on
his shoulder, and said:

"I know it hurts you, Dad.  But we've got to find out for ourselves,
haven't we?  All the time you and George were talking, I felt that
you didn't see that it's I who've changed.  It's not what he thinks,
but what I've come to think of my own accord.  I wish you'd
understand that I've got a mind of my own, Dad."

Pierson looked up with amazement.

"Of course you have a mind."

Gratian shook her head.  "No, you thought my mind was yours; and now
you think it's George's.  But it's my own.  When you were my age
weren't you trying hard to find the truth yourself, and differing
from your father?"

Pierson did not answer.  He could not remember.  It was like stirring
a stick amongst a drift of last year's leaves, to awaken but a dry
rustling, a vague sense of unsubstantiality.  Searched?  No doubt he
had searched, but the process had brought him nothing.  Knowledge was
all smoke!  Emotional faith alone was truth--reality

"Ah, Gracie!"  he said, "search if you must, but where will you find
bottom?  The well is too deep for us.  You will come back to God, my
child, when you're tired out; the only rest is there."

"I don't want to rest.  Some people search all their lives, and die
searching.  Why shouldn't I.

"You will be most unhappy, my child."

"If I'm unhappy, Dad, it'll be because the world's unhappy.  I don't
believe it ought to be; I think it only is, because it shuts its
eyes."

Pierson got up.  "You think I shut my eyes?"

Gratian nodded.

"If I do, it is because there is no other way to happiness."

"Are you happy; Dad?"

"As happy as my nature will let me be.  I miss your mother.  If I
lose you and Noel--"

"Oh, but we won't let you!"

Pierson smiled.  "My dear," he said, "I think I have!"




VIII

1

Some wag, with a bit of chalk, had written the word "Peace" on three
successive doors of a little street opposite Buckingham Palace.

It caught the eye of Jimmy Fort, limping home to his rooms from a
very late discussion at his Club, and twisted his lean shaven lips
into a sort of smile.  He was one of those rolling-stone Englishmen,
whose early lives are spent in all parts of the world, and in all
kinds of physical conflict--a man like a hickory stick, tall, thin,
bolt-upright, knotty, hard as nails, with a curved fighting back to
his head and a straight fighting front to his brown face.  His was
the type which becomes, in a generation or so, typically Colonial or
American; but no one could possibly have taken Jimmy Fort for
anything but an Englishman.  Though he was nearly forty, there was
still something of the boy in his face, something frank and curly-
headed, gallant and full of steam, and his small steady grey eyes
looked out on life with a sort of combative humour.  He was still in
uniform, though they had given him up as a bad job after keeping him
nine months trying to mend a wounded leg which would never be sound
again; and he was now in the War Office in connection with horses,
about which he knew.  He did not like it, having lived too long with
all sorts and conditions of men who were neither English nor
official, a combination which he found trying.  His life indeed, just
now, bored him to distraction, and he would ten times rather have
been back in France.  This was why he found the word "Peace" so
exceptionally tantalising.

Reaching his rooms, he threw off his tunic, to whose stiff regularity
he still had a rooted aversion; and, pulling out a pipe, filled it
and sat down at his window.

Moonshine could not cool the hot town, and it seemed sleeping badly
--the seven million sleepers in their million homes.  Sound lingered
on, never quite ceased; the stale odours clung in the narrow street
below, though a little wind was creeping about to sweeten the air.
'Curse the war!' he thought.  'What wouldn't I give to be sleeping
out, instead of in this damned city!'  They who slept in the open,
neglecting morality, would certainly have the best of it tonight, for
no more dew was falling than fell into Jimmy Fort's heart to cool the
fret of that ceaseless thought: 'The war! The cursed war!' In the
unending rows of little grey houses, in huge caravanserais, and the
mansions of the great, in villas, and high slum tenements; in the
government offices, and factories, and railway stations where they
worked all night; in the long hospitals where they lay in rows; in
the camp prisons of the interned; in bar racks, work-houses, palaces
--no head, sleeping or waking, would be free of that thought: 'The,
cursed war!'  A spire caught his eye, rising ghostly over the roofs.
Ah! churches alone, void of the human soul, would be unconscious!
But for the rest, even sleep would not free them!  Here a mother
would be whispering the name of her boy; there a merchant would snore
and dream he was drowning, weighted with gold; and a wife would be
turning to stretch out her arms to-no one; and a wounded soldier wake
out of a dream trench with sweat on his brow; and a newsvendor in his
garret mutter hoarsely.  By thousands the bereaved would be tossing,
stifling their moans; by thousands the ruined would be gazing into
the dark future; and housewives struggling with sums; and soldiers
sleeping like logs--for to morrow they died; and children dreaming of
them; and prostitutes lying in stale wonder at the busyness of their
lives; and journalists sleeping the sleep of the just.  And over them
all, in the moonlight that thought 'The cursed war!' flapped its
black wings, like an old crow!  "If Christ were real," he mused,
"He'd reach that moon down, and go chalking 'Peace' with it on every
door of every house, all over Europe.  But Christ's not real, and
Hindenburg and Harmsworth are!"  As real they were as two great bulls
he had once seen in South Africa, fighting.  He seemed to hear again
the stamp and snort and crash of those thick skulls, to see the
beasts recoiling and driving at each other, and the little red eyes
of them.  And pulling a letter out of his pocket, he read it again by
the light of the moon:

"15, Camelot Mansions,
"St.  John's Wood.

"DEAR MR.  FORT,
"I came across your Club address to-night, looking at some old
letters.  Did you know that I was in London?  I left Steenbok when my
husband died, five years ago.  I've had a simply terrific time since.
While the German South West campaign was on I was nursing out there,
but came back about a year ago to lend a hand here.  It would be
awfully nice to meet you again, if by any chance you are in England.
I'm working in a V. A. D.  hospital in these parts, but my evenings
are usually free.  Do you remember that moonlit night at grape
harvest?  The nights here aren't scented quite like that.  Listerine!
Oh!  This war!
"With all good remembrances,
"LEILA LYNCH."


A terrific time!  If he did not mistake, Leila Lynch had always had a
terrific time.  And he smiled, seeing again the stoep of an old Dutch
house at High Constantia, and a woman sitting there under the white
flowers of a sweet-scented creeper--a pretty woman, with eyes which
could put a spell on you, a woman he would have got entangled with if
he had not cut and run for it!  Ten years ago, and here she was
again, refreshing him out of the past.  He sniffed the fragrance of
the little letter.  How everybody always managed to work into a
letter what they were doing in the war!  If he answered her he would
be sure to say: "Since I got lamed, I've been at the War Office,
working on remounts, and a dull job it is!"  Leila Lynch!  Women
didn't get younger, and he suspected her of being older than himself.
But he remembered agreeably her white shoulders and that turn of her
neck when she looked at you with those big grey eyes of hers.  Only a
five-day acquaintanceship, but they had crowded much into it as one
did in a strange land.  The episode had been a green and dangerous
spot, like one of those bright mossy bits of bog when you were snipe-
shooting, to set foot on which was to let you down up to the neck, at
least.  Well, there was none of that danger now, for her husband was
dead-poor chap!  It would be nice, in these dismal days, when nobody
spent any time whatever except in the service of the country, to
improve his powers of service by a few hours' recreation in her
society.  'What humbugs we are!' he thought: 'To read the newspapers
and the speeches you'd believe everybody thought of nothing but how
to get killed for the sake of the future.  Drunk on verbiage!  What
heads and mouths we shall all have when we wake up some fine morning
with Peace shining in at the window!  Ah!  If only we could; and
enjoy ourselves again!'  And he gazed at the moon.  She was dipping
already, reeling away into the dawn.  Water carts and street sweepers
had come out into the glimmer; sparrows twittered in the eaves.  The
city was raising a strange unknown face to the grey light, shuttered
and deserted as Babylon.  Jimmy Fort tapped out his pipe, sighed, and
got into bed.



2

Coming off duty at that very moment, Leila Lynch decided to have her
hour's walk before she went home.  She was in charge of two wards,
and as a rule took the day watches; but some slight upset had given
her this extra spell.  She was, therefore, at her worst, or perhaps
at her best, after eighteen hours in hospital.  Her cheeks were pale,
and about her eyes were little lines, normally in hiding.  There was
in this face a puzzling blend of the soft and hard, for the eyes, the
rather full lips, and pale cheeks, were naturally soft; but they were
hardened by the self-containment which grows on women who have to
face life for themselves, and, conscious of beauty, intend to keep
it, in spite of age.  Her figure was contradictory, also; its soft
modelling a little too rigidified by stays.  In this desert of the
dawn she let her long blue overcoat flap loose, and swung her hat on
a finger, so that her light-brown, touched-up hair took the morning
breeze with fluffy freedom.  Though she could not see herself, she
appreciated her appearance, swaying along like that, past lonely
trees and houses.  A pity there was no one to see her in that round
of Regent's Park, which took her the best part of an hour, walking in
meditation, enjoying the colour coming back into the world, as if
especially for her.

There was character in Leila Lynch, and she had lived an interesting
life from a certain point of view.  In her girlhood she had fluttered
the hearts of many besides Cousin Edward Pierson, and at eighteen had
made a passionate love match with a good-looking young Indian
civilian, named Fane.  They had loved each other to a standstill in
twelve months.  Then had begun five years of petulance, boredom, and
growing cynicism, with increasing spells of Simla, and voyages home
for her health which was really harmed by the heat.  All had
culminated, of course, in another passion for a rifleman called
Lynch.  Divorce had followed, remarriage, and then the Boer War, in
which he had been badly wounded.  She had gone out and nursed him
back to half his robust health, and, at twenty-eight, taken up life
with him on an up-country farm in Cape Colony.  This middle period
had lasted ten years, between the lonely farm and an old Dutch house
at High Constantia.  Lynch was not a bad fellow, but, like most
soldiers of the old Army, had been quite carefully divested of an
aesthetic sense.  And it was Leila's misfortune to have moments when
aesthetic sense seemed necessary.  She had struggled to overcome this
weakness, and that other weakness of hers--a liking for men's
admiration; but there had certainly been intervals when she had not
properly succeeded.  Her acquaintance with Jimmy Fort had occurred
during one of these intervals, and when he went back to England so
abruptly, she had been feeling very tenderly towards him.  She still
remembered him with a certain pleasure.  Before Lynch died, these
"intervals" had been interrupted by a spell of returning warmth for
the invalided man to whom she had joined her life under the romantic
conditions of divorce.  He had failed, of course, as a farmer, and
his death left her with nothing but her own settled income of a
hundred and fifty pounds a year.  Faced by the prospect of having
almost to make her living, at thirty-eight, she felt but momentary
dismay--for she had real pluck.  Like many who have played with
amateur theatricals, she fancied herself as an actress; but, after
much effort, found that only her voice and the perfect preservation
of her legs were appreciated by the discerning managers and public of
South Africa; and for three chequered years she made face against
fortune with the help of them, under an assumed name.  What she did
--keeping a certain bloom of refinement, was far better than the
achievements of many more respectable ladies in her shoes.  At least
she never bemoaned her "reduced circumstances," and if her life was
irregular and had at least three episodes, it was very human.  She
bravely took the rough with the smooth, never lost the power of
enjoying herself, and grew in sympathy with the hardships of others.
But she became deadly tired.  When the war broke out, remembering
that she was a good nurse, she took her real name again and a change
of occupation.  For one who liked to please men, and to be pleased by
them, there was a certain attraction about that life in war-time; and
after two years of it she could still appreciate the way her Tommies
turned their heads to look at her when she passed their beds.  But in
a hard school she had learned perfect self-control; and though the
sour and puritanical perceived her attraction, they knew her to be
forty-three.  Besides, the soldiers liked her; and there was little
trouble in her wards.  The war moved her in simple ways; for she was
patriotic in the direct fashion of her class.  Her father had been a
sailor, her husbands an official and a soldier; the issue for her was
uncomplicated by any abstract meditation.  The Country before
everything!  And though she had tended during those two years so many
young wrecked bodies, she had taken it as all in the a day's work,
lavishing her sympathy on the individual, without much general sense
of pity and waste.  Yes, she had worked really hard, had "done her
bit"; but of late she had felt rising within her the old vague
craving for "life," for pleasure, for something more than the mere
negative admiration bestowed on her by her "Tommies."  Those old
letters--to look them through them had been a sure sign of this vague
craving--had sharpened to poignancy the feeling that life was
slipping away from her while she was still comely.  She had been long
out of England, and so hard-worked since she came back that there
were not many threads she could pick up suddenly.  Two letters out of
that little budget of the past, with a far cry between them, had
awakened within her certain sentimental longings.

"DEAR LADY OF THE STARRY FLOWERS,

"Exiturus (sic) to saluto!  The tender carries you this message of
good-bye.  Simply speaking, I hate leaving South Africa.  And of all
my memories, the last will live the longest.  Grape harvest at
Constantia, and you singing: 'If I could be the falling dew: If ever
you and your husband come to England, do let me know, that I may try
and repay a little the happiest five days I've spent out here.

"Your very faithful servant,

"TIMMY FORT."


She remembered a very brown face, a tall slim figure, and something
gallant about the whole of him.  What was he like after ten years?
Grizzled, married, with a large family?  An odious thing--Time!  And
Cousin Edward's little yellow letter.

Good heavens!  Twenty-six years ago--before he was a parson, or
married or anything!  Such a good partner, really musical; a queer,
dear fellow, devoted, absentminded, easily shocked, yet with flame
burning in him somewhere.

'DEAR LEILA,

"After our last dance I went straight off'--I couldn't go in.  I went
down to the river, and walked along the bank; it was beautiful, all
grey and hazy, and the trees whispered, and the cows looked holy; and
I walked along and thought of you.  And a farmer took me for a
lunatic, in my dress clothes.  Dear Leila, you were so pretty last
night, and I did love our dances.  I hope you are not tired, and that
I shall see you soon again:

"Your affectionate cousin,

"EDWARD PIERSON."


And then he had gone and become a parson, and married, and been a
widower fifteen years.  She remembered the death of his wife, just
before she left for South Africa, at that period of disgrace when she
had so shocked her family by her divorce.  Poor Edward--quite the
nicest of her cousins!  The only one she would care to see again.  He
would be very old and terribly good and proper, by now

Her wheel of Regent's Park was coming full circle, and the sun was up
behind the houses, but still no sound of traffic stirred.  She
stopped before a flower-bed where was some heliotrope, and took a
long, luxurious sniff: She could not resist plucking a sprig, too,
and holding it to her nose.  A sudden want of love had run through
every nerve and fibre of her; she shivered, standing there with her
eyes half closed, above the pale violet blossom.  Then, noting by her
wrist-watch that it was four o'clock, she hurried on, to get to her
bed, for she would have to be on duty again at noon.  Oh!  the war!
She was tired!  If only it were over, and one could live!...

Somewhere by Twickenham the moon had floated down; somewhere up from
Kentish Town the sun came soaring; wheels rolled again, and the seven
million sleepers in their million houses woke from morning sleep to
that same thought....




IX

Edward Pierson, dreaming over an egg at breakfast, opened a letter in
a handwriting which he did not recognise.

"V. A. D. Hospital,

"Mulberry Road, St. John's Wood N. W.

"DEAR COUSIN EDWARD,

"Do you remember me, or have I gone too far into the shades of night?
I was Leila Pierson once upon a time, and I often think of you and
wonder what you are like now, and what your girls are like.  I have
been here nearly a year, working for our wounded, and for a year
before that was nursing in South Africa.  My husband died five years
ago out there.  Though we haven't met for I dare not think how long,
I should awfully like to see you again.  Would you care to come some
day and look over my hospital?  I have two wards under me; our men
are rather dears.

"Your forgotten but still affectionate cousin

"LEILA LYNCH."

"P. S.  I came across a little letter you once wrote me; it brought
back old days."


No!  He had not forgotten.  There was a reminder in the house.  And
he looked up at Noel sitting opposite.  How like the eyes were!  And
he thought: 'I wonder what Leila has become.  One mustn't be
uncharitable.  That man is dead; she has been nursing two years.  She
must be greatly changed; I should certainly like to see her.  I will
go!'  Again he looked at Noel.  Only yesterday she had renewed her
request to be allowed to begin her training as a nurse.

"I'm going to see a hospital to-day, Nollie," he said; "if you like,
I'll make enquiries.  I'm afraid it'll mean you have to begin by
washing up."

"I know; anything, so long as I do begin."

"Very well; I'll see about it."  And he went back to his egg.

Noel's voice roused him.  "Do you feel the war much, Daddy?  Does it
hurt you here?"  She had put her hand on her heart.  "Perhaps it
doesn't, because you live half in the next world, don't you?"

The words: "God forbid," sprang to Pierson's lips; he did not speak
them, but put his egg-spoon down, hurt and bewildered.  What did the
child mean?  Not feel the war!  He smiled.

"I hope I'm able to help people sometimes, Nollie," and was conscious
that he had answered his own thoughts, not her words.  He finished
his breakfast quickly, and very soon went out.  He crossed the
Square, and passed East, down two crowded streets to his church.  In
the traffic of those streets, all slipshod and confused, his black-
clothed figure and grave face, with its Vandyk beard, had a curious
remote appearance, like a moving remnant of a past civilisation.  He
went in by the side door.  Only five days he had been away, but they
had been so full of emotion that the empty familiar building seemed
almost strange to him.  He had come there unconsciously, groping for
anchorage and guidance in this sudden change of relationship between
him and his daughters.  He stood by the pale brazen eagle, staring
into the chancel.  The choir were wanting new hymn-books--he must not
forget to order them!  His eyes sought the stained-glass window he
had put in to the memory of his wife.  The sun, too high to slant,
was burnishing its base, till it glowed of a deep sherry colour.  "In
the next world!"  What strange words of Noel's!  His eyes caught the
glimmer of the organ-pipes; and, mounting to the loft, he began to
play soft chords wandering into each other.  He finished, and stood
gazing down.  This space within high walls, under high vaulted roof,
where light was toned to a perpetual twilight, broken here and there
by a little glow of colour from glass and flowers, metal, and dark
wood, was his home, his charge, his refuge.  Nothing moved down
there, and yet--was not emptiness mysteriously living, the closed-in
air imprinted in strange sort, as though the drone of music and
voices in prayer and praise clung there still?  Had not sanctity a
presence?  Outside, a barrel-organ drove its tune along; a wagon
staggered on the paved street, and the driver shouted to his horses;
some distant guns boomed out in practice, and the rolling of wheels
on wheels formed a net of sound.  But those invading noises were
transmuted to a mere murmuring in here; only the silence and the
twilight were real to Pierson, standing there, a little black figure
in a great empty space.

When he left the church, it was still rather early to go to Leila's
hospital; and, having ordered the new hymn-books, he called in at the
house of a parishioner whose son had been killed in France.  He found
her in her kitchen; an oldish woman who lived by charing.  She wiped
a seat for the Vicar.

"I was just makin' meself a cup o' tea, sir."

"Ah!  What a comfort tea is, Mrs. Soles!"  And he sat down, so that
she should feel "at home."

"Yes; it gives me 'eart-burn; I take eight or ten cups a day, now.  I
take 'em strong, too.  I don't seem able to get on without it.  I
'ope the young ladies are well, sir?"

"Very well, thank you.  Miss Noel is going to begin nursing, too."

"Deary-me!  She's very young; but all the young gells are doin'
something these days.  I've got a niece in munitions-makin' a pretty
penny she is.  I've been meanin' to tell you--I don't come to church
now; since my son was killed, I don't seem to 'ave the 'eart to go
anywhere--'aven't been to a picture-palace these three months.  Any
excitement starts me cryin'."

"I know; but you'd find rest in church."

Mrs. Soles shook her head, and the small twisted bob of her
discoloured hair wobbled vaguely.

"I can't take any recreation," she said.  "I'd rather sit 'ere, or be
at work.  My son was a real son to me.  This tea's the only thing
that does me any good.  I can make you a fresh cup in a minute."

"Thank you, Mrs. Soles, but I must be getting on.  We must all look
forward to meeting our beloved again, in God's mercy.  And one of
these days soon I shall be seeing you in church, shan't I."

Mrs. Soles shifted her weight from one slippered foot to the other.

"Well! let's 'ope so," she said.  "But I dunno when I shall 'ave the
spirit.  Good day, sir, and thank you kindly for calling, I'm sure."

Pierson walked away with a very faint smile.  Poor queer old soul!
--she was no older than himself, but he thought of her as ancient
--cut off from her son, like so many--so many; and how good and
patient!  The melody of an anthem began running in his head.  His
fingers moved on the air beside him, and he stood still, waiting for
an omnibus to take him to St. John's Wood.  A thousand people went by
while he was waiting, but he did not notice them, thinking of that
anthem, of his daughters, and the mercy of God; and on the top of his
'bus, when it came along, he looked lonely and apart, though the man
beside him was so fat that there was hardly any seat left to sit on.
Getting down at Lord's Cricket-ground, he asked his way of a lady in
a nurse's dress.

"If you'll come with me," she said, "I'm just going there."

"Oh!  Do you happen to know a Mrs. Lynch who nurses"

"I am Mrs. Lynch.  Why, you're Edward Pierson!"

He looked into her face, which he had not yet observed.

"Leila!"  he said.

"Yes, Leila!  How awfully nice of you to come, Edward!"

They continued to stand, searching each for the other's youth, till
she murmured:

"In spite of your beard, I should have known you anywhere!"  But she
thought: 'Poor Edward!  He is old, and monk-like!'

And Pierson, in answer, murmured:

"You're very little changed, Leila!  We haven't, seen each other
since my youngest girl was born.  She's just a little like you."  But
he thought: 'My Nollie!  So much more dewy; poor Leila!'

They walked on, talking of his daughters, till they reached the
hospital.

"If you'll wait here a minute, I'll take you over my wards."

She had left him in a bare hall, holding his hat in one hand and
touching his gold cross with the other; but she soon came hack, and a
little warmth crept about his heart.  How works of mercy suited
women!  She looked so different, so much softer, beneath the white
coif, with a white apron over the bluish frock.

At the change in his face, a little warmth crept about Leila, too,
just where the bib of her apron stopped; and her eyes slid round at
him while they went towards what had once been a billiard-room.

"My men are dears," she said; "they love to be talked to."

Under a skylight six beds jutted out from a green distempered wall,
opposite to six beds jutting out from another green distempered wall,
and from each bed a face was turned towards them young faces, with
but little expression in them.  A nurse, at the far end, looked
round, and went on with her work.  The sight of the ward was no more
new to Pierson than to anyone else in these days.  It was so
familiar, indeed, that it had practically no significance.  He stood
by the first bed, and Leila stood alongside.  The man smiled up when
she spoke, and did not smile when he spoke, and that again was
familiar to him.  They passed from bed to bed, with exactly the same
result, till she was called away, and he sat down by a young soldier
with a long, very narrow head and face, and a heavily bandaged
shoulder. Touching the bandage reverently, Pierson said:

"Well, my dear fellow-still bad?"

"Ah!" replied the soldier.  "Shrapnel wound: It's cut the flesh
properly."

"But not the spirit, I can see!"

The young soldier gave him a quaint look, as much as to say: "Not
'arf bad!"  and a gramophone close to the last bed began to play:
"God bless Daddy at the war!"

"Are you fond of music?"

"I like it well enough.  Passes the time."

"I'm afraid the time hangs heavy in hospital."

"Yes; it hangs a bit 'eavy; it's just 'orspital life.  I've been
wounded before, you see.  It's better than bein' out there.  I expect
I'll lose the proper use o' this arm.  I don't worry; I'll get my
discharge."

"You've got some good nurses here."

"Yes; I like Mrs. Lynch; she's the lady I like."

"My cousin."

"I see you come in together.  I see everything 'ere.  I think a lot,
too.  Passes the time."

"Do they let you smoke?"

"Oh, yes!  They let us smoke."

"Have one of mine?"

The young soldier smiled for the first time.  "Thank you; I've got
plenty."

The nurse came by, and smiled at Pierson.

"He's one of our blase ones; been in before, haven't you, Simson?"

Pierson looked at the young man, whose long, narrow face; where one
sandy-lashed eyelid drooped just a little, seemed armoured with a
sort of limited omniscience.  The gramophone had whirred and grunted
into "Sidi Brahim."  The nurse passed on.

"'Seedy Abram,'" said the young soldier.  "The Frenchies sing it;
they takes it up one after the other, ye know."

"Ah!"  murmured Pierson; "it's pretty."  And his fingers drummed on
the counterpane, for the tune was new to him.  Something seemed to
move in the young man's face, as if a blind had been drawn up a
little.

"I don't mind France," he said abruptly; "I don't mind the shells and
that; but I can't stick the mud.  There's a lot o' wounded die in the
mud; can't get up--smothered."  His unwounded arm made a restless
movement.  "I was nearly smothered myself.  Just managed to keep me
nose up."

Pierson shuddered.  "Thank God you did!"

"Yes; I didn't like that.  I told Mrs. Lynch about that one day when
I had the fever.  She's a nice lady; she's seen a lot of us boys:
That mud's not right, you know."  And again his unwounded arm made
that restless movement; while the gramophone struck up: "The boys in
brown."  The movement of the arm affected Pierson horribly; he rose
and, touching the bandaged shoulder, said:

"Good-bye; I hope you'll soon be quite recovered."

The young soldier's lips twisted in the semblance of a smile; his
drooped eyelid seemed to try and raise itself.

"Good day, sir," he said; "and thank you."

Pierson went back to the hall.  The sunlight fell in a pool just
inside the open door, and an uncontrollable impulse made him move
into it, so that it warmed him up to the waist.  The mud!  How ugly
life was!  Life and Death!  Both ugly!  Poor boys!  Poor boys!

A voice behind him said:

"Oh!  There you are, Edward!  Would you like to see the other ward,
or shall I show you our kitchen?"

Pierson took her hand impulsively.  "You're doing a noble work,
Leila.  I wanted to ask you: Could you arrange for Noel to come and
get trained here?  She wants to begin at once.  The fact is, a boy
she is attracted to has just gone out to the Front."

"Ah!"  murmured Leila, and her eyes looked very soft.  "Poor child!
We shall be wanting an extra hand next week.  I'll see if she could
come now.  I'll speak to our Matron, and let you know to-night."  She
squeezed his hand hard.

"Dear Edward, I'm so glad to see you again.  You're the first of our
family I've seen for sixteen years.  I wonder if you'd bring Noel to
have supper at my flat to-night--Just nothing to eat, you know!  It's
a tiny place.  There's a Captain Fort coming; a nice man."

Pierson accepted, and as he walked away he thought: 'Dear Leila!
I believe it was Providence.  She wants sympathy.  She wants to feel
the past is the past.  How good women are!'

And the sun, blazing suddenly out of a cloud, shone on his black
figure and the little gold cross, in the middle of Portland Place.




X

Men, even if they are not artistic, who have been in strange places
and known many nooks of the world, get the scenic habit, become open
to pictorial sensation.  It was as a picture or series of pictures
that Jimmy Fort ever afterwards remembered his first supper at
Leila's.  He happened to have been all day in the open, motoring
about to horse farms under a hot sun; and Leila's hock cup possessed
a bland and subtle strength.  The scenic sense derived therefrom had
a certain poignancy, the more so because the tall child whom he met
there did not drink it, and her father seemed but to wet his lips, so
that Leila and he had all the rest.  Rather a wonderful little scene
it made in his mind, very warm, glowing, yet with a strange dark
sharpness to it, which came perhaps from the black walls.

The flat had belonged to an artist who was at the war.  It was but a
pocket dwelling on the third floor.  The two windows of the little
square sitting-room looked out on some trees and a church.  But
Leila, who hated dining by daylight, had soon drawn curtains of a
deep blue over them.  The picture which Fort remembered was this: A
little four-square table of dark wood, with a Chinese mat of vivid
blue in the centre, whereon stood a silver lustre bowl of clove
carnations; some greenish glasses with hock cup in them; on his left,
Leila in a low lilac frock, her neck and shoulders very white, her
face a little powdered, her eyes large, her lips smiling; opposite
him a black-clothed padre with a little gold cross, over whose thin
darkish face, with its grave pointed beard, passed little gentle
smiles, but whose deep sunk grey eyes were burnt and bright; on his
right, a girl in a high grey frock, almost white, just hollowed at
the neck, with full sleeves to the elbow, so that her slim arms
escaped; her short fair hair a little tumbled; her big grey eyes
grave; her full lips shaping with a strange daintiness round every
word--and they not many; brilliant red shades over golden lights
dotting the black walls; a blue divan; a little black piano flush
with the wall; a dark polished floor; four Japanese prints; a white
ceiling.  He was conscious that his own khaki spoiled something as
curious and rare as some old Chinese tea-chest.  He even remembered
what they ate; lobster; cold pigeon pie; asparagus; St. Ivel cheese;
raspberries and cream.  He did not remember half so well what they
talked of, except that he himself told them stories of the Boer War,
in which he had served in the Yeomanry, and while he was telling
them, the girl, like a child listening to a fairy-tale, never moved
her eyes from his face.  He remembered that after supper they all
smoked cigarettes, even the tall child, after the padre had said to
her mildly, "My dear!" and she had answered: "I simply must, Daddy,
just one."  He remembered Leila brewing Turkish coffee--very good,
and how beautiful her white arms looked, hovering about the cups.  He
remembered her making the padre sit down at the piano, and play to
them.  And she and the girl on the divan together, side by side, a
strange contrast; with just as strange a likeness to each other.  He
always remembered how fine and rare that music sounded in the little
room, flooding him with a dreamy beatitude.  Then--he remembered--
Leila sang, the padre standing-by; and the tall child on the divan
bending forward over her knees, with her chin on her hands.  He
remembered rather vividly how Leila turned her neck and looked up,
now at the padre, now at himself; and, all through, the delightful
sense of colour and warmth, a sort of glamour over all the evening;
and the lingering pressure of Leila's hand when he said good-bye and
they went away, for they all went together.  He remembered talking a
great deal to the padre in the cab, about the public school they had
both been at, and thinking: 'It's a good padre--this!'  He remembered
how their taxi took them to an old Square which he did not know,
where the garden trees looked densely black in the starshine.  He
remembered that a man outside the house had engaged the padre in
earnest talk, while the tall child and himself stood in the open
doorway, where the hall beyond was dark.  Very exactly he remembered
the little conversation which then took place between them, while
they waited for her father.

"Is it very horrid in the trenches, Captain Fort?"

"Yes, Miss Pierson; it is very horrid, as a rule."

"Is it dangerous all the time?"

"Pretty well."

"Do officers run more risks than the men?"

"Not unless there's an attack."

"Are there attacks very often?"

It had seemed to him so strangely primitive a little catechism, that
he had smiled.  And, though it was so dark, she had seen that smile,
for her face went proud and close all of a sudden.  He had cursed
himself, and said gently:

"Have you a brother out there?"

She shook her head.

"But someone?"

"Yes."

Someone!  He had heard that answer with a little shock.  This child--
this fairy princess of a child already to have someone!  He wondered
if she went about asking everyone these questions, with that someone
in her thoughts.  Poor child!  And quickly he said:

"After all, look at me!  I was out there a year, and here I am with
only half a game leg; times were a lot worse, then, too.  I often
wish I were back there.  Anything's better than London and the War
Office."  But just then he saw the padre coming, and took her hand.
"Good night, Miss Pierson.  Don't worry.  That does no good, and
there isn't half the risk you think."

Her hand stirred, squeezed his gratefully, as a child's would
squeeze.

"Good night," she murmured; "thank you awfully."

And, in the dark cab again, he remembered thinking: 'Fancy that
child!  A jolly lucky boy, out there!  Too bad!  Poor little fairy
princess!'






PART II

I

1

To wash up is not an exciting operation.  To wash up in August became
for Noel a process which taxed her strength and enthusiasm.  She
combined it with other forms of instruction in the art of nursing,
had very little leisure, and in the evenings at home would often fall
asleep curled up in a large chintz-covered chair.

George and Gratian had long gone back to their respective hospitals,
and she and her father had the house to themselves.  She received
many letters from Cyril which she carried about with her and read on
her way to and from the hospital; and every other day she wrote to
him.  He was not yet in the firing line; his letters were descriptive
of his men, his food, or the natives, or reminiscent of Kestrel; hers
descriptive of washing up, or reminiscent of Kestrel.  But in both
there was always some little word of the longing within them.

It was towards the end of August when she had the letter which said
that he had been moved up.  From now on he would be in hourly danger!
That evening after dinner she did not go to sleep in the chair, but
sat under the open window, clenching her hands, and reading "Pride
and Prejudice" without understanding a word.  While she was so
engaged her father came up and said:

"Captain Fort, Nollie.  Will you give him some coffee?  I'm afraid I
must go out."

When he had gone, Noel looked at her visitor drinking his coffee.  He
had been out there, too, and he was alive; with only a little limp.
The visitor smiled and said:

"What were you thinking about when we came in?"

"Only the war."

"Any news of him?"

Noel frowned, she hated to show her feelings.

"Yes!  he's gone to the Front.  Won't you have a cigarette?"

"Thanks.  Will you?"

"I want one awfully.  I think sitting still and waiting is more
dreadful than anything in the world."

"Except, knowing that others are waiting.  When I was out there I
used to worry horribly over my mother.  She was ill at the time.  The
cruelest thing in war is the anxiety of people about each other--
nothing touches that."

The words exactly summed up Noel's hourly thought.  He said nice
things, this man with the long legs and the thin brown bumpy face!

"I wish I were a man," she said, "I think women have much the worst
time in the war.  Is your mother old?"  But of course she was old why
he was old himself!

"She died last Christmas."

"Oh!  I'm so sorry!"

"You lost your mother when you were a babe, didn't you?"

"Yes.  That's her portrait."  At the end of the room, hanging on a
strip of black velvet was a pastel, very faint in colouring, as
though faded, of a young woman, with an eager, sweet face, dark eyes,
and bent a little forward, as if questioning her painter.  Fort went
up to it.

"It's not a bit like you.  But she must have been a very sweet
woman."

"It's a sort of presence in the room.  I wish I were like her!"

Fort turned.  "No," he said; "no.  Better as you are.  It would only
have spoiled a complete thing."

"She was good."

"And aren't you?"

"Oh! no.  I get a devil."

"You!  Why, you're out of a fairy-tale!"

"It comes from Daddy--only he doesn't know, because he's a perfect
saint; but I know he's had a devil somewhere, or he couldn't be the
saint he is."

"H'm!" said Fort.  "That's very deep: and I believe it's true--the
saints did have devils."

"Poor Daddy's devil has been dead ages.  It's been starved out of
him, I think."

"Does your devil ever get away with you?"

Noel felt her cheeks growing red under his stare, and she turned to
the window:

"Yes.  It's a real devil."

Vividly there had come before her the dark Abbey, and the moon
balancing over the top of the crumbling wall, and the white owl
flying across.  And, speaking to the air, she said:

"It makes you do things that you want to do."

She wondered if he would laugh--it sounded so silly.  But he did not.

"And damn the consequences?  I know.  It's rather a jolly thing to
have."

Noel shook her head.  "Here's Daddy coming back!"

Fort held out his hand.

"I won't stay.  Good night; and don't worry too much, will you?"

He kept her hand rather a long time, and gave it a hard squeeze.

Don't worry!  What advice!  Ah!  if she could see Cyril just for a
minute!



2

In September, 1916, Saturday still came before Sunday, in spite of
the war.  For Edward Pierson this Saturday had been a strenuous day,
and even now, at nearly midnight, he was still conning his just-
completed sermon.

A patriot of patriots, he had often a passionate longing to resign
his parish, and go like his curate for a chaplain at the Front.  It
seemed to him that people must think his life idle and sheltered and
useless.  Even in times of peace he had been sensitive enough to feel
the cold draughty blasts which the Church encounters in a material
age.  He knew that nine people out of ten looked on him as something
of a parasite, with no real work in the world.  And since he was
nothing if not conscientious, he always worked himself to the bone.

To-day he had risen at half-past six, and after his bath and
exercises, had sat down to his sermon--for, even now, he wrote a new
sermon once a month, though he had the fruits of twenty-six years to
choose from.  True, these new sermons were rather compiled than
written, because, bereft of his curate, he had not time enough for
fresh thought on old subjects.  At eight he had breakfasted with
Noel, before she went off to her hospital, whence she would return at
eight in the evening.  Nine to ten was his hour for seeing
parishioners who had troubles, or wanted help or advice, and he had
received three to-day who all wanted help, which he had given.  From
ten to eleven he had gone back to his sermon, and had spent from
eleven to one at his church, attending to small matters, writing
notices, fixing hymns, holding the daily half-hour Service instituted
during wartime, to which but few ever came.  He had hurried back to
lunch, scamping it so that he might get to his piano for an hour of
forgetfulness.  At three he had christened a very noisy baby, and
been detained by its parents who wished for information on a variety
of topics.  At half-past four he had snatched a cup of tea, reading
the paper; and had spent from five to seven visiting two Parish
Clubs, and those whose war-pension matters he had in hand, and
filling up forms which would be kept in official places till such
time as the system should be changed and a fresh set of forms issued.
>From seven to eight he was at home again, in case his flock wanted to
see him; to-day four sheep had come, and gone away, he was afraid,
but little the wiser.  From half-past eight to half-past nine he had
spent in choir practice, because the organist was on his holiday.
Slowly in the cool of the evening he had walked home, and fallen
asleep in his chair on getting in.  At eleven he had woken with a
start, and, hardening his heart, had gone back to his sermon.  And
now, at nearly midnight, it was still less than twenty minutes long.
He lighted one of his rare cigarettes, and let thought wander.  How
beautiful those pale pink roses were in that old silver bowl-like a
little strange poem, or a piece of Debussy music, or a Mathieu Maris
picture-reminding him oddly of the word Leila.  Was he wrong in
letting Noel see so much of Leila?  But then she was so improved--
dear Leila!...  The pink roses were just going to fall!  And yet how
beautiful!...  It was quiet to-night; he felt very drowsy....  Did
Nollie still think of that young man, or had it passed?  She had
never confided in him since!  After the war, it would be nice to take
her to Italy, to all the little towns.  They would see the Assisi of
St. Francis.  The Little Flowers of St. Francis.  The Little
Flowers!...  His hand dropped, the cigarette went out.  He slept with
his face in shadow.  Slowly into the silence of his sleep little
sinister sounds intruded.  Short concussions, dragging him back out
of that deep slumber.  He started up.  Noel was standing at the door,
in a long coat.  She said in her calm voice:

"Zeps, Daddy!"

"Yes, my dear.  Where are the maids?"

An Irish voice answered from the hall: "Here, sir; trustin' in God;
but 'tis better on the ground floor."

He saw a huddle of three figures, queerly costumed, against the
stairs.

"Yes, Yes, Bridgie; you're safe down here."  Then he noticed that
Noel was gone.  He followed her out into the Square, alive with faces
faintly luminous in the darkness, and found her against the garden
railings.

"You must come back in, Nollie."

"Oh, no!  Cyril has this every day."

He stood beside her; not loth, for excitement had begun to stir his
blood.  They stayed there for some minutes, straining their eyes for
sight of anything save the little zagged splashes of bursting
shrapnel, while voices buzzed, and muttered: "Look!  There!  There!
There it is!"

But the seers had eyes of greater faith than Pierson's, for he saw
nothing: He took her arm at last, and led her in.  In the hall she
broke from him.

"Let's go up on the roof, Daddy!" and ran upstairs.

Again he followed, mounting by a ladder, through a trapdoor on to the
roof.

"It's splendid up here!" she cried.

He could see her eyes blazing, and thought: 'How my child does love
excitement--it's almost terrible!'

Over the wide, dark, star-strewn sky travelling searchlights, were
lighting up the few little clouds; the domes and spires rose from
among the spread-out roofs, all fine and ghostly.  The guns had
ceased firing, as though puzzled.  One distant bang rumbled out.

"A bomb!  Oh!  If we could only get one of the Zeps!"

A furious outburst of firing followed, lasting perhaps a minute, then
ceased as if by magic.  They saw two searchlights converge and meet
right overhead.

"It's above us!" murmured Noel.

Pierson put his arm round her waist.  'She feels no fear!' he
thought.  The search-lights switched apart; and suddenly, from far
away, came a confusion of weird sounds.

"What is it?  They're cheering.  Oh! Daddy, look!" There in the
heavens, towards the east, hung a dull red thing, lengthening as they
gazed.

"They've got it.  It's on fire!  Hurrah!"

Through the dark firmament that fiery orange shape began canting
downward; and the cheering swelled in a savage frenzy of sound.  And
Pierson's arm tightened on her waist.

"Thank God!" he muttered.

The bright oblong seemed to break and spread, tilted down below the
level of the roofs; and suddenly the heavens flared, as if some huge
jug of crimson light had been flung out on them.  Something turned
over in Pierson's heart; he flung up his hand to his eyes.

"The poor men in it!"  he said.  "How terrible!"

Noel's voice answered, hard and pitiless:

"They needn't have come.  They're murderers!"

Yes, they were murderers--but how terrible!  And he stood quivering,
with his hands pressed to his face, till the cheering had died out
into silence.

"Let's pray, Nollie!"  he whispered.  "O God, Who in Thy great mercy
hath delivered us from peril, take into Thy keeping the souls of
these our enemies, consumed by Thy wrath before our eyes; give us the
power to pity them--men like ourselves."

But even while he prayed he could see Noel's face flame-white in the
darkness; and, as that glow in the sky faded out, he felt once more
the thrill of triumph.

They went down to tell the maids, and for some time after sat up
together, talking over what they had seen, eating biscuits and
drinking milk, which they warmed on an etna.  It was nearly two
o'clock before they went to bed.  Pierson fell asleep at once, and
never turned till awakened at half-past six by his alarum.  He had
Holy Communion to administer at eight, and he hurried to get early to
his church and see that nothing untoward had happened to it.  There
it stood in the sunlight; tall, grey, quiet, unharmed, with bell
gently ringing.



3

And at that hour Cyril Morland, under the parapet of his trench,
tightening his belt, was looking at his wrist-watch for the hundredth
time, calculating exactly where he meant to put foot and hand for the
going over: 'I absolutely mustn't let those chaps get in front of
me,' he thought.  So many yards before the first line of trenches, so
many yards to the second line, and there stop.  So his rehearsals had
gone; it was the performance now!  Another minute before the terrific
racket of the drum-fire should become the curtain-fire, which would
advance before them.  He ran his eye down the trench.  The man next
him was licking his two first fingers, as if he might be going to
bowl at cricket.  Further down, a man was feeling his puttees.  A
voice said: "Wot price the orchestra nah!"  He saw teeth gleam in
faces burnt almost black.  Then he looked up; the sky was blue beyond
the brownish film of dust raised by the striking shells.  Noel!
Noel!  Noel!...  He dug his fingers deep into the left side of his
tunic till he could feel the outline of her photograph between his
dispatch-case and his heart.  His heart fluttered just as it used
when he was stretched out with hand touching the ground, before the
start of the "hundred yards" at school.  Out of the corner of his eye
he caught the flash of a man's "briquet" lighting a cigarette.  All
right for those chaps, but not for him; he wanted all his breath--
this rifle, and kit were handicap enough!  Two days ago he had been
reading in some paper how men felt just before an attack.  And now he
knew.  He just felt nervous.  If only the moment would come, and get
itself over!  For all the thought he gave to the enemy there might
have been none--nothing but shells and bullets, with lives of their
own.  He heard the whistle; his foot was on the spot he had marked
down; his hand where he had seen it; he called out: "Now, boys!"  His
head was over the top, his body over; he was conscious of someone
falling, and two men neck and neck beside him.  Not to try and run,
not to break out of a walk; to go steady, and yet keep ahead!  D--n
these holes!  A bullet tore through his sleeve, grazing his arm--a
red-hot sensation, like the touch of an iron.  A British shell from
close over his head burst sixty yards ahead; he stumbled, fell flat,
picked himself up.  Three ahead of him now!  He walked faster, and
drew alongside.  Two of them fell.  'What luck!' he thought; and
gripping his rifle harder, pitched headlong into a declivity.  Dead
bodies lay there!  The first German trench line, and nothing alive in
it, nothing to clean up, nothing of it left!  He stopped, getting his
wind; watching the men panting and stumbling in.  The roar of the
guns was louder than ever again, barraging the second line.  So far,
good!  And here was his captain!

"Ready, boys?  On, then!"

This time he moved more slowly still, over terrible going, all holes
and hummocks.  Half consciously he took cover all he could.  The air
was alive with the whistle from machine-gun fire storming across
zigzag fashion-alive it was with bullets, dust, and smoke.  'How
shall I tell her?' he thought.  There would be nothing to tell but
just a sort of jagged brown sensation.  He kept his eyes steadily
before him, not wanting to seethe men falling, not wanting anything
to divert him from getting there.  He felt the faint fanning of the
passing bullets.  The second line must be close now.  Why didn't that
barrage lift?  Was this new dodge of firing till the last second
going to do them in?  Another hundred yards and he would be bang into
it.  He flung himself flat and waited; looking at his wrist-watch he
noted that his arm was soaked with blood.  He thought: 'A wound!  Now
I shall go home.  Thank God!  Oh, Noel!' The passing bullets whirled
above him; he could hear them even through the screech and thunder of
the shell-fire.  'The beastly things!' he thought: A voice beside him
gasped out:

"It's lifted, sir."

He called: "Come on, boys!" and went forward, stooping.  A bullet
struck his rifle.  The shock made him stagger and sent an electric
shock spinning up his arm.  'Luck again!' he thought.  'Now for it!
I haven't seen a German yet!' He leaped forward, spun round, flung up
his arms, and fell on his back, shot through and through....

The position was consolidated, as they say, and in the darkness
stretcher-bearers were out over the half-mile.  Like will-o'-the-
wisps, with their shaded lanterns, they moved, hour after hour,
slowly quartering the black honeycomb which lay behind the new
British line.  Now and then in the light of some star-shell their
figures were disclosed, bending and raising the forms of the wounded,
or wielding pick and shovel.

"Officer."

"Dead?"

"Sure."

"Search."

>From the shaded lantern, lowered to just above the body, a yellowish
glare fell on face and breast.  The hands of the searcher moved in
that little pool of light.  The bearer who was taking notes bent
down.

"Another boy," he said.  "That all he has?"

The searcher raised himself.

"Just those, and a photo."

"Dispatch-case; pound loose; cigarette-case; wristwatch; photo.
Let's see it."

The searcher placed the photo in the pool of light.  The tiny face of
a girl stared up at them, unmoved, from its short hair.

"Noel," said the searcher, reading.

"H'm!  Take care of it.  Stick it in his case.  Come on!"

The pool of light dissolved, and darkness for ever covered Cyril
Morland.




II

When those four took their seats in the Grand Circle at Queen's Hall
the programme was already at the second number, which, in spite of
all the efforts of patriotism, was of German origin--a Brandenburg
concerto by Bach.  More curious still, it was encored.  Pierson did
not applaud, he was too far gone in pleasure, and sat with a rapt
smile on his face, oblivious of his surroundings.  He remained thus
removed from mortal joys and sorrows till the last applause had died
away, and Leila's voice said in his ear:

"Isn't it a wonderful audience, Edward?  Look at all that khaki.
Who'd have thought those young men cared for music--good music--
German music, too?"

Pierson looked down at the patient mass of standing figures in straw
hats and military caps, with faces turned all one way, and sighed.

"I wish I could get an audience like that in my church."

A smile crept out at the corner of Leila's lips.  She was thinking:
'Ah!  Your Church is out of date, my dear, and so are you! Your
Church, with its smell of mould and incense, its stained-glass, and
narrowed length and droning organ.  Poor Edward, so out of the
world!'  But she only pressed his arm, and whispered:

"Look at Noel!"

The girl was talking to Jimmy Fort.  Her cheeks were gushed, and she
looked prettier than Pierson had seen her look for a long time now,
ever since Kestrel, indeed.  He heard Leila sigh.

"Does she get news of her boy?  Do you remember that May Week,
Edward?  We were very young then; even you were young.  That was such
a pretty little letter you wrote me.  I can see you still-wandering
in your dress clothes along the river, among the 'holy' cows."

But her eyes slid round again, watching her other neighbour and the
girl.  A violinist had begun to play the Cesar Franck Sonata.  It was
Pierson's favourite piece of music, bringing him, as it were, a view
of heaven, of devotional blue air where devout stars were shining in
a sunlit noon, above ecstatic trees and waters where ecstatic swans
were swimming.

"Queer world, Mr. Pierson!  Fancy those boys having to go back to
barrack life after listening to that!, What's your feeling?  Are we
moving back to the apes?  Did we touch top note with that Sonata?"

Pierson turned and contemplated his questioner shrewdly.

"No, Captain Fort, I do not think we are moving back to the apes; if
we ever came from them.  Those boys have the souls of heroes!"

"I know that, sir, perhaps better than you do."

"Ah!  yes," said Pierson humbly, "I forgot, of course."  But he still
looked at his neighbour doubtfully.  This Captain Fort, who was a
friend of Leila's, and who had twice been to see them, puzzled him.
He had a frank face, a frank voice, but queer opinions, or so it
seemed to, Pierson--little bits of Moslemism, little bits of the
backwoods, and the veldt; queer unexpected cynicisms, all sorts of
side views on England had lodged in him, and he did not hide them.
They came from him like bullets, in that frank voice, and drilled
little holes in the listener.  Those critical sayings flew so much
more poignantly from one who had been through the same educational
mill as himself, than if they had merely come from some rough
diamond, some artist, some foreigner, even from a doctor like George.
And they always made him uncomfortable, like the touch of a prickly
leaf; they did not amuse him.  Certainly Edward Pierson shrank from
the rough touches of a knock-about philosophy.  After all, it was but
natural that he should.

He and Noel left after the first part of the concert, parting from
the other two at the door.  He slipped his hand through her arm; and,
following out those thoughts of his in the concert-hall, asked:

"Do you like Captain Fort, Nollie?"

"Yes; he's a nice man."

"He seems a nice man, certainly; he has a nice smile, but strange
views, I'm afraid."

"He thinks the Germans are not much worse than we are; he says that a
good many of us are bullies too."

"Yes, that is the sort of thing I mean."

"But are we, Daddy?"

"Surely not."

"A policeman I talked to once said the same.  Captain Fort says that
very few men can stand having power put into their hands without
being spoiled.  He told me some dreadful stories.  He says we have no
imagination, so that we often do things without seeing how brutal
they are."

"We're not perfect, Nollie; but on the whole I think we're a kind
people."

Noel was silent a moment, then said suddenly:

"Kind people often think others are kind too, when they really
aren't.  Captain Fort doesn't make that mistake."

"I think he's a little cynical, and a little dangerous."

"Are all people dangerous who don't think like others, Daddy?"

Pierson, incapable of mockery, was not incapable of seeing when he
was being mocked.  He looked at his daughter with a smile.

"Not quite so bad as that, Nollie; but Mr. Fort is certainly
subversive.  I think perhaps he has seen too many queer sides of
life."

"I like him the better for that."

"Well, well," Pierson answered absently.  He had work to do in
preparation for a Confirmation Class, and sought his study on getting
in.

Noel went to the dining-room to drink her hot milk.  The curtains
were not drawn, and bright moonlight was coming in.  Without lighting
up, she set the etna going, and stood looking at the moon-full for
the second time since she and Cyril had waited for it in the Abbey.
And pressing her hands to her breast, she shivered.  If only she
could summon him from the moonlight out there; if only she were a
witch-could see him, know where he was, what doing!  For a fortnight
now she had received no letter.  Every day since he had left she had
read the casualty lists, with the superstitious feeling that to do so
would keep him out of them.  She took up the Times.  There was just
enough light, and she read the roll of honour--till the moon shone in
on her, lying on the floor, with the dropped journal....

But she was proud, and soon took grief to her room, as on that night
after he left her, she had taken love.  No sign betrayed to the house
her disaster; the journal on the floor, and the smell of the burnt
milk which had boiled over, revealed nothing.  After all, she was but
one of a thousand hearts which spent that moonlit night in agony.
Each night, year in, year out, a thousand faces were buried in
pillows to smother that first awful sense of desolation, and grope
for the secret spirit-place where bereaved souls go, to receive some
feeble touch of healing from knowledge of each other's trouble....

In the morning she got up from her sleepless bed, seemed to eat her
breakfast, and went off to her hospital.  There she washed up plates
and dishes, with a stony face, dark under the eyes.

The news came to Pierson in a letter from Thirza, received at lunch-
time.  He read it with a dreadful aching.  Poor, poor little Nollie!
What an awful trouble for her!  And he, too, went about his work with
the nightmare thought that he had to break the news to her that
evening.  Never had he felt more lonely, more dreadfully in want of
the mother of his children.  She would have known how to soothe, how
to comfort.  On her heart the child could have sobbed away grief.
And all that hour, from seven to eight, when he was usually in
readiness to fulfil the functions of God's substitute to his
parishioners, he spent in prayer of his own, for guidance how to
inflict and heal this blow.  When, at last, Noel came, he opened.
the door to her himself, and, putting back the hair from her
forehead, said: "Come in here a moment, my darling!"  Noel followed
him into the study, and sat down.  "I know already, Daddy."  Pierson
was more dismayed by this stoicism than he would have been by any
natural out burst.  He stood, timidly stroking her hair, murmuring to
her what he had said to Gratian, and to so many others in these days:
"There is no death; look forward to seeing him again; God is
merciful"  And he marvelled at the calmness of that pale face--so
young.

"You are very brave, my child!"  he said.

"There's nothing else to be, is there?"

"Isn't there anything I can do for you, Nollie?"

"No, Daddy."

"When did you see it?"

"Last night."  She had already known for twenty-four hours without
telling him!

"Have you prayed, my darling?"

"No."

"Try, Nollie!"

"No."

"Ah, try!"

"It would be ridiculous, Daddy; you don't know."

Grievously upset and bewildered, Pierson moved away from her, and
said:

"You look dreadfully tired.  Would you like a hot bath, and your
dinner in bed?"

"I'd like some tea; that's all."  And she went out.

When he had seen that the tea had gone up to her, he too went out;
and, moved by a longing for woman's help, took a cab to Leila's flat.




III

1


On leaving the concert Leila and Jimmy Fort had secured a taxi; a
vehicle which, at night, in wartime, has certain advantages for those
who desire to become better acquainted.  Vibration, sufficient noise,
darkness, are guaranteed; and all that is lacking for the furtherance
of emotion is the scent of honeysuckle and roses, or even of the
white flowering creeper which on the stoep at High Constantia had
smelled so much sweeter than petrol.

When Leila found herself with Fort in that loneliness to which she
had been looking forward, she was overcome by an access of nervous
silence.  She had been passing through a strange time for weeks past.
Every night she examined her sensations without quite understanding
them as yet.  When a woman comes to her age, the world-force is
liable to take possession, saying:

"You were young, you were beautiful, you still have beauty, you are
not, cannot be, old.  Cling to youth, cling to beauty; take all you
can get, before your face gets lines and your hair grey; it is
impossible that you have been loved for the last time."

To see Jimmy Fort at the concert, talking to Noel, had brought this
emotion to a head.  She was not of a grudging nature, and could
genuinely admire Noel, but the idea that Jimmy Fort might also admire
disturbed her greatly.  He must not; it was not fair; he was too old-
-besides, the girl had her boy; and she had taken care that he should
know it.  So, leaning towards him, while a bare-shouldered young lady
sang, she had whispered:

"Penny?"

And he had whispered back:

"Tell you afterwards."

That had comforted her.  She would make him take her home.  It was
time she showed her heart.

And now, in the cab, resolved to make her feelings known, in sudden
shyness she found it very difficult.  Love, to which for quite three
years she had been a stranger, was come to life within her.  The
knowledge was at once so sweet, and so disturbing, that she sat with
face averted, unable to turn the precious minutes to account.  They
arrived at the flat without having done more than agree that the
streets were dark, and the moon bright.  She got out with a sense of
bewilderment, and said rather desperately:

"You must come up and have a cigarette.  It's quite early, still."

He went up.

"Wait just a minute," said Leila.

Sitting there with his drink and his cigarette, he stared at some
sunflowers in a bowl--Famille Rose--and waited just ten; smiling a
little, recalling the nose of the fairy princess, and the dainty way
her lips shaped the words she spoke.  If she had not had that lucky
young devil of a soldier boy, one would have wanted to buckle her
shoes, lay one's coat in the mud for her, or whatever they did in
fairytales.  One would have wanted--ah! what would one not have
wanted!  Hang that soldier boy!  Leila said he was twenty-two.  By
George!  how old it made a man feel who was rising forty, and tender
on the off-fore!  No fairy princesses for him!  Then a whiff of
perfume came to his nostrils; and, looking up, he saw Leila standing
before him, in a long garment of dark silk, whence her white arms
peeped out.

"Another penny?  Do you remember these things, Jimmy?  The Malay
women used to wear them in Cape Town.  You can't think what a relief
it is to get out of my slave's dress.  Oh!  I'm so sick of nursing!
Jimmy, I want to live again a little!"

The garment had taken fifteen years off her age, and a gardenia, just
where the silk crossed on her breast, seemed no whiter than her skin.
He wondered whimsically whether it had dropped to her out of the
dark!

"Live?"  he said.  "Why!  Don't you always?"

She raised her hands so that the dark silk fell, back from the whole
length of those white arms.

"I haven't lived for two years.  Oh, Jimmy!  Help me to live a
little!  Life's so short, now."

Her eyes disturbed him, strained and pathetic; the sight of her arms;
the scent of the flower disturbed him; he felt his cheeks growing
warm, and looked down.

She slipped suddenly forward on to her knees at his feet, took his
hand, pressed it with both of hers, and murmured:

"Love me a little!  What else is there?  Oh! Jimmy, what else is
there?"

And with the scent of the flower, crushed by their hands, stirring
his senses, Fort thought: 'Ah, what else is there, in these forsaken
days?'

To Jimmy Fort, who had a sense of humour, and was in some sort a
philosopher, the haphazard way life settled things seldom failed to
seem amusing.  But when he walked away from Leila's he was pensive.
She was a good sort, a pretty creature, a sportswoman, an
enchantress; but--she was decidedly mature.  And here he was--
involved in helping her to "live"; involved almost alarmingly, for
there had been no mistaking the fact that she had really fallen in
love with him.

This was flattering and sweet.  Times were sad, and pleasure scarce,
but--!  The roving instinct which had kept him, from his youth up,
rolling about the world, shied instinctively at bonds, however
pleasant, the strength and thickness of which he could not gauge; or,
was it that perhaps for the first time in his life he had been
peeping into fairyland of late, and this affair with Leila was by no
means fairyland?  He had another reason, more unconscious, for
uneasiness.  His heart, for all his wanderings, was soft, he had
always found it difficult to hurt anyone, especially anyone who did
him the honour to love him.  A sort of presentiment weighed on him
while he walked the moonlit streets at this most empty hour, when
even the late taxis had ceased to run.  Would she want him to marry
her?  Would it be his duty, if she did?  And then he found himself
thinking of the concert, and that girl's face, listening to the tales
he was telling her.  'Deuced queer world,' he thought, 'the way
things go!  I wonder what she would think of us, if she knew--and
that good padre!  Phew!'

He made such very slow progress, for fear of giving way in his leg,
and having to spend the night on a door-step, that he had plenty of
time for rumination; but since it brought him no confidence whatever,
he began at last to feel: 'Well; it might be a lot worse.  Take the
goods the gods send you and don't fuss!'  And suddenly he remembered
with extreme vividness that night on the stoep at High Constantia,
and thought with dismay: 'I could have plunged in over head and ears
then; and now--I can't!  That's life all over!  Poor Leila!  Me
miserum, too, perhaps--who knows!'




IV

When Leila opened her door to Edward Pierson, her eyes were smiling,
and her lips were soft.  She seemed to smile and be soft all over,
and she took both his hands.  Everything was a pleasure to her that
day, even the sight of this sad face.  She was in love and was loved
again; had a present and a future once more, not only her own full
past; and she must finish with Edward in half an hour, for Jimmy was
coming.  She sat down on the divan, took his hand in a sisterly way,
and said:

"Tell me, Edward; I can see you're in trouble.  What is it?"

"Noel.  The boy she was fond of has been killed."

She dropped his hand.

"Oh, no!  Poor child!  It's too cruel!"  Tears started up in her grey
eyes, and she touched them with a tiny handkerchief.  "Poor, poor
little Noel!  Was she very fond of him?"

"A very sudden, short engagement; but I'm afraid she takes it
desperately to heart.  I don't know how to comfort her; only a woman
could.  I came to ask you: Do you think she ought to go on with her
work?  What do you think, Leila?  I feel lost!"

Leila, gazing at him, thought: 'Lost?  Yes, you look lost, my poor
Edward!'

"I should let her go on," she said: "it helps; it's the only thing
that does help.  I'll see if I can get them to let her come into the
wards.  She ought to be in touch with suffering and the men; that
kitchen work will try her awfully just now: Was he very young?"

"Yes.  They wanted to get married.  I was opposed to it."

Leila's lip curled ever so little.  'You would be!' she thought.

"I couldn't bear to think of Nollie giving herself hastily, like
that; they had only known each other three weeks.  It was very hard
for me, Leila.  And then suddenly he was sent to the front."

Resentment welled up in Leila.  The kill-Joys!  As if life didn't
kill joy fast enough!  Her cousin's face at that moment was almost
abhorrent to her, its gentle perplexed goodness darkened and warped
by that monkish look.  She turned away, glanced at the clock over the
hearth, and thought: 'Yes, and he would stop Jimmy and me!  He would
say: "Oh, no! dear Leila--you mustn't love--it's sin!"  How I hate
that word!'

"I think the most dreadful thing in life," she said abruptly, "is the
way people suppress their natural instincts; what they suppress in
themselves they make other people suppress too, if they can; and
that's the cause of half the misery in this world."

Then at the surprise on his face at this little outburst, whose cause
he could not know, she added hastily: "I hope Noel will get over it
quickly, and find someone else."

"Yes.  If they had been married--how much worse it would have been.
Thank God, they weren't!"

"I don't know.  They would have had an hour of bliss.  Even an hour
of bliss is worth something in these days."

"To those who only believe in this 'life--perhaps."

'Ten minutes more!' she thought: 'Oh, why doesn't he go?' But at that
very moment he got up, and instantly her heart went out to him again.

"I'm so sorry, Edward.  If I can help in any way--I'll try my best
with Noel to-morrow; and do come to me whenever you feel inclined."

She took his hand in hers; afraid that he would sit down again, she
yet could not help a soft glance into his eyes, and a little rush of
pitying warmth in the pressure of her hand.

Pierson smiled; the smile which always made her sorry for him.

"Good-bye, Leila; you're very good and kind to me.  Good-bye."

Her bosom swelled with relief and compassion; and--she let him out.

Running upstairs again she thought: 'I've just time.  What shall I
put on?  Poor Edward, poor Noel!  What colour does Jimmy like?  Oh!
Why didn't I keep him those ten years ago--what utter waste!'  And,
feverishly adorning herself, she came back to the window, and stood
there in the dark to watch, while some jasmine which grew below sent
up its scent to her.  'Would I marry him?' she thought, 'if he asked
me?  But he won't ask me--why should he now?  Besides, I couldn't
bear him to feel I wanted position or money from him.  I only want
love--love--love!'  The silent repetition of that word gave her a
wonderful sense of solidity and comfort.  So long as she only wanted
love, surely he would give it.

A tall figure turned down past the church, coming towards her.  It
was he!  And suddenly she bethought herself.  She went to the little
black piano, sat down, and began to sing the song she had sung to him
ten years ago: "If I could be the falling dew and fall on thee all
day!"  She did not even look round when he came in, but continued to
croon out the words, conscious of him just behind her shoulder in the
dark.  But when she had finished, she got up and threw her arms round
him, strained him to her, and burst into tears on his shoulder;
thinking of Noel and that dead boy, thinking of the millions of other
boys, thinking of her own happiness, thinking of those ten years
wasted, of how short was life, and love; thinking--hardly knowing
what she thought!  And Jimmy Fort, very moved by this emotion which
he only half understood, pressed her tightly in his arms, and kissed
her wet cheeks and her neck, pale and warm in the darkness.




V

1

Noel went on with her work for a month, and then, one morning,
fainted over a pile of dishes.  The noise attracted attention, and
Mrs. Lynch was summoned.

The sight of her lying there so deadly white taxed Leila's nerves
severely.  But the girl revived quickly, and a cab was sent for.
Leila went with her, and told the driver to stop at Camelot Mansions.
Why take her home in this state, why not save the jolting, and let
her recover properly?  They went upstairs arm in arm.  Leila made her
lie down on the divan, and put a hot-water bottle to her feet.  Noel
was still so passive and pale that even to speak to her seemed a
cruelty.  And, going to her little sideboard, Leila stealthily
extracted a pint bottle of some champagne which Jimmy Fort had sent
in, and took it with  two glasses and a corkscrew into her bedroom.
She drank a little herself, and came out bearing a glass to the girl.
Noel shook her head, and her eyes seemed to say: "Do you really think
I'm so easily mended?"  But Leila had been through too much in her
time to despise earthly remedies, and she held it to the girl's lips
until she drank.  It was excellent champagne, and, since Noel had
never yet touched alcohol, had an instantaneous effect.  Her eyes
brightened; little red spots came up in her cheeks.  And suddenly she
rolled over and buried her face deep in a cushion.  With her short
hair, she looked so like a child lying there, that Leila knelt down,
stroking her head, and saying: "There, there; my love!  There,
there!"

At last the girl raised herself; now that the pallid, masklike
despair of the last month was broken, she seemed on fire, and her
face had a wild look.  She withdrew herself from Leila's touch,
and, crossing her arms tightly across her chest, said:

"I can't bear it; I can't sleep.  I want him back; I hate life--
I hate the world.  We hadn't done anything--only just loved each
other.  God likes punishing; just because we loved each other; we had
only one day to love each other--only one day--only one!"

Leila could see the long white throat above those rigid arms
straining and swallowing; it gave her a choky feeling to watch it.
The voice, uncannily dainty for all the wildness of the words and
face, went on:

"I won't--I don't want to live.  If there's another life, I shall go
to him.  And if there isn't--it's just sleep."

Leila put out her hand to ward of these wild wanderings.  Like most
women who live simply the life of their senses and emotions, she was
orthodox; or rather never speculated on such things.

"Tell me about yourself and him," she said.

Noel fastened her great eyes on her cousin.  "We loved each other;
and children are born, aren't they, after you've loved?  But mine
won't be!"  From the look on her face rather than from her words, the
full reality of her meaning came to Leila, vanished, came again.
Nonsense!  But--what an awful thing, if true!  That which had always
seemed to her such an exaggerated occurrence in the common walks of
life--why! now, it was a tragedy!  Instinctively she raised herself
and put her arms round the girl.

"My poor dear!" she said; "you're fancying things!"

The colour had faded out of Noel's face, and, with her head thrown
back and her eyelids half-closed, she looked like a scornful young
ghost.

"If it is--I shan't live.  I don't mean to--it's easy to die.
I don't mean Daddy to know."

"Oh! my dear, my dear!"  was all Leila could stammer.

"Was it wrong, Leila?"

"Wrong?  I don't know--wrong?  If it really is so--it was--
unfortunate.  But surely, surely--you're mistaken?"

Noel shook her head.  "I did it so that we should belong to each
other.  Nothing could have taken him from me."

Leila caught at the girl's words.

"Then, my dear--he hasn't quite gone from you, you see?"

Noel's lips formed a "No" which was inaudible.  "But Daddy!"  she
whispered.

Edward's face came before Leila so vividly that she could hardly see
the girl for the tortured shape of it.  Then the hedonist in her
revolted against that ascetic vision.  Her worldly judgment condemned
and deplored this calamity, her instinct could not help applauding
that hour of life and love, snatched out of the jaws of death.  "Need
he ever know?" she said.

"I could never lie to Daddy.  But it doesn't matter.  Why should one
go on living, when life is rotten?"

Outside the sun was shining brightly, though it was late October.
Leila got up from her knees.  She stood at the window thinking hard.

"My dear," she said at last, "you mustn't get morbid.  Look at me!
I've had two husbands, and--and--well, a pretty stormy up and down
time of it; and I daresay I've got lots of trouble before me.  But
I'm not going to cave in.  Nor must you.  The Piersons have plenty of
pluck; you mustn't be a traitor to your blood.  That's the last
thing.  Your boy would have told you to stick it.  These are your
'trenches,' and you're not going to be downed, are you?"

After she had spoken there was a long silence, before Noel said:

"Give me a cigarette, Leila."

Leila produced the little flat case she carried.

"That's brave," she said.  "Nothing's incurable at your age.  Only
one thing's incurable--getting old."

Noel laughed.  "That's curable too, isn't it?"

"Not without surrender."

Again there was a silence, while the blue fume from two cigarettes
fast-smoked, rose towards the low ceiling.  Then Noel got up from the
divan, and went over to the piano.  She was still in her hospital
dress of lilac-coloured linen, and while she stood there touching the
keys, playing a chord now, and then, Leila's heart felt hollow from
compassion; she was so happy herself just now, and this child so very
wretched!

"Play to me," she said; "no--don't; I'll play to you."  And sitting
down, she began to play and sing a little French song, whose first
line ran: "Si on est jolie, jolie comme vous."  It was soft, gay,
charming.  If the girl cried, so much the better.  But Noel did not
cry.  She seemed suddenly to have recovered all her self-possession.
She spoke calmly, answered Leila's questions without emotion, and
said she would go home.  Leila went out with her, and walked some way
in the direction of her home; distressed, but frankly at a loss.  At
the bottom of Portland Place Noel stopped and said: "I'm quite all
right now, Leila; thank you awfully.  I shall just go home and lie
down.  And I shall come to-morrow, the same as usual.  Goodbye!"
Leila could only grasp the girl's hand, and say: "My dear, that's
splendid.  There's many a slip--besides, it's war-time."

With that saying, enigmatic even to herself, she watched the girl
moving slowly away; and turned back herself towards her hospital,
with a disturbed and compassionate heart.



2

But Noel did not go east; she walked down Regent Street.  She had
received a certain measure of comfort, been steadied by her
experienced cousin's vitality, and the new thoughts suggested by
those words: "He hasn't quite gone from you, has he?"  "Besides, it's
war-time."  Leila had spoken freely, too, and the physical ignorance
in which the girl had been groping these last weeks was now removed.
Like most proud natures, she did not naturally think much about the
opinion of other people; besides, she knew nothing of the world, its
feelings and judgments.  Her nightmare was the thought of her
father's horror and grief.  She tried to lessen that nightmare by
remembering his opposition to her marriage, and the resentment she
had felt.  He had never realised, never understood, how she and Cyril
loved.  Now, if she were really going to have a child, it would be
Cyril's--Cyril's son--Cyril over again.  The instinct stronger than
reason, refinement, tradition, upbringing, which had pushed her on in
such haste to make sure of union--the irrepressible pulse of life
faced with annihilation--seemed to revive within her, and make her
terrible secret almost precious.  She had read about "War babies" in
the papers, read with a dull curiosity; but now the atmosphere, as it
were, of those writings was illumined for her.  These babies were
wrong, were a "problem," and yet, behind all that, she seemed now to
know that people were glad of them; they made up, they filled the
gaps.  Perhaps, when she had one, she would be proud, secretly proud,
in spite of everyone, in spite of her father!  They had tried to kill
Cyril--God and everyone; but they hadn't been able, he was alive
within her!  A glow came into her face, walking among the busy
shopping crowd, and people turned to look at her; she had that
appearance of seeing no one, nothing, which is strange and attractive
to those who have a moment to spare from contemplation of their own
affairs.  Fully two hours she wandered thus, before going in, and
only lost that exalted feeling when, in her own little room, she had
taken up his photograph, and was sitting on her bed gazing at it.
She had a bad breakdown then.  Locked in there, she lay on her bed,
crying, dreadfully lonely, till she fell asleep exhausted, with the
tear-stained photograph clutched in her twitching fingers.  She woke
with a start.  It was dark, and someone was knocking on her door.

"Miss Noel!"

Childish perversity kept her silent.  Why couldn't they leave her
alone?  They would leave her alone if they knew.  Then she heard
another kind of knocking, and her father's voice:

"Nollie!  Nollie !"

She scrambled up, and opened.  He looked scared, and her heart smote
her.

"It's all right, Daddy; I was asleep."

"My dear, I'm sorry, but dinner's ready."

"I don't want any dinner; I think I'll go to bed."

The frown between his brows deepened.

"You shouldn't lock your door, Nollie: I was quite frightened.  I
went round to the hospital to bring you home, and they told me about
your fainting.  I want you to see a doctor."

Noel shook her head vigorously.  "Oh, no!  It's nothing!"

"Nothing?  To faint like that?  Come, my child.  To please me."  He
took her face in his hands.  Noel shrank away.

"No, Daddy.  I won't see a doctor.  Extravagance in wartime!  I
won't.  It's no good trying to make me.  I'll come down if you like;
I shall be all right to-morrow."

With this Pierson had to be content; but, often that evening, she saw
him looking at her anxiously.  And when she went up, he came out of
his study, followed to her room, and insisted on lighting her fire.
Kissing her at the door, he said very quietly:

"I wish I could be a mother to you, my child!"

For a moment it flashed through Noel: 'He knows!' then, by the
puzzled look on his face, she knew that he did not.  If only he did
know; what a weight it would be off her mind!  But she answered
quietly too; "Good night, Daddy dear!" kissed him, and shut the door.

She sat down before the little new fire, and spread her hands out to
it; all was so cold and wintry in her heart.  And the firelight
flickered on her face, where shadows lay thick under her eyes, for
all the roundness of her cheeks, and on her slim pale hands, and the
supple grace of her young body.  And out in the night, clouds raced
over the moon, which had come full once more.




VI

1

Pierson went back to his study, and wrote to Gratian.

"If you can get leave for a few days, my dear, I want you at home.  I
am troubled about Nollie.  Ever since that disaster happened to her
she has been getting paler; and to-day she fainted.  She won't see a
doctor, but perhaps you could get her to see George.  If you come up,
he will surely be able to run up to us for a day or two.  If not, you
must take her down to him at the sea.  I have just seen the news of
your second cousin Charlie Pierson's death; he was killed in one of
the last attacks on the Somme; he was nephew of my cousin Leila whom,
as you know, Noel sees every day at her hospital.  Bertram has the
D. S. O.  I have been less hard-pressed lately; Lauder has been home
on leave and has taken some Services for me.  And now the colder
weather has come, I am feeling much fresher.  Try your best to come.
I am seriously concerned for our beloved child.
"Your affectionate father
"EDWARD PIERSON."

Gratian answered that she could get week-end leave, and would come on
Friday.  He met her at the station, and they drove thence straight to
the hospital, to pick up Noel.  Leila came to them in the waiting-
room, and Pierson, thinking they would talk more freely about Noel's
health if he left them alone, went into the recreation room, and
stood watching a game of bagatelle between two convalescents.  When
he returned to the little sitting-room they were still standing by
the hearth, talking in low voices.  Gratian must surely have been
stooping over the fire, for her face was red, almost swollen, and her
eyes looked as if she had scorched them.

Leila said lightly:

"Well, Edward, aren't the men delightful?  When are we going to
another concert together?"

She, too, was flushed and looking almost young.

"Ah!  If we could do the things we want to.

"That's very pretty, Edward; but you should, you know--for a tonic."
He shook his head and smiled.

"You're a temptress, Leila.  Will you let Nollie know, please, that
we can take her back with us?  Can you let her off to-morrow?"

"For as long as you like; she wants a rest.  I've been talking to
Gratian.  We oughtn't to have let her go on after a shock like that
--my fault, I'm afraid.  I thought that work might be best."

Pierson was conscious of Gratian walking past him out of the room.
He held out his hand to Leila, and followed.  A small noise occurred
behind him such as a woman makes when she has put a foot through her
own skirt, or has other powerful cause for dismay.  Then he saw Noel
in the hall, and was vaguely aware of being the centre of a triangle
of women whose eyes were playing catch-glance.  His daughters kissed
each other; and he became seated between them in the taxi.  The most
unobservant of men, he parted from them in the hall without having
perceived anything except that they were rather silent; and, going to
his study, he took up a Life of Sir Thomas More.  There was a passage
therein which he itched to show George Laird, who was coming up that
evening.

Gratian and Noel had mounted the stairs with lips tight set, and eyes
averted; both were very pale.  When they reached the door of
Gratian's room the room which had been their mother's--Noel was for
passing on, but Gratian caught her by the arm, and said: "Come in."
The fire was burning brightly in there, and the two sisters stood in
front of it, one on each side, their hands clutching the mantel-
shelf, staring at the flames.  At last Noel put one hand in front of
her eyes, and said:

"I asked her to tell you."

Gratian made the movement of one who is gripped by two strong
emotions, and longs to surrender to one or to the other.

"It's too horrible," was all she said.

Noel turned towards the door.

"Stop, Nollie!"

Noel stopped with her hand on the door knob.  "I don't want to be
forgiven and sympathised with.  I just want to be let alone."

"How can you be let alone?"

The tide of misery surged up in Noel, and she cried out passionately:

"I hate sympathy from people who can't understand.  I don't want
anyone's.  I can always go away, and lose myself."

The words "can't understand" gave Gratian a shock.

"I can understand," she said.

"You can't; you never saw him.  You never saw--" her lips quivered so
that she had to stop and bite them, to keep back a rush of tears.

"Besides you would never have done it yourself."

Gratian went towards her, but stopped, and sat down on the bed.  It
was true.  She would never have done it herself; it was just that
which, for all her longing to help her sister, iced her love and
sympathy.  How terrible, wretched, humiliating!  Her own sister, her
only sister, in the position of all those poor, badly brought up
girls, who forgot themselves!  And her father--their father!  Till
that moment she had hardly thought of him, too preoccupied by the
shock to her own pride.  The word: "Dad!" was forced from her.

Noel shuddered.

"That boy!" said Gratian suddenly; "I can't forgive him.  If you
didn't know--he did.  It was--it was--" She stopped at the sight of
Noel's face.

"I did know," she said.  "It was I.  He was my husband, as much as
yours is.  If you say a word against him, I'll never speak to you
again: I'm glad, and you would be, if you were going to have one.
What's the difference, except that you've had luck, and I--haven't."
Her lips quivered again, and she was silent.

Gratian stared up at her.  She had a longing for George--to know what
he thought and felt.

"Do you mind if I tell George?"  she said.

Noel shook her head.  "No! not now.  Tell anybody."  And suddenly the
misery behind the mask of her face went straight to Gratian's heart.
She got up and put her arms round her sister.

"Nollie dear, don't look like that!"

Noel suffered the embrace without response, but when it was over,
went to her own room.

Gratian stayed, sorry, sore and vexed, uncertain, anxious.  Her pride
was deeply wounded, her heart torn; she was angry with herself.  Why
couldn't she have been more sympathetic?  And yet, now that Noel was
no longer there, she again condemned the dead.  What he had done was
unpardonable.  Nollie was such--a child!  He had committed sacrilege.
If only George would come, and she could talk it all out with him!
She, who had married for love and known passion, had insight enough
to feel that Noel's love had been deep--so far as anything, of
course, could be deep in such a child.  Gratian was at the mature age
of twenty.  But to have forgotten herself like that!  And this boy!
If she had known him, that feeling might have been mitigated by the
personal element, so important to all human judgment; but never
having seen him, she thought of his conduct as "caddish."  And she
knew that this was, and would be, the trouble between her and her
sister.  However she might disguise it, Noel would feel that judgment
underneath.

She stripped off her nurse's garb, put on an evening frock, and
fidgeted about the room.  Anything rather than go down and see her
father again before she must.  This, which had happened, was beyond
words terrible for him; she dreaded the talk with him about Noel's
health which would have to come.  She could say nothing, of course,
until Noel wished; and, very truthful by nature, the idea, of having
to act a lie distressed her.

She went down at last, and found them both in the drawing-room
already; Noel in a frilly evening frock, sitting by the fire with her
chin on her hand, while her father was reading out the war news from
the evening paper.  At sight of that cool, dainty, girlish figure
brooding over the fire, and of her father's worn face, the tragedy of
this business thrust itself on her with redoubled force.  Poor Dad!
Poor Nollie!  Awful!  Then Noel turned, and gave a little shake of
her head, and her eyes said, almost as plainly as lips could have
said it: 'Silence!' Gratian nodded, and came forward to the fire.
And so began one of those calm, domestic evenings, which cover
sometimes such depths of heartache.



2

Noel stayed up until her father went to bed, then went upstairs at
once.  She had evidently determined that they should not talk about
her.  Gratian sat on alone, waiting for her husband!  It was nearly
midnight when he came, and she did not tell him the family news till
next morning.  He received it with a curious little grunt.  Gratian
saw his eyes contract, as they might have, perhaps, looking at some
bad and complicated wound, and then stare steadily at the ceiling.
Though they had been married over a year, she did not yet know what
he thought about many things, and she waited with a queer sinking at
her heart.  This skeleton in the family cupboard was a test of his
affection for herself, a test of the quality of the man she had
married.  He did not speak for a little, and her anxiety grew.  Then
his hand sought hers, and gave it a hard squeeze.

"Poor little Nollie!  This is a case for Mark Tapleyism.  But cheer
up, Gracie!  We'll get her through somehow."

"But father!  It's impossible to keep it from him, and impossible to
tell him!  Oh George!  I never knew what family pride was till now.
It's incredible.  That wretched boy!"

"'De mortuis.' Come, Gracie!  In the midst of death we are in life!
Nollie was a plumb little idiot.  But it's the war--the war!  Your
father must get used to it; it's a rare chance for his Christianity."

"Dad will be as sweet as anything--that's what makes it so horrible!"

George Laird redoubled his squeeze.  "Quite right!  The old-fashioned
father could let himself go.  But need he know?  We can get her away
from London, and later on, we must manage somehow.  If he does hear,
we must make him feel that Nollie was 'doing her bit.'"

Gratian withdrew her hand.  "Don't!" she said in a muffled voice.

George Laird turned and looked at her.  He was greatly upset himself,
realising perhaps more truly than his young wife the violence of this
disaster; he was quite capable, too, of feeling how deeply she was
stirred and hurt; but, a born pragmatist, confronting life always in
the experimental spirit, he was impatient of the: "How awful!"
attitude.  And this streak of her father's ascetic traditionalism in
Gratian always roused in him a wish to break it up.  If she had not
been his wife he would have admitted at once that he might just as
well try and alter the bone-formation of her head, as break down such
a fundamental trait of character, but, being his wife, he naturally
considered alteration as possible as putting a new staircase in a
house, or throwing two rooms into one.  And, taking her in his arms,
he said: "I know; but it'll all come right, if we put a good face on
it.  Shall I talk to Nollie?"

Gratian assented, from the desire to be able to say to her father:
"George is seeing her!"  and so stay the need for a discussion.  But
the whole thing seemed to her more and more a calamity which nothing
could lessen or smooth away.

George Laird had plenty of cool courage, invaluable in men who have
to inflict as well as to alleviate pain, but he did not like his
mission "a little bit" as he would have said; and he proposed a walk
because he dreaded a scene.  Noel accepted for the same reason.  She
liked George, and with the disinterested detachment of a sister-in-
law, and the shrewdness of extreme youth, knew him perhaps better
than did his wife.  She was sure, at all events, of being neither
condemned nor sympathised with.

They might have gone, of course, in any direction, but chose to make
for the City.  Such deep decisions are subconscious.  They sought, no
doubt, a dry, unemotional region; or perhaps one where George, who
was in uniform, might rest his arm from the automatic-toy game which
the military play.  They had reached Cheapside before he was
conscious to the full of the bizarre nature of this walk with his
pretty young sister-in-law among all the bustling, black-coated mob
of money-makers.  'I wish the devil we hadn't come out!' he thought;
'it would have been easier indoors, after all.'

He cleared his throat, however, and squeezing her arm gently, began:
"Gratian's told me, Nollie.  The great thing is to keep your spirit
up, and not worry."

"I suppose you couldn't cure me."

The words, in that delicate spurning voice, absolutely staggered
George; but he said quickly:

"Out of the question, Nollie; impossible!  What are you thinking of?"

"Daddy."

The words: "D--n Daddy!"  rose to his teeth; he bit them off, and
said: "Bless him!  We shall have to see to all that.  Do you really
want to keep it from him?  It must be one way or the other; no use
concealing it, if it's to come out later."

"No."

He stole a look at her.  She was gazing straight before her.  How
damnably young she was, how pretty!  A lump came up in his throat.

"I shouldn't do anything yet," he said; "too early.  Later on, if
you'd like me to tell him.  But that's entirely up to you, my dear;
he need never know."

"No."

He could not follow her thought.  Then she said:

"Gratian condemns Cyril.  Don't let her.  I won't have him badly
thought of.  It was my doing.  I wanted to make sure of him."

George answered stoutly:

"Gracie's upset, of course, but she'll soon be all right.  You
mustn't let it come between you.  The thing you've got to keep
steadily before you is that life's a huge wide adaptable thing.  Look
at all these people!  There's hardly one of them who hasn't got now,
or hasn't had, some personal difficulty or trouble before them as big
as yours almost; bigger perhaps.  And here they are as lively as
fleas.  That's what makes the fascination of life--the jolly irony of
it all.  It would do you good to have a turn in France, and see
yourself in proportion to the whole."  He felt her fingers suddenly
slip under his arm, and went on with greater confidence:

"Life's going to be the important thing in the future, Nollie; not
comfort and cloistered virtue and security; but living, and pressure
to the square inch.  Do you twig?  All the old hard-and-fast
traditions and drags on life are in the melting-pot.  Death's boiling
their bones, and they'll make excellent stock for the new soup.  When
you prune and dock things, the sap flows quicker.  Regrets and
repinings and repressions are going out of fashion; we shall have no
time or use for them in the future.  You're going to make life--well,
that's something to be thankful for, anyway.  You've kept Cyril
Morland alive.  And--well, you know, we've all been born; some of us
properly, and some improperly, and there isn't a ha'porth of
difference in the value of the article, or the trouble of bringing it
into the world.  The cheerier you are the better your child will be,
and that's all you've got to think about.  You needn't begin to
trouble at all for another couple of months, at least; after that,
just let us know where you'd like to go, and I'll arrange it
somehow."

She looked round at him, and under that young, clear, brooding gaze
he had the sudden uncomfortable feeling of having spoken like a
charlatan.  Had he really touched the heart of the matter?  What good
were his generalities to this young, fastidiously nurtured girl,
brought up to tell the truth, by a father so old-fashioned and
devoted, whom she loved?  It was George's nature, too, to despise
words; and the conditions of his life these last two years had given
him a sort of horror of those who act by talking.  He felt inclined
to say: 'Don't pay the slightest attention to me; it's all humbug;
what will be will be, and there's an end of it:

Then she said quietly:

"Shall I tell Daddy or not?"

He wanted to say: "No," but somehow couldn't.  After all, the
straightforward course was probably the best.  For this would have to
be a lifelong concealment.  It was impossible to conceal a thing for
ever; sooner or later he would find out.  But the doctor rose up in
him, and he said:

"Don't go to meet trouble, Nollie; it'll be time enough in two
months.  Then tell him, or let me."

She shook her head.  "No; I will, if it is to be done."

He put his hand on hers, within his arm, and gave it a squeeze.

"What shall I do till then?"  she asked.

"Take a week's complete rest, and then go on where you are."

Noel was silent a minute, then said: "Yes; I will."

They spoke no more on the subject, and George exerted himself to talk
about hospital experiences, and that phenomenon, the British soldier.
But just before they reached home he said:

"Look here, Nollie!  If you're not ashamed of yourself, no one will
be ashamed of you.  If you put ashes on your own head, your fellow-
beings will, assist you; for of such is their charity."

And, receiving another of those clear, brooding looks, he left her
with the thought: 'A lonely child!'




VII

Noel went back to her hospital after a week's rest.  George had done
more for her than he suspected, for his saying: "Life's a huge wide
adaptable thing!" had stuck in her mind.  Did it matter what happened
to her?  And she used to look into the faces of the people she met,
and wonder what was absorbing them.  What secret griefs and joys were
they carrying about with them?  The loneliness of her own life now
forced her to this speculation concerning others, for she was
extraordinarily lonely; Gratian and George were back at work, her
father must be kept at bay; with Leila she felt ill at ease, for the
confession had hurt her pride; and family friends and acquaintances
of all sorts she shunned like the plague.  The only person she did
not succeed in avoiding was Jimmy Fort, who came in one evening after
dinner, bringing her a large bunch of hothouse violets.  But then, he
did not seem to matter--too new an acquaintance, too detached.
Something he said made her aware that he had heard of her loss, and
that the violets were a token of sympathy.  He seemed awfully kind
that evening, telling her "tales of Araby," and saying nothing which
would shock her father.  It was wonderful to be a man and roll about
the world as he had, and see all life, and queer places, and people
--Chinamen, and Gauchos, and Boers, and Mexicans.  It gave her a kind
of thirst.  And she liked to watch his brown, humorous face; which
seemed made of dried leather.  It gave her the feeling that life and
experience were all that mattered, doing and seeing things; it made
her own trouble seem smaller; less important.  She squeezed his hand
when she said good night: "Thank you for my violets and for coming;
it was awfully kind of you!  I wish I could have adventures!"  And he
answered: "You will, my dear fairy princess!" He said it queerly and
very kindly.

Fairy Princess!  What a funny thing to call her!  If he had only
known!

There were not many adventures to be had in those regions where she
washed up.  Not much "wide and adaptable life" to take her thoughts
off herself.  But on her journeys to and from the hospital she had
more than one odd little experience.  One morning she noticed a
poorly dressed woman with a red and swollen face, flapping along
Regent Street like a wounded bird, and biting strangely at her hand.
Hearing her groan, Noel asked her what the matter was.  The woman
held out the hand.  "Oh!" she moaned, "I was scrubbin' the floor and
I got this great needle stuck through my 'and, and it's broke off,
and I can't get it out.  Oh!  Oh!"  She bit at the needle-end, not
quite visible, but almost within reach of teeth, and suddenly went
very white.  In dismay, Noel put an arm round her, and turned her
into a fine chemist's shop.  Several ladies were in there, buying
perfumes, and they looked with acerbity at this disordered dirty
female entering among them.  Noel went up to a man behind the
counter.  "Please give me something quick, for this poor woman, I
think she's going to faint.  She's run a needle through her hand, and
can't get it out."  The man gave her "something quick," and Noel
pushed past two of the dames back to where the woman was sitting.
She was still obstinately biting at her hand, and suddenly her chin
flew up, and there, between her teeth, was the needle.  She took it
from them with her other hand, stuck it proudly in the front of her
dress, and out tumbled the words: "Oh! there--I've got it!"

When she had swallowed the draught, she looked round her, bewildered,
and said:

"Thank you kindly, miss!" and shuffled out.  Noel paid for the
draught, and followed; and, behind her, the shining shop seemed to
exhale a perfumed breath of relief.

"You can't go back to work," she said to the woman.  "Where do you
live?"

"'Ornsey, miss."

"You must take a 'bus and go straight home, and put your hand at once
into weak Condy's fluid and water.  It's swelling.  Here's five
shillings."

"Yes, miss; thank you, miss, I'm sure.  It's very kind of you.  It
does ache cruel."

"If it's not better this afternoon, you must go to a doctor.
Promise!"

"Oh, dear, yes.  'Ere's my 'bus.  Thank you kindly, miss."

Noel saw her borne away, still sucking at her dirty swollen hand.
She walked on in a glow of love for the poor woman, and hate for the
ladies in the chemist's shop, and forgot her own trouble till she had
almost reached the hospital.

Another November day, a Saturday, leaving early, she walked to Hyde
Park.  The plane-trees were just at the height of their spotted
beauty.  Few--very few-yellow leaves still hung; and the slender
pretty trees seemed rejoicing in their freedom from summer foliage.
All their delicate boughs and twigs were shaking and dancing in the
wind; and their rain-washed leopard-like bodies had a lithe
un-English gaiety.  Noel passed down their line, and seated herself
on a bench.  Close by, an artist was painting.  His easel was only
some three yards away from her, and she could see the picture; a
vista of the Park Lane houses through, the gay plane-tree screen.  He
was a tall man, about forty, evidently foreign, with a thin, long,
oval, beardless face, high brow, large grey eyes which looked as if
he suffered from headaches and lived much within himself.  He cast
many glances at her, and, pursuant of her new interest in "life" she
watched him discreetly; a little startled however, when, taking off
his broad-brimmed squash hat, he said in a broken accent:

"Forgive me the liberty I take, mademoiselle, but would you so very
kindly allow me to make a sketch of you sitting there?  I work very
quick.  I beg you will let me.  I am Belgian, and have no manners,
you see."  And he smiled.

"If you like," said Noel.

"I thank you very much:"

He shifted his easel, and began to draw.  She felt flattered, and a
little fluttered.  He was so pale, and had a curious, half-fed look,
which moved her.

"Have you been long in England?"  she said presently.

"Ever since the first months of the war."

"Do you like it?"

"I was very homesick at first.  But I live in my pictures; there are
wonderful things in London."

"Why did you want to sketch me?"

The painter smiled again.  "Mademoiselle, youth is so mysterious.
Those young trees I have been painting mean so much more than the old
big trees.  Your eyes are seeing things that have not yet happened.
There is Fate in them, and a look of defending us others from seeing
it.  We have not such faces in my country; we are simpler; we do not
defend our expressions.  The English are very mysterious.  We are
like children to them.  Yet in some ways you are like children to us.
You are not people of the world at all.  You English have been good
to us, but you do not like us."

"And I suppose you do not like us, either?"

He smiled again, and she noticed how white his teeth were.

"Well, not very much.  The English do things from duty, but their
hearts they keep to themselves.  And their Art--well, that is really
amusing!"

"I don't know much about Art," Noel murmured.

"It is the world to me," said the painter, and was silent, drawing
with increased pace and passion.

"It is so difficult to get subjects," he remarked abruptly.  "I
cannot afford to pay models, and they are not fond of me painting out
of doors.  If I had always a subject like you!  You--you have a
grief, have you not?"

At that startling little question, Noel looked up, frowning.

"Everybody has, now."

The painter grasped his chin; his eyes had suddenly become tragical.

"Yes," he said, "everybody.  Tragedy is daily bread.  I have lost my
family; they are in Belgium.  How they live I do not know."

"I'm sorry; very sorry, too, if we aren't nice to you, here.  We
ought to be."

He shrugged his shoulders.  "What would you have?  We are different.
That is unpardonable.  An artist is always lonely, too; he has a skin
fewer than other people, and he sees things that they do not.  People
do not like you to be different.  If ever in your life you act
differently from others, you will find it so, mademoiselle."

Noel felt herself flushing.  Was he reading her secret?  His eyes had
such a peculiar, secondsighted look.

"Have you nearly finished?"  she asked.

"No, mademoiselle; I could go on for hours; but I do not wish to keep
you.  It is cold for you, sitting there."

Noel got up.  "May I look?"

"Certainly."

She did not quite recognise herself--who does?--but she saw a face
which affected her oddly, of a girl looking at something which was,
and yet was not, in front of her.

"My name is Lavendie," the painter said; "my wife and I live here,"
and he gave her a card.

Noel could not help answering: "My name is Noel Pierson; I live with
my father; here's the address"--she found her case, and fished out a
card.  "My father is a clergyman; would you care to come and see him?
He loves music and painting."

"It would be a great pleasure; and perhaps I might be allowed to
paint you.  Alas! I have no studio."

Noel drew back.  "I'm afraid that I work in a hospital all day, and--
and I don't want to be painted, thank you.  But, Daddy would like to
meet you, I'm sure."

The painter bowed again; she saw that he was hurt.

"Of course I can see that you're a very fine painter," she said
quickly; "only--only--I don't want to, you see.  Perhaps you'd like
to paint Daddy; he's got a most interesting face."

The painter smiled.  "He is your father, mademoiselle.  May I ask you
one question?  Why do you not want to be painted?"

"Because--because I don't, I'm afraid."  She held out her hand.  The
painter bowed over it.  "Au revoir, mademoiselle."

"Thank you," said Noel; "it was awfully interesting."  And she walked
away.  The sky had become full of clouds round the westerly sun; and
the foreign crinkled tracery of the plane-tree branches against that
French-grey, golden-edged mass, was very lovely.  Beauty, and the
troubles of others, soothed her.  She felt sorry for the painter, but
his eyes saw too much!  And his words: "If ever you act differently
from others," made her feel him uncanny.  Was it true that people
always disliked and condemned those who acted differently?  If her
old school-fellows now knew what was before her, how would they treat
her?  In her father's study hung a little reproduction of a tiny
picture in the Louvre, a "Rape of Europa," by an unknown painter--
a humorous delicate thing, of an enraptured; fair-haired girl mounted
on a prancing white bull, crossing a shallow stream, while on the
bank all her white girl-companions were gathered, turning half-sour,
half-envious faces away from that too-fearful spectacle, while one of
them tried with timid desperation to mount astride of a sitting cow,
and follow.  The face of the girl on the bull had once been compared
by someone with her own.  She thought of this picture now, and saw
her school fellows-a throng of shocked and wondering girls.  Suppose
one of them had been in her position!  'Should I have been turning my
face away, like the rest?  I wouldn't no, I wouldn't,' she thought;
'I should have understood!'  But she knew there was a kind of false
emphasis in her thought.  Instinctively she felt the painter right.
One who acted differently from others, was lost.

She told her father of the encounter, adding:

"I expect he'll come, Daddy."

Pierson answered dreamily: "Poor fellow, I shall be glad to see him
if he does."

"And you'll sit to him, won't you?"

"My dear--I?"

"He's lonely, you know, and people aren't nice to him.  Isn't it
hateful that people should hurt others, because they're foreign or
different?"

She saw his eyes open with mild surprise, and went on: "I know you
think people are charitable, Daddy, but they aren't, of course."

"That's not exactly charitable, Nollie."

"You know they're not.  I think sin often just means doing things
differently.  It's not real sin when it only hurts yourself; but that
doesn't prevent people condemning you, does it?"

"I don't know what you mean, Nollie."

Noel bit her lips, and murmured: "Are you sure we're really
Christians, Daddy?"

The question was so startling, from his own daughter, that Pierson
took refuge in an attempt at wit.  "I should like notice of that
question, Nollie, as they say in Parliament."

"That means you don't."

Pierson flushed.  "We're fallible enough; but, don't get such ideas
into your head, my child.  There's a lot of rebellious talk and
writing in these days...."

Noel clasped her hands behind her head.  "I think," she said, looking
straight before her, and speaking to the air, "that Christianity is
what you do, not what you think or say.  And I don't believe people
can be Christians when they act like others--I mean, when they join
together to judge and hurt people."

Pierson rose and paced the room.  "You have not seen enough of life
to talk like that," he said.  But Noel went on:

"One of the men in her hospital told Gratian about the treatment of
conscientious objectors--it was horrible.  Why do they treat them
like that, just because they disagree?  Captain Fort says it's fear
which makes people bullies.  But how can it be fear when they're
hundreds to one?  He says man has domesticated his animals but has
never succeeded in domesticating himself.  Man must be a wild beast,
you know, or the world couldn't be so awfully brutal.  I don't see
much difference between being brutal for good reasons, and being
brutal for bad ones."

Pierson looked down at her with a troubled smile.  There was
something fantastic to him in this sudden philosophising by one whom
he had watched grow up from a tiny thing.  Out of the mouths of babes
and sucklings--sometimes!  But then the young generation was always
something of a sealed book to him; his sensitive shyness, and, still
more, his cloth, placed a sort of invisible barrier between him and
the hearts of others, especially the young.  There were so many
things of which he was compelled to disapprove, or which at least he
couldn't discuss.  And they knew it too well.  Until these last few
months he had never realised that his own daughters had remained as
undiscovered by him as the interior of Brazil.  And now that he
perceived this, he was bewildered, yet could not imagine how to get
on terms with them.

And he stood looking at Noel, intensely puzzled, suspecting nothing
of the hard fact which was altering her--vaguely jealous, anxious,
pained.  And when she had gone up to bed, he roamed up and down the
room a long time, thinking.  He longed for a friend to confide in,
and consult; but he knew no one.  He shrank from them all, as too
downright, bluff, and active; too worldly and unaesthetic; or too
stiff and narrow.  Amongst the younger men in his profession he was
often aware of faces which attracted him, but one could not confide
deep personal questions to men half one's age.  But of his own
generation, or his elders, he knew not one to whom he could have
gone.




VIII

1

Leila was deep in her new draught of life.  When she fell in love it
had always been over head and ears, and so far her passion had always
burnt itself out before that of her partner.  This had been, of
course, a great advantage to her.  Not that Leila had ever expected
her passions to burn themselves out.  When she fell in love she had
always thought it was for always.  This time she was sure it was,
surer than she had ever been.  Jimmy Fort seemed to her the man she
had been looking for all her life.  He was not so good-looking as
either Farie or Lynch, but beside him these others seemed to her now
almost ridiculous.  Indeed they did not figure at all, they shrank,
they withered, they were husks, together with the others for whom she
had known passing weaknesses.  There was only one man in the world
for her now, and would be for evermore.  She did not idealise him
either, it was more serious than that; she was thrilled by his voice,
and his touch, she dreamed of him, longed for him when he was not
with her.  She worried, too, for she was perfectly aware that he was
not half as fond of her as she was of him.  Such a new experience
puzzled her, kept her instincts painfully on the alert.  It was
perhaps just this uncertainty about his affection which made him seem
more precious than any of the others.  But there was ever the other
reason, too-consciousness that Time was after her, and this her last
grand passion.  She watched him as a mother-cat watches her kitten,
without seeming to, of course, for she had much experience.  She had
begun to have a curious secret jealousy of Noel though why she could
not have said.  It was perhaps merely incidental to her age, or
sprang from that vague resemblance between her and one who
outrivalled even what she had been as a girl; or from the occasional
allusions Fort made to what he called "that little fairy princess."
Something intangible, instinctive, gave her that jealousy.  Until the
death of her young cousin's lover she had felt safe, for she knew
that Jimmy Fort would not hanker after another man's property; had he
not proved that in old days, with herself, by running away from her?
And she had often regretted having told him of Cyril Morland's death.
One day she determined to repair that error.  It was at the Zoo,
where they often went on Sunday afternoons.  They were standing
before a creature called the meercat, which reminded them both of old
days on the veldt.  Without turning her head she said, as if to the
little animal: "Do you know that your fairy princess, as you call
her, is going to have what is known as a war-baby?"

The sound of his "What!" gave her quite a stab.  It was so utterly
horrified.

She said stubbornly: "She came and told me all about it.  The boy is
dead, as you know.  Yes, terrible, isn't it?"  And she looked at him.
His face was almost comic, so wrinkled up with incredulity.

"That lovely child!  But it's impossible!"

"The impossible is sometimes true, Jimmy."

"I refuse to believe it."

"I tell you it is so," she said angrily.

"What a ghastly shame!"

"It was her own doing; she said so, herself."

"And her father--the padre!  My God!"

Leila was suddenly smitten with a horrible doubt.  She had thought it
would disgust him, cure him of any little tendency to romanticise
that child; and now she perceived that it was rousing in him,
instead, a dangerous compassion.  She could have bitten her tongue
out for having spoken.  When he got on the high horse of some
championship, he was not to be trusted, she had found that out; was
even finding it out bitterly in her own relations with him,
constantly aware that half her hold on him, at least, lay in his
sense of chivalry, aware that he knew her lurking dread of being
flung on the beach, by age.  Only ten minutes ago he had uttered a
tirade before the cage of a monkey which seemed unhappy.  And now she
had roused that dangerous side of him in favour of Noel.  What an
idiot she had been!

"Don't look like that, Jimmy.  I'm sorry I told you."

His hand did not answer her pressure in the least, but he muttered:

"Well, I do think that's the limit.  What's to be done for her?"

Leila answered softly: "Nothing, I'm afraid.  Do you love me?"  And
she pressed his hand hard.

"Of course."

But Leila thought: 'If I were that meercat he'd have taken more
notice of my paw!'  Her heart began suddenly to ache, and she walked
on to the next cage with head up, and her mouth hard set.

Jimmy Fort walked away from Camelot Mansions that evening in extreme
discomfort of mind.  Leila had been so queer that he had taken leave
immediately after supper.  She had refused to talk about Noel; had
even seemed angry when he had tried to.  How extraordinary some women
were!  Did they think that a man could hear of a thing like that
about such a dainty young creature without being upset!  It was the
most perfectly damnable news!  What on earth would she do--poor
little fairy princess!  Down had come her house of cards with a
vengeance!  The whole of her life--the whole of her life!  With her
bringing-up and her father and all--it seemed inconceivable that she
could ever survive it.  And Leila had been almost callous about the
monstrous business.  Women were hard to each other!  Bad enough,
these things, when it was a simple working girl, but this dainty,
sheltered, beautiful child!  No, it was altogether too strong--too
painful!  And following an impulse which he could not resist, he made
his way to the old Square.  But having reached the house, he nearly
went away again.  While he stood hesitating with his hand on the
bell, a girl and a soldier passed, appearing as if by magic out of
the moonlit November mist, blurred and solid shapes embraced, then
vanished into it again, leaving the sound of footsteps.  Fort jerked
the bell.  He was shown into what seemed, to one coming out of that
mist, to be a brilliant, crowded room, though in truth there were but
two lamps and five people in it.  They were sitting round the fire,
talking, and paused when he came in.  When he had shaken hands with
Pierson and been introduced to "my daughter Gratian" and a man in
khaki "my son-in-law George Laird," to a tall thin-faced, foreign-
looking man in a black stock and seemingly no collar, he went up to
Noel, who had risen from a chair before the fire.  'No!' he thought,
'I've dreamed it, or Leila has lied!'  She was so perfectly the self-
possessed, dainty maiden he remembered.  Even the feel of her hand
was the same-warm and confident; and sinking into a chair, he said:
"Please go on, and let me chip in."

"We were quarrelling about the Universe, Captain Fort," said the man
in khaki; "delighted to have your help.  I was just saying that this
particular world has no particular importance, no more than a
newspaper-seller would accord to it if it were completely destroyed
tomorrow--''Orrible catastrophe, total destruction of the world--six
o'clock edition-pyper!'  I say that it will become again the nebula
out of which it was formed, and by friction with other nebula re-form
into a fresh shape and so on ad infinitum--but I can't explain why.
My wife wonders if it exists at all except in the human mind--but she
can't explain what the human mind is.  My father-in-law thinks that
it is God's hobby--but he can't explain who or what God is.  Nollie
is silent.  And Monsieur Lavendie hasn't yet told us what he thinks.
What do you think, monsieur?"  The thin-faced, big-eyed man put up
his hand to his high, veined brow as if he had a headache, reddened,
and began to speak in French, which Fort followed with difficulty.

"For me the Universe is a limitless artist, monsieur, who from all
time and to all time is ever expressing himself in differing forms--
always trying to make a masterpiece, and generally failing.  For me
this world, and all the worlds, are like ourselves, and the flowers
and trees--little separate works of art, more or less perfect, whose
little lives run their course, and are spilled or powdered back into
this Creative Artist, whence issue ever fresh attempts at art.  I
agree with Monsieur Laird, if I understand him right; but I agree
also with Madame Laird, if I understand her.  You see, I think mind
and matter are one, or perhaps there is no such thing as either mind
or matter, only growth and decay and growth again, for ever and ever;
but always conscious growth--an artist expressing himself in millions
of ever-changing forms; decay and death as we call them, being but
rest and sleep, the ebbing of the tide, which must ever come between
two rising tides, or the night which comes between two days.  But the
next day is never the same as the day before, nor the tide as the
last tide; so the little shapes of the world and of ourselves, these
works of art by the Eternal Artist, are never renewed in the same
form, are never twice alike, but always fresh-fresh worlds, fresh
individuals, fresh flowers, fresh everything.  I do not see anything
depressing in that.  To me it would be depressing to think that I
would go on living after death, or live again in a new body, myself
yet not myself.  How stale that would be!  When I finish a picture it
is inconceivable to me that this picture should ever become another
picture, or that one can divide the expression from the mind-stuff it
has expressed.  The Great Artist who is the whole of Everything, is
ever in fresh effort to achieve new things.  He is as a fountain who
throws up new drops, no two ever alike, which fall back into the
water, flow into the pipe, and so are thrown up again in fresh-shaped
drops.  But I cannot explain why there should be this Eternal Energy,
ever expressing itself in fresh individual shapes, this Eternal
Working Artist, instead of nothing at all--just empty dark for
always; except indeed that it must be one thing or the other, either
all or nothing; and it happens to be this and not that, the all and
not the nothing."

He stopped speaking, and his big eyes, which had fixed themselves on
Fort's face, seemed to the latter not to be seeing him at all, but to
rest on something beyond.  The man in khaki, who had risen and was
standing with his hand on his wife's shoulder, said:

"Bravo, monsieur; Jolly well put from the artist's point of view.
The idea is pretty, anyway; but is there any need for an idea at all?
Things are; and we have just to take them."  Fort had the impression
of something dark and writhing; the thin black form of his host, who
had risen and come close to the fire.

"I cannot admit," he was saying, "the identity of the Creator with
the created.  God exists outside ourselves.  Nor can I admit that
there is no defnite purpose and fulfilment.  All is shaped to His
great ends.  I think we are too given to spiritual pride.  The world
has lost reverence; I regret it, I bitterly regret it."

"I rejoice at it," said the man in khaki.  "Now, Captain Fort, your
turn to bat!"

Fort, who had been looking at Noel, gave himself a shake, and said:
"I think what monsieur calls expression, I call fighting.  I suspect
the Universe of being simply a long fight, a sum of conquests and
defeats.  Conquests leading to defeats, defeats to conquests.  I want
to win while I'm alive, and because I want to win, I want to live on
after death.  Death is a defeat.  I don't want to admit it.  While I
have that instinct, I don't think I shall really die; when I lose it,
I think I shall."  He was conscious of Noel's face turning towards
him, but had the feeling that she wasn't really listening.
"I suspect that what we call spirit is just the fighting instinct;
that what we call matter is the mood of lying down.  Whether, as Mr.
Pierson says, God is outside us, or, as monsieur thinks, we are all
part of God, I don't know, I'm sure."

"Ah! There we are!" said the man in khaki.  "We all speak after our
temperaments, and none of us know.  The religions of the world are
just the poetic expressions of certain strongly marked temperaments.
Monsieur was a poet just now, and his is the only temperament which
has never yet been rammed down the world's throat in the form of
religion.  Go out and proclaim your views from the housetops,
monsieur, and see what happens."

The painter shook his head with a smile which seemed to Fort very
bright on the surface, and very sad underneath.

"Non, monsieur," he said; "the artist does not wish to impose his
temperament.  Difference of temperament is the very essence of his
joy, and his belief in life.  Without difference there would be no
life for him.  'Tout casse, tout lasse,' but change goes on for ever:
We artists reverence change, monsieur; we reverence the newness of
each morning, of each night, of each person, of each expression of
energy.  Nothing is final for us; we are eager for all and always for
more.  We are in love, you see, even with-death."

There was a silence; then Fort heard Pierson murmur:

"That is beautiful, monsieur; but oh! how wrong!"  "And what do you
think, Nollie?" said the man in khaki suddenly.  The girl had been
sitting very still in her low chair, with her hands crossed in her
lap, her eyes on the fire, and the lamplight shining down on her fair
hair; she looked up, startled, and her eyes met Fort's.

"I don't know; I wasn't listening."  Something moved in him, a kind
of burning pity, a rage of protection.  He said quickly:

"These are times of action.  Philosophy seems to mean nothing
nowadays.  The one thing is to hate tyranny and cruelty, and protect
everything that's weak and lonely.  It's all that's left to make life
worth living, when all the packs of all the world are out for blood."

Noel was listening now, and he went on fervently: "Why!  Even we who
started out to fight this Prussian pack, have caught the pack feeling
--so that it's hunting all over the country, on every sort of scent.
It's a most infectious thing."

"I cannot see that we are being infected, Captain Fort."

"I'm afraid we are, Mr.  Pierson.  The great majority of people are
always inclined to run with the hounds; the pressure's great just
now; the pack spirit's in the air."

Pierson shook his head.  "No, I cannot see it," he repeated; "it
seems to me that we are all more brotherly, and more tolerant."

"Ah!  monsieur le cure," Fort heard the painter say very gently, "it
is difficult for a good man to see the evil round him.  There are
those whom the world's march leaves apart, and reality cannot touch.
They walk with God, and the bestialities of us animals are fantastic
to them.  The spirit of the pack, as monsieur says, is in the air.  I
see all human nature now, running with gaping mouths and red tongues
lolling out, their breath and their cries spouting thick before them.
On whom they will fall next--one never knows; the innocent with the
guilty.  Perhaps if you were to see some one dear to you devoured
before your eyes, monsieur le cure, you would feel it too; and yet I
do not know."

Fort saw Noel turn her face towards her father; her expression at
that moment was very strange, searching, half frightened.  No!  Leila
had not lied, and he had not dreamed!  That thing was true!

When presently he took his leave, and was out again in the Square, he
could see nothing but her face and form before him in the moonlight:
its soft outline, fair colouring, slender delicacy, and the brooding
of the big grey eyes.  He had already crossed New Oxford Street and
was some way down towards the Strand, when a voice behind him
murmured: "Ah! c'est vous, monsieur!"  and the painter loomed up at
his elbow.

"Are you going my way?"  said Fort.  "I go slowly, I'm afraid."

"The slower the better, monsieur.  London is so beautiful in the
dark.  It is the despair of the painter--these moonlit nights.  There
are moments when one feels that reality does not exist.  All is in
dreams--like the face of that young lady."

Fort stared sharply round at him.  "Oh! She strikes you like that,
does she?"

"Ah! What a charming figure!  What an atmosphere of the past and
future round her!  And she will not let me paint her!  Well, perhaps
only Mathieu Maris."  He raised his broad Bohemian hat, and ran his
fingers through his hair.

"Yes," said Fort, "she'd make a wonderful picture.  I'm not a judge
of Art, but I can see that."

The painter smiled, and went on in his rapid French:

"She has youth and age all at once--that is rare.  Her father is an
interesting man, too; I am trying to paint him; he is very difficult.
He sits lost in some kind of vacancy of his own; a man whose soul has
gone before him somewhere, like that of his Church, escaped from this
age of machines, leaving its body behind--is it not?  He is so kind;
a saint, I think.  The other clergymen I see passing in the street
are not at all like him; they look buttoned-up and busy, with faces
of men who might be schoolmasters or lawyers, or even soldiers--men
of this world.  Do you know this, monsieur--it is ironical, but it is
true, I think a man cannot be a successful priest unless he is a man
of this world.  I do not see any with that look of Monsieur Pierson,
a little tortured within, and not quite present.  He is half an
artist, really a lover of music, that man.  I am painting him at the
piano; when he is playing his face is alive, but even then, so far
away.  To me, monsieur, he is exactly like a beautiful church which
knows it is being deserted.  I find him pathetic.  Je suis
socialiste, but I have always an aesthetic admiration for that old
Church, which held its children by simple emotion.  The times have
changed; it can no longer hold them so; it stands in the dusk, with
its spire to a heaven which exists no more, its bells, still
beautiful but out of tune with the music of the streets.  It is
something of that which I wish to get into my picture of Monsieur
Pierson; and sapristi!  it is difficult!"  Fort grunted assent.  So
far as he could make out the painter's words, it seemed to him a
large order.

"To do it, you see," went on the painter, "one should have the proper
background--these currents of modern life and modern types, passing
him and leaving him untouched.  There is no illusion, and no
dreaming, in modern life.  Look at this street.  La, la!"

In the darkened Strand, hundreds of khaki-clad figures and girls were
streaming by, and all their voices had a hard, half-jovial vulgarity.
The motor-cabs and buses pushed along remorselessly; newspaper-
sellers muttered their ceaseless invitations.  Again the painter made
his gesture of despair: "How am I to get into my picture this modern
life, which washes round him as round that church, there, standing in
the middle of the street?  See how the currents sweep round it, as if
to wash it away; yet it stands, seeming not to see them.  If I were a
phantasist, it would be easy enough: but to be a phantasist is too
simple for me--those romantic gentlemen bring what they like from
anywhere, to serve their ends.  Moi, je suis realiste.  And so,
monsieur, I have invented an idea.  I am painting over his head while
he sits there at the piano a picture hanging on the wall--of one of
these young town girls who have no mysteriousness at all, no youth;
nothing but a cheap knowledge and defiance, and good humour.  He is
looking up at it, but he does not see it.  I will make the face of
that girl the face of modern life, and he shall sit staring at it,
seeing nothing.  What do you think of my idea?"

But Fort had begun to feel something of the revolt which the man of
action so soon experiences when he listens to an artist talking.

"It sounds all right," he said abruptly; "all the same, monsieur, all
my sympathy is with modern life.  Take these young girls, and these
Tommies.  For all their feather-pated vulgarity and they are damned
vulgar, I must say--they're marvellous people; they do take the rough
with the smooth; they're all 'doing their bit,' you know, and facing
this particularly beastly world.  Aesthetically, I daresay, they're
deplorable, but can you say that on the whole their philosophy isn't
an advance on anything we've had up till now?  They worship nothing,
it's true; but they keep their ends up marvellously."

The painter, who seemed to feel the wind blowing cold on his ideas,
shrugged his shoulders.

"I am not concerned with that, monsieur; I set down what I see;
better or worse, I do not know.  But look at this!"  And he pointed
down the darkened and moonlit street.  It was all jewelled and
enamelled with little spots and splashes of subdued red and green-
blue light, and the downward orange glow of the high lamps--like an
enchanted dream-street peopled by countless moving shapes, which only
came to earth-reality when seen close to.  The painter drew his
breath in with a hiss.

"Ah!" he said, "what beauty!  And they don't see it--not one in a
thousand!  Pity, isn't it?  Beauty is the holy thing!"

Fort, in his turn, shrugged his shoulders.  "Every man to his
vision!"  he said.  "My leg's beginning to bother me; I'm afraid I
must take a cab.  Here's my address; any time you like to come.  I'm
often in about seven.  I can't take you anywhere, I suppose?"

"A thousand thanks, monsieur; but I go north.  I loved your words
about the pack.  I often wake at night and hear the howling of all
the packs of the world.  Those who are by nature gentle nowadays feel
they are strangers in a far land.  Good night, monsieur!"

He took off his queer hat, bowed low, and crossed out into the
Strand, like one who had come in a dream, and faded out with the
waking.  Fort hailed a cab, and went home, still seeing Noel's face.
There was one, if you liked, waiting to be thrown to the wolves,
waiting for the world's pack to begin howling round her--that lovely
child; and the first, the loudest of all the pack, perhaps, must be
her own father, the lean, dark figure with the gentle face, and the
burnt bright eyes.  What a ghastly business!  His dreams that night
were not such as Leila would have approved.




IX

When in the cupboard there is a real and very bony skeleton,
carefully kept from the sight of a single member of the family, the
position of that member is liable to become lonely.  But Pierson, who
had been lonely fifteen years, did not feel it so much, perhaps, as
most men would have.  In his dreamy nature there was a curious self-
sufficiency, which only violent shocks disturbed, and he went on with
his routine of duty, which had become for him as set as the pavements
he trod on his way to and from it.  It was not exactly true, as the
painter had said, that this routine did not bring him into touch with
life.  After all he saw people when they were born, when they
married, when they died.  He helped them when they wanted money, and
when they were ill; he told their children Bible stories on Sunday
afternoons; he served those who were in need with soup and bread from
his soup kitchen.  He never spared himself in any way, and his ears
were always at the service of their woes.  And yet he did not
understand them, and they knew that.  It was as though he, or they,
were colour-blind.  The values were all different.  He was seeing one
set of objects, they another.

One street of his parish touched a main line of thoroughfare, and
formed a little part of the new hunting-grounds of women, who, chased
forth from their usual haunts by the Authorities under pressure of
the country's danger, now pursued their calling in the dark.  This
particular evil had always been a sort of nightmare to Pierson.  The
starvation which ruled his own existence inclined him to a
particularly severe view and severity was not his strong point.  In
consequence there was ever within him a sort of very personal and
poignant struggle going on beneath that seeming attitude of rigid
disapproval.  He joined the hunters, as it were, because he was
afraid-not, of course, of his own instincts, for he was fastidious, a
gentleman, and a priest, but of being lenient to a sin, to something
which God abhorred: He was, as it were, bound to take a professional
view of this particular offence.  When in his walks abroad he passed
one of these women, he would unconsciously purse his lips, and frown.
The darkness of the streets seemed to lend them such power, such
unholy sovereignty over the night.  They were such a danger to the
soldiers, too; and in turn, the soldiers were such a danger to the
lambs of his flock.  Domestic disasters in his parish came to his
ears from time to time; cases of young girls whose heads were turned
by soldiers, so that they were about to become mothers.  They seemed
to him pitiful indeed; but he could not forgive them for their
giddiness, for putting temptation in the way of brave young men,
fighting, or about to fight.  The glamour which surrounded soldiers
was not excuse enough.  When the babies were born, and came to his
notice, he consulted a Committee he had formed, of three married and
two maiden ladies, who visited the mothers, and if necessary took the
babies into a creche; for those babies had a new value to the
country, and were not--poor little things!--to be held responsible
for their mothers' faults.  He himself saw little of the young
mothers; shy of them, secretly afraid, perhaps, of not being
censorious enough.  But once in a way Life set him face to face with
one.

On New Year's Eve he was sitting in his study after tea, at that hour
which he tried to keep for his parishioners, when a Mrs. Mitchett was
announced, a small bookseller's wife, whom he knew for an occasional
Communicant.  She came in, accompanied by a young dark-eyed girl in a
loose mouse-coloured coat.  At his invitation they sat down in front
of the long bookcase on the two green leather chairs which had grown
worn in the service of the parish; and, screwed round in his chair at
the bureau, with his long musician's fingers pressed together, he
looked at them and waited.  The woman had taken out her handkerchief,
and was wiping her eyes; but the girl sat quiet, as the mouse she
somewhat resembled in that coat.

"Yes, Mrs. Mitchett?"  He said gently, at last.

The woman put away her handkerchief, sniffed resolutely, and began:

"It's 'Ilda, sir.  Such a thing Mitchett and me never could 'ave
expected, comin' on us so sudden.  I thought it best to bring ,'er
round, poor girl.  Of course, it's all the war.  I've warned 'er a
dozen times; but there it is, comin' next month, and the man in
France."  Pierson instinctively averted his gaze from the girl, who
had not moved her eyes from his face, which she scanned with a
seeming absence of interest, as if she had long given up thinking
over her lot, and left it now to others.

"That is sad," he said; "very, very sad."

"Yes," murmured Mrs. Mitchett; "that's what I tell 'Ilda."

The girl's glance, lowered for a second, resumed its impersonal
scrutiny of Pierson's face.

"What is the man's name and regiment?  Perhaps we can get leave for
him to come home and marry Hilda at once."

Mrs. Mitchett sniffed.  "She won't give it, sir.  Now, 'Ilda, give it
to Mr.  Pierson."  And her voice had a real note of entreaty.  The
girl shook her head.  Mrs. Mitchett murmured dolefully: "That's 'ow
she is, sir; not a word will she say.  And as I tell her, we can only
think there must 'ave been more than one.  And that does put us to
shame so!"

But still the girl made no sign.

"You speak to her, sir; I'm really at my wit's end."

"Why won't you tell us?" said Pierson.  "The man will want to do the
right thing, 'I'm sure."

The girl shook her head, and spoke for the first time.

"I don't know his name."

Mrs. Mitchett's face twitched.

"Oh, dear!" she said: "Think of that!  She's never said as much to
us."

"Not know his name?"  Pierson murmured.  "But how--how could you--"
he stopped, but his face had darkened.  "Surely you would never have
done such a thing without affection?  Come, tell me!"

"I don't know it," the girl repeated.

"It's these Parks," said Mrs.  Mitchett, from behind her
handkerchief.  "And to think that this'll be our first grandchild and
all!  'Ilda is difficult; as quiet, as quiet; but that stubborn--"

Pierson looked at the girl, who seemed, if anything, less interested
than ever.  This impenetrability and something mulish in her attitude
annoyed him.  "I can't think," he said, "how you could so have
forgotten yourself.  It's truly grievous."

Mrs. Mitchett murmured: "Yes, sir; the girls gets it into their heads
that there's going to be no young men for them."

"That's right," said the girl sullenly.

Pierson's lips grew tighter.  "Well, what can I do for you, Mrs.
Mitchett?"  he said.  "Does your daughter come to church?"

Mrs.  Mitchett shook her head mournfully.  "Never since she had her
byke."

Pierson rose from his chair.  The old story! Control and discipline
undermined, and these bitter apples the result!

"Well," he said, "if you need our creche, you have only to come to
me," and he turned to the girl.  "And you--won't you let this
dreadful experience move your heart?  My dear girl, we must all
master ourselves, our passions, and our foolish wilfulness,
especially in these times when our country needs us strong, and self-
disciplined, not thinking of ourselves.  I'm sure you're a good girl
at heart."

The girl's dark eyes, unmoved from his face, roused in him a spasm of
nervous irritation.  "Your soul is in great danger, and you're very
unhappy, I can see.  Turn to God for help, and in His mercy
everything will be made so different for you--so very different!
Come!"

The girl said with a sort of surprising quietness: "I don't want the
baby!"

The remark staggered him, almost as if she had uttered a hideous
oath.

'Ilda was in munitions," said her mother in an explanatory voice:
"earnin' a matter of four pound a week.  Oh! dear, it is a waste an'
all!"  A queer, rather terrible little smile curled Pierson's lips.

"A judgment!" he said.  "Good evening, Mrs. Mitchett.  Good evening,
Hilda.  If you want me when the time comes, send for me."

They stood up; he shook hands with them; and was suddenly aware that
the door was open, and Noel standing there.  He had heard no sound;
and how long she had been there he could not tell.  There was a
singular fixity in her face and attitude.  She was staring at the
girl, who, as she passed, lifted her face, so that the dark eyes and
the grey eyes met.  The door was shut, and Noel stood there alone
with him.

"Aren't you early, my child?"  said Pierson.  "You came in very
quietly."

"Yes; I heard."

A slight shock went through him at the tone of her voice; her face
had that possessed look which he always dreaded.  "What did you
hear?"  he said.

"I heard you say: 'A judgment!'  You'll say the same to me, won't
you?  Only, I do want my baby."

She was standing with her back to the door, over which a dark curtain
hung; her face looked young and small against its stuff, her eyes
very large.  With one hand she plucked at her blouse, just over her
heart.

Pierson stared at her, and gripped the back of the chair he had been
sitting in.  A lifetime of repression served him in the half-realised
horror of that moment.  He stammered out the single word

"Nollie!"

"It's quite true," she said, turned round, and went out.

Pierson had a sort of vertigo; if he had moved, he must have fallen
down.  Nollie!  He slid round and sank into his chair, and by some
horrible cruel fiction of his nerves, he seemed to feel Noel on his
knee, as, when a little girl, she had been wont to sit, with her fair
hair fluffing against his cheek.  He seemed to feel that hair
tickling his skin; it used to be the greatest comfort he had known
since her mother died.  At that moment his pride shrivelled like a
flower held to a flame; all that abundant secret pride of a father
who loves and admires, who worships still a dead wife in the children
she has left him; who, humble by nature, yet never knows how proud he
is till the bitter thing happens; all the long pride of the priest
who, by dint of exhortation and remonstrance has coated himself in a
superiority he hardly suspects--all this pride shrivelled in him.
Then something writhed and cried within, as a tortured beast cries,
at loss to know why it is being tortured.  How many times has not a
man used those words: "My God!  My God!  Why hast Thou forsaken me!"
He sprang up and tried to pace his way out of this cage of confusion:
His thoughts and feelings made the strangest medley, spiritual and
worldly--Social ostracism--her soul in peril--a trial sent by God!
The future!  Imagination failed him.  He went to his little piano,
opened it, closed it again; took his hat, and stole out.  He walked
fast, without knowing where.  It was very cold--a clear, bitter
evening.  Silent rapid motion in the frosty air was some relief.  As
Noel had fled from him, having uttered her news, so did he fly from
her.  The afflicted walk fast.  He was soon down by the river, and
turned West along its wall.  The moon was up, bright and nearly full,
and the steel-like shimmer of its light burnished the ebbing water.
A cruel night!  He came to the Obelisk, and leaned against it,
overcome by a spasm of realisation.  He seemed to see his dead wife's
face staring at him out of the past, like an accusation.  "How have
you cared for Nollie, that she should have come to this?"  It became
the face of the moonlit sphinx, staring straight at him, the broad
dark face with wide nostrils, cruel lips, full eyes blank of pupils,
all livened and whitened by the moonlight--an embodiment of the
marvellous unseeing energy of Life, twisting and turning hearts
without mercy.  He gazed into those eyes with a sort of scared
defiance.  The great clawed paws of the beast, the strength and
remorseless serenity of that crouching creature with human head, made
living by his imagination and the moonlight, seemed to him like a
temptation to deny God, like a refutation of human virtue.

Then, the sense of beauty stirred in him; he moved where he could see
its flanks coated in silver by the moonlight, the ribs and the great
muscles, and the tail with tip coiled over the haunch, like the head
of a serpent.  It was weirdly living; fine and cruel, that great man-
made thing.  It expressed something in the soul of man, pitiless and
remote from love--or rather, the remorselessness which man had seen,
lurking within man's fate.  Pierson recoiled from it, and resumed his
march along the Embankment, almost deserted in the bitter cold.  He
came to where, in the opening of the Underground railway, he could
see the little forms of people moving, little orange and red lights
glowing.  The sight arrested him by its warmth and motion.  Was it
not all a dream?  That woman and her daughter, had they really come?
Had not Noel been but an apparition, her words a trick which his
nerves had played him?  Then, too vividly again, he saw her face
against the dark stuff of the curtain, the curve of her hand plucking
at her blouse, heard the sound of his own horrified: "Nollie!"  No
illusion, no deception!  The edifice of his life was in the dust.
And a queer and ghastly company of faces came about him; faces he had
thought friendly, of good men and women whom he knew, yet at that
moment did not know, all gathered round Noel, with fingers pointing
at her.  He staggered back from that vision, could not bear it, could
not recognise this calamity.  With a sort of comfort, yet an aching
sense of unreality, his mind flew to all those summer holidays spent
in Scotland, Ireland, Cornwall, Wales, by mountain and lake, with his
two girls; what sunsets, and turning leaves, birds, beasts, and
insects they had watched together!  From their youthful
companionship, their eagerness, their confidence in him, he had known
so much warmth and pleasure.  If all those memories were true, surely
this could not be true.  He felt suddenly that he must hurry back, go
straight to Noel, tell her that she had been cruel to him, or assure
himself that, for the moment, she had been insane: His temper rose
suddenly, took fire.  He felt anger against her, against every one he
knew, against life itself.  Thrusting his hands deep into the pockets
of his thin black overcoat, he plunged into that narrow glowing
tunnel of the station booking-office, which led back to the crowded
streets.  But by the time he reached home his anger had evaporated;
he felt nothing but utter lassitude.  It was nine o'clock, and the
maids had cleared the dining table.  In despair Noel had gone up to
her room.  He had no courage left, and sat down supperless at his
little piano, letting his fingers find soft painful harmonies, so
that Noel perhaps heard the faint far thrumming of that music through
uneasy dreams.  And there he stayed, till it became time for him to
go forth to the Old Year's Midnight Service.

When he returned, Pierson wrapped himself in a rug and lay down on
the old sofa in his study.  The maid, coming in next morning to "do"
the grate, found him still asleep.  She stood contemplating him in
awe; a broad-faced, kindly, fresh-coloured girl.  He lay with his
face resting on his hand, his dark, just grizzling hair unruffled, as
if he had not stirred all night; his other hand clutched the rug to
his chest, and his booted feet protruded beyond it.  To her young
eyes he looked rather appallingly neglected.  She gazed with interest
at the hollows in his cheeks, and the furrows in his brow, and the
lips, dark-moustached and bearded, so tightly compressed, even in.
sleep.  Being holy didn't make a man happy, it seemed!  What
fascinated her were the cindery eyelashes resting on the cheeks, the
faint movement of face and body as he breathed, the gentle hiss of
breath escaping through the twitching nostrils.  She moved nearer,
bending down over him, with the childlike notion of counting those
lashes.  Her lips parted in readiness to say: "Oh!" if he waked.
Something in his face, and the little twitches which passed over it,
made her feel "that sorry" for him.  He was a gentleman, had money,
preached to her every Sunday, and was not so very old--what more
could a man want?  And yet--he looked so tired, with those cheeks.

She pitied him; helpless and lonely he seemed to her, asleep there
instead of going to bed properly.  And sighing, she tiptoed towards
the door.

"Is that you, Bessie?"

The girl turned: "Yes, sir.  I'm sorry I woke you, sir.  'Appy New
Year, sir!"

"Ah, yes.  A Happy New Year, Bessie."

She saw his usual smile, saw it die, and a fixed look come on his
face; it scared her, and she hurried away.  Pierson had remembered.
For full five minutes he lay there staring at nothing.  Then he rose,
folded the rug mechanically, and looked at the clock.  Eight!  He
went upstairs, knocked on Noel's door, and entered.

The blinds were drawn up, but she was still in bed.  He stood looking
down at her.  "A Happy New Year, my child!"  he said; and he trembled
all over, shivering visibly.  She looked so young and innocent, so
round-faced and fresh, after her night's sleep, that the thought
sprang up in him again: 'It must have been a dream!'  She did not
move, but a slow flush came up in her cheeks.  No dream--dream!  He
said tremulously: "I can't realise.  I--I hoped I had heard wrong.
Didn't I, Nollie?  Didn't I?"

She just shook her head.

"Tell me--everything," he said; "for God's sake!"

He saw her lips moving, and caught the murmur: "There s nothing more.
Gratian and George know, and Leila.  It can't be undone, Daddy.
Perhaps I wouldn't have wanted to make sure, if you hadn't tried to
stop Cyril and me--and I'm glad sometimes, because I shall have
something of his--"  She looked up at him.  "After all, it's the
same, really; only, there's no ring.  It's no good talking to me now,
as if I hadn't been thinking of this for ages.  I'm used to anything
you can say; I've said it to myself, you see.  There's nothing but to
make the best of it."

Her hot hand came out from under the bedclothes, and clutched his
very tight.  Her flush had deepened, and her eyes seemed to him to
glitter.

"Oh, Daddy!  You do look tired!  Haven't you been to bed?  Poor
Daddy!"

That hot clutch, and the words: "Poor Daddy!"  brought tears into his
eyes.  They rolled slowly down to his beard, and he covered his face
with the other hand.  Her grip tightened convulsively; suddenly she
dragged it to her lips, kissed it, and let it drop.

"Don't!"  she said, and turned away her face.

Pierson effaced his emotion, and said quite calmly:

"Shall you wish to be at home, my dear, or to go elsewhere?"

Noel had begun to toss her head on her pillow, like a feverish child
whose hair gets in its eyes and mouth.

"Oh!  I don't know; what does it matter?"

"Kestrel; would you like to go there?  Your aunt--I could write to
her."  Noel stared at him a moment; a struggle seemed going on within
her.

"Yes," she said, "I would.  Only, not Uncle Bob."

"Perhaps your uncle would come up here, and keep me company."

She turned her face away, and that tossing movement of the limbs
beneath the clothes began again.  "I don't care," she said;
"anywhere--it doesn't matter."

Pierson put his chilly hand on her forehead.  "Gently!"  he said, and
knelt down by the bed.  "Merciful Father," he murmured, "give us
strength to bear this dreadful trial.  Keep my beloved child safe,
and bring her peace; and give me to understand how I have done wrong,
how I have failed towards Thee, and her.  In all things chasten and
strengthen her, my child, and me."

His thoughts moved on in the confused, inarticulate suspense of
prayer, till he heard her say: "You haven't failed; why do you talk
of failing--it isn't true; and don't pray for me, Daddy."

Pierson raised himself, and moved back from the bed.  Her words
confounded him, yet he was afraid to answer.  She pushed her head
deep into the pillow, and lay looking up at the ceiling.

"I shall have a son; Cyril won't quite have died.  And I don't want
to be forgiven."

He dimly perceived what long dumb processes of thought and feeling
had gone on in her to produce this hardened state of mind, which to
him seemed almost blasphemous.  And in the very midst of this turmoil
in his heart, he could not help thinking how lovely her face looked,
lying back so that the curve of her throat was bared, with the short
tendrils of hair coiling about it.  That flung-back head, moving
restlessly from side to side in the heat of the soft pillow, had such
a passion of protesting life in it!  And he kept silence.

"I want you to know it was all me.  But I can't pretend.  Of course
I'll try and not let it hurt you more than I possibly can.  I'm sorry
for you, poor Daddy; oh!  I'm sorry for you!"  With a movement
incredibly lithe and swift, she turned and pressed her face down in
the pillow, so that all he could see was her tumbled hair and the
bedclothes trembling above her shoulders.  He tried to stroke that
hair, but she shook her head free, and he stole out.

She did not come to breakfast; and when his own wretched meal was
over, the mechanism of his professional life caught him again at
once.  New Year's Day!  He had much to do.  He had, before all, to be
of a cheerful countenance before his flock, to greet all and any with
an air of hope and courage.




X

1

Thirza Pierson, seeing her brother-in-law's handwriting, naturally
said: "Here's a letter from Ted."

Bob Pierson, with a mouth full of sausage, as naturally responded:

"What does he say?"

In reading on, she found that to answer that question was one of the
most difficult tasks ever set her.  Its news moved and disturbed her
deeply.  Under her wing this disaster had happened!  Down here had
been wrought this most deplorable miracle, fraught with such
dislocation of lives!  Noel's face, absorbed and passionate, outside
the door of her room on the night when Cyril Morland went away--her
instinct had been right!

"He wants you to go up and stay with him, Bob."

"Why not both of us?"

"He wants Nollie to come down to me; she's not well."

"Not well?  What's the matter?"

To tell him seemed disloyalty to her sex; not to tell him, disloyalty
to her husband.  A simple consideration of fact and not of principle,
decided her.  He would certainly say in a moment: 'Here!  Pitch it
over!' and she would have to.  She said tranquilly:

"You remember that night when Cyril Morland went away, and Noel
behaved so strangely.  Well, my dear; she is going to have a child at
the beginning of April.  The poor boy is dead, Bob; he died for the
Country."

She saw the red tide flow up into his face.

"What!"

"Poor Edward is dreadfully upset.  We must do what we can.  I blame
myself."  By instinct she used those words.

"Blame yourself?  Stuff!  That young--!"  He stopped.

Thirza said quietly: "No, Bob; of the two, I'm sure it was Noel; she
was desperate that day.  Don't you remember her face?  Oh!  this war!
It's turned the whole world upside down.  That's the only comfort;
nothing's normal"

Bob Pierson possessed beyond most men the secret of happiness, for he
was always absorbed in the moment, to the point of unself-
consciousness.  Eating an egg, cutting down a tree, sitting on a
Tribunal, making up his accounts, planting potatoes, looking at the
moon, riding his cob, reading the Lessons--no part of him stood aside
to see how he was doing it, or wonder why he was doing it, or not
doing it better.  He grew like a cork-tree, and acted like a sturdy
and well-natured dog.  His griefs, angers, and enjoyments were simple
as a child's, or as his somewhat noisy slumbers.  They were notably
well-suited, for Thirza had the same secret of happiness, though her,
absorption in the moment did not--as became a woman--prevent her
being conscious of others; indeed, such formed the chief subject of
her absorptions.  One might say that they neither of them had
philosophy yet were as philosophic a couple as one could meet on this
earth of the self-conscious.  Daily life to these two was still of
simple savour.  To be absorbed in life--the queer endless tissue of
moments and things felt and done and said and made, the odd
inspiriting conjunctions of countless people--was natural to them;
but they never thought whether they were absorbed or not, or had any
particular attitude to Life or Death--a great blessing at the epoch
in which they were living.

Bob Pierson, then, paced the room, so absorbed in his dismay and
concern, that he was almost happy.

"By Jove!" he said, "what a ghastly thing!

"Nollie, of all people!  I feel perfectly wretched, Thirza; wretched
beyond words."  But with each repetition his voice grew cheerier, and
Thirza felt that he was already over the worst.

"Your coffee's getting cold!"  she said.

"What do you advise?  Shall I go up, heh?"

"I think you'll be a godsend to poor Ted; you'll keep his spirits up.
Eve won't get any leave till Easter; and I can be quite alone, and
see to Nollie here.  The servants can have a holiday--, Nurse and I
will run the house together.  I shall enjoy it."

"You're a good woman, Thirza!"  Taking his wife's hand, he put it to
his lips.  "There isn't another woman like you in the world."

Thirza's eyes smiled.  "Pass me your cup; I'll give you some fresh
coffee."

It was decided to put the plan into operation at mid-month, and she
bent all her wits to instilling into her husband the thought that a
baby more or less was no great matter in a world which already
contained twelve hundred million people.  With a man's keener sense
of family propriety, he could not see that this baby would be the
same as any other baby.  "By heaven!"  he would say, "I simply can't
get used to it; in our family!  And Ted a parson!  What the devil
shall we do with it?"

"If Nollie will let us, why shouldn't we adopt it?  It'll be
something to take my thoughts off the boys."

"That's an idea!  But Ted's a funny fellow.  He'll have some doctrine
of atonement, or other in his bonnet."

"Oh, bother!" said Thirza with asperity.

The thought of sojourning in town for a spell was not unpleasant to
Bob Pierson.  His Tribunal work was over, his early, potatoes in, and
he had visions of working for the Country, of being a special
constable, and dining at his Club.  The nearer he was to the front,
and the more he could talk about the war, the greater the service he
felt he would be doing.  He would ask for a job where his brains
would be of use.  He regretted keenly that Thirza wouldn't be with
him; a long separation like this would be a great trial.  And he
would sigh and run his fingers through his whiskers.  Still for the
Country, and for Nollie, one must put up with it!

When Thirza finally saw him into the train, tears stood in the eyes
of both, for they were honestly attached, and knew well enough that
this job, once taken in hand, would have to be seen through; a three
months' separation at least.

"I shall write every day."

"So shall I, Bob."

"You won't fret, old girl?"

"Only if you do."

"I shall be up at 5.5, and she'll be down at 4.50.  Give us a kiss--
damn the porters.  God bless you!  I suppose she'd mind if--I--were
to come down now and then?"

"I'm afraid she would.  It's--it's--well, you know."

"Yes, Yes; I do."  And he really did; for underneath, he had true
delicacy.

Her last words: "You're very sweet, Bob," remained in his ears all
the way to Severn Junction.

She went back to the house, emptied of her husband, daughter, boys,
and maids; only the dogs left and the old nurse whom she had taken
into confidence.  Even in that sheltered, wooded valley it was very
cold this winter.  The birds hid themselves, not one flower bloomed,
and the red-brown river was full and swift.  The sound of trees being
felled for trench props, in the wood above the house resounded all
day long in the frosty air.  She meant to do the cooking herself; and
for the rest of the morning and early afternoon she concocted nice
things, and thought out how she herself would feel if she were Noel
and Noel she, so as to smooth out of the way anything which would
hurt the girl.  In the afternoon she went down to the station in the
village car, the same which had borne Cyril Morland away that July
night, for their coachman had been taken for the army, and the horses
were turned out.

Noel looked tired and white, but calm--too calm.  Her face seemed to
Thirza to have fined down, and with those brooding eyes, to be more
beautiful.  In the car she possessed herself of the girl's hand, and
squeezed it hard; their only allusion to the situation, except Noel's
formal:

"Thank you so much, Auntie, for having me; it's most awfully sweet of
you and Uncle Bob."

"There's no one in the house, my dear, except old Nurse.  It'll be
very dull for you; but I thought I'd teach you to cook; it's rather
useful."

The smile which slipped on to Noel's face gave Thirza quite a turn.

She had assigned the girl a different room, and had made it
extraordinarily cheerful with a log fire, chrysanthemums, bright
copper candlesticks, warming-pans, and such like.

She went up with her at bedtime, and standing before the fire, said:

"You know, Nollie, I absolutely refuse to regard this as any sort of
tragedy.  To bring life into the worlds in these days, no matter-
how, ought to make anyone happy.  I only wish I could do it again,
then I should feel some use.  Good night dear; and if you want
anything, knock on the wall.  I'm next door.  Bless you!"  She saw
that the girl was greatly moved, underneath her pale mask; and went
out astonished at her niece's powers of self-control.

But she did not sleep at all well; for in imagination, she kept on
seeing Noel turning from side to side in the big bed, and those great
eyes of hers staring at the dark.



2

The meeting of the brothers Pierson took place at the dinner-hour,
and was characterised by a truly English lack of display.  They were
so extremely different, and had been together so little since early
days in their old Buckinghamshire home, that they were practically
strangers, with just the potent link of far-distant memories in
common.  It was of these they talked, and about the war.  On this
subject they agreed in the large, and differed in the narrow.  For
instance, both thought they knew about Germany and other countries,
and neither of course had any real knowledge of any country outside
their own; for, though both had passed through considerable tracts of
foreign ground at one time or another, they had never remarked
anything except its surface,--its churches, and its sunsets.  Again,
both assumed that they were democrats, but neither knew the meaning
of the word, nor felt that the working man could be really trusted;
and both revered Church and, King: Both disliked conscription, but
considered it necessary.  Both favoured Home Rule for Ireland, but
neither thought it possible to grant it.  Both wished for the war to
end, but were for prosecuting it to Victory, and neither knew what
they meant by that word.  So much for the large.  On the narrower
issues, such as strategy, and the personality of their country's
leaders, they were opposed.  Edward was a Westerner, Robert an
Easterner, as was natural in one who had lived twenty-five years in
Ceylon.  Edward favoured the fallen government, Robert the risen.
Neither had any particular reasons for their partisanship except what
he had read in the journals.  After all--what other reasons could
they have had?  Edward disliked the Harmsworth Press; Robert thought
it was doing good.  Robert was explosive, and rather vague; Edward
dreamy, and a little didactic.  Robert thought poor Ted looking like
a ghost; Edward thought poor Bob looking like the setting sun.  Their
faces were indeed as curiously contrasted as their views and voices;
the pale-dark, hollowed, narrow face of Edward, with its short,
pointed beard, and the red-skinned, broad, full, whiskered face of
Robert.  They parted for the night with an affectionate hand-clasp.
So began a queer partnership which consisted, as the days went on, of
half an hour's companionship at breakfast, each reading the paper;
and of dinner together perhaps three times a week.  Each thought his
brother very odd, but continued to hold the highest opinion of him.
And, behind it all, the deep tribal sense that they stood together in
trouble, grew.  But of that trouble they never spoke, though not
seldom Robert would lower his journal, and above the glasses perched
on his well-shaped nose, contemplate his brother, and a little frown
of sympathy would ridge his forehead between his bushy eyebrows.  And
once in a way he would catch Edward's eyes coming off duty from his
journal, to look, not at his brother, but at--the skeleton; when that
happened, Robert would adjust his glasses hastily, damn the newspaper
type, and apologise to Edward for swearing.  And he would think:
'Poor Ted!  He ought to drink port, and--and enjoy himself, and
forget it.  What a pity he's a parson!'

In his letters to Thirza he would deplore Edward's asceticism.  "He
eats nothing, he drinks nothing, he smokes a miserable cigarette once
in a blue moon.  He's as lonely as a coot; it's a thousand pities he
ever lost his wife.  I expect to see his wings sprout any day; but-
dash it all I--I don't believe he's got the flesh to grow them on.
Send him up some clotted cream; I'll see if I can get him to eat it."
When the cream came, he got Edward to eat some the first morning, and
at tea time found that he had finished it himself.  "We never talk
about Nollie," he wrote, "I'm always meaning to have it out with him
and tell him to buck up, but when it comes to the point I dry up;
because, after all, I feel it too; it sticks in my gizzard horribly.
We Piersons are pretty old, and we've always been respectable, ever
since St. Bartholomew, when that Huguenot chap came over and founded
us.  The only black sheep I ever heard of is Cousin Leila.  By the
way, I saw her the other day; she came round here to see Ted.  I
remember going to stay with her and her first husband; young Fane, at
Simla, when I was coming home, just before we were married.  Phew!
That was a queer menage; all the young chaps fluttering round her,
and young Fane looking like a cynical ghost.  Even now she can't help
setting her cap a little at Ted, and he swallows her whole; thinks
her a devoted creature reformed to the nines with her hospital and
all that.  Poor old Ted; he is the most dreamy chap that ever was."

"We have had Gratian and her husband up for the week-end," he wrote a
little later; "I don't like her so well as Nollie; too serious and
downright for me.  Her husband seems a sensible fellow, though; but
the devil of a free-thinker.  He and poor Ted are like cat and dog.
We had Leila in to dinner again on Saturday, and a man called Fort
came too.  She's sweet on him, I could see with half an eye, but poor
old Ted can't.  The doctor and Ted talked up hill and down dale.  The
doctor said a thing which struck me.  'What divides us from the
beasts?  Will power: nothing else.  What's this war, really, but a
death carnival of proof that man's will is invincible?'  I stuck it
down to tell you, when I got upstairs.  He's a clever fellow.  I
believe in God, as you know, but I must say when it comes to an
argument, poor old Ted does seem a bit weak, with his: 'We're told
this,' and 'We're told that: Nobody mentioned Nollie.  I must have
the whole thing out with Ted; we must know how to act when it's all
over."

But not till the middle of March, when the brothers had been sitting
opposite each other at meals for two months, was the subject broached
between them, and then not by Robert.  Edward, standing by the hearth
after dinner, in his familiar attitude, one foot on the fender, one
hand grasping the mantel-shelf, and his eyes fixed on the flames,
said: "I've never asked your forgiveness, Bob."

Robert, lingering at the table over his glass of port, started,
looked at Edward's back in its parson's coat, and answered:

"My dear old chap!"

"It has been very difficult to speak of this."

"Of course, of course!"  And there was a silence, while Robert's eyes
travelled round the walls for inspiration.  They encountered only the
effigies of past Piersons very oily works, and fell back on the
dining-table.  Edward went on speaking to the fire:

"It still seems to me incredible.  Day and night I think of what it's
my duty to do."

"Nothing!" ejaculated Robert.  "Leave the baby with Thirza; we'll
take care of it, and when Nollie's fit, let her go back to work in a
hospital again.  She'll soon get over it."  He saw his brother shake
his head, and thought: 'Ah! yes; now there's going to be some d--d
conscientious complication.'

Edward turned round on him: "That is very sweet of you both, but it
would be wrong and cowardly for me to allow it."

The resentment which springs up in fathers when other fathers dispose
of young lives, rose in Robert.

"Dash it all, my dear Ted, that's for Nollie to say.  She's a woman
now, remember."

A smile went straying about in the shadows of his brother's face.  "A
woman?  Little Nollie!  Bob, I've made a terrible mess of it with my
girls."  He hid his lips with his hand, and turned again to the
flames.  Robert felt a lump in his throat.  "Oh! Hang it, old boy, I
don't think that.  What else could you have done?  You take too much
on yourself.  After all, they're fine girls.  I'm sure Nollie's a
darling.  It's these modern notions, and this war.  Cheer up!  It'll
all dry straight."  He went up to his brother and put a hand on his
shoulder.  Edward seemed to stiffen under that touch.

"Nothing comes straight," he said, "unless it's faced; you know that,
Bob."

Robert's face was a study at that moment.  His cheeks filled and
collapsed again like a dog's when it has been rebuked.  His colour
deepened, and he rattled some money in a trouser pocket.

"Something in that, of course," he said gruffly.  "All the same, the
decision's with Nollie.  We'll see what Thirza says.  Anyway, there's
no hurry.  It's a thousand pities you're a parson; the trouble's
enough without that:"

Edward shook his head.  "My position is nothing; it's the thought of
my child, my wife's child.  It's sheer pride; and I can't subdue it.
I can't fight it down.  God forgive me, I rebel."

And Robert thought: 'By George, he does take it to heart!  Well, so
should I!  I do, as it is!'  He took out his pipe, and filled it,
pushing the tobacco down and down.

"I'm not a man of the world," he heard his brother say; "I'm out of
touch with many things.  It's almost unbearable to me to feel that
I'm joining with the world to condemn my own daughter; not for their
reasons, perhaps--I don't know; I hope not, but still, I'm against
her."

Robert lit his pipe.

"Steady, old man!"  he said.  "It's a misfortune.  But if I were you
I should feel: 'She's done a wild, silly thing, but, hang it, if
anybody says a word against her, I'll wring his neck.'  And what's
more, you'll feel much the same, when it comes to the point."  He
emitted a huge puff of smoke, which obscured his brother's face, and
the blood, buzzing in his temples, seemed to thicken the sound of
Edward's voice.

"I don't know; I've tried to see clearly.  I have prayed to be shown
what her duty is, and mine.  It seems to me there can be no peace for
her until she has atoned, by open suffering; that the world's
judgment is her cross, and she must bear it; especially in these
days, when all the world is facing suffering so nobly.  And then it
seems so hard-so bitter; my poor little Nollie!"

There was a silence, broken only by the gurgling of Robert's pipe,
till he said abruptly:

"I don't follow you, Ted; no, I don't.  I think a man should screen
his children all he can.  Talk to her as you like, but don't let the
world do it.  Dash it, the world's a rotten gabbling place.  I call
myself a man of the world, but when it comes to private matters--
well, then I draw the line.  It seems to me it seems to me inhuman.
What does George Laird think about it?  He's a knowing chap.  I
suppose you've--no, I suppose you haven't--"  For a peculiar smile
had come on Edward's face.

"No," he said, "I should hardly ask George Laird's opinion."

And Robert realised suddenly the stubborn loneliness of that thin
black figure, whose fingers were playing with a little gold cross.
'By Jove!' he thought, 'I believe old Ted's like one of those Eastern
chaps who go into lonely places.  He's got himself surrounded by
visions of things that aren't there.  He lives in unreality--
something we can't understand.  I shouldn't be surprised if he heard
voices, like--'who was it?  Tt, tt!  What a pity!'  Ted was deceptive.
He was gentle and--all that, a gentleman of course, and that
disguised him; but underneath; what was there--a regular ascetic, a
fakir!  And a sense of bewilderment, of dealing with something which
he could not grasp, beset Bob Pierson, so that he went back to the
table, and sat down again beside his port.

"It seems to me," he said rather gruffly, "that the chicken had
better be hatched before we count it."  And then, sorry for his
brusqueness, emptied his glass.  As the fluid passed over his palate,
he thought: 'Poor old Ted!  He doesn't even drink--hasn't a pleasure
in life, so far as I can see, except doing his duty, and doesn't even
seem to know what that is.  There aren't many like him--luckily!  And
yet I love him--pathetic chap!'

The "pathetic chap" was still staring at the flames.



3

And at this very hour, when the brothers were talking--for thought
and feeling do pass mysteriously over the invisible wires of space
Cyril Morland's son was being born of Noel, a little before his time.






PART III

I

Down by the River Wye, among plum-trees in blossom, Noel had laid her
baby in a hammock, and stood reading a letter:

"MY DEAREST NOLLIE,
"Now that you are strong again, I feel that I must put before you my
feeling as to your duty in this crisis of your life.  Your aunt and
uncle have made the most kind and generous offer to adopt your little
boy.  I have known that this was in their minds for some time, and
have thought it over day and night for weeks.  In the worldly sense
it would be the best thing, no doubt.  But this is a spiritual
matter.  The future of our souls depends on how we meet the
consequences of our conduct.  And painful, dreadful, indeed, as they
must be, I am driven to feel that you can only reach true peace by
facing them in a spirit of brave humility.  I want you to think and
think--till you arrive at a certainty which satisfies your
conscience.  If you decide, as I trust you will, to come back to me
here with your boy, I shall do all in my power to make you happy
while we face the future together.  To do as your aunt and uncle in
their kindness wish, would, I am sore afraid, end in depriving you of
the inner strength and happiness which God only gives to those who do
their duty and try courageously to repair their errors.  I have
confidence in you, my dear child.
"Ever your most loving father,
"EDWARD PIERSON."

She read it through a second time, and looked at her baby.  Daddy
seemed to think that she might be willing to part from this wonderful
creature!  Sunlight fell through the plum blossom, in an extra
patchwork quilt over the bundle lying there, touched the baby's nose
and mouth, so that he sneezed.  Noel laughed, and put her lips close
to his face.  'Give you up!' she thought: 'Oh, no!  And I'm going to
be happy too.  They shan't stop me:

In answer to the letter she said simply that she was coming up; and a
week later she went, to the dismay of her uncle and aunt.  The old
nurse went too.  Everything had hitherto been so carefully watched
and guarded against by Thirza, that Noel did not really come face to
face with her position till she reached home.

Gratian, who had managed to get transferred to a London Hospital, was
now living at home.  She had provided the house with new maids
against her sister's return; and though Noel was relieved not to meet
her old familiars, she encountered with difficulty the stolid
curiosity of new faces.  That morning before she left Kestrel, her
aunt had come into her room while she was dressing, taken her left
hand and slipped a little gold band on to its third finger.
"To please me, Nollie, now that you're going, just for the foolish,
who know nothing about you."

Noel had suffered it with the thought: 'It's all very silly!'  But
now, when the new maid was pouring out her hot water, she was
suddenly aware of the girl's round blue eyes wandering, as it were,
mechanically to her hand.  This little hoop of gold, then, had an
awful power!  A rush of disgust came over her.  All life seemed
suddenly a thing of forms and sham.  Everybody then would look at
that little ring; and she was a coward, saving herself from them!
When she was alone again, she slipped it off, and laid it on the
washstand, where the sunlight fell.  Only this little shining band of
metal, this little yellow ring, stood between her and the world's
hostile scorn!  Her lips trembled.  She took up the ring, and went to
the open window; to throw it out.  But she did not, uncertain and
unhappy--half realising the cruelty of life.  A knock at the door
sent her flying back to the washstand.  The visitor was Gratian.

"I've been looking at him," she said softly; "he's like you, Nollie,
except for his nose."

"He's hardly got one yet.  But aren't his eyes intelligent?  I think
they're wonderful."  She held up the ring: "What shall I do about
this, Gratian?"

Gratian flushed.  "Wear it.  I don't see why outsiders should know.
For the sake of Dad I think you ought.  There's the parish."

Noel slipped the ring back on to her finger.  "Would you?"

"I can't tell.  I think I would."

Noel laughed suddenly.  "I'm going to get cynical; I can feel it in
my bones.  How is Daddy looking?"

"Very thin; Mr. Lauder is back again from the Front for a bit, and
taking some of the work now."

"Do I hurt him very much still?"

"He's awfully pleased that you've come.  He's as sweet as he can be
about you."

"Yes," murmured Noel, "that's what's dreadful.  I'm glad he wasn't in
when I came.  Has he told anyone?"

Gratian shook her head.  "I don't think anybody knows; unless--
perhaps Captain Fort.  He came in again the other night; and
somehow--"

Noel flushed.  "Leila!"  she said enigmatically.  "Have you seen
her?"

"I went to her flat last week with Dad--he likes her."

"Delilah is her real name, you know.  All men like her.  And Captain
Fort is her lover."

Gratian gasped.  Noel would say things sometimes which made her feel
the younger of the two.

"Of course he is," went on Noel in a hard voice.  "She has no men
friends; her sort never have, only lovers.  Why do you think he knows
about me?"

"When he asked after you he looked--"

"Yes; I've seen him look like that when he's sorry for anything.  I
don't care.  Has Monsieur Lavendie been in lately?"

"Yes; he looks awfully unhappy."

"His wife drugs."

"Oh, Nollie!  How do you know?"

"I saw her once; I'm sure she does; there was a smell; and she's got
wandering eyes that go all glassy.  He can paint me now, if he likes.
I wouldn't let him before.  Does be know?"

"Of course not."

"He knows there was something; he's got second sight, I think.  But I
mind him less than anybody.  Is his picture of Daddy good?"

"Powerful, but it hurts, somehow."

"Let's go down and see it."

The picture was hung in the drawing-room, and its intense modernity
made that old-fashioned room seem lifeless and strange.  The black
figure, with long pale fingers touching the paler piano keys, had a
frightening actuality.  The face, three-quarters full, was raised as
if for inspiration, and the eyes rested, dreamy and unseeing, on the
face of a girl painted and hung on a background of wall above the
piano.

"It's the face of that girl," said Gratian, when they had looked at
the picture for some time in silence:

"No," said Noel, "it's the look in his eyes."

"But why did he choose such a horrid, common girl?  Isn't she
fearfully alive, though?  She looks as if she were saying:
'Cheerio!'"

"She is; it's awfully pathetic, I think.  Poor Daddy!"

"It's a libel," said Gratian stubbornly.

"No.  That's what hurts.  He isn't quite--quite all there.  Will he
be coming in soon?"

Gratian took her arm, and pressed it hard.  "Would you like me at
dinner or not; I can easily be out?"

Noel shook her head.  "It's no good to funk it.  He wanted me, and
now he's got me.  Oh!  why did he?  It'll be awful for him."

Gratian sighed.  "I've tried my best, but he always said: 'I've
thought so long about it all that I can't think any longer.  I can
only feel the braver course is the best.  When things are bravely and
humbly met, there will be charity and forgiveness.'"

"There won't," said Noel, "Daddy's a saint, and he doesn't see."

"Yes, he is a saint.  But one must think for oneself--one simply
must.  I can't believe as he does, any more; can you, Nollie?"

"I don't know.  When I was going through it, I prayed; but I don't
know whether I really believed.  I don't think I mind much about
that, one way or the other."

"I mind terribly," said Gratian, "I want the truth."

"I don't know what I want," said Noel slowly, "except that sometimes
I want--life; awfully."

And the two sisters were silent, looking at each other with a sort of
wonder.

Noel had a fancy to put on a bright-coloured blue frock that evening,
and at her neck she hung a Breton cross of old paste, which had
belonged to her mother.  When she had finished dressing she went into
the nursery and stood by the baby's cot.  The old nurse who was
sitting there beside him, got up at once and said:

"He's sleeping beautiful--the lamb.  I'll go down and get a cup o'
tea, and come up, ma'am, when the gong goes."  In the way peculiar to
those who have never to initiate, but only to support positions in
which they are placed by others, she had adopted for herself the
theory that Noel was a real war-widow.  She knew the truth perfectly;
for she had watched that hurried little romance at Kestrel, but by
dint of charity and blurred meditations it was easy for her to
imagine the marriage ceremony which would and should have taken
place; and she was zealous that other people should imagine it too.
It was so much more regular and natural like that, and "her" baby
invested with his proper dignity.  She went downstairs to get a "cup
o' tea," thinking: 'A picture they make--that they do, bless his
little heart; and his pretty little mother--no more than a child, all
said and done.'

Noel had been standing there some minutes in the failing light,
absorbed in the face of the sleeping baby, when, raising her eyes,
she saw in a mirror the refection of her father's dark figure by
the door.  She could hear him breathing as if the ascent of the
stairs had tired him; and moving to the head of the cot, she rested
her hand on it, and turned her face towards him.  He came up and
stood beside her, looking silently down at the baby.  She saw him
make the sign of the Cross above it, and the movement of his lips in
prayer.  Love for her father, and rebellion against this intercession
for her perfect baby fought so hard in the girl's heart that she felt
suffocated, and glad of the dark, so that he could not see her eyes.
Then he took her hand and put it to his lips, but still without a
word; and for the life of her she could not speak either.  In
silence, he kissed her forehead; and there mounted in Noel a sudden
passion of longing to show him her pride and love for her baby.  She
put her finger down and touched one of his hands.  The tiny sleeping
fingers uncurled and, like some little sea anemone, clutched round
it.  She heard her father draw his breath in; saw him turn away
quickly, silently, and go out.  And she stayed, hardly breathing,
with the hand of her baby squeezing her finger.




II

1

When Edward Pierson, afraid of his own emotion, left the twilit
nursery, he slipped into his own room, and fell on his knees beside
his bed, absorbed in the vision he had seen.  That young figure in
Madonna blue, with the halo of bright hair; the sleeping babe in the
fine dusk; the silence, the adoration in that white room!  He saw,
too; a vision of the past, when Noel herself had been the sleeping
babe within her mother's arm, and he had stood beside them, wondering
and giving praise.  It passed with its other-worldliness and the fine
holiness which belongs to beauty, passed and left the tormenting
realism of life.  Ah! to live with only the inner meaning, spiritual
and beautifed, in a rare wonderment such as he had experienced just
now!

His alarum clock, while he knelt in his narrow, monkish little room--
ticked the evening hour away into darkness.  And still he knelt,
dreading to come back into it all, to face the world's eyes, and the
sound of the world's tongue, and the touch of the rough, the gross,
the unseemly.  How could he guard his child?  How preserve that
vision in her life, in her spirit, about to enter such cold, rough
waters?  But the gong sounded; he got up, and went downstairs.

But this first family moment, which all had dreaded, was relieved, as
dreaded moments so often are, by the unexpected appearance of the
Belgian painter.  He had a general invitation, of which he often
availed himself; but he was so silent, and his thin, beardless face,
which seemed all eyes and brow, so mournful, that all three felt in
the presence of a sorrow deeper even than their own family grief.
During the meal he gazed silently at Noel.  Once he said: "You will
let me paint you now, mademoiselle, I hope?" and his face brightened
a little when she nodded.  There was never much talk when he came,
for any depth of discussion, even of art, brought out at once too
wide a difference.  And Pierson could never avoid a vague irritation
with one who clearly had spirituality, but of a sort which he could
not understand.  After dinner he excused himself, and went off to his
study.  Monsieur would be happier alone with the two girls!  Gratian,
too, got up.  She had remembered Noel's words: "I mind him less than
anybody."  It was a chance for Nollie to break the ice.



2

"I have not seen you for a long time, mademoiselle," said the
painter, when they were alone.

Noel was sitting in front of the empty drawing-room hearth, with her
arms stretched out as if there had been a fire there.

"I've been away.  How are you going to paint me, monsieur?"

"In that dress, mademoiselle; Just as you are now, warming yourself
at the fire of life."

"But it isn't there."

"Yes, fires soon go out.  Mademoiselle, will you come and see my
wife?  She is ill."

"Now?" asked Noel, startled.

"Yes, now.  She is really ill, and I have no one there.  That is what
I came to ask of your sister; but--now you are here, it's even
better.  She likes you."

Noel got up.  "Wait one minute!" she said, and ran upstairs.  Her
baby was asleep, and the old nurse dozing.  Putting on a cloak and
cap of grey rabbit's fur, she ran down again to the hall where the
painter was waiting; and they went out together.

"I do not know if I am to blame," he said, "my wife has been no real
wife to me since she knew I had a mistress and was no real husband to
her."

Noel stared round at his face lighted by a queer, smile.

"Yes," he went on, "from that has come her tragedy.  But she should
have known before I married her.  Nothing was concealed.  Bon Dieu!
she should have known!  Why cannot a woman see things as they are?
My mistress, mademoiselle, is not a thing of flesh.  It is my art.
It has always been first with me, and always will.  She has never
accepted that, she is incapable of accepting it.  I am sorry for her.
But what would you?  I was a fool to marry her.  Chere mademoiselle,
no troubles are anything beside the trouble which goes on day and
night, meal after meal, year, after year, between two people who
should never have married, because one loves too much and requires
all, and the other loves not at all--no, not at all, now, it is long
dead--and can give but little."

"Can't you separate?"  asked Noel, wondering.

"It is hard to separate from one who craves for you as she craves her
drugs--yes, she takes drugs now, mademoiselle.  It is impossible for
one who has any compassion in his soul.  Besides, what would she do?
We live from hand to mouth, in a strange land.  She has no friends
here, not one.  How could I leave her while this war lasts?  As well
could two persons on a desert island separate.  She is killing
herself, too, with these drugs, and I cannot stop her."

"Poor madame!"  murmured Noel.  "Poor monsieur!"

The painter drew his hand across his eyes.

"I cannot change my nature," he said in a stifled voice, "nor she
hers.  So we go on.  But life will stop suddenly some day for one of
us.  After all, it is much worse for her than for me.  Enter,
mademoiselle.  Do not tell her I am going to paint you; she likes
you, because you refused to let me."

Noel went up the stairs, shuddering; she had been there once before,
and remembered that sickly scent of drugs.  On the third floor they
entered a small sitting-room whose walls were covered with paintings
and drawings; from one corner a triangular stack of canvases jutted
out.  There was little furniture save an old red sofa, and on this
was seated a stoutish man in the garb of a Belgian soldier, with his
elbows on his knees and his bearded cheeks resting on his doubled
fists.  Beside him on the sofa, nursing a doll, was a little girl,
who looked up at Noel.  She had a most strange, attractive, pale
little face, with pointed chin and large eyes, which never moved from
this apparition in grey rabbits' skins.

"Ah, Barra!  You here!"  said the painter:

"Mademoiselle, this is Monsieur Barra, a friend of ours from the
front; and this is our landlady's little girl.  A little refugee,
too, aren't you, Chica?"

The child gave him a sudden brilliant smile and resumed her grave
scrutiny of the visitor.  The soldier, who had risen heavily, offered
Noel one of his podgy hands, with a sad and heavy giggle.

"Sit down, mademoiselle," said Lavendie, placing a chair for her: "I
will bring my wife in," and he went out through some double doors.

Noel sat down.  The soldier had resumed his old attitude, and the
little girl her nursing of the doll, though her big eyes still
watched the visitor.  Overcome by strangeness, Noel made no attempt
to talk.  And presently through the double doors the painter and his
wife came in.  She was a thin woman in a red wrapper, with hollow
cheeks, high cheek-bones, and hungry eyes; her dark hair hung loose,
and one hand played restlessly with a fold of her gown.  She took
Noel's hand; and her uplifted eyes seemed to dig into the girl's
face, to let go suddenly, and flutter.

"How do you do?"  she said in English.  "So Pierre brought you, to
see me again.  I remember you so well.  You would not let him paint
you.  Ah! que c'est drole!  You are so pretty, too.  Hein, Monsieur
Barra, is not mademoiselle pretty?"

The soldier gave his heavy giggle, and resumed his scrutiny of the
floor.

"Henriette," said Lavendie, "sit down beside Chica--you must not
stand.  Sit down, mademoiselle, I beg."

"I'm so sorry you're not well," said Noel, and sat down again.

The painter stood leaning against the wall, and his wife looked up at
his tall, thin figure, with eyes which had in them anger, and a sort
of cunning.

"A great painter, my husband, is he not?"  she said to Noel.  "You
would not imagine what that man can do.  And how he paints--all day
long; and all night in his head.  And so you would not let him paint
you, after all?"

Lavendie said impatiently: "Voyons, Henriette, causez d'autre chose."

His wife plucked nervously at a fold in her red gown, and gave him
the look of a dog that has been rebuked.

"I am a prisoner here, mademoiselle, I never leave the house.  Here I
live day after day--my husband is always painting.  Who would go out
alone under this grey sky of yours, and the hatreds of the war in
every face?  I prefer to keep my room.  My husband goes painting;
every face he sees interests him, except that which he sees every
day.  But I am a prisoner.  Monsieur Barra is our first visitor for a
long time."

The soldier raised his face from his fists.  "Prisonnier, madame!
What would you say if you were out there?"  And he gave his thick
giggle.  "We are the prisoners, we others.  What would you say to
imprisonment by explosion day and night; never a minute free.  Bom!
Bom!  Bom!  Ah!  les tranchees!  It's not so free as all that,
there."

"Every one has his own prison," said Lavendie bitterly.
"Mademoiselle even, has her prison--and little Chica, and her doll.
Every one has his prison, Barra.  Monsieur Barra is also a painter,
mademoiselle."

"Moi!"  said Barra, lifting his heavy hairy hand.  "I paint puddles,
star-bombs, horses' ribs--I paint holes and holes and holes, wire and
wire and wire, and water--long white ugly water.  I paint splinters,
and men's souls naked, and men's bodies dead, and nightmare--
nightmare--all day and all night--I paint them in my head."  He
suddenly ceased speaking and relapsed into contemplation of the
carpet, with his bearded cheeks resting on his fists.  "And their
souls as white as snow, les camarades," he added suddenly and loudly,
"millions of Belgians, English, French, even the Boches, with white
souls.  I paint those souls!"

A little shiver ran through Noel, and she looked appealingly at
Lavendie.

"Barra," he said, as if the soldier were not there, "is a great
painter, but the Front has turned his head a little.  What he says is
true, though.  There is no hatred out there.  It is here that we are
prisoners of hatred, mademoiselle; avoid hatreds--they are poison!"

His wife put out her hand and touched the child's shoulder.

"Why should we not hate?"  she said.  "Who killed Chica's father, and
blew her home to-rags?  Who threw her out into this horrible England-
-pardon, mademoiselle, but it is horrible.  Ah!  les Boches!  If my
hatred could destroy them there would not be one left.  Even my
husband was not so mad about his painting when we lived at home.  But
here--!"  Her eyes darted at his face again, and then sank as if
rebuked.  Noel saw the painter's lips move.  The sick woman's whole
figure writhed.

"It is mania, your painting!"  She looked at Noel with a smile.
"Will you have some tea, mademoiselle?  Monsieur Barra, some tea?"

The soldier said thickly: "No, madame; in the trenches we have tea
enough.  It consoles us.  But when we get away--give us wine, le bon
vin; le bon petit vin!"

"Get some wine, Pierre!"

Noel saw from the painter's face that there was no wine, and perhaps
no money to get any; but he went quickly out.  She rose and said:

"I must be going, madame."

Madame Lavendie leaned forward and clutched her wrist.  "Wait a
little, mademoiselle.  We shall have some wine, and Pierre shall take
you back presently.  You cannot go home alone--you are too pretty.
Is she not, Monsieur Barra?"

The soldier looked up: "What would you say," he said, "to bottles of
wine bursting in the air, bursting red and bursting white, all day
long, all night long?  Great steel bottles, large as Chica: bits of
bottles, carrying off men's heads?  Bsum, garra-a-a, and a house
comes down, and little bits of people ever so small, ever so small,
tiny bits in the air and all over the ground.  Great souls out there,
madame.  But I will tell you a secret," and again he gave his heavy
giggle, "all a little, little mad; nothing to speak of--just a little
bit mad; like a watch, you know, that you can wind for ever.  That is
the discovery of this war, mademoiselle," he said, addressing Noel
for the first time, "you cannot gain a great soul till you are a
little mad."  And lowering his piggy grey eyes at once, he resumed
his former attitude.  "It is that madness I shall paint some day," he
announced to the carpet; "lurking in one tiny corner of each soul of
all those millions, as it creeps, as it peeps, ever so sudden, ever
so little when we all think it has been put to bed, here--there, now
--then, when you least think; in and out like a mouse with bright
eyes.  Millions of men with white souls, all a little mad.  A great
subject, I think," he added heavily.  Involuntarily Noel put her hand
to her heart, which was beating fast.  She felt quite sick.

"How long have you been at the Front, monsieur?"

"Two years, mademoiselle.  Time to go home and paint, is it not?  But
art--!" he shrugged his heavy round shoulders, his whole bear-like
body.  "A little mad," he muttered once more.  "I will tell you a
story.  Once in winter after I had rested a fortnight, I go back to
the trenches at night, and I want some earth to fill up a hole in the
ground where I was sleeping; when one has slept in a bed one becomes
particular.  Well, I scratch it from my parapet, and I come to
something funny.  I strike my briquet, and there is a Boche's face
all frozen and earthy and dead and greeny-white in the flame from my
briquet."

"Oh, no!"

"Oh!  but yes, mademoiselle; true as I sit here.  Very useful in the
parapet--dead Boche.  Once a man like me.  But in the morning I could
not stand him; we dug him out and buried him, and filled the hole up
with other things.  But there I stood in the night, and my face as
close to his as this"--and he held his thick hand a foot before his
face.  "We talked of our homes; he had a soul, that man.  'Il me
disait des choses', how he had suffered; and I, too, told him my
sufferings.  Dear God, we know all; we shall never know more than we
know out there, we others, for we are mad--nothing to speak of, but
just a little, little mad.  When you see us, mademoiselle, walking
the streets, remember that."  And he dropped his face on to his fists
again.

A silence had fallen in the room-very queer and complete.  The little
girl nursed her doll, the soldier gazed at the floor, the woman's
mouth moved stealthily, and in Noel the thought rushed continually to
the verge of action: 'Couldn't I get up and run downstairs?' But she
sat on, hypnotised by that silence, till Lavendie reappeared with a
bottle and four glasses.

"To drink our health, and wish us luck, mademoiselle," he said.

Noel raised the glass he had given her.  "I wish you all happiness."

"And you, mademoiselle," the two men murmured.

She drank a little, and rose.

"And now, mademoiselle," said Lavendie, "if you must go, I will see
you home."

Noel took Madame Lavendie's hand; it was cold, and returned no
pressure; her eyes had the glazed look that she remembered.  The
soldier had put his empty glass down on the floor, and was regarding
it unconscious of her.  Noel turned quickly to the door; the last
thing she saw was the little girl nursing her doll.

In the street the painter began at once in his rapid French:

'I ought not to have asked you to come, mademoiselle; I did not know
our friend Barra was there.  Besides, my wife is not fit to receive a
lady; vous voyez qu'il y a de la manie dans cette pauvre tote.  I
should not have asked you; but I was so miserable."

"Oh!"  murmured Noel, "I know."

"In our home over there she had interests.  In this great town she
can only nurse her grief against me.  Ah! this war!  It seems to me
we are all in the stomach of a great coiling serpent.  We lie there,
being digested.  In a way it is better out there in the trenches;
they are beyond hate, they have attained a height that we have not.
It is wonderful how they still can be for going on till they have
beaten the Boche; that is curious and it is very great.  Did Barra
tell you how, when they come back--all these fighters--they are going
to rule, and manage the future of the world?  But it will not be so.
They will mix in with life, separate--be scattered, and they will be
ruled as they were before.  The tongue and the pen will rule them:
those who have not seen the war will rule them."

"Oh!"' cried Noel, "surely they will be the bravest and strongest in
the future."

The painter smiled.

"War makes men simple," he said, "elemental; life in peace is neither
simple nor elemental, it is subtle, full of changing environments, to
which man must adapt himself; the cunning, the astute, the adaptable,
will ever rule in times of peace.  It is pathetic, the belief of
those brave soldiers that the-future is theirs."

"He said, a strange thing," murmured Noel; "that they were all a
little mad."

"He is a man of queer genius--Barra; you should see some of his
earlier pictures.  Mad is not quite the word, but something is
loosened, is rattling round in them, they have lost proportion, they
are being forced in one direction.  I tell you, mademoiselle, this
war is one great forcing-house; every living plant is being made to
grow too fast, each quality, each passion; hate and love, intolerance
and lust and avarice, courage and energy; yes, and self-sacrifice--
all are being forced and forced beyond their strength, beyond the
natural flow of the sap, forced till there has come a great wild
luxuriant crop, and then--Psum! Presto!  The change comes, and these
plants will wither and rot and stink.  But we who see Life in forms
of Art are the only ones who feel that; and we are so few.  The
natural shape of things is lost.  There is a mist of blood before all
eyes.  Men are afraid of being fair.  See how we all hate not only
our enemies, but those who differ from us.  Look at the streets too
--see how men and women rush together, how Venus reigns in this
forcing-house.  Is it not natural that Youth about to die should
yearn for pleasure, for love, for union, before death?"

Noel stared up at him.  'Now!' she thought: I will.'

"Yes," she said, "I know that's true, because I rushed, myself.  I'd
like you to know.  We couldn't be married--there wasn't time.  And--
he was killed.  But his son is alive.  That's why I've been away so
long.  I want every one to know."  She spoke very calmly, but her
cheeks felt burning hot.

The painter had made an upward movement of his hands, as if they had
been jerked by an electric current, then he said quite quietly:

"My profound respect, mademoiselle, and my great sympathy.  And your
father?"

"It's awful for him."

The painter said gently: "Ah! mademoiselle, I am not so sure.
Perhaps he does not suffer so greatly.  Perhaps not even your trouble
can hurt him very much.  He lives in a world apart.  That, I think,
is his true tragedy to be alive, and yet not living enough to feel
reality.  Do you know Anatole France's description of an old woman:
'Elle vivait, mais si peu.'  Would that not be well said of the
Church in these days: 'Elle vivait, mais si peu.'  I see him always
like a rather beautiful dark spire in the night-time when you cannot
see how it is attached to the earth.  He does not know, he never will
know, Life."

Noel looked round at him.  "What do you mean by Life, monsieur?  I'm
always reading about Life, and people talk of seeing Life!  What is
it--where is it?  I never see anything that you could call Life."

The painter smiled.

"To 'see life'!"  he said.  "Ah! that is different.  To enjoy
yourself!  Well, it is my experience that when people are 'seeing
life' as they call it, they are not enjoying themselves.  You know
when one is very thirsty one drinks and drinks, but the thirst
remains all the same.  There are places where one can see life as it
is called, but the only persons you will see enjoying themselves at
such places are a few humdrums like myself, who go there for a talk
over a cup of coffee.  Perhaps at your age, though, it is different."

Noel clasped her hands, and her eyes seemed to shine in the gloom.
"I want music and dancing and light, and beautiful things and faces;
but I never get them."

"No, there does not exist in this town, or in any other, a place
which will give you that.  Fox-trots and ragtime and paint and powder
and glare and half-drunken young men, and women with red lips you can
get them in plenty.  But rhythm and beauty and charm never.  In
Brussels when I was younger I saw much 'life' as they call it, but
not one lovely thing unspoiled; it was all as ashes in the mouth.
Ah! you may smile, but I know what I am talking of.  Happiness never
comes when you are looking for it, mademoiselle; beauty is in Nature
and in real art, never in these false silly make believes.  There is
a place just here where we Belgians go; would you like to see how
true my words are?

"Oh, yes!"

"Tres-bien!  Let us go in?"

They passed into a revolving doorway with little glass compartments
which shot them out into a shining corridor.  At the end of this the
painter looked at Noel and seemed to hesitate, then he turned off
from the room they were about to enter into a room on the right.  It
was large, full of gilt and plush and marble tables, where couples
were seated; young men in khaki and older men in plain clothes,
together or with young women.  At these last Noel looked, face after
face, while they were passing down a long way to an empty table.  She
saw that some were pretty, and some only trying to be, that nearly
all were powdered and had their eyes darkened and their lips
reddened, till she felt her own face to be dreadfully ungarnished: Up
in a gallery a small band was playing an attractive jingling hollow
little tune; and the buzz of talk and laughter was almost deafening.

"What will you have, mademoiselle?"  said the painter.  "It is just
nine o'clock; we must order quickly."

"May I have one of those green things?"

"Deux cremes de menthe," said Lavendie to the waiter.

Noel was too absorbed to see the queer, bitter little smile hovering
about his face.  She was busy looking at the faces of women whose
eyes, furtively cold and enquiring, were fixed on her; and at the
faces of men with eyes that were furtively warm and wondering.

"I wonder if Daddy was ever in a place like this?"  she said, putting
the glass of green stuff to her lips.  "Is it nice?  It smells of
peppermint."

"A beautiful colour.  Good luck, mademoiselle!"  and he chinked his
glass with hers.

Noel sipped, held it away, and sipped again.

"It's nice; but awfully sticky.  May I have a cigarette?"

"Des cigarettes," said Lavendie to the waiter, "Et deux cafes noirs.
Now, mademoiselle," he murmured when they were brought, "if we
imagine that we have drunk a bottle of wine each, we shall have
exhausted all the preliminaries of what is called Vice.  Amusing,
isn't it?"  He shrugged his shoulders.

His face struck Noel suddenly as tarnished and almost sullen.

"Don't be angry, monsieur, it's all new to me, you see."

The painter smiled, his bright, skin-deep smile.

"Pardon!  I forget myself.  Only, it hurts me to see beauty in a
place like this.  It does not go well with that tune, and these
voices, and these faces.  Enjoy yourself, mademoiselle; drink it all
in!  See the way these people look at each other; what love shines in
their eyes!  A pity, too, we cannot hear what they are saying.
Believe me, their talk is most subtle, tres-spirituel.  These young
women are 'doing their bit,' as you call it; bringing le plaisir to
all these who are serving their country.  Eat, drink, love, for
tomorrow we die.  Who cares for the world simple or the world
beautiful, in days like these?  The house of the spirit is empty."

He was looking at her sidelong as if he would enter her very soul.

Noel got up.  "I'm ready to go, monsieur."

He put her cloak on her shoulders, paid the bill, and they went out,
threading again through the little tables, through the buzz of talk
and laughter and the fumes of tobacco, while another hollow little
tune jingled away behind them.

"Through there," said the painter, pointing to another door, "they
dance.  So it goes.  London in war-time!  Well, after all, it is
never very different; no great town is.  Did you enjoy your sight of
'life,' mademoiselle?"

"I think one must dance, to be happy.  Is that where your friends
go?"

"Oh, no!  To a room much rougher, and play dominoes, and drink coffee
and beer, and talk.  They have no money to throw away."

"Why didn't you show me?"

"Mademoiselle, in that room you might see someone perhaps whom one
day you would meet again; in the place we visited you were safe
enough at least I hope so."

Noel shrugged.  "I suppose it doesn't matter now, what I do."

And a rush of emotion caught at her throat--a wave from the past--the
moonlit night, the dark old Abbey, the woods and the river.  Two
tears rolled down her cheeks.

"I was thinking of--something," she said in a muffled voice.  "It's
all right."

"Chere mademoiselle!"  Lavendie murmured; and all the way home he was
timid and distressed.  Shaking his hand at the door, she murmured:

"I'm sorry I was such a fool; and thank you awfully, monsieur.  Good
night."

"Good night; and better dreams.  There is a good time coming--Peace
and Happiness once more in the world.  It will not always be this
Forcing-House.  Good night, chere mademoiselle!"

Noel went up to the nursery, and stole in.  A night-light was
burning, Nurse and baby were fast asleep.  She tiptoed through into
her own room.  Once there, she felt suddenly so tired that she could
hardly undress; and yet curiously rested, as if with that rush of
emotion, Cyril and the past had slipped from her for ever.




III

1

Noel's first encounter with Opinion took place the following day.
The baby had just come in from its airing; she had seen it
comfortably snoozing, and was on her way downstairs, when a voice
from the hall said:

"How do you do?"  and she saw the khaki-clad figure of Adrian Lauder,
her father's curate!  Hesitating just a moment, she finished her
descent, and put her fingers in his.  He was a rather heavy, dough-
coloured young man of nearly thirty, unsuited by khaki, with a round
white collar buttoned behind; but his aspiring eyes redeemed him,
proclaiming the best intentions in the world, and an inclination
towards sentiment in the presence of beauty.

"I haven't seen you for ages," he said rather fatuously, following
her into her father's study.

"No," said Noel.  "How--do you like being at the Front?"

"Ah!" he said, "they're wonderful!"  And his eyes shone.  "It's so
nice to see you again."

"Is it?"

He seemed puzzled by that answer; stammered, and said:

"I didn't know your sister had a baby.  A jolly baby."

"She hasn't."

Lauder's mouth opened.  'A silly mouth,' she thought.

"Oh!" he said.  "Is it a protegee--Belgian or something?"

"No, it's mine; my own."  And, turning round, she slipped the little
ring off her finger.  When she turned back to him, his face had not
recovered from her words.  It had a hapless look, as of one to whom
such a thing ought not to have happened.

"Don't look like that," said Noel.  "Didn't you understand?  It's
mine-mine."  She put out her left hand.  "Look!  There's no ring."

He stammered: "I say, you oughtn't to--you oughtn't to--!"

"What?"

"Joke about--about such things; ought you?"

"One doesn't joke if one's had a baby without being married, you
know."

Lauder went suddenly slack.  A shell might have burst a few paces
from him.  And then, just as one would in such a case, he made an
effort, braced himself, and said in a curious voice, both stiff and
heavy: "I can't--one doesn't--it's not--"

"It is," said Noel.  "If you don't believe me, ask Daddy."

He put his hand up to his round collar; and with the wild thought
that he was going to tear it off, she cried: "Don't!"

"You!"  he said."  You!  But--"

Noel turned away from him to the window: She stood looking out, but
saw nothing whatever.

"I don't want it hidden," she said without turning round, "I want
every one to know.  It's stupid as it is--stupid!" and she stamped
her foot.  "Can't you see how stupid it is--everybody's mouth falling
open!"

He uttered a little sound which had pain in it, and she felt a real
pang of compunction.  He had gripped the back of a chair; his face
had lost its heaviness.  A dull flush coloured his cheeks.  Noel had
a feeling, as if she had been convicted of treachery.  It was his
silence, the curious look of an impersonal pain beyond power of
words; she felt in him something much deeper than mere disapproval--
something which echoed within herself.  She walked quickly past him
and escaped.  She ran upstairs and threw herself on her bed.  He was
nothing: it was not that!  It was in herself, the awful feeling, for
the first time developed and poignant, that she had betrayed her
caste, forfeited the right to be thought a lady, betrayed her secret
reserve and refinement, repaid with black ingratitude the love
lavished on her up bringing, by behaving like any uncared-for common
girl.  She had never felt this before--not even when Gratian first
heard of it, and they had stood one at each end of the hearth, unable
to speak.  Then she still had her passion, and her grief for the
dead.  That was gone now as if it had never been; and she had no
defence, nothing between her and this crushing humiliation and
chagrin.  She had been mad!  She must have been mad!  The Belgian
Barra was right: "All a little mad" in this "forcing-house" of a war!
She buried her face deep in the pillow, till it almost stopped her
power of breathing; her head and cheeks and ears seemed to be on
fire.  If only he had shown disgust, done something which roused her
temper, her sense of justice, her feeling that Fate had been too
cruel to her; but he had just stood there, bewilderment incarnate,
like a creature with some very deep illusion shattered.  It was
horrible!  Then, feeling that she could not stay still, must walk,
run, get away somehow from this feeling of treachery and betrayal,
she sprang up.  All was quiet below, and she slipped downstairs and
out, speeding along with no knowledge of direction, taking the way
she had taken day after day to her hospital.  It was the last of
April, trees and shrubs were luscious with blossom and leaf; the dogs
ran gaily; people had almost happy faces in the sunshine.  'If I
could get away from myself, I wouldn't care,' she thought.  Easy to
get away from people, from London, even from England perhaps; but
from oneself--impossible!  She passed her hospital; and looked at it
dully, at the Red Cross flag against its stucco wall, and a soldier
in his blue slops and red tie, coming out.  She had spent many
miserable hours there, but none quite so miserable as this.  She
passed the church opposite to the flats where Leila lived, and
running suddenly into a tall man coming round the corner, saw Fort.
She bent her head, and tried to hurry past.  But his hand was held
out, she could not help putting hers into it; and looking up hardily,
she said:

"You know about me, don't you?"

His face, naturally so frank, seemed to clench up, as if he were
riding at a fence.  'He'll tell a lie,' she thought bitterly.  But he
did not.

"Yes, Leila told me."

And she thought: 'I suppose he'll try and pretend that I've not been
a beast!'

"I admire your pluck," he said.

"I haven't any."

"We never know ourselves, do we?  I suppose you wouldn't walk my pace
a minute or two, would you?  I'm going the same way."

"I don't know which way I'm going."

"That is my case, too."

They walked on in silence.

"I wish to God I were back in France," said Fort abruptly.  "One
doesn't feel clean here."

Noel's heart applauded.

Ah!  to get away--away from oneself!  But at the thought of her baby,
her heart fell again.  "Is your leg quite hopeless?"  she said.

"Quite."

"That must be horrid."

"Hundreds of thousands would look on it as splendid luck; and so it
is if you count it better to be alive than dead, which I do, in spite
of the blues."

"How is Cousin Leila?"

"Very well.  She goes on pegging away at the hospital; she's a
brick."  But he did not look at her, and again there was silence,
till he stopped by Lord's Cricket-ground.

"I mustn't keep you crawling along at this pace."

"Oh, I don't mind!"

"I only wanted to say that if I can be of any service to you at any
time in any way whatever, please command me."

He gave her hand a squeeze, took his hat off; and Noel walked slowly
on.  The little interview, with its suppressions, and its
implications, had but exasperated her restlessness, and yet, in a
way, it had soothed the soreness of her heart.  Captain Fort at all
events did not despise her; and he was in trouble like herself.  She
felt that somehow by the look of his face, and the tone of his voice
when he spoke of Leila.  She quickened her pace.  George's words came
back to her: "If you're not ashamed of yourself, no one will be of
you!"  How easy to say!  The old days, her school, the little half
grown-up dances she used to go to, when everything was happy.  Gone!
All gone!

But her meetings with Opinion were not over for the day, for turning
again at last into the home Square, tired out by her three hours'
ramble, she met an old lady whom she and Gratian had known from
babyhood--a handsome dame, the widow of an official, who spent her
days, which showed no symptom of declining, in admirable works.  Her
daughter, the widow of an officer killed at the Marne, was with her,
and the two greeted Noel with a shower of cordial questions: So she
was back from the country, and was she quite well again?  And working
at her hospital?  And how was her dear father?  They had thought him
looking very thin and worn.  But now Gratian was at home--How
dreadfully the war kept husbands and wives apart!  And whose was the
dear little baby they had in the house?

"Mine," said Noel, walking straight past them with her head up.  In
every fibre of her being she could feel the hurt, startled, utterly
bewildered looks of those firm friendly persons left there on the
pavement behind her; could feel the way they would gather themselves
together, and walk on, perhaps without a word, and then round the
corner begin: "What has come to Noel?  What did she mean?"  And
taking the little gold hoop out of her pocket, she flung it with all
her might into the Square Garden.  The action saved her from a
breakdown; and she went in calmly.  Lunch was long over, but her
father had not gone out, for he met her in the hall and drew her into
the dining-room.

"You must eat, my child," he said.  And while she was swallowing down
what he had caused to be kept back for her, he stood by the hearth in
that favourite attitude of his, one foot on the fender, and one hand
gripping.  the mantel-shelf.

"You've got your wish, Daddy," she said dully: "Everybody knows now.
I've told Mr. Lauder, and Monsieur, and the Dinnafords."

She saw his fingers uncrisp, then grip the shelf again.  "I'm glad,"
he said.

"Aunt Thirza gave me a ring to wear, but I've thrown it away."

"My dearest child," he began, but could not go on, for the quivering
of his lips.

"I wanted to say once more, Daddy, that I'm fearfully sorry about
you.  And I am ashamed of myself; I thought I wasn't, but I am--only,
I think it was cruel, and I'm not penitent to God; and it's no good
trying to make me."

Pierson turned and looked at her.  For a long time after, she could
not get that look out of her memory.

Jimmy Fort had turned away from Noel feeling particularly wretched.
Ever since the day when Leila had told him of the girl's misfortune
he had been aware that his liaison had no decent foundation, save a
sort of pity.  One day, in a queer access of compunction, he had made
Leila an offer of marriage.  She had refused; and he had respected
her the more, realising by the quiver in her voice and the look in
her eyes that she refused him, not because she did not love him well
enough, but because she was afraid of losing any of his affection.
She was a woman of great experience.

To-day he had taken advantage of the luncheon interval to bring her
some flowers, with a note to say that he could not come that evening.
Letting himself in with his latchkey, he had carefully put those
Japanese azaleas in the bowl "Famille Rose," taking water from her
bedroom.  Then he had sat down on the divan with his head in his
hands.

Though he had rolled so much about the world, he had never had much
to do with women.  And there was nothing in him of the Frenchman, who
takes what life puts in his way as so much enjoyment on the credit
side, and accepts the ends of such affairs as they naturally and
rather rapidly arrive.  It had been a pleasure, and was no longer a
pleasure; but this apparently did not dissolve it, or absolve him.
He felt himself bound by an obscure but deep instinct to go on
pretending that he was not tired of her, so long as she was not tired
of him.  And he sat there trying to remember any sign, however small,
of such a consummation, quite without success.  On the contrary, he
had even the wretched feeling that if only he had loved her, she
would have been much more likely to have tired of him by now.  For
her he was still the unconquered, in spite of his loyal endeavour to
seem conquered.  He had made a fatal mistake, that evening after the
concert at Queen's Hall, to let himself go, on a mixed tide of desire
and pity!

His folly came to him with increased poignancy after he had parted
from Noel.  How could he have been such a base fool, as to have
committed himself to Leila on an evening when he had actually been in
the company of that child?  Was it the vague, unseizable likeness
between them which had pushed him over the edge?  'I've been an ass,'
he thought; 'a horrible ass.'  I would always have given every hour
I've ever spent with Leila, for one real smile from that girl.'

This sudden sight of Noel after months during which he had tried
loyally to forget her existence, and not succeeded at all, made him
realise as he never had yet that he was in love with her; so very
much in love with her that the thought of Leila was become
nauseating.  And yet the instincts of a gentleman seemed to forbid
him to betray that secret to either of them.  It was an accursed
coil!  He hailed a cab, for he was late; and all the way back to the
War Office he continued to see the girl's figure and her face with
its short hair.  And a fearful temptation rose within him.  Was it
not she who was now the real object for chivalry and pity?  Had he
not the right to consecrate himself to championship of one in such a
deplorable position?  Leila had lived her life; but this child's
life--pretty well wrecked--was all before her.  And then he grinned
from sheer disgust.  For he knew that this was Jesuitry.  Not
chivalry was moving him, but love!  Love!  Love of the unattainable!
And with a heavy heart, indeed, he entered the great building, where,
in a small room, companioned by the telephone, and surrounded by
sheets of paper covered with figures, he passed his days.  The war
made everything seem dreary, hopeless.  No wonder he had caught at
any distraction which came along--caught at it, till it had caught
him!




IV

1

To find out the worst is, for human nature, only a question of time.
But where the "worst" is attached to a family haloed, as it were, by
the authority and reputation of an institution like the Church, the
process of discovery has to break through many a little hedge.  Sheer
unlikelihood, genuine respect, the defensive instinct in those
identified with an institution, who will themselves feel weaker if
its strength be diminished, the feeling that the scandal is too good
to be true--all these little hedges, and more, had to be broken
through.  To the Dinnafords, the unholy importance of what Noel had
said to them would have continued to keep them dumb, out of self-
protection; but its monstrosity had given them the feeling that there
must be some mistake, that the girl had been overtaken by a wild
desire to "pull their legs" as dear Charlie would say.  With the hope
of getting this view confirmed, they lay in wait for the old nurse
who took the baby out, and obtained the information, shortly
imparted: "Oh, yes; Miss Noel's.  Her 'usband was killed--poor lamb!"
And they felt rewarded.  They had been sure there was some mistake.
The relief of hearing that word "'usband" was intense.  One of these
hasty war marriages, of which the dear Vicar had not approved, and so
it had been kept dark.  Quite intelligible, but so sad!  Enough
misgiving however remained in their minds, to prevent their going to
condole with the dear Vicar; but not enough to prevent their roundly
contradicting the rumours and gossip already coming to their ears.
And then one day, when their friend Mrs. Curtis had said too
positively: "Well, she doesn't wear a wedding-ring, that I'll swear,
because I took very good care to look!" they determined to ask Mr.
Lauder.  He would--indeed must--know; and, of course, would not tell
a story.  When they asked him it was so manifest that he did know,
that they almost withdrew the question.  The poor young man had gone
the colour of a tomato.

"I prefer not to answer," he said.  The rest of a very short
interview was passed in exquisite discomfort.  Indeed discomfort,
exquisite and otherwise, within a few weeks of Noel's return, had
begun to pervade all the habitual congregation of Pierson's church.
It was noticed that neither of the two sisters attended Service now.
Certain people who went in the sincere hope of seeing Noel, only fell
off again when she did not appear.  After all, she would not have the
face!  And Gratian was too ashamed, no doubt.  It was constantly
remarked that the Vicar looked very grave and thin, even for him.  As
the rumours hardened into certainty, the feeling towards him became a
curious medley of sympathy and condemnation.  There was about the
whole business that which English people especially resent.  By the
very fact of his presence before them every Sunday, and his public
ministrations, he was exhibiting to them, as it were, the seamed and
blushing face of his daughter's private life, besides affording one
long and glaring demonstration of the failure of the Church to guide
its flock: If a man could not keep his own daughter in the straight
path--whom could he?  Resign!  The word began to be thought about,
but not yet spoken.  He had been there so long; he had spent so much
money on the church and the parish; his gentle dreamy manner was
greatly liked.  He was a gentleman; and had helped many people; and,
though his love of music and vestments had always caused heart-
burnings, yet it had given a certain cachet to the church.  The
women, at any rate, were always glad to know that the church they
went to was capable of drawing their fellow women away from other
churches.  Besides, it was war-time, and moral delinquency which in
time of peace would have bulked too large to neglect, was now less
insistently dwelt on, by minds preoccupied by food and air-raids.
Things, of course, could not go on as they were; but as yet they did
go on.

The talked-about is always the last to hear the talk; and nothing
concrete or tangible came Pierson's way.  He went about his usual
routine without seeming change.  And yet there was a change, secret
and creeping.  Wounded almost to death himself, he felt as though
surrounded by one great wound in others; but it was some weeks before
anything occurred to rouse within him the weapon of anger or the
protective impulse.

And then one day a little swift brutality shook him to the very soul.
He was coming home from a long parish round, and had turned into the
Square, when a low voice behind him said:

"Wot price the little barstard?"

A cold, sick feeling stifled his very breathing; he gasped, and spun
round, to see two big loutish boys walking fast away.  With swift and
stealthy passion he sprang after them, and putting his hands on their
two neighbouring shoulders, wrenched them round so that they faced
him, with mouths fallen open in alarm.  Shaking them with all his
force, he said:

"How dare you--how dare you use that word?"  His face and voice must
have been rather terrible, for the scare in their faces brought him
to sudden consciousness of his own violence, and he dropped his
hands.  In two seconds they were at the corner.  They stopped there
for a second; one of them shouted "Gran'pa"; then they vanished.  He
was left with lips and hands quivering, and a feeling that he had not
known for years--the weak white empty feeling one has after yielding
utterly to sudden murderous rage.  He crossed over, and stood leaning
against the Garden railings, with the thought: 'God forgive me!  I
could have killed them--I could have killed them!'  There had been a
devil in him.  If he had had something in his hand, he might now have
been a murderer: How awful!  Only one had spoken;  but he could have
killed them both!  And the word was true, and was in all mouths--all
low common mouths, day after day, of his own daughter's child!  The
ghastliness of this thought, brought home so utterly, made him
writhe, and grasp the railings as if he would have bent them.

>From that day on, a creeping sensation of being rejected of men,
never left him; the sense of identification with Noel and her tiny
outcast became ever more poignant, more real; the desire to protect
them ever more passionate; and the feeling that round about there
were whispering voices, pointing fingers, and a growing malevolence
was ever more sickening.  He was beginning too to realise the deep
and hidden truth: How easily the breath of scandal destroys the
influence and sanctity of those endowed therewith by vocation; how
invaluable it is to feel untarnished, and how difficult to feel that
when others think you tarnished.

He tried to be with Noel as much as possible; and in the evenings
they sometimes went walks together, without ever talking of what was
always in their minds.  Between six and eight the girl was giving
sittings to Lavendie in the drawing-room, and sometimes Pierson would
come there and play to them.  He was always possessed now by a sense
of the danger Noel ran from companionship with any man.  On three
occasions, Jimmy Fort made his appearance after dinner.  He had so
little to say that it was difficult to understand why he came; but,
sharpened by this new dread for his daughter, Pierson noticed his
eyes always following her.  'He admires her,' he thought; and often
he would try his utmost to grasp the character of this man, who had
lived such a roving life.  'Is he--can he be the sort of man I would
trust Nollie to?' he would think.  'Oh, that I should have to hope
like this that some good man would marry her--my little Nollie, a
child only the other day!'

In these sad, painful, lonely weeks he found a spot of something like
refuge in Leila's sitting-room, and would go there often for half an
hour when she was back from her hospital.  That little black-walled
room with its Japanese prints and its flowers, soothed him.  And
Leila soothed him, innocent as he was of any knowledge of her latest
aberration, and perhaps conscious that she herself was not too happy.
To watch her arranging flowers, singing her little French songs, or
to find her beside him, listening to his confidences, was the only
real pleasure he knew in these days.  And Leila, in turn, would watch
him and think: 'Poor Edward! He has never lived; and never will;
now!'  But sometimes the thought would shoot through her: 'Perhaps
he's to be envied.  He doesn't feel what I feel, anyway.  Why did I
fall in love again?'

They did not speak of Noel as a rule, but one evening she expressed
her views roundly.

"It was a great mistake to make Noel come back.  Edward.  It was
Quixotic.  You'll be lucky if real mischief doesn't come of it.
She's not a patient character; one day she'll do something rash.
And, mind you, she'll be much more likely to break out if she sees
the world treating you badly than if it happens to herself.  I should
send her back to the country, before she makes bad worse."

"I can't do that, Leila.  We must live it down together."

"Wrong, Edward.  You should take things as they are."

With a heavy sigh Pierson answered:

"I wish I could see her future.  She's so attractive.  And her
defences are gone.  She's lost faith, and belief in all that a good
woman should be.  The day after she came back she told me she was
ashamed of herself.  But since--she's not given a sign.  She's so
proud--my poor little Nollie.  I see how men admire her, too.  Our
Belgian friend is painting her.  He's a good man; but he finds her
beautiful, and who can wonder.  And your friend Captain Fort.
Fathers are supposed to be blind, but they see very clear sometimes."

Leila rose and drew down a blind.

"This sun," she said.  "Does Jimmy Fort come to you--often?"

"Oh! no; very seldom.  But still--I can see."

'You bat--you blunderer!' thought Leila: 'See!  You can't even see
this beside you!'

"I expect he's sorry for her," she said in a queer voice.

"Why should he be sorry?  He doesn't know:"

"Oh, yes!  He knows; I told him."

"You told him!"

"Yes," Leila repeated stubbornly; "and he's sorry for her."

And even then "this monk" beside her did not see, and went blundering
on.

"No, no; it's not merely that he's sorry.  By the way he looks at
her, I know I'm not mistaken.  I've wondered--what do you think,
Leila.  He's too old for her; but he seems an honourable, kind man."

"Oh!  a most honourable, kind man."  But only by pressing her hand
against her lips had she smothered a burst of bitter laughter.  He,
who saw nothing, could yet notice Fort's eyes when he looked at Noel,
and be positive that he was in love with her!  How plainly those eyes
must speak!  Her control gave way.

"All this is very interesting," she said, spurning her words like
Noel, "considering that he's more than my friend, Edward."  It gave
her a sort of pleasure to see him wince.  'These blind bats!' she
thought, terribly stung that he should so clearly assume her out of
the running.  Then she was sorry, his face had become so still and
wistful.  And turning away, she said:

"Oh!  I shan't break my heart; I'm a good loser.  And I'm a good
fighter, too; perhaps I shan't lose."  And snapping off a sprig of
geranium, she pressed it to her lips.

"Forgive me," said Pierson slowly; "I didn't know.  I'm stupid.  I
thought your love for your poor soldiers had left no room for other
feelings."

Leila uttered a shrill laugh.  "What have they to do with each other?
Did you never hear of passion, Edward?  Oh!  Don't look at me like
that.  Do you think a woman can't feel passion at my age?  As much as
ever, more than ever, because it's all slipping away."

She took her hand from her lips, but a geranium petal was left
clinging there, like a bloodstain.  "What has your life been all
these years," she went on vehemently--"suppression of passion,
nothing else!  You monks twist Nature up with holy words, and try to
disguise what the eeriest simpleton can see.  Well, I haven't
suppressed passion, Edward.  That's all."

"And are you happier for that?"

"I was; and I shall be again."

A little smile curled Pierson's lips.  "Shall be?" he said.  "I hope
so.  It's just two ways of looking at things, Leila."

"Oh, Edward!  Don't be so gentle!  I suppose you don't think a person
like me can ever really love?"

He was standing before her with his head down, and a sense that,
naive and bat-like as he was, there was something in him she could
not reach or understand, made her cry out:

"I've not been nice to you.  Forgive me, Edward!  I'm so unhappy."

"There was a Greek who used to say: 'God is the helping of man by
man.' It isn't true, but it's beautiful.  Good-bye, dear Leila, and
don't be sorrowful"

She squeezed his hand, and turned to the window.

She stood there watching his black figure cross the road in the
sunshine, and pass round the corner by the railings of the church.
He walked quickly, very upright; there was something unseeing even
about that back view of him; or was it that he saw-another world?
She had never lost the mental habits of her orthodox girlhood, and in
spite of all impatience, recognised his sanctity.  When he had
disappeared she went into her bedroom.  What he had said, indeed, was
no discovery.  She had known.  Oh!  She had known.  'Why didn't I
accept Jimmy's offer?  Why didn't I marry him?  Is it too late?' she
thought.  'Could I?  Would he--even now?' But then she started away
from her own thought.  Marry him! knowing his heart was with this
girl?

She looked long at her face in the mirror, studying with a fearful
interest the little hard lines and markings there beneath their light
coating of powder.  She examined the cunning touches of colouring
matter here and there in her front hair.  Were they cunning enough?
Did they deceive?  They seemed to her suddenly to stare out.  She
fingered and smoothed the slight looseness and fulness of the skin
below her chin.  She stretched herself, and passed her hands down
over her whole form, searching as it were for slackness, or
thickness.  And she had the bitter thought: 'I'm all out.  I'm doing
all I can.' The lines of a little poem Fort had showed her went
thrumming through her head:

         "Time, you old gipsy man
            Will you not stay
          Put up your caravan
            Just for a day?"

What more could she do?  He did not like to see her lips reddened.
She had marked his disapprovals, watched him wipe his mouth after a
kiss, when he thought she couldn't see him.  'I need'nt!' she
thought.  'Noel's lips are no redder, really.  What has she better
than I?  Youth--dew on the grass!'  That didn't last long!  But long
enough to "do her in" as her soldier-men would say.  And, suddenly
she revolted against herself, against Fort, against this chilled and
foggy country; felt a fierce nostalgia for African sun, and the
African flowers; the happy-go-lucky, hand-to-mouth existence of those
five years before the war began.  High Constantia at grape harvest!
How many years ago--ten years, eleven years!  Ah!  To have before her
those ten years, with him!  Ten years in the sun!  He would have
loved her then, and gone on loving her!  And she would not have tired
of him, as she had tired of those others.  'In half an hour,' she
thought, 'he'll be here, sit opposite me; I shall see him struggling
forcing himself to seem affectionate!  It's too humbling!  But I
don't care; I want him!'

She searched her wardrobe, for some garment or touch of colour,
novelty of any sort, to help her.  But she had tried them all--those
little tricks--was bankrupt.  And such a discouraged, heavy mood came
on her, that she did not even "change," but went back in her nurse's
dress and lay down on the divan, pretending to sleep, while the maid
set out the supper.  She lay there moody and motionless, trying to
summon courage, feeling that if she showed herself beaten she was
beaten; knowing that she only held him by pity.  But when she heard
his footstep on the stairs she swiftly passed her hands over her
cheeks, as if to press the blood out of them, and lay absolutely
still.  She hoped that she was white, and indeed she was, with
finger-marks under the eyes, for she had suffered greatly this last
hour.  Through her lashes she saw him halt, and look at her in
surprise.  Asleep, or-ill, which?  She did not move.  She wanted to
watch him.  He tiptoed across the room and stood looking down at her.
There was a furrow between his eyes.  'Ah!' she thought, 'it would
suit you, if I were dead, my kind friend.'  He bent a little towards
her; and she wondered suddenly whether she looked graceful lying
there, sorry now that she had not changed her dress.  She saw him
shrug his shoulders ever so faintly with a puzzled little movement.
He had not seen that she was shamming.  How nice his face was--not
mean, secret, callous!  She opened her eyes, which against her will
had in them the despair she was feeling.  He went on his knees, and
lifting her hand to his lips, hid them with it.

"Jimmy," she said gently, "I'm an awful bore to you.  Poor Jimmy!
No!  Don't pretend!  I know what I know!"  'Oh, God!  What am I
saying?' she thought.  'It's fatal-fatal.  I ought never!'  And
drawing his head to her, she put it to her heart.  Then,
instinctively aware that this moment had been pressed to its
uttermost, she scrambled up, kissed his forehead, stretched herself,
and laughed.

"I was asleep, dreaming; dreaming you loved me.  Wasn't it funny?
Come along.  There are oysters, for the last time this season."

All that evening, as if both knew they had been looking over a
precipice, they seemed to be treading warily, desperately anxious not
to rouse emotion in each other, or touch on things which must bring a
scene.  And Leila talked incessantly of Africa.

"Don't you long for the sun, Jimmy?  Couldn't we--couldn't you go?
Oh! why doesn't this wretched war end?  All that we've got here at
home every scrap of wealth, and comfort, and age, and art, and music,
I'd give it all for the light and the sun out there.  Wouldn't you?"

And Fort said he would, knowing well of one thing which he would not
give.  And she knew that, as well as he.

They were both gayer than they had been for a long time; so that when
he had gone, she fell back once more on to the divan, and burying her
face in a cushion, wept bitterly.




V

1

It was not quite disillusionment that Pierson felt while he walked
away.  Perhaps he had not really believed in Leila's regeneration.
It was more an acute discomfort, an increasing loneliness.  A soft
and restful spot was now denied him; a certain warmth and allurement
had gone out of his life.  He had not even the feeling that it was
his duty to try and save Leila by persuading her to marry Fort.  He
had always been too sensitive, too much as it were of a gentleman,
for the robuster sorts of evangelism.  Such delicacy had been a
stumbling-block to him all through professional life.  In the eight
years when his wife was with him, all had been more certain, more
direct and simple, with the help of her sympathy, judgment; and
companionship.  At her death a sort of mist had gathered in his soul.
No one had ever spoken plainly to him.  To a clergyman, who does?  No
one had told him in so many words that he should have married again--
that to stay unmarried was bad for him, physically and spiritually,
fogging and perverting life; not driving him, indeed, as it drove
many, to intolerance and cruelty, but to that half-living dreaminess,
and the vague unhappy yearnings which so constantly beset him.  All
these celibate years he had really only been happy in his music, or
in far-away country places, taking strong exercise, and losing
himself in the beauties of Nature; and since the war began he had
only once, for those three days at Kestrel, been out of London.

He walked home, going over in his mind very anxiously all the
evidence he had of Fort's feeling for Noel.  How many times had he
been to them since she came back?  Only three times--three evening
visits!  And he had not been alone with her a single minute!  Before
this calamity befell his daughter, he would never have observed
anything in Fort's demeanour; but, in his new watchfulness, he had
seen the almost reverential way he looked at her, noticed the extra
softness of his voice when he spoke to her, and once a look of sudden
pain, a sort of dulling of his whole self, when Noel had got up and
gone out of the room.  And the girl herself?  Twice he had surprised
her gazing at Fort when he was not looking, with a sort of brooding
interest.  He remembered how, as a little girl, she would watch a
grown-up, and then suddenly one day attach herself to him, and be
quite devoted.  Yes, he must warn her, before she could possibly
become entangled.  In his fastidious chastity, the opinion he had
held of Fort was suddenly lowered.  He, already a free-thinker, was
now revealed as a free-liver.  Poor little Nollie!  Endangered again
already!  Every man a kind of wolf waiting to pounce on her!

He found Lavendie and Noel in the drawing-room, standing before the
portrait which was nearing completion.  He looked at it for a long
minute, and turned away:

"Don't you think it's like me, Daddy?"

"It's like you; but it hurts me.  I can't tell why."

He saw the smile of a painter whose picture is being criticised come
on Lavendie's face.

"It is perhaps the colouring which does not please you, monsieur?"

"No, no; deeper.  The expression; what is she waiting for?"

The defensive smile died on Lavendie's lips.

"It is as I see her, monsieur le cure."

Pierson turned again to the picture, and suddenly covered his eyes.
"She looks 'fey,"' he said, and went out of the room.

Lavendie and Noel remained staring at the picture.  "Fey?  What does
that mean, mademoiselle ?"

"Possessed, or something."

And they continued to stare at the picture, till Lavendie said:

"I think there is still a little too much light on that ear."

The same evening, at bedtime, Pierson called Noel back.

"Nollie, I want you to know something.  In all but the name, Captain
Fort is a married man."

He saw her flush, and felt his own face darkening with colour.

She said calmly: "I know; to Leila."

"Do you mean she has told you?"

Noel shook her head.

"Then how?"

"I guessed.  Daddy, don't treat me as a child any more.  What's the
use, now?"

He sat down in the chair before the hearth, and covered his face with
his hands.  By the quivering of those hands, and the movement of his
shoulders, she could tell that he was stifling emotion, perhaps even
crying; and sinking down on his knees she pressed his hands and face
to her, murmuring: "Oh, Daddy dear!  Oh, Daddy dear!"

He put his arms round her, and they sat a long time with their cheeks
pressed together, not speaking a word.




VI

1

The day after that silent outburst of emotion in the drawing-room was
a Sunday.  And, obeying the longing awakened overnight to be as good
as she could to her father; Noel said to him:

"Would you like me to come to Church?"

"Of course, Nollie."

How could he have answered otherwise?  To him Church was the home of
comfort and absolution, where people must bring their sins and
troubles--a haven of sinners, the fount of charity, of forgiveness,
and love.  Not to have believed that, after all these years, would
have been to deny all his usefulness in life, and to cast a slur on
the House of God.

And so Noel walked there with him, for Gratian had gone down to
George, for the week-end.  She slipped quietly up the side aisle to
their empty pew, under the pulpit.  Never turning her eyes from the
chancel, she remained unconscious of the stir her presence made,
during that hour and twenty minutes.  Behind her, the dumb currents
of wonder, disapproval, and resentment ran a stealthy course.  On her
all eyes were fixed sooner or later, and every mind became the play
ground of judgments.  From every soul, kneeling, standing, or
sitting, while the voice of the Service droned, sang, or spoke, a
kind of glare radiated on to that one small devoted head, which
seemed so ludicrously devout.  She disturbed their devotions, this
girl who had betrayed her father, her faith, her class.  She ought to
repent, of course, and Church was the right place; yet there was
something brazen in her repenting there before their very eyes; she
was too palpable a flaw in the crystal of the Church's authority, too
visible a rent in the raiment of their priest.  Her figure focused
all the uneasy amazement and heart searchings of these last weeks.
Mothers quivered with the knowledge that their daughters could see
her; wives with the idea that their husbands were seeing her.  Men
experienced sensations varying from condemnation to a sort of
covetousness.  Young folk wondered, and felt inclined to giggle.  Old
maids could hardly bear to look.  Here and there a man or woman who
had seen life face to face, was simply sorry!  The consciousness of
all who knew her personally was at stretch how to behave if they came
within reach of her in going out.  For, though only half a dozen
would actually rub shoulders with her, all knew that they might be,
and many felt it their duty to be, of that half-dozen, so as to
establish their attitude once for all.  It was, in fact, too severe a
test for human nature and the feelings which Church ought to arouse.
The stillness of that young figure, the impossibility of seeing her
face and judging of her state of mind thereby; finally, a faint
lurking shame that they should be so intrigued and disturbed by
something which had to do with sex, in this House of Worship--all
combined to produce in every mind that herd-feeling of defence, which
so soon becomes, offensive.  And, half unconscious, half aware of it
all, Noel stood, and sat, and knelt.  Once or twice she saw her
father's eyes fixed on her; and, still in the glow of last night's
pity and remorse, felt a kind of worship for his thin grave face.
But for the most part, her own wore the expression Lavendie had
translated to his canvas--the look of one ever waiting for the
extreme moments of life, for those few and fleeting poignancies which
existence holds for the human heart.  A look neither hungry nor
dissatisfied, but dreamy and expectant, which might blaze into warmth
and depth at any moment, and then go back to its dream.

When the last notes of the organ died away she continued to sit very
still, without looking round.

There was no second Service, and the congregation melted out behind
her, and had dispersed into the streets and squares long before she
came forth.  After hesitating whether or no to go to the vestry door,
she turned away and walked home alone.

It was this deliberate evasion of all contact which probably clinched
the business.  The absence of vent, of any escape-pipe for the
feelings, is always dangerous.  They felt cheated.  If Noel had come
out amongst all those whose devotions her presence had disturbed, if
in that exit, some had shown and others had witnessed one knows not
what of a manifested ostracism, the outraged sense of social decency
might have been appeased and sleeping dogs allowed to lie, for we
soon get used to things; and, after all, the war took precedence in
every mind even over social decency.  But none of this had occurred,
and a sense that Sunday after Sunday the same little outrage would
happen to them, moved more than a dozen quite unrelated persons, and
caused the posting that evening of as many letters, signed and
unsigned, to a certain quarter.  London is no place for parish
conspiracy, and a situation which in the country would have provoked
meetings more or less public, and possibly a resolution, could
perhaps only thus be dealt with.  Besides, in certain folk there is
ever a mysterious itch to write an unsigned letter--such missives
satisfy some obscure sense of justice, some uncontrollable longing to
get even with those who have hurt or disturbed them, without
affording the offenders chance for further hurt or disturbance.

Letters which are posted often reach their destination.

On Wednesday morning Pierson was sitting in his study at the hour
devoted to the calls of his parishioners, when the maid announced,
"Canon Rushbourne, sir," and he saw before him an old College friend
whom he had met but seldom in recent years.  His visitor was a short,
grey-haired man of rather portly figure, whose round, rosy, good-
humoured face had a look of sober goodness, and whose light-blue eyes
shone a little.  He grasped Pierson's hand, and said in a voice to
whose natural heavy resonance professional duty had added a certain
unction:

"My dear Edward, how many years it is since we met!  Do you remember
dear old Blakeway?  I saw him only yesterday.  He's just the same.
I'm delighted to see you again," and he laughed a little soft nervous
laugh.  Then for a few moments he talked of the war and old College
days, and Pierson looked at him and thought: 'What has he come for?'

"You've something to say to me, Alec," he said, at last.

Canon Rushbourne leaned forward in his chair, and answered with
evident effort: "Yes; I wanted to have a little talk with you,
Edward.  I hope you won't mind.  I do hope you won't."

"Why should I mind?"

Canon Rushbourne's eyes shone more than ever, there was real
friendliness in his face.

"I know you've every right to say to me: 'Mind your own business.'
But I made up my mind to come as a friend, hoping to save you from
--er" he stammered, and began again: "I think you ought to know of
the feeling in your parish that--er--that--er--your position is very
delicate.  Without breach of confidence I may tell you that letters
have been sent to headquarters; you can imagine perhaps what I mean.
Do believe, my dear friend, that I'm actuated by my old affection for
you; nothing else, I do assure you."

In the silence, his breathing could be heard, as of a man a little
touched with asthma, while he continually smoothed his thick black
knees, his whole face radiating an anxious kindliness.  The sun shone
brightly on those two black figures, so very different, and drew out
of their well-worn garments the faint latent green mossiness which.
underlies the clothes of clergymen.

At last Pierson said: "Thank you, Alec; I understand."

The Canon uttered a resounding sigh.  "You didn't realise how very
easily people misinterpret her being here with you; it seems to them
a kind--a kind of challenge.  They were bound, I think, to feel that;
and I'm afraid, in consequence--" He stopped, moved by the fact that
Pierson had closed his eyes.

"I am to choose, you mean, between my daughter and my parish?"

The Canon seemed, with a stammer of words, to try and blunt the edge
of that clear question.

"My visit is quite informal, my dear fellow; I can't say at all.  But
there is evidently much feeling; that is what I wanted you to know.
You haven't quite seen, I think, that--"

Pierson raised his hand.  "I can't talk of this."

The Canon rose.  "Believe me, Edward, I sympathise deeply.  I felt I
had to warn you."  He held out his hand.  "Good-bye, my dear friend,
do forgive me"; and he went out.  In the hall an adventure befell him
so plump, and awkward, that he could barely recite it to Mrs.
Rushbourne that night.

"Coming out from my poor friend," he said, "I ran into a baby's
perambulator and that young mother, whom I remember as a little
thing"--he held his hand at the level of his thigh--"arranging it for
going out.  It startled me; and I fear I asked quite foolishly: 'Is
it a boy?'  The poor young thing looked up at me.  She has very large
eyes, quite beautiful, strange eyes.  'Have you been speaking to
Daddy about me?'  'My dear young lady,' I said, 'I'm such an old
friend, you see.  You must forgive me.'  And then she said: 'Are they
going to ask him to resign?'  'That depends on you,' I said.  Why do
I say these things, Charlotte?  I ought simply to have held my
tongue.  Poor young thing; so very young!  And the little baby!"
"She has brought it on herself, Alec," Mrs, Rushbourne replied.




VII

1

The moment his visitor had vanished, Pierson paced up and down the
study, with anger rising in his, heart.  His daughter or his parish!
The old saw, "An Englishman's house is his castle!"  was being
attacked within him.  Must he not then harbour his own daughter, and
help her by candid atonement to regain her inward strength and peace?
Was he not thereby acting as a true Christian, in by far the hardest
course he and she could pursue?  To go back on that decision and
imperil his daughter's spirit, or else resign his parish--the
alternatives were brutal!  This was the centre of his world, the only
spot where so lonely a man could hope to feel even the semblance of
home; a thousand little threads tethered him to his church, his
parishioners, and this house--for, to live on here if he gave up his
church was out of the question.  But his chief feeling was a
bewildered anger that for doing what seemed to him his duty, he
should be attacked by his parishioners.

A passion of desire to know what they really thought and felt--these
parishioners of his, whom he had befriended, and for whom he had
worked so long--beset him now, and he went out.  But the absurdity of
his quest struck him before he had gone the length of the Square.
One could not go to people and say: "Stand and deliver me your inmost
judgments."  And suddenly he was aware of how far away he really was
from them.  Through all his ministrations had he ever come to know
their hearts?  And now, in this dire necessity for knowledge, there
seemed no way of getting it.  He went at random into a stationer's
shop; the shopman sang bass in his choir.  They had met Sunday after
Sunday for the last seven years.  But when, with this itch for
intimate knowledge on him, he saw the man behind the counter, it was
as if he were looking on him for the first time.  The Russian
proverb, "The heart of another is a dark forest," gashed into his
mind, while he said:

"Well, Hodson, what news of your son?"

"Nothing more, Mr.  Pierson, thank you, sir, nothing more at
present."

And it seemed to Pierson, gazing at the man's face clothed in a
short, grizzling beard cut rather like his own, that he must be
thinking: 'Ah! sir, but what news of your daughter?' No one would
ever tell him to his face what he was thinking.  And buying two
pencils, he went out.  On the other side of the road was a bird-
fancier's shop, kept by a woman whose husband had been taken for the
Army.  She was not friendly towards him, for it was known to her that
he had expostulated with her husband for keeping larks, and other
wild birds.  And quite deliberately he crossed the road, and stood
looking in at the window, with the morbid hope that from this
unfriendly one he might hear truth.  She was in her shop, and came to
the door.

"Have you any news of your husband, Mrs.  Cherry?"

"No, Mr.  Pierson, I 'ave not; not this week."

"He hasn't gone out yet?"

"No, Mr.  Pierson; 'e 'as not."

There was no expression on her face, perfectly blank it was--Pierson
had a mad longing to say 'For God's sake, woman, speak out what's in
your mind; tell me what you think of me and my daughter.  Never mind
my cloth!'  But he could no more say it than the woman could tell him
what was in her mind.  And with a "Good morning" he passed on.  No
man or woman would tell him anything, unless, perhaps, they were
drunk.  He came to a public house, and for a moment even hesitated
before it, but the thought of insult aimed at Noel stopped him, and
he passed that too.  And then reality made itself known to him.
Though he had come out to hear what they were thinking, he did not
really want to hear it, could not endure it if he did.  He had been
too long immune from criticism, too long in the position of one who
may tell others what he thinks of them.  And standing there in the
crowded street, he was attacked by that longing for the country which
had always come on him when he was hard pressed.  He looked at his
memoranda.  By stupendous luck it was almost a blank day.  An omnibus
passed close by which would take him far out.  He climbed on to it,
and travelled as far as Hendon; then getting down, set forth on foot.
It was bright and hot, and the May blossom in full foam.  He walked
fast along the perfectly straight road till he came to the top of
Elstree Hill.  There for a few moments he stood gazing at the school
chapel, the cricket-field, the wide land beyond.  All was very quiet,
for it was lunch-time.  A horse was tethered there, and a strolling
cat, as though struck by the tall black incongruity of his figure,
paused in her progress, then, slithering under the wicket gate,
arched her back and rubbed herself against his leg, crinkling and
waving the tip of her tail.  Pierson bent down and stroked the
creature's head; but uttering a faint miaou, the cat stepped daintily
across the road, Pierson too stepped on, past the village, and down
over the stile, into a field path.  At the edge of the young clover,
under a bank of hawthorn, he lay down on his back, with his hat
beside him and his arms crossed over his chest, like the effigy of
some crusader one may see carved on an old tomb.  Though he lay quiet
as that old knight, his eyes were not closed, but fixed on the blue,
where a lark was singing.  Its song refreshed his spirit; its
passionate light-heartedness stirred all the love of beauty in him,
awoke revolt against a world so murderous and uncharitable.  Oh! to
pass up with that song into a land of bright spirits, where was
nothing ugly, hard, merciless, and the gentle face of the Saviour
radiated everlasting love!  The scent of the mayflowers, borne down
by the sun shine, drenched his senses; he closed his eyes, and, at
once, as if resenting that momentary escape, his mind resumed debate
with startling intensity.  This matter went to the very well-springs,
had a terrible and secret significance.  If to act as conscience bade
him rendered him unfit to keep his parish, all was built on sand, had
no deep reality, was but rooted in convention.  Charity, and the
forgiveness of sins honestly atoned for--what be came of them?
Either he was wrong to have espoused straightforward confession and
atonement for her, or they were wrong in chasing him from that
espousal.  There could be no making those extremes to meet.  But if
he were wrong, having done the hardest thing already--where could he
turn?  His Church stood bankrupt of ideals.  He felt as if pushed
over the edge of the world, with feet on space, and head in some
blinding cloud.  'I cannot have been wrong,' he thought; 'any other
course was so much easier.  I sacrificed my pride, and my poor girl's
pride; I would have loved to let her run away.  If for this we are to
be stoned and cast forth, what living force is there in the religion
I have loved; what does it all come to?  Have I served a sham?  I
cannot and will not believe it.  Something is wrong with me,
something is wrong--but where--what?'  He rolled over, lay on his
face, and prayed.  He prayed for guidance and deliverance from the
gusts of anger which kept sweeping over him; even more for relief
from the feeling of personal outrage, and the unfairness of this
thing.  He had striven to be loyal to what he thought the right, had
sacrificed all his sensitiveness, all his secret fastidious pride in
his child and himself.  For that he was to be thrown out!  Whether
through prayer, or in the scent and feel of the clover, he found
presently a certain rest.  Away in the distance he could see the
spire of Harrow Church.

The Church!  No!  She was not, could not be, at fault.  The fault was
in himself.  'I am unpractical,' he thought.  'It is so, I know.
Agnes used to say so, Bob and Thirza think so.  They all think me
unpractical and dreamy.  Is it a sin--I wonder?'  There were lambs in
the next field; he watched their gambollings and his heart relaxed;
brushing the clover dust off his black clothes, he began to retrace
his steps.  The boys were playing cricket now, and he stood a few
minutes watching them.  He had not seen cricket played since the war
began; it seemed almost otherworldly, with the click of the bats, and
the shrill young 'voices, under the distant drone of that sky-hornet
threshing along to Hendon.  A boy made a good leg hit.  "Well
played!" he called.  Then, suddenly conscious of his own incongruity
and strangeness in that green spot, he turned away on the road back
to London.  To resign; to await events; to send Noel away--of those
three courses, the last alone seemed impossible.  'Am I really so far
from them,' he thought, 'that they can wish me to go, for this?  If
so, I had better go.  It will be just another failure.  But I won't
believe it yet; I can't believe it.'

The heat was sweltering, and he became very tired before at last he
reached his omnibus, and could sit with the breeze cooling his hot
face.  He did not reach home till six, having eaten nothing since
breakfast.  Intending to have a bath and lie down till dinner, he
went upstairs.

Unwonted silence reigned.  He tapped on the nursery door.  It was
deserted; he passed through to Noel's room; but that too was empty.
The wardrobe stood open as if it had been hastily ransacked, and her
dressing-table was bare.  In alarm he went to the bell and pulled it
sharply.  The old-fashioned ring of it jingled out far below.  The
parlour-maid came up.

"Where are Miss Noel and Nurse, Susan?"

"I didn't know you were in, sir.  Miss Noel left me this note to give
you.  They--I--"

Pierson stopped her with his hand.  "Thank you, Susan; get me some
tea, please."  With the note unopened in his hand, he waited till she
was gone.  His head was going round, and he sat down on the side of
Noel's bed to read:

"DARLING DADDY,

"The man who came this morning told me of what is going to happen.  I
simply won't have it.  I'm sending Nurse and baby down to Kestrel at
once, and going to Leila's for the night, until I've made up my mind
what to do.  I knew it was a mistake my coming back.  I don't care
what happens to me, but I won't have you hurt.  I think it's hateful
of people to try and injure you for my fault.  I've had to borrow
money from Susan--six pounds.  Oh! Daddy dear, forgive me.

"Your loving

"NOLLIE."


He read it with unutterable relief; at all events he knew where she
was--poor, wilful, rushing, loving-hearted child; knew where she was,
and could get at her.  After his bath and some tea, he would go to
Leila's and bring her back.  Poor little Nollie, thinking that by
just leaving his house she could settle this deep matter!  He did not
hurry, feeling decidedly exhausted, and it was nearly eight before he
set out, leaving a message for Gratian, who did not as a rule come in
from her hospital till past nine.

The day was still glowing, and now, in the cool of evening, his
refreshed senses soaked up its beauty.  'God has so made this world,'
he thought, 'that, no matter what our struggles and sufferings, it's
ever a joy to live when the sun shines, or the moon is bright, or the
night starry.  Even we can't spoil it.'  In Regent's Park the lilacs
and laburnums were still in bloom though June had come, and he gazed
at them in passing, as a lover might at his lady.  His conscience
pricked him suddenly.  Mrs. Mitchett and the dark-eyed girl she had
brought to him on New Year's Eve, the very night he had learned of
his own daughter's tragedy--had he ever thought of them since?  How
had that poor girl fared?  He had been too impatient of her
impenetrable mood.  What did he know of the hearts of others, when he
did not even know his own, could not rule his feelings of anger and
revolt, had not guided his own daughter into the waters of safety!
And Leila!  Had he not been too censorious in thought?  How powerful,
how strange was this instinct of sex, which hovered and swooped on
lives, seized them, bore them away, then dropped them exhausted and
defenceless!  Some munition-wagons, painted a dull grey, lumbered
past, driven by sunburned youths in drab.  Life-force, Death-force--
was it all one; the great unknowable momentum from which there was
but the one escape, in the arms of their Heavenly Father?  Blake's
little old stanzas came into his mind:

    "And we are put on earth a little space,
     That we may learn to bear the beams of love;
     And these black bodies and this sunburnt face
     Are but a cloud, and like a shady grove.

    "For when our souls have learned the heat to bear,
     The cloud will vanish, we shall hear His voice,
     Saying: Come out from the grove, my love and care,
     And round my golden tent like lambs rejoice!"

Learned the heat to bear!  Those lambs he had watched in a field that
afternoon, their sudden little leaps and rushes, their funny
quivering wriggling tails, their tiny nuzzling black snouts--what
little miracles of careless joy among the meadow flowers!  Lambs, and
flowers, and sunlight!  Famine, lust, and the great grey guns!  A
maze, a wilderness; and but for faith, what issue, what path for man
to take which did not keep him wandering hopeless, in its thicket?
'God preserve our faith in love, in charity, and the life to come!'
he thought.  And a blind man with a dog, to whose neck was tied a
little deep dish for pennies, ground a hurdy-gurdy as he passed.
Pierson put a shilling in the dish.  The man stopped playing, his
whitish eyes looked up.  "Thank you kindly, sir; I'll go home now.
Come on, Dick!"  He tapped his way round the corner, with his dog
straining in front.  A blackbird hidden among the blossoms of an
acacia, burst into evening song, and another great grey munition-
wagon rumbled out through the Park gate.



2

The Church-clock was striking nine when he reached Leila's flat, went
up, and knocked.  Sounds from-a piano ceased; the door was opened by
Noel.  She recoiled when she saw who it was, and said:

"Why did you come, Daddy?  It was much better not."

"Are you alone here?"

"Yes; Leila gave me her key.  She has to be at the hospital till ten
to-night"

"You must come home with me, my dear."

Noel closed the piano, and sat down on the divan.  Her face had the
same expression as when he had told her that she could not marry
Cyril Morland.

"Come, Nollie," he said; "don't be unreasonable.  We must see this
through together."

"No."

"My dear, that's childish.  Do you think the mere accident of your
being or not being at home can affect my decision as to what my duty
is?"

"Yes; it's my being there that matters.  Those people don't care, so
long as it isn't an open scandal"

"Nollie!"

"But it is so, Daddy.  Of course it's so, and you know it.  If I'm
away they'll just pity you for having a bad daughter.  And quite
right too.  I am a bad daughter."

Pierson smiled.  "Just like when you were a tiny."

"I wish I were a tiny again, or ten years older.  It's this half
age--But I'm not coming back with you, Daddy; so it's no good."

Pierson sat down beside her.

"I've been thinking this over all day," he said quietly.  "Perhaps in
my pride I made a mistake when I first knew of your trouble.  Perhaps
I ought to have accepted the consequences of my failure, then, and
have given up, and taken you away at once.  After all, if a man is
not fit to have the care of souls, he should have the grace to know
it."

"But you are fit," cried Noel passionately; "Daddy, you are fit!"

"I'm afraid not.  There is something wanting in me, I don't know
exactly what; but something very wanting."

"There isn't.  It's only that you're too good--that's why!"

Pierson shook his head.  "Don't, Nollie!"

"I will," cried Noel.  "You're too gentle, and you're too good.
You're charitable, and you're simple, and you believe in another
world; that's what's the matter with you, Daddy.  Do you think they
do, those people who want to chase us out?  They don't even begin to
believe, whatever they say or think.  I hate them, and sometimes I
hate the Church; either it's hard and narrow, or else it's worldly."
She stopped at the expression on her father's face, the most strange
look of pain, and horror, as if an unspoken treachery of his own had
been dragged forth for his inspection.

"You're talking wildly," he said, but his lips were trembling.  "You
mustn't say things like that; they're blasphemous and wicked."

Noel bit her lips, sitting very stiff and still, against a high blue
cushion.  Then she burst out again:

"You've slaved for those people years and years, and you've had no
pleasure and you've had no love; and they wouldn't care that if you
broke your heart.  They don't care for anything, so long as it all
seems proper.  Daddy, if you let them hurt you, I won't forgive you!"

"And what if you hurt me now, Nollie?"

Noel pressed his hand against her warm cheek.

"Oh, no!  Oh, no!  I don't--I won't.  Not again.  I've done that
already."

"Very well, my dear!  then come home with me, and we'll see what's
best to be done.  It can't be settled by running away."

Noel dropped his hand.  "No.  Twice I've done what you wanted, and
it's been a mistake.  If I hadn't gone to Church on Sunday to please
you, perhaps it would never have come to this.  You don't see things,
Daddy.  I could tell, though I was sitting right in front.  I knew
what their faces were like, and what they were thinking."

"One must do right, Nollie, and not mind."

"Yes; but what is right?  It's not right for me to hurt you, and I'm
not going to."

Pierson understood all at once that it was useless to try and move
her.

"What are you going to do, then?"

"I suppose I shall go to Kestrel to-morrow.  Auntie will have me, I
know; I shall talk to Leila."

"Whatever you do, promise to let me know."

Noel nodded.

"Daddy, you--look awfully, awfully tired.  I'm going to give you some
medicine."  She went to a little three-cornered cupboard, and bent
down.  Medicine!  The medicine he wanted was not for the body;
knowledge of what his duty was--that alone could heal him!

The loud popping of a cork roused him.  "What are you doing, Nollie?"

Noel rose with a flushed face, holding in one hand a glass of
champagne, in the other a biscuit.

"You're to take this; and I'm going to have some myself."

"My dear," said Pierson bewildered; "it's not yours."

"Drink it; Daddy!  Don't you know that Leila would never forgive me
if I let you go home looking like that.  Besides, she told me I was
to eat.  Drink it.  You can send her a nice present.  Drink it!"  And
she stamped her foot.

Pierson took the glass, and sat there nibbling and sipping.  It was
nice, very!  He had not quite realised how much he needed food and
drink.  Noel returned from the cupboard a second time; she too had a
glass and a biscuit.

"There, you look better already.  Now you're to go home at once, in a
cab if you can get one; and tell Gratian to make you feed up, or you
won't have a body at all; you can't do your duty if you haven't one,
you know."

Pierson smiled, and finished the champagne.

Noel took the glass from him.  "You're my child to-night, and I'm
going to send you to bed.  Don't worry, Daddy; it'll all come right."
And, taking his arm, she went downstairs with him, and blew him a
kiss from the doorway.

He walked away in a sort of dream.  Daylight was not quite gone, but
the moon was up, just past its full, and the search-lights had begun
their nightly wanderings.  It was a sky of ghosts and shadows,
fitting to the thought which came to him.  The finger of Providence
was in all this, perhaps!  Why should he not go out to France!  At
last; why not?  Some better man, who understood men's hearts, who
knew the world, would take his place; and he could go where death
made all things simple, and he could not fail.  He walked faster and
faster, full of an intoxicating relief.  Thirza and Gratian would
take care of Nollie far better than he.  Yes, surely it was ordained!
Moonlight had the town now; and all was steel blue, the very air
steel-blue; a dream-city of marvellous beauty, through which he
passed, exalted.  Soon he would be where that poor boy, and a million
others, had given their lives; with the mud and the shells and the
scarred grey ground, and the jagged trees, where Christ was daily
crucified--there where he had so often longed to be these three years
past.  It was ordained!

And two women whom he met looked at each other when he had gone by,
and those words 'the blighted crow' which they had been about to
speak, died on their lips.




VIII

Noel felt light-hearted too, as if she had won a victory.  She found
some potted meat, spread it on another biscuit, ate it greedily, and
finished the pint bottle of champagne.  Then she hunted for the
cigarettes, and sat down at the piano.  She played old tunes--"There
is a Tavern in the Town," "Once I Loved a Maiden Fair," "Mowing the
Barley," "Clementine," "Lowlands," and sang to them such words as she
remembered.  There was a delicious running in her veins, and once she
got up and danced.  She was kneeling at the window, looking out, when
she heard the door open, and without getting up, cried out:

"Isn't it a gorgeous night!  I've had Daddy here.  I gave him some of
your champagne, and drank the rest--" then was conscious of a figure
far too tall for Leila, and a man's voice saying:

"I'm awfully sorry.  It's only I, Jimmy Fort."

Noel scrambled up.  "Leila isn't in; but she will be directly--it's
past ten."

He was standing stock-still in the middle of the room.

"Won't you sit down?  Oh!  and won't you have a cigarette?"

"Thanks."

By the flash of his briquette she saw his face clearly; the look on
it filled her with a sort of malicious glee.

"I'm going now," she said.  "Would you mind telling Leila that I
found I couldn't stop?"  She made towards the divan to get her hat.
When she had put it on, she found him standing just in front of her.

"Noel-if you don't mind me calling you that?"

"Not a bit."

"Don't go; I'm going myself."

"Oh, no!  Not for worlds."  She tried to slip past, but he took hold
of her wrist.

"Please; just one minute!"

Noel stayed motionless, looking at him, while his hand still held her
wrist.  He said quietly:

"Do you mind telling me why you came here?"

"Oh, just to see Leila."

"Things have come to a head at home, haven't they?"

Noel shrugged her shoulders.

"You came for refuge, didn't you?"

"From whom?"

"Don't be angry; from the need of hurting your father."

She nodded.

"I knew it would come to that.  What are you going to do?"

"Enjoy myself."  She was saying something fatuous, yet she meant it.

"That's absurd.  Don't be angry!  You're quite right.  Only, you must
begin at the right end, mustn't you?  Sit down!"

Noel tried to free her wrist.

"No; sit down, please."

Noel sat down; but as he loosed her wrist, she laughed.  This was
where he sat with Leila, where they would sit when she was gone.
"It's awfully funny, isn't it?" she said.

"Funny?"  he muttered savagely.  "Most things are, in this funny
world."

The sound of a taxi stopping not far off had come to her ears, and
she gathered her feet under her, planting them firmly.  If she sprang
up, could she slip by him before he caught her arm again, and get
that taxi?

"If I go now," he said, "will you promise me to stop till you've seen
Leila?"

"No."

"That's foolish.  Come, promise!"

Noel shook her head.  She felt a perverse pleasure at his
embarrassment.

"Leila's lucky, isn't she?  No children, no husband, no father, no
anything.  Lovely!"

She saw his arm go up as if to ward off a blow.  "Poor Leila!" he
said.

"Why are you sorry for her?  She has freedom!  And she has you!"

She knew it would hurt; but she wanted to hurt him.

"You needn't envy her for that."

He had just spoken, when Noel saw a figure over by the door.

She jumped up, and said breathlessly:

"Oh, here you are, Leila!  Father's been here, and we've had some of
your champagne!"

"Capital!  You are in the dark!"

Noel felt the blood rush into her cheeks.  The light leaped up, and
Leila came forward.  She looked extremely pale, calm, and self-
contained, in her nurse's dress; her full lips were tightly pressed
together, but Noel could see her breast heaving violently.  A turmoil
of shame and wounded pride began raging in the girl.  Why had she not
flown long ago?  Why had she let herself be trapped like this?  Leila
would think she had been making up to him!  Horrible!  Disgusting!
Why didn't he--why didn't some one, speak?  Then Leila said:

"I didn't expect you, Jimmy; I'm glad you haven't been dull.  Noel is
staying here to-night.  Give me a cigarette.  Sit down, both of you.
I'm awfully tired!"

She sank into a chair, leaning back, with her knees crossed; and at
that moment Noel admired her.  She had said it beautifully; she
looked so calm.  Fort was lighting her cigarette; his hand was
shaking, his face all sorry and mortified.

"Give Noel one, too, and draw the curtains, Jimmy.  Quick!  Not that
it makes any difference; it's as light as day.  Sit down, dear."

But Noel remained standing.

"What have you been talking of?  Love and Chinese lanterns, or only
me?"

At those words Fort, who was drawing the last curtain, turned round;
his tall figure was poised awkwardly against the wall, his face,
unsuited to diplomacy, had a look as of flesh being beaten.  If weals
had started up across it, Noel would not have been surprised.

He said with painful slowness:

"I don't exactly know; we had hardly begun, had we?"

"The night is young," said Leila.  "Go on while I just take off my
things."

She rose with the cigarette between her lips, and went into the inner
room.  In passing, she gave Noel a look.  What there was in that
look, the girl could never make clear even to herself.  Perhaps a
creature shot would gaze like that, with a sort of profound and
distant questioning, reproach, and anger, with a sort of pride, and
the quiver of death.  As the door closed, Fort came right across the
room.

"Go to her;" cried Noel; "she wants you.  Can't you see, she wants
you?"

And before he could move, she was at the door.  She flew downstairs,
and out into the moonlight.  The taxi, a little way off, was just
beginning to move away; she ran towards it, calling out:

"Anywhere!  Piccadilly!" and jumping in, blotted herself against the
cushions in the far corner.

She did not come to herself, as it were, for several minutes, and
then feeling she 'could no longer bear the cab, stopped it, and got
out.  Where was she?  Bond Street!  She began, idly, wandering down
its narrow length; the fullest street by day, the emptiest by night.
Oh!  it had been horrible!  Nothing said by any of them--nothing, and
yet everything dragged out--of him, of Leila, of herself!  She seemed
to have no pride or decency left, as if she had been caught stealing.
All her happy exhilaration was gone, leaving a miserable
recklessness.  Nothing she did was right, nothing turned out well, so
what did it all matter?  The moonlight flooding down between the tall
houses gave her a peculiar heady feeling.  "Fey" her father had
called her.  She laughed.  'But I'm not going home,' she thought.
Bored with the street's length; she turned off, and was suddenly in
Hanover Square.  There was the Church, grey-white, where she had been
bridesmaid to a second cousin, when she was fifteen.  She seemed to
see it all again--her frock, the lilies in her hand, the surplices of
the choir, the bride's dress, all moonlight-coloured, and unreal.
'I wonder what's become of her!' she thought.  'He's dead, I expect,
like Cyril!'  She saw her father's face as he was marrying them,
heard his voice: "For better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in
sickness and in health, till death do you part."  And the moonlight
on the Church seemed to shift and quiver-some pigeons perhaps had
been disturbed up there.  Then instead of that wedding vision, she
saw Monsieur Barra, sitting on his chair, gazing at the floor, and
Chica nursing her doll.  "All mad, mademoiselle, a little mad.
Millions of men with white souls, but all a little tiny bit mad, you
know."  Then Leila's face came before her, with that look in her
eyes.  She felt again the hot clasp of Fort's fingers on her wrist,
and walked on, rubbing it with the other hand.  She turned into
Regent Street.  The wide curve of the Quadrant swept into a sky of
unreal blue, and the orange-shaded lamps merely added to the
unreality.  'Love and Chinese lanterns!  I should like some coffee,'
she thought suddenly.  She was quite close to the place where
Lavendie had taken her.  Should she go in there?  Why not?  She must
go somewhere.  She turned into the revolving cage of glass.  But no
sooner was she imprisoned there than in a flash Lavendie's face of
disgust; and the red-lipped women, the green stuff that smelled of
peppermint came back, filling her with a rush of dismay.  She made
the full circle in the revolving cage; and came out into the street
again with a laugh.  A tall young man in khaki stood there: "Hallo!"
he said.  "Come in and dance!"  She started, recoiled from him and
began to walk away as fast as ever she could.  She passed a woman
whose eyes seemed to scorch her.  A woman like a swift vision of ruin
with those eyes, and thickly powdered cheeks, and loose red mouth.
Noel shuddered and fled along, feeling that her only safety lay in
speed.  But she could not walk about all night.  There would be no
train for Kestrel till the morning--and did she really want to go
there, and eat her heart out?  Suddenly she thought of George.  Why
should she not go down to him?  He would know what was best for her
to do.  At the foot of the steps below the Waterloo Column she stood
still.  All was quiet there and empty, the great buildings whitened,
the trees blurred and blue; and sweeter air was coming across their
flowering tops.  The queer "fey" moony sensation was still with her;
so that she felt small and light, as if she could have floated
through a ring.  Faint rims of light showed round the windows of the
Admiralty.  The war!  However lovely the night, however sweet the
lilac smelt-that never stopped!  She turned away and passed out under
the arch, making for the station.  The train of the wounded had just
come in, and she stood in the cheering crowd watching the ambulances
run out.  Tears of excited emotion filled her eyes, and trickled
down.  Steady, smooth, grey, one after the other they came gliding,
with a little burst of cheers greeting each one.  All were gone now,
and she could pass in.  She went to the buffet and got a large cup of
coffee, and a bun.  Then, having noted the time of her early morning
train, she sought the ladies' waiting-room, and sitting down in a
corner, took out her purse and counted her money.  Two pounds
fifteen-enough to go to the hotel, if she liked.  But, without
luggage--it was so conspicuous, and she could sleep in this corner
all right, if she wanted.  What did girls do who had no money, and no
friends to go to?  Tucked away in the corner of that empty, heavy,
varnished room, she seemed to see the cruelty and hardness of life as
she had never before seen it, not even when facing her confinement.
How lucky she had been, and was!  Everyone was good to her.  She had
no real want or dangers, to face.  But, for women--yes, and men too--
who had no one to fall back on, nothing but their own hands and
health and luck, it must be awful.  That girl whose eyes had scorched
her--perhaps she had no one--nothing.  And people who were born ill,
and the millions of poor women, like those whom she had gone visiting
with Gratian sometimes in the poorer streets of her father's parish--
for the first time she seemed to really know and feel the sort of
lives they led.  And then, Leila's face came back to her once more--
Leila whom she had robbed.  And the worst of it was, that, alongside
her remorseful sympathy, she felt a sort of satisfaction.  She could
not help his not loving Leila, she could not help it if he loved
herself!  And he did--she knew it!  To feel that anyone loved her was
so comforting.  But it was all awful!  And she--the cause of it!  And
yet--she had never done or said anything to attract him.  No!  She
could not have helped it.

She had begun to feel drowsy, and closed her eyes.  And gradually
there came on her a cosey sensation, as if she were leaning up
against someone with her head tucked in against his shoulder, as she
had so often leaned as a child against her father, coming back from
some long darkening drive in Wales or Scotland.  She seemed even to
feel the wet soft Westerly air on her face and eyelids, and to sniff
the scent of a frieze coat; to hear the jog of hoofs and the rolling
of the wheels; to feel the closing in of the darkness.  Then, so
dimly and drowsily, she seemed to know that it was not her father,
but someone--someone--then no more, no more at all.




IX

She was awakened by the scream of an engine, and looked around her
amazed.  Her neck had fallen sideways while she slept, and felt
horridly stiff; her head ached, and she was shivering.  She saw by
the clock that it was past five.  'If only I could get some tea!' she
thought.  'Anyway I won't stay here any longer!'  When she had
washed, and rubbed some of the stiffness out of her neck, the tea
renewed her sense of adventure wonderfully.  Her train did not start
for an hour; she had time for a walk, to warm herself, and went down
to the river.  There was an early haze, and all looked a little
mysterious; but people were already passing on their way to work.
She walked along, looking at the water flowing up under the bright
mist to which the gulls gave a sort of hovering life.  She went as
far as Blackfriars Bridge, and turning back, sat down on a bench
under a plane-tree, just as the sun broke through.  A little pasty
woman with a pinched yellowish face was already sitting there, so
still, and seeming to see so little, that Noel wondered of what she
could be thinking.  While she watched, the woman's face began
puckering, and tears rolled slowly, down, trickling from pucker to
pucker, till, summoning up her courage, Noel sidled nearer, and said:

"Oh! What's the matter?"

The tears seemed to stop from sheer surprise; little grey eyes gazed
round, patient little eyes from above an almost bridgeless nose.

"I'ad a baby.  It's dead....  its father's dead in France....  I was
goin' in the water, but I didn't like the look of it, and now I never
will."

That "Now I never will," moved Noel terribly.  She slid her arm along
the back of the bench and clasped the skinniest of shoulders.

"Don't cry!"

"It was my first.  I'm thirty-eight.  I'll never 'ave another.  Oh!
Why didn't I go in the water?"

The face puckered again, and the squeezed-out tears ran down.  'Of
course she must cry,' thought Noel; 'cry and cry till it feels
better.' And she stroked the shoulder of the little woman, whose
emotion was disengaging the scent of old clothes.

"The father of my baby was killed in France, too," she said at last.
The little sad grey eyes looked curiously round.

"Was 'e?  'Ave you got your baby still?"

"Yes, oh, yes!"

"I'm glad of that.  It 'urts so bad, it does.  I'd rather lose me
'usband than me baby, any day."  The sun was shining now on a cheek
of that terribly patient face; its brightness seemed cruel perching
there.

"Can I do anything to help you?"  Noel murmured.

"No, thank you, miss.  I'm goin' 'ome now.  I don't live far.  Thank
you kindly."  And raising her eyes for one more of those half-
bewildered looks, she moved away along the Embankment wall.  When she
was out of sight, Noel walked back to the station.  The train was in,
and she took her seat.  She had three fellow passengers, all in
khaki; very silent and moody, as men are when they have to get up
early.  One was tall, dark, and perhaps thirty-five; the second
small, arid about fifty, with cropped, scanty grey hair; the third
was of medium height and quite sixty-five, with a long row of little
coloured patches on his tunic, and a bald, narrow, well-shaped head,
grey hair brushed back at the sides, and the thin, collected features
and drooping moustache of the old school.  It was at him that Noel
looked.  When he glanced out of the window, or otherwise retired
within himself, she liked his face; but when he turned to the ticket-
collector or spoke to the others, she did not like it half so much.
It was as if the old fellow had two selves, one of which he used when
alone, the other in which he dressed every morning to meet the world.
They had begun to talk about some Tribunal on which they had to sit.
Noel did not listen, but a word or two carried to her now and then.

"How many to-day?"  she heard the old fellow ask, and the little
cropped man answering: "Hundred and fourteen."

Fresh from the sight of the poor little shabby woman and her grief,
she could not help a sort of shrinking from that trim old soldier,
with his thin, regular face, who held the fate of a "Hundred and
fourteen" in his firm, narrow grasp, perhaps every day.  Would he
understand their troubles or wants?  Of course he wouldn't!  Then,
she saw him looking at her critically with his keen eyes.  If he had
known her secret, he would be thinking: 'A lady and act like that!
Oh, no!  Quite-quite out of the question!'  And she felt as if she
could, sink under the seat with shame.  But no doubt he was only
thinking: 'Very young to be travelling by herself at this hour of the
morning.  Pretty too!'  If he knew the real truth of her--how he
would stare!  But why should this utter stranger, this old
disciplinarian, by a casual glance, by the mere form of his face,
make her feel more guilty and ashamed than she had yet felt?  That
puzzled her.  He was, must be, a narrow, conventional old man; but he
had this power to make her feel ashamed, because she felt that he had
faith in his gods, and was true to them; because she knew he would
die sooner than depart from his creed of conduct.  She turned to the
window, biting her lips-angry and despairing.  She would never--never
get used to her position; it was no good!  And again she had the
longing of her dream, to tuck her face away into that coat, smell the
scent of the frieze, snuggle in, be protected, and forget.  'If I had
been that poor lonely little woman,' she thought, 'and had lost
everything, I should have gone into the water.  I should have rushed
and jumped.  It's only luck that I'm alive.  I won't look at that old
man again: then I shan't feel so bad.'

She had bought some chocolate at the station, and nibbled it, gazing
steadily at the fields covered with daisies and the first of the
buttercups and cowslips.  The three soldiers were talking now in
carefully lowered voices.  The words: "women," "under control,"
"perfect plague," came to her, making her ears burn.  In the
hypersensitive mood caused by the strain of yesterday, her broken
night, and the emotional meeting with the little woman, she felt as
if they were including her among those "women."  'If we stop, I'll
get out,' she thought.  But when the train did stop it was they who
got out.  She felt the old General's keen veiled glance sum her up
for the last time, and looked full at him just for a moment.  He
touched his cap, and said: "Will you have the window up or down?"
and lingered to draw it half-way up.' His punctiliousness made her
feel worse than ever.  When the train had started again she roamed up
and down her empty carriage; there was no more a way out of her
position than out of this rolling cushioned carriage!  And then she
seemed to hear Fort's voice saying: 'Sit down, please!' and to feel
his fingers clasp her wrist, Oh!  he was nice and comforting; he
would never reproach or remind her!  And now, probably, she would
never see him again.

The train drew up at last.  She did not know where George lodged, and
would have to go to his hospital.  She planned to get there at half
past nine, and having eaten a sort of breakfast at the station, went
forth into the town.  The seaside was still wrapped in the early
glamour which haunts chalk of a bright morning.  But the streets were
very much alive.  Here was real business of the war.  She passed
houses which had been wrecked.  Trucks clanged and shunted, great
lorries rumbled smoothly by.  Sea--and Air-planes were moving like
great birds far up in the bright haze, and khaki was everywhere.  But
it was the sea Noel wanted.  She made her way westward to a little
beach; and, sitting down on a stone, opened her arms to catch the sun
on her face and chest.  The tide was nearly up, with the wavelets of
a blue bright sea.  The great fact, the greatest fact in the world,
except the sun; vast and free, making everything human seem small and
transitory!  It did her good, like a tranquillising friend.  The sea
might be cruel and terrible, awful things it could do, and awful
things were being done on it; but its wide level line, its never-
ending song, its sane savour, were the best medicine she could
possibly have taken.  She rubbed the Shelly sand between her fingers
in absurd ecstasy; took off her shoes and stockings, paddled, and sat
drying her legs in the sun.

When she left the little beach, she felt as if someone had said to
her:

'Your troubles are very little.  There's the sun, the sea, the air;
enjoy them.  They can't take those from you.'

At the hospital she had to wait half an hour in a little bare room
before George came.

"Nollie!  Splendid.  I've got an hour.  Let's get out of this
cemetery.  We'll have time for a good stretch on the tops.  Jolly of
you to have come to me.  Tell us all about it."

When she had finished, he squeezed her arm.  348

"I knew it wouldn't do.  Your Dad forgot that he's a public figure,
and must expect to be damned accordingly.  But though you've cut and
run, he'll resign all the same, Nollie."

"Oh, no!"  cried Noel.

George shook his head.

"Yes, he'll resign, you'll see, he's got no worldly sense; not a
grain."

"Then I shall have spoiled his life, just as if--oh, no!"

"Let's sit down here.  I must be back at eleven."

They sat down on a bench, where the green cliff stretched out before
them, over a sea quite clear of haze, far down and very blue.

"Why should he resign," cried Noel again, "now that I've gone?  He'll
be lost without it all."

George smiled.

"Found, my dear.  He'll be where he ought to be, Nollie, where the
Church is, and the Churchmen are not--in the air!"

"Don't!"  cried Noel passionately.

"No, no, I'm not chaffing.  There's no room on earth for saints in
authority.  There's use for a saintly symbol, even if one doesn't
hold with it, but there's no mortal use for those who try to have
things both ways--to be saints and seers of visions, and yet to come
the practical and worldly and rule ordinary men's lives.  Saintly
example yes; but not saintly governance.  You've been his
deliverance, Nollie."

"But Daddy loves his Church."

George frowned.  "Of course, it'll be a wrench.  A man's bound to
have a cosey feeling about a place where he's been boss so long; and
there is something about a Church--the drone, the scent, the half
darkness; there's beauty in it, it's a pleasant drug.  But he's not
being asked to give up the drug habit; only to stop administering
drugs to others.  Don't worry, Nollie; I don't believe that's ever
suited him, it wants a thicker skin than he's got."

"But all the people he helps?"

"No reason he shouldn't go on helping people, is there?"

"But to go on living there, without--Mother died there, you know!"

George grunted.  "Dreams, Nollie, all round him; of the past and the
future, of what people are and what he can do with them.  I never see
him without a skirmish, as you know, and yet I'm fond of him.  But I
should be twice as fond, and half as likely to skirmish, if he'd drop
the habits of authority.  Then I believe he'd have some real
influence over me; there's something beautiful about him, I know that
quite well."

"Yes," murmured Noel fervently.

"He's such a queer mixture," mused George.  "Clean out of his age;
chalks above most of the parsons in a spiritual sense and chalks
below most of them in the worldly.  And yet I believe he's in the
right of it.  The Church ought to be a forlorn hope, Nollie; then we
should believe in it.  Instead of that, it's a sort of business that
no one can take too seriously.  You see, the Church spiritual can't
make good in this age--has no chance of making good, and so in the
main it's given it up for vested interests and social influence.
Your father is a symbol of what the Church is not.  But what about
you, my dear?  There's a room at my boarding-house, and only one old
lady besides myself, who knits all the time.  If Grace can get
shifted we'll find a house, and you can have the baby.  They'll send
your luggage on from Paddington if you write; and in the meantime
Gracie's got some things here that you can have."

"I'll have to send a wire to Daddy."

"I'll do that.  You come to my diggings at half past one, and I'll
settle you in.  Until then, you'd better stay up here."

When he had gone she roamed a little farther, and lay down on the
short grass, where the chalk broke through in patches.  She could
hear a distant rumbling, very low, travelling in that grass, the long
mutter of the Flanders guns.  'I wonder if it's as beautiful a day
there,' she thought.  'How dreadful to see no green, no butterflies,
no flowers-not even sky-for the dust of the shells.  Oh!  won't it
ever, ever end?'  And a sort of passion for the earth welled up in
her, the warm grassy earth along which she lay, pressed so close that
she could feel it with every inch of her body, and the soft spikes of
the grass against her nose and lips.  An aching sweetness tortured
her, she wanted the earth to close its arms about her, she wanted the
answer to her embrace of it.  She was alive, and wanted love.  Not
death--not loneliness--not death!  And out there, where the guns
muttered, millions of men would be thinking that same thought!




X

Pierson had passed nearly the whole night with the relics of his
past, the records of his stewardship, the tokens of his short married
life.  The idea which had possessed him walking home in the moonlight
sustained him in that melancholy task of docketing and destruction.
There was not nearly so much to do as one would have supposed, for,
with all his dreaminess, he had been oddly neat and businesslike in
all parish matters.  But a hundred times that night he stopped,
overcome by memories.  Every corner, drawer, photograph, paper was a
thread in the long-spun web of his life in this house.  Some phase of
his work, some vision of his wife or daughters started forth from
each bit of furniture, picture, doorway.  Noiseless, in his slippers,
he stole up and down between the study, diningroom, drawing-room, and
anyone seeing him at his work in the dim light which visited the
staircase from above the front door and the upper-passage window,
would have thought: 'A ghost, a ghost gone into mourning for the
condition of the world.'  He had to make this reckoning to-night,
while the exaltation of his new idea was on him; had to rummage out
the very depths of old association, so that once for all he might
know whether he had strength to close the door on the past.  Five
o'clock struck before he had finished, and, almost dropping from
fatigue, sat down at his little piano in bright daylight.  The last
memory to beset him was the first of all; his honeymoon, before they
came back to live in this house, already chosen, furnished, and
waiting for them.  They had spent it in Germany--the first days in
Baden-baden, and each morning had been awakened by a Chorale played
down in the gardens of the Kurhaus, a gentle, beautiful tune, to
remind them that they were in heaven.  And softly, so softly that the
tunes seemed to be but dreams he began playing those old Chorales,
one after another, so that the stilly sounds floated out, through the
opened window, puzzling the early birds and cats and those few humans
who were abroad as yet.....

He received the telegram from Noel in the afternoon of the same day,
just as he was about to set out for Leila's to get news of her; and
close on the top of it came Lavendie.  He found the painter standing
disconsolate in front of his picture.

"Mademoiselle has deserted me?"

"I'm afraid we shall all desert you soon, monsieur."

"You are going?"

"Yes, I am leaving here.  I hope to go to France."

"And mademoiselle?"

"She is at the sea with my son-in-law."

The painter ran his hands through his hair, but stopped them half-
way, as if aware that he was being guilty of ill-breeding.

"Mon dieu!"  he said: "Is this not a calamity for you, monsieur le
cure?"  But his sense of the calamity was so patently limited to his
unfinished picture that Pierson could not help a smile.

"Ah, monsieur!"  said the painter, on whom nothing was lost.  "Comme
je suis egoiste!  I show my feelings; it is deplorable.  My
disappointment must seem a bagatelle to you, who will be so
distressed at leaving your old home.  This must be a time of great
trouble.  Believe me; I understand.  But to sympathise with a grief
which is not shown would be an impertinence, would it not?  You
English gentlefolk do not let us share your griefs; you keep them to
yourselves."

Pierson stared.  "True," he said.  "Quite true!"

"I am no judge of Christianity, monsieur, but for us artists the
doors of the human heart stand open, our own and others.  I suppose
we have no pride--c'est tres-indelicat.  Tell me, monsieur, you would
not think it worthy of you to speak to me of your troubles, would
you, as I have spoken of mine?"

Pierson bowed his head, abashed.

"You preach of universal charity and love," went on Lavendie; "but
how can there be that when you teach also secretly the keeping of
your troubles to yourselves?  Man responds to example, not to
teaching; you set the example of the stranger, not the brother.  You
expect from others what you do not give.  Frankly, monsieur, do you
not feel that with every revelation of your soul and feelings, virtue
goes out of you?  And I will tell you why, if you will not think it
an offence.  In opening your hearts you feel that you lose authority.
You are officers, and must never forget that.  Is it not so?"

Pierson grew red.  "I hope there is another feeling too.  I think we
feel that to speak of our sufferings or, deeper feelings is to
obtrude oneself, to make a fuss, to be self-concerned, when we might
be concerned with others."

"Monsieur, au fond we are all concerned with self.  To seem selfless
is but your particular way of cultivating the perfection of self.
You admit that not to obtrude self is the way to perfect yourself.
Eh bien!  What is that but a deeper concern with self?  To be free of
this, there is no way but to forget all about oneself in what one is
doing, as I forget everything when I am painting.  But," he added,
with a sudden smile, "you would not wish to forget the perfecting of
self--it would not be right in your profession.  So I must take away
this picture, must I not?  It is one of my best works: I regret much
not to have finished it."

"Some day, perhaps--"

"Some day!  The picture will stand still, but mademoiselle will not.
She will rush at something, and behold!  this face will be gone.  No;
I prefer to keep it as it is.  It has truth now."  And lifting down
the canvas, he stood it against the wall and folded up the easel.
"Bon soir, monsieur, you have been very good to me."  He wrung
Pierson's hand; and his face for a moment seemed all eyes and spirit.
"Adieu!"

"Good-bye," Pierson murmured.  "God bless you!"

"I don't know if I have great confidence in Him," replied Lavendie,
"but I shall ever remember that so good a man as you has wished it.
To mademoiselle my distinguished salutations, if you please.  If you
will permit me, I will come back for my other things to-morrow."  And
carrying easel and canvas, he departed.

Pierson stayed in the old drawing-room, waiting for Gratian to come
in, and thinking over the painter's words.  Had his education and
position really made it impossible for him to be brotherly?  Was this
the secret of the impotence which he sometimes felt; the reason why
charity and love were not more alive in the hearts of his
congregation?  'God knows I've no consciousness of having felt myself
superior,' he thought; 'and yet I would be truly ashamed to tell
people of my troubles and of my struggles.  Can it be that Christ, if
he were on earth, would count us Pharisees, believing ourselves not
as other men?  But surely it is not as Christians but rather as
gentlemen that we keep ourselves to ourselves.  Officers, he called
us.  I fear--I fear it is true.'  Ah, well!  There would not be many
more days now.  He would learn out there how to open the hearts of
others, and his own.  Suffering and death levelled all barriers, made
all men brothers.  He was still sitting there when Gratian came in;
and taking her hand, he said:

"Noel has gone down to George, and I want you to get transferred and
go to them, Gracie.  I'm giving up the parish and asking for a
chaplaincy."

"Giving up?  After all this time?  Is it because of Nollie?"

"No, I think not; I think the time has come.  I feel my work here is
barren."

"Oh, no!  And even if it is, it's only because--"

Pierson smiled.  "Because of what, Gracie?"

"Dad, it's what I've felt in myself.  We want to think and decide
things for ourselves, we want to own our consciences, we can't take
things at second-hand any longer."

Pierson's face darkened.  "Ah!" he said, "to have lost faith is a
grievous thing."

"We're gaining charity," cried Gratian.

"The two things are not opposed, my dear."

"Not in theory; but in practice I think they often are.  Oh, Dad!
you look so tired.  Have you really made up your mind?  Won't you
feel lost?"

"For a little.  I shall find myself, out there."

But the look on his face was too much for Gratian's composure, and
she turned away.

Pierson went down to his study to write his letter of resignation.
Sitting before that blank sheet of paper, he realised to the full how
strongly he had resented the public condemnation passed on his own
flesh and blood, how much his action was the expression of a purely
mundane championship of his daughter; of a mundane mortification.
'Pride,' he thought.  'Ought I to stay and conquer it?'  Twice he set
his pen down, twice took it up again.  He could not conquer it.  To
stay where he was not wanted, on a sort of sufferance--never!  And
while he sat before that empty sheet of paper he tried to do the
hardest thing a man can do--to see himself as others see him; and met
with such success as one might expect--harking at once to the
verdicts, not of others at all, but of his own conscience; and coming
soon to that perpetual gnawing sense which had possessed him ever
since the war began, that it was his duty to be dead.  This feeling
that to be alive was unworthy of him when so many of his flock had
made the last sacrifice, was reinforced by his domestic tragedy and
the bitter disillusionment it had brought.  A sense of having lost
caste weighed on him, while he sat there with his past receding from
him, dusty and unreal.  He had the queerest feeling of his old life
falling from him, dropping round his feet like the outworn scales of
a serpent, rung after rung of tasks and duties performed day after
day, year after year.  Had they ever been quite real?  Well, he had
shed them now, and was to move out into life illumined by the great
reality-death!  And taking up his pen, he wrote his resignation.





XI

The last Sunday, sunny and bright!  Though he did not ask her to go,
Gratian went to every Service that day.  And the sight of her, after
this long interval, in their old pew, where once he had been wont to
see his wife's face, and draw refreshment therefrom, affected Pierson
more than anything else.  He had told no one of his coming departure,
shrinking from the falsity and suppression which must underlie every
allusion and expression of regret.  In the last minute of his last
sermon he would tell them!  He went through the day in a sort of
dream.  Truly proud and sensitive, under this social blight, he
shrank from all alike, made no attempt to single out supporters or
adherents from those who had fallen away.  He knew there would be
some, perhaps many, seriously grieved that he was going; but to try
and realise who they were, to weigh them in the scales against the
rest and so forth, was quite against his nature.  It was all or
nothing.  But when for the last time of all those hundreds, he
mounted the steps of his dark pulpit, he showed no trace of finality,
did not perhaps even feel it yet.  For so beautiful a summer evening
the congregation was large.  In spite of all reticence, rumour was
busy and curiosity still rife.  The writers of the letters, anonymous
and otherwise, had spent a week, not indeed in proclaiming what they
had done, but in justifying to themselves the secret fact that they
had done it.  And this was best achieved by speaking to their
neighbours of the serious and awkward situation of the poor Vicar.
The result was visible in a better attendance than had been seen
since summer-time began.

Pierson had never been a great preacher, his voice lacked resonance
and pliancy, his thought breadth and buoyancy, and he was not free
from, the sing-song which mars the utterance of many who have to
speak professionally.  But he always made an impression of goodness
and sincerity.  On this last Sunday evening he preached again the
first sermon he had ever preached from that pulpit, fresh from the
honeymoon with his young wife.  "Solomon in all his glory was not
arrayed like one of these."  It lacked now the happy fervour of that
most happy of all his days, yet gained poignancy, coming from so worn
a face and voice.  Gratian, who knew that he was going to end with
his farewell, was in a choke of emotion long before he came to it.
She sat winking away her tears, and not till he paused, for so long
that she thought his strength had failed, did she look up.  He was
leaning a little forward, seeming to see nothing; but his hands,
grasping the pulpit's edge, were quivering.  There was deep silence
in the Church, for the look of his face and figure was strange, even
to Gratian.  When his lips parted again to speak, a mist covered her
eyes, and she lost sight of him.

"Friends, I am leaving you; these are the last words I shall ever
speak in this place.  I go to other work.  You have been very good to
me.  God has been very good to me.  I pray with my whole heart that
He may bless you all.  Amen!  Amen!"

The mist cleared into tears, and she could see him again gazing down
at her.  Was it at her?  He was surely seeing something--some vision
sweeter than reality, something he loved more dearly.  She fell on
her knees, and buried her face in her hand.  All through the hymn she
knelt, and through his clear slow Benediction: "The peace of God,
which passeth all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in the
knowledge and love of God, and of his Son Jesus Christ our Lord; and
the blessing of God Almighty, the Father, the Son, and the Holy
Ghost, be amongst you and remain with you always."  And still she
knelt on; till she was alone in the Church.  Then she rose and stole
home.  He did not come in; she did not expect him.  'It's over,' she
kept thinking; 'all over.  My beloved Daddy!  Now he has no home;
Nollie and I have pulled him down.  And yet I couldn't help it, and
perhaps she couldn't.  Poor Nollie!...'



2

Pierson had stayed in the vestry, talking with his choir and wardens;
there was no hitch, for his resignation had been accepted, and he had
arranged with a friend to carry on till the new Vicar was appointed.
When they were gone he went back into the empty Church, and mounted
to the organ-loft.  A little window up there was open, and he stood
leaning against the stone, looking out, resting his whole being.
Only now that it was over did he know what stress he had been
through.  Sparrows were chirping, but sound of traffic had almost
ceased, in that quiet Sunday hour of the evening meal.  Finished!
Incredible that he would never come up here again, never see those
roof-lines, that corner of Square Garden, and hear this familiar
chirping of the sparrows.  He sat down at the organ and began to
play.  The last time the sound would roll out and echo 'round the
emptied House of God.  For a long time he played, while the building
darkened slowly down there below him.  Of all that he would leave, he
would miss this most--the right to come and play here in the
darkening Church, to release emotional sound in this dim empty space
growing ever more beautiful.  From chord to chord he let himself go
deeper and deeper into the surge and swell of those sound waves,
losing all sense of actuality, till the music and the whole dark
building were fused in one rapturous solemnity.  Away down there the
darkness crept over the Church, till the pews, the altar-all was
invisible, save the columns; and the walls.  He began playing his
favourite slow movement from Beethoven's Seventh Symphony--kept to
the end, for the visions it ever brought him.  And a cat, which had
been stalking the sparrows, crept in through the little window, and
crouched, startled, staring at him with her green eyes.  He closed
the organ, went quickly down, and locked up his Church for the last
time.  It was warmer outside than in, and lighter, for daylight was
not quite gone.  He moved away a few yards, and stood looking up.
Walls, buttresses, and spire were clothed in milky shadowy grey.  The
top of the spire seemed to touch a star.  'Goodbye, my Church!' he
thought.  'Good-bye, good-bye!' He felt his face quiver; clenched his
teeth, and turned away.




XII

When Noel fled, Fort had started forward to stop her; then, realising
that with his lameness he could never catch her, he went back and
entered Leila's bedroom.

She had taken off her dress, and was standing in front of her glass,
with the cigarette still in her mouth; and the only movement was the
curling of its blue smoke.  He could see her face reflected, pale,
with a little spot of red in each cheek, and burning red ears.  She
had not seemed to hear him coming in, but he saw her eyes change when
they caught his reflection in the mirror.  From lost and blank, they
became alive and smouldering.

"Noel's gone!"  he said.

She answered, as if to his reflection in the glass

"And you haven't gone too?  Ah, no!  Of course--your leg!  She fled,
I suppose?  It was rather a jar, my coming in, I'm afraid."

"No; it was my coming in that was the jar."

Leila turned round.  "Jimmy!  I wonder you could discuss me.  The
rest--"She shrugged her shoulders--"But that!"

"I was not discussing you.  I merely said you were not to be envied
for having me.  Are you?"

The moment he had spoken, he was sorry.  The anger in her eyes
changed instantly, first to searching, then to misery.  She cried
out:

"I was to be envied.  Oh!  Jimmy; I was!" and flung herself face down
on the bed.

Through Fort's mind went the thought: 'Atrocious!'  How could he
soothe--make her feel that he loved her, when he didn't--that he
wanted her, when he wanted Noel.  He went up to the bedside and
touched her timidly:

"Leila, what is it?  You're overtired.  What's the matter?  I
couldn't help the child's being here.  Why do you let it upset you?
She's gone.  It's all right.  Things are just as they were."

"Yes!" came the strangled echo; "just!"

He knelt down and stroked her arm.  It shivered under the touch,
seemed to stop shivering and wait for the next touch, as if hoping it
might be warmer; shivered again.

"Look at me!" he said.  "What is it you want?  I'm ready to do
anything."

She turned and drew herself up on the bed, screwing herself back
against the pillow as if for support, with her knees drawn under her.
He was astonished at the strength of her face and figure, thus
entrenched.

"My dear Jimmy!" she said, "I want you to do nothing but get me
another cigarette.  At my age one expects no more than one gets!"  She
held out her thumb and finger: "Do you mind?"

Fort turned away to get the cigarette.  With what bitter restraint
and curious little smile she had said that!  But no sooner was he out
of the room and hunting blindly for the cigarettes, than his mind was
filled with an aching concern for Noel, fleeing like that, reckless
and hurt, with nowhere to go.  He found the polished birch-wood box
which held the cigarettes, and made a desperate effort to dismiss the
image of the girl before he again reached Leila.  She was still
sitting there, with her arms crossed, in the stillness of one whose
every nerve and fibre was stretched taut.

"Have one yourself," she said.  "The pipe of peace."

Fort lit the cigarettes, and sat down on the edge of the bed; and his
mind at once went back to Noel.

"Yes," she said suddenly; "I wonder where she's gone.  Can you see
her?  She might do something reckless a second time.  Poor Jimmy!  It
would be a pity.  And so that monk's been here, and drunk champagne.
Good idea!  Get me some, Jimmy!"

Again Fort went, and with him the image of the girl.  When he came
back the second time; she had put on that dark silk garment in which
she had appeared suddenly radiant the fatal night after the Queen's
Hall concert.  She took the wineglass, and passed him, going into the
sitting-room.

"Come and sit down," she said.  "Is your leg hurting you?"

"Not more than usual," and he sat down beside her.

"Won't you have some?  'In vino veritas;' my friend."

He shook his head, and said humbly: "I admire you, Leila."

"That's lucky.  I don't know anyone else who, would."  And she drank
her champagne at a draught.

"Don't you wish," she said suddenly, "that I had been one of those
wonderful New Women, all brain and good works.  How I should have
talked the Universe up and down, and the war, and Causes, drinking
tea, and never boring you to try and love me.  What a pity!"

But to Fort there had come Noel's words: "It's awfully funny, isn't
it?"

"Leila," he said suddenly, "something's got to be done.  So long as
you don't wish me to, I'll promise never to see that child again."

"My dear boy, she's not a child.  She's ripe for love; and--I'm too
ripe for love.  That's what's the matter, and I've got to lump it."
She wrenched her hand out of his and, dropping the empty glass,
covered her face.  The awful sensation which visits the true
Englishman when a scene stares him in the face spun in Fort's brain.
Should he seize her hands, drag them down, and kiss her?  Should he
get up and leave her alone?  Speak, or keep silent; try to console;
try to pretend?  And he did absolutely nothing.  So far as a man can
understand that moment in a woman's life when she accepts the defeat
of Youth and Beauty, he understood perhaps; but it was only a
glimmering.  He understood much better how she was recognising once
for all that she loved where she was not loved.

'And I can't help that,' he thought dumbly; 'simply can't help that!'
Nothing he could say or do would alter it.  No words can convince a
woman when kisses have lost reality.  Then, to his infinite relief,
she took her hands from her face, and said:

"This is very dull.  I think you'd better go, Jimmy."

He made an effort to speak, but was too afraid of falsity in his
voice.

"Very nearly a scene!" said Leila.  "My God!

"How men hate them!  So do I.  I've had too many in my time; nothing
comes of them but a headache next morning.  I've spared you that,
Jimmy.  Give me a kiss for it."

He bent down and put his lips to hers.  With all his heart he tried
to answer the passion in her kiss.  She pushed him away suddenly, and
said faintly:

"Thank you; you did try!"

Fort dashed his hand across his eyes.  The sight of her face just
then moved him horribly.  What a brute he felt!  He took her limp
hand, put it to his lips, and murmured:

"I shall come in to-morrow.  We'll go to the theatre, shall we?  Good
night, Leila!"

But, in opening the door, he caught sight of her face, staring at
him, evidently waiting for him to turn; the eyes had a frightened
look.  They went suddenly soft, so soft as to give his heart a
squeeze.

She lifted her hand, blew him a kiss, and he saw her smiling.
Without knowing what his own lips answered, he went out.  He could
not make up his mind to go away, but, crossing to the railings, stood
leaning against them, looking up at her windows.  She had been very
good to him.  He felt like a man who has won at cards, and sneaked
away without giving the loser his revenge.  If only she hadn't loved
him; and it had been a soulless companionship, a quite sordid
business.  Anything rather than this!  English to the backbone, he
could not divest himself of a sense of guilt.  To see no way of
making up to her, of straightening it out, made him feel intensely
mean.  'Shall I go up again?' he thought.  The window-curtain moved.
Then the shreds of light up there vanished.  'She's gone to bed,' he
thought.  'I should only upset her worse.  Where is Noel, now, I
wonder?  I shall never see her again, I suppose.  Altogether a bad
business.  My God, yes!  A bad-bad business!'

And, painfully, for his leg was hurting him, he walked away.

Leila was only too well aware of a truth that feelings are no less
real, poignant, and important to those outside morality's ring fence
than to those within.  Her feelings were, indeed, probably even more
real and poignant, just as a wild fruit's flavour is sharper than
that of the tame product.  Opinion--she knew--would say, that having
wilfully chosen a position outside morality she had not half the case
for brokenheartedness she would have had if Fort had been her
husband: Opinion--she knew--would say she had no claim on him, and
the sooner an illegal tie was broken, the better!  But she felt fully
as wretched as if she had been married.  She had not wanted to be
outside morality; never in her life wanted to be that.  She was like
those who by confession shed their sins and start again with a clear
conscience.  She never meant to sin, only to love, and when she was
in love, nothing else mattered for the moment.  But, though a
gambler, she had always so far paid up.  Only, this time the stakes
were the heaviest a woman can put down.  It was her last throw; and
she knew it.  So long as a woman believed in her attraction, there
was hope, even when the curtain fell on a love-affair!  But for Leila
the lamp of belief had suddenly gone out, and when this next curtain
dropped she felt that she must sit in the dark until old age made her
indifferent.  And between forty-four and real old age a gulf is
fixed.  This was the first time a man had tired of her.  Why! he had
been tired before he began, or so she felt.  In one swift moment as
of a drowning person, she saw again all the passages of their
companionship, knew with certainty that it had never been a genuine
flame.  Shame ran, consuming, in her veins.  She buried her face in
the cushions.  This girl had possessed his real heart all the time.
With a laugh she thought: 'I put my money on the wrong horse; I ought
to have backed Edward.  I could have turned that poor monk's head.
If only I had never seen Jimmy again; if I had torn his letter up, I
could have made poor Edward love me!'  Ifs!  What folly!  Things
happened as they must!

And, starting up, she began to roam the little room.  Without Jimmy
she would be wretched, with him she would be wretched too!  'I can't
bear to see his face,' she thought; 'and I can't live here without
him!  It's really funny!'  The thought of her hospital filled her
with loathing.  To go there day after day with this despair eating at
her heart--she simply could not.  She went over her resources.  She
had more money than she thought; Jimmy had given her a Christmas
present of five hundred pounds.  She had wanted to tear up the
cheque, or force him to take it back; but the realities of the
previous five years had prevailed with her, and she had banked it.
She was glad now.  She had not to consider money.  Her mind sought to
escape in the past.  She thought of her first husband, Ronny Fane; of
their mosquito-curtained rooms in that ghastly Madras heat.  Poor
Ronny!  What a pale, cynical young ghost started up under that name.
She thought of Lynch, his horsey, matter-of-fact solidity.  She had
loved them both--for a time.  She thought of the veldt, of
Constantia, and the loom of Table Mountain under the stars; and the
first sight of Jimmy, his straight look, the curve of his crisp head,
the kind, fighting-schoolboy frankness of his face.  Even now, after
all those months of their companionship, that long-ago evening at
grape harvest, when she sang to him under the scented creepers, was
the memory of him most charged with real feeling.  That one evening
at any rate he had longed for her, eleven: years ago, when she was in
her prime.  She could have held her own then; Noel would have come in
vain.  To think that this girl had still fifteen years before she
would be even in her prime.  Fifteen years of witchery; and then
another ten before she was on the shelf.  Why! if Noel married Jimmy,
he would be an old man doting on her still, by the time she had
reached this fatal age of forty-four: She felt as if she must scream,
and; stuffing her handkerchief into her mouth, turned out the light.
Darkness cooled her, a little.  She pulled aside the curtains, and
let in the moon light.  Jimmy and that girl were out in it some
where, seeking each other, if not in body, then in thought.  And
soon, somehow, somewhere, they would come together--come together
because Fate meant them to!  Fate which had given her young cousin a
likeness to herself; placed her, too, in just such a hopeless
position as appealed to Jimmy, and gave him a chance against younger
men.  She saw it with bitter surety.  Good gamblers cut their losses!
Yes, and proud women did not keep unwilling lovers!  If she had even
an outside chance, she would trail her pride, drag it through the
mud, through thorns!  But she had not.  And she clenched her fist,
and struck out at the night, as though at the face of that Fate which
one could never reach--impalpable, remorseless, surrounding Fate with
its faint mocking smile, devoid of all human warmth.  Nothing could
set back the clock, and give her what this girl had.  Time had "done
her in," as it "did in" every woman, one by one.  And she saw herself
going down the years, powdering a little more, painting a little
more, touching up her hair, till it was all artifice, holding on by
every little device--and all, to what end?  To see his face get
colder and colder, hear his voice more and more constrained to
gentleness; and know that underneath, aversion was growing with the
thought 'You are keeping me from life, and love!'  till one evening,
in sheer nerve-break, she would say or do some fearful thing, and he
would come no more.  'No, Jimmy!' she thought; 'find her, and stay
with her.  You're not worth all that!'  And puffing to the curtains,
as though with that gesture she could shut out her creeping fate, she
turned up the light and sat down at her writing table.  She stayed
some minutes motionless, her chin resting on her hands, the dark silk
fallen down from her arms.  A little mirror, framed in curiously
carved ivory, picked up by her in an Indian bazaar twenty-five years
ago, hung on a level with her face and gave that face back to her.
'I'm not ugly,' she thought passionately, 'I'm not.  I still have
some looks left.  If only that girl hadn't come.  And it was all my
doing.  Oh, what made me write to both of them, Edward and Jimmy?'
She turned the mirror aside, and took up a pen.

"MY DEAR JIMMY," she wrote: "It will be better for us both if you
take a holiday from here.  Don't come again till I write for you.
I'm sorry I made you so much disturbance to-night.  Have a good time,
and a good rest; and don't worry.
"Your--"

So far she had written when a tear dropped on the page, and she had
to tear it up and begin again.  This time she wrote to the end--"Your
Leila."  'I must post it now,' she thought, 'or he may not get it
before to-morrow evening.  I couldn't go through with this again.'
She hurried out with it and slipped it in a pillar box.  The night
smelled of flowers; and, hastening back, she lay down, and stayed
awake for hours, tossing, and staring at the dark.




XIII

1

Leila had pluck, but little patience.  Her one thought was to get
away and she at once began settling up her affairs and getting a
permit to return to South Africa.  The excitements of purchase and
preparation were as good an anodyne as she could have taken.  The
perils of the sea were at full just then, and the prospect of danger
gave her a sort of pleasure.  'If I go down,' she thought, 'all the
better; brisk, instead of long and dreary.'  But when she had the
permit and her cabin was booked, the irrevocability of her step came
to her with full force.  Should she see him again or no?  Her boat
started in three days, and she must decide.  If in compunction he
were to be affectionate, she knew she would never keep to her
decision, and then the horror would begin again, till again she was
forced to this same action.  She let the hours go and go till the
very day before, when the ache to see him and the dread of it had
become so unbearable that she could not keep quiet.  Late that
afternoon--everything, to the last label, ready--she went out, still
undecided.  An itch to turn the dagger in her wound, to know what had
become of Noel, took her to Edward's house.  Almost unconsciously she
had put on her prettiest frock, and spent an hour before the glass.
A feverishness of soul, more than of body, which had hung about her
ever since that night, gave her colour.  She looked her prettiest;
and she bought a gardenia at a shop in Baker Street and fastened it
in her dress.  Reaching the old Square, she was astonished to see a
board up with the words: "To let," though the house still looked
inhabited.  She rang, and was shown into the drawing-room.  She had
only twice been in this house before; and for some reason, perhaps
because of her own unhappiness, the old, rather shabby room struck
her as pathetic, as if inhabited by the past.  'I wonder what his
wife was like,' she thought: And then she saw, hanging against a
strip of black velvet on the wall, that faded colour sketch of the
slender young woman leaning forward, with her hands crossed in her
lap.  The colouring was lavender and old ivory, with faint touches of
rose.  The eyes, so living, were a little like Gratian's; the whole
face delicate, eager, good.  'Yes,' she thought, 'he must have loved
you very much.  To say good-bye must have been hard.' She was still
standing before it when Pierson came in.

"That's a dear face, Edward.  I've come to say good-bye.  I'm leaving
for South Africa to-morrow."  And, as her hand touched his, she
thought: 'I must have been mad to think I could ever have made him
love me.'

"Are you--are you leaving him?"

Leila nodded:

"That's very brave, and wonderful."

"Oh! no.  Needs must when the devil drives--that's all.  I don't give
up happiness of my own accord.  That's not within a hundred miles of
the truth.  What I shall become, I don't know, but nothing better,
you may be sure.  I give up because I can't keep, and you know why.
Where is Noel?"

"Down at the sea, with George and Gratian."

He was looking at her in wonder; and the pained, puzzled expression
on his face angered her.

"I see the house is to let.  Who'd have thought a child like that
could root up two fossils like us?  Never mind, Edward, there's the
same blood in us.  We'll keep our ends up in our own ways.  Where are
you going?"

"They'll give me a chaplaincy in the East, I think."

For a wild moment Leila thought: 'Shall I offer to go with him--the
two lost dogs together?'

"What would have happened, Edward, if you had proposed to me that May
week, when we were--a little bit in love?  Which would it have been,
worst for, you or me?"

"You wouldn't have taken me, Leila."

"Oh, one never knows.  But you'd never have been a priest then, and
you'd never have become a saint."

"Don't use that silly word.  If you knew--"

"I do; I can see that you've been half burned alive; half burned and
half buried!  Well, you have your reward, whatever it is, and I mine.
Good-bye, Edward!"  She took his hand.  "You might give me your
blessing; I want it."

Pierson put his other hand on her shoulder and, bending forward,
kissed her forehead.

The tears rushed up in Leila's eyes.  "Ah me!" she said, "it's a sad
world!"  And wiping the quivering off her lips with the back of her
gloved hand, she went quickly past him to the door.  She looked back
from there.  He had not stirred, but his lips were moving.  'He's
praying for me!' she thought.  'How funny!'



2

The moment she was outside, she forgot him; the dreadful ache for
Fort seemed to have been whipped up within her, as if that figure of
lifelong repression had infuriated the love of life and pleasure in
her.  She must and would see Jimmy again, if she had to wait and seek
for him all night!  It was nearly seven, he would surely have
finished at the War Office; he might be at his Club or at his rooms.
She made for the latter.

The little street near Buckingham Gate, where no wag had chalked
"Peace" on the doors for nearly a year now, had an arid look after a
hot day's sun.  The hair-dresser's shop below his rooms was still
open, and the private door ajar: 'I won't ring,' she thought; 'I'll
go straight up.' While she was mounting the two flights of stairs,
she stopped twice, breathless, from a pain in her side.  She often
had that pain now, as if the longing in her heart strained it
physically.  On the modest landing at the top, outside his rooms, she
waited, leaning against the wall, which was covered with a red paper.
A window at the back was open and the confused sound of singing came
in--a chorus "Vive-la, vive-la, vive-la ve.  Vive la compagnie."  So
it came to her.  'O God!' she thought: 'Let him be in, let him be
nice to me.  It's the last time.'  And, sick from anxiety, she opened
the door.  He was in--lying on a wicker-couch against the wall in the
far corner, with his arms crossed behind his head, and a pipe in his
mouth; his eyes were closed, and he neither moved, nor opened them,
perhaps supposing her to be the servant.  Noiseless as a cat, Leila
crossed the room till she stood above him.  And waiting for him to
come out of that defiant lethargy, she took her fill of his thin,
bony face, healthy and hollow at the same time.  With teeth clenched
on the pipe it had a look of hard resistance, as of a man with his
head back, his arms pinioned to his sides, stiffened against some
creature, clinging and climbing and trying to drag him down.  The
pipe was alive, and dribbled smoke; and his leg, the injured one,
wriggled restlessly, as if worrying him; but the rest of him was as
utterly and obstinately still as though he were asleep.  His hair
grew thick and crisp, not a thread of grey in it, the teeth which
held the pipe glinted white and strong.  His face was young; so much
younger than hers.  Why did she love it--the face of a man who
couldn't love her?  For a second she felt as if she could seize the
cushion which had slipped down off the couch, and smother him as he
lay there, refusing, so it seemed to her, to come to consciousness.
Love despised!  Humiliation!  She nearly turned and stole away.  Then
through the door, left open, behind her, the sound of that chorus:
"Vive-la, vive-la, vive-la ve!" came in and jolted her nerves
unbearably.  Tearing the gardenia from her breast, she flung it on to
his upturned face.

"Jimmy!"

Fort struggled up, and stared at her.  His face was comic from
bewilderment, and she broke into a little nervous laugh.

"You weren't dreaming of me, dear Jimmy, that's certain.  In what
garden were you wandering?"

"Leila!  You!  How--how jolly!"

"How--how jolly!  I wanted to see you, so I came.  And I have seen
you, as you are, when you aren't with me.  I shall remember it; it
was good for me--awfully good for me."

"I didn't hear you."

"Far, far away, my dear.  Put my gardenia in, your buttonhole.  Stop,
I'll pin it in.  Have you had a good rest all this week?  Do you like
my dress?  It's new.  You wouldn't have noticed it, would you?"

"I should have noticed.  I think it's charming.

"Jimmy, I believe that nothing--nothing will ever shake your
chivalry."

"Chivalry?  I have none."

"I am going to shut the door, do you mind?"  But he went to the door
himself, shut it, and came back to her.  Leila looked up at him.

"Jimmy, if ever you loved me a little bit, be nice to me today.  And
if I say things--if I'm bitter--don't mind; don't notice it.
Promise!"

"I promise."

She took off her hat and sat leaning against him on the couch, so
that she could not see his face.  And with his arm round her, she let
herself go, deep into the waters of illusion; down-down, trying to
forget there was a surface to which she must return; like a little
girl she played that game of make-believe.  'He loves me-he loves me-
he loves me!'  To lose herself like that for, just an hour, only an
hour; she felt that she would give the rest of the time vouchsafed to
her; give it all and willingly.  Her hand clasped his against her
heart, she turned her face backward, up to his, closing her eyes so
as still not to see his face; the scent of the gardenia in his coat
hurt her, so sweet and strong it was.



3

When with her hat on she stood ready to go, it was getting dark.  She
had come out of her dream now, was playing at make-believe no more.
And she stood with a stony smile, in the half-dark, looking between
her lashes at the mortified expression on his unconscious face.

"Poor Jimmy!" she said; "I'm not going to keep you from dinner any
longer.  No, don't come with me.  I'm going alone; and don't light
up, for heaven's sake."

She put her hand on the lapel of his coat.  "That flower's gone brown
at the edges.  Throw it away; I can't bear faded flowers.  Nor can
you.  Get yourself a fresh one tomorrow."

She pulled the flower from his buttonhole and, crushing it in her
hand, held her face up.

"Well, kiss me once more; it won't hurt you."

For one moment her lips clung to his with all their might.  She
wrenched them away, felt for the handle blindly, opened the door,
and, shutting it in his face, went slowly, swaying a little, down the
stairs.  She trailed a gloved hand along the wall, as if its solidity
could help her.  At the last half-landing, where a curtain hung,
dividing off back premises, she stopped and listened.  There wasn't a
sound.  'If I stand here behind this curtain,' she thought, 'I shall
see him again.' She slipped behind the curtain, close drawn but for a
little chink.  It was so dark there that she could not see her own
hand.  She heard the door open, and his slow footsteps coming down
the stairs.  His feet, knees, whole figure came into sight, his face
just a dim blur.  He passed, smoking a cigarette.  She crammed her
hand against her mouth to stop herself from speaking and the crushed
gardenia filled her nostrils with its cold, fragrant velvet.  He was
gone, the door below was shut.  A wild, half-stupid longing came on
her to go up again, wait till he came in, throw herself upon him,
tell him she was going, beg him to keep her with him.  Ah! and he
would!  He would look at her with that haggard pity she could not
bear, and say, "Of course, Leila, of course."  No! By God, no! "I am
going quietly home," she muttered; "just quietly home!  Come along,
be brave; don't be a fool! Come along !"  And she went down into the
street: At the entrance to the Park she saw him, fifty yards in
front, dawdling along.  And, as if she had been his shadow lengthened
out to that far distance, she moved behind him.  Slowly, always at
that distance, she followed him under the plane-trees, along the Park
railings, past St. James's Palace, into Pall Mall.  He went up some
steps, and vanished into his Club.  It was the end.  She looked up at
the building; a monstrous granite tomb, all dark.  An emptied cab was
just moving from the door.  She got in.  "Camelot Mansions, St.
John's Wood."  And braced against the cushions, panting, and
clenching her hands, she thought: 'Well, I've seen him again.  Hard
crust's better than no bread.  Oh, God!  All finished--not a crumb,
not a crumb!  Vive-la, vive-la, vive-la ve.  Vive-la compagnie!'




XIV

Fort had been lying there about an hour, sleeping and awake, before
that visit: He had dreamed a curious and wonderfully emotionalising
dream.  A long grey line, in a dim light, neither of night nor
morning, the whole length of the battle-front in France, charging in
short drives, which carried the line a little forward, with just a
tiny pause and suck-back; then on again irresistibly, on and on; and
at each rush, every voice, his own among them, shouted "Hooray! the
English!  Hooray! the English!"  The sensation of that advancing tide
of dim figures in grey light, the throb and roar, the wonderful,
rhythmic steady drive of it, no more to be stopped than the waves of
an incoming tide, was gloriously fascinating; life was nothing, death
nothing.  "Hooray, the English!"  In that dream, he was his country,
he was every one of that long charging line, driving forward in.
those great heaving pulsations, irresistible, on and on.  Out of the
very centre of this intoxicating dream he had been dragged by some
street noise, and had closed his eyes again, in the vain hope that he
might dream it on to its end.  But it came no more; and lighting his
pipe, he lay there wondering at its fervid, fantastic realism.  Death
was nothing, if his country lived and won.  In waking hours he never
had quite that single-hearted knowledge of himself.  And what
marvellously real touches got mixed into the fantastic stuff of
dreams, as if something were at work to convince the dreamer in spite
of himself--"Hooray!" not "Hurrah!"  Just common "Hooray!"  And "the
English," not the literary "British."  And then the soft flower had
struck his forehead, and Leila's voice cried: "Jimmy!"

When she left him, his thought was just a tired: 'Well, so it's begun
again!' What did it matter, since common loyalty and compassion cut
him off from what his heart desired; and that desire was absurd, as
little likely of attainment as the moon.  What did it matter?  If it
gave her any pleasure to love him, let it go on!  Yet, all the time
that he was walking across under the plane trees, Noel seemed to walk
in front of him, just out of reach, so that he ached with the thought
that he would never catch her up, and walk beside her.

Two days later, on reaching his rooms in the evening, he found this
letter on ship's note-paper, with the Plymouth postmark

    "Fare thee well, and if for ever,
     Then for ever fare thee well"
                         "Leila"

He read it with a really horrible feeling, for all the world as if he
had been accused of a crime and did not know whether he had committed
it or not.  And, trying to collect his thoughts, he took a cab and
drove to her fiat.  It was closed, but her address was given him; a
bank in Cape Town.  He had received his release.  In his remorse and
relief, so confusing and so poignant, he heard the driver of the cab
asking where he wanted to go now.  "Oh, back again!"  But before they
had gone a mile he corrected the address, in an impulse of which next
moment he felt thoroughly ashamed.  What he was doing indeed, was as
indecent as if he were driving from the funeral of his wife to the
boudoir of another woman.  When he reached the old Square, and the
words "To let" stared him in the face, he felt a curious relief,
though it meant that he would not see her whom to see for ten minutes
he felt he would give a year of life.  Dismissing his cab, he stood
debating whether to ring the bell.  The sight of a maid's face at the
window decided him.  Mr. Pierson was out, and the young ladies were
away.  He asked for Mrs. Laird's address, and turned away, almost
into the arms of Pierson himself.  The greeting was stiff and
strange.  'Does he know that Leila's gone?' he thought.  'If so, he
must think me the most awful skunk.  And am I?  Am I?'
When he reached home, he sat down to write to Leila.  But having
stared at the paper for an hour and written these three lines

"MY DEAR LEILA,
"I cannot express to you the feelings with which I received your
letter--"

he tore it up.  Nothing would be adequate, nothing would be decent.
Let the dead past bury its dead--the dead past which in his heart had
never been alive!  Why pretend?  He had done his best to keep his end
up.  Why pretend?





PART IV

I

In the boarding-house, whence the Lairds had not yet removed, the old
lady who knitted, sat by the fireplace, and light from the setting
sun threw her shadow on the wall, moving spidery and grey, over the
yellowish distemper, in time to the tune of her needles.  She was a
very old lady--the oldest lady in the world, Noel thought--and she
knitted without stopping, without breathing, so that the girl felt
inclined to scream.  In the evening when George and Gratian were not
in, Noel would often sit watching the needles, brooding over her as
yet undecided future.  And now and again the old lady would look up
above her spectacles; move the corners of her lips ever so slightly,
and drop her gaze again.  She had pitted herself against Fate; so
long as she knitted, the war could not stop--such was the conclusion
Noel had come to.  This old lady knitted the epic of acquiesence to
the tune of her needles; it was she who kept the war going such a
thin old lady!  'If I were to hold her elbows from behind,' the girl
used to think, 'I believe she'd die.  I expect I ought to; then the
war would stop.  And if the war stopped, there'd be love and life
again.'  Then the little silvery tune would click itself once more
into her brain, and stop her thinking.  In her lap this evening lay a
letter from her father.

"MY DEAREST NOLLIE,

"I am glad to say I have my chaplaincy, and am to start for Egypt
very soon.  I should have wished to go to France, but must take what
I can get, in view of my age, for they really don't want us who are
getting on, I fear.  It is a great comfort to me to think that
Gratian is with you, and no doubt you will all soon be in a house
where my little grandson can join you.  I have excellent accounts of
him in a letter from your aunt, just received: My child, you must
never again think that my resignation has been due to you.  It is not
so.  You know, or perhaps you don't, that ever since the war broke
out, I have chafed over staying at home, my heart has been with our
boys out there, and sooner or later it must have come to this, apart
from anything else.  Monsieur Lavendie has been round in the evening,
twice; he is a nice man, I like him very much, in spite of our
differences of view.  He wanted to give me the sketch he made of you
in the Park, but what can I do with it now?  And to tell you the
truth, I like it no better than the oil painting.  It is not a
likeness, as I know you.  I hope I didn't hurt his feelings, the
feelings of an artist are so very easily wounded.  There is one thing
I must tell you.  Leila has gone back to South Africa; she came round
one evening about ten days ago, to say goodbye.  She was very brave,
for I fear it means a great wrench for her.  I hope and pray she may
find comfort and tranquillity out there.  And now, my dear, I want
you to promise me not to see Captain Fort.  I know that he admires
you.  But, apart from the question of his conduct in regard to Leila,
he made the saddest impression on me by coming to our house the very
day after her departure.  There is something about that which makes
me feel he cannot be the sort of man in whom I could feel any
confidence.  I don't suppose for a moment that he is in your
thoughts, and yet before going so far from you, I feel I must warn
you.  I should rejoice to see you married to a good man; but, though
I don't wish to think hardly of anyone, I cannot believe Captain Fort
is that.

"I shall come down to you before I start, which may be in quite a
short time now.  My dear love to you and Gracie, and best wishes to
George.

"Your ever loving father,
"EDWARD PIERSON


Across this letter lying on her knees, Noel gazed at the spidery
movement on the wall.  Was it acquiescence that the old lady knitted,
or was it resistance--a challenge to death itself, a challenge
dancing to the tune of the needles like the grey ghost of human
resistance to Fate!  She wouldn't give in, this oldest lady in the
world, she meant to knit till she fell into the grave.  And so Leila
had gone!  It hurt her to know that; and yet it pleased her.
Acquiescence--resistance!  Why did Daddy always want to choose the
way she should go?  So gentle he was, yet he always wanted to!  And
why did he always make her feel that she must go the other way?  The
sunlight ceased to stream in, the old lady's shadow faded off the
wall, but the needles still sang their little tune.  And the girl
said:

"Do you enjoy knitting, Mrs. Adam?"

The old lady looked at her above the spectacles.

"Enjoy, my dear?  It passes the time."

"But do you want the time to pass?"

There was no answer for a moment, and Noel thought: 'How dreadful of
me to have said that!'

"Eh?"  said the old lady.

"I said: Isn't it very tiring?"

"Not when I don't think about it, my dear."

"What do you think about?"

The old lady cackled gently.

"Oh--well!"  she said.

And Noel thought: 'It must be dreadful to grow old, and pass the
time!'

She took up her father's letter, and bent it meditatively against her
chin.  He wanted her to pass the time--not to live, not to enjoy!  To
pass the time.  What else had he been doing himself, all these years,
ever since she could remember, ever since her mother died, but just
passing the time?  Passing the time because he did not believe in
this life; not living at all, just preparing for the life he did
believe in.  Denying himself everything that was exciting and nice,
so that when he died he might pass pure and saintly to his other
world.  He could not believe Captain Fort a good man, because he had
not passed the time, and resisted Leila; and Leila was gone!  And now
it was a sin for him to love someone else; he must pass the time
again.  'Daddy doesn't believe in life,' she thought; 'it's
monsieur's picture.  Daddy's a saint; but I don't want to be a saint,
and pass the time.  He doesn't mind making people unhappy, because
the more they're repressed, the saintlier they'll be.  But I can't
bear to be unhappy, or to see others unhappy.  I wonder if I could
bear to be unhappy to save someone else--as Leila is?  I admire her!
Oh!  I admire her!  She's not doing it because she thinks it good for
her soul; only because she can't bear making him unhappy.  She must
love him very much.  Poor Leila!  And she's done it all by herself,
of her own accord.'  It was like what George said of the soldiers;
they didn't know why they were heroes, it was not because they'd been
told to be, or because they believed in a future life.  They just had
to be, from inside somewhere, to save others.  'And they love life as
much as I do,' she thought.  'What a beast it makes one feel!'  Those
needles!  Resistance--acquiescence?  Both perhaps.  The oldest lady
in the world, with her lips moving at the corners, keeping things in,
had lived her life, and knew it.  How dreadful to live on when you
were of no more interest to anyone, but must just "pass the time" and
die.  But how much more dreadful to "pass the time" when you were
strong, and life and love were yours for the taking!  'I shan't
answer Daddy,' she thought.




II

The maid, who one Saturday in July opened the door to Jimmy Fort, had
never heard the name of Laird, for she was but a unit in the
ceaseless procession which pass through the boarding-houses of places
subject to air-raids.  Placing him in a sitting-room, she said she
would find Miss 'Allow.  There he waited, turning the leaves of an
illustrated Journal, wherein Society beauties; starving Servians,
actresses with pretty legs, prize dogs, sinking ships, Royalties,
shells bursting, and padres reading funeral services, testified to
the catholicity of the public taste, but did not assuage his nerves.
What if their address were not known here?  Why, in his fear of
putting things to the test, had he let this month go by?  An old lady
was sitting by the hearth, knitting, the click of whose needles
blended with the buzzing of a large bee on the window-pane.  'She may
know,' he thought, 'she looks as if she'd been here for ever.' And
approaching her, he said:

"I can assure you those socks are very much appreciated, ma'am."

The old lady bridled over her spectacles.

"It passes the time," she said.

"Oh, more than that; it helps to win the war, ma'am."

The old lady's lips moved at the corners; she did not answer.
'Deaf!' he thought.

"May I ask if you knew my friends, Doctor and Mrs. Laird, and Miss
Pierson?"

The old lady cackled gently.

"Oh, yes!  A pretty young girl; as pretty as life.  She used to sit
with me.  Quite a pleasure to watch her; such large eyes she had."

"Where have they gone?  Can you tell me?"

"Oh, I don't know at all."

It was a little cold douche on his heart.  He longed to say: 'Stop
knitting a minute, please.  It's my life, to know.'  But the tune of
the needles answered: 'It's my life to knit.'  And he turned away to
the window.

"She used to sit just there; quite still; quite still."

Fort looked down at the window-seat.  So, she used to sit just here,
quite still.

"What a dreadful war this is!" said the old lady.  "Have you been at
the front?"

"Yes."

"To think of the poor young girls who'll never have husbands!  I'm
sure I think it's dreadful."

"Yes," said Fort; "it's dreadful--"  And then a voice from the
doorway said:

"Did you want Doctor and Mrs. Laird, sir?  East Bungalow their
address is; it's a little way out on the North Road.  Anyone will
tell you."

With a sigh of relief Fort looked gratefully at the old lady who had
called Noel as pretty as life.  "Good afternoon, ma'am."

"Good afternoon."  The needles clicked, and little movements occurred
at the corners of her mouth.  Fort went out.  He could not find a
vehicle, and was a long time walking.  The Bungalow was ugly, of
yellow brick pointed with red.  It lay about two-thirds up between
the main road and cliffs, and had a rock-garden and a glaring, brand-
new look, in the afternoon sunlight.  He opened the gate, uttering
one of those prayers which come so glibly from unbelievers when they
want anything.  A baby's crying answered it, and he thought with
ecstasy: 'Heaven, she is here!'  Passing the rock-garden he could see
a lawn at the back of the house and a perambulator out there under a
holm-oak tree, and Noel--surely Noel herself!  Hardening his heart,
he went forward.  In a lilac sunbonnet she was bending over the
perambulator.  He trod softly on the grass, and was quite close
before she heard him.  He had prepared no words, but just held out
his hand.  The baby, interested in the shadow failing across its
pram, ceased crying.  Noel took his hand.  Under the sunbonnet, which
hid her hair, she seemed older and paler, as if she felt the heat.
He had no feeling that she was glad to see him.

"How do you do?  Have you seen Gratian; she ought to be in."

"I didn't come to see her; I came to see you."

Noel turned to the baby.

"Here he is."

Fort stood at the end of the perambulator, and looked at that other
fellow's baby.  In the shade of the hood, with the frilly clothes, it
seemed to him lying with its head downhill.  It had scratched its
snub nose and bumpy forehead, and it stared up at its mother with
blue eyes, which seemed to have no underlids so fat were its cheeks.

"I wonder what they think about," he said.

Noel put her finger into the baby's fist.

"They only think when they want some thing."

"That's a deep saying: but his eyes are awfully interested in you."

Noel smiled; and very slowly the baby's curly mouth unclosed, and
discovered his toothlessness.

"He's a darling," she said in a whisper.

'And so are you,' he thought, 'if only I dared say it!'

"Daddy is here," she said suddenly, without looking up.  "He's
sailing for Egypt the day after to-morrow.  He doesn't like you."

Fort's heart gave a jump.  Why did she tell him that, unless--unless
she was just a little on his side?

"I expected that," he said.  "I'm a sinner, as you know."

Noel looked up at him.  "Sin!" she said, and bent again over her
baby.  The word, the tone in which she said it, crouching over her
baby, gave him the thought: 'If it weren't for that little creature,
I shouldn't have a dog's chance.'  He said, "I'll go and see your
father.  Is he in?"

"I think so."

"May I come to-morrow?"

"It's Sunday; and Daddy's last day."

"Ah!  Of course."  He did not dare look back, to see if her gaze was
following him, but he thought: 'Chance or no chance, I'm going to
fight for her tooth and nail.'

In a room darkened against the evening sun Pierson was sitting on a
sofa reading.  The sight of that figure in khaki disconcerted Fort,
who had not realised that there would be this metamorphosis.  The
narrow face, clean-shaven now, with its deep-set eyes and compressed
lips, looked more priestly than ever, in spite of this brown garb.
He felt his hope suddenly to be very forlorn indeed.  And rushing at
the fence, he began abruptly:

"I've come to ask you, sir, for your permission to marry Noel, if she
will have me."

He had thought Pierson's face gentle; it was not gentle now.  "Did
you know I was here, then, Captain Fort?"

"I saw Noel in the garden.  I've said nothing to her, of course.  But
she told me you were starting to-morrow for Egypt, so I shall have no
other chance."

"I am sorry you have come.  It is not for me to judge, but I don't
think you will make Noel happy."

"May I ask you why, sir?"

"Captain Fort, the world's judgment of these things is not mine; but
since you ask me.  I will tell you frankly.  My cousin Leila has a
claim on you.  It is her you should ask to marry you."

"I did ask her; she refused."

"I know.  She would not refuse you again if you went out to her."

"I am not free to go out to her; besides, she would refuse.  She
knows I don't love her, and never have."


"Never have?"

"No."

"Then why--"

"Because I'm a man, I suppose, and a fool"

"If it was simply, 'because you are a man' as you call it, it is
clear that no principle or faith governs you.  And yet you ask me to
give you Noel; my poor Noel, who wants the love and protection not of
a 'man' but of a good man.  No, Captain Fort, no!"

Fort bit his lips.  "I'm clearly not a good man in your sense of the
word; but I love her terribly, and I would protect her.  I don't in
the least know whether she'll have me.  I don't expect her to,
naturally.  But I warn you that I mean to ask her, and to wait for
her.  I'm so much in love that I can do nothing else."

"The man who is truly in love does what is best for the one he
loves."  Fort bent his head; he felt as if he were at school again,
confronting his head-master.  "That's true," he said.  "And I shall
never trade on her position.  If she can't feel anything for me now
or in the future, I shan't trouble her, you may be sure of that.  But
if by some wonderful chance she should, I know I can make her happy,
sir."

"She is a child."

"No, she's not a child," said Fort stubbornly.

Pierson touched the lapel of his new tunic.  "Captain Fort, I am
going far away from her, and leaving her without protection.  I trust
to your chivalry not to ask her, till I come back."

Fort threw back his head.  "No, no, I won't accept that position.
With or without your presence the facts will be the same.  Either she
can love me, or she can't.  If she can, she'll be happier with me.
If she can't, there's an end of it."

Pierson came slowly up to him.  "In my view," he said, "you are as
bound to Leila as if you were married to her."

"You can't, expect me to take the priest's view, sir."

Pierson's lips trembled.

"You call it a priest's view; I think it is only the view of a man of
honour."

Fort reddened.  "That's for my conscience," he said stubbornly.
"I can't tell you, and I'm not going to, how things began.  I was a
fool.  But I did my best, and I know that Leila doesn't think I'm
bound.  If she had, she would never have gone.  When there's no
feeling--there never was real feeling on my side--and when there's
this terribly real feeling for Noel, which I never sought, which I
tried to keep down, which I ran away from

"Did you?"

"Yes.  To go on with the other was foul.  I should have thought you
might have seen that, sir; but I did go on with it.  It was Leila who
made an end."

"Leila behaved nobly, I think."

"She was splendid; but that doesn't make me a brute.".

Pierson turned away to the window, whence he must see Noel.

"It is repugnant to me," he said.  "Is there never to be any purity
in her life?"

"Is there never to be any life for her?  At your rate, sir, there
will be none.  I'm no worse than other men, and I love her more than
they could."

For fully a minute Pierson stood silent, before he said: "Forgive me
if I've spoken harshly.  I didn't mean to.  I love her intensely; I
wish for nothing but her good.  But all my life I have believed that
for a man there is only one woman--for a woman only one man."

"Then, Sir," Fort burst out, "you wish her--"

Pierson had put his hand up, as if to ward off a blow; and, angry
though he was, Fort stopped.

"We are all made of flesh and blood," he continued coldly, "and it
seems to me that you think we aren't."

"We have spirits too, Captain Fort."  The voice was suddenly so
gentle that Fort's anger evaporated.

"I have a great respect for you, sir; but a greater love for Noel,
and nothing in this world will prevent me trying to give my life to
her."

A smile quivered over Pierson's face.  "If you try, then I can but
pray that you will fail."

Fort did not answer, and went out.

He walked slowly away from the bungalow, with his head down, sore,
angry, and yet-relieved.  He knew where he stood; nor did he feel
that he had been worsted--those strictures had not touched him.
Convicted of immorality, he remained conscious of private
justifications, in a way that human beings have.  Only one little
corner of memory, unseen and uncriticised by his opponent, troubled
him.  He pardoned himself the rest; the one thing he did not pardon
was the fact that he had known Noel before his liaison with Leila
commenced; had even let Leila sweep him away on, an evening when he
had been in Noel's company.  For that he felt a real disgust with
himself.  And all the way back to the station he kept thinking: 'How
could I?  I deserve to lose her!  Still, I shall try; but not now--
not yet!'  And, wearily enough, he took the train back to town.




III

Both girls rose early that last day, and went with their father to
Communion.  As Gratian had said to George: "It's nothing to me now,
but it will mean a lot to him out there, as a memory of us.  So I
must go."  And he had answered: "Quite right, my dear.  Let him have
all he can get of you both to-day.  I'll keep out of the way, and be
back the last thing at night."  Their father's smile when he saw them
waiting for him went straight to both their hearts.  It was a
delicious day, and the early freshness had not yet dried out of the
air, when they were walking home to breakfast.  Each girl had slipped
a hand under his arm.  'It's like Moses or was it Aaron?' Noel
thought absurdly Memory had complete hold of her.  All the old days!
Nursery hours on Sundays after tea, stories out of the huge Bible
bound in mother-o'pearl, with photogravures of the Holy Land--palms,
and hills, and goats, and little Eastern figures, and funny boats on
the Sea of Galilee, and camels--always camels.  The book would be on
his knee, and they one on each arm of his chair, waiting eagerly for
the pages to be turned so that a new picture came.  And there would
be the feel of his cheek, prickly against theirs; and the old names
with the old glamour--to Gratian, Joshua, Daniel, Mordecai, Peter; to
Noel Absalom because of his hair, and Haman because she liked the
sound, and Ruth because she was pretty and John because he leaned on
Jesus' breast.  Neither of them cared for Job or David, and Elijah
and Elisha they detested because they hated the name Eliza.  And
later days by firelight in the drawing-room, roasting chestnuts just
before evening church, and telling ghost stories, and trying to make
Daddy eat his share.  And hours beside him at the piano, each eager
for her special hymns--for Gratian, "Onward, Christian Soldiers,"
"Lead, Kindly Light," and "O God Our Help"; for Noel, "Nearer, My
God, to Thee," the one with "The Hosts of Midian" in it, and "For
Those in Peril on the Sea."  And carols!  Ah!  And Choristers!  Noel
had loved one deeply--the word "chorister" was so enchanting; and
because of his whiteness, and hair which had no grease on it, but
stood up all bright; she had never spoken to him--a far worship, like
that for a star.  And always, always Daddy had been gentle; sometimes
angry, but always gentle; and they sometimes not at all!  And mixed
up with it all, the dogs they had had, and the cats they had had, and
the cockatoo, and the governesses, and their red cloaks, and the
curates, and the pantomimes, and "Peter Pan," and "Alice in
Wonderland"--Daddy sitting between them, so that one could snuggle
up.  And later, the school-days, the hockey, the prizes, the
holidays, the rush into his arms; and the great and wonderful yearly
exodus to far places, fishing and bathing; walks and drives; rides
and climbs, always with him.  And concerts and Shakespeare plays in
the Christmas and Easter holidays; and the walk home through the
streets--all lighted in those days--one on each side of him.  And
this was the end!  They waited on him at breakfast: they kept
stealing glances at him, photographing him in their minds.  Gratian
got her camera and did actually photograph him in the morning
sunlight with Noel, without Noel, with the baby; against all
regulations for the defence of the realm.  It was Noel who suggested:
"Daddy, let's take lunch out and go for all day on the cliffs, us
three, and forget there's a war."

So easy to say, so difficult to do, with the boom of the guns
travelling to their ears along the grass, mingled with the buzz of
insects.  Yet that hum of summer, the innumerable voices of tiny
lives, gossamer things all as alive as they, and as important to
their frail selves; and the white clouds, few and so slow-moving, and
the remote strange purity which clings to the chalky downs, all this
white and green and blue of land and sea had its peace, which crept
into the spirits of those three alone with Nature, this once more,
the last time for--who could say how long?  They talked, by tacit
agreement, of nothing but what had happened before the war began,
while the flock of the blown dandelions drifted past.  Pierson sat
cross-legged on the grass, without his cap, suffering a little still
from the stiffness of his unwonted garments.  And the girls lay one
on each side of him, half critical, and half admiring.  Noel could
not bear his collar.

"If you had a soft collar you'd be lovely, Daddy.  Perhaps out there
they'll let you take it off.  It must be fearfully hot in Egypt.  Oh!
I wish I were going.  I wish I were going everywhere in the world.
Some day!"  Presently he read to them, Murray's "Hippolytus" of
Euripides.  And now and then Gratian and he discussed a passage.  But
Noel lay silent, looking at the sky.  Whenever his voice ceased,
there was the song of the larks, and very faint, the distant mutter
of the guns.

They stayed up there till past six, and it was time to go and have
tea before Evening Service.  Those hours in the baking sun had drawn
virtue out of them; they were silent and melancholy all the evening.
Noel was the first to go up to her bedroom.  She went without saying
good night--she knew her father would come to her room that last
evening.  George had not yet come in; and Gratian was left alone with
Pierson in the drawing-room, round whose single lamp, in spite of
close-drawn curtains, moths were circling: She moved over to him on
the sofa.

"Dad, promise me not to worry about Nollie; we'll take care of her."

"She can only take care of herself, Gracie, and will she?  Did you
know that Captain Fort was here yesterday?"

"She told me."

"What is her feeling about him?"

"I don't think she knows.  Nollie dreams along, and then suddenly
rushes."

"I wish she were safe from that man."

"But, Dad, why?  George likes him and so do I."

A big grey moth was fluttering against the lamp.  Pierson got up and
caught it in the curve of his palm.  "Poor thing!  You're like my
Nollie; so soft, and dreamy, so feckless, so reckless."  And going to
the curtains, he thrust his hand through, and released the moth.

"Dad!"  said Gratian suddenly, "we can only find out for ourselves,
even if we do singe our wings in doing it.  We've been reading
James's 'Pragmatism.'  George says the only chapter that's important
is missing--the one on ethics, to show that what we do is not wrong
till it's proved wrong by the result.  I suppose he was afraid to
deliver that lecture."

Pierson's face wore the smile which always came on it when he had to
deal with George, the smile which said: "Ah, George, that's very
clever; but I know."

"My dear," he said, "that doctrine is the most dangerous in the
world.  I am surprised at George."

"I don't think George is in danger, Dad."

"George is a man of wide experience and strong judgment and
character; but think how fatal it would be for Nollie, my poor
Nollie, whom a little gust can blow into the candle."

"All the same," said Gratian stubbornly, "I don't think anyone can be
good or worth anything unless they judge for themselves and take
risks."

Pierson went close to her; his face was quivering.

"Don't let us differ on this last night; I must go up to Nollie for a
minute, and then to bed.  I shan't see you to-morrow; you mustn't get
up; I can bear parting better like this.  And my train goes at eight.
God bless you, Gracie; give George my love.  I know, I have always
known that he's a good man, though we do fight so.  Good-bye, my
darling."

He went out with his cheeks wet from Gratian's tears, and stood in
the porch a minute to recover his composure.  The shadow of the house
stretched velvet and blunt over the rock-garden.  A night-jar was
spinning; the churring sound affected him oddly.  The last English
night-bird he would hear.  England!  What a night-to say good-bye!
'My country!' he thought; 'my beautiful country!' The dew was lying
thick and silvery already on the little patch of grass-the last dew,
the last scent of an English night.  The call of a bugle floated out.
"England!"  he prayed; "God be about you!"  A little sound answered
from across the grass, like an old man's cough, and the scrape and
rattle of a chain.  A face emerged at the edge of the house's shadow;
bearded and horned like that of Pan, it seemed to stare at him.  And
he saw the dim grey form of the garden goat, heard it scuttle round
the stake to which it was tethered, as though alarmed at this visitor
to its' domain.

He went up the half-flight of stairs to Noel's narrow little room,
next the nursery.  No voice answered his tap.  It was dark, but he
could see her at the window, leaning far out, with her chin on her
hands.

"Nollie!"

She answered without turning: "Such a lovely night, Daddy.  Come and
look!  I'd like to set the goat free, only he'd eat the rock plants.
But it is his night, isn't it?  He ought to be running and skipping
in it: it's such a shame to tie things up.  Did you never, feel wild
in your heart, Daddy?"

"Always, I think, Nollie; too wild.  It's been hard to tame oneself."

Noel slipped her hand through his arm.  "Let's go and take the goat
and skip together on the hills.  If only we had a penny whistle!  Did
you hear the bugle?  The bugle and the goat!"

Pierson pressed the hand against him.

"Nollie, be good while I'm away.  You know what I don't want.  I told
you in my letter."  He looked at her cheek, and dared say no more.
Her face had its "fey" look again.

"Don't you feel," she said suddenly, "on a night like this, all the
things, all the things--the stars have lives, Daddy, and the moon has
a big life, and the shadows have, and the moths and the birds and the
goats and the trees, and the flowers, and all of us--escaped?  Oh!
Daddy, why is there a war?  And why are people so bound and so
unhappy?  Don't tell me it's God--don't!"

Pierson could not answer, for there came into his mind the Greek song
he had been reading aloud that afternoon

    "O for a deep and dewy Spring,
     With runlets cold to draw and drink,
     And a great meadow blossoming,
     Long-grassed, and poplars in a ring,
     To rest me by the brink.
     O take me to the mountain, O,
     Past the great pines and through the wood,
     Up where the lean hounds softly go,
     A-whine for wild things' blood,
     And madly flies the dappled roe,
     O God, to shout and speed them there;
     An arrow by my chestnut hair
     Drawn tight and one keen glimmering spear
     Ah! if I could!"


All that in life had been to him unknown, of venture and wild savour;
all the emotion he had stifled; the swift Pan he had denied; the
sharp fruits, the burning suns, the dark pools, the unearthly
moonlight, which were not of God--all came with the breath of that
old song, and the look on the girl's face.  And he covered his eyes.

Noel's hand tugged at his arm.  "Isn't beauty terribly alive," she
murmured, "like a lovely person?  it makes you ache to kiss it."

His lips felt parched.  "There is a beauty beyond all that," he said
stubbornly.

"Where?"

"Holiness, duty, faith.  O Nollie, my love!"  But Noel's hand
tightened on his arm.

"Shall I tell you what I should like?"  she whispered.  "To take
God's hand and show Him things.  I'm certain He's not seen
everything."

A shudder went through Pierson, one of those queer sudden shivers,
which come from a strange note in a voice, or a new sharp scent or
sight.

"My dear, what things you say!"

"But He hasn't, and it's time He did.  We'd creep, and peep, and see
it all for once, as He can't in His churches.  Daddy, oh!  Daddy!
I can't bear it any more; to think of them being killed on a night
like this; killed and killed so that they never see it all again--
never see it--never see it!"  She sank down, and covered her face
with her arms.

"I can't, I can't!  Oh! take it all away, the cruelty!  Why does it
come--why the stars and the flowers, if God doesn't care any more
than that?"

Horribly affected he stood bending over her, stroking her head.  Then
the habit of a hundred death-beds helped him.  "Come, Nollie!  This
life is but a minute.  We must all die."

"But not they--not so young!"  She clung to his knees, and looked up.
"Daddy, I don't want you to go; promise me to come back!"

The childishness of those words brought back his balance.

"My dear sweetheart, of course!  Come, Nollie, get up.  The sun's
been too much for you."

Noel got up, and put her hands on her father's shoulders.  "Forgive
me for all my badness, and all my badness to come, especially all my
badness to come!"

Pierson smiled.  "I shall always forgive you, Nollie; but there won't
be--there mustn't be any badness to come.  I pray God to keep you,
and make you like your mother."

"Mother never had a devil, like you and me."

He was silent from surprise.  How did this child know the devil of
wild feeling he had fought against year after year; until with the
many years he had felt it weakening within him!  She whispered
on: "I don't hate my devil.

"Why should I?--it's part of me.  Every day when the sun sets, I'll
think of you, Daddy; and you might do the same--that'll keep me good.
I shan't come to the station tomorrow, I should only cry.  And I
shan't say good-bye now.  It's unlucky."

She flung her arms round him; and half smothered by that fervent
embrace, he kissed her cheeks and hair.  Freed of each other at last,
he stood for a moment looking at her by the moonlight.

"There never was anyone more loving than you; Nollie!"  he said
quietly.  "Remember my letter.  And good night, my love!"  Then,
afraid to stay another second, he went quickly out of the dark little
room....

George Laird, returning half an hour later, heard a voice saying
softly: "George, George!"

Looking up, he saw a little white blur at the window, and Noel's face
just visible.

"George, let the goat loose, just for to-night, to please me."

Something in that voice, and in the gesture of her stretched-out arm
moved George in a queer way, although, as Pierson had once said, he
had no music in his soul.  He loosed the goat.




IV

In the weeks which succeeded Pierson's departure, Gratian and George
often discussed Noel's conduct and position by the light of the
Pragmatic theory.  George held a suitably scientific view.  Just as
he would point out to his wife--in the physical world, creatures who
diverged from the normal had to justify their divergence in
competition with their environments, or else go under, so in the
ethical world it was all a question of whether Nollie could make good
her vagary.  If she could, and grew in strength of character thereby,
it was ipso facto all right, her vagary would be proved an advantage,
and the world enriched.  If not, the world by her failure to make
good would be impoverished, and her vagary proved wrong.  The
orthodox and academies--he insisted--were always forgetting the
adaptability of living organisms; how every action which was out of
the ordinary, unconsciously modified all the other actions together
with the outlook, and philosophy of the doer.  "Of course Nollie was
crazy," he said, "but when she did what she did, she at once began to
think differently about life and morals.  The deepest instinct we all
have is the instinct that we must do what we must, and think that
what we've done is really all right; in fact the--instinct of self-
preservation.  We're all fighting animals; and we feel in our bones
that if we admit we're beaten--we are beaten; but that every fight we
win, especially against odds, hardens those bones.  But personally I
don't think she can make good on her own."

Gratian, whose Pragmatism was not yet fully baked, responded
doubtfully:

"No, I don't think she can.  And if she could I'm not sure.  But
isn't Pragmatism a perfectly beastly word, George?  It has no sense
of humour in it at all."

"It is a bit thick, and in the hands of the young, deuced likely to
become Prigmatism; but not with Nollie."

They watched the victim of their discussions with real anxiety.  The
knowledge that she would never be more sheltered than she was with
them, at all events until she married, gravely impeded the formation
of any judgment as to whether or no she could make good.  Now and
again there would come to Gratian who after all knew her sister
better than George--the disquieting thought that whatever conclusion
Noel led them to form, she would almost certainly force them to
abandon sooner or later.

Three days after her father's departure Noel had declared that she
wanted to work on the land.  This George had promptly vetoed.

"You aren't strong enough yet, my dear: Wait till the harvest begins.
Then you can go and help on the farm here.  If you can stand that
without damage, we'll think about it."

But the weather was wet and harvest late, and Noel had nothing much
to do but attend to her baby, already well attended to by Nurse, and
dream and brood, and now and then cook an omelette or do some
housework for the sake of a gnawing conscience.  Since Gratian and
George were away in hospital all day, she was very much alone.
Several times in the evenings Gratian tried to come at the core of
her thoughts, Twice she flew the kite of Leila.  The first time Noel
only answered: "Yes, she's a brick."  The second time, she said: "I
don't want to think about her."

But, hardening her heart, Gratian went on: "Don't you think it's
queer we've never heard from Captain Fort since he came down?"

In her calmest voice Noel answered: "Why should we, after being told
that he wasn't liked?"

"Who told him that?"

"I told him, that Daddy didn't; but I expect Daddy said much worse
things."  She gave a little laugh, then softly added: "Daddy's
wonderful, isn't he?"

"How?"

"The way he drives one to do the other thing.  If he hadn't opposed
my marriage to Cyril, you know, that wouldn't have happened, it just
made all the difference.  It stirred me up so fearfully."  Gratian
stared at her, astonished that she could see herself so clearly.
Towards the end of August she had a letter from Fort.

"DEAR MRS.  LAIRD,
"You know all about things, of course, except the one thing which to
me is all important.  I can't go on without knowing whether I have a
chance with your sister.  It is against your father's expressed wish
that she should have anything to do with me, but I told him that I
could not and would not promise not to ask her.  I get my holiday at
the end of this month, and am coming down to put it to the touch.  It
means more to me than you can possibly imagine.
"I am, dear Mrs. Laird,
"Your very faithful servant,
"JAMES FORT."

She discussed the letter with George, whose advice was: "Answer it
politely, but say nothing; and nothing to Nollie.  I think it would
be a very good thing.  Of course it's a bit of a make-shift--twice
her age; but he's a genuine man, if not exactly brilliant."

Gratian answered almost sullenly: "I've always wanted the very best
for Nollie."

George screwed up his steel-coloured eyes, as he might have looked at
one on whom he had to operate.  "Quite so," he said."  But you must
remember, Gracie, that out of the swan she was, Nollie has made
herself into a lame duck.  Fifty per cent at least is off her value,
socially.  We must look at things as they are."

"Father is dead against it."

George smiled, on the point of saying: 'That makes me feel it must be
a good thing' But he subdued the impulse.

"I agree that we're bound by his absence not to further it actively.
Still Nollie knows his wishes, and it's up to her and no one else.
After all, she's no longer a child."

His advice was followed.  But to write that polite letter, which said
nothing, cost Gratian a sleepless night, and two or three hours'
penmanship.  She was very conscientious.  Knowledge of this impending
visit increased the anxiety with which she watched her sister, but
the only inkling she obtained of Noel's state of mind was when the
girl showed her a letter she had received from Thirza, asking her to
come back to Kestrel.  A postscript, in Uncle Bob's handwriting,
added these words:

"We're getting quite fossilised down here; Eve's gone and left us
again.  We miss you and the youngster awfully.  Come along down,
Nollie there's a dear!"

"They're darlings," Noel said, "but I shan't go.  I'm too restless,
ever since Daddy went; you don't know how restless.  This rain simply
makes me want to die."



2

The weather improved next day, and at the end of that week harvest
began.  By what seemed to Noel a stroke of luck the farmer's binder
was broken; he could not get it repaired, and wanted all the human
binders he could get.  That first day in the fields blistered her
hands, burnt her face and neck, made every nerve and bone in her body
ache; but was the happiest day she had spent for weeks, the happiest
perhaps since Cyril Morland left her, over a year ago.  She had a
bath and went to bed the moment she got in.

Lying there nibbling chocolate and smoking a cigarette, she
luxuriated in the weariness which had stilled her dreadful
restlessness.  Watching the smoke of her cigarette curl up against
the sunset glow which filled her window, she mused: If only she could
be tired out like this every day!  She would be all right then, would
lose the feeling of not knowing what she wanted, of being in a sort o
of large box, with the lid slammed down, roaming round it like a
dazed and homesick bee in an overturned tumbler; the feeling of being
only half alive, of having a wing maimed so that she could only fly a
little way, and must then drop.

She slept like a top that night.  But the next day's work was real
torture, and the third not much better.  By the end of the week,
however, she was no longer stiff.

Saturday was cloudless; a perfect day.  The field she was working in
lay on a slope.  It was the last field to be cut, and the best wheat
yet, with a glorious burnt shade in its gold and the ears blunt and
full.  She had got used now to the feel of the great sheaves in her
arms, and the binding wisps drawn through her hand till she held them
level, below the ears, ready for the twist.  There was no new
sensation in it now; just steady, rather dreamy work, to keep her
place in the row, to the swish-swish of the cutter and the call of
the driver to his horses at the turns; with continual little pauses,
to straighten and rest her back a moment, and shake her head free
from the flies, or suck her finger, sore from the constant pushing of
the straw ends under.  So the hours went on, rather hot and
wearisome, yet with a feeling of something good being done, of a job
getting surely to its end.  And gradually the centre patch narrowed,
and the sun slowly slanted down.

When they stopped for tea, instead of running home as usual, she
drank it cold out of a flask she had brought, ate a bun and some
chocolate, and lay down on her back against the hedge.  She always
avoided that group of her fellow workers round the tea-cans which the
farmer's wife brought out.  To avoid people, if she could, had become
habitual to her now.  They must know about her, or would soon if she
gave them the chance.  She had never lost consciousness of her ring-
finger, expecting every eye to fall on it as a matter of course.
Lying on her face, she puffed her cigarette into the grass, and
watched a beetle, till one of the sheep-dogs, scouting for scraps,
came up, and she fed him with her second bun.  Having finished the
bun, he tried to eat the beetle, and, when she rescued it, convinced
that she had nothing more to give him, sneezed at her, and went away.
Pressing the end of her cigarette out against the bank, she turned
over.  Already the driver was perched on his tiny seat, and his
companion, whose business it was to free the falling corn, was
getting up alongside.  Swish-swish!  It had begun again.  She rose,
stretched herself, and went back to her place in the row.  The field
would be finished to-night; she would have a lovely rest-all Sunday I
Towards seven o'clock a narrow strip, not twenty yards broad, alone
was left.  This last half hour was what Noel dreaded.  To-day it was
worse, for the farmer had no cartridges left, and the rabbits were
dealt with by hullabaloo and sticks and chasing dogs.  Rabbits were
vermin, of course, and ate the crops, and must be killed; besides,
they were good food, and fetched two shillings apiece; all this she
knew but to see the poor frightened things stealing out, pounced on,
turned, shouted at, chased, rolled over by great swift dogs, fallen
on by the boys and killed and carried with their limp grey bodies
upside down, so dead and soft and helpless, always made her feel
quite sick.  She stood very still, trying not to see or hear, and in
the corn opposite to her a rabbit stole along, crouched, and peeped.
'Oh!' she thought, 'come out here, bunny.  I'll let you away--can't
you see I will? It's your only chance.  Come out!'  But the rabbit
crouched, and gazed, with its little cowed head poked forward, and
its ears laid flat; it seemed trying to understand whether this still
thing in front of it was the same as those others.  With the thought,
'Of course it won't while I look at it,' Noel turned her head away.
Out of the corner of her eye she could see a man standing a few yards
off.  The rabbit bolted out.  Now the man would shout and turn it.
But he did not, and the rabbit scuttled past him and away to the
hedge.  She heard a shout from the end of the row, saw a dog
galloping.  Too late!  Hurrah!  And clasping her hands, she looked at
the man.  It was Fort!  With the queerest feeling--amazement,
pleasure, the thrill of conspiracy, she saw him coming up to her.

"I did want that rabbit to get off," she sighed out; "I've been
watching it.  Thank you!"

He looked at her.  "My goodness!"  was all he said.

Noel's hands flew up to her cheeks.  "Yes, I know; is my nose very
red?"

"No; you're as lovely as Ruth, if she was lovely."

Swish-swish!  The cutter came by; Noel started forward to her place
in the row; but catching her arm, he said: "No, let me do this little
bit.  I haven't had a day in the fields since the war began.  Talk to
me while I'm binding."

She stood watching him.  He made a different, stronger twist from
hers, and took larger sheaves, so that she felt a sort of jealousy.

"I didn't know you knew about this sort of thing."

"Oh, Lord, yes!  I had a farm once out West.  Nothing like field-
work, to make you feel good.  I've been watching you; you bind jolly
well."

Noel gave a sigh of pleasure.

"Where have you come from?"  she asked.

"Straight from the station.  I'm on my holiday."  He looked up at
her, and they both fell silent.

Swish-swish!  The cutter was coming again.  Noel went to the
beginning of her portion of the falling corn, he to the end of it.
They worked towards each other, and met before the cutter was on them
a third time.

"Will you come in to supper?"

"I'd love to."

"Then let's go now, please.  I don't want to see any more rabbits
killed."

They spoke very little on the way to the bungalow, but she felt his
eyes on her all the time.  She left him with George and Gratian who
had just come in, and went up for her bath.

Supper had been laid out in the verandah, and it was nearly dark
before they had finished.  In rhyme with the failing of the light
Noel became more and more silent.  When they went in, she ran up to
her baby.  She did not go down again, but as on the night before her
father went away, stood at her window, leaning out.  A dark night, no
moon; in the starlight she could only just see the dim garden, where
no goat was grazing.  Now that her first excitement had worn off,
this sudden reappearance of Fort filled her with nervous melancholy:
She knew perfectly well what he had come for, she had always known.
She had no certain knowledge of her own mind; but she knew that all
these weeks she had been between his influence and her father's,
listening to them, as it were, pleading with her.  And, curiously,
the pleading of each, instead of drawing her towards the pleader, had
seemed dragging her away from him, driving her into the arms of the
other.  To the protection of one or the other she felt she must go;
and it humiliated her to think that in all the world there was no
other place for her.  The wildness of that one night in the old Abbey
seemed to have power to govern all her life to come.  Why should that
one night, that one act, have this uncanny power to drive her this
way or that, to those arms or these?  Must she, because of it, always
need protection?  Standing there in the dark it was almost as if they
had come up behind her, with their pleadings; and a shiver ran down
her back.  She longed to turn on them, and cry out: "Go away; oh; go
away!  I don't want either of you; I just want to be left alone!"
Then something, a moth perhaps, touched her neck.  She gasped and
shook herself.  How silly!

She heard the back door round the corner of the house opening; a
man's low voice down in the dark said:

"Who's the young lady that comes out in the fields?"

Another voice--one of the maids--answered:

"The Missis's sister."

"They say she's got a baby."

"Never you mind what she's got."

Noel heard the man's laugh.  It seemed to her the most odious laugh
she had ever heard.  She thought swiftly and absurdly: 'I'll get away
from all this.'  The window was only a few feet up.  She got out on
to the ledge, let herself down, and dropped.  There was a flower-bed
below, quite soft, with a scent of geranium-leaves and earth.  She
brushed herself, and went tiptoeing across the gravel and the little
front lawn, to the gate.  The house was quite dark, quite silent.
She walked on, down the road.  'Jolly!' she thought.  'Night after
night we sleep, and never see the nights: sleep until we're called,
and never see anything.  If they want to catch me they'll have to
run.'  And she began running down the road in her evening frock and
shoes, with nothing on her head.  She stopped after going perhaps
three hundred yards, by the edge of the wood.  It was splendidly dark
in there, and she groped her way from trunk to trunk, with a
delicious, half-scared sense of adventure and novelty.  She stopped
at last by a thin trunk whose bark glimmered faintly.  She felt it
with her cheek, quite smooth--a birch tree; and, with her arms round
it, she stood perfectly still.  Wonderfully, magically silent, fresh
and sweet-scented and dark!  The little tree trembled suddenly within
her arms, and she heard the low distant rumble, to which she had
grown so accustomed--the guns, always at work, killing--killing men
and killing trees, little trees perhaps like this within her arms,
little trembling trees!  Out there, in this dark night, there would
not be a single unscarred tree like this smooth quivering thing, no
fields of corn, not even a bush or a blade of grass, no leaves to
rustle and smell sweet, not a bird, no little soft-footed night
beasts, except the rats; and she shuddered, thinking of the Belgian
soldier-painter.  Holding the tree tight, she squeezed its smooth
body against her.  A rush of the same helpless, hopeless revolt and
sorrow overtook her, which had wrung from her that passionate little
outburst to her father, the night before he went away.  Killed, torn,
and bruised; burned, and killed, like Cyril!  All the young things,
like this little tree.

Rumble!  Rumble!  Quiver!  Quiver!  And all else so still, so sweet
and still, and starry, up there through the leaves....  'I can't bear
it!' she thought.  She pressed her lips, which the sun had warmed all
day, against the satiny smooth bark.  But the little tree stood
within her arms insentient, quivering only to the long rumbles.  With
each of those dull mutterings, life and love were going out, like the
flames of candles on a Christmas-tree, blown, one by one.  To her
eyes, accustomed by now to the darkness in there, the wood seemed
slowly to be gathering a sort of life, as though it were a great
thing watching her; a great thing with hundreds of limbs and eyes,
and the power of breathing.  The little tree, which had seemed so
individual and friendly, ceased to be a comfort and became a part of
the whole living wood, absorbed in itself, and coldly watching her,
this intruder of the mischievous breed, the fatal breed which loosed
those rumblings on the earth.  Noel unlocked her arms, and recoiled.
A bough scraped her neck, some leaves flew against her eyes; she
stepped aside, tripped over a root, and fell.  A bough had hit her
too, and she lay a little dazed, quivering at such dark
unfriendliness.  She held her hands up to her face for the mere
pleasure of seeing something a little less dark; it was childish, and
absurd, but she was frightened.  The wood seemed to have so many
eyes, so many arms, and all unfriendly; it seemed waiting to give her
other blows, other falls, and to guard her within its darkness
until--!  She got up, moved a few steps, and stood still, she had
forgotten from where she had come in.  And afraid of moving deeper
into the unfriendly wood, she turned slowly round, trying to tell
which way to go.  It was all just one dark watching thing, of limbs
on the ground and in the air.  'Any way,' she thought; 'any way of
course will take me out!' And she groped forward, keeping her hands
up to guard her face.  It was silly, but she could not help the
sinking, scattered feeling which comes to one bushed, or lost in a
fog.  If the wood had not been so dark, so,--alive!  And for a second
she had the senseless, terrifying thought of a child: 'What if I
never get out!'  Then she laughed at it, and stood still again,
listening.  There was no sound to guide her, no sound at all except
that faint dull rumble, which seemed to come from every side, now.
And the trees watched her.  'Ugh!' she thought; 'I hate this wood!'
She saw it now, its snaky branches, its darkness, and great forms, as
an abode of giants and witches.  She groped and scrambled on again,
tripped once more, and fell, hitting her forehead against a trunk.
The blow dazed and sobered her.  'It's idiotic,' she thought; 'I'm a
baby!  I'll Just walk very slowly till I reach the edge.  I know it
isn't a large wood!'  She turned deliberately to face each direction;
solemnly selected that from which the muttering of the guns seemed to
come, and started again, moving very slowly with her hands stretched
out.  Something rustled in the undergrowth, quite close; she saw a
pair of green eyes shining.  Her heart jumped into her mouth.  The
thing sprang--there was a swish of ferns and twigs, and silence.
Noel clasped her breast.  A poaching cat!  And again she moved
forward.  But she had lost direction.  'I'm going round and round,'
she thought.  'They always do.' And the sinking scattered feeling of
the "bushed" clutched at her again.  'Shall I call?' she thought.
'I must be near the road.  But it's so babyish.' She moved on again.
Her foot struck something soft.  A voice muttered a thick oath; a
hand seized her ankle.  She leaped, and dragged and wrenched it free;
and, utterly unnerved, she screamed, and ran forward blindly.




V

No one could have so convinced a feeling as Jimmy Fort that he would
be a 'bit of a makeshift' for Noel.  He had spent the weeks after his
interview with her father obsessed by her image, often saying to
himself "It won't do.  It's playing it too low down to try and get
that child, when I know that, but for her trouble, I shouldn't have a
chance."  He had never had much opinion of his looks, but now he
seemed to himself absurdly old and dried-up in this desert of a
London.  He loathed the Office job to which they had put him, and the
whole atmosphere of officialdom.  Another year of it, and he would
shrivel like an old apple!  He began to look at himself anxiously,
taking stock of his physical assets now that he had this dream of
young beauty.  He would be forty next month, and she was nineteen!
But there would be times too when he would feel that, with her, he
could be as much of a "three-year-old" as the youngster she had
loved.  Having little hope of winning her, he took her "past" but
lightly.  Was it not that past which gave him what chance he had?  On
two things he was determined: He would not trade on her past.  And if
by any chance she took him, he would never show her that he
remembered that she had one.

After writing to Gratian he had spent the week before his holiday
began, in an attempt to renew the youthfulness of his appearance,
which made him feel older, leaner, bonier and browner than ever.  He
got up early, rode in the rain, took Turkish baths, and did all
manner of exercises; neither smoked nor drank, and went to bed early,
exactly as if he had been going to ride a steeplechase.  On the
afternoon, when at last he left on that terrific pilgrimage, he gazed
at his face with a sort of despair, it was so lean, and leather-
coloured, and he counted almost a dozen grey hairs.

When he reached the bungalow, and was told that she was working in
the corn-fields, he had for the first time a feeling that Fate was on
his side.  Such a meeting would be easier than any other!  He had
been watching her for several minutes before she saw him, with his
heart beating more violently than it had ever beaten in the trenches;
and that new feeling of hope stayed with him--all through the
greeting, throughout supper, and even after she had left them and
gone upstairs.  Then, with the suddenness of a blind drawn down, it
vanished, and he sat on, trying to talk, and slowly getting more and
more silent and restless.

"Nollie gets so tired, working," Gratian said: He knew she meant it
kindly but that she should say it at all was ominous.  He got up at
last, having lost hope of seeing Noel again, conscious too that he
had answered the last three questions at random.

In the porch George said: "You'll come in to lunch tomorrow, won't
you?"

"Oh, thanks, I'm afraid it'll bore you all."

"Not a bit.  Nollie won't be so tired."

Again--so well meant.  They were very kind.  He looked up from the
gate, trying to make out which her window might be; but all was dark.
A little way down the road he stopped to light a cigarette; and,
leaning against a gate, drew the smoke of it deep into his lungs,
trying to assuage the ache in his heart.  So it was hopeless!  She
had taken the first, the very first chance, to get away from him!
She knew that he loved her, could not help knowing, for he had never
been able to keep it out of his eyes and voice.  If she had felt ever
so little for him, she would not have avoided him this first evening.
'I'll go back to that desert,' he thought; 'I'm not going to whine
and crawl.  I'll go back, and bite on it; one must have some pride.
Oh, why the hell am I crocked-up like this?  If only I could get out
to France again!' And then Noel's figure bent over the falling corn
formed before him.  'I'll have one more try,' he thought; 'one more--
tomorrow somewhere, I'll get to know for certain.  And if I get what
Leila's got I shall deserve it, I suppose.  Poor Leila!  Where is
she?  Back at High Constantia?'  What was that?  A cry--of terror--in
that wood!  Crossing to the edge, he called "Coo-ee!" and stood
peering into its darkness.  He heard the sound of bushes being
brushed aside, and whistled.  A figure came bursting out, almost into
his arms.

"Hallo!"  he said; "what's up?"

A voice gasped: "Oh!  It's--it's nothing!"

He saw Noel.  She had swayed back, and stood about a yard away.  He
could dimly see her covering her face with her arms.  Feeling
instinctively that she wanted to hide her fright, he said quietly:

"What luck!  I was just passing.  It's awfully dark."

"I--I got lost; and a man--caught my foot, in there!"

Moved beyond control by the little gulps and gasps of her breathing,
he stepped forward and put his hands on her shoulders.  He held her
lightly, without speaking, terrified lest he should wound her pride.

"I-I got in there," she gasped, "and the trees--and I stumbled over a
roan asleep, and he--"

"Yes, Yes, I know," he murmured, as if to a child.  She had dropped
her arms now, and he could see her face, with eyes unnaturally
dilated, and lips quivering.  Then moved again beyond control, he
drew her so close that he could feel the throbbing of her heart, and
put his lips to her forehead all wet with heat.  She closed her eyes,
gave a little choke, and buried her face against his coat.

"There, there, my darling!" he kept on saying.  "There, there, my
darling!"  He could feel the snuggling of her cheek against his
shoulder.  He had got her--had got her!  He was somehow certain that
she would not draw back now.  And in the wonder and ecstasy of that
thought, all the world above her head, the stars in their courses,
the wood which had frightened her, seemed miracles of beauty and
fitness.  By such fortune as had never come to man, he had got her!
And he murmured over and over again:

"I love you!"  She was resting perfectly quiet against him, while her
heart ceased gradually to beat so fast.  He could feel her cheek
rubbing against his coat of Harris tweed.  Suddenly she sniffed at
it, and whispered:

"It smells good."




VI

When summer sun has burned all Egypt, the white man looks eagerly
each day for evening, whose rose-coloured veil melts opalescent into
the dun drift, of the hills, and iridescent above, into the slowly
deepening blue.  Pierson stood gazing at the mystery of the desert
from under the little group of palms and bougainvillea which formed
the garden of the hospital.  Even-song was in full voice: From the
far wing a gramophone was grinding out a music-hall ditty; two
aeroplanes, wheeling exactly like the buzzards of the desert, were
letting drip the faint whir of their flight; metallic voices drifted
from the Arab village; the wheels of the water-wells creaked; and
every now and then a dry rustle was stirred from the palm-leaves by
puffs of desert wind.  On either hand an old road ran out, whose line
could be marked by the little old watch-towers of another age.  For
how many hundred years had human life passed along it to East and
West; the brown men and their camels, threading that immemorial track
over the desert, which ever filled him with wonder, so still it was,
so wide, so desolate, and every evening so beautiful!  He sometimes
felt that he could sit for ever looking at it; as though its cruel
mysterious loveliness were--home; and yet he never looked at it
without a spasm of homesickness.

So far his new work had brought him no nearer to the hearts of men.
Or at least he did not feel it had.  Both at the regimental base, and
now in this hospital--an intermediate stage--waiting for the draft
with which he would be going into Palestine, all had been very nice
to him, friendly, and as it were indulgent; so might schoolboys have
treated some well-intentioned dreamy master, or business men a
harmless idealistic inventor who came visiting their offices.  He had
even the feeling that they were glad to have him about, just as they
were glad to have their mascots and their regimental colours; but of
heart-to-heart simple comradeship--it seemed they neither wanted it
of him nor expected him to give it, so that he had a feeling that he
would be forward and impertinent to offer it.  Moreover, he no longer
knew how.  He was very lonely.  'When I come face to face with
death,' he would think, 'it will be different.  Death makes us all
brothers.  I may be of real use to them then.'

They brought him a letter while he stood there listening to that
even-song, gazing at the old desert road.

"DARLING DAD,

"I do hope this will reach you before you move on to Palestine.  You
said in your last--at the end of September, so I hope you'll just get
it.  There is one great piece of news, which I'm afraid will hurt and
trouble you; Nollie is married to Jimmy Fort.  They were married down
here this afternoon, and have just gone up to Town.  They have to
find a house of course.  She has been very restless, lonely, and
unhappy ever since you went, and I'm sure it is really for the best:
She is quite another creature, and simply devoted, headlong.  It's
just like Nollie.  She says she didn't know what she wanted, up to
the last minute.  But now she seems as if she could never want
anything else.

"Dad dear, Nollie could never have made good by herself.  It isn't
her nature, and it's much better like this, I feel sure, and so does
George.  Of course it isn't ideal--and one wanted that for her; but
she did break her wing, and he is so awfully good and devoted to her,
though you didn't believe it, and perhaps won't, even now.  The great
thing is to feel her happy again, and know she's safe.  Nollie is
capable of great devotion; only she must be anchored.  She was
drifting all about; and one doesn't know what she might have done, in
one of her moods.  I do hope you won't grieve about it.  She's
dreadfully anxious about how you'll feel.  I know it will be wretched
for you, so far off; but do try and believe it's for the best....
She's out of danger; and she was really in a horrible position.  It's
so good for the baby, too, and only fair to him.  I do think one must
take things as they are, Dad dear.  It was impossible to mend
Nollie's wing.  If she were a fighter, and gloried in it, or if she
were the sort who would 'take the veil'--but she isn't either.  So it
is all right, Dad.  She's writing to you herself.  I'm sure Leila
didn't want Jimmy Fort to be unhappy because he couldn't love her; or
she would never have gone away.  George sends you his love; we are
both very well.  And Nollie is looking splendid still, after her
harvest work.  All, all my love, Dad dear.  Is there anything we can
get, and send you?  Do take care of your blessed self, and don't
grieve about Nollie.

"GRATIAN."

A half-sheet of paper fluttered down; he picked it up from among the
parched fibre of dead palm-leaves.


"DADDY DARLING,

"I've done it.  Forgive me-I'm so happy.

"Your NOLLIE."


The desert shimmered, the palm-leaves rustled, and Pierson stood
trying to master the emotion roused in him by those two letters.  He
felt no anger, not even vexation; he felt no sorrow, but a loneliness
so utter and complete that he did not know how to bear it.  It seemed
as if some last link with life had' snapped.  'My girls are happy,'
he thought.  'If I am not--what does it matter?  If my faith and my
convictions mean nothing to them--why should they follow?  I must and
will not feel lonely.  I ought to have the sense of God present, to
feel His hand in mine.  If I cannot, what use am I--what use to the
poor fellows in there, what use in all the world?'

An old native on a donkey went by, piping a Soudanese melody on a
little wooden Arab flute.  Pierson turned back into the hospital
humming it.  A nurse met him there.

"The poor boy at the end of A ward is sinking fast, sir; I expect
he'd like to see you,"

He went into A ward, and walked down between the beds to the west
window end, where two screens had been put, to block off the cot.
Another nurse, who was sitting beside it, rose at once.

"He's quite conscious," she whispered; "he can still speak a little.
He's such a dear."  A tear rolled down her cheek, and she passed out
behind the screens.  Pierson looked down at the boy; perhaps he was
twenty, but the unshaven down on his cheeks was soft and almost
colourless.  His eyes were closed.  He breathed regularly, and did
not seem in pain; but there was about him that which told he was
going; something resigned, already of the grave.  The window was wide
open, covered by mosquito-netting, and a tiny line of sunlight,
slanting through across the foot of the cot, crept slowly backwards
over the sheets and the boy's body, shortening as it crept.  In the
grey whiteness of the walls; the bed, the boy's face, just that pale
yellow bar of sunlight, and one splash of red and blue from a little
flag on the wall glowed out.  At this cooler hour, the ward behind
the screens was almost empty, and few sounds broke the stillness; but
from without came that intermittent rustle of dry palm-leaves.
Pierson waited in silence, watching the sun sink.  If the boy might
pass like this, it would be God's mercy.  Then he saw the boy's eyes
open, wonderfully clear eyes of the lighted grey which has dark rims;
his lips moved, and Pierson bent down to hear.

"I'm goin' West, zurr."  The whisper had a little soft burr; the lips
quivered; a pucker as of a child formed on his face, and passed.

Through Pierson's mind there flashed the thought: 'O God!  Let me be
some help to him!'

"To God, my dear son!"  he said.

A flicker of humour, of ironic question, passed over the boy's lips.

Terribly moved, Pierson knelt down, and began softly, fervently
praying.  His whispering mingled with the rustle of the palm-leaves,
while the bar of sunlight crept up the body.  In the boy's smile had
been the whole of stoic doubt, of stoic acquiescence.  It had met him
with an unconscious challenge; had seemed to know so much.  Pierson
took his hand, which lay outside the sheet.  The boy's lips moved, as
though in thanks; he drew a long feeble breath, as if to suck in the
thread of sunlight; and his eyes closed.  Pierson bent over the hand.
When he looked up the boy was dead.  He kissed his forehead and went
quietly out.

The sun had set, and he walked away from the hospital to a hillock
beyond the track on the desert's edge, and stood looking at the
afterglow.  The sun and the boy--together they had gone West, into
that wide glowing nothingness.

The muezzin call to sunset prayer in the Arab village came to him
clear and sharp, while he sat there, unutterably lonely.  Why had
that smile so moved him?  Other death smiles had been like this
evening smile on the desert hills--a glowing peace, a promise of
heaven.  But the boy's smile had said: 'Waste no breath on me--you
cannot help.  Who knows--who knows?  I have no hope, no faith; but I
am adventuring.  Good-bye!'  Poor boy!  He had braved all things, and
moved out uncertain, yet undaunted!  Was that, then, the uttermost
truth, was faith a smaller thing?  But from that strange notion he.
recoiled with horror.  'In faith I have lived, in faith I will die!'
he thought, 'God helping me!'  And the breeze, ruffling the desert
sand, blew the grains against the palms of his hands, outstretched
above the warm earth.





End of The Project Gutenberg Etext Saint's Progress, by John Galsworthy






THE ISLAND PHARISEES

By John Galsworthy


             "But this is a worshipful society"
                                  KING JOHN



PREFACE

Each man born into the world is born like Shelton in this book--to go
a journey, and for the most part he is born on the high road.  At
first he sits there in the dust, with his little chubby hands
reaching at nothing, and his little solemn eyes staring into space.
As soon as he can toddle, he moves, by the queer instinct we call the
love of life, straight along this road, looking neither to the right
nor left, so pleased is he to walk.  And he is charmed with
everything--with the nice flat road, all broad and white, with his
own feet, and with the prospect he can see on either hand.  The sun
shines, and he finds the road a little hot and dusty; the rain falls,
and he splashes through the muddy puddles.  It makes no matter--all
is pleasant; his fathers went this way before him; they made this
road for him to tread, and, when they bred him, passed into his fibre
the love of doing things as they themselves had done them.  So he
walks on and on, resting comfortably at nights under the roofs that
have been raised to shelter him, by those who went before.

Suddenly one day, without intending to, he notices a path or opening
in the hedge, leading to right or left, and he stands, looking at the
undiscovered.  After that he stops at all the openings in the hedge;
one day, with a beating heart, he tries one.

And this is where the fun begins.

Out of ten of him that try the narrow path, nine of him come back to
the broad road, and, when they pass the next gap in the hedge, they
say: "No, no, my friend, I found you pleasant for a while, but after
that-ah! after that!  The way my fathers went is good enough for me,
and it is obviously the proper one; for nine of me came back, and
that poor silly tenth--I really pity him!"

And when he comes to the next inn, and snuggles in his well-warmed,
bed, he thinks of the wild waste of heather where he might have had
to spend the night alone beneath the stars; nor does it, I think,
occur to him that the broad road he treads all day was once a
trackless heath itself.

But the poor silly tenth is faring on.  It is a windy night that he
is travelling through a windy night, with all things new around, and
nothing to help him but his courage.  Nine times out of ten that
courage fails, and he goes down into the bog.  He has seen the
undiscovered, and--like Ferrand in this book--the undiscovered has
engulfed him; his spirit, tougher than the spirit of the nine that
burned back to sleep in inns, was yet not tough enough.  The tenth
time he wins across, and on the traces he has left others follow
slowly, cautiously--a new road is opened to mankind!  A true saying
goes: Whatever is, is right!  And if all men from the world's
beginning had said that, the world would never have begun--at all.
Not even the protoplasmic jelly could have commenced its journey;
there would have been no motive force to make it start.

And so, that other saying had to be devised before the world could
set up business: Whatever is, is wrong!  But since the Cosmic Spirit
found that matters moved too fast if those that felt "All things that
are, are wrong" equalled in number those that felt "All things that
are, are right," It solemnly devised polygamy (all, be it said, in a
spiritual way of speaking); and to each male spirit crowing "All
things that are, are wrong" It decreed nine female spirits clucking
"All things that are, are right."  The Cosmic Spirit, who was very
much an artist, knew its work, and had previously devised a quality
called courage, and divided it in three, naming the parts spiritual,
moral, physical.  To all the male-bird spirits, but to no female
(spiritually, not corporeally speaking), It gave courage that was
spiritual; to nearly all, both male and female, It gave courage that
was physical; to very many hen-bird spirits It gave moral courage
too.  But, because It knew that if all the male-bird spirits were
complete, the proportion of male to female--one to ten--would be too
great, and cause upheavals, It so arranged that only one in ten male-
bird spirits should have all three kinds of courage; so that the
other nine, having spiritual courage, but lacking either in moral or
in physical, should fail in their extensions of the poultry-run.  And
having started them upon these lines, it left them to get along as
best they might.

Thus, in the subdivision of the poultry-run that we call England, the
proportion of the others to the complete male-bird spirit, who, of
course, is not infrequently a woman, is ninety-nine to one; and with
every Island Pharisee, when he or she starts out in life, the
interesting question ought to be, "Am I that one?"  Ninety very soon
find out that they are not, and, having found it out, lest others
should discover, they say they are.  Nine of the other ten, blinded
by their spiritual courage, are harder to convince; but one by one
they sink, still proclaiming their virility.  The hundredth Pharisee
alone sits out the play.

Now, the journey of this young man Shelton, who is surely not the
hundredth Pharisee, is but a ragged effort to present the working of
the truth "All things that are, are wrong," upon the truth "All
things that are, are right."

The Institutions of this country, like the Institutions of all other
countries, are but half-truths; they are the working daily clothing
of the nation; no more the body's permanent dress than is a baby's
frock.  Slowly but surely they wear out, or are outgrown; and in
their fashion they are always thirty years at least behind the
fashions of those spirits who are concerned with what shall take
their place.  The conditions that dictate our education, the
distribution of our property, our marriage laws, amusements, worship,
prisons, and all other things, change imperceptibly from hour to
hour; the moulds containing them, being inelastic, do not change, but
hold on to the point of bursting, and then are hastily, often
clumsily, enlarged.  The ninety desiring peace and comfort for their
spirit, the ninety of the well-warmed beds, will have it that the
fashions need not change, that morality is fixed, that all is ordered
and immutable, that every one will always marry, play, and worship in
the way that they themselves are marrying, playing, worshipping.
They have no speculation, and they hate with a deep hatred those who
speculate with thought.  This is the function they were made for.
They are the dough, and they dislike that yeasty stuff of life which
comes and works about in them.  The Yeasty Stuff--the other
ten--chafed by all things that are, desirous ever of new forms and
moulds, hate in their turn the comfortable ninety.  Each party has
invented for the other the hardest names that it can think of:
Philistines, Bourgeois, Mrs. Grundy, Rebels, Anarchists, and
Ne'er-do-weels.  So we go on!  And so, as each of us is born to go
his journey, he finds himself in time ranged on one side or on the
other, and joins the choruses of name-slingers.

But now and then--ah! very seldom--we find ourselves so near that
thing which has no breadth, the middle line, that we can watch them
both, and positively smile to see the fun.

When this book was published first, many of its critics found that
Shelton was the only Pharisee, and a most unsatisfactory young man--
and so, no doubt, he is.  Belonging to the comfortable ninety, they
felt, in fact, the need of slinging names at one who obviously was of
the ten.  Others of its critics, belonging to the ten, wielded their
epithets upon Antonia, and the serried ranks behind her, and called
them Pharisees; as dull as ditch-water--and so, I fear, they are.

One of the greatest charms of authorship is the privilege it gives
the author of studying the secret springs of many unseen persons, of
analysing human nature through the criticism that his work evokes--
criticism welling out of the instinctive likings or aversions, out of
the very fibre of the human being who delivers it; criticism that
often seems to leap out against the critic's will, startled like a
fawn from some deep bed, of sympathy or of antipathy.  And so, all
authors love to be abused--as any man can see.

In the little matter of the title of this book, we are all Pharisees,
whether of the ninety or the ten, and we certainly do live upon an
Island.

JOHN GALSWORTHY.

January 1, 1908






PART I

THE TOWN


CHAPTER I

SOCIETY

A quiet, well-dressed man named Shelton, with a brown face and a
short, fair beard, stood by the bookstall at Dover Station.  He was
about to journey up to London, and had placed his bag in the corner
of a third-class carriage.

After his long travel, the flat-vowelled voice of the bookstall clerk
offering the latest novel sounded pleasant--pleasant the independent
answers of a bearded guard, and the stodgy farewell sayings of a man
and wife.  The limber porters trundling their barrows, the greyness
of the station and the good stolid humour clinging to the people,
air, and voices, all brought to him the sense of home.  Meanwhile he
wavered between purchasing a book called Market Hayborough, which he
had read and would certainly enjoy a second time, and Carlyle's
French Revolution, which he had not read and was doubtful of
enjoying; he felt that he ought to buy the latter, but he did not
relish giving up the former.  While he hesitated thus, his carriage
was beginning to fill up; so, quickly buying both, he took up a
position from which he could defend his rights.  "Nothing," he
thought, "shows people up like travelling."

The carriage was almost full, and, putting his bag, up in the rack,
he took his seat.  At the moment of starting yet another passenger, a
girl with a pale face, scrambled in.

"I was a fool to go third," thought Shelton, taking in his neighbours
from behind his journal.

They were seven.  A grizzled rustic sat in the far corner; his empty
pipe, bowl downwards, jutted like a handle from his face, all bleared
with the smear of nothingness that grows on those who pass their
lives in the current of hard facts.  Next to him, a ruddy, heavy-
shouldered man was discussing with a grey-haired, hatchet-visaged
person the condition of their gardens; and Shelton watched their eyes
till it occurred to him how curious a look was in them--a watchful
friendliness, an allied distrust--and that their voices, cheerful,
even jovial, seemed to be cautious all the time.  His glance strayed
off, and almost rebounded from the semi-Roman, slightly cross, and
wholly self-complacent face of a stout lady in a black-and-white
costume, who was reading the Strand Magazine, while her other, sleek,
plump hand, freed from its black glove, and ornamented with a thick
watch-bracelet, rested on her lap.  A younger, bright-cheeked, and
self-conscious female was sitting next her, looking at the pale girl
who had just got in.

"There's something about that girl," thought Shelton, "they don't
like."  Her brown eyes certainly looked frightened, her clothes were
of a foreign cut.  Suddenly he met the glance of another pair of
eyes; these eyes, prominent and blue, stared with a sort of subtle
roguery from above a thin, lopsided nose, and were at once averted.
They gave Shelton the impression that he was being judged, and
mocked, enticed, initiated.  His own gaze did not fall; this sanguine
face, with its two-day growth of reddish beard, long nose, full lips,
and irony, puzzled him.  "A cynical face!" he thought, and then, "but
sensitive!" and then, "too cynical," again.

The young man who owned it sat with his legs parted at the knees, his
dusty trouser-ends and boots slanting back beneath the seat, his
yellow finger-tips crisped as if rolling cigarettes.  A strange air
of detachment was about that youthful, shabby figure, and not a scrap
of luggage filled the rack above his head.

The frightened girl was sitting next this pagan personality; it was
possibly the lack of fashion in his looks that caused, her to select
him for her confidence.

"Monsieur," she asked, "do you speak French?"

"Perfectly."

"Then can you tell me where they take the tickets?

"The young man shook his head.

"No," said he, "I am a foreigner."

The girl sighed.

"But what is the matter, ma'moiselle?"

The girl did not reply, twisting her hands on an old bag in her lap.
Silence had stolen on the carriage--a silence such as steals on
animals at the first approach of danger; all eyes were turned towards
the figures of the foreigners.


"Yes," broke out the red-faced man, "he was a bit squiffy that
evening--old Tom."

"Ah!" replied his neighbour, "he would be."

Something seemed to have destroyed their look of mutual distrust.
The plump, sleek hand of the lady with the Roman nose curved
convulsively; and this movement corresponded to the feeling agitating
Shelton's heart.  It was almost as if hand and heart feared to be
asked for something.

"Monsieur," said the girl, with a tremble in her voice, "I am very
unhappy; can you tell me what to do?  I had no money for a ticket."

The foreign youth's face flickered.

"Yes?" he said; "that might happen to anyone, of course."

"What will they do to me?" sighed the girl.

"Don't lose courage, ma'moiselle."  The young man slid his eyes from
left to right, and rested them on Shelton.  "Although I don't as yet
see your way out."

"Oh, monsieur!" sighed the girl, and, though it was clear that none
but Shelton understood what they were saying, there was a chilly
feeling in the carriage.

"I wish I could assist you," said the foreign youth; "unfortunately--
--" he shrugged his shoulders, and again his eyes returned to
Shelton.

The latter thrust his hand into his pocket.

"Can I be of any use?" he asked in English.

"Certainly, sir; you could render this young lady the greatest
possible service by lending her the money for a ticket."

Shelton produced a sovereign, which the young man took.  Passing it.
to the girl, he said:

"A thousand thanks--'voila une belle action'!"

The misgivings which attend on casual charity crowded up in Shelton's
mind; he was ashamed of having them and of not having them, and he
stole covert looks at this young foreigner, who was now talking to
the girl in a language that he did not understand.  Though vagabond
in essence, the fellow's face showed subtle spirit, a fortitude and
irony not found upon the face of normal man, and in turning from it
to the other passengers Shelton was conscious of revolt, contempt,
and questioning, that he could not define.  Leaning back with half-
closed eyes, he tried to diagnose this new sensation.  He found it
disconcerting that the faces and behaviour of his neighbours lacked
anything he could grasp and secretly abuse.  They continued to
converse with admirable and slightly conscious phlegm, yet he knew,
as well as if each one had whispered to him privately, that this
shady incident had shaken them.  Something unsettling to their
notions of propriety-something dangerous and destructive of
complacency--had occurred, and this was unforgivable.  Each had a
different way, humorous or philosophic, contemptuous, sour, or sly,
of showing this resentment.  But by a flash of insight Shelton saw
that at the bottom of their minds and of his own the feeling was the
same.  Because he shared in their resentment he was enraged with them
and with himself.  He looked at the plump, sleek hand of the woman
with the Roman nose.  The insulation and complacency of its pale
skin, the passive righteousness about its curve, the prim separation
from the others of the fat little finger, had acquired a wholly
unaccountable importance.  It embodied the verdict of his fellow-
passengers, the verdict of Society; for he knew that, whether or no
repugnant to the well-bred mind, each assemblage of eight persons,
even in a third-class carriage, contains the kernel of Society.

But being in love, and recently engaged, Shelton had a right to be
immune from discontent of any kind, and he reverted to his mental
image of the cool, fair face, quick movements, and the brilliant
smile that now in his probationary exile haunted his imagination; he
took out his fiancee's last letter, but the voice of the young
foreigner addressing him in rapid French caused him to put it back
abruptly.

"From what she tells me, sir," he said, bending forward to be out of
hearing of the girl, "hers is an unhappy case.  I should have been
only too glad to help her, but, as you see"--and he made a gesture by
which Shelton observed that he had parted from his waistcoat--"I am
not Rothschild.  She has been abandoned by the man who brought her
over to Dover under promise of marriage.  Look"--and by a subtle
flicker of his eyes he marked how the two ladies had edged away from
the French girl "they take good care not to let their garments touch
her.  They are virtuous women.  How fine a thing is virtue, sir! and
finer to know you have it, especially when you are never likely to be
tempted."

Shelton was unable to repress a smile; and when he smiled his face
grew soft.

"Haven't you observed," went on the youthful foreigner, "that those
who by temperament and circumstance are worst fitted to pronounce
judgment are usually the first to judge?  The judgments of Society
are always childish, seeing that it's composed for the most part of
individuals who have never smelt the fire.  And look at this: they
who have money run too great a risk of parting with it if they don't
accuse the penniless of being rogues and imbeciles."

Shelton was startled, and not only by an outburst of philosophy from
an utter stranger in poor clothes, but at this singular wording of
his own private thoughts.  Stifling his sense of the unusual for the
queer attraction this young man inspired, he said:

"I suppose you're a stranger over here?"

"I've been in England seven months, but not yet in London," replied
the other.  "I count on doing some good there--it is time!"  A bitter
and pathetic smile showed for a second on his lips.  "It won't be my
fault if I fail.  You are English, Sir?"

Shelton nodded.

"Forgive my asking; your voice lacks something I've nearly always
noticed in the English a kind of--'comment cela s'appelle'--
cocksureness, coming from your nation's greatest quality."

"And what is that?" asked Shelton with a smile.

"Complacency," replied the youthful foreigner.

"Complacency!" repeated Shelton; "do you call that a great quality?"

"I should rather say, monsieur, a great defect in what is always a
great people.  You are certainly the most highly-civilised nation on
the earth; you suffer a little from the fact.  If I were an English
preacher my desire would be to prick the heart of your complacency."

Shelton, leaning back, considered this impertinent suggestion.

"Hum!" he said at last, "you'd be unpopular; I don't know that we're
any cockier than other nations."

The young foreigner made a sign as though confirming this opinion.

"In effect," said he, "it is a sufficiently widespread disease.  Look
at these people here"--and with a rapid glance he pointed to the
inmates of the carnage,--"very average persons!  What have they done
to warrant their making a virtuous nose at those who do not walk as
they do?  That old rustic, perhaps, is different--he never thinks at
all--but look at those two occupied with their stupidities about the
price of hops, the prospects of potatoes, what George is doing, a
thousand things all of that sort--look at their faces; I come of the
bourgeoisie myself--have they ever shown proof of any quality that
gives them the right to pat themselves upon the back?  No fear!
Outside potatoes they know nothing, and what they do not understand
they dread and they despise--there are millions of that breed.
'Voila la Societe'!  The sole quality these people have shown they
have is cowardice.  I was educated by the Jesuits," he concluded; "it
has given me a way of thinking."

Under ordinary circumstances Shelton would have murmured in a well-
bred voice, "Ah! quite so," and taken refuge in the columns of the
Daily Telegraph.  In place of this, for some reason that he did not
understand, he looked at the young foreigner, and asked,

"Why do you say all this to me?"

The tramp--for by his boots he could hardly have been better--
hesitated.

"When you've travelled like me," he said, as if resolved to speak the
truth, "you acquire an instinct in choosing to whom and how you
speak.  It is necessity that makes the law; if you want to live you
must learn all that sort of thing to make face against life."

Shelton, who himself possessed a certain subtlety, could not but
observe the complimentary nature of these words.  It was like saying
"I'm not afraid of you misunderstanding me, and thinking me a rascal
just because I study human nature."

"But is there nothing to be done for that poor girl?"

His new acquaintance shrugged his shoulders.

"A broken jug," said he; "--you'll never mend her.  She's going to a
cousin in London to see if she can get help; you've given her the
means of getting there--it's all that you can do.  One knows too well
what'll become of her."

Shelton said gravely,

"Oh!  that's horrible!  Could n't she be induced to go back home?  I
should be glad--"

The foreign vagrant shook his head.

"Mon cher monsieur," he said, "you evidently have not yet had
occasion to know what the 'family' is like.  'The family' does not
like damaged goods; it will have nothing to say to sons whose hands
have dipped into the till or daughters no longer to be married.  What
the devil would they do with her?  Better put a stone about her neck
and let her drown at once.  All the world is Christian, but Christian
and good Samaritan are not quite the same."

Shelton looked at the girl, who was sitting motionless, with her
hands crossed on her bag, and a revolt against the unfair ways of
life arose within him.

"Yes," said the young foreigner, as if reading all his thoughts,
"what's called virtue is nearly always only luck."  He rolled his
eyes as though to say: "Ah! La, Conventions?  Have them by all means
--but don't look like peacocks because you are preserving them; it is
but cowardice and luck, my friends--but cowardice and luck!"

"Look here," said Shelton, "I'll give her my address, and if she
wants to go back to her family she can write to me."

"She'll never go back; she won't have the courage."

Shelton caught the cringing glance of the girl's eyes; in the droop
of her lip there was something sensuous, and the conviction that the
young man's words were true came over him.

"I had better not give them my private address," he thought, glancing
at the faces opposite; and he wrote down the following: "Richard
Paramor Shelton, c/o Paramor and Herring, Lincoln's Inn Fields."

"You're very good, sir.  My name is Louis Ferrand; no address at
present.  I'll make her understand; she's half stupefied just now."

Shelton returned to the perusal of his paper, too disturbed to read;
the young vagrant's words kept sounding in his ears.  He raised his
eyes.  The plump hand of the lady with the Roman nose still rested on
her lap; it had been recased in its black glove with large white
stitching.  Her frowning gaze was fixed on him suspiciously, as if he
had outraged her sense of decency.

"He did n't get anything from me," said the voice of the red-faced
man, ending a talk on tax-gatherers.  The train whistled loudly, and
Shelton reverted to his paper.  This time he crossed his legs,
determined to enjoy the latest murder; once more he found himself
looking at the vagrant's long-nosed, mocking face.  "That fellow," he
thought, "has seen and felt ten times as much as I, although he must
be ten years younger."

He turned for distraction to the landscape, with its April clouds,
trim hedgerows, homely coverts.  But strange ideas would come, and he
was discontented with himself; the conversation he had had, the
personality of this young foreigner, disturbed him.  It was all as
though he had made a start in some fresh journey through the fields
of thought.




CHAPTER II

ANTONIA

Five years before the journey just described Shelton had stood one
afternoon on the barge of his old college at the end of the summer
races.  He had been "down" from Oxford for some years, but these
Olympian contests still attracted him.

The boats were passing, and in the usual rush to the barge side his
arm came in contact with a soft young shoulder.  He saw close to him
a young girl with fair hair knotted in a ribbon, whose face was eager
with excitement.  The pointed chin, long neck, the fluffy hair, quick
gestures, and the calm strenuousness of her grey-blue eyes, impressed
him vividly.

"Oh, we must bump them!" he heard her sigh.

"Do you know my people, Shelton?" said a voice behind his back; and
he was granted a touch from the girl's shy, impatient hand, the
warmer fingers of a lady with kindly eyes resembling a hare's, the
dry hand-clasp of a gentleman with a thin, arched nose, and a
quizzical brown face.

"Are you the Mr. Shelton who used to play the 'bones' at Eton?" said
the lady.  "Oh; we so often heard of you from Bernard!  He was your
fag, was n't he?  How distressin' it is to see these poor boys in the
boats!"

"Mother, they like it!" cried the girl.

"Antonia ought to be rowing, herself," said her father, whose name
was Dennant.

Shelton went back with them to their hotel, walking beside Antonia
through the Christchurch meadows, telling her details of his college
life.  He dined with them that evening, and, when he left, had a
feeling like that produced by a first glass of champagne.

The Dennants lived at Holm Oaks, within six miles of Oxford, and two
days later he drove over and paid a call.  Amidst the avocations of
reading for the Bar, of cricket, racing, shooting, it but required a
whiff of some fresh scent--hay, honeysuckle, clover--to bring
Antonia's face before him, with its uncertain colour and its frank,
distant eyes.  But two years passed before he again saw her.  Then,
at an invitation from Bernard Dennant, he played cricket for the
Manor of Holm Oaks against a neighbouring house; in the evening there
was dancing oh the lawn.  The fair hair was now turned up, but the
eyes were quite unchanged.  Their steps went together, and they.
outlasted every other couple on the slippery grass.  Thence, perhaps,
sprang her respect for him; he was wiry, a little taller than
herself, and seemed to talk of things that interested her.  He found
out she was seventeen, and she found out that he was twenty-nine.
The following two years Shelton went to Holm Oaks whenever he was
asked; to him this was a period of enchanted games, of cub-hunting,
theatricals, and distant sounds of practised music, and during it
Antonia's eyes grew more friendly and more curious, and his own more
shy, and schooled, more furtive and more ardent.  Then came his
father's death, a voyage round the world, and that peculiar hour of
mixed sensations when, one March morning, abandoning his steamer at
Marseilles, he took train for Hyeres.

He found her at one of those exclusive hostelries amongst the pines
where the best English go, in common with Americans, Russian
princesses, and Jewish families; he would not have been shocked to
find her elsewhere, but he would have been surprised.  His sunburnt
face and the new beard, on which he set some undefined value,
apologetically displayed, were scanned by those blue eyes with rapid
glances, at once more friendly and less friendly.  "Ah!" they seemed
to say, "here you are; how glad I am!  But--what now?"

He was admitted to their sacred table at the table d'hote, a snowy
oblong in an airy alcove, where the Honourable Mrs. Dennant, Miss
Dennant, and the Honourable Charlotte Penguin, a maiden aunt with
insufficient lungs, sat twice a day in their own atmosphere.  A
momentary weakness came on Shelton the first time he saw them sitting
there at lunch.  What was it gave them their look of strange
detachment?  Mrs. Dennant was bending above a camera.

"I'm afraid, d' you know, it's under-exposed," she said.

"What a pity!  The kitten was rather nice!"  The maiden aunt, placing
the knitting of a red silk tie beside her plate, turned her aspiring,
well-bred gaze on Shelton.

"Look, Auntie," said Antonia in her clear, quick voice, "there's the
funny little man again!"

"Oh," said the maiden aunt--a smile revealed her upper teeth; she
looked for the funny little man (who was not English)--"he's rather
nice!"

Shelton did not look for the funny little man; he stole a glance that
barely reached Antonia's brow, where her eyebrows took their tiny
upward slant at the outer corners, and her hair was still ruffled by
a windy walk.  From that moment he became her slave.

"Mr. Shelton, do you know anything about these periscopic
binoculars?" said Mrs. Dennant's voice; "they're splendid for
buildin's, but buildin's are so disappointin'.  The thing is to get
human interest, isn't it?" and her glance wandered absently past
Shelton in search of human interest.

"You haven't put down what you've taken, mother."

>From a little leather bag Mrs. Dennant took a little leather book.

"It's so easy to forget what they're about," she said, "that's so
annoyin'."

Shelton was not again visited by his uneasiness at their detachment;
he accepted them and all their works, for there was something quite
sublime about the way that they would leave the dining-room,
unconscious that they themselves were funny to all the people they
had found so funny while they had been sitting there, and he would
follow them out unnecessarily upright and feeling like a fool.

In the ensuing fortnight, chaperoned by the maiden aunt, for Mrs.
Dennant disliked driving, he sat opposite to Antonia during many
drives; he played sets of tennis with her; but it was in the evenings
after dinner--those long evenings on a parquet floor in wicker chairs
dragged as far as might be from the heating apparatus--that he seemed
so very near her.  The community of isolation drew them closer.  In
place of a companion he had assumed the part of friend, to whom she
could confide all her home-sick aspirations.  So that, even when she
was sitting silent, a slim, long foot stretched out in front, bending
with an air of cool absorption over some pencil sketches which she
would not show him--even then, by her very attitude, by the sweet
freshness that clung about her, by her quick, offended glances at the
strange persons round, she seemed to acknowledge in some secret way
that he was necessary.  He was far from realising this; his
intellectual and observant parts were hypnotised and fascinated even
by her failings.  The faint freckling across her nose, the slim and
virginal severeness of her figure, with its narrow hips and arms, the
curve of her long neck-all were added charms.  She had the wind and
rain look, a taste of home; and over the glaring roads, where the
palm-tree shadows lay so black, she seemed to pass like the very
image of an English day.

One afternoon he had taken her to play tennis with some friends, and
afterwards they strolled on to her favourite view.  Down the Toulon
road gardens and hills were bathed in the colour of ripe apricot; an
evening crispness had stolen on the air; the blood, released from the
sun's numbing, ran gladly in the veins.  On the right hand of the
road was a Frenchman playing bowls.  Enormous, busy, pleased, and
upright as a soldier, pathetically trotting his vast carcass from end
to end, he delighted Shelton.  But Antonia threw a single look at the
huge creature, and her face expressed disgust.  She began running up
towards the ruined tower.

Shelton let her keep in front, watching her leap from stone to stone
and throw back defiant glances when he pressed behind.  She stood at
the top, and he looked up at her.  Over the world, gloriously spread
below, she, like a statue, seemed to rule.  The colour was brilliant
in her cheeks, her young bosom heaved, her eyes shone, and the
flowing droop of her long, full sleeves gave to her poised figure the
look of one who flies.  He pulled himself up and stood beside her;
his heart choked him, all the colour had left his cheeks.

"Antonia," he said, "I love you."

She started, as if his whisper had intruded on her thoughts; but his
face must have expressed his hunger, for the resentment in her eyes
vanished.

They stood for several minutes without speaking, and then went home.
Shelton painfully revolved the riddle of the colour in her face.  Had
he a chance then?  Was it possible?  That evening the instinct
vouchsafed at times to lovers in place of reason caused him to pack
his bag and go to Cannes.  On returning, two days later, and
approaching the group in the centre of the Winter Garden, the voice
of the maiden aunt reading aloud an extract from the Morning Post
reached him across the room.

"Don't you think that's rather nice?" he heard her ask, and then:
"Oh, here you aye!  It's very nice to see you back!"

Shelton slipped into a wicker chair.  Antonia looked up quickly from
her sketch-book, put out a hand, but did not speak.

He watched her bending head, and his eagerness was changed to gloom.
With desperate vivacity he sustained the five intolerable minutes of
inquiry, where had he been, what had he been doing?  Then once again
the maiden aunt commenced her extracts from the Morning Post.

A touch on his sleeve startled him.  Antonia was leaning forward; her
cheeks were crimson above the pallor of her neck.

"Would you like to see my sketches?"

To Shelton, bending above those sketches, that drawl of the well-bred
maiden aunt intoning the well-bred paper was the most pleasant sound
that he had ever listened to.

"My dear Dick," Mrs. Dennant said to him a fortnight later, "we would
rather, after you leave here, that you don't see each other again
until July.  Of course I know you count it an engagement and all
that, and everybody's been writin' to congratulate you.  But Algie
thinks you ought to give yourselves a chance.  Young people don't
always know what they're about, you know; it's not long to wait."

"Three months!"  gasped Shelton.

He had to swallow down this pill with what grace he could command.
There was no alternative.  Antonia had acquiesced in the condition
with a queer, grave pleasure, as if she expected it to do her good.

"It'll be something to look forward to, Dick," she said.

He postponed departure as long as possible, and it was not until the
end of April that he left for England.  She came alone to see him
off.  It was drizzling, but her tall, slight figure in the golf cape
looked impervious to cold and rain amongst the shivering natives.
Desperately he clutched her hand, warm through the wet glove; her
smile seemed heartless in its brilliancy.  He whispered "You will
write?"

"Of course; don't be so stupid, you old Dick!"

She ran forward as the train began to move; her clear "Good-bye!"
sounded shrill and hard above the rumble of the wheels.  He saw her
raise her hand, an umbrella waving, and last of all, vivid still
amongst receding shapes, the red spot of her scarlet tam-o'-shanter.




CHAPTER III

A ZOOLOGICAL GARDEN

After his journey up from Dover, Shelton was still fathering his
luggage at Charing Cross, when the foreign girl passed him, and, in
spite of his desire to say something cheering, he could get nothing
out but a shame-faced smile.  Her figure vanished, wavering into the
hurly-burly; one of his bags had gone astray, and so all thought of
her soon faded from his mind.  His cab, however, overtook the foreign
vagrant marching along towards Pall Mall with a curious, lengthy
stride--an observant, disillusioned figure.

The first bustle of installation over, time hung heavy on his hands.
July loomed distant, as in some future century; Antonia's eyes
beckoned him faintly, hopelessly.  She would not even be coming back
to England for another month.

. . . I met a young foreigner in the train from Dover [he wrote to
her]--a curious sort of person altogether, who seems to have infected
me.  Everything here has gone flat and unprofitable; the only good
things in life are your letters . . . . John Noble dined with me
yesterday; the poor fellow tried to persuade me to stand for
Parliament.  Why should I think myself fit to legislate for the
unhappy wretches one sees about in the streets?  If people's faces
are a fair test of their happiness, I' d rather not feel in any way
responsible . . . .

The streets, in fact, after his long absence in the East, afforded
him much food for thought: the curious smugness of the passers-by;
the utterly unending bustle; the fearful medley of miserable, over-
driven women, and full-fed men, with leering, bull-beef eyes, whom he
saw everywhere--in club windows, on their beats, on box seats, on the
steps of hotels, discharging dilatory duties; the appalling choas of
hard-eyed, capable dames with defiant clothes, and white-cheeked
hunted-looking men; of splendid creatures in their cabs, and cadging
creatures in their broken hats--the callousness and the monotony!

One afternoon in May he received this letter couched in French:

                                   3, BLANK ROW
                                        WESTMINSTER.

MY DEAR SIR,

Excuse me for recalling to your memory the offer of assistance you so
kindly made me during the journey from Dover to London, in which I
was so fortunate as to travel with a man like you.  Having beaten the
whole town, ignorant of what wood to make arrows, nearly at the end
of my resources, my spirit profoundly discouraged, I venture to avail
myself of your permission, knowing your good heart.  Since I saw you
I have run through all the misfortunes of the calendar, and cannot
tell what door is left at which I have not knocked.  I presented
myself at the business firm with whose name you supplied me, but
being unfortunately in rags, they refused to give me your address.
Is this not very much in the English character?  They told me to
write, and said they would forward the letter.  I put all my hopes in
you.
     Believe me, my dear sir,
          (whatever you may decide)
               Your devoted
                    LOUIS FERRAND.

Shelton looked at the envelope, and saw, that it, bore date a week
ago.  The face of the young vagrant rose before him, vital, mocking,
sensitive; the sound of his quick French buzzed in his ears, and,
oddly, the whole whiff of him had a power of raising more vividly
than ever his memories of Antonia.  It had been at the end of the
journey from Hyeres to London that he had met him; that seemed to
give the youth a claim.

He took his hat and hurried, to Blank Row.  Dismissing his cab at the
corner of Victoria Street he with difficulty found the house in
question.  It was a doorless place, with stone-flagged corridor--in
other words, a "doss-house."  By tapping on a sort of ticket-office
with a sliding window, he attracted the attention of a blowsy woman
with soap-suds on her arms, who informed him that the person he was
looking for had gone without leaving his address.

"But isn't there anybody," asked Shelton, "of whom I can make
inquiry?"

"Yes; there's a Frenchman."  And opening an inner door she bellowed:
"Frenchy!  Wanted!" and disappeared.

A dried-up, yellow little man, cynical and weary in the face, as if a
moral steam-roller had passed over it, answered this call, and stood,
sniffing, as it were, at Shelton, on whom he made the singular
impression of some little creature in a cage.

"He left here ten days ago, in the company of a mulatto.  What do you
want with him, if I may ask?"  The little man's yellow cheeks were
wrinkled with suspicion.

Shelton produced the letter.

"Ah! now I know you"--a pale smile broke through the Frenchman's
crow's-feet--"he spoke of you.  'If I can only find him,' he used to
say, 'I 'm saved.'  I liked that young man; he had ideas."

"Is there no way of getting at him through his consul?"

The Frenchman shook his head.

"Might as well look for diamonds at the bottom of the sea."

"Do you think he will come back here?  But by that time I suppose,
you'll hardly be here yourself?"

A gleam of amusement played about the Frenchman's teeth:

"I? Oh, yes, sir!  Once upon a time I cherished the hope of emerging;
I no longer have illusions.  I shave these specimens for a living,
and shall shave them till the day of judgment.  But leave a letter
with me by all means; he will come back.  There's an overcoat of his
here on which he borrowed money--it's worth more.  Oh, yes; he will
come back--a youth of principle.  Leave a letter with me; I'm always
here."

Shelton hesitated, but those last three words, "I'm always here,"
touched him in their simplicity.  Nothing more dreadful could be
said.

"Can you find me a sheet of paper, then?" he asked; "please keep the
change for the trouble I am giving you."

"Thank you," said the Frenchman simply; "he told me that your heart
was good.  If you don't mind the kitchen, you could write there at
your ease."

Shelton wrote his letter at the table of this stone-flagged kitchen
in company with an aged, dried-up gentleman; who was muttering to
himself; and Shelton tried to avoid attracting his attention,
suspecting that he was not sober.  Just as he was about to take his
leave, however, the old fellow thus accosted him:

"Did you ever go to the dentist, mister?" he said, working at a loose
tooth with his shrivelled fingers.  "I went to a dentist once, who
professed to stop teeth without giving pain, and the beggar did stop
my teeth without pain; but did they stay in, those stoppings?  No, my
bhoy; they came out before you could say Jack Robinson. Now, I
shimply ask you, d'you call that dentistry?"  Fixing his eyes on
Shelton's collar, which had the misfortune to be high and clean, he
resumed with drunken scorn: "Ut's the same all over this pharisaical
counthry.  Talk of high morality and Anglo-Shaxon civilisation!  The
world was never at such low ebb!  Phwhat's all this morality?  Ut
stinks of the shop.  Look at the condition of Art in this counthry!
look at the fools you see upon th' stage! look at the pictures and
books that sell!  I know what I'm talking about, though I am a
sandwich man.  Phwhat's the secret of ut all?  Shop, my bhoy!  Ut
don't pay to go below a certain depth!  Scratch the skin, but pierce
ut--Oh! dear, no!  We hate to see the blood fly, eh?"

Shelton stood disconcerted, not knowing if he were expected to reply;
but the old gentleman, pursing up his lips, went on:

"Sir, there are no extremes in this fog-smitten land. Do ye think
blanks loike me ought to exist?  Whoy don't they kill us off?
Palliatives--palliatives--and whoy?  Because they object to th'
extreme course.  Look at women: the streets here are a scandal to the
world.  They won't recognise that they exist--their noses are so dam
high! They blink the truth in this middle-class counthry.  My bhoy"--
and he whispered confidentially--"ut pays 'em.  Eh? you say, why
shouldn't they, then?"  (But Shelton had not spoken.)  "Well, let'em!
let 'em!.  But don't tell me that'sh morality, don't tell me that'sh
civilisation!  What can you expect in a counthry where the crimson,
emotions are never allowed to smell the air?  And what'sh the result?
My bhoy, the result is sentiment, a yellow thing with blue spots,
like a fungus or a Stilton cheese.  Go to the theatre, and see one of
these things they call plays.  Tell me, are they food for men and
women?  Why, they're pap for babes and shop-boys!  I was a blanky
actor moyself!"

Shelton listened with mingled feelings of amusement and dismay, till
the old actor, having finished, resumed his crouching posture at the
table.

"You don't get dhrunk, I suppose?" he said suddenly--"too much of 'n
Englishman, no doubt."

"Very seldom," said Shelton.

"Pity!  Think of the pleasures of oblivion!  Oi 'm dhrunk every
night."

"How long will you last at that rate?"

"There speaks the Englishman!  Why should Oi give up me only pleasure
to keep me wretched life in?  If you've anything left worth the
keeping shober for, keep shober by all means; if not, the sooner you
are dhrunk the better--that stands to reason."

In the corridor Shelton asked the Frenchman where the old man came
from.

"Oh, and Englishman!  Yes, yes, from Belfast very drunken old man.
You are a drunken nation"--he made a motion with his hands "he no
longer eats--no inside left.  It is unfortunate-a man of spirit.  If
you have never seen one of these palaces, monsieur, I shall be happy
to show you over it."

Shelton took out his cigarette case.

"Yes, yes," said the Frenchman, making a wry nose and taking a
cigarette; "I'm accustomed to it.  But you're wise to fumigate the
air; one is n't in a harem."

And Shelton felt ashamed of his fastidiousness.

"This," said the guide, leading him up-stairs and opening a door, "is
a specimen of the apartments reserved for these princes of the
blood."  There were four empty beds on iron legs, and, with the air
of a showman, the Frenchman twitched away a dingy quilt.  "They go
out in the mornings, earn enough to make them drunk, sleep it off,
and then begin again.  That's their life.  There are people who think
they ought to be reformed.  'Mon cher monsieur', one must face
reality a little, even in this country.  It would be a hundred times
better for these people to spend their time reforming high Society.
Your high Society makes all these creatures; there's no harvest
without cutting stalks.  'Selon moi'," he continued, putting back the
quilt, and dribbling cigarette smoke through his nose, "there's no
grand difference between your high Society and these individuals
here; both want pleasure, both think only of themselves, which is
very natural.  One lot have had the luck, the other--well, you see."
He shrugged.  "A common set!  I've been robbed here half a dozen
times.  If you have new shoes, a good waistcoat, an overcoat, you
want eyes in the back of your head.  And they are populated!  Change
your bed, and you'll run all the dangers of not sleeping alone.
'V'la ma clientele'!  The half of them don't pay me!"  He, snapped
his yellow sticks of fingers.  "A penny for a shave, twopence a cut!
'Quelle vie'!  Here," he continued, standing by a bed, "is a
gentleman who owes me fivepence.  Here's one who was a soldier; he's
done for!  All brutalised; not one with any courage left!  But,
believe me, monsieur," he went on, opening another door, "when you
come down to houses of this sort you must have a vice; it's as
necessary as breath is to the lungs.  No matter what, you must have a
vice to give you a little solace--'un peu de soulagement'.  Ah, yes!
before you judge these swine, reflect on life!  I've been through it.
Monsieur, it is not nice never to know where to get your next meal.
Gentlemen who have food in their stomachs, money in their pockets,
and know where to get more, they never think.  Why should they--'pas
de danger'!  All these cages are the same.  Come down, and you shall
see the pantry."  He took Shelton through the kitchen, which seemed
the only sitting-room of the establishment, to an inner room
furnished with dirty cups and saucers, plates, and knives.  Another
fire was burning there.  "We always have hot water," said the
Frenchman, "and three times a week they make a fire down there"--he
pointed to a cellar--"for our clients to boil their vermin.  Oh, yes,
we have all the luxuries."

Shelton returned to the kitchen, and directly after took leave of the
little Frenchman, who said, with a kind of moral button-holing, as if
trying to adopt him as a patron:

"Trust me, monsieur; if he comes back--that young man--he shall have
your letter without fail.  My name is Carolan Jules Carolan; and I
am always at your service."




CHAPTER IV

THE PLAY

Shelton walked away; he had been indulging in a nightmare.  "That old
actor was drunk," thought he, "and no doubt he was an Irishman;
still, there may be truth in what he said.  I am a Pharisee, like all
the rest who are n't in the pit.  My respectability is only luck.
What should I have become if I'd been born into his kind of life?"
and he stared at a stream of people coming from the Stares, trying to
pierce the mask of their serious, complacent faces.  If these ladies
and gentlemen were put into that pit into which he had been looking,
would a single one of them emerge again?  But the effort of picturing
them there was too much for him; it was too far--too ridiculously
far.

One particular couple, a large; fine man and wife, who, in the midst
of all the dirt and rumbling hurry, the gloomy, ludicrous, and
desperately jovial streets, walked side by side in well-bred silence,
had evidently bought some article which pleased them.  There was
nothing offensive in their manner; they seemed quite unconcerned at
the passing of the other people.  The man had that fine solidity of
shoulder and of waist, the glossy self-possession that belongs to
those with horses, guns, and dressing-bags.  The wife, her chin
comfortably settled in her fur, kept her grey eyes on the ground,
and, when she spoke, her even and unruffled voice reached Shelton's
ears above all the whirring of the traffic.  It was leisurely
precise, as if it had never hurried, had never been exhausted, or
passionate, or afraid.  Their talk, like that of many dozens of fine
couples invading London from their country places, was of where to
dine, what theatre they should go to, whom they had seen, what they
should buy.  And Shelton knew that from day's end to end, and even in
their bed, these would be the subjects of their conversation.  They
were the best-bred people of the sort he met in country houses and
accepted as of course, with a vague discomfort at the bottom of his
soul.  Antonia's home, for instance, had been full of them.  They
were the best-bred people of the sort who supported charities, knew
everybody, had clear, calm judgment, and intolerance of all such
conduct as seemed to them "impossible," all breaches of morality,
such as mistakes of etiquette, such as dishonesty, passion, sympathy
(except with a canonised class of objects--the legitimate sufferings,
for instance, of their own families and class).  How healthy they
were!  The memory of the doss-house worked in Shelton's mind like
poison.  He was conscious that in his own groomed figure, in the
undemonstrative assurance of his walk, he bore resemblance to the
couple he apostrophised.  "Ah!" he thought, "how vulgar our
refinement is!"  But he hardly believed in his own outburst.  These
people were so well mannered, so well conducted, and so healthy, he
could not really understand what irritated him.  What was the matter
with them?  They fulfilled their duties, had good appetites, clear
consciences, all the furniture of perfect citizens; they merely
lacked-feelers, a loss that, he had read, was suffered by plants and
animals which no longer had a need for using them.  Some rare
national faculty of seeing only the obvious and materially useful had
destroyed their power of catching gleams or scents to right or left.

The lady looked up at her husband.  The light of quiet, proprietary
affection shone in her calm grey eyes, decorously illumining her
features slightly reddened by the wind.  And the husband looked back
at her, calm, practical, protecting.  They were very much alike.  So
doubtless he looked when he presented himself in snowy shirt-sleeves
for her to straighten the bow of his white tie; so nightly she would
look, standing before the full-length mirror, fixing his gifts upon
her bosom.  Calm, proprietary, kind!  He passed them and walked
behind a second less distinguished couple, who manifested a mutual
dislike as matter-of-fact and free from nonsense as the unruffled
satisfaction of the first; this dislike was just as healthy, and
produced in Shelton about the same sensation.  It was like knocking
at a never-opened door, looking at a circle--couple after couple all
the same.  No heads, toes, angles of their souls stuck out anywhere.
In the sea of their environments they were drowned; no leg braved the
air, no arm emerged wet and naked waving at the skies; shop-persons,
aristocrats, workmen, officials, they were all respectable.  And he
himself as respectable as any.

He returned, thus moody, to his rooms and, with the impetuosity which
distinguished him when about to do an unwise thing, he seized a pen
and poured out before Antonia some of his impressions:

. . . . Mean is the word, darling; we are mean, that's what 's the
matter with us, dukes and dustmen, the whole human species--as mean
as caterpillars.  To secure our own property and our own comfort, to
dole out our sympathy according to rule just so that it won't really
hurt us, is what we're all after.  There's something about human
nature that is awfully repulsive, and the healthier people are, the
more repulsive they seem to me to be . . . .

He paused, biting his pen.  Had he one acquaintance who would not
counsel him to see a doctor for writing in that style?  How would the
world go round, how could Society exist, without common-sense,
practical ability, and the lack of sympathy?

He looked out of the open window.  Down in the street a footman was
settling the rug over the knees of a lady in a carriage, and the
decorous immovability of both their faces, which were clearly visible
to him, was like a portion of some well-oiled engine.

He got up and walked up and down.  His rooms, in a narrow square
skirting Belgravia, were unchanged since the death of his father had
made him a man of means.  Selected for their centrality, they were
furnished in a very miscellaneous way.  They were not bare, but close
inspection revealed that everything was damaged, more or less, and
there was absolutely nothing that seemed to have an interest taken in
it.  His goods were accidents, presents, or the haphazard
acquisitions of a pressing need.  Nothing, of course, was frowsy, but
everything was somewhat dusty, as if belonging to a man who never
rebuked a servant.  Above all, there was nothing that indicated
hobbies.

Three days later he had her answer to his letter:

.  .  .  I don't think I understand what you mean by "the healthier
people are, the more repulsive they seem to be"; one must be healthy
to be perfect, must n't one?  I don't like unhealthy people.  I had
to play on that wretched piano after reading your letter; it made me
feel unhappy.  I've been having a splendid lot of tennis lately, got
the back-handed lifting stroke at last--hurrah!  .  .  .

By the same post, too, came the following note in an autocratic
writing:

DEAR BIRD [for this was Shelton's college nickname],
My wife has gone down to her people, so I'm 'en garcon' for a few
days.  If you've nothing better to do, come and dine to-night at
seven, and go to the theatre.  It's ages since I saw you.
               Yours as ever,
                    B. M. HALIDOME.

Shelton had nothing better to do, for pleasant were his friend
Halidome's well-appointed dinners.  At seven, therefore, he went to
Chester Square.  His friend was in his study, reading Matthew Arnold
by the light of an electric lamp.  The walls of the room were hung
with costly etchings, arranged with solid and unfailing taste; from
the carving of the mantel-piece to the binding of the books, from the
miraculously-coloured meerschaums to the chased fire-irons,
everything displayed an unpretentious luxury, an order and a finish
significant of life completely under rule of thumb.  Everything had
been collected.  The collector rose as Shelton entered, a fine figure
of a man, clean shaven,--with dark hair, a Roman nose, good eyes, and
the rather weighty dignity of attitude which comes from the assurance
that one is in the right.

Taking Shelton by the lapel, he drew him into the radius of the lamp,
where he examined him, smiling a slow smile.  "Glad to see you, old
chap.  I rather like your beard," he said with genial brusqueness;
and nothing, perhaps, could better have summed up his faculty for
forming independent judgments which Shelton found so admirable.  He
made no apology for the smallness of the dinner, which, consisting of
eight courses and three wines, served by a butler and one footman,
smacked of the same perfection as the furniture; in fact, he never
apologised for anything, except with a jovial brusqueness that was
worse than the offence.  The suave and reasonable weight of his
dislikes and his approvals stirred Shelton up to feel ironical and
insignificant; but whether from a sense of the solid, humane, and
healthy quality of his friend's egoism, or merely from the fact that
this friendship had been long in bottle, he did not resent his mixed
sensations.

"By the way, I congratulate you, old chap," said Halidome, while
driving to the theatre; there was no vulgar hurry about his
congratulations, no more than about himself.  "They're awfully nice
people, the Dennants."

A sense of having had a seal put on his choice came over Shelton.

"Where are you going to live?  You ought to come down and live near
us; there are some ripping houses to be had down there; it's really a
ripping neighbourhood.  Have you chucked the Bar?  You ought to do
something, you know; it'll be fatal for you to have nothing to do.  I
tell you what, Bird: you ought to stand for the County Council."

But before Shelton had replied they reached the theatre, and their
energies were spent in sidling to their stalls.  He had time to pass
his neighbours in review before the play began.  Seated next to him
was a lady with large healthy shoulders, displayed with splendid
liberality; beyond her a husband, red-cheeked, with drooping, yellow-
grey moustache and a bald head; beyond him again two men whom he had
known at Eton.  One of them had a clean-shaved face, dark hair, and a
weather-tanned complexion; his small mouth with its upper lip pushed
out above the lower, his eyelids a little drooped over his watchful
eyes, gave him a satirical and resolute expression.  "I've got hold
of your tail, old fellow," he seemed to say, as though he were always
busy with the catching of some kind of fox.  The other's goggling
eyes rested on Shelton with a chaffing smile; his thick, sleek hair,
brushed with water and parted in the middle, his neat moustache and
admirable waistcoat, suggested the sort of dandyism that despises
women.  From his recognition of these old schoolfellows Shelton
turned to look at Halidome, who, having cleared his throat, was
staring straight before him at the curtain.  Antonia's words kept
running in her lover's head, "I don't like unhealthy people."  Well,
all these people, anyway, were healthy; they looked as if they had
defied the elements to endow them with a spark of anything but
health.  Just then the curtain rose.

Slowly, unwillingly, for he was of a trustful disposition, Shelton
recognised that this play was one of those masterpieces of the modern
drama whose characters were drawn on the principle that men were made
for morals rather than morals made by men, and he watched the play
unfold with all its careful sandwiching of grave and gay.

A married woman anxious to be ridded of her husband was the pivot of
the story, and a number of scenes, ingeniously contrived, with a
hundred reasons why this desire was wrong and inexpedient, were
revealed to Shelton's eyes.  These reasons issued mainly from the
mouth of a well-preserved old gentleman who seemed to play the part
of a sort of Moral Salesman.  He turned to Halidome and whispered:

"Can you stand that old woman?"

His friend fixed his fine eyes on him wonderingly.

"What old woman?"

"Why, the old ass with the platitudes!"

Halidome's countenance grew cold, a little shocked, as though he had
been assailed in person.

"Do you mean Pirbright?" he said.  "I think he's ripping."

Shelton turned to the play rebuffed; he felt guilty of a breach of
manners, sitting as he was in one of his friend's stalls, and he
naturally set to work to watch the play more critically than ever.
Antonia's words again recurred to him, "I don't like unhealthy
people," and they seemed to throw a sudden light upon this play.  It
was healthy!

The scene was a drawing-room, softly lighted by electric lamps, with
a cat (Shelton could not decide whether she was real or not) asleep
upon the mat.

The husband, a thick-set, healthy man in evening dress, was drinking
off neat whisky.  He put down his tumbler, and deliberately struck a
match; then with even greater deliberation he lit a gold-tipped
cigarette....

Shelton was no inexperienced play-goer.  He shifted his elbows, for
he felt that something was about to happen; and when the match was
pitched into the fire, he leaned forward in his seat.  The husband
poured more whisky out, drank it at a draught, and walked towards the
door; then, turning to the audience as if to admit them to the secret
of some tremendous resolution, he puffed at them a puff of smoke.  He
left the room, returned, and once more filled his glass.  A lady now
entered, pale of face and dark of eye--his wife.  The husband crossed
the stage, and stood before the fire, his legs astride, in the
attitude which somehow Shelton had felt sure he would assume.  He
spoke:

"Come in, and shut the door."

Shelton suddenly perceived that he was face to face with one of those
dumb moments in which two people declare their inextinguishable
hatred--the hatred underlying the sexual intimacy of two ill-
assorted creatures--and he was suddenly reminded of a scene he had
once witnessed in a restaurant.  He remembered with extreme
minuteness how the woman and the man had sat facing each other across
the narrow patch of white, emblazoned by a candle with cheap shades
and a thin green vase with yellow flowers.  He remembered the curious
scornful anger of their voices, subdued so that only a few words
reached him.  He remembered the cold loathing in their eyes.  And,
above all, he remembered his impression that this sort of scene
happened between them every other day, and would continue so to
happen; and as he put on his overcoat and paid his bill he had asked
himself, "Why in the name of decency do they go on living together?"
And now he thought, as he listened to the two players wrangling on
the stage: "What 's the good of all this talk?  There's something
here past words."

The curtain came down upon the act, and he looked at the lady next
him.  She was shrugging her shoulders at her husband, whose face was
healthy and offended.

"I do dislike these unhealthy women," he was saying, but catching
Shelton's eye he turned square in his seat and sniffed ironically.

The face of Shelton's friend beyond, composed, satirical as ever, was
clothed with a mask of scornful curiosity, as if he had been
listening to something that had displeased him not a little.  The
goggle-eyed man was yawning.  Shelton turned to Halidome:

"Can you stand this sort of thing?" said he.

"No; I call that scene a bit too hot," replied his friend.

Shelton wriggled; he had meant to say it was not hot enough.

"I'll bet you anything," he said, "I know what's going to happen now.
You'll have that old ass--what's his name?--lunching off cutlets and
champagne to fortify himself--for a lecture to the wife.  He'll show
her how unhealthy her feelings are--I know him--and he'll take her
hand and say, 'Dear lady, is there anything in this poor world but
the good opinion of Society?' and he'll pretend to laugh at himself
for saying it; but you'll see perfectly well that the old woman means
it.  And then he'll put her into a set of circumstances that are n't
her own but his version of them, and show her the only way of
salvation is to kiss her husband"; and Shelton grinned.  "Anyway,
I'll bet you anything he takes her hand and says, 'Dear lady.'"

Halidome turned on him the disapproval of his eyes, and again he
said,

"I think Pirbright 's ripping!"

But as Shelton had predicted, so it turned out, amidst great
applause.




CHAPTER V

THE GOOD CITIZEN

Leaving the theatre, they paused a moment in the hall to don their
coats; a stream of people with spotless bosoms eddied round the
doors, as if in momentary dread of leaving this hothouse of false
morals and emotions for the wet, gusty streets, where human plants
thrive and die, human weeds flourish and fade under the fresh,
impartial skies.  The lights revealed innumerable solemn faces,
gleamed innumerably on jewels, on the silk of hats, then passed to
whiten a pavement wet with newly-fallen rain, to flare on horses, on
the visages of cabmen, and stray, queer objects that do not bear the
light.

"Shall we walk?" asked Halidome.

"Has it ever struck you," answered Shelton, "that in a play nowadays
there's always a 'Chorus of Scandalmongers' which seems to have
acquired the attitude of God?"

Halidome cleared his throat, and there was something portentous in
the sound.

"You're so d---d fastidious," was his answer.

"I've a prejudice for keeping the two things separate," went on
Shelton.  "That ending makes me sick."

"Why?" replied Halidome.  "What other end is possible?  You don't
want a play to leave you with a bad taste in your mouth."

"But this does."

Halidome increased his stride, already much too long; for in his
walk, as in all other phases of his life, he found it necessary to be
in front.

"How do you mean?" he asked urbanely; "it's better than the woman
making a fool of herself."

"I'm thinking of the man."

"What man?"

"The husband."

"What 's the matter with him?  He was a bit of a bounder, certainly."

"I can't understand any man wanting to live with a woman who doesn't
want him."

Some note of battle in Shelton's voice, rather than the sentiment
itself, caused his friend to reply with dignity:

"There's a lot of nonsense talked about that sort of thing.  Women
don't really care; it's only what's put into their heads."

"That's much the same as saying to a starving man: 'You don't really
want anything; it's only what's put into your head!'  You are begging
the question, my friend."

But nothing was more calculated to annoy Halidome than to tell him he
was "begging the question," for he prided himself on being strong in
logic.

"That be d---d," he said.

"Not at all, old chap.  Here is a case where a woman wants her
freedom, and you merely answer that she dogs n't want it."

"Women like that are impossible; better leave them out of court."

Shelton pondered this and smiled; he had recollected an acquaintance
of his own, who, when his wife had left him, invented the theory that
she was mad, and this struck him now as funny.  But then he thought:
"Poor devil!  he was bound to call her mad!  If he didn't, it would
be confessing himself distasteful; however true, you can't expect a
man to consider himself that."  But a glance at his friend's eye
warned him that he, too, might think his wife mad in such a case.

"Surely," he said, "even if she's his wife, a man's bound to behave
like a gentleman."

"Depends on whether she behaves like a lady."

"Does it?  I don't see the connection."

Halidome paused in the act of turning the latch-key in his door;
there was a rather angry smile in his fine eyes.

"My dear chap," he said, "you're too sentimental altogether."

The word "sentimental" nettled Shelton.  "A gentleman either is a
gentleman or he is n't; what has it to do with the way other people
behave?"

Halidome turned the key in the lock and opened the door into his
hall, where the firelight fell on the decanters and huge chairs drawn
towards the blaze.

"No, Bird," he said, resuming his urbanity, and gathering his coat-
tails in his hands; "it's all very well to talk, but wait until
you're married.  A man must be master, and show it, too."

An idea occurred to Shelton.

"Look here, Hal," he said: "what should you do if your wife got tired
of you?"

The expression on Halidome's face was a mixture of amusement and
contempt.

"I don't mean anything personal, of course, but apply the situation
to yourself."

Halidome took out a toothpick, used it brusquely, and responded:

"I shouldn't stand any humbug--take her travelling; shake her mind
up.  She'd soon come round."

"But suppose she really loathed you?"

Halidome cleared his throat; the idea was so obviously indecent.  How
could anybody loathe him?  With great composure, however, regarding
Shelton as if he were a forward but amusing child, he answered:

"There are a great many things to be taken into consideration."

"It appears to me," said Shelton, "to be a question of common pride.
How can you, ask anything of a woman who doesn't want to give it."

His friend's voice became judicial.

"A man ought not to suffer," he said, poring over his whisky,
"because a woman gets hysteria.  You have to think of Society, your
children, house, money arrangements, a thousand things.  It's all
very well to talk.  How do you like this whisky?"

"The part of the good citizen, in fact," said Shelton, "self-
preservation!"

"Common-sense," returned his friend; "I believe in justice before
sentiment."  He drank, and callously blew smoke at Shelton.
"Besides, there are many people with religious views about it."

"It's always seemed to me," said Shelton, "to be quaint that people
should assert that marriage gives them the right to 'an eye for an
eye,' and call themselves Christians.  Did you ever know anybody
stand on their rights except out of wounded pride or for the sake of
their own comfort?  Let them call their reasons what they like, you
know as well as I do that it's cant."

"I don't know about that," said Halidome, more and more superior as
Shelton grew more warm; "when you stand on your rights, you do it for
the sake of Society as well as for your own.  If you want to do away
with marriage, why don't you say so?"

"But I don't," said Shelton:" is it likely?  Why, I'm going---"  He
stopped without adding the words "to be married myself," for it
suddenly occurred to him that the reason was not the most lofty and
philosophic in the world.  "All I can say is," he went on soberly,
"that you can't make a horse drink by driving him.  Generosity is the
surest way of tightening the knot with people who've any sense of
decency; as to the rest, the chief thing is to prevent their
breeding."

Halidome smiled.

"You're a rum chap," he said.

Shelton jerked his cigarette into the fire.

"I tell you what"--for late at night a certain power of vision came
to him--"it's humbug to talk of doing things for the sake of Society;
it's nothing but the instinct to keep our own heads above the water."

But Halidome remained unruffled.

"All right," he said, "call it that.  I don't see why I should go to
the wall; it wouldn't do any good."

"You admit, then," said Shelton, "that our morality is the sum total
of everybody's private instinct of self-preservation?"

Halidome stretched his splendid frame and yawned.

"I don't know," he began, "that I should quite call it that--"

But the compelling complacency of his fine eyes, the dignified
posture of his healthy body, the lofty slope of his narrow forehead,
the perfectly humane look of his cultivated brutality, struck Shelton
as ridiculous.

"Hang it, Hall" he cried, jumping from his chair, "what an old fraud
you are!  I'll be off."

"No, look here!"  said Halidome; the faintest shade of doubt had
appeared upon his face; he took Shelton by a lapel: "You're quite
wrong---"

"Very likely; good-night, old chap!"

Shelton walked home, letting the spring wind into him.  It was
Saturday, and he passed many silent couples.  In every little patch
of shadow he could see two forms standing or sitting close together,
and in their presence Words the Impostors seemed to hold their
tongues.  The wind rustled the buds; the stars, one moment bright as
diamonds, vanished the next.  In the lower streets a large part of
the world was under the influence of drink, but by this Shelton was
far from being troubled.  It seemed better than Drama, than dressing-
bagged men, unruffled women, and padded points of view, better than
the immaculate solidity of his friend's possessions.

"So," he reflected, "it's right for every reason, social, religious,
and convenient, to inflict one's society where it's not desired.
There are obviously advantages about the married state; charming to
feel respectable while you're acting in a way that in any other walk
of life would bring on you contempt.  If old Halidome showed that he
was tired of me, and I continued to visit him, he'd think me a bit of
a cad; but if his wife were to tell him she couldn't stand him, he'd
still consider himself a perfect gentleman if he persisted in giving
her the burden of his society; and he has the cheek to bring religion
into it--a religion that says, 'Do unto others!'"

But in this he was unjust to Halidome, forgetting how impossible it
was for him to believe that a woman could not stand him.  He reached
his rooms, and, the more freely to enjoy the clear lamplight, the
soft, gusty breeze, and waning turmoil of the streets, waited a
moment before entering.

"I wonder," thought he, "if I shall turn out a cad when I marry, like
that chap in the play.  It's natural.  We all want our money's worth,
our pound of flesh!  Pity we use such fine words--'Society,
Religion, Morality.'  Humbug!"

He went in, and, throwing his window open, remained there a long
time, his figure outlined against the lighted room for the benefit of
the dark square below, his hands in his pockets, his head down, a
reflective frown about his eyes.  A half-intoxicated old ruffian, a
policeman, and a man in a straw hat had stopped below, and were
holding a palaver.

"Yus," the old ruffian said, "I'm a rackety old blank; but what I say
is, if we wus all alike, this would n't be a world!"

They went their way, and before the listener's eyes there rose
Antonia's face, with its unruffled brow; Halidome's, all health and
dignity; the forehead of the goggle-eyed man, with its line of hair
parted in the centre, and brushed across.  A light seemed to illumine
the plane of their existence, as the electric lamp with the green
shade had illumined the pages of the Matthew Arnold; serene before
Shelton's vision lay that Elysium, untouched by passion or extremes
of any kind, autocratic; complacent, possessive, and well-kept as any
Midland landscape.  Healthy, wealthy, wise!  No room but for
perfection, self-preservation, the survival of the fittest!  "The
part of the good citizen," he thought: "no, if we were all alike,
this would n't be a world!"




CHAPTER VI

MARRIAGE SETTLEMENT

"My dear Richard" (wrote Shelton's uncle the next day), "I shall be
glad to see you at three o'clock to-morrow afternoon upon the
question of your marriage settlement...."   At that hour accordingly
Shelton made his way to Lincoln's Inn Fields, where in fat black
letters the names "Paramor and Herring (Commissioners for Oaths)"
were written on the wall of a stone entrance.  He ascended the solid
steps with nervousness, and by a small red-haired boy was introduced
to a back room on the first floor.  Here, seated at a table in the
very centre, as if he thereby better controlled his universe, a pug-
featured gentleman, without a beard, was writing.  He paused.
"Ow, Mr. Richard!" he said; "glad to see you, sir.  Take a chair.
Your uncle will be disengaged in 'arf a minute"; and in the tone of
his allusion to his employer was the satirical approval that comes
with long and faithful service.  "He will do everything himself," he
went on, screwing up his sly, greenish, honest eyes, "and he 's not a
young man."

Shelton never saw his uncle's clerk without marvelling at the
prosperity deepening upon his face.  In place of the look of
harassment which on most faces begins to grow after the age of fifty,
his old friend's countenance, as though in sympathy with the nation,
had expanded--a little greasily, a little genially, a little
coarsely--every time he met it.  A contemptuous tolerance for people
who were not getting on was spreading beneath its surface; it left
each time a deeper feeling that its owner could never be in the
wrong.

"I hope you're well, sir," he resumed: "most important for you to
have your health now you're going-to"--and, feeling for the delicate
way to put it, he involuntarily winked--"to become a family man.  We
saw it in the paper.  My wife said to me the other morning at
breakfast: 'Bob, here's a Mr. Richard Paramor Shelton goin' to be
married.  Is that any relative of your Mr. Shelton?'  'My dear,' I
said to her, 'it's the very man!'"

It disquieted Shelton to perceive that his old friend did not pass
the whole of his life at that table writing in the centre of the
room, but that somewhere (vistas of little grey houses rose before
his eyes) he actually lived another life where someone called him
"Bob."  Bob!  And this, too, was a revelation.  Bob!  Why, of course,
it was the only name for him!  A bell rang.

"That's your uncle"; and again the head clerk's voice sounded
ironical.  "Good-bye, sir."

He seemed to clip off intercourse as one clips off electric light.
Shelton left him writing, and preceded the red-haired boy to an
enormous room in the front where his uncle waited.

Edmund Paramor was a medium-sized and upright man of seventy, whose
brown face was perfectly clean-shaven.  His grey, silky hair was
brushed in a cock's comb from his fine forehead, bald on the left
side.  He stood before the hearth facing the room, and his figure had
the springy abruptness of men who cannot fatten.  There was a certain
youthfulness, too, in his eyes, yet they had a look as though he had
been through fire; and his mouth curled at the corners in surprising
smiles.  The room was like the man--morally large, void of red-tape
and almost void of furniture; no tin boxes were ranged against the
walls, no papers littered up the table; a single bookcase contained a
complete edition of the law reports, and resting on the Law Directory
was a single red rose in a glass of water.  It looked the room of one
with a sober magnanimity, who went to the heart of things, despised
haggling, and before whose smiles the more immediate kinds of humbug
faded.

"Well, Dick," said he, "how's your mother?"

Shelton replied that his mother was all right.

"Tell her that I'm going to sell her Easterns after all, and put into
this Brass thing.  You can say it's safe, from me."

Shelton made a face.

"Mother," said he, "always believes things are safe."

His uncle looked through him with his keen, half-suffering glance,
and up went the corners of his mouth.

"She's splendid," he said.

"Yes," said Shelton, "splendid."

The transaction, however, did not interest him; his uncle's judgment
in such matters had a breezy soundness he would never dream of
questioning.

"Well, about your settlement"; and, touching a bell three times, Mr.
Paramor walked up and down the room.  "Bring me the draft of Mr.
Richard's marriage settlement."

The stalwart commissionaire reappearing with a document--"Now then,
Dick," said Mr. Paramor.  "She 's not bringing anything into
settlement, I understand; how 's that?"

"I did n't want it," replied Shelton, unaccountably ashamed.

Mr. Paramor's lips quivered; he drew the draft closer, took up a blue
pencil, and, squeezing Shelton's arm, began to read.  The latter,
following his uncle's rapid exposition of the clauses, was relieved
when he paused suddenly.

"If you die and she marries again," said Mr. Paramor, "she forfeits
her life interest--see?"

"Oh!" said Shelton; "wait a minute, Uncle Ted."

Mr. Paramor waited, biting his pencil; a smile flickered on his
mouth, and was decorously subdued.  It was Shelton's turn to walk
about.

"If she marries again," he repeated to himself.

Mr. Paramor was a keen fisherman; he watched his nephew as he might
have watched a fish he had just landed.

"It's very usual," he remarked.

Shelton took another turn.

"She forfeits," thought he; "exactly."

When he was dead, he would have no other way of seeing that she
continued to belong to him.  Exactly!

Mr. Paramor's haunting eyes were fastened on his nephew's face.

"Well, my dear," they seemed to say, "what 's the matter?"

Exactly!  Why should she have his money if she married again?  She
would forfeit it.  There was comfort in the thought.  Shelton came
back and carefully reread the clause, to put the thing on a purely
business basis, and disguise the real significance of what was
passing in his mind.

"If I die and she marries again," he repeated aloud, "she forfeits."

What wiser provision for a man passionately in love could possibly
have been devised?  His uncle's eye travelled beyond him, humanely
turning from the last despairing wriggles of his fish.

"I don't want to tie her," said Shelton suddenly.

The corners of Mr. Paramour's mouth flew up.

"You want the forfeiture out?" he asked.

The blood rushed into Shelton's face; he felt he had been detected in
a piece of sentiment.

"Ye-es," he stammered.

"Sure?"

"Quite!"  The answer was a little sulky.

Her uncle's pencil descended on the clause, and he resumed the
reading of the draft, but Shelton could not follow it; he was too
much occupied in considering exactly why Mr. Paramor had been amused,
and to do this he was obliged to keep his eyes upon him.  Those
features, just pleasantly rugged; the springy poise of the figure;
the hair neither straight nor curly, neither short nor long; the
haunting look of his eyes and the humorous look of his mouth; his
clothes neither shabby nor dandified; his serviceable, fine hands;
above all, the equability of the hovering blue pencil, conveyed the
impression of a perfect balance between heart and head, sensibility
and reason, theory and its opposite.

"'During coverture,'" quoted Mr. Paramor, pausing again, "you
understand, of course, if you don't get on, and separate, she goes on
taking?"

If they didn't get on!  Shelton smiled.  Mr. Paramor did not smile,
and again Shelton had the sense of having knocked up against
something poised but firm.  He remarked irritably:

"If we 're not living together, all the more reason for her having
it."

This time his uncle smiled.  It was difficult for Shelton to feel
angry at that ironic merriment, with its sudden ending; it was too
impersonal to irritate: it was too concerned with human nature.

"If--hum--it came to the other thing," said Mr. Paramor, "the
settlement's at an end as far as she 's concerned.  We 're bound to
look at every case, you know, old boy."

The memory of the play and his conversation with Halidome was still
strong in Shelton.  He was not one of those who could not face the
notion of transferred affections--at a safe distance.

"All right, Uncle Ted," said he.  For one mad moment he was attacked
by the desire to "throw in" the case of divorce.  Would it not be
common chivalry to make her independent, able to change her
affections if she wished, unhampered by monetary troubles?  You only
needed to take out the words "during coverture."

Almost anxiously he looked into his uncle's face.  There was no
meanness there, but neither was there encouragement in that
comprehensive brow with its wide sweep of hair.  "Quixotism," it
seemed to say, "has merits, but--"  The room, too, with its wide
horizon and tall windows, looking as if it dealt habitually in
common-sense, discouraged him.  Innumerable men of breeding and the
soundest principles must have bought their wives in here.  It was
perfumed with the atmosphere of wisdom and law-calf.  The aroma of
Precedent was strong; Shelton swerved his lance, and once more
settled down to complete the purchase of his wife.

"I can't conceive what you're--in such a hurry for; you 're not going
to be married till the autumn," said Mr. Paramor, finishing at last.

Replacing the blue pencil in the rack, he took the red rose from the
glass, and sniffed at it.  "Will you come with me as far as Pall
Mall?  I 'm going to take an afternoon off; too cold for Lord's, I
suppose?"

They walked into the Strand.

"Have you seen this new play of Borogrove's?" asked Shelton, as they
passed the theatre to which he had been with Halidome.

"I never go to modern plays," replied Mr. Paramor; "too d---d
gloomy."

Shelton glanced at him; he wore his hat rather far back on his head,
his eyes haunted the street in front; he had shouldered his umbrella.

"Psychology 's not in your line, Uncle Ted?"

"Is that what they call putting into words things that can't be put
in words?"

"The French succeed in doing it," replied Shelton, "and the Russians;
why should n't we?"

Mr. Paramor stopped to look in at a fishmonger's.

"What's right for the French and Russians, Dick," he said "is wrong
for us.  When we begin to be real, we only really begin to be false.
I should like to have had the catching of that fellow; let's send him
to your mother."  He went in and bought a salmon:

"Now, my dear," he continued, as they went on, "do you tell me that
it's decent for men and women on the stage to writhe about like eels?
Is n't life bad enough already?"

It suddenly struck Shelton that, for all his smile, his uncle's face
had a look of crucifixion.  It was, perhaps, only the stronger
sunlight in the open spaces of Trafalgar Square.

"I don't know," he said; "I think I prefer the truth."

"Bad endings and the rest," said Mr. Paramor, pausing under one of
Nelson's lions and taking Shelton by a button.  "Truth 's the very
devil!"

He stood there, very straight, his eyes haunting his nephew's face;
there seemed to Shelton a touching muddle in his optimism--a muddle
of tenderness and of intolerance, of truth and second-handedness.
Like the lion above him, he seemed to be defying Life to make him
look at her.

"No, my dear," he said, handing sixpence to a sweeper; "feelings are
snakes! only fit to be kept in bottles with tight corks.  You won't
come to my club?  Well, good-bye, old boy; my love to your mother
when you see her"; and turning up the Square, he left Shelton to go
on to his own club, feeling that he had parted, not from his uncle,
but from the nation of which they were both members by birth and
blood and education.




CHAPTER VII

THE CLUB

He went into the library of his club, and took up Burke's Peerage.
The words his uncle had said to him on hearing his engagement had
been these: "Dennant!  Are those the Holm Oaks Dennants?  She was a
Penguin."

No one who knew Mr. Paramor connected him with snobbery, but there
had been an "Ah! that 's right; this is due to us" tone about the
saying.

Shelton hunted for the name of Baltimore: "Charles Penguin, fifth
Baron Baltimore.  Issue: Alice, b.  184-, m. 186- Algernon Dennant,
Esq., of Holm Oaks, Cross Eaton, Oxfordshire."  He put down the
Peerage and took up the 'Landed Gentry': "Dennant, Algernon Cuffe,
eldest son of the late Algernon Cuffe Dennant, Esq., J. P., and
Irene, 2nd daur. of the Honble. Philip and Lady Lillian March Mallow;
ed. Eton and Ch. Ch., Oxford, J. P. for Oxfordshire.  Residence, Holm
Oaks," etc., etc.  Dropping the 'Landed Gentry', he took up a volume
of the 'Arabian Nights', which some member had left reposing on the
book-rest of his chair, but instead of reading he kept looking round
the room.  In almost every seat, reading or snoozing, were gentlemen
who, in their own estimation, might have married Penguins.  For the
first time it struck him with what majestic leisureliness they turned
the pages of their books, trifled with their teacups, or lightly
snored.  Yet no two were alike--a tall man-with dark moustache, thick
hair, and red, smooth cheeks; another, bald, with stooping shoulders;
a tremendous old buck, with a grey, pointed beard and large white
waistcoat; a clean-shaven dapper man past middle age, whose face was
like a bird's; a long, sallow, misanthrope; and a sanguine creature
fast asleep.  Asleep or awake, reading or snoring, fat or thin, hairy
or bald, the insulation of their red or pale faces was complete.
They were all the creatures of good form.  Staring at them or reading
the Arabian Nights Shelton spent the time before dinner.  He had not
been long seated in the dining-room when a distant connection
strolled up and took the next table.

"Ah, Shelton!  Back?  Somebody told me you were goin' round the
world."  He scrutinised the menu through his eyeglass.  "Clear soup!
.  .  .  Read Jellaby's speech?  Amusing the way he squashes all
those fellows.  Best man in the House, he really is."

Shelton paused in the assimilation of asparagus; he, too, had been in
the habit of admiring Jellaby, but now he wondered why.  The red and
shaven face beside him above a broad, pure shirt-front was swollen by
good humour; his small, very usual, and hard eyes were fixed
introspectively on the successful process of his eating.

"Success!"  thought Shelton, suddenly enlightened--"success is what
we admire in Jellaby.  We all want success .  .  .  .  Yes," he
admitted, "a successful beast."

"Oh!" said his neighbour, "I forgot.  You're in the other camp?"

"Not particularly.  Where did you get that idea?"

His neighbour looked round negligently.

"Oh," said he, "I somehow thought so"; and Shelton almost heard him
adding, "There's something not quite sound about you."

"Why do you admire Jellaby?" he asked.

"Knows his own mind," replied his neighbour; "it 's more than the
others do .  .  .  .  This whitebait is n't fit for cats!  Clever
fellow, Jellaby!  No nonsense about him!  Have you ever heard him
speak?  Awful good sport to watch him sittin' on the Opposition.  A
poor lot they are!"  and he laughed, either from appreciation of
Jellaby sitting on a small minority, or from appreciation of the
champagne bubbles in his glass.

"Minorities are always depressing," said Shelton dryly.

"Eh?  what?"

"I mean," said Shelton, "it's irritating to look at people who have
n't a chance of success--fellows who make a mess of things, fanatics,
and all that."

His neighbour turned his eyes inquisitively.

"Er--yes, quite," said he; "don't you take mint sauce?  It's the
best part of lamb, I always think."

The great room with its countless little tables, arranged so that
every man might have the support of the gold walls to his back, began
to regain its influence on Shelton.  How many times had he not sat
there, carefully nodding to acquaintances, happy if he got the table
he was used to, a paper with the latest racing, and someone to gossip
with who was not a bounder; while the sensation of having drunk
enough stole over him.  Happy!  That is, happy as a horse is happy
who never leaves his stall.

"Look at poor little Bing puffin' about," said his neighbour,
pointing to a weazened, hunchy waiter.  "His asthma's awf'ly bad; you
can hear him wheezin' from the street."

He seemed amused.

"There 's no such thing as moral asthma, I suppose?" said Shelton.

His neighbour dropped his eyeglass.

"Here, take this away; it's overdone;" said he.  "Bring me some
lamb."

Shelton pushed his table back.

"Good-night," he said; "the Stilton's excellent!"

His neighbour raised his brows, and dropped his eyes again upon his
plate.

In the hall Shelton went from force of habit to the weighing-scales
and took his weight.  "Eleven stone!"  he thought; "gone up!" and,
clipping a cigar, he sat down in the smoking-room with a novel.

After half an hour he dropped the book.  There seemed something
rather fatuous about this story, for though it had a thrilling plot,
and was full of well-connected people, it had apparently been
contrived to throw no light on anything whatever.  He looked at the
author's name; everyone was highly recommending it.  He began
thinking, and staring at the fire .  .  .  .

Looking up, he saw Antonia's second brother, a young man in the
Rifles, bending over him with sunny cheeks and lazy smile, clearly
just a little drunk.

"Congratulate you, old chap!  I say, what made you grow that
b-b-eastly beard?"

Shelton grinned.

"Pillbottle of the Duchess!"  read young Dennant, taking up the book.
"You been reading that?  Rippin', is n't it?"

"Oh, ripping!" replied Shelton.

"Rippin' plot!  When you get hold of a novel you don't want any rot
about--what d'you call it?--psychology, you want to be amused."

"Rather!"  murmured Shelton.

"That's an awfully good bit where the President steals her diamonds
There's old Benjy!  Hallo, Benjy!"

"Hallo, Bill, old man!"

This Benjy was a young, clean-shaven creature, whose face and voice
and manner were a perfect blend of steel and geniality.

In addition to this young man who was so smooth and hard and cheery,
a grey, short-bearded gentleman, with misanthropic eyes, called
Stroud, came up; together with another man of Shelton's age, with a
moustache and a bald patch the size of a crown-piece, who might be
seen in the club any night of the year when there was no racing out
of reach of London.

"You know," began young Dennant, "that this bounder"--he slapped the
young man Benjy on the knee--"is going to be spliced to-morrow.  Miss
Casserol--you know the Casserols--Muncaster Gate."

"By Jove!" said Shelton, delighted to be able to say something they
would understand.

"Young Champion's the best man, and I 'm the second best.  I tell you
what, old chap, you 'd better come with me and get your eye in; you
won't get such another chance of practice.  Benjy 'll give you a
card."

"Delighted!"  murmured Benjy.

"Where is it?"

"St. Briabas; two-thirty.  Come and see how they do the trick.  I'll
call for you at one; we'll have some lunch and go together"; again he
patted Benjy's knee.

Shelton nodded his assent; the piquant callousness of the affair had
made him shiver, and furtively he eyed the steely Benjy, whose
suavity had never wavered, and who appeared to take a greater
interest in some approaching race than in his coming marriage.  But
Shelton knew from his own sensations that this could not really be
the case; it was merely a question of "good form," the conceit of a
superior breeding, the duty not to give oneself away.  And when in
turn he marked the eyes of Stroud fixed on Benjy, under shaggy brows,
and the curious greedy glances of the racing man, he felt somehow
sorry for him.

"Who 's that fellow with the game leg--I'm always seeing him about?"
asked the racing man.

And Shelton saw a sallow man, conspicuous for a want of parting in
his hair and a certain restlessness of attitude.

"His name is Bayes," said Stroud; "spends half his time among the
Chinese--must have a grudge against them!  And now he 's got his leg
he can't go there any more."

"Chinese?  What does he do to them?"

"Bibles or guns.  Don't ask me!  An adventurer."

"Looks a bit of a bounder," said the racing man.

Shelton gazed at the twitching eyebrows of old Stroud; he saw at once
how it must annoy a man who had a billet in the "Woods and Forests,"
and plenty of time for "bridge" and gossip at his club, to see these
people with untidy lives.  A minute later the man with the "game leg"
passed close behind his chair, and Shelton perceived at once how
intelligible the resentment of his fellow-members was.  He had eyes
which, not uncommon in this country, looked like fires behind steel
bars; he seemed the very kind of man to do all sorts of things that
were "bad form," a man who might even go as far as chivalry.  He
looked straight at Shelton, and his uncompromising glance gave an
impression of fierce loneliness; altogether, an improper person to
belong to such.  a club.  Shelton remembered the words of an old
friend of his father's: "Yes, Dick, all sorts of fellows belong here,
and they come here for all sorts o' reasons, and a lot of em come
because they've nowhere else to go, poor beggars"; and, glancing from
the man with the "game leg" to Stroud, it occurred to Shelton that
even he, old Stroud, might be one of these poor beggars.  One never
knew!  A look at Benjy, contained and cheery, restored him.  Ah, the
lucky devil!  He would not have to come here any more! and the
thought of the last evening he himself would be spending before long
flooded his mind with a sweetness that was almost pain.

"Benjy, I'll play you a hundred up!"  said young Bill Dennant.

Stroud and the racing man went to watch the game; Shelton was left
once more to reverie.

"Good form!" thought he; "that fellow must be made of steel.  They'll
go on somewhere; stick about half the night playing poker, or some
such foolery."

He crossed over to the window.  Rain had begun to fall; the streets
looked wild and draughty.  The cabmen were putting on their coats.
Two women scurried by, huddled under one umbrella, and a thin-
clothed, dogged-looking scarecrow lounged past with a surly,
desperate step.  Shelton, returning to his chair, threaded his way
amongst his fellow-members.  A procession of old school and college
friends came up before his eyes.  After all, what had there been in
his own education, or theirs, to give them any other standard than
this "good form"?  What had there been to teach them anything of
life?  Their imbecility was incredible when you came to think of it.
They had all the air of knowing everything, and really they knew
nothing--nothing of Nature, Art, or the Emotions; nothing of the
bonds that bind all men together.  Why, even such words were not
"good form"; nothing outside their little circle was "good form."
They had a fixed point of view over life because they came of certain
schools, and colleges, and regiments!  And they were those in charge
of the state, of laws, and science, of the army, and religion.  Well,
it was their system--the system not to start too young, to form
healthy fibre, and let the after-life develop it!

"Successful!" he thought, nearly stumbling over a pair of patent-
leather boots belonging to a moon-faced, genial-looking member with
gold nose-nippers; "oh, it 's successful!"

Somebody came and picked up from the table the very volume which had
originally inspired this train of thought, and Shelton could see his
solemn pleasure as he read.  In the white of his eye there was a
torpid and composed abstraction.  There was nothing in that book to
startle him or make him think.

The moon-faced member with the patent boots came up and began talking
of his recent visit to the south of France.  He had a scandalous
anecdote or two to tell, and his broad face beamed behind his gold
nose-nippers; he was a large man with such a store of easy, worldly
humour that it was impossible not to appreciate his gossip, he gave
so perfect an impression of enjoying life, and doing himself well.
"Well, good-night!"  he murmured--" An engagement!"--and the
certainty he left behind that his engagement must be charming and
illicit was pleasant to the soul.

And, slowly taking up his glass, Shelton drank; the sense of well-
being was upon him.  His superiority to these his fellow-members
soothed him.  He saw through all the sham of this club life, the
meanness of this worship of success, the sham of kid-gloved
novelists, "good form," and the terrific decency of our education.
It was soothing thus to see through things, soothing thus to be
superior; and from the soft recesses of his chair he puffed out smoke
and stretched his limbs toward the fire; and the fire burned back at
him with a discreet and venerable glow.




CHAPTER VIII

THE WEDDING

Puncutal to his word, Bill Dennant called for Shelton at one o'clock.

"I bet old Benjy's feeling a bit cheap," said he, as they got out of
their cab at the church door and passed between the crowded files of
unelect, whose eyes, so curious and pitiful, devoured them from the
pavement.

The ashen face of a woman, with a baby in her arms and two more by
her side, looked as eager as if she had never experienced the pangs
of ragged matrimony.  Shelton went in inexplicably uneasy; the price
of his tie was their board and lodging for a week.  He followed his
future brother-in-law to a pew on the bridegroom's side, for, with
intuitive perception of the sexes' endless warfare, each of the
opposing parties to this contract had its serried battalion, the
arrows of whose suspicion kept glancing across and across the central
aisle.

Bill Dennant's eyes began to twinkle.

"There's old Benjy!"  he whispered; and Shelton looked at the hero of
the day.  A subdued pallor was traceable under the weathered
uniformity of his shaven face; but the well-bred, artificial smile he
bent upon the guests had its wonted steely suavity.  About his dress
and his neat figure was that studied ease which lifts men from the
ruck of common bridegrooms.  There were no holes in his armour
through which the impertinent might pry.

"Good old Benjy!"  whispered young Dennant; "I say, they look a bit
short of class, those Casserols."

Shelton, who was acquainted with this family, smiled.  The sensuous
sanctity all round had begun to influence him.  A perfume of flowers
and dresses fought with the natural odour of the church; the rustle
of whisperings and skirts struck through the native silence of the
aisles, and Shelton idly fixed his eyes on a lady in the pew in
front; without in the least desiring to make a speculation of this
sort, he wondered whether her face was as charming as the lines of
her back in their delicate, skin-tight setting of pearl grey; his
glance wandered to the chancel with its stacks of flowers, to the
grave, business faces of the presiding priests, till the organ began
rolling out the wedding march.

"They're off!"  whispered young Dermant.

Shelton was conscious of a shiver running through the audience which
reminded him of a bullfight he had seen in Spain.  The bride came
slowly up the aisle.  "Antonia will look like that," he thought, "and
the church will be filled with people like this .  .  .  .  She'll be
a show to them!"  The bride was opposite him now, and by an instinct
of common chivalry he turned away his eyes; it seemed to him a shame
to look at that downcast head above the silver mystery of her perfect
raiment; the modest head full, doubtless, of devotion and pure
yearnings; the stately head where no such thought as "How am I
looking, this day of all days, before all London?" had ever entered;
the proud head, which no such fear as "How am I carrying it off?"
could surely be besmirching.

He saw below the surface of this drama played before his eyes, and
set his face, as a man might who found himself assisting at a
sacrifice.  The words fell, unrelenting, on his ears: "For better,
for worse, for richer, for poorer; in sickness and in health--" and
opening the Prayer Book he found the Marriage Service, which he had
not looked at since he was a boy, and as he read he had some very
curious sensations.

All this would soon be happening to himself!  He went on reading in a
kind of stupor, until aroused by his companion whispering, "No luck!"
All around there rose a rustling of skirts; he saw a tall figure
mount the pulpit and stand motionless.  Massive and high-featured,
sunken of eye, he towered, in snowy cambric and a crimson stole,
above the blackness of his rostrum; it seemed he had been chosen for
his beauty.  Shelton was still gazing at the stitching of his gloves,
when once again the organ played the Wedding March.  All were
smiling, and a few were weeping, craning their heads towards the
bride.  "Carnival of second-hand emotions!"  thought Shelton; and he,
too, craned his head and brushed his hat.  Then, smirking at his
friends, he made his way towards the door.

In the Casserols' house he found himself at last going round the
presents with the eldest Casserol surviving, a tall girl in pale
violet, who had been chief bridesmaid.

"Did n't it go off well, Mr. Shelton?" she was saying

"Oh, awfully!"

"I always think it's so awkward for the man waiting up there for the
bride to come."

"Yes," murmured Shelton.

"Don't you think it's smart, the bridesmaids having no hats?"

Shelton had not noticed this improvement, but he agreed.

"That was my idea; I think it 's very chic.  They 've had fifteen
tea-sets-so dull, is n't it?"

"By Jove!"  Shelton hastened to remark.

"Oh, its fearfully useful to have a lot of things you don't want; of
course, you change them for those you do."

The whole of London seemed to have disgorged its shops into this
room; he looked at Miss Casserol's face, and was greatly struck by
the shrewd acquisitiveness of her small eyes.

"Is that your future brother-in-law?" she asked, pointing to Bill
Dennant with a little movement of her chin; "I think he's such a
bright boy.  I want you both to come to dinner, and help to keep
things jolly.  It's so deadly after a wedding."

And Shelton said they would.

They adjourned to the hall now, to wait for the bride's departure.
Her face as she came down the stairs was impassive, gay, with a
furtive trouble in the eyes, and once more Shelton had the odd
sensation of having sinned against his manhood.  Jammed close to him
was her old nurse, whose puffy, yellow face was pouting with emotion,
while tears rolled from her eyes.  She was trying to say something,
but in the hubbub her farewell was lost.  There was a scamper to the
carriage, a flurry of rice and flowers; the shoe was flung against
the sharply drawn-up window.  Then Benjy's shaven face was seen a
moment, bland and steely; the footman folded his arms, and with a
solemn crunch the brougham wheels rolled away.  "How splendidly it
went off!"  said a voice on Shelton's right.  "She looked a little
pale," said a voice on Shelton's left.  He put his hand up to his
forehead; behind him the old nurse sniffed.

"Dick," said young Dennant in his ear, "this isn't good enough; I
vote we bolt."

Shelton assenting, they walked towards the Park; nor could he tell
whether the slight nausea he experienced was due to afternoon
champagne or to the ceremony that had gone so well.

"What's up with you?" asked Dennant; "you look as glum as any
m-monkey."

"Nothing," said Shelton; "I was only thinking what humbugs we all
are!"

Bill Dennant stopped in the middle of the crossing, and clapped his
future brother-in-law upon the shoulder.

"Oh," said he, "if you're going to talk shop, I 'm off."




CHAPTER IX

THE DINNER

The dinner at the Casserols' was given to those of the bride's
friends who had been conspicuous in the day's festivities.  Shelton
found himself between Miss Casserol and a lady undressed to much the
same degree.  Opposite sat a man with a single diamond stud, a white
waistcoat, black moustache, and hawk-like face.  This was, in fact,
one of those interesting houses occupied by people of the upper
middle class who have imbibed a taste for smart society.  Its
inhabitants, by nature acquisitive and cautious, economical,
tenacious, had learnt to worship the word "smart."  The result was a
kind of heavy froth, an air of thoroughly domestic vice.  In addition
to the conventionally fast, Shelton had met there one or two ladies,
who, having been divorced, or having yet to be, still maintained
their position in "society."  Divorced ladies who did not so maintain
their place were never to be found, for the Casserols had a great
respect for marriage.  He had also met there American ladies who were
"too amusing"--never, of course, American men, Mesopotamians of the
financial or the racing type, and several of those gentlemen who had
been, or were about to be, engaged in a transaction which might or
again might not, "come off," and in conduct of an order which might,
or again might not be spotted.  The line he knew, was always drawn at
those in any category who were actually found out, for the value of
these ladies and these gentlemen was not their claim to pity--nothing
so sentimental--but their "smartness," clothes, jokes, racing tips,
their "bridge parties," and their motors.

In sum, the house was one whose fundamental domesticity attracted and
sheltered those who were too "smart" to keep their heads for long
above the water.

His host, a grey, clean-shaven city man, with a long upper lip, was
trying to understand a lady the audacity of whose speech came ringing
down the table.  Shelton himself had given up the effort with his
neighbours, and made love to his dinner, which, surviving the
incoherence of the atmosphere, emerged as a work of art.  It was with
surprise that he found Miss Casserol addressing him.

"I always say that the great thing is to be jolly.  If you can't find
anything to make you laugh, pretend you do; it's so much 'smarter to
be amusin'.  Now don't you agree?"

The philosophy seemed excellent.

"We can't all be geniuses, but we can all look jolly."

Shelton hastened to look jolly.

"I tell the governor, when he 's glum, that I shall put up the
shutters and leave him.  What's the good of mopin' and lookin'
miserable?  Are you going to the Four-in-Hand Meet?  We're making a
party.  Such fun; all the smart people!"

The splendour of her shoulders, her frizzy hair (clearly not two
hours out of the barber's hands), might have made him doubtful; but
the frank shrewdness in her eyes, and her carefully clipped tone of
voice, were guarantees that she was part of the element at the table
which was really quite respectable.  He had never realised before how
"smart" she was, and with an effort abandoned himself to a sort of
gaiety that would have killed a Frenchman.

And when she left him, he reflected upon the expression of her eyes
when they rested on a lady opposite, who was a true bird-of-prey.
"What is it," their envious, inquisitive glance had seemed to say,
"that makes you so really 'smart'?"  And while still seeking for the
reason, he noticed his host pointing out the merits of his port to
the hawk-like man, with a deferential air quite pitiful to see, for
the hawk-like man was clearly a "bad hat."  What in the name of
goodness did these staid bourgeois mean by making up to vice?  Was it
a craving to be thought distinguished, a dread of being dull, or
merely an effect of overfeeding?  Again he looked at his host, who
had not yet enumerated all the virtues of his port, and again felt
sorry for him.

"So you're going to marry Antonia Dennant?"  said a voice on his
right, with that easy coarseness which is a mark of caste.  "Pretty
girl!  They've a nice place, the, Dennants.  D' ye know, you're a
lucky feller!"

The speaker was an old baronet, with small eyes, a dusky, ruddy face,
and peculiar hail-fellow-well-met expression, at once morose and sly.
He was always hard up, but being a man of enterprise knew all the
best people, as well as all the worst, so that he dined out every
night.

"You're a lucky feller," he repeated; "he's got some deuced good
shootin', Dennant!  They come too high for me, though; never touched
a feather last time I shot there.  She's a pretty girl.  You 're a
lucky feller!"

"I know that," said Shelton humbly.

"Wish I were in your shoes.  Who was that sittin' on the other side
of you?  I'm so dashed short-sighted.  Mrs. Carruther?  Oh, ay!"  An
expression which, if he had not been a baronet, would have been a
leer, came on his lips.

Shelton felt that he was referring to the leaf in his mental pocket-
book covered with the anecdotes, figures, and facts about that lady.
"The old ogre means," thought he, "that I'm lucky because his leaf is
blank about Antonia."  But the old baronet had turned, with his
smile, and his sardonic, well-bred air, to listen to a bit of scandal
on the other side.

The two men to Shelton's left were talking.

"What!  You don't collect anything?  How's that?  Everybody collects
something.  I should be lost without my pictures."

"No, I don't collect anything.  Given it up; I was too awfully had
over my Walkers."

Shelton had expected a more lofty reason; he applied himself to the
Madeira in his glass.  That, had been "collected" by his host, and
its price was going up!  You couldn't get it every day; worth two
guineas a bottle!  How precious the idea that other people couldn't
get it, made it seem!  Liquid delight; the price was going up!  Soon
there would be none left; immense!  Absolutely no one, then, could
drink it!

"Wish I had some of this," said the old baronet, "but I have drunk
all mine."

"Poor old chap!"  thought Shelton; "after all, he's not a bad old
boy.  I wish I had his pluck.  His liver must be splendid."

The drawing-room was full of people playing a game concerned with
horses ridden by jockeys with the latest seat.  And Shelton was
compelled to help in carrying on this sport till early in the
morning.  At last he left, exhausted by his animation.

He thought of the wedding; he thought over his dinner and the wine
that he had drunk.  His mood of satisfaction fizzled out.  These
people were incapable of being real, even the smartest, even the most
respectable; they seemed to weigh their pleasures in the scales and
to get the most that could be gotten for their money.

Between the dark, safe houses stretching for miles and miles, his
thoughts were of Antonia; and as he reached his rooms he was
overtaken by the moment when the town is born again.  The first new
air had stolen down; the sky was living, but not yet alight; the
trees were quivering faintly; no living creature stirred, and nothing
spoke except his heart.  Suddenly the city seemed to breathe, and
Shelton saw that he was not alone; an unconsidered trifle with
inferior boots was asleep upon his doorstep.




CHAPTER X

AN ALIEN

The individual on the doorstep had fallen into slumber over his own
knees.  No greater air of prosperity clung about him than is conveyed
by a rusty overcoat and wisps of cloth in place of socks.  Shelton
endeavoured to pass unseen, but the sleeper woke.

"Ah, it's you, monsieur!" he said "I received your letter this
evening, and have lost no time."  He looked down at himself and
tittered, as though to say, "But what a state I 'm in!"

The young foreigner's condition was indeed more desperate than on the
occasion of their first meeting, and Shelton invited him upstairs.

"You can well understand," stammered Ferrand, following his host,
"that I did n't want to miss you this time.  When one is like this--"
and a spasm gripped his face.

"I 'm very glad you came," said Shelton doubtfully.

His visitor's face had a week's growth of reddish beard; the deep tan
of his cheeks gave him a robust appearance at variance with the fit
of, trembling which had seized on him as soon as he had entered.

"Sit down-sit down," said Shelton; "you 're feeling ill!"

Ferrand smiled.  "It's nothing," said he; "bad nourishment."

Shelton left him seated on the edge of an armchair, and brought him
in some whisky.

"Clothes," said Ferrand, when he had drunk, "are what I want.  These
are really not good enough."

The statement was correct, and Shelton, placing some garments in the
bath-room, invited his visitor to make himself at home.  While the
latter, then, was doing this, Shelton enjoyed the luxuries of self-
denial, hunting up things he did not want, and laying them in two
portmanteaus.  This done, he waited for his visitor's return.

The young foreigner at length emerged, unshaved indeed, and innocent
of boots, but having in other respects an air of gratifying
affluence.

"This is a little different," he said.  "The boots, I fear"--and,
pulling down his, or rather Shelton's, socks he exhibited sores the
size of half a crown.  "One does n't sow without reaping some harvest
or another.  My stomach has shrunk," he added simply.  "To see things
one must suffer.  'Voyager, c'est plus fort que moi'!"

Shelton failed to perceive that this was one way of disguising the
human animal's natural dislike of work--there was a touch of pathos,
a suggestion of God-knows-what-might-have-been, about this fellow.


"I have eaten my illusions," said the young foreigner, smoking a
cigarette.  "When you've starved a few times, your eyes are opened.
'Savoir, c'est mon metier; mais remarquez ceci, monsieur': It 's not
always the intellectuals who succeed."

"When you get a job," said Shelton, "you throw it away, I suppose."

"You accuse me of restlessness?  Shall I explain what I think about
that?  I'm restless because of ambition; I want to reconquer an
independent position.  I put all my soul into my trials, but as soon
as I see there's no future for me in that line, I give it up and go
elsewhere.  'Je ne veux pas etre rond de cuir,' breaking my back to
economise sixpence a day, and save enough after forty years to drag
out the remains of an exhausted existence.  That's not in my
character."  This ingenious paraphrase of the words "I soon get tired
of things" he pronounced with an air of letting Shelton into a
precious secret.

"Yes; it must be hard," agreed the latter.

Ferrand shrugged his shoulders.

"It's not all butter," he replied; "one is obliged to do things that
are not too delicate.  There's nothing I pride myself on but
frankness."

Like a good chemist, however, he administered what Shelton could
stand in a judicious way.  "Yes, yes," he seemed to say, "you'd like
me to think that you have a perfect knowledge of life: no morality,
no prejudices, no illusions; you'd like me to think that you feel
yourself on an equality with me, one human animal talking to another,
without any barriers of position, money, clothes, or the rest--'ca
c'est un peu trop fort'!  You're as good an imitation as I 've come
across in your class, notwithstanding your unfortunate education, and
I 'm grateful to you, but to tell you everything, as it passes
through my mind would damage my prospects.  You can hardly expect
that."

In one of Shelton's old frock-coats he was impressive, with his air
of natural, almost sensitive refinement.  The room looked as if it
were accustomed to him, and more amazing still was the sense of
familiarity that he inspired, as, though he were a part of Shelton's
soul.  It came as a shock to realise that this young foreign vagabond
had taken such a place within his thoughts.  The pose of his limbs
and head, irregular but not ungraceful; his disillusioned lips; the
rings of smoke that issued from them--all signified rebellion, and
the overthrow of law and order.  His thin, lopsided nose, the rapid
glances of his goggling, prominent eyes, were subtlety itself; he
stood for discontent with the accepted.

"How do I live when I am on the tramp?" he said.  "well, there are
the consuls.  The system is not delicate, but when it's a question of
starving, much is permissible; besides, these gentlemen were created
for the purpose.  There's a coterie of German Jews in Paris living
entirely upon consuls."  He hesitated for the fraction of a second,
and resumed: "Yes, monsieur; if you have papers that fit you, you can
try six or seven consuls in a single town.  You must know a language
or two; but most of these gentlemen are not too well up in the
tongues of the country they represent.  Obtaining money under false
pretences?  Well, it is.  But what's the difference at bottom between
all this honourable crowd of directors, fashionable physicians,
employers of labour, ferry-builders, military men, country priests,
and consuls themselves perhaps, who take money and give no value for
it, and poor devils who do the same at far greater risk?  Necessity
makes the law.  If those gentlemen were in my position, do you think
that they would hesitate?"

Shelton's face remaining doubtful, Ferrand went on instantly: "You're
right; they would, from fear, not principle.  One must be hard
pressed before committing these indelicacies.  Look deep enough, and
you will see what indelicate things are daily done by the respectable
for not half so good a reason as the want of meals."

Shelton also took a cigarette--his own income was derived from
property for which he gave no value in labour.

"I can give you an instance," said Ferrand, "of what can be done by
resolution.  One day in a German town, 'etant dans la misere', I
decided to try the French consul.  Well, as you know, I am a Fleming,
but something had to be screwed out somewhere.  He refused to see me;
I sat down to wait.  After about two hours a voice bellowed: 'Has n't
the brute gone?' and my consul appears.  'I 've nothing for fellows
like you,' says he; 'clear out!'

"'Monsieur,' I answered, 'I am skin and bone; I really must have
assistance.'

"'Clear out,' he says, 'or the police shall throw you out!'

"I don't budge.  Another hour passes, and back he comes again.

"'Still here?' says he.  'Fetch a sergeant.'

"The sergeant comes.

"'Sergeant,' says the consul, 'turn this creature out.'

"'Sergeant,' I say, 'this house is France!'  Naturally, I had
calculated upon that.  In Germany they're not too fond of those who
undertake the business of the French.

"'He is right,' says the sergeant; 'I can do nothing.'

"'You refuse?'

"'Absolutely.' And he went away.

"'What do you think you'll get by staying?' says my consul.

"'I have nothing to eat or drink, and nowhere to sleep,' says I.

"'What will you go for?'

"'Ten marks.'

"'Here, then, get out!' I can tell you, monsieur, one must n't have a
thin skin if one wants to exploit consuls."

His yellow fingers slowly rolled the stump of his cigarette, his
ironical lips flickered.  Shelton thought of his own ignorance of
life.  He could not recollect ever having gone without a meal.

"I suppose," he said feebly, "you've often starved."  For, having
always been so well fed, the idea of starvation was attractive.

Ferrand smiled.

"Four days is the longest," said he.  "You won't believe that story.
.  .  .  It was in Paris, and I had lost my money on the race-course.
There was some due from home which didn't come.  Four days and nights
I lived on water.  My clothes were excellent, and I had jewellery;
but I never even thought of pawning them.  I suffered most from the
notion that people might guess my state.  You don't recognise me
now?"

"How old were you then?" said Shelton.

"Seventeen; it's curious what one's like at that age."

By a flash of insight Shelton saw the well-dressed boy, with
sensitive, smooth face, always on the move about the streets of
Paris, for fear that people should observe the condition of his
stomach.  The story was a valuable commentary.  His thoughts were
brusquely interrupted; looking in Ferrand's face, he saw to his
dismay tears rolling down his cheeks.

"I 've suffered too much," he stammered; "what do I care now what
becomes of me?"

Shelton was disconcerted; he wished 'to say something sympathetic,'
but, being an Englishman, could only turn away his eyes.

"Your turn 's coming," he said at last.

"Ah! when you've lived my life," broke out his visitor, "nothing 's
any good.  My heart's in rags.  Find me anything worth keeping, in
this menagerie."

Moved though he was, Shelton wriggled in his chair, a prey to racial
instinct, to an ingrained over-tenderness, perhaps, of soul that
forbade him from exposing his emotions, and recoiled from the
revelation of other people's.  He could stand it on the stage, he
could stand it in a book, but in real life he could not stand it.
When Ferrand had gone off with a portmanteau in each hand, he sat
down and told Antonia:

.  .  .  The poor chap broke down and sat crying like a child; and
instead of making me feel sorry, it turned me into stone.  The more
sympathetic I wanted to be, the gruffer I grew.  Is it fear of
ridicule, independence, or consideration, for others that prevents
one from showing one's feelings?

He went on to tell her of Ferrand's starving four days sooner than
face a pawnbroker; and, reading the letter over before addressing it,
the faces of the three ladies round their snowy cloth arose before
him--Antonia's face, so fair and calm and wind-fresh; her mother's
face, a little creased by time and weather; the maiden aunt's
somewhat too thin-and they seemed to lean at him, alert and decorous,
and the words "That's rather nice!" rang in his ears.  He went out to
post the letter, and buying a five-shilling order enclosed it to the
little barber, Carolan, as a reward for delivering his note to
Ferrand.  He omitted to send his address with this donation, but
whether from delicacy or from caution he could not have said.  Beyond
doubt, however, on receiving through Ferrand the following reply, he
felt ashamed and pleased

3, BLANK Row,
WESTMINSTER.

>From every well-born soul humanity is owing.  A thousand thanks.  I
received this morning your postal order; your heart henceforth for me
will be placed beyond all praise.

                                        J.  CAROLAN.




CHAPTER XI

THE VISION

A few days later he received a letter from Antonia which filled him
with excitement:

.  .  .  Aunt Charlotte is ever so much better, so mother thinks we
can go home-hurrah!  But she says that you and I must keep to our
arrangement not to see each other till July.  There will be something
fine in being so near and having the strength to keep apart .  .  .
All the English are gone.  I feel it so empty out here; these people
are so funny-all foreign and shallow.  Oh, Dick!  how splendid to
have an ideal to look up to!  Write at once to Brewer's Hotel and
tell me you think the same .  .  .  .  We arrive at Charing Cross on
Sunday at half-past seven, stay at Brewer's for a couple of nights,
and go down on Tuesday to Holm Oaks.

Always your

ANTONIA.


"To-morrow!"  he thought; "she's coming tomorrow!"  and, leaving his
neglected breakfast, he started out to walk off his emotion.  His
square ran into one of those slums that still rub shoulders with the
most distinguished situations, and in it he came upon a little crowd
assembled round a dogfight.  One of the dogs was being mauled, but
the day was muddy, and Shelton, like any well-bred Englishman, had a
horror of making himself conspicuous even in a decent cause; he
looked for a policeman.  One was standing by, to see fair play, and
Shelton made appeal to him.  The official suggested that he should
not have brought out a fighting dog, and advised him to throw cold
water over them.

"It is n 't my dog," said Shelton.

"Then I should let 'em be," remarked the policeman with evident
surprise.

Shelton appealed indefinitely to the lower orders.  The lower orders,
however, were afraid of being bitten.

"I would n't meddle with that there job if I was you," said one.

"Nasty breed o' dawg is that."

He was therefore obliged to cast away respectability, spoil his
trousers and his gloves, break his umbrella, drop his hat in the mud,
and separate the dogs.  At the conclusion of the "job," the lower
orders said to him in a rather shamefaced spanner:

"Well, I never thought you'd have managed that, sir"; but, like all
men of inaction, Shelton after action was more dangerous.

"D----n it!"  he said, "one can't let a dog be killed"; and he
marched off, towing the injured dog with his pocket-handkerchief, and
looking scornfully at harmless passers-by.  Having satisfied for once
the smouldering fires within him, he felt entitled to hold a low
opinion of these men in the street.  "The brutes," he thought, "won't
stir a finger to save a poor dumb creature, and as for policemen---"
But, growing cooler, he began to see that people weighted down by
"honest toil" could not afford to tear their trousers or get a bitten
hand, and that even the policeman, though he had looked so like a
demi-god, was absolutely made of flesh and blood.  He took the dog
home, and, sending for a vet., had him sewn up.

He was already tortured by the doubt whether or no he might venture
to meet Antonia at the station, and, after sending his servant with
the dog to the address marked on its collar, he formed the resolve to
go and see his mother, with some vague notion that she might help him
to decide.  She lived in Kensington, and, crossing the Brompton Road,
he was soon amongst that maze of houses into the fibre of whose
structure architects have wrought the motto: "Keep what you have--
wives, money, a good address, and all the blessings of a moral
state!"

Shelton pondered as he passed house after house of such intense
respectability that even dogs were known to bark at them.  His blood
was still too hot; it is amazing what incidents will promote the
loftiest philosophy.  He had been reading in his favourite review an
article eulogising the freedom and expansion which had made the upper
middle class so fine a body; and with eyes wandering from side to
side he nodded his head ironically.  "Expansion and freedom," ran his
thoughts: "Freedom and expansion!"

Each house-front was cold and formal, the shell of an owner with from
three to five thousand pounds a year, and each one was armoured
against the opinion of its neighbours by a sort of daring regularity.
"Conscious of my rectitude; and by the strict observance of exactly
what is necessary and no more, I am enabled to hold my head up in the
world.  The person who lives in me has only four thousand two hundred
and fifty-five pounds each year, after allowing for the income tax."
Such seemed the legend of these houses.

Shelton passed ladies in ones and twos and threes going out shopping,
or to classes of drawing, cooking, ambulance.  Hardly any men were
seen, and they were mostly policemen; but a few disillusioned
children were being wheeled towards the Park by fresh-cheeked nurses,
accompanied by a great army of hairy or of hairless dogs.

There was something of her brother's large liberality about Mrs.
Shelton, a  tiny lady with affectionate eyes, warm cheeks, and chilly
feet; fond as a cat of a chair by the fire, and full of the sympathy
that has no insight.  She kissed her son at once with rapture, and,
as usual, began to talk of his engagement.  For the first time a
tremor of doubt ran through her son; his mother's view of it grated
on him like the sight of a blue-pink dress; it was too rosy.  Her
splendid optimism, damped him; it had too little traffic with the
reasoning powers.

"What right," he asked himself, "has she to be so certain?  It seems
to me a kind of blasphemy."

"The dear!" she cooed.  "And she is coming back to-morrow?  Hurrah!
how I long to see her!"

"But you know, mother, we've agreed not to meet again until July."

Mrs. Shelton rocked her foot, and, holding her head on one side like
a little bird, looked at her son with shining eyes.

"Dear old Dick!"  she said, "how happy you must be!"

Half a century of sympathy with weddings of all sorts--good, bad,
indifferent--beamed from her.

"I suppose," said Shelton gloomily, "I ought not to go and see her at
the station."

"Cheer up!"  replied the mother, and her son felt dreadfully
depressed.

That "Cheer-up!"--the panacea which had carried her blind and bright
through every evil--was as void of meaning to him as wine without a
flavour.

"And how is your sciatica?" he asked.

"Oh, pretty bad," returned his mother; "I expect it's all right,
really.  Cheer up!"  She stretched her little figure, canting her
head still more.

"Wonderful woman!"  Shelton thought.  She had, in fact, like many of
her fellow-countrymen, mislaid the darker side of things, and,
enjoying the benefits of orthodoxy with an easy conscience, had kept
as young in heart as any girl of thirty.

Shelton left her house as doubtful whether he might meet Antonia as
when he entered it.  He spent a restless afternoon.

The next day--that of her arrival--was a Sunday.  He had made Ferrand
a promise to go with him to hear a sermon in the slums, and, catching
at any diversion which might allay excitement, he fulfilled it.  The
preacher in question--an amateur, so Ferrand told him--had an
original method of distributing the funds that he obtained.  To male
sheep he gave nothing, to ugly female sheep a very little, to pretty
female sheep the rest.  Ferrand hazarded an inference, but he was a
foreigner.  The Englishman preferred to look upon the preacher as
guided by a purely abstract love of beauty.  His eloquence, at any
rate, was unquestionable, and Shelton came out feeling sick.

It was not yet seven o'clock, so, entering an Italian restaurant to
kill the half-hour before Antonia's arrival, he ordered a bottle of
wine for his companion, a cup of coffee for himself, and, lighting a
cigarette, compressed his lips.  There was a strange, sweet sinking
in his heart.  His companion, ignorant of this emotion, drank his
wine, crumbled his roll, and blew smoke through his nostrils,
glancing caustically at the rows of little tables, the cheap mirrors,
the hot, red velvet, the chandeliers.  His juicy lips seemed to be
murmuring, "Ah! if you only knew of the dirt behind these feathers!"
Shelton watched him with disgust.  Though his clothes were now so
nice, his nails were not quite clean, and his fingertips seemed
yellow to the bone.  An anaemic waiter in a shirt some four days old,
with grease-spots on his garments and a crumpled napkin on his arm,
stood leaning an elbow amongst doubtful fruits, and reading an
Italian journal.  Resting his tired feet in turn, he looked like
overwork personified, and when he moved, each limb accused the sordid
smartness of the walls.  In the far corner sat a lady eating, and,
mirrored opposite, her feathered hat, her short, round face, its coat
of powder, and dark eyes, gave Shelton a shiver of disgust.  His
companion's gaze rested long and subtly on her.

"Excuse me, monsieur," he said at length.  "I think I know that
lady!"  And, leaving his host, he crossed the room, bowed, accosted
her, and sat down.  With Pharisaic delicacy, Shelton refrained from
looking.  But presently Ferrand came back; the lady rose and left the
restaurant; she had been crying.  The young foreigner was flushed,
his face contorted; he did not touch his wine.

"I was right," he said; "she is the wife of an old friend.  I used to
know her well."

He was suffering from emotion, but someone less absorbed than Shelton
might have noticed a kind of relish in his voice, as though he were
savouring life's dishes, and glad to have something new, and spiced
with tragic sauce, to set before his patron.

"You can find her story by the hundred in your streets, but nothing
hinders these paragons of virtue"--he nodded at the stream of
carriages--"from turning up their eyes when they see ladies of her
sort pass.  She came to London--just three years ago.  After a year
one of her little boys took fever--the shop was avoided--her husband
caught it, and died.  There she was, left with two children and
everything gone to pay the debts.  She tried to get work; no one
helped her.  There was no money to pay anyone to stay with the
children; all the work she could get in the house was not enough to
keep them alive.  She's not a strong woman.  Well, she put the
children out to nurse, and went to the streets.  The first week was
frightful, but now she's used to it--one gets used to anything."

"Can nothing be done?" asked Shelton, startled.

"No," returned his companion.  "I know that sort; if they once take
to it all's over.  They get used to luxury.  One does n't part with
luxury, after tasting destitution.  She tells me she does very
nicely; the children are happy; she's able to pay well and see them
sometimes.  She was a girl of good family, too, who loved her
husband, and gave up much for him.  What would you have?  Three
quarters of your virtuous ladies placed in her position would do the
same if they had the necessary looks."

It was evident that he felt the shock of this discovery, and Shelton
understood that personal acquaintance makes a difference, even in a
vagabond.

"This is her beat," said the young foreigner, as they passed the
illuminated crescent, where nightly the shadows of hypocrites and
women fall; and Shelton went from these comments on Christianity to
the station of Charing Cross.  There, as he stood waiting in the
shadow, his heart was in his mouth; and it struck him as odd that he
should have come to this meeting fresh from a vagabond's society.

Presently, amongst the stream of travellers, he saw Antonia.  She was
close to her mother, who was parleying with a footman; behind them
were a maid carrying a bandbox and a porter with the travelling-bags.
Antonia's figure, with its throat settled in the collar of her cape,
slender, tall, severe, looked impatient and remote amongst the
bustle.  Her eyes, shadowed by the journey, glanced eagerly about,
welcoming all she saw; a wisp of hair was loose above her ear, her
cheeks glowed cold and rosy.  She caught sight of Shelton, and
bending her neck, stag-like, stood looking at him; a brilliant smile
parted her lips, and Shelton trembled.  Here was the embodiment of
all he had desired for weeks.  He could not tell what was behind that
smile of hers--passionate aching or only some ideal, some chaste and
glacial intangibility.  It seemed to be shining past him into the
gloomy station.  There was no trembling and uncertainty, no rage of
possession in that brilliant smile; it had the gleam of fixedness,
like the smiling of a star.  What did it matter?  She was there,
beautiful as a young day, and smiling at him; and she was his, only
divided from him by a space of time.  He took a step; her eyes fell
at once, her face regained aloofness; he saw her, encircled by
mother, footman, maid, and porter, take her seat and drive away.
It was over; she had seen him, she had smiled, but alongside his
delight lurked another feeling, and, by a bitter freak, not her face
came up before him but the face of that lady in the restaurant--
short, round, and powdered, with black-circled eyes.  What right had
we to scorn them?  Had they mothers, footmen, porters, maids?  He
shivered, but this time with physical disgust; the powdered face with
dark-fringed eyes had vanished; the fair, remote figure of the
railway-station came back again.

He sat long over dinner, drinking, dreaming; he sat long after,
smoking, dreaming, and when at length he drove away, wine and dreams
fumed in his brain.  The dance of lamps, the cream-cheese moon, the
rays of clean wet light on his horse's harness, the jingling of the
cab bell, the whirring wheels, the night air and the branches--it was
all so good!  He threw back the hansom doors to feel the touch of the
warm breeze.  The crowds on the pavement gave him strange delight;
they were like shadows, in some great illusion, happy shadows,
thronging, wheeling round the single figure of his world.




CHAPTER XII

ROTTEN ROW

With a headache and a sense of restlessness, hopeful and unhappy,
Shelton mounted his hack next morning for a gallop in the Park.

In the sky was mingled all the languor and the violence of the
spring.  The trees and flowers wore an awakened look in the gleams of
light that came stealing down from behind the purple of the clouds.
The air was rain-washed, and the passers by seemed to wear an air of
tranquil carelessness, as if anxiety were paralysed by their
responsibility of the firmament.

Thronged by riders, the Row was all astir.

Near to Hyde Park Corner a figure by the rails caught Shelton's eye.
Straight and thin, one shoulder humped a little, as if its owner were
reflecting, clothed in a frock-coat and a brown felt hat pinched up
in lawless fashion, this figure was so detached from its surroundings
that it would have been noticeable anywhere.  It belonged to Ferrand,
obviously waiting till it was time to breakfast with his patron.
Shelton found pleasure in thus observing him unseen, and sat quietly
on his horse, hidden behind a tree.

It was just at that spot where riders, unable to get further, are for
ever wheeling their horses for another turn; and there Ferrand, the
bird of passage, with his head a little to one side, watched them
cantering, trotting, wheeling up and down.

Three men walking along the rails were snatching off their hats
before a horsewoman at exactly the same angle and with precisely the
same air, as though in the modish performance of this ancient rite
they were satisfying some instinct very dear to them.

Shelton noted the curl of Ferrand's lip as he watched this sight.
"Many thanks, gentlemen," it seemed to say; "in that charming little
action you have shown me all your souls."

What a singular gift the fellow had of divesting things and people of
their garments, of tearing away their veil of shams, and their
phylacteries!  Shelton turned and cantered on; his thoughts were with
Antonia, and he did not want the glamour stripped away.

He was glancing at the sky, that every moment threatened to discharge
a violent shower of rain, when suddenly he heard his name called from
behind, and who should ride up to him on either side but Bill Dennant
and--Antonia herself!

They had been galloping; and she was flushed--flushed as when she
stood on the old tower at Hyeres, but with a joyful radiance
different from the calm and conquering radiance of that other moment.
To Shelton's delight they fell into line with him, and all three went
galloping along the strip between the trees and rails.  The look she
gave him seemed to say, "I don't care if it is forbidden!"  but she
did not speak.  He could not take his eyes off her.  How lovely she
looked, with the resolute curve of her figure, the glimpse of gold
under her hat, the glorious colour in her cheeks, as if she had been
kissed.

"It 's so splendid to be at home!  Let 's go faster, faster!"  she
cried out.

"Take a pull.  We shall get run in," grumbled her brother, with a
chuckle.

They reined in round the bend and jogged more soberly down on the far
side; still not a word from her to Shelton, and Shelton in his turn
spoke only to Bill Dennant.  He was afraid to speak to her, for he
knew that her mind was dwelling on this chance forbidden meeting in a
way quite different from his own.

Approaching Hyde Park Corner, where Ferrand was still standing
against the rails, Shelton, who had forgotten his existence, suffered
a shock when his eyes fell suddenly on that impassive figure.  He was
about to raise his hand, when he saw that the young foreigner, noting
his instinctive feeling, had at once adapted himself to it.  They
passed again without a greeting, unless that swift inquisition;
followed by unconsciousness in Ferrand's eyes, could so be called.
But the feeling of idiotic happiness left Shelton; he grew irritated
at this silence.  It tantalised him more and more, for Bill Dennant
had lagged behind to chatter to a friend; Shelton and Antonia were
alone, walking their horses, without a word, not even looking at each
other.  At one moment he thought of galloping ahead and leaving her,
then of breaking the vow of muteness she seemed to be imposing on
him, and he kept thinking: "It ought to be either one thing or the
other.  I can't stand this."  Her calmness was getting on his nerves;
she seemed to have determined just how far she meant to go, to have
fixed cold-bloodedly a limit.  In her happy young beauty and radiant
coolness she summed up that sane consistent something existing in
nine out of ten of the people Shelton knew.  "I can't stand it long,"
he thought, and all of a sudden spoke; but as he did so she frowned
and cantered on.  When he caught her she was smiling, lifting her
face to catch the raindrops which were falling fast.  She gave him
just a nod, and waved her hand as a sign for him to go; and when he
would not, she frowned.  He saw Bill Dennant, posting after them,
and, seized by a sense of the ridiculous, lifted his hat, and
galloped off.

The rain was coming down in torrents now, and every one was scurrying
for shelter.  He looked back from the bend, and could still make out
Antonia riding leisurely, her face upturned, and revelling in the
shower.  Why had n't she either cut him altogether or taken the
sweets the gods had sent?  It seemed wicked to have wasted such a
chance, and, ploughing back to Hyde Park Corner, he turned his head
to see if by any chance she had relented.

His irritation was soon gone, but his longing stayed.  Was ever
anything so beautiful as she had looked with her face turned to the
rain?  She seemed to love the rain.  It suited her--suited her ever
so much better than the sunshine of the South.  Yes, she was very
English!  Puzzling and fretting, he reached his rooms.  Ferrand had
not arrived, in fact did not turn up that day.  His non-appearance
afforded Shelton another proof of the delicacy that went hand in hand
with the young vagrant's cynicism.  In the afternoon he received a
note.

.  .  .  You see, Dick [he read], I ought to have cut you; but I felt
too crazy--everything seems so jolly at home, even this stuffy old
London.  Of course, I wanted to talk to you badly--there are heaps of
things one can't say by letter--but I should have been sorry
afterwards.  I told mother.  She said I was quite right, but I don't
think she took it in.  Don't you feel that the only thing that really
matters is to have an ideal, and to keep it so safe that you can
always look forward and feel that you have been--I can't exactly
express my meaning.

Shelton lit a cigarette and frowned.  It seemed to him queer that she
should set more store by an "ideal" than by the fact that they had
met for the first and only time in many weeks.

"I suppose she 's right," he thoughts--"I suppose she 's right.  I
ought not to have tried to speak to her!"  As a matter of fact, he
did not at all feel that she was right.




CHAPTER XIII

AN "AT HOME"

On Tuesday morning he wandered off to Paddington, hoping for a chance
view of her on her way down to Holm Oaks; but the sense of the
ridiculous, on which he had been nurtured, was strong enough to keep
him from actually entering the station and lurking about until she
came.  With a pang of disappointment he retraced his steps from Praed
Street to the Park, and once there tried no further to waylay her.
He paid a round of calls in the afternoon, mostly on her relations;
and, seeking out Aunt Charlotte, he dolorously related his encounter
in the Row.  But she found it "rather nice," and on his pressing her
with his views, she murmured that it was "quite romantic, don't you
know."

"Still, it's very hard," said Shelton; and he went away disconsolate.

As he was dressing for dinner his eye fell on a card announcing the
"at home" of one of his own cousins.  Her husband was a composer, and
he had a vague idea that he would find at the house of a composer
some quite unusually free kind of atmosphere.  After dining at the
club, therefore, he set out for Chelsea.  The party was held in a
large room on the ground-floor, which was already crowded with people
when Shelton entered.  They stood or sat about in groups with smiles
fixed on their lips, and the light from balloon-like lamps fell in
patches on their heads and hands and shoulders.  Someone had just
finished rendering on the piano a composition of his own.  An expert
could at once have picked out from amongst the applauding company
those who were musicians by profession, for their eyes sparkled, and
a certain acidity pervaded their enthusiasm.  This freemasonry of
professional intolerance flew from one to the other like a breath of
unanimity, and the faint shrugging of shoulders was as harmonious as
though one of the high windows had been opened suddenly, admitting a
draught of chill May air.

Shelton made his way up to his cousin--a fragile, grey-haired woman
in black velvet and Venetian lace, whose starry eyes beamed at him,
until her duties, after the custom of these social gatherings,
obliged her to break off conversation just as it began to interest
him.  He was passed on to another lady who was already talking to two
gentlemen, and, their volubility being greater than his own, he fell
into the position of observer.  Instead of the profound questions he
had somehow expected to hear raised, everybody seemed gossiping, or
searching the heart of such topics as where to go this summer, or how
to get new servants.  Trifling with coffee-cups, they dissected their
fellow artists in the same way as his society friends of the other
night had dissected the fellow--"smart"; and the varnish on the
floor, the pictures, and the piano were reflected on all the faces
around.  Shelton moved from group to group disconsolate.

A tall, imposing person stood under a Japanese print holding the palm
of one hand outspread; his unwieldy trunk and thin legs wobbled in
concert to his ingratiating voice.

"War," he was saying, "is not necessary.  War is not necessary.  I
hope I make myself clear.  War is not necessary; it depends on
nationality, but nationality is not necessary."  He inclined his head
to one side, "Why do we have nationality?  Let us do away with
boundaries--let us have the warfare of commerce.  If I see France
looking at Brighton"--he laid his head upon one side, and beamed at
Shelton,--"what do I do?  Do I say 'Hands off'?  No.  'Take it,'
I say--take it!'"  He archly smiled.  "But do you think they would?"

And the softness of his contours fascinated Shelton.

"The soldier," the person underneath the print resumed, "is
necessarily on a lower plane--intellectually--oh, intellectually--
than the philanthropist.  His sufferings are less acute; he enjoys
the compensations of advertisement--you admit that?" he breathed
persuasively.  "For instance--I am quite impersonal--I suffer; but do
I talk about it?"  But, someone gazing at his well-filled waistcoat,
he put his thesis in another form: "I have one acre and one cow, my
brother has one acre and one cow: do I seek to take them away from
him?"

Shelton hazarded, "Perhaps you 're weaker than your brother."

"Come, come!  Take the case of women: now, I consider our marriage
laws are barbarous."

For the first time Shelton conceived respect for them; he made a
comprehensive gesture, and edged himself into the conversation of
another group, for fear of having all his prejudices overturned.
Here an Irish sculptor, standing in a curve, was saying furiously,
"Bees are not bhumpkins, d---n their sowls!  "A Scotch painter, who
listened with a curly smile, seemed trying to compromise this
proposition, which appeared to have relation to the middle classes;
and though agreeing with the Irishman, Shelton felt nervous over his
discharge of electricity.  Next to them two American ladies,
assembled under the tent of hair belonging to a writer of songs, were
discussing the emotions aroused in them by Wagner's operas.

"They produce a strange condition of affairs in me," said the thinner
one.

"They 're just divine," said the fatter.

"I don't know if you can call the fleshly lusts divine," replied the
thinner, looking into the eyes of the writer of the songs.

Amidst all the hum of voices and the fumes of smoke, a sense of
formality was haunting Shelton.  Sandwiched between a Dutchman and a
Prussian poet, he could understand neither of his neighbours; so,
assuming an intelligent expression, he fell to thinking that an
assemblage of free spirits is as much bound by the convention of
exchanging their ideas as commonplace people are by the convention of
having no ideas to traffic in.  He could not help wondering whether,
in the bulk, they were not just as dependent on each other as the
inhabitants of Kensington; whether, like locomotives, they could run
at all without these opportunities for blowing off the steam, and
what would be left when the steam had all escaped.  Somebody ceased
playing the violin, and close to him a group began discussing ethics.
Aspirations were in the air all round, like a lot of hungry ghosts.
He realised that, if tongue be given to them, the flavour vanishes
from ideas which haunt the soul.

Again the violinist played.

"Cock gracious!"  said the Prussian poet, falling into English as the
fiddle ceased: "Colossal!  'Aber, wie er ist grossartig'!"

"Have you read that thing of Besom's?" asked shrill voice behind.

"Oh, my dear fellow! too horrid for words; he ought to be hanged!"

"The man's dreadful," pursued the voice, shriller than ever; "nothing
but a volcanic eruption would cure him."

Shelton turned in alarm to look at the authors of these statements.
They were two men of letters talking of a third.

"'C'est un grand naif, vous savez,'" said the second speaker.

"These fellows don't exist," resumed the first; his small eyes
gleamed with a green light, his whole face had a look as if he gnawed
himself.  Though not a man of letters, Shelton could not help
recognising from those eyes what joy it was to say those words:
"These fellows don't exist!"

"Poor Besom!  You know what Moulter said .  .  ."

Shelton turned away, as if he had been too close to one whose hair
smelt of cantharides; and, looking round the room, he frowned.  With
the exception of his cousin, he seemed the only person there of
English blood.  Americans, Mesopotamians, Irish, Italians, Germans,
Scotch, and Russians.  He was not contemptuous of them for being
foreigners; it was simply that God and the climate had made him
different by a skin or so.

But at this point his conclusions were denied (as will sometimes
happen) by his introduction to an Englishman--a Major Somebody, who,
with smooth hair and blond moustache, neat eyes and neater clothes,
seemed a little anxious at his own presence there.  Shelton took a
liking to him, partly from a fellow-feeling, and partly because of
the gentle smile with which he was looking at his wife.  Almost
before he had said "How do you do?" he was plunged into a discussion
on imperialism.

"Admitting all that," said Shelton, "what I hate is the humbug with
which we pride ourselves on benefiting the whole world by our so-
called civilising methods."

The soldier turned his reasonable eyes.

"But is it humbug?"

Shelton saw his argument in peril.  If we really thought it, was it
humbug?  He replied, however:

"Why should we, a small portion of the world's population, assume
that our standards are the proper ones for every kind of race?  If
it 's not humbug, it 's sheer stupidity."

The soldier, without taking his hands out of his pockets, but by a
forward movement of his face showing that he was both sincere and
just, re-replied:

"Well, it must be a good sort of stupidity; it makes us the nation
that we are."

Shelton felt dazed.  The conversation buzzed around him; he heard the
smiling prophet saying, "Altruism, altruism," and in his voice a
something seemed to murmur, "Oh, I do so hope I make a good
impression!"

He looked at the soldier's clear-cut head with its well-opened eyes,
the tiny crow's-feet at their corners, the conventional moustache; he
envied the certainty of the convictions lying under that well-parted
hair.

"I would rather we were men first and then Englishmen," he muttered;
"I think it's all a sort of national illusion, and I can't stand
illusions."

"If you come to that," said the soldier, "the world lives by
illusions.  I mean, if you look at history, you'll see that the
creation of illusions has always been her business, don't you know."

This Shelton was unable to deny.

"So," continued the soldier (who was evidently a highly cultivated
man), "if you admit that movement, labour, progress, and all that
have been properly given to building up these illusions, that--er--in
fact, they're what you might call--er--the outcome of the world's
crescendo," he rushed his voice over this phrase as if ashamed of it
--"why do you want to destroy them?"

Shelton thought a moment, then, squeezing his body with his folded
arms, replied:

"The past has made us what we are, of course, and cannot be
destroyed; but how about the future?  It 's surely time to let in
air.  Cathedrals are very fine, and everybody likes the smell of
incense; but when they 've been for centuries without ventilation you
know what the atmosphere gets like."

The soldier smiled.

"By your own admission," he said, "you'll only be creating a fresh
set of illusions."

"Yes," answered Shelton, "but at all events they'll be the honest
necessities of the present."

The pupils of the soldier's eyes contracted; he evidently felt the
conversation slipping into generalities; he answered:

"I can't see how thinking small beer of ourselves is going to do us
any good!"

An "At Home!"

Shelton felt in danger of being thought unpractical in giving vent to
the remark:

"One must trust one's reason; I never can persuade myself that I
believe in what I don't."

A minute later, with a cordial handshake, the soldier left, and
Shelton watched his courteous figure shepherding his wife away.

"Dick, may I introduce you to Mr. Wilfrid Curly?" said his cousin's
voice behind, and he found his hand being diffidently shaken by a
fresh-cheeked youth with a dome-like forehead, who was saying
nervously:

"How do you do?  Yes, I am very well, thank you!"

He now remembered that when he had first come in he had watched this
youth, who had been standing in a corner indulging himself in private
smiles.  He had an uncommon look, as though he were in love with
life--as though he regarded it as a creature to whom one could put
questions to the very end--interesting, humorous, earnest questions.
He looked diffident, and amiable, and independent, and he, too, was
evidently English.

"Are you good at argument?" said Shelton, at a loss for a remark.

The youth smiled, blushed, and, putting back his hair, replied:

"Yes--no--I don't know; I think my brain does n't work fast enough
for argument.  You know how many motions of the brain-cells go to
each remark.  It 's awfully interesting"; and, bending from the waist
in a mathematical position, he extended the palm of one hand, and
started to explain.

Shelton stared at the youth's hand, at his frowns and the taps he
gave his forehead while he found the expression of his meaning; he
was intensely interested.  The youth broke off, looked at his watch,
and, blushing brightly, said:

"I 'm afraid I have to go; I have to be at the 'Den' before eleven."

"I must be off, too," said Shelton.  Making their adieux together,
they sought their hats and coats.




CHAPTER XIV

THE NIGHT CLUB

"May I ask," said Shelton, as he and the youth came out into the
chilly street, "What it is you call the 'Den'?"

His companion smilingly answered:

"Oh, the night club.  We take it in turns.  Thursday is my night.
Would you like to come?  You see a lot of types.  It's only round the
corner."

Shelton digested a momentary doubt, and answered:

"Yes, immensely."

They reached the corner house in an angle of a, dismal street,
through the open door of which two men had just gone in.  Following,
they ascended some wooden, fresh-washed stairs, and entered a large
boarded room smelling of sawdust, gas, stale coffee, and old clothes.
It was furnished with a bagatelle board, two or three wooden tables,
some wooden forms, and a wooden bookcase.  Seated on these wooden
chairs, or standing up, were youths, and older men of the working
class, who seemed to Shelton to be peculiarly dejected.  One was
reading, one against the wall was drinking coffee with a
disillusioned air, two were playing chess, and a group of four made a
ceaseless clatter with the bagatelle.

A little man in a dark suit, with a pale face, thin lips, and deep-
set, black-encircled eyes, who was obviously in charge, came up with
an anaemic smile.

"You 're rather late," he said to Curly, and, looking ascetically at
Shelton, asked, without waiting for an introduction: "Do you play
chess?  There 's young Smith wants a game."

A youth with a wooden face, already seated before a fly-blown chess-
board, asked him drearily if he would have black or white.  Shelton
took white; he was oppressed by the virtuous odour of this room.

The little man with the deep blue eyes came up, stood in an uneasy
attitude, and watched:

"Your play's improving, young Smith," he said; "I should think you'd
be able to give Banks a knight."  His eyes rested on Shelton,
fanatical and dreary; his monotonous voice was suffering and nasal;
he was continually sucking in his lips, as though determined to
subdue 'the flesh.  "You should come here often," he said to Shelton,
as the latter received checkmate; "you 'd get some good practice.
We've several very fair players.  You're not as good as Jones or
Bartholomew," he added to Shelton's opponent, as though he felt it a
duty to put the latter in his place.  "You ought to come here often,"
he repeated to Shelton; "we have a lot of very good young fellows";
and, with a touch of complacence, he glanced around the dismal room.
"There are not so many here tonight as usual.  Where are Toombs and
Body?"

Shelton, too, looked anxiously around.  He could not help feeling
sympathy with Toombs and Body.

"They 're getting slack, I'm afraid," said the little deep-eyed man.
"Our principle is to amuse everyone.  Excuse me a minute; I see that
Carpenter is doing nothing."  He crossed over to the man who had been
drinking coffee, but Shelton had barely time to glance at his
opponent and try to think of a remark, before the little man was
back.  "Do you know anything about astronomy?" he asked of Shelton.
"We have several very interested in astronomy; if you could talk to
them a little it would help."

Shelton made a motion of alarm.

"Please-no," said he; "I---"

"I wish you'd come sometimes on Wednesdays; we have most interesting
talks, and a service afterwards.  We're always anxious to get new
blood"; and his eyes searched Shelton's brown, rather tough-looking
face, as though trying to see how much blood there was in it.  "Young
Curly says you 've just been around the world; you could describe
your travels."

"May I ask," said Shelton, "how your club is made up?"

Again a look of complacency, and blessed assuagement, visited the
little man.

"Oh," he said, "we take anybody, unless there 's anything against
them.  The Day Society sees to that.  Of course, we shouldn't take
anyone if they were to report against them.  You ought to come to our
committee meetings; they're on Mondays at seven.  The women's side,
too---"

"Thank you," said Shelton; "you 're very kind---"

"We should be pleased," said the little man; and his face seemed to
suffer more than ever.  "They 're mostly young fellows here to-night,
but we have married men, too.  Of course, we 're very careful about
that," he added hastily, as though he might have injured Shelton's
prejudices--"that, and drink, and anything criminal, you know."

"And do you give pecuniary assistance, too?"

"Oh yes," replied the little man; "if you were to come to our
committee meetings you would see for yourself.  Everything is most
carefully gone into; we endeavour to sift the wheat from the chaff."

"I suppose," said Shelton, "you find a great deal of chaff?"

The little man smiled a suffering smile.  The twang of his toneless
voice sounded a trifle shriller.

"I was obliged to refuse a man to-day--a man and a woman, quite young
people, with three small children.  He was ill and out of work; but
on inquiry we found that they were not man and wife."

There was a slight pause; the little man's eyes were fastened on his
nails, and, with an appearance of enjoyment, he began to bite them.
Shelton's face had grown a trifle red.

"And what becomes of the woman and the children in a case like that?"
he said.

The little man's eyes began to smoulder.

"We make a point of not encouraging sin, of course.  Excuse me a
minute; I see they've finished bagatelle."

He hurried off, and in a moment the clack of bagatelle began again.
He himself was playing with a cold and spurious energy, running after
the balls and exhorting the other players, upon whom a wooden
acquiescence seemed to fall.

Shelton crossed the room, and went up to young Curly.  He was sitting
on a bench, smiling to himself his private smiles.

"Are you staying here much longer?" Shelton asked.

Young Curly rose with nervous haste.

"I 'm afraid," he said, "there 's nobody very interesting here to-
night."

"Oh, not at all!"  said Shelton; "on the contrary.  Only I 've had a
rather tiring day, and somehow I don't feel up to the standard here."

His new acquaintance smiled.

"Oh, really!  do you think--that is--"

But he had not time to finish before the clack of bagatelle balls
ceased, and the voice of the little deep-eyed man was heard saying:
"Anybody who wants a book will put his name down.  There will be the
usual prayer-meeting on Wednesday next.  Will you all go quietly?
I am going to turn the lights out."

One gas-jet vanished, and the remaining jet flared suddenly.  By its
harder glare the wooden room looked harder too, and disenchanting.
The figures of its occupants began filing through the door.  The
little man was left in the centre of the room, his deep eyes
smouldering upon the backs of the retreating members, his thumb and
finger raised to the turncock of the metre.

"Do you know this part?" asked young Curly as they emerged into the
street.  "It 's really jolly; one of the darkest bits in London--it
is really.  If you care, I can take you through an awfully dangerous
place where the police never go."  He seemed so anxious for the
honour that Shelton was loath to disappoint him.  "I come here pretty
often," he went on, as they ascended a sort of alley rambling darkly
between a wall and row of houses.

"Why?" asked Shelton; "it does n't smell too nice."

The young man threw up his nose and sniffed, as if eager to add any
new scent that might be about to his knowledge of life.

"No, that's one of the reasons, you know," he said; "one must find
out.  The darkness is jolly, too; anything might happen here.  Last
week there was a murder; there 's always the chance of one."

Shelton stared; but the charge of morbidness would not lie against
this fresh-cheeked stripling.

"There's a splendid drain just here," his guide resumed; "the people
are dying like flies of typhoid in those three houses"; and under the
first light he turned his grave, cherubic face to indicate the
houses.  "If we were in the East End, I could show you other places
quite as good.  There's a coffee-stall keeper in one that knows all
the thieves in London; he 's a splendid type, but," he added, looking
a little anxiously at Shelton, "it might n't be safe for you.  With
me it's different; they 're beginning to know me.  I've nothing to
take, you see."

"I'm afraid it can't be to-night," said Shelton; "I must get back."

"Do you mind if I walk with you?  It's so jolly now the stars are
out."

"Delighted," said Shelton; "do you often go to that club?"

His companion raised his hat, and ran his fingers through his hair.

"They 're rather too high-class for me," he said.  "I like to go
where you can see people eat--school treats, or somewhere in the
country.  It does one good to see them eat.  They don't get enough,
you see, as a rule, to make bone; it's all used up for brain and
muscle.  There are some places in the winter where they give them
bread and cocoa; I like to go to those."

"I went once," said Shelton, "but I felt ashamed for putting my nose
in."

"Oh, they don't mind; most of them are half-dead with cold, you know.
You see splendid types; lots of dipsomaniacs .  .  .  .  It 's useful
to me," he went on as they passed a police-station, "to walk about at
night; one can take so much more notice.  I had a jolly night last
week in Hyde Park; a chance to study human nature there."

"And do you find it interesting?" asked Shelton.

His companion smiled.

"Awfully," he replied; "I saw a fellow pick three pockets."

" What did you do?"

"I had a jolly talk with him."

Shelton thought of the little deep-eyed man; who made a point of not
encouraging sin.

"He was one of the professionals from Notting Hill, you know; told me
his life.  Never had a chance, of course.  The most interesting part
was telling him I 'd seen him pick three pockets--like creeping into
a cave, when you can't tell what 's inside."

"Well?"

"He showed me what he 'd got--only fivepence halfpenny."

"And what became of your friend?" asked Shelton.

"Oh, went off; he had a splendidly low forehead."

They had reached Shelton's rooms.

"Will you come in," said the latter, "and have a drink?"

The youth smiled, blushed, and shook his head.

"No, thank you," he said; "I have to walk to Whitechapel.  I 'm
living on porridge now; splendid stuff for making bone.  I generally
live on porridge for a week at the end of every month.  It 's the
best diet if you're hard up"; once more blushing and smiling, he was
gone.

Shelton went upstairs and sat down on his bed.  He felt a little
miserable.  Sitting there, slowly pulling out the ends of his white
tie, disconsolate, he had a vision of Antonia with her gaze fixed
wonderingly on him.  And this wonder of hers came as a revelation--
just as that morning, when, looking from his window, he had seen a
passer-by stop suddenly and scratch his leg; and it had come upon him
in a flash that that man had thoughts and feelings of his own.  He
would never know what Antonia really felt and thought.  "Till I saw
her at the station, I did n't know how much I loved her or how little
I knew her"; and, sighing deeply, he hurried into bed.




CHAPTER XV

POLE TO POLE

The waiting in London for July to come was daily more unbearable to
Shelton, and if it had not been for Ferrand, who still came to
breakfast, he would have deserted the Metropolis.  On June first the
latter presented himself rather later than was his custom, and
announced that, through a friend, he had heard of a position as
interpreter to an hotel at Folkestone.

"If I had money to face the first necessities, he said, swiftly
turning over a collection of smeared papers with his yellow fingers,
as if searching for his own identity, "I 'd leave today.  This London
blackens my spirit."

"Are you certain to get this place," asked Shelton.

"I think so," the young foreigner replied; "I 've got some good
enough recommendations."

Shelton could not help a dubious glance at the papers in his hand.  A
hurt look passed on to Ferrand's curly lips beneath his nascent red
moustache.

"You mean that to have false papers is as bad as theft.  No, no; I
shall never be a thief--I 've had too many opportunities," said he,
with pride and bitterness.  "That's not in my character. I never do
harm to anyone.  This"--he touched the papers--"is not delicate, but
it does harm to no one.  If you have no money you must have papers;
they stand between you and starvation.  Society, has an excellent eye
for the helpless--it never treads on people unless they 're really
down."  He looked at Shelton.

"You 've made me what I am, amongst you," he seemed to say; "now put
up with me!"

"But there are always the workhouses," Shelton remarked at last.

"Workhouses!" returned Ferrand; "certainly there are--regular
palaces: I will tell you one thing: I've never been in places so
discouraging as your workhouses; they take one's very heart out."

"I always understood," said Shelton coldly; "that our system was
better than that of other countries."

Ferrand leaned over in his chair, an elbow on his knee, his favourite
attitude when particularly certain of his point.

"Well," he replied, "it 's always permissible to think well of your own
country.  But, frankly, I've come out of those places here with
little strength and no heart at all, and I can tell you why."  His
lips lost their bitterness, and he became an artist expressing the
result of his experience.  "You spend your money freely, you have
fine buildings, self-respecting officers, but you lack the spirit of
hospitality.  The reason is plain; you have a horror of the needy.
You invite us--and when we come you treat us justly enough, but as if
we were numbers, criminals, beneath contempt--as if we had inflicted
a personal injury on you; and when we get out again, we are naturally
degraded."

Shelton bit his lips.

"How much money will you want for your ticket, and to make a start?"
he asked.

The nervous gesture escaping Ferrand at this juncture betrayed how
far the most independent thinkers are dependent when they have no
money in their pockets.  He took the note that Shelton proffered him.

"A thousand thanks," said he; "I shall never forget what you have
done for me"; and Shelton could not help feeling that there was true
emotion behind his titter of farewell.

He stood at the window watching Ferrand start into the world again;
then looked back at his own comfortable room, with the number of
things that had accumulated somehow--the photographs of countless
friends, the old arm-chairs, the stock of coloured pipes.  Into him
restlessness had passed with the farewell clasp of the foreigner's
damp hand.  To wait about in London was unbearable.

He took his hat, and, heedless of direction, walked towards the
river.  It was a clear, bright day, with a bleak wind driving showers
before it.  During one of such Shelton found himself in Little Blank
Street.  "I wonder how that little Frenchman that I saw is getting
on!"  he thought.  On a fine day he would probably have passed by on
the other side; he now entered and tapped upon the wicket.

No. 3 Little Blank Street had abated nothing of its stone-flagged
dreariness; the same blowsy woman answered his inquiry.  Yes, Carolan
was always in; you could never catch him out--seemed afraid to go
into the street!  To her call the little Frenchman made his
appearance as punctually as if he had been the rabbit of a conjurer.
His face was as yellow as a guinea.

"Ah!  it's you, monsieur!"  he said.

"Yes," said Shelton; "and how are you?"

"It 's five days since I came out of hospital," muttered the little
Frenchman, tapping on his chest; "a crisis of this bad atmosphere.
I live here, shut up in a box; it does me harm, being from the South.
If there's anything I can do for you, monsieur, it will give me
pleasure."

"Nothing," replied Shelton, "I was just passing, and thought I should
like to hear how you were getting on."

"Come into the kitchen,--monsieur, there is nobody in there.  'Brr!
Il fait un froid etonnant'!"

"What sort of customers have you just now?"  asked Shelton, as they
passed into the kitchen.

"Always the same clientele," replied the little man; "not so
numerous, of course, it being summer."

"Could n't you find anything better than this to do?"

The barber's crow's-feet radiated irony.

"When I first came to London," said he, "I secured an engagement at
one of your public institutions.  I thought my fortune made.
Imagine, monsieur, in that sacred place I was obliged to shave at the
rate of ten a penny!  Here, it's true, they don't pay me half the
time; but when I'm  paid, I 'm paid.  In this, climate, and being
'poitrinaire', one doesn't make experiments.  I shall finish my days
here.  Have you seen that young man who interested you?  There 's
another!  He has spirit, as I had once--'il fait de la philosophie',
as I do--and you will see, monsieur, it will finish him.  In this
world what you want is to have no spirit.  Spirit ruins you."

Shelton looked sideways at the little man with his sardonic, yellow,
half-dead face, and the incongruity of the word "spirit" in his mouth
struck him so sharply that he smiled a smile with more pity in it
than any burst of tears.

"Shall we 'sit down?" he said, offering a cigarette.

"Merci, monsieur, it is always a pleasure to smoke a good cigarette.
You remember, that old actor who gave you a Jeremiad?  Well, he's
dead.  I was the only one at his bedside; 'un vrai drole'.  He was
another who had spirit.  And you will see, monsieur, that young man
in whom you take an interest, he'll die in a hospital, or in some.
hole or other, or even on the highroad; having closed his eyes once
too often some cold night; and all because he has something in him
which will not accept things as they are, believing always that they
should be better.  'Il n'y a riens de plus tragique'!"

"According to you, then," said Shelton--and the conversation seemed
to him of a sudden to have taken too personal a turn--"rebellion of
any sort is fatal."

"Ah!"  replied the little man, with the eagerness of one whose ideal
it is to sit under the awning of a cafe‚ and talk life upside down,
"you pose me a great problem there!  If one makes rebellion; it is
always probable that one will do no good to any one and harm one's
self.  The law of the majority arranges that.  But I would draw your
attention to this"--and he paused; as if it were a real discovery to
blow smoke through his nose--"if you rebel it is in all likelihood
because you are forced by your nature to rebel; this is one of the
most certain things in life.  In any case, it is necessary to avoid
falling between two stools--which is unpardonable," he ended with
complacence.

Shelton thought he had never seen a man who looked more completely as
if he had fallen between two stools, and he had inspiration enough to
feel that the little barber's intellectual rebellion and the action
logically required by it had no more than a bowing acquaintanceship.

"By nature," went on the little man, "I am an optimist; it is in
consequence of this that I now make pessimism.  I have always had
ideals; seeing myself cut off from them for ever, I must complain; to
complain, monsieur, is very sweet!"

Shelton wondered what these ideals had been, but had no answer ready;
so he nodded, and again held out his cigarettes, for, like a true
Southerner, the little man had thrown the first away, half smoked.

"The greatest pleasure in life," continued the Frenchman, with a bow,
"is to talk a little to a being who is capable of understanding you.
At present we have no one here, now that that old actor's dead.  Ah!
there was a man who was rebellion incarnate!  He made rebellion as
other men make money, 'c'etait son metier'; when he was no longer
capable of active revolution, he made it getting drunk.  At the last
this was his only way of protesting against Society.  An interesting
personality, 'je le regrette beaucoup'.  But, as you see, he died in
great distress, without a soul to wave him farewell, because as you
can well understand, monsieur, I don't count myself.  He died drunk.
'C'etait un homme'!"

Shelton had continued staring kindly at the little man; the barber
added hastily:

"It's difficult to make an end like that one has moments of
weakness."

"Yes," assented Shelton, "one has indeed."

The little barber looked at him with cynical discretion.

"Oh!" he said, "it 's to the destitute that such things are
important.  When one has money, all these matters---"

He shrugged his shoulders.  A smile had lodged amongst his crow's-
feet; he waved his hand as though to end the subject.

A sense of having been exposed came over Shelton.

"You think, then," said he, "that discontent is peculiar to the
destitute?"

"Monsieur," replied the little barber, "a plutocrat knows too well
that if he mixes in that 'galere' there 's not a dog in the streets
more lost than he."

Shelton rose.

"The rain is over.  I hope you 'll soon be better; perhaps you 'll
accept this in memory of that old actor," and he slipped a sovereign
into the little Frenchman's hand.

The latter bowed.

"Whenever you are passing, monsieur," he said eagerly, "I shall be
charmed to see you."

And Shelton walked away.  "'Not a dog in the streets more lost,'"
thought he; "now what did he mean by that?"

Something of that "lost dog" feeling had gripped his spirit.  Another
month of waiting would kill all the savour of anticipation, might
even kill his love.  In the excitement of his senses and his nerves,
caused by this strain of waiting, everything seemed too vivid; all
was beyond life size; like Art--whose truths; too strong for daily
use, are thus, unpopular with healthy people.  As will the, bones in
a worn face, the spirit underlying things had reached the surface;
the meanness and intolerable measure of hard facts, were too
apparent.  Some craving for help, some instinct, drove him into
Kensington, for he found himself before his, mother's house.
Providence seemed bent on flinging him from pole to pole.

Mrs. Shelton was in town; and, though it was the first of June, sat
warming her feet before a fire; her face, with its pleasant colour,
was crow's-footed like the little barber's, but from optimism, not
rebellion.  She, smiled when she saw her son; and the wrinkles round
her eyes twinkled, with vitality.

"Well, my dear boy," she said, "it's lovely to see you.  And how is
that sweet girl?"

"Very well, thank you," replied Shelton.

"She must be such a dear!"

"Mother," stammered Shelton, "I must give it up."

"Give it up?  My dear Dick, give what up?  You look quite worried.
Come and sit down, and have a cosy chat.  Cheer up!"  And Mrs.
Shelton; with her head askew, gazed at her son quite irrepressibly.

Mother," said Shelton, who, confronted by her optimism, had never,
since his time of trial began, felt so wretchedly dejected, "I can't
go on waiting about like this."

"My dear boy, what is the matter?";

"Everything is wrong!

"Wrong?" cried Mrs. Shelton.  "Come, tell me all, about it!"

But Shelton, shook his head.

"You surely have not had a quarrel----"

Mrs. Shelton stopped; the question seemed so vulgar--one might have
asked it of a groom.

"No," said Shelton, and his answer sounded like a groan.

"You know, my dear old Dick," murmured his mother, "it seems a little
mad."

"I know it seems mad."

"Come!" said Mrs. Shelton, taking his hand between her own; "you
never used to be like this."

"No," said Shelton, with a laugh; "I never used to be like this."

Mrs. Shelton snuggled in her Chuda shawl.

"Oh," she said, with cheery sympathy, "I know exactly how you feel!"

Shelton, holding his head, stared at the fire, which played and
bubbled like his mother's face.

"But you're so fond of each other," she began again.  "Such a sweet
girl!"

"You don't understand," muttered Shelton gloomily; "it 's not her--
it's nothing--it's--myself!"

Mrs. Shelton again seized his hand, and this time pressed it to her
soft, warm cheek, that had lost the elasticity of youth.

"Oh!" she cried again; "I understand.  I know exactly what you 're
feeling."  But Shelton saw from the fixed beam in her eyes that she
had not an inkling.  To do him justice, he was not so foolish as to
try to give her one.  Mrs. Shelton sighed.  "It would be so lovely if
you could wake up
to-morrow and think differently.  If I were you, my dear, I would
have a good long walk, and then a Turkish bath; and then I would just
write to her, and tell her all about it, and you'll see how
beautifully it'll all come straight"; and in the enthusiasm of advice
Mrs. Shelton rose, and, with a faint stretch of her tiny figure,
still so young, clasped her hands together.  "Now do, that 's a dear
old Dick!  You 'll just see how lovely it'll be!"  Shelton smiled; he
had not the heart to chase away this vision.  "And give her my
warmest love, and tell her I 'm longing for the wedding.  Come, now,
my dear boy, promise me that's what you 'll do."

And Shelton said: "I'll think about it."

Mrs. Shelton had taken up her stand with one foot on the fender, in
spite of her sciatica.

"Cheer up!"  she cried; her eyes beamed as if intoxicated by her
sympathy.

Wonderful woman!  The uncomplicated optimism that carried her through
good and ill had not descended to her son.

>From pole to pole he had been thrown that day, from the French
barber, whose intellect accepted nothing without carping, and whose
little fingers worked all day, to save himself from dying out, to his
own mother, whose intellect accepted anything presented with
sufficient glow, but who, until she died, would never stir a finger.
When Shelton reached his rooms, he wrote to Antonia:

I can't wait about in London any longer; I am going down to Bideford
to start a walking tour.  I shall work my way to Oxford, and stay
there till I may come to Holm Oaks.  I shall send you my address; do
write as usual.

He collected all the photographs he had of her--amateur groups, taken
by Mrs. Dennant--and packed them in the pocket of his shooting-
jacket.  There was one where she was standing just below her little
brother, who was perched upon a wall.  In her half-closed eyes, round
throat, and softly tilted chin, there was something cool and
watchful, protecting the ragamuffin up above her head.  This he kept
apart to be looked at daily, as a man says his prayers.






PART II

THE COUNTRY




CHAPTER XVI

THE INDIAN CIVILIAN

One morning then, a week later, Shelton found himself at the walls of
Princetown Prison.

He had seen this lugubrious stone cage before.  But the magic of his
morning walk across the moor, the sight of the pagan tors, the songs
of the last cuckoo, had unprepared him for that dreary building.  He
left the street, and, entering the fosse, began a circuit, scanning
the walls with morbid fascination.

This, then, was the system by which men enforced the will of the
majority, and it was suddenly borne in on him that all the ideas and
maxims which his Christian countrymen believed themselves to be
fulfilling daily were stultified in every cellule of the social
honeycomb.  Such teachings as "He that is without sin amongst you"
had been pronounced unpractical by peers and judges, bishops,
statesmen, merchants, husbands--in fact, by every truly Christian
person in the country.

"Yes," thought Shelton, as if he had found out something new, "the
more Christian the nation, the less it has to do with the Christian
spirit."

Society was a charitable organisation, giving nothing for nothing,
little for sixpence; and it was only fear that forced it to give at
all!

He took a seat on a wall, and began to watch a warder who was slowly
paring a last year's apple.  The expression of his face, the way he
stood with his solid legs apart, his head poked forward and his lower
jaw thrust out, all made him a perfect pillar of Society.  He was
undisturbed by Shelton's scrutiny, watching the rind coil down below
the apple; until in a springing spiral it fell on the path and
collapsed like a toy snake.  He took a bite; his teeth were jagged;
and his mouth immense.  It was obvious that he considered himself a
most superior man.  Shelton frowned, got down slowly, from the wall,
and proceeded on his way.

A little further down the hill he stopped again to watch a group of
convicts in a field.  They seemed to be dancing in a slow and sad
cotillon, while behind the hedge on every side were warders armed
with guns.  Just such a sight, substituting spears could have been
seen in Roman times.

While he thus stood looking, a man, walking, rapidly, stopped beside
him, and asked how many miles it was to Exeter.  His round visage;
and long, brown eyes, sliding about beneath their, brows, his cropped
hair and short neck, seemed familiar.

"Your name is Crocker, is n't it?"

"Why! it's the Bird!"  exclaimed the traveller; putting out his
hand.  "Have n't seen you since we both went down."

Shelton returned his handgrip.  Crocker had lived above his head at
college, and often kept him, sleepless half the night by playing on
the hautboy.

"Where have you sprung from?"

"India.  Got my long leave.  I say, are you going this way?  Let's go
together."

They went, and very fast; faster and faster every minute.

"Where are you going at this pace?" asked Shelton.

"London."

"Oh!  only as far as London?"

"I 've set myself to do it in a week."

"Are you in training?"

"No."

"You 'll kill yourself."

Crocker answered with a chuckle.

Shelton noted with alarm the expression of his eye; there was a sort
of stubborn aspiration in it.  "Still an idealist!"  he thought;
"poor fellow!"  "Well," he inquired, "what sort of a time have you
had in India?"

"Oh," said the Indian civilian absently, "I've, had the plague."

"Good God!"

Crocker smiled, and added:

"Caught it on famine duty."

"I see," said Shelton; "plague and famine!  I suppose you fellows
really think you 're doing good out there?"

His companion looked at him surprised, then answered modestly:

"We get very good screws."

"That 's the great thing," responded Shelton.

After a moment's silence, Crocker, looking straight before him,
asked:

"Don't you think we are doing good?"

"I 'm not an authority; but, as a matter of fact, I don't."

Crocker seemed disconcerted.

"Why?" he bluntly asked.

Shelton was not anxious to explain his views, and he did not reply.

His friend repeated:

"Why don't you think we're doing good in India?"

"Well," said Shelton gruffly, "how can progress be imposed on
nations from outside?"

The Indian civilian, glancing at Shelton in an affectionate and
doubtful way, replied:

"You have n't changed a bit, old chap."

"No, no," said Shelton; "you 're not going to get out of it that way.
Give me a single example of a nation, or an individual, for that
matter, who 's ever done any good without having worked up to it from
within."

Crocker, grunting, muttered, "Evils."

"That 's it," said Shelton; "we take peoples entirely different from
our own, and stop their natural development by substituting a
civilisation grown for our own use.  Suppose, looking at a tropical
fern in a hothouse, you were to say: 'This heat 's unhealthy for me;
therefore it must be bad for the fern, I 'll take it up and plant it
outside in the fresh air.'"

"Do you know that means giving up India?" said the Indian civilian
shrewdly.

"I don't say that; but to talk about doing good to India is--h'm!"

Crocker knitted his brows, trying to see the point of view his friend
was showing him.

"Come, now!  Should we go on administering India if it were dead
loss?  No.  Well, to talk about administering the country for the
purpose of pocketing money is cynical, and there 's generally some
truth in cynicism; but to talk about the administration of a country
by which we profit, as if it were a great and good thing, is cant.
I hit you in the wind for the benefit of myself--all right: law of
nature; but to say it does you good at the same time is beyond me."

"No, no," returned Crocker, grave and anxious; "you can't persuade me
that we 're not doing good."

"Wait a bit.  It's all a question of horizons; you look at it from
too close.  Put the horizon further back.  You hit India in the wind,
and say it's virtuous.  Well, now let's see what happens.  Either the
wind never comes back, and India gasps to an untimely death, or the
wind does come back, and in the pant of reaction your blow--that's to
say your labour--is lost, morally lost labour that you might have
spent where it would n't have been lost."

"Are n't you an Imperialist?" asked Crocker, genuinely concerned.

"I may be, but I keep my mouth shut about the benefits we 're
conferring upon other people."

"Then you can't believe in abstract right, or justice?"

"What on earth have our ideas of justice or right got to do with
India?"

"If I thought as you do," sighed the unhappy Crocker, "I should be
all adrift."

"Quite so.  We always think our standards best for the whole world.
It's a capital belief for us.  Read the speeches of our public men.
Does n't it strike you as amazing how sure they are of being in the
right?  It's so charming to benefit yourself and others at the same
time, though, when you come to think of it, one man's meat is usually
another's poison.  Look at nature.  But in England we never look at
nature--there's no necessity.  Our national point of view has filled
our pockets, that's all that matters."

"I say, old chap, that's awfully bitter," said Crocker, with a sort
of wondering sadness.

"It 's enough to make any one bitter the way we Pharisees wax fat,
and at the same time give ourselves the moral airs of a balloon.
I must stick a pin in sometimes, just to hear the gas escape."
Shelton was surprised at his own heat, and for some strange reason
thought of Antonia--surely, she was not a Pharisee.

His companion strode along, and Shelton felt sorry for the signs of
trouble on his face.

"To fill your pockets," said Crocker, "is n't the main thing.  One
has just got to do things without thinking of why we do them."

"Do you ever see the other side to any question?" asked Shelton.
"I suppose not.  You always begin to act before you stop thinking,
don't you?"

Crocker grinned.

"He's a Pharisee, too," thought Shelton, "without a Pharisee's pride.
Queer thing that!"

After walking some distance, as if thinking deeply, Crocker chuckled
out:

"You 're not consistent; you ought to be in favour of giving up
India."

Shelton smiled uneasily.

"Why should n't we fill our pockets?  I only object to the humbug
that we talk."

The Indian civilian put his hand shyly through his arm.

"If I thought like you," he said, "I could n't stay another day in
India."

And to this Shelton made no reply.

The wind had now begun to drop, and something of the morning's magic
was stealing again upon the moor.  They were nearing the outskirt
fields of cultivation.  It was past five when, dropping from the
level of the tors, they came into the sunny vale of Monkland.

"They say," said Crocker, reading from his guide-book--"they say this
place occupies a position of unique isolation."

The two travellers, in tranquil solitude, took their seats under an
old lime-tree on the village green.  The smoke of their pipes, the
sleepy air, the warmth from the baked ground, the constant hum, made
Shelton drowsy.

"Do you remember," his companion asked, "those 'jaws' you used to
have with Busgate and old Halidome in my rooms on Sunday evenings?
How is old Halidome?"

"Married," replied Shelton.

Crocker sighed. "And are you?" he asked.

"Not yet," said Shelton grimly; "I 'm--engaged."

Crocker took hold of his arm above the elbow, and, squeezing it, he
grunted.  Shelton had not received congratulations that pleased him
more; there was the spice of envy in them.

"I should like to get married while I 'm home," said the civilian
after a long pause.  His legs were stretched apart, throwing shadows
on the green, his hands deep thrust into his pockets, his head a
little to one side.  An absent-minded smile played round his mouth.

The sun had sunk behind a tor, but the warmth kept rising from the
ground, and the sweet-briar on a cottage bathed them with its spicy
perfume.  From the converging lanes figures passed now and then,
lounged by, staring at the strangers, gossiping amongst themselves,
and vanished into the cottages that headed the incline.  A clock
struck seven, and round the shady lime-tree a chafer or some heavy
insect commenced its booming rushes.  All was marvellously sane and
slumbrous.  The soft air, the drawling voices, the shapes and
murmurs, the rising smell of wood-smoke from fresh-kindled fires--
were full of the spirit of security and of home.  The outside world
was far indeed.  Typical of some island nation was this nest of
refuge--where men grew quietly tall, fattened, and without fuss
dropped off their perches; where contentment flourished, as
sunflowers flourished in the sun.

Crocker's cap slipped off; he was nodding, and Shelton looked at him.
>From a manor house in some such village he had issued; to one of a
thousand such homes he would find his way at last, untouched by the
struggles with famines or with plagues, uninfected in his fibre, his
prejudices, and his principles, unchanged by contact with strange
peoples, new conditions, odd feelings, or queer points of view!

The chafer buzzed against his shoulder, gathered flight again, and
boomed away.  Crocker roused himself, and, turning his amiable face,
jogged Shelton's arm.

"What are you thinking about, Bird?" he asked.




CHAPTER XVII

A PARSON

Shelton continued to travel with his college friend, and on Wednesday
night, four days after joining company, they reached the village of
Dowdenhame.  All day long the road had lain through pastureland, with
thick green hedges and heavily feathered elms.  Once or twice they
had broken the monotony by a stretch along the towing-path of a
canal, which, choked with water-lily plants and shining weeds,
brooded sluggishly beside the fields.  Nature, in one of her ironic
moods, had cast a grey and iron-hard cloak over all the country's
bland luxuriance.  From dawn till darkness fell there had been no
movement in the steely distant sky; a cold wind ruffed in the hedge-
tops, and sent shivers through the branches of the elms.  The cattle,
dappled, pied, or bay, or white, continued grazing with an air of
grumbling at their birthright.  In a meadow close to the canal
Shelton saw five magpies, and about five o'clock the rain began, a
steady, coldly-sneering rain, which Crocker, looking at the sky,
declared was going to be over in a minute.  But it was not over in a
minute; they were soon drenched.  Shelton was tired, and it annoyed
him very much that his companion, who was also tired, should grow
more cheerful.  His thoughts kept harping upon Ferrand: "This must be
something like what he described to me, tramping on and on when
you're dead-beat, until you can cadge up supper and a bed."  And
sulkily he kept on ploughing through the mud with glances at the
exasperating Crocker, who had skinned one heel and was limping
horribly.  It suddenly came home to him that life for three quarters
of the world meant physical exhaustion every day, without a
possibility of alternative, and that as soon as, for some cause
beyond control, they failed thus to exhaust themselves, they were
reduced to beg or starve.  "And then we, who don't know the meaning
of the word exhaustion, call them 'idle scamps,'" he said aloud.

It was past nine and dark when they reached Dowdenhame.  The street
yielded no accommodation, and while debating where to go they passed
the church, with a square tower, and next to it a house which was
certainly the parsonage.

"Suppose," said Crocker, leaning on his arms upon the gate, "we ask
him where to go"; and, without waiting for Shelton's answer, he rang
the bell.

The door was opened by the parson, a bloodless and clean-shaven man,
whose hollow cheeks and bony hands suggested a perpetual struggle.
Ascetically benevolent were his grey eyes; a pale and ghostly smile
played on the curves of his thin lips.

"What can I do for you?" he asked.  "Inn? yes, there's the Blue
Chequers, but I 'm afraid you 'll find it shut.  They 're early
people, I 'm glad to say"; and his eyes seemed to muse over the
proper fold for these damp sheep.  "Are you Oxford men, by any
chance?" he asked, as if that might throw some light upon the matter.
"Of Mary's?  Really!  I'm of Paul's myself.  Ladyman--Billington
Ladyman; you might remember my youngest brother.  I could give you a
room here if you could manage without sheets.  My housekeeper has two
days' holiday; she's foolishly taken the keys."

Shelton accepted gladly, feeling that the intonation in the parson's
voice was necessary unto his calling, and that he did not want to
patronise.

"You 're hungry, I expect, after your tramp.  I'm very much afraid
there 's--er--nothing in the house but bread; I could boil you water;
hot lemonade is better than nothing."

Conducting them into the kitchen, he made a fire, and put a kettle on
to boil; then, after leaving them to shed their soaking clothes,
returned with ancient, greenish coats, some carpet slippers, and some
blankets.  Wrapped in these, and carrying their glasses, the
travellers followed to the study, where, by doubtful lamp-light, he
seemed, from books upon the table, to have been working at his
sermon.

"We 're giving you a lot of trouble," said Shelton, "it's really very
good of you."

"Not at all," the parson answered; "I'm only grieved the house is
empty."

It was a truly dismal contrast to the fatness of the land they had
been passing through, and the parson's voice issuing from bloodless
lips, although complacent, was pathetic.  It was peculiar, that voice
of his, seeming to indicate an intimate acquaintanceship with what
was fat and fine, to convey contempt for the vulgar need of money,
while all the time his eyes--those watery, ascetic eyes--as plain as
speech they said, "Oh, to know what it must be like to have a pound
or two to spare just once a year, or so!"

Everything in the room had been bought for cheapness; no luxuries
were there, and necessaries not enough.  It was bleak and bare; the
ceiling cracked, the wall-paper discoloured, and those books--prim,
shining books, fat-backed, with arms stamped on them--glared in the
surrounding barrenness.

"My predecessor," said the parson, "played rather havoc with the
house.  The poor fellow had a dreadful struggle, I was told.  You
can, unfortunately, expect nothing else these days, when livings have
come down so terribly in value!  He was a married man--large family!"

Crocker, who had drunk his steaming lemonade, was smiling and already
nodding in his chair; with his black garment buttoned closely round
his throat, his long legs rolled up in a blanket, and stretched
towards the feeble flame of the newly-lighted fire, he had a rather
patchy air.  Shelton, on the other hand, had lost his feeling of
fatigue; the strangeness of the place was stimulating his brain; he
kept stealing glances at the scantiness around; the room, the parson,
the furniture, the very fire, all gave him the feeling caused by
seeing legs that have outgrown their trousers.  But there was
something underlying that leanness of the landscape, something
superior and academic, which defied all sympathy.  It was pure
nervousness which made him say:

"Ah! why do they have such families?"

A faint red mounted to the parson's cheeks; its appearance there was
startling, and Crocker chuckled, as a sleepy man will chuckle who
feels bound to show that he is not asleep.

"It's very unfortunate," murmured the parson, "certainly, in many
cases."

Shelton would now have changed the subject, but at this moment the
unhappy Crocker snored.  Being a man of action, he had gone to sleep.

"It seems to me," said Shelton hurriedly, as he saw the parson's
eyebrows rising at the sound, "almost what you might call wrong."

"Dear me, but how can it be wrong?"

Shelton now felt that he must justify his saying somehow.

"I don't know," he said, "only one hears of such a lot of cases--
clergymen's families; I've two uncles of my own, who---"

A new expression gathered on the parson's face; his mouth had
tightened, and his chin receded slightly.  "Why, he 's like a mule!"
thought Shelton.  His eyes, too, had grown harder, greyer, and more
parroty.  Shelton no longer liked his face.

"Perhaps you and I," the parson said, "would not understand each
other on such matters."

And Shelton felt ashamed.

"I should like to ask you a question in turn, however," the parson
said, as if desirous of meeting Shelton on his low ground: "How do
you justify marriage if it is not to follow the laws of nature?"

"I can only tell you what I personally feel."

"My dear sir, you forget that a woman's chief delight is in her
motherhood."

"I should have thought it a pleasure likely to pall with too much
repetition.  Motherhood is motherhood, whether of one or of a dozen."

"I 'm afraid," replied the parson, with impatience, though still
keeping on his guest's low ground, "your theories are not calculated
to populate the world."

"Have you ever lived in London?" Shelton asked.  "It always makes me
feel a doubt whether we have any right to have children at all."

"Surely," said the parson with wonderful restraint, and the joints of
his fingers cracked with the grip he had upon his chair, "you are
leaving out duty towards the country; national growth is paramount!"

"There are two ways of looking at that.  It depends on what you want
your country to become."

"I did n't know," said the parson--fanaticism now had crept into his
smile--"there could be any doubt on such a subject."

The more Shelton felt that commands were being given him, the more
controversial he naturally became--apart from the merits of this
subject, to which he had hardly ever given thought.

"I dare say I'm wrong," he said, fastening his eyes on the blanket in
which his legs were wrapped; "but it seems to me at least an open
question whether it's better for the country to be so well populated
as to be quite incapable of supporting itself."

"Surely," said the parson, whose face regained its pallor, "you're
not a Little Englander?"

On Shelton this phrase had a mysterious effect.  Resisting an impulse
to discover what he really was, he answered hastily:

" Of course I'm not!"

The parson followed up his triumph, and, shifting the ground of the
discussion from Shelton's to his own, he gravely said:

"Surely you must see that your theory is founded in immorality.  It
is, if I may say so, extravagant, even wicked."

But Shelton, suffering from irritation at his own dishonesty, replied
with heat:

"Why not say at once, sir, 'hysterical, unhealthy'?  Any opinion
which goes contrary to that of the majority is always called so, I
believe."

"Well," returned the parson, whose eyes seemed trying to bind Shelton
to his will, "I must say your ideas do seem to me both extravagant
and unhealthy.  The propagation of children is enjoined of marriage."

Shelton bowed above his blanket, but the parson did not smile.

"We live in very dangerous times," he said, "and it grieves me when a
man of your standing panders to these notions."

"Those," said Shelton, "whom the shoe does n't pinch make this rule
of morality, and thrust it on to such as the shoe does pinch."

"The rule was never made," said the parson; "it was given us."

"Oh!" said Shelton, "I beg your pardon."  He was in danger of
forgetting the delicate position he was in.  "He wants to ram his
notions down my throat," he thought; and it seemed to him that the
parson's face had grown more like a mule's, his accent more superior,
his eyes more dictatorial: To be right in this argument seemed now of
great importance, whereas, in truth, it was of no importance
whatsoever.  That which, however, was important was the fact that in
nothing could they ever have agreed.

But Crocker had suddenly ceased to snore; his head had fallen so that
a peculiar whistling arose instead.  Both Shelton and the parson
looked at him, and the sight sobered them.

"Your friend seems very tired," said the parson.

Shelton forgot all his annoyance, for his host seemed suddenly
pathetic, with those baggy garments, hollow cheeks, and the slightly
reddened nose that comes from not imbibing quite enough.  A kind
fellow, after all!

The kind fellow rose, and, putting his hands behind his back, placed
himself before the blackening fire.  Whole centuries of authority
stood behind him.  It was an accident that the mantelpiece was
chipped and rusty, the fire-irons bent and worn, his linen frayed
about the cuffs.

"I don't wish to dictate," said he, "but where it seems to me that
you are wholly wrong in that your ideas foster in women those lax
views of the family life that are so prevalent in Society nowadays."

Thoughts of Antonia with her candid eyes, the touch of freckling on
her pink-white skin, the fair hair gathered back, sprang up in
Shelton, and that word--"lax" seemed ridiculous.  And the women he
was wont to see dragging about the streets of London with two or
three small children, Women bent beneath the weight of babies that
they could not leave, women going to work with babies still unborn,
anaemic-looking women, impecunious mothers in his own class, with
twelve or fourteen children, all the victims of the sanctity of
marriage, and again the word "lax" seemed to be ridiculous.

"We are not put into the world to exercise our wits,"--muttered
Shelton.

"Our wanton wills," the parson said severely.

"That, sir, may have been all right for the last generation, the
country is more crowded now.  I can't see why we should n't decide it
for ourselves."

"Such a view of morality," said the parson, looking down at Crocker
with a ghostly smile, "to me is unintelligible."

Cracker's whistling grew in tone and in variety.

"What I hate," said Shelton, "is the way we men decide what women are
to bear, and then call them immoral, decadent, or what you will, if
they don't fall in with our views."

"Mr. Shelton," said the parson, "I think we may safely leave it in
the hands of God."

Shelton was silent.

"The questions of morality," said the parson promptly, "have always
lain through God in the hands of men, not women.  We are the
reasonable sex."

Shelton stubbornly replied

"We 're certainly the greater humbugs, if that 's the same."

"This is too bad," exclaimed the parson with some heat.

"I 'm sorry, sir; but how can you expect women nowadays to have the
same views as our grandmothers?  We men, by our commercial
enterprise, have brought about a different state of things; yet, for
the sake of our own comfort, we try to keep women where they were.
It's always those men who are most keen about their comfort"--and in
his heat the sarcasm of using the word "comfort" in that room was
lost on him--"who are so ready to accuse women of deserting the old
morality."

The parson quivered with impatient irony.

"Old morality! new morality!" he said.  "These are strange words."

"Forgive me," explained Shelton; "we 're talking of working morality,
I imagine.  There's not a man in a million fit to talk of true
morality."

The eyes of his host contracted.

"I think," he said--and his voice sounded as if he had pinched it in
the endeavour to impress his listener--"that any well-educated man
who honestly tries to serve his God has the right humbly--I say
humbly--to claim morality."

Shelton was on the point of saying something bitter, but checked
himself.  "Here am I," thought he, "trying to get the last word, like
an old woman."

At this moment there was heard a piteous mewing; the parson went
towards the door.

"Excuse me a moment; I 'm afraid that's one of my cats out in the
wet."  He returned a minute later with a wet cat in his arms.  "They
will get out," he said to Shelton, with a smile on his thin face,
suffused by stooping.  And absently he stroked the dripping cat,
while a drop of wet ran off his nose.  "Poor pussy, poor pussy!"  The
sound of that "Poor pussy!" like nothing human in its cracked
superiority, the softness of that smile, like the smile of gentleness
itself, haunted Shelton till he fell asleep.




CHAPTER XVIII

ACADEMIC

The last sunlight was playing on the roofs when the travellers
entered that High Street grave and holy to all Oxford men.  The
spirit hovering above the spires was as different from its
concretions in their caps and gowns as ever the spirit of Christ was
from church dogmas.

"Shall we go into Grinnings'?" asked Shelton, as they passed the
club.

But each looked at his clothes, for two elegant young men in flannel
suits were coming out.

"You go," said Crocker, with a smirk.

Shelton shook his head.  Never before had he felt such love for this
old city.  It was gone now from out his life, but everything about it
seemed so good and fine; even its exclusive air was not ignoble.
Clothed in the calm of history, the golden web of glorious tradition,
radiant with the alchemy of memories, it bewitched him like the
perfume of a woman's dress.  At the entrance of a college they
glanced in at the cool grey patch of stone beyond, and the scarlet of
a window flowerbox--secluded, mysteriously calm--a narrow vision of
the sacred past.  Pale and trencher-capped, a youth with pimply face
and random nose, grabbing at his cloven gown, was gazing at the
noticeboard.  The college porter--large man, fresh-faced, and small-
mouthed--stood at his lodge door in a frank and deferential attitude.
An image of routine, he looked like one engaged to give a decorous
air to multitudes of pecadilloes.  His blue eyes rested on the
travellers.  "I don't know you, sirs, but if you want to speak I
shall be glad to hear the observations you may have to make," they
seemed to say.

Against the wall reposed a bicycle with tennis-racquet buckled to its
handle.  A bull-dog bitch, working her snout from side to side, was
snuffling horribly; the great iron-studded door to which her chain
was fastened stayed immovable.  Through this narrow mouth, human
metal had been poured for centuries--poured, moulded, given back.

"Come along," said Shelton.

They now entered the Bishop's Head, and had their dinner in the room
where Shelton had given his Derby dinner to four-and-twenty well-bred
youths; here was the picture of the racehorse that the wineglass,
thrown by one of them, had missed when it hit the waiter; and there,
serving Crocker with anchovy sauce, was the very waiter.  When they
had finished, Shelton felt the old desire to rise with difficulty
from the table; the old longing to patrol the streets with arm hooked
in some other arm; the old eagerness to dare and do something heroic
--and unlawful; the old sense that he was of the forest set, in the
forest college, of the forest country in the finest world.  The
streets, all grave and mellow in the sunset, seemed to applaud this
after-dinner stroll; the entrance quad of his old college--spaciously
majestic, monastically modern, for years the heart of his universe,
the focus of what had gone before it in his life, casting the shadow
of its grey walls over all that had come after-brought him a sense of
rest from conflict, and trust in his own important safety.  The
garden-gate, whose lofty spikes he had so often crowned with empty
water-bottles, failed to rouse him.  Nor when they passed the
staircase where he had flung a leg of lamb at some indelicate
disturbing tutor, did he feel remorse.  High on that staircase were
the rooms in which he had crammed for his degree, upon the system by
which the scholar simmers on the fire of cramming, boils over at the
moment of examination, and is extinct for ever after.  His coach's
face recurred to him, a man with thrusting eyes, who reeled off
knowledge all the week, and disappeared to town on Sundays.

They passed their tutor's staircase.

"I wonder if little Turl would remember us?" said Crocker; "I should
like to see him.  Shall we go and look him up?"

"Little Turl?" said Shelton dreamily.

Mounting, they knocked upon a solid door.

"Come in," said the voice of Sleep itself.

A little man with a pink face and large red ears was sitting in a fat
pink chair, as if he had been grown there.

"What do you want?" he asked of them, blinking.

"Don't you know me, sir?"

"God bless me! Crocker, isn't it?  I didn't recognise you with a
beard."

Crocker, who had not been shaved since starting on his travels,
chuckled feebly.

"You remember Shelton, sir?" he said.

"Shelton?  Oh yes!  How do you do, Shelton?  Sit down; take a cigar";
and, crossing his fat little legs, the little gentleman looked them
up and down with drowsy interest, as who should say, "Now, after, all
you know, why come and wake me up like this?"

Shelton and Crocker took two other chairs; they too seemed thinking,
"Yes, why did we come and wake him up like this?  "And Shelton, who
could not tell the reason why, took refuge in the smoke of his cigar.
The panelled walls were hung with prints of celebrated Greek remains;
the soft, thick carpet on the floor was grateful to his tired feet;
the backs of many books gleamed richly in the light of the oil lamps;
the culture and tobacco smoke stole on his senses; he but vaguely
comprehended Crocker's amiable talk, vaguely the answers of his
little host, whose face, blinking behind the bowl of his huge
meerschaum pipe, had such a queer resemblance to a moon.  The door
was opened, and a tall creature, whose eyes were large and brown,
whose face was rosy and ironical, entered with a manly stride.

"Oh!" he said, looking round him with his chin a little in the air,
"am I intruding, Turl?"

The little host, blinking more than ever, murmured,

"Not at all, Berryman--take a pew!"

The visitor called Berryman sat down, and gazed up at the wall with
his fine eyes.

Shelton had a faint remembrance of this don, and bowed; but the new-
comer sat smiling, and did not notice the salute.

"Trimmer and Washer are coming round," he said, and as he spoke the
door opened to admit these gentlemen.  Of the same height, but
different appearance, their manner was faintly jocular, faintly
supercilious, as if they tolerated everything.  The one whose name
was Trimmer had patches of red on his large cheek-bones, and on his
cheeks a bluish tint.  His lips were rather full, so that he had a
likeness to a spider.  Washer, who was thin and pale, wore an
intellectual smile.

The little fat host moved the hand that held the meerschaum.

"Crocker, Shelton," he said.

An awkward silence followed.  Shelton tried to rouse the cultured
portion of his wits; but the sense that nothing would be treated
seriously paralysed his faculties; he stayed silent, staring at the
glowing tip of his cigar.  It seemed to him unfair to have intruded
on these gentlemen without its having been made quite clear to them
beforehand who and what he was; he rose to take his leave, but Washer
had begun to speak.

"Madame Bovary!" he said quizzically, reading the title of the book
on the little fat man's bookrest; and, holding it closer to his
boiled-looking eyes, he repeated, as though it were a joke, "Madame
Bovary!"

"Do you mean to say, Turl, that you can stand that stuff?" said
Berryman.

As might have been expected, this celebrated novel's name had
galvanised him into life; he strolled over to the bookcase, took down
a book, opened it, and began to read, wandering in a desultory way
about the room.

"Ha!  Berryman," said a conciliatory voice behind--it came from
Trimmer, who had set his back against the hearth, and grasped with
either hand a fistful of his gown--"the book's a classic!"

"Classic!" exclaimed Berryman, transfixing Shelton with his eyes;
"the fellow ought to have been horsewhipped for writing such
putridity!"

A feeling of hostility instantly sprang up in Shelton; he looked at
his little host, who, however, merely blinked.

"Berryman only means," explains Washer, a certain malice in his
smile, "that the author is n't one of his particular pets."

"For God's sake, you know, don't get Berryman on his horse!"  growled
the little fat man suddenly.

Berryman returned his volume to the shelf and took another down.
There was something almost godlike in his sarcastic absent-
mindedness.

"Imagine a man writing that stuff," he said, "if he'd ever been at
Eton!  What do we want to know about that sort of thing?  A writer
should be a sportsman and a gentleman"; and again he looked down over
his chin at Shelton, as though expecting him to controvert the
sentiment.

"Don't you--" began the latter.

But Berryman's attention had wandered to the wall.

"I really don't care," said he, "to know what a woman feels when she
is going to the dogs; it does n't interest me."

The voice of Trimmer made things pleasant:

"Question of moral standards, that, and nothing more."

He had stretched his legs like compasses,--and the way he grasped his
gown-wings seemed to turn him to a pair of scales.  His lowering
smile embraced the room, deprecating strong expressions.  "After
all," he seemed to say, "we are men of the world; we know there 's
not very much in anything.  This is the modern spirit; why not give
it a look in?"

"Do I understand you to say, Berryman, that you don't enjoy a spicy
book?" asked Washer with his smile; and at this question the little
fat man sniggered, blinking tempestuously, as if to say, "Nothing
pleasanter, don't you know, before a hot fire in cold weather."

Berryman paid no attention to the impertinent inquiry, continuing to
dip into his volume and walk up and down.

"I've nothing to say," he remarked, stopping before Shelton, and
looking down, as if at last aware of him, "to those who talk of being
justified through Art.  I call a spade a spade."

Shelton did not answer, because he could not tell whether Berryman
was addressing him or society at large.  And Berryman went on:

"Do we want to know about the feelings of a middle-class woman with a
taste for vice?   Tell me the point of it.  No man who was in the
habit of taking baths would choose such a subject."

"You come to the question of-ah-subjects," the voice of Trimmer
genially buzzed he had gathered his garments tight across his back-
"my dear fellow, Art, properly applied, justifies all subjects."

"For Art," squeaked Berryman, putting back his second volume and
taking down a third, "you have Homer, Cervantes, Shakespeare, Ossian;
for garbage, a number of unwashed gentlemen."

There was a laugh; Shelton glanced round at all in turn.  With the
exception of Crocker, who was half asleep and smiling idiotically,
they wore, one and all, a look as if by no chance could they consider
any subject fit to move their hearts; as if, one and all, they were
so profoundly anchored on the sea of life that waves could only seem
impertinent.  It may have been some glimmer in this glance of
Shelton's that brought Trimmer once more to the rescue with his
compromising air.

"The French," said he, "have quite a different standard from
ourselves in literature, just as they have a different standard in
regard to honour.  All this is purely artificial."

What he, meant, however, Shelton found it difficult to tell.

"Honour," said Washer, "'l'honneur, die Ehre' duelling, unfaithful
wives---"

He was clearly going to add to this, but it was lost; for the little
fat man, taking the meerschaum with trembling fingers, and holding it
within two inches of his chin, murmured:

"You fellows, Berryman's awf'ly strong on honour."

He blinked twice, and put the meerschaum back between his lips.

Without returning the third volume to its shelf, Berryman took down a
fourth; with chest expanded, he appeared about to use the books as
dumb-bells.

"Quite so," said Trimmer; "the change from duelling to law courts is
profoundly---"

Whether he were going to say "significant" or "insignificant," in
Shelton's estimate he did not know himself.  Fortunately Berryman
broke in:

"Law courts or not, when a man runs away with a wife of mine, I shall
punch his head!"

"Come, come!"  said Turner, spasmodically grasping his two wings.

Shelton had a gleam of inspiration.  "If your wife deceived you," he
thought, looking at Trimmer's eyes, "you 'd keep it quiet, and hold
it over her."

Washer passed his hand over his pale chaps: his smile had never
wavered; he looked like one for ever lost in the making of an
epigram.

The punching theorist stretched his body, holding the books level
with his shoulders, as though to stone his hearers with his point of
view.  His face grew paler, his fine eyes finer, his lips ironical.
Almost painful was this combination of the "strong" man and the
student who was bound to go to pieces if you hit him a smart blow.

"As for forgiving faithless wives," he said, "and all that sort of
thing, I don't believe in sentiment."

The words were high-pitched and sarcastic.  Shelton looked hastily
around.  All their faces were complacent.  He grew red, and suddenly
remarked, in a soft; clear voice:

"I see!"

He was conscious that he had never before made an impression of this
sort, and that he never would again.  The cold hostility flashing out
all round was most enlightening; it instantly gave way to the polite,
satirical indulgence peculiar to highly-cultivated men.  Crocker rose
nervously; he seemed scared, and was obviously relieved when Shelton,
following his example, grasped the little fat man's hand, who said
good-night in a voice shaken by tobacco.

"Who are your unshaven friends?" he heard as the door was closed
behind them.




CHAPTER XIX

AN INCIDENT

"Eleven o'clock," said Crocker, as they went out of college.  "I
don't feel sleepy; shall we stroll along the 'High' a bit?"

Shelton assented; he was too busy thinking of his encounter with the
dons to heed the soreness of his feet.  This, too, was the last day
of his travels, for he had not altered his intention of waiting at
Oxford till July.

"We call this place the heart of knowledge," he said, passing a great
building that presided, white and silent, over darkness; "it seems to
me as little that, as Society is the heart of true gentility."

Crocker's answer was a grunt; he was looking at the stars,
calculating possibly in how long he could walk to heaven.

"No," proceeded Shelton; "we've too much common-sense up here to
strain our minds.  We know when it's time to stop.  We pile up news
of Papias and all the verbs in 'ui' but as for news of life or of
oneself!  Real seekers after knowledge are a different sort.  They
fight in the dark--no quarter given.  We don't grow that sort up
here."

"How jolly the limes smell!"  said Crocker.

He had halted opposite a garden, and taken hold of Shelton by a
button of his coat.  His eyes, like a dog's, stared wistfully.  It
seemed as though he wished to speak, but feared to give offence.

"They tell you," pursued Shelton, "that we learn to be gentlemen up
here.  We learn that better through one incident that stirs our
hearts than we learn it here in all the time we're up."

"Hum!"  muttered Crocker, twisting at the button; "those fellows who
seemed the best sorts up here have turned out the best sorts
afterwards."

"I hope not," said Shelton gloomily; "I was a snob when I was up
here.  I believed all I was told, anything that made things pleasant;
my "set" were nothing but---"

Crocker smiled in the darkness; he had been too "cranky" to belong to
Shelton's "set."

"You never were much like your 'set,' old chap," he said.

Shelton turned away, sniffing the perfume of the limes.  Images were
thronging through his mind.  The faces of his old friends strangely
mixed with those of people he had lately met--the girl in the train,
Ferrand, the lady with the short, round, powdered face, the little
barber; others, too, and floating, mysterious,--connected with them
all, Antonia's face.  The scent of the lime-trees drifted at him with
its magic sweetness.  From the street behind, the footsteps of the
passers-by sounded muffled, yet exact, and on the breeze was borne
the strain: "For he's a jolly good fellow!"

"For he's a jolly good fellow!  For he's a jolly good fe-ellow!  And
so say all of us!"

"Ah!" he said, "they were good chaps."

"I used to think," said Crocker dreamily, "that some of them had too
much side."

And Shelton laughed.

"The thing sickens me," said he, "the whole snobbish, selfish
business.  The place sickens me, lined with cotton-wool-made so
beastly comfortable."

Crocker shook his head.

"It's a splendid old place," he said, his eyes fastening at last on
Shelton's boots.  "You know, old chap," he stammered, "I think you--
you ought to take care!"

"Take care?  What of?"

Crocker pressed his arm convulsively.

"Don't be waxy, old boy," he said; "I mean that you seem somehow--to
be--to be losing yourself."

"Losing myself!  Finding myself, you mean!"

Crocker did not answer; his face was disappointed.  Of what exactly
was he thinking?  In Shelton's heart there was a bitter pleasure in
knowing that his friend was uncomfortable on his account, a sort of
contempt, a sort of aching.  Crocker broke the silence.

"I think I shall do a bit more walking to-night," he said; "I feel
very fit.  Don't you really mean to come any further with me, Bird?"

And there was anxiety in his voice, as though Shelton were in danger
of missing something good.  The latter's feet had instantly begun to
ache and burn.

"No!"?  he said; "you know what I'm staying here for."

Crocker nodded.

"She lives near here.  Well, then, I'll say good-bye.  I should like
to do another ten miles to-night."

"My dear fellow, you're tired and lame."

Crocker chuckled.

"No," he said; "I want to get on.  See you in London.  Good-bye!"
and, gripping Shelton's hand, he turned and limped away.

Shelton called after him: "Don't be an idiot: You 'll only knock
yourself up."

But the sole answer was the pale moon of Crocker's face screwed round
towards him in the darkness, and the waving of his stick.

Shelton strolled slowly on; leaning over the bridge, he watched the
oily gleam of lamps, on the dark water underneath the trees.  He felt
relieved, yet sorry.  His thoughts were random, curious, half
mutinous, half sweet.  That afternoon five years ago, when he had
walked back from the river with Antonia across the Christchurch
meadows, was vivid to his mind; the scent of that afternoon had never
died away from him-the aroma of his love.  Soon she would be his
wife--his wife!  The faces of the dons sprang up before him.  They
had wives, perhaps.  Fat, lean, satirical, and compromising--what was
it that through diversity they had in common?  Cultured intolerance!
.  .  .  Honour!  .  .  .  A queer subject to discuss.  Honour!  The
honour that made a fuss, and claimed its rights!  And Shelton smiled.
"As if man's honour suffered when he's injured!"  And slowly he
walked along the echoing, empty street to his room at the Bishop's
Head.  Next morning he received the following wire:

     Thirty miles left eighteen hours heel bad but going
     strong                         CROCKER

He passed a fortnight at the Bishop's Head, waiting for the end of
his probation, and the end seemed long in coming.  To be so near
Antonia, and as far as if he lived upon another planet, was worse
than ever.  Each day he took a sculling skiff, and pulled down to
near Holm Oaks, on the chance of her being on the river; but the
house was two miles off, and the chance but slender.  She never came.
After spending the afternoons like this he would return, pulling hard
against the stream, with a queer feeling of relief, dine heartily,
and fall adreaming over his cigar.  Each morning he awoke in an
excited mood, devoured his letter if he had one, and sat down to
write to her.  These letters of his were the most amazing portion of
that fortnight.  They were remarkable for failing to express any
single one of his real thoughts, but they were full of sentiments
which were not what he was truly feeling; and when he set himself to
analyse, he had such moments of delirium that he was scared, and
shocked, and quite unable to write anything.  He made the discovery
that no two human beings ever tell each other what they really feel,
except, perhaps, in situations with which he could not connect
Antonia's ice-blue eyes and brilliant smile.  All the world was too
engaged in planning decency.

Absorbed by longings, he but vaguely realised the turmoil of
Commemoration, which had gathered its hundreds for their annual cure
of salmon mayonnaise and cheap champagne.  In preparation for his
visit to Holm Oaks he shaved his beard and had some clothes sent down
from London.  With them was forwarded a letter from Ferrand, which
ran as follows:


IMPERIAL PEACOCK HOTEL,
FOLKESTONE,

June 20.

MY DEAR SIR,

Forgive me for not having written to you before, but I have been so
bothered that I have felt no taste for writing; when I have the time,
I have some curious stories to tell you.  Once again I have
encountered that demon of misfortune which dogs my footsteps.  Being
occupied all day and nearly all night upon business which brings me a
heap of worries and next to no profit, I have no chance to look after
my things.  Thieves have entered my room, stolen everything, and left
me an empty box.  I am once again almost without clothes, and know
not where to turn to make that figure necessary for the fulfilment of
my duties.  You see, I am not lucky.  Since coming to your country,
the sole piece of fortune I have had was to tumble on a man like you.
Excuse me for not writing more at this moment.  Hoping that you are
in good health, and in affectionately pressing your hand,
          I am,
               Always your devoted
                         LOUIS FERRAND.


Upon reading this letter Shelton had once more a sense of being
exploited, of which he was ashamed; he sat down immediately and wrote
the following reply:

BISHOPS HEAD HOTEL,
OXFORD,

June 25.

MY DEAR FERRAND,

I am grieved to hear of your misfortunes.  I was much hoping that you
had made a better start.  I enclose you Post Office Orders for four
pounds.  Always glad to hear from you.

Yours sincerely,

RICHARD SHELTON.


He posted it with the satisfaction that a man feels who nobly shakes
off his responsibilities.

Three days before July he met with one of those disturbing incidents
which befall no persons who attend quietly to their, property and
reputation.

The night was unbearably hot, and he had wandered out with his cigar;
a woman came sidling up and spoke to him.  He perceived her to be one
of those made by men into mediums for their pleasure, to feel
sympathy with whom was sentimental.  Her face was flushed, her
whisper hoarse; she had no attractions but the curves of a tawdry
figure.  Shelton was repelled by her proprietary tone, by her blowzy
face, and by the scent of patchouli.  Her touch on his arm startled
him, sending a shiver through his marrow; he almost leaped aside, and
walked the faster.  But her breathing as she followed sounded
laboured; it suddenly seemed pitiful that a woman should be panting
after him like that.

"The least I can do," he thought, "is to speak to her."  He stopped,
and, with a mixture of hardness and compassion, said, "It 's
impossible."

In spite of her smile, he saw by her disappointed eyes that she
accepted the impossibility.

"I 'm sorry," he said.

She muttered something.  Shelton shook his head.

"I 'm sorry," he said once more.  "Good.-night."

The woman bit her lower lip.

"Good-night," she answered dully.

At the corner of the street he turned his head.  The woman was
hurrying uneasily; a policeman coming from behind had caught her by
the arm.

His heart began to beat.  "Heavens!"  he thought, "what shall I do
now?"  His first impulse was to walk away, and think no more about it
--to act, indeed, like any averagely decent man who did not care to
be concerned in such affairs.

He retraced his steps, however, and halted half a dozen paces from
their figures.

"Ask the gentleman!  He spoke to me," she was saying in her brassy
voice, through the emphasis of which Shelton could detect her fear.

"That's all right," returned the policeman, "we know all about that."

"You--police!"  cried the woman tearfully; "I 've got to get my
living, have n't I, the same as you?"

Shelton hesitated, then, catching the expression in her frightened
face, stepped forward.  The policeman turned, and at the sight of his
pale, heavy jowl, cut by the cheek-strap, and the bullying eyes, he
felt both hate and fear, as if brought face to face with all that he
despised and loathed, yet strangely dreaded.  The cold certainty of
law and order upholding the strong, treading underfoot the weak, the
smug front of meanness that only the purest spirits may attack,
seemed to be facing him.  And the odd thing was, this man was only
carrying out his duty.  Shelton moistened his lips.

"You're not going to charge her?"

"Aren't I?" returned the policeman.

"Look here; constable, you 're making a mistake."

The policeman took out his note-book.

"Oh, I 'm making a mistake?  I 'll take your name and address,
please; we have to report these things."

"By all means," said Shelton, angrily giving it.  "I spoke to her
first."

"Perhaps you'll come up to the court tomorrow morning, and repeat
that," replied the policeman, with incivility.

Shelton looked at him with all the force at his command.

"You had better be careful, constable," he said; but in the act of
uttering these words he thought how pitiable they sounded.

"We 're not to be trifled with," returned the policeman in a
threatening voice.

Shelton could think of nothing but to repeat:

"You had better be careful, constable."

"You're a gentleman," replied the policeman.  "I'm only a policeman.
You've got the riches, I've got the power."

Grasping the woman's arm, he began to move along with her.

Shelton turned, and walked away.

He went to Grinnings' Club, and flung himself down upon a sofa.  His
feeling was not one of pity for the woman, nor of peculiar anger with
the policeman, but rather of dissatisfaction with himself.

"What ought I to have done?" he thought, "the beggar was within his
rights."

He stared at the pictures on the wall, and a tide of disgust surged
up in him.

"One or other of us," he reflected, "we make these women what they
are.  And when we've made them, we can't do without them; we don't
want to; but we give them no proper homes, so that they're reduced to
prowl about the streets, and then we run them in.  Ha! that's good--
that's excellent!  We run them in!  And here we sit and carp.  But
what do we do?  Nothing!  Our system is the most highly moral known.
We get the benefit without soiling even the hem of our phylacteries--
the women are the only ones that suffer.  And why should n't they--
inferior things?"

He lit a cigarette, and ordered the waiter to bring a drink.

"I'll go to the Court," he thought; but suddenly it occurred to him
that the case would get into the local papers.   The press would
never miss so nice a little bit of scandal--"Gentleman v. Policeman!"
And he had a vision of Antonia's father, a neighbouring and
conscientious magistrate, solemnly reading this.  Someone, at all
events, was bound to see his name and make a point of mentioning it
too good to be missed!  And suddenly he saw with horror that to help
the woman he would have to assert again that he had spoken to her
first.  "I must go to the Court!" he kept thinking, as if to assure
himself that he was not a coward.

He lay awake half the night worrying over this dilemma.

"But I did n't speak to her first," he told himself; "I shall only be
telling a lie, and they 'll make me swear it, too!"

He tried to persuade himself that this was against his principles,
but at the bottom of his heart he knew that he would not object to
telling such a lie if only guaranteed immune from consequences; it
appeared to him, indeed, but obvious humanity.

"But why should I suffer?" he thought; "I've done nothing.  It's
neither reasonable nor just."

He hated the unhappy woman who was causing him these horrors of
uncertainty.  Whenever he decided one way or other, the policeman's
face, with its tyrannical and muddy eyes, rose before him like a
nightmare, and forced him to an opposite conviction.  He fell asleep
at last with the full determination to go and see what happened.

He woke with a sense of odd disturbance.  "I can do no good by
going," he thought, remembering, aid lying very still; "they 're
certain to believe the policeman; I shall only blacken myself for
nothing;" and the combat began again within him, but with far less
fury.  It was not what other people thought, not even the risk of
perjury that mattered (all this he made quite clear)--it was Antonia.
It was not fair to her to put himself in such a false position; in
fact, not decent.

He breakfasted.  In the room were some Americans, and the face of one
young girl reminded him a little of Antonia.  Fainter and fainter
grew the incident; it seemed to have its right proportions.

Two hours later, looking at the clock, he found that it was lunch-
time.  He had not gone, had not committed perjury; but he wrote to a
daily paper, pointing out the danger run by the community from the
power which a belief in their infallibility places in the hands of
the police--how, since they are the sworn abettors of right and
justice, their word is almost necessarily taken to be gospel; how one
and all they hang together, from mingled interest and esprit de
corps.  Was it not, he said, reasonable to suppose that amongst
thousands of human beings invested with such opportunities there
would be found bullies who would take advantage of them, and rise to
distinction in the service upon the helplessness of the unfortunate
and the cowardice of people with anything to lose?  Those who had in
their hands the sacred duties of selecting a practically
irresponsible body of men were bound, for the sake of freedom and
humanity, to exercise those duties with the utmost care and
thoroughness .  .  .  .

However true, none of this helped him to think any better of himself
at heart, and he was haunted by the feeling that a stout and honest
bit of perjury was worth more than a letter to a daily paper.

He never saw his letter printed, containing, as it did, the germs of
an unpalatable truth.

In the afternoon he hired a horse, and galloped on Port Meadow.  The
strain of his indecision over, he felt like a man recovering from an
illness, and he carefully abstained from looking at the local papers.
There was that within him, however, which resented the worsting of
his chivalry.




CHAPTER XX

HOLM OAKS

Holm Oaks stood back but little from the road--an old manor-house,
not set upon display, but dwelling close to its barns, stables, and
walled gardens, like a good mother; long, flat-roofed, red, it had
Queen Anne windows, on whose white-framed diamond panes the sunbeams
glinted.

In front of it a fringe of elms, of all trees the tree of most
established principle, bordered the stretch of turf between the
gravel drive and road; and these elms were the homes of rooks of all
birds the most conventional.  A huge aspen--impressionable creature--
shivered and shook beyond, apologising for appearance among such
imperturbable surroundings.  It was frequented by a cuckoo, who came
once a year to hoot at the rules of life, but seldom made long stay;
for boys threw stones at it, exasperated by the absence of its
morals.

The village which clustered in the dip had not yet lost its dread of
motor-cars.  About this group of flat-faced cottages with gabled
roofs the scent of hay, manure, and roses clung continually; just now
the odour of the limes troubled its servile sturdiness.  Beyond the
dip, again, a square-towered church kept within grey walls the record
of the village flock, births, deaths, and marriages--even the births
of bastards, even the deaths of suicides--and seemed to stretch a
hand invisible above the heads of common folk to grasp the forgers of
the manor-house.  Decent and discreet, the two roofs caught the eye
to the exclusion of all meaner dwellings, seeming to have joined in a
conspiracy to keep them out of sight.

The July sun had burned his face all the way from Oxford, yet pale
was Shelton when he walked up the drive and rang the bell.

"Mrs. Dennant at home, Dobson?" he asked of the grave butler, who,
old servant that he was, still wore coloured trousers (for it was not
yet twelve o'clock, and he regarded coloured trousers up to noon as a
sacred distinction between the footmen and himself).

"Mrs. Dennant," replied this personage, raising his round and
hairless face, while on his mouth appeared that apologetic pout which
comes of living with good families--"Mrs. Dennant has gone into the
village, sir; but Miss Antonia is in the morning-room."

Shelton crossed the panelled, low-roofed hall, through whose far side
the lawn was visible, a vision of serenity.  He mounted six wide,
shallow steps, and stopped.  From behind a closed door there came the
sound of scales, and he stood, a prey to his emotions, the notes
mingling in his ears with the beating of his heart.  He softly turned
the handle, a fixed smile on his lips.

Antonia was at the piano; her head was bobbing to the movements of
her fingers, and pressing down the pedals were her slim monotonously
moving feet.  She had been playing tennis, for a racquet and her tam-
o'-shanter were flung down, and she was dressed in a blue skirt and
creamy blouse, fitting collarless about her throat.  Her face was
flushed, and wore a little frown; and as her fingers raced along the
keys, her neck swayed, and the silk clung and shivered on her arms.

Shelton's eyes fastened on the silent, counting lips, on the fair
hair about her forehead, the darker eyebrows slanting down towards
the nose, the undimpled cheeks with the faint finger-marks beneath
the ice-blue eyes, the softly-pouting and undimpled chin, the whole
remote, sweet, suntouched, glacial face.

She turned her head, and, springing up, cried:

"Dick!  What fun!"  She gave him both her hands, but her smiling face
said very plainly, "Oh; don't let us be sentimental!"

"Are n't you glad to see me?" muttered Shelton.

"Glad to see you!  You are funny, Dick!--as if you did n't know!
Why, you 've shaved your beard!  Mother and Sybil have gone into the
village to see old Mrs. Hopkins.  Shall we go out?  Thea and the boys
are playing tennis.  It's so jolly that you 've come!  "She caught up
the tam-o'-shanter, and pinned it to her hair.  Almost as tall as
Shelton, she looked taller, with arms raised and loose sleeves
quivering like wings to the movements of her fingers.  "We might have
a game before lunch; you can have my other racquet."

"I've got no things," said Shelton blankly.

Her calm glance ran over him.

"You can have some of old Bernard's; he's got any amount.  I'll wait
for you."  She swung her racquet, looked at Shelton, cried, "Be
quick!"  and vanished.

Shelton ran up-stairs, and dressed in the undecided way of men
assuming other people's clothes.  She was in the hall when he
descended, humming a tune and prodding at her shoe; her smile showed
all her pearly upper teeth.  He caught hold of her sleeve and
whispered:

"Antonia!"

The colour rushed into her cheeks; she looked back across her
shoulder.

"Come along, old Dick!"  she cried; and, flinging open the glass
door, ran into the garden.

Shelton followed.

The tennis-ground was divided by tall netting from a paddock.  A holm
oak tree shaded one corner, and its thick dark foliage gave an
unexpected depth to the green smoothness of the scene.  As Shelton
and Antonia carne up, Bernard Dennant stopped and cordially grasped
Shelton's hand.  From the far side of the net Thea, in a shortish
skirt, tossed back her straight fair hair, and, warding off the sun,
came strolling up to them. The umpire, a small boy of twelve, was
lying on his stomach, squealing and tickling a collie.  Shelton bent
and pulled his hair.

"Hallo, Toddles! you young ruffian!"

One and all they stood round Shelton, and there was a frank and
pitiless inquiry in their eyes, in the angle of their noses something
chaffing and distrustful, as though about him were some subtle
poignant scent exciting curiosity and disapproval.

When the setts were over, and the girls resting in the double hammock
underneath the holm oak, Shelton went with Bernard to the paddock to
hunt for the lost balls.

"I say, old chap," said his old school-fellow, smiling dryly, "you're
in for a wigging from the Mater."

"A wigging?" murmured Shelton.

"I don't know much about it, but from something she let drop it seems
you've been saying some queer things in your letters to Antonia"; and
again he looked at Shelton with his dry smile.

"Queer things?" said the latter angrily. "What d' you mean?"

"Oh, don't ask me.  The Mater thinks she's in a bad way--unsettled,
or what d' you call at.  You've been telling her that things are not
what they seem.  That's bad, you know"; and still smiling he shook
his head.

Shelton dropped his eyes.

"Well, they are n't!" he said.

"Oh, that's all right!  But don't bring your philosophy down here,
old chap."

"Philosophy!" said Shelton, puzzled.

"Leave us a sacred prejudice or two."

"Sacred!  Nothing's sacred, except--"  But Shelton did not finish his
remark. "I don't understand," he said.

"Ideals, that sort of thing!  You've been diving down below the line
of 'practical politics,' that's about the size of it, my boy"; and,
stooping suddenly, he picked up the last ball. "There is the Mater!"
Shelton saw Mrs. Dennant coming down the lawn with her second
daughter, Sybil.

By the time they reached the holm oak the three girls had departed
towards the house, walking arm in arm, and Mrs. Dennant was standing
there alone, in a grey dress, talking to an undergardener.  Her
hands, cased in tan gauntlets, held a basket which warded off the
bearded gardener from the severe but ample lines of her
useful-looking skirt.  The collie, erect upon his haunches, looked at
their two faces, pricking his ears in his endeavour to appreciate how
one of these two bipeds differed from the other.

"Thank you; that 'll do, Bunyan.  Ah, Dick!  Charmin' to see you
here, at last!"

In his intercourse with Mrs. Dennant, Shelton never failed to mark
the typical nature of her personality.  It always seemed to him that
he had met so many other ladies like her.  He felt that her
undoubtable quality had a non-individual flavour, as if standing for
her class.  She thought that standing for herself was not the thing;
yet she was full of character.  Tall, with nose a trifle beaked,
long, sloping chin, and an assured, benevolent mouth, showing,
perhaps, too many teeth--though thin, she was not unsubstantial.  Her
accent in speaking showed her heritage; it was a kind of drawl which
disregarded vulgar merits such as tone; leaned on some syllables, and
despised the final 'g'--the peculiar accent, in fact, of aristocracy,
adding its deliberate joys to life.

Shelton knew that she had many interests; she was never really idle,
from the time (7 A.M.) when her maid brought her a little china pot
of tea with a single biscuit and her pet dog, Tops, till eleven
o'clock at night, when she lighted a wax candle in a silver
candlestick, and with this in one hand, and in the other a new novel,
or, better still, one of those charming volumes written by great
people about the still greater people they have met, she said good-
night to her children and her guests.  No!  What with photography,
the presidency of a local league, visiting the rich, superintending
all the poor, gardening, reading, keeping all her ideas so tidy that
no foreign notions might stray in, she was never idle.  The
information she collected from these sources was both vast and
varied, but she never let it flavour her opinions, which lacked
sauce, and were drawn from some sort of dish into which, with all her
class, she dipped her fingers.

He liked her.  No one could help liking her.  She was kind, and of
such good quality, with a suggestion about her of thin, excellent,
and useful china; and she was scented, too--not with verbena,
violets, or those essences which women love, but with nothing, as if
she had taken stand against all meretricity.  In her intercourse with
persons not "quite the thing" (she excepted the vicar from this
category, though his father had dealt in haberdashery), her
refinement, gently, unobtrusively, and with great practical good
sense, seemed continually to murmur, "I am, and you--well, are you,
don't you know?" But there was no self-consciousness about this
attitude, for she was really not a common woman.  She simply could
not help it; all her people had done this.  Their nurses breathed
above them in their cradles something that, inhaled into their
systems, ever afterwards prevented them from taking good, clear
breaths.  And her manner!  Ah! her manner--it concealed the inner
woman so as to leave doubt of her existence!

Shelton listened to the kindly briskness with which she dwelt upon
the under-gardener.

"Poor Bunyan! he lost his wife six months ago, and was quite cheerful
just at first, but now he 's really too distressin'.  I 've done all
I can to rouse him; it's so melancholy to see him mopin'.  And, my
dear Dick, the way he mangles the new rose-trees!  I'm afraid he's
goin' mad; I shall have to send him away; poor fellow!"

It was clear that she sympathised with Bunyan, or, rather, believed
him entitled to a modicum of wholesome grief, the loss of wives being
a canonised and legal, sorrow.  But excesses!  O dear, no!

"I 've told him I shall raise his wages," she sighed.  "He used to be
such a splendid gardener!  That reminds me, my dear Dick; I want to
have a talk with you.  Shall we go in to lunch?"

Consulting the memorandum-book in which she had been noting the case
of Mrs. Hopkins, she slightly preceded Shelton to the house.

It was somewhat late that afternoon when Shelton had his "wigging";
nor did it seem to him, hypnotised by the momentary absence of
Antonia, such a very serious affair.

"Now, Dick," the Honourable Mrs. Dennant said, in her decisive drawl,
"I don't think it 's right to put ideas into Antonia's head."

"Ideas!"  murmured Shelton in confusion.

"We all know," continued Mrs. Dennant, "that things are not always
what they ought to be."

Shelton looked at her; she was seated at her writing-table,
addressing in her large, free writing a dinner invitation to a
bishop.  There was not the faintest trace of awkwardness about her,
yet Shelton could not help a certain sense of shock.  If she--she--
did not think things were what they ought to be--in a bad way things
must be indeed!

"Things!"  he muttered.

Mrs. Dennant looked at him firmly but kindly with the eyes that would
remind him of a hare's.

"She showed me some of your letters, you know.  Well, it 's not a bit
of use denyin', my dear Dick, that you've been thinkin' too much
lately."

Shelton perceived that he had done her an injustice; she handled
"things" as she handled under-gardeners--put them away when they
showed signs of running to extremes.

"I can't help that, I 'm afraid," he answered.

"My dear boy!  you'll never get on that way.  Now, I want you to
promise me you won't talk to Antonia about those sort of things."

Shelton raised his eyebrows.

"Oh, you know what I mean!"

He saw that to press Mrs. Dennant to say what she meant by "things"
would really hurt her sense of form; it would be cruel to force her
thus below the surface!

He therefore said, "Quite so!"

To his extreme surprise, flushing the peculiar arid pathetic flush of
women past their prime, she drawled out:

"About the poor--and criminals--and marriages--there was that
wedding, don't you know?"

Shelton bowed his head.  Motherhood had been too strong for her; in
her maternal flutter she had committed the solecism of touching in so
many words on "things."

"Does n't she really see the fun," he thought, "in one man dining out
of gold and another dining in the gutter; or in two married people
living on together in perfect discord 'pour encourages les autres',
or in worshipping Jesus Christ and claiming all her rights at the
same time; or in despising foreigners because they are foreigners; or
in war; or in anything that is funny?" But he did her a certain
amount of justice by recognising that this was natural, since her
whole life had been passed in trying not to see the fun in all these
things.

But Antonia stood smiling in the doorway.  Brilliant and gay she
looked, yet resentful, as if she knew they had been talking of her.
She sat down by Shelton's side, and began asking him about the
youthful foreigner whom he had spoken of; and her eyes made him doubt
whether she, too, saw the fun that lay in one human being patronising
others.

"But I suppose he's really good," she said, "I mean, all those things
he told you about were only---"

"Good!"  he answered, fidgeting; "I don't really know what the word
means."

Her eyes clouded.  "Dick, how can you?" they seemed to say.

Shelton stroked her sleeve.

"Tell us about Mr. Crocker," she said, taking no heed of his caress.

"The lunatic!"  he said.

"Lunatic!  Why, in your letters he was splendid."

"So he is," said Shelton, half ashamed; "he's not a bit mad, really
--that is, I only wish I were half as mad."

"Who's that mad?" queried Mrs. Dennant from behind the urn--"Tom
Crocker?  Ah, yes!  I knew his mother; she was a Springer."

"Did he do it in the week?" said Thea, appearing in the window with a
kitten.

"I don't know," Shelton was obliged to answer.

Thea shook back her hair.

"I call it awfully slack of you not to have found out," she said.

Antonia frowned.

"You were very sweet to that young foreigner, Dick," she murmured
with a smile at Shelton.  "I wish that we could see him."

But Shelton shook his head.

"It seems to me," he muttered, "that I did about as little for him as
I could."

Again her face grew thoughtful, as though his words had chilled her.

"I don't see what more you could have done," she answered.

A desire to get close to her, half fear, half ache, a sense of
futility and bafflement, an inner burning, made him feel as though a
flame were licking at his heart.




CHAPTER XXI

ENGLISH

Just as Shelton was starting to walk back to Oxford he met Mr.
Dennant coming from a ride.  Antonia's father was a spare man of
medium height, with yellowish face, grey moustache, ironical
eyebrows, and some tiny crow's-feet.  In his old, short grey coat,
with a little slit up the middle of the back, his drab cord breeches,
ancient mahogany leggings, and carefully blacked boats, he had a dry,
threadbare quality not without distinction.

"Ah, Shelton!"  he said, in his quietly festive voice; "glad to see
the pilgrim here, at last.  You're not off already?" and, laying his
hand on Shelton's arm, he proposed to walk a little way with him
across the fields.

This was the first time they had met since the engagement; and
Shelton began to nerve himself to express some sentiment, however
bald, about it.  He squared his shoulders, cleared his throat, and
looked askance at Mr. Dennant.  That gentleman was walking stiffly,
his cord breeches faintly squeaking.  He switched a yellow, jointed
cane against his leggings, and after each blow looked at his legs
satirically.  He himself was rather like that yellow cane-pale, and
slim, and jointed, with features arching just a little, like the
arching of its handle.

"They say it'll be a bad year for fruit," Shelton said at last.

"My dear fellow, you don't know your farmer, I 'm afraid.  We ought
to hang some farmers--do a world of good.  Dear souls!  I've got some
perfect strawberries."

"I suppose," said Shelton, glad to postpone the evil moment, "in a
climate like this a man must grumble."

"Quite so, quite so!  Look at us poor slaves of land-owners; if I
couldn't abuse the farmers I should be wretched.  Did you ever see
anything finer than this pasture?  And they want me to lower their
rents!"

And Mr. Dennant's glance satirically wavered, rested on Shelton, and
whisked back to the ground as though he had seen something that
alarmed him.  There was a pause.

"Now for it!"  thought the younger man.

Mr. Dennant kept his eyes fixed on his boots.

"If they'd said, now," he remarked jocosely, "that the frost had
nipped the partridges, there 'd have been some sense in it; but what
can you expect?  They've no consideration, dear souls!"

Shelton took a breath, and, with averted eyes, he hurriedly began:

"It's awfully hard, sir, to---"

Mr. Dennant switched his cane against his shin.

"Yes," he said, "it 's awfully hard to put up with, but what can a
fellow do?  One must have farmers.  Why, if it was n't for the
farmers, there 'd be still a hare or two about the place!"

Shelton laughed spasmodically; again he glanced askance at his future
father-in-law.  What did the waggling of his head mean, the deepening
of his crow's-feet, the odd contraction of the mouth?  And his eye
caught Mr. Dennant's eye; its expression was queer above the fine,
dry nose (one of the sort that reddens in a wind).

"I've never had much to do with farmers," he said at last.

"Have n't you?  Lucky fellow!  The most--yes, quite the most trying
portion of the human species--next to daughters."

"Well, sir, you can hardly expect me--" began Shelton.

"I don't--oh, I don't!  D 'you know, I really believe we're in for a
ducking."

A large black cloud had covered up the sun, and some drops were
spattering on Mr. Dennant's hard felt hat.

Shelton welcomed the shower; it appeared to him an intervention on
the part of Providence.  He would have to say something, but not now,
later.

"I 'll go on," he said; "I don't mind the rain.  But you'd better get
back, sir."

"Dear me!  I've a tenant in this cottage," said Mr. Dennant in his,
leisurely, dry manner "and a beggar he is to poach, too.  Least we
can do 's to ask for a little shelter; what do you think?" and
smiling sarcastically, as though deprecating his intention to keep
dry, he rapped on the door of a prosperous-looking cottage.

It was opened by a girl of Antonia's age and height.

"Ah, Phoebe!  Your father in?"

"No," replied the girl, fluttering; "father's out, Mr. Dennant."

"So sorry!  Will you let us bide a bit out of the rain?"

The sweet-looking Phoebe dusted them two chairs, and, curtseying,
left them in the parlour.

"What a pretty girl!" said Shelton.

"Yes, she's a pretty girl; half the young fellows are after her, but
she won't leave her father.  Oh, he 's a charming rascal is that
fellow!"

This remark suddenly brought home to Shelton the conviction that he
was further than ever from avoiding the necessity for speaking.  He
walked over to the window.  The rain.  was coming down with fury,
though a golden line far down the sky promised the shower's quick
end.  "For goodness' sake," he thought, "let me say something,
however idiotic, and get it over!"  But he did not turn; a kind of
paralysis had seized on him.

"Tremendous heavy rain!"  he said at last; "coming down in
waterspouts."

It would have been just as easy to say: "I believe your daughter to
be the sweetest thing on earth; I love her, and I 'm going to make
her happy!"  Just as easy, just about the same amount of breath
required; but he couldn't say it!  He watched the rain stream and
hiss against the leaves and churn the dust on the parched road with
its insistent torrent; and he noticed with precision all the details
of the process going on outside how the raindrops darted at the
leaves like spears, and how the leaves shook themselves free a
hundred times a minute, while little runnels of water, ice-clear,
rolled over their edges, soft and quick.  He noticed, too, the
mournful head of a sheltering cow that was chewing at the hedge.

Mr. Dennant had not replied to his remark about the rain.  So
disconcerting was this silence that Shelton turned.  His future
father-in-law, upon his wooden chair, was staring at his well-blacked
boots, bending forward above his parted knees, and prodding at the
carpet; a glimpse at his face disturbed Shelton's resolution.  It was
not forbidding, stern, discouraging--not in the least; it had merely
for the moment ceased to look satirical.  This was so startling that
Shelton lost his chance of speaking.  There seemed a heart to Mr.
Dennant's gravity; as though for once he were looking grave because
he felt so.  But glancing up at Shelton, his dry jocosity reappeared
at once.

"What a day for ducks!"  he said; and again there was unmistakable
alarm about the eye.  Was it possible that he, too, dreaded
something?

"I can't express---" began Shelton hurriedly.

"Yes, it's beastly to get wet," said Mr. Dennant, and he sang--

          "For we can wrestle and fight, my boys,
          And jump out anywhere."

"You 'll be with us for that dinner-party next week, eh?  Capital!
There's the Bishop of Blumenthal and old Sir Jack Buckwell; I must
get my wife to put you between them---"

          "For it's my delight of a starry night--"

"The Bishop's a great anti-divorce man, and old Buckwell 's been in
the court at least twice---"

          "In the season of the year!"

"Will you please to take some tea, gentlemen?" said the voice of
Phoebe in the doorway.

"No, thank you, Phoebe.  That girl ought to get married," went on Mr.
Dennant, as Phoebe blushingly withdrew.  A flush showed queerly on
his sallow cheeks.  "A shame to keep her tied like this to her
father's apron-strings--selfish fellow, that!"  He looked up sharply,
as if he had made a dangerous remark.

          The keeper he was watching us,
          For him we did n't care!

Shelton suddenly felt certain that Antonia's father was just as
anxious to say something expressive of his feelings, and as unable as
himself.  And this was comforting.

"You know, sir---" he began.

But Mr. Dennant's eyebrows rose, his crow's-feet twinkled; his
personality seemed to shrink together.

"By Jove!"  he said, "it's stopped!  Now's our chance!  Come along,
my dear fellow; delays are dangerous!"  and with his bantering
courtesy he held the door for Shelton to pass out.  "I think we'll
part here," he said--"I almost think so.  Good luck to you!"

He held out his dry, yellow hand.  Shelton seized it, wrung it hard,
and muttered the word:

"Grateful!"

Again Mr. Dennant's eyebrows quivered as if they had been tweaked; he
had been found out, and he disliked it.  The colour in his face had
died away; it was calm, wrinkled, dead-looking under the flattened,
narrow brim of his black hat; his grey moustache drooped thinly; the
crow's-feet hardened round his eyes; his nostrils were distended by
the queerest smile.

"Gratitude!"  he said; "almost a vice, is n't it?  Good-night!"

Shelton's face quivered; he raised his hat, and, turning as abruptly
as his senior, proceeded on his way.  He had been playing in a comedy
that could only have been played in England.  He could afford to
smile now at his past discomfort, having no longer the sense of duty
unfulfilled.  Everything had been said that was right and proper to
be said, in the way that we such things should say.  No violence had
been done; he could afford to smile--smile at himself, at Mr.
Dennant, at to-morrow; smile at the sweet aroma of the earth, the
shy, unwilling sweetness that only rain brings forth.




CHAPTER XXII

THE COUNTRY HOUSE

The luncheon hour at Holm Oaks, was, as in many well-bred country
houses--out of the shooting season, be it understood--the soulful
hour.  The ferment of the daily doings was then at its full height,
and the clamour of its conversation on the weather, and the dogs, the
horses, neighbours, cricket, golf, was mingled with a literary
murmur; for the Dennants were superior, and it was quite usual to
hear remarks like these "Have you read that charmin' thing of
Poser's?" or, "Yes, I've got the new edition of old Bablington:
delightfully bound--so light."  And it was in July that Holm Oaks, as
a gathering-place of the elect, was at its best.  For in July it had
become customary to welcome there many of those poor souls from
London who arrived exhausted by the season, and than whom no
seamstress in a two-pair back could better have earned a holiday.
The Dennants themselves never went to London for the season.  It was
their good pleasure not to.  A week or fortnight of it satisfied
them.  They had a radical weakness for fresh air, and Antonia, even
after her presentation two seasons back, had insisted on returning
home, stigmatising London balls as "stuffy things."

When Shelton arrived the stream had only just begun, but every day
brought fresh, or rather jaded, people to occupy the old, dark,
sweet-smelling bedrooms.  Individually, he liked his fellow-guests,
but he found himself observing them.  He knew that, if a man judged
people singly, almost all were better than himself; only when judged
in bulk were they worthy of the sweeping criticisms he felt inclined
to pass on them.  He knew this just as he knew that the conventions,
having been invented to prevent man following his natural desires,
were merely the disapproving sums of innumerable individual
approvals.

It was in the bulk; then, that he found himself observing.  But with
his amiability and dread of notoriety he remained to all appearance a
well-bred, docile creature, and he kept his judgments to himself.

In the matter of intellect he made a rough division of the guests--
those who accepted things without a murmur, those who accepted them
with carping jocularity; in the matter of morals he found they all
accepted things without the semblance of a kick.  To show sign of
private moral judgment was to have lost your soul, and, worse, to be
a bit of an outsider.  He gathered this by intuition rather than from
conversation; for conversation naturally tabooed such questions, and
was carried on in the loud and cheerful tones peculiar to people of
good breeding.  Shelton had never been able to acquire this tone, and
he could not help feeling that the inability made him more or less an
object of suspicion.  The atmosphere struck him as it never had
before, causing him to feel a doubt of his gentility.  Could a man
suffer from passion, heart-searchings, or misgivings, and remain a
gentleman?  It seemed improbable.  One of his fellow-guests, a man
called Edgbaston, small-eyed and semi-bald, with a dark moustache and
a distinguished air of meanness, disconcerted him one day by
remarking of an unknown person, "A half-bred lookin' chap; did n't
seem to know his mind."  Shelton was harassed by a horrid doubt.

Everything seemed divided into classes, carefully docketed and
valued.  For instance, a Briton was of more value than a man, and
wives than women.  Those things or phases of life with which people
had no personal acquaintance were regarded with a faint amusement and
a certain disapproval.  The principles of the upper class, in fact,
were strictly followed.

He was in that hypersenstive and nervous state favourable for
recording currents foreign to itself.  Things he had never before
noticed now had profound effect on him, such as the tone in which men
spoke of women--not precisely with hostility, nor exactly with
contempt best, perhaps, described as cultured jeering; never, of
course, when men spoke of their own wives, mothers, sisters, or
immediate friends, but merely when they spoke of any other women.  He
reflected upon this, and came to the conclusion that, among the upper
classes, each man's own property was holy, while other women were
created to supply him with gossip, jests, and spice.  Another thing
that struck him was the way in which the war then going on was made
into an affair of class.  In their view it was a baddish business,
because poor hack Blank and Peter Blank-Blank had lost their lives,
and poor Teddy Blank had now one arm instead of two.  Humanity in
general was omitted, but not the upper classes, nor, incidentally,
the country which belonged to them.  For there they were, all seated
in a row, with eyes fixed on the horizon of their lawns.

Late one evening, billiards and music being over and the ladies gone,
Shelton returned from changing to his smoking-suit, and dropped into
one of the great arm-chairs that even in summer made a semicircle
round the fendered hearth.  Fresh from his good-night parting with
Antonia, he sat perhaps ten minutes before he began to take in all
the figures in their parti-coloured smoking jackets, cross-legged,
with glasses in their hands, and cigars between their teeth.

The man in the next chair roused him by putting down his tumbler with
a tap, and seating himself upon the cushioned fender.  Through the
mist of smoke, with shoulders hunched, elbows and knees crooked out,
cigar protruding, beak-ways, below his nose, and the crimson collar
of his smoking jacket buttoned close as plumage on his breast, he
looked a little like a gorgeous bird.

"They do you awfully well," he said.

A voice from the chair on Shelton's right replied,

"They do you better at Verado's."

"The Veau d'Or 's the best place; they give you Turkish baths for
nothing!"  drawled a fat man with a tiny mouth.

The suavity of this pronouncement enfolded all as with a blessing.
And at once, as if by magic, in the old, oak-panelled room, the world
fell naturally into its three departments: that where they do you
well; that where they do you better; and that where they give you
Turkish baths for nothing.

"If you want Turkish baths," said a tall youth with clean red face,
who had come into the room, and stood, his mouth a little open, and
long feet jutting with sweet helplessness in front of him, "you
should go, you know, to Buda Pesth; most awfully rippin' there."

Shelton saw an indescribable appreciation rise on every face, as
though they had been offered truffles or something equally delicious.

"Oh no, Poodles," said the man perched on the fender.  "A Johnny I
know tells me they 're nothing to Sofia."  His face was transfigured
by the subtle gloating of a man enjoying vice by proxy.

"Ah!" drawled the small-mouthed man, "there 's nothing fit to hold a
candle to Baghda-ad."

Once again his utterance enfolded all as with a blessing, and once
again the world fell into its three departments: that where they do
you well; that where they do you better; and--Baghdad.

Shelton thought to himself: "Why don't I know a place that's better
than Baghdad?"

He felt so insignificant.  It seemed that he knew none of these
delightful spots; that he was of no use to any of his fellow-men;
though privately he was convinced that all these speakers were as.
ignorant as himself, and merely found it warming to recall such
things as they had heard, with that peculiar gloating look.  Alas!
his anecdotes would never earn for him that prize of persons in
society, the label of a "good chap" and "sportsman."

"Have you ever been in Baghdad?" he feebly asked.

The fat man did not answer; he had begun an anecdote, and in his
broad expanse of face his tiny mouth writhed like a caterpillar.  The
anecdote was humorous.

With the exception of Antonia, Shelton saw but little of the ladies,
for, following the well-known custom of the country house, men and
women avoided each other as much as might be.  They met at meals, and
occasionally joined in tennis and in croquet; otherwise it seemed--
almost Orientally--agreed that they were better kept apart.

Chancing one day to enter the withdrawing room, while searching for
Antonia, he found that he had lighted on a feminine discussion; he
would have beaten a retreat, of course, but it seemed too obvious
that he was merely looking for his fiancee, so, sitting down, he
listened.

The Honourable Charlotte Penguin, still knitting a silk tie--the
sixth since that she had been knitting at Hyeres--sat on the low
window-seat close to a hydrangea, the petals of whose round flowers
almost kissed her sanguine cheek. Her eyes were fixed with languid
aspiration on the lady who was speaking.  This was a square woman of
medium height, with grey hair brushed from her low forehead, the
expression of whose face was brisk and rather cross.  She was
standing with a book, as if delivering a sermon.  Had she been a man
she might have been described as a bright young man of business; for,
though grey, she never could be old, nor ever lose the power of
forming quick decisions.  Her features and her eyes were prompt and
slightly hard, tinged with faith fanatical in the justice of her
judgments, and she had that fussy simpleness of dress which indicates
the right to meddle.  Not red, not white, neither yellow nor quite
blue, her complexion was suffused with a certain mixture of these
colours, adapted to the climate; and her smile had a strange sour
sweetness, like nothing but the flavour of an apple on the turn.

"I don't care what they tell you," she was saying--not offensively,
though her voice seemed to imply that she had no time to waste in
pleasing--" in all my dealings with them I've found it best to treat
them quite like children."

A lady, behind the Times, smiled; her mouth--indeed, her whole hard,
handsome face--was reminiscent of dappled rocking-horses found in the
Soho Bazaar.  She crossed her feet, and some rich and silk stuff
rustled.  Her whole personality seemed to creak as, without looking,
she answered in harsh tones:

"I find the poor are most delightful persons."

Sybil Dennant, seated on the sofa, with a feathery laugh shot a
barking terrier dog at Shelton.

"Here's Dick," she said.  "Well, Dick, what's your opinion?"

Shelton looked around him, scared.  The elder ladies who had spoken
had fixed their eyes on him, and in their gaze he read his utter
insignificance.

"Oh, that young man!" they seemed to say.  "Expect a practical remark
from him?  Now, come!"

"Opinion," he stammered, "of the poor?  I haven't any."

The person on her feet, whose name was Mrs. Mattock, directing her
peculiar sweet-sour smile at the distinguished lady with the Times,
said:

"Perhaps you 've not had experience of them in London, Lady
Bonington?"

Lady Bonington, in answer, rustled.

"Oh, do tell us about the slums, Mrs. Mattock!"  cried Sybil.

"Slumming must be splendid!  It's so deadly here--nothing but flannel
petticoats."

"The poor, my dear," began Mrs. Mattock, "are not the least bit what
you think them---"

"Oh, d' you know, I think they're rather nice!"  broke in Aunt
Charlotte close to the hydrangea.

"You think so?" said Mrs. Mattock sharply.  "I find they do nothing
but grumble."

"They don't grumble at me: they are delightful persons", and Lady
Bonington gave Shelton a grim smile.

He could not help thinking that to grumble in the presence of that
rich, despotic personality would require a superhuman courage.

"They're the most ungrateful people in the world," said Mrs. Mattock.

"Why, then," thought Shelton, "do you go amongst them?"

She continued, "One must do them good, one, must do one's duty, but
as to getting thanks---"

Lady Bonington sardonically said,

"Poor things! they have a lot to bear."

"The little children!"  murmured Aunt Charlotte, with a flushing
cheek and shining eyes; "it 's rather pathetic."

"Children indeed!"  said Mrs. Mattock.  "It puts me out of all
patience to see the way that they neglect them.  People are so
sentimental about the poor."

Lady Bonington creaked again.  Her splendid shoulders were wedged
into her chair; her fine dark hair, gleaming with silver, sprang back
upon her brow; a ruby bracelet glowed on the powerful wrist that held
the journal; she rocked her copper-slippered foot.  She did not
appear to be too sentimental.

"I know they often have a very easy time," said Mrs. Mattock, as if
some one had injured her severely.  And Shelton saw, not without
pity, that Fate had scored her kind and squashed-up face with
wrinkles, whose tiny furrows were eloquent of good intentions
frustrated by the unpractical and discontented poor.  "Do what you
will, they are never satisfied; they only resent one's help, or else
they take the help and never thank you for it!"

"Oh!"  murmured Aunt Charlotte, "that's rather hard."

Shelton had been growing, more uneasy.  He said abruptly:

"I should do the same if I were they."

Mrs. Mattock's brown eyes flew at him; Lady Bonington spoke to the
Times; her ruby bracelet and a bangle jingled.

"We ought to put ourselves in their places."

Shelton could not help a smile; Lady Bonington in the places of the
poor!

"Oh!"  exclaimed Mrs. Mattock, "I put myself entirely in their place.
I quite understand their feelings.  But ingratitude is a repulsive
quality."

"They seem unable to put themselves in your place," murmured Shelton;
and in a fit of courage he took the room in with a sweeping glance.

Yes, that room was wonderfully consistent, with its air of perfect
second-handedness, as if each picture, and each piece of furniture,
each book, each lady present, had been made from patterns.  They were
all widely different, yet all (like works of art seen in some
exhibitions) had the look of being after the designs of some original
spirit.  The whole room was chaste, restrained, derived, practical,
and comfortable; neither in virtue nor in work, neither in manner,
speech, appearance, nor in theory, could it give itself away.




CHAPTER XXIII

THE STAINED-GLASS MAN

Still looking for Antonia, Shelton went up to the morning-room.  Thea
Dennant and another girl were seated in the window, talking.  From
the look they gave him he saw that he had better never have been
born; he hastily withdrew.  Descending to the hall, he came on Mr.
Dennant crossing to his study, with a handful of official-looking
papers.

"Ah, Shelton!"  said he, "you look a little lost.  Is the shrine
invisible?"

Shelton grinned, said "Yes," and went on looking.  He was not
fortunate.  In the dining-room sat Mrs. Dennant, making up her list
of books.

"Do give me your opinion, Dick," she said.  "Everybody 's readin'
this thing of Katherine Asterick's; I believe it's simply because
she's got a title."

"One must read a book for some reason or other," answered Shelton.

"Well," returned Mrs. Dennant, "I hate doin' things just because
other people do them, and I sha'n't get it."

"Good!"

Mrs. Dennant marked the catalogue.

"Here 's Linseed's last, of course; though I must say I don't care
for him, but I suppose we ought to have it in the house.  And there's
Quality's 'The Splendid Diatribes': that 's sure to be good, he's
always so refined.  But what am I to do about this of Arthur Baal's?
They say that he's a charlatan, but everybody reads him, don't you
know"; and over the catalogue Shelton caught the gleam of hare-like
eyes.

Decision had vanished from her face, with its arched nose and
slightly sloping chin, as though some one had suddenly appealed to
her to trust her instincts.  It was quite pathetic.  Still, there was
always the book's circulation to form her judgment by.

"I think I 'd better mark it," she said, "don't you?  Were you
lookin' for Antonia?  If you come across Bunyan in the garden, Dick,
do say I want to see him; he's gettin' to be a perfect nuisance.  I
can understand his feelin's, but really he 's carryin' it too far."

Primed with his message to the under-gardener, Shelton went.  He took
a despairing look into the billiard-room.  Antonia was not there.
Instead, a tall and fat-cheeked gentleman with a neat moustache,
called Mabbey, was practising the spot-stroke.  He paused as Shelton
entered, and, pouting like a baby, asked in a sleepy voice,

"Play me a hundred up?"

Shelton shook his head, stammered out his sorrow, and was about to
go.

The gentleman called Mabbey, plaintively feeling the places where his
moustaches joined his pink and glossy cheeks, asked with an air of
some surprise,

"What's your general game, then?"

"I really don't know," said Shelton.

The gentleman called Mabbey chalked his cue, and, moving his round,
knock-kneed legs in their tight trousers, took up his position for
the stroke.

"What price that?" he said, as he regained the perpendicular; and his
well-fed eyes followed Shelton with sleepy inquisition.  "Curious
dark horse, Shelton," they seemed to say.

Shelton hurried out, and was about to run down the lower lawn, when
he was accosted by another person walking in the sunshine--a slight-
built man in a turned-down collar, with a thin and fair moustache,
and a faint bluish tint on one side of his high forehead, caused by a
network of thin veins.  His face had something of the youthful,
optimistic, stained-glass look peculiar to the refined English type.
He walked elastically, yet with trim precision, as if he had a
pleasant taste in furniture and churches, and held the Spectator in
his hand.

"Ah, Shelton!  "he said in high-tuned tones, halting his legs in such
an easy attitude that it was impossible to interrupt it: "come to
take the air?"

Shelton's own brown face, nondescript nose, and his amiable but
dogged chin contrasted strangely with the clear-cut features of the
stained-glass man.

"I hear from Halidome that you're going to stand for Parliament," the
latter said.

Shelton, recalling Halidome's autocratic manner of settling other
people's business, smiled.

"Do I look like it?" he asked.

The eyebrows quivered on the stained-glass man.  It had never
occurred to him, perhaps, that to stand for Parliament a man must
look like it; he examined Shelton with some curiosity.

"Ah, well," he said, "now you mention it, perhaps not."  His eyes, so
carefully ironical, although they differed from the eyes of Mabbey,
also seemed to ask of Shelton what sort of a dark horse he was.

"You 're still in the Domestic Office, then?" asked Shelton.

The stained-glass man stooped to sniff a rosebush.  "Yes," he said;
"it suits me very well.  I get lots of time for my art work."

"That must be very interesting," said Shelton, whose glance was
roving for Antonia; "I never managed to begin a hobby."

"Never had a hobby!"  said the stained-glass man, brushing back his
hair (he was walking with no hat); "why, what the deuce d' you do?"

Shelton could not answer; the idea had never troubled him.

"I really don't know," he said, embarrassed; "there's always
something going on, as far as I can see."

The stained-glass man placed his hands within his pockets, and his
bright glance swept over his companion.

"A fellow must have a hobby to give him an interest in life," he
said.

"An interest in life?" repeated Shelton grimly; "life itself is good
enough for me."

"Oh!" replied the stained-glass man, as though he disapproved of
regarding life itself as interesting.

"That's all very well, but you want something more than that.  Why
don't you take up woodcarving?"

"Wood-carving?"

"The moment I get fagged with office papers and that sort of thing I
take up my wood-carving; good as a game of hockey."

"I have n't the enthusiasm."

The eyebrows of the stained-glass man twitched; he twisted his
moustache.

"You 'll find not having a hobby does n't pay," he said; "you 'll get
old, then where 'll you be?"

It came as a surprise that he should use the words "it does n't pay,"
for he had a kind of partially enamelled look, like that modern
jewellery which really seems unconscious of its market value.

"You've given up the Bar?  Don't you get awfully bored having nothing
to do?" pursued the stained-glass man, stopping before an ancient
sundial.

Shelton felt a delicacy, as a man naturally would, in explaining that
being in love was in itself enough to do.  To do nothing is unworthy
of a man!  But he had never felt as yet the want of any occupation.
His silence in no way disconcerted his acquaintance.

"That's a nice old article of virtue," he said, pointing with his
chin; and, walking round the sundial, he made its acquaintance from
the other side.  Its grey profile cast a thin and shortening shadow
on the turf; tongues of moss were licking at its sides; the daisies
clustered thick around its base; it had acquired a look of growing
from the soil.  "I should like to get hold of that," the stained-
glass man remarked; "I don't know when I 've seen a better specimen,"
and he walked round it once again.

His eyebrows were still ironically arched, but below them his eyes
were almost calculating, and below them, again, his mouth had opened
just a little.  A person with a keener eye would have said his face
looked greedy, and even Shelton was surprised, as though he had read
in the Spectator a confession of commercialism.

"You could n't uproot a thing like that," he said; "it would lose all
its charm."

His companion turned impatiently, and his countenance looked
wonderfully genuine.

"Couldn't I?" he said.  "By Jove!  I thought so.  1690!  The best
period."  He ran his forger round the sundial's edge.  "Splendid
line-clean as the day they made it.  You don't seem to care much
about that sort of thing"; and once again, as though accustomed to
the indifference of Vandals, his face regained its mask.

They strolled on towards the kitchen gardens, Shelton still busy
searching every patch of shade.  He wanted to say "Can't stop," and
hurry off; but there was about the stained-glass man a something
that, while stinging Shelton's feelings, made the showing of them
quite impossible.  "Feelings!"  that person seemed to say; "all very
well, but you want more than that.  Why not take up wood-carving?
 .   .  .  .  Feelings!  I was born in England, and have been at
Cambridge."

"Are you staying long?" he asked Shelton.  "I go on to Halidome's
to-morrow; suppose I sha'n't see you there?  Good, chap, old
Halidome!  Collection of etchings very fine!"

"No; I 'm staying on," said Shelton.

"Ah!"  said the stained-glass man, "charming people, the Dennants!"

Shelton, reddening slowly, turned his head away; he picked a
gooseberry, and muttered, "Yes."

"The eldest girl especially; no nonsense about her.  I thought she
was a particularly nice girl."

Shelton heard this praise of Antonia with an odd sensation; it gave
him the reverse of pleasure, as though the words had cast new light
upon her.  He grunted hastily,

"I suppose you know that we 're engaged?"

"Really!"  said the stained-glass man, and again his bright, clear,
iron-committal glance swept over Shelton--"really!  I didn't know.
Congratulate you!"

It was as if he said: "You're a man of taste; I should say she would
go well in almost any drawing-room!"

"Thanks," said Shelton; "there she' is.  If you'll excuse me, I want
to speak to her."




CHAPTER XXIV

PARADISE

Antonia, in a sunny angle of the old brick wall, amid the pinks and
poppies and cornflowers, was humming to herself.  Shelton saw the
stained-glass man pass out of sight, then, unobserved, he watched her
smelling at the flowers, caressing her face with each in turn,
casting away spoiled blossoms, and all the time humming that soft
tune.

In two months, or three, all barriers between himself and this
inscrutable young Eve would break; she would be a part of him, and he
a part of her; he would know all her thoughts, and she all his;
together they would be as one, and all would think of them, and talk
of them, as one; and this would come about by standing half an hour
together in a church, by the passing of a ring, and the signing of
their names.

The sun was burnishing her hair--she wore no hat flushing her cheeks,
sweetening and making sensuous her limbs; it had warmed her through
and through, so that, like the flowers and bees, the sunlight and the
air, she was all motion, light, and colour.

She turned and saw Shelton standing there.

"Oh, Dick!"  she said: "Lend me your hand-kerchief to put these
flowers in, there 's a good boy!"

Her candid eyes, blue as the flowers in her hands, were clear and
cool as ice, but in her smile was all the warm profusion of that
corner; the sweetness had soaked into her, and was welling forth
again.  The sight of those sun-warmed cheeks, and fingers twining
round the flower-stalks, her pearly teeth, and hair all fragrant,
stole the reason out of Shelton.  He stood before her, weak about the
knees.

"Found you at last!"  he said.

Curving back her neck, she cried out, "Catch!"  and with a sweep of
both her hands flung the flowers into Shelton's arms.

Under the rain of flowers, all warm and odorous, he dropped down on
his knees, and put them one by one together, smelling at the pinks,
to hide the violence of his feelings.  Antonia went on picking
flowers, and every time her hand was full she dropped them on his
hat, his shoulder, or his arms, and went on plucking more; she
smiled, and on her lips a little devil danced, that seemed to know
what he was suffering.  And Shelton felt that she did know.

"Are you tired?" she asked; "there are heaps more wanted.  These are
the bedroom-flowers--fourteen lots.  I can't think how people can
live without flowers, can you?" and close above his head she buried
her face in pinks.

He kept his eyes on the plucked flowers before him on the grass, and
forced himself to answer,

"I think I can hold out."

"Poor old Dick!"  She had stepped back.  The sun lit the clear-cut
profile of her cheek, and poured its gold over the bosom of her
blouse.  "Poor old Dick!  Awfully hard luck, is n't it?"  Burdened
with mignonette, she came so close again that now she touched his
shoulder, but Shelton did not look; breathless, with wildly beating
heart, he went on sorting out the flowers.  The seeds of mignonette
rained on his neck, and as she let the blossoms fall, their perfume
fanned his face.  "You need n't sort them out!" she said.

Was she enticing him?  He stole a look; but she was gone again,
swaying and sniffing at the flowers.

"I suppose I'm only hindering you," he growled; "I 'd better go."

She laughed.

"I like to see you on your knees, you look so funny!"  and as she
spoke she flung a clove carnation at him.  "Does n't it smell good?"

"Too good Oh, Antonia!  why are you doing this?"

" Why am I doing what?"

"Don't you know what you are doing?"

"Why, picking flowers!"  and once more she was back, bending and
sniffing at the blossoms.

"That's enough."

"Oh no," she called; "it's not not nearly.

"Keep on putting them together, if you love me."

"You know I love you," answered Shelton, in a smothered voice.

Antonia gazed at him across her shoulder; puzzled and inquiring was
her face.

"I'm not a bit like you," she said.  "What will you have for your
room?"

"Choose!"

"Cornflowers and clove pinks.  Poppies are too frivolous, and pinks
too---"

"White," said Shelton.

"And mignonette too hard and---"

"Sweet.  Why cornflowers?"

Antonia stood before him with her hands against her sides; her figure
was so slim and young, her face uncertain and so grave.

"Because they're dark and deep."

"And why clove pinks?"

Antonia did not answer.

"And why clove pinks?"

"Because," she said, and, flushing, touched a bee that had settled on
her skirt, "because of something in you I don't understand."

"Ah!  And what flowers shall t give YOU?"

She put her hands behind her.

"There are all the other flowers for me."

Shelton snatched from the mass in front of him an Iceland poppy with
straight stem and a curved neck, white pinks, and sprigs of hard,
sweet mignonette, and held it out to her.

"There," he said, "that's you."  But Antonia did not move.

"Oh no, it is n't!" and behind her back her fingers slowly crushed
the petals of a blood-red poppy.  She shook her head, smiling a
brilliant smile.  The blossoms fell, he flung his arms around her,
and kissed her on the lips.

But his hands dropped; not fear exactly, nor exactly shame, had come
to him.  She had not resisted, but he had kissed the smile away; had
kissed a strange, cold, frightened look, into her eyes.

"She did n't mean to tempt me, then," he thought, in surprise and
anger.  "What did she mean?" and, like a scolded dog, he kept his
troubled watch upon her face.




CHAPTER XXV

THE RIDE

"Where now?" Antonia asked, wheeling her chestnut mare, as they
turned up High Street, Oxford City.  "I won't go back the same way,
Dick!"

"We could have a gallop on Port Meadow, cross the Upper River twice,
and get home that way; but you 'll be tired."

Antonia shook her head.  Aslant her cheek the brim of a straw hat
threw a curve of shade, her ear glowed transparent in the sun.

A difference had come in their relations since that kiss; outwardly
she was the same good comrade, cool and quick.  But as before a
change one feels the subtle difference in the temper of the wind, so
Shelton was affected by the inner change in her.  He had made a blot
upon her candour; he had tried to rub it out again, but there was
left a mark, and it was ineffaceable.  Antonia belonged to the most
civilised division of the race most civilised in all the world, whose
creed is "Let us love and hate, let us work and marry, but let us
never give ourselves away; to give ourselves away is to leave a mark,
and that is past forgive ness.  Let our lives be like our faces, free
from every kind of wrinkle, even those of laughter; in this way alone
can we be really civilised."

He felt that she was ruffled by a vague discomfort.  That he should
give himself away was natural, perhaps, and only made her wonder, but
that he should give her the feeling that she had given herself away
was a very different thing.

"Do you mind if I just ask at the Bishop's Head for letters?" he
said, as they passed the old hotel.

A dirty and thin envelope was brought to him, addressed "Mr. Richard
Shelton, Esq.," in handwriting that was passionately clear, as though
the writer had put his soul into securing delivery of the letter.  It
was dated three days back, and, as they rode away, Shelton read as
follows:

                              IMPERIAL PEACOCK HOTEL,
                                        FOLKESTONE.

MON CHER MONSIEUR SHELTON,

This is already the third time I have taken up pen to write to you,
but, having nothing but misfortune to recount, I hesitated, awaiting
better days.  Indeed, I have been so profoundly discouraged that if I
had not thought it my duty to let you know of my fortunes I know not
even now if I should have found the necessary spirit.  'Les choses
vont de mal en mal'.  From what I hear there has never been so bad a
season here.  Nothing going on.  All the same, I am tormented by a
mob of little matters which bring me not sufficient to support my
life.  I know not what to do; one thing is certain, in no case shall
I return here another year.  The patron of this hotel, my good
employer, is one of those innumerable specimens who do not forge or
steal because they have no need, and if they had would lack the
courage; who observe the marriage laws because they have been brought
up to believe in them, and know that breaking them brings risk and
loss of reputation; who do not gamble because they dare not; do not
drink because it disagrees with them; go to church because their
neighbours go, and to procure an appetite for the mid-day meal;
commit no murder because, not transgressing in any other fashion,
they are not obliged.  What is there to respect in persons of this
sort?  Yet they are highly esteemed, and form three quarters of
Society.  The rule with these good gentlemen is to shut their eyes,
never use their thinking powers, and close the door on all the dogs
of life for fear they should get bitten.

Shelton paused, conscious of Antonia's eyes fixed on him with the
inquiring look that he had come to dread.  In that chilly questioning
she seemed to say: "I am waiting.  I am prepared to be told things--
that is, useful things--things that help one to believe without the
risk of too much thinking."

"It's from that young foreigner," he said; and went on reading to
himself.

I have eyes, and here I am; I have a nose 'pour, flairer le humbug'.
I see that amongst the value of things nothing is the equal of "free
thought."  Everything else they can take from me, 'on ne pent pas
m'oter cela'!  I see no future for me here, and certainly should have
departed long ago if I had had the money, but, as I have already told
you, all that I can do barely suffices to procure me 'de quoi vivre'.
'Je me sens ecceuye'.  Do not pay too much attention to my Jeremiads;
you know what a pessimist I am.  'Je ne perds pas courage'.

Hoping that you are well, and in the cordial pressing of your hand, I
subscribe myself,

                    Your very devoted

                              LOUIS FERRAND.


He rode with the letter open in his hand, frowning at the curious
turmoil which Ferrand excited in his heart.  It was as though this
foreign vagrant twanged within him a neglected string, which gave
forth moans of a mutiny.

"What does he say?" Antonia asked.

Should he show it to her?  If he might not, what should he do when
they were married?

"I don't quite know," he said at last; "it 's not particularly
cheering."'

"What is he like, Dick--I mean, to look at?  Like a gentleman, or
what?"

Shelton stifled a desire to laugh.

"He looks very well in a frock-coat," he replied; "his father was a
wine merchant."

Antonia flicked her whip against her skirt.

"Of course," she murmured, "I don't want to hear if there's anything
I ought not."

But instead of soothing Shelton, these words had just the opposite
effect.  His conception of the ideal wife was not that of one from
whom the half of life must be excluded.

"It's only," he stammered again, "that it's not cheerful."

"Oh, all right!"  she cried, and, touching her horse, flew off in
front.  "I hate dismal things."

Shelton bit his lips.  It was not his fault that half the world was
dark.  He knew her words were loosed against himself, and, as always
at a sign of her displeasure, was afraid.  He galloped after her on
the scorched turf.

" What is it?" he said.  "You 're angry with me!"

"Oh no!"

"Darling, I can't help it if things are n't cheerful.  We have eyes,"
he added, quoting from the letter.

Antonia did not look at him; but touched her horse again.

"Well, I don't want to see the gloomy side," she said, "and I can't
see why YOU should.  It's wicked to be discontented"; and she
galloped off.

It was not his fault if there were a thousand different kinds of men,
a thousand different points of view, outside the fence of her
experience!  "What business," he thought, digging in his dummy spurs,
"has our class to patronise?  We 're the only people who have n't an
idea of what life really means."  Chips of dried turf and dust came
flying back, stinging his face.  He gained on her, drew almost within
reach, then, as though she had been playing with him, was left
hopelessly behind.

She stooped under the far hedge, fanning her flushed face with dock-
leaves:

"Aha, Dick!  I knew you'd never catch me" and she patted the chestnut
mare, who turned her blowing muzzle with contemptuous humour towards
Shelton's steed, while her flanks heaved rapturously, gradually
darkening with sweat.

"We'd better take them steadily," grunted Shelton, getting off and
loosening his girths, "if we mean to get home at all."

"Don't be cross, Dick!"

"We oughtn't to have galloped them like this; they 're not in
condition.  We'd better go home the way we came."

Antonia dropped the reins, and straightened her back hair.

"There 's no fun in that," she said.  "Out and back again; I hate a
dog's walk."

"Very well," said Shelton; he would have her longer to himself!

The road led up and up a hill, and from the top a vision of Saxonia
lay disclosed in waves of wood and pasture.  Their way branched down
a gateless glade, and Shelton sidled closer till his knee touched the
mare's off-flank.

Antonia's profile conjured up visions.  She was youth itself; her
eyes so brilliant, and so innocent, her cheeks so glowing, and her
brow unruffled; but in her smile and in the setting of her jaw lurked
something resolute and mischievous.  Shelton put his hand out to the
mare's mane.

"What made you promise to marry me?" he said.

She smiled.

"Well, what made you?"

"I?" cried Shelton.

She slipped her hand over his hand.

"Oh, Dick!"  she said.

"I want," he stammered, "to be everything to you.  Do you think I
shall?"

"Of course!"

Of course!  The words seemed very much or very little.

She looked down at the river, gleaming below the glade in a curving
silver line.  "Dick, there are such a lot of splendid things that we
might do."

Did she mean, amongst those splendid things, that they might
understand each other; or were they fated to pretend to only, in the
old time-honoured way?

They crossed the river by a ferry, and rode a long time in silence,
while the twilight slowly fell behind the aspens.  And all the beauty
of the evening, with its restless leaves, its grave young moon, and
lighted campion flowers, was but a part of her; the scents, the
witchery and shadows, the quaint field noises, the yokels' whistling,
and the splash of water-fowl, each seemed to him enchanted.  The
flighting bats, the forms of the dim hayricks, and sweet-brier
perfume-she summed them all up in herself.  The fingermarks had
deepened underneath her eyes, a languor came upon her; it made her
the more sweet and youthful.  Her shoulders seemed to bear on them
the very image of our land--grave and aspiring, eager yet contained--
before there came upon that land the grin of greed, the folds of
wealth, the simper of content.  Fair, unconscious, free!

And he was silent, with a beating heart.




CHAPTER XXVI

THE BIRD 'OF PASSAGE

That night, after the ride, when Shelton was about to go to bed, his
eyes fell on Ferrand's letter, and with a sleepy sense of duty he
began to read it through a second time.  In the dark, oak-panelled
bedroom, his four-post bed, with back of crimson damask and its
dainty sheets, was lighted by the candle glow; the copper pitcher of
hot water in the basin, the silver of his brushes, and the line of
his well-polished boots all shone, and Shelton's face alone was
gloomy, staring at the yellowish paper in his hand.

"The poor chap wants money, of course," he thought.  But why go on
for ever helping one who had no claim on him, a hopeless case,
incurable--one whom it was his duty to let sink for the good of the
community at large?  Ferrand's vagabond refinement had beguiled him
into charity that should have been bestowed on hospitals, or any
charitable work but foreign missions.  To give a helping hand, a bit
of himself, a nod of fellowship to any fellow-being irrespective of a
claim, merely because he happened to be down, was sentimental
nonsense!  The line must be drawn!  But in the muttering of this
conclusion he experienced a twinge of honesty.  "Humbug!  You don't
want to part with your money, that's all!"

So, sitting down in shirt-sleeves at his writing table, he penned the
following on paper stamped with the Holm Oaks address and crest:

MY DEAR FERRAND,

I am sorry you are having such a bad spell.  You seem to be dead out
of luck.  I hope by the time you get this things will have changed
for the better.  I should very much like to see you again and have a
talk, but shall be away for some time longer, and doubt even when I
get back whether I should be able to run down and look you up.  Keep
me 'au courant' as to your movements.  I enclose a cheque.

                    Yours sincerely,

                              RICHARD SHELTON.


Before he had written out the cheque, a moth fluttering round the
candle distracted his attention, and by the time he had caught and
put it out he had forgotten that the cheque was not enclosed.  The
letter, removed with his clothes before he was awake, was posted in
an empty state.

One morning a week later he was sitting in the smoking-room in the
company of the gentleman called Mabbey, who was telling him how many
grouse he had deprived of life on August 12 last year, and how many
he intended to deprive of life on August 12 this year, when the door
was opened, and the butler entered, carrying his head as though it
held some fatal secret.

"A young man is asking for you, sir," he said to Shelton, bending
down discreetly; "I don't know if you would wish to see him, sir."

"A young man!  "repeated Shelton; "what sort of a young man?"

"I should say a sort of foreigner, sir," apologetically replied the
butler.  "He's wearing a frock-coat, but he looks as if he had been
walking a good deal."

Shelton rose with haste; the description sounded to him ominous.

"Where is he?"

"I put him in the young ladies' little room, sir."

"All right," said Shelton; "I 'll come and see him.  Now, what the
deuce!"  he thought, running down the stairs.

It was with a queer commingling of pleasure and vexation that he
entered the little chamber sacred to the birds, beasts, racquets,
golf-clubs, and general young ladies' litter.  Ferrand was standing
underneath the cage of a canary, his hands folded on his pinched-up
hat, a nervous smile upon his lips.  He was dressed in Shelton's old
frock-coat, tightly buttoned, and would have cut a stylish figure but
far his look of travel.  He wore a pair of pince-nez, too, which
somewhat veiled his cynical blue eyes, and clashed a little with the
pagan look of him.  In the midst of the strange surroundings he still
preserved that air of knowing, and being master of, his fate, which
was his chief attraction.

"I 'm glad to see you," said Shelton, holding out his hand.

"Forgive this liberty," began Ferrand, "but I thought it due to you
after all you've done for me not to throw up my efforts to get
employment in England without letting you know first.  I'm entirely
at the end of my resources."

The phrase struck Shelton as one that he had heard before.

"But I wrote to you," he said; "did n't you get my letter?"

A flicker passed across the vagrant's face; he drew the letter from
his pocket and held it out.

"Here it is, monsieur."

Shelton stared at it.

"Surely," said he, "I sent a cheque?"

Ferrand did not smile; there was a look about him as though Shelton
by forgetting to enclose that cheque had done him a real injury.

Shelton could not quite hide a glance of doubt.

"Of course," he said, "I--I--meant to enclose a cheque."

Too subtle to say anything, Ferrand curled his lip.  "I am capable of
much, but not of that," he seemed to say; and at once Shelton felt
the meanness of his doubt.

"Stupid of me," he said.

"I had no intention of intruding here," said Ferrand; "I hoped to see
you in the neighbourhood, but I arrive exhausted with fatigue.  I've
eaten nothing since yesterday at noon, and walked thirty miles."  He
shrugged his shoulders.  "You see, I had no time to lose before
assuring myself whether you were here or not."

"Of course---" began Shelton, but again he stopped.

"I should very much like," the young foreigner went on, "for one of
your good legislators to find himself in these country villages with
a penny in his pocket.  In other countries bakers are obliged to sell
you an equivalent of bread for a penny; here they won't sell you as
much as a crust under twopence.  You don't encourage poverty."

"What is your idea now?" asked Shelton, trying to gain time.

"As I told you," replied Ferrand, "there 's nothing to be done at
Folkestone, though I should have stayed there if I had had the money
to defray certain expenses"; and again he seemed to reproach his
patron with the omission of that cheque.  "They say things will
certainly be better at the end of the month.  Now that I know English
well, I thought perhaps I could procure a situation for teaching
languages."

"I see," said Shelton.

As a fact, however, he was far from seeing; he literally did not know
what to do.  It seemed so brutal to give Ferrand money and ask him to
clear out; besides, he chanced to have none in his pocket.

"It needs philosophy to support what I 've gone through this week,"
said Ferrand, shrugging his shoulders.  "On Wednesday last, when I
received your letter, I had just eighteen-pence, and at once I made a
resolution to come and see you; on that sum I 've done the journey.
My strength is nearly at an end."

Shelton stroked his chin.

"Well," he had just begun, "we must think it over," when by Ferrand's
face he saw that some one had come in.  He turned, and saw Antonia in
the doorway.  "Excuse me," he stammered, and, going to Antonia, drew
her from the room.

With a smile she said at once: "It's the young foreigner; I'm
certain.  Oh, what fun!"

"Yes," answered Shelton slowly; "he's come to see me about getting
some sort of tutorship or other.  Do you think your mother would mind
if I took him up to have a wash?  He's had a longish walk.  And might
he have some breakfast?  He must be hungry."

"Of course!  I'll tell Dobson.  Shall I speak to mother?  He looks
nice, Dick."

He gave her a grateful, furtive look, and went back to his guest; an
impulse had made him hide from her the true condition of affairs.

Ferrand was standing where he had been left his face still clothed in
mordant impassivity.

"Come up to my room!"  said Shelton; and while his guest was washing,
brushing, and otherwise embellishing his person, he stood reflecting
that Ferrand was by no means unpresentable, and he felt quite
grateful to him.

He took an opportunity, when the young man's back was turned, of
examining his counterfoils.  There was no record, naturally, of a
cheque drawn in Ferrand's favour.  Shelton felt more mean than ever.

A message came from Mrs. Dennant; so he took the traveller to the
dining-room and left him there, while he himself went to the lady of
the house.  He met Antonia coming down.

"How many days did you say he went without food that time--you know?"
she asked in passing.

"Four."

"He does n't look a bit common, Dick."

Shelton gazed at her dubiously.

"They're surely not going to make a show of him!" he thought.

Mrs. Dennant was writing, in a dark-blue dress starred over with
white spots, whose fine lawn collar was threaded with black velvet.

"Have you seen the new hybrid Algy's brought me back from Kidstone?
Is n't it charmin'?" and she bent her face towards this perfect rose.
"They say unique; I'm awfully interested to find out if that's true.
I've told Algy I really must have some."

Shelton thought of the unique hybrid breakfasting downstairs; he
wished that Mrs. Dennant would show in him the interest she had
manifested in the rose.  But this was absurd of him, he knew, for the
potent law of hobbies controlled the upper classes, forcing them to
take more interest in birds, and roses, missionaries, or limited and
highly-bound editions of old books (things, in a word, in treating
which you knew exactly where you were) than in the manifestations of
mere life that came before their eyes.

"Oh, Dick, about that young Frenchman.  Antonia says he wants a
tutorship; now, can you really recommend him?  There's Mrs. Robinson
at the Gateways wants someone to teach her boys languages; and, if he
were quite satisfactory, it's really time Toddles had a few lessons
in French; he goes to Eton next half."

Shelton stared at the rose; he had suddenly realised why it was that
people take more interest in roses than in human beings--one could do
it with a quiet heart.

"He's not a Frenchman, you know," he said to gain a little time.

"He's not a German, I hope," Mrs. Dennant answered, passing her
forgers round a petal, to impress its fashion on her brain; "I don't
like Germans.  Is n't he the one you wrote about--come down in the
world?  Such a pity with so young a fellow!  His father was a
merchant, I think you told us.  Antonia says he 's quite refined to
look at."

"Oh, yes," said Shelton, feeling on safe ground; "he's refined enough
to look at."

Mrs. Dennant took the rose and put it to her nose.

"Delicious perfume!  That was a very touchin' story about his goin'
without food in Paris.  Old Mrs. Hopkins has a room to let; I should
like to do her a good turn.  I'm afraid there's a hole in the
ceilin', though.  Or there's the room here in the left wing on the
ground-floor where John the footman used to sleep.  It's quite nice;
perhaps he could have that."

"You 're awfully kind," said Shelton, "but---"

"I should like to do something to restore his self-respect,", went on
Mrs. Dennant, "if, as you say, he 's clever and all that.  Seein' a
little refined life again might make a world of difference to him.
It's so sad when a young man loses self-respect."

Shelton was much struck by the practical way in which she looked at
things.  Restore his self-respect!  It seemed quite a splendid
notion!  He smiled, and said,

"You're too kind.  I think---"

"I don't believe in doin' things by halves," said Mrs. Dennant; "he
does n't drink, I suppose?"

"Oh, no," said Shelton.  "He's rather a tobacco maniac, of course."

"Well, that's a mercy!  You would n't believe the trouble I 've had
with drink, especially over cooks and coachmen.  And now Bunyan's
taken to it."

"Oh, you'd have no trouble with Ferrand," returned Shelton; "you
couldn't tell him from a gentleman as far as manners go."

Mrs. Dennant smiled one of her rather sweet and kindly smiles.

"My dear Dick," she said, "there's not much comfort in that.  Look at
poor Bobby Surcingle, look at Oliver Semples and Victor Medallion;
you could n't have better families.  But if you 're sure he does n't
drink!  Algy 'll laugh, of course; that does n't matter--he laughs at
everything."

Shelton felt guilty; being quite unprepared for so rapid an adoption
of his client.

"I really believe there's a lot of good in him," he stammered; "but,
of course, I know very little, and from what he tells me he's had a
very curious life.  I shouldn't like---"

"Where was he educated?" inquired Mrs. Dennant.  "They have no public
schools in France, so I 've been told; but, of course, he can't help
that, poor young fellow!  Oh, and, Dick, there 's one thing--has he
relations?  One has always to be so careful about that.  It 's one
thing to help a young fellow, but quite another to help his family
too.  One sees so many cases of that where men marry girls without
money, don't you know."

"He has told me," answered Shelton, "his only relations are some
cousins, and they are rich."

Mrs. Dennant took out her handkerchief, and, bending above the rose,
removed a tiny insect.

"These green-fly get in everywhere," she said.

"Very sad story; can't they do anything for him?" and she made
researches in the rose's heart.

"He's quarrelled with them, I believe," said Shelton; "I have n't
liked to press him, about that."

"No, of course not," assented Mrs. Dennant absently--she had found
another green-fly "I always think it's painful when a young man seems
so friendless."

Shelton was silent; he was thinking deeply.  He had never before felt
so distrustful of the youthful foreigner.

"I think," he said at last, "the best thing would be for you to see
him for yourself."

"Very well," said Mrs. Dennant.  "I should be so glad if you would
tell him to come up.  I must say I do think that was a most touchin'
story about Paris.  I wonder whether this light's strong enough now
for me to photograph this rose."

Shelton withdrew and went down-stairs.  Ferrand was still at
breakfast.  Antonia stood at the sideboard carving beef for him, and
in the window sat Thea with her Persian kitten.

Both girls were following the traveller's movements with inscrutable
blue eyes.  A shiver ran down Shelton's spine.  To speak truth, he
cursed the young man's coming, as though it affected his relations
with Antonia.




CHAPTER XXVII

SUB ROSA

>From the interview, which Shelton had the mixed delight of watching,
between Ferrand and the Honourable Mrs. Dennant, certain definite
results accrued, the chief of which was the permission accorded the
young wanderer to occupy the room which had formerly been tenanted by
the footman John.  Shelton was lost in admiration of Ferrand's manner
in this scene..  Its subtle combination of deference and dignity was
almost paralysing; paralysing, too, the subterranean smile upon his
lips.

"Charmin' young man, Dick," said Mrs. Dennant, when Shelton lingered
to say once more that he knew but very little of him; "I shall send a
note round to Mrs. Robinson at once.  They're rather common, you
know--the Robinsons.  I think they'll take anyone I recommend."

"I 'm sure they will," said Shelton; "that's why I think you ought to
know---"

But Mrs. Dennant's eyes, fervent, hare-like, were fixed on something
far away; turning, he saw the rose in a tall vase on a tall and
spindly stool.  It seemed to nod towards them in the sunshine.  Mrs.
Dennant dived her nose towards her camera.

"The light's perfect now," she said, in a voice muffled by the cloth.
"I feel sure that livin' with decent people will do wonders for him.
Of course, he understands that his meals will be served to him
apart."

Shelton, doubly anxious, now that his efforts had lodged his client
in a place of trust, fell, back on hoping for the best; his instinct
told him that, vagabond as Ferrand was, he had a curious self-
respect, that would save him from a mean ingratitude.

In fact, as Mrs. Dennant, who was by no means void of common-sense,
foresaw, the arrangement worked all right.  Ferrand entered on his
duties as French tutor to the little Robinsons.  In the Dennants'
household he kept himself to his own room, which, day and night, he
perfumed with tobacco, emerging at noon into the garden, or, if wet,
into the study, to teach young Toddles French.  After a time it
became customary for him to lunch with the house-party, partly
through a mistake of Toddles, who seemed to think that it was
natural, and partly through John Noble, one of Shelton's friends, who
had come to stay, and discovered Ferrand to be a most awfully
interesting person he was always, indeed, discovering the most
awfully interesting persons.  In his grave and toneless voice,
brushing his hair from off his brow, he descanted upon Ferrand with
enthusiasm, to which was joined a kind of shocked amusement, as who
should say, "Of course, I know it's very odd, but really he 's such
an awfully interesting person."  For John Noble was a politician,
belonging to one of those two Peculiar parties, which, thoroughly in
earnest, of an honesty above suspicion, and always very busy, are
constitutionally averse to anything peculiar for fear of finding they
have overstepped the limit of what is practical in politics.  As such
he inspired confidence, not caring for things unless he saw some
immediate benefit to be had from them, having a perfect sense of
decency, and a small imagination.  He discussed all sorts of things
with Ferrand; on one occasion Shelton overheard them arguing on
anarchism.

"No Englishman approves of murder," Noble was saying, in the gloomy
voice that contrasted with the optimistic cast of his fine head, "but
the main principle is right.  Equalisation of property is bound to
come.  I sympathise with then, not with their methods."

"Forgive me," struck in Ferrand; "do you know any anarchists?"

"No," returned Noble; "I certainly do not."

"You say you sympathise with them, but the first time it comes to
action---"

"Well?"

"Oh, monsieur! one doesn't make anarchism with the head."

Shelton perceived that he had meant to add, "but with the heart, the
lungs, the liver."  He drew a deeper meaning from the saying, and
seemed to see, curling with the smoke from Ferrand's lips, the words:
"What do you, an English gentleman, of excellent position, and all
the prejudices of your class, know about us outcasts?  If you want to
understand us you must be an outcast too; we are not playing at the
game."

This talk took place upon the lawn, at the end of one of Toddles's
French lessons, and Shelton left John Noble maintaining to the
youthful foreigner, with stubborn logic, that he, John Noble, and the
anarchists had much, in common.  He was returning to the house, when
someone called his name from underneath the holm oak.  There, sitting
Turkish fashion on the grass, a pipe between his teeth, he found a
man who had arrived the night before, and impressed him by his
friendly taciturnity.  His name was Whyddon, and he had just returned
from Central Africa; a brown-faced, large-jawed man, with small but
good and steady eyes, and strong, spare figure.

"Oh, Mr. Shelton!" he said, "I wondered if you could tell me what
tips I ought to give the servants here; after ten years away I 've
forgotten all about that sort of thing."

Shelton sat down beside him; unconsciously assuming, too, a cross-
legged attitude, which caused him much discomfort.

"I was listening," said his new acquaintance, "to the little chap
learning his French.  I've forgotten mine.  One feels a hopeless
duffer knowing no, languages."

"I suppose you speak Arabic?" said Shelton.

"Oh, Arabic, and a dialect or two; they don't count.  That tutor has
a curious face."

"You think so?" said Shelton, interested.  "He's had a curious life."

The traveller spread his hands, palms downwards, on the grass and
looked at Shelton with, a smile.

"I should say he was a rolling stone," he said.  "It 's odd, I' ve
seen white men in Central Africa with a good deal of his look about
them.

"Your diagnosis is a good one," answered Shelton.

"I 'm always sorry for those fellows.  There's generally some good in
them.  They are their own enemies.  A bad business to be unable to
take pride in anything one does!"  And there was a look of pity on
his face.

"That's exactly it," said Shelton.  "I 've often tried to put it into
words.  Is it incurable?"

"I think so."

"Can you tell me why?"

Whyddon pondered.

"I rather think," he said at last, "it must be because they have too
strong a faculty of criticism.  You can't teach a man to be proud of
his own work; that lies in his blood "; folding his arms across his
breast, he heaved a sigh.  Under the dark foliage, his eyes on the
sunlight, he was the type of all those Englishmen who keep their
spirits bright and wear their bodies out in the dark places of hard
work.  "You can't think," he said, showing his teeth in a smile, "how
delightful it is to be at home!  You learn to love the old country
when you're away from it."

Shelton often thought, afterwards; of this diagnosis of the vagabond,
for he was always stumbling on instances of that power of subtle
criticism which was the young foreigner's prime claim to be "a most
awfully interesting" and perhaps a rather shocking person.

An old school-fellow of Shelton's and his wife were staying in the
house, who offered to the eye the picture of a perfect domesticity.
Passionless and smiling, it was impossible to imagine they could ever
have a difference.  Shelton, whose bedroom was next to theirs, could
hear them in the mornings talking in exactly the tones they used at
lunch, and laughing the same laughs.  Their life seemed to accord
them perfect satisfaction; they were supplied with their convictions
by Society just as, when at home, they were supplied with all the
other necessaries of life by some co-operative stores.  Their fairly
handsome faces, with the fairly kind expressions, quickly and
carefully regulated by a sense of compromise, began to worry him so
much that when in the same room he would even read to avoid the need
of looking at them.  And yet they were kind--that is, fairly kind--
and clean and quiet in the house, except when they laughed, which was
often, and at things which made him want to howl as a dog howls at
music.

"Mr. Shelton," Ferrand said one day, "I 'm not an amateur of
marriage--never had the chance, as you may well suppose; but, in any
case, you have some people in the house who would make me mark time
before I went committing it.  They seem the ideal young married
people--don't quarrel, have perfect health, agree with everybody, go
to church, have children--but I should like to hear what is beautiful
in their life," and he grimaced.  "It seems to me so ugly that I can
only gasp.  I would much rather they ill-treated each other, just to
show they had the corner of a soul between them.  If that is
marriage, 'Dieu m'en garde!'"

But Shelton did not answer; he was thinking deeply.

The saying of John Noble's, "He's really a most interesting person,"
grew more and more upon his nerves; it seemed to describe the Dennant
attitude towards this stranger within their gates.  They treated him
with a sort of wonder on the "don't touch" system, like an object in
an exhibition.  The restoration, however, of, his self-respect
proceeded with success.  For all the semblance of having grown too
big for Shelton's clothes, for all his vividly burnt face, and the
quick but guarded play of cynicism on his lips--he did much credit to
his patrons.  He had subdued his terror of a razor, and looked well
in a suit of Shelton's flannels.  For, after all, he had only been
eight years exiled from middle-class gentility, and he had been a
waiter half that time.  But Shelton wished him at the devil.  Not for
his manners' sake--he was never tired of watching how subtly the
vagabond adapted his conduct to the conduct of his hosts, while
keeping up his critical detachment--but because that critical
detachment was a constant spur to his own vision, compelling him to
analyse the life into which, he had been born and was about to marry.
This process was disturbing; and to find out when it had commenced,
he had to go back to his meeting with Ferrand on the journey up from
Dover.

There was kindness in a hospitality which opened to so strange a
bird; admitting the kindness, Shelton fell to analysing it.  To
himself, to people of his class, the use of kindness was a luxury,
not significant of sacrifice, but productive of a pleasant feeling in
the heart, such as massage will setup in the legs.  "Everybody's
kind," he thought; "the question is, What understanding is there,
what real sympathy?"  This problem gave him food for thought.

The progress, which Mrs. Dennant not unfrequently remarked upon, in
Ferrand's conquest of his strange position, seemed to Shelton but a
sign that he was getting what he could out of his sudden visit to
green pastures; under the same circumstances, Shelton thought that he
himself would do the same.  He felt that the young foreigner was
making a convenient bow to property, but he had more respect for the
sarcastic smile on the lips of Ferrand's heart.

It was not long before the inevitable change came in the spirit of
the situation; more and more was Shelton conscious of a quaint
uneasiness in the very breathing of the household.

"Curious fellow you've got hold of there, Shelton," Mr. Dennant said
to him during a game of croquet; "he 'll never do any good for
himself, I'm afraid."

"In one sense I'm afraid not," admitted Shelton.

"Do you know his story?  I will bet you sixpence"--and Mr.  Dennant
paused to swing his mallet with a proper accuracy "that he's been in
prison."

"Prison!" ejaculated Shelton.

"I think," said Mr. Dennant, with bent knees carefully measuring his
next shot, "that you ought to make inquiries--ah!  missed it!
Awkward these hoops!  One must draw the line somewhere."

"I never could draw," returned Shelton, nettled and uneasy; "but I
understand--I 'll give him a hint to go."

"Don't," said Mr. Dennant, moving after his second ball, which
Shelton had smitten to the farther end, "be offended, my dear
Shelton, and by no means give him a hint; he interests me very much--
a very clever, quiet young fellow."

That this was not his private view Shelton inferred by studying Mr.
Dennant's manner in the presence of the vagabond.  Underlying the
well-bred banter of the tranquil voice, the guarded quizzicality of
his pale brown face, it could be seen that Algernon Cuffe Dennant,
Esq., J.P., accustomed to laugh at other people, suspected that he
was being laughed at.  What more natural than that he should grope
about to see how this could be?  A vagrant alien was making himself
felt by an English Justice of the Peace--no small tribute, this, to
Ferrand's personality.  The latter would sit silent through a meal,
and yet make his effect.  He, the object of their kindness,
education, patronage, inspired their fear.  There was no longer any
doubt; it was not of Ferrand that they were afraid, but of what they
did not understand in him; of horrid subtleties meandering in the
brain under that straight, wet-looking hair; of something bizarre
popping from the curving lips below that thin, lopsided nose.

But to Shelton in this, as in all else, Antonia was what mattered.
At first, anxious to show her lover that she trusted him, she seemed
never tired of doing things for his young protege, as though she too
had set her heart on his salvation; but, watching her eyes when they
rested on the vagabond, Shelton was perpetually reminded of her
saying on the first day of his visit to Holm Oaks, "I suppose he 's
really good--I mean all these things you told me about were only...."

Curiosity never left her glance, nor did that story of his four days'
starving leave her mind; a sentimental picturesqueness clung about
that incident more valuable by far than this mere human being with
whom she had so strangely come in contact.  She watched Ferrand, and
Shelton watched her.  If he had been told that he was watching her,
he would have denied it in good faith; but he was bound to watch her,
to find out with what eyes she viewed this visitor who embodied all
the rebellious under-side of life, all that was absent in herself.

"Dick," she said to him one day, "you never talk to me of Monsieur
Ferrand."

"Do you want to talk of him?"

"Don't you think that he's improved?"

"He's fatter."

Antonia looked grave.

"No, but really?"

"I don't know," said Shelton; "I can't judge him."

Antonia turned her face away, and something in her attitude alarmed
him.

"He was once a sort of gentleman," she said; "why shouldn't he become
one again?"

Sitting on the low wall of the kitchen-garden, her head was framed by
golden plums.  The sun lay barred behind the foliage of the holm oak,
but a little patch filtering through a gap had rested in the plum-
tree's heart.  It crowned the girl.  Her raiment, the dark leaves,
the red wall, the golden plums, were woven by the passing glow to a
block of pagan colour.  And her face above it, chaste, serene, was
like the scentless summer evening.  A bird amongst the currant bushes
kept a little chant vibrating; and all the plum-tree's shape and
colour seemed alive.

"Perhaps he does n't want to be a gentleman," said Shelton.

Antonia swung her foot.

"How can he help wanting to?"

"He may have a different philosophy of life."

Antonia was slow to answer.

"I know nothing about philosophies of life," she said at last.

Shelton answered coldly,

"No two people have the same."

With the falling sun-glow the charm passed off the tree.  Chilled and
harder, yet less deep, it was no more a block of woven colour, warm
and impassive, like a southern goddess; it was now a northern tree,
with a grey light through its leaves.

"I don't understand you in the least," she said; "everyone wishes to
be good."

"And safe?" asked Shelton gently.

Antonia stared.

"Suppose," he said--"I don't pretend to know, I only suppose--what
Ferrand really cares for is doing things differently from other
people?  If you were to load him with a character and give him money
on condition that he acted as we all act, do you think he would
accept it?"

"Why not?"

"Why are n't cats dogs; or pagans Christians?"

Antonia slid down from the wall.

"You don't seem to think there 's any use in trying," she said, and
turned away.

Shelton made a movement as if he would go after her, and then stood
still, watching her figure slowly pass, her head outlined above the
wall, her hands turned back across her narrow hips.  She halted at
the bend, looked back, then, with an impatient gesture, disappeared.

Antonia was slipping from him!

A moment's vision from without himself would have shown him that it
was he who moved and she who was standing still, like the figure of
one watching the passage of a stream with clear, direct, and sullen
eyes.




CHAPTER XXVIII

THE RIVER

One day towards the end of August Shelton took Antonia on the river--
the river that, like soft music, soothes the land; the river of the
reeds and poplars, the silver swan-sails, sun and moon, woods, and
the white slumbrous clouds; where cuckoos, and the wind, the pigeons,
and the weirs are always singing; and in the flash of naked bodies,
the play of waterlily leaves, queer goblin stumps, and the twilight
faces of the twisted tree-roots, Pan lives once more.

The reach which Shelton chose was innocent of launches, champagne
bottles and loud laughter; it was uncivilised, and seldom troubled by
these humanising influences.  He paddled slowly, silent and absorbed,
watching Antonia.  An unaccustomed languor clung about her; her eyes
had shadows, as though she had not slept; colour glowed softly in her
cheeks, her frock seemed all alight with golden radiance.  She made
Shelton pull into the reeds, and plucked two rounded lilies sailing
like ships against slow-moving water.

"Pull into the shade, please," she said; "it's too hot out here."

The brim of her linen hat kept the sun from her face, but her head
was drooping like a flower's head at noon.

Shelton saw that the heat was really harming her, as too hot a day
will dim the icy freshness of a northern plant.  He dipped his
sculls, the ripples started out and swam in grave diminuendo till
they touched the banks.

He shot the boat into a cleft, and caught the branches of an
overhanging tree.  The skiff rested, balancing with mutinous
vibration, like a living thing.

"I should hate to live in London," said Antonia suddenly;" the slums
must be so awful.  What a pity, when there are places like this!  But
it's no good thinking."

"No," answered Shelton slowly!  "I suppose it is no good."

"There are some bad cottages at the lower end of Cross Eaton.  I went
them one day with Miss Truecote.  The people won't help themselves.
It's so discouraging to help people who won't help themselves."

She was leaning her elbows on her knees, and, with her chin resting
on her hands, gazed up at Shelton.  All around them hung a tent of
soft, thick leaves, and, below, the water was deep-dyed with green
refraction.  Willow boughs, swaying above the boat, caressed
Antonia's arms and shoulders; her face and hair alone were free.

"So discouraging," she said again.

A silence fell....  Antonia seemed thinking deeply.

"Doubts don't help you," she said suddenly; "how can you get any good
from doubts?  The thing is to win victories."

"Victories?" said Shelton.  "I 'd rather understand than conquer!"

He had risen to his feet, and grasped stunted branch, canting the
boat towards the bank.

"How can you let things slide like that, Dick?  It's like Ferrand."

"Have you such a bad opinion of him, then?" asked Shelton.  He felt
on the verge of some, discovery.

She buried her chin deeper in her hands.

"I liked him at first," she said; "I thought that he was different.
I thought he couldn't really be---"

"Really be what?"

Antonia did not answer.

"I don't know," she said at last.  "I can't explain.  I thought---"

Shelton still stood, holding to the branch, and the oscillation of
the boat freed an infinity of tiny ripples.

"You thought--what?" he said.

He ought to have seen her face grow younger, more childish, even
timid.  She said in a voice smooth, round, and young:

"You know, Dick, I do think we ought to try.  I know I don't try half
hard enough.  It does n't do any good to think; when you think,
everything seems so mixed, as if there were nothing to lay hold of.
I do so hate to feel like that.  It is n't as if we didn't know
what's right.  Sometimes I think, and think, and it 's all no good,
only a waste of time, and you feel at the end as if you had been
doing wrong."

Shelton frowned.

"What has n't been through fire's no good," he said; and, letting go
the branch, sat down.  Freed from restraint, the boat edged out
towards the current.  "But what about Ferrand?"

"I lay awake last night wondering what makes you like him so.  He's
so bitter; he makes me feel unhappy.  He never seems content with
anything.  And he despises"--her face hardened--"I mean, he hates us
all!"

"So should I if I were he," said Shelton.

The boat was drifting on, and gleams of sunlight chased across their
faces.  Antonia spoke again.

"He seems to be always looking at dark things, or else he seems as
if--as if he could--enjoy himself too much.  I thought--I thought at
first," she stammered, "that we could do him good."

"Do him good!  Ha, ha!"

A startled rat went swimming for its life against the stream; and
Shelton saw that he had done a dreadful thing: he had let Antonia
with a jerk into a secret not hitherto admitted even by himself--the
secret that her eyes were not his eyes, her way of seeing things not
his nor ever would be.  He quickly muffled up his laughter.  Antonia
had dropped her gaze; her face regained its languor, but the bosom of
her dress was heaving.  Shelton watched her, racking his brains to
find excuses for that fatal laugh; none could he find.  It was a
little piece of truth.  He paddled slowly on, close to the bank, in
the long silence of the river.

The breeze had died away, not a fish was rising; save for the lost
music of the larks no birds were piping; alone, a single pigeon at
brief intervals cooed from the neighbouring wood.

They did not stay much longer in the boat.

On the homeward journey in the pony-cart, rounding a corner of the
road, they came on Ferrand in his pince-nez, holding a cigarette
between his fingers and talking to a tramp, who was squatting on the
bank.  The young foreigner recognised them, and at once removed his
hat.

"There he is," said Shelton, returning the salute.

Antonia bowed.

"Oh!" she, cried, when they were out of hearing, "I wish he 'd go.
I can't bear to see him; it's like looking at the dark."




CHAPTER XXIX

ON THE WING

That night, having gone up to his room, Shelton filled his pipe for
his unpleasant duty.  He had resolved to hint to Ferrand that he had
better go.  He was still debating whether to write or go himself to
the young foreigner, when there came a knock and Ferrand himself
appeared.

"I should be sorry," he said, breaking an awkward silence, "if you
were to think me ungrateful, but I see no future for me here.  It
would be better for me to go.  I should never be content to pass my
life in teaching languages 'ce n'est guere dans mon caractre'."

As soon as what he had been cudgelling his brains to find a way of
saying had thus been said for him, Shelton experienced a sense of
disapproval.

"What do you expect to get that's better?" he said, avoiding
Ferrand's eyes.

"Thanks to your kindness," replied the latter, "I find myself
restored.  I feel that I ought to make some good efforts to dominate
my social position."

"I should think it well over, if I were you!" said Shelton.

"I have, and it seems to me that I'm wasting my time.  For a man with
any courage languages are no career; and, though I 've many defects,
I still have courage."

Shelton let his pipe go out, so pathetic seemed to him this young
man's faith in his career; it was no pretended faith, but neither was
it, he felt, his true motive for departure.  "He's tired," he
thought; "that 's it.  Tired of one place."  And having the
instinctive sense that nothing would keep Ferrand, he redoubled his
advice.

"I should have thought," he said, "that you would have done better to
have held on here and saved a little before going off to God knows
what."

"To save," said Ferrand, "is impossible for me, but, thanks to you
and your good friends, I 've enough to make front to first
necessities.  I'm in correspondence with a friend; it's of great
importance for me to reach Paris before all the world returns.  I 've
a chance to get, a post in one of the West African companies.  One
makes fortunes out there--if one survives, and, as you know, I don't
set too much store by life."

"We have a proverb," said Shelton, "'A bird in the hand is worth two
birds in the bush!'"

"That," returned Ferrand, "like all proverbs, is just half true.
This is an affair of temperament.  It 's not in my character to
dandle one when I see two waiting to be caught; 'voyager, apprendre,
c'est plus fort que moi'."  He paused; then, with a nervous goggle of
the eyes and an ironic smile he said: "Besides, 'mon cher monsieur',
it is better that I go.  I have never been one to hug illusions, and
I see pretty clearly that my presence is hardly acceptable in this
house."

"What makes you say that?" asked, Shelton, feeling that the murder
was now out."

"My dear sir, all the world has not your understanding and your lack
of prejudice, and, though your friends have been extremely kind to
me, I am in a false position; I cause them embarrassment, which is
not extraordinary when you reflect what I have been, and that they
know my history."

"Not through me," said Shelton quickly, "for I don't know it myself."

"It's enough," the vagrant said, "that they feel I'm not a bird of
their feather.  They cannot change, neither can I.  I have never
wanted to remain where I 'm not welcome."

Shelton turned to the window, and stared into the darkness; he would
never quite understand this vagabond, so delicate, so cynical, and he
wondered if Ferrand had been swallowing down the words, "Why, even
you won't be sorry to see my back!"

"Well," he said at last, "if you must go, you must.  When do you
start?"

"I 've arranged with a man to carry my things to the early train.  I
think it better not to say good-bye.  I 've written a letter instead;
here it is.  I left it open for you to read if you should wish,"

"Then," said Shelton, with a curious mingling of relief, regret,
good-will, "I sha'n't see you again?"

Ferrand gave his hand a stealthy rub, and held it out.

"I shall never forget what you have done for me," he said.

"Mind you write," said Shelton.

"Yes, yes"--the, vagrant's face was oddly twisted--"you don't know
what a difference it makes to have a correspondent; it gives one
courage.  I hope to remain a long time in correspondence with you."

"I dare say you do," thought Shelton grimly, with a certain queer
emotion.

"You will do me the justice to remember that I have never asked you
for anything," said Ferrand.  "Thank you a thousand times.
Good-bye!"

He again wrung his patron's hand in his damp grasp, and, going out,
left Shelton with an odd sensation in his throat.  "You will do me
the justice to remember that I have never asked you for anything."
The phrase seemed strange, and his mind flew back over all this queer
acquaintanceship.  It was a fact: from the beginning to the end the
youth had never really asked for anything.  Shelton sat down on his
bed, and began to read the letter in his hand.  It was in French.

DEAR MADAME (it ran),

It will be insupportable to me, after your kindness, if you take me
for ungrateful.  Unfortunately, a crisis has arrived which plunges me
into the necessity of leaving your hospitality.  In all lives, as you
are well aware, there arise occasions that one cannot govern, and I
know that you will pardon me that I enter into no explanation on an
event which gives me great chagrin, and, above all, renders me
subject to an imputation of ingratitude, which, believe me, dear
Madame, by no means lies in my character.  I know well enough that it
is a breach of politeness to leave you without in person conveying
the expression of my profound reconnaissance, but if you consider how
hard it is for me to be compelled to abandon all that is so
distinguished in domestic life, you will forgive my weakness.  People
like me, who have gone through existence with their eyes open, have
remarked that those who are endowed with riches have a right to look
down on such as are not by wealth and breeding fitted to occupy the
same position.  I shall never dispute a right so natural and
salutary, seeing that without this distinction, this superiority,
which makes of the well-born and the well-bred a race apart, the rest
of the world would have no standard by which to rule their lives, no
anchor to throw into the depths of that vast sea of fortune and of
misfortune on which we others drive before the wind.  It is because
of this, dear Madame, that I regard myself so doubly fortunate to
have been able for a few minutes in this bitter pilgrimage called
life, to sit beneath the tree of safety.  To have been able, if only
for an hour, to sit and set the pilgrims pass, the pilgrims with the
blistered feet and ragged clothes, and who yet, dear Madame, guard
within their hearts a certain joy in life, illegal joy, like the
desert air which travellers will tell you fills men as with wine to
be able thus to sit an hour, and with a smile to watch them pass,
lame and blind, in all the rags of their deserved misfortunes, can
you not conceive, dear Madame, how that must be for such as I a
comfort?  Whatever one may say, it is sweet, from a position of
security, to watch the sufferings of others; it gives one a good
sensation in the heart.

In writing this, I recollect that I myself once had the chance of
passing all my life in this enviable safety, and as you may suppose,
dear Madame, I curse myself that I should ever have had the courage
to step beyond the boundaries of this fine tranquil state.  Yet, too,
there have been times when I have asked myself: "Do we really differ
from the wealthy--we others, birds of the fields, who have our own
philosophy, grown from the pains of needing bread--we who see that
the human heart is not always an affair of figures, or of those good
maxims that one finds in copy-books--do we really differ?"  It is
with shame that I confess to have asked myself a question so
heretical.  But now, when for these four weeks I have had the fortune
of this rest beneath your roof, I see how wrong I was to entertain
such doubts.  It is a great happiness to have decided once for all
this point, for it is not in my character to pass through life
uncertain--mistaken, perhaps--on psychological matters such as these.
No, Madame; rest happily assured that there is a great difference,
which in the future will be sacred for me.  For, believe me, Madame,
it would be calamity for high Society if by chance there should arise
amongst them any understanding of all that side of life which--vast
as the plains and bitter as the sea, black as the ashes of a corpse,
and yet more free than any wings of birds who fly away--is so justly
beyond the grasp of their philosophy.  Yes, believe me, dear Madame,
there is no danger in the world so much to be avoided by all the
members of that circle, most illustrious, most respectable, called
high Society.

>From what I have said you may imagine how hard it is for me to take
my flight.  I shall always keep for you the most distinguished
sentiments.  With the expression of my full regard for you and your
good family, and of a gratitude as sincere as it is badly worded,

                         Believe me, dear Madame,
                                   Your devoted
                                             LOUIS FERRAND.

Shelton's first impulse was to tear the letter up, but this he
reflected he had no right to do.  Remembering, too, that Mrs.
Dennant's French was orthodox, he felt sure she would never
understand the young foreigner's subtle innuendoes.  He closed the
envelope and went to bed, haunted still by Ferrand's parting look.

It was with no small feeling of embarrassment, however, that, having
sent the letter to its destination by an early footman, he made his
appearance at the breakfast-table.  Behind the Austrian coffee-urn,
filled with French coffee, Mrs. Dennant, who had placed four eggs in
a German egg-boiler, said "Good-morning," with a kindly smile.

"Dick, an egg?" she asked him, holding up a fifth.

"No, thank you," replied Shelton, greeting the table and fitting
down.

He was a little late; the buzz of conversation rose hilariously
around.

"My dear," continued Mr. Dennant, who was talking to his youngest
daughter, "you'll have no chance whatever--not the least little bit
of chance."

"Father, what nonsense!  You know we shall beat your heads off!"

"Before it 's too late, then, I will eat a muffin.  Shelton, pass the
muffins!  "But in making this request, Mr. Dennant avoided looking in
his face.

Antonia, too, seemed to keep her eyes away from him.  She was talking
to a Connoisseur on Art of supernatural appearances, and seemed in
the highest spirits.  Shelton rose, and, going to the sideboard,
helped himself to grouse.

"Who was the young man I saw yesterday on the lawn?" he heard the
Connoisseur remark.  "Struck me as having an--er--quite intelligent
physiog."

His own intelligent physiog, raised at a slight slant so that he
might look the better through his nose-nippers, was the very pattern
of approval.  "It's curious how one's always meeting with
intelligence;" it seemed to say.  Mrs. Dennant paused in the act of
adding cream, and Shelton scrutinised her face; it was hare-like, and
superior as ever.  Thank goodness she had smelt no rat!  He felt
strangely disappointed.

"You mean Monsieur Ferrand, teachin' Toddles French?  Dobson, the
Professor's cup."

"I hope I shall see him again," cooed the Connoisseur; "he was quite
interesting on the subject of young German working men.  It seems
they tramp from place to place to learn their trades.  What
nationality was he, may I ask?"

Mr. Dennant, of whom he asked this question, lifted his brows, and
said,

"Ask Shelton."

"Half Dutch, half French."

"Very interesting breed; I hope I shall see him again."

"Well, you won't," said Thea suddenly; "he's gone."

Shelton saw that their good breeding alone prevented all from adding,
"And thank goodness, too!"

"Gone?  Dear me, it's very--"

"Yes," said Mr. Dennant, "very sudden."

"Now, Algie," murmured Mrs. Dennant, "it 's quite a charmin' letter.
Must have taken the poor young man an hour to write."

"Oh, mother!" cried Antonia.

And Shelton felt his face go crimson.  He had suddenly remembered
that her French was better than her mother's.

"He seems to have had a singular experience," said the Connoisseur.

"Yes," echoed Mr. Dennant; "he 's had some singular experience.  If
you want to know the details, ask friend Shelton; it's quite
romantic.  In the meantime, my dear; another cup?"

The Connoisseur, never quite devoid of absent-minded malice, spurred
his curiosity to a further effort; and, turning his well-defended
eyes on Shelton, murmured,

"Well, Mr. Shelton, you are the historian, it seems."

"There is no history," said Shelton, without looking up.

"Ah, that's very dull," remarked the Connoisseur.

"My dear Dick," said Mrs. Dennant, "that was really a most touchin'
story about his goin' without food in Paris."

Shelton shot another look at Antonia; her face was frigid.  "I hate
your d---d superiority!" he thought, staring at the Connoisseur.

"There's nothing," said that gentleman, "more enthralling than
starvation.  Come, Mr Shelton."

"I can't tell stories," said Shelton; "never could."

He cared not a straw for Ferrand, his coming, going, or his history;
for, looking at Antonia, his heart was heavy.




CHAPTER XX

THE LADY FROM BEYOND

The morning was sultry, brooding, steamy.  Antonia was at her music,
and from the room where Shelton tried to fix attention on a book he
could hear her practising her scales with a cold fury that cast an
added gloom upon his spirit.  He did not see her until lunch, and
then she again sat next the Connoisseur.  Her cheeks were pale, but
there was something feverish in her chatter to her neighbour; she
still refused to look at Shelton.  He felt very miserable.  After
lunch, when most of them had left the table, the rest fell to
discussing country neighbours.

"Of course," said Mrs. Dennant, "there are the Foliots; but nobody
calls on them."

"Ah!" said the Connoisseur, "the Foliots--the Foliots--the people--
er--who--quite so!"

"It's really distressin'; she looks so sweet ridin' about.  Many
people with worse stories get called on," continued Mrs. Dennant,
with that large frankness of intrusion upon doubtful subjects which
may be made by certain people in a certain way," but, after all, one
couldn't ask them to meet anybody."

"No," the Connoisseur assented.  "I used to know Foliot.  Thousand
pities.  They say she was a very pretty woman."

"Oh, not pretty!"  said Mrs. Dennant! "more interestin than pretty, I
should say."

Shelton, who knew the lady slightly, noticed that they spoke of her
as in the past.  He did not look towards Antonia; for, though a
little troubled at her presence while such a subject was discussed,
he hated his conviction that her face, was as unruffled as though the
Foliots had been a separate species.  There was, in fact, a curiosity
about her eyes, a faint impatience on her lips; she was rolling
little crumbs of bread.  Suddenly yawning, she muttered some remark,
and rose.  Shelton stopped her at the door.

"Where are you going?"

"For a walk."

"May n't I come?".

She shook her head.

"I 'm going to take Toddles."

Shelton held the door open, and went back to the table.

"Yes," the Connoisseur said, sipping at his sherry, "I 'm afraid it's
all over with young Foliot."

"Such a pity!" murmured Mrs. Dennant, and her kindly face looked
quite disturbed.  "I've known him ever since he was a boy.  Of
course, I think he made a great mistake to bring her down here.  Not
even bein' able to get married makes it doubly awkward.  Oh, I think
he made a great mistake!"

"Ah!" said the Connoisseur, "but d' you suppose that makes much
difference?  Even if What 's--his-name gave her a divorce, I don't
think, don't you know, that--"

"Oh, it does!  So many people would be inclined to look over it in
time.  But as it is it's hopeless, quite.  So very awkward for
people, too, meetin' them about.  The Telfords and the Butterwicks--
by the way, they're comin' here to dine to-night--live near them,
don't you know."

"Did you ever meet her before-er-before the flood?" the Connoisseur
inquired; and his lips parting and unexpectedly revealing teeth gave
him a shadowy resemblance to a goat.

"Yes; I did meet her once at the Branksomes'.  I thought her quite a
charmin' person."

"Poor fellow!"  said the Connoisseur; "they tell me he was going to
take the hounds."

"And there are his delightful coverts, too.  Algie often used to
shoot there, and now they say he just has his brother down to shoot
with him.  It's really quite too melancholy!  Did you know him,
Dick?"

"Foliot?" replied Shelton absently.  "No; I never met him: I've seen
her once or twice at Ascot."

Through the window he could see Antonia in her scarlet Tam-o'-
shanter, swinging her stick, and he got up feigning unconcern.  Just
then Toddles came bounding up against his sister.  They went off arm
in arm.  She had seen him at the window, yet she gave no friendly
glance; Shelton felt more miserable than ever.  He stepped out upon
the drive.  There was a lurid, gloomy canopy above; the elm-trees
drooped their heavy blackish green, the wonted rustle of the aspen-
tree was gone, even the rooks were silent.  A store of force lay
heavy on the heart of nature.  He started pacing slowly up and down,
his pride forbidding him to follow her, and presently sat down on an
old stone seat that faced the road.  He stayed a long time staring at
the elms, asking himself what he had done and what he ought to do.
And somehow he was frightened.  A sense of loneliness was on him, so
real, so painful, that he shivered in the sweltering heat.  He was
there, perhaps, an hour, alone, and saw nobody pass along the road.
Then came the sound of horse's hoofs, and at the same time he heard a
motor-car approaching from the opposite direction.  The rider made
appearance first, riding a grey horse with an Arab's high set head
and tail.  She was holding him with difficulty, for the whirr of the
approaching car grew every moment louder.  Shelton rose; the car
flashed by.  He saw the horse stagger in the gate-way, crushing its
rider up against the gatepost.

He ran, but before he reached the gate the lady was on foot, holding
the plunging horse's bridle.

"Are you hurt?" cried Shelton breathlessly, and he, too, grabbed the
bridle.  "Those beastly cars!"

"I don't know," she said.  "Please don't; he won't let strangers
touch him."

Shelton let go, and watched her coax the horse.  She was rather tall,
dressed in a grey habit, with a grey Russian cap upon her head, and
he suddenly recognised the Mrs. Foliot whom they had been talking of
at lunch.

"He 'll be quiet now," she said, "if you would n't mind holding him a
minute."

She gave the reins to him, and leaned against the gate.  She was very
pale.

"I do hope he has n't hurt you," Shelton said.  He was quite close to
her, well able to see her face--a curious face with high cheek-bones
and a flatfish moulding, enigmatic, yet strangely passionate for all
its listless pallor.  Her smiling, tightened lips were pallid;
pallid, too, her grey and deep-set eyes with greenish tints; above
all, pale the ashy mass of hair coiled under her grey cap.

"Th-thanks!"  she said; "I shall be all right directly.  I'm sorry to
have made a fuss."

She bit her lips and smiled.

"I 'm sure you're hurt; do let me go for---" stammered Shelton.
"I can easily get help."

"Help!"  she said, with a stony little laugh; "oh, no, thanks!"

She left the gate, and crossed the road to where he held the horse.
Shelton, to conceal embarrassment, looked at the horse's legs, and
noticed that the grey was resting one of them.  He ran his hand down.

"I 'm afraid," he said, "your horse has knocked his off knee; it's
swelling."

She smiled again.

"Then we're both cripples."

"He'll be lame when he gets cold.  Would n't you like to put him in
the stable here?  I 'm sure you ought to drive home."

"No, thanks; if I 'm able to ride him he can carry me.  Give me a
hand up."

Her voice sounded as though something had offended her.  Rising from
inspection of the horse's leg, Shelton saw Antonia and Toddles
standing by.  They had come through a wicketgate leading from the
fields.

The latter ran up to him at once.

"We saw it," he whispered--"jolly smash-up.  Can't I help?"

"Hold his bridle," answered Shelton, and he looked from one lady to
the other.

There are moments when the expression of a face fixes itself with
painful clearness; to Shelton this was such a moment.  Those two
faces close together, under their coverings of scarlet and of grey,
showed a contrast almost cruelly vivid.  Antonia was flushed, her
eyes had grown deep blue; her look of startled doubt had passed and
left a question in her face.

"Would you like to come in and wait?  We could send you home, in the
brougham," she said.

The lady called Mrs. Foliot stood, one arm across the crupper of her
saddle, biting her lips and smiling still her enigmatic smile, and it
was her face that stayed most vividly on Shelton's mind, its ashy
hail, its pallor, and fixed, scornful eyes.

"Oh, no, thanks!  You're very kind."

Out of Antonia's face the timid, doubting friendliness had fled, and
was replaced by enmity.  With a long, cold look at both of them she
turned away.  Mrs. Foliot gave a little laugh, and raised her foot
for Shelton's help.  He heard a hiss of pain as he swung her up, but
when he looked at her she smiled.

"Anyway,"  he said impatiently, "let me come and see you don't break
down."

She shook her head.  "It 's only two miles.  I'm not made of sugar."

"Then I shall simply have to follow."

She shrugged her shoulders, fixing her resolute eyes on him.

"Would that boy like to come?" she asked.

Toddles left the horse's head.

"By Jove!" he cried.  "Would n't I just!"

"Then," she said, "I think that will be best.  You 've been so kind."

She bowed, smiled inscrutably once more, touched the Arab with her
whip, and started, Toddles trotting at her side.

Shelton was left with Antonia underneath the elms.  A sudden puff of
tepid air blew in their faces, like a warning message from the heavy,
purple heat clouds; low rumbling thunder travelled slowly from afar.

"We're going to have a storm," he said.

Antonia nodded.  She was pale now, and her face still wore its cold
look of offence.

"I 've got a headache," she said, "I shall go in and lie down."

Shelton tried to speak, but something kept him silent--submission to
what was coming, like the mute submission of the fields and birds to
the menace of the storm.

He watched her go, and went back to his seat.  And the silence seemed
to grow; the flowers ceased to exude their fragrance, numbed by the
weighty air.  All the long house behind him seemed asleep, deserted.
No noise came forth, no laughter, the echo of no music, the ringing
of no bell; the heat had wrapped it round with drowsiness.  And the
silence added to the solitude within him.  What an unlucky chance,
that woman's accident!  Designed by Providence to put Antonia further
from him than before!  Why was not the world composed of the
immaculate alone?  He started pacing up and down, tortured by a
dreadful heartache.

"I must get rid of this," he thought.  "I 'll go for a good tramp,
and chance the storm."

Leaving the drive he ran on Toddles, returning in the highest
spirits.

"I saw her home," he crowed.  "I say, what a ripper, isn't she?
She 'll be as lame as a tree to-morrow; so will the gee.  Jolly hot!"

This meeting showed Shelton that he had been an hour on the stone
seat; he had thought it some ten minutes, and the discovery alarmed
him.  It seemed to bring the import of his miserable fear right home
to him.  He started with a swinging stride, keeping his eyes fixed on
the road, the perspiration streaming down his face.




CHAPTER XXXI

THE STORM

It was seven and more when Shelton returned, from his walk; a few
heat drops had splashed the leaves, but the storm had not yet broken.
In brooding silence the world seemed pent beneath the purple
firmament.

By rapid walking in the heat Shelton had got rid of his despondency.
He felt like one who is to see his mistress after long estrangement.
He, bathed, and, straightening his tie-ends, stood smiling at the
glass.  His fear, unhappiness, and doubts seemed like an evil dream;
how much worse off would he not have been, had it all been true?

It was dinner-party night, and when he reached the drawing-room the
guests were there already, chattering of the coming storm.  Antonia
was not yet down, and Shelton stood by the piano waiting for her
entry.  Red faces, spotless shirt-fronts, white arms; and freshly-
twisted hair were all around him.  Some one handed him a clove
carnation, and, as he held it to his nose, Antonia came in,
breathless, as though she had rushed down-stairs, Her cheeks were
pale no longer; her hand kept stealing to her throat.  The flames of
the coming storm seemed to have caught fire within her, to be
scorching her in her white frock; she passed him close, and her
fragrance whipped his senses.

She had never seemed to him so lovely.

Never again will Shelton breathe the perfume of melons and pineapples
without a strange emotion.  From where he sat at dinner he could not
see Antonia, but amidst the chattering of voices, the clink of glass
and silver, the sights and sounds and scents of feasting, he thought
how he would go to her and say that nothing mattered but her love.
He drank the frosted, pale-gold liquid of champagne as if it had been
water.

The windows stood wide open in the heat; the garden lay in thick,
soft shadow, where the pitchy shapes of trees could be discerned.
There was not a breath of air to fan the candle-flames above the
flowers; but two large moths, fearful of the heavy dark, flew in and
wheeled between the lights over the diners' heads.  One fell scorched
into a dish of fruit, and was removed; the other, eluding all the
swish of napkins and the efforts of the footmen, continued to make
soft, fluttering rushes till Shelton rose and caught it in his hand.
He took it to the window and threw it out into the darkness, and he
noticed that the air was thick and tepid to his face.  At a sign from
Mr. Dennant the muslin curtains were then drawn across the windows,
and in gratitude, perhaps, for this protection, this filmy barrier
between them and the muffled threats of Nature, everyone broke out in
talk.  It was such a night as comes in summer after perfect weather,
frightening in its heat, and silence, which was broken by the distant
thunder travelling low along the ground like the muttering of all
dark places on the earth--such a night as seems, by very
breathlessness, to smother life, and with its fateful threats to
justify man's cowardice.

The ladies rose at last.  The circle of the rosewood dining-table,
which had no cloth, strewn with flowers and silver gilt, had a
likeness to some autumn pool whose brown depths of oily water gleam
under the sunset with red and yellow leaves; above it the smoke of
cigarettes was clinging, like a mist to water when the sun goes down.
Shelton became involved in argument with his neighbour on the English
character.

"In England we've mislaid the recipe of life," he said.  "Pleasure's
a lost art.  We don't get drunk, we're ashamed of love, and as to
beauty, we've lost the eye for' it.  In exchange we have got money,
but what 's the good of money when we don't know how to spend it?"
Excited by his neighbour's smile, he added: "As to thought, we think
so much of what our neighbours think that we never think at all....
Have you ever watched a foreigner when he's listening to an
Englishman?  We 're in the habit of despising foreigners; the scorn
we have for them is nothing to the scorn they have for us.  And they
are right!  Look at our taste!  What is the good of owning riches if
we don't know how to use them?"

"That's rather new to me," his neighbour said.  "There may be
something in it....  Did you see that case in the papers the other
day of old Hornblower, who left the 1820 port that fetched a guinea a
bottle?  When the purchaser--poor feller!--came to drink it he found
eleven bottles out of twelve completely ullaged--ha! ha!  Well,
there's nothing wrong with this"; and he drained his glass.

"No," answered Shelton.

When they rose to join the ladies, he slipped out on the lawn.

At once he was enveloped in a bath of heat.  A heavy odour, sensual,
sinister, was in the air, as from a sudden flowering of amorous
shrubs.  He stood and drank it in with greedy nostrils.  Putting his
hand down, he felt the grass; it was dry, and charged with
electricity.  Then he saw, pale and candescent in the blackness,
three or four great lilies, the authors of that perfume.  The
blossoms seemed to be rising at him through the darkness; as though
putting up their faces to be kissed.  He straightened himself
abruptly and went in.

The guests were leaving when Shelton, who was watching; saw Antonia
slip through the drawing-room window.  He could follow the white
glimmer of her frock across the lawn, but lost it in the shadow of
the trees; casting a hasty look to see that he was not observed, he
too slipped out.  The blackness and the heat were stifling he took
great breaths of it as if it were the purest mountain air, and,
treading softly on the grass, stole on towards the holm oak.  His
lips were dry, his heart beat painfully.  The mutter of the distant
thunder had quite ceased; waves of hot air came wheeling in his face,
and in their midst a sudden rush of cold.  He thought, "The storm is
coming now!"  and stole on towards the tree.  She was lying in the
hammock, her figure a white blur in, the heart of the tree's shadow,
rocking gently to a little creaking of the branch.  Shelton held his
breath; she had not heard him.  He crept up close behind the trunk
till he stood in touch of her.  "I mustn't startle her," he thought.
"Antonia!"

There was a faint stir in the hammock, but no answer.  He stood over
her, but even then he could not see her face; he only, had a sense of
something breathing and alive within a yard of him--of something warm
and soft.  He whispered again, "Antonia!" but again there came no
answer, and a sort of fear and frenzy seized on him.  He could no
longer hear her breathe; the creaking of the branch had ceased.  What
was passing in that silent, living creature there so close?  And then
he heard again the sound of breathing, quick and scared, like the
fluttering of a bird; in a moment he was staring in the dark at an
empty hammock.

He stayed beside the empty hammock till he could bear uncertainty no
longer.  But as he crossed the lawn the sky was rent from end to end
by jagged lightning, rain spattered him from head to foot, and with a
deafening crack the thunder broke.

He sought the smoking-room, but, recoiling at the door, went to his
own room, and threw himself down on the bed.  The thunder groaned and
sputtered in long volleys; the lightning showed him the shapes of
things within the room, with a weird distinctness that rent from them
all likeness to the purpose they were made for, bereaved them of
utility, of their matter-of-factness, presented them as skeletons,
abstractions, with indecency in their appearance, like the naked
nerves and sinews of a leg preserved in, spirit.  The sound of the
rain against the house stunned his power of thinking, he rose to shut
his windows; then, returning to his bed, threw himself down again.
He stayed there till the storm was over, in a kind of stupor; but
when the boom of the retreating thunder grew every minute less
distinct, he rose.  Then for the first time he saw something white
close by the door.

It was a note:

I have made a mistake.  Please forgive me, and go away.--ANTONIA.




CHAPTER XXXII

WILDERNESS

When he had read this note, Shelton put it down beside his sleeve-
links on his dressing table, stared in the mirror at himself, and
laughed. But his lips soon stopped him laughing; he threw himself
upon his bed and pressed his face into the pillows.  He lay there
half-dressed throughout the night, and when he rose, soon after dawn,
he had not made his mind up what to do.  The only thing he knew for
certain was that he must not meet Antonia.

At last he penned the following:

I have had a sleepless night with toothache, and think it best to run
up to the dentist at once.  If a tooth must come out, the sooner the
better.

He addressed it to Mrs. Dennant, and left it on his table.  After
doing this he threw himself once more upon his bed, and this time
fell into a doze.

He woke with a start, dressed, and let himself quietly out.  The
likeness of his going to that of Ferrand struck him.  "Both outcasts
now," he thought.

He tramped on till noon without knowing or caring where he went;
then, entering a field, threw himself down under the hedge, and fell
asleep.

He was awakened by a whirr.  A covey of partridges, with wings
glistening in the sun, were straggling out across the adjoining field
of mustard.  They soon settled in the old-maidish way of partridges,
and began to call upon each other.

Some cattle had approached him in his sleep, and a beautiful bay cow,
with her head turned sideways, was snuffing at him gently, exhaling
her peculiar sweetness.  She was as fine in legs and coat as any
race-horse.  She dribbled at the corners of her black, moist lips;
her eye was soft and cynical.  Breathing the vague sweetness of the
mustard-field, rubbing dry grasp-stalks in his fingers, Shelton had a
moment's happiness--the happiness of sun and sky, of the eternal
quiet, and untold movements of the fields.  Why could not human
beings let their troubles be as this cow left the flies that clung
about her eyes?  He dozed again, and woke up with a laugh, for this
was what he dreamed:

He fancied he was in a room, at once the hall and drawing-room of
some country house.  In the centre of this room a lady stood, who was
looking in a hand-glass at her face.  Beyond a door or window could
be seen a garden with a row of statues, and through this door people
passed without apparent object.

Suddenly Shelton saw his mother advancing to the lady with the hand-
glass, whom now he recognised as Mrs. Foliot.  But, as he looked, his
mother changed to Mrs. Dennant, and began speaking in a voice that
was a sort of abstract of refinement.  "Je fais de la philosophic,"
it said; "I take the individual for what she's worth.  I do not
condemn; above all, one must have spirit!"  The lady with the mirror
continued looking in the glass; and, though he could not see her
face, he could see its image-pale, with greenish eyes, and a smile
like scorn itself.  Then, by a swift transition, he was walking in
the garden talking to Mrs. Dennant.

It was from this talk that he awoke with laughter.  "But," she had
been saying, "Dick, I've always been accustomed to believe what I was
told.  It was so unkind of her to scorn me just because I happen to
be second-hand."  And her voice awakened Shelton's pity; it was like
a frightened child's.  "I don't know what I shall do if I have to
form opinions for myself.  I was n't brought up to it.  I 've always
had them nice and secondhand.  How am I to go to work?  One must
believe what other people do; not that I think much of other people,
but, you do know what it is--one feels so much more comfortable," and
her skirts rustled.  "But, Dick, whatever happens"--her voice
entreated--"do let Antonia get her judgments secondhand.  Never mind
for me--if I must form opinions for myself, I must--but don't let
her; any old opinions so long as they are old.  It 's dreadful to
have to think out new ones for oneself."  And he awoke.  His dream
had had in it the element called Art, for, in its gross absurdity,
Mrs. Dennant had said things that showed her soul more fully than
anything she would have said in life.

"No," said a voice quite close, behind the hedge, "not many
Frenchmen, thank the Lord!  A few coveys of Hungarians over from the
Duke's.  Sir James, some pie?"

Shelton raised himself with drowsy curiosity--still half asleep--and
applied his face to a gap in the high, thick osiers of the hedge.
Four men were seated on camp-stools round a folding-table, on which
was a pie and other things to eat.  A game-cart, well-adorned with
birds and hares, stood at a short distance; the tails of some dogs
were seen moving humbly, and a valet opening bottles.  Shelton had
forgotten that it was "the first."  The host was a soldierly and
freckled man; an older man sat next him, square-jawed, with an
absent-looking eye and sharpened nose; next him, again, there was a
bearded person whom they seemed to call the Commodore; in the fourth,
to his alarm, Shelton recognised the gentleman called Mabbey.  It was
really no matter for surprise to meet him miles from his own place,
for he was one of those who wander with a valet and two guns from the
twelfth of August to the end of January, and are then supposed to go
to Monte Carlo or to sleep until the twelfth of August comes again.

He was speaking.

"Did you hear what a bag we made on the twelfth, Sir James?"

"Ah! yes; what was that?  Have you sold your bay horse, Glennie?"

Shelton had not decided whether or no to sneak away, when the
Commodore's thick voice began:

"My man tellsh me that Mrs. Foliot--haw--has lamed her Arab.  Does
she mean to come out cubbing?"

Shelton observed the smile that came on all their faces.  "Foliot 's
paying for his good time now; what a donkey to get caught!" it seemed
to say.  He turned his back and shut his eyes.

"Cubbing?" replied Glennie; "hardly."

"Never could shee anything wonderful in her looks," went on the
Commodore; "so quiet, you never knew that she was in the room.  I
remember sayin' to her once, 'Mrs. Lutheran, now what do you like
besht in all the world?' and what do you think she answered?  'Music!'
Haw!"

The voice of Mabbey said:

"He was always a dark horse, Foliot: It 's always the dark horses
that get let in for this kind of thing"; and there was a sound as
though he licked his lips.

"They say," said the voice of the host, "he never gives you back a
greeting now.  Queer fish; they say that she's devoted to him."

Coming so closely on his meeting with this lady, and on the dream
from which he had awakened, this conversation mesmerised the listener
behind the hedge.

"If he gives up his huntin' and his shootin', I don't see what the
deuce he 'll do; he's resigned his clubs; as to his chance of
Parliament---" said the voice of Mabbey.

"Thousand pities," said Sir James; "still, he knew what to expect."

"Very queer fellows, those Foliots," said the Commodore.  "There was
his father: he 'd always rather talk to any scarecrow he came across
than to you or me.  Wonder what he'll do with all his horses; I
should like that chestnut of his."

"You can't tell what a fellow 'll do," said the voice of Mabbey--
"take to drink or writin' books.  Old Charlie Wayne came to gazin' at
stars, and twice a week he used to go and paddle round in
Whitechapel, teachin' pothooks--"

"Glennie," said Sir James, "what 's become of Smollett, your old
keeper?"

"Obliged to get rid of him."  Shelton tried again to close his ears,
but again he listened.  "Getting a bit too old; lost me a lot of eggs
last season."

"Ah!"  said the Commodore, "when they oncesh begin to lose eggsh--"

"As a matter of fact, his son--you remember him, Sir James, he used
to load for you?--got a girl into trouble; when her people gave her
the chuck old Smollet took her in; beastly scandal it made, too.  The
girl refused to marry Smollett, and old Smollett backed her up.
Naturally, the parson and the village cut up rough; my wife offered
to get her into one of those reformatory what-d' you-call-'ems, but
the old fellow said she should n't go if she did n't want to.  Bad
business altogether; put him quite off his stroke.  I only got five
hundred pheasants last year instead of eight."

There was a silence.  Shelton again peeped through the hedge.  All
were eating pie.

"In Warwickshire," said the Commodore, "they always marry--haw--and
live reshpectable ever after."

"Quite so," remarked the host; "it was a bit too thick, her refusing
to marry him.  She said he took advantage of her."

"She's sorry by this time," said Sir James; "lucky escape for young
Smollett.  Queer, the obstinacy of some of these old fellows!"

"What are we doing after lunch?" asked the Commodore.

"The next field," said the host, "is pasture.  We line up along the
hedge, and drive that mustard towards the roots; there ought to be a
good few birds."

"Shelton rose, and, crouching, stole softly to the gate:

"On the twelfth, shootin' in two parties," followed the voice of
Mabbey from the distance.

Whether from his walk or from his sleepless night, Shelton seemed to
ache in every limb; but he continued his tramp along the road.  He
was no nearer to deciding what to do.  It was late in the afternoon
when he reached Maidenhead, and, after breaking fast, got into a
London train and went to sleep.  At ten o'clock that evening he
walked into St. James's Park and there sat down.

The lamplight dappled through the tired foliage on to these benches
which have rested many vagrants.  Darkness has ceased to be the
lawful cloak of the unhappy; but Mother Night was soft and moonless,
and man had not despoiled her of her comfort, quite.

Shelton was not alone upon the seat, for at the far end was sitting a
young girl with a red, round, sullen face; and beyond, and further
still, were dim benches and dim figures sitting on them, as though
life's institutions had shot them out in an endless line of rubbish.

"Ah!"  thought Shelton, in the dreamy way of tired people; "the
institutions are all right; it's the spirit that's all---"

"Wrong?"  said a voice behind him; "why, of course!  You've taken the
wrong turn, old man."

He saw a policeman, with a red face shining through the darkness,
talking to a strange old figure like some aged and dishevelled bird.

"Thank you, constable," the old man said, "as I've come wrong I'll
take a rest."  Chewing his gums, he seemed to fear to take the
liberty of sitting down.

Shelton made room, and the old fellow took the vacant place.

"You'll excuse me, sir, I'm sure," he said in shaky tones, and
snatching at his battered hat; "I see you was a gentleman"--and
lovingly he dwelt upon the word--"would n't disturb you for the
world.  I'm not used to being out at night, and the seats do get so
full.  Old age must lean on something; you'll excuse me, sir, I 'm
sure."

"Of course," said Shelton gently.

"I'm a respectable old man, really," said his neighbour; "I never
took a liberty in my life.  But at my age, sir, you get nervous;
standin' about the streets as I been this last week, an' sleepin' in
them doss-houses--Oh, they're dreadful rough places--a dreadful rough
lot there!  Yes," the old man said again, as Shelton turned to look
at him, struck by the real self-pity in his voice, "dreadful rough
places!"

A movement of his head, which grew on a lean, plucked neck like that
of an old fowl, had brought his face into the light.  It was long,
and run to seed, and had a large, red nose; its thin, colourless lips
were twisted sideways and apart, showing his semi-toothless mouth;
and his eyes had that aged look of eyes in which all colour runs into
a thin rim round the iris; and over them kept coming films like the
films over parrots' eyes.  He was, or should have been, clean-shaven.
His hair--for he had taken off his hat was thick and lank, of dusty
colour, as far as could be seen, without a  speck of grey, and parted
very beautifully just about the middle.

"I can put up with that," he said again.  "I never interferes with
nobody, and nobody don't interfere with me; but what frightens me"--
his voice grew steady, as if too terrified to shake, is never knowin'
day to day what 's to become of yer.  Oh, that 'a dreadful, that is!"

"It must be," answered Shelton.

"Ah! it is," the old man said; "and the winter cumin' on.  I never
was much used to open air, bein' in domestic service all my life; but
I don't mind that so long as I can see my way to earn a livin'.
Well, thank God!  I've got a job at last"; and his voice grew
cheerful suddenly.  "Sellin' papers is not what I been accustomed to;
but the Westminister, they tell me that's one of the most respectable
of the evenin' papers--in fact, I know it is.  So now I'm sure to get
on; I try hard."

"How did you get the job?" asked Shelton.

"I 've got my character," the old fellow said, making a gesture with
a skinny hand towards his chest, as if it were there he kept his
character.

"Thank God, nobody can't take that away!  I never parts from that";
and fumbling, he produced a packet, holding first one paper to the
light, and then another, and he looked anxiously at Shelton.  "In
that house where I been sleepin' they're not honest; they 've stolen
a parcel of my things--a lovely shirt an' a pair of beautiful gloves
a gentleman gave me for holdin' of his horse.  Now, would n't you
prosecute 'em, sir?"

"It depends on what you can prove."

"I know they had 'em.  A man must stand up for his rights; that's
only proper.  I can't afford to lose beautiful things like them.  I
think I ought to prosecute, now, don't you, sir?"

Shelton restrained a smile.

"There!"  said the old man, smoothing out a piece of paper shakily,
"that's Sir George!"  and his withered finger-tips trembled on the
middle of the page: 'Joshua Creed, in my service five years as
butler, during which time I have found him all that a servant should
be.'  And this 'ere'--he fumbled with another--"this 'ere 's Lady
Glengow: 'Joshua Creed--' I thought I'd like you to read 'em since
you've been so kind."

"Will you have a pipe?"

"Thank  ye, sir," replied the aged butler, filling his clay from
Shelton's pouch; then, taking a front tooth between his finger and
his thumb, he began to feel it tenderly, working it to and fro with a
sort of melancholy pride.

"My teeth's a-comin' out," he said; "but I enjoys pretty good health
for a man of my age."

"How old is that?"

"Seventy-two!  Barrin' my cough, and my rupture, and this 'ere
affliction"--he passed his hand over his face--" I 've nothing to
complain of; everybody has somethink, it seems.  I'm a wonder for my
age, I think."

Shelton, for all his pity, would have given much to laugh.

"Seventy-two!" he said; "yes, a great age.  You remember the country
when it was very different to what it is now?"

"Ah!" said the old butler, "there was gentry then; I remember them
drivin' down to Newmarket (my native place, sir) with their own
horses.  There was n't so much o' these here middle classes then.
There was more, too, what you might call the milk o' human kindness
in people then--none o' them amalgamated stores, every man keepin'
his own little shop; not so eager to cut his neighbour's throat, as
you might say.  And then look at the price of bread!  O dear!  why,
it is n't a quarter what it was!"

"And are people happier now than they were then?" asked Shelton.

The old butler sucked his pipe.

"No," he answered, shaking his old head; "they've lost the contented
spirit.  I see people runnin' here and runnin' there, readin' books,
findin' things out; they ain't not so self-contented as they were."

"Is that possible?" thought Shelton.

"No," repeated the old man, again sucking at his pipe, and this time
blowing out a lot of smoke; "I don't see as much happiness about, not
the same look on the faces.  'T isn't likely.  See these 'ere motor-
cars, too; they say 'orses is goin' out"; and, as if dumbfounded at
his own conclusion, he sat silent for some time, engaged in the
lighting and relighting of his pipe.

The girl at the far end stirred, cleared her throat, and settled down
again; her movement disengaged a scent of frowsy clothes.  The
policeman had approached and scrutinised these ill-assorted faces;
his glance was jovially contemptuous till he noticed Shelton, and
then was modified by curiosity.

"There's good men in the police," the aged butler said, when the
policeman had passed on--" there's good men in the police, as good
men as you can see, and there 's them that treats you like the dirt--
a dreadful low class of man.  Oh dear, yes!  when they see you down
in the world, they think they can speak to you as they like; I don't
give them no chance to worry me; I keeps myself to myself, and speak
civil to all the world.  You have to hold the candle to them; for, oh
dear! if they 're crossed--some of them--they 're a dreadful
unscrup'lous lot of men!"

"Are you going to spend the night here?"

"It's nice and warm to-night," replied the aged butler.  "I said to
the man at that low place I said: 'Don't you ever speak to me again,'
I said, 'don't you come near me!'  Straightforward and honest 's been
my motto all my life; I don't want to have nothing to say to them low
fellows"--he made an annihilating gesture--"after the way they
treated me, takin' my things like that.  Tomorrow I shall get a room
for three shillin's a week, don't you think so, sir?  Well, then I
shall be all right.  I 'm not afraid now; the mind at rest.  So long
as I ran keep myself, that's all I want.  I shall do first-rate, I
think"; and he stared at Shelton, but the look in his eyes and the
half-scared optimism of his voice convinced the latter that he lived
in dread.  "So long as I can keep myself," he said again, "I sha'n't
need no workhouse nor lose respectability."

"No," thought Shelton; and for some time sat without a word.  "When
you can;" he said at last, "come and see me; here's my card."

The aged butler became conscious with a jerk, for he was nodding.

"Thank ye, sir; I will," he said, with pitiful alacrity.  "Down by
Belgravia?  Oh, I know it well; I lived down in them parts with a
gentleman of the name of Bateson--perhaps you knew him; he 's dead
now--the Honourable Bateson.  Thank ye, sir; I'll be sure to come";
and, snatching at his battered hat, he toilsomely secreted Shelton's
card amongst his character.  A minute later he began again to nod.

The policeman passed a second time; his gaze seemed to say, "Now,
what's a toff doing on that seat with those two rotters?"  And
Shelton caught his eye.

"Ah!"  he thought; "exactly!  You don't know what to make of me--a
man of my position sitting here!  Poor devil! to spend your days in
spying on your fellow-creatures!  Poor devil!  But you don't know
that you 're a poor devil, and so you 're not one."

The man on the next bench sneezed--a shrill and disapproving sneeze.

The policeman passed again, and, seeing that the lower creatures were
both dozing, he spoke to Shelton:

"Not very safe on these 'ere benches, sir," he said; "you never know
who you may be sittin' next to.  If I were you, sir, I should be
gettin' on--if you 're not goin' to spend the night here, that is";
and he laughed, as at an admirable joke.

Shelton looked at him, and itched to say, "Why shouldn't I?" but it
struck him that it would sound very odd.  "Besides," he thought, "I
shall only catch a cold"; and, without speaking, he left the seat,
and went along towards his rooms.




CHAPTER XXXIII

THE END

He reached his rooms at midnight so exhausted that, without waiting
to light up, he dropped into a chair.  The curtains and blinds had
been removed for cleaning, and the tall windows admitted the night's
staring gaze.  Shelton fixed his eyes on that outside darkness, as
one lost man might fix his eyes upon another.

An unaired, dusty odour clung about the room, but, like some God-sent
whiff of grass or flowers wafted to one sometimes in the streets, a
perfume came to him, the spice from the withered clove carnation
still clinging, to his button-hole; and he suddenly awoke from his.
queer trance.  There was a decision to be made.  He rose to light a
candle; the dust was thick on everything he touched.  "Ugh!"  he
thought, "how wretched!"  and the loneliness that had seized him on
the stone seat at Holm Oaks the day before returned with fearful
force.

On his table, heaped without order, were a pile of bills and
circulars.  He opened them, tearing at their covers with the random
haste of men back from their holidays.  A single long envelope was
placed apart.

MY DEAR DICK [he read],

I enclose you herewith the revised draft of your marriage settlement.
It is now shipshape.  Return it before the end of the week, and I
will have it engrossed for signature.  I go to Scotland next
Wednesday for a month; shall be back in good time for your wedding.
My love to your mother when you see her.
               Your-affectionate uncle,
                         EDMUND PARAMOR.


Shelton smiled and took out the draft.

"This Indenture made the____day of 190_, between Richard Paramor
Shelton---"

He put it down and sank back in his chair, the chair in which the
foreign vagrant had been wont to sit on mornings when he came to
preach philosophy.

He did not stay there long, but in sheer unhappiness got up, and,
taking his candle, roamed about the room, fingering things, and
gazing in the mirror at his face, which seemed to him repulsive in
its wretchedness.  He went at last into the hall and opened the door,
to go downstairs again into the street; but the sudden certainty
that, in street or house, in town or country, he would have to take
his trouble with him, made him shut it to.  He felt in the letter-
box, drew forth a letter, and with this he went back to the sitting-
room.

It was from Antonia.  And such was his excitement that he was forced
to take three turns between the window and the wall before he could
read; then, with a heart beating so that he could hardly hold the
paper, he began:

I was wrong to ask you to go away.  I see now that it was breaking my
promise, and I did n't mean to do that.  I don't know why things have
come to be so different.  You never think as I do about anything.

I had better tell you that that letter of Monsieur Ferrand's to
mother was impudent.  Of course you did n't know what was in it; but
when Professor Brayne was asking you about him at breakfast, I felt
that you believed that he was right and we were wrong, and I can't
understand it.  And then in the afternoon, when that woman hurt her
horse, it was all as if you were on her side.  How can you feel like
that?

I must say this, because I don't think I ought to have asked you to
go away, and I want you to believe that I will keep my promise, or I
should feel that you and everybody else had a right to condemn me.
I was awake all last night, and have a bad headache this morning.  I
can't write any more.

ANTONIA.


His first sensation was a sort of stupefaction of relief that had in
it an element of anger.  He was reprieved!  She would not break her
promise; she considered herself bound!  In the midst of the
exaltation of this thought he smiled, and that smile was strange.

He read it through again, and, like a judge, began to weigh what she
had written, her thoughts when she was writing, the facts which had
led up to this.

The vagrant's farewell document had done the business.  True to his
fatal gift of divesting things of clothing, Ferrand had not vanished
without showing up his patron in his proper colours; even to Shelton
those colours were made plain.  Antonia had felt her lover was a
traitor.  Sounding his heart even in his stress of indecision,
Shelton knew that this was true.

"Then in the afternoon, when that woman hurt her horse-"  That woman!
"It was as if you were on her side!"

He saw too well her mind, its clear rigidity, its intuitive
perception of that with which it was not safe to sympathise, its
instinct for self-preservation, its spontaneous contempt for those
without that instinct.  And she had written these words considering
herself bound to him--a man of sentiment, of rebellious sympathies,
of untidiness of principle!  Here was the answer to the question he
had asked all day: "How have things come to such a pass?" and he
began to feel compassion for her.

Poor child!  She could not jilt him; there was something vulgar in
the word!  Never should it be said that Antonia Dennant had accented
him and thrown him over.  No lady did these things!  They were
impossible!  At the bottom of his heart he had a queer, unconscious
sympathy with, this impossibility.

Once again he read the letter, which seemed now impregnated with
fresh meaning, and the anger which had mingled with his first
sensation of relief detached itself and grew in force.  In that
letter there was something tyrannous, a denial of his right to have a
separate point of view.  It was like a finger pointed at him as an
unsound person.  In marrying her he would be marrying not only her,
but her class--his class.  She would be there always to make him look
on her and on himself, and all the people that they knew and all the
things they did, complacently; she would be there to make him feel
himself superior to everyone whose life was cast in other moral
moulds.  To feel himself superior, not blatantly, not consciously,
but with subconscious righteousness.

But his anger, which was like the paroxysm that two days before had
made him mutter at the Connoisseur, "I hate your d---d superiority,"
struck him all at once as impotent and ludicrous.  What was the good
of being angry?  He was on the point of losing her!  And the anguish
of that thought, reacting on his anger, intensified it threefold.
She was so certain of herself, so superior to her emotions, to her
natural impulses--superior to her very longing to be free from him.
Of that fact, at all events, Shelton had no longer any doubt.  It was
beyond argument.  She did not really love him; she wanted to be free
of him!

A photograph hung in his bedroom at Holm Oaks of a group round the
hall door; the Honourable Charlotte Penguin, Mrs. Dennant, Lady
Bonington, Halidome, Mr. Dennant, and the stained-glass man--all were
there; and on the left-hand side, looking straight in front of her,
Antonia.  Her face in its youthfulness, more than all those others,
expressed their point of view: Behind those calm young eyes lay a
world of safety and tradition.  "I am not as others are," they seemed
to say.

And from that photograph Mr. and Mrs. Dennant singled themselves out;
he could see their faces as they talked--their faces with a peculiar
and uneasy look on them; and he could hear their voices, still
decisive, but a little acid, as if they had been quarrelling:

"He 's made a donkey of himself!"

"Ah!  it's too distressin'!"

They, too, thought him unsound, and did n't want him; but to save the
situation they would be glad to keep him.  She did n't want him, but
she refused to lose her right to say, "Commoner girls may break their
promises; I will not!"  He sat down at the table between the candles,
covering his face.  His grief and anger grew and grew within him.  If
she would not free herself, the duty was on him!  She was ready
without love to marry him, as a sacrifice to her ideal of what she
ought to be!

But she had n't, after all, the monopoly of pride!

As if she stood before him, he could see the shadows underneath her
eyes that he had dreamed of kissing, the eager movements of her lips.
For several minutes he remained, not moving hand or limb.  Then once
more his anger blazed.  She was going to sacrifice herself and--him!
All his manhood scoffed at such a senseless sacrifice.  That was not
exactly what he wanted!

He went to the bureau, took a piece of paper and an envelope, and
wrote as follows:

There never was, is not, and never would have been any question of
being bound between us.  I refuse to trade on any such thing.  You
are absolutely free.  Our engagement is at an end by mutual consent.

                              RICHARD SHELTON.


He sealed it, and, sitting with his hands between his knees, he let
his forehead droop lower and lower to the table, till it rested on
his marriage settlement.  And he had a feeling of relief, like one
who drops exhausted at his journey's end.





End of Project Gutenberg Etext The Island Pharisees, by John Galsworthy






THE COUNTRY HOUSE

by JOHN GALSWORTHY




CHAPTER I

A PARTY AT WORSTED SKEYNES

The year was 1891, the month October, the day Monday.  In the dark
outside the railway-station at Worsted Skeynes Mr. Horace Pendyce's
omnibus, his brougham, his luggage-cart, monopolised space.  The face
of Mr. Horace Pendyce's coachman monopolised the light of the
solitary station lantern.  Rosy-gilled, with fat close-clipped grey
whiskers and inscrutably pursed lips, it presided high up in the
easterly air like an emblem of the feudal system.  On the platform
within, Mr. Horace Pendyce's first footman and second groom in long
livery coats with silver buttons, their appearance slightly relieved
by the rakish cock of their top-hats, awaited the arrival of the
6.15.

The first footman took from his pocket a half-sheet of stamped and
crested notepaper covered with Mr. Horace Pendyce's small and precise
calligraphy.  He read from it in a nasal, derisive voice:

"Hon. Geoff, and Mrs. Winlow, blue room and dress; maid, small drab.
Mr. George, white room.  Mrs. Jaspar Bellew, gold.  The Captain, red.
General Pendyce, pink room; valet, back attic.  That's the lot."

The groom, a red-cheeked youth, paid no attention.

"If this here Ambler of Mr. George's wins on Wednesday," he said,
"it's as good as five pounds in my pocket.  Who does for Mr. George?"

"James, of course."

The groom whistled.

"I'll try an' get his loadin' to-morrow.  Are you on, Tom?"

The footman answered:

"Here's another over the page.  Green room, right wing--that
Foxleigh; he's no good.  'Take all you can and give nothing' sort!
But can't he shoot just!  That's why they ask him!"

>From behind a screen of dark trees the train ran in.

Down the platform came the first passengers--two cattlemen with long
sticks, slouching by in their frieze coats, diffusing an odour of
beast and black tobacco; then a couple, and single figures, keeping
as far apart as possible, the guests of Mr. Horace Pendyce.  Slowly
they came out one by one into the loom of the carriages, and stood
with their eyes fixed carefully before them, as though afraid they
might recognise each other.  A tall man in a fur coat, whose tall
wife carried a small bag of silver and shagreen, spoke to the
coachman:

"How are you, Benson?  Mr. George says Captain Pendyce told him he
wouldn't be down till the 9.30.  I suppose we'd better---"

Like a breeze tuning through the frigid silence of a fog, a high,
clear voice was heard:

"Oh, thanks; I'll go up in the brougham."

Followed by the first footman carrying her wraps, and muffled in a
white veil, through which the Hon. Geoffrey Winlow's leisurely gaze
caught the gleam of eyes, a lady stepped forward, and with a backward
glance vanished into the brougham.  Her head appeared again behind
the swathe of gauze.

"There's plenty of room, George."

George Pendyce walked quickly forward, and disappeared beside her.
There was a crunch of wheels; the brougham rolled away.

The Hon. Geoffrey Winlow raised his face again.

"Who was that, Benson?"

The coachman leaned over confidentially, holding his podgy
white-gloved hand outspread on a level with the Hon. Geoffrey's hat.

"Mrs. Jaspar Bellew, sir.  Captain Bellew's lady, of the Firs."

"But I thought they weren't---"

"No, sir; they're not, sir."

"Ah!"

A calm rarefied voice was heard from the door of the omnibus:

"Now, Geoff!"

The Hon. Geoffrey Winlow followed his wife, Mr. Foxleigh, and General
Pendyce into the omnibus, and again Mrs. Winlow's voice was heard:

"Oh, do you mind my maid?  Get in, Tookson!"

Mr. Horace Pendyce's mansion, white and long and low, standing well
within its acres, had come into the possession of his great-great-
great-grandfather through an alliance with the last of the Worsteds.
Originally a fine property let in smallish holdings to tenants who,
having no attention bestowed on them, did very well and paid
excellent rents, it was now farmed on model lines at a slight loss.
At stated intervals Mr. Pendyce imported a new kind of cow, or
partridge, and built a wing to the schools.  His income was
fortunately independent of this estate.  He was in complete accord
with the Rector and the sanitary authorities, and not infrequently
complained that his tenants did not stay on the land.  His wife was a
Totteridge, and his coverts admirable.  He had been, needless to say,
an eldest son.  It was his individual conviction that individualism
had ruined England, and he had set himself deliberately to eradicate
this vice from the character of his tenants.  By substituting for
their individualism his own tastes, plans, and sentiments, one might
almost say his own individualism, and losing money thereby, he had
gone far to demonstrate his pet theory that the higher the
individualism the more sterile the life of the community.  If,
however, the matter was thus put to him he grew both garrulous and
angry, for he considered himself not an individualist, but what he
called a "Tory Communist."  In connection with his agricultural
interests he was naturally a Fair Trader; a tax on corn, he knew,
would make all the difference in the world to the prosperity of
England.  As he often said: "A tax of three or four shillings on
corn, and I should be farming my estate at a profit."

Mr. Pendyce had other peculiarities, in which he was not too
individual.  He was averse to any change in the existing order of
things, made lists of everything, and was never really so happy as
when talking of himself or his estate.  He had a black spaniel dog
called John, with a long nose and longer ears, whom he had bred
himself till the creature was not happy out of his sight.

In appearance Mr. Pendyce was rather of the old school, upright and
active, with thin side-whiskers, to which, however, for some years
past he had added moustaches which drooped and were now grizzled.  He
wore large cravats and square-tailed coats.  He did not smoke.

At the head of his dining-table loaded with flowers and plate, he sat
between the Hon. Mrs. Winlow and Mrs. Jaspar Bellew, nor could he
have desired more striking and contrasted supporters.  Equally tall,
full-figured, and comely, Nature had fixed between these two women a
gulf which Mr. Pendyce, a man of spare figure, tried in vain to fill.
The composure peculiar to the ashen type of the British aristocracy
wintered permanently on Mrs. Winlow's features like the smile of a
frosty day.  Expressionless to a degree, they at once convinced the
spectator that she was a woman of the best breeding.  Had an
expression ever arisen upon these features, it is impossible to say
what might have been the consequences.  She had followed her nurse's
adjuration: "Lor, Miss Truda, never you make a face--You might grow
so!"  Never since that day had Gertrude Winlow, an Honourable in her
own right and in that of her husband, made a face, not even, it is
believed, when her son was born.  And then to find on the other side
of Mr. Pendyce that puzzling Mrs. Bellew with the green-grey eyes, at
which the best people of her own sex looked with instinctive
disapproval!  A woman in her position should avoid anything
conspicuous, and Nature had given her a too-striking appearance.
People said that when, the year before last, she had separated from
Captain Bellew, and left the Firs, it was simply because they were
tired of one another.  They said, too, that it looked as if she were
encouraging the attentions of George, Mr. Pendyce's eldest son.

Lady Maiden had remarked to Mrs. Winlow in the drawing-room before
dinner:

"What is it about that Mrs. Bellew?  I never liked her.  A woman
situated as she is ought to be more careful.  I don't understand her
being asked here at all, with her husband still at the Firs, only
just over the way.  Besides, she's very hard up.  She doesn't even
attempt to disguise it.  I call her almost an adventuress."

Mrs. Winlow had answered:

"But she's some sort of cousin to Mrs. Pendyce.  The Pendyces are
related to everybody!  It's so boring.  One never knows---"

Lady Maiden replied:

"Did you know her when she was living down here?  I dislike those
hard-riding women.  She and her husband were perfectly reckless.  One
heard of nothing else but what she had jumped and how she had jumped
it; and she bets and goes racing.  If George Pendyce is not in love
with her, I'm very much mistaken.  He's been seeing far too much of
her in town.  She's one of those women that men are always hanging
about!"

At the head of his dinner-table, where before each guest was placed a
menu carefully written in his eldest daughter's handwriting, Horace
Pendyce supped his soup.

"This soup," he said to Mrs. Bellew, "reminds me of your dear old
father; he was extraordinarily fond of it.  I had a great respect for
your father--a wonderful man!  I always said he was the most
determined man I'd met since my own dear father, and he was the most
obstinate man in the three kingdoms!"

He frequently made use of the expression "in the three kingdoms,"
which sometimes preceded a statement that his grandmother was
descended from Richard III., while his grandfather came down from the
Cornish giants, one of whom, he would say with a disparaging smile,
had once thrown a cow over a wall.

"Your father was too much of an individualist, Mrs. Bellew.  I have a
lot of experience of individualism in the management of my estate,
and I find that an individualist is never contented.  My tenants have
everything they want, but it's impossible to satisfy them.  There's a
fellow called Peacock, now, a most pig-headed, narrowminded chap.  I
don't give in to him, of course.  If he had his way, he'd go back to
the old days, farm the land in his own fashion.  He wants to buy it
from me.  Old vicious system of yeoman farming.  Says his grandfather
had it.  He's that sort of man.  I hate individualism; it's ruining
England.  You won't fend better cottages, or better farm-buildings
anywhere than on my estate.  I go in for centralisation.  I dare say
you know what I call myself--a 'Tory Communist.' To my mind, that's
the party of the future.  Now, your father's motto was: 'Every man
for himself!'  On the land that would never do.  Landlord and tenant
must work together.  You'll come over to Newmarket with us on
Wednesday?  George has a very fine horse running in the Rutlandshire
 a very fine horse.  He doesn't bet, I'm glad to say.  If there's one
thing I hate more than another, it's gambling!"

Mrs. Bellew gave him a sidelong glance, and a little ironical smile
peeped out on her full red lips.  But Mr. Pendyce had been called
away to his soup.  When he was ready to resume the conversation she
was talking to his son, and the Squire, frowning, turned to the Hon.
Mrs. Winlow.  Her attention was automatic, complete, monosyllabic;
she did not appear to fatigue herself by an over-sympathetic
comprehension, nor was she subservient.  Mr. Pendyce found her a
competent listener.

"The country is changing," he said, "changing every day.  Country
houses are not what they were.  A great responsibility rests on us
landlords.  If we go, the whole thing goes."

What, indeed, could be more delightful than this country-house life
of Mr. Pendyce; its perfect cleanliness, its busy leisure, its
combination of fresh air and scented warmth, its complete
intellectual repose, its essential and professional aloofness from
suffering of any kind, and its soup--emblematically and above all,
its soup--made from the rich remains of pampered beasts?

Mr. Pendyce thought this life the one right life; those who lived it
the only right people.  He considered it a duty to live this life,
with its simple, healthy, yet luxurious curriculum, surrounded by
creatures bred for his own devouring, surrounded, as it were, by a
sea of soup!  And that people should go on existing by the million in
the towns, preying on each other, and getting continually out of
work, with all those other depressing concomitants of an awkward
state, distressed him.  While suburban life, that living in little
rows of slate-roofed houses so lamentably similar that no man of
individual taste could bear to see them, he much disliked.  Yet, in
spite of his strong prejudice in favour of country-house life, he was
not a rich man, his income barely exceeding ten thousand a year.

The first shooting-party of the season, devoted to spinneys and the
outlying coverts, had been, as usual, made to synchronise with the
last Newmarket Meeting, for Newmarket was within an uncomfortable
distance of Worsted Skeynes; and though Mr. Pendyce had a horror of
gaming, he liked to figure there and pass for a man interested in
sport for sport's sake, and he was really rather proud of the fact
that his son had picked up so good a horse as the Ambler promised to
be for so little money, and was racing him for pure sport.

The guests had been carefully chosen.  On Mrs. Winlow's right was
Thomas Brandwhite (of Brown and Brandwhite), who had a position in
the financial world which could not well be ignored, two places in
the country, and a yacht.  His long, lined face, with very heavy
moustaches, wore habitually a peevish look.  He had retired from his
firm, and now only sat on the Boards of several companies.  Next to
him was Mrs. Hussell Barter, with that touching look to be seen on
the faces of many English ladies, that look of women who are always
doing their duty, their rather painful duty; whose eyes, above cheeks
creased and withered, once rose-leaf hued, now over-coloured by
strong weather, are starry and anxious; whose speech is simple,
sympathetic, direct, a little shy, a little hopeless, yet always
hopeful; who are ever surrounded by children, invalids, old people,
all looking to them for support; who have never known the luxury of
breaking down--of these was Mrs. Hussell Barter, the wife of the
Reverend Hussell Barter, who would shoot to-morrow, but would not
attend the race-meeting on the Wednesday.  On her other hand was
Gilbert Foxleigh, a lean-flanked man with a long, narrow head, strong
white teeth, and hollow, thirsting eyes.  He came of a county family
of Foxleighs, and was one of six brothers, invaluable to the owners
of coverts or young, half-broken horses in days when, as a Foxleigh
would put it, "hardly a Johnny of the lot could shoot or ride for
nuts."  There was no species of beast, bird, or fish, that he could
not and did not destroy with equal skill and enjoyment.  The only
thing against him was his income, which was very small.  He had taken
in Mrs. Brandwhite, to whom, however, he talked but little, leaving
her to General Pendyce, her neighbour on the other side.

Had he been born a year before his brother, instead of a year after,
Charles Pendyce would naturally have owned Worsted Skeynes, and
Horace would have gone into the Army instead.  As it was, having
almost imperceptibly become a Major-General, he had retired, taking
with him his pension.  The third brother, had he chosen to be born,
would have gone into the Church, where a living awaited him; he had
elected otherwise, and the living had passed perforce to a collateral
branch.  Between Horace and Charles, seen from behind, it was
difficult to distinguish.  Both were spare, both erect, with the
least inclination to bottle shoulders, but Charles Pendyce brushed
his hair, both before and behind, away from a central parting, and
about the back of his still active knees there was a look of
feebleness.  Seen from the front they could readily be
differentiated, for the General's whiskers broadened down his cheeks
till they reached his moustaches, and there was in his face and
manner a sort of formal, though discontented, effacement, as of an
individualist who has all his life been part of a system, from which
he has issued at last, unconscious indeed of his loss, but with a
vague sense of injury.  He had never married, feeling it to be
comparatively useless, owing to Horace having gained that year on him
at the start, and he lived with a valet close to his club in Pall
Mall.

In Lady Maiden, whom he had taken in to dinner, Worsted Skeynes
entertained a good woman and a personality, whose teas to Working Men
in the London season were famous.  No Working Man who had attended
them had ever gone away without a wholesome respect for his hostess.
She was indeed a woman who permitted no liberties to be taken with
her in any walk of life.  The daughter of a Rural Dean, she appeared
at her best when seated, having rather short legs.  Her face was
well-coloured, her mouth, firm and rather wide, her nose well-shaped,
her hair dark.  She spoke in a decided voice, and did not mince her
words.  It was to her that her husband, Sir James, owed his
reactionary principles on the subject of woman.

Round the corner at the end of the table the Hon. Geoffrey Winlow was
telling his hostess of the Balkan Provinces, from a tour in which he
had just returned.  His face, of the Norman type, with regular,
handsome features, had a leisurely and capable expression.  His
manner was easy and pleasant; only at times it became apparent that
his ideas were in perfect order, so that he would naturally not care
to be corrected.  His father, Lord Montrossor, whose seat was at
Coldingham six miles away, would ultimately yield to him his place in
the House of Lords.

And next him sat Mrs. Pendyce.  A portrait of this lady hung over the
sideboard at the end of the room, and though it had been painted by a
fashionable painter, it had caught a gleam of that "something" still
in her face these twenty years later.  She was not young, her dark
hair was going grey; but she was not old, for she had been married at
nineteen and was still only fifty-two.  Her face was rather long and
very pale, and her eyebrows arched and dark and always slightly
raised.  Her eyes were dark grey, sometimes almost black, for the
pupils dilated when she was moved; her lips were the least thing
parted, and the expression of those lips and eyes was of a rather
touching gentleness, of a rather touching expectancy.  And yet all
this was not the "something"; that was rather the outward sign of an
inborn sense that she had no need to ask for things, of an
instinctive faith that she already had them.  By that "something,"
and by her long, transparent hands, men could tell that she had been
a Totteridge.  And her voice, which was rather slow, with a little,
not unpleasant, trick of speech, and her eyelids by second nature
just a trifle lowered, confirmed this impression.  Over her bosom,
which hid the heart of a lady, rose and fell a piece of wonderful old
lace.

Round the corner again Sir James Maiden and Bee Pendyce (the eldest
daughter) were talking of horses and hunting--Bee seldom from choice
spoke of anything else.  Her face was pleasant and good, yet not
quite pretty, and this little fact seemed to have entered into her
very nature, making her shy and ever willing to do things for others.

Sir James had small grey whiskers and a carved, keen visage.  He came
of an old Kentish family which had migrated to Cambridgeshire; his
coverts were exceptionally fine; he was also a Justice of the Peace,
a Colonel of Yeomanry, a keen Churchman, and much feared by poachers.
He held the reactionary views already mentioned, being a little
afraid of Lady Malden.

Beyond Miss Pendyce sat the Reverend Hussell Barter, who would shoot
to-morrow, but would not attend the race-meeting on Wednesday.

The Rector of Worsted Skeynes was not tall, and his head had been
rendered somewhat bald by thought.  His broad face, of very straight
build from the top of the forehead to the base of the chin, was
well-coloured, clean-shaven, and of a shape that may be seen in
portraits of the Georgian era.  His cheeks were full and folded, his
lower lip had a habit of protruding, and his eyebrows jutted out
above his full, light eyes.  His manner was authoritative, and he
articulated his words in a voice to which long service in the pulpit
had imparted remarkable carrying-power--in fact, when engaged in
private conversation, it was with difficulty that he was not
overheard.  Perhaps even in confidential matters he was not unwilling
that what he said should bear fruit.  In some ways, indeed, he was
typical.  Uncertainty, hesitation, toleration--except of such
opinions as he held--he did not like.  Imagination he distrusted.  He
found his duty in life very clear, and other people's perhaps
clearer, and he did not encourage his parishioners to think for
themselves.  The habit seemed to him a dangerous one.  He was
outspoken in his opinions, and when he had occasion to find fault,
spoke of the offender as "a man of no character," "a fellow like
that," with such a ring of conviction that his audience could not but
be convinced of the immorality of that person.  He had a bluff jolly
way of speaking, and was popular in his parish--a good cricketer, a
still better fisherman, a fair shot, though, as he said, he could not
really afford time for shooting.  While disclaiming interference in
secular matters, he watched the tendencies of his flock from a sound
point of view, and especially encouraged them to support the existing
order of things--the British Empire and the English Church.  His cure
was hereditary, and he fortunately possessed some private means, for
he had a large family.  His partner at dinner was Norah, the younger
of the two Pendyce girls, who had a round, open face, and a more
decided manner than her sister Bee.

Her brother George, the eldest son, sat on her right.  George was of
middle height, with a red-brown, clean-shaved face and solid jaw.
His eyes were grey; he had firm lips, and darkish, carefully brushed
hair, a little thin on the top, but with that peculiar gloss seen on
the hair of some men about town.  His clothes were unostentatiously
perfect.  Such men may be seen in Piccadilly at any hour of the day
or night.  He had been intended for the Guards, but had failed to
pass the necessary examination, through no fault of his own, owing to
a constitutional inability to spell.  Had he been his younger brother
Gerald, he would probably have fulfilled the Pendyce tradition, and
passed into the Army as a matter of course.  And had Gerald (now
Captain Pendyce) been George the elder son, he might possibly have
failed.  George lived at his club in town on an allowance of six
hundred a year, and sat a great deal in a bay-window reading Ruff's
"Guide to the Turf."

He raised his eyes from the menu and looked stealthily round.  Helen
Bellew was talking to his father, her white shoulder turned a little
away.  George was proud of his composure, but there was a strange
longing in his face.  She gave, indeed, just excuse for people to
consider her too good-looking for the position in which she was
placed.  Her figure was tall and supple and full, and now that she no
longer hunted was getting fuller.  Her hair, looped back in loose
bands across a broad low brow, had a peculiar soft lustre.

There was a touch of sensuality about her lips.  The face was too
broad across the brow and cheekbones, but the eyes were magnificent--
ice-grey, sometimes almost green, always luminous, and set in with
dark lashes.

There was something pathetic in George's gaze, as of a man forced to
look against his will.

It had been going on all that past summer, and still he did not know
where he stood.  Sometimes she seemed fond of him, sometimes treated
him as though he had no chance.  That which he had begun as a game
was now deadly earnest.  And this in itself was tragic.  That
comfortable ease of spirit which is the breath of life was taken
away; he could think of nothing but her.  Was she one of those women
who feed on men's admiration, and give them no return?  Was she only
waiting to make her conquest more secure?  These riddles he asked of
her face a hundred times, lying awake in the dark.  To George
Pendyce, a man of the world, unaccustomed to privation, whose simple
creed was "Live and enjoy," there was something terrible about a
longing which never left him for a moment, which he could not help
any more than he could help eating, the end of which he could not
see.  He had known her when she lived at the Firs, he had known her
in the hunting-field, but his passion was only of last summer's date.
It had sprung suddenly out of a flirtation started at a dance.

A man about town does not psychologise himself; he accepts his
condition with touching simplicity.  He is hungry; he must be fed.
He is thirsty; he must drink.  Why he is hungry, when he became
hungry, these inquiries are beside the mark.  No ethical aspect of
the matter troubled him; the attainment of a married woman, not
living with her husband, did not impinge upon his creed.  What would
come after, though full of unpleasant possibilities, he left to the
future.  His real disquiet, far nearer, far more primitive and
simple, was the feeling of drifting helplessly in a current so strong
that he could not keep his feet.

"Ah yes; a bad case.  Dreadful thing for the Sweetenhams!  That young
fellow's been obliged to give up the Army.  Can't think what old
Sweetenham was about.  He must have known his son was hit.  I should
say Bethany himself was the only one in the dark.  There's no doubt
Lady Rose was to blame!"  Mr. Pendyce was speaking.

Mrs. Bellew smiled.

"My sympathies are all with Lady Rose.  What do you say, George?"

George frowned.

"I always thought," he said, "that Bethany was an ass."

"George," said Mr. Pendyce, "is immoral.  All young men are immoral.
I notice it more and more.  You've given up your hunting, I hear."

Mrs. Bellew sighed.

"One can't hunt on next to nothing!"

"Ah, you live in London.  London spoils everybody.  People don't take
the interest in hunting and farming they used to.  I can't get George
here at all.  Not that I'm a believer in apron-strings.  Young men
will be young men!"

Thus summing up the laws of Nature, the Squire resumed his knife and
fork.

But neither Mrs. Bellew nor George followed his example; the one sat
with her eyes fixed on her plate and a faint smile playing on her
lips, the other sat without a smile, and his eyes, in which there was
such a deep resentful longing, looked from his father to Mrs. Bellew,
and from Mrs. Bellew to his mother.  And as though down that vista of
faces and fruits and flowers a secret current had been set flowing,
Mrs. Pendyce nodded gently to her son.




CHAPTER II

THE COVERT SHOOT

At the head of the breakfast-table sat Mr. Pendyce, eating
methodically.  He was somewhat silent, as became a man who has just
read family prayers; but about that silence, and the pile of half-
opened letters on his right, was a hint of autocracy.

"Be informal--do what you like, dress as you like, sit where you
like, eat what you like, drink tea or coffee, but----" Each glance of
his eyes, each sentence of his sparing, semi-genial talk, seemed to
repeat that "but."

At the foot of the breakfast-table sat Mrs. Pendyce behind a silver
urn which emitted a gentle steam.  Her hands worked without ceasing
amongst cups, and while they worked her lips worked too in spasmodic
utterances that never had any reference to herself.  Pushed a little
to her left and entirely neglected, lay a piece of dry toast on a
small white plate.  Twice she took it up, buttered a bit of it, and
put it down again.  Once she rested, and her eyes, which fell on Mrs.
Bellow, seemed to say: "How very charming you look, my dear!"  Then,
taking up the sugar-tongs, she began again.

On the long sideboard covered with a white cloth reposed a number of
edibles only to be found amongst that portion of the community which
breeds creatures for its own devouring.  At one end of this row of
viands was a large game pie with a triangular gap in the pastry; at
the other, on two oval dishes, lay four cold partridges in various
stages of decomposition.  Behind them a silver basket of openwork
design was occupied by three bunches of black, one bunch of white
grapes, and a silver grape-cutter, which performed no function (it
was so blunt), but had once belonged to a Totteridge and wore their
crest.

No servants were in the room, but the side-door was now and again
opened, and something brought in, and this suggested that behind the
door persons were collected, only waiting to be called upon.  It was,
in fact, as though Mr. Pendyce had said: "A butler and two footmen at
least could hand you things, but this is a simple country house."

At times a male guest rose, napkin in hand, and said to a lady: "Can
I get you anything from the sideboard?"  Being refused, he went and
filled his own plate.  Three dogs--two fox-terriers and a decrepit
Skye circled round uneasily, smelling at the visitors' napkins.  And
there went up a hum of talk in which sentences like these could be
distinguished: "Rippin' stand that, by the wood.  D'you remember your
rockettin' woodcock last year, Jerry?"  "And the dear old Squire
never touched a feather!  Did you, Squire?"  "Dick--Dick! Bad dog!--
come and do your tricks.  Trust-trust!  Paid for!  Isn't he rather a
darling?"

On Mr. Pendyce's foot, or by the side of his chair, whence he could
see what was being eaten, sat the spaniel John, and now and then Mr.
Pendyce, taking a small portion of something between his finger and
thumb, would say:

"John!--Make a good breakfast, Sir James; I always say a half-
breakfasted man is no good!"

And Mrs. Pendyce, her eyebrows lifted, would look anxiously up and
down the table, murmuring: "Another cup, dear; let me see--are you
sugar?"

When all had finished a silence fell, as if each sought to get away
from what he had been eating, as if each felt he had been engaged in
an unworthy practice; then Mr. Pendyce, finishing his last grape,
wiped his mouth.

"You've a quarter of an hour, gentlemen; we start at ten-fifteen."

Mrs. Pendyce, left seated with a vague, ironical smile, ate one
mouthful of her buttered toast, now very old and leathery, gave the
rest to "the dear dogs," and called:

"George!  You want a new shooting tie, dear boy; that green one's
quite faded.  I've been meaning to get some silks down for ages.
Have you had any news of your horse this morning?"

"Yes, Blacksmith says he's fit as a fiddle."

"I do so hope he'll win that race for you.  Your Uncle Hubert once
lost four thousand pounds over the Rutlandshire.  I remember
perfectly; my father had to pay it.  I'm so glad you don't bet, dear
boy!"

"My dear mother, I do bet."

"Oh, George, I hope not much!  For goodness' sake, don't tell your
father; he's like all the Pendyces, can't bear a risk."

"My dear mother, I'm not likely to; but, as a matter of fact, there
is no risk.  I stand to win a lot of money to nothing."

"But, George, is that right?"

"Of course it's all right."

"Oh, well, I don't understand."  Mrs. Pendyce dropped her eyes, a
flush came into her white cheeks; she looked up again and said
quickly: "George, I should like just a little bet on your horse--a
real bet, say about a sovereign."

George Pendyce's creed permitted the show of no emotion.  He smiled.

"All right, mother, I'll put it on for you.  It'll be about eight to
one."

"Does that mean that if he wins I shall get eight?"

George nodded.

Mrs. Pendyce looked abstractedly at his tie.

"I think it might be two sovereigns; one seems very little to lose,
because I do so want him to win.  Isn't Helen Bellew perfectly
charming this morning!  It's delightful to see a woman look her best
in the morning."

George turned, to hide the colour in his cheeks.

"She looks fresh enough, certainly."

Mrs. Pendyce glanced up at him; there was a touch of quizzicality in
one of her lifted eyebrows.

"I mustn't keep you, dear; you'll be late for the shooting."

Mr. Pendyce, a sportsman of the old school, who still kept pointers,
which, in the teeth of modern fashion, he was unable to employ, set
his face against the use of two guns.

"Any man," he would say, "who cares to shoot at Worsted Skeynes must
do with one gun, as my dear old father had to do before me.  He'll
get a good day's sport--no barndoor birds" (for he encouraged his
pheasants to remain lean, that they might fly the better), "but don't
let him expect one of these battues--sheer butchery, I call them."

He was excessively fond of birds--it was, in fact, his hobby, and he
had collected under glass cases a prodigious number of specimens of
those species which are in danger of becoming extinct, having really,
in some Pendycean sort of way, a feeling that by this practice he was
doing them a good turn, championing them, as it were, to a world that
would soon be unable to look upon them in the flesh.  He wished, too,
that his collection should become an integral part of the estate, and
be passed on to his son, and his son's son after him.

"Look at this Dartford Warbler," he would say; "beautiful little
creature--getting rarer every day.  I had the greatest difficulty in
procuring this specimen.  You wouldn't believe me if I told you what
I had to pay for him!"

Some of his unique birds he had shot himself, having in his youth
made expeditions to foreign countries solely with this object, but
the great majority he had been compelled to purchase.  In his library
were row upon row of books carefully arranged and bearing on this
fascinating subject; and his collection of rare, almost extinct,
birds' eggs was one of the finest in the "three kingdoms."  One egg
especially he would point to with pride as the last obtainable of
that particular breed.  "This was procured," he would say, "by my
dear old gillie Angus out of the bird's very nest.  There was just
the single egg.  The species," he added, tenderly handling the
delicate, porcelain-like oval in his brown hand covered with very
fine, blackish hairs, "is now extinct."  He was, in fact, a true
bird-lover, strongly condemning cockneys, or rough, ignorant persons
who, with no collections of their own, wantonly destroyed
kingfishers, or scarce birds of any sort, out of pure stupidity.
"I would have them flogged," he would say, for he believed that no
such bird should be killed except on commission, and for choice--
barring such extreme cases as that Dartford Warbler--in some foreign
country or remoter part of the British Isles.  It was indeed
illustrative of Mr. Pendyce's character and whole point of view that
whenever a rare, winged stranger appeared on his own estate it was
talked of as an event, and preserved alive with the greatest care, in
the hope that it might breed and be handed down with the property;
but if it were personally known to belong to Mr. Fuller or Lord
Quarryman, whose estates abutted on Worsted Skeynes, and there was
grave and imminent danger of its going back, it was promptly shot and
stuffed, that it might not be lost to posterity.  An encounter with
another landowner having the same hobby, of whom there were several
in his neighbourhood, would upset him for a week, making him
strangely morose, and he would at once redouble his efforts to add
something rarer than ever to his own collection.

His arrangements for shooting were precisely conceived.  Little slips
of paper with the names of the "guns" written thereon were placed in
a hat, and one by one drawn out again, and this he always did
himself.  Behind the right wing of the house he held a review of the
beaters, who filed before him out of the yard, each with a long stick
in his hand, and no expression on his face.  Five minutes of
directions to the keeper, and then the guns started, carrying their
own weapons and a sufficiency of cartridges for the first drive in
the old way.

A misty radiance clung over the grass as the sun dried the heavy dew;
the thrushes hopped and ran and hid themselves, the rooks cawed
peacefully in the old elms.  At an angle the game cart, constructed
on Mr. Pendyce's own pattern, and drawn by a hairy horse in charge of
an aged man, made its way slowly to the end of the first beat:

George lagged behind, his hands deep in his pockets, drinking in the
joy of the tranquil day, the soft bird sounds, so clear and friendly,
that chorus of wild life.  The scent of the coverts stole to him, and
he thought:

'What a ripping day for shooting!'

The Squire, wearing a suit carefully coloured so that no bird should
see him, leather leggings, and a cloth helmet of his own devising,
ventilated by many little holes, came up to his son; and the spaniel
John, who had a passion for the collection of birds almost equal to
his master's, came up too.

"You're end gun, George," he said; "you'll get a nice high bird!"

George felt the ground with his feet, and blew a speck of dust off
his barrels, and the smell of the oil sent a delicious tremor darting
through him.  Everything, even Helen Bellew, was forgotten.  Then in
the silence rose a far-off clamour; a cock pheasant, skimming low,
his plumage silken in the sun, dived out of the green and golden
spinney, curled to the right, and was lost in undergrowth.  Some
pigeons passed over at a great height.  The tap-tap of sticks beating
against trees began; then with a fitful rushing noise a pheasant came
straight out.  George threw up his gun and pulled.  The bird stopped
in mid-air, jerked forward, and fell headlong into the grass sods
with a thud.  In the sunlight the dead bird lay, and a smirk of
triumph played on George's lips.  He was feeling the joy of life.

During his covert shoots the Squire had the habit of recording his
impressions in a mental note-book.  He put special marks against such
as missed, or shot birds behind the waist, or placed lead in them to
the detriment of their market value, or broke only one leg of a hare
at a time, causing the animal to cry like a tortured child, which
some men do not like; or such as, anxious for fame, claimed dead
creatures that they had not shot, or peopled the next beat with
imaginary slain, or too frequently "wiped an important neighbour's
eye," or shot too many beaters in the legs.  Against this evidence,
however, he unconsciously weighed the more undeniable social facts,
such as the title of Winlow's father; Sir James Malden's coverts,
which must also presently be shot; Thomas Brandwhite's position in
the financial world; General Pendyce's relationship to himself; and
the importance of the English Church.  Against Foxleigh alone he
could put no marks.  The fellow destroyed everything that came within
reach with utter precision, and this was perhaps fortunate, for
Foxleigh had neither title, coverts, position, nor cloth!  And the
Squire weighed one thing else besides--the pleasure of giving them
all a good day's sport, for his heart was kind.

The sun had fallen well behind the home wood when the guns stood
waiting for the last drive of the day.  From the keeper's cottage in
the hollow, where late threads of crimson clung in the brown network
of Virginia creeper, rose a mist of wood smoke, dispersed upon the
breeze.  Sound there was none, only that faint stir--the far, far
callings of men and beasts and birds--that never quite dies of a
country evening.  High above the wood some startled pigeons were
still wheeling, no other life in sight; but a gleam of sunlight stole
down the side of the covert and laid a burnish on the turned leaves
till the whole wood seemed quivering with magic.  Out of that
quivering wood a wounded rabbit had stolen and was dying.  It lay on
its side on the slope of a tussock of grass, its hind legs drawn
under it, its forelegs raised like the hands of a praying child.
Motionless as death, all its remaining life was centred in its black
soft eyes.  Uncomplaining, ungrudging, unknowing, with that poor soft
wandering eye, it was going back to Mother Earth.  There Foxleigh,
too, some day must go, asking of Nature why she had murdered him.




CHAPTER III

THE BLISSFUL HOUR

It was the hour between tea and dinner, when the spirit of the
country house was resting, conscious of its virtue, half asleep.

Having bathed and changed, George Pendyce took his betting-book into
the smoking-room.  In a nook devoted to literature, protected from
draught and intrusion by a high leather screen, he sat down in an
armchair and fell into a doze.

With legs crossed, his chin resting on one hand, his comely figure
relaxed, he exhaled a fragrance of soap, as though in this perfect
peace his soul were giving off its natural odour.  His spirit, on the
borderland of dreams, trembled with those faint stirrings of chivalry
and aspiration, the outcome of physical well-being after a long day
in the open air, the outcome of security from all that is unpleasant
and fraught with danger.  He was awakened by voices.

"George is not a bad shot!"

"Gave a shocking exhibition at the last stand; Mrs. Bellew was with
him.  They were going over him like smoke; he couldn't touch a
feather."

It was Winlow's voice.  A silence, then Thomas Brandwhite's:

"A mistake, the ladies coming out.  I never will have them myself.
What do you say, Sir James?"

"Bad principle--very bad!"

A laugh--Thomas Brandwhite's laugh, the laugh of a man never quite
sure of himself.

"That fellow Bellew is a cracked chap.  They call him the 'desperate
character' about here.  Drinks like a fish, and rides like the devil.
She used to go pretty hard, too.  I've noticed there's always a
couple like that in a hunting country.  Did you ever see him?  Thin,
high-shouldered, white-faced chap, with little dark eyes and a red
moustache."

"She's still a young woman?"

"Thirty or thirty-two."

"How was it they didn't get on?"

The sound of a match being struck.

"Case of the kettle and the pot."

"It's easy to see she's fond of admiration.  Love of admiration plays
old Harry with women!"

Winlow's leisurely tones again

"There was a child, I believe, and it died.  And after that--I know
there was some story; you never could get to the bottom of it.
Bellew chucked his regiment in consequence.  She's subject to moods,
they say, when nothing's exciting enough; must skate on thin ice,
must have a man skating after her.  If the poor devil weighs more
than she does, in he goes."

"That's like her father, old Cheriton.  I knew him at the club--one
of the old sort of squires; married his second wife at sixty and
buried her at eighty.  Old 'Claret and Piquet,' they called him; had
more children under the rose than any man in Devonshire.  I saw him
playing half-crown points the week before he died.  It's in the
blood.  What's George's weight?--ah, ha!"

"It's no laughing matter, Brandwhite.  There's time for a hundred up
before dinner if you care for a game, Winlow?"

The sound of chairs drawn back, of footsteps, and the closing of a
door.  George was alone again, a spot of red in either of his cheeks.
Those vague stirrings of chivalry and aspiration were gone, and gone
that sense of well-earned ease.  He got up, came out of his corner,
and walked to and fro on the tiger-skin before the fire.  He lit a
cigarette, threw it away, and lit another.

Skating on thin ice!  That would not stop him!  Their gossip would
not stop him, nor their sneers; they would but send him on the
faster!

He threw away the second cigarette.  It was strange for him to go to
the drawing-room at this hour of the day, but he went.

Opening the door quietly, he saw the long, pleasant room lighted with
tall oil-lamps, and Mrs. Bellew seated at the piano, singing.  The
tea-things were still on a table at one end, but every one had
finished.  As far away as might be, in the embrasure of the bay-
window, General Pendyce and Bee were playing chess.  Grouped in the
centre of the room, by one of the lamps, Lady Maiden, Mrs. Winlow,
and Mrs. Brandwhite had turned their faces towards the piano, and a
sort of slight unwillingness or surprise showed on those faces, a
sort of "We were having a most interesting talk; I don't think we
ought to have been stopped" expression.

Before the fire, with his long legs outstretched, stood Gerald
Pendyce.  And a little apart, her dark eyes fixed on the singer, and
a piece of embroidery in her lap, sat Mrs. Pendyce, on the edge of
whose skirt lay Roy, the old Skye terrier.

    "But had I wist, before I lost,
          That love had been sae ill to win;
     I had lockt my heart in a case of gowd
          And pinn'd it with a siller pin....
     O waly! waly! but love be bonny
          A little time while it is new,
     But when 'tis auld, it waxeth cauld,
          And fades awa' like morning dew!"

This was the song George heard, trembling and dying to the chords of
the fine piano that was a little out of tune.

He gazed at the singer, and though he was not musical, there came a
look into his eyes that he quickly hid away.

A slight murmur occurred in the centre of the room, and from the
fireplace Gerald called out, "Thanks; that's rippin!"

The voice of General Pendyce rose in the bay-window: "Check!"

Mrs. Pendyce, taking up her embroidery, on which a tear had dropped,
said gently:

"Thank you, dear; most charming!"

Mrs. Bellew left the piano, and sat down beside her.  George moved
into the bay-window.  He knew nothing of chess-indeed, he could not
stand the game; but from here, without attracting attention, he could
watch Mrs. Bellew.

The air was drowsy and sweet-scented; a log of cedarwood had just
been put on the fire; the voices of his mother and Mrs. Bellew,
talking of what he could not hear, the voices of Lady Malden, Mrs.
Brandwhite, and Gerald, discussing some neighbours, of Mrs. Winlow
dissenting or assenting in turn, all mingled in a comfortable, sleepy
sound, clipped now and then by the voice of General Pendyce calling,
"Check!" and of Bee saying, "Oh, uncle!"

A feeling of rage rose in George.  Why should they all be so
comfortable and cosy while this perpetual fire was burning in
himself?  And he fastened his moody eyes on her who was keeping him
thus dancing to her pipes.

He made an awkward movement which shook the chess-table.  The General
said behind him: "Look out, George!  What--what!"

George went up to his mother.

"Let's have a look at that, Mother."

Mrs. Pendyce leaned back in her chair and handed up her work with a
smile of pleased surprise.

"My dear boy, you won't understand it a bit.  It's for the front of
my new frock."

George took the piece of work.  He did not understand it, but turning
and twisting it he could breathe the warmth of the woman he loved.
In bending over the embroidery he touched Mrs. Bellew's shoulder; it
was not drawn away, a faint pressure seemed to answer his own.  His
mother's voice recalled him:

"Oh, my needle, dear!  It's so sweet of you, but perhaps"

George handed back the embroidery.  Mrs. Pendyce received it with a
grateful look.  It was the first time he had ever shown an interest
in her work.

Mrs. Bellew had taken up a palm-leaf fan to screen her face from the
fire.  She said slowly:

"If we win to-morrow I'll embroider you something, George."

"And if we lose?"

Mrs. Bellew raised her eyes, and involuntarily George moved so that
his mother could not see the sort of slow mesmerism that was in them.

"If we lose," she said, "I shall sink into the earth.  We must win,
George."

He gave an uneasy little laugh, and glanced quickly at his mother.
Mrs. Pendyce had begun to draw her needle in and out with a half-
startled look on her face.

"That's a most haunting little song you sang, dear," she said.

Mrs. Bellew answered: "The words are so true, aren't they?"

George felt her eyes on him, and tried to look at her, but those
half-smiling, half-threatening eyes seemed to twist and turn him
about as his hands had twisted and turned about his mother's
embroidery.  Again across Mrs. Pendyce's face flitted that half-
startled look.

Suddenly General Pendyce's voice was heard saying very loud, "Stale?
Nonsense, Bee, nonsense!  Why, damme, so it is!"

A hum of voices from the centre of the room covered up that outburst,
and Gerald, stepping to the hearth, threw another cedar log upon the
fire.  The smoke came out in a puff.

Mrs. Pendyce leaned back in her chair smiling, and wrinkling her
fine, thin nose.

"Delicious!" she said, but her eyes did not leave her son's face, and
in them was still that vague alarm.




CHAPTER IV

THE HAPPY HUNTING-GROUND

Of all the places where, by a judicious admixture of whip and spur,
oats and whisky, horses are caused to place one leg before another
with unnecessary rapidity, in order that men may exchange little
pieces of metal with the greater freedom, Newmarket Heath is "the
topmost, and merriest, and best."

This museum of the state of flux--the secret reason of horse-racing
being to afford an example of perpetual motion (no proper racing-man
having ever been found to regard either gains or losses in the light
of an accomplished fact)--this museum of the state of flux has a
climate unrivalled for the production of the British temperament.

Not without a due proportion of that essential formative of
character, east wind, it has at once the hottest sun, the coldest
blizzards, the wettest rain, of any place of its size in the "three
kingdoms."  It tends--in advance even of the City of London--to the
nurture and improvement of individualism, to that desirable "I'll see
you d---d" state of mind which is the proud objective of every
Englishman, and especially of every country gentleman.  In a word--a
mother to the self-reliant secretiveness which defies intrusion and
forms an integral part in the Christianity of this country--Newmarket
Heath is beyond all others the happy hunting-ground of the landed
classes.

In the Paddock half an hour before the Rutlandshire Handicap was to
be run numbers of racing-men were gathered in little knots of two and
three, describing to each other with every precaution the points of
strength in the horses they had laid against, the points of weakness
in the horses they had backed, or vice versa, together with the
latest discrepancies of their trainers and jockeys.  At the far end
George Pendyce, his trainer Blacksmith, and his jockey Swells, were
talking in low tones.  Many people have observed with surprise the
close-buttoned secrecy of all who have to do with horses.  It is no
matter for wonder.  The horse is one of those generous and somewhat
careless animals that, if not taken firmly from the first, will
surely give itself away.  Essential to a man who has to do with
horses is a complete closeness of physiognomy, otherwise the animal
will never know what is expected of him.  The more that is expected
of him, the closer must be the expression of his friends, or a grave
fiasco may have to be deplored.

It was for these reasons that George's face wore more than its
habitual composure, and the faces of his trainer and his jockey were
alert, determined, and expressionless.  Blacksmith, a little man, had
in his hand a short notched cane, with which, contrary to
expectation, he did not switch his legs.  His eyelids drooped over
his shrewd eyes, his upper lip advanced over the lower, and he wore
no hair on his face.  The Jockey Swells' pinched-up countenance, with
jutting eyebrows and practically no cheeks, had under George's
racing-cap of "peacock blue" a subfusc hue like that of old
furniture.

The Ambler had been bought out of the stud of Colonel Dorking, a man
opposed on high grounds to the racing of two-year-olds, and at the
age of three had never run.  Showing more than a suspicion of form in
one or two home trials, he ran a bye in the Fane Stakes, when
obviously not up to the mark, and was then withdrawn from the public
gaze.  The Stable had from the start kept its eye on the Rutlandshire
Handicap, and no sooner was Goodwood over than the commission was
placed in the hands of Barney's, well known for their power to enlist
at the most appropriate moment the sympathy of the public in a
horse's favour.  Almost coincidentally with the completion of the
Stable Commission it was found that the public were determined to
support the Ambler at any price over seven to one.  Barney's at once
proceeded judiciously to lay off the Stable Money, and this having
been done, George found that he stood to win four thousand pounds to
nothing.  If he had now chosen to bet this sum against the horse at
the then current price of eight to one, it is obvious that he could
have made an absolute certainty of five hundred pounds, and the horse
need never even have started.  But George, who would have been glad
enough of such a sum, was not the man to do this sort of thing.  It
was against the tenets of his creed.  He believed, too, in his horse;
and had enough of the Totteridge in him to like a race for a race's
sake.  Even when beaten there was enjoyment to be had out of the
imperturbability with which he could take that beating, out of a
sense of superiority to men not quite so sportsmanlike as himself.

"Come and see the nag saddled," he said to his brother Gerald.

In one of the long line of boxes the Ambler was awaiting his
toilette, a dark-brown horse, about sixteen hands, with well-placed
shoulders, straight hocks, a small head, and what is known as a rat-
tail.  But of all his features, the most remarkable was his eye.  In
the depths of that full, soft eye was an almost uncanny gleam, and
when he turned it, half-circled by a moon of white, and gave
bystanders that look of strange comprehension, they felt that he saw
to the bottom of all this that was going on around him.  He was still
but three years old, and had not yet attained the age when people
apply to action the fruits of understanding; yet there was little
doubt that as he advanced in years he would manifest his disapproval
of a system whereby men made money at his expense.  And with that eye
half-circled by the moon he looked at George, and in silence George
looked back at him, strangely baffled by the horse's long, soft, wild
gaze.  On this heart beating deep within its warm, dark satin sheath,
on the spirit gazing through that soft, wild eye, too much was
hanging, and he turned away.

"Mount, jockeys!"

Through the crowd of hard-looking, hatted, muffled, two-legged men,
those four-legged creatures in their chestnut, bay, and brown, and
satin nakedness, most beautiful in all the world, filed proudly past,
as though going forth to death.  The last vanished through the gate,
the crowd dispersed.

Down by the rails of Tattersall's George stood alone.  He had screwed
himself into a corner, whence he could watch through his long glasses
that gay-coloured, shifting wheel at the end of the mile and more of
turf.  At this moment, so pregnant with the future, he could not bear
the company of his fellows.

"They're off!"

He looked no longer, but hunched his shoulders, holding his elbows
stiff, that none might see what he was feeling.  Behind him a man
said:

"The favourite's beat.  What's that in blue on the rails?"

Out by himself on the far rails, out by himself, sweeping along like
a home-coming bird, was the Ambler.  And George's heart leaped, as a
fish leaps of a summer evening out of a dark pool.

"They'll never catch him.  The Ambler wins!  It's a walk-over!  The
Ambler!"

Silent amidst the shouting throng, George thought: 'My horse!  my
horse!' and tears of pure emotion sprang into his eyes.  For a full
minute he stood quite still; then, instinctively adjusting hat and
tie, made his way calmly to the Paddock.  He left it to his trainer
to lead the Ambler back, and joined him at the weighing-room.

The little jockey was seated, nursing his saddle, negligent and
saturnine, awaiting the words "All right."

Blacksmith said quietly:

"Well, sir, we've pulled it off.  Four lengths.  I've told Swells he
does no more riding for me.  There's a gold-mine given away.  What on
earth was he about to come in by himself like that?  We shan't get
into the 'City' now under nine stone.  It's enough to make a man
cry!"

And, looking at his trainer, George saw the little man's lips quiver.

In his stall, streaked with sweat, his hind-legs outstretched,
fretting under the ministrations of the groom, the Ambler stayed the
whisking of his head to look at his owner, and once more George met
that long, proud, soft glance.  He laid his gloved hand on the
horse's lather-flecked neck.  The Ambler tossed his head and turned
it away.

George came out into the open, and made his way towards the Stand.
His trainer's words had instilled a drop of poison into his cup.  "A
goldmine given away!"

He went up to Swells.  On his lips were the words: "What made you
give the show away like that?"  He did not speak them, for in his
soul he felt it would not become him to ask his jockey why he had not
dissembled and won by a length.  But the little jockey understood at
once.

"Mr. Blacksmith's been at me, sir.  You take my tip: he's a queer
one, that 'orse.  I thought it best to let him run his own race.
Mark my words, be knows what's what.  When they're like that, they're
best let alone."

A voice behind him said:

"Well, George, congratulate you!  Not the way I should have ridden
the race myself.  He should have lain off to the distance.
Remarkable turn of speed that horse.  There's no riding nowadays!"

The Squire and General Pendyce were standing there.  Erect and slim,
unlike and yet so very much alike, the eyes of both of them seemed
saying:

'I shall differ from you; there are no two opinions about it.  I
shall differ from you!'

Behind them stood Mrs. Bellew.  Her eyes could not keep still under
their lashes, and their light and colour changed continually.  George
walked on slowly at her side.  There was a look of triumph and
softness about her; the colour kept deepening in her cheeks, her
figure swayed.  They did not look at each other.

Against the Paddock railings stood a man in riding-clothes, of spare
figure, with a horseman's square, high shoulders, and thin long legs
a trifle bowed.  His narrow, thin-lipped, freckled face, with close-
cropped sandy hair and clipped red moustache, was of a strange dead
pallor.  He followed the figures of George and his companion with
little fiery dark-brown eyes, in which devils seemed to dance.
Someone tapped him on the arm.

"Hallo, Bellew! had a good race?"

"Devil take you, no!  Come and have a drink?"

Still without looking at each other, George and Mrs. Bellew walked
towards the gate.

"I don't want to see any more," she said.  "I should like to get away
at once."

"We'll go after this race," said George.  "There's nothing running in
the last."

At the back of the Grand Stand, in the midst of all the hurrying
crowd, he stopped.

"Helen?" he said.

Mrs. Bellew raised her eyes and looked full into his.

Long and cross-country is the drive from Royston Railway Station to
Worsted Skeynes.  To George Pendyce, driving the dog cart, with Helen
Bellew beside him, it seemed but a minute--that strange minute when
the heaven is opened and a vision shows between.  To some men that
vision comes but once, to some men many times.  It comes after long
winter, when the blossom hangs; it comes after parched summer, when
the leaves are going gold; and of what hues it is painted--of frost-
white and fire, of wine and purple, of mountain flowers, or the
shadowy green of still deep pools--the seer alone can tell.  But this
is certain--the vision steals from him who looks on it all images of
other things, all sense of law, of order, of the living past, and the
living present.  It is the future, fair-scented, singing, jewelled,
as when suddenly between high banks a bough of apple-blossom hangs
quivering in the wind loud with the song of bees.

George Pendyce gazed before him at this vision over the grey mare's
back, and she who sat beside him muffled in her fur was touching his
arm with hers.  And back to them the second groom, hugging himself
above the road that slipped away beneath, saw another kind of vision,
for he had won five pounds, and his eyes were closed.  And the grey
mare saw a vision of her warm light stall, and the oats dropping
between her manger bars, and fled with light hoofs along the lanes
where the side-lamps shot two moving gleams over dark beech-hedges
that rustled crisply in the northeast wind.  Again and again she
sneezed in the pleasure of that homeward flight, and the light foam
of her nostrils flicked the faces of those behind.  And they sat
silent, thrilling at the touch of each other's arms, their cheeks
glowing in the windy darkness, their eyes shining and fixed before
them.

The second groom awoke suddenly from his dream.

"If I owned that 'orse, like Mr. George, and had such a topper as
this 'ere Mrs. Bellew beside me, would I be sittin' there without a
word?"




CHAPTER V

MRS. PENDYCE'S DANCE

Mrs. Pendyce believed in the practice of assembling county society
for the purpose of inducing it to dance, a hardy enterprise in a
county where the souls, and incidentally the feet, of the inhabitants
were shaped for more solid pursuits.  Men were her chief difficulty,
for in spite of really national discouragement, it was rare to find a
girl who was not "fond of dancing."

"Ah, dancing; I did so love it!  Oh, poor Cecil Tharp!"  And with a
queer little smile she pointed to a strapping red-faced youth dancing
with her daughter.  "He nearly trips Bee up every minute, and he hugs
her so, as if he were afraid of falling on his head.  Oh, dear, what
a bump!  It's lucky she's so nice and solid.  I like to see the dear
boy.  Here come George and Helen Bellew.  Poor George is not quite up
to her form, but he's better than most of them.  Doesn't she look
lovely this evening?"

Lady Maiden raised her glasses to her eyes by the aid of a tortoise-
shell handle.

"Yes, but she's one of those women you never can look at without
seeing that she has a--a--body.  She's too-too--d'you see what I
mean?  It's almost--almost like a Frenchwoman!"

Mrs. Bellew had passed so close that the skirt of her seagreen dress
brushed their feet with a swish, and a scent as of a flower-bed was
wafted from it.  Mrs. Pendyce wrinkled her nose.

"Much nicer.  Her figure's so delicious," she said.

Lady Maiden pondered.

"She's a dangerous woman.  James quite agrees with me."

Mrs. Pendyce raised her eyebrows; there was a touch of scorn in that
gentle gesture.

"She's a very distant cousin of mine," she said.  "Her father was
quite a wonderful man.  It's an old Devonshire family.  The Cheritons
of Bovey are mentioned in Twisdom.  I like young people to enjoy.
themselves."

A smile illumined softly the fine wrinkles round her eyes.  Beneath
her lavender satin bodice, with strips of black velvet banding it at
intervals, her heart was beating faster than usual.  She was thinking
of a night in her youth, when her old playfellow, young Trefane of
the Blues, danced with her nearly all the evening, and of how at her
window she saw the sun rise, and gently wept because she was married
to Horace Pendyce.

"I always feel sorry for a woman who can dance as she does.  I should
have liked to have got some men from town, but Horace will only have
the county people.  It's not fair to the girls.  It isn't so much
their dancing, as their conversation--all about the first meet, and
yesterday's cubbing, and to-morrow's covert-shooting, and their fox-
terriers (though I'm awfully fond of the dear dogs), and then that
new golf course.  Really, it's quite distressing to me at times."
Again Mrs. Pendyce looked out into the room with her patient smile,
and two little lines of wrinkles formed across her forehead between
the regular arching of her eyebrows that were still dark-brown.
"They don't seem able to be gay.  I feel they don't really care about
it.  They're only just waiting till to-morrow morning, so that they
can go out and kill something.  Even Bee's like that!"

Mrs. Pendyce was not exaggerating.  The guests at Worsted Skeynes on
the night of the Rutlandshire Handicap were nearly all county people,
from the Hon. Gertrude Winlow, revolving like a faintly coloured
statue, to young Tharp, with his clean face and his fair bullety
head, who danced as though he were riding at a bullfinch.  In a niche
old Lord Quarryman, the Master of the Gaddesdon, could be discerned
in conversation with Sir James Malden and the Reverend Hussell
Barter.

Mrs. Pendyce said:

"Your husband and Lord Quarryman are talking of poachers; I can tell
that by the look of their hands.  I can't help sympathising a little
with poachers."

Lady Malden dropped her eyeglasses.

"James takes a very just view of them," she said.  "It's such an
insidious offence.  The more insidious the offence the more important
it is to check it.  It seems hard to punish people for stealing bread
or turnips, though one must, of course; but I've no sympathy with
poachers.  So many of them do it for sheer love of sport!"

Mrs. Pendyce answered:

"That's Captain Maydew dancing with her now.  He is a good dancer.
Don't their steps fit?  Don't they look happy?  I do like people to
enjoy themselves!  There is such a dreadful lot of unnecessary
sadness and suffering in the world.  I think it's really all because
people won't make allowances for each other."

Lady Malden looked at her sideways, pursing her lips; but Mrs.
Pendyce, by race a Totteridge, continued to smile.  She had been born
unconscious of her neighbours' scrutinies.

"Helen Bellew," she said, "was such a lovely girl.  Her grandfather
was my mother's cousin.  What does that make her?  Anyway, my cousin,
Gregory Vigil, is her first cousin once removed--the Hampshire
Vigils.  Do you know him?"

Lady Malden answered:

"Gregory Vigil?  The man with a lot of greyish hair?  I've had to do
with him in the S.R.W.C."

But Mrs. Pendyce was dancing mentally.

"Such a good fellow!  What is that--the----?"

Lady Malden gave her a sharp look.

"Society for the Rescue of Women and Children, of course.  Surely you
know about that?"

Mrs. Pendyce continued to smile.

"Ah, yes, that is nice!  What a beautiful figure she has!  It's so
refreshing.  I envy a woman with a figure like that; it looks as if
it would never grow old.  'Society for the Regeneration of Women'?
Gregory's so good about that sort of thing.  But he never seems quite
successful, have you noticed?  There was a woman he was very
interested in this spring.  I think she drank."

"They all do," said Lady Malden; "it's the curse of the day."

Mrs. Pendyce wrinkled her forehead.

"Most of the Totteridges," she said, "were great drinkers.  They
ruined their constitutions.  Do you know Jaspar Bellew?"

"No."

"It's such a pity he drinks.  He came to dinner here once, and I'm
afraid he must have come intoxicated.  He took me in; his little eyes
quite burned me up.  He drove his dog cart into a ditch on the way
home.  That sort of thing gets about so.  It's such a pity.  He's
quite interesting.  Horace can't stand him."

The music of the waltz had ceased.  Lady Maiden put her glasses to
her eyes.  From close beside them George and Mrs. Bellew passed by.
They moved on out of hearing, but the breeze of her fan had touched
the arching hair on Lady Maiden's forehead, the down on her upper
lip.

"Why isn't she with her husband?" she asked abruptly.

Mrs. Pendyce lifted her brows.

"Do you concern yourself to ask that which a well-bred woman leaves
unanswered?" she seemed to say, and a flush coloured her cheeks.

Lady Maiden winced, but, as though it were forced through her mouth
by some explosion in her soul, she said:

"You have only to look and see how dangerous she is!"

The colour in Mrs. Pendyce's cheeks deepened to a blush like a
girl's.

"Every man," she said, "is in love with Helen Bellew.  She's so
tremendously alive.  My cousin Gregory has been in love with her for
years, though he is her guardian or trustee, or whatever they call
them now.  It's quite romantic.  If I were a man I should be in love
with her myself."  The flush vanished and left her cheeks to their
true colour, that of a faded rose.

Once more she was listening to the voice of young Trefane, "Ah,
Margery, I love you!"--to her own half whispered answer, "Poor boy!"
Once more she was looking back through that forest of her life where
she had wandered so long, and where every tree was Horace Pendyce.

"What a pity one can't always be young!"  she said.

Through the conservatory door, wide open to the lawn, a full moon
flooded the country with pale gold light, and in that light the
branches of the cedar-trees seemed printed black on the grey-blue
paper of the sky; all was cold, still witchery out there, and not
very far away an owl was hooting.

The Reverend Husell Barter, about to enter the conservatory for a
breath of air, was arrested by the sight of a couple half-hidden by a
bushy plant; side by side they were looking at the moonlight, and he
knew them for Mrs. Bellew and George Pendyce.  Before he could either
enter or retire, he saw George seize her in his arms.  She seemed to
bend her head back, then bring her face to his.  The moonlight fell
on it, and on the full, white curve of her neck.  The Rector of
Worsted Skeynes saw, too, that her eyes were closed, her lips parted.




CHAPTER VI

INFLUENCE OF THE REVEREND HUSSELL BARTER

Along the walls of the smoking-room, above a leather dado, were
prints of horsemen in night-shirts and nightcaps, or horsemen in red
coats and top-hats, with words underneath such as:

"'Yeoicks' says Thruster; 'Yeoicks' says Dick.
'My word! these d---d Quornites shall now see the trick!'"

Two pairs of antlers surmounted the hearth, mementoes of Mr.
Pendyce's deer-forest, Strathbegally, now given up, where, with the
assistance of his dear old gillie Angus McBane, he had secured the
heads of these monarchs of the glen.  Between them was the print of a
personage in trousers, with a rifle under his arm and a smile on his
lips, while two large deerhounds worried a dying stag, and a lady
approached him on a pony.

The Squire and Sir James Malden had retired; the remaining guests
were seated round the fire.  Gerald Pendyce stood at a side-table, on
which was a tray of decanters, glasses, and mineral water.

"Who's for a dhrop of the craythur?  A wee dhrop of the craythur?
Rector, a dhrop of the craythur?  George, a dhrop--"

George shook his head.  A smile was on his lips, and that smile had
in it a quality of remoteness, as though it belonged to another
sphere, and had strayed on to the lips of this man of the world
against his will.  He seemed trying to conquer it, to twist his face
into its habitual shape, but, like the spirit of a strange force, the
smile broke through.  It had mastered him, his thoughts, his habits,
and his creed; he was stripped of fashion, as on a thirsty noon a man
stands stripped for a cool plunge from which he hardly cares if he
come up again.

And this smile, not by intrinsic merit, but by virtue of its
strangeness, attracted the eye of each man in the room; so, in a
crowd, the most foreign-looking face will draw all glances.

The Reverend Husell Barter with a frown watched that smile, and
strange thoughts chased through his mind.

"Uncle Charles, a dhrop of the craythur a wee dhrop of the craythur?"

General Pendyce caressed his whisker.

"The least touch," he said, "the least touch!  I hear that our friend
Sir Percival is going to stand again."

Mr. Barter rose and placed his back before the fire.

"Outrageous!"  he said.  "He ought to be told at once that we can't
have him."

The Hon. Geoffrey Winlow answered from his chair:

"If he puts up, he'll get in; they can't afford to lose him."  And
with a leisurely puff of smoke: "I must say, sir, I don't quite see
what it has to do with his public life."

Mr. Barter thrust forth his lower lip.

"An impenitent man," he said.

"But a woman like that!  What chance has a fellow if she once gets
hold of him?"

"When I was stationed at Halifax," began General Pendyce, "she was
the belle of the place---"

Again Mr. Barter thrust out his lower lip.

"Don't let's talk of her---the jade!"  Then suddenly to George:
"Let's hear your opinion, George.  Dreaming of your victories, eh?"
And the tone of his voice was peculiar.

But George got up.

"I'm too sleepy," he said; "good-night."  Curtly nodding, he left the
room.

Outside the door stood a dark oak table covered with silver
candlesticks; a single candle burned thereon, and made a thin gold
path in the velvet blackness.  George lighted his candle, and a
second gold path leaped out in front; up this he began to ascend.  He
carried his candle at the level of his breast, and the light shone
sideways and up over his white shirt-front and the comely, bulldog
face above it.  It shone, too, into his eyes, 'grey and slightly
bloodshot, as though their surfaces concealed passions violently
struggling for expression.  At the turning platform of the stair he
paused.  In darkness above and in darkness below the country house
was still; all the little life of its day, its petty sounds,
movements, comings, goings, its very breathing, seemed to have fallen
into sleep.  The forces of its life had gathered into that pool of
light where George stood listening.  The beating of his heart was the
only sound; in that small sound was all the pulse of this great
slumbering space.  He stood there long, motionless, listening to the
beating of his heart, like a man fallen into a trance.  Then floating
up through the darkness came the echo of a laugh.  George started.
"The d----d parson!"  he muttered, and turned up the stairs again;
but now he moved like a man with a purpose, and held his candle high
so that the light fell far out into the darkness.  He went beyond his
own room, and stood still again.  The light of the candle showed
the blood flushing his forehead, beating and pulsing in the veins at
the side of his temples; showed, too, his lips quivering, his shaking
hand. He stretched out that hand and touched the handle of a door,
then stood again like a man of stone, listening for the laugh.  He
raised the candle, and it shone into every nook; his throat clicked,
as though he found it hard to swallow....


It was at  Barnard Scrolls, the next station to Worsted Skeynes, on
the following afternoon, that a young man entered a first-class
compartment of the 3.10 train to town.  The young man wore a
Newmarket coat, natty white gloves, and carried an eyeglass.  His
face was well coloured, his chestnut moustache well brushed, and his
blue eyes with their loving expression seemed to say, "Look at me--
come, look at me--can anyone be better fed?" His valise and hat-box,
of the best leather, bore the inscription, "E. Maydew, 8th Lancers."

There was a lady leaning back in a corner, wrapped to the chin in a
fur garment, and the young man, encountering through his eyeglass her
cool, ironical glance, dropped it and held out his hand.

"Ah, Mrs. Bellew, great pleasure t'see you again so soon.  You goin'
up to town?  Jolly dance last night, wasn't it?  Dear old sort, the
Squire, and Mrs. Pendyce such an awf'ly nice woman."

Mrs. Bellew took his hand, and leaned back again in her corner.  She
was rather paler than usual, but it became her, and Captain Maydew
thought he had never seen so charming a creature.

"Got a week's leave, thank goodness.  Most awf'ly slow time of year.
Cubbin's pretty well over, an' we don't open till the first."

He turned to the window.  There in the sunlight the hedgerows ran
golden and brown away from the clouds of trailing train smoke.  Young
Maydew shook his head at their beauty.

"The country's still very blind," he said.  "Awful pity you've given
up your huntin'."

Mrs. Bellew did not trouble to answer, and it was just that certainty
over herself, the cool assurance of a woman who has known the world,
her calm, almost negligent eyes, that fascinated this young man.  He
looked at her quite shyly.

'I suppose you will become my slave,' those eyes seemed to say, 'but
I can't help you, really.'

"Did you back George's horse?  I had an awf'ly good race.  I was at
school with George.  Charmin' fellow, old George."

In Mrs. Bellew's eyes something seemed to stir down in the depths,
but young Maydew was looking at his glove.  The handle of the
carriage had left a mark that saddened him.

"You know him well, I suppose, old George?"

"Very well."

"Some fellows, if they have a good thing, keep it so jolly dark.  You
fond of racin', Mrs. Bellew?"

"Passionately."

"So am I" And his eyes continued, 'It's ripping to like what you
like,' for, hypnotised, they could not tear themselves away from that
creamy face, with its full lips and the clear, faintly smiling eyes
above the high collar of white fur.

At the terminus his services were refused, and rather crestfallen,
with his hat raised, he watched her walk away.  But soon, in his cab,
his face regained its normal look, his eyes seemed saying to the
little mirror, 'Look at me come, look at me--can anyone be better
fed?'




CHAPTER VII

SABBATH AT WORSTED SKEYNES

In the white morning-room which served for her boudoir Mrs. Pendyce
sat with an opened letter in her lap.  It was her practice to sit
there on Sunday mornings for an hour before she went to her room
adjoining to put on her hat for church.  It was her pleasure during
that hour to do nothing but sit at the window, open if the weather
permitted, and look over the home paddock and the squat spire of the
village church rising among a group of elms.  It is not known what
she thought about at those times, unless of the countless Sunday
mornings she had sat there with her hands in her lap waiting to be
roused at 10.45 by the Squire's entrance and his "Now, my dear,
you'll be late!"  She had sat there till her hair, once dark-brown,
was turning grey; she would sit there until it was white.  One day
she would sit there no longer, and, as likely as not, Mr. Pendyce,
still well preserved, would enter and say, "Now, my dear, you'll be
late!" having for the moment forgotten.

But this was all to be expected, nothing out of the common; the same
thing was happening in hundreds of country houses throughout the
"three kingdoms," and women were sitting waiting for their hair to
turn white, who, long before, at the altar of a fashionable church,
had parted with their imaginations and all the changes and chances of
this mortal life.

Round her chair "the dear dogs" lay--this was their practice too, and
now and again the Skye (he was getting very old) would put out a long
tongue and lick her little pointed shoe.  For Mrs. Pendyce had been a
pretty woman, and her feet were as small as ever.

Beside her on a spindley table stood a china bowl filled with dried
rose-leaves, whereon had been scattered an essence smelling like
sweetbriar, whose secret she had learned from her mother in the old
Warwickshire home of the Totteridges, long since sold to Mr. Abraham
Brightman.  Mrs. Pendyce, born in the year 1840, loved sweet
perfumes, and was not ashamed of using them.

The Indian summer sun was soft and bright; and wistful, soft, and
bright were Mrs. Pendyce's eyes, fixed on the letter in her lap.  She
turned it over and began to read again.  A wrinkle visited her brow.
It was not often that a letter demanding decision or involving
responsibility came to her hands past the kind and just censorship of
Horace Pendyce.  Many matters were under her control, but were not,
so to speak, connected with the outer world.  Thus ran the letter:


                              "S.R.W.C., HANOVER SQUARE,
                                   "November 1, 1891.

"DEAR MARGERY,

"I want to see you and talk something over, so I'm running down on
Sunday afternoon.  There is a train of sorts.  Any loft will do for
me to sleep in if your house is full, as it may be, I suppose, at
this time of year.  On second thoughts I will tell you what I want to
see you about.  You know, of course, that since her father died I am
Helen Bellew's only guardian.  Her present position is one in which
no woman should be placed; I am convinced it ought to be put an end
to.  That man Bellew deserves no consideration.  I cannot write of
him coolly, so I won't write at all.  It is two years now since they
separated, entirely, as I consider, through his fault.  The law has
placed her in a cruel and helpless position all this time; but now,
thank God, I believe we can move for a divorce.  You know me well
enough to realise what I have gone through before coming to this
conclusion.  Heaven knows if I could hit on some other way in which
her future could be safeguarded, I would take it in preference to
this, which is most repugnant; but I cannot.  You are the only woman
I can rely on to be interested in her, and I must see Bellew.  Let
not the fat and just Benson and his estimable horses be disturbed on
my account; I will walk up and carry my toothbrush.

                              "Affectionately your cousin,
                                             "GREGORY VIGIL."


Mrs. Pendyce smiled.  She saw no joke, but she knew from the wording
of the last sentence that Gregory saw one, and she liked to give it a
welcome; so smiling and wrinkling her forehead, she mused over the
letter.  Her thoughts wandered.  The last scandal--Lady Rose
Bethany's divorce--had upset the whole county, and even now one had
to be careful what one said.  Horace would not like the idea of
another divorce-suit, and that so close to Worsted Skeynes.  When
Helen left on Thursday he had said:

"I'm not sorry she's gone.  Her position is a queer one.  People
don't like it.  The Maidens were quite----"

And Mrs. Pendyce remembered with a glow at her heart how she had
broken in:

"Ellen Maiden is too bourgeoise for anything!"

Nor had Mr. Pendyce's look of displeasure effaced the comfort of that
word.

Poor Horace!  The children took after him, except George, who took
after her brother Hubert.  The dear boy had gone back to his club on
Friday--the day after Helen and the others went.  She wished he could
have stayed.  She wished----The wrinkle deepened on her brow.  Too
much London was bad for him!  Too much----Her fancy flew to the
London which she saw now only for three weeks in June and July, for
the sake of the girls, just when her garden was at its best, and when
really things were such a whirl that she never knew whether she was
asleep or awake.  It was not like London at all--not like that London
under spring skies, or in early winter lamplight, where all the
passers-by seemed so interesting, living all sorts of strange and
eager lives, with strange and eager pleasures, running all sorts of
risks, hungry sometimes, homeless even--so fascinating, so unlike----

"Now, my dear, you'll be late!"

Mr. Pendyce, in his Norfolk jacket, which he was on his way to change
for a black coat, passed through the room, followed by the spaniel
John.  He turned at the door, and the spaniel John turned too.

"I hope to goodness Barter'll be short this morning.  I want to talk
to old Fox about that new chaff-cutter."

Round their mistress the three terriers raised their heads; the aged
Skye gave forth a gentle growl.  Mrs. Pendyce leaned over and stroked
his nose.

"Roy, Roy, how can you, dear?"

Mr. Pendyce said:

"The old dog's losing all his teeth; he'll have to be put away."

His wife flushed painfully.

"Oh no, Horace--oh no!"

The Squire coughed.

"We must think of the dog!"  he said.

Mrs. Pendyce rose, and crumpling the letter nervously, followed him
from the room.

A narrow path led through the home paddock towards the church, and
along it the household were making their way.  The maids in feathers
hurried along guiltily by twos and threes; the butler followed slowly
by himself.  A footman and a groom came next, leaving trails of
pomatum in the air.  Presently General Pendyce, in a high square-
topped bowler hat, carrying a malacca cane, and Prayer-Book, appeared
walking between Bee and Norah, also carrying Prayer-Books, with fox-
terriers by their sides.  Lastly, the Squire in a high hat, six or
seven paces in advance of his wife, in a small velvet toque.

The rooks had ceased their wheeling and their cawing; the five-
minutes bell, with its jerky, toneless tolling, alone broke the
Sunday hush.  An old horse, not yet taken up from grass, stood
motionless, resting a hind-leg, with his face turned towards the
footpath.  Within the churchyard wicket the Rector, firm and square,
a low-crowned hat tilted up on his bald forehead, was talking to a
deaf old cottager.  He raised his hat and nodded to the ladies; then,
leaving his remark unfinished, disappeared within the vestry.  At the
organ Mrs. Barter was drawing out stops in readiness to play her
husband into church, and her eyes, half-shining and half-anxious,
were fixed intently on the vestry door.

The Squire and Mrs. Pendyce, now almost abreast, came down the aisle
and took their seats beside their daughters and the General in the
first pew on the left.  It was high and cushioned.  They knelt down
on tall red hassocks.  Mrs. Pendyce remained over a minute buried in
thought; Mr. Pendyce rose sooner, and looking down, kicked the
hassock that had been put too near the seat.  Fixing his glasses on
his nose, he consulted a worn old Bible, then rising, walked to the
lectern and began to find the Lessons.  The bell ceased; a wheezing,
growling noise was heard.  Mrs. Barter had begun to play; the Rector,
in a white surplice, was coming in.  Mr. Pendyce, with his back
turned, continued to find the Lessons.  The service began.

Through a plain glass window high up in the right-hand aisle the sun
shot a gleam athwart the Pendyces' pew.  It found its last resting-
place on Mrs. Barter's face, showing her soft crumpled cheeks
painfully flushed, the lines on her forehead, and those shining eyes,
eager and anxious, travelling ever from her husband to her music and
back again.  At the least fold or frown on his face the music seemed
to quiver, as to some spasm in the player's soul.  In the Pendyces'
pew the two girls sang loudly and with a certain sweetness.  Mr.
Pendyce, too, sang, and once or twice he looked in surprise at his
brother, as though he were not making a creditable noise.

Mrs. Pendyce did not sing, but her lips moved, and her eyes followed
the millions of little dust atoms dancing in the long slanting
sunbeam.  Its gold path canted slowly from her, then, as by magic,
vanished.  Mrs. Pendyce let her eyes fall.  Something had fled from
her soul with the sunbeam; her lips moved no more.

The Squire sang two loud notes, spoke three, sang two again; the
Psalms ceased.  He left his seat, and placing his hands on the
lectern's sides, leaned forward and began to read the Lesson.  He
read the story of Abraham and Lot, and of their flocks and herds, and
how they could not dwell together, and as he read, hypnotised by the
sound of his own voice, he was thinking:

'This Lesson is well read by me, Horace Pendyce.  I am Horace
Pendyce--Horace Pendyce.  Amen, Horace Pendyce!'

And in the first pew on the left Mrs. Pendyce fixed her eyes upon
him, for this was her habit, and she thought how, when the spring
came again, she would run up to town, alone, and stay at Green's
Hotel, where she had always stayed with her father when a girl.
George had promised to look after her, and take her round the
theatres.  And forgetting that she had thought this every autumn for
the last ten years, she gently smiled and nodded.  Mr. Pendyce said:

"'And I will make thy seed as the dust of the earth; so that if a man
can number the dust of the earth, then shall thy seed also be
numbered.  Arise, walk through the land in the length of it and in
the breadth of it; for I will give it unto thee.  Then Abram removed
his tent, and came and dwelt in the plain of Mamre, which is in
Hebron, and built there an altar unto the Lord.' Here endeth the
first Lesson."

The sun, reaching the second window, again shot a gold pathway
athwart the church; again the millions of dust atoms danced, and the
service went on.

There came a hush.  The spaniel John, crouched close to the ground
outside, poked his long black nose under the churchyard gate; the
fox-terriers, seated patient in the grass, pricked their ears.  A
voice speaking on one note broke the hush.  The spaniel John sighed,
the fox-terriers dropped their ears, and lay down heavily against
each other.  The Rector had begun to preach.  He preached on
fruitfulness, and in the first right-hand pew six of his children at
once began to fidget.  Mrs. Barter, sideways and unsupported on her
seat, kept her starry eyes fixed on his cheek; a line of perplexity
furrowed her brow.  Now and again she moved as though her back ached.
The Rector quartered his congregation with his gaze, lest any amongst
them should incline to sleep.  He spoke in a loud-sounding voice.

God-he said-wished men to be fruitful, intended them to be fruitful,
commanded them to be fruitful.  God--he said--made men, and made the
earth; He made man to be fruitful in the earth; He made man neither
to question nor answer nor argue; He made him to be fruitful and
possess the land.  As they had heard in that beautiful Lesson this
morning, God had set bounds, the bounds of marriage, within which man
should multiply; within those bounds it was his duty to multiply, and
that exceedingly--even as Abraham multiplied.  In these days dangers,
pitfalls, snares, were rife; in these days men went about and openly,
unashamedly advocated shameful doctrines.  Let them beware.  It would
be his sacred duty to exclude such men from within the precincts of
that parish entrusted to his care by God.  In the language of their
greatest poet, "Such men were dangerous"--dangerous to Christianity,
dangerous to their country, and to national life.  They were not
brought into this world to follow sinful inclination, to obey their
mortal reason.  God demanded sacrifices of men.  Patriotism demanded
sacrifices of men, it demanded that they should curb their
inclinations and desires.  It demanded of them their first duty as
men and Christians, the duty of being fruitful and multiplying, in
order that they might till this fruitful earth, not selfishly, not
for themselves alone.  It demanded of them the duty of multiplying in
order that they and their children might be equipped to smite the
enemies of their Queen and country, and uphold the name of England in
whatever quarrel, against all who rashly sought to drag her flag in
the dust.

The Squire opened his eyes and looked at his watch.  Folding his
arms, he coughed, for he was thinking of the chaff-cutter.  Beside
him Mrs. Pendyce, with her eyes on the altar, smiled as if in sleep.
She was thinking, 'Skyward's in Bond Street used to have lovely lace.
Perhaps in the spring I could----Or there was Goblin's, their Point
de Venise----'

Behind them, four rows back, an aged cottage woman, as upright as a
girl, sat with a rapt expression on her carved old face.  She never
moved, her eyes seemed drinking in the movements of the Rector's
lips, her whole being seemed hanging on his words.  It is true her
dim eyes saw nothing but a blur, her poor deaf ears could not hear
one word, but she sat at the angle she was used to, and thought of
nothing at all.  And perhaps it was better so, for she was near her
end.

Outside the churchyard, in the sun-warmed grass, the fox-terriers lay
one against the other, pretending to shiver, with their small bright
eyes fixed on the church door, and the rubbery nostrils of the
spaniel John worked ever busily beneath the wicket gate.




CHAPTER VIII

GREGORY VIGIL PROPOSES

About three o'clock that afternoon a tall man walked up the avenue at
Worsted Skeynes, in one hand carrying his hat, in the other a small
brown bag.  He stopped now and then, and took deep breaths, expanding
the nostrils of his straight nose.  He had a fine head, with wings of
grizzled hair.  His clothes were loose, his stride was springy.
Standing in the middle of the drive, taking those long breaths, with
his moist blue eyes upon the sky, he excited the attention of a
robin, who ran out of a rhododendron to see, and when he had passed
began to whistle.  Gregory Vigil turned, and screwed up his humorous
lips, and, except that he was completely lacking in embonpoint, he
had a certain resemblance to this bird, which is supposed to be
peculiarly British.

He asked for Mrs. Pendyce in a high, light voice, very pleasant to
the ear, and was at once shown to the white morning-room.

She greeted him affectionately, like many women who have grown used
to hearing from their husbands the formula "Oh! your people!"--she
had a strong feeling for her kith and kin.

"You know, Grig," she said, when her cousin was seated, "your letter
was rather disturbing.  Her separation from Captain Bellew has caused
such a lot of talk about here.  Yes; it's very common, I know, that
sort of thing, but Horace is so----!  All the squires and parsons and
county people we get about here are just the same.  Of course, I'm
very fond of her, she's so charming to look at; but, Gregory, I
really don't dislike her husband.  He's a desperate sort of person--I
think that's rather, refreshing; and you know I do think she's a
little like him in that!"

The blood rushed up into Gregory Vigil's forehead; he put his hand to
his head, and said:

"Like him?  Like that man?  Is a rose like an artichoke?"

Mrs. Pendyce went on:

"I enjoyed having her here immensely.  It's the first time she's been
here since she left the Firs.  How long is that?  Two years?  But you
know, Grig, the Maidens were quite upset about her.  Do you think a
divorce is really necessary?"

Gregory Vigil answered: "I'm afraid it is."

Mrs. Pendyce met her cousin's gaze serenely; if anything, her brows
were uplifted more than usual; but, as at the stirring of secret
trouble, her fingers began to twine and twist.  Before her rose a
vision of George and Mrs. Bellew side by side.  It was a vague
maternal feeling, an instinctive fear.  She stilled her fingers, let
her eyelids droop, and said:

"Of course, dear Grig, if I can help you in any way--Horace does so
dislike anything to do with the papers."

Gregory Vigil drew in his breath.

"The papers!"  he said.  "How hateful it is!  To think that our
civilisation should allow women to be cast to the dogs!  Understand,
Margery, I'm thinking of her.  In this matter I'm not capable of
considering anything else."

Mrs. Pendyce murmured: "Of course, dear Grig, I quite understand."

"Her position is odious; a woman should not have to live like that,
exposed to everyone's foul gossip."

"But, dear Grig, I don't think she minds; she seemed to me in such
excellent spirits."

Gregory ran his fingers through his hair.

"Nobody understands her," he said; "she's so plucky!"

Mrs. Pendyce stole a glance at him, and a little ironical smile
flickered over her face.

"No one can look at her without seeing her spirit.  But, Grig,
perhaps you don't quite understand her either!"

Gregory Vigil put his hand to his head.

"I must open the window a moment," he said.

Again Mrs. Pendyce's fingers began twisting, again she stilled them.

"We were quite a large party last week, and now there's only Charles.
Even George has gone back; he'll be so sorry to have missed you!"

Gregory neither turned nor answered, and a wistful look came into
Mrs. Pendyce's face.

"It was so nice for the dear boy to win that race!  I'm afraid he
bets rather!  It's such a comfort Horace doesn't know."

Still Gregory did not speak.

Mrs. Pendyce's face lost its anxious look, and gained a sort of
gentle admiration.

"Dear Grig," she said, "where do you go about your hair?  It is so
nice and long and wavy!"

Gregory turned with a blush.

"I've been wanting to get it cut for ages.  Do you really mean,
Margery, that your husband can't realise the position she's placed
in?"

Mrs. Pendyce fixed her eyes on her lap.

"You see, Grig," she began, "she was here a good deal before she left
the Firs, and, of course, she's related to me--though it's very
distant.  With those horrid cases, you never know what will happen.
Horace is certain to say that she ought to go back to her husband;
or, if that's impossible, he'll say she ought to think of Society.
Lady Rose Bethany's case has shaken everybody, and Horace is nervous.
I don't know how it is, there's a great feeling amongst people about
here against women asserting themselves.  You should hear Mr. Barter
and Sir James Maiden, and dozens of others; the funny thing is that
the women take their side.  Of course, it seems odd to me, because so
many of the Totteridges ran away, or did something funny.  I can't
help sympathising with her, but I have to think of--of----In the
country, you don't know how things that people do get about before
they've done them!  There's only that and hunting to talk of."

Gregory Vigil clutched at his head.

"Well, if this is what chivalry has come to, thank God I'm not a
squire!"

Mrs. Pendyce's eyes flickered.

"Ah!" she said, "I've thought like that so often."

Gregory broke the silence.

"I can't help the customs of the country.  My duty's plain.  There's
nobody else to look after her."

Mrs. Pendyce sighed, and, rising from her chair, said: "Very well,
dear Grig; do let us go and have some tea."

Tea at Worsted Skeynes was served in the hall on Sundays, and was
usually attended by the Rector and his wife.  Young Cecil Tharp had
walked over with his dog, which could be heard whimpering faintly
outside the front-door.

General Pendyce, with his knees crossed and the tips of his fingers
pressed together, was leaning back in his chair and staring at the
wall.  The Squire, who held his latest bird's-egg in his hand, was
showing its spots to the Rector.

In a corner by a harmonium, on which no one ever played, Norah talked
of the village hockey club to Mrs. Barter, who sat with her eyes
fixed on her husband.  On the other side of the fire Bee and young
Tharp, whose chairs seemed very close together, spoke of their horses
in low tones, stealing shy glances at each other.  The light was
failing, the wood logs crackled, and now and then over the cosy hum
of talk there fell short, drowsy silences--silences of sheer warmth
and comfort, like the silence of the spaniel John asleep against his
master's boot.

"Well," said Gregory softly, "I must go and see this man."

"Is it really necessary, Grig, to see him at all?  I mean--if you've
made up your mind----"

Gregory ran his hand through his hair.

"It's only fair, I think!"  And crossing the hall, he let himself out
so quietly that no one but Mrs. Pendyce noticed he had gone.

An hour and a half later, near the railway-station, on the road from
the village back to Worsted Skeynes, Mr. Pendyce and his daughter Bee
were returning from their Sunday visit to their old butler, Bigson.
The Squire was talking.

"He's failing, Bee-dear old Bigson's failing.  I can't hear what he
says, he mumbles so; and he forgets.  Fancy his forgetting that I was
at Oxford.  But we don't get servants like him nowadays.  That chap
we've got now is a sleepy fellow.  Sleepy! he's----What's that in
the road?  They've no business to be coming at that pace.  Who is it?
I can't see."

Down the middle of the dark road a dog cart was approaching at top
speed.  Bee seized her father's arm and pulled it vigorously, for Mr.
Pendyce was standing stock-still in disapproval.  The dog cart passed
within a foot of him and vanished, swinging round into the station.
Mr. Pendyce turned in his tracks.

"Who was that?  Disgraceful!  On Sunday, too!  The fellow must be
drunk; he nearly ran over my legs.  Did you see, Bee, he nearly ran
over----"

Bee answered:

"It was Captain Bellew, Father; I saw his face."  "Bellew?  That
drunken fellow?  I shall summons him.  Did you see, Bee, he nearly
ran over my----"

"Perhaps he's had bad news," said Bee.  "There's the train going out
now; I do hope he caught it!"

"Bad news!  Is that an excuse for driving over me?  You hope he
caught it?  I hope he's thrown himself out.  The ruffian!  I hope
he's killed himself."

In this strain Mr. Pendyce continued until they reached the church.
On their way up the aisle they passed Gregory Vigil leaning forward
with his elbows on the desk and his hand covering his eyes....

At eleven o'clock that night a man stood outside the door of Mrs.
Bellew's flat in Chelsea violently ringing the bell.  His face was
deathly white, but his little dark eyes sparkled.  The door was
opened, and Helen Bellew in evening dress stood there holding a
candle in her hand.

"Who are you?  What do you want?"

The man moved into the light.

"Jaspar!  You?  What on earth----"

"I want to talk."

"Talk?  Do you know what time it is?"

"Time--there's no such thing.  You might give me a kiss after two
years.  I've been drinking, but I'm not drunk."

Mrs. Bellew did not kiss him, neither did she draw back her face.  No
trace of alarm showed in her ice-grey eyes.  She said: "If I let you
in, will you promise to say what you want to say quickly, and go
away?"

The little brown devils danced in Bellew's face.  He nodded.  They
stood by the hearth in the sitting-room, and on the lips of both came
and went a peculiar smile.

It was difficult to contemplate too seriously a person with whom one
had lived for years, with whom one had experienced in common the
range of human passion, intimacy, and estrangement, who knew all
those little daily things that men and women living together know of
each other, and with whom in the end, without hatred, but because of
one's nature, one had ceased to live.  There was nothing for either
of them to find out, and with a little smile, like the smile of
knowledge itself, Jaspar Bellew and Helen his wife looked at each
other.

"Well," she said again; "what have you come for?"

Bellew's face had changed.  Its expression was furtive; his mouth
twitched; a furrow had come between his eyes.

"How--are--you?" he said in a thick, muttering voice.

Mrs. Bellew's clear voice answered:

"Now, Jaspar, what is it that you want?"

The little brown devils leaped up again in Jaspar's face.

"You look very pretty to-night!"

His wife's lips curled.

"I'm much the same as I always was," she said.

A violent shudder shook Bellew.  He fixed his eyes on the floor a
little beyond her to the left; suddenly he raised them.  They were
quite lifeless.

"I'm perfectly sober," he murmured thickly; then with startling
quickness his eyes began to sparkle again.  He came a step nearer.

"You're my wife!"  he said.

Mrs. Bellew smiled.

"Come," she answered, "you must go!" and she put out her bare arm to
push him back.  But Bellew recoiled of his own accord; his eyes were
fixed again on the floor a little beyond her to the left.

"What's that?" he stammered.  "What's that--that black----?"

The devilry, mockery, admiration, bemusement, had gone out of his
face; it was white and calm, and horribly pathetic.

"Don't turn me out," he stammered; "don't turn me out!"

Mrs. Bellew looked at him hard; the defiance in her eyes changed to a
sort of pity.  She took a quick step and put her hand on his
shoulder.

"It's all right, old boy--all right!"  she said.  "There's nothing
there!"




CHAPTER IX

MR. PARAMOR DISPOSES

Mrs. Pendyce, who, in accordance with her husband's wish, still
occupied the same room as Mr. Pendyce, chose the ten minutes before
he got up to break to him Gregory's decision.  The moment was
auspicious, for he was only half awake.

"Horace," she said, and her face looked young and anxious, "Grig says
that Helen Bellew ought not to go on in her present position.  Of
course, I told him that you'd be annoyed, but Grig says that she
can't go on like this, that she simply must divorce Captain Bellew."

Mr. Pendyce was lying on his back.

"What's that?" he said.

Mrs. Pendyce went on

"I knew it would worry you; but really"--she fixed her eyes on the
ceiling--"I suppose we ought only to think of her."

The Squire sat up.

"What was that," he said, "about Bellew?"

Mrs. Pendyce went on in a languid voice and without moving her eyes:

"Don't be angrier than you can help, dear; it is so wearing.  If Grig
says she ought to divorce Captain Bellew, then I'm sure she ought."

Horace Pendyce subsided on his pillow with a bounce, and he too lay
with his eyes fixed on the ceiling.

"Divorce him!"  he said--"I should think so!  He ought to be hanged,
a fellow like that.  I told you last night he nearly drove over me.
Living just as he likes, setting an example of devilry to the whole
neighbourhood!  If I hadn't kept my head he'd have bowled me over
like a ninepin, and Bee into the bargain."

Mrs. Pendyce sighed.

"It was a narrow escape," she said.

"Divorce him!" resumed Mr. Pendyce--"I should think so!  She ought to
have divorced him long ago.  It was the nearest thing in the world;
another foot and I should have been knocked off my feet!"

Mrs. Pendyce withdrew her glance from the ceiling.

"At first," she said, "I wondered whether it was quite--but I'm very
glad you've taken it like this."

"Taken it!  I can tell you, Margery, that sort of thing makes one
think.  All the time Barter was preaching last night I was wondering
what on earth would have happened to this estate if--if----" And he
looked round with a frown.  "Even as it is, I barely make the two
ends of it meet.  As to George, he's no more fit at present to manage
it than you are; he'd make a loss of thousands."

"I'm afraid George is too much in London.  That's the reason I
wondered whether--I'm afraid he sees too much of----"

Mrs. Pendyce stopped; a flush suffused her cheeks; she had pinched
herself violently beneath the bedclothes.

"George," said Mr. Pendyce, pursuing his own thoughts, "has no
gumption.  He'd never manage a man like Peacock--and you encourage
him!  He ought to marry and settle down."

Mrs. Pendyce, the flush dying in her cheeks, said:

"George is very like poor Hubert."

Horace Pendyce drew his watch from beneath his pillow.

"Ah!"  But he refrained from adding, "Your people!"  for Hubert
Totteridge had not been dead a year.  "Ten minutes to eight!  You
keep me talking here; it's time I was in my bath."

Clad in pyjamas with a very wide blue stripe, grey-eyed, grey-
moustached, slim and erect, he paused at the door.

"The girls haven't a scrap of imagination.  What do you think Bee
said?  'I hope he hasn't lost his train.'  Lost his train!  Good God!
and I might have--I might have----" The Squire did not finish his
sentence; no words but what seemed to him violent and extreme would
have fulfilled his conception of the danger he had escaped, and it
was against his nature and his training to exaggerate a physical
risk.

At breakfast he was more cordial than usual to Gregory, who was going
up by the first train, for as a rule Mr. Pendyce rather distrusted
him, as one would a wife's cousin, especially if he had a sense of
humour.

"A very good fellow," he was wont to say of him, "but an out-and-out
Radical."  It was the only label he could find for Gregory's
peculiarities.

Gregory departed without further allusion to the object of his visit.
He was driven to the station in a brougham by the first groom, and sat
with his hat off and his head at the open window, as if trying to get
something blown out of his brain.  Indeed, throughout the whole of
his journey up to town he looked out of the window, and expressions
half humorous and half puzzled played on his face.  Like a panorama
slowly unrolled, country house after country house, church after
church, appeared before his eyes in the autumn sunlight, among the
hedgerows and the coverts that were all brown and gold; and far away
on the rising uplands the slow ploughman drove, outlined against the
sky:

He took a cab from the station to his solicitors' in Lincoln's Inn
Fields.  He was shown into a room bare of all legal accessories,
except a series of Law Reports and a bunch of violets in a glass of
fresh water.  Edmund Paramor, the senior partner of Paramor and
Herring, a clean-shaven man of sixty, with iron-grey hair brushed in
a cockscomb off his forehead, greeted him with a smile.

"Ah, Vigil, how are you?  Up from the country?"

"From Worsted Skeynes."

"Horace Pendyce is a client of mine.  Well, what can we do for you?
Your Society up a tree?"

Gregory Vigil, in the padded leather chair that had held so many
aspirants for comfort, sat a full minute without speaking; and Mr.
Paramor, too, after one keen glance at his client that seemed to come
from very far down in his soul, sat motionless and grave.  There was
at that moment something a little similar in the eyes of these two
very different men, a look of kindred honesty and aspiration.
Gregory spoke at last.

"It's a painful subject to me."

Mr. Paramor drew a face on his blotting-paper.

"I have come," went on Gregory, "about a divorce for my ward."

"Mrs. Jaspar Bellew?"

"Yes; her position is intolerable."

Mr. Paramor gave him a searching look.

"Let me see: I think she and her husband have been separated for some
time."

"Yes, for two years."

"You're acting with her consent, of course?"

"I have spoken to her."

"You know the law of divorce, I suppose?"

Gregory answered with a painful smile:

"I'm not very clear about it; I hardly ever look at those cases in
the paper.  I hate the whole idea."

Mr. Paramor smiled again, became instantly grave, and said:

"We shall want evidence of certain things, Have you got any
evidence?"

Gregory ran his hand through his hair.

"I don't think there'll be any difficulty," he said.  "Bellew agrees
--they both agree!"

Mr. Paramor stared.

"What's that to do with it?"

Gregory caught him up.

"Surely, where both parties are anxious, and there's no opposition,
it can't be difficult."

"Good Lord!"  said Mr. Paramor.

"But I've seen Bellew; I saw him yesterday.  I'm sure I can get him
to admit anything you want!"

Mr. Paramor drew his breath between his teeth.

"Did you ever," he said drily, "hear of what's called collusion?"

Gregory got up and paced the room.

"I don't know that I've ever heard anything very exact about the
thing at all," he said.  "The whole subject is hateful to me.  I
regard marriage as sacred, and when, which God forbid, it proves
unsacred, it is horrible to think of these formalities.  This is a
Christian country; we are all flesh and blood.  What is this slime,
Paramor?"

With this outburst he sank again into the chair, and leaned his head
on his hand.  And oddly, instead of smiling, Mr. Paramor looked at
him with haunting eyes.

"Two unhappy persons must not seem to agree to be parted," he said.
"One must be believed to desire to keep hold of the other, and must
pose as an injured person.  There must be evidence of misconduct, and
in this case of cruelty or of desertion.  The evidence must be
impartial.  This is the law."

Gregory said without looking up:

"But why?"

Mr. Paramor took his violets out of the water, and put them to his
nose.

"How do you mean--why?"

"I mean, why this underhand, roundabout way?"

Mr. Paramor's face changed with startling speed from its haunting
look back to his smile.

"Well," he said, "for the preservation of morality.  What do you
suppose?"

"Do you call it moral so to imprison people that you drive them to
sin in order to free themselves?"

Mr. Paramor obliterated the face on his blotting-pad.

"Where's your sense of humour?" he said.

"I see no joke, Paramor."

Mr. Paramor leaned forward.

"My dear friend," he said earnestly, "I don't say for a minute that
our system doesn't cause a great deal of quite unnecessary suffering;
I don't say that it doesn't need reform.  Most lawyers and almost any
thinking man will tell you that it does.  But that's a wide question
which doesn't help us here.  We'll manage your business for you, if
it can be done.  You've made a bad start, that's all.  The first
thing is for us to write to Mrs. Bellew, and ask her to come and see
us.  We shall have to get Bellew watched."

Gregory said:

"That's detestable.  Can't it be done without that?"

Mr. Paramor bit his forefinger.

"Not safe," he said.  "But don't bother; we'll see to all that."

Gregory rose and went to the window.  He said suddenly:

"I can't bear this underhand work."

Mr. Paramor smiled.

"Every honest man," he said, "feels as you do.  But, you see, we must
think of the law."

Gregory burst out again:

"Can no one get a divorce, then, without making beasts or spies of
themselves?"

Mr. Paramor said gravely

"It is difficult, perhaps impossible.  You see, the law is based on
certain principles."

"Principles?"

A smile wreathed Mr. Paramor's mouth, but died instantly.

"Ecclesiastical principles, and according to these a person desiring
a divorce 'ipso facto' loses caste.  That they should have to make
spies or beasts of themselves is not of grave importance."

Gregory came back to the table, and again buried his head in his
hands.

"Don't joke, please, Paramor," he said; "it's all so painful to me."

Mr. Paramor's eyes haunted his client's bowed head.

"I'm not joking," he said.  "God forbid!  Do you read poetry?"  And
opening a drawer, he took out a book bound in red leather.  "This is
a man I'm fond of:

        "'Life is mostly froth and bubble;
               Two things stand like stone--
          KINDNESS in another's trouble,
               COURAGE in your own.'


"That seems to me the sum of all philosophy."

"Paramor," said Gregory, "my ward is very dear to me; she is dearer
to me than any woman I know.  I am here in a most dreadful dilemma.
On the one hand there is this horrible underhand business, with all
its publicity; and on the other there is her position--a beautiful
woman, fond of gaiety, living alone in this London, where every man's
instincts and every woman's tongue look upon her as fair game.  It
has been brought home to me only too painfully of late.  God forgive
me!  I have even advised her to go back to Bellew, but that seems out
of the question.  What am I to do?"

Mr. Paramor rose.

"I know," he said--"I know.  My dear friend, I know!"  And for a full
minute he remained motionless, a little turned from Gregory.  "It
will be better," he said suddenly, "for her to get rid of him.  I'll
go and see her myself.  We'll spare her all we can.  I'll go this
afternoon, and let you know the result."

As though by mutual instinct, they put out their hands, which they
shook with averted faces.  Then Gregory, seizing his hat, strode out
of the room.

He went straight to the rooms of his Society in Hanover Square.  They
were on the top floor, higher than the rooms of any other Society in
the building--so high, in fact, that from their windows, which began
five feet up, you could practically only see the sky.

A girl with sloping shoulders, red cheeks, and dark eyes, was working
a typewriter in a corner, and sideways to the sky at a bureau
littered with addressed envelopes, unanswered letters, and copies of
the Society's publications, was seated a grey-haired lady with a
long, thin, weatherbeaten face and glowing eyes, who was frowning at
a page of manuscript.

"Oh, Mr. Vigil," she said, "I'm so glad you've come.  This paragraph
mustn't go as it is.  It will never do."

Gregory took the manuscript and read the paragraph in question.


"This case of Eva Nevill is so horrible that we ask those of our
women readers who live in the security, luxury perhaps, peace
certainly, of their country homes, what they would have done, finding
themselves suddenly in the position of this poor girl--in a great
city, without friends, without money, almost without clothes, and
exposed to all the craft of one of those fiends in human form who
prey upon our womankind.  Let each one ask herself: Should I have
resisted where she fell?"


"It will never do to send that out," said the lady again.

"What is the matter with it, Mrs. Shortman?"

"It's too personal.  Think of Lady Maiden, or most of our
subscribers.  You can't expect them to imagine themselves like poor
Eva.  I'm sure they won't like it."

Gregory clutched at his hair.

"Is it possible they can't stand that?" he said.

"It's only because you've given such horrible details of poor Eva."

Gregory got up and paced the room.

Mrs. Shortman went on

"You've not lived in the country for so long, Mr. Vigil, that you
don't remember.  You see, I know.  People don't like to be harrowed.
Besides, think how difficult it is for them to imagine themselves in
such a position.  It'll only shock them, and do our circulation
harm."

Gregory snatched up the page and handed it to the girl who sat at the
typewriter in the corner.

"Read that, please, Miss Mallow."

The girl read without raising her eyes.

"Well, is it what Mrs. Shortman says?"

The girl handed it back with a blush.

"It's perfect, of course, in itself, but I think Mrs. Shortman is
right.  It might offend some people."

Gregory went quickly to the window, threw it up, and stood gazing at
the sky.  Both women looked at his back.

Mrs. Shortman said gently:

"I would only just alter it like this, from after 'country homes':
'whether they do not pity and forgive this poor girl in a great city,
without friends, without money, almost without clothes, and exposed
to all the craft of one of those fiends in human form who prey upon
our womankind,' and just stop there."

Gregory returned to the table.

"Not 'forgive,"' he said, "not 'forgive'!"

Mrs. Shortman raised her pen.

"You don't know," she said, "what a strong feeling there is.  Mind,
it has to go to numbers of parsonages, Mr. Vigil.  Our principle has
always been to be very careful.  And you have been plainer than usual
in stating the case.  It's not as if they really could put themselves
in her position; that's impossible.  Not one woman in a hundred
could, especially among those who live in the country and have never
seen life.  I'm a squire's daughter myself."

"And I a parson's," said Gregory, with a smile.

Mrs. Shortman looked at him reproachfully.

"Joking apart, Mr. Vigil, it's touch and go with our paper as it is;
we really can't afford it.  I've had lots of letters lately
complaining that we put the cases unnecessarily strongly.  Here's
one:

                              "'BOURNEFIELD RECTORY,
                              "'November 1.

"'DEAR MADAM,

"'While sympathising with your good work, I am afraid I cannot become
a subscriber to your paper while it takes its present form, as I do
not feel that it is always fit reading for my girls.  I cannot think
it either wise or right that they should become acquainted with such
dreadful aspects of life, however true they may be.

                              "'I am, dear madam,
                                   "'Respectfully yours,
                                        "'WINIFRED TUDDENHAM.

"'P.S.--I could never feel sure, too, that my maids would not pick it
up, and perhaps take harm.'


"I had that only this morning."

Gregory buried his face in his hands, and sitting thus he looked so
like a man praying that no one spoke.  When he raised his face it was
to say:

"Not 'forgive,' Mrs. Shortman, not 'forgive'!"

Mrs. Shortman ran her pen through the word.

"Very well, Mr. Vigil," she said; "it's a risk."

The sound of the typewriter, which had been hushed, began again from
the corner.

"That case of drink, Mr. Vigil--Millicent Porter--I'm afraid there's
very little hope there."

Gregory asked:

"What now?"

"Relapsed again; it's the fifth time."

Gregory turned his face to the window, and looked at the sky.

"I must go and see her.  Just give me her address."

Mrs. Shortman read from a green book:

"'Mrs. Porter, 2 Bilcock Buildings, Bloomsbury.'  Mr. Vigil!"

"Yes."

"Mr. Vigil, I do sometimes wish you would not persevere so long with
those hopeless cases; they never seem to come to anything, and your
time is so valuable."

"How can I give them up, Mrs. Shortman?  There's no choice."

"But, Mr. Vigil, why is there no choice?  You must draw the line
somewhere.  Do forgive me for saying that I think you sometimes waste
your time."

Gregory turned to the girl at the typewriter.

"Miss Mallow, is Mrs. Shortman right? do I waste my time?"

The girl at the typewriter blushed vividly, and, without looking
round, said:

"How can I tell, Mr. Vigil?  But it does worry one."

A humorous and perplexed smile passed over Gregory's lips.

"Now I know I shall cure her," he said.  "2 Bilcock Buildings."  And
he continued to look at the sky.  "How's your neuralgia, Mrs.
Shortman?"

Mrs. Shortman smiled.

"Awful!"

Gregory turned quickly.

"You feel that window, then; I'm so sorry."

Mrs. Shortman shook her head.

"No, but perhaps Molly does."

The girl at the typewriter said:

"Oh no; please, Mr. Vigil, don't shut it for me."

"Truth and honour?"

"Truth and honour," replied both women.  And all three for a moment
sat looking at the sky.  Then Mrs. Shortman said:

"You see, you can't get to the root of the evil--that husband of
hers."

Gregory turned.

"Ah," he said, "that man!  If she could only get rid of him!  That
ought to have been done long ago, before he drove her to drink like
this.  Why didn't she, Mrs. Shortman, why didn't she?"

Mrs. Shortman raised her eyes, which had such a peculiar spiritual
glow.

"I don't suppose she had the money," she said; "and she must have
been such a nice woman then.  A nice woman doesn't like to divorce--"

Gregory looked at her.

"What, Mrs. Shortman, you too, you too among the Pharisees?"

Mrs. Shortman flushed.

"She wanted to save him," she said; "she must have wanted to save
him."

"Then you and I----"  But Gregory did not finish, and turned again to
the window.  Mrs. Shortman, too, biting her lips, looked anxiously at
the sky.

Miss Mallow at the typewriter, with a scared face, plied her fingers
faster than ever.

Gregory was the first to speak.

"You must please forgive me," he said gently.  "A personal matter; I
forgot myself."

Mrs. Shortman withdrew her gaze from the sky.

"Oh, Mr. Vigil, if I had known----"

Gregory Gregory smiled.

"Don't, don't!"  he said; "we've quite frightened poor Miss Mallow!"

Miss Mallow looked round at him, he looked at her, and all three once
more looked at the sky.  It was the chief recreation of this little
society.

Gregory worked till nearly three, and walked out to a bun-shop, where
he lunched off a piece of cake and a cup of coffee.  He took an
omnibus, and getting on the top, was driven West with a smile on his
face and his hat in his hand.  He was thinking of Helen Bellew.  It
had become a habit with him to think of her, the best and most
beautiful of her sex--a habit in which he was growing grey, and with
which, therefore, he could not part.  And those women who saw him
with his uncovered head smiled, and thought:

'What a fine-looking man!'

But George Pendyce, who saw him from the window of the Stoics' Club,
smiled a different smile; the sight of him was always a little
unpleasant to George.

Nature, who had made Gregory Vigil a man, had long found that he had
got out of her hands, and was living in celibacy, deprived of the
comfort of woman, even of those poor creatures whom he befriended;
and Nature, who cannot bear that man should escape her control,
avenged herself through his nerves and a habit of blood to the head.
Extravagance, she said, I cannot have, and when I made this man I
made him quite extravagant enough.  For his temperament (not uncommon
in a misty climate) had been born seven feet high; and as a man
cannot add a cubit to his stature, so neither can he take one off.
Gregory could not bear that a yellow man must always remain a yellow
man, but trusted by care and attention some day to see him white.
There lives no mortal who has not a philosophy as distinct from every
other mortal's as his face is different from their faces; but Gregory
believed that philosophers unfortunately alien must gain in time a
likeness to himself if he were careful to tell them often that they
had been mistaken.  Other men in this Great Britain had the same
belief.

To Gregory's reforming instinct it was a constant grief that he had
been born refined.  A natural delicacy would interfere and mar his
noblest efforts.  Hence failures deplored by Mrs. Pendyce to Lady
Maiden the night they danced at Worsted Skeynes.

He left his bus near to the flat where Mrs. Bellow lived; with
reverence he made the tour of the building and back again.  He had
long fixed a rule, which he never broke, of seeing her only once a
fortnight; but to pass her windows he went out of his way most days
and nights.  And having made this tour, not conscious of having done
anything ridiculous, still smiling, and with his hat on his knee,
perhaps really happier because he had not seen her, was driven East,
once more passing George Pendyce in the bow-window of the Stoics'
Club, and once more raising on his face a jeering smile.

He had been back at his rooms in Buckingham Street half an hour when
a club commissionaire arrived with Mr. Paramor's promised letter.

He opened it hastily.

                              "THE NELSON CLUB,
                                   "TRAFALGAR SQUARE.

"MY DEAR VIGIL,

"I've just come from seeing your ward.  An embarrassing complexion is
lent to affairs by what took place last night.  It appears that after
your visit to him yesterday afternoon her husband came up to town,
and made his appearance at her flat about eleven o'clock.  He was in
a condition bordering on delirium tremens, and Mrs. Bellew was
obliged to keep him for the night.  'I could not,' she said to me,
'have refused a dog in such a state.'  The visit lasted until this
afternoon--in fact, the man had only just gone when I arrived.  It is
a piece of irony, of which I must explain to you the importance.  I
think I told you that the law of divorce is based on certain
principles.  One of these excludes any forgiveness of offences by the
party moving for a divorce.  In technical language, any such
forgiveness or overlooking is called condonation, and it is a
complete bar to further action for the time being.  The Court is very
jealous of this principle of nonforgiveness, and will regard with
grave suspicion any conduct on the part of the offended party which
might be construed as amounting to condonation.  I fear that what
your ward tells me will make it altogether inadvisable to apply for a
divorce on any evidence that may lie in the past.  It is too
dangerous.  In other words, the Court would almost certainly consider
that she has condoned offences so far.  Any further offence, however,
will in technical language 'revive' the past, and under these
circumstances, though nothing can be done at present, there may be
hope in the future.  After seeing your ward, I quite appreciate your
anxiety in the matter, though I am by no means sure that you are
right in advising this divorce.  If you remain in the same mind,
however, I will give the matter my best personal attention, and my
counsel to you is not to worry.  This is no matter for a layman,
especially not for one who, like you, judges of things rather as they
ought to be than as they are.

                         "I am, my dear Vigil,
                              "Very sincerely yours,
                                   "EDMUND PARAMOR.

"GREGORY VIGIL, ESQ.

"If you want to see me, I shall be at my club all the evening.-E. P."


When Gregory had read this note he walked to the window, and stood
looking out over the lights on the river.  His heart beat furiously,
his temples were crimson.  He went downstairs, and took a cab to the
Nelson Club.

Mr. Paramor, who was about to dine, invited his visitor to join him.

Gregory shook his head.

"No, thanks," he said; "I don't feel like dining.  What is this,
Paramor?  Surely there's some mistake?  Do you mean to tell me that
because she acted like a Christian to that man she is to be punished
for it in this way?"

Mr. Paramor bit his finger.

"Don't confuse yourself by dragging in Christianity.  Christianity
has nothing to do with law."

"You talked of principles," said Gregory--"ecclesiastical"

"Yes, yes; I meant principles imported from the old ecclesiastical
conception of marriage, which held man and wife to be undivorceable.
That conception has been abandoned by the law, but the principles
still haunt----"

"I don't understand."

Mr. Paramor said slowly:

"I don't know that anyone does.  It's our usual muddle.  But I know
this, Vigil--in such a case as your ward's we must tread very
carefully.  We must 'save face,' as the Chinese say.  We must pretend
we don't want to bring this divorce, but that we have been so injured
that we are obliged to come forward.  If Bellew says nothing, the
Judge will have to take what's put before him.  But there's always
the Queen's Proctor.  I don't know if you know anything about him?"

"No," said Gregory, "I don't."

"Well, if he can find out anything against our getting this divorce,
he will.  It is not my habit to go into Court with a case in which
anybody can find out anything."

"Do you mean to say"

"I mean to say that she must not ask for a divorce merely because she
is miserable, or placed in a position that no woman should be placed
in, but only if she has been offended in certain technical ways; and
if--by condonation, for instance--she has given the Court technical
reason for refusing her a divorce, that divorce will be refused her.
To get a divorce, Vigil, you must be as hard as nails and as wary as
a cat.  Now do you understand?"

Gregory did not answer.

Mr. Paramor looked searchingly and rather pityingly in his face.

"It won't do to go for it at present," he said.  "Are you still set
on this divorce?  I told you in my letter that I am not sure you are
right."

"How can you ask me, Paramor?  After that man's conduct last night, I
am more than ever set on it."

"Then," said Mr. Paramor, "we must keep a sharp eye on Bellew, and
hope for the best."

Gregory held out his hand.

"You spoke of morality," he said. "I can't tell you how inexpressibly
mean the whole thing seems to me.  Goodnight."

And, turning rather quickly, he went out.

His mind was confused and his heart torn.  He thought of Helen Bellew
as of the woman dearest to him in the coils of a great slimy serpent,
and the knowledge that each man and woman unhappily married was,
whether by his own, his partner's, or by no fault at all, in the same
embrace, afforded him no comfort whatsoever.  It was long before he
left the windy streets to go to his home.




CHAPTER X

AT BLAFARD'S

There comes now and then to the surface of our modern civilisation
one of those great and good men who, unconscious, like all great and
good men, of the goodness and greatness of their work, leave behind a
lasting memorial of themselves before they go bankrupt.

It was so with the founder of the Stoics' Club.

He came to the surface in the year 187-, with nothing in the world
but his clothes and an idea.  In a single year he had floated the
Stoics' Club, made ten thousand pounds, lost more, and gone down
again.

The Stoics' Club lived after him by reason of the immortal beauty of
his idea.  In 1891 it was a strong and corporate body, not perhaps
quite so exclusive as it had been, but, on the whole, as smart and
aristocratic as any club in London, with the exception of that one or
two into which nobody ever got.  The idea with which its founder had
underpinned the edifice was, like all great ideas, simple, permanent,
and perfect--so simple, permanent, and perfect that it seemed amazing
no one had ever thought of it before.  It was embodied in No. 1 of
the members' rules:

"No member of this club shall have any occupation whatsoever."

Hence the name of a club renowned throughout London for the
excellence of its wines and cuisine.

Its situation was in Piccadilly, fronting the Green Park, and through
the many windows of its ground-floor smoking-room the public were
privileged to see at all hours of the day numbers of Stoics in
various attitudes reading the daily papers or gazing out of the
window.

Some of them who did not direct companies, grow fruit, or own yachts,
wrote a book, or took an interest in a theatre.  The greater part
eked out existence by racing horses, hunting foxes, and shooting
birds.  Individuals among them, however, had been known to play the
piano, and take up the Roman Catholic religion.  Many explored the
same spots of the Continent year after year at stated seasons.  Some
belonged to the Yeomanry; others called themselves barristers; once
in a way one painted a picture or devoted himself to good works.
They were, in fact, of all sorts and temperaments, but their common
characteristic was an independent income, often so settled by
Providence that they could not in any way get rid of it.

But though the principle of no occupation overruled all class
distinctions, the Stoics were mainly derived from the landed gentry.
An instinct that the spirit of the club was safest with persons of
this class guided them in their elections, and eldest sons, who
became members almost as a matter of course, lost no time in putting
up their younger brothers, thereby keeping the wine as pure as might
be, and preserving that fine old country-house flavour which is
nowhere so appreciated as in London.

After seeing Gregory pass on the top of a bus, George Pendyce went
into the card-room, and as it was still empty, set to contemplation
of the pictures on the walls.  They were effigies of all those
members of the Stoics' Club who from time to time had come under the
notice of a celebrated caricaturist in a celebrated society paper.
Whenever a Stoic appeared, he was at once cut out, framed, glassed,
and hung alongside his fellows in this room.  And George moved from
one to another till he came to the last.  It was himself.  He was
represented in very perfectly cut clothes, with slightly crooked
elbows, and race-glasses slung across him.  His head,
disproportionately large, was surmounted by a black billycock hat
with a very flat brim.  The artist had thought long and carefully
over the face.  The lips and cheeks and chin were moulded so as to
convey a feeling of the unimaginative joy of life, but to their shape
and complexion was imparted a suggestion of obstinacy and choler.  To
the eyes was given a glazed look, and between them set a little line,
as though their owner were thinking:

'Hard work, hard work!  Noblesse oblige.  I must keep it going!'

Underneath was written: "The Ambler."

George stood long looking at the apotheosis of his fame.  His star
was high in the heavens.  With the eye of his mind he saw a long
procession of turf triumphs, a long vista of days and nights, and in
them, round them, of them--Helen Bellow; and by an odd coincidence,
as he stood there, the artist's glazed look came over his eyes, the
little line sprang up between them.

He turned at the sound of voices and sank into a chair.  To have been
caught thus gazing at himself would have jarred on his sense of what
was right.

It was twenty minutes past seven, when, in evening dress, he left the
club, and took a shilling's-worth to Buckingham Gate.  Here he
dismissed his cab, and turned up the large fur collar of his coat.
Between the brim of his opera-hat and the edge of that collar nothing
but his eyes were visible.  He waited, compressing his lips,
scrutinising each hansom that went by.  In the soft glow of one
coming fast he saw a hand raised to the trap.  The cab stopped;
George stepped out of the shadow and got in.  The cab went on, and
Mrs. Bellew's arm was pressed against his own.

It was their simple formula for arriving at a restaurant together.

In the third of several little rooms, where the lights were shaded,
they sat down at a table in a corner, facing each a wall, and,
underneath, her shoe stole out along the floor and touched his patent
leather boot.  In their eyes, for all their would-be wariness, a
light smouldered which would not be put out.  An habitue, sipping
claret at a table across the little room, watched them in a mirror,
and there came into his old heart a glow of warmth, half ache, half
sympathy; a smile of understanding stirred the crow's-feet round his
eyes.  Its sweetness ebbed, and left a little grin about his shaven
lips.  Behind the archway in the neighbouring room two waiters met,
and in their nods and glances was that same unconscious sympathy, the
same conscious grin.  And the old habitue thought:

'How long will it last?'....  "Waiter, some coffee and my bill!"

He had meant to go to the play, but he lingered instead to look at
Mrs. Bellew's white shoulders and bright eyes in the kindly mirror.
And he thought:

'Young days at present.  Ah, young days!'....

"Waiter, a Benedictine!"  And hearing her laugh, O his old heart
ached.  'No one,' he thought, 'will ever laugh like that for me
again!'....  "Here, waiter, how's this?  You've charged me for an
ice!"  But when the waiter had gone he glanced back into the mirror,
and saw them clink their glasses filled with golden bubbling wine,
and he thought: 'Wish you good luck!  For a flash of those teeth, my
dear, I'd give----'

But his eyes fell on the paper flowers adorning his little table--
yellow and red and green; hard, lifeless, tawdry.  He saw them
suddenly as they were, with the dregs of wine in his glass, the spill
of gravy on the cloth, the ruin of the nuts that he had eaten.
Wheezing and coughing, 'This place is not what it was,' he thought;
'I shan't come here again!'

He struggled into his coat to go, but he looked once more in the
mirror, and met their eyes resting on himself.  In them he read the
careless pity of the young for the old.  His eyes answered the
reflection of their eyes, 'Wait, wait!  It is young days yet!  I wish
you no harm, my dears!' and limping-for one of his legs was lame--he
went away.

But George and his partner sat on, and with every glass of wine the
light in their eyes grew brighter.  For who was there now in the room
to mind?  Not a living soul!  Only a tall, dark young waiter, a
little cross-eyed, who was in consumption; only the little wine-
waiter, with a pallid face, and a look as if he suffered.  And the
whole world seemed of the colour of the wine they had been drinking;
but they talked of indifferent things, and only their eyes, bemused
and shining, really spoke.  The dark young waiter stood apart,
unmoving, and his cross-eyed glance, fixed on her shoulders, had all
unconsciously the longing of a saint in some holy picture.  Unseen,
behind the serving screen, the little wine-waiter poured out and
drank a glass from a derelict bottle.  Through a chink of the red
blinds an eye peered in from the chill outside, staring and curious,
till its owner passed on in the cold.

It was long after nine when they rose.  The dark young waiter laid
her cloak upon her with adoring hands.  She looked back at him, and
in her eyes was an infinite indulgence.  'God knows,' she seemed to
say, 'if I could make you happy as well, I would.  Why should one
suffer?  Life is strong and good!'

The young waiter's cross-eyed glance fell before her, and he bowed
above the money in his hand.  Quickly before them the little wine-
waiter hurried to the door, his suffering face screwed into one long
smile.

"Good-night, madam; good-night, sir.  Thank you very much!"

And he, too, remained bowed over his hand, and his smile relaxed.

But in the cab George's arm stole round her underneath the cloak, and
they were borne on in the stream of hurrying hansoms, carrying
couples like themselves, cut off from all but each other's eyes, from
all but each other's touch; and with their eyes turned in the half-
dark they spoke together in low tones.





PART II


CHAPTER I

GREGORY REOPENS THE CAMPAIGN

At one end of the walled garden which Mr. Pendyce had formed in
imitation of that at dear old Strathbegally, was a virgin orchard of
pear and cherry trees.  They blossomed early, and by the end of the
third week in April the last of the cherries had broken into flower.
In the long grass, underneath, a wealth of daffodils, jonquils, and
narcissus, came up year after year, and sunned their yellow stars in
the light which dappled through the blossom.

And here Mrs. Pendyce would come, tan gauntlets on her hands, and
stand, her face a little flushed with stooping, as though the sight
of all that bloom was restful.  It was due to her that these old
trees escaped year after year the pruning and improvements which the
genius of the Squire would otherwise have applied.  She had been
brought up in an old Totteridge tradition that fruit-trees should be
left to themselves, while her husband, possessed of a grasp of the
subject not more than usually behind the times, was all for newer
methods.  She had fought for those trees.  They were as yet the only
things she had fought for in her married life, and Horace Pendyce
still remembered with a discomfort robbed by time of poignancy how
she had stood with her back to their bedroom door and said, "If you
cut those poor trees, Horace, I won't live here!"  He had at once
expressed his determination to have them pruned; but, having put off
the action for a day or two, the trees still stood unpruned thirty-
three years later.  He had even come to feel rather proud of the fact
that they continued to bear fruit, and would speak of them thus:
"Queer fancy of my wife's, never been cut.  And yet, remarkable
thing, they do better than any of the others!"

This spring, when all was so forward, and the cuckoos already in full
song, when the scent of young larches in the New Plantation (planted
the year of George's birth) was in the air like the perfume of
celestial lemons, she came to the orchard more than usual, and her
spirit felt the stirring, the old, half-painful yearning for she knew
not what, that she had felt so often in her first years at Worsted
Skeynes.  And sitting there on a green-painted seat under the largest
of the cherry-trees, she thought even more than her wont of George,
as though her son's spirit, vibrating in its first real passion, were
calling to her for sympathy.

He had been down so little all that winter, twice for a couple of
days' shooting, once for a week-end, when she had thought him looking
thinner and rather worn.  He had missed Christmas for the first time.
With infnite precaution she had asked him casually if he had seen
Helen Bellew, and he had answered, "Oh yes, I see her once in a way!"

Secretly all through the winter she consulted the Times newspaper for
mention of George's horse, and was disappointed not to find any.  One
day, however, in February, discovering him absolutely at the head of
several lists of horses with figures after them, she wrote off at
once with a joyful heart.  Of five lists in which the Ambler's name
appeared, there was only one in which he was second.  George's answer
came in the course of a week or so.


"MY DEAR MOTHER,

"What you saw were the weights for the Spring Handicaps.  They've
simply done me out of everything.  In great haste,

"Your affectionate son,

"GEORGE PENDYCE."


As the spring approached, the vision of her independent visit to
London, which had sustained her throughout the winter, having
performed its annual function, grew mistier and mistier, and at last
faded away.  She ceased even to dream of it, as though it had never
been, nor did George remind her, and as usual, she ceased even to
wonder whether he would remind her.  She thought instead of the
season visit, and its scurry of parties, with a sort of languid
fluttering.  For Worsted Skeynes, and all that Worsted Skeynes stood
for, was like a heavy horseman guiding her with iron hands along a
narrow lane; she dreamed of throwing him in the open, but the open
she never reached.

She woke at seven with her tea, and from seven to eight made little
notes on tablets, while on his back Mr. Pendyce snored lightly.  She
rose at eight.  At nine she poured out coffee.  From halfpast nine to
ten she attended to the housekeeper and her birds.  From ten to
eleven she attended to the gardener and her dress.  From eleven to
twelve she wrote invitations to persons for whom she did not care,
and acceptances to persons who did not care for her; she drew out
also and placed in due sequence cheques for Mr. Pendyce's signature;
and secured receipts, carefully docketed on the back, within an
elastic band; as a rule, also, she received a visit from Mrs. Husell
Barter. From twelve to one she walked with her and "the dear dogs" to
the village, where she stood hesitatingly in the cottage doors of
persons who were shy of her.  From half-past one to two she lunched.
>From two to three she rested on a sofa in the white morning-room with
the newspaper in her hand, trying to read the Parliamentary debate,
and thinking of other things.  From three to half-past four she went
to her dear flowers, from whom she was liable to be summoned at any
moment by the arrival of callers; or, getting into the carriage, was
driven to some neighbour's mansion, where she sat for half an hour
and came away.  At half-past four she poured out tea.  At five she
knitted a tie, or socks, for George or Gerald, and listened with a
gentle smile to what was going on.  From six to seven she received
from the Squire his impressions of Parliament and things at large.
>From seven to seven-thirty she changed to a black low dress, with old
lace about the neck.  At seven-thirty she dined.  At a quarter to
nine she listened to Norah playing two waltzes of Chopin's, and a
piece called "Serenade du Printemps" by Baff, and to Bee singing "The
Mikado," or the "Saucy Girl" From nine to ten thirty she played a
game called piquet, which her father had taught her, if she could get
anyone with whom to play; but as this was seldom, she played as a
rule patience by herself.  At ten-thirty she went to bed.  At eleven-
thirty punctually the Squire woke her.  At one o'clock she went to
sleep.  On Mondays she wrote out in her clear Totteridge hand, with
its fine straight strokes, a list of library books, made up without
distinction of all that were recommended in the Ladies' Paper that
came weekly to Worsted Skeynes.  Periodically Mr. Pendyce would hand
her a list of his own, compiled out of the Times and the Field in the
privacy of his study; this she sent too.

Thus was the household supplied with literature unerringly adapted to
its needs; nor was it possible for any undesirable book to find its
way into the house--not that this would have mattered much to Mrs.
Pendyce, for as she often said with gentle regret, "My dear, I have
no time to read."

This afternoon it was so warm that the bees were all around among the
blossoms, and two thrushes, who had built in a yew-tree that watched
over the Scotch garden, were in a violent flutter because one of
their chicks had fallen out of the nest.  The mother bird, at the
edge of the long orchard grass, was silent, trying by example to
still the tiny creature's cheeping, lest it might attract some large
or human thing.

Mrs. Pendyce, sitting under the oldest cherry-tree, looked for the
sound, and when she had located it, picked up the baby bird, and, as
she knew the whereabouts of all the nests, put it back into its
cradle, to the loud terror and grief of the parent birds.  She went
back to the bench and sat down again.

She had in her soul something of the terror of the mother thrush.
The Maidens had been paying the call that preceded their annual
migration to town, and the peculiar glow which Lady Maiden had the
power of raising had not yet left her cheeks.  True, she had the
comfort of the thought, 'Ellen Maiden is so bourgeoise,' but to-day
it did not still her heart.

Accompanied by one pale daughter who never left her, and two pale
dogs forced to run all the way, now lying under the carriage with
their tongues out, Lady Maiden had come and stayed full time; and for
three-quarters of that time she had seemed, as it were, labouring
under a sense of duty unfulfilled; for the remaining quarter Mrs.
Pendyce had laboured under a sense of duty fulfilled.

"My dear," Lady Maiden had said, having told the pale daughter to go
into the conservatory, "I'm the last person in the world to repeat
gossip, as you know; but I think it's only right to tell you that
I've been hearing things.  You see, my boy Fred" (who would
ultimately become Sir Frederick Maiden) "belongs to the same club as
your son George--the Stoics.  All young men belong there of course-I
mean, if they're anybody.  I'm sorry to say there's no doubt about
it; your son has been seen dining at--perhaps I ought not to mention
the name--Blafard's, with Mrs. Bellew.  I dare say you don't know
what sort of a place Blafard's is--a lot of little rooms where people
go when they don't want to be seen.  I've never been there, of
course; but I can imagine it perfectly.  And not once, but
frequently.  I thought I would speak to you, because I do think it's
so scandalous of her in her position."

An azalea in a blue and white pot had stood between them, and in this
plant Mrs. Pendyce buried her cheeks and eyes; but when she raised
her face her eyebrows were lifted to their utmost limit, her lips
trembled with anger.

"Oh," she said, "didn't you know?  There's nothing in that; it's the
latest thing!"

For a moment Lady Maiden wavered, then duskily flushed; her
temperament and principles had recovered themselves.

"If that," she said with some dignity, "is the latest thing, I think
it is quite time we were back in town."

She rose, and as she rose, such was her unfortunate conformation, it
flashed through Mrs. Pendyce's mind 'Why was I afraid?  She's only--'
And then as quickly: 'Poor woman! how can she help her legs being
short?'

But when she was gone, side by side with the pale daughter, the pale
dogs once more running behind the carriage, Margery Pendyce put her
hand to her heart.

And out here amongst the bees and blossom, where the blackbirds were
improving each minute their new songs, and the air was so fainting
sweet with scents, her heart would not be stilled, but throbbed as
though danger were coming on herself; and she saw her son as a little
boy again in a dirty holland suit with a straw hat down the back of
his neck, flushed and sturdy, as he came to her from some adventure.

And suddenly a gush of emotion from deep within her heart and the
heart of the spring day, a sense of being severed from him by a
great, remorseless power, came over her; and taking out a tiny
embroidered handkerchief, she wept.  Round her the bees hummed
carelessly, the blossom dropped, the dappled sunlight covered her
with a pattern as of her own fine lace.  From the home farm came the
lowing of the cows on their way to milking, and, strange sound in
that well-ordered home, a distant piping on a penny flute ....

"Mother, Mother, Mo-o-ther!"

Mrs. Pendyce passed her handkerchief across her eyes, and
instinctively obeying the laws of breeding, her face lost all trace
of its emotion.  She waited, crumpling the tiny handkerchief in her
gauntleted hand.

"Mother!  Oh, there you are!  Here's Gregory Vigil!"

Norah, a fox-terrier on either side, was coming down the path; behind
her, unhatted, showed Gregory's sanguine face between his wings of
grizzled hair.

"I suppose you're going to talk.  I'm going over to the Rectory.
Ta-to!"

And preceded by her dogs, Norah went on.

Mrs. Pendyce put out her hand.

"Well, Grig," she said, "this is a surprise."

Gregory seated himself beside her on the bench.

"I've brought you this," he said.  "I want you to look at it before I
answer."

Mrs. Pendyce, who vaguely felt that he would want her to see things
as he was seeing them, took a letter from him with a sinking heart.


                         "Private.

                                   "LINCOLN'S INN FIELDS,
                                        "April 21, 1892.

"MY DEAR VIGIL,

"I have now secured such evidence as should warrant our instituting a
suit.  I've written your ward to that effect, and am awaiting her
instructions.  Unfortunately, we have no act of cruelty, and I've
been obliged to draw her attention to the fact that, should her
husband defend the suit, it will be very difficult to get the Court
to accept their separation in the light of desertion on his part--
difficult indeed, even if he doesn't defend the suit.  In divorce
cases one has to remember that what has to be kept out is often more
important than what has to be got in, and it would be useful to know,
therefore, whether there is likelihood of opposition.  I do not
advise any direct approaching of the husband, but if you are
possessed of the information you might let me know.  I hate humbug,
my dear Vigil, and I hate anything underhand, but divorce is always a
dirty business, and while the law is shaped as at present, and the
linen washed in public, it will remain impossible for anyone, guilty
or innocent, and even for us lawyers, to avoid soiling our hands in
one way or another.  I regret it as much as you do.

"There is a new man writing verse in the Tertiary, some of it quite
first-rate.  You might look at the last number.  My blossom this year
is magnificent.

                    "With kind regards, I am,
                         "Very sincerely yours,
                              "EDMUND PARAMOR.
"Gregory Vigil, Esq."


Mrs. Pendyce dropped the letter in her lap, and looked at her cousin.

"He was at Harrow with Horace.  I do like him.  He is one of the very
nicest men I know."

It was clear that she was trying to gain time.

Gregory began pacing up and down.

"Paramor is a man for whom I have the highest respect.  I would trust
him before anyone."

It was clear that he, too, was trying to gain time.

"Oh, mind my daffodils, please!"

Gregory went down on his knees, and raised the bloom that he had
trodden on.  He then offered it to Mrs. Pendyce.  The action was one
to which she was so unaccustomed that it struck her as slightly
ridiculous.

"My dear Grig, you'll get rheumatism, and spoil that nice suit; the
grass comes off so terribly!"

Gregory got up, and looked shamefacedly at his knees.

"The knee is not what it used to be," he said.

Mrs. Pendyce smiled.

"You should keep your knees for Helen Bellow, Grig.  I was always
five years older than you."

Gregory rumpled up his hair.

"Kneeling's out of fashion, but I thought in the country you wouldn't
mind!"

"You don't notice things, dear Grig.  In the country it's still more
out of fashion.  You wouldn't find a woman within thirty miles of
here who would like a man to kneel to her.  We've lost the habit.
She would think she was being made fun of.  We soon grow out of
vanity!"

"In London," said Gregory, "I hear all women intend to be men; but in
the country I thought----"

"In the country, Grig, all women would like to be men, but they don't
dare to try.  They trot behind."

As if she had been guilty of thoughts too insightful, Mrs. Pendyce
blushed.

Gregory broke out suddenly:

"I can't bear to think of women like that!"

Again Mrs. Pendyce smiled.

"You see, Grig dear, you are not married."

"I detest the idea that marriage changes our views, Margery; I loathe
it."

"Mind my daffodils!"  murmured Mrs. Pendyce.

She was thinking all the time: 'That dreadful letter!  What am I to
do?'

And as though he knew her thoughts, Gregory said:

"I shall assume that Bellew will not defend the case.  If he has a
spark of chivalry in him he will be only too glad to see her free.
I will never believe that any man could be such a soulless clod as to
wish to keep her bound.  I don't pretend to understand the law, but
it seems to me that there's only one way for a man to act and after
all Bellew's a gentleman.  You'll see that he will act like one!"

Mrs. Pendyce looked at the daffodil in her lap.

"I have only seen him three or four times, but it seemed to me, Grig,
that he was a man who might act in one way today and another
tomorrow.  He is so very different from all the men about here."

"When it comes to the deep things of life," said Gregory, "one man is
much as another.  Is there any man you know who would be so lacking
in chivalry as to refuse in these circumstances?"

Mrs. Pendyce looked at him with a confused expression--wonder,
admiration, irony, and even fear, struggled in her eyes.

"I can think of dozens."

Gregory clutched his forehead.

"Margery," he said, "I hate your cynicism.  I don't know where you
get it from."

"I'm so sorry; I didn't mean to be cynical--I didn't, really.  I only
spoke from what I've seen."

"Seen?" said Gregory.  "If I were to go by what I saw daily, hourly,
in London in the course of my work I should commit suicide within a
week."

"But what else can one go by?"

Without answering, Gregory walked to the edge of the orchard, and
stood gazing over the Scotch garden, with his face a little tilted
towards the sky.  Mrs. Pendyce felt he was grieving that she failed
to see whatever it was he saw up there, and she was sorry.  He came
back, and said:

"We won't discuss it any more."

Very dubiously she heard those words, but as she could not express
the anxiety and doubt torturing her soul, she told him tea was ready.
But Gregory would not come in just yet out of the sun.

In the drawing-room Beatrix was already giving tea to young Tharp and
the Reverend Husell Barter.  And the sound of these well-known voices
restored to Mrs. Pendyce something of her tranquillity.  The Rector
came towards her at once with a teacup in his hand.

"My wife has got a headache," he said.  "She wanted to come over with
me, but I made her lie down.  Nothing like lying down for a headache.
We expect it in June, you know.  Let me get you your tea."

Mrs. Pendyce, already aware even to the day of what he expected in
June, sat down, and looked at Mr. Barter with a slight feeling of
surprise.  He was really a very good fellow; it was nice of him to
make his wife lie down!  She thought his broad, red-brown face, with
its protecting, not unhumorous, lower lip, looked very friendly.
Roy, the Skye terrier at her feet, was smelling at the reverend
gentleman's legs with a slow movement of his tail.

"The old dog likes me," said the Rector; "they know a dog-lover when
they see one wonderful creatures, dogs!  I'm sometimes tempted to
think they may have souls!"

Mrs. Pendyce answered:

"Horace says he's getting too old."

The dog looked up in her face, and her lip quivered.

The Rector laughed.

"Don't you worry about that; there's plenty of life in him."  And he
added unexpectedly: "I couldn't bear to put a dog away, the friend
of man.  No, no; let Nature see to that."

Over at the piano Bee and young Tharp were turning the pages of the
"Saucy Girl"; the room was full of the scent of azaleas; and Mr.
Barter, astride of a gilt chair, looked almost sympathetic, gazing
tenderly at the old Skye.

Mrs. Pendyce felt a sudden yearning to free her mind, a sudden
longing to ask a man's advice.

"Oh, Mr. Barter," she said, "my cousin, Gregory Vigil, has just
brought me some news; it is confidential, please.  Helen Bellew is
going to sue for a divorce.  I wanted to ask you whether you could
tell me----"  Looking in the Rector's face, she stopped.

"A divorce!  H'm!  Really!"

A chill of terror came over Mrs. Pendyce.

"Of course you will not mention it to anyone, not even to Horace.  It
has nothing to do with us."

Mr. Barter bowed; his face wore the expression it so often wore in
school on Sunday mornings.

"H'm!"  he said again.

It flashed through Mrs. Pendyce that this man with the heavy jowl and
menacing eyes, who sat so square on that flimsy chair, knew
something.  It was as though he had answered:

"This is not a matter for women; you will be good enough to leave it
to me."

With the exception of those few words of Lady Malden's, and the
recollection of George's face when he had said, "Oh yes, I see her
now and then," she had no evidence, no knowledge, nothing to go on;
but she knew from some instinctive source that her son was Mrs.
Bellew's lover.

So, with terror and a strange hope, she saw Gregory entering the
room.

"Perhaps," she thought, "he will make Grig stop it."

She poured out Gregory's tea, followed Bee and Cecil Tharp into the
conservatory, and left the two men together:



CHAPTER II

CONTINUED INFLUENCE OF THE REVEREND HUSSELL BARTER

To understand and sympathise with the feelings and action of the
Rector of Worsted Skeynes, one must consider his origin and the
circumstances of his life.

The second son of an old Suffolk family, he had followed the routine
of his house, and having passed at Oxford through certain
examinations, had been certificated at the age of twenty-four as a
man fitted to impart to persons of both sexes rules of life and
conduct after which they had been groping for twice or thrice that
number of years.  His character, never at any time undecided, was by
this fortunate circumstance crystallised and rendered immune from the
necessity for self-search and spiritual struggle incidental to his
neighbours.  Since he was a man neither below nor above the average,
it did not occur to him to criticise or place himself in opposition
to a system which had gone on so long and was about to do him so much
good.  Like all average men, he was a believer in authority, and none
the less because authority placed a large portion of itself in his
hands.  It would, indeed, have been unwarrantable to expect a man of
his birth, breeding, and education to question the machine of which
he was himself a wheel.

He had dropped, therefore, at the age of twenty-six, insensibly, on
the death of an uncle, into the family living at Worsted Skeynes.  He
had been there ever since.  It was a constant and natural grief to
him that on his death the living would go neither to his eldest nor
his second son, but to the second son of his elder brother, the
Squire.  At the age of twenty-seven he had married Miss Rose Twining,
the fifth daughter of a Huntingdonshire parson, and in less than
eighteen years begotten ten children, and was expecting the eleventh,
all healthy and hearty like him self.  A family group hung over the
fireplace in the study, under the framed and illuminated text, "Judge
not, that ye be not judged," which he had chosen as his motto in the
first year of his cure, and never seen any reason to change.  In that
family group Mr. Barter sat in the centre with his dog between his
legs; his wife stood behind him, and on both sides the children
spread out like the wings of a fan or butterfly.  The bills of their
schooling were beginning to weigh rather heavily, and he complained a
good deal; but in principle he still approved of the habit into which
he had got, and his wife never complained of anything.

The study was furnished with studious simplicity; many a boy had
been, not unkindly, caned there, and in one place the old Turkey
carpet was rotted away, but whether by their tears or by their knees,
not even Mr. Barter knew.  In a cabinet on one side of the fire he
kept all his religious books, many of them well worn; in a cabinet on
the other side he kept his bats, to which he was constantly
attending; a fshingrod and a gun-case stood modestly in a corner.
The archway between the drawers of his writing-table held a mat for
his bulldog, a prize animal, wont to lie there and guard his master's
legs when he was writing his sermons.  Like those of his dog, the
Rector's good points were the old English virtues of obstinacy,
courage, intolerance, and humour; his bad points, owing to the
circumstances of his life, had never been brought to his notice.

When, therefore, he found himself alone with Gregory Vigil, he
approached him as one dog will approach another, and came at once to
the matter in hand.

"It's some time since I had the pleasure of meeting you, Mr. Vigil,"
he said.  "Mrs. Pendyce has been giving me in confidence the news
you've brought down.  I'm bound to tell you at once that I'm
surprised."

Gregory made a little movement of recoil, as though his delicacy had
received a shock.

"Indeed!"  he said, with a sort of quivering coldness.

The Rector, quick to note opposition, repeated emphatically:

"More than surprised; in fact, I think there must be some mistake."

"Indeed?" said Gregory again.

A change came over Mr. Barter's face.  It had been grave, but was now
heavy and threatening.

"I have to say to you," he said, "that somehow--somehow, this divorce
must be put a stop to."

Gregory flushed painfully.

"On what grounds?  I am not aware that my ward is a parishioner of
yours, Mr. Barter, or that if she were----"

The Rector closed in on him, his head thrust forward, his lower lip
projecting.

"If she were doing her duty," he said, "she would be.  I'm not
considering her--I'm considering her husband; he is a parishioner of
mine, and I say this divorce must be stopped."

Gregory retreated no longer.

"On what grounds?" he said again, trembling all over.

"I've no wish to enter into particulars," said Mr. Barter, "but if
you force me to, I shall not hesitate."

"I regret that I must," answered Gregory.

"Without mentioning names, then, I say that she is not a fit person
to bring a suit for divorce!"

"You say that?" said Gregory.  "You----"

He could not go on.

"You will not move me, Mr. Vigil," said the Rector, with a grim
little smile.  "I have my duty to do."

Gregory recovered possession of himself with an effort.

"You have said that which no one but a clergyman could say with
impunity," he said freezingly.  "Be so good as to explain yourself."

"My explanation," said Mr. Barter, "is what I have seen with my own
eyes."

He raised those eyes to Gregory.  Their pupils were contracted to
pin-points, the light-grey irises around had a sort of swimming
glitter, and round these again the whites were injected with blood.

"If you must know, with my own eyes I've seen her in that very
conservatory over there kissing a man."

Gregory threw up his hand.

"How dare you!"  he whispered.

Again Mr. Barter's humorous under-lip shot out.

"I dare a good deal more than that, Mr. Vigil," he said, "as you will
find; and I say this to you--stop this divorce, or I'll stop it
myself!"

Gregory turned to the window.  When he came back he was outwardly
calm.

"You have been guilty of indelicacy," he said.  "Continue in your
delusion, think what you like, do what you like.  The matter will go
on.  Good-evening, sir."

And turning on his heel, he left the room.

Mr. Barter stepped forward.  The words, "You have been guilty of
indelicacy," whirled round his brain till every blood vessel in his
face and neck was swollen to bursting, and with a hoarse sound like
that of an animal in pain he pursued Gregory to the door.  It was
shut in his face.  And since on taking Orders he had abandoned for
ever the use of bad language, he was very near an apoplectic fit.
Suddenly he became aware that Mrs. Pendyce was looking at him from
the conservatory door.  Her face was painfully white, her eyebrows
lifted, and before that look Mr. Barter recovered a measure of self-
possession.

"Is anything the matter, Mr. Barter?"

The Rector smiled grimly.

"Nothing, nothing," he said.  "I must ask you to excuse me, that's
all.  I've a parish matter to attend to."

When he found himself in the drive, the feeling of vertigo and
suffocation passed, but left him unrelieved.  He had, in fact,
happened on one of those psychological moments which enable a man's
true nature to show itself.  Accustomed to say of himself bluffly,
"Yes, yes; I've a hot temper, soon over," he had never, owing to the
autocracy of his position, had a chance of knowing the tenacity of
his soul.  So accustomed and so able for many years to vent
displeasure at once, he did not himself know the wealth of his old
English spirit, did not know of what an ugly grip he was capable.  He
did not even know it at this minute, conscious only of a sort of
black wonder at this monstrous conduct to a man in his position,
doing his simple duty.  The more he reflected, the more intolerable
did it seem that a woman like this Mrs. Bellew should have the
impudence to invoke the law of the land in her favour a woman who was
no better than a common baggage--a woman he had seen kissing George
Pendyce.  To have suggested to Mr. Barter that there was something
pathetic in this black wonder of his, pathetic in the spectacle of
his little soul delivering its little judgments, stumbling its little
way along with such blind certainty under the huge heavens, amongst
millions of organisms as important as itself, would have astounded
him; and with every step he took the blacker became his wonder, the
more fixed his determination to permit no such abuse of morality, no
such disregard of Hussell Barter.

"You have been guilty of indelicacy!"  This indictment had a
wriggling sting, and lost no venom from the fact that he could in no
wise have perceived where the indelicacy of his conduct lay.  But he
did not try to perceive it.  Against himself, clergyman and
gentleman, the monstrosity of the charge was clear.  This was a point
of morality.  He felt no anger against George; it was the woman that
excited his just wrath.  For so long he had been absolute among
women, with the power, as it were, over them of life and death.  This
was flat immorality!  He had never approved of her leaving her
husband; he had never approved of her at all!  He turned his steps
towards the Firs.

>From above the hedges the sleepy cows looked down; a yaffle laughed a
field or two away; in the sycamores, which had come out before their
time, the bees hummed.  Under the smile of the spring the innumerable
life of the fields went carelessly on around that square black figure
ploughing along the lane with head bent down under a wide-brimmed
hat.

George Pendyce, in a fly drawn by an old grey horse, the only vehicle
that frequented the station at Worsted Skeynes, passed him in the
lane, and leaned back to avoid observation.  He had not forgotten the
tone of the Rector's voice in the smoking-room on the night of the
dance.  George was a man who could remember as well as another.  In
the corner of the old fly, that rattled and smelled of stables and
stale tobacco, he fixed his moody eyes on the driver's back and the
ears of the old grey horse, and never stirred till they set him down
at the hall door.

He went at once to his room, sending word that he had come for the
night.  His mother heard the news with feelings of joy and dread, and
she dressed quickly for dinner, that she might see him the sooner.
The Squire came into her room just as she was going down.  He had
been engaged all day at Sessions, and was in one of the moods of
apprehension as to the future which but seldom came over him.

"Why didn't you keep Vigil to dinner?" he said.  "I could have given
him things for the night.  I wanted to talk to him about insuring my
life; he knows, about that.  There'll be a lot of money wanted, to
pay my death-duties.  And if the Radicals get in I shouldn't be
surprised if they put them up fifty per cent."

"I wanted to keep him," said Mrs. Pendyce, "but he went away without
saying good-bye."

"He's an odd fellow!"

For some moments Mr. Pendyce made reflections on this breach of
manners.  He had a nice standard of conduct in all social affairs.

"I'm having trouble with that man Peacock again.  He's the most pig-
headed----What are you in such a hurry for, Margery?"

"George is here!"

"George?  Well, I suppose he can wait till dinner.  I have a lot of
things I want to tell you about.  We had a case of arson to-day.  Old
Quarryman was away, and I was in the chair.  It was that fellow
Woodford that we convicted for poaching--a very gross case.  And this
is what he does when he comes out.  They tried to prove insanity.
It's the rankest case of revenge that ever came before me.  We
committed him, of course.  He'll get a swinging sentence.  Of all
dreadful crimes, arson is the most----"

Mr. Pendyce could find no word to characterise his opinion of this
offence, and drawing his breath between his teeth, passed into his
dressing-room.  Mrs. Pendyce hastened quietly out, and went to her
son's room.  She found George in his shirtsleeves, inserting the
links of his cuffs.

"Let me do that for you, my dear boy!  How dreadfully they starch
your cuffs!  It is so nice to do something for you sometimes!"

George answered her:

"Well, Mother, and how have you been?"

Over Mrs. Pendyce's face came a look half sorrowful, half arch, but
wholly pathetic.  'What! is it beginning already?  Oh, don't put me
away from you!' she seemed to say.

"Very well, thank you, dear.  And you?"

George did not meet her eyes.

"So-so," he said.  "I took rather a nasty knock over the 'City' last
week."

"Is that a race?" asked Mrs. Pendyce.

And by some secret process she knew that he had hurried out that
piece of bad news to divert her attention from another subject, for
George had never been a "crybaby."

She sat down on the edge of the sofa, and though the gong was about
to sound, incited him to dawdle and stay with her.

"And have you any other news, dear?  It seems such an age since we've
seen you.  I think I've told you all our budget in my letters.  You
know there's going to be another event at the Rectory?"

"Another?  I passed Barter on the way up.  I thought he looked a bit
blue."

A look of pain shot into Mrs. Pendyce's eyes.

"Oh, I'm afraid that couldn't have been the reason, dear."  And she
stopped, but to still her own fears hurried on again.  "If I'd known
you'd been coming, I'd have kept Cecil Tharp.  Vic has had such dear
little puppies.  Would you like one?  They've all got that nice black
smudge round the eye."

She was watching him as only a mother can watch-stealthily, minutely,
longingly, every little movement, every little change of his face,
and more than all, that fixed something behind which showed the
abiding temper and condition of his heart.

'Something is making him unhappy,' she thought.  'He is changed since
I saw him last, and I can't get at it.  I seem to be so far from him
--so far!'

And somehow she knew he had come down this evening because he was
lonely and unhappy, and instinct had made him turn to her.

But she knew that trying to get nearer would only make him put her
farther off, and she could not bear this, so she asked him nothing,
and bent all her strength on hiding from him the pain she felt.

She went downstairs with her arm in his, and leaned very heavily on
it, as though again trying to get close to him, and forget the
feeling she had had all that winter--the feeling of being barred
away, the feeling of secrecy and restraint.

Mr. Pendyce and the two girls were in the drawing-room.

"Well, George," said the Squire dryly, "I'm glad you've come.  How
you can stick in London at this time of year!  Now you're down you'd
better stay a couple of days.  I want to take you round the estate;
you know nothing about anything.  I might die at any moment, for all
you can tell.  Just make up your mind to stay."

George gave him a moody look.

"Sorry," he said; "I've got an engagement in town."

Mr. Pendyce rose and stood with his back to the fire.

"That's it," he said: "I ask you to do a simple thing for your own
good--and--you've got an engagement.  It's always like that, and your
mother backs you up.  Bee, go and play me something."

The Squire could not bear being played to, but it was the only
command likely to be obeyed that came into his head.

The absence of guests made little difference to a ceremony esteemed
at Worsted Skeynes the crowning blessing of the day.  The courses,
however, were limited to seven, and champagne was not drunk.  The
Squire drank a glass or so of claret, for, as he said, "My dear old
father took his bottle of port every night of his life, and it never
gave him a twinge.  If I were to go on at that rate it would kill me
in a year."

His daughters drank water.  Mrs. Pendyce, cherishing a secret
preference for champagne, drank sparingly of a Spanish burgundy,
procured for her by Mr. Pendyce at a very reasonable price, and
corked between meals with a special cork.  She offered it to George.

"Try some of my burgundy, dear; it's so nice."

But George refused and asked for whisky-and-soda, glancing at the
butler, who brought it in a very yellow state.

Under the influence of dinner the Squire recovered equanimity, though
he still dwelt somewhat sadly on the future.

"You young fellows," he said, with a friendly look at George, "are
such individualists.  You make a business of enjoying yourselves.
With your piquet and your racing and your billiards and what not,
you'll be used up before you're fifty.  You don't let your
imaginations work.  A green old age ought to be your ideal, instead
of which it seems to be a green youth.  Ha!"  Mr. Pendyce looked at
his daughters till they said:

"Oh, Father, how can you!"

Norah, who had the more character of the two, added:

"Isn't Father rather dreadful, Mother?"

But Mrs. Pendyce was looking at her son.  She had longed so many
evenings to see him sitting there.

"We'll have a game of piquet to-night, George."

George looked up and nodded with a glum smile.

On the thick, soft carpet round the table the butler and second
footman moved.  The light of the wax candles fell lustrous and
subdued on the silver and fruit and flowers, on the girls' white
necks, on George's well-coloured face and glossy shirt-front, gleamed
in the jewels on his mother's long white fingers, showed off the
Squire's erect and still spruce figure; the air was languorously
sweet with the perfume of azaleas and narcissus bloom.  Bee, with
soft eyes, was thinking of young Tharp, who to-day had told her that
he loved her, and wondering if father would object.  Her mother was
thinking of George, stealing timid glances at his moody face.  There
was no sound save the tinkle of forks and the voices of Norah and the
Squire, talking of little things.  Outside, through the long opened
windows, was the still, wide country; the full moon, tinted apricot
and figured like a coin, hung above the cedar-trees, and by her light
the whispering stretches of the silent fields lay half enchanted,
half asleep, and all beyond that little ring of moonshine, unfathomed
and unknown, was darkness--a great darkness wrapping from their eyes
the restless world.




CHAPTER III

THE SINISTER NIGHT

On the day of the big race at Kempton Park, in which the Ambler,
starting favourite, was left at the post, George Pendyce had just put
his latch-key in the door of the room he had taken near Mrs. Bellew,
when a man, stepping quickly from behind, said:

"Mr. George Pendyce, I believe."

George turned.

"Yes; what do you want?"

The man put into George's hand a long envelope.

"From Messrs.  Frost and Tuckett."

George opened it, and read from the top of a slip of paper:


"'ADMIRALTY, PROBATE, AND DIVORCE.
The humble petition of Jaspar Bellew-----'"


He lifted his eyes, and his look, uncannily impassive, unresenting,
unangered, dogged, caused the messenger to drop his gaze as though he
had hit a man who was down.

"Thanks.  Good-night!"

He shut the door, and read the document through.  It contained some
precise details, and ended in a claim for damages, and George smiled.

Had he received this document three months ago, he would not have
taken it thus.  Three months ago he would have felt with rage that he
was caught.  His thoughts would have run thus 'I have got her into a
mess; I have got myself into a mess.  I never thought this would
happen.  This is the devil!  I must see someone--I must stop it.
There must be a way out.'  Having but little imagination, his
thoughts would have beaten their wings against this cage, and at once
he would have tried to act.  But this was not three months ago, and
now----

He lit a cigarette and sat down on the sofa, and the chief feeling in
his heart was a strange hope, a sort of funereal gladness.  He would
have to go and see her at once, that very night; an excuse--no need
to wait in here--to wait--wait on the chance of her coming.

He got up and drank some whisky, then went back to the sofa and sat
down again.

'If she is not here by eight,' he thought, 'I will go round.'

Opposite was a full-length mirror, and he turned to the wall to avoid
it.  There was fixed on his face a look of gloomy determination, as
though he were thinking, 'I'll show them all that I'm not beaten
yet.'

At the click of a latch-key he scrambled off the sofa, and his face
resumed its mask.  She came in as usual, dropped her opera cloak, and
stood before him with bare shoulders.  Looking in her face, he
wondered if she knew.

"I thought I'd better come," she said.  "I suppose you've had the
same charming present?"

George nodded.  There was a minute's silence.

"It's really rather funny.  I'm sorry for you, George."

George laughed too, but his laugh was different.

"I will do all I can," he said.

Mrs. Bellew came close to him.

"I've seen about the Kempton race.  What shocking luck!  I suppose
you've lost a lot.  Poor boy!  It never rains but it pours."

George looked down.

"That's all right; nothing matters when I have you."

He felt her arms fasten behind his neck, but they were cool as
marble; he met her eyes, and they were mocking and compassionate.

Their cab, wheeling into the main thoroughfare, joined in the race of
cabs flying as for life toward the East--past the Park, where the
trees, new-leafed, were swinging their skirts like ballet-dancers in
the wind; past the Stoics' and the other clubs, rattling, jingling,
jostling for the lead, shooting past omnibuses that looked cosy in
the half-light with their lamps and rows of figures solemnly opposed.

At Blafard's the tall dark young waiter took her cloak with
reverential fingers; the little wine-waiter smiled below the
suffering in his eyes.  The same red-shaded lights fell on her arms
and shoulders, the same flowers of green and yellow grew bravely in
the same blue vases.  On the menu were written the same dishes.  The
same idle eye peered through the chink at the corner of the red
blinds with its stare of apathetic wonder.

Often during that dinner George looked at her face by stealth, and
its expression baffled him, so careless was it.  And, unlike her mood
of late, that had been glum and cold, she was in the wildest spirits.

People looked round from the other little tables, all full now that
the season had begun, her laugh was so infectious; and George felt a
sort of disgust.  What was it in this woman that made her laugh, when
his own heart was heavy?  But he said nothing; he dared not even look
at her, for fear his eyes should show his feeling.

'We ought to be squaring our accounts,' he thought--'looking things
in the face.  Something must be done; and here she is laughing and
making everyone stare!'  Done!  But what could be done, when it was
all like quicksand?

The other little tables emptied one by one.

"George," she said, "take me somewhere where we can dance!"

George stared at her.

"My dear girl, how can I?  There is no such place!"

"Take me to your Bohemians!"

"You can't possibly go to a place like that."

"Why not?  Who cares where we go, or what we do?"

"I care!"

"Ah, my dear George, you and your sort are only half alive!"

Sullenly George answered:

"What do you take me for?  A cad?"

But there was fear, not anger, in his heart.

"Well, then, let's drive into the East End.  For goodness' sake,
let's do something not quite proper!"

They took a hansom and drove East.  It was the first time either had
ever been in that unknown land.

"Close your cloak, dear; it looks odd down here."

Mrs. Bellew laughed.

"You'll be just like your father when you're sixty, George."

And she opened her cloak the wider.  Round a barrel-organ at the
corner of a street were girls in bright colours dancing.

She called to the cabman to stop.

"Let's watch those children!"

"You'll only make a show of us."

Mrs. Bellew put her hands on the cab door.

"I've a good mind to get out and dance with them!"

"You're mad to-night," said George.  "Sit still!"

He stretched out his arm and barred her way.  The passers-by looked
curiously at the little scene.  A crowd began to collect.

"Go on!"  cried George.

There was a cheer from the crowd; the driver whipped his horse; they
darted East again.

It was striking twelve when the cab put them down at last near the
old church on Chelsea Embankment, and they had hardly spoken for an
hour.

And all that hour George was feeling:

'This is the woman for whom I've given it all up.  This is the woman
to whom I shall be tied.  This is the woman I cannot tear myself away
from.  If I could, I would never see her again.  But I can't live
without her.  I must go on suffering when she's with me, suffering
when she's away from me.  And God knows how it's all to end!'

He took her hand in the darkness; it was cold and unresponsive as a
stone.  He tried to see her face, but could read nothing in those
greenish eyes staring before them, like a cat's, into the darkness.

When the cab was gone they stood looking at each other by the light
of a street lamp.  And George thought:

'So I must leave her like this, and what then?'

She put her latch-key in the door, and turned round to him.  In the
silent, empty street, where the wind was rustling and scraping round
the corners of tall houses, and the lamplight flickered, her face and
figure were so strange, motionless, Sphinx-like.  Only her eyes
seemed alive, fastened on his own.

"Good-night!"  he muttered.

She beckoned.

"Take what you can of me, George!"  she said.




CHAPTER IV

Mr. PENDYCE'S HEAD

Mr. Pendyce's head, seen from behind at his library bureau, where it
was his practice to spend most mornings from half-past nine to eleven
or even twelve, was observed to be of a shape to throw no small light
upon his class and character.  Its contour was almost national.
Bulging at the back, and sloping rapidly to a thin and wiry neck,
narrow between the ears and across the brow, prominent in the jaw,
the length of a line drawn from the back headland to the promontory
at the chin would have been extreme.  Upon the observer there was
impressed the conviction that here was a skull denoting, by
surplusage of length, great precision of character and disposition to
action, and, by deficiency of breadth, a narrow tenacity which might
at times amount to wrong-headedness.  The thin cantankerous neck, on
which little hairs grew low, and the intelligent ears, confirmed this
impression; and when his face, with its clipped hair, dry rosiness,
into which the east wind had driven a shade of yellow and the sun a
shade of brown, and grey, rather discontented eyes, came into view,
the observer had no longer any hesitation in saying that he was in
the presence of an Englishman, a landed proprietor, and, but for Mr.
Pendyce's rooted belief to the contrary, an individualist.  His head,
indeed, was like nothing so much as the Admiralty Pier at Dover--that
strange long narrow thing, with a slight twist or bend at the end,
which first disturbs the comfort of foreigners arriving on these
shores, and strikes them with a sense of wonder and dismay.

He sat very motionless at his bureau, leaning a little over his
papers like a man to whom things do not come too easily; and every
now and then he stopped to refer to the calendar at his left hand, or
to a paper in one of the many pigeonholes.  Open, and almost out of
reach, was a back volume of Punch, of which periodical, as a landed
proprietor, he had an almost professional knowledge.  In leisure
moments it was one of his chief recreations to peruse lovingly those
aged pictures, and at the image of John Bull he never failed to
think: 'Fancy making an Englishman out a fat fellow like that!'

It was as though the artist had offered an insult to himself, passing
him over as the type, and conferring that distinction on someone fast
going out of fashion.  The Rector, whenever he heard Mr. Pendyce say
this, strenuously opposed him, for he was himself of a square, stout
build, and getting stouter.

With all their aspirations to the character of typical Englishmen,
Mr. Pendyce and Mr. Barter thought themselves far from the old beef
and beer, port and pigskin types of the Georgian and early Victorian
era.  They were men of the world, abreast of the times, who by virtue
of a public school and 'Varsity training had acquired a manner, a
knowledge of men and affairs, a standard of thought on which it had
really never been needful to improve.  Both of them, but especially
Mr. Pendyce, kept up with all that was going forward by visiting the
Metropolis six or seven or even eight times a year.  On these
occasions they rarely took their wives, having almost always
important business in hand--old College, Church, or Conservative
dinners, cricket-matches, Church Congress, the Gaiety Theatre, and
for Mr. Barter the Lyceum.  Both, too, belonged to clubs--the Rector
to a comfortable, old-fashioned place where he could get a rubber
without gambling, and Mr. Pendyce to the Temple of things as they had
been, as became a man who, having turned all social problems over in
his mind, had decided that there was no real safety but in the past.

They always went up to London grumbling, but this was necessary, and
indeed salutary, because of their wives; and they always came back
grumbling, because of their livers, which a good country rest always
fortunately reduced in time for the next visit.  In this way they
kept themselves free from the taint of provincialism.

In the silence of his master's study the spaniel John, whose head,
too, was long and narrow, had placed it over his paw, as though
suffering from that silence, and when his master cleared his throat
he guttered his tail and turned up an eye with a little moon of
white, without stirring his chin.

The clock ticked at the end of the long, narrow room; the sunlight
through the long, narrow windows fell on the long, narrow backs of
books in the glassed book-case that took up the whole of one wall;
and this room, with its slightly leathery smell, seemed a fitting
place for some long, narrow ideal to be worked out to its long and
narrow ending.

But Mr. Pendyce would have scouted the notion of an ending to ideals
having their basis in the hereditary principle.

"Let me do my duty and carry on the estate as my dear old father did,
and hand it down to my son enlarged if possible," was sometimes his
saying, very, very often his thought, not seldom his prayer.  "I want
to do no more than that."

The times were bad and dangerous.  There was every chance of a
Radical Government being returned, and the country going to the dogs.
It was but natural and human that he should pray for the survival of
the form of things which he believed in and knew, the form of things
bequeathed to him, and embodied in the salutary words "Horace
Pendyce."  It was not his habit to welcome new ideas.  A new idea
invading the country of the Squire's mind was at once met with a
rising of the whole population, and either prevented from landing, or
if already on shore instantly taken prisoner.  In course of time the
unhappy creature, causing its squeaks and groans to penetrate the
prison walls, would be released from sheer humaneness and love of a
quiet life, and even allowed certain privileges, remaining, however,
"that poor, queer devil of a foreigner."  One day, in an inattentive
moment, the natives would suffer it to marry, or find that in some
disgraceful way it had caused the birth of children unrecognised by
law; and their respect for the accomplished fact, for something that
already lay in the past, would then prevent their trying to unmarry
it, or restoring the children to an unborn state, and very gradually
they would tolerate this intrusive brood.  Such was the process of
Mr. Pendyce's mind.  Indeed, like the spaniel John, a dog of
conservative instincts, at the approach of any strange thing he
placed himself in the way, barking and showing his teeth; and
sometimes truly he suffered at the thought that one day Horace
Pendyce would no longer be there to bark.  But not often, for he had
not much imagination.

All the morning he had been working at that old vexed subject of
Common Rights on Worsted Scotton, which his father had fenced in and
taught him once for all to believe was part integral of Worsted
Skeynes.  The matter was almost beyond doubt, for the cottagers--in a
poor way at the time of the fencing, owing to the price of bread--had
looked on apathetically till the very last year required by law to
give the old Squire squatter's rights, when all of a sudden that man,
Peacock's father, had made a gap in the fence and driven in beasts,
which had reopened the whole unfortunate question.  This had been in
'65, and ever since there had been continual friction bordering on a
law suit.  Mr. Pendyce never for a moment allowed it to escape his
mind that the man Peacock was at the bottom of it all; for it was his
way to discredit all principles as ground of action, and to refer
everything to facts and persons; except, indeed, when he acted
himself, when he would somewhat proudly admit that it was on
principle.  He never thought or spoke on an abstract question; partly
because his father had avoided them before him, partly because he had
been discouraged from doing so at school, but mainly because he
temperamentally took no interest in such unpractical things.

It was, therefore, a source of wonder to him that tenants of his own
should be ungrateful.  He did his duty by them, as the Rector, in
whose keeping were their souls, would have been the first to affirm;
the books of his estate showed this, recording year by year an
average gross profit of some sixteen hundred pounds, and (deducting
raw material incidental to the upkeep of Worsted Skeynes) a net loss
of three.

In less earthly matters, too, such as non-attendance at church, a
predisposition to poaching, or any inclination to moral laxity, he
could say with a clear conscience that the Rector was sure of his
support.  A striking instance had occurred within the last month,
when, discovering that his under-keeper, an excellent man at his
work, had got into a scrape with the postman's wife, he had given the
young fellow notice, and cancelled the lease of his cottage.

He rose and went to the plan of the estate fastened to the wall,
which he unrolled by pulling a green silk cord, and stood there
scrutinising it carefully and placing his finger here and there.  His
spaniel rose too, and settled himself unobtrusively on his master's
foot.  Mr. Pendyce moved and trod on him.  The spaniel yelped.

"D--n the dog!  Oh, poor fellow, John!"  said Mr. Pendyce.  He went
back to his seat, but since he had identified the wrong spot he was
obliged in a minute to return again to the plan.  The spaniel John,
cherishing the hope that he had been justly treated, approached in a
half circle, fluttering his tail; he had scarcely reached Mr.
Pendyce's foot when the door was opened, and the first footman
brought in a letter on a silver salver.

Mr. Pendyce took the note, read it, turned to his bureau, and said:
"No answer."

He sat staring at this document in the silent room, and over his face
in turn passed anger, alarm, distrust, bewilderment.  He had not the
power of making very clear his thought, except by speaking aloud, and
he muttered to himself.  The spaniel John, who still nurtured a
belief that he had sinned, came and lay down very close against his
leg.

Mr. Pendyce, never having reflected profoundly on the working
morality of his times, had the less difficulty in accepting it.  Of
violating it he had practically no opportunity, and this rendered his
position stronger.  It was from habit and tradition rather than from
principle and conviction that he was a man of good moral character.

And as he sat reading this note over and over, he suffered from a
sense of nausea.

It was couched in these terms:

                                   "THE FIRS,
                                        "May 20.

"DEAR SIR,

"You may or may not have heard that I have made your son, Mr. George
Pendyce, correspondent in a divorce suit against my wife.  Neither
for your sake nor your son's, but for the sake of Mrs. Pendyce, who
is the only woman in these parts that I respect, I will withdraw the
suit if your son will give his word not to see my wife again.

"Please send me an early answer.
                                   "I am,
                              "Your obedient servant,

                                   "JASPAR BELLEW."


The acceptance of tradition (and to accept it was suitable to the
Squire's temperament) is occasionally marred by the impingement of
tradition on private life and comfort.  It was legendary in his class
that young men's peccadilloes must be accepted with a certain
indulgence.  They would, he said, be young men.  They must, he would
remark, sow their wild oats.  Such was his theory.  The only
difficulty he now had was in applying it to his own particular case,
a difficulty felt by others in times past, and to be felt again in
times to come.  But, since he was not a philosopher, he did not
perceive the inconsistency between his theory and his dismay.  He saw
his universe reeling before that note, and he was not a man to suffer
tamely; he felt that others ought to suffer too.  It was monstrous
that a fellow like this Bellew, a loose fish, a drunkard, a man who
had nearly run over him, should have it in his power to trouble the
serenity of Worsted Skeynes.  It was like his impudence to bring such
a charge against his son.  It was like his d----d impudence!  And
going abruptly to the bell, he trod on his spaniel's ear.

"D---n the dog!  Oh, poor fellow, John!"  But the spaniel John,
convinced at last that he had sinned, hid himself in a far corner
whence he could see nothing, and pressed his chin closely to the
ground.

"Ask your mistress to come here."

Standing by the hearth, waiting for his wife, the Squire displayed to
greater advantage than ever the shape of his long and narrow head;
his neck had grown conspicuously redder; his eyes, like those of an
offended swan, stabbed, as it were, at everything they saw.

It was not seldom that Mrs. Pendyce was summoned to the study to hear
him say: "I want to ask your advice.  So-and-so has done such and
such....  I have made up my mind."

She came, therefore, in a few minutes.  In compliance with his "Look
at that, Margery," she read the note, and gazed at him with distress
in her eyes, and he looked back at her with wrath in his.  For this
was tragedy.

Not to everyone is it given to take a wide view of things--to look
over the far, pale streams, the purple heather, and moonlit pools of
the wild marches, where reeds stand black against the sundown, and
from long distance comes the cry of a curlew--nor to everyone to gaze
from steep cliffs over the wine-dark, shadowy sea--or from high
mountainsides to see crowned chaos, smoking with mist, or gold-bright
in the sun.

To most it is given to watch assiduously a row of houses, a back-
yard, or, like Mrs. and Mr. Pendyce, the green fields, trim coverts,
and Scotch garden of Worsted Skeynes.  And on that horizon the
citation of their eldest son to appear in the Divorce Court loomed
like a cloud, heavy with destruction.

So far as such an event could be realised imagination at Worsted
Skeynes was not too vivid--it spelled ruin to an harmonious edifice
of ideas and prejudice and aspiration.  It would be no use to say of
that event, "What does it matter?  Let people think what they like,
talk as they like."  At Worsted Skeynes (and Worsted Skeynes was
every country house) there was but one set of people, one church, one
pack of hounds, one everything.  The importance of a clear escutcheon
was too great.  And they who had lived together for thirty-four years
looked at each other with a new expression in their eyes; their
feelings were for once the same.  But since it is always the man who
has the nicer sense of honour, their thoughts were not the same, for
Mr. Pendyce was thinking: 'I won't believe it--disgracing us all!'
and Mrs. Pendyce was thinking: 'My boy!'

It was she who spoke first.

"Oh, Horace!"

The sound of her voice restored the Squire's fortitude.

"There you go, Margery!  D'you mean to say you believe what this
fellow says?  He ought to be horsewhipped.  He knows my opinion of
him.

"It's a piece of his confounded impudence!  He nearly ran over me, and
now----"

Mrs. Pendyce broke in:

"But, Horace, I'm afraid it's true!  Ellen Maiden----"

"Ellen Maiden?" said Mr. Pendyce.  "What business has she----" He was
silent, staring gloomily at the plan of Worsted Skeynes, still
unrolled, like an emblem of all there was at stake.  "If George has
really," he burst out, "he's a greater fool than I took him for!  A
fool?  He's a knave!"

Again he was silent.

Mrs. Pendyce flushed at that word, and bit her lips.

"George could never be a knave!"  she said.

Mr. Pendyce answered heavily:

"Disgracing his name!"

Mrs. Pendyce bit deeper into her lips.

"Whatever he has done," she said, "George is sure to have behaved
like a gentleman!"

An angry smile twisted the Squire's mouth.

"Just like a woman!"  he said.

But the smile died away, and on both their faces came a helpless
look.  Like people who have lived together without real sympathy--
though, indeed, they had long ceased to be conscious of that--now
that something had occurred in which their interests were actually at
one, they were filled with a sort of surprise.  It was no good to
differ.  Differing, even silent differing, would not help their son.

"I shall write to George," said Mr. Pendyce at last.  "I shall
believe nothing till I've heard from him.  He'll tell us the truth, I
suppose."

There was a quaver in his voice.

Mrs. Pendyce answered quickly:

"Oh, Horace, be careful what you say!  I'm sure he is suffering!"

Her gentle soul, disposed to pleasure, was suffering, too, and the
tears stole up in her eyes.  Mr. Pendyce's sight was too long to see
them.  The infirmity had been growing on him ever since his marriage.

"I shall say what I think right," he said.  "I shall take time to
consider what I shall say; I won't be hurried by this ruffian."

Mrs. Pendyce wiped her lips with her lace-edged handkerchief.

"I hope you will show me the letter," she said.

The Squire looked at her, and he realised that she was trembling and
very white, and, though this irritated him, he answered almost
kindly:

"It's not a matter for you, my dear."

Mrs. Pendyce took a step towards him; her gentle face expressed a
strange determination.

"He is my son, Horace, as well as yours."

Mr. Pendyce turned round uneasily.

"It's no use your getting nervous, Margery.  I shall do what's best.
You women lose your heads.  That d----d fellow's lying!
If he isn't----"

At these words the spaniel John rose from his corner and advanced to
the middle of the floor.  He stood there curved in a half-circle, and
looked darkly at his master.

"Confound it!"  said Mr. Pendyce.  "It's--it's damnable!"

And as if answering for all that depended on Worsted Skeynes, the
spaniel John deeply wagged that which had been left him of his tail.

Mrs. Pendyce came nearer still.

"If George refuses to give you that promise, what will you do,
Horace?"

Mr. Pendyce stared.

"Promise?  What promise?"

Mrs. Pendyce thrust forward the note.

"This promise not to see her again."

Mr. Pendyce motioned it aside.

"I'll not be dictated to by that fellow Bellew," he said.  Then, by
an afterthought: "It won't do to give him a chance.  George must
promise me that in any case."

Mrs. Pendyce pressed her lips together.

"But do you think he will?"

"Think--think who will?  Think he will what?  Why can't you express
yourself, Margery?  If George has really got us into this mess he
must get us out again."

Mrs. Pendyce flushed.

"He would never leave her in the lurch!"

The Squire said angrily:

"Lurch!  Who said anything about lurch?  He owes it to her.  Not that
she deserves any consideration, if she's been----You don't mean to
say you think he'll refuse?  He'd never be such a donkey?"

Mrs. Pendyce raised her hands and made what for her was a passionate
gesture.

"Oh, Horace!" she said, "you don't understand.  He's in love with
her!"

Mr. Pendyce's lower lip trembled, a sign with him of excitement or
emotion.  All the conservative strength of his nature, all the
immense dumb force of belief in established things, all that stubborn
hatred and dread of change, that incalculable power of imagining
nothing, which, since the beginning of time, had made Horace Pendyce
the arbiter of his land, rose up within his sorely tried soul.

"What on earth's that to do with it?" he cried in a rage.  "You
women!  You've no sense of anything!  Romantic, idiotic, immoral--I
don't know what you're at.  For God's sake don't go putting ideas
into his head!"

At this outburst Mrs. Pendyce's face became rigid; only the flicker
of her eyelids betrayed how her nerves were quivering.  Suddenly she
threw her hands up to her ears.

"Horace!"  she cried, "do----Oh, poor John!"

The Squire had stepped hastily and heavily on to his dog's paw.  The
creature gave a grievous howl.  Mr. Pendyce went down on his knees
and raised the limb.

"Damn the dog!"  he stuttered.  "Oh, poor fellow, John!"

And the two long and narrow heads for a moment were close together.




CHAPTER V

RECTOR AND SQUIRE

The efforts of social man, directed from immemorial time towards the
stability of things, have culminated in Worsted Skeynes.  Beyond
commercial competition--for the estate no longer paid for living on
it--beyond the power of expansion, set with tradition and sentiment,
it was an undoubted jewel, past need of warranty.  Cradled within it
were all those hereditary institutions of which the country was most
proud, and Mr. Pendyce sometimes saw before him the time when, for
services to his party, he should call himself Lord Worsted, and after
his own death continue sitting in the House of Lords in the person of
his son.  But there was another feeling in the Squire's heart--the
air and the woods and the fields had passed into his blood a love for
this, his home and the home of his fathers.

And so a terrible unrest pervaded the whole household after the
receipt of Jaspar Bellew's note.  Nobody was told anything, yet
everybody knew there was something; and each after his fashion, down
to the very dogs, betrayed their sympathy with the master and
mistress of the house.

Day after day the girls wandered about the new golf course knocking
the balls aimlessly; it was all they could do.  Even Cecil Tharp, who
had received from Bee the qualified affirmative natural under the
circumstances, was infected.  The off foreleg of her grey mare was
being treated by a process he had recently discovered, and in the
stables he confided to Bee that the dear old Squire seemed "off his
feed;" he did not think it was any good worrying him at present.
Bee, stroking the mare's neck, looked at him shyly and slowly.

"It's about George," she said; "I know it's about George!  Oh, Cecil!
I do wish I had been a boy!"

Young Tharp assented in spite of himself:

"Yes; it must be beastly to be a girl."

A faint flush coloured Bee's cheeks.  It hurt her a little that he
should agree; but her lover was passing his hand down the mare's
shin.

"Father is rather trying," she said.  "I wish George would marry."

Cecil Tharp raised his bullet head; his blunt, honest face was
extremely red from stooping.

"Clean as a whistle," he said; "she's all right, Bee.  I expect
George has too good a time."

Bee turned her face away and murmured:

"I should loathe living in London."  And she, too, stooped and felt
the mare's shin.

To Mrs. Pendyce in these days the hours passed with incredible
slowness.  For thirty odd years she had waited at once for everything
and nothing; she had, so to say, everything she could wish for, and--
nothing, so that even waiting had been robbed of poignancy; but to
wait like this, in direct suspense, for something definite was
terrible.  There was hardly a moment when she did not conjure up
George, lonely and torn by conflicting emotions; for to her, long
paralysed by Worsted Skeynes, and ignorant of the facts, the
proportions of the struggle in her son's soul appeared Titanic; her
mother instinct was not deceived as to the strength of his passion.
Strange and conflicting were the sensations with which she awaited
the result; at one moment thinking, 'It is madness; he must promise--
it is too awful!' at another, 'Ah! but how can he, if he loves her
so?  It is impossible; and she, too--ah!  how awful it is!'

Perhaps, as Mr. Pendyce had said, she was romantic; perhaps it was
only the thought of the pain her boy must suffer.  The tooth was too
big, it seemed to her; and, as in old days, when she took him to
Cornmarket to have an aching tooth out, she ever sat with his hand in
hers while the little dentist pulled, and ever suffered the tug, too,
in her own mouth, so now she longed to share this other tug, so
terrible, so fierce.

Against Mrs. Bellew she felt only a sort of vague and jealous aching;
and this seemed strange even to herself--but, again, perhaps she was
romantic.

Now it was that she found the value of routine.  Her days were so
well and fully occupied that anxiety was forced below the surface.
The nights were far more terrible; for then, not only had she to bear
her own suspense, but, as was natural in a wife, the fears of Horace
Pendyce as well.  The poor Squire found this the only time when he
could get relief from worry; he came to bed much earlier on purpose.
By dint of reiterating dreads and speculation he at length obtained
some rest.  Why had not George answered?  What was the fellow about?
And so on and so on, till, by sheer monotony, he caused in himself
the need for slumber.  But his wife's torments lasted till after the
birds, starting with a sleepy cheeping, were at full morning chorus.
Then only, turning softly for fear she should awaken him, the poor
lady fell asleep.

For George had not answered.

In her morning visits to the village Mrs. Pendyce found herself, for
the first time since she had begun this practice, driven by her own
trouble over that line of diffident distrust which had always divided
her from the hearts of her poorer neighbours.  She was astonished at
her own indelicacy, asking questions, prying into their troubles,
pushed on by a secret aching for distraction; and she was surprised
how well they took it--how, indeed, they seemed to like it, as though
they knew that they were doing her good.  In one cottage, where she
had long noticed with pitying wonder a white-faced, black-eyed girl,
who seemed to crouch away from everyone, she even received a request.
It was delivered with terrified secrecy in a back-yard, out of Mrs.
Barter's hearing.

"Oh, ma'am!  Get me away from here!  I'm in trouble--it's comin', and
I don't know what I shall do."

Mrs. Pendyce shivered, and all the way home she thought: 'Poor little
soul--poor little thing!' racking her brains to whom she might
confide this case and ask for a solution; and something of the white-
faced, black-eyed girl's terror and secrecy fell on her, for, she
found no one not even Mrs. Barter, whose heart, though soft, belonged
to the Rector.  Then, by a sort of inspiration, she thought of
Gregory.

'How can I write to him,' she mused, 'when my son----'

But she did write, for, deep down, the Totteridge instinct felt that
others should do things for her; and she craved, too, to allude,
however distantly, to what was on her mind.  And, under the Pendyce
eagle and the motto: 'Strenuus aureaque penna', thus her letter ran:


"DEAR GRIG,

"Can you do anything for a poor little girl in the village here who
is 'in trouble'?--you know what I mean.  It is such a terrible crime
in this part of the country, and she looks so wretched and
frightened, poor little thing!  She is twenty years old.  She wants a
hiding-place for her misfortune, and somewhere to go when it is over.
Nobody, she says, will have anything to do with her where they know;
and, really, I have noticed for a long time how white and wretched
she looks, with great black frightened eyes.  I don't like to apply
to our Rector, for though he is a good fellow in many ways, he has
such strong opinions; and, of course, Horace could do nothing.  I
would like to do something for her, and I could spare a little money,
but I can't find a place for her to go, and that makes it difficult.
She seems to be haunted, too, by the idea that wherever she goes it
will come out.  Isn't it dreadful?  Do do something, if you can.  I
am rather anxious about George.  I hope the dear boy is well.  If you
are passing his club some day you might look in and just ask after
him.  He is sometimes so naughty about writing.  I wish we could see
you here, dear Grig; the country is looking beautiful just now--the
oak-trees especially--and the apple-blossom isn't over, but I suppose
you are too busy.  How is Helen Bellew?  Is she in town?

"Your affectionate cousin,

"MARGERY PENDYCE."


It was four o'clock this same afternoon when the second groom, very
much out of breath, informed the butler that there was a fire at
Peacock's farm.  The butler repaired at once to the library.  Mr.
Pendyce, who had been on horseback all the morning, was standing in
his riding-clothes, tired and depressed, before the plan of Worsted
Skeynes.

"What do you want, Bester?"

"There is a fire at Peacock's farm, sir."  Mr. Pendyce stared.

"What?" he said.  "A fire in broad daylight!  Nonsense!"

"You can see the flames from the front, sir."  The worn and querulous
look left Mr. Pendyce's face.

"Ring the stable-bell!"  he said.  "Tell them all to run with buckets
and ladders.  Send Higson off to Cornmarket on the mare.  Go and tell
Mr. Barter, and rouse the village.  Don't stand there--God bless me!
Ring the stable-bell!"  And snatching up his riding-crop and hat, he
ran past the butler, closely followed by the spaniel John.

Over the stile and along the footpath which cut diagonally across a
field of barley he moved at a stiff trot, and his spaniel, who had
not grasped the situation, frolicked ahead with a certain surprise.
The Squire was soon out of breath--it was twenty years or more since
he had run a quarter of a mile.  He did not, however, relax his
speed.  Ahead of him in the distance ran the second groom; behind him
a labourer and a footman.  The stable-bell at Worsted Skeynes began
to ring.  Mr. Pendyce crossed the stile and struck into the lane,
colliding with the Rector, who was running, too, his face flushed to
the colour of tomatoes.  They ran on, side by side.

"You go on!"  gasped Mr. Pendyce at last, "and tell them I'm coming."

The Rector hesitated--he, too, was very out of breath--and started
again, panting.  The Squire, with his hand to his side, walked
painfully on; he had run himself to a standstill.  At a gap in the
corner of the lane he suddenly saw pale-red tongues of flame against
the sunlight.

"God bless me!"  he gasped, and in sheer horror started to run again.
Those sinister tongues were licking at the air over a large barn,
some ricks, and the roofs of stables and outbuildings.  Half a dozen
figures were dashing buckets of water on the flames.  The true
insignificance of their efforts did not penetrate the Squire's mind.
Trembling, and with a sickening pain in his lungs, he threw off his
coat, wrenched a bucket from a huge agricultural labourer, who
resigned it with awe, and joined the string of workers.  Peacock, the
farmer, ran past him; his face and round red beard were the colour of
the flames he was trying to put out; tears dropped continually from
his eyes and ran down that fiery face.  His wife, a little dark woman
with a twisted mouth, was working like a demon at the pump.
Mr. Pendyce gasped to her:

"This is dreadful, Mrs. Peacock--this is dreadful!"

Conspicuous in black clothes and white shirt-sleeves, the Rector was
hewing with an axe at the boarding of a cowhouse, the door end of
which was already in flames, and his voice could be heard above the
tumult shouting directions to which nobody paid any heed.

"What's in that cow-house?" gasped Mr. Pendyce.

Mrs. Peacock, in a voice harsh with rage and grief answered:

"It's the old horse and two of the cows!"

"God bless me!"  cried the Squire, rushing forward with his bucket.

Some villagers came running up, and he shouted to these, but what he
said neither he nor they could tell.  The shrieks and snortings of
the horse and cows, the steady whirr of the flames, drowned all
lesser sounds.  Of human cries, the Rector's voice alone was heard,
between the crashing blows of his axe upon the woodwork.

Mr. Pendyce tripped; his bucket rolled out of his hand; he lay where
he had fallen, too exhausted to move.  He could still hear the crash
of the Rector's axe, the sound of his shouts.  Somebody helped him
up, and trembling so that he could hardly stand, he caught an axe out
of the hand of a strapping young fellow who had just arrived, and
placing himself by the Rector's side, swung it feebly against the
boarding.  The flames and smoke now filled the whole cow-house, and
came rushing through the gap that they were making.  The Squire and
the Rector stood their ground.  With a furious blow Mr. Barter
cleared a way.  A cheer rose behind them, but no beast came forth.
All three were dead in the smoke and flames.

The Squire, who could see in, flung down his axe, and covered his
eyes with his hands.  The Rector uttered a sound like a deep oath,
and he, too, flung down his axe.

Two hours later, with torn and blackened clothes, the Squire stood by
the ruins of the barn.  The fire was out, but the ashes were still
smouldering.  The spaniel John, anxious, panting, was licking his
master's boots, as though begging forgiveness that he had been so
frightened, and kept so far away.  Yet something in his eye seemed to
be saying:

"Must you really have these fires, master?"

A black hand grasped the Squire's arm, a hoarse voice said:

"I shan't forget, Squire!"

"God bless me, Peacock!"  returned Mr. Pendyce, "that's nothing!
You're insured, I hope?'

"Aye, I'm insured; but it's the beasts I'm thinking of!"

"Ah!"  said the Squire, with a gesture of horror.

The brougham took him and the Rector back together.  Under their feet
crouched their respective dogs, faintly growling at each other.  A
cheer from the crowd greeted their departure.

They started in silence, deadly tired.  Mr. Pendyce said suddenly:

"I can't get those poor beasts out of my head, Barter!"

The Rector put his hand up to his eyes.

"I hope to God I shall never see such a sight again!  Poor brutes,
poor brutes!"

And feeling secretly for his dog's muzzle, he left his hand against
the animal's warm, soft, rubbery mouth, to be licked again and again.

On his side of the brougham Mr. Pendyce, also unseen, was doing
precisely the same thing.

The carriage went first to the Rectory, where Mrs. Barter and her
children stood in the doorway.  The Rector put his head back into the
brougham to say:

"Good-night, Pendyce.  You'll be stiff tomorrow.  I shall get my wife
to rub me with Elliman!"

Mr. Pendyce nodded, raised his hat, and the carriage went on.
Leaning back, he closed his eyes; a pleasanter sensation was stealing
over him.  True, he would be stiff to-morrow, but he had done his
duty.  He had shown them all that blood told; done something to
bolster up that system which was-himself.  And he had a new and
kindly feeling towards Peacock, too.  There was nothing like a little
danger for bringing the lower classes closer; then it was they felt
the need for officers, for something!

The spaniel John's head rose between his knees, turning up eyes with
a crimson touch beneath.

'Master,' he seemed to say, 'I am feeling old.  I know there are
things beyond me in this life, but you, who know all things, will
arrange that we shall be together even when we die.'

The carriage stopped at the entrance of the drive, and the Squire's
thoughts changed.  Twenty years ago he would have beaten Barter
running down that lane.  Barter was only forty-five.  To give him
fourteen years and a beating was a bit too much to expect: He felt a
strange irritation with Barter--the fellow had cut a very good
figure!  He had shirked nothing.  Elliman was too strong!  Homocea
was the thing.  Margery would have to rub him!  And suddenly, as
though springing naturally from the name of his wife, George came
into Mr. Pendyce's mind, and the respite that he had enjoyed from
care was over.  But the spaniel John, who scented home, began singing
feebly for the brougham to stop, and beating a careless tail against
his master's boot.

It was very stiffly, with frowning brows and a shaking under-lip,
that the Squire descended from the brougham, and began sorely to
mount the staircase to his wife's room.




CHAPTER VI

THE PARK

There comes a day each year in May when Hyde Park is possessed.  A
cool wind swings the leaves; a hot sun glistens on Long Water, on
every bough, on every blade of grass.  The birds sing their small
hearts out, the band plays its gayest tunes, the white clouds race in
the high blue heaven.  Exactly why and how this day differs from
those that came before and those that will come after, cannot be
told; it is as though the Park said: 'To-day I live; the Past is
past.  I care not for the Future!'

And on this day they who chance in the Park cannot escape some
measure of possession.  Their steps quicken, their skirts swing,
their sticks flourish, even their eyes brighten--those eyes so dulled
with looking at the streets; and each one, if he has a Love, thinks
of her, and here and there among the wandering throng he has her with
him.  To these the Park and all sweet-blooded mortals in it nod and
smile.

There had been a meeting that afternoon at Lady Maiden's in Prince's
Gate to consider the position of the working-class woman.  It had
provided a somewhat heated discussion, for a person had got up and
proved almost incontestably that the working-class woman had no
position whatsoever.

Gregory Vigil and Mrs. Shortman had left this meeting together, and,
crossing the Serpentine, struck a line over the grass.

"Mrs. Shortman," said Gregory, "don't you think we're all a little
mad?"

He was carrying his hat in his hand, and his fine grizzled hair,
rumpled in the excitement of the meeting, had not yet subsided on his
head.

"Yes, Mr. Vigil.  I don't exactly----"

"We are all a little mad!  What did that woman, Lady Maiden, mean by
talking as she did?  I detest her!"

"Oh, Mr. Vigil!  She has the best intentions!"

"Intentions?" said Gregory.  "I loathe her!  What did we go to her
stuffy drawing-room for?  Look at that sky!"

Mrs. Shortman looked at the sky.

"But, Mr. Vigil," she said earnestly, "things would never get done.
Sometimes I think you look at everything too much in the light of the
way it ought to be!"

"The Milky Way," said Gregory.

Mrs. Shortman pursed her lips; she found it impossible to habituate
herself to Gregory's habit of joking.

They had scant talk for the rest of their journey to the S. R. W. C.,
where Miss Mallow, at the typewriter, was reading a novel.

"There are several letters for you, Mr. Vigil"

"Mrs. Shortman says I am unpractical," answered Gregory.  "Is that
true, Miss Mallow?"

The colour in Miss Mallow's cheeks spread to her sloping shoulders.

"Oh no.  You're most practical, only--perhaps--I don't know, perhaps
you do try to do rather impossible things, Mr. Vigil"

"Bilcock Buildings!"

There was a minute's silence.  Then Mrs. Shortman at her bureau
beginning to dictate, the typewriter started clicking.

Gregory, who had opened a letter, was seated with his head in his
hands.  The voice ceased, the typewriter ceased, but Gregory did not
stir.  Both women, turning a little in their seats, glanced at him.
Their eyes caught each other's and they looked away at once.  A few
seconds later they were looking at him again.  Still Gregory did not
stir.  An anxious appeal began to creep into the women's eyes.

"Mr. Vigil," said Mrs. Shortman at last, "Mr. Vigil, do you think---"

Gregory raised his face; it was flushed to the roots of his hair.

"Read that, Mrs. Shortman."

Handing her a pale grey letter stamped with an eagle and the motto
'Strenuus aureaque penna' he rose and paced the room.  And as with
his long, light stride he was passing to and fro, the woman at the
bureau conned steadily the writing, the girl at the typewriter sat
motionless with a red and jealous face.

Mrs. Shortman folded the letter, placed it on the top of the bureau,
and said without raising her eyes

"Of course, it is very sad for the poor little girl; but surely, Mr.
Vigil, it must always be, so as to check, to check----"

Gregory stopped, and his shining eyes disconcerted her; they seemed
to her unpractical.  Sharply lifting her voice, she went on:

"If there were no disgrace, there would be no way of stopping it.  I
know the country better than you do, Mr. Vigil."

Gregory put his hands to his ears.

"We must find a place for her at once."

The window was fully open, so that he could not open it any more, and
he stood there as though looking for that place in the sky.  And the
sky he looked at was very blue, and large white birds of cloud were
flying over it.

He turned from the window, and opened another letter.


                              "LINCOLN'S INN FIELDS,
                                   "May 24, 1892.
"MY DEAR VIGIL,

"I gathered from your ward when I saw her yesterday that she has not
told you of what, I fear, will give you much pain.  I asked her
point-blank whether she wished the matter kept from you, and her
answer was, 'He had better know--only I'm sorry for him.' In sum it
is this: Bellow has either got wind of our watching him, or someone
must have put him up to it; he has anticipated us and brought a suit
against your ward, joining George Pendyce in the cause.  George
brought the citation to me.  If necessary he's prepared to swear
there's nothing in it.  He takes, in fact, the usual standpoint of
the 'man of honour.'

"I went at once to see your ward.  She admitted that the charge is
true.  I asked her if she wished the suit defended, and a counter-
suit brought against her husband.  Her answer to that was: 'I
absolutely don't care.'  I got nothing from her but this, and, though
it sounds odd, I believe it to be true.  She appears to be in a
reckless mood, and to have no particular ill-will against her
husband.

"I want to see you, but only after you have turned this matter over
carefully.  It is my duty to put some considerations before you.  The
suit, if brought, will be a very unpleasant matter for George, a
still more unpleasant, even disastrous one, for his people.  The
innocent in such cases are almost always the greatest sufferers.  If
the cross-suit is instituted, it will assume at once, considering
their position in Society, the proportions of a 'cause celebre', and
probably occupy the court and the daily presses anything from three
days to a week, perhaps more, and you know what that means.  On the
other hand, not to defend the suit, considering what we know, is,
apart from ethics, revolting to my instincts as a fighter.  My
advice, therefore, is to make every effort to prevent matters being
brought into court at all.

"I am an older man than you by thirteen years.  I have a sincere
regard for you, and I wish to save you pain.  In the course of our
interviews I have observed your ward very closely, and at the risk of
giving you offence, I am going to speak out my mind.  Mrs. Bellew is
a rather remarkable woman.  From two or three allusions that you have
made in my presence, I believe that she is altogether different from
what you think.  She is, in my opinion, one of those very vital
persons upon whom our judgments, censures, even our sympathies, are
wasted.  A woman of this sort, if she comes of a county family, and
is thrown by circumstances with Society people, is always bound to be
conspicuous.  If you would realise something of this, it would, I
believe, save you a great deal of pain.  In short, I beg of you not
to take her, or her circumstances, too seriously.  There are quite a
number of such men and women as her husband and herself, and they are
always certain to be more or less before the public eye.  Whoever
else goes down, she will swim, simply because she can't help it.  I
want you to see things as they are.

"I ask you again, my dear Vigil, to forgive me for writing thus, and
to believe that my sole desire is to try and save you unnecessary
suffering.

"Come and see me as soon as you have reflected:

                              "I am,
                                   "Your sincere friend,
                                        "EDMUND PARAMOR."


Gregory made a movement like that of a blind man.  Both women were on
their feet at once.

"What is it, Mr. Vigil?  Can I get you anything?"

"Thanks; nothing, nothing.  I've had some rather bad news.  I'll go
out and get some air.  I shan't be back to-day."

He found his hat and went.

He walked towards the Park, unconsciously attracted towards the
biggest space, the freshest air; his hands were folded behind him,
his head bowed.  And since, of all things, Nature is ironical, it was
fitting that he should seek the Park this day when it was gayest.
And far in the Park, as near the centre as might be, he lay down on
the grass.  For a long time he lay without moving, his hands over his
eyes, and in spite of Mr. Paramor's reminder that his suffering was
unnecessary, he suffered.

And mostly he suffered from black loneliness, for he was a very
lonely man, and now he had lost that which he had thought he had.
It is difficult to divide suffering, difficult to say how much he
suffered, because, being in love with her, he had secretly thought
she must love him a little, and how much he suffered because his
private portrait of her, the portrait that he, and he alone, had
painted, was scored through with the knife.  And he lay first on his
face, and then on his back, with his hand always over his eyes.  And
around him were other men lying on the grass, and some were lonely,
and some hungry, and some asleep, and some were lying there for the
pleasure of doing nothing and for the sake of the hot sun on their
cheeks; and by the side of some lay their girls, and it was these
that Gregory could not bear to see, for his spirit and his senses
were a-hungered.  In the plantations close by were pigeons, and never
for a moment did they stop cooing; never did the blackbirds cease
their courting songs; the sun its hot, sweet burning; the clouds
above their love-chase in the sky.  It was the day without a past,
without a future, when it is not good for man to be alone.  And no
man looked at him, because it was no man's business, but a woman here
and there cast a glance on that long, tweed-suited figure with the
hand over the eyes, and wondered, perhaps, what was behind that hand.
Had they but known, they would have smiled their woman's smile that
he should so have mistaken one of their sex.

Gregory lay quite still, looking at the sky, and because he was a
loyal man he did not blame her, but slowly, very slowly, his spirit,
like a spring stretched to the point of breaking, came back upon
itself, and since he could not bear to see things as they were, he
began again to see them as they were not.

'She has been forced into this,' he thought.  'It is George Pendyce's
fault.  To me she is, she must be, the same!'

He turned again on to his face.  And a small dog who had lost its
master sniffed at his boots, and sat down a little way off, to wait
till Gregory could do something for him, because he smelled that he
was that sort of man.




CHAPTER VII

DOUBTFUL POSITION AT WORSTED SKEYNES

Then George's answer came at last, the flags were in full bloom round
the Scotch garden at Worsted Skeynes.  They grew in masses and of all
shades, from deep purple to pale grey, and their scent, very
penetrating, very delicate, floated on the wind.

While waiting for that answer, it had become Mr. Pendyce's habit to
promenade between these beds, his hand to his back, for he was still
a little stiff, followed at a distance of seven paces by the spaniel
John, very black, and moving his rubbery nostrils uneasily from side
to side.

In this way the two passed every day the hour from twelve to one.
Neither could have said why they walked thus, for Mr. Pendyce had a
horror of idleness, and the spaniel John disliked the scent of
irises; both, in fact, obeyed that part of themselves which is
superior to reason.  During this hour, too, Mrs. Pendyce, though
longing to walk between her flowers, also obeyed that part of her,
superior to reason, which told her that it would be better not.

But George's answer came at last.

                                        "STOICS' CLUB.
"DEAR FATHER,

"Yes, Bellew is bringing a suit.  I am taking steps in the matter.
As to the promise you ask for, I can give no promise of the sort.
You may tell Bellew I will see him d---d first.

                              "Your affectionate son,
                                        "GEORGE PENDYCE."


Mr. Pendyce received this at the breakfast-table, and while he read
it there was a hush, for all had seen the handwriting on the
envelope.

Mr. Pendyce read it through twice, once with his glasses on and once
without, and when he had finished the second reading he placed it in
his breast pocket.  No word escaped him; his eyes, which had sunk a
little the last few days, rested angrily on his wife's white face.
Bee and Norah looked down, and, as if they understood, the four dogs
were still.  Mr. Pendyce pushed his plate back, rose, and left the
room.

Norah looked up.

"What's the matter, Mother?"

Mrs. Pendyce was swaying.  She recovered herself in a moment.

"Nothing, dear.  It's very hot this morning, don't you think?  I'll
Just go to my room and take some sal volatile."

She went out, followed by old Roy, the Skye; the spaniel John, who
had been cut off at the door by his master's abrupt exit, preceded
her.  Norah and Bee pushed back their plates.

"I can't eat, Norah," said Bee.  "It's horrible not to know what's
going on."

Norah answered

"It's perfectly brutal not being a man.  You might just as well be a
dog as a girl, for anything anyone tells you!"

Mrs. Pendyce did not go to her room; she went to the library.  Her
husband, seated at his table, had George's letter before him.  A pen
was in his hand, but he was not writing.

"Horace," she said softly, "here is poor John!"

Mr. Pendyce did not answer, but put down the hand that did not hold
his pen.  The spaniel John covered it with kisses.

"Let me see the letter, won't you?"

Mr. Pendyce handed it to her without a word.  She touched his
shoulder gratefully, for his unusual silence went to her heart.  Mr.
Pendyce took no notice, staring at his pen as though surprised that,
of its own accord, it did not write his answer; but suddenly he flung
it down and looked round, and his look seemed to say: 'You brought
this fellow into the world; now see the result!'

He had had so many days to think and put his finger on the doubtful
spots of his son's character.  All that week he had become more and
more certain of how, without his wife, George would have been exactly
like himself.  Words sprang to his lips, and kept on dying there.
The doubt whether she would agree with him, the feeling that she
sympathised with her son, the certainty that something even in
himself responded to those words: "You can tell Bellew I will see him
d---d first!"--all this, and the thought, never out of his mind, 'The
name--the estate!' kept him silent.  He turned his head away, and
took up his pen again.

Mrs. Pendyce had read the letter now three times, and instinctively
had put it in her bosom.  It was not hers, but Horace must know it by
heart, and in his anger he might tear it up.  That letter, for which
they had waited so long; told her nothing; she had known all there
was to tell.  Her hand had fallen from Mr. Pendyce's shoulder, and
she did not put it back, but ran her fingers through and through each
other, while the sunlight, traversing the narrow windows, caressed
her from her hair down to her knees.  Here and there that stream of
sunlight formed little pools in her eyes, giving them a touching,
anxious brightness; in a curious heart-shaped locket of carved steel,
worn by her mother and her grandmother before her, containing now,
not locks of their son's hair, but a curl of George's; in her diamond
rings, and a bracelet of amethyst and pearl which she wore for the
love of pretty things.  And the warm sunlight disengaged from her a
scent of lavender.  Through the library door a scratching noise told
that the dear dogs knew she was not in her bedroom.  Mr. Pendyce,
too, caught that scent of lavender, and in some vague way it
augmented his discomfort.  Her silence, too, distressed him.  It did
not occur to him that his silence was distressing her.  He put down
his pen.

"I can't write with you standing there, Margery!"

Mrs. Pendyce moved out of the sunlight.

"George says he is taking steps.  What does that mean, Horace?"

This question, focusing his doubts, broke down the Squire's dumbness.

"I won't be treated like this!"  he said.  "I'll go up and see him
myself!"

He went by the 10.20, saying that he would be down again by the 5.55

Soon after seven the same evening a dogcart driven by a young groom
and drawn by a raking chestnut mare with a blaze face, swung into the
railway-station at Worsted Skeynes, and drew up before the booking-
office.  Mr. Pendyce's brougham, behind a brown horse, coming a
little later, was obliged to range itself behind.  A minute before
the train's arrival a wagonette and a pair of bays, belonging to Lord
Quarryman, wheeled in, and, filing past the other two, took up its
place in front.  Outside this little row of vehicles the station fly
and two farmers' gigs presented their backs to the station buildings.
And in this arrangement there was something harmonious and fitting,
as though Providence itself had guided them all and assigned to each
its place.  And Providence had only made one error--that of placing
Captain Bellew's dogcart precisely opposite the booking-office,
instead of Lord Quarryman's wagonette, with Mr. Pendyce's brougham
next.

Mr. Pendyce came out first; he stared angrily at the dogcart, and
moved to his own carriage.  Lord Quarryman came out second.  His
massive sun-burned head--the back of which, sparsely adorned by
hairs, ran perfectly straight into his neck--was crowned by a grey
top-hat.  The skirts of his grey coat were square-shaped, and so were
the toes of his boots.

"Hallo, Pendyce!"  he called out heartily; "didn't see you on the
platform.  How's your wife?"

Mr. Pendyce, turning to answer, met the little burning eyes of
Captain Bellew, who came out third.  They failed to salute each
other, and Bellow, springing into his cart, wrenched his mare round,
circled the farmers' gigs, and, sitting forward, drove off at a
furious pace.  His groom, running at full speed, clung to the cart
and leaped on to the step behind.  Lord Quarryman's wagonette backed
itself into the place left vacant.  And the mistake of Providence was
rectified.

"Cracked chap, that fellow Bellew.  D'you see anything of him?"

Mr. Pendyce answered:

"No; and I want to see less.  I wish he'd take himself off!"

His lordship smiled.

"A huntin' country seems to breed fellows like that; there's always
one of 'em to every pack of hounds.  Where's his wife now?  Good-
lookin' woman; rather warm member, eh?"

It seemed to Mr. Pendyce that Lord Quarryman's eyes searched his own
with a knowing look, and muttering "God knows!"  he vanished into his
brougham.

Lord Quarryman looked kindly at his horses.

He was not a man who reflected on the whys, the wherefores, the
becauses, of this life.  The good God had made him Lord Quarryman,
had made his eldest son Lord Quantock; the good God had made the
Gaddesdon hounds--it was enough!

When Mr. Pendyce reached home he went to his dressing-room.  In a
corner by the bath the spaniel John lay surrounded by an assortment
of his master's slippers, for it was thus alone that he could soothe
in measure the bitterness of separation.  His dark brown eye was
fixed upon the door, and round it gleamed a crescent moon of white.
He came to the Squire fluttering his tail, with a slipper in his
mouth, and his eye said plainly: 'Oh, master, where have you been?
Why have you been so long?  I have been expecting you ever since
half-past ten this morning!'

Mr. Pendyce's heart opened a moment and closed again.  He said
"John!" and began to dress for dinner.

Mrs. Pendyce found him tying his white tie.  She had plucked the
first rosebud from her garden; she had plucked it because she felt
sorry for him, and because of the excuse it would give her to go to
his dressing-room at once.

"I've brought you a buttonhole, Horace.  Did you see him?"

"No."

Of all answers this was the one she dreaded most.  She had not
believed that anything would come of an interview; she had trembled
all day long at the thought of their meeting; but now that they had
not met she knew by the sinking in her heart that anything was better
than uncertainty.  She waited as long as she could, then burst out:

"Tell me something, Horace!"

Mr. Pendyce gave her an angry glance.

"How can I tell you, when there's nothing to tell?  I went to his
club.  He's not living there now.  He's got rooms, nobody knows
where.  I waited all the afternoon.  Left a message at last for him
to come down here to-morrow.  I've sent for Paramor, and told him to
come down too.  I won't put up with this sort of thing."

Mrs. Pendyce looked out of the window, but there was nothing to see
save the ha-ha, the coverts, the village spire, the cottage roofs,
which for so long had been her world.

"George won't come down here," she said.

"George will do what I tell him."

Again Mrs. Pendyce shook her head, knowing by instinct that she was
right.

Mr. Pendyce stopped putting on his waist-coat.

"George had better take care," he said; "he's entirely dependent on
me."

And as if with those words he had summed up the situation, the
philosophy of a system vital to his son, he no longer frowned.  On
Mrs. Pendyce those words had a strange effect.  They stirred within
her terror.  It was like seeing her son's back bared to a lifted
whip-lash; like seeing the door shut against him on a snowy night.
But besides terror they stirred within her a more poignant feeling
yet, as though someone had dared to show a whip to herself, had dared
to defy that something more precious than life in her soul, that
something which was of her blood, so utterly and secretly passed by
the centuries into her fibre that no one had ever thought of defying
it before.  And there flashed before her with ridiculous concreteness
the thought: 'I've got three hundred a year of my own!'  Then the
whole feeling left her, just as in dreams a mordant sensation grips
and passes, leaving a dull ache, whose cause is forgotten, behind.

"There's the gong, Horace," she said.  "Cecil Tharp is here to
dinner.  I asked the Barters, but poor Rose didn't feel up to it.
Of course they are expecting it very soon now.  They talk of the 15th
of June."

Mr. Pendyce took from his wife his coat, passing his arms down the
satin sleeves.

"If I could get the cottagers to have families like that," he said,
"I shouldn't have much trouble about labour.  They're a pig-headed
lot--do nothing that they're told.  Give me some eau-de-Cologne,
Margery."

Mrs. Pendyce dabbed the wicker flask on her husband's handkerchief.

"Your eyes look tired," she said.  "Have you a headache, dear?"




CHAPTER VIII

COUNCIL AT WORSTED SKEYNES

It was on the following evening--the evening on which he was
expecting his son and Mr. Paramor that the Squire leaned forward over
the dining-table and asked:

"What do you say, Barter?  I'm speaking to you as a man of the
world."

The Rector bent over his glass of port and moistened his lower lip.

"There's no excuse for that woman," he answered.  "I always thought
she was a bad lot."

Mr. Pendyce went on:

"We've never had a scandal in my family.  I find the thought of it
hard to bear, Barter--I find it hard to bear----"

The Rector emitted a low sound.  He had come from long usage to have
a feeling like affection for his Squire.

Mr. Pendyce pursued his thoughts.

"We've gone on," he said, "father and son for hundreds of years.
It's a blow to me, Barter."

Again the Rector emitted that low sound.

"What will the village think?" said Mr. Pendyce; "and the farmers--
I mind that more than anything.  Most of them knew my dear old father
--not that he was popular.  It's a bitter thing."

The Rector said:

"Well, well, Pendyce, perhaps it won't come to that."

He looked a little shamefaced, and his light eyes were full of
something like contrition.

"How does Mrs. Pendyce take it?"

The Squire looked at him for the first time.

"Ah!"  he said; "you never know anything about women.  I'd as soon
trust a woman to be just as I'd--I'd finish that magnum; it'd give me
gout in no time."

The Rector emptied his glass.

"I've sent for George and my solicitor," pursued the Squire; "they'll
be here directly."

Mr. Barter pushed his chair back, and raising his right ankle on to
his left leg, clasped his hands round his right knee; then, leaning
forward, he stared up under his jutting brows at Mr. Pendyce.  It was
the attitude in which he thought best.

Mr. Pendyce ran on:

"I've nursed the estate ever since it came to me; I've carried on the
tradition as best I could; I've not been as good a man, perhaps, as I
should have wished, but I've always tried to remember my old father's
words: 'I'm done for, Horry; the estate's in your hands now.'"  He
cleared his throat.

For a full minute there was no sound save the ticking of the clock.
Then the spaniel John, coming silently from under the sideboard, fell
heavily down against his master's leg with a lengthy snore of
satisfaction.  Mr. Pendyce looked down.

"This fellow of mine," he muttered, "is getting fat."

It was evident from the tone of his voice that he desired his emotion
to be forgotten.  Something very deep in Mr. Barter respected that
desire.

"It's a first-rate magnum," he said.

Mr. Pendyce filled his Rector's glass.

"I forget if you knew Paramor.  He was before your time.  He was at
Harrow with me."

The Rector took a prolonged sip.

"I shall be in the way," he said.  "I'll take myself off'."

The Squire put out his hand affectionately.

"No, no, Barter, don't you go.  It's all safe with you.  I mean to
act.  I can't stand this uncertainty.  My wife's cousin Vigil is
coming too--he's her guardian.  I wired for him.  You know Vigil?  He
was about your time."

The Rector turned crimson, and set his underlip.  Having scented his
enemy, nothing would now persuade him to withdraw; and the conviction
that he had only done his duty, a little shaken by the Squire's
confidence, returned as though by magic.

"Yes, I know him."

"We'll have it all out here," muttered Mr. Pendyce, "over this port.
There's the carriage.  Get up, John."

The spaniel John rose heavily, looked sardonically at Mr. Barter, and
again flopped down against his master's leg.

"Get up, John," said Mr. Pendyce again.  The spaniel John snored.

'If I move, you'll move too, and uncertainty will begin for me
again,' he seemed to say.

Mr. Pendyce disengaged his leg, rose, and went to the door.  Before
reaching it he turned and came back to the table.

"Barter," he said, "I'm not thinking of myself--I'm not thinking of
myself--we've been here for generations--it's the principle."  His
face had the least twist to one side, as though conforming to a kink
in his philosophy; his eyes looked sad and restless.

And the Rector, watching the door for the sight of his enemy, also
thought:

'I'm not thinking of myself--I'm satisfied that I did right--I'm
Rector of this parish it's the principle.'

The spaniel John gave three short barks, one for each of the persons
who entered the room.  They were Mrs. Pendyce, Mr. Paramor, and
Gregory Vigil.

"Where's George?" asked the Squire, but no one answered him.

The Rector, who had resumed his seat, stared at a little gold cross
which he had taken out of his waistcoat pocket.  Mr. Paramor lifted a
vase and sniffed at the rose it contained; Gregory walked to the
window.

When Mr. Pendyce realised that his son had not come, he went to the
door and held it open.

"Be good enough to take John out, Margery," he said.  "John!"

The spaniel John, seeing what lay before him, rolled over on his
back.

Mrs. Pendyce fixed her eyes on her husband, and in those eyes she put
all the words which the nature of a lady did not suffer her to speak.

'I claim to be here.  Let me stay; it is my right.  Don't send me
away.' So her eyes spoke, and so those of the spaniel John, lying on
his back, in which attitude he knew that he was hard to move.

Mr. Pendyce turned him over with his foot.

"Get up, John!  Be good enough to take John out, Margery."

Mrs. Pendyce flushed, but did not move.

"John," said Mr. Pendyce, "go with your mistress."  The spaniel John
fluttered a drooping tail.  Mr. Pendyce pressed his foot to it.

"This is not a subject for women."

Mrs. Pendyce bent down.

"Come, John," she said.  The spaniel John, showing the whites of his
eyes, and trying to back through his collar, was assisted from the
room.  Mr. Pendyce closed the door behind them.

"Have a glass of port, Vigil; it's the '47.  My father laid it down
in '56, the year before he died.  Can't drink it myself--I've had to
put down two hogsheads of the Jubilee wine.  Paramor, fill your
glass.  Take that chair next to Paramor, Vigil.  You know Barter?"

Both Gregory's face and the Rector's were very red.

"We're all Harrow men here," went on Mr. Pendyce.  And suddenly
turning to Mr. Paramor, he said: "Well?"

Just as round the hereditary principle are grouped the State, the
Church, Law, and Philanthropy, so round the dining-table at Worsted
Skeynes sat the Squire, the Rector, Mr. Paramor, and Gregory Vigil,
and none of them wished to be the first to speak.  At last Mr.
Paramor, taking from his pocket Bellew's note and George's answer,
which were pinned in strange alliance, returned them to the Squire.

"I understand the position to be that George refuses to give her up;
at the same time he is prepared to defend the suit and deny
everything.  Those are his instructions to me."  Taking up the vase
again, he sniffed long and deep at the rose.

Mr. Pendyce broke the silence.

"As a gentleman," he said in a voice sharpened by the bitterness of
his feelings, "I suppose he's obliged----"

Gregory, smiling painfully, added:

"To tell lies."

Mr. Pendyce turned on him at once.

"I've nothing to say about that, Vigil.  George has behaved
abominably.  I don't uphold him; but if the woman wishes the suit
defended he can't play the cur--that's what I was brought up to
believe."

Gregory leaned his forehead on his hand.

"The whole system is odious----" he was beginning.

Mr. Paramor chimed in.

"Let us keep to the facts; without the system."

The Rector spoke for the first time.

"I don't know what you mean about the system; both this man and this
woman are guilty----"

Gregory said in a voice that quivered with rage:

"Be so kind as not to use the expression, 'this woman.'"

The Rector glowered.

"What expression then----"

Mr. Pendyce's voice, to which the intimate trouble of his thoughts
lent a certain dignity, broke in:

"Gentlemen, this is a question concerning the honour of my house."

There was another and a longer silence, during which Mr. Paramor's
eyes haunted from face to face, while beyond the rose a smile writhed
on his lips.

"I suppose you have brought me down here, Pendyce, to give you my
opinion," he said at last.  "Well; don't let these matters come into
court.  If there is anything you can do to prevent it, do it.  If
your pride stands in the way, put it in your pocket.  If your sense
of truth stands in the way, forget it.  Between personal delicacy and
our law of divorce there is no relation; between absolute truth and
our law of divorce there is no relation.  I repeat, don't let these
matters come into court.  Innocent and guilty, you will all suffer;
the innocent will suffer more than the guilty, and nobody will
benefit.  I have come to this conclusion deliberately.  There are
cases in which I should give the opposite opinion.  But in this case,
I repeat, there's nothing to be gained by it.  Once more, then, don't
let these matters come into court.  Don't give people's tongues a
chance.  Take my advice, appeal to George again to give you that
promise.  If he refuses, well, we must try and bluff Bellew out of
it."

Mr. Pendyce had listened, as he had formed the habit of listening to
Edmund Paramor, in silence.  He now looked up and said:

"It's all that red-haired ruffian's spite.  I don't know what you
were about to stir things up, Vigil.  You must have put him on the
scent."  He looked moodily at Gregory.  Mr. Barter, too, looked at
Gregory with a sort of half-ashamed defiance.

Gregory, who had been staring at his untouched wineglass, turned his
face, very flushed, and began speaking in a voice that emotion and
anger caused to tremble.  He avoided looking at the Rector, and
addressed himself to Mr. Paramor.

"George can't give up the woman who has trusted herself to him; that
would be playing the cur, if you like.  Let them go and live together
honestly until they can be married.  Why do you all speak as if it
were the man who mattered?  It is the woman that we should protect!"

The Rector first recovered speech.

"You're talking rank immorality," he said almost good-humouredly.

Mr. Pendyce rose.

"Marry her!"  he cried.  "What on earth--that's worse than all--the
very thing we're trying to prevent!  We've been here, father and son
--father and son--for generations!"

"All the more shame," burst out Gregory, "if you can't stand by a
woman at the end of them----!"

Mr. Paramor made a gesture of reproof.

"There's moderation in all things," he said.  "Are you sure that Mrs.
Bellew requires protection?  If you are right, I agree; but are you
right?"

"I will answer for it," said Gregory.

Mr. Paramor paused a full minute with his head resting on his hand.

"I am sorry," he said at last, "I must trust to my own judgment."

The Squire looked up.

"If the worst comes to the worst, can I cut the entail, Paramor?"

"No."

"What?  But that's all wrong--that's----"

"You can't have it both ways," said Mr. Paramor.

The Squire looked at him dubiously, then blurted out:

"If I choose to leave him nothing but the estate, he'll soon find
himself a beggar.  I beg your pardon, gentlemen; fill your glasses!
I'm forgetting everything!"

The Rector filled his glass.

"I've said nothing so far," he began; "I don't feel that it's my
business.  My conviction is that there's far too much divorce
nowadays.  Let this woman go back to her husband, and let him show
her where she's to blame"--his voice and his eyes hardened--"then let
them forgive each other like Christians.  You talk," he said to
Gregory, "about standing up for the woman.  I've no patience with
that; it's the way immorality's fostered in these days.  I raise my
voice against this sentimentalism.  I always have, and I always
shall!"

Gregory jumped to his feet.

"I've told you once before," he said, "that you were indelicate; I
tell you so again."

Mr. Barter got up, and stood bending over the table, crimson in the
face, staring at Gregory, and unable to speak.

"Either you or I," he said at last, stammering with passion, "must
leave this room!"

Gregory tried to speak; then turning abruptly, he stepped out on to
the terrace, and passed from the view of those within.

The Rector said:

"Good-night, Pendyce; I'm going, too!"

The Squire shook the hand held out to him with a face perplexed to
sadness.  There was silence when Mr. Barter had left the room.

The Squire broke it with a sigh.

"I wish we were back at Oxenham's, Paramor.  This serves me right for
deserting the old house.  What on earth made me send George to Eton?"

Mr. Paramor buried his nose in the vase.  In this saying of his old
schoolfellow was the whole of the Squire's creed:

'I believe in my father, and his father, and his father's father, the
makers and keepers of my estate; and I believe in myself and my son
and my son's son.  And I believe that we have made the country, and
shall keep the country what it is.  And I believe in the Public
Schools, and especially the Public School that I was at.  And I
believe in my social equals and the country house, and in things as
they are, for ever and ever.  Amen.'

Mr. Pendyce went on:

"I'm not a Puritan, Paramor; I dare say there are allowances to be
made for George.  I don't even object to the woman herself; she may
be too good for Bellew; she must be too good for a fellow like that!
But for George to marry her would be ruination.  Look at Lady Rose's
case!  Anyone but a star-gazing fellow like Vigil must see that!
It's taboo!  It's sheer taboo!  And think--think of my--my grandson!
No, no, Paramor; no, no, by God!"

The Squire covered his eyes with his hand.

Mr. Paramor, who had no son himself, answered with feeling:

"Now, now, old fellow; it won't come to that!"

"God knows what it will come to, Paramor!  My nerve's shaken!  You
know yourself that if there's a divorce he'll be bound to marry her!"

To this Mr. Paramor made no reply, but pressed his lips together.

"There's your poor dog whining," he said.

And without waiting for permission he opened the door.  Mrs. Pendyce
and the spaniel John came in.  The Squire looked up and frowned.  The
spaniel John, panting with delight, rubbed against him.  'I have been
through torment, master,' he seemed to say.  'A second separation at
present is not possible for me!'

Mrs. Pendyce stood waiting silently, and Mr. Paramor addressed
himself to her.

"You can do more than any of us, Mrs. Pendyce, both with George and
with this man Bellew--and, if I am not mistaken, with his wife."

The Squire broke in:

"Don't think that I'll have any humble pie eaten to that fellow
Bellew!"

The look Mr. Paramor gave him at those words, was like that of a
doctor diagnosing a disease.  Yet there was nothing in the expression
of the Squire's face with its thin grey whiskers and moustache, its
twist to the left, its swan-like eyes, decided jaw, and sloping brow,
different from what this idea might bring on the face of any country
gentleman.

Mrs. Pendyce said eagerly

"Oh, Mr. Paramor, if I could only see George!"

She longed so for a sight of her son that her thoughts carried her no
further.

"See him!"  cried the Squire.  "You'll go on spoiling him till he's
disgraced us all!"

Mrs. Pendyce turned from her husband to his solicitor.  Excitement
had fixed an unwonted colour in her cheeks; her lips twitched as if
she wished to speak.

Mr. Paramor answered for her:

"No, Pendyce; if George is spoilt, the system is to blame."

"System!" said the Squire.  "I've never had a system for him.  I'm no
believer in systems!  I don't know what you're talking of.  I have
another son, thank God!"

Mrs. Pendyce took a step forward.

"Horace," she said, "you would never----"

Mr. Pendyce turned from his wife, and said sharply:

"Paramor, are you sure I can't cut the entail?"

"As sure," said Mr. Paramor, "as I sit here!"




CHAPTER IX

DEFINITION OF "PENDYCITIS"

Gregory walked long in the Scotch garden with his eyes on the stars.
One, larger than all the rest, over the larches, shone on him
ironically, for it was the star of love.  And on his beat between the
yew-trees that, living before Pendyces came to Worsted Skeynes, would
live when they were gone, he cooled his heart in the silver light of
that big star.  The irises restrained their perfume lest it should
whip his senses; only the young larch-trees and the far fields sent
him their fugitive sweetness through the dark.  And the same brown
owl that had hooted when Helen Bellew kissed George Pendyce in the
conservatory hooted again now that Gregory walked grieving over the
fruits of that kiss.

His thoughts were of Mr. Barter, and with the injustice natural to a
man who took a warm and personal view of things, he painted the
Rector in colours darker than his cloth.

'Indelicate, meddlesome,' he thought.  'How dare he speak of her like
that!'

Mr. Paramor's voice broke in on his meditations.

"Still cooling your heels?  Why did you play the deuce with us in
there?"

"I hate a sham," said Gregory.  "This marriage of my ward's is a
sham.  She had better live honestly with the man she really loves!"

"So you said just now," returned Mr. Paramor.  "Would you apply that
to everyone?"

"I would."

"Well," said Mr. Paramor with a laugh, "there is nothing like an
idealist for-making hay!  You once told me, if I remember, that
marriage was sacred to you!"

"Those are my own private feelings, Paramor.  But here the mischief's
done already.  It is a sham, a hateful sham, and it ought to come to
an end!"

"That's all very well," replied Mr. Paramor, "but when you come to
put it into practice in that wholesale way it leads to goodness knows
what.  It means reconstructing marriage on a basis entirely different
from the present.  It's marriage on the basis of the heart, and not
on the basis of property.  Are you prepared to go to that length?"

"I am."

"You're as much of an extremist one way as Barter is the other.  It's
you extremists who do all the harm.  There's a golden mean, my
friend.  I agree that something ought to be done.  But what you don't
see is that laws must suit those they are intended to govern.  You're
too much in the stars, Vigil.  Medicine must be graduated to the
patient.  Come, man, where's your sense of humour?  Imagine your
conception of marriage applied to Pendyce and his sons, or his
Rector, or his tenants, and the labourers on his estate."

"No, no," said Gregory; "I refuse to believe----"

"The country classes," said Mr. Paramor quietly, "are especially
backward in such matters.  They have strong, meat-fed instincts, and
what with the county Members, the Bishops, the Peers, all the
hereditary force of the country, they still rule the roast.  And
there's a certain disease--to make a very poor joke, call it
'Pendycitis' with which most of these people are infected.  They're
'crass.'  They do things, but they do them the wrong way!  They
muddle through with the greatest possible amount of unnecessary
labour and suffering!  It's part of the hereditary principle.  I
haven't had to do with them thirty five years for nothing!"

Gregory turned his face away.

"Your joke is very poor," he said.  "I don't believe they are like
that!  I won't admit it.  If there is such a disease, it's our
business to find a remedy."

"Nothing but an operation will cure it," said Mr. Paramor; "and
before operating there's a preliminary process to be gone through.
It was discovered by Lister."

Gregory answered

"Paramor, I hate your pessimism!"

Mr. Paramor's eyes haunted Gregory's back.

"But I am not a pessimist," he said.  "Far from it.

    "'When daisies pied and violets blue,
          And lady-smocks all silver-white,
     And cuckoo-buds of yellow hue
          Do paint the meadows with delight,
     The cuckoo then, on every tree----'"


Gregory turned on him.

"How can you quote poetry, and hold the views you do?  We ought to
construct----"

'You want to build before you've laid your foundations," said Mr.
Paramor.  "You let your feelings carry you away, Vigil.  The state of
the marriage laws is only a symptom.  It's this disease, this
grudging narrow spirit in men, that makes such laws necessary.
Unlovely men, unlovely laws--what can you expect?"

"I will never believe that we shall be content to go on living in a
slough of--of----"

"Provincialism!"  said Mr. Paramor.  "You should take to gardening;
it makes one recognise what you idealists seem to pass over--that
men, my dear friend, are, like plants, creatures of heredity and
environment; their growth is slow.  You can't get grapes from thorns,
Vigil, or figs from thistles--at least, not in one generation--
however busy and hungry you may be!"

"Your theory degrades us all to the level of thistles."

"Social laws depend for their strength on the harm they have it in
their power to inflict, and that harm depends for its strength on the
ideals held by the man on whom the harm falls.  If you dispense with
the marriage tie, or give up your property and take to Brotherhood,
you'll have a very thistley time, but you won't mind that if you're a
fig.  And so on ad lib.  It's odd, though, how soon the thistles that
thought themselves figs get found out.  There are many things I hate,
Vigil.  One is extravagance, and another humbug!"

But Gregory stood looking at the sky.

"We seem to have wandered from the point," said Mr. Paramor, "and I
think we had better go in.  It's nearly eleven."

Throughout the length of the low white house there were but three
windows lighted, three eyes looking at the moon, a fairy shallop
sailing the night sky.  The cedar-trees stood black as pitch.  The
old brown owl had ceased his hooting.  Mr. Paramor gripped Gregory by
the arm.

"A nightingale!  Did you hear him down in that spinney?  It's a sweet
place, this!  I don't wonder Pendyce is fond of it.  You're not a
fisherman, I think?  Did you ever watch a school of fishes coasting
along a bank?  How blind they are, and how they follow their leader!
In our element we men know just about as much as the fishes do.  A
blind lot, Vigil!  We take a mean view of things; we're damnably
provincial!"

Gregory pressed his hands to his forehead.

"I'm trying to think," he said, "what will be the consequences to my
ward of this divorce."

"My friend, listen to some plain speaking.  Your ward and her husband
and George Pendyce are just the sort of people for whom our law of
divorce is framed.  They've all three got courage, they're all
reckless and obstinate, and--forgive me--thick-skinned.  Their case,
if fought, will take a week of hard swearing, a week of the public's
money and time.  It will give admirable opportunities to eminent
counsel, excellent reading to the general public, first-rate sport
all round.

"The papers will have a regular carnival.  I repeat, they are the very
people for whom our law of divorce is framed.  There's a great deal
to be said for publicity, but all the same it puts a premium on
insensibility, and causes a vast amount of suffering to innocent
people.  I told you once before, to get a divorce, even if you
deserve it, you mustn't be a sensitive person.  Those three will go
through it all splendidly, but every scrap of skin will be torn off
you and our poor friends down here, and the result will be a drawn
battle at the end!  That's if it's fought, and if it comes on I don't
see how we can let it go unfought; it's contrary to my instincts.  If
we let it go undefended, mark my words, your ward and George Pendyce
will be sick of each other before the law allows them to marry, and
George, as his father says, for the sake of 'morality,' will have to
marry a woman who is tired of him, or of whom he is tired.  Now
you've got it straight from the shoulder, and I'm going up to bed.
It's a heavy dew.  Lock this door after you."

Mr. Paramor made his way into the conservatory.  He stopped and came
back.

"Pendyce," he said, "perfectly understands all I've been telling you.
He'd give his eyes for the case not to come on, but you'll see he'll
rub everything up the wrong way, and it'll be a miracle if we
succeed.  That's 'Pendycitis'!  We've all got a touch of it.  Good-
night!"

Gregory was left alone outside the country house with his big star.
And as his thoughts were seldom of an impersonal kind he did not
reflect on "Pendycitis," but on Helen Bellew.  And the longer he
thought the more he thought of her as he desired to think, for this
was natural to him; and ever more ironical grew the twinkling of his
star above the spinney where the nightingale was singing.




CHAPTER X

GEORGE GOES FOR THE GLOVES

On the Thursday of the Epsom Summer Meeting, George Pendyce sat in
the corner of a first-class railway-carriage trying to make two and
two into five.  On a sheet of Stoics' Club note-paper his racing-
debts were stated to a penny--one thousand and forty five pounds
overdue, and below, seven hundred and fifty lost at the current
meeting.  Below these again his private debts were indicated by the
round figure of one thousand pounds.  It was round by courtesy, for
he had only calculated those bills which had been sent in, and
Providence, which knows all things, preferred the rounder figure of
fifteen hundred.  In sum, therefore, he had against him a total of
three thousand two hundred and ninety-five pounds.  And since at
Tattersalls and the Stock Exchange, where men are engaged in
perpetual motion, an almost absurd punctiliousness is required in the
payment of those sums which have for the moment inadvertently been
lost, seventeen hundred and ninety-five of this must infallibly be
raised by Monday next.  Indeed, only a certain liking for George, a
good loser and a good winner, and the fear of dropping a good
customer, had induced the firm of bookmakers to let that debt of one
thousand and forty-five stand over the Epsom Meeting.

To set against these sums (in which he had not counted his current
trainer's bill, and the expenses, which he could not calculate, of
the divorce suit), he had, first, a bank balance which he might still
overdraw another twenty pounds; secondly, the Ambler and two bad
selling platers; and thirdly (more considerable item), X, or that
which he might, or indeed must, win over the Ambler's race this
afternoon.

Whatever else, it was not pluck that was lacking in the character of
George Pendyce.  This quality was in his fibre, in the consistency of
his blood, and confronted with a situation which, to some men, and
especially to men not brought up on the hereditary plan, might have
seemed desperate, he exhibited no sign of anxiety or distress.  Into
the consideration of his difficulties he imported certain principles:
(1) He did not intend to be posted at Tattersalls.  Sooner than that
he would go to the Jews; the entail was all he could look to borrow
on; the Hebrews would force him to pay through the nose.  (2) He did
not intend to show the white feather, and in backing his horse meant
to "go for the gloves."  (3) He did not intend to think of the
future; the thought of the present was quite bad enough.

The train bounded and swung as though rushing onwards to a tune, and
George sat quietly in his corner.

Amongst his fellows in the carriage was the Hon. Geoffrey Winlow,
who, though not a racing-man, took a kindly interest in our breed of
horses, which by attendance at the principal meetings he hoped to
improve.

"Your horse going to run, George?"

George nodded.

"I shall have a fiver on him for luck.  I can't afford to bet.  Saw
your mother at the Foxholme garden-party last week.  You seen them
lately?"

George shook his head and felt an odd squeeze: at his heart.

"You know they had a fire at old Peacock's farm; I hear the Squire
and Barter did wonders.  He's as game as a pebble, the Squire."

Again George nodded, and again felt that squeeze at his heart.

"Aren't they coming to town this season?"

"Haven't heard," answered George.  "Have a cigar?"

Winlow took the cigar, and cutting it with a small penknife,
scrutinised George's square face with his leisurely eyes.  It needed
a physiognomist to penetrate its impassivity.  Winlow thought to
himself:

'I shouldn't be surprised if what they say about old George is true.'
.  .  .  "Had a good meeting so far?"

"So-so."

They parted on the racecourse.  George went at once to see his
trainer and thence into Tattersalls' ring.  He took with him that
equation with X, and sought the society of two gentlemen quietly
dressed, one of whom was making a note in a little book with a gold
pencil.  They greeted him respectfully, for it was to them that he
owed the bulk of that seventeen hundred and ninety-five pounds.

"What price will you lay against my horse?"

"Evens, Mr. Pendyce," replied the gentleman with the gold pencil, "to
a monkey."

George booked the bet.  It was not his usual way of doing business,
but to-day everything seemed different, and something stronger than
custom was at work.

'I am going for the gloves,' he thought; 'if it doesn't come off',
I'm done anyhow.'

He went to another quietly dressed gentleman with a diamond pin and a
Jewish face.  And as he went from one quietly dressed gentleman to
another there preceded him some subtle messenger, who breathed the
words, 'Mr. Pendyce is going for the gloves,' so that at each visit
he found they had greater confidence than ever in his horse.  Soon he
had promised to pay two thousand pounds if the Ambler lost, and
received the assurance of eminent gentlemen, quietly dressed, that
they would pay him fifteen hundred if the Ambler won.  The odds now
stood at two to one on, and he had found it impossible to back the
Ambler for "a place," in accordance with his custom.

'Made a fool of myself,' he thought; 'ought never to have gone into
the ring at all; ought to have let Barney's work it quietly.  It
doesn't matter!'

He still required to win three hundred pounds to settle on the
Monday, and laid a final bet of seven hundred to three hundred and
fifty pounds upon his horse.  Thus, without spending a penny, simply
by making a few promises, he had solved the equation with X.

On leaving the ring, he entered the bar and drank some whisky.  He
then went to the paddock.  The starting-bell for the second race had
rung; there was hardly anyone there, but in a far corner the Ambler
was being led up and down by a boy.

George glanced round to see that no acquaintances were near, and
joined in this promenade.  The Ambler turned his black, wild eye,
crescented with white, threw up his head, and gazed far into the
distance.

'If one could only make him understand!' thought George.

When his horse left the paddock for the starting-post George went
back to the stand.  At the bar he drank some more whisky, and heard
someone say:

"I had to lay six to four.  I want to find Pendyce; they say he's
backed it heavily."

George put down his glass, and instead of going to his usual place,
mounted slowly to the top of the stand.

'I don't want them buzzing round me,' he thought.

At the top of the stand--that national monument, visible for twenty
miles around--he knew himself to be safe.  Only "the many" came here,
and amongst the many he thrust himself till at the very top he could
rest his glasses on a rail and watch the colours.  Besides his own
peacock blue there was a straw, a blue with white stripes, a red with
white stars.

They say that through the minds of drowning men troop ghosts of past
experience.  It was not so with George; his soul was fastened on that
little daub of peacock blue.  Below the glasses his lips were
colourless from hard compression; he moistened them continually.  The
four little Coloured daubs stole into line, the flag fell.

"They're off!"  That roar, like the cry of a monster, sounded all
around.  George steadied his glasses on the rail.  Blue with white
stripes was leading, the Ambler lying last.  Thus they came round the
further bend.  And Providence, as though determined that someone
should benefit by his absorption, sent a hand sliding under George's
elbows, to remove the pin from his tie and slide away.  Round
Tattenham Corner George saw his horse take the lead.  So, with straw
closing up, they came into the straight.  The Ambler's jockey looked
back and raised his whip; in that instant, as if by magic, straw drew
level; down came the whip on the Ambler's flank; again as by magic
straw was in front.  The saying of his old jockey darted through
George's mind: "Mark my words, sir, that 'orse knows what's what, and
when they're like that they're best let alone."

"Sit still, you fool!"  he muttered.

The whip came down again; straw was two lengths in front.

Someone behind said:

"The favourite's beat!  No, he's not, by Jove!" For as though
George's groan had found its way to the jockey's ears, he dropped his
whip.  The Ambler sprang forward.  George saw that he was gaining.
All his soul went out to his horse's struggle.  In each of those
fifteen seconds he died and was born again; with each stride all that
was loyal and brave in his nature leaped into flame, all that was
base sank, for he himself was racing with his horse, and the sweat
poured down his brow.  And his lips babbled broken sounds that no one
heard, for all around were babbling too.

Locked together, the Ambler and straw ran home.  Then followed a
hush, for no one knew which of the two had won.  The numbers went up
"Seven-Two-Five."

"The favourite's second!  Beaten by a nose!" said a voice.

George bowed his head, and his whole spirit felt numb.  He closed his
glasses and moved with the crowd to the stairs.  A voice behind him
said:

"He'd have won in another stride!"

Another answered:

"I hate that sort of horse.  He curled up at the whip."

George ground his teeth.

"Curse you I" he muttered, "you little Cockney; what do you know
about a horse?"

The crowd surged; the speakers were lost to sight.

The long descent from the stand gave him time.  No trace of emotion
showed on his face when he appeared in the paddock.  Blacksmith the
trainer stood by the Ambler's stall.

"That idiot Tipping lost us the race, sir," he began with quivering
lips.  "If he'd only left him alone, the horse would have won in a
canter.  What on earth made him use his whip?  He deserves to lose
his license.  He----"

The gall and bitterness of defeat surged into George's brain.

"It's no good your talking, Blacksmith," he said; "you put him up.
What the devil made you quarrel with Swells?"

The little man's chin dropped in sheer surprise.

George turned away, and went up to the jockey, but at the sick look
on the poor youth's face the angry words died off his tongue.

"All right, Tipping; I'm not going to rag you."  And with the ghost
of a smile he passed into the Ambler's stall.  The groom had just
finished putting him to rights; the horse stood ready to be led from
the field of his defeat.  The groom moved out, and George went to the
Ambler's head.  There is no place, no corner, on a racecourse where a
man may show his heart.  George did but lay his forehead against the
velvet of his horse's muzzle, and for one short second hold it there.
The Ambler awaited the end of that brief caress, then with a snort
threw up his head, and with his wild, soft eyes seemed saying, 'You
fools!  what do you know of me?'

George stepped to one side.

"Take him away," he said, and his eyes followed the Ambler's receding
form.

A racing-man of a different race, whom he knew and did not like, came
up to him as he left the paddock.

"I suppothe you won't thell your horse, Pendythe?" he said.  "I'll
give you five thou. for him.  He ought never to have lotht; the
beating won't help him with the handicappers a little bit."

'You carrion crow!' thought George.

"Thanks; he's not for sale," he answered.

He went back to the stand, but at every step and in each face, he
seemed to see the equation which now he could only solve with X2.
Thrice he went into the bar.  It was on the last of these occasions
that he said to himself: "The horse must go.  I shall never have a
horse like him again."

Over that green down which a hundred thousand feet had trodden brown,
which a hundred thousand hands had strewn with bits of paper, cigar-
ends, and the fragments of discarded food, over the great approaches
to the battlefield, where all was pathway leading to and from the
fight, those who make livelihood in such a fashion, least and
littlest followers, were bawling, hawking, whining to the warriors
flushed with victory or wearied by defeat: Over that green down,
between one-legged men and ragged acrobats, women with babies at the
breast, thimble-riggers, touts, walked George Pendyce, his mouth hard
set and his head bent down.

"Good luck, Captain, good luck to-morrow; good luck, good luck!...
For the love of Gawd, your lordship!...  Roll, bowl, or pitch!"

The sun, flaming out after long hiding, scorched the back of his
neck; the free down wind, fouled by foetid odours, brought to his
ears the monster's last cry, "They're off!"

A voice hailed him.

George turned and saw Winlow, and with a curse and a smile he
answered:

"Hallo!"

The Hon. Geoffrey ranged alongside, examining George's face at
leisure.

"Afraid you had a bad race, old chap!  I hear you've sold the Ambler
to that fellow Guilderstein."

In George's heart something snapped.

'Already?' he thought.  'The brute's been crowing.  And it's that
little bounder that my horse--my horse'

He answered calmly:

"Wanted the money."

Winlow, who was not lacking in cool discretion, changed the subject.

Late that evening George sat in the Stoics' window overlooking
Piccadilly.  Before his eyes, shaded by his hand, the hansoms passed,
flying East and West, each with the single pale disc of face, or the
twin discs of faces close together; and the gentle roar of the town
came in, and the cool air refreshed by night.  In the light of the
lamps the trees of the Green Park stood burnished out of deep shadow
where nothing moved; and high over all, the stars and purple sky
seemed veiled with golden gauze.  Figures without end filed by.  Some
glanced at the lighted windows and the man in the white shirt-front
sitting there.  And many thought: 'Wish I were that swell, with
nothing to do but step into his father's shoes;' and to many no
thought came.  But now and then some passer murmured to himself:
"Looks lonely sitting there."

And to those faces gazing up, George's lips were grim, and over them
came and went a little bitter smile; but on his forehead he felt
still the touch of his horse's muzzle, and his eyes, which none could
see, were dark with pain.




CHAPTER XI

MR. BARTER TAKES A WALK

The event at the Rectory was expected every moment.  The Rector, who
practically never suffered, disliked the thought and sight of others'
suffering.  Up to this day, indeed, there had been none to dislike,
for in answer to inquiries his wife had always said "No, dear, no;
I'm all right--really, it's nothing."  And she had always said it
smiling, even when her smiling lips were white.  But this morning in
trying to say it she had failed to smile.  Her eyes had lost their
hopelessly hopeful shining, and sharply between her teeth she said:
"Send for Dr. Wilson, Hussell"

The Rector kissed her, shutting his eyes, for he was afraid of her
face with its lips drawn back, and its discoloured cheeks.  In five
minutes the groom was hastening to Cornmarket on the roan cob, and
the Rector stood in his study, looking from one to another of his
household gods, as though calling them to his assistance.  At last he
took down a bat and began oiling it.  Sixteen years ago, when Husell
was born, he had been overtaken by sounds that he had never to this
day forgotten; they had clung to the nerves of his memory, and for no
reward would he hear them again.  They had never been uttered since,
for like most wives, his wife was a heroine; but, used as he was to
this event, the Rector had ever since suffered from panic.  It was as
though Providence, storing all the anxiety which he might have felt
throughout, let him have it with a rush at the last moment.  He put
the bat back into its case, corked the oil-bottle, and again stood
looking at his household gods.  None came to his aid.  And his
thoughts were as they had nine times been before.  'I ought not to go
out.  I ought to wait for Wilson.  Suppose anything were to happen.
Still, nurse is with her, and I can do nothing.  Poor Rose--poor
darling!  It's my duty to----What's that?  I'm better out of the
way.'

Softly, without knowing that it was softly, he opened the door;
softly, without knowing it was softly, he stepped to the hat-rack and
took his black straw hat; softly, without knowing it was softly, he
went out, and, unfaltering, hurried down the drive.

Three minutes later he appeared again, approaching the house faster
than he had set forth.

He passed the hall door, ran up the stairs, and entered his wife's
room.

"Rose dear, Rose, can I do anything?"

Mrs. Barter put out her hand, a gleam of malice shot into her eyes.
Through her set lips came a vague murmur, and the words:

"No, dear, nothing.  Better go for your walk."

Mr. Barter pressed his lips to her quivering hand, and backed from
the room.  Outside the door he struck at the air with his fist, and,
running downstairs, was once more lost to sight.  Faster and faster
he walked, leaving the village behind, and among the country sights
and sounds and scents--his nerves began to recover.  He was able to
think again of other things: of Cecil's school report--far from
satisfactory; of old Hermon in the village, whom he suspected of
overdoing his bronchitis with an eye to port; of the return match
with Coldingham, and his belief that their left-hand bowler only
wanted "hitting"; of the new edition of hymn-books, and the slackness
of the upper village in attending church--five households less honest
and ductile than the rest, a foreign look about them, dark people,
un-English.  In thinking of these things he forgot what he wanted to
forget; but hearing the sound of wheels, he entered a field as though
to examine the crops until the vehicle had passed.

It was not Wilson, but it might have been, and at the next turning he
unconsciously branched off the Cornmarket road.

It was noon when he came within sight of Coldingham, six miles from
Worsted Skeynes.  He would have enjoyed a glass of beer, but, unable
to enter the public-house, he went into the churchyard instead.  He
sat down on a bench beneath a sycamore opposite the Winlow graves,
for Coldingham was Lord Montrossor's seat, and it was here that all
the Winlows lay.  Bees were busy above them in the branches, and Mr.
Barter thought:

'Beautiful site.  We've nothing like this at Worsted Skeynes....'

But suddenly he found that he could not sit there and think.  Suppose
his wife were to die!  It happened sometimes; the wife of John Tharp
of Bletchingham had died in giving birth to her tenth child!  His
forehead was wet, and he wiped it.  Casting an angry glance at the
Winlow graves, he left the seat.

He went down by the further path, and came out on the green.  A
cricket-match was going on, and in spite of himself the Rector
stopped.  The Coldingham team were in the field.  Mr. Barter watched.
As he had thought, that left-hand bowler bowled a good pace, and
"came in" from the off, but his length was poor, very poor!  A
determined batsman would soon knock him off!  He moved into line with
the wickets to see how much the fellow "came in," and he grew so
absorbed that he did not at first notice the Hon. Geoffrey Winlow in
pads and a blue and green blazer, smoking a cigarette astride of a
camp-stool.

"Ah, Winlow, it's your team against the village.  Afraid I can't stop
to see you bat.  I was just passing--matter I had to attend to--must
get back!"

The real solemnity of his face excited Winlow's curiosity.

"Can't you stop and have lunch with us?"

"No, no; my wife--Must get back!"

Winlow murmured:

"Ah yes, of course."  His leisurely blue eyes, always in command of
the situation, rested on the Rector's heated face.  "By the way," he
said, "I'm afraid George Pendyce is rather hard hit.  Been obliged to
sell his horse.  I saw him at Epsom the week before last."

The Rector brightened.

"I made certain he'd come to grief over that betting," he said.  "I'm
very sorry--very sorry indeed."

"They say," went on Winlow, "that he dropped four thousand over the
Thursday race.

"He was pretty well dipped before, I know.  Poor old George! such an
awfully good chap!"

"Ah," repeated Mr. Barter, "I'm very sorry--very sorry indeed.
Things were bad enough as it was."

A ray of interest illumined the leisureliness of the Hon. Geoffrey's
eyes.

"You mean about Mrs.----H'm, yes?" he said.  "People are talking;
you can't stop that.  I'm so sorry for the poor Squire, and Mrs.
Pendyce.  I hope something'll be done."

The Rector frowned.

"I've done my best," he said.  "Well hit, sir!  I've always said that
anyone with a little pluck can knock off that lefthand man you think
so much of.  He 'comes in' a bit, but he bowls a shocking bad length.
Here I am dawdling.  I must get back!"

And once more that real solemnity came over Mr. Barter's face.

"I suppose you'll be playing for Coldingham against us on Thursday?
Good-bye!"

Nodding in response to Winlow's salute, he walked away.

He avoided the churchyard, and took a path across the fields.  He was
hungry and thirsty.  In one of his sermons there occurred this
passage: "We should habituate ourselves to hold our appetites in
check.  By constantly accustoming our selves to abstinence little
abstinences in our daily life--we alone can attain to that true
spirituality without which we cannot hope to know God."  And it was
well known throughout his household and the village that the Rector's
temper was almost dangerously spiritual if anything detained him from
his meals.  For he was a man physiologically sane and healthy to the
core, whose digestion and functions, strong, regular, and
straightforward as the day, made calls upon him which would not be
denied.  After preaching that particular sermon, he frequently for a
week or more denied himself a second glass of ale at lunch, or his
after-dinner cigar, smoking a pipe instead.  And he was perfectly
honest in his belief that he attained a greater spirituality thereby,
and perhaps indeed he did.  But even if he did not, there was no one
to notice this, for the majority of his flock accepted his
spirituality as matter of course, and of the insignificant minority
there were few who did not make allowance for the fact that he was
their pastor by virtue of necessity, by virtue of a system which had
placed him there almost mechanically, whether he would or no.
Indeed, they respected him the more that he was their Rector, and
could not be removed, and were glad that theirs was no common Vicar
like that of Coldingham, dependent on the caprices of others.  For,
with the exception of two bad characters and one atheist, the whole
village, Conservatives or Liberals (there were Liberals now that they
were beginning to believe that the ballot was really secret), were
believers in the hereditary system.

Insensibly the Rector directed himself towards Bletchingham, where
there was a temperance house.  At heart he loathed lemonade and
gingerbeer in the middle of the day, both of which made his economy
cold and uneasy, but he felt he could go nowhere else.  And his
spirits rose at the sight of Bletchingham spire.

'Bread and cheese,' he thought.  'What's better than bread and
cheese?  And they shall make me a cup of coffee.'

In that cup of coffee there was something symbolic and fitting to his
mental state.  It was agitated and thick, and impregnated with the
peculiar flavour of country coffee.  He swallowed but little, and
resumed his march.  At the first turning he passed the village
school, whence issued a rhythmic but discordant hum, suggestive of
some dull machine that had served its time.  The Rector paused to
listen.  Leaning on the wall of the little play-yard, he tried to
make out the words that, like a religious chant, were being intoned
within.  It sounded like, "Twice two's four, twice four's six, twice
six's eight," and he passed on, thinking, 'A fine thing; but if we
don't take care we shall go too far; we shall unfit them for their
stations,' and he frowned.  Crossing a stile, he took a footpath.
The air was full of the singing of larks, and the bees were pulling
down the clover-stalks.  At the bottom of the field was a little pond
overhung with willows.  On a bare strip of pasture, within thirty
yards, in the full sun, an old horse was tethered to a peg.  It stood
with its face towards the pond, baring its yellow teeth, and
stretching out its head, all bone and hollows, to the water which it
could not reach.  The Rector stopped.  He did not know the horse
personally, for it was three fields short of his parish, but he saw
that the poor beast wanted water.  He went up, and finding that the
knot of the halter hurt his fingers, stooped down and wrenched at the
peg.  While he was thus straining and tugging, crimson in the face,
the old horse stood still, gazing at him out of his bleary eyes.  Mr.
Barter sprang upright with a jerk, the peg in his hand, and the old
horse started back.

"So ho, boy!"  said the Rector, and angrily he muttered: "A shame to
tie the poor beast up here in the sun.  I should like to give his
owner a bit of my mind!"

He led the animal towards the water.  The old horse followed
tranquilly enough, but as he had done nothing to deserve his
misfortune, neither did he feel any gratitude towards his deliverer.
He drank his fill, and fell to grazing.  The Rector experienced a
sense of disillusionment, and drove the peg again into the softer
earth under the willows; then raising himself, he looked hard at the
old horse.

The animal continued to graze.  The Rector took out his handkerchief,
wiped the perspiration from his brow, and frowned.  He hated
ingratitude in man or beast.

Suddenly he realised that he was very tired.

"It must be over by now," he said to himself, and hastened on in the
heat across the fields.

The Rectory door was open.  Passing into the study, he sat down a
moment to collect his thoughts.  People were moving above; he heard a
long moaning sound that filled his heart with terror.

He got up and rushed to the bell, but did not ring it, and ran
upstairs instead.  Outside his wife's room he met his children's old
nurse.  She was standing on the mat, with her hands to her ears, and
the tears were rolling down her face.

"Oh, sir!"  she said--"oh, sir!"

The Rector glared.

"Woman!"  he cried--"woman!"

He covered his ears and rushed downstairs again.  There was a lady in
the hall.  It was Mrs. Pendyce, and he ran to her, as a hurt child
runs to its mother.

"My wife," he said--"my poor wife!  God knows what they're doing to
her up there, Mrs. Pendyce!" and he hid his face in his hands.

She, who had been a Totteridge, stood motionless; then, very gently
putting her gloved hand on his thick arm, where the muscles stood out
from the clenching of his hands, she said:

"Dear Mr. Barter, Dr.  Wilson is so clever! Come into the drawing-
room!"

The Rector, stumbling like a blind man, suffered himself to be led.
He sat down on the sofa, and Mrs. Pendyce sat down beside him, her
hand still on his arm; over her face passed little quivers, as though
she were holding herself in.  She repeated in her gentle voice:

"It will be all right--it will be all right.  Come, come!"

In her concern and sympathy there was apparent, not aloofness, but a
faint surprise that she should be sitting there stroking the Rector's
arm.

Mr. Barter took his hands from before his face.

"If she dies," he said in a voice unlike his own, "I'll not bear it."

In answer to those words, forced from him by that which is deeper
than habit, Mrs. Pendyce's hand slipped from his arm and rested on
the shiny chintz covering of the sofa, patterned with green and
crimson.  Her soul shrank from the violence in his voice.

"Wait here," she said.  "I will go up and see."

To command was foreign to her nature, but Mr. Barter, with a look
such as a little rueful boy might give, obeyed.

When she was gone he stood listening at the door for some sound--for
any sound, even the sound of her dressbut there was none, for her
petticoat was of lawn, and the Rector was alone with a silence that
he could not bear.  He began to pace the room in his thick boots, his
hands clenched behind him, his forehead butting the air, his lips
folded; thus a bull, penned for the first time, turns and turns,
showing the whites of its full eyes.

His thoughts drove here and there, fearful, angered, without
guidance; he did not pray.  The words he had spoken so many times
left him as though of malice.  "We are all in the hands of God!--we
are all in the hands of God!"  Instead of them he could think of
nothing but the old saying Mr. Paramor had used in the Squire's
dining-room, "There is moderation in all things," and this with cruel
irony kept humming in his ears.  "Moderation in all things--
moderation in all things!" and his wife lying there--his doing, and

There was a sound.  The Rector's face, so brown and red, could not
grow pale, but his great fists relaxed.  Mrs. Pendyce was standing in
the doorway with a peculiar half-pitiful, half-excited smile.

"It's all right--a boy.  The poor dear has had a dreadful time!"

The Rector looked at her, but did not speak; then abruptly he brushed
past her in the doorway, hurried into his study and locked the door.
Then, and then only, he kneeled down, and remained there many
minutes, thinking of nothing.




CHAPTER XII

THE SQUIRE MAKES UP HIS MIND

That same evening at nine o'clock, sitting over the last glass of a
pint of port, Mr. Barter felt an irresistible longing for enjoyment,
an impulse towards expansion and his fellow-men.

Taking his hat and buttoning his coat--for though the June evening
was fine the easterly breeze was eager--he walked towards the
village.

Like an emblem of that path to God of which he spoke on Sundays, the
grey road between trim hedges threaded the shadow of the elm-trees
where the rooks had long since gone to bed.  A scent of wood-smoke
clung in the air; the cottages appeared, the forge, the little shops
facing the village green.  Lights in the doors and windows deepened;
a breeze, which hardly stirred the chestnut leaves, fled with a
gentle rustling through the aspens.  Houses and trees, houses and
trees!  Shelter through the past and through the days to come!

The Rector stopped the first man he saw.

"Fine weather for the hay, Aiken!  How's your wife doing--a girl?  Ah,
ha!  You want some boys!  You heard of our event at the Rectory?  I'm
thankful to say----"

From man to man and house to house he soothed his thirst for
fellowship, for the lost sense of dignity that should efface again
the scar of suffering.  And above him the chestnuts in their
breathing stillness, the aspens with their tender rustling, seemed to
watch and whisper: "Oh, little men! oh, little men!"

The moon, at the end of her first quarter, sailed out of the shadow
of the churchyard--the same young moon that had sailed in her silver
irony when the first Barter preached, the first Pendyce was Squire at
Worsted Skeynes; the same young moon that, serene, ineffable, would
come again when the last Barter slept, the last Pendyce was gone, and
on their gravestones, through the amethystine air, let fall her
gentle light.

The Rector thought:

'I shall set Stedman to work on that corner.  We must have more room;
the stones there are a hundred and fifty years old if they're a day.
You can't read a single word.  They'd better be the first to go.'

He passed on along the paddock footway leading to the Squire's.

Day was gone, and only the moonbeams lighted the tall grasses.

At the Hall the long French windows of the dining-room were open; the
Squire was sitting there alone, brooding sadly above the remnants of
the fruit he had been eating.  Flanking him on either wall hung a
silent company, the effigies of past Pendyces; and at the end, above
the oak and silver of the sideboard, the portrait of his wife was
looking at them under lifted brows, with her faint wonder.

He raised his head.

"Ah, Barter!  How's your wife?"

"Doing as well as can be expected."

"Glad to hear that!  A fine constitution--wonderful vitality.  Port
or claret?"

"Thanks; just a glass of port."

"Very trying for your nerves.  I know what it is.  We're different
from the last generation; they thought nothing of it.  When Charles
was born my dear old father was out hunting all day.  When my wife
had George, it made me as nervous as a cat!"

The Squire stopped, then hurriedly added:

"But you're so used to it."

Mr. Barter frowned.

"I was passing Coldingham to-day," he said.  "I saw Winlow.  He asked
after you."

"Ah! Winlow!  His wife's a very nice woman.  They've only the one
child, I think?"

The Rector winced.

"Winlow tells me," he said abruptly, "that George has sold his
horse."

The Squire's face changed.  He glanced suspiciously at Mr. Barter,
but the Rector was looking at his glass.

"Sold his horse!  What's the meaning of that?  He told you why, I
suppose?"

The Rector drank off his wine.

"I never ask for reasons," he said, "where racing-men are concerned.
It's my belief they know no more what they're about than so many dumb
animals."

"Ah! racing-men!"  said Mr. Pendyce.  "But George doesn't bet."

A gleam of humour shot into the Rector's eyes.  He pressed his lips
together.

The Squire rose.

"Come now, Barter!" he said.

The Rector blushed.  He hated tale-bearing--that is, of course, in
the case of a man; the case of a woman was different--and just as,
when he went to Bellew he had been careful not to give George away,
so now he was still more on his guard.

"No, no, Pendyce."

The Squire began to pace the room, and Mr. Barter felt something stir
against his foot; the spaniel John emerging at the end, just where
the moonlight shone, a symbol of all that was subservient to the
Squire, gazed up at his master with tragic eyes.  'Here, again,' they
seemed to say, 'is something to disturb me!'

The Squire broke the silence.

"I've always counted on you, Barter; I count on you as I would on my
own brother.  Come, now, what's this about George?"

'After all,' thought the Rector, 'it's his father!'--"I know nothing
but what they say," he blurted forth; "they talk of his having lost a
lot of money.  I dare say it's all nonsense.  I never set much store
by rumour.  And if he's sold the horse, well, so much the better.  He
won't be tempted to gamble again."

But Horace Pendyce made no answer.  A single thought possessed his
bewildered, angry mind:

'My son a gambler!  Worsted Skeynes in the hands of a gambler!'

The Rector rose.

"It's all rumour.  You shouldn't pay any attention.  I should hardly
think he's been such a fool.  I only know that I must get back to my
wife.  Good-night."

And, nodding but confused, Mr. Barter went away through the French
window by which he had come.

The Squire stood motionless.

A gambler!

To him, whose existence was bound up in Worsted Skeynes, whose every
thought had some direct or indirect connection with it, whose son was
but the occupier of that place he must at last vacate, whose religion
was ancestor-worship, whose dread was change, no word could be so
terrible.  A gambler!

It did not occur to him that his system was in any way responsible
for George's conduct.  He had said to Mr. Paramor: "I never had a
system; I'm no believer in systems."  He had brought him up simply as
a gentleman.  He would have preferred that George should go into the
Army, but George had failed; he would have preferred that George
should devote himself to the estate, marry, and have a son, instead
of idling away his time in town, but George had failed; and so,
beyond furthering his desire to join the Yeomanry, and getting him
proposed for the Stoics' Club, what was there he could have done to
keep him out of mischief?  And now he was a gambler!

Once a gambler always a gambler!

To his wife's face, looking down from the wall, he said:

"He gets it from you!"

But for all answer the face stared gently.

Turning abruptly, he left the room, and the spaniel John, for whom he
had been too quick, stood with his nose to the shut door, scenting
for someone to come and open it.

Mr. Pendyce went to his study, took some papers from a locked drawer,
and sat a long time looking at them.  One was the draft of his will,
another a list of the holdings at Worsted Skeynes, their acreage and
rents, a third a fair copy of the settlement, re-settling the estate
when he had married.  It was at this piece of supreme irony that Mr.
Pendyce looked longest.  He did not read it, but he thought:

'And I can't cut it!  Paramor says so!  A gambler!'

That "crassness" common to all men in this strange world, and in the
Squire intensified, was rather a process than a quality--obedience to
an instinctive dread of what was foreign to himself, an instinctive
fear of seeing another's point of view, an instinctive belief in
precedent.  And it was closely allied to his most deep and moral
quality--the power of making a decision.  Those decisions might be
"crass" and stupid, conduce to unnecessary suffering, have no
relation to morality or reason; but he could make them, and he could
stick to them.  By virtue of this power he was where he was, had been
for centuries, and hoped to be for centuries to come.  It was in his
blood.  By this alone he kept at bay the destroying forces that Time
brought against him, his order, his inheritance; by this alone he
could continue to hand down that inheritance to his son.  And at the
document which did hand it down he looked with angry and resentful
eyes.

Men who conceive great resolutions do not always bring them forth
with the ease and silence which they themselves desire.  Mr. Pendyce
went to his bedroom determined to say no word of what he had resolved
to do.  His wife was asleep.  The Squire's entrance wakened her, but
she remained motionless, with her eyes closed, and it was the sight
of that immobility, when he himself was so disturbed, which drew from
him the words:

"Did you know that George was a gambler?"

By the light of the candle in his silver candlestick her dark eyes
seemed suddenly alive.

"He's been betting; he's sold his horse.  He'd never have sold that
horse unless he were pushed.  For all I know, he may be posted at
Tattersalls!"

The sheets shivered as though she who lay within them were
struggling.  Then came her voice, cool and gentle:

"All young men bet, Horace; you must know that!"

The Squire at the foot of the bed held up the candle; the movement
had a sinister significance.

"Do you defend him?" it seemed to say.  "Do you defy me?"

Gripping the bed-rail, he cried:

"I'll have no gambler and profligate for my son!  I'll not risk the
estate!"

Mrs. Pendyce raised herself, and for many seconds stared at her
husband.  Her heart beat furiously.  It had come!  What she had been
expecting all these days had come!  Her pale lips answered:

"What do you mean?  I don't understand you, Horace."

Mr. Pendyce's eyes searched here and therefor what, he did not know.

"This has decided me," he said.  "I'll have no half-measures.  Until
he can show me he's done with that woman, until he can prove he's
given up this betting, until--until the heaven's fallen, I'll have no
more to do with him!"

To Margery Pendyce, with all her senses quivering, that saying,
"Until the heaven's fallen," was frightening beyond the rest.  On the
lips of her husband, those lips which had never spoken in metaphors,
never swerved from the direct and commonplace, nor deserted the
shibboleth of his order, such words had an evil and malignant sound.

He went on:

"I've brought him up as I was brought up myself.  I never thought to
have had a scamp for my son!"

Mrs. Pendyce's heart stopped fluttering.

"How dare you, Horace!"  she cried.

The Squire, letting go the bed-rail, paced to and fro.  There was
something savage in the sound of his footsteps through the utter
silence.

"I've made up my mind," he said.  "The estate----"

There broke from Mrs. Pendyce a torrent of words:

"You talk of the way you brought George up!  You--you never
understood him!  You--you never did anything for him!  He just grew
up like you all grow up in this-----"  But no word followed, for she
did not know herself what was that against which her soul had blindly
fluttered its wings.  "You never loved him as I do!  What do I care
about the estate?  I wish it were sold!  D'you think I like living
here?  D'you think I've ever liked it?  D'you think I've ever----"
But she did not finish that saying: D'you think I've ever loved you?
"My boy a scamp!  I've heard you laugh and shake your head and say a
hundred times: 'Young men will be young men!'  You think I don't know
how you'd all go on if you dared!  You think I don't know how you
talk among yourselves!  As for gambling, you'd gamble too, if you
weren't afraid!  And now George is in trouble----"

As suddenly as it had broken forth the torrent of her words dried up.

Mr. Pendyce had come back to the foot of the bed, and once more
gripped the rail whereon the candle, still and bright, showed them
each other's faces, very changed from the faces that they knew.  In
the Squire's lean brown throat, between the parted points of his
stiff collar, a string seemed working.  He stammered:

"You--you're talking like a madwoman!  My father would have cut me
off, his father would have cut him off!  By God! do you think I'll
stand quietly by and see it all played ducks and drakes with, and see
that woman here, and see her son, a--a bastard, or as bad as a
bastard, in my place?  You don't know me!"

The last words came through his teeth like the growl of a dog.  Mrs.
Pendyce made the crouching movement of one who gathers herself to
spring.

"If you give him up, I shall go to him; I will never come back!"

The Squire's grip on the rail relaxed; in the light of the candle,
still and steady and bright--his jaw could be seen to fall.  He
snapped his teeth together, and turning abruptly, said:

"Don't talk such rubbish!"

Then, taking the candle, he went into his dressing-room.

And at first his feelings were simple enough; he had merely that sore
sensation, that sense of raw offence, as at some gross and violent
breach of taste.

'What madness,' he thought, 'gets into women!  It would serve her
right if I slept here!'

He looked around him.  There was no place where he could sleep, not
even a sofa, and taking up the candle, he moved towards the door.
But a feeling of hesitation and forlornness rising, he knew not
whence, made him pause irresolute before the window.

The young moon, riding low, shot her light upon his still, lean
figure, and in that light it was strange to see how grey he looked--
grey from head to foot, grey, and sad, and old, as though in summary
of all the squires who in turn had looked upon that prospect frosted
with young moonlight to the boundary of their lands.  Out in the
paddock he saw his old hunter Bob, with his head turned towards the
house; and from the very bottom of his heart he sighed.

In answer to that sigh came a sound of something falling outside
against the door.  He opened it to see what might be there.  The
spaniel John, lying on a cushion of blue linen, with his head propped
up against the wall, darkly turned his eyes.

'I am here, master,' he seemed to say; 'it is late--I was about to go
to sleep; it has done me good, however, to see you;' and hiding his
eyes from the light under a long black ear, he drew a stertorous
breath.  Mr. Pendyce shut-to the door.  He had forgotten the
existence of his dog.  But, as though with the sight of that faithful
creature he had regained belief in all that he was used to, in all
that he was master of, in all that was--himself, he opened the
bedroom door and took his place beside his wife.

And soon he was asleep.






PART III


CHAPTER I

MRS. PENDYCE'S ODYSSEY

But Mrs. Pendyce did not sleep.  That blessed anodyne of the long day
spent in his farmyards and fields was on her husband's eyes--no
anodyne on hers; and through them, all that was deep, most hidden,
sacred, was laid open to the darkness.  If only those eyes could have
been seen that night!  But if the darkness had been light, nothing of
all this so deep and sacred would have been there to see, for more
deep, more sacred still, in Margery Pendyce, was the instinct of a
lady.  So elastic and so subtle, so interwoven of consideration for
others and consideration for herself, so old, so very old, this
instinct wrapped her from all eyes, like a suit of armour of the
finest chain.  The night must have been black indeed when she took
that off and lay without it in the darkness.

With the first light she put it on again, and stealing from bed,
bathed long and stealthily those eyes which felt as though they had
been burned all night; thence went to the open window and leaned out.
Dawn had passed, the birds were at morning music.  Down there in the
garden her flowers were meshed with the grey dew, and the trees were
grey, spun with haze; dim and spectrelike, the old hunter, with his
nose on the paddock rail, dozed in the summer mist.

And all that had been to her like prison out there, and all that she
had loved, stole up on the breath of the unaired morning, and kept
beating in her face, fluttering at the white linen above her heart
like the wings of birds flying.

The first morning song ceased, and at the silence the sun smiled out
in golden irony, and everything was shot with colour.  A wan glow
fell on Mrs. Pendyce's spirit, that for so many hours had been heavy
and grey in lonely resolution.  For to her gentle soul, unused to
action, shrinking from violence, whose strength was the gift of the
ages, passed into it against her very nature, the resolution she had
formed was full of pain.  Yet painful, even terrible in its demand
for action, it did not waver, but shone like a star behind the dark
and heavy clouds.  In Margery Pendyce (who had been a Totteridge)
there was no irascible and acrid "people's blood," no fierce
misgivings, no ill-digested beer and cider--it was pure claret in her
veins--she had nothing thick and angry in her soul to help her; that
which she had resolved she must carry out, by virtue of a thin, fine
flame, breathing far down in her--so far that nothing could
extinguish it, so far that it had little warmth.  It was not "I will
not be overridden" that her spirit felt, but "I must not be over-
ridden, for if I am over-ridden, I, and in me something beyond me,
more important than myself, is all undone."  And though she was far
from knowing this, that something was her country's civilisation, its
very soul, the meaning of it all gentleness, balance.  Her spirit, of
that quality so little gross that it would never set up a mean or
petty quarrel, make mountains out of mole-hills, distort proportion,
or get images awry, had taken its stand unconsciously, no sooner than
it must, no later than it ought, and from that stand would not
recede.  The issue had passed beyond mother love to that self-love,
deepest of all, which says:

"Do this, or forfeit the essence of your soul"

And now that she stole to her bed again, she looked at her sleeping
husband whom she had resolved to leave, with no anger, no reproach,
but rather with a long, incurious look which toad nothing even to
herself.

So, when the morning came of age and it was time to rise, by no
action, look, or sign, did she betray the presence of the unusual in
her soul.  If this which was before her must be done, it would be
carried out as though it were of no import, as though it were a daily
action; nor did she force herself to quietude, or pride herself
thereon, but acted thus from instinct, the instinct for avoiding fuss
and unnecessary suffering that was bred in her.

Mr. Pendyce went out at half-past ten accompanied by his bailiff and
the spaniel John.  He had not the least notion that his wife still
meant the words she had spoken overnight.  He had told her again
while dressing that he would have no more to do with George, that he
would cut him out of his will, that he would force him by sheer
rigour to come to heel, that, in short, he meant to keep his word,
and it would have been unreasonable in him to believe that a woman,
still less his wife, meant to keep hers.

Mrs. Pendyce spent the early part of the morning in the usual way.
Half an hour after the Squire went out she ordered the carriage
round, had two small trunks, which she had packed herself, brought
down, and leisurely, with her little green bag, got in.  To her maid,
to the butler Bester, to the coachman Benson, she said that she was
going up to stay with Mr. George.  Norah and Bee were at the Tharps',
so that there was no one to take leave of but old Roy, the Skye; and
lest that leave-taking should prove too much for her, she took him
with her to the station.

For her husband she left a little note, placing it where she knew he
must see it at once, and no one else see it at all.


"DEAR HORACE,

"I have gone up to London to be with George.  My address will be
Green's Hotel, Bond Street.  You will remember what I said last
night.  Perhaps you did not quite realise that I meant it.  Take care
of poor old Roy, and don't let them give him too much meat this hot
weather.  Jackman knows better than Ellis how to manage the roses
this year.  I should like to be told how poor Rose Barter gets on.
Please do not worry about me.  I shall write to dear Gerald when
necessary, but I don't feel like writing to him or the girls at
present.

"Good-bye, dear Horace; I am sorry if I grieve you.

                              "Your wife,
                                   "MARGERY PENDYCE."


Just as there was nothing violent in her manner of taking this step,
so there was nothing violent in her conception of it.  To her it was
not running away, a setting of her husband at defiance; there was no
concealment of address, no melodramatic "I cannot come back to you."
Such methods, such pistol-holdings, would have seemed to her
ridiculous.  It is true that practical details, such as the financial
consequences, escaped the grasp of her mind, but even in this, her
view, or rather lack of view, was really the wide, the even one.
Horace would not let her starve: the idea was inconceivable.  There
was, too, her own three hundred a year.  She had, indeed, no idea how
much this meant, or what it represented, neither was she concerned,
for she said to herself, "I should be quite happy in a cottage with
Roy and my flowers;" and though, of course, she had not the smallest
experience to go by, it was quite possible that she was right.
Things which to others came only by money, to a Totteridge came
without, and even if they came not, could well be dispensed with--for
to this quality of soul, this gentle self-sufficiency, had the ages
worked to bring her.

Yet it was hastily and with her head bent that she stepped from the
carriage at the station, and the old Skye, who from the brougham seat
could just see out of the window, from the tears on his nose that
were not his own, from something in his heart that was, knew this was
no common parting and whined behind the glass.

Mrs. Pendyce told her cabman to drive to Green's Hotel, and it was
only after she had arrived, arranged her things, washed, and had
lunch, that the beginnings of confusion and home-sickness stirred
within her.  Up to then a simmering excitement had kept her from
thinking of how she was to act, or of what she had hoped, expected,
dreamed, would come of her proceedings.  Taking her sunshade, she
walked out into Bond Street.

A passing man took off his hat.

'Dear me,' she thought, 'who was that?  I ought to know!'

She had a rather vague memory for faces, and though she could not
recall his name, felt more at home at once, not so lonely and adrift.
Soon a quaint brightness showed in her eyes, looking at the toilettes
of the passers-by, and at each shop-front, more engrossing than the
last.  Pleasure, like that which touches the soul of a young girl at
her first dance, the souls of men landing on strange shores, touched
Margery Pendyce.  A delicious sense of entering the unknown, of
braving the unexpected, and of the power to go on doing this
delightfully for ever, enveloped her with the gay London air of this
bright June day.  She passed a perfume shop, and thought she had
never smelt anything so nice.  And next door she lingered long
looking at some lace; and though she said to herself, "I must not buy
anything; I shall want all my money for poor George," it made no
difference to that sensation of having all things to her hand.

A list of theatres, concerts, operas confronted her in the next
window, together with the effigies of prominent artistes.  She looked
at them with an eagerness that might have seemed absurd to anyone who
saw her standing there.  Was there, indeed, all this going on all day
and every day, to be seen and heard for so few shillings?  Every
year, religiously, she had visited the opera once, the theatre twice,
and no concerts; her husband did not care for music that was
"classical."  While she was standing there a woman begged of her,
looking very tired and hot, with a baby in her arms so shrivelled and
so small that it could hardly be seen.  Mrs. Pendyce took out her
purse and gave her half a crown, and as she did so felt a gush of
feeling which was almost rage.

'Poor little baby!' she thought.  'There must be thousands like that,
and I know nothing of them!'

She smiled to the woman, who smiled back at her; and a fat Jewish
youth in a shop doorway, seeing them smile, smiled too, as though he
found them charming.  Mrs. Pendyce had a feeling that the town was
saying pretty things to her, and this was so strange and pleasant
that she could hardly believe it, for Worsted Skeynes had omitted to
say that sort of thing to her for over thirty years.  She looked in
the window of a hat shop, and found pleasure in the sight of herself.
The window was kind to her grey linen, with black velvet knots and
guipure, though it was two years old; but, then, she had only been
able to wear it once last summer, owing to poor Hubert's death.  The
window was kind, too, to her cheeks, and eyes, which had that
touching brightness, and to the silver-powdered darkness of her hair.
And she thought: 'I don't look so very old!'  But her own hat
reflected in the hat-shop window displeased her now; it turned down
all round, and though she loved that shape, she was afraid it was not
fashionable this year.  And she looked long in the window of that
shop, trying to persuade herself that the hats in there would suit
her, and that she liked what she did not like.  In other shop windows
she looked, too.  It was a year since she had seen any, and for
thirty-four years past she had only seen them in company with the
Squire or with her daughters, none of whom cared much for shops.

The people, too, were different from the people that she saw when she
went about with Horace or her girls.  Almost all seemed charming,
having a new, strange life, in which she--Margery Pendyce--had
unaccountably a little part; as though really she might come to know
them, as though they might tell her something of themselves, of what
they felt and thought, and even might stand listening, taking a
kindly interest in what she said.  This, too, was strange, and a
friendly smile became fixed upon her face, and of those who saw it--
shop-girls, women of fashion, coachmen, clubmen, policemen--most felt
a little warmth about their hearts; it was pleasant to see on the
lips of that faded lady with the silvered arching hair under a hat
whose brim turned down all round.

So Mrs. Pendyce came to Piccadilly and turned westward towards
George's club.  She knew it well, for she never failed to look at the
windows when she passed, and once--on the occasion of Queen
Victoria's Jubilee--had spent a whole day there to see that royal
show.

She began to tremble as she neared it, for though she did not, like
the Squire, torture her mind with what might or might not come to
pass, care had nested in her heart.

George was not in his club, and the porter could not tell her where
he was.  Mrs. Pendyce stood motionless.  He was her son; how could
she ask for his address?  The porter waited, knowing a lady when he
saw one.  Mrs. Pendyce said gently:

"Is there a room where I could write a note, or would it be----"

"Certainly not, ma'am.  I can show you to a room at once."

And though it was only a mother to a son, the porter preceded her
with the quiet discretion of one who aids a mistress to her lover;
and perhaps he was right in his view of the relative values of love,
for he had great experience, having lived long in the best society.

On paper headed with the fat white "Stoics' Club," so well known on
George's letters, Mrs. Pendyce wrote what she had to say.  The little
dark room where she sat was without sound, save for the buzzing of a
largish fly in a streak of sunlight below the blind.  It was dingy in
colour; its furniture was old.  At the Stoics' was found neither the
new art nor the resplendent drapings of those larger clubs sacred to
the middle classes.  The little writing-room had an air of mourning:
"I am so seldom used; but be at home in me; you might find me tucked
away in almost any country-house!"

Yet many a solitary Stoic had sat there and written many a note to
many a woman.  George, perhaps, had written to Helen Bellew at that
very table with that very pen, and Mrs. Pendyce's heart ached
jealously.


"DEAREST GEORGE" (she wrote),

"I have something very particular to tell you.  Do come to me at
Green's Hotel.  Come soon, my dear.  I shall be lonely and unhappy
till I see you.
                              "Your loving
                                   "MARGERY PENDYCE."


And this note, which was just what she would have sent to a lover,
took that form, perhaps unconsciously, because she had never had a
lover thus to write to.

She slipped the note and half a crown diffidently into the porter's
hand; refused his offer of some tea, and walked vaguely towards the
Park.

It was five o'clock; the sun was brighter than ever.  People in
carriages and people on foot in one leisurely, unending stream were
filing in at Hyde Park Corner.  Mrs. Pendyce went, too, and timidly--
she was unused to traffic--crossed to the further side and took a
chair.  Perhaps George was in the Park and she might see him; perhaps
Helen Bellew was there, and she might see her; and the thought of
this made her heart beat and her eyes under their uplifted brows
stare gently at each figure-old men and young men, women of the
world, fresh young girls.  How charming they looked, how sweetly they
were dressed!  A feeling of envy mingled with the joy she ever felt
at seeing pretty things; she was quite unconscious that she herself
was pretty under that hat whose brim turned down all round.  But as
she sat a leaden feeling slowly closed her heart, varied by nervous
flutterings, when she saw someone whom she ought to know.  And
whenever, in response to a salute, she was forced to bow her head, a
blush rose in her cheeks, a wan smile seemed to make confession:

"I know I look a guy; I know it's odd for me to be sitting here
alone!"

She felt old--older than she had ever felt before.  In the midst of
this gay crowd, of all this life and sunshine, a feeling of
loneliness which was almost fear--a feeling of being utterly adrift,
cut off from all the world--came over her; and she felt like one of
her own plants, plucked up from its native earth, with all its poor
roots hanging bare, as though groping for the earth to cling to.  She
knew now that she had lived too long in the soil that she had hated;
and was too old to be transplanted.  The custom of the country--that
weighty, wingless creature born of time and of the earth--had its
limbs fast twined around her.  It had made of her its mistress, and
was not going to let her go.




CHAPTER II

THE SON AND THE MOTHER

Harder than for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle is it for
a man to become a member of the Stoics' Club, except by virtue of the
hereditary principle; for unless he be nourished he cannot be
elected, and since by the club's first rule he may have no occupation
whatsoever, he must be nourished by the efforts of those who have
gone before.  And the longer they have gone before the more likely he
is to receive no blackballs.

Yet without entering into the Stoics' Club it is difficult for a man
to attain that supreme outward control which is necessary to conceal
his lack of control within; and, indeed, the club is an admirable
instance of how Nature places the remedy to hand for the disease.
For, perceiving how George Pendyce and hundreds of other young men
"to the manner born" had lived from their birth up in no connection
whatever with the struggles and sufferings of life, and fearing lest,
when Life in her careless and ironical fashion brought them into
abrupt contact with ill-bred events they should make themselves a
nuisance by their cries of dismay and wonder, Nature had devised a
mask and shaped it to its highest form within the portals of the
Stoics' Club.  With this mask she clothed the faces of these young
men whose souls she doubted, and called them--gentlemen.  And when
she, and she alone, heard their poor squeaks behind that mask, as
Life placed clumsy feet on them, she pitied them, knowing that it was
not they who were in fault, but the unpruned system which had made
them what they were.  And in her pity she endowed many of them with
thick skins, steady feet, and complacent souls, so that, treading in
well-worn paths their lives long, they might slumber to their deaths
in those halls where their fathers had slumbered to their deaths
before them.  But sometimes Nature (who was not yet a Socialist)
rustled her wings and heaved a sigh, lest the excesses and
excrescences of their system should bring about excesses and
excrescences of the opposite sort.  For extravagance of all kinds was
what she hated, and of that particular form of extravagance which Mr.
Paramor so vulgarly called "Pendycitis" she had a horror.

It may happen that for long years the likeness between father and son
will lie dormant, and only when disintegrating forces threaten the
links of the chain binding them together will that likeness leap
forth, and by a piece of Nature's irony become the main factor in
destroying the hereditary principle for which it is the silent, the
most worthy, excuse.

It is certain that neither George nor his father knew the depth to
which this "Pendycitis" was rooted in the other; neither suspected,
not even in themselves, the amount of essential bulldog at the bottom
of their souls, the strength of their determination to hold their own
in the way that would cause the greatest amount of unnecessary
suffering.  They did not deliberately desire to cause unnecessary
suffering; they simply could not help an instinct passed by time into
their fibre, through atrophy of the reasoning powers and the constant
mating, generation after generation, of those whose motto had been,
"Kings of our own dunghills."  And now George came forward, defying
his mother's belief that he was a Totteridge, as champion of the
principle in tail male; for in the Totteridges, from whom in this
stress he diverged more and more towards his father's line, there was
some freer strain, something non-provincial, and this had been so
ever since Hubert de-Totteridge had led his private crusade, from
which he had neglected to return.  With the Pendyces it had been
otherwise; from immemorial time "a county family," they had construed
the phrase literally, had taken no poetical licences.  Like
innumerable other county families, they were perforce what their
tradition decreed--provincial in their souls.

George, a man-about-town, would have stared at being called
provincial, but a man cannot stare away his nature.  He was
provincial enough to keep Mrs. Bellew bound when she herself was
tired of him, and consideration for her, and for his own self-respect
asked him to give her up.  He had been keeping her bound for two
months or more.  But there was much excuse for him.  His heart was
sore to breaking-point; he was sick with longing, and deep, angry
wonder that he, of all men, should be cast aside like a worn-out
glove.  Men tired of women daily--that was the law.  But what was
this?  His dogged instinct had fought against the knowledge as long
as he could, and now that it was certain he fought against it still.
George was a true Pendyce!

To the world, however, he behaved as usual.  He came to the club
about ten o'clock to eat his breakfast and read the sporting papers.
Towards noon a hansom took him to the railway-station appropriate to
whatever race-meeting was in progress, or, failing that, to the
cricket-ground at Lord's, or Prince's Tennis Club.  Half-past six saw
him mounting the staircase at the Stoics' to that card-room where his
effigy still hung, with its look of "Hard work, hard work; but I must
keep it going!"  At eight he dined, a bottle of champagne screwed
deep down into ice, his face flushed with the day's sun, his shirt-
front and his hair shining with gloss.  What happier man in all great
London!

But with the dark the club's swing-doors opened for his passage into
the lighted streets, and till next morning the world knew him no
more.  It was then that he took revenge for all the hours he wore a
mask.  He would walk the pavements for miles trying to wear himself
out, or in the Park fling himself down on a chair in the deep shadow
of the trees, and sit there with his arms folded and his head bowed
down.  On other nights he would go into some music-hall, and amongst
the glaring lights, the vulgar laughter, the scent of painted women,
try for a moment to forget the face, the laugh, the scent of that
woman for whom he craved.  And all the time he was jealous, with a
dumb, vague jealousy of he knew not whom; it was not his nature to
think impersonally, and he could not believe that a woman would drop
him except for another man.  Often he went to her Mansions, and
walked round and round casting a stealthy stare at her windows.
Twice he went up to her door, but came away without ringing the bell.
One evening, seeing a light in her sitting-room, he rang, but there
came no answer.  Then an evil spirit leaped up in him, and he rang
again and again.  At last he went away to his room--a studio he had
taken near--and began to write to her.  He was long composing that
letter, and many times tore it up; he despised the expression of
feelings in writing.  He only tried because his heart wanted relief
so badly.  And this, in the end, was all that he produced:


"I know you were in to-night.  It's the only time I've come.  Why
couldn't you have let me in?  You've no right to treat me like this.
You are leading me the life of a dog."
                                             GEORGE.


The first light was silvering the gloom above the river, the lamps
were paling to the day, when George went out and dropped this missive
in the letter-box.  He came back to the river and lay down on an
empty bench under the plane-trees of the Embankment, and while he lay
there one of those without refuge or home, who lie there night after
night, came up unseen and looked at him.

But morning comes, and with it that sense of the ridiculous, so
merciful to suffering men.  George got up lest anyone should see a
Stoic lying there in his evening clothes; and when it became time he
put on his mask and sallied forth.  At the club he found his mother's
note, and set out for her hotel.

Mrs. Pendyce was not yet down, but sent to ask him to come up.
George found her standing in her dressing-gown in the middle of the
room, as though she knew not where to place herself for this, their
meeting.  Only when he was quite close did she move and throw her
arms round his neck.  George could not see her face, and his own was
hidden from her, but through the thin dressing-gown he felt her
straining to him, and her arms that had pulled his head down
quivering; and for a moment it seemed to him as if he were dropping a
burden.  But only for a moment, for at the clinging of those arms his
instinct took fright.  And though she was smiling, the tears were in
her eyes, and this offended him.

"Don't, mother!"

Mrs. Pendyce's answer was a long look.  George could not bear it, and
turned away.

"Well," he said gruffly, "when you can tell me what's brought you
up----"

Mrs. Pendyce sat down on the sofa.  She had been brushing her hair;
though silvered, it was still thick and soft, and the sight of it
about her shoulders struck George.  He had never thought of her
having hair that would hang down.

Sitting on the sofa beside her, he felt her fingers stroking his,
begging him not to take offence and leave her.  He felt her eyes
trying to see his eyes, and saw her lips trembling; but a stubborn,
almost evil smile was fixed upon his face.

"And so, dear--and so," she stammered, "I told your father that I
couldn't see that done, and so I came up to you."

Many sons have found no hardship in accepting all that their mothers
do for them as a matter of right, no difficulty in assuming their
devotion a matter of course, no trouble in leaving their own
affections to be understood; but most sons have found great
difficulty in permitting their mothers to diverge one inch from the
conventional, to swerve one hair's breadth from the standard of
propriety appropriate to mothers of men of their importance.

It is decreed of mothers that their birth pangs shall not cease until
they die.

And George was shocked to hear his mother say that she had left his
father to come to him.  It affected his self-esteem in a strange and
subtle way.  The thought that tongues might wag about her revolted
his manhood and his sense of form.  It seemed strange,
incomprehensible, and wholly wrong; the thought, too, gashed through
his mind: 'She is trying to put pressure on me!'

"If you think I'll give her up, Mother----" he said.

Mrs. Pendyce's fingers tightened.

"No, dear," she answered painfully; "of course, if she loves you so
much, I couldn't ask you.  That's why I----"

George gave a grim little laugh.

"What on earth can you do, then?  What's the good of your coming up
like this?  How are you to get on here all alone?  I can fight my own
battles.  You'd much better go back."

Mrs. Pendyce broke in:

"Oh, George; I can't see you cast off from us!  I must be with you!"

George felt her trembling all over.  He got up and walked to the
window.  Mrs. Pendyce's voice followed:

"I won't try to separate you, George; I promise, dear.  I couldn't,
if she loves you, and you love her so!"

Again George laughed that grim little laugh.  And the fact that he
was deceiving her, meant to go on deceiving her, made him as hard as
iron.

"Go back, Mother!"  he said.  "You'll only make things worse.  This
isn't a woman's business.  Let father do what he likes; I can hold
on!"

Mrs. Pendyce did not answer, and he was obliged to look round.  She
was sitting perfectly still with her hands in her lap, and his man's
hatred of anything conspicuous happening to a woman, to his own
mother of all people, took fiercer fire.

"Go back!"  he repeated, "before there's any fuss!  What good can you
possibly do?  You can't leave father; that's absurd!  You must go!"

Mrs. Pendyce answered:

"I can't do that, dear."

George made an angry sound, but she was so motionless and pale that
he dimly perceived how she was suffering, and how little he knew of
her who had borne him.

Mrs. Pendyce broke the silence:

"But you, George dear?  What is going to happen?  How are you going
to manage?" And suddenly clasping her hands: "Oh! what is coming?"

Those words, embodying all that had been in his heart so long, were
too much for George.  He went abruptly to the door.

"I can't stop now," he said; "I'll come again this evening."

Mrs. Pendyce looked up.

"Oh, George"

But as she had the habit of subordinating her feelings to the
feelings of others, she said no more, but tried to smile.

That smile smote George to the heart.

"Don't worry, Mother; try and cheer up.  We'll go to the theatre.
You get the tickets!"

And trying to smile too, but turning lest he should lose his self-
control, he went away.

In the hall he came on his uncle, General Pendyce.  He came on him
from behind, but knew him at once by that look of feeble activity
about the back of his knees, by his sloping yet upright shoulders,
and the sound of his voice, with its dry and querulous precision, as
of a man whose occupation has been taken from him.

The General turned round.

"Ah, George," he said, "your mother's here, isn't she?  Look at this
that your father's sent me!"

He held out a telegram in a shaky hand.

     "Margery up at Green's Hotel.  Go and see her at once.
                                   HORACE."

And while George read the General looked at his nephew with eyes that
were ringed by little circles of darker pigment, and had crow's-
footed purses of skin beneath, earned by serving his country in
tropical climes.

"What's the meaning of it?" he said.  "Go and see her?  Of course,
I'll go and see her!  Always glad to see your mother.  But where's
all the hurry ?"

George perceived well enough that his father's pride would not let
him write to her, and though it was for himself that his mother had
taken this step, he sympathised with his father.  The General
fortunately gave him little time to answer.

"She's up to get herself some dresses, I suppose?  I've seen nothing
of you for a long time.  When are you coming to dine with me?  I
heard at Epsom that you'd sold your horse.  What made you do that?
What's your father telegraphing to me like this for?  It's not like
him.  Your mother's not ill, is she?"

George shook his head, and muttering something about "Sorry, an
engagement--awful hurry," was gone.

Left thus abruptly to himself, General Pendyce summoned a page,
slowly pencilled something on his card, and with his back to the only
persons in the hall, waited, his hands folded on the handle of his
cane.  And while he waited he tried as far as possible to think of
nothing.  Having served his country, his time now was nearly all
devoted to waiting, and to think fatigued and made him feel
discontented, for he had had sunstroke once, and fever several times.
In the perfect precision of his collar, his boots, his dress, his
figure; in the way from time to time he cleared his throat, in the
strange yellow driedness of his face between his carefully brushed
whiskers, in the immobility of his white hands on his cane, he gave
the impression of a man sucked dry by a system.  Only his eyes,
restless and opinionated, betrayed the essential Pendyce that was
behind.

He went up to the ladies' drawing-room, clutching that telegram.  It
worried him.  There was something odd about it, and he was not
accustomed to pay calls in the morning.  He found his sister-in-law
seated at an open window, her face unusually pink, her eyes rather
defiantly bright.  She greeted him gently, and General Pendyce was
not the man to discern what was not put under his nose.  Fortunately
for him, that had never been his practice.

"How are you, Margery?" he said.  "Glad to see you in town.  How's
Horace?  Look here what he's sent me!"  He offered her the telegram,
with the air of slightly avenging an offence; then added in surprise,
as though he had lust thought of it: "Is there anything I can do for
you?"

Mrs. Pendyce read the telegram, and she, too, like George, felt sorry
for the sender.

"Nothing, thanks, dear Charles," she said slowly.  "I'm all right.
Horace gets so nervous!"

General Pendyce looked at her; for a moment his eyes flickered, then,
since the truth was so improbable and so utterly in any case beyond
his philosophy, he accepted her statement.

"He shouldn't go sending telegrams like this," he said.  "You might
have been ill for all I could tell.  It spoiled my breakfast!"  For
though, as a fact, it had not prevented his completing a hearty meal,
he fancied that he felt hungry.  "When I was quartered at Halifax
there was a fellow who never sent anything but telegrams.  Telegraph
Jo they called him.  He commanded the old Bluebottles.  You know the
old Bluebottles?  If Horace is going to take to this sort of thing
he'd better see a specialist; it's almost certain to mean a
breakdown.  You're up about dresses, I see.  When do you come to
town?  The season's getting on."

Mrs. Pendyce was not afraid of her husband's brother, for though
punctilious and accustomed to his own way with inferiors, he was
hardly a man to inspire awe in his social equals.  It was, therefore,
not through fear that she did not tell him the truth, but through an
instinct for avoiding all unnecessary suffering too strong for her,
and because the truth was really untellable.  Even to herself it
seemed slightly ridiculous, and she knew the poor General would take
it so dreadfully to heart.

"I don't know about coming up this season.  The garden is looking so
beautiful, and there's Bee's engagement.  The dear child is so
happy!"

The General caressed a whisker with his white hand.

"Ah yes," he said--"young Tharp!  Let's see, he's not the eldest.
His brother's in my old corps.  What does this young fellow do with
himself?"

Mrs. Pendyce answered:

"He's only farming.  I'm afraid he'll have nothing to speak of, but
he's a dear good boy.  It'll be a long engagement.  Of course,
there's nothing in farming, and Horace insists on their having a
thousand a year.  It depends so much on Mr. Tharp.  I think they
could do perfectly well on seven hundred to start with, don't you,
Charles?"

General Pendyce's answer was not more conspicuously to the point than
usual, for he was a man who loved to pursue his own trains of
thought.

"What about George?", he said.  "I met him in the hall as I was
coming in, but he ran off in the very deuce of a hurry.  They told me
at Epsom that he was hard hit."

His eyes, distracted by a fly for which he had taken a dislike,
failed to observe his sister-in-law's face.

"Hard hit?" she repeated.

"Lost a lot of money.  That won't do, you know, Margery--that won't
do.  A little mild gambling's one thing."

Mrs. Pendyce said nothing; her face was rigid: It was the face of a
woman on the point of saying: "Do not compel me to hint that you are
boring me!"

The General went on:

"A lot of new men have taken to racing that no one knows anything
about.  That fellow who bought George's horse, for instance; you'd
never have seen his nose in Tattersalls when I was a young man.  I
find when I go racing I don't know half the colours.  It spoils the
pleasure.  It's no longer the close borough that it was.  George had
better take care what he's about.  I can't imagine what we're coming
to!"

On Margery Pendyce's hearing, those words, "I can't imagine what
we're coming to," had fallen for four-and-thirty years, in every sort
of connection, from many persons.  It had become part of her life,
indeed, to take it for granted that people could imagine nothing;
just as the solid food and solid comfort of Worsted Skeynes and the
misty mornings and the rain had become part of her life.  And it was
only the fact that her nerves were on edge and her heart bursting
that made those words seem intolerable that morning; but habit was
even now too strong, and she kept silence.

The General, to whom an answer was of no great moment, pursued his
thoughts.

"And you mark my words, Margery; the elections will go against us.
The country's in a dangerous state."

Mrs. Pendyce said:

"Oh, do you think the Liberals will really get in?"

>From custom there was a shade of anxiety in her voice which she did
not feel.

"Think?" repeated General Pendyce.  "I pray every night to God they
won't!"

Folding both hands on the silver knob of his Malacca cane, he stared
over them at the opposing wall; and there was something universal in
that fixed stare, a sort of blank and not quite selfish apprehension.
Behind his personal interests his ancestors had drilled into him the
impossibility of imagining that he did not stand for the welfare of
his country.  Mrs. Pendyce, who had so often seen her husband look
like that, leaned out of the window above the noisy street.

The General rose.

"Well," he said, "if I can't do anything for you, Margery, I'll take
myself off; you're busy with your dressmakers.  Give my love to
Horace, and tell him not to send me another telegram like that."

And bending stiffly, he pressed her hand with a touch of real
courtesy and kindness, took up his hat, and went away.  Mrs. Pendyce,
watching him descend the stairs, watching his stiff sloping
shoulders, his head with its grey hair brushed carefully away from
the centre parting, the backs of his feeble, active knees, put her
hand to her breast and sighed, for with him she seemed to see
descending all her past life, and that one cannot see unmoved.




CHAPTER III

MRS. BELLEW SQUARES HER ACCOUNTS

Mrs. Bellew sat on her bed smoothing out the halves of a letter; by
her side was her jewel-case.  Taking from it an amethyst necklet, an
emerald pendant, and a diamond ring, she wrapped them in cottonwool,
and put them in an envelope.  The other jewels she dropped one by one
into her lap, and sat looking at them.  At last, putting two necklets
and two rings back into the jewel-case, she placed the rest in a
little green box, and taking that and the envelope, went out.  She
called a hansom, drove to a post-office, and sent a telegram:

          PENDYCE, STOICS' CLUB.
               "Be at studio six to seven.--H."

>From the post-office she drove to her jeweller's, and many a man who
saw her pass with the flush on her cheeks and the smouldering look in
her eyes, as though a fire were alight within her, turned in his
tracks and bitterly regretted that he knew not who she was, or
whither going.  The jeweller took the jewels from the green box,
weighed them one by one, and slowly examined each through his lens.
He was a little man with a yellow wrinkled face and a weak little
beard, and having fixed in his mind the sum that he would give, he
looked at his client prepared to mention less.  She was sitting with
her elbows on the counter, her chin resting in her hands, and her
eyes were fixed on him.  He decided somehow to mention the exact sum.

"Is that all?"

"Yes, madam; that is the utmost."

"Very well, but I must have it now in cash!"

The jeweller's eyes flickered.

"It's a large sum," he said--"most unusual.  I haven't got such a sum
in the place."

"Then please send out and get it, or I must go elsewhere."

The jeweller brought his hands together, and washed them nervously.

"Excuse me a moment; I'll consult my partner."

He went away, and from afar he and his partner spied her nervously.
He came back with a forced smile.  Mrs. Bellew was sitting as he had
left her.

"It's a fortunate chance; I think we can just do it, madam."

"Give me notes, please, and a sheet of paper."  The jeweller brought
them.

Mrs. Bellew wrote a letter, enclosed it with the bank notes in the
bulky envelope she had brought, addressed it, and sealed the whole.

"Call a cab, please!"

The jeweller called a cab.

"Chelsea Embankment!"

The cab bore her away.

Again in the crowded streets so full of traffic, people turned to
look after her.  The cabman, who put her down at the Albert Bridge,
gazed alternately at the coins in his hands and the figure of his
fare, and wheeling his cab towards the stand, jerked his thumb in her
direction.

Mrs. Bellew walked fast down a street till, turning a corner, she
came suddenly on a small garden with three poplar-trees in a row.
She opened its green gate without pausing, went down a path, and
stopped at the first of three green doors.  A young man with a beard,
resembling an artist, who was standing behind the last of the three
doors, watched her with a knowing smile on his face.  She took out a
latch-key, put it in the lock, opened the door, and passed in.

The sight of her face seemed to have given the artist an idea.
Propping his door open, he brought an easel and canvas, and setting
them so that he could see the corner where she had gone in, began to
sketch.

An old stone fountain with three stone frogs stood in the garden near
that corner, and beyond it was a flowering currant-bush, and beyond
this again the green door on which a slanting gleam of sunlight fell.
He worked for an hour, then put his easel back and went out to get
his tea.

Mrs. Bellew came out soon after he was gone.  She closed the door
behind her, and stood still.  Taking from her pocket the bulky
envelope, she slipped it into the letter-box; then bending down,
picked up a twig, and placed it in the slit, to prevent the lid
falling with a rattle.  Having done this, she swept her hands down
her face and breast as though to brush something from her, and walked
away.  Beyond the outer gate she turned to the left, and took the
same street back to the river.  She walked slowly, luxuriously,
looking about her.  Once or twice she stopped, and drew a deep
breath, as though she could not have enough of the air.  She went as
far as the Embankment, and stood leaning her elbows on the parapet.
Between the finger and thumb of one hand she held a small object on
which the sun was shining.  It was a key.  Slowly, luxuriously, she
stretched her hand out over the water, parted her thumb and finger,
and let it fall.




CHAPTER IV

MRS. PENDYCE'S INSPIRATION

But George did not come to take his mother to the theatre, and she
whose day had been passed in looking forward to the evening, passed
that evening in a drawing-room full of furniture whose history she
did not know, and a dining-room full of people eating in twos and
threes and fours, at whom she might look, but to whom she must not
speak, to whom she did not even want to speak, so soon had the wheel
of life rolled over her wonder and her expectation, leaving it
lifeless in her breast.  And all that night, with one short interval
of sleep, she ate of bitter isolation and futility, and of the still
more bitter knowledge: "George does not want me; I'm no good to him!"

Her heart, seeking consolation, went back again and again to the time
when he had wanted her; but it was far to go, to the days of holland
suits, when all those things that he desired--slices of pineapple,
Benson's old carriage-whip, the daily reading out of "Tom Brown's
School-days," the rub with Elliman when he sprained his little ankle,
the tuck-up in bed--were in her power alone to give.

This night she saw with fatal clearness that since he went to school
he had never wanted her at all.  She had tried so many years to
believe that he did, till it had become part of her life, as it was
part of her life to say her prayers night and morning; and now she
found it was all pretence.  But, lying awake, she still tried to
believe it, because to that she had been bound when she brought him,
firstborn, into the world.  Her other son, her daughters, she loved
them too, but it was not the same thing, quite; she had never wanted
them to want her, because that part of her had been given once for
all to George.

The street noises died down at last; she had slept two hours when
they began again.  She lay listening.  And the noises and her
thoughts became tangled in her exhausted brain--one great web of
weariness, a feeling that it was all senseless and unnecessary, the
emanation of cross-purposes and cross-grainedness, the negation of
that gentle moderation, her own most sacred instinct.  And an early
wasp, attracted by the sweet perfumes of her dressing-table, roused
himself from the corner where he had spent the night, and began to
hum and hover over the bed.  Mrs. Pendyce was a little afraid of
wasps, so, taking a moment when he was otherwise engaged, she stole
out, and fanned him with her nightdress-case till, perceiving her to
be a lady, he went away.  Lying down again, she thought: 'People will
worry them until they sting, and then kill them; it's so
unreasonable,' not knowing that she was putting all her thoughts on
suffering in a single nutshell.

She breakfasted upstairs, unsolaced by any news from George.  Then
with no definite hope, but a sort of inner certainty, she formed the
resolution to call on Mrs. Bellew.  She determined, however, first to
visit Mr. Paramor, and, having but a hazy notion of the hour when men
begin to work, she did not dare to start till past eleven, and told
her cabman to drive her slowly.  He drove her, therefore, faster than
his wont.  In Leicester Square the passage of a Personage between two
stations blocked the traffic, and on the footways were gathered a
crowd of simple folk with much in their hearts and little in their
stomachs, who raised a cheer as the Personage passed.  Mrs. Pendyce
looked eagerly from her cab, for she too loved a show.

The crowd dispersed, and the cab went on.

It was the first time she had ever found herself in the business
apartment of any professional man less important than a dentist.
>From the little waiting-room, where they handed her the Times, which
she could not read from excitement, she caught sight of rooms lined
to the ceilings with leather books and black tin boxes, initialed in
white to indicate the brand, and of young men seated behind lumps of
paper that had been written on.  She heard a perpetual clicking noise
which roused her interest, and smelled a peculiar odour of leather
and disinfectant which impressed her disagreeably.  A youth with
reddish hair and a pen in his hand passed through and looked at her
with a curious stare immediately averted.  She suddenly felt sorry
for him and all those other young men behind the lumps of paper, and
the thought went flashing through her mind, 'I suppose it's all
because people can't agree.'

She was shown in to Mr. Paramor at last.  In his large empty room,
with its air of past grandeur, she sat gazing at three La France
roses in a tumbler of water with the feeling that she would never be
able to begin.

Mr. Paramor's eyebrows, which jutted from his clean, brown face like
little clumps of pothooks, were iron-grey, and iron-grey his hair
brushed back from his high forehead.  Mrs. Pendyce wondered why he
looked five years younger than Horace, who was his junior, and ten
years younger than Charles, who, of course, was younger still.  His
eyes, which from iron-grey some inner process of spiritual
manufacture had made into steel colour, looked young too, although
they were grave; and the smile which twisted up the corners of his
mouth looked very young.

"Well," he said, "it's a great pleasure to see you."

Mrs. Pendyce could only answer with a smile.

Mr. Paramor put the roses to his nose.

"Not so good as yours," he said, "are they? but the best I can do."

Mrs. Pendyce blushed with pleasure.

"My garden is looking so beautiful----" Then, remembering that she no
longer had a garden, she stopped; but remembering also that, though
she had lost her garden, Mr. Paramor still had his, she added
quickly: "And yours, Mr. Paramor--I'm sure it must be looking
lovely."

Mr. Paramor drew out a kind of dagger with which he had stabbed some
papers to his desk, and took a letter from the bundle.

"Yes," he said, "it's looking very nice.  You'd like to see this, I
expect."

"Bellew v. Bellew and Pendyce" was written at the top.  Mrs. Pendyce
stared at those words as though fascinated by their beauty; it was
long before she got beyond them.  For the first time the full horror
of these matters pierced the kindly armour that lies between mortals
and what they do not like to think of.  Two men and a woman
wrangling, fighting, tearing each other before the eyes of all the
world.  A woman and two men stripped of charity and gentleness, of
moderation and sympathy-stripped of all that made life decent and
lovable, squabbling like savages before the eyes of all the world.
Two men, and one of them her son, and between them a woman whom both
of them had loved!  "Bellew v. Bellew and Pendyce"!  And this would
go down to fame in company with the pitiful stories she had read from
time to time with a sort of offended interest; in company with
"Snooks v. Snooks and Stiles,"  "Horaday v. Horaday,"  "Bethany v.
Bethany and Sweetenham."  In company with all those cases where
everybody seemed so dreadful, yet where she had often and often felt
so sorry, as if these poor creatures had been fastened in the stocks
by some malignant, loutish spirit, for all that would to come and
jeer at.  And horror filled her heart.  It was all so mean, and
gross, and common.

The letter contained but a few words from a firm of solicitors
confirming an appointment.  She looked up at Mr. Paramor.  He stopped
pencilling on his blotting-paper, and said at once:

"I shall be seeing these people myself tomorrow afternoon.  I shall
do my best to make them see reason."

She felt from his eyes that he knew what she was suffering, and was
even suffering with her.

"And if--if they won't?"

"Then I shall go on a different tack altogether, and they must look
out for themselves."

Mrs. Pendyce sank back in her chair; she seemed to smell again that
smell of leather and disinfectant, and hear a sound of incessant
clicking.  She felt faint, and to disguise that faintness asked at
random, "What does 'without prejudice' in this letter mean?"

Mr. Paramor smiled.

"That's an expression we always use," he said.  "It means that when
we give a thing away, we reserve to ourselves the right of taking it
back again."

Mrs. Pendyce, who did not understand, murmured:

"I see.  But what have they given away?"

Paramor put his elbows on the desk, and lightly pressed his finger-
tips together.

"Well," he said, "properly speaking, in a matter like this, the other
side and I are cat and dog.

"We are supposed to know nothing about each other and to want to know
less, so that when we do each other a courtesy we are obliged to save
our faces by saying, 'We don't really do you one.'  D'you understand?"

Again Mrs. Pendyce murmured:

"I see."

"It sounds a little provincial, but we lawyers exist by reason of
provincialism.  If people were once to begin making allowances for
each other, I don't know where we should be."

Mrs. Pendyce's eyes fell again on those words, "Bellew v. Bellew and
Pendyce," and again, as though fascinated by their beauty, rested
there.

"But you wanted to see me about something else too, perhaps?" said
Mr. Paramor.

A sudden panic came over her.

"Oh no, thank you.  I just wanted to know what had been done.  I've
come up on purpose to see George.  You told me that I----"

Mr. Paramor hastened to her aid.

"Yes, yes; quite right--quite right."

"Horace hasn't come with me."

"Good!"

"He and George sometimes don't quite----"

"Hit it off?  They're too much alike."

"Do you think so?  I never saw-----"

"Not in face, not in face; but they've both got----"

Mr. Paramor's meaning was lost in a smile; and Mrs. Pendyce, who did
not know that the word "Pendycitis" was on the tip of his tongue,
smiled vaguely too.

"George is very determined," she said.  "Do you think--oh, do you
think, Mr. Paramor, that you will be able to persuade Captain
Bellew's solicitors----"

Mr. Paramor threw himself back in his chair, and his hand covered
what he had written on his blotting-paper.

"Yes," he said slowly----"oh yes, yes!"

But Mrs. Pendyce had had her answer.  She had meant to speak of her
visit to Helen Bellew, but now her thought was:

'He won't persuade them; I feel it.  Let me get away!'

Again she seemed to hear the incessant clicking, to smell leather and
disinfectant, to see those words, "Bellew v. Bellew and, Pendyce."

She held out her hand.

Mr. Paramor took it in his own and looked at the floor.

"Good-bye," he said-"good-bye.  What's your address--Green's Hotel?
I'll come and tell you what I do.  I know--I know!"

Mrs. Pendyce, on whom those words "I know--I know!"  had a strange,
emotionalising effect, as though no one had ever known before, went
away with quivering lips.  In her life no one had ever "known"--not
indeed that she could or would complain of such a trifle, but the
fact remained.  And at this moment, oddly, she thought of her
husband, and wondered what he was doing, and felt sorry for him.

But Mr. Paramor went back to his seat and stared at what he had
written on his blotting paper.  It ran thus:

     "We stand on our petty rights here,
     And our potty dignity there;
     We make no allowance for others,
     They make no allowance for us;
     We catch hold of them by the ear,
     They grab hold of us by the hair
     The result is a bit of a muddle
     That ends in a bit of a fuss."

He saw that it neither rhymed nor scanned, and with a grave face he
tore it up.

Again Mrs. Pendyce told her cabman to drive slowly, and again he
drove her faster than usual; yet that drive to Chelsea seemed to last
for ever, and interminable were the turnings which the cabman took,
each one shorter than the last, as if he had resolved to see how much
his horse's mouth could bear.

'Poor thing!' thought Mrs. Pendyce; 'its mouth must be so sore, and
it's quite unnecessary.' She put her hand up through the trap.
"Please take me in a straight line.  I don't like corners."

The cabman obeyed.  It worried him terribly to take one corner
instead of the six he had purposed on his way; and when she asked him
his fare, he charged her a shilling extra for the distance he had
saved by going straight.  Mrs. Pendyce paid it, knowing no better,
and gave him sixpence over, thinking it might benefit the horse; and
the cabman, touching his hat, said:

"Thank you, my lady," for to say "my lady" was his principle when he
received eighteen pence above his fare.

Mrs. Pendyce stood quite a minute on the pavement, stroking the
horse's nose and thinking:

'I must go in; it's silly to come all this way and not go in!'

But her heart beat so that she could hardly swallow.

At last she rang.

Mrs. Bellew was seated on the sofa in her little drawing-room
whistling to a canary in the open window.  In the affairs of men
there is an irony constant and deep, mingled with the very springs of
life.  The expectations of Mrs. Pendyce, those timid apprehensions of
this meeting which had racked her all the way, were lamentably
unfulfilled.  She had rehearsed the scene ever since it came into her
head; the reality seemed unfamiliar.  She felt no nervousness and no
hostility, only a sort of painful interest and admiration.  And how
could this or any other woman help falling in love with George?

The first uncertain minute over, Mrs. Bellew's eyes were as friendly
as if she had been quite within her rights in all she had done; and
Mrs. Pendyce could not help meeting friendliness halfway.

"Don't be angry with me for coming.  George doesn't know.  I felt I
must come to see you.  Do you think that you two quite know all
you're doing?  It seems so dreadful, and it's not only yourselves, is
it?"

Mrs. Bellew's smile vanished.

"Please don't say 'you two,'" she said.

Mrs. Pendyce stammered:

"I don't understand."

Mrs. Bellew looked her in the face and smiled; and as she smiled she
seemed to become a little coarser.

"Well, I think it's quite time you did!  I don't love your son.  I
did once, but I don't now.  I told him so yesterday, once for all."

Mrs. Pendyce heard those words, which made so vast, so wonderful a
difference--words which should have been like water in a wilderness--
with a sort of horror, and all her spirit flamed up into her eyes.

"You don't love him?" she cried.

She felt only a blind sense of insult and affront.

This woman tire of George?  Tire of her son?  She looked at Mrs.
Bellew, on whose face was a kind of inquisitive compassion, with eyes
that had never before held hatred.

"You have tired of him?  You have given him up?  Then the sooner I go
to him the better!  Give me the address of his rooms, please."

Helen Bellew knelt down at the bureau and wrote on an envelope, and
the grace of the woman pierced Mrs. Pendyce to the heart.

She took the paper.  She had never learned the art of abuse, and no
words could express what was in her heart, so she turned and went
out.

Mrs. Bellew's voice sounded quick and fierce behind her.

"How could I help getting tired?  I am not you.  Now go!"

Mrs. Pendyce wrenched open the outer door.  Descending the stairs,
she felt for the bannister.  She had that awful sense of physical
soreness and shrinking which violence, whether their own or others',
brings to gentle souls.




CHAPTER V

THE MOTHER AND THE SON

To Mrs. Pendyce, Chelsea was an unknown land, and to find her way to
George's rooms would have taken her long had she been by nature what
she was by name, for Pendyces never asked their way to anything, or
believed what they were told, but found out for themselves with much
unnecessary trouble, of which they afterwards complained.

A policeman first, and then a young man with a beard, resembling an
artist, guided her footsteps.  The latter, who was leaning by a gate,
opened it.

"In here," he said; "the door in the corner on the right."

Mrs. Pendyce walked down the little path, past the ruined fountain
with its three stone frogs, and stood by the first green door and
waited.  And while she waited she struggled between fear and joy; for
now that she was away from Mrs. Bellew she no longer felt a sense of
insult.  It was the actual sight of her that had aroused it, so
personal is even the most gentle heart.

She found the rusty handle of a bell amongst the creeper-leaves, and
pulled it.  A cracked metallic tinkle answered her, but no one came;
only a faint sound as of someone pacing to and fro.  Then in the
street beyond the outer gate a coster began calling to the sky, and
in the music of his prayers the sound was lost.  The young man with a
beard, resembling an artist, came down the path.

"Perhaps you could tell me, sir, if my son is out?"

"I've not seen him go out; and I've been painting here all the
morning."

Mrs. Pendyce looked with wonder at an easel which stood outside
another door a little further on.  It seemed to her strange that her
son should live in such a place.

"Shall I knock for you?" said the artist.  "All these knockers are
stiff."

"If you would be so kind!"

The artist knocked.

"He must be in," he said.  "I haven't taken my eyes off his door,
because I've been painting it."

Mrs. Pendyce gazed at the door.

"I can't get it," said the artist.  "It's worrying me to death."

Mrs. Pendyce looked at him doubtfully.

"Has he no servant?" she said.

"Oh no," said the artist; "it's a studio.  The light's all wrong.  I
wonder if you would mind standing just as you are for one second; it
would help me a lot!"

He moved back and curved his hand over his eyes, and through Mrs.
Pendyce there passed a shiver.

'Why doesn't George open the door?' she thought.  'What--what is this
man doing?'

The artist dropped his hand.

"Thanks so much!"  he said.  "I'll knock again.  There! that would
raise the dead!"

And he laughed.

An unreasoning terror seized on Mrs. Pendyce.

"Oh," she stammered, "I must get in--I must get in!"

She took the knocker herself, and fluttered it against the door.

"You see," said the artist, "they're all alike; these knockers are as
stiff' as pokers."

He again curved his hand over his eyes.  Mrs. Pendyce leaned against
the door; her knees were trembling violently.

'What is happening?' she thought.  'Perhaps he's only asleep,
perhaps----Oh God!'

She beat the knocker with all her force.  The door yielded, and in
the space stood George.  Choking back a sob, Mrs. Pendyce went in.
He banged the door behind her.

For a full minute she did not speak, possessed still by that strange
terror and by a sort of shame.  She did not even look at her son, but
cast timid glances round his room.  She saw a gallery at the far end,
and a conical roof half made of glass.  She saw curtains hanging all
the gallery length, a table with tea-things and decanters, a round
iron stove, rugs on the floor, and a large full-length mirror in the
centre of the wall.  A silver cup of flowers was reflected in that
mirror.  Mrs. Pendyce saw that they were dead, and the sense of their
vague and nauseating odour was her first definite sensation.

"Your flowers are dead, my darling," she said.  "I must get you some
fresh!"

Not till then did she look at George.  There were circles under his
eyes; his face was yellow; it seemed to her that it had shrunk.  This
terrified her, and she thought:

'I must show nothing; I must keep my head!'

She was afraid--afraid of something desperate in his face, of
something desperate and headlong, and she was afraid of his
stubbornness, the dumb, unthinking stubbornness that holds to what
has been because it has been, that holds to its own when its own is
dead.  She had so little of this quality herself that she could not
divine where it might lead him; but she had lived in the midst of it
all her married life, and it seemed natural that her son should be in
danger from it now.

Her terror called up her self-possession.  She drew George down on
the sofa by her side, and the thought flashed through her: 'How many
times has he not sat here with that woman in his arms!'

"You didn't come for me last night, dear!  I got the tickets, such
good ones!"

George smiled.

"No," he said; "I had something else to see to!"

At sight of that smile Margery Pendyce's heart beat till she felt
sick, but she, too, smiled.

"What a nice place you have here, darling!"

"There's room to walk about."

Mrs. Pendyce remembered the sound she had heard of pacing to and fro.
>From his not asking her how she had found out where he lived she knew
that he must have guessed where she had been, that there was nothing
for either of them to tell the other.  And though this was a relief,
it added to her terror--the terror of that which is desperate.  All
sorts of images passed through her mind.  She saw George back in her
bedroom after his first run with the hounds, his chubby cheek
scratched from forehead to jaw, and the bloodstained pad of a cub fox
in his little gloved hand.  She saw him sauntering into her room the
last day of the 1880 match at Lord's, with a battered top-hat, a
blackened eye, and a cane with a light-blue tassel.  She saw him
deadly pale with tightened lips that afternoon after he had escaped
from her, half cured of laryngitis, and stolen out shooting by
himself, and she remembered his words: "Well, Mother, I couldn't
stand it any longer; it was too beastly slow!"

Suppose he could not stand it now!  Suppose he should do something
rash!  She took out her handkerchief.

"It's very hot in here, dear; your forehead is quite wet!"

She saw his eyes turn on her suspiciously, and all her woman's wit
stole into her own eyes, so that they did not flicker, but looked at
him with matter-of-fact concern.

"That skylight is what does it," he said.  "The sun gets full on
there."

Mrs. Pendyce looked at the skylight.

"It seems odd to see you here, dear, but it's very nice--so
unconventional.  You must let me put away those poor flowers!"  She
went to the silver cup and bent over them.  "My dear boy, they're
quite nasty!  Do throw them outside somewhere; it's so dreadful, the
smell of old flowers!"

She held the cup out, covering her nose with her handkerchief.

George took the cup, and like a cat spying a mouse, Mrs. Pendyce
watched him take it out into the garden.  As the door closed,
quicker, more noiseless than a cat, she slipped behind the curtains.

'I know he has a pistol,' she thought.

She was back in an instant, gliding round the room, hunting with her
eyes and hands, but she saw nothing, and her heart lightened, for she
was terrified of all such things.

'It's only these terrible first hours,' she thought.

When George came back she was standing where he had left her.  They
sat down in silence, and in that silence, the longest of her life,
she seemed to feel all that was in his heart, all the blackness and
bitter aching, the rage of defeat and starved possession, the lost
delight, the sensation of ashes and disgust; and yet her heart was
full enough already of relief and shame, compassion, jealousy, love,
and deep longing.  Only twice was the silence broken.  Once when he
asked her whether she had lunched, and she who had eaten nothing all
day answered:

"Yes, dear--yes."

Once when he said:

"You shouldn't have come here, Mother; I'm a bit out of sorts!"

She watched his face, dearest to her in all the world, bent towards
the floor, and she so yearned to hold it to her breast that, since
she dared not, the tears stole up, and silently rolled down her
cheeks.  The stillness in that room, chosen for remoteness, was like
the stillness of a tomb, and, as in a tomb, there was no outlook on
the world, for the glass of the skylight was opaque.

That deathly stillness settled round her heart; her eyes fixed
themselves on the skylight, as though beseeching it to break and let
in sound.  A cat, making a pilgrimage from roof to roof, the four
dark moving spots of its paws, the faint blur of its body, was all
she saw.  And suddenly, unable to bear it any longer, she cried:

"Oh, George, speak to me!  Don't put me away from you like this!"

George answered:

"What do you want me to say, Mother?"

"Nothing--only----"

And falling on her knees beside her son, she pulled his head down
against her breast, and stayed rocking herself to and fro, silently
shifting closer till she could feel his head lie comfortably; so, she
had his face against her heart, and she could not bear to let it go.
Her knees hurt her on the boarded floor, her back and all her body
ached; but not for worlds would she relax an inch, believing that she
could comfort him with her pain, and her tears fell on his neck.
When at last he drew his face away she sank down on the floor, and
could not rise, but her fingers felt that the bosom of her dress was
wet.  He said hoarsely:

"It's all right, Mother; you needn't worry!"

For no reward would she have looked at him just then, but with a
deeper certainty than reason she knew that he was safe.

Stealthily on the sloping skylight the cat retraced her steps, its
four paws dark moving spots, its body a faint blur.

Mrs. Pendyce rose.

"I won't stay now, darling.  May I use your glass?"

Standing before that mirror, smoothing back her hair, passing her
handkerchief over her cheeks and eyes and lips, she thought:

'That woman has stood here!  That woman has smoothed her hair,
looking in this glass, and wiped his kisses from her cheeks!  May God
give to her the pain that she has given to my son!'

But when she had wished that wish she shivered.

She turned to George at the door with a smile that seemed to say:

'It's no good to weep, or try and tell you what is in my heart, and
so, you see, I'm smiling.  Please smile, too, so as to comfort me a
little.'

George put a small paper parcel in her hand and tried to smile.

Mrs. Pendyce went quickly out.  Bewildered by the sunlight, she did
not look at this parcel till she was beyond the outer gate.  It
contained an amethyst necklace, an emerald pendant, and a diamond
ring.  In the little grey street that led to this garden with its
poplars, old fountain, and green gate, the jewels glowed and sparkled
as though all light and life had settled there.  Mrs. Pendyce, who
loved colour and glowing things, saw that they were beautiful.

That woman had taken them, used their light and colour, and then
flung them back!  She wrapped them again in the paper, tied the
string, and went towards the river.  She did not hurry, but walked
with her eyes steadily before her.  She crossed the Embankment, and
stood leaning on the parapet with her hands over the grey water.  Her
thumb and fingers unclosed; the white parcel dropped, floated a
second, and then disappeared.

Mrs. Pendyce looked round her with a start.

A young man with a beard, whose face was familiar, was raising his
hat.

"So your son was in," he said.  "I'm very glad.  I must thank you
again for standing to me just that minute; it made all the
difference.  It was the relation between the figure and the door that
I wanted to get.  Good-morning!"

Mrs. Pendyce murmured "Good-morning," following him with startled
eyes, as though he had caught her in the commission of a crime.  She
had a vision of those jewels, buried, poor things!  in the grey
slime, a prey to gloom, and robbed for ever of their light and
colour.  And, as though she had sinned, wronged the gentle essence of
her nature, she hurried away.




CHAPTER VI

GREGORY LOOKS AT THE SKY

Gregory Vigil called Mr. Paramor a pessimist it was because, like
other people, he did not know the meaning of, the term; for with a
confusion common to the minds of many persons who have been conceived
in misty moments, he thought that, to see things as they were, meant,
to try and make them worse.  Gregory had his own way of seeing things
that was very dear to him--so dear that he would shut his eyes sooner
than see them any other way.  And since things to him were not the
same as things to Mr. Paramor, it cannot, after all, be said that he
did not see things as they were.  But dirt upon a face that he wished
to be clean he could not see--a fluid in his blue eyes dissolved that
dirt while the image of the face was passing on to their retinae.
The process was unconscious, and has been called idealism.  This was
why the longer he reflected the more agonisedly certain he became
that his ward was right to be faithful to the man she loved, right to
join her life to his.  And he went about pressing the blade of this
thought into his soul.

About four o'clock on the day of Mrs. Pendyce's visit to the studio a
letter was brought him by a page-boy.

                                   "GREEN'S HOTEL,
                                        "Thursday.

"DEAR GRIG,

"I have seen Helen Bellew, and have just come from George.  We have
all been living in a bad dream.  She does not love him--perhaps has
never loved him.  I do not know; I do not wish to judge.  She has
given him up.  I will not trust myself to say anything about that.
>From beginning to end it all seems so unnecessary, such a needless,
cross-grained muddle.  I write this line to tell you how things
really are, and to beg you, if you have a moment to spare, to look in
at George's club this evening and let me know if he is there and how
he seems.  There is no one else that I could possibly ask to do this
for me.  Forgive me if this letter pains you.

                         "Your affectionate cousin,
                                   "MARGERY PENDYCE."


To those with the single eye, the narrow personal view of all things
human, by whom the irony underlying the affairs of men is unseen and
unenjoyed, whose simple hearts afford that irony its most precious
smiles, who; vanquished by that irony, remain invincible--to these no
blow of Fate, no reversal of their ideas, can long retain importance.
The darts stick, quaver, and fall off, like arrows from chain-armour,
and the last dart, slipping upwards under the harness, quivers into
the heart to the cry of "What--you!  No, no; I don't believe you're
here!"

Such as these have done much of what has had to be done in this old
world, and perhaps still more of what has had to be undone.

When Gregory received this letter he was working on the case of a
woman with the morphia habit.  He put it into his pocket and went on
working.  It was all he was capable of doing.

"Here is the memorandum, Mrs. Shortman.  Let them take her for six
weeks.  She will come out a different woman."

Mrs. Shortman, supporting her thin face in her thin hand, rested her
glowing eyes on Gregory.

"I'm afraid she has lost all moral sense," she said.  "Do you know,
Mr. Vigil, I'm almost afraid she never had any!"

"What do you mean?"

Mrs. Shortman turned her eyes away.

"I'm sometimes tempted to think," she said, "that there are such
people.  I wonder whether we allow enough for that.  When I was a
girl in the country I remember the daughter of our vicar, a very
pretty creature.  There were dreadful stories about her, even before
she was married, and then we heard she was divorced.  She came up to
London and earned her own living by playing the piano until she
married again.  I won't tell you her name, but she is very well
known, and nobody has ever seen her show the slightest signs of being
ashamed.  If there is one woman like that there may be dozens, and I
sometimes think we waste----"

Gregory said dryly:

"I have heard you say that before."

Mrs. Shortman bit her lips.

" I don't think," she said, "that I grudge my efforts or my time."

Gregory went quickly up, and took her hand.

"I know that--oh, I know that," he said with feeling.

The sound of Miss Mallow furiously typing rose suddenly from the
corner.  Gregory removed his hat from the peg on which it hung.

"I must go now," he said.  "Good-night."

Without warning, as is the way with hearts, his heart had begun to
bleed, and he felt that he must be in the open air.  He took no
omnibus or cab, but strode along with all his might, trying to think,
trying to understand.  But he could only feel-confused and battered
feelings, with now and then odd throbs of pleasure of which he was
ashamed.  Whether he knew it or not, he was making his way to
Chelsea, for though a man's eyes may be fixed on the stars, his feet
cannot take him there, and Chelsea seemed to them the best
alternative.  He was not alone upon this journey, for many another
man was going there, and many a man had been and was coming now away,
and the streets were the one long streaming crowd of the summer
afternoon.  And the men he met looked at Gregory, and Gregory looked
at them, and neither saw the other, for so it is written of men, lest
they pay attention to cares that are not their own.  The sun that
scorched his face fell on their backs, the breeze that cooled his
back blew on their cheeks.  For the careless world, too, was on its
way, along the pavement of the universe, one of millions going to
Chelsea, meeting millions coming away....

"Mrs. Bellew at home?"

He went into a room fifteen feet square and perhaps ten high, with a
sulky canary in a small gilt cage, an upright piano with an open
operatic score, a sofa with piled-up cushions, and on it a woman with
a flushed and sullen face, whose elbows were resting on her knees,
whose chin was resting on her hand, whose gaze was fixed on nothing.
It was a room of that size, with all these things, but Gregory took
into it with him some thing that made it all seem different to
Gregory.  He sat down by the window with his eyes care fully averted,
and spoke in soft tones broken by something that sounded like
emotion.  He began by telling her of his woman with the morphia
habit, and then he told her that he knew every thing.  When he had
said this he looked out of the window, where builders had left by
inadvertence a narrow strip of sky.  And thus he avoided seeing the
look on her face, contemptuous, impatient, as though she were
thinking: 'You are a good fellow, Gregory, but for Heaven's sake do
see things for once as they are!  I have had enough of it.'  And he
avoided seeing her stretch her arms out and spread the fingers, as an
angry cat will stretch and spread its toes.  He told her that he did
not want to worry her, but that when she wanted him for anything she
must send for him--he was always there; and he looked at her feet, so
that he did not see her lip curl.  He told her that she would always
be the same to him, and he asked her to believe that.  He did not see
the smile which never left her lips again while he was there--the
smile he could not read, because it was the smile of life, and of a
woman that he did not understand.  But he did see on that sofa a
beautiful creature for whom he had longed for years, and so he went
away, and left her standing at the door with her teeth fastened on
her lip: And since with him Gregory took his eyes, he did not see her
reseated on the sofa, just as she had been before he came in, her
elbows on her knees, her chin in her hand, her moody eyes like those
of a gambler staring into the distance....

In the streets of tall houses leading away from Chelsea were many
men, some, like Gregory, hungry for love, and some hungry for bread--
men in twos and threes, in crowds, or by themselves, some with their
eyes on the ground, some with their eyes level, some with their eyes
on the sky, but all with courage and loyalty of one poor kind or
another in their hearts.  For by courage and loyalty alone it is
written that man shall live, whether he goes to Chelsea or whether he
comes away.  Of all these men, not one but would have smiled to hear
Gregory saying to himself: "She will always be the same to me!  She
will always be the same to me!"  And not one that would have
grinned....

It was getting on for the Stoics' dinner hour when Gregory found
himself in Piccadilly, and, Stoic after Stoic, they were getting out
of cabs and passing the club doors.  The poor fellows had been
working hard all day on the racecourse, the cricket-ground, at
Hurlingham, or in the Park; some had been to the Royal Academy, and
on their faces was a pleasant look: "Ah, God is good--we can rest at
last!"  And many of them had had no lunch, hoping to keep their
weights down, and many who had lunched had not done themselves as
well as might be hoped, and some had done themselves too well; but in
all their hearts the trust burned bright that they might do
themselves better at dinner, for their God was good, and dwelt
between the kitchen and the cellar of the Stoics' Club.  And all--for
all had poetry in their souls--looked forward to those hours in
paradise when, with cigars between their lips, good wine below, they
might dream the daily dream that comes to all true Stoics for about
fifteen shillings or even less, all told.

>From a little back slum, within two stones' throw of the god of the
Stoics' Club, there had come out two seamstresses to take the air;
one was in consumption, having neglected to earn enough to feed
herself properly for some years past, and the other looked as if she
would be in consumption shortly, for the same reason.  They stood on
the pavement, watching the cabs drive up.  Some of the Stoics saw
them and thought: 'Poor girls! they look awfully bad.'  Three or four
said to themselves: "It oughtn't to be allowed.  I mean, it's so
painful to see; and it's not as if one could do anything.  They're
not beggars, don't you know, and so what can one do?"

But most of the Stoics did not look at them at all, feeling that
their soft hearts could not stand these painful sights, and anxious
not to spoil their dinners.  Gregory did not see them either, for it
so happened that he was looking at the sky, and just then the two
girls crossed the road and were lost among the passers-by, for they
were not dogs, who could smell out the kind of man he was.

"Mr. Pendyce is in the club; I will send your name up, sir."  And
rolling a little, as though Gregory's name were heavy, the porter
gave it to the boy, who went away with it.

Gregory stood by the empty hearth and waited, and while he waited,
nothing struck him at all, for the Stoics seemed very natural, just
mere men like himself, except that their clothes were better, which
made him think: 'I shouldn't care to belong here and have to dress
for dinner every night.'

"Mr. Pendyce is very sorry, sir, but he's engaged."

Gregory bit his lip, said "Thank you," and went away.

'That's all Margery wants,' he thought; 'the rest is nothing to me,'
and, getting on a bus, he fixed his eyes once more on the sky.

But George was not engaged.  Like a wounded animal taking its hurt
for refuge to its lair, he sat in his favourite window overlooking
Piccadilly.  He sat there as though youth had left him, unmoving,
never lifting his eyes.  In his stubborn mind a wheel seemed turning,
grinding out his memories to the last grain.  And Stoics, who could
not bear to see a man sit thus throughout that sacred hour, came up
from time to time.

"Aren't you going to dine, Pendyce?"

Dumb brutes tell no one of their pains; the law is silence.  So with
George.  And as each Stoic came up, he only set his teeth and said:

"Presently, old chap."




CHAPTER VII

TOUR WITH THE SPANIEL JOHN

Now the spaniel John--whose habit was to smell of heather and baked
biscuits when he rose from a night's sleep--was in disgrace that
Thursday.  Into his long and narrow head it took time for any new
idea to enter, and not till forty hours after Mrs. Pendyce had gone
did he recognise fully that something definite had happened to his
master.  During the agitated minutes that this conviction took in
forming, he worked hard.  Taking two and a half brace of his master's
shoes and slippers, and placing them in unaccustomed spots, he lay on
them one by one till they were warm, then left them for some bird or
other to hatch out, and returned to Mr. Pendyce's door.  It was for
all this that the Squire said, "John!" several times, and threatened
him with a razorstrop.  And partly because he could not bear to leave
his master for a single second--the scolding had made him love him so
--and partly because of that new idea, which let him have no peace,
he lay in the hall waiting.

Having once in his hot youth inadvertently followed the Squire's
horse, he could never be induced to follow it again.  He both
personally disliked this needlessly large and swift form of animal,
and suspected it of designs upon his master; for when the creature
had taken his master up, there was not a smell of him left anywhere--
not a whiff of that pleasant scent that so endeared him to the heart.
As soon, therefore, as the horse appeared, the spaniel John would.
lie down on his stomach with his forepaws close to his nose, and his
nose close to the ground; nor until the animal vanished could he be
induced to abandon an attitude in which he resembled a couching
Sphinx.

But this afternoon, with his tail down, his lips pouting, his
shoulders making heavy work of it, his nose lifted in deprecation of
that ridiculous and unnecessary plane on which his master sat, he
followed at a measured distance.  In such-wise, aforetime, the
village had followed the Squire and Mr. Barter when they introduced
into it its one and only drain.

Mr. Pendyce rode slowly; his feet, in their well-blacked boots, his
nervous legs in Bedford cord and mahogany-coloured leggings, moved in
rhyme to the horse's trot.  A long-tailed coat fell clean and full
over his thighs; his back and shoulders were a wee bit bent to lessen
motion, and above his neat white stock under a grey bowler hat his
lean, greywhiskered and moustachioed face, with harassed eyes, was
preoccupied and sad.  His horse, a brown blood mare, ambled lazily,
head raking forward, and bang tail floating outward from her hocks.
And so, in the June sunshine, they went, all three, along the leafy
lane to Worsted Scotton....

On Tuesday, the day that Mrs. Pendyce had left, the Squire had come
in later than usual, for he felt that after their difference of the
night before, a little coolness would do her no harm.  The first hour
of discovery had been as one confused and angry minute, ending in a
burst of nerves and the telegram to General Pendyce.  He took the
telegram himself, returning from the village with his head down, a
sudden prey to a feeling of shame--an odd and terrible feeling that
he never remembered to have felt before, a sort of fear of his
fellow-creatures.  He would have chosen a secret way, but there was
none, only the highroad, or the path across the village green, and
through the churchyard to his paddocks.  An old cottager was standing
at the turnstile, and the Squire made for him with his head down, as
a bull makes for a fence.  He had meant to pass in silence, but
between him and this old broken husbandman there was a bond forged by
the ages.  Had it meant death, Mr. Pendyce could not have passed one
whose fathers had toiled for his fathers, eaten his fathers' bread,
died with his fathers, without a word and a movement of his hand.

"Evenin', Squire; nice evenin'.  Faine weather fur th' hay!"

The voice was warped and wavery.

'This is my Squire,' it seemed to say, 'whatever ther' be agin him!'

Mr. Pendyce's hand went up to his hat.

"Evenin', Hermon.  Aye, fine weather for the hay!  Mrs. Pendyce has
gone up to London.  We young bachelors, ha!"

He passed on.

Not until he had gone some way did he perceive why he had made that
announcement.  It was simply because he must tell everyone, everyone;
then no one could be astonished.

He hurried on to the house to dress in time for dinner, and show all
that nothing was amiss.  Seven courses would have been served him had
the sky fallen; but he ate little, and drank more claret than was his
wont.  After dinner he sat in his study with the windows open, and in
the mingled day and lamp light read his wife's letter over again.  As
it was with the spaniel John, so with his master--a new idea
penetrated but slowly into his long and narrow head.

She was cracked about George; she did not know what she was doing;
would soon come to her senses.  It was not for him to take any steps.
What steps, indeed, could he take without confessing that Horace
Pendyce had gone too far, that Horace Pendyce was in the wrong?  That
had never been his habit, and he could not alter now.  If she and
George chose to be stubborn, they must take the consequences, and
fend for themselves.

In the silence and the lamplight, growing mellower each minute under
the green silk shade, he sat confusedly thinking of the past.  And in
that dumb reverie, as though of fixed malice, there came to him no
memories that were not pleasant, no images that were not fair.  He
tried to think of her unkindly, he tried to paint her black; but with
the perversity born into the world when he was born, to die when he
was dead, she came to him softly, like the ghost of gentleness, to
haunt his fancy.  She came to him smelling of sweet scents, with a
slight rustling of silk, and the sound of her expectant voice,
saying, "Yes, dear?" as though she were not bored.  He remembered
when he brought her first to Worsted Skeynes thirty-four years ago,
"That timid, and like a rose, but a lady every hinch, the love!" as
his old nurse had said.

He remembered her when George was born, like wax for whiteness and
transparency, with eyes that were all pupils, and a hovering smile.
So many other times he remembered her throughout those years, but
never as a woman faded, old; never as a woman of the past.  Now that
he had not got her, for the first time Mr. Pendyce realised that she
had not grown old, that she was still to him "timid, and like a rose,
but a lady every hinch, the love!"  And he could not bear this
thought; it made him feel so miserable and lonely in the lamplight,
with the grey moths hovering round, and the spaniel John asleep upon
his foot.

So, taking his candle, he went up to bed.  The doors that barred away
the servants' wing were closed.  In all that great remaining space of
house his was the only candle, the only sounding footstep.  Slowly he
mounted as he had mounted many thousand times, but never once like
this, and behind him, like a shadow, mounted the spaniel John.

And She that knows the hearts of men and dogs, the Mother from whom
all things come, to whom they all go home, was watching, and
presently, when they were laid, the one in his deserted bed, the
other on blue linen, propped against the door, She gathered them to
sleep.

But Wednesday came, and with it Wednesday duties.  They who have
passed the windows of the Stoics' Club and seen the Stoics sitting
there have haunting visions of the idle landed classes.  These
visions will not let them sleep, will not let their tongues to cease
from bitterness, for they so long to lead that "idle" life
themselves.  But though in a misty land illusions be our cherished
lot, that we may all think falsely of our neighbours and enjoy
ourselves, the word "idle" is not at all the word.

Many and heavy tasks weighed on the Squire at Worsted Skeynes.  There
was the visit to the stables to decide as to firing Beldame's hock,
or selling the new bay horse because he did not draw men fast enough,
and the vexed question of Bruggan's oats or Beal's, talked out with
Benson, in a leather belt and flannel shirt-sleeves, like a
corpulent, white-whiskered boy.  Then the long sitting in the study
with memorandums and accounts, all needing care, lest So-and-so
should give too little for too little, or too little for too much;
and the smart walk across to Jarvis, the head keeper, to ask after
the health of the new Hungarian bird, or discuss a scheme whereby in
the last drive so many of those creatures he had nurtured from their
youth up might be deterred from flying over to his friend Lord
Quarryman.  And this took long, for Jarvis's feelings forced him to
say six times, "Well, Mr. Pendyce, sir, what I say is we didn't
oughter lose s'many birds in that last drive;" and Mr. Pendyce to
answer: "No, Jarvis, certainly not.  Well, what do you suggest?"  And
that other grievous question--how to get plenty of pheasants and
plenty of foxes to dwell together in perfect harmony--discussed with
endless sympathy, for, as the Squire would say, "Jarvis is quite safe
with foxes."  He could not bear his covers to be drawn blank.

Then back to a sparing lunch, or perhaps no lunch at all, that he
might keep fit and hard; and out again at once on horseback or on
foot to the home farm or further, as need might take him, and a long
afternoon, with eyes fixed on the ribs of bullocks, the colour of
swedes, the surfaces of walls or gates or fences.

Then home again to tea and to the Times, which had as yet received.
but fleeting glances, with close attention to all those Parliamentary
measures threatening, remotely, the existing state of things, except,
of course, that future tax on wheat so needful to the betterment of
Worsted Skeynes.  There were occasions, too, when they brought him
tramps to deal with, to whom his one remark would be, "Hold out your
hands, my man," which, being found unwarped by honest toil, were
promptly sent to gaol.  When found so warped, Mr. Pendyce was at a
loss, and would walk up and down, earnestly trying to discover what
his duty was to them.  There were days, too, almost entirely occupied
by sessions, when many classes of offenders came before him, to whom
he meted justice according to the heinousness of the offence, from
poaching at the top down and down to wife-beating at the bottom; for,
though a humane man, tradition did not suffer him to look on this
form of sport as really criminal--at any rate, not in the country.

It was true that all these matters could have been settled in a
fraction of the time by a young and trained intelligence, but this
would have wronged tradition, disturbed the Squire's settled
conviction that he was doing his duty, and given cause for slanderous
tongues to hint at idleness.  And though, further, it was true that
all this daily labour was devoted directly or indirectly to interests
of his own, what was that but doing his duty to the country and
asserting the prerogative of every Englishman at all costs to be
provincial?

But on this Wednesday the flavour of the dish was gone.  To be alone
amongst his acres, quite alone--to have no one to care whether he did
anything at all, no one to whom he might confide that Beldame's hock
was to be fired, that Peacock was asking for more gates, was almost
more than he could bear.  He would have wired to the girls to come
home, but he could not bring him self to face their questions.
Gerald was at Gib!  George--George was no son of his!--and his pride
forbade him to write to her who had left him thus to solitude and
shame.  For deep down below his stubborn anger it was shame that the
Squire felt--shame that he should have to shun his neighbours, lest
they should ask him questions which, for his own good name and his
own pride, he must answer with a lie; shame that he should not be
master in his own house--still more, shame that anyone should see
that he was not.  To be sure, he did not know that he felt shame,
being unused to introspection, having always kept it at arm's length.
For he always meditated concretely, as, for instance, when he looked
up and did not see his wife at breakfast, but saw Bester making
coffee, he thought, 'That fellow knows all about it, I shouldn't
wonder!' and he felt angry for thinking that.  When he saw Mr. Barter
coming down the drive he thought, 'Confound it!  I can't meet him,'
and slipped out, and felt angry that he had thus avoided him.  When
in the Scotch garden he came on Jackman syringing the rose-trees, he
said to him, "Your mistress has gone to London," and abruptly turned
away, angry that he had been obliged by a mysterious impulse to tell
him that:

So it was, all through that long, sad day, and the only thing that
gave him comfort was to score through, in the draft of his will,
bequests to his eldest son, and busy himself over drafting a clause
to take their place:

"Forasmuch as my eldest son, George Hubert, has by conduct unbecoming
to a gentleman and a Pendyce, proved himself unworthy of my
confidence, and forasmuch as to my regret I am unable to cut the
entail of my estate, I hereby declare that he shall in no way
participate in any division of my other property or of my personal
effects, conscientiously believing that it is my duty so to do in the
interests of my family and of the country, and I make this
declaration without anger."

For, all the anger that he was balked of feeling against his wife,
because he missed her so, was added to that already felt against his
son.

By the last post came a letter from General Pendyce.  He opened it
with fingers as shaky as his brother's writing.


                                   "ARMY AND NAVY CLUB.
"DEAR HORACE,

"What the deuce and all made you send that telegram?  It spoiled my
breakfast, and sent me off in a tearing hurry, to find Margery
perfectly well.  If she'd been seedy or anything I should have been
delighted, but there she was, busy about her dresses and what not,
and I dare say she thought me a lunatic for coming at that time in
the morning.  You shouldn't get into the habit of sending telegrams.
A telegram is a thing that means something--at least, I've always
thought so.  I met George coming away from her in a deuce of a hurry.
I can't write any more now.  I'm just going to have my lunch.

                              "Your affectionate brother,

                                        "CHARLES PENDYCE."


She was well.  She had been seeing George.  With a hardened heart the
Squire went up to bed.

And Wednesday came to an end....

And so on the Thursday afternoon the brown blood mare carried Mr.
Pendyce along the lane, followed by the spaniel John.  They passed
the Firs, where Bellew lived, and, bending sharply to the right,
began to mount towards the Common; and with them mounted the image of
that fellow who was at the bottom of it all--an image that ever
haunted the Squire's mind nowadays; a ghost, high-shouldered, with
little burning eyes, clipped red moustaches, thin bowed legs.  A
plague spot on that system which he loved, a whipping-post to
heredity, a scourge like Attila the Hun; a sort of damnable
caricature of all that a country gentleman should be--of his love of
sport and open air, of his "hardness" and his pluck; of his powers of
knowing his own mind, and taking his liquor like a man; of his creed,
now out of date, of gallantry.  Yes--a kind of cursed bogey of a man,
a spectral follower of the hounds, a desperate character--a man that
in old days someone would have shot; a drinking, white-faced devil
who despised Horace Pendyce, whom Horace Pendyce hated, yet could not
quite despise.  "Always one like that in a hunting country!"  A black
dog on the shoulders of his order.  'Post equitem sedet' Jaspar
Bellew!

The Squire came out on the top of the rise, and all Worsted Scotton
was in sight.  It was a sandy stretch of broom and gorse and heather,
with a few Scotch firs; it had no value at all, and he longed for it,
as a boy might long for the bite someone else had snatched out of his
apple.  It distressed him lying there, his and yet not his, like a
wife who was no wife--as though Fortune were enjoying her at his
expense.  Thus was he deprived of the fulness of his mental image;
for as with all men, so with the Squire, that which he loved and
owned took definite form--a some thing that he saw.  Whenever the
words "Worsted Skeynes" were in his mind--and that was almost always--
there rose before him an image defined and concrete, however
indescribable; and what ever this image was, he knew that Worsted
Scot ton spoiled it.  It was true that he could not think of any use
to which to put the Common, but he felt deeply that it was pure dog-
in-the-mangerism of the cottagers, and this he could not stand. Not
one beast in two years had fattened on its barrenness.  Three old
donkeys alone eked out the remnants of their days.  A bundle of
firewood or old bracken, a few peat sods from one especial corner,
were all the selfish peasants gathered. But the cottagers were no
great matter--he could soon have settled them; it was that fellow
Peacock whom he could not settle, just because he happened to abut on
the Common, and his fathers had been nasty before him.  Mr. Pendyce
rode round looking at the fence his father had put up, until he came
to the portion that Peacock's father had pulled down; and here, by a
strange fatality--such as will happen even in printed records--he
came on Peacock himself standing in the gap, as though he had
foreseen this visit of the Squire's.  The mare stopped of her own
accord, the spaniel John at a measured distance lay down to think,
and all those yards away he could be heard doing it, and now and then
swallowing his tongue.

Peacock stood with his hands in his breeches' pockets.  An old straw
hat was on his head, his little eyes were turned towards the ground;
and his cob, which he had tied to what his father had left standing
of the fence, had his eyes, too, turned towards the ground, for he
was eating grass.  Mr. Pendyce's fight with his burning stable had
stuck in the farmer's "gizzard" ever since.  He felt that he was
forgetting it day by day--would soon forget it altogether.  He felt
the old sacred doubts inherited from his fathers rising every hour
within him.  And so he had come up to see what looking at the gap
would do for his sense of gratitude.  At sight of the Squire his
little eyes turned here and there, as a pig's eyes turn when it
receives a blow behind.  That Mr. Pendyce should have chosen this
moment to come up was as though Providence, that knoweth all things,
knew the natural thing for Mr. Pendyce to do.

"Afternoon, Squire.  Dry weather; rain's badly wanted.  I'll get no
feed if this goes on."

Mr. Pendyce answered:

"Afternoon, Peacock.  Why, your fields are first-rate for grass."

They hastily turned their eyes away, for at that moment they could
not bear to see each other.

There was a silence; then Peacock said:

"What about those gates of mine, Squire?" and his voice quavered, as
though gratitude might yet get the better of him.

The Squire's irritable glance swept over the unfenced space to right
and left, and the thought flashed through his mind:

'Suppose I were to give the beggar those gates, would he--would he
let me enclose the Scotton again?'

He looked at that square, bearded man, and the infallible instinct,
christened so wickedly by Mr. Paramor, guided him.

"What's wrong with your gates, man, I should like to know?"

Peacock looked at him full this time; there was no longer any quaver
in his voice, but a sort of rough good-humour.

"Wy, the 'arf o' them's as rotten as matchwood!"  he said; and he
took a breath of relief, for he knew that gratitude was dead within
his soul.

"Well, I wish mine at the home farm were half as good.  Come, John!"
and, touching the mare with his heel, Mr. Pendyce turned; but before
he had gone a dozen paces he was back.

"Mrs. Peacock well, I hope?  Mrs. Pendyce has gone up to London."

And touching his hat, without waiting for Peacock's answer, he rode
away.  He took the lane past Peacock's farm across the home paddocks,
emerging on the cricket-ground, a field of his own which he had
caused to be converted.

The return match with Coldingham was going on, and, motionless on his
horse, the Squire stopped to watch.  A tall figure in the "long
field" came leisurely towards him.  It was the Hon. Geoffrey Winlow.
Mr. Pendyce subdued an impulse to turn the mare and ride away.

"We're going to give you a licking, Squire!  How's Mrs. Pendyce?  My
wife sent her love."

On the Squire's face in the full sun was more than the sun's flush.

"Thanks," he said, "she's very well.  She's gone up to London."

"And aren't you going up yourself this season?"

The Squire crossed those leisurely eyes with his own.

"I don't think so," he said slowly.

The Hon. Geoffrey returned to his duties.

"We got poor old Barter for a 'blob'!" he said over his shoulder.

The Squire became aware that Mr. Barter was approaching from behind.

"You see that left-hand fellow?" he said, pouting.  "Just watch his
foot.  D'you mean to say that wasn't a no-ball?  He bowled me with a
no-ball.  He's a rank no-batter.  That fellow Locke's no more an
umpire than----"

He stopped and looked earnestly at the bowler.

The Squire 'did not answer, sitting on his mare as though carved in
stone.  Suddenly his throat clicked.

"How's your wife?" he said.  "Margery would have come to see her,
but--but she's gone up to London."

The Rector did not turn his head.

"My wife?  Oh, going on first-rate.  There's another!  I say, Winlow,
this is too bad!"

The Hon. Geoffrey's pleasant voice was heard:

"Please not to speak to the man at the wheel!"

The Squire turned the mare and rode away; and the spaniel John, who
had been watching from a measured distance, followed after, his
tongue lolling from his mouth.

The Squire turned through a gate down the main aisle of the home
covert, and the nose and the tail of the spaniel John, who scented
creatures to the left and right, were in perpetual motion.  It was
cool in there.  The June foliage made one long colonnade, broken by a
winding river of sky.  Among the oaks and hazels; the beeches and the
elms, the ghostly body of a birch-tree shone here and there, captured
by those grosser trees which seemed to cluster round her, proud of
their prisoner, loth to let her go, that subtle spirit of their wood.
They knew that, were she gone, their forest lady, wilder and yet
gentler than themselves--they would lose credit, lose the grace and
essence of their corporate being.

The Squire dismounted, tethered his horse, and sat under one of those
birch-trees, on the fallen body of an elm.  The spaniel John also sat
and loved him with his eyes.  And sitting there they thought their
thoughts, but their thoughts were different.

For under this birch-tree Horace Pendyce had stood and kissed his
wife the very day he brought her home to Worsted Skeynes, and though
he did not see the parallel between her and the birch-tree that some
poor imaginative creature might have drawn, yet was he thinking of
that long past afternoon.  But the spaniel John was not thinking of
it; his recollection was too dim, for he had been at that time
twenty-eight years short of being born.

Mr. Pendyce sat there long with his horse and with his dog, and from
out the blackness of the spaniel John, who was more than less asleep,
there shone at times an eye turned on his master like some devoted
star.  The sun, shining too, gilded the stem of the birch-tree.  The
birds and beasts began their evening stir all through the
undergrowth, and rabbits, popping out into the ride, looked with
surprise at the spaniel John, and popped in back again.  They knew
that men with horses had no guns, but could not bring themselves to
trust that black and hairy thing whose nose so twitched whenever they
appeared.  The gnats came out to dance, and at their dancing, every
sound and scent and shape became the sounds and scents and shapes of
evening; and there was evening in the Squire's heart.

Slowly and stiffly he got up from the log and mounted to ride home.
It would be just as lonely when he got there, but a house is better
than a wood, where the gnats dance, the birds and creatures stir and
stir, and shadows lengthen; where the sun steals upwards on the tree-
stems, and all is careless of its owner, Man.

It was past seven o'clock when he went to his study.  There was a
lady standing at the window, and Mr. Pendyce said:

"I beg your pardon?"

The lady turned; it was his wife.  The Squire stopped with a hoarse
sound, and stood silent, covering his eyes with his hand.




CHAPTER VIII

ACUTE ATTACK OF 'PENDYCITIS'

Mrs. Pendyce felt very faint when she hurried away from Chelsea.  She
had passed through hours of great emotion, and eaten nothing.

Like sunset clouds or the colours in mother-o'-pearl, so, it is
written, shall be the moods of men--interwoven as the threads of an
embroidery, less certain than an April day, yet with a rhythm of
their own that never fails, and no one can quite scan.

A single cup of tea on her way home, and her spirit revived.  It
seemed suddenly as if there had been a great ado about nothing!  As
if someone had known how stupid men could be, and been playing a
fantasia on that stupidity.  But this gaiety of spirit soon died
away, confronted by the problem of what she should do next.

She reached her hotel without making a decision.  She sat down in the
reading-room to write to Gregory, and while she sat there with her
pen in her hand a dreadful temptation came over her to say bitter
things to him, because by not seeing people as they were he had
brought all this upon them.  But she had so little practice in saying
bitter things that she could not think of any that were nice enough,
and in the end she was obliged to leave them out.  After finishing
and sending off the note she felt better.  And it came to her
suddenly that, if she packed at once, there was just time to catch
the 5.55 to Worsted Skeynes.

As in leaving her home, so in returning, she followed her instinct,
and her instinct told her to avoid unnecessary fuss and suffering.

The decrepit station fly, mouldy and smelling of stables, bore her
almost lovingly towards the Hall.  Its old driver, clean-faced,
cheery, somewhat like a bird, drove her almost furiously, for, though
he knew nothing, he felt that two whole days and half a day were
quite long enough for her to be away.  At the lodge gate old Roy, the
Skye, was seated on his haunches, and the sight of him set Mrs.
Pendyce trembling as though till then she had not realised that she
was coming home.

Home!  The long narrow lane without a turning, the mists and
stillness, the driving rain and hot bright afternoons; the scents of
wood smoke and hay and the scent of her flowers; the Squire's voice,
the dry rattle of grass-cutters, the barking of dogs, and distant hum
of threshing; and Sunday sounds--church bells and rooks, and Mr.
Barter's preaching; the tastes, too, of the very dishes!  And all
these scents and sounds and tastes, and the feel of the air to her
cheeks, seemed to have been for ever in the past, and to be going on
for ever in the time to come.

She turned red and white by turns, and felt neither joy nor sadness,
for in a wave the old life came over her.  She went at once to the
study to wait for her husband to come in.  At the hoarse sound he
made, her heart beat fast, while old Roy and the spaniel John growled
gently at each other.

"John," she murmured, "aren't you glad to see me, dear?"

The spaniel John, without moving, beat his tail against his master's
foot.

The Squire raised his head at last.

"Well, Margery?" was all he said.

It shot through her mind that he looked older, and very tired!

The dinner-gong began to sound, and as though attracted by its long
monotonous beating, a swallow flew in at one of the narrow windows
and fluttered round the room.  Mrs. Pendyce's eyes followed its
flight.

The Squire stepped forward suddenly and took her hand.

"Don't run away from me again, Margery!"  he said; and stooping down,
he kissed it.

At this action, so unlike her husband, Mrs. Pendyce blushed like a
girl.  Her eyes above his grey and close-cropped head seemed grateful
that he did not reproach her, glad of that caress.

"I have some news to tell you, Horace.  Helen Bellew has given George
up!"

The Squire dropped her hand.

"And quite time too," he said.  "I dare say George has refused to
take his dismissal.  He's as obstinate as a mule."

"I found him in a dreadful state."

Mr. Pendyce asked uneasily:

"What?  What's that?"

"He looked so desperate."

"Desperate?" said the Squire, with a sort of startled anger.

Mrs. Pendyce went on:

"It was dreadful to see his face.  I was with him this afternoon-"

The Squire said suddenly:

"He's not ill, is he?"

"No, not ill.  Oh, Horace, don't you understand?  I was afraid he
might do something rash.  He was so--miserable."

The Squire began to walk up and down.

"Is he is he safe now?" he burst out.

Mrs. Pendyce sat down rather suddenly in the nearest chair.

"Yes," she said with difficulty, "I--I think so."

"Think!  What's the good of that?  What----Are you feeling faint,
Margery?"

Mrs. Pendyce, who had closed her eyes, said:

"No dear, it's all right."

Mr. Pendyce came close, and since air and quiet were essential to her
at that moment, he bent over and tried by every means in his power to
rouse her; and she, who longed to be let alone, sympathised with him,
for she knew that it was natural that he should do this.  In spite of
his efforts the feeling of faintness passed, and, taking his hand,
she stroked it gratefully.

"What is to be done now, Horace?"

"Done!"  cried the Squire.  "Good God!  how should I know?  Here you
are in this state, all because of that d---d fellow Bellew and his
d---d wife!  What you want is some dinner."

So saying, he put his arm around her, and half leading, half
carrying, took her to her room.

They did not talk much at dinner, and of indifferent things, of Mrs.
Barter, Peacock, the roses, and Beldame's hock.  Only once they came
too near to that which instinct told them to avoid, for the Squire
said suddenly:

"I suppose you saw that woman?"

And Mrs. Pendyce murmured:

"Yes."

She soon went to her room, and had barely got into bed when he
appeared, saying as though ashamed:

"I'm very early."

She lay awake, and every now and then the Squire would ask her, "Are
you asleep, Margery?" hoping that she might have dropped off, for he
himself could not sleep.  And she knew that he meant to be nice to
her, and she knew, too, that as he lay awake, turning from side to
side, he was thinking like herself: 'What's to be done next?'  And
that his fancy, too, was haunted by a ghost, high-shouldered, with
little burning eyes, red hair, and white freckled face.  For, save
that George was miserable, nothing was altered, and the cloud of
vengeance still hung over Worsted Skeynes.  Like some weary lesson
she rehearsed her thoughts: 'Now Horace can answer that letter of
Captain Bellow's, can tell him that George will not--indeed, cannot--
see her again.  He must answer it.  But will he?'

She groped after the secret springs of her husband's character,
turning and turning and trying to understand, that she might know the
best way of approaching him.  And she could not feel sure, for behind
all the little outside points of his nature, that she thought so
"funny," yet could comprehend, there was something which seemed to
her as unknown, as impenetrable as the dark, a sort of thickness of
soul, a sort of hardness, a sort of barbaric-what?  And as when in
working at her embroidery the point of her needle would often come to
a stop against stiff buckram, so now was the point of her soul
brought to a stop against the soul of her husband.  'Perhaps,' she
thought, 'Horace feels like that with me.'  She need not so have
thought, for the Squire never worked embroideries, nor did the needle
of his soul make voyages of discovery.

By lunch-time the next day she had not dared to say a word.  'If I
say nothing,' she thought, 'he may write it of his own accord.'

Without attracting his attention, therefore, she watched every
movement of his morning.  She saw him sitting at his bureau with a
creased and crumpled letter, and knew it was Bellew's; and she
hovered about, coming softly in and out, doing little things here and
there and in the hall, outside.  But the Squire gave no sign,
motionless as the spaniel John couched along the ground with his nose
between his paws.

After lunch she could bear it no longer.

"What do you think ought to be done now, Horace?"

The Squire looked at her fixedly.

"If you imagine," he said at last, "that I'll have anything to do
with that fellow Bellew, you're very much mistaken."

Mrs. Pendyce was arranging a vase of flowers, and her hand shook so
that some of the water was spilled over the cloth.  She took out her
handkerchief and dabbed it up.

"You never answered his letter, dear," she said.

The Squire put his back against the sideboard; his stiff figure, with
lean neck and angry eyes, whose pupils were mere pin-points, had a
certain dignity.

"Nothing shall induce me!"  he said, and his voice was harsh and
strong, as though he spoke for something bigger than himself.  "I've
thought it over all the morning, and I'm d---d if I do!  The man is a
ruffian.  I won't knuckle under to him!"

Mrs. Pendyce clasped her hands.

"Oh, Horace," she said; "but for the sake of us all!  Only just give
him that assurance."

"And let him crow over me!" cried the Squire.  "By Jove, no!"

"But, Horace, I thought that was what you wanted George to do.  You
wrote to him and asked him to promise."

The Squire answered:

"You know nothing about it, Margery; you know nothing about me.
D'you think I'm going to tell him that his wife has thrown my son
over--let him keep me gasping like a fish all this time, and then get
the best of it in the end?  Not if I have to leave the county--not if
I----"

But, as though he had imagined the most bitter fate of all, he
stopped.

Mrs. Pendyce, putting her hands on the lapels of his coat, stood with
her head bent.  The colour had gushed into her cheeks, her eyes were
bright with tears.  And there came from her in her emotion a warmth
and fragrance, a charm, as though she were again young, like the
portrait under which they stood.

"Not if I ask you, Horace?"

The Squire's face was suffused with dusky colour; he clenched his
hands and seemed to sway and hesitate.

"No, Margery," he said hoarsely; "it's--it's--I can't!"

And, breaking away from her, he left the room.

Mrs. Pendyce looked after him; her fingers, from which he had torn
his coat, began twining the one with the other.




CHAPTER IX

BELLEW BOWS TO A LADY

There was silence at the Firs, and in that silent house, where only
five rooms were used, an old manservant sat in his pantry on a wooden
chair, reading from an article out of Rural Life.  There was no one
to disturb him, for the master was asleep, and the housekeeper had
not yet come to cook the dinner.  He read slowly, through spectacles,
engraving the words for ever on the tablets of his mind.  He read
about the construction and habits of the owl: "In the tawny, or
brown, owl there is a manubrial process; the furcula, far from being
joined to the keel of the sternum, consists of two stylets, which do
not even meet; while the posterior margin of the sternum presents two
pairs of projections, with corresponding fissures between."  The old
manservant paused, resting his blinking eyes on the pale sunlight
through the bars of his narrow window, so that a little bird on the
window-sill looked at him and instantly flew away.

The old manservant read on again: "The pterylological characters of
Photodilus seem not to have been investigated, but it has been found
to want the tarsal loop, as well as the manubrial process, while its
clavicles are not joined in a furcula, nor do they meet the keel, and
the posterior margin of the sternum has processes and fissures like
the tawny section."  Again he paused, and his gaze was satisfied and
bland.

Up in the little smoking-room in a leather chair his master sat
asleep.  In front of him were stretched his legs in dusty riding-
boots.  His lips were closed, but through a little hole at one corner
came a tiny puffing sound.  On the floor by his side was an empty
glass, between his feet a Spanish bulldog.  On a shelf above his head
reposed some frayed and yellow novels with sporting titles, written
by persons in their inattentive moments.  Over the chimneypiece
presided the portrait of Mr. Jorrocks persuading his horse to cross a
stream.

And the face of Jaspar Bellew asleep was the face of a man who has
ridden far, to get away from himself, and to-morrow will have to ride
far again.  His sandy eyebrows twitched with his dreams against the
dead-white, freckled skin above high cheekbones, and two hard ridges
were fixed between his brows; now and then over the sleeping face
came the look of one riding at a gate.

In the stables behind the house she who had carried him on his ride,
having rummaged out her last grains of corn, lifted her nose and
poked it through the bars of her loosebox to see what he was doing
who had not carried her master that sweltering afternoon, and seeing
that he was awake, she snorted lightly, to tell him there was thunder
in the air.  All else in the stables was deadly quiet; the
shrubberies around were still; and in the hushed house the master
slept.

But on the edge of his wooden chair in the silence of his pantry the
old manservant read, "This bird is a voracious feeder," and he
paused, blinking his eyes and nervously puckering his lips, for he
had partially understood....

Mrs. Pendyce was crossing the fields.  She had on her prettiest
frock, of smoky-grey crepe, and she looked a little anxiously at the
sky.  Gathered in the west a coming storm was chasing the whitened
sunlight.  Against its purple the trees stood blackish-green.
Everything was very still, not even the poplars stirred, yet the
purple grew with sinister, unmoving speed.  Mrs. Pendyce hurried,
grasping her skirts in both her hands, and she noticed that the
cattle were all grouped under the hedge.

'What dreadful-looking clouds!' she thought.  'I wonder if I shall
get to the Firs before it comes?' But though her frock made her
hasten, her heart made her stand still, it fluttered so, and was so
full.  Suppose he were not sober!  She remembered those little
burning eyes, which had frightened her so the night he dined at
Worsted Skeynes and fell out of his dogcart afterwards.  A kind of
legendary malevolence clung about his image.

'Suppose he is horrid to me!' she thought.

She could not go back now; but she wished--how she wished!--that it
were over.  A heat-drop splashed her glove.  She crossed the lane and
opened the Firs gate.  Throwing frightened glances at the sky, she
hastened down the drive.  The purple was couched like a pall on the
treetops, and these had begun to sway and moan as though struggling
and weeping at their fate.  Some splashes of warm rain were falling.
A streak of lightning tore the firmament.  Mrs. Pendyce rushed into
the porch covering her ears with her hands.

'How long will it last?' she thought.  'I'm so frightened!'...

A very old manservant, whose face was all puckers, opened the door
suddenly to peer out at the storm, but seeing Mrs. Pendyce, he peered
at her instead.

"Is Captain Bellew at home?"

"Yes, ma'am.  The Captain's in the study.  We don't use the drawing-
room now.  Nasty storm coming on, ma'am--nasty storm.  Will you
please to sit down a minute, while I let the Captain know?"

The hall was low and dark; the whole house was low and dark, and
smelled a little of woodrot.  Mrs. Pendyce did not sit down, but
stood under an arrangement of three foxes' heads, supporting two
hunting-crops, with their lashes hanging down.  And the heads of
those animals suggested to her the thought: 'Poor man!  He must be
very lonely here.'

She started.  Something was rubbing against her knees: it was only an
enormous bulldog.  She stooped down to pat it, and having once begun,
found it impossible to leave off, for when she took her hand away the
creature pressed against her, and she was afraid for her frock.

"Poor old boy--poor old boy!"  she kept on murmuring.  "Did he want a
little attention?"

A voice behind her said:

"Get out, Sam!  Sorry to have kept you waiting.  Won't you come in
here?"

Mrs. Pendyce, blushing and turning pale by turns, passed into a low,
small, panelled room, smelling of cigars and spirits.  Through the
window, which was cut up into little panes, she could see the rain
driving past, the shrubs bent and dripping from the downpour.

"Won't you sit down?"

Mrs. Pendyce sat down.  She had clasped her hands together; she now
raised her eyes and looked timidly at her host.

She saw a thin, high-shouldered figure, with bowed legs a little
apart, rumpled sandy hair, a pale, freckled face, and little dark
blinking eyes.

"Sorry the room's in such a mess.  Don't often have the pleasure of
seeing a lady.  I was asleep; generally am at this time of year!"

The bristly red moustache was contorted as though his lips were
smiling.

Mrs. Pendyce murmured vaguely.

It seemed to her that nothing of this was real, but all some horrid
dream.  A clap of thunder made her cover her ears.

Bellew walked to the window, glanced at the sky, and came back to the
hearth.  His little burning eyes seemed to look her through and
through.  'If I don't speak at once,' she thought, 'I never shall
speak at all.'

"I've come," she began, and with those words she lost her fright; her
voice, that had been so uncertain hitherto, regained its trick of
speech; her eyes, all pupil, stared dark and gentle at this man who
had them all in his power--"I've come to tell you something, Captain
Bellew!"

The figure by the hearth bowed, and her fright, like some evil bird,
came guttering down on her again.  It was dreadful, it was barbarous
that she, that anyone, should have to speak of such things; it was
barbarous that men and women should so misunderstand each other, and
have so little sympathy and consideration; it was barbarous that she,
Margery Pendyce, should have to talk on this subject that must give
them both such pain.  It was all so mean and gross and common!  She
took out her handkerchief and passed it over her lips.

"Please forgive me for speaking.  Your wife has given my son up,
Captain Bellew!"

Bellew did not move.

"She does not love him; she told me so herself!  He will never see
her again!"

How hateful, how horrible, how odious!

And still Bellew did not speak, but stood devouring her with his
little eyes; and how long this went on she could not tell.

He turned his back suddenly, and leaned against the mantelpiece.

Mrs. Pendyce passed her hand over her brow to get rid of a feeling of
unreality.

"That is all," she said.

Her voice sounded to herself unlike her own.

'If that is really all,' she thought, 'I suppose I must get up and
go!' And it flashed through her mind: 'My poor dress will be ruined!'

Bellew turned round.

"Will you have some tea?"

Mrs. Pendyce smiled a pale little smile.

"No, thank you; I don't think I could drink any tea."

"I wrote a letter to your husband."

"Yes."

"He didn't answer it."

"No."

Mrs. Pendyce saw him staring at her, and a desperate struggle began
within her.  Should she not ask him to keep his promise, now that
George----?  Was not that what she had come for?  Ought she not--
ought she not for all their sakes?

Bellew went up to the table, poured out some whisky, and drank it
off.

"You don't ask me to stop the proceedings," he said.

Mrs. Pendyce's lips were parted, but nothing came through those
parted lips.  Her eyes, black as sloes in her white face, never moved
from his; she made no sound.

Bellew dashed his hand across his brow.

"Well, I will!"  he said, "for your sake.  There's my hand on it.
You're the only lady I know!"

He gripped her gloved fingers, brushed past her, and she saw that she
was alone.

She found her own way out, with the tears running down her face.
Very gently she shut the hall door.

'My poor dress!' she thought.  'I wonder if I might stand here a
little?  The rain looks nearly over!'

The purple cloud had passed, and sunk behind the house, and a bright
white sky was pouring down a sparkling rain; a patch of deep blue
showed behind the fir-trees in the drive.  The thrushes were out
already after worms.  A squirrel scampering along a branch stopped
and looked at Mrs. Pendyce, and Mrs. Pendyce looked absently at the
squirrel from behind the little handkerchief with which she was
drying her eyes.

'That poor man!' she thought 'poor solitary creature!  There's the
sun!'

And it seemed to her that it was the first time the sun had shone all
this fine hot year.  Gathering her dress in both hands, she stepped
into the drive, and soon was back again in the fields.

Every green thing glittered, and the air was so rain-sweet that all
the summer scents were gone, before the crystal scent of nothing.
Mrs. Pendyce's shoes were soon wet through.

'How happy I am!' she thought 'how glad and happy I am!'

And the feeling, which was not as definite as this, possessed her to
the exclusion of all other feelings in the rain-soaked fields.

The cloud that had hung over Worsted Skeynes so long had spent itself
and gone.  Every sound seemed to be music, every moving thing danced.
She longed to get to her early roses, and see how the rain had
treated them.  She had a stile to cross, and when she was safely over
she paused a minute to gather her skirts more firmly.  It was a home-
field she was in now, and right before her lay the country house.
Long and low and white it stood in the glamourous evening haze, with
two bright panes, where the sunlight fell, watching, like eyes, the
confines of its acres; and behind it, to the left, broad, square, and
grey among its elms, the village church.  Around, above, beyond, was
peace--the sleepy, misty peace of the English afternoon.

Mrs. Pendyce walked towards her garden.  When she was near it, away
to the right, she saw the Squire and Mr. Barter.  They were standing
together looking at a tree and--symbol of a subservient under-world--
the spaniel John was seated on his tail, and he, too, was looking at
the tree.  The faces of the Rector and Mr. Pendyce were turned up at
the same angle, and different as those faces and figures were in
their eternal rivalry of type, a sort of essential likeness struck
her with a feeling of surprise.  It was as though a single spirit
seeking for a body had met with these two shapes, and becoming
confused, decided to inhabit both.

Mrs. Pendyce did not wave to them, but passed quickly, between the
yew-trees, through the wicket-gate....

In her garden bright drops were falling one by one from every rose-
leaf, and in the petals of each rose were jewels of water.  A little
down the path a weed caught her eye; she looked closer, and saw that
there were several.

'Oh,' she thought, 'how dreadfully they've let the weeds I must
really speak to Jackman!'

A rose-tree, that she herself had planted, rustled close by, letting
fall a shower of drops.

Mrs. Pendyce bent down, and took a white rose in her fingers.  With
her smiling lips she kissed its face.

1907.





End of Project Gutenberg's Etext The Country House, by John Galsworthy






FRATERNITY

By John Galsworthy




CHAPTER I

THE SHADOW

In the afternoon of the last day of April, 190-, a billowy sea of
little broken clouds crowned the thin air above High Street,
Kensington.  This soft tumult of vapours, covering nearly all the
firmament, was in onslaught round a patch of blue sky, shaped
somewhat like a star, which still gleamed--a single gentian flower
amongst innumerable grass.  Each of these small clouds seemed fitted
with a pair of unseen wings, and, as insects flight on their too
constant journeys, they were setting forth all ways round this starry
blossom which burned so clear with the colour of its far fixity.  On
one side they were massed in fleecy congeries, so crowding each other
that no edge or outline was preserved; on the other, higher,
stronger, emergent from their fellow-clouds, they seemed leading the
attack on that surviving gleam of the ineffable.  Infinite was the
variety of those million separate vapours, infinite the unchanging
unity of that fixed blue star.

Down in the street beneath this eternal warring of the various soft-
winged clouds on the unmisted ether, men, women, children, and their
familiars--horses, dogs, and cats--were pursuing their occupations
with the sweet zest of the Spring.  They streamed along, and the
noise of their frequenting rose in an unbroken roar: "I, I-I, I!"

The crowd was perhaps thickest outside the premises of Messrs. Rose
and Thorn.  Every kind of being, from the highest to the lowest,
passed in front of the hundred doors of this establishment; and
before the costume window a rather tall, slight, graceful woman stood
thinking: "It really is gentian blue!  But I don't know whether I
ought to buy it, with all this distress about!"

Her eyes, which were greenish-grey, and often ironical lest they
should reveal her soul, seemed probing a blue gown displayed in that
window, to the very heart of its desirability.

"And suppose Stephen doesn't like me in it!"  This doubt set her
gloved fingers pleating the bosom of her frock.  Into that little
pleat she folded the essence of herself, the wish to have and the
fear of having, the wish to be and the fear of being, and her veil,
falling from the edge of her hat, three inches from her face,
shrouded with its tissue her half-decided little features, her rather
too high cheek-bones, her cheeks which were slightly hollowed, as
though Time had kissed them just too much.

The old man, with a long face, eyes rimmed like a parrot's, and
discoloured nose, who, so long as he did not sit down, was permitted
to frequent the pavement just there and sell the 'Westminster
Gazette', marked her, and took his empty pipe out of his mouth.

It was his business to know all the passers-by, and his pleasure too;
his mind was thus distracted from the condition of his feet.  He knew
this particular lady with the delicate face, and found her puzzling;
she sometimes bought the paper which Fate condemned him, against his
politics, to sell.  The Tory journals were undoubtedly those which
her class of person ought to purchase.  He knew a lady when he saw
one.  In fact, before Life threw him into the streets, by giving him
a disease in curing which his savings had disappeared, he had been a
butler, and for the gentry had a respect as incurable as was his
distrust of "all that class of people" who bought their things at
"these 'ere large establishments," and attended "these 'ere
subscription dances at the Town 'All over there."  He watched her
with special interest, not, indeed, attempting to attract attention,
though conscious in every fibre that he had only sold five copies of
his early issues.  And he was sorry and surprised when she passed
from his sight through one of the hundred doors.

The thought which spurred her into Messrs. Rose and Thorn's was this:
"I am thirty-eight; I have a daughter of seventeen.  I cannot afford
to lose my husband's admiration.  The time is on me when I really
must make myself look nice!"

Before a long mirror, in whose bright pool there yearly bathed
hundreds of women's bodies, divested of skirts and bodices, whose
unruffled surface reflected daily a dozen women's souls divested of
everything, her eyes became as bright as steel; but having
ascertained the need of taking two inches off the chest of the
gentian frock, one off its waist, three off its hips, and of adding
one to its skirt, they clouded again with doubt, as though prepared
to fly from the decision she had come to.  Resuming her bodice, she
asked:

"When could you let me have it?"

"At the end of the week, madam."

"Not till then?"

"We are very pressed, madam."

"Oh, but you must let me have it by Thursday at the latest, please."

The fitter sighed: "I will do my best."

"I shall rely on you.  Mrs.  Stephen Dallison, 76, The Old Square."

Going downstairs she thought: "That poor girl looked very tired; it's
a shame they give them such long hours!" and she passed into the
street.

A voice said timidly behind her: "Westminister, marm?"

"That's the poor old creature," thought Cecilia Dallison, "whose nose
is so unpleasant.  I don't really think I--" and she felt for a penny
in her little bag.  Standing beside the "poor old creature" was a
woman clothed in worn but neat black clothes, and an ancient toque
which had once known a better head.  The wan remains of a little bit
of fur lay round her throat.  She had a thin face, not without
refinement, mild, very clear brown eyes, and a twist of smooth black
hair.  Beside her was a skimpy little boy, and in her arms a baby.
Mrs.  Dallison held out two-pence for the paper, but it was at the
woman that she looked.

"Oh, Mrs. Hughs," she said, "we've been expecting you to hem the
curtains!"

The woman slightly pressed the baby.

"I am very sorry, ma'am.  I knew I was expected, but I've had such
trouble."

Cecilia winced.  "Oh, really?"

"Yes, m'm; it's my husband."

"Oh, dear!" Cecilia murmured.  "But why didn't you come to us?"

"I didn't feel up to it, ma'am; I didn't really--"

A tear ran down her cheek, and was caught in a furrow near the mouth.

Mrs. Dallison said hurriedly: "Yes, yes; I'm very sorry."

"This old gentleman, Mr. Creed, lives in the same house with us, and
he is going to speak to my husband."

The old man wagged his head on its lean stalk of neck.

"He ought to know better than be'ave 'imself so disrespectable," he
said.

Cecilia looked at him, and murmured: "I hope he won't turn on you!"

The old man shuffled his feet.

"I likes to live at peace with everybody.  I shall have the police to
'im if he misdemeans hisself with me!...  Westminister, sir?"  And,
screening his mouth from Mrs. Dallison, he added in a loud whisper:
"Execution of the Shoreditch murderer!"

Cecilia felt suddenly as though the world were listening to her
conversation with these two rather seedy persons.

"I don't really know what I can do for you, Mrs. Hughs.  I'll speak
to Mr. Dallison, and to Mr. Hilary too."

"Yes, ma'am; thank you, ma'am."

With a smile which seemed to deprecate its own appearance, Cecilia
grasped her skirts and crossed the road.  "I hope I wasn't
unsympathetic," she thought, looking back at the three figures on the
edge of the pavement--the old man with his papers, and his
discoloured nose thrust upwards under iron-rimmed spectacles; the
seamstress in her black dress; the skimpy little boy.  Neither
speaking nor moving, they were looking out before them at the
traffic; and something in Cecilia revolted at this sight.  It was
lifeless, hopeless, unaesthetic.

"What can one do," she thought, "for women like Mrs. Hughs, who
always look like that?  And that poor old man!  I suppose I oughtn't
to have bought that dress, but Stephen is tired of this."

She turned out of the main street into a road preserved from commoner
forms of traffic, and stopped at a long low house half hidden behind
the trees of its front garden.

It was the residence of Hilary Dallison, her husband's brother, and
himself the husband of Bianca, her own sister.

The queer conceit came to Cecilia that it resembled Hilary.  Its look
was kindly and uncertain; its colour a palish tan; the eyebrows of
its windows rather straight than arched, and those deep-set eyes, the
windows, twinkled hospitably; it had, as it were, a sparse moustache
and beard of creepers, and dark marks here and there, like the lines
and shadows on the faces of those who think too much.  Beside it, and
apart, though connected by a passage, a studio stood, and about that
studio--of white rough-cast, with a black oak door, and peacock-blue
paint--was something a little hard and fugitive, well suited to
Bianca, who used it, indeed, to paint in.  It seemed to stand, with
its eyes on the house, shrinking defiantly from too close company, as
though it could not entirely give itself to anything.  Cecilia, who
often worried over the relations between her sister and her brother-
in-law, suddenly felt how fitting and symbolical this was.

But, mistrusting inspirations, which, experience told her, committed
one too much, she walked quickly up the stone-flagged pathway to the
door.  Lying in the porch was a little moonlight-coloured lady
bulldog, of toy breed, who gazed up with eyes like agates, delicately
waving her bell-rope tail, as it was her habit to do towards
everyone, for she had been handed down clearer and paler with each
generation, till she had at last lost all the peculiar virtues of
dogs that bait the bull.

Speaking the word "Miranda!" Mrs. Stephen Dallison tried to pat this
daughter of the house.  The little bulldog withdrew from her caress,
being also unaccustomed to commit herself....

Mondays were Blanca's "days," and Cecilia made her way towards the
studio.  It was a large high room, full of people.

Motionless, by himself, close to the door, stood an old man, very
thin and rather bent, with silvery hair, and a thin silvery beard
grasped in his transparent fingers.  He was dressed in a suit of
smoke-grey cottage tweed, which smelt of peat, and an Oxford shirt,
whose collar, ceasing prematurely, exposed a lean brown neck; his
trousers, too, ended very soon, and showed light socks.  In his
attitude there was something suggestive of the patience and
determination of a mule.  At Cecilia's approach he raised his eyes.
It was at once apparent why, in so full a room, he was standing
alone.  Those blue eyes looked as if he were about to utter a
prophetic statement.

"They have been speaking to me of an execution," he said.

Cecilia made a nervous movement.

"Yes, Father?"

"To take life," went on the old man in a voice which, though charged
with strong emotion, seemed to be speaking to itself, "was the chief
mark of the insensate barbarism still prevailing in those days.  It
sprang from that most irreligious fetish, the belief in the
permanence of the individual ego after death.  From the worship of
that fetish had come all the sorrows of the human race."

Cecilia, with an involuntary quiver of her little bag, said:

"Father, how can you?"

"They did not stop to love each other in this life; they were so sure
they had all eternity to do it in.  The doctrine was an invention to
enable men to act like dogs with clear consciences.  Love could never
come to full fruition till it was destroyed."

Cecilia looked hastily round; no one had heard.  She moved a little
sideways, and became merged in another group.  Her father's lips
continued moving.  He had resumed the patient attitude which so
slightly suggested mules.  A voice behind her said: "I do think your
father is such an interesting man, Mrs. Dallison."

Cecilia turned and saw a woman of middle height, with her hair done
in the early Italian fashion, and very small, dark, lively eyes,
which looked as though her love of living would keep her busy each
minute of her day and all the minutes that she could occupy of
everybody else's days.

"Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace?  Oh! how do you do?  I've been meaning to
come and see you for quite a long time, but I know you're always so
busy."

With doubting eyes, half friendly and half defensive, as though
chaffing to prevent herself from being chaffed, Cecilia looked at
Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace, whom she had met several times at Bianca's
house.  The widow of a somewhat famous connoisseur, she was now
secretary of the League for Educating Orphans who have Lost both
Parents, vice-president of the Forlorn Hope for Maids in Peril, and
treasurer to Thursday Hops for Working Girls.  She seemed to know
every man and woman who was worth knowing, and some besides; to see
all picture-shows; to hear every new musician; and attend the opening
performance of every play.  With regard to literature, she would say
that authors bored her; but she was always doing them good turns,
inviting them to meet their critics or editors, and sometimes--though
this was not generally known--pulling them out of the holes they were
prone to get into, by lending them a sum of money--after which, as
she would plaintively remark; she rarely saw them more.

She had a peculiar spiritual significance to Mrs. Stephen Dallison,
being just on the borderline between those of Bianca's friends whom
Cecilia did not wish and those whom she did wish to come to her own
house, for Stephen, a barrister in an official position, had a keen
sense of the ridiculous.  Since Hilary wrote books and was a poet,
and Bianca painted, their friends would naturally be either
interesting or queer; and though for Stephen's sake it was important
to establish which was which, they were so very often both.  Such
people stimulated, taken in small doses, but neither on her husband's
account nor on her daughter's did Cecilia desire that they should
come to her in swarms.  Her attitude of mind towards them was, in
fact, similar-a sort of pleasurable dread-to that in which she
purchased the Westminster Gazette to feel the pulse of social
progress.

Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace's dark little eyes twinkled.

"I hear that Mr. Stone--that is your father's name, I think--is
writing a book which will create quite a sensation when it comes
out."

Cecilia bit her lips.  "I hope it never will come out," she was on
the point of saying.

"What will it be called?"  asked Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace.  "I gather
that it's a book of Universal Brotherhood.  That's so nice!"

Cecilia made a movement of annoyance.  "Who told you?"

"Ah!" said Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace, "I do think your sister gets
such attractive people at her At Homes.  They all take such interest
in things."

A little surprised at herself, Cecilia answered "Too much for me!"

Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace smiled.  "I mean in art and social
questions.  Surely one can't be too interested in them?"

Cecilia said rather hastily:

"Oh no, of course not."  And both ladies looked around them.  A buzz
of conversation fell on Cecilia's ears.

"Have you seen the 'Aftermath'?  It's really quite wonderful!"

"Poor old chap!  he's so rococo...."

"There's a new man.

"She's very sympathetic.

"But the condition of the poor....

"Is that Mr. Balladyce?  Oh, really.

"It gives you such a feeling of life.

"Bourgeois!..."

The voice of Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace broke through: "But do please
tell me who is that young girl with the young man looking at the
picture over there.  She's quite charming!"

Cecilia's cheeks went a very pretty pink.

"Oh, that's my little daughter."

"Really!  Have you a daughter as big as that?  Why, she must be
seventeen!"

"Nearly eighteen!"

"What is her name?"

"Thyme," said Cecilia, with a little smile.  She felt that Mrs.
Tallents Smallpeace was about to say: 'How charming!'

Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace saw her smile and paused.  "Who is the young
man with her?"

"My nephew, Martin Stone."

"The son of your brother who was killed with his wife in that
dreadful Alpine accident?  He looks a very decided sort of young man.
He's got that new look.  What is he?"

"He's very nearly a doctor.  I never know whether he's quite finished
or not."

"I thought perhaps he might have something to do with Art."

"Oh no, he despises Art."

"And does your daughter despise it, too?"

"No; she's studying it."

"Oh, really!  How interesting!  I do think the rising generation
amusing, don't you?  They're so independent."

Cecilia looked uneasily at the rising generation.  They were standing
side by side before the picture, curiously observant and detached,
exchanging short remarks and glances.  They seemed to watch all these
circling, chatting, bending, smiling people with a sort of youthful,
matter-of-fact, half-hostile curiosity.  The young man had a pale
face, clean-shaven, with a strong jaw, a long, straight nose, a
rather bumpy forehead which did not recede, and clear grey eyes.  His
sarcastic lips were firm and quick, and he looked at people with
disconcerting straightness.  The young girl wore a blue-green frock.
Her face was charming, with eager, hazel-grey eyes, a bright colour,
and fluffy hair the colour of ripe nuts.

"That's your sister's picture, 'The Shadow,' they're looking at,
isn't it?"  asked Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace.  "I remember seeing it on
Christmas Day, and the little model who was sitting for it--an
attractive type!  Your brother-in-law told me how interested you all
were in her.  Quite a romantic story, wasn't it, about her fainting
from want of food when she first came to sit?"

Cecilia murmured something.  Her hands were moving nervously; she
looked ill at ease.

These signs passed unperceived by Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace, whose
eyes were busy.

"In the F.H.M.P., of course, I see a lot of young girls placed in
delicate positions, just on the borders, don't you know?  You should
really join the F.H.M.P., Mrs. Dallison.  It's a first-rate thing--
most absorbing work."

The doubting deepened in Cecilia's eyes.

"Oh, it must be!" she said.  "I've so little time."

Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace went on at once.

"Don't you think that we live in the most interesting days?  There
are such a lot of movements going on.  It's quite exciting.  We all
feel that we can't shut our eyes any longer to social questions.  I
mean the condition of the people alone is enough to give one
nightmare!"

"Yes, yes," said Cecilia; "it is dreadful, of course.

"Politicians and officials are so hopeless, one can't look for
anything from them."

Cecilia drew herself up.  "Oh, do you think so?"  she said.

"I was just talking to Mr. Balladyce.  He says that Art and
Literature must be put on a new basis altogether."

"Yes," said Cecilia; "really?  Is he that funny little man?"

"I think he's so monstrously clever."

Cecilia answered quickly: "I know--I know.  Of course, something must
be done."

"Yes," said Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace absently, "I think we all feel
that.  Oh, do tell me!  I've been talking to such a delightful
person--just the type you see when you go into the City--thousands of
them, all in such good black coats.  It's so unusual to really meet
one nowadays; and they're so refreshing, they have such nice simple
views.  There he is, standing just behind your sister."

Cecilia by a nervous gesture indicated that she recognized the
personality alluded to.  "Oh, yes," she said; "Mr. Purcey.  I don't
know why he comes to see us."

"I think he's so delicious!" said Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace dreamily.
Her little dark eyes, like bees, had flown to sip honey from the
flower in question--a man of broad build and medium height, dressed.
with accuracy, who seemed just a little out of his proper bed.  His
mustachioed mouth wore a set smile; his cheerful face was rather red,
with a forehead of no extravagant height or breadth, and a
conspicuous jaw; his hair was thick and light in colour, and his eyes
were small, grey, and shrewd.  He was looking at a picture.

"He's so delightfully unconscious," murmured Mrs. Tallents
Smallpeace.  "He didn't even seem to know that there was a problem of
the lower classes."

"Did he tell you that he had a picture?"  asked Cecilia gloomily.

"Oh yes, by Harpignies, with the accent on the 'pig.'  It's worth
three times what he gave for it.  It's so nice to be made to feel
that there is still all that mass of people just simply measuring
everything by what they gave for it."

"And did he tell you my grandfather Carfax's dictum in the Banstock
case?"  muttered Cecilia.

"Oh yes: 'The man who does not know his own mind should be made an
Irishman by Act of Parliament.'  He said it was so awfully good."

"He would," replied Cecilia.

"He seems to depress you, rather!"

"Oh no; I believe he's quite a nice sort of person.  One can't be
rude to him; he really did what he thought a very kind thing to my
father.  That's how we came to know him.  Only it's rather trying
when he will come to call regularly.  He gets a little on one's
nerves."

"Ah, that's just what I feel is so jolly about him; no one would ever
get on his nerves.  I do think we've got too many nerves, don't you?
Here's your brother-in-law.  He's such an uncommon-looking man; I
want to have a talk with him about that little model.  A country
girl, wasn't she?"

She had turned her head towards a tall man with a very slight stoop
and a brown, thin, bearded face, who was approaching from the door.
She did not see that Cecilia had flushed, and was looking at her
almost angrily.  The tall thin man put his hand on Cecilia's arm,
saying gently: "Hallo Cis!  Stephen here yet?"

Cecilia shook her head.

"You know Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace, Hilary?"

The tall man bowed.  His hazel-coloured eyes were shy, gentle, and
deep-set; his eyebrows, hardly ever still, gave him a look of austere
whimsicality.  His dark brown hair was very lightly touched with
grey, and a frequent kindly smile played on his lips.  His
unmannerismed manner was quiet to the point of extinction.  He had
long, thin, brown hands, and nothing peculiar about his dress.

"I'll leave you to talk to Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace," Cecilia said.

A knot of people round Mr. Balladyce prevented her from moving far,
however, and the voice of Mrs. Smallpeace travelled to her ears.

"I was talking about that little model.  It was so good of you to
take such interest in the girl.  I wondered whether we could do
anything for her."

Cecilia's hearing was too excellent to miss the tone of Hilary's
reply:

"Oh, thank you; I don't think so."

"I fancied perhaps you might feel that our Society---hers is an
unsatisfactory profession for young girls!"

Cecilia saw the back of Hilary's neck grow red.  She turned her head
away.

"Of course, there are many very nice models indeed," said the voice
of Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace.  "I don't mean that they are necessarily
at all--if they're girls of strong character; and especially if they
don't sit for the--the altogether."

Hilary's dry, staccato answer came to Cecilia's ears: "Thank you;
it's very kind of you."

"Oh, of course, if it's not necessary.  Your wife's picture was so
clever, Mr. Dallison--such an interesting type."

Without intention Cecilia found herself before that picture.  It
stood with its face a little turned towards the wall, as though
somewhat in disgrace, portraying the full-length figure of a girl
standing in deep shadow, with her arms half outstretched, as if
asking for something.  Her eyes were fixed on Cecilia, and through
her parted lips breath almost seemed to come.  The only colour in the
picture was the pale blue of those eyes, the pallid red of those
parted lips, the still paler brown of the hair; the rest was shadow.
In the foreground light was falling as though from a street-lamp.

Cecilia thought: "That girl's eyes and mouth haunt me.  Whatever made
Blanca choose such a subject?  It is clever, of course--for her."




CHAPTER II

A FAMILY DISCUSSION

The marriage of Sylvanus Stone, Professor of the Natural Sciences, to
Anne, daughter of Mr. Justice Carfax, of the well-known county
family--the Carfaxes of Spring Deans, Hants--was recorded in the
sixties.  The baptisms of Martin, Cecilia, and Bianca, son and
daughters of Sylvanus and Anne Stone, were to be discovered
registered in Kensington in the three consecutive years following, as
though some single-minded person had been connected with their
births.  After this the baptisms of no more offspring were to be
found anywhere, as if that single mind had encountered opposition.
But in the eighties there was noted in the register of the same
church the burial of "Anne, nee Carfax, wife of Sylvanus Stone."  In
that "nee Carfax" there was, to those who knew, something more than
met the eye.  It summed up the mother of Cecilia and Bianca, and, in
more subtle fashion, Cecilia and Bianca, too.  It summed up that
fugitive, barricading look in their bright eyes, which, though spoken
of in the family as "the Carfax eyes," were in reality far from
coming from old Mr. Justice Carfax.  They had been his wife's in
turn, and had much annoyed a man of his decided character.  He
himself had always known his mind, and had let others know it, too;
reminding his wife that she was an impracticable woman, who knew not
her own mind; and devoting his lawful gains to securing the future of
his progeny.  It would have disturbed him if he had lived to see his
grand-daughters and their times.  Like so many able men of his
generation, far-seeing enough in practical affairs, he had never
considered the possibility that the descendants of those who, like
himself, had laid up treasure for their children's children might
acquire the quality of taking time, balancing pros and cons, looking
ahead, and not putting one foot down before picking the other up.  He
had not foreseen, in deed, that to wobble might become an art, in
order that, before anything was done, people might know the full
necessity for doing some thing, and how impossible it would be to do
indeed, foolish to attempt to do--that which would fully meet the
case.  He, who had been a man of action all his life, had not
perceived how it would grow to be matter of common instinct that to
act was to commit oneself, and that, while what one had was not
precisely what one wanted, what one had not (if one had it) would be
as bad.  He had never been self-conscious--it was not the custom of
his generation--and, having but little imagination, had never
suspected that he was laying up that quality for his descendants,
together with a competence which secured them a comfortable leisure.

Of all the persons in his grand-daughter's studio that afternoon,
that stray sheep Mr. Purcey would have been, perhaps, the only one
whose judgments he would have considered sound.  No one had laid up a
competence for Mr. Purcey, who had been in business from the age of
twenty.

It is uncertain whether the mere fact that he was not in his own fold
kept this visitor lingering in the studio when all other guests were
gone; or whether it was simply the feeling that the longer he stayed
in contact with really artistic people the more distinguished he was
becoming.  Probably the latter, for the possession of that
Harpignies, a good specimen, which he had bought by accident, and
subsequently by accident discovered to have a peculiar value, had
become a factor in his life, marking him out from all his friends,
who went in more for a neat type of Royal Academy landscape, together
with reproductions of young ladies in eighteenth-century costumes
seated on horseback, or in Scotch gardens.  A junior partner in a
banking-house of some importance, he lived at Wimbledon, whence he
passed up and down daily in his car.  To this he owed his
acquaintance with the family of Dallison.  For one day, after telling
his chauffeur to meet him at the Albert Gate, he had set out to
stroll down Rotten Row, as he often did on the way home, designing to
nod to anybody that he knew.  It had turned out a somewhat barren
expedition.  No one of any consequence had met his eye; and it was
with a certain almost fretful longing for distraction that in
Kensington Gardens he came on an old man feeding birds out of a paper
bag.  The birds having flown away on seeing him, he approached the
feeder to apologize.

"I'm afraid I frightened your birds, sir," he began.

This old man, who was dressed in smoke-grey tweeds which exhaled a
poignant scent of peat, looked at him without answering.

"I'm afraid your birds saw me coming," Mr. Purcey said again.

"In those days," said the aged stranger, "birds were afraid of men."

Mr. Purcey's shrewd grey eyes perceived at once that he had a
character to deal with.

"Ah, yes!" he said; "I see--you allude to the present time.  That's
very nice.  Ha, ha!"

The old man answered: "The emotion of fear is inseparably connected
with a primitive state of fratricidal rivalry."

This sentence put Mr. Purcey on his guard.

'The old chap,' he thought, 'is touched.  He evidently oughtn't to be
out here by himself.'  He debated, therefore, whether he should
hasten away toward his car, or stand by in case his assistance should
be needed.  Being a kind-hearted man, who believed in his capacity
for putting things to rights, and noticing a certain delicacy--a
"sort of something rather distinguished," as he phrased it
afterwards--in the old fellow's face and figure, he decided to see if
he could be of any service.  They walked along together, Mr. Purcey
watching his new friend askance, and directing the march to where he
had ordered his chauffeur to await him.

"You are very fond of birds, I suppose," he said cautiously.

"The birds are our brothers."

The answer was of a nature to determine Mr. Purcey in his diagnosis
of the case.

"I've got my car here," he said.  "Let me give you a lift home."

This new but aged acquaintance did not seem to hear; his lips moved
as though he were following out some thought.

"In those days," Mr. Purcey heard him say, "the congeries of men were
known as rookeries.  The expression was hardly just towards that
handsome bird."

Mr. Purcey touched him hastily on the arm.

"I've got my car here, sir," he said.  "Do let me put you down!"

Telling the story afterwards, he had spoken thus:

"The old chap knew where he lived right enough; but dash me if I
believe he noticed that I was taking him there in my car--I had the
A. i. Damyer out.  That's how I came to make the acquaintance of
these Dallisons.  He's the writer, you know, and she paints--rather
the new school--she admires Harpignies.  Well, when I got there in
the car I found Dallison in the garden.  Of course I was careful not
to put my foot into it.  I told him: 'I found this old gentleman
wandering about.  I've just brought him back in my car.'  Who should
the old chap turn out to be but her father!  They were awfully
obliged to me.  Charmin' people, but very what d'you call it 'fin de
siecle'--like all these professors, these artistic pigs--seem to know
rather a queer set, advanced people, and all that sort of cuckoo,
always talkin' about the poor, and societies, and new religions, and
that kind of thing."

Though he had since been to see them several times, the Dallisons had
never robbed him of the virtuous feeling of that good action--they
had never let him know that he had brought home, not, as he imagined,
a lunatic, but merely a philosopher.

It had been somewhat of a quiet shock to him to find Mr. Stone close
to the doorway when he entered Bianca's studio that afternoon; for
though he had seen him since the encounter in Kensington Gardens, and
knew that he was writing a book, he still felt that he was not quite
the sort of old man that one ought to meet about.  He had at once
begun to tell him of the hanging of the Shoreditch murderer, as
recorded in the evening papers.  Mr. Stone's reception of that news
had still further confrmed his original views.  When all the guests
were gone--with the exception of Mr. and Mrs. Stephen Dallison and
Miss Dallison, "that awfully pretty girl," and the young man "who was
always hangin' about her"--he had approached his hostess for some
quiet talk.  She stood listening to him, very well bred, with just
that habitual spice of mockery in her smile, which to Mr. Purcey's
eyes made her "a very strikin'-lookin' woman, but rather---"  There
he would stop, for it required a greater psychologist than he to
describe a secret disharmony which a little marred her beauty.  Due
to some too violent cross of blood, to an environment too unsuited,
to what not--it was branded on her.  Those who knew Bianca Dallison
better than Mr. Purcey were but too well aware of this fugitive,
proud spirit permeating one whose beauty would otherwise have passed
unquestioned.

She was a little taller than Cecilia, her figure rather fuller and
more graceful, her hair darker, her eyes, too, darker and more deeply
set, her cheek-bones higher, her colouring richer.  That spirit of
the age, Disharmony, must have presided when a child so vivid and
dark-coloured was christened Bianca.

Mr. Purcey, however, was not a man who allowed the finest shades of
feeling to interfere with his enjoyments.  She was a "strikin'-
lookin' woman," and there was, thanks to Harpignies, a link between
them.

"Your father and I, Mrs. Dallison, can't quite understand each
other," he began.  "Our views of life don't seem to hit it off
exactly."

"Really," murmured Bianca; "I should have thought that you'd have got
on so well."

"He's a little bit too--er--scriptural for me, perhaps," said Mr.
Purcey, with some delicacy.

"Did we never tell you," Bianca answered softly, "that my father was
a rather well--known man of science before his illness?"

"Ah!" replied Mr. Purcey, a little puzzled; "that, of course.  D'you
know, of all your pictures, Mrs. Dallison, I think that one you call
'The Shadow' is the most rippin'.  There's a something about it that
gets hold of you.  That was the original, wasn't it, at your
Christmas party--attractive girl--it's an awf'ly good likeness."

Bianca's face had changed, but Mr. Purcey was not a man to notice a
little thing like that.

"If ever you want to part with it," he said, "I hope you'll give me a
chance.  I mean it'd be a pleasure to me to have it.  I think it'll
be worth a lot of money some day."

Bianca did not answer, and Mr. Purcey, feeling suddenly a little
awkward, said: "I've got my car waiting.  I must be off--really."
Shaking hands with all of them, he went away.

When the door had closed behind his back, a universal sigh went up.
It was followed by a silence, which Hilary broke.

"We'll smoke, Stevie, if Cis doesn't mind."

Stephen Dallison placed a cigarette between his moustacheless lips,
always rather screwed up, and ready to nip with a smile anything that
might make him feel ridiculous.

"Phew!" he said.  "Our friend Purcey becomes a little tedious.  He
seems to take the whole of Philistia about with him."

"He's a very decent fellow," murmured Hilary.

"A bit heavy, surely!" Stephen Dallison's face, though also long and
narrow, was not much like his brother's.  His eyes, though not
unkind, were far more scrutinising, inquisitive, and practical; his
hair darker, smoother.

Letting a puff of smoke escape, he added:

"Now, that's the sort of man to give you a good sound opinion.  You
should have asked him, Cis."

Cecilia answered with a frown:

"Don't chaff, Stephen; I'm perfectly serious about Mrs. Hughs."

"Well, I don't see what I can do for the good woman, my dear.  One
can't interfere in these domestic matters."

"But it seems dreadful that we who employ her should be able to do
nothing for her.  Don't you think so, B.?"

"I suppose we could do something for her if we wanted to badly
enough."

Bianca's voice, which had the self-distrustful ring of modern music,
suited her personality.

A glance passed between Stephen and his wife.

"That's B.  all over!" it seemed to say....

"Hound Street, where they live, is a horrid place."

It was Thyme who spoke, and everybody looked round at her.

"How do you know that?"  asked Cecilia.

"I went to see."

"With whom?"

"Martin."

The lips of the young man whose name she mentioned curled
sarcastically.

Hilary asked gently:

"Well, my dear, what did you see?"

"Most of the doors are open---"

Bianca murmured: "That doesn't tell us much."

"On the contrary," said Martin suddenly, in a deep bass voice, "it
tells you everything.  Go on."

"The Hughs live on the top floor at No. 1.  It's the best house in
the street.  On the ground-floor are some people called Budgen; he's
a labourer, and she's lame.  They've got one son.  The Hughs have let
off the first-floor front-room to an old man named Creed---"

"Yes, I know," Cecilia muttered.

"He makes about one and tenpence a day by selling papers.  The back-
room on that floor they let, of course, to your little model, Aunt
B."

"She is not my model now."

There was a silence such as falls when no one knows how far the
matter mentioned is safe to, touch on.  Thyme proceeded with her
report.

"Her room's much the best in the house; it's airy, and it looks out
over someone's garden.  I suppose she stays there because it's so
cheap.  The Hughs' rooms are---"  She stopped, wrinkling her straight
nose.

"So that's the household," said Hilary.  "Two married couples, one
young man, one young girl"--his eyes travelled from one to another of
the two married couples, the young man, and the young girl, collected
in this room---" and one old man," he added softly.

"Not quite the sort of place for you to go poking about in, Thyme,"
Stephen said ironically.  "Do you think so, Martin?"

"Why not?"

Stephen raised his brows, and glanced towards his wife.  Her face was
dubious, a little scared.  There was a silence.  Then Bianca spoke:

"Well?"  That word, like nearly all her speeches, seemed rather to
disconcert her hearers.

"So Hughs ill-treats her?"  said Hilary.

"She says so," replied Cecilia---" at least, that's what I
understood.  Of course, I don't know any details."

"She had better get rid of him, I should think," Bianca murmured.

Out of the silence that followed Thyme's clear voice was heard
saying:

"She can't get a divorce; she could get a separation."

Cecilia rose uneasily.  These words concreted suddenly a wealth of
half-acknowledged doubts about her little daughter.  This came of
letting her hear people talk, and go about with Martin!  She might
even have been listening to her grandfather--such a thought was most
disturbing.  And, afraid, on the one hand, of gainsaying the liberty
of speech, and, on the other, of seeming to approve her daughter's
knowledge of the world, she looked at her husband.

But Stephen did not speak, feeling, no doubt, that to pursue the
subject would be either to court an ethical, even an abstract,
disquisition, and this one did not do in anybody's presence, much
less one's wife's or daughter's; or to touch on sordid facts of
doubtful character, which was equally distasteful in the
circumstances.  He, too, however, was uneasy that Thyme should know
so much.

The dusk was gathering outside; the fire threw a flickering light,
fitfully outlining their figures, making those faces, so familiar to
each other, a little mysterious.

At last Stephen broke the silence.  "Of course, I'm very sorry for
her, but you'd better let it alone--you can't tell with that sort of
people; you never can make out what they want--it's safer not to
meddle.  At all events, it's a matter for a Society to look into
first!"

Cecilia answered: "But she's, on my conscience, Stephen."

"They're all on my conscience," muttered Hilary.

Bianca looked at him for the first time; then, turning to her nephew,
said: "What do you say, Martin?"

The young man, whose face was stained by the firelight the colour of
pale cheese, made no answer.

But suddenly through the stillness came a voice:

"I have thought of something."

Everyone turned round.  Mr. Stone was seen emerging from behind "The
Shadow"; his frail figure, in its grey tweeds, his silvery hair and
beard, were outlined sharply against the wall.

"Why, Father," Cecilia said, "we didn't know that you were here!"

Mr. Stone looked round bewildered; it seemed as if he, too, had been
ignorant of that fact.

"What is it that you've thought of?"

The firelight leaped suddenly on to Mr. Stone's thin yellow hand.

"Each of us," he said, "has a shadow in those places--in those
streets."

There was a vague rustling, as of people not taking a remark too
seriously, and the sound of a closing door.




CHAPTER III

HILARY'S BROWN STUDY

"What do you really think, Uncle Hilary?"

Turning at his writing-table to look at the face of his young niece,
Hilary Dallison answered:

"My dear, we have had the same state of affairs since the beginning
of the world.  There is no chemical process; so far as my knowledge
goes, that does not make waste products.  What your grandfather calls
our 'shadows' are the waste products of the social process.  That
there is a submerged tenth is as certain as that there is an emerged
fiftieth like ourselves; exactly who they are and how they come,
whether they can ever be improved away, is, I think, as uncertain as
anything can be."

The figure of the girl seated in the big armchair did not stir.  Her
lips pouted contemptuously, a frown wrinkled her forehead.

"Martin says that a thing is only impossible when we think it so."

"Faith and the mountain, I'm afraid."

Thyme's foot shot forth; it nearly came into contact with Miranda,
the little bulldog.

"Oh, duckie!"

But the little moonlight bulldog backed away.

"I hate these slums, uncle; they're so disgusting!"

Hilary leaned his face on his thin hand; it was his characteristic
attitude.

"They are hateful, disgusting, and heartrending.  That does not make
the problem any the less difficult, does it?"

"I believe we simply make the difficulties ourselves by seeing them."

Hilary smiled.  "Does Martin say that too?"

"Of course he does."

"Speaking broadly," murmured Hilary, "I see only one difficulty--
human nature."

Thyme rose.  "I think it horrible to have a low opinion of human
nature."

"My dear," said Hilary, "don't you think perhaps that people who have
what is called a low opinion of human nature are really more tolerant
of it, more in love with it, in fact, than those who, looking to what
human nature might be, are bound to hate what human nature is."

The look which Thyme directed at her uncle's amiable, attractive
face, with its pointed beard, high forehead, and special little
smile, seemed to alarm Hilary.

"I don't want you to have an unnecessarily low opinion of me, my
dear.  I'm not one of those people who tell you that everything's all
right because the rich have their troubles as well as the poor.  A
certain modicum of decency and comfort is obviously necessary to man
before we can begin to do anything but pity him; but that doesn't
make it any easier to know how you're going to insure him that
modicum of decency and comfort, does it?"

"We've got to do it," said Thyme; "it won't wait any longer."

"My dear," said Hilary, "think of Mr. Purcey!  What proportion of the
upper classes do you imagine is even conscious of that necessity?
We, who have got what I call the social conscience, rise from the
platform of Mr. Purcey; we're just a gang of a few thousands to Mr.
Purcey's tens of thousands, and how many even of us are prepared, or,
for the matter of that, fitted, to act on our consciousness?  In
spite of your grandfather's ideas, I'm afraid we're all too much
divided into classes; man acts, and always has acted, in classes."

"Oh--classes!" answered Thyme--"that's the old superstition, uncle."

"Is it?  I thought one's class, perhaps, was only oneself
exaggerated--not to be shaken off.  For instance, what are you and I,
with our particular prejudices, going to do?"

Thyme gave him the cruel look of youth, which seemed to say: 'You are
my very good uncle, and a dear; but you are more than twice my age.
That, I think, is conclusive!'

"Has something been settled about Mrs. Hughs?"  she asked abruptly.

"What does your father say this morning?"

Thyme picked up her portfolio of drawings, and moved towards the
door.

"Father's hopeless.  He hasn't an idea beyond referring her to the
S.P.B."

She was gone; and Hilary, with a sigh, took his pen up, but he wrote
nothing down ....

Hilary and Stephen Dallison were grandsons of that Canon Dallison,
well known as friend, and sometime adviser, of a certain Victorian
novelist.  The Canon, who came of an old Oxfordshire family, which
for three hundred years at least had served the Church or State, was
himself the author of two volumes of "Socratic Dialogues."  He had
bequeathed to his son--a permanent official in the Foreign Office--if
not his literary talent, the tradition at all events of culture.
This tradition had in turn been handed on to Hilary and Stephen.

Educated at a public school and Cambridge, blessed with competent,
though not large, independent incomes, and brought up never to allude
to money if it could possibly be helped, the two young men had been
turned out of the mint with something of the same outward stamp on
them.  Both were kindly, both fond of open-air pursuits, and neither
of them lazy.  Both, too, were very civilised, with that bone-deep
decency, that dislike of violence, nowhere so prevalent as in the
upper classes of a country whose settled institutions are as old as
its roads, or the walls which insulate its parks.  But as time went
on, the one great quality which heredity and education, environment
and means, had bred in both of them--self-consciousness--acted in
these two brothers very differently.  To Stephen it was preservative,
keeping him, as it were, in ice throughout hot-weather seasons,
enabling him to know exactly when he was in danger of decomposition,
so that he might nip the process in the bud; it was with him a
healthy, perhaps slightly chemical, ingredient, binding his component
parts, causing them to work together safely, homogeneously.  In
Hilary the effect seemed to have been otherwise; like some slow and
subtle poison, this great quality, self-consciousness, had soaked his
system through and through; permeated every cranny of his spirit, so
that to think a definite thought, or do a definite deed, was
obviously becoming difficult to him.  It took in the main the form of
a sort of gentle desiccating humour.

"It's a remarkable thing," he had one day said to Stephen, "that by
the process of assimilating little bits of chopped-up cattle one
should be able to form the speculation of how remarkable a thing it
is."

Stephen had paused a second before answering--they were lunching off
roast beef in the Law Courts--he had then said:

"You're surely not going to eschew the higher mammals, like our
respected father-in-law?"

"On the contrary," said Hilary, "to chew them; but it is remarkable,
for all that; you missed my point."

It was clear that a man who could see anything remarkable in such a
thing was far gone, and Stephen had murmured:

"My dear old chap, you're getting too introspective."

Hilary, having given his brother the special retiring smile, which
seemed not only to say; "Don't let me bore you," but also, "Well,
perhaps you had better wait outside," the conversation closed.

That smile of Hilary's, which jibbed away from things, though
disconcerting and apt to put an end to intercourse, was natural
enough.  A sensitive man, who had passed his life amongst cultivated
people in the making of books, guarded from real wants by modest, not
vulgar, affluence, had not reached the age of forty-two without
finding his delicacy sharpened to the point of fastidiousness.  Even
his dog could see the sort of man he was.  She knew that he would
take no liberties, either with her ears or with her tail.  She knew
that he would never hold her mouth ajar, and watch her teeth, as some
men do; that when she was lying on her back he would gently rub her
chest without giving her the feeling that she was doing wrong, as
women will; and if she sat, as she was sitting now, with her eyes
fixed on his study fire, he would never, she knew, even from afar,
prevent her thinking of the nothing she loved to think on.

In his study, which smelt of a particular mild tobacco warranted to
suit the nerves of any literary man, there was a bust of Socrates,
which always seemed to have a strange attraction for its owner.  He
had once described to a fellow-writer the impression produced on him
by that plaster face, so capaciously ugly, as though comprehending
the whole of human life, sharing all man's gluttony and lust, his
violence and rapacity, but sharing also his strivings toward love and
reason and serenity.

"He's telling us," said Hilary, "to drink deep, to dive down and live
with mermaids, to lie out on the hills under the sun, to sweat with
helots, to know all things and all men.  No seat, he says, among the
Wise, unless we've been through it all before we climb!  That's how
he strikes me--not too cheering for people of our sort!"

Under the shadow of this bust Hilary rested his forehead on his hand.
In front of him were three open books and a pile of manuscript, and
pushed to one side a little sheaf of pieces of green-white paper,
press-cuttings of his latest book.

The exact position occupied by his work in the life of such a man is
not too easy to define.  He earned an income by it, but he was not
dependent on that income.  As poet, critic, writer of essays, he had
made himself a certain name--not a great name, but enough to swear
by.  Whether his fastidiousness could have stood the conditions of
literary existence without private means was now and then debated by
his friends; it could probably have done so better than was supposed,
for he sometimes startled those who set him down as a dilettante by a
horny way of retiring into his shell for the finish of a piece of
work.

Try as he would that morning to keep his thoughts concentrated on his
literary labour, they wandered to his conversation with his niece and
to the discussion on Mrs. Hughs; the family seamstress, in his wife's
studio the day before.  Stephen had lingered behind Cecilia and Thyme
when they went away after dinner, to deliver a last counsel to his
brother at the garden gate.

"Never meddle between man and wife--you know what the lower classes
are!"

And across the dark garden he had looked back towards the house.  One
room on the ground-floor alone was lighted.  Through its open window
the head and shoulders of Mr. Stone could be seen close to a small
green reading-lamp.  Stephen shook his head, murmuring:

"But, I say, our old friend, eh?  'In those places--in those
streets!'  It's worse than simple crankiness--the poor old chap is
getting almost---"

And, touching his forehead lightly with two fingers, he had hurried
off with the ever-springy step of one whose regularity habitually
controls his imagination.

Pausing a minute amongst the bushes, Hilary too had looked at the
lighted window which broke the dark front of his house, and his
little moonlight bulldog, peering round his legs, had gazed up also.
Mr. Stone was still standing, pen in hand, presumably deep in
thought.  His silvered head and beard moved slightly to the efforts
of his brain.  He came over to the window, and, evidently not seeing
his son-in-law, faced out into the night.

In that darkness were all the shapes and lights and shadows of a
London night in spring: the trees in dark bloom; the wan yellow of
the gas-lamps, pale emblems of the self-consciousness of towns; the
clustered shades of the tiny leaves, spilled, purple, on the surface
of the road, like bunches of black grapes squeezed down into the
earth by the feet of the passers-by.  There, too, were shapes of men
and women hurrying home, and the great blocked shapes of the houses
where they lived.  A halo hovered above the City--a high haze of
yellow light, dimming the stars.  The black, slow figure of a
policeman moved noiselessly along the railings opposite.

>From then till eleven o'clock, when he would make himself some cocoa
on a little spirit-lamp, the writer of the "Book of Universal
Brotherhood" would alternate between his bent posture above his
manuscript and his blank consideration of the night....

With a jerk, Hilary came back to his reflections beneath the bust of
Socrates.

"Each of us has a shadow in those places--in those streets!"

There certainly was a virus in that notion.  One must either take it
as a jest, like Stephen; or, what must one do?  How far was it one's
business to identify oneself with other people, especially the
helpless--how far to preserve oneself intact--'integer vita'?  Hilary
was no young person, like his niece or Martin, to whom everything
seemed simple; nor was he an old person like their grandfather, for
whom life had lost its complications.

And, very conscious of his natural disabilities for a decision on a
like, or indeed on any, subject except, perhaps, a point of literary
technique, he got up from his writing-table, and, taking his little
bulldog, went out.  His intention was to visit Mrs. Hughs in Hound
Street, and see with his own eyes the state of things.  But he had
another reason, too, for wishing to go there ....




CHAPTER IV

THE LITTLE MODEL

When in the preceding autumn Bianca began her picture called "The
Shadow," nobody was more surprised than Hilary that she asked him to
find her a model for the figure.  Not knowing the nature of the
picture, nor having been for many years--perhaps never--admitted into
the workings of his wife's spirit, he said:

"Why don't you ask Thyme to sit for you?"

Blanca answered: "She's not the type at all--too matter-of-fact.
Besides, I don't want a lady; the figure's to be half draped."

Hilary smiled.

Blanca knew quite well that he was smiling at this distinction
between ladies and other women, and understood that he was smiling,
not so much at her, but at himself, for secretly agreeing with the
distinction she had made.

And suddenly she smiled too.

There was the whole history of their married life in those two
smiles.  They meant so much: so many thousand hours of suppressed
irritation, so many baffled longings and earnest efforts to bring
their natures together.  They were the supreme, quiet evidence of the
divergence of two lives--that slow divergence which had been far from
being wilful, and was the more hopeless in that it had been so
gradual and so gentle.  They had never really had a quarrel, having
enlightened views of marriage; but they had smiled.  They had smiled
so often through so many years that no two people in the world could
very well be further from each other.  Their smiles had banned the
revelation even to themselves of the tragedy of their wedded state.
It is certain that neither could help those smiles, which were not
intended to wound, but came on their faces as naturally as moonlight
falls on water, out of their inimically constituted souls.

Hilary spent two afternoons among his artist friends, trying, by
means of the indications he had gathered, to find a model for "The
Shadow."  He had found one at last.  Her name, Barton, and address
had been given him by a painter of still life, called French.

"She's never sat to me," he said; "my sister discovered her in the
West Country somewhere.  She's got a story of some sort.  I don't
know what.  She came up about three months ago, I think."

"She's not sitting to your sister now?"  Hilary asked.

"No," said the painter of still life; "my sister's married and gone
out to India.  I don't know whether she'd sit for the half-draped,
but I should think so.  She'll have to, sooner or later; she may as
well begin, especially to a woman.  There's a something about her
that's attractive--you might try her!"  And with these words he
resumed the painting of still life which he had broken off to talk to
Hilary.

Hilary had written to this girl to come and see him.  She had come
just before dinner the same day.

He found her standing in the middle of his study, not daring, as it
seemed, to go near the furniture, and as there was very little light,
he could hardly see her face.  She was resting a foot, very patient,
very still, in an old brown skirt, an ill-shaped blouse, and a blue-
green tam-o'-shanter cap.  Hilary turned up the light.  He saw a
round little face with broad cheekbones, flower-blue eyes, short
lamp-black lashes, and slightly parted lips.  It was difficult to
judge of her figure in those old clothes, but she was neither short
nor tall; her neck was white and well set on, her hair pale brown and
abundant.  Hilary noted that her chin, though not receding, was too
soft and small; but what he noted chiefly was her look of patient
expectancy, as though beyond the present she were seeing something,
not necessarily pleasant, which had to come.  If he had not known
from the painter of still life that she was from the country, he
would have thought her a town-bred girl, she looked so pale.  Her
appearance, at all events, was not "too matter-of-fact."  Her speech,
however, with its slight West-Country burr, was matter-of-fact
enough, concerned entirely with how long she would have to sit, and
the pay she was to get for it.  In the middle of their conversation
she sank down on the floor, and Hilary was driven to restore her with
biscuits and liqueur, which in his haste he took for brandy.  It
seemed she had not eaten since her breakfast the day before, which
had consisted of a cup of tea.  In answer to his remonstrance, she
made this matter-of-fact remark:

"If you haven't money, you can't buy things....  There's no one I can
ask up here; I'm a stranger."

"Then you haven't been getting work?"

"No," the little model answered sullenly; "I don't want to sit as
most of them want me to till I'm obliged."  The blood rushed up in
her face with startling vividness, then left it white again.

'Ah!' thought Hilary, 'she has had experience already.'

Both he and his wife were accessible to cases of distress, but the
nature of their charity was different.  Hilary was constitutionally
unable to refuse his aid to anything that held out a hand for it.
Bianca (whose sociology was sounder), while affirming that charity
was wrong, since in a properly constituted State no one should need
help, referred her cases, like Stephen, to the "Society for the
Prevention of Begging," which took much time and many pains to
ascertain the worst.

But in this case what was of importance was that the poor girl should
have a meal, and after that to find out if she were living in a
decent house; and since she appeared not to be, to recommend her
somewhere better.  And as in charity it is always well to kill two
birds with one expenditure of force, it was found that Mrs. Hughs,
the seamstress, had a single room to let unfurnished, and would be
more than glad of four shillings, or even three and six, a week for
it.  Furniture was also found for her: a bed that creaked, a
washstand, table, and chest of drawers; a carpet, two chairs, and
certain things to cook with; some of those old photographs and prints
that hide in cupboards, and a peculiar little clock, which frequently
forgot the time of day.  All these and some elementary articles of
dress were sent round in a little van, with three ferns whose time
had nearly come, and a piece of the plant called "honesty."  Soon
after this she came to "sit."  She was a very quiet and passive
little model, and was not required to pose half-draped, Bianca having
decided that, after all, "The Shadow" was better represented fully
clothed; for, though she discussed the nude, and looked on it with
freedom, when it came to painting unclothed people, she felt a sort
of physical aversion.

Hilary, who was curious, as a man naturally would be, about anyone
who had fainted from hunger at his feet, came every now and then to
see, and would sit watching this little half-starved girl with kindly
and screwed-up eyes.  About his personality there was all the
evidence of that saying current among those who knew him: "Hilary
would walk a mile sooner than tread on an ant."  The little model,
from the moment when he poured liqueur between her teeth, seemed to
feel he had a claim on her, for she reserved her small, matter-of-
fact confessions for his ears.  She made them in the garden, coming
in or going out; or outside, and, now and then, inside his study,
like a child who comes and shows you a sore finger.  Thus, quite
suddenly:

"I've four shillings left over this week, Mr. Dallison," or, "Old Mr.
Creed's gone to the hospital to-day, Mr. Dallison."

Her face soon became less bloodless than on that first evening, but
it was still pale, inclined to colour in wrong places on cold days,
with little blue veins about the temples and shadows under the eyes.
The lips were still always a trifle parted, and she still seemed to
be looking out for what was coming, like a little Madonna, or Venus,
in a Botticelli picture.  This look of hers, coupled with the matter-
of-factness of her speech, gave its flavour to her personality....

On Christmas Day the picture was on view to Mr. Purcey, who had
chanced to "give his car a run," and to other connoisseurs.  Bianca
had invited her model to be present at this function, intending to
get her work.  But, slipping at once into a corner, the girl had
stood as far as possible behind a canvas.  People, seeing her
standing there, and noting her likeness to the picture, looked at her
with curiosity, and passed on, murmuring that she was an interesting
type.  They did not talk to her, either because they were afraid she
could not talk of the things they could talk of, or that they could
not talk of the things she could talk of, or because they were
anxious not to seem to patronize her.  She talked to one, therefore.
This occasioned Hilary some distress.  He kept coming up and smiling
at her, or making tentative remarks or jests, to which she would
reply, "Yes, Mr. Dallison," or "No, Mr. Dallison," as the case might
be.

Seeing him return from one of these little visits, an Art Critic
standing before the picture had smiled, and his round, clean-shaven,
sensual face had assumed a greenish tint in eyes and cheeks, as of
the fat in turtle soup.

The only two other people who had noticed her particularly were those
old acquaintances, Mr. Purcey and Mr. Stone.  Mr. Purcey had thought,
'Rather a good-lookin' girl,' and his eyes strayed somewhat
continually in her direction.  There was something piquant and, as it
were, unlawfully enticing to him in the fact that she was a real
artist's model.

Mr. Stone's way of noticing her had been different.  He had
approached in his slightly inconvenient way, as though seeing but one
thing in the whole world.

"You are living by yourself?"  he had said.  "I shall come and see
you."

Made by the Art Critic or by Mr. Purcey, that somewhat strange remark
would have had one meaning; made by Mr. Stone it obviously had
another.  Having finished what he had to say, the author of the book
of "Universal Brotherhood" had bowed and turned to go.  Perceiving
that he saw before him the door and nothing else, everybody made way
for him at once.  The remarks that usually arose behind his back
began to be heard--"Extraordinary old man!"  "You know, he bathes in
the Serpentine all the year round?"  "And he cooks his food himself,
and does his own room, they say; and all the rest of his time he
writes a book!"  "A perfect crank!"




CHAPTER V

THE COMEDY BEGINS

The Art Critic who had smiled was--like all men--a subject for pity
rather than for blame.  An Irishman of real ability, he had started
life with high ideals and a belief that he could live with them.  He
had hoped to serve Art, to keep his service pure; but, having one day
let his acid temperament out of hand to revel in an orgy of personal
retaliation, he had since never known when she would slip her chain
and come home smothered in mire.  Moreover, he no longer chastised
her when she came.  His ideals had left him, one by one; he now lived
alone, immune from dignity and shame, soothing himself with whisky.
A man of rancour, meet for pity, and, in his cups, contented.
He had lunched freely before coming to Blanca's Christmas function,
but by four o'clock, the gases which had made him feel the world a
pleasant place had nearly all evaporated, and he was suffering from a
wish to drink again.  Or it may have been that this girl, with her
soft look, gave him the feeling that she ought to have belonged to
him; and as she did not, he felt, perhaps, a natural irritation that
she belonged, or might belong, to somebody else.  Or, again, it was
possibly his natural male distaste for the works of women painters
which induced an awkward frame of mind.

Two days later in a daily paper over no signature, appeared this
little paragraph: "We learn that 'The Shadow,' painted by Bianca
Stone, who is not generally known to be the wife of the writer, Mr.
Hilary Dallison, will soon be exhibited at the Bencox Gallery.  This
very 'fin-de-siecle' creation, with its unpleasant subject,
representing a woman (presumably of the streets) standing beneath a
gas-lamp, is a somewhat anaemic piece of painting.  If Mr. Dallison,
who finds the type an interesting one, embodies her in one of his
very charming poems, we trust the result will be less bloodless."

The little piece of green-white paper containing this information was
handed to Hilary by his wife at breakfast.  The blood mounted slowly
in his cheeks.  Bianca's eyes fastened themselves on that flush.
Whether or no--as philosophers say--little things are all big with
the past, of whose chain they are the latest links, they frequently
produce what apparently are great results.

The marital relations of Hilary and his wife, which till then had
been those of, at all events, formal conjugality, changed from that
moment.  After ten o'clock at night their lives became as separate as
though they lived in different houses.  And this change came about
without expostulations, reproach, or explanation, just by the turning
of a key; and even this was the merest symbol, employed once only, to
save the ungracefulness of words.  Such a hint was quite enough for a
man like Hilary, whose delicacy, sense of the ridiculous, and
peculiar faculty of starting back and retiring into himself, put the
need of anything further out of the question.  Both must have felt,
too, that there was nothing that could be explained.  An anonymous
double entendre was not precisely evidence on which to found a
rupture of the marital tie.  The trouble was so much deeper than
that--the throbbing of a woman's wounded self-esteem, of the feeling
that she was no longer loved, which had long cried out for revenge.

One morning in the middle of the week after this incident the
innocent author of it presented herself in Hilary's study, and,
standing in her peculiar patient attitude, made her little
statements.  As usual, they were very little ones; as usual, she
seemed helpless, and suggested a child with a sore finger.  She had
no other work; she owed the week's rent; she did not know what would
happen to her; Mrs. Dallison did not want her any more; she could not
tell what she had done!  The picture was finished, she knew, but Mrs.
Dallison had said she was going to paint her again in another
picture....

Hilary did not reply.

"....That old gentleman, Mr.--Mr. Stone, had been to see her.  He
wanted her to come and copy out his book for two hours a day, from
four to six, at a shilling an hour.  Ought she to come, please?  He
said his book would take him years."

Before answering her Hilary stood for a full minute staring at the
fire.  The little model stole a look at him.  He suddenly turned and
faced her.  His glance was evidently disconcerting to the girl.  It
was, indeed, a critical and dubious look, such as he might have bent
on a folio of doubtful origin.

"Don't you think," he said at last, "that it would be much better for
you to go back into the country?"

The little model shook her head vehemently.

"Oh no!"

"Well, but why not?  This is a most unsatisfactory sort of life."

The girl stole another look at him, then said sullenly:

"I can't go back there."

"What is it?  Aren't your people nice to you?"

She grew red.

"No; and I don't want to go"; then, evidently seeing from Hilary's
face that his delicacy forbade his questioning her further, she
brightened up, and murmured: "The old gentleman said it would make me
independent."

"Well," replied Hilary, with a shrug, "you'd better take his offer."

She kept turning her face back as she went down the path, as though
to show her gratitude.  And presently, looking up from his
manuscript, he saw her face still at the railings, peering through a
lilac bush.  Suddenly she skipped, like a child let out of school.
Hilary got up, perturbed.  The sight of that skipping was like the
rays of a lantern turned on the dark street of another human being's
life.  It revealed, as in a flash, the loneliness of this child,
without money and without friends, in the midst of this great town.

The months of January, February, March passed, and the little model
came daily to copy the "Book of Universal Brotherhood."

Mr. Stone's room, for which he insisted on paying rent, was never
entered by a servant.  It was on the ground-floor, and anyone passing
the door between the hours of four and six could hear him dictating
slowly, pausing now and then to spell a word.  In these two hours it
appeared to be his custom to read out, for fair copying, the labours
of the other seven.

At five o'clock there was invariably a sound of plates and cups, and
out of it the little model's voice would rise, matter-of-fact, soft,
monotoned, making little statements; and in turn Mr. Stone's, also
making statements which clearly lacked cohesion with those of his
young friend.  On one occasion, the door being open, Hilary heard
distinctly the following conversation:

The LITTLE MODEL: "Mr. Creed says he was a butler.  He's got an ugly
nose."  (A pause.)

Mr. STONE: "In those days men were absorbed in thinking of their
individualities.  Their occupations seemed to them important---"

The LITTLE MODEL: "Mr. Creed says his savings were all swallowed up
by illness."

Mr. STONE: "---it was not so."

The LITTLE MODEL: "Mr. Creed says he was always brought up to go to
church."

Mr. STONE (suddenly): "There has been no church worth going to since
A. D. 700."

The LITTLE MODEL: "But he doesn't go."

And with a flying glance through the just open door Hilary saw her
holding bread-and-butter with inky fingers, her lips a little parted,
expecting the next bite, and her eyes fixed curiously on Mr. Stone,
whose transparent hand held a teacup, and whose eyes were immovably
fixed on distance.

It was one day in April that Mr. Stone, heralded by the scent of
Harris tweed and baked potatoes which habitually encircled him,
appeared at five o'clock in Hilary's study doorway.

"She has not come," he said.

Hilary laid down his pen.  It was the first real Spring day.

"Will you come for a walk with me, sir, instead?"  he asked.

"Yes," said Mr. Stone.

They walked out into Kensington Gardens, Hilary with his head rather
bent towards the ground, and Mr. Stone, with eyes fixed on his far
thoughts, slightly poking forward his silver beard.

In their favourite firmaments the stars of crocuses and daffodils
were shining.  Almost every tree had its pigeon cooing, every bush
its blackbird in full song.  And on the paths were babies in
perambulators.  These were their happy hunting-grounds, and here they
came each day to watch from a safe distance the little dirty girls
sitting on the grass nursing little dirty boys, to listen to the
ceaseless chatter of these common urchins, and learn to deal with the
great problem of the lowest classes.  And babies sat in their
perambulators, thinking and sucking india-rubber tubes.  Dogs went
before them, and nursemaids followed after.

The spirit of colour was flying in the distant trees, swathing them
with brownish-purple haze; the sky was saffroned by dying sunlight.
It was such a day as brings a longing to the heart, like that which
the moon brings to the hearts of children.

Mr. Stone and Hilary sat down in the Broad Walk.

"Elm-trees!" said Mr. Stone.  "It is not known when they assumed
their present shape.  They have one universal soul.  It is the same
with man."  He ceased, and Hilary looked round uneasily.  They were
alone on the bench.

Mr. Stone's voice rose again.  "Their form and balance is their
single soul; they have preserved it from century to century.  This is
all they live for.  In those days"--his voice sank; he had plainly
forgotten that he was not alone--"when men had no universal
conceptions, they would have done well to look at the trees.  Instead
of fostering a number of little souls on the pabulum of varying
theories of future life, they should have been concerned to improve
their present shapes, and thus to dignify man's single soul"

"Elms were always considered dangerous trees, I believe," said
Hilary.

Mr. Stone turned, and, seeing his son-in-law beside him, asked:

"You spoke to me, I think?"

"Yes, sir."

Mr. Stone said wistfully:

"Shall we walk?"

They rose from the bench and walked on....

The explanation of the little model's absence was thus stated by
herself to Hilary: "I had an appointment."

"More work?"

"A friend of Mr. French."

"Yes--who?"

"Mr. Lennard.  He's a sculptor; he's got a studio in Chelsea.  He
wants me to pose to him."

"Ah!"

She stole a glance at Hilary, and hung her head.

Hilary turned to the window.  "You know what posing to a sculptor
means, of course?"

The little model's voice sounded behind him, matter-of-fact as ever:
"He said I was just the figure he was looking for."

Hilary continued to stare through the window.  "I thought you didn't
mean to begin standing for the nude."

"I don't want to stay poor always."

Hilary turned round at the strange tone of these unexpected words.

The girl was in a streak of sunlight; her pale cheeks flushed; her
pale, half-opened lips red; her eyes, in their setting of short black
lashes, wide and mutinous; her young round bosom heaving as if she
had been running.

"I don't want to go on copying books all my life."

"Oh, very well."

"Mr. Dallison!  I didn't mean that--I didn't really!  I want to do
what you tell me to do--I do!"

Hilary stood contemplating her with the dubious, critical look, as
though asking: "What is there behind you?  Are you really a genuine
edition, or what?" which had so disconcerted her before.  At last he
said: "You must do just as you like.  I never advise anybody."

"But you don't want me to--I know you don't.  Of course, if you don't
want me to, then it'll be a pleasure not to!"

Hilary smiled.

"Don't you like copying for Mr. Stone?"

The little model made a face.  "I like Mr. Stone--he's such a funny
old gentleman."

"That is the general opinion," answered Hilary.  "But Mr. Stone, you
know, thinks that we are funny."

The little model smiled faintly, too; the streak of sunlight had
slanted past her, and, standing there behind its glamour and million
floating specks of gold-dust, she looked for the moment like the
young Shade of Spring, watching with expectancy for what the year
would bring her.

With the words "I am ready," spoken from the doorway, Mr. Stone
interrupted further colloquy....

But though the girl's position in the household had, to all seeming,
become established, now and then some little incident--straws blowing
down the wind--showed feelings at work beneath the family's apparent
friendliness, beneath that tentative and almost apologetic manner
towards the poor or helpless, which marks out those who own what
Hilary had called the "social conscience."  Only three days, indeed,
before he sat in his brown study, meditating beneath the bust of
Socrates, Cecilia, coming to lunch, had let fall this remark:

"Of course, I know nobody can read his handwriting; but I can't think
why father doesn't dictate to a typist, instead of to that little
girl.  She could go twice the pace!"

Blanca's answer, deferred for a few seconds, was:

"Hilary perhaps knows."

"Do you dislike her coming here?"  asked Hilary.

"Not particularly.  Why?"

"I thought from your tone you did."

"I don't dislike her coming here for that purpose."

"Does she come for any other?"

Cecilia, dropping her quick glance to her fork, said just a little
hastily: "Father is extraordinary, of course."

But the next three days Hilary was out in the afternoon when the
little model came.

This, then, was the other reason, on the morning of the first of May,
which made him not averse to go and visit Mrs. Hughs in Hound Street,
Kensington.




CHAPTER VI

FIRST PILGRIMAGE TO HOUND STREET

Hilary and his little bulldog entered Hound Street from its eastern
end.  It was a grey street of three-storied houses, all in one style
of architecture.  Nearly all their doors were open, and on the
doorsteps babes and children were enjoying Easter holidays.  They sat
in apathy, varied by sudden little slaps and bursts of noise.  Nearly
all were dirty; some had whole boots, some half boots, and two or
three had none.  In the gutters more children were at play; their
shrill tongues and febrile movements gave Hilary the feeling that
their "caste" exacted of them a profession of this faith: "To-day we
live; to-morrow--if there be one--will be like to-day."

He had unconsciously chosen the very centre of the street to walk in,
and Miranda, who had never in her life demeaned herself to this
extent, ran at his heels, turning up her eyes, as though to say: 'One
thing I make a point of--no dog must speak to me!'

Fortunately, there were no dogs; but there were many cats, and these
cats were thin.

Through the upper windows of the houses Hilary had glimpses of women
in poor habiliments doing various kinds of work, but stopping now and
then to gaze into the street.  He walked to the end, where a wall
stopped him, and, still in the centre of the road, he walked the
whole length back.  The children stared at his tall figure with
indifference; they evidently felt that he was not of those who, like
themselves, had no to-morrow.

No. 1, Hound Street, abutting on the garden of a house of better
class, was distinctly the show building of the street.  The door,
however, was not closed, and pulling the remnant of a bell, Hilary
walked in.

The first thing that he noticed was a smell; it was not precisely
bad, but it might have been better.  It was a smell of walls and
washing, varied rather vaguely by red herrings.  The second thing he
noticed was his moonlight bulldog, who stood on the doorstep eyeing a
tiny sandy cat.  This very little cat, whose back was arched with
fury, he was obliged to chase away before his bulldog would come in.
The third thing he noticed was a lame woman of short stature,
standing in the doorway of a room.  Her face, with big cheek-bones,
and wide-open, light grey, dark-lashed eyes, was broad and patient;
she rested her lame leg by holding to the handle of the door.

"I dunno if you'll find anyone upstairs.  I'd go and ask, but my
leg's lame."

"So I see," said Hilary; "I'm sorry."

The woman sighed: "Been like that these five years"; and turned back
into her room.

"Is there nothing to be done for it?"

"Well, I did think so once," replied the woman, "but they say the
bone's diseased; I neglected it at the start."

"Oh dear!"

"We hadn't the time to give to it," the woman said defensively,
retiring into a room so full of china cups, photographs, coloured
prints, waxwork fruits, and other ornaments, that there seemed no
room for the enormous bed.

Wishing her good-morning, Hilary began to mount the stairs.  On the
first floor he paused.  Here, in the back room, the little model
lived.

He looked around him.  The paper on the passage walls was of a dingy
orange colour, the blind of the window torn, and still pursuing him,
pervading everything, was the scent of walls and washing and red
herrings.  There came on him a sickness, a sort of spiritual revolt.
To live here, to pass up these stairs, between these dingy, bilious
walls, on this dirty carpet, with this--ugh! every day; twice, four
times, six times, who knew how many times a day!  And that sense, the
first to be attracted or revolted, the first to become fastidious
with the culture of the body, the last to be expelled from the temple
of the pure-spirit; that sense to whose refinement all breeding and
all education is devoted; that sense which, ever an inch at least in
front of man, is able to retard the development of nations, and
paralyse all social schemes--this Sense of Smell awakened within him
the centuries of his gentility, the ghosts of all those Dallisons
who, for three hundred years and more, had served Church or State.
It revived the souls of scents he was accustomed to, and with them,
subtly mingled, the whole live fabric of aestheticism, woven in fresh
air and laid in lavender.  It roused the simple, non-extravagant
demand of perfect cleanliness.  And though he knew that chemists
would have certified the composition of his blood to be the same as
that of the dwellers in this house, and that this smell, composed of
walls and washing and red herrings, was really rather healthy, he
stood frowning fixedly at the girl's door, and the memory of his
young niece's delicately wrinkled nose as she described the house
rose before him.  He went on upstairs, followed by his moonlight
bulldog.

Hilary's tall thin figure appearing in the open doorway of the top-
floor front, his kind and worried face, and the pale agate eyes of
the little bulldog peeping through his legs, were witnessed by
nothing but a baby, who was sitting in a wooden box in the centre of
the room.  This baby, who was very like a piece of putty to which
Nature had by some accident fitted two movable black eyes, was
clothed in a woman's knitted undervest, spreading beyond his feet and
hands, so that nothing but his head was visible.  This vest divided
him from the wooden shavings on which he sat, and, since he had not
yet attained the art of rising to his feet, the box divided him from
contacts of all other kinds.  As completely isolated from his kingdom
as a Czar of all the Russias, he was doing nothing.  In this realm
there was a dingy bed, two chairs, and a washstand, with one lame
leg, supported by an aged footstool.  Clothes and garments were
hanging on nails, pans lay about the hearth, a sewing-machine stood
on a bare deal table.  Over the bed was hung an oleograph, from a
Christmas supplement, of the birth of Jesus, and above it a bayonet,
under which was printed in an illiterate hand on a rough scroll of
paper: "Gave three of em what for at Elandslaagte.  S. Hughs."  Some
photographs adorned the walls, and two drooping ferns stood on the
window-ledge.  The room withal had a sort of desperate tidiness; in a
large cupboard, slightly open, could be seen stowed all that must not
see the light of day.  The window of the baby's kingdom was tightly
closed; the scent was the scent of walls and washing and red
herrings, and--of other things.

Hilary looked at the baby, and the baby looked at him.  The eyes of
that tiny scrap of grey humanity seemed saying:

'You are not my mother, I believe?'

He stooped down and touched its cheek.  The baby blinked its black
eyes once.

'No,' it seemed, to say again, 'you are not my mother.'

A lump rose in Hilary's throat; he turned and went downstairs.
Pausing outside the little model's door, he knocked, and, receiving
no answer, turned the handle.  The little square room was empty; it
was neat and clean enough, with a pink-flowered paper of
comparatively modern date.  Through its open window could be seen a
pear-tree in full bloom.  Hilary shut the door again with care,
ashamed of having opened it.

On the half-landing, staring up at him with black eyes like the
baby's, was a man of medium height and active build, whose short
face, with broad cheekbones, cropped dark hair, straight nose, and
little black moustache, was burnt a dark dun colour.  He was dressed
in the uniform of those who sweep the streets--a loose blue blouse,
and trousers tucked into boots reaching half-way up his calves; he
held a peaked cap in his hand.

After some seconds of mutual admiration, Hilary said:

"Mr. Hughs, I believe?"  Yes.

"I've been up to see your wife."

"Have you?"

"You know me, I suppose?"

"Yes, I know you."

"Unfortunately, there's only your baby at home."

Hughs motioned with his cap towards the little model's room.  "I
thought perhaps you'd been to see her," he said.  His black eyes
smouldered; there was more than class resentment in the expression of
his face.

Flushing slightly and giving him a keen look, Hilary passed down the
stairs without replying.  But Miranda had not followed.  She stood,
with one paw delicately held up above the topmost step.

'I don't know this man,' she seemed to say, 'and I don't like his
looks.'

Hughs grinned.  "I never hurt a dumb animal," he said; "come on,
tykie!"

Stimulated by a word she had never thought to hear, Miranda descended
rapidly.

'He meant that for impudence,' thought Hilary as he walked away.

"Westminister, sir?  Oh dear!"

A skinny trembling hand was offering him a greenish newspaper.

"Terrible cold wind for the time o' year!"

A very aged man in black-rimmed spectacles, with a distended nose and
long upper lip and chin, was tentatively fumbling out change for
sixpence.

"I seem to know your face," said Hilary.

"Oh dear, yes.  You deals with this 'ere shop--the tobacco
department.  I've often seen you when you've a-been agoin' in.
Sometimes you has the Pell Mell off o' this man here."  He jerked his
head a trifle to the left, where a younger man was standing armed
with a sheaf of whiter papers.  In that gesture were years of envy,
heart-burning, and sense of wrong.  'That's my paper,' it seemed to
say, 'by all the rights of man; and that low-class fellow sellin' it,
takin' away my profits!'

"I sells this 'ere Westminister.  I reads it on Sundays--it's a
gentleman's paper, 'igh-class paper--notwithstandin' of its politics.
But, Lor', sir, with this 'ere man a-sellin' the Pell Mell"--lowering
his voice, he invited Hilary to confidence--"so many o' the gentry
takes that; an' there ain't too many o' the gentry about 'ere--I
mean, not o' the real gentry--that I can afford to 'ave 'em took away
from me."

Hilary, who had stopped to listen out of delicacy, had a flash of
recollection.  "You live in Hound Street?"

The old man answered eagerly: "Oh dear!  Yes, sir--No. 1, name of
Creed.  You're the gentleman where the young person goes for to copy
of a book!"

"It's not my book she copies."

"Oh no; it's an old gentleman; I know 'im.  He come an' see me once.
He come in one Sunday morning.  'Here's a pound o' tobacca for you!'
'e says.  'You was a butler,' 'e says.  'Butlers!' 'e says, 'there'll
be no butlers in fifty years.'  An' out 'e goes.  Not quite"--he put
a shaky hand up to his head--"not quite--oh dear!"

"Some people called Hughs live in your house, I think?"

"I rents my room off o' them.  A lady was a-speakin' to me yesterday
about 'em; that's not your lady, I suppose, sir?"

His eyes seemed to apostrophise Hilary's hat, which was of soft felt:
'Yes, yes--I've seen your sort a-stayin' about in the best houses.
They has you down because of your learnin'; and quite the manners of
a gentleman you've got.'

"My wife's sister, I expect."

"Oh dear!  She often has a paper off o' me.  A real lady--not one o'
these"--again he invited Hilary to confidence--"you know what I mean,
sir--that buys their things a' ready-made at these 'ere large
establishments.  Oh, I know her well."

"The old gentleman who visited you is her father."

"Is he?  Oh dear!"  The old butler was silent, evidently puzzled.

Hilary's eyebrows began to execute those intricate manoeuvres which
always indicated that he was about to tax his delicacy.

"How-how does Hughs treat the little girl who lives in the next room
to you?"

The old butler replied in a rather gloomy tone:

"She takes my advice, and don't 'ave nothin' to say to 'im.  Dreadful
foreign-lookin' man 'e is.  Wherever 'e was brought up I can't
think!"

"A soldier, wasn't he?"

"So he says.  He's one o' these that works for the Vestry; an' then
'e'll go an' get upon the drink, an' when that sets 'im off, it seems
as if there wasn't no respect for nothing in 'im; he goes on against
the gentry, and the Church, and every sort of institution.  I never
met no soldiers like him.  Dreadful foreign--Welsh, they tell me."

"What do you think of the street you're living in?"

"I keeps myself to myself; low class o' street it is; dreadful low
class o' person there--no self-respect about 'em."

"Ah!" said Hilary.

"These little 'ouses, they get into the hands o' little men, and they
don't care so long as they makes their rent out o' them.  They can't
help themselves--low class o' man like that; 'e's got to do the best
'e can for 'imself.  They say there's thousands o' these 'ouses all
over London.  There's some that's for pullin' of 'em down, but that's
talkin' rubbish; where are you goin' to get the money for to do it?
These 'ere little men, they can't afford not even to put a paper on
the walls, and the big ground landlords-you can't expect them to know
what's happenin' behind their backs.  There's some ignorant fellers
like this Hughs talks a lot o' wild nonsense about the duty o' ground
landlords; but you can't expect the real gentry to look into these
sort o' things.  They've got their estates down in the country.  I've
lived with them, and of course I know."

The little bulldog, incommoded by the passers-by, now took the
opportunity of beating with her tail against the old butler's legs.

"Oh dear! what's this?  He don't bite, do 'e?  Good Sambo!"

Miranda sought her master's eye at once.  'You see what happens to
her if a lady loiters in the streets,' she seemed to say.

"It must be hard standing about here all day, after the life you've
led," said Hilary.

"I mustn't complain; it's been the salvation o' me."

"Do you get shelter?"

Again the old butler seemed to take him into confidence.

"Sometimes of a wet night they lets me stand up in the archway there;
they know I'm respectable.  'T wouldn't never do for that man"--he
nodded at his rival--"or any of them boys to get standin' there,
obstructin' of the traffic."

"I wanted to ask you, Mr. Creed, is there anything to be done for
Mrs. Hughs?"

The frail old body quivered with the vindictive force of his answer.

"Accordin' to what she says, if I'm a-to believe 'er, I'd have him up
before the magistrate, sure as my name's Creed, an' get a separation,
an' I wouldn't never live with 'im again: that's what she ought to
do.  An' if he come to go for her after that, I'd have 'im in prison,
if 'e killed me first!  I've no patience with a low class o' man like
that!  He insulted of me this morning."

"Prison's a dreadful remedy," murmured Hilary.

The old butler answered stoutly: "There ain't but one way o' treatin'
them low fellers--ketch hold o' them until they holler!"

Hilary was about to reply when he found himself alone.  At the edge
of the pavement some yards away, Creed, his face upraised to heaven,
was embracing with all his force the second edition of the
Westminster Gazette, which had been thrown him from a cart.

'Well,' thought Hilary, walking on, 'you know your own mind, anyway!'

And trotting by his side, with her jaw set very firm, his little
bulldog looked up above her eyes, and seemed to say: 'It was time we
left that man of action!'




CHAPTER VII

CECILIA'S SCATTERED THOUGHTS

In her morning room Mrs. Stephen Dallison sat at an old oak bureau
collecting her scattered thoughts.  They lay about on pieces of
stamped notepaper, beginning "Dear Cecilia," or "Mrs. Tallents
Smallpeace requests," or on bits of pasteboard headed by the names of
theatres, galleries, or concert-halls; or, again, on paper of not
quite so good a quality, commencing, "Dear Friend," and ending with a
single well-known name like "Wessex," so that no suspicion should
attach to the appeal contained between the two.  She had before her
also sheets of her own writing-paper, headed "76, The Old Square,
Kensington," and two little books.  One of these was bound in
marbleised paper, and on it written: "Please keep this book in
safety"; across the other, cased in the skin of some small animal
deceased, was inscribed the solitary word "Engagements."

Cecilia had on a Persian-green silk blouse with sleeves that would
have hidden her slim hands, but for silver buttons made in the
likeness of little roses at her wrists; on her brow was a faint
frown, as though she were wondering what her thoughts were all about.
She sat there every morning catching those thoughts, and placing them
in one or other of her little books.  Only by thus working hard could
she keep herself, her husband, and daughter, in due touch with all
the different movements going on.  And that the touch might be as due
as possible, she had a little headache nearly every day.  For the
dread of letting slip one movement, or of being too much taken with
another, was very real to her; there were so many people who were
interesting, so many sympathies of hers and Stephen's which she
desired to cultivate, that it was a matter of the utmost import not
to cultivate any single one too much.  Then, too, the duty of
remaining feminine with all this going forward taxed her
constitution.  She sometimes thought enviously of the splendid
isolation now enjoyed by Blanca, of which some subtle instinct,
rather than definite knowledge, had informed her; but not often, for
she was a loyal little person, to whom Stephen and his comforts were
of the first moment.  And though she worried somewhat because her
thoughts WOULD come by every post, she did not worry very much--
hardly more than the Persian kitten on her lap, who also sat for
hours trying to catch her tail, with a line between her eyes, and two
small hollows in her cheeks.

When she had at last decided what concerts she would be obliged to
miss, paid her subscription to the League for the Suppression of
Tinned Milk, and accepted an invitation to watch a man fall from a
balloon, she paused.  Then, dipping her pen in ink, she wrote as
follows:

"Mrs. Stephen Dallison would be glad to have the blue dress ordered
by her yesterday sent home at once without alteration.--Messrs. Rose
and Thorn, High Street, Kensington."

Ringing the bell, she thought: 'It will be a job for Mrs. Hughs, poor
thing.  I believe she'll do it quite as well as Rose and Thorn.'--
"Would you please ask Mrs. Hughs to come to me?--Oh, is that you,
Mrs. Hughs?  Come in."

The seamstress, who had advanced into the middle of the room, stood
with her worn hands against her sides, and no sign of life but the
liquid patience in her large brown eyes.  She was an enigmatic
figure.  Her presence always roused a sort of irritation in Cecilia,
as if she had been suddenly confronted with what might possibly have
been herself if certain little accidents had omitted to occur.  She
was so conscious that she ought to sympathise, so anxious to show
that there was no barrier between them, so eager to be all she ought
to be, that her voice almost purred.

"Are you Getting on with the curtains, Mrs. Hughs?"

"Yes, m'm, thank you, m'm."

"I shall have another job for you to-morrow--altering a dress.  Can
you come?"

"Yes, m'm, thank you, m'm."

"Is the baby well?"

"Yes, m'm, thank you, m'm."

There was a silence.

'It's no good talking of her domestic matters,' thought Cecilia; 'not
that I don't care!'  But the silence getting on her nerves, she said
quickly: "Is your husband behaving himself better?"

There was no answer; Cecilia saw a tear trickle slowly down the
woman's cheek.

'Oh dear, oh dear,' she thought; 'poor thing! I'm in for it!'

Mrs. Hughs' whispering voice began: "He's behaving himself dreadful,
m'm.  I was going to speak to you.  It's ever since that young girl"
--her face hardened--"come to live down in my room there; he seem to
--he seem to--just do nothing but neglect me."

Cecilia's heart gave the little pleasurable flutter which the heart
must feel at the love dramas of other people, however painful.

"You mean the little model?"  she said.

The seamstress answered in an agitated voice: "I don't want to speak
against her, but she's put a spell on him, that's what she has; he
don't seem able to do nothing but talk of her, and hang about her
room.  It was that troubling me when I saw you the other day.  And
ever since yesterday midday, when Mr. Hilary came--he's been talking
that wild--and he pushed me--and--and---"  Her lips ceased to form
articulate words, but, since it was not etiquette to cry before her
superiors, she used them to swallow down her tears, and something in
her lean throat moved up and down.

At the mention of Hilary's name the pleasurable sensation in Cecilia
had undergone a change.  She felt curiosity, fear, offence.

"I don't quite understand you," she said.

The seamstress plaited at her frock.  "Of course, I can't help the
way he talks, m'm.  I'm sure I don't like to repeat the wicked things
he says about Mr. Hilary.  It seems as if he were out of his mind
when he gets talkin' about that young girl."

The tone of those last three words was almost fierce.

Cecilia was on the point of saying: 'That will do, please; I want to
hear no more.' But her curiosity and queer subtle fear forced her
instead to repeat: "I don't understand.  Do you mean he insinuates
that Mr. Hilary has anything to do with--with this girl, or what?"
And she thought: 'I'll stop that, at any rate.'

The seamstress's face was distorted by her efforts to control her
voice.

"I tell him he's wicked to say such things, m'm, and Mr. Hilary such
a kind gentleman.  And what business is it of his, I say, that's got
a wife and children of his own?  I've seen him in the street, I've
watched him hanging about Mrs. Hilary's house when I've been working
there waiting for that girl, and following her--home---" Again her
lips refused to do service, except in the swallowing of her tears.

Cecilia thought: 'I must tell Stephen at once.  That man is
dangerous.'  A spasm gripped her heart, usually so warm and snug;
vague feelings she had already entertained presented themselves now
with startling force; she seemed to see the face of sordid life
staring at the family of Dallison.  Mrs. Hughs' voice, which did not
dare to break, resumed:

"I've said to him: 'Whatever are you thinking of?  And after Mrs.
Hilary's been so kind to me!  But he's like a madman when he's in
liquor, and he says he'll go to Mrs. Hilary---"

"Go to my sister?  What about?  The ruffian!"

At hearing her husband called a ruffian by another woman the shadow
of resentment passed across Mrs. Hughs' face, leaving it quivering
and red.  The conversation had already made a strange difference in
the manner of these two women to each other.  It was as though each
now knew exactly how much sympathy and confidence could be expected
of the other, as though life had suddenly sucked up the mist, and
shown them standing one on either side of a deep trench.  In Mrs.
Hughs' eyes there was the look of those who have long discovered that
they must not answer back for fear of losing what little ground they
have to stand on; and Cecilia's eyes were cold and watchful.  'I
sympathise,' they seemed to say, 'I sympathise; but you must please
understand that you cannot expect sympathy if your affairs compromise
the members of my family.'  Her, chief thought now was to be relieved
of the company of this woman, who had been betrayed into showing what
lay beneath her dumb, stubborn patience.  It was not callousness, but
the natural result of being fluttered.  Her heart was like a bird
agitated in its gilt-wire cage by the contemplation of a distant cat.
She did not, however, lose her sense of what was practical, but said
calmly: "Your husband was wounded in South Africa, you told me?  It
looks as if he wasn't quite....  I think you should have a doctor!"

The seamstress's answer, slow and matter-of-fact, was worse than her
emotion.

"No, m'm, he isn't mad."

Crossing to the hearth-whose Persian-blue tiling had taken her so
long to find--Cecilia stood beneath a reproduction of Botticelli's
"Primavera," and looked doubtfully at Mrs. Hughs.  The Persian
kitten, sleepy and disturbed on the bosom of her blouse, gazed up
into her face.  'Consider me,' it seemed to say; 'I am worth
consideration; I am of a piece with you, and everything round you.
We are both elegant and rather slender; we both love warmth and
kittens; we both dislike interference with our fur.  You took a long
time to buy me, so as to get me perfect.  You see that woman over
there!  I sat on her lap this morning while she was sewing your
curtains.  She has no right in here; she's not what she seems; she
can bite and scratch, I know; her lap is skinny; she drops water from
her eyes.  She made me wet all down my back.  Be careful what you're
doing, or she'll make you wet down yours!'


All that was like the little Persian kitten within Cecilia--cosiness
and love of pretty things, attachment to her own abode with its high-
art lining, love for her mate and her own kitten, Thyme, dread of
disturbance--all made her long to push this woman from the room; this
woman with the skimpy figure, and eyes that, for all their patience,
had in them something virago-like; this woman who carried about with
her an atmosphere of sordid grief, of squalid menaces, and scandal.
She longed all the more because it could well be seen from the
seamstress's helpless attitude that she too would have liked an easy
life.  To dwell on things like this was to feel more than thirty-
eight!

Cecilia had no pocket, Providence having removed it now for some time
past, but from her little bag she drew forth the two essentials of
gentility.  Taking her nose, which she feared was shining, gently
within one, she fumbled in the other.  And again she looked
doubtfully at Mrs. Hughs.  Her heart said: 'Give the poor woman half
a sovereign; it might comfort her!' But her brain said: 'I owe her
four-and-six; after what she's just been saying about her husband and
that girl and Hilary, it mayn't be safe to give her more.' She held
out two half-crowns, and had an inspiration: "I shall mention to my
sister what you've said; you can tell your husband that!"

No sooner had she said this, however, than she saw, from a little
smile devoid of merriment and quickly extinguished, that Mrs. Hughs
did not believe she would do anything of the kind; from which she
concluded that the seamstress was convinced of Hilary's interest in
the little model.  She said hastily:

"You can go now, Mrs. Hughs."

Mrs. Hughs went, making no noise or sign of any sort.

Cecilia returned to her scattered thoughts.  They lay there still,
with a gleam of sun from the low window smearing their importance;
she felt somehow that it did not now matter very much whether she and
Stephen, in the interests of science, saw that man fall from his
balloon, or, in the interests of art, heard Herr von Kraaffe sing his
Polish songs; she experienced, too, almost a revulsion in favour of
tinned milk.  After meditatively tearing up her note to Messrs. Rose
and Thorn, she lowered the bureau lid and left the room.

Mounting the stairs, whose old oak banisters on either side were a
real joy, she felt she was stupid to let vague, sordid rumours,
which, after all, affected her but indirectly, disturb her morning's
work.  And entering Stephen's dressing-room she stood looking at his
boots.

Inside each one of them was a wooden soul; none had any creases, none
had any holes.  The moment they wore out, their wooden souls were
taken from them and their bodies given to the poor, whilst--in
accordance with that theory, to hear a course of lectures on which a
scattered thought was even now inviting her--the wooden souls
migrated instantly to other leathern bodies.

Looking at that polished row of boots, Cecilia felt lonely and
unsatisfied.  Stephen worked in the Law Courts, Thyme worked at Art;
both were doing something definite.  She alone, it seemed, had to
wait at home, and order dinner, answer letters, shop, pay calls, and
do a dozen things that failed to stop her thoughts from dwelling on
that woman's tale.  She was not often conscious of the nature of her
life, so like the lives of many hundred women in this London, which
she said she could not stand, but which she stood very well.  As a
rule, with practical good sense, she kept her doubting eyes fixed
friendlily on every little phase in turn, enjoying well enough
fitting the Chinese puzzle of her scattered thoughts, setting out on
each small adventure with a certain cautious zest, and taking Stephen
with her as far as he allowed.  This last year or so, now that Thyme
was a grown girl, she had felt at once a loss of purpose and a gain
of liberty.  She hardly knew whether to be glad or sorry.  It freed
her for the tasting of more things, more people, and more Stephen;
but it left a little void in her heart, a little soreness round it.
What would Thyme think if she heard this story about her uncle?  The
thought started a whole train of doubts that had of late beset her.
Was her little daughter going to turn out like herself?  If not, why
not?  Stephen joked about his daughter's skirts, her hockey, her
friendship with young men.  He joked about the way Thyme refused to
let him joke about her art or about her interest in "the people."
His joking was a source of irritation to Cecilia.  For, by woman's
instinct rather than by any reasoning process, she was conscious of a
disconcerting change.  Amongst the people she knew, young men were
not now attracted by girls as they had been in her young days.  There
was a kind of cool and friendly matter-of-factness in the way they
treated them, a sort of almost scientific playfulness.  And Cecilia
felt uneasy as to how far this was to go.  She seemed left behind.
If young people were really becoming serious, if youths no longer
cared about the colour of Thyme's eyes, or dress, or hair, what would
there be left to care for--that is, up to the point of definite
relationship?  Not that she wanted her daughter to be married.  It
would be time enough to think of that when she was twenty-five.  But
her own experiences had been so different.  She had spent so many
youthful hours in wondering about men, had seen so many men cast
furtive looks at her; and now there did not seem in men or girls
anything left worth the other's while to wonder or look furtive
about.  She was not of a philosophic turn of mind, and had attached
no deep meaning to Stephen's jest--"If young people will reveal their
ankles, they'll soon have no ankles to reveal."

To Cecilia the extinction of the race seemed threatened; in reality
her species of the race alone was vanishing, which to her, of course,
was very much the same disaster.  With her eyes on Stephen's boots
she thought: 'How shall I prevent what I've heard from coming to
Bianca's ears?  I know how she would take it!  How shall I prevent
Thyme's hearing?  I'm sure I don't know what the effect would be on
her!  I must speak to Stephen.  He's so fond of Hilary.'

And, turning away from Stephen's boots, she mused: 'Of course it's
nonsense.  Hilary's much too--too nice, too fastidious, to be more
than just interested; but he's so kind he might easily put himself in
a false position.  And--it's ugly nonsense!  B. can be so
disagreeable; even now she's not--on terms with him!'  And suddenly
the thought of Mr. Purcey leaped into her mind--Mr. Purcey, who, as
Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace had declared, was not even conscious that
there was a problem of the poor.  To think of him seemed somehow at
that moment comforting, like rolling oneself in a blanket against a
draught.  Passing into her room, she opened her wardrobe door.

'Bother the woman!' she thought.  'I do want that gentian dress got
ready, but now I simply can't give it to her to do.'




CHAPTER VIII

THE SINGLE MIND OF MR. STONE

Since in the flutter of her spirit caused by the words of Mrs. Hughs,
Cecilia felt she must do something, she decided to change her dress.

The furniture of the pretty room she shared with Stephen had not been
hastily assembled.  Conscious, even fifteen years ago, when they
moved into this house, of the grave Philistinism of the upper
classes, she and Stephen had ever kept their duty to aestheticism
green; and, in the matter of their bed, had lain for two years on two
little white affairs, comfortable, but purely temporary, that they
might give themselves a chance.  The chance had come at last--a bed
in real keeping with the period they had settled on, and going for
twelve pounds.  They had not let it go, and now slept in it--not
quite so comfortable, perhaps, but comfortable enough, and conscious
of duty done.

For fifteen years Cecilia had been furnishing her house; the process
approached completion.  The only things remaining on her mind--apart,
that is, from Thyme's development and the condition of the people--
were: item, a copper lantern that would allow some light to pass its
framework; item, an old oak washstand not going back to Cromwell's
time.  And now this third anxiety had come!

She was rather touching, as she stood before the wardrobe glass
divested of her bodice, with dimples of exertion in her thin white
arms while she hooked her skirt behind, and her greenish eyes
troubled, so anxious to do their best for everyone, and save risk of
any sort.  Having put on a bramble-coloured frock, which laced across
her breast with silver lattice-work, and a hat (without feathers, so
as to encourage birds) fastened to her head with pins (bought to aid
a novel school of metal-work), she went to see what sort of day it
was.

The window looked out at the back over some dreary streets, where the
wind was flinging light drifts of smoke athwart the sunlight.  They
had chosen this room, not indeed for its view over the condition of
the people, but because of the sky effects at sunset, which were
extremely fine.  For the first time, perhaps, Cecilia was conscious
that a sample of the class she was so interested in was exposed to
view beneath her nose.  'The Hughs live somewhere there,' she
thought.  'After all I think B. ought to know about that man.  She
might speak to father, and get him to give up having the girl to copy
for him--the whole thing's so worrying.'

In pursuance of this thought, she lunched hastily, and went out,
making her way to Hilary's.  With every step she became more
uncertain.  The fear of meddling too much, of not meddling enough, of
seeming meddlesome; timidity at touching anything so awkward;
distrust, even ignorance, of her sister's character, which was like,
yet so very unlike, her own; a real itch to get the matter settled,
so that nothing whatever should come of it--all this she felt.  She
hurried, dawdled, finished the adventure almost at a run, then told
the servant not to announce her.  The vision of Bianca's eyes, while
she listened to this tale, was suddenly too much for Cecilia.  She
decided to pay a visit to her father first.

Mr. Stone was writing, attired in his working dress--a thick brown
woollen gown, revealing his thin neck above the line of a blue shirt,
and tightly gathered round the waist with tasselled cord; the lower
portions of grey trousers were visible above woollen-slippered feet.
His hair straggled over his thin long ears.  The window, wide open,
admitted an east wind; there was no fire.  Cecilia shivered.

"Come in quickly," said Mr. Stone.  Turning to a big high desk of
stained deal which occupied the middle of one wall, he began
methodically to place the inkstand, a heavy paper-knife, a book, and
stones of several sizes, on his guttering sheets of manuscript.

Cecilia looked about her; she had not been inside her father's room
for several months.  There was nothing in it but that desk, a camp
bed in the far corner (with blankets, but no sheets), a folding
washstand, and a narrow bookcase, the books in which Cecilia
unconsciously told off on the fingers of her memory.  They never
varied.  On the top shelf the Bible and the works of Plautus and
Diderot; on the second from the top the plays of Shakespeare in a
blue edition; on the third from the bottom Don Quixote, in four
volumes, covered with brown paper; a green Milton; the "Comedies of
Aristophanes"; a leather book, partially burned, comparing the
philosophy of Epicurus with the philosophy of Spinoza; and in a
yellow binding Mark Twain's "Huckleberry Finn."  On the second from
the bottom was lighter literature: "The Iliad"; a "Life of Francis of
Assisi"; Speke's "Discovery of the Sources of the Nile"; the
"Pickwick Papers"; "Mr. Midshipman Easy"; The Verses of Theocritus,
in a very old translation; Renan's "Life of Christ"; and the
"Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini."  The bottom shelf of all was
full of books on natural science.

The walls were whitewashed, and, as Cecilia knew, came off on anybody
who leaned against them.  The floor was stained, and had no carpet.
There was a little gas cooking-stove, with cooking things ranged on
it; a small bare table; and one large cupboard.  No draperies, no
pictures, no ornaments of any kind; but by the window an ancient
golden leather chair.  Cecilia could never bear to sit in that oasis;
its colour in this wilderness was too precious to her spirit.

"It's an east wind, father; aren't you terribly cold without a fire?"

Mr. Stone came from his writing-desk, and stood so that light might
fall on a sheet of paper in his hand.  Cecilia noted the scent that
went about with him of peat and baked potatoes.  He spoke:

"Listen to this: 'In the condition of society, dignified in those
days with the name of civilisation, the only source of hope was the
persistence of the quality called courage.  Amongst a thousand nerve-
destroying habits, amongst the dramshops, patent medicines, the
undigested chaos of inventions and discoveries, while hundreds were
prating in their pulpits of things believed in by a negligible
fraction of the population, and thousands writing down today what
nobody would want to read in two days' time; while men shut animals
in cages, and made bears jig to please their children, and all were
striving one against the other; while, in a word, like gnats above a
stagnant pool on a summer's evening, man danced up and down without
the faintest notion why--in this condition of affairs the quality of
courage was alive.  It was the only fire within that gloomy valley.'"
He stopped, though evidently anxious to go on, because he had read
the last word on that sheet of paper.  He moved towards the writing-
desk.  Cecilia said hastily:

"Do you mind if I shut the window, father?"

Mr. Stone made a movement of his head, and Cecilia saw that he held a
second sheet of paper in his hand.  She rose, and, going towards him,
said:

"I want to talk to you, Dad!"  Taking up the cord of his dressing-
gown, she pulled it by its tassel.

"Don't!" said Mr. Stone; "it secures my trousers."

Cecilia dropped the cord.  'Father is really terrible!' she thought.

Mr. Stone, lifting the second sheet of paper, began again:

"'The reason, however, was not far to seek---"

Cecilia said desperately:

"It's about that girl who comes to copy for you."

Mr. Stone lowered the sheet of paper, and stood, slightly curved from
head to foot; his ears moved as though he were about to lay them
back; his blue eyes, with little white spots of light alongside the
tiny black pupils, stared at his daughter.

Cecilia thought: 'He's listening now.'

She made haste.  "Must you have her here?  Can't you do without her?"

"Without whom?"  said Mr. Stone.

"Without the girl who comes to copy for you."

"Why?"

"For this very good reason---"

Mr. Stone dropped his eyes, and Cecilia saw that he had moved the
sheet of paper up as far as his waist.

"Does she copy better than any other girl could?"  she asked hastily.

"No," said Mr. Stone.

"Then, Father, I do wish, to please me, you'd get someone else.  I
know what I'm talking about, and I---" Cecilia stopped; her father's
lips and eyes were moving; he was obviously reading to himself.

'I've no patience with him,' she thought; 'he thinks of nothing but
his wretched book.'

Aware of his daughter's silence, Mr. Stone let the sheet of paper
sink, and waited patiently again.

"What do you want, my dear?"  he said.

"Oh, Father, do listen just a minute!"

"Yes, Yes."

"It's about that girl who comes to copy for you.  Is there any reason
why she should come instead of any other girl?"

"Yes," said Mr. Stone.

"What reason?"

"Because she has no friends."

So awkward a reply was not expected by Cecilia; she looked at the
floor, forced to search within her soul.  Silence lasted several
seconds; then Mr. Stone's voice rose above a whisper:

"'The reason was not far to seek.  Man, differentiated from the other
apes by his desire to know, was from the first obliged to steel
himself against the penalties of knowledge.  Like animals subjected
to the rigours of an Arctic climate, and putting forth more fur with
each reduction in the temperature, man's hide of courage thickened
automatically to resist the spear-thrusts dealt him by his own
insatiate curiosity.  In those days of which we speak, when
undigested knowledge, in a great invading horde, had swarmed all his
defences, man, suffering from a foul dyspepsia, with a nervous system
in the latest stages of exhaustion, and a reeling brain, survived by
reason of his power to go on making courage.  Little heroic as (in
the then general state of petty competition) his deeds appeared to
be, there never had yet been a time when man in bulk was more
courageous, for there never had yet been a time when he had more need
to be.  Signs were not wanting that this desperate state of things
had caught the eyes of the community.  A little sect---'"  Mr. Stone
stopped; his eyes had again tumbled over the bottom edge; he moved
hurriedly towards the desk.  Just as his hand removed a stone and
took up a third sheet, Cecilia cried out:

"Father!"

Mr. Stone stopped, and turned towards her.  His daughter saw that he
had gone quite pink; her annoyance vanished.

"Father!  About that girl---"

Mr. Stone seemed to reflect.  "Yes, yes," he said.

"I don't think Bianca likes her coming here."

Mr. Stone passed his hand across his brow.

"Forgive me for reading to you, my dear," he said; "it's a great
relief to me at times."

Cecilia went close to him, and refrained with difficulty from taking
up the tasselled cord.

"Of course, dear," she said: "I quite understand that."

Mr. Stone looked full in her face, and before a gaze which seemed to
go through her and see things the other side, Cecilia dropped her
eyes.

"It is strange," he said, "how you came to be my daughter!"

To Cecilia, too, this had often seemed a problem.

"There is a great deal in atavism," said Mr. Stone, "that we know
nothing of at present."

Cecilia cried with heat, "I do wish you would attend a minute,
Father; it's really an important matter," and she turned towards the
window, tears being very near her eyes.

The voice of Mr. Stone said humbly: "I will try, my dear."

But Cecilia thought: 'I must give him a good lesson.  He really is
too self-absorbed'; and she did not move, conveying by the posture of
her shoulders how gravely she was vexed.

She could see nursemaids wheeling babies towards the Gardens, and
noted their faces gazing, not at the babies, but, uppishly, at other
nursemaids, or, with a sort of cautious longing, at men who passed.
How selfish they looked!  She felt a little glow of satisfaction that
she was making this thin and bent old man behind her conscious of his
egoism.

'He will know better another time,' she thought.  Suddenly she heard
a whistling, squeaking sound--it was Mr. Stone whispering the third
page of his manuscript:

"'---animated by some admirable sentiments, but whose doctrines--
riddled by the fact that life is but the change of form to form--were
too constricted for the evils they designed to remedy; this little
sect, who had as yet to learn the meaning of universal love, were
making the most strenuous efforts, in advance of the community at
large, to understand themselves.  The necessary, movement which they
voiced--reaction against the high-tide of the fratricidal system then
prevailing--was young, and had the freshness and honesty of
youth....'"

Without a word Cecilia turned round and hurried to the door.  She saw
her father drop the sheet of paper; she saw his face, all pink and
silver, stooping after it; and remorse visited her anger.

In the corridor outside she was arrested by a noise.  The uncertain
light of London halls fell there; on close inspection the sufferer
was seen to be Miranda, who, unable to decide whether she wanted to
be in the garden or the house, was seated beneath the hatrack
snuffling to herself.  On seeing Cecilia she came out.

"What do you want, you little beast?"

Peering at her over the tops of her eyes, Miranda vaguely lifted a
white foot.  'Why ask me that?' she seemed to say.  'How am I to
know?  Are we not all like this?'

Her conduct, coming at that moment, over-tried Cecilia's nerves.  She
threw open Hilary's study-door, saying sharply: "Go in and find your
master!"

Miranda did not move, but Hilary came out instead.  He had been
correcting proofs to catch the post, and wore the look of a man
abstracted, faintly contemptuous of other forms of life.

Cecilia, once more saved from the necessity of approaching her
sister, the mistress of the house, so fugitive, haunting, and unseen,
yet so much the centre of this situation, said:

"Can I speak to you a minute, Hilary?"

They went into his study, and Miranda came creeping in behind.

To Cecilia her brother-in-law always seemed an amiable and more or
less pathetic figure.  In his literary preoccupations he allowed
people to impose on him.  He looked unsubstantial beside the bust of
Socrates, which moved Cecilia strangely--it was so very massive and
so very ugly!  She decided not to beat about the bush.

"I've been hearing some odd things from Mrs. Hughs about that little
model, Hilary."

Hilary's smile faded from his eyes, but remained clinging to his
lips.

"Indeed!"

Cecilia went on nervously: "Mrs. Hughs says it's because of her that
Hughs behaves so badly.  I don't want to say anything against the
girl, but she seems--she seems to have---"

"Yes?"  said Hilary.

"To have cast a spell on Hughs, as the woman puts it."

"On Hughs!" repeated Hilary.

Cecilia found her eyes resting on the bust of Socrates, and hastily
proceeded:

"She says he follows her about, and comes down here to lie in wait
for her.  It's a most strange business altogether.  You went to see
them, didn't you?"

Hilary nodded.

"I've been speaking to Father," Cecilia murmured; "but he's hopeless-
I, couldn't get him to pay the least attention."

Hilary seemed thinking deeply.

"I wanted him," she went on, "to get some other girl instead to come
and copy for him."

"Why?"

Under the seeming impossibility of ever getting any farther, without
saying what she had come to say, Cecilia blurted out:

"Mrs. Hughs says that Hughs has threatened you."

Hilary's face became ironical.

"Really!" he said.  "That's good of him!  What for?"

The frightful indelicacy of her situation at this moment, the feeling
of unfairness that she should be placed in it, almost overwhelmed
Cecilia.  "Goodness knows I don't want to meddle.  I never meddle in
anything-it's horrible!"

Hilary took her hand.

"My dear Cis," he said, "of course!  But we'd better have this out!"

Grateful for the pressure of his hand, she gave it a convulsive
squeeze.

"It's so sordid, Hilary!"

"Sordid!  H'm!  Let's get it over, then."

Cecilia had grown crimson.  "Do you want me to tell you everything?"

"Certainly."

"Well, Hughs evidently thinks you're interested in the girl.  You
can't keep anything from servants and people who work about your
house; they always think the worst of everything--and, of course,
they know that you and B. don't--aren't---"

Hilary nodded.

"Mrs. Hughs actually said the man meant to go to B.!"

Again the vision of her sister seemed to float into the room, and she
went on desperately: "And, Hilary, I can see Mrs. Hughs really thinks
you are interested.  Of course, she wants to, for if you were, it
would mean that a man like her husband could have no chance."

Astonished at this flash of cynical inspiration, and ashamed of such
plain speaking, she checked herself.  Hilary had turned away.

Cecilia touched his arm.  "Hilary, dear," she said, "isn't there any
chance of you and B---"

Hilary's lips twitched.  "I should say not."

Cecilia looked sadly at the floor.  Not since Stephen was bad with
pleurisy had she felt so worried.  The sight of Hilary's face brought
back her doubts with all their force.  It might, of course, be only
anger at the man's impudence, but it might be--she hardly liked to
frame her thought--a more personal feeling.

"Don't you think," she said, "that, anyway, she had better not come
here again?"

Hilary paced the room.

"It's her only safe and certain piece of work; it keeps her
independent.  It's much more satisfactory than this sitting.  I can't
have any hand in taking it away from her."

Cecilia had never seen him moved like this.  Was it possible that he
was not incorrigibly gentle, but had in him some of that animality
which she, in a sense, admired?  This uncertainty terribly increased
the difficulties of the situation.

"But, Hilary," she said at last, "are you satisfied about the girl--I
mean, are you satisfied that she really is worth helping?"

"I don't understand."

"I mean," murmured Cecilia, "that we don't know anything about her
past."  And, seeing from the movement of his eyebrows that she was
touching on what had evidently been a doubt with him, she went on
with great courage: "Where are her friends and relations?  I mean,
she may have had a--adventures."

Hilary withdrew into himself.

"You can hardly expect me," he said, "to go into that with her."

His reply made Cecilia feel ridiculous.

"Well," she said in a hard little voice, "if this is what comes of
helping the poor, I don't see the use of it."

The outburst evoked no reply from Hilary; she felt more tremulous
than ever.  The whole thing was so confused, so unnatural.  What with
the dark, malignant Hughs and that haunting vision of Bianca, the
matter seemed almost Italian.  That a man of Hughs' class might be
affected by the passion of love had somehow never come into her head.
She thought of the back streets she had looked out on from her
bedroom window.  Could anything like passion spring up in those
dismal alleys?  The people who lived there, poor downtrodden things,
had enough to do to keep themselves alive.  She knew all about them;
they were in the air; their condition was deplorable!  Could a person
whose condition was deplorable find time or strength for any sort of
lurid exhibition such as this?  It was incredible.

She became aware that Hilary was speaking.

"I daresay the man is dangerous!"

Hearing her fears confirmed, and in accordance with the secret vein
of hardness which kept her living, amid all her sympathies and
hesitations, Cecilia felt suddenly that she had gone as far as it was
in her to go.

"I shall have no more to do with them," she said; "I've tried my best
for Mrs. Hughs.  I know quite as good a needlewoman, who'll be only
too glad to come instead.  Any other girl will do as well to copy
father's book.  If you take my advice, Hilary, you'll give up trying
to help them too."

Hilary's smile puzzled and annoyed her.  If she had known, this was
the smile that stood between him and her sister.

"You may be right," he said, and shrugged his shoulders:

"Very well," said Cecilia, "I've done all I can.  I must go now.
Good-bye."

During her progress to the door she gave one look behind.  Hilary was
standing by the bust of Socrates.  Her heart smote her to leave him
thus embarrassed.  But again the vision of Bianca--fugitive in her
own house, and with something tragic in her mocking immobility--came
to her, and she hastened away.

A voice said: "How are you, Mrs. Dallison?  Your sister at home?"

Cecilia saw before her Mr. Purcey, rising and falling a little with
the oscillation of his A.i. Damyer.

A sense as of having just left a house visited by sickness or
misfortune made Cecilia murmur:

"I'm afraid she's not."

"Bad luck!" said Mr. Purcey.  His face fell as far as so red and
square a face could fall.  "I was hoping perhaps I might be allowed
to take them for a run.  She's wanting exercise."  Mr. Purcey laid
his hand on the flank of his palpitating car.  "Know these A.i.
Damyers, Mrs. Dallison?  Best value you can get, simply rippin'
little cars.  Wish you'd try her."

The A.i. Damyer, diffusing an aroma of the finest petrol, leaped and
trembled, as though conscious of her master's praise.  Cecilia looked
at her.

"Yes," she said, "she's very sweet."

"Now do!" said Mr. Purcey.  "Let me give you a run--Just to please
me, I mean.  I'm sure you'll like her."

A little compunction, a little curiosity, a sudden revolt against all
the discomfiture and sordid doubts she had been suffering from, made
Cecilia glance softly at Mr. Purcey's figure; almost before she knew
it, she was seated in the A.i. Damyer.  It trembled, emitted two
small sounds, one large scent, and glided forward.  Mr. Purcey said:

"That's rippin' of you!"

A postman, dog, and baker's cart, all hurrying at top speed, seemed
to stand still; Cecilia felt the wind beating her cheeks.  She gave a
little laugh.

"You must just take me home, please."

Mr. Purcey touched the chauffeur's elbow.

"Round the park," he said.  "Let her have it."

The A.i. Damyer uttered a tiny shriek.  Cecilia, leaning back in her
padded corner, glanced askance at Mr. Purcey leaning back in his; an
unholy, astonished little smile played on her lips.

'What am I doing?' it seemed to say.  'The way he got me here--
really!  And now I am here I'm just going to enjoy it!'

There were no Hughs, no little model--all that sordid life had
vanished; there was nothing but the wind beating her cheeks and the
A.i. Damyer leaping under her.

Mr. Purcey said: "It just makes all the difference to me; keeps my
nerves in order."

"Oh," Cecilia murmured, "have you got nerves."

Mr. Purcey smiled.  When he smiled his cheeks formed two hard red
blocks, his trim moustache stood out, and many little wrinkles ran
from his light eyes.

"Chock full of them," he said; "least thing upsets me.  Can't bear to
see a hungry-lookin' child, or anything."

A strange feeling of admiration for this man had come upon Cecilia.
Why could not she, and Thyme, and Hilary, and Stephen, and all the
people they knew and mixed with, be like him, so sound and healthy,
so unravaged by disturbing sympathies, so innocent of "social
conscience," so content?

As though jealous of these thoughts about her master, the A.i.
Damyer stopped of her own accord.

"Hallo," said Mr. Purcey, "hallo, I say!  Don't you get out; she'll
be all right directly."

"Oh," said Cecilia, "thanks; but I must go in here, anyhow; I think
I'll say good-bye.  Thank you so much.  I have enjoyed it."

>From the threshold of a shop she looked back.  Mr. Purcey, on foot,
was leaning forward from the waist, staring at his A.i. Damyer with
profound concentration.




CHAPTER IX

HILARY GIVES CHASE

The ethics of a man like Hilary were not those of the million pure
bred Purceys of this life, founded on a sense of property in this
world and the next; nor were they precisely the morals and religion
of the aristocracy, who, though aestheticised in parts, quietly used,
in bulk, their fortified position to graft on Mr. Purcey's ethics the
principle of 'You be damned!'  In the eyes of the majority he was
probably an immoral and irreligious man; but in fact his morals and
religion were those of his special section of society--the cultivated
classes, "the professors, the artistic pigs, advanced people, and all
that sort of cuckoo," as Mr. Purcey called them--a section of society
supplemented by persons, placed beyond the realms of want, who
speculated in ideas.

Had he been required to make confession of his creed he would
probably have framed it in some such way as this: "I disbelieve in
all Church dogmas, and do not go to church; I have no definite ideas
about a future state, and do not want to have; but in a private way I
try to identify myself as much as possible with what I see about me,
feeling that if I could ever really be at one with the world I live
in I should be happy.  I think it foolish not to trust my senses and
my reason; as for what my senses and my reason will not tell me, I
assume that all is as it had to be, for if one could get to know the
why of everything in one would be the Universe.  I do not believe
that chastity is a virtue in itself, but only so far as it ministers
to the health and happiness of the community.  I do not believe that
marriage confers the rights of ownership, and I loathe all public
wrangling on such matters; but I am temperamentally averse to the
harming of my neighbours, if in reason it can be avoided.  As to
manners, I think that to repeat a bit of scandal, and circulate
backbiting stories, are worse offences than the actions that gave
rise to them.  If I mentally condemn a person, I feel guilty of moral
lapse.  I hate self-assertion; I am ashamed of self-advertisement.  I
dislike loudness of any kind.  Probably I have too much tendency to
negation of all sorts.  Small-talk bores me to extinction, but I will
discuss a point of ethics or psychology half the night.  To make
capital out of a person's weakness is repugnant to me.  I want to be
a decent man, but--I really can't take myself too seriously."

Though he had preserved his politeness towards Cecilia, he was in
truth angry, and grew angrier every minute.  He was angry with her,
himself, and the man Hughs; and suffered from this anger as only they
can who are not accustomed to the rough-and-tumble of things.

Such a retiring man as Hilary was seldom given the opportunity for an
obvious display of chivalry.  The tenor of his life removed him from
those situations.  Such chivalry as he displayed was of a negative
order.  And confronted suddenly with the conduct of Hughs, who, it
seemed, knocked his wife about, and dogged the footsteps of a
helpless girl, he took it seriously to heart.

When the little model came walking up the garden on her usual visit,
he fancied her face looked scared.  Quieting the growling of Miranda,
who from the first had stubbornly refused to know this girl, he sat
down with a book to wait for her to go away.  After sitting an hour
or more, turning over pages, and knowing little of their sense, he
saw a man peer over his garden gate.  He was there for half a minute,
then lounged across the road, and stood hidden by some railings.

'So?' thought Hilary.  'Shall I go out and warn the fellow to clear
off, or shall I wait to see what happens when she goes away?'

He determined on the latter course.  Presently she came out, walking
with her peculiar gait, youthful and pretty, but too matter-of-fact,
and yet, as it were, too purposeless to be a lady's.  She looked back
at Hilary's window, and turned uphill.

Hilary took his hat and stick and waited.  In half a minute Hughs
came out from under cover of the railings and followed.  Then Hilary,
too, set forth.

There is left in every man something of the primeval love of
stalking.  The delicate Hilary, in cooler blood, would have revolted
at the notion of dogging people's footsteps.  He now experienced the
holy pleasures of the chase.  Certain that Hughs was really following
the girl, he had but to keep him in sight and remain unseen.  This
was not hard for a man given to mountain-climbing, almost the only
sport left to one who thought it immoral to hurt anybody but himself.

Taking advantage of shop-windows, omnibuses, passers-by, and other
bits of cover, he prosecuted the chase up the steepy heights of
Campden Hill.  But soon a nearly fatal check occurred; for, chancing
to take his eyes off Hughs, he saw the little model returning on her
tracks.  Ready enough in physical emergencies, Hilary sprang into a
passing omnibus.  He saw her stopping before the window of a picture-
shop.  From the expression of her face and figure, she evidently had
no idea that she was being followed, but stood with a sort of slack-
lipped wonder, lost in admiration of a well-known print.  Hilary had
often wondered who could possibly admire that picture--he now knew.
It was obvious that the girl's aesthetic sense was deeply touched.

While this was passing through his mind, he caught sight of Hughs
lurking outside a public-house.  The dark man's face was sullen and
dejected, and looked as if he suffered.  Hilary felt a sort of pity
for him.

The omnibus leaped forward, and he sat down smartly almost on a
lady's lap.  This was the lap of Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace, who
greeted him with a warm, quiet smile, and made a little room.

"Your sister-in-law has just been to see me, Mr. Dallison.  She's
such a dear-so interested in everything.  I tried to get her to come
on to my meeting with me."

Raising his hat, Hilary frowned.  For once his delicacy was at fault.
He said:

"Ah, yes!  Excuse me!" and got out.

Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace looked after him, and then glanced round the
omnibus.  His conduct was very like the conduct of a man who had got
in to keep an assignation with a lady, and found that lady sitting
next his aunt.  She was unable to see a soul who seemed to foster
this view, and sat thinking that he was "rather attractive."
Suddenly her dark busy eyes lighted on the figure of the little model
strolling along again.

'Oh!' she thought.  'Ah!  Yes, really!  How very interesting!'

Hilary, to avoid meeting the girl point-blank, had turned up a by-
street, and, finding a convenient corner, waited.  He was puzzled.
If this man were persecuting her with his attentions, why had he not
gone across when she was standing at the picture-shop?

She passed across the opening of the by-street, still walking in the
slack way of one who takes the pleasures of the streets.  She passed
from view; Hilary strained his eyes to see if Hughs were following.
He waited several minutes.  The man did not appear.  The chase was
over!  And suddenly it flashed across him that Hughs had merely
dogged her to see that she had no assignation with anybody.  They had
both been playing the same game!  He flushed up in that shady little
street, in which he was the only person to be seen.  Cecilia was
right!  It was a sordid business.  A man more in touch with facts
than Hilary would have had some mental pigeonhole into which to put
an incident like this; but, being by profession concerned mainly with
ideas and thoughts, he did not quite know where he was.  The habit of
his mind precluded him from thinking very definitely on any subject
except his literary work--precluded him especially in a matter of
this sort, so inextricably entwined with that delicate, dim question,
the impact of class on class.

Pondering deeply, he ascended the leafy lane that leads between high
railings from Notting Hill to Kensington.

It was so far from traffic that every tree on either side was loud
with the Spring songs of birds; the scent of running sap came forth
shyly as the sun sank low.  Strange peace, strange feeling of old
Mother Earth up there above the town; wild tunes, and the quiet sight
of clouds.  Man in this lane might rest his troubled thoughts, and
for a while trust the goodness of the Scheme that gave him birth, the
beauty of each day, that laughs or broods itself into night.  Some
budding lilacs exhaled a scent of lemons; a sandy cat on the coping
of a garden wall was basking in the setting sun.

In the centre of the lane a row of elm-trees displayed their gnarled,
knotted roots.  Human beings were seated there, whose matted hair
clung round their tired faces.  Their gaunt limbs were clothed in
rags; each had a stick, and some sort of dirty bundle tied to it.
They were asleep.  On a bench beyond, two toothless old women sat,
moving their eyes from side to side, and a crimson-faced woman was
snoring.  Under the next tree a Cockney youth and his girl were
sitting side by side-pale young things, with loose mouths, and hollow
cheeks, and restless eyes.  Their arms were enlaced; they were
silent.  A little farther on two young men in working clothes were
looking straight before them, with desperately tired faces.  They,
too, were silent.

On the last bench of all Hilary came on the little model, seated
slackly by herself.




CHAPTER X

THE TROUSSEAU

This the first time these two had each other at large, was clearly
not a comfortable event for either of them.  The girl blushed, and
hastily got off her seat.  Hilary, who raised his hat and frowned,
sat down on it.

"Don't get up," he said; "I want to talk to you."

The little model obediently resumed her seat.  A silence followed.
She had on the old brown skirt and knitted jersey, the old blue-green
tam-o'-shanter cap, and there were marks of weariness beneath her
eyes.

At last Hilary remarked: "How are you getting on?"

The little model looked at her feet.

"Pretty well, thank you, Mr. Dallison."

"I came to see you yesterday."

She slid a look at him which might have meant nothing or meant much,
so perfect its shy stolidity.

"I was out," she said, "sitting to Miss Boyle."

"So you have some work?"

"It's finished now."

"Then you're only getting the two shillings a day from Mr. Stone?"

She nodded.

"H'm!"

The unexpected fervour of this grunt seemed to animate the little
model.

"Three and sixpence for my rent, and breakfast costs threepence
nearly--only bread-and-butter--that's five and two; and washing's
always at least tenpence--that's six; and little things last week was
a shilling--even when I don't take buses--seven; that leaves five
shillings for my dinners.  Mr. Stone always gives me tea.  It's my
clothes worries me."  She tucked her feet farther beneath the seat,
and Hilary refrained from looking down.  "My hat is awful, and I do
want some---" She looked Hilary in the face for the first time.  "I
do wish I was rich."

"I don't wonder."

The little model gritted her teeth, and, twisting at her dirty
gloves, said: "Mr. Dallison, d'you know the first thing I'd buy if I
was rich?"

"No."

"I'd buy everything new on me from top to toe, and I wouldn't ever
wear any of these old things again."

Hilary got up: "Come with me now, and buy everything new from top to
toe."

"Oh!"

Hilary had already perceived that he had made an awkward, even
dangerous, proposal; short, however, of giving her money, the idea of
which offended his sense of delicacy, there was no way out of it.  He
said brusquely: "Come along!"

The little model rose obediently.  Hilary noticed that her boots were
split, and this--as though he had seen someone strike a child--so
moved his indignation that he felt no more qualms, but rather a sort
of pleasant glow, such as will come to the most studious man when he
levels a blow at the conventions.

He looked down at his companion--her eyes were lowered; he could not
tell at all what she was thinking of.

"This is what I was going to speak to you about," he said: "I don't
like that house you're in; I think you ought to be somewhere else.
What do you say?"

"Yes, Mr. Dallison."

"You'd better make a change, I think; you could find another room,
couldn't you?"

The little model answered as before: "Yes, Mr. Dallison."

"I'm afraid that Hughs is-a dangerous sort of fellow."

"He's a funny man."

"Does he annoy you?"

Her expression baffled Hilary; there seemed a sort of slow enjoyment
in it.  She looked up knowingly.

"I don't mind him--he won't hurt me.  Mr. Dallison, do you think blue
or green?"

Hilary answered shortly: "Bluey-green."

She clasped her hands, changed her feet with a hop, and went on
walking as before.

"Listen to me," said Hilary; "has Mrs. Hughs been talking to you
about her husband?"

The little model smiled again.

"She goes on," she said.

Hilary bit his lips.

"Mr. Dallison, please--about my hat?"

"What about your hat?"

"Would you like me to get a large one or a small one?"

"For God's sake," answered Hilary, "a small one--no feathers."

"Oh!"

"Can you attend to me a minute?  Have either Hughs or Mrs. Hughs
spoken to you about--coming to my house, about--me?"

The little model's face remained impassive, but by the movement of
her fingers Hilary saw that she was attending now.

"I don't care what they say."

Hilary looked away; an angry flush slowly mounted in his face.

With surprising suddenness the little model said:

"Of course, if I was a lady, I might mind!"

"Don't talk like that!" said Hilary; "every woman is a lady."

The stolidity of the girl's face, more mocking far than any smile,
warned him of the cheapness of this verbiage.

"If I was a lady," she repeated simply, "I shouldn't be livin' there,
should I?"

"No," said Hilary; "and you had better not go on living there,
anyway."

The little model making no answer, Hilary did not quite know what to
say.  It was becoming apparent to him that she viewed the situation
with a very different outlook from himself, and that he did not
understand that outlook.

He felt thoroughly at sea, conscious that this girl's life contained
a thousand things he did not know, a thousand points of view he did
not share.

Their two figures attracted some attention in the crowded street, for
Hilary-tall and slight, with his thin, bearded face and soft felt
hat--was what is known as "a distinguished-looking man"; and the
little model, though not "distinguished-looking" in her old brown
skirt and tam-o'shanter cap, had the sort of face which made men and
even women turn to look at her.  To men she was a little bit of
strangely interesting, not too usual, flesh and blood; to women, she
was that which made men turn to look at her.  Yet now and again there
would rise in some passer-by a feeling more impersonal, as though the
God of Pity had shaken wings overhead, and dropped a tiny feather.

So walking, and exciting vague interest, they reached the first of
the hundred doors of Messrs. Rose and Thorn.

Hilary had determined on this end door, for, as the adventure grew
warmer, he was more alive to its dangers.  To take this child into
the very shop frequented by his wife and friends seemed a little mad;
but that same reason which caused them to frequent it--the fact that
there was no other shop of the sort half so handy--was the reason
which caused Hilary to go there now.  He had acted on impulse; he
knew that if he let his impulse cool he would not act at all.  The
bold course was the wise one; this was why he chose the end door
round the corner.  Standing aside for her to go in first, he noticed
the girl's brightened eyes and cheeks; she had never looked so
pretty.  He glanced hastily round; the department was barren for
their purposes, filled entirely with pyjamas.  He felt a touch on his
arm.  The little model, rather pink, was looking up at him.

"Mr. Dallison, am I to get more than one set of--underthings?"

"Three-three," muttered Hilary; and suddenly he saw that they were on
the threshold of that sanctuary.  "Buy them," he said, "and bring me
the bill."

He waited close beside a man with a pink face, a moustache, and an
almost perfect figure, who was standing very still, dressed from head
to foot in blue-and-white stripes.  He seemed the apotheosis of what
a man should be, his face composed in a deathless simper: "Long, long
have been the struggles of man, but civilization has produced me at
last.  Further than this it cannot go.  Nothing shall make me
continue my line.  In me the end is reached.  See my back: 'The
Amateur.  This perfect style, 8s. 11d.  Great reduction.'"

He would not talk to Hilary, and the latter was compelled to watch
the shopmen.  It was but half an hour to closing time; the youths
were moving languidly, bickering a little, in the absence of their
customers--like flies on a pane unable to get out into the sun.  Two
of them came and asked him what they might serve him with; they were
so refined and pleasant that Hilary was on the point of buying what
he did not want.  The reappearance of the little model saved him.

"It's thirty shillings; five and eleven was the cheapest, and
stockings, and I bought some sta---"

Hilary produced the money hastily.

"This is a very dear shop," she said.

When she had paid the bill, and Hilary had taken from her a large
brown-paper parcel, they journeyed on together.  He had armoured his
face now in a slightly startled quizzicality, as though, himself
detached, he were watching the adventure from a distance.

On the central velvet seat of the boot and shoe department, a lady,
with an egret in her hat, was stretching out a slim silk-stockinged
foot, waiting for a boot.  She looked with negligent amusement at
this common little girl and her singular companion.  This look of
hers seemed to affect the women serving, for none came near the
little model.  Hilary saw them eyeing her boots, and, suddenly
forgetting his role of looker-on, he became very angry.  Taking out
his watch, he went up to the eldest woman.

"If somebody," he said, "does not attend this young lady within a
minute, I shall make a personal complaint to Mr. Thorn."

The hand of the watch, however, had not completed its round before a
woman was at the little model's side.  Hilary saw her taking off her
boot, and by a sudden impulse he placed himself between her and the
lady.  In doing this, he so far forgot his delicacy as to fix his
eyes on the little model's foot.  The sense of physical discomfort
which first attacked him became a sort of aching in his heart.  That
brown, dingy stocking was darned till no stocking, only darning, and
one toe and two little white bits of foot were seen, where the
threads refused to hold together any longer.

The little model wagged the toe uneasily--she had hoped, no doubt,
that it would not protrude, then concealed it with her skirt.  Hilary
moved hastily away; when he looked again, it was not at her, but at
the lady.

Her face had changed; it was no longer amused and negligent, but
stamped with an expression of offence.  'Intolerable,' it seemed to
say, 'to bring a girl like that into a shop like this!  I shall never
come here again!'  The expression was but the outward sign of that
inner physical discomfort Hilary himself had felt when he first saw
the little model's stocking.  This naturally did not serve to lessen
his anger, especially as he saw her animus mechanically reproduced on
the faces of the serving women.

He went back to the little model, and sat down by her side.

"Does it fit?  You'd better walk in it and see."

The little model walked.

"It squeezes me," she said.

"Try another, then," said Hilary.

The lady rose, stood for a second with her eyebrows raised and her
nostrils slightly distended, then went away, and left a peculiarly
pleasant scent of violets behind.

The second pair of boots not "squeezing" her, the little model was
soon ready to go down.  She had all her trousseau now, except the
dress--selected and, indeed, paid for, but which, as she told Hilary,
she was coming back to try on tomorrow, when--when---.  She had
obviously meant to say when she was all new underneath.  She was
laden with one large and two small parcels, and in her eyes there was
a holy look.

Outside the shop she gazed up in his face.

"Well, you are happy now?"  asked Hilary.

Between the short black lashes were seen two very bright, wet shining
eyes; her parted lips began to quiver.

"Good-night, then," he said abruptly, and walked away.

But looking round, he saw her still standing there, half buried in
parcels, gazing after him.  Raising his hat, he turned into the High
Street towards home....

The old man, known to that low class of fellow with whom he was now
condemned to associate as "Westminister," was taking a whiff or two
out of his old clay pipe, and trying to forget his feet.  He saw
Hilary coming, and carefully extended a copy of the last edition.

"Good-evenin', sir!  Quite seasonable to-day for the time of year!
Ho, yes!  'Westminister!'"

His eyes followed Hilary's retreat.  He thought:

"Oh dear!  He's a-given me an 'arf-a-crown.  He does look well--I
like to see 'im look as well as that--quite young!  Oh dear!"

The sun-that smoky, faring ball, which in its time had seen so many
last editions of the Westminster Gazette--was dropping down to pass
the night in Shepherd's Bush.  It made the old butler's eyelids blink
when he turned to see if the coin really was a half-crown, or too
good to be true.

And all the spires and house-roofs, and the spaces up above and
underneath them, glittered and swam, and men and horses looked as if
they had been powdered with golden dust.




CHAPTER XI

PEAR BLOSSOM

Weighed down by her three parcels, the little model pursued her way
to Hound Street.  At the door of No. 1 the son of the lame woman, a
tall weedy youth with a white face, was resting his legs alternately,
and smoking a cigarette.  Closing one eye, he addressed her thus:

"'Allo, miss!  Kerry your parcels for you?"

The little model gave him a look.  'Mind your own business!' it said;
but there was that in the flicker of her eyelashes which more than
nullified this snub.

Entering her room, she deposited the parcels on her bed, and untied
the strings with quick, pink fingers.  When she had freed the
garments from wrappings and spread them out, she knelt down, and
began to touch them, putting her nose down once or twice to sniff the
linen and feel its texture.  There were little frills attached here
and there, and to these she paid particular attention, ruffling their
edges with the palms of her hands, while the holy look came back to
her face.  Rising at length, she locked the door, drew down the
blind, undressed from head to foot, and put on the new garments.
Letting her hair down, she turned herself luxuriously round and round
before the too-small looking-glass.  There was utter satisfaction in
each gesture of that whole operation, as if her spirit, long starved,
were having a good meal.  In this rapt contemplation of herself, all
childish vanity and expectancy, and all that wonderful quality found
in simple unspiritual natures of delighting in the present moment,
were perfectly displayed.  So, motionless, with her hair loose on her
neck, she was like one of those half-hours of Spring that have lost
their restlessness and are content just to be.

Presently, however, as though suddenly remembering that her happiness
was not utterly complete, she went to a drawer, took out a packet of
pear-drops, and put one in her mouth.

The sun, near to setting, had found its way through a hole in the
blind, and touched her neck.  She turned as though she had received a
kiss, and, raising a corner of the blind, peered out.  The pear-tree,
which, to the annoyance of its proprietor, was placed so close to the
back court of this low-class house as almost to seem to belong to it,
was bathed in slanting sunlight.  No tree in all the world could have
looked more fair than it did just then in its garb of gilded bloom.
With her hand up to her bare neck, and her cheeks indrawn from
sucking the sweet, the little model fixed her eyes on the tree.  Her
expression did not change; she showed no signs of admiration.  Her
gaze passed on to the back windows of the house that really owned the
pear-tree, spying out whether anyone could see her--hoping, perhaps,
someone would see her while she was feeling so nice and new.  Then,
dropping the blind, she went back to the glass and began to pin her
hair up.  When this was done she stood for a long minute looking at
her old brown skirt and blouse, hesitating to defile her new-found
purity.  At last she put them on and drew up the blind.  The sunlight
had passed off the pear-tree; its bloom was now white, and almost as
still as snow.  The little model put another sweet into her mouth,
and producing from her pocket an ancient leather purse, counted out
her money.  Evidently discovering that it was no more than she
expected, she sighed, and rummaged out of a top drawer an old
illustrated magazine.

She sat down on the bed, and, turning the leaves rapidly till she
reached a certain page, rested the paper in her lap.  Her eyes were
fixed on a photograph in the left-hand corner-one of those effigies
of writers that appear occasionally in the public press.  Under it
were printed the words: "Mr. Hilary Dallison."  And suddenly she
heaved a sigh.

The room grew darker; the wind, getting up as the sun went down, blew
a few dropped petals of the pear-tree against the window-pane.




CHAPTER XII

SHIPS IN SAIL

In due accord with the old butler's comment on his looks, Hilary had
felt so young that, instead of going home, he mounted an omnibus, and
went down to his club--the "Pen and Ink," so called because the man
who founded it could not think at the moment of any other words.
This literary person had left the club soon after its initiation,
having conceived for it a sudden dislike.  It had indeed a certain
reputation for bad cooking, and all its members complained bitterly
at times that you never could go in without meeting someone you knew.
It stood in Dover Street.  Unlike other clubs, it was mainly used to
talk in, and had special arrangements for the safety of umbrellas and
such books as had not yet vanished from the library; not, of course,
owing to any peculative tendency among its members, but because,
after interchanging their ideas, those members would depart, in a
long row, each grasping some material object in his hand.  Its.
maroon-coloured curtains, too, were never drawn, because, in the heat
of their discussions, the members were always drawing them.  On the
whole, those members did not like each other much; wondering a
little, one by one, why the others wrote; and when the printed
reasons were detailed to them, reading them with irritation.  If
really compelled to hazard an opinion about each other's merits, they
used to say that, no doubt "So-and-so" was "very good," but they had
never read him!  For it had early been established as the principle
underlying membership not to read the writings of another man, unless
you could be certain he was dead, lest you might have to tell him to
his face that you disliked his work.  For they were very jealous of
the purity of their literary consciences.  Exception was made,
however, in the case of those who lived by written criticism, the
opinions of such persons being read by all, with a varying smile, and
a certain cerebral excitement.  Now and then, however, some member,
violating every sense of decency, would take a violent liking for
another member's books.  This he would express in words, to the
discomfort of his fellows, who, with a sudden chilly feeling in the
stomach, would wonder why it was not their books that he was
praising.

Almost every year, and generally in March, certain aspirations would
pass into the club; members would ask each other why there was no
Academy of British Letters; why there was no concerted movement to
limit the production of other authors' books; why there was no prize
given for the best work of the year.  For a little time it almost
seemed as if their individualism were in danger; but, the windows
having been opened wider than usual some morning, the aspirations
would pass out, and all would feel secretly as a man feels when he
has swallowed the mosquito that has been worrying him all night--
relieved, but just a little bit embarrassed.  Socially sympathetic in
their dealings with each other--they were mostly quite nice fellows--
each kept a little fame-machine, on which he might be seen sitting
every morning about the time the papers and his correspondence came,
wondering if his fame were going up.

Hilary stayed in the club till half-past nine; then, avoiding a
discussion which was just setting in, he took his own umbrella, and
bent his steps towards home.

It was the moment of suspense in Piccadilly; the tide had flowed up
to the theatres, and had not yet begun to ebb.  The tranquil trees,
still feathery, draped their branches along the farther bank of that
broad river, resting from their watch over the tragi-comedies played
on its surface by men, their small companions.  The gentle sighs
which distilled from their plume-like boughs seemed utterances of the
softest wisdom.  Not far beyond their trunks it was all dark velvet,
into which separate shapes, adventuring, were lost, as wild birds
vanishing in space, or the souls of men received into their Mother's
heart.

Hilary walked, hearing no sighs of wisdom, noting no smooth darkness,
wrapped in thought.  The mere fact of having given pleasure was
enough to produce a warm sensation in a man so naturally kind.  But,
as with all self-conscious, self-distrustful, natures, that sensation
had not lasted.  He  was left with a feeling of emptiness and
disillusionment, as of having given himself a good mark without
reason.

While walking, he was a target for the eyes of many women, who passed
him rapidly, like ships in sail.  The special fastidious shyness of
his face attracted those accustomed to another kind of face.  And
though he did not precisely look at them, they in turn inspired in
him the compassionate, morbid curiosity which persons who live
desperate lives necessarily inspire in the leisured, speculative
mind.  One of them deliberately approached him from a side-street.
Though taller and fuller, with heightened colour, frizzy hair, and a
hat with feathers; she was the image of the little model--the same
shape of face, broad cheek-bones, mouth a little open; the same
flower-coloured eyes and short black lashes, all coarsened and
accentuated as Art coarsens and accentuates the lines of life.
Looking boldly into Hilary's startled face, she laughed.  Hilary
winced and walked on quickly.

He reached home at half-past ten.  The lamp was burning in Mr.
Stone's room, and his window was, as usual, open; that which was not
usual, however, was a light in Hilary's own bedroom.  He went gently
up.  Through the door-ajar-he saw, to his surprise, the figure of his
wife.  She was reclining in a chair, her elbows on its arms, the tips
of her fingers pressed together.  Her face, with its dark hair, vivid
colouring, and sharp lines, was touched with shadows, her head turned
as though towards somebody beside her; her neck gleamed white.  So--
motionless, dimly seen--she was like a woman sitting alongside her
own life, scrutinising, criticising, watching it live, taking no part
in it.  Hilary wondered whether to go in or slip away from his
strange visitor.

"Ah! it's you," she said.

Hilary approached her.  For all her mocking of her own charms, this
wife of his was strangely graceful.  After nineteen years in which to
learn every line of her face and body, every secret of her nature,
she still eluded him; that elusiveness, which had begun by being such
a charm, had got on his nerves, and extinguished the flame it had
once lighted.  He had so often tried to see, and never seen, the
essence of her soul.  Why was she made like this?  Why was she for
ever mocking herself, himself, and every other thing?  Why was she so
hard to her own life, so bitter a foe to her own happiness?  Leonardo
da Vinci might have painted her, less sensual and cruel than his
women, more restless and disharmonic, but physically, spiritually
enticing, and, by her refusals to surrender either to her spirit or
her senses, baffling her own enticements.

"I don't know why I came," she said.

Hilary found no better answer than: "I am sorry I was out to dinner."

"Has the wind gone round?  My room is cold."

"Yes, north-east.  Stay here."

Her hand touched his; that warm and restless clasp was agitating.

"It's good of you to ask me; but we'd better not begin what we can't
keep up."

"Stay here," said Hilary again, kneeling down beside her chair.

And suddenly he began to kiss her face and neck.  He felt her
answering kisses; for a moment they were clasped together in a fierce
embrace.  Then, as though by mutual consent, their arms relaxed;
their eyes grew furtive, like the eyes of children who have egged
each other on to steal; and on their lips appeared the faintest of
faint smiles.  It was as though those lips were saying: "Yes, but we
are not quite animals!"

Hilary got up and sat down on his bed.  Blanca stayed in the chair,
looking straight before her, utterly inert, her head thrown back, her
white throat gleaming, on her lips and in her eyes that flickering
smile.  Not a word more, nor a look, passed between them.

Then rising, without noise, she passed behind him and went out.

Hilary had a feeling in his mouth as though he had been chewing
ashes.  And a phrase--as phrases sometimes fill the spirit of a man
without rhyme or reason--kept forming on his lips: "The house of
harmony!"

Presently he went to her door, and stood there listening.  He could
hear no sound whatever.  If she had been crying if she had been
laughing--it would have been better than this silence.  He put his
hands up to his ears and ran down-stairs.




CHAPTER XIII

SOUND IN THE NIGHT

He passed his study door, and halted at Mr. Stone's; the thought of
the old man, so steady and absorbed in the face of all external
things, refreshed him.

Still in his brown woollen gown, Mr. Stone was sitting with his eyes
fixed on something in the corner, whence a little perfumed steam was
rising.

"Shut the door," he said; "I am making cocoa; will you have a cup?"

"Am I disturbing you?" asked Hilary.

Mr. Stone looked at him steadily before answering:

"If I work after cocoa, I find it clogs the liver."

"Then, if you'll let me, sir, I'll stay a little."

"It is boiling," said Mr. Stone.  He took the saucepan off the flame,
and, distending his frail cheeks, blew.  Then, while the steam
mingled with his frosty beard, he brought two cups from a cupboard,
filled one of them, and looked at Hilary.

"I should like you," he said, "to hear three or four pages I have
just completed; you may perhaps be able to suggest a word or two."

He placed the saucepan back on the stove, and grasped the cup he had
filled.

"I will drink my cocoa, and read them to you."

Going to the desk, he stood, blowing at the cup.

Hilary turned up the collar of his coat against the night wind which
was visiting the room, and glanced at the empty cup, for he was
rather hungry.  He heard a curious sound: Mr. Stone was blowing his
own tongue.  In his haste to read, he had drunk too soon and deeply
of the cocoa.

"I have burnt my mouth," he said.

Hilary moved hastily towards him: "Badly?  Try cold milk, sir."

Mr. Stone lifted the cup.

"There is none," he said, and drank again.

'What would I not give,' thought Hilary, 'to have his singleness of
heart!'

There was the sharp sound of a cup set down.  Then, out of a rustling
of papers, a sort of droning rose:

"'The Proletariat--with a cynicism natural to those who really are in
want, and even amongst their leaders only veiled when these attained
a certain position in the public eye--desired indeed the wealth and
leisure of their richer neighbours, but in their long night of
struggle with existence they had only found the energy to formulate
their pressing needs from day to day.  They were a heaving, surging
sea of creatures, slowly, without consciousness or real guidance,
rising in long tidal movements to set the limits of the shore a
little farther back, and cast afresh the form of social life; and on
its pea-green bosom '"  Mr. Stone paused.  "She has copied it wrong,"
he said; "the word is 'seagreen.'  'And on its sea-green bosom sailed
a fleet of silver cockle-shells, wafted by the breath of those not in
themselves driven by the wind of need.  The voyage of these silver
cockle-shells, all heading across each other's bows, was, in fact,
the advanced movement of that time.  In the stern of each of these
little craft, blowing at the sails, was seated a by-product of the
accepted system.  These by-products we should now examine."

Mr. Stone paused, and looked into his cup.  There were some grounds
in it.  He drank them, and went on:

"'The fratricidal principle of the survival of the fittest, which in
those days was England's moral teaching, had made the country one
huge butcher's shop.  Amongst the carcasses of countless victims
there had fattened and grown purple many butchers, physically
strengthened by the smell of blood and sawdust.  These had begotten
many children.  Following out the laws of Nature providing against
surfeit, a proportion of these children were born with a feeling of
distaste for blood and sawdust; many of them, compelled for the
purpose of making money to follow in their fathers' practices, did so
unwillingly; some, thanks to their fathers' butchery, were in a
position to abstain from practising; but whether in practice or at
leisure, distaste for the scent of blood and sawdust was the common
feature that distinguished them.  Qualities hitherto but little
known, and generally despised--not, as we shall see, without some
reason--were developed in them.  Self-consciousness, aestheticism, a
dislike for waste, a hatred of injustice; these--or some one of
these, when coupled with that desire natural to men throughout all
ages to accomplish something--constituted the motive forces which
enabled them to work their bellows.  In practical affairs those who
were under the necessity of labouring were driven, under the then
machinery of social life, to the humaner and less exacting kinds of
butchery, such as the Arts, Education, the practice of Religions and
Medicine, and the paid representation of their fellow-creatures.
Those not so driven occupied themselves in observing and complaining
of the existing state of thing.  Each year saw more of their silver
cockleshells putting out from port, and the cheeks of those who blew
the sails more violently distended.  Looking back on that pretty
voyage, we see the reason why those ships were doomed never to move,
but, seated on the sea-green bosom of that sea, to heave up and down,
heading across each other's bows in the self-same place for ever.
That reason, in few words, was this: 'The man who blew should have
been in the sea, not on the ship.'"

The droning ceased.  Hilary saw that Mr. Stone was staring fixedly at
his sheet of paper, as though the merits of this last sentence were
surprising him.  The droning instantly began again: "'In social
effort, as in the physical processes of Nature, there had ever been a
single fertilising agent--the mysterious and wonderful attraction
known as Love.  To this--that merging of one being in another--had
been due all the progressive variance of form, known by man under the
name of Life.  It was this merger, this mysterious, unconscious Love,
which was lacking to the windy efforts of those who tried to sail
that fleet.  They were full of reason, conscience, horror, full of
impatience, contempt, revolt; but they did not love the masses of
their fellow-men.  They could not fling themselves into the sea.
Their hearts were glowing; but the wind which made them glow was not
the salt and universal zephyr: it was the desert wind of scorn.  As
with the flowering of the aloe-tree--so long awaited, so strange and
swift when once it comes--man had yet to wait for his delirious
impulse to Universal Brotherhood, and the forgetfulness of Self.'"

Mr. Stone had finished, and stood gazing at his visitor with eyes
that clearly saw beyond him.  Hilary could not meet those eyes; he
kept his own fixed on the empty cocoa cup.  It was not, in fact,
usual for those who heard Mr. Stone read his manuscript to look him
in the face.  He stood thus absorbed so long that Hilary rose at
last, and glanced into the saucepan.  There was no cocoa in it.  Mr.
Stone had only made enough for one.  He had meant it for his visitor,
but self-forgetfulness had supervened.

"You know what happens to the aloe, sir, when it has flowered?"
asked Hilary with malice.

Mr. Stone moved, but did not answer.

"It dies," said Hilary.

"No," said Mr. Stone; "it is at peace."

"When is self at peace, sir?  The individual is surely as immortal as
the universal.  That is the eternal comedy of life."

"What is?"  said Mr. Stone.

"The fight or game between the two."

Mr. Stone stood a moment looking wistfully at his son-in-law.  He
laid down the sheet of manuscript.  "It is time for me to do my
exercises."  So saying, he undid the tasselled cord tied round the
middle of his gown.

Hilary hastened to the door.  From that point of vantage he looked
back.

Divested of his gown and turned towards the window, Mr. Stone was
already rising on his toes, his arms were extended, his palms pressed
hard together in the attitude of prayer, his trousers slowly slipping
down.

"One, two, three, four, five!"  There was a sudden sound of breath
escaping....

In the corridor upstairs, flooded with moonlight from a window at the
end, Hilary stood listening again.  The only sound that came to him
was the light snoring of Miranda, who slept in the bathroom, not
caring to lie too near to anyone.  He went to his room, and for a
long time sat buried in thought; then, opening the side window, he
leaned out.  On the trees of the next garden, and the sloping roofs
of stables and outhouses, the moonlight had come down like a flight
of milk-white pigeons; with outspread wings, vibrating faintly as
though yet in motion, they covered everything.  Nothing stirred.  A
clock was striking two.  Past that flight of milk-white pigeons were
black walls as yet unvisited.  Then, in the stillness, Hilary seemed
to hear, deep and very faint, the sound as of some monster breathing,
or the far beating of muffed drums.  From every side of the pale
sleeping town it seemed to come, under the moon's cold glamour.  It
rose, and fell, and rose, with a weird, creepy rhythm, like a
groaning of the hopeless and hungry.  A hansom cab rattled down the
High Street; Hilary strained his ears after the failing clatter of
hoofs and bell.  They died; there was silence.  Creeping nearer,
drumming, throbbing, he heard again the beating of that vast heart.
It grew and grew.  His own heart began thumping.  Then, emerging from
that sinister dumb groan, he distinguished a crunching sound, and
knew that it was no muttering echo of men's struggles, but only the
waggons journeying to Covent Garden Market.




CHAPTER XIV

A WALK ABROAD

Thyme Dallison, in the midst of her busy life, found leisure to
record her recollections and ideas in the pages of old school
notebooks.  She had no definite purpose in so doing, nor did she
desire the solace of luxuriating in her private feelings--this she
would have scorned as out of date and silly.  It was done from the
fulness of youthful energy, and from the desire to express oneself
that was "in the air."  It was everywhere, that desire: among her
fellow-students, among her young men friends, in her mother's
drawing-room, and her aunt's studio.  Like sentiment and marriage to
the Victorian miss, so was this duty to express herself to Thyme;
and, going hand-in-hand with it, the duty to have a good and jolly
youth.  She never read again the thoughts which she recorded, she
took no care to lock them up, knowing that her liberty, development,
and pleasure were sacred things which no one would dream of touching
--she kept them stuffed down in a drawer among her handkerchiefs and
ties and blouses, together with the indelible fragment of a pencil.

This journal, naive and slipshod, recorded without order the current
impression of things on her mind.

In the early morning of the 4th of May she sat, night-gowned, on the
foot of her white bed, with chestnut hair all fluffy about her neck,
eyes bright and cheeks still rosy with sleep, scribbling away and
rubbing one bare foot against the other in the ecstasy of self-
expression.  Now and then, in the middle of a sentence, she would
stop and look out of the window, or stretch herself deliciously, as
though life were too full of joy for her to finish anything.

"I went into grandfather's room yesterday, and stayed while he was
dictating to the little model.  I do think grandfather's so splendid.
Martin says an enthusiast is worse than useless; people, he says,
can't afford to dabble in ideas or dreams.  He calls grandfather's
idea paleolithic.  I hate him to be laughed at.  Martin's so
cocksure.  I don't think he'd find many men of eighty who'd bathe in
the Serpentine all the year round, and do his own room, cook his own
food, and live on about ninety pounds a year out of his pension of
three hundred, and give all the rest away.  Martin says that's
unsound, and the 'Book of Universal Brotherhood' rot.  I don't care
if it is; it's fine to go on writing it as he does all day.  Martin
admits that.  That's the worst of him: he's so cool, you can't score
him off; he seems to be always criticising you; it makes me wild....
That little model is a hopeless duffer.  I could have taken it all
down in half the time.  She kept stopping and looking up with that
mouth of hers half open, as if she had all day before her.
Grandfather's so absorbed he doesn't notice; he likes to read the
thing over and over, to hear how the words sound.  That girl would be
no good at any sort of work, except 'sitting,' I suppose.  Aunt B.
used to say she sat well.  There's something queer about her face; it
reminds me a little of that Botticelli Madonna in the National
Gallery, the full-face one; not so much in the shape as in the
expression--almost stupid, and yet as if things were going to happen
to her.  Her hands and arms are pretty, and her feet are smaller than
mine.  She's two years older than me.  I asked her why she went in
for being a model, which is beastly work.  She said she was glad to
get anything!  I asked her why she didn't go into a shop or into
service.  She didn't answer at once, and then said she hadn't had any
recommendations--didn't know where to try; then, all of a sudden, she
grew quite sulky, and said she didn't want to...."

Thyme paused to pencil in a sketch of the little model's profile....

"She had on a really pretty frock, quite simple and well made--it
must have cost three or four pounds.  She can't be so very badly off,
or somebody gave it her...."

And again Thyme paused.

"She looked ever so much prettier in it than she used to in her old
brown skirt, I thought ....  Uncle Hilary came to dinner last night.
We talked of social questions; we always discuss things when he
comes.  I can't help liking Uncle Hilary; he has such kind eyes, and
he's so gentle that you never lose your temper with him.  Martin
calls him weak and unsatisfactory because he's not in touch with
life.  I should say it was more as if he couldn't bear to force
anyone to do anything; he seems to see both sides of every question,
and he's not good at making up his mind, of course.  He's rather like
Hamlet might have been, only nobody seems to know now what Hamlet was
really like.  I told him what I thought about the lower classes.  One
can talk to him.  I hate father's way of making feeble little jokes,
as if nothing were serious.  I said I didn't think it was any use to
dabble; we ought to go to the root of everything.  I said that money
and class distinctions are two bogeys we have got to lay.  Martin
says, when it comes to real dealing with social questions and the
poor, all the people we know are amateurs.  He says that we have got
to shake ourselves free of all the old sentimental notions, and just
work at putting everything to the test of Health.  Father calls
Martin a 'Sanitist'; and Uncle Hilary says that if you wash people
by law they'll all be as dirty again tomorrow...."

Thyme paused again.  A blackbird in the garden of the Square was
uttering a long, low, chuckling trill.  She ran to the window and
peeped out.  The bird was on a plane-tree, and, with throat uplifted,
was letting through his yellow beak that delicious piece of self-
expression.  All things he seemed to praise--the sky, the sun, the
trees, the dewy grass, himself:

'You darling!' thought Thyme.  With a shudder of delight she dropped
her notebook back into the drawer, flung off her nightgown, and flew
into her bath.

That same morning she slipped out quietly at ten o'clock.  Her
Saturdays were free of classes, but she had to run the gauntlet of
her mother's liking for her company and her father's wish for her to
go with him to Richmond and play golf.

For on Saturdays Stephen almost always left the precincts of the
Courts before three o'clock.  Then, if he could induce his wife or
daughter to accompany him, he liked to get a round or two in
preparation for Sunday, when he always started off at half-past ten
and played all day.  If Cecilia and Thyme failed him, he would go to
his club, and keep himself in touch with every kind of social
movement by reading the reviews.

Thyme walked along with her head up and a wrinkle in her brow, as
though she were absorbed in serious reflection; if admiring glances
were flung at her, she did not seem aware of them.  Passing not far
from Hilary's, she entered the Broad Walk, and crossed it to the
farther end.

On a railing, stretching out his long legs and observing the passers-
by, sat her cousin, Martin Stone.  He got down as she came up.

"Late again," he said.  "Come on!"

"Where are we going first?"  Thyme asked.

"The Notting Hill district's all we can do to-day if we're to go
again to Mrs. Hughs'.  I must be down at the hospital this
afternoon."

Thyme frowned.  "I do envy you living by yourself, Martin.  It's
silly having to live at home."

Martin did not answer, but one nostril of his long nose was seen to
curve, and Thyme acquiesced in this without remark.  They walked for
some minutes between tall houses, looking about them calmly.  Then
Martin said: "All Purceys round here."

Thyme nodded.  Again there was silence; but in these pauses there was
no embarrassment, no consciousness apparently that it was silence,
and their eyes--those young, impatient, interested eyes--were for
ever busy observing.

"Boundary line.  We shall be in a patch directly."

"Black?"  asked Thyme.

"Dark blue--black farther on."

They were passing down a long, grey, curving road, whose narrow
houses, hopelessly unpainted, showed marks of grinding poverty.  The
Spring wind was ruffling straw and little bits of paper in the
gutters; under the bright sunlight a bleak and bitter struggle seemed
raging.  Thyme said:

"This street gives me a hollow feeling."

Martin nodded.  "Worse than the real article.  There's half a mile
of this.  Here it's all grim fighting.  Farther on they've given it
up."

And still they went on up the curving street, with its few pinched
shops and its unending narrow grimness.

At the corner of a by-street Martin said: "We'll go down here."

Thyme stood still, wrinkling her nose.  Martin eyed her.

"Don't funk!"

"I'm not funking, Martin, only I can't stand the smells."

"You'll have to get used to them."

"Yes, I know; but--but I forgot my eucalyptus."

The young man took out a handkerchief which had not yet been
unfolded.

"Here, take mine."

"They do make me feel so--it's a shame to take yours," and she took
the handkerchief.

"That's all right," said Martin.  "Come on!"

The houses of this narrow street, inside and out, seemed full of
women.  Many of them had babies in their arms; they were working or
looking out of windows or gossiping on doorsteps.  And all stopped to
stare as the young couple passed.  Thyme stole a look at her
companion.  His long stride had not varied; there was the usual pale,
observant, sarcastic expression on his face.  Clenching the
handkerchief in readiness, and trying to imitate his callous air, she
looked at a group of five women on the nearest doorstep.

Three were seated and two were standing.  One of these, a young woman
with a round, open face, was clearly very soon to have a child; the
other, with a short, dark face and iron-grey, straggling hair, was
smoking a clay pipe.  Of the three seated, one, quite young, had a
face as grey white as a dirty sheet, and a blackened eye; the second,
with her ragged dress disarranged, was nursing a baby; the third, in
the centre, on the top step, with red arms akimbo, her face scored
with drink, was shouting friendly obscenities to a neighbour in the
window opposite.  In Thyme's heart rose the passionate feeling, 'How
disgusting! how disgusting!' and since she did not dare to give
expression to it, she bit her lips and turned her head from them,
resenting, with all a young girl's horror, that her sex had given her
away.  The women stared at her, and in those faces, according to
their different temperaments, could be seen first the same vague,
hard interest that had been Thyme's when she first looked at them,
then the same secret hostility and criticism, as though they too felt
that by this young girl's untouched modesty, by her gushed cheeks and
unsoiled clothes, their sex had given them away.  With contemptuous
movements of their lips and bodies, on that doorstep they proclaimed
their emphatic belief in the virtue and reality of their own
existences and in the vice and unreality of her intruding presence.

"Give the doll to Bill; 'e'd make 'er work for once, the---"  In a
burst of laughter the epithet was lost.

Martin's lips curled.

"Purple just here," he said.

Thyme's cheeks were crimson.

At the end of the little street he stopped before a shop.

"Come on," he said, "you'll see the sort of place where they buy
their grub."

In the doorway were standing a thin brown spaniel, a small fair woman
with a high, bald forehead, from which the hair was gleaned into
curlpapers, and a little girl with some affection of the skin.

Nodding coolly, Martin motioned them aside.  The shop was ten feet
square; its counters, running parallel to two of the walls, were
covered with plates of cake, sausages, old ham-bones, peppermint
sweets, and household soap; there was also bread, margarine, suet in
bowls, sugar, bloaters--many bloaters--Captain's biscuits, and other
things besides.  Two or three dead rabbits hung against the wall.
All was uncovered, so that what flies there were sat feeding
socialistically.  Behind the counter a girl of seventeen was serving
a thin-faced woman with portions of a cheese which she was holding
down with her strong, dirty hand, while she sawed it with a knife.
On the counter, next the cheese, sat a quiet-looking cat.

They all glanced round at the two young people, who stood and waited.

"Finish what you're at," said Martin, "then give me three pennyworth
of bull's-eyes."

The girl, with a violent effort, finished severing the cheese.  The
thin-faced woman took it, and, coughing above it, went away.  The
girl, who could not take her eyes off Thyme, now served them with
three pennyworth of bull's-eyes, which she took out with her fingers,
for they had stuck.  Putting them in a screw of newspaper, she handed
them to Martin.  The young man, who had been observing negligently,
touched Thyme's elbow.  She, who had stood with eyes cast down, now
turned.  They went out, Martin handing the bull's-eyes to the little
girl with an affection of the skin.

The street now ended in a wide road formed of little low houses.

"Black," said Martin, "here; all down this road-casual labour,
criminals, loafers, drunkards, consumps.  Look at the faces!"

Thyme raised her eyes obediently.  In this main thoroughfare it was
not as in the by-street, and only dull or sullen glances, or none at
all, were bent on her.  Some of the houses had ragged plants on the
window-sills; in one window a canary was singing.  Then, at a bend,
they came into a blacker reach of human river.  Here were
outbuildings, houses with broken windows, houses with windows boarded
up, fried-fish shops, low public-houses, houses without doors.  There
were more men here than women, and those men were wheeling barrows
full of rags and bottles, or not even full of rags and bottles; or
they were standing by the public-houses gossiping or quarrelling in
groups of three or four; or very slowly walking in the gutters, or on
the pavements, as though trying to remember if they were alive.  Then
suddenly some young man with gaunt violence in his face would pass,
pushing his barrow desperately, striding fiercely by.  And every now
and then, from a fried-fish or hardware shop, would come out a man in
a dirty apron to take the sun and contemplate the scene, not finding
in it, seemingly, anything that in any way depressed his spirit.
Amongst the constant, crawling, shifting stream of passengers were
seen women carrying food wrapped up in newspaper, or with bundles
beneath their shawls.  The faces of these women were generally either
very red and coarse or of a sort of bluish-white; they wore the
expression of such as know themselves to be existing in the way that
Providence has arranged they should exist.  No surprise, revolt,
dismay, or shame was ever to be seen on those faces; in place of
these emotions a drab and brutish acquiescence or mechanical coarse
jocularity.  To pass like this about their business was their
occupation each morning of the year; it was needful to accept it.
Not having any hope of ever, being different, not being able to
imagine any other life, they were not so wasteful of their strength
as to attempt either to hope or to imagine.  Here and there, too,
very slowly passed old men and women, crawling along, like winter
bees who, in some strange and evil moment, had forgotten to die in
the sunlight of their toil, and, too old to be of use, had been
chivied forth from their hive to perish slowly in the cold twilight
of their days.

Down the centre of the street Thyme saw a brewer's dray creeping its
way due south under the sun.  Three horses drew it, with braided
tails and beribboned manes, the brass glittering on their harness.
High up, like a god, sat the drayman, his little slits of eyes above
huge red cheeks fixed immovably on his horses' crests.  Behind him,
with slow, unceasing crunch, the dray rolled, piled up with
hogsheads, whereon the drayman's mate lay sleeping.  Like the
slumbrous image of some mighty unrelenting Power, it passed, proud
that its monstrous bulk contained all the joy and blessing those
shadows on the pavement had ever known.

The two young people emerged on to the high road running east and
west.

"Cross here," said Martin, "and cut down into Kensington.  Nothing
more of interest now till we get to Hound Street.  Purceys and
Purceys all round about this part."

Thyme shook herself.

"O Martin, let's go down a road where there's some air.  I feel so
dirty."  She put her hand up to her chest.

"There's one here," said Martin.

They turned to the left into a road that had many trees.  Now that
she could breathe and look about her, Thyme once more held her head
erect and began to swing her arms.

"Martin, something must be done!"

The young doctor did not reply; his face still wore its pale,
sarcastic, observant look.  He gave her arm a squeeze with a half-
contemptuous smile.




CHAPTER XV

SECOND PILGRIMAGE TO HOUND STREET

Arriving in Hound Street, Martin Stone and his companion went
straight up to Mrs. Hughs' front room.  They found her doing the
week's washing, and hanging out before a scanty fire part of the
little that the week had been suffered to soil.  Her arms were bare,
her face and eyes red; the steam of soapsuds had congealed on them.

Attached to the bolster by a towel, under his father's bayonet and
the oleograph depicting the Nativity, sat the baby.  In the air there
was the scent of him, of walls, and washing, and red herrings.  The
two young people took their seat on the window-sill.

"May we open the window, Mrs. Hughs?"  said Thyme.  "Or will it hurt
the baby?"

"No, miss."

"What's the matter with your wrists?"  asked Martin.

The seamstress, muffing her arms with the garment she was dipping in
soapy water, did not answer.

"Don't do that.  Let me have a look."

Mrs. Hughs held out her arms; the wrists were swollen and
discoloured.

"The brute!" cried Thyme.

The young doctor muttered: "Done last night.  Got any arnica?"

"No, Sir."

"Of course not."  He laid a sixpence on the sill.  "Get some and rub
it in.  Mind you don't break the skin."

Thyme suddenly burst out: "Why don't you leave him, Mrs. Hughs?  Why
do you live with a brute like that?"

Martin frowned.

"Any particular row," he said, "or only just the ordinary?"

Mrs. Hughs turned her face to the scanty fire.  Her shoulders heaved
spasmodically.

Thus passed three minutes, then she again began rubbing the soapy
garment.

"If you don't mind, I'll smoke," said Martin.  "What's your baby's
name?  Bill?  Here, Bill!" He placed his little finger in the baby's
hand.  "Feeding him yourself?"

"Yes, sir."

"What's his number?"

"I've lost three, sir; there's only his brother Stanley now."

"One a year?"

"No, Sir.  I missed two years in the war, of course."

"Hughs wounded out there?"

"Yes, sir--in the head."

"Ah!  And fever?"

"Yes, Sir."

Martin tapped his pipe against his forehead.  "Least drop of liquor
goes to it, I suppose?"

Mrs. Hughs paused in the dipping of a cloth; her tear-stained face
expressed resentment, as though she had detected an attempt to find
excuses for her husband.

"He didn't ought to treat me as he does," she said.

All three now stood round the bed, over which the baby presided with
solemn gaze.

Thyme said: "I wouldn't care what he did, Mrs. Hughs; I wouldn't stay
another day if I were you.  It's your duty as a woman."

To hear her duty as a woman Mrs. Hughs turned; slow vindictiveness
gathered on her thin face.

"Yes, miss?"  she said.  "I don't know what to do.

"Take the children and go.  What's the good of waiting?  We'll give
you money if you haven't got enough."

But Mrs. Hughs did not answer.

"Well?"  said Martin, blowing out a cloud of smoke.

Thyme burst out again: "Just go, the very minute your little boy
comes back from school.  Hughs 'll never find you.  It 'll serve him
right.  No woman ought to put up with what you have; it's simply
weakness, Mrs. Hughs."

As though that word had forced its way into her very heart and set
the blood free suddenly, Mrs. Hughs' face turned the colour of
tomatoes.  She poured forth words:

"And leave him to that young girl--and leave him to his wickedness!
After I've been his wife eight years and borne him five! after I've
done what I have for him!  I never want no better husband than what
he used to be, till she came with her pale face and her prinky
manners, and--and her mouth that you can tell she's bad by.  Let her
keep to her profession--sitting naked's what she's fit for--coming
here to decent folk---"  And holding out her wrists to Thyme, who had
shrunk back, she cried: "He's never struck me before.  I got these
all because of her new clothes!"

Hearing his mother speak with such strange passion, the baby howled.
Mrs. Hughs stopped, and took him up.  Pressing him close to her thin
bosom, she looked above his little dingy head at the two young
people.

"I got my wrists like this last night, wrestling with him.  He swore
he'd go and leave me, but I held him, I did.  And don't you ever
think that I'll let him go to that young girl--not if he kills me
first!"

With those words the passion in her face died down.  She was again a
meek, mute woman.

During this outbreak, Thyme, shrinking, stood by the doorway with
lowered eyes.  She now looked up at Martin, clearly asking him to
come away.  The latter had kept his gaze fixed on Mrs. Hughs, smoking
silently.  He took his pipe out of his mouth, and pointed with it at
the baby.

"This gentleman," he said, "can't stand too much of that."

In silence all three bent their eyes on the baby.  His little fists,
and nose, and forehead, even his little naked, crinkled feet, were
thrust with all his feeble strength against his mother's bosom, as
though he were striving to creep into some hole away from life.
There was a sort of dumb despair in that tiny pushing of his way back
to the place whence he had come.  His head, covered with dingy down,
quivered with his effort to escape.  He had been alive so little;
that little had sufficed.  Martin put his pipe back into his mouth.

"This won't do, you know," he said.  "He can't stand it.  And look
here!  If you stop feeding him, I wouldn't give that for him
tomorrow!"  He held up the circle of his thumb and finger.  "You're
the best judge of what sort of chance you've got of going on in your
present state of mind!"  Then, motioning to Thyme, he went down the
stairs.




CHAPTER XVI

BENEATH THE ELMS

Spring was in the hearts of men, and their tall companions, trees.
Their troubles, the stiflings of each other's growth, and all such
things, seemed of little moment.  Spring had them by the throat.  It
turned old men round, and made them stare at women younger than
themselves.  It made young men and women walking side by side touch
each other, and every bird on the branches tune his pipe.  Flying
sunlight speckled the fluttered leaves, and gushed the cheeks of
crippled boys who limped into the Gardens, till their pale Cockney
faces shone with a strange glow.

In the Broad Walk, beneath those dangerous trees, the elms, people
sat and took the sun--cheek by jowl, generals and nursemaids, parsons
and the unemployed.  Above, in that Spring wind, the elm-tree boughs
were swaying, rustling, creaking ever so gently, carrying on the
innumerable talk of trees--their sapient, wordless conversation over
the affairs of men.  It was pleasant, too, to see and hear the myriad
movement of the million little separate leaves, each shaped
differently, flighting never twice alike, yet all obedient to the
single spirit of their tree.

Thyme and Martin were sitting on a seat beneath the largest of all
the elms.  Their manner lacked the unconcern and dignity of the
moment, when, two hours before, they had started forth on their
discovery from the other end of the Broad Walk.  Martin spoke:

"It's given you the hump!  First sight of blood, and you're like all
the rest of them!"

"I'm not, Martin.  How perfectly beastly of you!"

"Oh yes, you are.  There's plenty of aestheticism about you and your
people--plenty of good intentions--but not an ounce of real
business!"

"Don't abuse my people; they're just as kind as you!"

"Oh, they're kind enough, and they can see what's wrong.  It's not
that which stops them.  But your dad's a regular official.  He's got
so much sense of what he ought not to do that he never does anything;
Just as Hilary's got so much consciousness of what he ought to do
that be never does anything.  You went to that woman's this morning
with your ideas of helping her all cut and dried, and now that you
find the facts aren't what you thought, you're stumped!"

"One can't believe anything they say.  That's what I hate.  I thought
Hughs simply knocked her about.  I didn't know it was her jealousy--"

"Of course you didn't.  Do you imagine those people give anything
away to our sort unless they're forced?  They know better."

"Well, I hate the whole thing--it's all so sordid!"

"O Lord!"

"Well, it is!  I don't feel that I want to help a woman who can say
and feel such horrid things, or the girl, or any of them."

"Who cares what they say or feel? that's not the point.  It's simply
a case of common sense: Your people put that girl there, and they
must get her to clear out again sharp.  It's just a question of
what's healthy."

"Well, I know it's not healthy for me to have anything to do with,
and I won't!  I don't believe you can help people unless they want to
be helped."

Martin whistled.

"You're rather a brute, I think," said Thyme.

"A brute, not rather a brute.  That's all the difference."

"For the worse!"

"I don't think so, Thyme!"

There was no answer.

"Look at me."

Very slowly Thyme turned her eyes.

"Well?"

"Are you one of us, or are you not?"

"Of course I am."

"You're not!"

"I am."

"Well, don't let's fight about it.  Give me your hand."

He dropped his hand on hers.  Her face had flushed rose colour.
Suddenly she freed herself.  "Here's Uncle Hilary!"

It was indeed Hilary, with Miranda, trotting in advance.  His hands
were crossed behind him, his face bent towards the ground.  The two
young people on the bench sat looking at him.

"Buried in self-contemplation," murmured Martin; "that's the way he
always walks.  I shall tell him about this!"

The colour of Thyme's face deepened from rose to crimson.

"No!"

"Why not?"

"Well--those new---"  She could not bring out that word "clothes."
It would have given her thoughts away.

Hilary seemed making for their seat, but Miranda, aware of Martin,
stopped.  "A man of action!" she appeared to say.  "The one who pulls
my ears."  And turning, as though unconscious, she endeavoured to
lead Hilary away.  Her master, however, had already seen his niece.
He came and sat down on the bench beside her.

"We wanted you!" said Martin, eyeing him slowly, as a young dog will
eye another of a different age and breed.  "Thyme and I have been to
see the Hughs in Hound Street.  Things are blowing up for a mess.
You, or whoever put the girl there, ought to get her away again as
quick as possible."

Hilary seemed at once to withdraw into himself.

"Well," he said, "let us hear all about it."

"The woman's jealous of her: that's all the trouble!"

"Oh!" said Hilary; "that's all the trouble?"

Thyme murmured: "I don't see a bit why Uncle Hilary should bother.
If they will be so horrid--I didn't think the poor were like that.
I didn't think they had it in them.  I'm sure the girl isn't worth
it, or the woman either!"

"I didn't say they were," growled Martin.  "It's a question of what's
healthy."

Hilary looked from one of his young companions to the other.

"I see," he said.  "I thought perhaps the matter was more delicate."

Martin's lip curled.'

"Ah, your precious delicacy!  What's the good of that?  What did it
ever do?  It's the curse that you're all suffering from.  Why don't
you act?  You could think about it afterwards."

A flush came into Hilary's sallow cheeks.

"Do you never think before you act, Martin?"

Martin got up and stood looking down on Hilary.

"Look here!" he said; "I don't go in for your subtleties.  I use my
eyes and nose.  I can see that the woman will never be able to go on
feeding the baby in the neurotic state she's in.  It's a matter of
health for both of them."

"Is everything a matter of health with you?"

"It is.  Take any subject that you like.  Take the poor themselves-
what's wanted?  Health.  Nothing on earth but health!  The
discoveries and inventions of the last century have knocked the floor
out of the old order; we've got to put a new one in, and we're going
to put it in, too--the floor of health.  The crowd doesn't yet see
what it wants, but they're looking for it, and when we show it them
they'll catch on fast enough."

"But who are 'you'?"  murmured Hilary.

"Who are we?  I'll tell you one thing.  While all the reformers are
pecking at each other we shall quietly come along and swallow up the
lot.  We've simply grasped this elementary fact, that theories are no
basis for reform.  We go on the evidence of our eyes and noses; what
we see and smell is wrong we correct by practical and scientific
means."

"Will you apply that to human nature?"

"It's human nature to want health."

"I wonder!  It doesn't look much like it at present."

"Take the case of this woman."

"Yes," said Hilary, "take her case.  You can't make this too clear to
me, Martin."

"She's no use--poor sort altogether.  The man's no use.  A man who's
been wounded in the head, and isn't a teetotaller, is done for.  The
girl's no use--regular pleasure-loving type!"

Thyme flushed crimson, and, seeing that flood of colour in his
niece's face, Hilary bit his lips.

"The only things worth considering are the children.  There's this
baby-well, as I said, the important thing is that the mother should
be able to look after it properly.  Get hold of that, and let the
other facts go hang."

"Forgive me, but my difficulty is to isolate this question of the
baby's health from all the other circumstances of the case."

Martin grinned.

"And you'll make that an excuse, I'm certain, for doing nothing."

Thyme slipped her hand into Hilary's.

"You are a brute, Martin," she-murmured.

The young man turned on her a look that said: 'It's no use calling me
a brute; I'm proud of being one.  Besides, you know you don't dislike
it.'

"It's better to be a brute than an amateur," he said.

Thyme, pressing close to Hilary, as though he needed her protection,
cried out:

"Martin, you really are a Goth!"

Hilary was still smiling, but his face quivered.

"Not at all," he said.  "Martin's powers of diagnosis do him credit."

And, raising his hat, he walked away.

The two young people, both on their feet now, looked after him.
Martin's face was a queer study of contemptuous compunction; Thyme's
was startled, softened, almost tearful.

"It won't do him any harm," muttered the young man.  "It'll shake him
up."

Thyme flashed a vicious look at him.

"I hate you sometimes," she said.  "You're so coarse-grained--your
skin's just like leather."

Martin's hand descended on her wrist.

"And yours," he said, "is tissue-paper.  You're all the same, you
amateurs."

"I'd rather be an amateur than a--than a bounder!"

Martin made a queer movement of his jaw, then smiled.  That smile
seemed to madden Thyme.  She wrenched her wrist away and darted after
Hilary.

Martin impassively looked after her.  Taking out his pipe, he filled
it with tobacco, slowly pressing the golden threads down into the
bowl with his little finger.




CHAPTER XVII

TWO BROTHERS

If has been said that Stephen Dallison, when unable to get his golf
on Saturdays, went to his club, and read reviews.  The two forms of
exercise, in fact, were very similar: in playing golf you went round
and round; in reading reviews you did the same, for in course of time
you were assured of coming to articles that, nullified articles
already read.  In both forms of sport the balance was preserved which
keeps a man both sound and young.

And to be both sound and young was to Stephen an everyday necessity.
He was essentially a Cambridge man, springy and undemonstrative, with
just that air of taking a continual pinch of really perfect snuff.
Underneath this manner he was a good worker, a good husband, a good
father, and nothing could be urged against him except his regularity
and the fact that he was never in the wrong.  Where he worked, and
indeed in other places, many men were like him.  In one respect he
resembled them, perhaps, too much--he disliked leaving the ground
unless he knew precisely where he was coming down again.

He and Cecilia had "got on" from the first.  They had both desired to
have one child--no more; they had both desired to keep up with the
times--no more; they now both considered Hilary's position awkward--
no more; and when Cecilia, in the special Jacobean bed, and taking
care to let him have his sleep out first, had told him of this matter
of the Hughs, they had both turned it over very carefully, lying on
their backs, and speaking in grave tones.  Stephen was of opinion
that poor old Hilary must look out what he was doing.  Beyond this he
did not go, keeping even from his wife the more unpleasant of what
seemed to him the possibilities.

Then, in the words she had used to Hilary, Cecilia spoke:

"It's so sordid, Stephen."

He looked at her, and almost with one accord they both said:

"But it's all nonsense!"

These speeches, so simultaneous, stimulated them to a robuster view.
What was this affair, if real, but the sort of episode that they read
of in their papers?  What was it, if true, but a duplicate of some
bit of fiction or drama which they daily saw described by that word
"sordid"?  Cecilia, indeed, had used this word instinctively.  It had
come into her mind at once.  The whole affair disturbed her ideals of
virtue and good taste--that particular mental atmosphere
mysteriously, inevitably woven round the soul by the conditions of
special breeding and special life.  If, then, this affair were real
it was sordid, and if it were sordid it was repellent to suppose that
her family could be mixed up in it; but her people were mixed up in
it, therefore it must be--nonsense!

So the matter rested until Thyme came back from her visit to her
grandfather, and told them of the little model's new and pretty
clothes.  When she detailed this news they were all sitting at
dinner, over the ordering of which Cecilia's loyalty had been taxed
till her little headache came, so that there might be nothing too
conventional to over-nourish Stephen or so essentially aesthetic as
not to nourish him at all.  The man servant being in the room, they
neither of them raised their eyes.  But when he was gone to fetch the
bird, each found the other looking furtively across the table.  By
some queer misfortune the word "sordid" had leaped into their minds
again.  Who had given her those clothes?  But feeling that it was
sordid to pursue this thought, they looked away, and, eating hastily,
began pursuing it.  Being man and woman, they naturally took a
different line of chase, Cecilia hunting in one grove and Stephen in
another.

Thus ran Stephen's pack of meditations:

'If old Hilary has been giving her money and clothes and that sort of
thing, he's either a greater duffer than I took him for, or there's
something in it.  B.'s got herself to thank, but that won't help to
keep Hughs quiet.  He wants money, I expect.  Oh, damn!'

Cecilia's pack ran other ways:

'I know the girl can't have bought those things out of her proper
earnings.  I believe she's a really bad lot.  I don't like to think
it, but it must be so.  Hilary can't have been so stupid after what I
said to him.  If she really is bad, it simplifies things very much;
but Hilary is just the sort of man who will never believe it.  Oh
dear!'

It was, to be quite fair, immensely difficult for Stephen and his
wife--or any of their class and circle--in spite of genuinely good
intentions, to really feel the existence of their "shadows," except
in so far as they saw them on the pavements.  They knew that these
people lived, because they saw them, but they did not feel it--with
such extraordinary care had the web of social life been spun.  They
were, and were bound to be, as utterly divorced from understanding
of, or faith in, all that shadowy life, as those "shadows" in their
by-streets were from knowledge or belief that gentlefolk really
existed except in so far as they had money from them.

Stephen and Cecilia, and their thousands, knew these "shadows" as
"the people," knew them as slums, as districts, as sweated
industries, of different sorts of workers, knew them in the capacity
of persons performing odd jobs for them; but as human beings
possessing the same faculties and passions with themselves, they did
not, could not, know them.  The reason, the long reason, extending
back through generations, was so plain, so very simple, that it was
never mentioned--in their heart of hearts, where there was no room
for cant, they knew it to be just a little matter of the senses.
They knew that, whatever they might say, whatever money they might
give, or time devote, their hearts could never open, unless--unless
they closed their ears, and eyes, and noses.  This little fact, more
potent than all the teaching of philosophers, than every Act of
Parliament, and all the sermons ever preached, reigned paramount,
supreme.  It divided class from class, man from his shadow--as the
Great Underlying Law had set dark apart from light.

On this little fact, too gross to mention, they and their kind had in
secret built and built, till it was not too much to say that laws,
worship, trade, and every art were based on it, if not in theory,
then in fact.  For it must not be thought that those eyes were dull
or that nose plain--no, no, those eyes could put two and two
together; that nose, of myriad fancy, could imagine countless things
unsmelled which must lie behind a state of life not quite its own.
It could create, as from the scent of an old slipper dogs create
their masters.

So Stephen and Cecilia sat, and their butler brought in the bird.  It
was a nice one, nourished down in Surrey, and as he cut it into
portions the butler's soul turned sick within him--not because he
wanted some himself, or was a vegetarian, or for any sort of
principle, but because he was by natural gifts an engineer, and
deadly tired of cutting up and handing birds to other people and
watching while they ate them.  Without a glimmer of expression on his
face he put the portions down before the persons who, having paid him
to do so, could not tell his thoughts.

That same night, after working at a Report on the present Laws of
Bankruptcy, which he was then drawing up, Stephen entered the joint
apartment with excessive caution, having first made all his
dispositions, and, stealing to the bed, slipped into it.  He lay
there, offering himself congratulations that he had not awakened
Cecilia, and Cecilia, who was wide awake, knew by his unwonted
carefulness that he had come to some conclusion which he did not wish
to impart to her.  Devoured, therefore, by disquiet, she lay
sleepless till the clock struck two.

The conclusion to which Stephen had come was this: Having twice gone
through the facts--Hilary's corporeal separation from Bianca
(communicated to him by Cecilia), cause unknowable; Hilary's interest
in the little model, cause unknown; her known poverty; her employment
by Mr. Stone; her tenancy of Mrs. Hughs' room; the latter's outburst
to Cecilia; Hughs' threat; and, finally, the girl's pretty clothes--
he had summed it up as just a common "plant," to which his brother's
possibly innocent, but in any case imprudent, conduct had laid him
open.  It was a man's affair.  He resolutely tried to look on the
whole thing as unworthy of attention, to feel that nothing would
occur.  He failed dismally, for three reasons.  First, his inherent
love of regularity, of having everything in proper order; secondly,
his ingrained mistrust of and aversion from Bianca; thirdly, his
unavowed conviction, for all his wish to be sympathetic to them, that
the lower classes always wanted something out of you.  It was a
question of how much they would want, and whether it were wise to
give them anything.  He decided that it would not be wise at all.
What then?  Impossible to say.  It worried him.  He had a natural
horror of any sort of scandal, and he was very fond of Hilary.  If
only he knew the attitude Bianca would take up! He could not even
guess it.

Thus, on that Saturday afternoon, the 4th of May, he felt for once
such a positive aversion from the reading of reviews, as men will
feel from their usual occupations when their nerves have been
disturbed.  He stayed late at Chambers, and came straight home
outside an omnibus.

The tide of life was flowing in the town.  The streets were awash
with wave on wave of humanity, sucked into a thousand crossing
currents.  Here men and women were streaming out from the meeting of
a religious congress, there streaming in at the gates of some social
function; like bright water confined within long shelves of rock and
dyed with myriad scales of shifting colour, they thronged Rotten Row,
and along the closed shop-fronts were woven into an inextricable
network of little human runlets.  And everywhere amongst this sea of
men and women could be seen their shadows, meandering like streaks of
grey slime stirred up from the lower depths by some huge, never-
ceasing finger.  The innumerable roar of that human sea climbed out
above the roofs and trees, and somewhere in illimitable space
blended, and slowly reached the meeting-point of sound and silence--
that Heart where Life, leaving its little forms and barriers, clasps
Death, and from that clasp springs forth new-formed, within new
barriers.

Above this crowd of his fellow-creatures, Stephen drove, and the same
Spring wind which had made the elm-trees talk, whispered to him, and
tried to tell him of the million flowers it had fertilised, the
million leaves uncurled, the million ripples it had awakened on the
sea, of the million flying shadows flung by it across the Downs, and
how into men's hearts its scent had driven a million longings and
sweet pains.

It was but moderately successful, for Stephen, like all men of
culture and neat habits, took Nature only at those moments when he
had gone out to take her, and of her wild heart he had a secret fear.

On his own doorstep he encountered Hilary coming out.

"I ran across Thyme and Martin in the Gardens," the latter said.
"Thyme brought me back to lunch, and here I've been ever since."

"Did she bring our young Sanitist in too?"  asked Stephen dubiously.

"No," said Hilary.

"Good!  That young man gets on my nerves."  Taking his elder brother
by the arm, he added: "Will you come in again, old boy, or shall we
go for a stroll?"

"A stroll," said Hilary.

Though different enough, perhaps because they were so different,
these two brothers had the real affection for each other which
depends on something deeper and more elementary than a similarity of
sentiments, and is permanent because unconnected with the reasoning
powers.

It depended on the countless times they had kissed and wrestled as
tiny boys, slept in small beds alongside, refused-to "tell" about
each other, and even now and then taken up the burden of each other's
peccadilloes.  They might get irritated or tired of being in each
other's company, but it would have been impossible for either to have
been disloyal to the other in any circumstances, because of that
traditional loyalty which went back to their cribs.

Preceded by Miranda, they walked along the flower walk towards the
Park, talking of indifferent things, though in his heart each knew
well enough what was in the other's.

Stephen broke through the hedge.

"Cis has been telling me," he said, "that this man Hughs is making
trouble of some sort."

Hilary nodded.

Stephen glanced a little anxiously at his brother's face; it struck
him as looking different, neither so gentle nor so impersonal as
usual.

"He's a ruffian, isn't he?"

"I can't tell you," Hilary answered.  "Probably not."

"He must be, old chap," murmured Stephen.  Then, with a friendly
pressure of his brother's arm, he added: "Look here, old boy, can I
be of any use?"

"In what?"  asked Hilary.

Stephen took a hasty mental view of his position; he had been in
danger of letting Hilary see that he suspected him.  Frowning
slightly, and with some colour in his clean-shaven face, he said:

"Of course, there's nothing in it."

"In what?"  said Hilary again.

"In what this ruffian says."

"No," said Hilary, "there's nothing in it, though what there may be
if people give me credit for what there isn't, is another thing."

Stephen digested this remark, which hurt him.  He saw that his
suspicions had been fathomed, and this injured his opinion of his own
diplomacy.

"You mustn't lose your head, old man," he said at last.

They were crossing the bridge over the Serpentine.  On the bright
waters, below, young clerks were sculling their inamoratas up and
down; the ripples set free by their oars gleamed beneath the sun, and
ducks swam lazily along the banks.  Hilary leaned over.

"Look here, Stephen, I take an interest in this child--she's a
helpless sort of little creature, and she seems to have put herself
under my protection.  I can't help that.  But that's all.  Do you
understand?"

This speech produced a queer turmoil in Stephen, as though his
brother had accused him of a petty view of things.  Feeling that he
must justify himself somehow, he began:

"Oh, of course I understand, old boy!  But don't think, anyway, that
I should care a damn--I mean as far as I'm concerned--even if you had
gone as far as ever you liked, considering what you have to put up
with.  What I'm thinking of is the general situation."

By this clear statement of his point of view Stephen felt he had put
things back on a broad basis, and recovered his position as a man of
liberal thought.  He too leaned over, looking at the ducks.  There
was a silence.  Then Hilary said:

"If Bianca won't get that child into some fresh place, I shall."

Stephen looked at his brother in surprise, amounting almost to
dismay; he had spoken with such unwonted resolution.

"My dear old chap," he said, "I wouldn't go to B.  Women are so
funny."

Hilary smiled.  Stephen took this for a sign of restored
impersonality.

"I'll tell you exactly how the thing appeals to me.  It'll be much
better for you to chuck it altogether.  Let Cis see to it!"

Hilary's eyes became bright with angry humour.

"Many thanks," he said, "but this is entirely our affair."

Stephen answered hastily:

"That's exactly what makes it difficult for you to look at it all
round.  That fellow Hughs could make himself quite nasty.  I wouldn't
give him any sort of chance.  I mean to say--giving the girl clothes
and that kind of thing---"

"I see," said Hilary.

"You know, old man," Stephen went on hastily, "I don't think you'll
get Bianca to look at things in your light.  If you were on--on
terms, of course it would be different.  I mean the girl, you know,
is rather attractive in her way."

Hilary roused himself from contemplation of the ducks, and they moved
on towards the Powder Magazine.  Stephen carefully abstained from
looking at his brother; the respect he had for Hilary--result,
perhaps, of the latter's seniority, perhaps of the feeling that
Hilary knew more of him than he of Hilary--was beginning to assert
itself in a way he did not like.  With every word, too, of this talk,
the ground, instead of growing firmer, felt less and less secure.
Hilary spoke:

"You mistrust my powers of action?"

"No, no," said Stephen.  "I don't want you to act at all."

Hilary laughed.  Hearing that rather bitter laugh, Stephen felt a
little ache about his heart.

"Come, old boy," he said, "we can trust each other, anyway."

Hilary gave his brother's arm a squeeze.

Moved by that pressure, Stephen spoke:

"I hate you to be worried over such a rotten business."

The whizz of a motor-car rapidly approaching them became a sort of
roar, and out of it a voice shouted: "How are you?"  A hand was seen
to rise in salute.  It was Mr. Purcey driving his A.i. Damyer back to
Wimbledon.  Before him in the sunlight a little shadow fled; behind
him the reek of petrol seemed to darken the road.

"There's a symbol for you," muttered Hilary.

"How do you mean?"  said Stephen dryly.  The word "symbol" was
distasteful to him.

"The machine in the middle moving on its business; shadows like you
and me skipping in front; oil and used-up stuff dropping behind.
Society-body, beak, and bones."

Stephen took time to answer.  "That's rather far-fetched," he said.
"You mean these Hughs and people are the droppings?"

"Quite so," was Hilary's sardonic answer.  "There's the body of that
fellow and his car between our sort and them--and no getting over it,
Stevie."

"Well, who wants to?  If you're thinking of our old friend's
Fraternity, I'm not taking any."  And Stephen suddenly added: "Look
here, I believe this affair is all 'a plant.'"

"You see that Powder Magazine?"  said Hilary.  "Well, this business
that you call a 'plant' is more like that.  I don't want to alarm
you, but I think you as well as our young friend Martin, are inclined
to underrate the emotional capacity of human nature."

Disquietude broke up the customary mask on Stephen's face: "I don't
understand," he stammered.

"Well, we're none of us machines, not even amateurs like me--not even
under-dogs like Hughs.  I fancy you may find a certain warmth, not to
say violence, about this business.  I tell you frankly that I don't
live in married celibacy quite with impunity.  I can't answer for
anything, in fact.  You had better stand clear, Stephen--that's all."

Stephen marked his thin hands quivering, and this alarmed him as
nothing else had done.

They walked on beside the water.  Stephen spoke quietly, looking at
the ground.  "How can I stand clear, old man, if you are going to get
into a mess?  That's impossible."

He saw at once that this shot, which indeed was from his heart, had
gone right home to Hilary's.  He sought within him how to deepen the
impression.

"You mean a lot to us," he said.  "Cis and Thyme would feel it
awfully if you and B.---"  He stopped.

Hilary was looking at him; that faintly smiling glance, searching him
through and through, suddenly made Stephen feel inferior.  He had
been detected trying to extract capital from the effect of his little
piece of brotherly love.  He was irritated at his brother's insight.

"I have no right to give advice, I suppose," he said; "but in my
opinion you should drop it--drop it dead.  The girl is not worth your
looking after.  Turn her over to that Society--Mrs. Tallents
Smallpeace's thing whatever it's called."

At a sound as of mirth Stephen, who was not accustomed to hear his
brother laugh, looked round.

"Martin," said Hilary, "also wants the case to be treated on strictly
hygienic grounds."

Nettled by this, Stephen answered:

"Don't confound me with our young Sanitist, please; I simply think
there are probably a hundred things you don't know about the girl
which ought to be cleared up."

"And then?"

"Then," said Stephen, "they could--er--deal with her accordingly."

Hilary shrank so palpably at this remark that he added rather
hastily:

"You call that cold-blooded, I suppose; but I think, you know, old
chap, that you're too sensitive."

Hilary stopped rather abruptly.

"If you don't mind, Stevie," he said, "we'll part here.  I want to
think it over."  So saying, he turned back, and sat down on a seat
that faced the sun.




CHAPTER XVIII

THE PERFECT DOG

Hilary sat long in the sun, watching the pale bright waters and many
well-bred ducks circling about the shrubs, searching with their
round, bright eyes for worms.  Between the bench where he was sitting
and the spiked iron railings people passed continually--men, women,
children of all kinds.  Every now and then a duck would stop and cast
her knowing glance at these creatures, as though comparing the
condition of their forms and plumage with her own.  'If I had had the
breeding of you,' she seemed to say, 'I could have made a better fist
of it than that.  A worse-looking lot of ducks, take you all round.
I never wish to see!' And with a quick but heavy movement of her
shoulders, she would turn away and join her fellows.

Hilary, however, got small distraction from the ducks.  The situation
gradually developing was something of a dilemma to a man better
acquainted with ideas than facts, with the trimming of words than
with the shaping of events.  He turned a queer, perplexed, almost
quizzical eye on it.  Stephen had irritated him profoundly.  He had
such a way of pettifying things!  Yet, in truth, the affair would
seem ridiculous enough to an ordinary observer.  What would a man of
sound common sense, like Mr. Purcey, think of it?  Why not, as
Stephen had suggested, drop it?  Here, however, Hilary approached the
marshy ground of feeling.

To give up befriending a helpless girl the moment he found himself
personally menaced was exceedingly distasteful.  But would she be
friendless?  Were there not, in Stephen's words, a hundred things he
did not know about her?  Had she not other resources?  Had she not a
story?  But here, too, he was hampered by his delicacy: one did not
pry into the private lives of others!

The matter, too, was hopelessly complicated by the domestic troubles
of the Hughs family.  No conscientious man--and whatever Hilary
lacked, no one ever accused him of a lack of conscience--could put
aside that aspect of the case.

Wandering among these reflections were his thoughts about Bianca.
She was his wife.  However he might feel towards her now, whatever
their relations, he must not put her in a false position.  Far from
wishing to hurt her, he desired to preserve her, and everyone, from
trouble and annoyance.  He had told Stephen that his interest in the
girl was purely protective.  But since the night when, leaning out
into the moonlight, he heard the waggons coming in to Covent Garden
Market, a strange feeling had possessed him--the sensation of a man
who lies, with a touch of fever on him, listening to the thrum of
distant music--sensuous, not unpleasurable.

Those who saw him sitting there so quietly, with his face resting on
his hand, imagined, no doubt, that he was wrestling with some deep,
abstract proposition, some great thought to be given to mankind; for
there was that about Hilary which forced everyone to connect him
instantly with the humaner arts.

The sun began to leave the long pale waters.

A nursemaid and two children came and sat down beside him.  Then it
was that, underneath his seat, Miranda found what she had been
looking for all her life.  It had no smell, made no movement, was
pale-grey in colour, like herself.  It had no hair that she could
find; its tail was like her own; it took no liberties, was silent,
had no passions, committed her to nothing.  Standing a few inches
from its head, closer than she had ever been of her free will to any
dog, she smelt its smellessness with a long, delicious snuffling,
wrinkling up the skin on her forehead, and through her upturned eyes
her little moonlight soul looked forth.  'How unlike you are,' she
seemed to say, 'to all the other dogs I know!  I would love to live
with you.  Shall I ever find a dog like you again?  "The latest-
sterilised cloth--see white label underneath: 4s. 3d.!"'  Suddenly
she slithered out her slender grey-pink tongue and licked its nose.
The creature moved a little way and stopped.  Miranda saw that it had
wheels.  She lay down close to it, for she knew it was the perfect
dog.

Hilary watched the little moonlight lady lying vigilant,
affectionate, beside this perfect dog, who could not hurt her.  She
panted slightly, and her tongue showed between her lips.
Presently behind his seat he saw another idyll.  A thin white spaniel
had come running up.  She lay down in the grass quite close, and
three other dogs who followed, sat and looked at her.  A poor, dirty
little thing she was, who seemed as if she had not seen a home for
days.  Her tongue lolled out, she panted piteously, and had no
collar.  Every now and then she turned her eyes, but though they were
so tired and desperate, there was a gleam in them.  'For all its
thirst and hunger and exhaustion, this is life!' they seemed to say.
The three dogs, panting too, and watching till it should be her
pleasure to begin to run again, seemed with their moist, loving eyes
to echo: 'This is life!'

Because of this idyll, people near were moving on.

And suddenly the thin white spaniel rose, and, like a little harried
ghost, slipped on amongst the trees, and the three dogs followed her.




CHAPTER XIX

BIANCA

In her studio that afternoon Blanca stood before her picture of the
little model--the figure with parted pale-red lips and haunting,
pale-blue eyes, gazing out of shadow into lamplight.

She was frowning, as though resentful of a piece of work which had
the power to kill her other pictures.  What force had moved her to
paint like that?  What had she felt while the girl was standing
before her, still as some pale flower placed in a cup of water?  Not
love--there was no love in the presentment of that twilight figure;
not hate--there was no hate in the painting of her dim appeal.  Yet
in the picture of this shadow girl, between the gloom and glimmer,
was visible a spirit, driving the artist on to create that which had
the power to haunt the mind.

Blanca turned away and went up to a portrait of her husband, painted
ten years before.  She looked from one picture to the other, with
eyes as hard and stabbing as the points of daggers.

In the more poignant relationships of human life there is a point
beyond which men and women do not quite truthfully analyse their
feelings--they feel too much.  It was Blanca's fortune, too, to be
endowed to excess with that quality which, of all others, most
obscures the real significance of human issues.  Her pride had kept
her back from Hilary, till she had felt herself a failure.  Her pride
had so revolted at that failure that she had led the way to utter
estrangement.  Her pride had forced her to the attitude of one who
says "Live your own life; I should be ashamed to let you see that I
care what happens between us."  Her pride had concealed from her the
fact that beneath her veil of mocking liberality there was an
essential woman tenacious of her dues, avid of affection and esteem.
Her pride prevented the world from guessing that there was anything
amiss.  Her pride even prevented Hilary from really knowing what had
spoiled his married life--this ungovernable itch to be appreciated,
governed by ungovernable pride.  Hundreds of times he had been
baffled by the hedge round that disharmonic nature.  With each
failure something had shrivelled in him, till the very roots of his
affection had dried up.  She had worn out a man who, to judge from
his actions and appearance, was naturally long-suffering to a fault.
Beneath all manner of kindness and consideration for each other--for
their good taste, at all events, had never given way--this tragedy of
a woman, who wanted to be loved, slowly killing the power of loving
her in the man, had gone on year after year.  It had ceased to be
tragedy, as far as Hilary was concerned; the nerve of his love for
her was quite dead, slowly frozen out of him.  It was still active
tragedy with Bianca, the nerve of whose jealous desire for his
appreciation was not dead.  Her instinct, too, ironically informed
her that, had he been a man with some brutality, a man who had set
himself to ride and master her, instead of one too delicate, he might
have trampled down the hedge.  This gave her a secret grudge against
him, a feeling that it was not she who was to blame.

Pride was Bianca's fate, her flavour, and her charm.  Like a shadowy
hill-side behind glamorous bars of waning sunlight, she was enveloped
in smiling pride--mysterious; one thinks, even to herself.  This
pride of hers took part even in her many generous impulses, kind
actions which she did rather secretly and scoffed at herself for
doing.  She scoffed at herself continually, even for putting on
dresses of colours which Hilary was fond of.  She would not admit her
longing to attract him.

Standing between those two pictures, pressing her mahl-stick against
her bosom, she suggested somewhat the image of an Italian saint
forcing the dagger of martyrdom into her heart.

That other person, who had once brought the thought of Italy into
Cecilia's mind--the man Hughs--had been for the last eight hours or
so walking the streets, placing in a cart the refuses of Life; nor
had he at all suggested the aspect of one tortured by the passions of
love and hate: For the first two hours he had led the horse without
expression of any sort on his dark face, his neat soldier's figure
garbed in the costume which had made "Westminister" describe him as a
"dreadful foreign-lookin' man."  Now and then he had spoken to the
horse; save for those speeches, of no great importance, he had been
silent.  For the next two hours, following the cart, he had used a
shovel, and still his square, short face, with little black moustache
and still blacker eyes, had given no sign of conflict in his breast.
So he had passed the day.  Apart from the fact, indeed, that men of
any kind are not too given to expose private passions to public gaze,
the circumstances of a life devoted from the age of twenty onwards to
the service of his country, first as a soldier, now in the more
defensive part of Vestry scavenger, had given him a kind of gravity.
Life had cloaked him with passivity--the normal look of men whose
bread and cheese depends on their not caring much for anything.  Had
Hughs allowed his inclinations play, or sought to express himself, he
could hardly have been a private soldier; still less, on his
retirement from that office with an honourable wound, would he have
been selected out of many others as a Vestry scavenger.  For such an
occupation as the lifting from the streets of the refuses of Life--a
calling greatly sought after, and, indeed, one of the few open to a
man who had served his country--charm of manner, individuality, or
the engaging quality of self-expression, were perhaps out of place.

He had never been trained in the voicing of his thoughts, and, ever
since he had been wounded, felt at times a kind of desperate
looseness in his head.  It was not, therefore, remarkable that he
should be liable to misconstruction, more especially by those who had
nothing in common with him, except that somewhat negligible factor,
common humanity.  The Dallisons had misconstrued him as much as, but
no more than, he had misconstrued them when, as "Westminister" had
informed Hilary, he "went on against the gentry."  He was, in fact, a
ragged screen, a broken vessel, that let light through its holes.
A glass or two of beer, the fumes of which his wounded head no longer
dominated, and he at once became "dreadful foreign."  Unfortunately,
it was his custom, on finishing his work, to call at the "Green
Glory."  On this particular afternoon the glass had become three, and
in sallying forth he had felt a confused sense of duty urging him to
visit the house where this girl for whom he had conceived his strange
infatuation "carried on her games."  The "no-tale-bearing" tradition
of a soldier fought hard with this sense of duty; his feelings were
mixed when he rang the bell and asked for Mrs. Dallison.  Habit,
however, masked his face, and he stood before her at "attention," his
black eyes lowered, clutching his peaked cap.

Blanca noted curiously the scar on the left side of his cropped black
head.

Whatever Hughs had to say was not said easily.

"I've come," he began at last in a dogged voice, "to let you know.  I
never wanted to come into this house.  I never wanted to see no one."

Blanca could see his lips and eyelids quivering in a way strangely
out of keeping with his general stolidity.

"My wife has told you tales of me, I suppose.  She's told you I knock
her about, I daresay.  I don't care what she tells you or any o' the
people that she works for.  But this I'll say: I never touched her
but she touched me first.  Look here! that's marks of hers!" and,
drawing up his sleeve he showed a scratch on his sinewy tattooed
forearm.  "I've not come here about her; that's no business of
anyone's."

Bianca turned towards her pictures.  "Well?"  she said, "but what
have you come about, please?  You see I'm busy."

Hughs' face changed.  Its stolidity vanished, the eyes became as
quick, passionate, and leaping as a dark torrent.  He was more
violently alive than she had ever seen a man.  Had it been a woman
she would have felt--as Cecilia had felt with Mrs. Hughs--the
indecency, the impudence of this exhibition; but from that male
violence the feminine in her derived a certain satisfaction.  So in
Spring, when all seems lowering and grey, the hedges and trees
suddenly flare out against the purple clouds, their twigs all in
flame.  The next moment that white glare is gone, the clouds are no
longer purple, fiery light no longer quivers and leaps along the
hedgerows.  The passion in Hughs' face was gone as soon.  Bianca felt
a sense of disappointment, as though she could have wished her life
held a little more of that.  He stole a glance at her out of his dark
eyes, which, when narrowed, had a velvety look, like the body of a
wild bee, then jerked his thumb at the picture of the little model.

"It's about her I come to speak."

Blanca faced him frigidly.

"I have not the slightest wish to hear."

Hughs looked round, as though to find something that would help him
to proceed; his eyes lighted on Hilary's portrait.

"Ah!  I'd put the two together if I was you," he said.

Blanca walked past him to the door.

"Either you or I must leave the room."

The man's face was neither sullen now nor passionate, but simply
miserable.

"Look here, lady," he said, "don't take it hard o' me coming here.
I'm not out to do you a harm.  I've got a wife of my own, and Gawd
knows I've enough to put up with from her about this girl.  I'll be
going in the water one of these days.  It's him giving her them
clothes that set me coming here."

Blanca opened the door.  "Please go," she said.

"I'll go quiet enough," he muttered, and, hanging his head, walked
out.

Having seen him through the side door out into the street, Blanca
went back to where she had been standing before he came.  She found
some difficulty in swallowing; for once there was no armour on her
face.  She stood there a long time without moving, then put the
pictures back into their places and went down the little passage to
the house.  Listening outside her father's door, she turned the
handle quietly and went in.

Mr. Stone, holding some sheets of paper out before him, was dictating
to the little model, who was writing laboriously with her face close
above her arm.  She stopped at Blanca's entrance.  Mr. Stone did not
stop, but, holding up his other hand, said:

"I will take you through the last three pages again.  Follow!"

Blanca sat down at the window.

Her father's voice, so thin and slow, with each syllable disjointed
from the other, rose like monotony itself.

"'There were tra-cea-able indeed, in those days, certain rudi-men-
tary at-tempts to f-u-s-e the classes....'"

It went on unwavering, neither rising high nor falling low, as though
the reader knew he had yet far to go, like a runner that brings great
news across mountains, plains, and rivers.

To Blanca that thin voice might have been the customary sighing of
the wind, her attention was so fast fixed on the girl, who sat
following the words down the pages with her pen's point.

Mr. Stone paused.

"Have you got the word 'insane'?"  he asked.

The little model raised her face.  "Yes, Mr. Stone."

"Strike it out."

With his eyes fixed on the trees he stood breathing audibly.  The
little model moved her fingers, freeing them from cramp.  Blanca's
curious, smiling scrutiny never left her, as though trying to fix an
indelible image on her mind.  There was something terrifying in that
stare, cruel to herself, cruel to the girl.

"The precise word," said Mr. Stone, "eludes me.  Leave a blank.
Follow!...  'Neither that sweet fraternal interest of man in man, nor
a curiosity in phenomena merely as phenomena....'"  His voice pursued
its tenuous path through spaces, frozen by the calm eternal presence
of his beloved idea, which, like a golden moon, far and cold,
presided glamorously above the thin track of words.  And still the
girl's pen-point traced his utterance across the pages: Mr. Stone
paused again, and looking at his daughter as though surprised to see
her sitting there, asked:

"Do you wish to speak to me, my dear?"

Blanca shook her head.

"Follow!" said Mr. Stone.

But the little model's glance had stolen round to meet the scrutiny
fixed on her.

A look passed across her face which seemed to say: 'What have I done
to you, that you should stare at me like this?'

Furtive and fascinated, her eyes remained fixed on Bianca, while her
hand moved, mechanically ticking the paragraphs.  That silent duel of
eyes went on--the woman's fixed, cruel, smiling; the girl's
uncertain, resentful.  Neither of them heard a word that Mr. Stone
was reading.  They treated it as, from the beginning, Life has
treated Philosophy--and to the end will treat it.

Mr. Stone paused again, seeming to weigh his last sentences.

"That, I think," he murmured to himself, "is true."  And suddenly he
addressed his daughter.  "Do you agree with me, my dear?"

He was evidently waiting with anxiety for her answer, and the little
silver hairs that straggled on his lean throat beneath his beard were
clearly visible.

"Yes, Father, I agree."

"Ah!" said Mr. Stone, "I am glad that you confirm me.  I was anxious.
Follow!"

Bianca rose.  Burning spots of colour had settled in her cheeks.  She
went towards the door, and the little model pursued her figure with a
long look, cringing, mutinous, and wistful.




CHAPTER XX

THE HUSBAND AND THE WIFE

It was past six o'clock when Hilary at length reached home, preceded
a little by Miranda, who almost felt within her the desire to eat.
The lilac bushes, not yet in flower, were giving forth spicy
fragrance.  The sun still netted their top boughs, as with golden
silk, and a blackbird, seated on a low branch of the acacia-tree, was
summoning the evening.  Mr. Stone, accompanied by the little model,
dressed in her new clothes, was coming down the path.  They were
evidently going for a walk, for Mr. Stone wore his hat, old and soft
and black, with a strong green tinge, and carried a paper parcel,
which leaked crumbs of bread at every step.

The girl grew very red.  She held her head down, as though afraid of
Hilary's inspection of her new clothes.  At the gate she suddenly
looked up.  His face said: 'Yes, you look very nice!'  And into her
eyes a look leaped such as one may see in dogs' eyes lifted in
adoration to their masters' faces.  Manifestly disconcerted, Hilary
turned to Mr. Stone.  The old man was standing very still; a thought
had evidently struck him.  "I have not, I think," he said, "given
enough consideration to the question whether force is absolutely, or
only relatively, evil.  If I saw a man ill-treat a cat, should I be
justified in striking him?"

Accustomed to such divagations, Hilary answered: "I don't know
whether you would be justifed, but I believe that you would strike
him."

"I am not sure," said Mr. Stone.  "We are going to feed the birds."

The little model took the paper bag.  "It's all dropping out," she
said.  From across the road she turned her head....'Won't you come,
too?' she seemed to say.

But Hilary passed rather hastily into the garden and shut the gate
behind him.  He sat in his study, with Miranda near him, for fully an
hour, without doing anything whatever, sunk in a strange, half-
pleasurable torpor.  At this hour he should have been working at his
book; and the fact that his idleness did not trouble him might well
have given him uneasiness.  Many thoughts passed through his mind,
imaginings of things he had thought left behind forever--sensations
and longings which to the normal eye of middle age are but dried
forms hung in the museum of memory.  They started up at the whip of
the still-living youth, the lost wildness at the heart of every man.
Like the reviving flame of half-spent fires, longing for discovery
leaped and flickered in Hilary--to find out once again what things
were like before he went down the hill of age.

No trivial ghost was beckoning him; it was the ghost, with unseen
face and rosy finger, which comes to men when youth has gone.

Miranda, hearing him so silent, rose.  At this hour it was her
master's habit to scratch paper.  She, who seldom scratched anything,
because it was not delicate, felt dimly that this was what he should
be doing.  She held up a slim foot and touched his knee.  Receiving
no discouragement, she delicately sprang into his lap, and,
forgetting for once her modesty, placed her arms on his chest, and
licked his face all over.

It was while receiving this embrace that Hilary saw Mr. Stone and the
little model returning across the garden.  The old man was walking
very rapidly, holding out the fragment of a broken stick.  He was
extremely pink.

Hilary went to meet them.

"What's the matter, sir?"  he said.

"I cut him over the legs," said Mr. Stone.  "I do not regret it"; and
he walked on to his room.

Hilary turned to the little model.

"It was a little dog.  The man kicked it, and Mr. Stone hit him.  He
broke his stick.  There were several men; they threatened us."  She
looked up at Hilary.  "I-I was frightened.  Oh!  Mr. Dallison, isn't
he funny?"

"All heroes are funny," murmured Hilary.

"He wanted to hit them again, after his stick was broken.  Then a
policeman came, and they all ran away."

"That was quite as it should be," said Hilary.  "And what did you
do?"

Perceiving that she had not as yet made much effect, the little model
cast down her eyes.

"I shouldn't have been frightened if you had been there!"

"Heavens!" muttered Hilary.  "Mr. Stone is far more valiant than I."

"I don't think he is," she replied stubbornly, and again looked up at
him.

"Well, good-night!" said Hilary hastily.  "You must run off...."

That same evening, driving with his wife back from a long, dull
dinner, Hilary began:

"I've something to say to you."

An ironic "Yes?"  came from the other corner of the cab.

"There is some trouble with the little model."

"Really!"

"This man Hughs has become infatuated with her.  He has even said, I
believe, that he was coming to see you."

"What about?"

"Me."

"And what is he going to say about you?"

"I don't know; some vulgar gossip--nothing true."

There was a silence, and in the darkness Hilary moistened his dry
lips.

Bianca spoke: "May I ask how you knew of this?"

"Cecilia told me."

A curious noise, like a little strangled laugh, fell on Hilary's
ears.

"I am very sorry," he muttered.

Presently Bianca said:

"It was good of you to tell me, considering that we go our own ways.
What made you?"

"I thought it right."

"And--of course, the man might have come to me!"

"That you need not have said."

"One does not always say what one ought."

"I have made the child a present of some clothes which she badly
needed.  So far as I know, that's all I've done!"

"Of course!"

This wonderful "of course" acted on Hilary like a tonic.  He said
dryly:

"What do you wish me to do?"

"I?"  No gust of the east wind, making the young leaves curl and
shiver, the gas jets flare and die down in their lamps, could so have
nipped the flower of amity.  Through Hilary's mind flashed Stephen's
almost imploring words: "Oh, I wouldn't go to her!  Women are so
funny!"

He looked round.  A blue gauze scarf was wrapped over his wife's dark
head.  There, in her corner, as far away from him as she could get,
she was smiling.  For a moment Hilary had the sensation of being
stiffed by fold on fold of that blue gauze scarf, as if he were
doomed to drive for ever, suffocated, by the side of this woman who
had killed his love for her.

"You will do what you like, of course," she said suddenly.

A desire to laugh seized Hilary.  "What do you wish me to do?"  "You
will do what you like, of course!"  Could civilised restraint and
tolerance go further?

"B." he said, with an effort, "the wife is jealous.  We put the girl
into that house--we ought to get her out."

Blanca's reply came slowly.

"From the first," she said, "the girl has been your property; do what
you like with her.  I shall not meddle."

"I am not in the habit of regarding people as my property."

"No need to tell me that--I have known you twenty years."

Doors sometimes slam in the minds of the mildest and most restrained
of men.

"Oh, very well!  I have told you; you can see Hughs when he comes--or
not, as you like."

"I have seen him."

Hilary smiled.

"Well, was his story very terrible?"

"He told me no story."

"How was that?"

Blanca suddenly sat forward, and threw back the blue scarf, as though
she, too, were stifling.  In her flushed face her eyes were bright as
stars; her lips quivered.

"Is it likely," she said, "that I should listen?  That's enough,
please, of these people."

Hilary bowed.  The cab, bearing them fast home, turned into the last
short cut.  This narrow street was full of men and women circling
round barrows and lighted booths.  The sound of coarse talk and
laughter floated out into air thick with the reek of paraffin and the
scent of frying fish.  In every couple of those men and women Hilary
seemed to see the Hughs, that other married couple, going home to
wedded happiness above the little model's head.  The cab turned out
of the gay alley.

"Enough, please, of these people!"

That same night, past one o'clock, he was roused from sleep by
hearing bolts drawn back.  He got up, hastened to the window, and
looked out.  At first he could distinguish nothing.  The moonless
night; like a dark bird, had nested in the garden; the sighing of the
lilac bushes was the only sound.  Then, dimly, just below him, on the
steps of the front door, he saw a figure standing.

"Who is that?"  he called.

The figure did not move.

"Who are you?"  said Hilary again.

The figure raised its face, and by the gleam of his white beard
Hilary knew that it was Mr. Stone.

"What is it, sir?"  he said.  "Can I do anything?"

"No," answered Mr. Stone.  "I am listening to the wind.  It has
visited everyone to-night."  And lifting his hand, he pointed out
into the darkness.




CHAPTER XXI

A DAY OF REST

Cecilia's house in the Old Square was steeped from roof to basement
in the peculiar atmosphere brought by Sunday to houses whose inmates
have no need of religion or of rest.

Neither she nor Stephen had been to church since Thyme was
christened; they did not expect to go again till she was married, and
they felt that even to go on these occasions was against their
principles; but for the sake of other people's feelings they had made
the sacrifice, and they meant to make it once more, when the time
came.  Each Sunday, therefore, everything tried to happen exactly as
it happened on every other day, with indifferent success.  This was
because, for all Cecilia's resolutions, a joint of beef and Yorkshire
pudding would appear on the luncheon-table, notwithstanding the fact
that Mr. Stone--who came when he remembered that it was Sunday--did
not devour the higher mammals.  Every week, when it appeared,
Cecilia, who for some reason carved on Sundays, regarded it with a
frown.  Next week she would really discontinue it; but when next week
came, there it was, with its complexion that reminded her so
uncomfortably of cabmen.  And she would partake of it with unexpected
heartiness.  Something very old and deep, some horrible whole-hearted
appetite, derived, no doubt, from Mr. Justice Carfax, rose at that
hour precisely every week to master her.  Having given Thyme the
second helping which she invariably took, Cecilia, who detested
carving, would look over the fearful joint at a piece of glass
procured by her in Venice, and at the daffodils standing upright in
it, apparently without support.  Had it not been for this joint of
beef, which had made itself smelt all the morning, and would make
itself felt all the afternoon, it need never have come into her mind
at all that it was Sunday--and she would cut herself another slice.

To have told Cecilia that there was still a strain of the Puritan in
her would have been to occasion her some uneasiness, and provoked a
strenuous denial; yet her way of observing Sunday furnished
indubitable evidence of this singular fact.  She did more that day
than any other.  For, in the morning she invariably "cleared off" her
correspondence; at lunch she carved the beef; after lunch she cleared
off the novel or book on social questions she was reading; went to a
concert, clearing off a call on the way back; and on first Sundays--a
great bore--stayed at home to clear off the friends who came to visit
her.  In the evening she went to some play or other, produced by
Societies for the benefit of persons compelled, like her, to keep a
Sunday with which they felt no sympathy.

On this particular "first Sunday," having made the circuit of her
drawing-room, which extended the whole breadth of her house, and
through long, low windows cut into leaded panes, looked out both back
and front, she took up Mr. Balladyce's latest book.  She sat, with
her paper-knife pressed against the tiny hollow in her flushed cheek,
and pretty little bits of lace and real old jewellery nestling close
to her.  And while she turned the pages of Mr. Balladyce's book Thyme
sat opposite in a bright blue frock, and turned the pages of Darwin's
work on earthworms.

Regarding her "little daughter," who was so much more solid than
herself, Cecilia's face wore a very sweet, faintly surprised
expression.

'My kitten is a bonny thing,' it seemed to say.  'It is queer that I
should have a thing so large.'

Outside in the Square Gardens a shower, the sunlight, and blossoms,
were entangled.  It was the time of year when all the world had
kittens; young things were everywhere--soft, sweet, uncouth.  Cecilia
felt this in her heart.  It brought depth into her bright, quick
eyes.  What a secret satisfaction it was that she had once so far
committed herself as to have borne a child!  What a queer vague
feeling she sometimes experienced in the Spring--almost amounting to
a desire to bear another!  So one may mark the warm eye of a staid
mare, following with her gaze the first strayings of her foal.  'I
must get used to it,' she seems to say.  'I certainly do miss the
little creature, though I used to threaten her with my hoofs, to show
I couldn't be bullied by anything of that age.  And there she goes!
Ah, well!'

Remembering suddenly, however, that she was sitting there to clear
off Mr. Balladyce, because it was so necessary to keep up with what
he wrote, Cecilia dropped her gaze to the page before her; and
instantly, by uncomfortable chance, not the choice pastures of Mr.
Balladyce appeared, where women might browse at leisure, but a vision
of the little model.  She had not thought of her for quite an hour;
she had tired herself out with thinking-not, indeed, of her, but of
all that hinged on her, ever since Stephen had spoken of his talk
with Hilary.  Things Hilary had said seemed to Cecilia's delicate.
and rather timid soul so ominous, so unlike himself.  Was there
really going to be complete disruption between him and Bianca--worse,
an ugly scandal?  She, who knew her sister better, perhaps, than
anyone, remembered from schoolroom days Bianca's moody violence when
anything had occurred to wound her--remembered, too, the long fits of
brooding that followed.  This affair, which she had tried to persuade
herself was exaggerated, loomed up larger than ever.  It was not an
isolated squib; it was a lighted match held to a train of gunpowder.
This girl of the people, coming from who knew where, destined for who
knew what--this young, not very beautiful, not even clever child,
with nothing but a sort of queer haunting naivete' to give her charm
--might even be a finger used by Fate!  Cecilia sat very still before
that sudden vision of the girl.  There was no staid mare to guard
that foal with the dark devotion of her eye.  There was no wise
whinnying to answer back those tiny whinnies; no long look round to
watch the little creature nodding to sleep on its thin trembling legs
in the hot sunlight; no ears to prick up and hoofs to stamp at the
approach of other living things.  These thoughts passed through
Cecilia's mind and were gone, being too far and pale to stay.
Turning the page which she had not been reading, she heaved a sigh.
Thyme sighed also.

"These worms are fearfully interesting," she said.  "Is anybody
coming in this afternoon?"

"Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace was going to bring a young man in, a Signor
Pozzi-Egregio Pozzi, or some such name.  She says he is the coming
pianist."  Cecilia's face was spiced with faint amusement.  Some
strain of her breeding (the Carfax strain, no doubt) still heard such
names and greeted such proclivities with an inclination to derision.

Thyme snatched up her book.  "Well," she said, "I shall be in the
attic.  If anyone interesting comes you might send up to me."

She stood, luxuriously stretching, and turning slowly round in a
streak of sunlight so as to bathe her body in it.  Then, with a long
soft yawn, she flung up her chin till the sun streamed on her face.
Her eyelashes rested on cheeks already faintly browned; her lips were
parted; little shivers of delight ran down her; her chestnut hair
glowed, burnished by the kisses of the sun.

'Ah!' Cecilia thought, 'if that other girl were like this, now, I
could understand well enough!'

"Oh, Lord!" said Thyme, "there they are!" She flew towards the door.

"My dear," murmured Cecilia, "if you must go, do please tell Father."

A minute later Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace came in, followed by a young
man with an interesting, pale face and a crop of dusky hair.

Let us consider for a minute the not infrequent case of a youth
cursed with an Italian mother and a father of the name of Potts, who
had baptised him William.  Had he emanated from the lower classes, he
might with impunity have ground an organ under the name of Bill; but
springing from the bourgeoisie, and playing Chopin at the age of
four, his friends had been confronted with a problem of no mean
difficulty.  Heaven, on the threshold of his career, had intervened
to solve it.  Hovering, as it were, with one leg raised before the
gladiatorial arena of musical London, where all were waiting to turn
their thumbs down on the figure of the native Potts, he had received
a letter from his mother's birthplace.  It was inscribed: "Egregio
Signor Pozzi."  He was saved.  By the simple inversion of the first
two words, the substitution of z's for t's, without so fortunately
making any difference in the sound, and the retention of that i, all
London knew him now to be the rising pianist.

He was a quiet, well-mannered youth, invaluable just then to Mrs.
Tallents Smallpeace, a woman never happy unless slightly leading a
genius in strings.

Cecilia, while engaging them to right and left in her half-
sympathetic, faintly mocking way--as if doubting whether they really
wanted to see her or she them--heard a word of fear.

"Mr. Purcey."

'Oh Heaven!' she thought.

Mr. Purcey, whose A.i. Damyer could be heard outside, advanced in his
direct and simple way.

"I thought I'd give my car a run," he said.  "How's your sister?"
And seeing Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace, he added: "How do you do?  We
met the other day."

"We did," said Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace, whose little eyes were
sparkling.  "We talked about the poor, do you remember?"

Mr. Purcey, a sensitive man if you could get through his skin, gave
her a shrewd look.  'I don't quite cotton to this woman,' he seemed
saying; 'there's a laugh about her I don't like.'

"Ah!  yes--you were tellin' me about them."

"Oh, Mr. Purcey, but you had heard of them, you remember!"

Mr. Purcey made a movement of his face which caused it to seem all
jaw.  It was a sort of unconscious declaration of a somewhat
formidable character.  So one may see bulldogs, those amiable
animals, suddenly disclose their tenacity.

"It's rather a blue subject," he said bluntly.

Something in Cecilia fluttered at those words.  It was like the
saying of a healthy man looking at a box of pills which he did not
mean to open.  Why could not she and Stephen keep that lid on, too?
And at this moment, to her deep astonishment, Stephen entered.  She
had sent for him, it is true, but had never expected he would come.

His entrance, indeed, requires explanation.

Feeling, as he said, a little "off colour," Stephen had not gone to
Richmond to play golf.  He had spent the day instead in the company
of his pipe and those ancient coins, of which he had the best
collection of any man he had ever met.  His thoughts had wandered
from them, more than he thought proper, to Hilary and that girl.  He
had felt from the beginning that he was so much more the man to deal
with an affair like this than poor old Hilary.  When, therefore,
Thyme put her head into his study and said, "Father, Mrs. Tallents
Smallpeace!" he had first thought, 'That busybody!' and then,
'I wonder--perhaps I'd better go and see if I can get anything out of
her.'

In considering Stephen's attitude towards a woman so firmly embedded
in the various social movements of the day, it must be remembered
that he represented that large class of men who, unhappily too
cultivated to put aside, like Mr. Purcey, all blue subjects, or deny
the need for movements to make them less blue, still could not move,
for fear of being out of order.  He was also temperamentally
distrustful of anything too feminine; and Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace
was undoubtedly extremely feminine.  Her merit, in his eyes,
consisted of her attachment to Societies.  So long as mankind worked
through Societies, Stephen, who knew the power of rules and minute
books, did not despair of too little progress being made.  He sat
down beside her, and turned the conversation on her chief work--"the
Maids in Peril."

Searching his face with those eyes so like little black bees sipping
honey from all the flowers that grew, Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace said:

"Why don't you get your wife to take an interest in our work?"

To Stephen this question was naturally both unexpected and annoying,
one's wife being the last person he wished to interest in other
people's movements.  He kept his head.

"Ah well!" he said, "we haven't all got a talent for that sort of
thing."

The voice of Mr. Purcey travelled suddenly across the room.

"Do tell me!  How do you go to work to worm things out of them?"

Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace, prone to laughter, bubbled.

"Oh, that is such a delicious expression, Mr. Purcey!  I almost think
we ought to use it in our Report.  Thank you!"

Mr. Purcey bowed.  "Not at all!" he said.

Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace turned again to Stephen.

"We have our trained inquirers.  That is the advantage of Societies
such as ours; so that we don't personally have the unpleasantness.
Some cases do baffle everybody.  It's such very delicate work."

"You sometimes find you let in a rotter?"  said Mr. Purcey, "or, I
should say, a rotter lets you in!  Ha, ha!"

Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace's eyes flew deliciously down his figure.

"Not often," she said; and turning rather markedly once more to
Stephen:  "Have you any special case that you are interested in, Mr.
Dallison?"

Stephen consulted Cecilia with one of those masculine half-glances so
discreet that Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace intercepted it without looking
up.  She found it rather harder to catch Cecilia's reply, but she
caught it before Stephen did.  It was, 'You'd better wait, perhaps,'
conveyed by a tiny raising of the left eyebrow and a slight movement
to the right of the lower lip.  Putting two and two together, she
felt within her bones that they were thinking of the little model.
And she remembered the interesting moment in the omnibus when that
attractive-looking man had got out so hastily.

There was no danger whatever from Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace feeling
anything.  The circle in which she moved did not now talk scandal,
or, indeed, allude to matters of that sort without deep  sympathy;
and in the second place she was really far too good a fellow, with
far too dear a love of life, to interfere with anybody else's love of
it.  At the same time it was interesting.

"That little model, now," she said, "what about her?"

"Is that the girl I saw?"  broke in Mr. Purcey, with his accustomed
shrewdness.

Stephen gave him the look with which he was accustomed to curdle the
blood of persons who gave evidence before Commissions.

'This fellow is impossible,' he thought.

The little black bees flying below Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace's dark
hair, done in the Early Italian fashion, tranquilly sucked honey from
Stephen's face.

"She seemed to me," she answered, "such a very likely type."

"Ah!" murmured Stephen, "there would be, I suppose, a danger---" And
he looked angrily at Cecilia.

Without ceasing to converse with Mr. Purcey and Signor Egregio Pozzi,
she moved her left eye upwards.  Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace understood
this to mean: 'Be frank, and guarded!' Stephen, however, interpreted
it otherwise.  To him it signified: 'What the deuce do you look at me
for?' And he felt justly hurt.  He therefore said abruptly:

"What would you do in a case like that?"

Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace, sliding her face sideways, with a really
charming little smile, asked softly:

"In a case like what?"

And her little eyes fled to Thyme, who had slipped into the room, and
was whispering to her mother.

Cecilia rose.

"You know my daughter," she said.  "Will you excuse me just a minute?
I'm so very sorry."  She glided towards the door, and threw a flying
look back.  It was one of those social moments precious to those who
are escaping them.

Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace was smiling, Stephen frowning at his boots;
Mr. Purcey stared admiringly at Thyme, and Thyme, sitting very
upright, was calmly regarding the unfortunate Egregio Pozzi, who
apparently could not bring himself to speak.

When Cecilia found herself outside, she stood still a moment to
compose her nerves.  Thyme had told her that Hilary was in the
dining-room, and wanted specially to see her.

As in most women of her class and bringing-up, Cecilia's qualities of
reticence and subtlety, the delicate treading of her spirit, were
seen to advantage in a situation such as this.  Unlike Stephen, who
had shown at once that he had something on his mind, she received
Hilary with that exact shade of friendly, intimate, yet cool
affection long established by her as the proper manner towards her
husband's brother.  It was not quite sisterly, but it was very nearly
so.  It seemed to say: 'We understand each other as far as it is
right and fitting that we should; we even sympathise with the
difficulties we have each of us experienced in marrying the other's
sister or brother, as the case may be.  We know the worst.  And we
like to see each other, too, because there are bars between us, which
make it almost piquant.'

Giving him her soft little hand, she began at once to talk of things
farthest from her heart.  She saw that she was deceiving Hilary, and
this feather in the cap of her subtlety gave her pleasure.  But her
nerves fluttered at once when he said: "I want to speak to you, Cis.
You know that Stephen and I had a talk yesterday, I suppose?"

Cecilia nodded.

"I have spoken to B.!"

"Oh!" Cecilia murmured.  She longed to ask what Bianca had said, but
did not dare, for Hilary had his armour on, the retired, ironical
look he always wore when any subject was broached for which he was
too sensitive.

She waited.

"The whole thing is distasteful to me," he said; "but I must do
something for this child.  I can't leave her completely in the
lurch."

Cecilia had an inspiration.

"Hilary," she said softly, "Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace is in the
drawing-room.  She was just speaking of the girl to Stephen.  Won't
you come in, and arrange with her quietly?"

Hilary looked at his sister-in-law for a moment without speaking,
then said:

"I draw the line there.  No, thank you.  I'll see this through
myself."

Cecilia fluttered out:

"Oh, but, Hilary, what do you mean?"

"I am going to put an end to it."

It needed all Cecilia's subtlety to hide her consternation.  End to
what?  Did he mean that he and B. were going to separate?

"I won't have all this vulgar gossip about the poor girl.  I shall go
and find another room for her."

Cecilia sighed with relief.

"Would you-would you like me to come too, Hilary?"

"It's very good of you," said Hilary dryly.  "My actions appear to
rouse suspicions."

Cecilia blushed.

"Oh, that's absurd!  Still, no one could think anything if I come
with you.  Hilary, have you thought that if she continues coming to
Father---"

"I shall tell her that she mustn't!"

Cecilia's heart gave two thumps, the first with pleasure, the second
with sympathy.

"It will be horrid for you," she said.  "You hate doing anything of
that sort."

Hilary nodded.

"But I'm afraid it's the only way," went on Cecilia, rather hastily.
"And, of course, it will be no good saying anything to Father; one
must simply let him suppose that she has got tired of it."

Again Hilary nodded.

"He will think it very funny,", murmured Cecilia pensively.  "Oh, and
have you thought that taking her away from where she is will only
make those people talk the more?"

Hilary shrugged his shoulders.

"It may make that man furious," Cecilia added.

"It will."

"Oh, but then, of course, if you don't see her afterwards, they will
have no--no excuse at all."

"I shall not see her afterwards," said Hilary, "if I can avoid it."

Cecilia looked at him.

"It's very sweet of you, Hilary."

"What is sweet?"  asked Hilary stonily.

"Why, to take all this trouble.  Is it really necessary for you to do
anything?"  But looking in his face, she went on hastily: "Yes, yes,
it's best.  Let's go at once.  Oh, those people in the drawing-room!
Do wait ten minutes."

A little later, running up to put her hat on, she wondered why it was
that Hilary always made her want to comfort him.  Stephen never
affected her like this.

Having little or no notion where to go, they walked in the direction
of Bayswater.  To place the Park between Hound Street and the little
model was the first essential.  On arriving at the other side of the
Broad Walk, they made instinctively away from every sight of green.
In a long, grey street of dismally respectable appearance they found
what they were looking for, a bed-sitting room furnished, advertised
on a card in the window.  The door was opened by the landlady, a tall
woman of narrow build, with a West-Country accent, and a rather
hungry sweetness running through her hardness.  They stood talking
with her in a passage, whose oilcloth of variegated pattern emitted a
faint odour.  The staircase could be seen climbing steeply up past
walls covered with a shining paper cut by narrow red lines into small
yellow squares.  An almanack, of so floral a design that nobody would
surely want to steal it, hung on the wall; below it was an umbrella
stand without umbrellas.  The dim little passage led past two grimly
closed doors painted rusty red to two half-open doors with dull glass
in their panels.  Outside, in the street from which they had mounted
by stone steps, a shower of sleet had begun to fall.  Hilary shut the
door, but the cold spirit of that shower had already slipped into the
bleak, narrow house.

"This is the apartment, m'm," said the landlady, opening the first of
the rusty-coloured doors.  The room, which had a paper of blue roses
on a yellow ground, was separated from another room by double doors.

"I let the rooms together sometimes, but just now that room's taken--
a young gentleman in the City; that's why I'm able to let this
cheap."

Cecilia looked at Hilary.  "I hardly think---"

The landlady quickly turned the handles of the doors, showing that
they would not open.

"I keep the key," she said.  "There's a bolt on both sides."

Reassured, Cecilia walked round the room as far as this was possible,
for it was practically all furniture.  There was the same little
wrinkle across her nose as across Thyme's nose when she spoke of
Hound Street.  Suddenly she caught sight of Hilary.  He was standing
with his back against the door.  On his face was a strange and bitter
look, such as a man might have on seeing the face of Ugliness
herself, feeling that she was not only without him, but within--a
universal spirit; the look of a man who had thought that he was
chivalrous, and found that he was not; of a leader about to give an
order that he would not himself have executed.

Seeing that look, Cecilia said with some haste:

"It's all very nice and clean; it will do very well, I think.  Seven
shillings a week, I believe you said.  We will take it for a
fortnight, at all events."

The first glimmer of a smile appeared on the landlady's grim face,
with its hungry eyes, sweetened by patience.

"When would she be coming in?"  she asked.

"When do you think, Hilary?"

"I don't know," muttered Hilary."  The sooner the better--if it must
be.  To-morrow, or the day after."

And with one look at the bed, covered by a piece of cheap red-and-
yellow tasselled tapestry, he went out into the street.  The shower
was over, but the house faced north, and no sun was shining on it.




CHAPTER XXII

HILARY PUTS AN END TO IT

Like flies caught among the impalpable and smoky threads of cobwebs,
so men struggle in the webs of their own natures, giving here a
start, there a pitiful small jerking, long sustained, and failing
into stillness.  Enmeshed they were born, enmeshed they die, fighting
according to their strength to the end; to fight in the hope of
freedom, their joy; to die, not knowing they are beaten, their
reward.  Nothing, too, is more to be remarked than the manner in
which Life devises for each man the particular dilemmas most suited
to his nature; that which to the man of gross, decided, or fanatic
turn of mind appears a simple sum, to the man of delicate and
speculative temper seems to have no answer.

So it was with Hilary in that special web wherein his spirit
struggled, sunrise unto sunset, and by moonlight afterward.
Inclination, and the circumstances of a life which had never forced
him to grips with either men or women, had detached him from the
necessity for giving or taking orders.  He had almost lost the
faculty.  Life had been a picture with blurred outlines melting into
a softly shaded whole.  Not for years had anything seemed to him
quite a case for "Yes" or "No."  It had been his creed, his delight,
his business, too, to try and put himself in everybody's place, so
that now there were but few places where he did not, speculatively
speaking, feel at home.

Putting himself into the little model's place gave him but small
delight.  Making due allowance for the sentiment men naturally import
into their appreciation of the lives of women, his conception of her
place was doubtless not so very wrong.

Here was a child, barely twenty years of age, country bred, neither a
lady nor quite a working-girl, without a home or relatives, according
to her own account--at all events, without those who were disposed to
help her--without apparently any sort of friend; helpless by nature,
and whose profession required a more than common wariness--this girl
he was proposing to set quite adrift again by cutting through the
single slender rope which tethered her.  It was like digging up a
little rose-tree planted with one's own hands in some poor shelter,
just when it had taken root, and setting it where the full winds
would beat against it.  To do so brusque and, as it seemed to Hilary,
so inhumane a thing was foreign to his nature.  There was also the
little matter of that touch of fever--the distant music he had been
hearing since the waggons came in to Covent Garden.

With a feeling that was almost misery, therefore, he waited for her
on Monday afternoon, walking to and fro in his study, where all the
walls were white, and all the woodwork coloured like the leaf of a
cigar; where the books were that colour too, in Hilary's special
deerskin binding; where there were no flowers nor any sunlight coming
through the windows, but plenty of sheets of paper--a room which
youth seemed to have left for ever, the room of middle age!

He called her in with the intention of at once saying what he had to
say, and getting it over in the fewest words.  But he had not
reckoned fully either with his own nature or with woman's instinct.
Nor had he allowed--being, for all his learning, perhaps because of
it, singularly unable to gauge the effects of simple actions--for the
proprietary relations he had established in the girl's mind by giving
her those clothes.

As a dog whose master has it in his mind to go away from him, stands
gazing up with tragic inquiry in his eyes, scenting to his soul that
coming cruelty--as a dog thus soon to be bereaved, so stood the
little model.

By the pose of every limb, and a fixed gaze bright as if tears were
behind it, and by a sort of trembling, she seemed to say: 'I know why
you have sent for me.'

When Hilary saw her stand like that he felt as a man might when told
to flog his fellow-creature.  To gain time he asked her what she did
with herself all day.  The little model evidently tried to tell
herself that her foreboding had been needless.

Now that the mornings were nice--she said with some animation--she
got up much earlier, and did her needlework first thing; she then
"did out" the room.  There were mouse-holes in her room, and she had
bought a trap.  She had caught a mouse last night.  She hadn't liked
to kill it; she had put it in a tin box, and let it go when she went
out.  Quick to see that Hilary was interested in this, as well he
might be, she told him that she could not bear to see cats hungry or
lost dogs, especially lost dogs, and she described to him one that
she had seen.  She had not liked to tell a policeman; they stared so
hard.  Those words were of strange omen, and Hilary turned his head
away.  The little model, perceiving that she had made an effect of
some sort, tried to deepen it.  She had heard they did all sorts of
things to people--but, seeing at once from Hilary's face that she was
not improving her effect, she broke off suddenly, and hastily began
to tell him of her breakfast, of how comfortable she was now she had
got her clothes; how she liked her room; how old Mr. Creed was very
funny, never taking any notice of her when he met her in the morning.
Then followed a minute account of where she had been trying to get
work; of an engagement promised; Mr. Lennard, too, still wanted her
to pose to him.  At this she gashed a look at Hilary, then cast down
her eyes.  She could get plenty of work if she began that way.  But
she hadn't, because he had told her not, and, of course, she didn't
want to; she liked coming to Mr. Stone so much.  And she got on very
well, and she liked London, and she liked the shops.  She mentioned
neither Hughs nor Mrs. Hughs.  In all this rigmarole, told with such
obvious purpose, stolidity was strangely mingled with almost cunning
quickness to see the effect made; but the dog-like devotion was never
quite out of her eyes when they were fixed on Hilary.

This look got through the weakest places in what little armour Nature
had bestowed on him.  It touched one of the least conceited and most
amiable of men profoundly.  He felt it an honour that anything so
young as this should regard him in that way.  He had always tried to
keep out of his mind that which might have given him the key to her
special feeling for himself--those words of the painter of still
life: "She's got a story of some sort."  But it flashed across him
suddenly like an inspiration: If her story were the simplest of all
stories--the direct, rather brutal, love affair of a village boy and
girl--would not she, naturally given to surrender, be forced this
time to the very antithesis of that young animal amour which had
brought on her such, sharp consequences?

But, wherever her devotion came from, it seemed to Hilary the
grossest violation of the feelings of a gentleman to treat it
ungratefully.  Yet it was as if for the purpose of saying, "You are a
nuisance to me, or worse!" that he had asked her to his study.  Her
presence had hitherto chiefly roused in him the half-amused, half-
tender feelings of one who strokes a foal or calf, watching its soft
uncouthness; now, about to say good-bye to her, there was the
question of whether that was the only feeling.

Miranda, stealing out between her master and his visitor, growled.

The little model, who was stroking a china ash-tray with her
ungloved, inky fingers, muttered, with a smile, half pathetic, half
cynical: "She doesn't like me!  She knows I don't belong here.  She
hates me to come.  She's jealous!"

Hilary said abruptly:

"Tell me!  Have you made any friends since you've been in London?"

The girl flashed a look at him that said:

'Could I make you jealous?'

Then, as though guilty of afar too daring thought, drooped her head,
and answered:

"No."

"Not one?"

The little model repeated almost passionately: "No.  I don't want any
friends; I only want to be let alone."

Hilary began speaking rapidly.

"But these Hughs have not left you alone.  I told you, I thought you
ought to move; I've taken another room for you quite away from them.
Leave your furniture with a week's rent, and take your trunk quietly
away to-morrow in a cab without saying a word to anyone.  This is the
new address, and here's the money for your expenses.  They're
dangerous for you, those people."

The little model muttered desperately: "But I don't care what they
do!"

Hilary went on: "Listen!  You mustn't come here again, or the man
will trace you.  We will take care you have what's necessary till you
can get other work."

The little model looked up at him without a word.  Now that the thin
link which bound her to some sort of household gods had snapped, all
the patience and submission bred in her by village life, by the hard
facts of her story, and by these last months in London, served her
well enough.  She made no fuss.  Hilary saw a tear roll down her
cheek.

He turned his head away, and said: "Don't cry, my child!"

Quite obediently the little model swallowed the tear.  A thought
seemed to strike her:

"But I could see you, Mr. Dallison, couldn't I, sometimes?"

Seeing from his face that this was not in the programme, she stood
silent again, looking up at him.

It was a little difficult for Hilary to say: "I can't see you because
my wife is jealous!"  It was cruel to tell her: "I don't want to see
you! "besides, it was not true.

"You'll soon be making friends," he said at last, "and you can always
write to me"; and with a queer smile he added: "You're only just
beginning life; you mustn't take these things to heart; you'll find
plenty of people better able to advise and help you than ever I shall
be!"

The little model answered this by seizing his hand with both of hers.
She dropped it again at once, as if guilty of presumption, and stood
with her head bent.  Hilary, looking down on the little hat which, by
his special wish, contained no feathers, felt a lump rise in his
throat.

"It's funny," he said; "I don't know your Christian name."

"Ivy," muttered the little model.

"Ivy!  Well, I'll write to you.  But you must promise me to do
exactly as I said."

The girl looked up; her face was almost ugly--like a child's in whom
a storm of feeling is repressed.

"Promise!" repeated Hilary.

With a bitter droop of her lower lip, she nodded, and suddenly put
her hand to her heart.  That action, of which she was clearly
unconscious, so naively, so almost automatically was it done, nearly
put an end to Hilary's determination.

"Now you must go," he said.

The little model choked, grew very red, and then quite white.

"Aren't I even to say good-bye to Mr. Stone?"

Hilary shook his head.

"He'll miss me," she said desperately.  "He will.  I know he will!"

"So shall I," said Hilary.  "We can't help that."

The little model drew herself up to her full height; her breast
heaved beneath the clothes which had made her Hilary's.  She was very
like "The Shadow" at that moment, as though whatever Hilary might do
there she would be--a little ghost, the spirit of the helpless
submerged world, for ever haunting with its dumb appeal the minds of
men.

"Give me your hand," said Hilary.

The little model put out her not too white, small hand.  It was soft,
clinging: and as hot as fire.

"Good-bye, my dear, and bless you!"

The little model gave him a look with who-knows-what of reproach in
it, and, faithful to her training, went submissively away.

Hilary did not look after her, but, standing by the lofty mantelpiece
above the ashes of the fire, rested his forehead on his arm.  Not
even a fly's buzzing broke the stillness.  There was sound for all
that-not of distant music, but of blood beating in his ears and
temples.




CHAPTER XXIII

THE "BOOK OF UNIVERSAL BROTHERHOOD"

It is fitting that a few words should be said about the writer of the
"Book of Universal Brotherhood."

Sylvanus Stone, having graduated very highly at the London
University, had been appointed at an early age lecturer to more than
one Public Institution.  He had soon received the professorial robes
due to a man of his profound learning in the natural sciences, and
from that time till he was seventy his life had flowed on in one
continual round of lectures, addresses, disquisitions, and arguments
on the subjects in which he was a specialist.  At the age of seventy,
long after his wife's death and the marriages of his three children,
he had for some time been living by himself, when a very serious
illness--the result of liberties taken with an iron constitution by a
single mind--prostrated him.

During the long convalescence following this illness the power of
contemplation, which the Professor had up to then given to natural
science, began to fix itself on life at large.  But the mind which
had made of natural science an idea, a passion, was not content with
vague reflections on life.  Slowly, subtly, with irresistible
centrifugal force--with a force which perhaps it would not have
acquired but for that illness--the idea, the passion of Universal
Brotherhood had sucked into itself all his errant wonderings on the
riddle of existence.  The single mind of this old man, divorced by
illness from his previous existence, pensioned and permanently
shelved, began to worship a new star, that with every week and month
and year grew brighter, till all other stars had lost their glimmer
and died out.

At the age of seventy-four he had begun his book.  Under the spell of
his subject and of advancing age, his extreme inattention to passing
matters became rapidly accentuated.  His figure had become almost too
publicly conspicuous before Bianca, finding him one day seated on the
roof of his lonely little top-story flat, the better to contemplate
his darling Universe, had inveigled him home with her, and installed
him in a room in her own house.  After the first day or two he had
not noticed any change to speak of.

His habits in his new home were soon formed, and once formed, they
varied not at all; for he admitted into his life nothing which took
him from the writing of his book.

On the afternoon following Hilary's dismissal of the little model,
being disappointed of his amanuensis, Mr. Stone had waited for an
hour, reading his pages over and over to himself.  He had then done
his exercises.  At the usual time for tea he had sat down, and, with
his cup and brown bread-and-butter alternately at his lips, had
looked long and fixedly at the place where the girl was wont to sit.
Having finished, he left the room and went about the house.  He found
no one but Miranda, who, seated in the passage leading to the studio,
was trying to keep one eye on the absence of her master and the other
on the absence of her mistress.  She joined Mr. Stone, maintaining a
respect-compelling interval behind him when he went before, and
before him when he went behind.  When they had finished hunting, Mr.
Stone went down to the garden gate.  Here Bianca found him presently
motionless, without a hat, in the full sun, craning his white head in
the direction from which he knew the little model habitually came.
The mistress of the house was herself returning from her annual visit
to the Royal Academy, where she still went, as dogs, from some
perverted sense, will go and sniff round other dogs to whom they have
long taken a dislike.  A loose-hanging veil depended from her
mushroom-shaped and coloured hat.  Her eyes were brightened by her
visit.
Mr. Stone soon seemed to take in who she was, and stood regarding her
a minute without speaking.  His attitude towards his daughters was
rather like that of an old drake towards two swans whom he has
inadvertently begotten--there was inquiry in it, disapproval,
admiration, and faint surprise.

"Why has she not come?"  he said.

Bianca winced behind her veil.  "Have you asked Hilary?"

"I cannot find him," answered Mr. Stone.  Something about his patient
stooping figure and white head, on which the sunlight was falling,
made Bianca slip her hand through his arm.

"Come in, Dad.  I'll do your copying."

Mr. Stone looked at her intently, and shook his head.

"It would be against my principles; I cannot take an unpaid service.
But if you would come, my dear, I should like to read to you.  It is
stimulating."

At that request Bianca's eyes grew dim.  Pressing Mr. Stone's shaggy
arm against her breast, she moved with him towards the house.

"I think I may have written something that will interest you," Mr.
Stone said, as they went along.

"I am sure you have," Bianca murmured.

"It is universal," said Mr. Stone; "it concerns birth.  Sit at the
table.  I will begin, as usual, where I left off yesterday."

Bianca took the little model's seat, resting her chin on her hand, as
motionless as any of the statues she had just been viewing.
It almost seemed as if Mr. Stone were feeling nervous.  He twice
arranged his papers; cleared his throat; then, lifting a sheet
suddenly, took three steps, turned his back on her, and began to
read.

"'In that slow, incessant change of form to form, called Life, men,
made spasmodic by perpetual action, had seized on a certain moment,
no more intrinsically notable than any other moment, and had called
it Birth.  This habit of honouring one single instant of the
universal process to the disadvantage of all the other instants had
done more, perhaps, than anything to obfuscate the crystal clearness
of the fundamental flux.  As well might such as watch the process of
the green, unfolding earth, emerging from the brumous arms of winter,
isolate a single day and call it Spring.  In the tides of rhythm by
which the change of form to form was governed'"--Mr. Stone's voice,
which had till then been but a thin, husky murmur, gradually grew
louder and louder, as though he were addressing a great concourse--
"'the golden universal haze in which men should have flown like
bright wing-beats round the sun gave place to the parasitic halo
which every man derived from the glorifying of his own nativity.  To
this primary mistake could be traced his intensely personal
philosophy.  Slowly but surely there had dried up in his heart the
wish to be his brother.'"

He stopped reading suddenly.

"I see him coming in," he said.

The next minute the door opened, and Hilary entered.

"She has not come," said Mr. Stone; and Bianca murmured:

"We miss her!"

"Her eyes," said Mr. Stone, "have a peculiar look; they help me to
see into the future.  I have noticed the same look in the eyes of
female dogs."

With a little laugh, Bianca murmured again:

"That is good!"

"There is one virtue in dogs," said Hilary, "which human beings lack-
they are incapable of mockery."

But Bianca's lips, parted, indrawn, seemed saying: 'You ask too much!
I no longer attract you.  Am I to sympathise in the attraction this
common little girl has for you?'

Mr. Stone's gaze was fixed intently on the wall.

"The dog," he said, "has lost much of its primordial character."

And, moving to his desk, he took up his quill pen.

Hilary and Bianca made no sound, nor did they look at one another;
and in this silence, so much more full of meaning than any talk, the
scratching of the quill went on.  Mr. Stone put it down at last, and,
seeing two persons in the room, read:

"'Looking back at those days when the doctrine of evolution had
reached its pinnacle, one sees how the human mind, by its habit of
continual crystallisations, had destroyed all the meaning of the
process.  Witness, for example, that sterile phenomenon, the pagoda
of 'caste'!  Like this Chinese building, so was Society then formed.
Men were living there in layers, as divided from each other, class
from class---'" He took up the quill, and again began to write.

"You understand, I suppose," said Hilary in a low voice, "that she
has been told not to come?"

Bianca moved her shoulders.

With a most unwonted look of anger, he added:

"Is it within the scope of your generosity to credit me with the
desire to meet your wishes?"

Bianca's answer was a laugh so strangely hard, so cruelly bitter,
that Hilary involuntarily turned, as though to retrieve the sound
before it reached the old man's ears.

Mr. Stone had laid down his pen.  "I shall write no more to-day," he
said; "I have lost my feeling--I am not myself."  He spoke in a voice
unlike his own.

Very tired and worn his old figure looked; as some lean horse, whose
sun has set, stands with drooped head, the hollows in his neck
showing under his straggling mane.  And suddenly, evidently quite
oblivious that he had any audience, he spoke:

"O Great Universe, I am an old man of a faint spirit, with no
singleness of purpose.  Help me to write on--help me to write a book
such as the world has never seen!"

A dead silence followed that strange prayer; then Bianca, with tears
rolling down her face, got up and rushed out of the room.

Mr. Stone came to himself.  His mute, white face had suddenly grown
scared and pink.  He looked at Hilary.

"I fear that I forgot myself.  Have I said anything peculiar?"

Not feeling certain of his voice, Hilary shook his head, and he, too,
moved towards the door.




CHAPTER XXIV

SHADOWLAND

"Each of us has a shadow in those places--in those streets."

That saying of Mr. Stone's, which--like so many of his sayings--had
travelled forth to beat the air, might have seemed, even "in those
days," not altogether without meaning to anyone who looked into the
room of Mr. Joshua Creed in Hound Street.

This aged butler lay in bed waiting for the inevitable striking of a
small alarum clock placed in the very centre of his mantelpiece.
Flanking that round and ruthless arbiter, which drove him day by day
to stand up on feet whose time had come to rest, were the effigies of
his past triumphs.  On the one hand, in a papier-mache frame,
slightly tinged with smuts, stood a portrait of the "Honorable
Bateson," in the uniform of his Yeomanry.  Creed's former master's
face wore that dare-devil look with which he had been wont to say:
"D---n it, Creed! lend me a pound.  I've got no money!"  On the other
hand, in a green frame which had once been plush, and covered by a
glass with a crack in the left-hand corner, was a portrait of the
Dowager Countess of Glengower, as this former mistress of his
appeared, conceived by the local photographer, laying the foundation-
stone of the local almshouse.  During the wreck of Creed's career,
which, following on a lengthy illness, had preceded his salvation by
the Westminster Gazette, these two household gods had lain at the
bottom of an old tin trunk, in the possession of the keeper of a
lodging-house, waiting to be bailed out.  The "Honorable Bateson" was
now dead, nor had he paid as yet the pounds he had borrowed.  Lady
Glengower, too, was in heaven, remembering that she had forgotten all
her servants in her will.  He who had served them was still alive,
and his first thought, when he had secured his post on the
"Westminister," was to save enough to rescue them from a
dishonourable confinement. It had taken him six months.  He had found
them keeping company with three pairs of woollen drawers; an old but
respectable black tail-coat; a plaid cravat; a Bible; four socks, two
of which had toes and two of which had heels; some darning-cotton and
a needle; a pair of elastic-sided boots; a comb and a sprig of white
heather, wrapped up with a little piece of shaving-soap and two pipe-
cleaners in a bit of the Globe newspaper; also two collars, whose
lofty points, separated by gaps of quite two inches, had been wont to
reach their master's gills; the small alarum clock aforesaid; and a
tiepin formed in the likeness of Queen Victoria at the date of her
first Jubilee.  How many times had he not gone in thought over those
stores of treasure while he was parted from them!  How many times
since they had come back to him had he not pondered with a slow but
deathless anger on the absence of a certain shirt, which he could
have sworn had been amongst them.

But now he lay in bed waiting to hear the clock go off, with his old
bristly chin beneath the bedclothes, and his old discoloured nose
above.  He was thinking the thoughts which usually came into his mind
about this hour--that Mrs. Hughs ought not to scrape the butter off
his bread for breakfast in the way she did; that she ought to take
that sixpence off his rent; that the man who brought his late
editions in the cart ought to be earlier, letting 'that man' get his
Pell Mells off before him, when he himself would be having the one
chance of his day; that, sooner than pay the ninepence which the
bootmaker had proposed to charge for resoling him, he would wait
until the summer came 'low class o' feller' as he was, he'd be glad
enough to sole him then for sixpence

And the high-souled critic, finding these reflections sordid, would
have thought otherwise, perhaps, had he been standing on those feet
(now twitching all by themselves beneath the bedclothes) up to eleven
o'clock the night before, because there were still twelve numbers of
the late edition that nobody would buy.  No one knew more surely than
Joshua Creed himself that, if he suffered himself to entertain any
large and lofty views of life, he would infallibly find himself in
that building to keep out of which he was in the habit of addressing
to God his only prayer to speak of.  Fortunately, from a boy up,
together with a lengthy, oblong, square-jawed face, he had been given
by Nature a single-minded view of life.  In fact, the mysterious,
stout tenacity of a soul born in the neighbourhood of Newmarket could
not have been done justice to had he constitutionally seen--any more
than Mr. Stone himself--two things at a time.  The one thing he had
seen, for the five years that he had now stood outside Messrs.  Rose
and Thorn's, was the workhouse; and, as he was not going there so
long as he was living, he attended carefully to all little matters of
expense in this somewhat sordid way.

While attending thus, he heard a scream.  Having by temperament
considerable caution, but little fear, he waited till he heard
another, and then got out of bed.  Taking the poker in his hand, and
putting on his spectacles, he hurried to the door.  Many a time and
oft in old days had he risen in this fashion to defend the plate of
the "Honorable Bateson" and the Dowager Countess of Glengower from
the periodical attacks of his imagination.  He stood with his ancient
nightgown flapping round his still more ancient legs, slightly
shivering; then, pulling the door open, he looked forth.  On the
stairs just above him Mrs. Hughs, clasping her baby with one arm, was
holding the other out at full length between herself and Hughs.  He
heard the latter say: "You've drove me to it; I'll do a swing for
you!"  Mrs. Hughs' thin body brushed past into his room; blood was
dripping from her wrist.  Creed saw that Hughs had his bayonet in his
hand.  With all his might he called out: "Ye ought to be ashamed of
yourself!" raising the poker to a position of defence.  At this
moment--more really dangerous than any he had ever known--it was
remarkable that he instinctively opposed to it his most ordinary
turns of speech.  It was as though the extravagance of this un-
English violence had roused in him the full measure of a native
moderation.  The sight of the naked steel deeply disgusted him; he
uttered a long sentence.  What did Hughs call this--disgracin' of the
house at this time in the mornin'?  Where was he brought up?  Call
'imself a soldier, attackin' of old men and women in this way?  He
ought to be ashamed!

While these words were issuing between the yellow stumps of teeth in
that withered mouth, Hughs stood silent, the back of his arm covering
his eyes.  Voices and a heavy tread were heard.  Distinguishing in
that tread the advancing footsteps of the Law, Creed said: "You
attack me if you dare!"

Hughs dropped his arm.  His short, dark face had a desperate look, as
of a caged rat; his eyes were everywhere at once.

"All right, daddy," he said; "I won't hurt you.  She's drove my head
all wrong again.  Catch hold o' this; I can't trust myself."  He held
out the bayonet.

"Westminister" took it gingerly in his shaking hand.

"To use a thing like that!" he said.  "An' call yourself an
Englishman!  I'll ketch me death standin' here, I will."

Hughs made no answer leaning against the wall.  The old butler
regarded him severely.  He did not take a wide or philosophic view of
him, as a tortured human being, driven by the whips of passion in his
dark blood; a creature whose moral nature was the warped, stunted
tree his life had made it; a poor devil half destroyed by drink and
by his wound.  The old butler took a more single-minded and old-
fashioned line.  'Ketch 'old of 'im!' he thought.  'With these low
fellers there's nothin' else to be done.  Ketch 'old of 'im until he
squeals.'

Nodding his ancient head, he said:

"Here's an orficer.  I shan't speak for yer; you deserves all you'll
get, and more."

Later, dressed in an old Newmarket coat, given him by some client,
and walking towards the police-station alongside Mrs. Hughs, he was
particularly silent, presenting a front of some austerity, as became
a man mixed up in a low class of incident like this.  And the
seamstress, very thin and scared, with her wounded wrist slung in a
muffler of her husband's, and carrying the baby on her other arm,
because the morning's incident had upset the little thing, slipped
along beside him, glancing now and then into his face.

Only once did he speak, and to himself:

"I don't know what they'll say to me down at the orffice, when I go
again-missin' my day like this!  Oh dear, what a misfortune!  What
put it into him to go on like that?"

At this, which was far from being intended as encouragement, the
waters of speech broke up and flowed from Mrs. Hughs.  She had only
told Hughs how that young girl had gone, and left a week's rent, with
a bit of writing to say she wasn't coming back; it wasn't her fault
that she was gone--that ought never to have come there at all, a
creature that knew no better than to come between husband and wife.
She couldn't tell no more than he could where that young girl had
gone!

The tears, stealing forth, chased each other down the seamstress's
thin cheeks.  Her face had now but little likeness to the face with
which she had stood confronting Hughs when she informed him of the
little model's flight.  None of the triumph which had leaped out of
her bruised heart, none of the strident malice with which her voice,
whether she would or no, strove to avenge her wounded sense of
property; none of that unconscious abnegation, so very near to
heroism, with which she had rushed and caught up her baby from
beneath the bayonet, when, goaded by her malice and triumph, Hughs
had rushed to seize that weapon.  None of all that, but, instead, a
pitiable terror of the ordeal before her--a pitiful, mute, quivering
distress, that this man, against whom, two hours before, she had felt
such a store of bitter rancour, whose almost murderous assault she
had so narrowly escaped, should now be in this plight.

The sight of her emotion penetrated through his spectacles to
something lying deep in the old butler.

"Don't you take on," he said; "I'll stand by yer.  He shan't treat
yer with impuniness."

To his uncomplicated nature the affair was still one of tit for tat.
Mrs. Hughs became mute again.  Her torn heart yearned to cancel the
penalty that would fall on all of them, to deliver Hughs from the
common enemy--the Law; but a queer feeling of pride and bewilderment,
and a knowledge, that, to demand an eye for an eye was expected of
all self-respecting persons, kept her silent.

Thus, then, they reached the great consoler, the grey resolver of all
human tangles, haven of men and angels, the police court.  It was
situated in a back street.  Like trails of ooze, when the tide,
neither ebb nor flow, is leaving and making for some estuary, trails
of human beings were moving to and from it.  The faces of these
shuffling "shadows" wore a look as though masked with some hard but
threadbare stuff-the look of those whom Life has squeezed into a last
resort.  Within the porches lay a stagnant marsh of suppliants,
through whose centre trickled to and fro that stream of ooze.  An old
policeman, too, like some grey lighthouse, marked the entrance to the
port of refuge.  Close to that lighthouse the old butler edged his
way.  The love of regularity, and of an established order of affairs,
born in him and fostered by a life passed in the service of the
"Honorable Bateson" and the other gentry, made him cling
instinctively to the only person in this crowd whom he could tell for
certain to be on the side of law and order.  Something in his oblong
face and lank, scanty hair parted precisely in the middle, something
in that high collar supporting his lean gills, not subservient
exactly, but as it were suggesting that he was in league against all
this low-class of fellow, made the policeman say to him:

"What's your business, daddy?"

"Oh!" the old butler answered.  "This poor woman.  I'm a witness to
her battery."

The policeman cast his not unkindly look over the figure of the
seamstress.  "You stand here," he said; "I'll pass you in directly."

And soon by his offices the two were passed into the port of refuge.

They sat down side by side on the edge of a long, hard, wooden bench;
Creed fixing his eyes, whose colour had run into a brownish rim round
their centres, on the magistrate, as in old days sun-worshippers
would sit blinking devoutly at the sun; and Mrs. Hughs fixing her
eyes on her lap, while tears of agony trickled down her face.  On her
unwounded arm the baby slept.  In front of them, and unregarded,
filed one by one those shadows who had drunk the day before too
deeply of the waters of forgetfulness.  To-day, instead, they were to
drink the water of remembrance, poured out for them with no uncertain
hand.  And somewhere very far away, it may have been that Justice sat
with her ironic smile watching men judge their shadows.  She had
watched them so long about that business.  With her elementary idea
that hares and tortoises should not be made to start from the same
mark she had a little given up expecting to be asked to come and lend
a hand; they had gone so far beyond her.  Perhaps she knew, too, that
men no longer punished, but now only reformed, their erring brothers,
and this made her heart as light as the hearts of those who had been
in the prisons where they were no longer punished.

The old butler, however, was not thinking of her; he had thoughts of
a simpler order in his mind.  He was reflecting that he had once
valeted the nephew of the late Lord Justice Hawthorn, and in the
midst of this low-class business the reminiscence brought him
refreshment.  Over and over to himself he conned these words: "I
interpylated in between them, and I says, 'You ought to be ashamed of
yourself; call yourself an Englishman, I says, attackin' of old men
and women with cold steel, I says!'"  And suddenly he saw that Hughs
was in the dock.

The dark man stood with his hands pressed to his sides, as though at
attention on parade.  A pale profile, broken by a line of black
moustache, was all "Westminister" could see of that impassive face,
whose eyes, fixed on the magistrate, alone betrayed the fires within.
The violent trembling of the seamstress roused in Joshua Creed a
certain irritation, and seeing the baby open his black eyes, he
nudged her, whispering: "Ye've woke the baby!"

Responding to words, which alone perhaps could have moved her at such
a moment, Mrs. Hughs rocked this dumb spectator of the drama.  Again
the old butler nudged her.

"They want yer in the box," he said.

Mrs. Hughs rose, and took her place.

He who wished to read the hearts of this husband and wife who stood
at right angles, to have their wounds healed by Law, would have
needed to have watched the hundred thousand hours of their wedded
life, known and heard the million thoughts and words which had passed
in the dim spaces of their world, to have been cognisant of the
million reasons why they neither of them felt that they could have
done other than they had done.  Reading their hearts by the light of
knowledge such as this, he would not have been surprised that,
brought into this place of remedy, they seemed to enter into a sudden
league.  A look passed between them.  It was not friendly, it had no
appeal; but it sufficed.  There seemed to be expressed in it the
knowledge bred by immemorial experience and immemorial time: This law
before which we stand was not made by us!  As dogs, when they hear
the crack of a far whip, will shrink, and in their whole bearing show
wary quietude, so Hughs and Mrs. Hughs, confronted by the
questionings of Law, made only such answers as could be dragged from
them.  In a voice hardly above a whisper Mrs. Hughs told her tale.
They had fallen out.  What about?  She did not know.  Had he attacked
her?  He had had it in his hand.  What then?  She had slipped, and
hurt her wrist against the point.  At this statement Hughs turned his
eyes on her, and seemed to say: "You drove me to it; I've got to
suffer, for all your trying to get me out of what I've done.  I gave
you one, and I don't want your help.  But I'm glad you stick to me
against this Law!"  Then, lowering his eyes, he stood motionless
during her breathless little outburst.  He was her husband; she had
borne him five; he had been wounded in the war.  She had never wanted
him brought here.

No mention of the little model....

The old butler dwelt on this reticence of Mrs. Hughs, when, two hours
afterwards, in pursuance of his instinctive reliance on the gentry,
he called on Hilary.

The latter, surrounded by books and papers--for, since his dismissal
of the girl, he had worked with great activity--was partaking of
lunch, served to him in his study on a tray.

"There's an old gentleman to see you, sir; he says you know him; his
name is Creed."

"Show him in," said Hilary.

Appearing suddenly from behind the servant in the doorway, the old
butler came in at a stealthy amble; he looked round, and, seeing a
chair, placed his hat beneath it, then advanced, with nose and
spectacles upturned, to Hilary.  Catching sight of the tray, he
stopped, checked in an evident desire to communicate his soul.

"Oh dear," he said, "I'm intrudin' on your luncheon.  I can wait;
I'll go and sit in the passage."

Hilary, however, shook his hand, faded now to skin and bone, and
motioned him to a chair.

He sat down on the edge of it, and again said:

"I'm intrudin' on yer."

"Not at all.  Is there anything I can do?"

Creed took off his spectacles, wiped them to help himself to see more
clearly what he had to say, and put them on again.

"It's a-concerning of these domestic matters," he said.  "I come up
to tell yer, knowing as you're interested in this family."

"Well," said Hilary.  "What has happened?"

"It's along of the young girl's having left them, as you may know."

"Ah!"

"It's brought things to a crisax," explained Creed.

"Indeed, how's that?"

The old butler related the facts of the assault.  "I took 'is bayonet
away from him," he ended; "he didn't frighten me."

"Is he out of his mind?"  asked Hilary.

"I've no conscience of it," replied Creed.  "His wife, she's gone the
wrong way to work with him, in my opinion, but that's particular to
women.  She's a-goaded of him respecting a certain party.  I don't
say but what that young girl's no better than what she ought to be;
look at her profession, and her a country girl, too!  She must be
what she oughtn't to.  But he ain't the sort o' man you can treat
like that.  You can't get thorns from figs; you can't expect it from
the lower orders.  They only give him a month, considerin' of him
bein' wounded in the war.  It'd been more if they'd a-known he was a-
hankerin' after that young girl--a married man like him; don't ye
think so, sir?"

Hilary's face had assumed its retired expression.  'I cannot go into
that with you,' it seemed to say.

Quick to see the change, Creed rose.  "But I'm intrudin' on your
dinner," he said--"your luncheon, I should say.  The woman goes on
irritatin' of him, but he must expect of that, she bein' his wife.
But what a misfortune!  He'll be back again in no time, and what'll
happen then?  It won't improve him, shut up in one of them low
prisons!"  Then, raising his old face to Hilary: "Oh dear!  It's like
awalkin' on a black night, when ye can't see your 'and before yer."

Hilary was unable to find a suitable answer to this simile.

The impression made on him by the old butler's recital was queerly
twofold; his more fastidious side felt distinct relief that he had
severed connection with an episode capable of developments so sordid
and conspicuous.  But all the side of him--and Hilary was a
complicated product--which felt compassion for the helpless, his
suppressed chivalry, in fact, had also received its fillip.  The old
butler's references to the girl showed clearly how the hands of all
men and women were against her.  She was that pariah, a young girl
without property or friends, spiritually soft, physically alluring.

To recompense "Westminister" for the loss of his day's work, to make
a dubious statement that nights were never so black as they appeared
to be, was all that he could venture to do.  Creed hesitated in the
doorway.

"Oh dear," he said, "there's a-one thing that the woman was a-saying
that I've forgot to tell you.  It's a-concernin' of what this 'ere
man was boastin' in his rage.  'Let them,' he says, 'as is responsive
for the movin' of her look out,' he says; 'I ain't done with them!'
That's conspiracy, I should think!"

Smiling away this diagnosis of Hughs' words, Hilary shook the old
man's withered hand, and closed the door.  Sitting down again at his
writing-table, he buried himself almost angrily in his work.  But the
queer, half-pleasurable, fevered feeling, which had been his, since
the night he walked down Piccadilly, and met the image of the little
model, was unfavourable to the austere process of his thoughts.




CHAPTER XXV

MR. STONE IN WAITING

That same afternoon, while Mr. Stone was writing, he heard a
voice saying:

"Dad, stop writing just a minute, and talk to me."

Recognition came into his eyes.  It was his younger daughter.

"My dear," he said, "are you unwell?"

Keeping his hand, fragile and veined and chill, under her own warm
grasp, Bianca answered: "Lonely."

Mr. Stone looked straight before him.

"Loneliness," he said, "is man's chief fault"; and seeing his pen
lying on the desk, he tried to lift his hand.  Bianca held it down.
At that hot clasp something seemed to stir in Mr. Stone.  His cheeks
grew pink.

"Kiss me, Dad."

Mr. Stone hesitated.  Then his lips resolutely touched her eye.  "It
is wet," he said.  He seemed for a moment struggling to grasp the
meaning of moisture in connection with the human eye.  Soon his face
again became serene.  "The heart," he said, "is a dark well; its
depth unknown.  I have lived eighty years.  I am still drawing
water."

"Draw a little for me, Dad."

This time Mr. Stone looked at his daughter anxiously, and suddenly
spoke, as if afraid that if he waited he might forget.

"You are unhappy!"

Bianca put her face down to his tweed sleeve.  "How nice your coat
smells!" she murmured.

"You are unhappy," repeated Mr. Stone.

Bianca dropped his hand, and moved away.

Mr. Stone followed her.  "Why?"  he said.  Then, grasping his brow,
he added: "If it would do you any good, my dear, to hear a page or
two, I could read to you."

Bianca shook her head.

"No; talk to me!"

Mr. Stone answered simply: "I have forgotten."

"You talk to that little girl," murmured Bianca.

Mr. Stone seemed to lose himself in reverie.

"If that is true," he said, following out his thoughts, "it must be
due to the sex instinct not yet quite extinct.  It is stated that the
blackcock will dance before his females to a great age, though I have
never seen it."

"If you dance before her," said Bianca, with her face averted, "can't
you even talk to me?"

"I do not dance, my dear," said Mr. Stone; "I will do my best to
talk to you."

There was a silence, and he began to pace the room.  Bianca, by the
empty fireplace, watched a shower of rain driving past the open
window.

"This is the time of year," said Mr. Stone suddenly; "when lambs leap
off the ground with all four legs at a time."  He paused as though
for an answer; then, out of the silence, his voice rose again--it
sounded different: "There is nothing in Nature more symptomatic of
that principle which should underlie all life.  Live in the future;
regret nothing; leap!  A lamb which has left earth with all four legs
at once is the symbol of true life.  That she must come down again is
but an inevitable accident.  'In those days men were living on their
pasts.  They leaped with one, or, at the most, two legs at a time;
they never left the ground, or in leaving, they wished to know the
reason why.  It was this paralysis'"--Mr. Stone did not pause, but,
finding himself close beside his desk, took up his pen--"'it was this
paralysis of the leaping nerve which undermined their progress.
Instead of millions of leaping lambs, ignorant of why they leaped,
they were a flock of sheep lifting up one leg and asking whether it
was or was not worth their while to lift another.'"

The words were followed by a silence, broken only by the scratching
of the quill with which Mr. Stone was writing.

Having finished, he again began to pace the room, and coming suddenly
on his daughter, stopped short.  Touching her shoulder timidly, he
said: "I was talking to you, I think, my dear; where were we?"

Bianca rubbed her cheek against his hand.

"In the air, I think."

"Yes, yes," said Mr. Stone, "I remember.  You must not let me wander
from the point again."

"No, dear."

"Lambs," said Mr. Stone, "remind me at times of that young girl who
comes to copy for me.  I make her skip to promote her circulation
before tea.  I myself do this exercise."  Leaning against the wall,
with his feet twelve inches from it, he rose slowly on his toes.  "Do
you know that exercise?  It is excellent for the calves of the legs,
and for the lumbar regions."  So saying, Mr. Stone left the wall, and
began again to pace the room; the whitewash had also left the wall,
and clung in a large square patch on his shaggy coat.  "I have seen
sheep in Spring," he said, "actually imitate their lambs in rising
from the ground with all four legs at once."  He stood still.  A
thought had evidently struck him.

"If Life is not all Spring, it is of no value whatsoever; better to
die, and to begin again.  Life is a tree putting on a new green gown;
it is a young moon rising--no, that is not so, we do not see the
young moon rising--it is a young moon setting, never younger than
when we are about to die--"

Bianca cried out sharply: "Don't, Father!  Don't talk like that; it's
so untrue!  Life is all autumn, it seems to me!"

Mr. Stone's eyes grew very blue.

"That is a foul heresy," he stammered; "I cannot listen to it.  Life
is the cuckoo's song; it is a hill-side bursting into leaf; it is the
wind; I feel it in me every day!"

He was trembling like a leaf in the wind he spoke of, and Bianca
moved hastily towards him, holding out her arms.  Suddenly his lips
began to move; she heard him mutter: "I have lost force; I will boil
some milk.  I must be ready when she comes."  And at those words her
heart felt like a lump of ice.

Always that girl!  And without again attracting his attention she
went away.  As she passed out through the garden she saw him at the
window holding a cup of milk, from which the steam was rising.




CHAPTER XXVI

THIRD PILGRIMAGE TO HOUND STREET

Like water, human character will find its level; and Nature, with her
way of fitting men to their environment, had made young Martin Stone
what Stephen called a "Sanitist."  There had been nothing else for
her to do with him.

This young man had come into the social scheme at a moment when the
conception of existence as a present life corrected by a life to
come, was tottering; and the conception of the world as an upper-
class preserve somewhat seriously disturbed.

Losing his father and mother at an early age, and brought up till he
was fourteen by Mr. Stone, he had formed the habit of thinking for
himself.  This had rendered him unpopular, and added force to the
essential single-heartedness transmitted to him through his
grandfather.  A particular aversion to the sights and scenes of
suffering, which had caused him as a child to object to killing
flies, and to watching rabbits caught in traps, had been regulated by
his training as a doctor.  His fleshly horror of pain and ugliness
was now disciplined, his spiritual dislike of them forced into a
philosophy.  The peculiar chaos surrounding all young men who live in
large towns and think at all, had made him gradually reject all
abstract speculation; but a certain fire of aspiration coming, we may
suppose, through Mr. Stone, had nevertheless impelled him to embrace
something with all his might.  He had therefore embraced health.  And
living, as he did, in the Euston Road, to be in touch with things, he
had every need of the health which he embraced.

Late in the afternoon of the day when Hughs had committed his
assault, having three hours of respite from his hospital, Martin
dipped his face and head into cold water, rubbed them with a
corrugated towel, put on a hard bowler hat, took a thick stick in his
hand, and went by Underground to Kensington.

With his usual cool, high-handed air he entered his aunt's house, and
asked for Thyme.  Faithful to his definite, if somewhat crude theory,
that Stephen and Cecilia and all their sort were amateurs, he never
inquired for them, though not unfrequently he would, while waiting,
stroll into Cecilia's drawing-room, and let his sarcastic glance
sweep over the pretty things she had collected, or, lounging in some
luxurious chair, cross his long legs, and fix his eyes on the
ceiling.

Thyme soon came down.  She wore a blouse of some blue stuff bought by
Cecilia for the relief of people in the Balkan States, a skirt of
purplish tweed woven by Irish gentlewomen in distress, and held in
her hand an open envelope addressed in Cecilia's writing to Mrs.
Tallents Smallpeace.

"Hallo!" she said.

Martin answered by a look that took her in from head to foot.

"Get on a hat! I haven't got much time.  That blue thing's new."

"It's pure flax.  Mother bought it."

"It's rather decent.  Hurry up!"

Thyme raised her chin; that lazy movement showed her round, creamy
neck in all its beauty.

"I feel rather slack," she said; "besides, I must get back to dinner,
Martin."

"Dinner!"

Thyme turned quickly to the door.  "Oh, well, I'll come," and ran
upstairs.

When they had purchased a postal order for ten shillings, placed it
in the envelope addressed to Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace, and passed the
hundred doors of Messrs. Rose and Thorn, Martin said: "I'm going to
see what that precious amateur has done about the baby.  If he hasn't
moved the girl, I expect to find things in a pretty mess."

Thyme's face changed at once.

"Just remember," she said, "that I don't want to go there.  I don't
see the good, when there's such a tremendous lot waiting to be done."

"Every other case, except the one in hand!"

"It's not my case.  You're so disgustingly unfair, Martin.  I don't
like those people."

"Oh, you amateur!"

Thyme flushed crimson.  "Look here!" she said, speaking with dignity,
"I don't care what you call me, but I won't have you call Uncle
Hilary an amateur."

"What is he, then?"

"I like him."

"That's conclusive."

"Yes, it is."

Martin did not reply, looking sideways at Thyme with his queer,
protective smile.  They were passing through a street superior to
Hound Street in its pretensions to be called a slum.

"Look here!" he said suddenly; "a man like Hilary's interest in all
this sort of thing is simply sentimental.  It's on his nerves.  He
takes philanthropy just as he'd take sulphonal for sleeplessness."

Thyme looked shrewdly up at him.

"Well," she said, "it's just as much on your nerves.  You see it from
the point of view of health; he sees it from the point of view of
sentiment, that's all."

"Oh!  you think so?"

"You just treat all these people as if they were in hospital."

The young man's nostrils quivered.  "Well, and how should they be
treated?"

"How would you like to be looked at as a 'case'?"  muttered Thyme.

Martin moved his hand in a slow half-circle.

"These houses and these people," he said, "are in the way--in the way
of you and me, and everyone."

Thyme's eyes followed that slow, sweeping movement of her cousin's
hand.  It seemed to fascinate her.

"Yes, of course; I know," she murmured.  "Something must be done!"

And she reared her head up, looking from side to side, as if to show
him that she, too, could sweep away things.  Very straight, and
solid, fair, and fresh, she looked just then.

Thus, in the hypnotic silence of high thoughts, the two young
"Sanitists" arrived in Hound Street.

In the doorway of No. 1 the son of the lame woman, Mrs. Budgen--the
thin, white youth as tall as Martin, but not so broad-stood, smoking
a dubious-looking cigarette.  He turned his lack-lustre, jeering gaze
on the visitors.

"Who d'you want?"  he said.  "If it's the girl, she's gone away, and
left no address."

"I want Mrs. Hughs," said Martin.

The young man coughed.  "Right-o!  You'll find her; but for him,
apply Wormwood Scrubs."

"Prison! What for?"

"Stickin' her through the wrist with his bayonet;" and the young man
let a long, luxurious fume of smoke trickle through his nose.

"How horrible!" said Thyme.

Martin regarded the young man, unmoved.  "That stuff' you're
smoking's rank," he said.  "Have some of mine; I'll show you how to
make them.  It'll save you one and three per pound of baccy, and
won't rot your lungs."

Taking out his pouch, he rolled a cigarette.  The white young man
bent his dull wink on Thyme, who, wrinkling her nose, was pretending
to be far away.

Mounting the narrow stairs that smelt of walls and washing and red
herrings, Thyme spoke: "Now, you see, it wasn't so simple as you
thought.  I don't want to go up; I don't want to see her.  I shall
wait for you here."  She took her stand in the open doorway of the
little model's empty room.  Martin ascended to the second floor.

There, in the front room, Mrs. Hughs was seen standing with the baby
in her arms beside the bed.  She had a frightened and uncertain air.
After examining her wrist, and pronouncing it a scratch, Martin
looked long at the baby.  The little creature's toes were stiffened
against its mother's waist, its eyes closed, its tiny fingers crisped
against her breast.  While Mrs. Hughs poured forth her tale, Martin
stood with his eyes still fixed on the baby.  It could not be
gathered from his face what he was thinking, but now and then he
moved his jaw, as though he were suffering from toothache.  In truth,
by the look of Mrs. Hughs and her baby, his recipe did not seem to
have achieved conspicuous success.  He turned away at last from the
trembling, nerveless figure of the seamstress, and went to the
window.  Two pale hyacinth plants stood on the inner edge; their
perfume penetrated through the other savours of the room--and very
strange they looked, those twin, starved children of the light and
air.

"These are new," he said.

"Yes, sir," murmured Mrs. Hughs.  "I brought them upstairs.  I didn't
like to see the poor things left to die."

>From the bitter accent of these words Martin understood that they had
been the little model's.

"Put them outside," he said; "they'll never live in here.  They want
watering, too.  Where are your saucers?"

Mrs. Hughs laid the baby down, and, going to the cupboard where all
the household gods were kept, brought out two old, dirty saucers.
Martin raised the plants, and as he held them, from one close, yellow
petal there rose up a tiny caterpillar.  It reared a green,
transparent body, feeling its way to a new resting-place.  The little
writhing shape seemed, like the wonder and the mystery of life, to
mock the young doctor, who watched it with eyebrows raised, having no
hand at liberty to remove it from the plant.

"She came from the country.  There's plenty of men there for her!"

Martin put the plants down, and turned round to the seamstress.

"Look here!" he said, "it's no good crying over spilt milk.  What
you've got to do is to set to and get some work."

"Yes, sir."

"Don't say it in that sort of way," said Martin; "you must rise to
the occasion."

"Yes, sir."

"You want a tonic.  Take this half-crown, and get in a dozen pints of
stout, and drink one every day."

And again Mrs. Hughs said, "Yes, sir."

"And about that baby."

Motionless, where it had been placed against the footrail of the bed,
the baby sat with its black eyes closed.  The small grey face was
curled down on the bundle of its garments.

"It's a silent gentleman," Martin muttered.

"It never was a one to cry," said Mrs. Hughs.

"That's lucky, anyway.  When did you feed it last?"

Mrs. Hughs did not reply at first.  "About half-past six last
evening, sir."

"What?"

"It slept all night; but to-day, of course, I've been all torn to
pieces; my milk's gone.  I've tried it with the bottle, but it
wouldn't take it."

Martin bent down to the baby's face, and put his finger on its chin;
bending lower yet, he raised the eyelid of the tiny eye....

"It's dead," he said.

At the word "dead" Mrs. Hughs, stooping behind him, snatched the baby
to her throat.  With its drooping head close to her she, she clutched
and rocked it without sound.  Full five minutes this desperate mute
struggle with eternal silence lasted--the feeling, and warming, and
breathing on the little limbs.  Then, sitting down, bent almost
double over her baby, she moaned.  That single sound was followed by
utter silence.  The tread of footsteps on the creaking stairs broke
it.  Martin, rising from his crouching posture by the bed, went
towards the door.

His grandfather was standing there, with Thyme behind him.

"She has left her room," said Mr. Stone.  "Where has she gone?"

Martin, understanding that he meant the little model, put his finger
to his lips, and, pointing to Mrs. Hughs, whispered:

"This woman's baby has just died."

Mr. Stone's face underwent the queer discoloration which marked the
sudden summoning of his far thoughts.  He stepped past Martin, and
went up to Mrs. Hughs.

He stood there a long time gazing at the baby, and at the dark head
bending over it with such despair.  At last he spoke:

"Poor woman!  He is at peace."

Mrs. Hughs looked up, and, seeing that old face, with its hollows and
thin silver hair, she spoke:

"He's dead, sir."

Mr. Stone put out his veined and fragile hand, and touched the baby's
toes.  "He is flying; he is everywhere; he is close to the sun--
Little brother!"  And turning on his heel, he went out.

Thyme followed him as he walked on tiptoe down stairs which seemed to
creak the louder for his caution.  Tears were rolling down her
cheeks.

Martin sat on, with the mother and her baby, in the close, still
room, where, like strange visiting spirits, came stealing whiffs of
the perfume of hyacinths.




CHAPTER XXVII

STEPHEN'S PRIVATE LIFE

Mr. Stone and Thyme, going out, again passed the tall, white young
man.  He had thrown away the hand-made cigarette, finding that it had
not enough saltpetre to make it draw, and was smoking one more suited
to the action of his lungs.  He directed towards them the same lack-
lustre, jeering stare.

Unconscious, seemingly, of where he went, Mr. Stone walked with his
eyes fixed on space.  His head jerked now and then, as a dried flower
will shiver in a draught.

Scared at these movements, Thyme took his arm.  The touch of that
soft young arm squeezing his own brought speech back to Mr. Stone.

"In those places...."  he said, "in those streets! ...I shall not see
the flowering of the aloe--I shall not see the living peace!  'As
with dogs, each couched over his proper bone, so men were living
then!'"  Thyme, watching him askance, pressed still closer to his
side, as though to try and warm him back to every day.

'Oh!' went her guttered thoughts.  'I do wish grandfather would say
something one could understand.  I wish he would lose that dreadful
stare.'

Mr. Stone spoke in answer to his granddaughter's thoughts.

"I have seen a vision of fraternity.  A barren hillside in the sun,
and on it a man of stone talking to the wind.  I have heard an owl
hooting in the daytime; a cuckoo singing in the night."

"Grandfather, grandfather!"

To that appeal Mr. Stone responded: "Yes, what is it?"

But Thyme, thus challenged, knew not what to say, having spoken out
of terror.

"If the poor baby had lived," she stammered out, "it would have grown
up....  It's all for the best, isn't it?"

"Everything is for the best," said Mr. Stone.  "'In those days men,
possessed by thoughts of individual life, made moan at death,
careless of the great truth that the world was one unending song.'"

Thyme thought: 'I have never seen him as bad as this!' She drew him
on more quickly.  With deep relief she saw her father, latchkey in
hand, turning into the Old Square.

Stephen, who was still walking with his springy step, though he had
come on foot the whole way from the Temple, hailed them with his hat.
It was tall and black, and very shiny, neither quite oval nor
positively round, and had a little curly brim.  In this and his black
coat, cut so as to show the front of him and cover the behind, he
looked his best.  The costume suited his long, rather narrow face,
corrugated by two short parallel lines slanting downwards from his
eyes and nostrils on either cheek; suited his neat, thin figure and
the close-lipped corners of his mouth.  His permanent appointment in
the world of Law had ousted from his life (together with all
uncertainty of income) the need for putting on a wig and taking his
moustache off; but he still preferred to go clean-shaved.

"Where have you two sprung from?"  he inquired, admitting them into
the hall.

Mr. Stone gave him no answer, but passed into the drawing-room, and
sat down on the verge of the first chair he came across, leaning
forward with his hands between his knees.

Stephen, after one dry glance at him, turned to his daughter.

"My child," he said softly, "what have you brought the old boy here
for?  If there happens to be anything of the high mammalian order for
dinner, your mother will have a fit."

Thyme answered: "Don't chaff, Father!"

Stephen, who was very fond of her, saw that for some reason she was
not herself.  He examined her with unwonted gravity.  Thyme turned
away from him.  He heard, to his alarm, a little gulping sound.

"My dear!" he said.

Conscious of her sentimental weakness, Thyme made a violent effort.

"I've seen a baby dead," she cried in a quick, hard voice; and,
without another word, she ran upstairs.

In Stephen there was a horror of emotion amounting almost to disease.
It would have been difficult to say when he had last shown emotion;
perhaps not since Thyme was born, and even then not to anyone except
himself, having first locked the door, and then walked up and down,
with his teeth almost meeting in the mouthpiece of his favourite
pipe.  He was unaccustomed, too, to witness this weakness on the part
of other people.  His looks and speech unconsciously discouraged it,
so that if Cecilia had been at all that way inclined, she must long
ago have been healed.  Fortunately, she never had been, having too
much distrust of her own feelings to give way to them completely.
And Thyme, that healthy product of them both, at once younger for her
age, and older, than they had ever been, with her incapacity for
nonsense, her love for open air and facts--that fresh, rising plant,
so elastic and so sane--she had never given them a single moment of
uneasiness.

Stephen, close to his hat-rack, felt soreness in his heart.  Such
blows as Fortune had dealt, and meant to deal him, he had borne, and
he could bear, so long as there was nothing in his own manner, or in
that of others, to show him they were blows.

Hurriedly depositing his hat, he ran to Cecilia.  He still preserved
the habit of knocking on her door before he entered, though she had
never, so far, answered, "Don't come in!" because she knew his knock.
The custom gave, in fact, the measure of his idealism.  What he
feared, or what he thought he feared, after nineteen years of
unchecked entrance, could never have been ascertained; but there it
was, that flower of something formal and precise, of something
reticent, within his soul.

This time, for once, he did not knock, and found Cecilia hooking up
her tea-gown and looking very sweet.  She glanced at him with mild
surprise.

"What's this, Cis," he said, "about a baby dead?  Thyme's quite upset
about it; and your dad's in the drawing-room!"

With the quick instinct that was woven into all her gentle treading,
Cecilia's thoughts flew--she could not have told why--first to the
little model, then to Mrs. Hughs.

"Dead?"  she said.  "Oh, poor woman!"

"What woman?"  Stephen asked.

"It must be Mrs. Hughs."

The thought passed darkly through Stephen's mind: 'Those people
again!  What now?'  He did not express it, being neither brutal nor
lacking in good taste.

A short silence followed, then Cecilia said suddenly: "Did you say
that father was in the drawing-room?  There's fillet of beef,
Stephen!"

Stephen turned away.  "Go and see Thyme!" he said.

Outside Thyme's door Cecilia paused, and, hearing no sound, tapped
gently.  Her knock not being answered, she slipped in.  On the bed of
that white room, with her face pressed into the pillow, her little
daughter lay.  Cecilia stood aghast.  Thyme's whole body was
quivering with suppressed sobs.

"My darling!" said Cecilia, "what is it?"

Thyme's answer was inarticulate.

Cecilia sat down on the bed and waited, drawing her fingers through
the girl's hair, which had fallen loose; and while she sat there she
experienced all that sore, strange feeling--as of being skinned--
which comes to one who watches the emotion of someone near and dear
without knowing the exact cause.

'This is dreadful,' she thought.  'What am I to do?'

To see one's child cry was bad enough, but to see her cry when that
child's whole creed of honour and conduct for years past had
precluded this relief as unfeminine, was worse than disconcerting.

Thyme raised herself on her elbow, turning her face carefully away.

"I don't know what's the matter with me," she said, choking.  "It's
--it's purely physical"

"Yes, darling," murmured Cecilia; "I know."

"Oh, Mother!" said Thyme suddenly, "it looked so tiny."

"Yes, yes, my sweet."

Thyme faced round; there was a sort of passion in her darkened eyes,
rimmed pink with grief, and in all her gushed, wet face.

"Why should it have been choked out like that?  It's--it's so
brutal!"

Cecilia slid an arm round her.

"I'm so distressed you saw it, dear," she said.

"And grandfather was so--"  A long sobbing quiver choked her
utterance.

"Yes, yes," said Cecilia; "I'm sure he was."

Clasping her hands together in her lap, Thyme muttered: "He called
him 'Little brother.'"

A tear trickled down Cecilia's cheek, and dropped on her daughter's
wrist.  Feeling that it was not her own tear, Thyme started up.

"It's weak and ridiculous," she said.  "I won't!"

"Oh, go away, Mother, please.  I'm only making you feel bad, too.
You'd better go and see to grandfather."

Cecilia saw that she would cry no more, and since it was the sight of
tears which had so disturbed her, she gave the girl a little
hesitating stroke, and went away.  Outside she thought: 'How
dreadfully unlucky and pathetic; and there's father in the drawing-
room!'  Then she hurried down to Mr. Stone.

He was sitting where he had first placed himself, motionless.  It
struck her suddenly how frail and white he looked.  In the shadowy
light of her drawing-room, he was almost like a spirit sitting there
in his grey tweed--silvery from head to foot.  Her conscience smote
her.  It is written of the very old that they shall pass, by virtue
of their long travel, out of the country of the understanding of the
young, till the natural affections are blurred by creeping mists such
as steal across the moors when the sun is going down.

Cecilia's heart ached with a little ache for all the times she had
thought: 'If father were only not quite so---'; for all the times she
had shunned asking him to come to them, because he was so---; for all
the silences she and Stephen had maintained after he had spoken; for
all the little smiles she had smiled.  She longed to go and kiss his
brow, and make him feel that she was aching.  But she did not dare;
he seemed so far away; it would be ridiculous.

Coming down the room, and putting her slim foot on the fender with a
noise, so that if possible he might both see and hear her, she turned
her anxious face towards him, and said: "Father!"

Mr. Stone looked up, and seeing somebody who seemed to be his elder
daughter, answered "Yes, my dear?"

"Are you sure you're feeling quite the thing?  Thyme said she thought
seeing that poor baby had upset you."

Mr. Stone felt his body with his hand.

"I am not conscious of any pain," he said.

"Then you'll stay to dinner, dear, won't you?"

Mr. Stone's brow contracted as though he were trying to recall his
past.

"I have had no tea," he said.  Then, with a sudden, anxious look at
his daughter: "The little girl has not come to me.  I miss her.
Where is she?"

The ache within Cecilia became more poignant.

"It is now two days," said Mr. Stone, "and she has left her room in
that house--in that street."

Cecilia, at her wits' end, answered: "Do you really miss her,
Father?"

"Yes," said Mr. Stone.  "She is like--" His eyes wandered round the
room as though seeking something which would help him to express
himself.  They fixed themselves on the far wall.  Cecilia, following
their gaze, saw a little solitary patch of sunlight dancing and
trembling there.  It had escaped the screen of trees and houses, and,
creeping through some chink, had quivered in.  "She is like that,"
said Mr. Stone, pointing with his finger.  "It is gone!" His finger
dropped; he uttered a deep sigh.

'How dreadful this is!' Cecilia thought.  'I never expected him to
feel it, and yet I can do nothing!'  Hastily she asked: "Would it do
if you had Thyme to copy for you?  I'm sure she'd love to come."

"She is my grand-daughter," Mr. Stone said simply.  "It would not be
the same."

Cecilia could think of nothing now to say but: "Would you like to
wash your hands, dear?"

"Yes," said Mr. Stone.

"Then will you go up to Stephen's dressing-room for hot water, or
will you wash them in the lavatory?"

"In the lavatory," said Mr. Stone.  "I shall be freer there."

When he had gone Cecilia thought: 'Oh dear, how shall I get through
the evening?  Poor darling, he is so single-minded!'

At the sounding of the dinner-gong they all assembled--Thyme from her
bedroom with cheeks and eyes still pink, Stephen with veiled inquiry
in his glance, Mr. Stone from freedom in the lavatory--and sat down,
screened, but so very little, from each other by sprays of white
lilac.  Looking round her table, Cecilia felt rather like one
watching a dew-belled cobweb, most delicate of all things in the
world, menaced by the tongue of a browsing cow.

Both soup and fish had been achieved, however, before a word was
spoken.  It was Stephen who, after taking a mouthful of dry sherry,
broke the silence.

"How are you getting on with your book, sir?"

Cecilia heard that question with something like dismay.  It was so
bald; for, however inconvenient Mr. Stone's absorption in his
manuscript might be, her delicacy told her how precious beyond life
itself that book was to him.  To her relief, however, her father was
eating spinach.

"You must be getting near the end, I should think," proceeded
Stephen.

Cecilia spoke hastily: "Isn't this white lilac lovely, Dad?"

Mr. Stone looked up.

"It is not white; it is really pink.  The test is simple."  He paused
with his eyes fixed on the lilac.

'Ah!' thought Cecilia, 'now, if I can only keep him on natural
science he used to be so interesting.'

"All flowers are one!" said Mr. Stone.  His voice had changed.

'Oh!' thought Cecilia, 'he is gone!'

"They have but a single soul.  In those days men divided, and
subdivided them, oblivious of the one pale spirit which underlay
those seemingly separate forms."

Cecilia's glance passed swiftly from the manservant to Stephen.

She saw one of her husband's eyes rise visibly.  Stephen did so hate
one thing to be confounded with another.

"Oh, come, sir," she heard him say; "you don't surely tell us that
dandelions and roses have the same pale spirit!"

Mr. Stone looked at him wistfully.

"Did I say that?"  he said.  "I had no wish to be dogmatic."

"Not at all, sir, not at all," murmured Stephen.

Thyme, leaning over to her mother, whispered "Oh, Mother, don't let
grandfather be queer; I can't bear it to-night!"

Cecilia, at her wits' end, said hurriedly:

"Dad, will you tell us what sort of character you think that little
girl who comes to you has?"

Mr. Stone paused in the act of drinking water; his attention had
evidently been riveted; he did not, however, speak.  And Cecilia,
seeing that the butler, out of the perversity which she found so
conspicuous in her servants, was about to hand him beef, made a
desperate movement with her lips.  "No, Charles, not there, not
there!"

The butler, tightening his lips, passed on.  Mr. Stone spoke:

"I had not considered that.  She is rather of a Celtic than an Anglo-
Saxon type; the cheekbones are prominent; the jaw is not massive; the
head is broad--if I can remember I will measure it; the eyes are of a
peculiar blue, resembling chicory flowers; the mouth---," Mr. Stone
paused.

Cecilia thought: 'What a lucky find!  Now perhaps he will go on all
right!'

"I do not know," Mr. Stone resumed, speaking in a far-off voice,
"whether she would be virtuous."

Cecilia heard Stephen drinking sherry; Thyme, too, was drinking
something; she herself drank nothing, but, pink and quiet, for she
was a well-bred woman, said:

"You have no new potatoes, dear.  Charles, give Mr. Stone some new
potatoes."

By the almost vindictive expression on Stephen's face she saw,
however, that her failure had decided him to resume command of the
situation.  "Talking of brotherhood, sir," he said dryly, "would you
go so far as to say that a new potato is the brother of a bean?"

Mr. Stone, on whose plate these two vegetables reposed, looked almost
painfully confused.

"I do not perceive," he stammered, "any difference between them."

"It's true," said Stephen; "the same pale spirit can be extracted
from them both."

Mr. Stone looked up at him.

"You laugh at me," he said.  "I cannot help it; but you must not
laugh at life--that is blasphemy."

Before the piercing wistfulness of that sudden gaze Stephen was
abashed.  Cecilia saw him bite his lower lip.

"We're talking too much," he said; "we really must let your father
eat!"  And the rest of the dinner was achieved in silence.

When Mr. Stone, refusing to be accompanied, had taken his departure,
and Thyme had gone to bed, Stephen withdrew to his study.  This room,
which had a different air from any other portion of the house, was
sacred to his private life.  Here, in specially designed
compartments, he kept his golf clubs, pipes, and papers.  Nothing was
touched by anyone except himself, and twice a week by one particular
housemaid.  Here was no bust of Socrates, no books in deerskin
bindings, but a bookcase filled with treatises on law, Blue Books,
reviews, and the novels of Sir Walter Scott; two black oak cabinets
stood side by side against the wall filled with small drawers.  When
these cabinets were opened and the drawers drawn forward there
emerged a scent of metal polish.  If the green-baize covers of the
drawers were lifted, there were seen coins, carefully arranged with
labels--as one may see plants growing in rows, each with its little
name tied on.  To these tidy rows of shining metal discs Stephen
turned in moments when his spirit was fatigued.  To add to them,
touch them, read their names, gave him the sweet, secret feeling
which comes to a man who rubs one hand against the other.  Like a
dram-drinker, Stephen drank--in little doses--of the feeling these
coins gave him.  They were his creative work, his history of the
world.  To them he gave that side of him which refused to find its
full expression in summarising law, playing golf, or reading the
reviews; that side of a man which aches, he knows not wherefore, to
construct something ere he die.  From Rameses to George IV. the coins
lay within those drawers--links of the long unbroken chain of
authority.

Putting on an old black velvet jacket laid out for him across a
chair, and lighting the pipe that he could never bring himself to
smoke in his formal dinner clothes, he went to the right-hand
cabinet, and opened it.  He stood with a smile, taking up coins one
by one.  In this particular drawer they were of the best Byzantine
dynasty, very rare.  He did not see that Cecilia had stolen in, and
was silently regarding him.  Her eyes seemed doubting at that moment
whether or no she loved him who stood there touching that other
mistress of his thoughts--that other mistress with whom he spent so
many evening hours.  The little green-baize cover fell.  Cecilia said
suddenly:

"Stephen, I feel as if I must tell Father where that girl is!"

Stephen turned.

"My dear child," he answered in his special voice, which, like
champagne, seemed to have been dried by artifice, "you don't want to
reopen the whole thing?"

"But I can see he really is upset about it; he's looking so awfully
white and thin."

"He ought to give up that bathing in the Serpentine.  At his age it's
monstrous.  And surely any other girl will do just as well?"

"He seems to set store by reading to her specially."

Stephen shrugged his shoulders.  It had happened to him on one
occasion to be present when Mr. Stone was declaiming some pages of
his manuscript.  He had never forgotten the discomfort of the
experience.  "That crazy stuff," as he had called it to Cecilia
afterwards, had remained on his mind, heavy and damp, like a cold
linseed poultice.  His wife's father was a crank, and perhaps even a
little more than a crank, a wee bit "touched"--that she couldn't
help, poor girl; but any allusion to his cranky produce gave Stephen
pain.  Nor had he forgotten his experience at dinner.

"He seems to have grown fond of her," murmured Cecilia.

"But it's absurd at his time of life!"

"Perhaps that makes him feel it more; people do miss things when they
are old!"

Stephen slid the drawer back into its socket.  There was dry decision
in that gesture.

"Look here!  Let's exercise a little common sense; it's been
sacrificed to sentiment all through this wretched business.  One
wants to be kind, of course; but one's got to draw the line."

"Ah!" said Cecilia; "where?"

"The thing," went on Stephen, "has been a mistake from first to last.
It's all very well up to a certain point, but after that it becomes
destructive of all comfort.  It doesn't do to let these people come
into personal contact with you.  There are the proper channels for
that sort of thing."

Cecilia's eyes were lowered, as though she did not dare to let him
see her thoughts.

"It seems so horrid," she said; "and father is not like other
people."

"He is not," said Stephen dryly; "we had a pretty good instance of
that this evening.  But Hilary and your sister are.  There's
something most distasteful to me, too, about Thyme's going about
slumming.  You see what she's been let in for this afternoon.  The
notion of that baby being killed through the man's treatment of his
wife, and that, no doubt, arising from the girl's leaving them, is
most repulsive!"

To these words Cecilia answered with a sound almost like a gasp.
"I hadn't thought of that.  Then we're responsible; it was we who
advised Hilary to make her change her lodging."

Stephen stared; he regretted sincerely that his legal habit of mind
had made him put the case so clearly.

"I can't imagine," he said, almost violently, "what possesses
everybody!  We--responsible!  Good gracious!  Because we gave Hilary
some sound advice!  What next?"

Cecilia turned to the empty hearth.

"Thyme has been telling me about that poor little thing.  It seems so
dreadful, and I can't get rid of the feeling that we're--we're all
mixed up with it!"

"Mixed up with what?"

"I don't know; it's just a feeling like--like being haunted."

Stephen took her quietly by the arm.

"My dear old girl," he said, "I'd no idea that you were run down like
this.  To-morrow's Thursday, and I can get away at three.  We'll
motor down to Richmond, and have a round or two!"

Cecilia quivered; for a moment it seemed that she was about to burst
out crying.  Stephen stroked her shoulder steadily.  Cecilia must
have felt his dread; she struggled loyally with her emotion.

"That will be very jolly," she said at last.

Stephen drew a deep breath.

"And don't you worry, dear," he said, "about your dad; he'll have
forgotten the whole thing in a day or two; he's far too wrapped up in
his book.  Now trot along to bed; I'll be up directly."

Before going out Cecilia looked back at him.  How wonderful was that
look, which Stephen did not--perhaps intentionally--see.  Mocking,
almost hating, and yet thanking him for having refused to let her be
emotional and yield herself up for once to what she felt, showing him
too how clearly she saw through his own masculine refusal to be made
to feel, and how she half-admired it--all this was in that look, and
more.  Then she went out.

Stephen glanced quickly at the door, and, pursing up his lips,
frowned.  He threw the window open, and inhaled the night air.

'If I don't look out,' he thought, 'I shall be having her mixed up
with this.  I was an ass ever to have spoken to old Hilary.  I ought
to have ignored the matter altogether.  It's a lesson not to meddle
with people in those places.  I hope to God she'll be herself
tomorrow!'

Outside, under the soft black foliage of the Square, beneath the slim
sickle of the moon, two cats were hunting after happiness; their
savage cries of passion rang in the blossom-scented air like a cry of
dark humanity in the jungle of dim streets.  Stephen, with a shiver
of disgust, for his nerves were on edge, shut the window with a slam.




CHAPTER XXVIII

HILARY HEARS THE CUCKOO SING

It was not left to Cecilia alone to remark how very white Mr. Stone
looked in these days.

The wild force which every year visits the world, driving with its
soft violence snowy clouds and their dark shadows, breaking through
all crusts and sheaths, covering the earth in a fierce embrace; the
wild force which turns form to form, and with its million leapings,
swift as the flight of swallows and the arrow-darts of the rain,
hurries everything on to sweet mingling--this great, wild force of
universal life, so-called the Spring, had come to Mr. Stone, like new
wine to some old bottle.  And Hilary, to whom it had come, too,
watching him every morning setting forth with a rough towel across
his arm, wondered whether the old man would not this time leave his
spirit swimming in the chill waters of the Serpentine--so near that
spirit seemed to breaking through its fragile shell.

Four days had gone by since the interview at which he had sent away
the little model, and life in his household--that quiet backwater
choked with lilies--seemed to have resumed the tranquillity enjoyed
before this intrusion of rude life.  The paper whiteness of Mr. Stone
was the only patent evidence that anything disturbing had occurred--
that and certain feelings about which the strictest silence was
preserved.

On the morning of the fifth day, seeing the old man stumble on the
level flagstones of the garden, Hilary finished dressing hastily, and
followed.  He overtook him walking forward feebly beneath the
candelabra of flowering chestnut-trees, with a hail-shower striking
white on his high shoulders; and, placing himself alongside, without
greeting--for forms were all one to Mr. Stone--he said:

"Surely you don't mean to bathe during a hail storm, sir!  Make an
exception this once.  You're not looking quite yourself."

Mr. Stone shook his head; then, evidently following out a thought
which Hilary had interrupted, he remarked:

"The sentiment that men call honour is of doubtful value.  I have not
as yet succeeded in relating it to universal brotherhood."

"How is that, sir?"

"In so far," said Mr. Stone, "as it consists in fidelity to
principle, one might assume it worthy of conjunction.  The difficulty
arises when we consider the nature of the principle ....  There is a
family of young thrushes in the garden.  If one of them finds a worm,
I notice that his devotion to that principle of self-preservation
which prevails in all low forms of life forbids his sharing it with
any of the other little thrushes."

Mr. Stone had fixed his eyes on distance.

"So it is, I fear," he said, "with 'honour.'  In those days men
looked on women as thrushes look on worms."

He paused, evidently searching for a word; and Hilary, with a faint
smile, said:

"And how did women look on men, sir?"

Mr. Stone observed him with surprise.  "I did not perceive that it
was you," he said.  "I have to avoid brain action before bathing."

They had crossed the road dividing the Gardens from the Park, and,
seeing that Mr. Stone had already seen the water where he was about
to bathe, and would now see nothing else, Hilary stopped beside a
little lonely birch-tree.  This wild, small, graceful visitor, who
had long bathed in winter, was already draping her bare limbs in a
scarf of green.  Hilary leaned against her cool, pearly body.  Below
were the chilly waters, now grey, now starch-blue, and the pale forms
of fifteen or twenty bathers.  While he stood shivering in the frozen
wind, the sun, bursting through the hail-cloud, burned his cheeks and
hands.  And suddenly he heard, clear, but far off, the sound which,
of all others, stirs the hearts of men: "Cuckoo, cuckoo!"

Four times over came the unexpected call.  Whence had that ill-
advised, indelicate grey bird flown into this great haunt of men and
shadows?  Why had it come with its arrowy flight and mocking cry to
pierce the heart and set it aching?  There were trees enough outside
the town, cloud-swept hollows, tangled brakes of furze just coming
into bloom, where it could preside over the process of Spring.  What
solemn freak was this which made it come and sing to one who had no
longer any business with the Spring?

With a real spasm in his heart Hilary turned away from that distant
bird, and went down to the water's edge.  Mr. Stone was swimming,
slower than man had ever swum before.  His silver head and lean arms
alone were visible, parting the water feebly; suddenly he
disappeared.  He was but a dozen yards from the shore; and Hilary,
alarmed at not seeing him reappear, ran in.  The water was not deep.
Mr. Stone, seated at the bottom, was doing all he could to rise.
Hilary took him by his bathing-dress, raised him to the surface, and
supported him towards the land.  By the time they reached the shore
he could just stand on his legs.  With the assistance of a policeman,
Hilary enveloped him in garments and got him to a cab.  He had
regained some of his vitality, but did not seem aware of what had
happened.

"I was not in as long as usual," he mused, as they passed out into
the high road.

"Oh, I think so, sir."

Mr. Stone looked troubled.

"It is odd," he said.  "I do not recollect leaving the water."

He did not speak again till he was being assisted from the cab.

"I wish to recompense the man.  I have half a crown indoors."

"I will get it, sir," said Hilary.

Mr. Stone, who shivered violently now that he was on his feet, turned
his face up to the cabman.

"Nothing is nobler than the horse," he said; "take care of him."

The cabman removed his hat.  "I will, sir," he answered.

Walking by himself, but closely watched by Hilary, Mr. Stone reached
his room.  He groped about him as though not distinguishing objects
too well through the crystal clearness of the fundamental flux.

"If I might advise you," said Hilary, "I would get back into bed for
a few minutes.  You seem a little chilly."

Mr. Stone, who was indeed shaking so that he could hardly stand,
allowed Hilary to assist him into bed and tuck the blankets round
him.

"I must be at work by ten o'clock," he said.

Hilary, who was also shivering, hastened to Bianca's room.  She was
just coming down, and exclaimed at seeing him all wet.  When he had
told her of the episode she touched his shoulder.

"What about you?"

"A hot bath and drink will set me right.  You'd better go to him."

He turned towards the bathroom, where Miranda stood, lifting a white
foot.  Compressing her lips, Bianca ran downstairs.  Startled by his
tale, she would have taken his wet body in her arms; if the ghosts of
innumerable moments had not stood between.  So this moment passed
too, and itself became a ghost.

Mr. Stone, greatly to his disgust, had not succeeded in resuming work
at ten o'clock.  Failing simply because he could not stand on his
legs, he had announced his intention of waiting until half-past
three, when he should get up, in preparation for the coming of the
little girl.  Having refused to see a doctor, or have his temperature
taken, it was impossible to tell precisely what degree of fever he
was in.  In his cheeks, just visible over the blankets, there was
more colour than there should have been; and his eyes, fixed on the
ceiling, shone with suspicious brilliancy.  To the dismay of Bianca--
who sat as far out of sight as possible, lest he should see her, and
fancy that she was doing him a service--he pursued his thoughts
aloud:

"Words--words--they have taken away brotherhood!" Bianca shuddered,
listening to that uncanny sound.  "'In those days of words they
called it death--pale death--mors pallida.  They saw that word like a
gigantic granite block suspended over them, and slowly coming down.
Some, turning up their faces at the sight, trembled painfully,
awaiting their obliteration.  Others, unable, while they still lived,
to face the thought of nothingness, inflated by some spiritual wind,
and thinking always of their individual forms, called out unceasingly
that those selves of theirs would and must survive this word--that in
some fashion, which no man could understand, each self-conscious
entity reaccumulated after distribution.  Drunk with this thought,
these, too, passed away.  Some waited for it with grim, dry eyes,
remarking that the process was molecular, and thus they also met
their so-called death.'"

His voice ceased, and in place of it rose the sound of his tongue
moistening his palate.  Bianca, from behind, placed a glass of
barley-water to his lips.  He drank it with a slow, clucking noise;
then, seeing that a hand held the glass, said: "Is that you?  Are you
ready for me?  Follow.  'In those days no one leaped up to meet pale
riding Death; no one saw in her face that she was brotherhood
incarnate; no one with a heart as light as gossamer kissed her feet,
and, smiling, passed into the Universe.'"  His voice died away, and
when next he spoke it was in a quick, husky whisper: "I must--I must
--I must---" There was silence; then he added: "Give me my trousers."

Bianca placed them by his bed.  The sight seemed to reassure him.  He
was once more silent.

For more than an hour after this he was so absolutely still that
Bianca rose continually to look at him.  Each time, his eyes, wide
open, were fixed on a little dark mark across the ceiling; his face
had a look of the most singular determination, as though his spirit
were slowly, relentlessly, regaining mastery over his fevered body.
He spoke suddenly:

"Who is there?"

"Bianca."

"Help me out of bed!"

The flush had left his face, the brilliance had faded from his eyes;
he looked just like a ghost.  With a sort of terror Bianca helped him
out of bed.  This weird display of mute white will-power was
unearthly.

When he was dressed in his woollen gown and seated before the fire,
she gave him a cup of strong beef-tea, with brandy.  He swallowed it
with great avidity.

"I should like some more of that," he said, and fell asleep.

While he was asleep Cecilia came, and the two sisters watched his
slumber, and, watching it, felt nearer to each other than they had
for many years.  Before she went away Cecilia whispered

"B. if he seems to want that little girl while he's like this, don't
you think she ought to come?"

Bianca answered: "I don't know where she is."

"I do."

"Ah!" said Bianca; "of course!"  And she turned her head away.

Disconcerted by that sarcastic little speech, Cecilia was silent;
then, summoning all her courage, she said:

"Here's the address, B. I've written it down for you;" and, with
puckers of anxiety in her face, she left the room.

Bianca sat on in the old golden chair, watching the deep hollows
beneath the sleeper's temples, the puffs of breath stirring the
silver round his mouth.  Her ears burned crimson.  Carried out of
herself by the sight of that old form, dearer to her than she had
thought, fighting its great battle for the sake of its idea, her
spirit grew all tremulous and soft within her.  With eagerness she
embraced the thought of self-effacement.  It did not seem to matter
whether she were first with Hilary.  Her spirit should so manifest
its capacity for sacrifice that she would be first with him through
sheer nobility.  At this moment she could almost have taken that
common little girl into her arms and kissed her.  So would all
disquiet end!  Some harmonious messenger had fluttered to her for a
second--the gold-winged bird of peace.  In this sensuous exaltation
her nerves vibrated like the strings of a violin.

When Mr. Stone woke it was past three o'clock and Bianca at once
handed him another cup of strong beef-tea.

He swallowed it, and said: "What is this?"

"Beef-tea."

Mr. Stone looked at the empty cup.

"I must not drink it.  The cow and the sheep are on the same plane as
man."

"But how do you feel, dear?"

"I feel," said Mr. Stone, "able to dictate what I have already
written--not more.  Has she come?"

"Not yet; but I will go and find her if you like."

Mr. Stone looked at his daughter wistfully.

"That will be taking up your time," he said.

Bianca answered: "My time is of no consequence."

Mr. Stone stretched his hands out to the fire.

"I will not consent," he said, evidently to himself, "to be a drag on
anyone.  If that has come, then I must go!"

Bianca, placing herself beside him on her knees, pressed her hot
cheek against his temple.

"But it has not come, Dad."

"I hope not," said Mr. Stone.  "I wish to end my book first."

The sudden grim coherence of his last two sayings terrified Bianca
more than all his feverish, utterances.

"I rely on your sitting quite still," she said, "while I go and find
her."  And with a feeling in her heart as though two hands had seized
and were pulling it asunder, she went out.


Some half-hour later Hilary slipped quietly in, and stood watching at
the door.  Mr. Stone, seated on the very verge of his armchair, with
his hands on its arms, was slowly rising to his feet, and slowly
falling back again, not once, but many times, practising a standing
posture.  As Hilary came into his line of sight, he said:

"I have succeeded twice."

"I am very glad," said Hilary.  "Won't you rest now, sir?"

"It is my knees," said Mr. Stone.  "She has gone to find her."

Hilary heard those words with bewilderment, and, sitting down on the
other chair, waited.

"I have fancied," said Mr. Stone, looking at him wistfully, "that
when we pass away from life we may become the wind.  Is that your
opinion?"

"It is a new thought to me," said Hilary.

"It is not tenable," said Mr. Stone.  "But it is restful.  The wind
is everywhere and nowhere, and nothing can be hidden from it.  When I
have missed that little girl, I have tried, in a sense, to become the
wind; but I have found it difficult."

His eyes left Hilary's face, whose mournful smile he had not noticed,
and fixed themselves on the bright fire.  "'In those days,"' he said,
"'men's relation to the eternal airs was the relation of a billion
little separate draughts blowing against the south-west wind.  They
did not wish to merge themselves in that soft, moon-uttered sigh, but
blew in its face through crevices, and cracks, and keyholes, and were
borne away on the pellucid journey, whistling out their protests.'"

He again tried to stand, evidently wishing to get to his desk to
record this thought, but, failing, looked painfully at Hilary.  He
seemed about to ask for something, but checked himself.

"If I practise hard," he murmured, "I shall master it."

Hilary rose and brought him paper and a pencil.  In bending, he saw
that Mr. Stone's eyes were dim with moisture.  This sight affected
him so that he was glad to turn away and fetch a book to form a
writing-pad.

When Mr. Stone had finished, he sat back in his chair with closed
eyes.  A supreme silence reigned in the bare room above those two men
of different generations and of such strange dissimilarity of
character.  Hilary broke that silence.

"I heard the cuckoo sing to-day," he said, almost in a whisper, lest
Mr. Stone should be asleep.

"The cuckoo," replied Mr. Stone, "has no sense of brotherhood."

"I forgive him-for his song," murmured Hilary.

"His song," said Mr. Stone, "is alluring; it excites the sexual
instinct."

Then to himself he added:

"She has not come, as yet!"

Even as he spoke there was heard by Hilary a faint tapping on the
door.  He rose and opened it.  The little model stood outside.




CHAPTER XXIX

RETURN OF THE LITTLE MODEL

That same afternoon in High Street, Kensington, "Westminister," with
his coat-collar raised against the inclement wind, his old hat
spotted with rain, was drawing at a clay pipe and fixing his iron-
rimmed gaze on those who passed him by.  It had been a day when
singularly few as yet had bought from him his faintly green-tinged
journal, and the low class of fellow who sold the other evening
prints had especially exasperated him.  His single mind, always torn
to some extent between an ingrained loyalty to his employers and
those politics of his which differed from his paper's, had vented
itself twice since coming on his stand; once in these words to the
seller of "Pell Mells": "I stupulated with you not to come beyond the
lamp-post.  Don't you never speak to me again--a-crowdin' of me off
my stand"; and once to the younger vendors of the less expensive
journals, thus: "Oh, you boys!  I'll make you regret of it--
a-snappin' up my customers under my very nose!  Wait until ye're
old!"  To which the boys had answered: "All right, daddy; don't you
have a fit.  You'll be a deader soon enough without that, y'know!"

It was now his time for tea, but "Pell Mell" having gone to partake
of this refreshment, he waited on, hoping against hope to get a
customer or two of that low fellow's.  And while in black insulation
he stood there a timid voice said at his elbow

"Mr. Creed!"

The aged butler turned, and saw the little model.

"Oh," he said dryly, "it's you, is it?"  His mind, with its incessant
love of rank, knowing that she earned her living as a handmaid to
that disorderly establishment, the House of Art, had from the first
classed her as lower than a lady's-maid.  Recent events had made him
think of her unkindly.  Her new clothes, which he had not been
privileged to see before, while giving him a sense of Sunday,
deepened his moral doubts.

"And where are you living now?"  he said in tones incorporating these
feelings.

"I'm not to tell you."

"Oh, very well.  Keep yourself to yourself."

The little model's lower lip drooped more than ever.  There were dark
marks beneath her eyes; her face was altogether rather pinched and
pitiful.

"Won't you tell me any news?"  she said in her matter-of-fact voice.

The old butler gave a strange grunt.

"Ho!" he said.  "The baby's dead, and buried to-morrer."

"Dead!" repeated the little model.

"I'm a-goin' to the funeral--Brompton Cemetery.  Half-past nine I
leave the door.  And that's a-beginnin' at the end.  The man's in
prison, and the woman's gone a shadder of herself."

The little model rubbed her hands against her skirt.

"What did he go to prison for?"

"For assaultin' of her; I was witness to his battery."

"Why did he assault her?"

Creed looked at her, and, wagging his head, answered:

"That's best known to them as caused of it."

The little model's face went the colour of carnations.

"I can't help what he does," she said.  "What should I want him for--
a man like that?  It wouldn't be him I'd want!"  The genuine contempt
in that sharp burst of anger impressed the aged butler.

"I'm not a-sayin' anything," he said; "it's all a-one to me.  I never
mixes up with no other people's business.  But it's very ill-
convenient.  I don't get my proper breakfast.  That poor woman--she's
half off her head.  When the baby's buried I'll have to go and look
out for another room before he gets a-comin' out."

"I hope they'll keep him there," muttered the little model suddenly.

"They give him a month," said Creed.

"Only a month!"

The old butler looked at her.  'There's more stuff' in you,' he
seemed to say, 'than ever I had thought.'

'Because of his servin' of his country," he remarked aloud.

"I'm sorry about the poor little baby," said the little model in her
stolid voice.

"Westminister" shook his head.  "I never suspected him of goin' to
live," he said.

The girl, biting the finger-tip of her white cotton glove, was
staring out at the traffic.  Like a pale ray of light entering the
now dim cavern of the old man's mind, the thought came to Creed that
he did not quite understand her.  He had in his time had occasion to
class many young persons, and the feeling that he did not quite know
her class of person was like the sensation a bat might have,
surprised by daylight.

Suddenly, without saying good-bye to him, she walked away.

'Well,' he thought, looking after her, 'your manners ain't improved
by where you're living, nor your appearance neither, for all your new
clothes.'  And for some time he stood thinking of the stare in her
eyes and that abrupt departure.

Through the crystal clearness of the fundamental flux the mind could
see at that same moment Bianca leaving her front gate.

Her sensuous exaltation, her tremulous longing after harmony, had
passed away; in her heart, strangely mingled, were these two
thoughts: 'If only she were a lady!' and, 'I am glad she is not a
lady!'

Of all the dark and tortuous places of this life, the human heart is
the most dark and tortuous; and of all human hearts none are less
clear, more intricate than the hearts of all that class of people
among whom Bianca had her being.  Pride was a simple quality when
joined with a simple view of life, based on the plain philosophy of
property; pride was no simple quality when the hundred paralysing
doubts and aspirations of a social conscience also hedged it round.
In thus going forth with the full intention of restoring the little
model to her position in the household, her pride fought against her
pride, and her woman's sense of ownership in the man whom she had
married wrestled with the acquired sentiments of freedom, liberality,
equality, good taste.  With her spirit thus confused, and her mind so
at variance with itself, she was really acting on the simple instinct
of compassion.

She had run upstairs from Mr. Stone's room, and now walked fast, lest
that instinct, the most physical, perhaps, of all--awakened by sights
and sounds, and requiring constant nourishment--should lose its
force.

Rapidly, then, she made her way to the grey street in Bayswater where
Cecilia had told her that the girl now lived.

The tall, gaunt landlady admitted her.

"Have you a Miss Barton lodging here?"  Bianca asked.

"Yes," said the landlady, "but I think she's out."

She looked into the little model's room.

"Yes," she said; "she's out; but if you'd like to leave a note you
could write in here.  If you're looking for a model, she wants work,
I believe."

That modern faculty of pressing on an aching nerve was assuredly not
lacking to Bianca.  To enter the girl's room was jabbing at the nerve
indeed.

She looked round her.  The mental vacuity of that little room!  There
was not one single thing--with the exception of a torn copy of Tit-
Bits--which suggested that a mind of any sort lived there.  For all
that, perhaps because of that, it was neat enough.

"Yes," said the landlady, "she keeps her room tidy.  Of course, she's
a country girl--comes from down my way."  She said this with a dry
twist of her grim, but not unkindly, features.  "If it weren't for
that," she went on, "I don't think I should care to let to one of her
profession."

Her hungry eyes, gazing at Bianca, had in them the aspirations of all
Nonconformity.

Bianca pencilled on her card:

"If you can come to my father to-day or tomorrow, please do."

"Will you give her this, please?  It will be quite enough."

"I'll give it her," the landlady said; "she'll be glad of it, I
daresay.  I see her sitting here.  Girls like that, if they've got
nothing to do--see, she's been moping on her bed...."

The impress of a form was, indeed, clearly visible on the red and
yellow tasselled tapestry of the bed.

Bianca cast a look at it.

"Thank you," she said; "good day."

With the jabbed nerve aching badly she came slowly homewards.

Before the garden gate the little model herself was gazing at the
house, as if she had been there some time.  Approaching from across
the road, Bianca had an admirable view of that young figure, now very
trim and neat, yet with something in its lines--more supple, perhaps,
but less refined--which proclaimed her not a lady; a something
fundamentally undisciplined or disciplined by the material facts of
life alone, rather than by a secret creed of voluntary rules.  It
showed here and there in ways women alone could understand; above
all, in the way her eyes looked out on that house which she was
clearly longing to enter.  Not 'Shall I go in?' was in that look, but
'Dare I go in?'

Suddenly she saw Bianca.  The meeting of these two was very like the
ordinary meeting of a mistress and her maid.  Bianca's face had no
expression, except the faint, distant curiosity which seems to say:
'You are a sealed book to me; I have always found you so.  What you
really think and do I shall never know.'

The little model's face wore a half-caught-out, half-stolid look.

"Please go in," Bianca said; "my father will be glad to see you."

She held the garden gate open for the girl to pass through.  Her
feeling at that moment was one of slight amusement at the futility of
her journey.  Not even this small piece of generosity was permitted
her, it seemed.

"How are you getting on?"

The little model made an impulsive movement at such an unexpected
question.  Checking it at once, she answered:

"Very well, thank you; that is, not very---"

"You will find my father tired to-day; he has caught a chill.  Don't
let him read too much, please."

The little model seemed to try and nerve herself to make some
statement, but, failing, passed into the house.

Bianca did not follow, but stole back into the garden, where the sun
was still falling on a bed of wallflowers at the far end.  She bent
down over these flowers till her veil touched them.  Two wild bees
were busy there, buzzing with smoky wings, clutching with their
black, tiny legs at the orange petals, plunging their black, tiny
tongues far down into the honeyed centres.  The flowers quivered
beneath the weight of their small dark bodies.  Bianca's face
quivered too, bending close to them, nor making the slightest
difference to their hunt.

Hilary, who, it has been seen, lived in thoughts about events rather
than in events themselves, and to whom crude acts and words had
little meaning save in relation to what philosophy could make of
them, greeted with a startled movement the girl's appearance in the
corridor outside Mr. Stone's apartment.  But the little model, who
mentally lived very much from hand to mouth, and had only the
philosophy of wants, acted differently.  She knew that for the last
five days, like a spaniel dog shut away from where it feels it ought
to be, she had wanted to be where she was now standing; she knew
that, in her new room with its rust-red doors, she had bitten her
lips and fingers till blood came, and, as newly caged birds will
flutter, had beaten her wings against those walls with blue roses on
a yellow ground.  She remembered how she had lain, brooding, on that
piece of red and yellow tapestry, twisting its tassels, staring
through half-closed eyes at nothing.

There was something different in her look at Hilary.  It had lost
some of its childish devotion; it was bolder, as if she had lived and
felt, and brushed a good deal more down off her wings during those
few days.

"Mrs. Dallison told me to come," she said.  "I thought I might.  Mr.
Creed told me about him being in prison."

Hilary made way for her, and, following her into Mr. Stone's
presence, shut the door.

"The truant has returned," he said.

Hearing herself called so unjustly by that name, the little model
gushed deeply, and tried to speak.  She stopped at the smile on
Hilary's face, and gazed from him to Mr. Stone and back again, the
victim of mingled feelings.

Mr. Stone was seen to have risen to his feet, and to be very slowly
moving towards his desk.  He leaned both arms on his papers for
support, and, seeming to gather strength, began sorting out his
manuscript.

Through the open window the distant music of a barrel-organ came
drifting in.  Faint, and much too slow, was the sound of the waltz it
played, but there was invitation, allurement, in that tune.  The
little model turned towards it, and Hilary looked hard at her.  The
girl and that sound together-there, quite plain, was the music he had
heard for many days, like a man lying with the touch of fever on him.

"Are you ready?"  said Mr. Stone.

The little model dipped her pen in ink.  Her eyes crept towards the
door, where Hilary was still standing with the same expression on his
face.  He avoided her eyes, and went up to Mr. Stone.

"Must you read to-day, sir?"

Mr. Stone looked at him with anger.

"Why not?"  he said.

"You are hardly strong enough."

Mr. Stone raised his manuscript.

"We are three days behind;" and very slowly he began dictating:
"'Bar-ba-rous ha-bits in those days, such as the custom known as War-
--'"  His voice died away; it was apparent that his elbows, leaning
on the desk, alone prevented his collapse.

Hilary moved the chair, and, taking him beneath the arms, lowered him
gently into it.

Noticing that he was seated, Mr. Stone raised his manuscript and read
on: "'---were pursued regardless of fraternity.  It was as though a
herd of horn-ed cattle driven through green pastures to that Gate,
where they must meet with certain dissolution, had set about to
prematurely gore and disembowel each other, out of a passionate
devotion to those individual shapes which they were so soon to lose.
So men--tribe against tribe, and country against country--glared
across the valleys with their ensanguined eyes; they could not see
the moonlit wings, or feel the embalming airs of brotherhood.'"

Slower and slower came his sentences, and as the last word died away
he was heard to be asleep, breathing through a tiny hole left beneath
the eave of his moustache.  Hilary, who had waited for that moment,
gently put the manuscript on the desk, and beckoned to the girl.  He
did not ask her to his study, but spoke to her in the hall.

"While Mr. Stone is like this he misses you.  You will come, then, at
present, please, so long as Hughs is in prison.  How do you like your
room?"

The little model answered simply: "Not very much."

"Why not?"

"It's lonely there.  I shan't mind, now I'm coming here again."

"Only for the present," was all Hilary could find to say.

The little model's eyes were lowered.

"Mrs. Hughs' baby's to be buried to-morrow," she said suddenly.

"Where?"

"In Brompton Cemetery.  Mr. Creed's going."

"What time is the funeral?"

The girl looked up stealthily.

"Mr. Creed's going to start at half-past nine."

"I should like to go myself," said Hilary.

A gleam of pleasure passing across her face was instantly obscured
behind the cloud of her stolidity.  Then, as she saw Hilary move
nearer to the door, her lip began to droop.

"Well, good-bye," he said.

The little model flushed and quivered.  'You don't even look at me,'
she seemed to say; 'you haven't spoken kindly to me once.' And
suddenly she said in a hard voice:

"Now I shan't go to Mr. Lennard's any more."

"Oh, then you have been to him!"

Triumph at attracting his attention, fear of what she had admitted,
supplication, and a half-defiant shame--all this was in her face.

"Yes," she said.

Hilary did not speak.

"I didn't care any more when you told me I wasn't to come here."

Still Hilary did not speak.

"I haven't done anything wrong," she said, with tears in her voice.

"No, no," said Hilary; "of course not!"

The little model choked.

"It's my profession."

"Yes, yes," said Hilary; "it's all right."

"I don't care what he thinks; I won't go again so long as I can come
here."

Hilary touched her shoulder.

"Well, well," he said, and opened the front door.

The little model, tremulous, like' a flower kissed by the sun after
rain, went out with a light in her eyes.

The master of the house returned to Mr. Stone.  Long he sat looking
at the old man's slumber.  "A thinker meditating upon action!" So
might Hilary's figure, with its thin face resting on its hand, a
furrow between the brows, and that painful smile, have been entitled
in any catalogue of statues.




CHAPTER XXX

FUNERAL OF A BABY

Following out the instinct planted so deeply in human nature for
treating with the utmost care and at great expense when dead those,
who, when alive, have been served with careless parsimony, there
started from the door of No. 1 in Hound Street a funeral procession
of three four-wheeled cabs. The first bore the little coffin, on
which lay a great white wreath (gift of Cecilia and Thyme).  The
second bore Mrs. Hughs, her son Stanley, and Joshua Creed.  The third
bore Martin Stone.  In the first cab Silence was presiding with the
scent of lilies over him who in his short life had made so little
noise, the small grey shadow which had crept so quietly into being,
and, taking his chance when he was not noticed, had crept so quietly
out again.  Never had he felt so restful, so much at home, as in that
little common coffin, washed as he was to an unnatural whiteness, and
wrapped in his mother's only spare sheet.  Away from all the strife
of men he was Journeying to a greater peace.  His little aloe-plant
had flowered; and, between the open windows of the only carriage he
had ever been inside, the wind--which, who knows? he had perhaps
become--stirred the fronds of fern and the flowers of his funeral
wreath.  Thus he was going from that world where all men were his
brothers.

>From the second cab the same wind was rigidly excluded, and there was
silence, broken by the aged butler's breathing.  Dressed in his
Newmarket coat, he was recalling with a certain sense of luxury past,
journeys in four-wheeled cabs--occasions when, seated beside a box
corded and secured with sealing-wax, he had taken his master's plate
for safety to the bank; occasions when, under a roof piled up with
guns and boxes, he had sat holding the "Honorable Bateson's" dog;
occasions when, with some young person by his side, he had driven at
the tail of a baptismal, nuptial, or funeral cortege.  These memories
of past grandeur came back to him with curious poignancy, and for
some reason the words kept rising in his mind: 'For richer or poorer,
for better or worser, in health and in sick places, till death do us
part.' But in the midst of the exaltation of these recollections the
old heart beneath his old red flannel chest-protector--that companion
of his exile--twittering faintly at short intervals, made him look at
the woman by his side.  He longed to convey to her some little of the
satisfaction he felt in the fact that this was by no means the low
class of funeral it might have been.  He doubted whether, with her
woman's mind, she was getting all the comfort she could out of three
four-wheeled cabs and a wreath of lilies.  The seamstress's thin
face, with its pinched, passive look, was indeed thinner, quieter,
than ever.  What she was thinking of he could not tell.  There were
so many things she might be thinking of.  She, too, no doubt, had
seen her grandeur, if but in the solitary drive away from the church
where, eight years ago, she and Hughs had listened to the words now
haunting Creed.  Was she thinking of that; of her lost youth and
comeliness, and her man's dead love; of the long descent to
shadowland; of the other children she had buried; of Hughs in prison;
of the girl that had "put a spell on him"; or only of the last
precious tugs the tiny lips at rest in the first four-wheeled cab had
given at her breast?  Or was she, with a nicer feeling for
proportion, reflecting that, had not people been so kind, she might
have had to walk behind a funeral provided by the parish?

The old butler could not tell, but he--whose one desire now, coupled
with the wish to die outside a workhouse, was to save enough to bury
his own body without the interference of other people--was inclined
to think she must be dwelling on the brighter side of things; and,
designing to encourage her, he said: "Wonderful improvement in these
'ere four-wheel cabs!  Oh dear, yes!  I remember of them when they
were the shadders of what they are at the present time of speakin'."

The seamstress answered in her quiet voice: "Very comfortable this
is.  Sit still, Stanley!"  Her little son, whose feet did not reach
the floor, was drumming his heels against the seat.  He stopped and
looked at her, and the old butler addressed him.

"You'll a-remember of this occasion," he said, "when you gets older."

The little boy turned his black eyes from his mother to him who had
spoken last.

"It's a beautiful wreath," continued Creed.  "I could smell of it all
the way up the stairs.  There's been no expense spared; there's white
laylock in it--that's a class of flower that's very extravagant."

A train of thought having been roused too strong for his discretion,
he added: "I saw that young girl yesterday.  She came interrogatin'
of me in the street."

On Mrs. Hughs' face, where till now expression had been buried, came
such a look as one may see on the face of an owl-hard, watchful,
cruel; harder, more cruel, for the softness of the big dark eyes.

"She'd show a better feeling," she said, "to keep a quiet tongue.
Sit still, Stanley!"

Once more the little boy stopped drumming his heels, and shifted his
stare from the old butler back to her who spoke.  The cab, which had
seemed to hesitate and start, as though jibbing at something in the
road, resumed its ambling pace.  Creed looked through the well-closed
window.  There before him, so long that it seemed to have no end,
like a building in a nightmare, stretched that place where he did not
mean to end his days.  He faced towards the horse again.  The colour
had deepened in his nose.  He spoke:

"If they'd a-give me my last edition earlier, 'stead of sending of it
down after that low-class feller's taken all my customers, that'd
make a difference to me o' two shillin's at the utmost in the week,
and all clear savin's."  To these words, dark with hidden meaning, he
received no answer save the drumming of the small boy's heels; and,
reverting to the subject he had been distracted from, he murmured:
"She was a-wearin' of new clothes."

He was startled by the fierce tone of a voice he hardly knew.  "I
don't want to hear about her; she's not for decent folk to talk of."

The old butler looked round askance.  The seamstress was trembling
violently.  Her fierceness at such a moment shocked him.  "'Dust to
dust,'" he thought.

"Don't you be considerate of it," he said at last, summoning all his
knowledge of the world; "she'll come to her own place."  And at the
sight of a slow tear trickling over her burning cheek, he added
hurriedly: "Think of your baby--I'll see yer through.  Sit still,
little boy--sit still!  Ye're disturbin' of your mother."

Once more the little boy stayed the drumming of his heels to look at
him who spoke; and the closed cab rolled on with its slow, jingling
sound.

In the third four-wheeled cab, where the windows again were wide
open, Martin Stone, with his hands thrust deep into the pockets of
his coat, and his long legs crossed, sat staring at the roof, with a
sort of twisted scorn on his pale face.

Just inside the gate, through which had passed in their time so many
dead and living shadows, Hilary stood waiting.  He could probably not
have explained why he had come to see this tiny shade committed to
the earth--in memory, perhaps, of those two minutes when the baby's
eyes had held parley with his own, or in the wish to pay a mute
respect to her on whom life had weighed so hard of late.  For
whatever reason he had come, he was keeping quietly to one side.  And
unobserved, he, too, had his watcher--the little model, sheltering
behind a tall grave.

Two men in rusty black bore the little coffin; then came the white-
robed chaplain; then Mrs. Hughs and her little son; close behind, his
head thrust forward with trembling movements from side to side, old
Creed; and, last of all, young Martin Stone.  Hilary joined the young
doctor.  So the five mourners walked.

Before a small dark hole in a corner of the cemetery they stopped.
On this forest of unflowered graves the sun was falling; the east
wind, with its faint reek, touched the old butler's plastered hair,
and brought moisture to the corners of his eyes, fixed with
absorption on the chaplain.  Words and thoughts hunted in his mind.

'He's gettin' Christian burial.  Who gives this woman away?  I do.
Ashes to ashes.  I never suspected him of livin'.'  The conning of
the burial service, shortened to fit the passing of that tiny shade,
gave him pleasurable sensation; films came down on his eyes; he
listened like some old parrot on its perch, his head a little to one
side.

'Them as dies young,' he thought, 'goes straight to heaven.  We
trusts in God--all mortal men; his godfathers and his godmothers in
his baptism.  Well, so it is!  I'm not afeared o' death!'

Seeing the little coffin tremble above the hole, he craned his head
still further forward.  It sank; a smothered sobbing rose.  The old
butler touched the arm in front of him with shaking fingers.

"Don't 'e," he whispered; "he's a-gone to glory."

But, hearing the dry rattle of the earth, he took out his own
handkerchief and put it to his nose.

'Yes, he's a-gone,' he thought; 'another little baby.  Old men an'
maidens, young men an' little children; it's a-goin' on all the time.
Where 'e is now there'll be no marryin', no, nor givin' out in
marriage; till death do us part.'

The wind, sweeping across the filled-in hole, carried the rustle of
his husky breathing, the dry, smothered sobbing of the seamstress,
out across the shadows' graves, to those places, to those streets....

>From the baby's funeral Hilary and Martin walked away together, and
far behind them, across the road, the little model followed.  For
some time neither spoke; then Hilary, stretching out his hand towards
a squalid alley, said:

"They haunt us and drag us down.  A long, dark passage.  Is there a
light at the far end, Martin?"

"Yes," said Martin gruffly.

"I don't see it."

Martin looked at him.

"Hamlet!"

Hilary did not reply.

The young man watched him sideways.  "It's a disease to smile like
that!"

Hilary ceased to smile.  "Cure me, then," he said, with sudden anger,
"you man of health!"

The young "Sanitist's" sallow cheeks flushed.  "Atrophy of the nerve
of action," he muttered; "there's no cure for that!"

"Ah!" said Hilary: "All kinds of us want social progress in our
different ways.  You, your grandfather, my brother, myself; there are
four types for you.  Will you tell me any one of us is the right man
for the job?  For instance, action's not natural to me."

"Any act," answered Martin, "is better than no act."

"And myopia is natural to you, Martin.  Your prescription in this
case has not been too successful, has it?"

"I can't help it if people will be d---d fools."

"There you hit it.  But answer me this question: Isn't a social
conscience, broadly speaking, the result of comfort and security?"

Martin shrugged his shoulders.

"And doesn't comfort also destroy the power of action?"

Again Martin shrugged.

"Then, if those who have the social conscience and can see what is
wrong have lost their power of action, how can you say there is any
light at the end of this dark passage?"

Martin took his pipe out, filled it, and pressed the filling with his
thumb.

"There is light," he said at last, "in spite of all invertebrates.
Good-bye!  I've wasted enough time," and he abruptly strode away.

"And in spite of myopia?"  muttered Hilary.

A few minutes later, coming out from Messrs. Rose and Thorn's, where
he had gone to buy tobacco, he came suddenly on the little model,
evidently waiting.

"I was at the funeral," she, said; and her face added plainly: 'I've
followed you.'  Uninvited, she walked on at his side.

'This is not the same girl,' he thought, 'that I sent away five days
ago.  She has lost something, gained something.  I don't know her.'

There seemed such a stubborn purpose in her face and manner.  It was
like the look in a dog's eyes that says: 'Master, you thought to shut
me up away from you; I know now what that is like.  Do what you will,
I mean in future to be near you.'

This look, by its simplicity, frightened one to whom the primitive
was strange.  Desiring to free himself of his companion, yet not
knowing how, Hilary sat down in Kensington Gardens on the first bench
they came to.  The little model sat down beside him.  The quiet siege
laid to him by this girl was quite uncanny.  It was as though someone
were binding him with toy threads, swelling slowly into rope before
his eyes.  In this fear of Hilary's there was at first much
irritation.  His fastidiousness and sense of the ridiculous were
roused.  What did this little creature with whom he had no thoughts
and no ideas in common, whose spirit and his could never hope to
meet, think that she could get from him?  Was she trying to weave a
spell over him too, with her mute, stubborn adoration?  Was she
trying to change his protective weakness for her to another sort of
weakness?  He turned and looked; she dropped her eyes at once, and
sat still as a stone figure.

As in her spirit, so in her body, she was different; her limbs looked
freer, rounder; her breath seemed stirring her more deeply; like a
flower of early June she was opening before his very eyes.  This,
though it gave him pleasure, also added to his fear.  The strange
silence, in its utter naturalness--for what could he talk about with
her?--brought home to him more vividly than anything before, the
barriers of class.  All he thought of was how not to be ridiculous!
She was inviting him in some strange, unconscious, subtle way to
treat her as a woman, as though in spirit she had linked her round
young arms about his neck, and through her half-closed lips were
whispering the eternal call of sex to sex.  And he, a middle-aged and
cultivated man, conscious of everything, could not even speak for
fear of breaking through his shell of delicacy.  He hardly breathed,
disturbed to his very depths by the young figure sitting by his side,
and by the dread of showing that disturbance.

Beside the cultivated plant the self-sown poppy rears itself; round
the stem of a smooth tree the honeysuckle twines; to a trim wall the
ivy clings.

In her new-found form and purpose this girl had gained a strange,
still power; she no longer felt it mattered whether he spoke or
looked at her; her instinct, piercing through his shell, was certain
of the throbbing of his pulses, the sweet poison in his blood.

The perception of this still power, more than all else, brought fear
to Hilary.  He need not speak; she would not care!  He need not even
look at her; she had but to sit there silent, motionless, with the
breath of youth coming through her parted lips, and the light of
youth stealing through her half-closed eyes.

And abruptly he got up and walked away.




CHAPTER XXXI

SWAN SONG

The new wine, if it does not break the old bottle, after fierce
effervescence seethes and bubbles quietly.

It was so in Mr. Stone's old bottle, hour by hour and day by day,
throughout the month.  A pinker, robuster look came back to his
cheeks; his blue eyes, fixed on distance, had in them more light; his
knees regained their powers; he bathed, and, all unknown to him, for
he only saw the waters he cleaved with his ineffably slow stroke,
Hilary and Martin, on alternate weeks, and keeping at a proper
distance, for fear he should see them doing him a service, attended
at that function in case Mr. Stone should again remain too long
seated at the bottom of the Serpentine.  Each morning after his cocoa
and porridge he could be heard sweeping out his room with
extraordinary vigour, and as ten o'clock came near anyone who
listened would remark a sound of air escaping, as he moved up and
down on his toes in preparation for the labours of the day.  No
letters, of course, nor any newspapers disturbed the supreme and
perfect self-containment of this life devoted to Fraternity--no
letters, partly because he lacked a known address, partly because for
years he had not answered them; and with regard to newspapers, once a
month he went to a Public Library, and could be seen with the last
four numbers of two weekly reviews before him, making himself
acquainted with the habits of those days, and moving his lips as
though in prayer.  At ten each morning anyone in the corridor outside
his room was startled by the whirr of an alarum clock; perfect
silence followed; then rose a sound of shuffling, whistling,
rustling, broken by sharply muttered words; soon from this turbid
lake of sound the articulate, thin fluting of an old man's voice
streamed forth.  This, alternating with the squeak of a quill pen,
went on till the alarum clock once more went off.  Then he who stood
outside could smell that Mr. Stone would shortly eat; if, stimulated
by that scent, he entered; he might see the author of the "Book of
Universal Brotherhood" with a baked potato in one hand and a cup of
hot milk in the other; on the table, too, the ruined forms of eggs,
tomatoes, oranges, bananas, figs, prunes, cheese, and honeycomb,
which had passed into other forms already, together with a loaf of
wholemeal bread.  Mr. Stone would presently emerge in his cottage-
woven tweeds, and old hat of green-black felt; or, if wet, in a long
coat of yellow gaberdine, and sou'wester cap of the same material;
but always with a little osier fruit-bag in his hand.  Thus equipped,
he walked down to Rose and Thorn's, entered, and to the first man he
saw handed the osier fruit-bag, some coins, and a little book
containing seven leaves, headed "Food: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday,"
and so forth.  He then stood looking through the pickles in some jar
or other at things beyond, with one hand held out, fingers upwards,
awaiting the return of his little osier fruit-bag.  Feeling.
presently that it had been restored to him, he would turn and walk
out of the shop.  Behind his back, on the face of the department, the
same protecting smile always rose.  Long habit had perfected it.  All
now felt that, though so very different from themselves, this aged
customer was dependent on them.  By not one single farthing or one
pale slip of cheese would they have defrauded him for all the
treasures of the moon, and any new salesman who laughed at that old
client was promptly told to "shut his head."

Mr. Stone's frail form, bent somewhat to one side by the increased
gravamen of the osier bag, was now seen moving homewards.  He arrived
perhaps ten minutes before the three o'clock alarum, and soon passing
through preliminary chaos, the articulate, thin fluting of his voice
streamed forth again, broken by the squeaking and spluttering of his
quill.

But towards four o'clock signs of cerebral excitement became visible;
his lips would cease to utter sounds, his pen to squeak.  His face,
with a flushed forehead, would appear at the open window.  As soon as
the little model came in sight--her eyes fixed, not on his window,
but on Hilary's--he turned his back, evidently waiting for her to
enter by the door.  His first words were uttered in a tranquil voice:
"I have several pages.  I have placed your chair.  Are you ready?
Follow!"

Except for that strange tranquillity of voice and the disappearance
of the flush on his brow, there was no sign of the rejuvenescence
that she brought, of such refreshment as steals on the traveller who
sits down beneath a lime-tree toward the end of along day's journey;
no sign of the mysterious comfort distilled into his veins by the
sight of her moody young face, her young, soft limbs.  So from some
stimulant men very near their end will draw energy, watching, as it
were, a shape beckoning them forward, till suddenly it disappears in
darkness.

In the quarter of an hour sacred to their tea and conversation he
never noticed that she was always listening for sounds beyond; it was
enough that in her presence he felt singleness of purpose strong
within him.

When she had gone, moving languidly, moodily away, her eyes darting
about for signs of Hilary, Mr. Stone would sit down rather suddenly
and fall asleep, to dream, perhaps, of Youth--Youth with its scent of
sap, its close beckonings; Youth with its hopes and fears; Youth that
hovers round us so long after it is dead!  His spirit would smile
behind its covering--that thin china of his face; and, as dogs
hunting in their sleep work their feet, so he worked the fingers
resting on his woollen knees.

The seven o'clock alarum woke him to the preparation of the evening
meal.  This eaten, he began once more to pace up and down, to pour
words out into the silence, and to drive his squeaking quill.

So was being written a book such as the world had never seen!

But the girl who came so moodily to bring him refreshment, and went
so moodily away, never in these days caught a glimpse of that which
she was seeking.

Since the morning when he had left her abruptly, Hilary had made a
point of being out in the afternoons and not returning till past six
o'clock.  By this device he put off facing her and himself, for he
could no longer refuse to see that he had himself to face.  In the
few minutes of utter silence when the girl sat beside him, magnetic,
quivering with awakening force, he had found that the male in him was
far from dead.  It was no longer vague, sensuous feeling; it was
warm, definite desire.  The more she was in his thoughts, the less
spiritual his feeling for this girl of the people had become.

In those days he seemed much changed to such as knew him well.
Instead of the delicate, detached, slightly humorous suavity which he
had accustomed people to expect from him, the dry kindliness which
seemed at once to check confidence and yet to say, 'If you choose to
tell me anything, I should never think of passing judgment on you,
whatever you have done'--instead of that rather abstracted, faintly
quizzical air, his manner had become absorbed and gloomy.  He seemed
to jib away from his friends.  His manner at the "Pen and Ink" was
wholly unsatisfying to men who liked to talk.  He was known to be
writing a new book; they suspected him of having "got into a hat"--
this Victorian expression, found by Mr. Balladyce in some chronicle
of post-Thackerayan manners, and revived by him in his incomparable
way, as who should say, 'What delicious expressions those good
bourgeois had!' now flourished in second childhood.

In truth, Hilary's difficulty with his new book was merely the one of
not being able to work at it at all.  Even the housemaid who "did"
his study noticed that day after day she was confronted by Chapter
XXIV., in spite of her employer's staying in, as usual, every
morning.

The change in his manner and face, which had grown strained and
harassed, had been noticed by Bianca, though she would have died
sooner than admit she had noticed anything about him.  It was one of
those periods in the lives of households like an hour of a late
summer's day--brooding, electric, as yet quiescent, but charged with
the currents of coming storms.

Twice only in those weeks while Hughs was in prison did Hilary see
the girl.  Once he met her when he was driving home; she blushed
crimson and her eyes lighted up.  And one morning, too, he passed her
on the bench where they had sat together.  She was staring straight
before her, the corners of her mouth drooping discontentedly.  She
did not see him.

To a man like Hilary-for whom running after women had been about the
last occupation in the world, who had, in fact, always fought shy of
them and imagined that they would always fight shy of him--there was
an unusual enticement and dismay in the feeling that a young girl
really was pursuing him.  It was at once too good, too unlikely, and
too embarrassing to be true.  His sudden feeling for her was the
painful sensation of one who sees a ripe nectarine hanging within
reach.  He dreamed continually of stretching out his hand, and so he
did not dare, or thought he did not dare, to pass that way.  All this
did not favour the tenor of a studious, introspective life; it also
brought a sense of unreality which made him avoid his best friends.
This, partly, was why Stephen came to see him one Sunday, his other
reason for the visit being the calculation that Hughs would be
released on the following Wednesday.

'This girl,' he thought, 'is going to the house still, and Hilary
will let things drift till he can't stop them, and there'll be a real
mess.'

The fact of the man's having been in prison gave a sinister turn to
an affair regarded hitherto as merely sordid by Stephen's orderly and
careful mind.

Crossing the garden, he heard Mr. Stone's voice issuing through the
open window.

'Can't the old crank stop even on Sundays?' he thought.

He found Hilary in his study, reading a book on the civilisation of
the Maccabees, in preparation for a review.  He gave Stephen but a
dubious welcome.

Stephen broke ground gently.

"We haven't seen you for an age.  I hear our old friend at it.  Is he
working double tides to finish his magnum opus?  I thought he
observed the day of rest."

"He does as a rule," said Hilary.

"Well, he's got the girl there now dictating."

Hilary winced.  Stephen continued with greater circumspection
"You couldn't get the old boy to finish by Wednesday, I suppose?  He
must be quite near the end by now."

The notion of Mr. Stone's finishing his book by Wednesday procured a
pale smile from Hilary.

"Could you get your Law Courts," he said, "to settle up the affairs
of mankind for good and all by Wednesday?"

"By Jove! Is it as bad as that?  I thought, at any rate, he must be
meaning to finish some day."

"When men are brothers," said Hilary, "he will finish."

Stephen whistled.

"Look here, dear boy!" he said, "that ruffian comes out on Wednesday.
The whole thing will begin over again."

Hilary rose and paced the room.  "I refuse," he said, "to consider
Hughs a ruffian.  What do we know about him, or any of them?"

"Precisely!  What do we know of this girl?"

"I am not going to discuss that," Hilary said shortly.

For a moment the faces of the two brothers wore a hard, hostile look,
as though the deep difference between their characters had at last
got the better of their loyalty.  They both seemed to recognise this,
for they turned their heads away.

"I just wanted to remind you," Stephen said, "though you know your
own business best, of course."  And at Hilary's nod he thought:

'That's just exactly what he doesn't!'

He soon left, conscious of an unwonted awkwardness in his brother's
presence.  Hilary watched him out through the wicket gate, then sat
down on the solitary garden bench.

Stephen's visit had merely awakened perverse desires in him.
Strong sunlight was falling on that little London garden, disclosing
its native shadowiness; streaks, and smudges such as Life smears over
the faces of those who live too consciously.  Hilary, beneath the
acacia-tree not yet in bloom, marked an early butterfly flitting over
the geraniums blossoming round an old sundial.  Blackbirds were
holding evensong; the late perfume of the lilac came stealing forth
into air faintly smeeched with chimney smoke.  There was brightness,
but no glory, in that little garden; scent, but no strong air blown
across golden lakes of buttercups, from seas of springing clover, or
the wind-silver of young wheat; music, but no full choir of sound, no
hum.  Like the face and figure of its master, so was this little
garden, whose sundial the sun seldom reached-refined, self-conscious,
introspective, obviously a creature of the town.  At that moment,
however, Hilary was not looking quite himself; his face was flushed,
his eyes angry, almost as if he had been a man of action.

The voice of Mr. Stone was still audible, fitfully quavering out into
the air, and the old man himself could now and then be seen holding
up his manuscript, his profile clear-cut against the darkness of the
room.  A sentence travelled out across the garden:

"'Amidst the tur-bu-lent dis-cov-eries of those days, which, like
cross-currented and multibillowed seas, lapped and hollowed every
rock '"

A motor-car dashing past drowned the rest, and when the voice rose
again it was evidently dictating another paragraph.

"'In those places, in those streets, the shadows swarmed, whispering
and droning like a hive of dying bees, who, their honey eaten, wander
through the winter day seeking flowers that are frozen and dead."'

A great bee which had been busy with the lilac began to circle,
booming, round his hair.  Suddenly Hilary saw Mr. Stone raise both
his arms.

"'In huge congeries, crowded, devoid of light and air, they were
assembled, these bloodless imprints from forms of higher caste.  They
lay, like the reflection of leaves which, fluttering free in the
sweet winds, let fall to the earth wan resemblances.  Imponderous,
dark ghosts, wandering ones chained to the ground, they had no hope
of any Lovely City, nor knew whence they had come.  Men cast them on
the pavements and marched on.  They did not in Universal Brotherhood
clasp their shadows to sleep within their hearts--for the sun was not
then at noon, when no man has a shadow.'"

As those words of swan song died away he swayed and trembled, and
suddenly disappeared below the sight-line, as if he had sat down.
The little model took his place in the open window.  She started at
seeing Hilary; then, motionless, stood gazing at him.  Out of the
gloom of the opening her eyes were all pupil, two spots of the
surrounding darkness imprisoned in a face as pale as any flower.
Rigid as the girl herself, Hilary looked up at her.

A voice behind him said: "How are you?  I thought I'd give my car a
run."  Mr. Purcey was coming from the gate, his eyes fixed on the
window where the girl stood.  "How is your wife?"  he added.

The bathos of this visit roused an acid fury in Hilary.  He surveyed
Mr. Purcey's figure from his cloth-topped boots to his tall hat, and
said: "Shall we go in and find her?"

As they went along Mr. Purcey said: "That's the young--the--er--model
I met in your wife's studio, isn't it?  Pretty girl!"

Hilary compressed his lips.

"Now, what sort of living do those girls make?"  pursued Mr. Purcey.
"I suppose they've most of them other resources.  Eh, what?"

"They make the living God will let them, I suppose, as other people
do."

Mr. Purcey gave him a sharp look.  It was almost as if Dallison had
meant to snub him.

"Oh, exactly!  I should think this girl would have no difficulty."
And suddenly he saw a curious change come over "that writing fellow,"
as he always afterwards described Hilary.  Instead of a mild,
pleasant-looking chap enough, he had become a regular cold devil.

"My wife appears to be out," Hilary said.  "I also have an
engagement."

In his surprise and anger Mr. Purcey said with great simplicity,
"Sorry I'm 'de trop'!" and soon his car could be heard bearing him
away with some unnecessary noise.




CHAPTER XXXII

BEHIND BIANCA'S VEIL

But Bianca was not out.  She had been a witness of Hilary's long look
at the little model.  Coming from her studio through the glass
passage to the house, she could not, of course, see what he was
gazing at, but she knew as well as if the girl had stood before her
in the dark opening of the window.  Hating herself for having seen,
she went to her room, and lay on her bed with her hands pressed to
her eyes.  She was used to loneliness--that necessary lot of natures
such as hers; but the bitter isolation of this hour was such as to
drive even her lonely nature to despair.

She rose at last, and repaired the ravages made in her face and
dress, lest anyone should see that she was suffering.  Then, first
making sure that Hilary had left the garden, she stole out.

She wandered towards Hyde Park.  It was Whitsuntide, a time of fear
to the cultivated Londoner.  The town seemed all arid jollity and
paper bags whirled on a dusty wind.  People swarmed everywhere in
clothes which did not suit them; desultory, dead-tired creatures who,
in these few green hours of leisure out of the sandy eternity of
their toil, were not suffered to rest, but were whipped on by starved
instincts to hunt pleasures which they longed for too dreadfully to
overtake.

Bianca passed an old tramp asleep beneath a tree.  His clothes had
clung to him so long and lovingly that they were falling off, but his
face was calm as though masked with the finest wax.  Forgotten were
his sores and sorrows; he was in the blessed fields of sleep.

Bianca hastened away from the sight of such utter peace.  She
wandered into a grove of trees which had almost eluded the notice of
the crowd.  They were limes, guarding still within them their honey
bloom.  Their branches of light, broad leaves, near heart-shaped,
were spread out like wide skirts.  The tallest of these trees, a
beautiful, gay creature, stood tremulous, like a mistress waiting for
her tardy lover.  What joy she seemed to promise, what delicate
enticement, with every veined quivering leaf!  And suddenly the sun
caught hold of her, raised her up to him, kissed her all over; she
gave forth a sigh of happiness, as though her very spirit had
travelled through her lips up to her lover's heart.

A woman in a lilac frock came stealing through the trees towards
Bianca, and sitting down not far off, kept looking quickly round
under her sunshade.

Presently Bianca saw what she was looking for.  A young man in black
coat and shining hat came swiftly up and touched her shoulder.  Half
hidden by the foliage they sat, leaning forward, prodding gently at
the ground with stick and parasol; the stealthy murmur of their talk,
so soft and intimate that no word was audible, stole across the
grass; and secretly he touched her hand and arm.  They were not of
the holiday crowd, and had evidently chosen out this vulgar afternoon
for a stolen meeting.

Bianca rose and hurried on amongst the trees.  She left the Park.  In
the streets many couples, not so careful to conceal their intimacy,
were parading arm-in-arm.  The sight of them did not sting her like
the sight of those lovers in the Park; they were not of her own
order.  But presently she saw a little boy and girl asleep on the
doorstep of a mansion, with their cheeks pressed close together and
their arms round each other, and again she hurried on.  In the course
of that long wandering she passed the building which "Westminister"
was so anxious to avoid.  In its gateway an old couple were just
about to separate, one to the men's, the other to the women's
quarters.  Their toothless mouths were close together.  "Well,
goodnight, Mother!"  "Good-night, Father, good-night-take care o'
yourself!"

Once more Bianca hurried on.

It was past nine when she turned into the Old Square, and rang the
bell of her sister's house with the sheer physical desire to rest--
somewhere that was not her home.

At one end of the long, low drawing-room Stephen, in evening dress,
was reading aloud from a review.  Cecilia was looking dubiously at
his sock, where she seemed to see a tiny speck of white that might be
Stephen.  In the window at the far end Thyme and Martin were
exchanging speeches at short intervals; they made no move at Bianca's
entrance; and their faces said: "We have no use for that handshaking
nonsense!"

Receiving Cecilia's little, warm, doubting kiss and Stephen's polite,
dry handshake, Bianca motioned to him not to stop reading.  He
resumed.  Cecilia, too, resumed her scrutiny of Stephen's sock.

'Oh dear!' she thought.  'I know B.'s come here because she's
unhappy.  Poor thing!  Poor Hilary!  It's that wretched business
again, I suppose.'

Skilled in every tone of Stephen's voice, she knew that Bianca's
entry had provoked the same train of thought in him; to her he seemed
reading out these words: 'I disapprove--I disapprove.  She's Cis's
sister.  But if it wasn't for old Hilary I wouldn't have the subject
in the house!'

Bianca, whose subtlety recorded every shade of feeling, could see
that she was not welcome.  Leaning back with veil raised, she seemed
listening to Stephen's reading, but in fact she was quivering at the
sight of those two couples.

Couples, couples--for all but her!  What crime had she committed?
Why was the china of her cup flawed so that no one could drink from
it?  Why had she been made so that nobody could love her?  This, the
most bitter of all thoughts, the most tragic of all questionings,
haunted her.

The article which Stephen read--explaining exactly how to deal with
people so that from one sort of human being they might become
another, and going on to prove that if, after this conversion, they
showed signs of a reversion, it would then be necessary to know the
reason why--fell dryly on ears listening to that eternal question:
Why is it with me as it is?  It is not fair!--listening to the
constant murmuring of her pride: I am not wanted here or anywhere.
Better to efface myself!

>From their end of the room Thyme and Martin scarcely looked at her.
To them she was Aunt B., an amateur, the mockery of whose eyes
sometimes penetrated their youthful armour; they were besides too
interested in their conversation to perceive that she was suffering.
The skirmish of that conversation had lasted now for many days--ever
since the death of the Hughs' baby.

"Well," Martin was saying, "what are you going to do?  It's no good
to base it on the baby; you must know your own mind all round.  You
can't go rushing into real work on mere sentiment."

"You went to the funeral, Martin.  It's bosh to say you didn't feel
it too!"

Martin deigned no answer to this insinuation.

"We've gone past the need for sentiment," he said: "it's exploded; so
is Justice, administered by an upper class with a patch over one eye
and a squint in the other.  When you see a dying donkey in a field,
you don't want to refer the case to a society, as your dad would; you
don't want an essay of Hilary's, full of sympathy with everybody, on
'Walking in a field: with reflections on the end of donkeys'--you
want to put a bullet in the donkey."

"You're always down on Uncle Hilary," said Thyme.

"I don't mind Hilary himself; I object to his type."

"Well, he objects to yours," said Thyme.

"I'm not so sure of that," said Martin slowly; "he hasn't got
character enough."

Thyme raised her chin, and, looking at him through half-closed eyes,
said: "Well, I do think, of all the conceited persons I ever met
you're the worst."

Martin's nostril curled.

"Are you prepared," he said, "to put a bullet in the donkey, or are
you not?"

"I only see one donkey, and not a dying one!"

Martin stretched out his hand and gripped her arm below the elbow.
Retaining it luxuriously, he said: "Don't wander!"

Thyme tried to free her arm.  "Let go!"

Martin was looking straight into her eyes.  A flush had risen in his
cheeks.

Thyme, too, went the colour of the old-rose curtain behind which she
sat.

"Let go!"

"I won't!  I'll make you know your mind.  What do you mean to do?
Are you coming in a fit of sentiment, or do you mean business?"

Suddenly, half-hypnotised, the young girl ceased to struggle.  Her
face had the strangest expression of submission and defiance--a sort
of pain, a sort of delight.  So they sat full half a minute staring
at each other's eyes.  Hearing a rustling sound, they looked, and saw
Bianca moving to the door.  Cecilia, too, had risen.

"What is it, B.?"

Bianca, opening the door, went out.  Cecilia followed swiftly, too
late to catch even a glimpse of her sister's face behind the veil...

In Mr. Stone's room the green lamp burned dimly, and he who worked by
it was sitting on the edge of his campbed, attired in his old brown
woollen gown and slippers.

And suddenly it seemed to him that he was not alone.

"I have finished for to-night," he said.  "I am waiting for the moon
to rise.  She is nearly full; I shall see her face from here."

A form sat down by him on the bed, and a voice said softly:

"Like a woman's."

Mr. Stone saw his younger daughter.  "You have your hat on.  Are you
going out, my dear?"

"I saw your light as I came in."

"The moon," said Mr. Stone, "is an arid desert.  Love is unknown
there."

"How can you bear to look at her, then?"  Bianca whispered.

Mr. Stone raised his finger.  "She has risen."

The wan moon had slipped out into the darkness.  Her light stole
across the garden and through the open window to the bed where they
were sitting.

"Where there is no love, Dad," Bianca said, "there can be no life,
can there?"

Mr. Stone's eyes seemed to drink the moonlight.

"That," he said, "is the great truth.  The bed is shaking!"

With her arms pressed tight across her breast, Bianca was struggling
with violent, noiseless sobbing.  That desperate struggle seemed to
be tearing her to death before his eyes, and Mr. Stone sat silent,
trembling.  He knew not what to do.  From his frosted heart years of
Universal Brotherhood had taken all knowledge of how to help his
daughter.  He could only sit touching her tremulously with thin
fingers.

The form beside him, whose warmth he felt against his arm, grew
stiller, as though, in spite of its own loneliness, his helplessness
had made it feel that he, too; was lonely.  It pressed a little
closer to him.  The moonlight, gaining pale mastery over the
flickering lamp, filled the whole room.

Mr. Stone said: "I want her mother!"

The form beside him ceased to struggle.

Finding out an old, forgotten way, Mr. Stone's arm slid round that
quivering body.

"I do not know what to say to her," he muttered, and slowly he began
to rock himself.

"Motion," he said, "is soothing."

The moon passed on.  The form beside him sat so still that Mr. Stone
ceased moving.  His daughter was no longer sobbing.  Suddenly her
lips seared his forehead.

Trembling from that desperate caress, he raised his fingers to the
spot and looked round.

She was gone.




CHAPTER XXXIII

HILARY DEALS WITH THE SITUATION

To understand the conduct of Hilary and Bianca at what "Westminister"
would have called this "crisax," not only their feelings as sentient
human beings, but their matrimonial philosophy, must be taken into
account.  By education and environment they belonged to a section of
society which had "in those days" abandoned the more old-fashioned
views of marriage.  Such as composed this section, finding themselves
in opposition, not only to the orthodox proprietary creed, but even
to their own legal rights, had been driven to an attitude of almost
blatant freedom.  Like all folk in opposition, they were bound, as a
simple matter of principle, to disagree with those in power, to view
with a contemptuous resentment that majority which said, "I believe
the thing is mine, and mine it shall remain"--a majority which by
force of numbers made this creed the law.  Unable legally to, be
other than the proprietors of wife or husband, as the case might be,
they were obliged, even in the most happy unions, to be very careful
not to become disgusted with their own position.  Their legal status
was, as it were, a goad, spurring them on to show their horror of it.
They were like children sent to school with trousers that barely
reached their knees, aware that they could neither reduce their
stature to the proportions of their breeches nor make their breeches
grow.  They were furnishing an instance of that immemorial "change of
form to form" to which Mr. Stone had given the name of Life.  In a
past age thinkers and dreamers and "artistic pigs" rejecting the
forms they found, had given unconscious shape to this marriage law,
which, after they had become the wind, had formed itself out of their
exiled pictures and thoughts and dreams.  And now this particular law
in turn was the dried rind, devoid of pips or speculation; and the
thinkers and dreamers and "artistic pigs" were again rejecting it,
and again themselves in exile.

This exiled faith, this honour amongst thieves, animated a little
conversation between Hilary and Bianca on the Tuesday following the
night when Mr. Stone sat on his bed to watch the rising moon.

Quietly Bianca said: "I think I shall be going away for a time."

"Wouldn't you rather that I went instead?"  "You are wanted; I am
not."

That ice-cold, ice-clear remark contained the pith of the whole
matter; and Hilary said:

"You are not going at once?"

"At the end of the week, I think."

Noting his eyes fixed on her, she added:

"Yes; we're neither of us looking quite our best."

"I am sorry."

"I know you are."

This had been all.  It had been sufficient to bring Hilary once more
face to face with the situation.

Its constituent elements remained the same; relative values had much
changed.  The temptations of St. Anthony were becoming more poignant
every hour.  He had no "principles" to pit against them: he had
merely the inveterate distaste for hurting anybody, and a feeling
that if he yielded to his inclination he would be faced ultimately
with a worse situation than ever.  It was not possible for him to
look at the position as Mr. Purcey might have done, if his wife had
withdrawn from him and a girl had put herself in his way.  Neither
hesitation because of the defenceless position of the girl, nor
hesitation because of his own future with her, would have troubled
Mr. Purcey.  He--good man--in his straightforward way, would have
only thought about the present--not, indeed, intending to have a
future with a young person of that class.  Consideration for a wife
who had withdrawn from the society of Mr. Purcey would also naturally
have been absent from the equation.  That Hilary worried over all
these questions was the mark of his 'fin de sieclism.'  And in the
meantime the facts demanded a decision.

He had not spoken to this girl since the day of the baby's funeral,
but in that long look from the garden he had in effect said: 'You are
drawing me to the only sort of union possible to us!'  And she in
effect had answered: 'Do what you like with me!'

There were other facts, too, to be reckoned with.  Hughs would be
released to-morrow; the little model would not stop her visits unless
forced to; Mr. Stone could not well do without her; Bianca had in
effect declared that she was being driven out of her own house.  It
was this situation which Hilary, seated beneath the bust of Socrates,
turned over and over in his mind.  Long and painful reflection
brought him back continually to the thought that he himself, and not
Bianca, had better go away.  He was extremely bitter and contemptuous
towards himself that he had not done so long ago.  He made use of the
names Martin had given him.  "Hamlet," "Amateur," "Invertebrate."
They gave him, unfortunately, little comfort.

In the afternoon he received a visit.  Mr. Stone came in with his
osier fruit-bag in his hand.  He remained standing, and spoke at
once.

"Is my daughter happy?"

At this unexpected question Hilary walked over to the fireplace.

"No," he said at last; "I am afraid she is not."

"Why?"

Hilary was silent; then, facing the old man, he said:

"I think she will be glad, for certain reasons, if I go away for a
time."

"When are you going?"  asked Mr. Stone.

"As soon as I can."

Mr. Stone's eyes, wistfully bright, seemed trying to see through
heavy fog.

"She came to me, I think," he said; "I seem to recollect her crying.
You are good to her?"

"I have tried to be," said Hilary.

Mr. Stone's face was discoloured by a flush.  "You have no children,"
he said painfully; "do you live together?"

Hilary shook his head.

"You are estranged?"  said Mr. Stone.

Hilary bowed.  There was a long silence.  Mr. Stone's eyes had
travelled to the window.

"Without love there cannot be life," he said at last; and fixing his
wistful gaze on Hilary, asked: "Does she love another?"

Again Hilary shook his head.

When Mr. Stone next spoke it was clearly to himself.

"I do not know why I am glad.  Do you love another?"

At this question Hilary's eyebrows settled in a frown.  "What do you
mean by love?"  he said.

Mr. Stone did not reply; it was evident that he was reflecting
deeply.  His lips began to move: "By love I mean the forgetfulness of
self.  Unions are frequent in which only the sexual instincts, or the
remembrance of self, are roused---"

"That is true," muttered Hilary.

Mr. Stone looked up; painful traces of confusion showed in his face.

"We were discussing something."

"I was telling you," said Hilary, "that it would be better for your
daughter--if I go away for a time."

"Yes," said Mr. Stone; "you are estranged."

Hilary went back to his stand before the empty fireplace.

"There is one thing, sir," he said, "on my conscience to say before I
go, and I must leave it to you to decide.  The little girl who comes
to you no longer lives where she used to live."

"In that street...."  said Mr. Stone.

Hilary went on quickly.  "She was obliged to leave because the
husband of the woman with whom she used to lodge became infatuated
with her.  He has been in prison, and comes out tomorrow.  If she
continues to come here he will, of course, be able to find her.  I'm
afraid he will pursue her again.  Have I made it clear to you?"

"No," said Mr. Stone.

"The man," resumed Hilary patiently, "is a poor, violent creature,
who has been wounded in the head; he is not quite responsible.  He
may do the girl an injury."

"What injury?"

"He has stabbed his wife already."

"I will speak to him," said Mr. Stone.

Hilary smiled.  "I am afraid that words will hardly meet the case.
She ought to disappear."

There was silence.

"My book!" said Mr. Stone.

It smote Hilary to see how white his face had become.  'It's better,'
he thought, 'to bring his will-power into play; she will never come
here, anyway, after I'm gone.'

But, unable to bear the tragedy in the old man's eyes, he touched him
on the arm.

"Perhaps she will take the risk, sir, if you ask her."

Mr. Stone did not answer, and, not knowing what more to say, Hilary
went back to the window.  Miranda was slumbering lightly out there in
the speckled shade, where it was not too warm and not too cold, her
cheek resting on her paw and white teeth showing.

Mr. Stone's voice rose again.  "You are right; I cannot ask her to
run a risk like that!"

"She is just coming up the garden," Hilary said huskily.  "Shall I
tell her to come in?"

"Yes," said Mr. Stone.

Hilary beckoned.

The girl came in, carrying a tiny bunch of lilies of the valley; her
face fell at sight of Mr. Stone; she stood still, raising the lilies
to her breast.  Nothing could have been more striking than the change
from her look of guttered expectancy to a sort of hard dismay.  A
spot of red came into both her cheeks.  She gazed from Mr. Stone to
Hilary and back again.  Both were staring at her.  No one spoke.  The
little model's bosom began heaving as though she had been running;
she said faintly: "Look; I brought you this, Mr. Stone!" and held out
to him the bunch of lilies.  But Mr. Stone made no sign.  "Don't you
like them?"

Mr. Stone's eyes remained fastened on her face.

To Hilary this suspense was, evidently, most distressing.  "Come,
will you tell her, sir," he said, "or shall I?"

Mr. Stone spoke.

"I shall try and write my book without you.  You must not run this
risk.  I cannot allow it."

The little model turned her eyes from side to side.  "But I like to
copy out your book," she said.

"The man will injure you," said Mr. Stone.

The little model looked at Hilary.

"I don't care if he does; I'm not afraid of him.  I can look after
myself; I'm used to it."

"I am going away," said Hilary quietly.

After a desperate look, that seemed to ask, 'Am I going, too?' the
little model stood as though frozen.

Wishing to end the painful scene, Hilary went up to Mr. Stone.

"Do you want to dictate to her this afternoon, sir?"

"No," said Mr. Stone.

"Nor to-morrow?"

"Will you come a little walk with me?"

Mr. Stone bowed.

Hilary turned to the little model.  "It is goodbye, then," he said.

She did not take his hand.  Her eyes, turned sideways, glinted; her
teeth were fastened on her lower lip.  She dropped the lilies,
suddenly looked up at him, gulped, and slunk away.  In passing she
had smeared the lilies with her foot.

Hilary picked up the fragments of the flowers, and dropped them into
the grate.  The fragrance of the bruised blossoms remained clinging
to the air.

"Shall we get ready for our walk?"  he said.

Mr. Stone moved feebly to the door, and very soon they were walking
silently towards the Gardens.




CHAPTER XXXIV

THYME'S ADVENTURE

This same afternoon Thyme, wheeling a bicycle and carrying a light
valise, was slipping into a back street out of the Old Square.
Putting her burden down at the pavement's edge, she blew a whistle.
A hansom-cab appeared, and a man in ragged clothes, who seemed to
spring out of the pavement, took hold of her valise.  His lean,
unshaven face was full of wolfish misery.

"Get off with you!" the cabman said.

"Let him do it!" murmured Thyme.

The cab-runner hoisted up the trunk, then waited motionless beside
the cab.

Thyme handed him two coppers.  He looked at them in silence, and went
away.

'Poor man,' she thought; 'that's one of the things we've got to do
away with!'

The cab now proceeded in the direction of the Park, Thyme following
on her bicycle, and trying to stare about her calmly.

'This,' she thought, 'is the end of the old life.  I won't be
romantic, and imagine I'm doing anything special; I must take it all
as a matter of course.'  She thought of Mr. Purcey's face--'that
person!'--if he could have seen her at this moment turning her back
on comfort.  'The moment I get there,' she mused, 'I shall let mother
know; she can come out to-morrow, and see for herself.  I can't have
hysterics about my disappearance, and all that.  They must get used
to the idea that I mean to be in touch with things.  I can't be
stopped by what anybody thinks!'

An approaching motor-car brought a startled frown across her brow.
Was it 'that person'?  But though it was not Mr. Purcey and his A.i.
Damyer, it was somebody so like him as made no difference.  Thyme
uttered a little laugh.

In the Park a cool light danced and glittered on the trees and water,
and the same cool, dancing glitter seemed lighting the girl's eyes.

The cabman, unseen, took an admiring look at her.  'Nice little bit,
this!' it said.

'Grandfather bathes here,' thought Thyme.  'Poor darling!  I pity
everyone that's old.'

The cab passed on under the shade of trees out into the road.

'I wonder if we have only one self in us,' thought Thyme.
'I sometimes feel that I have two--Uncle Hilary would understand what
I mean.  The pavements are beginning to smell horrid already, and
it's only June to-morrow.  Will mother feel my going very much?  How
glorious if one didn't feel!'

The cab turned into a narrow street of little shops.

'It must be dreadful to have to serve in a small shop.  What millions
of people there are in the world!  Can anything be of any use?
Martin says what matters is to do one's job; but what is one's job?'

The cab emerged into a broad, quiet square.

'But I'm not going to think of anything,' thought Thyme; 'that's
fatal.  Suppose father stops my allowance; I should have to earn my
living as a typist, or something of that sort; but he won't, when he
sees I mean it.  Besides, mother wouldn't let him.'

The cab entered the Euston Road, and again the cabman's broad face
was turned towards Thyme with an inquiring stare.

'What a hateful road!' Thyme thought.  'What dull, ugly, common-
looking faces all the people seem to have in London! as if they
didn't care for anything but just to get through their day somehow.
I've only seen two really pretty faces!'

The cab stopped before a small tobacconist's on the south side of the
road.

'Have I got to live here?' thought Thyme.

Through the open door a narrow passage led to a narrow staircase
covered with oilcloth.  She raised her bicycle and wheeled it in.  A
Jewish-looking youth emerging from the shop accosted her.

"Your gentleman friend says you are to stay in your rooms, please,
until he comes."

His warm red-brown eyes dwelt on her lovingly.  "Shall I take your
luggage up, miss?"

"Thank you; I can manage."

"It's the first floor," said the young man.

The little rooms which Thyme entered were stuffy, clean, and neat.
Putting her trunk down in her bedroom, which looked out on a bare
yard, she went into the sitting-room and threw the window up.  Down
below the cabman and tobacconist were engaged in conversation.  Thyme
caught the expression on their faces--a sort of leering curiosity.

'How disgusting and horrible men are!' she thought, moodily staring
at the traffic.  All seemed so grim, so inextricable, and vast, out
there in the grey heat and hurry, as though some monstrous devil were
sporting with a monstrous ant-heap.  The reek of petrol and of dung
rose to her nostrils.  It was so terribly big and hopeless; it was so
ugly!  'I shall never do anything,' thought Thyme-'never--never!  Why
doesn't Martin come?'

She went into her bedroom and opened her valise.  With the scent of
lavender that came from it, there sprang up a vision of her white
bedroom at home, and the trees of the green garden and the blackbirds
on the grass.

The sound of footsteps on the stairs brought her back into the
sitting-room.  Martin was standing in the doorway.

Thyme ran towards him, but stopped abruptly.  "I've come, you see.
What made you choose this place?"

"I'm next door but two; and there's a girl here--one of us.  She'll
show you the ropes."

"Is she a lady?"

Martin raised his shoulders.  "She is what is called a lady," he
said; "but she's the right sort, all the same.  Nothing will stop
her."

At this proclamation of supreme virtue, the look on Thyme's face was
very queer.  'You don't trust me,' it seemed to say, 'and you trust
that girl.  You put me here for her to watch over me!...'

"I 'want to send this telegram," she said

Martin read the telegram.  "You oughtn't to have funked telling your
mother what you meant to do."

Thyme crimsoned.  "I'm not cold-blooded, like you."

"This is a big matter," said Martin.  "I told you that you had no
business to come at all if you couldn't look it squarely in the
face."

"If you want me to stay you had better be more decent to me, Martin."

"It must be your own affair," said Martin.

Thyme stood at the window, biting her lips to keep the tears back
from her eyes.  A very pleasant voice behind her said: "I do think
it's so splendid of you to come!"

A girl in grey was standing there--thin, delicate, rather plain, with
a nose ever so little to one side, lips faintly smiling, and large,
shining, greenish eyes.

"I am Mary Daunt.  I live above you.  Have you had some tea?"

In the gentle question of this girl with the faintly smiling lips and
shining eyes Thyme fancied that she detected mockery.

"Yes, thanks.  I want to be shown what my work's to be, at once,
please."

The grey girl looked at Martin.

"Oh!  Won't to-morrow do for all that sort of thing?  I'm sure you
must be tired.  Mr. Stone, do make her rest!"

Martin's glance seemed to say: 'Please leave your femininities!'

"If you mean business, your work will be the same as hers," he said;
"you're not qualified.  All you can do will be visiting, noting the
state of the houses and the condition of the children."

The girl in grey said gently: "You see, we only deal with sanitation
and the children.  It seems hard on the grown people and the old to
leave them out; but there's sure to be so much less money than we
want, so that it must all go towards the future."

There was a silence.  The girl with the shining eyes added softly:
"1950!"

"1950!" repeated Martin.  It seemed to be some formula of faith.

"I must send this telegram!" muttered Thyme.

Martin took it from her and went out.

Left alone in the little room, the two girls did not at first speak.
The girl in grey was watching Thyme half timidly, as if she could not
tell what to make of this young creature who looked so charming, and
kept shooting such distrustful glances.

"I think it's so awfully sweet of you to come," she said at last.
"I know what a good time you have at home; your cousin's often told
me.  Don't you think he's splendid?"

To that question Thyme made no answer.

"Isn't this work horrid," she said--"prying into people's houses?"

The grey girl smiled.  "It is rather awful sometimes.  I've been at
it six months now.  You get used to it.  I've had all the worst
things said to me by now, I should think."

Thyme shuddered.

"You see," said the grey girl's faintly smiling lips, "you soon get
the feeling of having to go through with it.  We all realise it's got
to be done, of course.  Your cousin's one of the best of us; nothing
seems to put him out.  He has such a nice sort of scornful kindness.
I'd rather work with him than anyone."

She looked past her new associate into that world outside, where the
sky seemed all wires and yellow heat-dust.  She did not notice Thyme
appraising her from head to foot, with a stare hostile and jealous,
but pathetic, too, as though confessing that this girl was her
superior.

"I'm sure I can't do that work!" she said suddenly.

The grey girl smiled.  "Oh, I thought that at first."  Then, with an
admiring look: "But I do think it's rather a shame for you, you're so
pretty.  Perhaps they'd put you on to tabulation work, though that's
awfully dull.  We'll ask your cousin."

"No; I'll do the whole or nothing."

"Well," said the grey girl, "I've got one house left to-day.  Would
you like to come and see the sort of thing?"

She took a small notebook from a side pocket in her skirt.

"I can't get on without a pocket.  You must have something that you
can't leave behind.  I left four little bags and two dozen
handkerchiefs in five weeks before I came back to pockets.  It's
rather a horrid house, I'm afraid!"

"I shall be all right," said Thyme shortly.

In the shop doorway the young tobacconist was taking the evening air.
He greeted them with his polite but constitutionally leering smile.

"Good-evening, mith," he said; "nithe evening!"

"He's rather an awful little man," the grey girl said when they had
achieved the crossing of the street; "but he's got quite a nice sense
of humour."

"Ah!" said Thyme.

They had turned into a by-street, and stopped before a house which
had obviously seen better days.  Its windows were cracked, its doors
unpainted, and down in the basement could be seen a pile of rags, an
evil-looking man seated by it, and a blazing fire.  Thyme felt a
little gulping sensation.  There was a putrid scent as of burning
refuse.  She looked at her companion.  The grey girl was consulting
her notebook, with a faint smile on her lips.  And in Thyme's heart
rose a feeling almost of hatred for this girl, who was so business-
like in the presence of such sights and scents.

The door was opened by a young red-faced woman, who looked as if she
had been asleep.

The grey girl screwed up her shining eyes.  "Oh, do you mind if we
come in a minute?"  she said.  "It would be so good of you.  We're
making a report."

"There's nothing to report here," the young woman answered.  But the
grey girl had slipped as gently past as though she had been the very
spirit of adventure.

"Of course, I see that, but just as a matter of form, you know."

"I've parted with most of my things," the young woman said
defensively, "since my husband died.  It's a hard life."

"Yes, yes, but not worse than mine--always poking my nose into other
people's houses."

The young woman was silent, evidently surprised.

"The landlord ought to keep you in better repair," said the grey
girl.  "He owns next door, too, doesn't he?"

The young woman nodded.  "He's a bad landlord.  All down the street
'ere it's the same.  Can't get nothing done."

The grey girl had gone over to a dirty bassinette where a half-naked
child sprawled.  An ugly little girl with fat red cheeks was sitting
on a stool beside it, close to an open locker wherein could be seen a
number of old meat bones.'

"Your chickabiddies?"  said the grey girl.  "Aren't they sweet?"

The young woman's face became illumined by a smile.

"They're healthy," she said.

"That's more than can be said for all the children in the house, I
expect," murmured the grey girl.

The young woman replied emphatically, as though voicing an old
grievance: "The three on the first floor's not so bad, but I don't
let 'em 'ave anything to do with that lot at the top."

Thyme saw her new friend's hand hover over the child's head like some
pale dove.  In answer to that gesture, the mother nodded.  "Just
that; you've got to clean 'em every time they go near them children
at the top."

The grey girl looked at Thyme.  'That's where we've got to go,
evidently,' she seemed to say.

"A dirty lot!" muttered the young woman.

"It's very hard on you."

"It is.  I'm workin' at the laundry all day when I can get it.  I
can't look after the children--they get everywhere."

"Very hard," murmured the grey girl.  "I'll make a note of that."

Together with the little book, in which she was writing furiously,
she had pulled out her handkerchief, and the sight of this
handkerchief reposing on the floor gave Thyme a queer satisfaction,
such as comes when one remarks in superior people the absence of a
virtue existing in oneself.

"Well, we mustn't keep you, Mrs.--Mrs. ?"

"Cleary."

"Cleary.  How old's this little one?  Four?  And the other?  Two?
They are ducks.  Good-bye!"

In the corridor outside the grey girl whispered: "I do like the way
we all pride ourselves on being better than someone else.  I think
it's so hopeful and jolly.  Shall we go up and see the abyss at the
top?"




CHAPTER XXXV

A YOUNG GIRL'S MIND

A young girl's mind is like a wood in Spring--now a rising mist of
bluebells and flakes of dappled sunlight; now a world of still, wan,
tender saplings, weeping they know not why.  Through the curling
twigs of boughs just green, its wings fly towards the stars; but the
next moment they have drooped to mope beneath the damp bushes.  It is
ever yearning for and trembling at the future; in its secret places
all the countless shapes of things that are to be are taking stealthy
counsel of how to grow up without letting their gown of mystery fall.
They rustle, whisper, shriek suddenly, and as suddenly fall into a
delicious silence.  From the first hazel-bush to the last may-tree it
is an unending meeting-place of young solemn things eager to find out
what they are, eager to rush forth to greet the kisses of the wind
and sun, and for ever trembling back and hiding their faces.  The
spirit of that wood seems to lie with her ear close to the ground, a
pale petal of a hand curved like a shell behind it, listening for the
whisper of her own life.  There she lies, white and supple, with
dewy, wistful eyes, sighing: 'What is my meaning?  Ah, I am
everything!  Is there in all the world a thing so wonderful as I?...
Oh, I am nothing--my wings are heavy; I faint, I die!'

When Thyme, attended by the grey girl, emerged from the abyss at the
top, her cheeks were flushed and her hands clenched.  She said
nothing.  The grey girl, too, was silent, with a look such as a
spirit divested of its body by long bathing in the river of reality
might bend on one who has just come to dip her head.  Thyme's quick
eyes saw that look, and her colour deepened.  She saw, too, the
glance of the Jewish youth when Martin joined them in the doorway.

'Two girls now,' he seemed to say.  'He goes it, this young man!'

Supper was laid in her new friend's room--pressed beef, potato salad,
stewed prunes, and ginger ale.  Martin and the grey girl talked.
Thyme ate in silence, but though her eyes seemed fastened on her
plate, she saw every glance that passed between them, heard every
word they said.  Those glances were not remarkable, nor were those
words particularly important, but they were spoken in tones that
seemed important to Thyme.  'He never talks to me like that,' she
thought.

When supper was over they went out into the streets to walk, but at
the door the grey girl gave Thyme's arm a squeeze, her cheek a swift
kiss, and turned back up the stairs.

"Aren't you coming?"  shouted Martin.

Her voice was heard answering from above: "No, not tonight."

With the back of her hand Thyme rubbed off the kiss.  The two cousins
walked out amongst the traffic.

The evening was very warm and close; no breeze fanned the reeking
town.  Speaking little, they wandered among endless darkening
streets, whence to return to the light and traffic of the Euston Road
seemed like coming back to Heaven.  At last, close again to her new
home, Thyme said: "Why should one bother?  It's all a horrible great
machine, trying to blot us out; people are like insects when you put
your thumb on them and smear them on a book.  I hate--I loathe it!"

"They might as well be healthy insects while they last," answered
Martin.

Thyme faced round at him.  "I shan't sleep tonight, Martin; get out
my bicycle for me."

Martin scrutinised her by the light of the street lamp.  "All right,"
he said; "I'll come too."

There are, say moralists, roads that lead to Hell, but it was on a
road that leads to Hampstead that the two young cyclists set forth
towards eleven o'clock.  The difference between the character of the
two destinations was soon apparent, for whereas man taken in bulk had
perhaps made Hell, Hampstead had obviously been made by the upper
classes.  There were trees and gardens, and instead of dark canals of
sky banked by the roofs of houses and hazed with the yellow scum of
London lights, the heavens spread out in a wide trembling pool.  From
that rampart of the town, the Spaniard's Road, two plains lay exposed
to left and right; the scent of may-tree blossom had stolen up the
hill; the rising moon clung to a fir-tree bough.  Over the country
the far stars presided, and sleep's dark wings were spread above the
fields--silent, scarce breathing, lay the body of the land.  But to
the south, where the town, that restless head, was lying, the stars
seemed to have fallen and were sown in the thousand furrows of its
great grey marsh, and from the dark miasma of those streets there
travelled up a rustle, a whisper, the far allurement of some
deathless dancer, dragging men to watch the swirl of her black,
spangled drapery, the gleam of her writhing limbs.  Like the song of
the sea in a shell was the murmur of that witch of motion, clasping
to her the souls of men, drawing them down into a soul whom none had
ever known to rest.

Above the two young cousins, scudding along that ridge between the
country and the town, three thin white clouds trailed slowly towards
the west-like tired.  seabirds drifting exhausted far out from land
on a sea blue to blackness with unfathomable depth.

For an hour those two rode silently into the country.

"Have we come far enough?"  Martin said at last.

Thyme shook her head.  A long, steep hill beyond a little sleeping
village had brought them to a standstill.  Across the shadowy fields
a pale sheet of water gleamed out in moonlight.  Thyme turned down
towards it.

"I'm hot," she said; "I want to bathe my face.  Stay here.  Don't
come with me."

She left her bicycle, and, passing through a gate, vanished among the
trees.

Martin stayed leaning against the gate.  The village clock struck
one.  The distant call of a hunting owl, "Qu-wheek, qu-wheek!"
sounded through the grave stillness of this last night of May.  The
moon at her curve's summit floated at peace on the blue surface of
the sky, a great closed water-lily.  And Martin saw through the trees
scimitar-shaped reeds clustering black along the pool's shore.  All
about him the may-flowers were alight.  It was such a night as makes
dreams real and turns reality to dreams.

'All moonlit nonsense!' thought the young man, for the night had
disturbed his heart.

But Thyme did not come back.  He called to her, and in the death-like
silence following his shouts he could hear his own heart beat.  He
passed in through the gate.  She was nowhere to be seen.  Why was she
playing him this trick?

He turned up from the water among the trees, where the incense of the
may-flowers hung heavy in the air.

'Never look for a thing!' he thought, and stopped to listen.  It was
so breathless that the leaves of a low bough against his cheek did
not stir while he stood there.  Presently he heard faint sounds, and
stole towards them.  Under a beech-tree he almost stumbled over
Thyme, lying with her face pressed to the ground.  The young doctor's
heart gave a sickening leap; he quickly knelt down beside her.  The
girl's body, pressed close to the dry beech-mat, was being shaken by
long sobs.  From head to foot it quivered; her hat had been torn off,
and the fragrance of her hair mingled with the fragrance of the
night.  In Martin's heart something seemed to turn over and over, as
when a boy he had watched a rabbit caught in a snare.  He touched
her.  She sat up, and, dashing her hand across her eyes, cried: "Go
away! Oh, go away!"

He put his arm round her and waited.  Five minutes passed.  The air
was trembling with a sort of pale vibration, for the moonlight had
found a hole in the dark foliage and flooded on to the ground beside
them, whitening the black beech-husks.  Some tiny bird, disturbed by
these unwonted visitors, began chirruping and fluttering, but was
soon still again.  To Martin, so strangely close to this young
creature in the night, there came a sense of utter disturbance.

'Poor little thing!' he thought; 'be careful of her, comfort her!'
Hardness seemed so broken out of her, and the night so wonderful!
And there came into the young man's heart a throb of the knowledge--
very rare with him, for he was not, like Hilary, a philosophising
person--that she was as real as himself--suffering, hoping, feeling,
not his hopes and feelings, but her own.  His fingers kept pressing
her shoulder through her thin blouse.  And the touch of those fingers
was worth more than any words, as this night, all moonlit dreams, was
worth more than a thousand nights of sane reality.

Thyme twisted herself away from him at last.  "I can't," she sobbed.
"I'm not what you thought me--I'm not made for it!"

A scornful little smile curled Martin's lip.  So that was it!  But
the smile soon died away.  One did not hit what was already down

Thyme's voice wailed through the silence.  "I thought I could--but I
want beautiful things.  I can't bear it all so grey and horrible.
I'm not like that girl.  I'm-an-amateur!"

'If I kissed her---' Martin thought.

She sank down again, burying her face in the dark beech-mat.  The
moonlight had passed on.  Her voice came faint and stiffed, as out of
the tomb of faith.  "I'm no good.  I never shall be.  I'm as bad as
mother!"

But to Martin there was only the scent of her hair.

"No," murmured Thyme's voice, "I'm only fit for miserable Art.... I'm
only fit for--nothing!"

They were so close together on the dark beech mat that their bodies
touched, and a longing to clasp her in his arms came over him.

"I'm a selfish beast!" moaned the smothered voice.  "I don't really
care for all these people--I only care because they're ugly for me to
see!"

Martin reached his hand out to her hair.  If she had shrunk away he
would have seized her, but as though by instinct she let it rest
there.  And at her sudden stillness, strange and touching, Martin's
quick passion left him.  He slipped his arm round her and raised her
up, as if she had been a child, and for a long time sat listening
with a queer twisted smile to the moanings of her lost illusions.

The dawn found them still sitting there against the bole of the
beech-tree.  Her lips were parted; the tears had dried on her
sleeping face, pillowed against his shoulder, while he still watched
her sideways with the ghost of that twisted smile.

And beyond the grey water, like some tired wanton, the moon in an
orange hood was stealing down to her rest between the trees.




CHAPTER XXXVI

STEPHEN SIGNS CHEQUES

Cecilia received the mystic document containing these words "Am quite
all right.  Address, 598, Euston Road, three doors off Martin.
Letter follows explaining.  Thyme," she had not even realised her
little daughter's departure.  She went up to Thyme's room at once,
and opening all the drawers and cupboards, stared into them one by
one.  The many things she saw there allayed the first pangs of her
disquiet.

'She has only taken one little trunk,' she thought, 'and left all her
evening frocks.'

This act of independence alarmed rather than surprised her, such had
been her sense of the unrest in the domestic atmosphere during the
last month.  Since the evening when she had found Thyme in foods of
tears because of the Hughs' baby, her maternal eyes had not failed to
notice something new in the child's demeanour--a moodiness, an air
almost of conspiracy, together with an emphatic increase of youthful
sarcasm: Fearful of probing deep, she had sought no confidence, nor
had she divulged her doubts to Stephen.

Amongst the blouses a sheet of blue ruled paper, which had evidently
escaped from a notebook, caught her eye.  Sentences were scrawled on
it in pencil.  Cecilia read: "That poor little dead thing was so grey
and pinched, and I seemed to realise all of a sudden how awful it is
for them.  I must--I must--I will do something!"

Cecilia dropped the sheet of paper; her hand was trembling.  There
was no mystery in that departure now, and Stephen's words came into
her mind: "It's all very well up to a certain point, and nobody
sympathises with them more than I do; but after that it becomes
destructive of all comfort, and that does no good to anyone."

The sound sense of those words had made her feel queer when they were
spoken; they were even more sensible than she had thought.  Did her
little daughter, so young and pretty, seriously mean to plunge into
the rescue work of dismal slums, to cut herself adrift from sweet
sounds and scents and colours, from music and art, from dancing,
flowers, and all that made life beautiful?  The secret forces of
fastidiousness, an inborn dread of the fanatical, and all her real
ignorance of what such a life was like, rose in Cecilia with a force
which made her feel quite sick.  Better that she herself should do
this thing than that her own child should be deprived of air and
light and all the just environment of her youth and beauty.  'She
must come back--she must listen to me!' she thought.  'We will begin
together; we will start a nice little creche of our own, or--perhaps
Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace could find us some regular work on one of
her committees.'

Then suddenly she conceived a thought which made her blood run
positively cold.  What if it were a matter of heredity?  What if
Thyme had inherited her grandfather's single-mindedness?  Martin was
giving proof of it.  Things, she knew, often skipped a generation and
then set in again.  Surely, surely, it could not have done that!
With longing, yet with dread, she waited for the sound of Stephen's
latchkey.  It came at its appointed time.

Even in her agitation Cecilia did not forget to spare him, all she
could.  She began by giving him a kiss, and then said casually:
"Thyme has got a whim into her head."

"What whim?"

"It's rather what you might expect," faltered Cecilia, "from her
going about so much with Martin."

Stephen's face assumed at once an air of dry derision; there was no
love lost between him and his young nephew-in-law.

"The Sanitist?"  he said; "ah! Well?"

"She has gone off to do work-some place in the Euston Road.  I've had
a telegram.  Oh, and I found this, Stephen."

She held out to him half-heartedly the two bits of paper, one
pinkish-brown, the other blue.  Stephen saw that she was trembling.
He took them from her, read them, and looked at her again.  He had a
real affection for his wife, and the tradition of consideration for
other people's feelings was bred in him, so that at this moment, so
vitally disturbing, the first thing he did was to put his hand on her
shoulder and give it a reassuring squeeze.  But there was also in
Stephen a certain primitive virility, pickled, it is true, at
Cambridge, and in the Law Courts dried, but still preserving
something of its possessive and assertive quality, and the second
thing he did was to say, "No, I'm damned!"

In that little sentence lay the whole psychology of his attitude
towards this situation and all the difference between two classes of
the population.  Mr. Purcey would undoubtedly have said: "Well, I'm
damned!" Stephen, by saying "No, I'm damned!" betrayed that before he
could be damned he had been obliged to wrestle and contend with
something, and Cecilia, who was always wrestling too, knew this
something to be that queer new thing, a Social Conscience, the dim
bogey stalking pale about the houses of those who, through the
accidents of leisure or of culture, had once left the door open to
the suspicion: Is it possible that there is a class of people besides
my own, or am I dreaming?  Happy the millions, poor or rich, not yet
condemned to watch the wistful visiting or hear the husky mutter of
that ghost, happy in their homes, blessed by a less disquieting god.
Such were Cecilia's inner feelings.

Even now she did not quite plumb the depths of Stephen's; she felt
his struggle with the ghost; she felt and admired his victory.  What
she did not, could not, perhaps, realise, was the precise nature of
the outrage inflicted on him by Thyme's action.  With her--being a
woman--the matter was more practical; she did not grasp, had never
grasped, the architectural nature of Stephen's mind--how really hurt
he was by what did not seem to him in due and proper order.

He spoke: "Why on earth, if she felt like that, couldn't she have
gone to work in the ordinary way?  She could have put herself in
connection with some proper charitable society--I should never have
objected to that.  It's all that young Sanitary idiot!"

"I believe," Cecilia faltered, "that Martin's is a society.  It's a
kind of medical Socialism, or something of that sort.  He has
tremendous faith in it."

Stephen's lip curled.

"He may have as much faith as he likes," he said, with the restraint
that was one of his best qualities, "so long as he doesn't infect my
daughter with it."

Cecilia said suddenly: "Oh!  what are we to do, Stephen?  Shall I go
over there to-night?"

As one may see a shadow pass down on a cornfield, so came the cloud
on Stephen's face.  It was as though he had not realised till then
the full extent of what this meant.  For a minute he was silent.
"Better wait for her letter," he said at last.  "He's her cousin,
after all, and Mrs. Grundy's dead--in the Euston Road, at all
events."

So, trying to spare each other all they could of anxiety, and careful
to abstain from any hint of trouble before the servants, they dined
and went to bed.

At that hour between the night and morning, when man's vitality is
lowest, and the tremors of his spirit, like birds of ill omen, fly
round and round him, beating their long plumes against his cheeks,
Stephen woke.

It was very still.  A bar of pearly-grey dawn showed between the
filmy curtains, which stirred with a regular, faint movement, like
the puffing of a sleeper's lips.  The tide of the wind, woven in Mr.
Stone's fancy of the souls of men, was at low ebb.  Feebly it fanned
the houses and hovels where the myriad forms of men lay sleeping,
unconscious of its breath; so faint life's pulse, that men and
shadows seemed for that brief moment mingled in the town's sleep.
Over the million varied roofs, over the hundred million little
different shapes of men and things, the wind's quiet, visiting wand
had stilled all into the wonder state of nothingness, when life is
passing into death, death into new life, and self is at its feeblest.

And Stephen's self, feeling the magnetic currents of that ebb-tide
drawing it down into murmurous slumber, out beyond the sand-bars of
individuality and class, threw up its little hands and began to cry
for help.  The purple sea of self-forgetfulness, under the dim,
impersonal sky, seemed to him so cold and terrible.  It had no limit
that he could see, no rules but such as hung too far away, written in
the hieroglyphics of paling stars.  He could feel no order in the
lift and lap of the wan waters round his limbs.  Where would those
waters carry him?  To what depth of still green silence?  Was his own
little daughter to go down into this sea that knew no creed but that
of self-forgetfulness, that respected neither class nor person--this
sea where a few wandering streaks seemed all the evidence of the
precious differences between mankind?  God forbid it

And, turning on his elbow, he looked at her who had given him this
daughter.  In the mystery of his wife's sleeping face--the face of
her most near and dear to him--he tried hard not to see a likeness to
Mr. Stone.  He fell back somewhat comforted with the thought: 'That
old chap has his one idea--his Universal Brotherhood.  He's
absolutely absorbed in it.  I don't see it in Cis's face a bit.
Quite the contrary.'

But suddenly a flash of clear, hard cynicism amounting to inspiration
utterly disturbed him: The old chap, indeed, was so wrapped up in
himself and his precious book as to be quite unconscious that anyone
else was alive.  Could one be everybody's brother if one were blind
to their existence?  But this freak of Thyme's was an actual try to
be everybody's sister.  For that, he supposed, one must forget
oneself.  Why, it was really even a worse case than that of Mr.
Stone!  And to Stephen there was something awful in this thought.

The first small bird of morning, close to the open window, uttered a
feeble chirrup.  Into Stephen's mind there leaped without reason
recollection of the morning after his first term at school, when,
awakened by the birds, he had started up and fished out from under
his pillow his catapult and the box of shot he had brought home and
taken to sleep with him.  He seemed to see again those leaden shot
with their bluish sheen, and to feel them, round, and soft, and
heavy, rolling about his palm.  He seemed to hear Hilary's surprised
voice saying: "Hallo, Stevie! you awake?"

No one had ever had a better brother than old Hilary.  His only fault
was that he had always been too kind.  It was his kindness that had
done for him, and made his married life a failure.  He had never
asserted himself enough with that woman, his wife.  Stephen turned
over on his other side.  'All this confounded business,' he thought,
'comes from over-sympathising.  That's what's the matter with Thyme,
too.'  Long he lay thus, while the light grew stronger, listening to
Cecilia's gentle breathing, disturbed to his very marrow by these
thoughts.

The first post brought no letter from Thyme, and the announcement
soon after, that Mr. Hilary had come to breakfast, was received by
both Stephen and Cecilia with a welcome such as the anxious give to
anything which shows promise of distracting them.

Stephen made haste down.  Hilary, with a very grave and harassed
face, was in the dining-room.  It was he, however, who, after one
look at Stephen, said:

"What's the matter, Stevie?"

Stephen took up the Standard.  In spite of his self-control, his hand
shook a little.

"It's a ridiculous business," he said.  "That precious young Sanitist
has so worked his confounded theories into Thyme that she has gone
off to the Euston Road to put them into practice, of all things!"

At the half-concerned amusement on Hilary's face his quick and rather
narrow eyes glinted.

"It's not exactly for you to laugh, Hilary," he said.  "It's all of a
piece with your cursed sentimentality about those Hughs, and that
girl.  I knew it would end in a mess."

Hilary answered this unjust and unexpected outburst by a look, and
Stephen, with the strange feeling of inferiority which would come to
him in Hilary's presence against his better judgment, lowered his own
glance.

"My dear boy," said Hilary, "if any bit of my character has crept
into Thyme, I'm truly sorry."

Stephen took his brother's hand and gave it a good grip; and, Cecilia
coming in, they all sat down.

Cecilia at once noted what Stephen in his preoccupation had not--that
Hilary had come to tell them something.  But she did not like to ask
him what it was, though she knew that in the presence of their
trouble Hilary was too delicate to obtrude his own.  She did not
like, either, to talk of her trouble in the presence of his.  They
all talked, therefore, of indifferent things--what music they had
heard, what plays they had seen--eating but little, and drinking tea.
In the middle of a remark about the opera, Stephen, looking up, saw
Martin himself standing in the doorway.  The young Sanitist looked
pale, dusty, and dishevelled.  He advanced towards Cecilia, and said
with his usual cool determination:

"I've brought her back, Aunt Cis."

At that moment, fraught with such relief, such pure joy, such desire
to say a thousand things, Cecilia could only murmur: "Oh, Martin!"

Stephen, who had jumped up, asked: "Where is she?"

"Gone to her room."

"Then perhaps," said Stephen, regaining at once his dry composure,
"you will give us some explanation of this folly."

"She's no use to us at present."

"Indeed!"

"None."

"Then," said Stephen, "kindly understand that we have no use for you
in future, or any of your sort."

Martin looked round the table, resting his eyes on each in turn.

"You're right," he said.  "Good-bye!"

Hilary and Cecilia had risen, too.  There was silence.  Stephen
crossed to the door.

"You seem to me," he said suddenly, in his driest voice, "with your
new manners and ideas, quite a pernicious youth."

Cecilia stretched her hands out towards Martin, and there was a faint
tinkling as of chains.

"You must know, dear," she said, "how anxious we've all been.  Of
course, your uncle doesn't mean that."

The same scornful tenderness with which he was wont to look at Thyme
passed into Martin's face.

"All right, Aunt Cis," he said; "if Stephen doesn't mean it, he ought
to.  To mean things is what matters."  He stooped and kissed her
forehead.  "Give that to Thyme for me," he said.  "I shan't see her
for a bit."

"You'll never see her, sir," said Stephen dryly, "if I can help it!
The liquor of your Sanitism is too bright and effervescent."

Martin's smile broadened.  "For old bottles," he said, and with
another slow look round went out.

Stephen's mouth assumed its driest twist.  "Bumptious young devil!"
he said.  "If that is the new young man, defend us!"

Over the cool dining-room, with its faint scent of pinks, of melon,
and of ham, came silence.  Suddenly Cecilia glided from the room.
Her light footsteps were heard hurrying, now that she was not
visible, up to Thyme.

Hilary, too, had moved towards the door.  In spite of his
preoccupation, Stephen could not help noticing how very worn his
brother looked.

"You look quite seedy, old boy," he said.  "Will you have some
brandy?"

Hilary shook his head.

"Now that you've got Thyme back," he said, "I'd better let you know
my news.  I'm going abroad to-morrow.  I don't know whether I shall
come back again to live with B."

Stephen gave a low whistle; then, pressing Hilary's arm, he said:
"Anything you decide, old man, I'll always back you in, but--"

"I'm going alone."

In his relief Stephen violated the laws of reticence.

"Thank Heaven for that!  I was afraid you were beginning to lose your
head about that girl"

"I'm not quite fool enough," said Hilary, "to imagine that such a
liaison would be anything but misery in the long-run.  If I took the
child I should have to stick to her; but I'm not proud of leaving her
in the lurch, Stevie."

The tone of his voice was so bitter that Stephen seized his hand.

"My dear old man, you're too kind.  Why, she's no hold on you--not
the smallest in the world!"

"Except the hold of this devotion I've roused in her, God knows how,
and her destitution."

"You let these people haunt you," said Stephen.  "It's quite a
mistake--it really is."

"I had forgotten to mention that I am not an iceberg," muttered
Hilary.

Stephen looked into his face without speaking, then with the utmost
earnestness he said:

"However much you may be attracted, it's simply unthinkable for a man
like you to go outside his class."

"Class!  Yes!" muttered Hilary: "Good-bye!"

And with a long grip of his brother's hand he went away.

Stephen turned to the window.  For all the care and contrivance
bestowed on the view, far away to the left the back courts of an
alley could be seen; and as though some gadfly had planted in him its
small poisonous sting, he moved back from the sight at once.
'Confusion!' he thought.  'Are we never to get rid of these infernal
people?'

His eyes lighted on the melon.  A single slice lay by itself on a
blue-green dish.  Leaning over a plate, with a desperation quite
unlike himself, he took an enormous bite.  Again and again he bit the
slice, then almost threw it from him, and dipped his fingers in a
bowl.

'Thank God!' he thought, 'that's over!  What an escape!'

Whether he meant Hilary's escape or Thyme's was doubtful, but there
came on him a longing to rush up to his little daughter's room, and
hug her.  He suppressed it, and sat down at the bureau; he was
suddenly experiencing a sensation such as he had sometimes felt on a
perfect day, or after physical danger, of too much benefit, of
something that he would like to return thanks for, yet knew not how.
His hand stole to the inner pocket of his black coat.  It stole out
again; there was a cheque-book in it.  Before his mind's eye,
starting up one after the other, he saw the names of the societies he
supported, or meant sometime, if he could afford it, to support.  He
reached his hand out for a pen.  The still, small noise of the nib
travelling across the cheques mingled with the buzzing of a single
fly.

These sounds Cecilia heard, when, from the open door, she saw the
thin back of her husband's neck, with its softly graduated hair, bent
forward above the bureau.  She stole over to him, and pressed herself
against his arm.

Stephen, staying the progress of his pen, looked up at her.  Their
eyes met, and, bending down, Cecilia put her cheek to his.




CHAPTER XXXVII

THE FLOWERING OF THE ALOE

This same day, returning through Kensington Gardens, from his
preparations for departure, Hilary came suddenly on Bianca standing
by the shores of the Round Pond.

To the eyes of the frequenters of these Elysian fields, where so many
men and shadows daily steal recreation, to the eyes of all drinking
in those green gardens their honeyed draught of peace, this husband
and wife appeared merely a distinguished-looking couple, animated by
a leisured harmony.  For the time was not yet when men were one, and
could tell by instinct what was passing in each other's hearts.

In truth, there were not too many people in London who, in their
situation, would have behaved with such seemliness--not too many so
civilised as they!

Estranged, and soon to part, they retained the manner of accord up to
the last.  Not for them the matrimonial brawl, the solemn accusation
and recrimination, the pathetic protestations of proprietary rights.
For them no sacred view that at all costs they must make each other
miserable--not even the belief that they had the right to do so.  No,
there was no relief for their sore hearts.  They walked side by side,
treating each other's feelings with respect, as if there had been no
terrible heart-turnings throughout the eighteen years in which they
had first loved, then, through mysterious disharmony, drifted apart;
as if there were now between them no question of this girl.

Presently Hilary said:

"I've been into town and made my preparations; I'm starting tomorrow
for the mountains.  There will be no necessity for you to leave your
father."

"Are you taking her?"

It was beautifully uttered, without a trace of bias or curiosity,
with an unforced accent, neither indifferent nor too interested--no
one could have told whether it was meant for generosity or malice.
Hilary took it for the former.

"Thank you," he said; "but that comedy is finished."

Close to the edge of the Round Pond a swanlike cutter was putting out
to sea; in the wake of this fair creature a tiny scooped-out bit of
wood, with three feathers for masts, bobbed and trembled; and the two
small ragged boys who owned that little galley were stretching bits
of branch out towards her over the bright waters.

Bianca looked, without seeing, at this proof of man's pride in his
own property.  A thin gold chain hung round her neck; suddenly she
thrust it into the bosom of her dress.  It had broken into two,
between her fingers.

They reached home without another word.

At the door of Hilary's study sat Miranda.  The little person
answered his caress by a shiver of her sleek skin, then curled
herself down again on the spot she had already warmed.

"Aren't you coming in with me?"  he said.

Miranda did not move.

The reason for her refusal was apparent when Hilary had entered.
Close to the long bookcase, behind the bust of Socrates, stood the
little model.  Very still, as if fearing to betray itself by sound or
movement, was her figure in its blue-green frock, and a brimless
toque of brown straw, with two purplish roses squashed together into
a band of darker velvet.  Beside those roses a tiny peacock's feather
had been slipped in--unholy little visitor, slanting backward,
trying, as it were, to draw all eyes, yet to escape notice.  And,
wedged between the grim white bust and the dark bookcase, the girl
herself was like some unlawful spirit which had slid in there, and
stood trembling and vibrating, ready to be shuttered out.

Before this apparition Hilary recoiled towards the door, hesitated,
and returned.

"You should not have come here," he muttered, "after what we said to
you yesterday."

The little model answered quickly: "But I've seen Hughs, Mr.
Dallison.  He's found out where I live.  Oh, he does look dreadful;
he frightens me.  I can't ever stay there now."

She had come a little out of her hiding-place, and stood fidgeting
her hands and looking down.

'She's not speaking the truth,' thought Hilary.

The little model gave him a furtive glance.  "I did see him," she
said.  "I must go right away now; it wouldn't be safe, would it?"
Again she gave him that swift look.

Hilary thought suddenly: 'She is using my own weapon against me.  If
she has seen the man, he didn't frighten her.  It serves me right!'
With a dry laugh, he turned his back.

There was a rustling round.  The little model had moved out of her
retreat, and stood between him and the door.  At this stealthy
action, Hilary felt once more the tremor which had come over him when
he sat beside her in the Broad Walk after the baby's funeral.
Outside in the garden a pigeon was pouring forth a continuous love.
song; Hilary heard nothing of it, conscious only of the figure of the
girl behind him-that young.  figure which had twined itself about his
senses.

"Well, what is it you want?"  he said at last.

The little model answered by another question.

'Are you really going away, Mr. Dallison?"

"I am."

She raised her hands to the level of her breast, as though she meant
to clasp them together; without doing so, however, she dropped them
to her sides.  They were cased in very worn suede gloves, and in this
dire moment of embarrassment Hilary's eyes fastened themselves on
those slim hands moving against her skirt.

The little model tried at once to slip them away behind her.
Suddenly she said in her matter-of-fact voice: "I only wanted to ask
--Can't I come too?"

At this question, whose simplicity might have made an angel smile,
Hilary experienced a sensation as if his bones had been turned to
water.  It was strange--delicious--as though he had been suddenly
offered all that he wanted of her, without all those things that he
did not want.  He stood regarding her silently.  Her cheeks and neck
were red; there was a red tinge, too, in her eyelids, deepening the
"chicory-flower" colour of her eyes.  She began to speak, repeating a
lesson evidently learned by heart.

" I wouldn't be in your way.  I wouldn't cost much.  I could do
everything you wanted.  I could learn typewriting.  I needn't live
too near, or that; if you didn't want me, because of people talking;
I'm used to being alone.  Oh, Mr. Dallison, I could do everything for
you.  I wouldn't mind anything, and I'm not like some girls; I do
know what I'm talking about."

"Do you?"

The little model put her hands up, and, covering her face, said:

"If you'd try and see!"

Hilary's sensuous feeling almost vanished; a lump rose in his throat
instead.

"My child," he said, "you are too generous!"

The little model seemed to know instinctively that by touching his
spirit she had lost ground.  Uncovering her face, she spoke
breathlessly, growing very pale:

"Oh no, I'm not.  I want to be let come; I don't want to stay here.
I know I'll get into mischief if you don't take me--oh, I know I
will!"

"If I were to let you come with me," said Hilary, "what then?  What
sort of companion should I be to you, or you to me?  You know very
well.  Only one sort.  It's no use pretending, child, that we've any
interests in common."

The little model came closer.

"I know what I am," she said, "and I don't want to be anything else.
I can do what you tell me to, and I shan't ever complain.  I'm not
worth any more!"

"You're worth more," muttered Hilary, "than I can ever give you, and
I'm worth more than you can ever give me."

The little model tried to answer, but her words would not pass her
throat; she threw her head back trying to free them, and stood,
swaying.  Seeing her like this before him, white as a sheet, with her
eyes closed and her lips parted, as though about to faint, Hilary
seized her by the shoulders.  At the touch of those soft shoulders,
his face became suffused with blood, his lips trembled.  Suddenly her
eyes opened ever so little between their lids, and looked at him.
And the perception that she was not really going to faint, that it
was a little desperate wile of this child Delilah, made him wrench
away his hands.  The moment she felt that grasp relax she sank down
and clasped his knees, pressing them to her bosom so that he could
not stir.  Closer and closer she pressed them to her, till it seemed
as though she must be bruising her flesh.  Her breath came in sobs;
her eyes were closed; her lips quivered upwards.  In the clutch of
her clinging body there seemed suddenly the whole of woman's power of
self-abandonment.  It was just that, which, at this moment, so
horribly painful to him, prevented Hilary from seizing her in his
arms just that queer seeming self-effacement, as though she were lost
to knowledge of what she did.  It seemed too brutal, too like taking
advantage of a child.

>From calm is born the wind, the ripple from the still pool, self out
of nothingness--so all passes imperceptibly, no man knows how.  The
little model's moment of self-oblivion passed, and into her wet eyes
her plain, twisting spirit suddenly writhed up again, for all the
world as if she had said: 'I won't let you go; I'll keep you--I'll
keep you.'

Hilary broke away from her, and she fell forward on her face.

"Get up, child," he said--"get up; for God's sake, don't lie there!"

She rose obediently, choking down her sobs, mopping her face with a
small, dirty handkerchief.  Suddenly, taking a step towards him, she
clenched both her hands and struck them downwards.

"I'll go to the bad," she said---" I will--if you don't take me!"
And, her breast heaving, her hair all loose, she stared straight into
his face with her red-rimmed eyes.  Hilary turned suddenly, took a
book up from the writing-table, and opened it.  His face was again
suffused with blood; his hands and lips trembled; his eyes had a
queer fixed stare.

"Not now, not now," he muttered; "go away now.  I'll come to you
to-morrow."

The little model gave him the look a dog gives you when it asks if
you are deceiving him.  She made a sign on her breast, as a Catholic
might make the sign of his religion, drawing her fingers together,
and clutching at herself with them, then passed her little dirty
handkerchief once more over her eyes, and, turning round, went out.

Hilary remained standing where he was, reading the open book without
apprehending what it was.

There was a wistful sound, as of breath escaping hurriedly.  Mr.
Stone was standing in the open doorway.

"She has been here," he said.  "I saw her go away."

Hilary dropped the book; his nerves were utterly unstrung.  Then,
pointing to a chair, he said: "Won't you sit down, sir?"

Mr. Stone came close up to his son-in-law.

"Is she in trouble?"

"Yes," murmured Hilary.

"She is too young to be in trouble.  Did you tell her that?"

Hilary shook his head.

"Has the man hurt her?"

Again Hilary shook his head.

"What is her trouble, then?"  said Mr. Stone.  The closeness of this
catechism, the intent stare of the old man's eyes, were more than
Hilary could bear.  He turned away.

"You ask me something that I cannot answer.

"Why?"

"It is a private matter."

With the blood still beating in his temples, his lips still
quivering, and the feeling of the girl's clasp round his knees, he
almost hated this old man who stood there putting such blind
questions.

Then suddenly in Mr. Stone's eyes he saw a startling change, as in
the face of a man who regains consciousness after days of vacancy.
His whole countenance had become alive with a sort of jealous
understanding.  The warmth which the little model brought to his old
spirit had licked up the fog of his Idea, and made him see what was
going on before his eyes.

At that look Hilary braced himself against the wall.

A flush spread slowly over Mr. Stone's face.  He spoke with rare
hesitation.  In this sudden coming back to the world of men and
things he seemed astray.

"I am not going," he stammered, "to ask you any more.  I could not
pry into a private matter.  That would not be---"  His voice failed;
he looked down.

Hilary bowed, touched to the quick by the return to life of this old
man, so long lost to facts, and by the delicacy in that old face.

"I will not intrude further on your trouble," said Mr. Stone,
"whatever it may be.  I am sorry that you are unhappy, too."

Very slowly, and without again looking up at his son-in-law, he went
out.

Hilary remained standing where he had been left against the wall.




CHAPTER XXXVIII

THE HOME-COMING OF HUGHS

Hilary had evidently been right in thinking the little model was not
speaking the truth when she said she had seen Hughs, for it was not
until early on the following morning that three persons traversed the
long winding road leading from Wormwood Scrubs to Kensington.  They
preserved silence, not because there was nothing in their hearts to
be expressed, but because there was too much; and they walked in the
giraffe-like formation peculiar to the lower classes--Hughs in front;
Mrs. Hughs to the left, a foot or two behind; and a yard behind her,
to the left again, her son Stanley.  They made no sign of noticing
anyone in the road besides themselves, and no one in the road gave
sign of noticing that they were there; but in their three minds, so
differently fashioned, a verb was dumbly, and with varying emotion,
being conjugated:

"I've been in prison."  "You've been in prison.  He's been in
prison."

Beneath the seeming acquiescence of a man subject to domination from
his birth up, those four words covered in Hughs such a whirlpool of
surging sensation, such ferocity of bitterness, and madness, and
defiance, that no outpouring could have appreciably relieved its
course.  The same four words summed up in Mrs. Hughs so strange a
mingling of fear, commiseration, loyalty, shame, and trembling
curiosity at the new factor which had come into the life of all this
little family walking giraffe-like back to Kensington that to have
gone beyond them would have been like plunging into a wintry river.
To their son the four words were as a legend of romance, conjuring up
no definite image, lighting merely the glow of wonder.

"Don't lag, Stanley.  Keep up with your father."

The little boy took three steps at an increased pace, then fell
behind again.  His black eyes seemed to answer: 'You say that because
you don't know what else to say.' And without alteration in their
giraffe-like formation, but again in silence, the three proceeded.

In the heart of the seamstress doubt and fear were being slowly knit
into dread of the first sound to pass her husband's lips.  What would
he ask?  How should she answer?  Would he talk wild, or would he talk
sensible?  Would he have forgotten that young girl, or had he nursed
and nourished his wicked fancy in the house of grief and silence?
Would he ask where the baby was?  Would he speak a kind word to her?
But alongside her dread there was guttering within her the undying
resolution not to 'let him go from her, if it were ever so, to that
young girl'

"Don't lag, Stanley!"

At the reiteration of those words Hughs spoke.

"Let the boy alone!  You'll be nagging at the baby next!"

Hoarse and grating, like sounds issuing from a damp vault, was this
first speech.

The seamstress's eyes brimmed over.

"I won't get the chance," she stammered out.  "He's gone!"

Hughs' teeth gleamed like those of a dog at bay.

"Who's taken him?  You let me know the name."

Tears rolled down the seamstress's cheeks; she could not answer.  Her
little son's thin voice rose instead:

"Baby's dead.  We buried him in the ground.  I saw it.  Mr. Creed
came in the cab with me."

White flecks appeared suddenly at the corners of Hughs' lips.  He
wiped the back of his hand across his mouth, and once more, giraffe-
like, the little family marched on....

"Westminister," in his threadbare summer jacket--for the day was
warm--had been standing for some little time in Mrs. Budgen's doorway
on the ground floor at Hound Street.  Knowing that Hughs was to be
released that morning early, he had, with the circumspection and
foresight of his character, reasoned thus: 'I shan't lie easy in my
bed, I shan't hev no peace until I know that low feller's not a-goin'
to misdemean himself with me.  It's no good to go a-puttin' of it
off.  I don't want him comin' to my room attackin' of old men.  I'll
be previous with him in the passage.  The lame woman 'll let me.  I
shan't trouble her.  She'll be palliable between me and him, in case
he goes for to attack me.  I ain't afraid of him.'

But, as the minutes of waiting went by, his old tongue, like that of
a dog expecting chastisement, appeared ever more frequently to
moisten his twisted, discoloured lips.  'This comes of mixin' up with
soldiers,' he thought, 'and a lowclass o' man like that.  I ought to
ha' changed my lodgin's.  He'll be askin' me where that young girl
is, I shouldn't wonder, an' him lost his character and his job, and
everything, and all because o' women!'

He watched the broad-faced woman, Mrs. Budgen, in whose grey eyes the
fighting light so fortunately never died, painfully doing out her
rooms, and propping herself against the chest of drawers whereon
clustered china cups and dogs as thick as toadstools on a bank.

"I've told my Charlie," she said, "to keep clear of Hughs a bit.
They comes out as prickly as hedgehogs.  Pick a quarrel as soon as
look at you, they will."

'Oh dear,' thought Creed, 'she's full o' cold comfort.' But, careful
of his dignity, he answered, "I'm a-waitin' here to engage the
situation.  You don't think he'll attack of me with definition at
this time in the mornin'?"

The lame woman shrugged her shoulders.  "He'll have had a drop of
something," she said, "before he comes home.  They gets a cold
feelin' in the stomach in them places, poor creatures!"

The old butler's heart quavered up into his mouth.  He lifted his
shaking hand, and put it to his lips, as though to readjust himself.

"Oh yes," he said; "I ought to ha' given notice, and took my things
away; but there, poor woman, it seemed a-hittin' of her when she was
down.  And I don't want to make no move.  I ain't got no one else
that's interested in me.  This woman's very good about mendin' of my
clothes. Oh dear, yes; she don't grudge a little thing like that!"

The lame woman hobbled from her post of rest, and began to make the
bed with the frown that always accompanied a task which strained the
contracted muscles of her leg.  "If you don't help your neighbour,
your neighbour don't help you," she said sententiously.

Creed fixed his iron-rimmed gaze on her in silence.  He was
considering perhaps how he stood with regard to Hughs in the light of
that remark.

"I attended of his baby's funeral," he said.  "Oh dear, he's here
a'ready!"

The family of Hughs, indeed, stood in the doorway.  The spiritual
process by which "Westminister" had gone through life was displayed
completely in the next few seconds.  'It's so important for me to
keep alive and well,' his eyes seemed saying.  'I know the class of
man you are, but now you're here it's not a bit o' use my bein'
frightened.  I'm bound to get up-sides with you.  Ho!  yes; keep
yourself to yourself, and don't you let me hev any o' your nonsense,
'cause I won't stand it.  Oh dear, no!'

Beads of perspiration stood thick on his patchily coloured forehead;
with lips stiffening, and intently staring eyes, he waited for what
the released prisoner would say.

Hughs, whose face had blanched in the prison to a sallow grey-white
hue, and whose black eyes seemed to have sunk back into his head,
slowly looked the old man up and down.  At last he took his cap off,
showing his cropped hair.

"You got me that, daddy," he said, "but I don't bear you malice.
Come up and have a cup o' tea with us."

And, turning on his heel, he began to mount the stairs, followed by
his wife and child.  Breathing hard, the old butler mounted too.

In the room on the second floor, where the baby no longer lived, a
haddock on the table was endeavouring to be fresh; round it were
slices of bread on plates, a piece of butter in a pie-dish, a teapot,
brown sugar in a basin, and, side by side a little jug of cold blue
milk and a half-empty bottle of red vinegar.  Close to one plate a
bunch of stocks and gilly flowers reposed on the dirty tablecloth, as
though dropped and forgotten by the God of Love.  Their faint perfume
stole through the other odours.  The old butler fixed his eyes on it.

'The poor woman bought that,' he thought, 'hopin' for to remind him
of old days.  She had them flowers on her weddin'-day, I shouldn't
wonder!"  This poetical conception surprising him, he turned towards
the little boy, and said "This 'll be a memorial to you, as you gets
older."  And without another word all sat down.  They ate in silence,
and the old butler thought 'That 'addick ain't what it was; but a
beautiful cup o' tea.  He don't eat nothing; he's more ameniable to
reason than I expected.  There's no one won't be too pleased to see
him now!"

His eyes, travelling to the spot from which the bayonet had been
removed, rested on the print of the Nativity.  "'Suffer little
children to come unto Me,'" he thought, "'and forbid them not."
He'll be glad to hear there was two carriages followed him home.'

And, taking his time, he cleared his throat in preparation for
speech.  But before the singular muteness of this family sounds would
not come.  Finishing his tea, he tremblingly arose.  Things that he
might have said jostled in his mind.  'Very pleased to 'a seen you.
Hope you're in good health at the present time of speaking.  Don't
let me intrude on you.  We've all a-got to die some time or other!'
They remained unuttered.  Making a vague movement of his skinny hand,
he walked feebly but quickly to the door.  When he stood but half-way
within the room, he made his final effort.

"I'm not a-goin' to say nothing," he said; "that'd be superlative!  I
wish you a good-morning."

Outside he waited a second, then grasped the banister.

'For all he sets so quiet, they've done him no good in that place,'
he thought.  'Them eyes of his!'  And slowly he descended, full of a
sort of very deep surprise.  'I misjudged of him,' he was thinking;
'he never was nothing but a 'armless human being.  We all has our
predijuices--I misjudged of him.  They've broke his 'eart between
'em--that they have.'

The silence in the room continued after his departure.  But when the
little boy had gone to school, Hughs rose and lay down on the bed.
He rested there, unmoving, with his face towards the wall, his arms
clasped round his head to comfort it.  The seamstress, stealing about
her avocations, paused now and then to look at him.  If he had raged
at her, if he had raged at everything, it would not have been so
terrifying as this utter silence, which passed her comprehension--
this silence as of a man flung by the sea against a rock, and pinned
there with the life crushed out of him.  All her inarticulate
longing, now that her baby was gone, to be close to something in her
grey life, to pass the unfranchisable barrier dividing her from the
world, seemed to well up, to flow against this wall of silence and to
recoil.

Twice or three times she addressed him timidly by name, or made some
trivial remark.  He did not answer, as though in very truth he had
been the shadow of a man lying there.  And the injustice of this
silence seemed to her so terrible.  Was she not his wife?  Had she
not borne him five, and toiled to keep him from that girl?  Was it
her fault if she had made his life a hell with her jealousy, as he
had cried out that morning before he went for her, and was "put
away"?  He was her "man."  It had been her right--nay, more, her
duty!

And still he lay there silent.  From the narrow street where no
traffic passed, the cries of a coster and distant whistlings mounted
through the unwholesome air.  Some sparrows in the eave were
chirruping incessantly.  The little sandy house-cat had stolen in,
and, crouched against the doorpost, was fastening her eyes on the
plate which, held the remnants of the fish.  The seamstress bowed her
forehead to the flowers on the table; unable any longer to bear the
mystery of this silence, she wept.  But the dark figure on the bed
only pressed his arms closer round his head, as though there were
within him a living death passing the speech of men.

The little sandy cat, creeping across the floor, fixed its claws in
the backbone of the fish, and drew it beneath the bed.




CHAPTER XXXIX

THE DUEL

Bianca did not see her husband after their return together from the
Round Pond.  She dined out that evening, and in the morning avoided
any interview.  When Hilary's luggage was brought down and the cab
summoned, she slipped up to take shelter in her room.  Presently the
sound of his footsteps coming along the passage stopped outside her
door.  He tapped.  She did not answer.

Good-bye would be a mockery!  Let him go with the words unsaid!  And
as though the thought had found its way through the closed door, she
heard his footsteps recede again.  She saw him presently go out to
the cab with his head bent down, saw him stoop and pat Miranda.  Hot
tears sprang into her eyes.  She heard the cab-wheels roll away.

The heart is like the face of an Eastern woman--warm and glowing,
behind swathe on swathe of fabric.  At each fresh touch from the
fingers of Life, some new corner, some hidden curve or angle, comes
into view, to be seen last of all perhaps never to be seen by the one
who owns them.

When the cab had driven away there came into Bianca's heart a sense
of the irreparable, and, mysteriously entwined with that arid ache, a
sort of bitter pity: What would happen to this wretched girl now that
he was gone?  Would she go completely to the bad--till she became one
of those poor creatures like the figure in "The Shadow," who stood
beneath lampposts in the streets?  Out of this speculation, which was
bitter as the taste of aloes, there came to her a craving for some
palliative, some sweetness, some expression of that instinct of
fellow-feeling deep in each human breast, however disharmonic.  But
even with that craving was mingled the itch to justify herself, and
prove that she could rise above jealousy.

She made her way to the little model's lodging.

A child admitted her into the bleak passage that served for hall.
The strange medley of emotions passing through Bianca's breast while
she stood outside the girl's door did not show in her face, which
wore its customary restrained, half-mocking look.

The little model's voice faintly said: "Come in."

The room was in disorder, as though soon to be deserted.  A closed
and corded trunk stood in the centre of the floor; the bed, stripped
of clothing, lay disclosed in all the barrenness of discoloured
ticking.  The china utensils of the washstand were turned head
downwards.  Beside that washstand the little model, with her hat on--
the hat with the purplish-pink roses and the little peacock's
feather-stood in the struck, shrinking attitude of one who, coming
forward in the expectation of a kiss, has received a blow.

"You are leaving here, then?"  Bianca said quietly.

"Yes," the girl murmured.

"Don't you like this part?  Is it too far from your work?"

Again the little model whispered: "Yes."

Bianca's eyes travelled slowly over the blue beflowered walls and
rust-red doors; through the dusty closeness of this dismantled room a
rank scent of musk and violets rose, as though a cheap essence had
been scattered as libation.  A small empty scent-bottle stood on the
shabby looking-glass.

"Have you found new lodgings?"

The little model edged closer to the window.  A stealthy watchfulness
was creeping into her shrinking, dazed face.

She shook her head.

"I don't know where I'm going."

Obeying a sudden impulse to see more clearly, Bianca lifted her veil.
"I came to tell you," she said, "that I shall always be ready to help
you."

The girl did not answer, but suddenly through her black lashes she
stole a look upward at her visitor.  'Can you,' it seemed to say,
'you--help me?  Oh no; I think not!'  And, as though she had been
stung by that glance, Bianca said with deadly slowness:

"It is my business, of course, entirely, now that Mr. Dallison has
gone abroad."

The little model received this saying with a quivering jerk.  It
might have been an arrow transfixing her white throat.  For a moment
she seemed almost about to fall, but, gripping the window-sill, held
herself erect.  Her eyes, like an animal's in pain, darted here,
there, everywhere, then rested on her visitor's breast, quite
motionless.  This stare, which seemed to see nothing, but to be
doing, as it were, some fateful calculation, was uncanny.  Colour
came gradually back into her lips and eyes and cheeks; she seemed to
have succeeded in her calculation, to be reviving from that stab.

And suddenly Bianca understood.  This was the meaning of the packed
trunk, the dismantled room.  He was going to take her, after all!

In the turmoil of this discovery two words alone escaped her:

"I see!"

They were enough.  The girl's face at once lost all trace of its look
of desperate calculation, brightened, became guilty, and from guilty
sullen.

The antagonism of all the long past months was now declared between
these two--Bianca's pride could no longer conceal, the girl's
submissiveness no longer obscure it.  They stood like duellists, one
on each side of the trunk--that common, brown-Japanned, tin trunk,
corded with rope.  Bianca looked at it.

"You," she said, "and he?  Ha, ha; ha, ha!  Ha, ha, ha!"

Against that cruel laughter--more poignant than a hundred homilies on
caste, a thousand scornful words--the little model literally could
not stand; she sat down in the low chair where she had evidently been
sitting to watch the street.  But as a taste of blood will infuriate
a hound, so her own laughter seemed to bereave Bianca of all
restraint.

"What do you imagine he's taking you for, girl?  Only out of pity!
It's not exactly the emotion to live on in exile.  In exile--but that
you do not understand!"

The little model staggered to her feet again.  Her face had grown
painfully red.

"He wants me!" she said.

"Wants you?  As he wants his dinner.  And when he's eaten it--what
then?  No, of course he'll never abandon you; his conscience is too
tender.  But you'll be round his neck--like this!"  Bianca raised her
arms, looped, and dragged them slowly down, as a mermaid's arms drag
at a drowning sailor.

The little model stammered: "I'll do what he tells me!  I'll do what
he tells me!"

Bianca stood silent, looking at the girl, whose heaving breast and
little peacock's feather, whose small round hands twisting in front
of her, and scent about her clothes, all seemed an offence.

"And do you suppose that he'll tell you what he wants?  Do you
imagine he'll have the necessary brutality to get rid of you?  He'll
think himself bound to keep you till you leave him, as I suppose you
will some day!"

The girl dropped her hands.  "I'll never leave him--never!" she cried
out passionately.

"Then Heaven help him!" said Bianca.

The little model's eyes seemed to lose all pupil, like two chicory
flowers that have no dark centres.  Through them, all that she was
feeling struggled to find an outlet; but, too deep for words, those
feelings would not pass her lips, utterly unused to express emotion.
She could only stammer:

"I'm not--I'm not--I will---" and press her hands again to her
breast.

Bianca's lip curled.

"I see; you imagine yourself capable of sacrifice.  Well, you have
your chance.  Take it!" She pointed to the corded trunk.  "Now's your
time; you have only to disappear!"

The little model shrank back against the windowsill.  "He wants me!"
she muttered.  "I know he wants me."

Bianca bit her lips till the blood came.

"Your idea of sacrifice," she said, "is perfect!  If you went now, in
a month's time he'd never think of you again."

The girl gulped.  There was something so pitiful in the movements of
her hands that Bianca turned away.  She stood for several seconds
staring at the door, then, turning round again, said:

"Well?"

But the girl's whole face had changed.  All tear-stained, indeed, she
had already masked it with a sort of immovable stolidity.

Bianca went swiftly up to the trunk.

"You shall!" she said.  "Take that thing and go."

The little model did not move.

"So you won't?"

The girl trembled violently all over.  She moistened her lips, tried
to speak, failed, again moistened them, and this time murmured; "I'll
only--I'll only--if lie tells me!"

"So you still imagine he will tell you!"

The little model merely repeated: "I won't--won't do anything without
he tells me!"

Bianca laughed.  "Why, it's like a dog!" she said.

But the girl had turned abruptly to the window.  Her lips were
parted.  She was shrinking, fluttering, trembling at what she saw.
She was indeed like a spaniel dog who sees her master coming.  Bianca
had no need of being told that Hilary was outside.  She went into the
passage and opened the front door.

He was coming up the steps, his face worn like that of a man in
fever, and at the sight of his wife he stood quite still, looking
into her face.

Without the quiver of an eyelid, without the faintest trace of
emotion, or the slightest sign that she knew him to be there, Bianca
passed and slowly walked away.




CHAPTER XL

FINISH OF THE COMEDY

Those who may have seen Hilary driving towards the little model's
lodgings saw one who, by a fixed red spot on either cheek, and the
over-compression of his quivering lips, betrayed the presence of that
animality which underlies even the most cultivated men.

After eighteen hours of the purgatory of indecision, he had not so
much decided to pay that promised visit on which hung the future of
two lives, as allowed himself to be borne towards the girl.

There was no one in the passage to see him after he had passed Bianca
in the doorway, but it was with a face darkened by the peculiar
stabbing look of wounded egoism that he entered the little model's
room.

The sight of it coming so closely on the struggle she had just been
through was too much for the girl's self-control.

Instead of going up to him, she sat down on the corded trunk and
began to sob.  It was the sobbing of a child whose school-treat has
been cancelled, of a girl whose ball-dress has not come home in time.
It only irritated Hilary, whose nerves had already borne all they
could bear.  He stood literally trembling, as though each one of
these common little sobs were a blow falling on the drum-skin of his
spirit; and through every fibre he took in the features of the dusty,
scent-besprinkled room--the brown tin trunk, the dismantled bed, the
rust-red doors.

And he realised that she had burned her boats to make it impossible
for a man of sensibility to disappoint her!

The little model raised her face and looked at him.  What she saw
must have been less reassuring even than the first sight had been,
for it stopped her sobbing.  She rose and turned to the window,
evidently trying with handkerchief and powder-puff to repair the
ravages caused by her tears; and when she had finished she still
stood there with her back to him.  Her deep breathing made her young
form quiver from her waist up to the little peacock's feather in her
hat; and with each supple movement it seemed offering itself to
Hilary.

In the street a barrel-organ had begun to play the very waltz it had
played the afternoon when Mr. Stone had been so ill.  Those two were
neither of them conscious of that tune, too absorbed in their
emotions; and yet, quietly, it was bringing something to the girl's
figure like the dowering of scent that the sun brings to a flower.
It was bringing the compression back to Hilary's lips, the flush to
his ears and cheeks, as a draught of wind will blow to redness a fire
that has been choked.  Without knowing it, without sound, inch by
inch he moved nearer to her; and as though, for all there was no sign
of his advance, she knew of it, she stayed utterly unmoving except
for the deep breathing that so stirred the warm youth in her.  In
that stealthy progress was the history of life and the mystery of
sex.  Inch by inch he neared her; and she swayed, mesmerising his
arms to fold round her thus poised, as if she must fall backward;
mesmerising him to forget that there was anything there, anything in
all the world, but just her young form waiting for him--nothing but
that!

The barrel-organ stopped; the spell had broken!  She turned round to
him.  As a wind obscures with grey wrinkles the still green waters of
enchantment into which some mortal has been gazing, so Hilary's
reason suddenly swept across the situation, and showed it once more
as it was.  Quick to mark every shade that passed across his face,
the girl made as though she would again burst into tears; then, since
tears had been so useless, she pressed her hand over her eyes.

Hilary looked at that round, not too cleanly hand.  He could see her
watching him between her fingers.  It was uncanny, almost horrible,
like the sight of a cat watching a bird; and he stood appalled at the
terrible reality of his position, at the sight of his own future with
this girl, with her traditions, customs, life, the thousand and one
things that he did not know about her, that he would have to live
with if he once took her.  A minute passed, which seemed eternity,
for into it was condensed every force of her long pursuit, her
instinctive clutching at something that she felt to be security, her
reaching upwards, her twining round him.

Conscious of all this, held back by that vision of his future, yet
whipped towards her by his senses, Hilary swayed like a drunken man.
And suddenly she sprang at him, wreathed her arms round his neck, and
fastened her mouth to his.  The touch of her lips was moist and hot.
The scent of stale violet powder came from her, warmed by her
humanity.  It penetrated to Hilary's heart.  He started back in sheer
physical revolt.

Thus repulsed, the girl stood rigid, her breast heaving, her eyes
unnaturally dilated, her mouth still loosened by the kiss.  Snatching
from his pocket a roll of notes, Hilary flung them on the bed.

"I can't take you!" he almost groaned.  "It's madness!  It's
impossible!"  And he went out into the passage.  He ran down the
steps and got into his cab.  An immense time seemed to pass before it
began to move.  It started at last, and Hilary sat back in it, his
hands clenched, still as a dead man.

His mortified face was recognised by the landlady, returning from her
morning's visit to the shops.  The gentleman looked, she thought, as
if he had received bad news!  She not unnaturally connected his
appearance with her lodger.  Tapping on the girl's door, and
receiving no answer, she went in.

The little model was lying on the dismantled bed, pressing her face
into the blue and white ticking of the bolster.  Her shoulders shook,
and a sound of smothered sobbing came from her.  The landlady stood
staring silently.

Coming of Cornish chapel-going stock, she had never liked this girl,
her instinct telling her that she was one for whom life had already
been too much.  Those for whom life had so early been too much, she
knew, were always "ones for pleasure!"  Her experience of village
life had enabled her to construct the little model's story--that very
simple, very frequent little story.  Sometimes, indeed, trouble of
that sort was soon over and forgotten; but sometimes, if the young
man didn't do the right thing by her, and the girl's folk took it
hardly, well, then---!  So had run the reasoning of this good woman.
Being of the same class, she had looked at her lodger from the first
without obliquity of vision.

But seeing her now apparently so overwhelmed, and having something
soft and warm down beneath her granitic face and hungry eyes, she
touched her on the back.

"Come, now!" she said; "you mustn't take on!  What is it?"

The little model shook off the hand as a passionate child shakes
itself free of consolation.  "Let me alone!" she muttered.

The landlady drew back.  "Has anyone done you a harm?"  she said.

The little model shook her head.

Baffled by this dumb grief, the landlady was silent; then, with the
stolidity of those whose lives are one long wrestling with fortune,
she muttered:

"I don't like to see anyone cry like that!"

And finding that the girl remained obstinately withdrawn from sight
or sympathy, she moved towards the door.

"Well," she said, with ironical compassion, "if you want me, I'll be
in the kitchen."

The little model remained lying on her bed.  Every now and then she
gulped, like a child flung down on the grass apart from its comrades,
trying to swallow down its rage, trying to bury in the earth its
little black moment of despair.  Slowly those gulps grew fewer,
feebler, and at last died away.  She sat up, sweeping Hilary's bundle
of notes, on which she had been lying, to the floor.

At sight of that bundle she broke out afresh, flinging herself down
sideways with her cheek on the wet bolster; and, for some time after
her sobs had ceased again, still lay there.  At last she rose and
dragged herself over to the looking-glass, scrutinising her streaked,
discoloured face, the stains in the cheeks, the swollen eyelids, the
marks beneath her eyes; and listlessly she tidied herself.  Then,
sitting down on the brown tin trunk, she picked the bundle of notes
off the floor.  They gave forth a dry peculiar crackle.  Fifteen ten-
pound notes--all Hilary's travelling money.  Her eyes opened wider
and wider as she counted; and tears, quite suddenly, rolled down on
to those thin slips of paper.

Then slowly she undid her dress, and forced them down till they
rested, with nothing but her vest between them and the quivering warm
flesh which hid her heart.




CHAPTER XLI

THE HOUSE OF HARMONY

At half-past ten that evening Stephen walked up the stone-flagged
pathway of his brother's house.

"Can I see Mrs. Hilary?"

"Mr. Hilary went abroad this morning, sir, and Mrs. Hilary has not
yet come in."

"Will you give her this letter?  No, I'll wait.  I suppose I can wait
for her in the garden?"

"Oh yes, sit!"

"Very well."

"I'll leave the door open, sir, in case you want to come in."

Stephen walked across to the rustic bench and sat down.  He stared
gloomily through the dusk at his patent-leather boots, and every now
and then he flicked his evening trousers with the letter.  Across the
dark garden, where the boughs hung soft, unmoved by wind, the light
from Mr. Stone's open window flowed out in a pale river; moths, born
of the sudden heat, were fluttering up this river to its source.

Stephen looked irritably at the figure of Mr. Stone, which could be
seen, bowed, and utterly still, beside his desk; so, by lifting the
spy-hole thatch, one may see a convict in his cell stand gazing at
his work, without movement, numb with solitude.

'He's getting awfully broken up,' thought Stephen.  'Poor old chap!
His ideas are killing him.  They're not human nature, never will be.'
Again he flicked his trousers with the letter, as though that
document emphasised the fact.  'I can't help being sorry for the
sublime old idiot!'

He rose, the better to see his father-in-law's unconscious figure.
It looked as lifeless and as cold as though Mr. Stone had followed
some thought below the ground, and left his body standing there to
await his return.  Its appearance oppressed Stephen.

'You might set the house on fire,' he thought; 'he'd never notice.'

Mr. Stone's figure moved; the sound of along sigh came out to Stephen
in the windless garden.  He turned his eyes away, with the sudden
feeling that it was not the thing to watch the old chap like this;
then, getting up, he went indoors.  In his brother's study he stood
turning over the knick-knacks on the writing-table.

'I warned Hilary that he was burning his fingers,' he thought.

At the sound of the latch-key he went back to the hall.

However much he had secretly disapproved of her from the beginning,
because she had always seemed to him such an uncomfortable and
tantalising person, Stephen was impressed that night by the haunting
unhappiness of Bianca's face; as if it had been suddenly disclosed to
him that she could not help herself.  This was disconcerting, being,
in a sense, a disorderly way of seeing things.

"You look tired, B.," he said.  "I'm sorry, but I thought it better
to bring this round tonight."

Bianca glanced at the letter.

"It is to you," she said.  "I don't wish to read it, thank you."

Stephen compressed his lips.

"But I wish you to hear it, please," he said.  "I'll read it out, if
you'll allow me.

"'CHARING CROSS STATION.

"'DEAR STEVIE,

"'I told you yesterday morning that I was going abroad alone.
Afterwards I changed my mind--I meant to take her.  I went to her
lodgings for the purpose.  I have lived too long amongst sentiments
for such a piece of reality as that.  Class has saved me; it has
triumphed over my most primitive instincts.

"'I am going alone--back to my sentiments.  No slight has been placed
on Bianca--but my married life having become a mockery, I shall not
return to it.  The following address will find me, and I shall ask
you presently to send on my household gods.

"'Please let Bianca know the substance of this letter.

"'Ever your affectionate brother,

"'HILARY DALLISON."'


With a frown Stephen folded up the letter, and restored it to his
breast pocket.

'It's more bitter than I thought,' he reflected; 'and yet he's done
the only possible thing!'

Bianca was leaning her elbow on the mantelpiece with her face turned
to the wall.  Her silence irritated Stephen, whose loyalty to his
brother longed to fend a vent.

"I'm very much relieved, of course," he said at last.  "It would have
been fatal"

She did not move, and Stephen became increasingly aware that this was
a most awkward matter to touch on.

"Of course," he began again.  "But, B., I do think you--rather--I
mean---" And again he stopped before her utter silence, her utter
immobility.  Then, unable to go away without having in some sort
expressed his loyalty to Hilary, he tried once more: "Hilary is the
kindest man I know.  It's not his fault if he's out of touch with
life--if he's not fit to deal with things.  He's negative!"

And having thus in a single word, somewhat to his own astonishment,
described his brother, he held out his hand.

The hand which Bianca placed in it was feverishly hot.  Stephen felt
suddenly compunctious.

"I'm awfully sorry," he stammered, "about the whole thing.  I'm
awfully sorry for you---"

Bianca drew back her hand.

With a little shrug Stephen turned away.

'What are you to do with women like that?' was his thought, and
saying dryly, "Good-night, B.," he went.

For some time Bianca sat in Hilary's chair.  Then, by the faint
glimmer coming through the half-open door, she began to wander round
the room, touching the walls, the books, the prints, all the familiar
things among which he had lived so many years....

In that dim continual journey she was like a disharmonic spirit
traversing the air above where its body lies.

The door creaked behind her.  A voice said sharply:

"What are you doing in this house?"

Mr. Stone was standing beside the bust of Socrates.  Bianca went up
to him.

"Father!"

Mr. Stone stared.  "It is you!  I thought it was a thief!  Where is
Hilary?"

"Gone away."

"Alone?"

Bianca bowed her head.  "It is very late, Dad," she whispered.

Mr. Stone's hand moved as though he would have stroked her.

"The human heart," he murmured, "is the tomb of many feelings."

Bianca put her arm round him.

"You must go to bed, Dad," she said, trying to get him to the door,
for in her heart something seemed giving way.

Mr. Stone stumbled; the door swung to; the room was plunged in
darkness.  A hand, cold as ice, brushed her cheek.  With all her
force she stiffed a scream.

"I am here," Mr. Stone said.

His hand, wandering downwards, touched her shoulder, and she seized
it with her own burning hand.  Thus linked, they groped their way out
into the passage towards his room.

"Good-night, dear," Bianca murmured.

By the light of his now open door Mr. Stone seemed to try and see her
face, but she would not show it him.  Closing the door gently, she
stole upstairs.

Sitting down in her bedroom by the open window, it seemed to her that
the room was full of people--her nerves were so unstrung.  It was as
if walls had not the power this night to exclude human presences.
Moving, or motionless, now distinct, then covered suddenly by the
thick veil of some material object, they circled round her quiet
figure, lying back in the chair with shut eyes.  These disharmonic
shadows flitting in the room made a stir like the rubbing of dry
straw or the hum of bees among clover stalks.  When she sat up they
vanished, and the sounds became the distant din of homing traffic;
but the moment she closed her eyes, her visitors again began to steal
round her with that dry, mysterious hum.

She fell asleep presently, and woke with a start.  There, in a
glimmer of pale light, stood the little model, as in the fatal
picture Bianca had painted of her.  Her face was powder white, with
shadows beneath the eyes.  Breath seemed coming through her parted
lips, just touched with colour.  In her hat lay the tiny peacock's
feather beside the two purplish-pink roses.  A scent came from her,
too--but faint, as ever was the scent of chicory flower.  How long
had she been standing there?  Bianca started to her feet, and as she
rose the vision vanished.

She went towards the spot.  There was nothing in that corner but
moonlight; the scent she had perceived was merely that of the trees
drifting in.

But so vivid had that vision been that she stood at the window,
panting for air, passing her hand again and again across her eyes.

Outside, over the dark gardens, the moon hung full and almost golden.
Its honey-pale light filtered down on every little shape of tree, and
leaf, and sleeping flower.  That soft, vibrating radiance seemed to
have woven all into one mysterious whole, stilling disharmony, so
that each little separate shape had no meaning to itself.

Bianca looked long at the rain of moonlight falling on the earth's
carpet, like a covering shower of blossom which bees have sucked and
spilled.  Then, below her, out through candescent space, she saw a
shadow dart forth along the grass, and to her fright a voice rose,
tremulous and clear, seeming to seek enfranchisement beyond the
barrier of the dark trees: "My brain is clouded.  Great Universe!  I
cannot write!  I can no longer discover to my brothers that they are
one.  I am not worthy to stay here.  Let me pass into You, and die!"

Bianca saw her father's fragile arms stretch out into the night
through the sleeves of his white garment, as though expecting to be
received at once into the Universal Brotherhood of the thin air.

There ensued a moment, when, by magic, every little dissonance in all
the town seemed blended into a harmony of silence, as it might be the
very death of self upon the earth.

Then, breaking that trance, Mr. Stone's voice rose again, trembling
out into the night, as though blown through a reed.

"Brothers!" he said.

Behind the screen of lilac bushes at the gate Bianca saw the dark
helmet of a policeman.  He stood there staring steadily in the
direction of that voice.  Raising his lantern, he flashed it into
every corner of the garden, searching for those who had been
addressed.  Satisfied, apparently, that no one was there, he moved it
to right and left, lowered it to the level of his breast, and walked
slowly on.





End of The Project Gutenberg Etext of Fraternity, by John Galsworthy






THE PATRICIAN

By John Galsworthy



CHAPTER I

Light, entering the vast room--a room so high that its carved ceiling
refused itself to exact scrutiny--travelled, with the wistful, cold
curiosity of the dawn, over a fantastic storehouse of Time.  Light,
unaccompanied by the prejudice of human eyes, made strange revelation
of incongruities, as though illuminating the dispassionate march of
history.

For in this dining hall--one of the finest in England--the Caradoc
family had for centuries assembled the trophies and records of their
existence.  Round about this dining hall they had built and pulled
down and restored, until the rest of Monkland Court presented some
aspect of homogeneity.  Here alone they had left virgin the work of
the old quasi-monastic builders, and within it unconsciously
deposited their souls.  For there were here, meeting the eyes of
light, all those rather touching evidences of man's desire to persist
for ever, those shells of his former bodies, the fetishes and queer
proofs of his faiths, together with the remorseless demonstration of
their treatment at the hands of Time.

The annalist might here have found all his needed confirmations; the
analyst from this material formed the due equation of high birth; the
philosopher traced the course of aristocracy, from its primeval rise
in crude strength or subtlety, through centuries of power, to
picturesque decadence, and the beginnings of its last stand.  Even
the artist might here, perchance, have seized on the dry ineffable
pervading spirit, as one visiting an old cathedral seems to scent out
the constriction of its heart.

From the legendary sword of that Welsh chieftain who by an act of
high, rewarded treachery had passed into the favour of the conquering
William, and received, with the widow of a Norman, many lands in
Devonshire, to the Cup purchased for Geoffrey Caradoc; present Earl
of Valleys, by subscription of his Devonshire tenants on the occasion
of his marriage with the Lady Gertrude Semmering--no insignia were
absent, save the family portraits in the gallery of Valleys House in
London.  There was even an ancient duplicate of that yellow tattered
scroll royally, reconfirming lands and title to John, the most
distinguished of all the Caradocs, who had unfortunately neglected to
be born in wedlock, by one of those humorous omissions to be found in
the genealogies of most old families.  Yes, it was there, almost
cynically hung in a corner; for this incident, though no doubt a
burning question in the fifteenth century, was now but staple for an
ironical little tale, in view of the fact that descendants of John's
'own' brother Edmund were undoubtedly to be found among the cottagers
of a parish not far distant.

Light, glancing from the suits of armour to the tiger skins beneath
them, brought from India but a year ago by Bertie Caradoc, the
younger son, seemed recording, how those, who had once been foremost
by virtue of that simple law of Nature which crowns the adventuring
and strong, now being almost washed aside out of the main stream of
national life, were compelled to devise adventure, lest they should
lose belief in their own strength.

The unsparing light of that first half-hour of summer morning
recorded many other changes, wandering from austere tapestries to the
velvety carpets, and dragging from the contrast sure proof of a
common sense which denied to the present Earl and Countess the
asceticisms of the past.  And then it seemed to lose interest in this
critical journey, as though longing to clothe all in witchery.  For
the sun had risen, and through the Eastern windows came pouring its
level and mysterious joy.  And with it, passing in at an open
lattice, came a wild bee to settle among the flowers on the table
athwart the Eastern end, used when there was only a small party in
the house.  The hours fled on silent, till the sun was high, and the
first visitors came--three maids, rosy, not silent, bringing brushes.
They passed, and were followed by two footmen--scouts of the
breakfast brigade, who stood for a moment professionally doing
nothing, then soberly commenced to set the table.  Then came a little
girl of six, to see if there were anything exciting--little Ann
Shropton, child of Sir William Shropton by his marriage with Lady
Agatha, and eldest daughter of the house, the only one of the four
young Caradocs as yet wedded.  She came on tiptoe, thinking to
surprise whatever was there.  She had a broad little face, and wide
frank hazel eyes over a little nose that came out straight and
sudden.  Encircled by a loose belt placed far below the waist of her
holland frock, as if to symbolize freedom, she seemed to think
everything in life good fun.  And soon she found the exciting thing.

"Here's a bumble bee, William.  Do you think I could tame it in my
little glass bog?"

"No, I don't, Miss Ann; and look out, you'll be stung!"

"It wouldn't sting me."

"Why not?"

"Because it wouldn't."

"Of course--if you say so----"

"What time is the motor ordered?"

"Nine o'clock."

"I'm going with Grandpapa as far as the gate."

"Suppose he says you're not?"

"Well, then I shall go all the same."

"I see."

"I might go all the way with him to London!  Is Auntie Babs going?"

"No, I don't think anybody is going with his lordship."

"I would, if she were.   William!"

"Yes."

"Is Uncle Eustace sure to be elected ?"

"Of course he is."

"Do you think he'll be a good Member of Parliament?"

"Lord Miltoun is very clever, Miss Ann."

"Is he?"

"Well, don't you think so?"

"Does Charles think so?"

"Ask him."

"William!"

"Yes."

"I don't like London.  I like here, and I like Cotton, and I like
home pretty well, and I love Pendridny--and--I like Ravensham."

"His lordship is going to Ravensham to-day on his way up, I heard
say."

"Oh! then he'll see great-granny.  William----"

"Here's Miss Wallace."

>From the doorway a lady with a broad pale patient face said:

"Come, Ann."

"All right!  Hallo, Simmons!"

The entering butler replied:

"Hallo, Miss Ann!"

"I've got to go."

"I'm sure we're very sorry."

"Yes."

The door banged faintly, and in the great room rose the busy silence
of those minutes which precede repasts.  Suddenly the four men by the
breakfast fable stood back.  Lord Valleys had come in.

He approached slowly, reading a blue paper, with his level grey eyes
divided by a little uncharacteristic frown.  He had a tanned yet
ruddy, decisively shaped face, with crisp hair and moustache
beginning to go iron-grey--the face of a man who knows his own mind
and is contented with that knowledge.  His figure too, well-braced
and upright, with the back of the head carried like a soldier's,
confirmed the impression, not so much of self-sufficiency, as of the
sufficiency of his habits of life and thought.  And there was
apparent about all his movements that peculiar unconsciousness of his
surroundings which comes to those who live a great deal in the public
eye, have the material machinery of existence placed exactly to their
hands, and never need to consider what others think of them.  Taking
his seat, and still perusing the paper, he at once began to eat what
was put before him; then noticing that his eldest daughter had come
in and was sitting down beside him, he said:

"Bore having to go up in such weather!"

"Is it a Cabinet meeting?"

"Yes.  This confounded business of the balloons."   But the rather
anxious dark eyes of Agatha's delicate narrow face were taking in the
details of a tray for keeping dishes warm on a sideboard, and she was
thinking: "I believe that would be better than the ones I've got,
after all.  If William would only say whether he really likes these
large trays better than single hot-water dishes!"  She contrived how-
ever to ask in her gentle voice--for all her words and movements were
gentle, even a little timid, till anything appeared to threaten the
welfare of her husband or children:

"Do you think this war scare good for Eustace's prospects, Father?"

But her father did not answer; he was greeting a new-comer, a tall,
fine-looking young man, with dark hair and a fair moustache, between
whom and himself there was no relationship, yet a certain negative
resemblance.  Claud Fresnay, Viscount Harbinger, was indeed also a
little of what is called the 'Norman' type--having a certain firm
regularity of feature, and a slight aquilinity of nose high up on the
bridge--but that which in the elder man seemed to indicate only an
unconscious acceptance of self as a standard, in the younger man gave
an impression at once more assertive and more uneasy, as though he
were a little afraid of not chaffing something all the time.

Behind him had come in a tall woman, of full figure and fine
presence, with hair still brown--Lady Valleys herself.  Though her
eldest son was thirty, she was, herself, still little more than
fifty.  From her voice, manner, and whole personality, one might
suspect that she had been an acknowledged beauty; but there was now
more than a suspicion of maturity about her almost jovial face, with
its full grey-blue eyes; and coarsened complexion.  Good comrade, and
essentially 'woman of the world,' was written on every line of her,
and in every tone of her voice.  She was indeed a figure suggestive
of open air and generous living, endowed with abundant energy, and
not devoid of humour.  It was she who answered Agatha's remark.

"Of course, my dear, the very best thing possible."

Lord Harbinger chimed in:

"By the way, Brabrook's going to speak on it.  Did you ever hear him,
Lady Agatha?  'Mr. Speaker, Sir, I rise--and with me rises the
democratic principle----'"

But Agatha only smiled, for she was thinking:

"If I let Ann go as far as the gate, she'll only make it a stepping-
stone to something else to-morrow."  Taking no interest in public
affairs, her inherited craving for command had resorted for
expression to a meticulous ordering of household matters.  It was
indeed a cult with her, a passion--as though she felt herself a sort
of figurehead to national domesticity; the leader of a patriotic
movement.

Lord Valleys, having finished what seemed necessary, arose.

"Any message to your mother, Gertrude?"

"No, I wrote last night."

"Tell Miltoun to keep--an eye on that Mr. Courtier.  I heard him
speak one day--he's rather good."

Lady Valleys, who had not yet sat down, accompanied her husband to
the door.

"By the way, I've told Mother about this woman, Geoff."

"Was it necessary?"

"Well, I think so; I'm uneasy--after all, Mother has some influence
with Miltoun."

Lord Valleys shrugged his shoulders, and slightly squeezing his
wife's arm, went out.

Though himself vaguely uneasy on that very subject, he was a man who
did not go to meet disturbance.  He had the nerves which seem to be
no nerves at all--especially found in those of his class who have
much to do with horses.  He temperamentally regarded the evil of the
day as quite sufficient to it.  Moreover, his eldest son was a riddle
that he had long given up, so far as women were concerned.

Emerging into the outer hall, he lingered a moment, remembering that
he had not seen his younger and favourite daughter.

"Lady Barbara down yet?"  Hearing that she was not, he slipped into
the motor coat held for him by Simmons, and stepped out under the
white portico, decorated by the Caradoc hawks in stone.

The voice of little Ann reached him, clear and high above the
smothered whirring of the car.

"Come on, Grandpapa!"

Lord Valleys grimaced beneath his crisp moustache--the word grandpapa
always fell queerly on the ears of one who was but fifty-six, and by
no means felt it--and jerking his gloved hand towards Ann, he said:

"Send down to the lodge gate for this."

The voice of little Ann answered loudly:

"No; I'm coming back by myself."

The car starting, drowned discussion.

Lord Valleys, motoring, somewhat pathetically illustrated the
invasion of institutions by their destroyer, Science.  A supporter of
the turf, and not long since Master of Foxhounds, most of whose soul
(outside politics) was in horses, he had been, as it were, compelled
by common sense, not only to tolerate, but to take up and even press
forward the cause of their supplanters.  His instinct of self-
preservation was secretly at work, hurrying him to his own
destruction; forcing him to persuade himself that science and her
successive victories over brute nature could be wooed into the
service of a prestige which rested on a crystallized and stationary
base.  All this keeping pace with the times, this immersion in the
results of modern discoveries, this speeding-up of existence so that
it was all surface and little root--the increasing volatility,
cosmopolitanism, and even commercialism of his life, on which he
rather prided himself as a man of the world--was, with a secrecy too
deep for his perception, cutting at the aloofness logically demanded
of one in his position.  Stubborn, and not spiritually subtle, though
by no means dull in practical matters, he was resolutely letting the
waters bear him on, holding the tiller firmly, without perceiving
that he was in the vortex of a whirlpool.  Indeed, his common sense
continually impelled him, against the sort of reactionaryism of which
his son Miltoun had so much, to that easier reactionaryism, which,
living on its spiritual capital, makes what material capital it can
out of its enemy, Progress.

He drove the car himself, shrewd and self-contained, sitting easily,
with his cap well drawn over those steady eyes; and though this
unexpected meeting of the Cabinet in the Whitsuntide recess was not
only a nuisance, but gave food for anxiety, he was fully able to
enjoy the swift smooth movement through the summer air, which met him
with such friendly sweetness under the great trees of the long
avenue.  Beside him, little Ann was silent, with her legs stuck out
rather wide apart.  Motoring was a new excitement, for at home it was
forbidden; and a meditative rapture shone in her wide eyes above her
sudden little nose.  Only once she spoke, when close to the lodge the
car slowed down, and they passed the lodge-keeper's little daughter.

"Hallo, Susie!"

There was no answer, but the look on Susie's small pale face was so
humble and adoring that Lord Valleys, not a very observant man,
noticed it with a sort of satisfaction.  "Yes," he thought, somewhat
irrelevantly, "the country is sound at heart!"




CHAPTER II

At Ravensham House on the borders of Richmond Park, suburban seat of
the Casterley family, ever since it became usual to have a residence
within easy driving distance of Westminster--in a large conservatory
adjoining the hall, Lady Casterley stood in front of some Japanese
lilies.  She was a slender, short old woman, with an ivory-coloured
face, a thin nose, and keen eyes half-veiled by delicate wrinkled
lids.  Very still, in her grey dress, and with grey hair, she gave
the impression of a little figure carved out of fine, worn steel.
Her firm, spidery hand held a letter written in free somewhat
sprawling style:

                                   MONKLAND COURT,
                                        "DEVON.

"MY DEAR, MOTHER,

"Geoffrey is motoring up to-morrow.  He'll look in on you on the way
if he can.  This new war scare has taken him up.  I shan't be in Town
myself till Miltoun's election is over.  The fact is, I daren't leave
him down here alone.  He sees his 'Anonyma' every day.  That Mr.
Courtier, who wrote the book against War--rather cool for a man who's
been a soldier of fortune, don't you think?--is staying at the inn,
working for the Radical.  He knows her, too--and, one can only hope,
for Miltoun's sake, too well--an attractive person, with red
moustaches, rather nice and mad.  Bertie has just come down; I must
get him to have a talk with Miltoun, and see if he cant find out how
the land lies.  One can trust Bertie--he's really very astute.  I
must say, that she's quite a sweet-looking woman; but absolutely
nothing's known of her here except that she divorced her husband.
How does one find out about people?  Miltoun's being so
extraordinarily strait-laced makes it all the more awkward.  The
earnestness of this rising generation is most remarkable.  I don't
remember taking such a serious view of life in my youth."


Lady Casterley lowered the coronetted sheet of paper.  The ghost of a
grimace haunted her face--she had not forgotten her daughter's youth.
Raising the letter again, she read on:


"I'm sure Geoffrey and I feel years younger than either Miltoun or
Agatha, though we did produce them.  One doesn't feel it with Bertie
or Babs, luckily.  The war scare is having an excellent effect on
Miltoun's candidature.  Claud Harbinger is with us, too, working for
Miltoun; but, as a matter of fact, I think he's after Babs.  It's
rather melancholy, when you think that Babs isn't quite twenty--
still, one can't expect anything else, I suppose, with her looks; and
Claud is rather a fine specimen.  They talk of him a lot now; he's
quite coming to the fore among the young Tories."

Lady Casterley again lowered the letter, and stood listening.  A
prolonged, muffled sound as of distant cheering and groans had
penetrated the great conservatory, vibrating among the pale petals of
the lilies and setting free their scent in short waves of perfume.
She passed into the hall; where, stood an old man with sallow face
and long white whiskers.

"What was that noise, Clifton?"

"A posse of Socialists, my lady, on their way to Putney to hold a
demonstration; the people are hooting them.  They've got blocked just
outside the gates."

"Are they making speeches?"

"They are talking some kind of rant, my lady."

"I'll go and hear them.  Give me my black stick."

Above the velvet-dark, flat-toughed cedar trees, which rose like
pagodas of ebony on either side of the drive, the sky hung lowering
in one great purple cloud, endowed with sinister life by a single
white beam striking up into it from the horizon.  Beneath this canopy
of cloud a small phalanx of dusty, dishevelled-looking men and women
were drawn up in the road, guarding, and encouraging with cheers, a
tall, black-coated orator.  Before and behind this phalanx, a little
mob of men and boys kept up an accompaniment of groans and jeering.

Lady Casterley and her 'major-domo' stood six paces inside the
scrolled iron gates, and watched.  The slight, steel-coloured figure
with steel-coloured hair, was more arresting in its immobility than
all the vociferations and gestures of the mob.  Her eyes alone moved
under their half-drooped lids; her right hand clutched tightly the
handle of her stick.  The speaker's voice rose in shrill protest
against the exploitation of 'the people'; it sank in ironical comment
on Christianity; it demanded passionately to be free from the
continuous burden of 'this insensate militarist taxation'; it
threatened that the people would take things info their own hands.

Lady Casterley turned her head:

"He is talking nonsense, Clifton.  It is going to rain.  I shall go
in."

Under the stone porch she paused.  The purple cloud had broken; a
blind fury of rain was deluging the fast-scattering crowd.  A faint
smile came on Lady Casterley's lips.

"It will do them good to have their ardour damped a little.  You will
get wet, Clifton--hurry!  I expect Lord Valleys to dinner.  Have a
room got ready for him to dress.  He's motoring from Monkland."




CHAPTER III

In a very high, white-pannelled room, with but little furniture, Lord
Valleys greeted his mother-in-law respectfully.

"Motored up in nine hours, Ma'am--not bad going."

"I am glad you came.  When is Miltoun's election?"

"On the twenty-ninth."

"Pity!  He should be away from Monkland, with that--anonymous woman
living there."

"Ah!  yes; you've heard of her!"

Lady Casterley replied sharply:

"You're too easy-going, Geoffrey."

Lord Valleys smiled.

"These war scares," he said, "are getting a bore.  Can't quite make
out what the feeling of the country is about them."

Lady Casterley rose:

"It has none.  When war comes, the feeling will be all right.  It
always is.  Give me your arm.  Are you hungry?"...

When Lord Valleys spoke of war, he spoke as one who, since he arrived
at years of discretion, had lived within the circle of those who
direct the destinies of States.  It was for him--as for the lilies in
the great glass house--impossible to see with the eyes, or feel with
the feelings of a flower of the garden outside.  Soaked in the best
prejudices and manners of his class, he lived a life no more shut off
from the general than was to be expected.  Indeed, in some sort, as a
man of facts and common sense, he was fairly in touch with the
opinion of the average citizen.  He was quite genuine when he said
that he believed he knew what the people wanted better than those who
prated on the subject; and no doubt he was right, for temperamentally
he was nearer to them than their own leaders, though he would not
perhaps have liked to be told so.  His man-of-the-world, political
shrewdness had been superimposed by life on a nature whose prime
strength was its practicality and lack of imagination.  It was his
business to be efficient, but not strenuous, or desirous of pushing
ideas to their logical conclusions; to be neither narrow nor
puritanical, so long as the shell of 'good form' was preserved
intact; to be a liberal landlord up to the point of not seriously
damaging his interests; to be well-disposed towards the arts until
those arts revealed that which he had not before perceived; it was
his business to have light hands, steady eyes, iron nerves, and those
excellent manners that have no mannerisms.  It was his nature to be
easy-going as a husband; indulgent as a father; careful and
straightforward as a politician; and as a man, addicted to pleasure,
to work, and to fresh air.  He admired, and was fond of his wife, and
had never regretted his marriage.  He had never perhaps regretted
anything, unless it were that he had not yet won the Derby, or quite
succeeded in getting his special strain of blue-ticked pointers to
breed absolutely true to type.  His mother-in-law he respected, as
one might respect a principle.

There was indeed in the personality of that little old lady the
tremendous force of accumulated decision--the inherited assurance of
one whose prestige had never been questioned; who, from long
immunity, and a certain clear-cut matter-of-factness, bred by the
habit of command, had indeed lost the power of perceiving that her
prestige ever could be questioned.  Her knowledge of her own mind was
no ordinary piece of learning, had not, in fact, been learned at all,
but sprang full-fledged from an active dominating temperament.
Fortified by the necessity, common to her class, of knowing
thoroughly the more patent side of public affairs; armoured by the
tradition of a culture demanded by leadership; inspired by ideas, but
always the same ideas; owning no master, but in servitude to her own
custom of leading, she had a mind, formidable as the two-edged swords
wielded by her ancestors the Fitz-Harolds, at Agincourt or Poitiers--
a mind which had ever instinctively rejected that inner knowledge of
herself or of the selves of others; produced by those foolish
practices of introspection, contemplation, and understanding, so
deleterious to authority.  If Lord Valleys was the body of the
aristocratic machine, Lady Casterley was the steel spring inside it.
All her life studiously unaffected and simple in attire; of plain and
frugal habit; an early riser; working at something or other from
morning till night, and as little worn-out at seventy-eight as most
women of fifty, she had only one weak spot--and that was her
strength--blindness as to the nature and size of her place in the
scheme of things.  She was a type, a force.

Wonderfully well she went with the room in which they were dining,
whose grey walls, surmounted by a deep frieze painted somewhat in the
style of Fragonard, contained many nymphs and roses now rather dim;
with the furniture, too, which had a look of having survived into
times not its own.  On the tables were no flowers, save five lilies
in an old silver chalice; and on the wall over the great sideboard a
portrait of the late Lord Casterley.

She spoke:

"I hope Miltoun is taking his own line?"

"That's the trouble.  He suffers from swollen principles--only wish
he could keep them out of his speeches."

"Let him be; and get him away from that woman as soon as his
election's over.  What is her real name?"

"Mrs. something Lees Noel."

"How long has she been there?"

"About a year, I think."

"And you don't know anything about her?"

Lord Valleys raised his shoulders.

"Ah!" said Lady Casterley; "exactly!  You're letting the thing drift.
I shall go down myself.  I suppose Gertrude can have me?  What has
that Mr. Courtier to do with this good lady?"

Lord Valleys smiled.  In this smile was the whole of his polite and
easy-going philosophy.  "I am no meddler," it seemed to say; and at
sight of that smile Lady Casterley tightened her lips.

"He is a firebrand," she said.  "I read that book of his against War-
-most inflammatory.  Aimed at Grant-and Rosenstern, chiefly.  I've
just seen, one of the results, outside my own gates.  A mob of anti-
War agitators."

Lord Valleys controlled a yawn.

"Really?  I'd no idea Courtier had any influence."

"He is dangerous.  Most idealists are negligible-his book was
clever."

"I wish to goodness we could see the last of these scares, they only
make both countries look foolish," muttered Lord Valleys.

Lady Casterley raised her glass, full of a bloody red wine.  "The war
would save us," she said.

"War is no joke."

"It would be the beginning of a better state of things."

"You think so?"

"We should get the lead again as a nation, and Democracy would be put
back fifty years."

Lord Valleys made three little heaps of salt, and paused to count
them; then, with a slight uplifting of his eyebrows, which seemed to
doubt what he was going to say, he murmured: "I should have said that
we were all democrats nowadays....  What is it, Clifton?"

"Your chauffeur would like to know, what time you will have the car?"

"Directly after dinner."

Twenty minutes later, he was turning through the scrolled iron gates
into the road for London.  It was falling dark; and in the tremulous
sky clouds were piled up, and drifted here and there with a sort of
endless lack of purpose.  No direction seemed to have been decreed
unto their wings.  They had met together in the firmament like a
flock of giant magpies crossing and re-crossing each others' flight.
The smell of rain was in the air.  The car raised no dust, but bored
swiftly on, searching out the road with its lamps.  On Putney Bridge
its march was stayed by a string of waggons.  Lord Valleys looked to
right and left.  The river reflected the thousand lights of buildings
piled along her sides, lamps of the embankments, lanterns of moored
barges.  The sinuous pallid body of this great Creature, for ever
gliding down to the sea, roused in his mind no symbolic image.  He
had had to do with her, years back, at the Board of Trade, and knew
her for what she was, extremely dirty, and getting abominably thin
just where he would have liked her plump.  Yet, as he lighted a
cigar, there came to him a queer feeling--as if he were in the
presence of a woman he was fond of.

"I hope to God," he thought, "nothing'il come of these scares!"  The
car glided on into the long road, swarming with traffic, towards the
fashionable heart of London.  Outside stationers' shops, however, the
posters of evening papers were of no reassuring order.

                    'THE PLOT THICKENS.'
                     'MORE REVELATIONS.'
               'GRAVE SITUATION THREATENED.'

And before each poster could be seen a little eddy in the stream of
the passers-by--formed by persons glancing at the news, and
disengaging themselves, to press on again.  The Earl of Valleys
caught himself wondering what they thought of it!  What was passing
behind those pale rounds of flesh turned towards the posters?

Did they think at all, these men and women in the street?  What was
their attitude towards this vaguely threatened cataclysm?  Face after
face, stolid and apathetic, expressed nothing, no active desire,
certainly no enthusiasm, hardly any dread.  Poor devils!  The thing,
after all, was no more within their control than it was within the
power of ants to stop the ruination of their ant-heap by some passing
boy!  It was no doubt quite true, that the people had never had much
voice in the making of war.  And the words of a Radical weekly, which
as an impartial man he always forced himself to read, recurred to
him.  "Ignorant of the facts, hypnotized by the words 'Country' and
'Patriotism'; in the grip of mob-instinct and inborn prejudice
against the foreigner; helpless by reason of his patience, stoicism,
good faith, and confidence in those above him; helpless by reason of
his snobbery, mutual distrust, carelessness for the morrow, and lack
of public spirit-in the face of War how impotent and to be pitied is
the man in the street!"  That paper, though clever, always seemed to
him intolerably hifalutin'!

It was doubtful whether he would get to Ascot this year.  And his
mind flew for a moment to his promising two-year-old Casetta; then
dashed almost violently, as though in shame, to the Admiralty and the
doubt whether they were fully alive to possibilities.  He himself
occupied a softer spot of Government, one of those almost nominal
offices necessary to qualify into the Cabinet certain tried minds,
for whom no more strenuous post can for the moment be found.  From
the Admiralty again his thoughts leaped to his mother-in-law.
Wonderful old woman!  What a statesman she would have made!  Too
reactionary!  Deuce of a straight line she had taken about Mrs. Lees
Noel!  And with a connoisseur's twinge of pleasure he recollected
that lady's face and figure seen that morning as he passed her
cottage.  Mysterious or not, the woman was certainly attractive!
Very graceful head with its dark hair waved back from the middle over
either temple--very charming figure, no lumber of any sort!  Bouquet
about her!  Some story or other, no doubt--no affair of his!  Always
sorry for that sort of woman!

A regiment of Territorials returning from a march stayed the progress
of his car.  He leaned forward watching them with much the same
contained, shrewd, critical look he would have bent on a pack of
hounds.  All the mistiness and speculation in his mind was gone now.
Good stamp of man, would give a capital account of themselves!  Their
faces, flushed by a day in the open, were masked with passivity, or,
with a half-aggressive, half-jocular self-consciousness; they were
clearly not troubled by abstract doubts, or any visions of the
horrors of war.

Someone raised a cheer 'for the Terriers!' Lord Valleys saw round him
a little sea of hats, rising and falling, and heard a sound, rather
shrill and tentative, swell into hoarse, high clamour, and suddenly
die out.  "Seem keen enough!" he thought.  "Very little does it!
Plenty of fighting spirit in the country."   And again a thrill of
pleasure shot through him.

Then, as the last soldier passed, his car slowly forged its way
through the straggling crowd, pressing on behind the regiment--men of
all ages, youths, a few women, young girls, who turned their eyes on
him with a negligent stare as if their lives were too remote to
permit them to take interest in this passing man at ease.




CHAPTER IV

At Monkland, that same hour, in the little whitewashed 'withdrawing-
room' of a thatched, whitewashed cottage, two men sat talking, one on
either side of the hearth; and in a low chair between them a dark-
eyed woman leaned back, watching, the tips of her delicate thin
fingers pressed together, or held out transparent towards the fire.
A log, dropping now and then, turned up its glowing underside; and
the firelight and the lamplight seemed so to have soaked into the
white walls that a wan warmth exuded.  Silvery dun moths, fluttering
in from the dark garden, kept vibrating, like spun shillings, over a
jade-green bowl of crimson roses; and there was a scent, as ever in
that old thatched cottage, of woodsmoke, flowers, and sweetbriar.

The man on the left was perhaps forty, rather above middle height,
vigorous, active, straight, with blue eyes and a sanguine face that
glowed on small provocation.  His hair was very bright, almost red,
and his fiery moustaches which descended to the level of his chin,
like Don Quixote's seemed bristling and charging.

The man on the right was nearer thirty, evidently tall, wiry, and
very thin.  He sat rather crumpled, in his low armchair, with hands
clasped round a knee; and a little crucified smile haunted the lips
of his lean face, which, with its parchmenty, tanned, shaven cheeks,
and deep-set, very living eyes, had a certain beauty.

These two men, so extravagantly unlike, looked at each other like
neighbouring dogs, who, having long decided that they are better
apart, suddenly find that they have met at some spot where they
cannot possibly have a fight.  And the woman watched; the owner, as
it were, of one, but who, from sheer love of dogs, had always stroked
and patted the other.

"So, Mr. Courtier," said the younger man, whose dry, ironic voice,
like his smile, seemed defending the fervid spirit in his eyes; "all
you say only amounts, you see, to a defence of the so-called Liberal
spirit; and, forgive my candour, that spirit, being an importation
from the realms of philosophy and art, withers the moment it touches
practical affairs."

The man with the red moustaches laughed; the sound was queer--at once
so genial and so sardonic.

"Well put!" he said: "And far be it from me to gainsay.  But since
compromise is the very essence of politics, high-priests of caste and
authority, like you, Lord Miltoun, are every bit as much out of it as
any Liberal professor."

"I don't agree!"

"Agree or not, your position towards public affairs is very like the
Church's attitude towards marriage and divorce; as remote from the
realities of life as the attitude of the believer in Free Love, and
not more likely to catch on.  The death of your point of view lies in
itself--it's too dried-up and far from things ever to understand
them.  If you don't understand you can never rule.  You might just as
well keep your hands in your pockets, as go into politics with your
notions!"

"I fear we must continue to agree to differ."

"Well; perhaps I do pay you too high a compliment.  After all, you
are a patrician."

"You speak in riddles, Mr. Courtier."

The dark-eyed woman stirred; her hands gave a sort of flutter, as
though in deprecation of acerbity.

Rising at once, and speaking in a deferential voice, the elder man
said

"We're tiring Mrs. Noel.  Good-night, Audrey, It's high time I was
off."   Against the darkness of the open French window, he turned
round to fire a parting shot.

"What I meant, Lord Miltoun, was that your class is the driest and
most practical in the State--it's odd if it doesn't save you from a
poet's dreams.  Good-night!"  He passed out on to the lawn, and
vanished.

The young man sat unmoving; the glow of the fire had caught his face,
so that a spirit seemed clinging round his lips, gleaming out of his
eyes.  Suddenly he said:

"Do you believe that, Mrs. Noel?"

For answer Audrey Noel smiled, then rose and went over to the window.

"Look at my dear toad!  It comes here every evening!"
On a flagstone of the verandah, in the centre of the stream of
lamplight, sat a little golden toad.  As Miltoun came to look, it
waddled to one side, and vanished.

"How peaceful your garden is!" he said; then taking her hand, he very
gently raised it to his lips, and followed his opponent out into the
darkness.

Truly peace brooded over that garden.  The Night seemed listening--
all lights out, all hearts at rest.  It watched, with a little white
star for every tree, and roof, and slumbering tired flower, as a
mother watches her sleeping child, leaning above him and counting
with her love every hair of his head, and all his tiny tremors.

Argument seemed child's babble indeed under the smile of Night.  And
the face of the woman, left alone at her window, was a little like
the face of this warm, sweet night.  It was sensitive, harmonious;
and its harmony was not, as in some faces, cold--but seemed to
tremble and glow and flutter, as though it were a spirit which had
found its place of resting.

In her garden,--all velvety grey, with black shadows beneath the yew-
trees, the white flowers alone seemed to be awake, and to look at her
wistfully.  The trees stood dark and still.  Not even the night birds
stirred.  Alone, the little stream down in the bottom raised its
voice, privileged when day voices were hushed.

It was not in Audrey Noel to deny herself to any spirit that was
abroad; to repel was an art she did not practise.  But this night,
though the Spirit of Peace hovered so near, she did not seem to know
it.  Her hands trembled, her cheeks were burning; her breast heaved,
and sighs fluttered from her lips, just parted.




CHAPTER V

Eustace Cardoc, Viscount Miltoun, had lived a very lonely life, since
he first began to understand the peculiarities of existence.  With
the exception of Clifton, his grandmother's 'majordomo,' he made, as
a small child, no intimate friend.  His nurses, governesses, tutors,
by their own confession did not understand him, finding that he took
himself with unnecessary seriousness; a little afraid, too, of one
whom they discovered to be capable of pushing things to the point of
enduring pain in silence.  Much of that early time was passed at
Ravensham, for he had always been Lady Casterley's favourite
grandchild.  She recognized in him the purposeful austerity which had
somehow been omitted from the composition of her daughter.  But only
to Clifton, then a man of fifty with a great gravity and long black
whiskers, did Eustace relieve his soul.  "I tell you this, Clifton,"
he would say, sitting on the sideboard, or the arm of the big chair
in Clifton's room, or wandering amongst the raspberries, "because you
are my friend."

And Clifton, with his head a little on one side, and a sort of wise
concern at his 'friend's' confidences, which were sometimes of an
embarrassing description, would answer now and then: "Of course, my
lord," but more often: "Of course, my dear."

There was in this friendship something fine and suitable, neither of
these 'friends' taking or suffering liberties, and both being
interested in pigeons, which they would stand watching with a
remarkable attention.

In course of time, following the tradition of his family, Eustace
went to Harrow.  He was there five years--always one of those boys a
little out at wrists and ankles, who may be seen slouching, solitary,
along the pavement to their own haunts, rather dusty, and with one
shoulder slightly raised above the other, from the habit of carrying
something beneath one arm.  Saved from being thought a 'smug,' by his
title, his lack of any conspicuous scholastic ability, his obvious
independence of what was thought of him, and a sarcastic tongue,
which no one was eager to encounter, he remained the ugly duckling
who refused to paddle properly in the green ponds of Public School
tradition.  He played games so badly that in sheer self-defence his
fellows permitted him to play without them.  Of 'fives' they made an
exception, for in this he attained much proficiency, owing to a
certain windmill-like quality of limb.  He was noted too for daring
chemical experiments, of which he usually had one or two brewing,
surreptitiously at first, and afterwards by special permission of his
house-master, on the principle that if a room must smell, it had
better smell openly.  He made few friendships, but these were
lasting.

His Latin was so poor, and his Greek verse so vile, that all had been
surprised when towards the finish of his career he showed a very
considerable power of writing and speaking his own language.  He left
school without a pang.  But when in the train he saw the old Hill and
the old spire on the top of it fading away from him, a lump rose in
his throat, he swallowed violently two or three times, and, thrusting
himself far back into the carriage corner, appeared to sleep.

At Oxford, he was happier, but still comparatively lonely; remaining,
so long as custom permitted, in lodgings outside his College, and
clinging thereafter to remote, panelled rooms high up, overlooking
the gardens and a portion of the city wall.  It was at Oxford that he
first developed that passion for self-discipline which afterwards
distinguished him.  He took up rowing; and, though thoroughly
unsuited by nature to this pastime, secured himself a place in his
College 'torpid.'  At the end of a race he was usually supported from
his stretcher in a state of extreme extenuation, due to having pulled
the last quarter of the course entirely with his spirit.  The same
craving for self-discipline guided him in the choice of Schools; he
went out in 'Greats,' for which, owing to his indifferent mastery of
Greek and Latin, he was the least fitted.  With enormous labour he
took a very good degree.  He carried off besides, the highest
distinctions of the University for English Essays.  The ordinary
circles of College life knew nothing of him.  Not once in the whole
course of his University career, was he the better for wine.  He, did
not hunt; he never talked of women, and none talked of women in his
presence.  But now and then he was visited by those gusts which come
to the ascetic, when all life seemed suddenly caught up and devoured
by a flame burning night and day, and going out mercifully, he knew
not why, like a blown candle.  However unsocial in the proper sense
of the word, he by no means lacked company in these Oxford days.  He
knew many, both dons and undergraduates.  His long stride, and
determined absence of direction, had severely tried all those who
could stomach so slow a pastime as walking for the sake of talking.
The country knew him--though he never knew the country--from Abingdon
to Bablock Hythe.  His name stood high, too, at the Union, where he
made his mark during his first term in a debate on a 'Censorship of
Literature' which he advocated with gloom, pertinacity, and a certain
youthful brilliance that might well have carried the day, had not an
Irishman got up and pointed out the danger hanging over the Old
Testament.  To that he had retorted: "Better, sir, it should run a
risk than have no risk to run."  From which moment he was notable.

He stayed up four years, and went down with a sense of bewilderment
and loss.  The matured verdict of Oxford on this child of hers, was
"Eustace Miltoun!  Ah!  Queer bird!  Will make his mark!"

He had about this time an interview with his father which confirmed
the impression each had formed of the other.  It took place in the
library at Monkland Court, on a late November afternoon.

The light of eight candles in thin silver candlesticks, four on
either side of the carved stone hearth, illumined that room.  Their
gentle radiance penetrated but a little way into the great dark space
lined with books, panelled and floored with black oak, where the
acrid fragrance of leather and dried roseleaves seemed to drench the,
very soul with the aroma of the past.  Above the huge fireplace, with
light falling on one side of his shaven face, hung a portrait--
painter unknown--of that Cardinal Caradoc who suffered for his faith
in the sixteenth century.  Ascetic, crucified, with a little smile
clinging to the lips and deep-set eyes, he presided, above the
bluefish flames of a log fire.

Father and son found some difficulty in beginning.

Each of those two felt as though he were in the presence of someone
else's very near relation.  They had, in fact, seen extremely little
of each other, and not seen that little long.

Lord Valleys uttered the first remark:

"Well, my dear fellow, what are you going to do now?  I think we can
make certain of this seat down here, if you like to stand."

Miltoun had answered: "Thanks, very much; I don't think so at
present."

Through the thin fume of his cigar Lord Valleys watched that long
figure sunk deep in the chair opposite.

"Why not?" he said.  "You can't begin too soon; unless you think you
ought to go round the world."

"Before I can become a man of it?"

Lord Valleys gave a rather disconcerted laugh.

"There's nothing in politics you can't pick up as you go along," he
said.  "How old are you?"

"Twenty-four."

"You look older."  A faint line, as of contemplation, rose between
his eyes.  Was it fancy that a little smile was hovering about
Miltoun's lips?

"I've got a foolish theory," came from those lips, "that one must
know the conditions first.  I want to give at least five years to
that."

Lord Valleys raised his eyebrows.  "Waste of time," he said.  "You'd
know more at the end of it, if you went into the House at once.  You
take the matter too seriously."

"No doubt."

For fully a minute Lord Valleys made no answer; he felt almost
ruffled.  Waiting till the sensation had passed, he said: "Well, my
dear fellow, as you please."

Miltoun's apprenticeship to the profession of politics was served in
a slum settlement; on his father's estates; in Chambers at the
Temple; in expeditions to Germany, America, and the British Colonies;
in work at elections; and in two forlorn hopes to capture a
constituency which could be trusted not to change its principles.  He
read much, slowly, but with conscientious tenacity, poetry, history,
and works on philosophy, religion, and social matters.

Fiction, and especially foreign fiction, he did not care for.  With
the utmost desire to be wide and impartial, he sucked in what
ministered to the wants of his nature, rejecting unconsciously all
that by its unsuitability endangered the flame of his private spirit.
What he read, in fact, served only to strengthen those profounder
convictions which arose from his temperament.  With a contempt of the
vulgar gewgaws of wealth and rank he combined a humble but intense
and growing conviction of his capacity for leadership, of a spiritual
superiority to those whom he desired to benefit.  There was no trace,
indeed, of the common Pharisee in Miltoun, he was simple and direct;
but his eyes, his gestures, the whole man, proclaimed the presence of
some secret spring of certainty, some fundamental well into which no
disturbing glimmers penetrated.  He was not devoid of wit, but he was
devoid of that kind of wit which turns its eyes inward, and sees
something of the fun that lies in being what you are.  Miltoun saw
the world and all the things thereof shaped like spires--even when
they were circles.  He seemed to have no sense that the Universe was
equally compounded of those two symbols, whose point of
reconciliation had not yet been discovered.

Such was he, then, when the Member for his native division was made a
peer.

He had reached the age of thirty without ever having been in love,
leading a life of almost savage purity, with one solitary breakdown.
Women were afraid of him.  And he was perhaps a little afraid of
woman.  She was in theory too lovely and desirable--the half-moon.
in a summer sky; in practice too cloying, or too harsh.  He had an
affection for Barbara, his younger sister; but to his mother, his
grandmother, or his elder sister Agatha, he had never felt close.  It
was indeed amusing to see Lady Valleys with her first-born.  Her fine
figure, the blown roses of her face, her grey-blue eyes which had a
slight tendency to roll, as though amusement just touched with
naughtiness bubbled behind them; were reduced to a queer, satirical
decorum in Miltoun's presence.  Thoughts and sayings verging on the
risky were characteristic of her robust physique, of her soul which
could afford to express almost ail that occurred to it.  Miltoun had
never, not even as a child, given her his confidence.  She bore him
no resentment, being of that large, generous build in body and mind,
rarely--never in her class--associated with the capacity for feeling
aggrieved or lowered in any estimation, even its own.  He was, and
always had been, an odd boy, and there was an end of it!  Nothing had
perhaps so disconcerted Lady Valleys as his want of behaviour in
regard to women.  She felt it abnormal, just as she recognized the
essential if duly veiled normality of her husband and younger son.
It was this feeling which made her realize almost more vividly than
she had time for, in the whirl of politics and fashion, the danger of
his friendship with this lady to whom she alluded so discreetly as
'Anonyma.'

Pure chance had been responsible for the inception of that
friendship.  Going one December afternoon to the farmhouse of a
tenant, just killed by a fall from his horse, Miltoun had found the
widow in a state of bewildered grief, thinly cloaked in the manner of
one who had almost lost the power to express her feelings, and quite
lost it in presence of 'the gentry.'  Having assured the poor soul
that she need have no fear about her tenancy, he was just leaving,
when he met, in the stone-flagged entrance, a lady in a fur cap and
jacket, carrying in her arms a little crying boy, bleeding from a cut
on the forehead.  Taking him from her and placing him on a table in
the parlour, Miltoun looked at this lady, and saw that she was
extremely grave, and soft, and charming.  He inquired of her whether
the mother should be told.

She shook her head.

"Poor thing, not just now: let's wash it, and bind it up first."

Together therefore they washed and bound up the cut.  Having
finished, she looked at Miltoun, and seemed to say: "You would do the
telling so much better than I"

He, therefore, told the mother and was rewarded by a little smile
from the grave lady.

>From that meeting he took away the knowledge of her name, Audrey Lees
Noel, and the remembrance of a face, whose beauty, under a cap of
squirrel's fur, pursued him.  Some days later passing by the village
green, he saw her entering a garden gate.  On this occasion he had
asked her whether she would like her cottage re-thatched; an
inspection of the roof had followed; he had stayed talking a long
time.  Accustomed to women--over the best of whom, for all their
grace and lack of affectation, high-caste life had wrapped the manner
which seems to take all things for granted--there was a peculiar
charm for Miltoun in this soft, dark-eyed lady who evidently lived
quite out of the world, and had so poignant, and shy, a flavour.
Thus from a chance seed had blossomed swiftly one of those rare
friendships between lonely people, which can in short time fill great
spaces of two lives.

One day she asked him: "You know about me, I suppose?"  Miltoun made
a motion of his head, signifying that he did.  His informant had been
the vicar.

"Yes, I am told, her story is a sad one--a divorce."

"Do you mean that she has been divorced, or----"

For the fraction of a second the vicar perhaps had hesitated.

"Oh!  no--no.  Sinned against, I am sure.  A nice woman, so far as I
have seen; though I'm afraid not one of my congregation."

With this, Miltoun, in whom chivalry had already been awakened, was
content.  When she asked if he knew her story, he would not for the
world have had her rake up what was painful.  Whatever that story,
she could not have been to blame.  She had begun already to be shaped
by his own spirit; had become not a human being as it was, but an
expression of his aspiration....

On the third evening after his passage of arms with Courtier, he was
again at her little white cottage sheltering within its high garden
walls.  Smothered in roses, and with a black-brown thatch overhanging
the old-fashioned leaded panes of the upper windows, it had an air of
hiding from the world.  Behind, as though on guard, two pine trees
spread their dark boughs over the outhouses, and in any south-west
wind could be heard speaking gravely about the weather.  Tall lilac
bushes flanked the garden, and a huge lime-tree in the adjoining
field sighed and rustled, or on still days let forth the drowsy hum
of countless small dusky bees who frequented that green hostelry.

He found her altering a dress, sitting over it in her peculiar
delicate fashion--as if all objects whatsoever, dresses, flowers,
books, music, required from her the same sympathy.

He had come from a long day's electioneering, had been heckled at two
meetings, and was still sore from the experience.  To watch her, to
be soothed, and ministered to by her had never been so restful; and
stretched out in a long chair he listened to her playing.

Over the hill a Pierrot moon was slowly moving up in a sky the colour
of grey irises.  And in a sort of trance Miltoun stared at the burnt-
out star, travelling in bright pallor.

Across the moor a sea of shallow mist was rolling; and the trees in
the valley, like browsing cattle, stood knee-deep in whiteness, with
all the air above them wan from an innumerable rain as of moondust,
falling into that white sea.  Then the moon passed behind the lime-
tree, so that a great lighted Chinese lantern seemed to hang blue-
black from the sky.

Suddenly, jarring and shivering the music, came a sound of hooting.
It swelled, died away, and swelled again.

Miltoun rose.

"That has spoiled my vision," he said.  "Mrs. Noel, I have something
I want to say."  But looking down at her, sitting so still, with her
hands resting on the keys, he was silent in sheer adoration.

A voice from the door ejaculated:

"Oh!  ma'am--oh!  my lord!  They're devilling a gentleman on the
green!"




CHAPTER VI

When the immortal Don set out to ring all the bells of merriment, he
was followed by one clown.  Charles Courtier on the other hand had
always been accompanied by thousands, who really could not understand
the conduct of this man with no commercial sense.  But though he
puzzled his contemporaries, they did not exactly laugh at him,
because it was reported that he had really killed some men, and loved
some women.  They found such a combination irresistible, when coupled
with an appearance both vigorous and gallant.  The son of an
Oxfordshire clergyman, and mounted on a lost cause, he had been
riding through the world ever since he was eighteen, without once
getting out of the saddle.  The secret of this endurance lay perhaps
in his unconsciousness that he was in the saddle at all.  It was as
much his natural seat as office stools to other mortals.  He made no
capital out of errantry, his temperament being far too like his red-
gold hair, which people compared to flames, consuming all before
them.  His vices were patent; too incurable an optimism; an
admiration for beauty such as must sometimes have caused him to
forget which woman he was most in love with; too thin a skin; too hot
a heart; hatred of humbug, and habitual neglect of his own interest.
Unmarried, and with many friends, and many enemies, he kept his body
like a sword-blade, and his soul always at white heat.

That one who admitted to having taken part in five wars should be
mixing in a by-election in the cause of Peace, was not so
inconsistent as might be supposed; for he had always fought on the
losing side, and there seemed to him at the moment no side so losing
as that of Peace.  No great politician, he was not an orator, nor
even a glib talker; yet a quiet mordancy of tongue, and the white-hot
look in his eyes, never failed to make an impression of some kind on
an audience.

There was, however, hardly a corner of England where orations on
behalf of Peace had a poorer chance than the Bucklandbury division.
To say that Courtier had made himself unpopular with its matter-of-
fact, independent, stolid, yet quick-tempered population, would be
inadequate.  He had outraged their beliefs, and roused the most
profound suspicions.  They could not, for the life of them, make out
what he was at.  Though by his adventures and his book, "Peace-a lost
Cause," he was, in London, a conspicuous figure, they had naturally
never heard of him; and his adventure to these parts seemed to them
an almost ludicrous example of pure idea poking its nose into plain
facts--the idea that nations ought to, and could live in peace being
so very pure; and the fact that they never had, so very plain!

At Monkland, which was all Court estate, there were naturally but few
supporters of Miltoun's opponent, Mr. Humphrey Chilcox, and the
reception accorded to the champion of Peace soon passed from
curiosity to derision, from derision to menace, till Courtier's
attitude became so defiant, and his sentences so heated that he was
only saved from a rough handling by the influential interposition of
the vicar.

Yet when he began to address them he had felt irresistibly attracted.
They looked such capital, independent fellows.  Waiting for his turn
to speak, he had marked them down as men after his own heart.  For
though  Courtier knew that against an unpopular idea there must
always be a majority, he never thought so ill of any individual as to
suppose him capable of belonging to that ill-omened body.

Surely these fine, independent fellows were not to be hoodwinked by
the jingoes!  It had been one more disillusion.  He had not taken it
lying down; neither had his audience.  They dispersed without
forgiving; they came together again without having forgotten.

The village Inn, a little white building whose small windows were
overgrown with creepers, had a single guest's bedroom on the upper
floor, and a little sitting-room where Courtier took his meals.  The
rest of the house was but stone-floored bar with a long wooden bench
against the back wall, whence nightly a stream of talk would issue,
all harsh a's, and sudden soft u's; whence too a figure, a little
unsteady, would now and again emerge, to a chorus of 'Gude naights,'
stand still under the ash-trees to light his pipe, then move slowly
home.

But on that evening, when the trees, like cattle, stood knee-deep in
the moon-dust, those who came out from the bar-room did not go away;
they hung about in the shadows, and were joined by other figures
creeping furtively through the bright moonlight, from behind the Inn.
Presently more figures moved up from the lanes and the churchyard
path, till thirty or more were huddled there, and their stealthy
murmur of talk distilled a rare savour of illicit joy.  Unholy
hilarity, indeed, seemed lurking in the deep tree-shadow, before the
wan Inn, whence from a single lighted window came forth the half-
chanting sound of a man's voice reading out loud.  Laughter was
smothered, talk whispered.

"He'm a-practisin' his spaches."  "Smoke the cunnin' old vox out!"
"Red pepper's the proper stuff."  "See men sneeze!  We've a-screed up
the door."

Then, as a face showed at the lighted window, a burst of harsh
laughter broke the hush.

He at the window was seen struggling violently to wrench away a bar.
The laughter swelled to hooting.  The prisoner forced his way
through, dropped to the ground, rose, staggered, and fell.

A voice said sharply:

"What's this?"

Out of the sounds of scuffling and scattering came the whisper: "His
lordship!"  And the shade under the ash-trees became deserted, save
by the tall dark figure of a man, and a woman's white shape.

"Is that you, Mr. Courtier?  Are you hurt?"

A chuckle rose from the recumbent figure.

"Only my knee.  The beggars!  They precious nearly choked me,
though."




CHAPTER VII

Bertie Caradoc, leaving the smoking-room at Monkland Court that same
evening,--on his way to bed, went to the Georgian corridor, where his
pet barometer was hanging.  To look at the glass had become the
nightly habit of one who gave all the time he could spare from his
profession to hunting in the winter and to racing in the summer.'

The Hon. Hubert Caradoc, an apprentice to the calling of diplomacy,
more completely than any living Caradoc embodied the characteristic
strength and weaknesses of that family.  He was of fair height, and
wiry build.  His weathered face, under sleek, dark hair, had regular,
rather small features, and wore an expression of alert resolution,
masked by impassivity.  Over his inquiring, hazel-grey eyes the lids
were almost religiously kept half drawn.  He had been born reticent,
and great, indeed, was the emotion under which he suffered when the
whole of his eyes were visible.  His nose was finely chiselled, and
had little flesh.  His lips, covered by a small, dark moustache,
scarcely opened to emit his speeches, which were uttered in a voice
singularly muffled, yet unexpectedly quick.  The whole personality
was that of a man practical, spirited, guarded, resourceful, with
great power of self-control, who looked at life as if she were a
horse under him, to whom he must give way just so far as was
necessary to keep mastery of her.  A man to whom ideas were of no
value, except when wedded to immediate action; essentially neat;
demanding to be 'done well,' but capable of stoicism if necessary;
urbane, yet always in readiness to thrust; able only to condone the
failings and to compassionate the kinds of distress which his own
experience had taught him to understand.  Such was Miltoun's younger
brother at the age of twenty-six.

Having noted that the glass was steady, he was about to seek the
stairway, when he saw at the farther end of the entrance-hall three
figures advancing arm-in-arm.  Habitually both curious and wary, he
waited till they came within the radius of a lamp; then, seeing them
to be those of Miltoun and a footman, supporting between them a lame
man, he at once hastened forward.

"Have you put your knee out, sir?  Hold on a minute!  Get a chair,
Charles."

Seating the stranger in this chair, Bertie rolled up the trouser, and
passed his fingers round the knee.  There was a sort, of loving-
kindness in that movement, as of a hand which had in its time felt
the joints and sinews of innumerable horses.

"H'm!" he said; "can you stand a bit of a jerk?  Catch hold of him
behind, Eustace.  Sit down on the floor, Charles, and hold the legs
of the chair.  Now then!" And taking up the foot, he pulled.  There
was a click, a little noise of teeth ground together; and Bertie
said: "Good man--shan't have to have the vet. to you, this time."

Having conducted their lame guest to a room in the Georgian corridor
hastily converted to a bedroom, the two brothers presently left him
to the attentions of the footman.

"Well, old man," said Bertie, as they sought their rooms; "that's put
paid to his name--won't do you any more harm this journey.  Good
plucked one, though!"

The report that Courtier was harboured beneath their roof went the
round of the family before breakfast, through the agency of one whose
practice it was to know all things, and to see that others partook of
that knowledge, Little Ann, paying her customary morning visit to her
mother's room, took her stand with face turned up and hands clasping
her belt, and began at once.

"Uncle Eustace brought a man last night with a wounded leg, and Uncle
Bertie pulled it out straight.  William says that Charles says he
only made a noise like this"--there was a faint sound of small
chumping teeth: "And he's the man that's staying at the Inn, and the
stairs were too narrow to carry him up, William says; and if his knee
was put out he won't be able to walk without a stick for a long time.
Can I go to Father?"

Agatha, who was having her hair brushed, thought:

"I'm not sure whether belts so low as that are wholesome," murmured:

"Wait a minute!"

But little Ann was gone; and her voice could be heard in the
dressing-room climbing up towards Sir William, who from the sound of
his replies, was manifestly shaving.  When Agatha, who never could
resist a legitimate opportunity of approaching her husband, looked
in, he was alone, and rather thoughtful--a tall man with a solid,
steady face and cautious eyes, not in truth remarkable except to his
own wife.

"That fellow Courtier's caught by the leg," he said.  "Don't know
what your Mother will say to an enemy in the camp."

"Isn't he a freethinker, and rather----"

Sir William, following his own thoughts, interrupted:

"Just as well, of course, so far as Miltoun's concerned, to have got
him here."

Agatha sighed: "Well, I suppose we shall have to be nice to him.
I'll tell Mother."

Sir William smiled.

"Ann will see to that," he said.

Ann was seeing to that.

Seated in the embrasure of the window behind the looking-glass, where
Lady Valleys was still occupied, she was saying:

"He fell out of the window because of the red pepper.  Miss Wallace
says he is a hostage--what does hostage mean, Granny?"

When six years ago that word had first fallen on Lady Valleys' ears,
she had thought: "Oh! dear!  Am I really Granny?  "It had been a
shock, had seemed the end of so much; but the matter-of-fact heroism
of women, so much quicker to accept the inevitable than men, had soon
come to her aid, and now, unlike her husband, she did not care a bit.
For all that she answered nothing, partly because it was not
necessary to speak in order to sustain a conversation with little
Ann, and partly because she was deep in thought.

The man was injured!  Hospitality, of course--especially since their
own tenants had committed the outrage!  Still, to welcome a man who
had gone out of his way to come down here and stump the country
against her own son, was rather a tall order.  It might have been
worse, no doubt.  If; for instance, he had been some 'impossible'
Nonconformist Radical!  This Mr. Courtier was a free lance--rather a
well-known man, an interesting creature.  She must see that he felt
'at home' and comfortable.  If he were pumped judiciously, no doubt
one could find out about this woman.  Moreover, the acceptance of
their 'salt' would silence him politically if she knew anything of
that type of man, who always had something in him of the Arab's
creed.  Her mind, that of a capable administrator, took in all the
practical significance of this incident, which, although untoward,
was not without its comic side to one disposed to find zest and
humour in everything that did not absolutely run counter to her
interests and philosophy.

The voice of little Ann broke in on her reflections.

"I'm going to Auntie Babs now."

"Very well; give me a kiss first."

Little Ann thrust up her face, so that its sudden little nose
penetrated Lady Valleys' soft curving lips....

When early that same afternoon Courtier, leaning on a stick, passed
from his room out on to the terrace, he was confronted by three
sunlit peacocks marching slowly across a lawn towards a statue of
Diana.  With incredible dignity those birds moved, as if never in
their lives had they been hurried.  They seemed indeed to know that
when they got there, there would be nothing for them to do but to
come back again.  Beyond them, through the tall trees, over some
wooded foot-hills of the moorland and a promised land of pinkish
fields, pasture, and orchards, the prospect stretched to the far sea.
Heat clothed this view with a kind of opalescence, a fairy garment,
transmuting all values, so that the four square walls and tall
chimneys of the pottery-works a few miles down the valley seemed to
Courtier like a vision of some old fortified Italian town.  His
sensations, finding himself in this galley, were peculiar.  For his
feeling towards Miltoun, whom he had twice met at Mrs. Noel's, was,
in spite of disagreements, by no means unfriendly; while his feeling
towards Miltoun's family was not yet in existence.  Having lived from
hand to mouth, and in many countries, since he left Westminster
School, he had now practically no class feelings.  An attitude of
hostility to aristocracy because it was aristocracy, was as
incomprehensible to him as an attitude of deference.

His sensations habitually shaped themselves in accordance with those
two permanent requirements of his nature, liking for adventure, and
hatred of tyranny.  The labourer who beat his wife, the shopman who
sweated his 'hands,' the parson who consigned his parishioners to
hell, the peer who rode roughshod--all were equally odious to him.
He thought of people as individuals, and it was, as it were, by
accident that he had conceived the class generalization which he had
fired back at Miltoun from Mrs. Noel's window.  Sanguine, accustomed
to queer environments, and always catching at the moment as it flew,
he had not to fight with the timidities and irritations of a nervous
temperament.  His cheery courtesy was only disturbed when he became
conscious of some sentiment which appeared to him mean or cowardly.
On such occasions, not perhaps infrequent, his face looked as if his
heart were physically fuming, and since his shell of stoicism was
never quite melted by this heat, a very peculiar expression was the
result, a sort of calm, sardonic, desperate, jolly look.

His chief feeling, then, at the outrage which had laid him captive in
the enemy's camp, was one of vague amusement, and curiosity.  People
round about spoke fairly well of this Caradoc family.  There did not
seem to be any lack of kindly feeling between them and their tenants;
there was said to be no griping destitution, nor any particular ill-
housing on their estate.  And if the inhabitants were not encouraged
to improve themselves, they were at all events maintained at a
certain level, by steady and not ungenerous supervision.  When a roof
required thatching it was thatched; when a man became too old to
work, he was not suffered to lapse into the Workhouse.  In bad years
for wool, or beasts, or crops, the farmers received a graduated
remission of rent.  The pottery-works were run on a liberal if
autocratic basis.  It was true that though Lord Valleys was said to
be a staunch supporter of a 'back to the land' policy, no disposition
was shown to encourage people to settle on these particular lands, no
doubt from a feeling that such settlers would not do them so much
justice as their present owner.  Indeed so firmly did this conviction
seemingly obtain, that Lord Valleys' agent was not unfrequently
observed to be buying a little bit more.

But, since in this life one notices only what interests him, all this
gossip, half complimentary, half not, had fallen but lightly on the
ears of the champion of Peace during his campaign, for he was, as
has, been said, but a poor politician, and rode his own horse very
much his own way.

While he stood there enjoying the view, he heard a small high voice,
and became conscious of a little girl in a very shady hat so far back
on her brown hair that it did not shade her; and of a small hand put
out in front.  He took the hand, and answered:

"Thank you, I am well--and you?" perceiving the while that a pair of
wide frank eyes were examining his leg.

"Does it hurt?"

"Not to speak of."

"My pony's leg was blistered.  Granny is coming to look at it."

"I see."

"I have to go now.  I hope you'll soon be better.  Good-bye!"

Then, instead of the little girl, Courtier saw a tall and rather
florid woman regarding him with a sort of quizzical dignity.  She
wore a stiffish fawn-coloured dress that seemed to be cut a little
too tight round her substantial hips, for it quite neglected to
embrace her knees.  She had on no hat, no gloves, no ornaments,
except the rings on her fingers, and a little jewelled watch in a
leather bracelet on her wrist.  There was, indeed, about her whole
figure an air of almost professional escape from finery.

Stretching out a well-shaped but not small hand, she said:


"I most heartily apologize to you, Mr. Courtier."

"Not at all."

"I do hope you're comfortable.  Have they given you everything you
want?"

"More than everything."

"It really was disgraceful!  However it's brought us the pleasure of
making your acquaintance.  I've read your book, of course."

To Courtier it seemed that on this lady's face had come a look which
seemed to say: Yes, very clever and amusing, quite enjoyable!  But
the ideas----What?  You know very well they won't do--in fact they
mustn't do!

"That's very nice of you."

But into Lady Valleys' answer, "I don't agree with it a bit, you
know!" there had crept a touch of asperity, as though she knew that
he had smiled inside.  "What we want preached in these days are the
warlike virtues--especially by a warrior."

"Believe me, Lady Valleys, the warlike virtues are best left to men
of more virgin imagination."

He received a quick look, and the words: "Anyway, I'm sure you don't
care a rap for politics.  You know Mrs. Lees Noel, don't you?  What a
pretty woman she is!"

But as she spoke Courtier saw a young girl coming along the terrace.
She had evidently been riding, for she wore high boots and a skirt
which had enabled her to sit astride.  Her eyes were blue, and her
hair--the colour of beech-leaves in autumn with the sun shining
through--was coiled up tight under a small soft hat.  She was tall,
and moved towards them like one endowed with great length from the
hip joint to the knee.  Joy of life, serene, unconscious vigour,
seemed to radiate from her whole face and figure.

At Lady Valleys' words:

"Ah, Babs!  My daughter Barbara--Mr. Courtier," he put out his hand,
received within it some gauntleted fingers held out with a smile, and
heard her say:

"Miltoun's gone up to Town, Mother; I was going to motor in to
Bucklandbury with a message he gave me; so I can fetch Granny out
from the station:"

"You had better take Ann, or she'll make our lives a burden; and
perhaps Mr. Courtier would like an airing.  Is your knee fit, do you
think?"

Glancing at the apparition, Courtier replied:

"It is."

Never since the age of seven had he been able to look on feminine
beauty without a sense of warmth and faint excitement; and seeing now
perhaps the most beautiful girl he had ever beheld, he desired to be
with her wherever she might be going.  There was too something very
fascinating in the way she smiled, as if she had a little seen
through his sentiments.

"Well then," she said, "we'd better look for Ann."

After short but vigorous search little Ann was found--in the car,
instinct having told her of a forward movement in which it was her
duty to take part.  And soon they had started, Ann between them in
that peculiar state of silence to which she became liable when really
interested.

>From the Monkland estate, flowered, lawned, and timbered, to the open
moor, was like passing to another world; for no sooner was the last
lodge of the Western drive left behind, than there came into sudden
view the most pagan bit of landscape in all England.  In this wild
parliament-house, clouds, rocks, sun, and winds met and consulted.
The 'old' men, too, had left their spirits among the great stones,
which lay couched like lions on the hill-tops, under the white
clouds, and their brethren, the hunting buzzard hawks.  Here the very
rocks were restless, changing form, and sense, and colour from day to
day, as though worshipping the unexpected, and refusing themselves to
law.  The winds too in their passage revolted against their courses,
and came tearing down wherever there were combes or crannies, so that
men in their shelters might still learn the power of the wild gods.

The wonders of this prospect were entirely lost on little Ann, and
somewhat so on Courtier, deeply engaged in reconciling those two
alien principles, courtesy, and the love of looking at a pretty face.
He was wondering too what this girl of twenty, who had the self-
possession of a woman of forty, might be thinking.  It was little Ann
who broke the silence.

"Auntie Babs, it wasn't a very strong house, was it?"

Courtier looked in the direction of her small finger.  There was the
wreck of a little house, which stood close to a stone man who had
obviously possessed that hill before there were men of flesh.  Over
one corner of the sorry ruin, a single patch of roof still clung, but
the rest was open.

"He was a silly man to build it, wasn't he, Ann?  That's why they
call it Ashman's Folly."

"Is he alive?"

"Not quite--it's just a hundred years ago."

"What made him build it here?"

"He hated women, and--the roof fell in on him."

"Why did he hate women?"

"He was a crank."

"What is a crank?"

"Ask Mr. Courtier."

Under this girl's calm quizzical glance, Courtier endeavoured to find
an answer to that question.

"A crank," he said slowly, "is a man like me."

He heard a little laugh, and became acutely conscious of Ann's
dispassionate examining eyes.

"Is Uncle Eustace a crank?"

"You know now, Mr. Courtier, what Ann thinks of you.  You think a
good deal of Uncle Eustace, don't you, Ann?"

"Yes," said Ann, and fixed her eyes before her.  But Courtier gazed
sideways--over her hatless head.

His exhilaration was increasing every moment.  This girl reminded him
of a two-year-old filly he had once seen, stepping out of Ascot
paddock for her first race, with the sun glistening on her satin
chestnut skin, her neck held high, her eyes all fire--as sure to win,
as that grass was green.  It was difficult to believe her Miltoun's
sister.  It was difficult to believe any of those four young Caradocs
related.  The grave ascetic Miltoun, wrapped in the garment of his
spirit; mild, domestic, strait-laced Agatha; Bertie, muffled, shrewd,
and steely; and this frank, joyful conquering Barbara--the range was
wide.

But the car had left the moor, and, down a steep hill, was passing
the small villas and little grey workmen's houses outside the town of
Bucklandbury.

"Ann and I have to go on to Miltoun's headquarters.  Shall I drop you
at the enemy's, Mr. Courtier?  Stop, please, Frith."

And before Courtier could assent, they had pulled up at a house on
which was inscribed with extraordinary vigour: "Chilcox for
Bucklandbury."

Hobbling into the Committee-room of Mr. Humphrey Chilcox, which
smelled of paint, Courtier took with him the scented memory of youth,
and ambergris, and Harris tweed.

In that room three men were assembled round a table; the eldest of
whom, endowed with little grey eyes, a stubbly beard, and that
mysterious something only found in those who have been mayors, rose
at once and came towards him.

"Mr. Courtier, I believe," he said bluffly.  "Glad to see you, sir.
Most distressed to hear of this outrage.  Though in a way, it's done
us good.  Yes, really.  Grossly against fair play.  Shouldn't be
surprised if it turned a couple of hundred votes.  You carry the
effects of it about with you, I see."

A thin, refined man, with wiry hair, also came up, holding a
newspaper in his hand.

"It has had one rather embarrassing effect," he said.  "Read this

          "'OUTRAGE ON A DISTINGUISHED VISITOR.

          "'LORD MILTOUN'S EVENING ADVENTURE.'"

Courtier read a paragraph.

The man with the little eyes broke the ominous silence which ensued.

"One of our side must have seen the whole thing, jumped on his
bicycle and brought in the account before they went to press.  They
make no imputation on the lady--simply state the facts.  Quite
enough," he added with impersonal grimness; "I think he's done for
himself, sir."

The man with the refined face added nervously:

"We couldn't help it, Mr. Courtier; I really don't know what we can
do.  I don't like it a bit."

"Has your candidate seen this?" Courtier asked.

"Can't have," struck in the third Committee-man; "we hadn't seen it
ourselves until an hour ago."

"I should never have permitted it," said the man with the refined
face; "I blame the editor greatly."

"Come to that----" said the little-eyed man, "it's a plain piece of
news.  If it makes a stir, that's not our fault.  The paper imputes
nothing, it states.  Position of the lady happens to do the rest.
Can't help it, and moreover, sir, speaking for self, don't want to.
We'll have no loose morals in public life down here, please God!"
There was real feeling in his words; then, catching sight of
Courtier's face, he added: "Do you know this lady?"

"Ever since she was a child.  Anyone who speaks evil of her, has to
reckon with me."

The man with the refined face said earnestly:

"Believe me, Mr. Courtier, I entirely sympathize.  We had nothing to
do with the paragraph.  It's one of those incidents where one
benefits against one's will.  Most unfortunate that she came out on
to the green with Lord Miltoun; you know what people are."

"It's the head-line that does it;" said the third Committee-man;
"they've put what will attract the public."

"I don't know, I don't know," said the little-eyed man stubbornly;
"if Lord Miltoun will spend his evenings with lonely ladies, he can't
blame anybody but himself."

Courtier looked from face to face.

"This closes my connection with the campaign," he said: "What's the
address of this paper?"  And without waiting for an answer, he took
up the journal and hobbled from the room.  He stood a minute outside
finding the address, then made his way down the street.




CHAPTER VIII

By the side of little Ann, Barbara sat leaning back amongst the
cushions of the car.  In spite of being already launched into high-
caste life which brings with it an early knowledge of the world, she
had still some of the eagerness in her face which makes children
lovable.  Yet she looked negligently enough at the citizens of
Bucklandbury, being already a little conscious of the strange mixture
of sentiment peculiar to her countrymen in presence of herself--that
curious expression on their faces resulting from the continual
attempt to look down their noses while slanting their eyes upwards.
Yes, she was already alive to that mysterious glance which had built
the national house and insured it afterwards--foe to cynicism,
pessimism, and anything French or Russian; parent of all the national
virtues, and all the national vices; of idealism and muddle-
headedness, of independence and servility; fosterer of conduct,
murderer of speculation; looking up, and looking down, but never
straight at anything; most high, most deep, most queer; and ever
bubbling-up from the essential Well of Emulation.

Surrounded by that glance, waiting for Courtier, Barbara, not less
British than her neighbours, was secretly slanting her own eyes up
and down over the absent figure of her new acquaintance.  She too
wanted something she could look up to, and at the same time see
damned first.  And in this knight-errant it seemed to her that she
had got it.

He was a creature from another world.  She had met many men, but not
as yet one quite of this sort.  It was rather nice to be with a
clever man, who had none the less done so many outdoor things, been
through so many bodily adventures.  The mere writers, or even the
'Bohemians,' whom she occasionally met, were after all only
'chaplains to the Court,' necessary to keep aristocracy in touch with
the latest developments of literature and art.  But this Mr. Courtier
was a man of action; he could not be looked on with the amused,
admiring toleration suited to men remarkable only for ideas, and the
way they put them into paint or ink.  He had used, and could use, the
sword, even in the cause of Peace.  He could love, had loved, or so
they said: If Barbara had been a girl of twenty in another class, she
would probably never have heard of this, and if she had heard, it
might very well have dismayed or shocked her.  But she had heard, and
without shock, because she had already learned that men were like
that, and women too sometimes.

It was with quite a little pang of concern that she saw him hobbling
down the street towards her; and when he was once more seated, she
told the chauffeur: "To the station, Frith.  Quick, please!" and
began:

"You are not to be trusted a bit.  What were you doing?"

But Courtier smiled grimly over the head of Ann, in silence.

At this, almost the first time she had ever yet encountered a
distinct rebuff, Barbara quivered, as though she had been touched
lightly with a whip.  Her lips closed firmly, her eyes began to
dance.  "Very well, my dear," she thought.  But presently stealing a
look at him, she became aware of such a queer expression on his face,
that she forgot she was offended.

"Is anything wrong, Mr. Courtier?"

"Yes, Lady Barbara, something is very wrong--that miserable mean
thing, the human tongue."

Barbara had an intuitive knowledge of how to handle things, a kind of
moral sangfroid, drawn in from the faces she had watched, the talk
she had heard, from her youth up.  She trusted those intuitions, and
letting her eyes conspire with his over Ann's brown hair, she said:

"Anything to do with Mrs. N-----?"  Seeing "Yes" in his eyes, she
added quickly: "And M-----?"

Courtier nodded.

"I thought that was coming.  Let them babble!  Who cares?"

She caught an approving glance, and the word, "Good!"

But the car had drawn up at Bucklandbury Station.

The little grey figure of Lady Casterley, coming out of the station
doorway, showed but slight sign of her long travel.  She stopped to
take the car in, from chauffeur to Courtier.

"Well, Frith!--Mr. Courtier, is it?  I know your book, and I don't
approve of you; you're a dangerous man--How do you do?  I must have
those two bags.  The cart can bring the rest....  Randle, get up in
front, and don't get dusty.  Ann!"  But Ann was already beside the
chauffeur, having long planned this improvement.  "H'm!  So you've
hurt your leg, sir?  Keep still!  We can sit three....  Now, my dear,
I can kiss you!  You've grown!"

Lady Casterley's kiss, once received, was never forgotten; neither
perhaps was Barbara's.  Yet they were different.  For, in the case of
Lady Casterley, the old eyes, bright and investigating, could be seen
deciding the exact spot for the lips to touch; then the face with its
firm chin was darted forward; the lips paused a second, as though to
make quite certain, then suddenly dug hard and dry into the middle of
the cheek, quavered for the fraction of a second as if trying to
remember to be soft, and were relaxed like the elastic of a catapult.
And in the case of Barbara, first a sort of light came into her eyes,
then her chin tilted a little, then her lips pouted a little, her
body quivered, as if it were getting a size larger, her hair
breathed, there was a small sweet sound; it was over.

Thus kissing her grandmother, Barbara resumed her seat, and looked at
Courtier.  'Sitting three' as they were, he was touching her, and it
seemed to her somehow that he did not mind.

The wind had risen, blowing from the West, and sunshine was flying on
it.  The call of the cuckoos--a little sharpened--followed the swift-
travelling car.  And that essential sweetness of the moor, born of
the heather roots and the South-West wind, was stealing out from
under the young ferns.

With her thin nostrils distended to this scent, Lady Casterley bore a
distinct resemblance to a small, fine game-bird.

"You smell nice down here," she said.  "Now, Mr. Courtier, before I
forget--who is this Mrs. Lees Noel that I hear so much of?"

At that question, Barbara could not help sliding her eyes round.  How
would he stand up to Granny?  It was the moment to see what he was
made of.  Granny was terrific!

"A very charming woman, Lady Casterley."

"No doubt; but I am tired of hearing that.  What is her story?"

"Has she one?"

"Ha!" said Lady Casterley.

Ever so slightly Barbara let her arm press against Courtiers.  It was
so delicious to hear Granny getting no forwarder.

"I may take it she has a past, then?"

"Not from me, Lady Casterley."

Again Barbara gave him that imperceptible and flattering touch.

"Well, this is all very mysterious.  I shall find out for myself.
You know her, my dear.  You must take me to see her."

"Dear Granny!  If people hadn't pasts, they wouldn't have futures."

Lady Casterley let her little claw-like hand descend on her grand-
daughter's thigh.

"Don't talk nonsense, and don't stretch like that!" she said; "you're
too large already...."

At dinner that night they were all in possession of the news.  Sir
William had been informed by the local agent at Staverton, where Lord
Harbinger's speech had suffered from some rude interruptions.  The
Hon. Geoffrey Winlow; having sent his wife on, had flown over in his
biplane from Winkleigh, and brought a copy of 'the rag' with him.
The one member of the small house-party who had not heard the report
before dinner was Lord Dennis Fitz-Harold, Lady Casterley's brother.

Little, of course, was said.  But after the ladies had withdrawn,
Harbinger, with that plain-spoken spontaneity which was so
unexpected, perhaps a little intentionally so, in connection with his
almost classically formed face, uttered words to the effect that, if
they did not fundamentally kick that rumour, it was all up with
Miltoun.  Really this was serious!  And the beggars knew it, and they
were going to work it.  And Miltoun had gone up to Town, no one knew
what for.  It was the devil of a mess!

In all the conversation of this young man there was that peculiar
brand of voice, which seems ever rebutting an accusation of being
serious--a brand of voice and manner warranted against anything save
ridicule; and in the face of ridicule apt to disappear.  The words,
just a little satirically spoken: "What is, my dear young man?"
stopped him at once.

Looking for the complement and counterpart of Lady Casterley, one
would perhaps have singled out her brother.  All her abrupt decision
was negated in his profound, ironical urbanity.  His voice and look
and manner were like his velvet coat, which had here and there a
whitish sheen, as if it had been touched by moonlight.  His hair too
had that sheen.  His very delicate features were framed in a white
beard and moustache of Elizabethan shape.  His eyes, hazel and still
clear, looked out very straight, with a certain dry kindliness.  His
face, though unweathered and unseamed, and much too fine and thin in
texture, had a curious affinity to the faces of old sailors or
fishermen who have lived a simple, practical life in the light of an
overmastering tradition.  It was the face of a man with a very set
creed, and inclined to be satiric towards innovations, examined by
him and rejected full fifty years ago.  One felt that a brain not
devoid either of subtlety or aesthetic quality had long given up all
attempts to interfere with conduct; that all shrewdness of
speculation had given place to shrewdness of practical judgment based
on very definite experience.  Owing to lack of advertising power,
natural to one so conscious of his dignity as to have lost all care
for it, and to his devotion to a certain lady, only closed by death,
his life had been lived, as it were, in shadow.  Still, he possessed
a peculiar influence in Society, because it was known to be
impossible to get him to look at things in a complicated way.  He was
regarded rather as a last resort, however.  "Bad as that?  Well,
there's old Fitz-Harold!  Try him!  He won't advise you, but he'll
say something."

And in the heart of that irreverent young man, Harbinger, there
stirred a sort of misgiving.  Had he expressed himself too freely?
Had he said anything too thick?  He had forgotten the old boy!
Stirring Bertie up with his foot, he murmured "Forgot you didn't
know, sir.  Bertie will explain."

Thus called on, Bertie, opening his lips a very little way, and
fixing his half-closed eyes on his great-uncle, explained.  There was
a lady at the cottage--a nice woman--Mr. Courtier knew her--old
Miltoun went there sometimes--rather late the other evening--these
devils were making the most of it--suggesting--lose him the election,
if they didn't look out.  Perfect rot, of course!

In his opinion, old Miltoun, though as steady as Time, had been a
flat to let the woman come out with him on to the Green, showing
clearly where he had been, when he ran to Courtier's rescue.  You
couldn't play about with women who had no form that anyone knew
anything of, however promising they might look.

Then, out of a silence Winlow asked: What was to be done?  Should
Miltoun be wired for?  A thing like this spread like wildfire!  Sir
William--a man not accustomed to underrate difficulties--was afraid
it was going to be troublesome.  Harbinger expressed the opinion that
the editor ought to be kicked.  Did anybody know what Courtier had
done when he heard of it.  Where was he--dining in his room?  Bertie
suggested that if Miltoun was at Valleys House, it mightn't be too
late to wire to him.  The thing ought to be stemmed at once!  And in
all this concern about the situation there kept cropping out quaint
little outbursts of desire to disregard the whole thing as infernal
insolence, and metaphorically to punch the beggars' heads, natural to
young men of breeding.

Then, out of another silence came the voice of Lord Dennis:

"I am thinking of this poor lady."

Turning a little abruptly towards that dry suave voice, and
recovering the self-possession which seldom deserted him, Harbinger
murmured:

"Quite so, sir; of course!"




CHAPTER IX

In the lesser withdrawing room, used when there was so small a party,
Mrs. Winlow had gone to the piano and was playing to herself, for
Lady Casterley, Lady Valleys, and her two daughters had drawn
together as though united to face this invading rumour.

It was curious testimony to Miltoun's character that, no more here
than in the dining-hall, was there any doubt of the integrity of his
relations with Mrs. Noel.  But whereas, there the matter was confined
to its electioneering aspect, here that aspect was already perceived
to be only the fringe of its importance.  Those feminine minds, going
with intuitive swiftness to the core of anything which affected their
own males, had already grasped the fact that the rumour would, as it
were, chain a man of Miltoun's temper to this woman.

But they were walking on such a thin crust of facts, and there was so
deep a quagmire of supposition beneath, that talk was almost
painfully difficult.  Never before perhaps had each of these four
women realized so clearly how much Miltoun--that rather strange and
unknown grandson, son, and brother--counted in the scheme of
existence.  Their suppressed agitation was manifested in very
different ways.  Lady Casterley, upright in her chair, showed it only
by an added decision of speech, a continual restless movement of one
hand, a thin line between her usually smooth brows.  Lady Valleys
wore a puzzled look, as if a little surprised that she felt serious.
Agatha looked frankly anxious.  She was in her quiet way a woman of
much character, endowed with that natural piety, which accepts
without questioning the established order in life and religion.  The
world to her being home and family, she had a real, if gently
expressed, horror of all that she instinctively felt to be subversive
of this ideal.  People judged her a little quiet, dull, and narrow;
they compared her to a hen for ever clucking round her chicks.  The
streak of heroism that lay in her nature was not perhaps of patent
order.  Her feeling about her brother's situation however was sincere
and not to be changed or comforted.  She saw him in danger of being
damaged in the only sense in which she could conceive of a man--as a
husband and a father.  It was this that went to her heart, though her
piety proclaimed to her also the peril of his soul; for she shared
the High Church view of the indissolubility of marriage.

As to Barbara, she stood by the hearth, leaning her white shoulders
against the carved marble, her hands behind her, looking down.  Now
and then her lips curled, her level brows twitched, a faint sigh came
from her; then a little smile would break out, and be instantly
suppressed.  She alone was silent--Youth criticizing Life; her
judgment voiced itself only in the untroubled rise and fall of her
young bosom, the impatience of her brows, the downward look of her
blue eyes, full of a lazy, inextinguishable light:

Lady Valleys sighed.

"If only he weren't such a queer boy!  He's quite capable of marrying
her from sheer perversity."

"What!" said Lady Casterley.

"You haven't seen her, my dear.  A most unfortunately attractive
creature--quite a charming face."

Agatha said quietly:

"Mother, if she was divorced, I don't think Eustace would."

"There's that, certainly," murmured Lady Valleys; "hope for the
best!"

"Don't you even know which way it was?" said Lady Casterley.

"Well, the vicar says she did the divorcing.  But he's very
charitable; it may be as Agatha hopes."

"I detest vagueness.  Why doesn't someone ask the woman?"

"You shall come with me, Granny dear, and ask her yourself; you will
do it so nicely."

Lady Casterley looked up.

"We shall see," she said.  Something struggled with the autocratic
criticism in her eyes.  No more than the rest of the world could she
help indulging Barbara.  As one who believed in the divinity of her
order, she liked this splendid child.  She even admired--though
admiration was not what she excelled in--that warm joy in life, as of
some great nymph, parting the waves with bare limbs, tossing from her
the foam of breakers.  She felt that in this granddaughter, rather
than in the good Agatha, the patrician spirit was housed.  There were
points to Agatha, earnestness and high principle; but something
morally narrow and over-Anglican slightly offended the practical,
this-worldly temper of Lady Casteriey.  It was a weakness, and she
disliked weakness.  Barbara would never be squeamish over moral
questions or matters such as were not really, essential to
aristocracy.  She might, indeed, err too much the other way from
sheer high spirits.  As the impudent child had said: "If people had
no pasts, they would have no futures."  And Lady Casterley could not
bear people without futures.  She was ambitious; not with the low
ambition of one who had risen from nothing, but with the high passion
of one on the top, who meant to stay there.

"And where have you been meeting this--er--anonymous creature?" she
asked.

Barbara came from the hearth, and bending down beside Lady
Casterley's chair, seemed to envelop her completely.

"I'm all right, Granny; she couldn't corrupt me."

Lady Casterley's face peered out doubtfully from that warmth, wearing
a look of disapproving pleasure.

"I know your wiles!" she said.  "Come, now!"

"I see her about.  She's nice to look at.  We talk."

Again with that hurried quietness Agatha said:

"My dear Babs, I do think you ought to wait."

"My dear Angel, why?  What is it to me if she's had four husbands?"

Agatha bit her lips, and Lady Valleys murmured with a laugh:

"You really are a terror, Babs."

But the sound of Mrs. Winlow's music had ceased--the men had come in.
And the faces of the four women hardened, as if they had slipped on
masks; for though this was almost or quite a family party, the
Winlows being second cousins, still the subject was one which each of
these four in their very different ways felt to be beyond general
discussion.  Talk, now, began glancing from the war scare--Winlow had
it very specially that this would be over in a week--to Brabrook's
speech, in progress at that very moment, of which Harbinger provided
an imitation.  It sped to Winlow's flight--to Andrew Grant's articles
in the 'Parthenon'--to the caricature of Harbinger in the 'Cackler',
inscribed 'The New Tory.  Lord H-rb-ng-r brings Social Reform beneath
the notice of his friends,' which depicted him introducing a naked
baby to a number of coroneted old ladies.  Thence to a dancer.
Thence to the Bill for Universal Assurance.  Then back to the war
scare; to the last book of a great French writer; and once more to
Winlow's flight.  It was all straightforward and outspoken, each
seeming to say exactly what came into the head.  For all that, there
was a curious avoidance of the spiritual significances of these
things; or was it perhaps that such significances were not seen?

Lord Dennis, at the far end of the room, studying a portfolio of
engravings, felt a touch on his cheek; and conscious of a certain
fragrance, said without turning his head:

"Nice things, these, Babs!"

Receiving no answer he looked up.

There indeed stood Barbara.

"I do hate sneering behind people's backs!"

There had always been good comradeship between these two, since the
days when Barbara, a golden-haired child, astride of a grey pony, had
been his morning companion in the Row all through the season.  His
riding days were past; he had now no outdoor pursuit save fishing,
which he followed with the ironic persistence of a self-contained,
high-spirited nature, which refuses to admit that the mysterious
finger of old age is laid across it.  But though she was no longer
his companion, he still had a habit of expecting her confidences; and
he looked after her, moving away from him to a window, with surprised
concern.

It was one of those nights, dark yet gleaming, when there seems a
flying malice in the heavens; when the stars, from under and above
the black clouds, are like eyes frowning and flashing down at men
with purposed malevolence.  The great sighing trees even had caught
this spirit, save one, a dark, spire-like cypress, planted three
hundred and fifty years before, whose tall form incarnated the very
spirit of tradition, and neither swayed nor soughed like the others.
>From her, too close-fibred, too resisting, to admit the breath of
Nature, only a dry rustle came.  Still almost exotic, in spite of her
centuries of sojourn, and now brought to life by the eyes of night,
she seemed almost terrifying, in her narrow, spear-like austerity, as
though something had dried and died within her soul.  Barbara came
back from the window.

"We can't do anything in our lives, it seems to me," she said, "but
play at taking risks!"

Lord Dennis replied dryly:

"I don't think I understand, my dear."

"Look at Mr. Courtier!" muttered Barbara.  "His life's so much more
risky altogether than any of our men folk lead.  And yet they sneer
at him."

"Let's see, what has he done?"

"Oh!  I dare say not very much; but it's all neck or nothing.  But
what does anything matter to Harbinger, for instance?  If his Social
Reform comes to nothing, he'll still be Harbinger, with fifty
thousand a year."

Lord Dennis looked up a little queerly.

"What!  Is it possible you don't take the young man seriously, Babs?"

Barbara shrugged; a strap slipped a little off one white shoulder.

"It's all play really; and he knows it--you can tell that from his
voice.  He can't help its not mattering, of course; and he knows that
too."

"I have heard that he's after you, Babs; is that true?"

"He hasn't caught me yet."

"Will he?"

Barbara's answer was another shrug; and, for all their statuesque
beauty, the movement of her shoulders was like the shrug of a little
girl in her pinafore.

"And this Mr. Courtier," said Lord Dennis dryly: "Are you after him?"

"I'm after everything; didn't you know that, dear?"

"In reason, my child."

"In reason, of course--like poor Eusty!"  She stopped.  Harbinger
himself was standing there close by, with an air as nearly
approaching reverence as was ever to be seen on him.  In truth, the
way in which he was looking at her was almost timorous.

"Will you sing that song I like so much, Lady Babs?"

They moved away together; and Lord Dennis, gazing after that
magnificent young couple, stroked his beard gravely.




CHAPTER X

Miltoun's sudden journey to London had been undertaken in pursuance
of a resolve slowly forming from the moment he met Mrs. Noel in the
stone flagged passage of Burracombe Farm.  If she would have him and
since last evening he believed she would--he intended to marry her.

It has been said that except for one lapse his life had been austere,
but this is not to assert that he had no capacity for passion.  The
contrary was the case.  That flame which had been so jealously
guarded smouldered deep within him--a smothered fire with but little
air to feed on.  The moment his spirit was touched by the spirit of
this woman, it had flared up.  She was the incarnation of all that he
desired.  Her hair, her eyes, her form; the tiny tuck or dimple at
the corner of her mouth just where a child places its finger; her way
of moving, a sort of unconscious swaying or yielding to the air; the
tone in her voice, which seemed to come not so much from happiness of
her own as from an innate wish to make others happy; and that
natural, if not robust, intelligence, which belongs to the very
sympathetic, and is rarely found in women of great ambitions or
enthusiasms--all these things had twined themselves round his heart.
He not only dreamed of her, and wanted her; he believed in her.  She
filled his thoughts as one who could never do wrong; as one who,
though a wife would remain a mistress, and though a mistress, would
always be the companion of his spirit.

It has been said that no one spoke or gossiped about women in
Miltoun's presence, and the tale of her divorce was present to his
mind simply in the form of a conviction that she was an injured
woman.  After his interview with the vicar, he had only once again
alluded to it, and that in answer to the speech of a lady staying at
the Court: "Oh! yes, I remember her case perfectly.  She was the poor
woman who----"  "Did not, I am certain, Lady Bonington."   The tone
of his voice had made someone laugh uneasily; the subject was
changed.

All divorce was against his convictions, but in a blurred way he
admitted that there were cases where release was unavoidable.  He was
not a man to ask for confidences, or expect them to be given him.  He
himself had never confided his spiritual struggles to any living
creature; and the unspiritual struggle had little interest for
Miltoun.  He was ready at any moment to stake his life on the
perfection of the idol he had set up within his soul, as simply and
straightforwardly as he would have placed his body in front of her to
shield her from harm.

The same fanaticism, which looked on his passion as a flower by
itself, entirely apart from its suitability to the social garden, was
also the driving force which sent him up to London to declare his
intention to his father before he spoke to Mrs. Noel.  The thing
should be done simply, and in right order.  For he had the kind of
moral courage found in those who live retired within the shell of
their own aspirations.  Yet it was not perhaps so much active moral
courage as indifference to what others thought or did, coming from
his inbred resistance to the appreciation of what they felt.

That peculiar smile of the old Tudor Cardinal--which had in it
invincible self-reliance, and a sort of spiritual sneer--played over
his face when he speculated on his father's reception of the coming
news; and very soon he ceased to think of it at all, burying himself
in the work he had brought with him for the journey.  For he had in
high degree the faculty, so essential to public life, of switching
off his whole attention from one subject to another.

On arriving at Paddington he drove straight to Valleys House.

This large dwelling with its pillared portico, seemed to wear an air
of faint surprise that, at the height of the season, it was not more
inhabited.  Three servants relieved Miltoun of his little luggage;
and having washed, and learned that his father would be dining in, he
went for a walk, taking his way towards his rooms in the Temple.  His
long figure, somewhat carelessly garbed, attracted the usual
attention, of which he was as usual unaware.  Strolling along, he
meditated deeply on a London, an England, different from this
flatulent hurly-burly, this 'omniuin gatherum', this great discordant
symphony of sharps and flats.  A London, an England, kempt and self-
respecting; swept and garnished of slums, and plutocrats,
advertisement, and jerry-building, of sensationalism, vulgarity,
vice, and unemployment.  An England where each man should know his
place, and never change it, but serve in it loyally in his own caste.
Where every man, from nobleman to labourer, should be an oligarch by
faith, and a gentleman by practice.  An England so steel-bright and
efficient that the very sight should suffice to impose peace.  An
England whose soul should be stoical and fine with the stoicism and
fineness of each soul amongst her many million souls; where the town
should have its creed and the country its creed, and there should be
contentment and no complaining in her streets.

And as he walked down the Strand, a little ragged boy cheeped out
between his legs:

"Bloodee discoveree in a Bank--Grite sensytion!  Pi-er!"

Miltoun paid no heed to that saying; yet, with it, the wind that
blows where man lives, the careless, wonderful, unordered wind, had
dispersed his austere and formal vision.  Great was that wind--the
myriad aspiration of men and women, the praying of the uncounted
multitude to the goddess of Sensation--of Chance, and Change.  A
flowing from heart to heart, from lip to lip, as in Spring the
wistful air wanders through a wood, imparting to every bush and tree
the secrets of fresh life, the passionate resolve to grow, and
become--no matter what!  A sighing, as eternal as the old murmuring
of the sea, as little to be hushed, as prone to swell into sudden
roaring!

Miltoun held on through the traffic, not looking overmuch at the
present forms of the thousands he passed, but seeing with the eyes of
faith the forms he desired to see.  Near St. Paul's he stopped in
front of an old book-shop.  His grave, pallid, not unhandsome face,
was well-known to William Rimall, its small proprietor, who at once
brought out his latest acquisition--a Mores 'Utopia.' That particular
edition (he assured Miltoun) was quite unprocurable--he had never
sold but one other copy, which had been literally, crumbling away.
This copy was in even better condition.  It could hardly last another
twenty years--a genuine book, a bargain.  There wasn't so much
movement in More as there had been a little time back.

Miltoun opened the tome, and a small book-louse who had been sleeping
on the word 'Tranibore,' began to make its way slowly towards the
very centre of the volume.

"I see it's genuine," said Miltoun.

"It's not to read, my lord," the little man warned him: "Hardly safe
to turn the pages.  As I was saying--I've not had a better piece this
year.  I haven't really!"

"Shrewd old dreamer," muttered Miltoun; "the Socialists haven't got
beyond him, even now."

The little man's eyes blinked, as though apologizing for the views of
Thomas More.

"Well," he said, "I suppose he was one of them.  I forget if your
lordship's very strong on politics?"

Miltoun smiled.

"I want to see an England, Rimall, something like the England of
Mores dream.  But my machinery will be different.  I shall begin at
the top."

The little man nodded.

"Quite so, quite so," he said; "we shall come to that, I dare say."

"We must, Rimall."   And Miltoun turned the page.

The little man's face quivered.

"I don't think," he said, "that book's quite strong enough for you,
my lord, with your taste for reading.  Now I've a most curious old
volume here--on Chinese temples.  It's rare--but not too old.  You
can peruse it thoroughly.  It's what I call a book to browse on just
suit your palate.  Funny principle they built those things on," he
added, opening the volume at an engraving, "in layers.  We don't
build like that in England."

Miltoun looked up sharply; the little man's face wore no signs of
understanding.

"Unfortunately we don't, Rimall," he said; "we ought to, and we
shall.  I'll take this book."

Placing his finger on the print of the pagoda, he added: "A good
symbol."

The little bookseller's eye strayed down the temple to the secret
price mark.

"Exactly, my lord," he said; "I thought it'd be your fancy.  The
price to you will be twenty-seven and six."

Miltoun, pocketing the bargain, walked out.  He made his way into the
Temple, left the book at his Chambers, and passed on down to the bank
of Mother Thames.  The Sun was loving her passionately that
afternoon; he had kissed her into warmth and light and colour.  And
all the buildings along  her banks, as far as the towers at
Westminster, seemed to be smiling.  It was a great sight for the eyes
of a lover.  And another vision came haunting Miltoun, of a soft-eyed
woman with a low voice, bending amongst her flowers.  Nothing would
be complete without her; no work bear fruit; no scheme could have
full meaning.

Lord Valleys greeted his son at dinner with good fellowship and a
faint surprise.

"Day off, my dear fellow?  Or have you come up to hear Brabrook pitch
into us?  He's rather late this time--we've got rid of that balloon
business no trouble after all."

And he eyed Miltoun with that clear grey stare of his, so cool,
level, and curious.  Now, what sort of bird is this?  it seemed
saying.  Certainly not the partridge I should have expected from its
breeding!

Miltoun's answer: "I came up to tell you some thing, sir," riveted
his father's stare for a second longer than was quite urbane.

It would not be true to say that Lord Valleys was afraid of his son.
Fear was not one of his emotions, but he certainly regarded him with
a respectful curiosity that bordered on uneasiness.  The oligarchic
temper of Miltoun's mind and political convictions almost shocked one
who knew both by temperament and experience how to wait in front.
This instruction he had frequently had occasion to give his jockeys
when he believed his horses could best get home first in that way.
And it was an instruction he now longed to give his son.  He himself
had 'waited in front' for over fifty years, and he knew it to be the
finest way of insuring that he would never be compelled to alter this
desirable policy--for something in Lord Valleys' character made him
fear that, in real emergency, he would exert himself to the point of
the gravest discomfort sooner than be left to wait behind.  A fellow
like young Harbinger, of course, he understood--versatile, 'full of
beans,' as he expressed it to himself in his more confidential
moments, who had imbibed the new wine (very intoxicating it was) of
desire for social reform.  He would have to be given his head a
little--but there would be no difficulty with him, he would never
'run out'--light handy build of horse that only required steadying at
the corners.  He would want to hear himself talk, and be let feel
that he was doing something.  All very well, and quite intelligible.
But with Miltoun (and Lord Valleys felt this to be no, mere parental
fancy) it was a very different business.  His son had a way of
forcing things to their conclusions which was dangerous, and reminded
him of his mother-in-law.  He was a baby in public affairs, of
course, as yet; but as soon as he once got going, the intensity of
his convictions, together with his position, and real gift--not of
the gab, like Harbinger's--but of restrained, biting oratory, was
sure to bring him to the front with a bound in the present state of
parties.  And what were those convictions?  Lord Valleys had tried to
understand them, but up to the present he had failed.  And this did
not surprise him exactly, since, as he often said, political
convictions were not, as they appeared on the surface, the outcome of
reason, but merely symptoms of temperament.  And he could not
comprehend, because he could not sympathize with, any attitude
towards public affairs that was not essentially level, attached to
the plain, common-sense factors of the case as they appeared to
himself.  Not that he could fairly be called a temporizer, for deep
down in him there was undoubtedly a vein of obstinate, fundamental
loyalty to the traditions of a caste which prized high spirit beyond
all things.  Still he did feel that Miltoun was altogether too much
the 'pukka' aristocrat--no better than a Socialist, with his
confounded way of seeing things all cut and dried; his ideas of
forcing reforms down people's throats and holding them there with the
iron hand!  With his way too of acting on his principles!  Why!  He
even admitted that he acted on his principles!  This thought always
struck a very discordant note in Lord Valleys' breast.  It was almost
indecent; worse-ridiculous!  The fact was, the dear fellow had
unfortunately a deeper habit of thought than was wanted in politics--
dangerous--very!  Experience might do something for him!  And out of
his own long experience the Earl of Valleys tried hard to recollect
any politician whom the practice of politics had left where he was
when he started.  He could not think of one.  But this gave him
little comfort; and, above a piece of late asparagus his steady eyes
sought his son's.  What had he come up to tell him?

The phrase had been ominous; he could not recollect Miltoun's ever
having told him anything.  For though a really kind and indulgent
father, he had--like so many men occupied with public and other
lives--a little acquired towards his offspring the look and manner:
Is this mine?  Of his four children, Barbara alone he claimed with
conviction.  He admired her; and, being a man who savoured life, he
was unable to love much except where he admired.  But, the last
person in the world to hustle any man or force a confidence, he
waited to hear his son's news, betraying no uneasiness.

Miltoun seemed in no hurry.  He described Courtier's adventure, which
tickled Lord Valleys a good deal.

"Ordeal by red pepper!  Shouldn't have thought them equal to that,"
he said.  "So you've got him at Monkland now.  Harbinger still with
you?"

"Yes.  I don't think Harbinger has much stamina.

"Politically?"

Miltoun nodded.

"I rather resent his being on our side--I don't think he does us any
good.  You've seen that cartoon, I suppose; it cuts pretty deep.  I
couldn't recognize you amongst the old women, sir."

Lord Valleys smiled impersonally.

"Very clever thing.  By the way; I shall win the Eclipse, I think."

And thus, spasmodically, the conversation ran till the last servant
had left the room.

Then Miltoun, without preparation, looked straight at his father and
said:

"I want to marry Mrs. Noel, sir."

Lord Valleys received the shot with exactly the same expression as
that with which he was accustomed to watch his horses beaten.  Then
he raised his wineglass to his lips; and set it down again untouched.
This was the only sign he gave of interest or discomfiture.

"Isn't this rather sudden?"

Miltoun answered: "I've wanted to from the moment I first saw her."

Lord Valleys, almost as good a judge of a man and a situation as of a
horse or a pointer dog, leaned back in his chair, and said with faint
sarcasm:

"My dear fellow, it's good of you to have told me this; though, to be
quite frank, it's a piece of news I would rather not have heard."

A dusky flush burned slowly up in Miltoun's cheeks.  He had
underrated his father; the man had coolness and courage in a crisis.

"What is your objection, sir?" And suddenly he noticed that a wafer
in Lord Valleys' hand was quivering.  This brought into his eyes no
look of compunction, but such a smouldering gaze as the old Tudor
Churchman might have bent on an adversary who showed a sign of
weakness.  Lord Valleys, too, noticed the quivering of that wafer,
and ate it.

"We are men of the world," he said.

Miltoun answered: "I am not."

Showing his first real symptom of impatience Lord Valleys rapped out:

"So be it!  I am."

"Yes?", said Miltoun.

"Eustace!"

Nursing one knee, Miltoun faced that appeal without the faintest
movement.  His eyes continued to burn into his father's face.  A
tremor passed over Lord Valleys' heart.  What intensity of feeling
there was in the fellow, that he could look like this at the first
breath of opposition!

He reached out and took up the cigar-box; held it absently towards
his son, and drew it quickly back.

"I forgot," he said; "you don't."

And lighting a cigar, he smoked gravely, looking straight before him,
a furrow between his brows.  He spoke at last:

"She looks like a lady.  I know nothing else about her."

The smile deepened round Miltoun's mouth.

"Why should you want to know anything else?"

Lord Valleys shrugged.  His philosophy had hardened.

"I understand for one thing," he said coldly; "that there is a matter
of a divorce.  I thought you took the Church's view on that subject."

"She has not done wrong."

"You know her story, then?"

"No."

Lord Valleys raised his brows, in irony and a sort of admiration.

"Chivalry the better part of discretion?"

Miltoun answered:

"You don't, I think, understand the kind of feeling I have for Mrs.
Noel.  It does not come into your scheme of things.  It is the only
feeling, however, with which I should care to marry, and I am not
likely to feel it for anyone again."

Lord Valleys felt once more that uncanny sense of insecurity.  Was
this true?  And suddenly he felt Yes, it is true!  The face before
him was the face of one who would burn in his own fire sooner than
depart from his standards.  And a sudden sense of the utter
seriousness of this dilemma dumbed him.

"I can say no more at the moment," he muttered and got up from the
table.




CHAPTER XI

Lady Casterley was that inconvenient thing--an early riser.  No woman
in the kingdom was a better judge of a dew carpet.  Nature had in her
time displayed before her thousands of those pretty fabrics, where
all the stars of the past night, dropped to the dark earth, were
waiting to glide up to heaven again on the rays of the sun.  At
Ravensham she walked regularly in her gardens between half-past seven
and eight, and when she paid a visit, was careful to subordinate
whatever might be the local custom to this habit.

When therefore her maid Randle came to Barbara's maid at seven
o'clock, and said: "My old lady wants Lady Babs to get up," there was
no particular pain in the breast of Barbara's maid, who was doing up
her corsets.  She merely answered "I'll see to it.  Lady Babs won't
be too pleased!"  And ten minutes later she entered that white-walled
room which smelled of pinks-a temple of drowsy sweetness, where the
summer light was vaguely stealing through flowered chintz curtains.

Barbara was sleeping with her cheek on her hand, and her tawny hair,
gathered back, streaming over the pillow.  Her lips were parted; and
the maid thought: "I'd like to have hair and a mouth like that!"  She
could not help smiling to herself with pleasure; Lady Babs looked so
pretty--prettier asleep even than awake!  And at sight of that
beautiful creature, sleeping and smiling in her sleep, the earthy,
hothouse fumes steeping the mind of one perpetually serving in an
atmosphere unsuited to her natural growth, dispersed.  Beauty, with
its queer touching power of freeing the spirit from all barriers and
thoughts of self, sweetened the maid's eyes, and kept her standing,
holding her breath.  For Barbara asleep was a symbol of that Golden
Age in which she so desperately believed.  She opened her eyes, and
seeing the maid, said:

"Is it eight o'clock, Stacey?"

"No, but Lady Casterley wants you to walk with her."

"Oh!  bother!  I was having such a dream!"

"Yes; you were smiling."

"I was dreaming that I could fly."

"Fancy!"

"I could see everything spread out below me, as close as I see you; I
was hovering like a buzzard hawk.  I felt that I could come down
exactly where I wanted.  It was fascinating.  I had perfect power,
Stacey."

And throwing her neck back, she closed her eyes again.  The sunlight
streamed in on her between the half-drawn curtains.

The queerest impulse to put out a hand and stroke that full white
throat shot through the maid's mind.

"These flying machines are stupid," murmured Barbara; "the pleasure's
in one's body---wings!"

"I can see Lady Casterley in the garden."

Barbara sprang out of bed.  Close by the statue of Diana Lady
Casterley was standing, gazing down at some flowers, a tiny, grey
figure.  Barbara sighed.  With her, in her dream, had been another
buzzard hawk, and she was filled with a sort of surprise, and queer
pleasure that ran down her in little shivers while she bathed and
dressed.

In her haste she took no hat; and still busy with the fastening of
her linen frock, hurried down the stairs and Georgian corridor,
towards the garden.  At the end of it she almost ran into the arms of
Courtier.

Awakening early this morning, he had begun first thinking of Audrey
Noel, threatened by scandal; then of his yesterday's companion, that
glorious young creature, whose image had so gripped and taken
possession of him.  In the pleasure of this memory he had steeped
himself.  She was youth itself!  That perfect thing, a young girl
without callowness.

And his words, when she nearly ran into him, were: "The Winged
Victory!"

Barbara's answer was equally symbolic: "A buzzard hawk!  Do you know,
I dreamed we were flying, Mr. Courtier."

Courtier gravely answered

"If the gods give me that dream----"

>From the garden door Barbara turned her head, smiled, and passed
through.

Lady Casterley, in the company of little Ann, who had perceived that
it was novel to be in the garden at this hour, had been scrutinizing
some newly founded colonies of a flower with which she was not
familiar.  On seeing her granddaughter approach, she said at once:

"What is this thing?"

"Nemesia."

"Never heard of it."

"It's rather the fashion, Granny."

"Nemesia?" repeated Lady Casterley.  "What has Nemesis to do with
flowers?  I have no patience with gardeners, and these idiotic names.
Where is your hat?  I like that duck's egg colour in your frock.
There's a button undone."   And reaching up her little spidery hand,
wonderfully steady considering its age, she buttoned the top button
but one of Barbara's bodice.

"You look very blooming, my dear," she said.  "How far is it to this
woman's cottage?  We'll go there now."

"She wouldn't be up."

Lady Casterley's eyes gleamed maliciously.

"You tell me she's so nice," she said.  "No nice unencumbered woman
lies in bed after half-past seven.  Which is the very shortest way?
No, Ann, we can't take you."

Little Ann, after regarding her great-grandmother rather too
intently, replied:

"Well, I can't come, you see, because I've got to go."

"Very well," said Lady Casterley," then trot along."

Little Ann, tightening her lips, walked to the next colony of
Nemesia, and bent over the colonists with concentration, showing
clearly that she had found something more interesting than had yet
been encountered.

"Ha!" said Lady Casterley, and led on at her brisk pace towards the
avenue.

All the way down the drive she discoursed on woodcraft, glancing
sharply at the trees.  Forestry--she said-like building, and all
other pursuits which required, faith and patient industry, was a lost
art in this second-hand age.  She had made Barbara's grandfather
practise it, so that at Catton (her country place) and even at
Ravensham, the trees were worth looking at.  Here, at Monkland, they
were monstrously neglected.  To have the finest Italian cypress in
the country, for example, and not take more care of it, was a
downright scandal!

Barbara listened, smiling lazily.  Granny was so amusing in her
energy and precision, and her turns of speech, so deliberately
homespun, as if she--than whom none could better use a stiff and
polished phrase, or the refinements of the French language--were
determined to take what liberties she liked.  To the girl, haunted
still by the feeling that she could fly, almost drunk on the
sweetness of the air that summer morning, it seemed funny that anyone
should be like that.  Then for a second she saw her grandmother's
face in repose, off guard, grim with anxious purpose, as if
questioning its hold on life; and in one of those flashes of
intuition which come to women--even when young and conquering like
Barbara--she felt suddenly sorry, as though she had caught sight of
the pale spectre never yet seen by her.  "Poor old dear," she
thought; "what a pity to be old!"

But they had entered the footpath crossing three long meadows which
climbed up towards Mrs. Noel's.  It was so golden-sweet here amongst
the million tiny saffron cups frosted with lingering dewshine; there
was such flying glory in the limes and ash-trees; so delicate a scent
from the late whins and may-flower; and, on every tree a greybird
calling to be sorry was not possible!

In the far corner of the first field a chestnut mare was standing,
with ears pricked at some distant sound whose charm she alone
perceived.  On viewing the intruders, she laid those ears back, and a
little vicious star gleamed out at the corner of her eye.  They
passed her and entered the second field.  Half way across, Barbara
said quietly:

"Granny, that's a bull!"

It was indeed an enormous bull, who had been standing behind a clump
of bushes.  He was moving slowly towards them, still distant about
two hundred yards; a great red beast, with the huge development of
neck and front which makes the bull, of all living creatures, the
symbol of brute force.

Lady Casterley envisaged him severely.

"I dislike bulls," she said; "I think I must walk backward."

"You can't; it's too uphill."

"I am not going to turn back," said Lady Casterley.  "The bull ought
not to be here.  Whose fault is it?  I shall speak to someone.  Stand
still and look at him.  We must prevent his coming nearer."

They stood still and looked at the bull, who continued to approach.

"It doesn't stop him," said Lady Casterley.  "We must take no notice.
Give me your arm, my dear; my legs feel rather funny."

Barbara put her arm round the little figure.  They walked on.

"I have not been used to bulls lately," said Lady Casterley.  The
bull came nearer.

"Granny," said Barbara, "you must go quietly on to the stile.  When
you're over I'll come too."

"Certainly not," said Lady Casterley, "we will go together.  Take no
notice of him; I have great faith in that."

"Granny darling, you must do as I say, please; I remember this bull,
he is one of ours."

At those rather ominous words Lady Casterley gave her a sharp glance.

"I shall not go," she said.  "My legs feel quite strong now.  We can
run, if necessary."

"So can the bull," said Barbara.

"I'm not going to leave you," muttered Lady Casterley.  "If he turns
vicious I shall talk to him.  He won't touch me.  You can run faster
than I; so that's settled."

"Don't be absurd, dear," answered Barbara; "I am not afraid of
bulls."

Lady Casterley flashed a look at her which had a gleam of amusement.

"I can feel you," she said; "you're just as trembly as I am."

The bull was now distant some eighty yards, and they were still quite
a hundred from the stile.

"Granny," said Barbara, "if you don't go on as I tell you, I shall
just leave you, and go and meet him!  You mustn't be obstinate!"

Lady Casterley's answer was to grip her granddaughter round the
waist; the nervous force of that thin arm was surprising.

"You will do nothing of the sort," she said.  "I refuse to have
anything more to do with this bull; I shall simply pay no attention."

The bull now began very slowly ambling towards them.

"Take no notice," said Lady Casterley, who was walking faster than
she had ever walked before.

"The ground is level now," said Barbara; "can you run?"

"I think so," gasped Lady Casterley; and suddenly she found herself
half-lifted from the ground, and, as it were, flying towards the
stile.  She heard a noise behind; then Barbara's voice:

"We must stop.  He's on us.  Get behind me."

She felt herself caught and pinioned by two arms that seemed set on
the wrong way.  Instinct, and a general softness told her that she
was back to back with her granddaughter.

"Let me go!" she gasped; "let me go!"

And suddenly she felt herself being propelled by that softness
forward towards the stile.

"Shoo!" she said; "shoo!"

"Granny," Barbara's voice came, calm and breathless, "don't!  You
only excite him!  Are we near the stile?"

"Ten yards," panted Lady Casterley.

"Look out, then!" There was a sort of warm flurry round her, a rush,
a heave, a scramble; she was beyond the stile.  The bull and Barbara,
a yard or two apart, were just the other side.  Lady Casterley raised
her handkerchief and fluttered it.  The bull looked up; Barbara, all
legs and arms, came slipping down beside her.

Without wasting a moment Lady Casterley leaned forward and addressed
the bull:

"You awful brute!" she said; "I will have you well flogged."

Gently pawing the ground, the bull snuffled.

"Are you any the worse, child?"

"Not a scrap," said Barbara's serene, still breathless voice.

Lady Casterley put up her hands, and took the girl's face between
them.

"What legs you have!" she said.  "Give me a kiss!"

Having received a hot, rather quivering kiss, she walked on, holding
somewhat firmly to Barbara's arm.

"As for that bull," she murmured, "the brute--to attack women!"

Barbara looked down at her.

"Granny," she said, "are you sure you're not shaken?"

Lady Casterley, whose lips were quivering, pressed them together very
hard.

"Not a b-b-bit."

"Don't you think," said Barbara, "that we had better go back, at
once--the other way?"

"Certainly not.  There are no more bulls, I suppose, between us and
this woman?"

"But are you fit to see her?"

Lady Casterley passed her handkerchief over her lips, to remove their
quivering.

"Perfectly," she answered.

"Then, dear," said Barbara, "stand still a minute, while I dust you
behind."

This having been accomplished, they proceeded in the direction of
Mrs. Noel's cottage.

At sight of it, Lady Casterley said:

"I shall put my foot down.  It's out of the question for a man of
Miltoun's prospects.  I look forward to seeing him Prime Minister
some day."  Hearing Barbara's voice murmuring above her, she paused:
"What's that you say?"

"I said: What is the use of our being what we are, if we can't love
whom we like?"

"Love!" said Lady Casterley; "I was talking of marriage."

"I am glad you admit the distinction, Granny dear."

"You are pleased to be sarcastic," said Lady Casterley.  "Listen to
me!  It's the greatest nonsense to suppose that people in our caste
are free to do as they please.  The sooner you realize that, the
better, Babs.  I am talking to you seriously.  The preservation of
our position as a class depends on our observing certain decencies.
What do you imagine would happen to the Royal Family if they were
allowed to marry as they liked?  All this marrying with Gaiety girls,
and American money, and people with pasts, and writers, and so forth,
is most damaging.  There's far too much of it, and it ought to be
stopped.  It may be tolerated for a few cranks, or silly young men,
and these new women, but for Eustace "Lady Casterley paused again,
and her fingers pinched Barbara's arm, "or for you--there's only one
sort of marriage possible.  As for Eustace, I shall speak to this
good lady, and see that he doesn't get entangled further."

Absorbed in the intensity of her purpose, she did not observe a
peculiar little smile playing round Barbara's lips.

"You had better speak to Nature, too, Granny!"

Lady Casterley stopped short, and looked up in her granddaughter's
face.

"Now what do you mean by that?" she said "Tell me!"

But noticing that Barbara's lips had closed tightly, she gave her arm
a hard--if unintentional-pinch, and walked on.




CHAPTER XII

Lady Casterley's rather malicious diagnosis of Audrey Noel was
correct.  The unencumbered woman was up and in her garden when
Barbara and her grandmother appeared at the Wicket gate; but being
near the lime-tree at the far end she did not hear the rapid colloquy
which passed between them.

"You are going to be good, Granny?"

"As to that--it will depend."

"You promised."

"H'm!"

Lady Casterley could not possibly have provided herself with a better
introduction than Barbara, whom Mrs. Noel never met without the sheer
pleasure felt by a sympathetic woman when she sees embodied in
someone else that 'joy in life' which Fate has not permitted to
herself.

She came forward with her head a little on one side, a trick of hers
not at all affected, and stood waiting.

The unembarrassed Barbara began at once:

"We've just had an encounter with a bull.  This is my grandmother,
Lady Casterley."

The little old lady's demeanour, confronted with this very pretty
face and figure was a thought less autocratic and abrupt than usual.
Her shrewd eyes saw at once that she had no common adventuress to
deal with.  She was woman of the world enough, too, to know that
'birth' was not what it had been in her young days, that even money
was rather rococo, and that good looks, manners, and a knowledge of
literature, art, and music (and this woman looked like one of that
sort), were often considered socially more valuable.  She was
therefore both wary and affable.

"How do you do?" she said.  "I have heard of you.  May we sit down
for a minute in your garden?  The bull was a wretch!"

But even in speaking, she was uneasily conscious that Mrs. Noel's
clear eyes were seeing very well what she had come for.  The look in
them indeed was almost cynical; and in spite of her sympathetic
murmurs, she did not somehow seem to believe in the bull.  This was
disconcerting.  Why had Barbara condescended to mention the wretched
brute?  And she decided to take him by the horns.

"Babs," she said, "go to the Inn and order me a 'fly.' I shall drive
back, I feel very shaky," and, as Mrs. Noel offered to send her maid,
she added:

"No, no, my granddaughter will go."

Barbara having departed with a quizzical look, Lady Casterley patted
the rustic seat, and said:

"Do come and sit down, I want to talk to you:"

Mrs. Noel obeyed.  And at once Lady Casterley perceived that "she had
a most difficult task before her.  She had not expected a woman with
whom one could take no liberties.  Those clear dark eyes, and that
soft, perfectly graceful manner--to a person so 'sympathetic' one
should be able to say anything, and--one couldn't!  It was awkward.
And suddenly she noticed that Mrs. Noel was sitting perfectly
upright, as upright--more upright, than she was herself.  A bad,
sign--a very bad sign!  Taking out her handkerchief, she put it to
her lips.

"I suppose you think," she said, "that we were not chased by a bull."


"I am sure you were."

"Indeed!  Ah!  But I've something else to talk to you about."

Mrs. Noel's face quivered back, as a flower might when it was going
to be plucked; and again Lady Casterley put her handkerchief to her
lips.  This time she rubbed them hard.  There was nothing to come
off; to do so, therefore, was a satisfaction.

"I am an old woman," she said," and you mustn't mind what I say."

Mrs. Noel did not answer, but looked straight at her visitor; to whom
it seemed suddenly that this was another person.  What was it about
that face, staring at her!  In a weird way it reminded her of a child
that one had hurt--with those great eyes and that soft hair, and the
mouth thin, in a line, all of a sudden.  And as if it had been jerked
out of her, she said:

"I don't want to hurt you, my dear.  It's about my grandson, of
course."

But Mrs. Noel made neither sign nor motion; and the feeling of
irritation which so rapidly attacks the old when confronted by the
unexpected, came to Lady Casterley's aid.

"His name," she said, "is being coupled with yours in a way that's
doing him a great deal of harm.  You don't wish to injure him, I'm
sure."

Mrs. Noel shook her head, and Lady Casterley went on:

"I don't know what they're not saying since the evening your friend
Mr. Courtier hurt his knee.  Miltoun has been most unwise.  You had
not perhaps realized that."

Mrs. Noel's answer was bitterly distinct:

"I didn't know anyone was sufficiently interested in my doings."

Lady Casterley suffered a gesture of exasperation to escape her.

"Good heavens!" she said; "every common person is interested in a
woman whose position is anomalous.  Living alone as you do, and not a
widow, you're fair game for everybody, especially in the country."

Mrs. Noel's sidelong glance, very clear and cynical, seemed to say:
"Even for you."

"I am not entitled to ask your story," Lady Casterley went on, "but
if you make mysteries you must expect the worst interpretation put on
them.  My grandson is a man of the highest principle; he does not see
things with the eyes of the world, and that should have made you
doubly careful not to compromise him, especially at a time like
this."

Mrs. Noel smiled.  This smile startled Lady Casterley; it seemed, by
concealing everything, to reveal depths of strength and subtlety.
Would the woman never show her hand?  And she said abruptly:

"Anything serious, of course, is out of the question."

"Quite."

That word, which of all others seemed the right one, was spoken so
that Lady Casterley did not know in the least what it meant.  Though
occasionally employing irony, she detested it in others.  No woman
should be allowed to use it as a weapon!  But in these days, when
they were so foolish as to want votes, one never knew what women
would be at.  This particular woman, however, did not look like one
of that sort.  She was feminine--very feminine--the sort of creature
that spoiled men by being too nice to them.  And though she had come
determined to find out all about everything and put an end to it, she
saw Barbara re-entering the wicket gate with considerable relief.

"I am ready to walk home now," she said.  And getting up from the
rustic seat, she made Mrs. Noel a satirical little bow.

"Thank you for letting me rest.  Give me your arm, child."

Barbara gave her arm, and over her shoulder threw a swift smile at
Mrs. Noel, who did not answer it, but stood looking quietly after
them, her eyes immensely dark and large.

Out in the lane Lady Casterley walked on, very silent, digesting her
emotions.

"What about the 'fly,' Granny?"

"What 'fly'?"

"The one you told me to order."

"You don't mean to say that you took me seriously?"

"No," said Barbara.

"Ha!"

They proceeded some little way farther before Lady Casterley said
suddenly:

"She is deep."

"And dark," said Barbara.  "I am afraid you were not good!"

Lady Casterley glanced upwards.

"I detest this habit," she said, "amongst you young people, of taking
nothing seriously.  Not even bulls," she added, with a grim smile.

Barbara threw back her head and sighed.

"Nor 'flys,'" she said.

Lady Casterley saw that she had closed her eyes and opened her lips.
And she thought:

"She's a very beautiful girl.  I had no idea she was so beautiful--
but too big!" And she added aloud:

"Shut your mouth!  You will get one down!"

They spoke no more till they had entered the avenue; then Lady
Casterley said sharply:

"Who is this coming down the drive?"

"Mr. Courtier, I think."

"What does he mean by it, with that leg?"

"He is coming to talk to you, Granny."

Lady Casterley stopped short.

"You are a cat," she said; "a sly cat.  Now mind, Babs, I won't have
it!"

"No, darling," murmured Barbara; "you shan't have it--I'll take him
off your hands."

"What does your mother mean," stammered Lady Casterley, "letting you
grow up like this!  You're as bad as she was at your age!"

"Worse!" said Barbara.  "I dreamed last night that I could fly!"

"If you try that," said Lady Casterley grimly, "you'll soon come to
grief.  Good-morning, sir; you ought to be in bed!"

Courtier raised his hat.

"Surely it is not for me to be where you are not!" And he added
gloomily: "The war scare's dead!"

"Ah!" said Lady Casterley: "your occupation's gone then.  You'll go
back to London now, I suppose."  Looking suddenly at Barbara she saw
that the girl's eyes were half-closed, and that she was smiling; it
seemed to Lady Casterley too or was it fancy?--that she shook her
head.




CHAPTER XIII

Thanks to Lady Valleys, a patroness of birds, no owl was ever shot on
the Monkland Court estate, and those soft-flying spirits of the dusk
hooted and hunted, to the great benefit of all except the creeping
voles.  By every farm, cottage, and field, they passed invisible,
quartering the dark air.  Their voyages of discovery stretched up on
to the moor as far as the wild stone man, whose origin their wisdom
perhaps knew.  Round Audrey Noel's cottage they were as thick as
thieves, for they had just there two habitations in a long, old,
holly-grown wall, and almost seemed to be guarding the mistress of
that thatched dwelling--so numerous were their fluttering rushes, so
tenderly prolonged their soft sentinel callings.  Now that the
weather was really warm, so that joy of life was in the voles, they
found those succulent creatures of an extraordinarily pleasant
flavour, and on them each pair was bringing up a family of
exceptionally fine little owls, very solemn, with big heads, bright
large eyes, and wings as yet only able to fly downwards.  There was
scarcely any hour from noon of the day (for some of them had horns)
to the small sweet hours when no one heard them, that they forgot to
salute the very large, quiet, wingless owl whom they could espy
moving about by day above their mouse-runs, or preening her white and
sometimes blue and sometimes grey feathers morning and evening in a
large square hole high up in the front wall.  And they could not
understand at all why no swift depredating graces nor any habit of
long soft hooting belonged to that lady-bird.

On the evening of the day when she received that early morning call,
as soon as dusk had fallen, wrapped in a long thin cloak, with black
lace over her dark hair, Audrey Noel herself fluttered out into the
lanes, as if to join the grave winged hunters of the invisible night.
Those far, continual sounds, not stilled in the country till long
after the sun dies, had but just ceased from haunting the air, where
the late May-scent clung as close as fragrance clings to a woman's
robe.  There was just the barking of a dog, the boom of migrating
chafers, the song of the stream, and of the owls, to proclaim the
beating in the heart of this sweet Night.  Nor was there any light by
which Night's face could be seen; it was hidden, anonymous; so that
when a lamp in a cottage threw a blink over the opposite bank, it was
as if some wandering painter had wrought a picture of stones and
leaves on the black air, framed it in purple, and left it hanging.
Yet, if it could only have been come at, the Night was as full of
emotion as this woman who wandered, shrinking away against the banks
if anyone passed, stopping to cool her hot face with the dew on the
ferns, walking swiftly to console her warm heart.  Anonymous Night
seeking for a symbol could have found none better than this errant
figure, to express its hidden longings, the fluttering, unseen rushes
of its dark wings, and all its secret passion of revolt against its
own anonymity....

At Monkland Court, save for little Ann, the morning passed but
dumbly, everyone feeling that something must be done, and no one
knowing what.  At lunch, the only allusion to the situation had been
Harbinger's inquiry:

"When does Miltoun return?"

He had wired, it seemed, to say that he was motoring down that night.

"The sooner the better," Sir William murmured: "we've still a
fortnight."

But all had felt from the tone in which he spoke these words, how
serious was the position in the eyes of that experienced campaigner.

What with the collapse of the war scare, and this canard about Mrs.
Noel, there was indeed cause for alarm.

The afternoon post brought a letter from Lord Valleys marked Express.

Lady Valleys opened it with a slight grimace, which deepened as she
read.  Her handsome, florid face wore an expression of sadness seldom
seen there.  There was, in fact, more than a touch of dignity in her
reception of the unpalatable news.

"Eustace declares his intention of marrying this Mrs. Noel"--so ran
her husband's letter--"I know, unfortunately, of no way in which I
can prevent him.  If you can discover legitimate means of dissuasion,
it would be well to use them.  My dear, it's the very devil."

It was the very devil!  For, if Miltoun had already made up his mind
to marry her, without knowledge of the malicious rumour, what would
not be his determination now?  And the woman of the world rose up in
Lady Valleys.  This marriage must not come off.  It was contrary to
almost every instinct of one who was practical not only by character,
but by habit of life and training.  Her warm and full-blooded nature
had a sneaking sympathy with love and pleasure, and had she not been
practical, she might have found this side of her a serious drawback
to the main tenor of a life so much in view of the public eye.  Her
consciousness of this danger in her own case made her extremely alive
to the risks of an undesirable connection--especially if it were a
marriage--to any public man.  At the same time the mother-heart in
her was stirred.  Eustace had never been so deep in her affection as
Bertie, still he was her first-born; and in face of news which meant
that he was lost to her--for this must indeed be 'the marriage of two
minds' (or whatever that quotation was)--she felt strangely jealous
of a woman, who had won her son's love, when she herself had never
won it.  The aching of this jealousy gave her face for a moment
almost a spiritual expression, then passed away into impatience.  Why
should he marry her?  Things could be arranged.  People spoke of it
already as an illicit relationship; well then, let people have what
they had invented.  If the worst came to the worst, this was not the
only constituency in England; and a dissolution could not be far off.
Better anything than a marriage which would handicap him all his
life!  But would it be so great a handicap?  After all, beauty
counted for much!  If only her story were not too conspicuous!  But
what was her story?  Not to know it was absurd!  That was the worst
of people who were not in Society, it was so difficult to find out!
And there rose in her that almost brutal resentment, which ferments
very rapidly in those who from their youth up have been hedged round
with the belief that they and they alone are the whole of the world.
In this mood Lady Valleys passed the letter to her daughters.  They
read, and in turn handed it to Bertie, who in silence returned it to
his mother.

But that evening, in the billiard-room, having manoeuvred to get him
to herself, Barbara said to Courtier:

"I wonder if you will answer me a question, Mr. Courtier?"

"If I may, and can."

Her low-cut dress was of yew-green, with, little threads of flame-
colour, matching her hair, so that there was about her a splendour of
darkness and whiteness and gold, almost dazzling; and she stood very
still, leaning back against the lighter green of the billiard-table,
grasping its edge so tightly that the smooth strong backs of her
hands quivered.

"We have just heard that Miltoun is going to ask Mrs. Noel to marry
him.  People are never mysterious, are they, without good reason?  I
wanted you to tell me--who is she?"

"I don't think I quite grasp the situation," murmured Courtier.  "You
said--to marry him?"

Seeing that she had put out her hand, as if begging for the truth, he
added: "How can your brother marry her--she's married!"

"Oh!"

"I'd no idea you didn't know that much."

"We thought there was a divorce."

The expression of which mention has been made--that peculiar white-
hot sardonically jolly look--visited Courtier's face at once.  "Hoist
with their own petard!  The usual thing.  Let a pretty woman live
alone--the tongues of men will do the rest."

"It was not so bad as that," said Barbara dryly; "they said she had
divorced her husband."

Caught out thus characteristically riding past the hounds Courtier
bit his lips.

"You had better hear the story now.  Her father was a country parson,
and a friend of my father's; so that I've known her from a child.
Stephen Lees Noel was his curate.  It was a 'snap' marriage--she was
only twenty, and had met hardly any men.  Her father was ill and
wanted to see her settled before he died.  Well, she found out almost
directly, like a good many other people, that she'd made an utter
mistake."

Barbara came a little closer.

"What was the man like?"

"Not bad in his way, but one of those narrow, conscientious pig-
headed fellows who make the most trying kind of husband--bone
egoistic.  A parson of that type has no chance at all.  Every mortal
thing he has to do or say helps him to develop his worst points.  The
wife of a man like that's no better than a slave.  She began to show
the strain of it at last; though she's the sort who goes on till she
snaps.  It took him four years to realize.  Then, the question was,
what were they to do?  He's a very High Churchman, with all their
feeling about marriage; but luckily his pride was wounded.  Anyway,
they separated two years ago; and there she is, left high and dry.
People say it was her fault.  She ought to have known her own mind--
at twenty!  She ought to have held on and hidden it up somehow.
Confound their thick-skinned charitable souls, what do they know of
how a sensitive woman suffers?  Forgive me, Lady Barbara--I get hot
over this."  He was silent; then seeing her eyes fixed on him, went
on: "Her mother died when she was born, her father soon after her
marriage.  She's enough money of her own, luckily, to live on
quietly.  As for him, he changed his parish and runs one somewhere in
the Midlands.  One's sorry for the poor devil, too, of course!  They
never see each other; and, so far as I know, they don't correspond.
That, Lady Barbara, is the simple history."

Barbara, said, "Thank you," and turned away; and he heard her mutter:
"What a shame!"

But he could not tell whether it was Mrs. Noel's fate, or the
husband's fate, or the thought of Miltoun that had moved her to those
words.

She puzzled him by her self-possession, so almost hard, her way of
refusing to show feeling.' Yet what a woman she would make if the
drying curse of high-caste life were not allowed to stereotype and
shrivel her!  If enthusiasm were suffered to penetrate and fertilize
her soul!  She reminded him of a great tawny lily.  He had a vision
of her, as that flower, floating, freed of roots and the mould of its
cultivated soil, in the liberty of the impartial air.  What a
passionate and noble thing she might become!  What radiance and
perfume she would exhale!  A spirit Fleur-de-Lys!  Sister to all the
noble flowers of light that inhabited the wind!

Leaning in the deep embrasure of his window, he looked at anonymous
Night.  He could hear the owls hoot, and feel a heart beating out
there somewhere in the darkness, but there came no answer to his
wondering.  Would she--this great tawny lily of a girl--ever become
unconscious of her environment, not in manner merely, but in the very
soul, so that she might be just a woman, breathing, suffering,
loving, and rejoicing with the poet soul of all mankind?  Would she
ever be capable of riding out with the little company of big hearts,
naked of advantage?  Courtier had not been inside a church for twenty
years, having long felt that he must not enter the mosques of his
country without putting off the shoes of freedom, but he read the
Bible, considering it a very great poem.  And the old words came
haunting him: 'Verily I say unto you, It is harder for a camel to
pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the
kingdom of Heaven.' And now, looking into the Night, whose darkness
seemed to hold the answer to all secrets, he tried to read the riddle
of this girl's future, with which there seemed so interwoven that
larger enigma, how far the spirit can free itself, in this life, from
the matter that encompasseth.

The Night whispered suddenly, and low down, as if rising from the
sea, came the moon, dropping a wan robe of light till she gleamed out
nude against the sky-curtain.  Night was no longer anonymous.  There
in the dusky garden the statue of Diana formed slowly before his
eyes, and behind her--as it were, her temple--rose the tall spire of
the cypress tree.




CHAPTER XIV

A copy of the Bucklandbury News, containing an account of his evening
adventure, did not reach Miltoun till he was just starting on his
return journey.  It came marked with blue pencil together with a
note.

"MY DEAR EUSTACE,

"The enclosed--however unwarranted and impudent--requires attention.
But we shall do nothing till you come back.

                              "Yours ever,
                                   "WILLIAM SHROPTON."

The effect on Miltoun might perhaps have been different had he not
been so conscious of his intention to ask Audrey Noel to be his wife;
but in any circumstances it is doubtful whether he would have done
more than smile, and tear the paper up.  Truly that sort of thing had
so little power to hurt or disturb him personally, that he was
incapable of seeing how it could hurt or disturb others.  If those
who read it were affected, so much the worse for them.  He had a
real, if unobtrusive, contempt for groundlings, of whatever class;
and it never entered his head to step an inch out of his course in
deference to their vagaries.  Nor did it come home to him that Mrs.
Noel, wrapped in the glamour which he cast about her, could possibly
suffer from the meanness of vulgar minds.  Shropton's note, indeed,
caused him the more annoyance of those two documents.  It was like
his brother-in-law to make much of little!

He hardly dozed at all during his swift journey through the sleeping
country; nor when he reached his room at Monkland did he go to bed.
He had the wonderful, upborne feeling of man on the verge of
achievement.  His spirit and senses were both on fire--for that was
the quality of this woman, she suffered no part of him to sleep, and
he was glad of her exactions.

He drank some tea; went out, and took a path up to the moor.  It was
not yet eight o'clock when he reached the top of the nearest tor.
And there, below him, around, and above, was a land and sky
transcending even his exaltation.  It was like a symphony of great
music; or the nobility of a stupendous mind laid bare; it was God up
there, in His many moods.  Serenity was spread in the middle heavens,
blue, illimitable, and along to the East, three huge clouds, like
thoughts brooding over the destinies below, moved slowly toward the
sea, so that great shadows filled the valleys.  And the land that lay
under all the other sky was gleaming, and quivering with every
colour, as it were, clothed with the divine smile.  The wind, from
the North, whereon floated the white birds of the smaller clouds, had
no voice, for it was above barriers, utterly free.  Before Miltoun,
turning to this wind, lay the maze of the lower lands, the misty
greens, rose pinks, and browns of the fields, and white and grey dots
and strokes of cottages and church towers, fading into the blue veil
of distance, confined by a far range of hills.  Behind him there was
nothing but the restless surface of the moor, coloured purplish-
brown.  On that untamed sea of graven wildness could be seen no ship
of man, save one, on the far horizon--the grim hulk, Dartmoor Prison.
There was no sound, no scent, and it seemed to Miltoun as if his
spirit had left his body, and become part of the solemnity of God.
Yet, as he stood there, with his head bared, that strange smile which
haunted him in moments of deep feeling, showed that he had not
surrendered to the Universal, that his own spirit was but being
fortified, and that this was the true and secret source of his
delight.  He lay down in a scoop of the stones.  The sun entered
there, but no wind, so that a dry sweet scent exuded from the young
shoots of heather.  That warmth and perfume crept through the shield
of his spirit, and stole into his blood; ardent images rose before
him, the vision of an unending embrace.  Out of an embrace sprang
Life, out of that the World was made, this World, with its
innumerable forms, and natures--no two alike!  And from him and her
would spring forms to take their place in the great pattern.  This
seemed wonderful, and right-for they would be worthy forms, who would
hand on those traditions which seemed to him so necessary and great.
And then there broke on him one of those delirious waves of natural
desire, against which he had so often fought, so often with great
pain conquered.  He got up, and ran downhill, leaping over the
stones, and the thicker clumps of heather.

Audrey Noel, too, had been early astir, though she had gone late
enough to bed.  She dressed languidly, but very carefully, being one
of those women who put on armour against Fate, because they are
proud, and dislike the thought that their sufferings should make
others suffer; because, too, their bodies are to them as it were
sacred, having been given them in trust, to cause delight.  When she
had finished, she looked at herself in the glass rather more
distrustfully than usual.  She felt that her sort of woman was at a
discount in these days, and being sensitive, she was never content
either with her appearance, or her habits.  But, for all that, she
went on behaving in unsatisfactory ways, because she incorrigibly
loved to look as charming as she could; and even if no one were going
to see her, she never felt that she looked charming enough.  She was
--as Lady Casterley had shrewdly guessed--the kind of woman who
spoils men by being too nice to them; of no use to those who wish
women to assert themselves; yet having a certain passive stoicism,
very disconcerting.  With little or no power of initiative, she would
do what she was set to do with a thoroughness that would shame an
initiator; temperamentally unable to beg anything of anybody, she
required love as a plant requires water; she could give herself
completely, yet remain oddly incorruptible; in a word, hopeless, and
usually beloved of those who thought her so.

With all this, however, she was not quite what is called a 'sweet
woman--a phrase she detested--for there was in her a queer vein of
gentle cynicism.  She 'saw' with extraordinary clearness, as if she
had been born in Italy and still carried that clear dry atmosphere
about her soul.  She loved glow and warmth and colour; such mysticism
as she felt was pagan; and she had few aspirations--sufficient to her
were things as they showed themselves to be.

This morning, when she had made herself smell of geraniums, and
fastened all the small contrivances that hold even the best of women
together, she went downstairs to her little dining-room, set the
spirit lamp going, and taking up her newspaper, stood waiting to make
tea.

It was the hour of the day most dear to her.  If the dew had been
brushed off her life, it was still out there every morning on the
face of Nature, and on the faces of her flowers; there was before her
all the pleasure of seeing how each of those little creatures in the
garden had slept; how many children had been born since the Dawn; who
was ailing, and needed attention.  There was also the feeling, which
renews itself every morning in people who live lonely lives, that
they are not lonely, until, the day wearing on, assures them of the
fact.  Not that she was idle, for she had obtained through Courtier
the work of reviewing music in a woman's paper, for which she was
intuitively fitted.  This, her flowers, her own music, and the
affairs of certain families of cottagers, filled nearly all her time.
And she asked no better fate than to have every minute occupied,
having that passion for work requiring no initiation, which is
natural to the owners of lazy minds.

Suddenly she dropped her newspaper, went to the bowl of flowers on
the breakfast-table, and plucked forth two stalks of lavender;
holding them away from her, she went out into the garden, and flung
them over the wall.

This strange immolation of those two poor sprigs, born so early,
gathered and placed before her with such kind intention by her maid,
seemed of all acts the least to be expected of one who hated to hurt
people's feelings, and whose eyes always shone at the sight of
flowers.  But in truth the smell of lavender--that scent carried on
her husband's handkerchief and clothes--still affected her so
strongly that she could not bear to be in a room with it.  As nothing
else did, it brought before her one, to live with whom had slowly
become torture.  And freed by that scent, the whole flood of memory
broke in on her.  The memory of three years when her teeth had been
set doggedly, on her discovery that she was chained to unhappiness
for life; the memory of the abrupt end, and of her creeping away to
let her scorched nerves recover.  Of how during the first year of
this release which was not freedom, she had twice changed her abode,
to get away from her own story--not because she was ashamed of it,
but because it reminded her of wretchedness.  Of how she had then
come to Monkland, where the quiet life had slowly given her
elasticity again.  And then of her meeting with Miltoun; the
unexpected delight of that companionship; the frank enjoyment of the
first four months.  And she remembered all her secret rejoicing, her
silent identification of another life with her own, before she
acknowledged or even suspected love.  And just three weeks ago now,
helping to tie up her roses, he had touched her, and she had known.
But even then, until the night of Courtier's accident, she had not
dared to realize.  More concerned now for him than for herself, she
asked herself a thousand times if she had been to blame.  She had let
him grow fond of her, a woman out of court, a dead woman!  An
unpardonable sin!  Yet surely that depended on what she was prepared
to give!  And she was frankly ready to give everything, and ask for
nothing.  He knew her position, he had told her that he knew.  In her
love for him she gloried, would continue to glory; would suffer for
it without regret.  Miltoun was right in believing that newspaper
gossip was incapable of hurting her, though her reasons for being so
impervious were not what he supposed.  She was not, like him, secured
from pain because such insinuations about the private affairs of
others were mean and vulgar and beneath notice; it had not as yet
occurred to her to look at the matter in so lofty and general a
light; she simply was not hurt, because she was already so deeply
Miltoun's property in spirit, that she was almost glad that they
should assign him all the rest of her.  But for Miltoun's sake she
was disturbed to the soul.  She had tarnished his shield in the eyes
of men; and (for she was oddly practical, and saw things in very
clear proportion) perhaps put back his career, who knew how many
years!

She sat down to drink her tea.  Not being a crying woman, she
suffered quietly.  She felt that Miltoun would be coming to her.  She
did not know at all what she should say when he did come.  He could
not care for her so much as she cared for him!  He was a man; men
soon forget!  Ah! but he was not like most men.  One could not look
at his eyes without feeling that he could suffer terribly!  In all
this her own reputation concerned her not at all.  Life, and her
clear way of looking at things, had rooted in her the conviction that
to a woman the preciousness of her reputation was a fiction invented
by men entirely for man's benefit; a second-hand fetish insidiously,
inevitably set-up by men for worship, in novels, plays, and law-
courts.  Her instinct told her that men could not feel secure in the
possession of their women unless they could believe that women set
tremendous store by sexual reputation.  What they wanted to believe,
that they did believe!  But she knew otherwise.  Such great-minded
women as she had met or read of had always left on her the impression
that reputation for them was a matter of the spirit, having little to
do with sex.  From her own feelings she knew that reputation, for a
simple woman, meant to stand well in the eyes of him or her whom she
loved best.  For worldly women--and there were so many kinds of
those, besides the merely fashionable--she had always noted that its
value was not intrinsic, but commercial; not a crown of dignity, but
just a marketable asset.  She did not dread in the least what people
might say of her friendship with Miltoun; nor did she feel at all
that her indissoluble marriage forbade her loving him.  She had
secretly felt free as soon as she had discovered that she had never
really loved her husband; she had only gone on dutifully until the
separation, from sheer passivity, and because it was against her
nature to cause pain to anyone.  The man who was still her husband
was now as dead to her as if he had never been born.  She could not
marry again, it was true; but she could and did love.  If that love
was to be starved and die away, it would not be because of any moral
scruples.

She opened her paper languidly; and almost the first words she read,
under the heading of Election News, were these:

'Apropos of the outrage on Mr. Courtier, we are requested to state
that the lady who accompanied Lord Miltoun to the rescue of that
gentleman was Mrs. Lees Noel, wife of the Rev. Stephen Lees Noel,
vicar of Clathampton, Warwickshire.'

This dubious little daub of whitewash only brought a rather sad smile
to her lips.  She left her tea, and went out into the air.  There at
the gate was Miltoun coming in.  Her heart leaped.  But she went
forward quietly, and greeted him with cast-down eyes, as if nothing
were out of the ordinary.




CHAPTER XV

Exaltation had not left Miltoun.  His sallow face was flushed, his
eyes glowed with a sort of beauty; and Audrey Noel who, better than
most women, could read what was passing behind a face, saw those eyes
with the delight of a moth fluttering towards a lamp.  But in a very
unemotional voice she said:

"So you have come to breakfast.  How nice of you!"

It was not in Miltoun to observe the formalities of attack.  Had he
been going to fight a duel there would have been no preliminary, just
a look, a bow, and the swords crossed.  So in this first engagement
of his with the soul of a woman!

He neither sat down nor suffered her to sit, but stood looking
intently into her face, and said:

"I love you."

Now that it had come, with this disconcerting swiftness, she was
strangely calm, and unashamed.  The elation of knowing for sure that
she was loved was like a wand waving away all tremors, stilling them
to sweetness.  Since nothing could take away that knowledge, it
seemed that she could never again be utterly unhappy.  Then, too, in
her nature, so deeply, unreasoningly incapable of perceiving the
importance of any principle but love, there was a secret feeling of
assurance, of triumph.  He did love her!  And she, him!  Well!  And
suddenly panic-stricken, lest he should take back those words, she
put her hand up to his breast, and said:

"And I love you."

The feel of his arms round her, the strength and passion of that
moment, were so terribly sweet, that she died to thought, just
looking up at him, with lips parted and eyes darker with the depth of
her love than he had ever dreamed that eyes could be.  The madness of
his own feeling kept him silent.  And they stood there, so merged in
one another that they knew and cared nothing for any other mortal
thing.  It was very still in the room; the roses and carnations in
the lustre bowl, seeming to know that their mistress was caught up
into heaven, had let their perfume steal forth and occupy every
cranny of the abandoned air; a hovering bee, too, circled round the
lovers' heads, scenting, it seemed, the honey in their hearts.

It has been said that Miltoun's face was not unhandsome; for Audrey
Noel at this moment when his eyes were so near hers, and his lips
touching her, he was transfigured, and had become the spirit of all
beauty.  And she, with heart beating fast against him, her eyes, half
closing from delight, and her hair asking to be praised with its
fragrance, her cheeks fainting pale with emotion, and her arms too
languid with happiness to embrace him--she, to him, was the
incarnation of the woman that visits dreams.

So passed that moment.

The bee ended it; who, impatient with flowers that hid their honey so
deep, had entangled himself in Audrey's hair.  And then, seeing that
words, those dreaded things, were on his lips, she tried to kiss them
back.  But they came:

"When will you marry me?"

It all swayed a little.  And with marvellous rapidity the whole
position started up before her.  She saw, with preternatural insight,
into its nooks and corners.  Something he had said one day, when they
were talking of the Church view of marriage and divorce, lighted all
up.  So he had really never known about her!  At this moment of utter
sickness, she was saved from fainting by her sense of humour--her
cynicism.  Not content to let her be, people's tongues had divorced
her; he had believed them!  And the crown of irony was that he should
want to marry her, when she felt so utterly, so sacredly his, to do
what he liked with sans forms or ceremonies.  A surge of bitter
feeling against the man who stood between her and Miltoun almost made
her cry out.  That man had captured her before she knew the world or
her own soul, and she was tied to him, till by some beneficent chance
he drew his last breath when her hair was grey, and her eyes had no
love light, and her cheeks no longer grew pale when they were kissed;
when twilight had fallen, and the flowers, and bees no longer cared
for her.

It was that feeling, the sudden revolt of the desperate prisoner,
which steeled her to put out her hand, take up the paper, and give it
to Miltoun.

When he had read the little paragraph, there followed one of those
eternities which last perhaps two minutes.

He said, then:

"It's true, I suppose?"  And, at her silence, added: "I am sorry."

This queer dry saying was so much more terrible than any outcry, that
she remained, deprived even of the power of breathing, with her eyes
still fixed on Miltoun's face.

The smile of the old Cardinal had come up there, and was to her like
a living accusation.  It seemed strange that the hum of the bees and
flies and the gentle swishing of the limetree should still go on
outside, insisting that there was a world moving and breathing apart
from her, and careless of her misery.  Then some of her courage came
back, and with it her woman's mute power.  It came haunting about her
face, perfectly still, about her lips, sensitive and drawn, about her
eyes, dark, almost mutinous under their arched brows.  She stood,
drawing him with silence and beauty.

At last he spoke:

"I have made a foolish mistake, it seems.  I believed you were free."

Her lips just moved for the words to pass: "I thought you knew.  I
never, dreamed you would want to marry me."

It seemed to her natural that he should be thinking only of himself,
but with the subtlest defensive instinct, she put forward her own
tragedy:

"I suppose I had got too used to knowing I was dead."

"Is there no release?"

"None.  We have neither of us done wrong; besides with him, marriage
is--for ever."

"My God!"

She had broken his smile, which had been cruel without meaning to be
cruel; and with a smile of her own that was cruel too, she said:

"I didn't know that you believed in release either."

Then, as though she had stabbed herself in stabbing him, her face
quivered.

He looked at her now, conscious at last that she was suffering.  And
she felt that he was holding himself in with all his might from
taking her again into his arms.  Seeing this, the warmth crept back
to her lips, and a little light into her eyes, which she kept hidden
from him.  Though she stood so proudly still, some wistful force was
coming from her, as from a magnet, and Miltoun's hands and arms and
face twitched as though palsied.  This struggle, dumb and pitiful,
seemed never to be coming to an end in the little white room,
darkened by the thatch of the verandah, and sweet with the scent of
pinks and of a wood fire just lighted somewhere out at the back.
Then, without a word, he turned and went out.  She heard the wicket
gate swing to.  He was gone.




CHAPTER XVI

Lord Denis was fly-fishing--the weather just too bright to allow the
little trout of that shallow, never silent stream to embrace with
avidity the small enticements which he threw in their direction.
Nevertheless he continued to invite them, exploring every nook of
their watery pathway with his soft-swishing line.  In a rough suit
and battered hat adorned with those artificial and other flies, which
infest Harris tweed, he crept along among the hazel bushes and thorn-
trees, perfectly happy.  Like an old spaniel, who has once gloried in
the fetching of hares, rabbits, and all manner of fowl, and is now
glad if you will but throw a stick for him, so one, who had been a
famous fisher before the Lord, who had harried the waters of Scotland
and Norway, Florida and Iceland, now pursued trout no bigger than
sardines.  The glamour of a thousand memories hallowed the hours he
thus spent by that brown water.  He fished unhasting, religious, like
some good Catholic adding one more to the row of beads already told,
as though he would fish himself, gravely, without complaint, into the
other world.  With each fish caught he experienced a solemn
satisfaction.

Though he would have liked Barbara with him that morning, he had only
looked at her once after breakfast in such a way that she could not
see him, and with a dry smile gone off by himself.  Down by the
stream it was dappled, both cool and warm, windless; the trees met
over the river, and there were many stones, forming little basins
which held up the ripple, so that the casting of a fly required much
cunning.  This long dingle ran for miles through the foot-growth of
folding hills.  It was beloved of jays; but of human beings there
were none, except a chicken-farmer's widow, who lived in a house
thatched almost to the ground, and made her livelihood by directing
tourists, with such cunning that they soon came back to her for tea.

It was while throwing a rather longer line than usual to reach a
little dark piece of crisp water that Lord Dennis heard the swishing
and crackling of someone advancing at full speed.  He frowned
slightly, feeling for the nerves of his fishes, whom he did not wish
startled.  The invader was Miltoun, hot, pale, dishevelled, with a
queer, hunted look on his face.  He stopped on seeing his great-
uncle, and instantly assumed the mask of his smile.

Lord Dennis was not the man to see what was not intended for him, and
he merely said:

"Well, Eustace!" as he might have spoken, meeting his nephew in the
hall of one of his London Clubs.

Miltoun, no less polite, murmured:

"Hope I haven't lost you anything."

Lord Dennis shook his head, and laying his rod on the bank, said:

"Sit down and have a chat, old fellow.  You don't fish, I think?"

He had not, in the least, missed the suffering behind Miltoun's mask;
his eyes were still good, and there was a little matter of some
twenty years' suffering of his own on account of a woman--ancient
history now--which had left him quaintly sensitive, for an old man,
to signs of suffering in others.

Miltoun would not have obeyed that invitation from anyone else, but
there was something about Lord Dennis which people did not resist;
his power lay in a dry ironic suavity which could not but persuade
people that impoliteness was altogether too new and raw a thing to be
indulged in.

The two sat side by side on the roots of trees.  At first they talked
a little of birds, and then were dumb, so dumb that the invisible
creatures of the woods consulted together audibly.  Lord Dennis broke
that silence.

"This place," he said, "always reminds me of Mark Twain's writings--
can't tell why, unless it's the ever-greenness.  I like the evergreen
philosophers, Twain and Meredith.  There's no salvation except
through courage, though I never could stomach the 'strong man'--
captain of his soul, Henley and Nietzsche and that sort--goes against
the grain with me.  What do you say, Eustace?"

"They meant well," answered Miltoun, "but they protested too much."

Lord Dennis moved his head in assent.

"To be captain of your soul!" continued Miltoun in a bitter voice;
"it's a pretty phrase!"

"Pretty enough," murmured Lord Dennis.

Miltoun looked at him.

"And suitable to you," he said.

"No, my dear," Lord Dennis answered dryly, "a long way off that,
thank God!"

His eyes were fixed intently on the place where a large trout had
risen in the stillest toffee-coloured pool.  He knew that fellow, a
half-pounder at least, and his thoughts began flighting round the top
of his head, hovering over the various merits of the flies.  His
fingers itched too, but he made no movement, and the ash-tree under
which he sat let its leaves tremble, as though in sympathy.

"See that hawk?" said Miltoun.

At a height more than level with the tops of the hills a buzzard hawk
was stationary in the blue directly over them.  Inspired by curiosity
at their stillness, he was looking down to see whether they were
edible; the upcurved ends of his great wings flirted just once to
show that he was part of the living glory of the air--a symbol of
freedom to men and fishes.

Lord Dennis looked at his great-nephew.  The boy--for what else was
thirty to seventy-six?--was taking it hard, whatever it might be,
taking it very hard!  He was that sort--ran till he dropped.  The
worst kind to help--the sort that made for trouble--that let things
gnaw at them!  And there flashed before the old man's mind the image
of Prometheus devoured by the eagle.  It was his favourite tragedy,
which he still read periodically, in the Greek, helping himself now
and then out of his old lexicon to the meaning of some word which had
flown to Erebus.  Yes, Eustace was a fellow for the heights and
depths!

He said quietly:

"You don't care to talk about it, I suppose?"

Miltoun shook his head, and again there was silence.

The buzzard hawk having seen them move, quivered his wings like a
moth's, and deserted that plane of air.  A robin from the dappled
warmth of a mossy stone, was regarding them instead.  There was
another splash in the pool.

Lord Dennis said gently:

"That fellow's risen twice; I believe he'd take a 'Wistman's
treasure.'"   Extracting from his hat its latest fly, and binding it
on, he began softly to swish his line.

"I shall have him yet!" he muttered.  But Miltoun had stolen away....

The further piece of information about Mrs. Noel, already known by
Barbara, and diffused by the 'Bucklandbury News', had not become
common knowledge at the Court till after Lord Dennis had started out
to fish.  In combination with the report that Miltoun had arrived and
gone out without breakfast, it had been received with mingled
feelings.  Bertie, Harbinger, and Shropton, in a short conclave,
after agreeing that from the point of view of the election it was
perhaps better than if she had been a divorcee, were still inclined
to the belief that no time was to be lost--in doing what, however,
they were unable to determine.  Apart from the impossibility of
knowing how a fellow like Miltoun would take the matter, they were
faced with the devilish subtlety of all situations to which the
proverb 'Least said, soonest mended' applies.  They were in the
presence of that awe-inspiring thing, the power of scandal.  Simple
statements of simple facts, without moral drawn (to which no legal
exception could be taken) laid before the public as pieces of
interesting information, or at the worst exposed in perfect good
faith, lest the public should blindly elect as their representative
one whose private life might not stand the inspection of daylight--
what could be more justifiable!  And yet Miltoun's supporters knew
that this simple statement of where he spent his evenings had a
poisonous potency, through its power of stimulating that side of the
human imagination the most easily excited.  They recognized only too
well, how strong was a certain primitive desire, especially in rural
districts, by yielding to which the world was made to go, and how
remarkably hard it, was not to yield to it, and how interesting and
exciting to see or hear of others yielding to it, and how (though
here, of course, men might differ secretly) reprehensible of them to
do so!  They recognized, too well, how a certain kind of conscience
would appreciate this rumour; and how the puritans would lick their
lengthened chops.  They knew, too, how irresistible to people of any
imagination at all, was the mere combination of a member of a class,
traditionally supposed to be inclined to having what it wanted, with
a lady who lived alone!  As Harbinger said: It was really devilish
awkward!  For, to take any notice of it would be to make more people
than ever believe it true.  And yet, that it was working mischief,
they felt by the secret voice in their own souls, telling them that
they would have believed it if they had not known better.  They hung
about, waiting for Miltoun to come in.

The news was received by Lady Valleys with a sigh of intense relief,
and the remark that it was probably another lie.  When Barbara
confirmed it, she only said: "Poor Eustace!" and at once wrote off to
her husband to say that 'Anonyma' was still married, so that the
worst fortunately could not happen.

Miltoun came in to lunch, but from his face and manner nothing could
be guessed.  He was a thought more talkative than usual, and spoke of
Brabrook's speech--some of which he had heard.  He looked at Courtier
meaningly, and after lunch said to him:

"Will you come round to my den?"

In that room, the old withdrawing-room of the Elizabethan wing--where
once had been the embroideries, tapestries, and missals of beruffled
dames were now books, pamphlets, oak-panels, pipes, fencing gear, and
along one wall a collection of Red Indian weapons and ornaments
brought back by Miltoun from the United States.  High on the wall
above these reigned the bronze death-mask of a famous Apache Chief,
cast from a plaster taken of the face by a professor of Yale College,
who had declared it to be a perfect specimen of the vanishing race.
That visage, which had a certain weird resemblance to Dante's,
presided over the room with cruel, tragic stoicism.  No one could
look on it without feeling that, there, the human will had been
pushed to its farthest limits of endurance.

Seeing it for the first time, Courtier said:

"Fine thing--that!  Only wants a soul."

Miltoun nodded:

"Sit down," he said.

Courtier sat down.

There followed one of those silences in which men whose spirits,
though different, have a certain bigness in common--can say so much
to one another:

At last Miltoun spoke:

"I have been living in the clouds, it seems.  You are her oldest
friend.  The immediate question is how to make it easiest for her in
face of this miserable rumour!"

Not even Courtier himself could have put such whip-lash sting into
the word 'miserable.'

He answered:

"Oh!  take no notice of that.  Let them stew in their own juice.  She
won't care."

Miltoun listened, not moving a muscle of his face.

"Your friends here," went on Courtier with a touch of contempt, "seem
in a flutter.  Don't let them do anything, don't let them say a word.
Treat the thing as it deserves to be treated.  It'll die."

Miltoun, however, smiled.

"I'm not sure," he said, "that the consequences will be as you think,
but I shall do as you say."

"As for your candidature, any man with a spark of generosity in his
soul will rally to you because of it."

"Possibly," said Miltoun.  "It will lose me the election, for all
that."

Then, dimly conscious that their last words had revealed the
difference of their temperaments and creeds, they stared at one
another.

"No," said Courtier, "I never will believe that people can be so
mean!"

"Until they are."

"Anyway, though we get at it in different ways, we agree."

Miltoun leaned his elbow on the mantelpiece, and shading his face
with his hand, said:

"You know her story.  Is there any way out of that, for her?"

On Courtier's face was the look which so often came when he was
speaking for one of his lost causes--as if the fumes from a fire in
his heart had mounted to his head.

"Only the way," he answered calmly, "that I should take if I were
you."

"And that?"

"The law into your own hands."

Miltoun unshaded his face.  His gaze seemed to have to travel from an
immense distance before it reached Courtier.  He answered:

"Yes, I thought you would say that."




CHAPTER XVII

When everything, that night, was quiet, Barbara, her hair hanging
loose outside her dressing gown, slipped from her room into the dim
corridor.  With bare feet thrust into fur-crowned slippers which made
no noise, she stole along looking at door after door.  Through a long
Gothic window, uncurtained, the mild moonlight was coming.  She
stopped just where that moonlight fell, and tapped.  There came no
answer.  She opened the door a little way, and said:

"Are you asleep, Eusty?"

There still came no answer, and she went in.

The curtains were drawn, but a chink of moonlight peering through
fell on the bed.  This was empty.  Barbara stood uncertain,
listening.  In the heart of that darkness there seemed to be, not
sound, but, as it were, the muffled soul of sound, a sort of strange
vibration, like that of a flame noiselessly licking the air.  She put
her hand to her heart, which beat as though it would leap through the
thin silk covering.  From what corner of the room was that mute
tremor coming?  Stealing to the window, she parted the curtains, and
stared back into the shadows.  There, on the far side, lying on the
floor with his arms pressed tightly round his head and his face to
the wall, was Miltoun.  Barbara let fall the curtains, and stood
breathless, with such a queer sensation in her breast as she had
never felt; a sense of something outraged-of scarred pride.  It was
gone at once, in a rush of pity.  She stepped forward quickly in the
darkness, was visited by fear, and stopped.  He had seemed absolutely
himself all the evening.  A little more talkative, perhaps, a little
more caustic than usual.  And now to find him like this!  There was
no great share of reverence in Barbara, but what little she possessed
had always been kept for her eldest brother.  He had impressed her,
from a child, with his aloofness, and she had been proud of kissing
him because he never seemed to let anybody else do so.  Those
caresses, no doubt, had the savour of conquest; his face had been the
undiscovered land for her lips.  She loved him as one loves that
which ministers to one's pride; had for him, too, a touch of motherly
protection, as for a doll that does not get on too well with the
other dolls; and withal a little unaccustomed awe.

Dared she now plunge in on this private agony?  Could she have borne
that anyone should see herself thus prostrate?  He had not heard her,
and she tried to regain the door.  But a board creaked; she heard him
move, and flinging away her fears, said: "It's me! Babs!" and dropped
on her knees beside him.  If it had not been so pitch dark she could
never have done that.  She tried at once to take his head into her
arms, but could not see it, and succeeded indifferently.  She could
but stroke his arm continually, wondering whether he would hate her
ever afterwards, and blessing the darkness, which made it all seem as
though it were not happening, yet so much more poignant than if it
had happened.  Suddenly she felt him slip away from her, and getting
up, stole out.  After the darkness of that room, the corridor seemed
full of grey filmy light, as though dream-spiders had joined the
walls with their cobwebs, in which innumerable white moths, so tiny
that they could not be seen, were struggling.  Small eerie noises
crept about.  A sudden frightened longing for warmth, and light, and
colour came to Barbara.  She fled back to her room.  But she could
not sleep.  That terrible mute unseen vibration in the unlighted
room-like the noiseless licking of a flame at bland air; the touch of
Miltoun's hand, hot as fire against her cheek and neck; the whole
tremulous dark episode, possessed her through and through.  Thus had
the wayward force of Love chosen to manifest itself to her in all its
wistful violence.  At this fiat sight of the red flower of passion
her cheeks burned; up and down her, between the cool sheets, little
hot cruel shivers ran; she lay, wide-eyed, staring at the ceiling.
She thought, of the woman whom he so loved, and wondered if she too
were lying sleepless, flung down on a bare floor, trying to cool her
forehead and lips against a cold wall.

Not for hours did she fall asleep, and then dreamed of running
desperately through fields full of tall spiky asphodel-like flowers,
and behind her was running herself.

In the morning she dreaded to go down.  Could she meet Miltoun now
that she knew of the passion in him, and he knew that she knew it?
She had her breakfast brought upstairs.  Before she had finished
Miltoun himself came in.  He looked more than usually self-contained,
not to say ironic, and only remarked: "If you're going to ride you
might take this note for me over to old Haliday at Wippincott."  By
his coming she knew that he was saying all he ever meant to say about
that dark incident.  And sympathizing completely with a reticence
which she herself felt to be the only possible way out for both of
them, Barbara looked at him gratefully, took the note and said: "All
right!"

Then, after glancing once or twice round the room, Miltoun went away.

He left her restless, divested of the cloak 'of course,' in a strange
mood of questioning, ready as it were for the sight of the magpie
wings of Life, and to hear their quick flutterings.  Talk jarred on
her that morning, with its sameness and attachment to the facts of
the present and the future, its essential concern with the world as
it was-she avoided all companionship on her ride.  She wanted to be
told of things that were not, yet might be, to peep behind the
curtain, and see the very spirit of mortal happenings escaped from
prison.  And this was all so unusual with Barbara, whose body was too
perfect, too sanely governed by the flow of her blood not to revel in
the moment and the things thereof.  She knew it was unusual.  After
her ride she avoided lunch, and walked out into the lanes.  But about
two o'clock, feeling very hungry, she went into a farmhouse, and
asked for milk.  There, in the kitchen, like young jackdaws in a row
with their mouths a little open, were the three farm boys, seated on
a bench gripped to the alcove of the great fire-way, munching bread
and cheese.  Above their heads a gun was hung, trigger upwards, and
two hams were mellowing in the smoke.  At the feet of a black-haired
girl, who was slicing onions, lay a sheep dog of tremendous age, with
nose stretched out on paws, and in his little blue eyes a gleam of
approaching immortality.  They all stared at, Barbara.  And one of
the boys, whose face had the delightful look of him who loses all
sense of other things in what he is seeing at the moment, smiled, and
continued smiling, with sheer pleasure.  Barbara drank her milk, and
wandered out again; passing through a gate at the bottom of a steep,
rocky tor, she sat down on a sun-warmed stone.  The sunlight fell
greedily on her here, like an invisible swift hand touching her all
over, and specially caressing her throat and face.  A very gentle
wind, which dived over the tor tops into the young fern; stole down
at her, spiced with the fern sap.  All was warmth and peace, and only
the cuckoos on the far thorn trees--as though stationed by the
Wistful Master himself--were there to disturb her heart: But all the
sweetness and piping of the day did not soothe her.  In truth, she
could not have said what was the matter, except that she felt so
discontented, and as it were empty of all but a sort of aching
impatience with--what exactly she could not say.  She had that rather
dreadful feeling of something slipping by which she could not catch.
It was so new to her to feel like that--for no girl was less given to
moods and repinings.  And all the time a sort of contempt for this
soft and almost sentimental feeling made her tighten her lips and
frown.  She felt distrustful and sarcastic towards a mood so utterly
subversive of that fetich 'Hardness,' to the unconscious worship of
which she had been brought up.  To stand no sentiment or nonsense
either in herself or others was the first article of faith; not to
slop-over anywhere.  So that to feel as she did was almost horrible
to Barbara.  Yet she could not get rid of the sensation.  With sudden
recklessness she tried giving herself up to it entirely.  Undoing the
scarf at her throat, she let the air play on her bared neck, and
stretched out her arms as if to hug the wind to her; then, with a
sigh, she got up, and walked on.  And now she began thinking of
'Anonyma'; turning her position over and over.  The idea that anyone
young and beautiful should thus be clipped off in her life, roused
her impatient indignation.  Let them try it with her!  They would
soon see!  For all her cultivated 'hardness,' Barbara really hated
anything to suffer.  It seemed to her unnatural.  She never went to
that hospital where Lady Valleys had a ward, nor to their summer camp
for crippled children, nor to help in their annual concert for
sweated workers, without a feeling of such vehement pity that it was
like being seized by the throat: Once, when she had been singing to
them, the rows of wan, pinched faces below had been too much for her;
she had broken down, forgotten her words, lost memory of the tune,
and just ended her performance with a smile, worth more perhaps to
her audience than those lost verses.  She never came away from such
sights and places without a feeling of revolt amounting almost to
rage; and she only continued to go because she dimly knew that it was
expected of her not to turn her back on such things, in her section
of Society.

But it was not this feeling which made her stop before Mrs. Noel's
cottage; nor was it curiosity.  It was a quite simple desire to
squeeze her hand.

'Anonyma' seemed taking her trouble as only those women who are no
good at self-assertion can take things--doing exactly as she would
have done if nothing had happened; a little paler than usual, with
lips pressed rather tightly together.

They neither of them spoke at first, but stood looking, not at each
other's faces, but at each other's breasts.  At last Barbara stepped
forward impulsively and kissed her.

After that, like two children who kiss first, and then make
acquaintance, they stood apart, silent, faintly smiling.  It had been
given and returned in real sweetness and comradeship, that kiss, for
a sign of womanhood making face against the world; but now that it
was over, both felt a little awkward.  Would that kiss have been
given if Fate had been auspicious?  Was it not proof of misery?  So
Mrs. Noel's smile seemed saying, and Barbara's smile unwillingly
admitted.  Perceiving that if they talked it could only be about the
most ordinary things, they began speaking of music, flowers, and the
queerness of bees' legs.  But all the time, Barbara, though seemingly
unconscious, was noting with her smiling eyes, the tiny movement's,
by which one woman can tell what is passing in another.  She saw a
little quiver tighten the corner of the lips, the eyes suddenly grow
large and dark, the thin blouse desperately rise and fall.  And her
fancy, quickened by last night's memory, saw this woman giving
herself up to the memory of love in her thoughts.  At this sight she
felt a little of that impatience which the conquering feel for the
passive, and perhaps just a touch of jealousy.

Whatever Miltoun decided, that would this woman accept!  Such
resignation, while it simplified things, offended the part of Barbara
which rebelled against all inaction, all dictation, even from her
favourite brother.  She said suddenly:

"Are you going to do nothing?  Aren't you going to try and free
yourself?  If I were in your position, I would never rest till I'd
made them free me."

But Mrs. Noel did not answer; and sweeping her glance from that crown
of soft dark hair, down the soft white figure, to the very feet,
Barbara cried:

"I believe you are a fatalist."

Soon after that, not knowing what more to say, she went away.  But
walking home across the fields, where full summer was swinging on the
delicious air and there was now no bull but only red cows to crop
short the 'milk-maids' and buttercups, she suffered from this strange
revelation of the strength of softness and passivity--as though she
had seen in the white figure of 'Anonyma,' and heard in her voice
something from beyond, symbolic, inconceivable, yet real.




CHAPTER XVIII

Lord Valleys, relieved from official pressure by subsidence of the
war scare, had returned for a long week-end.  To say that he had been
intensely relieved by the news that Mrs. Noel was not free, would be
to put it mildly.  Though not old-fashioned, like his mother-in-law,
in regard to the mixing of the castes, prepared to admit that
exclusiveness was out of date, to pass over with a shrug and a laugh
those numerous alliances by which his order were renewing the sinews
of war, and indeed in his capacity of an expert, often pointing out
the dangers of too much in-breeding--yet he had a peculiar personal
feeling about his own family, and was perhaps a little extra
sensitive because of Agatha; for Shropton, though a good fellow, and
extremely wealthy, was only a third baronet, and had originally been
made of iron.  It was inadvisable to go outside the inner circle
where there was no material necessity for so doing.  He had not done
it himself.  Moreover there was a sentiment about these things!

On the morning after his arrival, visiting the kennels before
breakfast, he stood chatting with his head man, and caressing the wet
noses of his two favourite pointers,--with something of the feeling
of a boy let out of school.  Those pleasant creatures, cowering and
quivering with pride against his legs, and turning up at him their
yellow Chinese eyes, gave him that sense of warmth and comfort which
visits men in the presence of their hobbies.  With this particular
pair, inbred to the uttermost, he had successfully surmounted a great
risk.  It was now touch and go whether he dared venture on one more
cross to the original strain, in the hope of eliminating the last
clinging of liver colour.  It was a gamble--and it was just that
which rendered it so vastly interesting.

A small voice diverted his attention; he looked round and saw little
Ann.  She had been in bed when he arrived the night before, and he
was therefore the newest thing about.

She carried in her arms a guinea-pig, and began at once:

"Grandpapa, Granny wants you.  She's on the terrace; she's talking to
Mr. Courtier.  I like him--he's a kind man.  If I put my guinea-pig
down, will they bite it?  Poor darling--they shan't!  Isn't it a
darling!"

Lord Valleys, twirling his moustache, regarded the guinea-pig without
favour; he had rather a dislike for all senseless kinds of beasts.

Pressing the guinea-pig between her hands, as it might be a
concertina, little Ann jigged it gently above the pointers, who,
wrinkling horribly their long noses, gazed upwards, fascinated.

"Poor darlings, they want it--don't they?  Grandpapa"

"Yes."

"Do you think the next puppies will be spotted quite all over?"

Continuing to twirl his moustache, Lord Valleys answered:

"I think it is not improbable, Ann."

"Why do you like them spotted like that?  Oh! they're kissing Sambo--
I must go!"

Lord Valleys followed her, his eyebrows a little raised.

As he approached the terrace his wife came, towards him.  Her colour
was, deeper than usual, and she had the look, higher and more
resolute, peculiar to her when she had been opposed.  In truth she
had just been through a passage of arms with Courtier, who, as the
first revealer of Mrs. Noel's situation, had become entitled to a
certain confidence on this subject.  It had arisen from what she had
intended as a perfectly natural and not unkind remark, to the effect
that all the trouble had come from Mrs. Noel not having made her
position clear to Miltoun from the first.

He had at once grown very red.

"It's easy, Lady Valleys, for those who have never been in the
position of a lonely woman, to blame her."

Unaccustomed to be withstood, she had looked at him intently:

"I am the last person to be hard on a woman for conventional
reasons.  But I think it showed lack of character."

Courtier's reply had been almost rude.

"Plants are not equally robust, Lady Valleys.  Some, as we know, are
actually sensitive."

She had retorted with decision

"If you like to so dignify the simpler word 'weak'"

He had become very rigid at that, biting deeply into his moustache.

"What crimes are not committed under the sanctity of that creed
'survival of the fittest,' which suits the book of all you fortunate
people so well!"

Priding herself on her restraint, Lady Valleys answered:

"Ah! we must talk that out.  On the face of them your words sound a
little unphilosophic, don't they?"

He had looked straight at her with a queer, unpleasant smile; and she
had felt at once disturbed and angry.  It was all very well to pet
and even to admire these original sort of men, but there were limits.
Remembering, however, that he was her guest, she had only said:

"Perhaps after all we had better not talk it out;" and moving away,
she heard him answer: "In any case, I'm certain Audrey Noel never
wilfully kept your son in the dark; she's much too proud."

Though rude, she could not help liking the way he stuck up for this
woman; and she threw back at him the words:

"You and I, Mr. Courtier, must have a good fight some day!"

She went towards her husband conscious of the rather pleasurable
sensation which combat always roused in her.

These two were very good comrades.  Theirs had been a love match, and
making due allowance for human nature beset by opportunity, had
remained, throughout, a solid and efficient alliance.  Taking, as
they both did, such prominent parts in public and social matters, the
time they spent together was limited, but productive of mutual
benefit and reinforcement.  They had not yet had an opportunity of
discussing their son's affair; and, slipping her hand through his
arm, Lady Valleys drew him away from the house.

"I want to talk to you about Miltoun, Geoff."

"H'm!" said Lord Valleys; "yes.  The boy's looking worn.  Good thing
when this election's over."

"If he's beaten and hasn't something new and serious to concentrate
himself on, he'll fret his heart out over that woman."

Lord Valleys meditated a little before replying.

"I don't think that, Gertrude.  He's got plenty of spirit."

"Of course!  But it's a real passion.  And, you know, he's not like
most boys, who'll take what they can."

She said this rather wistfully.

"I'm sorry for the woman," mused Lord Valleys; "I really am."

"They say this rumour's done a lot of harm."

"Our influence is strong enough to survive that."

"It'll be a squeak; I wish I knew what he was going to do.  Will you
ask him?"

"You're clearly the person to speak to him," replied Lord Valleys.
"I'm no hand at that sort of thing."

But Lady Valleys, with genuine discomfort, murmured:

"My dear, I'm so nervous with Eustace.  When he puts on that smile of
his I'm done for, at once."

"This is obviously a woman's business; nobody like a mother."

"If it were only one of the others," muttered Lady Valleys: "Eustace
has that queer way of making you feel lumpy."

Lord Valleys looked at her askance.  He had that kind of critical
fastidiousness which a word will rouse into activity.  Was she lumpy?
The idea had never struck him.

"Well, I'll do it, if I must," sighed Lady Valleys.

When after breakfast she entered Miltoun's 'den,' he was buckling on
his spurs preparatory, to riding out to some of the remoter villages.
Under the mask of the Apache chief, Bertie was standing, more
inscrutable and neat than ever, in a perfectly tied cravatte,
perfectly cut riding breeches, and boots worn and polished till a
sooty glow shone through their natural russet.  Not specially
dandified in his usual dress, Bertie Caradoc would almost sooner have
died than disgrace a horse.  His eyes, the sharper because they had
only half the space of the ordinary eye to glance from, at once took
in the fact that his mother wished to be alone with 'old Miltoun,'
and he discreetly left the room.

That which disconcerted all who had dealings with Miltoun was the
discovery made soon or late, that they could not be sure how anything
would strike him.  In his mind, as in his face, there was a certain
regularity, and then--impossible to say exactly where--it would,
shoot off and twist round a corner.  This was the legacy no doubt of
the hard-bitten individuality, which had brought to the front so many
of his ancestors; for in Miltoun was the blood not only of the
Caradocs and Fitz-Harolds, but of most other prominent families in
the kingdom, all of whom, in those ages before money made the man,
must have had a forbear conspicuous by reason of qualities, not
always fine, but always poignant.

And now, though Lady Valleys had the audacity of her physique, and
was not customarily abashed, she began by speaking of politics,
hoping her son would give her an opening.  But he gave her none, and
she grew nervous.  At last, summoning all her coolness, she said:

"I'm dreadfully sorry about this affair, dear boy.  Your father told
me of your talk with him.  Try not to take it too hard."

Miltoun did not answer, and silence being that which Lady Valleys
habitually most dreaded, she took refuge in further speech, outlining
for her son the whole episode as she saw it from her point of view,
and ending with these words:

"Surely it's not worth it."

Miltoun heard her with his peculiar look, as of a man peering through
a vizor.  Then smiling, he said:

"Thank you;" and opened the door.

Lady Valleys, without quite knowing whether he intended her to do so,
indeed without quite knowing anything at the moment, passed out, and
Miltoun closed the door behind her.

Ten minutes later he and Bertie were seen riding down the drive.




CHAPTER XIX

That afternoon the wind, which had been rising steadily, brought a
flurry of clouds up from the South-West.  Formed out on the heart of
the Atlantic, they sailed forward, swift and fleecy at first, like
the skirmishing white shallops of a great fleet; then, in serried
masses, darkened the sun.  About four o'clock they broke in rain,
which the wind drove horizontally with a cold whiffling murmur.  As
youth and glamour die in a face before the cold rains of life, so
glory died on the moor.  The tors, from being uplifted wild castles,
became mere grey excrescences.  Distance failed.  The cuckoos were
silent.  There was none of the beauty that there is in death, no
tragic greatness--all was moaning and monotony.  But about seven the
sun tore its way back through the swathe, and flared out.  Like some
huge star, whose rays were stretching down to the horizon, and up to
the very top of the hill of air, it shone with an amazing murky
glamour; the clouds splintered by its shafts, and tinged saffron,
piled themselves up as if in wonder.  Under the sultry warmth of this
new great star, the heather began to steam a little, and the glitter
of its wet unopened bells was like that of innumerable tiny smoking
fires.  The two brothers were drenched as they cantered silently
home.  Good friends always, they had never much to say to one
another.  For Miltoun was conscious that he thought on a different
plane from Bertie; and Bertie grudged even to his brother any inkling
of what was passing in his spirit, just as he grudged parting with
diplomatic knowledge, or stable secrets, or indeed anything that
might leave him less in command of life.  He grudged it, because in a
private sort of way it lowered his estimation of his own stoical
self-sufficiency; it hurt something proud in the withdrawing-room of
his soul.  But though he talked little, he had the power of
contemplation--often found in men of decided character, with a
tendency to liver.  Once in Nepal, where he had gone to shoot, he had
passed a month quite happily with only a Ghoorka servant who could
speak no English.  To those who asked him if he had not been horribly
bored, he had always answered: "Not a bit; did a lot of thinking."

With Miltoun's trouble he had the professional sympathy of a brother
and the natural intolerance of a confirmed bachelor.  Women were to
him very kittle-cattle.  He distrusted from the bottom of his soul
those who had such manifest power to draw things from you.  He was
one of those men in whom some day a woman might awaken a really fine
affection; but who, until that time, would maintain the perfectly
male attitude to the entire sex, and, after it, to all the sex but
one.  Women were, like Life itself, creatures to be watched,
carefully used, and kept duly subservient.  The only allusion
therefore that he made to Miltoun's trouble was very sudden.

"Old man, I hope you're going to cut your losses."

The words were followed by undisturbed silence: But passing Mrs.
Noel's cottage Miltoun said:

"Take my horse on; I want to go in here."....

She was sitting at her piano with her hands idle, looking at a line
of music....  She had been sitting thus for many minutes, but had not
yet taken in the notes.

When Miltoun's shadow blotted the light by which she was seeing so
little, she gave a slight start, and got up.  But she neither went
towards him, nor spoke.  And he, without a word, came in and stood by
the hearth, looking down at the empty grate.  A tortoise-shell cat
which had been watching swallows, disturbed by his entrance, withdrew
from the window beneath a chair.

This silence, in which the question of their future lives was to be
decided, seemed to both interminable; yet, neither could end it.

At last, touching his sleeve, she said: "You're wet!"

Miltoun shivered at that timid sign of possession.  And they again
stood in silence broken only by the sound of the cat licking its
paws.

But her faculty for dumbness was stronger than his, and--he had to
speak first.

"Forgive me for coming; something must be settled.  This--rumour----"

"Oh!  that!" she said.  "Is there anything I can do to stop the harm
to you?"

It was the turn of Miltoun's lips to curl.  "God! no; let them talk!"

Their eyes had come together now, and, once together, seemed unable
to part.

Mrs. Noel said at last:

"Will you ever forgive me?"

"What for--it was my fault."

"No; I should have known you better."

The depth of meaning in those words--the tremendous and subtle
admission they contained of all that she had been ready to do, the
despairing knowledge in them that he was not, and never had been,
ready to 'bear it out even to the edge of doom'--made Miltoun wince
away.

"It is not from fear--believe that, anyway."

"I do."

There followed another long, long silence!  But though so close that
they were almost touching, they no longer looked at one another.
Then Miltoun said:

"There is only to say good-bye, then."

At those clear words spoken by lips which, though just smiling,
failed so utterly to hide his misery, Mrs. Noel's face became
colourless as her white gown.  But her eyes, which had grown immense,
seemed from the sheer lack of all other colour, to have drawn into
them the whole of her vitality; to be pouring forth a proud and
mournful reproach.

Shivering, and crushing himself together with his arms, Miltoun
walked towards the window.  There was not the faintest sound from
her, and he looked back.  She was following him with her eyes.  He
threw his hand up over his face, and went quickly out.  Mrs. Noel
stood for a little while where he had left her; then, sitting down
once more at the piano, began again to con over the line of music.
And the cat stole back to the window to watch the swallows.  The
sunlight was dying slowly on the top branches of the lime-tree; a,
drizzling rain began to fall.




CHAPTER XX

Claud Fresnay, Viscount Harbinger was, at the age of thirty-one,
perhaps the least encumbered peer in the United Kingdom.  Thanks to
an ancestor who had acquired land, and departed this life one hundred
and thirty years before the town of Nettlefold was built on a small
portion of it, and to a father who had died in his son's infancy,
after judiciously selling the said town, he possessed a very large
income independently of his landed interests.  Tall and well-built,
with handsome, strongly-marked features, he gave at first sight an
impression of strength--which faded somewhat when he began to talk.
It was not so much the manner of his speech--with its rapid slang,
and its way of turning everything to a jest--as the feeling it
produced, that the brain behind it took naturally the path of least
resistance.  He was in fact one of those personalities who are often
enough prominent in politics and social life, by reason of their
appearance, position, assurance, and of a certain energy, half
genuine, and half mere inherent predilection for short cuts.
Certainly he was not idle, had written a book, travelled, was a
Captain of Yeomanry, a Justice of the Peace, a good cricketer, and a
constant and glib speaker.  It would have been unfair to call his
enthusiasm for social reform spurious.  It was real enough in its
way, and did certainly testify that he was not altogether lacking
either in imagination or good-heartedness.  But it was over and
overlaid with the public-school habit--that peculiar, extraordinarily
English habit, so powerful and beguiling that it becomes a second
nature stronger than the first--of relating everything in the
Universe to the standards and prejudices of a single class.  Since
practically all his intimate associates were immersed in it, he was
naturally not in the least conscious of this habit; indeed there was
nothing he deprecated so much in politics as the narrow and
prejudiced outlook, such as he had observed in the Nonconformist, or
labour politician.  He would never have admitted for a moment that
certain doors had been banged-to at his birth, bolted when he went to
Eton, and padlocked at Cambridge.  No one would have denied that
there was much that was valuable in his standards--a high level of
honesty, candour, sportsmanship, personal cleanliness, and self-
reliance, together with a dislike of such cruelty as had been
officially (so to speak) recognized as cruelty, and a sense of public
service to a State run by and for the public schools; but it would
have required far more originality than he possessed ever to look at
Life from any other point of view than that from which he had been
born and bred to watch Her.  To fully understand harbinger, one must,
and with unprejudiced eyes and brain, have attended one of those
great cricket matches in which he had figured conspicuously as a boy,
and looking down from some high impartial spot have watched the
ground at lunch time covered from rope to rope and stand to stand
with a marvellous swarm, all walking in precisely the same manner,
with precisely the same expression on their faces, under precisely
the same hats--a swarm enshrining the greatest identity of, creed and
habit ever known since the world began.  No, his environment had not
been favourable to originality.  Moreover he was naturally rapid
rather than deep, and life hardly ever left him alone or left him
silent.  Brought into contact day and night with people to whom
politics were more or less a game; run after everywhere; subjected to
no form of discipline--it was a wonder that he was as serious as he
was.  Nor had he ever been in love, until, last year, during her
first season, Barbara had, as he might have expressed it--in the case
of another 'bowled him middle stump.  Though so deeply smitten, he.
had not yet asked her to marry him--had not, as it were, had time,
nor perhaps quite the courage, or conviction.  When he was near her,
it seemed impossible that he could go on longer without knowing his
fate; when he was away from her it was almost a relief, because there
were so many things to be done and said, and so little time to do or
say them in.  But now, during this fortnight, which, for her sake, he
had devoted to Miltoun's cause, his feeling had advanced beyond the
point of comfort.

He did not admit that the reason of this uneasiness was Courtier,
for, after all, Courtier was, in a sense, nobody, and 'an extremist'
into the bargain, and an extremist always affected the centre of
Harbinger's anatomy, causing it to give off a peculiar smile and tone
of voice.  Nevertheless, his eyes, whenever they fell on that
sanguine, steady, ironic face, shone with a sort of cold inquiry, or
were even darkened by the shade of fear.  They met seldom, it is
true, for most of his day was spent in motoring and speaking, and
most of Courtier's in writing and riding, his leg being still too
weak for walking.  But once or twice in the smoking room late at
night, he had embarked on some bantering discussion with the champion
of lost causes; and very soon an ill-concealed impatience had crept
into his voice.  Why a man should waste his time, flogging dead.
horses on a journey to the moon, was incomprehensible!  Facts were
facts, human nature would never be anything but human nature!  And it
was peculiarly galling to see in Courtier's eye a gleam, to catch in
his voice a tone, as if he were thinking: "My young friend, your soup
is cold!"

On a morning after one of these encounters, seeing Barbara sally
forth in riding clothes, he asked if he too might go round the
stables, and started forth beside her, unwontedly silent, with an odd
feeling about his heart, and his throat unaccountably dry.

The stables at Monkland Court were as large as many country houses.
Accommodating thirty horses, they were at present occupied by twenty-
one, including the pony of little Ann.  For height, perfection of
lighting, gloss, shine, and purity of atmosphere they were unequalled
in the county.  It seemed indeed impossible that any horse could ever
so far forget himself in such a place as to remember that he was a
horse.  Every morning a little bin of carrots, apples, and lumps of
sugar, was set close to the main entrance, ready for those who might
desire to feed the dear inhabitants.

Reined up to a brass ring on either side of their stalls with their
noses towards the doors, they were always on view from nine to ten,
and would stand with their necks arched, ears pricked, and coats
gleaming, wondering about things, soothed by the faint hissing of the
still busy grooms, and ready to move their noses up and down the
moment they saw someone enter.

In a large loose-box at the end of the north wing Barbara's favourite
chestnut hunter, all but one saving sixteenth of whom had been
entered in the stud book, having heard her footstep, was standing
quite still with his neck turned.  He had been crumping up an apple
placed amongst his feed, and his senses struggled between the
lingering flavour of that delicacy,--and the perception of a sound
with which he connected carrots.  When she unlatched his door, and
said "Hal," he at once went towards his manger, to show his
independence, but when she said: "Oh! very well!" he turned round and
came towards her.  His eyes, which were full and of a soft
brilliance, under thick chestnut lashes, explored her all over.
Perceiving that her carrots were not in front, he elongated his neck,
let his nose stray round her waist, and gave her gauntletted hand a
nip with his lips.  Not tasting carrot, he withdrew his nose, and
snuffled.  Then stepping carefully so as not to tread on her foot, he
bunted her gently with his shoulder, till with a quick manoeuvre he
got behind her and breathed low and long on her neck.  Even this did
not smell of carrots, and putting his muzzle over her shoulder
against her cheek, he slobbered a very little.  A carrot appeared
about the level of her waist, and hanging his head over, he tried to
reach it.  Feeling it all firm and soft under his chin, he snuffled
again, and gave her a  gentle dig with his knee.  But still unable to
reach the carrot, he threw his head up, withdrew, and pretended not
to see her.  And suddenly he felt two long substances round his neck,
and something soft against his nose.  He suffered this in silence,
laying his ears back.  The softness began puffing on his muzzle.
Pricking his ears again, he puffed back a little harder, with more
curiosity, and the softness was withdrawn.  He perceived suddenly
that he had a carrot in his mouth.

Harbinger had witnessed this episode, oddly pale, leaning against the
loose-box wall.  He spoke, as it came to an end:

"Lady Babs!"

The tone of his voice must have been as strange as it sounded to
himself, for Barbara spun round.

"Yes?"

"How long am I going on like this?"

Neither changing colour nor dropping her eyes, she regarded him with
a faintly inquisitive interest.  It was not a cruel look, had not a
trace of mischief, or sex malice, and yet it frightened him by its
serene inscrutability.  Impossible to tell what was going on behind
it.  He took her hand, bent over it, and said in a low voice:

"You know what I feel; don't be cruel to me!"

She did not pull away her hand; it was as if she had not thought of
it.

"I am not a bit cruel."

Looking up, he saw her smiling.

"Then--Babs!"

His face was close to hers, but Barbara did not shrink back.  She
just shook her head; and Harbinger flushed up.

"Why?" he asked; and as though the enormous injustice of that
rejecting gesture had suddenly struck him, he dropped her hand.

"Why?" he said again, sharply.

But the silence was only broken by the cheeping of sparrows outside
the round window, and the sound of the horse, Hal, munching the last
morsel of his carrot.  Harbinger was aware in his every nerve of the
sweetish, slightly acrid, husky odour of the loosebox, mingling with
the scent of Barbara's hair and clothes.  And rather miserably, he
said for the third time:

"Why?"

But folding her hands away behind her back.  she answered gently:

"My dear, how should I know why?"

She was calmly exposed to his embrace if he had only dared; but he
did not dare, and went back to the loose-box wall.  Biting his
finger, he stared at her gloomily.  She was stroking the muzzle of
her horse; and a sort of dry rage began whisking and rustling in his
heart.  She had refused him--Harbinger!  He had not known, had not
suspected how much he wanted her.  How could there be anybody else
for him, while that young, calm, sweet-scented, smiling thing lived,
to make his head go round, his senses ache, and to fill his heart
with longing!  He seemed to himself at that moment the most unhappy
of all men.

"I shall not give you up," he muttered.

Barbara's answer was a smile, faintly curious, compassionate, yet
almost grateful, as if she had said:

"Thank you--who knows?"

And rather quickly, a yard or so apart, and talking of horses, they
returned to the house.

It was about noon, when, accompanied by Courtier, she rode forth.

The Sou-Westerly spell--a matter of three days--had given way before
radiant stillness; and merely to be alive was to feel emotion.  At a
little stream running beside the moor under the wild stone man, the
riders stopped their horses, just to listen, and, inhale the day.
The far sweet chorus of life was tuned to a most delicate rhythm; not
one of those small mingled pipings of streams and the lazy air, of
beasts, men; birds, and bees, jarred out too harshly through the
garment of sound enwrapping the earth.  It was noon--the still
moment--but this hymn to the sun, after his too long absence, never
for a moment ceased to be murmured.  And the earth wore an under-robe
of scent, delicious, very finely woven of the young fern sap, heather
buds; larch-trees not yet odourless, gorse just going brown, drifted
woodsmoke, and the breath of hawthorn.  Above Earth's twin vestments
of sound and scent, the blue enwrapping scarf of air, that wistful
wide champaign, was spanned only by the wings of Freedom.

After that long drink of the day, the riders mounted almost in
silence to the very top of the moor.  There again they sat quite
still on their horses, examining the prospect.  Far away to South and
East lay the sea, plainly visible.  Two small groups of wild ponies
were slowly grazing towards each other on the hillside below.

Courtier said.  in a low voice:

"'Thus will I sit and sing, with love in my arms; watching our two
herds mingle together, and below us the far, divine, cerulean sea.'"

And, after another silence, looking steadily in Barbara's face, he
added:

"Lady Barbara, I am afraid this is the last time we shall be alone
together.  While I have the chance, therefore, I must do homage....
You will always be the fixed star for my worship.  But your rays are
too bright; I shall worship from afar.  From your seventh Heaven,
therefore, look down on me with kindly eyes, and do not quite forget
me:"

Under that speech, so strangely compounded of irony and fervour,
Barbara sat very still, with glowing cheeks.

"Yes," said Courtier, "only an immortal must embrace a goddess.
Outside the purlieus of Authority I shall sit cross-legged, and
prostrate myself three times a day."

But Barbara answered nothing.

"In the early morning," went on Courtier, "leaving the dark and
dismal homes of Freedom I shall look towards the Temples of the
Great; there with the eye of faith I shall see you."

He stopped, for Barbara's lips were moving.

"Don't hurt me, please."

Courtier leaned over, took her hand, and put it to his lips.  "We
will now ride on...."

That night at dinner Lord Dennis, seated opposite his great-niece,
was struck by her appearance.

"A very beautiful child," he thought, "a most lovely young creature!"

She was placed between Courtier and Harbinger.  And the old man's
still keen eyes carefully watched those two.  Though attentive to
their neighbours on the other side, they were both of them keeping
the corner of an eye on Barbara and on each other.  The thing was
transparent to Lord Dennis, and a smile settled in that nest of
gravity between his white peaked beard and moustaches.  But he
waited, the instinct of a fisherman bidding him to neglect no piece
of water, till he saw the child silent and in repose, and watched
carefully to see what would rise.  Although she was so calmly, so
healthily eating, her eyes stole round at Courtier.  This quick look
seemed to Lord Dennis perturbed, as if something were exciting her.
Then Harbinger spoke, and she turned to answer him.  Her face was
calm now, faintly smiling, a little eager, provocative in its joy of
life.  It made Lord Dennis think of his own youth.  What a splendid
couple!  If Babs married young Harbinger there would not be a finer
pair in all England.  His eyes travelled back to Courtier.  Manly
enough!  They called him dangerous!  There was a look of
effervescence, carefully corked down--might perhaps be attractive to
a girl!  To his essentially practical and sober mind, a type like
Courtier was puzzling.  He liked the look of him, but distrusted his
ironic expression, and that appearance of blood to the head.  Fellow
--no doubt--that would ride off on his ideas, humanitarian!  To Lord
Dennis there was something queer about humanitarians.  They offended
perhaps his dry and precise sense of form.  They were always looking
out for cruelty or injustice; seemed delighted when they found it--
swelled up, as it were, when they scented it, and as there was a good
deal about, were never quite of normal size.  Men who lived for ideas
were, in fact, to one for whom facts sufficed always a little
worrying!  A movement from Barbara brought him back to actuality.
Was the possessor of that crown of hair and those divine young
shoulders the little Babs who had ridden with him in the Row?  Time
was certainly the Devil!  Her eyes were searching for something; and
following the direction of that glance, Lord Dennis found himself
observing Miltoun.  What a difference between those two!  Both no
doubt in the great trouble of youth; which sometimes, as he knew too
well, lasted on almost to old age.  It was a curious look the child
was giving her brother, as if asking him to help her.  Lord Dennis
had seen in his day many young creatures leave the shelter of their
freedom and enter the house of the great lottery; many, who had drawn
a prize and thereat lost forever the coldness of life; many too, the
light of whose eyes had faded behind the shutters of that house,
having drawn a blank.  The thought of 'little' Babs on the threshold
of that inexorable saloon, filled him with an eager sadness; and the
sight of the two men watching for her, waiting for her, like hunters,
was to him distasteful.  In any case, let her not, for Heaven's sake,
go ranging as far as that red fellow of middle age, who might have
ideas, but had no pedigree; let her stick to youth and her own order,
and marry the--young man, confound him, who looked like a Greek god,
of the wrong period, having grown a moustache.  He remembered her
words the other evening about these two and the different lives they
lived.  Some romantic notion or other was working in her!  And again
he looked at Courtier.  A Quixotic type--the sort that rode slap-bang
at everything!  All very well--but not for Babs!  She was not like
the glorious Garibaldi's glorious Anita!  It was truly characteristic
of Lord Dennis--and indeed of other people--that to him champions of
Liberty when dead were far dearer than champions of Liberty when
living.  Yes, Babs would want more, or was it less, than just a life
of sleeping under the stars for the man she loved, and the cause he
fought for.  She would want pleasure, and, not too much effort, and
presently a little power; not the uncomfortable after-fame of a woman
who went through fire, but the fame and power of beauty, and Society
prestige.  This, fancy of hers, if it were a fancy, could be nothing
but the romanticism of a young girl.  For the sake of a passing
shadow, to give up substance?  It wouldn't do!  And again Lord
Dennis fixed his shrewd glance on his great-niece.  Those eyes, that
smile!  Yes!  She would grow out of this.  And take the Greek god,
the dying Gaul--whichever that young man was!




CHAPTER XXI

It was not till the morning of polling day itself that Courtier left
Monkland Court.  He had already suffered for some time from bad
conscience.  For his knee was practically cured, and he knew well
that it was Barbara, and Barbara alone, who kept him staying there.
The atmosphere of that big house with its army of servants, the
impossibility of doing anything for himself, and the feeling of
hopeless insulation from the vivid and necessitous sides of life,
galled him greatly.  He felt a very genuine pity for these people who
seemed to lead an existence as it were smothered under their own
social importance.  It was not their fault.  He recognized that they
did their best.  They were good specimens of their kind; neither soft
nor luxurious, as things went in a degenerate and extravagant age;
they evidently tried to be simple--and this seemed to him to heighten
the pathos of their situation.  Fate had been too much for them.
What human spirit could emerge untrammelled and unshrunken from that
great encompassing host of material advantage?  To a Bedouin like
Courtier, it was as though a subtle, but very terrible tragedy was
all the time being played before his eyes; and in, the very centre of
this tragedy was the girl who so greatly attracted him.  Every night
when he retired to that lofty room, which smelt so good, and where,
without ostentation, everything was so perfectly ordered for his
comfort, he thought:

"My God, to-morrow I'll be off!"

But every morning when he met her at breakfast his thought was
precisely the same, and there were moments when he caught himself
wondering: "Am I falling under the spell of this existence--am I
getting soft?"  He recognized as never before that the peculiar
artificial 'hardness' of the patrician was a brine or pickle, in
which, with the instinct of self-preservation they deliberately
soaked themselves, to prevent the decay of their overprotected fibre.
He perceived it even in Barbara--a sort of sentiment-proof overall, a
species of mistrust of the emotional or lyrical, a kind of contempt
of sympathy and feeling.  And every day he was more and more tempted
to lay rude hands on this garment; to see whether he could not make
her catch fire, and flare up with some emotion or idea.  In spite of
her tantalizing, youthful self-possession, he saw that she felt this
longing in him, and now and then he caught a glimpse of a streak of
recklessness in her which lured him on:

And yet, when at last he was saying good-bye on the night before
polling day, he could not flatter himself that he had really struck
any spark from her.  Certainly she gave him no chance, at that final
interview, but stood amongst the other women, calm and smiling, as if
determined that he should not again mock her with his ironical
devotion.

He got up very early the next morning, intending to pass away unseen.
In the car put at his disposal; he found a small figure in a holland-
frock, leaning back against the cushions so that some sandalled toes
pointed up at the chauffeur's back.  They belonged to little Ann, who
in the course of business had discovered the vehicle before the door.
Her sudden little voice under her sudden little nose, friendly but
not too friendly, was comforting to Courtier.

"Are you going?  I can come as, far as the gate."  "That is lucky."

"Yes.  Is that all your luggage?"

"I'm afraid it is."

"Oh!  It's quite a lot, really, isn't it?"

"As much as I deserve."

"Of course you don't have to take guinea-pigs about with you?"

"Not as a rule."

"I always do.  There's great-Granny!"

There certainly was Lady Casterley, standing a little back from the
drive, and directing a tall gardener how to deal with an old oak-
tree.  Courtier alighted, and went towards her to say good-bye.  She
greeted him with a certain grim cordiality.

"So you are going!  I am glad of that, though you quite understand
that I like you personally."

"Quite!"

Her eyes gleamed maliciously.

"Men who laugh like you are dangerous, as I've told you before!"

Then, with great gravity; she added

"My granddaughter will marry Lord Harbinger.  I mention that, Mr.
Courtier, for your peace of mind.  You are a man of honour; it will
go no further."

Courtier, bowing over her hand, answered:

"He will be lucky."

The little old lady regarded him unflinchingly.

"He will, sir.  Good-bye!"

Courtier smilingly raised his hat.  His cheeks were burning.
Regaining the car, he looked round.  Lady Casterley was busy once
more exhorting the tall gardener.  The voice of little Ann broke in
on his thoughts:

"I hope you'll come again.  Because I expect I shall be here at
Christmas; and my brothers will be here then, that is, Jock and
Tiddy, not Christopher because he's young.  I must go now.  Good-bye!
Hallo, Susie!"

Courtier saw her slide away, and join the little pale adoring figure
of the lodge-keeper's daughter.

The car passed out into the lane.

If Lady Casterley had planned this disclosure, which indeed she had
not, for the impulse had only come over her at the sound of
Courtier's laugh, she could not have, devised one more effectual, for
there was deep down in him all a wanderer's very real distrust,
amounting almost to contempt, of people so settled and done for; as
aristocrats or bourgeois, and all a man of action's horror of what he
called puking and muling.  The pursuit of Barbara with any other
object but that of marriage had naturally not occurred to one who had
little sense of conventional morality, but much self-respect; and a
secret endeavour to cut out Harbinger, ending in a marriage whereat
he would figure as a sort of pirate, was quite as little to the taste
of a man not unaccustomed to think himself as good as other people.

He caused the car to deviate up the lane that led to Audrey Noel's,
hating to go away without a hail of cheer to that ship in distress.

She came out to him on the verandah.  From the clasp of her hand,
thin and faintly browned--the hand of a woman never quite idle--he
felt that she relied on him to understand and sympathize; and nothing
so awakened the best in Courtier as such mute appeals to his
protection.  He said gently:

"Don't let them think you're down;" and, squeezing her hand hard:
"Why should you be wasted like this?  It's a sin and shame!"

But he stopped in what he felt to be an unlucky speech at sight of
her face, which without movement expressed so much more than his
words.  He was protesting as a civilized man; her face was the
protest of Nature, the soundless declaration of beauty wasted against
its will, beauty that was life's invitation to the embrace which gave
life birth.

"I'm clearing out, myself," he said: "You and I, you know, are not
good for these people.  No birds of freedom allowed!"

Pressing his hand, she turned away into the house, leaving Courtier
gazing at the patch of air where her white figure had stood.  He had
always had a special protective feeling for Audrey Noel, a feeling
which with but little encouragement might have become something
warmer.  But since she had been placed in her anomalous position, he
would not for the world have brushed the dew off her belief that she
could trust him.  And, now that he had fixed his own gaze  elsewhere,
and she was in this bitter trouble, he felt on her account the
rancour that a brother feels when Justice and Pity have conspired to
flout his sister.  The voice of Frith the chauffeur roused him from
gloomy reverie.

"Lady Barbara, sir!"

Following the man's eyes, Courtier saw against the sky-line on the
for above Ashman's Folly, an equestrian statue.  He stopped the car
at once, and got out.

He reached her at the ruin, screened from the road, by that divine
chance which attends on men who take care that it shall.  He could
not tell whether she knew of his approach, and he would have given
all he had, which was not much, to have seen through the stiff grey
of her coat, and the soft cream of her body, into that mysterious
cave, her heart.  To have been for a moment, like Ashman, done for
good and all with material things, and living the white life where
are no barriers between man and woman.  The smile on her lips so
baffled him, puffed there by her spirit, as a first flower is puffed
through the sur face of earth to mock at the spring winds.  How tell
what it signified!  Yet he rather prided himself on his knowledge of
women, of whom he had seen something.  But all he found to say was:

"I'm glad of this chance."

Then suddenly looking up, he found her strangely pale and quivering.

"I shall see you in London!" she said; and, touching her horse with
her whip, without looking back, she rode away over the hill.

Courtier returned to the moor road, and getting into the car,
muttered:

"Faster, please, Frith!"....




CHAPTER XXII

Polling was already in brisk progress when Courtier arrived in
Bucklandbury; and partly from a not unnatural interest in the result,
partly from a half-unconscious clinging to the chance of catching
another glimpse of Barbara, he took his bag to the hotel, determined
to stay for the announcement of the poll.  Strolling out into the
High Street he began observing the humours of the day.  The bloom of
political belief had long been brushed off the wings of one who had
so flown the world's winds.  He had seen too much of more vivid
colours to be capable now of venerating greatly the dull and dubious
tints of blue and yellow.  They left him feeling extremely
philosophic.  Yet it was impossible to get away from them, for the
very world that day seemed blue and yellow, nor did the third colour
of red adopted by both sides afford any clear assurance that either
could see virtue in the other; rather, it seemed to symbolize the
desire of each to have his enemy's blood.  But Courtier soon observed
by the looks cast at his own detached, and perhaps sarcastic, face,
that even more hateful to either side than its antagonist, was the
philosophic eye.  Unanimous was the longing to heave half a brick at
it whenever it showed itself.  With its d---d impartiality, its habit
of looking through the integument of things to see if there might be
anything inside, he felt that they regarded it as the real adversary-
-the eternal foe to all the little fat 'facts,' who, dressed up in
blue and yellow, were swaggering and staggering, calling each other
names, wiping each other's eyes, blooding each other's noses.  To
these little solemn delicious creatures, all front and no behind, the
philosophic eye, with its habit of looking round the corner, was
clearly detestable.  The very yellow and very blue bodies of these
roistering small warriors with their hands on their tin swords and
their lips on their tin trumpets, started up in every window and on
every wall confronting each citizen in turn, persuading him that they
and they alone were taking him to Westminster.  Nor had they
apparently for the most part much trouble with electors, who, finding
uncertainty distasteful, passionately desired to be assured that the
country could at once be saved by little yellow facts or little blue
facts, as the case might be; who had, no doubt, a dozen other good
reasons for being on the one side or the other; as, for instance,
that their father had been so before them; that their bread was
buttered yellow or buttered blue; that they had been on the other
side last time; that they had thought it over and made up their
minds; that they had innocent blue or naive yellow beer within; that
his lordship was the man; or that the words proper to their mouths
were 'Chilcox for Bucklandbury'; and, above all, the one really
creditable reason, that, so far as they could tell with the best of
their intellect and feelings, the truth at the moment was either blue
or yellow.

The narrow high street was thronged with voters.  Tall policemen
stationed there had nothing to do.  The certainty of all, that they
were going to win, seemed to keep everyone in good humour.  There was
as yet no need to break anyone's head, for though the sharpest
lookout was kept for any signs of the philosophic eye, it was only to
be found--outside Courtier--in the perambulators of babies, in one
old man who rode a bicycle waveringly along the street and stopped to
ask a policeman what was the matter in the town, and in two rather
green-faced fellows who trundled barrows full of favours both blue
and yellow.

But though Courtier eyed the 'facts' with such suspicion, the
keenness of everyone about the business struck him as really
splendid.  They went at it with a will.  Having looked forward to it
for months, they were going to look back on it for months.  It was
evidently a religious ceremony, summing up most high feelings; and
this seemed to one who was himself a man of action, natural, perhaps
pathetic, but certainly no matter for scorn.

It was already late in the afternoon when there came debouching into
the high street a long string of sandwichmen, each bearing before and
behind him a poster containing these words beautifully situated in
large dark blue letters against a pale blue ground:

                    "NEW COMPLICATIONS.
                      DANGER NOT PAST.
          VOTE FOR MILTOUN AND THE GOVERNMENT,
                    AND SAVE THE EMPIRE."

Courtier stopped to look at them with peculiar indignation.  Not only
did this poster tramp in again on his cherished convictions about
Peace, but he saw in it something more than met the unphilosophic
eye.  It symbolized for him all that was catch-penny in the national
life-an epitaph on the grave of generosity, unutterably sad.  Yet
from a Party point of view what could be more justifiable?  Was it
not desperately important that every blue nerve should be strained
that day to turn yellow nerves, if not blue, at all events green,
before night fell?  Was it not perfectly true that the Empire could
only be saved by voting blue?  Could they help a blue paper printing
the words, 'New complications,' which he had read that morning?  No
more than the yellows could help a yellow journal printing the words
'Lord Miltoun's Evening Adventure.'  Their only business was to win,
ever fighting fair.  The yellows had not fought fair, they never did,
and one of their most unfair tactics was the way they had of always
accusing the blues of unfair fighting, an accusation truly ludicrous!
As for truth!  That which helped the world to be blue, was obviously
true; that which didn't, as obviously not.  There was no middle
policy!  The man who saw things neither was a softy, and no proper
citizen.  And as for giving the yellows credit for sincerity--the
yellows never gave them credit!  But though Courtier knew all that,
this poster seemed to him particularly damnable, and he could not for
the life of him resist striking one of the sandwich-boards with his
cane.  The resounding thwack startled a butcher's pony standing by
the pavement.  It reared, and bolted forward, with Courtier, who had
naturally seized the rein, hanging on.  A dog dashed past.  Courtier
tripped and fell.  The pony, passing over, struck him on the head
with a hoof.  For a moment he lost consciousness; then coming to
himself, refused assistance, and went to his hotel.  He felt very
giddy, and, after bandaging a nasty cut, lay down on his bed.

Miltoun, returning from that necessary exhibition of himself, the
crowning fact, at every polling centre, found time to go and see him.

"That last poster of yours!" Courtier began, at once.

"I'm having it withdrawn."

"It's done the trick--congratulations--you'll get in!"

"I knew nothing of it."

"My dear fellow, I didn't suppose you did."

"When there is a desert, Courtier, between a man and the sacred city,
he doesn't renounce his journey because he has to wash in dirty water
on the way: The mob--how I loathe it!"

There was such pent-up fury in those words as to astonish even one
whose life had been passed in conflict with majorities.

"I hate its mean stupidities, I hate the sound of its voice, and the
look on its face--it's so ugly, it's so little.  Courtier, I suffer
purgatory from the thought that I shall scrape in by the votes of the
mob.  There is sin in using this creature and I am expiating it."

To this strange outburst, Courtier at first made no reply.

"You've been working too hard," he said at last, "you're off your
balance.  After all, the mob's made up of men like you and me."

"No, Courtier, the mob is not made up of men like you and me.  If it
were it would not be the mob."

"It looks," Courtier answered gravely, "as if you had no business in
this galley.  I've always steered clear of it myself."

"You follow your feelings.  I have not that happiness."

So saying, Miltoun turned to the door.

Courtier's voice pursued him earnestly.

"Drop your politics--if you feel like this about them; don't waste
your life following whatever it is you follow; don't waste hers!"

But Miltoun did not answer.

It was a wondrous still night, when, a few minutes before twelve,
with his forehead bandaged under his hat, the champion of lost causes
left the hotel and made his way towards the Grammar School for the
declaration of the poll.  A sound as of some monster breathing guided
him, till, from a steep empty street he came in sight of a surging
crowd, spread over the town square, like a dark carpet patterned by
splashes of lamplight.  High up above that crowd, on the little
peaked tower of the Grammar School, a brightly lighted clock face
presided; and over the passionate hopes in those thousands of hearts
knit together by suspense the sky had lifted; and showed no cloud
between them and the purple fields of air.  To Courtier descending
towards the square, the swaying white faces, turned all one way,
seemed like the heads of giant wild flowers in a dark field, shivered
by wind.  The night had charmed away the blue and yellow facts, and
breathed down into that throng the spirit of emotion.  And he
realized all at once the beauty and meaning of this scene--expression
of the quivering forces, whose perpetual flux, controlled by the
Spirit of Balance, was the soul of the world.  Thousands of hearts
with the thought of self lost in one over-mastering excitement!

An old man with a long grey beard, standing close to his elbow,
murmured:

"'Tis anxious work--I wouldn't ha' missed this for anything in the
world."

"Fine, eh?" answered Courtier.

"Aye," said the old man, "'tis fine.  I've not seen the like o' this
since the great year--forty-eight.  There they are--the aristocrats!"

Following the direction of that skinny hand Courtier saw on a balcony
Lord and Lady Valleys, side by side, looking steadily down at the
crowd.  There too, leaning against a window and talking to someone
behind, was Barbara.  The old man went on muttering, and Courtier
could see that his eyes had grown very bright, his whole face
transfigured by intense hostility; he felt drawn to this old
creature, thus moved to the very soul.  Then he saw Barbara looking
down at him, with her hand raised to her temple to show that she saw
his bandaged head.  He had the presence of mind not to lift his hat.

The old man spoke again.

"You wouldn't remember forty-eight, I suppose.  There was a feeling
in the people then--we would ha' died for things in those days.  I'm
eighty-four," and he held his shaking hand up to his breast, "but the
spirit's alive here yet!  God send the Radical gets in!"  There was
wafted from him a scent as of potatoes.

Far behind, at the very edge of the vast dark throng, some voices
began singing: "Way down upon the Swanee ribber."  The tune floated
forth, ceased, spurted up once more, and died.

Then, in the very centre of the square a stentorian baritone roared
forth: "Should auld acquaintance be forgot!"

The song swelled, till every kind of voice, from treble to the old
Chartist's quavering bass, was chanting it; here and there the crowd
heaved with the movement of linked arms.  Courtier found the soft
fingers of a young woman in his right hand, the old Chartist's dry
trembling paw in his left.  He himself sang loudly.  The grave and
fearful music sprang straight up into they air, rolled out right and
left, and was lost among the hills.  But it had no sooner died away
than the same huge baritone yelled "God save our gracious King!"  The
stature of the crowd seemed at once to leap up two feet, and from
under that platform of raised hats rose a stupendous shouting.

"This," thought Courtier, "is religion!"

They were singing even on the balconies; by the lamplight he could
see Lord Valleys mouth not opened quite enough, as though his voice
were just a little ashamed of coming out, and Barbara with her head
flung back against the pillar, pouring out her heart.  No mouth in
all the crowd was silent.  It was as though the soul of the English
people were escaping from its dungeon of reserve, on the pinions of
that chant.

But suddenly, like a shot bird closing wings, the song fell silent
and dived headlong back to earth.  Out from under the clock-face had
moved a thin dark figure.  More figures came behind.  Courtier could
see Miltoun.  A voice far away cried: "Up; Chilcox!"  A huge:
"Husill" followed; then such a silence, that the sound of an engine
shunting a mile away could be heard plainly.

The dark figure moved forward, and a tiny square of paper gleamed out
white against the black of his frock-coat.

"Ladies and gentlemen.  Result of the Poll:

"Miltoun Four thousand eight hundred and ninety-eight.  Chilcox Four
thousand eight hundred and two."

The silence seemed to fall to earth, and break into a thousand
pieces.  Through the pandemonium of cheers and groaning, Courtier
with all his strength forced himself towards the balcony.  He could
see Lord Valleys leaning forward with a broad smile; Lady Valleys
passing her hand across her eyes; Barbara with her hand in
Harbinger's, looking straight into his face.  He stopped.  The old
Chartist was still beside him, tears rolling down his cheeks into his
beard.

Courtier saw Miltoun come forward, and stand, unsmiling, deathly
pale.






PART II


CHAPTER I

At three o'clock in the afternoon of the nineteenth of July little
Ann Shropton commenced the ascent of the main staircase of Valleys
House, London.  She climbed slowly, in the very middle, an extremely
small white figure on those wide and shining stairs, counting them
aloud.  Their number was never alike two days running, which made
them attractive to one for whom novelty was the salt of life.

Coming to that spot where they branched, she paused to consider which
of the two flights she had used last, and unable to remember, sat
down.  She was the bearer of a message.  It had been new when she
started, but was already comparatively old, and likely to become
older, in view of a design now conceived by her of travelling the
whole length of the picture gallery.  And while she sat maturing this
plan, sunlight flooding through a large window drove a white
refulgence down into the heart of the wide polished space of wood and
marble, whence she had come.  The nature of little Ann habitually
rejected fairies and all fantastic things, finding them quite too
much in the air, and devoid of sufficient reality and 'go'; and this
refulgence, almost unearthly in its travelling glory, passed over her
small head and played strangely with the pillars in the hall, without
exciting in her any fancies or any sentiment.  The intention of
discovering what was at the end of the picture gallery absorbed the
whole of her essentially practical and active mind.  Deciding on the
left-hand flight of stairs, she entered that immensely long, narrow,
and--with blinds drawn--rather dark saloon.  She walked carefully,
because the floor was very slippery here, and with a kind of
seriousness due partly to the darkness and partly to the pictures.
They were indeed, in this light, rather formidable, those old
Caradocs black, armoured creatures, some of them, who seemed to eye
with a sort of burning, grim, defensive greed the small white figure
of their descendant passing along between them.  But little Ann, who
knew they were only pictures, maintained her course steadily, and
every now and then, as she passed one who seemed to her rather uglier
than the others, wrinkled her sudden little nose.  At the end, as she
had thought; appeared a door.  She opened it, and passed on to a
landing.  There was a stone staircase in the corner, and there were
two doors.  It would be nice to go up the staircase, but it would
also be nice to open the doors.  Going towards the first door, with a
little thrill, she turned the handle.  It was one of those rooms,
necessary in houses, for which she had no great liking; and closing
this door rather loudly she opened the other one, finding herself in
a chamber not resembling the rooms downstairs, which were all high
and nicely gilded, but more like where she had lessons, low, and
filled with books and leather chairs.  From the end of the room which
she could not see, she heard a sound as of someone kissing something,
and instinct had almost made her turn to go away when the word:
"Hallo!" suddenly opened her lips.  And almost directly she saw that
Granny and Grandpapa were standing by the fireplace.  Not knowing
quite whether they were glad to see her, she went forward and began
at once:

"Is this where you sit, Grandpapa?"

"It is."

"It's nice, isn't it, Granny?  Where does the stone staircase go to?"

"To the roof of the tower, Ann."

"Oh!  I have to give a message, so I must go now."

"Sorry to lose you."

"Yes; good-bye!"

Hearing the door shut behind her, Lord and Lady Valleys looked at
each other with a dubious smile.

The little interview which she had interrupted, had arisen in this
way.

Accustomed to retire to this quiet and homely room, which was not his
official study where he was always liable to the attacks of
secretaries, Lord Valleys had come up here after lunch to smoke and
chew the cud of a worry.

The matter was one in connection with his Pendridny estate, in
Cornwall.  It had long agitated both his agent and himself, and had
now come to him for final decision.  The question affected two
villages to the north of the property, whose inhabitants were solely
dependent on the working of a large quarry, which had for some time
been losing money.

A kindly man, he was extremely averse to any measure which would
plunge his tenants into distress, and especially in cases where there
had been no question of opposition between himself and them.  But,
reduced to its essentials, the matter stood thus: Apart from that
particular quarry the Pendridny estate was not only a going, but even
a profitable concern, supporting itself and supplying some of the
sinews of war towards Valleys House and the racing establishment at
Newmarket and other general expenses; with this quarry still running,
allowing for the upkeep of Pendridny, and the provision of pensions
to superannuated servants, it was rather the other way.

Sitting there, that afternoon, smoking his favourite pipe, he had at
last come to the conclusion that there was nothing for it but to
close down.  He had not made this resolution lightly; though, to do
him justice, the knowledge that the decision would be bound to cause
an outcry in the local, and perhaps the National Press, had secretly
rather spurred him on to the resolve than deterred him from it.  He
felt as if he were being dictated to in advance, and he did not like
dictation.  To have to deprive these poor people of their immediate
living was, he knew, a good deal more irksome to him than to those
who would certainly make a fuss about it, his conscience was clear,
and he could discount that future outcry as mere Party spite.  He had
very honestly tried to examine the thing all round; and had reasoned
thus: If I keep this quarry open, I am really admitting the principle
of pauperization, since I naturally look to each of my estates to
support its own house, grounds, shooting, and to contribute towards
the support of this house, and my family, and racing stable, and all
the people employed about them both.

To allow any business to be run on my estates which does not
contribute to the general upkeep, is to protect and really pauperize
a portion of my tenants at the expense of the rest; it must therefore
be false economics and a secret sort of socialism.  Further, if
logically followed out, it might end in my ruin, and to allow that,
though I might not personally object, would be to imply that I do not
believe that I am by virtue of my traditions and training, the best
machinery through which the State can work to secure the welfare of
the people....

When he had reached that point in his consideration of the question,
his mind, or rather perhaps, his essential self, had not unnaturally
risen up and said:  Which is absurd!

Impersonality was in fashion, and as a rule he believed in thinking
impersonally.  There was a point, however, where the possibility of
doing so ceased, without treachery to oneself, one's order, and the
country.  And to the argument which he was quite shrewd enough to put
to himself, sooner than have it put by anyone else, that it was
disproportionate for a single man by a stroke of the pen to be able
to dispose of the livelihood of hundreds whose senses and feelings
were similar to his own--he had answered: "If I didn't, some
plutocrat or company would--or, worse still, the State!"  Cooperative
enterprise being, in his opinion, foreign to the spirit of the
country, there was, so far as he could see, no other alternative.
Facts were facts and not to be got over!

Notwithstanding all this, the necessity for the decision made him
sorry, for if he had no great sense of proportion, he was at least
humane.

He was still smoking his pipe and staring at a sheet of paper covered
with small figures when his wife entered.  Though she had come to ask
his advice on a very different subject, she saw at once that he was
vexed, and said:

" What's the matter, Geoff?"

Lord Valleys rose, went to the hearth, deliberately tapped out his
pipe, then held out to her the sheet of paper.

"That quarry!  Nothing for it--must go!"

Lady Valleys' face changed.

"Oh, no!  It will mean such dreadful distress."

Lord Valleys stared at his nails.  "It's putting a drag on the whole
estate," he said.

"I know, but how could we face the people--I should never be able to
go down there.  And most of them have such enormous families."

Since Lord Valleys continued to bend on his nails that slow, thought-
forming stare, she went on earnestly:

"Rather than that I'd make sacrifices.  I'd sooner Pendridny were let
than throw all those people out of work.  I suppose it would let."

"Let?  Best woodcock shooting in the world."

Lady Valleys, pursuing her thoughts, went on:

"In time we might get the people drafted into other things.  Have you
consulted Miltoun?"

"No," said Lord Valleys shortly, "and don't mean to--he's too
unpractical."

"He always seems to know what he wants very well."

"I tell you," repeated Lord Valleys, "Miltoun's no good in a matter
of this sort--he and his ideas throw back to the Middle Ages."

Lady Valleys went closer, and took him by the lapels of his collar.

"Geoff-really, to please me; some other way!"

Lord Valleys frowned, staring at her for some time; and at last
answered:

"To please you--I'll leave it over another year."

"You think that's better than letting?"

"I don't like the thought of some outsider there.  Time enough to
come to that if we must.  Take it as my Christmas present."

Lady Valleys, rather flushed, bent forward and kissed his ear.

It was at this moment that little Ann had entered.

When she was gone, and they had exchanged that dubious look, Lady
Valleys said:

"I came about Babs.  I don't know what to make of her since we came
up.  She's not putting her heart into things."

Lord Valleys answered almost sulkily:

"It's the heat probably--or Claud Harbinger."  In spite of his easy-
going parentalism, he disliked the thought of losing the child whom
he so affectionately admired.

"Ah!" said Lady Valleys slowly," I'm not so sure."

"How do you mean?"

"There's something queer about her.  I'm by no means certain she
hasn't got some sort of feeling for that Mr. Courtier."

"What!" said Lord Valleys, growing most unphilosophically red.

"Exactly!"

"Confound it, Gertrude, Miltoun's business was quite enough for one
year."

"For twenty," murmured Lady Valleys.  "I'm watching her.  He's going
to Persia, they say."

"And leaving his bones there, I hope," muttered Lord Valleys.
"Really, it's too much.  I should think you're all wrong, though."

Lady Valleys raised her eyebrows.  Men were very queer about such
things!  Very queer and worse than helpless!

"Well," she said, "I must go to my meeting.  I'll take her, and see
if I can get at something," and she went away.

It was the inaugural meeting of the Society for the Promotion of the
Birth Rate, over which she had promised to preside.  The scheme was
one in which she had been prominent from the start, appealing as it
did to her large and full-blooded nature.  Many movements, to which
she found it impossible to refuse her name, had in themselves but
small attraction; and it was a real comfort to feel something
approaching enthusiasm for one branch of her public work.  Not that
there was any academic consistency about her in the matter, for in
private life amongst her friends she was not narrowly dogmatic on the
duty of wives to multiply exceedingly.  She thought imperially on the
subject, without bigotry.  Large, healthy families, in all cases save
individual ones!  The prime idea at the back of her mind was--
National Expansion!  Her motto, and she intended if possible to make
it the motto of the League, was: 'De l'audace, et encore de
l'audace!'  It was a question of the full realization of the nation.
She had a true, and in a sense touching belief in 'the flag,' apart
from what it might cover.  It was her idealism.  "You may talk," she
would say, "as much as you like about directing national life in
accordance with social justice!  What does the nation care about
social justice?  The thing is much bigger than that.  It's a matter
of sentiment.  We must expand!"

On the way to the meeting, occupied with her speech, she made no
attempt to draw Barbara into conversation.  That must wait.  The
child, though languid, and pale, was looking so beautiful that it was
a pleasure to have her support in such a movement.

In a little dark room behind the hall the Committee were already
assembled, and they went at once on to the platform.




CHAPTER II

Unmoved by the stares of the audience, Barbara sat absorbed in moody
thoughts.

Into the three weeks since Miltoun's election there had been crowded
such a multitude of functions that she had found, as it were, no
time, no energy to know where she stood with herself.  Since that
morning in the stable, when he had watched her with the horse Hal,
Harbinger had seemed to live only to be close to her.  And the
consciousness of his passion gave her a tingling sense of pleasure.
She had been riding and dancing with him, and sometimes this had been
almost blissful.  But there were times too, when she felt--though
always with a certain contempt of herself, as when she sat on that
sunwarmed stone below the tor--a queer dissatisfaction, a longing for
something outside a world where she had to invent her own starvations
and simplicities, to make-believe in earnestness.

She had seen Courtier three times.  Once he had come to dine, in
response to an invitation from Lady Valleys worded in that charming,
almost wistful style, which she had taught herself to use to those
below her in social rank, especially if they were intelligent; once
to the Valleys House garden party; and next day, having told him what
time she would be riding, she had found him in the Row, not mounted,
but standing by the rail just where she must pass, with that look on
his face of mingled deference and ironic self-containment, of which
he was a master.  It appeared that he was leaving England; and to her
questions why, and where, he had only shrugged his shoulders.  Up on
this dusty platform, in the hot bare hall, facing all those people,
listening to speeches whose sense she was too languid and preoccupied
to take in, the whole medley of thoughts, and faces round her, and
the sound of the speakers' voices, formed a kind of nightmare, out of
which she noted with extreme exactitude the colour of her mother's
neck beneath a large black hat, and the expression on the face of a
Committee man to the right, who was biting his fingers under cover of
a blue paper.  She realized that someone was speaking amongst the
audience, casting forth, as it were, small bunches of words.  She
could see him--a little man in a black coat, with a white face which
kept jerking up and down.

"I feel that this is terrible," she heard him say; "I feel that this
is blasphemy.  That we should try to tamper with the greatest force,
the greatest and the most sacred and secret-force, that--that moves
in the world, is to me horrible.  I cannot bear to listen; it seems
to make everything so small!"  She saw him sit down, and her mother
rising to answer.

"We must all sympathize with the sincerity and to a certain extent
with the intention of our friend in the body of the hall.  But we
must ask ourselves:

"Have we the right to allow ourselves the luxury, of private feelings
in a matter which concerns the national expansion.  We must not give
way to sentiment.  Our friend in the body of the hall spoke--he will
forgive me for saying so--like a poet, rather than a serious
reformer.  I am afraid that if we let ourselves drop into poetry, the
birth rate of this country will very soon drop into poetry too.  And
that I think it is impossible for us to contemplate with folded
hands.  The resolution I was about to propose when our friend in the
body of the hall----"

But Barbara's attention, had wandered off again into that queer
medley of thoughts, and feelings, out of which the little man had so
abruptly roused her.  Then she realized that the meeting was breaking
up, and her mother saying:

"Now, my dear, it's hospital day.  We've just time."

When they were once more in the car, she leaned back very silent,
watching the traffic.

Lady Valleys eyed her sidelong.

"What a little bombshell," she said, "from that small person!  He
must have got in by mistake.  I hear Mr. Courtier has a card for
Helen Gloucester's ball to-night, Babs."

"Poor man!"

"You will be there," said Lady Valleys dryly.

Barbara drew back into her corner.

"Don't tease me, Mother!"

An expression of compunction crossed Lady Valleys' face; she tried to
possess herself of Barbara's hand.  But that languid hand did not
return her squeeze.

"I know the mood you're in, dear.  It wants all one's pluck to shake
it off; don't let it grow on you.  You'd better go down to Uncle
Dennis to-morrow.  You've been overdoing it."

Barbara sighed.

"I wish it were to-morrow."

The car had stopped, and Lady Valleys said:

"Will you come in, or are you too tired?  It always does them good to
see you."

"You're twice as tired as me," Barbara answered; "of course I'll
come."

At the entrance of the two ladies, there rose at once a faint buzz
and murmur.  Lady Valleys, whose ample presence radiated suddenly a
businesslike and cheery confidence, went to a bedside and sat down.
But Barbara stood in a thin streak of the July sunlight, uncertain
where to begin, amongst the faces turned towards her.  The poor dears
looked so humble, and so wistful, and so tired.  There was one lying
quite flat, who had not even raised her head to see who had come in.
That slumbering, pale, high cheek-boned face had a frailty as if a
touch, a breath, would shatter it; a wisp of the blackest hair, finer
than silk, lay across the forehead; the closed eyes were deep sunk;
one hand, scarred almost to the bone with work, rested above her
breast.  She breathed between lips which had no colour.  About her,
sleeping, was a kind of beauty.  And there came over the girl a queer
rush of emotion.  The sleeper seemed so apart from everything there,
from all the formality and stiffness of the ward.  To look at her
swept away the languid, hollow feeling with which she had come in; it
made her think of the tors at home, when the wind was blowing, and
all was bare, and grand, and sometimes terrible.  There was something
elemental in that still sleep.  And the old lady in the next led,
with a brown wrinkled face and bright black eyes brimful of life,
seemed almost vulgar beside such remote tranquillity, while she was
telling Barbara that a little bunch of heather in the better half of
a soap-dish on the window-sill had come from Wales, because, as she
explained: "My mother was born in Stirling, dearie; so I likes a bit
of heather, though I never been out o' Bethnal Green meself."

But when Barbara again passed, the sleeping woman was sitting up, and
looked but a poor ordinary thing--her strange fragile beauty all
withdrawn.

It was a relief when Lady Valleys said:

"My dear, my Naval Bazaar at five-thirty; and while I'm there you
must go home and have a rest, and freshen yourself up for the
evening.  We dine at Plassey House."

The Duchess of Gloucester's Ball, a function which no one could very
well miss, had been fixed for this late date owing to the Duchess's
announced desire to prolong the season and so help the hackney
cabmen; and though everybody sympathized, it had been felt by most
that it would be simpler to go away, motor up on the day of the Ball,
and motor down again on the following morning.  And throughout the
week by which the season was thus prolonged, in long rows at the
railway stations, and on their stands, the hackney cabmen,
unconscious of what was being done for them, waited, patient as their
horses.  But since everybody was making this special effort, an
exceptionally large, exclusive, and brilliant company reassembled at
Gloucester House.

In the vast ballroom over the medley of entwined revolving couples,
punkahs had been fixed, to clear and freshen the languid air, and
these huge fans, moving with incredible slowness, drove a faint
refreshing draught down over the sea of white shirt-fronts and bare
necks, and freed the scent from innumerable flowers.

Late in the evening, close by one of the great clumps of bloom, a
very pretty woman stood talking to Bertie Caradoc.  She was his
cousin, Lily Malvezin, sister of Geoffrey Winlow, and wife of a
Liberal peer, a charming creature, whose pink cheeks, bright eyes,
quick lips, and rounded figure, endowed her with the prettiest air of
animation.  And while she spoke she kept stealing sly glances at her
partner, trying as it were to pierce the armour of that self-
contained young man.

"No, my dear," she said in her mocking voice, "you'll never persuade
me that Miltoun is going to catch on.  'Il est trop intransigeant'.
Ah!  there's Babs!"

For the girl had come gliding by, her eyes wandering lazily, her lips
just parted; her neck, hardly less pale than her white frock; her
face pale, and marked with languor, under the heavy coil of her tawny
hair; and her swaying body seeming with each turn of the waltz to be
caught by the arms of her partner from out of a swoon.

With that immobility of lips, learned by all imprisoned in Society,
Lily Malvezin murmured:

"Who's that she's dancing with?  Is it the dark horse, Bertie?"

Through lips no less immobile Bertie answered:

"Forty to one, no takers."

But those inquisitive bright eyes still followed Barbara, drifting in
the dance, like a great waterlily caught in the swirl of a mill pool;
and the thought passed through that pretty head:

"She's hooked him.  It's naughty of Babs, really!" And then she saw
leaning against a pillar another whose eyes also were following those
two; and she thought: "H'm!  Poor Claud--no wonder he's looking like
that.  Oh!  Babs!"

By one of the statues on the terrace Barbara and her partner stood,
where trees, disfigured by no gaudy lanterns, offered the refreshment
of their darkness and serenity.

Wrapped in her new pale languor, still breathing deeply from the
waltz, she seemed to Courtier too utterly moulded out of loveliness.
To what end should a man frame speeches to a vision!  She was but an
incarnation of beauty imprinted on the air, and would fade out at a
touch-like the sudden ghosts of enchantment that came to one under
the blue, and the starlit snow of a mountain night, or in a birch
wood all wistful golden!  Speech seemed but desecration!  Besides,
what of interest was there for him to say in this world of hers, so
bewildering and of such glib assurance--this world that was like a
building, whose every window was shut and had a blind drawn down.  A
building that admitted none who had not sworn, as it were, to believe
it the world, the whole world, and nothing but the world, outside
which were only the nibbled remains of what had built it.  This,
world of Society, in which he felt like one travelling through a
desert, longing to meet a fellow-creature.

The voice of Harbinger behind them said:

"Lady-Babs!"

Long did the punkahs waft their breeze over that brave-hued wheel of
pleasure, and the sound of the violins quaver and wail out into the
morning.  Then quickly, as the spangles of dew vanish off grass when
the sun rises, all melted away; and in the great rooms were none but
flunkeys presiding over the polished surfaces like flamingoes by some
lakeside at dawn.




CHAPTER III

A brick dower-house of the Fitz-Harolds, just outside the little
seaside town of Nettlefold, sheltered the tranquil days of Lord
Dennis.  In that south-coast air, sanest and most healing in all
England, he raged very slowly, taking little thought of death, and
much quiet pleasure in his life.  Like the tall old house with its
high windows and squat chimneys, he was marvellously self-contained.
His books, for he somewhat passionately examined old civilizations,
and described their habits from time to time with a dry and not too
poignant pen in a certain old-fashioned magazine; his microscope, for
he studied infusoria; and the fishing boat of his friend John Bogle,
 who had long perceived that Lord Dennis was the biggest fish he ever
caught; all these, with occasional visitors, and little runs to
London, to Monkland, and other country houses, made up the sum of a
life which, if not desperately beneficial, was uniformly kind and
harmless, and, by its notorious simplicity, had a certain negative
influence not only on his own class but on the relations of that
class with the country at large.  It was commonly said in Nettlefold,
that he was a gentleman; if they were all like him there wasn't much
in all this talk against the Lords.  The shop people and lodging-
house keepers felt that the interests of the country were safer in
his hands: than in the hands of people who wanted to meddle with
everything for the good of those who were only anxious to be let
alone.  A man too who could so completely forget he was the son of a
Duke, that other people never forgot it, was the man for their money.
It was true that he had never had a say in public affairs; but this
was overlooked, because he could have had it if he liked, and the
fact that he did not like, only showed once more that he was a
gentleman.

Just as he was the one personality of the little town against whom
practically nothing was ever, said, so was his house the one house
which defied criticism.  Time had made it utterly suitable.  The
ivied walls, and purplish roof lichened yellow in places, the quiet
meadows harbouring ponies and kine, reaching from it to the sea--all
was mellow.  In truth it made all the other houses of the town seem
shoddy--standing alone beyond them, like its, master, if anything a
little too esthetically remote from common wants.

He had practically no near neighbours of whom he saw anything, except
once in a way young Harbinger three miles distant at Whitewater.  But
since he had the faculty of not being bored with his own society,
this did not worry him.  Of local charity, especially to the fishers
of the town, whose winter months were nowadays very bare of profit,
he was prodigal to the verge of extravagance, for his income was not
great.  But in politics, beyond acting as the figure-head of certain
municipal efforts, he took little or no part.  His Toryism indeed was
of the mild order, that had little belief in the regeneration of the
country by any means but those of kindly feeling between the classes.
When asked how that was to be brought about, he would answer with his
dry, slightly malicious, suavity, that if you stirred hornets' nests
with sticks the hornets would come forth.  Having no land, he was shy
of expressing himself on that vexed question; but if resolutely
attacked would give utterance to some such sentiment as this: "The
land's best in our hands on the whole, but we want fewer dogs-in-the-
manger among us."

He had, as became one of his race, a feeling for land, tender and
protective, and could not bear to think of its being put out to farm
with that cold Mother, the State.  He was ironical over the views of
Radicals or Socialists, but disliked to hear such people personally
abused behind their backs.  It must be confessed, however, that if
contradicted he increased considerably the ironical decision of his
sentiments.  Withdrawn from all chance in public life of enforcing
his views on others, the natural aristocrat within him was forced to
find some expression.

Each year, towards the end of July, he placed his house at the
service of Lord Valleys, who found it a convenient centre for
attending Goodwood.

It was on the morning after the Duchess of Gloucester's Ball, that he
received this note:

                                        "VALLEYS HOUSE.
"DEAREST UNCLE DENNIS,

"May I come down to you a little before time and rest?  London is so
terribly hot.  Mother has three functions still to stay for, and I
shall have to come back again for our last evening, the political
one--so I don't want to go all the way to Monkland; and anywhere
else, except with you, would be rackety.  Eustace looks so seedy.
I'll try and bring him, if I may.  Granny is terribly well.

                              "Best love, dear, from your.
                                             "BABS."

The same afternoon she came, but without Miltoun, driving up from the
station in a fly.  Lord Dennis met her at the gate; and, having
kissed her, looked at her somewhat anxiously, caressing his white
peaked beard.  He had never yet known Babs sick of anything, except
when he took her out in John Bogle's boat.  She was certainly looking
pale, and her hair was done differently--a fact disturbing to one who
did not discover it.  Slipping his arm through hers he led her out
into a meadow still full of buttercups, where an old white pony, who
had carried her in the Row twelve years ago, came up to them and
rubbed his muzzle against her waist.  And suddenly there rose in Lord
Dennis the thoroughly discomforting and strange suspicion that,
though the child was not going to cry, she wanted time to get over
the feeling that she was.  Without appearing to separate himself from
her, he walked to the wall at the end of the field, and stood looking
at the sea.

The tide was nearly up; the South wind driving over it brought him
the scent of the sea-flowers, and the crisp rustle of little waves
swimming almost to his feet.  Far out, where the sunlight fell, the
smiling waters lay white and mysterious in July haze, giving him a
queer feeling.  But Lord Dennis, though he had his moments of poetic
sentiment, was on the whole quite able to keep the sea in its proper
place--for after all it was the English Channel; and like a good
Englishman he recognized that if you once let things get away from
their names, they ceased to be facts, and if they ceased to be facts,
they became--the devil!  In truth he was not thinking much of the
sea, but of Barbara.  It was plain that she was in trouble of some
kind.  And the notion that Babs could find trouble in life was
extraordinarily queer; for he felt, subconsciously, what a great
driving force of disturbance was necessary to penetrate the hundred
folds of the luxurious cloak enwrapping one so young and fortunate.
It was not Death; therefore it must be Love; and he thought at once
of that fellow with the red moustaches.  Ideas were all very well--no
one would object to as many as you liked, in their proper place--the
dinner-table, for example.  But to fall in love, if indeed it were
so, with a man who not only had ideas, but an inclination to live up
to them, and on them, and on nothing else, seemed to Lord Dennis
'outre'.

She had followed him to the wall, and he looked--at her dubiously.

"To rest in the waters of Lethe, Babs?  By the way, seen anything of
our friend Mr. Courtier?  Very picturesque--that Quixotic theory of
life!"

And in saying that, his voice (like so many refined voices which have
turned their backs on speculation) was triple-toned-mocking at ideas,
mocking at itself for mocking at ideas, yet showing plainly that at
bottom it only mocked at itself for mocking at ideas, because it
would be, as it were, crude not to do so.

But Barbara did not answer his question, and began to speak of other
things.  And all that afternoon and evening she talked away so
lightly that Lord Dennis, but for his instinct, would have been
deceived.

That wonderful smiling mask--the inscrutability of Youth--was laid
aside by her at night.  Sitting at her window, under the moon,
'a gold-bright moth slow-spinning up the sky,' she watched the
darkness hungrily, as though it were a great thought into whose heart
she was trying to see.  Now and then she stroked herself, getting
strange comfort out of the presence of her body.  She had that old
unhappy feeling of having two selves within her.  And this soft night
full of the quiet stir of the sea, and of dark immensity, woke in her
a terrible longing to be at one with something, somebody, outside
herself.  At the Ball last night the 'flying feeling' had seized on
her again; and was still there--a queer manifestation of her streak
of recklessness.  And this result of her contacts with Courtier, this
'cacoethes volandi', and feeling of clipped wings, hurt her--as being
forbidden hurts a child.

She remembered how in the housekeeper's room at Monkland there lived
a magpie who had once sought shelter in an orchid-house from some
pursuer.  As soon as they thought him wedded to civilization, they
had let him go, to see whether he would come back.  For hours he had
sat up in a high tree, and at last come down again to his cage;
whereupon, fearing lest the rooks should attack him when he next took
this voyage of discovery, they clipped one of his wings.  After that
the twilight bird, though he lived happily enough, hopping about his
cage and the terrace which served him for exercise yard, would seem
at times restive and frightened, moving his wings as if flying in
spirit, and sad that he must stay on earth.

So, too, at her window Barbara fluttered her wings; then, getting
into bed, lay sighing and tossing.  A clock struck three; and seized
by an intolerable impatience at her own discomfort, she slipped a
motor coat over her night-gown, put on slippers, and stole out into
the passage.  The house was very still.  She crept downstairs,
smothering her footsteps.  Groping her way through the hall,
inhabited by the thin ghosts of would-be light, she slid back the
chain of the door, and fled towards the sea.  She made no more noise
running in the dew, than a bird following the paths of air; and the
two ponies, who felt her figure pass in the darkness, snuffled,
sending out soft sighs of alarm amongst the closed buttercups.  She
climbed the wall over to the beach.  While she was running, she had
fully meant to dash into the sea and cool herself, but it was so
black, with just a thin edging scarf of white, and the sky was black,
bereft of lights, waiting for the day!

She stood, and looked.  And all the leapings and pulsings of flesh
and spirit slowly died in that wide dark loneliness, where the only
sound was the wistful breaking of small waves.  She was well used to
these dead hours--only last night, at this very time, Harbinger's arm
had been round her in a last waltz!  But here the dead hours had such
different faces, wide-eyed, solemn, and there came to Barbara,
staring out at them, a sense that the darkness saw her very soul, so
that it felt little and timid within her.  She shivered in her fur-
lined coat, as if almost frightened at finding herself so
marvellously nothing before that black sky and dark sea, which seemed
all one, relentlessly great....  And crouching down, she waited for
the dawn to break.

It came from over the Downs, sweeping a rush of cold air on its
wings, flighting towards the sea.  With it the daring soon crept back
into her blood.  She stripped, and ran down into the dark water, fast
growing pale.  It covered her jealously, and she set to work to swim.
The water was warmer than the air.  She lay on her back and splashed,
watching the sky flush.  To bathe like this in the half-dark, with
her hair floating out, and no wet clothes clinging to her limbs, gave
her the joy of a child doing a naughty thing.  She swam out of her
depth, then scared at her own adventure, swam in again as the sun
rose.

She dashed into her two garments, climbed the wall, and scurried back
to the house.  All her dejection, and feverish uncertainty were gone;
she felt keen, fresh, terribly hungry, and stealing into the dark
dining-room, began rummaging for food.  She found biscuits, and was
still munching, when in the open doorway she saw Lord Dennis, a
pistol in one hand and a lighted candle in the other.  With his
carved features and white beard above an old blue dressing-gown, he
looked impressive, having at the moment a distinct resemblance to
Lady Casterley, as though danger had armoured him in steel.

"You call this resting!" he said, dryly; then, looking at her drowned
hair, added: "I see you have already entrusted your trouble to the
waters of Lethe."

But without answer Barbara vanished into the dim hall and up the
stairs.




CHAPTER IV

While Barbara was swimming to meet the dawn, Miltoun was bathing in
those waters of mansuetude and truth which roll from wall to wall in
the British House of Commons.

In that long debate on the Land question, for which he had waited to
make his first speech, he had already risen nine times without
catching the Speaker's eye, and slowly a sense of unreality was
creeping over him.  Surely this great Chamber, where without end rose
the small sound of a single human voice, and queer mechanical bursts
of approbation and resentment, did not exist at all but as a gigantic
fancy of his own!  And all these figures were figments of his brain!
And when he at last spoke, it would be himself alone that he
addressed!  The torpid air tainted with human breath, the unwinking
stare of the countless lights, the long rows of seats, the queer
distant rounds of pale listening flesh perched up so high, they were
all emanations of himself!  Even the coming and going in the gangway
was but the coming and going of little wilful parts of him!  And
rustling deep down in this Titanic creature of his fancy was 'the
murmuration' of his own unspoken speech, sweeping away the puff balls
of words flung up by that far-away, small, varying voice.

Then, suddenly all that dream creature had vanished; he was on his
feet, with a thumping heart, speaking.

Soon he had no tremors, only a dim consciousness that his words
sounded strange, and a queer icy pleasure in flinging them out into
the silence.  Round him there seemed no longer men, only mouths and
eyes.  And he had enjoyment in the feeling that with these words of
his he was holding those hungry mouths and eyes dumb and unmoving.
Then he knew that he had reached the end of what he had to say, and
sat down, remaining motionless in the centre of a various sound;
staring at the back of the head in front of him, with his hands
clasped round his knee.  And soon, when that little faraway voice was
once more speaking, he took his hat, and glancing neither to right
nor left, went out.

Instead of the sensation of relief and wild elation which fills the
heart of those who have taken the first plunge, Miltoun had nothing
in his deep dark well but the waters of bitterness.  In truth, with
the delivery of that speech he had but parted with what had been a
sort of anodyne to suffering.  He had only put the fine point on his
conviction, of how vain was his career now that he could not share it
with Audrey Noel.  He walked slowly towards the Temple, along the
riverside, where the lamps were paling into nothingness before that
daily celebration of Divinity, the meeting of dark and light.

For Miltoun was not one of those who take things lying down; he took
things desperately, deeply, and with revolt.  He took them like a
rider riding himself, plunging at the dig of his own spurs, chafing
and wincing at the cruel tugs of his own bitt; bearing in his
friendless, proud heart all the burden of struggles which shallower
or more genial natures shared with others.

He looked hardly less haggard, walking home, than some of those
homeless ones who slept nightly by the river, as though they knew
that to lie near one who could so readily grant oblivion, alone could
save them from seeking that consolation.  He was perhaps unhappier
than they, whose spirits, at all events, had long ceased to worry
them, having oozed out from their bodies under the foot of Life:

Now that Audrey Noel was lost to him, her loveliness and that
indescribable quality which made her lovable, floated before him, the
very torture-flowers of a beauty never to be grasped--yet, that he
could grasp, 'if he only would!  That was the heart and fervour of
his suffering.  To be grasped if he only would!  He was suffering,
too, physically from a kind of slow fever, the result of his wetting
on the day when he last saw her.  And through that latent fever,
things and feelings, like his sensations in the House before his
speech, were all as it were muffled in a horrible way, as if they all
came to him wrapped in a sort of flannel coating, through which he
could not cut.  And all the time there seemed to be within him two
men at mortal grips with one another; the man of faith in divine
sanction and authority, on which all his beliefs had hitherto hinged,
and a desperate warm-blooded hungry creature.  He was very miserable,
craving strangely for the society of someone who could understand
what he was feeling, .and, from long habit of making no confidants,
not knowing how to satisfy that craving.

It was dawn when he reached his rooms; and, sure that he would not
sleep, he did not even go to bed, but changed his clothes, made
himself some coffee, and sat down at the window which overlooked the
flowered courtyard.

In Middle Temple Hall a Ball was still in progress, though the
glamour from its Chinese lanterns was already darkened and gone.
Miltoun saw a man and a girl, sheltered by an old fountain, sitting
out their last dance.  Her head had sunk on her partner's shoulder;
their lips were joined.  And there floated up to the window the scent
of heliotrope, with the tune of the waltz that those two should have
been dancing.  This couple so stealthily enlaced, the gleam of their
furtively turned eyes, the whispering of their lips, that stony niche
below the twittering sparrows, so cunningly sought out--it was the
world he had abjured!  When he looked again, they--like a vision
seen--had stolen away and gone; the music too had ceased, there was
no scent of heliotrope.  In the stony niche crouched a stray cat
watching the twittering sparrows.

Miltoun went out, and, turning into the empty Strand, walked on--
without heeding where, till towards five o'clock he found himself on
Putney Bridge.

He rested there, leaning over the parapet, looking down at the grey
water.  The sun was just breaking through the heat haze; early
waggons were passing, and already men were coming in to work.  To
what end did the river wander up and down; and a human river flow
across it twice every day?  To what end were men and women suffering?
Of the full current of this life Miltoun could no more see the aim,
than that of the wheeling gulls in the early sunlight.

Leaving the bridge he made towards Barnes Common.  The night was
still ensnared there on the gorse bushes grey with cobwebs and starry
dewdrops.  He passed a tramp family still sleeping, huddled all
together.  Even the homeless lay in each other's arms!

>From the Common he emerged on the road near the gates of Ravensham;
turning in there, he found his way to the kitchen garden, and sat
down on a bench close to the raspberry bushes.  They were protected
from thieves, but at Miltoun's approach two blackbirds flustered out
through the netting and flew away.

His long figure resting so motionless impressed itself on the eyes of
a gardener, who caused a report to be circulated that his young
lordship was in the fruit garden.  It reached the ears of Clifton,
who himself came out to see what this might mean.  The old man took
his stand in front of Miltoun very quietly.

"You have come to breakfast, my lord?"

"If my grandmother will have me, Clifton."

"I understood your lordship was speaking last night."

"I was."

"You find the House of Commons satisfactory, I hope."

"Fairly, thank you, Clifton."

"They are not what they were in the great days of your grandfather, I
believe.  He had a very good opinion of them.  They vary, no doubt."

"Tempora mutantur."

"That is so.  I find quite anew spirit towards public affairs.  The
ha'penny Press; one takes it in, but one hardly approves.  I shall be
anxious to read your speech.  They say a first speech is a great
strain."

"It is rather."

"But you had no reason to be anxious.  I'm sure it was beautiful."

Miltoun saw that the old man's thin sallow cheeks had flushed to a
deep orange between his snow-white whiskers.

"I have looked forward to this day," he stammered, "ever since I knew
your lordship--twenty-eight years.  It is the beginning."

"Or the end, Clifton."

The old man's face fell in a look of deep and concerned astonishment.

"No, no," he said; "with your antecedents, never."

Miltoun took his hand.

"Sorry, Clifton--didn't mean to shock you."

And for a minute neither spoke, looking at their clasped hands as if
surprised.

"Would your lordship like a bath--breakfast is still at eight.  I can
procure you a razor."

When Miltoun entered the breakfast room, his grandmother, with a copy
of the Times in her hands, was seated before a grape fruit, which,
with a shredded wheat biscuit, constituted her first meal.  Her
appearance hardly warranted Barbara's description of 'terribly well';
in truth she looked a little white, as if she had been feeling the
heat.  But there was no lack of animation in her little steel-grey
eyes, nor of decision in her manner.

"I see," she said, "that you've taken a line of your own, Eustace.
I've nothing to say against that; in fact, quite the contrary.  But
remember this, my dear, however you may change you mustn't wobble.
Only one thing counts in that place, hitting the same nail on the
head with the same hammer all the time.  You aren't looking at all
well."

Miltoun, bending to kiss her, murmured:

"Thanks, I'm all right."

"Nonsense," replied Lady Casterley.  "They don't look after you.  Was
your mother in the House?"

"I don't think so."

"Exactly.  And what is Barbara about?  She ought to be seeing to
you."

"Barbara is down with Uncle Dennis."

Lady Casterley set her jaw; then looking her grandson through and
through, said:

"I shall take you down there this very day.  I shall have the sea to
you.  What do you say, Clifton?"

"His lordship does look pale."

"Have the carriage, and we'll go from Clapham Junction.  Thomas can
go in and fetch you some clothes.  Or, better, though I dislike them,
we can telephone to your mother for a car.  It's very hot for trains.
Arrange that, please, Clifton!"

To this project Miltoun raised no objection.  And all through the
drive he remained sunk in an indifference and lassitude which to Lady
Casterley seemed in the highest degree ominous.  For lassitude, to
her, was the strange, the unpardonable, state.  The little great
lady--casket of the aristocratic principle--was permeated to the very
backbone with the instinct of artificial energy, of that alert vigour
which those who have nothing socially to hope for are forced to
develop, lest they should decay and be again obliged to hope.  To
speak honest truth, she could not forbear an itch to run some sharp
and foreign substance into her grandson, to rouse him somehow, for
she knew the reason of his state, and was temperamentally out of
patience with such a cause for backsliding.  Had it been any other of
her grandchildren she would not have hesitated, but there was that in
Miltoun which held even Lady Casterley in check, and only once during
the four hours of travel did she attempt to break down his reserve.
She did it in a manner very soft for her--was he not of all living
things the hope and pride of her heart?  Tucking her little thin
sharp hand under his arm, she said quietly:

"My dear, don't brood over it.  That will never do."

But Miltoun removed her hand gently, and laid it back on the dust
rug, nor did he answer, or show other sign of having heard.

And Lady Casterley, deeply wounded, pressed her faded lips together,
and said sharply:

"Slower, please, Frith!"





CHAPTER V

It was to Barbara that Miltoun unfolded, if but little, the trouble
of his spirit, lying that same afternoon under a ragged tamarisk
hedge with the tide far out.  He could never have done this if there
had not been between them the accidental revelation of that night at
Monkland; nor even then perhaps had he not felt in this young sister
of his the warmth of life for which he was yearning.  In such a
matter as love Barbara was the elder of these two.  For, besides the
motherly knowledge of the heart peculiar to most women, she had the
inherent woman-of-the-worldliness to be expected of a daughter of
Lord and Lady Valleys.  If she herself were in doubt as to the state
of her affections, it was not as with Miltoun, on the score of the
senses and the heart, but on the score of her spirit and curiosity,
which Courtier had awakened and caused to flap their wings a little.
She worried over Miltoun's forlorn case; it hurt her too to think of
Mrs. Noel eating her heart out in that lonely cottage.  A sister so--
good and earnest as Agatha had ever inclined Barbara to a rebellious
view of morals, and disinclined her altogether to religion.  And so,
she felt that if those two could not be happy apart, they should be
happy together, in the name of all the joy there was in life!

And while her brother lay face to the sky under the tamarisks, she
kept trying to think of how to console him, conscious that she did
not in the least understand the way he thought about things.  Over
the fields behind, the larks were hymning the promise of the unripe
corn; the foreshore was painted all colours, from vivid green to
mushroom pink; by the edge of the blue sea little black figures
stooped, gathering sapphire.  The air smelled sweet in the shade of
the tamarisk; there was ineffable peace.  And Barbara, covered by the
network of sunlight, could not help impatience with a suffering which
seemed to her so corrigible by action.  At last she ventured:

"Life is short, Eusty!"

Miltoun's answer, given without movement, startled her:

"Persuade me that it is, Babs, and I'll bless you.  If the singing of
these larks means nothing, if that blue up there is a morass of our
invention, if we are pettily, creeping on furthering nothing, if
there's no purpose in our lives, persuade me of it, for God's sake!"

Carried suddenly beyond her depth, Barbara could only put out her
hand, and say: "Oh! don't take things so hard!"

"Since you say that life is short," Miltoun muttered, with his smile,
"you shouldn't spoil it by feeling pity!  In old days we went to the
Tower for our convictions.  We can stand a little private roasting, I
hope; or has the sand run out of us altogether?"

Stung by his tone, Barbara answered in rather a hard voice:

"What we must bear, we must, I suppose.  But why should we make
trouble?  That's what I can't stand!"

"O profound wisdom!"

Barbara flushed.

"I love Life!" she said.

The galleons of the westering sun were already sailing in a broad
gold fleet straight for that foreshore where the little black
stooping figures had not yet finished their toil, the larks still
sang over the unripe corn--when Harbinger, galloping along the sands
from Whitewater to Sea House, came on that silent couple walking home
to dinner.

It would not be safe to say of this young man that he readily
diagnosed a spiritual atmosphere, but this was the less his demerit,
since everything from his cradle up had conspired to keep the
spiritual thermometer of his surroundings at 60 in the shade.  And
the fact that his own spiritual thermometer had now run up so that it
threatened to burst the bulb, rendered him less likely than ever to
see what was happening with other people's.  Yet, he did notice that
Barbara was looking pale, and--it seemed--sweeter than ever.... With
her eldest brother he always somehow felt ill at ease.  He could not
exactly afford to despise an uncompromising spirit in one of his own
order, but he was no more impervious than others to Miltoun's
caustic, thinly-veiled contempt for the commonplace; and having a
full-blooded belief in himself---usual with men of fine physique,
whose lots are so cast that this belief can never or almost never be
really shaken--he greatly disliked the feeling of being a little
looked down on.  It was an intense relief, when, saying that he
wanted a certain magazine, Miltoun strode off into the town.

To Harbinger, no less than to Miltoun and Barbara, last night had
been bitter and restless.  The sight of that pale swaying figure,
with the parted lips, whirling round in Courtier's arms, had clung to
his vision ever since, the Ball.  During his own last dance with her
he had been almost savagely silent; only by a great effort
restraining his tongue from mordant allusions to that 'prancing, red-
haired fellow,' as he secretly called the champion of lost causes.
In fact, his sensations there and since had been a revelation, or
would have teen if he could have stood apart to see them.  True, he
had gone about next day with his usual cool, off-hand manner, because
one naturally did not let people see, but it was with such an inner
aching and rage of want and jealousy as to really merit pity.  Men of
his physically big, rather rushing, type, are the last to possess
their souls in patience.  Walking home after the Ball he had
determined to follow her down to the sea, where she had said, so
maliciously; that she was going.  After a second almost sleepless
night he had no longer any hesitation.  He must see her!  After all,
a man might go to his own 'place' with impunity; he did not care if
it were a pointed thing to do....  Pointed!  The more pointed the
better!  There was beginning to be roused in him an ugly stubbornness
of male determination.  She should not escape him!

But now that he was walking at her side, all that determination and
assurance melted to perplexed humility.  He marched along by his
horse with his head down, just feeling the ache of being so close to
her and yet so far; angry with his own silence and awkwardness,
almost angry with her for her loveliness, and the pain it made him
suffer.  When they reached the house, and she left him at the stable-
yard, saying she was going to get some flowers, he jerked the beast's
bridle and swore at it for its slowness in entering the stable.  He,
was terrified that she would be gone before he could get into the
garden; yet half afraid of finding her there.  But she was still
plucking carnations by the box hedge which led to the conservatories.
And as she rose from gathering those blossoms, before he knew what he
was doing, Harbinger had thrown his arm around her, held her as in a
vice, kissed her unmercifully.

She seemed to offer no resistance, her smooth cheeks growing warmer
and warmer, even her lips passive; but suddenly he recoiled, and his
heart stood still at his own outrageous daring.  What had he done?
He saw her leaning back almost buried in the clipped box hedge, and
heard her say with a sort of faint mockery: "Well!"

He would have flung himself down on his knees to ask for pardon but
for the thought that someone might come.  He muttered hoarsely: "By
God, I was mad!" and stood glowering in sullen suspense between
hardihood and fear.  He heard her say, quietly:

"Yes, you were-rather."

Then seeing her put her hand up to her lips as if he had hurt them,
he muttered brokenly:

"Forgive me, Babs!"

There was a full minute's silence while he stood there, no longer
daring to look at her, beaten all over by his emotions.  Then, with
bewilderment, he heard her say:

"I didn't mind it--for once!"

He looked up at that.  How could she love him, and speak so coolly!
How could she not mind, if she did not love him!  She was passing her
hands over her face and neck and hair, repairing the damage of his
kisses.

"Now shall we go in?" she said.

Harbinger took a step forward.

"I love you so," he said; "I will put my life in your hands, and you
shall throw it away."

At those words, of whose exact nature he had very little knowledge,
he saw her smile.

"If I let you come within three yards, will you be good?"

He bowed; and, in silence, they walked towards the house.

Dinner that evening was a strange, uncomfortable meal.  But its
comedy, too subtly played for Miltoun and Lord Dennis, seemed
transparent to the eyes of Lady Casterley; for, when Harbinger had
sallied forth to ride back along the sands, she took her candle and
invited Barbara to retire.  Then, having admitted her granddaughter
to the apartment always reserved for herself, and specially furnished
with practically nothing, she sat down opposite that tall, young,
solid figure, as it were taking stock of it, and said:

"So you are coming to your senses, at all events.  Kiss me!"

Barbara, stooping to perform this rite, saw a tear stealing down the
carved fine nose.  Knowing that to notice it would be too dreadful,
she raised herself, and went to the window.  There, staring out over
the dark fields and dark sea, by the side of which Harbinger was
riding home, she put her hand up to her, lips, and thought for the
hundredth time:

"So that's what it's like!"




CHAPTER VI

Three days after his first, and as he promised himself, his last
Society Ball, Courtier received a note from Audrey Noel, saying that
she had left Monkland for the present, and come up to a little flat--
on the riverside not far from Westminster.

When he made his way there that same July day, the Houses of
Parliament were bright under a sun which warmed all the grave air
emanating from their counsels of perfection: Courtier passed by
dubiously.  His feelings in the presence of those towers were always
a little mixed.  There was not so much of the poet in him as to cause
him to see nothing there at all save only same lines against the sky,
but there was enough of the poet to make him long to kick something;
and in this mood he wended his way to the riverside.

Mrs. Noel was not at home, but since the maid informed him that she
would be in directly, he sat down to wait.  Her flat, which was on-
the first floor, overlooked the river and had evidently been taken
furnished, for there were visible marks of a recent struggle with an
Edwardian taste which, flushed from triumph over Victorianism, had
filled the rooms with early Georgian remains.  On the only definite
victory, a rose-coloured window seat of great comfort and little age,
Courtier sat down, and resigned himself to doing nothing with the
ease of an old soldier.

To the protective feeling he had once had for a very graceful, dark-
haired child, he joined not only the championing pity of a man of
warm heart watching a woman in distress, but the impatience of one,
who, though temperamentally incapable of feeling oppressed himself,
rebelled at sight of all forms of tyranny affecting others.

The sight of the grey towers, still just visible, under which Miltoun
and his father sat, annoyed him deeply; symbolizing to him,
Authority--foe to his deathless mistress, the sweet, invincible lost
cause of Liberty.  But presently the river; bringing up in flood the
unbound water that had bathed every shore, touched all sands, and
seen the rising and falling of each mortal star, so soothed him with
its soundless hymn to Freedom, that Audrey Noel coming in with her
hands full of flowers, found him sleeping firmly, with his mouth
shut.

Noiselessly putting down the flowers, she waited for his awakening.
That sanguine visage, with its prominent chin, flaring moustaches,
and eyebrows raised rather V-shaped above his closed eyes, wore an
expression of cheery defiance even in sleep; and perhaps no face in
all London was so utterly its obverse, as that of this dark, soft-
haired woman, delicate, passive, and tremulous with pleasure at sight
of the only person in the world from whom she felt she might learn of
Miltoun, without losing her self-respect.

He woke at last, and manifesting no discomfiture, said:

"It was like you not to wake me."

They sat for a long while talking, the riverside traffic drowsily
accompanying their voices, the flowers drowsily filling the room with
scent; and when Courtier left, his heart was sore.  She had not
spoken of herself at all, but had talked nearly all the time of
Barbara, praising her beauty and high spirit; growing pale once or
twice, and evidently drinking in with secret avidity every allusion
to Miltoun.  Clearly, her feelings had not changed, though she would
not show them!  Courtier's pity for her became well-nigh violent.

It was in such a mood, mingled with very different feelings, that he
donned evening clothes and set out to attend the last gathering of
the season at Valleys House, a function which, held so late in July,
was perforce almost perfectly political.

Mounting the wide and shining staircase, that had so often baffled
the arithmetic of little Ann, he was reminded of a picture entitled
'The Steps to Heaven' in his nursery four-and-thirty years before.
At the top of this staircase, and surrounded by acquaintances, he
came on Harbinger, who nodded curtly.  The young man's handsome face
and figure appeared to Courtier's jaundiced eye more obviously
successful and complacent than ever; so that he passed him by
sardonically, and manoeuvred his way towards Lady Valleys, whom he
could perceive stationed, like a general, in a little cleared space,
where to and fro flowed constant streams of people, like the rays of
a star.  She was looking her very best, going well with great and
highly-polished spaces; and she greeted Courtier with a special
cordiality of tone, which had in it, besides kindness towards one who
must be feeling a strange bird, a certain diplomatic quality,
compounded of desire, as it were, to 'warn him off,' and fear of
saying something that might irritate and make him more dangerous.
She had heard, she said, that he was bound for Persia; she hoped he
was not going to try and make things more difficult there; then with
the words: "So good of you to have come!" she became once more the
centre of her battlefield.

Perceiving that he was finished with, Courtier stood back against a
wall and watched.  Thus isolated, he was like a solitary cuckoo
contemplating the gyrations of a flock of rooks.  Their motions
seemed a little meaningless to one so far removed from all the
fetishes and shibboleths of Westminster.  He heard them discussing
Miltoun's speech, the real significance of which apparently had only
just been grasped.  The words 'doctrinaire,' 'extremist,' came to his
ears, together with the saying 'a new force.'  People were evidently
puzzled, disturbed, not pleased--as if some star not hitherto
accounted for had suddenly appeared amongst the proper
constellations.

Searching this crowd for Barbara, Courtier had all the time an uneasy
sense of shame.  What business had he to come amongst these people so
strange to him, just for the sake of seeing her!  What business had
he to be hankering after this girl at all, knowing in his heart that
he could not stand the atmosphere she lived in for a week, and that
she was utterly unsuited for any atmosphere that he could give her;
to say nothing of the unlikelihood that he could flutter the pulses
of one half his age!

A voice, behind him said: "Mr. Courtier!"

He turned, and there was Barbara.

"I want to talk to you about something serious: Will you come into
the picture gallery?"

When at last they were close to a family group of Georgian Caradocs,
and could as it were shut out the throng sufficiently for private
speech, she began:

"Miltoun's so horribly unhappy; I don't know what to do for him: He's
making himself ill!"

And she suddenly looked up, in Courtier's face.  She seemed to him
very young, and touching, at that moment.  Her eyes had a gleam of
faith in them, like a child's eyes; as if she relied on him to
straighten out this tangle, to tell her not only about Miltoun's
trouble, but about all life, its meaning, and the secret of its
happiness: And he said gently:

"What can I do?  Mrs. Noel is in Town.  But that's no good, unless--"
Not knowing how to finish this sentence; he was silent.

"I wish I were Miltoun," she muttered.

At that quaint saying, Courtier was hard put to it not to take hold
of the hands so close to him.  This flash of rebellion in her had
quickened all his blood.  But she seemed to have seen what had passed
in him, for her next speech was chilly.

"It's no good; stupid of me to be worrying you."

"It is quite impossible for you to worry me."

Her eyes lifted suddenly from her glove, and looked straight into
his.

"Are you really going to Persia?"

"Yes."

"But I don't want you to, not yet!" and turning suddenly, she left
him.

Strangely disturbed, Courtier remained motionless, consulting the
grave stare of the group of Georgian Caradocs.

A voice said:

"Good painting, isn't it?"

Behind him was Lord Harbinger.  And once more the memory of Lady
Casterley's words; the memory of the two figures with joined hands on
the balcony above the election crowd; all his latent jealousy of this
handsome young Colossus, his animus against one whom he could, as it
were, smell out to be always fighting on the winning side; all his
consciousness too of what a lost cause his own was, his doubt whether
he were honourable to look on it as a cause at all, flared up in
Courtier, so that his answer was a stare.  On Harbinger's face, too,
there had come a look of stubborn violence slowly working up towards
the surface.

"I said: 'Good, isn't it?' Mr. Courtier."

"I heard you."

"And you were pleased to answer?"

"Nothing."

"With the civility which might be expected of your habits."

Coldly disdainful, Courtier answered:

"If you want to say that sort of thing, please choose a place where I
can reply to you," and turned abruptly on his heel.

But he ground his teeth as he made his way out into the street.

In Hyde Park the grass was parched and dewless under a sky whose
stars were veiled by the heat and dust haze.  Never had Courtier so
bitterly wanted the sky's consolation--the blessed sense of
insignificance in the face of the night's dark beauty, which,
dwarfing all petty rage and hunger, made men part of its majesty,
exalted them to a sense of greatness.




CHAPTER VII

It was past four o'clock the following day when Barbara issued from
Valleys House on foot; clad in a pale buff frock, chosen for
quietness, she attracted every eye.  Very soon entering a taxi-cab,
she drove to the Temple, stopped at the Strand entrance, and walked
down the little narrow lane into the heart of the Law.  Its votaries
were hurrying back from the Courts, streaming up from their Chambers
for tea, or escaping desperately to Lord's or the Park--young
votaries, unbound as yet by the fascination of fame or fees.  And
each, as he passed, looked at Barbara, with his fingers itching to
remove his hat, and a feeling that this was She.  After a day spent
amongst precedents and practice, after six hours at least of trying
to discover what chance A had of standing on his rights, or B had of
preventing him, it was difficult to feel otherwise about that calm
apparition--like a golden slim tree walking.  One of them, asked by
her the way to Miltoun's staircase, preceded her with shy ceremony,
and when she had vanished up those dusty stairs, lingered on, hoping
that she might find her visitee out, and be obliged to return and ask
him the way back.  But she did not come, and he went sadly away,
disturbed to the very bottom of all that he owned in fee simple.

In fact, no one answered Barbara's knock, and discovering that the
door yielded, she walked through the lobby past the clerk's den,
converted to a kitchen, into the sitting-room.  It was empty.  She
had never been to Miltoun's rooms before, and she stared about her
curiously.  Since he did not practise, much of the proper gear was
absent.  The room indeed had a worn carpet, a few old chairs, and was
lined from floor to ceiling with books.  But the wall space between
the windows was occupied by an enormous map of England, scored all
over with figures and crosses; and before this map stood an immense
desk, on which were piles of double foolscap covered with Miltoun's
neat and rather pointed writing.  Barbara examined them, puckering up
her forehead; she knew that he was working at a book on the land
question; but she had never realized that the making of a book
requited so much writing.  Papers, too, and Blue Books littered a
large bureau on which stood bronze busts of AEschylus and Dante.

"What an uncomfortable place!" she thought.  The room, indeed, had an
atmosphere, a spirit, which depressed her horribly.  Seeing a few
flowers down in the court below, she had a longing to get out to
them.  Then behind her she heard the sound of someone talking.  But
there was no one in the room; and the effect of this disrupted
soliloquy, which came from nowhere, was so uncanny, that she
retreated to the door.  The sound, as of two spirits speaking in one
voice, grew louder, and involuntarily she glanced at the busts.  They
seemed quite blameless.  Though the sound had been behind her when
she was at the window, it was again behind her now that she was at
the door; and she suddenly realized that it was issuing from a
bookcase in the centre of the wall.  Barbara had her father's nerve,
and walking up to the bookcase she perceived that it had been affixed
to, and covered, a door that was not quite closed.  She pulled it
towards her, and passed through.  Across the centre of an unkempt
bedroom Miltoun was striding, dressed only in his shirt and trousers.
His feet were bare, and his head and hair dripping wet; the look on
his thin dark face went to Barbara's heart.  She ran forward, and
took his hand.  This was burning hot, but the sight of her seemed to
have frozen his tongue and eyes.  And the contrast of his burning
hand with this frozen silence, frightened Barbara horribly.  She
could think of nothing but to put her other hand to his forehead.
That too was burning hot!

"What brought you here?" he said.

She could only murmur:

"Oh! Eusty!  Are you ill?"

Miltoun took hold of her wrists.

"It's all right, I've been working too hard; got a touch of fever."

"So I can feel," murmured Barbara.  "You ought to be in bed.  Come
home with me."

Miltoun smiled.  "It's not a case for leeches."

The look of his smile, the sound of his voice, sent a shudder through
her.

"I'm not going to leave you here alone."

But Miltoun's grasp tightened on her wrists.

"My dear Babs, you will do what I tell you.  Go home, hold your
tongue, and leave me to burn out in peace."

Barbara sustained that painful grip without wincing; she had regained
her calmness.

"You must come!  You haven't anything here, not even a cool drink."

"My God!  Barley water!"

The scorn he put into those two words was more withering than a whole
philippic against redemption by creature comforts.  And feeling it
dart into her, Barbara closed her lips tight.  He had dropped her
wrists, and again, begun pacing up and down; suddenly he stopped:

        "'The stars, sun, moon all shrink away,
               A desert vast, without a bound,
          And nothing left to eat or drink,

               "And a dark desert all around.'

"You should read your Blake, Audrey."

Barbara turned quickly, and went out frightened.  She passed through
the sitting-room and corridor on to the staircase.  He was ill-
raving!  The fever in Miltoun's veins seemed to have stolen through
the clutch of his hands into her own veins.  Her face was burning,
she thought confusedly, breathed unevenly.  She felt sore, and at the
same time terribly sorry; and withal there kept rising in her the
gusty memory of Harbingers kiss.

She hurried down the stairs, turned by instinct down-hill and found
herself on the Embankment.  And suddenly, with her inherent power of
swift decision, she hailed a cab, and drove to the nearest telephone
office.




CHAPTER VIII

To a woman like Audrey Noel, born to be the counterpart and
complement of another,--whose occupations and effort were inherently
divorced from the continuity of any stiff and strenuous purpose of
her own, the uprooting she had voluntarily undergone was a serious
matter.

Bereaved of the faces of her flowers, the friendly sighing of her
lime-tree, the wants of her cottagers; bereaved of that busy monotony
of little home things which is the stay and solace of lonely women,
she was extraordinarily lost.  Even music for review seemed to have
failed her.  She had never lived in London, so that she had not the
refuge of old haunts and habits, but had to make her own--and to make
habits and haunts required a heart that could at least stretch out
feelers and lay hold of things, and her heart was not now able.  When
she had struggled with her Edwardian flat, and laid down her simple
routine of meals, she was as stranded as ever was, convict let out of
prison.  She had not even that great support, the necessity of hiding
her feelings for fear of disturbing others.  She was planted there,
with her longing and grief, and nothing, nobody, to take her out of
herself.  Having wilfully embraced this position, she tried to make
the best of it, feeling it less intolerable, at all events, than
staying on at Monkland, where she had made that grievous, and
unpardonable error--falling in love.

This offence, on the part of one who felt within herself a great
capacity to enjoy and to confer happiness, had arisen--like the other
grievous and unpardonable offence, her marriage--from too much
disposition to yield herself to the personality of another.  But it
was cold comfort to know that the desire to give and to receive love
had twice over left her--a dead woman.  Whatever the nature of those
immature sensations with which, as a girl of twenty, she had accepted
her husband, in her feeling towards Miltoun there was not only
abandonment, but the higher flame of self-renunciation.  She wanted
to do the best for him, and had not even the consolation of the
knowledge that she had sacrificed herself for his advantage.  All had
been taken out of her hands!  Yet with characteristic fatalism she
did not feel rebellious.  If it were ordained that she should, for
fifty, perhaps sixty years, repent in sterility and ashes that first
error of her girlhood, rebellion was, none the less, too far-fetched.
If she rebelled, it would not be in spirit, but in action.  General
principles were nothing to her; she lost no force brooding over the
justice or injustice of her situation, but merely tried to digest its
facts.

The whole day, succeeding Courtier's visit, was spent by her in the
National Gallery, whose roof, alone of all in London, seemed to offer
her protection.  She had found one painting, by an Italian master,
the subject of which reminded her of Miltoun; and before this she sat
for a very long time, attracting at last the gouty stare of an
official.  The still figure of this lady, with the oval face and
grave beauty, both piqued his curiosity, and stimulated certain moral
qualms.  She, was undoubtedly waiting for her lover.  No woman, in
his experience, had ever sat so long before a picture without
ulterior motive; and he kept his eyes well opened to see what this
motive would be like.  It gave him, therefore, a sensation almost
amounting to chagrin when coming round once more, he found they had
eluded him and gone off together without coming under his inspection.
Feeling his feet a good deal, for he had been on them all day, he sat
down in the hollow which she had left behind her; and against his
will found himself also looking at the picture.  It was painted in a
style he did not care for; the face of the subject, too, gave him the
queer feeling that the gentleman was being roasted inside.  He had
not been sitting there long, however, before he perceived the lady
standing by the picture, and the lips of the gentleman in the picture
moving.  It seemed to him against the rules, and he got up at once,
and went towards it; but as he did so, he found that his eyes were
shut, and opened them hastily.  There was no one there.

>From the National Gallery, Audrey had gone into an A.B.C. for tea,
and then home.  Before the Mansions was a taxi-cab, and the maid met
her with the news that 'Lady Caradoc' was in the sitting-room.

Barbara was indeed standing in the middle of the room with a look on
her face such as her father wore sometimes on the racecourse, in the
hunting field, or at stormy Cabinet Meetings, a look both resolute
and sharp.  She spoke at once:

"I got your address from Mr. Courtier.  My brother is ill.  I'm
afraid it'll be brain fever, I think you had better go and see him at
his rooms in the Temple; there's no time to be lost."

To Audrey everything in the room seemed to go round; yet all her
senses were preternaturally acute, so that she could distinctly smell
the mud of the river at low tide.  She said, with a shudder:

"Oh! I will go; yes, I will go at once."

"He's quite alone.  He hasn't asked for you; but I think your going
is the only chance.  He took me for you.  You told me once you were a
good nurse."

"Yes."

The room was steady enough now, but she had lost the preternatural
acuteness of her senses, and felt confused.  She heard Barbara say:
"I can take you to the door in my cab," and murmuring: "I will get
ready," went into her bedroom.  For a moment she was so utterly
bewildered that she did nothing.  Then every other thought was lost
in a strange, soft, almost painful delight, as if some new instinct
were being born in her; and quickly, but without confusion or hurry,
she began packing.  She put into a valise her own toilet things; then
flannel, cotton-wool, eau de Cologne, hot-water bottle, Etna, shawls,
thermometer, everything she had which could serve in illness.
Changing to a plain dress, she took up the valise and returned to
Barbara.  They went out together to the cab.  The moment it began to
bear her to this ordeal at once so longed-for and so terrible, fear
came over her again, so that she screwed herself into the corner,
very white and still.  She was aware of Barbara calling to the
driver: "Go by the Strand, and stop at a poulterer's for ice!"  And,
when the bag of ice had been handed in, heard her saying: "I will
bring you all you want--if he is really going to be ill."

Then, as the cab stopped, and the open doorway of the staircase was
before her, all her courage came back.

She felt the girl's warm hand against her own, and grasping her
valise and the bag of ice, got out, and hurried up the steps.




CHAPTER IX

On leaving Nettlefold, Miltoun had gone straight back to his rooms,
and begun at once to work at his book on the land question.  He
worked all through that night--his third night without sleep, and all
the following day.  In the evening, feeling queer in the head, he
went out and walked up and down the Embankment.  Then, fearing to go
to bed and lie sleepless, he sat down in his arm-chair.  Falling
asleep there, he had fearful dreams, and awoke unrefreshed.  After
his bath, he drank coffee, and again forced himself to work.  By the
middle of the day he felt dizzy and exhausted, but utterly
disinclined to eat.  He went out into the hot Strand, bought himself
a necessary book, and after drinking more coffee, came back and again
began to work.  At four o'clock he found that he was not taking in
the words.  His head was burning hot, and he went into his bedroom to
bathe it.  Then somehow he began walking up and down, talking to
himself, as Barbara had found him.

She had no sooner gone, than he felt utterly exhausted.  A small
crucifix hung over his bed, and throwing himself down before it, he
remained motionless with his face buried in the coverlet, and his
arms stretched out towards the wall.  He did not pray, but merely
sought rest from sensation.  Across his half-hypnotized consciousness
little threads of burning fancy kept shooting.  Then he could feel
nothing but utter physical sickness, and against this his will
revolted.  He resolved that he would not be ill, a ridiculous log for
women to hang over.  But the moments of sickness grew longer and more
frequent; and to drive them away he rose from his knees, and for some
time again walked up and down; then, seized with vertigo, he was
obliged to sit on the bed to save himself from falling.  From being
burning hot he had become deadly cold, glad to cover himself with the
bedclothes.  The heat soon flamed up in him again; but with a sick
man's instinct he did not throw off the clothes, and stayed quite
still.  The room seemed to have turned to a thick white substance
like a cloud, in which he lay enwrapped, unable to move hand or foot.
His sense of smell and hearing had become unnaturally acute; he
smelled the distant streets, flowers, dust, and the leather of his
books, even the scent left by Barbara's clothes, and a curious.
odour of river mud.  A clock struck six, he counted each stroke; and
instantly the whole world seemed full of striking clocks, the sound
of horses' hoofs, bicycle bells, people's footfalls.  His sense of
vision, on the contrary, was absorbed in consciousness of this white
blanket of cloud wherein he was lifted above the earth, in the midst
of a dull incessant hammering.  On the surface of the cloud there
seemed to be forming a number of little golden spots; these spots
were moving, and he saw that they were toads.  Then, beyond them, a
huge face shaped itself, very dark, as if of bronze, with eyes
burning into his brain.  The more he struggled to get away from these
eyes, the more they bored and burned into him.  His voice was gone,
so that he was unable to cry out, and suddenly the face marched over
him.

When he recovered consciousness his head was damp with moisture
trickling from something held to his forehead by a figure leaning
above him.  Lifting his hand he touched a cheek; and hearing a sob
instantly suppressed, he sighed.  His hand was gently taken; he felt
kisses on it.

The room was so dark, that he could scarcely see her face--his sight
too was dim; but he could hear her breathing and the least sound of
her dress and movements--the scent too of her hands and hair seemed
to envelop him, and in the midst of all the acute discomfort of his
fever, he felt the band round his brain relax.  He did not ask how
long she had been there, but lay quite still, trying to keep his eyes
on her, for fear of that face, which seemed lurking behind the air,
ready to march on him again.  Then feeling suddenly that he could not
hold it back, he beckoned, and clutched at her, trying to cover
himself with the protection of her breast.  This time his swoon was
not so deep; it gave way to delirium, with intervals when he knew
that she was there, and by the shaded candle light could see her in a
white garment, floating close to him, or sitting still with her hand
on his; he could even feel the faint comfort of the ice cap, and of
the scent of eau de Cologne.  Then he would lose all consciousness of
her presence, and pass through into the incoherent world, where the
crucifix above his bed seemed to bulge and hang out, as if it must
fall on him.  He conceived a violent longing to tear it down, which
grew till he had struggled up in bed and wrenched it from off the
wall.  Yet a mysterious consciousness of her presence permeated even
his darkest journeys into the strange land; and once she seemed to be
with him, where a strange light showed them fields and trees, a dark
line of moor, and a bright sea, all whitened, and flashing with sweet
violence.

Soon after dawn he had a long interval of consciousness, and took in
with a sort of wonder her presence in the low chair by his bed.  So
still she sat in a white loose gown, pale with watching, her eyes
immovably fixed on him, her lips pressed together, and quivering at
his faintest motion.  He drank in desperately the sweetness of her
face, which had so lost remembrance of self.




CHAPTER X

Barbara gave the news of her brother's illness to no one else, common
sense telling her to run no risk of disturbance.  Of her own
initiative, she brought a doctor, and went down twice a day to hear
reports of Miltoun's progress.

As a fact, her father and mother had gone to Lord Dennis, for
Goodwood, and the chief difficulty had been to excuse her own neglect
of that favourite Meeting.  She had fallen back on the half-truth
that Eustace wanted her in Town; and, since Lord and Lady Valleys had
neither of them shaken off a certain uneasiness about their son, the
pretext sufficed:

It was not until the sixth day, when the crisis was well past and
Miltoun quite free from fever, that she again went down to
Nettlefold.

On arriving she at once sought out her mother, whom she found in her
bedroom, resting.  It had been very hot at Goodwood.

Barbara was not afraid of her--she was not, indeed, afraid of anyone,
except Miltoun, and in some strange way, a little perhaps of
Courtier; yet, when the maid had gone, she did not at once begin her
tale.  Lady Valleys, who at Goodwood had just heard details of a
Society scandal, began a carefully expurgated account of it suitable
to her daughter's ears--for some account she felt she must give to
somebody.

"Mother," said Barbara suddenly, "Eustace has been ill.  He's out of
danger now, and going on all right."  Then, looking hard at the
bewildered lady, she added: "Mrs. Noel is nursing him."

The past tense in which illness had been mentioned, checking at the
first moment any rush of panic in Lady Valleys, left her confused by
the situation conjured up in Barbara's last words.  Instead of
feeding that part of man which loves a scandal, she was being fed,
always an unenviable sensation.  A woman did not nurse a man under
such circumstances without being everything to him, in the world's
eyes.  Her daughter went on:

"I took her to him.  It seemed the only thing to do--since it's all
through fretting for her.  Nobody knows, of course, except the
doctor, and--Stacey."

"Heavens!" muttered Lady Valleys.

"It has saved him."

The mother instinct in Lady Valleys took sudden fright.  "Are you
telling me the truth, Babs?  Is he really out of danger?  How wrong
of you not to let me know before?"

But Barbara did not flinch; and her mother relapsed into rumination.

"Stacey is a cat!" she said suddenly.  The expurgated details of the
scandal she had been retailing to her daughter had included the usual
maid.  She could not find it in her to enjoy the irony of this
coincidence.  Then, seeing Barbara smile, she said tartly:

"I fail to see the joke."

"Only that I thought you'd enjoy my throwing Stacey in, dear."

"What!  You mean she doesn't know?"

"Not a word."

Lady Valleys smiled.

"What a little wretch you are, Babs!  "Maliciously she added: "Claud
and his mother are coming over from Whitewater, with Bertie and Lily
Malvezin, you'd better go and dress;" and her eyes searched her
daughter's so shrewdly, that a flush rose to the girl's cheeks.

When she had gone, Lady Valleys rang for her maid again, and relapsed
into meditation.  Her first thought was to consult her husband; her
second that secrecy was strength.  Since no one knew but Barbara, no
one had better know.

Her astuteness and experience comprehended the far-reaching
probabilities of this affair.  It would not do to take a single false
step.  If she had no one's action to control but her own and
Barbara's, so much the less chance of a slip.  Her mind was a strange
medley of thoughts and feelings, almost comic, well-nigh tragic; of
worldly prudence, and motherly instinct; of warm-blooded sympathy
with all love-affairs, and cool-blooded concern for her son's career.
It was not yet too late perhaps to prevent real mischief; especially
since it was agreed by everyone that the woman was no adventuress.
Whatever was done, they must not forget that she had nursed him--
saved him, Barbara had said!  She must be treated with all kindness
and consideration.

Hastening her toilette, she in turn went to her daughter's room.

Barbara was already dressed, leaning out of her window towards the
sea.

Lady Valleys began almost timidly:

"My dear, is Eustace out of bed yet?"

"He was to get up to-day for an hour or two."

"I see.  Now, would there be any danger if you and I went up and took
charge over from Mrs. Noel?"

"Poor Eusty!"

"Yes, yes!  But, exercise your judgment.  Would it harm him?"

Barbara was silent.  "No," she said at last, "I don't suppose it
would, now; but it's for the doctor to say."

Lady Valleys exhibited a manifest relief.

"We'll see him first, of course.  Eustace will have to have an
ordinary nurse, I suppose, for a bit."

Looking stealthily at Barbara, she added:

"I mean to be very nice to her; but one mustn't be romantic, you
know, Babs."

>From the little smile on Barbara's lips she derived no sense of
certainty; indeed she was visited by all her late disquietude about
her young daughter, by all the feeling that she, as well as Miltoun,
was hovering on the verge of some folly.

"Well, my dear," she said, "I am going down."

But Barbara lingered a little longer in that bedroom where ten nights
ago she had lain tossing, till in despair she went and cooled herself
in the dark sea.

Her last little interview with Courtier stood between her and a fresh
meeting with Harbinger, whom at the Valleys House gathering she had
not suffered to be alone with her.  She came down late.

That same evening, out on the beach road, under a sky swarming with
stars, the people were strolling--folk from the towns, down for their
fortnight's holiday.  In twos and threes, in parties of six or eight,
they passed the wall at the end of Lord Dennis's little domain; and
the sound of their sparse talk and laughter, together with the
sighing of the young waves, was blown over the wall to the ears of
Harbinger, Bertie, Barbara, and Lily Malvezin, when they strolled out
after dinner to sniff the sea.  The holiday-makers stared dully at
the four figures in evening dress looking out above their heads; they
had other things than these to think of, becoming more and more
silent as the night grew dark.  The four young people too were rather
silent.  There was something in this warm night, with its sighing,
and its darkness, and its stars, that was not favourable to talk, so
that presently they split into couples, drifting a little apart.

Standing there, gripping the wall, it seemed to Harbinger that there
were no words left in the world.  Not even his worst enemy could have
called this young man romantic; yet that figure beside him, the gleam
of her neck and her pale cheek in the dark, gave him perhaps the most
poignant glimpse of mystery that he had ever had.  His mind,
essentially that of a man of affairs, by nature and by habit at home
amongst the material aspects of things, was but gropingly conscious
that here, in this dark night, and the dark sea, and the pale figure
of this girl whose heart was dark to him and secret, there was
perhaps something--yes, something--which surpassed the confines of
his philosophy, something beckoning him on out of his snug compound
into the desert of divinity.  If so, it was soon gone in the aching
of his senses at the scent of her hair, and the longing to escape
from this weird silence.

"Babs," he said; "have you forgiven me?"

Her answer came, without turn of head, natural, indifferent:

"Yes--I told you so."

"Is that all you have to say to a fellow?"

"What shall we talk about--the running of Casetta?"

Deep down within him Harbinger uttered a noiseless oath.  Something
sinister was making her behave like this to him!  It was that fellow-
-that fellow!  And suddenly he said:

"Tell me this----" then speech seemed to stick in his throat.  No!
If there were anything in that, he preferred not to hear it.  There
was a limit!

Down below, a pair of lovers passed, very silent, their arms round
each other's waists.

Barbara turned and walked away towards the house.




CHAPTER XI

The days when Miltoun was first allowed out of bed were a time of
mingled joy and sorrow to her who had nursed him.  To see him sitting
up, amazed at his own weakness, was happiness, yet to think that he
would be no more wholly dependent, no more that sacred thing, a
helpless creature, brought her the sadness of a mother whose child no
longer needs her.  With every hour he would now get farther from her,
back into the fastnesses of his own spirit.  With every hour she
would be less his nurse and comforter, more the woman he loved.  And
though that thought shone out in the obscure future like a glamorous
flower, it brought too much wistful uncertainty to the present.  She
was very tired, too, now that all excitement was over--so tired that
she hardly knew what she did or where she moved.  But a smile had
become so faithful to her eyes that it clung there above the shadows
of fatigue, and kept taking her lips prisoner.

Between the two bronze busts she had placed a bowl of lilies of the
valley; and every free niche in that room of books had a little vase
of roses to welcome Miltoun's return.

He was lying back in his big leather chair, wrapped in a Turkish gown
of Lord Valleys'--on which Barbara had laid hands, having failed to
find anything resembling a dressing-gown amongst her brother's
austere clothing.  The perfume of lilies had overcome the scent of
books, and a bee, dusky, adventurer, filled the room with his
pleasant humming.

They did not speak, but smiled faintly, looking at one another.  In
this still moment, before passion had returned to claim its own,
their spirits passed through the sleepy air, and became entwined, so
that neither could withdraw that soft, slow, encountering glance.  In
mutual contentment, each to each, close as music to the strings of a
violin, their spirits clung--so lost, the one in the other, that
neither for that brief time seemed to know which was self.

In fulfilment of her resolution, Lady Valleys, who had returned to
Town by a morning train, started with Barbara for the Temple about
three in the after noon, and stopped at the doctor's on the way.  The
whole thing would be much simpler if Eustace were fit to be moved at
once to Valleys House; and with much relief she found that the doctor
saw no danger in this course.  The recovery had been remarkable--
touch and go for bad brain fever just avoided!  Lord Miltoun's
constitution was extremely sound.  Yes, he would certainly favour a
removal.  His rooms were too confined in this weather.  Well nursed--
(decidedly) Oh; yes!  Quite!  And the doctor's eyes became perhaps a
trifle more intense.  Not a professional, he understood.  It might be
as well to have another nurse, if they were making the change.  They
would have this lady knocking up.  Just so!  Yes, he would see to
that.  An ambulance carriage he thought advisable.  That could all be
arranged for this afternoon--at once--he himself would look to it.
They might take Lord Miltoun off just as he was; the men would know
what to do.  And when they had him at Valleys House, the moment he
showed interest in his food, down to the sea-down to the sea!  At
this time of year nothing like it!  Then with regard to nourishment,
he would be inclined already to shove in a leetle stimulant, a
thimbleful perhaps four times a day with food--not without--mixed
with an egg, with arrowroot, with custard.  A week would see him on
his legs, a fortnight at the sea make him as good a man as ever.
Overwork--burning the candle--a leetlemore would have seen a very
different state of things!  Quite so! quite so!  Would come round
himself before dinner, and make sure.  His patient might feel it just
at first!  He bowed Lady Valleys out; and when she had gone, sat down
at his telephone with a smile flickering on his clean-cut lips,

Greatly fortified by this interview, Lady Valleys rejoined her
daughter in the ear; but while it slid on amongst the multitudinous
traffic, signs of unwonted nervousness began to start out through the
placidity of her face.

"I wish, my dear," she said suddenly, "that someone else had to do
this.  Suppose Eustace refuses!"

"He won't," Barbara answered; "she looks so tired, poor dear.
Besides----"

Lady Valleys gazed with curiosity at that young face, which had
flushed pink.  Yes, this daughter of hers was a woman already, with
all a woman's intuitions.  She said gravely:

"It was a rash stroke of yours, Babs; let's hope it won't lead to
disaster."

Barbara bit her lips.

"If you'd seen him as I saw him!  And, what disaster?  Mayn't they
love each other, if they want?"

Lady Valleys swallowed a grimace.  It was so exactly her own point of
view.  And yet----!

"That's only the beginning," she said; "you forget the sort of boy
Eustace is."

"Why can't the poor thing be let out of her cage?" cried Barbara.
"What good does it do to anyone?  Mother, if ever, when I am married,
I want to get free, I will!"

The tone of her voice was so quivering, and unlike the happy voice of
Barbara, that Lady Valleys involuntarily caught hold of her hand and
squeezed it hard.

"My dear sweet," she said, "don't let's talk of such gloomy things."

"I mean it.  Nothing shall stop me."

But Lady Valleys' face had suddenly become rather grim.

"So we think, child; it's not so simple."

"It can't be worse, anyway," muttered Barbara, "than being buried
alive as that wretched woman is."

For answer Lady Valleys only murmured:

"The doctor promised that ambulance carriage at four o'clock.  What
am I going to say?"

"She'll understand when you look at her.  She's that sort."

The door was opened to them by Mrs. Noel herself.

It was the first time Lady Valleys had seen her in a house, and there
was real curiosity mixed with the assurance which masked her
nervousness.  A pretty creature, even lovely!  But the quite genuine
sympathy in her words: "I am truly grateful.  You must be quite worn
out," did not prevent her adding hastily: "The doctor says he must be
got home out of these hot rooms.  We'll wait here while you tell
him."

And then she saw that it was true; this woman was the sort who
understood.

Left in the dark passage, she peered round at Barbara.

The girl was standing against the wall with her head thrown back.
Lady Valleys could not see her face; but she felt all of a sudden
exceedingly uncomfortable, and whispered:

"Two murders and a theft, Babs; wasn't it 'Our Mutual Friend'?"

"Mother!"

"What?"

"Her face!  When you're going to throw away a flower, it looks at
you!"

"My dear!" murmured Lady Valleys, thoroughly distressed, "what things
you're saying to-day!"

This lurking in a dark passage, this whispering girl--it was all
queer, unlike an experience in proper life.

And then through the reopened door she saw Miltoun, stretched out in
a chair, very pale, but still with that look about his eyes and lips,
which of all things in the world had a chastening effect on Lady
Valleys, making her feel somehow incurably mundane.

She said rather timidly:

"I'm so glad you're better, dear.  What a time you must have had!
It's too bad that I knew nothing till yesterday!"

But Miltoun's answer was, as usual, thoroughly disconcerting.

"Thanks, yes!  I have had a perfect time--and have now to pay for it,
I suppose."

Held back by his smile from bending to kiss him, poor Lady Valleys
fidgeted from head to foot.  A sudden impulse of sheer womanliness
caused a tear to fall on his hand.

When Miltoun perceived that moisture, he said:

"It's all right, mother.  I'm quite willing to come."

Still wounded by his voice, Lady Valleys hardened instantly.  And
while preparing for departure she watched the two furtively.  They
hardly looked at one another, and when they did, their eyes baffled
her.  The expression was outside her experience, belonging as it were
to a different world, with its faintly smiling, almost shining,
gravity.

Vastly relieved when Miltoun, covered with a fur, had been taken down
to the carriage, she lingered to speak to Mrs. Noel.

"We owe you a great debt.  It might have been so much worse.  You
mustn't be disconsolate.  Go to bed and have a good long rest."  And
from the door, she murmured again: "He will come and thank you, when
he's well."

Descending the stone stairs, she thought: "'Anonyma'--'Anonyma'--yes,
it was quite the name."  And suddenly she saw Barbara come running up
again.

"What is it, Babs?"

Barbara answered:

"Eustace would like some of those lilies."  And, passing Lady
Valleys, she went on up to Miltoun's chambers.

Mrs. Noel was not in the sitting-room, and going to the bedroom door,
the girl looked in.

She was standing by the bed, drawing her hand over and over the white
surface of the pillow.  Stealing noiselessly back, Barbara caught up
the bunch of lilies, and fled.




CHAPTER XII

Miltoun, whose constitution, had the steel-like quality of Lady
Casterley's, had a very rapid convalescence.  And, having begun to
take an interest in his food, he was allowed to travel on the seventh
day to Sea House in charge of Barbara.

The two spent their time in a little summer-house close to the sea;
lying out on the beach under the groynes; and, as Miltoun grew
stronger, motoring and walking on the Downs.

To Barbara, keeping a close watch, he seemed tranquilly enough
drinking in from Nature what was necessary to restore balance after
the struggle, and breakdown of the past weeks.  Yet she could never
get rid of a queer feeling that he was not really there at all; to
look at him was like watching an uninhabited house that was waiting
for someone to enter.

During a whole fortnight he did not make a single allusion to Mrs.
Noel, till, on the very last morning, as they were watching the sea,
he said with his queer smile:

"It almost makes one believe her theory, that the old gods are not
dead.  Do you ever see them, Babs; or are you, like me, obtuse?"

Certainly about those lithe invasions of the sea-nymph waves, with
ashy, streaming hair, flinging themselves into the arms of the land,
there was the old pagan rapture, an inexhaustible delight, a
passionate soft acceptance of eternal fate, a wonderful acquiescence
in the untiring mystery of life.

But Barbara, ever disconcerted by that tone in his voice, and by this
quick dive into the waters of unaccustomed thought, failed to find an
answer.

Miltoun went on:

"She says, too, we can hear Apollo singing.  Shall we try."

But all that came was the sigh of the sea, and of the wind in the
tamarisk.

"No," muttered Miltoun at last, "she alone can hear it."

And Barbara saw, once more on his face that look, neither sad nor
impatient, but as of one uninhabited and waiting.

She left Sea House next day to rejoin her mother, who, having been to
Cowes, and to the Duchess of Gloucester's, was back in Town waiting
for Parliament to rise, before going off to Scotland.  And that same
afternoon the girl made her way to Mrs. Noel's flat.  In paying this
visit she was moved not so much by compassion, as by uneasiness, and
a strange curiosity.  Now that Miltoun was well again, she was
seriously disturbed in mind.  Had she made a mistake in summoning
Mrs. Noel to nurse him?

When she went into the little drawing-room Audrey was sitting in the
deep-cushioned window-seat with a book on her knee; and by the fact
that it was open at the index, Barbara judged that she had not been
reading too attentively.  She showed no signs of agitation at the
sight of her visitor, nor any eagerness to hear news of Miltoun.  But
the girl had not been five minutes in the room before the thought
came to her: "Why!  She has the same look as Eustace!"  She, too,
was like an empty tenement; without impatience, discontent, or grief-
-waiting!  Barbara had scarcely realized this with a curious sense of
discomposure, when Courtier was announced.  Whether there was in this
an absolute coincidence or just that amount of calculation which
might follow on his part from receipt of a note written from Sea
House--saying that Miltoun was well again, that she was coming up and
meant to go and thank Mrs. Noel--was not clear, nor were her own
sensations; and she drew over her face that armoured look which she
perhaps knew Courtier could not bear to see.  His face, at all
events, was very red when he shook hands.  He had come, he told Mrs.
Noel, to say good-bye.  He was definitely off next week.  Fighting
had broken out; the revolutionaries were greatly outnumbered.  Indeed
he ought to have been there long before!

Barbara had gone over to the window; she turned suddenly, and said:

"You were preaching peace two months ago!"

Courtier bowed.

"We are not all perfectly consistent, Lady Barbara.  These poor
devils have a holy cause."

Barbara held out her hand to Mrs. Noel.

"You only think their cause holy because they happen to be weak.
Good-bye, Mrs. Noel; the world is meant for the strong, isn't it!"

She intended that to hurt him; and from the tone of his voice, she
knew it had.

"Don't, Lady Barbara; from your mother, yes; not from you!"

"It's what I believe.  Good-bye!" And she went out.

She had told him that she did not want him to go--not yet; and he was
going!

But no sooner had she got outside, after that strange outburst, than
she bit her lips to keep back an angry, miserable feeling.  He had
been rude to her, she had been rude to him; that was the way they had
said good-bye!  Then, as she emerged into the sunlight, she thought:
"Oh! well; he doesn't care, and I'm sure I don't!"

She heard a voice behind her.

"May I get you a cab?" and at once the sore feeling began to die
away; but she did not look round, only smiled, and shook her head,
and made a little room for him on the pavement.

But though they walked, they did not at first talk.  There was rising
within Barbara a tantalizing devil of desire to know the feelings
that really lay behind that deferential gravity, to make him show her
how much he really cared.  She kept her eyes demurely lowered, but
she let the glimmer of a smile flicker about her lips; she knew too
that her cheeks were glowing, and for that she was not sorry.  Was
she not to have any--any--was he calmly to go away--without----And
she thought: "He shall say something!  He shall show me, without that
horrible irony of his!"

She said suddenly:

"Those two are just waiting--something will happen!"

"It is probable," was his grave answer.

She looked at him then--it pleased her to see him quiver as if that
glance had gone right into him; and she said softly:

"And I think they will be quite right."

She knew those were reckless words, nor cared very much what they
meant; but she knew the revolt in them would move him.  She saw from
his face that it had; and after a little pause, said:

"Happiness is the great thing," and with soft, wicked slowness:
"Isn't it, Mr. Courtier?"

But all the cheeriness had gone out of his face, which had grown
almost pale.  He lifted his hand, and let it drop.  Then she felt
sorry.  It was just as if he had asked her to spare him.

"As to that," he said: "The rough, unfortunately, has to be taken
with the smooth.  But life's frightfully jolly sometimes."

"As now?"

He looked at her with firm gravity, and answered

"As now."

A sense of utter mortification seized on Barbara.  He was too strong
for her--he was quixotic--he was hateful!  And, determined not to
show a sign, to be at least as strong as he, she said calmly:

"Now I think I'll have that cab!"


When she was in the cab, and he was standing with his hat lifted, she
looked at him in the way that women can, so that he did not realize
that she had looked.




CHAPTER XIII

When Miltoun came to thank her, Audrey Noel was waiting in the middle
of the room, dressed in white, her lips smiling, her dark eyes
smiling, still as a flower on a windless day.

In that first look passing between them, they forgot everything but
happiness.  Swallows, on the first day of summer, in their discovery
of the bland air, can neither remember that cold winds blow, nor
imagine the death of sunlight on their feathers, and, flitting hour
after hour over the golden fields, seem no longer birds, but just the
breathing of a new season--swallows were no more forgetful of
misfortune than were those two.  His gaze was as still as her very
self; her look at him had in at the quietude of all emotion.

When they' sat down to talk it was as if they had gone back to those
days at Monkland, when he had come to her so often to discuss
everything in heaven and earth.  And yet, over that tranquil eager
drinking--in of each other's presence, hovered a sort of awe.  It was
the mood of morning before the sun has soared.  The dew-grey cobwebs
enwrapped the flowers of their hearts--yet every prisoned flower
could be seen.  And he and she seemed looking through that web at the
colour and the deep-down forms enshrouded so jealously; each feared
too much to unveil the other's heart.  They were like lovers who,
rambling in a shy wood, never dare stay their babbling talk of the
trees and birds and lost bluebells, lest in the deep waters of a kiss
their star of all that is to come should fall and be drowned.  To
each hour its familiar--and the spirit of that hour was the spirit of
the white flowers in the bowl on the window-sill above her head.

They spoke of Monk-land, and Miltoun's illness; of his first speech,
his impressions of the House of Commons; of music, Barbara, Courtier,
the river.  He told her of his health, and described his days down by
the sea.  She, as ever, spoke little of herself, persuaded that it
could not interest even him; but she described a visit to the opera;
and how she had found a picture in the National Gallery which
reminded her of him.  To all these trivial things and countless
others, the tone of their voices--soft, almost murmuring, with a sort
of delighted gentleness--gave a high, sweet importance, a halo that
neither for the world would have dislodged from where it hovered.

It was past six when he got up to go, and there had not been a moment
to break the calm of that sacred feeling in both their hearts.  They
parted with another tranquil look, which seemed to say: 'It is well
with us--we have drunk of happiness.'

And in this same amazing calm Miltoun remained after he had gone
away, till about half-past nine in the evening, he started forth, to
walk down to the House.  It was now that sort of warm, clear night,
which in the country has firefly magic, and even over the Town
spreads a dark glamour.  And for Miltoun, in the delight of his new
health and well-being, with every sense alive and clean, to walk
through the warmth and beauty of this night was sheer pleasure.  He
passed by way of St. James's Park, treading down the purple shadows
of plane-tree leaves into the pools of lamplight, almost with
remorse--so beautiful, and as if alive, were they.  There were moths
abroad, and gnats, born on the water, and scent of new-mown grass
drifted up from the lawns.  His heart felt light as a swallow he had
seen that morning; swooping at a grey feather, carrying it along,
letting it flutter away, then diving to seize it again.  Such was his
elation, this beautiful night!  Nearing the House of Commons, he
thought he would walk a little longer, and turned westward to the
river: On that warm evening the water, without movement at turn of
tide, was like the black, snake-smooth hair of Nature streaming out
on her couch of Earth, waiting for the caress of a divine hand.  Far
away on the further; bank throbbed some huge machine, not stilled as
yet.  A few stars were out in the dark sky, but no moon to invest
with pallor the gleam of the lamps.  Scarcely anyone passed.  Miltoun
strolled along the river wall, then crossed, and came back in front
of the Mansions where she lived.  By the railing he stood still.  In
the sitting-room of her little flat there was no light, but the
casement window was wide open, and the crown of white flowers in the
bowl on the window-sill still gleamed out in the darkness like a
crescent moon lying on its face.  Suddenly, he saw two pale hands
rise--one on either side of that bowl, lift it, and draw it in.  And
he quivered, as though they had touched him.  Again those two hands
came floating up; they were parted now by darkness; the moon of
flowers was gone, in its place had been set handfuls of purple or
crimson blossoms.  And a puff of warm air rising quickly out of the
night drifted their scent of cloves into his face, so that he held
his breath for fear of calling out her name.

Again the hands had vanished--through the open window there was
nothing to be seen but darkness; and such a rush of longing seized on
Miltoun as stole from him all power of movement.  He could hear her
playing, now.  The murmurous current of that melody was like the
night itself, sighing, throbbing, languorously soft.  It seemed that
in this music she was calling him, telling him that she, too, was
longing; her heart, too, empty.  It died away; and at the window her
white figure appeared.  From that vision he could not, nor did he try
to shrink, but moved out into the, lamplight.  And he saw her
suddenly stretch out her hands to him, and withdraw them to her
breast.  Then all save the madness of his longing deserted Miltoun.
He ran down the little garden, across the hall, up the stairs.

The door was open.  He passed through.  There, in the sitting-room,
where the red flowers in the window scented all the air, it was dark,
and he could not at first see her, till against the piano he caught
the glimmer of her white dress.  She was sitting with hands resting
on the pale notes.  And falling on his knees, he buried his face
against her.  Then, without looking up, he raised his hands.  Her
tears fell on them covering her heart, that throbbed as if the
passionate night itself were breathing in there, and all but the
night and her love had stolen forth.





CHAPTER XIV

On a spur of the Sussex Downs, inland from Nettle-Cold, there stands
a beech-grove.  The traveller who enters it out of the heat and
brightness, takes off the shoes of his spirit before its, sanctity;
and, reaching the centre, across the clean beech-mat, he sits
refreshing his brow with air, and silence.  For the flowers of
sunlight on the ground under those branches are pale and rare, no
insects hum, the birds are almost mute.  And close to the border
trees are the quiet, milk-white sheep, in congregation, escaping from
noon heat.  Here, above fields and dwellings, above the ceaseless
network of men's doings, and the vapour of their talk, the traveller
feels solemnity.  All seems conveying divinity--the great white
clouds moving their wings above him, the faint longing murmur of the
boughs, and in far distance, the sea....  And for a space his
restlessness and fear know the peace of God.

So it was with Miltoun when he reached this temple, three days after
that passionate night, having walked for hours, alone and full of
conflict.  During those three days he had been borne forward on the
flood tide; and now, tearing himself out of London, where to think
was impossible, he had come to the solitude of the Downs to walk, and
face his new position.

For that position he saw to be very serious.  In the flush of full
realization, there was for him no question of renunciation.  She was
his, he hers; that was determined.  But what, then, was he to do?
There was no chance of her getting free.  In her husband's view, it
seemed, under no circumstances was marriage dissoluble.  Nor, indeed,
to Miltoun would divorce have made things easier, believing as he did
that he and she were guilty, and that for the guilty there could be
no marriage.  She, it was true, asked nothing but just to be his in
secret; and that was the course he knew most men would take, without
further thought.  There was no material reason in the world why he
should not so act, and maintain unchanged every other current of his
life.  It would be easy, usual.  And, with her faculty for self-
effacement, he knew she would not be unhappy.  But conscience, in
Miltoun, was a terrible and fierce thing.  In the delirium of his
illness it had become that Great Face which had marched over him.
And, though during the weeks of his recuperation, struggle of all
kind had ceased, now that he had yielded to his passion, conscience,
in a new and dismal shape, had crept up again to sit above his heart:
He must and would let this man, her husband, know; but even if that
caused no open scandal, could he go on deceiving those who, if they
knew of an illicit love, would no longer allow him to be their
representative?  If it were known that she was his mistress, he could
no longer maintain his position in public life--was he not therefore
in honour bound; of his own accord, to resign it?  Night and day he
was haunted by the thought: How can I, living in defiance of
authority, pretend to authority over my fellows?  How can I remain in
public life?  But if he did not remain in public life, what was he to
do?  That way of life was in his blood; he had been bred and born
into it; had thought of nothing else since he was a boy.  There was
no other occupation or interest that could hold him for a moment--he
saw very plainly that he would be cast away on the waters of
existence.

So the battle raged in his proud and twisted spirit, which took
everything so hard--his nature imperatively commanding him to keep
his work and his power for usefulness; his conscience telling him as
urgently that if he sought to wield authority, he must obey it.

He entered the beech-grove at the height of this misery, flaming with
rebellion against the dilemma which Fate had placed before him;
visited by gusts of resentment against a passion, which forced him to
pay the price, either of his career, or of his self-respect; gusts,
followed by remorse that he could so for one moment regret his love
for that tender creature.  The face of Lucifer was not more dark,
more tortured, than Miltoun's face in the twilight of the grove,
above those kingdoms of the world, for which his ambition and his
conscience fought.  He threw himself down among the trees; and
stretching out his arms, by chance touched a beetle trying to crawl
over the grassless soil.  Some bird had maimed it.  He took the
little creature up.  The beetle truly could no longer work, but it
was spared the fate lying before himself.  The beetle was not, as he
would be, when his power of movement was destroyed, conscious of his
own wasted life.  The world would not roll away down there.  He would
still see himself cumbering the ground, when his powers were taken,
from him.  This thought was torture.  Why had he been suffered to
meet her, to love her, and to be loved by her?  What had made him so
certain from the first moment, if she were not meant for him?  If he
lived to be a hundred, he would never meet another.  Why, because of
his love, must he bury the will and force of a man?  If there were no
more coherence in God's scheme than this, let him too be incoherent!
Let him hold authority, and live outside authority!  Why stifle his
powers for the sake of a coherence which did not exist!  That would
indeed be madness greater than that of a mad world!

There was no answer to his thoughts in the stillness of the grove,
unless it were the cooing of a dove, or the faint thudding of the
sheep issuing again into sunlight.  But slowly that stillness stole
into Miltoun's spirit.  "Is it like this in the grave?" he thought.
"Are the boughs of those trees the dark earth over me?  And the sound
in them the sound the dead hear when flowers are growing, and the
wind passing through them?  And is the feel of this earth how it
feels to lie looking up for ever at nothing?  Is life anything but a
nightmare, a dream; and is not this the reality?  And why my fury, my
insignificant flame, blowing here and there, when there is really no
wind, only a shroud of still air, and these flowers of sunlight that
have been dropped on me!  Why not let my spirit sleep, instead of
eating itself away with rage; why not resign myself at once to wait
for the substance, of which this is but the shadow!"

And he lay scarcely breathing, looking up at the unmoving branches
setting with their darkness the pearls of the sky.

"Is not peace enough?" he thought.  "Is not love enough?  Can I not
be reconciled, like a woman?  Is not that salvation, and happiness?
What is all the rest, but 'sound and fury, signifying nothing?"

And as though afraid to lose his hold of that thought, he got up and
hurried from the grove.

The whole wide landscape of field and wood, cut by the pale roads,
was glimmering under the afternoon sun, Here was no wild, wind-swept
land, gleaming red and purple, and guarded by the grey rocks; no home
of the winds, and the wild gods.  It was all serene and silver-
golden.  In place of the shrill wailing pipe of the hunting buzzard-
hawks half lost up in the wind, invisible larks were letting fall
hymns to tranquillity; and even the sea--no adventuring spirit
sweeping the shore with its wing--seemed to lie resting by the side
of the land.




CHAPTER XV

When on the afternoon of that same day Miltoun did not come, all the
chilly doubts which his presence alone kept away, crowded thick and
fast into the mind of one only too prone to distrust her own
happiness.  It could not last--how could it?

His nature and her own were so far apart!  Even in that giving of
herself which had been such happiness, she had yet doubted; for there
was so much in him that was to her mysterious.  All that he loved in
poetry and nature, had in it something craggy and culminating.  The
soft and fiery, the subtle and harmonious, seemed to leave him cold.
He had no particular love for all those simple natural things, birds,
bees, animals, trees, and flowers, that seemed to her precious and
divine.

Though it was not yet four o'clock she was already beginning to droop
like a flower that wants water.  But she sat down to her piano,
resolutely, till tea came; playing on and on with a spirit only half
present, the other half of her wandering in the Town, seeking for
Miltoun.  After tea she tried first to read, then to sew, and once
more came back to her piano.  The clock struck six; and as if its
last stroke had broken the armour of her mind, she felt suddenly sick
with anxiety.  Why was he so long?  But she kept on playing, turning
the pages without taking in the notes, haunted by the idea that he
might again have fallen ill.  Should she telegraph?  What good, when
she could not tell in the least where he might be?  And all the
unreasoning terror of not knowing where the loved one is, beset her
so that her hands, in sheer numbness, dropped from the keys.  Unable
to keep still, now, she wandered from window to door, out into the
little hall, and back hastily to the window.  Over her anxiety
brooded a darkness, compounded of vague growing fears.  What if it
were the end?  What if he had chosen this as the most merciful way of
leaving her?  But surely he would never be so cruel!  Close on the
heels of this too painful thought came reaction; and she told herself
that she was a fool.  He was at the House; something quite ordinary
was keeping him.  It was absurd to be anxious!  She would have to get
used to this now.  To be a drag on him would be dreadful.  Sooner
than that she would rather--yes--rather he never came back!  And she
took up her book, determined to read quietly till he came.  But the
moment she sat down her fears returned with redoubled force-the cold
sickly horrible feeling of uncertainty, of the knowledge that she
could do nothing but wait till she was relieved by something over
which she had no control.  And in the superstition that to stay there
in the window where she could see him come, was keeping him from her,
she went into her bedroom.  From there she could watch the sunset
clouds wine-dark over the river.  A little talking wind shivered
along the houses; the dusk began creeping in.  She would not turn on
the light, unwilling to admit that it was really getting late, but
began to change her dress, lingering desperately over every little
detail of her toilette, deriving therefrom a faint, mysterious
comfort, trying to make herself feel beautiful.  From sheer dread of
going back before he came, she let her hair fall, though it was quite
smooth and tidy, and began brushing it.  Suddenly she thought with
horror of her efforts at adornment--by specially preparing for him,
she must seem presumptuous to Fate.  At any little sound she stopped
and stood listening--save for her hair and eyes, as white from head
to foot as a double narcissus flower in the dusk, bending towards
some faint tune played to it somewhere oft in the fields.  But all
those little sounds ceased, one after another--they had meant
nothing; and each time, her spirit returning--within the pale walls
of the room, began once more to inhabit her lingering fingers.
During that hour in her bedroom she lived through years.  It was dark
when she left it.




CHAPTER XVI

When Miltoun at last came it was past nine o'clock.

Silent, but quivering all over; she clung to him in the hall; and
this passion of emotion, without sound to give it substance, affected
him profoundly.  How terribly sensitive and tender she was!  She
seemed to have no armour.  But though so stirred by her emotion, he
was none the less exasperated.  She incarnated at that moment the
life to which he must now resign himself--a life of unending
tenderness, consideration, and passivity.

For a long time he could not bring himself to speak of his decision.
Every look of her eyes, every movement of her body, seemed pleading
with him to keep silence.  But in Miltoun's character there was an
element of rigidity, which never suffered him to diverge from an
objective once determined.

When he had finished telling her, she only said:

"Why can't we go on in secret?"

And he felt with a sort of horror that he must begin his struggle
over again.  He got up, and threw open the window.  The sky was dark
above the river; the wind had risen.  That restless murmuration, and
the width of the night with its scattered stars, seemed to come
rushing at his face.  He withdrew from it, and leaning on the sill
looked down at her.  What flower-like delicacy she had!  There
flashed across him the memory of a drooping blossom, which, in the
Spring, he had seen her throw into the flames; with the words: "I
can't bear flowers to fade, I always want to burn them."  He could
see again those waxen petals yield to the fierce clutch of the little
red creeping sparks, and the slender stalk quivering, and glowing,
and writhing to blackness like a live thing.  And, distraught, he
began:

"I can't live a lie.  What right have I to lead, if I can't follow?
I'm not like our friend Courtier who believes in Liberty.  I never
have, I never shall.  Liberty?  What is Liberty?  But only those who
conform to authority have the right to wield authority.  A man is a
churl who enforces laws, when he himself has not the strength to
observe them.  I will not be one of whom it can be said: 'He can rule
others, himself----!"

"No one will know."

Miltoun turned away.

"I shall know," he said; but he saw clearly that she did not
understand him.  Her face had a strange, brooding, shut-away look, as
though he had frightened her.  And the thought that she could not
understand, angered him.

He said, stubbornly: "No, I can't remain in public life."

"But what has it to do with politics?  It's such a little thing."

"If it had been a little thing to me, should I have left you at
Monkland, and spent those five weeks in purgatory before my illness?
A little thing!"

She exclaimed with sudden fire:

"Circumstances aye the little thing; it's love that's the great
thing."

Miltoun stared at her, for the first time understanding that she had
a philosophy as deep and stubborn as his own.  But he answered
cruelly:

"Well! the great thing has conquered me!"

And then he saw her looking at him, as if, seeing into the recesses
of his soul, she had made some ghastly discovery.  The look was so
mournful, so uncannily intent that he turned away from it.

"Perhaps it is a little thing," he muttered; "I don't know.  I can't
see my way.  I've lost my bearings; I must find them again before I
can do anything."

But as if she had not heard, or not taken in the sense of his words,
she said again:

"Oh! don't let us alter anything; I won't ever want what you can't
give."

And this stubbornness, when he was doing the very thing that would
give him to her utterly, seemed to him unreasonable.

"I've had it out with myself," he said.  "Don't let's talk about it
any more."

Again, with a sort of dry anguish, she murmured:

"No, no!  Let us go on as we are!"

Feeling that he had borne all he could, Miltoun put his hands on her
shoulders, and said: "That's enough!"

Then, in sudden remorse, he lifted her, and clasped her to him.

But she stood inert in his arms, her eyes closed, not returning his
kisses.




CHAPTER XVII

On the last day before Parliament rose, Lord Valleys, with a light
heart, mounted his horse for a gallop in the Row.  Though she was a
blood mare he rode her with a plain snaffle, having the horsemanship
of one who has hunted from the age of seven, and been for twenty
years a Colonel of Yeomanry.  Greeting affably everyone he knew, he
maintained a frank demeanour on all subjects, especially of
Government policy, secretly enjoying the surmises and
prognostications, so pleasantly wide of the mark, and the way
questions and hints perished before his sphinx-like candour.  He
spoke cheerily too of Miltoun, who was 'all right again,' and
'burning for the fray' when the House met again in the autumn.  And
he chaffed Lord Malvezin about his wife.  If anything--he said--could
make Bertie take an interest in politics, it would be she.  He had
two capital gallops, being well known to the police: The day was
bright, and he was sorry to turn home.  Falling in with Harbinger, he
asked him to come back to lunch.  There had seemed something
different lately, an almost morose look, about young Harbinger; and
his wife's disquieting words about Barbara came back to Lord Valleys
with a shock.  He had seen little of the child lately, and in the
general clearing up of this time of year had forgotten all about the
matter.

Agatha, who was still staying at Valleys House with little Ann,
waiting to travel up to Scotland with her mother, was out, and there
was no one at lunch except Lady Valleys and Barbara herself.
Conversation flagged; for the young people were extremely silent,
Lady Valleys was considering the draft of a report which had to be
settled before she left, and Lord Valleys himself was rather
carefully watching his daughter.  The news that Lord Miltoun was in
the study came as a surprise, and somewhat of a relief to all.  To an
exhortation to luring him in to lunch; the servant replied that Lord
Miltoun had lunched, and would wait.

"Does he know there's no one here?"

"Yes, my lady."

Lady Valleys pushed back her plate, and rose:

"Oh, well!" she said, "I've finished."

Lord Valleys also got up, and they went out together, leaving
Barbara, who had risen, looking doubtfully at the door.

Lord Valleys had recently been told of the nursing episode, and had
received the news with the dubious air of one hearing something about
an eccentric person, which, heard about anyone else, could have had
but one significance.  If Eustace had been a normal young man his
father would have shrugged his shoulder's, and thought: "Oh, well!
There it is!"  As it was, he had literally not known what to think.

And now, crossing the saloon which intervened between the dining-room
and the study, he said to his wife uneasily:

"Is it this woman again, Gertrude--or what?"

Lady Valleys answered with a shrug:

"Goodness knows, my dear."

Miltoun was standing in the embrasure of a window above the terrace.
He looked well, and his greeting was the same as usual.

"Well, my dear fellow," said Lord Valleys, "you're all right again
evidently--what's the news?"

"Only that I've decided to resign my seat."

Lord Valleys stared.

"What on earth for?"

But Lady Valleys, with the greater quickness of women, divining
already something of the reason, had flushed a deep pink.

"Nonsense, my dear," she said; "it can't possibly be necessary, even
if----" Recovering herself, she added dryly:

"Give us some reason."

"The reason is simply that I've joined my life to Mrs. Noel's, and I
can't go on as I am, living a lie.  If it were known I should
obviously have to resign at once."

"Good God!" exclaimed Lord Valleys.

Lady Valleys made a rapid movement.  In the face of what she felt to
be a really serious crisis between these two utterly different
creatures of the other sex, her husband and her son, she had dropped
her mask and become a genuine woman.  Unconsciously both men felt
this change, and in speaking, turned towards her.

"I can't argue it," said Miltoun; "I consider myself bound in
honour."

"And then?" she asked.

Lord Valleys, with a note of real feeling, interjected:

"By Heaven!  I did think you put your country above your private
affairs."

"Geoff!" said Lady Valleys.

But Lord Valleys went on:

"No, Eustace, I'm out of touch with your view of things altogether.
I don't even begin to understand it."

"That is true," said Miltoun.

"Listen to me, both of you!" said Lady Valleys: "You two are
altogether different; and you must not quarrel.  I won't have that.
Now, Eustace, you are our son, and you have got to be kind and
considerate.  Sit down, and let's talk it over."

And motioning her husband to a chair, she sat down in the embrasure
of a window.  Miltoun remained standing.  Visited by a sudden dread,
Lady Valleys said:

"Is it--you've not--there isn't going to be a scandal?"

Miltoun smiled grimly.

"I shall tell this man, of course, but you may make your minds easy,
I imagine; I understand that his view of marriage does not permit of
divorce in any case whatever."

Lady Valleys sighed with an utter and undisguised relief.

"Well, then, my dear boy," she began, "even if you do feel you must
tell him, there is surely no reason why it should not otherwise be
kept secret."

Lord Valleys interrupted her:

"I should be glad if you would point out the connection between your
honour and the resignation of your seat," he said stiffly.

Miltoun shook his head.

"If you don't see already, it would be useless."

"I do not see.  The whole matter is--is unfortunate, but to give up
your work, so long as there is no absolute necessity, seems to me
far-fetched and absurd.  How many men are, there into whose lives
there has not entered some such relation at one time or another?
This idea would disqualify half the nation."  His eyes seemed in that
crisis both to consult and to avoid his wife's, as though he were at
once asking her endorsement of his point of view, and observing the
proprieties.  And for a moment in the midst of her anxiety, her sense
of humour got the better of Lady Valleys.  It was so funny that Geoff
should have to give himself away; she could not for the life of her
help fixing him with her eyes.

"My dear," she murmured, "you underestimate three-quarters, at the
very least!"

But Lord Valleys, confronted with danger, was growing steadier.

"It passes my comprehension;" he said, "why you should want to mix up
sex and politics at all."

Miltoun's answer came very slowly, as if the confession were hurting
his lips:

"There is--forgive me for using the word--such a thing as one's
religion.  I don't happen to regard life as divided into public and
private departments.  My vision is gone--broken--I can see no object
before me now in public life--no goal--no certainty."

Lady Valleys caught his hand:

"Oh! my dear," she said, "that's too dreadfully puritanical!"  But at
Miltoun's queer smile, she added hastily: "Logical--I mean."

"Consult your common sense, Eustace, for goodness' sake," broke in
Lord Valleys.  "Isn't it your simple duty to put your scruples in
your pocket, and do the best you can for your country with the powers
that have been given you?"

"I have no common sense."

"In that case, of course, it may be just as well that you should
leave public life."

Miltoun bowed.

"Nonsense!" cried Lady Valleys.  "You don't understand, Geoffrey.
I ask you again, Eustace, what will you do afterwards?"

"I don't know."

"You will eat your heart out."

"Quite possibly."

"If you can't come to a reasonable arrangement with your conscience,"
again broke in Lord Valleys, "for Heaven's sake give her up, like a
man, and cut all these knots."

"I beg your pardon, sir!" said Miltoun icily.

Lady Valleys laid her hand on his arm.  "You must allow us a little
logic too, my dear.  You don't seriously imagine that she would wish
you to throw away your life for her?  I'm not such a bad judge of
character as that."

She stopped before the expression on Miltoun's face.

"You go too fast," he said; "I may become a free spirit yet."

To this saying, which seemed to her cryptic and sinister, Lady
Valleys did not know what to answer.

"If you feel, as you say," Lord Valleys began once more, "that the
bottom has been knocked out of things for you by this--this affair,
don't, for goodness' sake, do anything in a hurry.  Wait!  Go abroad!
Get your balance back!  You'll find the thing settle itself in a few
months.  Don't precipitate matters; you can make your health an
excuse to miss the Autumn session."

Lady Valleys chimed in eagerly

"You really are seeing the thing out of all proportion.  What is a
love-affair.  My dear boy, do you suppose for a moment anyone would
think the worse of you, even if they knew?  And really not a soul
need know."

"It has not occurred to me to consider what they would think."

"Then," cried Lady Valleys, nettled, "it's simply your own pride."

"You have said."

Lord Valleys, who had turned away, spoke in an almost tragic voice

"I did not think that on a point of honour I should differ from my
son."

Catching at the word honour, Lady Valleys cried suddenly:

"Eustace, promise me, before you do anything, to consult your Uncle
Dennis."

Miltoun smiled.

"This becomes comic," he said.

At that word, which indeed seemed to them quite wanton, Lord and Lady
Valleys turned on their son, and the three stood staring, perfectly
silent.  A little noise from the doorway interrupted them.




CHAPTER XVIII

Left by her father and mother to the further entertainment of
Harbinger, Barbara had said:

"Let's have coffee in here," and passed into the withdrawing room.

Except for that one evening, when together by the sea wall they stood
contemplating the populace, she had not been alone with him since he
kissed her under the shelter of the box hedge.  And now, after the
first moment, she looked at him calmly, though in her breast there
was a fluttering, as if an imprisoned bird were struggling ever so
feebly against that soft and solid cage.  Her last jangled talk with
Courtier had left an ache in her heart.  Besides, did she not know
all that Harbinger could give her?

Like a nymph pursued by a faun who held dominion over the groves,
she, fugitive, kept looking back.  There was nothing in that fair
wood of his with which she was not familiar, no thicket she had not
travelled, no stream she had not crossed, no kiss she could not
return.  His was a discovered land, in which, as of right, she would
reign.  She had nothing to hope from him but power, and solid
pleasure.  Her eyes said: How am I to know whether I shall not want
more than you; feel suffocated in your arms; be surfeited by all that
you will bring me?  Have I not already got all that?

She knew, from his downcast gloomy face, how cruel she seemed, and
was sorry.  She wanted to be good to him, and said almost shyly:

"Are you angry with me, Claud?"

Harbinger looked up.

"What makes you so cruel?"

"I am not cruel."

"You are.  Where is your heart?"

"Here!" said Barbara, touching her breast.

"Ah!" muttered Harbinger; "I'm not joking."

She said gently:'

"Is it as bad as that, my dear?"

But the softness of her voice seemed to fan the smouldering fires in
him.

"There's something behind all this," he stammered, "you've no right
to make a fool of me!"

"And what is the something, please?"

"That's for you to say.  But I'm not blind.  What about this fellow
Courtier?"

At that moment there was revealed to Barbara a new acquaintance--the
male proper.  No, to live with him would not be quite lacking in
adventure!

His face had darkened; his eyes were dilated, his whole figure seemed
to have grown.  She suddenly noticed the hair which covered his
clenched fists.  All his suavity had left him.  He came very close.

How long that look between them lasted, and of all there was in it,
she had no clear knowledge; thought after thought, wave after wave of
feeling, rushed through her.  Revolt and attraction, contempt and
admiration, queer sensations of disgust and pleasure, all mingled--as
on a May day one may see the hail fall, and the sun suddenly burn
through and steam from the grass.

Then he said hoarsely:

"Oh!  Babs, you madden me so!"

Smoothing her lips, as if to regain control of them, she answered:

"Yes, I think I have had enough," and went out into her father's
study.

The sight of Lord and Lady Valleys so intently staring at Miltoun
restored hex self-possession.

It struck her as slightly comic, not knowing that the little scene
was the outcome of that word.  In truth, the contrast between Miltoun
and his parents at this moment was almost ludicrous.

Lady Valleys was the first to speak.

"Better comic than romantic.  I suppose Barbara may know, considering
her contribution to this matter.  Your brother is resigning his seat,
my dear; his conscience will not permit him to retain it, under
certain circumstances that have arisen."

"Oh!" cried Barbara: "but surely----"

"The matter has been argued, Babs," Lord Valleys said shortly;
"unless you have some better reason to advance than those of ordinary
common sense, public spirit, and consideration for one's family, it
will hardly be worth your while to reopen the discussion."

Barbara looked up at Miltoun, whose face, all but the eyes, was like
a mask.

"Oh, Eusty!" she said, "you're not going to spoil your life like
this!  Just think how I shall feel."

Miltoun answered stonily:

"You did what you thought right; as I am doing."

"Does she want you to?"

"No."

"There is, I should imagine," put in Lord Valleys, "not a solitary
creature in the whole world except your brother himself who would
wish for this consummation.  But with him such a consideration does
not weigh!"

"Oh!" sighed Barbara; "think of Granny!"

"I prefer not to think of her," murmured Lady Valleys.

"She's so wrapped up in you, Eusty.  She always has believed in you
intensely."

Miltoun sighed.  And, encouraged by that sound, Barbara went closer.

It was plain enough that, behind his impassivity, a desperate
struggle was going on in Miltoun.  He spoke at last:

"If I have not already yielded to one who is naturally more to me
than anything, when she begged and entreated, it is because I feel
this in a way you don't realize.  I apologize for using the word
comic just now, I should have said tragic.  I'll enlighten Uncle
Dennis, if that will comfort you; but this is not exactly a matter
for anyone, except myself."  And, without another look or word, he
went out.

As the door closed, Barbara ran towards it; and, with a motion
strangely like the wringing of hands, said

"Oh, dear!  Oh! dear!" Then, turning away to a bookcase, she began to
cry.

This ebullition of feeling, surpassing even their own, came as a real
shock to Lady and Lord Valleys, ignorant of how strung-up she had
been before she entered the room.  They had not seen Barbara cry
since she was a tiny girl.  And in face of her emotion any animus
they might have shown her for having thrown Miltoun into Mrs. Noel's
arms, now melted away.  Lord Valleys, especially moved, went up to
his daughter, and stood with her in that dark corner, saying nothing,
but gently stroking her hand.  Lady Valleys, who herself felt very
much inclined to cry, went out of sight into the embrasure of the
window.

Barbara's sobbing was soon subdued.

"It's his face," she said: "And why?  Why?  It's so unnecessary!"

Lord Valleys, continually twisting his moustache, muttered:

"Exactly!  He makes things for himself!"

"Yes," murmured Lady Valleys from the window, "he was always
uncomfortable, like that.  I remember him as a baby.  Bertie never
was."

And then the silence was only broken by the little angry sounds of
Barbara blowing her nose.

"I shall go and see mother," said Lady Valleys, suddenly: "The boy's
whole life may be ruined if we can't stop this.  Are you coming,
child?"

But Barbara refused.

She went to her room, instead.  This crisis in Miltoun's life had
strangely shaken her.  It was as if Fate had suddenly revealed all
that any step out of the beaten path might lead to, had brought her
sharply up against herself.  To wing out into the blue!  See what it
meant!  If Miltoun kept to his resolve, and gave up public life, he
was lost!  And she herself!  The fascination of Courtier's chivalrous
manner, of a sort of innate gallantry, suggesting the quest of
everlasting danger--was it not rather absurd?  And--was she
fascinated?  Was it not simply that she liked the feeling of
fascinating him?  Through the maze of these thoughts, darted the
memory of Harbinger's face close to her own, his clenched hands, the
swift revelation of his dangerous masculinity.  It was all a
nightmare of scaring queer sensations, of things that could never be
settled.  She was stirred for once out of all her normal conquering
philosophy.  Her thoughts flew back to Miltoun.  That which she had
seen in their faces, then, had come to pass!  And picturing Agatha's
horror, when she came to hear of it, Barbara could not help a smile.
Poor Eustace!  Why did he take things so hardly?  If he really
carried out his resolve--and he never changed his mind--it would be
tragic!  It would mean the end of everything for him!

Perhaps now he would get tired of Mrs. Noel.  But she was not the
sort of woman a man would get tired of.  Even Barbara in her
inexperience felt that.  She would always be too delicately careful
never to cloy him, never to exact anything from him, or let him feel
that he was bound to her by so much as a hair.  Ah! why couldn't they
go on as if nothing had happened?  Could nobody persuade him?  She
thought again of Courtier.  If he, who knew them both, and was so
fond of Mrs. Noel, would talk to Miltoun, about the right to be
happy, the right to revolt?  Eustace ought to revolt!  It was his
duty.  She sat down to write; then, putting on her hat, took the note
and slipped downstairs.




CHAPTER XIX

The flowers of summer in the great glass house at Ravensham were
keeping the last afternoon-watch when Clifton summoned Lady Casterley
with the words:

"Lady Valleys in the white room."

Since the news of Miltoun's illness, and of Mrs. Noel's nursing, the
little old lady had possessed her soul in patience; often, it is
true, afflicted with poignant misgivings as to this new influence in
the life of her favourite, affected too by a sort of jealousy, not to
be admitted, even in her prayers, which, though regular enough, were
perhaps somewhat formal.  Having small liking now for leaving home,
even for Catton, her country place, she was still at Ravensham, where
Lord Dennis had come up to stay with her as soon as Miltoun had left
Sea House.  But Lady Casterley was never very dependent on company.
She retained unimpaired her intense interest in politics, and still
corresponded freely with prominent men.  Of late, too, a slight
revival of the June war scare had made its mark on her in a certain
rejuvenescence, which always accompanied her contemplation of
national crises, even when such were a little in the air.  At blast
of trumpet her spirit still leaped forward, unsheathed its sword, and
stood at the salute.  At such times, she rose earlier, went to bed
later, was far less susceptible to draughts, and refused with
asperity any food between meals.  She wrote too with her own hand
letters which she would otherwise have dictated to her secretary.
Unfortunately the scare had died down again almost at once; and the
passing of danger always left her rather irritable.  Lady Valleys'
visit came as a timely consolation.

She kissed her daughter critically; for there was that about her
manner which she did not like.

"Yes, of course I am well!" she said.  "Why didn't you bring
Barbara?"

"She was tired!"

"H'm!  Afraid of meeting me, since she committed that piece of folly
over Eustace.  You must be careful of that child, Gertrude, or she
will be doing something silly herself.  I don't like the way she
keeps Claud Harbinger hanging in the wind."

Her daughter cut her short:

"There is bad news about Eustace."

Lady Casterley lost the little colour in her cheeks; lost, too, all
her superfluity of irritable energy.

"Tell me, at once!"

Having heard, she said nothing; but Lady Valleys noticed with alarm
that over her eyes had come suddenly the peculiar filminess of age.

"Well, what do you advise?" she asked.

Herself tired, and troubled, she was conscious of a quite unwonted
feeling of discouragement before this silent little figure, in the
silent white room.  She had never before seen her mother look as if
she heard Defeat passing on its dark wings.  And moved by sudden
tenderness for the little frail body that had borne her so long ago,
she murmured almost with surprise:

"Mother, dear!"

"Yes," said Lady Casterley, as if speaking to herself, "the boy saves
things up; he stores his feelings--they burst and sweep him away.
First his passion; now his conscience.  There are two men in him; but
this will be the death of one of them."  And suddenly turning on her
daughter, she said:

"Did you ever hear about him at Oxford, Gertrude?  He broke out once,
and ate husks with the Gadarenes.  You never knew.  Of course--you
never have known anything of him."

Resentment rose in Lady Valleys, that anyone should knew her son
better than herself; but she lost it again looking at the little
figure, and said, sighing:

"Well?"

Lady Casterley murmured:

"Go away, child; I must think.  You say he's to consult' Dennis?  Do
you know her address?  Ask Barbara when you get back and telephone it
to me.  And at her daughter's kiss, she added grimly:

"I shall live to see him in the saddle yet, though I am seventy-
eight."

When the sound of her daughter's car had died away, she rang the
bell.

"If Lady Valleys rings up, Clifton, don't take the message, but call
me."  And seeing that Clifton did not move she added sharply: "Well?"

"There is no bad news of his young lordship's health, I hope?"

"No."

"Forgive me, my lady, but I have had it on my mind for some time to
ask you something."

And the old man raised his hand with a peculiar dignity, seeming to
say: You will excuse me that for the moment I am a human being
speaking to a human being.

"The matter of his attachment," he went on, "is known to me; it has
given me acute anxiety, knowing his lordship as I do, and having
heard him say something singular when he was here in July.  I should
be grateful if you would assure--me that there is to be no hitch in
his career, my lady."

The expression on Lady Casterley's face was strangely compounded of
surprise, kindliness, defence, and impatience as with a child.

"Not if I can prevent it, Clifton," she said shortly; "in fact, you
need not concern yourself."

Clifton bowed.

"Excuse me mentioning it, my lady;" a quiver ran over his face
between its long white whiskers, "but his young lordship's career is
more to me than my own."

When he had left her, Lady Casterley sat down in a little low chair--
long she sat there by the empty hearth, till the daylight, was all
gone.




CHAPTER XX

Not far from the dark-haloed indeterminate limbo where dwelt that
bugbear of Charles Courtier, the great Half-Truth Authority, he
himself had a couple of rooms at fifteen shillings a week.  Their
chief attraction was that the great Half-Truth Liberty had
recommended them.  They tied him to nothing, and were ever at his
disposal when he was in London; for his landlady, though not bound by
agreement so to do, let them in such a way, that she could turn
anyone else out at a week's notice.  She was a gentle soul, married
to a socialistic plumber twenty years her senior.  The worthy man had
given her two little boys, and the three of them kept her in such
permanent order that to be in the presence of Courtier was the
greatest pleasure she knew.  When he disappeared on one of his
nomadic missions, explorations, or adventures, she enclosed the whole
of his belongings in two tin trunks and placed them in a cupboard
which smelled a little of mice.  When he reappeared the trunks were
reopened, and a powerful scent of dried rose-leaves would escape.
For, recognizing the mortality of things human, she procured every
summer from her sister, the wife of a market gardener, a consignment
of this commodity, which she passionately sewed up in bags, and
continued to deposit year by year, in Courtier's trunks.

This, and the way she made his toast--very crisp--and aired his
linen--very dry, were practically the only things she could do for a
man naturally inclined to independence, and accustomed from his
manner of life to fend for himself.

At first signs of his departure she would go into some closet or
other, away from the plumber and the two marks of his affection, and
cry quietly; but never in Courtier's presence did she dream of
manifesting grief--as soon weep in the presence of death or birth, or
any other fundamental tragedy or joy.  In face of the realities of
life she had known from her youth up the value of the simple verb
'sto--stare-to stand fast.'

And to her Courtier was a reality, the chief reality of life, the
focus of her aspiration, the morning and the evening star.

The request, then five days after his farewell visit to Mrs. Noel--
for the elephant-hide trunk which accompanied his rovings, produced
her habitual period of seclusion, followed by her habitual appearance
in his sitting-room bearing a note, and some bags of dried rose--
leaves on a tray.  She found him in his shirt sleeves, packing.

"Well, Mrs. Benton; off again!"

Mrs. Benton, plaiting her hands, for she had not yet lost something
of the look and manner of a little girl, answered in her flat, but
serene voice:

"Yes, sir; and I hope you're not going anywhere very dangerous this
time.  I always think you go to such dangerous places."

"To Persia, Mrs. Benton, where the carpets come from."

"Oh! yes, sir.  Your washing's just come home."

Her, apparently cast-down, eyes stored up a wealth of little details;
the way his hair grew, the set of his back, the colour of his braces.
But suddenly she said in a surprising voice:

"You haven't a photograph you could spare, sir, to leave behind?  Mr.
Benton was only saying to me yesterday, we've nothing to remember him
by, in case he shouldn't come back."

"Here's an old one."

Mrs. Benton took the photograph.

"Oh!" she said; "you can see who it is."  And holding it perhaps too
tightly, for her fingers trembled, she added:

"A note, please, sir; and the messenger boy is waiting for--an
answer."

While he read the note she noticed with concern how packing had
brought the blood into his head....

When, in response to that note, Courtier entered the well-known
confectioner's called Gustard's, it was still not quite tea-time, and
there seemed to him at first no one in the room save three middle-
aged women packing sweets; then in the corner he saw Barbara.  The
blood was no longer in his head; he was pale, walking down that
mahogany-coloured room impregnated with the scent of wedding-cake.
Barbara, too, was pale.

So close to her that he could count her every eyelash, and inhale the
scent of her hair and clothes to listen to her story of Miltoun, so
hesitatingly, so wistfully told, seemed very like being kept waiting
with the rope already round his neck, to hear about another person's
toothache.  He felt this to have been unnecessary on the part of
Fate!  And there came to him perversely the memory of that ride over
the sun-warmed heather, when he had paraphrased the old Sicilian
song: 'Here will I sit and sing.'  He was a long way from singing
now; nor was there love in his arms.  There was instead a cup of tea;
and in his nostrils the scent of cake, with now and then a whiff of
orange-flower water.

"I see," he said, when she had finished telling him: "'Liberty's a
glorious feast!' You want me to go to your brother, and quote Bums?
You know, of course, that he regards me as dangerous."

"Yes; but he respects and likes you."

"And I respect and like him," answered Courtier.

One of the middle-aged females passed, carrying a large white card-
board box; and the creaking of her stays broke the hush.

"You have been very sweet to me," said Barbara, suddenly.

Courtier's heart stirred, as if it were turning over within him; and
gazing into his teacup, he answered

"All men are decent to the evening star.  I will go at once and find
your brother.  When shall I bring you news?"

"To-morrow at five I'll be at home."

And repeating, "To-morrow at five," he rose.


Looking back from the door, he saw her face puzzled, rather
reproachful, and went out gloomily.  The scent of cake, and orange-
flower water, the creaking of the female's stays, the colour of
mahogany, still clung to his nose and ears, and eyes; but within him
it was all dull baffled rage.  Why had he not made the most of this
unexpected chance; why had he not made desperate love to her?  A
conscientious ass!  And yet--the whole thing was absurd!  She was so
young!  God knew he would be glad to be out of it.  If he stayed he
was afraid that he would play the fool.  But the memory of her words:
"You have been very sweet to me!"  would not leave him; nor the
memory of her face, so puzzled, and reproachful.  Yes, if he stayed
he would play the fool!  He would be asking her to marry a man double
her age, of no position but that which he had carved for himself, and
without a rap.  And he would be asking her in such a way that she
might possibly have some little difficulty in refusing.  He would be
letting himself go.  And she was only twenty--for all her woman-of-
the-world air, a child!  No!  He would be useful to her, if possible,
this once, and then clear out!




CHAPTER XXI

When Miltoun left Valleys House he walked in the direction of
Westminster.  During the five days that he had been back in London he
had not yet entered the House of Commons.  After the seclusion of his
illness, he still felt a yearning, almost painful, towards the
movement and stir of the town.  Everything he heard and saw made an
intensely vivid impression.  The lions in Trafalgar Square, the great
buildings of Whitehall, filled him with a sort of exultation.  He was
like a man, who, after a long sea voyage, first catches sight of
land, and stands straining his eyes, hardly breathing, taking in one
by one the lost features of that face.  He walked on to Westminster
Bridge, and going to an embrasure in the very centre, looked back
towards the towers.

It was said that the love of those towers passed into the blood.  It
was said that he who had sat beneath them could never again be quite
the same.  Miltoun knew that it was true--desperately true, of
himself.  In person he had sat there but three weeks, but in soul he
seemed to have been sitting there hundreds of years.  And now he
would sit there no more!  An almost frantic desire to free himself
from this coil rose up within him.  To be held a prisoner by that
most secret of all his instincts, the instinct for authority!  To be
unable to wield authority because to wield authority was to insult
authority.  God!  It was hard!  He turned his back on the towers; and
sought distraction in the faces of the passers-by.

Each of these, he knew, had his struggle to keep self-respect!  Or
was it that they were unconscious of struggle or of self-respect, and
just let things drift?  They looked like that, most of them!  And all
his inherent contempt for the average or common welled up as he
watched them.  Yes, they looked like that!  Ironically, the sight of
those from whom he had desired the comfort of compromise, served
instead to stimulate that part of him which refused to let him
compromise.  They looked soft, soggy, without pride or will, as
though they knew that life was too much for them, and had shamefully
accepted the fact.  They so obviously needed to be told what they
might do, and which way they should, go; they would accept orders as
they accepted their work, or pleasures: And the thought that he was
now debarred from the right to give them orders, rankled in him
furiously.  They, in their turn, glanced casually at his tall figure
leaning against the parapet, not knowing how their fate was trembling
in the balance.  His thin, sallow face, and hungry eyes gave one or
two of them perhaps a feeling of interest or discomfort; but to most
he was assuredly no more than any other man or woman in the hurly-
burly.  That dark figure of conscious power struggling in the fetters
of its own belief in power, was a piece of sculpture they had neither
time nor wish to understand, having no taste for tragedy--for
witnessing the human spirit driven to the wall.

It was five o'clock before Miltoun left the Bridge, and passed, like
an exile, before the gates of Church and State, on his way to his
uncle's Club.  He stopped to telegraph to Audrey the time he would be
coming to-morrow afternoon; and on leaving the Post-Office, noticed
in the window of the adjoining shop some reproductions of old Italian
masterpieces, amongst them one of Botticelli's 'Birth of Venus.'  He
had never seen that picture; and, remembering that she had told him
it was her favourite, he stopped to look at it.  Averagely well
versed in such matters, as became one of his caste, Miltoun had not
the power of letting a work of art insidiously steal the private self
from his soul, and replace it with the self of all the world; and he
examined this far-famed presentment of the heathen goddess with
aloofness, even irritation.  The drawing of the body seemed to him
crude, the whole picture a little flat and Early; he did not like the
figure of the Flora.  The golden serenity, and tenderness, of which
she had spoken, left him cold.  Then he found himself looking at the
face, and slowly, but with uncanny certainty, began to feel that he
was looking at the face of Audrey herself.  The hair was golden and
different, the eyes grey and different, the mouth a little fuller;
yet--it was her face; the same oval shape, the same far-apart, arched
brows, the same strangely tender, elusive spirit.  And, as though
offended, he turned and walked on.  In the window of that little shop
was the effigy of her for whom he had bartered away his life--the
incarnation of passive and entwining love, that gentle creature, who
had given herself to him so utterly, for whom love, and the flowers,
and trees, and birds, music, the sky, and the quick-flowing streams,
were all-sufficing; and who, like the goddess in the picture, seemed
wondering at her own existence.  He had a sudden glimpse of
understanding, strange indeed in one who had so little power of
seeing into others' hearts: Ought she ever to have been born into a
world like this?  But the flash of insight yielded quickly to that
sickening consciousness of his own position, which never left him
now.  Whatever else he did, he must get rid of that malaise!  But
what could he do in that coming life?  Write books?  What sort of
books could he write?  Only such as expressed his views of
citizenship, his political and social beliefs.  As well remain
sitting and speaking beneath those towers!  He could never join the
happy band of artists, those soft and indeterminate spirits, for whom
barriers had no meaning, content-to understand, interpret, and
create.  What should he be doing in that galley?  The thought was
inconceivable.  A career at the Bar--yes, he might take that up; but
to what end?  To become a judge!  As well continue to sit beneath
those towers!  Too late for diplomacy.  Too late for the Army;
besides, he had not the faintest taste for military glory.  Bury
himself in the country like Uncle Dennis, and administer one of his
father's estates?  It would be death.  Go amongst the poor?  For a
moment he thought he had found a new vocation.  But in what capacity
--to order their lives, when he himself could not order his own; or,
as a mere conduit pipe for money, when he believed that charity was
rotting the nation to its core?  At the head of every avenue stood an
angel or devil with drawn sword.  And then there came to him another
thought.  Since he was being cast forth from Church and State, could
he not play the fallen spirit like a man--be Lucifer, and destroy!
And instinctively he at once saw himself returning to those towers,
and beneath them crossing the floor; joining the revolutionaries, the
Radicals, the freethinkers, scourging his present Party, the party of
authority and institutions.  The idea struck him as supremely comic,
and he laughed out loud in the street....

The Club which Lord Dennis frequented was in St. James's untouched by
the tides of the waters of fashion--steadily swinging to its moorings
in a quiet backwater, and Miltoun found his uncle in the library.  He
was reading a volume of Burton's travels, and drinking tea.

"Nobody comes here," he said, "so, in spite of that word on the door,
we shall talk.  Waiter, bring some more tea, please."

Impatiently, but with a sort of pity, Miltoun watched Lord Dennis's
urbane movements, wherein old age was, pathetically, trying to make
each little thing seem important, if only to the doer.  Nothing his
great-uncle could say would outweigh the warning of his picturesque
old figure!  To be a bystander; to see it all go past you; to let
your sword rust in its sheath, as this poor old fellow had done!  The
notion of explaining what he had come about was particularly hateful
to Miltoun; but since he had given his word, he nerved himself with
secret anger, and began:

"I promised my mother to ask you a question, Uncle Dennis.  You know
of my attachment, I believe?"

Lord Dennis nodded.

"Well, I have joined my life to this lady's.  There will be no
scandal, but I consider it my duty to resign my seat, and leave
public life alone.  Is that right or wrong according to, your view?"

Lord Dennis looked at his nephew in silence.  A faint flush coloured
his brown cheeks.  He had the appearance of one travelling in mind
over the past.

"Wrong, I think," he said, at last.

"Why, if I may ask?"

"I have not the pleasure of knowing this lady, and am therefore
somewhat in the dark; but it appears to me that your decision is not
fair to her."

"That is beyond me," said Miltoun.

Lord Dennis answered firmly:

"You have asked me a frank question, expecting a frank answer, I
suppose?"

Miltoun nodded.

"Then, my dear, don't blame me if what I say is unpalatable."

"I shall not."

"Good!  You say you are going to give up public life for the sake of
your conscience.  I should have no criticism to make if it stopped
there."

He paused, and for quite a minute remained silent, evidently
searching for words to express some intricate thread of thought.

"But it won't, Eustace; the public man in you is far stronger than
the other.  You want leadership more than you want love.  Your
sacrifice will kill your affection; what you imagine is your loss and
hurt, will prove to be this lady's in the end."

Miltoun smiled.

Lord Dennis continued very dryly and with a touch of malice:

"You are not listening to me; but I can see very well that the
process has begun already underneath.  There's a curious streak of
the Jesuit in you, Eustace.  What you don't want to see, you won't
look at."

"You advise me, then, to compromise?"

"On the contrary, I point out that you will be compromising if you
try to keep both your conscience and your love.  You will be seeking
to have, it both ways."

"That is interesting."

"And you will find yourself having it neither," said Lord Dennis
sharply.

Miltoun rose.  "In other words, you, like the others, recommend me to
desert this lady who loves me, and whom I love.  And yet, Uncle, they
say that in your own case----"

But Lord Dennis had risen, too, having lost all the appanage and
manner of old age.

"Of my own case," he said bluntly, "we won't talk.  I don't advise
you to desert anyone; you quite mistake me.  I advise you to know
yourself.  And I tell you my opinion of you--you were cut out by
Nature for a statesman, not a lover!  There's something dried-up in
you, Eustace; I'm not sure there isn't something dried-up in all our
caste.  We've had to do with forms and ceremonies too long.  We're
not good at taking the lyrical point of view."

"Unfortunately," said Miltoun, "I cannot, to fit in with a theory of
yours, commit a baseness."

Lord Dennis began pacing up and down.  He was keeping his lips closed
very tight.

"A man who gives advice," he said at last, "is always something of a
fool.  For all that, you have mistaken mine.  I am not so
presumptuous as to attempt to enter the inner chamber of your spirit.
I have merely told you that, in my opinion, it would be more honest
to yourself, and fairer to this lady, to compound with your
conscience, and keep both your love and your public life, than to
pretend that you were capable of sacrificing what I know is the
stronger element in you for the sake of the weaker.  You remember the
saying, Democritus I think: 'each man's nature or character is his
fate or God'.  I recommend it to you."

For a full minute Miltoun stood without replying, then said:

"I am sorry to have troubled you, Uncle Dennis.  A middle policy is
no use to me.  Good-bye!"  And without shaking hands, he went out.




CHAPTER XXII

In the hall someone rose from a sofa, and came towards him.  It was
Courtier.

"Run you to earth at last," he said; "I wish you'd come and dine with
me.  I'm leaving England to-morrow night, and there are things I want
to say."

There passed through Miltoun's mind the rapid thought: 'Does he
know?'  He assented, however, and they went out together.

"It's difficult to find a quiet place," said Courtier; "but this
might do."

The place chosen was a little hostel, frequented by racing men, and
famed for the excellence of its steaks.  And as they sat down
opposite each other in the almost empty room, Miltoun thought: Yes,
he does know!  Can I stand any more of this?  He waited almost
savagely for the attack he felt was coming.

"So you are going to give up your seat?" said Courtier.

Miltoun looked at him for some seconds, before replying.

"From what town-crier did you hear that?"

But there was that in Courtier's face which checked his anger; its
friendliness was transparent.

"I am about her only friend," Courtier proceeded earnestly; "and this
is my last chance--to say nothing of my feeling towards you, which,
believe me, is very cordial."

"Go on, then," Miltoun muttered.

"Forgive me for putting it bluntly.  Have you considered what her
position was before she met you?"

Miltoun felt the blood rushing to his face, but he sat still,
clenching his nails into the palms of his hands.

"Yes, yes," said Courtier, "but that attitude of mind--you used to
have it yourself--which decrees either living death, or spiritual
adultery to women, makes my blood boil.  You can't deny that those
were the alternatives, and I say you had the right fundamentally to
protest against them, not only in words but deeds.  You did protest,
I know; but this present decision of yours is a climb down, as much
as to say that your protest was wrong."

Miltoun rose from his seat.  "I cannot discuss this," he said; "I
cannot."

"For her sake, you must.  If you give up your public work, you'll
spoil her life a second time."

Miltoun again sat down.  At the word 'must' a steely feeling had come
to his aid; his eyes began to resemble the old Cardinal's.  "Your
nature and mine, Courtier," he said, "are too far apart; we shall
never understand each other."

"Never mind that," answered Courtier.  "Admitting those two
alternatives to be horrible, which you never would have done unless
the facts had been brought home to you personally

"That," said Miltoun icily, "I deny your right to say."

"Anyway, you do admit them--if you believe you had not the right to
rescue her, on what principle do you base that belief?"

Miltoun placed his elbow on the table, and leaning his chin on his
hand, regarded the champion of lost causes without speaking.  There
was such a turmoil going on within him that with difficulty he could
force his lips to obey him.

"By what right do you ask me that?" he said at last.  He saw
Courtier's face grow scarlet, and his fingers twisting furiously at
those flame-like moustaches; but his answer was as steadily ironical
as usual.

"Well, I can hardly sit still, my last evening in England, without
lifting a finger, while you immolate a woman to whom I feel like a
brother.  I'll tell you what your principle is: Authority, unjust or
just, desirable or undesirable, must be implicitly obeyed.  To break
a law, no matter on what provocation, or for whose sake, is to break
the commandment"

"Don't hesitate--say, of God."

"Of an infallible fixed Power.  Is that a true definition of your
principle?"

"Yes," said Miltoun, between his teeth, "I think so."

"Exceptions prove the rule."

"Hard cases make bad law."

Courtier smiled: "I knew you were coming out with that.  I deny that
they do with this law, which is altogether behind the times.  You had
the right to rescue this woman."

"No, Courtier, if we must fight, let us fight on the naked facts.
I have not rescued anyone.  I have merely stolen sooner than starve.
That is why I cannot go on pretending to be a pattern.  If it were
known, I could not retain my seat an hour; I can't take advantage of
an accidental secrecy.  Could you?"

Courtier was silent; and with his eyes Miltoun pressed on him, as
though he would despatch him with that glance.

"I could," said Courtier at last.  "When this law, by enforcing
spiritual adultery on those who have come to hate their mates,
destroys the sanctity of the married state--the very sanctity it
professes to uphold, you must expect to have it broken by reasoning
men and women without their feeling shame, or losing self-respect."

In Miltoun there was rising that vast and subtle passion for
dialectic combat, which was of his very fibre.  He had almost lost
the feeling that this was his own future being discussed.  He saw
before him in this sanguine man, whose voice and eyes had such a
white-hot sound and look, the incarnation of all that he
temperamentally opposed.

"That," he said, "is devil's advocacy.  I admit no individual as
judge in his own case."

"Ah! Now we're coming to it.  By the way, shall we get out of this
heat?"

They were no sooner in the cooler street, than the voice of Courtier
began again:

"Distrust of human nature, fear--it's the whole basis of action for
men of your stamp.  You deny the right of the individual to judge,
because you've no faith in the essential goodness of men; at heart
you believe them bad.  You give them no freedom, you allow them no
consent, because you believe that their decisions would move
downwards, and not upwards.  Well, it's the whole difference between
the aristocratic and the democratic view of life.  As you once told
me, you hate and fear the crowd."

Miltoun eyed that steady sanguine face askance:

"Yes," he said, "I do believe that men are raised in spite of
themselves."

"You're honest.  By whom?"

Again Miltoun felt rising within him a sort of fury.  Once for all he
would slay this red-haired rebel; he answered with almost savage
irony:

"Strangely enough, by that Being to mention whom you object--working
through the medium of the best."

"High-Priest!  Look at that girl slinking along there, with her eye
on us; suppose, instead of withdrawing your garment, you went over
and talked to her, got her to tell you what she really felt and
thought, you'd find things that would astonish you.  At bottom,
mankind is splendid.  And they're raised, sir, by the aspiration
that's in all of them.  Haven't you ever noticed that public
sentiment is always in advance of the Law?"

"And you," said Miltoun, "are the man who is never on the side of the
majority?"

The champion of lost causes uttered a short laugh.

"Not so logical as all that," he answered; "the wind still blows; and
Life's not a set of rules hung up in an office.  Let's see, where are
we?"  They had been brought to a stand-still by a group on the
pavement in front of the Queen's Hall: "Shall we go in, and hear some
music, and cool our tongues?"

Miltoun nodded, and they went in.

The great lighted hall, filled with the faint bluefish vapour from
hundreds of little rolls of tobacco leaf, was crowded from floor to
ceiling.

Taking his stand among the straw-hatted throng, Miltoun heard that
steady ironical voice behind him:

"Profanum vulgus!  Come to listen to the finest piece of music ever
written!  Folk whom you wouldn't trust a yard to know what was good
for them!  Deplorable sight, isn't it?"

He made no answer.  The first slow notes of the seventh Symphony of
Beethoven had begun to steal forth across the bank of flowers; and,
save for the steady rising of that bluefish vapour, as it were
incense burnt to the god of melody, the crowd had become deathly
still, as though one mind, one spirit, possessed each pale face
inclined towards that music rising and falling like the sighing of
the winds, that welcome from death the freed spirits of the
beautiful.

When the last notes had died away, he turned and walked out.

"Well," said the voice behind him, "hasn't that shown you how things
swell and grow; how splendid the world is?"

Miltoun smiled.

"It has shown me how beautiful the world can be made by a great man."

And suddenly, as if the music had loosened some band within him, he
began to pour forth words:

"Look at the crowd in this street, Courtier, which of all crowds in
the whole world can best afford to be left to itself; secure from
pestilence, earthquake, cyclone, drought, from extremes of heat and
cold, in the heart of the greatest and safest city in the world; and
yet-see the figure of that policeman!  Running through all the good
behaviour of this crowd, however safe and free it looks, there is,
there always must be, a central force holding it together.  Where
does that central force come from?  From the crowd itself, you say.
I answer: No.  Look back at the origin of human States.  From the
beginnings of things, the best man has been the unconscious medium of
authority, of the controlling principle, of the divine force; he felt
that power within him--physical, at first--he used it to take the
lead, he has held the lead ever since, he must always hold it.  All
your processes of election, your so-called democratic apparatus, are
only a blind to the inquiring, a sop to the hungry, a salve to the
pride of the rebellious.  They are merely surface machinery; they
cannot prevent the best man from coming to the top; for the best man
stands nearest to the Deity, and is the first to receive the waves
that come from Him.  I'm not speaking of heredity.  The best man is
not necessarily born in my class, and I, at all events, do not
believe he is any more frequent there than in other classes."

He stopped as suddenly as he had begun.

"You needn't be afraid," answered Courtier, "that I take you for an
average specimen.  You're at one end, and I at the other, and we
probably both miss the golden mark.  But the world is not ruled by
power, and the fear which power produces, as you think, it's ruled by
love.  Society is held together by the natural decency in man, by
fellow-feeling.  The democratic principle, which you despise, at root
means nothing at all but that.  Man left to himself is on the upward
lay.  If it weren't so, do you imagine for a moment your 'boys in
blue' could keep order?  A man knows unconsciously what he can and
what he can't do, without losing his self-respect.  He sucks that
knowledge in with every breath.  Laws and authority are not the be-
all and end-all, they are conveniences, machinery, conduit pipes,
main roads.  They're not of the structure of the building--they're
only scaffolding."

Miltoun lunged out with the retort

"Without which no building could be built."

Courtier parried.

"That's rather different, my friend, from identifying them with the
building.  They are things to be taken down as fast as ever they can
be cleared away, to make room for an edifice that begins on earth,
not in the sky.  All the scaffolding of law is merely there to save
time, to prevent the temple, as it mounts, from losing its way, and
straying out of form."

"No," said Miltoun, "no!  The scaffolding, as you call it, is the
material projection of the architect's conception, without which the
temple does not and cannot rise; and the architect is God, working
through the minds and spirits most akin to Himself."

"We are now at the bed-rock," cried Courtier, "your God is outside
this world.  Mine within it."

"And never the twain shall meet!"

In the silence that followed Miltoun saw that they were in Leicester
Square, all quiet as yet before the theatres had disgorged; quiet yet
waiting, with the lights, like yellow stars low-driven from the dark
heavens, clinging to the white shapes of music-halls and cafes, and a
sort of flying glamour blanching the still foliage of the plane
trees.

"A 'whitely wanton'--this Square!" said Courtier: "Alive as a face;
no end to its queer beauty!  And, by Jove, if you went deep enough,
you'd find goodness even here."

"And you'd ignore the vice," Miltoun answered.

He felt weary all of a sudden, anxious to get to his rooms, unwilling
to continue this battle of words, that brought him no nearer to
relief.  It was with strange lassitude that he heard the voice still
speaking:

"We must make a night of it, since to-morrow we die....  You would
curb licence from without--I from within.  When I get up and when I
go to bed, when I draw a breath, see a face, or a flower, or a tree--
if I didn't feel that I was looking on the Deity, I believe I should
quit this palace of varieties, from sheer boredom.  You, I
understand, can't look on your God, unless you withdraw into some
high place.  Isn't it a bit lonely there?"

"There are worse things than loneliness."  And they walked on, in
silence; till suddenly Miltoun broke out:

"You talk of tyranny!  What tyranny could equal this tyranny of your
freedom?  What tyranny in the world like that of this 'free' vulgar,
narrow street, with its hundred journals teeming like ants' nests, to
produce-what?  In the entrails of that creature of your freedom,
Courtier, there is room neither for exaltation, discipline, nor
sacrifice; there is room only for commerce, and licence."

There was no answer for a moment; and from those tall houses, whose
lighted windows he had apostrophized, Miltoun turned away towards the
river.  "No," said the voice beside him, "for all its faults, the
wind blows in that street, and there's a chance for everything.  By
God, I would rather see a few stars struggle out in a black sky than
any of your perfect artificial lighting."

And suddenly it seemed to Miltoun that he could never free himself
from the echoes of that voice--it was not worth while to try.  "We
are repeating ourselves," he said, dryly.

The river's black water was making stilly, slow recessional under a
half-moon.  Beneath the cloak of night the chaos on the far bank, the
forms of cranes, high buildings, jetties, the bodies of the sleeping
barges, a--million queer dark shapes, were invested with emotion.
All was religious out there, all beautiful, all strange.  And over
this great quiet friend of man, lamps--those humble flowers of night,
were throwing down the faint continual glamour of fallen petals; and
a sweet-scented wind stole along from the West, very slow as yet,
bringing in advance the tremor and perfume of the innumerable trees
and fields which the river had loved as she came by.

A murmur that was no true sound, but like the whisper of a heart to.
a heart, accompanied this voyage of the dark water.

Then a small blunt skiff--manned by two rowers came by under the
wall, with the thudding and the creak of oars.

"So 'To-morrow we die'?" said Miltoun: "You mean, I suppose, that
'public life' is the breath of my nostrils, and I must die, because I
give it up?"

Courtier nodded.

"Am I right in thinking that it was my young sister who sent you on
this crusade?"

Courtier did not answer.

"And so," Miltoun went on, looking him through and through;
"to-morrow is to be your last day, too?  Well, you're right to go.
She is not an ugly duckling, who can live out of the social pond;
she'll always want her native element.  And now, we'll say goodbye!
Whatever happens to us both, I shall remember this evening."
Smiling, he put out his hand 'Moriturus te saluto.'




CHAPTER XXIII

Courtier sat in Hyde Park waiting for five o'clock.  The day had
recovered somewhat from a grey morning, as though the glow of that
long hot summer were too burnt-in on the air to yield to the first
assault.  The sun, piercing the crisped clouds, those breast feathers
of heavenly doves, darted its beams at the mellowed leaves, and
showered to the ground their delicate shadow stains.  The first, too
early, scent from leaves about to fall, penetrated to the heart.  And
sorrowful sweet birds were tuning their little autumn pipes, blowing
into them fragments of Spring odes to Liberty.

Courtier thought of Miltoun and his mistress.  By what a strange fate
had those two been thrown together; to what end was their love
coming?  The seeds of grief were already sown, what flowers of
darkness, or of tumult would come up?  He saw her again as a little,
grave, considering child, with her soft eyes, set wide apart under
the dark arched brows, and the little tuck at the corner of her mouth
that used to come when he teased her.  And to that gentle creature
who would sooner die than force anyone to anything, had been given
this queer lover; this aristocrat by birth and nature, with the dried
fervent soul, whose every fibre had been bred and trained in and to
the service of Authority; this rejecter of the Unity of Life; this
worshipper of an old God!  A God that stood, whip in hand, driving
men to obedience.  A God that even now Courtier could conjure up
staring at him from the walls of his nursery.  The God his own father
had believed in.  A God of the Old Testament, knowing neither
sympathy nor understanding.  Strange that He should be alive still;
that there should still be thousands who worshipped Him.  Yet, not so
very strange, if, as they said, man made God in his own image!  Here
indeed was a curious mating of what the philosophers would call the
will to Love, and the will to Power!

A soldier and his girl came and sat down on a bench close by.  They
looked askance at this trim and upright figure with the fighting
face; then, some subtle thing informing them that he was not of the
disturbing breed called officer, they ceased to regard him,
abandoning themselves to dumb and inexpressive felicity.  Arm in arm,
touching each other, they seemed to Courtier very jolly, having that
look of living entirely in the moment, which always especially
appealed to one whose blood ran too fast to allow him to speculate
much upon the future or brood much over the past.

A leaf from the bough above him, loosened by the sun's kisses,
dropped, and fell yellow at his feet.  The leaves were turning very
soon?

It was characteristic of this man, who could be so hot over the lost
causes of others, that, sitting there within half an hour of the
final loss of his own cause, he could be so calm, so almost
apathetic.  This apathy was partly due to the hopelessness, which
Nature had long perceived, of trying to make him feel oppressed, but
also to the habits of a man incurably accustomed to carrying his
fortunes in his hand, and that hand open.  It did not seem real to
him that he was actually going to suffer a defeat, to have to confess
that he had hankered after this girl all these past weeks, and that
to-morrow all would be wasted, and she as dead to him as if he had
never seen her.  No, it was not exactly resignation, it was rather
sheer lack of commercial instinct.  If only this had been the lost
cause of another person.  How gallantly he would have rushed to the
assault, and taken her by storm!  If only he himself could have been
that other person, how easily, how passionately could he not have
pleaded, letting forth from him all those words which had knocked at
his teeth ever since he knew her, and which would have seemed so
ridiculous and so unworthy, spoken on his own behalf.  Yes, for that
other person he could have cut her out from under the guns of the
enemy; he could have taken her, that fairest prize.
And in queer, cheery-looking apathy--not far removed perhaps from
despair--he sat, watching the leaves turn over and fall, and now and
then cutting with his stick at the air, where autumn was already
riding.  And, if in imagination he saw himself carrying her away into
the wilderness, and with his devotion making her happiness to grow,
it was so far a flight, that a smile crept about his lips, and once
or twice he snapped his jaws.

The soldier and his girl rose, passing in front of him down the Row.
He watched their scarlet and blue figures, moving slowly towards the
sun, and another couple close to the rails, crossing those receding
forms.  Very straight and tall, there was something exhilarating in
the way this new couple swung along, holding their heads up, turning
towards each other, to exchange words or smiles.  Even at that
distance they could be seen to be of high fashion; in their gait was
the almost insolent poise of those who are above doubts and cares,
certain of the world and of themselves.  The girl's dress was tawny
brown, her hair and hat too of the same hue, and the pursuing
sunlight endowed her with a hazy splendour.  Then, Courtier saw who
they were--that couple!

Except for an unconscious grinding of his teeth, he made no sound or
movement, so that they went by without seeing him.  Her voice, though
not the words, came to him distinctly.  He saw her hand slip up under
Harbinger's arm and swiftly down again.  A smile, of whose existence
he was unaware, settled on his lips.  He got up, shook himself, as a
dog shakes off a beating, and walked away, with his mouth set very
firm.




CHAPTER XXIV

Left alone among the little mahogany tables of Gustard's, where the
scent of cake and of orange-flower water made happy all the air,
Barbara had sat for some minutes, her eyes cast down--as a child from
whom a toy has been taken contemplates the ground, not knowing
precisely what she is feeling.  Then, paying one of the middle-aged
females, she went out into the Square.  There a German band was
playing Delibes' Coppelia; and the murdered tune came haunting her, a
very ghost of incongruity.

She went straight back to Valleys House.  In the room where three
hours ago she had been left alone after lunch with Harbinger, her
sister was seated in the window, looking decidedly upset.  In fact,
Agatha had just spent an awkward hour.  Chancing, with little Ann,
into that confectioner's where she could best obtain a particularly
gummy sweet which she believed wholesome for her children, she had
been engaged in purchasing a pound, when looking down, she perceived
Ann standing stock-still, with her sudden little nose pointed down
the shop, and her mouth opening; glancing in the direction of those
frank, enquiring eyes, Agatha saw to her amazement her sister, and a
man whom she recognized as Courtier.  With a readiness which did her
complete credit, she placed a sweet in Ann's mouth, and saying to the
middle-aged female: "Then you'll send those, please.  Come, Ann!"
went out.  Shocks never coming singly, she had no sooner reached
home, than from her father she learned of the development of
Miltoun's love affair.  When Barbara returned, she was sitting,
unfeignedly disturbed and grieved; unable to decide whether or no she
ought to divulge what she herself had seen, but withal buoyed-up by
that peculiar indignation of the essentially domestic woman, whose
ideals have been outraged.

Judging at once from the expression of her face that she must have
heard the news of Miltoun, Barbara said:

"Well, my dear Angel, any lecture for me?"

Agatha answered coldly:

"I think you were quite mad to take Mrs. Noel to him."

"The whole duty of woman," murmured Barbara, "includes a little
madness."

Agatha looked at her in silence.

"I can't make you out," she said at last; "you're not a fool!"

"Only a knave."

"You may think it right to joke over the ruin of Miltoun's life,"
murmured Agatha; "I don't."

Barbara's eyes grew bright; and in a hard voice she answered:

"The world is not your nursery, Angel!"

Agatha closed her lips very tightly, as who should imply: "Then it
ought to be!"  But she only answered:

"I don't think you know that I saw you just now in Gustard's."

Barbara eyed her for a moment in amazement, and began to laugh.

"I see," she said; "monstrous depravity--poor old Gustard's!"  And
still laughing that dangerous laugh, she turned on her heel and went
out.

At dinner and afterwards that evening she was very silent, having on
her face the same look that she wore out hunting, especially when in
difficulties of any kind, or if advised to 'take a pull.' When she
got away to her own room she had a longing to relieve herself by some
kind of action that would hurt someone, if only herself.  To go to
bed and toss about in a fever--for she knew herself in these thwarted
moods--was of no use!  For a moment she thought of going out.  That
would be fun, and hurt them, too; but it was difficult.  She did not
want to be seen, and have the humiliation of an open row.  Then there
came into her head the memory of the roof of the tower, where she had
once been as a little girl.  She would be in the air there, she would
be able to breathe, to get rid of this feverishness.  With the
unhappy pleasure of a spoiled child taking its revenge, she took care
to leave her bedroom door open, so that her maid would wonder where
she was, and perhaps be anxious, and make them anxious.  Slipping
through the moonlit picture gallery on to the landing, outside her
father's sanctum, whence rose the stone staircase leading to the
roof, she began to mount.  She was breathless when, after that
unending flight of stairs she emerged on to the roof at the extreme
northern end of the big house, where, below her, was a sheer drop of
a hundred feet.  At first she stood, a little giddy, grasping the
rail that ran round that garden of lead, still absorbed in her
brooding, rebellious thoughts.  Gradually she lost consciousness of
everything save the scene before her.  High above all neighbouring
houses, she was almost appalled by the majesty of what she saw.  This
night-clothed city, so remote and dark, so white-gleaming and alive,
on whose purple hills and valleys grew such myriad golden flowers of
light, from whose heart came this deep incessant murmur--could it
possibly be the same city through which she had been walking that
very day!  From its sleeping body the supreme wistful spirit had
emerged in dark loveliness, and was low-flying down there, tempting
her.  Barbara turned round, to take in all that amazing prospect,
from the black glades of Hyde Park, in front, to the powdery white
ghost of a church tower, away to the East.  How marvellous was this
city of night!  And as, in presence of that wide darkness of the sea
before dawn, her spirit had felt little and timid within her--so it
felt now, in face of this great, brooding, beautiful creature, whom
man had made.  She singled out the shapes of the Piccadilly hotels,
and beyond them the palaces and towers of Westminster and Whitehall;
and everywhere the inextricable loveliness of dim blue forms and
sinuous pallid lines of light, under an indigo-dark sky.  Near at
hand, she could see plainly the still-lighted windows, the motorcars
gliding by far down, even the tiny shapes of people walking; and the
thought that each of them meant someone like herself, seemed strange.

Drinking of this wonder-cup, she began to experience a queer
intoxication, and lost the sense of being little; rather she had the
feeling of power, as in her dream at Monkland.  She too, as well as
this great thing below her, seemed to have shed her body, to be
emancipated from every barrier-floating deliciously identified with
air.  She seemed to be one with the enfranchised spirit of the city,
drowned in perception of its beauty.  Then all that feeling went, and
left her frowning, shivering, though the wind from the West was warm.
Her whole adventure of coming up here seemed bizarre, ridiculous.
Very stealthily she crept down, and had reached once more the door
into 'the picture gallery, when she heard her mother's voice say in
amazement: "That you, Babs?" And turning, saw her coming from the
doorway of the sanctum.

Of a sudden very cool, with all her faculties about her, Barbara
smiled, and stood looking at Lady Valleys, who said with hesitation:

"Come in here, dear, a minute, will you?"

In that room resorted to for comfort, Lord Valleys was standing with
his back to the hearth, and an expression on his face that wavered
between vexation and decision.  The doubt in Agatha's mind whether
she should tell or no, had been terribly resolved by little Ann, who
in a pause of conversation had announced: "We saw Auntie Babs and Mr.
Courtier in Gustard's, but we didn't speak to them."

Upset by the events of the afternoon, Lady Valleys had not shown her
usual 'savoir faire'.  She had told her husband.  A meeting of this
sort in a shop celebrated for little save its wedding cakes was in a
sense of no importance; but, being disturbed already by the news of
Miltoun, it seemed to them both nothing less than sinister, as though
the heavens were in league for the demolition of their house.  To
Lord Valleys it was peculiarly mortifying, because of his real
admiration for his daughter, and because he had paid so little
attention to his wife's warning of some weeks back.  In consultation,
however, they had only succeeded in deciding that Lady Valleys should
talk with her.  Though without much spiritual insight, they had, each
of them, a certain cool judgment; and were fully alive to the danger
of thwarting Barbara.  This had not prevented Lord Valleys from
expressing himself strongly on the 'confounded unscrupulousness of
that fellow,' and secretly forming his own plan for dealing with this
matter.  Lady Valleys, more deeply conversant with her daughter's
nature, and by reason of femininity more lenient towards the other
sex, had not tried to excuse Courtier, but had thought privately:
'Babs is rather a flirt.'  For she could not altogether help
remembering herself at the same age.

Summoned thus unexpectedly, Barbara, her lips very firmly pressed
together, took her stand, coolly enough, by her father's writing-
table.

Seeing her suddenly appear, Lord Valleys instinctively relaxed his
frown; his experience of men and things, his thousands of diplomatic
hours, served to give him an air of coolness and detachment which he
was very far from feeling.  In truth he would rather have faced a
hostile mob than his favourite daughter in such circumstances.  His
tanned face with its crisp grey moustache, his whole head indeed,
took on, unconsciously, a more than ordinarily soldierlike
appearance.  His eyelids drooped a little, his brows rose slightly.

She was wearing a blue wrap over her evening frock, and he seized
instinctively on that indifferent trifle to begin this talk.

"Ah!  Babs, have you been out?"

Alive to her very finger-nails, with every nerve tingling, but
showing no sign, Barbara answered:

"No; on the roof of the tower."

It gave her a real malicious pleasure to feel the perplexity beneath
her father's dignified exterior.  And detecting that covert mockery,
Lord Valleys said dryly:

"Star-gazing?"

Then, with that sudden resolution peculiar to him, as though he were
bored with having to delay and temporize, he added:

"Do you know, I doubt whether it's wise to make appointments in
confectioner's shops when Ann is in London."

The dangerous little gleam in Barbara's eyes escaped his vision but
not that of Lady Valleys, who said at once:

"No doubt you had the best of reasons, my dear."

Barbara curled her lip.  Had it not been for the scene they had been
through that day with Miltoun, and for their very real anxiety, both
would have seen, then, that while their daughter was in this mood,
least said was soonest mended.  But their nerves were not quite
within control; and with more than a touch of impatience Lord Valleys
ejaculated:

"It doesn't appear to you, I suppose, to require any explanation?"

Barbara answered:

"No."

"Ah!" said Lord Valleys: "I see.  An explanation can be had no doubt
from the gentleman whose sense of proportion was such as to cause him
to suggest such a thing."

"He did not suggest it.  I did."

Lord Valleys' eyebrows rose still higher.

"Indeed!" he said.

"Geoffrey!" murmured Lady Valleys, "I thought I was to talk to Babs."

"It would no doubt be wiser."

In Barbara, thus for the first time in her life seriously
reprimanded, there was at work the most peculiar sensation she had
ever felt, as if something were scraping her very skin--a sick, and
at the same time devilish, feeling.  At that moment she could have
struck her father dead.  But she showed nothing, having lowered the
lids of her eyes.

"Anything else?" she said.

Lord Valleys' jaw had become suddenly more prominent.

"As a sequel to your share in Miltoun's business, it is peculiarly
entrancing."

"My dear," broke in Lady Valleys very suddenly, "Babs will tell me.
It's nothing, of course."

Barbara's calm voice said again:

"Anything else?"

The repetition of this phrase in that maddening, cool voice almost
broke down her father's sorely tried control.

"Nothing from you," he said with deadly coldness.  "I shall have the
honour of telling this gentleman what I think of him."

At those words Barbara drew herself together, and turned her eyes
from one face to the other.

Under that gaze, which for all its cool hardness, was so furiously
alive, neither Lord nor Lady Valleys could keep quite still.  It was
as if she had stripped from them the well-bred mask of those whose
spirits, by long unquestioning acceptance of themselves, have become
inelastic, inexpansive, commoner than they knew.  In fact a rather
awful moment!  Then Barbara said:

"If there's nothing else, I'm going to bed.  Goodnight!"

And as calmly as she had come in, she went out.

When she had regained her room, she locked the door, threw off her
cloak, and looked at herself in the glass.  With pleasure she saw how
firmly her teeth were clenched, how her breast was heaving, and how
her eyes seemed to be stabbing herself.  And all the time she
thought:

"Very well!  My dears!  Very well!"




CHAPTER XXV

In that mood of rebellious mortification she fell asleep.  And,
curiously enough, dreamed not of him whom she had in mind been so
furiously defending, but of Harbinger.  She fancied herself in
prison, lying in a cell fashioned like the drawing-room at Sea house;
and in the next cell, into which she could somehow look, Harbinger
was digging at the wall with his nails.  She could distinctly see the
hair on the back of his hands, and hear him breathing.  The hole he
was making grew larger and larger.  Her heart began to beat
furiously; she awoke.

She rose with a new and malicious resolution to show no sign of
rebellion, to go through the day as if nothing had happened, to
deceive them all, and then--!  Exactly what 'and then' meant, she did
not explain even to herself.

In accordance with this plan of action she presented an untroubled
front at breakfast, went out riding with little Ann, and shopping
with her mother afterwards.  Owing to this news of Miltoun the
journey to Scotland had been postponed.  She parried with cool
ingenuity each attempt made by Lady Valleys to draw her into
conversation on the subject of that meeting at Gustard's, nor would
she talk of her brother; in every other way she was her usual self.
In the afternoon she even volunteered to accompany her mother to old
Lady Harbinger's in the neighbourhood of Prince's Gate.  She knew
that Harbinger would be there, and with the thought of meeting that
other at 'five o'clock,' had a cynical pleasure in thus encountering
him.  It was so complete a blind to them all!  Then, feeling that she
was accomplishing a masterstroke; she even told him, in her mother's
hearing, that she would walk home, and he might come if he cared.  He
did care.

But when once she had begun to swing along in the mellow afternoon,
under the mellow trees, where the air was sweetened by the South-West
wind, all that mutinous, reckless mood of hers vanished, she felt
suddenly happy and kind, glad to be walking with him.  To-day too he
was cheerful, as if determined not to spoil her gaiety; and she was
grateful for this.  Once or twice she even put her hand up and
touched his sleeve, calling his attention to birds or trees,
friendly, and glad, after all those hours of bitter feelings, to be
giving happiness.  When they parted at the door of Valleys House, she
looked back at him with a queer, half-rueful smile.  For, now the
hour had come!

In a little unfrequented ante-room, all white panels and polish, she
sat down to wait.  The entrance drive was visible from here; and she
meant to encounter Courtier casually in the hall.  She was excited,
and a little scornful of her own excitement.  She had expected him to
be punctual, but it was already past five; and soon she began to feel
uneasy, almost ridiculous, sitting in this room where no one ever
came.  Going to the window, she looked out.

A sudden voice behind her, said:

"Auntie Babs!".

Turning, she saw little Ann regarding her with those wide, frank,
hazel eyes.  A shiver of nerves passed through Barbara.

"Is this your room?  It's a nice room, isn't it?"

She answered:

"Quite a nice room, Ann."

"Yes.  I've never been in here before.  There's somebody just come,
so I must go now."

Barbara involuntarily put her hands up to her cheeks, and quickly
passed with her niece into the hall.  At the very door the footman
William handed her a note.  She looked at the superscription.  It was
from Courtier.  She went back into the room.  Through its half-closed
door the figure of little Ann could be seen, with her legs rather
wide apart, and her hands clasped on her low-down belt, pointing up
at William her sudden little nose.  Barbara shut the door abruptly,
broke the seal, and read:


"DEAR LADY BARBARA,

"I am sorry to say my interview with your brother was fruitless.

"I happened to be sitting in the Park just now, and I want to wish
you every happiness before I go.  It has been the greatest pleasure
to know you.  I shall never have a thought of you that will not be my
pride; nor a memory that will not help me to believe that life is
good.  If I am tempted to feel that things are dark, I shall remember
that you are breathing this same mortal air.  And to beauty and joy'
I shall take off my hat with the greater reverence, that once I was
permitted to walk and talk, with you.  And so, good-bye, and God
bless you.
                         "Your faithful servant,
                                   "CHARLES COURTIER."


Her cheeks burned, quick sighs escaped her lips; she read the letter
again, but before getting to the end could not see the words for
mist.  If in that letter there had been a word of complaint or even
of regret!  She could not let him go like this, without good-bye,
without any explanation at all.  He should not think of her as a
cold, stony flirt, who had been merely stealing a few weeks'
amusement out of him.  She would explain to him at all events that it
had not been that.  She would make him understand that it was not
what he thought--that something in her wanted--wanted----!  Her mind
was all confused.  "What was it?" she thought: "What did I do?" And
sore with anger at herself, she screwed the letter up in her glove,
and ran out.  She walked swiftly down to Piccadilly, and crossed into
the Green Park.  There she passed Lord Malvezin and a friend
strolling up towards Hyde Park Corner, and gave them a very faint
bow.  The composure of those two precise and well-groomed figures
sickened her just then.  She wanted to run, to fly to this meeting
that should remove from him the odious feelings he must have, that
she, Barbara Caradoc, was a vulgar enchantress, a common traitress
and coquette!  And his letter--without a syllable of reproach!  Her
cheeks burned so, that she could not help trying to hide them from
people who passed.

As she drew nearer to his rooms she walked slower, forcing herself to
think what she should do, what she should let him do!  But she
continued resolutely forward.  She would not shrink now--whatever
came of it!  Her heart fluttered, seemed to stop beating, fluttered
again.  She set her teeth; a sort of desperate hilarity rose in her.
It was an adventure!  Then she was gripped by the feeling that had
come to her on the roof.  The whole thing was bizarre, ridiculous!
She stopped, and drew the letter from her glove.  It might be
ridiculous, but it was due from her; and closing her lips very tight,
she walked on.  In thought she was already standing close to him, her
eyes shut, waiting, with her heart beating wildly, to know what she
would feel when his lips had spoken, perhaps touched her face or
hand.  And she had a sort of mirage vision of herself, with eyelashes
resting on her cheeks, lips a little parted, arms helpless at her
sides.  Yet, incomprehensibly, his figure was invisible.  She
discovered then that she was standing before his door.

She rang the bell calmly, but instead of dropping her hand, pressed
the little bare patch of palm left open by the glove to her face, to
see whether it was indeed her own cheek flaming so.

The door had been opened by some unseen agency, disclosing a passage
and flight of stairs covered by a red carpet, at the foot of which
lay an old, tangled, brown-white dog full of fleas and sorrow.
Unreasoning terror seized on Barbara; her body remained rigid, but
her spirit began flying back across the Green Park, to the very hall
of Valleys House.  Then she saw coming towards her a youngish woman
in a blue apron, with mild, reddened eyes.

"Is this where Mr. Courtier lives?"

"Yes, miss."  The teeth of the young woman were few in number and
rather black; and Barbara could only stand there saying nothing, as
if her body had been deserted between the sunlight and this dim red
passage, which led to-what?

The woman spoke again:

"I'm sorry if you was wanting him, miss, he's just gone away."

Barbara felt a movement in her heart, like the twang and quiver of an
elastic band, suddenly relaxed.  She bent to stroke the head of the
old dog, who was smelling her shoes.  The woman said:

"And, of course, I can't give you his address, because he's gone to
foreign parts."

With a murmur, of whose sense she knew nothing, Barbara hurried out
into the sunshine.  Was she glad?  Was she sorry?  At the corner of
the street she turned and looked back; the two heads, of the woman
and the dog, were there still, poked out through the doorway.

A horrible inclination to laugh seized her, followed by as horrible a
desire to cry.




CHAPTER XXVI

By the river the West wind, whose murmuring had visited Courtier and
Miltoun the night before, was bringing up the first sky of autumn.
Slow-creeping and fleecy grey, the clouds seemed trying to overpower
a sun that shone but fitfully even thus early in the day.  While
Audrey Noel was dressing sunbeams danced desperately on the white
wall, like little lost souls with no to-morrow, or gnats that wheel
and wheel in brief joy, leaving no footmarks on the air.  Through the
chinks of a side window covered by a dark blind some smoky filaments
of light were tethered to the back of her mirror.  Compounded of
trembling grey spirals, so thick to the eye that her hand felt
astonishment when it failed to grasp them, and so jealous as ghosts
of the space they occupied, they brought a moment's distraction to a
heart not happy.  For how could she be happy, her lover away from her
now thirty hours, without having overcome with his last kisses the
feeling of disaster which had settled on her when he told her of his
resolve.  Her eyes had seen deeper than his; her instinct had
received a message from Fate.

To be the dragger-down, the destroyer of his usefulness; to be not
the helpmate, but the clog; not the inspiring sky, but the cloud!
And because of a scruple which she could not understand!  She had no
anger with that unintelligible scruple; but her fatalism, and her
sympathy had followed it out into his future.  Things being so, it
could not be long before he felt that her love was maiming him; even
if he went on desiring her, it would be only with his body.  And if,
for this scruple, he were capable of giving up his public life, he
would be capable of living on with her after his love was dead!  This
thought she could not bear.  It stung to the very marrow of her
nerves.  And yet surely Life could not be so cruel as to have given
her such happiness meaning to take it from her!  Surely her love was
not to be only one summer's day; his love but an embrace, and then--
for ever nothing!

This morning, fortified by despair, she admitted her own beauty.  He
would, he must want her more than that other life, at the very
thought of which her face darkened.  That other life so hard, and far
from her!  So loveless, formal, and yet--to him so real, so
desperately, accursedly real!  If he must indeed give up his career,
then surely the life they could live together would make up to him--
a life among simple and sweet things, all over the world, with music
and pictures, and the flowers and all Nature, and friends who sought
them for themselves, and in being kind to everyone, and helping the
poor and the unfortunate, and loving each other!  But he did not want
that sort of life!  What was the good of pretending that he did?  It
was right and natural he should want, to use his powers!  To lead and
serve!  She would not have him otherwise: With these thoughts
hovering and darting within her, she went on twisting and coiling her
dark hair, and burying her heart beneath its lace defences.  She
noted too, with her usual care, two fading blossoms in the bowl of
flowers on her dressing-table, and, removing their, emptied out the
water and refilled the bowl.

Before she left her bedroom the sunbeams had already ceased to dance,
the grey filaments of light were gone.  Autumn sky had come into its
own.  Passing the mirror in the hall which was always rough with her,
she had not courage to glance at it.  Then suddenly a woman's belief
in the power of her charm came to her aid; she felt almost happy--
surely he must love her better than his conscience!  But that
confidence was very tremulous, ready to yield to the first rebuff.
Even the friendly fresh--cheeked maid seemed that morning to be
regarding her with compassion; and all the innate sense, not of 'good
form,' but of form, which made her shrink from anything that should
disturb or hurt another, or make anyone think she was to be pitied,
rose up at once within her; she became more than ever careful to show
nothing even to herself.  So she passed the morning, mechanically
doing the little usual things.  An overpowering longing was with her
all the time, to get him away with her from England, and see whether
the thousand beauties she could show him would not fire him with love
of the things she loved.  As a girl she had spent nearly three years
abroad.  And Eustace had never been to Italy, nor to her beloved
mountain valleys!  Then, the remembrance of his rooms at the Temple
broke in on that vision, and shattered it.  No Titian's feast of
gentian, tawny brown, and alpen-rose could intoxicate the lover of
those books, those papers, that great map.  And the scent of leather
came to her now as poignantly as if she were once more flitting about
noiselessly on her business of nursing.  Then there rushed through
her again the warm wonderful sense that had been with her all those
precious days--of love that knew secretly of its approaching triumph
and fulfilment; the delicious sense of giving every minute of her
time, every thought, and movement; and all the sweet unconscious
waiting for the divine, irrevocable moment when at last she would
give herself and be his.  The remembrance too of how tired, how
sacredly tired she had been, and of how she had smiled all the time
with her inner joy of being tired for him.

The sound of the bell startled her.  His telegram had said, the
afternoon!  She determined to show nothing of the trouble darkening
the whole world for her, and drew a deep breath, waiting for his
kiss.

It was not Miltoun, but Lady Casterley.

The shock sent the blood buzzing into her temples.  Then she noticed
that the little figure before her was also trembling; drawing up a
chair, she said: "Won't you sit down?"

The tone of that old voice, thanking her, brought back sharply the
memory of her garden, at Monkland, bathed in the sweetness and
shimmer of summer, and of Barbara standing at her gate towering above
this little figure, which now sat there so silent, with very white
face.  Those carved features, those keen, yet veiled eyes, had too
often haunted her thoughts; they were like a bad dream come true.

"My grandson is not here, is he?"

Audrey shook her head.

"We have heard of his decision.  I will not beat about the bush with
you.  It is a disaster for me a calamity.  I have known and loved him
since he was born, and I have been foolish enough to dream, dreams
about him.  I wondered perhaps whether you knew how much we counted
on him.  You must forgive an old woman's coming here like this.  At
my age there are few things that matter, but they matter very much."

And Audrey thought: "And at my age there is but one thing that
matters, and that matters worse than death."  But she did not speak.
To whom, to what should she speak?  To this hard old woman, who
personified the world?  Of what use, words?

"I can say to you," went on the voice of the little figure, that
seemed so to fill the room with its grey presence, "what I could not
bring myself to say to others; for you are not hard-hearted."

A quiver passed up from the heart so praised to the still lips.  No,
she was not hard-hearted!  She could even feel for this old woman
from whose voice anxiety had stolen its despotism.

"Eustace cannot live without his career.  His career is himself, he
must be doing, and leading, and spending his powers.  What he has
given you is not his true self.  I don't want to hurt you, but the
truth is the truth, and we must all bow before it.  I may be hard,
but I can respect sorrow."

To respect sorrow!  Yes, this grey visitor could do that, as the wind
passing over the sea respects its surface, as the air respects the
surface of a rose, but to penetrate to the heart, to understand her
sorrow, that old age could not do for youth!  As well try to track
out the secret of the twistings in the flight of those swallows out
there above the river, or to follow to its source the faint scent of
the lilies in that bowl!  How should she know what was passing in
here--this little old woman whose blood was cold?  And Audrey had the
sensation of watching someone pelt her with the rind and husks of
what her own spirit had long devoured.  She had a longing to get up,
and take the hand, the chill, spidery hand of age, and thrust it into
her breast, and say: "Feel that, and cease!"

But, withal, she never lost her queer dull compassion for the owner
of that white carved face.  It was not her visitor's fault that she
had come!  Again Lady Casterley was speaking.

"It is early days.  If you do not end it now, at once, it will only
come harder on you presently.  You know how determined he is.  He
will not change his mind.  If you cut him off from his work in life,
it will but recoil on you.  I can only expect your hatred, for
talking like this, but believe me, it's for your good, as well as
his, in the long run."

A tumultuous heart-beating of ironical rage seized on the listener to
that speech.  Her good!  The good of a corse that the breath is just
abandoning; the good of a flower beneath a heel; the good of an old
dog whose master leaves it for the last time!  Slowly a weight like
lead stopped all that fluttering of her heart.  If she did not end it
at once!  The words had now been spoken that for so many hours, she
knew, had lain unspoken within her own breast.  Yes, if she did not,
she could never know a moment's peace, feeling that she was forcing
him to a death in life, desecrating her own love and pride!  And the
spur had been given by another!  The thought that someone--this hard
old woman of the hard world--should have shaped in words the
hauntings of her love and pride through all those ages since Miltoun
spoke to her of his resolve; that someone else should have had to
tell her what her heart had so long known it must do--this stabbed
her like a knife!  This, at all events, she could not bear!

She stood up, and said:

"Please leave me now!  I have a great many things to do, before I
go."

With a sort of pleasure she saw a look of bewilderment cover that old
face; with a sort of pleasure she marked the trembling of the hands
raising their owner from the chair; and heard the stammering in the
voice: "You are going?  Before-before he comes?  You-you won't be
seeing him again?"  With a sort of pleasure she marked the
hesitation, which did not know whether to thank, or bless, or just
say nothing and creep away.  With a sort of pleasure she watched the
flush mount in the faded cheeks, the faded lips pressed together.
Then, at the scarcely whispered words: "Thank you, my dear!" she
turned, unable to bear further sight or sound.  She went to the
window and pressed her forehead against the glass, trying to think of
nothing.  She heard the sound of wheels-Lady Casterley had gone.  And
then, of all the awful feelings man or woman can know, she
experienced the worst: She could not cry!

At this most bitter and deserted moment of her life, she felt
strangely calm, foreseeing clearly, exactly; what she must do, and
where go.  Quickly it must be done, or it would never be done!
Quickly!  And without fuss!  She put some things together, sent the
maid out for a cab, and sat down to write.

She must do and say nothing that could excite him, and bring back his
illness.  Let it all be sober, reasonable!  It would be easy to let
him know where she was going, to write a letter that would bring him
flying after her.  But to write the calm, reasonable words that would
keep him waiting and thinking, till he never again came to her, broke
her heart.

When she had finished and sealed the letter, she sat motionless with
a numb feeling in hands and brain, trying to realize what she had
next to do.  To go, and that was all!

Her trunks had been taken down already.  She chose the little hat
that he liked her best in, and over it fastened her thickest veil.
Then, putting on her travelling coat and gloves, she looked in the
long mirror, and seeing that there was nothing more to keep her,
lifted her dressing bag, and went down.

Over on the embankment a child was crying; and the passionate
screaming sound, broken by the gulping of tears, made her cover her
lips, as though she had heard her own escaped soul wailing out there.

She leaned out of the cab to say to the maid:

"Go and comfort that crying, Ella."

Only when she was alone in the train, secure from all eyes, did she
give way to desperate weeping.  The white smoke rolling past the
windows was not more evanescent than her joy had been.  For she had
no illusions--it was over!  From first to last--not quite a year!
But even at this moment, not for all the world would she have been
without her love, gone to its grave, like a dead child that evermore
would be touching her breast with its wistful fingers.




CHAPTER XXVII

Barbara returning from her visit to Courtier's deserted rooms, was
met at Valleys House with the message: Would she please go at once to
Lady Casterley?

When, in obedience, she reached Ravensham, she found her grandmother
and Lord-Dennis in the white room.  They were standing by one of the
tall windows, apparently contemplating the view.  They turned indeed
at sound of Barbara's approach, but neither of them spoke or nodded.
Not having seen her grandfather since before Miltoun's illness,
Barbara found it strange to be so treated; she too took her stand
silently before the window.  A very large wasp was crawling up the
pane, then slipping down with a faint buzz.

Suddenly Lady Casterley spoke.

"Kill that thing!"

Lord Dennis drew forth his handkerchief.

"Not with that, Dennis.  It will make a mess.  "Take a paper knife."

"I was going to put it out," murmured Lord Dennis.

"Let Barbara with her gloves."

Barbara moved towards the pane.

"It's a hornet, I think," she said.

"So he is!" said Lord Dennis, dreamily:

"Nonsense," murmured Lady Casterley, "it's a common wasp."

"I know it's a hornet, Granny.  The rings are darker."

Lady Casterley bent down; when she raised herself she had a slipper
in her hand.

"Don't irritate him!" cried Barbara, catching her wrist.  But Lady
Casterley freed her hand.

"I will," she said, and brought the sole of the slipper down on the
insect, so that it dropped on the floor, dead.  "He has no business
in here."

And, as if that little incident had happened to three other people,
they again stood silently looking through the window.

Then Lady Casterley turned to Barbara.

"Well, have you realized the mischief that you've done?"

"Ann!" murmured Lord Dennis.

"Yes, yes; she is your favourite, but that won't save her.  This
woman--to her great credit--I say to her great credit--has gone away,
so as to put herself out of Eustace's reach, until he has recovered
his senses."

With a sharp-drawn breath Barbara said:

"Oh!  poor thing!"

But on Lady Casterley's face had come an almost cruel look.

"Ah!" she said: "Exactly.  But, curiously enough, I am thinking of
Eustace."  Her little figure was quivering from head to foot: "This
will be a lesson to you not to play with fire!"

"Ann!" murmured Lord Dennis again, slipping his arm through
Barbara's.

"The world," went on Lady Casterley, "is a place of facts, not of
romantic fancies.  You have done more harm than can possibly be
repaired.  I went to her myself.  I was very much moved.' If it
hadn't been for your foolish conduct----"

"Ann!" said Lord Dennis once more.

Lady Casterley paused, tapping the floor with her little foot.
Barbara's eyes were gleaming.

"Is there anything else you would like to squash, dear?"

"Babs!" murmured Lord Dennis; but, unconsciously pressing his hand
against her heart, the girl went on.

"You are lucky to be abusing me to-day--if it had been yesterday----"

At these dark words Lady Casterley turned away, her shoes leaving
little dull stains on the polished floor.

Barbara raised to her cheek the fingers which she had been so
convulsively embracing.  "Don't let her go on, uncle," she whispered,
"not just now!"

"No, no, my dear," Lord Dennis murmured, "certainly not--it is
enough."

"It has been your sentimental folly," came Lady Casterley's voice
from a far corner, "which has brought this on the boy."

Responding to the pressure of the hand, back now at her waist,
Barbara did not answer; and the sound of the little feet retracing
their steps rose in the stillness.  Neither of those two at the
window turned their heads; once more the feet receded, and again
began coming back.

Suddenly Barbara, pointing to the floor, cried:

"Oh!  Granny, for Heaven's sake, stand still; haven't you squashed
the hornet enough, even if he did come in where he hadn't any
business?"

Lady Casterley looked down at the debris of the insect.

"Disgusting!" she said; but when she next spoke it was in a less
hard, more querulous voice.

"That man--what was his name--have you got rid of him?"

Barbara went crimson.

"Abuse my friends, and I will go straight home and never speak to you
again."

For a moment Lady Casterley looked almost as if she might strike her
granddaughter; then a little sardonic smile broke out on her face.

"A creditable sentiment!" she said.

Letting fall her uncle's hand, Barbara cried:

"In any case, I'd better go.  I don't know why you sent for me."

Lady Casterley answered coldly:

"To let you and your mother know of this woman's most unselfish
behaviour; to put you on the 'qui vive' for what Eustace may do now;
to give you a chance to make up for your folly.  Moreover to warn you
against----" she paused.

"Yes?"

"Let me----" interrupted Lord Dennis.

"No, Uncle Dennis, let Granny take her shoe!"

She had withdrawn against the wall, tall, and as it were, formidable,
with her head up.  Lady Casterley remained silent.

"Have you got it ready?" cried Barbara: "Unfortunately he's flown!"

A voice said:

"Lord Miltoun."

He had come in quietly and quickly, preceding the announcement, and
stood almost touching that little group at the window before they
caught sight of him.  His face had the rather ghastly look of
sunburnt faces from which emotion has driven the blood; and his eyes,
always so much the most living part of him, were full of such
stabbing anger, that involuntarily they all looked down.

"I want to speak to you alone," he said to Lady Casterley.

Visibly, for perhaps the first time in her life, that indomitable
little figure flinched.  Lord Dennis drew Barbara away, but at the
door he whispered:

"Stay here quietly, Babs; I don't like the look of this."

Unnoticed, Barbara remained hovering.

The two voices, low, and so far off in the long white room, were
uncannily distinct, emotion charging each word with preternatural
power of penetration; and every movement of the speakers had to the
girl's excited eyes a weird precision, as of little figures she had
once seen at a Paris puppet show.  She could hear Miltoun reproaching
his grandmother in words terribly dry and bitter.  She edged nearer
and nearer, till, seeing that they paid no more heed to her than if
she were an attendant statue, she had regained her position by the
window.

Lady Casterley was speaking.

"I was not going to see you ruined before my eyes, Eustace.  I did
what I did at very great cost.  I did my best for you."

Barbara saw Miltoun's face transfigured by a dreadful smile--the
smile of one defying his torturer with hate.  Lady Casterley went on:

"Yes, you stand there looking like a devil.  Hate me if you like--but
don't betray us, moaning and moping because you can't have the moon.
Put on your armour, and go down into the battle.  Don't play the
coward, boy!"

Miltoun's answer cut like the lash of a whip.

"By God!  Be silent!"

And weirdly, there was silence.  It was not the brutality of the
words, but the sight of force suddenly naked of all disguise--like a
fierce dog let for a moment off its chain--which made Barbara utter a
little dismayed sound.  Lady Casterley had dropped into a chair,
trembling.  And without a look Miltoun passed her.  If their
grandmother had fallen dead, Barbara knew he would not have stopped
to see.  She ran forward, but the old woman waved her away.

"Go after him," she said, "don't let him go alone."

And infected by the fear in that wizened voice, Barbara flew.

She caught her brother as he was entering the taxi-cab in which he
had come, and without a word slipped in beside him.  The driver's
face appeared at the window, but Miltoun only motioned with his head,
as if to say: Anywhere, away from here!

The thought flashed through Barbara: "If only I can keep him in here
with me!"

She leaned out, and said quietly:

"To Nettlefold, in Sussex--never mind your petrol--get more on the
road.  You can have what fare you like.  Quick!"

The man hesitated, looked in her face, and said:

"Very well; miss.  By Dorking, ain't it?"

Barbara nodded.




CHAPTER XXVIII

The clock over the stables was chiming seven when Miltoun and Barbara
passed out of the tall iron gates, in their swift-moving small world,
that smelled faintly of petrol.  Though the cab was closed, light
spurts of rain drifted in through the open windows, refreshing the
girl's hot face, relieving a little her dread of this drive.  For,
now that Fate had been really cruel, now that it no longer lay in
Miltoun's hands to save himself from suffering, her heart bled for
him; and she remembered to forget herself.  The immobility with which
he had received her intrusion, was ominous.  And though silent in her
corner, she was desperately working all her woman's wits to discover
a way of breaking into the house of his secret mood.  He appeared not
even to have noticed that they had turned their backs on London, and
passed into Richmond Park.

Here the trees, made dark by rain, seemed to watch gloomily the
progress of this whirring-wheeled red box, unreconciled even yet to
such harsh intruders on their wind-scented tranquillity.  And the
deer, pursuing happiness on the sweet grasses, raised disquieted
noses, as who should say: Poisoners of the fern, defilers of the
trails of air!

Barbara vaguely felt the serenity out there in the clouds, and the
trees, and wind.  If it would but creep into this dim, travelling
prison, and help her; if it would but come, like sleep, and steal
away dark sorrow, and in one moment make grief-joy.  But it stayed
outside on its wistful wings; and that grand chasm which yawns
between soul and soul remained unbridged.  For what could she say?
How make him speak of what he was going to do?  What alternatives
indeed were now before him?  Would he sullenly resign his seat, and
wait till he could find Audrey Noel again?  But even if he did find
her, they would only be where they were.  She had gone, in order not
to be a drag on him--it would only be the same thing all over again!
Would he then, as Granny had urged him, put on his armour, and go
down into the fight?  But that indeed would mean the end, for if she
had had the strength to go away now, she would surely never come back
and break in on his life a second time.  And a grim thought swooped
down on Barbara.  What if he resigned everything!  Went out into the
dark!  Men did sometimes--she knew--caught like this in the full
flush of passion.  But surely not Miltoun, with his faith!  'If the
lark's song means nothing--if that sky is a morass of our invention--
if we are pettily creeping on, furthering nothing--persuade me of it,
Babs, and I'll bless you.' But had he still that anchorage, to
prevent him slipping out to sea?  This sudden thought of death to one
for whom life was joy, who had never even seen the Great Stillness,
was very terrifying.  She fixed her eyes on the back of the
chauffeur, in his drab coat with the red collar, finding some comfort
in its solidity.  They were in a taxi-cab, in Richmond Park!  Death-
incongruous, incredible death!  It was stupid to be frightened!  She
forced herself to look at Miltoun.  He seemed to be asleep; his eyes
were closed, his arms folded--only a quivering of his eyelids
betrayed him.  Impossible to tell what was going on in that grim
waking sleep, which made her feel that she was not there at all, so
utterly did he seem withdrawn into himself!

He opened his eyes, and said suddenly:

"So you think I'm going to lay hands on myself, Babs?"

Horribly startled by this reading of her thoughts, Barbara could only
edge away and stammer:

"No; oh, no!"

"Where are we going in this thing?"

"Nettlefold.  Would you like him stopped?"

"It will do as well as anywhere."

Terrified lest he should relapse into that grim silence, she timidly
possessed herself of his hand.

It was fast growing dark; the cab, having left the villas of Surbiton
behind, was flying along at great speed among pine-trees and
stretches of heather gloomy with faded daylight.

Miltoun said presently, in a queer, slow voice "If I want, I have
only to open that door and jump.  You who believe that 'to-morrow we
die'--give me the faith to feel that I can free myself by that jump,
and out I go!"  Then, seeming to pity her terrified squeeze of his
hand, he added: "It's all right, Babs; we, shall sleep comfortably
enough in our beds tonight."

But, so desolate to the girl was his voice, that she hoped now for
silence.

"Let us be skinned quietly," muttered Miltoun, "if nothing else.
Sorry to have disturbed you."

Pressing close up to him, Barbara murmured:

"If only----Talk to me!".

But Miltoun, though he stroked her hand, was silent.

The cab, moving at unaccustomed speed along these deserted roads,
moaned dismally; and Barbara was possessed now by a desire which she
dared not put in practice, to pull his head down, and rock it against
her.  Her heart felt empty, and timid; to have something warm resting
on it would have made all the difference.  Everything real,
substantial, comforting, seemed to have slipped away.  Among these
flying dark ghosts of pine-trees--as it were the unfrequented
borderland between two worlds--the feeling of a cheek against her
breast alone could help muffle the deep disquiet in her, lost like a
child in a wood.

The cab slackened speed, the driver was lighting his lamps; and his
red face appeared at the window.

"We'll 'ave to stop here, miss; I'm out of petrol.  Will you get some
dinner, or go through?"

"Through," answered Barbara:

While they were passing the little their, buying then petrol, asking
the way, she felt less miserable, and even looked about her with a
sort of eagerness.  Then when they had started again, she thought: If
I could get him to sleep--the sea will comfort him!  But his eyes
were staring, wide-open.  She feigned sleep herself; letting her head
slip a little to one side, causing small sounds of breathing to
escape.  The whirring of the wheels, the moaning of the cab joints,
the dark trees slipping by, the scent of the wet fern drifting in,
all these must surely help!  And presently she felt that he was
indeed slipping into darkness--and then-she felt nothing.

When she awoke from the sleep into which she had seen Miltoun fall,
the cab was slowly mounting a steep hill, above which the moon had
risen.  The air smelled strong and sweet, as though it had passed
over leagues of grass.

"The Downs!" she thought; "I must have been asleep!"

In sudden terror, she looked round for Miltoun.  But he was still
there, exactly as before, leaning back rigid in his corner of the
cab, with staring eyes, and no other signs of life.  And still only
half awake, like a great warm sleepy child startled out of too deep
slumber, she clutched, and clung to him.  The thought that he had
been sitting like that, with his spirit far away, all the time that
she had been betraying her watch in sleep, was dreadful.  But to her
embrace there was no response, and awake indeed now, ashamed, sore,
Barbara released him, and turned her face to the air.

Out there, two thin, dense-black, long clouds, shaped like the wings
of a hawk, had joined themselves together, so that nothing of the
moon showed but a living brightness imprisoned, like the eyes and
life of a bird, between those swift sweeps of darkness.  This great
uncanny spirit, brooding malevolent over the high leagues of moon-wan
grass, seemed waiting to swoop, and pluck up in its talons, and
devour, all that intruded on the wild loneness of these far-up plains
of freedom.  Barbara almost expected to hear coming from it the lost
whistle of the buzzard hawks.  And her dream came back to her.  Where
were her wings-the wings that in sleep had borne her to the stars;
the wings that would never lift her--waking--from the ground?  Where
too were Miltoun's wings?  She crouched back into her corner; a tear
stole up and trickled out between her closed lids-another and another
followed.  Faster and faster they came.  Then she felt Miltoun's arm
round her, and heard him say: "Don't cry, Babs!"  Instinct telling
her what to do, she laid her head against his chest, and sobbed
bitterly.  Struggling with those sobs, she grew less and less
unhappy--knowing that he could never again feel quite so desolate, as
before he tried to give her comfort.  It was all a bad dream, and
they would soon wake from it!  And they would be happy; as happy as
they had been before--before these last months!  And she whispered:

"Only a little while, Eusty!"




CHAPTER XXIX

Old Lady Harbinger dying in the early February of the following year,
the marriage of Barbara with her son was postponed till June.

Much of the wild sweetness of Spring still clung to the high moor
borders of Monkland on the early morning of the wedding day.

Barbara was already up and dressed for riding when her maid came to
call her; and noting Stacey's astonished eyes fix themselves on her
boots, she said:

"Well, Stacey?"

"It'll tire you."

"Nonsense; I'm not going to be hung."

Refusing the company of a groom, she made her way towards the stretch
of high moor where she had ridden with Courtier a year ago.  Here
over the short, as yet unflowering, heather, there was a mile or more
of level galloping ground.  She mounted steadily, and her spirit
rode, as it were, before her, longing to get up there among the
peewits and curlew, to feel the crisp, peaty earth slip away under
her, and the wind drive in her face, under that deep blue sky.
Carried by this warm-blooded sweetheart of hers, ready to jump out of
his smooth hide with pleasure, snuffling and sneezing in sheer joy,
whose eye she could see straying round to catch a glimpse of her
intentions, from whose lips she could hear issuing the sweet bitt-
music, whose vagaries even seemed designed to startle from her a
closer embracing--she was filled with a sort of delicious impatience
with everything that was not this perfect communing with vigour.

Reaching the top, she put him into a gallop.  With the wind furiously
assailing her face and throat, every muscle crisped; and all her
blood tingling--this was a very ecstasy of motion!

She reined in at the cairn whence she and Courtier had looked down at
the herds of ponies.  It was the merest memory now, vague and a
little sweet, like the remembrance of some exceptional Spring day,
when trees seem to flower before your eyes, and in sheer wantonness
exhale a scent of lemons.  The ponies were there still, and in
distance the shining sea.  She sat thinking of nothing, but how good
it was to be alive.  The fullness and sweetness of it all, the
freedom and strength!  Away to the West over a lonely farm she could
see two buzzard hawks hunting in wide circles.  She did not envy
them--so happy was she, as happy as the morning.  And there came to
her suddenly the true, the overmastering longing of mountain tops.

"I must," she thought; "I simply must!"

Slipping off her horse she lay down on her back, and at once
everything was lost except the sky.  Over her body, supported above
solid earth by the warm, soft heather, the wind skimmed without sound
or touch.  Her spirit became one with that calm unimaginable freedom.
Transported beyond her own contentment, she no longer even knew
whether she was joyful.

The horse Hal, attempting to eat her sleeve, aroused her.  She
mounted him, and rode down.  Near home she took a short cut across a
meadow, through which flowed two thin bright streams, forming a delta
full of lingering 'milkmaids,' mauve marsh orchis, and yellow flags.
>From end to end of this long meadow, so varied, so pied with trees
and stones, and flowers, and water, the last of the Spring was
passing.

Some ponies, shyly curious of Barbara and her horse, stole up, and
stood at a safe distance, with their noses dubiously stretched out,
swishing their lean tails.  And suddenly, far up, following their own
music, two cuckoos flew across, seeking the thorn-trees out on the
moor.  While she was watching the arrowy birds, she caught sight of
someone coming towards her from a clump of beech-trees, and suddenly
saw that it was Mrs. Noel!

She rode forward, flushing.  What dared she say?  Could she speak of
her wedding, and betray Miltoun's presence?  Could she open her mouth
at all without rousing painful feeling of some sort?  Then, impatient
of indecision, she began:

"I'm so glad to see you again.  I didn't know you were still down
here."

"I only came back to England yesterday, and I'm just here to see to
the packing of my things."

"Oh!" murmured Barbara.  "You know what's happening to me, I
suppose?"

Mrs. Noel smiled, looked up, and said: "I heard last night.  All joy
to you!"

A lump rose in Barbara's throat.

"I'm so glad to have seen you," she murmured once more; "I expect I
ought to be getting on," and with the word "Good-bye," gently
echoed, she rode away.

But her mood of delight was gone; even the horse Hal seemed to tread
unevenly, for all that he was going back to that stable which ever
appeared to him desirable ten minutes after he had left it.

Except that her eyes seemed darker, Mrs. Noel had not changed.  If
she had shown the faintest sign of self-pity, the girl would never
have felt, as she did now, so sorry and upset.

Leaving the stables, she saw that the wind was driving up a huge,
white, shining cloud.  "Isn't it going to be fine after all!" she
thought.

Re-entering the house by an old and so-called secret stairway that
led straight to the library, she had to traverse that great dark
room.  There, buried in an armchair in front of the hearth she saw
Miltoun with a book on his knee, not reading, but looking up at the
picture of the old Cardinal.  She hurried on, tiptoeing over the.
soft carpet, holding her breath, fearful of disturbing the queer
interview, feeling guilty, too, of her new knowledge, which she did
not mean to impart.  She had burnt her fingers once at the flame
between them; she would not do so a second time!

Through the window at the far end she saw that the cloud had burst;
it was raining furiously.  She regained her bedroom unseen.  In spite
of her joy out there on the moor, this last adventure of her girlhood
had not been all success; she had again the old sensations, the old
doubts, the dissatisfaction which she had thought dead.  Those two!
To shut one's eyes, and be happy--was it possible!  A great rainbow,
the nearest she had ever seen, had sprung up in the park, and was
come to earth again in some fields close by.  The sun was shining out
already through the wind-driven bright rain.  Jewels of blue had
begun to star the black and white and golden clouds.  A strange white
light-ghost of Spring passing in this last violent outburst-painted
the leaves of every tree; and a hundred savage hues had come down
like a motley of bright birds on moor and fields.

The moment of desperate beauty caught Barbara by the throat.  Its
spirit of galloping wildness flew straight into her heart.  She
clasped her hands across her breast to try and keep that moment.  Far
out, a cuckoo hooted-and the immortal call passed on the wind.  In
that call all the beauty, and colour, and rapture of life seemed to
be flying by.  If she could only seize and evermore have it in her
heart, as the buttercups out there imprisoned the sun, or the fallen
raindrops on the sweetbriars round the windows enclosed all changing
light!  If only there were no chains, no walls, and finality were
dead!

Her clock struck ten.  At this time to-morrow!  Her cheeks turned
hot; in a mirror she could see them burning, her lips scornfully
curved, her eyes strange.  Standing there, she looked long at
herself, till, little by little, her face lost every vestige of that
disturbance, became solid and resolute again.  She ceased to have the
galloping wild feeling in her heart, and instead felt cold.  Detached
from herself she watched, with contentment, her own calm and radiant
beauty resume the armour it had for that moment put off.

After dinner that night, when the men left the dining-hall, Miltoun
slipped away to his den.  Of all those present in the little church
he had seemed most unemotional, and had been most moved.  Though it
had been so quiet and private a wedding, he had resented all cheap
festivity accompanying the passing of his young sister.  He would
have had that ceremony in the little dark disused chapel at the
Court; those two, and the priest alone.  Here, in this half-pagan
little country church smothered hastily in flowers, with the raw
singing of the half-pagan choir, and all the village curiosity and
homage-everything had jarred, and the stale aftermath sickened him.
Changing his swallow-tail to an old smoking jacket, he went out on to
the lawn.  In the wide darkness he could rid himself of his
exasperation.

Since the day of his election he had not once been at Monkland; since
Mrs. Noel's flight he had never left London.  In London and work he
had buried himself; by London and work he had saved himself!  He had
gone down into the battle.

Dew had not yet fallen, and he took the path across the fields.
There was no moon, no stars, no wind; the cattle were noiseless under
the trees; there were no owls calling, no night-jars churring, the
fly-by-night chafers were not abroad.  The stream alone was alive in
the quiet darkness.  And as Miltoun followed the wispy line of grey
path cleaving the dim glamour of daisies and buttercups, there came
to him the feeling that he was in the presence, not of sleep, but of
eternal waiting.  The sound of his footfalls seemed desecration.  So
devotional was that hush, burning the spicy incense of millions of
leaves and blades of grass.

Crossing the last stile he came out, close to her deserted cottage,
under her lime-tree, which on the night of Courtier's adventure had
hung blue-black round the moon.  On that side, only a rail, and a few
shrubs confined her garden.

The house was all dark, but the many tall white flowers, like a
bright vapour rising from earth, clung to the air above the beds.
Leaning against the tree Miltoun gave himself to memory.

>From the silent boughs which drooped round his dark figure, a little
sleepy bird uttered a faint cheep; a hedgehog, or some small beast of
night, rustled away in the grass close by; a moth flew past, seeking
its candle flame.  And something in Miltoun's heart took wings after
it, searching for the warmth and light of his blown candle of love.
Then, in the hush he heard a sound as of a branch ceaselessly trailed
through long grass, fainter and fainter, more and more distinct;
again fainter; but nothing could he see that should make that
homeless sound.  And the sense of some near but unseen presence crept
on him, till the hair moved on his scalp.  If God would light the
moon or stars, and let him see!  If God would end the expectation of
this night, let one wan glimmer down into her garden, and one wan
glimmer into his breast!  But it stayed dark, and the homeless noise
never ceased.  The weird thought came to Miltoun that it was made by
his own heart, wandering out there, trying to feel warm again.  He
closed his eyes and at once knew that it was not his heart, but
indeed some external presence, unconsoled.  And stretching his hands
out he moved forward to arrest that sound.  As he reached the
railing, it ceased.  And he saw a flame leap up, a pale broad pathway
of light blanching the grass.

And, realizing that she was there, within, he gasped.  His finger-
nails bent and broke against the iron railing without his knowing.
It was not as on that night when the red flowers on her windowsill
had wafted their scent to him; it was no sheer overpowering rush of
passion.  Profounder, more terrible, was this rising up within him of
yearning for love--as if, now defeated, it would nevermore stir, but
lie dead on that dark grass beneath those dark boughs.  And if
victorious--what then?  He stole back under the tree.

He could see little white moths travelling down that path of
lamplight; he could see the white flowers quite plainly now, a pale
watch of blossoms guarding the dark sleepy ones; and he stood, not
reasoning, hardly any longer feeling; stunned, battered by struggle.
His face and hands were sticky with the honey-dew, slowly, invisibly
distilling from the lime-tree.  He bent down and felt the grass.  And
suddenly there came over him the certainty of her presence.  Yes, she
was there--out on the verandah!  He could see her white figure from
head to foot; and, not realizing that she could not see him, he
expected her to utter some cry.  But no sound came from her, no
gesture; she turned back into the house.  Miltoun ran forward to the
railing.  But there, once more, he stopped--unable to think, unable
to feel; as it were abandoned by himself.  And he suddenly found his
hand up at his mouth, as though there were blood there to be
staunched that had escaped from his heart.

Still holding that hand before his mouth, and smothering the sound of
his feet in the long grass, he crept away.




CHAPTER XXX

In the great glass house at Ravensham, Lady Casterley stood close to
some Japanese lilies, with a letter in her hand.  Her face was very
white, for it was the first day she had been allowed down after an
attack of influenza; nor had the hand in which she held the letter
its usual steadiness.  She read:

                                        "MONKLAND COURT.

"Just a line, dear, before the post goes, to tell you that Babs has
gone off happily.  The child looked beautiful.  She sent you her
love, and some absurd message--that you would be glad to hear, she
was perfectly safe, with both feet firmly on the ground."


A grim little smile played on Lady Casterley's pale lips:--Yes,
indeed, and time too!  The child had been very near the edge of the
cliffs!  Very near committing a piece of romantic folly!  That was
well over!  And raising the letter again, she read on:


"We were all down for it, of course, and come back tomorrow.
Geoffrey is quite cut up.  Things can't be what they were without our
Babs.  I've watched Eustace very carefully, and I really believe he's
safely over that affair at last.  He is doing extraordinarily well in
the House just now.  Geoffrey says his speech on the Poor Law was
head and shoulders the best made."


Lady Casterley let fall the hand which held the letter.  Safe?  Yes,
he was safe!  He had done the right--the natural thing!  And in time
he would be happy!  He would rise now to that pinnacle of desired
authority which she had dreamed of for him, ever since he was a tiny
thing, ever since his little thin brown hand had clasped hers in
their wanderings amongst the flowers, and the furniture of tall
rooms.  But, as she stood--crumpling the letter, grey-white as some
small resolute ghost, among her tall lilies that filled with their
scent the great glass house-shadows flitted across her face.  Was it
the fugitive noon sunshine?  Or was it some glimmering perception of
the old Greek saying--'Character is Fate;' some sudden sense of the
universal truth that all are in bond to their own natures, and what a
man has most desired shall in the end enslave him?




End of The Project Gutenberg Etext of The Patrician, by John Galsworthy






THE BURNING SPEAR

by John Galsworthy




Being the Experiences of Mr. John Lavender in the Time of War

Recorded by: A. R. P--M   [John Galsworthy]


[NOTE: John Galsworthy said of this work: "'The Burning Spear' was revenge
of the nerves.  It was bad enough to have to bear the dreads and strains
and griefs of war."  Several years after its first publication he
admitted authorship and it was included in the collected edition of his
works.  D.W.]


         "With a heart of furious fancies,
          Whereof I am commander,
          With a burning spear and a horse of air
          In the wilderness I wander;
          With a night of ghosts and shadows
          I summoned am to tourney
          Ten leagues beyond the wide world's end
          For me it is no journey."

                         TOM O'BEDLAM





THE BURNING SPEAR



I

THE HERO

In the year ---- there dwelt on Hampstead Heath a small thin gentleman of
fifty-eight, gentle disposition, and independent means, whose wits had
become somewhat addled from reading the writings and speeches of public
men.  The castle which, like every Englishman, he inhabited was embedded
in lilac bushes and laburnums, and was attached to another castle,
embedded, in deference to our national dislike of uniformity, in acacias
and laurustinus.  Our gentleman, whose name was John Lavender, had until
the days of the Great War passed one of those curious existences are
sometimes to be met with, in doing harm to nobody.  He had been brought
up to the Bar, but like most barristers had never practised, and had
spent his time among animals and the wisdom of the past.  At the period
in which this record opens he owned a young female sheep-dog called
Blink, with beautiful eyes obscured by hair; and was attended to by a
thin and energetic housekeeper, in his estimation above all weakness,
whose name was Marian Petty, and by her husband, his chauffeur, whose
name was Joe.

It was the ambition of our hero to be, like all public men, without fear
and without reproach.  He drank not, abstained from fleshly intercourse,
and habitually spoke the truth.  His face was thin, high cheek-boned, and
not unpleasing, with one loose eyebrow over which he had no control; his
eyes, bright and of hazel hue, looked his fellows in the face without
seeing what was in it.  Though his moustache was still dark, his thick
waving hair was permanently white, for his study was lined from floor to
ceiling with books, pamphlets, journals, and the recorded utterances of
great mouths.  He was of a frugal habit, ate what was put before him
without question, and if asked what he would have, invariably answered:
"What is there?" without listening to the reply.  For at mealtimes it was
his custom to read the writings of great men.

"Joe," he would say to his chauffeur, who had a slight limp, a green
wandering eye, and a red face, with a rather curved and rather redder
nose, "You must read this."

And Joe would answer:

"Which one is that, sir?"

"Hummingtop; a great man, I think, Joe."

"A brainy chap, right enough, sir."

"He has done wonders for the country.  Listen to this."   And Mr.
Lavender would read as follows: "If I had fifty sons I would give them
all.  "If I had forty daughters they should nurse and scrub and weed and
fill shells; if I had thirty country-houses they should all be hospitals;
if I had twenty pens I would use them all day long; if had ten voices
they should never cease to inspire and aid my country."

"If 'e had nine lives," interrupted Joe, with a certain suddenness, "'e'd
save the lot."

Mr. Lavender lowered the paper.

"I cannot bear cynicism, Joe; there is no quality so unbecoming to a
gentleman."

"Me and 'im don't put in for that, sir."

"Joe, Mr. Lavender would say you are, incorrigible...."

Our gentleman, in common with all worthy of the name, had a bank-book,
which, in hopes that it would disclose an unsuspected balance, he would
have "made up" every time he read an utterance exhorting people to invest
and save their country.

One morning at the end of May, finding there was none, he called in his
housekeeper and said:

"Mrs. Petty, we are spending too much; we have again been exhorted to
save.  Listen!  'Every penny diverted from prosecution of the war is one
more spent in the interests of the enemies of mankind.  No patriotic
person, I am confident; will spend upon him or herself a stiver which
could be devoted to the noble ends so near to all our hearts.  Let us
make every spare copper into bullets to strengthen the sinews of war!'
A great speech.  What can we do without?"

"The newspapers, sir."

"Don't be foolish, Mrs. Petty.  From what else could we draw our
inspiration and comfort in these terrible days?"

Mrs. Petty sniffed.  "Well, you can't eat less than you do," she said;
"but you might stop feedin' Blink out of your rations--that I do think."

"I have not found that forbidden as yet in any public utterance,"
returned Mr. Lavender; "but when the Earl of Betternot tells us to stop,
I shall follow his example, you may depend on that.  The country comes
before everything.  "Mrs. Petty tossed her head and murmured darkly

"Do you suppose he's got an example, Sir?"

"Mrs. Petty," replied Mr. Lavender, "that is quite unworthy of you.  But,
tell me, what can we do without?"

"I could do without Joe," responded Mrs. Petty, "now that you're not
using him as chauffeur."

"Please be serious.  Joe is an institution; besides, I am thinking of
offering myself to the Government as a speaker now that we may use gas."

Ah!" said Mrs. Petty.

"I am going down about it to-morrow."

"Indeed, sir!"

"I feel my energies are not fully employed."

"No, sir?"

"By the way, there was a wonderful leader on potatoes yesterday.  We must
dig up the garden.  Do you know what the subsoil is?"

"Brickbats and dead cats, I expect, sir."

"Ah!  We shall soon improve that.  Every inch of land reclaimed is a nail
in the coffin of our common enemies."

And going over to a bookcase, Mr. Lavender took out the third from the
top of a pile of newspapers.  "Listen!" he said.  "'The problem before us
is the extraction of every potential ounce of food.  No half measures
must content us.  Potatoes!  Potatoes!  No matter how, where, when the
prime national necessity is now the growth of potatoes.  All Britons
should join in raising a plant which may be our very salvation.

"Fudge!" murmured Mrs. Petty.

Mr. Lavender read on, and his eyes glowed.

"Ah!" he thought, "I, too, can do my bit to save England.... It needs but
the spark to burn away the dross of this terrible horse-sense which keeps
the country back.

"Mrs. Petty!"  But Mrs. Petty was already not.

      . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

The grass never grew under the feet of Mr. Lavender, No sooner had he
formed his sudden resolve than he wrote to what he conceived to be the
proper quarter, and receiving no reply, went down to the centre of the
official world.  It was at time of change and no small national
excitement; brooms were sweeping clean, and new offices had arisen
everywhere.  Mr. Lavender passed bewildered among large stone buildings
and small wooden buildings, not knowing where to go.  He had bought no
clothes since the beginning of the war, except the various Volunteer
uniforms which the exigencies of a shifting situation had forced the
authorities to withdraw from time to time; and his, small shrunken figure
struck somewhat vividly on the eye, with elbows and knees shining in the
summer sunlight.  Stopping at last before the only object which seemed
unchanged, he said:

"Can you tell me where the Ministry is?"

The officer looked down at him.

"What for?"

"For speaking about the country."

"Ministry of Propagation?  First on the right, second door on the left."

"Thank you.  The Police are wonderful."

"None of that," said the officer coldly.

"I only said you were wonderful."

"I 'eard you."

"But you are.  I don't know what the country would do without you.  Your
solid qualities, your imperturbable bonhomie, your truly British
tenderness towards----"

"Pass away!" said the officer.

"I am only repeating what we all say of you," rejoined Mr. Lavender
reproachfully.

"Did you 'ear me say 'Move on,'" said the officer; "or must I make you an
example?"

"YOU are the example," said Mr. Lavender warmly.

"Any more names," returned the officer, "and I take you to the station."
And he moved out into the traffic.  Puzzled by his unfriendliness Mr.
Lavender resumed his search, and, arriving at the door indicated, went
in.  A dark, dusty, deserted corridor led him nowhere, till he came on a
little girl in a brown frock, with her hair down her back.

"Can you tell me, little one----" he said, laying his hand on her head.

"Chuck it!" said the little girl.

"No, no!" responded Mr. Lavender, deeply hurt.  "Can you tell me where I
can find the Minister?"

"'Ave you an appointment?

"No; but I wrote to him.  He should expect me."

"Wot nyme?"

"John Lavender.  Here is my card."

"I'll tyke it in.  Wyte 'ere!"

"Wonderful!" mused Mr. Lavender; "the patriotic impulse already stirring
in these little hearts!  What was the stanza of that patriotic poet?

         "'Lives not a babe who shall not feel the pulse
          Of Britain's need beat wild in Britain's wrist.
          And, sacrificial, in the world's convulse
          Put up its lips to be by Britain kissed.'

"So young to bring their lives to the service of the country!"

"Come on," said the little girl, reappearing suddenly; "e'll see you."

Mr. Lavender entered a room which had a considerable resemblance to the
office of a lawyer save for the absence of tomes.  It seemed furnished
almost exclusively by the Minister, who sat with knees crossed, in a pair
of large round tortoiseshell spectacles, which did not, however, veil the
keenness of his eyes.  He was a man with close
cropped grey hair, a broad, yellow, clean-shaven face, and thrusting grey
eyes.

"Mr. Lavender," he said, in a raw, forcible voice; "sit down, will you?"

"I wrote to you," began our hero, "expressing the wish to offer myself as
a speaker."

"Ah!" said the Minister.  "Let's see--Lavender, Lavender.  Here's your
letter."  And extracting a letter from a file he read it, avoiding with
difficulty his tortoiseshell spectacles.  "You want to stump the country?
M.A., Barrister, and Fellow of the Zoological.  Are you a good speaker?"

"If zeal---" began Mr. Lavender.

"That's it; spark!  We're out to win this war, sir."

"Quite so," began Mr. Lavender.  "If devotion----"

"You'll have to use gas," said the Minister; and we don't pay."

"Pay!" cried Mr. Lavender with horror; "no, indeed!"

The Minister bent on him a shrewd glance.

"What's your line?  Anything particular, or just general patriotism?
I recommend that; but you'll have to put some punch into it, you
know."

"I have studied all the great orators of the war, sir," said Mr.
Lavender, "and am familiar with all the great writers on, it.  I should
form myself on them; and if enthusiasm----"

"Quite!" said the Minister.  "If you want any atrocities we can give you
them.  No facts and no figures; just general pat."

"I shall endeavour----" began Mr. Lavender.

"Well, good-bye," said the Minister, rising.  "When do you start?"

Mr. Lavender rose too.  "To-morrow," he said, "if I can get inflated."

The Minister rang a bell.

"You're on your own, mind," he said.  "No facts; what they want is
ginger.  Yes, Mr. Japes?"

And seeing that the Minister was looking over his tortoiseshell.
spectacles at somebody behind him, Mr. Lavender turned and went out.  In
the corridor he thought, "What terseness!  How different from the days
when Dickens wrote his 'Circumlocution Office'!  Punch!"  And opening the
wrong door, he found himself in the presence of six little girls in brown
frocks, sitting against the walls with their thumbs in their mouths.

"Oh!" he said, "I'm afraid I've lost my way."

The eldest of the little girls withdrew a thumb.

"What d'yer want?"

"The door," said Mr. Lavender.

"Second on the right."

"Goodbye," said Mr. Lavender.

The little girls did not answer.  And he went out thinking, "These
children are really wonderful!  What devotion one sees!  And yet the
country is not yet fully roused!"




II

THE VALET

Joe Petty stood contemplating the car which, purchased some fifteen years
before had not been used since the war began.  Birds had nested in its
hair.  It smelled of mould inside; it creaked from rust.  "The Guv'nor
must be cracked," he thought, "to think we can get anywhere in this old
geyser.  Well, well, it's summer; if we break down it won't break my
'eart.  Government job--better than diggin' or drillin'.  Good old Guv!"
So musing, he lit his pipe and examined the recesses beneath the driver's
seat.  "A bottle or three," he thought, "in case our patriotism should
get us stuck a bit off the beaten; a loaf or two, some 'oney in a pot,
and a good old 'am.

"A life on the rollin' road----'  'Ow they can give 'im the job I can't
think!"  His soliloquy was here interrupted by the approach of his wife,
bearing a valise.

"Don't you wish you was comin', old girl?" he remarked to her lightly.

"I do not; I'm glad to be shut of you.  Keep his feet dry.  What have you
got under there?"

Joe Petty winked.

"What a lumbering great thing it looks!" said Mrs. Petty, gazing upwards.

"Ah!" returned her husband thoughtfully, we'll 'ave the population round
us without advertisement.  And taking the heads of two small boys who had
come up, he knocked them together in an absent-minded fashion.

"Well," said Mrs. Petty, "I can't waste time.  Here's his extra set of
teeth.  Don't lose them.  Have you got your own toothbrush?  Use it, and
behave yourself.  Let me have a line.  And don't let him get excited."
She tapped her forehead.

"Go away, you boys; shoo!"

The boys, now six in number, raised a slight cheer ; for at that moment
Mr. Lavender, in a broad-brimmed grey felt hat and a holland dust-coat,
came out through his garden-gate carrying a pile of newspapers and
pamphlets so large that his feet, legs, and hat alone were visible.

"Open the door, Joe!" he said, and stumbled into the body of the vehicle.
A shrill cheer rose from the eight boys, who could see him through the
further window.  Taking this for an augury Of success, Mr. Lavender
removed his hat, and putting his head through the window, thus addressed
the ten boys:

"I thank you.  The occasion is one which I shall ever remember.  The
Government has charged me with the great task of rousing our country in
days which demand of each of us the utmost exertions.  I am proud to feel
that I have here, on the very threshold of my task, an audience of bright
young spirits, each one of whom in this democratic country has in him
perhaps the makings of a General or even of a Prime Minister.  Let it be
your earnest endeavour, boys----"

At this moment a piece of indiarubber rebounded from Mr. Lavender's
forehead, and he recoiled into the body of the car.

"Are you right, sir?" said Joe, looking in; and without waiting for reply
he started the engine.  The car moved out amid a volley of stones, balls,
cheers, and other missiles from the fifteen boys who pursued it with
frenzy.  Swaying slightly from side to side, with billowing bag, it
gathered speed, and, turning a corner, took road for the country.  Mr.
Lavender, somewhat dazed, for the indiarubber had been hard, sat gazing
through the little back window at the great city he was leaving.  His
lips moved, expressing unconsciously the sentiments of innumerable Lord
Mayors: "Greatest City in the world, Queen of Commerce, whose full heart
I can still hear beating behind me, in mingled pride and regret I leave
you.  With the most sacred gratitude I lay down my office.  I go to other
work, whose---- Joe!"

"Sir?"

"Do you see that?"

"I see your 'ead, that's all, sir."

"We seem to be followed by a little column of dust, which keeps ever at
the same distance in the middle of the road.  Do you think it can be an
augury."

"No; I should think it's a dog."

"In that case, hold hard!" said Mr. Lavender, who had a weakness for
dog's.  Joe slackened the car's pace, and leaned his head round the
comer.  The column of dust approached rapidly.

"It is a dog," said Mr. Lavender, "it's Blink."

The female sheep-dog, almost flat with the ground from speed, emerged
from the dust, wild with hair and anxiety, white on the cheeks and
chest and top of the head, and grey in the body and the very little tail,
and passed them like a streak of lightning.

"Get on!"  cried Mr. Lavender, excited; "follow her she's trying to catch
us up!"

Joe urged on the car, which responded gallantly, swaying from side to
side, while the gas-bag bellied and shook; but the faster it went the
faster the sheep-dog flew in front of it.

"This is dreadful!" said Mr. Lavender in anguish, leaning far out.
"Blink!  Blink!"

His cries were drowned in the roar of the car.

"Damn the brute!" muttered Joe at this rate she'll be over the edge in
'alf a mo'.  Wherever does she think we are?"

"Blink!  Blink!" wailed Mr. Lavender.  "Get on, Joe, get on!  She's
gaining on us!"

"Well I never see anything like this," said Joe, "chasin' wot's chasing
you!  Hi!  Hi!"

Urged on by their shouts and the noise of the pursuing car, the poor dog
redoubled her efforts to rejoin her master, and Mr. Lavender, Joe, and
the car, which had begun to emit the most lamentable creaks and odours,
redoubled theirs.

"I shall bust her up," said Joe.

"I care not!" cried Mr. Lavender.  "I must recover the dog."

They flashed through the outskirts of the Garden City.  "Stop her, stop
her!" called Mr. Lavender to such of the astonished inhabitants as they
had already left behind.  "This is a nightmare, Joe!"

"'It's a blinkin' day-dream," returned Joe, forcing the car to an
expiring spurt.

"If she gets to that 'ill before we ketch 'er, we're done; the old geyser
can't 'alf crawl up 'ills."

"We're gaining," shrieked Mr. Lavender; "I can see her tongue."

As though it heard his voice, the car leaped forward and stopped with a
sudden and most formidable jerk; the door burst open, and Mr. Lavender
fell out upon his sheep-dog.

Fortunately they were in the only bed of nettles in that part of the
world, and its softness and that of Blink assuaged the severity of his
fall, yet it was some minutes before he regained the full measure of his
faculties.  He came to himself sitting on a milestone, with his dog on
her hind legs between his knees, licking his face clean, and panting down
his throat.

"Joe," he said; "where are you"?

The voice of Joe replied from underneath the car: "Here sir.  She's
popped."

"Do you mean that our journey is arrested?"

"Ah!  We're in irons.  You may as well walk 'ome, sir.  It ain't two
miles.

"No! no!" said Mr. Lavender.  "We passed the Garden City a little way
back; I could go and hold a meeting.  How long will you be?"

"A day or two," said Joe.

Mr. Lavender sighed, and at this manifestation of his grief his sheep-dog
redoubled her efforts to comfort him.  "Nothing becomes one more than the
practice of philosophy," he thought.  "I always admired those great
public men who in moments of national peril can still dine with a good
appetite.  We will sit in the car a little, for I have rather a pain, and
think over a speech."  So musing he mounted the car, followed by his dog,
and sat down in considerable discomfort.

"What subject can I choose for a Garden City?" he thought, and
remembering that he had with him the speech of a bishop on the subject of
babies, he dived into his bundle of literature, and extracting a pamphlet
began to con its periods.  A sharp blow from a hammer on the bottom of the
car just below where Blink was sitting caused him to pause and the dog to
rise and examine her tiny tail.

"Curious," thought Mr. Lavender dreamily, "how Joe always does the right
thing in the wrong place.  He is very English."  The hammering continued,
and the dog, who traced it to the omnipotence of her master, got up on
the seat where she could lick his face.  Mr. Lavender was compelled to
stop.

"Joe," he said, leaning out and down; "must you?"

The face of Joe, very red, leaned out and up.  "What's the matter now,
sir?"

"I am preparing a speech; must you hammer?"

"No," returned Joe, "I needn't."

"I don't wish you to waste your time," said Mr Lavender.

"Don't worry about that, sir," replied Joe; "there's plenty to do."

"In that case I shall be glad to finish my speech."

Mr. Lavender resumed his seat and Blink her position on the floor, with
her head on his feet. The sound of his voice soon rose again in the car
like the buzzing of large flies.  "'If we are to win this war we must
have an ever-increasing population.  In town and countryside, in the
palace and the slum, above all in the Garden City, we must have babies.'"

Here Blink, who had been regarding him with lustrous eyes, leaped on to
his knees and licked his mouth.  Again Mr. Lavender was compelled to
stop.

"Down, Blink, down!  I am not speaking to you.  'The future of our
country depends on the little citizens born now. I especially appeal to
women. It is to them we must look----'"

"Will you 'ave a glass, sir?"

Mr. Lavender saw before him a tumbler containing a yellow fluid.

"Joe," he said sadly, "you know my rule----"

"'Ere's the exception, sir."

Mr. Lavender sighed.  "No, no; I must practise what I preach.  I shall
soon be rousing the people on the liquor question, too."

Well, 'ere's luck," said Joe, draining the glass.  "Will you 'ave a slice
of 'am?"

"That would not be amiss," said Mr. Lavender, taking Joe's knife with the
slice of ham upon its point.   "'It is to them that we must look,'" he
resumed, "'to rejuvenate the Empire and make good the losses in the
firing-line.'"  And he raised the knife to his mouth.  No result
followed, while Blink wriggled on her base and licked her lips.

"Blink!" said Mr. Lavender reproachfully. "Joe!"

"Sir!"

"When you've finished your lunch and repaired the car you will find me in
the Town Hall or market-place.  Take care of Blink.  I'll tie her up.
Have you some string?"

Having secured his dog to the handle of the door and disregarded the
intensity of her gaze, Mr. Lavender walked back towards the Garden City
with a pamphlet in one hand and a crutch-handled stick in the other.
Restoring the ham to its nest behind his feet, Joe finished the bottle of
Bass.  "This is a bit of all right!" he thought dreamily.  "Lie down, you
bitch!  Quiet!  How can I get my nap while you make that row?  Lie down!
That's better."

Blink was silent, gnawing at her string.  The smile deepened on Joe's
face, his head fell a little one side his mouth fell open a fly flew into
it.

"Ah!" he thought, spitting it out; "dog's quiet now."  He slept.




III

MR. LAVENDER ADDRESSES A CROWD OF HUNS

"'Give them ginger!'" thought Mr. Lavender, approaching the first houses.
"My first task, however, will be to collect them."

"Can you tell me," he said to a dustman, "where the market-place is?"

"Ain't none."

"The Town Hall, then?"

"Likewise."

"What place is there, then," said Mr. Lavender," where people
congregate?"

"They don't."

"Do they never hold public meetings here?"

"Ah!" said the dustman mysteriously.

"I wish to address them on the subject of babies."

"Bill! Gent abaht babies.  Where'd he better go?"

The man addressed, however, who carried a bag of tools, did not stop.

"You,'ear?" said the dustman, and urging his horse, passed on.

"How rude!" thought Mr. Lavender.  Something cold and wet was pressed
against his hand, he felt a turmoil, and saw Blink moving round and round
him, curved like a horseshoe, with a bit of string dangling from her
white neck.  At that moment of discouragement the sight of one who
believed in him gave Mr. Lavender nothing but pleasure.  "How wonderful
dogs are!" he murmured.  The sheep-dog responded by bounds and
ear-splitting barks, so that two boys and a little girl wheeling a
perambulator stopped to look and listen.

"She is like Mercury," thought Mr. Lavender; and taking advantage of her
interest in his hat, which she had knocked off in her effusions, he
placed his hand on her head and crumpled her ear.  The dog passed into an
hypnotic trance, broken by soft grumblings of pleasure.  "The most
beautiful eyes in the world!" thought Mr. Lavender, replacing his hat;
"the innocence and goodness of her face are entrancing."

In his long holland coat, with his wide-brimmed felt hat all dusty, and
the crutch-handled stick in his hand, he had already arrested the
attention of five boys, the little girl with the perambulator, a postman,
a maid-servant, and three old ladies.

"What a beautiful dog yours is!" said one of the old ladies; "dear
creature!  Are you a shepherd?"

Mr. Lavender removed his hat.

"No, madam," he said; "a public speaker."

"How foolish of me!" replied the old lady.

"Not at all, madam; the folly is mine."  And Mr. Lavender bowed.
"I have come here to give an address on babies."

The old lady looked at him shrewdly, and, saying something in a low voice
to her companions, passed on, to halt again a little way off.

In the meantime the rumour that there was a horse down in the Clemenceau
Road had spread rapidly, and more boys, several little girls, and three
soldiers in blue, with red ties, had joined the group round Mr. Lavender,
to whom there seemed something more than providential in this rapid
assemblage.  Looking round him for a platform from which to address them,
he saw nothing but the low wall of the little villa garden outside which
he was standing.  Mounting on this, therefore, and firmly grasping the
branch of a young acacia tree to steady himself, he stood upright, while
Blink, on her hind legs, scratched at the wall, whining and sniffing his
feet.

Encouraged by the low murmur of astonishment, which swelled idly
into a shrill cheer, Mr. Lavender removed his hat, and spoke as follows:

"Fellow Britons, at this crisis in the history of our country I make no
apology for addressing myself to the gathering I see around me.  Here, in
the cradle of patriotism and the very heart of Movements, I may safely
assume that you are aware of the importance of Man-power.  At a moment
when every man of a certain age and over is wanted at the front, and
every woman of marrigeable years is needed in hospitals, in factories, on
the land, or where not, we see as never before the paramount necessity of
mobilizing the forces racial progress and increasing the numbers of our
population.  Not a man, not a woman can be spared from the great task in
which they are now engaged, of defeating the common enemy.  Side by side
with our American cousins, with la belle France, and the Queen of the
Adriatic, we are fighting to avert the greatest menace which ever
threatened civilization.  Our cruel enemies are strong and ruthless.
While I have any say in this matter, no man or woman shall be withdrawn
from the sacred cause of victory; better they should die to the last unit
than that we should take our hands from the plough.  But, ladies and
gentlemen, we must never forget that in the place of every one who dies
we must put two.  Do not be content with ordinary measures; these are no
piping times of peace.  Never was there in the history of this country
such a crying need for--for twins, if I may put it picturesquely.  In
each family, in each home where there are no families, let there be two
babies where there was one, for thus only can we triumph over the
devastation of this war."  At this moment the now considerable audience,
which had hitherto been silent, broke into a shrill "'Ear, 'ear!" and Mr.
Lavender, taking his hand from the acacia branch to silence them, fell
off the wall into the garden.  Seeing her master thus vanish, Blink, who
had never ceased to whine and sniff his toes, leaped over and landed on
his chest.  Rising with difficulty, Mr. Lavender found himself in front
of an elderly man with a commercial cast of countenance, who said:
"You're trespassing!"

"I am aware of it," returned Mr. Lavender and I beg your pardon.  It was
quite inadvertent, however.

"Rubbish!" said the man.

"I fell off the wall."

"Whose wall do you think it is?"  said the man.

"How should I know?" said Mr. Lavender; "I am a stranger."

"Out you go," said the man, applying his boot to Blink.

"Mr. Lavender's eyes blazed."  You may insult me," he said, "but you must
not kick my dog, or I shall do you an injury.

"Try!" said the man.

"I will," responded Mr. Lavender, taking off his holland coat.

To what extremities he would have proceeded cannot be told, for at this
moment the old lady who had taken him for a shepherd appeared on the
path, tapping her forehead with finger.

"All right!" said the owner of the garden, "take him away."

The old lady laced her hand within Mr. Lavender's arm.  "Come with me,
sir,"  she said, "and your nice doggie."

Mr. Lavender, whose politeness to ladies was invariable, bowed, and
resuming his coat accompanied her through the 'garden gate.  "He kicked
my dog," he said; "no action could be more despicable."

"Yes, yes," said the old lady soothingly.  "Poor doggie!"

The crowd, who had hoped for better things, here gave vent to a prolonged
jeer.

"Stop!" said Mr. Lavender; "I am going to take a collection.

"There, there!"  said the old lady.  "Poor man!"

"I don't know what you mean by that, madam, said Mr. Lavender, whose
spirit was roused; "I shall certainly take a collection, in the interests
of our population.  "So saying he removed his hat, and disengaging his
arm from the old lady's hand, moved out into the throng, extending the
hat.  A boy took it from him at once, and placing it on his head, ran
off, pursued by Blink, who, by barking and jumping up increased the boy's
speed to one of which he could never have thought himself capable.  Mr.
Lavender followed, calling out "Blink!" at the top of his voice.  The
crowd followed Mr. Lavender, and the old lady followed crowd.  Thus they
proceeded until the boy, arriving at a small piece of communal water,
flung the hat into the middle of it, and, scaling the wall, made a
strategic detour and became a disinterested spectator among the crowd.
The hat, after skimming the surface of the pond, settled like a water-
lily, crown downwards, while Blink, perceiving in all this the hand of
her master, stood barking at it wildly.  Mr. Lavender arrived at the edge
of the pond slightly in advance of the crowd.

"Good Blink!" he said.  "Fetch it! Good Blink!"

Blink looked up into his face, and, with the acumen for which her breed
is noted, perceiving he desired her to enter the water backed away from
it.

"She is not a water dog," explained Mr. Lavender to the three soldiers in
blue clothes.

"Good dog; fetch it!" Blink backed into the soldiers, who, bending down,
took her by head tail, threw her into the pond, and encouraged her on
with small stones pitched at the hat.  Having taken the plunge, the
intelligent animal waded boldly to the hat, and endeavoured by barking
and making little rushes at it with her nose, to induce it to return to
shore.

"She thinks it's a sheep," said Mr. Lavender; "a striking instance of
hereditary instinct."

Blink, unable to persuade the hat, mounted it with her fore-paws and trod
it under.

"Ooray!" shouted the crowd.

"Give us a shilling, guv'nor, an' I'll get it for yer?"

"Thank you, my boy," said Mr. Lavender, producing a shilling.

The boy--the same boy who had thrown it in--stepped into the water and
waded towards the hat.  But as he approached, Blink interposed between
him and the hat, growling and showing her teeth.

"Does she bite?" yelled the boy.

"Only strangers," cried Mr. Lavender.

Excited by her master's appeal, Blink seized the jacket of the boy, who
made for the shore, while the hat rested in the centre of the pond, the
cynosure of the stones with which the soldiers were endeavouring to drive
it towards the bank.  By this, time the old lady had rejoined Mr.
Lavender.

"Your nice hat she murmured.

"I thank you for your sympathy, madam," Lavender, running his hand
through his hair; "in moments like these one realizes the deep humanity
of the British people.  I really believe that in no other race could you
find such universal interest and anxiety to recover a hat.  Say what you
will, we are a great nation, who only, need rousing to show our best
qualities.  Do you remember the words of the editor: 'In the spavined and
spatch-cocked ruin to which our inhuman enemies have reduced
civilization, we of the island shine with undimmed effulgence in all
those qualities which mark man out from the ravening beast'?"

"But how are you going to get your hat?" asked the old lady.

"I know not,"  returned Mr. Lavender, still under the influence of the
sentiment he had quoted; "but if I had fifteen hats I would take them all
off to the virtues which have been ascribed to the British people by all
those great men who have written and spoken since the war began."

"Yes," said the old lady soothingly.  "But, I think you had better come
under my sunshade.  The sun is very strong."

"Madam," said Mr. Lavender, "you are very good, but your sunshade is too
small.  To deprive you of even an inch of its shade would be unworthy of
anyone in public life."  So saying, he recoiled from the proffered
sunshade into the pond, which he had forgotten was behind him.

"Oh, dear!" said the old lady; "now you've got your feet wet!"

"It is nothing," responded Mr. Lavender gallantly.  And seeing that he
was already wet, he rolled up his trousers, and holding up the tails of
his holland coat, turned round and proceeded towards his hat, to the
frantic delight of the crowd.

"The war is a lesson to us to make little of little things," he thought,
securing the hat and wringing it out.  "My feet are wet, but--how much
wetter they would be in the trenches, if feet can be wetter than wet
through," he mused with some exactitude.  "Down, Blink, down!"  For Blink
was plastering him with the water-marks of joy and anxiety.  "Nothing is
quite so beautiful as the devotion of one's own dog," thought Mr.
Lavender, resuming the hat, and returning towards the shore.  The by-now-
considerable throng were watching him with every mark of acute enjoyment;
and the moment appeared to Mr. Lavender auspicious for addressing them.
Without, therefore, emerging from the pond, which he took for his,
platform, he spoke as follows:

"Circumstances over which I have no control have given me the advantage
of your presence in numbers which do credit to the heart of the nation to
which we all belong.  In the midst of the greatest war which ever
threatened the principle of Liberty, I rejoice to see so many people able
to follow the free and spontaneous impulses of their inmost beings.  For,
while we must remember that our every hour is at the disposal of our
country, we must not forget the maxim of our fathers: 'Britons never will
be slaves.'  Only by preserving the freedom of individual conscience, and
at the same time surrendering it whole-heartedly to every which the State
makes on us, can we hope defeat the machinations of the arch enemies of
mankind."

At this moment a little stone hit him sharply on the hand.

"Who threw that stone?" said Mr. Lavender.  "Let him stand out."

The culprit, no other indeed than he who had thrown the hat in, and not
fetched it out for a shilling, thus menaced with discovery made use of a
masterly device, and called out loudly:

"Pro-German!"

Such was the instinctive patriotism of the crowd that the cry was taken
up in several quarters; and for the moment Mr. Lavender remained
speechless from astonishment.  The cries of "Pro-German!" increased in
volume, and a stone hitting her on the nose caused Blink to utter a yelp;
Mr. Lavender's eyes blazed.

"Huns!" he cried; "Huns! I am coming out."

With this prodigious threat he emerged from the pond at the very moment
that a car scattered the throng, and a well-known voice said:

"Well, sir, you 'ave been goin' it!"

"Joe," said Mr. Lavender, "don't speak to me!"

"Get in."

"Never!"

"Pro-Germans!" yelled the crowd.

"Get in!" repeated Joe.

And seizing Mr. Lavender as if collaring him at football, he knocked off
his hat, propelled him into the car, banged the door, mounted, and
started at full speed, with Blink leaping and barking in front of them.

Debouching from Piave Parade into Bottomley Lane he drove up it till the
crowd was but a memory before he stopped to examine the condition
his master.  Mr. Lavender was hanging out of window, looking back, and
shivering violently.

"Well, sir," said Joe.  "I don't think!"

"Joe," said Mr. Lavender that crowd ought not to be at large.  They were
manifestly Huns.

"The speakin's been a bit too much for you, sir," said Joe.  "But you've
got it off your chest, anyway."

Mr. Lavender regarded him for a moment in silence; then putting his hand
to his throat, said hoarsely:

"No, on my chest, I think, Joe.  All public speakers do.  It is
inseparable from that great calling."

"'Alf a mo'!" grunted Joe, diving into the recesses beneath the driving-
seat.  "'Ere, swig that off, sir."

Mr. Lavender raised the tumbler of fluid to his mouth, and drank it off;
only from the dregs left on his moustache did he perceive that it smelled
of rum and honey.

"Joe," he said reproachfully, "you have made me break my pledge."

Joe smiled.  "Well, what are they for, sir?  You'll sleep at 'ome to-
night."

"Never," said Mr. Lavender.  "I shall sleep at High Barnet; I must
address them there tomorrow on abstinence during the war."

"As you please, sir.  But try and 'ave a nap while we go along."  And
lifting Blink into the car, where she lay drenched and exhausted by
excitement, with the petal of a purple flower clinging to her black nose,
he mounted to his seat and drove off.  Mr. Lavender, for years
unaccustomed to spirituous liquor, of which he had swallowed nearly half
a pint neat, passed rapidly into a state of coma.  Nor did he fully
regain consciousness till he awoke in bed the next morning.





IV

INTO THE DANGERS OF A PUBLIC LIFE

"At what time is my meeting?" thought Mr. Lavender vaguely, gazing at the
light filtering through the Venetian blind.  "Blink!"

His dog, who was lying beside his bed gnawing a bone which with some
presence of mind she had brought in, raised herself and regarded him with
the innocence of her species.  "She has an air of divine madness,"
thought Mr. Lavender, "which is very pleasing to me.  I have a terrible
headache."  And seeing a bellrope near his hand he pulled it.

A voice said: "Yes, sir."

"I wish to see my, servant, Joe Petty," said Lavender.  "I shall not
require any breakfast thank you.  What is the population of High Barnet?"

"I'm sure I don't know what you're talking about, sir," answered the
voice, which seemed to be that of his housekeeper; "but you can't see
Joe; he's gone out with a flea in his ear.  The idea of his letting you
get your feet wet like that!

"How is this?" said Mr. Lavender.  "I thought you were the chambermaid of
the inn at High Barnet?"

"No, indeed," said Mrs. Petty soothingly, placing a thermometer in his
mouth.  "Smoke that a minute, sir.  Oh! look at what this dog's brought
in!  Fie!"  And taking the bone between thumb and finger she cast it out
of the window; while Blink, aware that she was considered in the wrong,
and convinced that she was in the right, spread out her left paw, laid
her head on her right paw, and pressed her chin hard against it.  Mrs.
Petty, returning from the window, stood above her master, who lay gazing
up with the thermometer jutting out through the middle of his moustache.

"I thought so!" she said, removing it; "a hundred and one.  No getting up
for you, sir!  That Joe!"

"Mrs. Petty," said Mr. Lavender rather feebly, for his head pained him
excessively, "bring me the morning papers."

"No, sir.  The thermometer bursts at an an' ten.  I'll bring you the
doctor."

Mr. Lavender was about to utter a protest when he reflected that all
public men had doctors.

"About the bulletin?"  he said faintly.

"What?" ejaculated Mrs. Petty, whose face seemed to Mr. Lavender to have
become all cheekbones, eyes, and shadows.  Joe never said a about a
bullet.  Where? and however did you get it in?

"I did not say 'bullet in'," murmured Mr. Lavender closing his eyes! "I
said bulletin.  They have it."

At this mysterious sentence Mrs. Petty lifted her hands, and muttering
the word "Ravin'!" hastened from the room.  No sooner had she gone,
however, than Blink, whose memory was perfect, rose, and going to the
window placed her forepaws on the sill.  Seeing her bone shining on the
lawn below, with that disregard of worldly consequence which she shared
with all fine characters, she leaped through.  The rattle of the Venetian
blind disturbed Mr. Lavender from the lethargy to which he had reverted.
"Mr. John Lavender passed a good night," he thought, "but his condition
is still critical."  And in his disordered imagination he seemed to see
people outside Tube stations, standing stock-still in the middle of the
traffic, reading that bulletin in the evening papers.  "Let me see," he
mused, "how will they run?  To-morrow I shall be better, but not yet able
to leave my bed; the day after to-morrow I shall have a slight relapse,
and my condition will still give cause for anxiety; on the day following-
-What is that noise.  For a sound like the whiffling of a wind through
dry sticks combined with the creaking of a saw had, impinged on his
senses.  It was succeeded by scratching.  "Blink!" said Mr. Lavender.
A heartrending whine came from outside the door.  Mr. Lavender rose and
opened it.  His dog came in carrying her bone, and putting it down by the
bed divided her attention between it and her master's legs, revealed by
the nightshirt which, in deference to the great Disraeli, he had never
abandoned in favour of pyjamas.  Having achieved so erect a posture Mr.
Lavender, whose heated imagination had now carried him to the
convalescent stage of his indisposition, felt that a change of air would
do him good, and going to the window, leaned out above a lilac-tree.

"Mr. John Lavender," he murmured, "has gone to his seat to recuperate
before resuming his public duties."

While he stood there his attention was distracted by a tall young lady of
fine build and joyous colour, who was watering some sweet-peas in the
garden of the adjoining castle: Naturally delicate, Mr. Lavender at once
sought a jacket, and, having put it on, resumed his position at the
window.  He had not watched her more than two minutes before he saw that
she was cultivating soil, and, filled with admiration, he leaned still
further out, and said:

"My dear young madam, you are doing a great work."

Thus addressed, the young lady, who had those roving grey eyes which see
everything and betoken a large nature not devoid of merry genius, looked
up and smiled.

"Believe me," continued Mr. Lavender, "no task in these days is so
important as the cultivation of the soil; now that we are fighting to the
last man and the last dollar every woman and child in the islands should
put their hands to the plough.  And at that word his vision became
feverishly enlarged, so that he seemed to see not merely the young lady,
but quantities of young ladies, filling the whole garden.

"This," he went on, raising his voice, "is the psychological moment, the
turning-point in the history of these islands.  The defeat of our common
enemies imposes on us the sacred duty of feeding ourselves once more.
'There is a tide in the affairs of men which taken at the flood leads on
to----Oh!"  For in his desire to stir his audience, Mr. Lavender had
reached out too far, and losing foothold on his polished bedroom floor,
was slipping down into the lilac-bush.  He was arrested by a jerk from
behind; where Blink, moved by this sudden elopement of her master, had
seized him by the nightshirt tails, and was staying his descent.

"Is anything up?" said the young lady.

"I have lost my balance," thickly answered Mr. Lavender, whose blood was
running to his head, which was now lower than his feet."  Fortunately, my
dog seems to be holding me from behind.  But if someone could assist her
it would be an advantage, for I fear that I am slipping."

"Hold on!" cried the young lady.  And breaking through the low privet
hedge which separated the domains, she vanished beneath him with a low
gurgling sound.

Mr. Lavender, who dared not speak again for fear that Blink, hearing his
voice, might let go to answer, remained suspended, torn with anxiety
about his costume.  "If she comes in," he thought, "I shall die from
shame.  And if she doesn't, I shall die from a broken neck.  What a
dreadful alternative!  And he firmly grasped the most substantial lilac-
boughs within, his reach, listening with the ears of a hare for any sound
within the room, in which he no longer was to any appreciable extent.
Then the thought of what a public man should feel in his position came to
his rescue.  "We die but once," he mused; "rather than shock that
charming lady let me seek oblivion." And the words of his obituary notice
at once began to dance before his eyes.  "This great public servant
honoured his country no less in his death than in his life.'  Then
striking out vigorously with his feet he launched his body forward.  The
words "My goodness resounded above him, as all restraining influence was
suddenly relaxed; Mr. Lavender slid into the lilac-bush, turned heels
over head, and fell bump on the ground.  He lay there at full, length,
conscious of everything, and especially of the faces of Blink and the
young lady looking down on him from the window.

"Are you hurt?" she called.

"No," said Mr. Lavender that is--er--yes," he added, ever scrupulously
exact.

"I'm coming down," said the young lady.

"Don't move!"

With a great effort Mr. Lavender arranged his costume, and closed his
eyes.  "How many lie like this, staring at the blue heavens!" he
thought.

"Where has it got you?" said a voice; and he saw the young lady bending
over him.

"'In the dorsal region, I think," said Mr. Lavender.  "But I suffer more
from the thought that I--that you--"

"That's all right," said the young lady; "I'm a V.A.D.  It WAS a bump!
Let's see if you can----" and taking his hands she raised him to a
sitting posture.  "Does it work?"

"Yes," said Mr. Lavender rather faintly.

"Try and stand," said the young lady, pulling.

Mr.  Lavender tried, and stood; but no, sooner was he on his feet than
she turned her face away.  Great tears rolled down her cheeks; and she
writhed and shook all over.

"Don't!" cried Mr. Lavender, much concerned.  "I beg you not to cry.
It's nothing, I assure you--nothing!"  The young lady with
an effort controlled her emotion, and turned her large grey eyes on him.

"The angelic devotion of nurses!" murmured Mr. Lavender, leaning against
the wall of the house with his hand to his back.  "Nothing like it has
been seen since the world began."

"I shall never forget the sight!" said the young lady, choking.

Mr. Lavender, who took the noises she made for sobbing, was unutterably
disturbed.

"I can't bear to see you distressed on my account," he said.  "I am quite
well, I assure you; look--I can walk!"  And he started forth up the
garden in his nightshirt and Norfolk jacket.  When he turned round she
was no longer there, sounds of uncontrollable emotion were audible from
the adjoining garden.  Going to the privet hedge, he looked aver.  She
was lying gracefully on the grass, with her face smothered in her hands,
and her whole body shaking.  "Poor thing!" thought Mr. Lavender.  "No
doubt she is one of those whose nerves have been destroyed by the
terrible sights she has seen!"  But at that moment the young lady rose
and ran as if demented into her castle.  Mr. Lavender stayed transfixed.
"Who would not be ill for the pleasure of drinking from a cup held by her
hand?" he thought.  "I am fortunate to have received injuries in trying
to save her from confusion.  Down, Blink, down!"

For his dog, who had once more leaped from the window, was frantically
endeavouring to lick his face.  Soothing her, and feeling his anatomy,
Mr. Lavender became conscious that he was not alone.  An old lady was
standing on the gardenpath which led to the front gate, holding in her
hand a hat.  Mr. Lavender sat down at once, and gathering his nightshirt
under him, spoke as follows:

"There are circumstances, madam, which even the greatest public servants
cannot foresee, and I, who am the humblest of them, ask you to forgive me
for receiving you in this costume."

"I have brought your hat back," said the old lady with a kindling eye;
"they told me you lived here and I was anxious to know that you and your
dear dog were none the worse."

"Madam," replied Mr. Lavender, "I am infinitely obliged to you.  Would
you very kindly hang my, hat up on the--er--weeping willow tree?"

At this moment a little white dog, who accompanied the old lady, began
sniffing round Mr. Lavender, and Blink, wounded in her proprietary
instincts, placed her paws at once on her master's shoulders, so that he
fell prone.  When he recovered a sitting posture neither the old lady nor
the little dog were in sight, but his hat was hanging on a laurel bush.
"There seems to be something fateful about this morning," he mused; "I
had better go in before the rest of the female population----" and
recovering his feet with difficulty, he took his hat, and was about to
enter the house when he saw the young lady watching him from an upper
window of the adjoining castle.  Thinking to relieve her anxiety, he said
at once:

"My dear young lady, I earnestly beg you to believe that such a thing
never happens to me, as a rule."

Her face was instantly withdrawn, and, sighing deeply, Mr. Lavender
entered the house and made his way upstairs.  "Ah!" he thought,
painfully recumbent in his bed once more, "though my bones ache and my
head burns I have performed an action not unworthy of the traditions of
public life.  There is nothing more uplifting than to serve Youth and
Beauty at the peril of one's existence.  Humanity and Chivalry have ever
been the leading characteristics of the British race;" and, really half-
delirious now, he cried aloud: "This incident will for ever inspire those
who have any sense of beauty to the fulfilment of our common task.
Believe me, we shall never sheathe the sword until the cause of humanity
and chivalry is safe once more."

Blink, ever uneasy about sounds which seemed to her to have no meaning,
stood up on her hind legs and endeavoured to stay them by licking his
face; and Mr. Lavender, who had become so stiff that he could not stir
without great pain, had to content himself by moving his head feebly from
side to side until his dog, having taken her fill, resumed the
examination of her bone.  Perceiving presently that whenever he began to-
talk she began to lick his face, he remained silent, with his mouth open
and his eyes shut, in an almost unconscious condition, from which he was
roused by a voice saying:

"He is suffering from alcoholic poisoning."

The monstrous injustice of these words restored his faculties, and seeing
before him what he took to be a large concourse of people--composed in
reality of Joe Petty, Mrs. Petty, and the doctor--he thus addressed them
in a faint, feverish voice:

"The pressure of these times, ladies and gentlemen, brings to the fore
the most pushing and obstreperous blackguards.  We have amongst us
persons who, under the thin disguise of patriotism, do not scruple to
bring hideous charges against public men.  Such but serve the blood-
stained cause of our common enemies.  Conscious of the purity of our
private lives, we do not care what is said of us so long as we can fulfil
our duty to our country.  Abstinence from every form of spirituous liquor
has been the watchword of all public men since this land was first
threatened by the most stupendous cataclysm which ever hung over the
heads of a great democracy.  We have never ceased to preach the need for
it, and those who say the contrary are largely Germans or persons lost to
a sense of decency."  So saying, he threw off all the bedclothes, and
fell back with a groan.

"Easy, easy, my dear sir!" said the voice.

"Have you a pain in your back?"

"I shall not submit," returned our hero, "to the ministrations of a Hun;
sooner will I breathe my last."

"Turn him over," said the voice.  And Mr. Lavender found himself on his
face.

"Do you feel that?" said the voice.

Mr. Lavender answered faintly into his pillow:

"It is useless for you to torture me.  No German hand shall wring from me
a groan."

"Is there mania in his family?" asked the voice.  At this cruel insult
Mr. Lavender, who was nearly smothered, made a great effort, and clearing
his mouth of the pillow, said:

"Since we have no God nowadays, I call the God of my fathers to witness
that there is no saner public man than I."

It was, however, his last effort, for the wriggle he had given to his
spine brought on a kind of vertigo, and he relapsed into unconsciousness.




V

IS CONVICTED OF A NEW DISEASE

Those who were assembled round the bed of Mr. Lavender remained for a
moment staring at him with their mouths open, while Blink growled faintly
from underneath.

"Put your hand here," said the doctor at last.

"There is a considerable swelling, an appearance of inflammation, and the
legs are a curious colour.  You gave him three-quarters of a tumbler of
rum--how much honey?"

Thus addressed, Joe Petty, leaning his head a little to one side,
answered:

"Not 'alf a pot, sir."

"Um!  There are all the signs here of something quite new.  He's not had
a fall, has he?"

"Has he?" said Mrs. Petty severely to her husband.

"No," replied Joe.

"Singular!" said the doctor.  Turn him back again; I want to feel his
head.  Swollen; it may account for his curious way of talking.  Well,
shove in quinine, and keep him quiet, with hot bottles to his feet.  I
think we have come on a new war disease.  I'll send you the quinine.
Good morning.

"Wot oh!" said Joe to his wife, when they were left alone with the
unconscious body of their master.  "Poor old Guv!  Watch and pray!"

"However could you have given him such a thing?"

"Wet outside, wet your inside," muttered Joe sulkily, "'as always been my
motto.  Sorry I give 'im the honey.  Who'd ha' thought the product of an
'armless insect could 'a done 'im in like this?"

Fiddle said Mrs. Petty.  "In my belief it's come on through reading those
newspapers.  If I had my way I'd bum the lot.  Can I trust you to watch
him while I go and get the bottles filled?"

Joe drooped his lids over his greenish eyes, and, with a whisk of her
head, his wife left the room.

"Gawd 'elp us!" thought Joe, gazing at his unconscious master, and
fingering his pipe; "'ow funny women are!  If I was to smoke in 'ere
she'd have a fit.  I'll just 'ave a whiff in the window, though!"  And,
leaning out, he drew the curtains to behind him and lighted his pipe.

The sound of Blink gnawing her bone beneath the bed alone broke the
silence.

"I could do with a pint o' bitter," thought Joe; and, noticing the form
of the weekly gardener down below, he said softly:

"'Ello, Bob!"

"'Ello?" replied the gardener.  "'Ow's yours?"

"Nicely."

"Goin' to 'ave some rain?"

"Ah!"

"What's the, matter with that?"

"Good for the crops."

"Missis well?"

"So, so."

"Wish mine was."

"Wot's the matter with her?"

"Busy!" replied Joe, sinking his voice.  Never 'ave a woman permanent;
that's my experience.

The gardener did not reply, but stood staring at the lilac-bush below Joe
Petty's face.  He was a thin man, rather like an old horse.

"Do you think we can win this war?" resumed Joe.

"Dunno," replied the gardener apathetically.

"We seem to be goin' back nicely all the time."

Joe wagged his head.  "You've 'it it," he said.  And, jerking his head
back towards the room behind him, "Guv'nor's got it now."

"What?"

"The new disease."

"What new disease?"

"Wy, the Run-abaht-an-tell-'em-'ow-to-do-it."

"Ah!"

"'E's copped it fair.  In bed."

"You don't say!"

"Not 'alf!" Joe sank his voice still lower.  "Wot'll you bet me I don't
ketch it soon?"

The gardener uttered a low gurgle.

"The cats 'ave been in that laylock," he replied, twisting off a broken
branch.  "I'll knock off now for a bit o' lunch."

But at that moment the sound of a voice speaking as it might be from a
cavern, caused him and Joe Petty to stare at each other as if petrified.

"Wot is it?" whispered Joe at last.

The gardener jerked his head towards a window on the ground floor.

"Someone in pain," he said.

"Sounds like the Guv'nor's voice."

"Ah!" said the gardener.

"Alf a mo'!"  And, drawing in his head, Joe peered through the curtains.
The bed was empty and the door open.

"Watch it! 'E's loose!"  he called to the gardener, and descended the
stairs at a run.

In fact, Mr. Lavender had come out of his coma at the words, " D'you
think we can win this war?"  And, at once conscious that he had not read
the morning papers, had got out of bed.  Sallying forth just as he was he
had made his way downstairs, followed by Blink.  Seeing the journals
lying on the chest in the hall, he took all five to where he usually went
at this time of the morning, and sat down to read.  Once there, the pain
he was in, added to the disorder occasioned in his brain by the five
leaders, caused him to give forth a summary of their contents, while
Blink pressed his knees with her chin whenever the rising of his voice
betokened too great absorption, as was her wont when she wanted him to
feed her.  Joe Petty joined the gardener in considerable embarrassment.

"Shan't I not 'alf cop it from the Missis?" he murmured.  "The door's
locked."

The voice of Mr. Lavender maintained its steady flow, rising and falling
with the tides of his pain and his feelings.  "What, then, is our duty?
Is it not plain and simple?  We require every man in the Army, for that
is the 'sine qua non' of victory.  We must greatly reinforce the ranks of
labour in our shipyards--ships, ships, ships, always more ships; for
without them we shall infallibly be defeated.  We cannot too often repeat
that we must see the great drama that is being played before our eyes
steadily, and we must see it whole....  Not a man must be taken from the
cultivation of our soil, for on that depends our very existence as a
nation.  Without abundant labour of the right sort on the land we cannot
hope to cope with the menace of the pirate submarine.  We must have the
long vision, and not be scuppered by the fears of those who would deplete
our most vital industry .  .  .  .  In munition works," wailed Mr.
Lavender's voice, as he reached the fourth leader, "we still require the
maximum of effort, and a considerable reinforcement of manpower will in
that direction be necessary to enable us to establish the 'overwhelming
superiority in the air and in guns which alone can ensure the defeat
of our enemies"....  He reached the fifth in what was almost a scream.
"Every man up to sixty must be mobilized but here we would utter the most
emphatic caveat.  In the end this war will be won by the country whose
financial position stands the strain best.  The last copper bullet will
be the deciding factor.  Our economic strength must on no account be
diminished.  We cannot at this time of day afford to deplete the ranks of
trade and let out the very life-blood in our veins.  "We must see,"
groaned Mr. Lavender, "the problem steadily, and see it whole."

"Poor old geyser!" said the gardener; "'e do seem bad."

"Old me!" said Joe.

"I'll get on the sill and see what I can do through the top o' the
window."

He got up, and, held by the gardener, put his arm through.  There was the
sound of considerable disturbance, and through the barking of Blink, Mr.
Lavender's voice was heard again: "Stanch in the middle of the
cataclysm, unruffled by the waters of heaven and hell, let us be captains
of our souls.  Down, Blink, down!"

"He's out!" said Joe, rejoining the gardener.  "Now for it, before my
missis comes!" and he ran into the house.

Mr. Lavender was walking dazedly in the hall with the journals held out
before him.

"Joe," he said, catching sight of his servant, "get the car ready.
I must be in five places at once, for only thus can we defeat the
greatest danger which ever threatened the future of civilization."

"Right-o, sir," replied Joe; and, waiting till his master turned round,
he seized him round the legs, and lifting that thin little body ascended
the stairs, while Mr. Lavender, with the journals waving fanlike in his
hands, his white hair on end, and his legs kicking, endeavoured to turn
his head to see what agency was moving him.

At the top of the stairs they came on Mrs. Petty, who, having Scotch
blood in her veins, stood against the wall to let them pass, with a hot
bottle in either hand.  Having placed Mr. Lavender in his bed and drawn
the clothes up to his eyes, Joe Petty passed the back of his hand across
his brow, and wrung it out.

"Phew!" he gasped; "he's artful!"

His wife, who had followed them in, was already fastening her eyes on the
carpet.

"What's that?" she said, sniffing.

"That?" repeated Joe, picking up his pipe; "why, I had to run to ketch
'im, and it fell out o' me pocket."

"And lighted itself," said Mrs. Petty, darting, at the floor and taking
up a glowing quid which had burned a little round hole in the carpet.
"You're a pretty one!"

"You can't foresee those sort o' things," said Joe.

"You can't foresee anything," replied his wife; "you might be a
Government.  Here! hold the clothes while I get the bottles to his feet.
Well I never!  If he hasn't got----"  And from various parts of Mr.
Lavender's body she recovered the five journals.  "For putting things in
the wrong place, Joe Petty, I've never seen your like!"

"They'll keep 'im warm," said Joe.

Mr. Lavender who, on finding himself in bed, had once more fallen into a
comatose condition, stirred, and some words fell from his lips.  "Five in
one, and one in five."

"What does he say?" said Mrs. Petty, tucking him up.

"It's the odds against Candelabra for the Derby."

"Only faith," cried Mr. Lavender, "can multiply exceedingly."

"Here, take them away!" muttered Mrs. Petty, and dealing the journals a
smart slap, she handed them to Joe.

"Faith!" repeated Mr. Lavender, and fell into a doze.

"About this new disease,"  said Joe.  "D'you think it's ketchin'?  I feel
rather funny meself."

"Stuff!" returned his wife.  "Clear away those papers and that bone, and
go and take Blink out, and sit on a seat; it's all you're fit for.  Of
all the happy-go-luckys you're the worst."

"Well, I never could worry," said Joe from the doorway; "'tisn't in me.
So long!"

And, dragging Blink by the collar, he withdrew.

Alone with her patient, Mrs. Petty, an enthusiast for cleanliness and
fresh air, went on her knees, and, having plucked out the charred ring of
the little hole in the carpet, opened the window wider to rid the room of
the smell of burning.  "If it wasn't for me," she thought, leaning out
into the air, "I don't know what'd become of them."

A voice from a few feet away said:

"I hope he's none the worse.  What does the doctor say?"

Looking round in astonishment, Mrs. Petty saw a young lady leaning out of
a window on her right.

"We can't tell at present," she said, with a certain reserve he is going
on satisfactory.

"It's not hydrophobia, is it?" asked the young lady.  "You know he fell
out of the window?

"What!" ejaculated Mrs. Petty.

"Where the lilac's broken.  If I can give you a hand I shall be very
glad.  I'm a V.A.D."

"Thank you, I'm sure," said Mrs. Petty stiffly, for the passion of
jealousy, to which she was somewhat prone, was rising in her, "there is
no call."  And she thought, "V.A. indeed!  I know them."

Poor dear said the young lady.  "He did come a bump.  It was awfully
funny!  Is he--er----?"  And she touched her forehead, where tendrils of
fair hair were blowing in the breeze.

Inexpressibly outraged by such a question concerning one for whom she had
a proprietary reverence, Mrs. Petty answered acidly:

"Oh dear no!  He is much wiser than some people!"

"It was only that he mentioned the last man and the last dollar, you
know," said the young lady, as if to herself, "but, of course, that's no
real sign." And she uttered a sudden silvery laugh.

Mrs. Petty became aware of something tickling her left ear, and turning
round, found her master leaning out beside her, in his dressing-gown.

Leave me, Mrs. Petty," he said with such dignity that she instinctively
recoiled.  "It may seem to you," continued Mr. Lavender, addressing the
young lady, "indelicate on my part to resume my justification, but as a
public man, I suffer, knowing that I have committed a breach of decorum."

"Don't you think you ought to keep quiet in bed?"  Mrs. Petty heard the
young lady ask.

"My dear young lady, "Mr. Lavender replied, "the thought of bed is
abhorrent to me at a time like this.  What more ignoble fate than to die
in, one's bed?

"I'm only asking you to live in it," said the young lady, while Mrs.
Petty grasped her master by the skirts of his gown.

"Down, Blink, down!" said Mr. Lavender, leaning still further out.

"For pity's sake, "wailed the young lady, don't fall out again, or I
shall burst."

"Ah, believe me," said Mr. Lavender in a receding voice, "I would not
pain you further for the world----"

Mrs. Petty, exerting all her strength, had hauled him in.

"Aren't you ashamed of yourself, sir," she said severely, "talking to a
young lady like that in your dressing-gown?

"Mrs. Petty," said Mr Lavender mysteriously, "it might have been
worse....  I should like some tea with a little lemon in it."

Taking this for a sign of returning reason Mrs. Petty drew him gently
towards the bed, and, having seen him get in, tucked him up and said:

"Now, sir, you never break your word, do you?"

"No public man----" began Mr. Lavender.

"Oh, bother!  Now, promise me to stay quiet in bed while I get you that
tea."

"I certainly shall," replied our hero, "for I feel rather faint."

"That's right," said Mrs. Petty.  "I trust you."  And, bolting the
window, she whisked out of the room and locked the door behind her.

Mr. Lavender lay with his eyes fixed on the, ceiling, clucking his
parched tongue.  "God," he thought, "for one must use that word when the
country is in danger--God be thanked for Beauty!  But I must not allow it
to unsteel my soul.  Only when the cause of humanity has triumphed, and
with the avenging sword and shell we have exterminated that criminal
nation, only then shall I be entitled to let its gentle influence creep
about my being."  And drinking off the tumbler of tea which Mrs. Petty
was holding to his lips, he sank almost immediately into a deep slumber.




VI

MAKES A MISTAKE, AND MEETS A MOON-CAT

The old lady, whose name was Sinkin, and whose interest in Mr. Lavender
had become so deep, lived in a castle in Frognal; and with her lived her
young nephew, a boy of forty-five, indissolubly connected with the Board
of Guardians.  It was entirely due to her representations that he
presented himself at Mr. Lavender's on the following day, and, sending in
his card, was admitted to our hero's presence.

Mr. Lavender, pale and stiff, was sitting in his study, with Blink on his
feet, reading a speech.

"Excuse my getting up, sir," he said; "and pray be seated."

The nephew, who had a sleepy, hairless face and little Chinese eyes,
bowed, and sitting down, stared at Mr. Lavender with a certain
embarrassment.

"I have come," he said at last, "to ask you a few questions on behalf
of----"

"By all means," said Mr. Lavender, perceiving at once that he was being
interviewed.  "I shall be most happy to give you my views.  Please take a
cigarette, for I believe that is usual.  I myself do not smoke.  If it is
the human touch you want, you may like to know that I gave it up when
that appeal in your contemporary flooded the trenches with cigarettes and
undermined the nerves of our heroes.  By setting an example of
abstinence, and at the same time releasing more tobacco for our men,
I felt that I was but doing my duty.  Please don't mention that, though.
And while we are on the personal note, which I sincerely deprecate, you
might like to stroll round the room and look at the portrait of my
father, behind the door, and of my mother, over the fireplace.  Forgive
my not accompanying you.  The fact is--this is an interesting touch--I
have always been rather subject to lumbago."  And seeing the nephew
Sinkin, who had risen to his suggestion, standing somewhat irresolutely
in front of him, he added: "Perhaps you would like to look a little more
closely at my eyes.  Every now and then they flash with an almost uncanny
insight."  For by now he had quite forgotten his modesty in the
identification he felt with the journal which was interviewing him.
"I am fifty-eight," he added quickly; "but I do not look my years, though
my hair, still thick and full of vigour, is prematurely white--so often
the case with men whose brains are.  continually on the stretch.  The
little home, far from grandiose, which forms the background to this most
interesting personality is embowered in trees.  Cats have made their mark
on its lawns, and its owner's love of animals was sharply illustrated by
the sheep-dog which lay on his feet clad in Turkish slippers.  Get up,
Blink!"

Blink, disturbed by the motion of her master's feet, rose and gazed long
into his face.

"Look!" said Mr. Lavender," she has the most beautiful eyes in the
world."

At this remark, which appeared to him no saner than the others he had
heard--so utterly did he misjudge Mr. Lavender's character--the nephew
put down the notebook he had taken out of his pocket, and said:

"Has there ever been anything--er--remarkable about your family?"

"Indeed, yes," said Mr. Lavender.  Born of poor but lofty parentage in
the city of Rochester, my father made his living as a publisher; my
mother was a true daughter of the bards, the scion of a stock tracing its
decent from the Druids; her name was originally Jones."

"Ah!" said the nephew Sinkin, writing.

"She has often told me at her knee," continued Mr. Lavender, "that there
was a strong vein of patriotism in her family."

"She did not die--in--in----"

"No, indeed," interrupted Mr. Lavender; she is still living there."

"Ah!" said the nephew.  "And your brothers and sisters?"

"One of my brothers," replied Mr. Lavender, with pardonable pride, "is
the editor of Cud Bits.  The other is a clergyman."

"Eccentric," murmured the nephew absently.  "Tell me, Mr. Lavender, do
you find your work a great strain?  Does it----" and he touched the top
of his head, covered with moist black hair.

Mr. Lavender sighed.  "At a time like this," he said, "we must all be
prepared to sacrifice our health.  No public man, as you know, can call
his head his own for a moment.  I should count myself singularly lacking
if I stopped to consider--er--such a consideration."

Consider--er--such a consideration," repeated the nephew, jotting it
down.

"He carries on," murmured Mr. Lavender, once more identifying himself
with the journal, "grappling with the intricacies of this enormous
problem; happy in the thought that nothing--not even reason itself--is
too precious to sacrifice on the altar of his duty to his country.  The
public may rest confident in the knowledge that he will so carry on till
they carry him out on his shield."  And aware subconsciously that the
interview could go no further than that phrase, Mr. Lavender was silent,
gazing up with rather startled eyes.

"I see," said the nephew; "I am very much obliged to you.  Is your dog
safe?" For Blink had begun to growl in a low and uneasy manner.

"The gentlest creature in the world," replied Lavender, "and the most
sociable.  I sometimes think,"  he went on in a changed voice, "that we
have all gone mad, and that animals alone retain the sweet reasonableness
which used to be esteemed a virtue in human society.  Don't take that
down," he added quickly, "we are all subject to moments of weakness.  It
was just an 'obiter dictum'."

"Make your mind easy," said the nephew, rising, "it does not serve my
purpose.  Just one thing, Mr. Lavender."

At this moment Blink, whose instinct had long been aware of some sinister
purpose in this tall and heavy man, whose trousers did not smell of dogs,
seeing him approach too near, bit him gently in the calf.

The nephew started back.  "She's bitten me!" he said, in a hushed voice.

"My God!" ejaculated Mr. Lavender and falling back again, so stiff was
he.  "Is it possible?  There must be some good reason.  Blink!"

Blink wagged her little tail, thrust her nose into his hand, removed it,
and growled again.

"She is quite well, I assure you,"  Mr. Lavender added hastily, "her nose
is icy."

"She's bitten me," repeated the nephew, pulling up his trouser leg.
"There's no mark, but she distinctly bit me."

"Treasure!" said Mr. Lavender, endeavouring to interest him in the dog.
"Do you notice how dark the rims of her eyes are, and how clear the
whites?  Extraordinarily well bred.  Blink!"

Aware that she was being talked of Blink continued to be torn between
the desire to wag her tail and to growl.  Unable to make up her mind, she
sighed heavily and fell on her side against her side against her master's
legs.

"Wonderful with sheep, too," said Mr. Lavender; "at least, she would be
if they would let her....  You should see her with them on the Heath.
They simply can't bear her."

"You will hear from me again," said the nephew sourly.

"Thank you," said Mr. Lavender.  "I shall be glad of a proof; it is
always safer, I believe."

"Good morning," said the nephew.

Blink, who alone perceived the dark meaning in these words, seeing him
move towards the door began to bark and run from side to side behind him,
for all the world as if he had been a flock of sheep.

"Keep her off!" said the nephew anxiously.  "Keep her off.  I refuse to
be bitten again."

"Blink!" called Mr. Lavender in some agony.  Blink, whose obedience was
excessive, came back to him at once, and stood growling from under her
master's hand, laid on the white hair which flowed back from her collar,
till the nephew's footsteps had died away.  "I cannot imagine," thought
Mr. Lavender, "why she should have taken exception to that excellent
journalist.  Perhaps he did not smell quite right?  One never knows."

And with her moustachioed muzzle pressed to his chin Mr. Lavender sought
for explanation in the innocent and living darkness of his dog's eyes....

On leaving Mr. Lavender's the nephew forthwith returned to the castle in
Frognal, and sought his aunt.

"Mad as a March hare, Aunt Rosie; and his dog bit me."

"That dear doggie?"

"They're dangerous."

"You were always funny about dogs, dear, said his aunt soothingly." Why,
even Sealey doesn't really like you.  "And calling to the little low
white dog she quite failed to attract his attention.  "Did you notice his
dress.  The first time I took him for a shepherd, and the second time---!
What do you think ought to be done?"

"He'll have to be watched," said the nephew.  "We can't have lunatics at
large in Hampstead."

"But, Wilfred," said the old lady, "will our man-power stand it?
Couldn't they watch each other?  Or, if it would be any help, I could
watch him myself.  I took such a fancy to his dear dog."

"I shall take steps," said the nephew.

"No, don't do that.  I'll go and call on the people, next door.  Their
name is Scarlet.  They'll know about him, no doubt.  We mustn't do
anything inconsiderate."

The nephew, muttering and feeling his calf, withdrew to his study.  And
the old lady, having put on her bonnet, set forth placidly, unaccompanied
by her little white dog.

On arriving at the castle embedded in acacias and laurustinus she asked
of the maid who opened:

"Can I see Mrs. Scarlet?"

"No," replied the girl dispassionately; "she's dead."

"Mr. Scarlet, then?"

"No," replied the girl he's a major."

"Oh, dear!" said the old lady.

"Miss Isabel's at home," said the girl, who appeared, like so many people
in time of war, to be of a simple, plain-spoken nature; "you'll find her
in the garden."  And she let the old lady out through a French window.

At the far end, under an acacia, Mrs. Sinkin could see the form of a
young lady in a blue dress, lying in a hammock, with a cigarette between
her lips and a yellow book in her hands.  She approached her thinking,
"Dear me!  how comfortable, in these days!"  And, putting her head a
little on one side, she said with a smile: "My name is Sinkin.  I hope
I'm not disturbing you."

The young lady rose with a vigorous gesture.

"Oh, no!  Not a bit."

"I do admire some people," said the old lady; "they seem to find time for
everything."

The young lady stretched herself joyously.

"I'm taking it out before going to my new hospital.  Try it," she said
touching the hammock; "it's not bad.  Will you have a cigarette?"

"I'm afraid I'm too old for both," said the old lady, "though I've often
thought they must be delightfully soothing.  I wanted to speak to you
about your neighbour."

The young lady rolled her large grey eyes.  "Ah!" she said, "he's
perfectly sweet."

"I know," said the old lady, "and has such a dear dog.  My nephew's very
interested in them.  You may have heard of him--Wilfred Sinkin--a very
clever man; on so many Committees."

"Not really?" said the young lady.

"Oh, yes!  He has one of those heads which nothing can disturb; so
valuable in these days."

"And what sort of a heart?" asked the young lady, emitting a ring of
smoke.

"Just as serene.  I oughtn't to say so, but I think he's rather a
wonderful machine."

"So long as he's not a doctor!  You can't think how they get on your
nerves when they're, like that.  I've bumped up against so many of them.
They fired me at last!"

"Really?  Where?  I thought they only did that to the dear horses.  Oh,
what a pretty laugh you have!  It's so pleasant to hear anyone laugh, in
these days."

"I thought no one did anything else!  I mean, what else can you do,
except die, don't you know?"

"I think that's rather a gloomy view," said the old lady placidly.  But
about your neighbour.  What is his name?"

"Lavender.  But I call him Don Pickwixote."

"Dear me, do you indeed?  Have you noticed anything very eccentric about
him?"

"That depends on what you call eccentric.  Wearing a nightshirt, for
instance?  I don't know what your standard is, you see."

The old lady was about to reply when a voice from the adjoining garden
was heard saying:

"Blink!  Don't touch that charming mooncat!"

"Hush!" murmured the young lady; and seizing her visitor's arm, she drew
her vigorously beneath the acacia tree.  Sheltered from observation by
those thick and delicate branches, they stooped, and applying their eyes
to holes in the privet hedge, could see a very little cat, silvery-fawn
in colour and far advanced in kittens, holding up its paw exactly like a
dog, and gazing with sherry-coloured eyes at Mr. Lavender, who stood in
the middle of his lawn, with Blink behind him.

"If you see me going to laugh," whispered the young lady, "pinch me
hard."

"Moon-cat," repeated Mr. Lavender, "where have you come from?  And what
do you want, holding up your paw like that?  What curious little noises
you make, duckie!"  The cat, indeed, was uttering sounds rather like a
duck.  It came closer to Mr. Lavender, circled his legs, drubbed itself
against Blink's chest, while its tapered tail, barred with silver,
brushed her mouth.

"This is extraordinary," they heard Mr. Lavender say; "I would stroke it
if I wasn't so stiff.  How nice of you little moon-cat to be friendly to
my play-girl!  For what is there in all the world so pleasant to see as
friendliness between a dog and cat!"

At those words the old lady, who was a great lover of animals, was so
affected that she pinched the young lady by mistake.

"Not yet!" whispered the latter in some agony.  "Listen!"

"Moon-cat," Mr. Lavender was saying, "Arcadia is in your golden eyes.
You have come, no doubt, to show us how far we have strayed away from
it."  And too stiff to reach the cat by bending, Mr. Lavender let himself
slowly down till he could sit.  "Pan is dead," he said, as he arrived on
the grass and crossed his feet, "and Christ is not alive.  Moon-cat!"

The little cat had put its head into his hand, while Blink was thrusting
her nose into his mouth.

"I'm going to sneeze!"  whispered the old lady, strangely affected.

"Pull your upper lip down hard, like the German Empress, and count nine!"
murmured the young.

While the old lady was doing this Mr. Lavender had again begun to speak.

"Life is now nothing but explosions.  Gentleness has vanished, and beauty
is a dream.  When you have your kittens, moon-cat, bring them up in
amity, to love milk, dogs, and the sun."

The moon-cat, who had now reached his shoulder, brushed the tip of her
tail across his loose right eyebrow, while Blink's jealous tongue avidly
licked his high left cheekbone.  With one hand Mr. Lavender was cuddling
the cat's head, with the other twiddling Blink's forelock, and the
watchers could see his eyes shining, and his white hair standing up all
ruffled.

"Isn't it sweet?" murmured the old lady.

"Ah! moon-cat," went on Mr. Lavender, "come and live with us.  You shall
have your kittens in the bathroom, and forget this age of blood and
iron."

Both the old lady and the young were removing moisture from their eyes
when, the voice of Mr. Lavender, very changed, recalled them to their
vigil.  His face had become strained and troubled.

"Never," he was saying, "will we admit that doctrine of our common
enemies.  Might is not right gentlemen those who take the sword shall
perish by the sword.  With blood and iron we will ourselves stamp out
this noxious breed.  No stone shall be left standing, and no babe
sleeping in that abandoned country.  We will restore the tide of
humanity, if we have to wade through rivers of blood across mountains of
iron."

"Whom is he calling gentlemen?" whispered the old lady.

But Blink, by anxiously licking Mr. Lavender's lips, had produced a
silence in which the young-lady did not dare reply.  The sound of the
little cat's purring broke the hush.

"Down, Blink, down!" said Mr. Lavender.

"Watch this little moon-cat and her perfect manners!  We may all learn
from her how not to be crude.  See the light shining through her pretty
ears!"

The little cat, who had seen a bird, had left Mr. Lavender's shoulder,
and was now crouching and moving the tip of its tail from side to side.

"She would like a bird inside her; but let us rather go and find her some
milk instead," said Mr. Lavender, and he began to rise.

"Do you know, I think he's quite sane, whispered the old lady, "except,
perhaps, at intervals.  What do you?"

"Glorious print!" cried Mr. Lavender suddenly, for a journal had fallen
from his pocket, and the sight of it lying there, out of his reach,
excited him.  "Glorious print!  I can read you even from here.  When the
enemy of mankind uses the word God he commits blasphemy!  How different
from us!" And raising his eyes from the journal Mr. Lavender fastened
them, as it seemed to his anxious listeners, on the tree which sheltered
them.  "Yes!  Those unseen presences, who search out the workings of our
heart, know that even the most Jingo among us can say, 'I am not as they
are!'  Come, mooncat!"

So murmuring, he turned and moved towards the house, clucking with his
tongue, and followed by Blink.

"Did he mean us?" said the old lady nervously.

"No; that was one of his intervals.  He's not mad; he's just crazy."

"Is there any difference, my dear?"

"Why, we're all crazy about something, you know; it's only a question of
what."

"But what is his what?"

"He's got a message.  They're in the air, you know."

"I haven't come across them," said the old lady.  "I fear I live a very
quiet life--except for picking over sphagnum moss."

"Oh, well!  There's no hurry."

"Well, I shall tell my nephew what I've seen," said the old lady.  "Good-
bye."

"Good-bye," responded the young; and, picking up her yellow book, she got
back into the hammock and relighted her cigarette.




VII

SEES AND EDITOR, AND FINDS A FARMER

Not for some days after his fall from the window did Mr. Lavender begin
to regain the elasticity of body necessary to the resumption of public
life.  He spent the hours profitably, however, in digesting the
newspapers and storing ardour.  On Tuesday morning, remembering that no
proof of his interview had yet been sent him, and feeling that he ought
not to neglect so important a matter, he set forth to the office of the
great journal from which, in the occult fashion of the faithful, he was
convinced the reporter had come.  While he was asking for the editor in
the stony entrance, a young man who was passing looked at him attentively
and said: "Ah, sir, here you are! He's waiting for you.  Come up, will
you?"

Mr. Lavender followed up some stairs, greatly gratified at the thought
that he was expected.  The young man led him through one or two swing
doors into an outer office, where a young woman was typing.

Mr. Lavender shook his head, and sat down on the edge of a green leather
chair.  The editor, resuming his seat, crossed his legs deferentially,
and sinking his chin again on his chest, began:

"About your article.  My only trouble, of course, is that I'm running
that stunt on British prisoners--great success!  You've seen it, I
suppose?"

"Yes, indeed," said Mr. Lavender; I read you every day.

The editor made a little movement which showed that he was flattered, and
sinking his chin still further into his chest, resumed:

"It might run another week, or it might fall down to-morrow--you never
can tell.  But I'm getting lots of letters.  Tremendous public interest."

"Yes, yes," assented Mr. Lavender, "it's most important."

"Of course, we might run yours with it," said the editor.  "But I don't
know; I think it'd kill the other.  Still----"

"I shouldn't like----" began Mr. Lavender.

"I don't believe in giving them more than they want, you know," resumed
the editor.  "I think I'll have my news editor in," and he blew into a
tube.  "Send me Mr. Crackamup.  This thing of yours is very important,
sir.  Suppose we began to run it on Thursday.  Yes, I should think
they'll be tired of British prisoners by then."

"Don't let me," began Mr. Lavender.

The editor's eye became unveiled for the Moment.  "You'll be wanting to
take it somewhere else if we----Quite!  Well, I think we could run them
together.  See here, Mr. Crackamup"--Mr. Lavender saw a small man like
Beethoven frowning from behind spectacles--"could we run this German
prisoner stunt alongside the British, or d'you think it would kill it?"

Mr. Lavender almost rose from his chair in surprise.  "Are you----" he
said; "is it----"

The small man hiccoughed, and said in a raw voice:

"The letters are falling off."

"Ah!" murmured the editor, "I thought we should be through by Thursday.
We'll start this new stunt Thursday.  Give it all prominence, Crackamup.
It'll focus fury.  All to the good--all to the good.  Opinion's ripe."
Then for a moment he seemed to hesitate, and his chin sank back on his
chest.  "I don't know," he murmured of course it may----"

"Please," began Mr. Lavender, rising, while the small man hiccoughed
again.  The two motions seemed to determine the editor.

"That's all right, sir," he said, rising also; "that's quite all right.
We'll say Thursday, and risk it.  Thursday, Crackamup.  "And he held out
his hand to Mr. Lavender.  "Good morning, sir, good morning.  Delighted
to have seen you.  You wouldn't put your name to it?  Well, well, it
doesn't matter; only you could have written it.  The turn of phrase--
immense!  They'll tumble all right!"  And Mr. Lavender found himself,
with Mr. Crackamup, in the lobby.  "It's bewildering," he thought, "how
quickly he settled that.  And yet he had such repose.  But is there some
mistake?"  He was about to ask his companion, but with a distant hiccough
the small man had vanished.  Thus deserted, Mr. Lavender was in two minds
whether to ask to be readmitted, when the four gentlemen with notebooks
repassed him in single file into the editor's room.

"My name is Lavender," he said resolutely to the young woman.  "Is that
all right?"

"Quite," she answered, without looking up.

Mr. Lavender went out slowly, thinking, "I may perhaps have said more in
that interview than I remember.  Next time I really will insist on having
a proof.  Or have they taken me for some other public man?" This notion
was so disagreeable, however, that he dismissed it, and passed into the
street.

On Thursday, the day fixed for his fresh tour of public speaking, he
opened the great journal eagerly.  Above the third column was the
headline:  OUR VITAL DUTY: BY A GREAT PUBLIC MAN.  "That must be it," he
thought.  The article, which occupied just a column of precious space,
began with an appeal so moving that before he had read twenty lines Mr.
Lavender had identified himself completely with the writer; and if anyone
had told him that he had not uttered these sentiments, he would have
given him the lie direct.  Working from heat to heat the article finished
in a glorious outburst with a passionate appeal to the country to starve
all German prisoners.

Mr. Lavender put it down in a glow of exultation.  "I shall translate
words into action," he thought; "I shall at once visit a rural district
where German prisoners are working on the land, and see that the farmers
do their duty.  "And, forgetting in his excitement to eat his breakfast,
he put the journal in his pocket, wrapped himself in his dust-coat and
broad-brimmed hat, and went out to his car, which was drawn up, with
Blink, who had not forgotten her last experience, inside.

"We will go to a rural district, Joe," he said, getting in.

"Very good, sir," answered Joe; and, unnoticed by the population, they
glided into the hazy heat of the June morning.

"Well, what abaht it, sir?" said Joe, after they had proceeded for some
three hours.  "Here we are."

Mr. Lavender, who had been lost in the beauty of the scenes through which
he was passing, awoke from reverie, and said:

"I am looking for German prisoners, Joe; if you see a farmer, you might
stop."

"Any sort of farmer?" asked Joe.

"Is there more than one sort?" returned Mr. Lavender, smiling.

Joe cocked his eye.  "Ain't you never lived in the country, sir?"

"Not for more than a few weeks at a time, Joe, unless Rochester counts.
Of course, I know Eastbourne very well."

"I know Eastbourne from the inside," said Joe discursively.  "I was a
waiter there once."

"An interesting life, a waiter's, Joe, I should think."

"Ah!  Everything comes to 'im who waits, they say.  But abaht farmers--
you've got a lot to learn, sir."

"I am always conscious of that, Joe; the ramifications of public life are
innumerable."

"I could give you some rummikins abaht farmers.  I once travelled in
breeches."

"You seem to have done a great many things Joe."

"That's right, sir.  I've been a sailor, a 'traveller,' a waiter, a
scene-shifter, and a shover, and I don't know which was the cushiest job.
But, talking of farmers: there's the old English type that wears
Bedfords--don't you go near 'im, 'e bites.  There's the modern scientific
farmer, but it'll take us a week to find 'im.  And there's the small-
'older, wearin' trahsers, likely as not; I don't think 'e'd be any use to
you.

"What am I to do then?" asked Mr Lavender.

"Ah!" said Joe, "'ave lunch."

Mr. Lavender sighed, his hunger quarelling with his sense of duty.  "I
should like to have found a farmer first," he said.

"Well, sir, I'll drive up to that clump o'beeches, and you can have a
look round for one while I get lunch ready.

"That will do admirably."

There's just one thing, sir," said Joe, when his master was about to
start; "don't you take any house you come across for a farm.  They're
mostly cottages o' gentility nowadays, in'abited by lunatics."

"I shall be very careful," said Mr. Lavender.

"This glorious land!" he thought, walking away from the beech clump, with
Blink at his heels; "how wonderful to see it being restored to its former
fertility under pressure of the war!  The farmer must be a happy man,
indeed, working so nobly for his country, without thought of his own
prosperity.  How flowery those beans look already!"  he mused, glancing
at a field of potatoes.  "Now that I am here I shall be able to combine
my work on German prisoners with an effort to stimulate food production.
Blink!"  For Blink was lingering in a gateway.  Moving back to her, Mr.
Lavender saw that the sagacious animal was staring through the gate at a
farmer who was standing in a field perfectly still, with his back turned,
about thirty yards away.

"Have you----" Mr. Lavender began eagerly; "is it--are you employing any
German prisoners, sir?"

The farmer did not seem to hear.  "He must," thought Mr. Lavender, "be of
the old stolid English variety."

The farmer, who was indeed attired in a bowler hat and Bedford cords,
continued to gaze over his land, unconscious of Mr. Lavender's presence.

"I am asking you a question, sir," resumed the latter in a louder voice."
And however patriotically absorbed you may be in cultivating your soil,
there is no necessity for rudeness."

The farmer did not move a muscle.

"Sir," began Mr. Lavender again, very patiently, "though I have always
heard that the British farmer is of all men least amenable to influence
and new ideas, I have never believed it, and I am persuaded that if you
will but listen I shall be able to alter your whole outlook about the
agricultural future of this country."  For it had suddenly occurred to
him that it might be a long time before he had again such an opportunity
of addressing a rural audience on the growth of food, and he was loth to
throw away the chance.  The farmer, however, continued to stand with his
hack to the speaker, paying no more heed to his voice than to the buzzing
of a fly.

"You SHALL hear me," cried Mr. Lavender, unconsciously miming a voice
from the past, and catching, as he thought, the sound of a titter, he
flung his hand out, and exclaimed:

"Grass, gentlemen, grass is the hub of the matter.  We have put our hand
to the plough"--and, his imagination taking flight at those words, he
went on in a voice calculated to reach the great assembly of farmers
which he now saw before him with their backs turned--"and never shall we
take it away till we have reduced every acre in the country to an arable
condition.  In the future not only must we feed ourselves, but our dogs,
our horses, and our children, and restore the land to its pristine glory
in the front rank of the world's premier industry.  But me no buts," he
went on with a winning smile, remembering that geniality is essential in
addressing a country audience, "and butter me no butter, for in future we
shall require to grow our margarine as well.  Let us, in a word, put
behind us all prejudice and pusillanimity till we see this country of
ours once more blooming like one great cornfield, covered with cows.
Sirs, I am no iconoclast; let us do all this without departing in any way
from those great principles of Free Trade, Industrialism, and Individual
Liberty which have made our towns the largest, most crowded, and
wealthiest under that sun which never sets over the British Empire.  We
do but need to see this great problem steadily and to see it whole, and
we shall achieve this revolution in our national life without the
sacrifice of a single principle or a single penny.  Believe me,
gentlemen, we shall yet eat our cake and have it."

Mr. Lavender paused for breath, the headlines of his great speech in
tomorrow's paper dancing before his eyes: "THE CLIMACTERIC--EATS CAKE AND
HAS IT--A GREAT CONCLUSION."  The wind, which had risen somewhat during
Mr. Lavender's speech, fluttered the farmer's garments at this moment, so
that they emitted a sound like the stir which runs through an audience at
a moment of strong emotion.

"Ah!" cried Mr. Lavender, "I see that I move you, gentlemen.  Those have
traduced you who call you unimpressionable.  After all, are you not the
backbone of this country up which runs the marrow which feeds the brain;
and shall you not respond to an appeal at once so simple and so
fundamental?  I assure you, gentlemen, it needs no thought; indeed, the
less you think about it the better, for to do so will but weaken your
purpose and distract your attention.  Your duty is to go forward with
stout hearts, firm steps, and kindling eyes; in this way alone shall we
defeat our common enemies.  And at those words, which he had uttered at
the top of his voice, Mr. Lavender stood like a clock which has run down,
rubbing his eyes.  For Blink, roaming the field during the speech, and
encountering quadruped called rabbit, which she had never seen before,
had backed away from it in dismay, brushed against the farmer's legs and
caused his breeches to fall down, revealing the sticks on which they had
been draped.  When Mr. Lavender saw this he called out in a loud voice
Sir, you have deceived me.  I took you for a human being.  I now perceive
that you are but a selfish automaton, rooted to your own business,
without a particle of patriotic sense.  Farewell!"




VIII

STARVES SOME GERMANS

After parting with the scarecrow Mr. Lavender who felt uncommonly hungry'
was about to despair of finding any German prisoners when he saw before
him a gravel-pit, and three men working therein.  Clad in dungaree, and
very dusty, they had a cast of countenance so unmistakably Teutonic that
Mr. Lavender stood still.  They paid little or no attention to him,
however, but went on sadly and silently with their work, which was that
of sifting gravel.  Mr. Lavender sat down on a milestone opposite, and
his heart contracted within him.  "They look very thin and sad," he
thought, "I should not like to be a prisoner myself far from my country,
in the midst of a hostile population, without a woman or a dog to throw
me a wag of the tail.  Poor men!  For though it is necessary to hate the
Germans, it seems impossible to forget that we are all human beings.
This is weakness," he added to himself, "which no editor would tolerate
for a moment.  I must fight against it if I am to fulfil my duty of
rousing the population to the task of starving them.  How hungry they
look already--their checks are hollow!  I must be firm.  Perhaps they
have wives and families at home, thinking of them at this moment.  But,
after all, they are Huns.  What did the great writer say?  'Vermin--
creatures no more worthy of pity than the tiger or the rat.'  How true!
And yet--Blink!"  For his dog, seated on her haunches, was looking at him
with that peculiarly steady gaze which betokened in her the desire for
food.  "Yes," mused Mr. Lavender, "pity is the mark of the weak man.  It
is a vice which was at one time rampant in this country; the war has made
one beneficial change at least--we are moving more and more towards the
manly and unforgiving vigour of the tiger and the rat.  To be brutal!
This is the one lesson that the Germans can teach us, for we had almost
forgotten the art.  What danger we were in!  Thank God, we have past
masters again among us now!"  A frown became fixed between his brows.
"Yes, indeed, past masters.  How I venerate those good journalists and
all the great crowd of witnesses who have dominated the mortal weakness,
pity.  'The Hun must and shall be destroyed--root and branch--hip and
thigh--bag and baggage man, woman, and babe--this is the sole duty of the
great and humane British people.  Roll up, ladies and gentlemen, roll up!
Great thought--great language!  And yet----"

Here Mr. Lavender broke into a gentle sweat, while the Germans went on
sifting gravel in front of him, and Blink continued to look up into his
face with her fixed, lustrous eyes.  "What an awful thing," he thought,
"to be a man.  If only I were just a public man and could, as they do,
leave out the human and individual side of everything, how simple it
would be!  It is the being a man as well which is so troublesome.  A man
has feelings; it is wrong--wrong!  There should be no connection whatever
between public duty and the feelings of a man.  One ought to be able to
starve one's enemy without a quiver, to watch him drown without a wink.
In fact, one ought to be a German.  We ought all to be Germans.  Blink,
we ought all to be Germans, dear!  I must steel myself!"  And Mr.
Lavender wiped his forehead, for, though a great idea had come to him, he
still lacked the heroic savagery to put it into execution.  "It is my
duty," he thought, "to cause those hungry, sad-looking men to follow me
and watch me eat my lunch.  It is my duty.  God give me strength!  For
unless I make this sacrifice of my gentler nature I shall be unworthy to
call myself a public man, or to be reported in the newspapers.  'En
avant, de Bracy!'" So musing, he rose, and Blink with him.  Crossing the
road, he clenched his fists, and said in a voice which anguish made
somewhat shrill:

"Are you hungry, my friends?"

The Germans stopped sifting gravel, looked up at him, and one of them
nodded.

"And thirsty?"

This time they all three nodded.

"Come on, then," said Mr. Lavender.

And he led the way back along the road, followed by Blink and the three
Germans.  Arriving at the beech clump whose great trees were already
throwing shadows, denoting that it was long past noon, Mr. Lavender saw
that Joe had spread food on the smooth ground, and was, indeed, just
finishing his own repast.

"What is there to eat?" thought Mr. Lavender, with a soft of horror.
"For I feel as if I were about to devour a meal of human flesh."  And he
looked round at the three Germans slouching up shamefacedly behind him.

"Sit down, please," he said.  The three men sat down.

"Joe," said Mr. Lavender to his surprised chauffeur, "serve my lunch.
Give me a large helping, and a glass of ale.  "And, paler than his
holland dust-coat, he sat resolutely down on the bole of a beech, with
Blink on her haunches beside him.  While Joe was filling a plate with
pigeon-pie and pouring out a glass of foaming Bass, Mr. Lavender stared
at the three Germans and suffered the tortures of the damned.  "I will
not flinch," he thought; "God helping me, I certainly will not flinch.
Nothing shall prevent my going through with it."  And his eyes, more
prominent than a hunted rabbit's, watched the approach of Joe with the
plate and glass.  The three men also followed the movements of the
chauffeur, and it seemed to Mr. Lavender that their eyes were watering.
"Courage!" he murmured to himself, transfixing a succulent morsel with
his fork and conveying it to his lips.  For fully a minute he revolved
the tasty mouthful, which he could not swallow, while the three men's
eyes watched him with a sort of lugubrious surprise.  "If," he thought
with anguish, "if I were a prisoner in Germany!  Come, come!  One effort,
it's only the first mouthful!" and with a superhuman effort, he
swallowed.  "Look at me!" he cried to the three Germans, "look at me!
I--I--I'm going to be sick!" and putting down his plate, he rose and
staggered forward.  "Joe," he said in a dying voice, "feed these poor
men, feed them; make them drink; feed them!"  And rushing headlong to the
edge of the grove, he returned what he had swallowed--to the great
interest of Brink.  Then, waving away the approach of Joe, and consumed
with shame and remorse at his lack of heroism, he ran and hid himself in
a clump of hazel bushes, trying to slink into the earth.  "No," he
thought; "no; I am not for public life.  I have failed at the first test.
Was ever so squeamish an exhibition?  I have betrayed my country and the
honour of public life.  These Germans are now full of beer and pigeon-
pie.  What am I but a poltroon, unworthy to lace the shoes of the great
leaders of my land?  The sun has witnessed my disgrace."

How long he stayed there lying on his face he did not know before he
heard the voice of Joe saying, "Wot oh, sir!"

"Joe," replied Mr. Lavender faintly, "my body is here, but my spirit has
departed."

"Ah!" said Joe, "a rum upset--that there.  Swig this down, sir!" and he
held out to his master, a flask-cup filled with brandy.  Mr. Lavender
swallowed it.

"Have they gone?" he said, gasping.

"They 'ave, sir," replied Joe, "and not 'alf full neither.  Where did you
pick 'em up?"

"In a gravel-pit," said Mr. Lavender.  "I can never forgive myself for
this betrayal of my King and country.  I have fed three Germans.  Leave
me, for I am not fit to mingle with my fellows."

"Well, I don't think," said Joe.  "Germans?"

Gazing up into his face Mr. Lavender read the unmistakable signs of
uncontrolled surprise.

"Why do you look at me like that?" he said.

"Germans?" repeated Joe; "what Germans?  Three blighters workin' on the
road, as English as you or me.  Wot are you talkin' about, sir?"

"What!" cried Mr. Lavender do you tell me they were not Germans?"

"Well, their names was Tompkins, 'Obson, and Brown, and they 'adn't an
'aitch in their 'eads."

"God be praised said Mr. Lavender.  "I am, then, still an English
gentleman.  Joe, I am very hungry; is there nothing left?"

"Nothin' whatever, sir," replied Joe.

"Then take me home," said Mr. Lavender; "I care not, for my spirit has
come back to me."

So saying, he rose, and supported by Joe, made his way towards the car,
praising God in his heart that he had not disgraced his country.




IX

CONVERSES WITH A CONSCIENTIOUS OBJECTOR

"Yes," said Mr. Lavender, when they had proceeded some twenty miles along
the road for home, "my hunger is excessive.  If we come across an hotel,
Joe, pull up."

"Right-o, sir," returned Joe.  "'Otels, ain't what they were, but we'll
find something.  I've got your coupons."

Mr. Lavender, who was seated beside his chauffeur on the driving-seat,
while Blink occupied in solitude the body of the car, was silent for a
minute, revolving a philosophic thought.

"Do you find," he said suddenly, "that compulsory sacrifice is doing you
good, Joe?"

"It's good for my thirst, sir," replied Joe.  "Never was so powerful
thirsty in me life as I've been since they watered beer.  There's just
'enough in it to tickle you.  That bottle o' Bass you would 'ave 'ad at
lunch is the last of the old stock at 'ome, sir; an' the sight of it fair
gave me the wind up.  To think those blighters 'ad it!  Wish I'd known
they was Germans--I wouldn't 'ave weakened on it."

"Do not, I beg," said Mr. Lavender, "remind me of that episode.  I
sometimes think," he went on as dreamily as his hunger would permit,
"that being forced to deprive oneself awakens one's worst passions; that
is, of course, speaking rather as a man than a public man.  What do you
think will happen, Joe, when we are no longer obliged to sacrifice
ourselves?

"Do wot we've been doin all along--sacrifice someone else," said Joe
lightly.

"Be serious, Joe," said Mr. Lavender.

"Well," returned Joe, "I don't know what'll 'appen to you, sir, but I
shall go on the bust permanent."

Mr. Lavender sighed.  "I do so wonder whether I shall, too," he said.

Joe looked round at him, and a gleam of compassion twinkled in his
greenish eyes.  "Don't you worry, sir," he said; "it's a question of
constitootion.  A week'd sew you up."

"A week!" said Mr. Lavender with watering lips, "I trust I may not forget
myself so long as that.  Public men do not go 'on the bust,' Joe, as you
put it."

"Be careful, sir!  I can't drive with one eye."

"How can they, indeed?" went on Mr. Lavender; "they are like athletes,
ever in training for their unending conflict with the national life."

"Well," answered Joe indulgently, "they 'as their own kind of
intoxication, too--that's true; and the fumes is permanent; they're
gassed all the time, and chloroformed the rest.

"I don't know to what you allude, Joe," said Mr. Lavender severely.

"'Aven't you never noticed, sir, that there's two worlds--the world as it
is, and the world as it seems to the public man?"

"That may be," said Mr. Lavender with some excitement.  "But which is the
greater, which is the nobler, Joe?  And what does the other matter?
Surely that which flourishes in great minds, and by their utterances is
made plain.  Is it not better to live in a world where nobody shrinks
from being starved or killed so long as they can die for their kings and
countries, rather than in a world where people merely wish to live?"

"Ah!" said Joe, "we're all ready to die for our countries if we've got
to.  But we don't look on it, like the public speakers, as a picnic.
They're a bit too light-'earted."

"Joe," said Mr. Lavender, covering his ears, and instantly uncovering
them again, "this is the most horrible blasphemy I have ever listened
to."

"I can do better than that, sir," answered Joe.  "Shall I get on with
it?"

"Yes," said Mr. Lavender, clenching his hands, "a public man shrinks from
nothing--not even from the gibes of his enemies."

"Well, wot abaht it, sir?  Look at the things they say, and at what
really is.  Mind you, I'm not speakin' particular of the public men in
this country--or any other country; I'm speakin' of the lot of 'em in
every country.  They're a sort of secret society, brought up on gas.  And
every now and then someone sets a match to it, and we get it in the neck.
Look 'ere, sir.  Dahn squats one on his backside an' writes something in
'igh words.  Up pops another and says something in 'igher; an' so they go
on poppin' up an' squattin' dahn till you get an atmosphere where you
can't breathe; and all the time all we want is to be let alone, and 'uman
kindness do the rest.  All these fellers 'ave got two weaknesses--one's
ideas, and the other's their own importance.  They've got to be
conspicuous, and without ideas they can't, so it's a vicious circle.
When I see a man bein' conspicuous, I says to meself: 'Gawd 'elp us, we
shall want it!'  And sooner or later we always do.  I'll tell you what's
the curse of the world, sir; it's the gift of expressin' what ain't your
real feeling.  And--Lord! what a lot of us 'ave got it!"

"Joe," said Mr. Lavender, whose eyes were almost starting from his head,
"your words are the knell of poetry, philosophy, and prose--especially of
prose.  They are the grave of history, which, as you know, is made up of
the wars and intrigues which have originated in the brains of public men.
If your sordid views were true, how do you suppose for one minute that in
this great epic struggle we could be consoled by the thought that we are
'making history'?  Has there been a single utterance of any note which
has not poured the balm of those words into our ears?  Think how they
have sustained the widow and the orphan, and the wounded lying out in
agony under the stars.  'To make history,' 'to act out the great drama'--
that thought, ever kept before us, has been our comfort and their stay.
And you would take it from us?  Shame--shame!" repeated Mr. Lavender.
You would destroy all glamour, and be the death of every principle."

"Give me facts," said Joe stubbornly, "an' you may 'ave my principles.
As to the other thing, I don't know what it is, but you may 'ave it, too.
And 'ere's another thing, sir: haven't you never noticed that when a
public man blows off and says something, it does 'im in?  No matter what
'appens afterwards, he's got to stick to it or look a fool."

"I certainly have not," said Mr. Lavender.  I have never, or very seldom,
noticed that narrowness in public men, nor have I ever seen them 'looking
fools' as you rudely put it."

"Where are your eyes, sir?" answered Joe; "where are your eyes?  I give
you my word it's one or the other, though I admit they've brought
camouflage to an 'igh art.  But, speaking soberly, sir, if that's
possible, public men are a good thing' and you can 'ave too much of it.
But you began it, sir," he added soothingly, "and 'ere's your hotel.
You'll feel better with something inside you."

So saying, he brought the car to a standstill before a sign which bore
the words, "Royal Goat."

Mr. Lavender, deep sunk in the whirlpool of feeling which had been
stirred in him by his chauffeur's cynicism, gazed at the square redbrick
building with bewildered eyes.

"It's quite O. K.," said Joe; "I used to call here regular when I was
travellin' in breeches.  Where the commercials are gathered together the
tap is good," he added, laying a finger against the side of his nose.
"And they've a fine brand of pickles.  Here's your coupon."

Thus encouraged, Mr. Lavender descended from the car, and, accompanied by
Blink, entered the hotel and sought the coffee-room.

A maid of robust and comely appearance, with a fine free eye, divested
him of his overcoat and the coupon, and pointed to a table and a pale and
intellectual-looking young man in spectacles who was eating.

"Have you any more beef?" said the latter without looking up.

"No, sir," replied the maid.

"Then bring me the ham and eggs," he added.

"Here's another coupon--and anything else you've got."

Mr. Lavender, whose pangs had leaped in him at the word "beef," gazed at
the bare bone of the beef-joint, and sighed.

"I, too, will have some ham and a couple of poached eggs," he said.

"You can have ham, sir," replied the maid, "but there are only eggs
enough for one."

"And I am the one," said the young man, looking up for the first time.

Mr. Lavender at once conceived an aversion from him; his appearance was
unhealthy, and his eyes ravened from behind the spectacles beneath his
high forehead.

"I have no wish to deprive you of your eggs, sir," he said, "though I
have had nothing to eat all day."

"I have had nothing to eat to speak of for six months," replied the young
man and in a fortnight's time I shall have nothing to eat again for two
years."

Mr. Lavender, who habitually spoke, the truth, looked at him with a sort
of horror.  But the young man had again concentrated his attention on his
plate.  "How deceptive are appearances," thought Mr. Lavender; "one would
say an intellectual, not to say a spiritual type, and yet he eats like a
savage, and lies like a trooper!"  And the pinchings of his hunger again
attacking him, he said rather acidly:

May I ask you, sir, whether you consider it amusing to tell such untruths
to a stranger?

The young man, who had finished what was on his plate, paused, and with a
faint smile said:

"I spoke figuratively.  You, sir, I expect, have never been in prison."

At the word 'prison' Mr. Lavender's natural kindliness reasserted itself
at once.  "Forgive me," he said gently; "please eat all the ham.  I can
easily do with bread and cheese.  I am extremely sorry you have had that
misfortune, and would on no account do anything which might encourage you
to incur it again.  If it is a question of money or anything of that
sort," he went on timidly, "please command me.  I abhor prisons; I
consider them inhuman; people should only be confined upon their honours."

The young man's eyes kindled behind his spectacles.

"I have been confined," he said, "not upon my honour, but because of my
honour; to break it in."

"How is that?" cried Mr. Lavender, aghast, "to break it in?"

"Yes," said the young man, cutting a large slice of bread, "there's no
other way of putting it with truth.  They want me to go back on my word
to go back on my faith, and I won't.  In a fortnight's time they'll gaol
me again, so I MUST eat--excuse me.  I shall want all my strength."  And
he filled his mouth too full to go on speaking.

Mr. Lavender stared at him, greatly perturbed.

How unjustly I judged him," he thought; and seeing that the maid had
placed the end of a ham before him he began carving off what little there
was left on it, and, filling a plate, placed it before the young man.
The latter thanked him, and without looking up ate rapidly on.  Mr.
Lavender watched him with beaming eyes.  "It's lovely to see him!" he
thought; "poor fellow!"

"Where are the eggs?" said the young man suddenly.

Mr. Lavender got up and rang the bell.

"Please  bring those eggs for him," he said.

"Yes, sir," said the maid.  "And what are you going to have?  There's
nothing in the house now."

"Oh!" said Mr. Lavender, startled.  "A cup of coffee and a slice of bread,
thank you.  I can always eat at any time."

The maid went away muttering to herself, and bringing the eggs, plumped
them down before the young man, who ate them more hastily than words
could tell.

"I mean," he said, "to do all I can in this fort-night to build up my
strength.  I shall eat almost continuously.  They shall never break me."
And, reaching out, he took the remainder of the loaf.

Mr. Lavender watched it disappear with a certain irritation which he
subdued at once.  "How selfish of me," he thought, "even to think of
eating while this young hero is still hungry."

"Are you, then," he said, "the victim of some religious or political
plot?"

"Both," replied the young man, leaning back with a sigh of repletion, and
wiping his mouth.  "I was released to-day, and, as I said, I shall be
court-martialled again to-day fortnight.  It'll be two years this time.
But they can't break me."

Mr. Lavender gasped, for at the word "courtmartialled" a dreadful doubt
had assailed him.

"Are you," he stammered--"you are not--you cannot be a Conscientious
Objector?"

"I can," said the young man.

Mr. Lavender half rose in horror.

"I don't approve," he ejaculated; "I do not approve of you."

"Of course not," said the young man with a little smile at once proud and
sad, "who does?  If you did I shouldn't have to eat like this, nor should I
have the consciousness of spiritual loneliness to sustain me.  You look
on me as a moral outcast, as a leper.  That is my comfort and my
strength.  For though I have a genuine abhorrence of war, I know full
well that I could not stick this if it were not for the feeling that I
must not and will not lower myself to the level of mere opportunists like
you, and sink myself in the herd of men in the street."

At hearing himself thus described Mr. Lavender flushed.

"I yield to no one, he said, "in my admiration of principle.  It is
because of my principles that I regard you as a----"

"Shirker," put in the young man calmly.  "Go on; don't mince words; we're
used to them."

"Yes," said Mr. Lavender, kindling, "a shirker.  Excuse me!  A renegade
from the camp of Liberty, a deserter from the ranks of Humanity, if you
will pardon me."

"Say a Christian, and have done with it," said the young man.

"No," said Mr. Lavender, who had risen to his feet, "I will not go so far
as that.  You are not a Christian, you are a Pharisee.  I abhor you."

"And I abhor you," said the young man suddenly.  "I am a Christian
Socialist, but I refuse to consider you my brother.  And I can tell you
this: Some day when through our struggle the triumph of Christian
Socialism and of Peace is assured, we shall see that you firebrands and
jingoes get no chance to put up your noxious heads and disturb the
brotherhood of the world.  We shall stamp you out.  We shall do you in.
We who believe in love will take jolly good care that you apostles of
hate get all we've had and more--if you provoke us enough that is."

He stopped, for Mr. Lavender's figure had rigidified on the other side of
the table into the semblance of one who is about to address the House of
Lords.

"I can find here," he cried, "no analogy with religious persecution.
This is a simple matter.  The burden of defending his country falls
equally on every citizen.  I know not, and I care not, what promises were
made to you, or in what spirit the laws of compulsory service were
passed.  You will either serve or go to prison till you do.  I am a plain
Englishman, expressing the view of my plain countrymen."

The young man, tilting back in his chair, rapped on the table with the
handle of his dinner-knife.

"Hear, hear!" he murmured.

"And let me tell you this," continued Mr. Lavender, "you have no right to
put a mouthful of food between your lips so long as you are not prepared
to die for it.  And if the Huns came here tomorrow I would not lift a
finger to save you from the fate you would undoubtedly receive."

During this colloquy their voices had grown so loud that the maid,
entering in dismay, had gone into the bar and informed the company that a
Conscientious Objector had eaten all the food and was "carrying on
outrageous" in the coffee-room.  On hearing this report those who were
assembled--being four commercial travellers far gone in liquor--taking up
the weapons which came nearest to hand--to wit, four syphons--formed
themselves two deep and marched into the coffee-room.  Aware at once from
Mr. Lavender's white hair and words that he was not the Objector in
question, they advanced upon the young man, who was still seated, and
taking up the four points of the compass, began squirting him
unmercifully with soda-water.  Blinded and dripping, the unfortunate
young fellow tried desperately to elude the cordon of his persecutors,
only to receive a fresh stream in his face at each attempt.  Seeing him
thus tormented, amid the coarse laughter of these half-drunken
"travellers," Mr. Lavender suffered a moment of the most poignant
struggle between his principles and his chivalry.  Then, almost
unconsciously grasping the ham-bone, he advanced and called out loudly:

"Stop!  Do not persecute that young man.  You are four and he is one.
Drop it, I tell you--Huns that you are!"

The commercial fellows, however, laughed; and this infuriating Mr.
Lavender, he dealt one of them a blow with the ham-bone, which, lighting
on the funny point of his elbow, caused him to howl and spin round the
room.  One of the others promptly avenged him with a squirt of syphon in
Mr. Lavender's left eye; whereon he incontinently attacked them all,
whirling the ham-bone round his head like a shillelagh.  And had it not
been that Blink and the maid seized his coat-tails he would have done
them severe injury.  It was at this moment that Joe Petty, attracted by
the hullabaloo, arrived in the doorway, and running up to his master,
lifted him from behind and carried him from the room, still brandishing
the ham-bone and kicking out with his legs.  Dumping him into the car,
Joe mounted hastily and drove off.  Mr. Lavender sat for two or three
minutes coming to his senses before full realization of what he had done
dawned on him.  Then, flinging the ham-bone from him, he sank back among
the cushions, with his chin buried on his chest.  "What have I done?" he
thought over and over again.  "What have I done?  Taken up the bone for a
Conscientious Objector--defended a renegade against great odds! My God!
I am indeed less than a public man!"

And in this state of utter dejection, inanition, and collapse, with Blink
asleep on his feet, he was driven back to Hampstead.




X

DREAMS A DREAM AND SEES A VISION

Though habitually abstemious, Mr. Lavender was so very hungry that
evening when he sat down to supper that he was unable to leave the
lobster which Mrs. Petty had provided until it was reduced to mere
integument.  Since his principles prevented his lightening it with
anything but ginger-beer he went to bed in some discomfort, and, tired
out with the emotions of the day, soon fell into a heavy slumber, which
at dawn became troubled by a dream of an extremely vivid character.  He
fancied himself, indeed, dressed in khaki, with a breastplate composed of
newspapers containing reports of speeches which he had been charged to
deliver to soldiers at the front.  He was passing in a winged tank along
those scenes of desolation of which he had so often read in his daily
papers, and which his swollen fancy now coloured even more vividly than
had those striking phrases of the past, when presently the tank turned a
somersault, and shot him out into a morass lighted up by countless star-
shells whizzing round and above.  In this morass were hundreds and
thousands of figures sunk like himself up to the waist, and waving their
arms above their heads.  "These," thought Mr. Lavender, "must be the
soldiers I have come to speak to," and he tore a sheet off his
breastplate; but before he could speak from its columns it became thin
air in his hand; and he went on tearing off sheet after sheet, hoping to
find a speech which would stay solid long enough for him to deliver it.
At last a little corner stayed substantial in his hand, and he called out
in a loud voice: "Heroes!"

But at the word the figures vanished with a wail, sinking into the mud,
which was left covered with bubbles iridescent in the light of the star-
shells.  At this moment one of these, bursting over his head, turned into
a large bright moon; and Mr. Lavender saw to his amazement that the
bubbles were really butterflies, perched on the liquid moonlit mud,
fluttering their crimson wings, and peering up at him with tiny human
faces.  "Who are you?" he cried; "oh! who are you?"  The butterflies
closed their wings; and on each of their little faces came a look so sad
and questioning that Mr. Lavender's tears rolled down into his
breastplate of speeches.  A whisper rose from them.  "We are the dead."
And they flew up suddenly in swarms, and beat his face with their wings.

Mr. Lavender woke up sitting in the middle of the floor, with light
shining in on him through a hole in the curtain, and Blink licking off
the tears which were streaming down his face.

"Blink," he said, "I have had a horrible dream."  And still conscious of
that weight on his chest, as of many undelivered speeches, he was afraid
to go back to bed; so, putting on some clothes, he went carefully
downstairs and out of doors into the morning.  He walked with his dog
towards the risen sun, alone in the silvery light of Hampstead,
meditating deeply on his dream.  "I have evidently," he thought, "not yet
acquired that felicitous insensibility which is needful for successful
public speaking.  This is undoubtedly the secret of my dream.  For the
sub-conscious knowledge of my deficiency explains the weight on my chest
and the futile tearing of sheet after sheet, which vanished as I tore
them away.  I lack the self-complacency necessary to the orator in any
surroundings, and that golden certainty which has enchanted me in the
outpourings of great men, whether in ink or speech.  This is, however, a
matter which I can rectify with practice."  And coming to a little may-
tree in full blossom, he thus addressed it:

"Little tree, be my audience, for I see in you, tipped with the sunlight,
a vision of the tranquil and beautiful world, which, according to every
authority, will emerge out of this carnival of blood and iron."

And the little tree lifted up its voice and answered him with the song of
a blackbird.

Mr. Lavender's heart, deeply responsive to the voice of Nature, melted
within him.

"What are the realms of this earth, the dreams of statesmen, and all
plots and policies," he said, "compared with the beauty of this little
tree?  She--or is it a he?--breathes, in her wild and simple dress, just
to be lovely and loved.  He harbours the blackbird, and shakes fragrance
into the morning; and with her blossom catches the rain and the sun drops
of heaven.  I see in him the witchery of God; and of her prettiness would
I make a song of redemption."

So saying he knelt down before the little tree, while Blink on her
haunches, very quiet beside him, looked wiser than many dogs.

A familiar gurgling sound roused him from his devotions, and turning his
head he saw his young neighbour in the garb of a nurse, standing on the
path behind him.  "She has dropped from heaven," he thought for all
nurses are angels.

And, taking off his hat, he said:

"You surprised me at a moment of which I am not ashamed; I was communing
with Beauty.  And behold!  Aurora is with me."

"Say, rather, Borealis," said the young lady.  "I was so fed-up with
hospital that I had to have a scamper before turning in.  If you're going
home we might go together?"

"It would, indeed, be a joy," said Mr. Lavender.  "The garb of mercy
becomes you."

"Do you think so?" replied the young lady, in whose cheeks a lovely flush
had not deepened.  "I call it hideous.  Do you always come out and pray
to that tree?"

"I am ashamed to say," returned Mr. Lavender, "that I do not.  But I
intend to do so in future, since it has brought me such a vision."

And he looked with such deferential and shining eyes at his companion
that she placed the back of her hand before her mouth, and her breast
rose.

"I'm most fearfully sleepy," she said.  "Have you had any adventures
lately--you and Samjoe?

"Samjoe?" repeated Mr. Lavender.

"Your chauffeur--I call him that.  He's very like Sam Weller and Sancho
Panza, don't you think, Don Pickwixote?

"Ah!" said Mr. Lavender, bewildered; "Joe, you mean.  A good fellow.  He
has in him the sort of heroism which I admire more than any other."

"Which is that?" asked the young lady.

"That imperturbable humour in the face of adverse circumstances for which
our soldiers are renowned."

"You are a great believer in heroics, Don Pickwixote," said the young
lady.

"What would life be without them?" returned Mr. Lavender.  "The war could
not go on for a minute."

"You're right there," said the young lady bitterly.

"You surely," said Mr. Lavender, aghast, cannot wish it to stop until we
have destroyed our common enemies?"

"Well," said the young lady," I'm not a Pacifist; but when you see as
many people without arms and legs as I do, heroics get a bit off, don't
you know."  And she increased her pace until Mr. Lavender, who was not
within four inches of her stature, was almost compelled to trot.  "If I
were a Tommy," she added, "I should want to shoot every man who uttered a
phrase.  Really, at this time of day, they are the limit."

"Aurora," said Mr. Lavender, "if you will permit me, who am old enough--
alas!--to be your father, to call you that, you must surely be aware that
phrases are the very munitions of war, and certainly not less important
than mere material explosives.  Take the word 'Liberty,' for instance;
would you deprive us of it?"

The young lady fixed on him those large grey eyes which had in them the
roll of genius.  "Dear Don Pickwixote," she said, "I would merely take it
from the mouths of those who don't know what it means; and how much do
you think would be left?  Not enough to butter the parsnips of a Borough
Council, or fill one leader in a month of Sundays.  Have you not
discovered, Don Pickwixote, that Liberty means the special form of
tyranny which one happens to serve under; and that our form of tyranny is
GAS."

"High heaven!" cried Mr. Lavender, "that I should hear such words from so
red lips!"

"I've not been a Pacifist, so far," continued the young lady, stifling a
yawn, "because I hate cruelty, I hate it enough to want to be cruel to
it.  I want the Huns to lap their own sauce.  I don't want to be
revengeful, but I just can't help it."

"My dear young lady," said Mr. Lavender soothingly, "you are not--you
cannot be revengeful; for every great writer and speaker tells us that
revengefulness is an emotion alien to the Allies, who are merely just.

"Rats!"

At this familiar word, Blink who had been following their conversation
quietly, threw up her nose and licked the young lady's hand so
unexpectedly that she started and added:

"Darling!"

Mr. Lavender, who took the expression as meant for himself, coloured
furiously.

"Aurora," he said in a faint voice, "the rapture in my heart prevents my
taking advantage of your sweet words.  Forgive me, and let us go quietly
in, with the vision I have seen, for I know my place."

The young lady's composure seemed to tremble in the balance, and her lips
twitched; then holding out her hand she took Mr. Lavender's and gave it a
good squeeze.

"You really are a dear," she said.  "I think you ought to be in bed.  My
name's Isabel, you know."

"Not to me," said Mr. Lavender.  You are the Dawn; nothing shall persuade
me to the contrary.  And from henceforth I swear to rise with you every
morning."

"Oh, no!" cried the young lady please don't imagine that I sniff the
matutinal as a rule.  I just happened to be in a night shift."

"No matter," said Mr. Lavender; "I shall see you with the eye of faith,
in your night shifts, and draw from the vision strength to continue my
public work beckoned by the fingers of the roseate future."

"Well," murmured the young lady, "so long for now; and do go back to bed.
It's only about five."  And waving the tips of those fingers, she ran
lightly up the garden-path and disappeared into her house.

Mr. Lavender remained for a moment as if transfigured; then entering his
garden, he stood gazing up at her window, until the thought that she
might appear there was too much for him, and he went in.




XI

BREAKS UP A PEACE MEETING

While seated at breakfast on the morning after he had seen this vision,
Mr. Lavender, who read his papers as though they had been Holy Writ, came
on an announcement that a meeting would be held that evening at a chapel
in Holloway under the auspices of the "Free Speakers' League," an
association which his journals had often branded with a reputation, for
desiring Peace.  On reading the names of the speakers Mr. Lavender felt
at once that it would be his duty to attend.  "There will," he thought,
"very likely be no one there to register a protest.  For in this country
we have pushed the doctrine of free speech to a limit which threatens the
noble virtue of patriotism.  This is no doubt a recrudescence of that
terrible horse-sense in the British people which used to permit everybody
to have his say, no matter what he said.  Yet I would rather stay at
home," he mused "for they will do me violence, I expect; cowardice,
however, would not become me, and I must go."

He was in a state of flurry all day, thinking of his unpleasant duty
towards those violent persons, and garbishing up his memory by reading
such past leaders in his five journals as bore on the subject.  He spoke
no word of his intentions, convinced that he ran a considerable risk at
the hands of the Pacifists, but too sensible of his honour to assist
anyone to put that spoke in his wheel which he could not help longing
for.

At six o'clock he locked Blink into his study, and arming himself with
three leaders, set forth on his perilous adventure.  Seven o'clock saw
him hurrying along the dismal road to the chapel, at whose door he met
with an unexpected check.

"Where is your ticket?" said a large man.

"I have none," replied Mr. Lavender, disconcerted; "for this is a meeting
of the Free Speakers' League, and it is for that reason that I
have come."

The large man looked at him attentively.  "No admittance without ticket,"
he said.

"I protest," said Mr. Lavender.  "How can you call yourselves by that
name and not let me in?"

The large man smiled.

"Well, he said, you haven't the strength of--of a rabbit--in you go!"

Mr. Lavender found himself inside and some indignation.

The meeting had begun, and a tall man at the pulpit end, with the face of
a sorrowful bull, was addressing an audience composed almost entirely of
women and old men, while his confederates sat behind him trying to look
as if they were not present.  At the end of a row, about half-way up the
chapel, Mr. Lavender composed himself to listen, thinking, "However eager
I may be to fulfil my duty and break up this meeting, it behoves me as a
fair-minded man to ascertain first what manner of meeting it is that I am
breaking up."  But as the speaker progressed, in periods punctuated by
applause from what, by his experience at the door, Mr. Lavender knew to
be a packed audience, he grew more and more uneasy.  It cannot be said
that he took in what the speaker was saying, obsessed as he was by the
necessity of formulating a reply, and of revolving, to the exclusion of
all else, the flowers and phrases of the leaders which during the day he
had almost learned by heart.  But by nature polite he waited till the
orator was sitting down before he rose, and, with the three leaders
firmly grasped in his hand, walked deliberately up to the seated
speakers.  Turning his back on them, he said, in a voice to which
nervousness and emotion lent shrillness:

"Ladies and gentlemen, it is now your turn, in accordance with the
tradition of your society, to listen to me.  Let us not mince matters
with mealy mouths.  There are in our midst certain viperous persons, like
that notorious gentleman who had the sulphurous impudence to have a
French father--French! gentlemen; not German, ladies-mark the cunning and
audacity of the fellow; like that renegade Labour leader, who has never
led anything, yet, if he had his will, would lead us all into the pit of
destruction; like those other high-brow emasculates who mistake their
pettifogging pedantry for pearls of price, and plaster the plain issue
before us with perfidious and Pacifistic platitudes.  We say at once, and
let them note it, we will have none of them; we will have----"  Here his
words were drowned by an interruption greater even than that; which was
fast gathering among the row of speakers behind him, and the surprised
audience in front; and he could see the large man being forced from the
door and up the aisle by a posse of noisy youths, till he stood with arms
pinioned, struggling to turn round, just in front of Mr. Lavender.
Seeing his speech thus endangered, the latter cried out at the top of his
voice: "Free speech, gentlemen, free speech; I have come here expressly
to see that we have nothing of the sort."  At this the young men, who now
filled the aisle, raised a mighty booing.

"Gentlemen," shouted Mr. Lavender, waving his leaders, "gentlemen---" But
at this moment the large man was hurled into contact with what served Mr.
Lavender for stomach, and the two fell in confusion.  An uproar ensued of
which Mr. Lavender was more than vaguely conscious, for many feet went
over him.  He managed, however, to creep into a corner, and, getting up,
surveyed the scene.  The young men who had invaded the meeting, much
superior in numbers and strength to the speakers, to the large man, and
the three or four other able-bodied persons who had rallied to them from
among the audience, were taking every advantage of their superiority;
and it went to Mr. Lavender's heart to see how they thumped and
maltreated their opponents.  The sight of their brutality, indeed,
rendered him so furious that, forgetting all his principles and his
purpose in coming to the meeting, he climbed on to a form, and folding
his arms tightly on his breast, called out at the top of his voice:

"Cads!  Do not thus take advantage of your numbers.  Cads!"  Having thus
defended what in his calmer moments he would have known to be the wrong,
he awaited his own fate calmly.  But in the hubbub his words had passed
unnoticed.  "It is in moments like these," he thought, "that the great
speaker asserts his supremacy, quells the storm, and secures himself a
hearing."  And he began to rack his brains to remember how they did it.
"It must require the voice of an ox," he thought, "and the skin of an
alligator.  Alas!  How deficient I am in public qualities!"  But his
self-depreciation was here cut off with the electric light.  At this
sheer intervention of Providence Mr. Lavender, listening to the
disentangling sounds which rose in the black room, became aware that he
had a chance such as he had not yet had of being heard.

"Stay, my friends!" he said; "here in darkness we can see better the true
proportions of this great question of free speech.  There are some who
contend that in a democracy every opinion should be heard; that, just
because the good sense of the majority will ever lead the country into
the right paths, the minority should be accorded full and fair
expression, for they cannot deflect the country's course, and because
such expression acts as a healthful safety-valve.  Moreover, they say
there is no way of preventing the minority from speaking save that of
force, which is unworthy of a majority, and the negation of what we are
fighting for in this war.  But I say, following the great leader-writers,
that in a time of national danger nobody ought to say anything except
what is in accord with the opinions of the majority; for only in this way
can we present a front which will seem to be united to our common
enemies.  I say, and since I am the majority I must be in the right, that
no one who disagrees with me must say anything if we are to save the
cause of freedom and humanity.  I deprecate violence, but I am thoroughly
determined to stand no nonsense, and shall not hesitate to suppress by
every means in the power of the majority--including, if need be, Prussian
measures--any whisper from those misguided and unpatriotic persons whose
so-called principles induce them to assert their right to have opinions
of their own.  This has ever been a free country, and they shall not
imperil its freedom by their volubility and self-conceit."  Here Mr.
Lavender paused for breath, and in the darkness a faint noise, as of a
mouse scrattling at a wainscot, attracted his attention.  "Wonderful," he
thought, elated by the silence, "that I should so have succeeded in
riveting their attention as to be able to hear a mouse gnawing.  I must
have made a considerable impression." And, fearing to spoil it by further
speech, he set to work to grope his way round the chapel wall in the hope
of coming to the door.  He had gone but a little way when his
outstretched hand came into contact with something warm, which shrank
away with a squeal.

"Oh!" cried Mr. Lavender, while a shiver went down his spine, "what is
that?"

"Me," said a stifled voice.  "Who are you?"

"A public speaker, madam," answered Mr. Lavender, unutterably relieved.
Don't be alarmed.

"Ouch!" whispered the voice.  That madman!

"I assure you, madam," replied Mr. Lavender, striving to regain contact,
"I wouldn't harm you for the world.  Can you tell me in what portion of
the hall we are?" And crouching down he stretched out his arms and felt
about him.  No answer came; but he could tell that he was between two
rows of chairs, and, holding to the top of one, he began to sidle along,
crouching, so as not to lose touch with the chairs behind him.  He had
not proceeded the length of six chairs in the pitchy darkness when the
light was suddenly turned up, and he found himself glaring over the backs
of the chairs in front into the eyes of a young woman, who was crouching
and glaring back over the same chairs.

"Dear me," said Mr. Lavender, as with a certain dignity they both rose to
their full height, "I had no conception----"

Without a word, the young woman put her hand up to her back hair, sidled
swiftly down the row of chairs, ran down the aisle, and vanished.  There
was no one else in the chapel.  Mr. Lavender, after surveying the
considerable wreckage, made his way to the door and passed out into the
night.  "Like a dream," he thought; "but I have done my duty, for no
meeting was ever more completely broken up.  With a clear conscience and
a good appetite I can how go home."




XII

SPEEDS UP TRANSPORT, AND SEES A DOCTOR

Greatly cheered by his success at the Peace meeting, Mr. Lavender
searched his papers next morning to find a new field for his activities;
nor had he to read far before he came on this paragraph:

     "Everything is dependent on transport, and we cannot sufficiently
     urge that this should be speeded up by
     every means in our power."

"How true!" he thought.  And, finishing his breakfast hastily, he went
out with Blink to think over what he could do to help.  "I can exhort,"
he mused, "anyone engaged in transport who is not exerting himself to the
utmost.  It will not be pleasant to do so, for it will certainly provoke
much ill-feeling.  I must not, however, be deterred by that, for it is
the daily concomitant of public life, and hard words break no bones, as
they say, but rather serve to thicken the skins and sharpen the tongues
of us public men, so that, we are able to meet our opponents with their
own weapons.  I perceive before me, indeed, a liberal education in just
those public qualities wherein I am conscious of being as yet deficient.
"And his heart sank within him, thinking of the carts on the hills of
Hampstead and the boys who drove them.  "What is lacking to them," he
mused, "is the power of seeing this problem steadily and seeing it whole.
Let me endeavour to impart this habit to all who have any connection with
transport."

He had just completed this reflection when, turning a corner, he came on
a large van standing stockstill at the top of an incline.  The driver was
leaning idly against the hind wheel filling a pipe.  Mr. Lavender glanced
at the near horse, and seeing that he was not distressed, he thus
addressed the man:

"Do you not know, my friend, that every minute is of importance in this
national crisis?  If I could get you to see the question of transport
steadily, and to see it whole, I feel convinced that you would not be
standing there lighting your pipe when perhaps this half-hour's delay in
the delivery of your goods may mean the death of one of your comrades at
the front."

The man, who was wizened, weathered, and old, with but few teeth, looked
up at him from above the curved hands with which he was coaxing the flame
of a match into the bowl of his pipe.  His brow was wrinkled, and
moisture stood at the comers of his eyes.

"I assure you," went on Mr. Lavender, "that we have none of us the right
in these days to delay for a single minute the delivery of anything--not
even of speeches.  When I am tempted to do so, I think of our sons and
brothers in the trenches, and how every shell and every word saves their
lives, and I deliver----"

The old man, who had finished lighting his pipe, took a long pull at it,
and said hoarsely:

"Go on!"

"I will," said Mr. Lavender, "for I perceive that I can effect a
revolution in your outlook, so that instead of wasting the country's time
by leaning against that wheel you will drive on zealously and help to win
the war."

The old man looked at him, and one side of his face became drawn up in a
smile, which seemed to Mr. Lavender so horrible that he said: "Why do you
look at me like that?"

"Cawn't 'elp it," said the man.

"What makes you," continued Mr. Lavender, "pause here with your job half
finished?  It is not the hill which keeps you back, for you are at the
top, and your horses seem rested."

"Yes," said the old man, with another contortion of his face, "they're
rested--leastways, one of 'em."

"Then what delays you--if not that British sluggishness which we in
public life find such a terrible handicap to our efforts in conducting
the war?"

"Ah!" said the old man.  "But out of one you don't make two, guv'nor.
Git on the offside and you'll see it a bit steadier and a bit 'oler than
you 'ave 'itherto."

Struck by his words, which were accompanied by a painful puckering of the
checks, Mr. Lavender moved round the van looking for some defect in its
machinery, and suddenly became aware that the off horse was lying on the
ground, with the traces cut.  It lay on its side, and did not move.

"Oh!" cried Mr. Lavender; "oh!"  And going up to the horse's head he
knelt down.  The animal's eye was glazing.

"Oh!" he cried again, "poor horse!  Don't die!" And tears dropped out of
his eyes on to the horse's cheek.  The eye seemed to give him a look, and
became quite glazed.

"Dead!" said Mr Lavender in an awed whisper. "This is horrible!  What a
thin horse--nothing but bones!"  And his gaze haunted the ridge and
furrow of the horse's carcase, while the living horse looked round and
down at its dead fellow, from whose hollow face a ragged forelock drooped
in the dust.

"I must go and apologize to that old man," said Mr. Lavender aloud, "for
no doubt he is even more distressed than I am."

"Not 'e, guv'nor,"  said a voice, and looking beside him he saw the aged
driver standing beside him; "not 'e; for of all the crool jobs I ever
'ad--drivin' that 'orse these last three months 'as been the croolest.
There 'e lies and 'es aht of it; and that's where they'd all like to be.
Speed, done 'im in, savin' 'is country's 'time an' 'is country's oats;
that done 'im in.  A good old 'orse, a willin' old 'orse, 'as broke 'is
'eart tryin' to do 'is bit on 'alf rations.  There 'e lies; and I'm glad
'e does."  And with the back of his hand the old fellow removed some
brown moisture which was trembling on his jaw.  Mr. Lavender rose from
his knees.

"Dreadful!--monstrous!" he cried; "poor horse!  Who is responsible for
this?"

"Why," said the old driver, "the gents as sees it steady and sees it 'ole
from one side o' the van, same as you."

So smitten to the heart was Mr. Lavender by those words that he covered
his ears with his hands and almost ran from the scene, nor did he stop
till he had reached the shelter of his study, and was sitting in his arm-
chair with Blink upon his feet.  "I will buy a go-cart," he thought, "Blink
and I will pull our weight and save the poor horses.  We can at least
deliver our own milk and vegetables."

He had not been sitting there for half-an-hour revolving the painful
complexities of national life before the voice of Mrs. Petty recalled him
from that sad reverie.

"Dr. Gobang to see you, sir."

At sight of the doctor who had attended him for alcoholic poisoning Mr.
Lavender experienced one or those vaguely disagreeable sensations which
follow on half-realized insults.

"Good-morning, sir," said the doctor; thought I'd just look in and make
my mind easy about you.  That was a nasty attack.  Do you still feel your
back?"

"No," said Mr. Lavender rather coldly, while Blink growled.

"Nor your head ?"

"I have never felt my head," replied Mr. Lavender, still more coldly.

"I seem to remember----" began the doctor.

"Doctor," said Mr. Lavender with dignity, surely you know that public
men--do not feel--their heads--it would not do.  They sometimes suffer
from their throats, but otherwise they have perfect health, fortunately."

The doctor smiled.

"Well, what do you think of the war?" he asked chattily.

"Be quiet, Blink," said Mr. Lavender.  Then, in a far-away voice, he
added: "Whatever the clouds which have gathered above our heads for the
moment, and whatever the blows which Fate may have in store for us, we
shall not relax our efforts till we have attained our aims and hurled our
enemies back.  Nor shall we stop there," he went on, warming at his own
words.  "It is but a weak-kneed patriotism which would be content with
securing the objects for which we began to fight.  We shall not hesitate
to sacrifice the last of our men, the last of our money, in the sacred
task of achieving the complete ruin of the fiendish Power which has
brought this great calamity on the world.  Even if our enemies surrender
we will fight on till we have dictated terms on the doorsteps of
Potsdam."

The doctor, who, since Mr. Lavender began to speak, had been looking at
him with strange intensity, dropped his eyes.

"Quite so," he said heartily, "quite so.  Well, good-morning.  I only
just ran in!"  And leaving Mr. Lavender to the exultation he was
evidently feeling, this singular visitor went out and closed the door.
Outside the garden-gate he rejoined the nephew Sinkin.

"Well?" asked the latter.

"Sane as you or me," said the doctor.  "A little pedantic in his way of
expressing himself, but quite all there, really."

"Did his dog bite you?" muttered the nephew.  "No," said the doctor
absently.  "I wish to heaven everyone held his views.  So long.  I must
be getting on."  And they parted.

But Mr. Lavender, after pacing the room six times, had sat down again in
his chair, with a cold feeling in the pit of his stomach, such as other
men feel on mornings after a debauch.




XIII

ADDRESSES SOME SOLDIERS ON THEIR FUTURE

On pleasant afternoons Mr. Lavender would often take his seat on one of
the benches which adorned the Spaniard's Road to enjoy the beams of the
sun and the towers of the City confused in smoky distance.  And strolling
forth with Blink on the afternoon of the day on which the doctor had come
to see him he sat down to read a periodical, which enjoined on everyone
the necessity of taking the utmost interest in soldiers disabled by the
war.  "Yes," he thought, "it is indeed our duty to force them, no matter
what their disablements, to continue and surpass the heroism they
displayed out there, and become superior to what they once were."  And it
seemed to him a distinct dispensation of Providence when the rest of his
bench was suddenly occupied by three soldiers in the blue garments and
red ties of hospital life.  They had been sitting there for some minutes,
divided by the iron bars necessary to the morals of the neighbourhood,
while Mr. Lavender cudgelled his brains for an easy and natural method of
approach, before Blink supplied the necessary avenue by taking her stand
before a soldier and looking up into his eye.

"Lord!" said the one thus accosted, "what a fyce!  Look at her moustache!
Well, cocky, 'oo are you starin' at?"

"My dog," said Mr. Lavender, perceiving his chance, "has an eye for the
strange and beautiful.

"Wow said the soldier, whose face was bandaged, she'll get it 'ere, won't
she?"

Encouraged by the smiles of the soldier and his comrades, Mr. Lavender
went on in the most natural voice he could assume.

"I'm sure you appreciate, my friends, the enormous importance of your own
futures?"

The three soldiers, whose faces were all bandaged, looked as surprised as
they could between them, and did not answer.  Mr. Lavender went on,
dropping unconsciously into the diction of the article he had been
reading: "We are now at the turning-point of the ways, and not a moment
is to be lost in impressing on the disabled man the paramount necessity
of becoming again the captain of his soul.  He who was a hero in the
field must again lead us in those qualities of enterprise and endurance
which have made him the admiration of the world."

The three soldiers had turned what was visible of their faces towards Mr.
Lavender, and, seeing that he had riveted their attention, he proceeded:
"The apathy which hospital produces, together with the present scarcity
of labour, is largely responsible for the dangerous position in which the
disabled man now finds himself.  Only we who have not to face his future
can appreciate what that future is likely to be if he does not make the
most strenuous efforts to overcome it.  Boys," he added earnestly,
remembering suddenly that this was the word which those who had the
personal touch ever employed, "are you making those efforts?  Are you
equipping your minds?  Are you taking advantage of your enforced leisure
to place yourselves upon some path of life in which you can largely hold
your own against all comers?"

He paused for a reply.

The soldiers, silent for a moment, in what seemed to Mr. Lavender to be
sheer astonishment, began to fidget; then the one next him turned to his
neighbour, and said:

"Are we, Alf?  Are we doin' what the gentleman says?"

"I can answer that for you," returned Mr. Lavender brightly; "for I can
tell by your hospitalized faces that you are living in the present; a
habit which, according to our best writers, is peculiar to the British.
I assure you," he went on with a winning look, "there is no future in
that.  If you do not at once begin to carve fresh niches for yourselves
in the temple of industrialism you will be engulfed by the returning
flood, and left high and dry upon the beach of fortune."

During these last few words the half of an irritated look on the faces of
the soldiers changed to fragments of an indulgent and protective
expression.

"Right you are, guv'nor," said the one in the middle.  Don't you worry,
we'll see you home all right.

"It is you," said Mr. Lavender, "that I must see home.  For that is
largely the duty of us who have not had the great privilege of fighting
for our country."

These words, which completed the soldiers' conviction that Mr. Lavender
was not quite all there, caused them to rise.


"Come on, then," said one; we'll see each other home.  We've got to be in
by five.  You don't have a string to your dog, I see."

"Oh no!" said Mr. Lavender puzzled "I am not blind."

"Balmy," said the soldier soothingly.  "Come on, sir, an' we can talk
abaht it on the way."

Mr. Lavender, delighted at the impression he had made, rose and walked
beside them, taking insensibly the direction for home.

"What do you advise us to do, then, guv'nor?" said one of the soldiers.

"Throw away all thought of the present," returned Mr. Lavender, with
intense earnestness; "forget the past entirely, wrap yourselves wholly in
the future.  Do nothing which will give you immediate satisfaction.  Do
not consider your families, or any of those transient considerations such
as pleasure, your homes, your condition of health, or your economic
position; but place yourselves unreservedly in the hands of those who by
hard thinking on this subject are alone in the condition to appreciate
the individual circumstances of each of you.  For only by becoming a
flock of sheep can you be conducted into those new pastures where the
grass of your future will be sweet and plentiful.  Above all, continue to
be the heroes which you were under the spur of your country's call, for
you must remember that your country is still calling you."

"That's right," said the soldier on Mr. Lavender's left.  "Puss, puss!
Does your dog swot cats?"

At so irrelevant a remark Mr. Lavender looked suspiciously from left to
right, but what there was of the soldiers' faces told him nothing.

"Which is your hospital?" he asked.

"Down the 'ill, on the right," returned the soldier.  "Which is yours?"

"Alas! it is not in a hospital that I----"

"I know," said the soldier delicately, "don't give it a name; no need.
We're all friends 'ere.  Do you get out much?"

"I always take an afternoon stroll," said Mr. Lavender, "when my public
life permits.  If you think your comrades would like me to come and
lecture to them on their future I should be only too happy."

"D'you 'ear, Alf?" said the soldier.  "D'you think they would?"

The soldier, addressed put a finger to the sound side of his mouth and
uttered a catcall.

"I might effect a radical change in their views, continued Mr. Lavender,
a little puzzled.  "Let me leave you this periodical.  Read it, and you
will see how extremely vital all that I have been saying is.  And then,
perhaps, if you would send me a round robin, such as is usual in a
democratic country, I could pop over almost any day after five.  I
sometimes feel"--and here Mr. Lavender stopped in the middle of the road,
overcome by sudden emotion----" that I have really no right to be alive
when I see what you have suffered for me."

"That's all right, old bean,", said the soldier on his left; "you'd 'a
done the same for us but for your disabilities.  We don't grudge it
you'."

"Boys," said Mr. Lavender, "you are men.  I cannot tell you how much I
admire and love you."

"Well, give it a rest, then; t'ain't good for yer.  And, look 'ere!  Any
time they don't treat you fair in there, tip us the wink, and we'll come
over and do in your 'ousekeeper."

Mr. Lavender smiled.

"My poor housekeeper!" he said.  "I thank you all the same for your
charming goodwill.  This is where I live," he added, stopping at the gate
of the little house smothered in lilac and laburnum.  "Can I offer you
some tea?"

The three soldiers looked at each other, and Mr. Lavender, noticing their
surprise, attributed it to the word tea.

"I regret exceedingly that I am a total abstainer," he said.

The remark, completing the soldiers' judgment of his case, increased
their surprise at the nature of his residence; it remained unanswered,
save by a shuffling of the feet.

Mr. Lavender took off his hat.

"I consider it a great privilege," he said, "to have been allowed to
converse with you.  Goodbye, and God bless you!"

So saying, he opened the gate and entered his little garden carrying his
hat in his hand, and followed by Blink.

The soldiers watched him disappear within, then continued on their way
down the hill in silence.

"Blimy," said one suddenly, "some of these old civilians 'ave come it
balmy on the crumpet since the war began.  Give me the trenches!"




XIV

ENDEAVOURS TO INTERN A GERMAN

Aglow with satisfaction at what he had been able to do for the wounded
soldiers, Mr. Lavender sat down in his study to drink the tea which he
found there.  "There is nothing in life," he thought, "which gives one
such satisfaction as friendliness and being able to do something for
others.  Moon-cat!"

The moon-cat, who, since Mr. Lavender had given her milk, abode in his
castle, awaiting her confinement, purred loudly, regarding him with
burning eyes, as was her fashion when she wanted milk, Mr. Lavender put
down the saucer and continued his meditations.  "Everything is vain; the
world is full of ghosts and shadows; but in friendliness and the purring
of a little cat there is solidity."

"A lady has called, sir."

Looking up, Mr. Lavender became aware of Mrs. Petty.

"How very agreeable!

"I don't know, sir," returned his housekeeper in her decisive voice; "but
she wants to see you.  Name of Pullbody."

"Pullbody," repeated Mr. Lavender dreamily; "I don't seem----Ask her in,
Mrs. Petty, ask her in."

"It's on your head, sir," said Mrs. Petty, and went out.

Mr. Lavender was immediately conscious of a presence in dark green silk,
with a long upper lip, a loose lower lip, and a fixed and faintly raddled
air, moving stealthily towards him.

"Sit down, madam, I beg.  Will you have some tea?"

The lady sat down.  "Thank you, I have had tea.  It was on the
recommendation of your next-door neighbour, Miss Isabel Scarlet----"

"Indeed," replied Mr. Lavender, whose heart began to beat; "command me,
for I am entirely at her service."

"I have come to see you," began the lady with a peculiar sinuous smile,
"as a public man and a patriot."

Mr. Lavender bowed, and the lady went on: I am in very great trouble.
The fact is, my sister's husband's sister is married to a German."

"Is it possible, madam?" murmured Mr. Lavender, crossing his knees, and
joining the tips of his fingers.

"Yes," resumed the lady, "and what's more, he is still at large."

Mr. Lavender, into whose mind there had instantly rushed a flood of
public utterances, stood gazing at her haggard face in silent sympathy.

"You may imagine my distress, sir, and the condition of my conscience,"
pursued the lady, "when I tell you that my sister's husband's sister is a
very old friend of mine--and, indeed, so was this German.  The two are a
very attached young couple, and, being childless, are quite wrapped up in
each other.  I have come to you, feeling it my duty to secure his
internment."

Mr. Lavender, moved by the human element in her words, was about to say,
"But why, madam?" when the lady continued:

"I have not myself precisely heard him speak well of his country.  But
the sister of a friend of mine who was having tea in their house
distinctly heard him say that there were two sides to every question, and
that he could not believe all that was said in the English papers.

"Dear me!" said Mr. Lavender, troubled; "that is serious."

"Yes," went on the lady; "and on another occasion my sister's husband
himself heard him remark that a man could not help loving his country and
hoping that it would win."

"But that is natural," began Mr. Lavender.

"What!" said the lady, nearly rising, "when that country is Germany?"

The word revived Mr. Lavender's sense of proportion.

"True," he said, "true.  I was forgetting for the moment.  It is
extraordinary how irresponsible one's thoughts are sometimes.  Have you
reason to suppose that he is dangerous?"

"I should have thought that what I have said might have convinced you,"
replied the lady reproachfully; "but I don't wish you to act without
satisfying yourself.  It is not as if you knew him, of course.  I have
easily been able to get up an agitation among his friends, but I should
not expect an outsider--so I thought if I gave you his address you could
form your own opinion."

"Yes," murmured Mr. Lavender, "yes.  It is in the last degree undesirable
that any man of German origin should remain free to work possible harm to
our country.  There is no question in this of hatred or of mere rabid
patriotism," he went on, in a voice growing more and more far-away; it is
largely the A. B. C. of common prudence."

"I ought to say," interrupted his visitor, "that we all thought him, of
course, an honourable man until this war, or we should not have been his
friends.  He is a dentist," she added, "and, I suppose, may be said to be
doing useful work, which makes it difficult.  I suggest that you go to
him to have a tooth out."

Mr. Lavender quivered, and insensibly felt his teeth.

"Thank you," he said I will see if I can find one.  It is certainly a
matter which cannot be left to chance.  We public men, madam, often have
to do very hard and even inhumane things for no apparent reason.  Our
consciences alone support us.  An impression, I am told, sometimes gets
abroad that we yield to clamour.  Those alone who know us realize how
unfounded that aspersion is."

"This is his address," said the lady, rising, and handing him an
envelope.  "I shall not feel at rest until he is safely interned.  You
will not mention my name, of course.  It is tragic to be obliged to work
against one's friends in the dark.  Your young neighbour spoke in
enthusiastic terms of your zeal, and I am sure that in choosing you for
my public man she was not pulling--er--was not making a mistake."

Mr. Lavender bowed.

"I hope not, madam, he said humbly I try to do my duty."

The lady smiled her sinuous smile and moved towards the door, leaving on
the air a faint odour of vinegar and sandalwood.

When she was gone Mr. Lavender sat down on the edge of his chair before
the tea-tray and extracted his teeth while Blink, taking them for a bone,
gazed at them lustrously, and the moon-cat between his feet purred from
repletion.  "There is reason in all things," he thought, running his
finger over what was left in his mouth, "but not in patriotism, for that
would prevent us from consummating the destruction of our common enemies.
It behoves us public men ever to set an extreme example.  Which one can I
spare, I wonder?"  And he fixed upon a large rambling tooth on the left
wing of his lower jaw.  "It will hurt horribly, I'm afraid; and if I have
an anaesthetic there will be someone else present; and not improbably I
shall feel ill afterwards, and be unable to form a clear judgment.  I
must steel myself.  Blink!"

For Blink was making tremulous advances to the teeth.  "How pleasant to
be a dog!" thought Mr. Lavender, "and know nothing of Germans and teeth.
I shall be very unhappy till this is out; but Aurora recommended me, and
I must not complain, but rather consider myself the most fortunate of
public men."  And, ruffling his hair till it stood up all over his head,
while his loose eyebrow worked up and down, he gazed at the moon-cat.

"Moon-cat," he said suddenly, "we are but creatures of chance, unable to
tell from one day to another what Fate has in store for us.  My tooth is
beginning to ache already.  That is, perhaps, as it should be, for I
shall not forget which one it is.  "So musing he resumed his teeth; and,
going to his bookcase, sought fortitude and inspiration in the records of
a Parliamentary debate on enemy aliens.

It was not without considerable trepidation, however, on the following
afternoon that he made his way up Welkin Street, and rang at the number
on the envelope in his hand.

"Yes sir, doctor is at home," said the maid.

Mr. Lavender's heart was about to fail him when, conjuring up the vision
of Aurora, he said in a faint voice: "I wish to see him professionally."
And, while the maid departed up the stairs, he waited in the narrow hall,
alternately taking his hat off and putting it on again, so great was his
spiritual confusion.

"Doctor will see you at once, sir."

Putting his hat on hastily, Mr. Lavender followed her upstairs, feeling
at his tooth to make quite sure that he remembered which it was.  His
courage mounted as he came nearer to his fate, and he marched into the
room behind the maid holding his hat on firmly with one hand and his
tooth in firmly with the other.  There, beside a red velvet dentist's
chair, he saw a youngish man dressed in a white coat, with round eyes and
a domestic face, who said in good English:

"What can I do for you, my dear sir?  I fear you are in bain."

"In great pain," replied Mr. Lavender faintly, "in great pain."  And,
indeed, he was; for the nervous crisis from which he was suffering had
settled in the tooth, on which he still pressed a finger through his
cheek.

"Sit down, sir, sit down," said the young man, "and perhaps it would be
better if you should remove your hat.  We shall not hurd you--no, no, we
shall not hurd you."

At those words, which seemed to cast doubt on his courage, Mr. Lavender
recovered all his presence of mind.  He took off his hat, advanced
resolutely to the chair, sat down in it, and, looking up, said:

"Do to me what you will; I shall not flinch, nor depart in any way from
the behaviour of those whose duty it is to set an example to others."

So saying, he removed his teeth, and placing them in a bowl on the little
swinging table which he perceived on his left hand, he closed his eyes,
put his finger in his mouth, and articulated:

"'Ith one."

"Excuse me, sir," said the young German, "but do you wish a dooth oud?"

"'At ish my deshire," said Mr. Lavender, keeping his finger on his tooth,
and his eyes closed.  "'At one."

"I cannot give you gas without my anaesthedist."

"I dow," said Mr. Lavender; "be wick."

And, feeling the little cold spy-glass begin to touch his gums, he
clenched his hands and thought: "This is the moment to prove that I, too,
can die for a good cause.  If I am not man enough to bear for my country
so small a woe I can never again look Aurora in the face."

The voice of the young dentist dragged him rudely from the depth of his
resignation.

"Excuse me, but which dooth did you say?"

Mr. Lavender again inserted his finger, and opened his eyes.

The dentist shook his head.  "Imbossible," he said; "that dooth is
perfectly sound.  The other two are rotten.  But they do not ache?"

Mr. Lavender shook his head and repeated:

"At one."

"You are my first client this week, sir," said the young German calmly,
"but I cannot that dooth dake out."

At those words Mr. Lavender experienced a sensation as if his soul were
creeping back up his legs; he spoke as it reached his stomach.

"Noc?" he said.

"No," replied the young German.  It is nod the dooth which causes you the
bain.

Mr. Lavender, suddenly conscious that he had no pain, took his finger
out.

"Sir," he said, "I perceive that you are an honourable man.  There is
something sublime in your abnegation if, indeed, you have had no other
client this week.

"No fear," said the young German.  "Haf I, Cicely?"

Mr. Lavender became conscious for the first time of a young woman leaning
up against the wall, with a pair of tweezers in her hand.

"Take it out, Otto," she said in a low voice, "if he wants it."

"No no," said Mr. Lavender sharply, resuming his teeth; "I would not for
the world burden your conscience."

"My clients are all batriots," said the young dentist, "and my bractice
is Kaput.  We are in a bad way, sir," he added, with a smile, "but we try
to do the correct ting."

Mr. Lavender saw the young woman move the tweezers in a manner which
caused his blood to run a little cold.

"We must live," he heard her say.

"Young madam," he said, "I honour the impulse which makes you desire to
extend your husband's practice.  Indeed, I perceive you both to be so
honourable that I cannot but make you a confession.  My tooth is indeed
sound, though, since I have been pretending that it isn't, it has caused
me much discomfort.  I came here largely to form an opinion of your
husband's character, with a view to securing his internment."

At that word the two young people shrank together till they were standing
side by side, staring at Mr Lavender with eyes full of anxiety and
wonder.  Their hands, which still held the implements of dentistry,
insensibly sought each other.

Be under no apprehension," cried Mr. Lavender, much moved; "I can see
that you are greatly attached, and even though your husband is a German,
he is still a man, and I could never bring myself to separate him from
you."

"Who are you?" said the young woman in a frightened voice, putting her
arm round her husband's waist.

"Just a public man," answered Mr. Lavender.

"I came here from a sense of duty; nothing more, assure you."

"Who put you up to it?

"That," said Mr. Lavender, bowing as best he could from the angle he was
in, "I am not at liberty to disclose.  But, believe me, you have nothing
to fear from this visit; I shall never do anything to distress a woman.
And please charge me as if the tooth had been extracted."

The young German smiled, and shook his head.

"Sir," he said, "I am grateful to you for coming, for it shows us what
danger we are in.  The hardest ting to bear has been the uncertainty of
our bosition, and the feeling that our friends were working behind our
backs.  Now we know that this is so we shall vordify our souls to bear
the worst.  But, tell me," he went on, "when you came here, surely you
must have subbosed that to tear me away from my wife would be very
bainful to her and to myself.  You say now you never could do that, how
was it, then, you came?"

"Ah, sir!" cried Mr. Lavender, running his hands through his hair and
staring at the ceiling, "I feared this might seem inconsistent to your
logical German mind.  But there are many things we public men would never
do if we could see them being done.  Fortunately, as a rule we cannot.
Believe me, when I leave you I shall do my best to save you from a fate
which I perceive to be unnecessary."

So saying, he rose from the chair, and, picking up his hat, backed
towards the door.

"I will not offer you my hand," he said, "for I am acutely conscious that
my position is neither dignified nor decent.  I owe you a tooth that I
shall not readily forget.  Good-bye!"

And backing through the doorway he made his way down the stairs and out
into the street, still emotionalized by the picture of the two young
people holding each other by the waist.  He had not, however, gone far
before reason resumed its sway, and he began to see that the red velvet
chair in which he had been sitting was in reality a wireless apparatus
reaching to Berlin, or at least concealed a charge of dynamite to blow up
some King or Prime Minister; and that the looking-glasses, of which he
had noticed two at least, were surely used for signalling to Gothas or
Zeppelins.  This plunged him into a confusion so poignant that, rather by
accident than design, he found himself again at Hampstead instead of at
Scotland Yard.  "In the society of Aurora alone," he thought, "can I free
myself from the goadings of conscience, for it was she who sent me on
that errand."  And, instead of going in, he took up a position on his
lawn whence he could attract her attention by waving his arms.  He had
been doing this for some time, to the delight of Blink, who thought it a
new game, before he saw her in her nurse's dress coming out of a French-
window with her yellow book in her hand.  Redoubling his efforts till he
had arrested her attention, he went up to the privet hedge, and said, in
a deep and melancholy voice:

"Aurora, I have failed in my duty, and the errand on which you sent me is
unfulfilled.  Mrs. Pullbody's sister's husband's sister's husband is
still, largely speaking, at large."

"I knew he would be," replied the young lady, with her joyous smile,
"that's why I put her on to you--the cat!"

At a loss to understand her meaning, Mr. Lavender, who had bent forward
above the hedge in his eagerness to explain, lost his balance, and,
endeavouring to save the hedge, fell over into some geranium pots.

"Dear Don Pickwixote," cried the young lady, assisting him to rise, "have
you hurt your nose?"

"It is not that," said Mr. Lavender, removing some mould from his hair,
and stifling the attentions of Blink; "but rather my honour, for I have
allowed my duty to my country to be overridden by the common emotion of
pity."

"Hurrah!" cried the young lady.  "It'll do you ever so much good."

"Aurora!" cried Mr. Lavender aghast, walking at her side.  But the young
lady only uttered her enchanting laugh.

"Come and lie down in the hammock!" she said you're looking like a ghost.
I'll cover you up with a rug, and smoke a cigarette to keep the midges
off you. Tuck up your legs; that's right!"

"No!" said Mr. Lavender from the recesses of the hammock, feeling his
nose, "let the bidges bide me.  I deserve they should devour me alive.

"All right," said the young lady.  "But have a nap, anyway!  "And sitting
down in a low chair, she opened her book and lit a cigarette.

Mr. Lavender remained silent, watching her with the eyes of an acolyte,
and wondering whether he was in his senses to have alighted on so rare a
fortune.  Nor was it long before he fell into a hypnotic doze.

How long Mr. Lavender had been asleep he could not of course tell before
he dreamed that he was caught in a net, the meshes of which were formed
of the cries of newspaper boys announcing atrocities by land and sea.  He
awoke looking into the eyes of Aurora, who, to still his struggles, had
taken hold of his ankles.

"My goodness!  You are thin!" were the first words he heard.  "No wonder
you're lightheaded."

Mr. Lavender, whose returning chivalry struggled with unconscious
delight, murmured with difficulty:

"Let me go, let me go; it is too heavenly!

"Well, have you finished kicking?" asked the young lady.

"Yes," returned Mr. Lavender in a fainting voice----" alas!"

The young lady let go of his ankles, and, aiding him to rise from the
hammock, said: "I know what's the matter with you now--you're starving
yourself.  You ought to be kept on your back for three months at least,
and fed on butter."

Mr. Lavender, soothing the feelings of Blink, who, at his struggles, had
begun to pant deeply, answered with watering lips:

"Everyone in these days must do twice as much as he ought, and I eat
half, for only in this way can we compass the defeat of our common
enemies."  The young lady's answer, which sounded like "Bosh!" was lost
in Mr. Lavender's admiration of her magnificent proportions as she bent
to pick up her yellow book.

"Aurora," he said, "I know not what secret you share with the goddesses;
suffer me to go in and give thanks for this hour spent in your company."

And he was about to recross the privet hedge when she caught him by the
coat-tag, saying:

"No, Don Pickwixote, you must dine with us.  I want you to meet my
father.  Come along!"  And, linking her arm in his, she led him towards
her castle.  Mr. Lavender, who had indeed no, option but to obey, such
was the vigour of her arm, went with a sense of joy not unmingled with
consternation lest the personage she spoke of should have viewed him in
the recent extravagance of his dreaming moments.

"I don't believe," said the young lady, gazing down at him, "that you
weigh an ounce more than seven stone.  It's appalling!

"Not," returned Mr. Lavender, "by physical weight and force shall we win
this war, for it is at bottom a question of morale.  Right is, ever
victorious in the end, and though we have infinitely greater material
resources than our foes, we should still triumph were we reduced to the
last ounce, because of the inherent nobility of our cause."

"You'll be reduced to the last ounce if we don't feed, you up somehow,"
said the young lady.

"Would you like to wash your hands?"

Mr. Lavender having signified his assent, she left him alone in a place
covered with linoleum.  When, at length, followed by Blink, he emerged
from dreamy ablutions, Mr. Lavender, saw that she had changed her dress
to a flowing blue garment of diaphanous character, which made her appear,
like an emanation of the sky.  He was about to say so when he noticed a
gentleman in khaki scrutinizing him with lively eyes slightly injected
with blood.

"Don Pickwixote," said the young lady; "my father, Major Scarlet."

Mr. Lavender's hand was grasped by one which seemed to him made of iron.

"I am honoured, sir," he said painfully, "to meet the father of my
charming young neighbour."

The Major answered in a voice as clipped as his grey bottle-brush
moustache, "Delighted!  Dinner's ready.  Come along!"

Mr. Lavender saw that he had a mouth which seemed to have a bitt in it;
several hairs on a finely rounded head; and an air of efficient and
truculent bonhomie tanned and wrinkled by the weather.

The table at which they became seated seemed to one accustomed to
frugality to groan with flowers and china and glass; and Mr. Lavender had
hardly supped his rich and steaming soup before his fancy took fire; nor
did he notice that he was drinking from a green glass in which was a
yellow fluid.

"I get Army rations," said the Major, holding a morsel of fillet of beef
towards Blink.  "Nice dog, Mr. Lavender."

"Yes," replied Mr. Lavender, ever delighted that his favourite should
receive attention, "she is an angel."

"Too light," said the Major, "and a bit too narrow in front; but a nice
dog.  What's your view of the war?"

Before Mr. Lavender could reply he felt Aurora's foot pressing his, and
heard her say:

"Don Pickwixote's views are after your own heart, Dad; he's for the
complete destruction of the Hun."

"Indeed, yes," cried Mr. Lavender with shining eyes.  "Right and justice
demand it.  We seek to gain nothing!"

"But we'll take all we can get," said the Major.

"They'll never get their Colonies back.  We'll stick to them fast enough."

Mr. Lavender stared at him for a moment, then, remembering what he had so
often read, he murmured:

"Aggrandizement is not our object; but we can never forget that so long
as any territory remains in the hands of our treacherous foe the arteries
of our far-flung Empire are menaced at the roots."

"Right-o," said the Major, "we've got the chance of our lives, and we're
going to take it."

Mr. Lavender sat forward a little on his chair.  "I shall never admit,"
he said, "that we are going to take anything, for that would be contrary
to the principles which we are pledged to support, and to our avowed
intention of seeking only the benefit of the human race; but our inhuman
foes have compelled us to deprive them of the power to injure others."

"Yes," said the Major, "we must just go on killing Germans and collaring
every bit of their property we can."

Mr. Lavender sat a little further forward on his chair, and the trouble
in his eyes grew.

"After all's said and done," continued the Major; "it's a simple war--us
or them!  And in the long run it's bound to be us.  We've got the cards."
Mr. Lavender started, and said in a weak and wavering voice:

"We shall never sheathe the sword until----"

"The whole bag of tricks is in our hands.  Might isn't Right, but Right's
Might, Mr. Lavender; ha, ha!"

Mr. Lavender's eyes lighted on his glass, and he emptied it in his
confusion.  When he looked up again he could not see the Major very well,
but could distinctly hear the truculent bonhomie of his voice.

"Every German ought to be interned; all their property ought to be
confiscated; all their submarines' and Zeppelins' crews ought to be hung;
all German prisoners ought to be treated as they treat our men.  We ought
to give 'em no quarter.  We ought to bomb their towns out of existence.
I draw the line at their women.  Short of that there's nothing too bad
for them.  I'd treat 'em like rabbits.  Vermin they were, and vermin they
remain."

During this speech the most astounding experience befell Mr. Lavender, so
that his eyes nearly started from his head.  It seemed to him, indeed,
that he was seated at dinner with a Prussian, and the Major's voice had
no sooner ceased its genial rasping than with a bound forward on his
chair, he ejaculated:

"Behold the man--the Prussian in his jack-boot!"  And, utterly oblivious
of the fact that he was addressing Aurora's father, he went on with
almost terrible incoherence: "Although you have conquered this country,
sir, never shall you subdue in my breast the sentiments of liberty and
generosity which make me an Englishman.  I abhor you--invader of the
world--trampler underfoot of the humanities--enemy of mankind--apostle of
force!  You have blown out the sparks of love and kindliness, and have
for ever robbed the Universe.  Prussian!"

The emphasis with which he spoke that word caused his chair, on the edge
of which he was sitting, to tilt up under him so that he slid under the
table, losing the vision of that figure in helmet and field-grey which he
had been apostrophizing.

"Hold up!" said a voice, while Blink joined him nervously beneath the
board.

"Never!" cried Mr. Lavender.  "Imprison, maltreat me do what you will.
You have subdued her body, but never will I admit that you have conquered
the honour of Britain and trodden her gentle culture into the mud."

And, convinced that he would now be dragged away to be confined in some
dungeon on bread and water, he clasped the leg of the dining-table with
all his might, while Blink, sagaciously aware that something peculiar was
occurring to her master, licked the back of his neck.  He had been
sitting there perhaps half a minute, with his ears stretched to catch the
half-whispered sounds above, when he saw a shining object appear under
the table, the head, indeed, of the Prussian squatting there to look at
him.

"Go up, thou bald-head," he called out at once; "I will make no terms
with the destroyer of justice and humanity."

"All right, my dear sir," replied the head.

"Will you let my daughter speak to you?"

"Prussian blasphemer," responded Mr. Lavender, shifting his position so
as to be further away, and clasping instead of the table leg some soft
silken objects, which he was too excited to associate with Aurora, "you
have no daughter, for no woman would own one whose hated presence poisons
this country."

"Well, well," said the Major.  "How shall we get him out?"

Hearing these words, and believing them addressed to a Prussian guard,
Mr. Lavender clung closer to the objects, but finding them wriggle in his
clasp let go, and, bolting forward like a rabbit on his hands and knees,
came into contact with the Major's head.  The sound of the concussion,
the Major's oaths, Mr. Lavender's moans, Blink's barking, and the peals
of laughter from Aurora made up a noise which might have been heard in
Portugal.  The situation was not eased until Mr. Lavender crawled out,
and taking up a dinner-knife, rolled his napkin round his arm, and
prepared to defend himself against the German Army.

"Well, I'm damned," said the Major when he saw these preparations;
"I am damned."

Aurora, who had been leaning against the wall from laughter, here came
forward, gasping:

"Go away, Dad, and leave him to me."

"To you!"  cried the Major.  "He's not safe!"

"Oh yes, he is; it's only you that are exciting him.  Come along!"

And taking her father by the arm she conducted him from the room.
Closing the door behind him, and putting her back against it, she said,
gently:

"Dear Don Pickwixote, all danger is past.  The enemy has been repulsed,
and we are alone in safety.  Ha, ha, ha!"

Her voice recalled.  Mr. Lavender from his strange hallucination.
"What?" he said weakly.

"Why?  Who?  Where?  When?"

"You have been dreaming again.  Let me take you home, and tuck you into
bed."  And taking from him the knife and napkin, she opened the French-
window, and passed out on to the lawn.

Lavender, who now that his reason had come back, would have followed her
to the death, passed out also, accompanied by Blink, and watched by the
Major, who had put his head in again at the door.  Unfortunately, the
spirit moved Mr. Lavender to turn round at this moment, and seeing the
head he cried out in a loud voice:

"He is there!  He is there!  Arch enemy of mankind!  Let me go and die
under his jackboot, for never over my living body shall he rule this
land."  And the infatuated gentleman would certainly have rushed at his
host had not Aurora stayed him by the slack of his nether garments.  The
Major withdrawing his head, Mr. Lavender's excitement again passed from
him, and he suffered himself to be led dazedly away and committed to the
charge of Mrs. Petty and Joe, who did not leave him till he was in bed
with a strong bromide to keep him company.




XVI

FIGHTS THE FIGHT OF FAITH

The strenuous experiences through which Mr. Lavender had passed resulted
in what Joe Petty called "a fair knock-out," and he was forced to spend
three days in the seclusion of his bed, deprived of his newspapers.  He
instructed Mrs. Petty, however, on no account to destroy or mislay any
journal, but to keep them in a pile in his study.  This she did, for
though her first impulse was to light the kitchen fire with the five of
them every morning, deliberate reflection convinced her that twenty
journals read at one sitting would produce on him a more soporific effect
than if he came down to a mere five.

Mr. Lavender passed his three days, therefore, in perfect repose, feeding
Blink, staring at the ceiling, and conversing with Joe.  An uneasy sense
that he had been lacking in restraint caused his mind to dwell on life as
seen by the monthly rather than the daily papers, and to hold with his
chauffeur discussions of a somewhat philosophical character.

"As regards the government of this country, Joe," he said, on the last
evening of his retirement, "who do you consider really rules?  For it is
largely on this that our future must depend."

"Can't say, sir," answered Joe, "unless it's Botty."

"I do not know whom or what you signify by that word," replied Mr.
Lavender; "I am wondering if it is the People who rule."

"The People!" replied Joe;" the People's like a gent in a lunatic asylum,
allowed to 'ave instinks but not to express 'em.  One day it'll get aht,
and we shall all step lively."

"It is, perhaps, Public Opinion," continued Mr. Lavender to himself, "as
expressed in the Press."

"Not it," said Joe the nearest opinion the Press gets to expressin' is
that of Mayors.  'Ave you never noticed, sir, that when the Press is 'ard
up for support of an opinion that the public don't 'old, they go to the
Mayors, and get 'em in two columns?"

"Mayors are most valuable public men," said Mr. Lavender.

"I've nothin' against 'em," replied Joe; "very average lot in their walk
of life; but they ain't the People."

Mr. Lavender sighed.  "What, then, is the People, Joe?"

"I am," replied Joe; "I've got no opinions on anything except that I want
to live a quiet life--just enough beer and 'baccy, short hours, and no
worry."

"'If you compare that with the aspirations of Mayors you will see how
sordid such a standard is," said Mr. Lavender, gravely.

"Sordid it may be, sir," replied Joe; "but there's, a thing abaht it you
'aven't noticed.  I don't want to sacrifice nobody to satisfy my
aspirations.  Why?  Because I've got none.  That's priceless.  Take the
Press, take Parlyment, take Mayors--all mad on aspirations.  Now it's
Free Trade, now it's Imperialism; now it's Liberty in Europe; now it's
Slavery in Ireland; now it's sacrifice of the last man an' the last
dollar.  You never can tell what aspiration'll get 'em next.  And the
'ole point of an aspiration is the sacrifice of someone else.  Don't you
make a mistake, sir.  I defy you to make a public speech which 'asn't got
that at the bottom of it."

"We are wandering from the point, Joe," returned Mr. Lavender.  "Who is
it that governs, the country?"

"A Unseen Power," replied Joe promptly.

"How?"

"Well, sir, we're a democratic country, ain't we?  Parlyment's elected by
the People, and Gover'ment's elected by Parlyment.  All right so far; but
what 'appens?  Gover'ment says 'I'm going to do this.'  So long as it
meets with the approval of the Unseen Power, well an' good.  But what if
it don't?  The U.P.  gets busy; in an 'undred papers there begins to
appear what the U.P.  calls Public Opinion, that's to say the opinion of
the people that agree with the U.P.  There you 'ave it, sir, only them--
and it appears strong.  Attacks on the Gover'ment policy, nasty things
said abaht members of it that's indiscreet enough to speak aht what, they
think--German fathers, and other secret vices; an' what's more than all,
not a peep at any opinion that supports the Gover'ment.  Well, that goes
on day after day, playin' on the mind of Parlyment, if they've got any,
and gittin' on the Gover'ment's nerves, which they've got weak, till they
says: 'Look 'ere, it's no go; Public Opinion won't stand it.  We shall be
outed; and that'll never do, because there's no other set of fellows that
can save this country.'  Then they 'ave a meetin' and change their
policy.  And what they've never seen is that they've never seen Public
Opinion at all.  All they've seen is what the U.P.  let 'em.  Now if I
was the Gover'ment, I'd 'ave it out once for all with the U. P."

"Ah!" cried Mr. Lavender, whose eyes were starting from his, head, so
profoundly was he agitated by what was to him a new thought.

"Yes," continued Joe, "if I was the Gover'ment, next time it 'appened,
I'd say: 'All right, old cock, do your damnedest.  I ain't responsible to
you.  Attack, suppress, and all the rest of it.  We're goin' to do what
we say, all the same!'  And then I'd do it.  And what'd come of it?
Either the U.P. would go beyond the limits of the Law--and then I'd jump
on it, suppress its papers, and clap it into quod--or it'd take it lyin'
down.  Whichever 'appened it'd be all up with the U. P.  I'd a broke its
chain off my neck for good.  But I ain't the Gover'ment, an Gover'ment's
got tender feet.  I ask you, sir, wot's the good of havin' a
Constitooshion, and a the bother of electing these fellows, if they can't
act according to their judgment for the short term of their natural
lives?  The U.P.  may be patriotic and estimable, and 'ave the best
intentions and all that, but its outside the Constitooshion; and what's
more, I'm not goin' to spend my last blood an' my last money in a
democratic country to suit the tastes of any single man, or triumpherate,
or wotever it may be made of.  If the Government's uncertain wot the
country wants they can always ask it in the proper way, but they never
ought to take it on 'earsay from the papers.  That's wot I think."

While he was speaking Mr. Lavender had become excited to the point of
fever, for, without intending it, Joe had laid bare to him a yawning
chasm between his worship of public men and his devotion to the Press.
And no sooner had his chauffeur finished than he cried: "Leave me, Joe,
for I must think this out."

"Right, sir," answered Joe with his smile, and taking the tea-tray from
off his master, he set it where it must infallibly be knocked over, and
went out.

"Can it be possible," thought Mr. Lavender, when he was alone, "that I am
serving God and Mammon?  And which is God and which is Mammon?" he added,
letting his thoughts play over the countless speeches and leading
articles which had formed his spiritual diet since the war began.  "Or,
indeed, are they not both God or both Mammon?  If what Joe says is true,
and nothing is recorded save what seems good to this Unseen Power, have I
not been listening to ghosts and shadows; and am I, indeed, myself
anything but the unsubstantial image of a public man?  For it is true
that I have no knowledge of anything save what is recorded in the
papers."  And perceiving that the very basis of his faith was endangered,
he threw off the bedclothes, and began to pace the room.  "Are we, then,
all," he thought, "being bounded like india-rubber balls by an unseen
hand; and is there no one of us strong enough to bounce into the eye of
our bounder and overthrow him?  My God, I am unhappy; for it is a
terrible thing not to know which my God is, and whether I am a public man
or an india-rubber ball.  "And the more he thought the more dreadful it
seemed to him, now that he perceived that all those journals, pamphlets,
and reports with which his study walls were lined might not be the truth,
but merely authorized versions of it.

"This," he said aloud, "is a nightmare from which I must awaken or lose
all my power of action and my ability to help my country in its peril."

And sudden sweat broke out on his brow, for he perceived that he had now
no means of telling even whether there was a peril, so strangely had
Joe's words affected his powers of credulity.

"But surely," he thought, steadying himself by gripping his washstand,
"there was, at least, a peril once.  And yet, how do I know even that,
for I have only been told so; and the tellers themselves were only told
so by this Unseen Power; and suppose it has made a mistake or has some
private ends to serve!  Oh! it is terrible, and there is no end to it.
"And he shook the crockery in the spasms which followed the first
awakenings of these religious doubts.  "Where, then, am I to go," he
cried, "for knowledge of the truth?  For even books would seem dependent
on the good opinion of this Unseen Power, and would not reach my eyes
unless they were well spoken of by it."

And the more he thought the more it seemed to him that nothing could help
him but to look into the eyes of this Unseen Power, so that he might see
for himself whether it was the Angel of Truth or some Demon jumping on
the earth.  No sooner had this conviction entered his brain than he
perceived how in carrying out such an enterprise he would not only be
setting his own mind at rest, and re-establishing or abolishing his
faith, but would be doing the greatest service which he could render to
his country and to all public men.  "Thus," he thought, "shall I
cannonize my tourney, and serve Aurora, who is the dawn of truth and
beauty in the world.  I am not yet worthy, however, of this adventure,
which will, indeed, be far more arduous and distressing to accomplish
than any which I have yet undertaken.  What can I do to brighten and
equip my mind and divest it of all those prejudices in which it may
unconsciously have become steeped?  If I could 1eave the earth a short
space and commune with the clouds it might be best.  I will go to Hendon
and see if someone will take me up for a consideration; for on earth I
can no longer be sure of anything."

And having rounded off his purpose with this lofty design, he went back
to bed with his head lighter than a puff-ball.




XVII

ADDRESSES THE CLOUDS

On the morning following his resurrection Mr. Lavender set out very early
for the celebrated flying ground without speaking of his intention to
anyone.  At the bottom of the hill he found to his annoyance that Blink
had divined his purpose and was following.  This, which compelled him to
walk, greatly delayed his arrival.  But chance now favoured him, for he
found he was expected, and at once conducted to a machine which was about
to rise.  A taciturn young man, with a long jaw, and wings on his breast,
was standing there gazing at it with an introspective eye.

"Ready, sir?" he said.

"Yes," replied Mr. Lavender, enveloped to the eyes in a garment of fur
and leather.  "Will you kindly hold my dog?" he added, stroking Blink
with the feeling that he was parting for ever with all that was most dear
to him.

An attendant having taken hold of her by the collar, Mr. Lavender was
heaved into the machine, where the young airman was already seated in
front of him.

"Shall I feel sick?" asked Mr. Lavender.

"Probably," said the young airman.

"That will not deter me, for the less material I become the better it
will be."

The young airman turned his head, and Mr. Lavender caught the surprised
yellow of his eye.

"Hold on," said the airman, "I'm going to touch her off."

Mr. Lavender held on, and the machine moved but at this moment Blink,
uttering a dismal howl, leapt forward, and, breaking from the attendant's
grasp, landed in the machine against Mr. Lavender's chest.

"Stop! stop he cried!" my dog.

"Stuff her down," said the unmoved airman, "between your legs.  She's not
the first to go up and won't be the last to come down."

Mr. Lavender stuffed her down as best he could.  "If we are to be
killed," he thought, "it will be together.  Blink!"  The faithful
creature, who bitterly regretted her position now that the motion had
begun, looked up with a darkened eye at Mr. Lavender, who was stopping
his ears against the horrible noises which had now begun.  He too, had
become aware of the pit of his stomach; but this sensation soon passed
away in the excitement he felt at getting away from the earth, for they
were already at the height of a house, and rising rapidly.

"It is not at all like a little bird," he thought, but rather resembles a
slow train on the surface of the sea, or a horse on a switchback merry-
go-round.  I feel, however, that my spirit will soon be free, for the
earth is becoming like a board whereon a game is played by an unseen
hand, and I am leaving it."  And craning his head out a little too far he
felt his chin knock against his spine.  Drawing it in with difficulty he
concentrated his attention upon that purification of his spirit which was
the object of his journey.

"I am now," he thought, "in the transcendent ether.  It should give me an
amazing power of expression such as only the greatest writers and orators
attain; and, divorced as I am rapidly becoming from all sordid reality,
truth will appear to me like one of those stars towards which I am
undoubtedly flying though I cannot as yet see it."

Blink, who between his legs had hitherto been unconscious of their
departure from the earth, now squirmed irresistibly up till her forepaws
were on her master's chest, and gazed lugubriously at the fearful
prospect.  Mr. Lavender clasped her convulsively.  They were by now
rapidly nearing a flock of heavenly sheep, which as they approached
became ever more gigantic till they were transformed into monstrous snow-
fleeces intersected by wide drifts of blue.

"Can it be that we are to adventure above them?" thought Mr. Lavender.
"I hope not, for they seem to me fearful."  His alarm was soon appeased,
for the machine began to take a level course a thousand feet, perhaps,
below the clouds, whence little wraiths wandering out now and again
dimmed Mr. Lavender's vision and moistened his brow.

Blink having retired again between her master's legs, a sense of security
and exaltation was succeeding to the natural trepidation of Mr.
Lavender's mood.  "I am now," he thought, "lifted above all petty plots
and passions on the wings of the morning.  Soon will great thoughts begin
to jostle in my head, and I shall see the truth of all things made clear
at last."

But the thoughts did not jostle, a curious lethargy began stealing over
him instead, so that his head fell back, and his mouth fell open.  This
might have endured until he returned to earth had not the airman stopped
the engines so that they drifted ruminantly in space below the clouds.
With the cessation of the noise Mr. Lavender's brain regained its
activity, and he was enchanted to hear the voice of his pilot saying:

"How are you getting on, sir?"

"As regards the sensation," Mr. Lavender replied, "it is marvellous, for
after the first minute or two, during which the unwonted motion causes a
certain inconvenience, one grasps at once the exhilaration and joy of
this great adventure.  To be in motion towards the spheres, and see the
earth laid out like a chess-board below you; to feel the lithe creature
beneath your body responding so freely to every call of its gallant young
pilot; to be filled with the scream of the engines, as of an eagle at
sport; to know that at the least aberration of the intrepid airman we
should be dashed into a million pieces; all this is largely to experience
an experience so unforgettable that one will never--er--er--forget it."

"Gosh!" said the young airman.

"Yes," pursued Mr. Lavender, who was now unconsciously reading himself in
his morning's paper, "one can only compare the emotion to that which the
disembodied spirit might feel passing straight from earth to heaven.  We
saw at a great depth below us on a narrow white riband of road two
crawling black specks, and knew that they were human beings, the same and
no more than we had been before we left that great common place called
Earth."

"Gum!" said the young airman, as Lavender paused, "you're getting it
fine, sir!  Where will it appear?"

"Those great fleecy beings the clouds," went on Mr. Lavender, without
taking on the interruption, "seemed to await our coming in the morning
glory of their piled-up snows; and we, with the rarefied air in our
lungs, felt that we must shout to them."  And so carried away was Mr.
Lavender by his own style that he really did begin to address the clouds:
"Ghosts of the sky, who creep cold about this wide blue air, we small
adventuring mortals great-hearted salute you.  Humbly proud of our daring
have we come to sport with you and the winds of Ouranos, and, in the
rapturous corridors between you, play hide-and seek, avoiding your
glorious moisture with the dips and curves and skimming of our swallow
flights--we, the little unconquerable Spirits of the Squirth!"

The surprise which Mr. Lavender felt at having uttered so peculiar a
word, in the middle of such a flow of poetry reduced him to sudden
silence.

"Golly!" said the airman with sudden alarm in his voice.  "Hold tight!"
And they began to shoot towards earth faster than they had risen.  They
came down, by what seemed a miracle to Mr. Lavender, who was still
contemplative, precisely where they had gone up.  A little group was
collected there, and as they stepped out a voice said, "I beg your
pardon," in a tone so dry that it pierced even the fogged condition in
which Mr. Lavender alighted.  The gentleman who spoke had a dark
moustache and thick white hair, and, except that he wore a monocle, and
was perhaps three inches taller, bore a striking resemblance to himself.

"Thank you," he replied, "certainly."

"No," said the gentleman, "not at all--on the contrary, Who the hell are
you?"

"A public man," said Mr. Lavender, surprised; "at least," he added
conscientiously, "I am not quite certain."

"Well," said the gentleman, "you've jolly well stolen my stunt."

"Who, then, are you?" asked Mr. Lavender.

"I?" replied the gentleman, evidently intensely surprised that he was not
known; "I--my name----"

But at this moment Mr. Lavender's attention was diverted by the sight of
Blink making for the horizon, and crying out in a loud voice: "My dog!"
he dropped the coat in which he was still enveloped and set off running
after her at full speed, without having taken in the identity of the
gentleman or disclosed his own.  Blink, indeed, scenting another flight
in the air, had made straight for the entrance of the enclosure, and
finding a motor cab there with the door open had bolted into it, taking
it for her master's car.  Mr. Lavender sprang in after her.  At the shake
which this imparted to the cab, the driver, who had been dozing, turned
his head.

"Want to go back, sir?" he said.

"Yes," replied Mr. Lavender, breathless; "London."




XVIII

SEES TRUTH FACE TO FACE

"I fear," thought Mr. Lavender, as they sped towards Town, "that I have
inadvertently taken a joy-ride which belonged to that distinguished
person with the eyeglass.  No matter, my spirit is now bright for the
adventure I have in hand.  If only I knew where I could find the Unseen
Power--but possibly its movements may be recorded in these journals.
"And taking from his pocket his morning papers, which he had not yet had
time to peruse, he buried himself in their contents.  He was still deeply
absorbed when the cab stopped and the driver knocked on the window.  Mr.
Lavender got out, followed by Blink, and was feeling in his pocket for
the fare when an exclamation broke from the driver:

"Gorblimy! I've brought the wrong baby!"

And before Mr. Lavender had recovered from his surprise, he had whipped
the car round and was speeding back towards the flying ground.

"How awkward!" thought Mr. Lavender, who was extremely nice in money
matters; "what shall I do now?"  And he looked around him.  There, as it
were by a miracle, was the office of a great journal, whence obviously
his distinguished colleague had set forth to the flying grounds, and to
which he had been returned in error by the faithful driver.

Perceiving in all this the finger of Providence, Mr. Lavender walked in.
Those who have followed his experiences so far will readily understand
how no one could look on Mr. Lavender without perceiving him to be a man
of extreme mark, and no surprise need be felt when he was informed that
the Personage he sought was on the point of visiting Brighton to open a
hospital, and might yet be overtaken at Victoria Station.

With a beating heart he took up the trail in another taxi-cab, and,
arriving at Victoria, purchased tickets for himself and Blink, and
inquired for the Brighton train.

"Hurry up!" replied the official.  Mr. Lavender ran, searching the
carriage windows for any indication of his objective.  The whistle had
been blown, and he was in despair, when his eye caught the label
"Reserved" on a first-class window, and looking in he saw a single person
evidently of the highest consequence smoking a cigar, surrounded by
papers.  Without a moment's hesitation he opened the door, and, preceded
by Blink, leaped in.  "This carriage is reserved, sir," said the
Personage, as the train moved out.

"I know," said Mr. Lavender, who had fallen on to the edge of the seat
opposite; "and only the urgency of my business would have caused me to
violate the sanctity of your retreat, for, believe me, I have the
instincts if not the habits of a gentleman."

The Personage, who had made a move of his hand as if to bring the train
to a standstill, abandoning his design, replaced his cigar, and
contemplated Mr. Lavender from above it.

The latter remained silent, returning that remarkable stare, while Blink
withdrew beneath the seat and pressed her chin to the ground, savouring
the sensation of a new motion.

"Yes," he thought, "those eyes have an almost superhuman force and
cunning.  They are the eyes of a spider in the centre of a great web.
They seem to draw me."

"You are undoubtedly the Unseen Power, sir," he said suddenly, "and I
have reached the heart of the mystery.  From your own lips I shall soon
know whether I am a puppet or a public man."

The Personage, who by his movements was clearly under the impression that
he had to do with a lunatic, sat forward with his hands on his knees
ready to rise at a moment's notice; he kept his cigar in his mouth,
however, and an enforced smile on the folds of his face.

"What can I do for you, sir?" he said.

"Will you have a cigar?"

"No, thank you," replied Mr. Lavender, "I must keep the eyes of my spirit
clear, and come to the point.  Do you rule this country or do you not?
For it is largely on the answer to this that my future depends.  In
telling others what to do am I speaking as my conscience or as your
conscience dictates; and, further, if indeed I am speaking as your
conscience dictates, have you a conscience?"

The Personage, who had evidently made up his mind to humour the intruder,
flipped the ash off his cigar.

Well, sir, he said, I don't know who the devil you may be, but my
conscience is certainly as good as yours."

"That," returned Mr: Lavender with a sigh, is a great relief, for whether
you rule the country or not, you are undoubtedly the source from which I,
together with the majority of my countrymen, derive our inspirations.
You are the fountainhead at which we draw and drink.  And to know that
your waters are pure, unstained by taint of personal prejudice and the
love of power, will fortify us considerably.  Am I to assume, then, that
above all passion and pettiness, you are an impersonal force whose
innumerable daily editions reflect nothing but abstract truth, and are in
no way the servants of a preconceived and personal view of the
situation?"

"You want to know too much, don't you think?" said the Personage with a
smile.

"How can that be, sir?" asked Mr. Lavender: If you are indeed the
invisible king swaying the currents of national life, and turning its
tides at will, it is essential that we should believe in you; and before
we can believe in you must we not know all about you?"

"By Jove, sir," replied the Personage, "that strikes me as being contrary
to all the rules of religion.  I thought faith was the ticket."

By this answer Mr. Lavender was so impressed that he sat for a moment in
silence, with his eyebrow working up and down.

"Sir," he said at last, "you have given me a new thought.  If you are
right, to disbelieve in you and the acts which you perform, or rather the
editions which you issue, is blasphemy."

"I should think so," said the Personage, emitting a long whiff of smoke.
Hadn't that ever occurred to you before?"

"No," replied Mr. Lavender, naively, "for I have never yet disbelieved
anything in those journals."

The Personage coughed heartily.

"I have always regarded them," went on Mr. Lavender, "as I myself should
wish to be regarded, 'without fear and without reproach.'  For that is,
as I understand it, the principle on which a gentleman must live, ever
believing of others what he would wish believed of himself.  With the
exception of Germans," he added hastily.

"Naturally," returned the Personage.  "And I'll defy you to find anything
in them which disagrees with that formula.  Everything they print refers
to Germans if not directly then obliquely.  Germans are the 'idee fixe',
and without an 'idee fixe', as you know, there's no such thing as
religion.  Do you get me?"

"Yes, indeed," cried Mr. Lavender, enthused, for the whole matter now
seemed to him to fall into coherence, and, what was more, to coincide
with his preconceptions, so that he had no longer any doubts.  "You, sir-
-the Unseen Power--are but the crystallized embodiment of the national
sentiment in time of war; in serving you, and fulfilling the ideas which
you concrete in your journals, we public men are servants of the general
animus, which in its turn serves the blind and burning instinct of
justice.  This is eminently satisfactory to me, who would wish no better
fate than to be a humble lackey in that house."  He had no sooner,
however, spoken those words than Joe Petty's remarks about Public Opinion
came back to him, and he added:  "But are you really the general animus,
or are you only the animus of Mayors, that is the question?"

The personage seemed to follow this thought with difficulty.  "What's
that?" he said.

Mr. Lavender ran his hands through his hair.

"And turns," he said, "on what is the unit of national feeling and
intelligence?  Is it or is it not a Mayor?"

The Personage smiled.  "Well, what do you think?" he said.  "Haven't you
ever heard them after dinner?  There's no question about it.  Make your
mind easy if that's your only trouble."

Mr. Lavender, greatly cheered by the genial certainty in this answer,
said: "I thank you, sir.  I shall go back and refute that common scoffer,
that caster of doubts.  I have seen the Truth face, to face, and am
greatly encouraged to further public effort.  With many apologies I can
now get out," he added, as the train stopped at South Croydon.  "Blink!"
And, followed by his dog, he stepped from the train.

The Personage, who was indeed no other than the private secretary of the
private secretary of It whom Mr. Lavender had designated as the Truth
watched him from the window.

"Well, that WAS a treat, dear papa!" he murmured to himself, emitting a
sigh of smoke after his retreating interlocutor.




XIX

IS IN PERIL OF THE STREET

On the Sunday following this interview with the Truth Mr. Lavender, who
ever found the day of rest irksome to his strenuous spirit, left his
house after an early supper.  It, had been raining all day, but the
sinking sun had now emerged and struck its level light into the tree tops
from a still cloudy distance.  Followed by Blink, he threaded the puddled
waste which lies to the west of the Spaniard's Road, nor was it long
before the wild beauty of the scene infected his spirit, and he stood
still to admire the world spread out.  The smoke rack of misted rain was
still drifting above the sunset radiance in an apple-green sky; and
behind Mr. Lavender, as he gazed at those clouds symbolical of the
world's unrest, a group of tall, dark pine-trees, wild and witch-like,
had collected as if in audience of his cosmic mood.  He formed a striking
group for a painter, with the west wind flinging back his white hair, and
fluttering his dark moustache along his cheeks, while Blink, a little in
front of him, pointed at the prospect and emitted barks whose vigour
tossed her charming head now to this side now to that.

"How beautiful is this earth!" thought Mr. Lavender, "and how simple to
be good and happy thereon.  Yet must we journey ten leagues beyond the
wide world's end to find justice and liberty.  There are dark powers like
lions ever in the path.  Yes," he continued, turning round to the
pinetrees, who were creaking slightly in the wind, "hate and oppression,
greed, lust, and ambition! There you stand malevolently regarding me.
Out upon you, dark witches of evil!  If I had but an axe I would lay you
lower than the dust."  But the poor pine-trees paid no attention save to
creak a little louder.  And so incensed was Mr. Lavender by this
insensibility on the part of those which his own words had made him
perceive were the powers of darkness that he would very likely have
barked his knuckles on them if Blink by her impatience had not induced
him to resume his walk and mount on to the noble rampart of the
Spaniard's Road.

Along this he wandered and down the hill with the countless ghosts and
shadows of his brain, liberating the world in fancy from all the
hindrances which beset the paths of public men, till dark fell, and he
was compelled to turn towards home.  Closely attended by the now sobered
Blink he had reached the Tube Station when he perceived in the inky war-
time dusk that a woman was following him.  Dimly aware that she was tall
and graceful he hurried to avoid her, but before long could but note that
she was walking parallel and turning her face towards him.  Her gloved
hand seemed to make a beckoning movement, and perceiving at once that he
was the object of that predatory instinct which he knew from the many
letters and protests in his journals to be one of the most distressing
features of the War, he would have broken into a run if he had not been
travelling up-hill; being deprived of this means of escape, his public
nature prevailed, and he saw that it was his duty to confront the woman,
and strike a blow at, the national evil stalking beside him.  But he was
in a difficulty, for his natural delicacy towards women seemed to
preclude him from treating her as if she were what she evidently was,
while his sense of duty--urged him with equal force to do so.

A whiff of delicious scent determined him.  "Madam," he said, without
looking in her face, which, indeed, was not visible--so great was the
darkness, "it is useless to pursue one who not only has the greatest
veneration for women but regards you as a public danger at a time when
all the energies of the country should be devoted to the defeat of our
common enemies."

The woman, uttering a sound like a laugh, edged towards him, and Mr.
Lavender edged away, so that they proceeded up the street crabwise, with
Blink adhering jealously to her master's heels.

"Do you know," said Mr. Lavender, with all the delicacy in his power,
"how terribly subversive of the national effort it is to employ your
beauty and your grace to snare and slacken the sinews of our glorious
youth?  The mystery of a woman's glance in times like these should be
used solely to beckon our heroes on to death in the field.  But you,
madam, than whom no one indeed has a more mysterious glance, have turned
it to ends which, in the words of a great public man, profane the temple
of our--our----"

Mr. Lavender stopped, for his delicacy would not allow him even in so
vital a cause to call bodies bodies.  The woman here edged so close that
he bolted across her in affright, and began to slant back towards the
opposite side of the street.

"Madam," he said, you must have perceived by now that I am, alas!  not
privileged by age to be one of the defenders of my country; and though I
am prepared to yield to you, if by so doing I can save some young hero
from his fate, I wish you to clearly understand that only my sense of
duty as a public man would induce me to do any such thing."  At this he
turned his eyes dreadfully upon her graceful form still sidling towards
him, and, conscious again of that delightful scent, felt a swooning
sensation which made him lean against a lamp-post.  "Spare me, madam," he
said in a faint voice for my country's sake I am ready to do anything,
but I must tell you that I worship another of your sex from afar, and if
you are a woman you will not seek to make me besmirch that adoration or
imperil my chivalry."

So saying, he threw his arms round the lamppost and closed his eyes,
expecting every moment to be drawn away against his will into a life of
vice.

A well-known voice, strangled to the pitch almost of inaudibility, said
in his ear:

"Oh, Don Pickwixote, Don Pickwixote, you will be the death of me!"

Electrified, Mr. Lavender opened his eyes, and in the dull orange rays of
the heavily shaded lamp he saw beside him no other than the writhing,
choking figure of Aurora herself.  Shocked beyond measure by the mistake
he had made, Mr. Lavender threw up his hands and bolted past her through
the gateway of his garden; nor did he cease running till he had reached
his bedroom and got under the bed, so terribly was he upset.  There, in
the company of Blink, he spent perhaps the most shame-stricken hours of
his existence, cursing the memory of all those bishops and novelists who
had caused him to believe that every woman in a dark street was a danger
to the State; nor could the persuasion of Mrs. Petty or Joe induce him to
come out, so that in despair they were compelled to leave him to pass the
night in this penitential position, which he did without even taking out
his teeth.




XX

RECEIVES A REVELATION

Fully a week elapsed before Mr. Lavender recovered from the effects of
the night which he had spent under his bed and again took his normal
interest in the course of national affairs.  That which at length tore
him from his torpid condition and refixed his imagination was an article
in one of, his journals on the League of Nations, which caused him
suddenly to perceive that this was the most important subject of the day.
Carefully extracting the address of the society who had the matter in
hand, he determined to go down forthwith and learn from their own lips
how he could best induce everybody to join them in their noble
undertaking.  Shutting every window, therefore and locking Blink
carefully into his study, he set forth and took the Tube to Charing
Cross.

Arriving at the premises indicated he made his way in lifts and corridors
till he came to the name of this great world undertaking upon the door of
Room 443, and paused for a moment to recover from the astonishment he
felt that the whole building at least was not occupied by the energies of
such a prodigious association.

"Appearances, however, are deceptive," he thought; "and from a single
grain of mustard-seed whole fields will flower."  He knocked on the door,
therefore, and receiving the reply, "Cub id," in a female voice, he
entered a room where two young ladies with bad colds were feebly tapping
type-writers.

"Can I see the President?" asked Mr. Lavender.

"Dot at the bobent," said one of the young ladies.  "Will the Secretary
do?"

"Yes," replied Mr. Lavender "for I seek information."

The young ladies indulged in secret confabulation, from which the
perpetual word "He" alone escaped to Mr. Lavender's ears.

Then one of them slipped into an inner room, leaving behind her a
powerful trail of eucalyptus.  She came back almost directly, saying,
"Go id."

The room which Mr Lavender entered contained two persons, one seated at a
bureau and the other pacing up and down and talking in a powerful bass
voice.  He paused, looked at Mr. Lavender from under bushy brows, and at
once went on walking and talking, with a sort of added zest.

"This must be He," thought Mr. Lavender, sitting down to listen, for
there was something about the gentleman which impressed him at once.  He
had very large red ears, and hardly a hair on his head, while his full,
bearded face and prominent eyes were full of force and genius.

"It won't do a little bit, Titmarsh," he was saying, "to allow the
politicians to meddle in this racket.  We want men of genius, whose
imaginations carry them beyond the facts of the moment.  This is too big
a thing for those blasted politicians.  They haven't shown a sign so far
of paying attention to what I've been telling them all this time.  We
must keep them out, Titmarsh.  Machinery without mechanism, and a change
of heart in the world.  It's very simple.  A single man of genius from
each country, no pettifogging opposition, no petty prejudices."

The other gentleman, whom Mr. Lavender took for the Secretary, and who
was leaning his head rather wearily on his hand, interjected: "Quite so!
And whom would you choose besides yourself?  In France, for instance?"

He who was walking stopped a moment, again looked at Mr. Lavender
intently, and again began to speak as if he were not there.

"France?" he said.  "There isn't anybody--Anatole's too old--there isn't
anybody."

"America, then?" hazarded the Secretary.

"America!" replied the other; "they haven't got even half a man.  There's
that fellow in Germany that I used to influence; but I don't know--no, I
don't think he'd be any good."

"D'Annunzio, surely----" began the Secretary.

"D'Annunzio?  My God!  D'Annunzio!  No!  There's nobody in Italy or
Holland--she's as bankrupt as Spain; and there's not a cat in Austria.
Russia might, perhaps, give us someone, but I can't at the moment think
of him.  No, Titmarsh, it's difficult."

Mr. Lavender had been growing more and more excited at each word he
overheard, for a scheme of really stupendous proportions was shaping
itself within him.  He suddenly rose, and said: "I have an idea."

The Secretary sat up as if he had received a Faradic shock, and he who
was walking up and down stood still.  "The deuce you have, sir," he said.

"Yes," cried Mr. Lavender and in concentration and marvellous simplicity,
"it has, I am sure, never been surpassed.  It is clear to me, sir, that
you, and you alone, must be this League of Nations.  For if it is
entirely in your hands there will be no delay.  The plan will spring full
fledged from the head of Jove, and this great and beneficial change in
the lot of mankind will at once become an accomplished fact.  There will
be no need for keeping in touch with human nature, no call for patience
and all that laborious upbuilding stone by stone which is so apt to
discourage mankind and imperil the fruition of great reforms.  No, sir;
you--you must be this League, and we will all work to the end that
tomorrow at latest there may be perfected this crowning achievement of
the human species."

The gentleman, who had commenced to walk again, looked furtively from Mr.
Lavender to the Secretary, and said:

"By Jingo! some idea!"

"Yes," cried Mr. Lavender, entranced that his grand notion should be at
once accepted; "for it is only men like you who can both soaringly
conceive and immediately concrete in action; and, what is more, there
will be no fear of your tiring of this job and taking up another, for you
will be IT; and one cannot change oneself."

The gentleman looked at Mr. Lavender very suddenly at the words "tiring
of this job," and transferred his gaze to the Secretary, who had bent his
face down to his papers, and was smothering a snigger with his hand.

"Who are you, sir?" he said sharply.

"Merely one," returned Mr. Lavender, "who wishes to do all in his power
to forward a project so fraught with beneficence to all mankind.  I count
myself fortunate beyond measure to have come here this morning and found
the very Heart of the matter, the grain of mustard-seed."

The gentleman, who had begun to walk again, here muttered words which
would have sounded like "Damned impudence" if Mr. Lavender had not been
too utterly carried away by his idea to hear them.

"I shall go forth at once," he said, "and make known the good tidings
that the fields are sown, the League formed.  Henceforth there are no
barriers between nations, and the reign of perpetual Peace is assured.
It is colossal."

The gentleman abruptly raised his boot, but, seeming to think better of
it, lowered it again, and turned away to the window.

Mr. Lavender, having bowed to his back, went out, and, urged on by his
enthusiasm, directed his steps at once towards Trafalgar Square.

Arriving at this hub of the universe he saw that Chance was on his side,
for a meeting was already in progress, and a crowd of some forty persons
assembled round one of the lions.  Owing to his appearance Mr. Lavender
was able without opposition to climb up on the plinth and join the
speaker, a woman of uncertain years.  He stood there awaiting his turn
and preparing his oration, while she continued her discourse, which
seemed to be a protest against any interference with British control of
the freedom of the seas.  A Union Jack happened to be leaning against the
monument, and when she had at last finished, Mr. Lavender seized it and
came forward to the edge.

"Great tidings!" he said at once, waving the flag, and without more ado
plunged into an oration, which, so far as it went, must certainly
be ranked among his masterpieces.  "Great tidings, Friends!  I have
planted the grain of mustard seed or, in common parlance, have just come
from the meeting which has incepted the League of Nations; and it will be
my task this morning briefly to make known to you the principles which in
future must dominate the policy of the world.  Since it is for the closer
brotherhood of man and the reign of perpetual peace that we are
struggling, we must first secure the annihilation of our common enemies.
Those members of the human race whose infamies have largely placed them
beyond the pale must be eliminated once for all."

Loud cheers greeted this utterance, and stimulated by the sound Mr.
Lavender proceeded: "What, however, must the civilized nations do when
at last they have clean sheets?  In the first place, all petty prejudices
and provincial aspirations must be set aside; and though the world must
be firmly founded upon the principle of nationality it must also act as
one great people.  This, my fellow-countrymen, is no mere contradiction
in terms, for though in their new solidarities each nation will be
prouder of itself, and more jealous of its good name and independence
than ever, that will not prevent its' sacrificing its inalienable rights
for the good of the whole human nation of which it is a member.  Friends,
let me give you a simple illustration, which in a nutshell will make the
whole thing clear.  We, here in Britain, are justly proud and tenacious
of our sea power--in the words of the poet, 'We hold all the gates of the
water.'  Now it is abundantly and convincingly plain that this reinforced
principle of nationality bids us to retain and increase them, while
internationalism bids us give--them up."

His audience--which had hitherto listened with open mouths, here closed
them, and a strident voice exclaimed:

"Give it a name, gov'nor.  D'you say we ought to give up Gib?"

This word pierced Mr. Lavender, standing where he was, to the very
marrow, and he fell into such confusion of spirit that his words became
inaudible.

"My God!" he thought, appalled; "is it possible that I have not got to
the bottom of this question?" And, turning his back on the audience, he
gazed in a sort of agony at the figure of Nelson towering into the sky
above him.  He was about to cry out piteously: "Countrymen, I know not
what I think.  Oh!  I am unhappy!" when he inadvertently stepped back
over the edge of the plinth, and, still entangled in the flag, was picked
up by two policemen and placed in a dazed condition and a deserted spot
opposite the National Gallery.

It was while he was standing there, encircled by, pigeons and forgotten
by his fellow man, that there came to him a spiritual revelation.
"Strange!" he thought; "I notice a certain inconsistency in myself, and
even in my utterances.  I am two men, one of whom is me and one not me;
and the one which is not me is the one which causes me to fall into the
arms of policemen and other troubles.  The one which is me loves these
pigeons, and desires to live quietly with my dog, not considering public
affairs, which, indeed, seem to be suited to persons of another sort.
Whence, then, comes the one which is not me?  Can it be that it is
derived from the sayings and writings of others, and is but a spurious
spirit only meet to be outcast?  Do I, to speak in the vernacular, care
any buttons whether we stick to Gibraltar or not so long as men do but
live in kindness?  And if that is so, have I the right to say I do?
Ought I not, rather, to be true to my private self and leave the course
of public affairs to those who have louder voices and no private selves?"
The thought was extremely painful, for it seemed to disclose to him grave
inconsistency in the recent management of his life.  And, thoroughly
mortified, he turned round with a view of entering the National Gallery
and soothing his spirit with art, when he was arrested by the placard
which covered it announcing which town had taken which sum of bonds.
This lighted up such a new vista of public utility that his brain would
certainly have caught fire again if one of the policemen who had
conducted him across the Square had not touched him on the arm, and said:

"How are you now, sir?"

"I am pretty well, thank you, policeman," replied Mr. Lavender, "and
sorry that I occasioned so much disturbance."

"Don't mention it, sir," answered the policeman; "you came a nasty
crump."

"Tell me," said Mr. Lavender, suddenly looking up into his face, "do you
consider that a man is justified in living a private life?  For, as
regards my future, it is largely on your opinion that I shall act."

The policeman, whose solid face showed traces of astonishment, answered
slowly: "As a general thing, a man's private life don't bear lookin'
into, as you know, sir."

"I have not lived one for some time," said Mr. Lavender.

"Well," remarked the policeman, "if you take my advice you won't try it
a-gain.  I should say you 'adn't the constitution."

"I fear you do not catch my meaning," returned Mr. Lavender, whose whole
body was aching from his fall; "it is my public life which tries me."

"Well, then, I should chuck it," said the policeman.

"Really?" murmured Mr. Lavender eagerly, "would you?"

"Why not?" said the policeman.

So excited was Mr. Lavender by this independent confirmation of his
sudden longing that he took out half a crown.

"You will oblige me greatly," he said, "by accepting this as a token of my
gratitude."

"Well, sir, I'll humour you," answered the policeman; "though it was no
trouble, I'm sure; you're as light as a feather.  Goin' anywhere in
particular?" he added.

"Yes," said Mr. Lavender, rather faintly, "the Tube Station."

"Come along with me, then."

Mr. Lavender went along, not sorry to have the protection of that
stalwart form, for his nerve was shaken, not so much by physical
suffering as by the revelation he had received.

"If you'll take my tip, sir," said the policeman, parting from him, "you
won't try no private life again; you don't look strong."

"Thank you, policeman," said Mr. Lavender musingly; "it is kind of you to
take an interest in me.  Good-bye!"

Safely seated in the Tube for Hampstead he continued the painful struggle
of his meditations.  "If, indeed," he thought, "as a public man I do more
harm than good, I am prepared to sacrifice all for my country's sake and
retire into private life.  But the policeman said that would be dangerous
for me.  What, then, is left?  To live neither a public nor a private
life!"

This thought, at once painful and heroic, began to take such hold of him
that he arrived at his house in a high fever of the brain.




XXI

AND ASCENDS TO PARADISE

Now when Mr. Lavender once slept over an idea it became so strong that no
power on earth could prevent his putting it into execution, and all night
long he kept Blink awake by tramping up and down his bedroom and planning
the details of such a retirement as would meet his unfortunate case.  For
at once he perceived that to retire from both his lives without making
the whole world know of it would be tantamount to not retiring.  "Only by
a public act," he thought, "of so striking a character that nobody can
miss it can I bring the moral home to all public and private men."  And a
hundred schemes swarmed like ants in his brain.  Nor was it till the cock
crew that one adequate to this final occasion occurred to him.

"It will want very careful handling," he thought, "for otherwise I shall
be prevented, and perhaps even arrested in the middle, which will be both
painful and ridiculous.  So sublime, however, was his idea that he shed
many tears over it, and often paused in his tramping to regard the
unconscious Blink with streaming eyes.  All the next day he went about
the house and heath taking a last look at objects which had been dear,
and at mealtimes ate and drank even less than usual, absorbed by the
pathos of his coming renunciation.  He determined to make his
preparations for the final act during the night, when Mrs. Petty would be
prevented by Joe's snoring from hearing the necessary sounds; and at
supper he undertook the delicate and harrowing task of saying good-bye
to, his devoted housekeeper without letting her know that he, was doing
it.

"Mrs--Petty," he said, trifling with a morsel of cheese, "it is useless
to disguise, from you that I may be going a journey, and I feel that I
shall not be able to part from all the care you have, bestowed on me
without recording in words my heartfelt appreciation of your devotion.  I
shall miss it, I shall miss it terribly, if, that is, I am permitted to
miss anything."

Mrs. Petty, whose mind instantly ran to his bed socks, answered: "Don't
you worry, sir; I won't forget them.  But wherever are you going now?"

"Ah!" said Mr. Lavender subtly, "it is all in the air at present; but now
that the lime-trees are beginning to smell a certain restlessness is upon
me, and you may see some change in my proceedings.  Whatever happens to
me, however, I commit my dear Blink to your care; feed her as if she were
myself, and love her as if she were Joe, for it is largely on food and
affection that dogs depend for happiness.

"Why, good gracious, sir," said Mrs. Petty, "you talk as if you were
going for a month of Sundays.  Are you thinking of Eastbourne?"

Mr. Lavender sighed deeply at that word, for the memory of a town where
he had spent many happy days added to the gentle melancholy of his
feelings on this last evening.

"As regards that I shall not inform you at present; for, indeed, I am by
no means certain what my destination will be.  Largely speaking, no pub--
public man," he stammered, doubtful whether he was any longer that,
"knows where he will be going to-morrow.  Sufficient unto the day are the
intentions in his head.

"Well, sir," said Mrs. Petty frankly, "you can't go anywhere without Joe
or me, that's flat."

Mr. Lavender smiled.

"Dear Mrs. Petty," he murmured, "there are sacrifices one cannot demand
even of the most faithful friends.  But," he went on with calculated
playfulness, "we need not consider that point until the day after to-
morrow at least, for I have much to do in the meantime."

Reassured by those words and the knowledge that Mr. Lavender's plans
seldom remained the same for more than two days, Mrs. Petty tossed her
head slightly and went to the door.  "Well, it is a mystery, I'm sure,"
she said.

"I should like to see Joe," said Mr. Lavender, with a lingering look at
his devoted housekeeper.

"The beauty!" muttered Mrs. Petty; "I'll send him," and withdrew.

Giving the morsel of cheese to Blink, who, indeed, had eaten practically
the whole of this last meal, Mr. Lavender took the moon-cat on his
shoulder, and abandoned himself for a moment to the caresses of his two
favourites.

"Blink," he said in a voice which trembled slightly, "be good to this
moon-cat while I am away; and if I am longer than you expect, darling, do
not be unhappy.  Perhaps some day you will rejoin me; and even if we are
not destined to meet again, I would not, in the fashion of cruel men,
wish to hinder your second marriage, or to stand in the way of your happy
forgetfulness of me.  Be as light-hearted as you can, my dear, and wear
no mourning for your master."

So saying, he flung his arms round her, and embraced her warmly, inhaling
with the most poignant emotion her sheep-like odour.  He was still
engaged with her when the door was opened, and Joe came in.

"Joe," said Mr. Lavender resolutely, "sit down and light your pipe.  You
will find a bottle of pre-war port in the sideboard.  Open it, and, drink
my health; indeed, I myself will drink it too, for it may give me
courage.  We have been good friends, Joe," he went on while Joe was
drawing the cork," and have participated in pleasant and sharp
adventures.  I have called you in at this moment, which may some day seem
to you rather solemn, partly to shake your hand and partly to resume the
discussion on public men which we held some days ago, if you remember."

"Ah!" said Joe, with his habitual insouciance, "when I told you that they
give me the 'ump."

"Yes, what abaht it, sir?  'Ave they been sayin' anything particular
vicious?"  His face flying up just then with the cork which he was
extracting encountered the expression on Mr. Lavender's visage, and he
added: "Don't take wot I say to 'eart, sir; try as you like you'll never
be a public man."

Those words, which seemed to Mr. Lavender to seal his doom, caused a
faint pink flush to invade his cheeks.

"No," continued Joe, pouring out the wine; you 'aven't got the brass in
times like these.  I dare say you've noticed, sir, that the times is
favourable for bringing out the spots on the body politic.  'Ere's
'ealth!"

"Joe," said Mr. Lavender, raising the glass to his lips with solemnity,
"I wish you a most happy and prosperous life.  Let us drink to all those
qualities which make you par excellence one of that great race, the best
hearted in the world, which never thinks of to-morrow, never knows when
it is beaten, and seldom loses its sense of humour.

"Ah!" returned Joe enigmatically, half-closing one of his greenish eyes,
and laying the glass to one side of his reddish nose.  Then, with a quick
movement, he swallowed its contents and refilled it before Mr. Lavender
had succeeded in absorbing more than a drop.

"I don't say," he continued, "but what there's a class o' public man
that's got its uses, like the little 'un that keeps us all alive, or the
perfect English gentleman what did his job, and told nobody nothin' abaht
it.  You can 'ave confidence in a man like that----that's why 'e's gone
an' retired; 'e's civilized, you see, the finished article; but all this
raw material, this 'get-on' or 'get-out' lot, that's come from 'oo knows
where, well, I wish they'd stayed there with their tell-you-how-to-do-it
and their 'ymns of 'ate."

"Joe," said Mr. Lavender, "are you certain that therein does not speak
the snob inherent in the national bosom?  Are you not unconsciously
paying deference to the word gentleman?"

"Why not, sir?" replied Joe, tossing off his second glass.  "It'd be a
fine thing for the country if we was all gentlemen--straight, an' a
little bit stupid, and 'ad 'alf a thought for others."  And he refilled
his master's glass.  "I don't measure a gentleman by 'is money, or 'is
title, not even by 'is clothes--I measure 'im by whether he can stand
'avin' power in 'is 'ands without gettin' unscrupled or swollen 'eaded,
an' whether 'e can do what he thinks right without payin' attention, to
clamour.  But, mind you, 'e's got to 'ave right thoughts too, and a
feelin' 'eart.  'Ere's luck, sir."

Mr. Lavender, who, absorbed in his chauffeur's sentiments, had now drunk
two glasses, rose from his, chair, and clutching his hair said: "I will
not conceal from you, Joe, that I have always assumed every public man
came up to that standard, at least."

"Crikey said Joe.  'Ave you really, sir?  My Gawd!  Got any use for the
rest of this bottle?"

"No, Joe, no.  I shall never have use for a bottle again."

"In that case I might as well," said Joe, pouring what remained into a
tumbler and drinking it off.  "Is there any other topic you'd like to
mention?  If I can 'ave any influence on you, I shall be very glad."

"Thank you, Joe," returned Mr. Lavender, "what I have most need of at
this moment is solitude and your good wishes.  And will you kindly take
Blink away, and when she has had her run, place her in my bedroom, with
the window closed.  Good-night, Joe.  Call me late tomorrow morning.

"Certainly, sir.  Good-night, sir."

"Good-night, Joe.  Shake hands."

When Joe was gone, accompanied by the unwilling Blink, turning her
beautiful dark eyes back to the last, Mr. Lavender sat down at his
bureau, and drawing a sheet of paper to him, wrote at the top of it.

     "My last Will and Testament."

It was a long time before he got further, and then entirely omitted to
leave anything in it, completely preoccupied by the preamble, which
gradually ran as follows:

     "I, John Lavender, make known to all men by these presents that the
     act which I contemplate is symbolical, and must in no sense be taken
     as implying either weariness of life or that surrender to misfortune
     which is unbecoming to an English public gentleman."  (Over this
     description of himself Mr. Lavender was obliged to pause some time
     hovering between the two designations, and finally combining them as
     the only way out of his difficulty.) "Long and painful experience
     has convinced me that only by retiring from the former can I retain
     the latter character, and only by retiring from both can I point the
     moral ever demanded by my countrymen.  Conscious, indeed, that a
     mere act of private resignation would have no significance to the
     body politic, nor any deflecting influence on the national life, I
     have chosen rather to disappear in blue flame, so that every
     Englishman may take to heart my lesson, and learn from my strange
     fate how to be himself uninfluenced by the verbiage of others.  At
     the same time, with the utmost generosity, I wish to acknowledge in
     full my debt towards all those great writers and speakers on the war
     who have exercised so intoxicating an influence on my mind." (Here
     followed an alphabetical list of names beginning with B and ending
     with S.)

     "I wish to be dissociated firmly from the views of my chauffeur Joe
     Petty, and to go to my last account with an emphatic assertion that
     my failure to become a perfect public gentleman is due to private
     idiosyncrasies rather than to any conviction that it is impossible,
     or to anything but admiration of the great men I have mentioned.  If
     anybody should wish to paint me after I am dead, I desire that I may
     he represented with my face turned towards the Dawn; for it is at
     that moment so symptomatic of a deep adoration--which I would scorn
     to make the common property of gossiping tongues--that I intend to
     depart.  If there should be anything left of me--which is less than
     probable considering the inflammatory character of the material I
     design for my pyre--I would be obliged if, without giving anybody
     any trouble, it could be buried in my garden, with the usual
     Hampstead tablet.

                             "'JOHN LAVENDER,
                      THE PUBLIC MAN, WHO DIED FOR HIS
                         COUNTRY'S GOOD, LIVED HERE.'

     "In conclusion, I would say a word to that land I have loved and
     served: 'Be not extreme!  Distrust the words, of others.  To
     yourself be true!  As you are strong be gentle, as you are brave be
     modest! Beloved country, farewell!'"



Having written that final sentence he struggled long with himself before
he could lay down the pen.  But by this time the port he had drunk had
begun to have its usual effect, and he fell into a doze, from which he
was awakened five hours later by the beams of a full moon striking in on
him.

"The hour has come," he thought, and, opening the French-window, he went
out on to the lawn, where the dew lay white.  The freshness in the air,
the glamour of the moonlight, and the fumes of the port combined to make
him feel strangely rhumantic, and if he had possessed a musical
instrument he would very likely have begun to play on it.  He spent some
moments tracking to and fro in the dew before he settled on the centre of
the lawn as the most suitable spot for the act which he contemplated, for
thence he would be able to turn his last looks towards Aurora's bedroom-
window without interference from foliage.  Having drawn a twelve-foot
circle in the dew with his toe he proceeded in the bright moonlight to
the necessary accumulation of his funeral pile, conveying from his study,
book by book, journal by journal, pamphlet by pamphlet, the hoarded
treasures of the last four years; and as he carefully placed each one,
building up at once a firm and cunning structure, he gave a little groan,
thinking of the intoxications of the past, and all the glorious thoughts
embodied in that literature.  Underneath, in the heart of the pile, he
reserved a space for the most inflammable material, which he selected
from a special file of a special journal, and round the circumference of
the lofty and tapering mound he carefully deposited the two hundred and
four war numbers of a certain weekly, so that a ring of flame might lick
well up the sides and permeate the more solid matter on which he would be
sitting.  For two hours he worked in the waning moonlight till he had
completed this weird and heroic erection; and just before the dawn, sat
down by the light of the candle with which he meant to apply the
finishing touch, to compose that interview with himself whereby he
intended to convey to the world the message of his act.

"I found him," he began, in the words of the interviewer, "sitting upon a
journalistic pile of lovely leaves of thought, which in the dawning of a
new day glowed with a certain restrained flamboyance, as though the
passion stored within those exotic pages gave itself willingly to the
'eclaircissement' of the situation, and of his lineaments on which
suffering had already set their stamp.

"'I should like you,' I said, approaching as near as I could, for the
sparks, like little fireflies on a Riviera evening, were playing
profoundly round my trousers, 'I should like to hear from your own lips
the reasons which have caused you to resign.'

"'Certainly,' he replied, with the courtesy which I have always found
characteristic of him in moments which would try the suavity of more
ordinary men; and with the utmost calm and clarity he began to tell me
the inner workings of his mind, while the growing dawn-light irradiated
his wasted and expressive features, and the flames slowly roasted his
left boot.

"'Yes,' he said quietly, and his eyes turned inwards, 'I have at last
seen the problem clearly, and seen it whole.  It is largely because of
this that I have elected to seek the seclusion of another world.  What
that world contains for me I know not, though so many public men have
tried to tell me; but it has never been my way to recoil from the
Unknown, and I am ready for my journey beyond the wide world's end.'

"I was greatly struck by the large-hearted way in which he spoke those
words, and I interrupted him to ask whether he did not think that there
was something fundamental in the British character which would leap as
one man at such an act of daring sacrifice and great adventure.

"'As regards that,' he replied fearlessly, while in the light of the
ever-brightening dawn I could, see the suspender on his right leg
gradually charring, so that he must already have been in great pain, 'as
regards that, it is largely the proneness of the modern British to leap
to verbal extremity which is inducing me to afford them this object-
lesson in restraint and commonsense.  Ouch !'

"This momentary ejaculation seemed to escape him in spite of all his iron
control; and the smell of burning flesh brought home to me as nothing
else, perhaps, could have done the tortures he must have been suffering.

"'I feel,' he went on very gravely, 'that extravagance of word and
conduct is fatal to my country, and having so profoundly experienced its
effects upon myself, I am now endeavouring by a shining example to supply
a remedy for a disease which is corroding the vitals and impairing the
sanity of my countrymen and making them a race of second-hand spiritual
drunkards.  Ouch!'

"I confess that at this moment the tears started to my eyes, for a more
sublime show than the spectacle of this devoted man slowly roasting
himself to death before my eyes for the good of his country I had seldom
seen.  It had a strange, an appalling interest, and for nothing on earth
could I have torn my gaze away.  I now realized to the full for the first
time the will-power and heroism of the human species, and I rejoiced with
a glorious new feeling that I was of the same breed as this man, made of
such stern stuff that not even a tear rolled down his cheeks to quench
the flames that leaped around him ever higher and higher.  And the dawn
came up in the eastern sky; and I knew that a great day was preparing for
mankind; and with my eyes fixed upon him as he turned blacker and blacker
I let my heart loose in a great thanksgiving that I had lived to see this
moment.  It was then that he cried out in a loud voice:

"'I call Aurora to witness that I have died without a falter, grasping a
burning spear, to tilt at the malpractice which has sent me mad!'  And I
saw that he held in his fast-consuming hand a long roll of journals
sharpened to a point of burning flame.

"'Aurora!' he cried again, and with that enigmatic word on his lips was
incinerated in the vast and towering belch of the devouring element.

"It was among the most inspiring sights I have ever witnessed."


When Mr. Lavender had completed that record, whose actuality and wealth
of moving detail had greatly affected him, and marked it "For the Press-
Immediate," he felt very cold.  It was, in fact, that hour of dawn when a
shiver goes through the world; and, almost with pleasurable anticipation
he took up his lighted candle and stole shivering out to his pile, rising
ghostly to the height of some five feet in the middle of the dim lawn
whereon a faint green tinge was coming with the return of daylight.
Having reached it, he walked round it twice, and readjusted four volumes
of the history of the war as stepping-stones to the top; then lowering
the candle, whose flame burned steadily in the stillness, he knelt down
in the grey dew and set fire to an article in a Sunday paper.  Then,
sighing deeply, he returned to his little ladder and, with some
difficulty preserving his balance, mounted to the top, and sat down with
his legs towards the house and his eyes fixed on Aurora's bedroom-window.
He had been there perhaps ten minutes before he realized that nothing was
happening below him, and, climbing down again, proceeded to the aperture
where he had inserted the burning print.  There, by the now considerable
daylight, he saw that the flame had gone out at the words "The Stage is
now set for the last act of this colossal world drama."  And convinced
that Providence had intended that heartening sentence to revive his
somewhat drooping courage, he thought, "I, too, shall be making history
this morning," and relighting the journal, went on his hands and knees
and began manfully to blow the flames. . . . . .

Now the young lady in the adjoining castle, who had got out of bed,
happened, as she sometimes did, to go to the window for a look at the sun
rising over Parliament Hill.  Attracted by the smell of burning paper she
saw Mr. Lavender in this act of blowing up the flames.

"What on earth is the poor dear doing now?"  she thought.  "This is
really the limit!"  And slipping on her slippers and blue dressing-gown
she ensconced herself behind the curtain to await developments.

Mr. Lavender had now backed away from the flames at which he had been
blowing, and remained on his hands and knees, apparently assuring himself
that they had really obtained hold.  He then rose, and to her intense
surprise began climbing up on to the pile.  She watched him at first with
an amused astonishment, so ludicrous was his light little figure, crowned
by stivered-up white hair, and the expression of eager melancholy on his
thin, high-cheekboned face upturned towards her window.  Then, to her
dismay, she saw that the flame had really caught, and, suddenly persuaded
that he had some crazy intention of injuring himself with the view,
perhaps, of attracting her attention, she ran out of her room and down
the stairs, and emerging from the back door just as she was, circled her
garden, so that she might enter Mr. Lavender's garden from behind him,
ready for any eventuality.  She arrived within arm's reach of him without
his having heard her, for Blink, whose anxious face as she watched her
master wasting, could be discerned at the bedroom-window, was whining,
and Mr. Lavender himself had now broken into a strange and lamentable
chantey, which, in combination with the creeping flutter of the flames in
the weekly journals encircling the base of the funeral pyre, well-nigh
made her blood curdle.

"Aurora," sang Mr. Lavender, in that most dolorous voice,

         "Aurora, my heart I bring,
          For I know well it will not burn,
          Oh! when the leaves puff out in Spring
          And when the leaves in Autumn turn
               Think, think of me!
          Aurora, I pass away!
          Upon my horse of air I ride;
          Here let my grizzled ashes stay,
          But take, ah! take my heart inside!
               Aurora!  Aurora!"

At this moment, just as a fit of the most uncontrollable laughter was
about to seize her, she saw a flame which had just consumed the word
Horatio reach Mr. Lavender's right calf.

"Oh!" he cried out in desperate tones, stretching up his arms to the sky.
"Now is my hour come!  Sweet-sky, open and let me see her face!  Behold!
behold her with the eyes of faith.  It is enough.  Courage, brother; let
me now consume in silence!"  So saying, he folded his arm tightly across
his breast and closed his lips.  The flame rising to the bottom of the
weekly which had indeed been upside down, here nipped him vigorously, so
that with a wholly unconscious movement he threw up his little legs, and,
losing his balance, fell backwards into the arms of Aurora, watchfully
outstretched to receive him.  Uplifted there, close to that soft blue
bosom away from the reek of the flame, he conceived that he was consumed
and had passed already from his night of ghosts and shadows into the arms
of the morning, and through his swooning lips came forth the words:

"I am in Paradise."





End of Project Gutenberg Etext of The Burning Spear, by John Galsworthy






FIVE TALES

by John Galsworthy




"Life calls the tune, we dance."




CONTENTS:

THE FIRST AND LAST
A STOIC
THE APPLE TREE
THE JURYMAN
INDIAN SUMMER OF A FORSYTE  [Also posted as Etext #2594]
Contains:
Indian Summer of a Forsyte
In Chancery




[In this 1919 edition of "Five Tales" the fifth tale was "Indian
Summer of a Forsyte;" in later collections, "Indian Summer..." became
the first section of the second volume of The Forsyte Saga]




FIVE TALES

"Life calls the tune, we dance."




CONTENTS:

THE FIRST AND LAST
A STOIC
THE APPLE TREE
THE JURYMAN
INDIAN SUMMER OF A FORSYTE




THE FIRST AND LAST

"So the last shall be first, and the first last."--HOLY WRIT.




It was a dark room at that hour of six in the evening, when just the
single oil reading-lamp under its green shade let fall a dapple of
light over the Turkey carpet; over the covers of books taken out of
the bookshelves, and the open pages of the one selected; over the
deep blue and gold of the coffee service on the little old stool with
its Oriental embroidery.  Very dark in the winter, with drawn
curtains, many rows of leather-bound volumes, oak-panelled walls and
ceiling.  So large, too, that the lighted spot before the fire where
he sat was just an oasis.  But that was what Keith Darrant liked,
after his day's work--the hard early morning study of his "cases,"
the fret and strain of the day in court; it was his rest, these two
hours before dinner, with books, coffee, a pipe, and sometimes a nap.
In red Turkish slippers and his old brown velvet coat, he was well
suited to that framing of glow and darkness.  A painter would have
seized avidly on his clear-cut, yellowish face, with its black
eyebrows twisting up over eyes--grey or brown, one could hardly tell,
and its dark grizzling hair still plentiful, in spite of those daily
hours of wig.  He seldom thought of his work while he sat there,
throwing off with practised ease the strain of that long attention to
the multiple threads of argument and evidence to be disentangled--
work profoundly interesting, as a rule, to his clear intellect,
trained to almost instinctive rejection of all but the essential, to
selection of what was legally vital out of the mass of confused
tactical and human detail presented to his scrutiny; yet sometimes
tedious and wearing.  As for instance to-day, when he had suspected
his client of perjury, and was almost convinced that he must throw up
his brief.  He had disliked the weak-looking, white-faced fellow from
the first, and his nervous, shifty answers, his prominent startled
eyes--a type too common in these days of canting tolerations and weak
humanitarianism; no good, no good!

Of the three books he had taken down, a Volume of Voltaire--curious
fascination that Frenchman had, for all his destructive irony!--a
volume of Burton's travels, and Stevenson's "New Arabian Nights," he
had pitched upon the last.  He felt, that evening, the want of
something sedative, a desire to rest from thought of any kind.  The
court had been crowded, stuffy; the air, as he walked home, soft,
sou'-westerly, charged with coming moisture, no quality of vigour in
it; he felt relaxed, tired, even nervy, and for once the loneliness
of his house seemed strange and comfortless.

Lowering the lamp, he turned his face towards the fire.  Perhaps he
would get a sleep before that boring dinner at the Tellasson's.  He
wished it were vacation, and Maisie back from school.  A widower for
many years, he had lost the habit of a woman about him; yet to-night
he had a positive yearning for the society of his young daughter,
with her quick ways, and bright, dark eyes.  Curious what perpetual
need of a woman some men had!  His brother Laurence--wasted--all
through women--atrophy of willpower!  A man on the edge of things;
living from hand to mouth; his gifts all down at heel!  One would
have thought the Scottish strain might have saved him; and yet, when
a Scotsman did begin to go downhill, who could go faster?  Curious
that their mother's blood should have worked so differently in her
two sons.  He himself had always felt he owed all his success to it.

His thoughts went off at a tangent to a certain issue troubling his
legal conscience.  He had not wavered in the usual assumption of
omniscience, but he was by no means sure that he had given right
advice.  Well!  Without that power to decide and hold to decision in
spite of misgiving, one would never have been fit for one's position
at the Bar, never have been fit for anything.  The longer he lived,
the more certain he became of the prime necessity of virile and
decisive action in all the affairs of life.  A word and a blow--and
the blow first!  Doubts, hesitations, sentiment the muling and puking
of this twilight age--!  And there welled up on his handsome face a
smile that was almost devilish--the tricks of firelight are so many!
It faded again in sheer drowsiness; he slept....

He woke with a start, having a feeling of something out beyond the
light, and without turning his head said: "What's that?"  There came
a sound as if somebody had caught his breath.  He turned up the lamp.

"Who's there?"

A voice over by the door answered:

"Only I--Larry."

Something in the tone, or perhaps just being startled out of sleep
like this, made him shiver.  He said:

"I was asleep.  Come in!"

It was noticeable that he did not get up, or even turn his head, now
that he knew who it was, but waited, his half-closed eyes fixed on
the fire, for his brother to come forward.  A visit from Laurence was
not an unmixed blessing.  He could hear him breathing, and became
conscious of a scent of whisky.  Why could not the fellow at least
abstain when he was coming here!  It was so childish, so lacking in
any sense of proportion or of decency!  And he said sharply:

"Well, Larry, what is it?"

It was always something.  He often wondered at the strength of that
sense of trusteeship, which kept him still tolerant of the troubles,
amenable to the petitions of this brother of his; or was it just
"blood" feeling, a Highland sense of loyalty to kith and kin; an old-
time quality which judgment and half his instincts told him was
weakness but which, in spite of all, bound him to the distressful
fellow?  Was he drunk now, that he kept lurking out there by the
door?  And he said less sharply:

"Why don't you come and sit down?"

He was coming now, avoiding the light, skirting along the walls just
beyond the radiance of the lamp, his feet and legs to the waist
brightly lighted, but his face disintegrated in shadow, like the face
of a dark ghost.

"Are you ill, man?"

Still no answer, save a shake of that head, and the passing up of a
hand, out of the light, to the ghostly forehead under the dishevelled
hair.  The scent of whisky was stronger now; and Keith thought:

'He really is drunk.  Nice thing for the new butler to see!  If he
can't behave--'

The figure against the wall heaved a sigh--so truly from an
overburdened heart that Keith was conscious with a certain dismay of
not having yet fathomed the cause of this uncanny silence.  He got
up, and, back to the fire, said with a brutality born of nerves
rather than design:

"What is it, man?  Have you committed a murder, that you stand there
dumb as a fish?"

For a second no answer at all, not even of breathing; then, just the
whisper:

"Yes."

The sense of unreality which so helps one at moments of disaster
enabled Keith to say vigorously:

"By Jove!  You have been drinking!"

But it passed at once into deadly apprehension.

"What do you mean?  Come here, where I can see you.  What's the
matter with you, Larry?"

With a sudden lurch and dive, his brother left the shelter of the
shadow, and sank into a chair in the circle of light.  And another
long, broken sigh escaped him.

"There's nothing the matter with me, Keith!  It's true!"

Keith stepped quickly forward, and stared down into his brother's
face; and instantly he saw that it was true.  No one could have
simulated the look in those eyes--of horrified wonder, as if they
would never again get on terms with the face to which they belonged.
To see them squeezed the heart-only real misery could look like that.
Then that sudden pity became angry bewilderment.

"What in God's name is this nonsense?"

But it was significant that he lowered his voice; went over to the
door, too, to see if it were shut.  Laurence had drawn his chair
forward, huddling over the fire--a thin figure, a worn, high-
cheekboned face with deep-sunk blue eyes, and wavy hair all ruffled,
a face that still had a certain beauty.  Putting a hand on that lean
shoulder, Keith said:

"Come, Larry!  Pull yourself together, and drop exaggeration."

"It's true; I tell you; I've killed a man."

The noisy violence of that outburst acted like a douche.  What was
the fellow about--shouting out such words!  But suddenly Laurence
lifted his hands and wrung them.  The gesture was so utterly painful
that it drew a quiver from Keith's face.

"Why did you come here," he said, "and tell me this?"

Larry's face was really unearthly sometimes, such strange gleams
passed up on to it!

"Whom else should I tell?  I came to know what I'm to do, Keith?
Give myself up, or what?"

At that sudden introduction of the practical Keith felt his heart
twitch.  Was it then as real as all that?  But he said, very quietly:

"Just tell me--How did it come about, this--affair?"

That question linked the dark, gruesome, fantastic nightmare on to
actuality.

"When did it happen?"

"Last night."

In Larry's face there was--there had always been--something
childishly truthful.  He would never stand a chance in court!  And
Keith said:

"How?  Where?  You'd better tell me quietly from the beginning.
Drink this coffee; it'll clear your head."

Laurence took the little blue cup and drained it.

"Yes," he said.  "It's like this, Keith.  There's a girl I've known
for some months now--"

Women!  And Keith said between his teeth: "Well?"

"Her father was a Pole who died over here when she was sixteen, and
left her all alone.  A man called Walenn, a mongrel American, living
in the same house, married her, or pretended to--she's very pretty,
Keith--he left her with a baby six months old, and another coming.
That one died, and she did nearly.  Then she starved till another
fellow took her on.  She lived with him two years; then Walenn turned
up again, and made her go back to him.  The brute used to beat her
black and blue, all for nothing.  Then he left her again.  When I met
her she'd lost her elder child, too, and was taking anybody who came
along."

He suddenly looked up into Keith's face.

"But I've never met a sweeter woman, nor a truer, that I swear.
Woman!  She's only twenty now!  When I went to her last night, that
brute--that Walenn--had found her out again; and when he came for me,
swaggering and bullying--Look!"--he touched a dark mark on his
forehead--"I took his throat in my hands, and when I let go--"

"Yes?"

"Dead.  I never knew till afterwards that she was hanging on to him
behind."

Again he made that gesture-wringing his hands.

In a hard voice Keith said:

"What did you do then?"

"We sat by it a long time.  Then I carried it on my back down the
street, round a corner to an archway."

"How far?"

"About fifty yards."

"Was anyone--did anyone see?"

"No."

"What time?"

"Three."

"And then?"

"Went back to her."

"Why--in Heaven's name?"

"She was lonely and afraid; so was I, Keith."

"Where is this place?"

"Forty-two, Borrow Street, Soho."

"And the archway?"

"Corner of Glove Lane."

"Good God!  Why--I saw it in the paper!"

And seizing the journal that lay on his bureau, Keith read again that
paragraph: "The body of a man was found this morning under an archway
in Glove Lane, Soho.  From marks about the throat grave suspicions of
foul play are entertained.  The body had apparently been robbed, and
nothing was discovered leading to identification."

It was real earnest, then.  Murder!  His own brother!  He faced round
and said:

"You saw this in the paper, and dreamed it.  Understand--you dreamed
it!"

The wistful answer came:

"If only I had, Keith--if only I had!"

In his turn, Keith very nearly wrung his hands.

"Did you take anything from the--body?"

"This dropped while we were struggling.",

It was an empty envelope with a South American post-mark addressed:
"Patrick Walenn, Simon's Hotel, Farrier Street, London." Again with
that twitching in his heart, Keith said:

"Put it in the fire."

Then suddenly he stooped to pluck it out.  By that command--he had--
identified himself with this--this--But he did not pluck it out.  It
blackened, writhed, and vanished.  And once more he said:

"What in God's name made you come here and tell me?"

"You know about these things.  I didn't mean to kill him.  I love the
girl.  What shall I do, Keith?

"Simple!  How simple!  To ask what he was to do!  It was like Larry!
And he said:

"You were not seen, you think?"  "It's a dark street.  There was no
one about."

"When did you leave this girl the second time?"

"About seven o'clock."

"Where did you go?"

"To my rooms."

"In Fitzroy Street?"

"Yes."

"Did anyone see you come in?"

"No."

"What have you done since?"

"Sat there."

"Not been out?"

"No."

"Not seen the girl?"

"No."

"You don't know, then, what she's done since?"

"No."

"Would she give you away?"

"Never."

"Would she give herself away--hysteria?"

"No."

"Who knows of your relations with her?"

"No one."

"No one?"

"I don't know who should, Keith."

"Did anyone see you going in last night, when you first went to her?"

"No.  She lives on the ground floor.  I've got keys."

"Give them to me.  What else have you that connects you with her?"

"Nothing."

"In your rooms?"

"No."

"No photographs.  No letters?"

"No."

"Be careful."

"Nothing."

"No one saw you going back to her the second time?"

"No."

"No one saw you leave her in the morning?"

"No."

"You were fortunate.  Sit down again, man.  I must think."

Think!  Think out this accursed thing--so beyond all thought, and all
belief.  But he could not think.  Not a coherent thought would come.
And he began again:

"Was it his first reappearance with her?"

"Yes."

"She told you so?"

"Yes."

"How did he find out where she was?"

"I don't know."

"How drunk were you?"

"I was not drunk."

"How much had you drunk?"

"About two bottles of claret--nothing."

"You say you didn't mean to kill him?"

"No-God knows!"

"That's something."

What made you choose the arch?"

"It was the first dark place."

"Did his face look as if he had been strangled?"

"Don't!"

"Did it?"

"Yes."

"Very disfigured?"

"Yes."

"Did you look to see if his clothes were marked?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"Why not?  My God!  If you had done it!"

"You say he was disfigured.  Would he be recognisable?"

"I don't know."

"When she lived with him last--where was that?"

"I don't know for certain.  Pimlico, I think."

"Not Soho?"

"No."

"How long has she been at the Soho place?"

"Nearly a year."

"Always the same rooms?"

"Yes."

"Is there anyone living in that house or street who would be likely
to know her as his wife?"

"I don't think so."

"What was he?"

"I should think he was a professional 'bully.'"

"I see.  Spending most of his time abroad, then?"

"Yes."

"Do you know if he was known to the police?"

"I haven't heard of it."

"Now, listen, Larry.  When you leave here go straight home, and don't
go out till I come to you, to-morrow morning.  Promise that!"

"I promise."

"I've got a dinner engagement.  I'll think this out.  Don't drink.
Don't talk! Pull yourself together."

"Don't keep me longer than you can help, Keith!"

That white face, those eyes, that shaking hand!  With a twinge of
pity in the midst of all the turbulence of his revolt, and fear, and
disgust Keith put his hand on his brother's shoulder, and said:

"Courage!"

And suddenly he thought: 'My God!  Courage!  I shall want it all
myself!'




II

Laurence Darrant, leaving his brother's house in the Adelphi, walked
northwards, rapidly, slowly, rapidly again.  For, if there are men
who by force of will do one thing only at a time, there are men who
from lack of will do now one thing, now another; with equal
intensity.  To such natures, to be gripped by the Nemesis which
attends the lack of self-control is no reason for being more self-
controlled.  Rather does it foster their pet feeling: "What matter?
To-morrow we die!"  The effort of will required to go to Keith had
relieved, exhausted and exasperated him.  In accordance with those
three feelings was the progress of his walk.  He started from the
door with the fixed resolve to go home and stay there quietly till
Keith came.  He was in Keith's hands, Keith would know what was to be
done.  But he had not gone three hundred yards before he felt so
utterly weary, body and soul, that if he had but had a pistol in his
pocket he would have shot himself in the street.  Not even the
thought of the girl--this young unfortunate with her strange
devotion, who had kept him straight these last five months, who had
roused in him a depth of feeling he had never known before--would
have availed against that sudden black defection.  Why go on--a waif
at the mercy of his own nature, a straw blown here and there by every
gust which rose in him?  Why not have done with it for ever, and take
it out in sleep?

He was approaching the fatal street, where he and the girl, that
early morning, had spent the hours clutched together, trying in the
refuge of love to forget for a moment their horror and fear.  Should
he go in?  He had promised Keith not to.  Why had he promised?  He
caught sight of himself in a chemist's lighted window.  Miserable,
shadowy brute!  And he remembered suddenly a dog he had picked up
once in the streets of Pera, a black-and-white creature--different
from the other dogs, not one of their breed, a pariah of pariahs, who
had strayed there somehow.  He had taken it home to the house where
he was staying, contrary to all custom of the country; had got fond
of it; had shot it himself, sooner than leave it behind again to the
mercies of its own kind in the streets.  Twelve years ago!  And those
sleevelinks made of little Turkish coins he had brought back for the
girl at the hairdresser's in Chancery Lane where he used to get
shaved--pretty creature, like a wild rose.  He had asked of her a
kiss for payment.  What queer emotion when she put her face forward
to his lips--a sort of passionate tenderness and shame, at the
softness and warmth of that flushed cheek, at her beauty and trustful
gratitude.  She would soon have given herself to him--that one!  He
had never gone there again!  And to this day he did not know why he
had abstained; to this day he did not know whether he were glad or
sorry not to have plucked that rose.  He must surely have been very
different then!  Queer business, life--queer, queer business!--to go
through it never knowing what you would do next.  Ah! to be like
Keith, steady, buttoned-up in success; a brass pot, a pillar of
society!  Once, as a boy, he had been within an ace of killing Keith,
for sneering at him.  Once in Southern Italy he had been near killing
a driver who was flogging his horse.  And now, that darkfaced,
swinish bully who had ruined the girl he had grown to love--he had
done it!  Killed him!  Killed a man!

He who did not want to hurt a fly.  The chemist's window comforted
him with the sudden thought that he had at home that which made him
safe, in case they should arrest him.  He would never again go out
without some of those little white tablets sewn into the lining of
his coat.  Restful, even exhilarating thought!  They said a man
should not take his own life.  Let them taste horror--those glib
citizens!  Let them live as that girl had lived, as millions lived
all the world over, under their canting dogmas!  A man might rather
even take his life than watch their cursed inhumanities.

He went into the chemist's for a bromide; and, while the man was
mixing it, stood resting one foot like a tired horse.  The "life" he
had squeezed out of that fellow!  After all, a billion living
creatures gave up life each day, had it squeezed out of them, mostly.
And perhaps not one a day deserved death so much as that loathly
fellow.  Life! a breath--aflame!  Nothing!  Why, then, this icy
clutching at his heart?

The chemist brought the draught.

"Not sleeping, sir?"

"No."

The man's eyes seemed to say: 'Yes!  Burning the candle at both ends-
I know!' Odd life, a chemist's; pills and powders all day long, to
hold the machinery of men together!  Devilish odd trade!

In going out he caught the reflection of his face in a mirror; it
seemed too good altogether for a man who had committed murder.  There
was a sort of brightness underneath, an amiability lurking about its
shadows; how--how could it be the face of a man who had done what he
had done?  His head felt lighter now, his feet lighter; he walked
rapidly again.

Curious feeling of relief and oppression all at once!  Frightful--to
long for company, for talk, for distraction; and--to be afraid of it!
The girl--the girl and Keith were now the only persons who would not
give him that feeling of dread.  And, of those two--Keith was not...!
Who could consort with one who was never wrong, a successful,
righteous fellow; a chap built so that he knew nothing about himself,
wanted to know nothing, a chap all solid actions?  To be a quicksand
swallowing up one's own resolutions was bad enough!  But to be like
Keith--all willpower, marching along, treading down his own feelings
and weaknesses!  No!  One could not make a comrade of a man like
Keith, even if he were one's brother?  The only creature in all the
world was the girl.  She alone knew and felt what he was feeling;
would put up with him and love him whatever he did, or was done to
him.  He stopped and took shelter in a doorway, to light a cigarette.
He had suddenly a fearful wish to pass the archway where he had
placed the body; a fearful wish that had no sense, no end in view, no
anything; just an insensate craving to see the dark place again.  He
crossed Borrow Street to the little lane.  There was only one person
visible, a man on the far side with his shoulders hunched against the
wind; a short, dark figure which crossed and came towards him in the
flickering lamplight.  What a face!  Yellow, ravaged, clothed almost
to the eyes in a stubbly greyish growth of beard, with blackish
teeth, and haunting bloodshot eyes.  And what a figure of rags--one
shoulder higher than the other, one leg a little lame, and thin!  A
surge of feeling came up in Laurence for this creature, more
unfortunate than himself.  There were lower depths than his!

"Well, brother," he said, "you don't look too prosperous!"

The smile which gleamed out on the man's face seemed as unlikely as a
smile on a scarecrow.

"Prosperity doesn't come my way," he said in a rusty voice.  "I'm a
failure--always been a failure.  And yet you wouldn't think it, would
you?--I was a minister of religion once."

Laurence held out a shilling.  But the man shook his head.

"Keep your money," he said.  "I've got more than you to-day, I
daresay.  But thank you for taking a little interest.  That's worth
more than money to a man that's down."

"You're right."

"Yes," the rusty voice went on; "I'd as soon die as go on living as I
do.  And now I've lost my self-respect.  Often wondered how long a
starving man could go without losing his self-respect.  Not so very
long.  You take my word for that."  And without the slightest change
in the monotony of that creaking voice he added:

"Did you read of the murder?  Just here.  I've been looking at the
place."

The words: 'So have I!' leaped up to Laurence's lips; he choked them
down with a sort of terror.

"I wish you better luck," he said.  "Goodnight!" and hurried away.  A
sort of ghastly laughter was forcing its way up in his throat.  Was
everyone talking of the murder he had committed?  Even the very
scarecrows?




III

There are some natures so constituted that, due to be hung at ten
o'clock, they will play chess at eight.  Such men invariably rise.
They make especially good bishops, editors, judges, impresarios,
Prime ministers, money-lenders, and generals; in fact, fill with
exceptional credit any position of power over their fellow-men.  They
have spiritual cold storage, in which are preserved their nervous
systems.  In such men there is little or none of that fluid sense and
continuity of feeling known under those vague terms, speculation,
poetry, philosophy.  Men of facts and of decision switching
imagination on and off at will, subordinating sentiment to reason...
one does not think of them when watching wind ripple over cornfields,
or swallows flying.

Keith Darrant had need for being of that breed during his dinner at
the Tellassons.  It was just eleven when he issued from the big house
in Portland Place and refrained from taking a cab.  He wanted to walk
that he might better think.  What crude and wanton irony there was in
his situation!  To have been made father-confessor to a murderer, he-
-well on towards a judgeship!  With his contempt for the kind of
weakness which landed men in such abysses, he felt it all so sordid,
so "impossible," that he could hardly bring his mind to bear on it at
all.  And yet he must, because of two powerful instincts--self-
preservation and blood-loyalty.

The wind had still the sapping softness of the afternoon, but rain
had held off so far.  It was warm, and he unbuttoned his fur
overcoat.  The nature of his thoughts deepened the dark austerity of
his face, whose thin, well-cut lips were always pressing together, as
if, by meeting, to dispose of each thought as it came up.  He moved
along the crowded pavements glumly.  That air of festive conspiracy
which drops with the darkness on to lighted streets, galled him.  He
turned off on a darker route.

This ghastly business!  Convinced of its reality, he yet could not
see it.  The thing existed in his mind, not as a picture, but as a
piece of irrefutable evidence.  Larry had not meant to do it, of
course.  But it was murder, all the same.  Men like Larry--weak,
impulsive, sentimental, introspective creatures--did they ever mean
what they did?  This man, this Walenn, was, by all accounts, better
dead than alive; no need to waste a thought on him!  But, crime--the
ugliness--Justice unsatisfied!  Crime concealed--and his own share in
the concealment!  And yet--brother to brother!  Surely no one could
demand action from him!  It was only a question of what he was going
to advise Larry to do.  To keep silent, and disappear?  Had that a
chance of success?  Perhaps if the answers to his questions had been
correct.  But this girl!  Suppose the dead man's relationship to her
were ferreted out, could she be relied on not to endanger Larry?
These women were all the same, unstable as water, emotional,
shiftless pests of society.  Then, too, a crime untracked, dogging
all his brother's after life; a secret following him wherever he
might vanish to; hanging over him, watching for some drunken moment,
to slip out of his lips.  It was bad to think of.  A clean breast of
it?  But his heart twitched within him.  "Brother of Mr. Keith
Darrant, the wellknown King's Counsel"--visiting a woman of the town,
strangling with his bare hands the woman's husband!  No intention to
murder, but--a dead man!  A dead man carried out of the house, laid
under a dark archway!  Provocation!  Recommended to mercy--penal
servitude for life!  Was that the advice he was going to give Larry
to-morrow morning?

And he had a sudden vision of shaven men with clay-coloured features,
run, as it were, to seed, as he had seen them once in Pentonville,
when he had gone there to visit a prisoner.  Larry!  Whom, as a baby
creature, he had watched straddling; whom, as a little fellow, he had
fagged; whom he had seen through scrapes at college; to whom he had
lent money time and again, and time and again admonished in his
courses.  Larry!  Five years younger than himself; and committed to
his charge by their mother when she died.  To become for life one of
those men with faces like diseased plants; with no hair but a bushy
stubble; with arrows marked on their yellow clothes!  Larry!  One of
those men herded like sheep; at the beck and call of common men!  A
gentleman, his own brother, to live that slave's life, to be ordered
here and there, year after year, day in, day out.  Something snapped
within him.  He could not give that advice.  Impossible!  But if not,
he must make sure of his ground, must verify, must know.  This Glove
Lane--this arch way?  It would not be far from where he was that very
moment.  He looked for someone of whom to make enquiry.  A policeman
was standing at the corner, his stolid face illumined by a lamp;
capable and watchful--an excellent officer, no doubt; but, turning
his head away, Keith passed him without a word.  Strange to feel that
cold, uneasy feeling in presence of the law!  A grim little driving
home of what it all meant!  Then, suddenly, he saw that the turning
to his left was Borrow Street itself.  He walked up one side, crossed
over, and returned.  He passed Number Forty-two, a small house with
business names printed on the lifeless windows of the first and
second floors; with dark curtained windows on the ground floor, or
was there just a slink of light in one corner?  Which way had Larry
turned?  Which way under that grisly burden?  Fifty paces of this
squalid street-narrow, and dark, and empty, thank heaven!  Glove
Lane!  Here it was!  A tiny runlet of a street.  And here--!  He had
run right on to the arch, a brick bridge connecting two portions of a
warehouse, and dark indeed.

"That's right, gov'nor!  That's the place!"  He needed all his self-
control to turn leisurely to the speaker.  "'Ere's where they found
the body--very spot leanin' up 'ere.  They ain't got 'im yet.
Lytest--me lord!"

It was a ragged boy holding out a tattered yellowish journal.  His
lynx eyes peered up from under lanky wisps of hair, and his voice had
the proprietary note of one making "a corner" in his news.  Keith
took the paper and gave him twopence.  He even found a sort of
comfort in the young ghoul's hanging about there; it meant that
others besides himself had come morbidly to look.  By the dim
lamplight he read: "Glove Lane garrotting mystery.  Nothing has yet
been discovered of the murdered man's identity; from the cut of his
clothes he is supposed to be a foreigner."  The boy had vanished, and
Keith saw the figure of a policeman coming slowly down this gutter of
a street.  A second's hesitation, and he stood firm.  Nothing
obviously could have brought him here save this "mystery," and he
stayed quietly staring at the arch.  The policeman moved up abreast.
Keith saw that he was the one whom he had passed just now.  He noted
the cold offensive question die out of the man's eyes when they
caught the gleam of white shirt-front under the opened fur collar.
And holding up the paper, he said:

"Is this where the man was found?"

"Yes, sir."

"Still a mystery, I see?"

"Well, we can't always go by the papers.  But I don't fancy they do
know much about it, yet."

"Dark spot.  Do fellows sleep under here?"

The policeman nodded.  "There's not an arch in London where we don't
get 'em sometimes."

"Nothing found on him--I think I read?"

"Not a copper.  Pockets inside out.  There's some funny characters
about this quarter.  Greeks, Hitalians--all sorts."

Queer sensation this, of being glad of a policeman's confidential
tone!

"Well, good-night!"

"Good-night, sir.  Good-night!"

He looked back from Borrow Street.  The policeman was still standing
there holding up his lantern, so that its light fell into the
archway, as if trying to read its secret.

Now that he had seen this dark, deserted spot, the chances seemed to
him much better.  "Pockets inside out!"  Either Larry had had
presence of mind to do a very clever thing, or someone had been at
the body before the police found it.  That was the more likely.  A
dead backwater of a place.  At three o'clock--loneliest of all hours-
-Larry's five minutes' grim excursion to and fro might well have
passed unseen!  Now, it all depended on the girl; on whether Laurence
had been seen coming to her or going away; on whether, if the man's
relationship to her were discovered, she could be relied on to say
nothing.  There was not a soul in Borrow Street now; hardly even a
lighted window; and he took one of those rather desperate decisions
only possible to men daily accustomed to the instant taking of
responsibility.  He would go to her, and see for himself.  He came to
the door of Forty-two, obviously one of those which are only shut at
night, and tried the larger key.  It fitted, and he was in a gas-
lighted passage, with an oil-clothed floor, and a single door to his
left.  He stood there undecided.  She must be made to understand that
he knew everything.  She must not be told more than that he was a
friend of Larry's.  She must not be frightened, yet must be forced to
give her very soul away.  A hostile witness--not to be treated as
hostile--a matter for delicate handling!  But his knock was not
answered.

Should he give up this nerve-racking, bizarre effort to come at a
basis of judgment; go away, and just tell Laurence that he could not
advise him?  And then--what?  Something must be done.  He knocked
again.  Still no answer.  And with that impatience of being thwarted,
natural to him, and fostered to the full by the conditions of his
life, he tried the other key.  It worked, and he opened the door.
Inside all was dark, but a voice from some way off, with a sort of
breathless relief in its foreign tones, said:

"Oh!  then it's you, Larry!  Why did you knock?  I was so frightened.
Turn up the light, dear.  Come in!"

Feeling by the door for a switch in the pitch blackness he was
conscious of arms round his neck, a warm thinly clad body pressed to
his own; then withdrawn as quickly, with a gasp, and the most awful
terror-stricken whisper:

"Oh!  Who is it?"

With a glacial shiver down his own spine, Keith answered

"A friend of Laurence.  Don't be frightened!"

There was such silence that he could hear a clock ticking, and the
sound of his own hand passing over the surface of the wall, trying to
find the switch.  He found it, and in the light which leaped up he
saw, stiffened against a dark curtain evidently screening off a
bedroom, a girl standing, holding a long black coat together at her
throat, so that her face with its pale brown hair, short and square-
cut and curling up underneath, had an uncanny look of being detached
from any body.  Her face was so alabaster pale that the staring,
startled eyes, dark blue or brown, and the faint rose of the parted
lips, were like colour stainings on a white mask; and it had a
strange delicacy, truth, and pathos, such as only suffering brings.
Though not susceptible to aesthetic emotion, Keith was curiously
affected.  He said gently:

"You needn't be afraid.  I haven't come to do you harm--quite the
contrary.  May I sit down and talk?"  And, holding up the keys, he
added: "Laurence wouldn't have given me these, would he, if he hadn't
trusted me?"

Still she did not move, and he had the impression that he was looking
at a spirit--a spirit startled out of its flesh.  Nor at the moment
did it seem in the least strange that he should conceive such an odd
thought.  He stared round the room--clean and tawdry, with its
tarnished gilt mirror, marble-topped side-table, and plush-covered
sofa.  Twenty years and more since he had been in such a place.  And
he said:

"Won't you sit down?  I'm sorry to have startled you."

But still she did not move, whispering:

"Who are you, please?"

And, moved suddenly beyond the realm of caution by the terror in that
whisper, he answered:

"Larry's brother."

She uttered a little sigh of relief which went to Keith's heart, and,
still holding the dark coat together at her throat, came forward and
sat down on the sofa.  He could see that her feet, thrust into
slippers, were bare; with her short hair, and those candid startled
eyes, she looked like a tall child.  He drew up a chair and said:

"You must forgive me coming at such an hour; he's told me, you see."
He expected her to flinch and gasp; but she only clasped her hands
together on her knees, and said:

"Yes?"

Then horror and discomfort rose up in him, afresh.

"An awful business!"

Her whisper echoed him:

"Yes, oh! yes!  Awful--it is awful!"

And suddenly realising that the man must have fallen dead just where
he was sitting, Keith became stock silent, staring at the floor.

"Yes," she whispered; "Just there.  I see him now always falling!"

How she said that!  With what a strange gentle despair!  In this girl
of evil life, who had brought on them this tragedy, what was it which
moved him to a sort of unwilling compassion?

"You look very young," he said.

"I am twenty."

"And you are fond of--my brother?"

"I would die for him."

Impossible to mistake the tone of her voice, or the look in her eyes,
true deep Slav eyes; dark brown, not blue as he had thought at first.
It was a very pretty face--either her life had not eaten into it yet,
or the suffering of these last hours had purged away those marks; or
perhaps this devotion of hers to Larry.  He felt strangely at sea,
sitting there with this child of twenty; he, over forty, a man of the
world, professionally used to every side of human nature.  But he
said, stammering a little:

"I--I have come to see how far you can save him.  Listen, and just
answer the questions I put to you."

She raised her hands, squeezed them together, and murmured:

"Oh!  I will answer anything."

"This man, then--your--your husband--was he a bad man?"

"A dreadful man."

"Before he came here last night, how long since you saw him?"

"Eighteen months."

"Where did you live when you saw him last?"

"In Pimlico."

"Does anybody about here know you as Mrs. Walenn?"

"No.  When I came here, after my little girl died, I came to live a
bad life.  Nobody knows me at all.  I am quite alone."

"If they discover who he was, they will look for his wife?"

"I do not know.  He did not let people think I was married to him.  I
was very young; he treated many, I think, like me."

"Do you think he was known to the police?"

She shook her head.  "He was very clever."

"What is your name now?"

"Wanda Livinska."

"Were you known by that name before you were married?"

"Wanda is my Christian name.  Livinska--I just call myself."

"I see; since you came here."

"Yes."

"Did my brother ever see this man before last night?"

"Never."

"You had told him about his treatment of you?"

"Yes.  And that man first went for him."

"I saw the mark.  Do you think anyone saw my brother come to you?"

"I do not know.  He says not."

"Can you tell if anyone saw him carrying the--the thing away?"

"No one in this street--I was looking."

"Nor coming back?"

"No one."

"Nor going out in the morning?"

"I do not think it."


"Have you a servant?"

"Only a woman who comes at nine in the morning for an hour."

"Does she know Larry?"

"No."

"Friends, acquaintances?"

"No; I am very quiet.  And since I knew your brother, I see no one.
Nobody comes here but him for a long time now."

"How long?"

"Five months."

"Have you been out to-day?"

"No."

"What have you been doing?"

"Crying."

It was said with a certain dreadful simplicity, and pressing her
hands together, she went on:

"He is in danger, because of me.  I am so afraid for him."
Holding up his hand to check that emotion, he said:

"Look at me!"

She fixed those dark eyes on him, and in her bare throat, from which
the coat had fallen back, he could see her resolutely swallowing down
her agitation.

"If the worst comes to the worst, and this man is traced to you, can
you trust yourself not to give my brother away?"

Her eyes shone.  She got up and went to the fireplace:

"Look!  I have burned all the things he has given me--even his
picture.  Now I have nothing from him."

Keith, too, got up.

"Good!  One more question: Do the police know you, because--because
of your life?"

She shook her head, looking at him intently, with those mournfully
true eyes.  And he felt a sort of shame.

"I was obliged to ask.  Do you know where he lives?"

"Yes."

"You must not go there.  And he must not come to you, here."

Her lips quivered; but she bowed her head.  Suddenly he found her
quite close to him, speaking almost in a whisper:

"Please do not take him from me altogether.  I will be so careful.  I
will not do anything to hurt him; but if I cannot see him sometimes,
I shall die.  Please do not take him from me."  And catching his hand
between her own, she pressed it desperately.  It was several seconds
before Keith said:

"Leave that to me.  I will see him.  I shall arrange.  You must leave
that to me."

"But you will be kind?"

He felt her lips kissing his hand.  And the soft moist touch sent a
queer feeling through him, protective, yet just a little brutal,
having in it a shiver of sensuality.  He withdrew his hand.  And as
if warned that she had been too pressing, she recoiled humbly.  But
suddenly she turned, and stood absolutely rigid; then almost
inaudibly whispered: "Listen!  Someone out--out there!"  And darting
past him she turned out the light.

Almost at once came a knock on the door.  He could feel--actually
feel the terror of this girl beside him in the dark.  And he, too,
felt terror.  Who could it be?  No one came but Larry, she had said.
Who else then could it be?  Again came the knock, louder!  He felt
the breath of her whisper on his cheek: "If it is Larry!  I must
open."  He shrank back against the wall; heard her open the door and
say faintly: "Yes.  Please!  Who?"

Light painted a thin moving line on the wall opposite, and a voice
which Keith recognised answered:

"All right, miss.  Your outer door's open here.  You ought to keep it
shut after dark."

God!  That policeman!  And it had been his own doing, not shutting
the outer door behind him when he came in.  He heard her say timidly
in her foreign voice: "Thank you, sir!" the policeman's retreating
steps, the outer door being shut, and felt her close to him again.
That something in her youth and strange prettiness which had touched
and kept him gentle, no longer blunted the edge of his exasperation,
now that he could not see her.  They were all the same, these women;
could not speak the truth! And he said brusquely:

"You told me they didn't know you!"

Her voice answered like a sigh:

"I did not think they did, sir.  It is so long I was not out in the
town, not since I had Larry."

The repulsion which all the time seethed deep in Keith welled up at
those words.  His brother--son of his mother, a gentleman--the
property of this girl, bound to her, body and soul, by this
unspeakable event!  But she had turned up the light.  Had she some
intuition that darkness was against her?  Yes, she was pretty with
that soft face, colourless save for its lips and dark eyes, with that
face somehow so touchingly, so unaccountably good, and like a
child's.

"I am going now," he said.  "Remember!  He mustn't come here; you
mustn't go to him.  I shall see him to-morrow.  If you are as fond of
him as you say--take care, take care!"

She sighed out, "Yes! oh, yes!"  and Keith went to the door.  She was
standing with her back to the wall, and to follow him she only moved
her head--that dove-like face with all its life in eyes which seemed
saying: 'Look into us; nothing we hide; all--all is there!'

And he went out.

In the passage he paused before opening the outer door.  He did not
want to meet that policeman again; the fellow's round should have
taken him well out of the street by now, and turning the handle
cautiously, he looked out.  No one in sight.  He stood a moment,
wondering if he should turn to right or left, then briskly crossed
the street.  A voice to his right hand said:

"Good-night, sir."

There in the shadow of a doorway the policeman was standing.  The
fellow must have seen him coming out!  Utterly unable to restrain a
start, and muttering "Goodnight!"  Keith walked on rapidly:

He went full quarter of a mile before he lost that startled and
uneasy feeling in sardonic exasperation that he, Keith Darrant, had
been taken for a frequenter of a lady of the town.  The whole thing--
the whole thing!--a vile and disgusting business!  His very mind felt
dirty and breathless; his spirit, drawn out of sheath, had slowly to
slide back before he could at all focus and readjust his reasoning
faculty.  Certainly, he had got the knowledge he wanted.  There was
less danger than he thought.  That girl's eyes!  No mistaking her
devotion.  She would not give Larry away.  Yes!  Larry must clear
out--South America--the East--it did not matter.  But he felt no
relief.  The cheap, tawdry room had wrapped itself round his fancy
with its atmosphere of murky love, with the feeling it inspired, of
emotion caged within those yellowish walls and the red stuff of its
furniture.  That girl's face!  Devotion; truth, too, and beauty, rare
and moving, in its setting of darkness and horror, in that nest of
vice and of disorder!...  The dark archway; the street arab, with his
gleeful: "They 'ain't got 'im yet!"; the feel of those bare arms
round his neck; that whisper of horror in the darkness; above all,
again, her child face looking into his, so truthful!  And suddenly he
stood quite still in the street.  What in God's name was he about?
What grotesque juggling amongst shadows, what strange and ghastly
eccentricity was all this?  The forces of order and routine, all the
actualities of his daily life, marched on him at that moment, and
swept everything before them.  It was a dream, a nightmare not real!
It was ridiculous!  That he--he should thus be bound up with things
so black and bizarre!

He had come by now to the Strand, that street down which every day he
moved to the Law Courts, to his daily work; his work so dignified and
regular, so irreproachable, and solid.  No!  The thing was all a
monstrous nightmare!  It would go, if he fixed his mind on the
familiar objects around, read the names on the shops, looked at the
faces passing.  Far down the thoroughfare he caught the outline of
the old church, and beyond, the loom of the Law Courts themselves.
The bell of a fire-engine sounded, and the horses came galloping by,
with the shining metal, rattle of hoofs and hoarse shouting.  Here
was a sensation, real and harmless, dignified and customary!  A woman
flaunting round the corner looked up at him, and leered out: "Good-
night!"  Even that was customary, tolerable.  Two policemen passed,
supporting between them a man the worse for liquor, full of fight and
expletives; the sight was soothing, an ordinary thing which brought
passing annoyance, interest, disgust.  It had begun to rain; he felt
it on his face with pleasure--an actual thing, not eccentric, a thing
which happened every day!

He began to cross the street.  Cabs were going at furious speed now
that the last omnibus had ceased to run; it distracted him to take
this actual, ordinary risk run so often every day.  During that
crossing of the Strand, with the rain in his face and the cabs
shooting past, he regained for the first time his assurance, shook
off this unreal sense of being in the grip of something, and walked
resolutely to the corner of his home turning.  But passing into that
darker stretch, he again stood still.  A policeman had also turned
into that street on the other side.  Not--surely not!  Absurd!  They
were all alike to look at--those fellows!  Absurd!  He walked on
sharply, and let himself into his house.  But on his way upstairs he
could not for the life of him help raising a corner of a curtain and
looking from the staircase window.  The policeman was marching
solemnly, about twenty-five yards away, paying apparently no
attention to anything whatever.




IV

Keith woke at five o'clock, his usual hour, without remembrance.  But
the grisly shadow started up when he entered his study, where the
lamp burned, and the fire shone, and the coffee was set ready, just
as when yesterday afternoon Larry had stood out there against the
wall.  For a moment he fought against realisation; then, drinking off
his coffee, sat down sullenly at the bureau to his customary three
hours' study of the day's cases.

Not one word of his brief could he take in.  It was all jumbled with
murky images and apprehensions, and for full half an hour he suffered
mental paralysis.  Then the sheer necessity of knowing something of
the case which he had to open at half-past ten that morning forced
him to a concentration which never quite subdued the malaise at the
bottom of his heart.  Nevertheless, when he rose at half-past eight
and went into the bathroom, he had earned his grim satisfaction in
this victory of will-power.  By half-past nine he must be at Larry's.
A boat left London for the Argentine to-morrow.  If Larry was to get
away at once, money must be arranged for.  And then at breakfast he
came on this paragraph in the paper:

           "SOHO MURDER.

"Enquiry late last night established the fact that the Police have
discovered the identity of the man found strangled yesterday morning
under an archway in Glove Lane.  An arrest has been made."

By good fortune he had finished eating, for the words made him feel
physically sick.  At this very minute Larry might be locked up,
waiting to be charged-might even have been arrested before his own
visit to the girl last night.  If Larry were arrested, she must be
implicated.  What, then, would be his own position?  Idiot to go and
look at that archway, to go and see the girl!  Had that policeman
really followed him home?  Accessory after the fact!  Keith Darrant,
King's Counsel, man of mark!  He forced himself by an effort, which
had something of the heroic, to drop this panicky feeling.  Panic
never did good.  He must face it, and see.  He refused even to hurry,
calmly collected the papers wanted for the day, and attended to a
letter or two, before he set out in a taxi-cab to Fitzroy Street.

Waiting outside there in the grey morning for his ring to be
answered, he looked the very picture of a man who knew his mind, a
man of resolution.  But it needed all his will-power to ask without
tremor: "Mr. Darrant in?"  to hear without sign of any kind the
answer: "He's not up yet, sir."

"Never mind; I'll go in and see him.  Mr. Keith Darrant."

On his way to Laurence's bedroom, in the midst of utter relief, he
had the self-possession to think: 'This arrest is the best thing that
could have happened.  It'll keep their noses on a wrong scent till
Larry's got away.  The girl must be sent off too, but not with him.'
Panic had ended in quite hardening his resolution.  He entered the
bedroom with a feeling of disgust.  The fellow was lying there, his
bare arms crossed behind his tousled head, staring at the ceiling,
and smoking one of many cigarettes whose ends littered a chair beside
him, whose sickly reek tainted the air.  That pale face, with its
jutting cheek-bones and chin, its hollow cheeks and blue eyes far
sunk back--what a wreck of goodness!

He looked up at Keith through the haze of smoke and said quietly:
"Well, brother, what's the sentence?  'Transportation for life, and
then to be fined forty pounds?'"

The flippancy revolted Keith.  It was Larry all over!  Last night
horrified and humble, this morning, "Don't care" and feather-headed.
He said sourly:

"Oh!  You can joke about it now?"

Laurence turned his face to the wall.

"Must."

Fatalism!  How detestable were natures like that!

"I've been to see her," he said.

"You?"

"Last night.  She can be trusted."

Laurence laughed.

"That I told you."

"I had to see for myself.  You must clear out at once, Larry.  She
can come out to you by the next boat; but you can't go together.
Have you any money?"

"No."

"I can foot your expenses, and lend you a year's income in advance.
But it must be a clean cut; after you get out there your whereabouts
must only be known to me."

A long sigh answered him.

"You're very good to me, Keith; you've always been very good.  I
don't know why."

Keith answered drily

"Nor I.  There's a boat to the Argentine tomorrow.  You're in luck;
they've made an arrest.  It's in the paper."

"What?"

The cigarette end dropped, the thin pyjama'd figure writhed up and
stood clutching at the bedrail.

"What?"

The disturbing thought flitted through Keith's brain: 'I was a fool.
He takes it queerly; what now?'

Laurence passed his hand over his forehead, and sat down on the bed.

"I hadn't thought of that," he said; "It does me!"

Keith stared.  In his relief that the arrested man was not Laurence,
this had not occurred to him.  What folly!

"Why?"  he said quickly; "an innocent man's in no danger.  They
always get the wrong man first.  It's a piece of luck, that's all.
It gives us time."

How often had he not seen that expression on Larry's face, wistful,
questioning, as if trying to see the thing with his--Keith's-eyes,
trying to submit to better judgment?  And he said, almost gently

"Now, look here, Larry; this is too serious to trifle with.  Don't
worry about that.  Leave it to me.  Just get ready to be off'.  I'll
take your berth and make arrangements.  Here's some money for kit.  I
can come round between five and six, and let you know.  Pull yourself
together, man.  As soon as the girl's joined you out there, you'd
better get across to Chile, the further the better.  You must simply
lose yourself: I must go now, if I'm to get to the Bank before I go
down to the courts."  And looking very steadily at his brother, he
added:

"Come!  You've got to think of me in this matter as well as of
yourself.  No playing fast and loose with the arrangements.
Understand?"

But still Larry gazed up at him with that wistful questioning, and
not till he had repeated, "Understand?"  did he receive "Yes" for
answer.

Driving away, he thought: 'Queer fellow!  I don't know him, shall
never know him!' and at once began to concentrate on the practical
arrangements.  At his bank he drew out L400; but waiting for the
notes to be counted he suffered qualms.  A clumsy way of doing
things!  If there had been more time!  The thought: 'Accessory after
the fact!' now infected everything.  Notes were traceable.  No other
way of getting him away at once, though.  One must take lesser risks
to avoid greater.  From the bank he drove to the office of the
steamship line.  He had told Larry he would book his passage.  But
that would not do!  He must only ask anonymously if there were
accommodation.  Having discovered that there were vacant berths, he
drove on to the Law Courts.  If he could have taken a morning off, he
would have gone down to the police court and seen them charge this
man.  But even that was not too safe, with a face so well known as
his.  What would come of this arrest?  Nothing, surely!  The police
always took somebody up, to keep the public quiet.  Then, suddenly,
he had again the feeling that it was all a nightmare; Larry had never
done it; the police had got the right man!  But instantly the memory
of the girl's awe-stricken face, her figure huddling on the sofa, her
words "I see him always falling!"  came back.  God!  What a business!

He felt he had never been more clear-headed and forcible than that
morning in court.  When he came out for lunch he bought the most
sensational of the evening papers.  But it was yet too early for
news, and he had to go back into court no whit wiser concerning the
arrest.  When at last he threw off wig and gown, and had got through
a conference and other necessary work, he went out to Chancery Lane,
buying a paper on the way.  Then he hailed a cab, and drove once more
to Fitzroy Street.




V

Laurence had remained sitting on his bed for many minutes.  An
innocent man in no danger!  Keith had said it--the celebrated lawyer!
Could he rely on that?  Go out 8,000 miles, he and the girl, and
leave a fellow-creature perhaps in mortal peril for an act committed
by himself?

In the past night he had touched bottom, as he thought: become ready
to face anything.  When Keith came in he would without murmur have
accepted the advice: "Give yourself up!"  He was prepared to pitch
away the end of his life as he pitched from him the fag-ends of his
cigarettes.  And the long sigh he had heaved, hearing of reprieve,
had been only half relief.  Then, with incredible swiftness there had
rushed through him a feeling of unutterable joy and hope.  Clean
away--into a new country, a new life!  The girl and he!  Out there he
wouldn't care, would rejoice even to have squashed the life out of
such a noisome beetle of a man.  Out there!  Under a new sun, where
blood ran quicker than in this foggy land, and people took justice
into their own hands.  For it had been justice on that brute even
though he had not meant to kill him.  And then to hear of this
arrest!  They would be charging the man to-day.  He could go and see
the poor creature accused of the murder he himself had committed!
And he laughed.  Go and see how likely it was that they might hang a
fellow-man in place of himself?  He dressed, but too shaky to shave
himself, went out to a barber's shop.  While there he read the news
which Keith had seen.  In this paper the name of the arrested man was
given: "John Evan, no address."  To be brought up on the charge at
Bow Street.  Yes!  He must go.  Once, twice, three times he walked
past the entrance of the court before at last he entered and screwed
himself away among the tag and bobtail.

The court was crowded; and from the murmurs round he could tell that
it was his particular case which had brought so many there.  In a
dazed way he watched charge after charge disposed of with lightning
quickness.  But were they never going to reach his business?  And
then suddenly he saw the little scarecrow man of last night advancing
to the dock between two policemen, more ragged and miserable than
ever by light of day, like some shaggy, wan, grey animal, surrounded
by sleek hounds.

A sort of satisfied purr was rising all round; and with horror
Laurence perceived that this--this was the man accused of what he
himself had done--this queer, battered unfortunate to whom he had
shown a passing friendliness.  Then all feeling merged in the
appalling interest of listening.  The evidence was very short.
Testimony of the hotel-keeper where Walenn had been staying, the
identification of his body, and of a snake-shaped ring he had been
wearing at dinner that evening.  Testimony of a pawnbroker, that this
same ring was pawned with him the first thing yesterday morning by
the prisoner.  Testimony of a policeman that he had noticed the man
Evan several times in Glove Lane, and twice moved him on from
sleeping under that arch.  Testimony of another policeman that, when
arrested at midnight, Evan had said: "Yes; I took the ring off his
finger.  I found him there dead ....  I know I oughtn't to have done
it....  I'm an educated man; it was stupid to pawn the ring.  I found
him with his pockets turned inside out."

Fascinating and terrible to sit staring at the man in whose place he
should have been; to wonder when those small bright-grey bloodshot
eyes would spy him out, and how he would meet that glance.  Like a
baited raccoon the little man stood, screwed back into a corner,
mournful, cynical, fierce, with his ridged, obtuse yellow face, and
his stubbly grey beard and hair, and his eyes wandering now and again
amongst the crowd.  But with all his might Laurence kept his face
unmoved.  Then came the word "Remanded"; and, more like a baited
beast than ever, the man was led away.

Laurence sat on, a cold perspiration thick on his forehead.  Someone
else, then, had come on the body and turned the pockets inside out
before John Evan took the ring.  A man such as Walenn would not be
out at night without money.  Besides, if Evan had found money on the
body he would never have run the risk of taking that ring.  Yes,
someone else had come on the body first.  It was for that one to come
forward, and prove that the ring was still on the dead man's finger
when he left him, and thus clear Evan.  He clung to that thought; it
seemed to make him less responsible for the little man's position; to
remove him and his own deed one step further back.  If they found the
person who had taken the money, it would prove Evan's innocence.  He
came out of the court in a sort of trance.  And a craving to get
drunk attacked him.  One could not go on like this without the relief
of some oblivion.  If he could only get drunk, keep drunk till this
business was decided and he knew whether he must give himself up or
no.  He had now no fear at all of people suspecting him; only fear of
himself--fear that he might go and give himself up.  Now he could see
the girl; the danger from that was as nothing compared with the
danger from his own conscience.  He had promised Keith not to see
her.  Keith had been decent and loyal to him--good old Keith!  But he
would never understand that this girl was now all he cared about in
life; that he would rather be cut off from life itself than be cut
off from her.  Instead of becoming less and less, she was becoming
more and more to him--experience strange and thrilling!  Out of deep
misery she had grown happy--through him; out of a sordid, shifting
life recovered coherence and bloom, through devotion to him him, of
all people in the world!  It was a miracle.  She demanded nothing of
him, adored him, as no other woman ever had--it was this which had
anchored his drifting barque; this--and her truthful mild
intelligence, and that burning warmth of a woman, who, long treated
by men as but a sack of sex, now loves at last.

And suddenly, mastering his craving to get drunk, he made towards
Soho.  He had been a fool to give those keys to Keith.  She must have
been frightened by his visit; and, perhaps, doubly miserable since,
knowing nothing, imagining everything!  Keith was sure to have
terrified her.  Poor little thing!

Down the street where he had stolen in the dark with the dead body on
his back, he almost ran for the cover of her house.  The door was
opened to him before he knocked, her arms were round his neck, her
lips pressed to his.  The fire was out, as if she had been unable to
remember to keep warm.  A stool had been drawn to the window, and
there she had evidently been sitting, like a bird in a cage, looking
out into the grey street.  Though she had been told that he was not
to come, instinct had kept her there; or the pathetic, aching hope
against hope which lovers never part with.

Now that he was there, her first thoughts were for his comfort.  The
fire was lighted.  He must eat, drink, smoke.  There was never in her
doings any of the "I am doing this for you, but you ought to be doing
that for me" which belongs to so many marriages, and liaisons.  She
was like a devoted slave, so in love with the chains that she never
knew she wore them.  And to Laurence, who had so little sense of
property, this only served to deepen tenderness, and the hold she had
on him.  He had resolved not to tell her of the new danger he ran
from his own conscience.  But resolutions with him were but the
opposites of what was sure to come; and at last the words:

"They've arrested someone," escaped him.

>From her face he knew she had grasped the danger at once; had divined
it, perhaps, before he spoke.  But she only twined her arms round him
and kissed his lips.  And he knew that she was begging him to put his
love for her above his conscience.  Who would ever have thought that
he could feel as he did to this girl who had been in the arms of
many!  The stained and suffering past of a loved woman awakens in
some men only chivalry; in others, more respectable, it rouses a
tigerish itch, a rancorous jealousy of what in the past was given to
others.  Sometimes it will do both.  When he had her in his arms he
felt no remorse for killing the coarse, handsome brute who had ruined
her.  He savagely rejoiced in it.  But when she laid her head in the
hollow of his shoulder, turning to him her white face with the faint
colour-staining on the parted lips, the cheeks, the eyelids; when her
dark, wide-apart, brown eyes gazed up in the happiness of her
abandonment--he felt only tenderness and protection.

He left her at five o'clock, and had not gone two streets' length
before the memory of the little grey vagabond, screwed back in the
far corner of the dock like a baited raccoon, of his dreary, creaking
voice, took possession of him again; and a kind of savagery mounted
in his brain against a world where one could be so tortured without
having meant harm to anyone.

At the door of his lodgings Keith was getting out of a cab.  They
went in together, but neither of them sat down; Keith standing with
his back to the carefully shut door, Laurence with his back to the
table, as if they knew there was a tug coming.  And Keith said:
"There's room on that boat.  Go down and book your berth before they
shut.  Here's the money!"

"I'm going to stick it, Keith."

Keith stepped forward, and put a roll of notes on the table.

"Now look here, Larry.  I've read the police court proceedings.
There's nothing in that.  Out of prison, or in prison for a few
weeks, it's all the same to a night-bird of that sort.  Dismiss it
from your mind--there's not nearly enough evidence to convict.  This
gives you your chance.  Take it like a man, and make a new life for
yourself."

Laurence smiled; but the smile had a touch of madness and a touch of
malice.  He took up the notes.

"Clear out, and save the honour of brother Keith.  Put them back in
your pocket, Keith, or I'll put them in the fire.  Come, take them!"
And, crossing to the fire, he held them to the bars.  "Take them, or
in they go!"

Keith took back the notes.

"I've still got some kind of honour, Keith; if I clear out I shall
have none, not the rag of any, left.  It may be worth more to me than
that--I can't tell yet--I can't tell."  There was a long silence
before Keith answered.  "I tell you you're mistaken; no jury will
convict.  If they did, a judge would never hang on it.  A ghoul who
can rob a dead body ought to be in prison.  What he did is worse than
what you did, if you come to that!"  Laurence lifted his face.
"Judge not, brother," he said; "the heart is a dark well."  Keith's
yellowish face grew red and swollen, as though he were mastering the
tickle of a bronchial cough.  "What are you going to do, then?  I
suppose I may ask you not to be entirely oblivious of our name; or is
such a consideration unworthy of your honour?"  Laurence bent his
head.  The gesture said more clearly than words: 'Don't kick a man
when he's down!'

"I don't know what I'm going to do--nothing at present.  I'm awfully
sorry, Keith; awfully sorry."

Keith looked at him, and without another word went out.




VI

To any, save philosophers, reputation may be threatened almost as
much by disgrace to name and family as by the disgrace of self.
Keith's instinct was always to deal actively with danger.  But this
blow, whether it fell on him by discovery or by confession, could not
be countered.  As blight falls on a rose from who knows where, the
scandalous murk would light on him.  No repulse possible!  Not even a
wriggling from under!  Brother of a murderer hung or sent to penal
servitude!  His daughter niece to a murderer!  His dead mother-a
murderer's mother!  And to wait day after day, week after week, not
knowing whether the blow would fall, was an extraordinarily atrocious
penance, the injustice of which, to a man of rectitude, seemed daily
the more monstrous.

The remand had produced evidence that the murdered man had been
drinking heavily on the night of his death, and further evidence of
the accused's professional vagabondage and destitution; it was shown,
too, that for some time the archway in Glove Lane had been his
favourite night haunt.  He had been committed for trial in January.
This time, despite misgivings, Keith had attended the police court.
To his great relief Larry was not there.  But the policeman who had
come up while he was looking at the archway, and given him afterwards
that scare in the girl's rooms, was chief witness to the way the
accused man haunted Glove Lane.  Though Keith held his silk hat high,
he still had the uncomfortable feeling that the man had recognised
him.

His conscience suffered few, if any, twinges for letting this man
rest under the shadow of the murder.  He genuinely believed that
there was not evidence enough to convict; nor was it in him to
appreciate the tortures of a vagabond shut up.  The scamp deserved
what he had got, for robbing a dead body; and in any case such a
scarecrow was better off in prison than sleeping out under archways
in December.  Sentiment was foreign to Keith's character, and his
justice that of those who subordinate the fates of the weak and
shiftless to the needful paramountcy of the strong and well
established.

His daughter came back from school for the Christmas holidays.  It
was hard to look up from her bright eyes and rosy cheeks and see this
shadow hanging above his calm and ordered life, as in a glowing room
one's eye may catch an impending patch of darkness drawn like a
spider's web across a corner of the ceiling.

On the afternoon of Christmas Eve they went, by her desire, to a
church in Soho, where the Christmas Oratorio was being given; and
coming away passed, by chance of a wrong turning, down Borrow Street.
Ugh!  How that startled moment, when the girl had pressed herself
against him in the dark, and her terror-stricken whisper: "Oh!  Who
is it?"  leaped out before him!  Always that business--that ghastly
business!  After the trial he would have another try to get them both
away.  And he thrust his arm within his young daughter's, hurrying
her on, out of this street where shadows filled all the winter air.

But that evening when she had gone to bed he felt uncontrollably
restless.  He had not seen Larry for weeks.  What was he about?  What
desperations were hatching in his disorderly brain?  Was he very
miserable; had he perhaps sunk into a stupor of debauchery?  And the
old feeling of protectiveness rose up in him; a warmth born of long
ago Christmas Eves, when they had stockings hung out in the night
stuffed by a Santa Claus, whose hand never failed to tuck them up,
whose kiss was their nightly waft into sleep.

Stars were sparkling out there over the river; the sky frosty-clear,
and black.  Bells had not begun to ring as yet.  And obeying an
obscure, deep impulse, Keith wrapped himself once more into his fur
coat, pulled a motoring cap over his eyes, and sallied forth.
In the Strand he took a cab to Fitzroy Street.  There was no light in
Larry's windows, and on a card he saw the words "To Let."  Gone!  Had
he after all cleared out for good?  But how-without money?  And the
girl?  Bells were ringing now in the silent frostiness.  Christmas
Eve!  And Keith thought: 'If only this wretched business were off my
mind!  Monstrous that one should suffer for the faults of others!'
He took a route which led him past Borrow Street.  Solitude brooded
there, and he walked resolutely down on the far side, looking hard at
the girl's window.  There was a light.  The curtains just failed to
meet, so that a thin gleam shone through.  He crossed; and after
glancing swiftly up and down, deliberately peered in.

He only stood there perhaps twenty seconds, but visual records
gleaned in a moment sometimes outlast the visions of hours and days.
The electric light was not burning; but, in the centre of the room
the girl was kneeling in her nightgown before a little table on which
were four lighted candles.  Her arms were crossed on her breast; the
candle-light shone on her fair cropped hair, on the profile of cheek
and chin, on her bowed white neck.  For a moment he thought her
alone; then behind her saw his brother in a sleeping suit, leaning
against the wall, with arms crossed, watching.  It was the expression
on his face which burned the whole thing in, so that always
afterwards he was able to see that little scene--such an expression
as could never have been on the face of one even faintly conscious
that he was watched by any living thing on earth. The whole of
Larry's heart and feeling seemed to have come up out of him.
Yearning, mockery, love, despair!  The depth of his feeling for this
girl, his stress of mind, fears, hopes; the flotsam good and evil of
his soul, all transfigured there, exposed and unforgettable.  The
candle-light shone upward on to his face, twisted by the strangest
smile; his eyes, darker and more wistful than mortal eyes should be,
seemed to beseech and mock the white-clad girl, who, all unconscious,
knelt without movement, like a carved figure of devotion.  The words
seemed coming from his lips: "Pray for us!  Bravo!  Yes!  Pray for
us!"  And suddenly Keith saw her stretch out her arms, and lift her
face with a look of ecstasy, and Laurence starting forward.  What had
she seen beyond the candle flames?  It is the unexpected which
invests visions with poignancy.  Nothing more strange could Keith
have seen in this nest of the murky and illicit.  But in sheer panic
lest he might be caught thus spying he drew back and hurried on.
So Larry was living there with her!  When the moment came he could
still find him.

Before going in, he stood full five minutes leaning on the terrace
parapet before his house, gazing at the star-frosted sky, and the
river cut by the trees into black pools, oiled over by gleams from
the Embankment lamps.  And, deep down, behind his mere thoughts, he
ached-somehow, somewhere ached.  Beyond the cage of all that he saw
and heard and thought, he had perceived something he could not reach.
But the night was cold, the bells silent, for it had struck twelve.
Entering his house, he stole upstairs.




VII

If for Keith those six weeks before the Glove Lane murder trial came
on were fraught with uneasiness and gloom, they were for Laurence
almost the happiest since his youth.  From the moment when he left
his rooms and went to the girl's to live, a kind of peace and
exaltation took possession of him.  Not by any effort of will did he
throw off the nightmare hanging over him.  Nor was he drugged by
love.  He was in a sort of spiritual catalepsy.  In face of fate too
powerful for his will, his turmoil, anxiety, and even restlessness
had ceased; his life floated in the ether of "what must come, will."
Out of this catalepsy, his spirit sometimes fell headlong into black
waters.  In one such whirlpool he was struggling on the night of
Christmas Eve.  When the girl rose from her knees he asked her:

"What did you see?"

Pressing close to him, she drew him down on to the floor before the
fire; and they sat, knees drawn up, hands clasped, like two children
trying to see over the edge of the world.

"It was the Virgin I saw.  She stood against the wall and smiled.  We
shall be happy soon."

"When we die, Wanda," he said, suddenly, "let it be together.  We
shall keep each other warm, out there."

Huddling to him she whispered: "Yes, oh, yes!  If you die, I could
not go on living."

It was this utter dependence on him, the feeling that he had rescued
something, which gave him sense of anchorage.  That, and his buried
life in the retreat of these two rooms.  Just for an hour in the
morning, from nine to ten, the charwoman would come, but not another
soul all day.  They never went out together.  He would stay in bed
late, while Wanda bought what they needed for the day's meals; lying
on his back, hands clasped behind his head, recalling her face, the
movements of her slim, rounded, supple figure, robing itself before
his gaze; feeling again the kiss she had left on his lips, the gleam
of her soft eyes, so strangely dark in so fair a face.  In a sort of
trance he would lie till she came back.  Then get up to breakfast
about noon off things which she had cooked, drinking coffee.  In the
afternoon he would go out alone and walk for hours, any where, so
long as it was East.  To the East there was always suffering to be
seen, always that which soothed him with the feeling that he and his
troubles were only a tiny part of trouble; that while so many other
sorrowing and shadowy creatures lived he was not cut off.  To go West
was to encourage dejection.  In the West all was like Keith,
successful, immaculate, ordered, resolute.  He would come back tired
out, and sit watching her cook their little dinner.  The evenings
were given up to love.  Queer trance of an existence, which both were
afraid to break.  No sign from her of wanting those excitements which
girls who have lived her life, even for a few months, are supposed to
need.  She never asked him to take her anywhere; never, in word,
deed, look, seemed anything but almost rapturously content.  And yet
he knew, and she knew, that they were only waiting to see whether
Fate would turn her thumb down on them.  In these days he did not
drink.  Out of his quarter's money, when it came in, he had paid his
debts--their expenses were very small.  He never went to see Keith,
never wrote to him, hardly thought of him.  And from those dread
apparitions--Walenn lying with the breath choked out of him, and the
little grey, driven animal in the dock--he hid, as only a man can who
must hide or be destroyed.  But daily he bought a newspaper, and
feverishly, furtively scanned its columns.




VIII

Coming out of the Law Courts on the afternoon of January 28th, at the
triumphant end of a desperately fought will case, Keith saw on a
poster the words: "Glove Lane Murder: Trial and Verdict"; and with a
rush of dismay he thought: 'Good God!  I never looked at the paper
this morning!'  The elation which had filled him a second before, the
absorption he had felt for two days now in the case so hardly won,
seemed suddenly quite sickeningly trivial.  What on earth had he been
doing to forget that horrible business even for an instant?  He stood
quite still on the crowded pavement, unable, really unable, to buy a
paper.  But his face was like a piece of iron when he did step
forward and hold his penny out.  There it was in the Stop Press!
"Glove Lane Murder.  The jury returned a verdict of Guilty.  Sentence
of death was passed."

His first sensation was simple irritation.  How had they come to
commit such an imbecility?  Monstrous!  The evidence--!  Then the
futility of even reading the report, of even considering how they had
come to record such a verdict struck him with savage suddenness.
There it was, and nothing he could do or say would alter it; no
condemnation of this idiotic verdict would help reverse it.  The
situation was desperate, indeed!  That five minutes' walk from the
Law Courts to his chambers was the longest he had ever taken.

Men of decided character little know beforehand what they will do in
certain contingencies.  For the imaginations of decided people do not
endow mere contingencies with sufficient actuality.  Keith had never
really settled what he was going to do if this man were condemned.
Often in those past weeks he had said to himself: "Of course, if they
bring him in guilty, that's another thing!"  But, now that they had,
he was beset by exactly the same old arguments and feelings, the same
instincts of loyalty and protection towards Laurence and himself,
intensified by the fearful imminence of the danger.  And yet, here
was this man about to be hung for a thing he had not done!  Nothing
could get over that!  But then he was such a worthless vagabond, a
ghoul who had robbed a dead body.  If Larry were condemned in his
stead, would there be any less miscarriage of justice?  To strangle a
brute who had struck you, by the accident of keeping your hands on
his throat a few seconds too long, was there any more guilt in that--
was there even as much, as in deliberate theft from a dead man?
Reverence for order, for justice, and established fact, will, often
march shoulder to shoulder with Jesuitry in natures to whom success
is vital.

In the narrow stone passage leading to his staircase, a friend had
called out: "Bravo, Darrant!  That was a squeak!  Congratulations!"
And with a bitter little smile Keith thought: 'Congratulations!  I!'

At the first possible moment the hurried back to the Strand, and
hailing a cab, he told the man to put him down at a turning near to
Borrow Street.

It was the girl who opened to his knock.  Startled, clasping her
hands, she looked strange to Keith in her black skirt and blouse of
some soft velvety stuff the colour of faded roses.  Her round, rather
long throat was bare; and Keith noticed fretfully that she wore gold
earrings.  Her eyes, so pitch dark against her white face, and the
short fair hair, which curled into her neck, seemed both to search
and to plead.

"My brother?"

"He is not in, sir, yet."

"Do you know where he is?"

"No."

"He is living with you here now?"

"Yes."

"Are you still as fond of him as ever, then?"

With a movement, as though she despaired of words, she clasped her
hands over her heart.  And he said:

"I see."

He had the same strange feeling as on his first visit to her, and
when through the chink in the curtains he had watched her kneeling--
of pity mingled with some faint sexual emotion.  And crossing to the
fire he asked:

"May I wait for him?"

"Oh!  Please!  Will you sit down?"

But Keith shook his head.  And with a catch in her breath, she said:

"You will not take him from me.  I should die."

He turned round on her sharply.

"I don't want him taken from you.  I want to help you keep him.  Are
you ready to go away, at any time?"

"Yes.  Oh, yes!"

"And he?"

She answered almost in a whisper:

"Yes; but there is that poor man."

"That poor man is a graveyard thief; a hyena; a ghoul--not worth
consideration."  And the rasp in his own voice surprised him.

"Ah!" she sighed.  "But I am sorry for him.  Perhaps he was hungry.
I have been hungry--you do things then that you would not.  And
perhaps he has no one to love; if you have no one to love you can be
very bad.  I think of him often--in prison."

Between his teeth Keith muttered: "And Laurence?"

"We do never speak of it, we are afraid."

"He's not told you, then, about the trial?"

Her eyes dilated.

"The trial!  Oh!  He was strange last night.  This morning, too, he
got up early.  Is it-is it over?"

"Yes."

"What has come?"

"Guilty."

For a moment Keith thought she was going to faint.  She had closed
her eyes, and swayed so that he took a step, and put his hands on her
arms.

"Listen!" he said.  "Help me; don't let Laurence out of your sight.
We must have time.  I must see what they intend to do.  They can't be
going to hang this man.  I must have time, I tell you.  You must
prevent his giving himself up."

She stood, staring in his face, while he still held her arms,
gripping into her soft flesh through the velvety sleeves.

"Do you understand?"

"Yes-but if he has already!"

Keith felt the shiver which ran through her.  And the thought rushed
into his mind: 'My God!  Suppose the police come round while I'm
here!'  If Larry had indeed gone to them!  If that Policeman who had
seen him here the night after the murder should find him here again
just after the verdict!  He said almost fiercely:

"Can I trust you not to let Larry out of your sight?  Quick!
Answer!"

Clasping her hands to her breast, she answered humbly:

"I will try."

"If he hasn't already done this, watch him like a lynx!  Don't let
him go out without you.  I'll come to-morrow morning early.  You're a
Catholic, aren't you?  Swear to me that you won't let him do anything
till he's seen me again."

She did not answer, looking past him at the door; and Keith heard a
key in the latch.  There was Laurence himself, holding in his hand a
great bunch of pink lilies and white narcissi.  His face was pale and
haggard.  He said quietly:

"Hallo, Keith!"

The girl's eyes were fastened on Larry's face; and Keith, looking
from one to the other, knew that he had never had more need for
wariness.

"Have you seen?"  he said.

Laurence nodded.  His expression, as a rule so tell-tale of his
emotions, baffled Keith utterly.

"Well?"

"I've been expecting it."

"The thing can't stand--that's certain.  But I must have time to look
into the report.  I must have time to see what I can do.  D'you
understand me, Larry--I must have time."  He knew he was talking at
random.  The only thing was to get them away at once out of reach of
confession; but he dared not say so.

"Promise me that you'll do nothing, that you won't go out even till
I've seen you to-morrow morning."

Again Laurence nodded.  And Keith looked at the girl.  Would she see
that he did not break that promise?  Her eyes were still fixed
immovably on Larry's face.  And with the feeling that he could get no
further, Keith turned to go.

"Promise me," he said.

Laurence answered: "I promise."

He was smiling.  Keith could make nothing of that smile, nor of the
expression in the girl's eyes.  And saying: "I have your promise, I
rely on it!"  he went.




IX

To keep from any woman who loves, knowledge of her lover's mood, is
as hard as to keep music from moving the heart.  But when that woman
has lived in suffering, and for the first time knows the comfort of
love, then let the lover try as he may to disguise his heart--no use!
Yet by virtue of subtler abnegation she will often succeed in keeping
it from him that she knows.

When Keith was gone the girl made no outcry, asked no questions,
managed that Larry should not suspect her intuition; all that evening
she acted as if she knew of nothing preparing within him, and through
him, within herself.

His words, caresses, the very zest with which he helped her to
prepare the feast, the flowers he had brought, the wine he made her
drink, the avoidance of any word which could spoil their happiness,
all--all told her.  He was too inexorably gay and loving.  Not for
her--to whom every word and every kiss had uncannily the desperate
value of a last word and kiss--not for her to deprive herself of
these by any sign or gesture which might betray her prescience.  Poor
soul--she took all, and would have taken more, a hundredfold.  She
did not want to drink the wine he kept tilting into her glass, but,
with the acceptance learned by women who have lived her life, she did
not refuse.  She had never refused him anything.  So much had been
required of her by the detestable, that anything required by a loved
one was but an honour.

Laurence drank deeply; but he had never felt clearer, never seen
things more clearly.  The wine gave him what he wanted, an edge to
these few hours of pleasure, an exaltation of energy.  It dulled his
sense of pity, too.  It was pity he was afraid of--for himself, and
for this girl.  To make even this tawdry room look beautiful, with
firelight and candlelight, dark amber wine in the glasses, tall pink
lilies spilling their saffron, exuding their hot perfume he and even
himself must look their best.  And with a weight as of lead on her
heart, she managed that for him, letting him strew her with flowers
and crush them together with herself.  Not even music was lacking to
their feast.  Someone was playing a pianola across the street, and
the sound, very faint, came stealing when they were silent--swelling,
sinking, festive, mournful; having a far-off life of its own, like
the flickering fire-flames before which they lay embraced, or the
lilies delicate between the candles.  Listening to that music,
tracing with his finger the tiny veins on her breast, he lay like one
recovering from a swoon.  No parting.  None!  But sleep, as the
firelight sleeps when flames die; as music sleeps on its deserted
strings.

And the girl watched him.

It was nearly ten when he bade her go to bed.  And after she had gone
obedient into the bedroom, he brought ink and paper down by the fire.
The drifter, the unstable, the good-for-nothing--did not falter.  He
had thought, when it came to the point, he would fail himself; but a
sort of rage bore him forward.  If he lived on, and confessed, they
would shut him up, take from him the one thing he loved, cut him off
from her; sand up his only well in the desert.  Curse them!  And he
wrote by firelight which mellowed the white sheets of paper; while,
against the dark curtain, the girl, in her nightgown, unconscious of
the cold, stood watching.

Men, when they drown, remember their pasts.  Like the lost poet he
had "gone with the wind."  Now it was for him to be true in his
fashion.  A man may falter for weeks and weeks, consciously,
subconsciously, even in his dreams, till there comes that moment when
the only thing impossible is to go on faltering.  The black cap, the
little driven grey man looking up at it with a sort of wonder--
faltering had ceased!

He had finished now, and was but staring into the fire.

         "No more, no more, the moon is dead,
          And all the people in it;
          The poppy maidens strew the bed,
          We'll come in half a minute."

Why did doggerel start up in the mind like that?  Wanda!  The weed-
flower become so rare he would not be parted from her!  The fire, the
candles, and the fire--no more the flame and flicker!

And, by the dark curtain, the girl watched.




X

Keith went, not home, but to his club; and in the room devoted to the
reception of guests, empty at this hour, he sat down and read the
report of the trial.  The fools had made out a case that looked black
enough.  And for a long time, on the thick soft carpet which let out
no sound of footfall, he paced up and down, thinking.  He might see
the defending counsel, might surely do that as an expert who thought
there had been miscarriage of justice.  They must appeal; a petition
too might be started in the last event.  The thing could--must be put
right yet, if only Larry and that girl did nothing!

He had no appetite, but the custom of dining is too strong.  And
while he ate, he glanced with irritation at his fellow-members.  They
looked so at their ease.  Unjust--that this black cloud should hang
over one blameless as any of them!  Friends, connoisseurs of such
things--a judge among them--came specially to his table to express
their admiration of his conduct of that will case.  Tonight he had
real excuse for pride, but he felt none.  Yet, in this well-warmed
quietly glowing room, filled with decorously eating, decorously
talking men, he gained insensibly some comfort.  This surely was
reality; that shadowy business out there only the drear sound of a
wind one must and did keep out--like the poverty and grime which had
no real existence for the secure and prosperous.  He drank champagne.
It helped to fortify reality, to make shadows seem more shadowy.  And
down in the smoking-room he sat before the fire, in one of those
chairs which embalm after-dinner dreams.  He grew sleepy there, and
at eleven o'clock rose to go home.  But when he had once passed down
the shallow marble steps, out through the revolving door which let in
no draughts, he was visited by fear, as if he had drawn it in with
the breath of the January wind.  Larry's face; and the girl watching
it!  Why had she watched like that?  Larry's smile; and the flowers
in his hand?  Buying flowers at such a moment!  The girl was his
slave-whatever he told her, she would do.  But she would never be
able to stop him.  At this very moment he might be rushing to give
himself up!

His hand, thrust deep into the pocket of his fur coat, came in
contact suddenly with something cold.  The keys Larry had given him
all that time ago.  There they had lain forgotten ever since.  The
chance touch decided him.  He turned off towards Borrow Street,
walking at full speed.  He could but go again and see.  He would
sleep better if he knew that he had left no stone unturned.  At the
corner of that dismal street he had to wait for solitude before he
made for the house which he now loathed with a deadly loathing.  He
opened the outer door and shut it to behind him.  He knocked, but no
one came.  Perhaps they had gone to bed.  Again and again he knocked,
then opened the door, stepped in, and closed it carefully.  Candles
lighted, the fire burning; cushions thrown on the floor in front of
it and strewn with flowers!  The table, too, covered with flowers and
with the remnants of a meal.  Through the half-drawn curtain he could
see that the inner room was also lighted.  Had they gone out, leaving
everything like this?  Gone out!  His heart beat.  Bottles! Larry had
been drinking!

Had it really come?  Must he go back home with this murk on him;
knowing that his brother was a confessed and branded murderer?  He
went quickly, to the half-drawn curtains and looked in.  Against the
wall he saw a bed, and those two in it.  He recoiled in sheer
amazement and relief.  Asleep with curtains undrawn, lights left on?
Asleep through all his knocking!  They must both be drunk.  The blood
rushed up in his neck.  Asleep!  And rushing forward again, he called
out: "Larry!"  Then, with a gasp he went towards the bed.  "Larry!"
No answer!  No movement!  Seizing his brother's shoulder, he shook it
violently.  It felt cold.  They were lying in each other's arms,
breast to breast, lips to lips, their faces white in the light
shining above the dressing-table.  And such a shudder shook Keith
that he had to grasp the brass rail above their heads.  Then he bent
down, and wetting his finger, placed it close to their joined lips.
No two could ever swoon so utterly as that; not even a drunken sleep
could be so fast.  His wet finger felt not the faintest stir of air,
nor was there any movement in the pulses of their hands.  No breath!
No life!  The eyes of the girl were closed.  How strangely innocent
she looked!  Larry's open eyes seemed to be gazing at her shut eyes;
but Keith saw that they were sightless.  With a sort of sob he drew
down the lids.  Then, by an impulse that he could never have
explained, he laid a hand on his brother's head, and a hand on the
girl's fair hair.  The clothes had fallen down a little from her bare
shoulder; he pulled them up, as if to keep her warm, and caught the
glint of metal; a tiny gilt crucifix no longer than a thumbnail, on a
thread of steel chain, had slipped down from her breast into the
hollow of the arm which lay round Larry's neck.  Keith buried it
beneath the clothes and noticed an envelope pinned to the coverlet;
bending down, he read: "Please give this at once to the police.--
LAURENCE DARRANT."  He thrust it into his pocket.  Like elastic
stretched beyond its uttermost, his reason, will, faculties of
calculation and resolve snapped to within him.  He thought with
incredible swiftness: 'I must know nothing of this.  I must go!'
And, almost before he knew that he had moved, he was out again in the
street.

He could never have told of what he thought while he was walking
home.  He did not really come to himself till he was in his study.
There, with a trembling hand, he poured himself out whisky and drank
it off.  If he had not chanced to go there, the charwoman would have
found them when she came in the morning, and given that envelope to
the police!  He took it out.  He had a right--a right to know what
was in it!  He broke it open.

"I, Laurence Darrant, about to die by my own hand, declare that this
is a solemn and true confession.  I committed what is known as the
Glove Lane Murder on the night of November the 27th last in the
following way"--on and on to the last words--"We didn't want to die;
but we could not bear separation, and I couldn't face letting an
innocent man be hung for me.  I do not see any other way.  I beg that
there may be no postmortem on our bodies.  The stuff we have taken is
some of that which will be found on the dressing-table.  Please bury
us together.

"LAURENCE DARRANT.
"January the 28th, about ten o'clock p.m."

Full five minutes Keith stood with those sheets of paper in his hand,
while the clock ticked, the wind moaned a little in the trees
outside, the flames licked the logs with the quiet click and ruffle
of their intense far-away life down there on the hearth.  Then he
roused himself, and sat down to read the whole again.


There it was, just as Larry had told it to him-nothing left out, very
clear; even to the addresses of people who could identify the girl as
having once been Walenn's wife or mistress.  It would convince.  Yes!
It would convince.

The sheets dropped from his hand.  Very slowly he was grasping the
appalling fact that on the floor beside his chair lay the life or
death of yet another man; that by taking this confession he had taken
into his own hands the fate of the vagabond lying under sentence of
death; that he could not give him back his life without incurring the
smirch of this disgrace, without even endangering himself.  If he let
this confession reach the authorities, he could never escape the
gravest suspicion that he had known of the whole affair during these
two months.  He would have to attend the inquest, be recognised by
that policeman as having come to the archway to see where the body
had lain, as having visited the girl the very evening after the
murder.  Who would believe in the mere coincidence of such visits on
the part of the murderer's brother.  But apart from that suspicion,
the fearful scandal which so sensational an affair must make would
mar his career, his life, his young daughter's life!  Larry's suicide
with this girl would make sensation enough as it was; but nothing to
that other.  Such a death had its romance; involved him in no way
save as a mourner, could perhaps even be hushed up!  The other--
nothing could hush that up, nothing prevent its ringing to the house-
tops.  He got up from his chair, and for many minutes roamed the room
unable to get his mind to bear on the issue. Images kept starting up
before him.  The face of the man who handed him wig and gown each
morning, puffy and curious, with a leer on it he had never noticed
before; his young daughter's lifted eyebrows, mouth drooping, eyes
troubled; the tiny gilt crucifix glinting in the hollow of the dead
girl's arm; the sightless look in Larry's unclosed eyes; even his own
thumb and finger pulling the lids down.  And then he saw a street and
endless people passing, turning to stare at him.  And, stopping in
his tramp, he said aloud: "Let them go to hell!  Seven days' wonder!"
Was he not trustee to that confession!  Trustee!  After all he had
done nothing to be ashamed of, even if he had kept knowledge dark.  A
brother!  Who could blame him?  And he picked up those sheets of
paper.  But, like a great murky hand, the scandal spread itself about
him; its coarse malignant voice seemed shouting: "Paiper!...
Paiper!... Glove Lane Murder!... Suicide and confession of brother of
well-known K.C....  Well-known K.C.'s brother....  Murder and
suicide.... Paiper!"  Was he to let loose that flood of foulness?
Was he, who had done nothing, to smirch his own little daughter's
life; to smirch his dead brother, their dead mother--himself, his own
valuable, important future?  And all for a sewer rat!  Let him hang,
let the fellow hang if he must!  And that was not certain.  Appeal!
Petition!  He might--he should be saved!  To have got thus far, and
then, by his own action, topple himself down!

With a sudden darting movement he thrust the confession in among the
burning coals.  And a smile licked at the folds in his dark face,
like those flames licking the sheets of paper, till they writhed and
blackened.  With the toe of his boot he dispersed their scorched and
crumbling wafer.  Stamp them in!  Stamp in that man's life!  Burnt!
No more doubts, no more of this gnawing fear!  Burnt?  A man--an
innocent-sewer rat!  Recoiling from the fire he grasped his forehead.
It was burning hot and seemed to be going round.

Well, it was done!  Only fools without will or purpose regretted.
And suddenly he laughed.  So Larry had died for nothing!  He had no
will, no purpose, and was dead!  He and that girl might now have been
living, loving each other in the warm night, away at the other end of
the world, instead of lying dead in the cold night here!  Fools and
weaklings regretted, suffered from conscience and remorse.  A man
trod firmly, held to his purpose, no matter what!

He went to the window and drew back the curtain.  What was that?  A
gibbet in the air, a body hanging?  Ah!  Only the trees--the dark
trees--the winter skeleton trees!  Recoiling, he returned to his
armchair and sat down before the fire.  It had been shining like
that, the lamp turned low, his chair drawn up, when Larry came in
that afternoon two months ago.  Bah!  He had never come at all!  It
was a nightmare.  He had been asleep.  How his head burned!  And
leaping up, he looked at the calendar on his bureau.  "January the
28th!"  No dream!  His face hardened and darkened.  On!  Not like
Larry!  On!

1914.







A STOIC

I

1

         "Aequam memento rebus in arduis
          Servare mentem:"--Horace.

In the City of Liverpool, on a January day of 1905, the Board-room of
"The Island Navigation Company" rested, as it were, after the labours
of the afternoon.  The long table was still littered with the ink,
pens, blotting-paper, and abandoned documents of six persons--a
deserted battlefield of the brain.  And, lonely, in his chairman's
seat at the top end old Sylvanus Heythorp sat, with closed eyes,
still and heavy as an image.  One puffy, feeble hand, whose fingers
quivered, rested on the arm of his chair; the thick white hair on his
massive head glistened in the light from a green-shaded lamp.  He was
not asleep, for every now and then his sanguine cheeks filled, and a
sound, half sigh, half grunt, escaped his thick lips between a white
moustache and the tiny tuft of white hairs above his cleft chin.
Sunk in the chair, that square thick trunk of a body in short black-
braided coat seemed divested of all neck.

Young Gilbert Farney, secretary of "The Island Navigation Company,"
entering his hushed Board-room, stepped briskly to the table,
gathered some papers, and stood looking at his chairman.  Not more
than thirty-five, with the bright hues of the optimist in his hair,
beard, cheeks, and eyes, he had a nose and lips which curled
ironically.  For, in his view, he was the Company; and its Board did
but exist to chequer his importance.  Five days in the week for seven
hours a day he wrote, and thought, and wove the threads of its
business, and this lot came down once a week for two or three hours,
and taught their grandmother to suck eggs.  But watching that red-
cheeked, white-haired, somnolent figure, his smile was not so
contemptuous as might have been expected.  For after all, the
chairman was a wonderful old boy.  A man of go and insight could not
but respect him.  Eighty!  Half paralysed, over head and ears in
debt, having gone the pace all his life--or so they said!--till at
last that mine in Ecuador had done for him--before the secretary's
day, of course, but he had heard of it.  The old chap had bought it
up on spec'--"de l'audace, toujours de l'audace," as he was so fond
of saying--paid for it half in cash and half in promises, and then--
the thing had turned out empty, and left him with L20,000 worth of
the old shares unredeemed.  The old boy had weathered it out without
a bankruptcy so far.  Indomitable old buffer; and never fussy like
the rest of them!  Young Farney, though a secretary, was capable of
attachment; and his eyes expressed a pitying affection.  The Board
meeting had been long and "snadgy"--a final settling of that Pillin
business.  Rum go the chairman forcing it on them like this!  And
with quiet satisfaction the secretary thought 'And he never would
have got it through if I hadn't made up my mind that it really is
good business!'  For to expand the company was to expand himself.
Still, to buy four ships with the freight market so depressed was a
bit startling, and there would be opposition at the general meeting.
Never mind!  He and the chairman could put it through--put it
through.  And suddenly he saw the old man looking at him.

Only from those eyes could one appreciate the strength of life yet
flowing underground in that well-nigh helpless carcase--deep-coloured
little blue wells, tiny, jovial, round windows.

A sigh travelled up through layers of flesh, and he said almost
inaudibly:

"Have they come, Mr. Farney?"

"Yes, sir.  I've put them in the transfer office; said you'd be with
them in a minute; but I wasn't going to wake you."

"Haven't been asleep.  Help me up."

Grasping the edge of the table with his trembling hands, the old man
pulled, and, with Farney heaving him behind, attained his feet.  He
stood about five feet ten, and weighed fully fourteen stone; not
corpulent, but very thick all through; his round and massive head
alone would have outweighed a baby.  With eyes shut, he seemed to be
trying to get the better of his own weight, then he moved with the
slowness of a barnacle towards the door.  The secretary, watching
him, thought: 'Marvellous old chap!  How he gets about by himself is
a miracle!  And he can't retire, they say-lives on his fees!'

But the chairman was through the green baize door.  At his tortoise
gait he traversed the inner office, where the youthful clerks
suspended their figuring--to grin behind his back--and entered the
transfer office, where eight gentlemen were sitting.  Seven rose, and
one did not.  Old Heythorp raised a saluting hand to the level of his
chest and moving to an arm-chair, lowered himself into it.

"Well, gentlemen?"

One of the eight gentlemen got up again.

"Mr. Heythorp, we've appointed Mr. Brownbee to voice our views.  Mr.
Brownbee!"  And down he sat.

Mr. Brownbee rose a stoutish man some seventy years of age, with
little grey side whiskers, and one of those utterly steady faces only
to be seen in England, faces which convey the sense of business from
father to son for generations; faces which make wars, and passion,
and free thought seem equally incredible; faces which inspire
confidence, and awaken in one a desire to get up and leave the room.
Mr. Brownbee rose, and said in a suave voice:

"Mr. Heythorp, we here represent about L14,000.  When we had the
pleasure of meeting you last July, you will recollect that you held
out a prospect of some more satisfactory arrangement by Christmas.
We are now in January, and I am bound to say we none of us get
younger."

>From the depths of old Heythorp a preliminary rumble came travelling,
reached the surface, and materialised

"Don't know about you--feel a boy, myself."

The eight gentlemen looked at him.  Was he going to try and put them
off again?  Mr. Brownbee said with unruffled calm:

"I'm sure we're very glad to hear it.  But to come to the point.  We
have felt, Mr. Heythorp, and I'm sure you won't think it
unreasonable, that--er--bankruptcy would be the most satisfactory
solution.  We have waited a long time, and we want to know definitely
where we stand; for, to be quite frank, we don't see any prospect of
improvement; indeed, we fear the opposite."

"You think I'm going to join the majority."

This plumping out of what was at the back of their minds produced in
Mr. Brownbee and his colleagues a sort of chemical disturbance.  They
coughed, moved their feet, and turned away their eyes, till the one
who had not risen, a solicitor named Ventnor, said bluffly:

"Well, put it that way if you like."

Old Heythorp's little deep eyes twinkled.

"My grandfather lived to be a hundred; my father ninety-six--both of
them rips.  I'm only eighty, gentlemen; blameless life compared with
theirs."

"Indeed," Mr. Brownbee said, "we hope you have many years of this
life before you."

"More of this than of another."  And a silence fell, till old
Heythorp added: "You're getting a thousand a year out of my fees.
Mistake to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs.  I'll make it
twelve hundred.  If you force me to resign my directorships by
bankruptcy, you won't get a rap, you know."

Mr. Brownbee cleared his throat:

"We think, Mr. Heythorp, you should make it at least fifteen hundred.
In that case we might perhaps consider--"

Old Heythorp shook his head.

"We can hardly accept your assertion that we should get nothing in
the event of bankruptcy.  We fancy you greatly underrate the
possibilities.  Fifteen hundred a year is the least you can do for
us."

"See you d---d first."

Another silence followed, then Ventnor, the solicitor, said
irascibly:

"We know where we are, then."

Brownbee added almost nervously:

"Are we to understand that twelve hundred a year is your--your last
word?"

Old Heythorp nodded.  "Come again this day month, and I'll see what I
can do for you;" and he shut his eyes.

Round Mr. Brownbee six of the gentlemen gathered, speaking in low
voices; Mr. Ventnor nursed a leg and glowered at old Heythorp, who
sat with his eyes closed.  Mr. Brownbee went over and conferred with
Mr. Ventnor, then clearing his throat, he said:

"Well, sir, we have considered your proposal; we agree to accept it
for the moment.  We will come again, as you suggest, in a month's
time.

"We hope that you will by then have seen your way to something more
substantial, with a view to avoiding what we should all regret, but
which I fear will otherwise become inevitable."

Old Heythorp nodded.  The eight gentlemen took their hats, and went
out one by one, Mr. Brownbee courteously bringing up the rear.

The old man, who could not get up without assistance, stayed musing
in his chair.  He had diddled 'em for the moment into giving him
another month, and when that month was up-he would diddle 'em again!
A month ought to make the Pillin business safe, with all that hung on
it.  That poor funkey chap Joe Pillin!  A gurgling chuckle escaped
his red lips.  What a shadow the fellow had looked, trotting in that
evening just a month ago, behind his valet's announcement: "Mr.
Pillin, sir."

What a parchmenty, precise, thread-paper of a chap, with his bird's
claw of a hand, and his muffled-up throat, and his quavery:

"How do you do, Sylvanus?  I'm afraid you're not--"

"First rate.  Sit down.  Have some port."

"Port!  I never drink it.  Poison to me!  Poison!"

"Do you good!"

"Oh!  I know, that's what you always say."

You've a monstrous constitution, Sylvanus.  If I drank port and
smoked cigars and sat up till one o'clock, I should be in my grave
to-morrow.  I'm not the man I was.  The fact is, I've come to see if
you can help me.  I'm getting old; I'm growing nervous...."

"You always were as chickeny as an old hen, Joe."

"Well, my nature's not like yours.  To come to the point, I want to
sell my ships and retire.  I need rest.  Freights are very depressed.
I've got my family to think of."

"Crack on, and go broke; buck you up like anything!"

"I'm quite serious, Sylvanus."

"Never knew you anything else, Joe."

A quavering cough, and out it had come:

"Now--in a word--won't your 'Island Navigation Company' buy my
ships?"

A pause, a twinkle, a puff of smoke.  "Make it worth my while!"  He
had said it in jest; and then, in a flash, the idea had come to him.
Rosamund and her youngsters!  What a chance to put something between
them and destitution when he had joined the majority!  And so he
said:" We don't want your silly ships."

That claw of a hand waved in deprecation.  "They're very good ships--
doing quite well.  It's only my wretched health.  If I were a strong
man I shouldn't dream...."

"What d'you want for'em?"  Good Lord!  how he jumped if you asked him
a plain question.  The chap was as nervous as a guinea-fowl!

"Here are the figures--for the last four years.  I think you'll agree
that I couldn't ask less than seventy thousand."

Through the smoke of his cigar old Heythorp had digested those
figures slowly, Joe Pillin feeling his teeth and sucking lozenges the
while; then he said:

"Sixty thousand!  And out of that you pay me ten per cent., if I get
it through for you.  Take it or leave it."

"My dear Sylvanus, that's almost-cynical."

"Too good a price--you'll never get it without me."

"But a--but a commission!  You could never disclose it!"

"Arrange that all right.  Think it over.  Freights'll go lower yet.
Have some port."

"No, no!  Thank you.  No!  So you think freights will go lower?"

"Sure of it."

"Well, I'll be going.  I'm sure I don't know.  It's--it's--I must
think."

"Think your hardest."

"Yes, yes.  Good-bye.  I can't imagine how you still go on smoking
those things and drinking port.

"See you in your grave yet, Joe."  What a feeble smile the poor
fellow had!  Laugh-he couldn't!  And, alone again, he had browsed,
developing the idea which had come to him.

Though, to dwell in the heart of shipping, Sylvanus Heythorp had
lived at Liverpool twenty years, he was from the Eastern Counties, of
a family so old that it professed to despise the Conquest.  Each of
its generations occupied nearly twice as long as those of less
tenacious men.  Traditionally of Danish origin, its men folk had as a
rule bright reddish-brown hair, red cheeks, large round heads,
excellent teeth and poor morals.  They had done their best for the
population of any county in which they had settled; their offshoots
swarmed.  Born in the early twenties of the nineteenth century,
Sylvanus Heythorp, after an education broken by escapades both at
school and college, had fetched up in that simple London of the late
forties, where claret, opera, and eight per cent. for your money
ruled a cheery roost.  Made partner in his shipping firm well before
he was thirty, he had sailed with a wet sheet and a flowing tide;
dancers, claret, Cliquot, and piquet; a cab with a tiger; some
travel--all that delicious early-Victorian consciousness of nothing
save a golden time.  It was all so full and mellow that he was forty
before he had his only love affair of any depth--with the daughter of
one of his own clerks, a liaison so awkward as to necessitate a
sedulous concealment.  The death of that girl, after three years,
leaving him a, natural son, had been the chief, perhaps the only
real, sorrow of his life.  Five years later he married.  What for?
God only knew! as he was in the habit of remarking.  His wife had
been a hard, worldly, well-connected woman, who presented him with
two unnatural children, a girl and a boy, and grew harder, more
worldly, less handsome, in the process.  The migration to Liverpool,
which took place when he was sixty and she forty-two, broke what she
still had of heart, but she lingered on twelve years, finding solace
in bridge, and being haughty towards Liverpool.  Old Heythorp saw her
to her rest without regret.  He had felt no love for her whatever,
and practically none for her two children--they were in his view
colourless, pragmatical, very unexpected characters.  His son Ernest-
-in the Admiralty--he thought a poor, careful stick.  His daughter
Adela, an excellent manager, delighting in spiritual conversation and
the society of tame men, rarely failed to show him that she
considered him a hopeless heathen.  They saw as little as need be of
each other.  She was provided for under that settlement he had made
on her mother fifteen years ago, well before the not altogether
unexpected crisis in his affairs.  Very different was the feeling he
had bestowed on that son of his "under the rose."  The boy, who had
always gone by his mother's name of Larne, had on her death been sent
to some relations of hers in Ireland, and there brought up.  He had
been called to the Dublin bar, and married, young, a girl half
Cornish and half Irish; presently, having cost old Heythorp in all a
pretty penny, he had died impecunious, leaving his fair Rosamund at
thirty with a girl of eight and a boy of five.  She had not spent six
months of widowhood before coming over from Dublin to claim the old
man's guardianship.  A remarkably pretty woman, like a full-blown
rose, with greenish hazel eyes, she had turned up one morning at the
offices of "The Island Navigation Company," accompanied by her two
children--for he had never divulged to them his private address.  And
since then they had always been more or less on his hands, occupying
a small house in a suburb of Liverpool.  He visited them there, but
never asked them to the house in Sefton Park, which was in fact his
daughter's; so that his proper family and friends were unaware of
their existence.

Rosamund Larne was one of those precarious ladies who make uncertain
incomes by writing full-bodied storyettes.  In the most dismal
circumstances she enjoyed a buoyancy bordering on the indecent; which
always amused old Heythorp's cynicism.  But of his grandchildren
Phyllis and Jock (wild as colts) he had become fond.  And this chance
of getting six thousand pounds settled on them at a stroke had seemed
to him nothing but heaven-sent.  As things were, if he "went off"--
and, of course, he might at any moment, there wouldn't be a penny for
them; for he would "cut up" a good fifteen thousand to the bad.  He
was now giving them some three hundred a year out of his fees; and
dead directors unfortunately earned no fees!  Six thousand pounds at
four and a half per cent., settled so that their mother couldn't
"blue it," would give them a certain two hundred and fifty pounds a
year-better than beggary.  And the more he thought the better he
liked it, if only that shaky chap, Joe Pillin, didn't shy off when
he'd bitten his nails short over it!

Four evenings later, the "shaky chap" had again appeared at his house
in Sefton Park.

"I've thought it over, Sylvanus.  I don't like it.

"No; but you'll do it."

"It's a sacrifice.  Fifty-four thousand for four ships--it means a
considerable reduction in my income."

"It means security, my boy."

"Well, there is that; but you know, I really can't be party to a
secret commission.  If it came out, think of my name and goodness
knows what."

"It won't come out."

"Yes, yes, so you say, but--"

"All you've got to do's to execute a settlement on some third parties
that I'll name.  I'm not going to take a penny of it myself.  Get
your own lawyer to draw it up and make him trustee.  You can sign it
when the purchase has gone through.  I'll trust you, Joe.  What stock
have you got that gives four and a half per cent.?"

"Midland"

"That'll do.  You needn't sell."

"Yes, but who are these people?"

"Woman and her children I want to do a good turn to."  What a face
the fellow had made!  "Afraid of being connected with a woman, Joe?"

"Yes, you may laugh--I am afraid of being connected with someone
else's woman.  I don't like it--I don't like it at all.  I've not led
your life, Sylvanus."

"Lucky for you; you'd have been dead long ago.  Tell your lawyer it's
an old flame of yours--you old dog!"

"Yes, there it is at once, you see.  I might be subject to
blackmail."

"Tell him to keep it dark, and just pay over the income, quarterly."

"I don't like it, Sylvanus--I don't like it."

"Then leave it, and be hanged to you.  Have a cigar?"

"You know I never smoke.  Is there no other way?"

"Yes.  Sell stock in London, bank the proceeds there, and bring me
six thousand pounds in notes.  I'll hold 'em till after the general
meeting.  If the thing doesn't go through, I'll hand 'em back to
you."

"No; I like that even less."

"Rather I trusted you, eh!"

"No, not at all, Sylvanus, not at all.  But it's all playing round
the law."

"There's no law to prevent you doing what you like with your money.
What I do's nothing to you.  And mind you, I'm taking nothing from
it--not a mag.  You assist the widowed and the fatherless--just your
line, Joe!"

"What a fellow you are, Sylvanus; you don't seem capable of taking
anything seriously."

"Care killed the cat!"

Left alone after this second interview he had thought: 'The beggar'll
jump.'

And the beggar had.  That settlement was drawn and only awaited
signature.  The Board to-day had decided on the purchase; and all
that remained was to get it ratified at the general meeting.  Let him
but get that over, and this provision for his grandchildren made, and
he would snap his fingers at Brownbee and his crew-the canting
humbugs!  "Hope you have many years of this life before you!"  As if
they cared for anything but his money--their money rather!  And
becoming conscious of the length of his reverie, he grasped the arms
of his chair, heaved at his own bulk, in an effort to rise, growing
redder and redder in face and neck.  It was one of the hundred things
his doctor had told him not to do for fear of apoplexy, the humbug!
Why didn't Farney or one of those young fellows come and help him up?
To call out was undignified.  But was he to sit there all night?
Three times he failed, and after each failure sat motionless again,
crimson and exhausted; the fourth time he succeeded, and slowly made
for the office.  Passing through, he stopped and said in his extinct
voice:

"You young gentlemen had forgotten me."

"Mr. Farney said you didn't wish to be disturbed, sir."

"Very good of him.  Give me my hat and coat."

"Yes, sir."

"Thank you.  What time is it?"

"Six o'clock, sir."

"Tell Mr. Farney to come and see me tomorrow at noon, about my speech
for the general meeting."

"Yes, Sir."

"Good-night to you."

"Good-night, Sir."

At his tortoise gait he passed between the office stools to the door,
opened it feebly, and slowly vanished.

Shutting the door behind him, a clerk said:

"Poor old chairman!  He's on his last!"

Another answered:

"Gosh!  He's a tough old hulk.  He'll go down fightin'."




2

Issuing from the offices of "The Island Navigation Company," Sylvanus
Heythorp moved towards the corner whence he always took tram to
Sefton Park.  The crowded street had all that prosperous air of
catching or missing something which characterises the town where
London and New York and Dublin meet.  Old Heythorp had to cross to
the far side, and he sallied forth without regard to traffic.  That
snail-like passage had in it a touch of the sublime; the old man
seemed saying: "Knock me down and be d---d to you--I'm not going to
hurry."  His life was saved perhaps ten times a day by the British
character at large, compounded of phlegm and a liking to take
something under its protection.  The tram conductors on that line
were especially used to him, never failing to catch him under the
arms and heave him like a sack of coals, while with trembling hands
he pulled hard at the rail and strap.

"All right, sir?"

"Thank you."

He moved into the body of the tram, where somebody would always get
up from kindness and the fear that he might sit down on them; and
there he stayed motionless, his little eyes tight closed.  With his
red face, tuft of white hairs above his square cleft block of shaven
chin, and his big high-crowned bowler hat, which yet seemed too petty
for his head with its thick hair--he looked like some kind of an idol
dug up and decked out in gear a size too small.

One of those voices of young men from public schools and exchanges
where things are bought and sold, said:

"How de do, Mr. Heythorp?"

Old Heythorp opened his eyes.  That sleek cub, Joe Pillin's son!
What a young pup-with his round eyes, and his round cheeks, and his
little moustache, his fur coat, his spats, his diamond pin!

"How's your father?"  he said.

"Thanks, rather below par, worryin' about his ships.  Suppose you
haven't any news for him, sir?"

Old Heythorp nodded.  The young man was one of his pet abominations,
embodying all the complacent, little-headed mediocrity of this new
generation; natty fellows all turned out of the same mould, sippers
and tasters, chaps without drive or capacity, without even vices; and
he did not intend to gratify the cub's curiosity.

"Come to my house," he said; "I'll give you a note for him."

"Tha-anks; I'd like to cheer the old man up."

The old man!  Cheeky brat!  And closing his eyes he relapsed into
immobility.  The tram wound and ground its upward way, and he mused.
When he was that cub's age--twenty-eight or whatever it might be--he
had done most things; been up Vesuvius, driven four-in-hand, lost his
last penny on the Derby and won it back on the Oaks, known all the
dancers and operatic stars of the day, fought a duel with a Yankee at
Dieppe and winged him for saying through his confounded nose that Old
England was played out; been a controlling voice already in his
shipping firm; drunk five other of the best men in London under the
table; broken his neck steeple-chasing; shot a burglar in the legs;
been nearly drowned, for a bet; killed snipe in Chelsea; been to
Court for his sins; stared a ghost out of countenance; and travelled
with a lady of Spain.  If this young pup had done the last, it would
be all he had; and yet, no doubt, he would call himself a "spark."

The conductor touched his arm.

"'Ere you are, sir."

"Thank you."

He lowered himself to the ground, and moved in the bluish darkness
towards the gate of his daughter's house.  Bob Pillin walked beside
him, thinking: 'Poor old josser, he is gettin' a back number!'  And
he said: "I should have thought you ought to drive, sir.  My old
guv'nor would knock up at once if he went about at night like this."

The answer rumbled out into the misty air:

"Your father's got no chest; never had."

Bob Pillin gave vent to one of those fat cackles which come so
readily from a certain type of man; and old Heythorp thought:

'Laughing at his father!  Parrot!'

They had reached the porch.

A woman with dark hair and a thin, straight face and figure was
arranging some flowers in the hall.  She turned and said:

"You really ought not to be so late, Father!  It's wicked at this
time of year.  Who is it--oh!  Mr. Pillin, how do you do?  Have you
had tea?  Won't you come to the drawing-room; or do you want to see
my father?"

"Tha-anks!  I believe your father--"  And he thought: 'By Jove! the
old chap is a caution!'  For old Heythorp was crossing the hall
without having paid the faintest attention to his daughter.
Murmuring again:

"Tha-anks awfully; he wants to give me something," he followed.  Miss
Heythorp was not his style at all; he had a kind of dread of that
thin woman who looked as if she could never be unbuttoned.  They said
she was a great churchgoer and all that sort of thing.

In his sanctum old Heythorp had moved to his writing-table, and was
evidently anxious to sit down.

"Shall I give you a hand, sir?"

Receiving a shake of the head, Bob Pillin stood by the fire and
watched.  The old "sport" liked to paddle his own canoe.  Fancy
having to lower yourself into a chair like that!  When an old Johnny
got to such a state it was really a mercy when he snuffed out, and
made way for younger men.  How his Companies could go on putting up
with such a fossil for chairman was a marvel!  The fossil rumbled and
said in that almost inaudible voice:

"I suppose you're beginning to look forward to your father's shoes?"

Bob Pillin's mouth opened.  The voice went on:

"Dibs and no responsibility.  Tell him from me to drink port--add
five years to his life."

To this unwarranted attack Bob Pillin made no answer save a laugh; he
perceived that a manservant had entered the room.

"A Mrs. Larne, sir.  Will you see her?"

At this announcement the old man seemed to try and start; then he
nodded, and held out the note he had written.  Bob Pillin received it
together with the impression of a murmur which sounded like: "Scratch
a poll, Poll!"  and passing the fine figure of a woman in a fur coat,
who seemed to warm the air as she went by, he was in the hall again
before he perceived that he had left his hat.

A young and pretty girl was standing on the bearskin before the fire,
looking at him with round-eyed innocence.  He thought: 'This is
better; I mustn't disturb them for my hat'; and approaching the fire,
said:

"Jolly cold, isn't it?"

The girl smiled: "Yes-jolly."

He noticed that she had a large bunch of violets at her breast, a lot
of fair hair, a short straight nose, and round blue-grey eyes very
frank and open.  "Er" he said, "I've left my hat in there."

"What larks!"  And at her little clear laugh something moved within
Bob Pillin.

"You know this house well?"

She shook her head.  "But it's rather scrummy, isn't it?"

Bob Pillin, who had never yet thought so answered:

"Quite O.K."

The girl threw up her head to laugh again.  "O.K.?  What's that?"

Bob Pillin saw her white round throat, and thought: 'She is a
ripper!'  And he said with a certain desperation:

"My name's Pillin.  Yours is Larne, isn't it?  Are you a relation
here?"

"He's our Guardy.  Isn't he a chook?"

That rumbling whisper like "Scratch a Poll, Poll!"  recurring to Bob
Pillin, he said with reservation:

"You know him better than I do."  "Oh!  Aren't you his grandson, or
something?"

Bob Pillin did not cross himself.

"Lord!  No!  My dad's an old friend of his; that's all."

"Is your dad like him?"

"Not much."

"What a pity!  It would have been lovely if they'd been Tweedles."

Bob Pillin thought: 'This bit is something new.  I wonder what her
Christian name is.'  And he said:

"What did your godfather and godmothers in your baptism---?"

The girl laughed; she seemed to laugh at everything.

"Phyllis."

Could he say: "Is my only joy"?  Better keep it!  But-for what?  He
wouldn't see her again if he didn't look out!  And he said:

"I live at the last house in the park-the red one.  D'you know it?
Where do you?"

"Oh!  a long way--23, Millicent Villas.  It's a poky little house.  I
hate it.  We have awful larks, though."

"Who are we?"

"Mother, and myself, and Jock--he's an awful boy.  You can't conceive
what an awful boy he is.  He's got nearly red hair; I think he'll be
just like Guardy when he gets old.  He's awful!"

Bob Pillin murmured:

"I should like to see him."

"Would you?  I'll ask mother if you can.  You won't want to again; he
goes off all the time like a squib."  She threw back her head, and
again Bob Pillin felt a little giddy.  He collected himself, and
drawled:

"Are you going in to see your Guardy?"

"No.  Mother's got something special to say.  We've never been here
before, you see.  Isn't he fun, though?"

"Fun!"

"I think he's the greatest lark; but he's awfully nice to me.  Jock
calls him the last of the Stoic'uns."

A voice called from old Heythorp's den:

"Phyllis!"  It had a particular ring, that voice, as if coming from
beautifully formed red lips, of which the lower one must curve the
least bit over; it had, too, a caressing vitality, and a kind of warm
falsity.

The girl threw a laughing look back over her shoulder, and vanished
through the door into the room.

Bob Pillin remained with his back to the fire and his puppy round
eyes fixed on the air that her figure had last occupied.  He was
experiencing a sensation never felt before.  Those travels with a
lady of Spain, charitably conceded him by old Heythorp, had so far
satisfied the emotional side of this young man; they had stopped
short at Brighton and Scarborough, and been preserved from even the
slightest intrusion of love.  A calculated and hygienic career had
caused no anxiety either to himself or his father; and this sudden
swoop of something more than admiration gave him an uncomfortable
choky feeling just above his high round collar, and in the temples a
sort of buzzing--those first symptoms of chivalry.  A man of the
world does not, however, succumb without a struggle; and if his hat
had not been out of reach, who knows whether he would not have left
the house hurriedly, saying to himself: "No, no, my boy; Millicent
Villas is hardly your form, when your intentions are honourable"?
For somehow that round and laughing face, bob of glistening hair,
those wide-opened grey eyes refused to awaken the beginnings of other
intentions--such is the effect of youth and innocence on even the
steadiest young men.  With a kind of moral stammer, he was thinking:
'Can I--dare I offer to see them to their tram?  Couldn't I even nip
out and get the car round and send them home in it?  No, I might miss
them--better stick it out here!  What a jolly laugh!  What a tipping
face--strawberries and cream, hay, and all that!  Millicent Villas!'
And he wrote it on his cuff.

The door was opening; he heard that warm vibrating voice: "Come
along, Phyllis!"--the girl's laugh so high and fresh: "Right-o!
Coming!"  And with, perhaps, the first real tremor he had ever known,
he crossed to the front door.  All the more chivalrous to escort them
to the tram without a hat!  And suddenly he heard: "I've got your
hat, young man!"  And her mother's voice, warm, and simulating shock:
"Phyllis, you awful gairl!  Did you ever see such an awful gairl;
Mr.---"

"Pillin, Mother."

And then--he did not quite know how--insulated from the January air
by laughter and the scent of fur and violets, he was between them
walking to their tram.  It was like an experience out of the "Arabian
Nights," or something of that sort, an intoxication which made one
say one was going their way, though one would have to come all the
way back in the same beastly tram.  Nothing so warming had ever
happened to him as sitting between them on that drive, so that he
forgot the note in his pocket, and his desire to relieve the anxiety
of the "old man," his father.  At the tram's terminus they all got
out.  There issued a purr of invitation to come and see them some
time; a clear: "Jock'll love to see you!"  A low laugh: "You awful
gairl!"  And a flash of cunning zigzagged across his brain.  Taking
off his hat, he said:

"Thanks awfully; rather!" and put his foot back on the step of the
tram.  Thus did he delicately expose the depths of his chivalry!

"Oh!  you said you were going our way!  What one-ers you do tell!
Oh!"  The words were as music; the sight of those eyes growing
rounder, the most perfect he had ever seen; and Mrs. Larne's low
laugh, so warm yet so preoccupied, and the tips of the girl's fingers
waving back above her head.  He heaved a sigh, and knew no more till
he was seated at his club before a bottle of champagne.  Home!  Not
he!  He wished to drink and dream.  "The old man" would get his news
all right to-morrow!




3

The words: "A Mrs. Larne to see you, sir," had been of a nature to
astonish weaker nerves.  What had brought her here?  She knew she
mustn't come!  Old Heythorp had watched her entrance with cynical
amusement.  The way she whiffed herself at that young pup in passing,
the way her eyes slid round!  He had a very just appreciation of his
son's widow; and a smile settled deep between his chin tuft and his
moustache.  She lifted his hand, kissed it, pressed it to her
splendid bust, and said:

"So here I am at last, you see.  Aren't you surprised?"

Old Heythorp, shook his head.

"I really had to come and see you, Guardy; we haven't had a sight of
you for such an age.  And in this awful weather!  How are you, dear
old Guardy?"

"Never better."  And, watching her green-grey eyes, he added:

"Haven't a penny for you!"

Her face did not fall; she gave her feather-laugh.

"How dreadful of you to think I came for that!  But I am in an awful
fix, Guardy."

"Never knew you not to be."

"Just let me tell you, dear; it'll be some relief.  I'm having the
most terrible time."

She sank into a low chair, disengaging an overpowering scent of
violets, while melancholy struggled to subdue her face and body.

"The most awful fix.  I expect to be sold up any moment.  We may be
on the streets to-morrow.  I daren't tell the children; they're so
happy, poor darlings.  I shall be obliged to take Jock away from
school.  And Phyllis will have to stop her piano and dancing; it's an
absolute crisis.  And all due to those Midland Syndicate people.
I've been counting on at least two hundred for my new story, and the
wretches have refused it."

With a tiny handkerchief she removed one tear from the corner of one
eye.  "It is hard, Guardy; I worked my brain silly over that story."

>From old Heythorp came a mutter which sounded suspiciously like:

"Rats!"

Heaving a sigh, which conveyed nothing but the generosity of her
breathing apparatus, Mrs. Larne went on:

"You couldn't, I suppose, let me have just one hundred?"

"Not a bob."

She sighed again, her eyes slid round the room; then in her warm
voice she murmured:

"Guardy, you were my dear Philip's father, weren't you?  I've never
said anything; but of course you were.  He was so like you, and so is
Jock."

Nothing moved in old Heythorp's face.  No pagan image consulted with
flowers and song and sacrifice could have returned less answer.  Her
dear Philip!  She had led him the devil of a life, or he was a
Dutchman!  And what the deuce made her suddenly trot out the skeleton
like this?  But Mrs. Larne's eyes were still wandering.

"What a lovely house!  You know, I think you ought to help me,
Guardy.  Just imagine if your grandchildren were thrown out into the
street!"

The old man grinned.  He was not going to deny his relationship--it
was her look-out, not his.  But neither was he going to let her rush
him.

"And they will be; you couldn't look on and see it.  Do come to my
rescue this once.  You really might do something for them."

With a rumbling sigh he answered:

"Wait.  Can't give you a penny now.  Poor as a church mouse."

"Oh!  Guardy

"Fact."

Mrs. Larne heaved one of her most buoyant sighs.  She certainly did
not believe him.

"Well!" she said; "you'll be sorry when we come round one night and
sing for pennies under your window.  Wouldn't you like to see
Phyllis?  I left her in the hall.  She's growing such a sweet gairl.
Guardy just fifty!"

"Not a rap."

Mrs. Larne threw up her hands.  "Well! You'll repent it.  I'm at my
last gasp."  She sighed profoundly, and the perfume of violets
escaped in a cloud; Then, getting up, she went to the door and
called: "Phyllis!"

When the girl entered old Heythorp felt the nearest approach to a
flutter of the heart for many years.  She had put her hair up!  She
was like a spring day in January; such a relief from that scented
humbug, her mother.  Pleasant the touch of her lips on his forehead,
the sound of her clear voice, the sight of her slim movements, the
feeling that she did him credit--clean-run stock, she and that young
scamp Jock--better than the holy woman, his daughter Adela, would
produce if anyone were ever fool enough to marry her, or that
pragmatical fellow, his son Ernest.

And when they were gone he reflected with added zest on the six
thousand pounds he was getting for them out of Joe Pillin and his
ships.  He would have to pitch it strong in his speech at the general
meeting.  With freights so low, there was bound to be opposition.  No
dash nowadays; nothing but gabby caution!  They were a scrim-shanking
lot on the Board--he had had to pull them round one by one--the deuce
of a tug getting this thing through!  And yet, the business was sound
enough.  Those ships would earn money, properly handled-good money

His valet, coming in to prepare him for dinner, found him asleep.  He
had for the old man as much admiration as may be felt for one who
cannot put his own trousers on.  He would say to the housemaid Molly:
"He's a game old blighter--must have been a rare one in his day.
Cocks his hat at you, even now, I see!"  To which the girl, Irish and
pretty, would reply: "Well, an' sure I don't mind, if it gives um a
pleasure.  'Tis better anyway than the sad eye I get from herself."

At dinner, old Heythorp always sat at one end of the rosewood table
and his daughter at the other.  It was the eminent moment of the day.
With napkin tucked high into his waistcoat, he gave himself to the
meal with passion.  His palate was undimmed, his digestion
unimpaired.  He could still eat as much as two men, and drink more
than one.  And while he savoured each mouthful he never spoke if he
could help it.  The holy woman had nothing to say that he cared to
hear, and he nothing to say that she cared to listen to.  She had a
horror, too, of what she called "the pleasures of the table"--those
lusts of the flesh!  She was always longing to dock his grub, he
knew.  Would see her further first!  What other pleasures were there
at his age?  Let her wait till she was eighty.  But she never would
be; too thin and holy!

This evening, however, with the advent of the partridge she did
speak.

"Who were your visitors, Father?"

Trust her for nosing anything out!  Fixing his little blue eyes on
her, he mumbled with a very full mouth: "Ladies."

"So I saw; what ladies?"

He had a longing to say: 'Part of one of my families under the rose.'
As a fact it was the best part of the only one, but the temptation to
multiply exceedingly was almost overpowering.  He checked himself,
however, and went on eating partridge, his secret irritation
crimsoning his cheeks; and he watched her eyes, those cold precise
and round grey eyes, noting it, and knew she was thinking: 'He eats
too much.'

She said: "Sorry I'm not considered fit to be told.  You ought not to
be drinking hock."

Old Heythorp took up the long green glass, drained it, and repressing
fumes and emotion went on with his partridge.  His daughter pursed
her lips, took a sip of water, and said:

"I know their name is Larne, but it conveyed nothing to me; perhaps
it's just as well."

The old man, mastering a spasm, said with a grin:

"My daughter-in-law and my granddaughter."

"What!  Ernest married--Oh!  nonsense!"

He chuckled, and shook his head.

"Then do you mean to say, Father, that you were married before you
married my mother?"

"No."

The expression on her face was as good as a play!

She said with a sort of disgust: "Not married!  I see.  I suppose
those people are hanging round your neck, then; no wonder you're
always in difficulties.  Are there any more of them?"

Again the old man suppressed that spasm, and the veins in his neck
and forehead swelled alarmingly.  If he had spoken he would
infallibly have choked.  He ceased eating, and putting his hands on
the table tried to raise himself.  He could not and subsiding in his
chair sat glaring at the stiff, quiet figure of his daughter.

"Don't be silly, Father, and make a scene before Meller.  Finish your
dinner."

He did not answer.  He was not going to sit there to be dragooned and
insulted!  His helplessness had never so weighed on him before.  It
was like a revelation.  A log--that had to put up with anything!  A
log!  And, waiting for his valet to return, he cunningly took up his
fork.

In that saintly voice of hers she said:

"I suppose you don't realise that it's a shock to me.  I don't know
what Ernest will think--"

"Ernest be d---d."

"I do wish, Father, you wouldn't swear."

Old Heythorp's rage found vent in a sort of rumble.  How the devil
had he gone on all these years in the same house with that woman,
dining with her day after day!  But the servant had come back now,
and putting down his fork he said:

"Help me up!"

The man paused, thunderstruck, with the souffle balanced.  To leave
dinner unfinished--it was a portent!

"Help me up!"

"Mr. Heythorp's not very well, Meller; take his other arm."

The old man shook off her hand.

"I'm very well.  Help me up.  Dine in my own room in future."

Raised to his feet, he walked slowly out; but in his sanctum he did
not sit down, obsessed by this first overwhelming realisation of his
helplessness.  He stood swaying a little, holding on to the table,
till the servant, having finished serving dinner, brought in his
port.

"Are you waiting to sit down, sir?"

He shook his head.  Hang it, he could do that for himself, anyway.
He must think of something to fortify his position against that
woman.  And he said:

"Send me Molly!"

"Yes, sir."  The man put down the port and went.

Old Heythorp filled his glass, drank, and filled again.  He took a
cigar from the box and lighted it.  The girl came in, a grey-eyed,
dark-haired damsel, and stood with her hands folded, her head a
little to one side, her lips a little parted.  The old man said:

"You're a human being."

"I would hope so, sirr."

"I'm going to ask you something as a human being--not a servant--
see?"

"No, sirr; but I will be glad to do anything you like."

"Then put your nose in here every now and then, to see if I want
anything.  Meller goes out sometimes.  Don't say anything; Just put
your nose in."

"Oh!  an' I will; 'tis a pleasure 'twill be to do ut."

He nodded, and when she had gone lowered himself into his chair with
a sense of appeasement.  Pretty girl!  Comfort to see a pretty face-
not a pale, peeky thing like Adela's.  His anger burned up anew.  So
she counted on his helplessness, had begun to count on that, had she?
She should see that there was life in the old dog yet!  And his
sacrifice of the uneaten souffle, the still less eaten mushrooms, the
peppermint sweet with which he usually concluded dinner, seemed to
consecrate that purpose.  They all thought he was a hulk, without a
shot left in the locker!  He had seen a couple of them at the Board
that afternoon shrugging at each other, as though saying: 'Look at
him!' And young Farney pitying him.  Pity, forsooth!  And that
coarse-grained solicitor chap at the creditors' meeting curling his
lip as much as to say: 'One foot in the grave!'  He had seen the
clerks dowsing the glim of their grins; and that young pup Bob Pillin
screwing up his supercilious mug over his dog-collar.  He knew that
scented humbug Rosamund was getting scared that he'd drop off before
she'd squeezed him dry.  And his valet was always looking him up and
down queerly.  As to that holy woman--!  Not quite so fast!  Not
quite so fast!  And filling his glass for the fourth time, he slowly
sucked down the dark red fluid, with the "old boots" flavour which
his soul loved, and, drawing deep at his cigar, closed his eyes.




II

1

The room in the hotel where the general meetings of "The Island
Navigation Company" were held was nearly full when the secretary came
through the door which as yet divided the shareholders from their
directors.  Having surveyed their empty chairs, their ink and papers,
and nodded to a shareholder or two, he stood, watch in hand,
contemplating the congregation.  A thicker attendance than he had
ever seen!  Due, no doubt, to the lower dividend, and this Pillin
business.  And his tongue curled.  For if he had a natural contempt
for his Board, with the exception of the chairman, he had a still
more natural contempt for his shareholders.  Amusing spectacle when
you came to think of it, a general meeting!  Unique!  Eighty or a
hundred men, and five women, assembled through sheer devotion to
their money.  Was any other function in the world so single-hearted.
Church was nothing to it--so many motives were mingled there with
devotion to one's soul.  A well-educated young man--reader of Anatole
France, and other writers--he enjoyed ironic speculation.  What
earthly good did they think they got by coming here?  Half-past two!
He put his watch back into his pocket, and passed into the Board-
room.

There, the fumes of lunch and of a short preliminary meeting made
cosy the February atmosphere.  By the fire four directors were
conversing rather restlessly; the fifth was combing his beard; the
chairman sat with eyes closed and red lips moving rhythmically in the
sucking of a lozenge, the slips of his speech ready in his hand.  The
secretary said in his cheerful voice: "Time, sir."

Old Heythorp swallowed, lifted his arms, rose with help, and walked
through to his place at the centre of the table.  The five directors
followed.  And, standing at the chairman's right, the secretary read
the minutes, forming the words precisely with his curling tongue.
Then, assisting the chairman to his feet, he watched those rows of
faces, and thought: 'Mistake to let them see he can't get up without
help.  He ought to have let me read his speech--I wrote it.'

The chairman began to speak:

"It is my duty and my pleasure,' ladies and gentlemen, for the
nineteenth consecutive year to present to you the directors' report
and the accounts for the past twelve months.  You will all have had
special notice of a measure of policy on which your Board has
decided, and to which you will be asked to-day to give your
adherence--to that I shall come at the end of my remarks...."

"Excuse me, sir; we can't hear a word down here."

'Ah!' thought the secretary, 'I was expecting that.'

The chairman went on, undisturbed.  But several shareholders now
rose, and the same speaker said testily: "We might as well go home.
If the chairman's got no voice, can't somebody read for him?"

The chairman took a sip of water, and resumed.  Almost all in the
last six rows were now on their feet, and amid a hubbub of murmurs
the chairman held out to the secretary the slips of his speech, and
fell heavily back into his chair.

The secretary re-read from the beginning; and as each sentence fell
from his tongue, he thought: 'How good that is!'  'That's very
clear!'  'A neat touch!'  'This is getting them.'  It seemed to him a
pity they could not know it was all his composition.  When at last he
came to the Pillin sale he paused for a second.

"I come now to the measure of policy to which I made allusion at the
beginning of my speech.  Your Board has decided to expand your
enterprise by purchasing the entire fleet of Pillin & Co., Ltd.  By
this transaction we become the owners of the four steamships Smyrna,
Damascus, Tyre, and Sidon, vessels in prime condition with a total
freight-carrying capacity of fifteen thousand tons, at the low
inclusive price of sixty thousand pounds.  Gentlemen, de l'audace,
toujours de l'audace!"--it was the chairman's phrase, his bit of the
speech, and the secretary did it more than justice.  "Times are bad,
but your Board is emphatically of the opinion that they are touching
bottom; and this, in their view, is the psychological moment for a
forward stroke.  They confidently recommend your adoption of their
policy and the ratification of this purchase, which they believe
will, in the not far distant future, substantially increase the
profits of the Company."  The secretary sat down with reluctance.
The speech should have continued with a number of appealing sentences
which he had carefully prepared, but the chairman had cut them out
with the simple comment: "They ought to be glad of the chance."  It
was, in his view, an error.

The director who had combed his beard now rose--a man of presence,
who might be trusted to say nothing long and suavely.  While he was
speaking the secretary was busy noting whence opposition was likely
to come.  The majority were sitting owl-like-a good sign; but some
dozen were studying their copies of the report, and three at least
were making notes--Westgate, for, instance, who wanted to get on the
Board, and was sure to make himself unpleasant--the time-honoured
method of vinegar; and Batterson, who also desired to come on, and
might be trusted to support the Board--the time-honoured method of
oil; while, if one knew anything of human nature, the fellow who had
complained that he might as well go home would have something
uncomfortable to say.  The director finished his remarks, combed his
beard with his fingers, and sat down.

A momentary pause ensued.  Then Messieurs Westgate and Batterson rose
together.  Seeing the chairman nod towards the latter, the secretary
thought: 'Mistake!  He should have humoured Westgate by giving him
precedence.'  But that was the worst of the old man, he had no notion
of the suaviter in modo!  Mr. Batterson thus unchained--would like,
if he might be so allowed, to congratulate the Board on having
piloted their ship so smoothly through the troublous waters of the
past year.  With their worthy chairman still at the helm, he had no
doubt that in spite of the still low--he would not say falling-
barometer, and the-er-unseasonable climacteric, they might rely on
weathering the--er--he would not say storm.  He would confess that
the present dividend of four per cent. was not one which satisfied
every aspiration (Hear, hear!), but speaking for himself, and he
hoped for others--and here Mr. Batterson looked round--he recognised
that in all the circumstances it was as much as they had the right--
er--to expect.  But following the bold but to his mind prudent
development which the Board proposed to make, he thought that they
might reasonably, if not sanguinely, anticipate a more golden future.
("No, no!") A shareholder said, 'No, no!'  That might seem to
indicate a certain lack of confidence in the special proposal before
the meeting.  ("Yes!") From that lack of confidence he would like at
once to dissociate himself.  Their chairman, a man of foresight and
acumen, and valour proved on many a field and--er--sea, would not
have committed himself to this policy without good reason.  In his
opinion they were in safe hands, and he was glad to register his
support of the measure proposed.  The chairman had well said in his
speech: 'de l'audace, toujours de l'audace!'  Shareholders would
agree with him that there could be no better motto for Englishmen.
Ahem!

Mr. Batterson sat down.  And Mr. Westgate rose: He wanted--he said--
to know more, much more, about this proposition, which to his mind
was of a very dubious wisdom....  'Ah!' thought the secretary, 'I
told the old boy he must tell them more'....  To whom, for instance,
had the proposal first been made?  To him!--the chairman said.  Good!
But why were Pillins selling, if freights were to go up, as they were
told?

"Matter of opinion."

"Quite so; and in my opinion they are going lower, and Pillins were
right to sell.  It follows that we are wrong to buy."  ("Hear, hear!"
"No, no!") "Pillins are shrewd people.  What does the chairman say?
Nerves!  Does he mean to tell us that this sale was the result of
nerves?"

The chairman nodded.

"That appears to me a somewhat fantastic theory; but I will leave
that and confine myself to asking the grounds on which the chairman
bases his confidence; in fact, what it is which is actuating the
Board in pressing on us at such a time what I have no hesitation in
stigmatising as a rash proposal.  In a word, I want light as well as
leading in this matter."

Mr. Westgate sat down.

What would the chairman do now?  The situation was distinctly
awkward--seeing his helplessness and the lukewarmness of the Board
behind him.  And the secretary felt more strongly than ever the
absurdity of his being an underling, he who in a few well-chosen
words could so easily have twisted the meeting round his thumb.
Suddenly he heard the long, rumbling sigh which preluded the
chairman's speeches.

"Has any other gentleman anything to say before I move the adoption
of the report?"

Phew!  That would put their backs up.  Yes, sure enough it had
brought that fellow, who had said he might as well go home, to his
feet!  Now for something nasty!

"Mr. Westgate requires answering.  I don't like this business.  I
don't impute anything to anybody; but it looks to me as if there were
something behind it which the shareholders ought to be told.  Not
only that; but, to speak frankly, I'm not satisfied to be ridden over
roughshod in this fashion by one who, whatever he may have been in
the past, is obviously not now in the prime of his faculties."

With a gasp the secretary thought: 'I knew that was a plain-spoken
man!'

He heard again the rumbling beside him.  The chairman had gone
crimson, his mouth was pursed, his little eyes were very blue.

"Help me up," he said.

The secretary helped him, and waited, rather breathless.

The chairman took a sip of water, and his voice, unexpectedly loud,
broke an ominous hush:

"Never been so insulted in my life.  My best services have been at
your disposal for nineteen years; you know what measure of success
this Company has attained.  I am the oldest man here, and my
experience of shipping is, I hope, a little greater than that of the
two gentlemen who spoke last.  I have done my best for you, ladies
and gentlemen, and we shall see whether you are going to endorse an
indictment of my judgment and of my honour, if I am to take the last
speaker seriously.  This purchase is for your good.  'There is a tide
in the affairs of men'--and I for one am not content, never have
been, to stagnate.  If that is what you want, however, by all means
give your support to these gentlemen and have done with it.  I tell
you freights will go up before the end of the year; the purchase is a
sound one, more than a sound one--I, at any rate, stand or fall by
it.  Refuse to ratify it, if you like; if you do, I shall resign."

He sank back into his seat.  The secretary, stealing a glance,
thought with a sort of enthusiasm: 'Bravo!  Who'd have thought he
could rally his voice like that?  A good touch, too, that about his
honour!  I believe he's knocked them.

It's still dicky, though, if that fellow at the back gets up again;
the old chap can't work that stop a second time.  'Ah! here was 'old
Apple-pie' on his hind legs.  That was all right!

"I do not hesitate to say that I am an old friend of the chairman; we
are, many of us, old friends of the chairman, and it has been painful
to me, and I doubt not to others, to hear an attack made on him.  If
he is old in body, he is young in mental vigour and courage.  I wish
we were all as young.  We ought to stand by him; I say, we ought to
stand by him."  ("Hear, hear!  Hear, hear!") And the secretary
thought: 'That's done it!' And he felt a sudden odd emotion, watching
the chairman bobbing his body, like a wooden toy, at old Appleby; and
old Appleby bobbing back.  Then, seeing a shareholder close to the
door get up, thought: 'Who's that?  I know his face--Ah!  yes;
Ventnor, the solicitor--he's one of the chairman's creditors that are
coming again this afternoon.  What now?'

"I can't agree that we ought to let sentiment interfere with our
judgment in this matter.  The question is simply: How are our pockets
going to be affected?  I came here with some misgivings, but the
attitude of the chairman has been such as to remove them; and I shall
support the proposition."  The secretary thought: 'That's all right--
only, he said it rather queerly--rather queerly.'

Then, after a long silence, the chairman, without rising, said:

"I move the adoption of the report and accounts."

"I second that."

"Those in favour signify the same in the usual way.  Contrary?
Carried."  The secretary noted the dissentients, six in number, and
that Mr. Westgate did not vote.

A quarter of an hour later he stood in the body of the emptying room
supplying names to one of the gentlemen of the Press.  The
passionless fellow said: "Haythorp, with an 'a'; oh!  an 'e'; he
seems an old man.  Thank you.  I may have the slips?  Would you like
to see a proof?  With an 'a' you said--oh!  an 'e.' Good afternoon!"
And the secretary thought: 'Those fellows, what does go on inside
them?  Fancy not knowing the old chairman by now!'...




2

Back in the proper office of "The Island Navigation Company" old
Heythorp sat smoking a cigar and smiling like a purring cat.  He was
dreaming a little of his triumph, sifting with his old brain, still
subtle, the wheat from the chaff of the demurrers: Westgate--nothing
in that--professional discontent till they silenced him with a place
on the board--but not while be held the reins!  That chap at the
back--an ill-conditioned fellow!  "Something behind!"  Suspicious
brute!  There was something--but--hang it! they might think
themselves lucky to get four ships at that price, and all due to him!
It was on the last speaker that his mind dwelt with a doubt.  That
fellow Ventnor, to whom he owed money--there had been something just
a little queer about his tone--as much as to say, "I smell a rat."
Well! one would see that at the creditors' meeting in half an hour.

"Mr. Pillin, sir."

"Show him in!"

In a fur coat which seemed to extinguish his thin form, Joe Pillin
entered.  It was snowing, and the cold had nipped and yellowed his
meagre face between its slight grey whiskering.  He said thinly:

"How are you, Sylvanus?  Aren't you perished in this cold?"

"Warm as a toast.  Sit down.  Take off your coat."

"Oh! I should be lost without it.  You must have a fire inside you.
So-so it's gone through?"

Old Heythorp nodded; and Joe Pillin, wandering like a spirit,
scrutinised the shut door.  He came back to the table, and said in a
low voice:

"It's a great sacrifice."

Old Heythorp smiled.

"Have you signed the deed poll?"

Producing a parchment from his pocket Joe Pillin unfolded it with
caution to disclose his signature, and said:

"I don't like it--it's irrevocable."

A chuckle escaped old Heythorp.

"As death."

Joe Pillin's voice passed up into the treble clef.

"I can't bear irrevocable things.  I consider you stampeded me,
playing on my nerves."

Examining the signatures old Heythorp murmured:

"Tell your lawyer to lock it up.  He must think you a sad dog, Joe."

"Ah!  Suppose on my death it comes to the knowledge of my wife!"

"She won't be able to make it hotter for you than you'll be already."

Joe Pillin replaced the deed within his coat, emitting a queer thin
noise.  He simply could not bear joking on such subjects.

"Well," he said, "you've got your way; you always do.  Who is this
Mrs. Larne?  You oughtn't to keep me in the dark.  It seems my boy
met her at your house.  You told me she didn't come there."

Old Heythorp said with relish:

"Her husband was my son by a woman I was fond of before I married;
her children are my grandchildren.  You've provided for them.  Best
thing you ever did."

"I don't know--I don't know.  I'm sorry you told me.  It makes it all
the more doubtful.  As soon as the transfer's complete, I shall get
away abroad.  This cold's killing me.  I wish you'd give me your
recipe for keeping warm."

"Get a new inside."

Joe Pillin regarded his old friend with a sort of yearning.  "And
yet," he said, "I suppose, with your full-blooded habit, your life
hangs by a thread, doesn't it?"

"A stout one, my boy"

"Well, good-bye, Sylvanus.  You're a Job's comforter; I must be
getting home."  He put on his hat, and, lost in his fur coat, passed
out into the corridor.  On the stairs he met a man who said:

"How do you do, Mr. Pillin?  I know your son.  Been' seeing the
chairman?  I see your sale's gone through all right.  I hope that'll
do us some good, but I suppose you think the other way?"

Peering at him from under his hat, Joe Pillin said:

"Mr. Ventnor, I think?  Thank you!  It's very cold, isn't it?"  And,
with that cautious remark, he passed on down.

Alone again, old Heythorp thought: 'By George!  What a wavering,
quavering, thread paper of a fellow!  What misery life must be to a
chap like that!  He walks in fear--he wallows in it.  Poor devil!'
And a curious feeling swelled his heart, of elation, of lightness
such as he had not known for years.  Those two young things were safe
now from penury-safe!  After dealing with those infernal creditors of
his he would go round and have a look at the children.  With a
hundred and twenty a year the boy could go into the Army--best place
for a young scamp like that. The girl would go off like hot cakes, of
course, but she needn't take the first calf that came along. As for
their mother, she must look after herself; nothing under two thousand
a year would keep her out of debt.  But trust her for wheedling and
bluffing her way out of any scrape!  Watching his cigar-smoke curl
and disperse he was conscious of the strain he had been under these
last six weeks, aware suddenly of how greatly he had baulked at
thought of to-day's general meeting. Yes!  It might have turned out
nasty.  He knew well enough the forces on the Board, and off, who
would be only too glad to shelve him.  If he were shelved here his
other two Companies would be sure to follow suit, and bang would go
every penny of his income--he would be a pauper dependant on that
holy woman.  Well!  Safe now for another year if he could stave off
these sharks once more.  It might be a harder job this time, but he
was in luck--in luck, and it must hold.  And taking a luxurious pull
at his cigar, he rang the handbell.

"Bring 'em in here, Mr. Farney.  And let me have a cup of China tea
as strong as you can make it."

"Yes, sir.  Will you see the proof of the press report, or will you
leave it to me?"

"To you."

"Yes, sir.  It was a good meeting, wasn't it?"

Old Heythorp nodded.

"Wonderful how your voice came back just at the right moment.  I was
afraid things were going to be difficult.  The insult did it, I
think.  It was a monstrous thing to say.  I could have punched his
head."

Again old Heythorp nodded; and, looking into the secretary's fine
blue eyes, he repeated: "Bring 'em in."

The lonely minute before the entrance of his creditors passed in the
thought: 'So that's how it struck him!  Short shrift I should get if
it came out.'

The gentlemen, who numbered ten this time, bowed to their debtor,
evidently wondering why the deuce they troubled to be polite to an
old man who kept them out of their money.  Then, the secretary
reappearing with a cup of China tea, they watched while their debtor
drank it.  The feat was tremulous.  Would he get through without
spilling it all down his front, or choking?  To those unaccustomed to
his private life it was slightly miraculous.  He put the cup down
empty, tremblingly removed some yellow drops from the little white
tuft below his lip, refit his cigar, and said:

"No use beating about the bush, gentlemen; I can offer you fourteen
hundred a year so long as I live and hold my directorships, and not a
penny more.  If you can't accept that, you must make me bankrupt and
get about sixpence in the pound.  My qualifying shares will fetch a
couple of thousand at market price.  I own nothing else.  The house I
live in, and everything in it, barring my clothes, my wine, and my
cigars, belong to my daughter under a settlement fifteen years old.
My solicitors and bankers will give you every information.  That's
the position in a nutshell."

In spite of business habits the surprise of the ten gentlemen was
only partially concealed.  A man who owed them so much would
naturally say he owned nothing, but would he refer them to his
solicitors and bankers unless he were telling the truth?  Then Mr.
Ventnor said:

"Will you submit your pass books?"

"No, but I'll authorise my bankers to give you a full statement of my
receipts for the last five years--longer, if you like."

The strategic stroke of placing the ten gentlemen round the Board
table had made it impossible for them to consult freely without being
overheard, but the low-voiced transference of thought travelling
round was summed up at last by Mr. Brownbee.

"We think, Mr. Heythorp, that your fees and dividends should enable
you to set aside for us a larger sum.  Sixteen hundred, in fact, is
what we think you should give us yearly.  Representing, as we do,
sixteen thousand pounds, the prospect is not cheering, but we hope
you have some good years before you yet.  We understand your income
to be two thousand pounds."

Old Heythorp shook his head.  "Nineteen hundred and thirty pounds in
a good year.  Must eat and drink; must have a man to look after me
not as active as I was.  Can't do on less than five hundred pounds.
Fourteen hundred's all I can give you, gentlemen; it's an advance of
two hundred pounds.  That's my last word."

The silence was broken by Mr. Ventnor.

"And it's my last word that I'm not satisfied.  If these other
gentlemen accept your proposition I shall be forced to consider what
I can do on my own account."

The old man stared at him, and answered:

"Oh!  you will, sir; we shall see."

The others had risen and were gathered in a knot at the end of the
table; old Heythorp and Mr. Ventnor alone remained seated.  The old
man's lower lip projected till the white hairs below stood out like
bristles.  'You ugly dog,' he was thinking, 'you think you've got
something up your sleeve.  Well, do your worst!'  The "ugly dog" rose
abruptly and joined the others.  And old Heythorp closed his eyes,
sitting perfectly still, with his cigar, which had gone out, sticking
up between his teeth.  Mr. Brownbee turning to voice the decision
come to, cleared his throat.

"Mr. Heythorp," he said, "if your bankers and solicitors bear out
your statements, we shall accept your offer faute de mieux, in
consideration of your--" but meeting the old man's eyes, which said
so very plainly: "Blow your consideration!" he ended with a stammer:
"Perhaps you will kindly furnish us with the authorisation you spoke
of?"

Old Heythorp nodded, and Mr. Brownbee, with a little bow, clasped his
hat to his breast and moved towards the door.  The nine gentlemen
followed.  Mr. Ventnor, bringing up the rear, turned and looked back.
But the old man's eyes were already closed again.

The moment his creditors were gone, old Heythorp sounded the hand-
bell.

"Help me up, Mr. Farney.  That Ventnor--what's his holding?"

"Quite small.  Only ten shares, I think."

"Ah!  What time is it?"

"Quarter to four, sir."

"Get me a taxi."

After visiting his bank and his solicitors he struggled once more
into his cab and caused it to be driven towards Millicent Villas.  A
kind of sleepy triumph permeated his whole being, bumped and shaken
by the cab's rapid progress.  So!  He was free of those sharks now so
long as he could hold on to his Companies; and he would still have a
hundred a year or more to spare for Rosamund and her youngsters.  He
could live on four hundred, or even three-fifty, without losing his
independence, for there would be no standing life in that holy
woman's house unless he could pay his own scot!  A good day's work!
The best for many a long month!

The cab stopped before the villa.




3

There are rooms which refuse to give away their owners, and rooms
which seem to say: 'They really are like this.' Of such was Rosamund
Larne's--a sort of permanent confession, seeming to remark to anyone
who entered: 'Her taste?  Well, you can see--cheerful and exuberant;
her habits--yes, she sits here all the morning in a dressing-gown,
smoking cigarettes and dropping ink; kindly observe my carpet.
Notice the piano--it has a look of coming and going, according to the
exchequer.  This very deep-cushioned sofa is permanent, however; the
water-colours on the walls are safe, too--they're by herself.  Mark
the scent of mimosa--she likes flowers, and likes them strong.  No
clock, of course.  Examine the bureau--she is obviously always
ringing for "the drumstick," and saying: "Where's this, Ellen, and
where's that?  You naughty gairl, you've been tidying."  Cast an eye
on that pile of manuscript--she has evidently a genius for
composition; it flows off her pen--like Shakespeare, she never blots
a line.  See how she's had the electric light put in, instead of that
horrid gas; but try and turn either of them on--you can't; last
quarter isn't paid, of course; and she uses an oil lamp, you can tell
that by the ceiling: The dog over there, who will not answer to the
name of 'Carmen,' a Pekinese spaniel like a little Djin, all
prominent eyes rolling their blacks, and no nose between--yes, Carmen
looks as if she didn't know what was coming next; she's right--it's a
pet-and-slap-again life!  Consider, too, the fittings of the tea-
tray, rather soiled, though not quite tin, but I say unto you that no
millionaire's in all its glory ever had a liqueur bottle on it.'

When old Heythorp entered this room, which extended from back to
front of the little house, preceded by the announcement "Mr.  Aesop,"
it was resonant with a very clatter-bodandigo of noises, from Phyllis
playing the Machiche; from the boy Jock on the hearthrug, emitting at
short intervals the most piercing notes from an ocarina; from Mrs.
Larne on the sofa, talking with her trailing volubility to Bob
Pillin; from Bob Pillin muttering: "Ye-es!  Qui-ite!  Ye-es!" and
gazing at Phyllis over his collar.  And, on the window-sill, as far
as she could get from all this noise, the little dog Carmen was
rolling her eyes.  At sight of their visitor Jock blew one rending
screech, and bolting behind the sofa, placed his chin on its top, so
that nothing but his round pink unmoving face was visible; and the
dog Carmen tried to climb the blind cord.

Encircled from behind by the arms of Phyllis, and preceded by the
gracious perfumed bulk of Mrs. Larne, old Heythorp was escorted to
the sofa.  It was low, and when he had plumped down into it, the boy
Jock emitted a hollow groan.  Bob Pillin was the first to break the
silence.

"How are you, sir?  I hope it's gone through."

Old Heythorp nodded.  His eyes were fixed on the liqueur, and Mrs.
Larne murmured:

"Guardy, you must try our new liqueur.  Jock, you awful boy, get up
and bring Guardy a glass."

The boy Jock approached the tea-table, took up a glass, put it to his
eye and filled it rapidly.

"You horrible boy, you could see that glass has been used."

In a high round voice rather like an angel's, Jock answered:

"All right, Mother; I'll get rid of it," and rapidly swallowing the
yellow liquor, took up another glass.

Mrs. Larne laughed.

"What am I to do with him?"

A loud shriek prevented a response.  Phyllis, who had taken her
brother by the ear to lead him to the door, let him go to clasp her
injured self.

Bob Pillin went hastening towards her; and following the young man
with her chin, Mrs. Larne said, smiling:

"Aren't those children awful?  He's such a nice fellow.  We like him
so much, Guardy."

The old man grinned.  So she was making up to that young pup!
Rosamund Larne, watching him, murmured:

"Oh! Guardy, you're as bad as Jock.  He takes after you terribly.
Look at the shape of his head.  Jock, come here!"  The innocent boy
approached; with his girlish complexion, his flowery blue eyes, his
perfect mouth, he stood before his mother like a large cherub.  And
suddenly he blew his ocarina in a dreadful manner.  Mrs. Larne
launched a box at his ears, and receiving the wind of it he fell
prone.

"That's the way he behaves.  Be off with you, you awful boy.  I want
to talk to Guardy."

The boy withdrew on his stomach, and sat against the wall cross-
legged, fixing his innocent round eyes on old Heythorp.  Mrs. Larne
sighed.

"Things are worse and worse, Guardy.  I'm at my wits' end to tide
over this quarter.  You wouldn't advance me a hundred on my new
story?  I'm sure to get two for it in the end."

The old man shook his head.

"I've done something for you and the children," he said.  "You'll get
notice of it in a day or two; ask no questions."

"Oh!  Guardy!  Oh!  you dear!"  And her gaze rested on Bob Pillin,
leaning over the piano, where Phyllis again sat.

Old Heythorp snorted.  "What are you cultivating that young gaby for?
She mustn't be grabbed up by any fool who comes along."

Mrs. Larne murmured at once:

"Of course, the dear gairl is much too young.  Phyllis, come and talk
to Guardy!"

When the girl was installed beside him on the sofa, and he had felt
that little thrill of warmth the proximity of youth can bring, he
said:

"Been a good girl?"

She shook her head.

"Can't, when Jock's not at school.  Mother can't pay for him this
term."

Hearing his name, the boy Jock blew his ocarina till Mrs. Larne drove
him from the room, and Phyllis went on:

"He's more awful than anything you can think of.  Was my dad at all
like him, Guardy?  Mother's always so mysterious about him.  I
suppose you knew him well."

Old Heythorp, incapable of confusion,  answered stolidly:

"Not very."

"Who was his father?  I don't believe even mother knows."

"Man about town in my day."

"Oh!  your day must have been jolly.  Did you wear peg-top trousers,
and dundreary's?"

Old Heythorp nodded.

"What larks!  And I suppose you had lots of adventures with opera
dancers and gambling.  The young men are all so good now."  Her eyes
rested on Bob Pillin.  "That young man's a perfect stick of
goodness."

Old Heythorp grunted.

"You wouldn't know how good he was," Phyllis went on musingly,
"unless you'd sat next him in a tunnel.  The other day he had his
waist squeezed and he simply sat still and did nothing.  And then
when the tunnel ended, it was Jock after all, not me.  His face was--
Oh!  ah!  ha!  ha!  Ah!  ha!"  She threw back her head, displaying
all her white, round throat.  Then edging near, she whispered:

"He likes to pretend, of course, that he's fearfully lively.  He's
promised to take mother and me to the theatre and supper afterwards.
Won't it be scrummy!  Only, I haven't anything to go in."

Old Heythorp said: "What do you want?  Irish poplin?"

Her mouth opened wide: "Oh!  Guardy!  Soft white satin!"

"How many yards'll go round you?"

"I should think about twelve.  We could make it ourselves.  You are a
chook!"

A scent of hair, like hay, enveloped him, her lips bobbed against his
nose,--and there came a feeling in his heart as when he rolled the
first sip of a special wine against his palate.  This little house
was a rumty-too affair, her mother was a humbug, the boy a cheeky
young rascal, but there was a warmth here he never felt in that big
house which had been his wife's and was now his holy daughter's.  And
once more he rejoiced at his day's work, and the success of his
breach of trust, which put some little ground beneath these young
feet, in a hard and unscrupulous world.  Phyllis whispered in his
ear:

"Guardy, do look; he will stare at me like that.  Isn't it awful--
like a boiled rabbit?"

Bob Pillin, attentive to Mrs. Larne, was gazing with all his might
over her shoulder at the girl.  The young man was moonstruck, that
was clear!  There was something almost touching in the stare of those
puppy dog's eyes.  And he thought 'Young beggar--wish I were his
age!'  The utter injustice of having an old and helpless body, when
your desire for enjoyment was as great as ever!  They said a man was
as old as he felt!  Fools!  A man was as old as his legs and arms,
and not a  day younger.  He heard the girl beside him utter a
discomfortable sound, and saw her face cloud as if tears were not far
off; she jumped up, and going to the window, lifted the little dog
and buried her face in its brown and white fur.  Old Heythorp
thought: 'She sees that her humbugging mother is using her as a
decoy.'  But she had come back, and the little dog, rolling its eyes
horribly at the strange figure on the sofa, in a desperate effort to
escape succeeded in reaching her shoulder, where it stayed perched
like a cat, held by one paw and trying to back away into space.  Old
Heythorp said abruptly:

"Are you very fond of your mother?"

"Of course I am, Guardy.  I adore her."

"H'm!  Listen to me.  When you come of age or marry, you'll have a
hundred and twenty a year of your own that you can't get rid of.
Don't ever be persuaded into doing what you don't want.  And
remember: Your mother's a sieve, no good giving her money; keep what
you'll get for yourself--it's only a pittance, and you'll want it all
--every penny."

Phyllis's eyes had opened very wide; so that he wondered if she had
taken in his words.

"Oh!  Isn't money horrible, Guardy?"

"The want of it."

"No, it's beastly altogether.  If only we were like birds.  Or if one
could put out a plate overnight, and have just enough in the morning
to use during the day."

Old Heythorp sighed.

"There's only one thing in life that matters--independence.  Lose
that, and you lose everything.  That's the value of money.  Help me
up."

Phyllis stretched out her hands, and the little dog, running down her
back, resumed its perch on the window-sill, close to the blind cord.

Once on his feet, old Heythorp said:

"Give me a kiss.  You'll have your satin tomorrow."

Then looking at Bob Pillin, he remarked:

"Going my way?  I'll give you a lift."

The young man, giving Phyllis one appealing look, answered dully:
"Tha-anks!"  and they went out together to the taxi.  In that
draughtless vehicle they sat, full of who knows what contempt of age
for youth; and youth for age; the old man resenting this young pup's
aspiration to his granddaughter; the young man annoyed that this old
image had dragged him away before he wished to go.  Old Heythorp said
at last:

"Well?"

Thus expected to say something, Bob Pillin muttered

"Glad your meetin' went off well, sir.  You scored a triumph I should
think."

"Why?"

"Oh!  I don't know.  I thought you had a good bit of opposition to
contend with."

Old Heythorp looked at him.

"Your grandmother!"  he said; then, with his habitual instinct of
attack, added: "You make the most of your opportunities, I see."

At this rude assault Bob Pillin's red-cheeked face assumed a certain
dignity.  "I don't know what you mean, sir.  Mrs. Larne is very kind
to me."

"No doubt.  But don't try to pick the flowers."

Thoroughly upset, Bob Pillin preserved a dogged silence.  This
fortnight, since he had first met Phyllis in old Heythorp's hall, had
been the most singular of his existence up to now.  He would never
have believed that a fellow could be so quickly and completely
bowled, could succumb without a kick, without even wanting to kick.
To one with his philosophy of having a good time and never committing
himself too far, it was in the nature of "a fair knock-out," and yet
so pleasurable, except for the wear and tear about one's chances.  If
only he knew how far the old boy really counted in the matter!  To
say: "My intentions are strictly honourable" would be old-fashioned;
besides--the old fellow might have no right to hear it.  They called
him Guardy, but without knowing more he did not want to admit the old
curmudgeon's right to interfere.

"Are you a relation of theirs, sir?"

Old Heythorp nodded.

Bob Pillin went on with desperation:

"I should like to know what your objection to me is."

The old man turned his head so far as he was able; a grim smile
bristled the hairs about his lips, and twinkled in his eyes.  What
did he object to?  Why--everything!  Object to!  That sleek head,
those puppy-dog eyes, fattish red cheeks, high collars, pearl pin,
spats, and drawl-pah!  the imbecility, the smugness of his mug; no
go, no devil in any of his sort, in any of these fish-veined,
coddled-up young bloods, nothing but playing for safety!  And he
wheezed out:

"Milk and water masquerading as port wine."

Bob Pillin frowned.

It was almost too much for the composure even of a man of the world.
That this paralytic old fellow should express contempt for his
virility was really the last thing in jests.  Luckily he could not
take it seriously.  But suddenly he thought: 'What if he really has
the power to stop my going there, and means to turn them against me!'
And his heart quailed.

"Awfully sorry, sir," he said, "if you don't think I'm wild enough.
Anything I can do for you in that line--"

The old man grunted; and realising that he had been quite witty, Bob
Pillin went on:

"I know I'm not in debt, no entanglements, got a decent income,
pretty good expectations and all that; but I can soon put that all
right if I'm not fit without."

It was perhaps his first attempt at irony, and he could not help
thinking how good it was.

But old Heythorp preserved a deadly silence.  He looked like a
stuffed man, a regular Aunt Sally sitting there, with the fixed red
in his cheeks, his stivered hair, square block of a body, and no neck
that you could see-only wanting the pipe in his mouth!  Could there
really be danger from such an old idol?  The idol spoke:

"I'll give you a word of advice.  Don't hang round there, or you'll
burn your fingers.  Remember me to your father.  Good-night!"

The taxi had stopped before the house in Sefton Park.  An insensate
impulse to remain seated and argue the point fought in Bob Pillin
with an impulse to leap out, shake his fist in at the window, and
walk off.  He merely said, however:

"Thanks for the lift.  Good-night!"  And, getting out deliberately,
he walked off.

Old Heythorp, waiting for the driver to help him up, thought 'Fatter,
but no more guts than his father!'

In his sanctum he sank at once into his chair.  It was wonderfully
still there every day at this hour; just the click of the coals, just
the faintest ruffle from the wind in the trees of the park.  And it
was cosily warm, only the fire lightening the darkness.  A drowsy
beatitude pervaded the old man.  A good day's work!  A triumph--that
young pup had said.  Yes!  Something of a triumph!  He had held on,
and won.  And dinner to look forward to, yet.  A nap--a nap!  And
soon, rhythmic, soft, sonorous, his breathing rose, with now and then
that pathetic twitching of the old who dream.




III

1

When Bob Pillin emerged from the little front garden of 23, Millicent
Villas ten days later, his sentiments were ravelled, and he could not
get hold of an end to pull straight the stuff of his mind.

He had found Mrs. Larne and Phyllis in the sitting-room, and Phyllis
had been crying; he was sure she had been crying; and that memory
still infected the sentiments evoked by later happenings.  Old
Heythorp had said: "You'll burn your fingers."  The process had
begun.  Having sent her daughter away on a pretext really a bit too
thin, Mrs. Larne had installed him beside her scented bulk on the
sofa, and poured into his ear such a tale of monetary woe and
entanglement, such a mass of present difficulties and rosy prospects,
that his brain still whirled, and only one thing emerged clearly-that
she wanted fifty pounds, which she would repay him on quarter-day;
for their Guardy had made a settlement by which, until the dear
children came of age, she would have sixty pounds every quarter.  It
was only a question of a few weeks; he might ask Messrs.  Scriven and
Coles; they would tell him the security was quite safe.  He certainly
might ask Messrs.  Scriven and Coles--they happened to be his
father's solicitors; but it hardly seemed to touch the point.  Bob
Pillin had a certain shrewd caution, and the point was whether he was
going to begin to lend money to a woman who, he could see, might
borrow up to seventy times seven on the strength of his infatuation
for her daughter.  That was rather too strong!  Yet, if he didn't she
might take a sudden dislike to him, and where would he be then?
Besides, would not a loan make his position stronger?  And then--such
is the effect of love even on the younger generation--that thought
seemed to him unworthy.  If he lent at all, it should be from
chivalry--ulterior motives might go hang!  And the memory of the
tear-marks on Phyllis's pretty pale-pink cheeks; and her petulantly
mournful: "Oh!  young man, isn't money beastly!" scraped his heart,
and ravished his judgment.  All the same, fifty pounds was fifty
pounds, and goodness knew how much more; and what did he know of Mrs.
Larne, after all, except that she was a relative of old Heythorp's
and wrote stories--told them too, if he was not mistaken?  Perhaps it
would be better to see Scrivens'.  But again that absurd nobility
assaulted him.  Phyllis!  Phyllis!  Besides, were not settlements
always drawn so that they refused to form security for anything?
Thus, hampered and troubled, he hailed a cab.  He was dining with the
Ventnors on the Cheshire side, and would be late if he didn't get
home sharp to dress.

Driving, white-tied--and waist-coated, in his father's car, he
thought with a certain contumely of the younger Ventnor girl, whom he
had been wont to consider pretty before he knew Phyllis. And seated
next her at dinner, he quite enjoyed his new sense of superiority to
her charms, and the ease with which he could chaff and be agreeable.
And all the time he suffered from the suppressed longing which
scarcely ever left him now, to think and talk of Phyllis.  Ventnor's
fizz was good and plentiful, his old Madeira absolutely first chop,
and the only other man present a teetotal curate, who withdrew with
the ladies to talk his parish shop.  Favoured by these circumstances,
and the perception that Ventnor was an agreeable fellow, Bob Pillin
yielded to his secret itch to get near the subject of his affections.

"Do you happen," he said airily, "to know a Mrs. Larne--relative of
old Heythorp's--rather a handsome woman-she writes stories."

Mr. Ventnor shook his head.  A closer scrutiny than Bob Pillin's
would have seen that he also moved his ears.

"Of old Heythorp's?  Didn't know he had any, except his daughter, and
that son of his in the Admiralty."

Bob Pillin felt the glow of his secret hobby spreading within him.

"She is, though--lives rather out of town; got a son and daughter.  I
thought you might know her stories--clever woman."

Mr. Ventnor smiled.  "Ah!" he said enigmatically, "these lady
novelists!  Does she make any money by them?"

Bob Pillin knew that to make money by writing meant success, but that
not to make money by writing was artistic, and implied that you had
private means, which perhaps was even more distinguished.  And he
said:

"Oh!  she has private means, I know."

Mr. Ventnor reached for the Madeira.

"So she's a relative of old Heythorp's," he said.  "He's a very old
friend of your father's.  He ought to go bankrupt, you know."

To Bob Pillin, glowing with passion and Madeira, the idea of
bankruptcy seemed discreditable in connection with a relative of
Phyllis.  Besides, the old boy was far from that!  Had he not just
made this settlement on Mrs. Larne?  And he said:

"I think you're mistaken.  That's of the past."

Mr. Ventnor smiled.

"Will you bet?"  he said.

Bob Pillin also smiled.  "I should be bettin' on a certainty."

Mr. Ventnor passed his hand over his whiskered face.  "Don't you
believe it; he hasn't a mag to his name.  Fill your glass."

Bob Pillin said, with a certain resentment:

"Well, I happen to know he's just made a settlement of five or six
thousand pounds.  Don't know if you call that being bankrupt."

"What!  On this Mrs. Larne?"

Confused, uncertain whether he had said something derogatory or
indiscreet, or something which added distinction to Phyllis, Bob
Pillin hesitated, then gave a nod.

Mr. Ventnor rose and extended his short legs before the fire.

"No, my boy," he said.  "No!"

Unaccustomed to flat contradiction, Bob Pillin reddened.

"I'll bet you a tenner.  Ask Scrivens."

Mr. Ventnor ejaculated:

"Scrivens---but they're not--" then, staring rather hard, he added:
"I won't bet.  You may be right.  Scrivens are your father's
solicitors too, aren't they?  Always been sorry he didn't come to me.
Shall we join the ladies?"  And to the drawing-room he preceded a
young man more uncertain in his mind than on his feet....

Charles Ventnor was not one to let you see that more was going on
within than met the eye.  But there was a good deal going on that
evening, and after his conversation with young Bob he had occasion
more than once to turn away and rub his hands together.  When, after
that second creditors' meeting, he had walked down the stairway which
led to the offices of "The Island Navigation Company," he had been
deep in thought.  Short, squarely built, rather stout, with moustache
and large mutton-chop whiskers of a red brown, and a faint floridity
in face and dress, he impressed at first sight only by a certain
truly British vulgarity.  One felt that here was a hail-fellow--well-
met man who liked lunch and dinner, went to Scarborough for his
summer holidays, sat on his wife, took his daughters out in a boat
and was never sick.  One felt that he went to church every Sunday
morning, looked upwards as he moved through life, disliked the
unsuccessful, and expanded with his second glass of wine. But then a
clear look into his well-clothed face and red-brown eyes would give
the feeling: 'There's something fulvous here; he might be a bit too
foxy.'  A third look brought the thought: 'He's certainly a bully.'
He was not a large creditor of old Heythorp.  With interest on the
original, he calculated his claim at three hundred pounds--unredeemed
shares in that old Ecuador mine. But he had waited for his money
eight years, and could never imagine how it came about that he had
been induced to wait so long.  There had been, of course, for one who
liked "big pots," a certain glamour about the personality of old
Heythorp, still a bit of a swell in shipping circles, and a bit of an
aristocrat in Liverpool.  But during the last year Charles Ventnor
had realised that the old chap's star had definitely set--when that
happens, of course, there is no more glamour, and the time has come
to get your money.  Weakness in oneself and others is despicable!
Besides, he had food for thought, and descending the stairs he chewed
it: He smelt a rat--creatures for which both by nature and profession
he had a nose.  Through Bob Pillin, on whom he sometimes dwelt in
connection with his younger daughter, he knew that old Pillin and old
Heythorp had been friends for thirty years and more.  That, to an
astute mind, suggested something behind this sale.  The thought had
already occurred to him when he read his copy of the report.  A
commission would be a breach of trust, of course, but there were ways
of doing things; the old chap was devilish hard pressed, and human
nature was human nature!  His lawyerish mind habitually put two and
two together.  The old fellow had deliberately appointed to meet his
creditors again just after the general meeting which would decide the
purchase--had said he might do something for them then.  Had that no
significance?

In these circumstances Charles Ventnor had come to the meeting with
eyes wide open and mouth tight closed.  And he had watched.  It was
certainly remarkable that such an old and feeble man, with no neck at
all, who looked indeed as if he might go off with apoplexy any
moment, should actually say that he "stood or fell" by this purchase,
knowing that if he fell he would be a beggar.  Why should the old
chap be so keen on getting it through?  It would do him personally no
good, unless--Exactly!  He had left the meeting, therefore, secretly
confident that old Heythorp had got something out of this transaction
which would enable him to make a substantial proposal to his
creditors.  So that when the old man had declared that he was going
to make none, something had turned sour in his heart, and he had said
to himself: "All right, you old rascal!  You don't know C. V."  The
cavalier manner of that beggarly old rip, the defiant look of his
deep little eyes, had put a polish on the rancour of one who prided
himself on letting no man get the better of him.  All that evening,
seated on one side of the fire, while Mrs. Ventnor sat on the other,
and the younger daughter played Gounod's Serenade on the violin--he
cogitated.  And now and again he smiled, but not too much.  He did
not see his way as yet, but had little doubt that before long he
would.  It would not be hard to knock that chipped old idol off his
perch.  There was already a healthy feeling among the shareholders
that he was past work and should be scrapped.  The old chap should
find that Charles V. was not to be defied; that when he got his teeth
into a thing, he did not let it go.  By hook or crook he would have
the old man off his Boards, or his debt out of him as the price of
leaving him alone.  His life or his money--and the old fellow should
determine which.  With the memory of that defiance fresh within him,
he almost hoped it might come to be the first, and turning to Mrs.
Ventnor, he said abruptly:

"Have a little dinner Friday week, and ask young Pillin and the
curate."  He specified the curate, a tee-totaller, because he had two
daughters, and males and females must be paired, but he intended to
pack him off after dinner to the drawing-room to discuss parish
matters while he and Bob Pillin sat over their wine.  What he
expected to get out of the young man he did not as yet know.

On the day of the dinner, before departing for the office, he had
gone to his cellar.  Would three bottles of Perrier Jouet do the
trick, or must he add one of the old Madeira?  He decided to be on
the safe side.  A bottle or so of champagne went very little way with
him personally, and young Pillin might be another.

The Madeira having done its work by turning the conversation into
such an admirable channel, he had cut it short for fear young Pillin
might drink the lot or get wind of the rat.  And when his guests were
gone, and his family had retired, he stood staring into the fire,
putting together the pieces of the puzzle.  Five or six thousand
pounds--six would be ten per cent. on sixty!  Exactly!  Scrivens--
young Pillin had said!  But Crow & Donkin, not Scriven & Coles, were
old Heythorp's solicitors.  What could that mean, save that the old
man wanted to cover the tracks of a secret commission, and had
handled the matter through solicitors who did not know the state of
his affairs!  But why Pillin's solicitors?  With this sale just going
through, it must look deuced fishy to them too.  Was it all a mare's
nest, after all?  In such circumstances he himself would have taken
the matter to a London firm who knew nothing of anybody.  Puzzled,
therefore, and rather disheartened, feeling too that touch of liver
which was wont to follow his old Madeira, he went up to bed and woke
his wife to ask her why the dickens they couldn't always have soup
like that!

Next day he continued to brood over his puzzle, and no fresh light
came; but having a matter on which his firm and Scrivens' were in
touch, he decided to go over in person, and see if he could surprise
something out of them.  Feeling, from experience, that any really
delicate matter would only be entrusted to the most responsible
member of the firm, he had asked to see Scriven himself, and just as
he had taken his hat to go, he said casually:

"By the way, you do some business for old Mr. Heythorp, don't you?"

Scriven, raising his eyebrows a little, murmured: "Er--no," in
exactly the tone Mr. Ventnor himself used when he wished to imply
that though he didn't as a fact do business, he probably soon would.
He knew therefore that the answer was a true one.  And non-plussed,
he hazarded:

"Oh!  I thought you did, in regard to a Mrs. Larne."

This time he had certainly drawn blood of sorts, for down came
Scriven's eyebrows, and he said:

"Mrs. Larne--we know a Mrs. Larne, but not in that connection.  Why?"

"Oh!  Young Pillin told me--"

"Young Pillin?  Why, it's his---!"  A little pause, and then: "Old
Mr. Heythorp's solicitors are Crow & Donkin, I believe."

Mr. Ventnor held out his hand.  "Yes, yes," he said; "goodbye.  Glad
to have got that matter settled up," and out he went, and down the
street, important, smiling.  By George!  He had got it!  "It's his
father"--Scriven had been going to say.  What a plant!  Exactly!  Oh!
neat!  Old Pillin had made the settlement direct; and the solicitors
were in the dark; that disposed of his difficulty about them.  No
money had passed between old Pillin and old Heythorp not a penny.
Oh!  neat!  But not neat enough for Charles Ventnor, who had that
nose for rats.  Then his smile died, and with a little chill he
perceived that it was all based on supposition--not quite good enough
to go on!  What then?  Somehow he must see this Mrs. Larne, or
better--old Pillin himself.  The point to ascertain was whether she
had any connection of her own with Pillin.  Clearly young Pillin
didn't know of it; for, according to him, old Heythorp had made the
settlement.  By Jove!  That old rascal was deep--all the more
satisfaction in proving that he was not as deep as C. V.  To unmask
the old cheat was already beginning to seem in the nature of a public
service.  But on what pretext could he visit Pillin?  A subscription
to the Windeatt almshouses!  That would make him talk in self-defence
and he would take care not to press the request to the actual point
of getting a subscription.  He caused himself to be driven to the
Pillin residence in Sefton Park.  Ushered into a room on the ground
floor, heated in American fashion, Mr. Ventnor unbuttoned his coat.
A man of sanguine constitution, he found this hot-house atmosphere a
little trying.  And having sympathetically obtained Joe Pillin's
reluctant refusal--Quite so!  One could not indefinitely extend one's
subscriptions even for the best of causes!--he said gently:

"By the way, you know Mrs. Larne, don't you?"

The effect of that simple shot surpassed his highest hopes.  Joe
Pillin's face, never highly coloured, turned a sort of grey; he
opened his thin lips, shut them quickly, as birds do, and something
seemed to pass with difficulty down his scraggy throat.  The hollows,
which nerve exhaustion delves in the cheeks of men whose cheekbones
are not high, increased alarmingly.  For a moment he looked deathly;
then, moistening his lips, he said:

"Larne--Larne?  No, I don't seem---"

Mr. Ventnor, who had taken care to be drawing on his gloves,
murmured:

"Oh!  I thought--your son knows her; a relation of old Heythorp's,"
and he looked up.

Joe Pillin had his handkerchief to his mouth; he coughed feebly, then
with more and more vigour:

"I'm in very poor health," he said, at last.  "I'm getting abroad at
once.  This cold's killing me.  What name did you say?"  And he
remained with his handkerchief against his teeth.

Mr. Ventnor repeated:

"Larne.  Writes stories."

Joe Pillin muttered into his handkerchief

"Ali!  H'm!  No--I--no!  My son knows all sorts of people.  I shall
have to try Mentone.  Are you going?  Good-bye!  Good-bye! I'm sorry;
ah! ha!  My cough--ah! ha h'h'm!  Very distressing.  Ye-hes!  My
cough-ah! ha h'h'm!  Most distressing.  Ye-hes!"

Out in the drive Mr. Ventnor took a deep breath of the frosty air.
Not much doubt now!  The two names had worked like charms.  This
weakly old fellow would make a pretty witness, would simply crumple
under cross-examination.  What a contrast to that hoary old sinner
Heythorp, whose brazenness nothing could affect.  The rat was as
large as life!  And the only point was how to make the best use of
it.  Then--for his experience was wide--the possibility dawned on
him, that after all, this Mrs. Larne might only have been old
Pillin's mistress--or be his natural daughter, or have some other
blackmailing hold on him.  Any such connection would account for his
agitation, for his denying her, for his son's ignorance.  Only it
wouldn't account for young Pillin's saying that old Heythorp had made
the settlement.  He could only have got that from the woman herself.
Still, to make absolutely sure, he had better try and see her.  But
how?  It would never do to ask Bob Pillin for an introduction, after
this interview with his father.  He would have to go on his own and
chance it.  Wrote stories did she?  Perhaps a newspaper would know
her address; or the Directory would give it--not a common name!  And,
hot on the scent, he drove to a post office.  Yes, there it was,
right enough!  "Larne, Mrs. R., 23, Millicent Villas."  And thinking
to himself: 'No time like the present,' he turned in that direction.
The job was delicate.  He must be careful not to do anything which
might compromise his power of making public use of his knowledge.
Yes-ticklish!  What he did now must have a proper legal bottom.
Still, anyway you looked at it, he had a right to investigate a fraud
on himself as a shareholder of "The Island Navigation Company," and a
fraud on himself as a creditor of old Heythorp.  Quite!  But suppose
this Mrs. Larne was really entangled with old Pillin, and the
settlement a mere reward of virtue, easy or otherwise.  Well! in that
case there'd be no secret commission to make public, and he needn't
go further.  So that, in either event, he would be all right.  Only--
how to introduce himself?  He might pretend he was a newspaper man
wanting a story.  No, that wouldn't do!  He must not represent that
he was what he was not, in case he had afterwards to justify his
actions publicly, always a difficult thing, if you were not careful!
At that moment there came into his mind a question Bob Pillin had
asked the other night.  "By the way, you can't borrow on a
settlement, can you?  Isn't there generally some clause against it?"
Had this woman been trying to borrow from him on that settlement?
But at this moment he reached the house, and got out of his cab still
undecided as to how he was going to work the oracle.  Impudence,
constitutional and professional, sustained him in saying to the
little maid:

"Mrs. Larne at home?  Say Mr. Charles Ventnor, will you?"

His quick brown eyes took in the apparel of the passage which served
for hall--the deep blue paper on the walls, lilac-patterned curtains
over the doors, the well-known print of a nude young woman looking
over her shoulder, and he thought: 'H'm!  Distinctly tasty!'  They
noted, too, a small brown-and-white dog cowering in terror at the
very end of the passage, and he murmured affably: "Fluffy!  Come
here, Fluffy!" till Carmen's teeth chattered in her head.

"Will you come in, sir?"

Mr. Ventnor ran his hand over his whiskers, and, entering a room, was
impressed at once by its air of domesticity.  On a sofa a handsome
woman and a pretty young girl were surrounded by sewing apparatus and
some white material.  The girl looked up, but the elder lady rose.

Mr. Ventnor said easily

"You know my young friend, Mr. Robert Pillin, I think."

The lady, whose bulk and bloom struck him to the point of admiration,
murmured in a full, sweet drawl:

"Oh!  Ye-es.  Are you from Messrs. Scrivens?"

With the swift reflection: 'As I thought!'  Mr. Ventnor answered:

"Er--not exactly.  I am a solicitor though; came just to ask about a
certain settlement that Mr. Pillin tells me you're entitled under."

"Phyllis dear!"

Seeing the girl about to rise from underneath the white stuff, Mr.
Ventnor said quickly:

"Pray don't disturb yourself--just a formality!"  It had struck him
at once that the lady would have to speak the truth in the presence
of this third party, and he went on: "Quite recent, I think.  This'll
be your first interest-on six thousand pounds?  Is that right?"  And
at the limpid assent of that rich, sweet voice, he thought: 'Fine
woman; what eyes!'

"Thank you; that's quite enough.  I can go to Scrivens for any
detail.  Nice young fellow, Bob Pillin, isn't he?"  He saw the girl's
chin tilt, and Mrs. Larne's full mouth curling in a smile.

"Delightful young man; we're very fond of him."

And he proceeded:

"I'm quite an old friend of his; have you known him long?"

"Oh! no.  How long, Phyllis, since we met him at Guardy's?  About a
month.  But he's so unaffected--quite at home with us.  A nice
fellow."

Mr. Ventnor murmured:

"Very different from his father, isn't he?"

"Is he?  We don't know his father; he's a shipowner, I think."

Mr. Ventnor rubbed his hands: "Ye-es," he said, "just giving up--a
warm man.  Young Pillin's a lucky fellow--only son.  So you met him
at old Mr. Heythorp's.  I know him too--relation of yours, I
believe."

"Our dear Guardy such a wonderful man."

Mr. Ventnor echoed: "Wonderful--regular old Roman."

"Oh! but he's so kind!"  Mrs. Larne lifted the white stuff: "Look
what he's given this naughty gairl!"

Mr. Ventnor murmured: "Charming! Charming!  Bob Pillin said, I think,
that Mr. Heythorp was your settlor."

One of those little clouds which visit the brows of women who have
owed money in their time passed swiftly athwart Mrs. Larne's eyes.
For a moment they seemed saying: 'Don't you want to know too much?'
Then they slid from under it.

"Won't you sit down?"  she said.  "You must forgive our being at
work."

Mr. Ventnor, who had need of sorting his impressions, shook his head.

"Thank you; I must be getting on.  Then Messrs. Scriven can--a mere
formality!  Goodbye!  Good-bye, Miss Larne.  I'm sure the dress will
be most becoming."

And with memories of a too clear look from the girl's eyes, of a warm
firm pressure from the woman's hand, Mr. Ventnor backed towards the
door and passed away just in time to avoid hearing in two voices:

"What a nice lawyer!"

"What a horrid man!"

Back in his cab, he continued to rub his hands.  No, she didn't know
old Pillin! That was certain; not from her words, but from her face.
She wanted to know him, or about him, anyway.  She was trying to hook
young Bob for that sprig of a girl--it was clear as mud.  H'm! it
would astonish his young friend to hear that he had called.  Well,
let it!  And a curious mixture of emotions beset Mr. Ventnor.  He saw
the whole thing now so plainly, and really could not refrain from a
certain admiration.  The law had been properly diddled!  There was
nothing to prevent a man from settling money on a woman he had never
seen; and so old Pillin's settlement could probably not be upset.
But old Heythorp could.  It was neat, though, oh!  neat!  And that
was a fine woman--remarkably!  He had a sort of feeling that if only
the settlement had been in danger, it might have been worth while to
have made a bargain--a woman like that could have made it worth
while!  And he believed her quite capable of entertaining the
proposition!  Her eye!  Pity--quite a pity!  Mrs. Ventnor was not a
wife who satisfied every aspiration.  But alas! the settlement was
safe.  This baulking of the sentiment of love, whipped up, if
anything, the longing for justice in Mr. Ventnor.  That old chap
should feel his teeth now.  As a piece of investigation it was not so
bad--not so bad at all!  He had had a bit of luck, of course,--no,
not luck--just that knack of doing the right thing at the right
moment which marks a real genius for affairs.

But getting into his train to return to Mrs. Ventnor, he thought: 'A
woman like that would have been--!' And he sighed.




2

With a neatly written cheque for fifty pounds in his pocket Bob
Pillin turned in at 23, Millicent Villas on the afternoon after Mr.
Ventnor's visit.  Chivalry had won the day.  And he rang the bell
with an elation which astonished him, for he knew he was doing a soft
thing.

"Mrs. Larne is out, sir; Miss Phyllis is at home."

His heart leaped.

"Oh-h!  I'm sorry.  I wonder if she'd see me?"

The little maid answered

"I think she's been washin' 'er'air, sir, but it may be dry be now.
I'll see."

Bob Pillin stood stock still beneath the young woman on the wall.  He
could scarcely breathe.  If her hair were not dry--how awful!
Suddenly he heard floating down a clear but smothered "Oh!
Gefoozleme!"  and other words which he could not catch.  The little
maid came running down.

"Miss Phyllis says, sir, she'll be with you in a jiffy.  And I was to
tell you that Master Jock is loose, sir."

Bob Pillin answered "Tha-anks," and passed into the drawing-room.  He
went to the bureau, took an envelope, enclosed the cheque, and
addressing it: "Mrs. Larne," replaced it in his pocket.  Then he
crossed over to the mirror.  Never till this last month had he really
doubted his own face; but now he wanted for it things he had never
wanted.  It had too much flesh and colour.  It did not reflect his
passion.  This was a handicap.  With a narrow white piping round his
waistcoat opening, and a buttonhole of tuberoses, he had tried to
repair its deficiencies.  But do what he would, he was never easy
about himself nowadays, never up to that pitch which could make him
confident in her presence.  And until this month to lack confidence
had never been his wont.  A clear, high, mocking voice said:

"Oh-h!  Conceited young man!"

And spinning round he saw Phyllis in the doorway.  Her light brown
hair was fluffed out on her shoulders, so that he felt a kind of
fainting-sweet sensation, and murmured inarticulately:

"Oh!  I say--how jolly!"

"Lawks!  It's awful!  Have you come to see mother?"

Balanced between fear and daring, conscious of a scent of hay and
verbena and camomile, Bob Pillin stammered:

"Ye-es.  I--I'm glad she's not in, though."

Her laugh seemed to him terribly unfeeling.

"Oh!  oh!  Don't be foolish.  Sit down.  Isn't washing one's head
awful?"

Bob Pillin answered feebly:

"Of course, I haven't much experience."

Her mouth opened.

"Oh!  You are--aren't you?"

And he thought desperately: 'Dare I--oughtn't I--couldn't I somehow
take'her hand or put my arm round her, or something?'  Instead, he
sat very rigid at his end of the sofa, while she sat lax and lissom
at the other, and one of those crises of paralysis which beset would-
-be lovers fixed him to the soul.

Sometimes during this last month memories of a past existence, when
chaff and even kisses came readily to the lips, and girls were fair
game, would make him think: 'Is she really such an innocent?  Doesn't
she really want me to kiss her?'  Alas! such intrusions lasted but a
moment before a blast of awe and chivalry withered them, and a
strange and tragic delicacy--like nothing he had ever known--resumed
its sway.  And suddenly he heard her say:

"Why do you know such awful men?"

"What?  I don't know any awful men."

"Oh yes, you do; one came here yesterday; he had whiskers, and he was
awful."

"Whiskers?"  His soul revolted in disclaimer.  "I believe I only know
one man with whiskers--a lawyer."

"Yes--that was him; a perfectly horrid man.  Mother didn't mind him,
but I thought he was a beast."

"Ventnor!  Came here?  How d'you mean?"

"He did; about some business of yours, too."  Her face had clouded
over.  Bob Pillin had of late been harassed by the still-born
beginning of a poem:

         "I rode upon my way and saw
          A maid who watched me from the door."

It never grew longer, and was prompted by the feeling that her face
was like an April day.  The cloud which came on it now was like an
April cloud, as if a bright shower of rain must follow.  Brushing
aside the two distressful lines, he said:

"Look here, Miss Larne--Phyllis--look here!"

"All right, I'm looking!"

"What does it mean--how did he come?  What did he say?"

She shook her head, and her hair quivered; the scent of camomile,
verbena, hay was wafted; then looking at her lap, she muttered:

"I wish you wouldn't--I wish mother wouldn't--I hate it.  Oh!  Money!
Beastly--beastly!" and a tearful sigh shivered itself into Bob
Pillin's reddening ears.

"I say--don't!  And do tell me, because--"

"Oh! you know."

"I don't--I don't know anything at all.  I never---"

Phyllis looked up at him.  "Don't tell fibs; you know mother's
borrowing money from you, and it's hateful!"

A desire to lie roundly, a sense of the cheque in his pocket, a
feeling of injustice, the emotion of pity, and a confused and black
astonishment about Ventnor, caused Bob Pillin to stammer:

'Well, I'm d---d!" and to miss the look which Phyllis gave him
through her lashes--a look saying:

"Ah! that's better!"

"I am d---d!  Look here!  D'you mean to say that Ventnor came here
about my lending money?  I never said a word to him---"

"There you see--you are lending!"

He clutched his hair.

"We've got to have this out," he added.

"Not by the roots!  Oh! you do look funny.  I've never seen you with
your hair untidy.  Oh! oh!"

Bob Pillin rose and paced the room.  In the midst of his emotion he
could not help seeing himself sidelong in the mirror; and on pretext
of holding his head in both his hands, tried earnestly to restore his
hair.  Then coming to a halt he said:

"Suppose I am lending money to your mother, what does it matter?
It's only till quarter-day.  Anybody might want money."

Phyllis did not raise her face.

"Why are you lending it?"

"Because--because--why shouldn't I?"  and diving suddenly, he seized
her hands.

She wrenched them free; and with the emotion of despair, Bob Pillin
took out the envelope.

"If you like," he said, "I'll tear this up.  I don't want to lend it,
if you don't want me to; but I thought--I thought--"  It was for her
alone he had been going to lend this money!

Phyllis murmured through her hair:

"Yes!  You thought that I--that's what's so hateful!"

Apprehension pierced his mind.

"Oh!  I never--I swear I never--"

"Yes, you did; you thought I wanted you to lend it."

She jumped up, and brushed past him into the window.

So she thought she was being used as a decoy!  That was awful--
especially since it was true.  He knew well enough that Mrs. Larne
was working his admiration for her daughter for all that it was
worth.  And he said with simple fervour:

"What rot!"  It produced no effect, and at his wits' end, he almost
shouted: "Look, Phyllis!  If you don't want me to--here goes!"
Phyllis turned.  Tearing the envelope across he threw the bits into
the fire.  "There it is," he said.

Her eyes grew round; she said in an awed voice: "Oh!"

In a sort of agony of honesty he said:

"It was only a cheque.  Now you've got your way."

Staring at the fire she answered slowly:

"I expect you'd better go before mother comes."

Bob Pillin's mouth fell afar; he secretly agreed, but the idea of
sacrificing a moment alone with her was intolerable, and he said
hardily:

"No, I shall stick it!"

Phyllis sneezed.

"My hair isn't a bit dry," and she sat down on the fender with her
back to the fire.

A certain spirituality had come into Bob Pillin's face.  If only he
could get that wheeze off: "Phyllis is my only joy!" or even:
"Phyllis--do you--won't you--mayn't I?"  But nothing came--nothing.

And suddenly she said:

"Oh! don't breathe so loud; it's awful!"

"Breathe?  I wasn't!"

"You were; just like Carmen when she's dreaming."

He had walked three steps towards the door, before he thought: 'What
does it matter?  I can stand anything from her; and walked the three
steps back again.

She said softly:

"Poor young man!"

He answered gloomily:

"I suppose you realise that this may be the last time you'll see me?"

"Why?  I thought you were going to take us to the theatre."

"I don't know whether your mother will--after---"

Phyllis gave a little clear laugh.

"You don't know mother.  Nothing makes any difference to her."

And Bob Pillin muttered:

"I see."  He did not, but it was of no consequence.  Then the thought
of Ventnor again ousted all others.  What on earth-how on earth!  He
searched his mind for what he could possibly have said the other
night.  Surely he had not asked him to do anything; certainly not
given him their address.  There was something very odd about it that
had jolly well got to be cleared up!  And he said:

"Are you sure the name of that Johnny who came here yesterday was
Ventnor?"

Phyllis nodded.

"And he was short, and had whiskers?"

"Yes; red, and red eyes."

He murmured reluctantly:

"It must be him.  Jolly good cheek; I simply can't understand.  I
shall go and see him.  How on earth did he know your address?"

"I expect you gave it him."

"I did not.  I won't have you thinking me a squirt."

Phyllis jumped up.  "Oh!  Lawks!  Here's mother!"  Mrs. Larne was
coming up the garden.  Bob Pillin made for the door.  "Good-bye," he
said; "I'm going."  But Mrs. Larne was already in the hall.
Enveloping him in fur and her rich personality, she drew him with her
into the drawing-room, where the back window was open and Phyllis
gone.

"I hope," she said, "those naughty children have been making you
comfortable.  That nice lawyer of yours came yesterday.  He seemed
quite satisfied."

Very red above his collar, Bob Pillin stammered:

"I never told him to; he isn't my lawyer.  I don't know what it
means."

Mrs. Larne smiled.  "My dear boy, it's all right.  You needn't be so
squeamish.  I want it to be quite on a business footing."

Restraining a fearful inclination to blurt out: "It's not going to be
on any footing!"  Bob Pillin mumbled: "I must go; I'm late."

"And when will you be able---?"

"Oh!  I'll--I'll send--I'll write.  Good-bye!"  And suddenly he found
that Mrs. Larne had him by the lapel of his coat.  The scent of
violets and fur was overpowering, and the thought flashed through
him: 'I believe she only wanted to take money off old Joseph in the
Bible.  I can't leave my coat in her hands!  What shall I do?'

Mrs. Larne was murmuring:

"It would be se sweet of you if you could manage it today"; and her
hand slid over his chest.  "Oh!  You have brought your cheque-book--
what a nice boy!"

Bob Pillin took it out in desperation, and, sitting down at the
bureau, wrote a cheque similar to that which he had torn and burned.
A warm kiss lighted on his eyebrow, his head was pressed for a moment
to a furry bosom; a hand took the cheque; a voice said: "How
delightful!"  and a sigh immersed him in a bath of perfume.  Backing
to the door, he gasped:

"Don't mention it; and--and don't tell Phyllis, please.  Good-bye!"

Once through the garden gate, he thought: 'By gum!  I've done it now.
That Phyllis should know about it at all!  That beast Ventnor!'

His face grew almost grim.  He would go and see what that meant
anyway!




3

Mr. Ventnor had not left his office when his young friend's card was
brought to him.  Tempted for a moment to deny his own presence, he
thought: 'No!  What's the good?  Bound to see him some time!'  If he
had not exactly courage, he had that peculiar blend of self-
confidence and insensibility which must needs distinguish those who
follow the law; nor did he ever forget that he was in the right.

"Show him in!"  he said.

He would be quite bland, but young Pillin might whistle for an
explanation; he was still tormented, too, by the memory of rich
curves and moving lips, and the possibilities of better
acquaintanceship.

While shaking the young man's hand his quick and fulvous eye detected
at once the discomposure behind that mask of cheek and collar, and
relapsing into one of those swivel chairs which give one an advantage
over men more statically seated, he said:

"You look pretty bobbish.  Anything I can do for you?"

Bob Pillin, in the fixed chair of the consultor, nursed his bowler on
his knee.

"Well, yes, there is.  I've just been to see Mrs. Larne."

Mr. Ventnor did not flinch.

"Ah!  Nice woman; pretty daughter, too!"  And into those words he put
a certain meaning.  He never waited to be bullied.  Bob Pillin felt
the pressure of his blood increasing.

"Look here, Ventnor," he said, "I want an explanation."

"What of?"

"Why, of your going there, and using my name, and God knows what."

Mr. Ventnor gave his chair two little twiddles before he said

"Well, you won't get it."

Bob Pillin remained for a moment taken aback; then he muttered
resolutely:

"It's not the conduct of a gentleman."

Every man has his illusions, and no man likes them disturbed.  The
gingery tint underlying Mr. Ventnor's colouring overlaid it; even the
whites of his eyes grew red."

"Oh!"  he said; "indeed!  You mind your own business, will you?"

"It is my business--very much so.  You made use of my name, and I
don't choose---"

"The devil you don't!  Now, I tell you what---"

Mr. Ventnor leaned forward--"you'd better hold your tongue, and not
exasperate me.  I'm a good-tempered man, but I won't stand your
impudence."

Clenching his bowler hat, and only kept in his seat by that sense of
something behind, Bob Pillin ejaculated:

"Impudence!  That's good--after what you did!  Look here, why did
you?  It's so extraordinary!"

Mr. Ventnor answered:

"Oh! is it?  You wait a bit, my friend!"

Still more moved by the mystery of this affair, Bob Pillin could only
mutter:

"I never gave you their address; we were only talking about old
Heythorp."


And at the smile which spread between Mr. Ventnor's whiskers, he
jumped up, crying:

"It's not the thing, and you're not going to put me off.  I insist on
an explanation."

Mr. Ventnor leaned back, crossing his stout legs, joining the tips of
his thick fingers.  In this attitude he was always self-possessed.

"You do--do you?"

"Yes.  You must have had some reason."

Mr. Ventnor gazed up at him.

"I'll give you a piece of advice, young cock, and charge you nothing
for it, too: Ask no questions, and you'll be told no lies.  And
here's another: Go away before you forget yourself again."

The natural stolidity of Bob Pilings face was only just proof against
this speech.  He said thickly:

"If you go there again and use my name, I'll Well, it's lucky for you
you're not my age.  Anyway I'll relieve you of my acquaintanceship in
future.  Good-evening!"  and he went to the door.  Mr. Ventnor had
risen.

"Very well," he said loudly.  "Good riddance!  You wait and see which
boot the leg is on!"

But Bob Pillin was gone, leaving the lawyer with a very red face, a
very angry heart, and a vague sense of disorder in his speech.  Not
only Bob Pillin, but his tender aspirations had all left him; he no
longer dallied with the memory of Mrs. Larne, but like a man and a
Briton thought only of how to get his own back, and punish evildoers.
The atrocious words of his young friend, "It's not the conduct of a
gentleman," festered in the heart of one who was made gentle not
merely by nature but by Act of Parliament, and he registered a solemn
vow to wipe the insult out, if not with blood, with verjuice.  It was
his duty, and they should d---d well see him do it!




IV

Sylvanus Heythorp seldom went to bed before one or rose before
eleven.  The latter habit alone kept his valet from handing in the
resignation which the former habit prompted almost every night.

Propped on his pillows in a crimson dressing-gown, and freshly
shaved, he looked more Roman than he ever did, except in his bath.
Having disposed of coffee, he was wont to read his letters, and The
Morning Post, for he had always been a Tory, and could not stomach
paying a halfpenny for his news.  Not that there were many letters--
when a man has reached the age of eighty, who should write to him,
except to ask for money?

It was Valentine's Day.  Through his bedroom window he could see the
trees of the park, where the birds were in song, though he could not
hear them.  He had never been interested in Nature--full-blooded men
with short necks seldom are.

This morning indeed there were two letters, and he opened that which
smelt of something.  Inside was a thing like a Christmas card, save
that the naked babe had in his hands a bow and arrow, and words
coming out of his mouth: "To be your Valentine."  There was also a
little pink note with one blue forget-me-not printed at the top.  It
ran:

"DEAREST GUARDY,--I'm sorry this is such a mangy little valentine; I
couldn't go out to get it because I've got a beastly cold, so I asked
Jock, and the pig bought this.  The satin is simply scrumptious.  If
you don't come and see me in it some time soon, I shall come and show
it to you.  I wish I had a moustache, because my top lip feels just
like a matchbox, but it's rather ripping having breakfast in bed.
Mr. Pillin's taking us to the theatre the day after to-morrow
evening.  Isn't it nummy!  I'm going to have rum and honey for my
cold.

"Good-bye,
"Your PHYLLIS."


So this that quivered in his thick fingers, too insensitive to feel
it, was a valentine for him!

Forty years ago that young thing's grandmother had given him his
last.  It made him out a very old chap!  Forty years ago!  Had that
been himself living then?  And himself, who, as a youth came on the
town in 'forty-five?  Not a thought, not a feeling the same!  They
said you changed your body every seven years.  The mind with it, too,
perhaps!  Well, he had come to the last of his bodies, now!  And that
holy woman had been urging him to take it to Bath, with her face as
long as a tea-tray, and some gammon from that doctor of his.  Too
full a habit--dock his port--no alcohol--might go off in a coma any
night!  Knock off not he!  Rather die any day than turn tee-totaller!
When a man had nothing left in life except his dinner, his bottle,
his cigar, and the dreams they gave him--these doctors forsooth must
want to cut them off!  No, no!  Carpe diem! while you lived, get
something out of it.  And now that he had made all the provision he
could for those youngsters, his life was no good to any one but
himself; and the sooner he went off the better, if he ceased to enjoy
what there was left, or lost the power to say: "I'll do this and
that, and you be jiggered!"  Keep a stiff lip until you crashed, and
then go clean!  He sounded the bell beside him twice-for Molly, not
his man.  And when the girl came in, and stood, pretty in her print
frock, her fluffy over-fine dark hair escaping from under her cap, he
gazed at her in silence.

"Yes, sirr?"

"Want to look at you, that's all."

"Oh I an' I'm not tidy, sirr."

"Never mind.  Had your valentine?"

"No, sirr; who would send me one, then?"

"Haven't you a young man?"

"Well, I might.  But he's over in my country.

"What d'you think of this?"

He held out the little boy.

The girl took the card and scrutinised it reverently; she said in a
detached voice:

"Indeed, an' ut's pretty, too."

"Would you like it?"

"Oh I if 'tis not taking ut from you."

Old Heythorp shook his head, and pointed to the dressing-table.

"Over there--you'll find a sovereign.  Little present for a good
girl."

She uttered a deep sigh.  "Oh!  sirr, 'tis too much; 'tis kingly."

"Take it."

She took it, and came back, her hands clasping the sovereign and the
valentine, in an attitude as of prayer.

The old man's gaze rested on her with satisfaction.

"I like pretty faces--can't bear sour ones.  Tell Meller to get my
bath ready."

When she had gone he took up the other letter--some lawyer's writing,
and opening it with the usual difficulty, read:

"February 13, 1905.

"SIR,--Certain facts having come to my knowledge, I deem it my duty
to call a special meeting of the shareholders of 'The Island
Navigation Coy.,' to consider circumstances in connection with the
purchase of Mr. Joseph Pillin's fleet.  And I give you notice that at
this meeting your conduct will be called in question.

"I am, Sir,
"Yours faithfully,

"CHARLES VENTNOR.

"SYLVANUS HEYTHORP, ESQ."


Having read this missive, old Heythorp remained some minutes without
stirring.  Ventnor!  That solicitor chap who had made himself
unpleasant at the creditors' meetings!

There are men whom a really bad bit of news at once stampedes out of
all power of coherent thought and action, and men who at first simply
do not take it in.  Old Heythorp took it in fast enough; coming from
a lawyer it was about as nasty as it could be.  But, at once, with
stoic wariness his old brain began casting round.  What did this
fellow really know?  And what exactly could he do?  One thing was
certain; even if he knew everything, he couldn't upset that
settlement.  The youngsters were all right.  The old man grasped the
fact that only his own position was at stake.  But this was enough in
all conscience; a name which had been before the public fifty odd
years--income, independence, more perhaps.  It would take little,
seeing his age and feebleness, to make his Companies throw him over.
But what had the fellow got hold of?  How decide whether or no to
take notice; to let him do his worst, or try and get into touch with
him?  And what was the fellow's motive?  He held ten shares!  That
would never make a man take all this trouble, and over a purchase
which was really first-rate business for the Company.  Yes!  His
conscience was quite clean.  He had not betrayed his Company--on the
contrary, had done it a good turn, got them four sound ships at a low
price--against much opposition.  That he might have done the Company
a better turn, and got the ships at fifty-four thousand, did not
trouble him--the six thousand was a deuced sight better employed; and
he had not pocketed a penny piece himself!  But the fellow's motive?
Spite?  Looked like it.  Spite, because he had been disappointed of
his money, and defied into the bargain!  H'm!  If that were so, he
might still be got to blow cold again.  His eyes lighted on the pink
note with the blue forget-me-not.  It marked as it were the high
water mark of what was left to him of life; and this other letter in
his hand-by Jove!  Low water mark!  And with a deep and rumbling sigh
he thought: 'No, I'm not going to be beaten by this fellow.'

"Your bath is ready, sir."

Crumpling the two letters into the pocket of his dressing-gown, he
said:

"Help me up; and telephone to Mr. Farney to be good enough to come
round." ....

An hour later, when the secretary entered, his chairman was sitting
by the fire perusing the articles of association.  And, waiting for
him to look up, watching the articles shaking in that thick, feeble
hand, the secretary had one of those moments of philosophy not too
frequent with his kind.  Some said the only happy time of life was
when you had no passions, nothing to hope and live for.  But did you
really ever reach such a stage?  The old chairman, for instance,
still had his passion for getting his own way, still had his
prestige, and set a lot of store by it!  And he said:

"Good morning, sir; I hope you're all right in this east wind.  The
purchase is completed."

"Best thing the company ever did.  Have you heard from a shareholder
called Ventnor.  You know the man I mean?"

"No, sir.  I haven't."

"Well!  You may get a letter that'll make you open your eyes.  An
impudent scoundrel!  Just write at my dictation."

"February 14th, 1905.

"CHARLES VENTNOR, Esq.

"SIR,--I have your letter of yesterday's date, the contents of which
I am at a loss to understand.  My solicitors will be instructed to
take the necessary measures."

'Phew What's all this about?' the secretary thought.

"Yours truly...."

"I'll sign."  And the shaky letters closed the page:

"SYLVANUS HEYTHORP."


"Post that as you go."

"Anything else I can do for you, sir?"

"Nothing, except to let me know if you hear from this fellow."

When the secretary had gone the old man thought: 'So!  The ruffian
hasn't called the meeting yet.  That'll bring him round here fast
enough if it's his money he wants-blackmailing scoundrel!'

"Mr. Pillin, sir; and will you wait lunch, or will you have it in the
dining-room?"

"In the dining-room."

At sight of that death's-head of a fellow, old Heythorp felt a sort
of pity.  He looked bad enough already--and this news would make him
look worse.  Joe Pillin glanced round at the two closed doors.

"How are you, Sylvanus?  I'm very poorly."  He came closer, and
lowered his voice: "Why did you get me to make that settlement?  I
must have been mad.  I've had a man called Ventnor--I didn't like his
manner.  He asked me if I knew a Mrs. Larne."

"Ha!  What did you say?"

"What could I say?  I don't know her.  But why did he ask?"

"Smells a rat."

Joe Pillin grasped the edge of the table with both hands.

"Oh!"  he murmured.  "Oh!  don't say that!"

Old Heythorp held out to him the crumpled letter.

When he had read it Joe Pillin sat down abruptly before the fire.

"Pull yourself together, Joe; they can't touch you, and they can't
upset either the purchase or the settlement.  They can upset me,
that's all."

Joe Pillin answered, with trembling lips:

"How you can sit there, and look the same as ever!  Are you sure they
can't touch me?"

Old Heyworth nodded grimly.

"They talk of an Act, but they haven't passed it yet.  They might
prove a breach of trust against me.  But I'll diddle them.  Keep your
pecker up, and get off abroad."

"Yes, yes.  I must.  I'm very bad.  I was going to-morrow.  But I
don't know, I'm sure, with this hanging over me.  My son knowing her
makes it worse.  He picks up with everybody.  He knows this man
Ventnor too.  And I daren't say anything to Bob.  What are you
thinking of, Sylvanus?  You look very funny!"

Old Heythorp seemed to rouse himself from a sort of coma.

"I want my lunch," he said.  "Will you stop and have some?"

Joe Pillin stammered out:

"Lunch! I don't know when I shall eat again.  What are you going to
do, Sylvanus?"

"Bluff the beggar out of it."

"But suppose you can't?"

"Buy him off.  He's one--of my creditors."

Joe Pillin stared at him afresh.  "You always had such nerve," he
said yearningly.  "Do you ever wake up between two and four?  I do--
and everything's black."

"Put a good stiff nightcap on, my boy, before going to bed."

"Yes; I sometimes wish I was less temperate.  But I couldn't stand
it.  I'm told your doctor forbids you alcohol."

"He does.  That's why I drink it."

Joe Pillin, brooding over the fire, said: "This meeting--d'you think
they mean to have it?  D'you think this man really knows?  If my name
gets into the newspapers--" but encountering his old friend's deep
little eyes, he stopped.  "So you advise me to get off to-morrow,
then?"

Old Heythorp nodded.

"Your lunch is served, sir."

Joe Pillin started violently, and rose.

"Well, good-bye, Sylvanus-good-bye!  I don't suppose I shall be back
till the summer, if I ever come back!"  He sank his voice: "I shall
rely on you.  You won't let them, will you?"

Old Heythorp lifted his hand, and Joe Pillin put into that swollen
shaking paw his pale and spindly fingers.  "I wish I had your pluck,"
he said sadly.  "Good-bye, Sylvanus," and turning, he passed out.

Old Heythorp thought: 'Poor shaky chap.  All to pieces at the first
shot!'  And, going to his lunch, ate more heavily than usual.




2

Mr. Ventnor, on reaching his office and opening his letters, found,
as he had anticipated, one from "that old rascal."  Its contents
excited in him the need to know his own mind.  Fortunately this was
not complicated by a sense of dignity--he only had to consider the
position with an eye on not being made to look a fool.  The point was
simply whether he set more store by his money than by his desire for-
-er--Justice.  If not, he had merely to convene the special meeting,
and lay before it the plain fact that Mr. Joseph Pillin, selling his
ships for sixty thousand pounds, had just made a settlement of six
thousand pounds on a lady whom he did not know, a daughter, ward, or
what-not--of the purchasing company's chairman, who had said,
moreover, at the general meeting, that he stood or fell by the
transaction; he had merely to do this, and demand that an explanation
be required from the old man of such a startling coincidence.
Convinced that no explanation would hold water, he felt sure that his
action would be at once followed by the collapse, if nothing more, of
that old image, and the infliction of a nasty slur on old Pillin and
his hopeful son.  On the other hand, three hundred pounds was money;
and, if old Heythorp were to say to him: "What do you want to make
this fuss for--here's what I owe you!"  could a man of business and
the world let his sense of justice--however he might itch to have it
satisfied--stand in the way of what was after all also his sense of
Justice?--for this money had been owing to him for the deuce of along
time.  In this dilemma, the words:

"My solicitors will be instructed" were of notable service in helping
him to form a decision, for he had a certain dislike of other
solicitors, and an intimate knowledge of the law of libel and
slander; if by any remote chance there should be a slip between the
cup and the lip, Charles Ventnor might be in the soup--a position
which he deprecated both by nature and profession.  High thinking,
therefore, decided him at last to answer thus:

"February 19th, 1905.

"SIR,--I have received your note.  I think it may be fair, before
taking further steps in this matter, to ask you for a personal
explanation of the circumstances to which I alluded.  I therefore
propose with your permission to call on you at your private residence
at five o'clock to-morrow afternoon.

"Yours faithfully,

"CHARLES VENTNOR.

"SYLVANUS HEYTHORP, Esq."


Having sent this missive, and arranged in his mind the damning, if
circumstantial, evidence he had accumulated, he awaited the hour with
confidence, for his nature was not lacking in the cock-surety of a
Briton.  All the same, he dressed himself particularly well that
morning, putting on a blue and white striped waistcoat which, with a
cream-coloured tie, set off his fulvous whiskers and full blue eyes;
and he lunched, if anything, more fully than his wont, eating a
stronger cheese and taking a glass of special Club ale.  He took care
to be late, too, to show the old fellow that his coming at all was in
the nature of an act of grace.  A strong scent of hyacinths greeted
him in the hall; and Mr. Ventnor, who was an amateur of flowers,
stopped to put his nose into a fine bloom and think uncontrollably of
Mrs. Larne.  Pity!  The things one had to give up in life--fine
women--one thing and another.  Pity!  The thought inspired in him a
timely anger; and he followed the servant, intending to stand no
nonsense from this paralytic old rascal.

The room he entered was lighted by a bright fire, and a single
electric lamp with an orange shade on a table covered by a black
satin cloth.  There were heavily gleaming oil paintings on the walls,
a heavy old brass chandelier without candles, heavy dark red
curtains, and an indefinable scent of burnt acorns, coffee, cigars,
and old man.  He became conscious of a candescent spot on the far
side of the hearth, where the light fell on old Heythorp's thick
white hair.

"Mr. Ventnor, sir."

The candescent spot moved.  A voice said: "Sit down."

Mr. Ventnor sat in an armchair on the opposite side of the fire; and,
finding a kind of somnolence creeping over him, pinched himself.  He
wanted all his wits about him.

The old man was speaking in that extinct voice of his, and Mr.
Ventnor said rather pettishly:

"Beg pardon, I don't get you."

Old Heythorp's voice swelled with sudden force:

"Your letters are Greek to me."

"Oh!  indeed, I think we can soon make them into plain English!"

"Sooner the better."

Mr. Ventnor passed through a moment of indecision.  Should he lay his
cards on the table?  It was not his habit, and the proceeding was
sometimes attended with risk.  The knowledge, however, that he could
always take them up again, seeing there was no third person here to
testify that he had laid them down, decided him, and he said:

"Well, Mr. Heythorp, the long and short of the matter is this: Our
friend Mr. Pillin paid you a commission of ten per cent. on the sale
of his ships.  Oh! yes.  He settled the money, not on you, but on
your relative Mrs. Larne and her children.  This, as you know, is a
breach of trust on your part."

The old man's voice: "Where did you get hold of that cock-and-bull
story?"  brought him to his feet before the fire.

"It won't do, Mr. Heythorp.  My witnesses are Mr. Pillin, Mrs. Larne,
and Mr. Scriven."

"What have you come here for, then--blackmail?"

Mr. Ventnor straightened his waistcoat; a rush of conscious virtue
had dyed his face.

"Oh! you take that tone," he said, "do you?  You think you can ride
roughshod over everything?  Well, you're very much mistaken.  I
advise you to keep a civil tongue and consider your position, or I'll
make a beggar of you.  I'm not sure this isn't a case for a
prosecution!"

"Gammon!"

The choler in Charles Ventnor kept him silent for a moment; then he
burst out:

"Neither gammon nor spinach.  You owe me three hundred pounds, you've
owed it me for years, and you have the impudence to take this
attitude with me, have you?  Now, I never bluster; I say what I mean.
You just listen to me.  Either you pay me what you owe me at once, or
I call this meeting and make what I know public.  You'll very soon
find out where you are.  And a good thing, too, for a more
unscrupulous--unscrupulous---" he paused for breath.

Occupied with his own emotion, he had not observed the change in old
Heythorp's face.  The imperial on that lower lip was bristling, the
crimson of those cheeks had spread to the roots of his white hair.
He grasped the arms of his chair, trying to rise; his swollen hands
trembled; a little saliva escaped one corner of his lips.  And the
words came out as if shaken by his teeth:

"So-so-you-you bully me!"

Conscious that the interview had suddenly passed from the phase of
negotiation, Mr. Ventnor looked hard at his opponent.  He saw nothing
but a decrepit, passionate, crimson-faced old man at bay, and all the
instincts of one with everything on his side boiled up in him.  The
miserable old turkey-cock--the apoplectic image!  And he said:

"And you'll do no good for yourself by getting into a passion.  At
your age, and in your condition, I recommend a little prudence.  Now
just take my terms quietly, or you know what'll happen.  I'm not to
be intimidated by any of your airs."  And seeing that the old man's
rage was such that he simply could not speak, he took the opportunity
of going on: "I don't care two straws which you do--I'm out to show
you who's master.  If you think in your dotage you can domineer any
longer--well, you'll find two can play at that game.  Come, now,
which are you going to do?"

The old man had sunk back in his chair, and only his little deep-blue
eyes seemed living.  Then he moved one hand, and Mr. Ventnor saw that
he was fumbling to reach the button of an electric bell at the end of
a cord.  'I'll show him,' he thought, and stepping forward, he put it
out of reach.

Thus frustrated, the old man remained-motionless, staring up.  The
word "blackmail" resumed its buzzing in Mr. Ventnor's ears.  The
impudence the consummate impudence of it from this fraudulent old
ruffian with one foot in bankruptcy and one foot in the grave, if not
in the dock.

"Yes," he said, "it's never too late to learn; and for once you've
come up against someone a leetle bit too much for you.  Haven't you
now?  You'd better cry 'Peccavi.'"

Then, in the deathly silence of the room, the moral force of his
position, and the collapse as it seemed of his opponent, awakening a
faint compunction, he took a turn over the Turkey carpet to readjust
his mind.

"You're an old man, and I don't want to be too hard on you.  I'm only
showing you that you can't play fast and loose as if you were God
Almighty any longer.  You've had your own way too many years.  And
now you can't have it, see!"  Then, as the old man again moved
forward in his chair, he added: "Now, don't get into a passion again;
calm yourself, because I warn you--this is your last chance.  I'm a
man of my word; and what I say, I do."

By a violent and unsuspected effort the old man jerked himself up and
reached the bell.  Mr. Ventnor heard it ring, and said sharply:

"Mind you, it's nothing to me which you do.  I came for your own
good.  Please yourself.  Well?"

He was answered by the click of the door and the old man's husky
voice:

"Show this hound out!  And then come back!"

Mr. Ventnor had presence of mind enough not to shake his fist.
Muttering: "Very well, Mr. Heythorp!  Ah!  Very well!" he moved with
dignity to the door.  The careful shepherding of the servant renewed
the fire of his anger.  Hound!  He had been called a hound




3

After seeing Mr. Ventnor off the premises the man Meller returned to
his master, whose face looked very odd--"all patchy-like," as he put
it in the servants' hall, as though the blood driven to his head had
mottled for good the snowy whiteness of the forehead.  He received
the unexpected order:

"Get me a hot bath ready, and put some pine stuff in it."

When the old man was seated there, the valet asked:

"How long shall I give you, sir?"

"Twenty minutes."

"Very good, sir."

Lying in that steaming brown fragrant liquid, old Heythorp heaved a
stertorous sigh.  By losing his temper with that ill-conditioned cur
he had cooked his goose.  It was done to a turn; and he was a ruined
man.  If only--oh! if only he could have seized the fellow by the
neck and pitched him out of the room!  To have lived to be so spoken
to; to have been unable to lift hand or foot, hardly even his voice--
he would sooner have been dead!  Yes--sooner have been dead!  A dumb
and measureless commotion was still at work in the recesses of that
thick old body, silver-brown in the dark water, whose steam he drew
deep into his wheezing lungs, as though for spiritual relief.  To be
beaten by a cur like that!  To have that common cad of a pettifogging
lawyer drag him down and kick him about; tumble a name which had
stood high, in the dust!  The fellow had the power to make him a
byword and a beggar!  It was incredible!  But it was a fact.  And to-
morrow he would begin to do it--perhaps had begun already.  His tree
had come down with a crash!  Eighty years-eighty good years!  He
regretted none of them-regretted nothing; least of all this breach of
trust which had provided for his grandchildren--one of the best
things he had ever done.  The fellow was a cowardly hound, too!  The
way he had snatched the bell-pull out of his reach-despicable cur!
And a chap like that was to put "paid" to the account of Sylvanus
Heythorp, to "scratch" him out of life--so near the end of
everything, the very end!  His hand raised above the surface fell
back on his stomach through the dark water, and a bubble or two rose.
Not so fast--not so fast!  He had but to slip down a foot, let the
water close over his head, and "Good-bye" to Master Ventnor's triumph
Dead men could not be kicked off the Boards of Companies.  Dead men
could not be beggared, deprived of their independence.  He smiled and
stirred a little in the bath till the water reached the white hairs
on his lower lip.  It smelt nice!  And he took a long sniff: He had
had a good life, a good life!  And with the thought that he had it in
his power at any moment to put Master Ventnor's nose out of joint--to
beat the beggar after all, a sense of assuagement and well-being
crept over him.  His blood ran more evenly again.  He closed his
eyes.  They talked about an after-life--people like that holy woman.
Gammon!  You went to sleep--a long sleep; no dreams.  A nap after
dinner!  Dinner!  His tongue sought his palate!  Yes! he could eat a
good dinner!  That dog hadn't put him off his stroke!  The best
dinner he had ever eaten was the one he gave to Jack Herring,
Chichester, Thornworthy, Nick Treffry and Jolyon Forsyte at Pole's.
Good Lord!  In 'sixty--yes--'sixty-five?  Just before he fell in love
with Alice Larne--ten years before he came to Liverpool.  That was a
dinner!  Cost twenty-four pounds for the six of them--and Forsyte an
absurdly moderate fellow.  Only Nick Treff'ry and himself had been
three-bottle men!  Dead!  Every jack man of them.  And suddenly he
thought: 'My name's a good one--I was never down before--never
beaten!'

A voice above the steam said:

"The twenty minutes is up, sir."

"All right; I'll get out.  Evening clothes."

And Meller, taking out dress suit and shirt, thought: 'Now, what does
the old bloomer want dressin' up again for; why can't he go to bed
and have his dinner there?  When a man's like a baby, the cradle's
the place for him.'....

An hour later, at the scene of his encounter with Mr. Ventnor, where
the table was already laid for dinner, old Heythorp stood and gazed.
The curtains had been drawn back, the window thrown open to air the
room, and he could see out there the shapes of the dark trees and a
sky grape-coloured, in the mild, moist night.  It smelt good.  A
sensuous feeling stirred in him, warm from his bath, clothed from
head to foot in fresh garments.  Deuce of a time since he had dined
in full fig!  He would have liked a woman dining opposite--but not
the holy woman; no, by George!--would have liked to see light falling
on a woman's shoulders once again, and a pair of bright eyes!  He
crossed, snail-like, towards the fire.  There that bullying fellow
had stood with his back to it--confound his impudence!--as if the
place belonged to him.  And suddenly he had a vision of his three
secretaries' faces--especially young Farney's as they would look,
when the pack got him by the throat and pulled him down.  His co-
directors, too! Old Heythorp!  How are the mighty fallen!  And that
hound jubilant!

His valet passed across the room to shut the window and draw the
curtains.  This chap too!  The day he could no longer pay his wages,
and had lost the power to say "Shan't want your services any more"--
when he could no longer even pay his doctor for doing his best to
kill him off!  Power, interest, independence, all--gone!  To be
dressed and undressed, given pap, like a baby in arms, served as they
chose to serve him, and wished out of the way--broken, dishonoured!

By money alone an old man had his being!  Meat, drink, movement,
breath!  When all his money was gone the holy woman would let him
know it fast enough.  They would all let him know it; or if they
didn't, it would be out of pity!  He had never been pitied yet--thank
God!  And he said:

"Get me up a bottle of Perrier Jouet.  What's the menu?"

"Germane soup, sir; filly de sole; sweetbread; cutlet soubees, rum
souffly."

"Tell her to give me a hors d'oeuvre, and put on a savoury."

"Yes, sir."

When the man had gone, he thought: 'I should have liked an oyster--
too late now!' and going over to his bureau, he fumblingly pulled out
the top drawer.  There was little in it--Just a few papers, business
papers on his Companies, and a schedule of his debts; not even a copy
of his will--he had not made one, nothing to leave!  Letters he had
never kept.  Half a dozen bills, a few receipts, and the little pink
note with the blue forget-me-not.  That was the lot!  An old tree
gives up bearing leaves, and its roots dry up, before it comes down
in a wind; an old man's world slowly falls away from him till he
stands alone in the night.  Looking at the pink note, he thought:
'Suppose I'd married Alice--a man never had a better mistress!'  He
fumbled the drawer to; but still he strayed feebly about the room,
with a curious shrinking from sitting down, legacy from the quarter
of an hour he had been compelled to sit while that hound worried at
his throat.  He was opposite one of the pictures now.  It gleamed,
dark and oily, limning a Scots Grey who had mounted a wounded Russian
on his horse, and was bringing him back prisoner from the Balaclava
charge.  A very old friend--bought in 'fifty-nine.  It had hung in
his chambers in the Albany--hung with him ever since.  With whom
would it hang when he was gone?  For that holy woman would scrap it,
to a certainty, and stick up some Crucifixion or other, some new-
fangled high art thing!  She could even do that now if she liked--for
she owned it, owned every mortal stick in the room, to the very glass
he would drink his champagne from; all made over under the settlement
fifteen years ago, before his last big gamble went wrong.  "De
l'audace, toujours de l'audace!"  The gamble which had brought him
down till his throat at last was at the mercy of a bullying hound.
The pitcher and the well!  At the mercy---!  The sound of a popping
cork dragged him from reverie.  He moved to his seat, back to the
window, and sat down to his dinner.  By George!  They had got him an
oyster!  And he said:

"I've forgotten my teeth!"

While the man was gone for them, he swallowed the oysters,
methodically touching them one by one with cayenne, Chili vinegar,
and lemon.  Ummm!  Not quite what they used to be at Pimm's in the
best days, but not bad--not bad!  Then seeing the little blue bowl
lying before him, he looked up and said:

"My compliments to cook on the oysters.  Give me the champagne."  And
he lifted his trembling teeth.  Thank God, he could still put 'em in
for himself!  The creaming goldenish fluid from the napkined bottle
slowly reached the brim of his glass, which had a hollow stem;
raising it to his lips, very red between the white hairs above and
below, he drank with a gurgling noise, and put the glass down-empty.
Nectar!  And just cold enough!

"I frapped it the least bit, sir."

"Quite right.  What's that smell of flowers?"

"It's from those 'yacinths on the sideboard, sir.  They come from
Mrs. Larne, this afternoon."

"Put 'em on the table.  Where's my daughter?"

"She's had dinner, sir; goin' to a ball, I think."

"A ball!"

"Charity ball, I fancy, sir."

"Ummm!  Give me a touch of the old sherry with the soup."

"Yes, sir.  I shall have to open a bottle:"

"Very well, then, do!"

On his way to the cellar the man confided to Molly, who was carrying
the soup:

"The Gov'nor's going it to-night!  What he'll be like tomorrow I
dunno."

The girl answered softly:

"Poor old man, let um have his pleasure."  And, in the hall, with the
soup tureen against her bosom, she hummed above the steam, and
thought of the ribbons on her new chemises, bought out of the
sovereign he had given her.

And old Heythorp, digesting his osyters, snuffed the scent of the
hyacinths, and thought of the St. Germain, his favourite soup.  It
would n't be first-rate, at this time of year--should be made with
little young home-grown peas.  Paris was the place for it.  Ah!  The
French were the fellows for eating, and--looking things in the face!
Not hypocrites--not ashamed of their reason or their senses!

The soup came in.  He sipped it, bending forward as far as he could,
his napkin tucked in over his shirt-front like a bib.  He got the
bouquet of that sherry to a T--his sense of smell was very keen to-
night; rare old stuff it was--more than a year since he had tasted
it--but no one drank sherry nowadays, hadn't the constitution for it!
The fish came up, and went down; and with the sweetbread he took his
second glass of champagne.  Always the best, that second glass--the
stomach well warmed, and the palate not yet dulled.  Umm!  So that
fellow thought he had him beaten, did he?  And he said suddenly:

"The fur coat in the wardrobe, I've no use for it.  You can take it
away to-night."

With tempered gratitude the valet answered:

"Thank you, sir; much obliged, I'm sure."  So the old buffer had
found out there was moth in it!

"Have I worried you much?"

"No, sir; not at all, sir--that is, no more than reason."

"Afraid I have.  Very sorry--can't help it.  You'll find that, when
you get like me."

"Yes, sir; I've always admired your pluck, sir.

"Um!  Very good of you to say so."

"Always think of you keepin' the flag flying', sir."

Old Heythorp bent his body from the waist.

"Much obliged to you."

"Not at all, sir.  Cook's done a little spinach in cream with the
soubees."

"Ah!  Tell her from me it's a capital dinner, so far."

"Thank you, sir."

Alone again, old Heythorp sat unmoving, his brain just narcotically
touched.  "The flag flyin'--the flag flyin'!"  He raised his glass
and sucked.  He had an appetite now, and finished the three cutlets,
and all the sauce and spinach.  Pity!  he could have managed a snipe
fresh shot!  A desire to delay, to lengthen dinner, was strong upon
him; there were but the souffle' and the savoury to come.  He would
have enjoyed, too, someone to talk to.  He had always been fond of
good company--been good company himself, or so they said--not that he
had had a chance of late.  Even at the Boards they avoided talking to
him, he had noticed for a long time.  Well!  that wouldn't trouble
him again--he had sat through his last Board, no doubt.  They
shouldn't kick him off, though; he wouldn't give them that pleasure--
had seen the beggars hankering after his chairman's shoes too long.
The souffle was before him now, and lifting his glass, he said:

"Fill up."

"These are the special glasses, sir; only four to the bottle."

"Fill up."

The servant filled, screwing up his mouth.

Old Heythorp drank, and put the glass down empty with a sigh.  He had
been faithful to his principles, finished the bottle before touching
the sweet--a good bottle--of a good brand!  And now for the souffle!
Delicious, flipped down with the old sherry!  So that holy woman was
going to a ball, was she!  How deuced funny!  Who would dance with a
dry stick like that, all eaten up with a piety which was just sexual
disappointment?  Ah! yes, lots of women like that--had often noticed
'em--pitied 'em too, until you had to do with them and they made you
as unhappy as themselves, and were tyrants into the bargain.  And he
asked:

"What's the savoury?"

"Cheese remmykin, sir."

His favourite.

"I'll have my port with it--the 'sixty-eight."  The man stood gazing
with evident stupefaction.  He had not expected this.  The old man's
face was very flushed, but that might be the bath.  He said feebly:

"Are you sure you ought, sir?"

"No, but I'm going to."

"Would you mind if I spoke to Miss Heythorp, Sir?"

"If you do, you can leave my service."

"Well, Sir, I don't accept the responsibility."

"Who asked you to?"

"No, Sir...."

"Well, get it, then; and don't be an ass."

"Yes, Sir."  If the old man were not humoured he would have a fit,
perhaps!

And the old man sat quietly staring at the hyacinths.  He felt happy,
his whole being lined and warmed and drowsed--and there was more to
come!  What had the holy folk to give you compared with the comfort
of a good dinner?  Could they make you dream, and see life rosy for a
little?  No, they could only give you promissory notes which never
would be cashed.  A man had nothing but his pluck--they only tried to
undermine it, and make him squeal for help.  He could see his
precious doctor throwing up his hands: "Port after a bottle of
champagne--you'll die of it!"  And a very good death too--none
better.  A sound broke the silence of the closed-up room.  Music?
His daughter playing the piano overhead.  Singing too!  What a
trickle of a voice!  Jenny Lind!  The Swedish nightingale--he had
never missed the nights when she was singing--Jenny Lind!

"It's very hot, sir.  Shall I take it out of the case?"

Ah!  The ramequin!

"Touch of butter, and the cayenne!"

"Yes, sir."

He ate it slowly, savouring each mouthful; had never tasted a better.
With cheese--port!  He drank one glass, and said:

"Help me to my chair."

And settled there before the fire with decanter and glass and hand-
bell on the little low table by his side, he murmured:

"Bring coffee, and my cigar, in twenty minutes."

To-night he would do justice to his wine, not smoking till he had
finished.  As old Horace said:

"Aequam memento rebus in arduis Servare mentem."

And, raising his glass, he sipped slowly, spilling a drop or two,
shutting his eyes.

The faint silvery squealing of the holy woman in the room above, the
scent of hyacinths, the drowse of the fire, on which a cedar log had
just been laid, the feeling of the port soaking down into the
crannies of his being, made up a momentary Paradise.  Then the music
stopped; and no sound rose but the tiny groans of the log trying to
resist the fire.  Dreamily he thought: 'Life wears you out--wears you
out.  Logs on a fire!'  And he filled his glass again.  That fellow
had been careless; there were dregs at the bottom of the decanter and
he had got down to them!  Then, as the last drop from his tilted
glass trickled into the white hairs on his chin, he heard the coffee
tray put down, and taking his cigar he put it to his ear, rolling it
in his thick fingers.  In prime condition!  And drawing a first
whiff, he said:

"Open that bottle of the old brandy in the sideboard."

"Brandy, sir?  I really daren't, sir."

"Are you my servant or not?"

"Yes, sir, but---"

A minute of silence, then the man went hastily to the sideboard, took
out the bottle, and drew the cork.  The tide of crimson in the old
man's face had frightened him.

"Leave it there."

The unfortunate valet placed the bottle on the little table.  'I'll
have to tell her,' he thought; 'but if I take away the port decanter
and the glass, it won't look so bad.' And, carrying them, he left the
room.

Slowly the old man drank his coffee, and the liqueur of brandy.  The
whole gamut!  And watching his cigar-smoke wreathing blue in the
orange glow, he smiled.  The last night to call his soul his own, the
last night of his independence.  Send in his resignations to-morrow--
not wait to be kicked off!  Not give that fellow a chance

A voice which seemed to come from far off, said:

"Father!  You're drinking brandy!  How can you--you know it's simple
poison to you!"  A figure in white, scarcely actual, loomed up close.
He took the bottle to fill up his liqueur glass, in defiance; but a
hand in a long white glove, with another dangling from its wrist,
pulled it away, shook it at him, and replaced it in the sideboard.
And, just as when Mr. Ventnor stood there accusing him, a swelling
and churning in his throat prevented him from speech; his lips moved,
but only a little froth came forth.

His daughter had approached again.  She stood quite close, in white
satin, thin-faced, sallow, with eyebrows raised, and her dark hair
frizzed--yes! frizzed--the holy woman!  With all his might he tried
to say: 'So you bully me, do you--you bully me to-night!' but only
the word "so" and a sort of whispering came forth.  He heard her
speaking.  "It's no good your getting angry, Father.  After
champagne--it's wicked!"  Then her form receded in a sort of rustling
white mist; she was gone; and he heard the sputtering and growling of
her taxi, bearing her to the ball.  So!  She tyrannised and bullied,
even before she had him at her mercy, did she?  She should see!
Anger had brightened his eyes; the room came clear again.  And slowly
raising himself he sounded the bell twice, for the girl, not for that
fellow Meller, who was in the plot.  As soon as her pretty black and
white-aproned figure stood before him, he said:

"Help me up."

Twice her soft pulling was not enough, and he sank back.  The third
time he struggled to his feet.

"Thank you; that'll do."  Then, waiting till she was gone, he crossed
the room, fumbled open the sideboard door, and took out the bottle.
Reaching over the polished oak, he grasped a sherry glass; and
holding the bottle with both hands, tipped the liquor into it, put it
to his lips and sucked.  Drop by drop it passed over his palate mild,
very old, old as himself, coloured like sunlight, fragrant.  To the
last drop he drank it, then hugging the bottle to his shirt-front, he
moved snail-like to his chair, and fell back into its depths.  For
some minutes he remained there motionless, the bottle clasped to his
chest, thinking: 'This is not the attitude of a gentleman.  I must
put it down on the table-on the table;' but a thick cloud was between
him and everything.  It was with his hands he would have to put the
bottle on the table!  But he could not find his hands, could not feel
them.  His mind see-sawed in strophe and antistrophe: "You can't
move!"--"I will move!"  "You're beaten"--"I'm not beat."  "Give up"--
"I won't."  That struggle to find his hands seemed to last for ever--
he must find them!  After that--go down--all standing--after that!
Everything round him was red.  Then the red cloud cleared just a
little, and he could hear the clock--"tick-tick-tick"; a faint
sensation spread from his shoulders down to his wrists, down his
palms; and yes--he could feel the bottle!  He redoubled his struggle
to get forward in his chair; to get forward and put the bottle down.
It was not dignified like this!  One arm he could move now; but he
could not grip the bottle nearly tight enough to put it down.
Working his whole body forward, inch by inch, he shifted himself up
in the chair till he could lean sideways, and the bottle, slipping
down his chest, dropped slanting to the edge of the low stool-table.
Then with all his might he screwed his trunk and arms an inch
further, and the bottle stood.  He had done it--done it!  His lips
twitched into a smile; his body sagged back to its old position.  He
had done it!  And he closed his eyes ....

At half-past eleven the girl Molly, opening the door, looked at him
and said softly: "Sirr! there's some ladies, and a gentleman!"  But
he did not answer.  And, still holding the door, she whispered out
into the hall:

"He's asleep, miss."

A voice whispered back:

"Oh!  Just let me go in, I won't wake him unless he does.  But I do
want to show him my dress."

The girl moved aside; and on tiptoe Phyllis passed in.  She walked to
where, between the lamp-glow and the fire-glow, she was lighted up.
White satin--her first low-cut dress--the flush of her first supper
party--a gardenia at her breast, another in her fingers!  Oh!  what a
pity he was asleep!  How red he looked!  How funnily old men
breathed!  And mysteriously, as a child might, she whispered:

"Guardy!"

No answer!  And pouting, she stood twiddling the gardenia.  Then
suddenly she thought: 'I'll put it in his buttonhole!  When he wakes
up and sees it, how he'll jump!'

And stealing close, she bent and slipped it in.  Two faces looked at
her from round the door; she heard Bob Pillin's smothered chuckle;
her mother's rich and feathery laugh.  Oh!  How red his forehead was!
She touched it with her lips; skipped back, twirled round, danced
silently a second, blew a kiss, and like quicksilver was gone.

And the whispering, the chuckling, and one little out-pealing laugh
rose in the hall.

But the old man slept.  Nor until Meller came at his usual hour of
half-past twelve, was it known that he would never wake.







THE APPLE TREE


              "The Apple-tree, the singing and the gold."
               MURRAY'S "HIPPOLYTUS of EURIPIDES."

In their silver-wedding day Ashurst and his wife were motoring along
the outskirts of the moor, intending to crown the festival by
stopping the night at Torquay, where they had first met.  This was
the idea of Stella Ashurst, whose character contained a streak of
sentiment.  If she had long lost the blue-eyed, flower-like charm,
the cool slim purity of face and form, the apple-blossom colouring,
which had so swiftly and so oddly affected Ashurst twenty-six years
ago, she was still at forty-three a comely and faithful companion,
whose cheeks were faintly mottled, and whose grey-blue eyes had
acquired a certain fullness.

It was she who had stopped the car where the common rose steeply to
the left, and a narrow strip of larch and beech, with here and there
a pine, stretched out towards the valley between the road and the
first long high hill of the full moor.  She was looking for a place
where they might lunch, for Ashurst never looked for anything; and
this, between the golden furze and the feathery green larches
smelling of lemons in the last sun of April--this, with a view into
the deep valley and up to the long moor heights, seemed fitting to
the decisive nature of one who sketched in water-colours, and loved
romantic spots.  Grasping her paint box, she got out.

"Won't this do, Frank?"

Ashurst, rather like a bearded Schiller, grey in the wings, tall,
long-legged, with large remote grey eyes which sometimes filled with
meaning and became almost beautiful, with nose a little to one side,
and bearded lips just open--Ashurst, forty-eight, and silent, grasped
the luncheon basket, and got out too.

"Oh! Look, Frank!  A grave!"

By the side of the road, where the track from the top of the common
crossed it at right angles and ran through a gate past the narrow
wood, was a thin mound of turf, six feet by one, with a moorstone to
the west, and on it someone had thrown a blackthorn spray and a
handful of bluebells.  Ashurst looked, and the poet in him moved.  At
cross-roads--a suicide's grave!  Poor mortals with their
superstitions!  Whoever lay there, though, had the best of it, no
clammy sepulchre among other hideous graves carved with futilities--
just a rough stone, the wide sky, and wayside blessings!  And,
without comment, for he had learned not to be a philosopher in the
bosom of his family, he strode away up on to the common, dropped the
luncheon basket under a wall, spread a rug for his wife to sit on--
she would turn up from her sketching when she was hungry--and took
from his pocket Murray's translation of the "Hippolytus."  He had
soon finished reading of "The Cyprian" and her revenge, and looked at
the sky instead.  And watching the white clouds so bright against the
intense blue, Ashurst, on his silver-wedding day, longed for--he knew
not what.  Maladjusted to life--man's organism!  One's mode of life
might be high and scrupulous, but there was always an, undercurrent
of greediness, a hankering, and sense of waste.  Did women have it
too?  Who could tell?  And yet, men who gave vent to their appetites
for novelty, their riotous longings for new adventures, new risks,
new pleasures, these suffered, no doubt, from the reverse side of
starvation, from surfeit.  No getting out of it--a maladjusted
animal, civilised man!  There could be no garden of his choosing, of
"the Apple-tree, the singing, and the gold," in the words of that
lovely Greek chorus, no achievable elysium in life, or lasting haven
of happiness for any man with a sense of beauty--nothing which could
compare with the captured loveliness in a work of art, set down for
ever, so that to look on it or read was always to have the same
precious sense of exaltation and restful inebriety.  Life no doubt
had moments with that quality of beauty, of unbidden flying rapture,
but the trouble was, they lasted no longer than the span of a cloud's
flight over the sun; impossible to keep them with you, as Art caught
beauty and held it fast.  They were fleeting as one of the glimmering
or golden visions one had of the soul in nature, glimpses of its
remote and brooding spirit.  Here, with the sun hot on his face, a
cuckoo calling from a thorn tree, and in the air the honey savour of
gorse--here among the little fronds of the young fern, the starry
blackthorn, while the bright clouds drifted by high above the hills
and dreamy valleys here and now was such a glimpse.  But in a moment
it would pass--as the face of Pan, which looks round the corner of a
rock, vanishes at your stare.  And suddenly he sat up.  Surely there
was something familiar about this view, this bit of common, that
ribbon of road, the old wall behind him.  While they were driving he
had not been taking notice--never did; thinking of far things or of
nothing--but now he saw!  Twenty-six years ago, just at this time of
year, from the farmhouse within half a mile of this very spot he had
started for that day in Torquay whence it might be said he had never
returned.  And a sudden ache beset his heart; he had stumbled on just
one of those past moments in his life, whose beauty and rapture he
had failed to arrest, whose wings had fluttered away into the
unknown; he had stumbled on a buried memory, a wild sweet time,
swiftly choked and ended.  And, turning on his face, he rested his
chin on his hands, and stared at the short grass where the little
blue milkwort was growing....




I

And this is what he remembered.

On the first of May, after their last year together at college, Frank
Ashurst and his friend Robert Garton were on a tramp.  They had
walked that day from Brent, intending to make Chagford, but Ashurst's
football knee had given out, and according to their map they had
still some seven miles to go.  They were sitting on a bank beside
the-road, where a track crossed alongside a wood, resting the knee
and talking of the universe, as young men will.  Both were over six
feet, and thin as rails; Ashurst pale, idealistic, full of absence;
Garton queer, round-the-corner, knotted, curly, like some primeval
beast.  Both had a literary bent; neither wore a hat.

Ashurst's hair was smooth, pale, wavy, and had a way of rising on
either side of his brow, as if always being flung back; Carton's was
a kind of dark unfathomed mop.  They had not met a soul for miles.

"My dear fellow," Garton was saying, "pity's only an effect of self-
consciousness; it's a disease of the last five thousand years.  The
world was happier without."

Ashurst, following the clouds with his eyes, answered:

"It's the pearl in the oyster, anyway."

"My dear chap, all our modern unhappiness comes from pity.  Look at
animals, and Red Indians, limited to feeling their own occasional
misfortunes; then look at ourselves--never free from feeling the
toothaches of others.  Let's get back to feeling for nobody, and have
a better time."

"You'll never practise that."

Garton pensively stirred the hotch-potch of his hair.

"To attain full growth, one mustn't be squeamish.  To starve oneself
emotionally's a mistake.  All emotion is to the good--enriches life."

"Yes, and when it runs up against chivalry?"

"Ah!  That's so English!  If you speak of emotion the English always
think you want something physical, and are shocked.  They're afraid
of passion, but not of lust--oh, no!--so long as they can keep it
secret."

Ashurst did not answer; he had plucked a blue floweret, and was
twiddling it against the sky.  A cuckoo began calling from a thorn
tree.  The sky, the flowers, the songs of birds!  Robert was talking
through his hat!  And he said:

"Well, let's go on, and find some farm where we can put up."  In
uttering those words, he was conscious of a girl coming down from the
common just above them.  She was outlined against the sky, carrying a
basket, and you could see that sky through the crook of her arm.  And
Ashurst, who saw beauty without wondering how it could advantage him,
thought: 'How pretty!'  The wind, blowing her dark frieze skirt
against her legs, lifted her battered peacock tam-o'-shanter; her
greyish blouse was worn and old, her shoes were split, her little
hands rough and red, her neck browned.  Her dark hair waved untidy
across her broad forehead, her face was short, her upper lip short,
showing a glint of teeth, her brows were straight and dark, her
lashes long and dark, her nose straight; but her grey eyes were the
wonder-dewy as if opened for the first time that day.  She looked at
Ashurst--perhaps he struck her as strange, limping along without a
hat, with his large eyes on her, and his hair falling back.  He could
not take off what was not on his head, but put up his hand in a
salute, and said:

"Can you tell us if there's a farm near here where we could stay the
night?  I've gone lame."

"There's only our farm near, sir."  She spoke without shyness, in a
pretty soft crisp voice.

"And where is that?"

"Down here, sir."

"Would you put us up?"

"Oh!  I think we would."

"Will you show us the way?"

"Yes, Sir."

He limped on, silent, and Garton took up the catechism.

"Are you a Devonshire girl?"

"No, Sir."

"What then?"

"From Wales."

"Ah!  I thought you were a Celt; so it's not your farm?"

"My aunt's, sir."

"And your uncle's?"

"He is dead."

"Who farms it, then?"

"My aunt, and my three cousins."

"But your uncle was a Devonshire man?"

"Yes, Sir."

"Have you lived here long?"  "Seven years."

"And how d'you like it after Wales?"  "I don't know, sir."

"I suppose you don't remember?"  "Oh, yes!  But it is different."

"I believe you!"

Ashurst broke in suddenly: "How old are you?"

"Seventeen, Sir."

"And what's your name?"  "Megan David."

"This is Robert Garton, and I am Frank Ashurst.  We wanted to get on
to Chagford."

"It is a pity your leg is hurting you."

Ashurst smiled, and when he smiled his face was rather beautiful.

Descending past the narrow wood, they came on the farm suddenly-a
long, low, stone-built dwelling with casement windows, in a farmyard
where pigs and fowls and an old mare were straying.  A short steep-up
grass hill behind was crowned with a few Scotch firs, and in front,
an old orchard of apple trees, just breaking into flower, stretched
down to a stream and a long wild meadow.  A little boy with oblique
dark eyes was shepherding a pig, and by the house door stood a woman,
who came towards them.  The girl said:

"It is Mrs. Narracombe, my aunt."

"Mrs. Narracombe, my aunt," had a quick, dark eye, like a mother
wild-duck's, and something of the same snaky turn about her neck.

"We met your niece on the road," said Ashurst; "she thought you might
perhaps put us up for the night."

Mrs. Narracombe, taking them in from head to heel, answered:

"Well, I can, if you don't mind one room.  Megan, get the spare room
ready, and a bowl of cream.  You'll be wanting tea, I suppose."

Passing through a sort of porch made by two yew trees and some
flowering-currant bushes, the girl disappeared into the house, her
peacock tam-o'-shanter bright athwart that rosy-pink and the dark
green of the yews.

"Will you come into the parlour and rest your leg?  You'll be from
college, perhaps?"

"We were, but we've gone down now."

Mrs. Narracombe nodded sagely.

The parlour, brick-floored, with bare table and shiny chairs and sofa
stuffed with horsehair, seemed never to have been used, it was so
terribly clean.  Ashurst sat down at once on the sofa, holding his
lame knee between his hands, and Mrs. Narracombe gazed at him.  He
was the only son of a late professor of chemistry, but people found a
certain lordliness in one who was often so sublimely unconscious of
them.

"Is there a stream where we could bathe?"

"There's the strame at the bottom of the orchard, but sittin' down
you'll not be covered!"

"How deep?"

"Well, 'tis about a foot and a half, maybe."

"Oh!  That'll do fine.  Which way?"

"Down the lane, through the second gate on the right, an' the pool's
by the big apple tree that stands by itself.  There's trout there, if
you can tickle them."

"They're more likely to tickle us!"

Mrs. Narracombe smiled.  "There'll be the tea ready when you come
back."

The pool, formed by the damming of a rock, had a sandy bottom; and
the big apple tree, lowest in the orchard, grew so close that its
boughs almost overhung the water; it was in leaf, and all but in
flower-its crimson buds just bursting.  There was not room for more
than one at a time in that narrow bath, and Ashurst waited his turn,
rubbing his knee and gazing at the wild meadow, all rocks and thorn
trees and feld flowers, with a grove of beeches beyond, raised up on
a flat mound.  Every bough was swinging in the wind, every spring
bird calling, and a slanting sunlight dappled the grass.  He thought
of Theocritus, and the river Cherwell, of the moon, and the maiden
with the dewy eyes; of so many things that he seemed to think of
nothing; and he felt absurdly happy.




2

During a late and sumptuous tea with eggs to it, cream and jam, and
thin, fresh cakes touched with saffron, Garton descanted on the
Celts.  It was about the period of the Celtic awakening, and the
discovery that there was Celtic blood about this family had excited
one who believed that he was a Celt himself.  Sprawling on a horse
hair chair, with a hand-made cigarette dribbling from the corner of
his curly lips, he had been plunging his cold pin-points of eyes into
Ashurst's and praising the refinement of the Welsh.  To come out of
Wales into England was like the change from china to earthenware!
Frank, as a d---d Englishman, had not of course perceived the
exquisite refinement and emotional capacity of that Welsh girl!  And,
delicately stirring in the dark mat of his still wet hair, he
explained how exactly she illustrated the writings of the Welsh bard
Morgan-ap-Something in the twelfth century.

Ashurst, full length on the horsehair sofa, and jutting far beyond
its end, smoked a deeply-coloured pipe, and did not listen, thinking
of the girl's face when she brought in a relay of cakes.  It had been
exactly like looking at a flower, or some other pretty sight in
Nature-till, with a funny little shiver, she had lowered her glance
and gone out, quiet as a mouse.

"Let's go to the kitchen," said Garton, "and see some more of her."

The kitchen was a white-washed room with rafters, to which were
attached smoked hams; there were flower-pots on the window-sill, and
guns hanging on nails, queer mugs, china and pewter, and portraits of
Queen Victoria.  A long, narrow table of plain wood was set with
bowls and spoons, under a string of high-hung onions; two sheep-dogs
and three cats lay here and there.  On one side of the recessed
fireplace sat two small boys, idle, and good as gold; on the other
sat a stout, light-eyed, red-faced youth with hair and lashes the
colour of the tow he was running through the barrel of a gun; between
them Mrs. Narracombe dreamily stirred some savoury-scented stew in a
large pot.  Two other youths, oblique-eyed, dark-haired, rather sly-
faced, like the two little boys, were talking together and lolling
against the wall; and a short, elderly, clean-shaven man in
corduroys, seated in the window, was conning a battered journal.  The
girl Megan seemed the only active creature-drawing cider and passing
with the jugs from cask to table.  Seeing them thus about to eat,
Garton said:

"Ah!  If you'll let us, we'll come back when supper's over," and
without waiting for an answer they withdrew again to the parlour.
But the colour in the kitchen, the warmth, the scents, and all those
faces, heightened the bleakness of their shiny room, and they resumed
their seats moodily.

"Regular gipsy type, those boys.  There was only one Saxon--the
fellow cleaning the gun.  That girl is a very subtle study
psychologically."

Ashurst's lips twitched.  Garton seemed to him an ass just then.
Subtle study!  She was a wild flower.  A creature it did you good to
look at.  Study!

Garton went on:

"Emotionally she would be wonderful.  She wants awakening."

"Are you going to awaken her?"

Garton looked at him and smiled.  'How coarse and English you are!'
that curly smile seemed saying.

And Ashurst puffed his pipe.  Awaken her! That fool had the best
opinion of himself!  He threw up the window and leaned out.  Dusk had
gathered thick.  The farm buildings and the wheel-house were all dim
and bluish, the apple trees but a blurred wilderness; the air smelled
of woodsmoke from the kitchen fire.  One bird going to bed later than
the others was uttering a half-hearted twitter, as though surprised
at the darkness.  From the stable came the snuffle and stamp of a
feeding horse.  And away over there was the loom of the moor, and
away and away the shy stars which had not as yet full light, pricking
white through the deep blue heavens.  A quavering owl hooted.
Ashurst drew a deep breath.  What a night to wander out in!  A
padding of unshod hoofs came up the lane, and three dim, dark shapes
passed--ponies on an evening march.  Their heads, black and fuzzy,
showed above the gate.  At the tap of his pipe, and a shower of
little sparks, they shied round and scampered.  A bat went fluttering
past, uttering its almost inaudible "chip, chip."  Ashurst held out
his hand; on the upturned palm he could feel the dew.  Suddenly from
overhead he heard little burring boys' voices, little thumps of boots
thrown down, and another voice, crisp and soft--the girl's putting
them to bed, no doubt; and nine clear words "No, Rick, you can't have
the cat in bed"; then came a skirmish of giggles and gurgles, a soft
slap, a laugh so low and pretty that it made him shiver a little.  A
blowing sound, and the glim of the candle which was fingering the
dusk above, went out; silence reigned.  Ashurst withdrew into the
room and sat down; his knee pained him, and his soul felt gloomy.

"You go to the kitchen," he said; "I'm going to bed."




3

For Ashurst the wheel of slumber was wont to turn noiseless and slick
and swift, but though he seemed sunk in sleep when his companion came
up, he was really wide awake; and long after Carton, smothered in the
other bed of that low-roofed room, was worshipping darkness with his
upturned nose, he heard the owls.  Barring the discomfort of his
knee, it was not unpleasant--the cares of life did not loom large in
night watches for this young man.  In fact he had none; just enrolled
a barrister, with literary aspirations, the world before him, no
father or mother, and four hundred a year of his own.  Did it matter
where he went, what he did, or when he did it?  His bed, too, was
hard, and this preserved him from fever.  He lay, sniffing the scent
of the night which drifted into the low room through the open
casement close to his head.  Except for a definite irritation with
his friend, natural when you have tramped with a man for three days,
Ashurst's memories and visions that sleepless night were kindly and
wistful and exciting.  One vision, specially clear and unreasonable,
for he had not even been conscious of noting it, was the face of the
youth cleaning the gun; its intent, stolid, yet startled uplook at
the kitchen doorway, quickly shifted to the girl carrying the cider
jug.  This red, blue-eyed, light-lashed, tow-haired face stuck as
firmly in his memory as the girl's own face, so dewy and simple.  But
at last, in the square of darkness through the uncurtained casement,
he saw day coming, and heard one hoarse and sleepy caw.  Then
followed silence, dead as ever, till the song of a blackbird, not
properly awake, adventured into the hush.  And, from staring at the
framed brightening light, Ashurst fell asleep.

Next day his knee was badly swollen; the walking tour was obviously
over.  Garton, due back in London on the morrow, departed at midday
with an ironical smile which left a scar of irritation--healed the
moment his loping figure vanished round the corner of the steep lane.
All day Ashurst rested his knee, in a green-painted wooden chair on
the patch of grass by the yew-tree porch, where the sunlight
distilled the scent of stocks and gillyflowers, and a ghost of scent
from the flowering-currant bushes.  Beatifically he smoked, dreamed,
watched.

A farm in spring is all birth-young things coming out of bud and
shell, and human beings watching over the process with faint
excitement feeding and tending what has been born.  So still the
young man sat, that a mother-goose, with stately cross-footed waddle,
brought her six yellow-necked grey-backed goslings to strop their
little beaks against the grass blades at his feet.  Now and again
Mrs. Narracombe or the girl Megan would come and ask if he wanted
anything, and he would smile and say: "Nothing, thanks.  It's
splendid here."  Towards tea-time they came out together, bearing a
long poultice of some dark stuff in a bowl, and after a long and
solemn scrutiny of his swollen knee, bound it on.  When they were
gone, he thought of the girl's soft "Oh!"--of her pitying eyes, and
the little wrinkle in her brow.  And again he felt that unreasoning
irritation against his departed friend, who had talked such rot about
her.  When she brought out his tea, he said:

"How did you like my friend, Megan?"

She forced down her upper lip, as if afraid that to smile was not
polite.  "He was a funny gentleman; he made us laugh.  I think he is
very clever."

"What did he say to make you laugh?"

"He said I was a daughter of the bards.  What are they?"

"Welsh poets, who lived hundreds of years ago."

"Why am I their daughter, please?"

"He meant that you were the sort of girl they sang about."

She wrinkled her brows.  "I think he likes to joke.  Am I?"

"Would you believe me, if I told you?"

"Oh, yes."

"Well, I think he was right."

She smiled.

And Ashurst thought: 'You are a pretty thing!'

"He said, too, that Joe was a Saxon type.  What would that be?"

"Which is Joe?  With the blue eyes and red face?"

"Yes.  My uncle's nephew."

"Not your cousin, then?"

"No."

"Well, he meant that Joe was like the men who came over to England
about fourteen hundred years ago, and conquered it."

"Oh!  I know about them; but is he?"

"Garton's crazy about that sort of thing; but I must say Joe does
look a bit Early Saxon."

"Yes."

That "Yes" tickled Ashurst.  It was so crisp and graceful, so
conclusive, and politely acquiescent in what was evidently.  Greek to
her.

"He said that all the other boys were regular gipsies.  He should not
have said that.  My aunt laughed, but she didn't like it, of course,
and my cousins were angry.  Uncle was a farmer--farmers are not
gipsies.  It is wrong to hurt people."

Ashurst wanted to take her hand and give it a squeeze, but he only
answered:

"Quite right, Megan.  By the way, I heard you putting the little ones
to bed last night."

She flushed a little.  "Please to drink your tea--it is getting cold.
Shall I get you some fresh?"

"Do you ever have time to do anything for yourself?"

"Oh!  Yes."

"I've been watching, but I haven't seen it yet."

She wrinkled her brows in a puzzled frown, and her colour deepened.

When she was gone, Ashurst thought: 'Did she think I was chaffing
her?  I wouldn't for the world!' He was at that age when to some men
"Beauty's a flower," as the poet says, and inspires in them the
thoughts of chivalry.  Never very conscious of his surroundings, it
was some time before he was aware that the youth whom Garton had
called "a Saxon type" was standing outside the stable door; and a
fine bit of colour he made in his soiled brown velvet-cords, muddy
gaiters, and blue shirt; red-armed, red-faced, the sun turning his
hair from tow to flax; immovably stolid, persistent, unsmiling he
stood.  Then, seeing Ashurst looking at him, he crossed the yard at
that gait of the young countryman always ashamed not to be slow and
heavy-dwelling on each leg, and disappeared round the end of the
house towards the kitchen entrance.  A chill came over Ashurst's
mood.  Clods?  With all the good will in the world, how impossible to
get on terms with them!  And yet--see that girl!  Her shoes were
split, her hands rough; but--what was it?  Was it really her Celtic
blood, as Garton had said?--she was a lady born, a jewel, though
probably she could do no more than just read and write!

The elderly, clean-shaven man he had seen last night in the kitchen
had come into the yard with a dog, driving the cows to their milking.
Ashurst saw that he was lame.

"You've got some good ones there!"

The lame man's face brightened.  He had the upward look in his eyes
which prolonged suffering often brings.

"Yeas; they'm praaper buties; gude milkers tu."

"I bet they are."

"'Ope as yure leg's better, zurr."

"Thank you, it's getting on."

The lame man touched his own: "I know what 'tes, meself; 'tes a main
worritin' thing, the knee.  I've a-'ad mine bad this ten year."

Ashurst made the sound of sympathy which comes so readily from those
who have an independent income, and the lame man smiled again.

"Mustn't complain, though--they mighty near 'ad it off."

"Ho!"

"Yeas; an' compared with what 'twas, 'tes almost so gude as nu."

"They've put a bandage of splendid stuff on mine."

"The maid she picks et.  She'm a gude maid wi' the flowers.  There's
folks zeem to know the healin' in things.  My mother was a rare one
for that.  'Ope as yu'll zune be better, zurr.  Goo ahn, therr!"

Ashurst smiled.  "Wi' the flowers!"  A flower herself!

That evening, after his supper of cold duck, junket, and cider, the
girl came in.

"Please, auntie says--will you try a piece of our Mayday cake?"

"If I may come to the kitchen for it."

"Oh, yes!  You'll be missing your friend."

"Not I.  But are you sure no one minds?"

"Who would mind?  We shall be very pleased."

Ashurst rose too suddenly for his stiff knee, staggered, and
subsided.  The girl gave a little gasp, and held out her hands.
Ashurst took them, small, rough, brown; checked his impulse to put
them to his lips, and let her pull him up.  She came close beside
him, offering her shoulder.  And leaning on her he walked across the
room.  That shoulder seemed quite the pleasantest thing he had ever
touched.  But, he had presence of mind enough to catch his stick out
of the rack, and withdraw his hand before arriving at the kitchen.

That night he slept like a top, and woke with his knee of almost
normal size.  He again spent the morning in his chair on the grass
patch, scribbling down verses; but in the afternoon he wandered about
with the two little boys Nick and Rick.  It was Saturday, so they
were early home from school; quick, shy, dark little rascals of seven
and six, soon talkative, for Ashurst had a way with children.  By
four o'clock they had shown him all their methods of destroying life,
except the tickling of trout; and with breeches tucked up, lay on
their stomachs over the trout stream, pretending they had this
accomplishment also.  They tickled nothing, of course, for their
giggling and shouting scared every spotted thing away.  Ashurst, on a
rock at the edge of the beech clump, watched them, and listened to
the cuckoos, till Nick, the elder and less persevering, came up and
stood beside him.

"The gipsy bogle zets on that stone," he said.

"What gipsy bogie?"

"Dunno; never zeen 'e.  Megan zays 'e zets there; an' old Jim zeed 'e
once.  'E was zettin' there naight afore our pony kicked--in father's
'ead.  'E plays the viddle."

"What tune does he play?"

"Dunno."

"What's he like?"

"'E's black.  Old Jim zays 'e's all over 'air.  'E's a praaper bogle.
'E don' come only at naight."  The little boy's oblique dark eyes
slid round.  "D'yu think 'e might want to take me away?  Megan's
feared of 'e."

"Has she seen him?"

"No.  She's not afeared o' yu."

"I should think not.  Why should she be?"

"She zays a prayer for yu."

"How do you know that, you little rascal?"

"When I was asleep, she said: 'God bless us all, an' Mr. Ashes.'  I
yeard 'er whisperin'."

"You're a little ruffian to tell what you hear when you're not meant
to hear it!"

The little boy was silent.  Then he said aggressively:

"I can skin rabbets.  Megan, she can't bear skinnin' 'em.  I like
blood."

"Oh! you do; you little monster!"

"What's that?"

"A creature that likes hurting others."

The little boy scowled.  "They'm only dead rabbets, what us eats."

"Quite right, Nick.  I beg your pardon."

"I can skin frogs, tu."

But Ashurst had become absent.  "God bless us all, and Mr. Ashes!"
And puzzled by that sudden inaccessibility, Nick ran back to the
stream where the giggling and shouts again uprose at once.

When Megan brought his tea, he said:

"What's the gipsy bogle, Megan?"

She looked up, startled.

"He brings bad things."

"Surely you don't believe in ghosts?"

"I hope I will never see him."

"Of course you won't.  There aren't such things.  What old Jim saw
was a pony."

"No!  There are bogies in the rocks; they are the men who lived long
ago."

"They aren't gipsies, anyway; those old men were dead long before
gipsies came."

She said simply: "They are all bad."

"Why?  If there are any, they're only wild, like the rabbits.  The
flowers aren't bad for being wild; the thorn trees were never
planted--and you don't mind them.  I shall go down at night and look
for your bogie, and have a talk with him."

"Oh, no! Oh, no!"

"Oh, yes!  I shall go and sit on his rock."

She clasped her hands together: "Oh, please!"

"Why!  What 'does it matter if anything happens to me?"

She did not answer; and in a sort of pet he added:

"Well, I daresay I shan't see him, because I suppose I must be off
soon."

"Soon?"

"Your aunt won't want to keep me here."

"Oh, yes!  We always let lodgings in summer."

Fixing his eyes on her face, he asked:

"Would you like me to stay?"

"Yes."

"I'm going to say a prayer for you to-night!"

She flushed crimson, frowned, and went out of the room.  He sat,
cursing himself, till his tea was stewed.  It was as if he had hacked
with his thick boots at a clump of bluebells.  Why had he said such a
silly thing?  Was he just a towny college ass like Robert Garton, as
far from understanding this girl?

Ashurst spent the next week confirming the restoration of his leg, by
exploration of the country within easy reach.  Spring was a
revelation to him this year.  In a kind of intoxication he would
watch the pink-white buds of some backward beech tree sprayed up in
the sunlight against the deep blue sky, or the trunks and limbs of
the few Scotch firs, tawny in violent light, or again, on the moor,
the gale-bent larches which had such a look of life when the wind
streamed in their young green, above the rusty black underboughs.  Or
he would lie on the banks, gazing at the clusters of dog-violets, or
up in the dead bracken, fingering the pink, transparent buds of the
dewberry, while the cuckoos called and yafes laughed, or a lark, from
very high, dripped its beads of song.  It was certainly different
from any spring he had ever known, for spring was within him, not
without.  In the daytime he hardly saw the family; and when Megan
brought in his meals she always seemed too busy in the house or among
the young things in the yard to stay talking long.  But in the
evenings he installed himself in the window seat in the kitchen,
smoking and chatting with the lame man Jim, or Mrs. Narracombe, while
the girl sewed, or moved about, clearing the supper things away.  And
sometimes, with the sensation a cat must feel when it purrs, he would
become conscious that Megan's eyes--those dew-grey eyes--were fixed
on him with a sort of lingering soft look which was strangely
flattering.

It was on Sunday week in the evening, when he was lying in the
orchard listening to a blackbird and composing a love poem, that he
heard the gate swing to, and saw the girl come running among the
trees, with the red-cheeked, stolid Joe in swift pursuit.  About
twenty yards away the chase ended, and the two stood fronting each
other, not noticing the stranger in the grass--the boy pressing on,
the girl fending him off.  Ashurst could see her face, angry,
disturbed; and the youth's--who would have thought that red-faced
yokel could look so distraught!  And painfully affected by that
sight, he jumped up.  They saw him then.  Megan dropped her hands,
and shrank behind a tree trunk; the boy gave an angry grunt, rushed
at the bank, scrambled over and vanished.  Ashurst went slowly up to
her.  She was standing quite still, biting her lip-very pretty, with
her fine, dark hair blown loose about her face, and her eyes cast
down.

"I beg your pardon," he said.

She gave him one upward look, from eyes much dilated; then, catching
her breath, turned away.  Ashurst followed.

"Megan!"

But she went on; and taking hold of her arm, he turned her gently
round to him.

"Stop and speak to me."

"Why do you beg my pardon?  It is not to me you should do that."

"Well, then, to Joe."

"How dare he come after me?"

"In love with you, I suppose."

She stamped her foot.

Ashurst uttered a short laugh.  "Would you like me to punch his
head?"

She cried with sudden passion:

"You laugh at me-you laugh at us!"

He caught hold of her hands, but she shrank back, till her passionate
little face and loose dark hair were caught among the pink clusters
of the apple blossom.  Ashurst raised one of her imprisoned hands and
put his lips to it.  He felt how chivalrous he was, and superior to
that clod Joe--just brushing that small, rough hand with his mouth I
Her shrinking ceased suddenly; she seemed to tremble towards him.  A
sweet warmth overtook Ashurst from top to toe.  This slim maiden, so
simple and fine and pretty, was pleased, then, at the touch of his
lips!  And, yielding to a swift impulse, he put his arms round her,
pressed her to him, and kissed her forehead.  Then he was frightened-
-she went so pale, closing her eyes, so that the long, dark lashes
lay on her pale cheeks; her hands, too, lay inert at her sides.  The
touch of her breast sent a shiver through him.  "Megan!"  he sighed
out, and let her go.  In the utter silence a blackbird shouted.  Then
the girl seized his hand, put it to her cheek, her heart, her lips,
kissed it passionately, and fled away among the mossy trunks of the
apple trees, till they hid her from him.

Ashurst sat down on a twisted old tree growing almost along the
ground, and, all throbbing and bewildered, gazed vacantly at the
blossom which had crowned her hair--those pink buds with one white
open apple star.  What had he done?  How had he let himself be thus
stampeded by beauty--pity--or--just the spring!  He felt curiously
happy, all the same; happy and triumphant, with shivers running
through his limbs, and a vague alarm.  This was the beginning of--
what?  The midges bit him, the dancing gnats tried to fly into his
mouth, and all the spring around him seemed to grow more lovely and
alive; the songs of the cuckoos and the blackbirds, the laughter of
the yaflies, the level-slanting sunlight, the apple blossom which had
crowned her head!  He got up from the old trunk and strode out of the
orchard, wanting space, an open sky, to get on terms with these new
sensations.  He made for the moor, and from an ash tree in the hedge
a magpie flew out to herald him.

Of man--at any age from five years on--who can say he has never been
in love?  Ashurst had loved his partners at his dancing class; loved
his nursery governess; girls in school-holidays; perhaps never been
quite out of love, cherishing always some more or less remote
admiration.  But this was different, not remote at all.  Quite a new
sensation; terribly delightful, bringing a sense of completed
manhood.  To be holding in his fingers such a wild flower, to be able
to put it to his lips, and feel it tremble with delight against them!
What intoxication, and--embarrassment!  What to do with it--how meet
her next time?  His first caress had been cool, pitiful; but the next
could not be, now that, by her burning little kiss on his hand, by
her pressure of it to her heart, he knew that she loved him.  Some
natures are coarsened by love bestowed on them; others, like
Ashurst's, are swayed and drawn, warmed and softened, almost exalted,
by what they feel to be a sort of miracle.

And up there among the tors he was racked between the passionate
desire to revel in this new sensation of spring fulfilled within him,
and a vague but very real uneasiness.  At one moment he gave himself
up completely to his pride at having captured this pretty, trustful,
dewy-eyed thing!  At the next he thought with factitious solemnity:
'Yes, my boy!  But look out what you're doing!  You know what comes
of it!'

Dusk dropped down without his noticing--dusk on the carved, Assyrian-
looking masses of the rocks.  And the voice of Nature said: "This is
a new world for you!"  As when a man gets up at four o'clock and goes
out into a summer morning, and beasts, birds, trees stare at him and
he feels as if all had been made new.

He stayed up there for hours, till it grew cold, then groped his way
down the stones and heather roots to the road, back into the lane,
and came again past the wild meadow to the orchard.  There he struck
a match and looked at his watch.  Nearly twelve!  It was black and
unstirring in there now, very different from the lingering, bird-
befriended brightness of six hours ago!  And suddenly he saw this
idyll of his with the eyes of the outer world--had mental vision of
Mrs. Narracombe's snake-like neck turned, her quick dark glance
taking it all in, her shrewd face hardening; saw the gipsy-like
cousins coarsely mocking and distrustful; Joe stolid and furious;
only the lame man, Jim, with the suffering eyes, seemed tolerable to
his mind.  And the village pub!--the gossiping matrons he passed on
his walks; and then--his own friends--Robert Carton's smile when he
went off that morning ten days ago; so ironical and knowing!
Disgusting!  For a minute he literally hated this earthy, cynical
world to which one belonged, willy-nilly.  The gate where he was
leaning grew grey, a sort of shimmer passed be fore him and spread
into the bluish darkness. The moon!  He could just see it over the
bank be hind; red, nearly round-a strange moon!  And turning away, he
went up the lane which smelled of the night and cowdung and young
leaves.  In the straw-yard he could see the dark shapes of cattle,
broken by the pale sickles of their horns, like so many thin moons,
fallen ends-up.  He unlatched the farm gate stealthily.  All was dark
in the house.  Muffling his footsteps, he gained the porch, and,
blotted against one of the yew trees, looked up at Megan's window.
It was open.  Was she sleeping, or lying awake perhaps, disturbed--
unhappy at his absence?  An owl hooted while he stood there peering
up, and the sound seemed to fill the whole night, so quiet was all
else, save for the never-ending murmur of the stream running below
the orchard.  The cuckoos by day, and now the owls--how wonderfully
they voiced this troubled ecstasy within him!  And suddenly he saw
her at her window, looking out.  He moved a little from the yew tree,
and whispered: "Megan!"  She drew back, vanished, reappeared, leaning
far down.  He stole forward on the grass patch, hit his shin against
the green-painted chair, and held his breath at the sound.  The pale
blur of her stretched-down arm and face did not stir; he moved the
chair, and noiselessly mounted it.  By stretching up his arm he could
just reach.  Her hand held the huge key of the front door, and he
clasped that burning hand with the cold key in it.  He could just see
her face, the glint of teeth between her lips, her tumbled hair.  She
was still dressed--poor child, sitting up for him, no doubt!  "Pretty
Megan!"  Her hot, roughened fingers clung to his; her face had a
strange, lost look.  To have been able to reach it--even with his
hand!  The owl hooted, a scent of sweetbriar crept into his nostrils.
Then one of the farm dogs barked; her grasp relaxed, she shrank back.

"Good-night, Megan!"

"Good-night, sir!"  She was gone!  With a sigh he dropped back to
earth, and sitting on that chair, took off his boots.  Nothing for it
but to creep in and go to bed; yet for a long while he sat unmoving,
his feet chilly in the dew, drunk on the memory of her lost, half-
smiling face, and the clinging grip of her burning fingers, pressing
the cold key into his hand.




5

He awoke feeling as if he had eaten heavily overnight, instead of
having eaten nothing.  And far off, unreal, seemed yesterday's
romance!  Yet it was a golden morning.  Full spring had burst at
last--in one night the "goldie-cups," as the little boys called them,
seemed to have made the field their own, and from his window he could
see apple blossoms covering the orchard as with a rose and white
quilt.  He went down almost dreading to see Megan; and yet, when not
she but Mrs. Narracombe brought in his breakfast, he felt vexed and
disappointed.  The woman's quick eye and snaky neck seemed to have a
new alacrity this morning.  Had she noticed?

"So you an' the moon went walkin' last night, Mr. Ashurst!  Did ye
have your supper anywheres?"

Ashurst shook his head.

"We kept it for you, but I suppose you was too busy in your brain to
think o' such a thing as that?"

Was she mocking him, in that voice of hers, which still kept some
Welsh crispness against the invading burr of the West Country?  If
she knew!  And at that moment he thought: 'No, no; I'll clear out.  I
won't put myself in such a beastly false position.'

But, after breakfast, the longing to see Megan began and increased
with every minute, together with fear lest something should have been
said to her which had spoiled everything.  Sinister that she had not
appeared, not given him even a glimpse of her!  And the love poem,
whose manufacture had been so important and absorbing yesterday
afternoon under the apple trees, now seemed so paltry that he tore it
up and rolled it into pipe spills.  What had he known of love, till
she seized his hand and kissed it!  And now--what did he not know?
But to write of it seemed mere insipidity!  He went up to his bedroom
to get a book, and his heart began to beat violently, for she was in
there making the bed.  He stood in the doorway watching; and
suddenly, with turbulent joy, he saw her stoop and kiss his pillow,
just at the hollow made by his head last night.

How let her know he had seen that pretty act of devotion?  And yet,
if she heard him stealing away, it would be even worse.  She took the
pillow up, holding it as if reluctant to shake out the impress of his
cheek, dropped it, and turned round.

"Megan!"

She put her hands up to her cheeks, but her eyes seemed to look right
into him.  He had never before realised the depth and purity and
touching faithfulness in those dew-bright eyes, and he stammered:

"It was sweet of you to wait up for me last night."

She still said nothing, and he stammered on:

"I was wandering about on the moor; it was such a jolly night.  I--
I've just come up for a book."

Then, the kiss he had seen her give the pillow afflicted him with
sudden headiness, and he went up to her.  Touching her eyes with his
lips, he thought with queer excitement: 'I've done it!  Yesterday all
was sudden--anyhow; but now--I've done it!' The girl let her forehead
rest against his lips, which moved downwards till they reached hers.
That first real lover's kiss-strange, wonderful, still almost
innocent--in which heart did it make the most disturbance?

"Come to the big apple tree to-night, after they've gone to bed.
Megan-promise!"

She whispered back: "I promise."

Then, scared at her white face, scared at everything, he let her go,
and went downstairs again.  Yes!  He had done it now!  Accepted her
love, declared his own!  He went out to the green chair as devoid of
a book as ever; and there he sat staring vacantly before him,
triumphant and remorseful, while under his nose and behind his back
the work of the farm went on.  How long he had been sitting in that
curious state of vacancy he had no notion when he saw Joe standing a
little behind him to the right.  The youth had evidently come from
hard work in the fields, and stood shifting his feet, breathing
loudly, his face coloured like a setting sun, and his arms, below the
rolled-up sleeves of his blue shirt, showing the hue and furry sheen
of ripe peaches.  His red lips were open, his blue eyes with their
flaxen lashes stared fixedly at Ashurst, who said ironically:

"Well, Joe, anything I can do for you?"

"Yeas."

"What, then?"

"Yu can goo away from yere.  Us don' want yu."

Ashurst's face, never too humble, assumed its most lordly look.

"Very good of you, but, do you know, I prefer the others should speak
for themselves."

The youth moved a pace or two nearer, and the scent of his honest
heat afflicted Ashurst's nostrils.

"What d'yu stay yere for?"

"Because it pleases me."

"Twon't please yu when I've bashed yure head in!"

"Indeed!  When would you like to begin that?"

Joe answered only with the loudness of his breathing, but his eyes
looked like those of a young and angry bull.  Then a sort of spasm
seemed to convulse his face.

"Megan don' want yu."

A rush of jealousy, of contempt, and anger with this thick, loud-
breathing rustic got the better of Ashurst's self-possession; he
jumped up, and pushed back his chair.

"You can go to the devil!"

And as he said those simple words, he saw Megan in the doorway with a
tiny brown spaniel puppy in her arms.  She came up to him quickly:

"Its eyes are blue!"  she said.

Joe turned away; the back of his neck was literally crimson.

Ashurst put his finger to the mouth of the little brown bullfrog of a
creature in her arms.  How cosy it looked against her!

"It's fond of you already.  Ah I Megan, everything is fond of you."

"What was Joe saying to you, please?"

"Telling me to go away, because you didn't want me here."

She stamped her foot; then looked up at Ashurst.  At that adoring
look he felt his nerves quiver, just as if he had seen a moth
scorching its wings.

"To-night!"  he said.  "Don't forget!"

"No."  And smothering her face against the puppy's little fat, brown
body, she slipped back into the house.

Ashurst wandered down the lane.  At the gate of the wild meadow he
came on the lame man and his cows.

"Beautiful day, Jim!"

"Ah!  'Tes brave weather for the grass.  The ashes be later than th'
oaks this year.  'When th' oak before th' ash---'"

Ashurst said idly: "Where were you standing when you saw the gipsy
bogie, Jim?"

"It might be under that big apple tree, as you might say."

"And you really do think it was there?"

The lame man answered cautiously:

"I shouldn't like to say rightly that 't was there.  'Twas in my mind
as 'twas there."

"What do you make of it?"

The lame man lowered his voice.

"They du zay old master, Mist' Narracombe come o' gipsy stock.  But
that's tellin'.  They'm a wonderful people, yu know, for claimin'
their own.  Maybe they knu 'e was goin', and sent this feller along
for company.  That's what I've a-thought about it."

"What was he like?"

"'E 'ad 'air all over 'is face, an' goin' like this, he was, zame as
if 'e 'ad a viddle.  They zay there's no such thing as bogies, but
I've a-zeen the 'air on this dog standin' up of a dark naight, when I
couldn' zee nothin', meself."

"Was there a moon?"

"Yeas, very near full, but 'twas on'y just risen, gold-like be'ind
them trees."

"And you think a ghost means trouble, do you?"

The lame man pushed his hat up; his aspiring eyes looked at Ashurst
more earnestly than ever.

"'Tes not for me to zay that but 'tes they bein' so unrestin'like.
There's things us don' understand, that's zartin, for zure.  There's
people that zee things, tu, an' others that don't never zee nothin'.
Now, our Joe--yu might putt anything under'is eyes an e'd never zee
it; and them other boys, tu, they'm rattlin' fellers.  But yu take
an' putt our Megan where there's suthin', she'll zee it, an' more tu,
or I'm mistaken."

"She's sensitive, that's why."

"What's that?"

"I mean, she feels everything."

"Ah!  She'm very lovin'-'earted."

Ashurst, who felt colour coming into his cheeks, held out his tobacco
pouch.

"Have a fill, Jim?"

"Thank 'ee, sir.  She'm one in an 'underd, I think."

"I expect so," said Ashurst shortly, and folding up his pouch, walked
on.

"Lovin'-hearted!  "Yes!  And what was he doing?  What were his
intentions-as they say towards this loving-hearted girl?  The thought
dogged him, wandering through fields bright with buttercups, where
the little red calves were feeding, and the swallows flying high.
Yes, the oaks were before the ashes, brown-gold already; every tree
in different stage and hue.  The cuckoos and a thousand birds were
singing; the little streams were very bright.  The ancients believed
in a golden age, in the garden of the Hesperides!...  A queen wasp
settled on his sleeve.  Each queen wasp killed meant two thousand
fewer wasps to thieve the apples which would grow from that blossom
in the orchard; but who, with love in his heart, could kill anything
on a day like this?  He entered a field where a young red bull was
feeding.  It seemed to Ashurst that he looked like Joe.  But the
young bull took no notice of this visitor, a little drunk himself,
perhaps, on the singing and the glamour of the golden pasture, under
his short legs.  Ashurst crossed out unchallenged to the hillside
above the stream.  From that slope a for mounted to its crown of
rocks.  The ground there was covered with a mist of bluebells, and
nearly a score of crab-apple trees were in full bloom.  He threw
himself down on the grass.  The change from the buttercup glory and
oak-goldened glamour of the fields to this ethereal beauty under the
grey for filled him with a sort of wonder; nothing the same, save the
sound of running water and the songs of the cuckoos.  He lay there a
long time, watching the sunlight wheel till the crab-trees threw
shadows over the bluebells, his only companions a few wild bees.  He
was not quite sane, thinking of that morning's kiss, and of to-night
under the apple tree.  In such a spot as this, fauns and dryads
surely lived; nymphs, white as the crab-apple blossom, retired within
those trees; fauns, brown as the dead bracken, with pointed ears, lay
in wait for them.  The cuckoos were still calling when he woke, there
was the sound of running water; but the sun had couched behind the
tor, the hillside was cool, and some rabbits had come out.
'Tonight!' he thought.  Just as from the earth everything was pushing
up, unfolding under the soft insistent fingers of an unseen hand, so
were his heart and senses being pushed, unfolded.  He got up and
broke off a spray from a crab-apple tree.  The buds were like Megan--
shell-like, rose-pink, wild, and fresh; and so, too, the opening
flowers, white, and wild; and touching.  He put the spray into his
coat.  And all the rush of the spring within him escaped in a
triumphant sigh.  But the rabbits scurried away.




6

It was nearly eleven that night when Ashurst put down the pocket
"Odyssey" which for half an hour he had held in his hands without
reading, and slipped through the yard down to the orchard.  The moon
had just risen, very golden, over the hill, and like a bright,
powerful, watching spirit peered through the bars of an ash tree's
half-naked boughs.  In among the apple trees it was still dark, and
he stood making sure of his direction, feeling the rough grass with
his feet.  A black mass close behind him stirred with a heavy
grunting sound, and three large pigs settled down again close to each
other, under the wall.  He listened.  There was no wind, but the
stream's burbling whispering chuckle had gained twice its daytime
strength.  One bird, he could not tell what, cried "Pippip," "Pip-
pip," with perfect monotony; he could hear a night-Jar spinning very
far off; an owl hooting.  Ashurst moved a step or two, and again
halted, aware of a dim living whiteness all round his head.  On the
dark unstirring trees innumerable flowers and buds all soft and
blurred were being bewitched to life by the creeping moonlight.  He
had the oddest feeling of actual companionship, as if a million white
moths or spirits had floated in and settled between dark sky and
darker ground, and were opening and shutting their wings on a level
with his eyes.  In the bewildering, still, scentless beauty of that
moment he almost lost memory of why he had come to the orchard.  The
flying glamour which had clothed the earth all day had not gone now
that night had fallen, but only changed into this new form.  He moved
on through the thicket of stems and boughs covered with that live
powdering whiteness, till he reached the big apple tree.  No
mistaking that, even in the dark, nearly twice the height and size of
any other, and leaning out towards the open meadows and the stream.
Under the thick branches he stood still again, to listen.  The same
sounds exactly, and a faint grunting from the sleepy pigs.  He put
his hands on the dry, almost warm tree trunk, whose rough mossy
surface gave forth a peaty scent at his touch.  Would she come--would
she?  And among these quivering, haunted, moon-witched trees he was
seized with doubts of everything!  All was unearthly here, fit for no
earthly lovers; fit only for god and goddess, faun and nymph not for
him and this little country girl.  Would it not be almost a relief if
she did not come?  But all the time he was listening.  And still that
unknown bird went "Pip-pip," "Pip-pip," and there rose the busy
chatter of the little trout stream, whereon the moon was flinging
glances through the bars of her tree-prison.  The blossom on a level
with his eyes seemed to grow more living every moment, seemed with
its mysterious white beauty more and more a part of his suspense.  He
plucked a fragment and held it close--three blossoms.  Sacrilege to
pluck fruit-tree blossom--soft, sacred, young blossom--and throw it
away!  Then suddenly he heard the gate close, the pigs stirring again
and grunting; and leaning against the trunk, he pressed his hands to
its mossy sides behind him, and held his breath.  She might have been
a spirit threading the trees, for all the noise she made!  Then he
saw her quite close--her dark form part of a little tree, her white
face part of its blossom; so still, and peering towards him.
He whispered: "Megan!" and held out his hands. She ran forward,
straight to his breast.  When he felt her heart beating against him,
Ashurst knew to the full the sensations of chivalry and passion.
Because she was not of his world, because she was so simple and young
and headlong, adoring and defenceless, how could he be other than her
protector, in the dark!  Because she was all simple Nature and
beauty, as much a part of this spring night as was the living
blossom, how should he not take all that she would give him how not
fulfil the spring in her heart and his!  And torn between these two
emotions he clasped her close, and kissed her hair.  How long they
stood there without speaking he knew not.  The stream went on
chattering, the owls hooting, the moon kept stealing up and growing
whiter; the blossom all round them and above brightened in suspense
of living beauty.  Their lips had sought each other's, and they did
not speak.  The moment speech began all would be unreal!  Spring has
no speech, nothing but rustling and whispering.  Spring has so much
more than speech in its unfolding flowers and leaves, and the
coursing of its streams, and in its sweet restless seeking!  And
sometimes spring will come alive, and, like a mysterious Presence
stand, encircling lovers with its arms, laying on them the fingers of
enchantment, so that, standing lips to lips, they forget everything
but just a kiss.  While her heart beat against him, and her lips
quivered on his, Ashurst felt nothing but simple rapture--Destiny
meant her for his arms, Love could not be flouted!  But when their
lips parted for breath, division began again at once.  Only, passion
now was so much the stronger, and he sighed:

"Oh!  Megan!  Why did you come?"  She looked up, hurt, amazed.

"Sir, you asked me to."

"Don't call me 'sir,' my pretty sweet."  "What should I be callin"
you?"

"Frank."

"I could not.  Oh, no!"

"But you love me--don't you?"

"I could not help lovin' you.  I want to be with you--that's all."

"All!"

So faint that he hardly heard, she whispered: "I shall die if I can't
be with you."

Ashurst took a mighty breath.

"Come and be with me, then!"

"Oh!"

Intoxicated by the awe and rapture in that "Oh!" he went on,
whispering:

"We'll go to London.  I'll show you the world.

"And I will take care of you, I promise, Megan.  I'll never be a brute
to you!"

"If I can be with you--that is all."

He stroked her hair, and whispered on:

"To-morrow I'll go to Torquay and get some money, and get you some
clothes that won't be noticed, and then we'll steal away.  And when
we get to London, soon perhaps, if you love me well enough, we'll be
married."

He could feel her hair shiver with the shake of her head.

"Oh, no!  I could not.  I only want to be with you!"

Drunk on his own chivalry, Ashurst went on murmuring, "It's I who am
not good enough for you.  Oh! Megan, when did you begin to love me?"

"When I saw you in the road, and you looked at me.  The first night I
loved you; but I never thought you would want me."

She slipped down suddenly to her knees, trying to kiss his feet.

A shiver of horror went through Ashurst; he lifted her up bodily and
held her fast--too upset to speak.

She whispered: "Why won't you let me?"

"It's I who will kiss your feet!"

Her smile brought tears into his eyes.  The whiteness of her moonlit
face so close to his, the faint pink of her opened lips, had the
living unearthly beauty of the apple blossom.

And then, suddenly, her eyes widened and stared past him painfully;
she writhed out of his arms, and whispered: "Look!"

Ashurst saw nothing but the brightened stream, the furze faintly
gilded, the beech trees glistening, and behind them all the wide loom
of the moonlit hill.  Behind him came her frozen whisper: "The gipsy
bogie!"

"Where?"

"There--by the stone--under the trees!"

Exasperated, he leaped the stream, and strode towards the beech
clump.  Prank of the moonlight!  Nothing!  In and out of the boulders
and thorn trees, muttering and cursing, yet with a kind of terror, he
rushed and stumbled.  Absurd!  Silly!  Then he went back to the apple
tree.  But she was gone; he could hear a rustle, the grunting of the
pigs, the sound of a gate closing.  Instead of her, only this old
apple tree!  He flung his arms round the trunk.  What a substitute
for her soft body; the rough moss against his face--what a substitute
for her soft cheek; only the scent, as of the woods, a little the
same!  And above him, and around, the blossoms, more living, more
moonlit than ever, seemed to glow and breathe.




7

Descending from the train at Torquay station, Ashurst wandered
uncertainly along the front, for he did not know this particular
queen of English watering places.  Having little sense of what he had
on, he was quite unconscious of being remarkable among its
inhabitants, and strode along in his rough Norfolk jacket, dusty
boots, and battered hat, without observing that people gazed at him
rather blankly.  He was seeking a branch of his London bank, and
having found one, found also the first obstacle to his mood.  Did he
know anyone in Torquay?  No.  In that case, if he would wire to his
bank in London, they would be happy to oblige him on receipt of the
reply.  That suspicious breath from the matter-of-fact world somewhat
tarnished the brightness of his visions.  But he sent the telegram.

Nearly opposite to the post office he saw a shop full of ladies'
garments, and examined the window with strange sensations.  To have
to undertake the clothing of his rustic love was more than a little
disturbing.  He went in.  A young woman came forward; she had blue
eyes and a faintly puzzled forehead.  Ashurst stared at her in
silence.

"Yes, sir?"

"I want a dress for a young lady."

The young woman smiled.  Ashurst frowned the peculiarity of his
request struck him with sudden force.

The young woman added hastily:

"What style would you like--something modish?"

"No.  Simple."

"What figure would the young lady be?"

"I don't know; about two inches shorter than you, I should say."

"Could you give me her waist measurement?"

Megan's waist!

"Oh!  anything usual!"

"Quite!"

While she was gone he stood disconsolately eyeing the models in the
window, and suddenly it seemed to him incredible that Megan--his
Megan could ever be dressed save in the rough tweed skirt, coarse
blouse, and tam-o'-shanter cap he was wont to see her in.  The young
woman had come back with several dresses in her arms, and Ashurst
eyed her laying them against her own modish figure.  There was one
whose colour he liked, a dove-grey, but to imagine Megan clothed in
it was beyond him.  The young woman went away, and brought some more.
But on Ashurst there had now come a feeling of paralysis.  How
choose?  She would want a hat too, and shoes, and gloves; and,
suppose, when he had got them all, they commonised her, as Sunday
clothes always commonised village folk!  Why should she not travel as
she was?  Ah!  But conspicuousness would matter; this was a serious
elopement.  And, staring at the young woman, he thought: 'I wonder if
she guesses, and thinks me a blackguard?'

"Do you mind putting aside that grey one for me?"  he said
desperately at last.  "I can't decide now; I'll come in again this
afternoon."

The young woman sighed.

"Oh!  certainly.  It's a very tasteful costume.  I don't think you'll
get anything that will suit your purpose better."

"I expect not," Ashurst murmured, and went out.

Freed again from the suspicious matter-of-factness of the world, he
took a long breath, and went back to visions.  In fancy he saw the
trustful, pretty creature who was going to join her life to his; saw
himself and her stealing forth at night, walking over the moor under
the moon, he with his arm round her, and carrying her new garments,
till, in some far-off wood, when dawn was coming, she would slip off
her old things and put on these, and an early train at a distant
station would bear them away on their honeymoon journey, till London
swallowed them up, and the dreams of love came true.

"Frank Ashurst!  Haven't seen you since Rugby, old chap!"

Ashurst's frown dissolved; the face, close to his own, was blue-eyed,
suffused with sun--one of those faces where sun from within and
without join in a sort of lustre.  And he answered:

"Phil Halliday, by Jove!"

"What are you doing here?"

"Oh!  nothing.  Just looking round, and getting some money.  I'm
staying on the moor."

"Are you lunching anywhere?  Come and lunch with us; I'm here with my
young sisters.  They've had measles."

Hooked in by that friendly arm Ashurst went along, up a hill, down a
hill, away out of the town, while the voice of Halliday, redolent of
optimism as his face was of sun, explained how "in this mouldy place
the only decent things were the bathing and boating," and so on, till
presently they came to a crescent of houses a little above and back
from the sea, and into the centre one an hotel--made their way.

"Come up to my room and have a wash.  Lunch'll be ready in a jiffy."

Ashurst contemplated his visage in a looking-glass.  After his
farmhouse bedroom, the comb and one spare shirt regime of the last
fortnight, this room littered with clothes and brushes was a sort of
Capua; and he thought: 'Queer--one doesn't realise But what--he did
not quite know.

When he followed Halliday into the sitting room for lunch, three
faces, very fair and blue-eyed, were turned suddenly at the words:
"This is Frank Ashurst my young sisters."

Two were indeed young, about eleven and ten.  The third was perhaps
seventeen, tall and fair-haired too, with pink-and-white cheeks just
touched by the sun, and eyebrows, rather darker than the hair,
running a little upwards from her nose to their outer points.  The
voices of all three were like Halliday's, high and cheerful; they
stood up straight, shook hands with a quick movement, looked at
Ashurst critically, away again at once, and began to talk of what
they were going to do in the afternoon.  A regular Diana and
attendant nymphs!  After the farm this crisp, slangy, eager talk,
this cool, clean, off-hand refinement, was queer at first, and then
so natural that what he had come from became suddenly remote.  The
names of the two little ones seemed to be Sabina and Freda; of the
eldest, Stella.

Presently the one called Sabina turned to him and said:

"I say, will you come shrimping with us?--it's awful fun!"

Surprised by this unexpected friendliness, Ashurst murmured:

"I'm afraid I've got to get back this afternoon."

"Oh!"

"Can't you put it off?"

Ashurst turned to the new speaker, Stella, shook his head, and
smiled.  She was very pretty!  Sabina said regretfully: "You might!"
Then the talk switched off to caves and swimming.

"Can you swim far?"

"About two miles."

"Oh!"

"I say!"

"How jolly!"

The three pairs of blue eyes, fixed on him, made him conscious of his
new importance--The sensation was agreeable.  Halliday said:

"I say, you simply must stop and have a bathe.  You'd better stay the
night."

"Yes, do!"'

But again Ashurst smiled and shook his head.  Then suddenly he found
himself being catechised about his physical achievements.  He had
rowed--it seemed--in his college boat, played in his college football
team, won his college mile; and he rose from table a sort of hero.
The two little girls insisted that he must see "their" cave, and they
set forth chattering like magpies, Ashurst between them, Stella and
her brother a little behind.  In the cave, damp and darkish like any
other cave, the great feature was a pool with possibility of
creatures which might be caught and put into bottles.  Sabina and
Freda, who wore no stockings on their shapely brown legs, exhorted
Ashurst to join them in the middle of it, and help sieve the water.
He too was soon bootless and sockless.  Time goes fast for one who
has a sense of beauty, when there are pretty children in a pool and a
young Diana on the edge, to receive with wonder anything you can
catch!  Ashurst never had much sense of time.  It was a shock when,
pulling out his watch, he saw it was well past three.  No cashing his
cheque to-day-the bank would be closed before he could get there.
Watching his expression, the little girls cried out at once:

"Hurrah!  Now you'll have to stay!"

Ashurst did not answer.  He was seeing again Megan's face, when at
breakfast time he had whispered: "I'm going to Torquay, darling, to
get everything; I shall be back this evening.  If it's fine we can go
to-night.  Be ready."  He was seeing again how she quivered and hung
on his words.  What would she think?  Then he pulled himself
together, conscious suddenly of the calm scrutiny of this other young
girl, so tall and fair and Diana-like, at the edge of the pool, of
her wondering blue eyes under those brows which slanted up a little.
If they knew what was in his mind--if they knew that this very night
he had meant!  Well, there would be a little sound of disgust, and he
would be alone in the cave.  And with a curious mixture of anger,
chagrin, and shame, he put his watch back into his pocket and said
abruptly:

"Yes; I'm dished for to-day."

"Hurrah!  Now you can bathe with us."

It was impossible not to succumb a little to the contentment of these
pretty children, to the smile on Stella's lips, to Halliday's
"Ripping, old chap!  I can lend you things for the night!" But again
a spasm of longing and remorse throbbed through Ashurst, and he said
moodily:

"I must send a wire!"

The attractions of the pool palling, they went back to the hotel.
Ashurst sent his wire, addressing it to Mrs. Narracombe: "Sorry,
detained for the night, back to-morrow."  Surely Megan would
understand that he had too much to do; and his heart grew lighter.
It was a lovely afternoon, warm, the sea calm and blue, and swimming
his great passion; the favour of these pretty children flattered him,
the pleasure of looking at them, at Stella, at Halliday's sunny face;
the slight unreality, yet extreme naturalness of it all--as of a last
peep at normality before be took this plunge with Megan!  He got his
borrowed bathing dress, and they all set forth.  Halliday and he
undressed behind one rock, the three girls behind another.  He was
first into the sea, and at once swam out with the bravado of
justifying his self-given reputation.  When he turned he could see
Halliday swimming along shore, and the girls flopping and dipping,
and riding the little waves, in the way he was accustomed to despise,
but now thought pretty and sensible, since it gave him the
distinction of the only deep-water fish.  But drawing near, he
wondered if they would like him, a stranger, to come into their
splashing group; he felt shy, approaching that slim nymph.  Then
Sabina summoned him to teach her to float, and between them the
little girls kept him so busy that he had no time even to notice
whether Stella was accustomed to his presence, till suddenly he heard
a startled sound from her: She was standing submerged to the waist,
leaning a little forward, her slim white arms stretched out and
pointing, her wet face puckered by the sun and an expression of fear.

"Look at Phil!  Is he all right?  Oh, look!"

Ashurst saw at once that Phil was not all right.  He was splashing
and struggling out of his depth, perhaps a hundred yards away;
suddenly he gave a cry, threw up his arms, and went down.  Ashurst
saw the girl launch herself towards him, and crying out: "Go back,
Stella!  Go back!"  he dashed out.  He had never swum so fast, and
reached Halliday just as he was coming up a second time.  It was a
case of cramp, but to get him in was not difficult, for he did not
struggle.  The girl, who had stopped where Ashurst told her to,
helped as soon as he was in his depth, and once on the beach they sat
down one on each side of him to rub his limbs, while the little ones
stood by with scared faces.  Halliday was soon smiling.  It was--he
said--rotten of him, absolutely rotten!  If Frank would give him an
arm, he could get to his clothes all right now.  Ashurst gave him the
arm, and as he did so caught sight of Stella's face, wet and flushed
and tearful, all broken up out of its calm; and he thought: 'I called
her Stella!  Wonder if she minded?'

While they were dressing, Halliday said quietly, "You saved my life,
old chap!"

"Rot!"

Clothed, but not quite in their right minds, they went up all
together to the hotel and sat down to tea, except Halliday, who was
lying down in his room.  After some slices of bread and jam, Sabina
said:

"I say, you know, you are a brick!"  And Freda chimed in:

"Rather!"

Ashurst saw Stella looking down; he got up in confusion, and went to
the window.  From there he heard Sabina mutter: "I say, let's swear
blood bond.  Where's your knife, Freda?"  and out of the corner of
his eye could see each of them solemnly prick herself, squeeze out a
drop of blood and dabble on a bit of paper.  He turned and made for
the door.

"Don't be a stoat!  Come back!"  His arms were seized; imprisoned
between the little girls he was brought back to the table.  On it lay
a piece of paper with an effigy drawn in blood, and the three names
Stella Halliday, Sabina Halliday, Freda Halliday--also in blood,
running towards it like the rays of a star.  Sabina said:

"That's you.  We shall have to kiss you, you know."

And Freda echoed:

"Oh!  Blow--Yes!"

Before Ashurst could escape, some wettish hair dangled against his
face, something like a bite descended on his nose, he felt his left
arm pinched, and other teeth softly searching his cheek.  Then he was
released, and Freda said:

"Now, Stella."

Ashurst, red and rigid, looked across the table at a red and rigid
Stella.  Sabina giggled; Freda cried:

"Buck up--it spoils everything!"

A queer, ashamed eagerness shot through Ashurst: then he said
quietly:

"Shut up, you little demons!"

Again Sabina giggled.

"Well, then, she can kiss her hand, and you can put it against your
nose.  It is on one side!"

To his amazement the girl did kiss her hand and stretch it out.
Solemnly he took that cool, slim hand and laid it to his cheek.  The
two little girls broke into clapping, and Freda said:

"Now, then, we shall have to save your life at any time; that's
settled.  Can I have another cup, Stella, not so beastly weak?"
Tea was resumed, and Ashurst, folding up the paper, put it in his
pocket.  The talk turned on the advantages of measles, tangerine
oranges, honey in a spoon, no lessons, and so forth.  Ashurst
listened, silent, exchanging friendly looks with Stella, whose face
was again of its normal sun-touched pink and white.  It was soothing
to be so taken to the heart of this jolly family, fascinating to
watch their faces.  And after tea, while the two little girls pressed
seaweed, he talked to Stella in the window seat and looked at her
water-colour sketches.  The whole thing was like a pleasurable dream;
time and incident hung up, importance and reality suspended.
Tomorrow he would go back to Megan, with nothing of all this left
save the paper with the blood of these children, in his pocket.
Children!  Stella was not quite that--as old as Megan!  Her talk--
quick, rather hard and shy, yet friendly--seemed to flourish on his
silences, and about her there was something cool and virginal--a
maiden in a bower.  At dinner, to which Halliday, who had swallowed
too much sea-water, did not come, Sabina said:

"I'm going to call you Frank."

Freda echoed:

"Frank, Frank, Franky."

Ashurst grinned and bowed.

"Every time Stella calls you Mr. Ashurst, she's got to pay a forfeit.
It's ridiculous."

Ashurst looked at Stella, who grew slowly red.  Sabina giggled; Freda
cried:

"She's 'smoking'--'smoking!'--Yah!"

Ashurst reached out to right and left, and grasped some fair hair in
each hand.

"Look here," he said, "you two!  Leave Stella alone, or I'll tie you
together!"

Freda gurgled:

"Ouch!  You are a beast!"

Sabina murmured cautiously:

"You call her Stella, you see!"

"Why shouldn't I?  It's a jolly name!"

"All right; we give you leave to!"

Ashurst released the hair.  Stella!  What would she call him--after
this?  But she called him nothing; till at bedtime he said,
deliberately:

"Good-night, Stella!"

"Good-night, Mr.----Good-night, Frank!  It was jolly of you, you
know!"

"Oh-that!  Bosh!"

Her quick, straight handshake tightened suddenly, and as suddenly
became slack.

Ashurst stood motionless in the empty sitting-room.  Only last night,
under the apple tree and the living blossom, he had held Megan to
him, kissing her eyes and lips.  And he gasped, swept by that rush of
remembrance.  To-night it should have begun-his life with her who
only wanted to be with him!  And now, twenty-four hours and more must
pass, because-of not looking at his watch!  Why had he made friends
with this family of innocents just when he was saying good-bye to
innocence, and all the rest of it?  'But I mean to marry her,' he
thought; 'I told her so!'

He took a candle, lighted it, and went to his bedroom, which was next
to Halliday's.  His friend's voice called, as he was passing:

"Is that you, old chap?  I say, come in."

He was sitting up in bed, smoking a pipe and reading.

"Sit down a bit."

Ashurst sat down by the open window.

"I've been thinking about this afternoon, you know," said Halliday
rather suddenly.  "They say you go through all your past.  I didn't.
I suppose I wasn't far enough gone."

"What did you think of?"

Halliday was silent for a little, then said quietly

"Well, I did think of one thing--rather odd--of a girl at Cambridge
that I might have--you know; I was glad I hadn't got her on my mind.
Anyhow, old chap, I owe it to you that I'm here; I should have been
in the big dark by now.  No more bed, or baccy; no more anything.  I
say, what d'you suppose happens to us?"

Ashurst murmured:

"Go out like flames, I expect."

"Phew!"

"We may flicker, and cling about a bit, perhaps."

"H'm! I think that's rather gloomy.  I say, I hope my young sisters
have been decent to you?"

"Awfully decent."

Halliday put his pipe down, crossed his hands behind his neck, and
turned his face towards the window.

"They're not bad kids!"  he said.

Watching his friend, lying there, with that smile, and the candle-
light on his face, Ashurst shuddered.  Quite true!  He might have
been lying there with no smile, with all that sunny look gone out for
ever!  He might not have been lying there at all, but "sanded" at the
bottom of the sea, waiting for resurrection on the ninth day, was it?
And that smile of Halliday's seemed to him suddenly something
wonderful, as if in it were all the difference between life and
death--the little flame--the all!  He got up, and said softly:

"Well, you ought to sleep, I expect.  Shall I blow out?"

Halliday caught his hand.

"I can't say it, you know; but it must be rotten to be dead.  Good-
night, old boy!"

Stirred and moved, Ashurst squeezed the hand, and went downstairs.
The hall door was still open, and he passed out on to the lawn before
the Crescent.  The stars were bright in a very dark blue sky, and by
their light some lilacs had that mysterious colour of flowers by
night which no one can describe.  Ashurst pressed his face against a
spray; and before his closed eyes Megan started up, with the tiny
brown spaniel pup against her breast.  "I thought of a girl that I
might have you know.  I was glad I hadn't got her on my mind!"  He
jerked his head away from the lilac, and began pacing up and down
over the grass, a grey phantom coming to substance for a moment in
the light from the lamp at either end.  He was with her again under
the living, breathing white ness of the blossom, the stream
chattering by, the moon glinting steel-blue on the bathing-pool; back
in the rapture of his kisses on her upturned face of innocence and
humble passion, back in the suspense and beauty of that pagan night.
He stood still once more in the shadow of the lilacs.  Here the sea,
not the stream, was Night's voice; the sea with its sigh and rustle;
no little bird, no owl, no night-Jar called or spun; but a piano
tinkled, and the white houses cut the sky with solid curve, and the
scent from the lilacs filled the air.  A window of the hotel, high
up, was lighted; he saw a shadow move across the blind.  And most
queer sensations stirred within him, a sort of churning, and twining,
and turning of a single emotion on itself, as though spring and love,
bewildered and confused, seeking the way, were baffled.  This girl,
who had called him Frank, whose hand had given his that sudden little
clutch, this girl so cool and pure--what would she think of such
wild, unlawful loving?  He sank down on the grass, sitting there
cross-legged, with his back to the house, motionless as some carved
Buddha.  Was he really going to break through innocence, and steal?
Sniff the scent out of a wild flower, and--perhaps--throw it away?
"Of a girl at Cambridge that I might have--you know!"  He put his
hands to the grass, one on each side, palms downwards, and pressed;
it was just warm still--the grass, barely moist, soft and firm and
friendly.  'What am I going to do?' he thought.  Perhaps Megan was at
her window, looking out at the blossom, thinking of him!  Poor little
Megan!  'Why not?' he thought.  'I love her!  But do I really love
her? or do I only want her because she is so pretty, and loves me?
What am I going to do?'  The piano tinkled on, the stars winked; and
Ashurst gazed out before him at the dark sea, as if spell-bound.  He
got up at last, cramped and rather chilly.  There was no longer light
in any window.  And he went in to bed.

Out of a deep and dreamless sleep he was awakened by the sound of
thumping on the door.  A shrill voice called:

"Hi! Breakfast's ready."

He jumped up.  Where was he--?  Ah!

He found them already eating marmalade, and sat down in the empty
place between Stella and Sabina, who, after watching him a little,
said:

"I say, do buck up; we're going to start at half-past nine."

"We're going to Berry Head, old chap; you must come!"

Ashurst thought: 'Come!  Impossible.  I shall be getting things and
going back.'  He looked at Stella.  She said quickly:

"Do come!"

Sabina chimed in:

"It'll be no fun without you."

Freda got up and stood behind his chair.

"You've got to come, or else I'll pull your hair!"

Ashurst thought: 'Well--one day more--to think it over!  One day
more!'  And he said:

"All right!  You needn't tweak my mane!"

"Hurrah!"

At the station he wrote a second telegram to the farm, and then tore
it up; he could not have explained why.  From Brixham they drove in a
very little wagonette.  There, squeezed between Sabina and Freda,
with his knees touching Stella's, they played "Up, Jenkins "; and the
gloom he was feeling gave way to frolic.  In this one day more to
think it over, he did not want to think!  They ran races, wrestled,
paddled--for to-day nobody wanted to bathe--they sang catches, played
games, and ate all they had brought.  The little girls fell asleep
against him on the way back, and his knees still touched Stella's in
the narrow wagonette.  It seemed incredible that thirty hours ago he
had never set eyes on any of those three flaxen heads.  In the train
he talked to Stella of poetry, discovering her favourites, and
telling her his own with a pleasing sense of superiority; till
suddenly she said, rather low:

"Phil says you don't believe in a future life, Frank.  I think that's
dreadful."

Disconcerted, Ashurst muttered:

"I don't either believe or not believe--I simply don't know."

She said quickly:

"I couldn't bear that.  What would be the use of living?"

Watching the frown of those pretty oblique brows, Ashurst answered:

"I don't believe in believing things because a one wants to."

"But why should one wish to live again, if one isn't going to?"

And she looked full at him.

He did not want to hurt her, but an itch to dominate pushed him on to
say:

"While one's alive one naturally wants to go on living for ever;
that's part of being alive.  But it probably isn't anything more."

"Don't you believe in the Bible at all, then?"

Ashurst thought: 'Now I shall really hurt her!'

"I believe in the Sermon on the Mount, because it's beautiful and
good for all time."

"But don't you believe Christ was divine?"

He shook his head.

She turned her face quickly to the window, and there sprang into his
mind Megan's prayer, repeated by little Nick: "God bless us all, and
Mr. Ashes!"  Who else would ever say a prayer for him, like her who
at this moment must be waiting--waiting to see him come down the
lane?  And he thought suddenly: 'What a scoundrel I am!'

All that evening this thought kept coming back; but, as is not
unusual, each time with less poignancy, till it seemed almost a
matter of course to be a scoundrel.  And--strange!--he did not know
whether he was a scoundrel if he meant to go back to Megan, or if he
did not mean to go back to her.

They played cards till the children were sent off to bed; then Stella
went to the piano.  From over on the window seat, where it was nearly
dark, Ashurst watched her between the candles--that fair head on the
long, white neck bending to the movement of her hands.  She played
fluently, without much expression; but what a Picture she made, the
faint golden radiance, a sort of angelic atmosphere hovering about
her!  Who could have passionate thoughts or wild desires in the
presence of that swaying, white-clothed girl with the seraphic head?
She played a thing of Schumann's called "Warum?"  Then Halliday
brought out a flute, and the spell was broken.  After this they made
Ashurst sing, Stella playing him accompaniments from a book of
Schumann songs, till, in the middle of "Ich grolle nicht," two small
figures clad in blue dressing-gowns crept in and tried to conceal
themselves beneath the piano.  The evening broke up in confusion, and
what Sabina called "a splendid rag."

That night Ashurst hardly slept at all.  He was thinking, tossing and
turning.  The intense domestic intimacy of these last two days, the
strength of this Halliday atmosphere, seemed to ring him round, and
make the farm and Megan--even Megan--seem unreal.  Had he really made
love to her--really promised to take her away to live with him?  He
must have been bewitched by the spring, the night, the apple blossom!
This May madness could but destroy them both!  The notion that he was
going to make her his mistress--that simple child not yet eighteen--
now filled him with a sort of horror, even while it still stung and
whipped his blood.  He muttered to himself: "It's awful, what I've
done--awful!"  And the sound of Schumann's music throbbed and mingled
with his fevered thoughts, and he saw again Stella's cool, white,
fair-haired figure and bending neck, the queer, angelic radiance
about her.  'I must have been--I must be-mad!' he thought.  'What
came into me?  Poor little Megan!'  "God bless us all, and Mr.
Ashes!"  "I want to be with you--only to be with you!"  And burying
his face in his pillow, he smothered down a fit of sobbing.  Not to
go back was awful!  To go back--more awful still!

Emotion, when you are young, and give real vent to it, loses its
power of torture.  And he fell asleep, thinking: 'What was it--a few
kisses--all forgotten in a month!'

Next morning he got his cheque cashed, but avoided the shop of the
dove-grey dress like the plague; and, instead, bought himself some
necessaries.  He spent the whole day in a queer mood, cherishing a
kind of sullenness against himself.  Instead of the hankering of the
last two days, he felt nothing but a blank--all passionate longing
gone, as if quenched in that outburst of tears.  After tea Stella put
a book down beside him, and said shyly:

"Have you read that, Frank?"

It was Farrar's "Life of Christ."  Ashurst smiled.  Her anxiety about
his beliefs seemed to him comic, but touching.  Infectious too,
perhaps, for he began to have an itch to justify himself, if not to
convert her.  And in the evening, when the children and Halliday were
mending their shrimping nets, he said:

"At the back of orthodox religion, so far as I can see, there's
always the idea of reward--what you can get for being good; a kind of
begging for favours.  I think it all starts in fear."

She was sitting on the sofa making reefer knots with a bit of string.
She looked up quickly:

"I think it's much deeper than that."

Ashurst felt again that wish to dominate.

"You think so," he said; "but wanting the 'quid pro quo' is about the
deepest thing in all of us!  It's jolly hard to get to the bottom of
it!"

She wrinkled her brows in a puzzled frown.

"I don't think I understand."

He went on obstinately:

"Well, think, and see if the most religious people aren't those who
feel that this life doesn't give them all they want.  I believe in
being good because to be good is good in itself."

"Then you do believe in being good?"

How pretty she looked now--it was easy to be good with her!  And he
nodded and said:

"I say, show me how to make that knot!"

With her fingers touching his, in manoeuvring the bit of string, he
felt soothed and happy.  And when he went to bed he wilfully kept his
thoughts on her, wrapping himself in her fair, cool sisterly
radiance, as in some garment of protection.

Next day he found they had arranged to go by train to Totnes, and
picnic at Berry Pomeroy Castle.  Still in that resolute oblivion of
the past, he took his place with them in the landau beside Halliday,
back to the horses.  And, then, along the sea front, nearly at the
turning to the railway station, his heart almost leaped into his
mouth.  Megan--Megan herself!--was walking on the far pathway, in her
old skirt and jacket and her tam-o'-shanter, looking up into the
faces of the passers-by.  Instinctively he threw his hand up for
cover, then made a feint of clearing dust out of his eyes; but
between his fingers he could see her still, moving, not with her free
country step, but wavering, lost-looking, pitiful-like some little
dog which has missed its master and does not know whether to run on,
to run back--where to run.  How had she come like this?--what excuse
had she found to get away?--what did she hope for?  But with every
turn of the wheels bearing him away from her, his heart revolted and
cried to him to stop them, to get out, and go to her!  When the
landau turned the corner to the station he could stand it no more,
and opening the carriage door, muttered: "I've forgotten something!
Go on--don't wait for me!  I'll join you at the castle by the next
train!"  He jumped, stumbled, spun round, recovered his balance, and
walked forward, while the carriage with the astonished Hallidays
rolled on.

>From the corner he could only just see Megan, a long way ahead now.
He ran a few steps, checked himself, and dropped into a walk.  With
each step nearer to her, further from the Hallidays, he walked more
and more slowly.  How did it alter anything--this sight of her?  How
make the going to her, and that which must come of it, less ugly?
For there was no hiding it--since he had met the Hallidays he had
become gradually sure that he would not marry Megan.  It would only
be a wild love-time, a troubled, remorseful, difficult time--and
then--well, then he would get tired, just because she gave him
everything, was so simple, and so trustful, so dewy.  And dew--wears
off!  The little spot of faded colour, her tam-o'-shanter cap,
wavered on far in front of him; she was looking up into every face,
and at the house windows.  Had any man ever such a cruel moment to go
through?  Whatever he did, he felt he would be a beast.  And he
uttered a groan which made a nursemaid turn and stare.  He saw Megan
stop and lean against the sea-wall, looking at the sea; and he too
stopped.  Quite likely she had never seen the sea before, and even in
her distress could not resist that sight.  'Yes-she's seen nothing,'
he thought; 'everything's before her.  And just for a few weeks'
passion, I shall be cutting her life to ribbons.  I'd better go and
hang myself rather than do it!'  And suddenly he seemed to see
Stella's calm eyes looking into his, the wave of fluffy hair on her
forehead stirred by the wind.  Ah! it would be madness, would mean
giving up all that he respected, and his own self-respect.  He turned
and walked quickly back towards the station.  But memory of that
poor, bewildered little figure, those anxious eyes searching the
passers-by, smote him too hard again, and once more he turned towards
the sea.

The cap was no longer visible; that little spot of colour had
vanished in the stream of the noon promenaders.  And impelled by the
passion of longing, the dearth which comes on one when life seems to
be whirling something out of reach, he hurried forward.  She was
nowhere to be seen; for half an hour he looked for her; then on the
beach flung himself face downward in the sand.  To find her again he
knew he had only to go to the station and wait till she returned from
her fruitless quest, to take her train home; or to take train himself
and go back to the farm, so that she found him there when she
returned.  But he lay inert in the sand, among the indifferent groups
of children with their spades and buckets.  Pity at her little figure
wandering, seeking, was well-nigh merged in the spring-running of his
blood; for it was all wild feeling now--the chivalrous part, what
there had been of it, was gone.  He wanted her again, wanted her
kisses, her soft, little body, her abandonment, all her quick, warm,
pagan emotion; wanted the wonderful feeling of that night under the
moonlit apple boughs; wanted it all with a horrible intensity, as the
faun wants the nymph.  The quick chatter of the little bright trout-
stream, the dazzle of the buttercups, the rocks of the old "wild
men"; the calling of the cuckoos and yaffles, the hooting of the
owls; and the red moon peeping out of the velvet dark at the living
whiteness of the blossom; and her face just out of reach at the
window, lost in its love-look; and her heart against his, her lips
answering his, under the apple tree--all this besieged him.  Yet he
lay inert.  What was it which struggled against pity and this
feverish longing, and kept him there paralysed in the warm sand?
Three flaxen heads--a fair face with friendly blue--grey eyes, a slim
hand pressing his, a quick voice speaking his name--"So you do
believe in being good?"  Yes, and a sort of atmosphere as of some old
walled-in English garden, with pinks, and cornflowers, and roses, and
scents of lavender and lilaccool and fair, untouched, almost holy--
all that he had been brought up to feel was clean and good.  And
suddenly he thought: 'She might come along the front again and see
me!' and he got up and made his way to the rock at the far end of the
beach.  There, with the spray biting into his face, he could think
more coolly.  To go back to the farm and love Megan out in the woods,
among the rocks, with everything around wild and fitting--that, he
knew, was impossible, utterly.  To transplant her to a great town, to
keep, in some little flat or rooms, one who belonged so wholly to
Nature--the poet in him shrank from it.  His passion would be a mere
sensuous revel, soon gone; in London, her very simplicity, her lack
of all intellectual quality, would make her his secret plaything--
nothing else.  The longer he sat on the rock, with his feet dangling
over a greenish pool from which the sea was ebbing, the more clearly
he saw this; but it was as if her arms and all of her were slipping
slowly, slowly down from him, into the pool, to be carried away out
to sea; and her face looking up, her lost face with beseeching eyes,
and dark, wet hair-possessed, haunted, tortured him!  He got up at
last, scaled the low rock-cliff, and made his way down into a
sheltered cove.  Perhaps in the sea he could get back his control--
lose this fever!  And stripping off his clothes, he swam out.  He
wanted to tire himself so that nothing mattered and swam recklessly,
fast and far; then suddenly, for no reason, felt afraid.  Suppose he
could not reach shore again--suppose the current set him out--or he
got cramp, like Halliday!  He turned to swim in.  The red cliffs
looked a long way off.  If he were drowned they would find his
clothes.  The Hallidays would know; but Megan perhaps never--they
took no newspaper at the farm.  And Phil Halliday's words came back
to him again: "A girl at Cambridge I might have   Glad I haven't got
her on my mind!"  And in that moment of unreasoning fear he vowed he
would not have her on his mind.  Then his fear left him; he swam in
easily enough, dried himself in the sun, and put on his clothes.  His
heart felt sore, but no longer ached; his body cool and refreshed.

When one is as young as Ashurst, pity is not a violent emotion.  And,
back in the Hallidays' sitting-room, eating a ravenous tea, he felt
much like a man recovered from fever.  Everything seemed new and
clear; the tea, the buttered toast and jam tasted absurdly good;
tobacco had never smelt so nice.  And walking up and down the empty
room, he stopped here and there to touch or look.  He took up
Stella's work-basket, fingered the cotton reels and a gaily-coloured
plait of sewing silks, smelt at the little bag filled with woodroffe
she kept among them.  He sat down at the piano, playing tunes with
one finger, thinking: 'To-night she'll play; I shall watch her while
she's playing; it does me good to watch her.'  He took up the book,
which still lay where she had placed it beside him, and tried to
read.  But Megan's little, sad figure began to come back at once, and
he got up and leaned in the window, listening to the thrushes in the
Crescent gardens, gazing at the sea, dreamy and blue below the trees.
A servant came in and cleared the tea away, and he still stood,
inhaling the evening air, trying not to think.  Then he saw the
Hallidays coming through the gate of the Crescent, Stella a little in
front of Phil and the children, with their baskets, and instinctively
he drew back.  His heart, too sore and discomfited, shrank from this
encounter, yet wanted its friendly solace--bore a grudge against this
influence, yet craved its cool innocence, and the pleasure of
watching Stella's face.  From against the wall behind the piano he
saw her come in and stand looking a little blank as though
disappointed; then she saw him and smiled, a swift, brilliant smile
which warmed yet irritated Ashurst.

"You never came after us, Frank."

"No; I found I couldn't."

"Look!  We picked such lovely late violets!"  She held out a bunch.
Ashurst put his nose to them, and there stirred within him vague
longings, chilled instantly by a vision of Megan's anxious face
lifted to the faces of the passers-by.

He said shortly: "How jolly!"  and turned away.  He went up to his
room, and, avoiding the children, who were coming up the stairs,
threw himself on his bed, and lay there with his arms crossed over
his face.  Now that he felt the die really cast, and Megan given up,
he hated himself, and almost hated the Hallidays and their atmosphere
of healthy, happy English homes.

Why should they have chanced here, to drive away first love--to show
him that he was going to be no better than a common seducer?  What
right had Stella, with her fair, shy beauty, to make him know for
certain that he would never marry Megan; and, tarnishing it all,
bring him such bitterness of regretful longing and such pity?  Megan
would be back by now, worn out by her miserable seeking--poor little
thing!--expecting, perhaps, to find him there when she reached home.
Ashurst bit at his sleeve, to stifle a groan of remorseful longing.
He went to dinner glum and silent, and his mood threw a dinge even
over the children.  It was a melancholy, rather ill tempered evening,
for they were all tired; several times he caught Stella looking at
him with a hurt, puzzled expression, and this pleased his evil mood.
He slept miserably; got up quite early, and wandered out.  He went
down to the beach.  Alone there with the serene, the blue, the sunlit
sea, his heart relaxed a little.  Conceited fool--to think that Megan
would take it so hard!  In a week or two she would almost have
forgotten!  And he well, he would have the reward of virtue!  A good
young man!  If Stella knew, she would give him her blessing for
resisting that devil she believed in; and he uttered a hard laugh.
But slowly the peace and beauty of sea and sky, the flight of the
lonely seagulls, made him feel ashamed.  He bathed, and turned
homewards.

In the Crescent gardens Stella herself was sitting on a camp stool,
sketching.  He stole up close behind.  How fair and pretty she was,
bent diligently, holding up her brush, measuring, wrinkling her
brows.

He said gently:

"Sorry I was such a beast last night, Stella."

She turned round, startled, flushed very pink, and said in her quick
way:

"It's all right.  I knew there was something.  Between friends it
doesn't matter, does it?"

Ashurst answered:

"Between friends--and we are, aren't we?"

She looked up at him, nodded vehemently, and her upper teeth gleamed
again in that swift, brilliant smile.

Three days later he went back to London, travelling with the
Hallidays.  He had not written to the farm.  What was there he could
say?

On the last day of April in the following year he and Stella were
married....

Such were Ashurst's memories, sitting against the wall among the
gorse, on his silver-wedding day.  At this very spot, where he had
laid out the lunch, Megan must have stood outlined against the sky
when he had first caught sight of her.  Of all queer coincidences!
And there moved in him a longing to go down and see again the farm
and the orchard, and the meadow of the gipsy bogle.  It would not
take long; Stella would be an hour yet, perhaps.

How well he remembered it all--the little crowning group of pine
trees, the steep-up grass hill behind!  He paused at the farm gate.
The low stone house, the yew-tree porch, the flowering currants--not
changed a bit; even the old green chair was out there on the grass
under the window, where he had reached up to her that night to take
the key.  Then he turned down the lane, and stood leaning on the
orchard gate-grey skeleton of a gate, as then.  A black pig even was
wandering in there among the trees.  Was it true that twenty-six
years had passed, or had he dreamed and awakened to find Megan
waiting for him by the big apple tree?  Unconsciously he put up his
hand to his grizzled beard and brought himself back to reality.
Opening the gate, he made his way down through the docks and nettles
till he came to the edge, and the old apple tree itself.  Unchanged!
A little more of the greygreen lichen, a dead branch or two, and for
the rest it might have been only last night that he had embraced that
mossy trunk after Megan's flight and inhaled its woody savour, while
above his head the moonlit blossom had seemed to breathe and live.
In that early spring a few buds were showing already; the blackbirds
shouting their songs, a cuckoo calling, the sunlight bright and warm.
Incredibly the same-the chattering trout-stream, the narrow pool he
had lain in every morning, splashing the water over his flanks and
chest; and out there in the wild meadow the beech clump and the stone
where the gipsy bogie was supposed to sit.  And an ache for lost
youth, a hankering, a sense of wasted love and sweetness, gripped
Ashurst by the throat.  Surely, on this earth of such wild beauty,
one was meant to hold rapture to one's heart, as this earth and sky
held it!  And yet, one could not!

He went to the edge of the stream, and looking down at the little
pool, thought: 'Youth and spring!  What has become of them all, I
wonder?'

And then, in sudden fear of having this memory jarred by human
encounter, he went back to the lane, and pensively retraced his steps
to the crossroads.

Beside the car an old, grey-bearded labourer was leaning on a stick,
talking to the chauffeur.  He broke off at once, as though guilty of
disrespect, and touching his hat, prepared to limp on down the lane.

Ashurst pointed to the narrow green mound.  "Can you tell me what
this is?"

The old fellow stopped; on his face had come a look as though he were
thinking: 'You've come to the right shop, mister!'

"'Tes a grave," he said.

"But why out here?"

The old man smiled.  "That's a tale, as yu may say.  An' not the
first time as I've a-told et--there's plenty folks asks 'bout that
bit o' turf.  'Maid's Grave' us calls et, 'ereabouts."

Ashurst held out his pouch.  "Have a fill?"

The old man touched his hat again, and slowly filled an old clay
pipe.  His eyes, looking upward out of a mass of wrinkles and hair,
were still quite bright.

"If yu don' mind, zurr, I'll zet down my leg's 'urtin' a bit today."
And he sat down on the mound of turf.

"There's always a flower on this grave.  An' 'tain't so very
lonesome, neither; brave lot o' folks goes by now, in they new motor
cars an' things--not as 'twas in th' old days.  She've a got company
up 'ere.  'Twas a poor soul killed 'erself."

"I see!" said Ashurst.  "Cross-roads burial.  I didn't know that
custom was kept up."

"Ah!  but 'twas a main long time ago.  Us 'ad a parson as was very
God-fearin' then.  Let me see, I've a 'ad my pension six year come
Michaelmas, an' I were just on fifty when t'appened.  There's none
livin' knows more about et than what I du.  She belonged close 'ere;
same farm as where I used to work along o' Mrs. Narracombe 'tes Nick
Narracombe's now; I dus a bit for 'im still, odd times."

Ashurst, who was leaning against the gate, lighting his pipe, left
his curved hands before his face for long after the flame of the
match had gone out.

"Yes?"  he said, and to himself his voice sounded hoarse and queer.

"She was one in an 'underd, poor maid!  I putts a flower 'ere every
time I passes.  Pretty maid an' gude maid she was, though they
wouldn't burry 'er up to th' church, nor where she wanted to be
burried neither."  The old labourer paused, and put his hairy,
twisted hand flat down on the turf beside the bluebells.

"Yes?"  said Ashurst.

"In a manner of speakin'," the old man went on, "I think as 'twas a
love-story--though there's no one never knu for zartin.  Yu can't
tell what's in a maid's 'ead but that's wot I think about it."  He
drew his hand along the turf.  "I was fond o' that maid--don' know as
there was anyone as wasn' fond of 'er.  But she was to lovin'-
'earted--that's where 'twas, I think."  He looked up.  And Ashurst,
whose lips were trembling in the cover of his beard, murmured again:
"Yes?"

"'Twas in the spring, 'bout now as 't might be, or a little later--
blossom time--an' we 'ad one o' they young college gentlemen stayin'
at the farm-nice feller tu, with 'is 'ead in the air.  I liked 'e
very well, an' I never see nothin' between 'em, but to my thinkin' 'e
turned the maid's fancy."  The old man took the pipe out of his
mouth, spat, and went on:

"Yu see, 'e went away sudden one day, an' never come back.  They got
'is knapsack and bits o' things down there still.  That's what stuck
in my mind--'is never sendin' for 'em.  'Is name was Ashes, or
somethen' like that."

"Yes?"  said Ashurst once more.

The old man licked his lips.

"'Er never said nothin', but from that day 'er went kind of dazed
lukin'; didn'seem rightly therr at all.  I never knu a'uman creature
so changed in me life--never.  There was another young feller at the
farm--Joe Biddaford 'is name wer', that was praaperly sweet on 'er,
tu; I guess 'e used to plague 'er wi 'is attentions.  She got to luke
quite wild.  I'd zee her sometimes of an avenin' when I was bringin'
up the calves; ther' she'd stand in th' orchard, under the big apple
tree, lukin' straight before 'er.  'Well,' I used t'think, 'I dunno
what 'tes that's the matter wi' yu, but yu'm lukin' pittiful, that yu
be!'"

The old man refit his pipe, and sucked at it reflectively.

"Yes?"  said Ashurst.

"I remembers one day I said to 'er: 'What's the matter, Megan?'--'er
name was Megan David, she come from Wales same as 'er aunt, ol'
Missis Narracombe.  'Yu'm frettin' about somethin'.  I says.  'No,
Jim,' she says, 'I'm not frettin'.' 'Yes, yu be!' I says.  'No,' she
says, and to tears cam' rollin' out.  'Yu'm cryin'--what's that,
then?' I says.  She putts 'er 'and over 'er 'eart: 'It 'urts me,' she
says; 'but 'twill sune be better,' she says.  'But if anything shude
'appen to me, Jim, I wants to be burried under this 'ere apple tree.'
I laughed.  'What's goin' to 'appen to yu?' I says; 'don't 'ee be
fulish.' 'No,' she says, 'I won't be fulish.'  Well, I know what
maids are, an' I never thought no more about et, till two days arter
that, 'bout six in the avenin' I was comin' up wi' the calves, when I
see somethin' dark lyin' in the strame, close to that big apple tree.
I says to meself: 'Is that a pig-funny place for a pig to get to!'
an' I goes up to et, an' I see what 'twas."

The old man stopped; his eyes, turned upward, had a bright, suffering
look.

"'Twas the maid, in a little narrer pool ther' that's made by the
stoppin' of a rock--where I see the young gentleman bathin' once or
twice.  'Er was lyin' on 'er face in the watter.  There was a plant
o' goldie-cups growin' out o' the stone just above 'er'ead.  An' when
I come to luke at 'er face, 'twas luvly, butiful, so calm's a baby's
--wonderful butiful et was.  When the doctor saw 'er, 'e said: 'Er
culdn' never a-done it in that little bit o' watter ef' er 'adn't a-
been in an extarsy.'  Ah! an' judgin' from 'er face, that was just
'ow she was.  Et made me cry praaper-butiful et was!  'Twas June
then, but she'd afound a little bit of apple-blossom left over
somewheres, and stuck et in 'er 'air.  That's why I thinks 'er must
abeen in an extarsy, to go to et gay, like that.  Why!  there wasn't
more than a fute and 'arf o' watter.  But I tell 'ee one thing--that
meadder's 'arnted; I knu et, an' she knu et; an' no one'll persuade
me as 'tesn't.  I told 'em what she said to me 'bout bein' burried
under th' apple tree.  But I think that turned 'em--made et luke to
much 's ef she'd 'ad it in 'er mind deliberate; an' so they burried
'er up 'ere.  Parson we 'ad then was very particular, 'e was."

Again the old man drew his hand over the turf.

"'Tes wonderful, et seems," he added slowly, "what maids 'll du for
love.  She 'ad a lovin-'eart; I guess 'twas broken.  But us never knu
nothin'!"

He looked up as if for approval of his story, but Ashurst had walked
past him as if he were not there.

Up on the top of the hill, beyond where he had spread the lunch,
over, out of sight, he lay down on his face.  So had his virtue been
rewarded, and "the Cyprian," goddess of love, taken her revenge!  And
before his eyes, dim with tears, came Megan's face with the sprig of
apple blossom in her dark, wet hair.  'What did I do that was wrong?'
he thought.  'What did I do?' But he could not answer.  Spring, with
its rush of passion, its flowers and song-the spring in his heart and
Megan's!  Was it just Love seeking a victim!  The Greek was right,
then--the words of the "Hippolytus" as true to-day!

    "For mad is the heart of Love,
     And gold the gleam of his wing;
     And all to the spell thereof
     Bend when he makes his spring.
     All life that is wild and young
     In mountain and wave and stream
     All that of earth is sprung,
     Or breathes in the red sunbeam;
     Yea, and Mankind.  O'er all a royal throne,
     Cyprian, Cyprian, is thine alone!"

The Greek was right!  Megan!  Poor little Megan--coming over the
hill!  Megan under the old apple tree waiting and looking!  Megan
dead, with beauty printed on her!

A voice said:

"Oh, there you are! Look !"

Ashurst rose, took his wife's sketch, and stared at it in silence.

"Is the foreground right, Frank?"

"Yes."

"But there's something wanting, isn't there?"

Ashurst nodded.  Wanting?  The apple tree, the singing, and the gold!

And solemnly he put his lips to her forehead.  It was his silver-
wedding day.

1916







THE JURYMAN



     "Don't you see, brother, I was reading yesterday the Gospel
     about Christ, the little Father; how He suffered, how He walked
     on the earth.  I suppose you have heard about it?"

     "Indeed, I have," replied Stepanuitch; "but we are people in
     darkness; we can't read."--TOLSTOI.


Mr. Henry Bosengate, of the London Stock Exchange, seated himself in
his car that morning during the great war with a sense of injury.
Major in a Volunteer Corps; member of all the local committees;
lending this very car to the neighbouring hospital, at times even
driving it himself for their benefit; subscribing to funds, so far as
his diminished income permitted--he was conscious of being an asset
to the country, and one whose time could not be wasted with impunity.
To be summoned to sit on a jury at the local assizes, and not even
the grand jury at that!  It was in the nature of an outrage.

Strong and upright, with hazel eyes and dark eyebrows, pinkish-brown
cheeks, a forehead white, well-shaped, and getting high, with greyish
hair glossy and well-brushed, and a trim moustache, he might have
been taken for that colonel of Volunteers which indeed he was in a
fair way of becoming.

His wife had followed him out under the porch, and stood bracing her
supple body clothed in lilac linen.  Red rambler roses formed a sort
of crown to her dark head; her ivory-coloured face had in it just a
suggestion of the Japanese.

Mr. Bosengate spoke through the whirr of the engine:

"I don't expect to be late, dear.  This business is ridiculous.
There oughtn't to be any crime in these days."

His wife--her name was Kathleen--smiled.  She looked very pretty and
cool, Mr. Bosengate thought.  To him bound on this dull and stuffy
business everything he owned seemed pleasant--the geranium beds
beside the gravel drive, his long, red-brick house mellowing
decorously in its creepers and ivy, the little clock-tower over
stables now converted to a garage, the dovecote, masking at the other
end the conservatory which adjoined the billiard-room.  Close to the
red-brick lodge his two children, Kate and Harry, ran out from under
the acacia trees, and waved to him, scrambling bare-legged on to the
low, red, ivy-covered wall which guarded his domain of eleven acres.
Mr. Bosengate waved back, thinking: 'Jolly couple--by Jove, they
are!'  Above their heads, through the trees, he could see right away
to some Downs, faint in the July heat haze.  And he thought: 'Pretty
a spot as one could have got, so close to Town!'

Despite the war he had enjoyed these last two years more than any of
the ten since he built "Charmleigh" and settled down to semi-rural
domesticity with his young wife.  There had been a certain piquancy,
a savour added to existence, by the country's peril, and all the
public service and sacrifice it demanded.  His chauffeur was gone,
and one gardener did the work of three.  He enjoyed-positively
enjoyed, his committee work; even the serious decline of business and
increase of taxation had not much worried one continually conscious
of the national crisis and his own part therein.  The country had
wanted waking up, wanted a lesson in effort and economy; and the
feeling that he had not spared himself in these strenuous times, had
given a zest to those quiet pleasures of bed and board which, at his
age, even the most patriotic could retain with a good conscience.  He
had denied himself many things--new clothes, presents for Kathleen
and the children, travel, and that pine-apple house which he had been
on the point of building when the war broke out; new wine, too, and
cigars, and membership of the two Clubs which he had never used in
the old days.  The hours had seemed fuller and longer, sleep better
earned--wonderful, the things one could do without when put to it!
He turned the car into the high road, driving dreamily for he was in
plenty of time.  The war was going pretty well now; he was no fool
optimist, but now that conscription was in force, one might
reasonably hope for its end within a year.  Then there would be a
boom, and one might let oneself go a little.  Visions of theatres and
supper with his wife at the Savoy afterwards, and cosy night drives
back into the sweet-smelling country behind your own chauffeur once
more teased a fancy which even now did not soar beyond the confines
of domestic pleasures.  He pictured his wife in new dresses by Jay--
she was fifteen years younger than himself, and "paid for dressing"
as they said.  He had always delighted--as men older than their wives
will--in the admiration she excited from others not privileged to
enjoy her charms.  Her rather queer and ironical beauty, her cool
irreproachable wifeliness, was a constant balm to him.  They would
give dinner parties again, have their friends down from town, and he
would once more enjoy sitting at the foot of the dinner table while
Kathleen sat at the head, with the light soft on her ivory shoulders,
behind flowers she had arranged in that original way of hers, and
fruit which he had grown in his hot-houses; once more he would take
legitimate interest in the wine he offered to his guests--once more
stock that Chinese cabinet wherein he kept cigars.  Yes--there was a
certain satisfaction in these days of privation, if only from the
anticipation they created.

The sprinkling of villas had become continuous on either side of the
high road; and women going out to shop, tradesmen's boys delivering
victuals, young men in khaki, began to abound.  Now and then a
limping or bandaged form would pass--some bit of human wreckage; and
Mr. Bosengate would think mechanically: 'Another of those poor
devils!  Wonder if we've had his case before us!'

Running his car into the best hotel garage of the little town, he
made his way leisurely over to the court.  It stood back from the
market-place, and was already lapped by a sea of persons having, as
in the outer ring at race meetings, an air of business at which one
must not be caught out, together with a soaked or flushed appearance.
Mr. Bosengate could not resist putting his handkerchief to his nose.
He had carefully drenched it with lavender water, and to this fact
owed, perhaps, his immunity from the post of foreman on the jury--
for, say what you will about the English, they have a deep instinct
for affairs.

He found himself second in the front row of the jury box, and through
the odour of "Sanitas" gazed at the judge's face expressionless up
there, for all the world like a bewigged bust.  His fellows in the
box had that appearance of falling between two classes characteristic
of jurymen.  Mr. Bosengate was not impressed.  On one side of him the
foreman sat, a prominent upholsterer, known in the town as "Gentleman
Fox."  His dark and beautifully brushed and oiled hair and moustache,
his radiant linen, gold watch and chain, the white piping to his
waistcoat, and a habit of never saying "Sir" had long marked him out
from commoner men; he undertook to bury people too, to save them
trouble; and was altogether superior.  On the other side Mr.
Bosengate had one of those men, who, except when they sit on juries,
are never seen without a little brown bag, and the appearance of
having been interrupted in a drink.  Pale and shiny, with large loose
eyes shifting from side to side, he had an underdone voice and uneasy
flabby hands.  Mr. Bosengate disliked sitting next to him.  Beyond
this commercial traveller sat a dark pale young man with spectacles;
beyond him again, a short old man with grey moustache, mutton chops,
and innumerable wrinkles; and the front row was completed by a
chemist.  The three immediately behind, Mr. Bosengate did not
thoroughly master; but the three at the end of the second row he
learned in their order of an oldish man in a grey suit, given to
winking; an inanimate person with the mouth of a moustachioed cod-
fish, over whose long bald crown three wisps of damp hair were
carefully arranged; and a dried, dapperish, clean-shorn man, whose
mouth seemed terrified lest it should be surprised without a smile.
Their first and second verdicts were recorded without the necessity
for withdrawal, and Mr. Bosengate was already sleepy when the third
case was called.  The sight of khaki revived his drooping attention.
But what a weedy-looking specimen!  This prisoner had a truly
nerveless pitiable dejected air.  If he had ever had a military
bearing it had shrunk into him during his confinement.  His ill-
shaped brown tunic, whose little brass buttons seemed trying to keep
smiling, struck Mr. Bosengate as ridiculously short, used though he
was to such things.  'Absurd,' he thought--'Lumbago!  Just where they
ought to be covered!'  Then the officer and gentleman stirred in him,
and he added to himself: 'Still, there must be some distinction
made!'  The little soldier's visage had once perhaps been tanned, but
was now the colour of dark dough; his large brown eyes with white
showing below the iris, as so often in the eyes of very nervous
people--wandered from face to face, of judge, counsel, jury, and
public.  There were hollows in his cheeks, his dark hair looked damp;
around his neck he wore a bandage.  The commercial traveller on Mr.
Bosengate's left turned, and whispered: "Felo de se!  My hat! what a
guy!"  Mr. Bosengate pretended not to hear--he could not bear that
fellow!--and slowly wrote on a bit of paper: "Owen Lewis."  Welsh!
Well, he looked it--not at all an English face.  Attempted suicide--
not at all an English crime!  Suicide implied surrender, a putting-up
of hands to Fate--to say nothing of the religious aspect of the
matter.  And suicide in khaki seemed to Mr. Bosengate particularly
abhorrent; like turning tail in face of the enemy; almost meriting
the fate of a deserter.  He looked at the prisoner, trying not to
give way to this prejudice.  And the prisoner seemed to look at him,
though this, perhaps, was fancy.

The Counsel for the prosecution, a little, alert, grey, decided man,
above military age, began detailing the circumstances of the crime.
Mr. Bosengate, though not particularly sensitive to atmosphere, could
perceive a sort of current running through the Court.  It was as if
jury and public were thinking rhythmically in obedience to the same
unexpressed prejudice of which he himself was conscious.  Even the
Caesar-like pale face up there, presiding, seemed in its ironic
serenity responding to that current.

"Gentlemen of the jury, before I call my evidence, I direct your
attention to the bandage the accused is still wearing.  He gave
himself this wound with his Army razor, adding, if I may say so,
insult to the injury he was inflicting on his country.  He pleads not
guilty; and before the magistrates he said that absence from his wife
was preying on his mind"--the advocate's close lips widened--"Well,
gentlemen, if such an excuse is to weigh with us in these days, I'm
sure I don't know what's to happen to the Empire."

'No, by George!' thought Mr. Bosengate.

The evidence of the first witness, a room-mate who had caught the
prisoner's hand, and of the sergeant, who had at once been summoned,
was conclusive and he began to cherish a hope that they would get
through without withdrawing, and he would be home before five.  But
then a hitch occurred.  The regimental doctor failed to respond when
his name was called; and the judge having for the first time that day
showed himself capable of human emotion, intimated that he would
adjourn until the morrow.

Mr. Bosengate received the announcement with equanimity.  He would be
home even earlier!  And gathering up the sheets of paper he had
scribbled on, he put them in his pocket and got up.  The would-be
suicide was being taken out of the court--a shambling drab figure
with shoulders hunched.  What good were men like that in these days!
What good!  The prisoner looked up.  Mr. Bosengate encountered in
full the gaze of those large brown eyes, with the white showing
underneath.  What a suffering, wretched, pitiful face!  A man had no
business to give you a look like that!  The prisoner passed on down
the stairs, and vanished.  Mr. Bosengate went out and across the
market place to the garage of the hotel where he had left his car.
The sun shone fiercely and he thought: 'I must do some watering in
the garden.'  He brought the car out, and was about to start the
engine, when someone passing said: "Good evenin'.  Seedy-lookin'
beggar that last prisoner, ain't he?  We don't want men of that
stamp."  It was his neighbour on the jury, the commercial traveller,
in a straw hat, with a little brown bag already in his hand and the
froth of an interrupted drink on his moustache.  Answering curtly:
"Good evening!" and thinking: 'Nor of yours, my friend!'  Mr.
Bosengate started the car with unnecessary clamour.  But as if
brought back to life by the commercial traveller's remark, the
prisoner's figure seemed to speed along too, turning up at Mr.
Bosengate his pitifully unhappy eyes.  Want of his wife!--queer
excuse that for trying to put it out of his power ever to see her
again!  Why!  Half a loaf, even a slice, was better than no bread.
Not many of that neurotic type in the Army--thank Heaven!  The
lugubrious figure vanished, and Mr. Bosengate pictured instead the
form of his own wife bending over her "Gloire de Dijon roses" in the
rosery, where she generally worked a little before tea now that they
were short of gardeners.  He saw her, as often he had seen her, raise
herself and stand, head to one side, a gloved hand on her slender
hip, gazing as it were ironically from under drooped lids at buds
which did not come out fast enough.  And the word 'Caline,' for he
was something of a French scholar, shot through his mind: 'Kathleen-
Caline!'  If he found her there when he got in, he would steal up on
the grass and--ah! but with great care not to crease her dress or
disturb her hair!  'If only she weren't quite so self-contained,' he
thought; 'It's like a cat you can't get near, not really near!'

The car, returning faster than it had come down that morning, had
already passed the outskirt villas, and was breasting the hill to
where, among fields and the old trees, Charmleigh lay apart from
commoner life.  Turning into his drive, Mr. Bosengate thought with a
certain surprise: 'I wonder what she does think of!  I wonder!'  He
put his gloves and hat down in the outer hall and went into the
lavatory, to dip his face in cool water and wash it with sweet-
smelling soap--delicious revenge on the unclean atmosphere in which
he had been stewing so many hours.  He came out again into the hall
dazed by soap and the mellowed light, and a voice from half-way up
the stairs said: "Daddy!  Look!"  His little daughter was standing up
there with one hand on the banisters.  She scrambled on to them and
came sliding down, her frock up to her eyes, and her holland knickers
to her middle.  Mr. Bosengate said mildly:

"Well, that's elegant!"

"Tea's in the summer-house.  Mummy's waiting.  Come on!"

With her hand in his, Mr. Bosengate went on, through the drawing-
room, long and cool, with sun-blinds down, through the billiard-room,
high and cool, through the conservatory, green and sweet-smelling,
out on to the terrace and the upper lawn.  He had never felt such
sheer exhilarated joy in his home surroundings, so cool, glistening
and green under the July sun; and he said:

"Well, Kit, what have you all been doing?"

"I've fed my rabbits and Harry's; and we've been in the attic; Harry
got his leg through the skylight."

Mr. Bosengate drew in his breath with a hiss.

"It's all right, Daddy; we got it out again, it's only grazed the
skin.  And we've been making swabs--I made seventeen, Mummy made
thirty-three, and then she went to the hospital.  Did you put many
men in prison?"

Mr. Bosengate cleared his throat.  The question seemed to him
untimely.

"Only two."

"What's it like in prison, Daddy?"

Mr. Bosengate, who had no more knowledge than his little daughter,
replied in an absent voice:

"Not very nice."

They were passing under a young oak tree, where the path wound round
to the rosery and summer-house.  Something shot down and clawed Mr.
Bosengate's neck.  His little daughter began to hop and suffocate
with laughter.

"Oh, Daddy!  Aren't you caught!  I led you on purpose!"

Looking up, Mr. Bosengate saw his small son lying along a low branch
above him--like the leopard he was declaring himself to be (for fear
of error), and thought blithely: 'What an active little chap it is!'
"Let me drop on your shoulders, Daddy--like they do on the deer."

"Oh, yes!  Do be a deer, Daddy!"

Mr. Bosengate did not see being a deer; his hair had just been
brushed.  But he entered the rosery buoyantly between his offspring.
His wife was standing precisely as he had imagined her, in a pale
blue frock open at the neck, with a narrow black band round the
waist, and little accordion pleats below.  She looked her coolest.
Her smile, when she turned her head, hardly seemed to take Mr.
Bosengate seriously enough.  He placed his lips below one of her
half-drooped eyelids.  She even smelled of roses.  His children began
to dance round their mother, and Mr. Bosengate,--firmly held between
them, was also compelled to do this, until she said:

"When you've quite done, let's have tea!"

It was not the greeting he had imagined coming along in the car.
Earwigs were plentiful in the summer-house--used perhaps twice a
year, but indispensable to every country residence--and Mr. Bosengate
was not sorry for the excuse to get out again.  Though all was so
pleasant, he felt oddly restless, rather suffocated; and lighting his
pipe, began to move about among the roses, blowing tobacco at the
greenfly; in war-time one was never quite idle!  And suddenly he
said:

"We're trying a wretched Tommy at the assizes."

His wife looked up from a rose.

"What for?"

"Attempted suicide."

"Why did he?"

"Can't stand the separation from his wife."

She looked at him, gave a low laugh, and said:

"Oh dear!"

Mr. Bosengate was puzzled.  Why did she laugh?  He looked round, saw
that the children were gone, took his pipe from his mouth, and
approached her.

"You look very pretty," he said.  "Give me a kiss!"

His wife bent her body forward from the waist, and pushed her lips
out till they touched his moustache.  Mr. Bosengate felt a sensation
as if he had arisen from breakfast, without having eaten marmalade.
He mastered it, and said:

"That jury are a rum lot."

His wife's eyelids flickered.  "I wish women sat on juries."

"Why?"

"It would be an experience."

Not the first time she had used that curious expression!  Yet her
life was far from dull, so far as he could see; with the new
interests created by the war, and the constant calls on her time made
by the perfection of their home life, she had a useful and busy
existence.  Again the random thought passed through him: 'But she
never tells me anything!'  And suddenly that lugubrious khaki-clad
figure started up among the rose bushes.  "We've got a lot to be
thankful for!" he said abruptly.  "I must go to work!"  His wife,
raising one eyebrow, smiled.  "And I to weep!"  Mr. Bosengate
laughed--she had a pretty wit!  And stroking his comely moustache
where it had been kissed, he moved out into the sunshine.  All the
evening, throughout his labours, not inconsiderable, for this jury
business had put him behind time, he was afflicted by that restless
pleasure in his surroundings; would break off in mowing the lower
lawn to look at the house through the trees; would leave his study
and committee papers, to cross into the drawing-room and sniff its
dainty fragrance; paid a special good-night visit to the children
having supper in the schoolroom; pottered in and out from his
dressing room to admire his wife while she was changing for dinner;
dined with his mind perpetually on the next course; talked volubly of
the war; and in the billiard room afterwards, smoking the pipe which
had taken the place of his cigar, could not keep still, but roamed
about, now in conservatory, now in the drawing-room, where his wife
and the governess were still making swabs.  It seemed to him that he
could not have enough of anything.  About eleven o'clock he strolled
out beautiful night, only just dark enough--under the new arrangement
with Time--and went down to the little round fountain below the
terrace.  His wife was playing the piano.  Mr. Bosengate looked at
the water and the flat dark water lily leaves which floated there;
looked up at the house, where only narrow chinks of light showed,
because of the Lighting Order.  The dreamy music  drifted out; there
was a scent of heliotrope.  He moved a few steps back, and sat in the
children's swing under an old lime tree.  Jolly--blissful--in the
warm, bloomy dark!  Of all hours of the day, this before going to bed
was perhaps the pleasantest.  He saw the light go up in his wife's
bed room, unscreened for a full minute, and thought: 'Aha!  If I did
my duty as a special, I should "strafe" her for that.'  She came to
the window, her figure lighted, hands up to the back of her head, so
that her bare arms gleamed.  Mr. Bosengate wafted her a kiss, knowing
he could not be seen.  'Lucky chap!' he mused; 'she's a great joy!'
Up went her arm, down came the blind the house was dark again.  He
drew a long breath.  'Another ten minutes,' he thought, 'then I'll go
in and shut up.  By Jove!  The limes are beginning to smell already!'
And, the better to take in that acme of his well-being, he tilted the
swing, lifted his feet from the ground, and swung himself toward the
scented blossoms.  He wanted to whelm his senses in their perfume,
and closed his eyes.  But instead of the domestic vision he expected,
the face of the little Welsh soldier, hare-eyed, shadowy, pinched and
dark and pitiful, started up with such disturbing vividness that he
opened his eyes again at once.  Curse!  The fellow almost haunted
one!  Where would he be now poor little devil!--lying in his cell,
thinking--thinking of his wife!  Feeling suddenly morbid, Mr.
Bosengate arrested the swing and stood up. Absurd!--all his well-
being and mood of warm anticipation had deserted him!  'A d---d
world!' he thought.  'Such a lot of misery!  Why should I have to sit
in judgment on that poor beggar, and condemn him?'  He moved up on to
the terrace and walked briskly, to rid himself of this disturbance
before going in.  'That commercial traveller chap,' he thought, 'the
rest of those fellows--they see nothing!'  And, abruptly turning up
the three stone steps, he entered the conservatory, locked it, passed
into the billiard room, and drank his barley water.  One of the
pictures was hanging crooked; he went up to put it straight.  Still
life.  Grapes and apples, and--lobsters!  They struck him as odd for
the first time.  Why lobsters?  The whole picture seemed dead and
oily.  He turned off the light, and went upstairs, passed his wife's
door, into his own room, and undressed.  Clothed in his pyjamas he
opened the door between the rooms.  By the light coming from his own
he could see her dark head on the pillow.  Was she asleep?  No--not
asleep, certainly.  The moment of fruition had come; the crowning of
his pride and pleasure in his home.  But he continued to stand there.
He had suddenly no pride, no pleasure, no desire; nothing but a sort
of dull resentment against everything.  He turned back; shut the
door, and slipping between the heavy curtains and his open window,
stood looking out at the night.  'Full of misery!' he thought.  'Full
of d---d misery!'




II

Filing into the jury box next morning, Mr. Bosengate collided
slightly with a short juryman, whose square figure and square head of
stiff yellow-red hair he had only vaguely noticed the day before.
The man looked angry, and Mr. Bosengate thought: 'An ill-bred dog,
that!'

He sat down quickly, and, to avoid further recognition of his
fellows, gazed in front of him.  His appearance on Saturdays was
always military, by reason of the route march of his Volunteer Corps
in the afternoon.  Gentleman Fox, who belonged to the corps too, was
also looking square; but that commercial traveller on his other side
seemed more louche, and as if surprised in immorality, than ever;
only the proximity of Gentleman Fox on the other side kept Mr.
Bosengate from shrinking.  Then he saw the prisoner being brought in,
shadowy and dark behind the brightness of his buttons, and he
experienced a sort of shock, this figure was so exactly that which
had several times started up in his mind.  Somehow he had expected a
fresh sight of the fellow to dispel and disprove what had been
haunting him, had expected to find him just an outside phenomenon,
not, as it were, a part of his own life.  And he gazed at the carven
immobility of the judge's face, trying to steady himself, as a
drunken man will, by looking at a light.  The regimental doctor,
unabashed by the judge's comment on his absence the day before, gave
his evidence like a man who had better things to do, and the case for
the prosecution was forthwith rounded in by a little speech from
counsel.  The matter--he said--was clear as daylight.  Those who wore
His Majesty's uniform, charged with the responsibility and privilege
of defending their country, were no more entitled to desert their
regiments by taking their own lives than they were entitled to desert
in any other way.  He asked for a conviction.  Mr. Bosengate felt a
sympathetic shuffle passing through all feet; the judge was speaking:

"Prisoner, you can either go into the witness box and make your
statement on oath, in which case you may be cross-examined on it; or
you can make your statement there from the dock, in which case you
will not be cross-examined.  Which do you elect to do?"

"From here, my lord."

Seeing him now full face, and, as it might be, come to life in the
effort to convey his feelings, Mr. Bosengate had suddenly a quite
different impression of the fellow.  It was as if his khaki had
fallen off, and he had stepped out of his own shadow, a live and
quivering creature.  His pinched clean-shaven face seemed to have an
irregular, wilder, hairier look, his large nervous brown eyes
darkened and glowed; he jerked his shoulders, his arms, his whole
body, like a man suddenly freed from cramp or a suit of armour.

He spoke, too, in a quick, crisp, rather high voice, pinching his
consonants a little, sharpening his vowels, like a true Welshman.

"My lord and misters the jury," he said: "I was a hairdresser when
the call came on me to join the army.  I had a little home and a
wife.  I never thought what it would be like to be away from them, I
surely never did; and I'm ashamed to be speaking it out like this--
how it can squeeze and squeeze a man, how it can prey on your mind,
when you're nervous like I am.  'Tis not everyone that cares for his
home--there's lots o' them never wants to see their wives again.  But
for me 'tis like being shut up in a cage, it is!"  Mr. Bosengate saw
daylight between the skinny fingers of the man's hand thrown out with
a jerk.  "I cannot bear it shut up away from wife and home like what
you are in the army.  So when I took my razor that morning I was
wild--an' I wouldn't be here now but for that man catching my hand.
There was no reason in it, I'm willing to confess.  It was foolish;
but wait till you get feeling like what I was, and see how it draws
you.  Misters the jury, don't send me back to prison; it is worse
still there.  If you have wives you will know what it is like for
lots of us; only some is more nervous than others.  I swear to you,
sirs, I could not help it---?"  Again the little man flung out his
hand, his whole thin body shook and Mr. Bosengate felt the same
sensation as when he drove his car over a dog--"Misters the jury, I
hope you may never in your lives feel as I've been feeling."

The little man ceased, his eyes shrank back into their sockets, his
figure back into its mask of shadowy brown and gleaming buttons, and
Mr. Bosengate was conscious that the judge was making a series of
remarks; and, very soon, of being seated at a mahogany table in the
jury's withdrawing room, hearing the, voice of the man with hair like
an Irish terrier's saying: "Didn't he talk through his hat, that
little blighter!"  Conscious, too, of the commercial traveller, still
on his left--always on his left!--mopping his brow, and muttering:
"Phew! It's hot in there to-day!"  while an effluvium, as of an
inside accustomed to whisky came from him.  Then the man with the
underlip and the three plastered wisps of hair said:

"Don't know why we withdrew, Mr. Foreman!"

Mr. Bosengate looked round to where, at the head of the table,
Gentleman Fox sat, in defensive gentility and the little white piping
to his waistcoat saying blandly:

"I shall be happy to take the sense of the jury."

There was a short silence, then the chemist murmured:

"I should say he must have what they call claustrophobia."

"Clauster fiddlesticks!  The feller's a shirker, that's all.  Missed
his wife--pretty excuse!  Indecent, I call it!"

The speaker was the little wire-haired man; and emotion, deep and
angry, stirred in Mr. Bosengate.  That ill-bred little cur!  He
gripped the edge of the table with both hands.

"I think it's d-----d natural!"  he muttered.  But almost before the
words had left his lips he felt dismay.  What had he said--he, nearly
a colonel of volunteers--endorsing such a want of patriotism!  And
hearing the commercial traveller murmuring: "'Ear, 'ear!"  he
reddened violently.

The wire-headed man said roughly:

"There's too many of these blighted shirkers, and too much pampering
of them."

The turmoil in Mr. Bosengate increased; he remarked in an icy voice:

"I agree to no verdict that'll send the man back to prison."

At this a real tremor seemed to go round the table, as if they all
saw themselves sitting there through lunch time.  Then the large
grey-haired man given to winking, said:

"Oh!  Come, sir--after what the judge said!  Come, sir!  What do you
say, Mr. Foreman?"

Gentleman Fox--as who should say 'This is excellent value, but I
don't wish to press it on you!'--answered:

"We are only concerned with the facts.  Did he or did he not try to
shorten his life?"

"Of course he did--said so himself," Mr. Bosengate heard the wire-
haired man snap out, and from the following murmur of assent he alone
abstained.  Guilty!  Well--yes!  There was no way out of admitting
that, but his feelings revolted against handing "that poor little
beggar" over to the tender mercy of his country's law.  His whole
soul rose in arms against agreeing with that ill-bred little cur, and
the rest of this job-lot.  He had an impulse to get up and walk out,
saying: "Settle it your own way.  Good morning."

"It seems, sir," Gentleman Fox was saying, "that we're all agreed to
guilty, except yourself.  If you will allow me, I don't see how you
can go behind what the prisoner himself admitted."

Thus brought up to the very guns, Mr. Bosengate, red in the face,
thrust his hands deep into the side pockets of his tunic, and,
staring straight before him, said:

"Very well; on condition we recommend him to mercy."

"What do you say, gentlemen; shall we recommend him to mercy?"

"'Ear, 'ear!" burst from the commercial traveller, and from the
chemist came the murmur:

"No harm in that."

"Well, I think there is.  They shoot deserters at the front, and we
let this fellow off.  I'd hang the cur."

Mr. Bosengate stared at that little wire-haired brute.  "Haven't you
any feeling for others?"  he wanted to say.  "Can't you see that this
poor devil suffers tortures?"  But the sheer impossibility of doing
this before ten other men brought a slight sweat out on his face and
hands; and in agitation he smote the table a blow with his fist.  The
effect was instantaneous.  Everybody looked at the wire-haired man,
as if saying: "Yes, you've gone a bit too far there!"  The "little
brute" stood it for a moment, then muttered surlily:

"Well, commend 'im to mercy if you like; I don't care."

"That's right; they never pay any attention to it," said the grey-
haired man, winking heartily.  And Mr. Bosengate filed back with the
others into court.

But when from the jury box his eyes fell once more on the hare-eyed
figure in the dock, he had his worst moment yet.  Why should this
poor wretch suffer so--for no fault, no fault; while he, and these
others, and that snapping counsel, and the Caesar-like judge up
there, went off to their women and their homes, blithe as bees, and
probably never thought of him again?  And suddenly he was conscious
of the judge's voice:

"You will go back to your regiment, and endeavour to serve your
country with better spirit.  You may thank the jury that you are not
sent to prison, and your good fortune that you were not at the front
when you tried to commit this cowardly act.  You are lucky to be
alive."

A policeman pulled the little soldier by the arm; his drab figure
with eyes fixed and lustreless, passed down and away.  From his very
soul Mr. Bosengate wanted to lean out and say: "Cheer up, cheer up!
I understand."

It was nearly ten o'clock that evening before he reached home,
motoring back from the route march.  His physical tiredness was
abated, for he had partaken of a snack and a whisky and soda at the
hotel; but mentally he was in a curious mood.  His body felt
appeased, his spirit hungry.  Tonight he had a yearning, not for his
wife's kisses, but for her understanding.  He wanted to go to her and
say: "I've learnt a lot to-day-found out things I never thought of.
Life's a wonderful thing, Kate, a thing one can't live all to
oneself; a thing one shares with everybody, so that when another
suffers, one suffers too.  It's come to me that what one has doesn't
matter a bit--it's what one does, and how one sympathises with other
people.  It came to me in the most extraordinary vivid way, when I
was on that jury, watching that poor little rat of a soldier in his
trap; it's the first time I've ever felt--the--the spirit of Christ,
you know.  It's a wonderful thing, Kate--wonderful!  We haven't been
close--really close, you and I, so that we each understand what the
other is feeling.  It's all in that, you know; understanding--
sympathy--it's priceless.  When I saw that poor little devil taken
down and sent back to his regiment to begin his sorrows all over
again--wanting his wife, thinking and thinking of her just as you
know I would be thinking and wanting you, I felt what an awful
outside sort of life we lead, never telling each other what we really
think and feel, never being really close.  I daresay that little chap
and his wife keep nothing from each other--live each other's lives.
That's what we ought to do.  Let's get to feeling that what really
matters is--understanding and loving, and not only just saying it as
we all do, those fellows on the jury, and even that poor devil of a
judge--what an awful life judging one's fellow-creatures.

"When I left that poor little Tommy this morning, and ever since, I've
longed to get back here quietly to you and tell you about it, and
make a beginning.  There's something wonderful in this, and I want
you to feel it as I do, because you mean such a lot to me."

This was what he wanted to say to his wife, not touching, or kissing
her, just looking into her eyes, watching them soften and glow as
they surely must, catching the infection of his new ardour.  And he
felt unsteady, fearfully unsteady with the desire to say it all as it
should be said: swiftly, quietly, with the truth and fervour of his
feeling.

The hall was not lit up, for daylight still lingered under the new
arrangement.  He went towards the drawing-room, but from the very
door shied off to his study and stood irresolute under the picture of
a "Man catching a flea" (Dutch school), which had come down to him
from his father.  The governess would be in there with his wife!  He
must wait.  Essential to go straight to Kathleen and pour it all out,
or he would never do it.  He felt as nervous as an undergraduate
going up for his viva' voce.  This thing was so big, so astoundingly
and unexpectedly important.  He was suddenly afraid of his wife,
afraid of her coolness and her grace, and that something Japanese
about her--of all those attributes he had been accustomed to admire
most; afraid, as it were, of her attraction.  He felt young to-night,
almost boyish; would she see that he was not really fifteen years
older than herself, and she not really a part of his collection, of
all the admirable appointments of his home; but a companion spirit to
one who wanted a companion badly.  In this agitation of his soul he
could keep still no more than he could last night in the agitation of
his senses; and he wandered into the dining-room.  A dainty supper
was set out there, sandwiches, and cake, whisky and the cigarettes-
even an early peach. Mr. Bosengate looked at this peach with sorrow
rather than disgust.  The perfection of it was of a piece with all
that had gone before this new and sudden feeling.  Its delicious
bloom seemed to heighten his perception of the hedge around him, that
hedge of the things he so enjoyed, carefully planted and tended these
many years.  He passed it by uneaten, and went to the window.  Out
there all was darkening, the fountain, the lime tree, the flower-
beds, and the fields below, with the Jersey cows who would come to
your call; darkening slowly, losing form, blurring into soft
blackness, vanishing, but there none the less--all there--the hedge
of his possessions.  He heard the door of the drawing-room open, the
voices of his wife and the governess in the hall, going up to bed.
If only they didn't look in here!  If only!  The voices ceased.  He
was safe now--had but to follow in a few minutes, to make sure of
Kathleen alone.  He turned round and stared down the length of the
dark dining-room, over the rosewood table, to where in the mirror
above the sideboard at the far end, his figure bathed, a stain, a
mere blurred shadow; he made his way down to it along the table edge,
and stood before himself as close as he could get.  His throat and
the roof of his mouth felt dry with nervousness; he put out his
finger and touched his face in the glass.  'You're an ass!' he
thought.  'Pull yourself together, and get it over.  She will see; of
course she will!'  He swallowed, smoothed his moustache, and walked
out.  Going up the stairs, his heart beat painfully; but he was in
for it now, and marched straight into her room.
Dressed only in a loose blue wrapper, she was brushing her dark hair
before the glass.  Mr. Bosengate went up to her and stood there
silent, looking down.  The words he had thought of were like a swarm
of bees buzzing in his head, yet not one would fly from between his
lips.  His wife went on brushing her hair under the light which shone
on her polished elbows.  She looked up at him from beneath one lifted
eyebrow.

"Well, dear--tired?"

With a sort of vehemence the single word "No" passed out.  A faint, a
quizzical smile flitted over her face; she shrugged her shoulders
ever so gently.  That gesture--he had seen it before!  And in
desperate desire to make her understand, he put his hand on her
lifted arm.

"Kathleen, stop--listen to me!"  His fingers tightened in his
agitation and eagerness to make his great discovery known.  But
before he could get out a word he became conscious of that cool round
arm, conscious of her eyes half-closed, sliding round at him, of her
half-smiling lips, of her neck under the wrapper.  And he stammered:

"I want--I must--Kathleen, I---"

She lifted her shoulders again in that little shrug.  "Yes--I know;
all right!"

A wave of heat and shame, and of God knows what came over Mr.
Bosengate; he fell on his knees and pressed his forehead to her arm;
and he was silent, more silent than the grave.  Nothing--nothing came
from him but two long sighs.  Suddenly he felt her hand stroke his
cheek--compassionately, it seemed to him.  She made a little movement
towards him; her lips met his, and he remembered nothing but that....

In his own room Mr. Bosengate sat at his wide open window, smoking a
cigarette; there was no light.  Moths went past, the moon was
creeping up.  He sat very calm, puffing the smoke out in to the night
air.  Curious thing-life!  Curious world!  Curious forces in it--
making one do the opposite of what one wished; always--always making
one do the opposite, it seemed!  The furtive light from that creeping
moon was getting hold of things down there, stealing in among the
boughs of the trees.  'There's something ironical,' he thought,
'which walks about.  Things don't come off as you think they will.  I
meant, I tried but one doesn't change like that all of a sudden, it
seems.  Fact is, life's too big a thing for one!  All the same, I'm
not the man I was yesterday--not quite!'  He closed his eyes, and in
one of those flashes of vision which come when the senses are at
rest, he saw himself as it were far down below--down on the floor of
a street narrow as a grave, high as a mountain, a deep dark slit of a
street walking down there, a black midget of a fellow, among other
black midgets--his wife, and the little soldier, the judge, and those
jury chaps--fantoches straight up on their tiny feet, wandering down
there in that dark, infinitely tall, and narrow street.  'Too much
for one!' he thought; 'Too high for one--no getting on top of it.
We've got to be kind, and help one another, and not expect too much,
and not think too much.  That's--all!'  And, squeezing out his
cigarette, he took six deep breaths of the night air, and got into
bed.







INDIAN SUMMER OF A FORSYTE

                          "And Summer's lease hath all
                                  too short a date."
                                              --Shakespeare


I

In the last day of May in the early 'nineties, about six o'clock of
the evening, old Jolyon Forsyte sat under the oak tree below the
terrace of his house at Robin Hill.  He was waiting for the midges to
bite him, before abandoning the glory of the afternoon.  His thin
brown hand, where blue veins stood out, held the end of a cigar in
its tapering, long-nailed fingers--a pointed polished nail had
survived with him from those earlier Victorian days when to touch
nothing, even with the tips of the fingers, had been so
distinguished.  His domed forehead, great white moustache, lean
cheeks, and long lean jaw were covered from the westering sunshine by
an old brown Panama hat.  His legs were crossed; in all his attitude
was serenity and a kind of elegance, as of an old man who every
morning put eau de Cologne upon his silk handkerchief.  At his feet
lay a woolly brown-and-white dog trying to be a Pomeranian--the dog
Balthasar between whom and old Jolyon primal aver-sion had changed
into attachment with the years.  Close to his chair was a swing, and
on the swing was seated one of Holly's dolls--called 'Duffer Alice'-
-with her body fallen over her legs and her doleful nose buried in a
black petticoat.  She was never out of disgrace, so it did not matter
to her how she sat.  Below the oak tree the lawn dipped down a bank,
stretched to the fernery, and, beyond that refinement, became fields,
dropping to the pond, the coppice, and the prospect 'Fine,
remarkable'--at which Swithin Forsyte, from under this very tree, had
stared five years ago when he drove down with Irene to look at the
house.  Old Jolyon had heard of his brother's exploit--that drive
which had become quite celebrated on Forsyte 'Change.' Swithin! And
the fellow had gone and died, last November, at the age of only
seventy-nine, renewing the doubt whether Forsytes could live for
ever, which had first arisen when Aunt Ann passed away.  Died! and
left only Jolyon and James, Roger and Nicholas and Timothy, Julia,
Hester, Susan!  And old Jolyon thought: 'Eighty-five! I don't feel
it--except when I get that pain.'

His memory went searching.  He had not felt his age since he had
bought his nephew Soames' ill-starred house and settled into it here
at Robin Hill over three years ago.  It was as if he had been getting
younger every spring, living in the country with his son and his
grandchildren--June, and the little ones of the second marriage,
Jolly and Holly; living down here out of the racket of London and the
cackle of Forsyte 'Change,' free of his boards, in a delicious
atmosphere of no work and all play, with plenty of occupation in the
perfecting and mellowing of the house and its twenty acres, and in
ministering to the whims of Holly and Jolly.  All the knots and
crankiness, which had gathered in his heart during that long and
tragic business of June, Soames, Irene his wife, and poor young
Bosinney, had been smoothed out.  Even June had thrown off her
melancholy at last--witness this travel in Spain she was taking now
with her father and her stepmother.  Curiously perfect peace was left
by their departure; blissful, yet blank, because his son was not
there.  Jo was never anything but a comfort and a pleasure to him
nowadays--an amiable chap; but women, somehow--even the best--got a
little on one's nerves, unless of course one admired them.

Far-off a cuckoo called; a wood-pigeon was cooing from the first
elm-tree in the field, and how the daisies and buttercups had sprung
up after the last mowing! The wind had got into the sou'-west, too--a
delicious air, sappy! He pushed his hat back and let the sun fall on
his chin and cheek.  Somehow, to-day, he wanted company wanted a
pretty face to look at.  People treated the old as if they wanted
nothing.  And with the un-Forsytean philosophy which ever intruded on
his soul, he thought: 'One's never had enough'

With a foot in the grave one'll want something, I shouldn't be
surprised!'  Down here--away from the exigencies of affairs--his
grandchildren, and the flowers, trees, birds of his little domain, to
say nothing of sun and moon and stars above them, said, 'Open,
sesame,' to him day and night.  And sesame had opened--how much,
perhaps, he did not know.  He had always been responsive to what they
had begun to call 'Nature,' genuinely, almost religiously responsive,
though he had never lost his habit of calling a sunset a sunset and a
view a view, however deeply they might move him.  But nowadays Nature
actually made him ache, he appreciated it so.  Every one of these
calm, bright, lengthening days, with Holly's hand in his, and the dog
Balthasar in front looking studiously for what he never found, he
would stroll, watching the roses open, fruit budding on the walls,
sunlight brightening the oak leaves and saplings in the coppice,
watching the water-lily leaves unfold and glisten, and the silvery
young corn of the one wheat field; listening to the starlings and
skylarks, and the Alderney cows chewing the cud, flicking slow their
tufted tails; and every one of these fine days he ached a little from
sheer love of it all, feeling perhaps, deep down, that he had not
very much longer to enjoy it.  The thought that some day perhaps not
ten years hence, perhaps not five--all this world would be taken away
from him, before he had exhausted his powers of loving it, seemed to
him in the nature of an injustice brooding over his horizon.  If
anything came after this life, it wouldn't be what he wanted; not
Robin Hill, and flowers and birds and pretty faces--too few, even
now, of those about him! With the years his dislike of humbug had
increased; the orthodoxy he had worn in the 'sixties, as he had worn
side-whiskers out of sheer exuberance, had long dropped off, leaving
him reverent before three things alone--beauty, upright conduct, and
the sense of property; and the greatest of these now was beauty.  He
had always had wide interests, and, indeed could still read The
Tines, but he was liable at any moment to put it down if he heard a
blackbird sing.  Upright conduct, property--somehow, they were
tiring; the blackbirds and the sunsets never tired him, only gave him
an uneasy feeling that he could not get enough of them.  Staring into
the stilly radiance of the early evening and at the little gold and
white flowers on the lawn, a thought came to him: This weather was
like the music of 'Orfeo,' which he had recently heard at Covent
Garden.  A beautiful opera, not like Meyerbeer, nor even quite
Mozart, but, in its way, perhaps even more lovely; some-thing
classical and of the Golden Age about it, chaste and mellow, and the
Ravogli 'almost worthy of the old days'--highest praise he could
bestow.  The yearning of Orpheus for the beauty he was losing, for
his love going down to Hades, as in life love and beauty did go--the
yearning which sang and throbbed through the golden music, stirred
also in the lingering beauty of the world that evening.  And with the
tip of his cork-soled, elastic-sided boot he involuntarily stirred
the ribs of the dog Balthasar, caus-ing the animal to wake and attack
his fleas; for though he was supposed to have none, nothing could
persuade him of the fact.  When he had finished, he rubbed the place
he had been scratching against his master's calf, and settled down
again with his chin over the instep of the disturbing boot.  And into
old Jolyon's mind came a sudden recollection--a face he had seen at
that opera three weeks ago--Irene, the wife of his precious nephew
Soames, that man of property! Though he had not met her since the day
of  the 'At Home' in his old house at Stanhope Gate, which celebrated
his granddaughter June's ill-starred engagement to young Bosinney, he
had remembered her at once, for he had always admired her--a very
pretty creature.  After the death of young Bosinney, whose mistress
she had so reprehensibly become, he had heard that she had left
Soames at once.  Goodness only knew what she had been doing since.
That sight of her face--a side view--in the row in front, had been
literally the only reminder these three years that she was still
alive.  No one ever spoke of her.  And yet Jo had told him some-thing
once--something which had upset him completely.  The boy had got it
from George Forsyte, he believed, who had seen Bosinney in the fog
the day he was run over--something which explained the young fellow's
distress--an act of Soames towards his wife--a shocking act.  Jo had
seen her, too, that afternoon, after the news was out, seen her for a
moment, and his description had always lingered in old Jolyon's mind-
-'wild and lost' he had called her.  And next day June had gone there
bottled up her feelings and gone there, and the maid had cried and
told her how her mistress had slipped out in the night and vanished.
A tragic business altogether! One thing was certain--Soames had never
been able to lay hands on her again.  And he was living at Brighton,
and journeying up and down--a fitting fate, the man of property! For
when he once took a dislike to anyone--as he had to his nephew--old
Jolyon never got over it.  He remembered still the sense of relief
with which he had heard the news of Irene's disappearance.  It had
been shocking to think of her a prisoner in that house to which she
must have wandered back, when Jo saw her, wandered back for a
moment--like a wounded animal to its hole after seeing that news,
'Tragic death of an Architect,' in the street.  Her face had struck
him very much the other night--more beautiful than he had remem-
bered, but like a mask, with something going on beneath it.  A young
woman still--twenty-eight perhaps.  Ah, well! Very likely she had
another lover by now.  But at this subversive thought--for married
women should never love: once, even, had been too much--his instep
rose, and with it the dog Balthasar's head.  The sagacious animal
stood up and looked into old Jolyon's face.  'Walk?' he seemed to
say; and old Jolyon answered: "Come on, old chap!"

Slowly, as was their wont, they crossed among the constellations of
buttercups and daisies, and entered the fernery.  This feature, where
very little grew as yet, had been judiciously dropped below the level
of the lawn so that it might come up again on the level of the other
lawn and give the impression of irregularity, so important in
horticulture.  Its rocks and earth were beloved of the dog Balthasar,
who sometimes found a mole there.  Old Jolyon made a point of passing
through it because, though it was not beautiful, he intended that it
should be, some day, and he would think: 'I must get Varr to come
down and look at it; he's better than Beech.' For plants, like houses
and human complaints, required the best expert consideration.  It was
inhabited by snails, and if accompanied by his grandchildren, he
would point to one and tell them the story of the little boy who
said: 'Have plummers got leggers, Mother?  'No, sonny.'  'Then darned
if I haven't been and swallowed a snileybob.'  And when they skipped
and clutched his hand, thinking of the snileybob going down the
little boy's 'red lane,' his, eyes would twinkle.  Emerging from the
fernery, he opened the wicket gate, which just there led into the
first field, a large and park-like area, out of which, within brick
walls, the vegetable garden had been carved.  Old Jolyon avoided
this, which did not suit his mood, and made down the hill towards the
pond.  Balthasar, who knew a water-rat or two, gambolled in front, at
the gait which marks an oldish dog who takes the same walk every day.
Arrived at the edge, old Jolyon stood, noting another water-lily
opened since yesterday; he would show it to Holly to-morrow, when
'his little sweet' had got over the upset which had followed on her
eating a tomato at lunch--her little arrangements were very delicate.
Now that Jolly had gone to school--his first term--Holly was with him
nearly all day long, and he missed her badly.  He felt that pain too,
which often bothered him now, a little dragging at his left side.  He
looked back up the hill.  Really, poor young Bosinney had made an
uncommonly good job of the house; he would have done very well for
himself if he had lived!  And where was he now? Perhaps, still
haunting this, the site of his last work, of his tragic love affair.
Or was Philip Bosinney's spirit diffused in the general?  Who could
say?  That dog was getting his legs muddy!  And he moved towards the
coppice.  There had been the most delightful lot of bluebells, and--
he knew where some still lingered like little patches of sky fallen
irk between the trees, away out of the sun.  He passed the cow-houses
and the hen-houses there installed, and pursued a path into the thick
of the saplings, making for one of the bluebell plots.  Balthasar,
preceding him once more, uttered a low growl.  Old Jolyon stirred him
with his foot, but the dog remained motionless, just where there was
no room to pass, and the hair rose slowly along the centre of his
woolly back.  Whether from the growl and the look of the dog's
stivered hair, or from the sensation which a man feels in a wood, old
Jolyon also felt something move along his spine.  And then the path
turned, and there was an old mossy log, and on it a woman sitting.
Her face was turned away, and he had just time to think: 'She's
trespassing--I must have a board put up!' before she turned.  Powers
above!  The face he had seen at the opera--the very woman he had just
been thinking of! In that confused moment he saw things blurred, as
if a spirit--queer effect--the slant of sunlight perhaps on her
violet-grey frock! And then she rose and stood smiling, her head a
little to one side.  Old Jolyon thought: 'How pretty she is!' She did
not speak, neither did he; and he realized why with a certain
admiration.  She was here no doubt because of some memory, and did
not mean to try and get out of it by vulgar explanation.

"Don't let that dog touch your frock," he said; "he's got wet feet.
Come here, you!"

But the dog Balthasar went on towards the visitor, who put her hand
down and stroked his head.  Old Jolyon said quickly:

"I saw you at the opera the other night; you didn't notice me."

"Oh, yes! I did."

He felt a subtle flattery in that, as though she had added: 'Do you
think one could miss seeing you?'

"They're all in Spain," he remarked abruptly.  "I'm alone; I drove up
for the opera.  The Ravogli's good.  Have you seen the cow-houses?"

In a situation so charged with mystery and something very like
emotion he moved instinctively towards that bit of property, and she
moved beside him.  Her figure swayed faintly, like the best kind of
French figures; her dress, too, was a sort of French grey.  He
noticed two or three silver threads in her amber-coloured hair,
strange hair with those dark eyes of hers, and that creamy-pale face.
A sudden sidelong look from the velvety brown eyes disturbed him.  It
seemed to come from deep and far, from another world almost, or at
all events from some one not living very much in this.  And he said
mechanically

"Where are you living now?"

"I have a little flat in Chelsea."

He did not want to hear what she was doing, did not want to hear
anything; but the perverse word came out:

"Alone?"

She nodded.  It was a relief to know that.  And it came into his mind
that, but for a twist of fate, she would have been mistress of this
coppice, showing these cow-houses to him, a visitor.

"All Alderneys," he muttered; "they give the best milk.  This one's a
pretty creature.  Woa, Myrtle!"

The fawn-coloured cow, with eyes as soft and brown as Irene's own,
was standing absolutely still, not having long been milked.  She
looked round at them out of the corner of those lustrous, mild,
cynical eyes, and from her grey lips a little dribble of saliva
threaded its way towards the straw.  The scent of hay and vanilla and
ammonia rose in the dim light of the cool cow-house; and old Jolyon
said:

"You must come up and have some dinner with me.  I'll send you home
in the carriage."

He perceived a struggle going on within her; natural, no doubt, with
her memories.  But he wanted her company; a pretty face, a charming
figure, beauty!  He had been alone all the afternoon.  Perhaps his
eyes were wistful, for she answered: "Thank you, Uncle Jolyon.  I
should like to."

He rubbed his hands, and said:

"Capital! Let's go up, then!" And, preceded by the dog Balthasar,
they ascended through the field.  The sun was almost level in their
faces now, and he could see, not only those silver threads, but
little lines, just deep enough to stamp her beauty with a coin-like
fineness--the special look of life unshared with others.  "I'll take
her in by the terrace, "he thought: "I won't make a common visitor of
her."

"What do you do all day?" he said.

"Teach music; I have another interest, too."

"Work!" said old Jolyon, picking up the doll from off the swing, and
smoothing its black petticoat.  "Nothing like it, is there?  I don't
do any now.  I'm getting on.  What interest is that?"

"Trying to help women who've come to grief."  Old Jolyon did not
quite understand.  "To grief?" he repeated; then realised with a
shock that she meant exactly what he would have meant himself if he
had used that expression.  Assisting the Magdalenes of London!  What
a weird and terrifying interest!  And, curiosity overcoming his
natural shrinking, he asked:

"Why? What do you do for them?"

"Not much.  I've no money to spare.  I can only give sympathy and
food sometimes."

Involuntarily old Jolyon's hand sought his purse.  He said hastily:
"How d'you get hold of them?"

"I go to a hospital."

"A hospital! Phew!"

"What hurts me most is that once they nearly all had some sort of
beauty."

Old Jolyon straightened the doll.  "Beauty!" he ejaculated: "Ha! Yes!
A sad business!" and he moved towards the house.  Through a French
window, under sun-blinds not yet drawn up, he preceded her into the
room where he was wont to study 'The Times' and the sheets of an
agricultural magazine, with huge illustrations of mangold wurzels,
and the like, which provided Holly with material for her paint brush.

"Dinner's in half an hour.  You'd like to wash your hands!  I'll take
you to June's room."

He saw her looking round eagerly; what changes since she had last
visited this house with her husband, or her lover, or both perhaps--
he did not know, could not say!  All that was dark, and he wished to
leave it so.  But what changes!  And in the hall he said:

"My boy Jo's a painter, you know.  He's got a lot of taste.  It isn't
mine, of course, but I've let him have his way."

She was standing very still, her eyes roaming through the hall and
music room, as it now was--all thrown into one, under the great
skylight.  Old Jolyon had an odd impression of her.  Was she trying
to conjure somebody from the shades of that space where the colouring
was all pearl-grey and silver? He would have had gold himself; more
lively and solid.  But Jo had French tastes, and it had come out
shadowy like that, with an effect as of the fume of cigarettes the
chap was always smoking, broken here and there by a little blaze of
blue or crimson colour.  It was not his dream! Mentally he had hung
this space with those gold-framed masterpieces of still and stiller
life which he had bought in days when quantity was precious.  And now
where were they?  Sold for a song!  That something which made him,
alone among Forsytes, move with the times had warned him against the
struggle to retain them.  But in his study he still had 'Dutch
Fishing Boats at Sunset.'

He began to mount the stairs with her, slowly, for he felt his side.

"These are the bathrooms," he said, "and other arrangements.  I've
had them tiled.  The nurseries are along there.  And this is Jo's and
his wife's.  They all communicate.  But you remember, I expect."

Irene nodded.  They passed on, up the gallery and entered a large
room with a small bed, and several windows.

"This is mine," he said.  The walls were covered with the photographs
of children and watercolour sketches, and he added doubtfully:

"These are Jo's.  The view's first-rate.  You can see the Grand Stand
at Epsom in clear weather."

The sun was down now, behind the house, and over the 'prospect' a
luminous haze had settled, emanation of the long and prosperous day.
Few houses showed, but fields and trees faintly glistened, away to a
loom of downs.

"The country's changing," he said abruptly, "but there it'll be when
we're all gone.  Look at those thrushes--the birds are sweet here in
the mornings.  I'm glad to have washed my hands of London."

Her face was close to the window pane, and he was struck by its
mournful look.  'Wish I could make her look happy!' he thought.  'A
pretty face, but sad!'  And taking up his can of hot water he went
out into the gallery.

"This is June's room," he said, opening the next door and putting the
can down; "I think you'll find everything." And closing the door
behind her he went back to his own room.  Brushing his hair with his
great ebony brushes, and dabbing his forehead with eau de Cologne, he
mused.  She had come so strangely--a sort of visit-ation; mysterious,
even romantic, as if his desire for company, for beauty, had been
fulfilled by whatever it was which fulfilled that sort of thing.  And
before the mirror he straightened his still upright figure, passed
the brushes over his great white moustache, touched up his eyebrows
with eau de Cologne, and rang the bell.

"I forgot to let them know that I have a lady to dinner with me.  Let
cook do something extra, and tell Beacon to have the landau and pair
at half-past ten to drive her back to Town to-night.  Is Miss Holly
asleep?"

The maid thought not.  And old Jolyon, passing down the gallery,
stole on tiptoe towards the nursery, and opened the door whose hinges
he kept specially oiled that he might slip in and out in the evenings
without being heard.

But Holly was asleep, and lay like a miniature Madonna, of that type
which the old painters could not tell from Venus, when they had
completed her.  Her long dark lashes clung to her cheeks; on her face
was perfect peace--her little arrangements were evidently all right
again.  And old Jolyon, in the twilight of the room, stood adoring
her!  It was so charming, solemn, and loving--that little face.  He
had more than his share of the blessed capacity of living again in
the young.  They were to him his future life--all of a future life
that his fundamental pagan sanity perhaps admitted.  There she was
with everything before her, and his blood--some of it--in her tiny
veins.  There she was, his little companion, to be made as happy as
ever he could make her, so that she knew nothing but love.  His heart
swelled, and he went out, stilling the sound of his patent-leather
boots.  In the corridor an eccentric notion attacked him: To think
that children should come to that which Irene had told him she was
helping!  Women who were all, once, little things like this one
sleeping there!  'I must give her a cheque!' he mused; 'Can't bear to
think of them!'  They had never borne reflecting on, those poor
outcasts; wounding too deeply the core of true refinement hidden
under layers of conformity to the sense of property--wounding too
grievously the deepest thing in him--a love of beauty which could
give him, even now, a flutter of the heart, thinking of his evening
in the society of a pretty woman.  And he went downstairs, through
the swinging doors, to the back regions.  There, in the wine-cellar,
was a hock worth at least two pounds a bottle, a Steinberg Cabinet,
better than any Johan-nisberg that ever went down throat; a wine of
perfect bouquet, sweet as a nectarine--nectar indeed! He got a bottle
out, handling it like a baby, and holding it level to the light, to
look.  Enshrined in its coat of dust, that mellow coloured, slender--
necked bottle gave him deep pleasure.  Three years to settle down
again since the move from Town--ought to be in prime condition!
Thirty-five years ago he had bought it--thank God he had kept his
palate, and earned the right to drink it.  She would appreciate this;
not a spice of acidity in a dozen.  He wiped the bottle, drew the
cork with his own hands, put his nose down, inhaled its perfume, and
went back to the music room.

Irene was standing by the piano; she had taken off her hat and a lace
scarf she had been wearing, so that her gold-coloured hair was
visible, and the pallor of her neck.  In her grey frock she made a
pretty picture for old Jolyon, against the rosewood of the piano.

He gave her his arm, and solemnly they went.  The room, which had
been designed to enable twenty-four people to dine in comfort, held
now but a little round table.  In his present solitude the big
dining-table oppressed old Jolyon; he had caused it to be removed
till his son came back.  Here in the company of two really good
copies of Raphael Madonnas he was wont to dine alone.  It was the
only disconsolate hour of his day, this summer weather.  He had never
been a large eater, like that great chap Swithin, or Sylvanus
Heythorp, or Anthony Thornworthy, those cronies of past times; and to
dine alone, overlooked by the Madonnas, was to him but a sorrowful
occupation, which he got through quickly, that he might come to the
more spiritual enjoyment of his coffee and cigar.  But this evening
was a different matter! His eyes twinkled at her across the little
table and he spoke of Italy and Switzerland, telling her stories of
his travels there, and other experiences which he could no longer
recount to his son and grand-daughter because they knew them.  This
fresh audience was precious to him; he had never become one of those
old men who ramble round and round the fields of reminiscence.
Himself quickly fatigued by the insensitive, he instinctively avoided
fatiguing others, and his natural flirtatiousness towards beauty
guarded him specially in his relations with a woman.  He would have
liked to draw her out, but though she murmured and smiled and seemed
to be enjoying what he told her, he remained conscious of that
mysterious remoteness which constituted half her fascination.  He
could not bear women who threw their shoulders and eyes at you, and
chattered away; or hard-mouthed women who laid down the law and knew
more than you did.  There was only one quality in a woman that
appealed to him--charm; and the quieter it was, the more he liked it.
And this one had charm, shadowy as afternoon sunlight on those
Italian hills and valleys he had loved.  The feeling, too, that she
was, as it were, apart, cloistered, made her seem nearer to himself,
a strangely desirable companion.  When a man is very old and quite
out of the running, he loves to feel secure from the rivalries of
youth, for he would still be first in the heart of beauty.  And he
drank his hock, and watched her lips, and felt nearly young.  But the
dog Balthasar lay watching her lips too, and despising in his heart
the interruptions of their talk, and the tilting of those greenish
glasses full of a golden fluid which was distasteful to him.

The light was just failing when they went back into the music-room.
And, cigar in mouth, old Jolyon said:

"Play me some Chopin."

By the cigars they smoke, and the composers they love, ye shall know
the texture of men's souls.  Old Jolyon could not bear--a strong
cigar or Wagner's music.  He loved Beethoven and Mozart, Handel and
Gluck, and Schumann, and, for some occult reason, the operas of
Meyerbeer; but of late years he had been seduced by Chopin, just as
in painting he had succumbed to Botticelli.  In yielding to these
tastes he had been conscious of divergence from the standard of the
Golden Age.  Their poetry was not that of Milton and Byron and
Tennyson; of Raphael and Titian; Mozart and Beethoven.  It was, as it
were, behind a veil; their poetry hit no one in the face, but slipped
its fingers under the ribs and turned and twisted, and melted up the
heart.  And, never certain that this was healthy, he did not care a
rap so long as he could see the pictures of the one or hear the music
of the other.

Irene sat down at the piano under the electric lamp festooned with
pearl-grey, and old Jolyon, in an armchair, whence he could see her,
crossed his legs and drew slowly at his cigar.  She sat a few moments
with her hands on the keys, evidently searching her mind for what to
give him.  Then she began and within old Jolyon there arose a
sorrowful pleasure, not quite like anything else in the world.  He
fell slowly into a trance, interrupted only by the movements of
taking the cigar out of his mouth at long intervals, and replacing
it.  She was there, and the hock within him, and the scent of
tobacco; but there, too, was a world of sunshine lingering into
moonlight, and pools with storks upon them, and bluish trees above,
glowing with blurs of wine-red roses, and fields of lavender where
milk-white cows were grazing, and a woman all shadowy, with dark eyes
and a white neck, smiled, holding out her arms; and through air which
was like music a star dropped and was caught on a cow's horn.  He
opened his eyes.  Beautiful piece; she played well--the touch of an
angel!  And he closed them again.  He felt mirac-ulously sad and
happy, as one does, standing under a lime-tree in full honey flower.
Not live one's own life again, but just stand there and bask in the
smile of a woman's eyes, and enjoy the bouquet!  And he jerked his
hand; the dog Balthasar had reached up and licked it.

"Beautiful!" He said: "Go on--more Chopin!"

She began to play again.  This time the resemblance between her and
'Chopin' struck him.  The swaying he had noticed in her walk was in
her playing too, and the Nocturne she had chosen and the soft
darkness of her eyes, the light on her hair, as of moonlight from a
golden moon.  Seductive, yes; but nothing of Delilah in her or in
that music.  A long blue spiral from his cigar ascended and
dispersed.  'So we go out!' he thought.  'No more beauty! Nothing?'

Again Irene stopped.

"Would you like some Gluck?  He used to write his music in a sunlit
garden, with a bottle of Rhine wine beside him."

"Ah! yes.  Let's have 'Orfeo.'"  Round about him now were fields of
gold and silver flowers, white forms swaying in the sunlight, bright
birds flying to and fro.  All was summer.  Lingering waves of
sweetness and regret flooded his soul.  Some cigar ash dropped, and
taking out a silk handkerchief to brush it off, he inhaled a mingled
scent as of snuff and eau de Cologne.  'Ah!' he thought, 'Indian
summer--that's all!' and he said: "You haven't played me 'Che faro.'"

She did not answer; did not move.  He was conscious of something--
some strange upset.  Suddenly he saw her rise and turn away, and a
pang of remorse shot through him.  What a clumsy chap!  Like Orpheus,
she of course--she too was looking for her lost one in the hall of
memory!  And disturbed to the heart, he got up from his chair.  She
had gone to the great window at the far end.  Gingerly he followed.
Her hands were folded over her breast; he could just see her cheek,
very white.  And, quite emotionalized, he said:

"There, there, my love!"  The words had escaped him mechanically, for
they were those he used to Holly when she had a pain, but their
effect was instantaneously distressing.  She raised her arms, covered
her face with them, and wept.

Old Jolyon stood gazing at her with eyes very deep from age.  The
passionate shame she seemed feeling at her abandonment, so unlike the
control and quietude of her whole presence was as if she had never
before broken down in the presence of another being.

"There, there--there, there!" he murmured, and putting his hand out
reverently, touched her.  She turned, and leaned the arms which
covered her face against him.  Old Jolyon stood very still, keeping
one thin hand on her shoulder.  Let her cry her heart out--it would
do her good.

And the dog Balthasar, puzzled, sat down on his stern to examine
them.

The window was still open, the curtains had not been drawn, the last
of daylight from without mingled with faint intrusion from the lamp
within; there was a scent of new-mown grass.  With the wisdom of a
long life old Jolyon did not speak.  Even grief sobbed itself out in
time; only Time was good for sorrow--Time who saw the passing of each
mood, each emotion in turn; Time the layer-to-rest.  There came into
his mind the words: 'As panteth the hart after cooling streams'--but
they were of no use to him.  Then, conscious of a scent of violets,
he knew she was drying her eyes.  He put his chin forward, pressed
his moustache against her forehead, and felt her shake with a
quivering of her whole body, as of a tree which shakes itself free of
raindrops.  She put his hand to her lips, as if saying: "All over
now!  Forgive me!"

The kiss filled him with a strange comfort; he led her back to where
she had been so upset.  And the dog Balthasar, following, laid the
bone of one of the cutlets they had eaten at their feet.

Anxious to obliterate the memory of that emotion, he could think of
nothing better than china; and moving with her slowly from cabinet to
cabinet, he kept taking up bits of Dresden and Lowestoft and Chelsea,
turning them round and round with his thin, veined hands, whose skin,
faintly freckled, had such an aged look.

"I bought this at Jobson's," he would say; "cost me thirty pounds.
It's very old.  That dog leaves his bones all over the place.  This
old 'ship-bowl' I picked up at the sale when that precious rip, the
Marquis, came to grief.  But you don't remember.  Here's a nice piece
of Chelsea.  Now, what would you say this was?"  And he was
comforted, feeling that, with her taste, she was taking a real
interest in these things; for, after all, nothing better composes the
nerves than a doubtful piece of china.

When the crunch of the carriage wheels was heard at last, he said

"You must come again; you must come to lunch, then I can show you
these by daylight, and my little sweet--she's a dear little thing.
This dog seems to have taken a fancy to you."

For Balthasar, feeling that she was about to leave, was rubbing his
side against her leg.  Going out under the porch with her, he said:

"He'll get you up in an hour and a quarter.  Take this for your
protegees," and he slipped a cheque for fifty pounds into her hand.
He saw her brightened eyes, and heard her murmur: "Oh Uncle Jolyon!"
and a real throb of pleasure went through him.  That meant one or two
poor creatures helped a little, and it meant that she would come
again.  He put his hand in at the window and grasped hers once more.
The carriage rolled away.  He stood looking at the moon and the
shadows of the trees, and thought: 'A sweet night! She ...!'




II


Two days of rain, and summer set in bland and sunny.  Old Jolyon
walked and talked with Holly.  At first he felt taller and full of a
new vigour; then he felt restless.  Almost every afternoon they would
enter the coppice, and walk as far as the log.  'Well, she's not
there!' he would think, 'of course not!'  And he would feel a little
shorter, and drag his feet walking up the hill home, with his hand
clapped to his left side.  Now and then the thought would move in
him: 'Did she come--or did I dream it?' and he would stare at space,
while the dog Balthasar stared at him.  Of course she would not come
again!  He opened the letters from Spain with less excitement.  They
were not returning till July; he felt, oddly, that he could bear it.
Every day at dinner he screwed up his eyes and looked at where she
had sat.  She was not there, so he unscrewed his eyes again.

On the seventh afternoon he thought: 'I must go up and get some
boots.'  He ordered Beacon, and set out.  Passing from Putney towards
Hyde Park he reflected: 'I might as well go to Chelsea and see her.'
And he called out: "Just drive me to where you took that lady the
other night."  The coachman turned his broad red face, and his juicy
lips answered: "The lady in grey, sir?"

"Yes, the lady in grey."  What other ladies were there!  Stodgy chap!

The carriage stopped before a small three-storied block of flats,
standing a little back from the river.  With a practised eye old
Jolyon saw that they were cheap.  'I should think about sixty pound a
year,'  he mused; and entering, he looked at the name-board.  The
name 'Forsyte' was not on it, but against 'First Floor, Flat C' were
the words: 'Mrs. Irene Heron.'  Ah! She had taken her maiden name
again!  And somehow this pleased him.  He went upstairs slowly,
feeling his side a little.  He stood a moment, before ringing, to
lose the feeling of drag and fluttering there.  She would not be in!
And then Boots!  The thought was black.  What did he want with boots
at his age? He could not wear out all those he had.

"Your mistress at home?"

"Yes, sir."

"Say Mr. Jolyon Forsyte."

"Yes, sir, will you come this way?"

Old Jolyon followed a very little maid--not more than sixteen one
would say--into a very small drawing-room where the sun-blinds were
drawn.  It held a cottage piano and little else save a vague
fragrance and good taste.  'He stood in the middle, with his top hat
in his hand, and thought: 'I expect she's very badly off!' There was
a mirror above the fireplace, and he saw himself reflected.  An
old-looking chap!  He heard a rustle, and turned round.  She was so
close that his moustache almost brushed her forehead, just under her
hair.

"I was driving up," he said.  "Thought I'd look in on you, and ask
you how you got up the other night."

And, seeing her smile, he felt suddenly relieved.  She was really
glad to see him, perhaps.

"Would you like to put on your hat and come for a drive in the Park?"

But while she was gone to put her hat on, he frowned.  The Park!
James and Emily!  Mrs. Nicholas, or some other member of his precious
family would be there very likely, prancing up and down.  And they
would go and wag their tongues about having seen him with her,
afterwards.  Better not!  He did not wish to revive the echoes of the
past on Forsyte 'Change.'  He removed a white hair from the lapel of
his closely-buttoned-up frock coat, and passed his hand over his
cheeks, moustache, and square chin.  It felt very hollow there under
the cheekbones.  He had not been eating much lately--he had better
get that little whippersnapper who attended Holly to give him a
tonic.  But she had come back and when they were in the carriage, he
said:

"Suppose we go and sit in Kensington Gardens instead?" and added with
a twinkle: "No prancing up and down there," as if she had been in the
secret of his thoughts.

Leaving the carriage, they entered those select precincts, and
strolled towards the water.

"You've gone back to your maiden name, I see," he said: "I'm not
sorry."

She slipped her hand under his arm: "Has June forgiven me, Uncle
Jolyon?"

He answered gently: "Yes--yes; of course, why not?"

"And have you?"

"I?  I forgave you as soon as I saw how the land really lay."  And
perhaps he had; his instinct had always been to forgive the
beautiful.

She drew a deep breath.  "I never regretted--I couldn't.  Did you
ever love very deeply, Uncle Jolyon?"

At that strange question old Jolyon stared before him.  Had he?  He
did not seem to remember that he ever had.  But he did not like to
say this to the young woman whose hand was touching his arm, whose
life was suspended, as it were, by memory of a tragic love.  And he
thought: 'If I had met you when I was young I--I might have made a
fool of myself, perhaps.'  And a longing to escape in generalities
beset him.

"Love's a queer thing," he said, "fatal thing often.  It was the
Greeks--wasn't it?--made love into a goddess; they were right, I dare
say, but then they lived in the Golden Age."

"Phil adored them."

Phil! The word jarred him, for suddenly--with his power to see all
round a thing, he perceived why she was putting up with him like
this.  She wanted to talk about her lover!  Well!  If it was any
pleasure to her!  And he said: "Ah! There was a bit of the sculptor
in him, I fancy."

"Yes.  He loved balance and symmetry; he loved the whole-hearted way
the Greeks gave themselves to art."

Balance! The chap had no balance at all, if he remembered; as for
symmetry--clean-built enough he was, no doubt; but those queer eyes
of his, and high cheek-bones--Symmetry?

"You're of the Golden Age, too, Uncle Jolyon."

Old Jolyon looked round at her.  Was she chaffing him?  No, her eyes
were soft as velvet.  Was she flattering him?  But if so, why?  There
was nothing to be had out of an old chap like him.

"Phil thought so.  He used to say: 'But I can never tell him that I
admire him."'

Ah! There it was again.  Her dead lover; her desire to talk of him!
And he pressed her arm, half resentful of those memories, half
grateful, as if he recognised what a link they were between herself
and him.

"He was a very talented young fellow," he murmured.  "It's hot; I
feel the heat nowadays.  Let's sit down."

They took two chairs beneath a chestnut tree whose broad leaves
covered them from the peaceful glory of the afternoon.  A pleasure to
sit there and watch her, and feel that she liked to be with him.  And
the wish to increase that liking, if he could, made him go on:

"I expect he showed you a side of him I never saw.  He'd be at his
best with you.  His ideas of art were a little new--to me "--he had
stiffed the word 'fangled.'

"Yes: but he used to say you had a real sense of beauty."  Old Jolyon
thought: 'The devil he did!' but answered with a twinkle: "Well, I
have, or I shouldn't be sitting here with you."  She was fascinating
when she smiled with her eyes, like that!

"He thought you had one of those hearts that never grow old.  Phil
had real insight."

He was not taken in by this flattery spoken out of the past, out of a
longing to talk of her dead lover--not a bit; and yet it was precious
to hear, because she pleased his eyes and heart which quite true!--
had never grown old.  Was that because--unlike her and her dead
lover, he had never loved to desperation, had always kept his
balance, his sense of symmetry.  Well! It had left him power, at
eighty-four, to admire beauty.  And he thought, 'If I were a painter
or a sculptor!  But I'm an old chap.  Make hay while the sun shines.'

A couple with arms entwined crossed on the grass before them, at the
edge of the shadow from their tree.  The sunlight fell cruelly on
their pale, squashed, unkempt young faces.  "We're an ugly lot!" said
old Jolyon suddenly.  "It amazes me to see how--love triumphs over
that."

"Love triumphs over everything!"

"The young think so," he muttered.

"Love has no age, no limit; and no death."

With that glow in her pale face, her breast heaving, her eyes so
large and dark and soft, she looked like Venus come to life!  But
this extravagance brought instant reaction, and, twinkling, he said:
"Well, if it had limits, we shouldn't be born; for by George! it's
got a lot to put up with."

Then, removing his top hat, he brushed it round with a cuff.  The
great clumsy thing heated his forehead; in these days he often got a
rush of blood to the head--his circulation was not what it had been.

She still sat gazing straight before her, and suddenly she murmured:

"It's strange enough that I'm alive."

Those words of Jo's 'Wild and lost' came back to him.

"Ah!" he said: "my son saw you for a moment--that day."

"Was it your son? I heard a voice in the hall; I thought for a second
it was--Phil."

Old Jolyon saw her lips tremble.  She put her hand over them, took it
away again, and went on calmly: "That night I went to the Embankment;
a woman caught me by the dress.  She told me about herself.  When one
knows that others suffer, one's ashamed."

"One of those?"

She nodded, and horror stirred within old Jolyon, the horror of one
who has never known a struggle with desperation.  Almost against his
will he muttered: "Tell me, won't you?"

"I didn't care whether I lived or died.  When you're like that, Fate
ceases to want to kill you.  She took care of me three days--she
never left me.  I had no money.  That's why I do what I can for them,
now."

But old Jolyon was thinking: 'No money!'  What fate could compare
with that?  Every other was involved in it.

"I wish you had come to me," he said.  "Why didn't you?"  But Irene
did not answer.

"Because my name was Forsyte, I suppose?  Or was it June who kept you
away?  How are you getting on now?"  His eyes involuntarily swept her
body.  Perhaps even now she was--!  And yet she wasn't thin--not
really!

"Oh! with my fifty pounds a year, I make just enough."  The answer
did not reassure him; he had lost confidence.  And that fellow
Soames!  But his sense of justice stifled condemnation.  No, she
would certainly have died rather than take another penny from him.
Soft as she looked, there must be strength in her somewhere--strength
and fidelity.  But what business had young Bosinney to have got run
over and left her stranded like this!

"Well, you must come to me now," he said, "for anything you want, or
I shall be quite cut up."  And putting on his hat, he rose.  "Let's
go and get some tea.  I told that lazy chap to put the horses up for
an hour, and come for me at your place.  We'll take a cab presently;
I can't walk as I used to."

He enjoyed that stroll to the Kensington end of the gardens--the
sound of her voice, the glancing of her eyes, the subtle beauty of a
charming form moving beside him.  He enjoyed their tea at Ruffel's in
the High Street, and came out thence with a great box of chocolates
swung on his little finger.  He enjoyed the drive back to Chelsea in
a hansom, smoking his cigar.  She had promised to come down next
Sunday and play to him again, and already in thought he was plucking
carnations and early roses for her to carry back to town.  It was a
pleasure to give her a little pleasure, if it WERE pleasure from an
old chap like him!  The carriage was already there when they arrived.
Just like that fellow, who was always late when he was wanted!  Old
Jolyon went in for a minute to say good-bye.  The little dark hall of
the fiat was impregnated with a disagreeable odour of patchouli, and
on a bench against the wall--its only furniture--he saw a figure
sitting.  He heard Irene say softly: "Just one minute."  In the
little drawing-room when the door was shut, he asked gravely: "One of
your protegees?"

"Yes.  Now thanks to you, I can do something for her."

He stood, staring, and stroking that chin whose strength had
frightened so many in its time.  The idea of her thus actually in
contact with this outcast, grieved and frightened him.  What could
she do for them?  Nothing.  Only soil and make trouble for herself,
perhaps.  And he said: "Take care, my dear!  The world puts the worst
construction on everything."

"I know that."

He was abashed by her quiet smile.  "Well then--Sunday," he murmured:
"Good-bye."

She put her cheek forward for him to kiss.

"Good-bye," he said again; "take care of yourself."  And he went out,
not looking towards the figure on the bench.  He drove home by way of
Hammersmith; that he might stop at a place he knew of and tell them
to send her in two dozen of their best Burgundy.  She must want
picking-up sometimes!  Only in Richmond Park did he remember that he
had gone up to order himself some boots, and was surprised that he
could have had so paltry an idea.




III


The little spirits of the past which throng an old man's days had
never pushed their faces up to his so seldom as in the seventy hours
elapsing before Sunday came.  The spirit of the future, with the
charm of the unknown, put up her lips instead.  Old Jolyon was not
restless now, and paid no visits to the log, because she was coming
to lunch.  There is wonderful finality about a meal; it removes a
world of doubts, for no one misses meals except for reasons beyond
control.  He played many games with Holly on the lawn, pitching them
up to her who was batting so as to be ready to bowl to Jolly in the
holidays.  For she was not a Forsyte, but Jolly was--and Forsytes
always bat, until they have resigned and reached the age of
eighty-five.  The dog Balthasar, in attendance, lay on the ball as
often as he could, and the page-boy fielded, till his face was like
the harvest moon.  And because the time was getting shorter, each day
was longer and more golden than the last.  On Friday night he took a
liver pill, his side hurt him rather, and though it was not the liver
side, there is no remedy like that.  Anyone telling him that he had
found a new excitement in life and that excitement was not good for
him, would have been met by one of those steady and rather defiant
looks of his deep-set iron-grey eyes, which seemed to say: 'I know my
own business best.'  He always had and always would.

On Sunday morning, when Holly had gone with her governess to church,
he visited the strawberry beds.  There, accompanied by the dog
Balthasar, he examined the plants narrowly and succeeded in finding
at least two dozen berries which were really ripe.  Stooping was not
good for him, and he became very dizzy and red in the forehead.
Having placed the strawberries in a dish on the dining-table, he
washed his hands and bathed his forehead with eau de Cologne.  There,
before the mirror, it occurred to him that he was thinner.  What a
'threadpaper' he had been when he was young!  It was nice to be slim-
-he could not bear a fat chap; and yet perhaps his cheeks were too
thin!  She was to arrive by train at half-past twelve and walk up,
entering from the road past Drage's farm at the far end of the
coppice.  And, having looked into June's room to see that there was
hot water ready, he set forth to meet her, leisurely, for his heart
was beating.  The air smelled sweet, larks sang, and the Grand Stand
at Epsom was visible.  A perfect day!  On just such a one, no doubt,
six years ago, Soames had brought young Bosinney down with him to
look at the site before they began to build.  It was Bosinney who had
pitched on the exact spot for the house--as June had often told him.
In these days he was thinking much about that young fellow, as if his
spirit were really haunting the field of his last work, on the chance
of seeing--her.  Bosinney--the one man who had possessed her heart,
to whom she had given her whole self with rapture!  At his age one
could not, of course, imagine such things, but there stirred in him a
queer vague aching--as it were the ghost of an impersonal jealousy;
and a feeling, too, more generous, of pity for that love so early
lost.  All over in a few poor months!  Well, well!  He looked at his
watch before entering the coppice--only a quarter past, twenty-five
minutes to wait!  And then, turning the corner of the path, he saw
her exactly where he had seen her the first time, on the log; and
realised that she must have come by the earlier train to sit there
alone for a couple of hours at least.  Two hours of her society
missed!  What memory could make that log so dear to her?  His face
showed what he was thinking, for she said at once:

"Forgive me, Uncle Jolyon; it was here that I first knew."

"Yes, yes; there it is for you whenever you like.  You're looking a
little Londony; you're giving too many lessons."

That she should have to give lessons worried him.  Lessons to a
parcel of young girls thumping out scales with their thick fingers.

"Where do you go to give them?" he asked.

"They're mostly Jewish families, luckily."

Old Jolyon stared; to all Forsytes Jews seem strange and doubtful.

"They love music, and they're very kind."

"They had better be, by George!"  He took her arm--his side always
hurt him a little going uphill--and said:

"Did you ever see anything like those buttercups?  They came like
that in a night."

Her eyes seemed really to fly over the field, like bees after the
flowers and the honey.  "I wanted you to see them--wouldn't let them
turn the cows in yet."  Then, remembering that she had come to talk
about Bosinney, he pointed to the clock-tower over the stables:

"I expect be wouldn't have let me put that there--had no notion of
time, if I remember."

But, pressing his arm to her, she talked of flowers instead, and he
knew it was done that he might not feel she came because of her dead
lover.

"The best flower I can show you," he said, with a sort of triumph,
"is my little sweet.  She'll be back from Church directly.  There's
something about her which reminds me a little of you," and it did not
seem to him peculiar that he had put it thus, instead of saying:
"There's something about you which reminds me a little of her."  Ah!
And here she was!

Holly, followed closely by her elderly French governess, whose
digestion had been ruined twenty-two years ago in the siege of
Strasbourg, came rushing towards them from under the oak tree.  She
stopped about a dozen yards away, to pat Balthasar and pretend that
this was all she had in her mind.  Old Jolyon who knew better, said:

"Well, my darling, here's the lady in grey I promised you."

Holly raised herself and looked up.  He watched the two of them with
a twinkle, Irene smiling, Holly beginning with grave inquiry, passing
into a shy smile too, and then to something deeper.  She had a sense
of beauty, that child--knew what was what!  He enjoyed the sight of
the kiss between them.

"Mrs. Heron, Mam'zelle Beauce.  Well, Mam'zelle--good sermon?"

For, now that he had not much more time before him, the only part of
the service connected with this world absorbed what interest in
church remained to him.  Mam'zelle Beauce stretched out a spidery
hand clad in a black kid glove--she had been in the best families--
and the rather sad eyes of her lean yellowish face seemed to ask:
"Are you well-brrred?" Whenever Holly or Jolly did anything
unpleasing to her--a not uncommon occurrence he would say to them:
"The little Tayleurs never did that--they were such well-brrred
little children."  Jolly hated the little Tayleurs; Holly wondered
dreadfully how it was she fell so short of them.  'A thin rum little
soul,' old Jolyon thought her--Mam'zelle Beauce.

Luncheon was a successful meal, the mushrooms which he himself had
picked in the mushroom house, his chosen strawberries, and another
bottle of the Steinberg cabinet filled him with a certain aromatic
spirituality, and a conviction that he would have a touch of eczema
to-morrow.

After lunch they sat under the oak tree drinking Turkish coffee.  It
was no matter of grief to him when Mademoiselle Beauce withdrew to
write her Sunday letter to her sister, whose future had been
endangered in the past by swallowing a pin--an event held up daily in
warning to the children to eat slowly and digest what they had eaten.
At the foot of the bank, on a carriage rug, Holly and the dog
Balthasar teased and loved each other, and in the shade old Jolyon
with his legs crossed and his cigar luxuriously savoured, gazed at
Irene sitting in the swing.  A light, vaguely swaying, grey figure
with a fleck of sunlight here and there upon it, lips just opened,
eyes dark and soft under lids a little drooped.  She looked content;
surely it did her good to come and see him!  The selfishness of age
had not set its proper grip on him, for he could still feel pleasure
in the pleasure of others, realising that what he wanted, though
much, was not quite all that mattered.

"It's quiet here," he said; "you mustn't come down if you find it
dull.  But it's a pleasure to see you.  My little sweet's is the only
face which gives me any pleasure, except yours."

>From her smile he knew that she was not beyond liking to be
appreciated, and this reassured him.  "That's not humbug," he said.
"I never told a woman I admired her when I didn't.  In fact I
don't know when I've told a woman I admired her, except my wife in
the old days; and wives are funny."  He was silent, but resumed
abruptly:

"She used to expect me to say it more often than I felt it, and there
we were."  Her face looked  mysteriously troubled, and, afraid that
he had said something painful, he hurried on: "When my little sweet
marries, I hope she'll find someone who knows what women feel.  I
shan't be here to see it, but there's too much  topsy-turvydom in
marriage; I don't want her to pitch up against that."  And, aware
that he had made bad worse, he added: "That dog will scratch."

A silence followed.  Of what was she thinking, this pretty creature
whose life was spoiled; who had done with love, and yet was made for
love?  Some day when he was gone, perhaps, she would find another
mate--not so disorderly as that young fellow who had got himself run
over.  Ah! but her husband?

"Does Soames never trouble you?" he asked.

She shook her head.  Her face had closed up  suddenly.  For all her
softness there was something irreconcilable about her.  And a glimpse
of light on the inexorable nature of sex antipathies strayed into a
brain which, belonging to early Victorian civil-isation--so much
older than this of his old age--had never thought about such
primitive things.

"That's a comfort," he said.  "You can see the Grand Stand to-day.
Shall we take a turn round?"

Through the flower and fruit garden, against whose high outer walls
peach trees and nectarines were trained to the sun, through the
stables, the vinery, the mushroom house, the asparagus beds, the
rosery, the summer-house, he conducted her--even into the kitchen
garden to see the tiny green peas which Holly loved to scoop out of
their pods with her finger, and lick up from the palm of her little
brown hand.  Many delightful things he showed her, while Holly and
the dog Balthasar danced ahead, or came to them at intervals for
attention.  It was one of the happiest afternoons he had ever spent,
but it tired him and he was glad to sit down in the music room and
let her give him tea.  A special little friend of Holly's had come
in--a fair child with short hair like a boy's.  And the two sported
in the distance, under the stairs, on the stairs, and up in the
gallery.  Old Jolyon begged for Chopin.  She played studies,
mazurkas, waltzes, till the two children, creeping near, stood at the
foot of the piano their dark and golden heads bent forward,
listening.  Old Jolyon watched.

"Let's see you dance, you two!"

Shyly, with a false start, they began.  Bobbing and circling,
earnest, not very adroit, they went past and past his chair to the
strains of that waltz.  He watched them and the face of her who was
playing turned smiling towards those little dancers thinking:

'Sweetest picture I've seen for ages.'

A voice said:

"Hollee! Mais enfin--quest-ce que tu fais la--danser, le dimanche!
Viens, donc!"

But the children came close to old Jolyon, knowing that he would save
them, and gazed into a face which was decidedly 'caught out.'

"Better the day, better the deed, Mam'zelle.  It's all my doing.
Trot along, chicks, and have your tea."

And, when they were gone, followed by the dog Balthasar, who took
every meal, he looked at Irene with a twinkle and said:

"Well, there we are! Aren't they sweet? Have you any little ones
among your pupils?"

"Yes, three--two of them darlings."

"Pretty?"

"Lovely!"

Old Jolyon sighed; he had an insatiable appetite for the very young.
"My little sweet," he said, "is devoted to music; she'll be a
musician some day.  You wouldn't give me your opinion of her playing,
I suppose?"

"Of course I will."

"You wouldn't like--" but he stifled the words "to give her lessons."
The idea that she gave lessons was unpleasant to him; yet it would
mean that he would see her regularly.  She left the piano and came
over to his chair.

"I would like, very much; but there is--June.  When are they coming
back?"

Old Jolyon frowned.  "Not till the middle of next month.  What does
that matter?"

"You said June had forgiven me; but she could never forget, Uncle
Jolyon."

Forget! She must forget, if he wanted her to.

But as if answering, Irene shook her head.  "You know she couldn't;
one doesn't forget."

Always that wretched past! And he said with a sort of vexed finality:

"Well, we shall see."

He talked to her an hour or more, of the children, and a hundred
little things, till the carriage came round to take her home.  And
when she had gone he went back to his chair, and sat there smoothing
his face and chin, dreaming over the day.

That evening after dinner he went to his study and took a sheet of
paper.  He stayed for some minutes without writing, then rose and
stood under the masterpiece 'Dutch Fishing Boats at Sunset.'  He was
not thinking of that picture, but of his life.  He was going to leave
her something in his Will; nothing could so have stirred the stilly
deeps of thought and memory.  He was going to leave her a portion of
his wealth, of his aspirations, deeds, qualities, work--all that had
made that wealth; going to leave her, too, a part of all he had
missed in life, by his sane and steady pursuit of wealth.  All! What
had he missed?  'Dutch Fishing Boats' responded blankly; he crossed
to the French window, and drawing the curtain aside, opened it.  A
wind had got up, and one of last year's oak leaves which had somehow
survived the gardener's brooms, was dragging itself with a tiny
clicking rustle along the stone terrace in the twilight.  Except for
that it was very quiet out there, and he could smell the heliotrope
watered not long since.  A bat went by.  A bird uttered its last
'cheep.'  And right above the oak tree the first star shone.  Faust
in the opera had bartered his soul for some fresh years of youth.
Morbid notion!  No such bargain was possible, that was real tragedy!
No making oneself new again for love or life or anything.  Nothing
left to do but enjoy beauty from afar off while you could, and leave
it something in your Will.  But how much? And, as if he could not
make that calculation looking out into the mild freedom of the
country night, he turned back and went up to the chimney-piece.
There were his pet bronzes--a Cleopatra with the asp at her breast; a
Socrates; a greyhound playing with her puppy; a strong man reining in
some horses.  'They last!' he thought, and a pang went through his
heart.  They had a thousand years of life before them!

'How much?' Well! enough at all events to save her getting old before
her time, to keep the lines out of her face as long as possible, and
grey from soiling that bright hair.  He might live another five
years.  She would be well over thirty by then.  'How much?'  She had
none of his blood in her!  In loyalty to the tenor of his life for
forty years and more, ever since he married and founded that
mysterious thing, a family, came this warning thought--None of his
blood, no right to anything!  It was a luxury then, this notion.  An
extravagance, a petting of an old man's whim, one of those things
done in dotage.  His real future was vested in those who had his
blood, in whom he would live on when he was gone.  He turned away
from the bronzes and stood looking at the old leather chair in which
he had sat and smoked so many hundreds of cigars.  And suddenly he
seemed to see her sitting there in her grey dress, fragrant, soft,
dark-eyed, graceful, looking up at him.  Why! She cared nothing for
him, really; all she cared for was that lost lover of hers.  But she
was there, whether she would or no, giving him pleasure with her
beauty and grace.  One had no right to inflict an old man's company,
no right to ask her down to play to him and let him look at her--for
no reward!  Pleasure must be paid for in this world.  'How much?'
After all, there was plenty; his son and his three grandchildren
would never miss that little lump.  He had made it himself, nearly
every penny; he could leave it where he liked, allow himself this
little pleasure.  He went back to the bureau.  'Well, I'm going to,'
he thought, 'let them think what they like.  I'm going to!'  And he
sat down.

'How much?' Ten thousand, twenty thousand--how much? If only with his
money he could buy one year, one month of youth.  And startled by
that thought, he wrote quickly:


'DEAR HERRING,--Draw me a codicil to this effect: "I leave to my
niece Irene Forsyte, born Irene Heron, by which name she now goes,
fifteen thousand pounds free of legacy duty."
'Yours faithfully,
'JOLYON FORSYTE.'


When he had sealed and stamped the envelope, he went back to the
window and drew in a long breath.  It was dark, but many stars shone
now.




IV


He woke at half-past two, an hour which long experience had taught
him brings panic intensity to all awkward thoughts.  Experience had
also taught him that a further waking at the proper hour of eight
showed the folly of such panic.  On this particular morning the
thought which gathered rapid momentum was that if he became ill, at
his age not improbable, he would not see her.  From this it was but a
step to realisation that he would be cut off, too, when his son and
June returned from Spain.  How could he justify desire for the
company of one who had stolen--early morning does not mince words--
June's lover?  That lover was dead; but June was a stubborn little
thing; warm-hearted, but stubborn as wood, and--quite true--not one
who forgot!  By the middle of next month they would be back.  He had
barely five weeks left to enjoy the new interest which had come into
what remained of his life.  Darkness showed up to him absurdly clear
the nature of his feeling.  Admiration for beauty--a craving to see
that which delighted his eyes.

Preposterous, at his age! And yet--what other reason was there for
asking June to undergo such painful reminder, and how prevent his son
and his son's wife from thinking him very queer?  He would be reduced
to sneaking up to London, which tired him; and the least
indisposition would cut him off even from that.  He lay with eyes
open, setting his jaw against the prospect, and calling himself an
old fool, while his heart beat loudly, and then seemed to stop
beating altogether.  He had seen the dawn lighting the window chinks,
heard the birds chirp and twitter, and the cocks crow, before he fell
asleep again, and awoke tired but sane.  Five weeks before he need
bother, at his age an eternity!  But that early morning panic had
left its mark, had slightly fevered the will of one who had always
had his own way.  He would see her as often as he wished!  Why not go
up to town and make that codicil at his solicitor's instead of
writing about it; she might like to go to the opera!  But, by train,
for he would not have that fat chap Beacon grinning behind his back.
Servants were such fools; and, as likely as not, they had known all
the past history of Irene and young Bosinney--servants knew
everything, and suspected the rest.  He wrote to her that morning:


"MY DEAR IRENE,--I have to be up in town to-morrow.  If you would
like to have a look in at the opera, come and dine with me quietly
...."

But where?  It was decades since he had dined anywhere in London save
at his Club or at a private house.  Ah! that new-fangled place close
to Covent Garden....

"Let me have a line to-morrow morning to the Piedmont Hotel whether
to expect you there at 7 o'clock."
"Yours affectionately,
"JOLYON FORSYTE."


She would understand that he just wanted to give her a little
pleasure; for the idea that she should guess he had this itch to see
her was instinctively unpleasant to him; it was not seemly that one
so old should go out of his way to see beauty, especially in a woman.

The journey next day, short though it was, and the visit to his
lawyer's, tired him.  It was hot too, and after dressing for dinner
he lay down on the sofa in his bedroom to rest a little.  He must
have had a sort of fainting fit, for he came to himself feeling very
queer; and with some difficulty rose and rang the bell.  Why! it was
past seven!  And there he was and she would be waiting.  But suddenly
the dizziness came on again, and he was obliged to relapse on the
sofa.  He heard the maid's voice say:

"Did you ring, sir?"

"Yes, come here"; he could not see her clearly, for the cloud in
front of his eyes.  "I'm not well, I want some sal volatile."

"Yes, sir."  Her voice sounded frightened.

Old Jolyon made an effort.

"Don't go.  Take this message to my niece--a lady waiting in the
hall--a lady in grey.  Say Mr. Forsyte is not well--the heat.  He is
very sorry; if he is not down directly, she is not to wait dinner."

When she was gone, he thought feebly: 'Why did I say a lady in grey--
she may be in anything.  Sal volatile!'  He did not go off again, yet
was not conscious of how Irene came to be standing beside him,
holding smelling salts to his nose, and pushing a pillow up behind
his head.  He heard her say anxiously: "Dear Uncle Jolyon, what is
it?" was dimly conscious of the soft pressure of her lips on his
hand; then drew a long breath of smelling salts, suddenly discovered
strength in them, and sneezed.

"Ha!" he said, "it's nothing.  How did you get here? Go down and
dine--the tickets are on the dressing-table.  I shall be all right in
a minute."

He felt her cool hand on his forehead, smelled violets, and sat
divided between a sort of pleasure and a determination to be all
right.

"Why! You are in grey!" he said.  "Help me up."  Once on his feet he
gave himself a shake.

"What business had I to go off like that!"  And he moved very slowly
to the glass.  What a cadaverous chap!  Her voice, behind him,
murmured:

"You mustn't come down, Uncle; you must rest."

"Fiddlesticks!  A glass of champagne'll soon set me to rights.  I
can't have you missing the opera."

But the journey down the corridor was troublesome.  What carpets they
had in these newfangled places, so thick that you tripped up in them
at every step! In the lift he noticed how concerned she looked, and
said with the ghost of a twinkle:

"I'm a pretty host."

When the lift stopped he had to hold firmly to the seat to prevent
its slipping under him; but after soup and a glass of champagne he
felt much better, and began to enjoy an infirmity which had brought
such solicitude into her manner towards him.

"I should have liked you for a daughter," he said suddenly; and
watching the smile in her eyes, went on:

"You mustn't get wrapped up in the past at your time of life; plenty
of that when you get to my age.  That's a nice dress--I like the
style."

"I made it myself."

Ah! A woman who could make herself a pretty frock had not lost her
interest in life.

"Make hay while the sun shines," he said; "and drink that up.  I want
to see some colour in your cheeks.  We mustn't waste life; it doesn't
do.  There's a new Marguerite to-night; let's hope she won't be fat.
And Mephisto--anything more dreadful than a fat chap playing the
Devil I can't imagine."

But they did not go to the opera after all, for in getting up from
dinner the dizziness came over him again, and she insisted on his
staying quiet and going to bed early.  When he parted from her at the
door of the hotel, having paid the cabman to drive her to Chelsea, he
sat down again for a moment to enjoy the memory of her words: "You
are such a darling to me, Uncle Jolyon!"  Why! Who wouldn't be!  He
would have liked to stay up another day and take her to the Zoo, but
two days running of him would bore her to death.  No, he must wait
till next Sunday; she had promised to come then.  They would settle
those lessons for Holly, if only for a month.  It would be something.
That little Mam'zelle Beauce wouldn't like it, but she would have to
lump it.  And crushing his old opera hat against his chest he sought
the lift.

He drove to Waterloo next morning, struggling with a desire to say:
'Drive me to Chelsea.'  But his sense of proportion was too strong.
Besides, he still felt shaky, and did not want to risk another
aberration like that of last night, away from home.  Holly, too, was
expecting him, and what he had in his bag for her.  Not that there
was any cupboard love in his little sweet--she was a bundle of
affection.  Then, with the rather bitter cynicism of the old, he
wondered for a second whether it was not cupboard love which made
Irene put up with him.  No, she was not that sort either.  She had,
if anything, too little notion of how to butter her bread, no sense
of property, poor thing! Besides, he had not breathed a word about
that codicil, nor should he--sufficient unto the day was the good
thereof.

In the victoria which met him at the station Holly was restraining
the dog Balthasar, and their caresses made 'jubey' his drive home.
All the rest of that fine hot day and most of the next he was content
and peaceful, reposing in the shade, while the long lingering
sunshine showered gold on the lawns and the flowers.  But on Thursday
evening at his lonely dinner he began to count the hours; sixty-five
till he would go down to meet her again in the little coppice, and
walk up through the fields at her side.  He had intended to consult
the doctor about his fainting fit, but the fellow would be sure to
insist on quiet, no excitement and all that; and he did not mean to
be tied by the leg, did not want to be told of an infirmity--if there
were one, could not afford to hear of it at his time of life, now
that this new interest had come.  And he carefully avoided making any
mention of it in a letter to his son.  It would only bring them back
with a run!  How far this silence was due to consideration for their
pleasure, how far to regard for his own, he did not pause to
consider.

That night in his study he had just finished his cigar and was dozing
off, when he heard the rustle of a gown, and was conscious of a scent
of violets.  Opening his eyes he saw her, dressed in grey, standing
by the fireplace, holding out her arms.  The odd thing was that,
though those arms seemed to hold nothing, they were curved as if
round someone's neck, and her own neck was bent back, her lips open,
her eyes closed.  She vanished at once, and there were the
mantelpiece and his bronzes.  But those bronzes and the mantelpiece
had not been there when she was, only the fireplace and the wall!
Shaken and troubled, he got up.  'I must take medicine,' he thought;
'I can't be well.'  His heart beat too fast, he had an asthmatic
feeling in the chest; and going to the window, he opened it to get
some air.  A dog was barking far away, one of the dogs at Gage's farm
no doubt, beyond the coppice.  A beautiful still night, but dark.  'I
dropped off,' he mused, 'that's it!  And yet I'll swear my eyes were
open!'  A sound like a sigh seemed to answer.

"What's that?" he said sharply, "who's there?"

Putting his hand to his side to still the beating of his heart, he
stepped out on the terrace.  Something soft scurried by in the dark.
"Shoo!"  It was that great grey cat.  'Young Bosinney was like a
great cat!' he thought.  'It was him in there, that she--that she
was--He's got her still!'  He walked to the edge of the terrace, and
looked down into the darkness; he could just see the powdering of the
daisies on the unmown lawn.  Here to-day and gone to-morrow!  And
there came the moon, who saw all, young and old, alive and dead, and
didn't care a dump!  His own turn soon.  For a single day of youth he
would give what was left!  And he turned again towards the house.  He
could see the windows of the night nursery up there.  His little
sweet would be asleep.  'Hope that dog won't wake her!' he thought.
'What is it makes us love, and makes us die!  I must go to bed.'

And across the terrace stones, growing grey in the moonlight, he
passed back within.

How should an old man live his days if not in dreaming of his
well-spent past? In that, at all events, there is no agitating
warmth, only pale winter sunshine.  The shell can withstand the
gentle beating of the dynamos of memory.  The present he should
distrust; the future shun.  From beneath thick shade he should watch
the sunlight creeping at his toes.  If there be sun of summer, let
him not go out into it, mistaking it for the Indian-summer sun!  Thus
peradventure he shall decline softly, slowly, imperceptibly, until
impatient Nature clutches his wind-pipe and he gasps away to death
some early morning before the world is aired, and they put on his
tombstone: 'In the fulness of years!' yea!  If he preserve his
principles in perfect order, a Forsyte may live on long after he is
dead.

Old Jolyon was conscious of all this, and yet there was in him that
which transcended Forsyteism.  For it is written that a Forsyte shall
not love beauty more than reason; nor his own way more than his own
health.  And something beat within him in these days that with each
throb fretted at the thinning shell.  His sagacity knew this, but it
knew too that he could not stop that beating, nor would if he could.
And yet, if you had told him he was living on his capital, he would
have stared you down.  No, no; a man did not live on his capital; it
was not done!  The shibboleths of the past are ever more real than
the actualities of the present.  And he, to whom living on one's
capital had always been anathema, could not have borne to have
applied so gross a phrase to his own case.  Pleasure is healthful;
beauty good to see; to live again in the youth of the young--and what
else on earth was he doing!

Methodically, as had been the way of his whole life, he now arranged
his time.  On Tuesdays he journeyed up to town by train; Irene came
and dined with him.  And they went to the opera.  On Thursdays he
drove to town, and, putting that fat chap and his horses up, met her
in Kensington Gardens, picking up the carriage after he had left her,
and driving home again in time for dinner.  He threw out the casual
formula that he had business in London on those two days.  On
Wednesdays and Saturdays she came down to give Holly music lessons.
The greater the pleasure he took in her society, the more
scrupulously fastidious he became, just a matter-of-fact and friendly
uncle.  Not even in feeling, really, was he more--for, after all,
there was his age.  And yet, if she were late he fidgeted himself to
death.  If she missed coming, which happened twice, his eyes grew sad
as an old dog's, and he failed to sleep.

And so a month went by--a month of summer in the fields, and in his
heart, with summer's heat and the fatigue thereof.  Who could have
believed a few weeks back that he would have looked forward to his
son's and his grand-daughter's return with something like dread!
There was such a delicious freedom, such recovery of that
independence a man enjoys before he founds a family, about these
weeks of lovely weather, and this new companionship with one who
demanded nothing, and remained always a little unknown, retaining the
fascination of mystery.  It was like a draught of wine to him who has
been drinking water for so long that he has almost forgotten the stir
wine brings to his blood, the narcotic to his brain.  The flowers
were coloured brighter, scents and music and the sunlight had a
living value--were no longer mere reminders of past enjoy-ment.
There was something now to live for which stirred him continually to
anticipation.  He lived in that, not in retrospection; the difference
is considerable to any so old as he.  The pleasures of the table,
never of much consequence to one naturally abstemious, had lost all
value.  He ate little, without knowing what he ate; and every day
grew thinner and more worn to look at.  He was again a 'threadpaper';
and to this thinned form his massive forehead, with hollows at the
temples, gave more dignity than ever.  He was very well aware that he
ought to see the doctor, but liberty was too sweet.  He could not
afford to pet his frequent shortness of breath and the pain in his
side at the expense of liberty.  Return to the vegetable existence he
had led among the agricultural journals with the life-size mangold
wurzels, before this new attraction came into his life--no! He
exceeded his allowance of cigars.  Two a day had always been his
rule.  Now he smoked three and sometimes four--a man will when he is
filled with the creative spirit.  But very often he thought: 'I must
give up smoking, and coffee; I must give up rattling up to town.'
But he did not; there was no one in any sort of authority to notice
him, and this was a priceless boon.

The servants perhaps wondered, but they were, naturally, dumb.
Mam'zelle Beauce was too concerned with her own digestion, and too
'wellbrrred' to make personal allusions.  Holly had not as yet an eye
for the relative appearance of him who was her plaything and her god.
It was left for Irene herself to beg him to eat more, to rest in the
hot part of the day, to take a tonic, and so forth.  But she did not
tell him that she was the a cause of his thinness--for one cannot see
the havoc oneself is working.  A man of eighty-five has no passions,
but the Beauty which produces passion works on in the old way, till
death closes the eyes which crave the sight of Her.

On the first day of the second week in July he received a letter from
his son in Paris to say that they would all be back on Friday.  This
had always been more sure than Fate; but, with the pathetic
improvidence given to the old, that they may endure to the end, he
had never quite admitted it.  Now he did, and something would have to
be done.  He had ceased to be able to imagine life without this new
interest, but that which is not imagined sometimes exists, as
Forsytes are perpetually finding to their cost.  He sat in his old
leather chair, doubling up the letter, and mumbling with his lips the
end of an unlighted cigar.  After to-morrow his Tuesday expeditions
to town would have to be abandoned.  He could still drive up,
perhaps, once a week, on the pretext of seeing his man of business.
But even that would be dependent on his health, for now they would
begin to fuss about him.  The lessons!  The lessons must go on!  She
must swallow down her scruples, and June must put her feelings in her
pocket.  She had done so once, on the day after the news of
Bosinney's death; what she had done then, she could surely do again
now.  Four years since that injury was inflicted on her--not
Christian to keep the memory of old sores alive.  June's will was
strong, but his was stronger, for his sands were running out.  Irene
was soft, surely she would do this for him, subdue her natural
shrinking, sooner than give him pain!  The lessons must continue; for
if they did, he was secure.  And lighting his cigar at last, he began
trying to shape out how to put it to them all, and explain this
strange intimacy; how to veil and wrap it away from the naked truth--
that he could not bear to be deprived of the sight of beauty.  Ah!
Holly!  Holly was fond of her, Holly liked her lessons.  She would
save him--his little sweet!  And with that happy thought he became
serene, and wondered what he had been worrying about so fearfully.
He must not worry, it left him always curiously weak, and as if but
half present in his own body.

That evening after dinner he had a return of the dizziness, though he
did not faint.  He would not ring the bell, because he knew it would
mean a fuss, and make his going up on the morrow more conspicuous.
When one grew old, the whole world was in conspiracy to limit
freedom, and for what reason?--just to keep the breath in him a
little longer.  He did not want it at such cost.  Only the dog
Balthasar saw his lonely recovery from that weakness; anxiously
watched his master go to the sideboard and drink some brandy, instead
of giving him a biscuit.  When at last old Jolyon felt able to tackle
the stairs he went up to bed.  And, though still shaky next morning,
the thought of the evening sustained and strengthened him.  It was
always such a pleasure to give her a good dinner--he suspected her of
undereating when she was alone; and, at the opera to watch her eyes
glow and brighten, the unconscious smiling of her lips.  She hadn't
much pleasure, and this was the last time he would be able to give
her that treat.  But when he was packing his bag he caught himself
wishing that he had not the fatigue of dressing for dinner before
him, and the exertion, too, of telling her about June's return.

The opera that evening was 'Carmen,' and he chose the last entr'acte
to break the news, instinctively putting it off till the latest
moment.

She took it quietly, queerly; in fact, he did not know how she had
taken it before the wayward music lifted up again and silence became
necessary.  The mask was down over her face, that mask behind which
so much went on that he could not see.  She wanted time to think it
over, no doubt!  He would not press her, for she would be coming to
give her lesson to-morrow afternoon, and he should see her then when
she had got used to the idea.  In the cab he talked only of the
Carmen; he had seen better in the old days, but this one was not bad
at all.  When he took her hand to say good-night, she bent quickly
forward and kissed his forehead.

"Good-bye, dear Uncle Jolyon, you have been so sweet to me."

"To-morrow then," he said.  "Good-night.  Sleep well."  She echoed
softly: "Sleep welll" and from the cab window, already moving away,
he saw her face screwed round towards him, and her hand put out in a
gesture which seemed to linger.

He sought his room slowly.  They never gave him the same, and he
could not get used to these 'spick-and-spandy' bedrooms with new
furniture and grey-green carpets sprinkled all over with pink roses.
He was wakeful and that wretched Habanera kept throbbing in his head.

His French had never been equal to its words, but its sense he knew,
if it had any sense, a gipsy thing--wild and unaccountable.  Well,
there was in life something which upset all your care and plans--
something which made men and women dance to its pipes.  And he lay
staring from deep-sunk eyes into the darkness where the unaccountable
held sway.  You thought you had hold of life, but it slipped away
behind you, took you by the scruff of the neck, forced you here and
forced you there, and then, likely as not, squeezed life out of you!
It took the very stars like that, he shouldn't wonder, rubbed their
noses together and flung them apart; it had never done playing its
pranks.  Five million people in this great blunderbuss of a town, and
all of them at the mercy of that Life-Force, like a lot of little
dried peas hopping about on a board when you struck your fist on it.
Ah, well! Himself would not hop much longer--a good long sleep would
do him good!

How hot it was up here!--how noisy! His forehead burned; she had
kissed it just where he always worried; just there--as if she had
known the very place and wanted to kiss it all away for him.  But,
instead, her lips left a patch of grievous uneasiness.  She had never
spoken in quite that voice, had never before made that lingering
gesture or looked back at him as she drove away.

He got out of bed and pulled the curtains aside; his room faced down
over the river.  There was little air, but the sight of that breadth
of water flowing by, calm, eternal, soothed him.  'The great thing,'
he thought 'is not to make myself a nuisance.  I'll think of my
little sweet, and go to sleep.'  But it was long before the heat and
throbbing of the London night died out into the short slumber of the
summer morning.  And old Jolyon had but forty winks.

When he reached home next day he went out to the flower garden, and
with the help of Holly, who was very delicate with flowers, gathered
a great bunch of carnations.  They were, he told her, for 'the lady
in grey'--a name still bandied between them; and he put them in a
bowl in his study where he meant to tackle Irene the moment she came,
on the subject of June and future lessons.  Their fragrance and
colour would help.  After lunch he lay down, for he felt very tired,
and the carriage would not bring her from the station till four
o'clock.  But as the hour approached he grew restless, and sought the
schoolroom, which overlooked the drive.  The sun-blinds were down,
and Holly was there with Mademoiselle Beauce, sheltered from the heat
of a stifling July day, attending to their silkworms.  Old Jolyon had
a natural antipathy to these methodical creatures, whose heads and
colour reminded him of elephants; who nibbled such quantities of
holes in nice green leaves; and smelled, as he thought, horrid.  He
sat down on a chintz-covered windowseat whence he could see the
drive, and get what air there was; and the dog Balthasar who
appreciated chintz on hot days, jumped up beside him.  Over the
cottage piano a violet dust-sheet, faded almost to grey, was spread,
and on it the first lavender, whose scent filled the room.  In spite
of the coolness here, perhaps because of that coolness the beat of
life vehemently impressed his ebbed-down senses.  Each sunbeam which
came through the chinks had annoying brilliance; that dog smelled
very strong; the lavender perfume was overpowering; those silkworms
heaving up their grey-green backs seemed horribly alive; and Holly's
dark head bent over them had a wonderfully silky sheen.  A marvellous
cruelly strong thing was life when you were old and weak; it seemed
to mock you with its multitude of forms and its beating vitality.  He
had never, till those last few weeks, had this curious feeling of
being with one half of him eagerly borne along in the stream of life,
and with the other half left on the bank, watching that helpless
progress.  Only when Irene was with him did he lose this double
consciousness.

Holly turned her head, pointed with her little brown fist to the
piano--for to point with a finger was not 'well-brrred'--and said
slyly:

"Look at the 'lady in grey,' Gran; isn't she pretty to-day?"

Old Jolyon's heart gave a flutter, and for a second the room was
clouded; then it cleared, and he said with a twinkle:

"Who's been dressing her up?"

"Mam'zelle."

"Hollee! Don't be foolish!"

That prim little Frenchwoman!  She hadn't yet got over the music
lessons being taken away from her.  That wouldn't help.  His little
sweet was the only friend they had.  Well, they were her lessons.
And he shouldn't budge shouldn't budge for anything.  He stroked the
warm wool on Balthasar's head, and heard Holly say: "When mother's
home, there won't be any changes, will there?  She doesn't like
strangers, you know."

The child's words seemed to bring the chilly atmosphere of opposition
about old Jolyon, and disclose all the menace to his new-found
freedom.  Ah! He would have to resign himself to being an old man at
the mercy of care and love, or fight to keep this new and prized
companionship; and to fight tired him to death.  But his thin, worn
face hardened into resolution till it appeared all Jaw.  This was his
house, and his affair; he should not budge!  He looked at his watch,
old and thin like himself; he had owned it fifty years.  Past four
already!  And kissing the top of Holly's head in passing, he went
down to the hall.  He wanted to get hold of her before she went up to
give her lesson.  At the first sound of wheels he stepped out into
the porch, and saw at once that the victoria was empty.

"The train's in, sir; but the lady 'asn't come."

Old Jolyon gave him a sharp upward look, his eyes seemed to push away
that fat chap's curiosity, and defy him to see the bitter
disappointment he was feeling.

"Very well," he said, and turned back into the house.  He went to his
study and sat down, quivering like a leaf.  What did this mean? She
might have lost her train, but he knew well enough she hadn't.
'Good-bye, dear Uncle Jolyon.'  Why 'Good-bye' and not 'Good-night'?
And that hand of hers lingering in the air.  And her kiss.  What did
it mean?  Vehement alarm and irritation took possession of him.  He
got up and began to pace the Turkey carpet, between window and wall.
She was going to give him up!  He felt it for certain--and he
defenceless.  An old man wanting to look on beauty!  It was
ridiculous!  Age closed his mouth, paralysed his power to fight.  He
had no right to what was warm and living, no right to anything but
memories and sorrow.  He could not plead with her; even an old man
has his dignity.  Defenceless!  For an hour, lost to bodily fatigue,
he paced up and down, past the bowl of carnations he had plucked,
which mocked him with its scent.  Of all things hard to bear, the
prostration of will-power is hardest, for one who has always had his
way.  Nature had got him in its net, and like an unhappy fish he
turned and swam at the meshes, here and there, found no hole, no
breaking point.  They brought him tea at five o'clock, and a letter.
For a moment hope beat up in him.  He cut the envelope with the
butter knife, and read:


"DEAREST UNCLE JOLYON,--I can't bear to write anything that may
disappoint you, but I was too cowardly to tell you last night.  I
feel I can't come down and give Holly any more lessons, now that June
is coming back.  Some things go too deep to be forgotten.  It has
been such a joy to see you and Holly.  Perhaps I shall still see you
sometimes when you come up, though I'm sure it's not good for you; I
can see you are tiring yourself too much.  I believe you ought to
rest quite quietly all this hot weather, and now you have your son
and June coming back you will be so happy.  Thank you a million times
for all your sweetness to me.

"Lovingly your IRENE."


So, there it was! Not good for him to have pleasure and what he
chiefly cared about; to try and put off feeling the inevitable end of
all things, the approach of death with its stealthy, rustling
footsteps.  Not good for him!  Not even she could see how she was his
new lease of interest in life, the incarnation of all the beauty he
felt slipping from him.

His tea grew cold, his cigar remained unlit; and up and down he
paced, torn between his dignity and his hold on life.  Intolerable to
be squeezed out slowly, without a say of your own, to live on when
your will was in the hands of others bent on weighing you to the
ground with care and love.  Intolerable!  He would see what telling
her the truth would do--the truth that he wanted the sight of her
more than just a lingering on.  He sat down at his old bureau and
took a pen.  But he could not write.  There was some-thing revolting
in having to plead like this; plead that she should warm his eyes
with her beauty.  It was tantamount to confessing dotage.  He simply
could not.  And instead, he wrote:


"I had hoped that the memory of old sores would not be allowed to
stand in the way of what is a pleasure and a profit to me and my
little grand-daughter.  But old men learn to forego their whims; they
are obliged to, even the whim to live must be foregone sooner or
later; and perhaps the sooner the better.
"My love to you,
"JOLYON FORSYTE."


'Bitter,' he thought, 'but I can't help it.  I'm tired.'  He sealed
and dropped it into the box for the evening post, and hearing it fall
to the bottom, thought: 'There goes all I've looked forward to!'

That evening after dinner which he scarcely touched, after his cigar
which he left half-smoked for it made him feel faint, he went very
slowly upstairs and stole into the night-nursery.  He sat down on the
window-seat.  A night-light was burning, and he could just see
Holly's face, with one hand underneath the cheek.  An early
cockchafer buzzed in the Japanese paper with which they had filled
the grate, and one of the horses in the stable stamped restlessly.
To sleep like that child!  He pressed apart two rungs of the venetian
blind and looked out.  The moon was rising, blood-red.  He had never
seen so red a moon.  The woods and fields out there were dropping to
sleep too, in the last glimmer of the summer light.  And beauty, like
a spirit, walked.  'I've had a long life,' he thought, 'the best of
nearly everything.  I'm an ungrateful chap; I've seen a lot of beauty
in my time.  Poor young Bosinney said I had a sense of beauty.
There's a man in the moon to-night!'  A moth went by, another,
another.  'Ladies in grey!'  He closed his eyes.  A feeling that he
would never open them again beset him; he let it grow, let himself
sink; then, with a shiver, dragged the lids up.  There was something
wrong with him, no doubt, deeply wrong; he would have to have the
doctor after all.  It didn't much matter now!  Into that coppice the
moon-light would have crept; there would be shadows, and those
shadows would be the only things awake.  No birds, beasts, flowers,
insects; Just the shadows--moving; 'Ladies in grey!'  Over that log
they would climb; would whisper together.  She and Bosinney!  Funny
thought!  And the frogs and little things would whisper too!  How the
clock ticked, in here!  It was all eerie-out there in the light of
that red moon; in here with the little steady night-light and, the
ticking clock and the nurse's dressing-gown hanging from the edge of
the screen, tall, like a woman's figure.  'Lady in grey!'  And a very
odd thought beset him: Did she exist?  Had she ever come at all?  Or
was she but the emanation of all the beauty he had loved and must
leave so soon?  The violet-grey spirit with the dark eyes and the
crown of amber hair, who walks the dawn and the moonlight, and at
blue-bell time?  What was she, who was she, did she exist?  He rose
and stood a moment clutching the window-sill, to give him a sense of
reality again; then began tiptoeing towards the door.  He stopped at
the foot of the bed; and Holly, as if conscious of his eyes fixed on
her, stirred, sighed, and curled up closer in defence.  He tiptoed on
and passed out into the dark passage; reached his room, undressed at
once, and stood before a mirror in his night-shirt.  What a
scarecrow--with temples fallen in, and thin legs! His eyes resisted
his own image, and a look of pride came on his face.  All was in
league to pull him down, even his reflection in the glass, but he was
not down--yet!  He got into bed, and lay a long time without
sleeping, trying to reach resignation, only too well aware that
fretting and disappointment were very bad for him.  He woke in the
morning so unrefreshed and strengthless that he sent for the doctor.
After sounding him, the fellow pulled a face as long as your arm, and
ordered him to stay in bed and give up smoking.  That was no
hardship; there was nothing to get up for, and when he felt ill,
tobacco always lost its savour.  He spent the morning languidly with
the sun-blinds down, turning and re-turning The Times, not reading
much, the dog Balthasar lying beside his bed.  With his lunch they
brought him a telegram, running thus:


'Your letter received coming down this afternoon will be with you at
four-thirty.  Irene.'


Coming down!  After all!  Then she did exist--and he was not
deserted.  Coming down!  A glow ran through his limbs; his cheeks and
forehead felt hot.  He drank his soup, and pushed the tray-table
away, lying very quiet until they had removed lunch and left him
alone; but every now and then his eyes twinkled.  Coming down!  His
heart beat fast, and then did not seem to beat at all.  At three
o'clock he got up and dressed deliberately, noiselessly.  Holly and
Mam'zelle would be in the schoolroom, and the servants asleep after
their dinner, he shouldn't wonder.  He opened his door cautiously,
and went downstairs.  In the hall the dog Balthasar lay solitary,
and, followed by him, old Jolyon passed into his study and out into
the burning afternoon.  He meant to go down and meet her in the
coppice, but felt at once he could not manage that in this heat.  He
sat down instead under the oak tree by the swing, and the dog
Balthasar, who also felt the heat, lay down beside him.  He sat there
smiling.  What a revel of bright minutes!  What a hum of insects, and
cooing of pigeons!  It was the quintessence of a summer day.  Lovely!
And he was happy--happy as a sand-boy, what-ever that might be.  She
was coming; she had not given him up!  He had everything in life he
wanted--except a little more breath, and less weight--just here!  He
would see her when she emerged from the fernery, come swaying just a
little, a violet-grey figure passing over the daisies and dandelions
and 'soldiers' on the lawn--the soldiers with their flowery crowns.
He would not move, but she would come up to him and say: 'Dear Uncle
Jolyon, I am sorry!' and sit in the swing and let him look at her and
tell her that he had not been very well but was all right now; and
that dog would lick her hand.  That dog knew his master was fond of
her; that dog was a good dog.

It was quite shady under the tree; the sun could not get at him, only
make the rest of the world bright so that he could see the Grand
Stand at Epsom away out there, very far, and the cows crop-ping the
clover in the field and swishing at the flies with their tails.  He
smelled the scent of limes, and lavender.  Ah!  that was why there
was such a racket of bees.  They were excited--busy, as his heart was
busy and excited.  Drowsy, too, drowsy and drugged on honey and
happiness; as his heart was drugged and drowsy.  Summer--summer--they
seemed saying; great bees and little bees, and the flies too!

The stable clock struck four; in half an hour she would be here.  He
would have just one tiny nap, because he had had so little sleep of
late; and then he would be fresh for her, fresh for youth and beauty,
coming towards him across the sunlit lawn--lady in grey!  And
settling back in his chair he closed his eyes.  Some thistle-down
came on what little air there was, and pitched on his moustache more
white than itself.  He did not know; but his breathing stirred it,
caught there.  A ray of sunlight struck through and lodged on his
boot.  A bumble-bee alighted and strolled on the crown of his Panama
hat.  And the delicious surge of slumber reached the brain beneath
that hat, and the head swayed forward and rested on his breast.
Summer--summer!  So went the hum.

The stable clock struck the quarter past.  The dog Balthasar
stretched and looked up at his master.  The thistledown no longer
moved.  The dog placed his chin over the sunlit foot.  It did not
stir.  The dog withdrew his chin quickly, rose, and leaped on old
Jolyon's lap, looked in his face, whined; then, leaping down, sat on
his haunches, gazing up.  And suddenly he uttered a long, long howl.

But the thistledown was still as death, and the face of his old
master.

Summer--summer--summer!  The soundless footsteps on the grass!





End of The Project Gutenberg Etext of Five Tales, by John Galsworthy






STUDIES AND ESSAYS, Complete

By John Galsworthy


CONTENTS:

     CONCERNING LIFE, Part 1.
          INN OF TRANQUILITY
          MAGPIE OVER THE HILL
          SHEEP-SHEARING
          EVOLUTION
          RIDING IN THE MIST
          THE PROCESSION
          A CHRISTIAN
          WIND IN THE ROCKS
          MY DISTANT RELATIVE
          THE BLACK GODMOTHER

     CONCERNING LIFE, Part 2.
          QUALITY
          THE GRAND JURY
          GONE
          THRESHING
          THAT OLD-TIME PLACE
          ROMANCE--THREE GLEAMS
          MEMORIES
          FELICITY

     CONCERNING LETTERS
          A NOVELIST'S ALLEGORY
          SOME PLATITUDES CONCERNING DRAMA
          MEDITATION ON FINALITY
          WANTED--SCHOOLING
          ON OUR DISLIKE OF THINGS AS THEY ARE
          THE WINDLESTRAW

      CENSORSHIP AND ART
          ABOUT CENSORSHIP
          VAGUE THOUGHTS ON ART



          "Je vous dirai que l'exces est toujours un mal."
                                        --ANATOLE FRANCE





                         CONCERNING LIFE


TABLE OF CONTENTS:
          INN OF TRANQUILITY
          MAGPIE OVER THE HILL
          SHEEP-SHEARING
          EVOLUTION
          RIDING IN THE MIST
          THE PROCESSION
          A CHRISTIAN
          WIND IN THE ROCKS
          MY DISTANT RELATIVE
          THE BLACK GODMOTHER




THE INN OF TRANQUILLITY

Under a burning blue sky, among the pine-trees and junipers, the
cypresses and olives of that Odyssean coast, we came one afternoon on
a pink house bearing the legend: "Osteria di Tranquillita,"; and,
partly because of the name, and partly because we did not expect to
find a house at all in those goat-haunted groves above the waves, we
tarried for contemplation.  To the familiar simplicity of that
Italian building there were not lacking signs of a certain spiritual
change, for out of the olive-grove which grew to its very doors a
skittle-alley had been formed, and two baby cypress-trees were cut
into the effigies of a cock and hen.  The song of a gramophone, too,
was breaking forth into the air, as it were the presiding voice of a
high and cosmopolitan mind.  And, lost in admiration, we became
conscious of the odour of a full-flavoured cigar.  Yes--in the
skittle-alley a gentleman was standing who wore a bowler hat, a
bright brown suit, pink tie, and very yellow boots.  His head was
round, his cheeks fat and well-coloured, his lips red and full under
a black moustache, and he was regarding us through very thick and
half-closed eyelids.

Perceiving him to be the proprietor of the high and cosmopolitan
mind, we accosted him.

"Good-day!" he replied: "I spik English.  Been in Amurrica yes."

"You have a lovely place here."

Sweeping a glance over the skittle-alley, he sent forth a long puff
of smoke; then, turning to my companion (of the politer sex) with the
air of one who has made himself perfect master of a foreign tongue,
he smiled, and spoke.

"Too-quiet!"

"Precisely; the name of your inn, perhaps, suggests----"

"I change all that--soon I call it Anglo-American hotel."

"Ah! yes; you are very up-to-date already."

He closed one eye and smiled.

Having passed a few more compliments, we saluted and walked on; and,
coming presently to the edge of the cliff, lay down on the thyme and
the crumbled leaf-dust.  All the small singing birds had long been
shot and eaten; there came to us no sound but that of the waves
swimming in on a gentle south wind.  The wanton creatures seemed
stretching out white arms to the land, flying desperately from a sea
of such stupendous serenity; and over their bare shoulders their hair
floated back, pale in the sunshine.  If the air was void of sound, it
was full of scent--that delicious and enlivening perfume of mingled
gum, and herbs, and sweet wood being burned somewhere a long way off;
and a silky, golden warmth slanted on to us through the olives and
umbrella pines.  Large wine-red violets were growing near.  On such a
cliff might Theocritus have lain, spinning his songs; on that divine
sea Odysseus should have passed.  And we felt that presently the
goat-god must put his head forth from behind a rock.

It seemed a little queer that our friend in the bowler hat should
move and breathe within one short flight of a cuckoo from this home
of Pan.  One could not but at first feelingly remember the old Boer
saying: "O God, what things man sees when he goes out without a gun!"
But soon the infinite incongruity of this juxtaposition began to
produce within one a curious eagerness, a sort of half-philosophical
delight. It began to seem too good, almost too romantic, to be true.
To think of the gramophone wedded to the thin sweet singing of the
olive leaves in the evening wind; to remember the scent of his rank
cigar marrying with this wild incense; to read that enchanted name,
"Inn of Tranquillity," and hear the bland and affable remark of the
gentleman who owned it--such were, indeed, phenomena to stimulate
souls to speculation.  And all unconsciously one began to justify
them by thoughts of the other incongruities of existence--the
strange, the passionate incongruities of youth and age, wealth and
poverty, life and death; the wonderful odd bedfellows of this world;
all those lurid contrasts which haunt a man's spirit till sometimes
he is ready to cry out: "Rather than live where such things can be,
let me die!"

Like a wild bird tracking through the air, one's meditation wandered
on, following that trail of thought, till the chance encounter became
spiritually luminous.  That Italian gentleman of the world, with his
bowler hat, his skittle-alley, his gramophone, who had planted
himself down in this temple of wild harmony, was he not Progress
itself--the blind figure with the stomach full of new meats and the
brain of raw notions?  Was he not the very embodiment of the
wonderful child, Civilisation, so possessed by a new toy each day
that she has no time to master its use--naive creature lost amid her
own discoveries!  Was he not the very symbol of that which was making
economists thin, thinkers pale, artists haggard, statesmen bald--the
symbol of Indigestion Incarnate!  Did he not, delicious, gross,
unconscious man, personify beneath his Americo-Italian polish all
those rank and primitive instincts, whose satisfaction necessitated
the million miseries of his fellows; all those thick rapacities which
stir the hatred of the humane and thin-skinned!  And yet, one's
meditation could not stop there--it was not convenient to the heart!

A little above us, among the olive-trees, two blue-clothed peasants,
man and woman, were gathering the fruit--from some such couple, no
doubt, our friend in the bowler hat had sprung; more "virile" and
adventurous than his brothers, he had not stayed in the home groves,
but had gone forth to drink the waters of hustle and commerce, and
come back--what he was.  And he, in turn, would beget children, and
having made his pile out of his 'Anglo-American hotel' would place
those children beyond the coarser influences of life, till they
became, perhaps, even as our selves, the salt of the earth, and
despised him.  And I thought: "I do not despise those peasants--far
from it.  I do not despise myself--no more than reason; why, then,
despise my friend in the bowler hat, who is, after all, but the
necessary link between them and me?"  I did not despise the olive-
trees, the warm sun, the pine scent, all those material things which
had made him so thick and strong; I did not despise the golden,
tenuous imaginings which the trees and rocks and sea were starting in
my own spirit.  Why, then, despise the skittle-alley, the gramophone,
those expressions of the spirit of my friend in the billy-cock hat?
To despise them was ridiculous!

And suddenly I was visited by a sensation only to be described as a
sort of smiling certainty, emanating from, and, as it were, still
tingling within every nerve of myself, but yet vibrating harmoniously
with the world around.  It was as if I had suddenly seen what was the
truth of things; not perhaps to anybody else, but at all events to
me.  And I felt at once tranquil and elated, as when something is met
with which rouses and fascinates in a man all his faculties.

"For," I thought, "if it is ridiculous in me to despise my friend--
that perfect marvel of disharmony--it is ridiculous in me to despise
anything.  If he is a little bit of continuity, as perfectly logical
an expression of a necessary phase or mood of existence as I myself
am, then, surely, there is nothing in all the world that is not a
little bit of continuity, the expression of a little necessary mood.
Yes," I thought, "he and I, and those olive-trees, and this spider on
my hand, and everything in the Universe which has an individual
shape, are all fit expressions of the separate moods of a great
underlying Mood or Principle, which must be perfectly adjusted,
volving and revolving on itself.  For if It did not volve and revolve
on Itself, It would peter out at one end or the other, and the image
of this petering out no man with his mental apparatus can conceive.
Therefore, one must conclude It to be perfectly adjusted and
everlasting.  But if It is perfectly adjusted and everlasting, we are
all little bits of continuity, and if we are all little bits of
continuity it is ridiculous for one of us to despise another.  So,"
I thought, "I have now proved it from my friend in the billy-cock hat
up to the Universe, and from the Universe down, back again to my
friend."

And I lay on my back and looked at the sky.  It seemed friendly to my
thought with its smile, and few white clouds, saffron-tinged like the
plumes of a white duck in sunlight.  "And yet," I wondered, "though
my friend and I may be equally necessary, I am certainly irritated by
him, and shall as certainly continue to be irritated, not only by
him, but by a thousand other men and so, with a light heart, you may
go on being irritated with your friend in the bowler hat, you may go
on loving those peasants and this sky and sea.  But, since you have
this theory of life, you may not despise any one or any thing, not
even a skittle-alley, for they are all threaded to you, and to
despise them would be to blaspheme against continuity, and to
blaspheme against continuity would be to deny Eternity.  Love you
cannot help, and hate you cannot help; but contempt is--for you--the
sovereign idiocy, the irreligious fancy!"

There was a bee weighing down a blossom of thyme close by, and
underneath the stalk a very ugly little centipede.  The wild bee,
with his little dark body and his busy bear's legs, was lovely to me,
and the creepy centipede gave me shudderings; but it was a pleasant
thing to feel so sure that he, no less than the bee, was a little
mood expressing himself out in harmony with Designs tiny thread on
the miraculous quilt.  And I looked at him with a sudden zest and
curiosity; it seemed to me that in the mystery of his queer little
creepings I was enjoying the Supreme Mystery; and I thought: "If I
knew all about that wriggling beast, then, indeed, I might despise
him; but, truly, if I knew all about him I should know all about
everything--Mystery would be gone, and I could not bear to live!"

So I stirred him with my finger and he went away.

"But how"--I thought "about such as do not feel it ridiculous to
despise; how about those whose temperaments and religions show them
all things so plainly that they know they are right and others wrong?
They must be in a bad way!"  And for some seconds I felt sorry for
them, and was discouraged.  But then I thought: "Not at all--
obviously not!  For if they do not find it ridiculous to feel
contempt, they are perfectly right to feel contempt, it being natural
to them; and you have no business to be sorry for them, for that is,
after all, only your euphemism for contempt.  They are all right,
being the expressions of contemptuous moods, having religions and so
forth, suitable to these moods; and the religion of your mood would
be Greek to them, and probably a matter for contempt.  But this only
makes it the more interesting.  For though to you, for instance, it
may seem impossible to worship Mystery with one lobe of the brain,
and with the other to explain it, the thought that this may not seem
impossible to others should not discourage you; it is but another
little piece of that Mystery which makes life so wonderful and
sweet."

The sun, fallen now almost to the level of the cliff, was slanting
upward on to the burnt-red pine boughs, which had taken to themselves
a quaint resemblance to the great brown limbs of the wild men Titian
drew in his pagan pictures, and down below us the sea-nymphs, still
swimming to shore, seemed eager to embrace them in the enchanted
groves.  All was fused in that golden glow of the sun going down-sea
and land gathered into one transcendent mood of light and colour, as
if Mystery desired to bless us by showing how perfect was that
worshipful adjustment, whose secret we could never know.  And I said
to myself: "None of those thoughts of yours are new, and in a vague
way even you have thought them before; but all the same, they have
given you some little feeling of tranquillity."

And at that word of fear I rose and invited my companion to return
toward the town.  But as we stealthy crept by the "Osteria di
Tranquillita," our friend in the bowler hat came out with a gun over
his shoulder and waved his hand toward the Inn.

"You come again in two week--I change all that!  And now," he added,
"I go to shoot little bird or two," and he disappeared into the
golden haze under the olive-trees.

A minute later we heard his gun go off, and returned homeward with a
prayer.

1910.







MAGPIE OVER THE HILL

I lay often that summer on a slope of sand and coarse grass, close to
the Cornish sea, trying to catch thoughts; and I was trying very hard
when I saw them coming hand in hand.

She was dressed in blue linen, and a little cloud of honey-coloured
hair; her small face had serious eyes the colour of the chicory
flowers she was holding up to sniff at--a clean sober little maid,
with a very touching upward look of trust.  Her companion was a
strong, active boy of perhaps fourteen, and he, too, was serious--his
deep-set, blacklashed eyes looked down at her with a queer protective
wonder; the while he explained in a soft voice broken up between two
ages, that exact process which bees adopt to draw honey out of
flowers.  Once or twice this hoarse but charming voice became quite
fervent, when she had evidently failed to follow; it was as if he
would have been impatient, only he knew he must not, because she was
a lady and younger than himself, and he loved her.

They sat down just below my nook, and began to count the petals of a
chicory flower, and slowly she nestled in to him, and he put his arm
round her.  Never did I see such sedate, sweet lovering, so trusting
on her part, so guardianlike on his.  They were like, in miniature---
though more dewy,--those sober couples who have long lived together,
yet whom one still catches looking at each other with confidential
tenderness, and in whom, one feels, passion is atrophied from never
having been in use.

Long I sat watching them in their cool communion, half-embraced,
talking a little, smiling a little, never once kissing.  They did not
seem shy of that; it was rather as if they were too much each other's
to think of such a thing.  And then her head slid lower and lower
down his shoulder, and sleep buttoned the lids over those chicory-
blue eyes.  How careful he was, then, not to wake her, though I could
see his arm was getting stiff!  He still sat, good as gold, holding
her, till it began quite to hurt me to see his shoulder thus in
chancery.  But presently I saw him draw his arm away ever so
carefully, lay her head down on the grass, and lean forward to stare
at something.  Straight in front of them was a magpie, balancing
itself on a stripped twig of thorn-tree.  The agitating bird, painted
of night and day, was making a queer noise and flirting one wing, as
if trying to attract attention.  Rising from the twig, it circled,
vivid and stealthy, twice round the tree, and flew to another a dozen
paces off.  The boy rose; he looked at his little mate, looked at the
bird, and began quietly to move toward it; but uttering again its
queer call, the bird glided on to a third thorn-tree.  The boy
hesitated then--but once more the bird flew on, arid suddenly dipped
over the hill.  I saw the boy break into a run; and getting up
quickly, I ran too.

When I reached the crest there was the black and white bird flying
low into a dell, and there the boy, with hair streaming back, was
rushing helter-skelter down the hill.  He reached the bottom and
vanished into the dell.  I, too, ran down the hill.  For all that I
was prying and must not be seen by bird or boy, I crept warily in
among the trees to the edge of a pool that could know but little
sunlight, so thickly arched was it by willows, birch-trees, and wild
hazel.  There, in a swing of boughs above the water, was perched no
pied bird, but a young, dark-haired girl with, dangling, bare, brown
legs.  And on the brink of the black water goldened, with fallen
leaves, the boy was crouching, gazing up at her with all his soul.
She swung just out of reach and looked down at him across the pool.
How old was she, with her brown limbs, and her gleaming, slanting
eyes?  Or was she only the spirit of the dell, this elf-thing
swinging there, entwined with boughs and the dark water, and covered
with a shift of wet birch leaves.  So strange a face she had, wild,
almost wicked, yet so tender; a face that I could not take my eyes
from.  Her bare toes just touched the pool, and flicked up drops of
water that fell on the boy's face.

>From him all the sober steadfastness was gone; already he looked as
wild as she, and his arms were stretched out trying to reach her
feet.  I wanted to cry to him: "Go back, boy, go back!" but could
not; her elf eyes held me dumb-they looked so lost in their tender
wildness.

And then my heart stood still, for he had slipped and was struggling
in deep water beneath her feet.  What a gaze was that he was turning
up to her--not frightened, but so longing, so desperate; and hers how
triumphant, and how happy!

And then he clutched her foot, and clung, and climbed; and bending
down, she drew him up to her, all wet, and clasped him in the swing
of boughs.

I took a long breath then.  An orange gleam of sunlight had flamed in
among the shadows and fell round those two where they swung over the
dark water, with lips close together and spirits lost in one
another's, and in their eyes such drowning ecstasy!  And then they
kissed!  All round me pool, and leaves, and air seemed suddenly to
swirl and melt--I could see nothing plain! .  .  .   What time
passed--I do not know--before their faces slowly again became
visible!  His face the sober boy's--was turned away from her, and he
was listening; for above the whispering of leaves a sound of weeping
came from over the hill.  It was to that he listened.

And even as I looked he slid down from out of her arms; back into the
pool, and began struggling to gain the edge.  What grief and longing
in her wild face then!  But she did not wail.  She did not try to
pull him back; that elfish heart of dignity could reach out to what
was coming, it could not drag at what was gone.  Unmoving as the
boughs and water, she watched him abandon her.

Slowly the struggling boy gained land, and lay there, breathless.
And still that sound of lonely weeping came from over the hill.

Listening, but looking at those wild, mourning eyes that never moved
from him, he lay.  Once he turned back toward the water, but fire had
died within him; his hands dropped, nerveless--his young face was all
bewilderment.

And the quiet darkness of the pool waited, and the trees, and those
lost eyes of hers, and my heart.  And ever from over the hill came
the little fair maiden's lonely weeping.

Then, slowly dragging his feet, stumbling, half-blinded, turning and
turning to look back, the boy groped his way out through the trees
toward that sound; and, as he went, that dark spirit-elf, abandoned,
clasping her own lithe body with her arms, never moved her gaze from
him.

I, too, crept away, and when I was safe outside in the pale evening
sunlight, peered back into the dell.  There under the dark trees she
was no longer, but round and round that cage of passion, fluttering
and wailing through the leaves, over the black water, was the magpie,
flighting on its twilight wings.

I turned and ran and ran till I came over the hill and saw the boy
and the little fair, sober maiden sitting together once more on the
open slope, under the high blue heaven.  She was nestling her tear-
stained face against his shoulder and speaking already of indifferent
things.  And he--he was holding her with his arm and watching over
her with eyes that seemed to see something else.

And so I lay, hearing their sober talk and gazing at their sober
little figures, till I awoke and knew I had dreamed all that little
allegory of sacred and profane love, and from it had returned to
reason, knowing no more than ever which was which.

1912.








SHEEP-SHEARING

>From early morning there had been bleating of sheep in the yard, so
that one knew the creatures were being sheared, and toward evening I
went along to see.  Thirty or forty naked-looking ghosts of sheep
were penned against the barn, and perhaps a dozen still inhabiting
their coats.  Into the wool of one of these bulky ewes the farmer's
small, yellow-haired daughter was twisting her fist, hustling it
toward Fate; though pulled almost off her feet by the frightened,
stubborn creature, she never let go, till, with a despairing cough,
the ewe had passed over the threshold and was fast in the hands of a
shearer.  At the far end of the barn, close by the doors, I stood a
minute or two before shifting up to watch the shearing.  Into that
dim, beautiful home of age, with its great rafters and mellow stone
archways, the June sunlight shone through loopholes and chinks, in
thin glamour, powdering with its very strangeness the dark
cathedraled air, where, high up, clung a fog of old grey cobwebs so
thick as ever were the stalactites of a huge cave.  At this end the
scent of sheep and wool and men had not yet routed that home essence
of the barn, like the savour of acorns and withering beech leaves.

They were shearing by hand this year, nine of them, counting the
postman, who, though farm-bred, "did'n putt much to the shearin',"
but had come to round the sheep up and give general aid.

Sitting on the creatures, or with a leg firmly crooked over their
heads, each shearer, even the two boys, had an air of going at it in
his own way.  In their white canvas shearing suits they worked very
steadily, almost in silence, as if drowsed by the "click-clip, click-
clip" of the shears.  And the sheep, but for an occasional wriggle of
legs or head, lay quiet enough, having an inborn sense perhaps of the
fitness of things, even when, once in a way, they lost more than
wool; glad too, mayhap, to be rid of their matted vestments.  From
time to time the little damsel offered each shearer a jug and glass,
but no man drank till he had finished his sheep; then he would get
up, stretch his cramped muscles, drink deep, and almost instantly sit
down again on a fresh beast.  And always there was the buzz of flies
swarming in the sunlight of the open doorway, the dry rustle of the
pollarded lime-trees in the sharp wind outside, the bleating of some
released ewe, upset at her own nakedness, the scrape and shuffle of
heels and sheep's limbs on the floor, together with the "click-clip,
click-clip" of the shears.

As each ewe, finished with, struggled up, helped by a friendly shove,
and bolted out dazedly into the pen, I could not help wondering what
was passing in her head--in the heads of all those unceremoniously
treated creatures; and, moving nearer to the postman, I said:

"They're really very good, on the whole."

He looked at me, I thought, queerly.

"Yaas," he answered; "Mr. Molton's the best of them."

I looked askance at Mr. Molton; but, with his knee crooked round a
young ewe, he was shearing calmly.

"Yes," I admitted, "he is certainly good."

"Yaas," replied the postman.

Edging back into the darkness, away from that uncomprehending youth,
I escaped into the air, and passing the remains of last year's stacks
under the tall, toppling elms, sat down in a field under the bank.
It seemed to me that I had food for thought.  In that little
misunderstanding between me and the postman was all the essence of
the difference between that state of civilisation in which sheep
could prompt a sentiment, and that state in which sheep could not.

The heat from the dropping sun, not far now above the moorline,
struck full into the ferns and long grass of the bank where I was
sitting, and the midges rioted on me in this last warmth.  The wind
was barred out, so that one had the full sweetness of the clover,
fast becoming hay, over which the swallows were wheeling and swooping
after flies.  And far up, as it were the crown of Nature's beautiful
devouring circle, a buzzard hawk, almost stationary on the air,
floated, intent on something pleasant below him.  A number of little
hens crept through the gate one by one, and came round me.  It seemed
to them that I was there to feed them; and they held their neat red
or yellow heads to one side and the other, inquiring with their beady
eyes, surprised at my stillness.  They were pretty with their
speckled feathers, and as it seemed to me, plump and young, so that I
wondered how many of them would in time feed me.  Finding, however,
that I gave them nothing to eat, they went away, and there arose, in
place of their clucking, the thin singing of air passing through some
long tube.  I knew it for the whining of my dog, who had nosed me
out, but could not get through the padlocked gate.  And as I lifted
him over, I was glad the postman could not see me--for I felt that to
lift a dog over a gate would be against the principles of one for
whom the connection of sheep with good behaviour had been too strange
a thought. And it suddenly rushed into my mind that the time would no
doubt come when the conduct of apples, being plucked from the mother
tree, would inspire us, and we should say: "They're really very
good!"  And I wondered, were those future watchers of apple-gathering
farther from me than I, watching sheep-shearing, from the postman?
I thought, too, of the pretty dreams being dreamt about the land, and
of the people who dreamed them.  And I looked at that land, covered
with the sweet pinkish-green of the clover, and considered how much
of it, through the medium of sheep, would find its way into me, to
enable me to come out here and be eaten by midges, and speculate
about things, and conceive the sentiment of how good the sheep were.
And it all seemed queer.  I thought, too, of a world entirely
composed of people who could see the sheen rippling on that clover,
and feel a sort of sweet elation at the scent of it, and I wondered
how much clover would be sown then?  Many things I thought of,
sitting there, till the sun sank below the moor line, the wind died
off the clover, and the midges slept.  Here and there in the iris-
coloured sky a star crept out; the soft-hooting owls awoke.  But
still I lingered, watching how, one after another, shapes and colours
died into twilight; and I wondered what the postman thought of
twilight, that inconvenient state, when things were neither dark nor
light; and I wondered what the sheep were thinking this first night
without their coats.  Then, slinking along the hedge, noiseless,
unheard by my sleeping spaniel, I saw a tawny dog stealing by.  He
passed without seeing us, licking his lean chops.

"Yes, friend," I thought, "you have been after something very unholy;
you have been digging up buried lamb, or some desirable person of
that kind!"

Sneaking past, in this sweet night, which stirred in one such
sentiment, that ghoulish cur was like the omnivorousness of Nature.
And it came to me, how wonderful and queer was a world which embraced
within it, not only this red gloating dog, fresh from his feast on
the decaying flesh of lamb, but all those hundreds of beings in whom
the sight of a fly with one leg shortened produced a quiver of
compassion.  For in this savage, slinking shadow, I knew that I had
beheld a manifestation of divinity no less than in the smile of the
sky, each minute growing more starry.  With what Harmony--
I thought--can these two be enwrapped in this round world so fast
that it cannot be moved!  What secret, marvellous, all-pervading
Principle can harmonise these things!  And the old words 'good' and
'evil' seemed to me more than ever quaint.

It was almost dark, and the dew falling fast; I roused my spaniel to
go in.

Over the high-walled yard, the barns, the moon-white porch, dusk had
brushed its velvet.  Through an open window came a roaring sound.
Mr. Molton was singing "The Happy Warrior," to celebrate the finish
of the shearing.  The big doors into the garden, passed through, cut
off the full sweetness of that song; for there the owls were already
masters of night with their music.

On the dew-whitened grass of the lawn, we came on a little dark
beast.  My spaniel, liking its savour, stood with his nose at point;
but, being called off, I could feel him obedient, still quivering,
under my hand.

In the field, a wan huddle in the blackness, the dismantled sheep lay
under a holly hedge.  The wind had died; it was mist-warm.

1910








EVOLUTION

Coming out of the theatre, we found it utterly impossible to get a
taxicab; and, though it was raining slightly, walked through
Leicester Square in the hope of picking one up as it returned down
Piccadilly.  Numbers of hansoms and four-wheelers passed, or stood by
the curb, hailing us feebly, or not even attempting to attract our
attention, but every taxi seemed to have its load.  At Piccadilly
Circus, losing patience, we beckoned to a four-wheeler and resigned
ourselves to a long, slow journey.  A sou'-westerly air blew through
the open windows, and there was in it the scent of change, that wet
scent which visits even the hearts of towns and inspires the watcher
of their myriad activities with thought of the restless Force that
forever cries: "On, on!"  But gradually the steady patter of the
horse's hoofs, the rattling of the windows, the slow thudding of the
wheels, pressed on us so drowsily that when, at last, we reached home
we were more than half asleep.  The fare was two shillings, and,
standing in the lamplight to make sure the coin was a half-crown
before handing it to the driver, we happened to look up.  This cabman
appeared to be a man of about sixty, with a long, thin face, whose
chin and drooping grey moustaches seemed in permanent repose on the
up-turned collar of his old blue overcoat.  But the remarkable
features of his face were the two furrows down his cheeks, so deep
and hollow that it seemed as though that face were a collection of
bones without coherent flesh, among which the eyes were sunk back so
far that they had lost their lustre.  He sat quite motionless, gazing
at the tail of his horse.  And, almost unconsciously, one added the
rest of one's silver to that half-crown.  He took the coins without
speaking; but, as we were turning into the garden gate, we heard him
say:

"Thank you; you've saved my life."

Not knowing, either of us, what to reply to such a curious speech, we
closed the gate again and came back to the cab.

"Are things so very bad?"

"They are," replied the cabman.  "It's done with--is this job.  We're
not wanted now."  And, taking up his whip, he prepared to drive away.

"How long have they been as bad as this?"

The cabman dropped his hand again, as though glad to rest it, and
answered incoherently:

"Thirty-five year I've been drivin' a cab."

And, sunk again in contemplation of his horse's tail, he could only
be roused by many questions to express himself, having, as it seemed,
no knowledge of the habit.

"I don't blame the taxis, I don't blame nobody.  It's come on us,
that's what it has.  I left the wife this morning with nothing in the
house.  She was saying to me only yesterday: 'What have you brought
home the last four months?'  'Put it at six shillings a week,' I
said.  'No,' she said, 'seven.'  Well, that's right--she enters it
all down in her book."

"You are really going short of food?"

The cabman smiled; and that smile between those two deep hollows was
surely as strange as ever shone on a human face.

"You may say that," he said.  "Well, what does it amount to?  Before
I picked you up, I had one eighteen-penny fare to-day; and yesterday
I took five shillings.  And I've got seven bob a day to pay for the
cab, and that's low, too.  There's many and many a proprietor that's
broke and gone--every bit as bad as us.  They let us down as easy as
ever they can; you can't get blood from a stone, can you?"  Once
again he smiled.  "I'm sorry for them, too, and I'm sorry for the
horses, though they come out best of the three of us, I do believe."

One of us muttered something about the Public.

The cabman turned his face and stared down through the darkness.

"The Public?" he said, and his voice had in it a faint surprise.
"Well, they all want the taxis.  It's natural.  They get about faster
in them, and time's money.  I was seven hours before I picked you up.
And then you was lookin' for a taxi.  Them as take us because they
can't get better, they're not in a good temper, as a rule.  And
there's a few old ladies that's frightened of the motors, but old
ladies aren't never very free with their money--can't afford to be,
the most of them, I expect."

"Everybody's sorry for you; one would have thought that----"

He interrupted quietly: "Sorrow don't buy bread .  .  .  .  I never
had nobody ask me about things before."  And, slowly moving his long
face from side to side, he added: "Besides, what could people do?
They can't be expected to support you; and if they started askin' you
questions they'd feel it very awkward.  They know that, I suspect.
Of course, there's such a lot of us; the hansoms are pretty nigh as
bad off as we are.  Well, we're gettin' fewer every day, that's one
thing."

Not knowing whether or no to manifest sympathy with this extinction,
we approached the horse.  It was a horse that "stood over" a good
deal at the knee, and in the darkness seemed to have innumerable
ribs.  And suddenly one of us said: "Many people want to see nothing
but taxis on the streets, if only for the sake of the horses."

The cabman nodded.

"This old fellow," he said, "never carried a deal of flesh.  His grub
don't put spirit into him nowadays; it's not up to much in quality,
but he gets enough of it."

"And you don't?"

The cabman again took up his whip.

"I don't suppose," he said without emotion, "any one could ever find
another job for me now.  I've been at this too long.  It'll be the
workhouse, if it's not the other thing."

And hearing us mutter that it seemed cruel, he smiled for the third
time.

"Yes," he said slowly, "it's a bit 'ard on us, because we've done
nothing to deserve it.  But things are like that, so far as I can
see.  One thing comes pushin' out another, and so you go on.  I've
thought about it--you get to thinkin' and worryin' about the rights
o' things, sittin' up here all day.  No, I don't see anything for it.
It'll soon be the end of us now--can't last much longer.  And I don't
know that I'll be sorry to have done with it.  It's pretty well broke
my spirit."

"There was a fund got up."

"Yes, it helped a few of us to learn the motor-drivin'; but what's
the good of that to me, at my time of life?  Sixty, that's my age;
I'm not the only one--there's hundreds like me.  We're not fit for
it, that's the fact; we haven't got the nerve now.  It'd want a mint
of money to help us.  And what you say's the truth--people want to
see the end of us.  They want the taxis--our day's over.  I'm not
complaining; you asked me about it yourself."

And for the third time he raised his whip.

"Tell me what you would have done if you had been given your fare and
just sixpence over?"

The cabman stared downward, as though puzzled by that question.

"Done?  Why, nothing.  What could I have done?"

"But you said that it had saved your life."

"Yes, I said that," he answered slowly; "I was feelin' a bit low.
You can't help it sometimes; it's the thing comin' on you, and no way
out of it--that's what gets over you.  We try not to think about it,
as a rule."

And this time, with a "Thank you, kindly!" he touched his horse's
flank with the whip.  Like a thing aroused from sleep the forgotten
creature started and began to draw the cabman away from us.  Very
slowly they travelled down the road among the shadows of the trees
broken by lamplight.  Above us, white ships of cloud were sailing
rapidly across the dark river of sky on the wind which smelled of
change.  And, after the cab was lost to sight, that wind still
brought to us the dying sound of the slow wheels.

1910.








RIDING IN MIST

Wet and hot, having her winter coat, the mare exactly matched the
drenched fox-coloured beech-leaf drifts.  As was her wont on such
misty days, she danced along with head held high, her neck a little
arched, her ears pricked, pretending that things were not what they
seemed, and now and then vigorously trying to leave me planted on the
air.  Stones which had rolled out of the lane banks were her especial
goblins, for one such had maltreated her nerves before she came into
this ball-room world, and she had not forgotten.

There was no wind that day.  On the beech-trees were still just
enough of coppery leaves to look like fires lighted high-up to air
the eeriness; but most of the twigs, pearled with water, were
patterned very naked against universal grey.  Berries were few,
except the pink spindle one, so far the most beautiful, of which
there were more than Earth generally vouchsafes.  There was no sound
in the deep lanes, none of that sweet, overhead sighing of yesterday
at the same hour, but there was a quality of silence--a dumb mist
murmuration.  We passed a tree with a proud pigeon sitting on its top
spire, quite too heavy for the twig delicacy below; undisturbed by
the mare's hoofs or the creaking of saddle leather, he let us pass,
absorbed in his world of tranquil turtledoves.  The mist had
thickened to a white, infinitesimal rain-dust, and in it the trees
began to look strange, as though they had lost one another.  The
world seemed inhabited only by quick, soundless wraiths as one
trotted past.

Close to a farm-house the mare stood still with that extreme
suddenness peculiar to her at times, and four black pigs scuttled by
and at once became white air.  By now we were both hot and inclined
to cling closely together and take liberties with each other; I
telling her about her nature, name, and appearance, together with
comments on her manners; and she giving forth that sterterous, sweet
snuffle, which begins under the star on her forehead.  On such days
she did not sneeze, reserving those expressions of her joy for sunny
days and the crisp winds.  At a forking of the ways we came suddenly
on one grey and three brown ponies, who shied round and flung away in
front of us, a vision of pretty heads and haunches tangled in the
thin lane, till, conscious that they were beyond their beat, they
faced the bank and, one by one, scrambled over to join the other
ghosts out on the dim common.

Dipping down now over the road, we passed hounds going home.  Pied,
dumb-footed shapes, padding along in that soft-eyed, remote world of
theirs, with a tall riding splash of red in front, and a tall splash
of riding red behind.  Then through a gate we came on to the moor,
amongst whitened furze.  The mist thickened.  A curlew was whistling
on its invisible way, far up; and that wistful, wild calling seemed
the very voice of the day.  Keeping in view the glint of the road, we
galloped; rejoicing, both of us, to be free of the jog jog of the
lanes.

And first the voice of the curlew died; then the glint of the road
vanished; and we were quite alone.  Even the furze was gone; no shape
of anything left, only the black, peaty ground, and the thickening
mist.  We might as well have been that lonely bird crossing up there
in the blind white nothingness, like a human spirit wandering on the
undiscovered moor of its own future.

The mare jumped a pile of stones, which appeared, as it were, after
we had passed over; and it came into my mind that, if we happened to
strike one of the old quarry pits, we should infallibly be killed.
Somehow, there was pleasure in this thought, that we might, or might
not, strike that old quarry pit.  The blood in us being hot, we had
pure joy in charging its white, impalpable solidity, which made way,
and at once closed in behind us.  There was great fun in this yard-
by-yard discovery that we were not yet dead, this flying, shelterless
challenge to whatever might lie out there, five yards in front.  We
felt supremely above the wish to know that our necks were safe; we
were happy, panting in the vapour that beat against our faces from
the sheer speed of our galloping.  Suddenly the ground grew lumpy and
made up-hill.  The mare slackened pace; we stopped.  Before us,
behind, to right and left, white vapour.  No sky, no distance, barely
the earth.  No wind in our faces, no wind anywhere. At first we just
got our breath, thought nothing, talked a little.  Then came a
chillness, a faint clutching over the heart.  The mare snuffled; we
turned and made down-hill.  And still the mist thickened, and seemed
to darken ever so little; we went slowly, suddenly doubtful of all
that was in front.  There came into our minds visions, so distant in
that darkening vapour, of a warm stall and manger of oats; of tea and
a log fire.  The mist seemed to have fingers now, long, dark white,
crawling fingers; it seemed, too, to have in its sheer silence a sort
of muttered menace, a shuddery lurkingness, as if from out of it that
spirit of the unknown, which in hot blood we had just now so
gleefully mocked, were creeping up at us, intent on its vengeance.
Since the ground no longer sloped, we could not go down-hill; there
were no means left of telling in what direction we were moving, and
we stopped to listen.  There was no sound, not one tiny noise of
water, wind in trees, or man; not even of birds or the moor ponies.
And the mist darkened.  The mare reached her head down and walked on,
smelling at the heather; every time she sniffed, one's heart
quivered, hoping she had found the way.  She threw up her head,
snorted, and stood still; and there passed just in front of us a pony
and her foal, shapes of scampering dusk, whisked like blurred shadows
across a sheet.  Hoof-silent in the long heather--as ever were
visiting ghosts--they were gone in a flash.  The mare plunged
forward, following.  But, in the feel of her gallop, and the feel of
my heart, there was no more that ecstasy of facing the unknown; there
was only the cold, hasty dread of loneliness.  Far asunder as the
poles were those two sensations, evoked by this same motion.  The
mare swerved violently and stopped.  There, passing within three
yards, from the same direction as before, the soundless shapes of the
pony and her foal flew by again, more intangible, less dusky now
against the darker screen.  Were we, then, to be haunted by those
bewildering uncanny ones, flitting past ever from the same direction?
This time the mare did not follow, but stood still; knowing as well
as I that direction was quite lost.  Soon, with a whimper, she picked
her way on again, smelling at the heather.  And the mist darkened!

Then, out of the heart of that dusky whiteness, came a tiny sound; we
stood, not breathing, turning our heads.  I could see the mare's eye
fixed and straining at the vapour.  The tiny sound grew till it
became the muttering of wheels.  The mare dashed forward.  The
muttering ceased untimely; but she did not stop; turning abruptly to
the left, she slid, scrambled, and dropped into a trot.  The mist
seemed whiter below us; we were on the road.  And involuntarily there
came from me a sound, not quite a shout, not quite an oath.  I saw
the mare's eye turn back, faintly derisive, as who should say: Alone
I did it!  Then slowly, comfortably, a little ashamed, we jogged on,
in the mood of men and horses when danger is over.  So pleasant it
seemed now, in one short half-hour, to have passed through the
circle-swing of the emotions, from the ecstasy of hot recklessness to
the clutching of chill fear.  But the meeting-point of those two
sensations we had left out there on the mysterious moor!  Why, at one
moment, had we thought it finer than anything on earth to risk the
breaking of our necks; and the next, shuddered at being lost in the
darkening mist with winter night fast coming on?

And very luxuriously we turned once more into the lanes, enjoying the
past, scenting the future.  Close to home, the first little eddy of
wind stirred, and the song of dripping twigs began; an owl hooted,
honey-soft, in the fog.  We came on two farm hands mending the lane
at the turn of the avenue, and, curled on the top of the bank, their
cosy red collie pup, waiting for them to finish work for the day.
He raised his sharp nose and looked at us dewily.  We turned down,
padding softly in the wet fox-red drifts under the beechtrees,
whereon the last leaves still flickered out in the darkening
whiteness, that now seemed so little eerie.  We passed the grey-green
skeleton of the farm-yard gate.  A hen ran across us, clucking, into
the dusk.  The maze drew her long, home-coming snuffle, and stood
still.

1910.









THE PROCESSION

In one of those corners of our land canopied by the fumes of blind
industry, there was, on that day, a lull in darkness.  A fresh wind
had split the customary heaven, or roof of hell; was sweeping long
drifts of creamy clouds across a blue still pallid with reek.  The
sun even shone--a sun whose face seemed white and wondering.  And
under that rare sun all the little town, among its slag heaps and few
tall chimneys, had an air of living faster.  In those continuous
courts and alleys, where the women worked, smoke from each little
forge rose and dispersed into the wind with strange alacrity; amongst
the women, too, there was that same eagerness, for the sunshine had
crept in and was making pale all those dark-raftered, sooted ceilings
which covered them in, together with their immortal comrades, the
small open furnaces.  About their work they had been busy since seven
o'clock; their feet pressing the leather lungs which fanned the
conical heaps of glowing fuel, their hands poking into the glow a
thin iron rod till the end could be curved into a fiery hook;
snapping it with a mallet; threading it with tongs on to the chain;
hammering, closing the link; and; without a second's pause, thrusting
the iron rod again into the glow.  And while they worked they
chattered, laughed sometimes, now and then sighed.  They seemed of
all ages and all types; from her who looked like a peasant of
Provence, broad, brown, and strong, to the weariest white consumptive
wisp; from old women of seventy, with straggling grey hair, to
fifteen-year-old girls.  In the cottage forges there would be but one
worker, or two at most; in the shop forges four, or even five, little
glowing heaps; four or five of the grimy, pale lung-bellows; and
never a moment without a fiery hook about to take its place on the
growing chains, never a second when the thin smoke of the forges, and
of those lives consuming slowly in front of them, did not escape from
out of the dingy, whitewashed spaces past the dark rafters, away to
freedom.

But there had been in the air that morning something more than the
white sunlight.  There had been anticipation.  And at two o'clock
began fulfilment.  The forges were stilled, and from court and alley
forth came the women.  In their ragged working clothes, in their best
clothes--so little different; in bonnets, in hats, bareheaded; with
babies born and unborn, they swarmed into the high street and formed
across it behind the band.  A strange, magpie, jay-like flock; black,
white, patched with brown and green and blue, shifting, chattering,
laughing, seeming unconscious of any purpose.  A thousand and more of
them, with faces twisted and scored by those myriad deformings which
a desperate town-toiling and little food fasten on human visages; yet
with hardly a single evil or brutal face.  Seemingly it was not easy
to be evil or brutal on a wage that scarcely bound soul and body.  A
thousand and more of the poorest-paid and hardest-worked human beings
in the world.

On the pavement alongside this strange, acquiescing assembly of
revolt, about to march in protest against the conditions of their
lives, stood a young woman without a hat and in poor clothes, but
with a sort of beauty in her rough-haired, high cheek-boned, dark-
eyed face.  She was not one of them; yet, by a stroke of Nature's
irony, there was graven on her face alone of all those faces, the
true look of rebellion; a haughty, almost fierce, uneasy look--an
untamed look.  On all the other thousand faces one could see no
bitterness, no fierceness, not even enthusiasm; only a half-stolid,
half-vivacious patience and eagerness as of children going to a
party.

The band played; and they began to march.

Laughing, talking, waving flags, trying to keep step; with the same
expression slowly but surely coming over every face; the future was
not; only the present--this happy present of marching behind the
discordance of a brass band; this strange present of crowded movement
and laughter in open air.

We others--some dozen accidentals like myself, and the tall, grey-
haired lady interested in "the people," together with those few kind
spirits in charge of "the show"--marched too, a little self-
conscious, desiring with a vague military sensation to hold our heads
up, but not too much, under the eyes of the curious bystanders.
These--nearly all men--were well-wishers, it was said, though their
faces, pale from their own work in shop or furnace, expressed nothing
but apathy.  They wished well, very dumbly, in the presence of this
new thing, as if they found it queer that women should be doing
something for themselves; queer and rather dangerous.  A few, indeed,
shuffled along between the column and the little hopeless shops and
grimy factory sheds, and one or two accompanied their women, carrying
the baby.  Now and then there passed us some better-to-do citizen-a
housewife, or lawyer's clerk, or ironmonger, with lips pressed rather
tightly together and an air of taking no notice of this disturbance
of traffic, as though the whole thing were a rather poor joke which
they had already heard too often.

So, with laughter and a continual crack of voices our jay-like crew
swung on, swaying and thumping in the strange ecstasy of
irreflection, happy to be moving they knew not where, nor greatly
why, under the visiting sun, to the sound of murdered music.
Whenever the band stopped playing, discipline became as
tatterdemalion as the very flags and garments; but never once did
they lose that look of essential order, as if indeed they knew that,
being the worst-served creatures in the Christian world, they were
the chief guardians of the inherent dignity of man.

Hatless, in the very front row, marched a tall slip of a girl, arrow-
straight, and so thin, with dirty fair hair, in a blouse and skirt
gaping behind, ever turning her pretty face on its pretty slim neck
from side to side, so that one could see her blue eyes sweeping here,
there, everywhere, with a sort of flower-like wildness, as if a
secret embracing of each moment forbade her to let them rest on
anything and break this pleasure of just marching.  It seemed that in
the never-still eyes of that anaemic, happy girl the spirit of our
march had elected to enshrine itself and to make thence its little
excursions to each ecstatic follower.  Just behind her marched a
little old woman--a maker of chains, they said, for forty years--
whose black slits of eyes were sparkling, who fluttered a bit of
ribbon, and reeled with her sense of the exquisite humour of the
world.  Every now and then she would make a rush at one of her
leaders to demonstrate how immoderately glorious was life.  And each
time she spoke the woman next to her, laden with a heavy baby, went
off into squeals of laughter.  Behind her, again, marched one who
beat time with her head and waved a little bit of stick, intoxicated
by this noble music.

For an hour the pageant wound through the dejected street, pursuing
neither method nor set route, till it came to a deserted slag-heap,
selected for the speech-making.  Slowly the motley regiment swung
into that grim amphitheatre under the pale sunshine; and, as I
watched, a strange fancy visited my brain.  I seemed to see over
every ragged head of those marching women a little yellow flame, a
thin, flickering gleam, spiring upward and blown back by the wind.  A
trick of the sunlight, maybe?  Or was it that the life in their
hearts, the inextinguishable breath of happiness, had for a moment
escaped prison, and was fluttering at the pleasure of the breeze?

Silent now, just enjoying the sound of the words thrown down to them,
they stood, unimaginably patient, with that happiness of they knew
not what gilding the air above them between the patchwork ribands of
their poor flags.  If they could not tell very much why they had
come, nor believe very much that they would gain anything by coming;
if their demonstration did not mean to the world quite all that
oratory would have them think; if they themselves were but the
poorest, humblest, least learned women in the land--for all that, it
seemed to me that in those tattered, wistful figures, so still, so
trustful, I was looking on such beauty as I had never beheld.  All
the elaborated glory of things made, the perfected dreams of
aesthetes, the embroideries of romance, seemed as nothing beside this
sudden vision of the wild goodness native in humble hearts.

1910.







A CHRISTIAN

One day that summer, I came away from a luncheon in company of an old
College chum.  Always exciting to meet those one hasn't seen for
years; and as we walked across the Park together I kept looking at
him askance.  He had altered a good deal.  Lean he always was, but
now very lean, and so upright that his parson's coat was overhung by
the back of his long and narrow head, with its dark grizzled hair,
which thought had not yet loosened on his forehead.  His clean-shorn
face, so thin and oblong, was remarkable only for the eyes: dark-
browed and lashed, and coloured like bright steel, they had a fixity
in them, a sort of absence, on one couldn't tell what business.  They
made me think of torture.  And his mouth always gently smiling, as if
its pinched curly sweetness had been commanded, was the mouth of a
man crucified--yes, crucified!

Tramping silently over the parched grass, I felt that if we talked,
we must infallibly disagree; his straight-up, narrow forehead so
suggested a nature divided within itself into compartments of iron.

It was hot that day, and we rested presently beside the Serpentine.
On its bright waters were the usual young men, sculling themselves to
and fro with their usual sad energy, the usual promenaders loitering
and watching them, the usual dog that swam when it did not bark, and
barked when it did not swim; and my friend sat smiling, twisting
between his thin fingers the little gold cross on his silk vest.

Then all of a sudden we did begin to talk; and not of those matters
of which the well-bred naturally converse--the habits of the rarer
kinds of ducks, and the careers of our College friends, but of
something never mentioned in polite society.

At lunch our hostess had told me the sad story of an unhappy
marriage, and I had itched spiritually to find out what my friend,
who seemed so far away from me, felt about such things.  And now I
determined to find out.

"Tell me," I asked him, "which do you consider most important--the
letter or the spirit of Christ's teachings?"

"My dear fellow," he answered gently, "what a question!  How can you
separate them?"

"Well, is it not the essence of His doctrine that the spirit is all
important, and the forms of little value?  Does not that run through
all the Sermon on the Mount?"

"Certainly."

"If, then," I said, "Christ's teaching is concerned with the spirit,
do you consider that Christians are justified in holding others bound
by formal rules of conduct, without reference to what is passing in
their spirits?"

"If it is for their good."

"What enables you to decide what is for their good?"

"Surely, we are told."

"Not to judge, that ye be not judged."

"Oh! but we do not, ourselves, judge; we are but impersonal ministers
of the rules of God."

"Ah!  Do general rules of conduct take account of the variations of
the individual spirit?"

He looked at me hard, as if he began to scent heresy.

"You had better explain yourself more fully," he said.  "I really
don't follow."

"Well, let us take a concrete instance.  We know Christ's saying of
the married that they are one flesh!  But we know also that there are
wives who continue to live the married life with dreadful feelings of
spiritual revolt wives who have found out that, in spite of all their
efforts, they have no spiritual affinity with their husbands.  Is
that in accordance with the spirit of Christ's teaching, or is it
not?"

"We are told----" he began.

"I have admitted the definite commandment: 'They twain shall be one
flesh.'  There could not be, seemingly, any more rigid law laid down;
how do you reconcile it with the essence of Christ's teaching?
Frankly, I want to know: Is there or is there not a spiritual
coherence in Christianity, or is it only a gathering of laws and
precepts, with no inherent connected spiritual philosophy?"

"Of course," he said, in his long-suffering voice, "we don't look at
things like that--for us there is no questioning."

"But how do you reconcile such marriages as I speak of, with the
spirit of Christ's teaching?  I think you ought to answer me."

"Oh! I can, perfectly," he answered; "the reconciliation is through
suffering.  What a poor woman in such a case must suffer makes for
the salvation of her spirit.  That is the spiritual fulfilment, and
in such a case the justification of the law."

"So then," I said, "sacrifice or suffering is the coherent thread of
Christian philosophy?"

"Suffering cheerfully borne," he answered.

"You do not think," I said, "that there is a touch of extravagance in
that?  Would you say, for example, that an unhappy marriage is a more
Christian thing than a happy one, where there is no suffering, but
only love?"

A line came between his brows.  "Well!" he said at last, "I would
say, I think, that a woman who crucifies her flesh with a cheerful
spirit in obedience to God's law, stands higher in the eyes of God
than one who undergoes no such sacrifice in her married life."  And I
had the feeling that his stare was passing through me, on its way to
an unseen goal.

"You would desire, then, I suppose, suffering as the greatest
blessing for yourself?"

"Humbly," he said, "I would try to."

"And naturally, for others?"

"God forbid!"

"But surely that is inconsistent."

He murmured: "You see, I have suffered."

We were silent.  At last I said: "Yes, that makes much which was dark
quite clear to me."

"Oh?" he asked.

I answered slowly: "Not many men, you know, even in your profession,
have really suffered.  That is why they do not feel the difficulty
which you feel in desiring suffering for others."

He threw up his head exactly as if I had hit him on the jaw: "It's
weakness in me, I know," he said.

"I should have rather called it weakness in them.  But suppose you
are right, and that it's weakness not to be able to desire
promiscuous suffering for others, would you go further and say that
it is Christian for those, who have not experienced a certain kind of
suffering, to force that particular kind on others?"

He sat silent for a full minute, trying evidently to reach to the
bottom of my thought.

"Surely not," he said at last, "except as ministers of God's laws."

"You do not then think that it is Christian for the husband of such a
woman to keep her in that state of suffering--not being, of course, a
minister of God?"

He began stammering at that: "I--I----" he said.  "No; that is, I
think not-not Christian.  No, certainly."

"Then, such a marriage, if persisted in, makes of the wife indeed a
Christian, but of the husband--the reverse."

"The answer to that is clear," he said quietly: "The husband must
abstain."

"Yes, that is, perhaps, coherently Christian, on your theory: They
would then both suffer.  But the marriage, of course, has become no
marriage.  They are no longer one flesh."

He looked at me, almost impatiently as if to say: Do not compel me to
enforce silence on you!

"But, suppose," I went on, "and this, you know; is the more frequent
case, the man refuses to abstain.  Would you then say it was more
Christian to allow him to become daily less Christian through his
unchristian conduct, than to relieve the woman of her suffering at
the expense of the spiritual benefit she thence derives?  Why, in
fact, do you favour one case more than the other?"

"All question of relief," he replied, "is a matter for Caesar; it
cannot concern me."

There had come into his face a rigidity--as if I might hit it with my
questions till my tongue was tired, and it be no more moved than.
the bench on which we were sitting.

"One more question," I said, "and I have done.  Since the Christian
teaching is concerned with the spirit and not forms, and the thread
in it which binds all together and makes it coherent, is that of
suffering----"

"Redemption by suffering," he put in.

"If you will--in one word, self-crucifixion--I must ask you, and
don't take it personally, because of what you told me of yourself: In
life generally, one does not accept from people any teaching that is
not the result of firsthand experience on their parts.  Do you
believe that this Christian teaching of yours is valid from the
mouths of those who have not themselves suffered--who have not
themselves, as it were, been crucified?"

He did not answer for a minute; then he said, with painful slowness:
"Christ laid hands on his apostles and sent them forth; and they in
turn, and so on, to our day."

"Do you say, then, that this guarantees that they have themselves
suffered, so that in spirit they are identified with their teaching?"

He answered bravely: "No--I do not--I cannot say that in fact it is
always so."

"Is not then their teaching born of forms, and not of the spirit?"

He rose; and with a sort of deep sorrow at my stubbornness said: "We
are not permitted to know the way of this; it is so ordained; we must
have faith."

As he stood there, turned from me, with his hat off, and his neck
painfully flushed under the sharp outcurve of his dark head, a
feeling of pity surged up in me, as if I had taken an unfair
advantage.

"Reason--coherence--philosophy," he said suddenly.  "You don't
understand.  All that is nothing to me--nothing--nothing!"

1911








WIND IN THE ROCKS

Though dew-dark when we set forth, there was stealing into the frozen
air an invisible white host of the wan-winged light--born beyond the
mountains, and already, like a drift of doves, harbouring grey-white
high up on the snowy skycaves of Monte Cristallo; and within us,
tramping over the valley meadows, was the incredible elation of those
who set out before the sun has risen; every minute of the precious
day before us--we had not lost one!

At the mouth of that enchanted chine, across which for a million
years the howdahed rock elephant has marched, but never yet passed
from sight, we crossed the stream, and among the trees began our
ascent.  Very far away the first cowbells chimed; and, over the dark
heights, we saw the thin, sinking moon, looking like the white horns
of some devotional beast watching and waiting up there for the god of
light.  That god came slowly, stalking across far over our heads from
top to top; then, of a sudden, his flame-white form was seen standing
in a gap of the valley walls; the trees flung themselves along the
ground before him, and censers of pine gum began swinging in the dark
aisles, releasing their perfumed steam.  Throughout these happy
ravines where no man lives, he shows himself naked and unashamed, the
colour of pale honey; on his golden hair such shining as one has not
elsewhere seen; his eyes like old wine on fire.  And already he had
swept his hand across the invisible strings, for there had arisen,
the music of uncurling leaves and flitting things.

A legend runs, that, driven from land to land by Christians, Apollo
hid himself in Lower Austria, but those who ever they saw him there
in the thirteenth century were wrong; it was to these enchanted
chines, frequented only by the mountain shepherds, that he certainly
came.

And as we were lying on the grass, of the first alp, with the star
gentians--those fallen drops of the sky--and the burnt-brown
dandelions, and scattered shrubs of alpen-rose round us, we were
visited by one of these very shepherds, passing with his flock--the
fiercest-looking man who ever, spoke in a gentle voice; six feet
high, with an orange cloak, bare knees; burnt as the very dandelions,
a beard blacker than black, and eyes more glorious than if sun and
night had dived and were lying imprisoned in their depths.  He spoke
in an unknown tongue, and could certainly not understand any word of
ours; but he smelled of the good earth, and only through interminable
watches under sun and stars could so great a gentleman have been
perfected.

Presently, while we rested outside that Alpine hut which faces the
three sphinx-like mountains, there came back, from climbing the
smallest and most dangerous of those peaks, one, pale from heat, and
trembling with fatigue; a tall man, with long brown hands, and a
long, thin, bearded face.  And, as he sipped cautiously of red wine
and water, he looked at his little conquered mountain.  His kindly,
screwed-up eyes, his kindly, bearded lips, even his limbs seemed
smiling; and not for the world would we have jarred with words that
rapt, smiling man, enjoying the sacred hour of him who has just
proved himself.  In silence we watched, in silence left him smiling,
knowing somehow that we should remember him all our days.  For there
was in his smile the glamour of adventure just for the sake of
danger; all that high instinct which takes a man out of his chair to
brave what he need not.

Between that hut and the three mountains lies a saddle--astride of
all beauty and all colour, master of a titanic chaos of deep clefts,
tawny heights, red domes, far snow, and the purple of long shadows;
and, standing there, we comprehended a little of what Earth had been
through in her time, to have made this playground for most glorious
demons.  Mother Earth!  What travail undergone, what long heroic
throes, had brought on her face such majesty!

Hereabout edelweiss was clinging to smoothed-out rubble; but a little
higher, even the everlasting plant was lost, there was no more life.
And presently we lay down on the mountain side, rather far apart.  Up
here above trees and pasture the wind had a strange, bare voice, free
from all outer influence, sweeping along with a cold, whiffing sound.
On the warm stones, in full sunlight, uplifted over all the beauty of
Italy, one felt at first only delight in space and wild loveliness,
in the unknown valleys, and the strength of the sun.  It was so good
to be alive; so ineffably good to be living in this most wonderful
world, drinking air nectar.

Behind us, from the three mountains, came the frequent thud and
scuffle of falling rocks, loosened by rains.  The wind, mist, and
winter snow had ground the powdery stones on which we lay to a
pleasant bed, but once on a time they, too, had clung up there.  And
very slowly, one could not say how or when, the sense of joy began
changing to a sense of fear.  The awful impersonality of those great
rock-creatures, the terrible impartiality of that cold, clinging wind
which swept by, never an inch lifted above ground!  Not one tiny
soul, the size of a midge or rock flower, lived here.  Not one little
"I" breathed here, and loved!

And we, too, some day would no longer love, having become part of
this monstrous, lovely earth, of that cold, whiffling air.  To be no
longer able to love!  It seemed incredible, too grim to bear; yet it
was true!  To become powder, and the wind; no more to feel the
sunlight; to be loved no more!  To become a whiffling noise, cold,
without one's self!  To drift on the breath of that noise, homeless!
Up here, there were not even those little velvet, grey-white flower-
comrades we had plucked.  No life!  Nothing but the creeping wind,
and those great rocky heights, whence came the sound of falling-
symbols of that cold, untimely state into which we, too, must pass.
Never more to love, nor to be loved!  One could but turn to the
earth, and press one's face to it, away from the wild loveliness.  Of
what use loveliness that must be lost; of what use loveliness when
one could not love?  The earth was warm and firm beneath the palms of
the hands; but there still came the sound of the impartial wind, and
the careless roar of the stories falling.

Below, in those valleys amongst the living trees and grass, was the
comradeship of unnumbered life, so that to pass out into Peace, to
step beyond, to die, seemed but a brotherly act, amongst all those
others; but up here, where no creature breathed, we saw the heart of
the desert that stretches before each little human soul.  Up here, it
froze the spirit; even Peace seemed mocking--hard as a stone.  Yet,
to try and hide, to tuck one's head under one's own wing, was not
possible in this air so crystal clear, so far above incense and the
narcotics of set creeds, and the fevered breath of prayers and
protestations.  Even to know that between organic and inorganic
matter there is no gulf fixed, was of no peculiar comfort.  The
jealous wind came creeping over the lifeless limestone, removing even
the poor solace of its warmth; one turned from it, desperate, to look
up at the sky, the blue, burning, wide, ineffable, far sky.

Then slowly, without reason, that icy fear passed into a feeling, not
of joy, not of peace, but as if Life and Death were exalted into what
was neither life nor death, a strange and motionless vibration, in
which one had been merged, and rested, utterly content, equipoised,
divested of desire, endowed with life and death.

But since this moment had come before its time, we got up, and, close
together, marched on rather silently, in the hot sun.

1910.







MY DISTANT RELATIVE

Though I had not seen my distant relative for years--not, in fact,
since he was obliged to give Vancouver Island up as a bad job--I knew
him at once, when, with head a little on one side, and tea-cup held
high, as if, to confer a blessing, he said: "Hallo!" across the Club
smoking-room.

Thin as a lath--not one ounce heavier--tall, and very upright, with
his pale forehead, and pale eyes, and pale beard, he had the air of a
ghost of a man.  He had always had that air.  And his voice--that
matter-of-fact and slightly nasal voice, with its thin, pragmatical
tone--was like a wraith of optimism, issuing between pale lips.  I
noticed; too, that his town habiliments still had their unspeakable
pale neatness, as if, poor things, they were trying to stare the
daylight out of countenance.

He brought his tea across to my bay window, with that wistful
sociability of his, as of a man who cannot always find a listener.

"But what are you doing in town?" I said.  "I thought you were in
Yorkshire with your aunt."

Over his round, light eyes, fixed on something in the street, the
lids fell quickly twice, as the film falls over the eyes of a parrot.

"I'm after a job," he answered.  "Must be on the spot just now."

And it seemed to me that I had heard those words from him before.

"Ah, yes," I said, "and do you think you'll get it?"

But even as I spoke I felt sorry, remembering how many jobs he had
been after in his time, and how soon they ended when he had got them.

He answered:

"Oh, yes!  They ought to give it me," then added rather suddenly:
"You never know, though.  People are so funny!"

And crossing his thin legs, he went on to tell me, with quaint
impersonality, a number of instances of how people had been funny in
connection with jobs he had not been given.

"You see," he ended, "the country's in such a state--capital going
out of it every day.  Enterprise being killed all over the place.
There's practically nothing to be had!"

"Ah!" I said, "you think it's worse, then, than it used to be?"

He smiled; in that smile there was a shade of patronage.

"We're going down-hill as fast as ever we can.  National character's
losing all its backbone.  No wonder, with all this molly-coddling
going on!"

"Oh!" I murmured, "molly-coddling?  Isn't that excessive?"

"Well!  Look at the way everything's being done for them!  The
working classes are losing their, self-respect as fast as ever they
can.  Their independence is gone already!"

"You think?"

"Sure of it!  I'll give you an instance----" and he went on to
describe to me the degeneracy of certain working men employed by his
aunt and his eldest brother Claud and his youngest brother Alan.

"They don't do a stroke more than they're obliged," he ended; "they
know jolly well they've got their Unions, and their pensions, and
this Insurance, to fall back on."

It was evidently a subject on which he felt strongly.

"Yes," he muttered, "the nation is being rotted down."

And a faint thrill of surprise passed through me.  For the affairs of
the nation moved him so much more strongly than his own.  His voice
already had a different ring, his eyes a different look.  He eagerly
leaned forward, and his long, straight backbone looked longer and
straighter than ever.  He was less the ghost of a man.  A faint flush
even had come into his pale cheeks, and he moved his well-kept hands
emphatically.

"Oh, yes!" he said: "The country is going to the dogs, right enough;
but you can't get them to see it.  They go on sapping and sapping the
independence of the people.  If the working man's to be looked after,
whatever he does--what on earth's to become of his go, and foresight,
and perseverance?"

In his rising voice a certain piquancy was left to its accent of the
ruling class by that faint twang, which came, I remembered, from some
slight defect in his tonsils.

"Mark my words!  So long as we're on these lines, we shall do
nothing.  It's going against evolution.  They say Darwin's getting
old-fashioned; all I know is, he's good enough for me.  Competition
is the only thing."

"But competition," I said, "is bitter cruel, and some people can't
stand against it!"  And I looked at him rather hard: "Do you object
to putting any sort of floor under the feet of people like that?"

He let his voice drop a little, as if in deference to my scruples.

"Ah!" he said; "but if you once begin this sort of thing, there's no
end to it.  It's so insidious.  The more they have, the more they
want; and all the time they're losing fighting power.  I've thought
pretty deeply about this.  It's shortsighted; it really doesn't do!"

"But," I said, "surely you're not against saving people from being
knocked out of time by old age, and accidents like illness, and the
fluctuations of trade?"

"Oh!" he said, "I'm not a bit against charity.  Aunt Emma's splendid
about that.  And Claud's awfully good.  I do what I can, myself."  He
looked at me, so queerly deprecating, that I quite liked him at that
moment.  At heart--I felt he was a good fellow.  "All I think is," he
went on, "that to give them something that they can rely on as a
matter of course, apart from their own exertions, is the wrong
principle altogether," and suddenly his voice began to rise again,
and his eyes to stare.  "I'm convinced that all this doing things for
other people, and bolstering up the weak, is rotten.  It stands to
reason that it must be."

He had risen to his feet, so preoccupied with the wrongness of that
principle that he seemed to have forgotten my presence.  And as he
stood there in the window the light was too strong for him.  All the
thin incapacity of that shadowy figure was pitilessly displayed; the
desperate narrowness in that long, pale face; the wambling look of
those pale, well-kept hands--all that made him such a ghost of a man.
But his nasal, dogmatic voice rose and rose.

"There's nothing for it but bracing up!  We must cut away all this
State support; we must teach them to rely on themselves.  It's all
sheer pauperisation."

And suddenly there shot through me the fear that he might burst one
of those little blue veins in his pale forehead, so vehement had he
become; and hastily I changed the subject.

"Do you like living up there with your aunt?" I asked: "Isn't it a
bit quiet?"

He turned, as if I had awakened him from a dream.

"Oh, well!" he said, "it's only till I get this job."

"Let me see--how long is it since you----?"

"Four years.  She's very glad to have me, of course."

"And how's your brother Claud?"

"Oh!  All right, thanks; a bit worried with the estate.  The poor old
gov'nor left it in rather a mess, you know."

"Ah!  Yes.  Does he do other work?"

"Oh!  Always busy in the parish."

"And your brother Richard?"

"He's all right.  Came home this year.  Got just enough to live on,
with his pension--hasn't saved a rap, of course."

"And Willie?  Is he still delicate?"

"Yes."

"I'm sorry."

"Easy job, his, you know.  And even if his health does give out, his
college pals will always find him some sort of sinecure.  So jolly
popular, old Willie!"

"And Alan?  I haven't heard anything of him since his Peruvian thing
came to grief.  He married, didn't he?"

"Rather!  One of the Burleys.  Nice girl--heiress; lot of property in
Hampshire.  He looks after it for her now."

"Doesn't do anything else, I suppose?"

"Keeps up his antiquarianism."

I had exhausted the members of his family.

Then, as though by eliciting the good fortunes of his brothers I had
cast some slur upon himself, he said suddenly: "If the railway had
come, as it ought to have, while I was out there, I should have done
quite well with my fruit farm."

"Of course," I agreed; "it was bad luck.  But after all, you're sure
to get a job soon, and--so long as you can live up there with your
aunt--you can afford to wait, and not bother."

"Yes," he murmured.  And I got up.

"Well, it's been very jolly to hear about you all!"

He followed me out.

"Awfully glad, old man," he said, "to have seen you, and had this
talk.  I was feeling rather low.  Waiting to know whether I get that
job--it's not lively."

He came down the Club steps with me.  By the door of my cab a loafer
was standing; a tall tatterdemalion with a pale, bearded face.  My
distant relative fended him away, and leaning through the window,
murmured: "Awful lot of these chaps about now!"

For the life of me I could not help looking at him very straight.
But no flicker of apprehension crossed his face.

"Well, good-by again!" he said: "You've cheered me up a lot!"

I glanced back from my moving cab.  Some monetary transaction was
passing between him and the loafer, but, short-sighted as I am, I
found it difficult to decide which of those tall, pale, bearded
figures was giving the other one a penny. And by some strange freak
an awful vision shot up before me--of myself, and my distant
relative, and Claud, and Richard, and Willie, and Alan, all suddenly
relying on ourselves.  I took out my handkerchief to mop my brow; but
a thought struck me, and I put it back.  Was it possible for me, and
my distant relatives, and their distant relatives, and so on to
infinity of those who be longed to a class provided by birth with a
certain position, raised by Providence on to a platform made up of
money inherited, of interest, of education fitting us for certain
privileged pursuits, of friends similarly endowed, of substantial
homes, and substantial relatives of some sort or other, on whom we
could fall back--was it possible for any of us ever to be in the
position of having to rely absolutely on ourselves?  For several
minutes I pondered that question; and slowly I came to the conclusion
that, short of crime, or that unlikely event, marooning, it was not
possible.  Never, never--try as we might--could any single one of us
be quite in the position of one of those whose approaching
pauperisation my distant relative had so vehemently deplored.  We
were already pauperised.  If we served our country, we were
pensioned....  If we inherited land, it could not be taken from us.
If we went into the Church, we were there for life, whether we were
suitable or no.  If we attempted the more hazardous occupations of
the law, medicine, the arts, or business, there were always those
homes, those relations, those friends of ours to fall back on, if we
failed.  No!  We could never have to rely entirely on ourselves; we
could never be pauperised more than we were already!  And a light
burst in on me.  That explained why my distant relative felt so
keenly.  It bit him, for he saw, of course, how dreadful it would be
for these poor people of the working classes when legislation had
succeeded in placing them in the humiliating position in which we
already were--the dreadful position of having something to depend on
apart from our own exertions, some sort of security in our lives.
I saw it now.  It was his secret pride, gnawing at him all the time,
that made him so rabid on the point.  He was longing, doubtless, day
and night, not to have had a father who had land, and had left a
sister well enough off to keep him while he was waiting for his job.
He must be feeling how horribly degrading was the position of Claud--
inheriting that land; and of Richard, who, just because he had served
in the Indian Civil Service, had got to live on a pension all the
rest of his days; and of Willie, who was in danger at any moment, if
his health--always delicate--gave out, of having a sinecure found for
him by his college friends; and of Alan, whose educated charm had
enabled him to marry an heiress and live by managing her estates.
All, all sapped of go and foresight and perseverance by a cruel
Providence!  That was what he was really feeling, and concealing, be
cause he was too well-bred to show his secret grief.  And I felt
suddenly quite warm toward him, now that I saw how he was suffering.
I understood how bound he felt in honour to combat with all his force
this attempt to place others in his own distressing situation.  At
the same time I was honest enough to confess to myself sitting there
in the cab--that I did not personally share that pride of his, or
feel that I was being rotted by my own position; I even felt some dim
gratitude that if my powers gave out at any time, and I had not saved
anything, I should still not be left destitute to face the prospect
of a bleak and impoverished old age; and I could not help a weak
pleasure in the thought that a certain relative security was being
guaranteed to those people of the working classes who had never had
it before.  At the same moment I quite saw that to a prouder and
stronger heart it must indeed be bitter to have to sit still under
your own security, and even more bitter to have to watch that
pauperising security coming closer and closer to others--for the
generous soul is always more concerned for others than for himself.
No doubt, I thought, if truth were known, my distant relative is
consumed with longing to change places with that loafer who tried to
open the door of my cab--for surely he must see, as I do, that that
is just what he himself--having failed to stand the pressure of
competition in his life--would be doing if it were not for the
accident of his birth, which has so lamentably insured him against
coming to that.

"Yes," I thought, "you have learnt something to-day; it does not do,
you see, hastily to despise those distant relatives of yours, who
talk about pauperising and molly-coddling the lower classes.  No, no!
One must look deeper than that!  One must have generosity!"

And with that I stopped the cab and got out.  for I wanted a breath
of air.

1911








THE BLACK GODMOTHER

Sitting out on the lawn at tea with our friend and his retriever, we
had been discussing those massacres of the helpless which had of late
occurred, and wondering that they should have been committed by the
soldiery of so civilised a State, when, in a momentary pause of our
astonishment, our friend, who had been listening in silence,
crumpling the drooping soft ear of his dog, looked up and said, "The
cause of atrocities is generally the violence of Fear.  Panic's at
the back of most crimes and follies."

Knowing that his philosophical statements were always the result of
concrete instance, and that he would not tell us what that instance
was if we asked him--such being his nature--we were careful not to
agree.

He gave us a look out of those eyes of his, so like the eyes of a
mild eagle, and said abruptly: "What do you say to this, then?.....
I was out in the dog-days last year with this fellow of mine, looking
for Osmunda, and stayed some days in a village--never mind the name.
Coming back one evening from my tramp, I saw some boys stoning
a mealy-coloured dog.  I went up and told the young devils to stop
it.  They only looked at me in the injured way boys do, and one of
them called out, 'It's mad, guv'nor!'  I told them to clear off, and
they took to their heels.  The dog followed me.  It was a young,
leggy, mild looking mongrel, cross--I should say--between a brown
retriever and an Irish terrier.  There was froth about its lips, and
its eyes were watery; it looked indeed as if it might be in
distemper.  I was afraid of infection for this fellow of mine, and
whenever it came too close shooed it away, till at last it slunk off
altogether.  Well, about nine o'clock, when I was settling down to
write by the open window of my sitting-room--still daylight, and very
quiet and warm--there began that most maddening sound, the barking of
an unhappy dog.  I could do nothing with that continual 'Yap yap!'
going on, and it was too hot to shut the window; so I went out to see
if I could stop it.  The men were all at the pub, and the women just
finished with their gossip; there was no sound at all but the
continual barking of this dog, somewhere away out in the fields.  I
travelled by ear across three meadows, till I came on a hay-stack by
a pool of water.  There was the dog sure enough--the same mealy-
coloured mongrel, tied to a stake, yapping, and making frantic little
runs on a bit of rusty chain; whirling round and round the stake,
then standing quite still, and shivering.  I went up and spoke to it,
but it backed into the hay-stack, and there it stayed shrinking away
from me, with its tongue hanging out.  It had been heavily struck by
something on the head; the cheek was cut, one eye half-closed, and an
ear badly swollen.  I tried to get hold of it, but the poor thing was
beside itself with fear.  It snapped and flew round so that I had to
give it up, and sit down with this fellow here beside me, to try and
quiet it--a strange dog, you know, will generally form his estimate
of you from the way it sees you treat another dog.  I had to sit
there quite half an hour before it would let me go up to it, pull the
stake out, and lead it away.  The poor beast, though it was so feeble
from the blows it had received, was still half-frantic, and I didn't
dare to touch it; and all the time I took good care that this fellow
here didn't come too near.  Then came the question what was to be
done.  There was no vet, of course, and I'd no place to put it except
my sitting-room, which didn't belong to me.  But, looking at its
battered head, and its half-mad eyes, I thought: 'No trusting you
with these bumpkins; you'll have to come in here for the night!'
Well, I got it in, and heaped two or three of those hairy little red
rugs landladies are so fond of, up in a corner; and got it on to
them, and put down my bread and milk.  But it wouldn't eat--its sense
of proportion was all gone, fairly destroyed by terror.  It lay there
moaning, and every now and then it raised its head with a 'yap' of
sheer fright, dreadful to hear, and bit the air, as if its enemies
were on it again; and this fellow of mine lay in the opposite corner,
with his head on his paw, watching it.  I sat up for a long time with
that poor beast, sick enough, and wondering how it had come to be
stoned and kicked and battered into this state; and next day I made
it my business to find out."

Our friend paused, scanned us a little angrily, and then went on: "It
had made its first appearance, it seems, following a bicyclist.
There are men, you know--save the mark--who, when their beasts get
ill or too expensive, jump on their bicycles and take them for a
quick run, taking care never to look behind them.  When they get back
home they say: 'Hallo! where's Fido?'  Fido is nowhere, and there's
an end!  Well, this poor puppy gave up just as it got to our village;
and, roaming shout in search of water, attached itself to a farm
labourer.  The man with excellent intentions--as he told me himself--
tried to take hold of it, but too abruptly, so that it was startled,
and snapped at him.  Whereon he kicked it for a dangerous cur, and it
went drifting back toward the village, and fell in with the boys
coming home from school.  It thought, no doubt, that they were going
to kick it too, and nipped one of them who took it by the collar.
Thereupon they hullabalooed and stoned it down the road to where I
found them.  Then I put in my little bit of torture, and drove it
away, through fear of infection to my own dog.  After that it seems
to have fallen in with a man who told me: 'Well, you see, he came
sneakin' round my house, with the children playin', and snapped at
them when they went to stroke him, so that they came running in to
their mother, an' she' called to me in a fine takin' about a mad dog.
I ran out with a shovel and gave 'im one, and drove him out.  I'm
sorry if he wasn't mad, he looked it right enough; you can't be too
careful with strange dogs.'  Its next acquaintance was an old stone-
breaker, a very decent sort.  'Well! you see,' the old man explained
to me, 'the dog came smellin' round my stones, an' it wouldn' come
near, an' it wouldn' go away; it was all froth and blood about the
jaw, and its eyes glared green at me.  I thought to meself, bein' the
dog-days--I don't like the look o' you, you look funny!  So I took a
stone, an' got it here, just on the ear; an' it fell over.  And I
thought to meself: Well, you've got to finish it, or it'll go bitin'
somebody, for sure!  But when I come to it with my hammer, the dog it
got up--an' you know how it is when there's somethin' you've 'alf
killed, and you feel sorry, and yet you feel you must finish it, an'
you hit at it blind, you hit at it agen an' agen.  The poor thing, it
wriggled and snapped, an' I was terrified it'd bite me, an' some'ow
it got away."'  Again our friend paused, and this time we dared not
look at him.

"The next hospitality it was shown," he went on presently, "was by a
farmer, who, seeing it all bloody, drove it off, thinking it had been
digging up a lamb that he'd just buried.  The poor homeless beast
came sneaking back, so he told his men to get rid of it.  Well, they
got hold of it somehow--there was a hole in its neck that looked as
if they'd used a pitchfork--and, mortally afraid of its biting them,
but not liking, as they told me, to drown it, for fear the owner
might come on them, they got a stake and a chain, and fastened it up,
and left it in the water by the hay-stack where I found it.  I had
some conversation with that farmer.  'That's right,' he said, 'but
who was to know?  I couldn't have my sheep worried.  The brute had
blood on his muzzle.  These curs do a lot of harm when they've once
been blooded.  You can't run risks."'  Our friend cut viciously at a
dandelion with his stick.  "Run risks!" he broke out suddenly: "That
was it from beginning to end of that poor beast's sufferings, fear!
>From that fellow on the bicycle, afraid of the worry and expense, as
soon as it showed signs of distemper, to myself and the man with the
pitch fork--not one of us, I daresay, would have gone out of our way
to do it--a harm.  But we felt fear, and so by the law of self-
preservation, or what ever you like--it all began, till there the
poor thing was, with a battered head and a hole in its neck, ravenous
with hunger, and too distraught even to lap my bread and milk.  Yes,
and there's something uncanny about a suffering animal--we sat
watching it, and again we were afraid, looking at its eyes and the
way it bit the air.  Fear!  It's the black godmother of all damnable
things!"

Our friend bent down, crumpling and crumpling at his dog's ears.  We,
too, gazed at the ground, thinking of, that poor lost puppy, and the
horrible inevitability of all that happens, seeing men are what they
are; thinking of all the foul doings in the world, whose black
godmother is Fear.

"And what became of the poor dog?" one of us asked at last.

"When," said our friend slowly, "I'd had my fill of watching, I
covered it with a rug, took this fellow away with me, and went to
bed.  There was nothing else to do.  At dawn I was awakened by three
dreadful cries--not like a dog's at all.  I hurried down.  There was
the poor beast--wriggled out from under the rug-stretched on its
side, dead.  This fellow of mine had followed me in, and he went and
sat down by the body.  When I spoke to him he just looked round, and
wagged his tail along the ground, but would not come away; and there
he sat till it was buried, very interested, but not sorry at all."

Our friend was silent, looking angrily at something in the distance.

And we, too, were silent, seeing in spirit that vigil of early
morning: The thin, lifeless, sandy-coloured body, stretched on those
red mats; and this black creature--now lying at our feet--propped on
its haunches like the dog in "The Death of Procris," patient,
curious, ungrieved, staring down at it with his bright, interested
eyes.

1912.





End of The Project Gutenberg Etext of The Inn of Tranquility and Others
By John Galsworthy







STUDIES AND ESSAYS

By John Galsworthy


          "Je vous dirai que l'exces est toujours un mal."
                                        --ANATOLE FRANCE



                         CONCERNING LIFE


TABLE OF CONTENTS:
          QUALITY
          THE GRAND JURY
          GONE
          THRESHING
          THAT OLD-TIME PLACE
          ROMANCE--THREE GLEAMS
          MEMORIES
          FELICITY




QUALITY

I knew him from the days of my extreme youth, because he made my
father's boots; inhabiting with his elder brother two little shops
let into one, in a small by-street-now no more, but then most
fashionably placed in the West End.

That tenement had a certain quiet distinction; there was no sign upon
its face that he made for any of the Royal Family--merely his own
German name of Gessler Brothers; and in the window a few pairs of
boots.  I remember that it always troubled me to account for those
unvarying boots in the window, for he made only what was ordered,
reaching nothing down, and it seemed so inconceivable that what he
made could ever have failed to fit.  Had he bought them to put there?
That, too, seemed inconceivable.  He would never have tolerated in
his house leather on which he had not worked himself.  Besides, they
were too beautiful--the pair of pumps, so inexpressibly slim, the
patent leathers with cloth tops, making water come into one's mouth,
the tall brown riding boots with marvellous sooty glow, as if, though
new, they had been worn a hundred years.  Those pairs could only have
been made by one who saw before him the Soul of Boot--so truly were
they prototypes incarnating the very spirit of all foot-gear.  These
thoughts, of course, came to me later, though even when I was
promoted to him, at the age of perhaps fourteen, some inkling haunted
me of the dignity of himself and brother.  For to make boots--such
boots as he made--seemed to me then, and still seems to me,
mysterious and wonderful.

I remember well my shy remark, one day, while stretching out to him
my youthful foot:

"Isn't it awfully hard to do, Mr. Gessler?"

And his answer, given with a sudden smile from out of the sardonic
redness of his beard: "Id is an Ardt!"

Himself, he was a little as if made from leather, with his yellow
crinkly face, and crinkly reddish hair and beard; and neat folds
slanting down his cheeks to the corners of his mouth, and his
guttural and one-toned voice; for leather is a sardonic substance,
and stiff and slow of purpose.  And that was the character of his
face, save that his eyes, which were grey-blue, had in them the
simple gravity of one secretly possessed by the Ideal.  His elder
brother was so very like him--though watery, paler in every way, with
a great industry--that sometimes in early days I was not quite sure
of him until the interview was over.  Then I knew that it was he, if
the words, "I will ask my brudder," had not been spoken; and that, if
they had, it was his elder brother.

When one grew old and wild and ran up bills, one somehow never ran
them up with Gessler Brothers.  It would not have seemed becoming to
go in there and stretch out one's foot to that blue iron-spectacled
glance, owing him for more than--say--two pairs, just the comfortable
reassurance that one was still his client.

For it was not possible to go to him very often--his boots lasted
terribly, having something beyond the temporary--some, as it were,
essence of boot stitched into them.

One went in, not as into most shops, in the mood of: "Please serve
me, and let me go!" but restfully, as one enters a church; and,
sitting on the single wooden chair, waited--for there was never
anybody there.  Soon, over the top edge of that sort of well--rather
dark, and smelling soothingly of leather--which formed the shop,
there would be seen his face, or that of his elder brother, peering
down.  A guttural sound, and the tip-tap of bast slippers beating the
narrow wooden stairs, and he would stand before one without coat, a
little bent, in leather apron, with sleeves turned back, blinking--as
if awakened from some dream of boots, or like an owl surprised in
daylight and annoyed at this interruption.

And I would say: "How do you do, Mr. Gessler?  Could you make me a
pair of Russia leather boots?"

Without a word he would leave me, retiring whence he came, or into
the other portion of the shop, and I would, continue to rest in the
wooden chair, inhaling the incense of his trade.  Soon he would come
back, holding in his thin, veined hand a piece of gold-brown leather.
With eyes fixed on it, he would remark: "What a beaudiful biece!"
When I, too, had admired it, he would speak again.  "When do you wand
dem?"  And I would answer: "Oh!  As soon as you conveniently can."
And he would say: "To-morrow fordnighd?"  Or if he were his elder
brother: "I will ask my brudder!"

Then I would murmur: "Thank you!  Good-morning, Mr.  Gessler." "Goot-
morning!" he would reply, still looking at the leather in his hand.
And as I moved to the door, I would hear the tip-tap of his bast
slippers restoring him, up the stairs, to his dream of boots.  But if
it were some new kind of foot-gear that he had not yet made me, then
indeed he would observe ceremony--divesting me of my boot and holding
it long in his hand, looking at it with eyes at once critical and
loving, as if recalling the glow with which he had created it, and
rebuking the way in which one had disorganized this masterpiece.
Then, placing my foot on a piece of paper, he would two or three
times tickle the outer edges with a pencil and pass his nervous
fingers over my toes, feeling himself into the heart of my
requirements.

I cannot forget that day on which I had occasion to say to him; "Mr.
Gessler, that last pair of town walking-boots creaked, you know."

He looked at me for a time without replying, as if expecting me to
withdraw or qualify the statement, then said:

"Id shouldn'd 'ave greaked."

"It did, I'm afraid."

"You goddem wed before dey found demselves?"

"I don't think so."

At that he lowered his eyes, as if hunting for memory of those boots,
and I felt sorry I had mentioned this grave thing.

"Zend dem back!" he said; "I will look at dem."

A feeling of compassion for my creaking boots surged up in me, so
well could I imagine the sorrowful long curiosity of regard which he
would bend on them.

"Zome boods," he said slowly, "are bad from birdt.  If I can do
noding wid dem, I dake dem off your bill."

Once (once only) I went absent-mindedly into his shop in a pair of
boots bought in an emergency at some large firm's.  He took my order
without showing me any leather, and I could feel his eyes penetrating
the inferior integument of my foot.  At last he said:

"Dose are nod my boods."

The tone was not one of anger, nor of sorrow, not even of contempt,
but there was in it something quiet that froze the blood.  He put his
hand down and pressed a finger on the place where the left boot,
endeavouring to be fashionable, was not quite comfortable.

"Id 'urds you dere,", he said.  "Dose big virms 'ave no self-respect.
Drash!"  And then, as if something had given way within him, he spoke
long and bitterly.  It was the only time I ever heard him discuss the
conditions and hardships of his trade.

"Dey get id all," he said, "dey get id by adverdisement, nod by work.
Dey dake it away from us, who lofe our boods.  Id gomes to this--
bresently I haf no work.  Every year id gets less you will see."  And
looking at his lined face I saw things I had never noticed before,
bitter things and bitter struggle--and what a lot of grey hairs there
seemed suddenly in his red beard!

As best I could, I explained the circumstances of the purchase of
those ill-omened boots.  But his face and voice made so deep
impression that during the next few minutes I ordered many pairs.
Nemesis fell!  They lasted more terribly than ever.  And I was not
able conscientiously to go to him for nearly two years.

When at last I went I was surprised to find that outside one of the
two little windows of his shop another name was painted, also that of
a bootmaker-making, of course, for the Royal Family.  The old
familiar boots, no longer in dignified isolation, were huddled in the
single window.  Inside, the now contracted well of the one little
shop was more scented and darker than ever.  And it was longer than
usual, too, before a face peered down, and the tip-tap of the bast
slippers began.  At last he stood before me, and, gazing through
those rusty iron spectacles, said:

"Mr.-----, isn'd it?"

"Ah!  Mr.  Gessler," I stammered, "but your boots are really too
good, you know!  See, these are quite decent still!"  And I stretched
out to him my foot.  He looked at it.

"Yes," he said, "beople do nod wand good hoods, id seems."

To get away from his reproachful eyes and voice I hastily remarked:
"What have you done to your shop?"

He answered quietly: "Id was too exbensif.  Do you wand some boods?"

I ordered three pairs, though I had only wanted two, and quickly
left.  I had, I do not know quite what feeling of being part, in his
mind, of a conspiracy against him; or not perhaps so much against him
as against his idea of boot.  One does not, I suppose, care to feel
like that; for it was again many months before my next visit to his
shop, paid, I remember, with the feeling: "Oh! well, I can't leave
the old boy--so here goes!  Perhaps it'll be his elder brother!"

For his elder brother, I knew, had not character enough to reproach
me, even dumbly.

And, to my relief, in the shop there did appear to be his elder
brother, handling a piece of leather.

"Well, Mr.  Gessler," I said, "how are you?"

He came close, and peered at me.

"I am breddy well," he said slowly "but my elder brudder is dead."

And I saw that it was indeed himself--but how aged and wan!  And
never before had I heard him mention his brother.  Much shocked;
I murmured: "Oh! I am sorry!"

"Yes," he answered, "he was a good man, he made a good bood; but he
is dead."  And he touched the top of his head, where the hair had
suddenly gone as thin as it had been on that of his poor brother, to
indicate, I suppose, the cause of death.  "He could nod ged over
losing de oder shop.  Do you wand any hoods?"  And he held up the
leather in his hand: "Id's a beaudiful biece."

I ordered several pairs.  It was very long before they came--but they
were better than ever.  One simply could not wear them out.  And soon
after that I went abroad.

It was over a year before I was again in London.  And the first shop
I went to was my old friend's.  I had left a man of sixty, I came
back to one of seventy-five, pinched and worn and tremulous, who
genuinely, this time, did not at first know me.

"Oh! Mr. Gessler," I said, sick at heart; "how splendid your boots
are!  See, I've been wearing this pair nearly all the time I've been
abroad; and they're not half worn out, are they?"

He looked long at my boots--a pair of Russia leather, and his face
seemed to regain steadiness.  Putting his hand on my instep, he said:

"Do dey vid you here?  I 'ad drouble wid dat bair, I remember."

I assured him that they had fitted beautifully.

"Do you wand any boods?" he said.  "I can make dem quickly; id is a
slack dime."

I answered: "Please, please!  I want boots all round--every kind!"

"I will make a vresh model.  Your food must be bigger."  And with
utter slowness, he traced round my foot, and felt my toes, only once
looking up to say:

"Did I dell you my brudder was dead?"

To watch him was painful, so feeble had he grown; I was glad to get
away.

I had given those boots up, when one evening they came.  Opening the
parcel, I set the four pairs out in a row.  Then one by one I tried
them on.  There was no doubt about it.  In shape and fit, in finish
and quality of leather, they were the best he had ever made me.  And
in the mouth of one of the Town walking-boots I found his bill.

The amount was the same as usual, but it gave me quite a shock.  He
had never before sent it in till quarter day.  I flew down-stairs,
and wrote a cheque, and posted it at once with my own hand.

A week later, passing the little street, I thought I would go in and
tell him how splendidly the new boots fitted.  But when I came to
where his shop had been, his name was gone.  Still there, in the
window, were the slim pumps, the patent leathers with cloth tops, the
sooty riding boots.

I went in, very much disturbed.  In the two little shops--again made
into one--was a young man with an English face.

"Mr. Gessler in?" I said.

He gave me a strange, ingratiating look.

"No, sir," he said, "no.  But we can attend to anything with
pleasure.  We've taken the shop over.  You've seen our name, no
doubt, next door.  We make for some very good people."

"Yes, Yes," I said; "but Mr. Gessler?"

"Oh!" he answered; "dead."

"Dead!  But I only received these boots from him last Wednesday
week."

"Ah!" he said; "a shockin' go.  Poor old man starved 'imself."

"Good God!"

"Slow starvation, the doctor called it!  You see he went to work in
such a way!  Would keep the shop on; wouldn't have a soul touch his
boots except himself.  When he got an order, it took him such a time.
People won't wait.  He lost everybody.  And there he'd sit, goin' on
and on--I will say that for him not a man in London made a better
boot!  But look at the competition!  He never advertised!  Would 'ave
the best leather, too, and do it all 'imself.  Well, there it is.
What could you expect with his ideas?"

"But starvation----!"

"That may be a bit flowery, as the sayin' is--but I know myself he
was sittin' over his boots day and night, to the very last.  You see
I used to watch him.  Never gave 'imself time to eat; never had a
penny in the house.  All went in rent and leather.  How he lived so
long I don't know.  He regular let his fire go out.  He was a
character.  But he made good boots."

"Yes," I said, "he made good boots."

And I turned and went out quickly, for I did not want that youth to
know that I could hardly see.

1911








THE GRAND JURY--IN TWO PANELS AND A FRAME


Read that piece of paper, which summoned me to sit on the Grand Jury
at the approaching Sessions, lying in a scoop of the shore close to
the great rollers of the sea--that span of eternal freedom, deprived
just there of too great liberty by the word "Atlantic."  And I
remember thinking, as I read, that in each breaking wave was some
particle which had visited every shore in all the world--that in each
sparkle of hot sunlight stealing that bright water up into the sky,
was the microcosm of all change, and of all unity.


PANEL I

In answer to that piece of paper, I presented myself at the proper
place in due course and with a certain trepidation.  What was it that
I was about to do?  For I had no experience of these things.  And,
being too early, I walked a little to and fro, looking at all those
my partners in this matter of the purification of Society.
Prosecutors, witnesses, officials, policemen, detectives, undetected,
pressmen, barristers, loafers, clerks, cadgers, jurymen.  And I
remember having something of the feeling that one has when one looks
into a sink without holding one's nose.  There was such uneasy hurry,
so strange a disenchanted look, a sort of spiritual dirt, about all
that place, and there were--faces!  And I thought: To them my face
must seem as their faces seem to me!

Soon I was taken with my accomplices to have my name called, and to
be sworn.  I do not remember much about that process, too occupied
with wondering what these companions of mine were like; but presently
we all came to a long room with a long table, where nineteen lists of
indictments and nineteen pieces of blotting paper were set alongside
nineteen pens.  We did not, I recollect, speak much to one another,
but sat down, and studied those nineteen lists.  We had eighty-seven
cases on which to pronounce whether the bill was true or no; and the
clerk assured us we should get through them in two days at most.
Over the top of these indictments I regarded my eighteen fellows.
There was in me a hunger of inquiry, as to what they thought about
this business; and a sort of sorrowful affection for them, as if we
were all a ship's company bound on some strange and awkward
expedition.  I wondered, till I thought my wonder must be coming
through my eyes, whether they had the same curious sensation that I
was feeling, of doing something illegitimate, which I had not been
born to do, together with a sense of self-importance, a sort of
unholy interest in thus dealing with the lives of my fellow men.  And
slowly, watching them, I came to the conclusion that I need not
wonder.  All with the exception perhaps of two, a painter and a Jew
looked such good citizens.  I became gradually sure that they were
not troubled with the lap and wash of speculation; unclogged by any
devastating sense of unity; pure of doubt, and undefiled by an uneasy
conscience.

But now they began to bring us in the evidence.  They brought it
quickly.  And at first we looked at it, whatever it was, with a sort
of solemn excitement.  Were we not arbiters of men's fates, purifiers
of Society, more important by far than Judge or Common Jury?  For if
we did not bring in a true bill there was an end; the accused would
be discharged.

We set to work, slowly at first, then faster and still faster,
bringing in true bills; and after every one making a mark in our
lists so that we might know where we were.  We brought in true bills
for burglary, and false pretences, larceny, and fraud; we brought
them in for manslaughter, rape, and arson.  When we had ten or so,
two of us would get up and bear them away down to the Court below and
lay them before the Judge.  "Thank you, gentlemen!" he would say, or
words to that effect; and we would go up again, and go on bringing in
true bills.  I noticed that at the evidence of each fresh bill we
looked with a little less excitement, and a little less solemnity,
making every time a shorter tick and a shorter note in the margin of
our lists.  All the bills we had--fifty-seven--we brought in true.
And the morning and the afternoon made that day, till we rested and
went to our homes.

Next day we were all back in our places at the appointed hour, and,
not greeting each other much, at once began to bring in bills.  We
brought them in, not quite so fast, as though some lurking megrim,
some microbe of dissatisfaction with ourselves was at work within us.
It was as if we wanted to throw one out, as if we felt our work too
perfect.  And presently it came.  A case of defrauding one Sophie
Liebermann, or Laubermann, or some such foreign name, by giving her
one of those five-pound Christmas-card banknotes just then in
fashion, and receiving from her, as she alleged, three real
sovereigns change.  There was a certain piquancy about the matter,
and I well remember noticing how we sat a little forward and turned
in our seats when they brought in the prosecutrix to give evidence.
Pale, self-possessed, dressed in black, and rather comely, neither
brazen nor furtive, speaking but poor English, her broad, matter-of-
fact face, with its wide-set grey eyes and thickish nose and lips,
made on me, I recollect, an impression of rather stupid honesty.  I
do not think they had told us in so many words what her calling was,
nor do I remember whether she actually disclosed it, but by our
demeanour I could tell that we had all realized what was the nature
of the service rendered to the accused, in return for which he had
given her this worthless note.  In her rather guttural but pleasant
voice she answered all our questions--not very far from tears, I
think, but saved by native stolidity, and perhaps a little by the
fear that purifiers of Society might not be the proper audience for
emotion.  When she had left us we recalled the detective, and still,
as it were, touching the delicate matter with the tips of our
tongues, so as not, being men of the world, to seem biassed against
anything, we definitely elicited from him her profession and these
words: "If she's speaking the truth, gentlemen; but, as you know,
these women, they don't always, specially the foreign ones!"  When
he, too, had gone, we looked at each other in unwonted silence.  None
of us quite liked, it seemed, to be first to speak.  Then our foreman
said: "There's no doubt, I think, that he gave her the note--mean
trick, of course, but we can't have him on that alone--bit too
irregular--no consideration in law, I take it."

He smiled a little at our smiles, and then went on: "The question,
gentlemen, really seems to be, are we to take her word that she
actually gave him change?"  Again, for quite half a minute; we were
silent, and then, the fattest one of us said, suddenly: "Very
dangerous--goin' on the word of these women."

And at once, as if he had released something in our souls, we all
(save two or three) broke out.  It wouldn't do!  It wasn't safe!
Seeing what these women were!  It was exactly as if, without word
said, we had each been swearing the other to some secret compact to
protect Society.  As if we had been whispering to each other
something like this: "These women--of course, we need them, but for
all that we can't possibly recognise them as within the Law; we can't
do that without endangering the safety of every one of us.  In this
matter we are trustees for all men--indeed, even for ourselves, for
who knows at what moment we might not ourselves require their
services, and it would be exceedingly awkward if their word were
considered the equal of our own!"  Not one of us, certainly said
anything so crude as this; none the less did many of us feel it.
Then the foreman, looking slowly round the table, said: "Well,
gentlemen, I think we are all agreed to throw out this bill"; and
all, except the painter, the Jew, and one other, murmured: "Yes."
And, as though, in throwing out this bill we had cast some trouble
off our minds, we went on with the greater speed, bringing in true
bills.  About two o'clock we finished, and trooped down to the Court
to be released.  On the stairway the Jew came close, and, having
examined me a little sharply with his velvety slits of eyes, as if to
see that he was not making a mistake, said: "Ith fonny--we bring in
eighty thix bills true, and one we throw out, and the one we throw
out we know it to be true, and the dirtieth job of the whole lot.
Ith fonny!"  "Yes," I answered him, "our sense of respectability does
seem excessive."  But just then we reached the Court, where, in his
red robe and grey wig, with his clear-cut, handsome face, the judge
seemed to shine and radiate, like sun through gloom.  "I thank you,
gentlemen," he said, in a voice courteous and a little mocking, as
though he had somewhere seen us before: "I thank you for the way in
which you have performed your duties.  I have not the pleasure of
assigning to you anything for your services except the privilege of
going over a prison, where you will be able to see what sort of
existence awaits many of those to whose cases you have devoted so
much of your valuable time.  You are released, gentlemen."

Looking at each, other a little hurriedly, and not taking too much
farewell, for fear of having to meet again, we separated.

I was, then, free--free of the injunction of that piece of paper
reposing in my pocket.  Yet its influence was still upon me.  I did
not hurry away, but lingered in the courts, fascinated by the notion
that the fate of each prisoner had first passed through my hands.  At
last I made an effort, and went out into the corridor.  There I
passed a woman whose figure seemed familiar.  She was sitting with
her hands in her lap looking straight before her, pale-faced and not
uncomely, with thickish mouth and nose--the woman whose bill we had
thrown out.  Why was she sitting there?  Had she not then realised
that we had quashed her claim; or was she, like myself, kept here by
mere attraction of the Law?  Following I know not what impulse, I
said: "Your case was dismissed, wasn't it?"  She looked up at me
stolidly, and a tear, which had evidently been long gathering,
dropped at the movement.  "I do nod know; I waid to see," she said in
her thick voice; "I tink there has been mistake."  My face, no doubt,
betrayed something of my sentiments about her case, for the thick
tears began rolling fast down her pasty cheeks, and her pent-up
feeling suddenly flowed forth in words: "I work 'ard; Gott! how I
work hard!  And there gomes dis liddle beastly man, and rob me.  And
they say: 'Ah! yes; but you are a bad woman, we don' trust you--you
speak lie.'  But I speak druth, I am nod a bad woman--I gome from
Hamburg."  "Yes, yes," I murmured; "yes, yes."  "I do not know this
country well, sir.  I speak bad English.  Is that why they do not
drust my word?"  She was silent for a moment, searching my face, then
broke out again: "It is all 'ard work in my profession, I make very
liddle, I cannot afford to be rob.  Without the men I cannod make my
living, I must drust them--and they rob me like this, it is too
'ard."  And the slow tears rolled faster and faster from her eyes on
to her hands and her black lap.  Then quietly, and looking for a
moment singularly like a big, unhappy child, she asked: "Will you
blease dell me, sir, why they will not give me the law of that dirty
little man?"

I knew--and too well; but I could not tell her.

"You see," I said, "it's just a case of your word against his."  "Oh!
no; but," she said eagerly, "he give me the note--I would not have
taken it if I 'ad not thought it good, would I?  That is sure, isn't
it?  But five pounds it is not my price.  It must that I give 'im
change!  Those gentlemen that heard my case, they are men of
business, they must know that it is not my price.  If I could tell
the judge--I think he is a man of business too he would know that
too, for sure.  I am not so young.  I am not so veree beautiful as
all that; he must see, mustn't he, sir?"

At my wits' end how to answer that most strange question, I stammered
out: "But, you know, your profession is outside the law."

At that a slow anger dyed her face.  She looked down; then, suddenly
lifting one of her dirty, ungloved hands, she laid it on her breast
with the gesture of one baring to me the truth in her heart.  "I am
not a bad woman," she said: "Dat beastly little man, he do the same
as me--I am free-woman, I am not a slave bound to do the same to-
morrow night, no more than he.  Such like him make me what I am; he
have all the pleasure, I have all the work.  He give me noding--he
rob my poor money, and he make me seem to strangers a bad woman.  Oh,
dear!  I am not happy!"

The impulse I had been having to press on her the money, died within
me; I felt suddenly it would be another insult.  From the movement of
her fingers about her heart I could not but see that this grief of
hers was not about the money.  It was the inarticulate outburst of a
bitter sense of deep injustice; of all the dumb wondering at her own
fate that went about with her behind that broad stolid face and
bosom.  This loss of the money was but a symbol of the furtive,
hopeless insecurity she lived with day and night, now forced into the
light, for herself and all the world to see.  She felt it suddenly a
bitter, unfair thing.  This beastly little man did not share her
insecurity.  None of us shared it--none of us, who had brought her
down to this.  And, quite unable to explain to her how natural and
proper it all was, I only murmured: "I am sorry, awfully sorry," and
fled away.



PANEL II

It was just a week later when, having for passport my Grand Jury
summons, I presented myself at that prison where we had the privilege
of seeing the existence to which we had assisted so many of the
eighty-six.

"I'm afraid," I said to the guardian of the gate, "that I am rather
late in availing myself--the others, no doubt----?"

"Not at all, sir," he said, smiling.  "You're the first, and if
you'll excuse me, I think you'll be the last.  Will you wait in here
while I send for the chief warder to take you over?"

He showed me then to what he called the Warder's Library--an iron-
barred room, more bare and brown than any I had seen since I left
school.  While I stood there waiting and staring out into the prison
court-yard, there came, rolling and rumbling in, a Black Maria.  It
drew up with a clatter, and I saw through the barred door the single
prisoner--a young girl of perhaps eighteen--dressed in rusty black.
She was resting her forehead against a bar and looking out, her
quick, narrow dark eyes taking in her new surroundings with a sort of
sharp, restless indifference; and her pale, thin-upped, oval face
quite expressionless.  Behind those bars she seemed to me for all the
world like a little animal of the cat tribe being brought in to her
Zoo.  Me she did not see, but if she had I felt she would not shrink-
-only give me the same sharp, indifferent look she was giving all
else.  The policeman on the step behind had disappeared at once, and
the driver now got down from his perch and, coming round, began to
gossip with her.  I saw her slink her eyes and smile at him, and he
smiled back; a large man; not unkindly.  Then he returned to his
horses, and she stayed as before, with her forehead against the bars,
just staring out.  Watching her like that, unseen, I seemed to be
able to see right through that tight-lipped, lynx-eyed mask.  I
seemed to know that little creature through and through, as one knows
anything that one surprises off its guard, sunk in its most private
moods.  I seemed to see her little restless, furtive, utterly unmoral
soul, so stripped of all defence, as if she had taken it from her
heart and handed it out to me.  I saw that she was one of those whose
hands slip as indifferently into others' pockets as into their own;
incapable of fidelity, and incapable of trusting; quick as cats, and
as devoid of application; ready to scratch, ready to purr, ready to
scratch again; quick to change, and secretly as unchangeable as a
little pebble.  And I thought: "Here we are, taking her to the Zoo
(by no means for the first time, if demeanour be any guide), and we
shall put her in a cage, and make her sew, and give her good books
which she will not read; and she will sew, and walk up and down,
until we let her out; then she will return to her old haunts, and at
once go prowling and do exactly the same again, what ever it was,
until we catch her and lock her up once more.  And in this way we
shall goon purifying Society until she dies.  And I thought: If
indeed she had been created cat in body as well as in soul, we should
not have treated her thus, but should have said: 'Go on, little cat,
you scratch us sometimes, you steal often, you are as sensual as the
night.  All this we cannot help.  It is your nature.  So were you
made--we know you cannot change--you amuse us!  Go on, little cat!'
Would it not then be better, and less savoury of humbug if we said
the same to her whose cat-soul has chanced into this human shape?
For assuredly she will but pilfer, and scratch a little, and be
mildly vicious, in her little life, and do no desperate harm, having
but poor capacity for evil behind that petty, thin-upped mask.  What
is the good of all this padlock business for such as she; are we not
making mountains out of her mole hills?  Where is our sense of
proportion, and our sense of humour?  Why try to alter the make and
shape of Nature with our petty chisels?  Or, if we must take care of
her, to save ourselves, in the name of Heaven let us do it in a
better way than this!  And suddenly I remembered that I was a Grand
Juryman, a purifier of Society, who had brought her bill in true;
and, that I might not think these thoughts unworthy of a good
citizen, I turned my eyes away from her and took up my list of
indictments.  Yes, there she was, at least so I decided: Number 42,
"Pilson, Jenny: Larceny, pocket-picking.  "And I turned my memory
back to the evidence about her case, but I could not remember a
single word.  In the margin I had noted: "Incorrigible from a child
up; bad surroundings.  And a mad impulse came over me to go back to
my window and call through the bars to her: "Jenny Pilson!  Jenny
Pilson!  It was I who bred you and surrounded you with evil!  It was
I who caught you for being what I made you!  I brought your bill in
true!  I judged you, and I caged you!  Jenny Pilson!  Jenny Pilson!"
But just as I reached the window, the door of my waiting-room was
fortunately opened, and a voice said: "Now, sir; at your service!"...

I sat again in that scoop of the shore by the long rolling seas,
burying in the sand the piece of paper which had summoned me away to
my Grand Jury; and the same thoughts came to me with the breaking of
the waves that had come to me before: How, in every wave was a
particle that had known the shore of every land; and in each sparkle
of the hot sunlight stealing up that bright water into the sky, the
microcosm of all change and of all unity!

1912.








GONE

Not possible to conceive of rarer beauty than that which clung about
the summer day three years ago when first we had the news of the poor
Herds.  Loveliness was a net of golden filaments in which the world
was caught.  It was gravity itself, so tranquil; and it was a sort of
intoxicating laughter.  From the top field that we crossed to go down
to their cottage, all the far sweep of those outstretched wings of
beauty could be seen.  Very wonderful was the poise of the sacred
bird, that moved nowhere but in our hearts.  The lime-tree scent was
just stealing out into air for some days already bereft of the scent
of hay; and the sun was falling to his evening home behind our pines
and beeches.  It was no more than radiant warm.  And, as we went, we
wondered why we had not been told before that Mrs. Herd was so very
ill.  It was foolish to wonder--these people do not speak of
suffering till it is late.  To speak, when it means what this meant
loss of wife and mother--was to flatter reality too much.  To be
healthy, or--die!  That is their creed.  To go on till they drop--
then very soon pass away!  What room for states between--on their
poor wage, in their poor cottages?

We crossed the mill-stream in the hollow--to their white, thatched
dwelling; silent, already awed, almost resentful of this so-varying
Scheme of Things.  At the gateway Herd himself was standing, just in
from his work.  For work in the country does not wait on illness--
even death claims from its onlookers but a few hours, birth none at
all, and it is as well; for what must be must, and in work alone man
rests from grief.  Sorrow and anxiety had made strange alteration
already in Herd's face.  Through every crevice of the rough, stolid
mask the spirit was peeping, a sort of quivering suppliant, that
seemed to ask all the time: "Is it true?"  A regular cottager's
figure, this of Herd's--a labourer of these parts--strong, slow, but
active, with just a touch of the untamed somewhere, about the swing
and carriage of him, about the strong jaw, and wide thick-lipped
mouth; just that something independent, which, in great variety,
clings to the natives of these still remote, half-pagan valleys by
the moor.

We all moved silently to the lee of the outer wall, so that our
voices might not carry up to the sick woman lying there under the
eaves, almost within hand reach.  "Yes, sir."  "No, sir."  "Yes,
ma'am."  This, and the constant, unforgettable supplication of his
eyes, was all that came from him; yet he seemed loath to let us go,
as though he thought we had some mysterious power to help him--the
magic, perhaps, of money, to those who have none.  Grateful at our
promise of another doctor, a specialist, he yet seemed with his eyes
to say that he knew that such were only embroideries of Fate.  And
when we had wrung his hand and gone, we heard him coming after us:
His wife had said she would like to see us, please.  Would we come
up?

An old woman and Mrs. Herd's sister were in the sitting-room; they
showed us to the crazy, narrow stairway.  Though we lived distant but
four hundred yards of a crow's flight, we had never seen Mrs. Herd
before, for that is the way of things in this land of minding one's
own business--a slight, dark, girlish-looking woman, almost quite
refined away, and with those eyes of the dying, where the spirit is
coming through, as it only does when it knows that all is over except
just the passing.  She lay in a double bed, with clean white sheets.
A white-washed room, so low that the ceiling almost touched our
heads, some flowers in a bowl, the small lattice window open.  Though
it was hot in there, it was better far than the rooms of most
families in towns, living on a wage of twice as much; for here was no
sign of defeat in decency or cleanliness.  In her face, as in poor
Herd's, was that same strange mingling of resigned despair and almost
eager appeal, so terrible to disappoint.  Yet, trying not to
disappoint it, one felt guilty of treachery: What was the good, the
kindness, in making this poor bird flutter still with hope against
the bars, when fast prison had so surely closed in round her?  But
what else could we do?  We could not give her those glib assurances
that naive souls make so easily to others concerning their after
state.

Secretly, I think, we knew that her philosophy of calm reality, that
queer and unbidden growing tranquillity which precedes death, was
nearer to our own belief, than would be any gilt-edged orthodoxy; but
nevertheless (such is the strength of what is expected), we felt it
dreadful that we could not console her with the ordinary
presumptions.

"You mustn't give up hope," we kept on saying: "The new doctor will
do a lot for you; he's a specialist--a very clever man."

And she kept on answering: "Yes, sir."  "Yes, ma'am."  But still her
eyes went on asking, as if there were something else she wanted.  And
then to one of us came an inspiration:

"You mustn't let your husband worry about expense.  That will be all
right."

She smiled then, as if the chief cloud on her soul had been the
thought of the arrears her illness and death would leave weighing on
him with whom she had shared this bed ten years and more.  And with
that smile warming the memory of those spirit-haunted eyes, we crept
down-stairs again, and out into the fields.

It was more beautiful than ever, just touched already with evening
mystery--it was better than ever to be alive.  And the immortal
wonder that has haunted man since first he became man, and haunts,
I think, even the animals--the unanswerable question,--why joy and
beauty must ever be walking hand in hand with ugliness and pain
haunted us across those fields of life and loveliness.  It was all
right, no doubt, even reasonable, since without dark there is no
light.  It was part of that unending sum whose answer is not given;
the merest little swing of the great pendulum!  And yet----!
To accept this violent contrast without a sigh of revolt, without a
question!  No sirs, it was not so jolly as all that!  That she should
be dying there at thirty, of a creeping malady which she might have
checked, perhaps, if she had not had too many things to do for the
children and husband, to do anything for herself--if she had not been
forced to hold the creed: Be healthy, or die!  This was no doubt
perfectly explicable and in accordance with the Supreme Equation; yet
we, enjoying life, and health, and ease of money, felt horror and
revolt on, this evening of such beauty.  Nor at the moment did we
derive great comfort from the thought that life slips in and out of
sheath, like sun-sparks on water, and that of all the cloud of summer
midges dancing in the last gleam, not one would be alive to-morrow.

It was three evenings later that we heard uncertain footfalls on the
flagstones of the verandah, then a sort of brushing sound against the
wood of the long, open window.  Drawing aside the curtain, one of us
looked out.  Herd was standing there in the bright moonlight,
bareheaded, with roughened hair.  He came in, and seeming not to know
quite where he went, took stand by the hearth, and putting up his
dark hand, gripped the mantelshelf.  Then, as if recollecting
himself, he said: "Gude evenin', sir; beg pardon, M'm."  No more for
a full minute; but his hand, taking some little china thing, turned
it over and over without ceasing, and down his broken face tears ran.
Then, very suddenly, he said: "She's gone.  "And his hand turned over
and over that little china thing, and the tears went on rolling down.
Then, stumbling, and swaying like a man in drink, he made his way out
again into the moonlight.  We watched him across the lawn and path,
and through the gate, till his footfalls died out there in the field,
and his figure was lost in the black shadow of the holly hedge.

And the night was so beautiful, so utterly, glamourously beautiful,
with its star-flowers, and its silence, and its trees clothed in
moonlight.  All was tranquil as a dream of sleep.  But it was long
before our hearts, wandering with poor Herd, would let us remember
that she had slipped away into so beautiful a dream.

The dead do not suffer from their rest in beauty.  But the living---!

1911.








THRESHING

When the drone of the thresher breaks through the autumn sighing of
trees and wind, or through that stillness of the first frost, I get
restless and more restless, till, throwing down my pen, I have gone
out to see.  For there is nothing like the sight of threshing for
making one feel good--not in the sense of comfort, but at heart.
There, under the pines and the already leafless elms and beech-trees,
close to the great stacks, is the big, busy creature, with its small
black puffing engine astern; and there, all around it, is that
conglomeration of unsentimental labour which invests all the crises
of farm work with such fascination.  The crew of the farm is only
five all told, but to-day they are fifteen, and none strangers, save
the owners of the travelling thresher.

They are working without respite and with little speech, not at all
as if they had been brought together for the benefit of some one
else's corn, but as though they, one and all, had a private grudge
against Time and a personal pleasure in finishing this job, which,
while it lasts, is bringing them extra pay and most excellent free
feeding.  Just as after a dilatory voyage a crew will brace
themselves for the run in, recording with sudden energy their
consciousness of triumph over the elements, so on a farm the harvests
of hay and corn, sheep-shearing, and threshing will bring out in all
a common sentiment, a kind of sporting energy, a defiant spurt, as it
were, to score off Nature; for it is only a philosopher here and
there among them, I think, who sees that Nature is eager to be scored
off in this fashion, being anxious that some one should eat her
kindly fruits.

With ceremonial as grave as that which is at work within the thresher
itself, the tasks have been divided.  At the root of all things,
pitchforking from the stack, stands--the farmer, moustached, and
always upright was he not in the Yeomanry?--dignified in a hard black
hat, no waistcoat, and his working coat so ragged that it would never
cling to him but for pure affection.  Between him and the body of the
machine are five more pitch forks, directing the pale flood of raw
material.  There, amongst them, is poor Herd, still so sad from his
summer loss, plodding doggedly away.  To watch him even now makes one
feel how terrible is that dumb grief which has never learned to moan.
And there is George Yeoford, almost too sober; and Murdon plying his
pitchfork with a supernatural regularity that cannot quite dim his
queer brigand's face of dark, soft gloom shot with sudden humours,
his soft, dark corduroys and battered hat.  Occasionally he stops,
and taking off that hat, wipes his corrugated brow under black hair,
and seems to brood over his own regularity.

Down here, too, where I stand, each separate function of the thresher
has its appointed slave.  Here Cedric rakes the chaff pouring from
the side down into the chaff-shed.  Carting the straw that streams
from the thresher bows, are Michelmore and Neck--the little man who
cannot read, but can milk and whistle the hearts out of his cows till
they follow him like dogs.  At the thresher's stern is Morris, the
driver, selected because of that utter reliability which radiates
from his broad, handsome face.  His part is to attend the sacking of
the three kinds of grain for ever sieving out.  He murmurs: "Busy
work, sir!" and opens a little door to show me how "the machinery
does it all," holding a sack between his knees and some string in his
white teeth.  Then away goes the sack--four bushels, one hundred and
sixty pounds of "genuines, seconds, or seed"--wheeled by Cedric on a
little trolley thing, to where George-the-Gaul or Jim-the-Early-Saxon
is waiting to bear it on his back up the stone steps into the corn-
chamber.

It has been raining in the night; the ground is a churn of straw and
mud, and the trees still drip; but now there is sunlight, a sweet
air, and clear sky, wine-coloured through the red, naked, beechtwigs
tipped with white untimely buds.  Nothing can be more lovely than
this late autumn day, so still, save for the droning of the thresher
and the constant tinny chuckle of the grey, thin-headed Guinea-fowl,
driven by this business away from their usual haunts.

And soon the, feeling that I knew would come begins creeping over me,
the sense of an extraordinary sanity in this never-ceasing harmonious
labour pursued in the autumn air faintly perfumed with wood-smoke,
with the scent of chaff, and whiffs from that black puffing-Billy;
the sense that there is nothing between this clean toil--not too hard
but hard enough--and the clean consumption of its clean results; the
sense that nobody except myself is in the least conscious of how sane
it all is.  The brains of these sane ones are all too busy with the
real affairs of life, the disposition of their wages, anticipation of
dinner, some girl, some junketing, some wager, the last rifle match,
and, more than all, with that pleasant rhythmic nothingness,
companion of the busy swing and play of muscles, which of all states
is secretly most akin to the deep unconsciousness of life itself.
Thus to work in the free air for the good of all and the hurt of
none, without worry or the breath of acrimony--surely no phase of
human life so nears the life of the truly civilised community--the
life of a hive of bees.  Not one of these working so sanely--unless
it be Morris, who will spend his Sunday afternoon on some high rock
just watching sunlight and shadow drifting on the moors--not one, I
think, is distraught by perception of his own sanity, by knowledge of
how near he is to Harmony, not even by appreciation of the still
radiance of this day, or its innumerable fine shades of colour.  It
is all work, and no moody consciousness--all work, and will end in
sleep.

I leave them soon, and make my way up the stone steps to the "corn
chamber," where tranquillity is crowned.  In the whitewashed room the
corn lies in drifts and ridges, three to four feet deep, all silvery-
dun, like some remote sand desert, lifeless beneath the moon.  Here
it lies, and into it, staggering under the sacks, George-the-Gaul and
Jim-the-Early Saxon tramp up to their knees, spill the sacks over
their heads, and out again; and above where their feet have plunged
the patient surface closes again, smooth.  And as I stand there in
the doorway, looking at that silvery corn drift, I think of the whole
process, from seed sown to the last sieving into this tranquil
resting-place.  I think of the slow, dogged ploughman, with the crows
above him on the wind; of the swing of the sower's arm, dark up
against grey sky on the steep field.  I think of the seed snug-
burrowing for safety, and its mysterious ferment under the warm
Spring rain, of the soft green shoots tapering up so shyly toward the
first sun, and hardening in air to thin wiry stalk.  I think of the
unnumerable tiny beasts that have jangled in that pale forest; of the
winged blue jewels of butterfly risen from it to hover on the wild-
rustling blades; of that continual music played there by the wind; of
the chicory and poppy flowers that have been its lights-o' love, as
it grew tawny and full of life, before the appointed date when it
should return to its captivity.  I think of that slow-travelling hum
and swish which laid it low, of the gathering to stack, and the long
waiting under the rustle and drip of the sheltering trees, until
yesterday the hoot of the thresher blew, and there began the falling
into this dun silvery peace.  Here it will lie with the pale sun
narrowly filtering in on it, and by night the pale moon, till slowly,
week by week, it is stolen away, and its ridges and drifts sink and
sink, and the beasts have eaten it all....

When the dusk is falling, I go out to them again.  They have nearly
finished now; the chaff in the chaff-shed is mounting hillock-high;
only the little barley stack remains unthreshed.  Mrs.  George-the-
Gaul is standing with a jug to give drink to the tired ones.  Some
stars are already netted in the branches of the pines; the Guinea-
fowl are silent.  But still the harmonious thresher hums and showers
from three sides the straw, the chaff, the corn; and the men fork,
and rake, and cart, and carry, sleep growing in their muscles,
silence on their tongues, and the tranquillity of the long day nearly
ended in their souls.  They will go on till it is quite dark.

1911.








THAT OLD-TIME PLACE

"Yes, suh--here we are at that old-time place!  "And our dark driver
drew up his little victoria gently.

Through the open doorway, into a dim, cavernous, ruined house of New
Orleans we passed.  The mildew and dirt, the dark denuded dankness of
that old hostel, rotting down with damp and time!

And our guide, the tall, thin, grey-haired dame, who came forward
with such native ease and moved before us, touching this fungused
wall, that rusting stairway, and telling, as it were, no one in her
soft, slow speech, things that any one could see--what a strange and
fitting figure!

Before the smell of the deserted, oozing rooms, before that old
creature leading us on and on, negligent of all our questions, and
talking to the air, as though we were not, we felt such discomfort
that we soon made to go out again into such freshness as there was on
that day of dismal heat.  Then realising, it seemed, that she was
losing us, our old guide turned; for the first time looking in our
faces, she smiled, and said in her sweet, weak voice, like the sound
from the strings of a spinet long unplayed on: "Don' you wahnd to see
the dome-room: an' all the other rooms right here, of this old-time
place?"

Again those words!  We had not the hearts to disappoint her.  And as
we followed on and on, along the mouldering corridors and rooms where
the black peeling papers hung like stalactites, the dominance of our
senses gradually dropped from us, and with our souls we saw its soul
--the soul of this old-time place; this mustering house of the old
South, bereft of all but ghosts and the grey pigeons niched in the
rotting gallery round a narrow courtyard open to the sky.

"This is the dome-room, suh and lady; right over the slave-market it
is.  Here they did the business of the State--sure; old-time heroes
up therein the roof--Washington, Hamilton, Jefferson, Davis, Lee-
there they are!  All gone--now!  Yes, suh!"

A fine--yea, even a splendid room, of great height, and carved
grandeur, with hand-wrought bronze sconces and a band of metal
bordering, all blackened with oblivion.  And the faces of those old
heroes encircling that domed ceiling were blackened too, and scarred
with damp, beyond recognition.  Here, beneath their gaze, men had
banqueted and danced and ruled.  The pride and might and vivid
strength of things still fluttered their uneasy flags of spirit,
moved disherited wings!  Those old-time feasts and grave discussions
--we seemed to see them printed on the thick air, imprisoned in this
great chamber built above their dark foundations.  The pride and the
might and the vivid strength of things--gone, all gone!

We became conscious again of that soft, weak voice.

"Not hearing very well, suh, I have it all printed, lady--beautifully
told here--yes, indeed!"

She was putting cards into our hands; then, impassive, maintaining
ever her impersonal chant, the guardian of past glory led us on.

"Now we shall see the slave-market--downstairs, underneath!  It's wet
for the lady the water comes in now yes, suh!"

On the crumbling black and white marble floorings the water indeed
was trickling into pools.  And down in the halls there came to us
wandering--strangest thing that ever strayed through deserted
grandeur--a brown, broken horse, lean, with a sore flank and a head
of tremendous age.  It stopped and gazed at us, as though we might be
going to give it things to eat, then passed on, stumbling over the
ruined marbles.  For a moment we had thought him ghost--one of the
many.  But he was not, since his hoofs sounded.  The scrambling
clatter of them had died out into silence before we came to that
dark, crypt-like chamber whose marble columns were ringed in iron,
veritable pillars of foundation.  And then we saw that our old
guide's hands were full of newspapers.  She struck a match; they
caught fire and blazed.  Holding high that torch, she said: "See!  Up
there's his name, above where he stood.  The auctioneer.  Oh yes,
indeed!  Here's where they sold them!"

Below that name, decaying on the wall, we had the slow, uncanny
feeling of some one standing there in the gleam and flicker from that
paper torch.  For a moment the whole shadowy room seemed full of
forms and faces.  Then the torch lied out, and our old guide,
pointing through an archway with the blackened stump of it, said:

"'Twas here they kept them indeed, yes!"

We saw before us a sort of vault, stone-built, and low, and long.
The light there was too dim for us to make out anything but walls and
heaps of rusting scrap-iron cast away there and mouldering own.  But
trying to pierce that darkness we became conscious, as it seemed, of
innumerable eyes gazing, not at us, but through the archway where we
stood; innumerable white eyeballs gleaming out of blackness.  From
behind us came a little laugh.  It floated past through the archway,
toward those eyes.  Who was that?  Who laughed in there?  The old
South itself--that incredible, fine, lost soul!  That "old-time"
thing of old ideals, blindfolded by its own history!  That queer
proud blend of simple chivalry and tyranny, of piety and the
abhorrent thing!  Who was it laughed there in the old slave-market--
laughed at these white eyeballs glaring from out of the blackness of
their dark cattle-pen?  What poor departed soul in this House of
Melancholy?  But there was no ghost when we turned to look--only our
old guide with her sweet smile.

"Yes, suh.  Here they all came--'twas the finest hotel--before the
war-time; old Southern families--buyin' an' sellin' their property.
Yes, ma'am, very interesting!  This way!  And here were the bells to
all the rooms.  Broken, you see--all broken!"

And rather quickly we passed away, out of that "old-time place";
where something had laughed, and the drip, drip, drip of water down
the walls was as the sound of a spirit grieving.

1912.








ROMANCE--THREE GLEAMS


On that New Year's morning when I drew up the blind it was still
nearly dark, but for the faintest pink flush glancing out there on
the horizon of black water.  The far shore of the river's mouth was
just soft dusk; and the dim trees below me were in perfect stillness.
There was no lap of water.  And then--I saw her, drifting in on the
tide-the little ship, passaging below me, a happy ghost.  Like no
thing of this world she came, ending her flight, with sail-wings
closing and her glowing lantern eyes.  There was I know not what of
stealthy joy about her thus creeping in to the unexpecting land.  And
I wished she would never pass,  but go on gliding by down there for
ever with her dark ropes, and her bright lanterns, and her mysterious
felicity, so that I might have for ever in my heart the blessed
feeling she brought me, coming like this out of that great mystery
the sea.  If only she need not change to solidity, but ever be this
visitor from the unknown, this sacred bird, telling with her half-
seen, trailing-down plume--sails the story of uncharted wonder.  If
only I might go on trembling, as I was, with the rapture of all I did
not know and could not see, yet felt pressing against me and touching
my face with its lips!  To think of her at anchor in cold light was
like flinging-to a door in the face of happiness.  And just then she
struck her bell; the faint silvery far-down sound fled away before
her, and to every side, out into the utter hush, to discover echo.
But nothing answered, as if fearing to break the spell of her coming,
to brush with reality the dark sea dew from her sail-wings.  But
within me, in response, there began the song of all unknown things;
the song so tenuous, so ecstatic, that seems to sweep and quiver
across such thin golden strings, and like an eager dream dies too
soon.  The song of the secret-knowing wind that has peered through so
great forests and over such wild sea; blown on so many faces, and in
the jungles of the grass the song of all that the wind has seen and
felt.  The song of lives that I should never live; of the loves that
I should never love singlng to me as though I should!  And suddenly I
felt that I could not bear my little ship of dreams to grow hard and
grey, her bright lanterns drowned in the cold light, her dark ropes
spidery and taut, her sea-wan sails all furled, and she no more en
chanted; and turning away I let fall the curtain.


II

Then what happens to the moon?  She, who, shy and veiled, slips out
before dusk to take the air of heaven, wandering timidly among the
columned clouds, and fugitive from the staring of the sun; she, who,
when dusk has come, rules the sentient night with such chaste and icy
spell--whither and how does she retreat?

I came on her one morning--I surprised her.  She was stealing into a
dark wintry wood, and five little stars were chasing her.  She was
orange-hooded, a light-o'-love dismissed--unashamed and unfatigued,
having taken--all.  And she was looking back with her almond eyes,
across her dark-ivory shoulder, at Night where he still lay drowned
in the sleep she had brought him.  What a strange, slow, mocking
look!  So might Aphrodite herself have looked back at some weary
lover, remembering the fire of his first embrace.  Insatiate, smiling
creature, slipping down to the rim of the world to her bath in the
sweet waters of dawn, whence emerging, pure as a water lily, she
would float in the cool sky till evening came again!  And just then
she saw me looking, and hid behind a holm-oak tree; but I could still
see the gleam of one shoulder and her long narrow eyes pursuing me.
I went up to the tree and parted its dark boughs to take her; but she
had slipped behind another.  I called to her to stand, if only for
one moment.  But she smiled and went slip ping on, and I ran
thrusting through the wet bushes, leaping the fallen trunks.  The
scent of rotting leaves disturbed by my feet leaped out into the
darkness, and birds, surprised, fluttered away.  And still I ran--she
slipping ever further into the grove, and ever looking back at me.
And I thought: But I will catch you yet, you nymph of perdition!  The
wood will soon be passed, you will have no cover then!  And from her
eyes, and the scanty gleam of her flying limbs, I never looked away,
not even when I stumbled or ran against tree trunks in my blind
haste.  And at every clearing I flew more furiously, thinking to
seize all of her with my gaze before she could cross the glade; but
ever she found some little low tree, some bush of birch ungrown, or
the far top branches of the next grove to screen her flying body and
preserve allurement.  And all the time she was dipping, dipping to
the rim of the world.  And then I tripped; but, as I rose, I saw that
she had lingered for me; her long sliding eyes were full, it seemed
to me, of pity, as if she would have liked for me to have enjoyed the
sight of her.  I stood still, breathless, thinking that at last she
would consent; but flinging back, up into the air, one dark-ivory
arm, she sighed and vanished.  And the breath of her sigh stirred all
the birch-tree twigs just coloured with the dawn.  Long I stood in
that thicket gazing at the spot where she had leapt from me over the
edge of the world-my heart quivering.


III

We embarked on the estuary steamer that winter morning just as
daylight came full.  The sun was on the wing scattering little white
clouds, as an eagle might scatter doves.  They scurried up before him
with their broken feathers tipped and tinged with gold.  In the air
was a touch of frost, and a smoky mist-drift clung here and there
above the reeds, blurring the shores of the lagoon so that we seemed
to be steaming across boundless water, till some clump of trees would
fling its top out of the fog, then fall back into whiteness.

And then, in that thick vapour, rounding I suppose some curve, we
came suddenly into we knew not what--all white and moving it was, as
if the mist were crazed; murmuring, too, with a sort of restless
beating.  We seemed to be passing through a ghost--the ghost of all
the life that had sprung from this water and its, shores; we seemed
to have left reality, to be travelling through live wonder.

And the fantastic thought sprang into my mind: I have died.  This is
the voyage of my soul in the wild.  I am in the final wilderness of
spirits--lost in the ghost robe that wraps the earth.  There seemed
in all this white murmuration to be millions of tiny hands stretching
out to me, millions of whispering voices, of wistful eyes.  I had no
fear, but a curious baked eagerness, the strangest feeling of having
lost myself and become part of this around me; exactly as if my own
hands and voice and eyes had left me and were groping, and
whispering, and gazing out there in the eeriness.  I was no longer a
man on an estuary steamer, but part of sentient ghostliness.  Nor did
I feel unhappy; it seemed as though I had never been anything but
this Bedouin spirit wandering.

We passed through again into the stillness of plain mist, and all
those eerie sensations went, leaving nothing but curiosity to know
what this was that we had traversed.  Then suddenly the sun came
flaring out, and we saw behind us thousands and thousands of white
gulls dipping, wheeling, brushing the water with their wings,
bewitched with sun and mist.  That was all.  And yet that white-
winged legion through whom we had ploughed our way were not, could
never be, to me just gulls--there was more than mere sun-glamour
gilding their misty plumes; there was the wizardry of my past wonder,
the enchantment of romance.

1912.








MEMORIES

We set out to meet him at Waterloo Station on a dull day of February
--I, who had owned his impetuous mother, knowing a little what to
expect, while to my companion he would be all original.  We stood
there waiting (for the Salisbury train was late), and wondering with
a warm, half-fearful eagerness what sort of new thread Life was going
to twine into our skein.  I think our chief dread was that he might
have light eyes--those yellow Chinese eyes of the common, parti-
coloured spaniel.  And each new minute of the train's tardiness
increased our anxious compassion: His first journey; his first
separation from his mother; this black two-months' baby!  Then the
train ran in, and we hastened to look for him.  "Have you a dog for
us?"

"A dog!  Not in this van.  Ask the rearguard."

"Have you a dog for us?"

"That's right.  From Salisbury.  Here's your wild beast, Sir!"

>From behind a wooden crate we saw a long black muzzled nose poking
round at us, and heard a faint hoarse whimpering.

I remember my first thought:

"Isn't his nose too long?"

But to my companion's heart it went at once, because it was swollen
from crying and being pressed against things that he could not see
through.  We took him out--soft, wobbly, tearful; set him down on his
four, as yet not quite simultaneous legs, and regarded him.  Or,
rather, my companion did, having her head on one side, and a
quavering smile; and I regarded her, knowing that I should thereby
get a truer impression of him.

He wandered a little round our legs, neither wagging his tail nor
licking at our hands; then he looked up, and my companion said: "He's
an angel!"

I was not so certain.  He seemed hammer-headed, with no eyes at all,
and little connection between his head, his body, and his legs.  His
ears were very long, as long as his poor nose; and gleaming down in
the blackness of him I could see the same white star that disgraced
his mother's chest.

Picking him up, we carried him to a four-wheeled cab, and took his
muzzle off.  His little dark-brown eyes were resolutely fixed on
distance, and by his refusal to even smell the biscuits we had.
brought to make him happy, we knew that the human being had not yet
come into a life that had contained so far only a mother, a wood-
shed, and four other soft, wobbly, black, hammer-headed angels,
smelling of themselves, and warmth, and wood shavings.  It was
pleasant to feel that to us he would surrender an untouched love,
that is, if he would surrender anything.  Suppose he did not take to
us!

And just then something must have stirred in him, for he turned up
his swollen nose and stared at my companion, and a little later
rubbed the dry pinkness of his tongue against my thumb.  In that
look, and that unconscious restless lick; he was trying hard to leave
unhappiness behind, trying hard to feel that these new creatures with
stroking paws and queer scents, were his mother; yet all the time he
knew, I am sure, that they were something bigger, more permanently,
desperately, his.  The first sense of being owned, perhaps (who
knows) of owning, had stirred in him.  He would never again be quite
the same unconscious creature.

A little way from the end of our journey we got out and dismissed the
cab.  He could not too soon know the scents and pavements of this
London where the chief of his life must pass.  I can see now his
first bumble down that wide, back-water of a street, how continually
and suddenly he sat down to make sure of his own legs, how
continually he lost our heels.  He showed us then in full perfection
what was afterwards to be an inconvenient--if endearing--
characteristic: At any call or whistle he would look in precisely the
opposite direction.  How many times all through his life have I not
seen him, at my whistle, start violently and turn his tail to me,
then, with nose thrown searchingly from side to side, begin to canter
toward the horizon.

In that first walk, we met, fortunately, but one vehicle, a brewer's
dray; he chose that moment to attend to the more serious affairs of
life, sitting quietly before the horses' feet and requiring to be
moved by hand.  From the beginning he had his dignity, and was
extremely difficult to lift, owing to the length of his middle
distance.

What strange feelings must have stirred in his little white soul when
he first smelled carpet!  But it was all so strange to him that day--
I doubt if he felt more than I did when I first travelled to my
private school, reading "Tales of a Grandfather," and plied with
tracts and sherry by my 'father's man of business.

That night, indeed, for several nights, he slept with me, keeping me
too warm down my back, and waking me now and then with quaint sleepy
whimperings.  Indeed, all through his life he flew a good deal in his
sleep, fighting dogs and seeing ghosts, running after rabbits and
thrown sticks; and to the last one never quite knew whether or no to
rouse him when his four black feet began to jerk and quiver.  His
dreams were like our dreams, both good and bad; happy sometimes,
sometimes tragic to weeping point.

He ceased to sleep with me the day we discovered that he was a
perfect little colony, whose settlers were of an active species which
I have never seen again.  After that he had many beds, for
circumstance ordained that his life should be nomadic, and it is to
this I trace that philosophic indifference to place or property,
which marked him out from most of his own kind.  He learned early
that for a black dog with long silky ears, a feathered tail, and head
of great dignity, there was no home whatsoever, away from those
creatures with special scents, who took liberties with his name, and
alone of all created things were privileged to smack him with a
slipper.  He would sleep anywhere, so long as it was in their room,
or so close outside it as to make no matter, for it was with him a
principle that what he did not smell did not exist.  I would I could
hear again those long rubber-lipped snufflings of recognition
underneath the door, with which each morning he would regale and
reassure a spirit that grew with age more and more nervous and
delicate about this matter of propinquity!  For he was a dog of fixed
ideas, things stamped on his mind were indelible; as, for example,
his duty toward cats, for whom he had really a perverse affection,
which had led to that first disastrous moment of his life, when he
was brought up, poor bewildered puppy, from a brief excursion to the
kitchen, with one eye closed and his cheek torn!  He bore to his
grave that jagged scratch across the eye.  It was in dread of a
repetition of this tragedy that he was instructed at the word "Cats"
to rush forward with a special "tow-row-rowing," which he never used
toward any other form of creature.  To the end he cherished a hope
that he would reach the cat; but never did; and if he had, we knew he
would only have stood and wagged his tail; but I well remember once,
when he returned, important, from some such sally, how dreadfully my
companion startled a cat-loving friend by murmuring in her most
honeyed voice: "Well, my darling, have you been killing pussies in
the garden?"

His eye and nose were impeccable in their sense of form; indeed, he
was very English in that matter: People must be just so; things smell
properly; and affairs go on in the one right way.  He could tolerate
neither creatures in ragged clothes, nor children on their hands and
knees, nor postmen, because, with their bags, they swelled-up on one
side, and carried lanterns on their stomachs.  He would never let the
harmless creatures pass without religious barks.  Naturally a
believer in authority and routine, and distrusting spiritual
adventure, he yet had curious fads that seemed to have nested in him,
quite outside of all principle.  He would, for instance, follow
neither carriages nor horses, and if we tried to make him, at once
left for home, where he would sit with nose raised to Heaven,
emitting through it a most lugubrious, shrill noise.  Then again, one
must not place a stick, a slipper, a glove, or anything with which he
could play, upon one's head--since such an action reduced him at once
to frenzy.  For so conservative a dog, his environment was sadly
anarchistic.  He never complained in words of our shifting habits,
but curled his head round over his left paw and pressed his chin very
hard against the ground whenever he smelled packing.  What necessity,
he seemed continually to be saying, what real necessity is there for
change of any kind whatever?  Here we were all together, and one day
was like another, so that I knew where I was--and now you only know
what will happen next; and I--I can't tell you whether I shall be
with you when it happens!  What strange, grieving minutes a dog
passes at such times in the underground of his subconsciousness,
refusing realisation, yet all the time only too well divining.  Some
careless word, some unmuted compassion in voice, the stealthy
wrapping of a pair of boots, the unaccustomed shutting of a door that
ought to be open, the removal from a down-stair room of an object
always there--one tiny thing, and he knows for certain that he is not
going too.  He fights against the knowledge just as we do against
what we cannot bear; he gives up hope, but not effort, protesting in
the only way he knows of, and now and then heaving a great sigh.
Those sighs of a dog!  They go to the heart so much more deeply than
the sighs of our own kind, because they are utterly unintended,
regardless of effect, emerging from one who, heaving them, knows not
that they have escaped him!

The words: "Yes--going too!" spoken in a certain tone, would call up
in his eyes a still-questioning half-happiness, and from his tail a
quiet flutter, but did not quite serve to put to rest either his
doubt or his feeling that it was all unnecessary--until the cab
arrived.  Then he would pour himself out of door or window, and be
found in the bottom of the vehicle, looking severely away from an
admiring cabman.  Once settled on our feet he travelled with
philosophy, but no digestion.

I think no dog was ever more indifferent to an outside world of human
creatures; yet few dogs have made more conquests--especially among
strange women, through whom, however, he had a habit of looking--very
discouraging.  He had, natheless, one or two particular friends, such
as him to whom this book is dedicated, and a few persons whom he knew
he had seen before, but, broadly speaking, there were in his world of
men, only his mistress, and--the almighty.

Each August, till he was six, he was sent for health, and the
assuagement of his hereditary instincts, up to a Scotch shooting,
where he carried many birds in a very tender manner.  Once he was
compelled by Fate to remain there nearly a year; and we went up
ourselves to fetch him home.  Down the long avenue toward the
keeper's cottage we walked: It was high autumn; there had been frost
already, for the ground was fine with red and yellow leaves; and
presently we saw himself coming; professionally questing among those
leaves, and preceding his dear keeper with the businesslike self-
containment of a sportsman; not too fat, glossy as a raven's wing,
swinging his ears and sporran like a little Highlander.  We
approached him silently.  Suddenly his nose went up from its imagined
trail, and he came rushing at our legs.  From him, as a garment drops
from a man, dropped all his strange soberness; he became in a single
instant one fluttering eagerness.  He leaped from life to life in one
bound, without hesitation, without regret.  Not one sigh, not one
look back, not the faintest token of gratitude or regret at leaving
those good people who had tended him for a whole year, buttered oat-
cake for him, allowed him to choose each night exactly where he would
sleep.  No, he just marched out beside us, as close as ever he could
get, drawing us on in spirit, and not even attending to the scents,
until the lodge gates were passed.

It was strictly in accordance with the perversity of things, and
something in the nature of calamity that he had not been ours one
year, when there came over me a dreadful but overmastering aversion
from killing those birds and creatures of which he was so fond as
soon as they were dead.  And so I never knew him as a sportsman; for
during that first year he was only an unbroken puppy, tied to my
waist for fear of accidents, and carefully pulling me off every shot.
They tell me he developed a lovely nose and perfect mouth, large
enough to hold gingerly the biggest hare.  I well believe it,
remembering the qualities of his mother, whose character, however, in
stability he far surpassed.  But, as he grew every year more devoted
to dead grouse and birds and rabbits, I liked them more and more
alive; it was the only real breach between us, and we kept it out of
sight.  Ah! well; it is consoling to reflect that I should infallibly
have ruined his sporting qualities, lacking that peculiar habit of
meaning what one says, so necessary to keep dogs virtuous.  But
surely to have had him with me, quivering and alert, with his solemn,
eager face, would have given a new joy to those crisp mornings when
the hope of wings coming to the gun makes poignant in the sports man
as nothing else will, an almost sensual love of Nature, a fierce
delight in the soft glow of leaves, in the white birch stems and
tracery of sparse twigs against blue sky, in the scents of sap and
grass and gum and heather flowers; stivers the hair of him with
keenness for interpreting each sound, and fills the very fern or moss
he kneels on, the very trunk he leans against, with strange
vibration.

Slowly Fate prepares for each of us the religion that lies coiled in
our most secret nerves; with such we cannot trifle, we do not even
try!  But how shall a man grudge any one sensations he has so keenly
felt?  Let such as have never known those curious delights, uphold
the hand of horror--for me there can be no such luxury.  If I could,
I would still perhaps be knowing them; but when once the joy of life
in those winged and furry things has knocked at the very portals of
one's spirit, the thought that by pressing a little iron twig one
will rive that joy out of their vitals, is too hard to bear.  Call it
aestheticism, squeamishness, namby-pamby sentimentalism, what you
will it is stronger than oneself!

Yes, after one had once watched with an eye that did not merely see,
the thirsty gaping of a slowly dying bird, or a rabbit dragging a
broken leg to a hole where he would lie for hours thinking of the
fern to which he should never more come forth--after that, there was
always the following little matter of arithmetic: Given, that all
those who had been shooting were "good-fair" shots--which, Heaven
knew, they never were--they yet missed one at least in four, and did
not miss it very much; so that if seventy-five things were slain,
there were also twenty-five that had been fired at, and, of those
twenty-five, twelve and a half had "gotten it" somewhere in their
bodies, and would "likely" die at their great leisure.

This was the sum that brought about the only cleavage in our lives;
and so, as he grew older, and trying to part from each other we no
longer could, he ceased going to Scotland.  But after that I often
felt, and especially when we heard guns, how the best and most secret
instincts of him were being stifled.  But what was to be done?  In
that which was left of a clay pigeon he would take not the faintest
interest--the scent of it was paltry.  Yet always, even in his most
cosseted and idle days, he managed to preserve the grave
preoccupation of one professionally concerned with retrieving things
that smell; and consoled himself with pastimes such as cricket, which
he played in a manner highly specialised, following the ball up the
moment it left the bowler's hand, and sometimes retrieving it before
it reached the batsman.  When remonstrated with, he would consider a
little, hanging out a pink tongue and looking rather too eagerly at
the ball, then canter slowly out to a sort of forward short leg.  Why
he always chose that particular position it is difficult to say;
possibly he could lurk there better than anywhere else, the batsman's
eye not being on him, and the bowler's not too much.  As a fieldsman
he was perfect, but for an occasional belief that he was not merely
short leg, but slip, point, midoff, and wicket-keep; and perhaps a
tendency to make the ball a little "jubey."  But he worked
tremendously, watching every movement; for he knew the game
thoroughly, and seldom delayed it more than three minutes when he
secured the ball.  And if that ball were really lost, then indeed he
took over the proceedings with an intensity and quiet vigour that
destroyed many shrubs, and the solemn satisfaction which comes from
being in the very centre of the stage.

But his most passionate delight was swimming in anything except the
sea, for which, with its unpleasant noise and habit of tasting salt,
he had little affection.  I see him now, cleaving the Serpentine,
with his air of "the world well lost," striving to reach my stick
before it had touched water.  Being only a large spaniel, too small
for mere heroism, he saved no lives in the water but his own--and
that, on one occasion, before our very eyes, from a dark trout
stream, which was trying to wash him down into a black hole among the
boulders.

The call of the wild-Spring running--whatever it is--that besets men
and dogs, seldom attained full mastery over him; but one could often
see it struggling against his devotion to the scent of us, and,
watching that dumb contest, I have time and again wondered how far
this civilisation of ours was justifiably imposed on him; how far the
love for us that we had so carefully implanted could ever replace in
him the satisfaction of his primitive wild yearnings: He was like a
man, naturally polygamous, married to one loved woman.

It was surely not for nothing that Rover is dog's most common name,
and would be ours, but for our too tenacious fear of losing
something, to admit, even to ourselves, that we are hankering.  There
was a man who said: Strange that two such queerly opposite qualities
as courage and hypocrisy are the leading characteristics of the
Anglo-Saxon!  But is not hypocrisy just a product of tenacity, which
is again the lower part of courage?  Is not hypocrisy but an active
sense of property in one's good name, the clutching close of
respectability at any price, the feeling that one must not part, even
at the cost of truth, with what he has sweated so to gain?  And so we
Anglo-Saxons will not answer to the name of Rover, and treat our dogs
so that they, too, hardly know their natures.

The history of his one wandering, for which no respectable reason can
be assigned, will never, of course, be known.  It was in London, of
an October evening, when we were told he had slipped out and was not
anywhere.  Then began those four distressful hours of searching for
that black needle n that blacker bundle of hay.  Hours of real dismay
and suffering for it is suffering, indeed, to feel a loved thing
swallowed up in that hopeless haze of London streets.  Stolen or run
over?  Which was worst?  The neighbouring police stations visited,
the Dog's Home notified, an order of five hundred "Lost Dog" bills
placed in the printer's hands, the streets patrolled!  And then, in a
lull snatched for food, and still endeavouring to preserve some
aspect of assurance, we heard the bark which meant: "Here is a door I
cannot open!"  We hurried forth, and there he was on the top
doorstep--busy, unashamed, giving no explanations, asking for his
supper; and very shortly after him came his five hundred "Lost Dog"
bills.  Long I sat looking at him that night after my companion had
gone up, thinking of the evening, some years before, when there
followed as that shadow of a spaniel who had been lost for eleven
days.  And my heart turned over within me. But he!  He was asleep,
for he knew not remorse.

Ah! and there was that other time, when it was reported to me,
returning home at night, that he had gone out to find me; and I went
forth again, disturbed, and whistling his special call to the empty
fields.  Suddenly out of the darkness I heard a rushing, and he came
furiously dashing against my heels from he alone knew where he had
been lurking and saying to himself: I will not go in till he comes!
I could not scold, there was something too lyrical in the return of
that live, lonely, rushing piece of blackness through the blacker
night.  After all, the vagary was but a variation in his practice
when one was away at bed-time, of passionately scratching up his bed
in protest, till it resembled nothing; for, in spite of his long and
solemn face and the silkiness of his ears, there was much in him yet
of the cave bear--he dug graves on the smallest provocations, in
which he never buried anything.  He was not a "clever" dog; and
guiltless of all tricks.  Nor was he ever "shown."  We did not even
dream of subjecting him to this indignity.  Was our dog a clown, a
hobby, a fad, a fashion, a feather in our caps that we should subject
him to periodic pennings in stuffy halls, that we should harry his
faithful soul with such tomfoolery?  He never even heard us talk
about his lineage, deplore the length of his nose, or call him
"clever-looking."  We should have been ashamed to let him smell about
us the tar-brush of a sense of property, to let him think we looked
on him as an asset to earn us pelf or glory.  We wished that there
should be between us the spirit that was between the sheep dog and
that farmer, who, when asked his dog's age, touched the old
creature's head, and answered thus: "Teresa" (his daughter) "was born
in November, and this one in August."  That sheep dog had seen
eighteen years when the great white day came for him, and his spirit
passed away up, to cling with the wood-smoke round the dark rafters
of the kitchen where he had lain so vast a time beside his master's
boots.  No, no!  If a man does not soon pass beyond the thought "By
what shall this dog profit me?" into the large state of simple
gladness to be with dog, he shall never know the very essence of that
companion ship which depends not on the points of dog, but on some
strange and subtle mingling of mute spirits.  For it is by muteness
that a dog becomes for one so utterly beyond value; with him one is
at peace, where words play no torturing tricks. When he just sits,
loving, and knows that he is being loved, those are the moments that
I think are precious to a dog; when, with his adoring soul coming
through his eyes, he feels that you are really thinking of him.  But
he is touchingly tolerant of one's other occupations.  The subject of
these memories always knew when one was too absorbed in work to be so
close to him as he thought proper; yet he never tried to hinder or
distract, or asked for attention.  It dinged his mood, of course, so
that the red under his eyes and the folds of his crumply cheeks--
which seemed to speak of a touch of bloodhound introduced a long way
back into his breeding--drew deeper and more manifest.  If he could
have spoken at such times, he would have said: "I have been a long
time alone, and I cannot always be asleep; but you know best, and I
must not criticise."

He did not at all mind one's being absorbed in other humans; he
seemed to enjoy the sounds of conversation lifting round him, and to
know when they were sensible.  He could not, for instance, stand
actors or actresses giving readings of their parts, perceiving at
once that the same had no connection with the minds and real feelings
of the speakers; and, having wandered a little to show his
disapproval, he would go to the door and stare at it till it opened
and let him out.  Once or twice, it is true, when an actor of large
voice was declaiming an emotional passage, he so far relented as to
go up to him and pant in his face.  Music, too, made him restless,
inclined to sigh, and to ask questions.  Sometimes, at its first
sound, he would cross to the window and remain there looking for Her.
At others, he would simply go and lie on the loud pedal, and we never
could tell whether it was from sentiment, or because he thought that
in this way he heard less.  At one special Nocturne of Chopin's he
always whimpered.  He was, indeed, of rather Polish temperament--very
gay when he was gay, dark and brooding when he was not.

On the whole, perhaps his life was uneventful for so far-travelling a
dog, though it held its moments of eccentricity, as when he leaped
through the window of a four-wheeler into Kensington, or sat on a
Dartmoor adder.  But that was fortunately of a Sunday afternoon--when
adder and all were torpid, so nothing happened, till a friend, who
was following, lifted him off the creature with his large boot.

If only one could have known more of his private life--more of his
relations with his own kind!  I fancy he was always rather a dark dog
to them, having so many thoughts about us that he could not share
with any one, and being naturally fastidious, except with ladies, for
whom he had a chivalrous and catholic taste, so that they often
turned and snapped at him.  He had, however, but one lasting love
affair, for a liver-coloured lass of our village, not quite of his
own caste, but a wholesome if somewhat elderly girl, with loving and
sphinx-like eyes.  Their children, alas, were not for this world, and
soon departed.

Nor was he a fighting dog; but once attacked, he lacked a sense of
values, being unable to distinguish between dogs that he could beat
and dogs with whom he had "no earthly."  It was, in fact, as well to
interfere at once, especially in the matter of retrievers, for he
never forgot having in his youth been attacked by a retriever from
behind.  No, he never forgot, and never forgave, an enemy.  Only a
month before that day of which I cannot speak, being very old and
ill, he engaged an Irish terrier on whose impudence he had long had
his eye, and routed him.  And how a battle cheered his spirit!  He
was certainly no Christian; but, allowing for essential dog, he was
very much a gentleman.  And I do think that most of us who live on
this earth these days would rather leave it with that label on us
than the other.  For to be a Christian, as Tolstoy understood the
word--and no one else in our time has had logic and love of truth
enough to give it coherent meaning--is (to be quite sincere) not
suited to men of Western blood.  Whereas--to be a gentleman!  It is a
far cry, but perhaps it can be done.  In him, at all events, there
was no pettiness, no meanness, and no cruelty, and though he fell
below his ideal at times, this never altered the true look of his
eyes, nor the simple loyalty in his soul.

But what a crowd of memories come back, bringing with them the
perfume of fallen days!  What delights and glamour, what long hours
of effort, discouragements, and secret fears did he not watch over--
our black familiar; and with the sight and scent and touch of him,
deepen or assuage!  How many thousand walks did we not go together,
so that we still turn to see if he is following at his padding gait,
attentive to the invisible trails.  Not the least hard thing to bear
when they go from us, these quiet friends, is that they carry away
with them so many years of our own lives.  Yet, if they find warmth
therein, who would grudge them those years that they have so guarded?
Nothing else of us can they take to lie upon with outstretched paws
and chin pressed to the ground; and, whatever they take, be sure they
have deserved.

Do they know, as we do, that their time must come?  Yes, they know,
at rare moments.  No other way can I interpret those pauses of his
latter life, when, propped on his forefeet, he would sit for long
minutes quite motionless--his head drooped, utterly withdrawn; then
turn those eyes of his and look at me.  That look said more plainly
than all words could: "Yes, I know that I must go!"  If we have
spirits that persist--they have.  If we know after our departure, who
we were they do.  No one, I think, who really longs for truth, can
ever glibly say which it will be for dog and man persistence or
extinction of our consciousness.  There is but one thing certain--the
childishness of fretting over that eternal question.  Whichever it
be, it must be right, the only possible thing.  He felt that too, I
know; but then, like his master, he was what is called a pessimist.

My companion tells me that, since he left us, he has once come back.
It was Old Year's Night, and she was sad, when he came to her in
visible shape of his black body, passing round the dining-table from
the window-end, to his proper place beneath the table, at her feet.
She saw him quite clearly; she heard the padding tap-tap of his paws
and very toe-nails; she felt his warmth brushing hard against the
front of her skirt.  She thought then that he would settle down upon
her feet, but something disturbed him, and he stood pausing, pressed
against her, then moved out toward where I generally sit, but was not
sitting that night.

She saw him stand there, as if considering; then at some sound or
laugh, she became self-conscious, and slowly, very slowly, he was no
longer there.  Had he some message, some counsel to give, something
he would say, that last night of the last year of all those he had
watched over us?  Will he come back again?

No stone stands over where he lies.  It is on our hearts that his
life is engraved.

1912.







FELICITY

When God is so good to the fields, of what use are words--those poor
husks of sentiment!  There is no painting Felicity on the wing!  No
way of bringing on to the canvas the flying glory of things!  A
single buttercup of the twenty million in one field is worth all
these dry symbols--that can never body forth the very spirit of that
froth of May breaking over the hedges, the choir of birds and bees,
the lost-travelling down of the wind flowers, the white-throated
swallows in their Odysseys.  Just here there are no skylarks, but
what joy of song and leaf; of lanes lighted with bright trees, the
few oaks still golden brown, and the ashes still spiritual!  Only the
blackbirds and thrushes can sing-up this day, and cuckoos over the
hill.  The year has flown so fast that the apple-trees have dropped
nearly all their bloom, and in "long meadow" the "daggers" are out
early, beside the narrow bright streams.  Orpheus sits there on a
stone, when nobody is by, and pipes to the ponies; and Pan can often
be seen dancing with his nymphs in the raised beech-grove where it is
always twilight, if you lie still enough against the far bank.

Who can believe in growing old, so long as we are wrapped in this
cloak of colour and wings and song; so long as this unimaginable
vision is here for us to gaze at--the soft-faced sheep about us, and
the wool-bags drying out along the fence, and great numbers of tiny
ducks, so trustful that the crows have taken several.

Blue is the colour of youth, and all the blue flowers have a "fey"
look.  Everything seems young too young to work.  There is but one
thing busy, a starling, fetching grubs for its little family, above
my head--it must take that flight at least two hundred times a day.
The children should be very fat.

When the sky is so happy, and the flowers so luminous, it does not
seem possible that the bright angels of this day shall pass into dark
night, that slowly these wings shall close, and the cuckoo praise
himself to sleep, mad midges dance-in the evening; the grass shiver
with dew, wind die, and no bird sing .  .  .  .

Yet so it is.  Day has gone--the song and glamour and swoop of wings.
Slowly, has passed the daily miracle.  It is night.  But Felicity has
not withdrawn; she has but changed her robe for silence, velvet, and
the pearl fan of the moon.  Everything is sleeping, save only a
single star, and the pansies.  Why they should be more wakeful than
the other flowers, I do not know.  The expressions of their faces, if
one bends down into the dusk, are sweeter and more cunning than ever.
They have some compact, no doubt, in hand.

What a number of voices have given up the ghost to this night of but
one voice--the murmur of the stream out there in darkness!

With what religion all has been done!  Not one buttercup open; the
yew-trees already with shadows flung down!  No moths are abroad yet;
it is too early in the year for nightjars; and the owls are quiet.
But who shall say that in this silence, in this hovering wan light,
in this air bereft of wings, and of all scent save freshness, there
is less of the ineffable, less of that before which words are dumb?

It is strange how this tranquillity of night, that seems so final, is
inhabited, if one keeps still enough.  A lamb is bleating out there
on the dim moor; a bird somewhere, a little one, about three fields
away, makes the sweetest kind of chirruping; some cows are still
cropping.  There is a scent, too, underneath the freshness-sweet-
brier, I think, and our Dutch honeysuckle; nothing else could so
delicately twine itself with air.  And even in this darkness the
roses have colour, more beautiful perhaps than ever.  If colour be,
as they say, but the effect of light on various fibre, one may think
of it as a tune, the song of thanksgiving that each form puts forth,
to sun and moon and stars and fire.  These moon-coloured roses are
singing a most quiet song.  I see all of a sudden that there are many
more stars beside that one so red and watchful.  The flown kite is
there with its seven pale worlds; it has adventured very high and far
to-night-with a company of others remoter still. . . .

This serenity of night!  What could seem less likely ever more to
move, and change again to day?  Surely now the world has found its
long sleep; and the pearly glimmer from the moon will last, and the
precious silence never again yield to clamour; the grape-bloom of
this mystery never more pale out into gold .  .  .  .

And yet it is not so.  The nightly miracle has passed.  It is dawn.
Faint light has come.  I am waiting for the first sound.  The sky as
yet is like nothing but grey paper, with the shadows of wild geese
passing.  The trees are phantoms.  And then it comes--that first call
of a bird, startled at discovering day!  Just one call--and now,
here, there, on all the trees, the sudden answers swelling, of that
most sweet and careless choir.  Was irresponsibility ever so divine
as this, of birds waking?  Then--saffron into the sky, and once more
silence!  What is it birds do after the first Chorale?  Think of
their sins and business?  Or just sleep again?  The trees are fast
dropping unreality, and the cuckoos begin calling.  Colour is burning
up in the flowers already; the dew smells of them.

The miracle is ended, for the starling has begun its job; and the sun
is fretting those dark, busy wings with gold.  Full day has come
again.  But the face of it is a little strange, it is not like
yesterday.  Queer-to think, no day is like to a day that's past and
no night like a night that's coming!  Why, then, fear death, which is
but night?  Why care, if next day have different face and spirit?
The sun has lighted buttercup-field now, the wind touches the lime-
tree.  Something passes over me away up there.

It is Felicity on her wings!

1912.





End of Project Gutenberg's Etext Studies and Essays: Quality and Others
By John Galsworthy






STUDIES AND ESSAYS

By John Galsworthy


          "Je vous dirai que l'exces est toujours un mal."
                                        --ANATOLE FRANCE



                    CONCERNING LETTERS



TABLE OF CONTENTS:
          A NOVELIST'S ALLEGORY
          SOME PLATITUDES CONCERNING DRAMA
          MEDITATION ON FINALITY
          WANTED--SCHOOLING
          ON OUR DISLIKE OF THINGS AS THEY ARE
          THE WINDLESTRAW




A NOVELIST'S ALLEGORY

Once upon a time the Prince of Felicitas had occasion to set forth on
a journey.  It was a late autumn evening with few pale stars and a
moon no larger than the paring of a finger-nail.  And as he rode
through the purlieus of his city, the white mane of his amber-
coloured steed was all that he could clearly see in the dusk of the
high streets.  His way led through a quarter but little known to him,
and he was surprised to find that his horse, instead of ambling
forward with his customary gentle vigour, stepped carefully from side
to side, stopping now and then to curve his neck and prick his ears-
as though at some thing of fear unseen in the darkness; while on
either hand creatures could be heard rustling and scuttling, and
little cold draughts as of wings fanned the rider's cheeks.

The Prince at last turned in his saddle, but so great was the
darkness that he could not even see his escort.

"What is the name of this street?" he said.

"Sire, it is called the Vita Publica."

"It is very dark." Even as he spoke his horse staggered, but,
recovering its foothold with an effort, stood trembling violently.
Nor could all the incitements of its master induce the beast again to
move forward.

"Is there no one with a lanthorn in this street?" asked the Prince.

His attendants began forthwith to call out loudly for any one who had
a lanthorn.  Now, it chanced that an old man sleeping in a hovel on a
pallet of straw was, awakened by these cries.  When he heard that it
was the Prince of Felicitas himself, he came hastily, carrying his
lanthorn, and stood trembling beside the Prince's horse.  It was so
dark that the Prince could not see him.

"Light your lanthorn, old man," he said.

The old man laboriously lit his lanthorn.  Its pale rays fled out on
either hand; beautiful but grim was the vision they disclosed.  Tall
houses, fair court-yards, and a palm grown garden; in front of the
Prince's horse a deep cesspool, on whose jagged edges the good
beast's hoofs were planted; and, as far as the glimmer of the
lanthorn stretched, both ways down the rutted street, paving stones
displaced, and smooth tesselated marble; pools of mud, the hanging
fruit of an orange tree, and dark, scurrying shapes of monstrous rats
bolting across from house to house.  The old man held the lanthorn
higher; and instantly bats flying against it would have beaten out
the light but for the thin protection of its horn sides.

The Prince sat still upon his horse, looking first at the rutted
space that he had traversed and then at the rutted space before him.

"Without a light," he said, "this thoroughfare is dangerous.  What is
your name, old man?"

"My name is Cethru," replied the aged churl.

"Cethru!" said the Prince.  "Let it be your duty henceforth to walk
with your lanthorn up and down this street all night and every
night,"--and he looked at Cethru: "Do you understand, old man, what
it is you have to do?"

The old man answered in a voice that trembled like a rusty flute:

"Aye, aye!--to walk up and down and hold my lanthorn so that folk can
see where they be going."

The Prince gathered up his reins; but the old man, lurching forward,
touched his stirrup.

"How long be I to go on wi' thiccy job?"

"Until you die!"

Cethru held up his lanthorn, and they could see his long, thin face,
like a sandwich of dried leather, jerk and quiver, and his thin grey
hairs flutter in the draught of the bats' wings circling round the
light.

"'Twill be main hard!" he groaned; "an' my lanthorn's nowt but a poor
thing."

With a high look, the Prince of Felicitas bent and touched the old
man's forehead.

"Until you die, old man," he repeated; and bidding his followers to
light torches from Cethru's lanthorn, he rode on down the twisting
street.  The clatter of the horses' hoofs died out in the night, and
the scuttling and the rustling of the rats and the whispers of the
bats' wings were heard again.

Cethru, left alone in the dark thoroughfare, sighed heavily; then,
spitting on his hands, he tightened the old girdle round his loins,
and slinging the lanthorn on his staff, held it up to the level of
his waist, and began to make his way along the street.  His progress
was but slow, for he had many times to stop and rekindle the flame
within his lanthorn, which the bats' wings, his own stumbles, and the
jostlings of footpads or of revellers returning home, were for ever
extinguishing.  In traversing that long street he spent half the
night, and half the night in traversing it back again.  The saffron
swan of dawn, slow swimming up the sky-river between the high roof-
banks, bent her neck down through the dark air-water to look at him
staggering below her, with his still smoking wick.  No sooner did
Cethru see that sunlit bird, than with a great sigh of joy he sat him
down, and at once fell asleep.

Now when the dwellers in the houses of the Vita Publica first gained
knowledge that this old man passed every night with his lanthorn up
and down their street, and when they marked those pallid gleams
gliding over the motley prospect of cesspools and garden gates, over
the sightless hovels and the rich-carved frontages of their palaces;
or saw them stay their journey and remain suspended like a handful of
daffodils held up against the black stuffs of secrecy--they said:

"It is good that the old man should pass like this--we shall see
better where we're going; and if the Watch have any job on hand, or
want to put the pavements in order, his lanthorn will serve their
purpose well enough."  And they would call out of their doors and
windows to him passing:

"Hola! old man Cethru!  All's well with our house, and with the
street before it?"

But, for answer, the old man only held his lanthorn up, so that in
the ring of its pale light they saw some sight or other in the
street.  And his silence troubled them, one by one, for each had
expected that he would reply:

"Aye, aye!  All's well with your house, Sirs, and with the street
before it!"

Thus they grew irritated with this old man who did not seem able to
do anything but just hold his lanthorn up.  And gradually they began
to dislike his passing by their doors with his pale light, by which
they could not fail to see, not only the rich-carved frontages and
scrolled gates of courtyards and fair gardens, but things that were
not pleasing to the eye.  And they murmured amongst themselves: "What
is the good of this old man and his silly lanthorn?  We can see all
we want to see without him; in fact, we got on very well before he
came."

So, as he passed, rich folk who were supping would pelt him with
orange-peel and empty the dregs of their wine over his head; and poor
folk, sleeping in their hutches, turned over, as the rays of the
lanthorn fell on them, and cursed him for that disturbance.  Nor did
revellers or footpads treat the old man, civilly, but tied him to the
wall, where he was constrained to stay till a kind passerby released
him.  And ever the bats darkened his lanthorn with their wings and
tried to beat the flame out.  And the old man thought: "This be a
terrible hard job; I don't seem to please nobody."  But because the
Prince of Felicitas had so commanded him, he continued nightly to
pass with his lanthorn up and down the street; and every morning as
the saffron swan came swimming overhead, to fall asleep.  But his
sleep did not last long, for he was compelled to pass many hours each
day in gathering rushes and melting down tallow for his lanthorn; so
that his lean face grew more than ever like a sandwich of dried
leather.

Now it came to pass that the Town Watch having had certain complaints
made to them that persons had been bitten in the Vita Publica by
rats, doubted of their duty to destroy these ferocious creatures; and
they held investigation, summoning the persons bitten and inquiring
of them how it was that in so dark a street they could tell that the
animals which had bitten them were indeed rats.  Howbeit for some
time no one could be found who could say more than what he had been
told, and since this was not evidence, the Town Watch had good hopes
that they would not after all be forced to undertake this tedious
enterprise.  But presently there came before them one who said that
he had himself seen the rat which had bitten him, by the light of an
old man's lanthorn.  When the Town Watch heard this they were vexed,
for they knew that if this were true they would now be forced to
prosecute the arduous undertaking, and they said:

"Bring in this old man!"

Cethru was brought before them trembling.

"What is this we hear, old man, about your lanthorn and the rat?  And
in the first place, what were you doing in the Vita Publica at that
time of night?"

Cethru answered: "I were just passin' with my lanthorn!"

"Tell us--did you see the rat?"

Cethru shook his head: "My lanthorn seed the rat, maybe!" he
muttered.

"Old owl!" said the Captain of the Watch: "Be careful what you say!
If you saw the rat, why did you then not aid this unhappy citizen who
was bitten by it--first, to avoid that rodent, and subsequently to
slay it, thereby relieving the public of a pestilential danger?"

Cethru looked at him, and for some seconds did not reply; then he
said slowly: "I were just passin' with my lanthorn."

"That you have already told us," said the Captain of the Watch; "it
is no answer."

Cethru's leathern cheeks became wine-coloured, so desirous was he to
speak, and so unable.  And the Watch sneered and laughed, saying:

"This is a fine witness."

But of a sudden Cethru spoke:

"What would I be duin'--killin' rats; tidden my business to kill
rats."

The Captain of the Watch caressed his beard, and looking at the old
man with contempt, said:

"It seems to me, brothers, that this is an idle old vagabond, who
does no good to any one.  We should be well advised, I think, to
prosecute him for vagrancy.  But that is not at this moment the
matter in hand.  Owing to the accident--scarcely fortunate--of this
old man's passing with his lanthorn, it would certainly appear that
citizens have been bitten by rodents.  It is then, I fear, our duty
to institute proceedings against those poisonous and violent
animals."

And amidst the sighing of the Watch, it was so resolved.

Cethru was glad to shuffle away, unnoticed, from the Court, and
sitting down under a camel-date tree outside the City Wall, he thus
reflected:

"They were rough with me!  I done nothin', so far's I can see!"

And a long time he sat there with the bunches of the camel-dates
above him, golden as the sunlight.  Then, as the scent of the lyric-
flowers, released by evening, warned him of the night dropping like a
flight of dark birds on the plain, he rose stiffly, and made his way
as usual toward the Vita Publica.

He had traversed but little of that black thoroughfare, holding his
lanthorn at the level of his breast, when the sound of a splash and
cries for help smote his long, thin ears.  Remembering how the
Captain of the Watch had admonished him, he stopped and peered about,
but owing to his proximity to the light of his own lanthorn he saw
nothing.  Presently he heard another splash and the sound of blowings
and of puffings, but still unable to see clearly whence they came, he
was forced in bewilderment to resume his march.  But he had no sooner
entered the next bend of that obscure and winding avenue than the
most lamentable, lusty cries assailed him.  Again he stood still,
blinded by his own light.  Somewhere at hand a citizen was being
beaten, for vague, quick-moving forms emerged into the radiance of
his lanthorn out of the deep violet of the night air.  The cries
swelled, and died away, and swelled; and the mazed Cethru moved
forward on his way.  But very near the end of his first traversage,
the sound of a long, deep sighing, as of a fat man in spiritual pain,
once more arrested him.

"Drat me!" he thought, "this time I will see what 'tis," and he spun
round and round, holding his lanthorn now high, now low, and to both
sides.  "The devil an' all's in it to-night," he murmured to himself;
"there's some'at here fetchin' of its breath awful loud."  But for
his life he could see nothing, only that the higher he held his
lanthorn the more painful grew the sound of the fat but spiritual
sighing.  And desperately, he at last resumed his progress.

On the morrow, while he still slept stretched on his straw pallet,
there came to him a member of the Watch.

"Old man, you are wanted at the Court House; rouse up, and bring your
lanthorn."

Stiffly Cethru rose.

"What be they wantin' me fur now, mester?"

"Ah!" replied the Watchman, "they are about to see if they can't put
an end to your goings-on."

Cethru shivered, and was silent.

Now when they reached the Court House it was patent that a great
affair was forward; for the Judges were in their robes, and a crowd
of advocates, burgesses, and common folk thronged the careen, lofty
hall of justice.

When Cethru saw that all eyes were turned on him, he shivered still
more violently, fixing his fascinated gaze on the three Judges in
their emerald robes.

"This then is the prisoner," said the oldest of the Judges; "proceed
with the indictment!"

A little advocate in snuff-coloured clothes rose on little legs, and
commenced to read:

"Forasmuch as on the seventeenth night of August fifteen hundred
years since the Messiah's death, one Celestine, a maiden of this
city, fell into a cesspool in the Vita Publica, and while being
quietly drowned, was espied of the burgess Pardonix by the light of a
lanthorn held by the old man Cethru; and, forasmuch as, plunging in,
the said Pardonix rescued her, not without grave risk of life and the
ruin, of his clothes, and to-day lies ill of fever; and forasmuch as
the old man Cethru was the cause of these misfortunes to the burgess
Pardonix, by reason of his wandering lanthorn's showing the drowning
maiden, the Watch do hereby indict, accuse, and otherwise place
charge upon this Cethru of 'Vagabondage without serious occupation.'

"And, forasmuch as on this same night the Watchman Filepo, made
aware, by the light of this said Cethru's lanthorn, of three sturdy
footpads, went to arrest them, and was set on by the rogues and well-
nigh slain, the Watch do hereby indict, accuse, and otherwise charge
upon Cethru complicity in this assault, by reasons, namely, first,
that he discovered the footpads to the Watchman and the Watchman to
the footpads by the light of his lanthorn; and, second, that, having
thus discovered them, he stood idly by and gave no assistance to the
law.

"And, forasmuch as on this same night the wealthy burgess Pranzo,
who, having prepared a banquet, was standing in his doorway awaiting
the arrival of his guests, did see, by the light of the said Cethru's
lanthorn, a beggar woman and her children grovelling in the gutter
for garbage, whereby his appetite was lost completely; and, forasmuch
as he, Pranzo, has lodged a complaint against the Constitution for
permitting women and children to go starved, the Watch do hereby
indict, accuse, and otherwise make charge on Cethru of rebellion and
of anarchy, in that wilfully he doth disturb good citizens by showing
to them without provocation disagreeable sights, and doth moreover
endanger the laws by causing persons to desire to change them.

"These be the charges, reverend Judges, so please you!"

And having thus spoken, the little advocate resumed his seat.

Then said the oldest of the Judges:

"Cethru, you have heard; what answer do you make?"

But no word, only the chattering of teeth, came from Cethru.

"Have you no defence?" said the Judge: "these are grave accusations!"

Then Cethru spoke:

"So please your Highnesses," he said, "can I help what my lanthorn
sees?"

And having spoken these words, to all further questions he remained
more silent than a headless man.

The Judges took counsel of each other, and the oldest of them thus
addressed himself to Cethru:

"If you have no defence, old man, and there is no one will say a word
for you, we can but proceed to judgment."

Then in the main aisle of the Court there rose a youthful advocate.

"Most reverend Judges," he said in a mellifluous voice, clearer than
the fluting of a bell-bird, "it is useless to look for words from
this old man, for it is manifest that he himself is nothing, and that
his lanthorn is alone concerned in this affair.  But, reverend
Judges, bethink you well:  Would you have a lanthorn ply a trade or
be concerned with a profession, or do aught indeed but pervade the
streets at night, shedding its light, which, if you will, is
vagabondage?  And, Sirs, upon the second count of this indictment:
Would you have a lanthorn dive into cesspools to rescue maidens?
Would you have a lanthorn to beat footpads?  Or, indeed, to be any
sort of partisan either of the Law or of them that break the Law?
Sure, Sirs, I think not.  And as to this third charge of fostering
anarchy let me but describe the trick of this lanthorn's flame.  It
is distilled, most reverend Judges, of oil and wick, together with
that sweet secret heat of whose birth no words of mine can tell.  And
when, Sirs, this pale flame has sprung into the air swaying to every
wind, it brings vision to the human eye.  And, if it be charged on
this old man Cethru that he and his lanthorn by reason of their
showing not only the good but the evil bring no pleasure into the
world, I ask, Sirs, what in the world is so dear as this power to see
whether it be the beautiful or the foul that is disclosed?  Need I,
indeed, tell you of the way this flame spreads its feelers, and
delicately darts and hovers in the darkness, conjuring things from
nothing?  This mechanical summoning, Sirs, of visions out of
blackness is benign, by no means of malevolent intent; no more than
if a man, passing two donkeys in the road, one lean and the
other fat, could justly be arraigned for malignancy because they were
not both fat.  This, reverend Judges, is the essence of the matter
concerning the rich burgess, Pranzo, who, on account of the sight he
saw by Cethru's lanthorn, has lost the equilibrium of his stomach.
For, Sirs, the lanthorn did but show that which was there, both fair
and foul, no more, no less; and though it is indeed true that Pranzo
is upset, it was not because the lanthorn maliciously produced
distorted images, but merely caused to be seen, in due proportions,
things which Pranzo had not seen before.  And surely, reverend
Judges, being just men, you would not have this lanthorn turn its
light away from what is ragged and ugly because there are also fair
things on which its light may fall; how, indeed, being a lanthorn,
could it, if it would?  And I would have you note this, Sirs, that by
this impartial discovery of the proportions of one thing to another,
this lanthorn must indeed perpetually seem to cloud and sadden those
things which are fair, because of the deep instincts of harmony and
justice planted in the human breast.  However unfair and cruel, then,
this lanthorn may seem to those who, deficient in these instincts,
desire all their lives to see naught but what is pleasant, lest they,
like Pranzo, should lose their appetites--it is not consonant with
equity that this lanthorn should, even if it could, be prevented from
thus mechanically buffeting the holiday cheek of life.  I would
think, Sirs, that you should rather blame the queazy state of
Pranzo's stomach.  The old man has said that he cannot help what his
lanthorn sees.  This is a just saying.  But if, reverend Judges, you
deem this equipoised, indifferent lanthorn to be indeed blameworthy
for having shown in the same moment, side by side, the skull and the
fair face, the burdock and the tiger-lily, the butterfly and toad,
then, most reverend Judges, punish it, but do not punish this old
man, for he himself is but a flume of smoke, thistle down dispersed--
nothing!"

So saying, the young advocate ceased.

Again the three Judges took counsel of each other, and after much
talk had passed between them, the oldest spoke:

"What this young advocate has said seems to us to be the truth.  We
cannot punish a lanthorn.  Let the old man go!"

And Cethru went out into the sunshine .  .  .  .

Now it came to pass that the Prince of Felicitas, returning from his
journey, rode once more on his amber-coloured steed down the Vita
Publica.

The night was dark as a rook's wing, but far away down the street
burned a little light, like a red star truant from heaven.  The
Prince riding by descried it for a lanthorn, with an old man sleeping
beside it.

"How is this, Friend?" said the Prince.  "You are not walking as I
bade you, carrying your lanthorn."

But Cethru neither moved nor answered:

"Lift him up!" said the Prince.

They lifted up his head and held the lanthorn to his closed eyes.  So
lean was that brown face that the beams from the lanthorn would not
rest on it, but slipped past on either side into the night.  His eyes
did not open.  He was dead.

And the Prince touched him, saying: "Farewell, old man!  The lanthorn
is still alight.  Go, fetch me another one, and let him carry it!"

1909.







SOME PLATITUDES CONCERNING DRAMA

A drama must be shaped so as to have a spire of meaning.  Every
grouping of life and character has its inherent moral; and the
business of the dramatist is so to pose the group as to bring that
moral poignantly to the light of day.  Such is the moral that exhales
from plays like 'Lear', 'Hamlet', and 'Macbeth'.  But such is not the
moral to be found in the great bulk of contemporary Drama.  The moral
of the average play is now, and probably has always been, the triumph
at all costs of a supposed immediate ethical good over a supposed
immediate ethical evil.

The vice of drawing these distorted morals has permeated the Drama to
its spine; discoloured its art, humanity, and significance; infected
its creators, actors, audience, critics; too often turned it from a
picture into a caricature.  A Drama which lives under the shadow of
the distorted moral forgets how to be free, fair, and fine--forgets
so completely that it often prides itself on having forgotten.

Now, in writing plays, there are, in this matter of the moral, three
courses open to the serious dramatist.  The first is: To definitely
set before the public that which it wishes to have set before it, the
views and codes of life by which the public lives and in which it
believes.  This way is the most common, successful, and popular.  It
makes the dramatist's position sure, and not too obviously
authoritative.

The second course is: To definitely set before the public those views
and codes of life by which the dramatist himself lives, those
theories in which he himself believes, the more effectively if they
are the opposite of what the public wishes to have placed before it,
presenting them so that the audience may swallow them like powder in
a spoonful of jam.

There is a third course: To set before the public no cut-and-dried
codes, but the phenomena of life and character, selected and
combined, but not distorted, by the dramatist's outlook, set down
without fear, favour, or prejudice, leaving the public to draw such
poor moral as nature may afford.  This third method requires a
certain detachment; it requires a sympathy with, a love of, and a
curiosity as to, things for their own sake; it requires a far view,
together with patient industry, for no immediately practical result.

It was once said of Shakespeare that he had never done any good to
any one, and never would.  This, unfortunately, could not, in the
sense in which the word "good" was then meant, be said of most modern
dramatists.  In truth, the good that Shakespeare did to humanity was
of a remote, and, shall we say, eternal nature; something of the good
that men get from having the sky and the sea to look at.  And this
partly because he was, in his greater plays at all events, free from
the habit of drawing a distorted moral.  Now, the playwright who
supplies to the public the facts of life distorted by the moral which
it expects, does so that he may do the public what he considers an
immediate good, by fortifying its prejudices; and the dramatist who
supplies to the public facts distorted by his own advanced morality,
does so because he considers that he will at once benefit the public
by substituting for its worn-out ethics, his own.  In both cases the
advantage the dramatist hopes to confer on the public is immediate
and practical.

But matters change, and morals change; men remain--and to set men,
and the facts about them, down faithfully, so that they draw for us
the moral of their natural actions, may also possibly be of benefit
to the community.  It is, at all events, harder than to set men and
facts down, as they ought, or ought not to be.  This, however, is not
to say that a dramatist should, or indeed can, keep himself and his
temperamental philosophy out of his work.  As a man lives and thinks,
so will he write.  But it is certain, that to the making of good
drama, as to the practice of every other art, there must be brought
an almost passionate love of discipline, a white-heat of self-
respect, a desire to make the truest, fairest, best thing in one's
power; and that to these must be added an eye that does not flinch.
Such qualities alone will bring to a drama the selfless character
which soaks it with inevitability.

The word "pessimist" is frequently applied to the few dramatists who
have been content to work in this way.  It has been applied, among
others, to Euripides, to Shakespeare, to Ibsen; it will be applied to
many in the future.  Nothing, however, is more dubious than the way
in which these two words "pessimist" and "optimist" are used; for the
optimist appears to be he who cannot bear the world as it is, and is
forced by his nature to picture it as it ought to be, and the
pessimist one who cannot only bear the world as it is, but loves it
well enough to draw it faithfully.  The true lover of the human race
is surely he who can put up with it in all its forms, in vice as well
as in virtue, in defeat no less than in victory; the true seer he who
sees not only joy but sorrow, the true painter of human life one who
blinks nothing.  It may be that he is also, incidentally, its true
benefactor.

In the whole range of the social fabric there are only two impartial
persons, the scientist and the artist, and under the latter heading
such dramatists as desire to write not only for to-day, but for to-
morrow, must strive to come.

But dramatists being as they are made--past remedy it is perhaps more
profitable to examine the various points at which their qualities and
defects are shown.

The plot!  A good plot is that sure edifice which slowly rises out of
the interplay of circumstance on temperament, and temperament on
circumstance, within the enclosing atmosphere of an idea.  A human
being is the best plot there is; it may be impossible to see why be
is a good plot, because the idea within which he was brought forth
cannot be fully grasped; but it is plain that he is a good plot.  He
is organic.  And so it must be with a good play.  Reason alone
produces no good plots; they come by original sin, sure conception,
and instinctive after-power of selecting what benefits the germ.  A
bad plot, on the other hand, is simply a row of stakes, with a
character impaled on each--characters who would have liked to live,
but came to untimely grief; who started bravely, but fell on these
stakes, placed beforehand in a row, and were transfixed one by one,
while their ghosts stride on, squeaking and gibbering, through the
play.  Whether these stakes are made of facts or of ideas, according
to the nature of the dramatist who planted them, their effect on the
unfortunate characters is the same; the creatures were begotten to be
staked, and staked they are!  The demand for a good plot, not
unfrequently heard, commonly signifies: "Tickle my sensations by
stuffing the play with arbitrary adventures, so that I need not be
troubled to take the characters seriously.  Set the persons of the
play to action, regardless of time, sequence, atmosphere, and
probability!"

Now, true dramatic action is what characters do, at once contrary, as
it were, to expectation, and yet because they have already done other
things.  No dramatist should let his audience know what is coming;
but neither should he suffer his characters to, act without making
his audience feel that those actions are in harmony with temperament,
and arise from previous known actions, together with the temperaments
and previous known actions of the other characters in the play.  The
dramatist who hangs his characters to his plot, instead of hanging
his plot to his characters, is guilty of cardinal sin.

The dialogue!  Good dialogue again is character, marshalled so as
continually to stimulate interest or excitement.  The reason good
dialogue is seldom found in plays is merely that it is hard to write,
for it requires not only a knowledge of what interests or excites,
but such a feeling for character as brings misery to the dramatist's
heart when his creations speak as they should not speak--ashes to his
mouth when they say things for the sake of saying them--disgust when
they are "smart."

The art of writing true dramatic dialogue is an austere art, denying
itself all license, grudging every sentence devoted to the mere
machinery of the play, suppressing all jokes and epigrams severed
from character, relying for fun and pathos on the fun and tears of
life.  From start to finish good dialogue is hand-made, like good
lace; clear, of fine texture, furthering with each thread the harmony
and strength of a design to which all must be subordinated.

But good dialogue is also spiritual action.  In so far as the
dramatist divorces his dialogue from spiritual action--that is to
say, from progress of events, or toward events which are significant
of character--he is stultifying the thing done; he may make pleasing
disquisitions, he is not making drama.  And in so far as he twists
character to suit his moral or his plot, he is neglecting a first
principle, that truth to Nature which alone invests art with handmade
quality.

The dramatist's license, in fact, ends with his design.  In
conception alone he is free.  He may take what character or group of
characters he chooses, see them with what eyes, knit them with what
idea, within the limits of his temperament; but once taken, seen, and
knitted, he is bound to treat them like a gentleman, with the
tenderest consideration of their mainsprings.  Take care of
character; action and dialogue will take care of themselves!  The
true dramatist gives full rein to his temperament in the scope and
nature of his subject; having once selected subject and characters,
he is just, gentle, restrained, neither gratifying his lust for
praise at the expense of his offspring, nor using them as puppets to
flout his audience.  Being himself the nature that brought them
forth, he guides them in the course predestined at their conception.
So only have they a chance of defying Time, which is always lying in
wait to destroy the false, topical, or fashionable, all--in a word--
that is not based on the permanent elements of human nature.  The
perfect dramatist rounds up his characters and facts within the ring-
fence of a dominant idea which fulfils the craving of his spirit;
having got them there, he suffers them to live their own lives.

Plot, action, character, dialogue!  But there is yet another subject
for a platitude.  Flavour!  An impalpable quality, less easily
captured than the scent of a flower, the peculiar and most essential
attribute of any work of art!  It is the thin, poignant spirit which
hovers up out of a play, and is as much its differentiating essence
as is caffeine of coffee.  Flavour, in fine, is the spirit of the
dramatist projected into his work in a state of volatility, so that
no one can exactly lay hands on it, here, there, or anywhere.  This
distinctive essence of a play, marking its brand, is the one thing at
which the dramatist cannot work, for it is outside his consciousness.
A man may have many moods, he has but one spirit; and this spirit he
communicates in some subtle, unconscious way to all his work.  It
waxes and wanes with the currents of his vitality, but no more alters
than a chestnut changes into an oak.

For, in truth, dramas are very like unto trees, springing from
seedlings, shaping themselves inevitably in accordance with the laws
fast hidden within themselves, drinking sustenance from the earth and
air, and in conflict with the natural forces round them.  So they
slowly come to full growth, until warped, stunted, or risen to fair
and gracious height, they stand open to all the winds.  And the trees
that spring from each dramatist are of different race; he is the
spirit of his own sacred grove, into which no stray tree can by any
chance enter.

One more platitude.  It is not unfashionable to pit one form of drama
against another--holding up the naturalistic to the disadvantage of
the epic; the epic to the belittlement of the fantastic; the
fantastic to the detriment of the naturalistic.  Little purpose is
thus served.  The essential meaning, truth, beauty, and irony of
things may be revealed under all these forms.  Vision over life and
human nature can be as keen and just, the revelation as true,
inspiring, delight-giving, and thought-provoking, whatever fashion be
employed--it is simply a question of doing it well enough to uncover
the kernel of the nut.  Whether the violet come from Russia, from
Parma, or from England, matters little.  Close by the Greek temples
at Paestum there are violets that seem redder, and sweeter, than any
ever seen--as though they have sprung up out of the footprints of
some old pagan goddess; but under the April sun, in a Devonshire
lane, the little blue scentless violets capture every bit as much of
the spring.  And so it is with drama--no matter what its form it need
only be the "real thing," need only have caught some of the precious
fluids, revelation, or delight, and imprisoned them within a chalice
to which we may put our lips and continually drink.

And yet, starting from this last platitude, one may perhaps be
suffered to speculate as to the particular forms that our renascent
drama is likely to assume.  For our drama is renascent, and nothing
will stop its growth.  It is not renascent because this or that man
is writing, but because of a new spirit.  A spirit that is no doubt
in part the gradual outcome of the impact on our home-grown art, of
Russian, French, and Scandinavian influences, but which in the main
rises from an awakened humanity in the conscience of our time.

What, then, are to be the main channels down which the renascent
English drama will float in the coming years?  It is more than
possible that these main channels will come to be two in number and
situate far apart.

The one will be the broad and clear-cut channel of naturalism, down
which will course a drama poignantly shaped, and inspired with high
intention, but faithful to the seething and multiple life around us,
drama such as some are inclined to term photographic, deceived by a
seeming simplicity into forgetfulness of the old proverb, "Ars est
celare artem," and oblivious of the fact that, to be vital, to grip,
such drama is in every respect as dependent on imagination,
construction, selection, and elimination--the main laws of artistry--
as ever was the romantic or rhapsodic play: The question of
naturalistic technique will bear, indeed, much more study than has
yet been given to it.  The aim of the dramatist employing it is
obviously to create such an illusion of actual life passing on the
stage as to compel the spectator to pass through an experience of his
own, to think, and talk, and move with the people he sees thinking,
talking, and moving in front of him.  A false phrase, a single word
out of tune or time, will destroy that illusion and spoil the surface
as surely as a stone heaved into a still pool shatters the image seen
there.  But this is only the beginning of the reason why the
naturalistic is the most exacting and difficult of all techniques.
It is easy enough to reproduce the exact conversation and movements
of persons in a room; it is desperately hard to produce the perfectly
natural conversation and movements of those persons, when each
natural phrase spoken and each natural movement made has not only to
contribute toward the growth and perfection of a drama's soul, but
also to be a revelation, phrase by phrase, movement by movement, of
essential traits of character.  To put it another way, naturalistic
art, when alive, indeed to be alive at all, is simply the art of
manipulating a procession of most delicate symbols.  Its service is
the swaying and focussing of men's feelings and thoughts in the
various departments of human life.  It will be like a steady lamp,
held up from time to time, in whose light things will be seen for a
space clearly and in due proportion, freed from the mists of
prejudice and partisanship.  And the other of these two main channels
will, I think, be a twisting and delicious stream, which will bear on
its breast new barques of poetry, shaped, it may be, like prose, but
a prose incarnating through its fantasy and symbolism all the deeper
aspirations, yearning, doubts, and mysterious stirrings of the human
spirit; a poetic prose-drama, emotionalising us by its diversity and
purity of form and invention, and whose province will be to disclose
the elemental soul of man and the forces of Nature, not perhaps as
the old tragedies disclosed them, not necessarily in the epic mood,
but always with beauty and in the spirit of discovery.

Such will, I think, be the two vital forms of our drama in the coming
generation.  And between these two forms there must be no crude
unions; they are too far apart, the cross is too violent.  For, where
there is a seeming blend of lyricism and naturalism, it will on
examination be found, I think, to exist only in plays whose subjects
or settings--as in Synge's "Playboy of the Western World," or in Mr.
Masefield's "Nan"--are so removed from our ken that we cannot really
tell, and therefore do not care, whether an absolute illusion is
maintained.  The poetry which may and should exist in naturalistic
drama, can only be that of perfect rightness of proportion, rhythm,
shape--the poetry, in fact, that lies in all vital things.  It is the
ill-mating of forms that has killed a thousand plays.  We want no
more bastard drama; no more attempts to dress out the simple dignity
of everyday life in the peacock's feathers of false lyricism; no more
straw-stuffed heroes or heroines; no more rabbits and goldfish from
the conjurer's pockets, nor any limelight.  Let us have starlight,
moonlight, sunlight, and the light of our own self-respects.

1909.








MEDITATION ON FINALITY

In the Grand Canyon of Arizona, that most exhilarating of all natural
phenomena, Nature has for once so focussed her effects, that the
result is a framed and final work of Art.  For there, between two
high lines of plateau, level as the sea, are sunk the wrought thrones
of the innumerable gods, couchant, and for ever revering, in their
million moods of light and colour, the Master Mystery.

Having seen this culmination, I realize why many people either recoil
before it, and take the first train home, or speak of it as a
"remarkable formation."  For, though mankind at large craves
finality, it does not crave the sort that bends the knee to Mystery.
In Nature, in Religion, in Art, in Life, the common cry is: "Tell me
precisely where I am, what doing, and where going!  Let me be free of
this fearful untidiness of not knowing all about it!"  The favoured
religions are always those whose message is most finite.  The
fashionable professions--they that end us in assured positions.  The
most popular works of fiction, such as leave nothing to our
imagination.  And to this craving after prose, who would not be
lenient, that has at all known life, with its usual predominance of
our lower and less courageous selves, our constant hankering after
the cosey closed door and line of least resistance?  We are
continually begging to be allowed to know for certain; though, if our
prayer were granted, and Mystery no longer hovered, made blue the
hills, and turned day into night, we should, as surely, wail at once
to be delivered of that ghastliness of knowing things for certain!

Now, in Art, I would never quarrel with a certain living writer who
demands of it the kind of finality implied in what he calls a "moral
discovery"--using, no doubt, the words in their widest sense.  I
would maintain, however, that such finality is not confined to
positively discovering the true conclusion of premises laid down; but
that it may also distil gradually, negatively from the whole work, in
a moral discovery, as it were, of Author.  In other words, that,
permeation by an essential point of view, by emanation of author, may
so unify and vitalize a work, as to give it all the finality that
need be required of Art.  For the finality that is requisite to Art,
be it positive or negative, is not the finality of dogma, nor the
finality of fact, it is ever the finality of feeling--of a spiritual
light, subtly gleaned by the spectator out of that queer luminous
haze which one man's nature must ever be to others.  And herein,
incidentally, it is that Art acquires also that quality of mystery,
more needful to it even than finality, for the mystery that wraps a
work of Art is the mystery of its maker, and the mystery of its maker
is the difference between that maker's soul and every other soul.

But let me take an illustration of what I mean by these two kinds of
finality that Art may have, and show that in essence they are but two
halves of the same thing.  The term "a work of Art" will not be
denied, I think, to that early novel of M. Anatole France, "Le Lys
Rouge."  Now, that novel has positive finality, since the spiritual
conclusion from its premises strikes one as true.  But neither will
the term "a work of Art" be denied to the same writer's four
"Bergeret" volumes, whose negative finality consists only in the
temperamental atmosphere wherein they are soaked.  Now, if the theme
of "Le Lys Rouge" had been treated by Tolstoy, Meredith, or Turgenev,
we should have had spiritual conclusions from the same factual
premises so different from M. France's as prunes from prisms, and
yet, being the work of equally great artists, they would, doubtless,
have struck us as equally true.  Is not, then, the positive finality
of "Le Lys Rouge," though expressed in terms of a different
craftsmanship, the same, in essence, as the negative finality of the
"Bergeret" volumes?  Are not both, in fact, merely flower of author
true to himself?  So long as the scent, colour, form of that flower
is strong and fine enough to affect the senses of our spirit, then
all the rest, surely, is academic--I would say, immaterial.

But here, in regard to Art, is where mankind at large comes on the
field.  "'Flower of author,'" it says, "'Senses of the spirit!' Phew!
Give me something I can understand!  Let me know where I am getting
to!"  In a word, it wants a finality different from that which Art
can give.  It will ask the artist, with irritation, what his
solution, or his lesson, or his meaning, really is, having omitted to
notice that the poor creature has been giving all the meaning that he
can, in every sentence.  It will demand to know why it was not told
definitely what became of Charles or Mary in whom it had grown so
interested; and will be almost frightened to learn that the artist
knows no more than itself.  And if by any chance it be required to
dip its mind into a philosophy that does not promise it a defined
position both in this world and the next, it will assuredly recoil,
and with a certain contempt say: "No, sir!  This means nothing to me;
and if it means anything to you--which I very much doubt--I am sorry
for you!"

It must have facts, and again facts, not only in the present and the
past, but in the future.  And it demands facts of that, which alone
cannot glibly give it facts.  It goes on asking facts of Art, or,
rather, such facts as Art cannot give--for, after all, even "flower
of author" is fact in a sort of way.

Consider, for instance, Synge's masterpiece, "The Playboy of the
Western World!" There is flower of author!  What is it for mankind at
large?  An attack on the Irish character!  A pretty piece of writing!
An amusing farce!  Enigmatic cynicism leading nowhere!  A puzzling
fellow wrote it!  Mankind at large has little patience with puzzling
fellows.

Few, in fact, want flower of author.  Moreover, it is a quality that
may well be looked for where it does not exist.  To say that the
finality which Art requires is merely an enwrapping mood, or flower
of author, is not by any means to say that any robust fellow,
slamming his notions down in ink, can give us these.  Indeed, no!  So
long as we see the author's proper person in his work, we do not see
the flower of him.  Let him retreat himself, if he pretend to be an
artist.  There is no less of subtle skill, no less impersonality, in
the "Bergeret" volumes than in "Le Lys Rouge."  No less labour and
mental torturing went to their making, page by page, in order that
they might exhale their perfume of mysterious finality, their
withdrawn but implicit judgment.  Flower of author is not quite so
common as the buttercup, the Californian poppy, or the gay Texan
gaillardia, and for that very reason the finality it gives off will
never be robust enough for a mankind at large that would have things
cut and dried, and labelled in thick letters.  For, consider--to take
one phase alone of this demand for factual finality--how continual
and insistent is the cry for characters that can be worshipped; how
intense and persistent the desire to be told that Charles was a real
hero; and how bitter the regret that Mary was no better than she
should be!  Mankind at large wants heroes that are heroes, and
heroines that are heroines--and nothing so inappropriate to them as
unhappy endings.

Travelling away, I remember, from that Grand Canyon of Arizona were a
young man and a young woman, evidently in love.  He was sitting very
close to her, and reading aloud for her pleasure, from a paper-
covered novel, heroically oblivious of us all:

"'Sir Robert,' she murmured, lifting her beauteous eyes, 'I may not
tempt you, for you are too dear to me!' Sir Robert held her lovely
face between his two strong hands.  'Farewell!' he said, and went out
into the night.  But something told them both that, when he had
fulfilled his duty, Sir Robert would return .  .  .  ."  He had not
returned before we reached the Junction, but there was finality about
that baronet, and we well knew that he ultimately would.  And, long
after the sound of that young man's faithful reading had died out of
our ears, we meditated on Sir Robert, and compared him with the
famous characters of fiction, slowly perceiving that they were none
of them so final in their heroism as he.  No, none of them reached
that apex.  For Hamlet was a most unfinished fellow, and Lear
extremely violent.  Pickwick addicted to punch, and Sam Weller to
lying; Bazarof actually a Nihilist, and Irina----!  Levin and Anna,
Pierre and Natasha, all of them stormy and unsatisfactory at times.
"Un Coeur Simple" nothing but a servant, and an old maid at that;
"Saint Julien l'Hospitalier" a sheer fanatic.  Colonel Newcome too
irritable and too simple altogether.  Don Quixote certified insane.
Hilda Wangel, Nora, Hedda--Sir Robert would never even have spoken to
such baggages!  Mon sieur Bergeret--an amiable weak thing!
D'Artagnan--a true swashbuckler!  Tom Jones, Faust, Don Juan--we
might not even think of them: And those poor Greeks: Prometheus--
shocking rebel.  OEdipus for a long time banished by the Censor.
Phaedra and Elektra, not even so virtuous as Mary, who failed of
being what she should be!  And coming to more familiar persons Joseph
and Moses, David and Elijah, all of them lacked his finality of true
heroism--none could quite pass muster beside Sir Robert .  .  .  .
Long we meditated, and, reflecting that an author must ever be
superior to the creatures of his brain, were refreshed to think that
there were so many living authors capable of giving birth to Sir
Robert; for indeed, Sir Robert and finality like his--no doubtful
heroes, no flower of author, and no mystery is what mankind at large
has always wanted from Letters, and will always want.

As truly as that oil and water do not mix, there are two kinds of
men.  The main cleavage in the whole tale of life is this subtle, all
pervading division of mankind into the man of facts and the man of
feeling.  And not by what they are or do can they be told one from
the other, but just by their attitude toward finality.  Fortunately
most of us are neither quite the one nor quite the other.  But
between the pure-blooded of each kind there is real antipathy, far
deeper than the antipathies of race, politics, or religion--an
antipathy that not circumstance, love, goodwill, or necessity will
ever quite get rid of.  Sooner shall the panther agree with the bull
than that other one with the man of facts.  There is no bridging the
gorge that divides these worlds.

Nor is it so easy to tell, of each, to which world he belongs, as it
was to place the lady, who held out her finger over that gorge called
Grand Canyon, and said:

"It doesn't look thirteen miles; but they measured it just there!
Excuse my pointing!"

1912.







WANTED-SCHOOLING

"Et nous jongleurs inutiles, frivoles joueurs de luth!". . .  Useless
jugglers, frivolous players on the lute!  Must we so describe
ourselves, we, the producers, season by season, of so many hundreds
of "remarkable" works of fiction?--for though, when we take up the
remarkable works of our fellows, we "really cannot read them!" the
Press and the advertisements of our publishers tell us that they are
"remarkable."

A story goes that once in the twilight undergrowth of a forest of
nut-bearing trees a number of little purblind creatures wandered,
singing for nuts.  On some of these purblind creatures the nuts fell
heavy and full, extremely indigestible, and were quickly swallowed;
on others they fell light, and contained nothing, because the kernel
had already been eaten up above, and these light and kernel-less nuts
were accompanied by sibilations or laughter.  On others again no nuts
at all, empty or full, came down.  But nuts or no nuts, full nuts or
empty nuts, the purblind creatures below went on wandering and
singing.  A traveller one day stopped one of these creatures whose
voice was peculiarly disagreeable, and asked "Why do you sing like
this?  Is it for pleasure that you do it, or for pain?  What do you
get out of it?  Is it for the sake of those up there?  Is it for your
own sake--for the sake of your family--for whose sake?  Do you think
your songs worth listening to?  Answer!"

The creature scratched itself, and sang the louder.

"Ah!  Cacoethes!  I pity, but do not blame you," said the traveller.

He left the creature, and presently came to another which sang a
squeaky treble song.  It wandered round in a ring under a grove of
stunted trees, and the traveller noticed that it never went out of
that grove.

"Is it really necessary," he said, "for you to express yourself
thus?"

And as he spoke showers of tiny hard nuts came down on the little
creature, who ate them greedily.  The traveller opened one; it was
extremely small and tasted of dry rot.

"Why, at all events," he said, "need you stay under these trees?  the
nuts are not good here."

But for answer the little creature ran round and round, and round and
round.

"I suppose," said the traveller, "small bad nuts are better than no
bread; if you went out of this grove you would starve?"

The purblind little creature shrieked.  The traveller took the sound
for affirmation, and passed on.  He came to a third little creature
who, under a tall tree, was singing very loudly indeed, while all
around was a great silence, broken only by sounds like the snuffling
of small noses.  The creature stopped singing as the traveller came
up, and at once a storm of huge nuts came down; the traveller found
them sweetish and very oily.

"Why," he said to the creature, "did you sing so loud?  You cannot
eat all these nuts.  You really do sing louder than seems necessary;
come, answer me!"

But the purblind little creature began to sing again at the top of
its voice, and the noise of the snuffling of small noses became so
great that the traveller hastened away.  He passed many other
purblind little creatures in the twilight of this forest, till at
last he came to one that looked even blinder than the rest, but whose
song was sweet and low and clear, breaking a perfect stillness; and
the traveller sat down to listen.  For a long time he listened to
that song without noticing that not a nut was falling.  But suddenly
he heard a faint rustle and three little oval nuts lay on the ground.

The traveller cracked one of them.  It was of delicate flavour.  He
looked at the little creature standing with its face raised, and
said:

"Tell me, little blind creature, whose song is so charming, where did
you learn to sing?"

The little creature turned its head a trifle to one side as though
listening for the fall of nuts.

"Ah, indeed!" said the traveller: "You, whose voice is so clear, is
this all you get to eat?"

The little blind creature smiled .  .  .  .

It is a twilight forest in which we writers of fiction wander, and
once in a way, though all this has been said before, we may as well
remind ourselves and others why the light is so dim; why there is so
much bad and false fiction; why the demand for it is so great.
Living in a world where demand creates supply, we writers of fiction
furnish the exception to this rule.  For, consider how, as a class,
we come into existence.  Unlike the followers of any other
occupation, nothing whatever compels any one of us to serve an
apprenticeship.  We go to no school, have to pass no examination,
attain no standard, receive no diploma.  We need not study that which
should be studied; we are at liberty to flood our minds with all that
should not be studied.  Like mushrooms, in a single sight we spring
up--a pen in our hands, very little in our brains, and who-knows-what
in our hearts!

Few of us sit down in cold blood to write our first stories; we have
something in us that we feel we must express.  This is the beginning
of the vicious circle.  Our first books often have some thing in
them.  We are sincere in trying to express that something.  It is
true we cannot express it, not having learnt how, but its ghost
haunts the pages the ghost of real experience and real life--just
enough to attract the untrained intelligence, just enough to make a
generous Press remark: "This shows promise."  We have tasted blood,
we pant for more.  Those of us who had a carking occupation hasten to
throw it aside, those who had no occupation have now found one; some
few of us keep both the old occupation and the new. Whichever of
these courses we pursue, the hurry with which we pursue it undoes us.
For, often we have only that one book in us, which we did not know
how to write, and having expressed that which we have felt, we are
driven in our second, our third, our fourth, to warm up variations,
like those dressed remains of last night's dinner which are served
for lunch; or to spin from our usually commonplace imaginations thin
extravagances which those who do not try to think for themselves are
ever ready to accept as full of inspiration and vitality.  Anything
for a book, we say--anything for a book!

>From time immemorial we have acted in this immoral manner, till we
have accustomed the Press and Public to expect it.  From time
immemorial we have allowed ourselves to be driven by those powerful
drivers, Bread, and Praise, and cared little for the quality of
either.  Sensibly, or insensibly, we tune our songs to earn the nuts
of our twilight forest.  We tune them, not to the key of: "Is it
good?" but to the key of: "Will it pay?" and at each tuning the nuts
fall fast!  It is all so natural.  How can we help it, seeing that we
are undisciplined and standardless, seeing that we started without
the backbone that schooling gives?  Here and there among us is a
genius, here and there a man of exceptional stability who trains
himself in spite of all the forces working for his destruction.  But
those who do not publish until they can express, and do not express
until they have something worth expressing, are so rare that they can
be counted on the fingers of three or perhaps four hands; mercifully,
we all--or nearly all believe ourselves of that company.

It is the fashion to say that the public will have what it wants.
Certainly the Public will have what it wants if what it wants is
given to the Public.  If what it now wants were suddenly withdrawn,
the Public, the big Public, would by an obvious natural law take the
lowest of what remained; if that again were withdrawn, it would take
the next lowest, until by degrees it took a relatively good article.
The Public, the big Public, is a mechanical and helpless consumer at
the mercy of what is supplied to it, and this must ever be so.  The
Public then is not to blame for the supply of bad, false fiction.
The Press is not to blame, for the Press, like the Public, must take
what is set before it; their Critics, for the most part, like
ourselves have been to no school, passed no test of fitness, received
no certificate; they cannot lead us, it is we who lead them, for
without the Critics we could live but without us the Critics would
die.  We cannot, therefore, blame the Press.  Nor is the Publisher to
blame; for the Publisher will publish what is set before him.  It is
true that if he published no books on commission he would deserve the
praise of the State, but it is quite unreasonable for us to expect
him to deserve the praise of the State, since it is we who supply him
with these books and incite him to publish them.  We cannot,
therefore, lay the blame on the Publisher.

We must lay the blame where it clearly should be laid, on ourselves.
We ourselves create the demand for bad and false fiction.  Very many
of us have private means; for such there is no excuse.  Very many of
us have none; for such, once started on this journey of fiction,
there is much, often tragic, excuse--the less reason then for not
having trained ourselves before setting out on our way.  There is no
getting out of it; the fault is ours.  If we will not put ourselves
to school when we are young; if we must rush into print before we can
spell; if we will not repress our natural desires and walk before we
run; if we will not learn at least what not to do--we shall go on
wandering through the forest, singing our foolish songs.

And since we cannot train ourselves except by writing, let us write,
and burn what we write; then shall we soon stop writing, or produce
what we need not burn!

For, as things are now, without compass, without map, we set out into
the twilight forest of fiction; without path, without track--and we
never emerge.

Yes, with the French writer, we must say:

"Et nous jongleurs inutiles, frivoles joueurs de luth!" .  .  .

1906.







REFLECTIONS ON OUR DISLIKE OF THINGS AS THEY ARE

Yes!  Why is this the chief characteristic of our art?  What secret
instincts are responsible for this inveterate distaste?  But, first,
is it true that we have it?

To stand still and look at a thing for the joy of looking, without
reference to any material advantage, and personal benefit, either to
ourselves or our neighbours, just simply to indulge our curiosity!
Is that a British habit?  I think not.

If, on some November afternoon, we walk into Kensington Gardens,
where they join the Park on the Bayswater side, and, crossing in
front of the ornamental fountain, glance at the semicircular seat let
into a dismal little Temple of the Sun, we shall see a half-moon of
apathetic figures.  There, enjoying a moment of lugubrious idleness,
may be sitting an old countrywoman with steady eyes in a lean, dusty-
black dress and an old poke-bonnet; by her side, some gin-faced
creature of the town, all blousy and draggled; a hollow-eyed
foreigner, far gone in consumption; a bronzed young navvy, asleep,
with his muddy boots jutting straight out; a bearded, dreary being,
chin on chest; and more consumptives, and more vagabonds, and more
people dead-tired, speechless, and staring before them from that
crescent-shaped haven where there is no draught at their backs, and
the sun occasionally shines.  And as we look at them, according to
the state of our temper, we think: Poor creatures, I wish I could do
something for them! or: Revolting!  They oughtn't to allow it!  But
do we feel any pleasure in just watching them; any of that intimate
sensation a cat entertains when its back is being rubbed; are we
curiously enjoying the sight of these people, simply as
manifestations of life, as objects fashioned by the ebb and flow of
its tides?  Again, I think, not.  And why?  Either, because we have
instantly felt that we ought to do something; that here is a danger
in our midst, which one day might affect our own security; and at all
events, a sight revolting to us who came out to look at this
remarkably fine fountain.  Or, because we are too humane!  Though
very possibly that frequent murmuring of ours: Ah! It's too sad! is
but another way of putting the words: Stand aside, please, you're too
depressing!  Or, again, is it that we avoid the sight of things as
they are, avoid the unedifying, because of what may be called "the
uncreative instinct," that safeguard and concomitant of a
civilisation which demands of us complete efficiency, practical and
thorough employment of every second of our time and every inch of our
space?  We know, of course, that out of nothing nothing can be made,
that to "create" anything a man must first receive impressions, and
that to receive impressions requires an apparatus of nerves and
feelers, exposed and quivering to every vibration round it, an
apparatus so entirely opposed to our national spirit and traditions
that the bare thought of it causes us to blush.  A robust recognition
of this, a steadfast resolve not to be forced out of the current of
strenuous civilisation into the sleepy backwater of pure impression
ism, makes us distrustful of attempts to foster in ourselves that
receptivity and subsequent creativeness, the microbes of which exist
in every man: To watch a thing simply because it is a thing, entirely
without considering how it can affect us, and without even seeing at
the moment how we are to get anything out of it, jars our
consciences, jars that inner feeling which keeps secure and makes
harmonious the whole concert of our lives, for we feel it to be a
waste of time, dangerous to the community, contributing neither to
our meat and drink, our clothes and comfort, nor to the stability and
order of our lives.

Of these three possible reasons for our dislike of things as they
are, the first two are perhaps contained within the third.  But, to
whatever our dislike is due, we have it--Oh!  we have it!  With the
possible exception of Hogarth in his non-preaching pictures, and
Constable in his sketches of the sky,--I speak of dead men only,--
have we produced any painter of reality like Manet or Millet, any
writer like Flaubert or Maupassant, like Turgenev, or Tchekov.  We
are, I think, too deeply civilised, so deeply civilised that we have
come to look on Nature as indecent.  The acts and emotions of life
undraped with ethics seem to us anathema.  It has long been, and
still is, the fashion among the intellectuals of the Continent to
regard us as barbarians in most aesthetic matters.  Ah! If they only
knew how infinitely barbarous they seem to us in their naive contempt
of our barbarism, and in what we regard as their infantine concern
with things as they are.  How far have we not gone past all that--we
of the oldest settled Western country, who have so veneered our lives
that we no longer know of what wood they are made!  Whom generations
have so soaked with the preserve "good form" that we are impervious
to the claims and clamour of that ill-bred creature--life!  Who think
it either dreadful, or 'vieux jeu', that such things as the crude
emotions and the raw struggles of Fate should be even mentioned, much
less presented in terms of art!  For whom an artist is 'suspect' if
he is not, in his work, a sportsman and a gentleman?  Who shake a
solemn head over writers who will treat of sex; and, with the remark:
"Worst of it is, there's so much truth in those fellows!" close the
book.

Ah!  well!  I suppose we have been too long familiar with the
unprofitableness of speculation, have surrendered too definitely to
action--to the material side of things, retaining for what relaxation
our spirits may require, a habit of sentimental aspiration, carefully
divorced from things as they are.  We seem to have decided that
things are not, or, if they are, ought not to be--and what is the
good of thinking of things like that?  In fact, our national ideal
has become the Will to Health, to Material Efficiency, and to it we
have sacrificed the Will to Sensibility.  It is a point of view.  And
yet--to the philosophy that craves Perfection, to the spirit that
desires the golden mean, and hankers for the serene and balanced seat
in the centre of the see-saw, it seems a little pitiful, and
constricted; a confession of defeat, a hedging and limitation of the
soul.  Need we put up with this, must we for ever turn our eyes away
from things as they are, stifle our imaginations and our
sensibilities, for fear that they should become our masters, and
destroy our sanity?  This is the eternal question that confronts the
artist and the thinker.  Because of the inevitable decline after full
flowering-point is reached, the inevitable fading of the fire that
follows the full flame and glow, are we to recoil from striving to
reach the perfect and harmonious climacteric?  Better to have loved
and lost, I think, than never to have loved at all; better to reach
out and grasp the fullest expression of the individual and the
national soul, than to keep for ever under the shelter of the wall.
I would even think it possible to be sensitive without neurasthenia,
to be sympathetic without insanity, to be alive to all the winds that
blow without getting influenza.  God forbid that our Letters and our
Arts should decade into Beardsleyism; but between that and their
present "health" there lies full flowering-point, not yet, by a long
way, reached.

To flower like that, I suspect, we must see things just a little
more--as they are!

1905-1912.







THE WINDLESTRAW

A certain writer, returning one afternoon from rehearsal of his play,
sat down in the hall of the hotel where he was staying.  "No," he
reflected, "this play of mine will not please the Public; it is
gloomy, almost terrible.  This very day I read these words in my
morning paper: 'No artist can afford to despise his Public, for,
whether he confesses it or not, the artist exists to give the Public
what it wants.'  I have, then, not only done what I cannot afford to
do, but I have been false to the reason of my existence."

The hall was full of people, for it was the hour of tea; and looking
round him, the writer thought "And this is the Public--the Public
that my play is destined not to please!"  And for several minutes he
looked at them as if he had been hypnotised.  Presently, between two
tables he noticed a waiter standing, lost in his thoughts.  The mask
of the man's professional civility had come awry, and the expression
of his face and figure was curiously remote from the faces and forms
of those from whom he had been taking orders; he seemed like a bird
discovered in its own haunts, all unconscious as yet of human eyes.
And the writer thought: "But if those people at the tables are the
Public, what is that waiter?  How if I was mistaken, and not they,
but he were the real Public?"  And testing this thought, his mind
began at once to range over all the people he had lately seen.  He
thought of the Founder's Day dinner of a great School, which he had
attended the night before.  "No," he mused, "I see very little
resemblance between the men at that dinner and the men in this hall;
still less between them and the waiter.  How if they were the real
Public, and neither the waiter, nor these people here!"  But no
sooner had he made this reflection, than he bethought him of a
gathering of workers whom he had watched two days ago.  "Again," he
mused, "I do not recollect any resemblance at all between those
workers and the men at the dinner, and certainly they are not like
any one here.  What if those workers are the real Public, not the men
at the dinner, nor the waiter, nor the people in this hall!"  And
thereupon his mind flew off again, and this time rested on the
figures of his own immediate circle of friends.  They seemed very
different from the four real Publics whom he had as yet discovered.
"Yes," he considered, "when I come to think of it, my associates
painters, and writers, and critics, and all that kind of person--do
not seem to have anything to speak of in common with any of these
people.  Perhaps my own associates, then, are the real Public, and
not these others!"  Perceiving that this would be the fifth real
Public, he felt discouraged.  But presently he began to think: "The
past is the past and cannot be undone, and with this play of mine I
shall not please the Public; but there is always the future!  Now, I
do not wish to do what the artist cannot afford to do, I earnestly
desire to be true to the reason of my existence; and since the reason
of that existence is to give the Public what it wants, it is really
vital to discover who and what the Public is!"  And he began to look
very closely at the faces around him, hoping to find out from types
what he had failed to ascertain from classes.  Two men were sitting
near, one on each side of a woman.  The first, who was all crumpled
in his arm-chair, had curly lips and wrinkles round the eyes, cheeks
at once rather fat and rather shadowy, and a dimple in his chin.  It
seemed certain that he was humourous, and kind, sympathetic, rather
diffident, speculative, moderately intelligent, with the rudiments
perhaps of an imagination.  And he looked at the second man, who was
sitting very upright, as if he had a particularly fine backbone, of
which he was not a little proud.  He was extremely big and handsome,
with pronounced and regular nose and chin, firm, well-cut lips
beneath a smooth moustache, direct and rather insolent eyes, a some
what receding forehead, and an air of mastery over all around.  It
was obvious that he possessed a complete knowledge of his own mind,
some brutality, much practical intelligence, great resolution, no
imagination, and plenty of conceit. And he looked at the woman.  She
was pretty, but her face was vapid, and seemed to have no character
at all.  And from one to the other he looked, and the more he looked
the less resemblance he saw between them, till the objects of his
scrutiny grew restive....  Then, ceasing to examine them, an idea
came to him.  "No!  The Public is not this or that class, this or
that type; the Public is an hypothetical average human being, endowed
with average human qualities--a distillation, in fact, of all the
people in this hall, the people in the street outside, the people of
this country everywhere."  And for a moment he was pleased; but soon
he began again to feel uneasy.  "Since," he reflected, "it is
necessary for me to supply this hypothetical average human being with
what he wants, I shall have to find out how to distil him from all
the ingredients around me. Now how am I to do that?  It will
certainly take me more than all my life to collect and boil the souls
of all of them, which is necessary if I am to extract the genuine
article, and I should then apparently have no time left to supply the
precipitated spirit, when I had obtained it, with what it wanted!
Yet this hypothetical average human being must be found, or I must
stay for ever haunted by the thought that I am not supplying him with
what he wants!"  And the writer became more and more discouraged, for
to arrogate to himself knowledge of all the heights and depths, and
even of all the virtues and vices, tastes and dislikes of all the
people of the country, without having first obtained it, seemed to
him to savour of insolence.  And still more did it appear
impertinent, having taken this mass of knowledge which he had not
got, to extract from it a golden mean man, in order to supply him
with what he wanted.  And yet this was what every artist did who
justified his existence--or it would not have been so stated in a
newspaper.  And he gaped up at the lofty ceiling, as if he might
perchance see the Public flying up there in the faint bluish mist of
smoke.  And suddenly he thought: "Suppose, by some miracle, my
golden-mean bird came flying to me with its beak open for the food
with which it is my duty to supply it--would it after all be such a
very strange-looking creature; would it not be extremely like my
normal self?  Am I not, in fact, myself the Public?  For, without the
strongest and most reprehensible conceit, can I claim for my normal
self a single attribute or quality not possessed by an hypothetical
average human being?  Yes, I am myself the Public; or at all events
all that my consciousness can ever know of it for certain."  And he
began to consider deeply.  For sitting there in cold blood, with his
nerves at rest, and his brain and senses normal, the play he had
written did seem to him to put an unnecessary strain upon the
faculties.  "Ah!" he thought, "in future I must take good care never
to write anything except in cold blood, with my nerves well clothed,
and my brain and senses quiet.  I ought only to write when I feel as
normal as I do now."  And for some minutes he remained motionless,
looking at his boots.  Then there crept into his mind an
uncomfortable thought.  "But have I ever written anything without
feeling a little-abnormal, at the time?  Have I ever even felt
inclined to write anything, until my emotions had been unduly
excited, my brain immoderately stirred, my senses unusually
quickened, or my spirit extravagantly roused?  Never!  Alas, never!
I am then a miserable renegade, false to the whole purpose of my
being--nor do I see the slightest hope of becoming a better man, a
less unworthy artist!  For I literally cannot write without the
stimulus of some feeling exaggerated at the expense of other
feelings.  What has been in the past will be in the future: I shall
never be taking up my pen when I feel my comfortable and normal self
never be satisfying that self which is the Public!"  And he thought:
"I am lost.  For, to satisfy that normal self, to give the Public
what it wants, is, I am told, and therefore must believe, what all
artists exist for.  AEschylus in his 'Choephorae' and his
'Prometheus'; Sophocles in his 'OEdipus Tyrannus'; Euripides when he
wrote 'The Trojan Women,' 'Medea,'--and 'Hippolytus'; Shakespeare in
his 'Leer'; Goethe in his 'Faust'; Ibsen in his 'Ghosts' and his
'Peer Gynt'; Tolstoy in 'The Powers of Darkness'; all--all in those
great works, must have satisfied their most comfortable and normal
selves; all--all must have given to the average human being, to the
Public, what it wants; for to do that, we know, was the reason of
their existence, and who shall say those noble artists were not true
to it?  That is surely unthinkable.  And yet--and yet--we are
assured, and, indeed, it is true, that there is no real Public in
this country for just those plays!  Therefore AEschylus, Sophocles,
Euripides, Shakespeare, Goethe, Ibsen, Tolstoy, in their greatest
works did not give the Public what it wants, did not satisfy the
average human being, their more comfortable and normal selves, and as
artists were not true to the reason of their existence.  Therefore
they were not artists, which is unthinkable; therefore I have not yet
found the Public!"

And perceiving that in this impasse his last hope of discovery had
foundered, the writer let his head fall on his chest.

But even as he did so a gleam of light, like a faint moonbeam, stole
out into the garden of his despair.  "Is it possible," he thought,
"that, by a writer, until his play has been performed (when, alas!
it is too late), 'the Public' is inconceivable--in fact that for him
there is no such thing?  But if there be no such thing, I cannot
exist to give it what it wants.  What then is the reason of my
existence?  Am I but a windlestraw?"  And wearied out with his
perplexity, he fell into a doze.  And while he dozed he dreamed that
he saw the figure of a woman standing in darkness, from whose face
and form came a misty refulgence, such as steals out into the dusk
from white campion flowers along summer hedgerows.  She was holding
her pale hands before her, wide apart, with the palms turned down,
quivering as might doves about to settle; and for all it was so dark,
her grey eyes were visible-full of light, with black rims round the
irises.  To gaze at those eyes was almost painful; for though they
were beautiful, they seemed to see right through his soul, to pass
him by, as though on a far discovering voyage, and forbidden to rest.

The dreamer spoke to her: "Who are you, standing there in the
darkness with those eyes that I can hardly bear to look at?  Who are
you?"

And the woman answered: "Friend, I am your Conscience; I am the Truth
as best it may be seen by you.  I am she whom you exist to serve."
With those words she vanished, and the writer woke.  A boy was
standing before him with the evening papers.

To cover his confusion at being caught asleep he purchased one and
began to read a leading article.  It commenced with these words:
"There are certain playwrights taking themselves very seriously;
might we suggest to them that they are in danger of becoming
ridiculous .  .  .  ."

The writer let fall his hand, and the paper fluttered to the ground.
"The Public," he thought, "I am not able to take seriously, because I
cannot conceive what it may be; myself, my conscience, I am told I
must not take seriously, or I become ridiculous.  Yes, I am indeed
lost!"

And with a feeling of elation, as of a straw blown on every wind, he
arose.

1910.





End of Project Gutenberg's Etext Studies and Essays: Concerning Letters
By John Galsworthy








STUDIES AND ESSAYS

By John Galsworthy



          "Je vous dirai que l'exces est toujours un mal."
                                        -ANATOLE FRANCE


TABLE OF CONTENTS:
          ABOUT CENSORSHIP
          VAGUE THOUGHTS ON ART




ABOUT CENSORSHIP

Since, time and again, it has been proved, in this country of free
institutions, that the great majority of our fellow-countrymen
consider the only Censorship that now obtains amongst us, namely the
Censorship of Plays, a bulwark for the preservation of their comfort
and sensibility against the spiritual researches and speculations of
bolder and too active spirits--it has become time to consider whether
we should not seriously extend a principle, so grateful to the
majority, to all our institutions.

For no one can deny that in practice the Censorship of Drama works
with a smooth swiftness--a lack of delay and friction unexampled in
any public office.  No troublesome publicity and tedious postponement
for the purpose of appeal mar its efficiency.  It is neither hampered
by the Law nor by the slow process of popular election.  Welcomed by
the overwhelming majority of the public; objected to only by such
persons as suffer from it, and a negligible faction, who, wedded
pedantically to liberty of the subject, are resentful of summary
powers vested in a single person responsible only to his own
'conscience'--it is amazingly, triumphantly, successful.

Why, then, in a democratic State, is so valuable a protector of the
will, the interests, and pleasure of the majority not bestowed on
other branches of the public being?  Opponents of the Censorship of
Plays have been led by the absence of such other Censorships to
conclude that this Office is an archaic survival, persisting into
times that have outgrown it.  They have been known to allege that the
reason of its survival is simply the fact that Dramatic Authors,
whose reputation and means of livelihood it threatens, have ever been
few in number and poorly organised--that the reason, in short, is the
helplessness and weakness of the interests concerned.  We must all
combat with force such an aspersion on our Legislature.  Can it even
for a second be supposed that a State which gives trial by Jury to
the meanest, poorest, most helpless of its citizens, and concedes to
the greatest criminals the right of appeal, could have debarred a
body of reputable men from the ordinary rights of citizenship for so
cynical a reason as that their numbers were small, their interests
unjoined, their protests feeble?  Such a supposition were
intolerable!  We do not in this country deprive a class of citizens
of their ordinary rights, we do not place their produce under the
irresponsible control of one not amenable to Law, by any sort of
political accident!  That would indeed be to laugh at Justice in this
Kingdom!  That would indeed be cynical and unsound!  We must never
admit that there is no basic Justice controlling the edifice of our
Civic Rights.  We do, we must, conclude that a just and well-
considered principle underlies this despotic Institution; for surely,
else, it would not be suffered to survive for a single moment!  Pom!
Pom!

If, then, the Censorship of Plays be just, beneficent, and based on a
well-considered principle, we must rightly inquire what good and
logical reason there is for the absence of Censorship in other
departments of the national life.  If Censorship of the Drama be in
the real interests of the people, or at all events in what the Censor
for the time being conceives to be their interest--then Censorships
of Art, Literature, Religion, Science, and Politics are in the
interests of the people, unless it can be proved that there exists
essential difference between the Drama and these other branches of
the public being.  Let us consider whether there is any such
essential difference.

It is fact, beyond dispute, that every year numbers of books appear
which strain the average reader's intelligence and sensibilities to
an unendurable extent; books whose speculations are totally unsuited
to normal thinking powers; books which contain views of morality
divergent from the customary, and discussions of themes unsuited to
the young person; books which, in fine, provide the greater Public
with no pleasure whatsoever, and, either by harrowing their feelings
or offending their good taste, cause them real pain.

It is true that, precisely as in the case of Plays, the Public are
protected by a vigilant and critical Press from works of this
description; that, further, they are protected by the commercial
instinct of the Libraries, who will not stock an article which may
offend their customers--just as, in the case of Plays, the Public are
protected by the common-sense of theatrical Managers; that, finally,
they are protected by the Police and the Common Law of the land.  But
despite all these protections, it is no uncommon thing for an average
citizen to purchase one of these disturbing or dubious books.  Has
he, on discovering its true nature, the right to call on the
bookseller to refund its value?  He has not.  And thus he runs a
danger obviated in the case of the Drama which has the protection of
a prudential Censorship.  For this reason alone, how much better,
then, that there should exist a paternal authority (some, no doubt,
will call it grand-maternal--but sneers must not be confounded with
argument) to suppress these books before appearance, and safeguard us
from the danger of buying and possibly reading undesirable or painful
literature!

A specious reason, however, is advanced for exempting Literature from
the Censorship accorded to Plays.  He--it is said--who attends the
performance of a play, attends it in public, where his feelings may
be harrowed and his taste offended, cheek by jowl with boys, or women
of all ages; it may even chance that he has taken to this
entertainment his wife, or the young persons of his household.  He--
on the other hand--who reads a book, reads it in privacy.  True; but
the wielder of this argument has clasped his fingers round a two-
edged blade.  The very fact that the book has no mixed audience
removes from Literature an element which is ever the greatest check
on licentiousness in Drama.  No manager of a theatre,--a man of the
world engaged in the acquisition of his livelihood, unless guaranteed
by the license of the Censor, dare risk the presentment before a
mixed audience of that which might cause an 'emeute' among his
clients.  It has, indeed, always been observed that the theatrical
manager, almost without exception, thoughtfully recoils from the
responsibility that would be thrust on him by the abolition of the
Censorship.  The fear of the mixed audience is ever suspended above
his head.  No such fear threatens the publisher, who displays his
wares to one man at a time.  And for this very reason of the mixed
audience; perpetually and perversely cited to the contrary by such as
have no firm grasp of this matter, there is a greater necessity for a
Censorship on Literature than for one on Plays.

Further, if there were but a Censorship of Literature, no matter how
dubious the books that were allowed to pass, the conscience of no
reader need ever be troubled.  For, that the perfect rest of the
public conscience is the first result of Censorship, is proved to
certainty by the protected Drama, since many dubious plays are yearly
put before the play-going Public without tending in any way to
disturb a complacency engendered by the security from harm guaranteed
by this beneficent, if despotic, Institution.  Pundits who, to the
discomfort of the populace, foster this exemption of Literature from
discipline, cling to the old-fashioned notion that ulcers should be
encouraged to discharge themselves upon the surface, instead of being
quietly and decently driven into the system and allowed to fester
there.

The remaining plea for exempting Literature from Censorship, put
forward by unreflecting persons: That it would require too many
Censors--besides being unworthy, is, on the face of it, erroneous.
Special tests have never been thought necessary in appointing
Examiners of Plays.  They would, indeed, not only be unnecessary, but
positively dangerous, seeing that the essential function of
Censorship is protection of the ordinary prejudices and forms of
thought.  There would, then, be no difficulty in securing tomorrow as
many Censors of Literature as might be necessary (say twenty or
thirty); since all that would be required of each one of them would
be that he should secretly exercise, in his uncontrolled discretion,
his individual taste.  In a word, this Free Literature of ours
protects advancing thought and speculation; and those who believe in
civic freedom subject only to Common Law, and espouse the cause of
free literature, are championing a system which is essentially
undemocratic, essentially inimical to the will of the majority, who
have certainly no desire for any such things as advancing thought and
speculation.  Such persons, indeed, merely hold the faith that the
People, as a whole, unprotected by the despotic judgments of single
persons, have enough strength and wisdom to know what is and what is
not harmful to themselves.  They put their trust in a Public Press
and a Common Law, which deriving from the Conscience of the Country,
is openly administered and within the reach of all.  How absurd, how
inadequate this all is we see from the existence of the Censorship on
Drama.

Having observed that there is no reason whatever for the exemption of
Literature, let us now turn to the case of Art.  Every picture hung
in a gallery, every statue placed on a pedestal, is exposed to the
public stare of a mixed company.  Why, then, have we no Censorship to
protect us from the possibility of encountering works that bring
blushes to the cheek of the young person?  The reason cannot be that
the proprietors of Galleries are more worthy of trust than the
managers of Theatres; this would be to make an odious distinction
which those very Managers who uphold the Censorship of Plays would be
the first to resent.  It is true that Societies of artists and the
proprietors of Galleries are subject to the prosecution of the Law if
they offend against the ordinary standards of public decency; but
precisely the same liability attaches to theatrical managers and
proprietors of Theatres, in whose case it has been found necessary
and beneficial to add the Censorship.  And in this connection let it
once more be noted how much more easily the ordinary standards of
public decency can be assessed by a single person responsible to no
one, than by the clumsy (if more open) process of public protest.
What, then, in the light of the proved justice and efficiency of the
Censorship of Drama, is the reason for the absence of the Censorship
of Art?  The more closely the matter is regarded, the more plain it
is, that there is none!  At any moment we may have to look upon some
painting, or contemplate some statue, as tragic, heart-rending, and
dubiously delicate in theme as that censured play "The Cenci," by one
Shelley; as dangerous to prejudice, and suggestive of new thought as
the censured "Ghosts," by one Ibsen.  Let us protest against this
peril suspended over our heads, and demand the immediate appointment
of a single person not selected for any pretentiously artistic
feelings, but endowed with summary powers of prohibiting the
exhibition, in public galleries or places, of such works as he shall
deem, in his uncontrolled discretion, unsuited to average
intelligence or sensibility.  Let us demand it in the interest, not
only of the young person, but of those whole sections of the
community which cannot be expected to take an interest in Art, and to
whom the purpose, speculations, and achievements of great artists,
working not only for to-day but for to-morrow, must naturally be dark
riddles.  Let us even require that this official should be empowered
to order the destruction of the works which he has deemed unsuited to
average intelligence and sensibility, lest their creators should, by
private sale, make a profit out of them, such as, in the nature of
the case, Dramatic Authors are debarred from making out of plays
which, having been censured, cannot be played for money.  Let us ask
this with confidence; for it is not compatible with common justice
that there should be any favouring of Painter over Playwright.  They
are both artists--let them both be measured by the same last!

But let us now consider the case of Science.  It will not, indeed
cannot, be contended that the investigations of scientific men,
whether committed to writing or to speech, are always suited to the
taste and capacities of our general public.  There was, for example,
the well-known doctrine of Evolution, the teachings of Charles Darwin
and Alfred Russet Wallace, who gathered up certain facts, hitherto
but vaguely known, into presentments, irreverent and startling,
which, at the time, profoundly disturbed every normal mind.  Not only
did religion, as then accepted, suffer in this cataclysm, but our
taste and feeling were inexpressibly shocked by the discovery, so
emphasised by Thomas Henry Huxley, of Man's descent from Apes.  It
was felt, and is felt by many to this day, that the advancement of
that theory grossly and dangerously violated every canon of decency.
What pain, then, might have been averted, what far-reaching
consequences and incalculable subversion of primitive faiths checked,
if some judicious Censor of scientific thought had existed in those
days to demand, in accordance with his private estimate of the will
and temper of the majority, the suppression of the doctrine of
Evolution.

Innumerable investigations of scientists on subjects such as the date
of the world's creation, have from time to time been summarised and
inconsiderately sprung on a Public shocked and startled by the
revelation that facts which they were accustomed to revere were
conspicuously at fault.  So, too, in the range of medicine, it would
be difficult to cite any radical discovery (such as the preventive
power of vaccination), whose unchecked publication has not violated
the prejudices and disturbed the immediate comfort of the common
mind.  Had these discoveries been judiciously suppressed, or pared
away to suit what a Censorship conceived to be the popular palate of
the time, all this disturbance and discomfort might have been
avoided.

It will doubtless be contended (for there are no such violent
opponents of Censorship as those who are threatened with the same)
that to compare a momentous disclosure, such as the doctrine of
Evolution, to a mere drama, were unprofitable.  The answer to this
ungenerous contention is fortunately plain.  Had a judicious
Censorship existed over our scientific matters, such as for two
hundred years has existed over our Drama, scientific discoveries
would have been no more disturbing and momentous than those which we
are accustomed to see made on our nicely pruned and tutored stage.
For not only would the more dangerous and penetrating scientific
truths have been carefully destroyed at birth, but scientists, aware
that the results of investigations offensive to accepted notions
would be suppressed, would long have ceased to waste their time in
search of a knowledge repugnant to average intelligence, and thus
foredoomed, and have occupied themselves with services more agreeable
to the public taste, such as the rediscovery of truths already known
and published.

Indissolubly connected with the desirability of a Censorship of
Science, is the need for Religious Censorship.  For in this,
assuredly not the least important department of the nation's life, we
are witnessing week by week and year by year, what in the light of
the security guaranteed by the Censorship of Drama, we are justified
in terming an alarming spectacle.  Thousands of men are licensed to
proclaim from their pulpits, Sunday after Sunday, their individual
beliefs, quite regardless of the settled convictions of the masses of
their congregations.  It is true, indeed, that the vast majority of
sermons (like the vast majority of plays) are, and will always be,
harmonious with the feelings--of the average citizen; for neither
priest nor playwright have customarily any such peculiar gift of
spiritual daring as might render them unsafe mentors of their
fellows; and there is not wanting the deterrent of common-sense to
keep them in bounds.  Yet it can hardly be denied that there spring
up at times men--like John Wesley or General Booth--of such incurable
temperament as to be capable of abusing their freedom by the
promulgation of doctrine or procedure, divergent from the current
traditions of religion.  Nor must it be forgotten that sermons, like
plays, are addressed to a mixed audience of families, and that the
spiritual teachings of a lifetime may be destroyed by ten minutes of
uncensored pronouncement from a pulpit, the while parents are
sitting, not, as in a theatre vested with the right of protest, but
dumb and excoriated to the soul, watching their children, perhaps of
tender age, eagerly drinking in words at variance with that which
they themselves have been at such pains to instil.

If a set of Censors--for it would, as in the case of Literature,
indubitably require more than one (perhaps one hundred and eighty,
but, for reasons already given, there should be no difficulty
whatever in procuring them) endowed with the swift powers conferred
by freedom from the dull tedium of responsibility, and not remarkable
for religious temperament, were appointed, to whom all sermons and
public addresses on religious subjects must be submitted before
delivery, and whose duty after perusal should be to excise all
portions not conformable to their private ideas of what was at the
moment suitable to the Public's ears, we should be far on the road
toward that proper preservation of the status quo so desirable if the
faiths and ethical standards of the less exuberantly spiritual masses
are to be maintained in their full bloom.  As things now stand, the
nation has absolutely nothing to safeguard it against religious
progress.

We have seen, then, that Censorship is at least as necessary over
Literature, Art, Science, and Religion as it is over our Drama.  We
have now to call attention to the crowning need--the want of a
Censorship in Politics.

If Censorship be based on justice, if it be proved to serve the
Public and to be successful in its lonely vigil over Drama, it
should, and logically must be, extended to all parallel cases; it
cannot, it dare not, stop short at--Politics.  For, precisely in this
supreme branch of the public life are we most menaced by the rule and
license of the leading spirit.  To appreciate this fact, we need only
examine the Constitution of the House of Commons.  Six hundred and
seventy persons chosen from a population numbering four and forty
millions, must necessarily, whatever their individual defects, be
citizens of more than average enterprise, resource, and resolution.
They are elected for a period that may last five years.  Many of them
are ambitious; some uncompromising; not a few enthusiastically eager
to do something for their country; filled with designs and
aspirations for national or social betterment, with which the masses,
sunk in the immediate pursuits of life, can in the nature of things
have little sympathy.  And yet we find these men licensed to pour
forth at pleasure, before mixed audiences, checked only by Common Law
and Common Sense political utterances which may have the gravest, the
most terrific consequences; utterances which may at any moment let
loose revolution, or plunge the country into war; which often, as a
fact, excite an utter detestation, terror, and mistrust; or shock the
most sacred domestic and proprietary convictions in the breasts of
vast majorities of their fellow-countrymen!  And we incur this
appalling risk for the want of a single, or at the most, a handful of
Censors, invested with a simple but limitless discretion to excise or
to suppress entirely such political utterances as may seem to their
private judgments calculated to cause pain or moral disturbance in
the average man.  The masses, it is true, have their protection and
remedy against injudicious or inflammatory politicians in the Law and
the so-called democratic process of election; but we have seen that
theatre audiences have also the protection of the Law, and the remedy
of boycott, and that in their case, this protection and this remedy
are not deemed enough.  What, then, shall we say of the case of
Politics, where the dangers attending inflammatory or subversive
utterance are greater a million fold, and the remedy a thousand times
less expeditious?

Our Legislators have laid down Censorship as the basic principle of
Justice underlying the civic rights of dramatists.  Then, let
"Censorship for all" be their motto, and this country no longer be
ridden and destroyed by free Institutions!  Let them not only
establish forthwith Censorships of Literature, Art, Science, and
Religion, but also place themselves beneath the regimen with which
they have calmly fettered Dramatic Authors.  They cannot deem it
becoming to their regard for justice, to their honour; to their sense
of humour, to recoil from a restriction which, in a parallel case
they have imposed on others.  It is an old and homely saying that
good officers never place their men in positions they would not
themselves be willing to fill.  And we are not entitled to believe
that our Legislators, having set Dramatic Authors where they have
been set, will--now that their duty is made plain--for a moment
hesitate to step down and stand alongside.

But if by any chance they should recoil, and thus make answer: "We
are ready at all times to submit to the Law and the People's will,
and to bow to their demands, but we cannot and must not be asked to
place our calling, our duty, and our honour beneath the irresponsible
rule of an arbitrary autocrat, however sympathetic with the
generality he may chance to be!"  Then, we would ask: "Sirs, did you
ever hear of that great saying: 'Do unto others as ye would they
should do unto you!'"  For it is but fair presumption that the
Dramatists, whom our Legislators have placed in bondage to a despot,
are, no less than those Legislators, proud of their calling,
conscious of their duty, and jealous of their honour.

1909.







VAGUE THOUGHTS ON ART

It was on a day of rare beauty that I went out into the fields to try
and gather these few thoughts.  So golden and sweetly hot it was,
that they came lazily, and with a flight no more coherent or
responsible than the swoop of the very swallows; and, as in a play or
poem, the result is conditioned by the conceiving mood, so I knew
would be the nature of my diving, dipping, pale-throated, fork-tailed
words.  But, after all--I thought, sitting there--I need not take my
critical pronouncements seriously.  I have not the firm soul of the
critic.  It is not my profession to know 'things for certain, and to
make others feel that certainty.  On the contrary, I am often wrong--
a luxury no critic can afford.  And so, invading as I was the realm
of others, I advanced with a light pen, feeling that none, and least
of all myself, need expect me to be right.

What then--I thought--is Art?  For I perceived that to think about it
I must first define it; and I almost stopped thinking at all before
the fearsome nature of that task.  Then slowly in my mind gathered
this group of words:

Art is that imaginative expression of human energy, which, through
technical concretion of feeling and perception, tends to reconcile
the individual with the universal, by exciting in him impersonal
emotion.  And the greatest Art is that which excites the greatest
impersonal emotion in an hypothecated perfect human being.

Impersonal emotion!  And what--I thought do I mean by that?  Surely I
mean: That is not Art, which, while I, am contemplating it, inspires
me with any active or directive impulse; that is Art, when, for
however brief a moment, it replaces within me interest in myself by
interest in itself.  For, let me suppose myself in the presence of a
carved marble bath.  If my thoughts be "What could I buy that for?"
Impulse of acquisition; or: "From what quarry did it come?"  Impulse
of inquiry; or: "Which would be the right end for my head?"  Mixed
impulse of inquiry and acquisition--I am at that moment insensible to
it as a work of Art.  But, if I stand before it vibrating at sight of
its colour and forms, if ever so little and for ever so short a time,
unhaunted by any definite practical thought or impulse--to that
extent and for that moment it has stolen me away out of myself and
put itself there instead; has linked me to the universal by making me
forget the individual in me.  And for that moment, and only while
that moment lasts, it is to me a work of Art.  The word "impersonal,"
then, is but used in this my definition to signify momentary
forgetfulness of one's own personality and its active wants.

So Art--I thought--is that which, heard, read, or looked on, while
producing no directive impulse, warms one with unconscious vibration.
Nor can I imagine any means of defining what is the greatest Art,
without hypothecating a perfect human being.  But since we shall
never see, or know if we do see, that desirable creature--dogmatism
is banished, "Academy" is dead to the discussion, deader than even
Tolstoy left it after his famous treatise "What is Art?"  For, having
destroyed all the old Judges and Academies, Tolstoy, by saying that
the greatest Art was that which appealed to the greatest number of
living human beings, raised up the masses of mankind to be a definite
new Judge or Academy, as tyrannical and narrow as ever were those
whom he had destroyed.

This, at all events--I thought is as far as I dare go in defining
what Art is.  But let me try to make plain to myself what is the
essential quality that gives to Art the power of exciting this
unconscious vibration, this impersonal emotion.  It has been called
Beauty!  An awkward word--a perpetual begging of the question; too
current in use, too ambiguous altogether; now too narrow, now too
wide--a word, in fact, too glib to know at all what it means.  And
how dangerous a word--often misleading us into slabbing with
extraneous floridities what would otherwise, on its own plane, be
Art!  To be decorative where decoration is not suitable, to be
lyrical where lyricism is out of place, is assuredly to spoil Art,
not to achieve it.  But this essential quality of Art has also, and
more happily, been called Rhythm.  And, what is Rhythm if not that
mysterious harmony between part and part, and part and whole, which
gives what is called life; that exact proportion, the mystery of
which is best grasped in observing how life leaves an animate
creature when the essential relation of part to whole has been
sufficiently disturbed.  And I agree that this rhythmic relation of
part to part, and part to whole--in short, vitality--is the one
quality inseparable from a work of Art.  For nothing which does not
seem to a man possessed of this rhythmic vitality, can ever steal him
out of himself.

And having got thus far in my thoughts, I paused, watching the
swallows; for they seemed to me the symbol, in their swift, sure
curvetting, all daring and balance and surprise, of the delicate
poise and motion of Art, that visits no two men alike, in a world
where no two things of all the things there be, are quite the same.

Yes--I thought--and this Art is the one form of human energy in the
whole world, which really works for union, and destroys the barriers
between man and man.  It is the continual, unconscious replacement,
however fleeting, of oneself by another; the real cement of human
life; the everlasting refreshment and renewal.  For, what is
grievous, dompting, grim, about our lives is that we are shut up
within ourselves, with an itch to get outside ourselves.  And to be
stolen away from ourselves by Art is a momentary relaxation from that
itching, a minute's profound, and as it were secret, enfranchisement.
The active amusements and relaxations of life can only rest certain
of our faculties, by indulging others; the whole self is never rested
save through that unconsciousness of self, which comes through rapt
contemplation of Nature or of Art.

And suddenly I remembered that some believe that Art does not produce
unconsciousness of self, but rather very vivid self-realisation.

Ah! but--I though--that is not the first and instant effect of Art;
the new impetus is the after effect of that momentary replacement of
oneself by the self of the work before us; it is surely the result of
that brief span of enlargement, enfranchisement, and rest.

Yes, Art is the great and universal refreshment.  For Art is never
dogmatic; holds no brief for itself you may take it or you may leave
it.  It does not force itself rudely where it is not wanted.  It is
reverent to all tempers, to all points of view.  But it is wilful--
the very wind in the comings and goings of its influence, an
uncapturable fugitive, visiting our hearts at vagrant, sweet moments;
since we often stand even before the greatest works of Art without
being able quite to lose ourselves!  That restful oblivion comes, we
never quite know when--and it is gone!  But when it comes, it is a
spirit hovering with cool wings, blessing us from least to greatest,
according to our powers; a spirit deathless and varied as human life
itself.

And in what sort of age--I thought--are artists living now?  Are
conditions favourable?  Life is very multiple; full of "movements,"
"facts," and "news"; with the limelight terribly turned on--and all
this is adverse to the artist.  Yet, leisure is abundant; the
facilities for study great; Liberty is respected--more or less.  But,
there is one great reason why, in this age of ours, Art, it seems,
must flourish.  For, just as cross-breeding in Nature--if it be not
too violent--often gives an extra vitality to the offspring, so does
cross-breeding of philosophies make for vitality in Art.  I cannot
help thinking that historians, looking back from the far future, will
record this age as the Third Renaissance.  We who are lost in it,
working or looking on, can neither tell what we are doing, nor where
standing; but we cannot help observing, that, just as in the Greek
Renaissance, worn-out Pagan orthodoxy was penetrated by new
philosophy; just as in the Italian Renaissance, Pagan philosophy,
reasserting itself, fertilised again an already too inbred Christian
creed; so now Orthodoxy fertilised by Science is producing a fresh
and fuller conception of life--a, love of Perfection, not for hope of
reward, not for fear of punishment, but for Perfection's sake.
Slowly, under our feet, beneath our consciousness, is forming that
new philosophy, and it is in times of new philosophies that Art,
itself in essence always a discovery, must flourish.  Those whose
sacred suns and moons are ever in the past, tell us that our Art is
going to the dogs; and it is, indeed, true that we are in confusion!
The waters are broken, and every nerve and sinew of the artist is
strained to discover his own safety.  It is an age of stir and
change, a season of new wine and old bottles.  Yet, assuredly, in
spite of breakages and waste, a wine worth the drinking is all the
time being made.

I ceased again to think, for the sun had dipped low, and the midges
were biting me; and the sounds of evening had begun, those
innumerable far-travelling sounds of man and bird and beast--so clear
and intimate--of remote countrysides at sunset.  And for long I
listened, too vague to move my pen.

New philosophy--a vigorous Art!  Are there not all the signs of it?
In music, sculpture, painting; in fiction--and drama; in dancing; in
criticism itself, if criticism be an Art.  Yes, we are reaching out
to a new faith not yet crystallised, to a new Art not yet perfected;
the forms still to find-the flowers still to fashion!

And how has it come, this slowly growing faith in Perfection for
Perfection's sake?  Surely like this: The Western world awoke one day
to find that it no longer believed corporately and for certain in
future life for the individual consciousness.  It began to feel: I
cannot say more than that there may be--Death may be the end of man,
or Death may be nothing.  And it began to ask itself in this
uncertainty: Do I then desire to go on living?  Now, since it found
that it desired to go on living at least as earnestly as ever it did
before, it began to inquire why.  And slowly it perceived that there
was, inborn within it, a passionate instinct of which it had hardly
till then been conscious--a sacred instinct to perfect itself, now,
as well as in a possible hereafter; to perfect itself because
Perfection was desirable, a vision to be adored, and striven for; a
dream motive fastened within the Universe; the very essential Cause
of everything.  And it began to see that this Perfection, cosmically,
was nothing but perfect Equanimity and Harmony; and in human
relations, nothing but perfect Love and Justice.  And Perfection
began to glow before the eyes of the Western world like a new star,
whose light touched with glamour all things as they came forth from
Mystery, till to Mystery they were ready to return.

This--I thought is surely what the Western world has dimly been
rediscovering.  There has crept into our minds once more the feeling
that the Universe is all of a piece, Equipoise supreme; and all
things equally wonderful, and mysterious, and valuable.  We have
begun, in fact, to have a glimmering of the artist's creed, that
nothing may we despise or neglect--that everything is worth the doing
well, the making fair--that our God, Perfection, is implicit
everywhere, and the revelation of Him the business of our Art.

And as I jotted down these words I noticed that some real stars had
crept up into the sky, so gradually darkening above the pollard lime-
trees; cuckoos, who had been calling on the thorn-trees all the
afternoon, were silent; the swallows no longer flirted past, but a
bat was already in career over the holly hedge; and round me the
buttercups were closing.  The whole form and feeling of the world had
changed, so that I seemed to have before me a new picture hanging.

Ah!  I thought Art must indeed be priest of this new faith in
Perfection, whose motto is: "Harmony, Proportion, Balance."  For by
Art alone can true harmony in human affairs be fostered, true
Proportion revealed, and true Equipoise preserved.  Is not the
training of an artist a training in the due relation of one thing
with another, and in the faculty of expressing that relation clearly;
and, even more, a training in the faculty of disengaging from self
the very essence of self--and passing that essence into other selves
by so delicate means that none shall see how it is done, yet be
insensibly unified?  Is not the artist, of all men, foe and nullifier
of partisanship and parochialism, of distortions and extravagance,
the discoverer of that jack-o'-lantern--Truth; for, if Truth be not
Spiritual Proportion I know not what it is.  Truth it seems to me--is
no absolute thing, but always relative, the essential symmetry in the
varying relationships of life; and the most perfect truth is but the
concrete expression of the most penetrating vision.  Life seen
throughout as a countless show of the finest works of Art; Life
shaped, and purged of the irrelevant, the gross, and the extravagant;
Life, as it were, spiritually selected--that is Truth; a thing as
multiple, and changing, as subtle, and strange, as Life itself, and
as little to be bound by dogma.  Truth admits but the one rule: No
deficiency, and no excess!  Disobedient to that rule--nothing attains
full vitality.  And secretly fettered by that rule is Art, whose
business is the creation of vital things.

That aesthete, to be sure, was right, when he said: "It is Style that
makes one believe in a thing; nothing but Style.  "For, what is Style
in its true and broadest sense save fidelity to idea and mood, and
perfect balance in the clothing of them?  And I thought: Can one
believe in the decadence of Art in an age which, however
unconsciously as yet, is beginning to worship that which Art
worships--Perfection-Style?

The faults of our Arts to-day are the faults of zeal and of
adventure, the faults and crudities of pioneers, the errors and
mishaps of the explorer.  They must pass through many fevers, and
many times lose their way; but at all events they shall not go dying
in their beds, and be buried at Kensal Green.  And, here and there,
amid the disasters and wreckage of their voyages of discovery, they
will find something new, some fresh way of embellishing life, or of
revealing the heart of things.  That characteristic of to-day's Art--
the striving of each branch of Art to burst its own.  boundaries--
which to many spells destruction, is surely of happy omen.  The novel
straining to become the play, the play the novel, both trying to
paint; music striving to become story; poetry gasping to be music;
painting panting to be philosophy; forms, canons, rules, all melting
in the pot; stagnation broken up!  In all this havoc there is much to
shock and jar even the most eager and adventurous.  We cannot stand
these new-fangled fellows!  They have no form!  They rush in where
angels fear to tread.  They have lost all the good of the old, and
given us nothing in its place!  And yet--only out of stir and change
is born new salvation.  To deny that is to deny belief in man, to
turn our backs on courage!  It is well, indeed, that some should live
in closed studies with the paintings and the books of yesterday--such
devoted students serve Art in their own way.  But the fresh-air world
will ever want new forms.  We shall not get them without faith enough
to risk the old!  The good will live, the bad will die; and tomorrow
only can tell us which is which!

Yes--I thought--we naturally take a too impatient view of the Art of
our own time, since we can neither see the ends toward which it is
almost blindly groping, nor the few perfected creations that will be
left standing amidst the rubble of abortive effort.  An age must
always decry itself and extol its forbears.  The unwritten history of
every Art will show us that.  Consider the novel--that most recent
form of Art!  Did not the age which followed Fielding lament the
treachery of authors to the Picaresque tradition, complaining that
they were not as Fielding and Smollett were?  Be sure they did.  Very
slowly and in spite of opposition did the novel attain in this
country the fulness of that biographical form achieved under
Thackeray.  Very slowly, and in face of condemnation, it has been
losing that form in favour of a greater vividness which places before
the reader's brain, not historical statements, as it were, of motives
and of facts, but word-paintings of things and persons, so chosen and
arranged that the reader may see, as if at first hand, the spirit of
Life at work before him.  The new novel has as many bemoaners as the
old novel had when it was new.  It is no question of better or worse,
but of differing forms--of change dictated by gradual suitability to
the changing conditions of our social life, and to the ever fresh
discoveries of craftsmen, in the intoxication of which, old and
equally worthy craftsmanship is--by the way--too often for the moment
mislaid.  The vested interests of life favour the line of least
resistance--disliking and revolting against disturbance; but one must
always remember that a spurious glamour is inclined to gather around
what is new.  And, because of these two deflecting factors, those who
break through old forms must well expect to be dead before the new
forms they have unconsciously created have found their true level,
high or low, in the world of Art.  When a thing is new how shall it
be judged?  In the fluster of meeting novelty, we have even seen
coherence attempting to bind together two personalities so
fundamentally opposed as those of Ibsen and Bernard Shaw dramatists
with hardly a quality in common; no identity of tradition, or belief;
not the faintest resemblance in methods of construction or technique.
Yet contemporary; estimate talks of them often in the same breath.
They are new!  It is enough.  And others, as utterly unlike them
both.  They too are new.  They have as yet no label of their own then
put on some one else's!

And so--I thought it must always be; for Time is essential to the
proper placing and estimate of all Art.  And is it not this feeling,
that contemporary judgments are apt to turn out a little ludicrous,
which has converted much criticism of late from judgment pronounced
into impression recorded--recreative statement--a kind, in fact, of
expression of the critic's self, elicited through contemplation of a
book, a play, a symphony, a picture?  For this kind of criticism
there has even recently been claimed an actual identity with
creation.  Esthetic judgment and creative power identical!  That is a
hard saying.  For, however sympathetic one may feel toward this new
criticism, however one may recognise that the recording of impression
has a wider, more elastic, and more lasting value than the delivery
of arbitrary judgment based on rigid laws of taste; however one may
admit that it approaches the creative gift in so far as it demands
the qualities of receptivity and reproduction--is there not still
lacking to this "new" critic something of that thirsting spirit of
discovery, which precedes the creation--hitherto so-called--of
anything?  Criticism, taste, aesthetic judgment, by the very nature
of their task, wait till life has been focussed by the artists before
they attempt to reproduce the image which that imprisoned fragment of
life makes on the mirror of their minds.  But a thing created springs
from a germ unconsciously implanted by the direct impact of
unfettered life on the whole range, of the creator's temperament; and
round the germ thus engendered, the creative artist--ever
penetrating, discovering, selecting--goes on building cell on cell,
gathered from a million little fresh impacts and visions.  And to say
that this is also exactly what the recreative critic does, is to say
that the interpretative musician is creator in the same sense as is
the composer of the music that he interprets.  If, indeed, these
processes be the same in kind, they are in degree so far apart that
one would think the word creative unfortunately used of both....

But this speculation--I thought--is going beyond the bounds of
vagueness.  Let there be some thread of coherence in your thoughts,
as there is in the progress of this evening, fast fading into night.
Return to the consideration of the nature and purposes of Art!  And
recognize that much of what you have thought will seem on the face of
it heresy to the school whose doctrine was incarnated by Oscar Wilde
in that admirable apotheosis of half-truths: "The Decay of the Art of
Lying."  For therein he said: "No great artist ever sees things as
they really are."  Yet, that half-truth might also be put thus: The
seeing of things as they really are--the seeing of a proportion
veiled from other eyes (together with the power of expression), is
what makes a man an artist.  What makes him a great artist is a high
fervour of spirit, which produces a superlative, instead of a
comparative, clarity of vision.

Close to my house there is a group of pines with gnarled red limbs
flanked by beech-trees.  And there is often a very deep blue sky
behind.  Generally, that is all I see.  But, once in a way, in those
trees against that sky I seem to see all the passionate life and glow
that Titian painted into his pagan pictures.  I have a vision of
mysterious meaning, of a mysterious relation between that sky and
those trees with their gnarled red limbs and Life as I know it.  And
when I have had that vision I always feel, this is reality, and all
those other times, when I have no such vision, simple unreality.  If
I were a painter, it is for such fervent vision I should wait, before
moving brush: This, so intimate, inner vision of reality, indeed,
seems in duller moments well-nigh grotesque; and hence that other
glib half-truth: "Art is greater than Life itself."  Art is, indeed,
greater than Life in the sense that the power of Art is the
disengagement from Life of its real spirit and significance.  But in
any other sense, to say that Art is greater than Life from which it
emerges, and into which it must remerge, can but suspend the artist
over Life, with his feet in the air and his head in the clouds--Prig
masquerading as Demi-god.  "Nature is no great Mother who has borne
us.  She is our creation.  It is in our brain that she quickens to
life."  Such is the highest hyperbole of the aesthetic creed.  But
what is creative instinct, if not an incessant living sympathy with
Nature, a constant craving like that of Nature's own, to fashion
something new out of all that comes within the grasp of those
faculties with which Nature has endowed us?  The qualities of vision,
of fancy, and of imaginative power, are no more divorced from Nature,
than are the qualities of common-sense and courage.  They are rarer,
that is all.  But in truth, no one holds such views.  Not even those
who utter them.  They are the rhetoric, the over-statement of half-
truths, by such as wish to condemn what they call "Realism," without
being temperamentally capable of understanding what "Realism" really
is.

And what--I thought--is Realism?  What is the meaning of that word so
wildly used?  Is it descriptive of technique, or descriptive of the
spirit of the artist; or both, or neither?  Was Turgenev a realist?
No greater poet ever wrote in prose, nor any one who more closely
brought the actual shapes of men and things before us.  No more
fervent idealists than Ibsen and Tolstoy ever lived; and none more
careful to make their people real.  Were they realists?  No more
deeply fantastic writer can I conceive than Dostoievsky, nor any who
has described actual situations more vividly.  Was he a realist?  The
late Stephen Crane was called a realist.  Than whom no more
impressionistic writer ever painted with words.  What then is the
heart of this term still often used as an expression almost of abuse?
To me, at all events--I thought--the words realism, realistic, have
no longer reference to technique, for which the words naturalism,
naturalistic, serve far better.  Nor have they to do with the
question of imaginative power--as much demanded by realism as by
romanticism.  For me, a realist is by no means tied to naturalistic
technique--he may be poetic, idealistic, fantastic, impressionistic,
anything but--romantic; that, in so far as he is a realist, he
cannot be.  The word, in fact, characterises that artist whose
temperamental preoccupation is with revelation of the actual inter-
relating spirit of life, character, and thought, with a view to
enlighten himself and others; as distinguished from that artist whom
I call romantic--whose tempera mental purpose is invention of tale or
design with a view to delight himself and others.  It is a question
of temperamental antecedent motive in the artist, and nothing more.

Realist--Romanticist!  Enlightenment--Delight!  That is the true
apposition.  To make a revelation--to tell a fairy-tale!  And either
of these artists may use what form he likes--naturalistic, fantastic,
poetic, impressionistic.  For it is not by the form, but by the
purpose and mood of his art that he shall be known, as one or as the
other.  Realists indeed--including the half of Shakespeare that was
realist not being primarily concerned to amuse their audience, are
still comparatively unpopular in a world made up for the greater part
of men of action, who instinctively reject all art that does not
distract them without causing them to think.  For thought makes
demands on an energy already in full use; thought causes
introspection; and introspection causes discomfort, and disturbs the
grooves of action.  To say that the object of the realist is to
enlighten rather than to delight, is not to say that in his art the
realist is not amusing himself as much as ever is the teller of a
fairy-tale, though he does not deliberately start out to do so; he is
amusing, too, a large part of mankind.  For, admitted that the
abject, and the test of Art, is always the awakening of vibration, of
impersonal emotion, it is still usually forgotten that men fall,
roughly speaking, into two flocks: Those whose intelligence is
uninquiring in the face of Art, and does not demand to be appeased
before their emotions can be stirred; and those who, having a
speculative bent of mind, must first be satisfied by an enlightening
quality in a work of Art, before that work of Art can awaken in them
feeling.  The audience of the realist is drawn from this latter type
of man; the much larger audience of the romantic artist from the
former; together with, in both cases, those fastidious few for whom
all Art is style and only style, and who welcome either kind, so long
as it is good enough.

To me, then--I thought--this division into Realism and Romance, so
understood, is the main cleavage in all the Arts; but it is hard to
find pure examples of either kind.  For even the most determined
realist has more than a streak in him of the romanticist, and the
most resolute romanticist finds it impossible at times to be quite
unreal.  Guido Reni, Watteau, Leighton were they not perhaps somewhat
pure romanticists; Rembrandt, Hogarth, Manet mainly realists;
Botticelli, Titian, Raphael, a blend.  Dumas pere, and Scott, surely
romantic; Flaubert and Tolstoy as surely realists; Dickens and
Cervantes, blended.  Keats and Swinburne romantic; Browning and
Whitman--realistic; Shakespeare and Goethe, both.  The Greek
dramatists--realists.  The Arabian Nights and Malory romantic.  The
Iliad, the Odyssey, and the Old Testament, both realism and romance.
And if in the vagueness of my thoughts I were to seek for
illustration less general and vague to show the essence of this
temperamental cleavage in all Art, I would take the two novelists
Turgenev and Stevenson.  For Turgenev expressed himself in stories
that must be called romances, and Stevenson employed almost always a
naturalistic technique.  Yet no one would ever call Turgenev a
romanticist, or Stevenson a realist.  The spirit of the first brooded
over life, found in it a perpetual voyage of spiritual adventure, was
set on discovering and making clear to himself and all, the varying
traits and emotions of human character--the varying moods of Nature;
and though he couched all this discovery in caskets of engaging
story, it was always clear as day what mood it was that drove him to
dip pen in ink.  The spirit of the second, I think, almost dreaded to
discover; he felt life, I believe, too keenly to want to probe into
it; he spun his gossamer to lure himself and all away from life.
That was his driving mood; but the craftsman in him, longing to be
clear and poignant, made him more natural, more actual than most
realists.

So, how thin often is the hedge!  And how poor a business the
partisan abuse of either kind of art in a world where each sort of
mind has full right to its own due expression, and grumbling lawful
only when due expression is not attained.  One may not care for a
Rembrandt portrait of a plain old woman; a graceful Watteau
decoration may leave another cold but foolish will he be who denies
that both are faithful to their conceiving moods, and so proportioned
part to part, and part to whole, as to have, each in its own way,
that inherent rhythm or vitality which is the hall-mark of Art.  He
is but a poor philosopher who holds a view so narrow as to exclude
forms not to his personal taste.  No realist can love romantic Art so
much as he loves his own, but when that Art fulfils the laws of its
peculiar being, if he would be no blind partisan, he must admit it.
The romanticist will never be amused by realism, but let him not for
that reason be so parochial as to think that realism, when it
achieves vitality, is not Art.  For what is Art but the perfected
expression of self in contact with the world; and whether that self
be of enlightening, or of fairy-telling temperament, is of no moment
whatsoever.  The tossing of abuse from realist to romanticist and
back is but the sword-play of two one-eyed men with their blind side
turned toward each other.  Shall not each attempt be judged on its
own merits?  If found not shoddy, faked, or forced, but true to
itself, true to its conceiving mood, and fair-proportioned part to
whole; so that it lives--then, realistic or romantic, in the name of
Fairness let it pass!  Of all kinds of human energy, Art is surely
the most free, the least parochial; and demands of us an essential
tolerance of all its forms. Shall we waste breath and ink in
condemnation of artists, because their temperaments are not our own?

But the shapes and colours of the day were now all blurred; every
tree and stone entangled in the dusk.  How different the world seemed
from that in which I had first sat down, with the swallows flirting
past.  And my mood was different; for each of those worlds had
brought to my heart its proper feeling--painted on my eyes the just
picture.  And Night, that was coming, would bring me yet another mood
that would frame itself with consciousness at its own fair moment,
and hang before me.  A quiet owl stole by in the geld below, and
vanished into the heart of a tree.  And suddenly above the moor-line
I saw the large moon rising.  Cinnamon-coloured, it made all things
swim, made me uncertain of my thoughts, vague with mazy feeling.
Shapes seemed but drifts of moon-dust, and true reality nothing save
a sort of still listening to the wind.  And for long I sat, just
watching the moon creep up, and hearing the thin, dry rustle of the
leaves along the holly hedge.  And there came to me this thought:
What is this Universe--that never had beginning and will never have
an end--but a myriad striving to perfect pictures never the same, so
blending and fading one into another, that all form one great
perfected picture?  And what are we--ripples on the tides of a
birthless, deathless, equipoised Creative-Purpose--but little
works of Art?

Trying to record that thought, I noticed that my note-book was damp
with dew.  The cattle were lying down.  It was too dark to see.

1911





End of Project Gutenberg's Etext Studies and Essays: Censorship and Art
By John Galsworthy






THE COMPLETE PLAYS OF JOHN GALSWORTHY


CONTENTS:

     First Series:
          The Silver Box
          Joy
          Strife

     Second Series:
          The Eldest Son
          The Little Dream
          Justice

     Third Series:
          The Fugitive
          The Pigeon
          The Mob

     Fourth Series:
          A Bit O' Love
          The Foundations
          The Skin Game

     Six Short Plays:
          The First and The Last
          The Little Man
          Hall-marked
          Defeat
          The Sun
          Punch and Go




FIRST SERIES
     THE SILVER BOX
     JOY
     STRIFE


THE SILVER BOX

A COMEDY IN THREE ACTS



PERSONS OF THE PLAY

JOHN BARTHWICK, M.P., a wealthy Liberal
MRS. BARTHWICK, his wife
JACK BARTHWICK, their son
ROPER, their solicitor
MRS. JONES, their charwoman
MARLOW, their manservant
WHEELER, their maidservant
JONES, the stranger within their gates
MRS. SEDDON, a landlady
SNOW, a detective
A POLICE MAGISTRATE
AN UNKNOWN LADY, from beyond
TWO LITTLE GIRLS, homeless
LIVENS, their father
A RELIEVING OFFICER
A MAGISTRATE'S CLERK
AN USHER
POLICEMEN, CLERKS, AND OTHERS


TIME: The present. The action of the first two Acts takes place on
Easter Tuesday; the action of the third on Easter Wednesday week.


ACT I.
     SCENE I. Rockingham Gate. John Barthwick's dining-room.
     SCENE II. The same.
     SCENE III. The same.

ACT II.
     SCENE I. The Jones's lodgings, Merthyr Street.
     SCENE II. John Barthwick's dining-room.

ACT III. A London police court.




ACT I

SCENE I

     The  curtain rises on the BARTHWICK'S dining-room, large,
     modern, and well furnished; the window curtains drawn.
     Electric light is burning.  On the large round dining-table is
     set out a tray with whisky, a syphon, and a silver
     cigarette-box.  It is past midnight.

     A fumbling is heard outside the door.  It is opened suddenly;
     JACK BARTHWICK seems to fall into the room.  He stands holding
     by the door knob, staring before him, with a beatific smile.
     He is in evening dress and opera hat, and carries in his hand a
     sky-blue velvet lady's reticule.  His boyish face is freshly
     coloured and clean-shaven.  An overcoat is hanging on his arm.


JACK.  Hello!  I've got home all ri----[Defiantly.]  Who says I sh
'd never 've opened th' door without 'sistance.  [He staggers in,
fumbling with the reticule. A lady's handkerchief and purse of
crimson silk fall out.]  Serve her joll' well right--everything
droppin' out.  Th' cat.  I 've scored her off--I 've got her bag.
[He swings the reticule.]  Serves her joly' well right. [He takes a
cigarette out of the silver box and puts it in his mouth.]  Never
gave tha' fellow anything!  [He hunts through all his pockets and
pulls a shilling out; it drops and rolls away.  He looks for it.]
Beastly shilling!  [He looks again.]  Base ingratitude!  Absolutely
nothing.  [He laughs.]  Mus' tell him I've got absolutely nothing.

     [He lurches through the door and down a corridor, and presently
     returns, followed by JONES, who is advanced in liquor.  JONES,
     about thirty years of age, has hollow cheeks, black circles
     round his eyes, and rusty clothes: He looks as though he might
     be unemployed, and enters in a hang-dog manner.]

JACK.  Sh!  sh!  sh!  Don't you make a noise, whatever you do.  Shu'
the door, an' have a drink.  [Very solemnly.]  You helped me to open
the door--I 've got nothin, for you.  This is my house.  My father's
name's Barthwick; he's Member of Parliament--Liberal Member of
Parliament: I've told you that before.  Have a drink!  [He pours out
whisky and drinks it up.]  I'm not drunk [Subsiding on a sofa.]
Tha's all right.  Wha's your name?  My name's Barthwick, so's my
father's; I'm a Liberal too--wha're you?

JONES.  [In a thick, sardonic voice.]  I'm a bloomin' Conservative.
My name's Jones!  My wife works 'ere; she's the char; she works
'ere.

JACK.  Jones?  [He laughs.]  There's 'nother Jones at College with
me.  I'm not a Socialist myself; I'm a Liberal--there's ve--lill
difference, because of the principles of the Lib--Liberal Party.
We're all equal before the law--tha's rot, tha's silly.  [Laughs.]
Wha' was I about to say?  Give me some whisky.

     [JONES gives him the whisky he desires, together with a squirt
     of syphon.]

Wha' I was goin' tell you was--I 've had a row with her.  [He waves
the reticule.]  Have a drink, Jonessh 'd never have got in without
you--tha 's why I 'm giving you a drink.  Don' care who knows I've
scored her off.  Th' cat!  [He throws his feet up on the sofa.]
Don' you make a noise, whatever you do.  You pour out a drink--you
make yourself good long, long drink--you take cigarette--you take
anything you like.  Sh'd never have got in without you.  [Closing
his eyes.]  You're a Tory--you're a Tory Socialist.  I'm Liberal
myself--have a drink--I 'm an excel'nt chap.

     [His head drops back.  He, smiling, falls asleep, and JONES
     stands looking at him; then, snatching up JACK's glass, he
     drinks it off.  He picks the reticule from off JACK'S
     shirt-front, holds it to the light, and smells at it.]

JONES.  Been on the tiles and brought 'ome some of yer cat's fur.
[He stuffs it into JACK's breast pocket.]

JACK.  [Murmuring.]  I 've scored you off!  You cat!

     [JONES looks around him furtively; he pours out whisky and
     drinks it.  From the silver box he takes a cigarette, puffs at
     it, and drinks more whisky.  There is no sobriety left in him.]

JONES.  Fat lot o' things they've got 'ere!  [He sees the crimson
purse lying on the floor.]  More cat's fur.  Puss, puss!  [He
fingers it, drops it on the tray, and looks at JACK.]  Calf!  Fat
calf!  [He sees his own presentment in a mirror.  Lifting his hands,
with fingers spread, he stares at it; then looks again at JACK,
clenching his fist as if to batter in his sleeping, smiling face.
Suddenly he tilts the rest o f the whisky into the glass and drinks
it.  With cunning glee he takes the silver box and purse and pockets
them.]  I 'll score you off too, that 's wot I 'll do!

     [He gives a little snarling laugh and lurches to the door.  His
     shoulder rubs against the switch; the light goes out.  There is
     a sound as of a closing outer door.]


                         The curtain falls.




The curtain rises again at once.

SCENE II

     In the BARTHWICK'S dining-room.  JACK is still asleep; the
     morning light is coming through the curtains.  The time is
     half-past eight.  WHEELER, brisk person enters with a dust-pan,
     and MRS. JONES more slowly with a scuttle.

WHEELER.  [Drawing the curtains.]  That precious husband of yours
was round for you after you'd gone yesterday, Mrs. Jones.  Wanted
your money for drink, I suppose.  He hangs about the corner here
half the time.  I saw him outside the "Goat and Bells" when I went
to the post last night.  If I were you I would n't live with him.  I
would n't live with a man that raised his hand to me.  I wouldn't
put up with it.  Why don't you take your children and leave him?  If
you put up with 'im it'll only make him worse.  I never can see why,
because a man's married you, he should knock you about.

MRS. JONES.  [Slim, dark-eyed, and dark-haired; oval-faced, and with
a smooth, soft, even voice; her manner patient, her way of talking
quite impersonal; she wears a blue linen dress, and boots with
holes.]  It was nearly two last night before he come home, and he
wasn't himself.  He made me get up, and he knocked me about; he
didn't seem to know what he was saying or doing.  Of course I would
leave him, but I'm really afraid of what he'd do to me.  He 's such
a violent man when he's not himself.

WHEELER.  Why don't you get him locked up?  You'll never have any
peace until you get him locked up.  If I were you I'd go to the
police court tomorrow.  That's what I would do.

MRS. JONES.  Of course I ought to go, because he does treat me so
badly when he's not himself.  But you see, Bettina, he has a very
hard time--he 's been out of work two months, and it preys upon his
mind.  When he's in work he behaves himself much better.  It's when
he's out of work that he's so violent.

WHEELER.  Well, if you won't take any steps you 'll never get rid of
him.

MRS. JONES.  Of course it's very wearing to me; I don't get my sleep
at nights.  And it 's not as if I were getting help from him,
because I have to do for the children and all of us.  And he throws
such dreadful things up at me, talks of my having men to follow me
about.  Such a thing never happens; no man ever speaks to me.  And
of course, it's just the other way.  It's what he does that's wrong
and makes me so unhappy.  And then he 's always threatenin' to cut
my throat if I leave him.  It's all the drink, and things preying on
his mind; he 's not a bad man really.  Sometimes he'll speak quite
kind to me, but I've stood so much from him, I don't feel it in me
to speak kind back, but just keep myself to myself.  And he's all
right with the children too, except when he's not himself.

WHEELER.  You mean when he's drunk, the beauty.

MRS. JONES.  Yes.  [Without change of voice]  There's the young
gentleman asleep on the sofa.

     [They both look silently at Jack.]

MRS. JONES.  [At last, in her soft voice.]  He does n't look quite
himself.

WHEELER.  He's a young limb, that's what he is.  It 's my belief he
was tipsy last night, like your husband.  It 's another kind of
bein' out of work that sets him to drink.  I 'll go and tell Marlow.
This is his job.

     [She goes.]

     [Mrs. Jones, upon her knees, begins a gentle sweeping.]

JACK.  [Waking.]  Who's there?  What is it?

MRS. JONES.  It's me, sir, Mrs. Jones.

JACK.  [Sitting up and looking round.]  Where is it--what--what time
is it?

MRS. JONES.  It's getting on for nine o'clock, sir.

JACK.  For nine!  Why--what!  [Rising, and loosening his tongue;
putting hands to his head, and staring hard at Mrs. Jones.]  Look
here, you, Mrs.----Mrs. Jones--don't you say you caught me asleep
here.

MRS. JONES.  No, sir, of course I won't sir.

JACK.  It's quite an accident; I don't know how it happened.  I must
have forgotten to go to bed.  It's a queer thing.  I 've got a most
beastly headache.  Mind you don't say anything, Mrs. Jones.

     [Goes out and passes MARLOW in the doorway.  MARLOW is young
     and quiet; he is cleanshaven, and his hair is brushed high from
     his forehead in a coxcomb.  Incidentally a butler, he is first
     a man.  He looks at MRS. JONES, and smiles a private smile.]

MARLOW.  Not the first time, and won't be the last.  Looked a bit
dicky, eh, Mrs. Jones?

MRS. JONES.  He did n't look quite himself.  Of course I did n't
take notice.

MARLOW.  You're used to them.  How's your old man?

MRS. JONES.  [Softly as throughout.]  Well, he was very bad last
night; he did n't seem to know what he was about.  He was very late,
and he was most abusive.  But now, of course, he's asleep.

MARLOW.  That's his way of finding a job, eh?

MRS. JONES.  As a rule, Mr. Marlow, he goes out early every morning
looking for work, and sometimes he comes in fit to drop--and of
course I can't say he does n't try to get it, because he does.
Trade's very bad.  [She stands quite still, her fan and brush before
her, at the beginning and the end of long vistas of experience,
traversing them with her impersonal eye.]  But he's not a good
husband to me--last night he hit me, and he was so dreadfully
abusive.

MARLOW.  Bank 'oliday, eh!  He 's too fond of the "Goat and Bells,"
that's what's the matter with him.  I see him at the corner late
every night.  He hangs about.

MRS. JONES.  He gets to feeling very low walking about all day after
work, and being refused so often, and then when he gets a drop in
him it goes to his head.  But he shouldn't treat his wife as he
treats me.  Sometimes I 've had to go and walk about at night, when
he wouldn't let me stay in the room; but he's sorry for it
afterwards.  And he hangs about after me, he waits for me in the
street; and I don't think he ought to, because I 've always been a
good wife to him.  And I tell him Mrs. Barthwick wouldn't like him
coming about the place.  But that only makes him angry, and he says
dreadful things about the gentry.  Of course it was through me that
he first lost his place, through his not treating me right; and
that's made him bitter against the gentry.  He had a very good place
as groom in the country; but it made such a stir, because of course
he did n't treat me right.

MARLOW.  Got the sack?

MRS. JONES.  Yes; his employer said he couldn't keep him, because
there was a great deal of talk; and he said it was such a bad
example.  But it's very important for me to keep my work here; I
have the three children, and I don't want him to come about after me
in the streets, and make a disturbance as he sometimes does.

MARLOW.  [Holding up the empty decanter.]  Not a drain!  Next time
he hits you get a witness and go down to the court----

MRS. JONES.  Yes, I think I 've made up my mind.  I think I ought
to.

MARLOW.  That's right.  Where's the ciga----?

     [He searches for the silver box; he looks at MRS. JONES, who is
     sweeping on her hands and knees; he checks himself and stands
     reflecting.  From the tray he picks two half-smoked cigarettes,
     and reads the name on them.]

Nestor--where the deuce----?

     [With a meditative air he looks again at MRS. JONES, and,
     taking up JACK'S overcoat, he searches in the pockets.
     WHEELER, with a tray of breakfast things, comes in.]

MARLOW.  [Aside to WHEELER.]  Have you seen the cigarette-box?

WHEELER.  No.

MARLOW.  Well, it's gone.  I put it on the tray last night.  And
he's been smoking.  [Showing her the ends of cigarettes.]  It's not
in these pockets.  He can't have taken it upstairs this morning!
Have a good look in his room when he comes down.  Who's been in
here?

WHEELER.  Only me and Mrs. Jones.

MRS. JONES.  I 've finished here; shall I do the drawing-room now?

WHEELER.  [Looking at her doubtfully.]  Have you seen----Better do
the boudwower first.

     [MRS. JONES goes out with pan and brush.  MARLOW and WHEELER
     look each other in the face.]

MARLOW.  It'll turn up.

WHEELER.  [Hesitating.]  You don't think she----
[Nodding at the door.]

MARLOW.  [Stoutly.]  I don't----I never believes anything of
anybody.

WHEELER.  But the master'll have to be told.

MARLOW.  You wait a bit, and see if it don't turn up.  Suspicion's
no business of ours.  I set my mind against it.


                    The curtain falls.




               The curtain rises again at once.



SCENE III

     BARTHWICK and MRS. BARTHWICK are seated at the breakfast table.
     He is a man between fifty and sixty; quietly important, with a
     bald forehead, and pince-nez, and the "Times" in his hand.  She
     is a lady of nearly fifty, well dressed, with greyish hair,
     good features, and a decided manner.  They face each other.

BARTHWICK.  [From behind his paper.]  The Labour man has got in at
the by-election for Barnside, my dear.

MRS. BARTHWICK.  Another Labour?  I can't think what on earth the
country is about.

BARTHWICK.  I predicted it.  It's not a matter of vast importance.

MRS. BARTHWICK.  Not?  How can you take it so calmly, John?  To me
it's simply outrageous.  And there you sit, you Liberals, and
pretend to encourage these people!

BARTHWICK.  [Frowning.]  The representation of all parties is
necessary for any proper reform, for any proper social policy.

MRS. BARTHWICK.  I've no patience with your talk of reform--all that
nonsense about social policy.  We know perfectly well what it is
they want; they want things for themselves.  Those Socialists and
Labour men are an absolutely selfish set of people.  They have no
sense of patriotism, like the upper classes; they simply want what
we've got.

BARTHWICK.  Want what we've got!  [He stares into space.]  My dear,
what are you talking about?  [With a contortion.]  I 'm no alarmist.

MRS. BARTHWICK.  Cream?  Quite uneducated men!  Wait until they
begin to tax our investments.  I 'm convinced that when they once
get a chance they will tax everything--they 've no feeling for the
country.  You Liberals and Conservatives, you 're all alike; you
don't see an inch before your noses.  You've no imagination, not a
scrap of imagination between you.  You ought to join hands and nip
it in the bud.

BARTHWICK.  You 're talking nonsense!  How is it possible for
Liberals and Conservatives to join hands, as you call it?  That
shows how absurd it is for women----Why, the very essence of a
Liberal is to trust in the people!

MRS. BARTHWICK.  Now, John, eat your breakfast.  As if there were
any real difference between you and the Conservatives.  All the
upper classes have the same interests to protect, and the same
principles.  [Calmly.]  Oh!  you're sitting upon a volcano, John.

BARTHWICK.  What!

MRS. BARTHWICK.  I read a letter in the paper yesterday.  I forget
the man's name, but it made the whole thing perfectly clear.  You
don't look things in the face.

BARTHWICK.  Indeed!  [Heavily.]  I am a Liberal!  Drop the subject,
please!

MRS. BARTHWICK.  Toast?  I quite agree with what this man says:
Education is simply ruining the lower classes.  It unsettles them,
and that's the worst thing for us all.  I see an enormous difference
in the manner of servants.

BARTHWICK, [With suspicious emphasis.]  I welcome any change that
will lead to something better.  [He opens a letter.]  H'm!  This is
that affair of Master Jack's again.  "High Street, Oxford.  Sir, We
have received Mr. John Barthwick, Senior's, draft for forty pounds!"
Oh! the letter's to him!  "We now enclose the cheque you cashed with
us, which, as we stated in our previous letter, was not met on
presentation at your bank.  We are, Sir, yours obediently, Moss and
Sons, Tailors."  H 'm!  [Staring at the cheque.]  A pretty business
altogether!  The boy might have been prosecuted.

MRS. BARTHWICK.  Come, John, you know Jack did n't mean anything; he
only thought he was overdrawing.  I still think his bank ought to
have cashed that cheque.  They must know your position.

BARTHWICK.  [Replacing in the envelope the letter and the cheque.]
Much good that would have done him in a court of law.

     [He stops as JACK comes in, fastening his waistcoat and
     staunching a razor cut upon his chin.]

JACK.  [Sitting down between them, and speaking with an artificial
joviality.]  Sorry I 'm late.  [He looks lugubriously at the
dishes.]  Tea, please, mother.  Any letters for me?  [BARTHWICK
hands the letter to him.]  But look here, I say, this has been
opened!  I do wish you would n't----

BARTHWICK.  [Touching the envelope.]  I suppose I 'm entitled to
this name.

JACK.  [Sulkily.]  Well, I can't help having your name, father!  [He
reads the letter, and mutters.]  Brutes!

BARTHWICK.  [Eyeing him.]  You don't deserve to be so well out of
that.

JACK.  Haven't you ragged me enough, dad?

MRS. BARTHWICK.  Yes, John, let Jack have his breakfast.

BARTHWICK.  If you hadn't had me to come to, where would you have
been?  It's the merest accident--suppose you had been the son of a
poor man or a clerk.  Obtaining money with a cheque you knew your
bank could not meet.  It might have ruined you for life.  I can't
see what's to become of you if these are your principles.  I never
did anything of the sort myself.

JACK.  I expect you always had lots of money.  If you've got plenty
of money, of course----

BARTHWICK.  On the contrary, I had not your advantages.  My father
kept me very short of money.

JACK.  How much had you, dad?

BARTHWICK.  It's not material.  The question is, do you feel the
gravity of what you did?

JACK.  I don't know about the gravity.  Of course, I 'm very sorry
if you think it was wrong.  Have n't I said so!  I should never have
done it at all if I had n't been so jolly hard up.

BARTHWICK.  How much of that forty pounds have you got left, Jack?

JACK.  [Hesitating.]  I don't know--not much.

BARTHWICK.  How much?

JACK.  [Desperately.]  I have n't got any.

BARTHWICK.  What?

JACK.  I know I 've got the most beastly headache.

     [He leans his head on his hand.]

MRS. BARTHWICK.  Headache?  My dear boy!  Can't you eat any
breakfast?

JACK.  [Drawing in his breath.]  Too jolly bad!

MRS. BARTHWICK.  I'm so sorry.  Come with me; dear; I'll give you
something that will take it away at once.

     [They leave the room; and BARTHWICK, tearing up the letter,
     goes to the fireplace and puts the pieces in the fire.  While
     he is doing this MARLOW comes in, and looking round him, is
     about quietly to withdraw.]

BARTHWICK.  What's that?  What d 'you want?

MARLOW.  I was looking for Mr. John, sir.

BARTHWICK.  What d' you want Mr. John for?

MARLOW.  [With hesitation.]  I thought I should find him here, sir.

BARTHWICK.  [Suspiciously.]  Yes, but what do you want him for?

MARLOW.  [Offhandedly.]  There's a lady called--asked to speak to
him for a minute, sir.

BARTHWICK.  A lady, at this time in the morning.  What sort of a
lady?

MARLOW.  [Without expression in his voice.]  I can't tell, sir; no
particular sort.  She might be after charity.  She might be a Sister
of Mercy, I should think, sir.

BARTHWICK.  Is she dressed like one?

MARLOW.  No, sir, she's in plain clothes, sir.

BARTHWICK.  Did n't she say what she wanted?

MARLOW.  No sir.

BARTHWICK.  Where did you leave her?

MARLOW.  In the hall, sir.

BARTHWICK.  In the hall?  How do you know she's not a thief--not got
designs on the house?

MARLOW.  No, sir, I don't fancy so, sir.

BARTHWICK.  Well, show her in here; I'll see her myself.

     [MARLOW goes out with a private gesture of dismay.  He soon
     returns, ushering in a young pale lady with dark eyes and
     pretty figure, in a modish, black, but rather shabby dress, a
     black and white trimmed hat with a bunch of Parma violets
     wrongly placed, and fuzzy-spotted veil.  At the Sight of MR.
     BARTHWICK she exhibits every sign of nervousness.  MARLOW goes
     out.]

UNKNOWN LADY.  Oh!  but--I beg pardon there's some mistake--I [She
turns to fly.]

BARTHWICK.  Whom did you want to see, madam?

UNKNOWN.  [Stopping and looking back.]  It was Mr. John Barthwick I
wanted to see.

BARTHWICK.  I am John Barthwick, madam.  What can I have the
pleasure of doing for you?

UNKNOWN.  Oh!  I--I don't [She drops her eyes.  BARTHWICK
scrutinises her, and purses his lips.]

BARTHWICK.  It was my son, perhaps, you wished to see?

UNKNOWN.  [Quickly.]  Yes, of course, it's your son.

BARTHWICK.  May I ask whom I have the pleasure of speaking to?

UNKNOWN.  [Appeal and hardiness upon her face.]  My name is----oh!
it does n't matter--I don't want to make any fuss.  I just want to
see your son for a minute.  [Boldly.]  In fact, I must see him.

BARTHWICK.  [Controlling his uneasiness.]  My son is not very well.
If necessary, no doubt I could attend to the matter; be so kind as
to let me know----

UNKNOWN.  Oh! but I must see him--I 've come on purpose--[She bursts
out nervously.]  I don't want to make any fuss, but the fact is,
last--last night your son took away--he took away my [She stops.]

BARTHWICK.  [Severely.]  Yes, madam, what?

UNKNOWN.  He took away my--my reticule.

BARTHWICK.  Your reti----?

UNKNOWN.  I don't care about the reticule; it's not that I want--I
'm sure I don't want to make any fuss--[her face is quivering]--but-
-but--all my money was in it!

BARTHWICK.  In what--in what?

UNKNOWN.  In my purse, in the reticule.  It was a crimson silk
purse.  Really, I wouldn't have come--I don't want to make any fuss.
But I must get my money back--mustn't I?

BARTHWICK.  Do you tell me that my son----?

UNKNOWN.  Oh! well, you see, he was n't quite I mean he was

     [She smiles mesmerically.]

BARTHWICK.  I beg your pardon.

UNKNOWN.  [Stamping her foot.]  Oh!  don't you see--tipsy!  We had a
quarrel.

BARTHWICK.  [Scandalised.]  How?  Where?

UNKNOWN.  [Defiantly.]  At my place.  We'd had supper at the----and
your son----

BARTHWICK.  [Pressing the bell.]  May I ask how you knew this house?
Did he give you his name and address?

UNKNOWN.  [Glancing sidelong.]  I got it out of his overcoat.

BARTHWICK.  [Sardonically.]  Oh!  you got it out of his overcoat.
And may I ask if my son will know you by daylight?

UNKNOWN.  Know me?  I should jolly--I mean, of course he will!
     [MARLOW comes in.]

BARTHWICK.  Ask Mr. John to come down.

     [MARLOW goes out, and BARTHWICK walks uneasily about.]

And how long have you enjoyed his acquaintanceship?

UNKNOWN.  Only since--only since Good Friday.

BARTHWICK.  I am at a loss--I repeat I am at a----

     [He glances at this unknown lady, who stands with eyes cast
     down, twisting her hands And suddenly Jack appears.  He stops
     on seeing who is here, and the unknown lady hysterically
     giggles.  There is a silence.]

BARTHWICK.  [Portentously.]  This young--er--lady says that last
night--I think you said last night madam--you took away----

UNKNOWN.  [Impulsively.]  My reticule, and all my money was in a
crimson silk purse.

JACK.  Reticule.  [Looking round for any chance to get away.]  I
don't know anything about it.

BARTHWICK.  [Sharply.]  Come, do you deny seeing this young lady
last night?

JACK.  Deny?  No, of course.  [Whispering.]  Why did you give me
away like this?  What on earth did you come here for?

UNKNOWN.  [Tearfully.]  I'm sure I didn't want to--it's not likely,
is it?  You snatched it out of my hand--you know you did--and the
purse had all my money in it.  I did n't follow you last night
because I did n't want to make a fuss and it was so late, and you
were so----

BARTHWICK.  Come, sir, don't turn your back on me--explain!

JACK.  [Desperately.]  I don't remember anything about it.  [In a
low voice to his friend.]  Why on earth could n't you have written?

UNKNOWN.  [Sullenly.]  I want it now; I must have, it--I 've got to
pay my rent to-day. [She looks at BARTHWICK.]  They're only too glad
to jump on people who are not--not well off.

JACK.  I don't remember anything about it, really.  I don't remember
anything about last night at all.  [He puts his hand up to his
head.]  It's all--cloudy, and I 've got such a beastly headache.

UNKNOWN.  But you took it; you know you did.  You said you'd score
me off.

JACK.  Well, then, it must be here.  I remember now--I remember
something.  Why did I take the beastly thing?

BARTHWICK.  Yes, why did you take the beastly----[He turns abruptly
to the window.]

UNKNOWN.  [With her mesmeric smile.]  You were n't quite were you?

JACK.  [Smiling pallidly.]  I'm awfully sorry.  If there's anything
I can do----

BARTHWICK.  Do?  You can restore this property, I suppose.

JACK.  I'll go and have a look, but I really don't think I 've got
it.

     [He goes out hurriedly.  And BARTHWICK, placing a chair,
     motions to the visitor to sit; then, with pursed lips, he
     stands and eyes her fixedly.  She sits, and steals a look at
     him; then turns away, and, drawing up her veil, stealthily
     wipes her eyes.  And Jack comes back.]

JACK.  [Ruefully holding out the empty reticule.]  Is that the
thing?  I 've looked all over--I can't find the purse anywhere.  Are
you sure it was there?

UNKNOWN.  [Tearfully.]  Sure?  Of course I'm sure.  A crimson silk
purse.  It was all the money I had.

JACK.  I really am awfully sorry--my head's so jolly bad.  I 've
asked the butler, but he has n't seen it.

UNKNOWN.  I must have my money----

JACK.  Oh!  Of course--that'll be all right; I'll see that that's
all right.  How much?

UNKNOWN.  [Sullenly.]  Seven pounds-twelve--it's all I 've got in
the world.

JACK.  That'll be all right; I'll--send you acheque.

UNKNOWN.  [Eagerly.]  No; now, please.  Give me what was in my
purse; I've got to pay my rent this morning.  They won't' give me
another day; I'm a fortnight behind already.

JACK.  [Blankly.]  I'm awfully sorry; I really have n't a penny in
my pocket.

     [He glances stealthily at BARTHWICK.]

UNKNOWN.  [Excitedly.]  Come I say you must--it's my money, and you
took it.  I 'm not going away without it.  They 'll turn me out of
my place.

JACK.  [Clasping his head.]  But I can't give you what I have n't
got.  Don't I tell you I have n't a beastly cent.

UNKNOWN.  [Tearing at her handkerchief.]  Oh!  do give it me!  [She
puts her hands together in appeal; then, with sudden fierceness.]
If you don't I'll summons you.  It's stealing, that's what it is!

BARTHWICK.  [Uneasily.]  One moment, please.  As a matter of---er-
principle, I shall settle this claim.  [He produces money.]  Here is
eight pounds; the extra will cover the value of the purse and your
cab fares.  I need make no comment--no thanks are necessary.

     [Touching the bell, he holds the door ajar in silence.  The
     unknown lady stores the money in her reticule, she looks from
     JACK to BARTHWICK, and her face is quivering faintly with a
     smile.  She hides it with her hand, and steals away.  Behind
     her BARTHWICK shuts the door.]

BARTHWICK.  [With solemnity.]  H'm!  This is nice thing to happen!

JACK.  [Impersonally.]  What awful luck!

BARTHWICK.  So this is the way that forty pounds has gone!  One
thing after another!  Once more I should like to know where you 'd
have been if it had n't been for me!  You don't seem to have any
principles.  You--you're one of those who are a nuisance to society;
you--you're dangerous!  What your mother would say I don't know.
Your conduct, as far as I can see, is absolutely unjustifiable.
It's--it's criminal.  Why, a poor man who behaved as you've done----
d' you think he'd have any mercy shown him?  What you want is a good
lesson.  You and your sort are--[he speaks with feeling]--a nuisance
to the community.  Don't ask me to help you next time.  You're not
fit to be helped.

JACK.  [Turning upon his sire, with unexpected fierceness.]  All
right, I won't then, and see how you like it.  You would n't have
helped me this time, I know, if you had n't been scared the thing
would get into the papers.  Where are the cigarettes?

BARTHWICK.  [Regarding him uneasily.]  Well I 'll say no more about
it.  [He rings the bell.]  I 'll pass it over for this once, but----
[MARLOW Comes in.]  You can clear away.

     [He hides his face behind the "Times."]

JACK.  [Brightening.]  I say, Marlow, where are the cigarettes?

MARLOW.  I put the box out with the whisky last night, sir, but this
morning I can't find it anywhere.

JACK.  Did you look in my room?

MARLOW.  Yes, sir; I've looked all over the house.  I found two
Nestor ends in the tray this morning, so you must have been smokin'
last night, sir.  [Hesitating.]  I 'm really afraid some one's
purloined the box.

JACK.  [Uneasily.]  Stolen it!

BARTHWICK.  What's that?  The cigarette-box!  Is anything else
missing?

MARLOW.  No, sir; I 've been through the plate.

BARTHWICK.  Was the house all right this morning?  None of the
windows open?

MARLOW.  No, sir.  [Quietly to JACK.]  You left your latch-key in
the door last night, sir.

     [He hands it back, unseen by BARTHWICK]

JACK.  Tst!

BARTHWICK.  Who's been in the room this morning?

MARLOW.  Me and Wheeler, and Mrs. Jones is all, sir, as far as I
know.

BARTHWICK.  Have you asked Mrs. Barthwick?

[To JACK.]  Go and ask your mother if she's had it; ask her to look
and see if she's missed anything else.

     [JACK goes upon this mission.]

Nothing is more disquieting than losing things like this.

MARLOW.  No, sir.

BARTHWICK.  Have you any suspicions?

MARLOW, No, sir.

BARTHWICK.  This Mrs. Jones--how long has she been working here?

MARLOW.  Only this last month, sir.

BARTHWICK.  What sort of person?

MARLOW.  I don't know much about her, sir; seems a very quiet,
respectable woman.

BARTHWICK.  Who did the room this morning?

MARLOW.  Wheeler and Mrs. Jones, Sir.

BARTHWICK.  [With his forefinger upraised.]  Now, was this Mrs.
Jones in the room alone at any time?

MARLOW.  [Expressionless.]  Yes, Sir.

BARTHWICK.  How do you know that?

MARLOW.  [Reluctantly.]  I found her here, sir.

BARTHWICK.  And has Wheeler been in the room alone?

MARLOW.  No, sir, she's not, sir.  I should say, sir, that Mrs.
Jones seems a very honest----

BARTHWICK.  [Holding up his hand.]  I want to know this:  Has this
Mrs. Jones been here the whole morning?

MARLOW.  Yes, sir--no, sir--she stepped over to the greengrocer's
for cook.

BARTHWICK.  H'm!  Is she in the house now?

MARLOW.  Yes, Sir.

BARTHWICK.  Very good.  I shall make a point of clearing this up.
On principle I shall make a point of fixing the responsibility; it
goes to the foundations of security.  In all your interests----

MARLOW.  Yes, Sir.

BARTHWICK.  What sort of circumstances is this Mrs. Jones in?  Is
her husband in work?

MARLOW.  I believe not, sir.

BARTHWICK.  Very well.  Say nothing about it to any one.  Tell
Wheeler not to speak of it, and ask Mrs. Jones to step up here.

MARLOW.  Very good, sir.

     [MARLOW goes out, his face concerned; and BARTHWICK stays, his
     face judicial and a little pleased, as befits a man conducting
     an inquiry.  MRS. BARTHWICK and hey son come in.]

BARTHWICK.  Well, my dear, you've not seen it, I suppose?

MRS. BARTHWICK.  No.  But what an extraordinary thing, John!
Marlow, of course, is out of the question.  I 'm certain none of the
maids as for cook!

BARTHWICK.  Oh, cook!

MRS. BARTHWICK.  Of course!  It's perfectly detestable to me to
suspect anybody.

BARTHWICK.  It is not a question of one's feelings.  It's a question
of justice.  On principle----

MRS. BARTHWICK.  I should n't be a bit surprised if the charwoman
knew something about it.  It was Laura who recommended her.

BARTHWICK.  [Judicially.]  I am going to have Mrs. Jones up.  Leave
it to me; and--er--remember that nobody is guilty until they're
proved so.  I shall be careful.  I have no intention of frightening
her; I shall give her every chance.  I hear she's in poor
circumstances.  If we are not able to do much for them we are bound
to have the greatest sympathy with the poor.  [MRS. JONES comes in.]
[Pleasantly.]  Oh!  good morning, Mrs. Jones.

MRS. JONES.  [Soft, and even, unemphatic.]  Good morning, sir!  Good
morning, ma'am!

BARTHWICK.  About your husband--he's not in work, I hear?

MRS. JONES.  No, sir; of course he's not in work just now.

BARTHWICK.  Then I suppose he's earning nothing.

MRS. JONES.  No, sir, he's not earning anything just now, sir.

BARTHWICK.  And how many children have you?

MRS. JONES.  Three children; but of course they don't eat very much
sir.  [A little silence.]

BARTHWICK.  And how old is the eldest?

MRS. JONES.  Nine years old, sir.

BARTHWICK.  Do they go to school?

MRS. JONES, Yes, sir, they all three go to school every day.

BARTHWICK.  [Severely.]  And what about their food when you're out
at work?

MRS. JONES.  Well, Sir, I have to give them their dinner to take
with them.  Of course I 'm not always able to give them anything;
sometimes I have to send them without; but my husband is very good
about the children when he's in work.  But when he's not in work of
course he's a very difficult man.

BARTHWICK.  He drinks, I suppose?

MRS. JONES.  Yes, Sir.  Of course I can't say he does n't drink,
because he does.

BARTHWICK.  And I suppose he takes all your money?

MRS. JONES.  No, sir, he's very good about my money, except when
he's not himself, and then, of course, he treats me very badly.

BARTHWICK.  Now what is he--your husband?

MRS. JONES.  By profession, sir, of course he's a groom.

BARTHWICK.  A groom!  How came he to lose his place?

MRS. JONES.  He lost his place a long time ago, sir, and he's never
had a very long job since; and now, of course, the motor-cars are
against him.

BARTHWICK.  When were you married to him, Mrs. Jones?

MRS. JONES.  Eight years ago, sir that was in----

MRS. BARTHWICK.  [Sharply.]  Eight?  You said the eldest child was
nine.

MRS. JONES.  Yes, ma'am; of course that was why he lost his place.
He did n't treat me rightly, and of course his employer said he
couldn't keep him because of the example.

BARTHWICK.  You mean he--ahem----

MRS. JONES.  Yes, sir; and of course after he lost his place he
married me.

MRS. BARTHWICK.  You actually mean to say you--you were----

BARTHWICK.  My dear----

MRS. BARTHWICK.  [Indignantly.] How disgraceful!

BARTHWICK.  [Hurriedly.]  And where are you living now, Mrs. Jones?

MRS. JONES.  We've not got a home, sir.  Of course we've been
obliged to put away most of our things.

BARTHWICK.  Put your things away!  You mean to--to--er--to pawn
them?

MRS. JONES.  Yes, sir, to put them away.  We're living in Merthyr
Street--that is close by here, sir--at No. 34.  We just have the one
room.

BARTHWICK.  And what do you pay a week?

MRS. JONES.  We pay six shillings a week, sir, for a furnished room.

BARTHWICK.  And I suppose you're behind in the rent?

MRS. JONES.  Yes, sir, we're a little behind in the rent.

BARTHWICK.  But you're in good work, aren't you?

MRS. JONES.  Well, Sir, I have a day in Stamford Place Thursdays.
And Mondays and Wednesdays and Fridays I come here.  But to-day, of
course, is a half-day, because of yesterday's Bank Holiday.

BARTHWICK.  I see; four days a week, and you get half a crown a day,
is that it?

MRS.  JONES.  Yes, sir, and my dinner; but sometimes it's only half
a day, and that's eighteen pence.

BARTHWICK.  And when your husband earns anything he spends it in
drink, I suppose?

MRS. JONES.  Sometimes he does, sir, and sometimes he gives it to me
for the children.  Of course he would work if he could get it, sir,
but it seems there are a great many people out of work.

BARTHWICK.  Ah!  Yes.  We--er--won't go into that.
[Sympathetically.]  And how about your work here?  Do you find it
hard?

MRS. JONES.  Oh!  no, sir, not very hard, sir; except of course,
when I don't get my sleep at night.

BARTHWICK.  Ah!  And you help do all the rooms?  And sometimes, I
suppose, you go out for cook?

MRS. JONES.  Yes, Sir.

BARTHWICK.  And you 've been out this morning?

MRS. JONES.  Yes, sir, of course I had to go to the greengrocer's.

BARTHWICK.  Exactly.  So your husband earns nothing?  And he's a bad
character.

MRS. JONES.  No, Sir, I don't say that, sir.  I think there's a
great deal of good in him; though he does treat me very bad
sometimes.  And of course I don't like to leave him, but I think I
ought to, because really I hardly know how to stay with him.  He
often raises his hand to me.  Not long ago he gave me a blow here
[touches her breast]  and I can feel it now.  So I think I ought to
leave him, don't you, sir?

BARTHWICK.  Ah! I can't help you there.  It's a very serious thing
to leave your husband.  Very serious thing.

MRS. JONES.  Yes, sir, of course I 'm afraid of what he might do to
me if I were to leave him; he can be so very violent.

BARTHWICK.  H'm!  Well, that I can't pretend to say anything about.
It's the bad principle I'm speaking of----

MRS. JONES.  Yes, Sir; I know nobody can help me.  I know I must
decide for myself, and of course I know that he has a very hard
life.  And he's fond of the children, and its very hard for him to
see them going without food.

BARTHWICK.  [Hastily.]  Well--er--thank you, I just wanted to hear
about you.  I don't think I need detain you any longer, Mrs. Jones.

MRS. JONES.  No, sir, thank you, sir.

BARTHWICK.  Good morning, then.

MRS. JONES.  Good morning, sir; good morning, ma'am.

BARTHWICK.  [Exchanging glances with his wife.]  By the way, Mrs.
Jones--I think it is only fair to tell you, a silver cigarette-box
--er--is missing.

MRS. JONES.  [Looking from one face to the other.] I am very sorry,
sir.

BARTHWICK.  Yes; you have not seen it, I suppose?

MRS. JONES.  [Realising that suspicion is upon her; with an uneasy
movement.]  Where was it, sir; if you please, sir?

BARTHWICK.  [Evasively.]  Where did Marlow say?  Er--in this room,
yes, in this room.

MRS. JONES.  No, Sir, I have n't seen it--of course if I 'd seen it
I should have noticed it.

BARTHWICK.  [Giving hey a rapid glance.]  You--you are sure of that?

MRS. JONES.  [Impassively.]  Yes, Sir.  [With a slow nodding of her
head.]  I have not seen it, and of course I don't know where it is.

     [She turns and goes quietly out.]

BARTHWICK.  H'm!

     [The three BARTHWICKS avoid each other's glances.]


                         The curtain falls.




ACT II

SCENE I

     The JONES's lodgings, Merthyr Street, at half-past two o'clock.

     The bare room, with tattered oilcloth and damp, distempered
     walls, has an air of tidy wretchedness.  On the bed lies JONES,
     half-dressed; his coat is thrown across his feet, and muddy
     boots are lying on the floor close by.  He is asleep.  The door
     is opened and MRS. JONES comes in, dressed in a pinched black
     jacket and old black sailor hat; she carries a parcel wrapped
     up in the "Times."  She puts her parcel down, unwraps an apron,
     half a loaf, two onions, three potatoes, and a tiny piece of
     bacon.  Taking a teapot from the cupboard, she rinses it,
     shakes into it some powdered tea out of a screw of paper, puts
     it on the hearth, and sitting in a wooden chair quietly begins
     to cry.

JONES.  [Stirring and yawning.]  That you?  What's the time?

MRS. JONES.  [Drying her eyes, and in her usual voice.]  Half-past
two.

JONES.  What you back so soon for?

MRS. JONES.  I only had the half day to-day, Jem.

JONES.  [On his back, and in a drowsy voice.]  Got anything for
dinner?

MRS. JONES.  Mrs. BARTHWICK's cook gave me a little bit of bacon.
I'm going to make a stew.  [She prepares for cooking.]  There's
fourteen shillings owing for rent, James, and of course I 've only
got two and fourpence.  They'll be coming for it to-day.

JONES.  [Turning towards her on his elbow.]  Let 'em come and find
my surprise packet.  I've had enough o' this tryin' for work.  Why
should I go round and round after a job like a bloomin' squirrel in
a cage.  "Give us a job, sir"--"Take a man on"--"Got a wife and
three children."  Sick of it I am! I 'd sooner lie here and rot.
"Jones, you come and join the demonstration; come and 'old a flag,
and listen to the ruddy orators, and go 'ome as empty as you came."
There's some that seems to like that--the sheep!  When I go seekin'
for a job now, and see the brutes lookin' me up an' down, it's like
a thousand serpents in me.  I 'm not arskin' for any treat.  A man
wants to sweat hisself silly and not allowed that's a rum start,
ain't it?  A man wants to sweat his soul out to keep the breath in
him and ain't allowed--that's justice that's freedom and all the
rest of it!  [He turns his face towards the wall.]  You're so milky
mild; you don't know what goes on inside o' me.  I'm done with the
silly game.  If they want me, let 'em come for me!

     [MRS. JONES stops cooking and stands unmoving at the table.]

I've tried and done with it, I tell you.  I've never been afraid of
what 's before me.  You mark my words--if you think they've broke my
spirit, you're mistook.  I 'll lie and rot sooner than arsk 'em
again.  What makes you stand like that--you long-sufferin', Gawd-
forsaken image--that's why I can't keep my hands off you.  So now
you know.  Work!  You can work, but you have n't the spirit of a
louse!

MRS. JONES.  [Quietly.]  You talk more wild sometimes when you're
yourself, James, than when you 're not.  If you don't get work, how
are we to go on?  They won't let us stay here; they're looking to
their money to-day, I know.

JONES.  I see this BARTHWICK o' yours every day goin' down to
Pawlyment snug and comfortable to talk his silly soul out; an' I see
that young calf, his son, swellin' it about, and goin' on the
razzle-dazzle.  Wot 'ave they done that makes 'em any better than
wot I am?  They never did a day's work in their lives.  I see 'em
day after day.

MRS. JONES.  And I wish you wouldn't come after me like that, and
hang about the house.  You don't seem able to keep away at all, and
whatever you do it for I can't think, because of course they notice
it.

JONES.  I suppose I may go where I like.  Where may I go?  The other
day I went to a place in the Edgware Road.  "Gov'nor," I says to the
boss, "take me on," I says.  "I 'aven't done a stroke o' work not
these two months; it takes the heart out of a man," I says; "I 'm
one to work; I 'm not afraid of anything you can give me!"  "My good
man," 'e says, "I 've had thirty of you here this morning.  I took
the first two," he says, "and that's all I want."  "Thank you, then
rot the world!" I says.  "Blasphemin'," he says, "is not the way to
get a job.  Out you go, my lad!"  [He laughs sardonically.]  Don't
you raise your voice because you're starvin'; don't yer even think
of it; take it lyin' down!  Take it like a sensible man, carn't you?
And a little way down the street a lady says to me: [Pinching his
voice]  "D' you want to earn a few pence, my man?" and gives me her
dog to 'old outside a shop-fat as a butler 'e was--tons o' meat had
gone to the makin' of him.  It did 'er good, it did, made 'er feel
'erself that charitable, but I see 'er lookin' at the copper
standin' alongside o' me, for fear I should make off with 'er
bloomin' fat dog.  [He sits on the edge of the bed and puts a boot
on.  Then looking up.]  What's in that head o' yours?  [Almost
pathetically.]  Carn't you speak for once?

     [There is a knock, and MRS. SEDDON, the landlady, appears, an
     anxious, harassed, shabby woman in working clothes.]

MRS. SEDDON.  I thought I 'eard you come in, Mrs. Jones.  I 've
spoke to my 'usband, but he says he really can't afford to wait
another day.

JONES.  [With scowling jocularity.]  Never you mind what your
'usband says, you go your own way like a proper independent woman.
Here, jenny, chuck her that.

     [Producing a sovereign from his trousers pocket, he throws it
     to his wife, who catches it in her apron with a gasp.  JONES
     resumes the lacing of his boots.]

MRS. JONES.  [Rubbing the sovereign stealthily.]  I'm very sorry
we're so late with it, and of course it's fourteen shillings, so if
you've got six that will be right.

     [MRS. SEDDON takes the sovereign and fumbles for the change.]

JONES.  [With his eyes fixed on his boots.]  Bit of a surprise for
yer, ain't it?

MRS. SEDDON.  Thank you, and I'm sure I'm very much obliged.  [She
does indeed appear surprised.]  I 'll bring you the change.

JONES.  [Mockingly.]  Don't mention it.

MRS. SEDDON.  Thank you, and I'm sure I'm very much obliged.  [She
slides away.]

     [MRS. JONES gazes at JONES who is still lacing up his boots.]

JONES.  I 've had a bit of luck.  [Pulling out the crimson purse and
some loose coins.]  Picked up a purse--seven pound and more.

MRS. JONES.  Oh, James!

JONES.  Oh, James!  What about Oh, James!  I picked it up I tell
you.  This is lost property, this is!

MRS. JONES.  But is n't there a name in it, or something?

JONES.  Name?  No, there ain't no name.  This don't belong to such
as 'ave visitin' cards.  This belongs to a perfec' lidy.  Tike an'
smell it.  [He pitches her the purse, which she puts gently to her
nose.]  Now, you tell me what I ought to have done.  You tell me
that.  You can always tell me what I ought to ha' done, can't yer?

MRS. JONES.  [Laying down the purse.]  I can't say what you ought to
have done, James.  Of course the money was n't yours; you've taken
somebody else's money.

JONES.  Finding's keeping.  I 'll take it as wages for the time I
've gone about the streets asking for what's my rights.  I'll take
it for what's overdue, d' ye hear?  [With strange triumph.]  I've
got money in my pocket, my girl.

     [MRS. JONES goes on again with the preparation of the meal,
     JONES looking at her furtively.]

Money in my pocket!  And I 'm not goin' to waste it.  With this 'ere
money I'm goin' to Canada.  I'll let you have a pound.

     [A silence.]

You've often talked of leavin' me.  You 've often told me I treat
you badly--well I 'ope you 'll be glad when I 'm gone.

MRS.  JONES. [Impassively.] You have, treated me very badly, James,
and of course I can't prevent your going; but I can't tell whether I
shall be glad when you're gone.

JONES.  It'll change my luck.  I 've 'ad nothing but bad luck since
I first took up with you.  [More softly.]  And you've 'ad no
bloomin' picnic.

MRS. JONES.  Of course it would have been better for us if we had
never met.  We were n't meant for each other.  But you're set
against me, that's what you are, and you have been for a long time.
And you treat me so badly, James, going after that Rosie and all.
You don't ever seem to think of the children that I 've had to bring
into the world, and of all the trouble I 've had to keep them, and
what 'll become of them when you're gone.

JONES. [Crossing the room gloomily.] If you think I want to leave
the little beggars you're bloomin' well mistaken.

MRS. JONES. Of course I know you're fond of them.

JONES.  [Fingering the purse, half angrily.]  Well, then, you stow
it, old girl.  The kids 'll get along better with you than when I 'm
here.  If I 'd ha' known as much as I do now, I 'd never ha' had one
o' them.  What's the use o' bringin' 'em into a state o' things like
this? It's a crime, that's what it is; but you find it out too late;
that's what's the matter with this 'ere world.

     [He puts the purse back in his pocket.]

MRS. JONES.  Of course it would have been better for them, poor
little things; but they're your own children, and I wonder at you
talkin' like that.  I should miss them dreadfully if I was to lose
them.

JONES.  [Sullenly.]  An' you ain't the only one.  If I make money
out there--[Looking up, he sees her shaking out his coat--in a
changed voice.] Leave that coat alone!

     [The silver box drops from the pocket, scattering the
     cigarettes upon the bed.  Taking up the box she stares at it;
     he rushes at her and snatches the box away.]

MRS. JONES.  [Cowering back against the bed.] Oh, Jem! oh, Jem!

JONES.  [Dropping the box onto the table.]  You mind what you're
sayin'!  When I go out I 'll take and chuck it in the water along
with that there purse.  I 'ad it when I was in liquor, and for what
you do when you 're in liquor you're not responsible-and that's
Gawd's truth as you ought to know.  I don't want the thing--I won't
have it.  I took it out o' spite.  I 'm no thief, I tell you; and
don't you call me one, or it'll be the worse for you.

MRS. JONES.  [Twisting her apron strings.]  It's Mr. Barthwick's!
You've taken away my reputation.  Oh, Jem, whatever made you?

JONES.  What d' you mean?

MRS. JONES.  It's been missed; they think it's me.  Oh! whatever
made you do it, Jem?

JONES.  I tell you I was in liquor.  I don't want it; what's the
good of it to me?  If I were to pawn it they'd only nab me. I 'm no
thief. I 'm no worse than wot that young Barthwick is; he brought
'ome that purse that I picked up--a lady's purse--'ad it off 'er in
a row, kept sayin' 'e 'd scored 'er off.  Well, I scored 'im off.
Tight as an owl 'e was!  And d' you think anything'll happen to him?

MRS. JONES.  [As though speaking to herself.]  Oh, Jem!  it's the
bread out of our mouths!

JONES.  Is it then?  I'll make it hot for 'em yet.  What about that
purse?  What about young BARTHWICK?

[MRS. JONES comes forward to the table and tries to take the box;
JONES prevents her.]  What do you want with that?  You drop it, I
say!

MRS. JONES.  I 'll take it back and tell them all about it.  [She
attempts to wrest the box from him.]

JONES.  Ah, would yer?

     [He drops the box, and rushes on her with a snarl.  She slips
     back past the bed.  He follows; a chair is overturned.  The
     door is opened; Snow comes in, a detective in plain clothes and
     bowler hat, with clipped moustaches.  JONES drops his arms,
     MRS. JONES stands by the window gasping; SNOW, advancing
     swiftly to the table, puts his hand on the silver box.]

SNOW.  Doin' a bit o' skylarkin'?  Fancy this is what I 'm after.
J. B., the very same.  [He gets back to the door, scrutinising the
crest and cypher on the box.  To MRS. JONES.]  I'm a police officer.
Are you Mrs. Jones?

MRS. JONES.  Yes, Sir.

SNOW.  My instructions are to take you on a charge of stealing this
box from J.  BARTHWICK, Esquire, M.P., of 6, Rockingham Gate.
Anything you say may be used against you.  Well, Missis?

MRS. JONES.  [In her quiet voice, still out of breath, her hand
upon.  her breast.]  Of course I did not take it, sir.  I never have
taken anything that did n't belong to me; and of course I know
nothing about it.

SNOW.  You were at the house this morning; you did the room in which
the box was left; you were alone in the room.  I find the box 'ere.
You say you did n't take it?

MRS. JONES.  Yes, sir, of course I say I did not take it, because I
did not.

SNOW.  Then how does the box come to be here?

MRS. JONES.  I would rather not say anything about it.

SNOW.  Is this your husband?

MRS. JONES.  Yes, sir, this is my husband, sir.

SNOW.  Do you wish to say anything before I take her?

     [JONES remains silent, with his head bend down.]

Well then, Missis.  I 'll just trouble you to come along with me
quietly.

MRS. JONES.  [Twisting her hands.]  Of course I would n't say I had
n't taken it if I had--and I did n't take it, indeed I did n't.  Of
course I know appearances are against me, and I can't tell you what
really happened: But my children are at school, and they'll be
coming home--and I don't know what they'll do without me.

SNOW.  Your 'usband'll see to them, don't you worry.  [He takes the
woman gently by the arm.]

JONES.  You drop it--she's all right!  [Sullenly.] I took the thing
myself.

SNOW.  [Eyeing him]  There, there, it does you credit.  Come along,
Missis.

JONES.  [Passionately.]  Drop it, I say, you blooming teck.  She's
my wife; she 's a respectable woman.  Take her if you dare!

SNOW.  Now, now.  What's the good of this?  Keep a civil tongue, and
it'll be the better for all of us.

     [He puts his whistle in his mouth and draws the woman to the
     door.]

JONES.  [With a rush.]  Drop her, and put up your 'ands, or I 'll
soon make yer.  You leave her alone, will yer!  Don't I tell yer, I
took the thing myself.

SNOW.  [Blowing his whistle.]  Drop your hands, or I 'll take you
too.  Ah, would you?

     [JONES, closing, deals him a blow.  A Policeman in uniform
     appears; there is a short struggle and JONES is overpowered.
     MRS. JONES raises her hands avid drops her face on them.]


                         The curtain falls.




SCENE II

     The BARTHWICKS' dining-room the same evening.  The BARTHWICKS
     are seated at dessert.

MRS. BARTHWICK.  John!  [A silence broken by the cracking of nuts.]
John!

BARTHWICK.  I wish you'd speak about the nuts they're uneatable.
[He puts one in his mouth.]

MRS. BARTHWICK.  It's not the season for them.  I called on the
Holyroods.

     [BARTHWICK fills his glass with port.]

JACK.  Crackers, please, Dad.

     [BARTHWICK passes the crackers.  His demeanour is reflective.]

MRS. BARTHWICK.  Lady Holyrood has got very stout.  I 've noticed it
coming for a long time.

BARTHWICK.  [Gloomily.]  Stout?  [He takes up the crackers--with
transparent airiness.]  The Holyroods had some trouble with their
servants, had n't they?

JACK.  Crackers, please, Dad.

BARTHWICK.  [Passing the crackers.]  It got into the papers.  The
cook, was n't it?

MRS. BARTHWICK.  No, the lady's maid.  I was talking it over with
Lady Holyrood.  The girl used to have her young man to see her.

BARTHWICK.  [Uneasily.]  I'm not sure they were wise----

MRS. BARTHWICK.  My dear John, what are you talking about?  How
could there be any alternative?  Think of the effect on the other
servants!

BARTHWICK.  Of course in principle--I wasn't thinking of that.

JACK.  [Maliciously.]  Crackers, please, Dad.

     [BARTHWICK is compelled to pass the crackers.]

MRS. BARTHWICK.  Lady Holyrood told me: "I had her up," she said; "I
said to her, 'You'll leave my house at once; I think your conduct
disgraceful.  I can't tell, I don't know, and I don't wish to know,
what you were doing.  I send you away on principle; you need not
come to me for a character.'  And the girl said: 'If you don't give
me my notice, my lady, I want a month's wages.  I'm perfectly
respectable.  I've done nothing.'"'--Done nothing!

BARTHWICK.  H'm!

MRS. BARTHWICK.  Servants have too much license.  They hang together
so terribly you never can tell what they're really thinking; it's as
if they were all in a conspiracy to keep you in the dark.  Even with
Marlow, you feel that he never lets you know what's really in his
mind.  I hate that secretiveness; it destroys all confidence.  I
feel sometimes I should like to shake him.

JACK.  Marlow's a most decent chap.  It's simply beastly every one
knowing your affairs.

BARTHWICK.  The less you say about that the better!

MRS. BARTHWICK.  It goes all through the lower classes.  You can not
tell when they are speaking the truth.  To-day when I was shopping
after leaving the Holyroods, one of these unemployed came up and
spoke to me.  I suppose I only had twenty yards or so to walk to the
carnage, but he seemed to spring up in the street.

BARTHWICK.  Ah!  You must be very careful whom you speak to in these
days.

MRS. BARTHWICK.  I did n't answer him, of course.  But I could see
at once that he wasn't telling the truth.

BARTHWICK.  [Cracking a nut.]  There's one very good rule--look at
their eyes.

JACK.  Crackers, please, Dad.

BARTHWICK.  [Passing the crackers.]  If their eyes are straight-
forward I sometimes give them sixpence.  It 's against my
principles, but it's most difficult to refuse.  If you see that
they're desperate, and dull, and shifty-looking, as so many of them
are, it's certain to mean drink, or crime, or something
unsatisfactory.

MRS. BARTHWICK.  This man had dreadful eyes.  He looked as if he
could commit a murder.  "I 've 'ad nothing to eat to-day," he said.
Just like that.

BARTHWICK.  What was William about?  He ought to have been waiting.

JACK.  [Raising his wine-glass to his nose.]  Is this the '63, Dad?

     [BARTHWICK, holding his wine-glass to his eye, lowers it and
     passes it before his nose.]

MRS. BARTHWICK.  I hate people that can't speak the truth.  [Father
and son exchange a look behind their port.]  It 's just as easy to
speak the truth as not.  I've always found it easy enough.  It makes
it impossible to tell what is genuine; one feels as if one were
continually being taken in.

BARTHWICK.  [Sententiously.]  The lower classes are their own
enemies.  If they would only trust us, they would get on so much
better.

MRS. BARTHWICK.  But even then it's so often their own fault.  Look
at that Mrs. Jones this morning.

BARTHWICK.  I only want to do what's right in that matter.  I had
occasion to see Roper this afternoon.  I mentioned it to him.  He's
coming in this evening.  It all depends on what the detective says.
I've had my doubts.  I've been thinking it over.

MRS. BARTHWICK.  The woman impressed me most unfavourably.  She
seemed to have no shame.  That affair she was talking about--she and
the man when they were young, so immoral!  And before you and Jack!
I could have put her out of the room!

BARTHWICK.  Oh!  I don't want to excuse them, but in looking at
these matters one must consider----

MRS. BARTHWICK.  Perhaps you'll say the man's employer was wrong in
dismissing him?

BARTHWICK.  Of course not.  It's not there that I feel doubt.  What
I ask myself is----

JACK.  Port, please, Dad.

BARTHWICK.  [Circulating the decanter in religious imitation of the
rising and setting of the sun.]  I ask myself whether we are
sufficiently careful in making inquiries about people before we
engage them, especially as regards moral conduct.

JACK.  Pass the-port, please, Mother!

MRS. BARTHWICK.  [Passing it.]  My dear boy, are n't you drinking
too much?

     [JACK fills his glass.]

MARLOW.  [Entering.]  Detective Snow to see you, Sir.

BARTHWICK.  [Uneasily.]  Ah!  say I'll be with him in a minute.

MRS. BARTHWICK.  [Without turning.]  Let him come in here, Marlow.

     [SNOW enters in an overcoat, his bowler hat in hand.]

BARTHWICK.  [Half-rising.]  Oh!  Good evening!

SNOW.  Good evening, sir; good evening, ma'am. I 've called round to
report what I 've done, rather late, I 'm afraid--another case took
me away.  [He takes the silver box out o f his pocket, causing a
sensation in the BARTHWICK family.]  This is the identical article,
I believe.

BARTHWICK.  Certainly, certainly.

SNOW.  Havin' your crest and cypher, as you described to me, sir, I
'd no hesitation in the matter.

BARTHWICK.  Excellent.  Will you have a glass of [he glances at the
waning port]--er--sherry-[pours out sherry].  Jack, just give Mr.
Snow this.

     [JACK rises and gives the glass to SNOW; then, lolling in his
     chair, regards him indolently.]

SNOW.  [Drinking off wine and putting down the glass.]  After seeing
you I went round to this woman's lodgings, sir.  It's a low
neighborhood, and I thought it as well to place a constable below--
and not without 'e was wanted, as things turned out.

BARTHWICK.  Indeed!

SNOW.  Yes, Sir, I 'ad some trouble.  I asked her to account for the
presence of the article.  She could give me no answer, except to
deny the theft; so I took her into custody; then her husband came
for me, so I was obliged to take him, too, for assault.  He was very
violent on the way to the station--very violent--threatened you and
your son, and altogether he was a handful, I can till you.

MRS. BARTHWICK.  What a ruffian he must be!

SNOW.  Yes, ma'am, a rough customer.

JACK.  [Sipping his mine, bemused.]  Punch the beggar's head.

SNOW.  Given to drink, as I understand, sir.

MRS. BARTHWICK.  It's to be hoped he will get a severe punishment.

SNOW.  The odd thing is, sir, that he persists in sayin' he took the
box himself.

BARTHWICK.  Took the box himself!  [He smiles.]  What does he think
to gain by that?

SNOW.  He says the young gentleman was intoxicated last night

     [JACK stops the cracking of a nut, and looks at SNOW.]

     [BARTHWICK, losing his smile, has put his wine-glass down;
     there is a silence--SNOW, looking from face to face, remarks]

--took him into the house and gave him whisky; and under the
influence of an empty stomach the man says he took the box.

MRS. BARTHWICK.  The impudent wretch!

BARTHWICK.  D' you mean that he--er--intends to put this forward
to-morrow?

SNOW.  That'll be his line, sir; but whether he's endeavouring to
shield his wife, or whether [he looks at JACK]  there's something in
it, will be for the magistrate to say.

MRS. BARTHWICK.  [Haughtily.]  Something in what?  I don't
understand you.  As if my son would bring a man like that into the
house!

BARTHWICK.  [From the fireplace, with an effort to be calm.]  My son
can speak for himself, no doubt.  Well, Jack, what do you say?

MRS. BARTHWICK.  [Sharply.]  What does he say?  Why, of course, he
says the whole story's stuff!

JACK.  [Embarrassed.]  Well, of course, I--of course, I don't know
anything about it.

MRS. BARTHWICK.  I should think not, indeed!  [To Snow.]  The man is
an audacious ruffian!

BARTHWICK.  [Suppressing jumps.]  But in view of my son's saying
there's nothing in this--this fable--will it be necessary to proceed
against the man under the circumstances?

SNOW.  We shall have to charge him with the assault, sir.  It would
be as well for your son to come down to the Court.  There'll be a
remand, no doubt.  The queer thing is there was quite a sum of money
found on him, and a crimson silk purse.

     [BARTHWICK starts; JACK rises and sits dozen again.]

I suppose the lady has n't missed her purse?

BARTHWICK.  [Hastily.]  Oh, no!  Oh!  No!

JACK.  No!

MRS. BARTHWICK.  [Dreamily.]  No!  [To SNOW.]  I 've been inquiring
of the servants.  This man does hang about the house.  I shall feel
much safer if he gets a good long sentence; I do think we ought to
be protected against such ruffians.

BARTHWICK.  Yes, yes, of course, on principle but in this case we
have a number of things to think of.  [To SNOW.]  I suppose, as you
say, the man must be charged, eh?

SNOW.  No question about that, sir.

BARTHWICK.  [Staring gloomily at JACK.]  This prosecution goes very
much against the grain with me.  I have great sympathy with the
poor.  In my position I 'm bound to recognise the distress there is
amongst them.  The condition of the people leaves much to be
desired.  D' you follow me?  I wish I could see my way to drop it.

MRS. BARTHWICK.  [Sharply.]  John!  it's simply not fair to other
people.  It's putting property at the mercy of any one who likes to
take it.

BARTHWICK.  [Trying to make signs to her aside.]  I 'm not defending
him, not at all.  I'm trying to look at the matter broadly.

MRS. BARTHWICK.  Nonsense, John, there's a time for everything.

SNOW.  [Rather sardonically.]  I might point out, sir, that to
withdraw the charge of stealing would not make much difference,
because the facts must come out [he looks significantly at JACK]  in
reference to the assault; and as I said that charge will have to go
forward.

BARTHWICK.  [Hastily.]  Yes, oh!  exactly!  It's entirely on the
woman's account--entirely a matter of my own private feelings.

SNOW.  If I were you, sir, I should let things take their course.
It's not likely there'll be much difficulty.  These things are very
quick settled.

BARTHWICK.  [Doubtfully.]  You think so--you think so?

JACK.  [Rousing himself.]  I say, what shall I have to swear to?

SNOW.  That's best known to yourself, sir.  [Retreating to the
door.]  Better employ a solicitor, sir, in case anything should
arise.  We shall have the butler to prove the loss of the article.
You'll excuse me going, I 'm rather pressed to-night.  The case may
come on any time after eleven.  Good evening, sir; good evening,
ma'am.  I shall have to produce the box in court to-morrow, so if
you'll excuse me, sir, I may as well take it with me.

     [He takes the silver box and leaves them with a little bow.]

     [BARTHWICK makes a move to follow him, then dashing his hands
     beneath his coat tails, speaks with desperation.]

BARTHWICK.  I do wish you'd leave me to manage things myself.  You
will put your nose into matters you know nothing of.  A pretty mess
you've made of this!

MRS. BARTHWICK.  [Coldly.]  I don't in the least know what you're
talking about.  If you can't stand up for your rights, I can.  I 've
no patience with your principles, it's such nonsense.

BARTHWICK.  Principles!  Good Heavens!  What have principles to do
with it for goodness sake?  Don't you know that Jack was drunk last
night!

JACK.  Dad!

MRS. BARTHWICK.  [In horror rising.]  Jack!

JACK.  Look here, Mother--I had supper.  Everybody does.  I mean to
say--you know what I mean--it's absurd to call it being drunk.  At
Oxford everybody gets a bit "on" sometimes----

MRS. BARTHWICK.  Well, I think it's most dreadful!  If that is
really what you do at Oxford?

JACK.  [Angrily.]  Well, why did you send me there?  One must do as
other fellows do.  It's such nonsense, I mean, to call it being
drunk.  Of course I 'm awfully sorry.  I 've had such a beastly
headache all day.

BARTHWICK.  Tcha!  If you'd only had the common decency to remember
what happened when you came in.  Then we should know what truth
there was in what this fellow says--as it is, it's all the most
confounded darkness.

JACK.  [Staring as though at half-formed visions.]  I just get a--
and then--it 's gone----

MRS. BARTHWICK.  Oh, Jack!  do you mean to say you were so tipsy you
can't even remember----

JACK.  Look here, Mother!  Of course I remember I came--I must have
come----

BARTHWICK.  [Unguardedly, and walking up and down.]  Tcha!--and that
infernal purse!  Good Heavens!  It'll get into the papers.  Who on
earth could have foreseen a thing like this?  Better to have lost a
dozen cigarette-boxes, and said nothing about it.  [To his wife.]
It's all your doing.  I told you so from the first.  I wish to
goodness Roper would come!

MRS. BARTHWICK.  [Sharply.]  I don't know what you're talking about,
John.

BARTHWICK.  [Turning on her.]  No, you--you--you don't know
anything!  [Sharply.]  Where the devil is Roper?  If he can see a
way out of this he's a better man than I take him for.  I defy any
one to see a way out of it.  I can't.

JACK.  Look here, don't excite Dad--I can simply say I was too
beastly tired, and don't remember anything except that I came in and
[in a dying voice] went to bed the same as usual.

BARTHWICK.  Went to bed?  Who knows where you went--I 've lost all
confidence.  For all I know you slept on the floor.

JACK.  [Indignantly.]  I did n't, I slept on the----

BARTHWICK.  [Sitting on the sofa.]  Who cares where you slept; what
does it matter if he mentions the--the--a perfect disgrace?

MRS. BARTHWICK.  What?  [A silence.]  I insist on knowing.

JACK.  Oh!  nothing.

MRS. BARTHWICK.  Nothing?  What do you mean by nothing, Jack?
There's your father in such a state about it!

JACK.  It's only my purse.

MRS. BARTHWICK.  Your purse!  You know perfectly well you have n't
got one.

JACK.  Well, it was somebody else's--it was all a joke--I did n't
want the beastly thing.

MRS. BARTHWICK.  Do you mean that you had another person's purse,
and that this man took it too?

BARTHWICK.  Tcha!  Of course he took it too!  A man like that Jones
will make the most of it.  It'll get into the papers.

MRS. BARTHWICK.  I don't understand.  What on earth is all the fuss
about?  [Bending over JACK, and softly.] Jack now, tell me dear!
Don't be afraid.  What is it?  Come!

JACK.  Oh, don't Mother!

MRS. BARTHWICK.  But don't what, dear?

JACK.  It was pure sport.  I don't know how I got the thing.  Of
course I 'd had a bit of a row--I did n't know what I was doing--I
was--I Was--well, you know--I suppose I must have pulled the bag out
of her hand.

MRS. BARTHWICK.  Out of her hand?  Whose hand?  What bag--whose bag?

JACK.  Oh!  I don't know--her bag--it belonged to--[in a desperate
and rising voice] a woman.

MRS. BARTHWICK.  A woman?  Oh!  Jack!  No!

JACK.  [Jumping up.]  You would have it.  I did n't want to tell
you.  It's not my fault.

     [The door opens and MARLOW ushers in a man of middle age,
     inclined to corpulence, in evening dress.  He has a ruddy, thin
     moustache, and dark, quick-moving little eyes.  His eyebrows
     aye Chinese.]

MARLOW.  Mr. Roper, Sir.  [He leaves the room.]

ROPER.  [With a quick look round.]  How do you do?

     [But neither JACK nor MRS. BARTHWICK make a sign.]

BARTHWICK.  [Hurrying.]  Thank goodness you've come, Roper.  You
remember what I told you this afternoon; we've just had the
detective here.

ROPER.  Got the box?

BARTHWICK.  Yes, yes, but look here--it was n't the charwoman at
all; her drunken loafer of a husband took the things--he says that
fellow there [he waves his hand at JACK, who with his shoulder
raised, seems trying to ward off a blow] let him into the house last
night.  Can you imagine such a thing.

     [Roper laughs. ]

BARTHWICK.  [With excited emphasis.].  It's no laughing matter,
Roper.  I told you about that business of Jack's too--don't you see
the brute took both the things--took that infernal purse.  It'll get
into the papers.

ROPER.  [Raising his eyebrows.]  H'm!  The purse!  Depravity in high
life!  What does your son say?

BARTHWICK.  He remembers nothing.  D--n!  Did you ever see such a
mess?  It 'll get into the papers.

MRS. BARTHWICK.  [With her hand across hey eyes.]  Oh!  it's not
that----

     [BARTHWICK and ROPER turn and look at her.]

BARTHWICK.  It's the idea of that woman--she's just heard----

     [ROPER nods.  And MRS. BARTHWICK, setting her lips, gives a
     slow look at JACK, and sits down at the table.]

What on earth's to be done, Roper?  A ruffian like this Jones will
make all the capital he can out of that purse.

MRS. BARTHWICK.  I don't believe that Jack took that purse.

BARTHWICK.  What--when the woman came here for it this morning?

MRS. BARTHWICK.  Here?  She had the impudence?  Why was n't I told?

     [She looks round from face to face--no one answers hey, there
     is a pause.]

BARTHWICK.  [Suddenly.]  What's to be done, Roper?

ROPER.  [Quietly to JACK.]  I suppose you did n't leave your latch-
key in the door?

JACK.  [Sullenly.]  Yes, I did.

BARTHWICK.  Good heavens!  What next?

MRS. BARTHWICK.  I 'm certain you never let that man into the house,
Jack, it's a wild invention.  I'm sure there's not a word of truth
in it, Mr. Roper.

ROPER.  [Very suddenly.]  Where did you sleep last night?

JACK.  [Promptly.]  On the sofa, there--[hesitating]--that is--I----

BARTHWICK.  On the sofa?  D' you mean to say you did n't go to bed?

JACK.[Sullenly.]  No.

BARTHWICK.  If you don't remember anything, how can you remember
that?

JACK.  Because I woke up there in the morning.

MRS. BARTHWICK.  Oh, Jack!

BARTHWICK.  Good Gracious!

JACK.  And Mrs. Jones saw me.  I wish you would n't bait me so.

ROPER.  Do you remember giving any one a drink?

JACK.  By Jove, I do seem to remember a fellow with--a fellow with
[He looks at Roper.]  I say, d' you want me----?

ROPER.  [Quick as lightning.]  With a dirty face?

JACK.  [With illumination.]  I do--I distinctly remember his----

     [BARTHWICK moves abruptly; MRS. BARTHWICK looks at ROPER
     angrily, and touches her son's arm.]

MRS. BARTHWICK.  You don't remember, it's ridiculous!  I don't
believe the man was ever here at all.

BARTHWICK.  You must speak the truth, if it is the truth.  But if
you do remember such a dirty business, I shall wash my hands of you
altogether.

JACK.  [Glaring at them.]  Well, what the devil----

MRS. BARTHWICK.  Jack!

JACK.  Well, Mother, I--I don't know what you do want.

MRS. BARTHWICK.  We want you to speak the truth and say you never
let this low man into the house.

BARTHWICK.  Of course if you think that you really gave this man
whisky in that disgraceful way, and let him see what you'd been
doing, and were in such a disgusting condition that you don't
remember a word of it----

ROPER.  [Quick.] I've no memory myself--never had.

BARTHWICK.  [Desperately.]  I don't know what you're to say.

ROPER.  [To JACK.]  Say nothing at all!  Don't put yourself in a
false position.  The man stole the things or the woman stole the
things, you had nothing to do with it.  You were asleep on the sofa.

MRS. BARTHWICK.  Your leaving the latch-key in the door was quite
bad enough, there's no need to mention anything else.  [Touching his
forehead softly.]  My dear, how hot your head is!

JACK.  But I want to know what I 'm to do.  [Passionately.]  I won't
be badgered like this.

     [MRS. BARTHWICK recoils from him.]

ROPER.  [Very quickly.]  You forget all about it. You were asleep.

JACK.  Must I go down to the Court to-morrow?

ROPER.  [Shaking his head.]  No.

BARTHWICK.  [In a relieved voice.] Is that so?

ROPER.  Yes.

BARTHWICK.  But you'll go, Roper.

ROPER.  Yes.

JACK.  [With wan cheerfulness.]  Thanks, awfully!  So long as I
don't have to go.  [Putting his hand up to his head.]  I think if
you'll excuse me--I've had a most beastly day.  [He looks from his
father to his mother.]

MRS. BARTHWICK. [Turning quickly.] Goodnight, my boy.

JACK.  Good-night, Mother.

     [He goes out.  MRS. BARTHWICK heaves a sigh.  There is a
     silence.]

BARTHWICK.  He gets off too easily.  But for my money that woman
would have prosecuted him.

ROPER.  You find money useful.

BARTHWICK.  I've my doubts whether we ought to hide'the truth----

ROPER.  There'll be a remand.

BARTHWICK.  What!  D' you mean he'll have to appear on the remand.

ROPER. Yes.

BARTHWICK.  H'm, I thought you'd be able to----Look here, Roper,
you must keep that purse out of the papers.

     [ROPER fixes his little eyes on him and nods.]

MRS. BARTHWICK.  Mr. Roper, don't you think the magistrate ought to
be told what sort of people these Jones's are; I mean about their
immorality before they were married.  I don't know if John told you.

ROPER.  Afraid it's not material.

MRS. BARTHWICK.  Not material?

ROPER.  Purely private life!  May have happened to the magistrate.

BARTHWICK.  [With a movement as if to shift a burden.] Then you'll
take the thing into your hands?

ROPER.  If the gods are kind.  [He holds his hand out.]

BARTHWICK.  [Shaking it dubiously.]  Kind eh?  What?  You going?

ROPER.  Yes.  I've another case, something like yours--most
unexpected.

     [He bows to MRS. BARTHWICK, and goes out, followed by
     BARTHWICK, talking to the last.  MRS. BARTHWICK at the table
     bursts into smothered sobs.  BARTHWICK returns.]

BARTHWICK.  [To himself.]  There'll be a scandal!

MRS. BARTHWICK.  [Disguising her grief at once.]  I simply can't
imagine what Roper means by making a joke of a thing like that!

BARTHWICK.  [Staring strangely.]  You!  You can't imagine anything!
You've no more imagination than a fly!

MRS. BARTHWICK.  [Angrily.]  You dare to tell me that I have no
imagination.

BARTHWICK.  [Flustered.]  I--I 'm upset.  From beginning to end, the
whole thing has been utterly against my principles.

MRS. BARTHWICK.  Rubbish!  You have n't any!  Your principles are
nothing in the world but sheer fright!

BARTHWICK.  [Walking to the window.]  I've never been frightened in
my life.  You heard what Roper said.  It's enough to upset one when
a thing like this happens.  Everything one says and does seems to
turn in one's mouth--it's--it's uncanny.  It's not the sort of thing
I've been accustomed to.  [As though stifling, he throws the window
open.  The faint sobbing of a child comes in.]  What's that?

     [They listen.]

MRS. BARTHWICK.  [Sharply.]  I can't stand that crying.  I must send
Marlow to stop it.  My nerves are all on edge.  [She rings the
bell.]

BARTHWICK.  I'll shut the window; you'll hear nothing.  [He shuts
the window.  There is silence.]

MRS. BARTHWICK.  [Sharply.]  That's no good!  It's on my nerves.
Nothing upsets me like a child's crying.

     [MARLOW comes in.]

What's that noise of crying, Marlow?  It sounds like a child.

BARTHWICK.  It is a child.  I can see it against the railings.

MARLOW.  [Opening the window, and looking out quietly.]  It's Mrs.
Jones's little boy, ma'am; he came here after his mother.

MRS. BARTHWICK.  [Moving quickly to the window.]  Poor little chap!
John, we ought n't to go on with this!

BARTHWICK.  [Sitting heavily in a chair.]  Ah!  but it's out of our
hands!

     [MRS. BARTHWICK turns her back to the window.  There is an
     expression of distress on hey face.  She stands motionless,
     compressing her lips.  The crying begins again.  BARTHWICK
     coveys his ears with his hands, and MARLOW shuts the window.
     The crying ceases.]


                         The curtain falls.




ACT III

     Eight days have passed, and the scene is a London Police Court
     at one o'clock.  A canopied seat of Justice is surmounted by
     the lion and unicorn.  Before the fire a worn-looking
     MAGISTRATE is warming his coat-tails, and staring at two little
     girls in faded blue and orange rags, who are placed before the
     dock.  Close to the witness-box is a RELIEVING OFFICER in an
     overcoat, and a short brown beard.  Beside the little girls
     stands a bald POLICE CONSTABLE.  On the front bench are sitting
     BARTHWICK and ROPER, and behind them JACK.  In the railed
     enclosure are seedy-looking men and women.  Some prosperous
     constables sit or stand about.

MAGISTRATE.  [In his paternal and ferocious voice, hissing his s's.]
Now let us dispose of these young ladies.

USHER.  Theresa Livens, Maud Livens.

     [The bald CONSTABLE indicates the little girls, who remain
     silent, disillusioned, inattentive.]

Relieving Officer!

     [The RELIEVING OFFICER Steps into the witness-box.]

USHER.  The evidence you give to the Court shall be the truth, the
whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God!  Kiss the
book!

     [The book is kissed.]

RELIEVING OFFICER.  [In a monotone, pausing slightly at each
sentence end, that his evidence may be inscribed.]  About ten
o'clock this morning, your Worship, I found these two little girls
in Blue Street, Fulham, crying outside a public-house.  Asked where
their home was, they said they had no home.  Mother had gone away.
Asked about their father.  Their father had no work.  Asked where
they slept last night.  At their aunt's.  I 've made inquiries, your
Worship.  The wife has broken up the home and gone on the streets.
The husband is out of work and living in common lodging-houses.  The
husband's sister has eight children of her own, and says she can't
afford to keep these little girls any longer.

MAGISTRATE.  [Returning to his seat beneath the canopy of justice.]
Now, let me see.  You say the mother is on the streets; what
evidence have you of that?

RELIEVING OFFICER.  I have the husband here, your Worship.

MAGISTRATE.  Very well; then let us see him.

     [There are cries of "LIVENS."  The MAGISTRATE leans forward,
     and stares with hard compassion at the little girls.  LIVENS
     comes in.  He is quiet, with grizzled hair, and a muffler for a
     collar.  He stands beside the witness-box.]

And you, are their father?  Now, why don't you keep your little
girls at home.  How is it you leave them to wander about the streets
like this?

LIVENS.  I've got no home, your Worship.  I'm living from 'and to
mouth.  I 've got no work; and nothin' to keep them on.

MAGISTRATE.  How is that?

LIVENS.  [Ashamedly.]  My wife, she broke my 'ome up, and pawned the
things.

MAGISTRATE.  But what made you let her?

LEVINS.  Your Worship, I'd no chance to stop 'er, she did it when I
was out lookin' for work.

MAGISTRATE.  Did you ill-treat her?

LIVENS.  [Emphatically.]  I never raised my 'and to her in my life,
your Worship.

MAGISTRATE.  Then what was it--did she drink?

LIVENS.  Yes, your Worship.

MAGISTRATE.  Was she loose in her behaviour?

LIVENS.  [In a low voice.]  Yes, your Worship.

MAGISTRATE.  And where is she now?

LIVENS.  I don't know your Worship. She went off with a man, and
after that I----

MAGISTRATE.  Yes, yes.  Who knows anything of her?  [To the bald
CONSTABLE.]  Is she known here?

RELIEVING OFFICER.  Not in this district, your Worship; but I have
ascertained that she is well known----

MAGISTRATE.  Yes--yes; we'll stop at that.  Now [To the Father] you
say that she has broken up your home, and left these little girls.
What provision can you make for them?  You look a strong man.

LIVENS.  So I am, your Worship.  I'm willin' enough to work, but for
the life of me I can't get anything to do.

MAGISTRATE.  But have you tried?

LIVENS.  I've tried everything, your Worship--I 've tried my
'ardest.

MAGISTRATE.  Well, well----       [There is a silence.]

RELIEVING OFFICER. If your Worship thinks it's a case, my people are
willing to take them.

MAGISTRATE. Yes, yes, I know; but I've no evidence that this man is
not the proper guardian for his children.

     [He rises oval goes back to the fire.]

RELIEVING OFFICER.  The mother, your Worship, is able to get access
to them.

MAGISTRATE.  Yes, yes; the mother, of course, is an improper person
to have anything to do with them.  [To the Father.]  Well, now what
do you say?

LIVENS.  Your Worship, I can only say that if I could get work I
should be only too willing to provide for them.  But what can I do,
your Worship?  Here I am obliged to live from 'and to mouth in these
'ere common lodging-houses.  I 'm a strong man--I'm willing to work
--I'm half as alive again as some of 'em--but you see, your Worship,
my 'airs' turned a bit, owing to the fever--[Touches his hair]--and
that's against me; and I don't seem to get a chance anyhow.

MAGISTRATE.  Yes-yes.  [Slowly.]  Well, I think it 's a case.
[Staring his hardest at the little girls.]  Now, are you willing
that these little girls should be sent to a home.

LIVENS. Yes, your Worship, I should be very willing.

MAGISTRATE.  Well, I'll remand them for a week.  Bring them again
to-day week; if I see no reason against it then, I 'll make an
order.

RELIEVING OFFICER. To-day week, your Worship.

     [The bald CONSTABLE takes the little girls out by the
     shoulders. The father follows them.  The MAGISTRATE, returning
     to his seat, bends over and talks to his CLERK inaudibly.]

BARTHWICK.  [Speaking behind his hand.]  A painful case, Roper; very
distressing state of things.

ROPER.  Hundreds like this in the Police Courts.

BARTHWICK.  Most distressing!  The more I see of it, the more
important this question of the condition of the people seems to
become.  I shall certainly make a point of taking up the cudgels in
the House.  I shall move----

     [The MAGISTRATE ceases talking to his CLERK.]

CLERK.  Remands!

     [BARTHWICK stops abruptly.  There is a stir and MRS. JONES
     comes in by the public door; JONES, ushered by policemen, comes
     from the prisoner's door.  They file into the dock.]

CLERK.  James Jones, Jane Jones.

USHER.  Jane Jones!

BARTHWICK.  [In a whisper.]  The purse--the purse must be kept out
of it, Roper.  Whatever happens you must keep that out of the
papers.

     [ROPER nods.]

BALD CONSTABLE.  Hush!

     [MRS. JONES, dressed in hey thin, black, wispy dress, and black
     straw hat, stands motionless with hands crossed on the front
     rail of the dock.  JONES leans against the back rail of the
     dock, and keeps half turning, glancing defiantly about him.  He
     is haggard and unshaven.]

CLERK.  [Consulting with his papers.]  This is the case remanded
from last Wednesday, Sir.  Theft of a silver cigarette-box and
assault on the police; the two charges were taken together.  Jane
Jones!  James Jones!

MAGISTRATE.  [Staring.]  Yes, yes; I remember.

CLERK.  Jane Jones.

MRS. JONES.  Yes, Sir.

CLERK.  Do you admit stealing a silver cigarette-box valued at five
pounds, ten shillings, from the house of John BARTHWICK, M.P.,
between the hours of 11 p.m.  on Easter Monday and 8.45 a.m.  on
Easter Tuesday last?  Yes, or no?

MRS. JONES.  [In a logy voice.]  No, Sir, I do not, sir.

CLERK.  James Jones?  Do you admit stealing a silver cigarette-box
valued at five pounds, ten shillings, from the house of John
BARTHWICK, M.P., between the hours of 11 p.m.  on Easter Monday and
8.45 A.M.  on Easter Tuesday last.  And further making an assault on
the police when in the execution of their duty at 3 p.m.  on Easter
Tuesday?  Yes or no?

JONES.  [Sullenly.]  Yes, but I've got a lot to say about it.

MAGISTRATE.  [To the CLERK.]  Yes--yes.  But how comes it that these
two people are charged with the same offence?  Are they husband and
wife?

CLERK.  Yes, Sir.  You remember you ordered a remand for further
evidence as to the story of the male prisoner.

MAGISTRATE.  Have they been in custody since?

CLERK.  You released the woman on her own recognisances, sir.

MAGISTRATE.  Yes, yes, this is the case of the silver box; I
remember now.  Well?

CLERK.  Thomas Marlow.

     [The cry of "THOMAS MARLOW" is repeated MARLOW comes in, and
     steps into the witness-box.]

USHER.  The evidence you give to the court shall be the truth, the
whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God.  Kiss the
book.

     [The book is kissed.  The silver box is handed up, and placed
     on the rail.]

CLERK.  [Reading from his papers.]  Your name is Thomas Marlow?  Are
you, butler to John BARTHWICK, M.P., of 6, Rockingham Gate?

MARLOW.  Yes, Sir.

CLERK.  Is that the box?

MARLOW.  Yes Sir.

CLERK.  And did you miss the same at 8.45 on the following morning,
on going to remove the tray?

MARLOW.  Yes, Sir.

CLERK.  Is the female prisoner known to you?

     [MARLOW nods.]

Is she the charwoman.  employed at 6, Rockingham Gate?

     [Again MARLOW nods.]

Did you at the time of your missing the box find her in the room
alone?

MARLOW.  Yes, Sir.

CLERK.  Did you afterwards communicate the loss to your employer,
and did he send you to the police station?

MARLOW.  Yes, Sir.

CLERK.  [To MRS. JONES.]  Have you anything to ask him?

MRS. JONES.  No, sir, nothing, thank you, sir.

CLERK.  [To JONES.]  James Jones, have you anything to ask this
witness?

JONES.  I don't know 'im.

MAGISTRATE.  Are you sure you put the box in the place you say at
the time you say?

MARLOW.  Yes, your Worship.

MAGISTRATE.  Very well; then now let us have the officer.

     [MARLOW leaves the box, and Snow goes into it.]

USHER.  The evidence you give to the court shall be the truth, the
whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God.  [The book
is kissed.]

CLERK.  [Reading from his papers.]  Your name is Robert Allow?  You
are a detective in the X. B.  division of the Metropolitan police
force?  According to instructions received did you on Easter Tuesday
last proceed to the prisoner's lodgings at 34, Merthyr Street, St.
Soames's?  And did you on entering see the box produced, lying on
the table?

SNOW.  Yes, Sir.

CLERK.  Is that the box?

Snow.  [Fingering the box.]  Yes, Sir.

CLERK.  And did you thereupon take possession of it, and charge the
female prisoner with theft of the box from 6, Rockingham Gate?  And
did she deny the same?

SNOW.  Yes, Sir.

CLERK.  Did you take her into custody?

Snow.  Yes, Sir.

MAGISTRATE.  What was her behaviour?

SNOW.  Perfectly quiet, your Worship.  She persisted in the denial.
That's all.

MAGISTRATE.  DO you know her?

SNOW.  No, your Worship.

MAGISTRATE.  Is she known here?

BALD CONSTABLE.  No, your Worship, they're neither of them known,
we 've nothing against them at all.

CLERK.  [To MRS. JONES.]  Have you anything to ask the officer?

MRS. JONES.  No, sir, thank you, I 've nothing to ask him.

MAGISTRATE.  Very well then--go on.

CLERK.  [Reading from his papers.]  And while you were taking the
female prisoner did the male prisoner interpose, and endeavour to
hinder you in the execution of your duty, and did he strike you a
blow?

SNOW.  Yes, Sir.

CLERK.  And did he say, "You, let her go, I took the box myself"?

SNOW.  He did.

CLERK.  And did you blow your whistle and obtain the assistance of
another constable, and take him into custody?

SNOW.  I did.

CLERK.  Was he violent on the way to the station, and did he use bad
language, and did he several times repeat that he had taken the box
himself?

     [Snow nods.]

Did you thereupon ask him in what manner he had stolen the box?  And
did you understand him to say he had entered the house at the
invitation of young Mr. BARTHWICK

     [BARTHWICK, turning in his seat, frowns at ROPER.]

after midnight on Easter Monday, and partaken of whisky, and that
under the influence of the whisky he had taken the box?

SNOW.  I did, sir.

CLERK.  And was his demeanour throughout very violent?

SNOW.  It was very violent.

JONES.  [Breaking in.]  Violent---of course it was!  You put your
'ands on my wife when I kept tellin' you I took the thing myself.

MAGISTRATE.  [Hissing, with protruded neck.]  Now--you will have
your chance of saying what you want to say presently.  Have you
anything to ask the officer?

JONES.  [Sullenly.]  No.

MAGISTRATE.  Very well then.  Now let us hear what the female
prisoner has to say first.

MRS. JONES.  Well, your Worship, of course I can only say what I 've
said all along, that I did n't take the box.

MAGISTRATE.  Yes, but did you know that it was taken?

MRS. JONES.  No, your Worship.  And, of course, to what my husband
says, your Worship, I can't speak of my own knowledge.  Of course, I
know that he came home very late on the Monday night.  It was past
one o'clock when he came in, and he was not himself at all.

MAGISTRATE.  Had he been drinking?

MRS. JONES.  Yes, your Worship.

MAGISTRATE.  And was he drunk?

MRS. JONES.  Yes, your Worship, he was almost quite drunk.

MAGISTRATE.  And did he say anything to you?

MRS. JONES.  No, your Worship, only to call me names.  And of course
in the morning when I got up and went to work he was asleep.  And I
don't know anything more about it until I came home again.  Except
that Mr. BARTHWICK--that 's my employer, your Worship--told me the
box was missing.

MAGISTRATE.  Yes, yes.

MRS. JONES.  But of course when I was shaking out my husband's coat
the cigarette-box fell out and all the cigarettes were scattered on
the bed.

MAGISTRATE.  You say all the cigarettes were scattered on the bed?
[To SNOW.]  Did you see the cigarettes scattered on the bed?

SNOW.  No, your Worship, I did not.

MAGISTRATE.  You see he says he did n't see them.

JONES.  Well, they were there for all that.

SNOW.  I can't say, your Worship, that I had the opportunity of
going round the room; I had all my work cut out with the male
prisoner.

MAGISTRATE.  [To MRS. JONES.]  Well, what more have you to say?

MRS. JONES.  Of course when I saw the box, your Worship, I was
dreadfully upset, and I could n't think why he had done such a
thing; when the officer came we were having words about it, because
it is ruin to me, your Worship, in my profession, and I have three
little children dependent on me.

MAGISTRATE.  [Protruding his neck].  Yes--yes--but what did he say
to you?

MRS. JONES.  I asked him whatever came over him to do such a thing-
and he said it was the drink.  He said he had had too much to drink,
and something came over him.  And of course, your Worship, he had
had very little to eat all day, and the drink does go to the head
when you have not had enough to eat.  Your Worship may not know, but
it is the truth.  And I would like to say that all through his
married life, I have never known him to do such a thing before,
though we have passed through great hardships and [speaking with
soft emphasis]  I am quite sure he would not have done it if he had
been himself at the time.

MAGISTRATE.  Yes, yes.  But don't you know that that is no excuse?

MRS. JONES.  Yes, your Worship.  I know that it is no excuse.

     [The MAGISTRATE leans over and parleys with his CLERK.]

JACK.  [Leaning over from his seat behind.]  I say, Dad----

BARTHWICK.  Tsst!  [Sheltering his mouth he speaks to ROPER.]
Roper, you had better get up now and say that considering the
circumstances and the poverty of the prisoners, we have no wish to
proceed any further, and if the magistrate would deal with the case
as one of disorder only on the part of----

BALD CONSTABLE.  HSSShh!

     [ROPER shakes his head.]

MAGISTRATE.  Now, supposing what you say and what your husband says
is true, what I have to consider is--how did he obtain access to
this house, and were you in any way a party to his obtaining access?
You are the charwoman employed at the house?

MRS. JONES.  Yes, your Worship, and of course if I had let him into
the house it would have been very wrong of me; and I have never done
such a thing in any of the houses where I have been employed.

MAGISTRATE.  Well--so you say.  Now let us hear what story the male
prisoner makes of it.

JONES.  [Who leans with his arms on the dock behind, speaks in a
slow, sullen voice.]  Wot I say is wot my wife says.  I 've never
been 'ad up in a police court before, an' I can prove I took it when
in liquor.  I told her, and she can tell you the same, that I was
goin' to throw the thing into the water sooner then 'ave it on my
mind.

MAGISTRATE.  But how did you get into the HOUSE?

JONES.  I was passin'.  I was goin' 'ome from the "Goat and Bells."

MAGISTRATE.  The "Goat and Bells,"--what is that?  A public-house?

JONES.  Yes, at the corner.  It was Bank 'oliday, an' I'd 'ad a drop
to drink.  I see this young Mr. BARTHWICK tryin' to find the keyhole
on the wrong side of the door.

MAGISTRATE.  Well?

JONES.  [Slowly and with many pauses.]  Well---I 'elped 'im to find
it--drunk as a lord 'e was.  He goes on, an' comes back again, and
says, I 've got nothin' for you, 'e says, but come in an' 'ave a
drink.  So I went in just as you might 'ave done yourself.  We 'ad a
drink o' whisky just as you might have 'ad, 'nd young Mr. BARTHWICK
says to me, "Take a drink 'nd a smoke.  Take anything you like, 'e
says."  And then he went to sleep on the sofa.  I 'ad some more
whisky--an' I 'ad a smoke--and I 'ad some more whisky--an' I carn't
tell yer what 'appened after that.

MAGISTRATE.  Do you mean to say that you were so drunk that you can
remember nothing?

JACK.  [Softly to his father.]  I say, that's exactly what----

BARTHWICK.  TSSh!

JONES.  That's what I do mean.

MAGISTRATE.  And yet you say you stole the box?

JONES.  I never stole the box.  I took it.

MAGISTRATE.  [Hissing with protruded neck.]  You did not steal it--
you took it.  Did it belong to you--what is that but stealing?

JONES.  I took it.

MAGISTRATE.  You took it--you took it away from their house and you
took it to your house----

JONES.  [Sullenly breaking in.]  I ain't got a house.

MAGISTRATE.  Very well, let us hear what this young man Mr.--Mr.
BARTHWICK has to say to your story.

     [SNOW leaves the witness-box.  The BALD CONSTABLE beckons JACK,
     who, clutching his hat, goes into the witness-box.  ROPER moves
     to the table set apart for his profession.]

SWEARING CLERK.  The evidence you give to the court shall be the
truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God.
Kiss the book.

     [The book is kissed.]

ROPER.  [Examining.]  What is your name?

JACK.  [In a low voice.]  John BARTHWICK, Junior.

     [The CLERK writes it down.]

ROPER.  Where do you live?

JACK.  At 6, Rockingham Gate.

     [All his answers are recorded by the Clerk.]

ROPER.  You are the son of the owner?

JACK.  [In a very low voice.]  Yes.

ROPER.  Speak up, please.  Do you know the prisoners?

JACK.  [Looking at the JONESES, in a low voice.]  I 've seen Mrs.
Jones.  I   [in a loud voice]  don't know the man.

JONES.  Well, I know you!

BALD CONSTABLE.  HSSh!

ROPER.  Now, did you come in late on the night of Easter Monday?

JACK.  Yes.

ROPER.  And did you by mistake leave your latch key in the door?

JACK.  Yes.

MAGISTRATE.  Oh!  You left your latch-key in the door?

ROPER.  And is that all you can remember about your coming in?

JACK.  [In a loud voice.]  Yes, it is.

MAGISTRATE.  Now, you have heard the male prisoner's story, what do
you say to that?

JACK.  [Turning to the MAGISTRATE, speaks suddenly in a confident,
straight-forward voice.]  The fact of the matter is, sir, that I 'd
been out to the theatre that night, and had supper afterwards, and I
came in late.

MAGISTRATE.  Do you remember this man being outside when you came
in?

JACK.  No, Sir.  [He hesitates.]  I don't think I do.

MAGISTRATE.  [Somewhat puzzled.]  Well, did he help you to open the
door, as he says?  Did any one help you to open the door?

JACK.  No, sir--I don't think so, sir--I don't know.

MAGISTRATE.  You don't know?  But you must know.  It is n't a usual
thing for you to have the door opened for you, is it?

JACK.  [With a shamefaced smile.]  No.

MAGISTRATE.  Very well, then----

JACK.  [Desperately.]  The fact of the matter is, sir, I'm afraid
I'd had too much champagne that night.

MAGISTRATE.  [Smiling.]  Oh! you'd had too much champagne?

JONES.  May I ask the gentleman a question?

MAGISTRATE.  Yes--yes--you may ask him what questions you like.

JONES.  Don't you remember you said you was a Liberal, same as your
father, and you asked me wot I was?

JACK.  [With his hand against his brow.]  I seem to remember----

JONES.  And I said to you, "I'm a bloomin' Conservative," I said;
an' you said to me, "You look more like one of these 'ere
Socialists.  Take wotever you like," you said.

JACK.  [With sudden resolution.]  No, I don't.  I don't remember
anything of the sort.

JONES.  Well, I do, an' my word's as good as yours.  I 've never
been had up in a police court before.  Look 'ere, don't you remember
you had a sky-blue bag in your 'and [BARTHWICK jumps.]

ROPER.  I submit to your worship that these questions are hardly to
the point, the prisoner having admitted that he himself does not
remember anything.  [There is a smile on the face of Justice.]  It
is a case of the blind leading the blind.

JONES.  [Violently.]  I've done no more than wot he 'as.  I'm a poor
man; I've got no money an' no friends--he 's a toff--he can do wot I
can't.

MAGISTRATE: Now, now?  All this won't help you--you must be quiet.
You say you took this box?  Now, what made you take it?  Were you
pressed for money?

JONES.  I'm always pressed for money.

MAGISTRATE.  Was that the reason you took it?

JONES.  No.

MAGISTRATE.  [To SNOW.]  Was anything found on him?

SNOW.  Yes, your worship.  There was six pounds twelve shillin's
found on him, and this purse.

     [The red silk purse is handed to the MAGISTRATE.  BARTHWICK
     rises his seat, but hastily sits down again.]

MAGISTRATE.  [Staring at the purse.]  Yes, yes--let me see [There is
a silence.]  No, no, I 've nothing before me as to the purse.  How
did you come by all that money?

JONES.  [After a long pause, suddenly.]  I declines to say.

MAGISTRATE.  But if you had all that money, what made you take this
box?

JONES.  I took it out of spite.

MAGISTRATE.  [Hissing, with protruded neck.]  You took it out of
spite?  Well now, that's something!  But do you imagine you can go
about the town taking things out of spite?

JONES.  If you had my life, if you'd been out of work----

MAGISTRATE.  Yes, yes; I know--because you're out of work you think
it's an excuse for everything.

JONES.  [Pointing at JACK.]  You ask 'im wot made 'im take the----

ROPER.  [Quietly.]  Does your Worship require this witness in the
box any longer?

MAGISTRATE. [Ironically.]  I think not; he is hardly profitable.

     [JACK leaves the witness-box, and hanging his head, resumes his
     seat.]

JONES.  You ask 'im wot made 'im take the lady's----

     [But the BALD CONSTABLE catches him by the sleeve.]

BALD CONSTABLE.  SSSh!

MAGISTRATE.  [Emphatically.]  Now listen to me.

I 've nothing to do with what he may or may not have taken.  Why did
you resist the police in the execution of their duty?

JONES.  It war n't their duty to take my wife, a respectable woman,
that 'ad n't done nothing.

MAGISTRATE.  But I say it was.  What made you strike the officer a
blow?

JONES.  Any man would a struck 'im a blow.  I'd strike 'im again, I
would.

MAGISTRATE.  You are not making your case any better by violence.
How do you suppose we could get on if everybody behaved like you?

JONES.  [Leaning forward, earnestly.]  Well, wot, about 'er; who's
to make up to 'er for this?  Who's to give 'er back 'er good name?

MRS. JONES.  Your Worship, it's the children that's preying on his
mind, because of course I 've lost my work.  And I've had to find
another room owing to the scandal.

MAGISTRATE.  Yes, yes, I know--but if he had n't acted like this
nobody would have suffered.

JONES.  [Glaring round at JACK.]  I 've done no worse than wot 'e
'as.  Wot I want to know is wot 's goin' to be done to 'im.

     [The BALD CONSTABLE again says "HSSh"]

ROPER.  Mr. BARTHWICK wishes it known, your Worship, that
considering the poverty of the prisoners, he does not press the
charge as to the box.  Perhaps your Worship would deal with the case
as one of disorder.

JONES.  I don't want it smothered up, I want it all dealt with fair-
-I want my rights----

MAGISTRATE.  [Rapping his desk.]  Now you have said all you have to
say, and you will be quiet.

     [There is a silence; the MAGISTRATE bends over and parleys with
     his CLERK.]

Yes, I think I may discharge the woman.  [In a kindly voice he
addresses MRS. JONES, who stands unmoving with her hands crossed on
the rail.]  It is very unfortunate for you that this man has behaved
as he has.  It is not the consequences to him but the consequences
to you.  You have been brought here twice, you have lost your work--
[He glares at JONES]--and this is what always happens.  Now you may
go away, and I am very sorry it was necessary to bring you here at
all.

MRS. JONES.  [Softly.]  Thank you very much, your Worship.

     [She leaves the dock, and looking back at JONES, twists her
     fingers and is still.]

MAGISTRATE.  Yes, yes, but I can't pass it over.  Go away, there's a
good woman.

     [MRS. JONES stands back.  The MAGISTRATE leans his head on his
     hand; then raising it he speaks to JONES.]

Now, listen to me.  Do you wish the case to be settled here, or do
you wish it to go before a jury?

JONES.  [Muttering.]  I don't want no jury.

MAGISTRATE.  Very well then, I will deal with it here.  [After a
pause.]  You have pleaded guilty to stealing this box----

JONES.  Not to stealin'----

BALD CONSTABLE.  HSSShh!

MAGISTRATE.  And to assaulting the police----

JONES.  Any man as was a man----

MAGISTRATE.  Your conduct here has been most improper.  You give the
excuse that you were drunk when you stole the box.  I tell you that
is no excuse.  If you choose to get drunk and break the law
afterwards you must take the consequences.  And let me tell you that
men like you, who get drunk and give way to your spite or whatever
it is that's in you, are--are--a nuisance to the community.

JACK.  [Leaning from his seat.]  Dad!  that's what you said to me!

BARTHWICK.  TSSt!

     [There is a silence, while the MAGISTRATE consults his CLERK;
     JONES leans forward waiting.]

MAGISTRATE.  This is your first offence, and I am going to give you
a light sentence.  [Speaking sharply, but without expression.]  One
month with hard labour.

     [He bends, and parleys with his CLERK.  The BALD CONSTABLE and
     another help JONES from the dock.]

JONES.  [Stopping and twisting round.]  Call this justice?  What
about 'im?  'E got drunk!  'E took the purse--'e took the purse but
[in a muffled shout]  it's 'is money got 'im off--JUSTICE!

     [The prisoner's door is shut on JONES, and from the seedy-
     looking men and women comes a hoarse and whispering groan.]

MAGISTRATE.  We will now adjourn for lunch!  [He rises from his
seat.]

     [The Court is in a stir.  ROPER gets up and speaks to the
     reporter.  JACK, throwing up his head, walks with a swagger to
     the corridor; BARTHWICK follows.]

MRS. JONES.  [Turning to him zenith a humble gesture.]  Oh!  sir!

     [BARTHWICK hesitates, then yielding to his nerves, he makes a
     shame-faced gesture of refusal, and hurries out of court.  MRS.
     JONES stands looking after him.]


                         The curtain falls.





End of this Project Gutenberg Etext of THE SILVER BOX
by John Galsworthy






JOY

A PLAY ON THE LETTER "I"

IN THREE ACTS




PERSONS OF THE PLAY

COLONEL HOPE, R.A., retired
MRS. HOPE, his wife
MISS BEECH, their old governess
LETTY, their daughter
ERNEST BLUNT, her husband
MRS. GWYN, their niece
JOY, her daughter
DICK MERTON, their young friend
HON. MAURICE LEVER, their guest
ROSE, their parlour-maid



TIME: The present.  The action passes throughout midsummer day on the
lawn of Colonel Hope's house, near the Thames above Oxford.


ACT I

     The time is morning, and the scene a level lawn, beyond which
     the river is running amongst fields.  A huge old beech tree
     overshadows everything, in the darkness of whose hollow many
     things are hidden.  A rustic seat encircles it.  A low wall
     clothed in creepers, with two openings, divides this lawn from
     the flowery approaches to the house.  Close to the wall there is
     a swing.  The sky is clear and sunny.  COLONEL HOPE is seated in
     a garden-chair, reading a newspaper through pince-nez.  He is
     fifty-five and bald, with drooping grey moustaches and a
     weather-darkened face.  He wears a flannel suit and a hat from
     Panama; a tennis racquet leans against his chair.  MRS. HOPE
     comes quickly through the opening of the wall, with roses in her
     hands.  She is going grey; she wears tan gauntlets, and no hat.
     Her manner is decided, her voice emphatic, as though aware that
     there is no nonsense in its owner's composition.  Screened from
     sight, MISS BEECH is seated behind the hollow tree; and JOY is
     perched on a lower branch hidden by foliage.


MRS. HOPE.  I told Molly in my letter that she'd have to walk up,
Tom.

COLONEL.  Walk up in this heat?  My dear, why didn't you order
Benson's fly?

MRS. HOPE.  Expense for nothing!  Bob can bring up her things in the
barrow.  I've told Joy I won't have her going down to meet the train.
She's so excited about her mother's coming there's no doing anything
with her.

COLONEL.  No wonder, after two months.

MRS. HOPE.  Well, she's going home to-morrow; she must just keep
herself fresh for the dancing tonight.  I'm not going to get people
in to dance, and have Joy worn out before they begin.

COLONEL.  [Dropping his paper.]  I don't like Molly's walking up.

MRS. HOPE.  A great strong woman like Molly Gwyn!  It isn't half a
mile.

COLONEL.  I don't like it, Nell; it's not hospitable.

MRS. HOPE.  Rubbish!  If you want to throw away money, you must just
find some better investment than those wretched 3 per cents. of
yours.  The greenflies are in my roses already!  Did you ever see
anything so disgusting?  [They bend over the roses they have grown,
and lose all sense of everything.]  Where's the syringe?  I saw you
mooning about with it last night, Tom.

COLONEL.  [Uneasily.]  Mooning!

     [He retires behind his paper.  MRS. HOPE enters the hollow of
     the tree.]

There's an account of that West Australian swindle.  Set of ruffians!
Listen to this, Nell!  "It is understood that amongst the share-
holders are large numbers of women, clergymen, and Army officers."
How people can be such fools!

     [Becoming aware that his absorption is unobserved, he drops his
     glasses, and reverses his chair towards the tree.]

MRS. HOPE.  [Reappearing with a garden syringe.  I simply won't have
Dick keep his fishing things in the tree; there's a whole potful of
disgusting worms.  I can't touch them.  You must go and take 'em out,
Tom.

     [In his turn the COLONEL enters the hollow of the tree.]

MRS. HOPE.  [Personally.]  What on earth's the pleasure of it?  I
can't see!  He never catches anything worth eating.

     [The COLONEL reappears with a paint pot full of worms; he holds
     them out abstractedly.]

MRS. HOPE.  [Jumping.]  Don't put them near me!

MISS BEECH.  [From behind the tree.]  Don't hurt the poor creatures.

COLONEL.  [Turning.]  Hallo, Peachey?  What are you doing round
there?

     [He puts the worms down on the seat.]

MRS. HOPE.  Tom, take the worms off that seat at once!

COLONEL.  [Somewhat flurried.]  Good gad!  I don't know what to do
with the beastly worms!

MRS. HOPE.  It's not my business to look after Dick's worms.  Don't
put them on the ground.  I won't have them anywhere where they can
crawl about.  [She flicks some greenflies off her roses.]

COLONEL.  [Looking into the pot as though the worms could tell him
where to put them.]  Dash!

MISS BEECH.  Give them to me.

MRS. HOPE.  [Relieved.]  Yes, give them to Peachey.

     [There comes from round the tree Miss BEECH, old-fashioned,
     barrel-shaped, balloony in the skirts.  She takes the paint pot,
     and sits beside it on the rustic seat.]

MISS BEECH.  Poor creatures!

MRS. HOPE.  Well, it's beyond me how you can make pets of worms-
wriggling, crawling, horrible things!

     [ROSE, who is young and comely, in a pale print frock, comes
     from the house and places letters before her on a silver
     salver.]

     [Taking the letters.]

What about Miss joy's frock, Rose?

ROSE.  Please, 'm, I can't get on with the back without Miss Joy.

MRS. HOPE.  Well, then you must just find her.  I don't know where
she is.

ROSE.  [In a slow, sidelong manner.]  If you please, Mum, I think
Miss Joy's up in the----

     [She stops, seeing Miss BEECH signing to her with both hands.]

MRS. HOPE.  [Sharply.]  What is it, Peachey?

MISS BEECH.  [Selecting a finger.]  Pricked meself!

MRS. HOPE.  Let's look!

     [She bends to look, but Miss BEECH places the finger in her
     mouth.]

ROSE.  [Glancing askance at the COLONEL.]  If you please, Mum, it's
below the waist; I think I can manage with the dummy.

MRS. HOPE.  Well, you can try.  [Opening her letter as ROSE retires.]
Here's Molly about her train.

MISS BEECH.  Is there a letter for me?

MRS. HOPE.  No, Peachey.

MISS BEECH.  There never is.

COLONEL.  What's that?  You got four by the first post.

MISS BEECH.  Exceptions!

COLONEL.  [Looking over his glasses.]  Why!  You know, you get 'em
every day!

MRS. HOPE.  Molly says she'll be down by the eleven thirty.  [In an
injured voice.]  She'll be here in half an hour!  [Reading with
disapproval from the letter.]  "MAURICE LEVER is coming down by the
same train to see Mr. Henty about the Tocopala Gold Mine.  Could you
give him a bed for the night?"

     [Silence, slight but ominous.]

COLONEL.  [Calling into his aid his sacred hospitality.]  Of course
we must give him a bed!

MRS. HOPE.  Just like a man!  What room I should like to know!

COLONEL.  Pink.

MRS. HOPE.  As if Molly wouldn't have the pink!

COLONEL.  [Ruefully.]  I thought she'd have the blue!

MRS. HOPE.  You know perfectly well it's full of earwigs, Tom.  I
killed ten there yesterday morning.

MISS BEECH.  Poor creatures!

MRS. HOPE.  I don't know that I approve of this Mr. Lever's dancing
attendance.  Molly's only thirty-six.

COLONEL.  [In a high voice.]  You can't refuse him a bed; I never
heard of such a thing.

MRS. HOPE.  [Reading from the letter.]  "This gold mine seems to be a
splendid chance.  [She glances at the COLONEL.]  I've put all my
spare cash into it.  They're issuing some Preference shares now; if
Uncle Tom wants an investment"--[She pauses, then in a changed,
decided voice ]--Well, I suppose I shall have to screw him in
somehow.

COLONEL.  What's that about gold mines?  Gambling nonsense!  Molly
ought to know my views.

MRS. HOPE.  [Folding the letter away out of her consciousness.]  Oh!
your views!  This may be a specially good chance.

MISS BEECH.  Ahem!  Special case!

MRS. HOPE.  [Paying no attention.]  I 'm sick of these 3 per cent.
dividends.  When you've only got so little money, to put it all into
that India Stock, when it might be earning 6 per cent.  at least,
quite safely!  There are ever so many things I want.

COLONEL.  There you go!

MRS. HOPE.  As to Molly, I think it's high time her husband came home
to look after her, instead of sticking out there in that hot place.
In fact

     [Miss BEECH looks up at the tree and exhibits cerebral
     excitement]

I don't know what Geoff's about; why doesn't he find something in
England, where they could live together.

COLONEL.  Don't say anything against Molly, Nell!

MRS. HOPE.  Well, I don't believe in husband and wife being
separated.  That's not my idea of married life.

     [The COLONEL whistles quizzically.]

Ah, yes, she's your niece, not mime!  Molly's very----

MISS BEECH.  Ouch!  [She sucks her finger.]

MRS. HOPE.  Well, if I couldn't sew at your age, Peachey, without
pricking my fingers!  Tom, if I have Mr. Lever here, you'll just
attend to what I say and look into that mine!

COLONEL.  Look into your grandmother!  I have n't made a study of
geology for nothing.  For every ounce you take out of a gold mine,
you put an ounce and a half in.  Any fool knows that, eh, Peachey?

MISS BEECH.  I hate your horrid mines, with all the poor creatures
underground.

MRS. HOPE.  Nonsense, Peachey!  As if they'd go there if they did n't
want to!

COLONEL.  Why don't you read your paper, then you'd see what a lot of
wild-cat things there are about.

MRS. HOPE.  [Abstractedly.]  I can't put Ernest and Letty in the blue
room, there's only the single bed.  Suppose I put Mr. Lever there,
and say nothing about the earwigs.  I daresay he'll never notice.

COLONEL.  Treat a guest like that!

MRS. HOPE.  Then where am I to put him for goodness sake?

COLONEL.  Put him in my dressing-room, I'll turn out.

MRS. HOPE.  Rubbish, Tom, I won't have you turned out, that's flat.
He can have Joy's room, and she can sleep with the earwigs.

JOY.  [From her hiding-place upon a lower branch of the hollow tree.]
I won't.

     [MRS. HOPE and the COLONEL jump.]

COLONEL.  God bless my soul!

MRS. HOPE.  You wretched girl!  I told you never to climb that tree
again.  Did you know, Peachey?  [Miss BEECH smiles.]  She's always up
there, spoiling all her frocks.  Come down now, Joy; there's a good
child!

JOY.  I don't want to sleep with earwigs, Aunt Nell.

MISS BEECH.  I'll sleep with the poor creatures.

MRS. HOPE, [After a pause.]  Well, it would be a mercy if you would
for once, Peachey.

COLONEL.  Nonsense, I won't have Peachey----

MRS. HOPE.  Well, who is to sleep there then?

JOY.  [Coaxingly.]  Let me sleep with Mother, Aunt Nell, do!

MRS. HOPE.  Litter her up with a great girl like you, as if we'd only
one spare room!  Tom, see that she comes down--I can't stay here, I
must manage something.  [She goes away towards the house.]

COLONEL.  [Moving to the tree, and looking up.]  You heard what your
aunt said?

JOY.  [Softly.]  Oh, Uncle Tom!

COLONEL.  I shall have to come up after you.

JOY.  Oh, do, and Peachey too!

COLONEL.  [Trying to restrain a smile.]  Peachey, you talk to her.
[Without waiting for MISS BEECH, however, he proceeds.]  What'll your
aunt say to me if I don't get you down?

MISS BEECH.  Poor creature!

JOY.  I don't want to be worried about my frock.

COLONEL.  [Scratching his bald head.]  Well, I shall catch it.

JOY.  Oh, Uncle Tom, your head is so beautiful from here!  [Leaning
over, she fans it with a leafy twig.]

MISS BEECH.  Disrespectful little toad!

COLONEL.  [Quickly putting on his hat.]  You'll fall out, and a
pretty mess that'll make on--[he looks uneasily at the ground]--my
lawn!

     [A voice is heard calling "Colonel!  Colonel!]"

JOY.  There's Dick calling you, Uncle Tom.

     [She disappears.]

DICK.  [Appearing in the opening of the wall.]  Ernie's waiting to
play you that single, Colonel!

     [He disappears.]

JOY.  Quick, Uncle Tom!  Oh! do go, before he finds I 'm up here.

MISS.  BEECH.  Secret little creature!

     [The COLONEL picks up his racquet, shakes his fist, and goes
     away.]

JOY.  [Calmly.]  I'm coming down now, Peachey.

     [Climbing down.]

Look out!  I'm dropping on your head.

MISS BEECH.  [Unmoved.]  Don't hurt yourself!

     [Joy drops on the rustic seat and rubs her shin.  Told you so!]

     [She hunts in a little bag for plaster.]

Let's see!

JOY.  [Seeing the worms.]  Ugh!

MISS BEECH.  What's the matter with the poor creatures?

JOY.  They're so wriggly!

     [She backs away and sits down in the swing.  She is just
     seventeen, light and slim, brown-haired, fresh-coloured, and
     grey-eyed; her white frock reaches to her ankles, she wears a
     sunbonnet.]  Peachey, how long were you Mother's governess.

MISS BEECH.  Five years.

JOY.  Was she as bad to teach as me?

MISS BEECH.  Worse!

     [Joy claps her hands.]

She was the worst girl I ever taught.

JOY.  Then you weren't fond of her?

MISS BEECH.  Oh!  yes, I was.

JOY.  Fonder than of me?

MISS BEECH.  Don't you ask such a lot of questions.

JOY.  Peachey, duckie, what was Mother's worst fault?

MISS BEECH.  Doing what she knew she oughtn't.

JOY.  Was she ever sorry?

MISS BEECH.  Yes, but she always went on doin' it.

JOY.  I think being sorry 's stupid!

MISS BEECH.  Oh, do you?

JOY.  It isn't any good.  Was Mother revengeful, like me?

MISS BEECH.  Ah!  Wasn't she?

JOY.  And jealous?

MISS BEECH.  The most jealous girl I ever saw.

JOY.  [Nodding.]  I like to be like her.

MISS BEECH.  [Regarding her intently.]  Yes!  you've got all your
troubles before you.

JOY.  Mother was married at eighteen, wasn't she, Peachey?  Was she--
was she much in love with Father then?

MISS BEECH.  [With a sniff.]  About as much as usual.  [She takes the
paint pot, and walking round begins to release the worms.]

JOY.  [Indifferently.]  They don't get on now, you know.

MISS BEECH.  What d'you mean by that, disrespectful little creature?

JOY.  [In a hard voice.]  They haven't ever since I've known them.
MISS BEECH.  [Looks at her, and turns away again.]  Don't talk about
such things.

JOY.  I suppose you don't know Mr. Lever?  [Bitterly.]  He's such a
cool beast.  He never loses his temper.

MISS BEECH.  Is that why you don't like him?

JOY.  [Frowning.]  No--yes--I don't know.

MISS BEECH.  Oh!  perhaps you do like him?

JOY.  I don't; I hate him.

MISS BEECH. [Standing still.]  Fie!  Naughty Temper!

JOY.  Well, so would you!  He takes up all Mother's time.

MISS BEECH.  [In a peculiar voice.]  Oh!  does he?

JOY.  When he comes I might just as well go to bed.  [Passionately.]
And now he's chosen to-day to come down here, when I haven't seen her
for two months!  Why couldn't he come when Mother and I'd gone home.
It's simply brutal!

MISS BEECH.  But your mother likes him?

JOY.  [Sullenly.]  I don't want her to like him.

MISS BEECH.  [With a long look at Joy.]  I see!

JOY.  What are you doing, Peachey?

MISS BEECH.  [Releasing a worm.]  Letting the poor creatures go.

JOY.  If I tell Dick he'll never forgive you.

MISS BEECH.  [Sidling behind the swing and plucking off Joy's
sunbonnet.  With devilry.]  Ah-h-h!  You've done your hair up; so
that's why you wouldn't come down!

JOY.  [Springing up, anal pouting.]  I didn't want any one to see
before Mother.  You are a pig, Peachey!

MISS BEECH.  I thought there was something!

JOY.  [Twisting round.]  How does it look?

MISS BEECH.  I've seen better.

JOY.  You tell any one before Mother comes, and see what I do!

MISS BEECH.  Well, don't you tell about my worms, then!

JOY.  Give me my hat!  [Backing hastily towards the tree, and putting
her finger to her lips.]  Look out!  Dick!

MISS BEECH.  Oh!  dear!

     [She sits down on the swing, concealing the paint pot with her
     feet and skirts.]

JOY.  [On the rustic seat, and in a violent whisper.]  I hope the
worms will crawl up your legs!

     [DICK, in flannels and a hard straw hat comes in.  He is a quiet
     and cheerful boy of twenty.  His eyes are always fixed on joy.]

DICK.  [Grimacing.]  The Colonel's getting licked.  Hallo!  Peachey,
in the swing?

JOY.  [Chuckling.]  Swing her, Dick!

MISS BEECH.  [Quivering with emotion.]  Little creature!

JOY.  Swing her!

     [DICK takes the ropes.]

MISS BEECH.  [Quietly.]  It makes me sick, young man.

DICK.  [Patting her gently on the back.]  All right, Peachey.

MISS BEECH.  [Maliciously.]  Could you get me my sewing from the
seat?  Just behind Joy.

JOY.  [Leaning her head against the tree.]  If you do, I won't dance
with you to-night.

     [DICK stands paralysed.  Miss BEECH gets off the swing, picks up
     the paint pot, and stands concealing it behind her.]

JOY.  Look what she's got behind her, sly old thing!

MISS BEECH.  Oh!  dear!

JOY.  Dance with her, Dick!

MISS BEECH.  If he dare!

JOY.  Dance with her, or I won't dance with you to-night.
[She whistles a waltz.]

DICK.  [Desperately.]  Come on then, Peachey.  We must.

JOY.  Dance, dance!

     [DICK seizes Miss BEECH by the waist.  She drops the paint pot.
     They revolve.]  [Convulsed.]

Oh, Peachey, Oh!

     [Miss BEECH is dropped upon the rustic seat.  DICK seizes joy's
     hands and drags her up.]

No, no!  I won't!

MISS BEECH.  [Panting.]  Dance, dance with the poor young man!  [She
moves her hands.]  La la-la-la la-la la la!

     [DICK and JOY dance.]

DICK.  By Jove, Joy!  You've done your hair up. I say, how jolly!
You do look----

JOY.  [Throwing her hands up to her hair.]  I did n't mean you to
see!

DICK.  [In a hurt voice.]  Oh!  didn't you?  I'm awfully sorry!

JOY.  [Flashing round.]  Oh, you old Peachey!

     [She looks at the ground, and then again at DICK.]

MISS BEECH.  [Sidling round the tree.]  Oh!  dear!

JOY.  [Whispering.]  She's been letting out your worms.
[Miss BEECH disappears from view.]
Look!

DICK.  [Quickly.]  Hang the worms!  Joy, promise me the second and
fourth and sixth and eighth and tenth and supper, to-night.  Promise!
Do!

     [Joy shakes her head.]

It's not much to ask.

JOY.  I won't promise anything.

DICK.  Why not?

JOY.  Because Mother's coming.  I won't make any arrangements.

DICK.  [Tragically.]  It's our last night.

JOY.  [Scornfully.]  You don't understand!  [Dancing and clasping her
hands.]  Mother's coming, Mother's coming!

DICK.  [Violently.]  I wish----Promise, Joy!

JOY.  [Looking over her shoulder.]  Sly old thing!  If you'll pay
Peachey out, I'll promise you supper!

MISS BEECH.  [From behind the tree.]  I hear you.

JOY.  [Whispering.]  Pay her out, pay her out!  She's let out all
your worms!

DICK.  [Looking moodily at the paint pot.]  I say, is it true that
Maurice Lever's coming with your mother?  I've met him playing
cricket, he's rather a good sort.

JOY.  [Flashing out.] I hate him.

DICK.  [Troubled.]  Do you?  Why?  I thought--I didn't know--if I'd
known of course, I'd have----

     [He is going to say "hated him too!" But the voices of ERNEST
     BLUNT and the COLONEL are heard approaching, in dispute.]

JOY.  Oh!  Dick, hide me, I don't want my hair seen till Mother
comes.

     [She springs into the hollow tree.  The COLONEL and ERNEST
     appear in the opening of the wall.]

ERNEST.  The ball was out, Colonel.

COLONEL.  Nothing of the sort.

ERNEST.  A good foot out.

COLONEL.  It was not, sir.  I saw the chalk fly.

     [ERNEST is twenty-eight, with a little moustache, and the
     positive cool voice of a young man who knows that he knows
     everything.  He is perfectly calm.]

ERNEST.  I was nearer to it than you.

COLONEL.  [In a high, hot voice.]  I don't care where you were, I
hate a fellow who can't keep cool.

MISS BEECH.  [From behind the hollow tree.]  Fie!  Fie!

ERNEST.  We're two to one, Letty says the ball was out.

COLONEL.  Letty's your wife, she'd say anything.

ERNEST.  Well, look here, Colonel, I'll show you the very place it
pitched.

COLONEL.  Gammon!  You've lost your temper, you don't know what
you're talking about.

ERNEST.  [coolly.]  I suppose you'll admit the rule that one umpires
one's own court.

COLONEL.  [Hotly.]  Certainly not, in this case!

MISS BEECH.  [From behind the hollow tree.]  Special case!

ERNEST.  [Moving chin in collar--very coolly.]  Well, of course if
you won't play the game!

COLONEL.  [In a towering passion.]  If you lose your temper like
this, I 'll never play with you again.

     [To LETTY, a pretty soul in a linen suit, approaching through
     the wall.]

Do you mean to say that ball was out, Letty?

LETTY.  Of course it was, Father.

COLONEL.  You say that because he's your husband.  [He sits on the
rustic seat.]  If your mother'd been there she'd have backed me up!

LETTY.  Mother wants Joy, Dick, about her frock.

DICK.  I--I don't know where she is.

MISS BEECH.  [From behind the hollow tree.]  Ahem!

LETTY.  What's the matter, Peachey?

MISS BEECH.  Swallowed a fly.  Poor creature!

ERNEST.  [Returning to his point.]  Why I know the ball was out,
Colonel, was because it pitched in a line with that arbutus tree.

COLONEL.  [Rising.]  Arbutus tree!  [To his daughter.]  Where's your
mother?

LETTY.  In the blue room, Father.

ERNEST.  The ball was a good foot out; at the height it was coming
when it passed me.

COLONEL.  [Staring at him.]  You're a--you're aa theorist!  From
where you were you could n't see the ball at all.  [To LETTY.]
Where's your mother?

LETTY.  [Emphatically.]  In the blue room, Father!

     [The COLONEL glares confusedly, and goes away towards the blue
     room.]

ERNEST.  [In the swing, and with a smile.]  Your old Dad'll never be
a sportsman!

LETTY.  [Indignantly.]  I wish you wouldn't call Father old, Ernie!
What time's Molly coming, Peachey?

     [ROSE has come from the house, and stands waiting for a chance
     to speak.]

ERNEST.  [Breaking in.]  Your old Dad's only got one fault: he can't
take an impersonal view of things.

MISS BEECH.  Can you find me any one who can?

ERNEST.  [With a smile.]  Well, Peachey!

MISS BEECH.  [Ironically.]  Oh! of course, there's you!

ERNEST.  I don't know about that!  But----

ROSE.  [To LETTY,]  Please, Miss, the Missis says will you and Mr.
Ernest please to move your things into Miss Peachey's room.

ERNEST.  [Vexed.]  Deuce of a nuisance havin' to turn out for this
fellow Lever.  What did Molly want to bring him for?

MISS BEECH.  Course you've no personal feeling in the matter!

ROSE.  [Speaking to Miss BEECH.]  The Missis says you're to please
move your things into the blue room, please Miss.

LETTY.  Aha, Peachey!  That settles you!  Come on, Ernie!

     [She goes towards the house.  ERNEST, rising from the swing,
     turns to Miss BEECH, who follows.]

ERNEST.  [Smiling, faintly superior.]  Personal, not a bit!  I only
think while Molly 's out at grass, she oughtn't to----

MISS BEECH.  [Sharply.]  Oh! do you?

     [She hustles ERNEST out through the wall, but his voice is heard
     faintly from the distance: "I think it's jolly thin."]

ROSE.  [To DICK.]  The Missis says you're to take all your worms and
things, Sir, and put them where they won't be seen.

DICK.  [Shortly.]  Have n't got any!

ROSE.  The Missis says she'll be very angry if you don't put your
worms away; and would you come and help kill earwigs in the blue----?

DICK.  Hang!  [He goes, and ROSE is left alone.]

ROSE.  [Looking straight before her.]  Please, Miss Joy, the Missis
says will you go to her about your frock.

     [There is a little pause, then from the hollow tree joy's voice
     is heard.]

JOY.  No-o!

ROSE.  If you did n't come, I was to tell you she was going to put
you in the blue.

     [Joy looks out of the tree.]

     [Immovable, but smiling.]

Oh, Miss joy, you've done your hair up! [Joy retires into the tree.]
Please, Miss, what shall I tell the Missis?

JOY.  [Joy's voice is heard.]  Anything you like.

ROSE.  [Over her shoulder.]  I shall be drove to tell her a story,
Miss.

JOY.  All right!  Tell it.

     [ROSE goes away, and JOY comes out.  She sits on the rustic seat
     and waits.  DICK, coming softly from the house, approaches her.]

DICK.  [Looking at her intently.]  Joy!  I wanted to say something

     [Joy does not look at him, but twists her fingers.]

I shan't see you again you know after to-morrow till I come up for
the 'Varsity match.

JOY.  [Smiling.]  But that's next week.

DICK.  Must you go home to-morrow?

     [Joy nods three times.]

     [Coming closer.]

I shall miss you so awfully.  You don't know how I----

     [Joy shakes her head.]

Do look at me!  [JOY steals a look.]  Oh!  Joy!

     [Again joy shakes her head.]

JOY.  [Suddenly.]  Don't!

DICK.  [Seizing her hand.]  Oh, Joy!  Can't you----

JOY.  [Drawing the hand away.]  Oh!  don't.

DICK.  [Bending his head.]  It's--it's--so----

JOY.  [Quietly.]  Don't, Dick!

DICK.  But I can't help it!  It's too much for me, Joy, I must tell
you----

     [MRS. GWYN is seen approaching towards the house.]

JOY.  [Spinning round.]  It's Mother--oh, Mother!
[She rushes at her.]

     [MRS. GWYN is a handsome creature of thirty-six, dressed in a
     muslin frock.  She twists her daughter round, and kisses her.]

MRS. GWYN.  How sweet you look with your hair up, Joy!  Who 's this?
[Glancing with a smile at DICK.]

JOY.  Dick Merton--in my letters you know.

     [She looks at DICK as though she wished him gone.]

MRS. GWYN.  How do you do?

DICK.  [Shaking hands.]  How d 'you do?  I think if you'll excuse me
--I'll go in.

     [He goes uncertainly.

MRS. GWYN.  What's the matter with him?

JOY.  Oh, nothing!  [Hugging her.]  Mother!  You do look such a duck.
Why did you come by the towing-path, was n't it cooking?

MRS. GWYN.  [Avoiding her eyes.]  Mr. Lever wanted to go into Mr.
Henty's.

     [Her manner is rather artificially composed.]

JOY.  [Dully.]  Oh!  Is he-is he really coming here, Mother?

MRS. GWYN.  [Whose voice has hardened just a little.]  If Aunt Nell's
got a room for him--of course--why not?

JOY.  [Digging her chin into her mother's shoulder.]

     [Why couldn't he choose some day when we'd gone?  I wanted you
     all to myself.]

MRS. GWYN.  You are a quaint child--when I was your age----

JOY.  [Suddenly looking up.]  Oh!  Mother, you must have been a
chook!

MRS. GWYN.  Well, I was about twice as old as you, I know that.

JOY.  Had you any--any other offers before you were married, Mother?

MRS. GWYN.  [Smilingly.]  Heaps!

JOY.  [Reflectively.]  Oh!

MRS. GWYN.  Why?  Have you been having any?

JOY.  [Glancing at MRS. GWYN, and then down.]  N-o, of course not!

MRS. GWYN.  Where are they all?  Where's Peachey?

JOY.  Fussing about somewhere; don't let's hurry!  Oh! you duckie--
duckie!  Aren't there any letters from Dad?

MRS. GWYN.  [In a harder voice.]  Yes, one or two.

JOY.  [Hesitating.]  Can't I see?

MRS. GWYN.  I didn't bring them.  [Changing the subject obviously.]
Help me to tidy--I'm so hot I don't know what to do.

     [She takes out a powder-puff bag, with a tiny looking-glass.]

JOY.  How lovely it'll be to-morrow-going home!

MRS. GWYN.  [With an uneasy look.]  London's dreadfully stuffy, Joy.
You 'll only get knocked up again.

JOY.  [With consternation.]  Oh!  but Mother, I must come.

MRS. GWYN.  (Forcing a smile.) Oh, well, if you must, you must!

     [Joy makes a dash at her.]

Don't rumple me again.  Here's Uncle Tom.

JOY.  [Quickly.]  Mother, we're going to dance tonight; promise to
dance with me--there are three more girls than men, at least--and
don't dance too much with--with--you know--because I'm--[dropping her
voice and very still]--jealous.

MRS. GWYN.  [Forcing a laugh.]  You are funny!

JOY.  [Very quickly.] I haven't made any engagements because of you.

     [The COLONEL approaches through the wall.]

MRS. GWYN.  Well, Uncle Tom?

COLONEL.  [Genially.]  Why, Molly! [He kisses her.]  What made you
come by the towing-path?

JOY.  Because it's so much cooler, of course.

COLONEL.  Hallo!  What's the matter with you?  Phew!  you've got your
hair up!  Go and tell your aunt your mother's on the lawn.  Cut
along!

     [Joy goes, blowing a kiss.]

Cracked about you, Molly!  Simply cracked!  We shall miss her when
you take her off to-morrow.  [He places a chair for her.]  Sit down,
sit down, you must be tired in this heat.  I 've sent Bob for your
things with the wheelbarrow; what have you got?--only a bag, I
suppose.

MRS. GWYN.  [Sitting, with a smile.]  That's all, Uncle Tom, except--
my trunk and hat-box.

COLONEL.  Phew!  And what's-his-name brought a bag, I suppose?

MRS. GWYN.  They're all together.  I hope it's not too much, Uncle
Tom.

COLONEL.  [Dubiously.]  Oh! Bob'll manage!  I suppose you see a good
deal of--of--Lever.  That's his brother in the Guards, isn't it?

MRS. GWYN.  Yes.

COLONEL.  Now what does this chap do?

MRS. GWYN.  What should he do, Uncle Tom?  He's a Director.

COLONEL.  Guinea-pig!  [Dubiously.]  Your bringing him down was a
good idea.

     [MRS. GWYN, looking at him sidelong, bites her lips.]

I should like to have a look at him.  But, I say, you know, Molly--
mines, mines!  There are a lot of these chaps about, whose business
is to cook their own dinners.  Your aunt thinks----

MRS. GWYN.  Oh!  Uncle Tom, don't tell me what Aunt Nell thinks!

COLONEL.  Well-well!  Look here, old girl!  It's my experience never
to--what I mean is--never to trust too much to a man who has to do
with mining.  I've always refused to have anything to do with mines.
If your husband were in England, of course, I'd say nothing.

MRS. GWYN.  [Very still.]  We'd better keep him out of the question,
had n't we?

COLONEL.  Of course, if you wish it, my dear.

MRS. GWYN.  Unfortunately, I do.

COLONEL.  [Nervously.]  Ah!  yes, I know; but look here, Molly, your
aunt thinks you're in a very delicate position-in fact, she thinks
you see too much of young Lever.

MRS. GWYN.  [Stretching herself like an angry cat.]  Does she?  And
what do you think?

COLONEL.  I?  I make a point of not thinking.  I only know that here
he is, and I don't want you to go burning your fingers, eh?

     [MRS. GWYN sits with a vindictive smile.]

A gold mine's a gold mine.  I don't mean he deliberately--but they
take in women and parsons, and--and all sorts of fools.  [Looking
down.]  And then, you know, I can't tell your feelings, my dear, and
I don't want to; but a man about town 'll compromise a woman as soon
as he'll look at her, and [softly shaking his head]  I don't like
that, Molly!  It 's not the thing!

     [MRS. GWYN sits unmoved, smiling the same smile, and the COLONEL
     gives her a nervous look.]

If--if you were any other woman I should n't care--and if--if you
were a plain woman, damme, you might do what you liked!  I know you
and Geoff don't get on; but here's this child of yours, devoted to
you, and--and don't you see, old girl?  Eh?

MRS. GWYN.  [With a little hard laugh.]  Thanks!  Perfectly!  I
suppose as you don't think, Uncle Tom, it never occurred to you that
I have rather a lonely time of it.

COLONEL.  [With compunction.]  Oh!  my dear, yes, of course I know it
must be beastly.

MRS. GWYN.  [Stonily.]  It is.

COLONEL.  Yes, yes!  [Speaking in a surprised voice.]  I don't know
what I 'm talking like this for!  It's your aunt!  She goes on at me
till she gets on my nerves.  What d' you think she wants me to do
now?  Put money into this gold mine!  Did you ever hear such folly?

MRS. GWYN.  [Breaking into laughter.]  Oh! Uncle Tom!

COLONEL.  All very well for you to laugh, Molly!

MRS. GWYN.  [Calmly.]  And how much are you going to put in?

COLONEL.  Not a farthing!  Why, I've got nothing but my pension and
three thousand India stock!

MRS. GWYN.  Only ninety pounds a year, besides your pension!  D' you
mean to say that's all you've got, Uncle Tom?  I never knew that
before.  What a shame!

COLONEL.  [Feelingly.]  It is a, d--d shame!  I don't suppose there's
another case in the army of a man being treated as I've been.

MRS. GWYN.  But how on earth do you manage here on so little?

COLONEL.  [Brooding.]  Your aunt's very funny.  She's a born manager.
She 'd manage the hind leg off a donkey; but if I want five shillings
for a charity or what not, I have to whistle for it.  And then all of
a sudden, Molly, she'll take it into her head to spend goodness knows
what on some trumpery or other and come to me for the money.  If I
have n't got it to give her, out she flies about 3 per cent., and
worries me to invest in some wild-cat or other, like your friend's
thing, the Jaco what is it?  I don't pay the slightest attention to
her.

MRS. HOPE.  [From the direction of the house.]  Tom!

COLONEL.  [Rising.]  Yes, dear!  [Then dropping his voice.]  I say,
Molly, don't you mind what I said about young Lever.  I don't want
you to imagine that I think harm of people--you know I don't--but so
many women come to grief, and--[hotly]--I can't stand men about town;
not that he of course----

MRS. HOPE, [Peremptorily.]  Tom!

COLONEL.  [In hasty confidence.]  I find it best to let your aunt run
on.  If she says anything----

MRS. HOPE.  To-om!

COLONEL.  Yes, dear!

     [He goes hastily.  MRS. GWYN sits drawing circles on the ground
     with her charming parasol.  Suddenly she springs to her feet,
     and stands waiting like an animal at bay.  The COLONEL and MRS.
     HOPE approach her talking.]

MRS. HOPE.  Well, how was I to know?

COLONEL.  Did n't Joy come and tell you?

MRS. HOPE.  I don't know what's the matter with that child?  Well,
Molly, so here you are.  You're before your time--that train's always
late.

MRS. GWYN.  [With faint irony.]  I'm sorry, Aunt Nell!

     [They bob, seem to take fright, and kiss each other gingerly.]

MRS. HOPE.  What have you done with Mr. Lever?  I shall have to put
him in Peachey's room.  Tom's got no champagne.

COLONEL.  They've a very decent brand down at the George, Molly, I'll
send Bob over----

MRS. HOPE.  Rubbish, Tom!  He'll just have to put up with what he can
get!

MRS. GWYN.  Of course!  He's not a snob!  For goodness sake, Aunt
Nell, don't put yourself out!  I'm sorry I suggested his coming.

COLONEL.  My dear, we ought to have champagne in the house--in case
of accident.

MRS.  GWYN.  [Shaking him gently by the coat.]  No, please, Uncle
Tom!

MRS. HOPE.  [Suddenly.]  Now, I've told your uncle, Molly, that he's
not to go in for this gold mine without making certain it's a good
thing.  Mind, I think you've been very rash.  I'm going to give you a
good talking to; and that's not all--you ought n't to go about like
this with a young man; he's not at all bad looking.  I remember him
perfectly well at the Fleming's dance.

     [On MRS. GWYN's lips there comes a little mocking smile.]

COLONEL.  [Pulling his wife's sleeve.]  Nell!

MRS. HOPE.  No, Tom, I'm going to talk to Molly; she's old enough to
know better.

MRS. GWYN.  Yes?

MRS. HOPE.  Yes, and you'll get yourself into a mess; I don't approve
of it, and when I see a thing I don't approve of----

COLONEL.  [Walking about, and pulling his moustache.]  Nell, I won't
have it, I simply won't have it.

MRS. HOPE.  What rate of interest are these Preference shares to pay?

MRS. GWYN.  [Still smiling.]  Ten per cent.

MRS. HOPE.  What did I tell you, Tom?  And are they safe?

MRS. GWYN.  You'd better ask Maurice.

MRS. HOPE.  There, you see, you call him Maurice!  Now supposing your
uncle went in for some of them----

COLONEL.  [Taking off his hat-in a high, hot voice]  I'm not going in
for anything of the sort.

MRS. HOPE.  Don't swing your hat by the brim!  Go and look if you can
see him coming!

     [The COLONEL goes.]

[In a lower voice.]  Your uncle's getting very bald.  I 've only
shoulder of lamb for lunch, and a salad.  It's lucky it's too hot to
eat.

     [MISS BEECH has appeared while she is speaking.]

Here she is, Peachey!

MISS BEECH.  I see her.  [She kisses MRS. GWYN, and looks at her
intently.]

MRS. GWYN.  [Shrugging her shoulders.]  Well, Peachey!  What d 'you
make of me?

COLONEL.  [Returning from his search.]  There's a white hat crossing
the second stile.  Is that your friend, Molly?

     [MRS. GWYN nods.]

MRS. HOPE.  Oh!  before I forget, Peachey--Letty and Ernest can move
their things back again.  I'm going to put Mr. Lever in your room.
[Catching sight o f the paint pot on the ground.]  There's that
disgusting paint pot!  Take it up at once, Tom, and put it in the
tree.

     [The COLONEL picks up the pot and bears it to the hollow tree
     followed by MRS. HOPE; he enters.]

MRS. HOPE.  [Speaking into the tree.]  Not there!

COLONEL.  [From within.]  Well, where then?

MRS. HOPE.  Why--up--oh!  gracious!

     [MRS. GWYN, standing alone, is smiling.  LEVER approaches from
     the towing-path.  He is a man like a fencer's wrist, supple and
     steely.  A man whose age is difficult to tell, with a quick,
     good-looking face, and a line between his brows; his darkish
     hair is flecked with grey.  He gives the feeling that he has
     always had to spurt to keep pace with his own life.]

MRS. HOPE.  [Also entering the hollow tree.]  No-oh!

COLONEL.  [From the depths, in a high voice.]  Well, dash it then!
What do you want?

MRS. GWYN.  Peachey, may I introduce Mr. Lever to you?  Miss Beech,
my old governess.

     [They shake each other by the hand.]

LEVER.  How do you do?  [His voice is pleasant, his manner easy.]

MISS BEECH.  Pleased to meet you.

     [Her manner is that of one who is not pleased. She watches.]

MRS. GWYN.  [Pointing to the tree-maliciously.]  This is my uncle and
my aunt.  They're taking exercise, I think.

     [The COLONEL and MRS. HOPE emerge convulsively.  They are very
     hot.  LEVER and MRS. GWYN are very cool.]

MRS.  HOPE.  [Shaking hands with him.]  So you 've got here!  Are n't
you very hot?--Tom!

COLONEL.  Brought a splendid day with you!  Splendid!

     [As he speaks, Joy comes running with a bunch of roses; seeing
     LEVER, she stops and stands quite rigid.]

MISS BEECH.  [Sitting in the swing.]  Thunder!

COLONEL.  Thunder?  Nonsense, Peachey, you're always imagining
something.  Look at the sky!

MISS BEECH.  Thunder!

     [MRS. GWYN's smile has faded. ]

MRS. HOPE.  [Turning.]  Joy, don't you see Mr. Lever?

     [Joy, turning to her mother, gives her the roses.  With a forced
     smile, LEVER advances, holding out his hand.]

LEVER.  How are you, Joy?  Have n't seen you for an age!

JOY.  [Without expression.]  I am very well, thank you.

     [She raises her hand, and just touches his.  MRS. GWYN'S eyes
     are fixed on her daughter.  Miss BEECH is watching them
     intently.  MRS. HOPE is buttoning the COLONEL'S coat.]


                         The curtain falls.





ACT II

     It is afternoon, and at a garden-table placed beneath the hollow
     tree, the COLONEL is poring over plans.  Astride of a garden-
     chair, LEVER is smoking cigarettes.  DICK is hanging Chinese
     lanterns to the hollow tree.

LEVER.  Of course, if this level [pointing with his cigarette]
peters out to the West we shall be in a tightish place; you know what
a mine is at this stage, Colonel Hope.

COLONEL.  [Absently.]  Yes, yes.  [Tracing a line.]  What is there to
prevent its running out here to the East?

LEVER.  Well, nothing, except that as a matter of fact it doesn't.

COLONEL.  [With some excitement.]  I'm very glad you showed me these
papers, very glad!  I say that it's a most astonishing thing if the
ore suddenly stops there.  [A gleam of humour visits LEVER'S face.]
I'm not an expert, but you ought to prove that ground to the East
more thoroughly.

LEVER.  [Quizzically.]  Of course, sir, if you advise that----

COLONEL.  If it were mine, I'd no more sit down under the belief that
the ore stopped there than I 'd---There's a harmony in these things.

NEVER.  I can only tell you what our experts say.

COLONEL.  Ah!  Experts!  No faith in them--never had!  Miners,
lawyers, theologians, cowardly lot--pays them to be cowardly.  When
they have n't their own axes to grind, they've got their theories; a
theory's a dangerous thing.  [He loses himself in contemplation of
the papers.]  Now my theory is, you 're in strata here of what we
call the Triassic Age.

LEVER.  [Smiling faintly.]  Ah!

COLONEL.  You've struck a fault, that's what's happened.  The ore may
be as much as thirty or forty yards out; but it 's there, depend on
it.

LEVER.  Would you back that opinion, sir?

COLONEL.  [With dignity.]  I never give an opinion that I'm not
prepared to back.  I want to get to the bottom of this.  What's to
prevent the gold going down indefinitely?

LEVER.  Nothing, so far as I know.

COLONEL.  [With suspicion.]  Eh!

LEVER.  All I can tell you is: This is as far as we've got, and we
want more money before we can get any farther.

COLONEL.  [Absently.]  Yes, yes; that's very usual.

LEVER.  If you ask my personal opinion I think it's very doubtful
that the gold does go down.

COLONEL.  [Smiling.]  Oh!  a personal opinion a matter of this sort!

LEVER.  [As though about to take the papers.]  Perhaps we'd better
close the sitting, sir; sorry to have bored you.

COLONEL.  Now, now!  Don't be so touchy!  If I'm to put money in, I'm
bound to look at it all round.

LEVER.  [With lifted brows.]  Please don't imagine that I want you to
put money in.

COLONEL.  Confound it, sir!  D 'you suppose I take you for a Company
promoter?

LEVER.  Thank you!

COLONEL.  [Looking at him doubtfully.]  You've got Irish blood in
you--um?  You're so hasty!

LEVER.  If you 're really thinking of taking shares--my advice to you
is, don't!

COLONEL.  [Regretfully.]  If this were an ordinary gold mine, I
wouldn't dream of looking at it, I want you to understand that.
Nobody has a greater objection to gold mines than I.

LEVER.  [Looks down at his host with half-closed eyes.]  But it is a
gold mine, Colonel Hope.

COLONEL.  I know, I know; but I 've been into it for myself; I've
formed my opinion personally.  Now, what 's the reason you don't want
me to invest?

LEVER.  Well, if it doesn't turn out as you expect, you'll say it's
my doing.  I know what investors are.

COLONEL.  [Dubiously.]  If it were a Westralian or a Kaffir I would
n't touch it with a pair of tongs!  It 's not as if I were going to
put much in!  [He suddenly bends above the papers as though
magnetically attracted.] I like these Triassic formations!

     [DICK, who has hung the last lantern, moodily departs.]

LEVER.  [Looking after him.]  That young man seems depressed.

COLONEL.  [As though remembering his principles.]  I don't like
mines, never have!  [Suddenly absorbed again.]  I tell you what,
Lever--this thing's got tremendous possibilities.  You don't seem to
believe in it enough.  No mine's any good without faith; until I see
for myself, however, I shan't commit myself beyond a thousand.

LEVER.  Are you serious, sir?

COLONEL.  Certainly!  I've been thinking it over ever since you told
me Henty had fought shy.  I 've a poor opinion of Henty.  He's one of
those fellows that says one thing and does another.  An opportunist!

LEVER.  [Slowly.]  I'm afraid we're all that, more or less.  [He sits
beneath the hollow tree.]

COLONEL.  A man never knows what he is himself.  There 's my wife.
She thinks she 's----By the way, don't say anything to her about
this, please.  And, Lever [nervously], I don't think, you know, this
is quite the sort of thing for my niece.

LEVER.  [Quietly.]  I agree.  I mean to get her out of it.

COLONEL.  [A little taken aback.]  Ah!  You know, she--she's in a
very delicate position, living by herself in London.  [LEVER looks at
him ironically.]  You  [very nervously]  see a good deal of her?  If
it had n't been for Joy growing so fast, we shouldn't have had the
child down here.  Her mother ought to have her with her.  Eh!  Don't
you think so?

LEVER.  [Forcing a smile.]  Mrs. Gwyn always seems to me to get on
all right.

COLONEL.  [As though making a discovery.]  You know, I've found that
when a woman's living alone and unprotected, the very least thing
will set a lot of hags and jackanapes talking.  [Hotly.]  The more
unprotected and helpless a woman is, the more they revel in it.  If
there's anything I hate in this world, it's those wretched creatures
who babble about their neighbours' affairs.

LEVER.  I agree with you.

COLONEL.  One ought to be very careful not to give them--that is----
[checks himself confused; then hurrying on]--I suppose you and Joy
get on all right?

LEVER.  [Coolly.]  Pretty well, thanks.  I'm not exactly in Joy's
line; have n't seen very much of her, in fact.

     [Miss BEECH and JOY have been approaching from the house.  But
     seeing LEVER, JOY turns abruptly, hesitates a moment, and with
     an angry gesture goes away.]

COLONEL [Unconscious.]  Wonderfully affectionate little thing!  Well,
she'll be going home to-morrow!

MISS BEECH.  [Who has been gazing after JOY.]  Talkin' business, poor
creatures?

LEVER.  Oh, no!  If you'll excuse me, I'll wash my hands before tea.

     [He glances at the COLONEL poring over papers, and, shrugging
     his shoulders, strolls away.]

MISS BEECH.  [Sitting in the swing.]  I see your horrid papers.

COLONEL.  Be quiet, Peachey!

MISS BEECH.  On a beautiful summer's day, too.

COLONEL.  That'll do now.

MISS BEECH.  [Unmoved.]  For every ounce you take out of a gold mine
you put two in.

COLONEL.  Who told you that rubbish?

MISS BEECH. [With devilry.]  You did!

COLONEL.  This is n't an ordinary gold mine.

MISS BEECH.  Oh! quite a special thing.

     [COLONEL stares at her, but subsiding at hey impassivity, he
     pores again over the papers.]

     [Rosy has approached with a tea cloth.]

ROSE.  If you please, sir, the Missis told me to lay the tea.

COLONEL.  Go away!  Ten fives fifty.  Ten 5 16ths, Peachey?

MISS BEECH.  I hate your nasty sums!

     [ROSE goes away.  The COLONEL Writes.  MRS. HOPE'S voice is
     heard, "Now then, bring those chairs, you two.  Not that one,
     Ernest."  ERNEST arid LETTY appear through the openings of the
     wall, each with a chair.]

COLONEL.  [With dull exasperation.]  What do you want?

LETTY.  Tea, Father.

     [She places her chair arid goes away.]

ERNEST.  That Johnny-bird Lever is too cocksure for me, Colonel.
Those South American things are no good at all.  I know all about
them from young Scrotton.  There's not one that's worth a red cent.
If you want a flutter----

COLONEL.  [Explosively.]  Flutter!  I'm not a gambler, sir!

ERNEST.  Well, Colonel [with a smile], I only don't want you to chuck
your money away on a stiff 'un.  If you want anything good you should
go to Mexico.

COLONEL.  [Jumping up and holding out the map.]  Go to  [He stops in
time.]  What d'you call that, eh?  M-E-X----

ERNEST.  [Not to be embarrassed.]  It all depend on what part.

COLONEL.  You think you know everything--you think nothing's right
unless it's your own idea!  Be good enough to keep your advice to
yourself.

ERNEST.  [Moving with his chair, and stopping with a smile.]  If you
ask me, I should say it wasn't playing the game to put Molly into a
thing like that.

COLONEL.  What do you mean, sir?

ERNEST.  Any Juggins can see that she's a bit gone on our friend.

COLONEL.  [Freezingly.]  Indeed!

ERNEST.  He's not at all the sort of Johnny that appeals to me.

COLONEL.  Really?

ERNEST.  [Unmoved.]  If I were you, Colonel, I should tip her the
wink.  He was hanging about her at Ascot all the time.  It 's a bit
thick!

     [MRS. HOPE followed by ROSE appears from the house.]

COLONEL.  [Stammering with passion.]  Jackanapes!

MRS. HOPE.  Don't stand there, Tom; clear those papers, and let Rose
lay the table.  Now, Ernest, go and get another chair.

     [The COLONEL looks wildly round and sits beneath the hollow
     tree, with his head held in his hands.  ROSE lays the cloth.]

MRS. BEECH.  [Sitting beside the COLONEL.]  Poor creature!

ERNEST.  [Carrying his chair about with him.]  Ask any Johnny in the
City, he 'll tell you Mexico's a very tricky country--the people are
awful rotters

MRS. HOPE.  Put that chair down, Ernest.

     [ERNEST looks at the chair, puts it down, opens his mouth, and
     goes away.  ROSE follows him.]

What's he been talking about?  You oughtn't to get so excited, Tom;
is your head bad, old man?  Here, take these papers!  [She hands the
papers to the COLONEL.]  Peachey, go in and tell them tea 'll be
ready in a minute, there 's a good soul?  Oh! and on my dressing
table you'll find a bottle of Eau de Cologne.

MRS. BEECH.  Don't let him get in a temper again.  That 's three
times to-day!

     [She goes towards the house. ]

COLONEL.  Never met such a fellow in my life, the most opinionated,
narrow-minded--thinks he knows everything.  Whatever Letty could see
in him I can't think.  Pragmatical beggar!

MRS. HOPE.  Now Tom!  What have you been up to, to get into a state
like this?

COLONEL.  [Avoiding her eyes.]  I shall lose my temper with him one
of these days.  He's got that confounded habit of thinking nobody can
be right but himself.

MRS. HOPE.  That's enough!  I want to talk to you seriously!  Dick's
in love.  I'm perfectly certain of it.

COLONEL.  Love!  Who's he in love with--Peachey?

MRS. HOPE.  You can see it all over him.  If I saw any signs of Joy's
breaking out, I'd send them both away.  I simply won't have it.

COLONEL.  Why, she's a child!

MRS. HOPE.  [Pursuing her own thoughts.]  But she isn't--not yet.
I've been watching her very carefully.  She's more in love with her
Mother than any one, follows her about like a dog!  She's been quite
rude to Mr. Lever.

COLONEL.  [Pursuing his own thoughts.]  I don't believe a word of it.

     [He rises and walks about]

MRS. HOPE.  Don't believe a word of what?

     [The COLONEL is Silent.]

     [Pursuing his thoughts with her own.]

If I thought there was anything between Molly and Mr. Lever, d 'you
suppose I'd have him in the house?

     [The COLONEL stops, and gives a sort of grunt.]

He's a very nice fellow; and I want you to pump him well, Tom, and
see what there is in this mine.

COLONEL.  [Uneasily.]  Pump!

MRS. HOPE.  [Looking at him curiously.]  Yes, you 've been up to
something!  Now what is it?

COLONEL.  Pump my own guest!  I never heard of such a thing!

MRS. HOPE.  There you are on your high horse!  I do wish you had a
little common-sense, Tom!

COLONEL.  I'd as soon you asked me to sneak about eavesdropping!
Pump!

MRS. HOPE.  Well, what were you looking at these papers for?  It does
drive me so wild the way you throw away all the chances you have of
making a little money.  I've got you this opportunity, and you do
nothing but rave up and down, and talk nonsense!

COLONEL.  [In a high voice]  Much you know about it!  I 've taken a
thousand shares in this mine

     [He stops dead.  There is a silence. ]

MRS. HOPE.  You 've--WHAT?  Without consulting me?  Well, then,
you 'll just go and take them out again!

COLONEL.  You want me to----?

MRS. HOPE.  The idea!  As if you could trust your judgment in a thing
like that!  You 'll just go at once and say there was a mistake; then
we 'll talk it over calmly.

COLONEL. [Drawing himself up.]  Go back on what I 've said?  Not if I
lose every penny!  First you worry me to take the shares, and then
you worry me not--I won't have it, Nell, I won't have it!

MRS. HOPE.  Well, if I'd thought you'd have forgotten what you said
this morning and turned about like this, d'you suppose I'd have
spoken to you at all?  Now, do you?

COLONEL.  Rubbish!  If you can't see that this is a special
opportunity!

     [He walks away followed by MRS. HOPE, who endeavors to make him
     see her point of view.  ERNEST and LETTY are now returning from
     the house armed with a third chair.]

LETTY.  What's the matter with everybody?  Is it the heat?

ERNEST.  [Preoccupied and sitting in the swing.]  That sportsman,
Lever, you know, ought to be warned off.

LETTY.  [Signing t0 ERNEST.]  Where's Miss Joy, Rose?

ROSE.  Don't know, Miss.

     [Putting down the tray, she goes.]


     [ROSE, has followed with the tea tray.]

LETTY.  Ernie, be careful, you never know where Joy is.

ERNEST.  [Preoccupied with his reflections.]  Your old Dad 's as mad
as a hatter with me.

LETTY.  Why?

ERNEST.  Well, I merely said what I thought, that Molly ought to look
out what's she's doing, and he dropped on me like a cartload of
bricks.

LETTY.  The Dad's very fond of Molly.

ERNEST.  But look here, d'you mean to tell me that she and Lever
are n't----

LETTY.  Don't!  Suppose they are!  If joy were to hear it'd be simply
awful.  I like Molly.  I 'm not going to believe anything against
her.  I don't see the use of it.  If it is, it is, and if it is n't,
it is n't.

ERNEST.  Well, all I know is that when I told her the mine was
probably a frost she went for me like steam.

LETTY.  Well, so should I.  She was only sticking up for her friends.

ERNEST.  Ask the old Peachey-bird.  She knows a thing or two.  Look
here, I don't mind a man's being a bit of a sportsman, but I think
Molly's bringin' him down here is too thick.  Your old Dad's got one
of his notions that because this Josser's his guest, he must keep him
in a glass case, and take shares in his mine, and all the rest of it.

LETTY.  I do think people are horrible, always thinking things.  It's
not as if Molly were a stranger.  She's my own cousin.  I 'm not
going to believe anything about my own cousin.  I simply won't.

ERNEST.  [Reluctantly realising the difference that this makes.]  I
suppose it does make a difference, her bein' your cousin.

LETTY.  Of course it does!  I only hope to goodness no one will make
Joy suspect----

     [She stops and buts her finger to her lips, for JOY is coming
     towards them, as the tea-bell sounds.  She is followed by DICK
     and MISS BEECH with the Eau de Cologne.  The COLONEL and MRS.
     HOPE are also coming back, discussing still each other's point
     of view.]

JOY.  Where 's Mother?  Isn't she here?

MRS. HOPE.  Now Joy, come and sit down; your mother's been told tea's
ready; if she lets it get cold it's her lookout.

DICK.  [Producing a rug, and spreading it beneath the tree.]  Plenty
of room, Joy.

JOY.  I don't believe Mother knows, Aunt Nell.

     [MRS. GWYN and LEVER appear in the opening of the wall.]

LETTY.  [Touching ERNEST's arm.]  Look, Ernie!  Four couples and
Peachey----

ERNEST.  [Preoccupied.]  What couples?

JOY.  Oh!  Mums, here you are!

     [Seizing her, she turns her back on LEVER.  They sit in various
     seats, and MRS. HOPE pours out the tea.]

MRS. HOPE.  Hand the sandwiches to Mr. Lever, Peachey.  It's our own
jam, Mr. Lever.

LEVER.  Thanks.  [He takes a bite.]  It's splendid!

MRS. GWYN.  [With forced gaiety.]  It's the first time I've ever seen
you eat jam.

LEVER.  [Smiling a forced smile.]  Really!  But I love it.

MRS. GWYN.  [With a little bow.]  You always refuse mine.

JOY.  [Who has been staring at her enemy, suddenly.]  I'm all burnt
up!  Are n't you simply boiled, Mother?

     [She touches her Mother's forehead.]

MRS. GWYN.  Ugh!  You're quite clammy, Joy.

JOY.  It's enough to make any one clammy.

     [Her eyes go back to LEVER'S face as though to stab him.]

ERNEST.  [From the swing.]  I say, you know, the glass is going down.

LEVER.  [Suavely.]  The glass in the hall's steady enough.

ERNEST.  Oh, I never go by that; that's a rotten old glass.

COLONEL.  Oh! is it?

ERNEST.  [Paying no attention.]  I've got a little ripper--never puts
you in the cart.  Bet you what you like we have thunder before
tomorrow night.

MISS BEECH.  [Removing her gaze from JOY to LEVER.]  You don't think
we shall have it before to-night, do you?

LEVER.  [Suavely.]  I beg your pardon; did you speak to me?

MISS BEECH.  I said, you don't think we shall have the thunder before
to-night, do you?

     [She resumes her watch on joy.]

LEVER.  [Blandly.]  Really, I don't see any signs of it.

     [Joy, crossing to the rug, flings herself down.  And DICK sits
     cross-legged, with his eyes fast fixed on her.]

MISS BEECH.  [Eating.]  People don't often see what they don't want
to, do they?

     [LEVER only lifts his brows.]

MRS. GWYN.  [Quickly breaking ivy.]  What are you talking about?  The
weather's perfect.

MISS BEECH.  Isn't it?

MRS. HOPE.  You'd better make a good tea, Peachey; nobody'll get
anything till eight, and then only cold shoulder.  You must just put
up with no hot dinner, Mr. Lever.

LEVER.  [Bowing.]  Whatever is good enough for Miss Beech is good
enough for me.

MISS BEECH.  [Sardonically-taking another sandwich.]  So you think!

MRS. GWYN.  [With forced gaiety.]  Don't be so absurd, Peachey.

     [MISS BEECH, grunts slightly.]

COLONEL.  [Once more busy with his papers.]  I see the name of your
engineer is Rodriguez--Italian, eh?

LEVER.  Portuguese.

COLONEL.  Don't like that!

LEVER.  I believe he was born in England.

COLONEL.  [Reassured.]  Oh, was he?  Ah!

ERNEST.  Awful rotters, those Portuguese!

COLONEL.  There you go!

LETTY.  Well, Father, Ernie only said what you said.

MRS. HOPE.  Now I want to ask you, Mr. Lever, is this gold mine safe?
If it isn't--I simply won't allow Tom to take these shares; he can't
afford it.

LEVER.  It rather depends on what you call safe, Mrs. Hope.

MRS. HOPE.  I don't want anything extravagant, of course; if they're
going to pay their 10 per cent, regularly, and Tom can have his money
out at any time--[There is a faint whistle from the swing.]  I only
want to know that it's a thoroughly genuine thing.

MRS. GWYN.  [Indignantly.]  As if Maurice would be a Director if it
was n't?

MRS. HOPE.  Now Molly, I'm simply asking----

MRS. GWYN.  Yes, you are!

COLONEL.  [Rising.]  I'll take two thousand of those shares, Lever.
To have my wife talk like that--I 'm quite ashamed.

LEVER.  Oh, come, sir, Mrs. Hope only meant----

     [MRS. GWYN looks eagerly at LEVER.]

DICK.  [Quietly.]  Let's go on the river, Joy.

     [JOY rises, and goes to her Mother's chair.]

MRS. HOPE.  Of course!  What rubbish, Tom!  As if any one ever
invested money without making sure!

LEVER.  [Ironically.]  It seems a little difficult to make sure in
this case.  There isn't the smallest necessity for Colonel Hope to
take any shares, and it looks to me as if he'd better not.

     [He lights a cigarette.]

MRS. HOPE.  Now, Mr. Lever, don't be offended!  I'm very anxious for
Tom to take the shares if you say the thing's so good.

LEVER.  I 'm afraid I must ask to be left out, please.

JOY.  [Whispering.]  Mother, if you've finished, do come, I want to
show you my room.

MRS. HOPE.  I would n't say a word, only Tom's so easily taken in.

MRS. GWYN.  [Fiercely.]  Aunt Nell, how can't you? [Joy gives a
little savage laugh.]

LETTY.  [Hastily.]  Ernie, will you play Dick and me?  Come on, Dick!

     [All three go out towards the lawn.]

MRS. HOPE.  You ought to know your Uncle by this time, Molly.  He's
just like a child.  He'd be a pauper to-morrow if I did n't see to
things.

COLONEL.  Understand once for all that I shall take two thousand
shares in this mine.  I 'm--I 'm humiliated.  [He turns and goes
towards the house.]

MRS. HOPE.  Well, what on earth have I said?

     [She hurries after him. ]

MRS. GWYN.  [In a low voice as she passes.]  You need n't insult my
friends!

     [LEVER, shrugging his shoulders, has strolled aside.  JOY, with
     a passionate movement seen only by Miss BEECH, goes off towards
     the house.  MISS BEECH and MRS. GWYN aye left alone beside the
     remnants of the feast.]

MISS BEECH.  Molly!

     [MRS. GWYN looks up startled.]

Take care, Molly, take care!  The child!  Can't you see?
[Apostrophising LEVER.]  Take care, Molly, take care!

LEVER.  [Coming back.]  Awfully hot, is n't it?

MISS BEECH.  Ah!  and it'll be hotter if we don't mind.

LEVER.  [Suavely.]  Do we control these things?

     [MISS BEECH looking from face to face, nods her head repeatedly;
     then gathering her skirts she walks towards the house.  MRS.
     GWYN sits motionless, staying before her.]

Extraordinary old lady!  [He pitches away his cigarette.]  What's the
matter with her, Molly?

MRS. GWYN, [With an effort.]  Oh!  Peachey's a character!

LEVER.  [Frowning.]  So I see!  [There is a silence.]

MRS. GWYN.  Maurice!

LEVER.  Yes.

MRS. GWYN.  Aunt Nell's hopeless, you mustn't mind her.

LEVER.  [In a dubious and ironic voice.]  My dear girl, I 've too
much to bother me to mind trifles like that.

MRS. GWYN.  [Going to him suddenly.]  Tell me, won't you?

     [LEVER shrugs his shoulders.]

A month ago you'd have told me soon enough!

LEVER.  Now, Molly!

MRS. GWYN.  Ah!  [With a bitter smile.]  The Spring's soon over.

LEVER.  It 's always Spring between us.

MRS. GWYN.  Is it?

LEVER.  You did n't tell me what you were thinking about just now
when you sat there like stone.

MRS. GWYN.  It does n't do for a woman to say too much.

LEVER.  Have I been so bad to you that you need feel like that,
Molly?

MRS. GWYN.  [With a little warm squeeze of his arm.]  Oh!  my dear,
it's only that I'm so---

[She stops.]

LEVER.  [Gently].  So what?

MRS. GWYN.  [In a low voice.]  It's hateful here.

LEVER.  I didn't want to come.  I don't understand why you suggested
it.  [MRS. GWYN is silent.]  It's been a mistake.

MRS. GWYN.  [Her eyes fixed on the ground.]  Joy comes home to-
morrow.  I thought if I brought you here--I should know----

LEVER.  [Vexedly.]  Um!

MRS. GWYN.  [Losing her control.]  Can't you SEE?  It haunts me?  How
are we to go on?  I must know--I must know!

LEVER.  I don't see that my coming----

MRS. GWYN.  I thought I should have more confidence; I thought I
should be able to face it better in London, if you came down here
openly--and now--I feel I must n't speak or look at you.

LEVER.  You don't think your Aunt----

MRS. GWYN.  [Scornfully.]  She!  It's only Joy I care about.

LEVER.  [Frowning.]  We must be more careful, that's all.  We mustn't
give ourselves away again, as we were doing just now.

MRS. GWYN.  When any one says anything horrid to you, I can't help
it.

     [She puts her hand on the label of his coat.]

LEVER.  My dear child, take care!

     [MRS. GWYN drops her hand.  She throws her head back, and her
     throat is seen to work as though she were gulping down a bitter
     draught.  She moves away.]

[Following hastily.]  Don't dear, don't!  I only meant--Come, Molly,
let's be sensible.  I want to tell you something about the mine.

MRS. GWYN.  [With a quavering smile.]  Yes-let 's talk sensibly, and
walk properly in this sensible, proper place.

     [LEVER is seen trying to soothe her, and yet to walk properly.
     As they disappear, they are viewed by JOY, who, like the shadow
     parted from its figure, has come to join it again.  She stands
     now, foiled, a carnation in her hand; then flings herself on a
     chair, and leans her elbows on the table.]

JOY.  I hate him!  Pig!

ROSE.  [Who has come to clear the tea things.]  Did you call, Miss?

JOY.  Not you!

ROSE.  [Motionless.]  No, Miss!

JOY.  [Leaning back and tearing the flower.]  Oh! do hurry up, Rose!

ROSE.  [Collects the tea things.]  Mr. Dick's coming down the path!
Aren't I going to get you to do your frock, Miss Joy?

JOY.  No.

ROSE.  What will the Missis say?

JOY.  Oh, don't be so stuck, Rose!

     [ROSE goes, but DICK has come.]

DICK.  Come on the river, Joy, just for half an hour, as far as the
kingfishers--do!  [Joy shakes her head.]  Why not?  It 'll be so
jolly and cool.  I'm most awfully sorry if I worried you this
morning.  I didn't mean to.  I won't again, I promise.  [Joy slides a
look at him, and from that look he gains a little courage.]  Do come!
It'll be the last time.  I feel it awfully, Joy.

JOY.  There's nothing to hurt you!

DICK. [Gloomily.]  Isn't there--when you're like this?

JOY.  [In a hard voice.]  If you don't like me, why do you follow me
about?

DICK.  What is the matter?

JOY.  [Looking up, as if for want of air.]  Oh!  Don't!

DICK.  Oh, Joy, what is the matter?  Is it the heat?

JOY.  [With a little laugh.]  Yes.

DICK.  Have some Eau de Cologne.  I 'll make you a bandage.  [He
takes the Eau de Cologne, and makes a bandage with his handkerchief.]
It's quite clean.

JOY.  Oh, Dick, you are so funny!

DICK.  [Bandaging her forehead.]  I can't bear you to feel bad; it
puts me off completely.  I mean I don't generally make a fuss about
people, but when it 's you----

JOY.  [Suddenly.]  I'm all right.

DICK.  Is that comfy?

JOY.  [With her chin up, and her eyes fast closed.]  Quite.

DICK.  I'm not going to stay and worry you.  You ought to rest.
Only, Joy!  Look here!  If you want me to do anything for you, any
time----

JOY.  [Half opening her eyes.]  Only to go away.

     [DICK bites his lips and walks away.]

Dick--[softly]--Dick!

     [DICK stops.]

I didn't mean that; will you get me some water-irises for this
evening?

DICK.  Won't I?  [He goes to the hollow tree and from its darkness
takes a bucket and a boat-hook.]  I know where there are some
rippers!

     [JOY stays unmoving with her eyes half closed.]

Are you sure you 're all right.  Joy?  You 'll just rest here in the
shade, won't you, till I come back?--it 'll do you no end of good.  I
shan't be twenty minutes.

     [He goes, but cannot help returning softly, to make sure.]

You're quite sure you 're all right?

     [JOY nods.  He goes away towards the river.  But there is no
     rest for JOY.  The voices of MRS. GWYN and LEVER are heard
     returning.]

JOY.  [With a gesture of anger.]  Hateful!  Hateful!

     [She runs away.]

     [MRS. GWYN and LEVER are seen approaching; they pass the tree,
     in conversation.]

MRS. GWYN.  But I don't see why, Maurice.

LEVER.  We mean to sell the mine; we must do some more work on it,
and for that we must have money.

MRS. GWYN.  If you only want a little, I should have thought you
could have got it in a minute in the City.

LEVER.  [Shaking his head.]  No, no; we must get it privately.

MRS. GWYN.  [Doubtfully.]  Oh!  [She slowly adds.]  Then it isn't
such a good thing!

     [And she does not look at him.]

LEVER.  Well, we mean to sell it.

MRS. GWYN.  What about the people who buy?

LEVER.  [Dubiously regarding her.]  My dear girl, they've just as
much chance as we had.  It 's not my business to think of them.
There's YOUR thousand pounds----

MRS. GWYN.  [Softly.]  Don't bother about my money, Maurice.  I don't
want you to do anything not quite----

LEVER.  [Evasively.]  Oh!  There's my brother's and my sister's too.
I 'm not going to let any of you run any risk.  When we all went in
for it the thing looked splendid; it 's only the last month that we
've had doubts.  What bothers me now is your Uncle.  I don't want him
to take these shares.  It looks as if I'd come here on purpose.

MRS. GWYN.  Oh!  he mustn't take them!

LEVER.  That 's all very well; but it 's not so simple.

MRS. GWYN.  [Shyly.]  But, Maurice, have you told him about the
selling?

LEVER.  [Gloomily, under the hollow tree.]  It 's a Board secret.
I'd no business to tell even you.

MRS. GWYN.  But he thinks he's taking shares in a good--a permanent
thing.

LEVER.  You can't go into a mining venture without some risk.

MRS. GWYN.  Oh yes, I know--but--but Uncle Tom is such a dear!

LEVER.  [Stubbornly.]  I can't help his being the sort of man he is.
I did n't want him to take these shares; I told him so in so many
words.  Put yourself in my place, Molly: how can I go to him and say,
"This thing may turn out rotten," when he knows I got you to put your
money into it?

     [But JOY, the lost shadow, has come back.  She moves forward
     resolutely.  They are divided from her by the hollow tree; she
     is unseen.  She stops.]

MRS. GWYN.  I think he ought to be told about the selling; it 's not
fair.

LEVER.  What on earth made him rush at the thing like that?  I don't
understand that kind of man.

MRS. GWYN.  [Impulsively.]  I must tell him, Maurice; I can't let him
take the shares without----

     [She puts her hand on his arm.]

     [Joy turns, as if to go back whence she came, but stops once
     more.]

LEVER.  [Slowly and very quietly.]  I did n't think you'd give me
away, Molly.

MRS. GWYN.  I don't think I quite understand.

LEVER.  If you tell the Colonel about this sale the poor old chap
will think me a man that you ought to have nothing to do with.  Do
you want that?

     [MRS. GWYN, giving her lover a long look, touches his sleeve.
     JOY, slipping behind the hollow tree, has gone.]

You can't act in a case like this as if you 'd only a principle to
consider.  It 's the--the special circumstances.

MRS. GWYN.  [With a faint smile.]  But you'll be glad to get the
money won't you?

LEVER.  By George! if you're going to take it like this, Molly

MRS. GWYN.  Don't!

LEVER.  We may not sell after all, dear, we may find it turn out
trumps.

MRS. GWYN.  [With a shiver.]  I don't want to hear any more.  I know
women don't understand.  [Impulsively.]  It's only that I can't bear
any one should think that you----

LEVER.  [Distressed.]  For goodness sake don't look like that, Molly!
Of course, I'll speak to your Uncle.  I'll stop him somehow, even if
I have to make a fool of myself.  I 'll do anything you want----

MRS. GWYN.  I feel as if I were being smothered here.

LEVER.  It 's only for one day.

MRS. GWYN.  [With sudden tenderness.]  It's not your fault, dear.  I
ought to have known how it would be.  Well, let's go in!

     [She sets her lips, and walks towards the house with LEVER
     following.  But no sooner has she disappeared than JOY comes
     running after; she stops, as though throwing down a challenge.
     Her cheeks and ears are burning.]

JOY.  Mother!

     [After a moment MRS. GWYN reappears in the opening of the wall.]

MRS. GWYN.  Oh!  here you are!

JOY.  [Breathlessly.]  Yes.

MRS. GWYN.  [Uncertainly.]  Where--have you been?  You look
dreadfully hot; have you been running?

JOY.  Yes----no.

MRS. GWYN.  [Looking at her fixedly.]  What's the matter--you 're
trembling!  [Softly.]  Are n't you well, dear?

JOY.  Yes--I don't know.

MRS. GWYN.  What is it, darling?

JOY.  [Suddenly clinging to her.]  Oh!  Mother!

MRS. GWYN.  I don't understand.

JOY.  [Breathlessly.]  Oh, Mother, let me go back home with you now
at once----
MRS. GWYN.  [Her face hardening.]  Why?  What on earth----

JOY.  I can't stay here.

MRS. GWYN.  But why?

JOY. I want to be with you--Oh!  Mother, don't you love me?

MRS. GWYN.  [With a faint smile.]  Of course I love you, Joy.

JOY.  Ah! but you love him more.

MRS. GWYN.  Love him--whom?

JOY.  Oh!  Mother, I did n't--[She tries to take her Mother's hand,
but fails.]  Oh!  don't.

MRS. GWYN.  You'd better explain what you mean, I think.

JOY.  I want to get you to--he--he 's--he 'snot----!

MRS. GWYN.  [Frigidly.]  Really, Joy!

JOY.  [Passionately.]  I'll fight against him, and I know there's
something wrong about----

     [She stops.]

MRS. GWYN.  About what?

JOY.  Let's tell Uncle Tom, Mother, and go away.

MRS. GWYN.  Tell Uncle--Tom--what?

JOY.  [Looking down and almost whispering.]  About--about--the mine.

MRS. GWYN.  What about the mine?  What do you mean?  [Fiercely.]
Have you been spying on me?

JOY.  [Shrinking.]  No! oh, no!

MRS. GWYN.  Where were you?

JOY.  [Just above her breath.]  I--I heard something.

MRS. GWYN.  [Bitterly.] But you were not spying?

JOY.  I was n't--I wasn't!  I didn't want--to hear.  I only heard a
little.  I couldn't help listening, Mother.

MRS. GWYN.  [With a little laugh.]  Couldn't help listening?

JOY.  [Through her teeth.]  I hate him.  I didn't mean to listen, but
I hate him.

MRS. GWYN.  I see.  Why do you hate him?

     [There is a silence.]

JOY.  He--he----[She stops.]


MRS. GWYN.  Yes?

JOY.  [With a sort of despair.]  I don't know.  Oh!  I don't know!
But I feel----

MRS. GWYN.  I can't reason with you.  As to what you heard, it 's--
ridiculous.

JOY.  It 's not that.  It 's--it 's you!

MRS. GWYN.  [Stonily.]  I don't know what you mean.

JOY.  [Passionately.]  I wish Dad were here!

MRS. GWYN.  Do you love your Father as much as me?

JOY.  Oh!  Mother, no-you know I don't.

MRS. GWYN.  [Resentfully.]  Then why do you want him?

JOY.  [Almost under her breath.]  Because of that man.

MRS. GWYN.  Indeed!

JOY.  I will never--never make friends with him.

MRS. GWYN.  [Cuttingly.]  I have not asked you to.

JOY.  [With a blind movement of her hand.]  Oh, Mother!

     [MRS. GWYN half turns away.]

Mother--won't you?  Let's tell Uncle Tom and go away from him?

MRS. GWYN.  If you were not, a child, Joy, you wouldn't say such
things.

JOY.  [Eagerly.]  I'm not a child, I'm--I'm a woman.  I am.

MRS. GWYN.  No!  You--are--not a woman, Joy.

     [She sees joy throw up her arms as though warding off a blow,
     and turning finds that LEVER is standing in the opening of the
     wall.]

LEVER.  [Looking from face to face.]  What's the matter?  [There is
no answer.]  What is it, Joy?

JOY.  [Passionately.]  I heard you, I don't care who knows.  I'd
listen again.

LEVER.  [Impassively.]  Ah! and what did I say that was so very
dreadful?

JOY.  You're a--a--you 're a--coward!

MRS. GWYN.  [With a sort of groan.]  Joy!

LEVER.  [Stepping up to JOY, and standing with his hands behind him--
in a low voice.]  Now hit me in the face--hit me--hit me as hard as
you can.  Go on, Joy, it'll do you good.

     [Joy raises her clenched hand, but drops it, and hides her
     face.]

Why don't you?  I'm not pretending!

     [Joy makes no sign.]

Come, joy; you'll make yourself ill, and that won't help, will it?

     [But joy still makes no sign.]

[With determination.]  What's the matter?  now come--tell me!

JOY.  [In a stifled, sullen voice.]  Will you leave my mother alone?

MRS. GWYN.  Oh! my dear Joy, don't be silly!

JOY.  [Wincing; then with sudden passion.]  I defy you--I defy you!
[She rushes from their sight.]

MRS. GWYN.  [With a movement of distress.] Oh!

LEVER.  [Turning to MRS. GWYN with a protecting gesture.]  Never
mind, dear!  It'll be--it'll be all right!

     [But the expression of his face is not the expression of his
     words.]


                         The curtain falls.





ACT III

     It is evening; a full yellow moon is shining through the
     branches of the hollow tree.  The Chinese lanterns are alight.
     There is dancing in the house; the music sounds now loud, now
     soft.  MISS BEECH is sitting on the rustic seat in a black
     bunchy evening dress, whose inconspicuous opening is inlaid with
     white.  She slowly fans herself.

     DICK comes from the house in evening dress.  He does not see
     Miss BEECH.


DICK.  Curse!  [A short silence.]  Curse!

MISS BEECH.  Poor young man!

DICK.  [With a start.]  Well, Peachey, I can't help it
[He fumbles off his gloves.]

MISS BEECH.  Did you ever know any one that could?

DICK.  [Earnestly.]  It's such awfully hard lines on Joy.  I can't get
her out of my head, lying there with that beastly headache while
everybody's jigging round.

MISS BEECH.  Oh!  you don't mind about yourself--noble young man!

DICK.  I should be a brute if I did n't mind more for her.

MISS BEECH.  So you think it's a headache, do you?

DICK.  Did n't you hear what Mrs. Gwyn said at dinner about the sun?
[With inspiration.]  I say, Peachey, could n't you--could n't you
just go up and give her a message from me, and find out if there 's
anything she wants, and say how brutal it is that she 's seedy; it
would be most awfully decent of you.  And tell her the dancing's no
good without her.  Do, Peachey, now do!  Ah!  and look here!

     [He dives into the hollow of the tree, and brings from out of it
     a pail of water in which are placed two bottles of champagne,
     and some yellow irises--he takes the irises.]

You might give her these.  I got them specially for her, and I have
n't had a chance.

MISS BEECH.  [Lifting a bottle.]  What 's this?

DICK.  Fizz.  The Colonel brought it from the George.  It 's for
supper; he put it in here because of--[Smiling faintly]--Mrs. Hope,
I think.  Peachey, do take her those irises.

MISS. BEECH.  D' you think they'll do her any good?

DICK.  [Crestfallen.]  I thought she'd like--I don't want to worry
her--you might try.

     [MISS BEECH shakes her head.]

Why not?

MISS BEECH.  The poor little creature won't let me in.

DICK.  You've been up then!

MISS BEECH.  [Sharply.]  Of course I've been up.  I've not got a
stone for my heart, young man!

DICK.  All right!  I suppose I shall just have to get along somehow.

MISS BEECH.  [With devilry.]  That's what we've all got to do.

DICK.  [Gloomily.] But this is too brutal for anything!

MISS BEECH.  Worse than ever happened to any one!

DICK.  I swear I'm not thinking of myself.

MISS BEECH.  Did y' ever know anybody that swore they were?

DICK.  Oh! shut up!

MISS BEECH.  You'd better go in and get yourself a partner.

DICK.  [With pale desperation.]  Look here, Peachey, I simply loathe
all those girls.

MISS BEECH.  Ah-h!  [Ironically.]  Poor lot, are n't they?

DICK.  All right; chaff away, it's good fun, isn't it?  It makes me
sick to dance when Joy's lying there.  Her last night, too!

MISS BEECH.  [Sidling to him.]  You're a good young man, and you 've
got a good heart.

     [She takes his hand, and puts it to her cheek.]

DICK.  Peachey--I say, Peachey d' you think there 's--I mean d' you
think there'll ever be any chance for me?

MISS BEECH.  I thought that was coming!  I don't approve of your
making love at your time of life; don't you think I 'm going to
encourage you.

DICK.  But I shall be of age in a year; my money's my own, it's not
as if I had to ask any one's leave; and I mean, I do know my own
mind.

MISS BEECH.  Of course you do.  Nobody else would at your age, but
you do.

DICK.  I would n't ask her to promise, it would n't be fair when
she 's so young, but I do want her to know that I shall never change.

MISS BEECH.  And suppose--only suppose--she's fond of you, and says
she'll never change.

DICK.  Oh!  Peachey!  D' you think there's a chance of that--do you?

MISS BEECH.  A-h-h!

DICK.  I wouldn't let her bind herself, I swear I wouldn't.
[Solemnly.]  I'm not such a selfish brute as you seem to think.

MISS BEECH.  [Sidling close to him and in a violent whisper.]  Well--
have a go!

DICK.  Really?  You are a brick, Peachey!

     [He kisses her.]

MISS BEACH. [Yielding pleasurably; then remembering her principles.]
Don't you ever say I said so!  You're too young, both of you.

DICK.  But it is exceptional--I mean in my case, is n't it?

     [The COLONEL and MRS. GWYN are coming down the lawn.]

MISS BEECH.  Oh!  very!

     [She sits beneath the tree and fans herself.]

COLONEL.  The girls are all sitting out, Dick!  I've been obliged to
dance myself.  Phew!

     [He mops his brow.]

     [DICK swinging round goes rushing off towards the house.]

[Looking after him.]  Hallo!  What's the matter with him?  Cooling
your heels, Peachey?  By George!  it's hot.  Fancy the poor devils in
London on a night like this, what?  [He sees the moon.]  It's a full
moon.  You're lucky to be down here, Molly.

MRS. GWYN.  [In a low voice.]  Very!

MISS BEECH.  Oh!  so you think she's lucky, do you?

COLONEL. [Expanding his nostrils.]  Delicious scent to-night!  Hay
and roses--delicious.

     [He seats himself between them.]

A shame that poor child has knocked up like this.  Don't think it was
the sun myself--more likely neuralgic--she 's subject to neuralgia,
Molly.

MRS. GWYN.  [Motionless.]  I know.

COLONEL.  Got too excited about your coming.  I told Nell not to keep
worrying her about her frock, and this is the result.  But your Aunt
--you know--she can't let a thing alone!

MISS BEECH.  Ah!  't isn't neuralgia.

     [MRS.  GWYN looks at her quickly and averts her eyes.]

COLONEL.  Excitable little thing.  You don't understand her, Peachey.

MISS BEECH.  Don't I?

COLONEL.  She's all affection.  Eh, Molly?  I remember what I was
like at her age, a poor affectionate little rat, and now look at me!

MISS BEECH.  [Fanning herself.]  I see you.

COLONEL.  [A little sadly.]  We forget what we were like when we were
young.  She's been looking forward to to-night ever since you wrote;
and now to have to go to bed and miss the, dancing.  Too bad!

MRS. GWYN.  Don't, Uncle Tom!

COLONEL.  [Patting her hand.]  There, there, old girl, don't think
about it.  She'll be all right tomorrow.

MISS BEECH.  If I were her mother I'd soon have her up.

COLONEL.  Have her up with that headache!  What are you talking
about, Peachey?

MISS BEECH.  I know a remedy.

COLONEL.  Well, out with it.

MISS BEECH.  Oh!  Molly knows it too!

MRS. GWYN.  [Staring at the ground.]  It's easy to advise.

COLONEL.  [Fidgetting.]  Well, if you're thinking of morphia for her,
don't have anything to do with it.  I've always set my face against
morphia; the only time I took it was in Burmah.  I'd raging neuralgia
for two days.  I went to our old doctor, and I made him give me some.
"Look here, doctor," I said, "I hate the idea of morphia, I 've never
taken it, and I never want to."

MISS BEECH.  [Looking at MRS. GWYN.]  When a tooth hurts, you should
have it out.  It 's only puttin' off the evil day.

COLONEL.  You say that because it was n't your own.

MISS BEECH.  Well, it was hollow, and you broke your principles!

COLONEL.  Hollow yourself, Peachey; you're as bad as any one!

MISS BEECH [With devilry.]  Well, I know that!  [She turns to MRS.
GWYN.]  He should have had it out!  Shouldn't he, Molly?

MRS. GWYN.  I--don't--judge for other people.

     [She gets up suddenly, as though deprived of air.]

COLONEL.  [Alarmed.]  Hallo, Molly!  Are n't you feeling the thing,
old girl?

MISS BEECH.  Let her get some air, poor creature!

COLONEL.  [Who follows anxiously.]  Your Aunt's got some first-rate
sal volatile.

MRS. GWYN.  It's all right, Uncle Tom.  I felt giddy, it's nothing,
now.

COLONEL.  That's the dancing.  [He taps his forehead.]  I know what
it is when you're not used to it.

MRS. GWYN.  [With a sudden bitter outburst.]  I suppose you think I
'm a very bad mother to be amusing myself while joy's suffering.

COLONEL.  My dear girl, whatever put such a thought into your head?
We all know if there were anything you could do, you'd do it at once,
would n't she, Peachey?

     [MISS BEECH turns a slow look on MRS. GWYN.]

MRS. GWYN.  Ah!  you see, Peachey knows me better.

COLONEL.  [Following up his thoughts.]  I always think women are
wonderful.  There's your Aunt, she's very funny, but if there's
anything the matter with me, she'll sit up all night; but when she's
ill herself, and you try to do anything for her, out she raps at
once.

MRS. GWYN.  [In a low voice.]  There's always one that a woman will
do anything for.

COLONEL.  Exactly what I say.  With your Aunt it's me, and by George!
Molly, sometimes I wish it was n't.

MISS BEECH, [With meaning.]  But is it ever for another woman!

COLONEL.  You old cynic!  D' you mean to say Joy wouldn't do anything
on earth for her Mother, or Molly for Joy?  You don't know human
nature.  What a wonderful night!  Have n't seen such a moon for
years, she's like a great, great lamp!

     [MRS. GWYN hiding from Miss BEECH's eyes, rises and slips her
     arm through his; they stand together looking at the moon.]

Don't like these Chinese lanterns, with that moon-tawdry!  eh!  By
Jove, Molly, I sometimes think we humans are a rubbishy lot--each of
us talking and thinking of nothing but our own petty little affairs;
and when you see a great thing like that up there--[Sighs.]  But
there's your Aunt, if I were to say a thing like that to her she 'd--
she'd think me a lunatic; and yet, you know, she 's a very good
woman.

MRS. GWYN.  [Half clinging to him.]  Do you think me very selfish,
Uncle Tom?

COLONEL.  My dear--what a fancy!  Think you selfish--of course I
don't; why should I?

MRS. GWYN.  [Dully.]  I don't know.

COLONEL.  [Changing the subject nervously.]  I like your friend,
Lever, Molly.  He came to me before dinner quite distressed about
your Aunt, beggin' me not to take those shares.  She 'll be the first
to worry me, but he made such a point of it, poor chap--in the end I
was obliged to say I wouldn't.  I thought it showed very' nice
feeling.  [Ruefully.]  It's a pretty tight fit to make two ends meet
on my income--I've missed a good thing, all owing to your Aunt.
[Dropping his voice.]  I don't mind telling you, Molly, I think
they've got a much finer mine there than they've any idea of.

     [MRS. GWYN gives way to laughter that is very near to sobs.]

[With dignity.]  I can't see what there is to laugh at.

MRS. GWYN.  I don't know what's the matter with me this evening.

MISS BEECH.  [In a low voice.]  I do.

COLONEL.  There, there!  Give me a kiss, old girl!  [He kisses her on
the brow.]  Why, your forehead's as hot as fire.  I know--I know-you
're fretting about Joy.  Never mind--come!  [He draws her hand
beneath his arm.]  Let's go and have a look at the moon on the river.
We all get upset at times; eh! [Lifting his hand as if he had been
stung.]  Why, you 're not crying, Molly!  I say!  Don't do that, old
girl, it makes me wretched.  Look here, Peachey.  [Holding out the
hand on which the tear has dropped.]  This is dreadful!

MRS. GWYN.  [With a violent effort.]  It's all right, Uncle Tom!

     [MISS BEECH wipes her own eyes stealthily.  From the house is
     heard the voice of MRS. HOPE, calling "Tom."]

MISS BEECH.  Some one calling you.

COLONEL.  There, there, my dear, you just stay here, and cool
yourself--I 'll come back--shan't be a minute.  [He turns to go.]

     [MRS. HOPE'S voice sounds nearer.]

[Turning back.]  And Molly, old girl, don't you mind anything I said.
I don't remember what it was--it must have been something, I suppose.

     [He hastily retreats.]

MRS. GWYN.  [In a fierce low voice.]  Why do you torture me?

MISS BEECH.  [Sadly.]  I don't want to torture you.

MRS. GWYN, But you do.  D' you think I haven't seen this coming--all
these weeks.  I knew she must find out some time!  But even a day
counts----

MISS BEECH.  I don't understand why you brought him down here.

MRS. GWYN.  [After staring at her, bitterly.]  When day after day and
night after night you've thought of nothing but how to keep them
both, you might a little want to prove that it was possible, mightn't
you?  But you don't understand--how should you?  You've never been a
mother!  [And fiercely.]  You've never had a lov----

     [MISS BEECH raises her face-it is all puckered.]

[Impulsively.]  Oh, I did n't mean that, Peachey!

MISS BEECH.  All right, my dear.

MRS. GWYN.  I'm so dragged in two!  [She sinks into a chair.]  I knew
it must come.

MISS BEECH.  Does she know everything, Molly?

MRS. GWYN.  She guesses.

MISS BEECH.  [Mournfully.]  It's either him or her then, my dear; one
or the other you 'll have to give up.

MRS. GWYN.  [Motionless.]  Life's very hard on women!

MISS BEECH.  Life's only just beginning for that child, Molly.

MRS. GWYN.  You don't care if it ends for me!

MISS BEECH.  Is it as bad as that?

MRS. GWYN.  Yes.

MISS BEECH.  [Rocking hey body.]  Poor things!  Poor things!

MRS. GWYN.  Are you still fond of me?

MISS BEECH.  Yes, yes, my dear, of course I am.

MRS. GWYN.  In spite of my-wickedness?

     [She laughs.]

MISS BEECH.  Who am I to tell what's wicked and what is n't?  God
knows you're both like daughters to me!

MRS. GWYN.  [Abruptly.]  I can't.

MISS BEECH.  Molly.

MRS. GWYN.  You don't know what you're asking.

MISS BEECH.  If I could save you suffering, my dear, I would.  I hate
suffering, if it 's only a fly, I hate it.

MRS. GWYN.  [Turning away from her.]  Life is n't fair.  Peachey, go
in and leave me alone.

     [She leans back motionless.]

     [Miss BEECH gets off her seat, and stroking MRS. GWYN's arm in
     passing goes silently away.  In the opening of the wall she
     meets LEVER who is looking for his partner.  They make way for
     each other.]

LEVER.  [Going up to MRS. GWYN--gravely.]  The next is our dance,
Molly.

MRS. GWYN. [Unmoving.]  Let's sit it out here, then.

     [LEVER sits down.]

LEVER.  I've made it all right with your Uncle.

MRS. GWYN.  [Dully.]  Oh?

LEVER.  I spoke to him about the shares before dinner.

MRS. GWYN.  Yes, he told me, thank you.

LEVER.  There 's nothing to worry over, dear.

MRS. GWYN.  [Passionately.]  What does it matter about the wretched
shares now?  I 'm stifling.

     [She throws her scarf off.]

LEVER.  I don't understand what you mean by "now."

MRS. GWYN.  Don't you?

LEVER.  We were n't--Joy can't know--why should she?  I don't believe
for a minute----

MRS. GWYN.  Because you don't want to.

LEVER.  Do you mean she does?

MRS. GWYN.  Her heart knows.

     [LEVER makes a movement of discomfiture; suddenly MRS. GWYN
     looks at him as though to read his soul.]

I seem to bring you nothing but worry, Maurice.  Are you tired of me?

LEVER.  [Meeting her eyes.]  No, I am not.

MRS. GWYN.  Ah, but would you tell me if you were?

LEVER.  [Softly.]  Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.

     [MRS. GWYN struggles to look at him, then covers her face with
     her hands.]

MRS. GWYN.  If I were to give you up, you'd forget me in a month.

LEVER.  Why do you say such things?

MRS. GWYN.  If only I could believe I was necessary to you!

LEVER.  [Forcing the fervour of his voice.]  But you are!

MRS. GWYN.  Am I?  [With the ghost of a smile.]  Midsummer day!

     [She gives a laugh that breaks into a sob.]

     [The music o f a waltz sounds from the house.]

LEVER.  For God's sake, don't, Molly--I don't believe in going to
meet trouble.

MRS. GWYN.  It's staring me in the face.

LEVER.  Let the future take care of itself!

     [MRS. GWYN has turned away her face, covering it with her
     hands.]

Don't, Molly!  [Trying to pull her hands away.]  Don't!

MRS. GWYN.  Oh! what shall I do?

     [There is a silence; the music of the waltz sounds louder from
     the house.]

[Starting up.]  Listen!  One can't sit it out and dance it too.
Which is it to be, Maurice, dancing--or sitting out?  It must be one
or the other, must n't it?

LEVER.  Molly!  Molly!

MRS. GWYN.  Ah, my dear!  [Standing away from him as though to show
herself.]  How long shall I keep you?  This is all that 's left of
me.  It 's time I joined the wallflowers.  [Smiling faintly.]  It's
time I played the mother, is n't it?  [In a whisper.]  It'll be all
sitting out then.

LEVER.  Don't!  Let's go and dance, it'll do you good.

     [He puts his hands on her arms, and in a gust of passion kisses
     her lips and throat.]

MRS. GWYN.  I can't give you up--I can't.  Love me, oh! love me!

     [For a moment they stand so; then, with sudden remembrance of
     where they are, they move apart.]

LEVER.  Are you all right now, darling?

MRS. GWYN.  [Trying to smile.]  Yes, dear--quite.

LEVER.  Then let 's go, and dance.  [They go.]

[For a few seconds the hollow tree stands alone; then from the house
ROSE comes and enters it.  She takes out a bottle of champagne, wipes
it, and carries it away; but seeing MRS. GWYN's scarf lying across
the chair, she fingers it, and stops, listening to the waltz.
Suddenly draping it round her shoulders, she seizes the bottle of
champagne, and waltzes with abandon to the music, as though avenging
a long starvation of her instincts.  Thus dancing, she is surprised
by DICK, who has come to smoke a cigarette and think, at the spot
where he was told to "have a go."  ROSE, startled, stops and hugs the
bottle.]

DICK.  It's not claret, Rose, I should n't warm it.

     [ROSE, taking off the scarf, replaces it on the chair; then with
     the half-warmed bottle, she retreats.  DICK, in the swing, sits
     thinking of his fate.  Suddenly from behind the hollow tree he
     sees Joy darting forward in her day dress with her hair about
     her neck, and her skirt all torn.  As he springs towards her,
     she turns at bay.]

DICK.  Joy!

JOY.  I want Uncle Tom.

DICK.  [In consternation.]  But ought you to have got up--I thought
you were ill in bed; oughtn't you to be lying down?

JOY.  If have n't been in bed.  Where's Uncle Tom?

DICK.  But where have you been?-your dress is all torn.  Look!  [He
touches the torn skirt.]

JOY.  [Tearing it away.]  In the fields.  Where's Uncle Tom?

DICK.  Are n't you really ill then?

     [Joy shakes her head.]

DICK, [showing her the irises.]  Look at these.  They were the best I
could get.

JOY.  Don't!  I want Uncle Tom!

DICK.  Won't you take them?

JOY.  I 've got something else to do.

DICK.  [With sudden resolution.]  What do you want the Colonel for?

JOY.  I want him.

DICK.  Alone?

JOY.  Yes.

DICK.  Joy, what is the matter?

JOY.  I 've got something to tell him.

DICK.  What?  [With sudden inspiration.]  Is it about Lever?

JOY.  [In a low voice.]  The mine.

DICK.  The mine?

JOY.  It 's not--not a proper one.

DICK.  How do you mean, Joy?

JOY.  I overheard.  I don't care, I listened.  I would n't if it had
been anybody else, but I hate him.

DICK.  [Gravely.]  What did you hear?

JOY.  He 's keeping back something Uncle Tom ought to know.

DICK.  Are you sure?

     [Joy makes a rush to pass him.]

[Barring the way.]  No, wait a minute--you must!  Was it something
that really matters?--I don't want to know what.

JOY.  Yes, it was.

DICK.  What a beastly thing--are you quite certain, Joy?

JOY.  [Between her teeth.]  Yes.

DICK.  Then you must tell him, of course, even if you did overhear.
You can't stand by and see the Colonel swindled.  Whom was he talking
to?

JOY.  I won't tell you.

DICK.  [Taking her wrist.]  Was it was it your Mother?

     [Joy bends her head.]

But if it was your Mother, why does n't she----

JOY.  Let me go!

DICK.  [Still holding her.]  I mean I can't see what----

JOY.  [Passionately.]  Let me go!

DICK.  [Releasing her.]  I'm thinking of your Mother, Joy.  She would
never----

JOY.  [Covering her face.]  That man!

DICK.  But joy, just think!  There must be some mistake.  It 's so
queer--it 's quite impossible!

JOY.  He won't let her.

DICK.  Won't let her--won't let her?  But [Stopping dead, and in a
very different voice.]  Oh!

JOY.  [Passionately.]  Why d' you look at me like that?  Why can't
you speak?

     [She waits for him to speak, but he does not.]

I'm going to show what he is, so that Mother shan't speak to him
again.  I can--can't I--if I tell Uncle Tom?--can't I----?

DICK.  But Joy--if your Mother knows a thing like--that----

JOY.  She wanted to tell--she begged him--and he would n't.

DICK.  But, joy, dear, it means----

JOY.  I hate him, I want to make her hate him, and I will.

DICK.  But, Joy, dear, don't you see--if your Mother knows a thing
like that, and does n't speak of it, it means that she--it means that
you can't make her hate him--it means----If it were anybody else--
but, well, you can't give your own Mother away!

JOY.  How dare you!  How dare you!  [Turning to the hollow tree.]  It
is n't true--Oh! it is n't true!

DICK.  [In deep distress.]  Joy, dear, I never meant, I didn't
really!

     [He tries to pull her hands down from her face.]

JOY.  [Suddenly.]  Oh!  go away, go away!

     [MRS. GWYN is seen coming back.  JOY springs into the tree.
     DICK quickly steals away.  MRS. GWYN goes up to the chair and
     takes the scarf that she has come for, and is going again when
     JOY steals out to her.]

Mother!

     [MRS. GWYN stands looking at her with her teeth set on her lower
     lip.]

Oh!  Mother, it is n't true?

MRS. GWYN.  [Very still.]  What is n't true?

JOY.  That you and he are----

     [Searching her Mother's face, which is deadly still.  In a
     whisper.]

Then it is true.  Oh!

MRS. GWYN.  That's enough, Joy!  What I am is my affair--not yours--
do you understand?

JOY.  [Low and fierce.]  Yes, I do.

MRS. GWYN.  You don't.  You're only a child.

JOY.  [Passionately.]  I understand that you've hurt [She stops.]

MRS. GWYN.  Do you mean your Father?

JOY.  [Bowing her head.]  Yes, and--and me.  [She covers her face.]
I'm--I'm ashamed.

MRS. GWYN.  I brought you into the world, and you say that to me?
Have I been a bad mother to you?

JOY.  [In a smothered voice.]  Oh!  Mother!

MRS. GWYN.  Ashamed?  Am I to live all my life like a dead woman
because you're ashamed?  Am I to live like the dead because you 're a
child that knows nothing of life?  Listen, Joy, you 'd better
understand this once for all.  Your Father has no right over me and
he knows it.  We 've been hateful to each other for years.  Can you
understand that?  Don't cover your face like a child--look at me.

     [Joy drops her hands, and lifts her face.  MRS. GWYN looks back
     at her, her lips are quivering; she goes on speaking with
     stammering rapidity.]

D' you think--because I suffered when you were born and because I 've
suffered since with every ache you ever had, that that gives you the
right to dictate to me now?  [In a dead voice.]  I've been unhappy
enough and I shall be unhappy enough in the time to come.  [Meeting
the hard wonder in Joy's face.]  Oh!  you untouched things, you're as
hard and cold as iron!

JOY.  I would do anything for you, Mother.

MRS. GWYN.  Except--let me live, Joy.  That's the only thing you won't
do for me, I quite understand.

JOY.  Oh!  Mother, you don't understand--I want you so; and I seem to
be nothing to you now.

MRS. GWYN.  Nothing to me?  [She smiles.]

JOY.  Mother, darling, if you're so unhappy let's forget it all,
let's go away and I 'll be everything to you, I promise.

MRS. GWYN.  [With the ghost of a laugh.]  Ah, Joy!

JOY.  I would try so hard.

MRS. GWYN.  [With the same quivering smile.]  My darling, I know you
would, until you fell in love yourself.

JOY.  Oh, Mother, I wouldn't, I never would, I swear it.

MRS. GWYN.  There has never been a woman, joy, that did not fall in
love.

JOY.  [In a despairing whisper.]  But it 's wrong of you it's wicked!

MRS. GWYN.  If it's wicked, I shall pay for it, not you!

JOY.  But I want to save you, Mother!

MRS. GWYN.  Save me?  [Breaking into laughter.]

JOY.  I can't bear it that you--if you 'll only--I'll never leave
you.  You think I don't know what I 'm saying, but I do, because even
now I--I half love somebody.  Oh, Mother!  [Pressing her breast.]
I feel--I feel so awful--as if everybody knew.

MRS. GWYN.  You think I'm a monster to hurt you.  Ah!  yes!  You'll
understand better some day.

JOY.  [In a sudden outburst of excited fear.]  I won't believe it--
I--I--can't--you're deserting me, Mother.

MRS. GWYN.  Oh, you untouched things!  You----

     [Joy' looks up suddenly, sees her face, and sinks down on her
     knees.]

JOY.  Mother--it 's for me!

GWYN.  Ask for my life, JOY--don't be afraid.

     [Joy turns her face away.  MRS. GWYN bends suddenly and touches
     her daughter's hair; JOY shrinks from that touch.]

[Recoiling as though she had been stung.]  I forgot--I 'm deserting
you.

     [And swiftly without looking back she goes away. Joy, left alone
     under the hollow tree, crouches lower, and her shoulders shake.
     Here DICK finds her, when he hears no longer any sound o f
     voices.  He falls on his knees beside her.]

DICK.  Oh!  Joy; dear, don't cry.  It's so dreadful to see you!  I 'd
do anything not to see you cry!  Say something.

     [Joy is still for a moment, then the shaking of the shoulders
     begins again.]

Joy, darling!  It's so awful, you 'll make yourself ill, and it is
n't worth it, really.  I 'd do anything to save you pain--won't you
stop just for a minute?

     [Joy is still again.]

Nothing in the world 's worth your crying, Joy.  Give me just a
little look!

JOY.  [Looking; in a smothered voice.] Don't!

DICK.  You do look so sweet!  Oh, Joy, I'll comfort you, I'll take it
all on myself.  I know all about it.

     [Joy gives a sobbing laugh]

I do.  I 've had trouble too, I swear I have.  It gets better, it
does really.

JOY.  You don't know--it's--it's----

DICK.  Don't think about it!  No, no, no!  I know exactly what it's
like.  [He strokes her arm.]

JOY.  [Shrinking, in a whisper.]  You mustn't.

     [The music of a waltz is heard again.]

DICK.  Look here, joy!  It's no good, we must talk it over calmly.

JOY.  You don't see!  It's the--it 's the disgrace----

DICK.  Oh! as to disgrace--she's your Mother, whatever she does; I'd
like to see anybody say anything about her--[viciously]--I'd punch
his head.

JOY.  [Gulping her tears.]  That does n't help.

DICK.  But if she doesn't love your Father----

JOY.  But she's married to him!

DICK.  [Hastily.]  Yes, of course, I know, marriage is awfully
important; but a man understands these things.

     [Joy looks at him.  Seeing the impression he has made, he tries
     again.]

I mean, he understands better than a woman.  I've often argued about
moral questions with men up at Oxford.

JOY.  [Catching at a straw.]  But there's nothing to argue about.

DICK.  [Hastily.]  Of course, I believe in morals.

     [They stare solemnly at each other.]

Some men don't.  But I can't help seeing marriage is awfully
important.

JOY.  [Solemnly.]  It's sacred.

DICK.  Yes, I know, but there must be exceptions, Joy.

Joy.  [Losing herself a little in the stress of this discussion.]
How can there be exceptions if a thing 's sacred?

DICK.  [Earnestly.]  All rules have exceptions; that's true, you
know; it's a proverb.

JOY.  It can't be true about marriage--how can it when----?

DICK.  [With intense earnestness.]  But look here, Joy, I know a
really clever man--an author.  He says that if marriage is a failure
people ought to be perfectly free; it isn't everybody who believes
that marriage is everything.  Of course, I believe it 's sacred, but
if it's a failure, I do think it seems awful--don't you?

JOY.  I don't know--yes--if--[Suddenly]  But it's my own Mother!

DICK.  [Gravely.]  I know, of course.  I can't expect you to see it
in your own case like this.  [With desperation.]  But look here, Joy,
this'll show you!  If a person loves a person, they have to decide,
have n't they?  Well, then, you see, that 's what your Mother's done.

JOY.  But that does n't show me anything!

DICK.  But it does.  The thing is to look at it as if it was n't
yourself.  If it had been you and me in love, Joy, and it was wrong,
like them, of course [ruefully]  I know you'd have decided right.
[Fiercely.]  But I swear I should have decided wrong.
[Triumphantly.]  That 's why I feel I understand your Mother.

JOY.  [Brushing her sleeve across her eyes.]  Oh, Dick, you are so
sweet--and--and--funny!

DICK.  [Sliding his arm about her.]  I love you, Joy, that 's why,
and I 'll love you till you don't feel it any more.  I will.  I'll
love you all day and every day; you shan't miss anything, I swear it.
It 's such a beautiful night--it 's on purpose.  Look' [JOY looks; he
looks at her.]  But it 's not so beautiful as you.

JOY.  [Bending her head.]  You mustn't.  I don't know--what's coming?

DICK.  [Sidling closer.]  Are n't your knees tired, darling?  I--I
can't get near you properly.

JOY.  [With a sob.]  Oh!  Dick, you are a funny--comfort!

DICK.  We'll stick together, Joy, always; nothing'll matter then.

     [They struggle to their feet-the waltz sounds louder.]

You're missing it all!  I can't bear you to miss the dancing.  It
seems so queer!  Couldn't we?  Just a little turn?

JOY.  No, no?

DICK.  Oh!  try!

     [He takes her gently by the waist, she shrinks back.]

JOY.  [Brokenly.]  No-no!  Oh!  Dick-to-morrow 'll be so awful.

DICK.  To-morrow shan't hurt you, Joy; nothing shall ever hurt you
again.

     [She looks at him, and her face changes; suddenly she buries it
     against his shoulder.]

[They stand so just a moment in the moon light; then turning to the
river move slowly out of sight.  Again the hollow tree is left alone.
The music of the waltz has stopped.  The voices of MISS BEECH and the
COLONEL are heard approaching from the house.  They appear in the
opening of the wall.  The COLONEL carries a pair of field glasses
with which to look at the Moon.]

COLONEL.  Charming to see Molly dance with Lever, their steps go so
well together!  I can always tell when a woman's enjoying herself,
Peachey.

MISS BEECH.  [Sharply.]  Can you?  You're very clever.

COLONEL.  Wonderful, that moon!  I'm going to have a look at her!
Splendid glasses these, Peachy [he screws them out], not a better
pair in England.  I remember in Burmah with these glasses I used to
be able to tell a man from a woman at two miles and a quarter.  And
that's no joke, I can tell you.  [But on his way to the moon, he has
taken a survey of the earth to the right along the river.  In a low
but excited voice]  I say, I say--is it one of the maids--the
baggage!  Why!  It's Dick!  By George, she's got her hair down,
Peachey!  It's Joy!

     [MISS BEECH goes to look.  He makes as though to hand the
     glasses to her, but puts them to his own eyes instead--
     excitedly.]

It is!  What about her headache?  By George, they're kissing.  I say,
Peachey!  I shall have to tell Nell!

MISS BEECH.  Are you sure they're kissing?  Well, that's some
comfort.

COLONEL.  They're at the stile now.  Oughtn't I to stop them, eh?
[He stands on tiptoe.]  We must n't spy on them, dash it all.  [He
drops the glasses.] They're out of sight now.

MISS BEECH.  [To herself.]  He said he wouldn't let her.

COLONEL.  What!  have you been encouraging them!

MISS BEECH.  Don't be in such a hurry!

     [She moves towards the hollow tree.]

COLONEL.  [Abstractedly.]  By George, Peachey, to think that Nell and
I were once--Poor Nell!  I remember just such a night as this

     [He stops, and stares before him, sighing.]

MISS BEECH, [Impressively.]  It's a comfort she's got that good young
man.  She's found out that her mother and this Mr. Lever are--you
know.

COLONEL.  [Losing all traces of his fussiness, and drawing himself up
as though he were on parade.]  You tell me that my niece?

MISS BEECH.  Out of her own mouth!

COLONEL.  [Bowing his head.]  I never would have believed she'd have
forgotten herself.

MISS BEECH.  [Very solemnly.]  Ah, my dear!  We're all the same;
we're all as hollow as that tree!  When it's ourselves it's always a
special case!

     [The COLONEL makes a movement of distress, and Miss BEECH goes
     to him.]

Don't you take it so to heart, my dear!

     [A silence.]

COLONEL.  [Shaking his head.]  I couldn't have believed Molly would
forget that child.

MISS BEECH.  [Sadly.]  They must go their own ways, poor things!  She
can't put herself in the child's place, and the child can't put
herself in Molly's.  A woman and a girl--there's the tree of life
between them!

COLONEL.  [Staring into the tree to see indeed if that were the tree
alluded to.]  It's a grief to me, Peachey, it's a grief!  [He sinks
into a chair, stroking his long moustaches.  Then to avenge his
hurt.]  Shan't tell Nell--dashed if I do anything to make the trouble
worse!

MISS BEECH.  [Nodding.]  There's suffering enough, without adding to
it with our trumpery judgments!  If only things would last between
them!

COLONEL.  [Fiercely.]  Last!  By George, they'd better----

     [He stops, and looking up with a queer sorry look.]

I say, Peachey Life's very funny!

MISS BEECH.  Men and women are!  [Touching his forehead tenderly.]
There, there--take care of your poor, dear head!  Tsst!  The blessed
innocents!

     [She pulls the COLONEL'S sleeve.  They slip away towards the
     house, as JOY and DICK come back.  They are still linked
     together, and stop by the hollow tree.]

JOY.  [In a whisper.]  Dick, is love always like this?

DICK.  [Putting his arms around her, with conviction.] It's never
been like this before.  It's you and me!

     [He kisses her on the lips.]



                              The curtain falls.





End of this Project Gutenberg Etext of JOY, by John Galsworthy






STRIFE

A DRAMA IN THREE ACTS




PERSONS OF THE PLAY

JOHN ANTHONY, Chairman of the Trenartha Tin Plate Works
EDGAR ANTHONY, his Son

FREDERIC H. WILDER, |
WILLIAM SCANTLEBURY,| Directors Of the same
OLIVER WANKLIN,     |

HENRY TENCH, Secretary of the same
FRANCIS UNDERWOOD, C.E., Manager of the same
SIMON HARNESS, a Trades Union official

DAVID ROBERTS, |
JAMES GREEN,   |
JOHN BULGIN,   | the workmen's committee
HENRY THOMAS,  |
GEORGE ROUS,   |

HENRY ROUS,         |
LEWIS,              |
JAGO,               |
EVANS,              | workman at the Trenartha Tin Plate Works
A BLACKSMITH,       |
DAVIES,             |
A RED-HAIRED YOUTH. |
BROWN               |

FROST, valet to John Anthony
ENID UNDERWOOD, Wife of Francis Underwood, daughter of John Anthony
ANNIE ROBERTS, wife of David Roberts
MADGE THOMAS, daughter of Henry Thomas
MRS. ROUS, mother of George and Henry Rous
MRS. BULGIN, wife of John Bulgin
MRS. YEO, wife of a workman
A PARLOURMAID to the Underwoods
JAN, Madge's brother, a boy of ten
A CROWD OF MEN ON STRIKE





ACT I.  The dining-room of the Manager's house.

ACT II,
     SCENE I.  The kitchen of the Roberts's cottage near the works.
     SCENE II.  A space outside the works.

ACT III.  The drawing-room of the Manager's house.



The action takes place on February 7th between the hours of noon and
six in the afternoon, close to the Trenartha Tin Plate Works, on the
borders of England and Wales, where a strike has been in progress
throughout the winter.





ACT I


     It is noon.  In the Underwoods' dining-room a bright fire is
     burning.  On one side of the fireplace are double-doors leading
     to the drawing-room, on the other side a door leading to the
     hall.  In the centre of the room a long dining-table without a
     cloth is set out as a Board table.  At the head of it, in the
     Chairman's seat, sits JOHN ANTHONY, an old man, big, clean-
     shaven, and high-coloured, with thick white hair, and thick dark
     eyebrows.  His movements are rather slow and feeble, but his
     eyes are very much alive.  There is a glass of water by his
     side.  On his right sits his son EDGAR, an earnest-looking man
     of thirty, reading a newspaper.  Next him WANKLIN, a man with
     jutting eyebrows, and silver-streaked light hair, is bending
     over transfer papers.  TENCH, the Secretary, a short and rather
     humble, nervous man, with side whiskers, stands helping him.  On
     WANKLIN'S right sits UNDERWOOD, the Manager, a quiet man, with
     along, stiff jaw, and steady eyes.  Back to the fire is
     SCANTLEBURY, a very large, pale, sleepy man, with grey hair,
     rather bald.  Between him and the Chairman are two empty chairs.

WILDER.  [Who is lean, cadaverous, and complaining, with drooping
grey moustaches, stands before the fire.]  I say, this fire's the
devil!  Can I have a screen, Tench?

SCANTLEBURY.  A screen, ah!

TENCH.  Certainly, Mr. Wilder.  [He looks at UNDERWOOD.]  That is--
perhaps the Manager--perhaps Mr. Underwood----

SCANTLEBURY.  These fireplaces of yours, Underwood----

UNDERWOOD.  [Roused from studying some papers.]  A screen?  Rather!
I'm sorry.  [He goes to the door with a little smile.]  We're not
accustomed to complaints of too much fire down here just now.

     [He speaks as though he holds a pipe between his teeth, slowly,
     ironically.]

WILDER.  [In an injured voice.]  You mean the men.  H'm!

     [UNDERWOOD goes out.]

SCANTLEBURY.  Poor devils!

WILDER.  It's their own fault, Scantlebury.

EDGAR.  [Holding out his paper.]  There's great distress among them,
according to the Trenartha News.

WILDER.  Oh, that rag!  Give it to Wanklin.  Suit his Radical views.
They call us monsters, I suppose.  The editor of that rubbish ought
to be shot.

EDGAR.  [Reading.]  "If the Board of worthy gentlemen who control the
Trenartha Tin Plate Works from their arm-chairs in London would
condescend to come and see for themselves the conditions prevailing
amongst their work-people during this strike----"

WILDER.  Well, we have come.

EDGAR.  [Continuing.]  "We cannot believe that even their leg-of-
mutton hearts would remain untouched."

     [WANKLIN takes the paper from him.]

WILDER.  Ruffian!  I remember that fellow when he had n't a penny to
his name; little snivel of a chap that's made his way by black-
guarding everybody who takes a different view to himself.

     [ANTHONY says something that is not heard.]

WILDER.  What does your father say?

EDGAR.  He says "The kettle and the pot."

WILDER.  H'm!

     [He sits down next to SCANTLEBURY.]

SCANTLEBURY.  [Blowing out his cheeks.]  I shall boil if I don't get
that screen.

     [UNDERWOOD and ENID enter with a screen, which they place before
     the fire.  ENID is tall; she has a small, decided face, and is
     twenty-eight years old.]

ENID.  Put it closer, Frank.  Will that do, Mr. Wilder?  It's the
highest we've got.

WILDER.  Thanks, capitally.

SCANTLEBURY.  [Turning, with a sigh of pleasure.]  Ah!  Merci,
Madame!

ENID.  Is there anything else you want, Father?  [ANTHONY shakes his
head.]  Edgar--anything?

EDGAR.  You might give me a "J" nib, old girl.

ENID.  There are some down there by Mr. Scantlebury.

SCANTLEBURY.  [Handing a little box of nibs.]  Ah!  your brother uses
"J's."  What does the manager use?  [With expansive politeness.]
What does your husband use, Mrs. Underwood?

UNDERWOOD.  A quill!

SCANTLEBURY.  The homely product of the goose.  [He holds out
quills.]

UNDERWOOD.  [Drily.]  Thanks, if you can spare me one.  [He takes a
quill.]  What about lunch, Enid?

ENID.  [Stopping at the double-doors and looking back.]  We're going
to have lunch here, in the drawing-room, so you need n't hurry with
your meeting.

     [WANKLIN and WILDER bow, and she goes out.]

SCANTLEBURY.  [Rousing himself, suddenly.]  Ah!  Lunch!  That hotel--
Dreadful!  Did you try the whitebait last night?  Fried fat!

WILDER.  Past twelve!  Are n't you going to read the minutes, Tench?

TENCH.  [Looking for the CHAIRMAN'S assent, reads in a rapid and
monotonous voice.]  "At a Board Meeting held the 31st of January at
the Company's Offices, 512, Cannon Street, E.C.  Present--Mr. Anthony
in the chair, Messrs.  F. H. Wilder, William Scantlebury, Oliver
Wanklin, and Edgar Anthony.  Read letters from the Manager dated
January 20th, 23d, 25th, 28th, relative to the strike at the
Company's Works.  Read letters to the Manager of January 21st, 24th,
26th, 29th.  Read letter from Mr. Simon Harness, of the Central
Union, asking for an interview with the Board.  Read letter from the
Men's Committee, signed David Roberts, James Green, John Bulgin,
Henry Thomas, George Rous, desiring conference with the Board; and it
was resolved that a special Board Meeting be called for February 7th
at the house of the Manager, for the purpose of discussing the
situation with Mr. Simon Harness and the Men's Committee on the spot.
Passed twelve transfers, signed and sealed nine certificates and one
balance certificate."

[He pushes the book over to the CHAIRMAN.]

ANTHONY.  [With a heavy sigh.]  If it's your pleasure, sign the same.

     [He signs, moving the pen with difficulty. ]

WANKLIN.  What's the Union's game, Tench?  They have n't made up
their split with the men.  What does Harness want this interview for?

TENCH.  Hoping we shall come to a compromise, I think, sir; he's
having a meeting with the men this afternoon.

WILDER.  Harness!  Ah!  He's one of those cold-blooded, cool-headed
chaps.  I distrust them.  I don't know that we didn't make a mistake
to come down.  What time'll the men be here?

UNDERWOOD.  Any time now.

WILDER.  Well, if we're not ready, they'll have to wait--won't do
them any harm to cool their heels a bit.

SCANTLEBURY. [Slowly.]  Poor devils!  It's snowing.  What weather!

UNDERWOOD.  [With meaning slowness.]  This house'll be the warmest
place they've been in this winter.

WILDER.  Well, I hope we're going to settle this business in time for
me to catch the 6.30.  I've got to take my wife to Spain to-morrow.
[Chattily.]  My old father had a strike at his works in '69 ; just
such a February as this.  They wanted to shoot him.

WANKLIN.  What!  In the close season?

WILDER.  By George, there was no close season for employers then!  He
used to go down to his office with a pistol in his pocket.

SCANTLEBURY.  [Faintly alarmed.]  Not seriously?

WILDER.  [With finality.]  Ended in his shootin' one of 'em in the
legs.

SCANTLEBURY.  [Unavoidably feeling his thigh.]  No?  Which?

ANTHONY.  [Lifting the agenda paper.]  To consider the policy of the
Board in relation to the strike.  [There is a silence.]

WILDER.  It's this infernal three-cornered duel--the Union, the men,
and ourselves.

WANKLIN.  We need n't consider the Union.

WILDER.  It's my experience that you've always got to, consider the
Union, confound them!  If the Union were going to withdraw their
support from the men, as they've done, why did they ever allow them
to strike at all?

EDGAR.  We've had that over a dozen times.

WILDER.  Well, I've never understood it!  It's beyond me.  They talk
of the engineers' and furnace-men's demands being excessive--so they
are--but that's not enough to make the Union withdraw their support.
What's behind it?

UNDERWOOD.  Fear of strikes at Harper's and Tinewell's.

WILDER.  [With triumph.]  Afraid of other strikes--now, that's a
reason!  Why could n't we have been told that before?

UNDERWOOD.  You were.

TENCH.  You were absent from the Board that day, sir.

SCANTLEBURY.  The men must have seen they had no chance when the
Union gave them up.  It's madness.

UNDERWOOD.  It's Roberts!

WILDER.  Just our luck, the men finding a fanatical firebrand like
Roberts for leader.  [A pause.]

WANKLIN.  [Looking at ANTHONY.]  Well?

WILDER.  [Breaking in fussily.]  It's a regular mess.  I don't like
the position we're in; I don't like it; I've said so for a long time.
[Looking at WANKLIN.]  When Wanklin and I came down here before
Christmas it looked as if the men must collapse.  You thought so too,
Underwood.

UNDERWOOD.  Yes.

WILDER.  Well, they haven't!  Here we are, going from bad to worse
losing our customers--shares going down!

SCANTLEBURY.  [Shaking his head.]  M'm!  M'm!

WANKLIN.  What loss have we made by this strike, Tench?

TENCH.  Over fifty thousand, sir!

SCANTLEBURY, [Pained.]  You don't say!

WILDER.  We shall never got it back.

TENCH.  No, sir.

WILDER.  Who'd have supposed the men were going to stick out like
this--nobody suggested that. [Looking angrily at TENCH.]

SCANTLEBURY.  [Shaking his head.]  I've never liked a fight--never
shall.

ANTHONY.  No surrender!  [All look at him.]

WILDER.  Who wants to surrender?  [ANTHONY looks at him.]  I--I want
to act reasonably.  When the men sent Roberts up to the Board in
December--then was the time.  We ought to have humoured him; instead
of that the Chairman--[Dropping his eyes before ANTHONY'S]--er--we
snapped his head off.  We could have got them in then by a little
tact.

ANTHONY.  No compromise!

WILDER.  There we are!  This strike's been going on now since
October, and as far as I can see it may last another six months.
Pretty mess we shall be in by then.  The only comfort is, the men'll
be in a worse!

EDGAR.  [To UNDERWOOD.]  What sort of state are they really in,
Frank?

UNDERWOOD.  [Without expression.]  Damnable!

WILDER.  Well, who on earth would have thought they'd have held on
like this without support!

UNDERWOOD.  Those who know them.

WILDER.  I defy any one to know them!  And what about tin?  Price
going up daily.  When we do get started we shall have to work off our
contracts at the top of the market.

WANKLIN.  What do you say to that, Chairman?

ANTHONY.  Can't be helped!

WILDER.  Shan't pay a dividend till goodness knows when!

SCANTLEBURY.  [With emphasis.]  We ought to think of the
shareholders.  [Turning heavily.]  Chairman, I say we ought to think
of the shareholders.  [ANTHONY mutters.]

SCANTLEBURY.  What's that?

TENCH.  The Chairman says he is thinking of you, sir.

SCANTLEBURY.  [Sinking back into torpor.]  Cynic!

WILDER.  It's past a joke.  I don't want to go without a dividend for
years if the Chairman does.  We can't go on playing ducks and drakes
with the Company's prosperity.

EDGAR.  [Rather ashamedly.]  I think we ought to consider the men.

     [All but ANTHONY fidget in their seats.]

SCANTLEBURY.  [With a sigh.]  We must n't think of our private
feelings, young man.  That'll never do.

EDGAR.  [Ironically.]  I'm not thinking of our feelings.  I'm
thinking of the men's.

WILDER.  As to that--we're men of business.

WANKLIN.  That is the little trouble.

EDGAR.  There's no necessity for pushing things so far in the face of
all this suffering--it's--it's cruel.

     [No one speaks, as though EDGAR had uncovered something whose
     existence no man prizing his self-respect could afford to
     recognise.]

WANKLIN.  [With an ironical smile.]  I'm afraid we must n't base our
policy on luxuries like sentiment.

EDGAR.  I detest this state of things.

ANTHONY.  We did n't seek the quarrel.

EDGAR.  I know that sir, but surely we've gone far enough.

ANTHONY.  No. [All look at one another.]

WANKLIN.  Luxuries apart, Chairman, we must look out what we're
doing.

ANTHONY.  Give way to the men once and there'll be no end to it.

WANKLIN.  I quite agree, but----

     [ANTHONY Shakes his head]

You make it a question of bedrock principle?

     [ANTHONY nods.]

Luxuries again, Chairman!  The shares are below par.

WILDER.  Yes, and they'll drop to a half when we pass the next
dividend.

SCANTLEBURY.  [With alarm.]  Come, come!  Not so bad as that.

WILDER.  [Grimly.]  You'll see!  [Craning forward to catch ANTHONY'S
speech.]  I didn't catch----

TENCH.  [Hesitating.]  The Chairman says, sir, "Fais que--que--devra."

EDGAR.  [Sharply.]  My father says: "Do what we ought--and let things
rip."

WILDER.  Tcha!

SCANTLEBURY.  [Throwing up his hands.]  The Chairman's a Stoic--I
always said the Chairman was a Stoic.

WILDER.  Much good that'll do us.

WANKLIN.  [Suavely.]  Seriously, Chairman, are you going to let the
ship sink under you, for the sake of--a principle?

ANTHONY.  She won't sink.

SCANTLEBURY.  [With alarm.]  Not while I'm on the Board I hope.

ANTHONY.  [With a twinkle.]  Better rat, Scantlebury.

SCANTLEBURY.  What a man!

ANTHONY.  I've always fought them; I've never been beaten yet.

WANKLIN.  We're with you in theory, Chairman.  But we're not all made
of cast-iron.

ANTHONY.  We've only to hold on.

WILDER.  [Rising and going to the fire.]  And go to the devil as fast
as we can!

ANTHONY.  Better go to the devil than give in!

WILDER.  [Fretfully.]  That may suit you, sir, but it does n't suit
me, or any one else I should think.

     [ANTHONY looks him in the face-a silence.]

EDGAR.  I don't see how we can get over it that to go on like this
means starvation to the men's wives and families.

     [WILDER turns abruptly to the fire, and SCANTLEBURY puts out a
     hand to push the idea away.]

WANKLIN.  I'm afraid again that sounds a little sentimental.

EDGAR.  Men of business are excused from decency, you think?

WILDER.  Nobody's more sorry for the men than I am, but if they
[lashing himself]  choose to be such a pig-headed lot, it's nothing
to do with us; we've quite enough on our hands to think of ourselves
and the shareholders.

EDGAR.  [Irritably.]  It won't kill the shareholders to miss a
dividend or two; I don't see that that's reason enough for knuckling
under.

SCANTLEBURY.  [With grave discomfort.]  You talk very lightly of your
dividends, young man; I don't know where we are.

WILDER.  There's only one sound way of looking at it.  We can't go on
ruining ourselves with this strike.

ANTHONY.  No caving in!

SCANTLEBURY.  [With a gesture of despair.]  Look at him!

     [ANTHONY'S leaning back in his chair.  They do look at him.]

WILDER.  [Returning to his seat.]  Well, all I can say is, if that's
the Chairman's view, I don't know what we've come down here for.

ANTHONY.  To tell the men that we've got nothing for them----
[Grimly.]  They won't believe it till they hear it spoken in plain
English.

WILDER.  H'm!  Shouldn't be a bit surprised if that brute Roberts had
n't got us down here with the very same idea.  I hate a man with a
grievance.

EDGAR.  [Resentfully.]  We didn't pay him enough for his discovery.
I always said that at the time.

WILDER.  We paid him five hundred and a bonus of two hundred three
years later.  If that's not enough!  What does he want, for goodness'
sake?

TENCH. [Complainingly.]  Company made a hundred thousand out of his
brains, and paid him seven hundred--that's the way he goes on, sir.

WILDER.  The man's a rank agitator!  Look here, I hate the Unions.
But now we've got Harness here let's get him to settle the whole
thing.

ANTHONY.  No! [Again they look at him.]

UNDERWOOD.  Roberts won't let the men assent to that.

SCANTLEBURY.  Fanatic!  Fanatic!

WILDER.  [Looking at ANTHONY.]  And not the only one!  [FROST enters
from the hall.]

FROST.  [To ANTHONY.]  Mr. Harness from the Union, waiting, sir.  The
men are here too, sir.

     [ANTHONY nods.  UNDERWOOD goes to the door, returning with
     HARNESS, a pale, clean-shaven man with hollow cheeks, quick
     eyes, and lantern jaw--FROST has retired.]

UNDERWOOD.  [Pointing to TENCH'S chair.]  Sit there next the
Chairman, Harness, won't you?

     [At HARNESS'S appearance, the Board have drawn together, as it
     were, and turned a little to him, like cattle at a dog.]

HARNESS.  [With a sharp look round, and a bow.]  Thanks!  [He sits---
his accent is slightly nasal.]  Well, gentlemen, we're going to do
business at last, I hope.

WILDER.  Depends on what you call business, Harness.  Why don't you
make the men come in?

HARNESS.  [Sardonically.]  The men are far more in the right than you
are.  The question with us is whether we shan't begin to support them
again.

     [He ignores them all, except ANTHONY, to whom he turns in
     speaking.]

ANTHONY.  Support them if you like; we'll put in free labour and have
done with it.

HARNESS.  That won't do, Mr. Anthony.  You can't get free labour, and
you know it.

ANTHONY.  We shall see that.

HARNESS.  I'm quite frank with you.  We were forced to withhold our
support from your men because some of their demands are in excess of
current rates.  I expect to make them withdraw those demands to-day:
if they do, take it straight from me, gentlemen, we shall back them
again at once.  Now, I want to see something fixed upon before I go
back to-night.  Can't we have done with this old-fashioned tug-of-war
business?  What good's it doing you?  Why don't you recognise once
for all that these people are men like yourselves, and want what's
good for them just as you want what's good for you [Bitterly.]  Your
motor-cars, and champagne, and eight-course dinners.

ANTHONY.  If the men will come in, we'll do something for them.

HARNESS.  [Ironically.]  Is that your opinion too, sir--and yours--
and yours?  [The Directors do not answer.]  Well, all I can say is:
It's a kind of high and mighty aristocratic tone I thought we'd grown
out of--seems I was mistaken.

ANTHONY.  It's the tone the men use.  Remains to be seen which can
hold out longest--they without us, or we without them.

HARNESS.  As business men, I wonder you're not ashamed of this waste
of force, gentlemen.  You know what it'll all end in.

ANTHONY.  What?

HARNESS.  Compromise--it always does.

SCANTLEBURY.  Can't you persuade the men that their interests are the
same as ours?

HARNESS. [Turning, ironically.]  I could persuade them of that, sir,
if they were.

WILDER.  Come, Harness, you're a clever man, you don't believe all
the Socialistic claptrap that's talked nowadays.  There 's no real
difference between their interests and ours.

HARNESS.  There's just one very simple question I'd like to put to
you.  Will you pay your men one penny more than they force you to pay
them?

     [WILDER is silent.]

WANKLIN.  [Chiming in.]  I humbly thought that not to pay more than
was necessary was the A B C of commerce.

HARNESS.  [With irony.]  Yes, that seems to be the A B C of commerce,
sir; and the A B C of commerce is between your interests and the
men's.

SCANTLEBURY.  [Whispering.]  We ought to arrange something.

HARNESS.  [Drily.]  Am I to understand then, gentlemen, that your
Board is going to make no concessions?

     [WANKLIN and WILDER bend forward as if to speak, but stop.]

ANTHONY.  [Nodding.]  None.

     [WANKLIN and WILDER again bend forward, and SCANTLEBURY gives an
     unexpected grunt.]

HARNESS.  You were about to say something, I believe?

     [But SCANTLEBURY says nothing.]

EDGAR.  [Looking up suddenly.]  We're sorry for the state of the men.

HARNESS.  [Icily.]  The men have no use for your pity, sir.  What
they want is justice.

ANTHONY.  Then let them be just.

HARNESS.  For that word "just" read "humble," Mr. Anthony.  Why
should they be humble?  Barring the accident of money, are n't they
as good men as you?

ANTHONY.  Cant!

HARNESS.  Well, I've been five years in America.  It colours a man's
notions.

SCANTLEBURY.  [Suddenly, as though avenging his uncompleted grunt.]
Let's have the men in and hear what they've got to say!

     [ANTHONY nods, and UNDERWOOD goes out by the single door.]

HARNESS.  [Drily.]  As I'm to have an interview with them this
afternoon, gentlemen, I 'll ask you to postpone your final decision
till that's over.

     [Again ANTHONY nods, and taking up his glass drinks.]

     [UNDERWOOD comes in again, followed by ROBERTS, GREEN, BULGIN,
     THOMAS, ROUS.  They file in, hat in hand, and stand silent in a
     row.  ROBERTS is lean, of middle height, with a slight stoop.
     He has a little rat-gnawn, brown-grey beard, moustaches, high
     cheek-bones, hollow cheeks, small fiery eyes.  He wears an old
     and grease-stained blue serge suit, and carries an old bowler
     hat.  He stands nearest the Chairman.  GREEN, next to him, has a
     clean, worn face, with a small grey goatee beard and drooping
     moustaches, iron spectacles, and mild, straightforward eyes.  He
     wears an overcoat, green with age, and a linen collar.  Next to
     him is BULGIN, a tall, strong man, with a dark moustache, and
     fighting jaw, wearing a red muffler, who keeps changing his cap
     from one hand to the other.  Next to him is THOMAS, an old man
     with a grey moustache, full beard, and weatherbeaten, bony face,
     whose overcoat discloses a lean, plucked-looking neck.  On his
     right, ROUS, the youngest of the five, looks like a soldier; he
     has a glitter in his eyes.]

UNDERWOOD.  [Pointing.]  There are some chairs there against the
wall, Roberts; won't you draw them up and sit down?

ROBERTS.  Thank you, Mr. Underwood--we'll stand in the presence of
the Board.  [He speaks in a biting and staccato voice, rolling his
r's, pronouncing his a's like an Italian a, and his consonants short
and crisp.]  How are you, Mr. Harness?  Did n't expect t' have the
pleasure of seeing you till this afternoon.

HARNESS.  [Steadily.]  We shall meet again then, Roberts.

ROBERTS.  Glad to hear that; we shall have some news for you to take
to your people.

ANTHONY.  What do the men want?

ROBERTS.  [Acidly.]  Beg pardon, I don't quite catch the Chairman's
remark.

TENCH.  [From behind the Chairman's chair.]  The Chairman wishes to
know what the men have to say.

ROBERTS.  It's what the Board has to say we've come to hear.  It's
for the Board to speak first.

ANTHONY.  The Board has nothing to say.

ROBERTS.  [Looking along the line of men.]  In that case we're
wasting the Directors' time.  We'll be taking our feet off this
pretty carpet.

     [He turns, the men move slowly, as though hypnotically
     influenced.]

WANKLIN: [Suavely.]  Come, Roberts, you did n't give us this long
cold journey for the pleasure of saying that.

THOMAS.  [A pure Welshman.]  No, sir, an' what I say iss----

ROBERTS.[Bitingly.]  Go on, Henry Thomas, go on.  You 're better able
to speak to the--Directors than me.  [THOMAS is silent.]

TENCH.  The Chairman means, Roberts, that it was the men who asked
for the conference, the Board wish to hear what they have to say.

ROBERTS.  Gad!  If I was to begin to tell ye all they have to say, I
wouldn't be finished to-day.  And there'd be some that'd wish they'd
never left their London palaces.

HARNESS.  What's your proposition, man?  Be reasonable.

ROBERTS.  You want reason Mr. Harness?  Take a look round this
afternoon before the meeting.  [He looks at the men; no sound escapes
them.]  You'll see some very pretty scenery.

HARNESS.  All right my friend; you won't put me off.

ROBERTS.  [To the men.]  We shan't put Mr. Harness off.  Have some
champagne with your lunch, Mr. Harness; you'll want it, sir.

HARNESS.  Come, get to business, man!

THOMAS.  What we're asking, look you, is just simple justice.

ROBERTS.  [Venomously.]  Justice from London?  What are you talking
about, Henry Thomas?  Have you gone silly?  [THOMAS is silent.]  We
know very well what we are--discontented dogs--never satisfied.  What
did the Chairman tell me up in London?  That I did n't know what I
was talking about.  I was a foolish, uneducated man, that knew
nothing of the wants of the men I spoke for,

EDGAR.  Do please keep to the point.

ANTHONY.  [Holding up his hand.]  There can only be one master,
Roberts.

ROBERTS.  Then, be Gad, it'll be us.

     [There is a silence; ANTHONY and ROBERTS stare at one another.]

UNDERWOOD.  If you've nothing to say to the Directors, Roberts,
perhaps you 'll let Green or Thomas speak for the men.

     [GREEN and THOMAS look anxiously at ROBERTS, at each other, and
     the other men.]

GREEN.  [An Englishman.]  If I'd been listened to, gentlemen----

THOMAS.  What I'fe got to say iss what we'fe all got to say----

ROBERTS.  Speak for yourself, Henry Thomas.

SCANTLEBURY.  [With a gesture of deep spiritual discomfort.]  Let the
poor men call their souls their own!

ROBERTS.  Aye, they shall keep their souls, for it's not much body
that you've left them, Mr. [with biting emphasis, as though the word
were an offence]  Scantlebury!  [To the men.]  Well, will you speak,
or shall I speak for you?

ROUS.  [Suddenly.]  Speak out, Roberts, or leave it to others.

ROBERTS.  [Ironically.]  Thank you, George Rous.  [Addressing himself
to ANTHONY.]  The Chairman and Board of Directors have honoured us by
leaving London and coming all this way to hear what we've got to say;
it would not be polite to keep them any longer waiting.

WILDER.  Well, thank God for that!

ROBERTS.  Ye will not dare to thank Him when I have done, Mr. Wilder,
for all your piety.  May be your God up in London has no time to
listen to the working man.  I'm told He is a wealthy God; but if he
listens to what I tell Him, He will know more than ever He learned in
Kensington.

HARNESS.  Come, Roberts, you have your own God.  Respect the God of
other men.

ROBERTS.  That's right, sir.  We have another God down here; I doubt
He is rather different to Mr. Wilder's.  Ask Henry Thomas; he will
tell you whether his God and Mr. Wilder's are the same.

     [THOMAS lifts his hand, and cranes his head as though to
     prophesy.]

WANKLIN.  For goodness' sake, let 's keep to the point, Roberts.

ROBERTS.  I rather think it is the point, Mr. Wanklin.  If you can
get the God of Capital to walk through the streets of Labour, and pay
attention to what he sees, you're a brighter man than I take you for,
for all that you're a Radical.

ANTHONY.  Attend to me, Roberts!  [Roberts is silent.]  You are here
to speak for the men, as I am here to speak for the Board.

     [He looks slowly round.]

     [WILDER, WANKLIN, and SCANTLEBURY make movements of uneasiness,
     and EDGAR gazes at the floor.  A faint smile comes on HARNESS'S
     face.]

Now then, what is it?

ROBERTS.  Right, Sir!

     [Throughout all that follows, he and ANTHONY look fixedly upon
     each other.  Men and Directors show in their various ways
     suppressed uneasiness, as though listening to words that they
     themselves would not have spoken.]

The men can't afford to travel up to London; and they don't trust you
to believe what they say in black and white.  They know what the post
is [he darts a look at UNDERWOOD and TENCH], and what Directors'
meetings are: "Refer it to the manager--let the manager advise us on
the men's condition.  Can we squeeze them a little more?"

UNDERWOOD.  [In a low voice.]  Don't hit below the belt, Roberts!

ROBERTS.  Is it below the belt, Mr. Underwood?  The men know.  When I
came up to London, I told you the position straight.  An' what came
of it?  I was told I did n't know what I was talkin' about.  I can't
afford to travel up to London to be told that again.

ANTHONY.  What have you to say for the men?

ROBERTS.  I have this to say--and first as to their condition.  Ye
shall 'ave no need to go and ask your manager.  Ye can't squeeze them
any more.  Every man of us is well-nigh starving.  [A surprised
murmur rises from the men.  ROBERTS looks round.]  Ye wonder why I
tell ye that?  Every man of us is going short.  We can't be no worse
off than we've been these weeks past.  Ye need n't think that by
waiting yell drive us to come in.  We'll die first, the whole lot of
us.  The men have sent for ye to know, once and for all, whether ye
are going to grant them their demands.  I see the sheet of paper in
the Secretary's hand.  [TENCH moves nervously.]  That's it, I think,
Mr. Tench.  It's not very large.

TENCH.  [Nodding.]  Yes.

ROBERTS.  There's not one sentence of writing on that paper that we
can do without.

     [A movement amongst the men.  ROBERTS turns on them sharply.]

Isn't that so?

     [The men assent reluctantly.  ANTHONY takes from TENCH the paper
     and peruses it.]

Not one single sentence.  All those demands are fair.  We have not.
asked anything that we are not entitled to ask.  What I said up in
London, I say again now: there is not anything on that piece of paper
that a just man should not ask, and a just man give.

     [A pause.]

ANTHONY.  There is not one single demand on this paper that we will
grant.

     [In the stir that follows on these words, ROBERTS watches the
     Directors and ANTHONY the men.  WILDER gets up abruptly and goes
     over to the fire.]

ROBERTS.  D' ye mean that?

ANTHONY.  I do.

     [WILDER at the fire makes an emphatic movement of disgust.]

ROBERTS.  [Noting it, with dry intensity.]  Ye best know whether the
condition of the Company is any better than the condition of the men.
[Scanning the Directors' faces.]  Ye best know whether ye can afford
your tyranny--but this I tell ye: If ye think the men will give way
the least part of an inch, ye're making the worst mistake ye ever
made.  [He fixes his eyes on SCANTLEBURY.]  Ye think because the
Union is not supporting us--more shame to it!--that we'll be coming
on our knees to you one fine morning.  Ye think because the men have
got their wives an' families to think of--that it's just a question
of a week or two----

ANTHONY.  It would be better if you did not speculate so much on what
we think.

ROBERTS.  Aye!  It's not much profit to us!  I will say this for you,
Mr. Anthony--ye know your own mind!  [Staying at ANTHONY.]  I can
reckon on ye!

ANTHONY.  [Ironically.]  I am obliged to you!

ROBERTS.  And I know mine.  I tell ye this: The men will send their
wives and families where the country will have to keep them; an' they
will starve sooner than give way.  I advise ye, Mr. Anthony, to
prepare yourself for the worst that can happen to your Company.  We
are not so ignorant as you might suppose.  We know the way the cat is
jumping.  Your position is not all that it might be--not exactly!

ANTHONY.  Be good enough to allow us to judge of our position for
ourselves.  Go back, and reconsider your own.

ROBERTS.  [Stepping forward.]  Mr. Anthony, you are not a young man
now; from the time I remember anything ye have been an enemy to every
man that has come into your works.  I don't say that ye're a mean
man, or a cruel man, but ye've grudged them the say of any word in
their own fate.  Ye've fought them down four times.  I've heard ye
say ye love a fight--mark my words--ye're fighting the last fight
yell ever fight

     [TENCH touches ROBERTS'S sleeve.]

UNDERWOOD.  Roberts!  Roberts!

ROBERTS.  Roberts!  Roberts!  I must n't speak my mind to the
Chairman, but the Chairman may speak his mind to me!

WILDER.  What are things coming to?

ANTHONY, [With a grim smile at WILDER.]  Go on, Roberts; say what you
like!

ROBERTS.  [After a pause.]  I have no more to say.

ANTHONY.  The meeting stands adjourned to five o'clock.

WANKLIN.  [In a low voice to UNDERWOOD.]  We shall never settle
anything like this.

ROBERTS.  [Bitingly.]  We thank the Chairman and Board of Directors
for their gracious hearing.

     [He moves towards the door; the men cluster together stupefied;
     then ROUS, throwing up his head, passes ROBERTS and goes out.
     The others follow.]

ROBERTS.  [With his hand on the door--maliciously.]  Good day,
gentlemen!  [He goes out.]

HARNESS.  [Ironically.]  I congratulate you on the conciliatory
spirit that's been displayed.  With your permission, gentlemen, I'll
be with you again at half-past five.  Good morning!

     [He bows slightly, rests his eyes on ANTHONY, who returns his
     stare unmoved, and, followed by UNDERWOOD, goes out.  There is a
     moment of uneasy silence.  UNDERWOOD reappears in the doorway.]

WILDER.  [With emphatic disgust.]  Well!

     [The double-doors are opened.]

ENID.  [Standing in the doorway.]  Lunch is ready.

     [EDGAR, getting up abruptly, walks out past his sister.]

WILDER.  Coming to lunch, Scantlebury?

SCANTLEBURY.  [Rising heavily.]  I suppose so, I suppose so.  It's
the only thing we can do.

     [They go out through the double-doors.]

WANKLIN.  [In a low voice.]  Do you really mean
to fight to a finish, Chairman?

     [ANTHONY nods.]

WANKLIN.  Take care!  The essence of things is to know when to stop.

     [ANTHONY does not answer.]

WANKLIN.  [Very gravely.]  This way disaster lies.  The ancient
Trojans were fools to your father, Mrs. Underwood.  [He goes out
through the double-doors.]

ENID.  I want to speak to father, Frank.

     [UNDERWOOD follows WANKLIN Out.  TENCH, passing round the table,
     is restoring order to the scattered pens and papers.]

ENID.  Are n't you coming, Dad?

     [ANTHONY Shakes his head.  ENID looks meaningly at TENCH.]

ENID.  Won't you go and have some lunch, Mr. Tench?

TENCH.  [With papers in his hand.]  Thank you, ma'am, thank you!  [He
goes slowly, looking back.]

ENID.  [Shutting the doors.]  I do hope it's settled, Father!

ANTHONY.  No!

ENID.  [Very disappointed.]  Oh!  Have n't you done anything!

     [ANTHONY shakes his head.]

ENID.  Frank says they all want to come to a compromise, really,
except that man Roberts.

ANTHONY.  I don't.

ENID.  It's such a horrid position for us.  If you were the wife of
the manager, and lived down here, and saw it all.  You can't realise,
Dad!

ANTHONY.  Indeed?

ENID.  We see all the distress.  You remember my maid Annie, who
married Roberts?  [ANTHONY nods.]  It's so wretched, her heart's
weak; since the strike began, she has n't even been getting proper
food.  I know it for a fact, Father.

ANTHONY.  Give her what she wants, poor woman!

ENID.  Roberts won't let her take anything from us.

ANTHONY.  [Staring before him.]  I can't be answerable for the men's
obstinacy.

ENID.  They're all suffering.  Father!  Do stop it, for my sake!

ANTHONY.  [With a keen look at her.]  You don't understand, my dear.

ENID.  If I were on the Board, I'd do something.

ANTHONY.  What would you do?

ENID.  It's because you can't bear to give way.  It's so----

ANTHONY.  Well?

ENID.  So unnecessary.

ANTHONY.  What do you know about necessity?  Read your novels, play
your music, talk your talk, but don't try and tell me what's at the
bottom of a struggle like this.

ENID.  I live down here, and see it.

ANTHONY.  What d' you imagine stands between you and your class and
these men that you're so sorry for?

ENID.  [Coldly.]  I don't know what you mean, Father.

ANTHONY.  In a few years you and your children would be down in the
condition they're in, but for those who have the eyes to see things
as they are and the backbone to stand up for themselves.

ENID.  You don't know the state the men are in.

ANTHONY.  I know it well enough.

ENID.  You don't, Father; if you did, you would n't

ANTHONY.  It's you who don't know the simple facts of the position.
What sort of mercy do you suppose you'd get if no one stood between
you and the continual demands of labour?  This sort of mercy--
[He puts his hand up to his throat and squeezes it.]  First would go
your sentiments, my dear; then your culture, and your comforts would
be going all the time!

ENID.  I don't believe in barriers between classes.

ANTHONY.  You--don't--believe--in--barriers--between the classes?

ENID.  [Coldly.]  And I don't know what that has to do with this
question.

ANTHONY.  It will take a generation or two for you to understand.

ENID.  It's only you and Roberts, Father, and you know it!

     [ANTHONY thrusts out his lower lip.]

It'll ruin the Company.

ANTHONY.  Allow me to judge of that.

ENID.  [Resentfully.]  I won't stand by and let poor Annie Roberts
suffer like this!  And think of the children, Father!  I warn you.

ANTHONY.  [With a grim smile.]  What do you propose to do?

ENID.  That's my affair.

     [ANTHONY only looks at her.]

ENID.  [In a changed voice, stroking his sleeve.]  Father, you know
you oughtn't to have this strain on you--you know what Dr. Fisher
said!

ANTHONY.  No old man can afford to listen to old women.

ENID.  But you have done enough, even if it really is such a matter
of principle with you.

ANTHONY.  You think so?

ENID.  Don't Dad!  [Her face works.]  You--you might think of us!

ANTHONY.  I am.

ENID.  It'll break you down.

ANTHONY.  [Slowly.]  My dear, I am not going to funk; on that you may
rely.

     [Re-enter TENCH with papers; he glances at them, then plucking
     up courage.]

TENCH.  Beg pardon, Madam, I think I'd rather see these papers were
disposed of before I get my lunch.

     [ENID, after an impatient glance at him, looks at her father,
     turns suddenly, and goes into the drawing-room.]

TENCH.  [Holding the papers and a pen to ANTHONY, very nervously.]
Would you sign these for me, please sir?

     [ANTHONY takes the pen and signs.]

TENCH.  [Standing with a sheet of blotting-paper behind EDGAR'S
chair, begins speaking nervously.]  I owe my position to you, sir.

ANTHONY.  Well?

TENCH.  I'm obliged to see everything that's going on, sir; I--I
depend upon the Company entirely.  If anything were to happen to it,
it'd be disastrous for me.  [ANTHONY nods.]  And, of course, my
wife's just had another; and so it makes me doubly anxious just now.
And the rates are really terrible down our way.

ANTHONY.  [With grim amusement.]  Not more terrible than they are up
mine.

TENCH.  No, Sir?  [Very nervously.]  I know the Company means a great
deal to you, sir.

ANTHONY.  It does; I founded it.

TENCH.  Yes, Sir.  If the strike goes on it'll be very serious.  I
think the Directors are beginning to realise that, sir.

ANTHONY.  [Ironically.]  Indeed?

TENCH.  I know you hold very strong views, sir, and it's always your
habit to look things in the face; but I don't think the Directors--
like it, sir, now they--they see it.

ANTHONY.  [Grimly.]  Nor you, it seems.

TENCH.  [With the ghost of a smile.]  No, sir; of course I've got my
children, and my wife's delicate; in my position I have to think of
these things.

     [ANTHONY nods.]

It was n't that I was going to say, sir, if you'll excuse me----
[hesitates]

ANTHONY.  Out with it, then!

TENCH.  I know--from my own father, sir, that when you get on in life
you do feel things dreadfully----

ANTHONY.  [Almost paternally.]  Come, out with it, Trench!

TENCH.  I don't like to say it, sir.

ANTHONY.  [Stonily.]  You Must.

TENCH.  [After a pause, desperately bolting it out.]  I think the
Directors are going to throw you over, sir.

ANTHONY.  [Sits in silence.]  Ring the bell!

     [TENCH nervously rings the bell and stands by the fire.]

TENCH.  Excuse me for saying such a thing.  I was only thinking of
you, sir.

     [FROST enters from the hall, he comes to the foot of the table,
     and looks at ANTHONY; TENCH coveys his nervousness by arranging
     papers.]

ANTHONY.  Bring me a whiskey and soda.

FROST.  Anything to eat, sir?

     [ANTHONY shakes his head.  FROST goes to the sideboard, and
     prepares the drink.]

TENCH.  [In a low voice, almost supplicating.]  If you could see your
way, sir, it would be a great relief to my mind, it would indeed.
[He looks up at ANTHONY, who has not moved.]  It does make me so very
anxious.  I haven't slept properly for weeks, sir, and that's a fact.

     [ANTHONY looks in his face, then slowly shakes his head.]

[Disheartened.]  No, Sir?  [He goes on arranging papers.]

     [FROST places the whiskey and salver and puts it down by
     ANTHONY'S right hand.  He stands away, looking gravely at
     ANTHONY.]

FROST.  Nothing I can get you, sir?

     [ANTHONY shakes his head.]

You're aware, sir, of what the doctor said, sir?

ANTHONY.  I am.

     [A pause.  FROST suddenly moves closer to him, and speaks in a
     low voice.]

FROST.  This strike, sir; puttin' all this strain on you.  Excuse me,
sir, is it--is it worth it, sir?

     [ANTHONY mutters some words that are inaudible.]

Very good, sir!

     [He turns and goes out into the hall.  TENCH makes two attempts
     to speak; but meeting his Chairman's gaze he drops his eyes,
     and, turning dismally, he too goes out.  ANTHONY is left alone.
     He grips the glass, tilts it, and drinks deeply; then sets it
     down with a deep and rumbling sigh, and leans back in his
     chair.]


                         The curtain falls.





ACT II

SCENE I

     It is half-past three.  In the kitchen of Roberts's cottage a
     meagre little fire is burning.  The room is clean and tidy, very
     barely furnished, with a brick floor and white-washed walls,
     much stained with smoke.  There is a kettle on the fire.  A door
     opposite the fireplace opens inward from a snowy street.  On the
     wooden table are a cup and saucer, a teapot, knife, and plate of
     bread and cheese.  Close to the fireplace in an old arm-chair,
     wrapped in a rug, sits MRS. ROBERTS, a thin and dark-haired
     woman about thirty-five, with patient eyes.  Her hair is not
     done up, but tied back with a piece of ribbon.  By the fire,
     too, is MRS. YEO; a red-haired, broad-faced person.  Sitting
     near the table is MRS. ROUS, an old lady, ashen-white, with
     silver hair; by the door, standing, as if about to go, is MRS.
     BULGIN, a little pale, pinched-up woman.  In a chair, with her
     elbows resting on the table, avid her face resting in her hands,
     sits MADGE THOMAS, a good-looking girl, of twenty-two, with high
     cheekbones, deep-set eyes, and dark untidy hair.  She is
     listening to the talk, but she neither speaks nor moves.


MRS. YEO.  So he give me a sixpence, and that's the first bit o'
money I seen this week.  There an't much 'eat to this fire.  Come and
warm yerself Mrs. Rous, you're lookin' as white as the snow, you are.

MRS. ROUS.  [Shivering--placidly.]  Ah!  but the winter my old man
was took was the proper winter.  Seventy-nine that was, when none of
you was hardly born--not Madge Thomas, nor Sue Bulgin.  [Looking at
them in turn.]  Annie Roberts, 'ow old were you, dear?

MRS ROBERTS.  Seven, Mrs. Rous.

MRS. ROUS.  Seven--well, there!  A tiny little thing!

MRS. YEO.  [Aggressively.]  Well, I was ten myself, I remembers it.

MRS. Rous.  [Placidly.]  The Company hadn't been started three years.
Father was workin' on the acid, that's 'ow he got 'is pisoned-leg.
I kep' sayin' to 'im, "Father, you've got a pisoned leg."  "Well," 'e
said, "Mother, pison or no pison, I can't afford to go a-layin' up."
An' two days after, he was on 'is back, and never got up again.  It
was Providence!  There was n't none o' these Compensation Acts then.

MRS. YEO.  Ye had n't no strike that winter!  [With grim humour.]
This winter's 'ard enough for me.  Mrs. Roberts, you don't want no
'arder winter, do you?  Wouldn't seem natural to 'ave a dinner, would
it, Mrs. Bulgin?

MRS. BULGIN.  We've had bread and tea last four days.

MRS. YEO.  You got that Friday's laundry job?

MRS. BULGIN.  [Dispiritedly.]  They said they'd give it me, but when
I went last Friday, they were full up.  I got to go again next week.

MRS. YEO.  Ah!  There's too many after that.  I send Yeo out on the
ice to put on the gentry's skates an' pick up what 'e can.  Stops 'im
from broodin' about the 'ouse.

MRS. BULGIN.  [In a desolate, matter-of-fact voice.]  Leavin' out the
men--it's bad enough with the children.  I keep 'em in bed, they
don't get so hungry when they're not running about; but they're that
restless in bed they worry your life out.

MRS. YEO.  You're lucky they're all so small.  It 's the goin' to
school that makes 'em 'ungry.  Don't Bulgin give you anythin'?

MRS. BULGIN. [Shakes her head, then, as though by afterthought.]
Would if he could, I s'pose.

MRS. YEO.  [Sardonically.]  What!  'Ave n't 'e got no shares in the
Company?

MRS. ROUS.  [Rising with tremulous cheerfulness.]  Well, good-bye,
Annie Roberts, I'm going along home.

MRS. ROBERTS.  Stay an' have a cup of tea, Mrs. Rous?

MRS. ROUS.  [With the faintest smile.]  Roberts 'll want 'is tea when
he comes in.  I'll just go an' get to bed; it's warmer there than
anywhere.

     [She moves very shakily towards the door.]

MRS. YEO.  [Rising and giving her an arm.]  Come on, Mother, take my
arm; we're all going' the same way.

MRS. ROUS.  [Taking the arm.]Thank you, my dearies!

     [THEY go out, followed by MRS. BULGIN.]

MADGE.  [Moving for the first time.]  There, Annie, you see that!  I
told George Rous, "Don't think to have my company till you've made an
end of all this trouble.  You ought to be ashamed," I said, "with
your own mother looking like a ghost, and not a stick to put on the
fire.  So long as you're able to fill your pipes, you'll let us
starve."  "I 'll take my oath, Madge," he said, "I 've not had smoke
nor drink these three weeks!"  "Well, then, why do you go on with
it?"  "I can't go back on Roberts!" .  .  .  That's it!  Roberts,
always Roberts!  They'd all drop it but for him.  When he talks it's
the devil that comes into them.

     [A silence.  MRS. ROBERTS makes a movement of pain.]

Ah!  You don't want him beaten!  He's your man.  With everybody like
their own shadows!  [She makes a gesture towards MRS. ROBERTS.]  If
ROUS wants me he must give up Roberts.  If he gave him up--they all
would.  They're only waiting for a lead.  Father's against him--
they're all against him in their hearts.

MRS. ROBERTS.  You won't beat Roberts!

     [They look silently at each other.]

MADGE.  Won't I?  The cowards--when their own mothers and their own
children don't know where to turn.

MRS. ROBERTS.  Madge!

MADGE.  [Looking searchingly at MRS. ROBERTS.]  I wonder he can look
you in the face.  [She squats before the fire, with her hands out to
the flame.]  Harness is here again.  They'll have to make up their
minds to-day.

MRS. ROBERTS.  [In a soft, slow voice, with a slight West-country
burr.]  Roberts will never give up the furnace-men and engineers.
'T wouldn't be right.

MADGE.  You can't deceive me.  It's just his pride.

     [A tapping at the door is heard, the women turn as ENID enters.
     She wears a round fur cap, and a jacket of squirrel's fur.  She
     closes the door behind her.]

ENID.  Can I come in, Annie?

MRS. ROBERTS.  [Flinching.]  Miss Enid!  Give Mrs. Underwood a chair,
Madge!

     [MADGE gives ENID the chair she has been sitting on.]

ENID.  Thank you!

ENID.  Are you any better?

MRS. ROBERTS.  Yes, M'm; thank you, M'm.

ENID.  [Looking at the sullen MADGE as though requesting her
departure.]  Why did you send back the jelly?  I call that really
wicked of you!

MRS. ROBERTS.  Thank you, M'm, I'd no need for it.

ENID.  Of course!  It was Roberts's doing, wasn't it?  How can he let
all this suffering go on amongst you?

MADGE.  [Suddenly.]  What suffering?

ENID.  [Surprised.]  I beg your pardon!

MADGE.  Who said there was suffering?

MRS. ROBERTS.  Madge!

MADGE.  [Throwing her shawl over her head.]  Please to let us keep
ourselves to ourselves.  We don't want you coming here and spying on
us.

ENID.  [Confronting her, but without rising.]  I did n't speak to
you.

MADGE.  [In a low, fierce voice.]  Keep your kind feelings to
yourself.  You think you can come amongst us, but you're mistaken.
Go back and tell the Manager that.

ENID.  [Stonily.]  This is not your house.

MADGE.  [Turning to the door.]  No, it is not my house; keep clear of
my house, Mrs. Underwood.

     [She goes out.  ENID taps her fingers on the table.]

MRS. ROBERTS.  Please to forgive Madge Thomas, M'm; she's a bit upset
to-day.

     [A pause.]

ENID.  [Looking at her.]  Oh, I think they're so stupid, all of them.

MRS. ROBERTS.  [With a faint smile].  Yes, M'm.

ENID.  Is Roberts out?

MRS. ROBERTS.  Yes, M'm.

ENID.  It is his doing, that they don't come to an agreement.  Now is
n't it, Annie?

MRS. ROBERTS.  [Softly, with her eyes on ENID, and moving the fingers
of one hand continually on her breast.]  They do say that your
father, M'm----

ENID.  My father's getting an old man, and you know what old men are.

MRS. ROBERTS.  I am sorry, M'm.

ENID.  [More softly.]  I don't expect you to feel sorry, Annie.  I
know it's his fault as well as Roberts's.

MRS. ROBERTS.  I'm sorry for any one that gets old, M'm; it 's
dreadful to get old, and Mr. Anthony was such a fine old man, I
always used to think.

ENID.  [Impulsively.]  He always liked you, don't you remember?  Look
here, Annie, what can I do?  I do so want to know.  You don't get
what you ought to have.  [Going to the fire, she takes the kettle
off, and looks for coals.]  And you're so naughty sending back the
soup and things.

MRS. ROBERTS.  [With a faint smile.]  Yes, M'm?

ENID.  [Resentfully.]  Why, you have n't even got coals?

MRS. ROBERTS.  If you please, M'm, to put the kettle on again;
Roberts won't have long for his tea when he comes in.  He's got to
meet the men at four.

ENID.  [Putting the kettle on.]  That means he'll lash them into a
fury again.  Can't you stop his going, Annie?

     [MRS. ROBERTS smiles ironically.]

Have you tried?

     [A silence.]

Does he know how ill you are?

MRS. ROBERTS.  It's only my weak 'eard, M'm.

ENID.  You used to be so well when you were with us.

MRS. ROBERTS.  [Stiffening.]  Roberts is always good to me.

ENID.  But you ought to have everything you want, and you have
nothing!

MRS. ROBERTS.  [Appealingly.]  They tell me I don't look like a dyin'
woman?

ENID.  Of course you don't; if you could only have proper--- Will you
see my doctor if I send him to you?  I'm sure he'd do you good.

MRS. ROBERTS.  [With faint questioning.]  Yes, M'm.

ENID.  Madge Thomas ought n't to come here; she only excites you.  As
if I did n't know what suffering there is amongst the men!  I do feel
for them dreadfully, but you know they have gone too far.

MRS. ROBERTS.  [Continually moving her fingers.]  They say there's no
other way to get better wages, M'm.

ENID.  [Earnestly.]  But, Annie, that's why the Union won't help
them.  My husband's very sympathetic with the men, but he says they
are not underpaid.

MRS. ROBERTS.  No, M'm?

ENID.  They never think how the Company could go on if we paid the
wages they want.

MRS. ROBERTS.  [With an effort.]  But the dividends having been so
big, M'm.

ENID.  [Takes aback.]  You all seem to think the shareholders are
rich men, but they're not--most of them are really no better off than
working men.

     [MRS. ROBERTS smiles.]

They have to keep up appearances.

MRS. ROBERTS.  Yes, M'm?

ENID.  You don't have to pay rates and taxes, and a hundred other
things that they do.  If the men did n't spend such a lot in drink
and betting they'd be quite well off!

MRS. ROBERTS.  They say, workin' so hard, they must have some
pleasure.

ENID.  But surely not low pleasure like that.

MRS. ROBERTS.  [A little resentfully.]  Roberts never touches a drop;
and he's never had a bet in his life.

ENID.  Oh!  but he's not a com----I mean he's an engineer----
a superior man.

MRS. ROBERTS.  Yes, M'm.  Roberts says they've no chance of other
pleasures.

ENID.  [Musing.]  Of course, I know it's hard.

MRS. ROBERTS.  [With a spice of malice.]  And they say gentlefolk's
just as bad.

ENID.  [With a smile.]  I go as far as most people, Annie, but you
know, yourself, that's nonsense.

MRS. ROBERTS.  [With painful effort.]  A lot 'o the men never go near
the Public; but even they don't save but very little, and that goes
if there's illness.

ENID.  But they've got their clubs, have n't they?

MRS. ROBERTS.  The clubs only give up to eighteen shillin's a week,
M'm, and it's not much amongst a family.  Roberts says workin' folk
have always lived from hand to mouth.  Sixpence to-day is worth more
than a shillin' to-morrow, that's what they say.

ENID.  But that's the spirit of gambling.

MRS. ROBERTS.  [With a sort of excitement.]  Roberts says a working
man's life is all a gamble, from the time 'e 's born to the time 'e
dies.

     [ENID leans forward, interested.  MRS. ROBERTS goes on with a
     growing excitement that culminates in the personal feeling of
     the last words.]

He says, M'm, that when a working man's baby is born, it's a toss-up
from breath to breath whether it ever draws another, and so on all
'is life; an' when he comes to be old, it's the workhouse or the
grave.  He says that without a man is very near, and pinches and
stints 'imself and 'is children to save, there can't be neither
surplus nor security.  That's why he wouldn't have no children [she
sinks back], not though I wanted them.

ENID.  Yes, yes, I know!

MRS. ROBERTS.  No you don't, M'm.  You've got your children, and
you'll never need to trouble for them.

ENID.  [Gently.]  You oughtn't to be talking so much, Annie.  [Then,
in spite of herself.]  But Roberts was paid a lot of money, was n't
he, for discovering that process?

MRS. ROBERTS.  [On the defensive.]  All Roberts's savin's have gone.
He 's always looked forward to this strike.  He says he's no right to
a farthing when the others are suffering.  'T is n't so with all o'
them!  Some don't seem to care no more than that--so long as they get
their own.

ENID.  I don't see how they can be expected to when they 're
suffering like this.  [In a changed voice.]  But Roberts ought to
think of you!  It's all terrible----!  The kettle's boiling.  Shall I
make the tea?  [She takes the teapot and, seeing tea there, pours
water into it.]  Won't you have a cup?

MRS. ROBERTS.  No, thank you, M'm.  [She is listening, as though for
footsteps.]  I'd--sooner you did n't see Roberts, M'm, he gets so
wild.

ENID.  Oh!  but I must, Annie; I'll be quite calm, I promise.

MRS. ROBERTS.  It's life an' death to him, M'm.

ENID.  [Very gently.]  I'll get him to talk to me outside, we won't
excite you.

MRS. ROBERTS.  [Faintly.]  No, M'm.

     [She gives a violent start.  ROBERTS has come in, unseen.]

ROBERTS.  [Removing his hat--with subtle mockery.]  Beg pardon for
coming in; you're engaged with a lady, I see.

ENID.  Can I speak to you, Mr. Roberts?

ROBERTS.  Whom have I the pleasure of addressing, Ma'am?

ENID.  But surely you know me!  I 'm Mrs. Underwood.

ROBERTS.  [With a bow of malice.]  The daughter of our Chairman.

ENID.  [Earnestly.]  I've come on purpose to speak to you; will you
come outside a minute?

     [She looks at MRS. ROBERTS.]

ROBERTS.  [Hanging up his hat.]  I have nothing to say, Ma'am.

ENID.  But I must speak to you, please.

     [She moves towards the door.]

ROBERTS.  [With sudden venom.]  I have not the time to listen!

MRS. ROBERTS.  David!

ENID.  Mr. Roberts, please!

ROBERTS.  [Taking off his overcoat.]  I am sorry to disoblige a lady-
Mr. Anthony's daughter.

ENID.  [Wavering, then with sudden decision.]  Mr. Roberts, I know
you've another meeting of the men.

     [ROBERTS bows.]

I came to appeal to you.  Please, please, try to come to some
compromise; give way a little, if it's only for your own sakes!

ROBERTS.  [Speaking to himself.]  The daughter of Mr. Anthony begs me
to give way a little, if it's only for our own sakes!

ENID.  For everybody's sake; for your wife's sake.

ROBERTS.  For my wife's sake, for everybody's sake--for the sake of
Mr. Anthony.

ENID.  Why are you so bitter against my father?  He has never done
anything to you.

ROBERTS.  Has he not?

ENID.  He can't help his views, any more than you can help yours.

ROBERTS.  I really did n't know that I had a right to views!

ENID.  He's an old man, and you----

     [Seeing his eyes fixed on her, she stops.]

ROBERTS.  [Without raising his voice.]  If I saw Mr. Anthony going to
die, and I could save him by lifting my hand, I would not lift the
little finger of it.

ENID.  You--you----[She stops again, biting her lips.]

ROBERTS.  I would not, and that's flat!

ENID.  [Coldly.]  You don't mean what you say, and you know it!

ROBERTS.  I mean every word of it.

ENID.  But why?

ROBERTS.  [With a flash.]  Mr. Anthony stands for tyranny!  That's
why!

ENID.  Nonsense!

     [MRS. ROBERTS makes a movement as if to rise, but sinks back in
     her chair.]

ENID.  [With an impetuous movement.]  Annie!

ROBERTS.  Please not to touch my wife!

ENID.  [Recoiling with a sort of horror.]  I believe--you are mad.

ROBERTS.  The house of a madman then is not the fit place for a lady.

ENID.  I 'm not afraid of you.

ROBERTS.  [Bowing.]  I would not expect the daughter of Mr. Anthony
to be afraid.  Mr. Anthony is not a coward like the rest of them.

ENID.  [Suddenly.]  I suppose you think it brave, then, to go on with
the struggle.

ROBERTS.  Does Mr. Anthony think it brave to fight against women and
children?  Mr. Anthony is a rich man, I believe; does he think it
brave to fight against those who have n't a penny?  Does he think it
brave to set children crying with hunger, an' women shivering with
cold?

ENID.  [Putting up her hand, as though warding off a blow.]  My
father is acting on his principles, and you know it!

ROBERTS.  And so am I!

ENID.  You hate us; and you can't bear to be beaten!

ROBERTS.  Neither can Mr. Anthony, for all that he may say.

ENID.  At any rate you might have pity on your wife.

     [MRS. ROBERTS who has her hand pressed to her heart, takes it
     away, and tries to calm her breathing.]

ROBERTS.  Madam, I have no more to say.

     [He takes up the loaf.  There is a knock at the door, and
     UNDERWOOD comes in.  He stands looking at them, ENID turns to
     him, then seems undecided.]

UNDERWOOD.  Enid!

ROBERTS.  [Ironically.]  Ye were not needing to come for your wife,
Mr. Underwood.  We are not rowdies.

UNDERWOOD.  I know that, Roberts.  I hope Mrs. Roberts is better.

     [ROBERTS turns away without answering.  Come, Enid!]

ENID.  I make one more appeal to you, Mr. Roberts, for the sake of
your wife.

ROBERTS.  [With polite malice.]  If I might advise ye, Ma'am--make it
for the sake of your husband and your father.

     [ENID, suppressing a retort, goes out.  UNDERWOOD opens the door
     for her and follows.  ROBERTS, going to the fire, holds out his
     hands to the dying glow.]

ROBERTS.  How goes it, my girl?  Feeling better, are you?

     [MRS. ROBERTS smiles faintly.  He brings his overcoat and wraps
     it round her.]

[Looking at his watch.]  Ten minutes to four!  [As though inspired.]
I've seen their faces, there's no fight in them, except for that one
old robber.

MRS. ROBERTS.  Won't you stop and eat, David?  You've 'ad nothing all
day!

ROBERTS.  [Putting his hand to his throat.]  Can't swallow till those
old sharks are out o' the town: [He walks up and down.]  I shall have
a bother with the men--there's no heart in them, the cowards.  Blind
as bats, they are--can't see a day before their noses.

MRS. ROBERTS.  It's the women, David.

ROBERTS.  Ah!  So they say!  They can remember the women when their
own bellies speak!  The women never stop them from the drink; but
from a little suffering to themselves in a sacred cause, the women
stop them fast enough.

MRS. ROBERTS.  But think o' the children, David.

ROBERTS.  Ah!  If they will go breeding themselves for slaves,
without a thought o' the future o' them they breed----

MRS. ROBERTS.  [Gasping.]  That's enough, David; don't begin to talk
of that--I won't--I can't----

ROBERTS.  [Staring at her.]  Now, now, my girl!

MRS. ROBERTS.  [Breathlessly.]  No, no, David--I won't!

ROBERTS.  There, there!  Come, come!  That's right!  [Bitterly.]  Not
one penny will they put by for a day like this.  Not they!  Hand to
mouth--Gad!--I know them!  They've broke my heart.  There was no
holdin' them at the start, but now the pinch 'as come.

MRS. ROBERTS.  How can you expect it, David?  They're not made of
iron.

ROBERTS.  Expect it?  Wouldn't I expect what I would do meself?
Wouldn't I starve an' rot rather than give in?  What one man can do,
another can.

MRS. ROBERTS.  And the women?

ROBERTS.  This is not women's work.

MRS. ROBERTS.  [With a flash of malice.]  No, the women may die for
all you care.  That's their work.

ROBERTS.  [Averting his eyes.]  Who talks of dying?  No one will die
till we have beaten these----

     [He meets her eyes again, and again turns his away.  Excitedly.]

This is what I've been waiting for all these months.  To get the old
robbers down, and send them home again without a farthin's worth o'
change.  I 've seen their faces, I tell you, in the valley of the
shadow of defeat.

     [He goes to the peg and takes down his hat.]

MRS. ROBERTS.  [Following with her eyes-softly.]  Take your overcoat,
David; it must be bitter cold.

ROBERTS.  [Coming up to her-his eyes are furtive.]  No, no!  There,
there, stay quiet and warm.  I won't be long, my girl.

MRS. ROBERTS.  [With soft bitterness.]  You'd better take it.

     [She lifts the coat.  But ROBERTS puts it back, and wraps it
     round her.  He tries to meet her eyes, but cannot.  MRS.
     ROBERTS stays huddled in the coat, her eyes, that follow him
     about, are half malicious, half yearning.  He looks at his watch
     again, and turns to go.  In the doorway he meets JAN THOMAS, a
     boy of ten in clothes too big for him, carrying a penny
     whistle.]

ROBERTS.  Hallo, boy!

     [He goes.  JAN stops within a yard of MRS. ROBERTS, and stares
     at her without a word.]

MRS. ROBERTS.  Well, Jan!

JAN.  Father 's coming; sister Madge is coming.

     [He sits at the table, and fidgets with his whistle; he blows
     three vague notes; then imitates a cuckoo.]

     [There is a tap on the door.  Old THOMAS comes in.]

THOMAS.  A very coot tay to you, Ma'am.  It is petter that you are.

MRS. ROBERTS.  Thank you, Mr. Thomas.

THOMAS.  [Nervously.]  Roberts in?

MRS. ROBERTS.  Just gone on to the meeting, Mr. Thomas.

THOMAS.  [With relief, becoming talkative.]  This is fery
unfortunate, look you!  I came to tell him that we must make terms
with London.  It is a fery great pity he is gone to the meeting.  He
will be kicking against the pricks, I am thinking.

MRS. ROBERTS.  [Half rising.]  He'll never give in, Mr. Thomas.

THOMAS.  You must not be fretting, that is very pat for you.  Look
you, there iss hartly any mans for supporting him now, but the
engineers and George Rous.  [Solemnly.]  This strike is no longer
Going with Chapel, look you!  I have listened carefully, an' I have
talked with her.

     [JAN blows.]

Sst!  I don't care what th' others say, I say that Chapel means us to
be stopping the trouple, that is what I make of her; and it is my
opinion that this is the fery best thing for all of us.  If it was
n't my opinion, I ton't say but it is my opinion, look you.

MRS. ROBERTS.  [Trying to suppress her excitement.]  I don't know
what'll come to Roberts, if you give in.

THOMAS.  It iss no disgrace whateffer!  All that a mortal man coult
do he hass tone.  It iss against Human Nature he hass gone; fery
natural any man may do that; but Chapel has spoken and he must not go
against her.

     [JAN imitates the cuckoo.]

Ton't make that squeaking!  [Going to the door.]  Here iss my
daughter come to sit with you.  A fery goot day, Ma'am--no fretting
--rememper!

     [MADGE comes in and stands at the open door, watching the
     street.]

MADGE.  You'll be late, Father; they're beginning.  [She catches him
by the sleeve.]  For the love of God, stand up to him, Father--this
time!

THOMAS.  [Detaching his sleeve with dignity.]  Leave me to do what's
proper, girl!

     [He goes out.  MADGE, in the centre of.  the open doorway,
     slowly moves in, as though before the approach of some one.]

ROUS.  [Appearing in the doorway.]  Madge!

     [MADGE stands with her back to MRS. ROBERTS, staring at him with
     her head up and her hands behind her.]

ROUS.  [Who has a fierce distracted look.]  Madge!  I'm going to the
meeting.

     [MADGE, without moving, smiles contemptuously.]

D' ye hear me?

     [They speak in quick low voices.]

MADGE.  I hear!  Go, and kill your own mother, if you must.

[ROUS seizes her by both her arms.  She stands rigid, with her head
bent back.  He releases her, and he too stands motionless.]

ROUS.  I swore to stand by Roberts.  I swore that!  Ye want me to go
back on what I've sworn.

MADGE.  [With slow soft mockery.]  You are a pretty lover!

ROUS.  Madge!

MADGE.  [Smiling.]  I've heard that lovers do what their girls ask
them--

     [JAN sounds the cuckoo's notes]

--but that's not true, it seems!

ROUS.  You'd make a blackleg of me!

MADGE.  [With her eyes half-closed.]  Do it for me!

ROUS.  [Dashing his hand across his brow.]  Damn!  I can't!

MADGE.  [Swiftly.]  Do it for me!

ROUS.  [Through his teeth.]  Don't play the wanton with me!

MADGE.  [With a movement of her hand towards JAN--quick and low.]
I would be that for the children's sake!

ROUS.  [In a fierce whisper.]  Madge!  Oh, Madge!

MADGE.  [With soft mockery.]  But you can't break your word for me!

ROUS.  [With a choke.] Then, Begod, I can!

     [He turns and rushes off.]

     [MADGE Stands, with a faint smile on her face, looking after
     him.  She turns to MRS. ROBERTS.]

MADGE.  I have done for Roberts!

MRS. ROBERTS.  [Scornfully.]  Done for my man, with that----!
[She sinks back.]

MADGE.  [Running to her, and feeling her hands.]  You're as cold as a
stone!  You want a drop of brandy.  Jan, run to the "Lion"; say, I
sent you for Mrs. Roberts.

MRS. ROBERTS.  [With a feeble movement.]  I'll just sit quiet, Madge.
Give Jan--his--tea.

MADGE.  [Giving JAN a slice of bread.]  There, ye little rascal.
Hold your piping.  [Going to the fire, she kneels.]  It's going out.

MRS. ROBERTS.  [With a faint smile.] 'T is all the same!

     [JAN begins to blow his whistle.]

MADGE.  Tsht!  Tsht!--you

     [JAN Stops.]

MRS. ROBERTS.  [Smiling.]  Let 'im play, Madge.

MADGE.  [On her knees at the fire, listening.]  Waiting an' waiting.
I've no patience with it; waiting an' waiting--that's what a woman
has to do!  Can you hear them at it--I can!

     [JAN begins again to play his whistle; MADGE gets up; half
     tenderly she ruffles his hair; then, sitting, leans her elbows
     on the table, and her chin on her hands.  Behind her, on MRS.
     ROBERTS'S face the smile has changed to horrified surprise.  She
     makes a sudden movement, sitting forward, pressing her hands
     against her breast.  Then slowly she sinks' back; slowly her
     face loses the look of pain, the smile returns.  She fixes her
     eyes again on JAN, and moves her lips and finger to the tune.]


                         The curtain falls.




SCENE II

     It is past four.  In a grey, failing light, an open muddy space
     is crowded with workmen.  Beyond, divided from it by a barbed-
     wire fence, is the raised towing-path of a canal, on which is
     moored a barge.  In the distance are marshes and snow-covered
     hills.  The "Works" high wall runs from the canal across the
     open space, and ivy the angle of this wall is a rude platform of
     barrels and boards.  On it, HARNESS is standing.  ROBERTS, a
     little apart from the crowd, leans his back against the wall.
     On the raised towing-path two bargemen lounge and smoke
     indifferently.

HARNESS.  [Holding out his hand.]  Well, I've spoken to you straight.
If I speak till to-morrow I can't say more.

JAGO.  [A dark, sallow, Spanish-looking man with a short, thin
beard.]  Mister, want to ask you!  Can they get blacklegs?

BULGIN.  [Menacing.]  Let 'em try.

     [There are savage murmurs from the crowd.]

BROWN.  [A round-faced man.]  Where could they get 'em then?

EVANS.  [A small, restless, harassed man, with a fighting face.]
There's always blacklegs; it's the nature of 'em.  There's always men
that'll save their own skins.

     [Another savage murmur.  There is a movement, and old THOMAS,
     joining the crowd, takes his stand in front.]

HARNESS.  [Holding up his hand.]  They can't get them.  But that
won't help you.  Now men, be reasonable.  Your demands would have
brought on us the burden of a dozen strikes at a time when we were
not prepared for them.  The Unions live by justice, not to one, but
all.  Any fair man will tell you--you were ill-advised!  I don't say
you go too far for that which you're entitled to, but you're going
too far for the moment; you've dug a pit for yourselves.  Are you to
stay there, or are you to climb out?  Come!

LEWIS.  [A clean-cut Welshman with a dark moustache.]  You've hit it,
Mister!  Which is it to be?

     [Another movement in the crowd, and ROUS, coming quickly, takes
     his stand next THOMAS.]

HARNESS.  Cut your demands to the right pattern, and we 'll see you
through; refuse, and don't expect me to waste my time coming down
here again.  I 'm not the sort that speaks at random, as you ought to
know by this time.  If you're the sound men I take you for--no matter
who advises you against it--[he fixes his eyes on ROBERTS] you 'll
make up your minds to come in, and trust to us to get your terms.
Which is it to be?  Hands together, and victory--or--the starvation
you've got now?

     [A prolonged murmur from the crowd.]

JAGO.  [Sullenly.]  Talk about what you know.

HARNESS.  [Lifting his voice above the murmur.]  Know?  [With cold
passion.]  All that you've been through, my friend, I 've been
through--I was through it when I was no bigger than [pointing to a
youth]  that shaver there; the Unions then were n't what they are
now.  What's made them strong?  It's hands together that 's made them
strong.  I 've been through it all, I tell you, the brand's on my
soul yet.  I know what you 've suffered--there's nothing you can tell
me that I don't know; but the whole is greater than the part, and you
are only the part.  Stand by us, and we will stand by you.

     [Quartering them with his eyes, he waits.  The murmuring swells;
     the men form little groups.  GREEN, BULGIN, and LEWIS talk
     together.]

LEWIS.  Speaks very sensible, the Union chap.

GREEN.  [Quietly.]  Ah!  if I 'd a been listened to, you'd 'ave 'eard
sense these two months past.

     [The bargemen are seen laughing. ]

LEWIS.  [Pointing.]  Look at those two blanks over the fence there!

BULGIN.  [With gloomy violence.]  They'd best stop their cackle, or I
'll break their jaws.

JAGO.  [Suddenly.]  You say the furnace men's paid enough?

HARNESS.  I did not say they were paid enough; I said they were paid
as much as the furnace men in similar works elsewhere.

EVANS.  That's a lie!  [Hubbub.]  What about Harper's?

HARNESS.  [With cold irony.]  You may look at home for lies, my man.
Harper's shifts are longer, the pay works out the same.

HENRY ROUS.  [A dark edition of his brother George.]  Will ye support
us in double pay overtime Saturdays?

HARNESS.  Yes, we will.

JAGO.  What have ye done with our subscriptions?

HARNESS.  [Coldly.]  I have told you what we will do with them.

EVANS.  Ah!  will, it's always will!  Ye'd have our mates desert us.
[Hubbub.]

BULGIN.  [Shouting.]  Hold your row!

     [EVANS looks round angrily.]

HARNESS.  [Lifting his voice.]  Those who know their right hands from
their lefts know that the Unions are neither thieves nor traitors.
I 've said my say.  Figure it out, my lads; when you want me you know
where I shall be.

     [He jumps down, the crowd gives way, he passes through them, and
     goes away.  A BARGEMAN looks after him jerking his pipe with a
     derisive gesture.  The men close up in groups, and many looks
     are cast at ROBERTS, who stands alone against the wall.]

EVANS.  He wants ye to turn blacklegs, that's what he wants.  He
wants ye to go back on us.  Sooner than turn blackleg--I 'd starve, I
would.

BULGIN.  Who's talkin' o' blacklegs--mind what you're saying, will
you?

BLACKSMITH.  [A youth with yellow hair and huge arms.]  What about
the women?

EVANS.  They can stand what we can stand, I suppose, can't they?

BLACKSMITH.  Ye've no wife?

EVANS.  An' don't want one!

THOMAS.  [Raising his voice.]  Aye!  Give us the power to come to
terms with London, lads.

DAVIES.  [A dark, slow-fly, gloomy man.]  Go up the platform, if you
got anything to say, go up an' say it.

     [There are cries of "Thomas!" He is pushed towards the
     platform; he ascends it with difficulty, and bares his head,
     waiting for silence.  A hush.]

RED-HAIRED YOUTH.  [suddenly.]  Coot old Thomas!

     [A hoarse laugh; the bargemen exchange remarks; a hush again,
     and THOMAS begins speaking.]

THOMAS.  We are all in the tepth together, and it iss Nature that has
put us there.

HENRY ROUS.  It's London put us there!

EVANS.  It's the Union.

THOMAS.  It iss not Lonton; nor it iss not the Union--it iss Nature.
It iss no disgrace whateffer to a potty to give in to Nature.  For
this Nature iss a fery pig thing; it is pigger than what a man is.
There iss more years to my hett than to the hett of any one here.
It is fery pat, look you, this Going against Nature.  It is pat to
make other potties suffer, when there is nothing to pe cot py it.

     [A laugh.  THOMAS angrily goes on.]

What are ye laughing at?  It is pat, I say!  We are fighting for a
principle; there is no potty that shall say I am not a peliever in
principle.  Putt when Nature says "No further," then it is no coot
snapping your fingers in her face.

     [A laugh from ROBERTS, and murmurs of approval.]

This Nature must pe humort.  It is a man's pisiness to pe pure,
honest, just, and merciful.  That's what Chapel tells you.  [To
ROBERTS, angrily.]  And, look you, David Roberts, Chapel tells you ye
can do that without Going against Nature.

JAGO.  What about the Union?

THOMAS.  I ton't trust the Union; they haf treated us like tirt.
"Do what we tell you," said they.  I haf peen captain of the furnace-
men twenty years, and I say to the Union--[excitedly]--"Can you tell
me then, as well as I can tell you, what iss the right wages for the
work that these men do?"  For fife and twenty years I haf paid my
moneys to the Union and--[with great excitement]--for nothings!  What
iss that but roguery, for all that this Mr. Harness says!

EVANS.  Hear, hear.

HENRY ROUS.  Get on with you!  Cut on with it then!

THOMAS.  Look you, if a man toes not trust me, am I going to trust
him?

JAGO.  That's right.

THOMAS.  Let them alone for rogues, and act for ourselves.

     [Murmurs.]

BLACKSMITH.  That's what we been doin', haven't we?

THOMAS.  [With increased excitement.]  I wass brought up to do for
meself.  I wass brought up to go without a thing, if I hat not moneys
to puy it.  There iss too much, look you, of doing things with other
people's moneys.  We haf fought fair, and if we haf peen beaten, it
iss no fault of ours.  Gif us the power to make terms with London for
ourself; if we ton't succeed, I say it iss petter to take our peating
like men, than to tie like togs, or hang on to others' coat-tails to
make them do our pisiness for us!

EVANS.  [Muttering.]  Who wants to?

THOMAS.  [Craning.]  What's that?  If I stand up to a potty, and he
knocks me town, I am not to go hollering to other potties to help me;
I am to stand up again; and if he knocks me town properly, I am to
stay there, is n't that right?

     [Laughter.]

JAGO.  No Union!

HENRY ROUS.  Union!

     [Murmurs.]

     [Others take up the shout.]

EVANS.  Blacklegs!


     [BULGIN and the BLACKSMITH shake their fists at EVANS.]

THOMAS.  [With a gesture.]  I am an olt man, look you.

     [A sudden silence, then murmurs again.]

LEWIS.  Olt fool, with his "No Union!"

BULGIN.  Them furnace chaps!  For twopence I 'd smash the faces o'
the lot of them.

GREEN.  If I'd a been listened to at the first!

THOMAS.  [Wiping his brow.]  I'm comin' now to what I was going to
say----

DAVIES.  [Muttering.]  An' time too!

THOMAS.  [Solemnly.]  Chapel says: Ton't carry on this strife!  Put
an end to it!

JAGO.  That's a lie!  Chapel says go on!

THOMAS.  [Scornfully.]  Inteet!  I haf ears to my head.

RED-HAIRED YOUTH.  Ah!  long ones!

     [A laugh.]

JAGO.  Your ears have misbeled you then.

THOMAS.  [Excitedly.]  Ye cannot be right if I am, ye cannot haf it
both ways.

RED-HAIRED YOUTH.  Chapel can though!

     ["The Shaver" laughs; there are murmurs from the crowd.]

THOMAS.  [Fixing his eyes on "The Shaver."]  Ah!  ye 're Going the
roat to tamnation.  An' so I say to all of you.  If ye co against
Chapel I will not pe with you, nor will any other Got-fearing man.

     [He steps down from the platform.  JAGO makes his way towards
     it.  There are cries of "Don't let 'im go up!"]

JAGO.  Don't let him go up?  That's free speech, that is.  [He goes
up.]  I ain't got much to say to you.  Look at the matter plain; ye
've come the road this far, and now you want to chuck the journey.
We've all been in one boat; and now you want to pull in two.  We
engineers have stood by you; ye 're ready now, are ye, to give us the
go-by?  If we'd aknown that before, we'd not a-started out with you
so early one bright morning!  That's all I 've got to say.  Old man
Thomas a'n't got his Bible lesson right.  If you give up to London,
or to Harness, now, it's givin' us the chuck--to save your skins--you
won't get over that, my boys; it's a dirty thing to do.

     [He gets down; during his little speech, which is ironically
     spoken, there is a restless discomfort in the crowd.  ROUS,
     stepping forward, jumps on the platform.  He has an air of
     fierce distraction.  Sullen murmurs of disapproval from the
     crowd.]

ROUS.  [Speaking with great excitement.]  I'm no blanky orator,
mates, but wot I say is drove from me.  What I say is yuman nature.
Can a man set an' see 'is mother starve?  Can 'e now?

ROBERTS.  [Starting forward.]  Rous!

ROUS.  [Staring at him fiercely.]  Sim 'Arness said fair!  I've
changed my mind!

ROBERTS.  Ah!  Turned your coat you mean!

     [The crowd manifests a great surprise.]

LEWIS.  [Apostrophising Rous.]  Hallo!  What's turned him round?

ROUS.  [Speaking with intense excitement.]  'E said fair.  "Stand by
us," 'e said, "and we'll stand by you."  That's where we've been
makin' our mistake this long time past; and who's to blame fort?  [He
points at ROBERTS]  That man there!  "No," 'e said, "fight the
robbers," 'e said, "squeeze the breath out o' them!" But it's not the
breath out o' them that's being squeezed; it's the breath out of us
and ours, and that's the book of truth.  I'm no orator, mates, it's
the flesh and blood in me that's speakin', it's the heart o' me.
[With a menacing, yet half-ashamed movement towards ROBERTS.]  He'll
speak to you again, mark my words, but don't ye listen.  [The crowd
groans.]  It's hell fire that's on that man's tongue.  [ROBERTS is
seen laughing.]  Sim 'Arness is right.  What are we without the
Union--handful o' parched leaves--a puff o' smoke.  I'm no orator,
but I say: Chuck it up!  Chuck it up!  Sooner than go on starving the
women and the children.

     [The murmurs of acquiescence almost drown the murmurs of
     dissent.]

EVANS.  What's turned you to blacklegging?

ROUS.  [With a furious look.]  Sim 'Arness knows what he's talking
about.  Give us power to come to terms with London; I'm no orator,
but I say--have done wi' this black misery!

     [He gives his muter a twist, jerks his head back, and jumps off
     the platform.  The crowd applauds and surges forward.  Amid
     cries of "That's enough!"  "Up Union!"  "Up Harness!" ROBERTS
     quietly ascends the platform.  There is a moment of silence.]

BLACKSMITH.  We don't want to hear you.  Shut it!

HENRY Rous.  Get down!

     [Amid such cries they surge towards the platform.]

EVANS.  [Fiercely.]  Let 'im speak!  Roberts!  Roberts!

BULGIN.  [Muttering.]  He'd better look out that I don't crack his
skull.

     [ROBERTS faces the crowd, probing them with his eyes till they
     gradually become silent.  He begins speaking.  One of the
     bargemen rises and stands.]

ROBERTS.  You don't want to hear me, then?  You'll listen to Rous and
to that old man, but not to me.  You'll listen to Sim Harness of the
Union that's treated you so fair; maybe you'll listen to those men
from London?  Ah!  You groan!  What for?  You love their feet on your
necks, don't you?  [Then as BULGIN elbows his way towards the
platform, with calm bathos.]  You'd like to break my jaw, John
Bulgin.  Let me speak, then do your smashing, if it gives you
pleasure.  [BULGIN Stands motionless and sullen.]  Am I a liar, a
coward, a traitor?  If only I were, ye'd listen to me, I'm sure.
[The murmurings cease, and there is now dead silence.]  Is there a
man of you here that has less to gain by striking?  Is there a man of
you that had more to lose?  Is there a man of you that has given up
eight hundred pounds since this trouble here began?  Come now, is
there?  How much has Thomas given up--ten pounds or five, or what?
You listened to him, and what had he to say?  "None can pretend," he
said, "that I'm not a believer in principle--[with biting irony]--but
when Nature says: 'No further, 't es going agenst Nature.'" I tell
you if a man cannot say to Nature: "Budge me from this if ye can!"--
[with a sort of exaltation]his principles are but his belly.  "Oh,
but," Thomas says, "a man can be pure and honest, just and merciful,
and take off his hat to Nature!  "I tell you Nature's neither pure
nor honest, just nor merciful.  You chaps that live over the hill,
an' go home dead beat in the dark on a snowy night--don't ye fight
your way every inch of it?  Do ye go lyin' down an' trustin' to the
tender mercies of this merciful Nature?  Try it and you'll soon know
with what ye've got to deal.  'T es only by that--[he strikes a blow
with his clenched fist]--in Nature's face that a man can be a man.
"Give in," says Thomas, "go down on your knees; throw up your foolish
fight, an' perhaps," he said, "perhaps your enemy will chuck you down
a crust."

JAGO.  Never!

EVANS.  Curse them!

THOMAS.  I nefer said that.

ROBERTS.  [Bitingly.]  If ye did not say it, man, ye meant it.
An' what did ye say about Chapel?  "Chapel's against it," ye said.
"She 's against it!"  Well, if Chapel and Nature go hand in hand,
it's the first I've ever heard of it.  That young man there--
[pointing to ROUS]--said I 'ad 'ell fire on my tongue.  If I had I
would use it all to scorch and wither this talking of surrender.
Surrendering 's the work of cowards and traitors.

HENRY ROUS.  [As GEORGE ROUS moves forward.]  Go for him, George--
don't stand his lip!

ROBERTS.  [Flinging out his finger.]  Stop there, George Rous, it's
no time this to settle personal matters.  [ROUS stops.]  But there
was one other spoke to you--Mr. Simon Harness.  We have not much to
thank Mr. Harness and the Union for.  They said to us "Desert your
mates, or we'll desert you."  An' they did desert us.

EVANS.  They did.

ROBERTS.  Mr. Simon Harness is a clever man, but he has come too
late.  [With intense conviction.]  For all that Mr. Simon Harness
says, for all that Thomas, Rous, for all that any man present here
can say--We've won the fight!

     [The crowd sags nearer, looking eagerly up.]

[With withering scorn.]  You've felt the pinch o't in your bellies.
You've forgotten what that fight 'as been; many times I have told
you; I will tell you now this once again.  The fight o' the country's
body and blood against a blood-sucker.  The fight of those that spend
themselves with every blow they strike and every breath they draw,
against a thing that fattens on them, and grows and grows by the law
of merciful Nature.  That thing is Capital!  A thing that buys the
sweat o' men's brows, and the tortures o' their brains, at its own
price.  Don't I know that?  Wasn't the work o' my brains bought for
seven hundred pounds, and has n't one hundred thousand pounds been
gained them by that seven hundred without the stirring of a finger.
It is a thing that will take as much and give you as little as it
can.  That's Capital!  A thing that will say--"I'm very sorry for
you, poor fellows--you have a cruel time of it, I know," but will not
give one sixpence of its dividends to help you have a better time.
That's Capital!  Tell me, for all their talk, is there one of them
that will consent to another penny on the Income Tax to help the
poor?  That's Capital!  A white-faced, stony-hearted monster!  Ye
have got it on its knees; are ye to give up at the last minute to
save your miserable bodies pain?  When I went this morning to those
old men from London, I looked into their very 'earts.  One of them
was sitting there--Mr. Scantlebury, a mass of flesh nourished on us:
sittin' there for all the world like the shareholders in this
Company, that sit not moving tongue nor finger, takin' dividends a
great dumb ox that can only be roused when its food is threatened.
I looked into his eyes and I saw he was afraid--afraid for himself
and his dividends; afraid for his fees, afraid of the very
shareholders he stands for; and all but one of them's afraid--like
children that get into a wood at night, and start at every rustle of
the leaves.  I ask you, men--[he pauses, holding out his hand till
there is utter silence]--give me a free hand to tell them: "Go you
back to London.  The men have nothing for you!" [A murmuring.]  Give
me that, an' I swear to you, within a week you shall have from London
all you want.

EVANS, JAGO, and OTHERS.  A free hand!  Give him a free hand!  Bravo-
bravo!

ROBERTS.  'T is not for this little moment of time we're fighting
[the murmuring dies], not for ourselves, our own little bodies, and
their wants, 't is for all those that come after throughout all time.
[With intense sadness.]  Oh!  men--for the love o' them, don't roll
up another stone upon their heads, don't help to blacken the sky, an'
let the bitter sea in over them.  They're welcome to the worst that
can happen to me, to the worst that can happen to us all, are n't
they--are n't they?  If we can shake [passionately]  that white-faced
monster with the bloody lips, that has sucked the life out of
ourselves, our wives, and children, since the world began.  [Dropping
the note of passion but with the utmost weight and intensity.]  If we
have not the hearts of men to stand against it breast to breast, and
eye to eye, and force it backward till it cry for mercy, it will go
on sucking life; and we shall stay forever what we are [in almost a
whisper], less than the very dogs.

     [An utter stillness, and ROBERTS stands rocking his body
     slightly, with his eyes burning the faces of the crowd.]

EVANS and JAGO.  [Suddenly.]  Roberts!  [The shout is taken up.]

     [There is a slight movement in the crowd, and MADGE passing
     below the towing-path, stops by the platform, looking up at
     ROBERTS.  A sudden doubting silence.]

ROBERTS.  "Nature," says that old man, "give in to Nature."  I tell
you, strike your blow in Nature's face--an' let it do its worst!

     [He catches sight of MADGE, his brows contract, he looks away.]

MADGE.  [In a low voice-close to the platform.]  Your wife's dying!

     [ROBERTS glares at her as if torn from some pinnacle of
     exaltation.]

ROBERTS.  [Trying to stammer on.]  I say to you--answer them--answer
them----

     [He is drowned by the murmur in the crowd.]

THOMAS.  [Stepping forward.]  Ton't you hear her, then?

ROBERTS.  What is it?  [A dead silence.]

THOMAS.  Your wife, man!

     [ROBERTS hesitates, then with a gesture, he leaps down, and goes
     away below the towing-path, the men making way for him.  The
     standing bargeman opens and prepares to light a lantern.
     Daylight is fast failing.]

MADGE.  He need n't have hurried!  Annie Roberts is dead. [Then in
the silence, passionately.]  You pack of blinded hounds!  How many
more women are you going to let to die?

     [The crowd shrinks back from her, and breaks up in groups, with
     a confused, uneasy movement.  MADGE goes quickly away below the
     towing-path.  There is a hush as they look after her.]

LEWIS.  There's a spitfire, for ye!

BULGIN.  [Growling.]  I'll smash 'er jaw.

GREEN.  If I'd a-been listened to, that poor woman----

THOMAS.  It's a judgment on him for going against Chapel.  I tolt him
how 't would be!

EVANS.  All the more reason for sticking by 'im.  [A cheer.]  Are you
goin' to desert him now 'e 's down?  Are you going to chuck him over,
now 'e 's lost 'is wife?

     [The crowd is murmuring and cheering all at once.]

ROUS.  [Stepping in front of platform.]  Lost his wife!  Aye!  Can't
ye see?  Look at home, look at your own wives!  What's to save them?
Ye'll have the same in all your houses before long!

LEWIS.  Aye, aye!

HENRY ROUS.  Right!  George, right!

     [There are murmurs of assent.]

ROUS.  It's not us that's blind, it's Roberts.  How long will ye put
up with 'im!

HENRY, ROUS, BULGIN, DAVIES.  Give 'im the chuck!

     [The cry is taken up.]

EVANS.  [Fiercely.]  Kick a man that's down?  Down?

HENRY ROUS.  Stop his jaw there!

     [EVANS throws up his arm at a threat from BULGIN.  The bargeman,
     who has lighted the lantern, holds it high above his head.]

ROUS.  [Springing on to the platform.]  What brought him down then,
but 'is own black obstinacy?  Are ye goin' to follow a man that can't
see better than that where he's goin'?

EVANS.  He's lost 'is wife.

ROUS.  An' who's fault's that but his own.  'Ave done with 'im, I
say, before he's killed your own wives and mothers.

DAVIES.  Down 'im!

HENRY ROUS.  He's finished!

BROWN.  We've had enough of 'im!

BLACKSMITH.  Too much!

     [The crowd takes up these cries, excepting only EVANS, JAGO, and
     GREEN, who is seen to argue mildly with the BLACKSMITH.]

ROUS.  [Above the hubbub.]  We'll make terms with the Union, lads.


     [Cheers.]

EVANS.  [Fiercely.]  Ye blacklegs!

BULGIN.  [Savagely-squaring up to him.]  Who are ye callin'
blacklegs, Rat?

     [EVANS throws up his fists, parries the blow, and returns it.
     They fight.  The bargemen are seen holding up the lantern and
     enjoying the sight.  Old THOMAS steps forward and holds out his
     hands.]

THOMAS.  Shame on your strife!

     [The BLACKSMITH, BROWN, LEWIS, and the RED-HAIRED YOUTH pull
     EVANS and BULGIN apart.  The stage is almost dark.]


                         The curtain falls.




ACT III

     It is five o'clock.  In the UNDERWOODS' drawing-room, which is
     artistically furnished, ENID is sitting on the sofa working at a
     baby's frock.  EDGAR, by a little spindle-legged table in the
     centre of the room, is fingering a china-box.  His eyes are
     fixed on the double-doors that lead into the dining-room.

EDGAR.  [Putting down the china-box, and glancing at his watch.]
Just on five, they're all in there waiting, except Frank.  Where's
he?

ENID.  He's had to go down to Gasgoyne's about a contract.  Will you
want him?

EDGAR.  He can't help us.  This is a director's job.  [Motioning
towards a single door half hidden by a curtain.]  Father in his room?

ENID.  Yes.

EDGAR.  I wish he'd stay there, Enid.

     [ENID looks up at him.  This is a beastly business, old girl?]

     [He takes up the little box again and turns it over and over.]

ENID.  I went to the Roberts's this afternoon, Ted.

EDGAR.  That was n't very wise.

ENID.  He's simply killing his wife.

EDGAR.  We are you mean.

ENID.  [Suddenly.]  Roberts ought to give way!

EDGAR.  There's a lot to be said on the men's side.

ENID.  I don't feel half so sympathetic with them as I did before I
went.  They just set up class feeling against you.  Poor Annie was
looking dread fully bad--fire going out, and nothing fit for her to
eat.

     [EDGAR walks to and fro.]

But she would stand up for Roberts.  When you see all this
wretchedness going on and feel you can do nothing, you have to shut
your eyes to the whole thing.

EDGAR.  If you can.

ENID.  When I went I was all on their side, but as soon as I got
there I began to feel quite different at once.  People talk about
sympathy with the working classes, they don't know what it means to
try and put it into practice.  It seems hopeless.

EDGAR.  Ah!  well.

ENID.  It's dreadful going on with the men in this state.  I do hope
the Dad will make concessions.

EDGAR.  He won't.  [Gloomily.]  It's a sort of religion with him.
Curse it!  I know what's coming!  He'll be voted down.

ENID.  They would n't dare!

EDGAR.  They will--they're in a funk.

ENID.  [Indignantly.]  He'd never stand it!

EDGAR.  [With a shrug.]  My dear girl, if you're beaten in a vote,
you've got to stand it.

ENID.  Oh!  [She gets up in alarm.]  But would he resign?

EDGAR.  Of course!  It goes to the roots of his beliefs.

ENID.  But he's so wrapped up in this company, Ted!  There'd be
nothing left for him!  It'd be dreadful!

     [EDGAR shrugs his shoulders.]

Oh, Ted, he's so old now!  You must n't let them!

EDGAR.  [Hiding his feelings in an outburst.]  My sympathies in this
strike are all on the side of the men.

ENID.  He's been Chairman for more than thirty years!  He made the
whole thing!  And think of the bad times they've had; it's always
been he who pulled them through.  Oh, Ted, you must!

EDGAR.  What is it you want?  You said just now you hoped he'd make
concessions.  Now you want me to back him in not making them.  This
is n't a game, Enid!

ENID.  [Hotly.]  It is n't a game to me that the Dad's in danger of
losing all he cares about in life.  If he won't give way, and he's
beaten, it'll simply break him down!

EDGAR.  Did n't you say it was dreadful going on with the men in this
state?

ENID.  But can't you see, Ted, Father'll never get over it!  You must
stop them somehow.  The others are afraid of him.  If you back him
up----

EDGAR.  [Putting his hand to his head.]  Against my convictions--
against yours!  The moment it begins to pinch one personally----

ENID.  It is n't personal, it's the Dad!

EDGAR.  Your family or yourself, and over goes the show!

ENID.  [Resentfully.]  If you don't take it seriously, I do.

EDGAR.  I am as fond of him as you are; that's nothing to do with it.

ENID.  We can't tell about the men; it's all guess-work.  But we know
the Dad might have a stroke any day.  D' you mean to say that he
isn't more to you than----

EDGAR.  Of course he is.

ENID.  I don't understand you then.

EDGAR.  H'm!

ENID.  If it were for oneself it would be different, but for our own
Father!  You don't seem to realise.

EDGAR.  I realise perfectly.

ENID.  It's your first duty to save him.

EDGAR.  I wonder.

ENID.  [Imploring.]  Oh, Ted?  It's the only interest he's got left;
it'll be like a death-blow to him!

EDGAR.  [Restraining his emotion.]  I know.

ENID.  Promise!

EDGAR.  I'll do what I can.

     [He turns to the double-doors.]

     [The curtained door is opened, and ANTHONY appears.  EDGAR opens
     the double-doors, and passes through.]

     [SCANTLEBURY'S voice is faintly heard: "Past five; we shall
     never get through--have to eat another dinner at that hotel!"
     The doors are shut.  ANTHONY walks forward.]

ANTHONY.  You've been seeing Roberts, I hear.

ENID.  Yes.

ANTHONY.  Do you know what trying to bridge such a gulf as this is
like?

     [ENID puts her work on the little table, and faces him.]

Filling a sieve with sand!

ENID.  Don't!

ANTHONY.  You think with your gloved hands you can cure the trouble
of the century.

     [He passes on. ]

ENID.  Father!

     [ANTHONY Stops at the double doors.]

I'm only thinking of you!

ANTHONY.  [More softly.]  I can take care of myself, my dear.

ENID.  Have you thought what'll happen if you're beaten--
[she points]--in there?

ANTHONY.  I don't mean to be.

ENID.  Oh!  Father, don't give them a chance.  You're not well; need
you go to the meeting at all?

ANTHONY.  [With a grim smile.]  Cut and run?

ENID.  But they'll out-vote you!

ANTHONY.  [Putting his hand on the doors.]  We shall see!

ENID.  I beg you, Dad!  Won't you?

     [ANTHONY looks at her softly.]

     [ANTHONY shakes his head.  He opens the doors.  A buzz of voices
     comes in.]

SCANTLEBURY.  Can one get dinner on that 6.30 train up?

TENCH.  No, Sir, I believe not, sir.

WILDER.  Well, I shall speak out; I've had enough of this.

EDGAR.  [Sharply.]  What?

     [It ceases instantly.  ANTHONY passes through, closing the doors
     behind him.  ENID springs to them with a gesture of dismay.  She
     puts her hand on the knob, and begins turning it; then goes to
     the fireplace, and taps her foot on the fender.  Suddenly she
     rings the bell.  FROST comes in by the door that leads into the
     hall.]

FROST.  Yes, M'm?

ENID.  When the men come, Frost, please show them in here; the
hall 's cold.

FROST.  I could put them in the pantry, M'm.

ENID.  No.  I don't want to--to offend them; they're so touchy.

FROST.  Yes, M'm.  [Pause.]  Excuse me, Mr. Anthony's 'ad nothing to
eat all day.

ENID.  I know Frost.

FROST.  Nothin' but two whiskies and sodas, M'm.

ENID.  Oh!  you oughtn't to have let him have those.

FROST.  [Gravely.]  Mr. Anthony is a little difficult, M'm.  It's not
as if he were a younger man, an' knew what was good for 'im; he will
have his own way.

ENID.  I suppose we all want that.

FROST.  Yes, M'm.  [Quietly.]  Excuse me speakin' about the strike.
I'm sure if the other gentlemen were to give up to Mr. Anthony, and
quietly let the men 'ave what they want, afterwards, that'd be the
best way.  I find that very useful with him at times, M'm.

     [ENID shakes hey head.]

If he's crossed, it makes him violent. [with an air of discovery],
and I've noticed in my own case, when I'm violent I'm always sorry
for it afterwards.

ENID.  [With a smile.]  Are you ever violent, Frost?

FROST.  Yes, M'm; oh!  sometimes very violent.

ENID.  I've never seen you.

FROST.  [Impersonally.]  No, M'm; that is so.

     [ENID fidgets towards the back of the door.]

[With feeling.]  Bein' with Mr. Anthony, as you know, M'm, ever since
I was fifteen, it worries me to see him crossed like this at his age.
I've taken the liberty to speak to Mr. Wanklin [dropping his voice]--
seems to be the most sensible of the gentlemen--but 'e said to me:
"That's all very well, Frost, but this strike's a very serious
thing," 'e said.  "Serious for all parties, no doubt," I said, "but
yumour 'im, sir," I said, "yumour 'im.  It's like this, if a man
comes to a stone wall, 'e does n't drive 'is 'ead against it, 'e gets
over it."  "Yes," 'e said, "you'd better tell your master that."
[FROST looks at his nails.]  That's where it is, M'm.  I said to Mr.
Anthony this morning: "Is it worth it, sir?"  "Damn it," he said to
me, "Frost!  Mind your own business, or take a month's notice!"  Beg
pardon, M'm, for using such a word.

ENID.  [Moving to the double-doors, and listening.]  Do you know that
man Roberts, Frost?

FROST.  Yes, M'm; that's to say, not to speak to.  But to look at 'im
you can tell what he's like.

ENID.  [Stopping.]  Yes?

FROST.  He's not one of these 'ere ordinary 'armless Socialists.
'E's violent; got a fire inside 'im.  What I call "personal."  A man
may 'ave what opinions 'e likes, so long as 'e 's not personal; when
'e 's that 'e 's not safe.

ENID.  I think that's what my father feels about Roberts.

FROST.  No doubt, M'm, Mr. Anthony has a feeling against him.

     [ENID glances at him sharply, but finding him in perfect
     earnest, stands biting her lips, and looking at the double-
     doors.]

It 's, a regular right down struggle between the two.  I've no
patience with this Roberts, from what I 'ear he's just an ordinary
workin' man like the rest of 'em.  If he did invent a thing he's no
worse off than 'undreds of others.  My brother invented a new kind o'
dumb-waiter--nobody gave him anything for it, an' there it is, bein'
used all over the place.

     [ENID moves closer to the double-doors.]

There's a kind o' man that never forgives the world, because 'e
wasn't born a gentleman.  What I say is--no man that's a gentleman
looks down on another because 'e 'appens to be a class or two above
'im, no more than if 'e 'appens to be a class or two below.

ENID.  [With slight impatience.]  Yes, I know, Frost, of course.
Will you please go in and ask if they'll have some tea; say I sent
you.

FROST.  Yes, M'm.

     [He opens the doors gently and goes in.  There is a momentary
     sound of earnest, gather angry talk.]

WILDER.  I don't agree with you.

WANKLIN.  We've had this over a dozen times.

EDGAR.  [Impatiently.]  Well, what's the proposition?

SCANTLEBURY.  Yes, what does your father say?  Tea?  Not for me, not
for me!

WANKLIN.  What I understand the Chairman to say is this----

     [FROST re-enters closing the door behind him.]

ENID.  [Moving from the door.]  Won't they have any tea, Frost?

     [She goes to the little table, and remains motionless, looking
     at the baby's frock.]

     [A parlourmaid enters from the hall.]

PARLOURMAID.  A Miss Thomas, M'm

ENID.  [Raising her head.]  Thomas?  What Miss Thomas--d' you
mean a----?

PARLOURMAID.  Yes, M'm.

ENID.  [Blankly.]  Oh!  Where is she?

PARLOURMAID.  In the porch.

ENID.  I don't want----[She hesitates.]

FROST.  Shall I dispose of her, M'm?

ENID.  I 'll come out.  No, show her in here, Ellen.

     [The PARLOUR MAID and FROST go out.  ENID pursing her lips, sits
     at the little table, taking up the baby's frock.  The
     PARLOURMAID ushers in MADGE THOMAS and goes out; MADGE stands by
     the door.]

ENID.  Come in.  What is it.  What have you come for, please?

MADGE.  Brought a message from Mrs. Roberts.

ENID.  A message?  Yes.

MADGE.  She asks you to look after her mother.

ENID.  I don't understand.

MADGE.  [Sullenly.]  That's the message.

ENID.  But--what--why?

MADGE.  Annie Roberts is dead.

     [There is a silence.]

ENID.  [Horrified.]  But it's only a little more than an hour since I
saw her.

MADGE.  Of cold and hunger.

ENID.  [Rising.]  Oh!  that's not true! the poor thing's heart----
What makes you look at me like that?  I tried to help her.

MADGE.  [With suppressed savagery.]  I thought you'd like to know.

ENID.  [Passionately.]  It's so unjust!  Can't you see that I want to
help you all?

MADGE.  I never harmed any one that had n't harmed me first.

ENID.  [Coldly.]  What harm have I done you?  Why do you speak to me
like that?

MADGE.  [With the bitterest intensity.]  You come out of your comfort
to spy on us!  A week of hunger, that's what you want!

ENID.  [Standing her ground.]  Don't talk nonsense!

MADGE.  I saw her die; her hands were blue with the cold.

ENID.  [With a movement of grief.]  Oh!  why wouldn't she let me help
her?  It's such senseless pride!

MADGE.  Pride's better than nothing to keep your body warm.

ENID.  [Passionately.]  I won't talk to you!  How can you tell what I
feel?  It's not my fault that I was born better off than you.

MADGE.  We don't want your money.

ENID.  You don't understand, and you don't want to; please to go
away!

MADGE.  [Balefully.]  You've killed her, for all your soft words, you
and your father

ENID.  [With rage and emotion.]  That's wicked!  My father is
suffering himself through this wretched strike.

MADGE.  [With sombre triumph.]  Then tell him Mrs. Roberts is dead!
That 'll make him better.

ENID.  Go away!

MADGE.  When a person hurts us we get it back on them.

     [She makes a sudden and swift movement towards ENID, fixing her
     eyes on the child's frock lying across the little table.  ENID
     snatches the frock up, as though it were the child itself.  They
     stand a yard apart, crossing glances.]

MADGE.  [Pointing to the frock with a little smile.]  Ah!  You felt
that!  Lucky it's her mother--not her children--you've to look after,
is n't it.  She won't trouble you long!

ENID.  Go away!

MADGE.  I've given you the message.

     [She turns and goes out into the hall.  ENID, motionless till
     she has gone, sinks down at the table, bending her head over the
     frock, which she is still clutching to her.  The double-doors
     are opened, and ANTHONY comes slowly in; he passes his daughter,
     and lowers himself into an arm-chair.  He is very flushed.]

ENID.  [Hiding her emotion-anxiously.]  What is it, Dad?

     [ANTHONY makes a gesture, but does not speak.]

Who was it?

     [ANTHONY does not answer.  ENID going to the double-doors meets
     EDGAR Coming in.  They speak together in low tones.]

What is it, Ted?

EDGAR.  That fellow Wilder!  Taken to personalities!  He was
downright insulting.

ENID.  What did he say?

EDGAR.  Said, Father was too old and feeble to know what he was
doing!  The Dad's worth six of him!

ENID.  Of course he is.

     [They look at ANTHONY.]

     [The doors open wider, WANKLIN appears With SCANTLEBURY.]

SCANTLEBURY.  [Sotto voce.]  I don't like the look of this!

WANKLIN.  [Going forward.]  Come, Chairman!  Wilder sends you his
apologies.  A man can't do more.

     [WILDER, followed by TENCH, comes in, and goes to ANTHONY.]

WILDER.  [Glumly.]  I withdraw my words, sir.  I'm sorry.

     [ANTHONY nods to him.]

ENID.  You have n't come to a decision, Mr. Wanklin?

     [WANKLIN shakes his head.]

WANKLIN.  We're all here, Chairman; what do you say?  Shall we get on
with the business, or shall we go back to the other room?

SCANTLEBURY.  Yes, yes; let's get on.  We must settle something.

     [He turns from a small chair, and settles himself suddenly in
     the largest chair with a sigh of comfort.]

     [WILDER and WANKLIN also sit; and TENCH, drawing up a straight-
     backed chair close to his Chairman, sits on the edge of it with
     the minute-book and a stylographic pen.]

ENID.  [Whispering.] I want to speak to you a minute, Ted.

     [They go out through the double-doors.]

WANKLIN.  Really, Chairman, it's no use soothing ourselves with a
sense of false security.  If this strike's not brought to an end
before the General Meeting, the shareholders will certainly haul us
over the coals.

SCANTLEBURY.  [Stirring.]  What--what's that?

WANKLIN.  I know it for a fact.

ANTHONY.  Let them!

WILDER.  And get turned out?

WANKLIN.  [To ANTHONY.]  I don't mind martyrdom for a policy in which
I believe, but I object to being burnt for some one else's
principles.

SCANTLEBURY.  Very reasonable--you must see that, Chairman.

ANTHONY.  We owe it to other employers to stand firm.

WANKLIN.  There's a limit to that.

ANTHONY.  You were all full of fight at the start.

SCANTLEBURY.  [With a sort of groan.]  We thought the men would give
in, but they-have n't!

ANTHONY.  They will!

WILDER.  [Rising and pacing up and down.] I can't have my reputation
as a man of business destroyed for the satisfaction of starving the
men out.  [Almost in tears.]  I can't have it!  How can we meet the
shareholders with things in the state they are?

SCANTLEBURY.  Hear, hear--hear, hear!

WILDER.  [Lashing himself.]  If any one expects me to say to them
I've lost you fifty thousand pounds and sooner than put my pride in
my pocket I'll lose you another.  [Glancing at ANTHONY.]  It's--it's
unnatural!  I don't want to go against you, sir.

WANKLIN.  [Persuasively.]  Come Chairman, we 're not free agents.
We're part of a machine.  Our only business is to see the Company
earns as much profit as it safely can.  If you blame me for want of
principle: I say that we're Trustees.  Reason tells us we shall never
get back in the saving of wages what we shall lose if we continue
this struggle--really, Chairman, we must bring it to an end, on the
best terms we can make.

ANTHONY.  No.

     [There is a pause of general dismay.]

WILDER.  It's a deadlock then.  [Letting his hands drop with a sort
of despair.]  Now I shall never get off to Spain!

WANKLIN.  [Retaining a trace of irony.]  You hear the consequences of
your victory, Chairman?

WILDER.  [With a burst of feeling.]  My wife's ill!

SCANTLEBURY.  Dear, dear!  You don't say so.

WILDER.  If I don't get her out of this cold, I won't answer for the
consequences.

     [Through the double-doors EDGAR comes in looking very grave.]

EDGAR.  [To his Father.]  Have you heard this, sir?  Mrs. Roberts is
dead!

     [Every one stages at him, as if trying to gauge the importance
     of this news.]

Enid saw her this afternoon, she had no coals, or food, or anything.
It's enough!

     [There is a silence, every one avoiding the other's eyes, except
     ANTHONY, who stares hard at his son.]

SCANTLEBURY.  You don't suggest that we could have helped the poor
thing?

WILDER.  [Flustered.]  The woman was in bad health.  Nobody can say
there's any responsibility on us.  At least--not on me.

EDGAR.  [Hotly.]  I say that we are responsible.

ANTHONY.  War is war!

EDGAR.  Not on women!

WANKLIN.  It not infrequently happens that women are the greatest
sufferers.

EDGAR.  If we knew that, all the more responsibility rests on us.

ANTHONY.  This is no matter for amateurs.

EDGAR.  Call me what you like, sir.  It's sickened me.  We had no
right to carry things to such a length.

WILDER.  I don't like this business a bit--that Radical rag will
twist it to their own ends; see if they don't!  They'll get up some
cock and bull story about the poor woman's dying from starvation.  I
wash my hands of it.

EDGAR.  You can't.  None of us can.

SCANTLEBURY.  [Striking his fist on the arm of his chair.]  But I
protest against this!

EDGAR.  Protest as you like, Mr. Scantlebury, it won't alter facts.

ANTHONY.  That's enough.

EDGAR.  [Facing him angrily.]  No, sir.  I tell you exactly what I
think.  If we pretend the men are not suffering, it's humbug; and if
they're suffering, we know enough of human nature to know the women
are suffering more, and as to the children--well--it's damnable!

     [SCANTLEBURY rises from his chair.]

I don't say that we meant to be cruel, I don't say anything of the
sort; but I do say it's criminal to shut our eyes to the facts.  We
employ these men, and we can't get out of it.  I don't care so much
about the men, but I'd sooner resign my position on the Board than go
on starving women in this way.

     [All except ANTHONY are now upon their feet, ANTHONY sits
     grasping the arms of his chair and staring at his son.]

SCANTLEBURY.  I don't--I don't like the way you're putting it, young
sir.

WANKLIN.  You're rather overshooting the mark.

WILDER.  I should think so indeed!

EDGAR.  [Losing control.]  It's no use blinking things!  If you want
to have the death of women on your hands--I don't!

SCANTLEBURY.  Now, now, young man!

WILDER.  On our hands?  Not on mine, I won't have it!

EDGAR.  We are five members of this Board; if we were four against
it, why did we let it drift till it came to this?  You know perfectly
well why--because we hoped we should starve the men out.  Well, all
we've done is to starve one woman out!

SCANTLEBURY.  [Almost hysterically.]  I protest, I protest!  I'm a
humane man--we're all humane men!

EDGAR.  [Scornfully.]  There's nothing wrong with our humanity.  It's
our imaginations, Mr. Scantlebury.

WILDER.  Nonsense!  My imagination's as good as yours.

EDGAR.  If so, it is n't good enough.

WILDER.  I foresaw this!

EDGAR.  Then why didn't you put your foot down!

WILDER.  Much good that would have done.

     [He looks at ANTHONY.]

EDGAR.  If you, and I, and each one of us here who say that our
imaginations are so good--

SCANTLEBURY.  [Flurried.]  I never said so.

EDGAR.  [Paying no attention.]--had put our feet down, the thing
would have been ended long ago, and this poor woman's life wouldn't
have been crushed out of her like this.  For all we can tell there
may be a dozen other starving women.

SCANTLEBURY.  For God's sake, sir, don't use that word at a--at a
Board meeting; it's--it's monstrous.

EDGAR.  I will use it, Mr. Scantlebury.

SCANTLEBURY.  Then I shall not listen to you.  I shall not listen!
It's painful to me.

     [He covers his ears.]

WANKLIN.  None of us are opposed to a settlement, except your Father.

EDGAR.  I'm certain that if the shareholders knew----

WANKLIN.  I don't think you'll find their imaginations are any better
than ours.  Because a woman happens to have a weak heart----

EDGAR.  A struggle like this finds out the weak spots in everybody.
Any child knows that.  If it hadn't been for this cut-throat policy,
she need n't have died like this; and there would n't be all this
misery that any one who is n't a fool can see is going on.

     [Throughout the foregoing ANTHONY has eyed his son; he now moves
     as though to rise, but stops as EDGAR speaks again.]

I don't defend the men, or myself, or anybody.

WANKLIN.  You may have to!  A coroner's jury of disinterested
sympathisers may say some very nasty things.  We mustn't lose sight
of our position.

SCANTLEBURY.  [Without uncovering his ears.]  Coroner's jury!  No,
no, it's not a case for that!

EDGAR.  I 've had enough of cowardice.

WANKLIN.  Cowardice is an unpleasant word, Mr. Edgar Anthony.  It
will look very like cowardice if we suddenly concede the men's
demands when a thing like this happens; we must be careful!

WILDER.  Of course we must.  We've no knowledge of this matter,
except a rumour.  The proper course is to put the whole thing into
the hands of Harness to settle for us; that's natural, that's what we
should have come to any way.

SCANTLEBURY.  [With dignity.]  Exactly!  [Turning to EDGAR.]  And as
to you, young sir, I can't sufficiently express my--my distaste for
the way you've treated the whole matter.  You ought to withdraw!
Talking of starvation, talking of cowardice!  Considering what our
views are!  Except your own is--is one of goodwill--it's most
irregular, it's most improper, and all I can say is it's--it's given
me pain----

     [He places his hand over his heart.]

EDGAR.  [Stubbornly.]  I withdraw nothing.

     [He is about to say mote when SCANTLEBURY once more coveys up
     his ears.  TENCH suddenly makes a demonstration with the minute-
     book.  A sense of having been engaged in the unusual comes over
     all of them, and one by one they resume their seats.  EDGAR
     alone remains on his feet.]

WILDER.  [With an air of trying to wipe something out.]  I pay no
attention to what young Mr. Anthony has said.  Coroner's jury!  The
idea's preposterous.  I--I move this amendment to the Chairman's
Motion: That the dispute be placed at once in the hands of Mr. Simon
Harness for settlement, on the lines indicated by him this morning.
Any one second that?

     [TENCH writes in his book.]

WANKLIN.  I do.

WILDER.  Very well, then; I ask the Chairman to put it to the Board.

ANTHONY.  [With a great sigh-slowly.]  We have been made the subject
of an attack.  [Looking round at WILDER and SCANTLEBURY with ironical
contempt.]  I take it on my shoulders.  I am seventy-six years old.
I have been Chairman of this Company since its inception two-and-
thirty years ago.  I have seen it pass through good and evil report.
My connection with it began in the year that this young man was born.

     [EDGAR bows his head.  ANTHONY, gripping his chair, goes on.]

I have had do to with "men" for fifty years; I've always stood up to
them; I have never been beaten yet.  I have fought the men of this
Company four times, and four times I have beaten them.  It has been
said that I am not the man I was.  [He looks at Wilder.]  However
that may be, I am man enough to stand to my guns.

     [His voice grows stronger.  The double-doors are opened.  ENID
     slips in, followed by UNDERWOOD, who restrains her.]

The men have been treated justly, they have had fair wages, we have
always been ready to listen to complaints.  It has been said that
times have changed; if they have, I have not changed with them.
Neither will I.  It has been said that masters and men are equal!
Cant!  There can only be one master in a house!  Where two men meet
the better man will rule.  It has been said that Capital and Labour
have the same interests.  Cant!  Their interests are as wide asunder
as the poles.  It has been said that the Board is only part of a
machine.  Cant!  We are the machine; its brains and sinews; it is for
us to lead and to determine what is to be done, and to do it without
fear or favour.  Fear of the men!  Fear of the shareholders!  Fear of
our own shadows!  Before I am like that, I hope to die.

     [He pauses, and meeting his son's eyes, goes on.]

There is only one way of treating "men"--with the iron hand.  This
half and half business, the half and half manners of this generation,
has brought all this upon us.  Sentiment and softness, and what this
young man, no doubt, would call his social policy.  You can't eat
cake and have it!  This middle-class sentiment, or socialism, or
whatever it may be, is rotten.  Masters are masters, men are men!
Yield one demand, and they will make it six.  They are [he smiles
grimly]  like Oliver Twist, asking for more.  If I were in their
place I should be the same.  But I am not in their place.  Mark my
words: one fine morning, when you have given way here, and given way
there--you will find you have parted with the ground beneath your
feet, and are deep in the bog of bankruptcy; and with you,
floundering in that bog, will be the very men you have given way to.
I have been accused of being a domineering tyrant, thinking only of
my pride--I am thinking of the future of this country, threatened
with the black waters of confusion, threatened with mob government,
threatened with what I cannot see.  If by any conduct of mine I help
to bring this on us, I shall be ashamed to look my fellows in the
face.

     [ANTHONY stares before him, at what he cannot see, and there is
     perfect stillness.  FROST comes in from the hall, and all but
     ANTHONY look round at him uneasily.]

FROST.  [To his master.]  The men are here, sir.  [ANTHONY makes a
gesture of dismissal.]  Shall I bring them in, sir?

ANTHONY.  Wait!

     [FROST goes out, ANTHONY turns to face his son.]

I come to the attack that has been made upon me.

     [EDGAR, with a gesture of deprecation, remains motionless with
     his head a little bowed.]

A woman has died.  I am told that her blood is on my hands; I am told
that on my hands is the starvation and the suffering of other women
and of children.

EDGAR.  I said "on our hands," sir.

ANTHONY.  It is the same.  [His voice grows stronger and stronger,
his feeling is more and more made manifest.]  I am not aware that if
my adversary suffer in a fair fight not sought by me, it is my fault.
If I fall under his feet--as fall I may--I shall not complain.  That
will be my look-out--and this is--his.  I cannot separate, as I
would, these men from their women and children.  A fair fight is a
fair fight!  Let them learn to think before they pick a quarrel!

EDGAR.  [In a low voice.]  But is it a fair fight, Father?  Look at
them, and look at us!  They've only this one weapon!

ANTHONY.  [Grimly.]  And you're weak-kneed enough to teach them how
to use it!  It seems the fashion nowadays for men to take their
enemy's side.  I have not learnt that art.  Is it my fault that they
quarrelled with their Union too?

EDGAR.  There is such a thing as Mercy.

ANTHONY.  And justice comes before it.

EDGAR.  What seems just to one man, sir, is injustice to another.

ANTHONY.  [With suppressed passion.]  You accuse me of injustice--of
what amounts to inhumanity--of cruelty?

     [EDGAR makes a gesture of horror--a general frightened
     movement.]

WANKLIN.  Come, come, Chairman.

ANTHONY.  [In a grim voice.]  These are the words of my own son.
They are the words of a generation that I don't understand; the words
of a soft breed.

     [A general murmur.  With a violent effort ANTHONY recovers his
     control.]

EDGAR.  [Quietly.]  I said it of myself, too, Father.

     [A long look is exchanged between them, and ANTHONY puts out his
     hand with a gesture as if to sweep the personalities away; then
     places it against his brow, swaying as though from giddiness.
     There is a movement towards him.  He moves them back.]

ANTHONY.  Before I put this amendment to the Board, I have one more
word to say.  [He looks from face to face.]  If it is carried, it
means that we shall fail in what we set ourselves to do.  It means
that we shall fail in the duty that we owe to all Capital.  It means
that we shall fail in the duty that we owe ourselves.  It means that
we shall be open to constant attack to which we as constantly shall
have to yield.  Be under no misapprehension--run this time, and you
will never make a stand again!  You will have to fly like curs before
the whips of your own men.  If that is the lot you wish for, you will
vote for this amendment.

     [He looks again, from face to face, finally resting his gaze on
     EDGAR; all sit with their eyes on the ground.  ANTHONY makes a
     gesture, and TENCH hands him the book.  He reads.]

"Moved by Mr. Wilder, and seconded by Mr. Wanklin: 'That the men's
demands be placed at once in the hands of Mr. Simon Harness for
settlement on the lines indicated by him this morning.'"  [With
sudden vigour.]  Those in favour: Signify the same in the usual way!

     [For a minute no one moves; then hastily, just as ANTHONY is
     about to speak, WILDER's hand and WANKLIN'S are held up, then
     SCANTLEBURY'S, and last EDGAR'S who does not lift his head.]

     [ANTHONY lifts his own hand.]

[In a clear voice.]  The amendment is carried.  I resign my position
on this Board.

     [ENID gasps, and there is dead silence.  ANTHONY sits
     motionless, his head slowly drooping; suddenly he heaves as
     though the whole of his life had risen up within him.]

Contrary?

Fifty years!  You have disgraced me, gentlemen.  Bring in the men!

     [He sits motionless, staring before him.  The Board draws
     hurriedly together, and forms a group.  TENCH in a frightened
     manner speaks into the hall.  UNDERWOOD almost forces ENID from
     the room.]

WILDER.  [Hurriedly.]  What's to be said to them?  Why isn't Harness
here?  Ought we to see the men before he comes?  I don't----

TENCH.  Will you come in, please?

     [Enter THOMAS, GREEN, BULGIN, and ROUS, who file up in a row
     past the little table.  TENCH sits down and writes.  All eyes
     are foxed on ANTHONY, who makes no sign.]

WANKLIN.  [Stepping up to the little table, with nervous cordiality.]
Well, Thomas, how's it to be?  What's the result of your meeting?

ROUS.  Sim Harness has our answer.  He'll tell you what it is.  We're
waiting for him.  He'll speak for us.

WANKLIN.  Is that so, Thomas?

THOMAS.  [Sullenly.]  Yes.  Roberts will not pe coming, his wife is
dead.

SCANTLEBURY.  Yes, yes!  Poor woman!  Yes!  Yes!

FROST.  [Entering from the hall.]  Mr. Harness, Sir!

     [As HARNESS enters he retires.]

     [HARNESS has a piece of paper in his hand, he bows to the
     Directors, nods towards the men, and takes his stand behind the
     little table in the very centre of the room.]

HARNESS.  Good evening, gentlemen.

     [TENCH, with the paper he has been writing, joins him, they
     speak together in low tones.]

WILDER.  We've been waiting for you, Harness.  Hope we shall come to
some----

FROST.  [Entering from the hall.]  Roberts!

     [He goes.]

     [ROBERTS comes hastily in, and stands staring at ANTHONY.  His
     face is drawn and old.]

ROBERTS.  Mr. Anthony, I am afraid I am a little late, I would have
been here in time but for something that--has happened.  [To the
men.]  Has anything been said?

THOMAS.  No!  But, man, what made ye come?

ROBERTS.  Ye told us this morning, gentlemen, to go away and
reconsider our position.  We have reconsidered it; we are here to
bring you the men's answer.  [To ANTHONY.]  Go ye back to London.  We
have nothing for you.  By no jot or tittle do we abate our demands,
nor will we until the whole of those demands are yielded.

     [ANTHONY looks at him but does not speak.  There is a movement
     amongst the men as though they were bewildered.]

HARNESS.  Roberts!

ROBERTS.  [Glancing fiercely at him, and back to ANTHONY.]  Is that
clear enough for ye?  Is it short enough and to the point?  Ye made a
mistake to think that we would come to heel.  Ye may break the body,
but ye cannot break the spirit.  Get back to London, the men have
nothing for ye?

     [Pausing uneasily he takes a step towards the unmoving ANTHONY.]

EDGAR.  We're all sorry for you, Roberts, but----

ROBERTS.  Keep your sorrow, young man.  Let your father speak!

HARNESS.  [With the sheet of paper in his hand, speaking from behind
the little table.]  Roberts!

ROBERT.  [TO ANTHONY, with passionate intensity.]  Why don't ye
answer?

HARNESS.  Roberts!

ROBERTS.  [Turning sharply.]  What is it?

HARNESS.  [Gravely.]  You're talking without the book; things have
travelled past you.

     [He makes a sign to TENCH, who beckons the Directors.  They
     quickly sign his copy of the terms.]

Look at this, man!  [Holding up his sheet of paper.]  "Demands
conceded, with the exception of those relating to the engineers and
furnace-men.  Double wages for Saturday's overtime.  Night-shifts as
they are."  These terms have been agreed.  The men go back to work
again to-morrow.  The strike is at an end.

ROBERTS.  [Reading the paper, and turning on the men.  They shrink
back from him, all but ROUS, who stands his ground.  With deadly
stillness.]  Ye have gone back on me?  I stood by ye to the death; ye
waited for that to throw me over!

     [The men answer, all speaking together.]

ROUS.  It's a lie!

THOMAS.  Ye were past endurance, man.

GREEN.  If ye'd listen to me!

BULGIN.  (Under his breath.) Hold your jaw!

ROBERTS.  Ye waited for that!

HARNESS.  [Taking the Director's copy of the terms, and handing his
own to TENCH.]  That's enough, men.  You had better go.

     [The men shuffle slowly, awkwardly away.]

WILDER.  [In a low, nervous voice.]  There's nothing to stay for now,
I suppose.  [He follows to the door.]  I shall have a try for that
train!  Coming, Scantlebury?

SCANTLEBURY. [Following with WANKLIN.]  Yes, yes; wait for me.  [He
stops as ROBERTS speaks.]

ROBERTS.  [To ANTHONY.]  But ye have not signed them terms!  They
can't make terms without their Chairman!  Ye would never sign them
terms! [ANTHONY looks at him without speaking.]  Don't tell me ye
have!  for the love o' God!  [With passionate appeal.]  I reckoned on
ye!

HARNESS.  [Holding out the Director's copy of the teems.]  The Board
has signed!

     [ROBERTS looks dully at the signatures--dashes the paper from
     him, and covers up his eyes.]

SCANTLEBURY.  [Behind his hand to TENCH.]  Look after the Chairman!
He's not well; he's not well--he had no lunch.  If there's any fund
started for the women and children, put me down for--for twenty
pounds.

     [He goes out into the hall, in cumbrous haste; and WANKLIN, who
     has been staring at ROBERTS and ANTHONY With twitchings of his
     face, follows.  EDGAR remains seated on the sofa, looking at the
     ground; TENCH, returning to the bureau, writes in his minute--
     book.  HARNESS stands by the little table, gravely watching
     ROBERTS.]

ROBERTS.  Then you're no longer Chairman of this Company!  [Breaking
into half-mad laughter.]  Ah!  ha-ah, ha, ha!  They've thrown ye over
thrown over their Chairman: Ah-ha-ha!  [With a sudden dreadful calm.]
So--they've done us both down, Mr. Anthony?

     [ENID, hurrying through the double-doors, comes quickly to her
     father.]

ANTHONY.  Both broken men, my friend Roberts!

HARNESS.  [Coming down and laying his hands on ROBERTS'S sleeve.]
For shame, Roberts!  Go home quietly, man; go home!

ROBERTS.  [Tearing his arm away.]  Home?  [Shrinking together--in a
whisper.]  Home!

ENID.  [Quietly to her father.]  Come away, dear!  Come to your room

     [ANTHONY rises with an effort.  He turns to ROBERTS who looks at
     him.  They stand several seconds, gazing at each other fixedly;
     ANTHONY lifts his hand, as though to salute, but lets it fall.
     The expression of ROBERTS'S face changes from hostility to
     wonder.  They bend their heads in token of respect.  ANTHONY
     turns, and slowly walks towards the curtained door.  Suddenly
     he sways as though about to fall, recovers himself, and is
     assisted out by EDGAR and ENID; UNDERWOOD follows, but stops at
     the door.  ROBERTS remains motionless for several seconds,
     staring intently after ANTHONY, then goes out into the hall.]

TENCH.  [Approaching HARNESS.]  It's a great weight off my mind, Mr.
Harness!  But what a painful scene, sir!  [He wipes his brow.]

     [HARNESS, pale and resolute, regards with a grim half-smile the
     quavering.]

TENCH.  It's all been so violent!  What did he mean by: "Done us both
down?"  If he has lost his wife, poor fellow, he oughtn't to have
spoken to the Chairman like that!

HARNESS.  A woman dead; and the two best men both broken!

TENCH.  [Staring at him-suddenly excited.]  D'you know, sir--these
terms, they're the very same we drew up together, you and I, and put
to both sides before the fight began?  All this--all this--and--and
what for?

HARNESS.  [In a slow grim voice.]  That's where the fun comes in!

     [UNDERWOOD without turning from the door makes a gesture of
     assent.]


                         The curtain falls.

THE END





End of this Project Gutenberg Etext of STRIFE, by John Galsworthy






GALSWORTHY PLAYS--SECOND SERIES--NO. 1

THE ELDEST SON

BY JOHN GALSWORTHY




PERSONS OF THE PLAY

SIR WILLIAM CHESHIRE, a baronet
LADY CHESHIRE, his wife
BILL, their eldest son
HAROLD, their second son
RONALD KEITH(in the Lancers), their son-in-law
CHRISTINE (his wife), their eldest daughter
DOT, their second daughter
JOAN, their third daughter
MABEL LANFARNE, their guest
THE REVEREND JOHN LATTER, engaged to Joan
OLD STUDDENHAM, the head-keeper
FREDA STUDDENHAM, the lady's-maid
YOUNG DUNNING, the under-keeper
ROSE TAYLOR, a village girl
JACKSON, the butler
CHARLES, a footman


TIME: The present.  The action passes on December 7 and 8 at the
Cheshires' country house, in one of the shires.

ACT I SCENE I. The hall; before dinner.
      SCENE II. The hall; after dinner.

ACT II. Lady Cheshire's morning room; after breakfast.

ACT III. The smoking-room; tea-time.

          A night elapses between Acts I. and II.





                              ACT I

SCENE I

     The scene is a well-lighted, and large, oak-panelled hall, with
     an air of being lived in, and a broad, oak staircase.  The
     dining-room, drawing-room, billiard-room, all open into it; and
     under the staircase a door leads to the servants' quarters.  In
     a huge fireplace a log fire is burning.  There are tiger-skins
     on the floor, horns on the walls; and a writing-table against
     the wall opposite the fireplace.  FREDA STUDDENHAM, a pretty,
     pale girl with dark eyes, in the black dress of a lady's-maid,
     is standing at the foot of the staircase with a bunch of white
     roses in one hand, and a bunch of yellow roses in the other.  A
     door closes above, and SIR WILLIAM CHESHIRE, in evening dress,
     comes downstairs.  He is perhaps fifty-eight, of strong build,
     rather bull-necked, with grey eyes, and a well-coloured face,
     whose choleric autocracy is veiled by a thin urbanity.  He
     speaks before he reaches the bottom.

SIR WILLIAM.  Well, Freda!  Nice roses.  Who are they for?

FREDA.  My lady told me to give the yellow to Mrs. Keith, Sir
William, and the white to Miss Lanfarne, for their first evening.

SIR WILLIAM.  Capital.  [Passing on towards the drawing-room] Your
father coming up to-night?

FREDA.  Yes.

SIR WILLIAM.  Be good enough to tell him I specially want to see him
here after dinner, will you?

FREDA.  Yes, Sir William.

SIR WILLIAM.  By the way, just ask him to bring the game-book in, if
he's got it.

     He goes out into the drawing-room; and FREDA stands restlessly
     tapping her foot against the bottom stair.  With a flutter of
     skirts CHRISTINE KEITH comes rapidly down.  She is a
     nice-looking, fresh-coloured young woman in a low-necked dress.

CHRISTINE.  Hullo, Freda!  How are YOU?

FREDA.  Quite well, thank you, Miss Christine--Mrs. Keith, I mean.
My lady told me to give you these.

CHRISTINE.  [Taking the roses] Oh! Thanks!  How sweet of mother!

FREDA. [In a quick, toneless voice] The others are for Miss Lanfarne.
My lady thought white would suit her better.

CHRISTINE.  They suit you in that black dress.

     [FREDA lowers the roses quickly.]

What do you think of Joan's engagement?

FREDA.  It's very nice for her.

CHRISTINE.  I say, Freda, have they been going hard at rehearsals?

FREDA.  Every day.  Miss Dot gets very cross, stage-managing.

CHRISTINE.  I do hate learning a part.  Thanks awfully for unpacking.
Any news?

FREDA.  [In the same quick, dull voice]  The under-keeper, Dunning,
won't marry Rose Taylor, after all.

CHRISTINE.  What a shame!  But I say that's serious.  I thought there
was--she was--I mean----

FREDA.  He's taken up with another girl, they say.

CHRISTINE.  Too bad!  [Pinning the roses]  D'you know if Mr. Bill's
come?

FREDA.  [With a swift upward look] Yes, by the six-forty.

     RONALD KEITH comes slowly down, a weathered firm-lipped man, in
     evening dress, with eyelids half drawn over his keen eyes, and
     the air of a horseman.

KEITH.  Hallo!  Roses in December.  I say, Freda, your father missed
a wigging this morning when they drew blank at Warnham's spinney.
Where's that litter of little foxes?

FREDA.  [Smiling faintly]  I expect father knows, Captain Keith.

KEITH.  You bet he does.  Emigration? Or thin air?  What?

CHRISTINE.  Studdenham'd never shoot a fox, Ronny.  He's been here
since the flood.

KEITH.  There's more ways of killing a cat--eh, Freda?

CHRISTINE.  [Moving with her husband towards the drawing-room] Young
Dunning won't marry that girl, Ronny.

KEITH.  Phew!  Wouldn't be in his shoes, then!  Sir William'll never
keep a servant who's made a scandal in the village, old girl.  Bill
come?

     As they disappear from the hall, JOHN LATTER in a clergyman's
     evening dress, comes sedately downstairs, a tall, rather pale
     young man, with something in him, as it were, both of heaven,
     and a drawing-room.  He passes FREDA with a formal little nod.
     HAROLD, a fresh-cheeked, cheery-looking youth, comes down, three
     steps at a time.

HAROLD.  Hallo, Freda!  Patience on the monument.  Let's have a
sniff!  For Miss Lanfarne? Bill come down yet?

FREDA.  No, Mr. Harold.

     HAROLD crosses the hall, whistling, and follows LATTER into the
     drawing-room.  There is the sound of a scuffle above, and a
     voice crying: "Shut up, Dot!" And JOAN comes down screwing her
     head back.  She is pretty and small, with large clinging eyes.

JOAN.  Am I all right behind, Freda?  That beast, Dot!

FREDA.  Quite, Miss Joan.

     DOT's face, like a full moon, appears over the upper banisters.
     She too comes running down, a frank figure, with the face of a
     rebel.

DOT.  You little being!

JOAN.  [Flying towards the drawing-roam, is overtaken at the door]
Oh!  Dot!  You're pinching!

     As they disappear into the drawing-room, MABEL LANFARNE, a tall
     girl with a rather charming Irish face, comes slowly down.  And
     at sight of her FREDA's whole figure becomes set and meaning-
     full.

FREDA.  For you, Miss Lanfarne, from my lady.

MABEL.  [In whose speech is a touch of wilful Irishry] How sweet!
[Fastening the roses]  And how are you, Freda?

FREDA.  Very well, thank you.

MABEL.  And your father?  Hope he's going to let me come out with the
guns again.

FREDA.  [Stolidly] He'll be delighted, I'm sure.

MABEL.  Ye-es!  I haven't forgotten his face-last time.

FREDA.  You stood with Mr. Bill.  He's better to stand with than Mr.
Harold, or Captain Keith?

MABEL.  He didn't touch a feather, that day.

FREDA.  People don't when they're anxious to do their best.

     A gong sounds.  And MABEL LANFARNE, giving FREDA a rather
     inquisitive stare, moves on to the drawing-room.  Left alone
     without the roses, FREDA still lingers.  At the slamming of a
     door above, and hasty footsteps, she shrinks back against the
     stairs.  BILL runs down, and comes on her suddenly.  He is a
     tall, good-looking edition of his father, with the same stubborn
     look of veiled choler.

BILL.  Freda! [And as she shrinks still further back] what's the
matter?  [Then at some sound he looks round uneasily and draws away
from her]  Aren't you glad to see me?

FREDA.  I've something to say to you, Mr. Bill.  After dinner.

BILL.  Mister----?

     She passes him, and rushes away upstairs.  And BILL, who stands
     frowning and looking after her, recovers himself sharply as the
     drawing-room door is opened, and SIR WILLIAM and MISS LANFARNE
     come forth, followed by KEITH, DOT, HAROLD, CHRISTINE, LATTER,
     and JOAN, all leaning across each other, and talking.  By
     herself, behind them, comes LADY CHESHIRE, a refined-looking
     woman of fifty, with silvery dark hair, and an expression at
     once gentle, and ironic.  They move across the hall towards the
     dining-room.

SIR WILLIAM.  Ah!  Bill.

MABEL.  How do you do?

KEITH.  How are you, old chap?

DOT. [gloomily] Do you know your part?

HAROLD.  Hallo, old man!

CHRISTINE gives her brother a flying kiss.  JOAN and LATTER pause and
look at him shyly without speech.

BILL.  [Putting his hand on JOAN's shoulder] Good luck, you two!
Well mother?

LADY CHESHIRE.  Well, my dear boy!  Nice to see you at last.  What a
long time!

     She draws his arm through hers, and they move towards the
     dining-room.

     The curtain falls.

     The curtain rises again at once.




SCENE II

     CHRISTINE, LADY CHESHIRE, DOT, MABEL LANFARNE,
     and JOAN, are returning to the hall after dinner.

CHRISTINE.  [in a low voice] Mother, is it true about young Dunning
and Rose Taylor?

LADY CHESHIRE.  I'm afraid so, dear.

CHRISTINE.  But can't they be----

DOT.  Ah! ah-h!  [CHRISTINE and her mother are silent.] My child, I'm
not the young person.

CHRISTINE.  No, of course not--only--[nodding towards JOAN and
Mable].

DOT.  Look here!  This is just an instance of what I hate.

LADY CHESHIRE.  My dear? Another one?

DOT.  Yes, mother, and don't you pretend you don't understand,
because you know you do.

CHRISTINE.  Instance?  Of what?

JOAN and MABEL have ceased talking, and listen, still at the fire.

DOT.  Humbug, of course.  Why should you want them to marry, if he's
tired of her?

CHRISTINE.  [Ironically] Well!  If your imagination doesn't carry you
as far as that!

DOT.  When people marry, do you believe they ought to be in love with
each other?

CHRISTINE.  [With a shrug] That's not the point.

DOT.  Oh?  Were you in love with Ronny?

CHRISTINE.  Don't be idiotic!

DOT.  Would you have married him if you hadn't been?

CHRISTINE.  Of course not!

JOAN.  Dot!  You are!----

DOT.  Hallo!  my little snipe!

LADY CHESHIRE.  Dot, dear!

DOT.  Don't shut me up, mother!  [To JOAN.]  Are you in love with
John?  [JOAN turns hurriedly to the fire.]  Would you be going to
marry him if you were not?

CHRISTINE.  You are a brute, Dot.

DOT.  Is Mabel in love with--whoever she is in love with?

MABEL.  And I wonder who that is.

DOT.  Well, would you marry him if you weren't?

MABEL.  No, I would not.

DOT.  Now, mother; did you love father?

CHRISTINE.  Dot, you really are awful.

DOT.  [Rueful and detached]  Well, it is a bit too thick, perhaps.

JOAN.  Dot!

DOT.  Well, mother, did you--I mean quite calmly?

LADY CHESHIRE.  Yes, dear, quite calmly.

DOT.  Would you have married him if you hadn't? [LADY CHESHIRE shakes
her head]  Then we're all agreed!

MABEL.  Except yourself.

DOT.  [Grimly] Even if I loved him, he might think himself lucky if I
married him.

MABEL.  Indeed, and I'm not so sure.

DOT.  [Making a face at her] What I was going to----

LADY CHESHIRE.  But don't you think, dear, you'd better not?

DOT.  Well, I won't say what I was going to say, but what I do say
is--Why the devil----

LADY CHESHIRE.  Quite so, Dot!

DOT.  [A little disconcerted.]  If they're tired of each other, they
ought not to marry, and if father's going to make them----

CHRISTINE.  You don't understand in the least.  It's for the sake of
the----

DOT.  Out with it, Old Sweetness!  The approaching infant!  God bless
it!

     There is a sudden silence, for KEITH and LATTER are seen coming
     from the dining-room.

LATTER.  That must be so, Ronny.

KEITH.  No, John; not a bit of it!

LATTER.  You don't think!

KEITH.  Good Gad, who wants to think after dinner!

DOT.  Come on!  Let's play pool.  [She turns at the billiard-room
door.]  Look here!  Rehearsal to-morrow is directly after breakfast;
from "Eccles enters breathless" to the end.

MABEL.  Whatever made you choose "Caste," DOT? You know it's awfully
difficult.

DOT.  Because it's the only play that's not too advanced.  [The girls
all go into the billiard-room.]

LADY CHESHIRE.  Where's Bill, Ronny?

KEITH.  [With a grimace]  I rather think Sir William and he are in
Committee of Supply--Mem-Sahib.

LADY CHESHIRE.  Oh!

     She looks uneasily at the dining-room; then follows the girls
     out.

LATTER.  [In the tone of one resuming an argument]  There can't be
two opinions about it, Ronny.  Young Dunning's refusal is simply
indefensible.

KEITH.  I don't agree a bit, John.

LATTER.  Of course, if you won't listen.

KEITH.  [Clipping a cigar]  Draw it mild, my dear chap.  We've had
the whole thing over twice at least.

LATTER.  My point is this----

KEITH.  [Regarding LATTER quizzically with his halfclosed eyes]
I know--I know--but the point is, how far your point is simply
professional.

LATTER.  If a man wrongs a woman, he ought to right her again.
There's no answer to that.

KEITH.  It all depends.

LATTER.  That's rank opportunism.

KEITH.  Rats!  Look here--Oh! hang it, John, one can't argue this out
with a parson.

LATTER.  [Frigidly]  Why not?

HAROLD.  [Who has entered from the dining-room]  Pull devil, pull
baker!

KEITH.  Shut up, Harold!

LATTER.  "To play the game" is the religion even of the Army.

KEITH.  Exactly, but what is the game?

LATTER.  What else can it be in this case?

KEITH.  You're too puritanical, young John.  You can't help it--line
of country laid down for you.  All drag-huntin'!  What!

LATTER.  [With concentration]  Look here!

HAROLD.  [Imitating the action of a man pulling at a horse's head]
'Come hup, I say, you hugly beast!'

KEITH.  [To LATTER]  You're not going to draw me, old chap.  You
don't see where you'd land us all.  [He smokes calmly]

LATTER.  How do you imagine vice takes its rise?  From precisely this
sort of thing of young Dunning's.

KEITH.  From human nature, I should have thought, John.  I admit that
I don't like a fellow's leavin' a girl in the lurch; but I don't see
the use in drawin' hard and fast rules.  You only have to break 'em.
Sir William and you would just tie Dunning and the girl up together,
willy-nilly, to save appearances, and ten to one but there'll be the
deuce to pay in a year's time.  You can take a horse to the water,
you can't make him drink.

LATTER.  I entirely and absolutely disagree with you.

HAROLD.  Good old John!

LATTER.  At all events we know where your principles take you.

KEITH.  [Rather dangerously]  Where, please?  [HAROLD turns up his
eyes, and points downwards]  Dry up, Harold!

LATTER.  Did you ever hear the story of Faust?

KEITH.  Now look here, John; with all due respect to your cloth, and
all the politeness in the world, you may go to-blazes.

LATTER.  Well, I must say, Ronny--of all the rude boors----[He turns
towards the billiard-room.]

KEITH.  Sorry I smashed the glass, old chap.

     LATTER passes out.  There comes a mingled sound through the
     opened door, of female voices, laughter, and the click of
     billiard balls, dipped of by the sudden closing of the door.

KEITH.  [Impersonally]  Deuced odd, the way a parson puts one's back
up!  Because you know I agree with him really; young Dunning ought to
play the game; and I hope Sir William'll make him.

     The butler JACKSON has entered from the door under the stairs
     followed by the keeper STUDDENHAM, a man between fifty and
     sixty, in a full-skirted coat with big pockets, cord breeches,
     and gaiters; he has a steady self respecting weathered face,
     with blue eyes and a short grey beard, which has obviously once
     been red.

KEITH.  Hullo!  Studdenham!

STUDDENHAM. [Touching his forehead] Evenin', Captain Keith.

JACKSON.  Sir William still in the dining-room with Mr. Bill, sir?

HAROLD.  [With a grimace]  He is, Jackson.

     JACKSON goes out to the dining-room.

KEITH.  You've shot no pheasants yet, Studdenham?

STUDDENHAM.  No, Sir.  Only birds.  We'll be doin' the spinneys and
the home covert while you're down.

KEITH.  I say, talkin' of spinneys----

     He breaks off sharply, and goes out with HAROLD into the
     billiard-room.  SIR WILLIAM enters from the dining-room,
     applying a gold toothpick to his front teeth.

SIR WILLIAM.  Ah!  Studdenham.  Bad business this, about young
Dunning!

STUDDENHAM.  Yes, Sir William.

SIR WILLIAM.  He definitely refuses to marry her?

STUDDENHAM.  He does that.

SIR WILLIAM.  That won't do, you know.  What reason does he give?

STUDDENHAM.  Won't say other than that he don't want no more to do
with her.

SIR WILLIAM.  God bless me!  That's not a reason.  I can't have a
keeper of mine playing fast and loose in the village like this.
[Turning to LADY CHESHIRE, who has come in from the billiard-room]
That affair of young Dunning's, my dear.

LADY CHESHIRE.  Oh!  Yes!  I'm so sorry, Studdenham.  The poor girl!

STUDDENHAM. [Respectfully] Fancy he's got a feeling she's not his
equal, now, my lady.

LADY CHESHIRE. [To herself] Yes, I suppose he has made her his
superior.

SIR WILLIAM.  What?  Eh!  Quite!  Quite!  I was just telling
Studdenham the fellow must set the matter straight.  We can't have
open scandals in the village.  If he wants to keep his place he must
marry her at once.

LADY CHESHIRE.  [To her husband in a low voice]  Is it right to force
them?  Do you know what the girl wishes, Studdenham?

STUDDENHAM.  Shows a spirit, my lady--says she'll have him--willin'
or not.

LADY CHESHIRE.  A spirit?  I see.  If they marry like that they're
sure to be miserable.

SIR WILLIAM.  What!  Doesn't follow at all.  Besides, my dear, you
ought to know by this time, there's an unwritten law in these
matters.  They're perfectly well aware that when there are
consequences, they have to take them.

STUDDENHAM.  Some o' these young people, my lady, they don't put two
and two together no more than an old cock pheasant.

SIR WILLIAM.  I'll give him till to-morrow.  If he remains obstinate,
he'll have to go; he'll get no character, Studdenham.  Let him know
what I've said.  I like the fellow, he's a good keeper.  I don't want
to lose him.  But this sort of thing I won't have.  He must toe the
mark or take himself off.  Is he up here to-night?

STUDDENHAM.  Hangin' partridges, Sir William.  Will you have him in?

SIR WILLIAM.  [Hesitating] Yes--yes.  I'll see him.

STUDDENHAM.  Good-night to you, my lady.

LADY CHESHIRE.  Freda's not looking well, Studdenham.

STUDDENHAM.  She's a bit pernickitty with her food, that's where it
is.

LADY CHESHIRE.  I must try and make her eat.

SIR WILLIAM.  Oh!  Studdenham.  We'll shoot the home covert first.
What did we get last year?

STUDDENHAM.  [Producing the game-book; but without reference to it]
Two hundred and fifty-three pheasants, eleven hares, fifty-two
rabbits, three woodcock, sundry.

SIR WILLIAM.  Sundry?  Didn't include a fox did it?  [Gravely] I was
seriously upset this morning at Warnham's spinney----

SUDDENHAM.  [Very gravely] You don't say, Sir William; that
four-year-old he du look a handful!

SIR WILLIAM.  [With a sharp look] You know well enough what I mean.

STUDDENHAM.  [Unmoved]  Shall I send young Dunning, Sir William?

     SIR WILLIAM gives a short, sharp nod, and STUDDENHAM retires by
     the door under the stairs.

SIR WILLIAM.  Old fox!

LADY CHESHIRE.  Don't be too hard on Dunning.  He's very young.

SIR WILLIAM.  [Patting her arm] My dear, you don't understand young
fellows, how should you?

LADY CHESHIRE.  [With her faint irony]  A husband and two sons not
counting.  [Then as the door under the stairs is opened]  Bill, now
do----

SIR WILLIAM.  I'll be gentle with him.  [Sharply]  Come in!

     LADY CHESHIRE retires to the billiard-room.  She gives a look
     back and a half smile at young DUNNING, a fair young man dressed
     in broom cords and leggings, and holding his cap in his hand;
     then goes out.

SIR WILLIAM.  Evenin', Dunning.

DUNNING.  [Twisting his cap] Evenin', Sir William.

SIR WILLIAM.  Studdenham's told you what I want to see you about?

DUNNING.  Yes, Sir.

SIR WILLIAM.  The thing's in your hands.  Take it or leave it.  I
don't put pressure on you.  I simply won't have this sort of thing on
my estate.

DUNNING.  I'd like to say, Sir William, that she [He stops].

SIR WILLIAM.  Yes, I daresay-Six of one and half a dozen of the
other.  Can't go into that.

DUNNING.  No, Sir William.

SIR WILLIAM.  I'm quite mild with you.  This is your first place.  If
you leave here you'll get no character.

DUNNING.  I never meant any harm, sir.

SIR WILLIAM.  My good fellow, you know the custom of the country.

DUNNING.  Yes, Sir William, but----

SIR WILLIAM.  You should have looked before you leaped.  I'm not
forcing you.  If you refuse you must go, that's all.

DUNNING.  Yes.  Sir William.

SIR WILLIAM.  Well, now go along and take a day to think it over.

     BILL, who has sauntered moody from the diningroom, stands by the
     stairs listening.  Catching sight of him, DUNNING raises his
     hand to his forelock.

DUNNING.  Very good, Sir William.  [He turns, fumbles, and turns
again]  My old mother's dependent on me----

SIR WILLIAM.  Now, Dunning, I've no more to say.
     [Dunning goes sadly away under the stairs.]

SIR WILLIAM.  [Following]  And look here!  Just understand this
     [He too goes out....]

     BILL, lighting a cigarette, has approached the writing-table.
     He looks very glum.  The billiard-room door is flung open.
     MABEL LANFARNE appears, and makes him a little curtsey.

MABEL.  Against my will I am bidden to bring you in to pool.

BILL.  Sorry!  I've got letters.

MABEL.  You seem to have become very conscientious.

BILL.  Oh!  I don't know.

MABEL.  Do you remember the last day of the covert shooting?

BITS.  I do.

MABEL.  [Suddenly]  What a pretty girl Freda Studdenham's grown!

BILL.  Has she?

MABEL.  "She walks in beauty."

BILL.  Really?  Hadn't noticed.

MABEL.  Have you been taking lessons in conversation?

BILL.  Don't think so.

MABEL.  Oh!  [There is a silence]  Mr. Cheshire!

BILL.  Miss Lanfarne!

MABEL.  What's the matter with you? Aren't you rather queer,
considering that I don't bite, and was rather a pal!

BILL.  [Stolidly] I'm sorry.

     Then seeing that his mother has came in from the billiard-room,
     he sits down at the writing-table.

LADY CHESHIRE.  Mabel, dear, do take my cue.  Won't you play too,
Bill, and try and stop Ronny, he's too terrible?

BILL.  Thanks.  I've got these letters.

MABEL taking the cue passes back into the billiard-room, whence comes
out the sound of talk and laughter.

LADY CHESHIRE.  [Going over and standing behind her son's chair]
Anything wrong, darling?

BILL.  Nothing, thanks.  [Suddenly]  I say, I wish you hadn't asked
that girl here.

LADY CHESHIRE.  Mabel!  Why?  She's wanted for rehearsals.  I thought
you got on so well with her last Christmas.

BILL.  [With a sort of sullen exasperation.]  A year ago.

LADY CHESHIRE.  The girls like her, so does your father; personally I
must say I think she's rather nice and Irish.

BILL.  She's all right, I daresay.

     He looks round as if to show his mother that he wishes to be
     left alone.  But LADY CHESHIRE, having seen that he is about to
     look at her, is not looking at him.

LADY CHESHIRE.  I'm afraid your father's been talking to you, Bill.

BILL.  He has.

LADY CHESHIRE.  Debts?  Do try and make allowances.  [With a faint
smile] Of course he is a little----

BILL.  He is.

LADY CHESHIRE.  I wish I could----

BILL.  Oh, Lord!  Don't you get mixed up in it!

LADY CHESHIRE.  It seems almost a pity that you told him.

BILL.  He wrote and asked me point blank what I owed.

LADY CHESHIRE.  Oh!  [Forcing herself to speak in a casual voice]
I happen to have a little money, Bill--I think it would be simpler
if----

BILL.  Now look here, mother, you've tried that before.  I can't help
spending money, I never shall be able, unless I go to the Colonies,
or something of the kind.

LADY CHESHIRE.  Don't talk like that, dear!

BILL.  I would, for two straws!

LADY CHESHIRE.  It's only because your father thinks such a lot of
the place, and the name, and your career.  The Cheshires are all like
that.  They've been here so long; they're all--root.

BILL.  Deuced funny business my career will be, I expect!

LADY CHESHIRE.  [Fluttering, but restraining herself lest he should
see] But, Bill, why must you spend more than your allowance?

BILL.  Why--anything? I didn't make myself.

LADY CHESHIRE.  I'm afraid we did that.  It was inconsiderate,
perhaps.

BILL.  Yes, you'd better have left me out.

LADY CHESHIRE.  But why are you so--Only a little fuss about money!

BILL.  Ye-es.

LADY CHESHIRE.  You're not keeping anything from me, are you?

BILL.  [Facing her] No.  [He then turns very deliberately to the
writing things, and takes up a pen] I must write these letters,
please.

LADY CHESHIRE.  Bill, if there's any real trouble, you will tell me,
won't you?

BILL.  There's nothing whatever.

     He suddenly gets up and walks about.  LADY CHESHIRE, too, moves
     over to the fireplace, and after an uneasy look at him, turns to
     the fire.  Then, as if trying to switch of his mood, she changes
     the subject abruptly.

LADY CHESHIRE.  Isn't it a pity about young Dunning?  I'm so sorry
for Rose Taylor.

     There is a silence.  Stealthily under the staircase FREDA has
     entered, and seeing only BILL, advances to speak to him.

BILL.  [Suddenly]  Oh!  well,--you can't help these things in the
country.

     As he speaks, FREDA stops dead, perceiving that he is not alone;
     BILL, too, catching sight of her, starts.

LADY CHESHIRE.  [Still speaking to the fire] It seems dreadful to
force him.  I do so believe in people doing things of their own
accord.  [Then seeing FREDA standing so uncertainly by the stairs] Do
you want me, Freda?

FREDA.  Only your cloak, my lady.  Shall I--begin it?

     At this moment SIR WILLIAM enters from the drawing-room.

LADY CHESHIRE.  Yes, yes.

SIR WILLIAM.  [Genially]  Can you give me another five minutes, Bill?
[Pointing to the billiard-room]  We'll come directly, my dear.

     FREDA, with a look at BILL, has gone back whence she came; and
     LADY CHESHIRE goes reluctantly away into the billiard-room.

SIR WILLIAM.  I shall give young Dunning short shrift.  [He moves
over to the fireplace and divides hip coat-tails]  Now, about you,
Bill!  I don't want to bully you the moment you come down, but you
know, this can't go on.  I've paid your debts twice.  Shan't pay them
this time unless I see a disposition to change your mode of life.
[A pause]  You get your extravagance from your mother.  She's very
queer--[A pause]--All the Winterleighs are like that about money....

BILL.  Mother's particularly generous, if that's what you mean.

SIR WILLIAM.  [Drily]  We will put it that way.  [A pause]  At the
present moment you owe, as I understand it, eleven hundred pounds.

BILL.  About that.

SIR WILLIAM.  Mere flea-bite.  [A pause]  I've a proposition to make.

BILL.  Won't it do to-morrow, sir?

SIR WILLIAM.  "To-morrow" appears to be your motto in life.

BILL.  Thanks!

SIR WILLIAM.  I'm anxious to change it to-day.  [BILL looks at him in
silence]  It's time you took your position seriously, instead of
hanging about town, racing, and playing polo, and what not.

BILL.  Go ahead!

     At something dangerous in his voice, SIR WILLIAM modifies his
     attitude.

SIR, WILLIAM.  The proposition's very simple.  I can't suppose
anything so rational and to your advantage will appeal to you, but
[drily] I mention it.  Marry a nice girl, settle down, and stand for
the division; you can have the Dower House and fifteen hundred a
year, and I'll pay your debts into the bargain.  If you're elected
I'll make it two thousand.  Plenty of time to work up the
constituency before we kick out these infernal Rads.  Carpetbagger
against you; if you go hard at it in the summer, it'll be odd if you
don't manage to get in your three days a week, next season.  You can
take Rocketer and that four-year-old--he's well up to your weight,
fully eight and a half inches of bone.  You'll only want one other.
And if Miss--if your wife means to hunt----

BILL.  You've chosen my wife, then?

SIR  WILLIAM.  [With a quick look]  I imagine, you've some girl in
your mind.

BILL.  Ah!

SIR WILLIAM: Used not to be unnatural at your age.  I married your
mother at twenty-eight.  Here you are, eldest son of a family that
stands for something.  The more I see of the times the more I'm
convinced that everybody who is anybody has got to buckle to, and
save the landmarks left.  Unless we're true to our caste, and
prepared to work for it, the landed classes are going to go under to
this infernal democratic spirit in the air.  The outlook's very
serious.  We're threatened in a hundred ways.  If you mean business,
you'll want a wife.  When I came into the property I should have been
lost without your mother.

BILL.  I thought this was coming.

SIR WILLIAM.  [With a certain geniality]  My dear fellow, I don't
want to put a pistol to your head.  You've had a slack rein so far.
I've never objected to your sowing a few wild oats-so long as you-
-er--[Unseen by SIR WILLIAM, BILL makes a sudden movement]  Short of
that--at all events, I've not inquired into your affairs.  I can only
judge by the--er--pecuniary evidence you've been good enough to
afford me from time to time.  I imagine you've lived like a good many
young men in your position--I'm not blaming you, but there's a time
for all things.

BILL.  Why don't you say outright that you want me to marry Mabel
Lanfarne?

SITS WILLIAM.  Well, I do.  Girl's a nice one.  Good family--got a
little money--rides well.  Isn't she good-looking enough for you, or
what?

BILL.  Quite, thanks.

SIR WILLIAM.  I understood from your mother that you and she were on
good terms.

BILL.  Please don't drag mother into it.

SIR WILLIAM.  [With dangerous politeness]  Perhaps you'll be good
enough to state your objections.

BILL.  Must we go on with this?

SIR WILLIAM.  I've never asked you to do anything for me before; I
expect you to pay attention now.  I've no wish to dragoon you into
this particular marriage.  If you don't care for Miss Lanfarne, marry
a girl you're fond of.

BILL.  I refuse.

SIR WILLIAM.  In that case you know what to look out for.  [With a
sudden rush of choler]  You young....  [He checks himself and stands
glaring at BILL, who glares back at him]  This means, I suppose, that
you've got some entanglement or other.

BILL.  Suppose what you like, sir.

SITS WILLIAM.  I warn you, if you play the blackguard----

BILL.  You can't force me like young Dunning.

     Hearing the raised voices LADY CHESHIRE has come back from the
     billiard-room.

LADY CHESHIRE.  [Closing the door] What is it?

SIR WILLIAM.  You deliberately refuse!  Go away, Dorothy.

LADY CHESHIRE.  [Resolutely] I haven't seen Bill for two months.

SIR WILLIAM.  What!  [Hesitating]  Well--we must talk it over again.

LADY CHESHIRE.  Come to the billiard-room, both of you!  Bill, do
finish those letters!

     With a deft movement she draws SIR WILLIAM toward the
     billiard-room, and glances back at BILL before going out, but he
     has turned to the writing-table.  When the door is closed, BILL
     looks into the drawing-room, them opens the door under the
     stairs; and backing away towards the writing-table, sits down
     there, and takes up a pen.  FREDA who has evidently been
     waiting, comes in and stands by the table.

BILL.  I say, this is dangerous, you know.

FREDA.  Yes--but I must.

BILL.  Well, then--[With natural recklessness]  Aren't you going to
kiss me?

     Without moving she looks at him with a sort of miserable inquiry.

BILL.  Do you know you haven't seen me for eight weeks?

FREDA.  Quite--long enough--for you to have forgotten.

BILL.  Forgotten!  I don't forget people so soon.

FREDA.  No?

BILL.  What's the matter with you, Freda?

FREDA.  [After a long look]  It'll never be as it was.

BILL.  [Jumping up] How d'you mean?

FREDA.  I've got something for you.  [She takes a diamond ring out of
her dress and holds it out to him]  I've not worn it since Cromer.

BILL.  Now, look here

FREDA.  I've had my holiday; I shan't get another in a hurry.

BILL.  Freda!

FREDA.  You'll be glad to be free.  That fortnight's all you really
loved me in.

BILL.  [Putting his hands on her arms] I swear----

FREDA.  [Between her teeth] Miss Lanfarne need never know about me.

BILL.  So that's it!  I've told you a dozen times--nothing's changed.
     [FREDA looks at him and smiles.]

BILL.  Oh! very well!  If you will make yourself miserable.

FREDA.  Everybody will be pleased.

BILL.  At what?

FREDA.  When you marry her.

BILL.  This is too bad.

FREDA.  It's what always happens--even when it's not a--gentleman.

BILL.  That's enough.

FREDA.  But I'm not like that girl down in the village.  You needn't
be afraid I'll say anything when--it comes.  That's what I had to
tell you.

BILL.  What!

FREDA.  I can keep a secret.

BILL.  Do you mean this?  [She bows her head.]

BILL.  Good God!

FREDA.  Father brought me up not to whine.  Like the puppies when
they hold them up by their tails.  [With a sudden break in her voice]
Oh!  Bill!

BILL.  [With his head down, seizing her hands]  Freda!  [He breaks
away from her towards the fire]  Good God!

     She stands looking at him, then quietly slips away
     by the door under the staircase.  BILL turns to
     speak to her, and sees that she has gone.  He
     walks up to the fireplace, and grips the mantelpiece.

BILL.  By Jove!  This is----!


                         The curtain falls.





                              ACT II


     The scene is LADY CHESHIRE's morning room, at ten o'clock on the
     following day.  It is a pretty room, with white panelled walls;
     and chrysanthemums and carmine lilies in bowls.  A large bow
     window overlooks the park under a sou'-westerly sky.  A piano
     stands open; a fire is burning; and the morning's correspondence
     is scattered on a writing-table.  Doors opposite each other lead
     to the maid's workroom, and to a corridor.  LADY CHESHIRE is
     standing in the middle of the room, looking at an opera cloak,
     which FREDA is holding out.

LADY CHESHIRE.  Well, Freda, suppose you just give it up!

FREDA.  I don't like to be beaten.

LADY CHESHIRE.  You're not to worry over your work.  And by the way,
I promised your father to make you eat more.  [FREDA smiles.]

LADY CHESHIRE.  It's all very well to smile.  You want bracing up.
Now don't be naughty.  I shall give you a tonic.  And I think you had
better put that cloak away.

FREDA.  I'd rather have one more try, my lady.

LADY CHESHIRE.  [Sitting doom at her writing-table] Very well.

     FREDA goes out into her workroom, as JACKSON comes in from the
     corridor.

JACKSON.  Excuse me, my lady.  There's a young woman from the
village, says you wanted to see her.

LADY CHESHIRE.  Rose Taylor?  Ask her to come in.  Oh! and Jackson
the car for the meet please at half-past ten.

     JACKSON having bowed and withdrawn, LADY CHESHIRE rises with
     worked signs of nervousness, which she has only just suppressed,
     when ROSE TAYLOR, a stolid country girl, comes in and stands
     waiting by the door.

LADY CHESHIRE.  Well, Rose.  Do come in!
     [ROSE advances perhaps a couple of steps.]

LADY CHESHIRE.  I just wondered whether you'd like to ask my advice.
Your engagement with Dunning's broken off, isn't it?

ROSE.  Yes--but I've told him he's got to marry me.

LADY CHESHIRE.  I see!  And you think that'll be the wisest thing?

ROSE.  [Stolidly] I don't know, my lady.  He's got to.

LADY CHESHIRE.  I do hope you're a little fond of him still.

ROSE.  I'm not.  He don't deserve it.

LADY CHESHIRE: And--do you think he's quite lost his affection for
you?

ROSE.  I suppose so, else he wouldn't treat me as he's done.  He's
after that--that--He didn't ought to treat me as if I was dead.

LADY CHESHIRE.  No, no--of course.  But you will think it all well
over, won't you?

ROSE.  I've a--got nothing to think over, except what I know of.

LADY CHESHIRE.  But for you both t0 marry in that spirit!  You know
it's for life, Rose.  [Looking into her face]  I'm always ready to
help you.

ROSE.  [Dropping a very slight curtsey]  Thank you, my lady, but I
think he ought to marry me.  I've told him he ought.

LADY CHESHIRE.  [Sighing]  Well, that's all I wanted to say.  It's a
question of your self-respect; I can't give you any real advice.  But
just remember that if you want a friend----

ROSE.  [With a gulp]  I'm not so 'ard, really.  I only want him to do
what's right by me.

LADY CHESHIRE.  [With a little lift of her eyebrow--gently] Yes,
yes--I see.

ROSE.  [Glancing back at the door] I don't like meeting the servants.

LADY CHESHIRE.  Come along, I'll take you out another way.  [As they
reach the door, DOT comes in.]

DOT.  [With a glance at ROSE] Can we have this room for the mouldy
rehearsal, Mother?

LADY CHESHIRE.  Yes, dear, you can air it here.

     Holding the door open for ROSE she follows her out.  And DOT,
     with a book of "Caste" in her hand, arranges the room according
     to a diagram.

DOT.  Chair--chair--table--chair--Dash!  Table--piano--fire--window!
[Producing a pocket comb] Comb for Eccles.  Cradle?--Cradle--[She
viciously dumps a waste-paper basket down, and drops a footstool into
it] Brat!  [Then reading from the book gloomily]  "Enter Eccles
breathless.  Esther and Polly rise-Esther puts on lid of bandbox."
Bandbox!

Searching for something to represent a bandbox, she opens the
workroom door.

DOT.  Freda?

     FREDA comes in.

DOT.  I say, Freda.  Anything the matter? You seem awfully down.
     [FREDA does not answer.]

DOT.  You haven't looked anything of a lollipop lately.

FREDA.  I'm quite all right, thank you, Miss Dot.

DOT.  Has Mother been givin' you a tonic?

FREDA.  [Smiling a little]  Not yet.

DOT.  That doesn't account for it then.  [With a sudden warm impulse]
What is it, Freda?

FREDA.  Nothing.

DOT.  [Switching of on a different line of thought] Are you very busy
this morning?

FREDA.  Only this cloak for my lady.

DOT.  Oh! that can wait.  I may have to get you in to prompt, if I
can't keep 'em straight.  [Gloomily]  They stray so.  Would you mind?

FREDA.  [Stolidly] I shall be very glad, Miss Dot.

DOT.  [Eyeing her dubiously]  All right.  Let's see--what did I want?

     JOAN has come in.

JOAN.  Look here, Dot; about the baby in this scene.  I'm sure I
ought to make more of it.

DOT.  Romantic little beast!  [She plucks the footstool out by one
ear, and holds it forth]  Let's see you try!

JOAN.  [Recoiling]  But, Dot, what are we really going to have for
the baby? I can't rehearse with that thing.  Can't you suggest
something, Freda?

FREDA.  Borrow a real one, Miss Joan.  There are some that don't
count much.

JOAN.  Freda, how horrible!

DOT.  [Dropping the footstool back into the basket]  You'll just put
up with what you're given.

     Then as CHRISTINE and MABEL LANFARNE Come in, FREDA turns
     abruptly and goes out.

DOT.  Buck up!  Where are Bill and Harold? [To JOAN] Go and find
them, mouse-cat.

     But BILL and HAROLD, followed by LATTER, are already in the
     doorway.  They come in, and LATTER, stumbling over the
     waste-paper basket, takes it up to improve its position.

DOT.  Drop that cradle, John!  [As he picks the footstool out of it]
Leave the baby in!  Now then!  Bill, you enter there!  [She points to
the workroom door where BILL and MABEL range themselves close to the
piano; while HAROLD goes to the window] John!  get off the stage!
Now then, "Eccles enters breathless, Esther and Polly rise."  Wait a
minute.  I know now.  [She opens the workroom door] Freda, I wanted a
bandbox.

HAROLD.  [Cheerfully] I hate beginning to rehearse, you know, you
feel such a fool.

DOT.  [With her bandbox-gloomily] You'll feel more of a fool when you
have begun.  [To BILL, who is staring into the workroom] Shut the
door.   Now.   [BILL shuts the door.]

LATTER.  [Advancing]  Look here!  I want to clear up a point of
psychology before we start.

DOT.  Good Lord!

LATTER.  When I bring in the milk--ought I to bring it in seriously--
as if I were accustomed--I mean, I maintain that if I'm----

JOAN.  Oh!  John, but I don't think it's meant that you should----

DOT.  Shut up!  Go back, John!  Blow the milk!  Begin, begin, begin!
Bill!

LATTER.  [Turning round and again advancing]  But I think you
underrate the importance of my entrance altogether.

MABEL.  Oh! no, Mr. Latter!

LATTER.  I don't in the least want to destroy the balance of the
scene, but I do want to be clear about the spirit.  What is the
spirit?

DOT.  [With gloom]  Rollicking!

LATTER.  Well, I don't think so.  We shall run a great risk, with
this play, if we rollick.

DOT.  Shall we?  Now look here----!

MABEL.  [Softly to BILL] Mr. Cheshire!

BILL.  [Desperately] Let's get on!

DOT.  [Waving LATTER back]  Begin, begin!  At last!
     [But JACKSON has came in.]

JACKSON.  [To CHRISTINE] Studdenham says, Mm, if the young ladies
want to see the spaniel pups, he's brought 'em round.

JOAN.  [Starting up] Oh! come 'on, John!
     [She flies towards the door, followed by LATTER.]

DOT.  [Gesticulating with her book] Stop!  You----
     [CHRISTINE and HAROLD also rush past.]

DOT.  [Despairingly]  First pick!  [Tearing her hair] Pigs!  Devils!
     [She rushes after them.  BILL and MABEL are left alone.]

MABEL.  [Mockingly]  And don't you want one of the spaniel pups?

BILL.  [Painfully reserved and sullen, and conscious of the workroom
door]  Can't keep a dog in town.  You can have one, if you like.  The
breeding's all right.

MABEL.  Sixth Pick?

BILL.  The girls'll give you one of theirs.  They only fancy they
want 'em.

Mann.  [Moving nearer to him, with her hands clasped behind her] You
know, you remind me awfully of your father.  Except that you're not
nearly so polite.  I don't understand you English-lords of the soil.
The way you have of disposing of your females.  [With a sudden change
of voice]  What was the matter with you last night? [Softly]  Won't
you tell me?

BILL.  Nothing to tell.

MABEL.  Ah! no, Mr. Bill.

BILL.  [Almost succumbing to her voice--then sullenly]  Worried, I
suppose.

MABEL. [Returning to her mocking]  Quite got over it?

BILL.  Don't chaff me, please.

MABEL.  You really are rather formidable.

BILL.  Thanks.

MABEL, But, you know, I love to cross a field where there's a bull.

BILL.  Really!  Very interesting.

MABEL.  The way of their only seeing one thing at a time.  [She moves
back as he advances]  And overturning people on the journey.

BILL.  Hadn't you better be a little careful?

MABEL.  And never to see the hedge until they're stuck in it.  And
then straight from that hedge into the opposite one.

BILL.  [Savagely]  What makes you bait me this morning of all
mornings?

MABEL.  The beautiful morning!  [Suddenly]  It must be dull for poor
Freda working in there with all this fun going on?

BILL.  [Glancing at the door] Fun you call it?

MABEL, To go back to you,--now--Mr.  Cheshire.

BILL.  No.

MABEL, You always make me feel so Irish.  Is it because you're so
English, d'you think?  Ah!  I can see him moving his ears.  Now he's
pawing the ground--He's started!

BILL.  Miss Lanfarne!

MABEL.  [Still backing away from him, and drawing him on with her
eyes and smile]  You can't help coming after me!  [Then with a sudden
change to a sort of sierra gravity]  Can you? You'll feel that when
I've gone.

     They stand quite still, looking into each other's eyes and
     FREDA, who has opened the door of the workroom stares at them.

MABEL.  [Seeing her]  Here's the stile.  Adieu, Monsieur le taureau!

     She puts her hand behind her, opens the door, and slips through,
     leaving BILL to turn, following the direction of her eyes, and
     see FREDA with the cloak still in her hand.

BILL.  [Slowly walking towards her] I haven't slept all night.

FREDA.  No?

BILL.  Have you been thinking it over?
     [FREDA gives a bitter little laugh.]

BILL.  Don't!  We must make a plan.  I'll get you away.  I won't let
you suffer.  I swear I won't.

FREDA.  That will be clever.

BILL.  I wish to Heaven my affairs weren't in such a mess.

FREDA.  I shall be--all--right, thank you.

BILL.  You must think me a blackguard.  [She shakes her head]  Abuse
me--say something!  Don't look like that!

FREDA.  Were you ever really fond of me?

BILL.  Of course I was, I am now.  Give me your hands.

     She looks at him, then drags her hands from his, and covers her
     face.

BILL.  [Clenching his fists]  Look here!  I'll prove it.  [Then as
she suddenly flings her arms round his neck and clings to him]
There, there!

     There is a click of a door handle.  They start away from each
     other, and see LADY CHESHIRE regarding them.

LADY CHESHIRE.  [Without irony]  I beg your pardon.

     She makes as if to withdraw from an unwarranted intrusion, but
     suddenly turning, stands, with lips pressed together, waiting.

LADY CHESHIRE.  Yes?

     FREDA has muffled her face.  But BILL turns and confronts his
     mother.

BILL.  Don't say anything against her!

LADY CHESHIRE.  [Tries to speak to him and fails--then to FREDA]
Please-go!

BILL.  [Taking FREDA's arm]  No.

     LADY CHESHIRE, after a moment's hesitation, herself moves
     towards the door.

BILL.  Stop, mother!

LADY CHESHIRE.  I think perhaps not.

BILL.  [Looking at FREDA, who is cowering as though from a blow] It's
a d---d shame!

LADY CHESHIRE.  It is.

BILL.  [With sudden resolution]  It's not as you think.  I'm engaged
to be married to her.

     [FREDA gives him a wild stare, and turns away.]

LADY CHESHIRE.  [Looking from one to the other] I don't think
I--quite--understand.

BILL.  [With the brutality of his mortification]  What I said was
plain enough.

LADY CHESHIRE.  Bill!

BILL.  I tell you I am going to marry her.

LADY CHESHIRE.  [To FREDA] Is that true?

     [FREDA gulps and remains silent.]

BILL.  If you want to say anything, say it to me, mother.

LADY CHESHIRE.  [Gripping the edge of a little table] Give me a
chair, please.  [BILL gives her a chair.]

LADY CHESHIRE.  [To FREDA] Please sit down too.

     FREDA sits on the piano stool, still turning her face away.

LADY CHESHIRE.  [Fixing her eyes on FREDA] Now!

BILL.  I fell in love with her.  And she with me.

LADY CHESHIRE.  When?

BILL.  In the summer.

LADY CHESHIRE.  Ah!

BILL.  It wasn't her fault.

LADY CHESHIRE.  No?

BILL.  [With a sort of menace]  Mother!

LADY CHESHIRE.  Forgive me, I am not quite used to the idea.  You say
that you--are engaged?

BILL.  Yes.

LADY CHESHIRE.  The reasons against such an engagement have occurred
to you, I suppose? [With a sudden change of tone]  Bill! what does it
mean?

BILL.  If you think she's trapped me into this----

LADY CHESHIRE.  I do not.  Neither do I think she has been trapped.
I think nothing.  I understand nothing.

BILL.  [Grimly]  Good!

LADY CHESHIRE.  How long has this-engagement lasted?

BILL.  [After a silence]  Two months.

LADY CHESHIRE.  [Suddenly]  This is-this is quite impossible.

BILL.  You'll find it isn't.

LADY CHESHIRE.  It's simple misery.

BILL.  [Pointing to the workroom]  Go and wait in there, Freda.

LADY CHESHIRE.  [Quickly]  And are you still in love with her?

     FREDA, moving towards the workroom, smothers a sob.

BILL.  Of course I am.

     FREDA has gone, and as she goes, LADY CHESHIRE rises suddenly,
     forced by the intense feeling she has been keeping in hand.

LADY CHESHIRE.  Bill!  Oh, Bill!  What does it all mean? [BILL,
looking from side to aide, only shrugs his shoulders] You are not in
love with her now.  It's no good telling me you are.

BILL.  I am.

LADY CHESHIRE.  That's not exactly how you would speak if you were.

BILL.  She's in love with me.

LADY CHESHIRE.  [Bitterly]  I suppose so.

BILL.  I mean to see that nobody runs her down.

LADY CHESHIRE.  [With difficulty] Bill!  Am I a hard, or mean woman?

BILL.  Mother!

LADY CHESHIRE.  It's all your life--and--your father's--and--all of
us.  I want to understand--I must understand.  Have you realised what
an awful thins this would be for us all? It's quite impossible that
it should go on.

BILL.  I'm always in hot water with the Governor, as it is.  She and
I'll take good care not to be in the way.

LADY CHESHIRE.  Tell me everything!

BILL.  I have.

LADY CHESHIRE.  I'm your mother, Bill.

BILL.  What's the good of these questions?

LADY CHESHIRE.  You won't give her away--I see!

BILL.  I've told you all there is to tell.  We're engaged, we shall
be married quietly, and--and--go to Canada.

LADY CHESHIRE.  If there weren't more than that to tell you'd be in
love with her now.

BILL.  I've told you that I am.

LADY CHESHIRE.  You are not.  [Almost fiercely] I know--I know
there's more behind.

BILL.  There--is--nothing.

LADY CHESHIRE.  [Baffled, but unconvinced] Do you mean that your love
for her has been just what it might have been for a lady?

BILL.  [Bitterly]  Why not?

LADY CHESHIRE.  [With painful irony] It is not so as a rule.

BILL.  Up to now I've never heard you or the girls say a word against
Freda.  This isn't the moment to begin, please.

LADY CHESHIRE.  [Solemnly]  All such marriages end in wretchedness.
You haven't a taste or tradition in common.  You don't know what
marriage is.  Day after day, year after year.  It's no use being
sentimental--for people brought up as we are to have different
manners is worse than to have different souls.  Besides, it's
poverty.  Your father will never forgive you, and I've practically
nothing.  What can you do?  You have no profession.  How are you
going to stand it; with a woman who--?  It's the little things.

BILL.  I know all that, thanks.

LADY CHESHIRE.  Nobody does till they've been through it.  Marriage
is hard enough when people are of the same class.  [With a sudden
movement towards him] Oh! my dear-before it's too late!

BILL.  [After a struggle]  It's no good.

LADY CHESHIRE.  It's not fair to her.  It can only end in her misery.

BILL.  Leave that to me, please.

LADY CHESHIRE.  [With an almost angry vehemence]  Only the very
finest can do such things.  And you don't even know what trouble's
like.

BILL.  Drop it, please, mother.

LADY CHESHIRE.  Bill, on your word of honour, are you acting of your
own free will?

BILL.  [Breaking away from her] I can't stand any more.
     [He goes out into the workroom.]

LADY CHESHIRE.  What in God's name shall I do?

     In her distress she walks up and doom the room, then goes to the
     workroom door, and opens it.

LADY CHESHIRE.  Come in here, please, Freda.

     After a seconds pause, FREDA, white and trembling, appears in
     the doorway, followed by BILL.

LADY CHESHIRE.  No, Bill.  I want to speak to her alone.

     BILL, does not move.

LADY CHESHIRE.  [Icily] I must ask you to leave us.

     BILL hesitates; then shrugging his shoulders, he touches FREDA's
     arms, and goes back into the workroom, closing the door.  There
     is silence.

LADY CHESHIRE.  How did it come about?

FREDA.  I don't know, my lady.

LADY CHESHIRE.  For heaven's sake, child, don't call me that again,
whatever happens.  [She walks to the window, and speaks from there]
I know well enough how love comes.  I don't blame you.  Don't cry.
But, you see, it's my eldest son.  [FREDA puts her hand to her
breast]  Yes, I know.  Women always get the worst of these things.
That's natural.  But it's not only you is it? Does any one guess?

FREDA.  No.

LADY CHESHIRE.  Not even your father? [FREDA shakes her head] There's
nothing more dreadful than for a woman to hang like a stone round a
man's neck.  How far has it gone? Tell me!

FREDA.  I can't.

LADY CHESHIRE.  Come!

FREDA.  I--won't.

LADY CHESHIRE.  [Smiling painfully].  Won't give him away?  Both of
you the same.  What's the use of that with me?  Look at me!  Wasn't
he with you when you went for your holiday this summer?

FREDA.  He's--always--behaved--like--a--gentleman.

LADY CHESHIRE.  Like a man you mean!

FREDA.  It hasn't been his fault!  I love him so.

     LADY CHESHIRE turns abruptly, and begins to walk up and down the
     room.  Then stopping, she looks intently at FREDA.

LADY CHESHIRE.  I don't know what to say to you.  It's simple
madness!  It can't, and shan't go on.

FREDA.  [Sullenly]  I know I'm not his equal, but I am--somebody.

LADY CHESHIRE.  [Answering this first assertion of rights with a
sudden steeliness]  Does he love you now?

FREDA.  That's not fair--it's not fair.

LADY CHESHIRE.  If men are like gunpowder, Freda, women are not.  If
you've lost him it's been your own fault.

FREDA.  But he does love me, he must.  It's only four months.

LADY CHESHIRE.  [Looking down, and speaking rapidly]  Listen to me.
I love my son, but I know him--I know all his kind of man.  I've
lived with one for thirty years.  I know the way their senses work.
When they want a thing they must have it, and then--they're sorry.

FREDA.  [Sullenly]  He's not sorry.

LADY CHESHIRE.  Is his love big enough to carry you both over
everything?.... You know it isn't.

FREDA.  If I were a lady, you wouldn't talk like that.

LADY CHESHIRE.  If you were a lady there'd be no trouble before
either of you.  You'll make him hate you.

FREDA.  I won't believe it.  I could make him happy--out there.

LADY CHESHIRE.  I don't want to be so odious as to say all the things
you must know.  I only ask you to try and put yourself in our
position.

FREDA.  Ah, yes!

LADY CHESHIRE.  You ought to know me better than to think I'm purely
selfish.

FREDA.  Would you like to put yourself in my position?

LADY CHESHIRE.  What!

FREDA.  Yes.  Just like Rose.

LADY CHESHIRE.  [In a low, horror-stricken voice]  Oh!

     There is a dead silence, then going swiftly up to her, she looks
     straight into FREDA's eyes.

FREDA.  [Meeting her gaze]  Oh!  Yes--it's the truth.  [Then to Bill
who has come in from the workroom, she gasps out]  I never meant to
tell.

BILL.  Well, are you satisfied?

LADY CHESHIRE.  [Below her breath]  This is terrible!

BILL.  The Governor had better know.

LADY CHESHIRE.  Oh! no; not yet!

BILL.  Waiting won't cure it!

     The door from the corridor is thrown open; CHRISTINE and DOT run
     in with their copies of the play in their hands; seeing that
     something is wrong, they stand still.  After a look at his
     mother, BILL turns abruptly, and goes back into the workroom.
     LADY CHESHIRE moves towards the window.

JOAN.  [Following her sisters] The car's round.  What's the matter?

DOT.  Shut up!

     SIR WILLIAM'S voice is heard from the corridor calling
     "Dorothy!"  As LADY CHESHIRE, passing her handkerchief over her
     face, turns round, he enters.  He is in full hunting dress:
     well-weathered pink, buckskins, and mahogany tops.

SIR WILLIAM.  Just off, my dear.  [To his daughters, genially]
Rehearsin'?  What!  [He goes up to FREDA holding out his gloved right
hand] Button that for me, Freda, would you?  It's a bit stiff!

     FREDA buttons the glove: LADY CHESHIRE arid the girls watching
     in hypnotic silence.

SIR WILLIAM.  Thank you!  "Balmy as May"; scent ought to be
first-rate.  [To LADY CHESHIRE] Good-bye, my dear!  Sampson's Gorse
--best day of the whole year.  [He pats JOAN on the shoulder] Wish
you were cumin' out, Joan.

     He goes out, leaving the door open, and as his footsteps and the
     chink of his spurs die away, FREDA turns and rushes into the
     workroom.

CHRISTINE.  Mother!  What----?

     But LADY CHESHIRE waves the question aside, passes her daughter,
     and goes out into the corridor.  The sound of a motor car is
     heard.

JOAN.  [Running to the window] They've started--!  Chris!  What is
it?  Dot?

DOT.  Bill, and her!

JOAN.  But what?

DOT.  [Gloomily] Heaven knows!  Go away, you're not fit for this.

JOAN.  [Aghast] I am fit.

DOT.  I think not.

JOAN.  Chris?

CHRISTINE.  [In a hard voice]  Mother ought to have told us.

JOAN.  It can't be very awful.  Freda's so good.

DOT.  Call yourself in love, you milk-and-water-kitten!

CHRISTINE.  It's horrible, not knowing anything!  I wish Runny hadn't
gone.

JOAN.  Shall I fetch John?

DOT.  John!

CHRISTINE.  Perhaps Harold knows.

JOAN.  He went out with Studdenham.

DOT.  It's always like this, women kept in blinkers.  Rose-leaves and
humbug!  That awful old man!

JOAN.  Dot!

CHRISTINE.  Don't talk of father like that!

DOT.  Well, he is!  And Bill will be just like him at fifty!  Heaven
help Freda, whatever she's done!  I'd sooner be a private in a German
regiment than a woman.

JOAN.  Dot, you're awful.

DOT.  You-mouse-hearted-linnet!

CHRISTINE.  Don't talk that nonsense about women!

DOT.  You're married and out of it; and Ronny's not one of these
terrific John Bulls.  [To JOAN who has opened the door] Looking for
John? No good, my dear; lath and plaster.

JOAN.  [From the door, in a frightened whisper] Here's Mabel!

DOT.  Heavens, and the waters under the earth!

CHRISTINE.  If we only knew!

     MABEL comes in, the three girls are silent, with their eyes
     fixed on their books.

MABEL.  The silent company.

DOT.  [Looking straight at her] We're chucking it for to-day.

MABEL.  What's the matter?

CHRISTINE.  Oh!  nothing.

DOT.  Something's happened.

MABEL.  Really!  I am sorry.  [Hesitating] Is it bad enough for me to
go?

CHRISTINE.  Oh!  no, Mabel!

DOT.  [Sardonically] I should think very likely.

     While she is looking from face to face, BILL comes in from the
     workroom.  He starts to walk across the room, but stops, and
     looks stolidly at the four girls.

BILL.  Exactly!  Fact of the matter is, Miss Lanfarne, I'm engaged to
my mother's maid.

     No one moves or speaks.  Suddenly MABEL LANFARNE goes towards
     him, holding out her hand.  BILL does not take her hand, but
     bows.  Then after a swift glance at the girls' faces MABEL goes
     out into the corridor, and the three girls are left staring at
     their brother.

BILL.  [Coolly] Thought you might like to know.
     [He, too, goes out into the corridor.]

CHRISTINE.  Great heavens!

JOAN.  How awful!

CHRISTINE.  I never thought of anything as bad as that.

JOAN.  Oh!  Chris!  Something must be done!

DOT.  [Suddenly to herself] Ha!  When Father went up to have his
glove buttoned!

     There is a sound, JACKSON has came in from the corridor.

JACKSON.  [To Dot] If you please, Miss, Studdenham's brought up the
other two pups.  He's just outside.  Will you kindly take a look at
them, he says?

     There is silence.

DOT.  [Suddenly] We can't.

CHRISTINE.  Not just now, Jackson.

JACKSON.  Is Studdenham and the pups to wait, Mm?

     DOT shakes her head violently.  But STUDDENHAM is seen already
     standing in the doorway, with a spaniel puppy in either
     side-pocket.  He comes in, and JACKSON stands waiting behind
     him.

STUDDENHAM.  This fellow's the best, Miss DOT.  [He protrudes the
right-hand pocket] I was keeping him for my girl--a, proper greedy
one--takes after his father.

     The girls stare at him in silence.

DOT.  [Hastily] Thanks, Studdenham, I see.

STUDDENHAM.  I won't take 'em out in here.  They're rather bold yet.

CHRISTINE.  [Desperately]  No, no, of course.

STUDDENHAM.  Then you think you'd like him, Miss DOT? The other's got
a white chest; she's a lady.

     [He protrudes the left-hand pocket.]

DOT.  Oh, yes!  Studdenham; thanks, thanks awfully.

STUDDENHAM.  Wonderful faithful creatures; follow you like a woman.
You can't shake 'em off anyhow.  [He protrudes the right-hand pocket]
My girl, she'd set her heart on him, but she'll just have to do
without.

DOT.  [As though galvanised] Oh!  no, I can't take it away from her.

STUDDENHAM.  Bless you, she won't mind!  That's settled, then.  [He
turns to the door.  To the PUPPY] Ah!  would you!  Tryin' to wriggle
out of it!  Regular young limb!  [He goes out, followed by JACKSON.]

CHRISTINE.  How ghastly!

DOT.  [Suddenly catching sight of the book in her hand] "Caste!"
     [She gives vent to a short sharp laugh.]


                    The curtain falls.





                         ACT III

     It is five o'clock of the same day.  The scene is the
     smoking-room, with walls of Leander red, covered by old
     steeplechase and hunting prints.  Armchairs encircle a high
     ferulered hearth, in which a fire is burning.  The curtains are
     not yet drawn across mullioned windows, but electric light is
     burning.  There are two doors, leading, the one to the billiard-
     room, the other to a corridor.  BILL is pacing up and doom;
     HAROLD, at the fireplace, stands looking at him with
     commiseration.

BILL.  What's the time?

HAROLD.  Nearly five.  They won't be in yet, if that's any
consolation.  Always a tough meet--[softly] as the tiger said when he
ate the man.

BILL.  By Jove!  You're the only person I can stand within a mile of
me, Harold.

HAROLD.  Old boy!  Do you seriously think you're going to make it any
better by marrying her?

     [Bill shrugs his shoulders, still pacing the room.]

BILL.  Look here!  I'm not the sort that finds it easy to say things.

HAROLD.  No, old man.

BILL.  But I've got a kind of self-respect though you wouldn't think
it!

HAROLD.  My dear old chap!

BILL.  This is about as low-down a thing as one could have done, I
suppose--one's own mother's maid; we've known her since she was so
high.  I see it now that--I've got over the attack.

HAROLD.  But, heavens! if you're no longer keen on her, Bill!  Do
apply your reason, old boy.

     There is silence; while BILL again paces up and dozen.

BILL.  If you think I care two straws about the morality of the
thing.

HAROLD.  Oh!  my dear old man!  Of course not!

BILL.  It's simply that I shall feel such a d---d skunk, if I leave
her in the lurch, with everybody knowing.  Try it yourself; you'd
soon see!

HAROLD.  Poor old chap!

BILL.  It's not as if she'd tried to force me into it.  And she's a
soft little thing.  Why I ever made such a sickening ass of myself, I
can't think.  I never meant----

HAROLD.  No, I know!  But, don't do anything rash, Bill; keep your
head, old man!

BILL.  I don't see what loss I should be, if I did clear out of the
country.  [The sound of cannoning billiard balls is heard]  Who's
that knocking the balls about?

HAROLD.  John, I expect.  [The sound ceases.]

BILL.  He's coming in here.  Can't stand that!

     As LATTER appears from the billiard-room, he goes hurriedly out.

LATTER.  Was that Bill?

HAROLD.  Yes.

LATTER.  Well?

HAROLD.  [Pacing up and down in his turn]  Rat in a cage is a fool to
him.  This is the sort of thing you read of in books, John!  What
price your argument with Runny now?  Well, it's not too late for you
luckily.

LATTER.  What do you mean?

HAROLD.  You needn't connect yourself with this eccentric family!

LATTER.  I'm not a bounder, Harold.

HAROLD.  Good!

LATTER.  It's terrible for your sisters.

HAROLD.  Deuced lucky we haven't a lot of people staying here!  Poor
mother!  John, I feel awfully bad about this.  If something isn't
done, pretty mess I shall be in.

LATTER.  How?

HAROLD.  There's no entail.  If the Governor cuts Bill off, it'll all
come to me.

LATTER.  Oh!

HAROLD.  Poor old Bill!  I say, the play!  Nemesis!  What?  Moral!
Caste don't matter.  Got us fairly on the hop.

LATTER.  It's too bad of Bill.  It really is.  He's behaved
disgracefully.

HAROLD.  [Warningly]  Well!  There are thousands of fellows who'd
never dream of sticking to the girl, considering what it means.

LATTER.  Perfectly disgusting!

HAROLD.  Hang you, John!  Haven't you any human sympathy?  Don't you
know how these things come about?  It's like a spark in a straw-yard.

LATTER.  One doesn't take lighted pipes into strawyards unless one's
an idiot, or worse.

HAROLD.  H'm!  [With a grin]  You're not allowed tobacco.  In the
good old days no one would hive thought anything of this.  My
great-grandfather----

LATTER.  Spare me your great-grandfather.

HAROLD.  I could tell you of at least a dozen men I know who've been
through this same business, and got off scot-free; and now because
Bill's going to play the game, it'll smash him up.

LATTER.  Why didn't he play the game at the beginning?

HAROLD.  I can't stand your sort, John.  When a thing like this
happens, all you can do is to cry out: Why didn't he--?  Why didn't
she--?  What's to be done--that's the point!

LATTER.  Of course he'll have to----.

HAROLD.  Ha!

LATTER.  What do you mean by--that?

HAROLD.  Look here, John!  You feel in your bones that a marriage'll
be hopeless, just as I do, knowing Bill and the girl and everything!
Now don't you?

LATTER.  The whole thing is--is most unfortunate.

HAROLD.  By Jove!  I should think it was!

     As he speaks CHRISTINE and KEITH Come in from the billiard-room.
     He is still in splashed hunting clothes, and looks exceptionally
     weathered, thin-lipped, reticent.  He lights a cigarette and
     sinks into an armchair.  Behind them DOT and JOAN have come
     stealing in.

CHRISTINE.  I've told Ronny.

JOAN.  This waiting for father to be told is awful.

HAROLD.  [To KEITH] Where did you leave the old man?

KEITH.  Clackenham.  He'll be home in ten minutes.

DOT.  Mabel's going.  [They all stir, as if at fresh consciousness of
discomfiture].  She walked into Gracely and sent herself a telegram.

HAROLD.  Phew!

DOT.  And we shall say good-bye, as if nothing had happened.

HAROLD.  It's up to you, Ronny.

     KEITH, looking at JOAN, slowly emits smoke; and LATTER passing
     his arm through JOAN'S, draws her away with him into the
     billiard-room.

KEITH.  Dot?

DOT.  I'm not a squeamy squirrel.

KEITH.  Anybody seen the girl since?

DOT.  Yes.

HAROLD.  Well?

DOT.  She's just sitting there.

CHRISTINE.  [In a hard voice]  As we're all doing.

DOT.  She's so soft, that's what's so horrible.  If one could only
feel----!

KEITH.  She's got to face the music like the rest of us.

DOT.  Music!  Squeaks!  Ugh!  The whole thing's like a concertina,
and some one jigging it!

     They all turn as the door opens, and a FOOTMAN enters with a
     tray of whiskey, gin, lemons, and soda water.  In dead silence
     the FOOTMAN puts the tray down.

HAROLD.  [Forcing his voice]  Did you get a run, Ronny? [As KEITH
nods] What point?

KEITH.  Eight mile.

FOOTMAN.  Will you take tea, sir?

KEITH.  No, thanks, Charles!

     In dead silence again the FOOTMAN goes out, and they all look
     after him.

HAROLD.  [Below his breath] Good Gad!  That's a squeeze of it!

KEITH.  What's our line of country to be?

CHRISTINE.  All depends on father.

KEITH.  Sir William's between the devil and the deep sea, as it
strikes me.

CHRISTINE.  He'll simply forbid it utterly, of course.

KEITH.  H'm!  Hard case!  Man who reads family prayers, and lessons
on Sunday forbids son to----

CHRISTINE, Ronny!

KEITH.  Great Scott!  I'm not saying Bill ought to marry her.  She's
got to stand the racket.  But your Dad will have a tough job to take
up that position.

DOT.  Awfully funny!

CHRISTINE.  What on earth d'you mean, Dot?

DOT.  Morality in one eye, and your title in the other!

CHRISTINE.  Rubbish!

HAROLD.  You're all reckoning without your Bill.

KEITH.  Ye-es.  Sir William can cut him off; no mortal power can help
the title going down, if Bill chooses to be such a----
     [He draws in his breath with a sharp hiss.]

HAROLD.  I won't take what Bill ought to have; nor would any of you
girls, I should think.

CHRISTINE and DOT.  Of course not!

KEITH.  [Patting his wife's arm] Hardly the point, is it?

DOT.  If it wasn't for mother!  Freda's just as much of a lady as
most girls.  Why shouldn't he marry her, and go to Canada? It's what
he's really fit for.

HAROLD.  Steady on, Dot!

DOT.  Well, imagine him in Parliament!  That's what he'll come to, if
he stays here--jolly for the country!

CHRISTINE.  Don't be cynical!  We must find a way of stopping Bill.

DOT.  Me cynical!

CHRISTINE.  Let's go and beg him, Ronny!

KEITH.  No earthly!  The only hope is in the girl.

DOT.  She hasn't the stuff in her!

HAROLD.  I say!  What price young Dunning!  Right about face!  Poor
old Dad!

CHRISTINE.  It's past joking, Harold!

DOT.  [Gloomily]  Old Studdenham's better than most relations by
marriage!

KEITH.  Thanks!

CHRISTINE.  It's ridiculous--monstrous!  It's fantastic!

HAROLD.  [Holding up his hand] There's his horse going round.  He's
in!

     They turn from listening to the sound, to see LADY CHESHIRE
     coming from the billiard-room.  She is very pale.  They all rise
     and DOT puts an arm round her; while KEITH pushes forward his
     chair.  JOAN and LATTER too have come stealing back.

LADY CHESHIRE.  Thank you, Ronny!
     [She sits down.]

DOT.  Mother, you're shivering!  Shall I get you a fur?

LADY CHESHIRE.  No, thanks, dear!

DOT.  [In a low voice]  Play up, mother darling!

LADY CHESHIRE.  [Straightening herself]  What sort of a run, Ronny?

KEITH.  Quite fair, M'm. Brazier's to Caffyn's Dyke, good straight
line.

LADY CHESHIRE.  And the young horse?

KEITH.  Carries his ears in your mouth a bit, that's all.  [Putting
his hand on her shoulder]  Cheer up, Mem-Sahib!

CHRISTINE.  Mother, must anything be said to father?  Ronny thinks it
all depends on her.  Can't you use your influence? [LADY CHESHIRE
shakes her head.]

CHRISTINE.  But, mother, it's desperate.

DOT.  Shut up, Chris!  Of course mother can't.  We simply couldn't
beg her to let us off!

CHRISTINE.  There must be some way.  What do you think in your heart,
mother?

DOT.  Leave mother alone!

CHRISTINE.  It must be faced, now or never.

DOT.  [In a low voice]  Haven't you any self-respect?

CHRISTINE.  We shall be the laughing-stock of the whole county.  Oh!
mother do speak to her!  You know it'll be misery for both of them.
[LADY CHESHIRE bows her head] Well, then? [LADY CHESHIRE shakes her
head.]

CHRISTINE.  Not even for Bill's sake?

DOT.  Chris!

CHRISTINE.  Well, for heaven's sake, speak to Bill again, mother!  We
ought all to go on our knees to him.

LADY CHESHIRE.  He's with your father now.

HAROLD.  Poor old Bill!

CHRISTINE.  [Passionately]  He didn't think of us!  That wretched
girl!

LADY CHESHIRE.  Chris!

CHRISTINE.  There are limits!

LADY CHESHIRE.  Not to self-control.

CHRISTINE.  No, mother!  I can't I never shall--Something must be
done!  You know what Bill is.  He rushes at things so, when he gets
his head down.  Oh! do try!  It's only fair to her, and all of us!

LADY CHESHIRE.  [Painfully]  There are things one can't do.

CHRISTINE.  But it's Bill!  I know you can make her give him up, if
you'll only say all you can.  And, after all, what's coming won't
affect her as if she'd been a lady.  Only you can do it, mother: Do
back me up, all of you!  It's the only way!

     Hypnotised by their private longing for what CHRISTINE has been
     urging they have all fixed their eyes on LADY CHESHIRE, who
     looks from, face to face, and moves her hands as if in physical
     pain.

CHRISTINE.  [Softly] Mother!

     LADY CHESHIRE suddenly rises, looking towards the billiard-room
     door, listening.  They all follow her eyes.  She sits down
     again, passing her hand over her lips, as SIR WILLIAM enters.
     His hunting clothes are splashed; his face very grim and set.
     He walks to the fore without a glance at any one, and stands
     looking down into it. Very quietly, every one but LADY CHESHIRE
     steals away.

LADY CHESHIRE.  What have you done?

SIR WILLIAM.  You there!

LADY CHESHIRE.  Don't keep me in suspense!

SIR WILLIAM.  The fool!  My God!  Dorothy!  I didn't think I had a
blackguard for a son, who was a fool into the bargain.

LADY CHESHIRE.  [Rising]  If he were a blackguard he would not be
what you call a fool.

SIR WILLIAM.  [After staring angrily, makes her a slight bow]  Very
well!

LADY CHESHIRE.  [In a low voice]  Bill, don't be harsh.  It's all too
terrible.

SIR WILLIAM.  Sit down, my dear.
     [She resumes her seat, and he turns back to the fire.]

SIR WILLIAM.  In all my life I've never been face to face with a
thing like this.  [Gripping the mantelpiece so hard that his hands
and arms are seen shaking] You ask me to be calm.  I am trying to be.
Be good enough in turn not to take his part against me.

LADY CHESHIRE.  Bill!

SIR WILLIAM.  I am trying to think.  I understand that you've known
this--piece of news since this morning.  I've known it ten minutes.
Give me a little time, please.  [Then, after a silence]  Where's the
girl?

LADY CHESHIRE.  In the workroom.

SIR WILLIAM.  [Raising his clenched fist]  What in God's name is he
about?

LADY CHESHIRE.  What have you said to him?

SIR WILLIAM.  Nothing-by a miracle.  [He breaks away from the fire
and walks up and down]  My family goes back to the thirteenth
century.  Nowadays they laugh at that!  I don't!  Nowadays they laugh
at everything--they even laugh at the word lady.  I married you, and
I don't ....  Married his mother's maid!  By George!  Dorothy!  I
don't know what we've done to deserve this; it's a death blow!  I'm
not prepared to sit down and wait for it.  By Gad!  I am not.  [With
sudden fierceness]  There are plenty in these days who'll be glad
enough for this to happen; plenty of these d---d Socialists and
Radicals, who'll laugh their souls out over what they haven't the
bowels to sees a--tragedy.  I say it would be a tragedy; for you, and
me, and all of us. You and I were brought up, and we've brought the
children up, with certain beliefs, and wants, and habits.  A man's
past--his traditions--he can't get rid of them. They're--they're
himself!  [Suddenly]  It shan't go on.

LADY CHESHIRE.  What's to prevent it?

SIR WILLIAM.  I utterly forbid this piece of madness.  I'll stop it.

LADY CHESHIRE.  But the thing we can't stop.

SIR WILLIAM.  Provision must be made.

LADY CHESHIRE.  The unwritten law!

SIR WILLIAM.  What!  [Suddenly perceiving what she is alluding to]
You're thinking of young--young----[Shortly] I don't see the
connection.

LADY CHESHIRE.  What's so awful, is that the boy's trying to do
what's loyal--and we--his father and mother----!

SIR WILLIAM.  I'm not going to see my eldest son ruin his life.  I
must think this out.

LADY CHESHIRE.  [Beneath her breath] I've tried that--it doesn't
help.

SIR WILLIAM.  This girl, who was born on the estate, had the run of
the house--brought up with money earned from me--nothing but kindness
from all of us; she's broken the common rules of gratitude and
decency--she lured him on, I haven't a doubt!

LADY CHESHIRE.  [To herself] In a way, I suppose.

SIR WILLIAM.  What!  It's ruin.  We've always been here.  Who the
deuce are we if we leave this place?  D'you think we could stay?  Go
out and meet everybody just as if nothing had happened?  Good-bye to
any prestige, political, social, or anything!  This is the sort of
business nothing can get over.  I've seen it before.  As to that
other matter--it's soon forgotten--constantly happening--Why, my own
grandfather----!

LADY CHESHIRE.  Does he help?

SIR WILLIAM.  [Stares before him in silence-suddenly] You must go to
the girl.  She's soft.  She'll never hold out against you.

LADY CHESHIRE.  I did before I knew what was in front of her--I said
all I could.  I can't go again now.  I can't do it, Bill.

SIR WILLIAM.  What are you going to do, then--fold your hands? [Then
as LADY CHESHIRE makes a move of distress.]  If he marries her, I've
done with him.  As far as I'm concerned he'll cease to exist.  The
title--I can't help.  My God!  Does that meet your wishes?

LADY CHESHIRE.  [With sudden fire] You've no right to put such an
alternative to me.  I'd give ten years of my life to prevent this
marriage.  I'll go to Bill.  I'll beg him on my knees.

SIR WILLIAM.  Then why can't you go to the girl? She deserves no
consideration.  It's not a question of morality: Morality be d---d!

LADY CHESHIRE.  But not self-respect....

SIR WILLIAM.  What!  You're his mother!

LADY CHESHIRE.  I've tried; I [putting her hand to her throat] can't
get it out.

SIR WILLIAM.  [Staring at her] You won't go to her? It's the only
chance.  [LADY CHESHIRE turns away.]

SIR WILLIAM.  In the whole course of our married life, Dorothy, I've
never known you set yourself up against me.  I resent this, I warn
you--I resent it.  Send the girl to me.  I'll do it myself.

     With a look back at him LADY CHESHIRE goes out into the
     corridor.

SIR WILLIAM.  This is a nice end to my day!

     He takes a small china cup from of the mantel-piece; it breaks
     with the pressure of his hand, and falls into the fireplace.
     While he stands looking at it blankly, there is a knock.

SIR WILLIAM.  Come in!

     FREDA enters from the corridor.

SIR WILLIAM.  I've asked you to be good enough to come, in order
that--[pointing to chair]--You may sit down.

     But though she advances two or three steps, she does not sit
     down.

SIR WILLIAM.  This is a sad business.

FREDA.  [Below her breath] Yes, Sir William.

SIR WILLIAM.  [Becoming conscious of the depths of feeling before
him] I--er--are you attached to my son?

FREDA. [In a whisper] Yes.

SIR WILLIAM. It's very painful to me to have to do this. [He turns
away from her and speaks to the fire.]  I sent for you--to--ask--
[quickly] How old are you?

FREDA. Twenty-two.

SIR WILLIAM. [More resolutely] Do you expect me to sanction such a
mad idea as a marriage?

FREDA. I don't expect anything.

SIR WILLIAM. You know--you haven't earned the right to be considered.

FREDA. Not yet!

SIR WILLIAM. What!  That oughtn't to help you!  On the contrary.  Now
brace yourself up, and listen to me!

     She stands waiting to hear her sentence. SIR WILLIAM looks at
     her; and his glance gradually wavers.

SIR WILLIAM.  I've not a word to say for my son.  He's behaved like a
scamp.

FREDA.  Oh!  no!

SIR WILLIAM.  [With a silencing gesture] At the same, time--What
made you forget yourself?  You've no excuse, you know.

FREDA.  No.

SIR WILLIAM.  You'll deserve all you'll get.  Confound it!  To expect
me to--It's intolerable!  Do you know where my son is?

FREDA. [Faintly] I think he's in the billiard-room with my lady.

SIR WILLIAM.  [With renewed resolution] I wanted to--to put it to
you--as a--as a--what! [Seeing her stand so absolutely motionless,
looking at him, he turns abruptly, and opens the billiard-room door]
I'll speak to him first.  Come in here, please! [To FREDA] Go in, and
wait!

     LADY CHESHIRE and BILL Come in, and FREDA passing them, goes
     into the billiard-room to wait.

SIR WILLIAM. [Speaking with a pause between each sentence] Your
mother and I have spoken of this--calamity.  I imagine that even you
have some dim perception of the monstrous nature of it.  I must tell
you this: If you do this mad thing, you fend for yourself.  You'll
receive nothing from me now or hereafter.  I consider that only due
to the position our family has always held here.  Your brother will
take your place.  We shall--get on as best we can without you. [There
is a dead silence till he adds sharply] Well!

BILL.  I shall marry her.

LADY CHESHIRE.  Oh! Bill!  Without love-without anything!

BILL.  All right, mother!  [To SIR WILLIAM] you've mistaken your man,
sir.  Because I'm a rotter in one way, I'm not necessarily a rotter
in all.  You put the butt end of the pistol to Dunning's head
yesterday, you put the other end to mine to-day.  Well!  [He turns
round to go out] Let the d---d thing off!

LADY CHESHIRE.  Bill!

BILL.  [Turning to her] I'm not going to leave her in the lurch.

SIR WILLIAM.  Do me the justice to admit that I have not attempted to
persuade you to.

BILL.  No! you've chucked me out.  I don't see what else you could
have done under the circumstances.  It's quite all right.  But if you
wanted me to throw her over, father, you went the wrong way to work,
that's all; neither you nor I are very good at seeing consequences.

SIR WILLIAM.  Do you realise your position?

BILK. [Grimly]  I've a fair notion of it.

SIR WILLIAM. [With a sudden outburst]  You have none--not the
faintest, brought up as you've been.

BILL. I didn't bring myself up.

SIR WILLIAM. [With a movement of uncontrolled anger, to which his son
responds]  You--ungrateful young dog!

LADY CHESHIRE. How can you--both?
[They drop their eyes, and stand silent.]

SIR WILLIAM. [With grimly suppressed emotion] I am speaking under the
stress of very great pain--some consideration is due to me.  This is
a disaster which I never expected to have to face.  It is a matter
which I naturally can never hope to forget.  I shall carry this down
to my death.  We shall all of us do that.  I have had the misfortune
all my life to believe in our position here--to believe that we
counted for something--that the country wanted us.  I have tried to
do my duty by that position.  I find in one moment that it is gone--
smoke--gone.  My philosophy is not equal to that.  To countenance
this marriage would be unnatural.

BILL.  I know.  I'm sorry.  I've got her into this--I don't see any
other way out.  It's a bad business for me, father, as well as for
you----

     He stops, seeing that JACKSON has route in, and is standing
     there waiting.

JACKSON.  Will you speak to Studdenham, Sir William?  It's about
young Dunning.

     After a moment of dead silence, SIR WILLIAM nods, and the butler
     withdraws.

BILL. [Stolidly] He'd better be told.

SIR WILLIAM.  He shall be.

     STUDDENHAM enters, and touches his forehead to them all with a
     comprehensive gesture.

STUDDENHAM.  Good evenin', my lady!  Evenin', Sir William!

STUDDENHAM.  Glad to be able to tell you, the young man's to do the
proper thing.  Asked me to let you know, Sir William.  Banns'll be up
next Sunday. [Struck by the silence, he looks round at all three in
turn, and suddenly seeing that LADY CHESHIRE is shivering] Beg
pardon, my lady, you're shakin' like a leaf!

BILL.  [Blurting it out]  I've a painful piece of news for you,
Studdenham; I'm engaged to your daughter.  We're to be married at
once.

STUDDENHAM.  I--don't--understand you--sir.

BILL.  The fact is, I've behaved badly; but I mean to put it
straight.

STUDDENHAM.  I'm a little deaf.  Did you say--my daughter?

SIR WILLIAM.  There's no use mincing matters, Studdenham.  It's a
thunderbolt--young Dunning's case over again.

STUDDENHAM.  I don't rightly follow.  She's--You've--!  I must see my
daughter.  Have the goodness to send for her, m'lady.

     LADY CHESHIRE goes to the billiard-room, and calls: "FREDA, come
     here, please."

STUDDENHAM.  [TO SIR WILLIAM]  YOU tell me that my daughter's in the
position of that girl owing to your son?  Men ha' been shot for less.

BILL.  If you like to have a pot at me, Studdenham you're welcome.

STUDDENHAM.  [Averting his eyes from BILL at the sheer idiocy of this
sequel to his words] I've been in your service five and twenty years,
Sir William; but this is man to man--this is!

SIR WILLIAM.  I don't deny that, Studdenham.

STUDDENHAM.  [With eyes shifting in sheer anger] No--'twouldn't be
very easy.  Did I understand him to say that he offers her marriage?

SIR WILLIAM.  You did.

STUDDENHAM.  [Into his beard] Well--that's something!  [Moving his
hands as if wringing the neck of a bird] I'm tryin' to see the rights
o' this.

SIR WILLIAM.  [Bitterly] You've all your work cut out for you,
Studdenham.

     Again STUDDENHAM makes the unconscious wringing movement with
     his hands.

LADY CHESHIRE.  [Turning from it with a sort of horror] Don't,
Studdenham!  Please!

STUDDENHAM.  What's that, m'lady?

LADY CHESHIRE.  [Under her breath] Your--your--hands.

     While STUDDENHAM is still staring at her, FREDA is seen standing
     in the doorway, like a black ghost.

STUDDENHAM.  Come here!  You!  [FREDA moves a few steps towards her
father] When did you start this?

FREDA.  [Almost inaudibly] In the summer, father.

LADY CHESHIRE.  Don't be harsh to her!

STUDDENHAM.  Harsh!  [His eyes again move from side to side as if
pain and anger had bewildered them.  Then looking sideways at FREDA,
but in a gentler voice] And when did you tell him about--what's come
to you?

FREDA.  Last night.

STUDDENHAM.  Oh!  [With sudden menace] You young--!  [He makes a
convulsive movement of one hand; then, in the silence, seems to lose
grip of his thoughts, and pits his hand up to his head] I want to
clear me mind a bit--I don't see it plain at all.  [Without looking
at BILL] 'Tis said there's been an offer of marriage?

BILL.  I've made it, I stick to it.

STUDDENHAM.  Oh!  [With slow, puzzled anger] I want time to get the
pith o' this.  You don't say anything, Sir William?

SIR WILLIAM.  The facts are all before you.

STUDDENHAM.  [Scarcely moving his lips] M'lady?

     LADY CHESHIRE is silent.

STUDDENHAM.  [Stammering] My girl was--was good enough for any man.
It's not for him that's--that's to look down on her.  [To FREDA] You
hear the handsome offer that's been made you?  Well? [FREDA moistens
her lips and tries to speak, but cannot]  If nobody's to speak a
word, we won't get much forrarder.  I'd like for you to say what's in
your mind, Sir William.

SIR WILLIAM.  I--If my son marries her he'll have to make his own
way.

STUDDENHAM.  [Savagely] I'm not puttin' thought to that.

SIR WILLIAM.  I didn't suppose you were, Studdenham.  It appears to
rest with your daughter.  [He suddenly takes out his handkerchief,
and puts it to his forehead] Infernal fires they make up here!

LADY CHESHIRE, who is again shivering desperately, as if with intense
cold, makes a violent attempt to control her shuddering.

STUDDENHAM.  [Suddenly]  There's luxuries that's got to be paid for.
[To FREDA] Speak up, now.

     FREDA turns slowly and looks up at SIR WILLIAM; he involuntarily
     raises his hand to his mouth.  Her eyes travel on to LADY
     CHESHIRE, who faces her, but so deadly pale that she looks as if
     she were going to faint.  The girl's gaze passes on to BILL,
     standing rigid, with his jaw set.

FREDA.  I want--[Then flinging her arm up over her eyes, she turns
from him] No!

SIR WILLIAM.  Ah!

     At that sound of profound relief, STUDDENHAM, whose eyes have
     been following his daughter's, moves towards SIR WILLIAM, all
     his emotion turned into sheer angry pride.

STUDDENHAM.  Don't be afraid, Sir William!  We want none of you!
She'll not force herself where she's not welcome.  She may ha'
slipped her good name, but she'll keep her proper pride.  I'll have
no charity marriage in my family.

SIR WILLIAM.  Steady, Studdenham!

STUDDENHAM.  If the young gentleman has tired of her in three months,
as a blind man can see by the looks of him--she's not for him!

BILL.  [Stepping forward]  I'm ready to make it up to her.

STUDDENHAM.  Keep back, there?  [He takes hold of FREDA, and looks
around him]  Well!  She's not the first this has happened to since
the world began, an' she won't be the last.  Come away, now, come away!

Taking FREDA by the shoulders, he guides her towards the door.

SIR WILLIAM.  D---n 'it, Studdenham!  Give us credit for something!

STUDDENHAM.  [Turning his face and eyes lighted up by a sort of
smiling snarl]  Ah!  I do that, Sir William.  But there's things that
can't be undone!

     He follows FREDA Out.  As the door closes, SIR WILLIAM'S Calm
     gives way.  He staggers past his wife, and sinks heavily, as
     though exhausted, into a chair by the fire.  BILL, following
     FREDA and STUDDENHAM, has stopped at the shut door.  LADY
     CHESHIRE moves swiftly close to him.  The door of the
     billiard-room is opened, and DOT appears.  With a glance round,
     she crosses quickly to her mother.

DOT.  [In a low voice]  Mabel's just going, mother!  [Almost
whispering]  Where's Freda?  Is it--Has she really had the pluck?

     LADY CHESHIRE bending her head for "Yes," goes out into the
     billiard-room.  DOT clasps her hands together, and standing
     there in the middle of the room, looks from her brother to her
     father, from her father to her brother.  A quaint little pitying
     smile comes on her lips.  She gives a faint shrug of her shoulders.



The curtain falls.





End of this Project Gutenberg Etext of THE ELDEST SON, by John Galsworthy






THE LITTLE DREAM

An Allegory in six scenes



CHARACTERS

SEELCHEN, a mountain girl
LAMOND, a climber
FELSMAN, a glide



CHARACTERS IN THE DREAM

THE GREAT HORN |
THE COW HORN   |          mountains
THE WINE HORN  |

THE EDELWEISS           |
THE ALPENROSE           | flowers
THE GENTIAN             |
THE MOUNTAIN DANDELION  |



VOICES AND FIGURES IN THE DREAM

COWBELLS
MOUNTAIN AIR
FAR VIEW OF ITALY
DISTANT FLUME OF STEAM
THINGS IN BOOKS
MOTH CHILDREN
THREE DANCING YOUTHS
THREE DANCING GIRLS
THE FORMS OF WORKERS
THE FORMS OF WHAT IS MADE BY WORK
DEATH BY SLUMBER
DEATH BY DROWNING
FLOWER CHILDREN
GOATHERD
GOAT BOYS
GOAT GOD
THE FORMS OF SLEEP




SCENE I

     It is just after sunset of an August evening. The scene is a
     room in a mountain hut, furnished only with a table, benches.
     and a low broad window seat.  Through this window three rocky
     peaks are seen by the light of a moon which is slowly whitening
     the last hues of sunset.  An oil lamp is burning.  SEELCHEN, a
     mountain girl, eighteen years old, is humming a folk-song, and
     putting away in a cupboard freshly washed soup-bowls and
     glasses.  She is dressed in a tight-fitting black velvet bodice.
     square-cut at the neck and partly filled in with a gay
     handkerchief, coloured rose-pink, blue, and golden, like the
     alpen-rose, the gentian, and the mountain dandelion; alabaster
     beads, pale as edelweiss, are round her throat; her stiffened.
     white linen sleeves finish at the elbow; and her full well-worn
     skirt is of gentian blue.  The two thick plaits of her hair are
     crossed, and turned round her head.  As she puts away the last
     bowl, there is a knock; and LAMOND opens the outer door.  He is
     young, tanned, and good-looking, dressed like a climber, and
     carries a plaid, a ruck-sack, and an ice-axe.

LAMOND.  Good evening!

SEELCHEN.  Good evening, gentle Sir!

LAMOND.  My name is Lamond.  I'm very late I fear.

SEELCHEN.  Do you wish to sleep here?

LAMOND.  Please.

SEELCHEN.  All the beds are full--it is a pity.  I will call Mother.

LAMOND.  I've come to go up the Great Horn at sunrise.

SEELCHEN.  [Awed]  The Great Horn!  But he is impossible.

LAMOND.  I am going to try that.

SEELCHEN.  There is the Wine Horn, and the Cow Horn.

LAMOND.  I have climbed them.

SEELCHEN.  But he is so dangerous--it is perhaps--death.

LAMOND.  Oh!  that's all right!  One must take one's chance.

SEELCHEN.  And father has hurt his foot.  For guide, there is only
Mans Felsman.

LAMOND.  The celebrated Felsman?

SEELCHEN. [Nodding; then looking at him with admiration]  Are you
that Herr Lamond who has climbed all our little mountains this year?

LAMOND. All but that big fellow.

SEELCHEN. We have heard of you.  Will you not wait a day for father's
foot?

LAMOND. Ah! no.  I must go back home to-morrow.

SEELCHEN.  The gracious Sir is in a hurry.

LAMOND. [Looking at her intently]  Alas!

SEELCHEN.  Are you from London?   Is it very big?

LAMOND. Six million souls.

SEELCHEN. Oh!  [After a little pause]  I have seen Cortina twice.

LAMOND.  Do you live here all the year?

SEELCHEN.  In winter in the valley.

LAMOND.  And don't you want to see the world?

SEELCHEN.  Sometimes.  [Going to a door, she calls softly]  Hans!
[Then pointing to another door]  There are seven German gentlemen
asleep in there!

LAMOND.  Oh God!

SEELCHEN.  Please?  They are here to see the sunrise.  [She picks up
a little book that has dropped from LAMOND'S pocket]  I have read
several books.

LAMOND.  This is by the great English poet.  Do you never make poetry
here, and dream dreams, among your mountains?

SEELCHEN. [Slowly shaking her head]  See!  It is the full moon.

     While they stand at the window looking at the moon, there enters
     a lean, well-built, taciturn young man dressed in Loden.

SEELCHEN. Hans!

FELSMAN. [In a deep voice]  The gentleman wishes me?

SEELCHEN.  [Awed]  The Great Horn for to-morrow!  [Whispering to him]
It is the celebrated London one.

FELSMAN.  The Great Horn is not possible.

LAMOND.  You say that?   And you're the famous Felsman?

FELSMAN.  [Grimly]  We start at dawn.

SEELCHEN.  It is the first time for years!

LAMOND.  [Placing his plaid and rucksack on the window bench]  Can I
sleep here?

SEELCHEN.  I will see; perhaps--

     [She runs out up some stairs]

FELSMAN.  [Taking blankets from the cupboard and spreading them on
the window seat]  So!

     As he goes out into the air.  SEELCHEN comes slipping in again
     with a lighted candle.

SEELCHEN.  There is still one bed. This is too hard for you.

LAMOND.  Oh! thanks; but that's all right.

SEELCHEN.  To please me!

LAMOND.  May I ask your name?

SEELCHEN.  Seelchen.

LAMOND.  Little soul, that means--doesn't it?   To please you I would
sleep with seven German gentlemen.

SEELCHEN.  Oh! no; it is not necessary.

LAMOND.  [With. a grave bow]  At your service, then.
[He prepares to go]

SEELCHEN.  Is it very nice in towns, in the World, where you come
from?

LAMOND.  When I'm there I would be here; but when I'm here I would be
there.

SEELCHEN.  [Clasping her hands]  That is like me but I am always
here.

LAMOND.  Ah!  yes; there is no one like you in towns.

SEELCHEN.  In two places one cannot be.  [Suddenly]  In the towns
there are theatres, and there is beautiful fine work, and--dancing,
and--churches--and trains--and all the things in books--and--

LAMOND.  Misery.

SEELCHEN.  But there is life.

LAMOND.  And there is death.

SEELCHEN. To-morrow, when you have climbed--will you not come back?

LAMOND.  No.

SEELCHEN.  You have all the world; and I have nothing.

LAMOND.  Except Felsman, and the mountains.

SEELCHEN. It is not good to eat only bread.

LAMOND.  [Looking at her hard] I would like to eat you!

SEELCHEN.  But I am not nice; I am full of big wants--like the cheese
with holes.

LAMOND.  I shall come again.

SEELCHEN.  There will be no more hard mountains left to climb.  And
if it is not exciting, you do not care.

LAMOND.  O wise little soul!

SEELCHEN.  No. I am not wise.  In here it is always aching.

LAMOND.  For the moon?

SEELCHEN.  Yes.  [Then suddenly]  From the big world you will
remember?

LAMOND.  [Taking her hand]  There is nothing in the big world so
sweet as this.

SEELCHEN.  [Wisely]  But there is the big world itself.

LAMOND.  May I kiss you, for good-night?

     She puts her face forward; and he kisses her cheek, and,
     suddenly, her lips. Then as she draws away.

LAMOND.  I am sorry, little soul.

SEELCHEN.  That's all right!

LAMOND.  [Taking the candle]  Dream well!  Goodnight!

SEELCHEN.  [Softly]  Good-night!

FELSMAN.  [Coming in from the air, and eyeing them]  It is cold--it
will be fine.

     LAMOND still looking back goes up the stairs; and FELSMAN waits
     for him to pass.

SEELCHEN.  [From the window seat]  It was hard for him here.  I
thought.

     He goes up to her, stays a moment looking down then bends and
     kisses her hungrily.

SEELCHEN. Art thou angry?

     He does not answer, but turning out the lamp, goes into an inner
     room.

     SEELCHEN sits gazing through the window at the peaks bathed in
     full moonlight.  Then, drawing the blankets about her, she
     snuggles doom on the window seat.

SEELCHEN. [In a sleepy voice] They kissed me--both. [She sleeps]

                    The scene falls quite dark




SCENE II

     The scene is slowly illumined as by dawn.  SEELCHEN is still
     lying on the window seat.  She sits up, freeing her face and
     hands from the blankets, changing the swathings of deep sleep
     for the filmy coverings of a dream.  The wall of the hut has
     vanished; there is nothing between her and the three mountains
     veiled in mist, save a through of darkness.  There, as the peaks
     of the mountains brighten, they are seen to have great faces.

SEELCHEN.  Oh!  They have faces!

     The face of THE WINE HORN is the profile of a beardless youth.
     The face of THE COW HORN is that of a mountain shepherd.
     solemn, and broom, with fierce black eyes, and a black beard.
     Between them THE GREAT HORN, whose hair is of snow, has a high.
     beardless visage, as of carved bronze, like a male sphinx,
     serene, without cruelty.  Far down below the faces of the peaks.
     above the trough of darkness, are peeping out the four little
     heads of the flowers of EDELWEISS, and GENTIAN, MOUNTAIN
     DANDELION, and ALPENROSE; on their heads are crowns made of
     their several flowers, all powdered with dewdrops; and when THE
     FLOWERS lift their child-faces little tinkling bells ring.

All around the peaks there is nothing but blue sky.

EDELWEISS.  [In a tiny voice]  Would you?   Would you?   Would you?
Ah! ha!

GENTIAN,  M. DANDELION,  ALPENROSE  [With their bells ranging
enviously]  Oo-oo-oo!

          From behind the Cow HORN are heard the voices of COWBELLS
          and MOUNTAIN AIR:

     "Clinkel-clink!  Clinkel-clink!"
     "Mountain air!  Mountain air!"

          From behind THE WINE HORN rise the rival voices Of VIEW OF
          ITALY,  FLUME OF STEAM,  and THINGS IN BOOKS:

     "I am Italy!  Italy!"

     "See me--steam in the distance!"

     "O remember the things in books!"

          And all call out together, very softly, with THE FLOWERS
          ringing their bells.  Then far away like an echo comes a
          sighing:

     "Mountain air!  Mountain air!"

          And suddenly the Peak of THE COW HORN speaks in a voice as
          of one unaccustomed.

THE COW HORN.  Amongst kine and my black-brown sheep I Live; I am
silence, and monotony; I am the solemn hills.  I am fierceness, and
the mountain wind; clean pasture, and wild rest.  Look in my eyes.
love me alone!

SEELCHEN.  [Breathless]  The Cow Horn!  He is speaking for Felsman
and the mountains.  It is the half of my heart!

          THE FLOWERS laugh happily.

THE COW HORN.  I stalk the eternal hills--I drink the mountain snows.
My eyes are the colour of burned wine; in them lives melancholy.  The
lowing of the kine, the wind, the sound of falling rocks, the running
of the torrents; no other talk know I.  Thoughts simple, and blood
hot, strength huge--the cloak of gravity.

SEELCHEN. Yes. yes!  I want him. He is strong!

          The voices of COWBELLS and MOUNTAIN AIR cry out together:

     "Clinkel-clink!  Clinkel-clink!"

     "Mountain air!  Mountain air!"

THE COW HORN.  Little soul!  Hold to me!  Love me!  Live with me
under the stars!

SEELCHEN.  [Below her breath]  I am afraid.

          And suddenly the Peak of THE WINE HORN speaks in a youth's
          voice.

THE WINE HORN.  I am the will o' the wisp that dances thro' the
streets; I am the cooing dove of Towns, from the plane trees and the
chestnuts' shade. From day to day all changes, where I burn my
incense to my thousand little gods.  In white palaces I dwell, and
passionate dark alleys.  The life of men in crowds is mine--of
lamplight in the streets at dawn.  [Softly]  I have a thousand loves.
and never one too long; for I am nimbler than your heifers playing in
the sunshine.

          THE FLOWERS, ringing in alarm, cry:

     "We know them!"

THE WINE HORN.  I hear the rustlings of the birth and death of
pleasure; and the rattling of swift wheels.  I hear the hungry oaths
of men; and love kisses in the airless night.  Without me, little
soul, you starve and die,

SEELCHEN.  He is speaking for the gentle Sir, and the big world of
the Town.  It pulls my heart.

THE WINE HORN.  My thoughts surpass in number the flowers in your
meadows; they fly more swiftly than your eagles on the wind. I drink
the wine of aspiration, and the drug of disillusion.  Thus am I never
dull!

          The voices of VIEW OF ITALY, FLUME OF STEAM, and THINGS IN
          BOOKS are heard calling out together:

     "I am Italy, Italy!"

     "See me--steam in the distance!"

     "O remember, remember!"

THE WINE HORN.  Love me, little soul!  I paint life fifty colours.
I make a thousand pretty things!  I twine about your heart!

SEELCHEN.  He is honey!

          THE FLOWERS ring their bells jealously and cry:

     "Bitter! Bitter!"


THE COW HORN.  Stay with me, Seelchen!  I wake thee with the crystal
air.

          The voices of COWBELLS and MOUNTAIN AIR tiny out far away:

     "Clinkel-clink!  Clinkel-clink!"

     "Mountain air!  Mountain air!"

          And THE FLOWERS laugh happily.

THE WINE HORN.  Come with me, Seelchen!  My fan, Variety, shall wake
you!

          The voices of VIEW OF ITALY, FLUME OF STEAM and THINGS IN
          BOOKS chant softly:

     "I am Italy!  Italy!"

     "See me--steam in the distance!"

     "O remember, remember!"

          And THE FLOWERS moan.

SEELCHEN.  [In grief]  My heart!  It is torn!

THE WINE HORN.  With me, little soul, you shall race in the streets.
and peep at all secrets.  We will hold hands, and fly like the
thistle-down.

M. DANDELION.  My puff-balls fly faster!

THE WINE HORN.  I will show you the sea.

GENTIAN.  My blue is deeper!

THE WINE HORN. I will shower on you blushes.

ALPENROSE.  I can blush redder!

THE WINE HORN.  Little soul, listen!  My Jewels!  Silk!  Velvet!

EDELWEISS.  I am softer than velvet!

THE WINE HORN. [Proudly]  My wonderful rags!

THE FLOWERS. [Moaning]  Of those we have none.

SEELCHEN.  He has all things.

THE COW HORN.  Mine are the clouds with the dark silvered wings; mine
are the rocks on fire with the sun; and the dewdrops cooler than
pearls. Away from my breath of snow and sweet grass, thou wilt droop,
little soul.

THE WINE HORN.  The dark Clove is my fragrance!

          THE FLOWERS ring eagerly, and turning up their faces, cry:

     "We too, smell sweet."

          But the voices of VIEW OF ITALY, FLUME OF STEAM, and THINGS
          IN BOOKS cry out:

     "I am Italy!  Italy!"

     "See me--steam in the distance!"

     "O remember!  remember!"

SEELCHEN. [Distracted]  Oh! it is hard!

THE COW HORN.  I will never desert thee.

THE WINE HORN.  A hundred times I will desert you, a hundred times
come back, and kiss you.

SEELCHEN.  [Whispering]  Peace for my heart!

THE COW HORN.  With me thou shalt lie on the warm wild thyme.

          THE FLOWERS laugh happily.

THE WINE HORN.  With me you shall lie on a bed of dove's feathers.

          THE FLOWERS moan.

THE WINE HORN.  I will give you old wine.

THE COW HORN.  I will give thee new milk.

THE WINE HORN.  Hear my song!

          From far away comes the sound as of mandolins.

SEELCHEN.  [Clasping her breast]  My heart--it is leaving me!

THE COW HORN.  Hear my song!

          From the distance floats the piping of a Shepherd's reed.

SEELCHEN.  [Curving her hand at her ears] The piping!  Ah!

THE COW HORN.  Stay with me, Seelchen!

THE WINE HORN.  Come with me, Seelchen!

THE COW HORN.  I give thee certainty!

THE WINE HORN.  I give you chance!

THE COW HORN.  I give thee peace.

THE WINE HORN.  I give you change.

THE COW HORN.  I give thee stillness.

THE WINE HORN.  I give you voice.

THE COW HORN.  I give thee one love.

THE WINE HORN.  I give you many.

SEELCHEN.  [As if the words were torn from her heart]  Both, both--I
will love!

     And suddenly the Peak of THE GREAT HORN speaks.

THE GREAT HORN.  And both thou shalt love, little soul!  Thou shalt
lie on the hills with Silence; and dance in the cities with
Knowledge.  Both shall possess thee!  The sun and the moon on the
mountains shall burn thee; the lamps of the town singe thy wings.
small Moth!  Each shall seem all the world to thee, each shall seem
as thy grave!  Thy heart is a feather blown from one mouth to the
other.  But be not afraid!  For the life of a man is for all loves in
turn. 'Tis a little raft moored, then sailing out into the blue; a
tune caught in a hush, then whispering on; a new-born babe, half
courage and half sleep.  There is a hidden rhythm.  Change.
Quietude.  Chance.  Certainty.  The One.  The Many.  Burn on--thou
pretty flame, trying to eat the world!  Thou shaft come to me at
last, my little soul!

     THE VOICES and THE FLOWER-BELLS peal out.

     SEELCHEN, enraptured, stretches her arms to embrace the sight
     and sound, but all fades slowly into dark sleep.




SCENE III

The dark scene again becomes glamorous.  SEELCHEN is seen with her
hand stretched out towards the Piazza of a little town, with a plane
tree on one side, a wall on the other, and from the open doorway of
an Inn a pale path of light.  Over the Inn hangs a full golden moon.
Against the wall, under the glimmer of a lamp, leans a youth with the
face of THE WINE HORN, in a crimson dock, thrumming a mandolin, and
singing:

         "Little star soul
          Through the frost fields of night
          Roaming alone, disconsolate--
          From out the cold
          I call thee in
          Striking my dark mandolin
          Beneath this moon of gold."

     From the Inn comes a burst of laughter, and the sound of
     dancing.

SEELCHEN:  [Whispering]  It is the big world!

     The Youth of THE WINE HORN sings On:

         "Pretty grey moth,
          Where the strange candles shine,
          Seeking for warmth, so desperate--
          Ah! fluttering dove
          I bid thee win
          Striking my dark mandolin
          The crimson flame of love."

SEELCHEN.  [Gazing enraptured at the Inn]  They are dancing!

     As SHE speaks, from either side come moth-children, meeting and
     fluttering up the path of light to the Inn doorway; then
     wheeling aside, they form again, and again flutter forward.

SEELCHEN.  [Holding out her hands]  They are real!  Their wings are
windy.

     The Youth of THE WINE HORN sings on;

         "Lips of my song,
          To the white maiden's heart
          Go ye, and whisper,  passionate.
          These words that burn
          'O listening one!
          Love that flieth past is gone
          Nor ever may return!'"

     SEELCHEN runs towards him--but the light above him fades; he has
     become shadow.  She turns bewildered to the dancing moth-
     children--but they vanish before her.  At the door of the Inn
     stands LAMOND in a dark cloak.

SEELCHEN.  It is you!

LAMOND.  Without my little soul I am cold.  Come!  [He holds out his
arms to her]

SEELCHEN.  Shall I be safe?

LAMOND.  What is safety?   Are you safe in your mountains?

SEELCHEN.  Where am I, here?

LAMOND.  The Town.

     Smiling, he points to the doorway. And silent as shadows there
     come dancing out, two by two, two girls and two youths.  The
     first girl is dressed in white satin and jewels; and the first
     youth in black velvet.  The second girl is in rags, and a shawl;
     and the second youth in shirt and corduroys.  They dance
     gravely, each couple as if in a world apart.

SEELCHEN. [Whispering]  In the mountains all dance together.  Do they
never change partners?

LAMOND. How could they, little one?   Those are rich, these poor.
But see!

     A CORYBANTIC COUPLE come dancing forth. The girl has bare limbs.
     a flame-coloured shift, and hair bound with red flowers; the
     youth wears a panther-skin.  They pursue not only each other.
     but the other girls and youths.  For a moment all is a furious
     medley.  Then the Corybantic Couple vanish into the Inn, and the
     first two couples are left, slowly, solemnly dancing, apart from
     each other as before.

SEELCHEN. [Shuddering]  Shall I one day dance like that?

     The Youth of THE WINE HORN appears again beneath the lamp.  He
     strikes a loud chord; then as SEELCHEN moves towards that sound
     the lamp goes out; there is again only blue shadow; but the
     couples have disappeared into the Inn, and the doorway has grown
     dark.

SEELCHEN.  Ah!  What I do not like, he will not let me see.

LAMOND.  Will you not come, then, little soul?

SEELCHEN.  Always to dance?

LAMOND:  Not so!

     THE SHUTTERS of the houses are suddenly thrown wide. In a
     lighted room on one aide of the Inn are seen two pale men and a
     woman, amongst many clicking machines.  On the other side of the
     Inn, in a forge, are visible two women and a man, but half
     clothed, making chains.

SEELCHEN.  [Recoiling from both sights, in turn]  How sad they look
--all!  What are they making?

     In the dark doorway of the Inn a light shines out, and in it is
     seen a figure, visible only from the waist up, clad in
     gold-cloth studded with jewels, with a flushed complacent face,
     holding in one hand a glass of golden wine.

SEELCHEN.  It is beautiful. What is it?

LAMOND.  Luxury.

SEELCHEN.  What is it standing on?  I cannot see.

     Unseen, THE WINE HORN'S mandolin twangs out.

LAMOND.  For that do not look, little soul.

SEELCHEN.  Can it not walk?   [He shakes his head]  Is that all they
make here with their sadness?

     But again the mandolin twangs out; the shutters fall over the
     houses; the door of the Inn grows dark.

LAMOND.  What is it, then, you would have?  Is it learning?  There
are books here, that, piled on each other, would reach to the stars!
[But SEELCHEN shakes her head]  There is religion so deep that no man
knows what it means. [But SEELCHEN shakes her head]  There is
religion so shallow, you may have it by turning a handle.  We have
everything.

SEELCHEN.  Is God here?

LAMOND.  Who knows?  Is God with your goats?  [But SEELCHEN shakes
her head]  What then do you want?

SEELCHEN.  Life.

     The mandolin twangs out.

LAMOND.  [Pointing to his breast]  There is but one road to life.

SEELCHEN.  Ah! but I do not love.

LAMOND.  When a feather dies, is it not loving the wind--the unknown?
When the day brings not new things, we are children of sorrow.  If
darkness and light did not change, could we breathe?  Child!  To live
is to love, to love is to live-seeking for wonder.  [And as she draws
nearer]  See!  To love is to peer over the edge, and, spying the
little grey flower, to climb down!  It has wings; it has flown--again
you must climb; it shivers, 'tis but air in your hand--you must
crawl, you must cling, you must leap, and still it is there and not
there--for the grey flower flits like a moth, and the wind of its
wings is all you shall catch.  But your eyes shall be shining, your
cheeks shall be burning, your breast shall be panting--Ah! little
heart!  [The scene falls darker]  And when the night comes--there it
is still, thistledown blown on the dark, and your white hands will
reach for it, and your honey breath waft it, and never, never, shall
you grasp that wanton thing--but life shall be lovely.  [His voice
dies to a whisper.  He stretches out his arms]

SEELCHEN.  [Touching his breast]  I will come.

LAMOND.  [Drawing her to the dark doorway]  Love me!

SEELCHEN.  I love!

     The mandolin twangs out, the doorway for a moment is all
     glamorous; and they pass through.  Illumined by the glimmer of
     the lamp the Youth of THE WINE Hour is seen again.  And slowly
     to the chords of his mandolin he begins to sing:

         "The windy hours through darkness fly
          Canst hear them little heart?
          New loves are born, and old loves die,
          And kissing lips must part.

          "The dusky bees of passing years
          Canst see them, soul of mine--
          From flower and flower supping tears,
          And pale sweet honey wine?

     [His voice grown strange and passionate]

          "O flame that treads the marsh of time.
          Flitting for ever low.
          Where, through the black enchanted slime.
          We, desperate, following go
          Untimely fire, we bid thee stay!
          Into dark air above.
          The golden gipsy thins away--
          So has it been with love!"

     While he is singing, the moon grows pale, and dies.  It falls
     dark, save for the glimmer of the lamp beneath which he stands.
     But as his song ends, the dawn breaks over the houses, the lamp
     goes out--THE WINE HORN becomes shadow.  Then from the doorway
     of the Inn, in the shrill grey light SEELCHEN comes forth.  She
     is pale, as if wan with living; her eyes like pitch against the
     powdery whiteness of her face.

SEELCHEN.  My heart is old.

     But as she speaks, from far away is heard a faint chiming of
     COWBELLS; and while she stands listening, LAMOND appears in the
     doorway of the Inn.

LAMOND.  Little soul!

SEELCHEN.  You!  Always you!

LAMOND.  I have new wonders.

SEELCHEN.  [Mournfully]  No.

LAMOND.  I swear it!  You have not tired of me, that am never the
same?  It cannot be.

SEELCHEN.  Listen!

     The chime of THE COWBELLS is heard again.

LAMOND.  [Jealously]  The music' of dull sleep!  Has life, then, with
me been sorrow?

SEELCHEN.  I do not regret.

LAMOND.  Come!

SEELCHEN.  [Pointing-to her breast]  The bird is tired with flying.
[Touching her lips]  The flowers have no dew.

LAMOND.  Would you leave me?

SEELCHEN.  See!

     There, in a streak of the dawn, against the plane tree is seen
     the Shepherd of THE COW HORN, standing wrapped in his mountain
     cloak.

LAMOND.  What is it?

SEELCHEN.  He!

LAMOND.  There is nothing.  [He holds her fast]  I have shown you the
marvels of my town--the gay, the bitter wonders.  We have known life.
If with you I may no longer live, then let us die!  See!  Here are
sweet Deaths by Slumber and by Drowning!

The mandolin twangs out, and from the dim doorway of the Inn come
forth the shadowy forms.  DEATH BY SLUMBER, and DEATH BY DROWNING.
who to a ghostly twanging of mandolins dance slowly towards SEELCHEN.
stand smiling at her, and as slowly dance away.

SEELCHEN.  [Following] Yes.  They are good and sweet.

     While she moves towards the Inn.  LAMOND'S face becomes
     transfigured with joy.  But just as she reaches the doorway.
     there is a distant chiming of bells and blowing of pipes, and
     the Shepherd of THE COW HORN sings:

         "To the wild grass come, and the dull far roar
          Of the falling rock; to the flowery meads
          Of thy mountain home, where the eagles soar,
          And the grizzled flock in the sunshine feeds.
          To the Alp, where I, in the pale light crowned
          With the moon's thin horns, to my pasture roam;
          To the silent sky, and the wistful sound
          Of the rosy dawns---my daughter, come!"

     While HE sings, the sun has risen; and SEELCHEN has turned.
     with parted lips, and hands stretched out; and the forms of
     death have vanished.

SEELCHEN.  I come.

LAMOND.  [Clasping her knees]  Little soul!  Must I then die, like a
gnat when the sun goes down?   Without you I am nothing.

SEELCHEN.  [Releasing herself]  Poor heart--I am gone!

LAMOND.  It is dark.  [He covers his face with his cloak].

     Then as SEELCHEN reaches the Shepherd of THE COW HORN, there is
     blown a long note of a pipe; the scene falls back; and there
     rises a far, continual, mingled sound of Cowbells, and Flower
     Bells, and Pipes.





SCENE IV

     The scene slowly brightens with the misty flush of dawn.
     SEELCHEN stands on a green alp, with all around, nothing but
     blue sky.  A slip of a crescent moon is lying on her back.  On a
     low rock sits a brown faced GOATHERD blowing on a pipe, and the
     four Flower-children are dancing in their shifts of grey white.
     and blue, rose-pink, and burnt-gold.  Their bells are ringing.
     as they pelt each other with flowers of their own colours; and
     each in turn, wheeling, flings one flower at SEELCHEN, who puts
     them to her lips and eyes.

SEELCHEN.  The dew! [She moves towards the rock]  Goatherd!

     But THE FLOWERS encircle him; and when they wheel away he has
     vanished.  She turns to THE FLOWERS, but they too vanish.  The
     veils of mist are rising.

SEELCHEN.  Gone!  [She rubs her eyes; then turning once more to the
rock, sees FELSMAN standing there, with his arms folded]  Thou!

FELSMAN.  So thou hast come--like a sick heifer to be healed.  Was it
good in the Town--that kept thee so long?

SEELCHEN.  I do not regret.

FELSMAN.  Why then return?

SEELCHEN.  I was tired.

FELSMAN.  Never again shalt thou go from me!

SEELCHEN.  [Mocking]  With what wilt thou keep me?

FELSMAN.  [Grasping her] Thus.

SEELCHEN. I have known Change--I am no timid maid.

FELSMAN.  [Moodily]  Aye, thou art different.  Thine eyes are hollow
--thou art white-faced.

SEELCHEN.  [Still mocking]  Then what hast thou here that shall keep
me?

FELSMAN.  The sun.

SEELCHEN.  To burn me.

FELSMAN.  The air.

     There is a faint wailing of wind.

SEELCHEN.  To freeze me.

FELSMAN.  The silence.

     The noise of the wind dies away.

SEELCHEN.  Yes, it is lonely.

FELSMAN.  Wait!  And the flowers shall dance to thee.

     And to a ringing of their bells.  THE FLOWERS come dancing;
     till, one by one, they cease, and sink down, nodding, falling
     asleep.

SEELCHEN.  See!  Even they grow sleepy here!

FELSMAN.  I will call the goats to wake them.

     THE GOATHERD is seen again sitting upright on his rock and
     piping.  And there come four little brown, wild-eyed, naked
     Boys, with Goat's legs and feet, who dance gravely in and out of
     The Sleeping Flowers; and THE FLOWERS wake, spring up, and fly.
     Till each Goat, catching his flower has vanished, and THE
     GOATHERD has ceased to pipe, and lies motionless again on his
     rock.

FELSMAN.  Love me!

SEELCHEN.  Thou art rude!

FELSMAN.  Love me!

SEELCHEN.  Thou art grim!

FELSMAN.  Aye.  I have no silver tongue.  Listen!  This is my voice.
[Sweeping his arm round all the still alp]  It is quiet.  From dawn
to the first star all is fast.  [Laying his hand on her heart]  And
the wings of the birds shall be still.

SEELCHEN.  [Touching his eyes]  Thine eyes are fierce.  In them I see
the wild beasts crouching.  In them I see the distance.  Are they
always fierce?

FELSMAN.  Never--to look on thee, my flower.

SEELCHEN.  [Touching his hands]  Thy hands are rough to pluck
flowers.  [She breaks away from him to the rock where THE GOATHERD is
lying]  See!  Nothing moves!  The very day stands still.  Boy!  [But
THE GOATHERD neither stirs nor answers]  He is lost in the blue.
[Passionately]  Boy!  He will not answer me.  No one will answer me
here.

FELSMAN. [With fierce longing]  Am I then no one?

SEELCHEN.  Thou?

     [The scene darkens with evening]

See!  Sleep has stolen the day!  It is night already.

     There come the female shadow forms of SLEEP, in grey cobweb
     garments, waving their arms drowsily, wheeling round her.

SEELCHEN.  Are you Sleep?   Dear Sleep!

     Smiling, she holds out her arms to FELSMAN.  He takes her
     swaying form.  They vanish, encircled by the forms of SLEEP. It
     is dark, save for the light of the thin horned moon suddenly
     grown bright.  Then on his rock, to a faint gaping THE GOATHERD
     sings:

         "My goat, my little speckled one.
          My yellow-eyed, sweet-smelling.
          Let moon and wind and golden sun
          And stars beyond all telling
          Make, every day, a sweeter grass.
          And multiply thy leaping!
          And may the mountain foxes pass
          And never scent thee sleeping!
          Oh!  Let my pipe be clear and far.
          And let me find sweet water!
          No hawk nor udder-seeking jar
          Come near thee, little daughter!
          May fiery rocks defend, at noon,
          Thy tender feet from slipping!
          Oh! hear my prayer beneath the moon--
          Great Master, Goat-God--skipping!"

     There passes in the thin moonlight the Goat-Good Pan; and with a
     long wail of the pipe THE GOATHERD BOY is silent.  Then the moon
     fades, and all is black; till, in the faint grisly light of the
     false dawn creeping up, SEELCHEN is seen rising from the side of
     the sleeping FELSMAN.  THE GOATHERD BOY has gone; but by the
     rock stands the Shepherd of THE COW HORN in his dock.

SEELCHEN.  Years, years I have slept.  My spirit is hungry.  [Then as
she sees the Shepherd of THE COW HORN standing there]  I know thee
now--Life of the earth--the smell of thee, the sight of thee, the
taste of thee, and all thy music.  I have passed thee and gone by.
[She moves away]

FELSMAN.  [Waking] Where wouldst thou go?

SEELCHEN.  To the edge of the world.

FELSMAN.  [Rising and trying to stay her]  Thou shalt not leave me!

     [But against her smiling gesture he struggles as though against
     solidity]

SEELCHEN.  Friend!  The time is on me.

FELSMAN.  Were my kisses, then, too rude?   Was I too dull?

SEELCHEN.  I do not regret.

     The Youth of THE WINE HORN is seen suddenly standing opposite
     the motionless Shepherd of THE COW HORN; and his mandolin twangs
     out.

FELSMAN.  The cursed music of the Town!  Is it back to him thou wilt
go?  [Groping for sight of the hated figure]  I cannot see.

SEELCHEN. Fear not!  I go ever onward.

FELSMAN.  Do not leave me to the wind in the rocks!  Without thee
love is dead, and I must die.

SEELCHEN.  Poor heart!  I am gone.

FELSMAN.  [Crouching against the rock]  It is cold.

     At the blowing of the Shepherd's pipe, THE COW HORN stretches
     forth his hand to her.  The mandolin twangs out, and THE WINE
     HORN holds out his hand.  She stands unmoving.

SEELCHEN. Companions.  I must go. In a moment it will be dawn.

     In Silence THE COW HORN and THE WINE HORN, cover their faces.
     The false dawn dies.  It falls quite dark.




SCENE V

     Then a faint glow stealing up, lights the snowy head of THE
     GREAT HORN, and streams forth on SEELCHEN.  To either aide of
     that path of light, like shadows.  THE COW HORN and THE WINE
     HORN stand with cloaked heads.

SEELCHEN.  Great One!  I come!

     The Peak of THE GREAT HORN speaks in a far-away voice, growing,
     with the light, clearer and stronger.

          Wandering flame, thou restless fever
          Burning all things, regretting none;
          The winds of fate are stilled for ever--
          Thy little generous life is done.
          And all its wistful wonderings cease!
          Thou traveller to the tideless sea,
          Where light and dark, and change and peace,
          Are One--Come, little soul, to MYSTERY!

     SEELCHEN falling on her knees, bows her head to the ground.  The
     glow slowly fades till the scene is black.




SCENE VI

Then as the blackness lifts, in the dim light of the false dawn
filtering through the window of the mountain hut.  LAMOND and FELSMAN
are seen standing beside SEELCHEN looking down at her asleep on the
window seat.

FELSMAN.  [Putting out his hand to wake her]  In a moment it will be
dawn.

     She stirs, and her lips move, murmuring.

LAMOND.  Let her sleep.  She's dreaming.

     FELSMAN raises a lantern, till its light falls on her face.
     Then the two men move stealthily towards the door, and, as she
     speaks, pass out.

SEELCHEN.  [Rising to her knees, and stretching out her hands with
ecstasy]  Great One.  I come!  [Waking, she looks around, and
struggles to her feet]  My little dream!

     Through the open door, the first flush of dawn shows in the sky.
     There is a sound of goat-bells passing.



The curtain falls.





End of this Project Gutenberg Etext of THE LITTLE DREAM, by John Galsworthy






JUSTICE



PERSONS OF THE PLAY

JAMES HOW, solicitor
WALTER HOW, solicitor
ROBERT COKESON, their managing clerk
WILLIAM FALDER, their junior clerk
SWEEDLE, their office-boy
WISTER, a detective
COWLEY, a cashier
MR. JUSTICE FLOYD, a judge
HAROLD CLEAVER, an old advocate
HECTOR FROME, a young advocate
CAPTAIN DANSON, V.C., a prison governor
THE REV. HUGH MILLER, a prison chaplain
EDWARD CLEMENT, a prison doctor
WOODER, a chief warder
MOANEY, convict
CLIFTON, convict
O'CLEARY, convict
RUTH HONEYWILL, a woman
A NUMBER OF BARRISTERS, SOLICITERS, SPECTATORS, USHERS, REPORTERS,
JURYMEN, WARDERS, AND PRISONERS




TIME: The Present.


ACT I. The office of James and Walter How.  Morning.  July.

ACT II. Assizes.  Afternoon.  October.

ACT III.  A prison.  December.
     SCENE I.  The Governor's office.
     SCENE II.  A corridor.
     SCENE III.  A cell.

ACT IV.  The office of James and Walter How.  Morning.
          March, two years later.




CAST OF THE FIRST PRODUCTION

AT THE DUKE OF YORK'S THEATRE, FEBRUARY 21, 1910

James How           MR.  SYDNEY VALENTINE
Walter How          MR.  CHARLES MAUDE
Cokeson             MR.  EDMUND GWENN
Falder              MR.  DENNIS EADIE
The Office-boy      MR.  GEORGE HERSEE
The Detective       MR.  LESLIE CARTER
The Cashier         MR.  C. E. VERNON
The Judge           MR.  DION BOUCICAULT
The Old Advocate    MR.  OSCAR ADYE
The Young Advocate  MR.  CHARLES BRYANT
The Prison Governor MR.  GRENDON BENTLEY
The Prison Chaplain MR.  HUBERT HARBEN
The Prison Doctor   MR.  LEWIS CASSON
Wooder              MR.  FREDERICK LLOYD
Moaney              MR.  ROBERT PATEMAN
Clipton             MR.  O. P. HEGGIE
O'Cleary            MR.  WHITFORD KANE
Ruth Honeywill      Miss EDYTH OLIVE





ACT I

     The scene is the managing clerk's room, at the offices of James
     and Walter How, on a July morning.  The room is old fashioned,
     furnished with well-worn  mahogany and leather, and lined with
     tin boxes and   estate plans.  It has three doors.  Two of them
     are close together in the centre of a wall.  One of these two
     doors leads to the outer office, which is only divided from the
     managing clerk's room by a   partition of wood and clear glass;
     and when the door into this outer office is opened there can be
     seen the wide outer door leading out on to the stone stairway of
     the building.  The other of these two   centre doors leads to
     the junior clerk's room.  The third door is that leading to the
     partners' room.

     The managing clerk, COKESON, is sitting at his table adding up
     figures in a pass-book, and murmuring their numbers to himself.
     He is a man of sixty, wearing spectacles; rather short, with a
     bald head, and an honest, pugdog face.  He is dressed in a
     well-worn black frock-coat and pepper-and-salt trousers.

COKESON.  And five's twelve, and three--fifteen, nineteen,
twenty-three, thirty-two, forty-one-and carry four. [He ticks the
page, and goes on murmuring]  Five, seven, twelve, seventeen,
twenty-four and nine, thirty-three, thirteen and carry one.

     He again makes a tick.  The outer office door is opened, and
     SWEEDLE, the office-boy, appears, closing the door behind him.
     He is a pale youth of sixteen, with spiky hair.

COKESON.  [With grumpy expectation]  And carry one.

SWEEDLE.  There's a party wants to see Falder, Mr. Cokeson.

COKESON.  Five, nine, sixteen, twenty-one, twenty-nine--and carry
two.  Send him to Morris's.  What name?

SWEEDLE.  Honeywill.

COKESON.  What's his business?

SWEEDLE.  It's a woman.

COKESON.  A lady?

SWEEDLE.  No, a person.

COKESON.  Ask her in.  Take this pass-book to Mr. James.  [He closes
the pass-book.]

SWEEDLE.  [Reopening the door]  Will you come in, please?

     RUTH HONEYWILL comes in.  She is a tall woman, twenty-six years
     old, unpretentiously dressed, with black hair and eyes, and an
     ivory-white, clear-cut face.  She stands very still, having a
     natural dignity of pose and gesture.

     SWEEDLE goes out into the partners' room with the pass-book.

COKESON.  [Looking round at RUTH]  The young man's out.
[Suspiciously]  State your business, please.

RUTH.  [Who speaks in a matter-of-fact voice, and with a slight
West-Country accent]  It's a personal matter, sir.

COKESON.  We don't allow private callers here.  Will you leave a
message?

RUTH.  I'd rather see him, please.

     She narrows her dark eyes and gives him a honeyed look.

COKESON.  [Expanding]  It's all against the rules.  Suppose I had my
friends here to see me!  It'd never do!

RUTH.  No, sir.

COKESON.  [A little taken aback]  Exactly!  And here you are wanting
to see a junior clerk!

RUTH.  Yes, sir; I must see him.

COKESON.  [Turning full round to her with a sort of outraged
interest]  But this is a lawyer's office.  Go to his private address.

RUTH.  He's not there.

COKESON.  [Uneasy]  Are you related to the party?

RUTH.  No, sir.

COKESON.  [In real embarrassment]  I don't know what to say.  It's no
affair of the office.

RUTH.  But what am I to do?

COKESON.  Dear me!  I can't tell you that.

     SWEEDLE comes back.  He crosses to the outer office and passes
     through into it, with a quizzical look at Cokeson, carefully
     leaving the door an inch or two open.

COKESON.  [Fortified by this look]  This won't do, you know, this
won't do at all.  Suppose one of the partners came in!

     An incoherent knocking and chuckling is heard from the outer
     door of the outer office.

SWEEDLE.  [Putting his head in]  There's some children outside here.

RUTH.  They're mine, please.

SWEEDLE.  Shall I hold them in check?

RUTH.  They're quite small, sir. [She takes a step towards COKESON]

COKESON.  You mustn't take up his time in office hours; we're a clerk
short as it is.

RUTH.  It's a matter of life and death.

COKESON.  [Again outraged]  Life and death!

SWEEDLE.  Here is Falder.

     FALDER has entered through the outer office.  He is a pale,
     good-looking young man, with quick, rather scared eyes.  He
     moves towards the door of the clerks' office, and stands there
     irresolute.

COKESON.  Well, I'll give you a minute.  It's not regular.

     Taking up a bundle of papers, he goes out into the partners'
     room.

RUTH.  [In a low, hurried voice]  He's on the drink again, Will.  He
tried to cut my throat last night.  I came out with the children
before he was awake.  I went round to you.

FALDER.  I've changed my digs.

RUTH.  Is it all ready for to-night?

FALDER.  I've got the tickets.  Meet me 11.45 at the booking office.
For God's sake don't forget we're man and wife!  [Looking at her with
tragic intensity]  Ruth!

RUTH.  You're not afraid of going, are you?

FALDER.  Have you got your things, and the children's?

RUTH.  Had to leave them, for fear of waking Honeywill, all but one
bag.  I can't go near home again.

FALDER.  [Wincing]  All that money gone for nothing.
How much must you have?

RUTH.  Six pounds--I could do with that, I think.

FALDER.  Don't give away where we're going.  [As if to himself]  When
I get out there I mean to forget it all.

RUTH.  If you're sorry, say so.  I'd sooner he killed me than take
you against your will.

FALDER.  [With a queer smile]  We've got to go.  I don't care; I'll
have you.

RUTH.  You've just to say; it's not too late.

FALDER.  It is too late.  Here's seven pounds.  Booking office 11.45
to-night.  If you weren't what you are to me, Ruth----!

RUTH.  Kiss me!

     They cling together passionately, there fly apart just as
     COKESON re-enters the room.  RUTH turns and goes out through the
     outer office.  COKESON advances deliberately to his chair and
     seats himself.

COKESON.  This isn't right, Falder.

FALDER.  It shan't occur again, sir.

COKESON.  It's an improper use of these premises.

FALDER.  Yes, sir.

COKESON.  You quite understand-the party was in some distress; and,
having children with her, I allowed my feelings----[He opens a
drawer and produces from it a tract]  Just take this!  "Purity in the
Home."  It's a well-written thing.

FALDER.  [Taking it, with a peculiar expression]  Thank you, sir.

COKESON.  And look here, Falder, before Mr. Walter comes, have you
finished up that cataloguing Davis had in hand before he left?

FALDER.  I shall have done with it to-morrow, sir--for good.

COKESON.  It's over a week since Davis went.  Now it won't do,
Falder.  You're neglecting your work for private life.  I shan't
mention about the party having called, but----

FALDER.  [Passing into his room] Thank you, sir.

     COKESON stares at the door through which FALDER has gone out;
     then shakes his head, and is just settling down to write, when
     WALTER How comes in through the outer Office.  He is a rather
     refined-looking man of thirty-five, with a pleasant, almost
     apologetic voice.

WALTER.  Good-morning, Cokeson.

COKESON.  Morning, Mr. Walter.

WALTER.  My father here?

COKESON.  [Always with a certain patronage as to a young man who
might be doing better]  Mr. James has been here since eleven o'clock.

WALTER.  I've been in to see the pictures, at the Guildhall.

COKESON.  [Looking at him as though this were exactly what was to be
expected]  Have you now--ye--es.  This lease of Boulter's--am I to
send it to counsel?

WALTER.  What does my father say?

COKESON.  'Aven't bothered him.

WALTER.  Well, we can't be too careful.

COKESON.  It's such a little thing--hardly worth the fees.  I thought
you'd do it yourself.

WALTER.  Send it, please.  I don't want the responsibility.

COKESON.  [With an indescribable air of compassion]  Just as you
like.  This "right-of-way" case--we've got 'em on the deeds.

WALTER.  I know; but the intention was obviously to exclude that bit
of common ground.

COKESON.  We needn't worry about that.  We're the right side of the
law.

WALTER.  I don't like it,

COKESON.  [With an indulgent smile]  We shan't want to set ourselves
up against the law.  Your father wouldn't waste his time doing that.

     As he speaks JAMES How comes in from the partners' room.  He is
     a shortish man, with white side-whiskers, plentiful grey hair,
     shrewd eyes, and gold pince-nez.

JAMES.  Morning, Walter.

WALTER.  How are you, father?

COKESON.  [Looking down his nose at the papers in his hand as though
deprecating their size] I'll just take Boulter's lease in to young
Falder to draft the instructions. [He goes out into FALDER'S room.]

WALTER.  About that right-of-way case?

JAMES.  Oh, well, we must go forward there.  I thought you told me
yesterday the firm's balance was over four hundred.

WALTER.  So it is.

JAMES.  [Holding out the pass-book to his son] Three--five--one, no
recent cheques.  Just get me out the cheque-book.

     WALTER goes to a cupboard, unlocks a drawer and produces a
     cheque-book.

JAMES.  Tick the pounds in the counterfoils.  Five, fifty-four,
seven, five, twenty-eight, twenty, ninety, eleven, fifty-two,
seventy-one.  Tally?

WALTER.  [Nodding]  Can't understand.  Made sure it was over four
hundred.

JAMES.  Give me the cheque-book.  [He takes the check-book and cons
the counterfoils] What's this ninety?

WALTER.  Who drew it?

JAMES.  You.

WALTER.  [Taking the cheque-book]  July 7th?  That's the day I went
down to look over the Trenton Estate--last Friday week; I came back
on the Tuesday, you remember.  But look here, father, it was nine I
drew a cheque for.  Five guineas to Smithers and my expenses.  It
just covered all but half a crown.

JAMES.  [Gravely]  Let's look at that ninety cheque.  [He sorts the
cheque out from the bundle in the pocket of the pass-book] Seems all
right.  There's no nine here.  This is bad.  Who cashed that
nine-pound cheque?

WALTER.  [Puzzled and pained]  Let's see!  I was finishing Mrs.
Reddy's will--only just had time; yes--I gave it to Cokeson.

JAMES.  Look at that 't' 'y': that yours?

WALTER.  [After consideration]  My y's curl back a little; this
doesn't.

JAMES.  [As COKESON re-enters from FALDER'S room]  We must ask him.
Just come here and carry your mind back a bit, Cokeson.  D'you
remember cashing a cheque for Mr. Walter last Friday week--the day
he went to Trenton?

COKESON.  Ye-es.  Nine pounds.

JAMES.  Look at this.  [Handing him the cheque.]

COKESON.  No!  Nine pounds.  My lunch was just coming in; and of
course I like it hot; I gave the cheque to Davis to run round to the
bank.  He brought it back, all gold--you remember, Mr. Walter, you
wanted some silver to pay your cab.  [With a certain contemptuous
compassion]  Here, let me see.  You've got the wrong cheque.

     He takes cheque-book and pass-book from WALTER.

WALTER.  Afraid not.

COKESON.  [Having seen for himself]  It's funny.

JAMES.  You gave it to Davis, and Davis sailed for Australia on
Monday.  Looks black, Cokeson.

COKESON.  [Puzzled and upset]  why this'd be a felony!  No, no!
there's some mistake.

JAMES.  I hope so.

COKESON.  There's never been anything of that sort in the office the
twenty-nine years I've been here.

JAMES.  [Looking at cheque and counterfoil]  This is a very clever
bit of work; a warning to you not to leave space after your figures,
Walter.

WALTER.  [Vexed]  Yes, I know--I was in such a tearing hurry that
afternoon.

COKESON.  [Suddenly]  This has upset me.

JAMES.  The counterfoil altered too--very deliberate piece of
swindling.  What was Davis's ship?

WALTER.  'City of Rangoon'.

JAMES.  We ought to wire and have him arrested at Naples; he can't be
there yet.

COKESON.  His poor young wife.  I liked the young man.  Dear, oh
dear!  In this office!

WALTER.  Shall I go to the bank and ask the cashier?

JAMES.  [Grimly]  Bring him round here.  And ring up Scotland Yard.

WALTER.  Really?

     He goes out through the outer office.  JAMES paces the room.  He
     stops and looks at COKESON, who is disconsolately rubbing the
     knees of his trousers.

JAMES.  Well, Cokeson!  There's something in character, isn't there?

COKESON.  [Looking at him over his spectacles]  I don't quite take
you, sir.

JAMES.  Your story, would sound d----d thin to any one who didn't
know you.

COKESON.  Ye-es!  [He laughs.  Then with a sudden gravity]  I'm sorry
for that young man.  I feel it as if it was my own son, Mr. James.

JAMES.  A nasty business!

COKESON.  It unsettles you.  All goes on regular, and then a thing
like this happens.  Shan't relish my lunch to-day.

JAMES.  As bad as that, Cokeson?

COKESON.  It makes you think.  [Confidentially]  He must have had
temptation.

JAMES.  Not so fast.  We haven't convicted him yet.

COKESON.  I'd sooner have lost a month's salary than had this happen.
    [He broods.]

JAMES.  I hope that fellow will hurry up.

COKESON.  [Keeping things pleasant for the cashier]  It isn't fifty
yards, Mr. James.  He won't be a minute.

JAMES.  The idea of dishonesty about this office it hits me hard,
Cokeson.

     He goes towards the door of the partners' room.

SWEEDLE.  [Entering quietly, to COKESON in a low voice]  She's popped
up again, sir-something she forgot to say to Falder.

COKESON.  [Roused from his abstraction]  Eh?  Impossible.  Send her
away!

JAMES.  What's that?

COKESON.  Nothing, Mr. James.  A private matter.  Here, I'll come
myself.  [He goes into the outer office as JAMES passes into the
partners' room]  Now, you really mustn't--we can't have anybody just
now.

RUTH.  Not for a minute, sir?

COKESON.  Reely!  Reely!  I can't have it.  If you want him, wait
about; he'll be going out for his lunch directly.

RUTH.  Yes, sir.

     WALTER, entering with the cashier, passes RUTH as she leaves the
     outer office.

COKESON.  [To the cashier, who resembles a sedentary dragoon]
Good-morning.  [To WALTER]  Your father's in there.

     WALTER crosses and goes into the partners' room.

COKESON.  It's a nahsty, unpleasant little matter, Mr. Cowley.  I'm
quite ashamed to have to trouble you.

COWLEY.  I remember the cheque quite well.  [As if it were a liver]
Seemed in perfect order.

COKESON.  Sit down, won't you?  I'm not a sensitive man, but a thing
like this about the place--it's not nice.  I like people to be open
and jolly together.

COWLEY.  Quite so.

COKESON.  [Buttonholing him, and glancing toward the partners' room]
Of course he's a young man.  I've told him about it before now--
leaving space after his figures, but he will do it.

COWLEY.  I should remember the person's face--quite a youth.

COKESON.  I don't think we shall be able to show him to you, as a
matter of fact.

     JAMES and WALTER have come back from the partners' room.

JAMES.  Good-morning, Mr. Cowley.  You've seen my son and myself,
you've seen Mr. Cokeson, and you've seen Sweedle, my office-boy.  It
was none of us, I take it.

     The cashier shakes his head with a smile.

JAMES.  Be so good as to sit there.  Cokeson, engage Mr. Cowley in
conversation, will you?

     He goes toward FALDER'S room.

COKESON.  Just a word, Mr. James.

JAMES.  Well?

COKESON.  You don't want to upset the young man in there, do you?
He's a nervous young feller.

JAMES.  This must be thoroughly cleared up, Cokeson, for the sake of
Falder's name, to say nothing of yours.

COKESON.  [With Some dignity] That'll look after itself, sir.  He's
been upset once this morning; I don't want him startled again.

JAMES.  It's a matter of form; but I can't stand upon niceness over a
thing like this--too serious.  Just talk to Mr. Cowley.

     He opens the door of FALDER'S room.

JAMES.  Bring in the papers in Boulter's lease, will you, Falder?

COKESON.  [Bursting into voice]  Do you keep dogs?

     The cashier, with his eyes fixed on the door, does not answer.

COKESON.  You haven't such a thing as a bulldog pup you could spare
me, I suppose?

     At the look on the cashier's face his jaw drops, and he turns to
     see FALDER standing in the doorway, with his eyes fixed on
     COWLEY, like the eyes of a rabbit fastened on a snake.

FALDER.  [Advancing with the papers] Here they are, sir!

JAMES.  [Taking them] Thank you.

FALDER.  Do you want me, sir?

JAMES.  No, thanks!

     FALDER turns and goes back into his own room.  As he shuts the
     door JAMES gives the cashier an interrogative look, and the
     cashier nods.

JAMES.  Sure?  This isn't as we suspected.

COWLEY.  Quite.  He knew me.  I suppose he can't slip out of that
room?

COKESON.  [Gloomily]  There's only the window--a whole floor and a
basement.

     The door of FALDER'S room is quietly opened, and FALDER, with
     his hat in his hand, moves towards the door of the outer office.

JAMES.  [Quietly]  Where are you going, Falder?

FALDER.  To have my lunch, sir.

JAMES.  Wait a few minutes, would you?  I want to speak to you about
this lease.

FALDER.  Yes, sir.  [He goes back into his room.]

COWLEY.  If I'm wanted, I can swear that's the young man who cashed
the cheque.  It was the last cheque I handled that morning before my
lunch.  These are the numbers of the notes he had.  [He puts a slip
of paper on the table; then, brushing his hat round]  Good-morning!

JAMES.  Good-morning, Mr. Cowley!

COWLEY.  [To COKESON]  Good-morning.

COKESON.  [With Stupefaction]  Good-morning.

     The cashier goes out through the outer office. COKESON sits down
     in his chair, as though it were the only place left in the
     morass of his feelings.

WALTER.  What are you going to do?

JAMES.  Have him in.  Give me the cheque and the counterfoil.

COKESON.  I don't understand.  I thought young Davis----

JAMES.  We shall see.

WALTER.  One moment, father: have you thought it out?

JAMES.  Call him in!

COKESON.  [Rising with difficulty and opening FALDER'S door;
hoarsely]  Step in here a minute.

FALDER.  [Impassively]  Yes, sir?

JAMES.  [Turning to him suddenly with the cheque held out]  You know
this cheque, Falder?

FALDER.  No, sir.

JADES.  Look at it.  You cashed it last Friday week.

FALDER.  Oh! yes, sir; that one--Davis gave it me.

JAMES.  I know. And you gave Davis the cash?

FALDER.  Yes, sir.

JAMES.  When Davis gave you the cheque was it exactly like this?

FALDER.  Yes, I think so, sir.

JAMES.  You know that Mr. Walter drew that cheque for nine pounds?

FALDER.  No, sir--ninety.

JAMES.  Nine, Falder.

FALDER.  [Faintly]  I don't understand, sir.

JAMES.  The suggestion, of course, is that the cheque was altered;
whether by you or Davis is the question.

FALDER.  I--I

COKESON.  Take your time, take your time.

FALDER.  [Regaining his impassivity]  Not by me, sir.

JAMES.  The cheque was handed to--Cokeson by Mr. Walter at one
o'clock; we know that because Mr. Cokeson's lunch had just arrived.

COKESON.  I couldn't leave it.

JAMES.  Exactly; he therefore gave the cheque to Davis.  It was
cashed by you at 1.15.  We know that because the cashier recollects
it for the last cheque he handled before his lunch.

FALDER.  Yes, sir, Davis gave it to me because some friends were
giving him a farewell luncheon.

JAMES.  [Puzzled] You accuse Davis, then?

FALDER.  I don't know, sir--it's very funny.

     WALTER, who has come close to his father, says something to him
     in a low voice.

JAMES.  Davis was not here again after that Saturday, was he?

COKESON.  [Anxious to be of assistance to the young man, and seeing
faint signs of their all being jolly once more] No, he sailed on the
Monday.

JAMES.  Was he, Falder?

FALDER.  [Very faintly]  No, sir.

JAMES.  Very well, then, how do you account for the fact that this
nought was added to the nine in the counterfoil on or after Tuesday?

COKESON.  [Surprised]  How's that?

     FALDER gives a sort of lurch; he tries to pull himself together,
     but he has gone all to pieces.

JAMES.  [Very grimly]  Out, I'm afraid, Cokeson.  The cheque-book
remained in Mr. Walter's pocket till he came back from Trenton on
Tuesday morning.  In the face of this, Falder, do you still deny that
you altered both cheque and counterfoil?

FALDER.  No, sir--no, Mr. How.  I did it, sir; I did it.

COKESON.  [Succumbing to his feelings]  Dear, dear! what a thing to
do!

FALDER.  I wanted the money so badly, sir.  I didn't know what I was
doing.

COKESON.  However such a thing could have come into your head!

FALDER.  [Grasping at the words]  I can't think, sir, really!  It was
just a minute of madness.

JAMES.  A long minute, Falder.  [Tapping the counterfoil] Four days
at least.

FALDER.  Sir, I swear I didn't know what I'd done till afterwards,
and then I hadn't the pluck.  Oh!  Sir, look over it!  I'll pay the
money back--I will, I promise.

JAMES.  Go into your room.

     FALDER, with a swift imploring look, goes back into his room.
     There is silence.

JAMES.  About as bad a case as there could be.

COKESON.  To break the law like that-in here!

WALTER.  What's to be done?

JAMES.  Nothing for it.  Prosecute.

WALTER.  It's his first offence.

JAMES.  [Shaking his head]  I've grave doubts of that.  Too neat a
piece of swindling altogether.

COKESON.  I shouldn't be surprised if he was tempted.

JAMES.  Life's one long temptation, Cokeson.

COKESON.  Ye-es, but I'm speaking of the flesh and the devil, Mr.
James.  There was a woman come to see him this morning.

WALTER.  The woman we passed as we came in just now.  Is it his wife?

COKESON.  No, no relation.  [Restraining what in jollier
circumstances would have been a wink]  A married person, though.

WALTER.  How do you know?

COKESON.  Brought her children.  [Scandalised]  There they were
outside the office.

JAMES.  A real bad egg.

WALTER.  I should like to give him a chance.

JAMES.  I can't forgive him for the sneaky way be went to work--
counting on our suspecting young Davis if the matter came to light.
It was the merest accident the cheque-book stayed in your pocket.

WALTER.  It must have been the temptation of a moment.  He hadn't
time.

JAMES.  A man doesn't succumb like that in a moment, if he's a clean
mind and habits.  He's rotten; got the eyes of a man who can't keep
his hands off when there's money about.

WALTER.  [Dryly] We hadn't noticed that before.

JAMES.  [Brushing the remark aside] I've seen lots of those fellows
in my time.  No doing anything with them except to keep 'em out of
harm's way.  They've got a blind spat.

WALTER.  It's penal servitude.

COKESON.  They're nahsty places-prisons.

JAMES.  [Hesitating] I don't see how it's possible to spare him.  Out
of the question to keep him in this office--honesty's the 'sine qua
non'.

COKESON.  [Hypnotised] Of course it is.

JAMES.  Equally out of the question to send him out amongst people
who've no knowledge of his character.  One must think of society.

WALTER.  But to brand him like this?

JAMES.  If it had been a straightforward case I'd give him another
chance.  It's far from that.  He has dissolute habits.

COKESON.  I didn't say that--extenuating circumstances.

JAMES.  Same thing.  He's gone to work in the most cold-blooded way
to defraud his employers, and cast the blame on an innocent man.  If
that's not a case for the law to take its course, I don't know what
is.

WALTER.  For the sake of his future, though.

JAMES.  [Sarcastically]  According to you, no one would ever
prosecute.

WALTER.  [Nettled]  I hate the idea of it.

COKESON.  That's rather 'ex parte', Mr. Walter!  We must have
protection.

JAMES.  This is degenerating into talk.

     He moves towards the partners' room.

WALTER.  Put yourself in his place, father.

JAMES.  You ask too much of me.

WALTER.  We can't possibly tell the pressure there was on him.

JAMES.  You may depend on it, my boy, if a man is going to do this
sort of thing he'll do it, pressure or no pressure; if he isn't
nothing'll make him.

WALTER.  He'll never do it again.

COKESON.  [Fatuously] S'pose I were to have a talk with him.  We
don't want to be hard on the young man.

JAMES.  That'll do, Cokeson.  I've made up my mind.  [He passes into
the partners' room.]

COKESON.  [After a doubtful moment]  We must excuse your father.  I
don't want to go against your father; if he thinks it right.

WALTER.  Confound it, Cokeson! why don't you back me up?  You know
you feel----

COKESON.  [On his dignity]  I really can't say what I feel.

WALTER.  We shall regret it.

COKESON.  He must have known what he was doing.

WALTER.  [Bitterly]  "The quality of mercy is not strained."

COKESON.  [Looking at him askance]  Come, come, Mr. Walter.  We must
try and see it sensible.

SWEEDLE.  [Entering with a tray] Your lunch, sir.

COKESON.  Put it down!

     While SWEEDLE is putting it down on COKESON's table, the
     detective, WISTER, enters the outer office, and, finding no one
     there, comes to the inner doorway.  He is a square, medium-sized
     man, clean-shaved, in a serviceable blue serge suit and strong
     boots.

COKESON.  [Hoarsely]  Here!  Here!  What are we doing?

WISTER.  [To WALTER]  From Scotland Yard, sir.  Detective-Sergeant
Blister.

WALTER.  [Askance] Very well!  I'll speak to my father.

     He goes into the partners' room.  JAMES enters.

JAMES.  Morning!  [In answer to an appealing gesture from COKESON]
I'm sorry; I'd stop short of this if I felt I could.  Open that door.
[SWEEDLE, wondering and scared, opens it] Come here, Mr. Falder.

     As FALDER comes shrinkingly out, the detective in obedience to a
     sign from JAMES, slips his hand out and grasps his arm.

FALDER.  [Recoiling] Oh! no,--oh! no!

WALTER.  Come, come, there's a good lad.

JAMES.  I charge him with felony.

FALTER.  Oh, sir!  There's some one--I did it for her.  Let me be
till to-morrow.

     JAMES motions with his hand.  At that sign of hardness, FALDER
     becomes rigid.  Then, turning, he goes out quietly in the
     detective's grip.  JAMES follows, stiff and erect.  SWEEDLE,
     rushing to the door with open mouth, pursues them through the
     outer office into the corridor.  When they have all disappeared
     COKESON spins completely round and makes a rush for the outer
     office.

COKESON: [Hoarsely] Here!  What are we doing?

     There is silence.  He takes out his handkerchief and mops the
     sweat from his face.  Going back blindly to his table, sits
     down, and stares blankly at his lunch.


                         The curtain falls.





ACT II

A Court of Justice, on a foggy October afternoon crowded with
barristers, solicitors, reporters, ushers, and jurymen.  Sitting in
the large, solid dock is FALDER, with a warder on either side of him,
placed there for his safe custody, but seemingly indifferent to and
unconscious of his presence.  FALDER is sitting exactly opposite to
the JUDGE, who, raised above the clamour of the court, also seems
unconscious of and indifferent to everything.  HAROLD CLEAVER, the
counsel for the Crown, is a dried, yellowish man, of more than middle
age, in a wig worn almost to the colour of his face.  HECTOR FROME,
the counsel for the defence, is a young, tall man, clean shaved, in a
very white wig.  Among the spectators,  having already given their
evidence, are JAMES and WALTER HOW, and COWLEY, the cashier.  WISTER,
the detective, is just leaving the witness-box.

CLEAVER.  That is the case for the Crown, me lud!

     Gathering his robes together, he sits down.

FROME.  [Rising and bowing to the JUDGE] If it please your lordship
and gentlemen of the jury.  I am not going to dispute the fact that
the prisoner altered this cheque, but I am going to put before you
evidence as to the condition of his mind, and to submit that you
would not be justified in finding that he was responsible for his
actions at the time.  I am going to show you, in fact, that he did
this in a moment of aberration, amounting to temporary insanity,
caused by the violent distress under which he was labouring.
Gentlemen, the prisoner is only twenty-three years old.  I shall call
before you a woman from whom you will learn the events that led up to
this act.  You will hear from her own lips the tragic circumstances
of her life, the still more tragic infatuation with which she has
inspired the prisoner.  This woman, gentlemen, has been leading a
miserable existence with a husband who habitually ill-uses her, from
whom she actually goes in terror of her life.  I am not, of course,
saying that it's either right or desirable for a young man to fall in
love with a married woman, or that it's his business to rescue her
from an ogre-like husband.  I'm not saying anything of the sort.  But
we all know the power of the passion of love; and I would ask you to
remember, gentlemen, in listening to her evidence, that, married to a
drunken and violent husband, she has no power to get rid of him; for,
as you know, another offence besides violence is necessary to enable
a woman to obtain a divorce; and of this offence it does not appear
that her husband is guilty.

JUDGE.  Is this relevant, Mr. Frome?

FROME.  My lord, I submit, extremely--I shall be able to show your
lordship that directly.

JUDGE.  Very well.

FROME.  In these circumstances, what alternatives were left to her?
She could either go on living with this drunkard, in terror of her
life; or she could apply to the Court for a separation order.  Well,
gentlemen, my experience of such cases assures me that this would
have given her very insufficient protection from the violence of such
a man; and even if effectual would very likely have reduced her
either to the workhouse or the streets--for it's not easy, as she is
now finding, for an unskilled woman without means of livelihood to
support herself and her children without resorting either to the Poor
Law or--to speak quite plainly--to the sale of her body.

JUDGE.  You are ranging rather far, Mr. Frome.

FROME.  I shall fire point-blank in a minute, my lord.

JUDGE.  Let us hope so.

FROME.  Now, gentlemen, mark--and this is what I have been leading up
to--this woman will tell you, and the prisoner will confirm her,
that, confronted with such alternatives, she set her whole hopes on
himself, knowing the feeling with which she had inspired him.  She
saw a way out of her misery by going with him to a new country, where
they would both be unknown, and might pass as husband and wife.  This
was a desperate and, as my friend Mr. Cleaver will no doubt call it,
an immoral resolution; but, as a fact, the minds of both of them were
constantly turned towards it.  One wrong is no excuse for another,
and those who are never likely to be faced by such a situation
possibly have the right to hold up their hands--as to that I prefer
to say nothing.  But whatever view you take, gentlemen, of this part
of the prisoner's story--whatever opinion you form of the right of
these two young people under such circumstances to take the law into
their own hands--the fact remains that this young woman in her
distress, and this young man, little more than a boy, who was so
devotedly attached to her, did conceive this--if you like--
reprehensible design of going away together.  Now, for that, of
course, they required money, and--they had none.  As to the actual
events of the morning of July 7th, on which this cheque was altered,
the events on which I rely to prove the defendant's irresponsibility
--I shall allow those events to speak for themselves, through the
lips of my witness.  Robert Cokeson.  [He turns, looks round, takes
up a sheet of paper, and waits.]

     COKESON is summoned into court, and goes into the witness-box,
     holding his hat before him.  The oath is administered to him.

FROME.  What is your name?

COKESON.  Robert Cokeson.

FROME.  Are you managing clerk to the firm of solicitors who employ
the prisoner?

COKESON.  Ye-es.

FROME.  How long had the prisoner been in their employ?

COKESON.  Two years.  No, I'm wrong there--all but seventeen days.

FROME.  Had you him under your eye all that time?

COKESON.  Except Sundays and holidays.

FROME.  Quite so.  Let us hear, please, what you have to say about
his general character during those two years.

COKESON.  [Confidentially to the jury, and as if a little surprised
at being asked]  He was a nice, pleasant-spoken young man.  I'd no
fault to find with him--quite the contrary.  It was a great surprise
to me when he did a thing like that.

FROME.  Did he ever give you reason to suspect his honesty?

COKESON.  No!  To have dishonesty in our office, that'd never do.

FROME.  I'm sure the jury fully appreciate that, Mr. Cokeson.

COKESON.  Every man of business knows that honesty's 'the sign qua
non'.

FROME.  Do you give him a good character all round, or do you not?

COKESON.  [Turning to the JUDGE]  Certainly.  We were all very jolly
and pleasant together, until this happened.  Quite upset me.

FROME.  Now, coming to the morning of the 7th of July, the morning on
which the cheque was altered.  What have you to say about his
demeanour that morning?

COKESON.  [To the jury]  If you ask me, I don't think he was quite
compos when he did it.

THE JUDGE.  [Sharply]  Are you suggesting that he was insane?

COKESON.  Not compos.

THE JUDGE.  A little more precision, please.

FROME.  [Smoothly]  Just tell us, Mr. Cokeson.

COKESON.  [Somewhat outraged]  Well, in my opinion--[looking at the
JUDGE]--such as it is--he was jumpy at the time.  The jury will
understand my meaning.

FROME.  Will you tell us how you came to that conclusion?

COKESON.  Ye-es, I will.  I have my lunch in from the restaurant, a
chop and a potato--saves time.  That day it happened to come just as
Mr. Walter How handed me the cheque.  Well, I like it hot; so I went
into the clerks' office and I handed the cheque to Davis, the other
clerk, and told him to get change.  I noticed young Falder walking up
and down.  I said to him: "This is not the Zoological Gardens,
Falder."

FROME.  Do you remember what he answered?

COKESON.  Ye-es: "I wish to God it were!"  Struck me as funny.

FROME.  Did you notice anything else peculiar?

COKESON.  I did.

FROME.  What was that?

COKESON.  His collar was unbuttoned.  Now, I like a young man to be
neat.  I said to him: "Your collar's unbuttoned."

FROME.  And what did he answer?

COKESON.  Stared at me.  It wasn't nice.

THE JUDGE.  Stared at you?  Isn't that a very common practice?

COKESON.  Ye-es, but it was the look in his eyes.  I can't explain my
meaning--it was funny.

FROME.  Had you ever seen such a look in his eyes before?

COKESON.  No.  If I had I should have spoken to the partners.  We
can't have anything eccentric in our profession.

THE JUDGE.  Did you speak to them on that occasion?

COKESON.  [Confidentially]  Well, I didn't like to trouble them about
prime facey evidence.

FROME.  But it made a very distinct impression on your mind?

COKESON.  Ye-es.  The clerk Davis could have told you the same.

FROME.  Quite so.  It's very unfortunate that we've not got him here.
Now can you tell me of the morning on which the discovery of the
forgery was made?  That would be the 18th.  Did anything happen that
morning?

COKESON.  [With his hand to his ear]  I'm a little deaf.

FROME.  Was there anything in the course of that morning--I mean
before the discovery--that caught your attention?

COKESON.  Ye-es--a woman.

THE JUDGE.  How is this relevant, Mr. Frome?

FROME.  I am trying to establish the state of mind in which the
prisoner committed this act, my lord.

THE JUDGE.  I quite appreciate that.  But this was long after the
act.

FROME.  Yes, my lord, but it contributes to my contention.

THE JUDGE.  Well!

FROME.  You say a woman.  Do you mean that she came to the office?

COKESON.  Ye-es.

FROME.  What for?

COKESON.  Asked to see young Falder; he was out at the moment.

FROME.  Did you see her?

COKESON.  I did.

FROME.  Did she come alone?

COKESON.  [Confidentially]  Well, there you put me in a difficulty.
I mustn't tell you what the office-boy told me.

FROME.  Quite so, Mr. Cokeson, quite so----

COKESON.  [Breaking in with an air of "You are young--leave it to
me"]  But I think we can get round it.  In answer to a question put
to her by a third party the woman said to me: "They're mine, sir."

THE JUDGE.  What are?  What were?

COKESON.  Her children.  They were outside.

THE JUDGE.  HOW do you know?

COKESON.  Your lordship mustn't ask me that, or I shall have to tell
you what I was told--and that'd never do.

THE JUDGE.  [Smiling]  The office-boy made a statement.

COKESON.  Egg-zactly.

FROME.  What I want to ask you, Mr. Cokeson, is this.  In the course
of her appeal to see Falder, did the woman say anything that you
specially remember?

COKESON.  [Looking at him as if to encourage him to complete the
sentence]  A leetle more, sir.

FROME.  Or did she not?

COKESON.  She did.  I shouldn't like you to have led me to the
answer.

FROME.  [With an irritated smile]  Will you tell the jury what it
was?

COKESON.  "It's a matter of life and death."

FOREMAN OF THE JURY.  Do you mean the woman said that?

COKESON.  [Nodding]  It's not the sort of thing you like to have said
to you.

FROME.  [A little impatiently]  Did Falder come in while she was
there?  [COKESON nods]  And she saw him, and went away?

COKESON.  Ah!  there I can't follow you.  I didn't see her go.

FROME.  Well, is she there now?

COKESON.  [With an indulgent smile]  No!

FROME.  Thank you, Mr. Cokeson.  [He sits down.]

CLEAVER.  [Rising] You say that on the morning of the forgery the
prisoner was jumpy.  Well, now, sir, what precisely do you mean by
that word?

COKESON.  [Indulgently]  I want you to understand.  Have you ever
seen a dog that's lost its master?  He was kind of everywhere at once
with his eyes.

CLEAVER.  Thank you; I was coming to his eyes.  You called them
"funny."  What are we to understand by that?  Strange, or what?

COKESON.  Ye-es, funny.

COKESON.  [Sharply]  Yes, sir, but what may be funny to you may not
be funny to me, or to the jury.  Did they look frightened, or shy, or
fierce, or what?

COKESON.  You make it very hard for me.  I give you the word, and you
want me to give you another.

CLEAVER.  [Rapping his desk] Does "funny" mean mad?

CLEAVER.  Not mad, fun----

CLEAVER.  Very well!  Now you say he had his collar unbuttoned?  Was
it a hot day?

COKESON.  Ye-es; I think it was.

CLEAVER.  And did he button it when you called his attention to it?

COKESON.  Ye-es, I think he did.

CLEAVER.  Would you say that that denoted insanity?

     He sits downs.  COKESON, who has opened his mouth to reply, is
     left gaping.

FROME.  [Rising hastily] Have you ever caught him in that dishevelled
state before?

COKESON.  No!  He was always clean and quiet.

FROME.  That will do, thank you.

     COKESON turns blandly to the JUDGE, as though to rebuke counsel
     for not remembering that the JUDGE might wish to have a chance;
     arriving at the conclusion that he is to be asked nothing
     further, he turns and descends from the box, and sits down next
     to JAMES and WALTER.

FROME.  Ruth Honeywill.

     RUTH comes into court, and takes her stand stoically in the
     witness-box.  She is sworn.

FROME.  What is your name, please?

RUTH.  Ruth Honeywill.

FROME.  How old are you?

RUTH.  Twenty-six.

FROME.  You are a married woman, living with your husband?  A little
louder.

RUTH.  No, sir; not since July.

FROME.  Have you any children?

RUTH.  Yes, sir, two.

FROME.  Are they living with you?

RUTH.  Yes, sir.

FROME.  You know the prisoner?

RUTH. [Looking at him]  Yes.

FROME.  What was the nature of your relations with him?

RUTH.  We were friends.

THE JUDGE.  Friends?

RUTH.  [Simply]  Lovers, sir.

THE JUDGE.  [Sharply]  In what sense do you use that word?

RUTH.  We love each other.

THE JUDGE.  Yes, but----

RUTH.  [Shaking her head]  No, your lordship--not yet.

THE JUDGE.  'Not yet!  H'm!  [He looks from RUTH to FALDER]  Well!

FROME.  What is your husband?

RUTH.  Traveller.

FROME.  And what was the nature of your married life?

RUTH.  [Shaking her head]  It don't bear talking about.

FROME.  Did he ill-treat you, or what?

RUTH.  Ever since my first was born.

FROME.  In what way?

RUTH.  I'd rather not say.  All sorts of ways.

THE JUDGE.  I am afraid I must stop this, you know.

RUTH.  [Pointing to FALDER]  He offered to take me out of it, sir.
We were going to South America.

FROME.  [Hastily]  Yes, quite--and what prevented you?

RUTH.  I was outside his office when he was taken away.  It nearly
broke my heart.

FROME.  You knew, then, that he had been arrested?

RUTH.  Yes, sir.  I called at his office afterwards, and  [pointing
to COKESON] that gentleman told me all about it.

FROME.  Now, do you remember the morning of Friday, July 7th?

RUTH.  Yes.

FROME.  Why?

RUTH.  My husband nearly strangled me that morning.

THE JUDGE.  Nearly strangled you!

RUTH.  [Bowing her head] Yes, my lord.

FROME.  With his hands, or----?

RUTH.  Yes, I just managed to get away from him.  I went straight to
my friend.  It was eight o'clock.

THE JUDGE.  In the morning?  Your husband was not under the influence
of liquor then?

RUTH.  It wasn't always that.

FROME.  In what condition were you?

RUTH.  In very bad condition, sir.  My dress was torn, and I was half
choking.

FROME.  Did you tell your friend what had happened?

RUTH.  Yes.  I wish I never had.

FROME.  It upset him?

RUTH.  Dreadfully.

FROME.  Did he ever speak to you about a cheque?

RUTH.  Never.

FROZE.  Did he ever give you any money?

RUTH.  Yes.

FROME.  When was that?

RUTH.  On Saturday.

FROME.  The 8th?

RUTH.  To buy an outfit for me and the children, and get all ready to
start.

FROME.  Did that surprise you, or not?

RUTH.  What, sir?

FROME.  That he had money to give you.

Ring.  Yes, because on the morning when my husband nearly killed me
my friend cried because he hadn't the money to get me away.  He told
me afterwards he'd come into a windfall.

FROME.  And when did you last see him?

RUTH.  The day he was taken away, sir.  It was the day we were to
have started.

FROME.  Oh, yes, the morning of the arrest.  Well, did you see him at
all between the Friday and that morning?  [RUTH nods]  What was his
manner then?

RUTH.  Dumb--like--sometimes he didn't seem able to say a word.

FROME.  As if something unusual had happened to him?

RUTH.  Yes.

FROME.  Painful, or pleasant, or what?

RUTH.  Like a fate hanging over him.

FROME.  [Hesitating]  Tell me, did you love the prisoner very much?

RUTH.  [Bowing her head]  Yes.

FROME.  And had he a very great affection for you?

RUTH.  [Looking at FALDER]  Yes, sir.

FROME.  Now, ma'am, do you or do you not think that your danger and
unhappiness would seriously affect his balance, his control over his
actions?

RUTH.  Yes.

FROME.  His reason, even?

RUTH.  For a moment like, I think it would.

FROME.  Was he very much upset that Friday morning, or was he fairly
calm?

RUTH.  Dreadfully upset.  I could hardly bear to let him go from me.

FROME.  Do you still love him?

RUTH.  [With her eyes on FALDER]  He's ruined himself for me.

FROME.  Thank you.

     He sits down.  RUTH remains stoically upright in the witness-
     box.

CLEAVER.  [In a considerate voice]  When you left him on the morning
of Friday the 7th you would not say that he was out of his mind, I
suppose?

RUTH.  No, sir.

CLEAVER.  Thank you; I've no further questions to ask you.

RUTH.  [Bending a little forward to the jury]  I would have done the
same for him; I would indeed.

THE JUDGE.  Please, please!  You say your married life is an unhappy
one?  Faults on both sides?

RUTH.  Only that I never bowed down to him.  I don't see why I
should, sir, not to a man like that.

THE JUDGE.  You refused to obey him?

RUTH.  [Avoiding the question]  I've always studied him to keep
things nice.

THE JUDGE.  Until you met the prisoner--was that it?

RUTH.  No; even after that.

THE JUDGE.  I ask, you know, because you seem to me to glory in this
affection of yours for the prisoner.

RUTH.  [Hesitating]  I--I do.  It's the only thing in my life now.

THE JUDGE.  [Staring at her hard] Well, step down, please.

     RUTH looks at FALDER, then passes quietly down and takes her
     seat among the witnesses.

FROME.  I call the prisoner, my lord.

     FALDER leaves the dock; goes into the witness-box, and is duly
     sworn.

FROME.  What is your name?

FALDER.  William Falder.

FROME.  And age?

FALDER.  Twenty-three.

FROME.  You are not married?

     FALDER shakes his head

FROME.  How long have you known the last witness?

FALDER.  Six months.

FROME.  Is her account of the relationship between you a correct one?

FALDER.  Yes.

FROME.  You became devotedly attached to her, however?

FALDER.  Yes.

THE JUDGE.  Though you knew she was a married woman?

FALDER.  I couldn't help it, your lordship.

THE JUDGE.  Couldn't help it?

FALDER.  I didn't seem able to.

     The JUDGE slightly shrugs his shoulders.

FROME.  How did you come to know her?

FALDER.  Through my married sister.

FROME.  Did you know whether she was happy with her husband?

FALDER.  It was trouble all the time.

FROME.  You knew her husband?

FALDER.  Only through her--he's a brute.

THE JUDGE.  I can't allow indiscriminate abuse of a person not
present.

FROME.  [Bowing]  If your lordship pleases.  [To FALDER]  You admit
altering this cheque?

FALDER bows his head.

FROME.  Carry your mind, please, to the morning of Friday, July the
7th, and tell the jury what happened.

FALDER.  [Turning to the jury]  I was having my breakfast when she
came.  Her dress was all torn, and she was gasping and couldn't seem
to get her breath at all; there were the marks of his fingers round
her throat; her arm was bruised, and the blood had got into her eyes
dreadfully.  It frightened me, and then when she told me, I felt--I
felt--well--it was too much for me!  [Hardening suddenly]  If you'd
seen it, having the feelings for her that I had, you'd have felt the
same, I know.

FROME.  Yes?

FALDER.  When she left me--because I had to go to the office--I was
out of my senses for fear that he'd do it again, and thinking what I
could do.  I couldn't work--all the morning I was like that--simply
couldn't fix my mind on anything.  I couldn't think at all.  I seemed
to have to keep moving.  When Davis--the other clerk--gave me the
cheque--he said: "It'll do you good, Will, to have a run with this.
You seem half off your chump this morning."  Then when I had it in my
hand--I don't know how it came, but it just flashed across me that if
I put the 'ty' and the nought there would be the money to get her
away.  It just came and went--I never thought of it again.  Then
Davis went out to his luncheon, and I don't really remember what I
did till I'd pushed the cheque through to the cashier under the rail.
I remember his saying "Gold or notes?"  Then I suppose I knew what
I'd done.  Anyway, when I got outside I wanted to chuck myself under
a bus; I wanted to throw the money away; but it seemed I was in for
it, so I thought at any rate I'd save her.  Of course the tickets I
took for the passage and the little I gave her's been wasted, and
all, except what I was obliged to spend myself, I've restored.  I
keep thinking over and over however it was I came to do it, and how I
can't have it all again to do differently!

     FALDER is silent, twisting his hands before him.

FROME.  How far is it from your office to the bank?

FALDER.  Not more than fifty yards, sir.

FROME.  From the time Davis went out to lunch to the time you cashed
the cheque, how long do you say it must have been?

FALDER.  It couldn't have been four minutes, sir, because I ran all
the way.

FROME.  During those four minutes you say you remember nothing?

FALDER.  No, sir; only that I ran.

FROME.  Not even adding the 'ty' and the nought?'

FALDER.  No, sir.  I don't really.

     FROME sits down, and CLEAVER rises.

CLEAVER.  But you remember running, do you?

FALDER.  I was all out of breath when I got to the bank.

CLEAVER.  And you don't remember altering the cheque?

FALDER.  [Faintly]  No, sir.

CLEAVER.  Divested of the romantic glamour which my friend is casting
over the case, is this anything but an ordinary forgery?  Come.

FALDER.  I was half frantic all that morning, sir.

CLEAVER.  Now, now!  You don't deny that the 'ty' and the nought were
so like the rest of the handwriting as to thoroughly deceive the
cashier?

FALDER.  It was an accident.

CLEAVER.  [Cheerfully]  Queer sort of accident, wasn't it?  On which
day did you alter the counterfoil?

FALDER.  [Hanging his head]  On the Wednesday morning.

CLEAVER.  Was that an accident too?

FALDER.  [Faintly]  No.

CLEAVER.  To do that you had to watch your opportunity, I suppose?

FALDER.  [Almost inaudibly] Yes.

CLEAVER.  You don't suggest that you were suffering under great
excitement when you did that?

FALDER.  I was haunted.

CLEAVER.  With the fear of being found out?

FALDER.  [Very low] Yes.

THE JUDGE.  Didn't it occur to you that the only thing for you to do
was to confess to your employers, and restore the money?

FALDER.  I was afraid. [There is silence]

CLEAVER.  You desired, too, no doubt, to complete your design of
taking this woman away?

FALDER.  When I found I'd done a thing like that, to do it for
nothing seemed so dreadful.  I might just as well have chucked myself
into the river.

CLEAVER.  You knew that the clerk Davis was about to leave England
--didn't it occur to you when you altered this cheque that suspicion
would fall on him?

FALDER.  It was all done in a moment.  I thought of it afterwards.

CLEAVER.  And that didn't lead you to avow what you'd done?

FALDER.  [Sullenly]  I meant to write when I got out there--I would
have repaid the money.

THE JUDGE.  But in the meantime your innocent fellow clerk might have
been prosecuted.

FALDER.  I knew he was a long way off, your lordship.  I thought
there'd be time.  I didn't think they'd find it out so soon.

FROME.  I might remind your lordship that as Mr. Walter How had the
cheque-book in his pocket till after Davis had sailed, if the
discovery had been made only one day later Falder himself would have
left, and suspicion would have attached to him, and not to Davis,
from the beginning.

THE JUDGE.  The question is whether the prisoner knew that suspicion
would light on himself, and not on Davis.  [To FALDER sharply] Did
you know that Mr. Walter How had the cheque-book till after Davis
had sailed?

FALDER.  I--I--thought--he----

THE JUDGE.  Now speak the truth-yes or no!

FALDER.  [Very low]  No, my lord.  I had no means of knowing.

THE JUDGE.  That disposes of your point, Mr. Frome.

     [FROME bows to the JUDGE]

CLEAVER.  Has any aberration of this nature ever attacked you before?

FALDER.  [Faintly]  No, sir.

CLEAVER.  You had recovered sufficiently to go back to your work that
afternoon?

FALDER.  Yes, I had to take the money back.

CLEAVER.  You mean the nine pounds.  Your wits were sufficiently keen
for you to remember that?  And you still persist in saying you don't
remember altering this cheque.  [He sits down]

FALDER.  If I hadn't been mad I should never have had the courage.

FROME.  [Rising]  Did you have your lunch before going back?

FALDER.  I never ate a thing all day; and at night I couldn't sleep.

FROME.  Now, as to the four minutes that elapsed between Davis's
going out and your cashing the cheque: do you say that you recollect
nothing during those four minutes?

FALDER.  [After a moment] I remember thinking of Mr. Cokeson's face.

FROME.  Of Mr. Cokeson's face!  Had that any connection with what you
were doing?

FALDER.  No, Sir.

FROME.  Was that in the office, before you ran out?

FALDER.  Yes, and while I was running.

FROME.  And that lasted till the cashier said: "Will you have gold or
notes?"

FALDER.  Yes, and then I seemed to come to myself--and it was too
late.

FROME.  Thank you.  That closes the evidence for the defence, my
lord.

     The JUDGE nods, and FALDER goes back to his seat in the dock.

FROME.  [Gathering up notes]  If it please your lordship--Gentlemen
of the Jury,--My friend in cross-examination has shown a disposition
to sneer at the defence which has been set up in this case, and I am
free to admit that nothing I can say will move you, if the evidence
has not already convinced you that the prisoner committed this act in
a moment when to all practical intents and purposes he was not
responsible for his actions; a moment of such mental and moral
vacuity, arising from the violent emotional agitation under which he
had been suffering, as to amount to temporary madness.  My friend has
alluded to the "romantic glamour" with which I have sought to invest
this case.  Gentlemen, I have done nothing of the kind.  I have
merely shown you the background of "life"--that palpitating life
which, believe me--whatever my friend may say--always lies behind the
commission of a crime.  Now gentlemen, we live in a highly, civilized
age, and the sight of brutal violence disturbs us in a very strange
way, even when we have no personal interest in the matter.  But when
we see it inflicted on a woman whom we love--what then?  Just think
of what your own feelings would have been, each of you, at the
prisoner's age; and then look at him.  Well!  he is hardly the
comfortable, shall we say bucolic, person likely to contemplate with
equanimity marks of gross violence on a woman to whom he was
devotedly attached.  Yes, gentlemen, look at him!  He has not a
strong face; but neither has he a vicious face.  He is just the sort
of man who would easily become the prey of his emotions.  You have
heard the description of his eyes.  My friend may laugh at the word
"funny"--I think it better describes the peculiar uncanny look of
those who are strained to breaking-point than any other word which
could have been used.  I don't pretend, mind you, that his mental
irresponsibility--was more than a flash of darkness, in which all
sense of proportion became lost; but to contend, that, just as a man
who destroys himself at such a moment may be, and often is, absolved
from the stigma attaching to the crime of self-murder, so he may, and
frequently does, commit other crimes while in this irresponsible
condition, and that he may as justly be acquitted of criminal intent
and treated as a patient.  I admit that this is a plea which might
well be abused.  It is a matter for discretion.  But here you have a
case in which there is every reason to give the benefit of the doubt.
You heard me ask the prisoner what he thought of during those four
fatal minutes.  What was his answer?  "I thought of Mr. Cokeson's
face!"  Gentlemen, no man could invent an answer like that; it is
absolutely stamped with truth.  You have seen the great affection
[legitimate or not] existing between him and this woman, who came
here to give evidence for him at the risk of her life.  It is
impossible for you to doubt his distress on the morning when he
committed this act.  We well know what terrible havoc such distress
can make in weak and highly nervous people.  It was all the work of a
moment.  The rest has followed, as death follows a stab to the heart,
or water drops if you hold up a jug to empty it.  Believe me,
gentlemen, there is nothing more tragic in life than the utter
impossibility of changing what you have done.  Once this cheque was
altered and presented, the work of four minutes--four mad minutes
--the rest has been silence.  But in those four minutes the boy
before you has slipped through a door, hardly opened, into that great
cage which never again quite lets a man go--the cage of the Law.  His
further acts, his failure to confess, the alteration of the
counterfoil, his preparations for flight, are all evidence--not of
deliberate and guilty intention when he committed the prime act from
which these subsequent acts arose; no--they are merely evidence of
the weak character which is clearly enough his misfortune.  But is a
man to be lost because he is bred and born with a weak character?
Gentlemen, men like the prisoner are destroyed daily under our law
for want of that human insight which sees them as they are, patients,
and not criminals.  If the prisoner be found guilty, and treated as
though he were a criminal type, he will, as all experience shows, in
all probability become one.  I beg you not to return a verdict that
may thrust him back into prison and brand him for ever.  Gentlemen,
Justice is a machine that, when some one has once given it the
starting push, rolls on of itself.  Is this young man to be ground to
pieces under this machine for an act which at the worst was one of
weakness?  Is he to become a member of the luckless crews that man
those dark, ill-starred ships called prisons?  Is that to be his
voyage-from which so few return?  Or is he to have another chance, to
be still looked on as one who has gone a little astray, but who will
come back?  I urge you, gentlemen, do not ruin this young man!  For,
as a result of those four minutes, ruin, utter and irretrievable,
stares him in the face.  He can be saved now.  Imprison him as a
criminal, and I affirm to you that he will be lost.  He has neither
the face nor the manner of one who can survive that terrible ordeal.
Weigh in the scales his criminality and the suffering he has
undergone.  The latter is ten times heavier already.  He has lain in
prison under this charge for more than two months.  Is he likely ever
to forget that?  Imagine the anguish of his mind during that time.
He has had his punishment, gentlemen, you may depend.  The rolling of
the chariot-wheels of Justice over this boy began when it was decided
to prosecute him.  We are now already at the second stage.  If you
permit it to go on to the third I would not give--that for him.

     He holds up finger and thumb in the form of a circle, drops his
     hand, and sits dozen.

The jury stir, and consult each other's faces; then they turn towards
the counsel for the Crown, who rises, and, fixing his eyes on a spot
that seems to give him satisfaction, slides them every now and then
towards the jury.

CLEAVER.  May it please your lordship--[Rising on his toes] Gentlemen
of the Jury,--The facts in this case are not disputed, and the
defence, if my friend will allow me to say so, is so thin that I
don't propose to waste the time of the Court by taking you over the
evidence.  The plea is one of temporary insanity.  Well, gentlemen, I
daresay it is clearer to me than it is to you why this rather--what
shall we call it?--bizarre defence has been set up.  The alternative
would have been to plead guilty.  Now, gentlemen, if the prisoner had
pleaded guilty my friend would have had to rely on a simple appeal to
his lordship.  Instead of that, he has gone into the byways and
hedges and found this--er--peculiar plea, which has enabled him to
show you the proverbial woman, to put her in the box--to give, in
fact, a romantic glow to this affair.  I compliment my friend; I
think it highly ingenious of him.  By these means, he has--to a
certain extent--got round the Law.  He has brought the whole story of
motive and stress out in court, at first hand, in a way that he would
not otherwise have been able to do.  But when you have once grasped
that fact, gentlemen, you have grasped everything.  [With
good-humoured contempt]  For look at this plea of insanity; we can't
put it lower than that.  You have heard the woman.  She has every
reason to favour the prisoner, but what did she say?  She said that
the prisoner was not insane when she left him in the morning.  If he
were going out of his mind through distress, that was obviously the
moment when insanity would have shown itself.  You have heard the
managing clerk, another witness for the defence.  With some
difficulty I elicited from him the admission that the prisoner,
though jumpy [a word that he seemed to think you would understand,
gentlemen, and I'm sure I hope you do], was not mad when the cheque
was handed to Davis.  I agree with my friend that it's unfortunate
that we have not got Davis here, but the prisoner has told you the
words with which Davis in turn handed him the cheque; he obviously,
therefore, was not mad when he received it, or he would not have
remembered those words.  The cashier has told you that he was
certainly in his senses when he cashed it.  We have therefore the
plea that a man who is sane at ten minutes past one, and sane at
fifteen minutes past, may, for the purposes of avoiding the
consequences of a crime, call himself insane between those points of
time.  Really, gentlemen, this is so peculiar a proposition that I am
not disposed to weary you with further argument.  You will form your
own opinion of its value.  My friend has adopted this way of saying a
great deal to you--and very eloquently--on the score of youth,
temptation, and the like.  I might point out, however, that the
offence with which the prisoner is charged is one of the most serious
known to our law; and there are certain features in this case, such
as the suspicion which he allowed to rest on his innocent fellow-
clerk, and his relations with this married woman, which will render
it difficult for you to attach too much importance to such pleading.
I ask you, in short, gentlemen, for that verdict of guilty which, in
the circumstances, I regard you as, unfortunately, bound to record.

     Letting his eyes travel from the JUDGE and the jury to FROME, he
     sits down.

THE JUDGE.  [Bending a little towards the jury, and speaking in a
business-like voice]  Gentlemen, you have heard the evidence, and the
comments on it.  My only business is to make clear to you the issues
you have to try.  The facts are admitted, so far as the alteration of
this cheque and counterfoil by the prisoner.  The defence set up is
that he was not in a responsible condition when he committed the
crime.  Well, you have heard the prisoner's story, and the evidence
of the other witnesses--so far as it bears on the point of insanity.
If you think that what you have heard establishes the fact that the
prisoner was insane at the time of the forgery, you will find him
guilty, but insane.  If, on the other hand, you conclude from what
you have seen and heard that the prisoner was sane--and nothing short
of insanity will count--you will find him guilty.  In reviewing the
testimony as to his mental condition you must bear in mind very
carefully the evidence as to his demeanour and conduct both before
and after the act of forgery--the evidence of the prisoner himself,
of the woman, of the witness--er--COKESON, and--er--of the cashier.
And in regard to that I especially direct your attention to the
prisoner's admission that the idea of adding the 'ty' and the nought
did come into his mind at the moment when the cheque was handed to
him; and also to the alteration of the counterfoil, and to his
subsequent conduct generally.  The bearing of all this on the
question of premeditation [and premeditation will imply sanity] is
very obvious.  You must not allow any considerations of age or
temptation to weigh with you in the finding of your verdict.  Before
you can come to a verdict of guilty but insane you must be well and
thoroughly convinced that the condition of his mind was such as would
have qualified him at the moment for a lunatic asylum.  [He pauses,
then, seeing that the jury are doubtful whether to retire or no,
adds:] You may retire, gentlemen, if you wish to do so.

     The jury retire by a door behind the JUDGE.  The JUDGE bends
     over his notes.  FALDER, leaning from the dock, speaks excitedly
     to his solicitor, pointing dawn at RUTH.  The solicitor in turn
     speaks to FROME.

FROME.  [Rising] My lord.  The prisoner is very anxious that I should
ask you if your lordship would kindly request the reporters not to
disclose the name of the woman witness in the Press reports of these
proceedings.  Your lordship will understand that the consequences
might be extremely serious to her.

THE JUDGE.  [Pointedly--with the suspicion of a smile]  well, Mr.
Frome, you deliberately took this course which involved bringing her
here.

FROME. [With an ironic bow]  If your lordship thinks I could have
brought out the full facts in any other way?

THE JUDGE.  H'm!  Well.

FROME.  There is very real danger to her, your lordship.

THE JUDGE.  You see, I have to take your word for all that.

FROME.  If your lordship would be so kind.  I can assure your
lordship that I am not exaggerating.

THE JUDGE.  It goes very much against the grain with me that the name
of a witness should ever be suppressed.  [With a glance at FALDER,
who is gripping and clasping his hands before him, and then at RUTH,
who is sitting perfectly rigid with her eyes fixed on FALDER]  I'll
consider your application.  It must depend.  I have to remember that
she may have come here to commit perjury on the prisoner's behalf.

FROME.  Your lordship, I really----

THE JUDGE.  Yes, yes--I don't suggest anything of the sort, Mr.
Frome.  Leave it at that for the moment.

     As he finishes speaking, the jury return, and file back into the
     box.

CLERK of ASSIZE.  Gentlemen, are you agreed on your verdict?

FOREMAN.  We are.

CLERK of ASSIZE.  Is it Guilty, or Guilty but insane?

FOREMAN.  Guilty.

     The JUDGE nods; then, gathering up his notes, sits looking at
     FALDER, who stands motionless.

FROME.  [Rising] If your lordship would allow me to address you in
mitigation of sentence.  I don't know if your lordship thinks I can
add anything to what I have said to the jury on the score of the
prisoner's youth, and the great stress under which he acted.

THE JUDGE.  I don't think you can, Mr. Frome.

FROME.  If your lordship says so--I do most earnestly beg your
lordship to give the utmost weight to my plea.  [He sits down.]

THE JUDGE.  [To the CLERK] Call upon him.

THE CLERK.  Prisoner at the bar, you stand convicted of felony.  Have
you anything to say for yourself, why the Court should not give you
judgment according to law?  [FALDER shakes his head]

THE JUDGE.  William Falder, you have been given fair trial and found
guilty, in my opinion rightly found guilty, of forgery.  [He pauses;
then, consulting his notes, goes on]  The defence was set up that you
were not responsible for your actions at the moment of committing
this crime.  There is no, doubt, I think, that this was a device to
bring out at first hand the nature of the temptation to which you
succumbed.  For throughout the trial your counsel was in reality
making an appeal for mercy.  The setting up of this defence of course
enabled him to put in some evidence that might weigh in that
direction.  Whether he was well advised to so is another matter.  He
claimed that you should be treated rather as a patient than as a
criminal.  And this plea of his, which in the end amounted to a
passionate appeal, he based in effect on an indictment of the march
of Justice, which he practically accused of confirming and completing
the process of criminality.  Now, in considering how far I should
allow weight to his appeal; I have a number of factors to take into
account.  I have to consider on the one hand the grave nature of your
offence, the deliberate way in which you subsequently altered the
counterfoil, the danger you caused to an innocent man--and that, to
my mind, is a very grave point--and finally I have to consider the
necessity of deterring others from following your example.  On the
other hand, I have to bear in mind that you are young, that you have
hitherto borne a good character, that you were, if I am to believe
your evidence and that of your witnesses, in a state of some
emotional excitement when you committed this crime.  I have every
wish, consistently with my duty--not only to you, but to the
community--to treat you with leniency.  And this brings me to what
are the determining factors in my mind in my consideration of your
case.  You are a clerk in a lawyer's office--that is a very serious
element in this case; there can be no possible excuse made for you on
the ground that you were not fully conversant with the nature of the
crime you were committing, and the penalties that attach to it.  It
is said, however, that you were carried away by your emotions.  The
story has been told here to-day of your relations with this--er--Mrs.
Honeywill; on that story both the defence and the plea for mercy were
in effect based.  Now what is that story?  It is that you, a young
man, and she, a young woman, unhappily married, had formed an
attachment, which you both say--with what truth I am unable to gauge-
-had not yet resulted in immoral relations, but which you both admit
was about to result in such relationship.  Your counsel has made an
attempt to palliate this, on the ground that the woman is in what he
describes, I think, as "a hopeless position."  As to that I can
express no opinion.  She is a married woman, and the fact is patent
that you committed this crime with the view of furthering an immoral
design.  Now, however I might wish, I am not able to justify to my
conscience a plea for mercy which has a basis inimical to morality.
It is vitiated 'ab initio', and would, if successful, free you for
the completion of this immoral project.  Your counsel has made an
attempt to trace your offence back to what he seems to suggest is a
defect in the marriage law; he has made an attempt also to show that
to punish you with further imprisonment would be unjust.  I do not
follow him in these flights.  The Law is what it is--a majestic
edifice, sheltering all of us, each stone of which rests on another.
I am concerned only with its administration.  The crime you have
committed is a very serious one.  I cannot feel it in accordance with
my duty to Society to exercise the powers I have in your favour.  You
will go to penal servitude for three years.

     FALDER, who throughout the JUDGE'S speech has looked at him
     steadily, lets his head fall forward on his breast.  RUTH starts
     up from her seat as he is taken out by the warders.  There is a
     bustle in court.

THE JUDGE.  [Speaking to the reporters] Gentlemen of the Press, I
think that the name of the female witness should not be reported.

     The reporters bow their acquiescence.  THE JUDGE.  [To RUTH, who
     is staring in the direction in which FALDER has disappeared] Do
     you understand, your name will not be mentioned?

COKESON.  [Pulling her sleeve]  The judge is speaking to you.

     RUTH turns, stares at the JUDGE, and turns away.

THE JUDGE.  I shall sit rather late to-day.  Call the next case.

CLERK of ASSIZE.  [To a warder]  Put up John Booley.

     To cries of "Witnesses in the case of Booley":


                    The curtain falls.




ACT III

SCENE I

     A prison.  A plainly furnished room, with two large barred
     windows, overlooking the prisoners' exercise yard, where men, in
     yellow clothes marked with arrows, and yellow brimless caps, are
     seen in single file at a distance of four yards from each other,
     walking rapidly on serpentine white lines marked on the concrete
     floor of the yard.  Two warders in blue uniforms, with peaked
     caps and swords, are stationed amongst them.  The room has
     distempered walls, a bookcase with numerous official-looking
     books, a cupboard between the windows, a plan of the prison on
     the wall, a writing-table covered with documents.  It is
     Christmas Eve.

     The GOVERNOR, a neat, grave-looking man, with a trim, fair
     moustache, the eyes of a theorist, and grizzled hair, receding
     from the temples, is standing close to this writing-table
     looking at a sort of rough saw made out of a piece of metal.
     The hand in which he holds it is gloved, for two fingers are
     missing.  The chief warder, WOODER, a tall, thin, military-
     looking man of sixty, with grey moustache and melancholy,
     monkey-like eyes, stands very upright two paces from him.

THE GOVERNOR.  [With a faint, abstracted smile]  Queer-looking
affair, Mr. Wooder!  Where did you find it?

WOODER.  In his mattress, sir.  Haven't come across such a thing for
two years now.

THE GOVERNOR.  [With curiosity] Had he any set plan?

WOODER.  He'd sawed his window-bar about that much.  [He holds up his
thumb and finger a quarter of an inch apart]

THE GOVERNOR.  I'll see him this afternoon.  What's his name?
Moaney!  An old hand, I think?

WOODER.  Yes, sir-fourth spell of penal.  You'd think an old lag like
him would have had more sense by now.  [With pitying contempt]
Occupied his mind, he said.  Breaking in and breaking out--that's all
they think about.

THE GOVERNOR.  Who's next him?

WOODER.  O'Cleary, sir.

THE GOVERNOR.  The Irishman.

WOODER.  Next him again there's that young fellow, Falder--star
class--and next him old Clipton.

THE GOVERNOR.  Ah, yes!  "The philosopher."  I want to see him about
his eyes.

WOODER.  Curious thing, sir: they seem to know when there's one of
these tries at escape going on.  It makes them restive--there's a
regular wave going through them just now.

THE GOVERNOR.  [Meditatively]  Odd things--those waves.  [Turning to
look at the prisoners exercising]  Seem quiet enough out here!

WOODER.  That Irishman, O'Cleary, began banging on his door this
morning.  Little thing like that's quite enough to upset the whole
lot.  They're just like dumb animals at times.

THE GOVERNOR.  I've seen it with horses before thunder--it'll run
right through cavalry lines.

     The prison CHAPLAIN has entered.  He is a dark-haired, ascetic
     man, in clerical undress, with a peculiarly steady, tight-lipped
     face and slow, cultured speech.

THE GOVERNOR.  [Holding up the saw]  Seen this, Miller?

THE CHAPLAIN.  Useful-looking specimen.

THE GOVERNOR.  Do for the Museum, eh!  [He goes to the cupboard and
opens it, displaying to view a number of quaint ropes, hooks, and
metal tools with labels tied on them]  That'll do, thanks, Mr.
Wooder.

WOODER.  [Saluting]  Thank you, sir.  [He goes out]

THE GOVERNOR.  Account for the state of the men last day or two,
Miller?  Seems going through the whole place.

THE CHAPLAIN.  No.  I don't know of anything.

THE GOVERNOR.  By the way, will you dine with us on Christmas Day?

THE CHAPLAIN.  To-morrow.  Thanks very much.

THE GOVERNOR.  Worries me to feel the men discontented.  [Gazing at
the saw]  Have to punish this poor devil.  Can't help liking a man
who tries to escape.  [He places the saw in his pocket and locks the
cupboard again]

THE CHAPLAIN.  Extraordinary perverted will-power--some of them.
Nothing to be done till it's broken.

THE GOVERNOR.  And not much afterwards, I'm afraid.  Ground too hard
for golf?

     WOODER comes in again.

WOODER.  Visitor who's been seeing Q 3007 asks to speak to you, sir.
I told him it wasn't usual.

THE GOVERNOR.  What about?

WOODER.  Shall I put him off, sir?

THE GOVERNOR.  [Resignedly]  No, no.  Let's see him.  Don't go,
Miller.

WOODER motions to some one without, and as the visitor comes in
withdraws.

     The visitor is COKESON, who is attired in a thick overcoat to
     the knees, woollen gloves, arid carries a top hat.

COKESON.  I'm sorry to trouble you.  I've been talking to the young
man.

THE GOVERNOR.  We have a good many here.

COKESON.  Name of Falder, forgery.  [Producing a card, and handing it
to the GOVERNOR]  Firm of James and Walter How.  Well known in the
law.

THE GOVERNOR.  [Receiving the card-with a faint smile]  What do you
want to see me about, sir?

COKESON.  [Suddenly seeing the prisoners at exercise]  Why! what a
sight!

THE GOVERNOR.  Yes, we have that privilege from here; my office is
being done up.  [Sitting down at his table]  Now, please!

COKESON.  [Dragging his eyes with difficulty from the window] I
wanted to say a word to you; I shan't keep you long.
[Confidentially]  Fact is, I oughtn't to be here by rights.  His
sister came to me--he's got no father and mother--and she was in some
distress.  "My husband won't let me go and see him," she said; "says
he's disgraced the family.  And his other sister," she said, "is an
invalid."  And she asked me to come.  Well, I take an interest in
him.  He was our junior--I go to the same chapel--and I didn't like
to refuse.  And what I wanted to tell you was, he seems lonely here.

THE GOVERNOR.  Not unnaturally.

COKESON.  I'm afraid it'll prey on my mind.  I see a lot of them
about working together.

THE GOVERNOR.  Those are local prisoners.  The convicts serve their
three months here in separate confinement, sir.

COKESON.  But we don't want to be unreasonable.  He's quite
downhearted.  I wanted to ask you to let him run about with the
others.

THE GOVERNOR.  [With faint amusement]  Ring the bell-would you,
Miller?  [To COKESON]  You'd like to hear what the doctor says about
him, perhaps.

THE CHAPLAIN.  [Ringing the bell]  You are not accustomed to prisons,
it would seem, sir.

COKESON.  No.  But it's a pitiful sight.  He's quite a young fellow.
I said to him: "Before a month's up" I said, "you'll be out and about
with the others; it'll be a nice change for you."  "A month!" he said
--like that!  "Come!" I said, "we mustn't exaggerate.  What's a
month?  Why, it's nothing!"  "A day," he said, "shut up in your cell
thinking and brooding as I do, it's longer than a year outside.  I
can't help it," he said; "I try--but I'm built that way, Mr.
COKESON."  And, he held his hand up to his face.  I could see the
tears trickling through his fingers.  It wasn't nice.

THE CHAPLAIN.  He's a young man with large, rather peculiar eyes,
isn't he?  Not Church of England, I think?

COKESON.  No.

THE CHAPLAIN.  I know.

THE GOVERNOR.  [To WOODER, who has come in]  Ask the doctor to be
good enough to come here for a minute.  [WOODER salutes, and goes
out]  Let's see, he's not married?

COKESON.  No.  [Confidentially]  But there's a party he's very much
attached to, not altogether com-il-fa.  It's a sad story.

THE CHAPLAIN.  If it wasn't for drink and women, sir, this prison
might be closed.

COKESON.  [Looking at the CHAPLAIN over his spectacles] Ye-es, but I
wanted to tell you about that, special.  He had hopes they'd have let
her come and see him, but they haven't.  Of course he asked me
questions.  I did my best, but I couldn't tell the poor young fellow
a lie, with him in here--seemed like hitting him.  But I'm afraid
it's made him worse.

THE GOVERNOR.  What was this news then?

COKESON.  Like this.  The woman had a nahsty, spiteful feller for a
husband, and she'd left him.  Fact is, she was going away with our
young friend.  It's not nice--but I've looked over it.  Well, when he
was put in here she said she'd earn her living apart, and wait for
him to come out.  That was a great consolation to him.  But after a
month she came to me--I don't know her personally--and she said:
"I can't earn the children's living, let alone my own--I've got no
friends.  I'm obliged to keep out of everybody's way, else my
husband'd get to know where I was.  I'm very much reduced," she said.
And she has lost flesh.  "I'll have to go in the workhouse!" It's a
painful story.  I said to her: "No," I said, "not that!  I've got a
wife an' family, but sooner than you should do that I'll spare you a
little myself."  "Really," she said--she's a nice creature--" I don't
like to take it from you.  I think I'd better go back to my husband."
Well, I know he's a nahsty, spiteful feller--drinks--but I didn't
like to persuade her not to.

THE CHAPLAIN.  Surely, no.

COKESON.  Ye-es, but I'm sorry now; it's upset the poor young fellow
dreadfully.  And what I wanted to say was: He's got his three years
to serve.  I want things to be pleasant for him.

THE CHAPLAIN.  [With a touch of impatience] The Law hardly shares
your view, I'm afraid.

COKESON.  But I can't help thinking that to shut him up there by
himself'll turn him silly.  And nobody wants that, I s'pose.  I don't
like to see a man cry.

THE CHAPLAIN.  It's a very rare thing for them to give way like that.

COKESON.  [Looking at him-in a tone of sudden dogged hostility]
I keep dogs.

THE CHAPLAIN.  Indeed?

COKESON.  Ye-es.  And I say this: I wouldn't shut one of them up all
by himself, month after month, not if he'd bit me all over.

THE CHAPLAIN.  Unfortunately, the criminal is not a dog; he has a
sense of right and wrong.

COKESON.  But that's not the way to make him feel it.

THE CHAPLAIN.  Ah!  there I'm afraid we must differ.

COKESON.  It's the same with dogs.  If you treat 'em with kindness
they'll do anything for you; but to shut 'em up alone, it only makes
'em savage.

THE CHAPLAIN.  Surely you should allow those who have had a little
more experience than yourself to know what is best for prisoners.

COKESON.  [Doggedly]  I know this young feller, I've watched him for
years.  He's eurotic--got no stamina.  His father died of
consumption.  I'm thinking of his future.  If he's to be kept there
shut up by himself, without a cat to keep him company, it'll do him
harm.  I said to him: "Where do you feel it?"  "I can't tell you, Mr.
COKESON," he said, "but sometimes I could beat my head against the
wall."  It's not nice.

     During this speech the DOCTOR has entered.  He is a
     medium-Sized, rather good-looking man, with a quick eye.
     He stands leaning against the window.

THE GOVERNOR.  This gentleman thinks the separate is telling on
Q 3007--Falder, young thin fellow, star class.  What do you say,
Doctor Clements?

THE DOCTOR.  He doesn't like it, but it's not doing him any harm.

COKESON.  But he's told me.

THE DOCTOR.  Of course he'd say so, but we can always tell.  He's
lost no weight since he's been here.

COKESON.  It's his state of mind I'm speaking of.

THE DOCTOR.  His mind's all right so far.  He's nervous, rather
melancholy.  I don't see signs of anything more.  I'm watching him
carefully.

COKESON.  [Nonplussed]  I'm glad to hear you say that.

THE CHAPLAIN.  [More suavely] It's just at this period that we are
able to make some impression on them, sir.  I am speaking from my
special standpoint.

COKESON.  [Turning bewildered to the GOVERNOR] I don't want to be
unpleasant, but having given him this news, I do feel it's awkward.

THE GOVERNOR.  I'll make a point of seeing him to-day.

COKESON.  I'm much obliged to you.  I thought perhaps seeing him
every day you wouldn't notice it.

THE GOVERNOR.  [Rather sharply]  If any sign of injury to his health
shows itself his case will be reported at once.  That's fully
provided for.  [He rises]

COKESON.  [Following his own thoughts]  Of course, what you don't see
doesn't trouble you; but having seen him, I don't want to have him on
my mind.

THE GOVERNOR.  I think you may safely leave it to us, sir.

COKESON.  [Mollified and apologetic]  I thought you'd understand me.
I'm a plain man--never set myself up against authority.  [Expanding
to the CHAPLAIN]  Nothing personal meant.  Good-morning.

     As he goes out the three officials do not look at each other,
     but their faces wear peculiar expressions.

THE CHAPLAIN.  Our friend seems to think that prison is a hospital.

COKESON.  [Returning suddenly with an apologetic air]  There's just
one little thing.  This woman--I suppose I mustn't ask you to let him
see her.  It'd be a rare treat for them both.  He's thinking about
her all the time.  Of course she's not his wife.  But he's quite safe
in here.  They're a pitiful couple.  You couldn't make an exception?

THE GOVERNOR.  [Wearily] As you say, my dear sir, I couldn't make an
exception; he won't be allowed another visit of any sort till he goes
to a convict prison.

COKESON.  I see.  [Rather coldly] Sorry to have troubled you.
[He again goes out]

THE CHAPLAIN.  [Shrugging his shoulders]  The plain man indeed, poor
fellow.  Come and have some lunch, Clements?


     He and the DOCTOR go out talking.

     The GOVERNOR, with a sigh, sits down at his table and takes up a
     pen.


                         The curtain falls.




SCENE II

     Part of the ground corridor of the prison.  The walls are
     coloured with greenish distemper up to a stripe of deeper green
     about the height of a man's shoulder, and above this line are
     whitewashed.  The floor is of blackened stones.  Daylight is
     filtering through a heavily barred window at the end.  The doors
     of four cells are visible.  Each cell door has a little round
     peep-hole at the level of a man's eye, covered by a little round
     disc, which, raised upwards, affords a view o f the cell.  On
     the wall, close to each cell door, hangs a little square board
     with the prisoner's name, number, and record.

     Overhead can be seen the iron structures of the first-floor and
     second-floor corridors.

     The WARDER INSTRUCTOR, a bearded man in blue uniform, with an
     apron, and some dangling keys, is just emerging from one of the
     cells.

INSTRUCTOR.  [Speaking from the door into the cell]  I'll have
another bit for you when that's finished.

O'CLEARY.  [Unseen--in an Irish voice] Little doubt o' that, sirr.

INSTRUCTOR.  [Gossiping]  Well, you'd rather have it than nothing, I
s'pose.

O'CLEARY.  An' that's the blessed truth.

     Sounds are heard of a cell door being closed and locked, and of
     approaching footsteps.

INSTRUCTOR.  [In a sharp, changed voice]  Look alive over it!

     He shuts the cell door, and stands at attention.

     The GOVERNOR comes walking down the corridor, followed by
     WOODER.

THE GOVERNOR.  Anything to report?

INSTRUCTOR.  [Saluting]  Q 3007  [he points to a cell]  is behind
with his work, sir.  He'll lose marks to-day.

     The GOVERNOR nods and passes on to the end cell.  The INSTRUCTOR
     goes away.

THE GOVERNOR.  This is our maker of saws, isn't it?

     He takes the saw from his pocket as WOODER throws open the door
     of the cell.  The convict MOANEY is seen lying on his bed,
     athwart the cell, with his cap on.  He springs up and stands in
     the middle of the cell.  He is a raw-boned fellow, about
     fifty-six years old, with outstanding bat's ears and fierce,
     staring, steel-coloured eyes.

WOODER.  Cap off!  [MOANEY removes his cap] Out here! [MOANEY Comes
to the door]

THE GOVERNOR.  [Beckoning him out into the corridor, and holding up
the saw--with the manner of an officer speaking to a private]
Anything to say about this, my man?  [MOANEY is silent]  Come!

MOANEY.  It passed the time.

THE GOVERNOR.  [Pointing into the cell]  Not enough to do, eh?

MOANEY.  It don't occupy your mind.

THE GOVERNOR.  [Tapping the saw]  You might find a better way than
this.

MOANEY.  [Sullenly]  Well!  What way?  I must keep my hand in against
the time I get out.  What's the good of anything else to me at my
time of life?  [With a gradual change to civility, as his tongue
warms]  Ye know that, sir.  I'll be in again within a year or two,
after I've done this lot.  I don't want to disgrace meself when I'm
out.  You've got your pride keeping the prison smart; well, I've got
mine.  [Seeing that the GOVERNOR is listening with interest, he goes
on, pointing to the saw]  I must be doin' a little o' this.  It's no
harm to any one.  I was five weeks makin' that saw--a, bit of all
right it is, too; now I'll get cells, I suppose, or seven days' bread
and water.  You can't help it, sir, I know that--I quite put meself
in your place.

THE GOVERNOR.  Now, look here, Moaney, if I pass it over will you
give me your word not to try it on again?  Think!  [He goes into the
cell, walks to the end of it, mounts the stool, and tries the
window-bars]

THE GOVERNOR.  [Returning]  Well?

MOANEY.  [Who has been reflecting] I've got another six weeks to do
in here, alone.  I can't do it and think o' nothing.  I must have
something to interest me.  You've made me a sporting offer, sir, but
I can't pass my word about it.  I shouldn't like to deceive a
gentleman.  [Pointing into the cell] Another four hours' steady work
would have done it.

THE GOVERNOR.  Yes, and what then?  Caught, brought back, punishment.
Five weeks' hard work to make this, and cells at the end of it, while
they put anew bar to your window.  Is it worth it, Moaney?

MOANEY.  [With a sort of fierceness] Yes, it is.

THE GOVERNOR.  [Putting his hand to his brow] Oh, well!  Two days'
cells-bread and water.

MOANEY.  Thank 'e, sir.

     He turns quickly like an animal and slips into his cell.

     The GOVERNOR looks after him and shakes his head as WOODER
     closes and locks the cell door.

THE GOVERNOR.  Open Clipton's cell.

     WOODER opens the door of CLIPTON'S cell.   CLIPTON is sitting on
     a stool just inside the door, at work on a pair of trousers.  He
     is a small, thick, oldish man, with an almost shaven head, and
     smouldering little dark eyes behind smoked spectacles.  He gets
     up and stands motionless in the doorway, peering at his
     visitors.

THE GOVERNOR.  [Beckoning] Come out here a minute, Clipton.

     CLIPTON, with a sort of dreadful quietness, comes into the
     corridor, the needle and thread in his hand.  The GOVERNOR signs
     to WOODER, who goes into the cell and inspects it carefully.

THE GOVERNOR.  How are your eyes?

CLIFTON.  I don't complain of them.  I don't see the sun here.  [He
makes a stealthy movement, protruding his neck a little]  There's
just one thing, Mr. Governor, as you're speaking to me.  I wish you'd
ask the cove next door here to keep a bit quieter.

THE GOVERNOR.  What's the matter?  I don't want any tales, Clipton.

CLIPTON.  He keeps me awake.  I don't know who he is.  [With
contempt]  One of this star class, I expect.  Oughtn't to be here
with us.

THE GOVERNOR.  [Quietly]  Quite right, Clipton.  He'll be moved when
there's a cell vacant.

CLIPTON.  He knocks about like a wild beast in the early morning.
I'm not used to it--stops me getting my sleep out.  In the evening
too.  It's not fair, Mr. Governor, as you're speaking to me.
Sleep's the comfort I've got here; I'm entitled to take it out full.

     WOODER comes out of the cell, and instantly, as though
     extinguished, CLIPTON moves with stealthy suddenness back into
     his cell.

WOODER.  All right, sir.

     THE GOVERNOR nods.  The door is closed and locked.

THE GOVERNOR.  Which is the man who banged on his door this morning?

WOODER.  [Going towards O'CLEARY'S cell]  This one, sir; O'Cleary.

     He lifts the disc and glances through the peephole.

THE GOVERNOR.  Open.

     WOODER throws open the door.  O'CLEARY, who is seated at a
     little table by the door as if listening, springs up and stands
     at attention jest inside the doorway.  He is a broad-faced,
     middle-aged man, with a wide, thin, flexible mouth, and little
     holes under his high cheek-bones.

THE GOVERNOR.  Where's the joke, O'Cleary?

O'CLEARY.  The joke, your honour?  I've not seen one for a long time.

THE GOVERNOR.  Banging on your door?

O'CLEARY.  Oh! that!

THE GOVERNOR.  It's womanish.

O'CLEARY.  An' it's that I'm becoming this two months past.

THE GOVERNOR.  Anything to complain of?

O'CLEARY.  NO, Sirr.

THE GOVERNOR.  You're an old hand; you ought to know better.

O'CLEARY.  Yes, I've been through it all.

THE GOVERNOR.  You've got a youngster next door; you'll upset him.

O'CLEARY.  It cam' over me, your honour.  I can't always be the same
steady man.

THE GOVERNOR.  Work all right?

O'CLEARY.  [Taking up a rush mat he is making]  Oh! I can do it on me
head.  It's the miserablest stuff--don't take the brains of a mouse.
[Working his mouth]  It's here I feel it--the want of a little noise
--a terrible little wud ease me.

THE GOVERNOR.  You know as well as I do that if you were out in the
shops you wouldn't be allowed to talk.

O'CLEARY.  [With a look of profound meaning]  Not with my mouth.

THE GOVERNOR.  Well, then?

O'CLEARY.  But it's the great conversation I'd have.

THE GOVERNOR.  [With a smile] Well, no more conversation on your
door.

O'CLEARY.  No, sirr, I wud not have the little wit to repeat meself.

THE GOVERNOR.  [Turning]  Good-night.

O'CLEARY.  Good-night, your honour.

     He turns into his cell.  The GOVERNOR shuts the door.

THE GOVERNOR.  [Looking at the record card]  Can't help liking the
poor blackguard.

WOODER.  He's an amiable man, sir.

THE GOVERNOR.  [Pointing down the corridor] Ask the doctor to come
here, Mr. Wooder.

     WOODER salutes and goes away down the corridor.

     The GOVERNOR goes to the door of FALDER'S cell.  He raises his
     uninjured hand to uncover the peep-hole; but, without uncovering
     it, shakes his head and drops his hand; then, after scrutinising
     the record board, he opens the cell door.  FALDER, who is
     standing against it, lurches forward.

THE GOVERNOR.  [Beckoning him out]  Now tell me: can't you settle
down, Falder?

FALDER.  [In a breathless voice]  Yes, sir.

THE GOVERNOR.  You know what I mean?  It's no good running your head
against a stone wall, is it?

FALDER.  No, sir.

THE GOVERNOR.  Well, come.

FALDER.  I try, sir.

THE GOVERNOR.  Can't you sleep?

FALDER.  Very little.  Between two o'clock and getting up's the worst
time.

THE GOVERNOR.  How's that?

FALDER.  [His lips twitch with a sort of smile] I don't know, sir.  I
was always nervous.  [Suddenly voluble]  Everything seems to get such
a size then.  I feel I'll never get out as long as I live.

THE GOVERNOR.  That's morbid, my lad.  Pull yourself together.

FALDER.  [With an equally sudden dogged resentment] Yes--I've got to.

THE GOVERNOR.  Think of all these other fellows?

FALDER.  They're used to it.

THE GOVERNOR.  They all had to go through it once for the first time,
just as you're doing now.

FALDER.  Yes, sir, I shall get to be like them in time, I suppose.

THE GOVERNOR.  [Rather taken aback]  H'm!  Well!  That rests with
you.  Now come.  Set your mind to it, like a good fellow.  You're
still quite young.  A man can make himself what he likes.

FALDER.  [Wistfully] Yes, sir.

THE GOVERNOR.  Take a good hold of yourself.  Do you read?

FALDER.  I don't take the words in.  [Hanging his head] I know it's
no good; but I can't help thinking of what's going on outside.  In my
cell I can't see out at all.  It's thick glass, sir.

THE GOVERNOR.  You've had a visitor.  Bad news?

FALDER.  Yes.

THE GOVERNOR.  You mustn't think about it.

FALDER.  [Looking back at his cell]  How can I help it, sir?

     He suddenly becomes motionless as WOODER and the DOCTOR
     approach.  The GOVERNOR motions to him to go back into his cell.

FALDER.  [Quick and low]  I'm quite right in my head, sir.  [He goes
back into his cell.]

THE GOVERNOR.  [To the DOCTOR]  Just go in and see him, Clements.

     The DOCTOR goes into the cell.  The GOVERNOR pushes the door to,
     nearly closing it, and walks towards the window.

WOODER.  [Following]  Sorry you should be troubled like this, sir.
Very contented lot of men, on the whole.

THE GOVERNOR.  [Shortly]  You think so?

WOODER.  Yes, sir.  It's Christmas doing it, in my opinion.

THE GOVERNOR.  [To himself]  Queer, that!

WOODER.  Beg pardon, sir?

THE GOVERNOR.  Christmas!

     He turns towards the window, leaving WOODER looking at him with
     a sort of pained anxiety.

WOODER.  [Suddenly]  Do you think we make show enough, sir?  If you'd
like us to have more holly?

THE GOVERNOR.  Not at all, Mr. Wooder.

WOODER.  Very good, sir.

     The DOCTOR has come out of FALDER's Cell, and the GOVERNOR
     beckons to him.

THE GOVERNOR.  Well?

THE DOCTOR.  I can't make anything much of him.  He's nervous, of
course.

THE GOVERNOR.  Is there any sort of case to report?  Quite frankly,
Doctor.

THE DOCTOR.  Well, I don't think the separates doing him any good;
but then I could say the same of a lot of them--they'd get on better
in the shops, there's no doubt.

THE GOVERNOR.  You mean you'd have to recommend others?

THE DOCTOR.  A dozen at least.  It's on his nerves.  There's nothing
tangible.  That fellow there [pointing to O'CLEARY'S cell], for
instance--feels it just as much, in his way.  If I once get away from
physical facts--I shan't know where I am.  Conscientiously, sir, I
don't know how to differentiate him.  He hasn't lost weight.  Nothing
wrong with his eyes.  His pulse is good.  Talks all right.

THE GOVERNOR.  It doesn't amount to melancholia?

THE DOCTOR.  [Shaking his head]  I can report on him if you like; but
if I do I ought to report on others.

THE GOVERNOR.  I see.  [Looking towards FALDER'S cell]  The poor
devil must just stick it then.

     As he says thin he looks absently at WOODER.

WOODER.  Beg pardon, sir?

     For answer the GOVERNOR stares at him, turns on his heel, and
     walks away.  There is a sound as of beating on metal.

THE GOVERNOR.  [Stopping]  Mr. Wooder?

WOODER.  Banging on his door, sir.  I thought we should have more of
that.

     He hurries forward, passing the GOVERNOR, who follows closely.


                         The curtain falls.




SCENE III

     FALDER's cell, a whitewashed space thirteen feet broad by seven
     deep, and nine feet high, with a rounded  ceiling.  The floor is
     of shiny blackened bricks.  The barred window of opaque glass,
     with a ventilator, is high up in the middle of the end wall.  In
     the middle of the opposite end wall is the narrow door.  In a
     corner are the mattress and bedding rolled up [two blankets, two
     sheets, and a coverlet].  Above them is a quarter-circular
     wooden shelf, on which is a Bible and several little devotional
     books, piled in a symmetrical pyramid; there are also a black
     hair brush, tooth-brush, and a bit of soap.  In another corner
     is the wooden frame of a bed, standing on end.  There is a dark
     ventilator under the window, and another over the door.
     FALDER'S work [a shirt to which he is putting buttonholes] is
     hung to a nail on the wall over a small wooden table, on which
     the novel "Lorna Doone" lies open.  Low down in the corner by
     the door is a thick glass screen, about a foot square, covering
     the gas-jet let into the wall. There is also a wooden stool, and
     a pair of shoes beneath it.  Three bright round tins are set
     under the window.

     In fast-failing daylight, FALDER, in his stockings, is seen
     standing motionless, with his head inclined towards the door,
     listening.  He moves a little closer to the door, his stockinged
     feet making no noise.  He stops at the door.  He is trying
     harder and harder to hear something, any little thing that is
     going on outside.  He springs suddenly upright--as if at a
     sound-and remains perfectly motionless.  Then, with a heavy
     sigh, he moves to his work, and stands looking at it, with his
     head doom; he does a stitch or two, having the air of a man so
     lost in sadness that each stitch is, as it were, a coming to
     life.  Then turning abruptly, he begins pacing the cell, moving
     his head, like an animal pacing its cage.  He stops again at the
     door, listens, and, placing the palms of hip hands against it
     with his fingers spread out, leans his forehead against the
     iron.  Turning from it, presently, he moves slowly back towards
     the window, tracing his way with his finger along the top line
     of the distemper that runs round the wall.  He stops under the
     window, and, picking up the lid of one of the tins, peers into
     it.  It has grown very nearly dark.  Suddenly the lid falls out
     of his hand with a clatter--the only sound that has broken the
     silence--and he stands staring intently at the wall where the
     stuff of the shirt is hanging rather white in the darkness--he
     seems to be seeing somebody or something there.  There is a
     sharp tap and click; the cell light behind the glass screen has
     been turned up.  The cell is brightly lighted.  FALDER is seen
     gasping for breath.

     A sound from far away, as of distant, dull beating on thick
     metal, is suddenly audible.  FALDER shrinks back, not able to
     bear this sudden clamour.  But the sound grows, as though some
     great tumbril were rolling towards the cell.  And gradually it
     seems to hypnotise him.  He begins creeping inch by inch
     nearer to the door.  The banging sound, travelling from cell to
     cell, draws closer and closer; FALDER'S hands are seen moving as
     if his spirit had already joined in this beating, and the sound
     swells till it seems to have entered the very cell.  He suddenly
     raises his clenched fists.  Panting violently, he flings himself
     at his door, and beats on it.


                         The curtain falls.




ACT IV

     The scene is again COKESON'S room, at a few minutes to ten of a
     March morning, two years later.  The doors are all open.
     SWEEDLE, now blessed with a sprouting moustache, is getting the
     offices ready.  He arranges papers on COKESON'S table; then goes
     to a covered washstand, raises the lid, and looks at himself in
     the mirror.  While he is gazing his full RUTH HONEYWILL comes in
     through the outer office and stands in the doorway.  There seems
     a kind of exultation and excitement behind her habitual
     impassivity.

SWEEDLE.  [Suddenly seeing her, and dropping the lid of the washstand
with a bang] Hello!  It's you!

RUTH.  Yes.

SWEEDLE.  There's only me here!  They don't waste their time hurrying
down in the morning.  Why, it must be two years since we had the
pleasure of seeing you.  [Nervously]  What have you been doing with
yourself?

RUTH.  [Sardonically] Living.

SWEEDLE.  [Impressed]  If you want to see him [he points to COKESON'S
chair], he'll be here directly--never misses--not much.  [Delicately]
I hope our friend's back from the country.  His time's been up these
three months, if I remember.  [RUTH nods] I was awful sorry about
that.  The governor made a mistake--if you ask me.

RUTH.  He did.

SWEEDLE.  He ought to have given him a chanst.  And, I say, the judge
ought to ha' let him go after that.  They've forgot what human
nature's like.  Whereas we know. [RUTH gives him a honeyed smile]

SWEEDLE.  They come down on you like a cartload of bricks, flatten
you out, and when you don't swell up again they complain of it.  I
know 'em--seen a lot of that sort of thing in my time.  [He shakes
his head in the plenitude of wisdom]  Why, only the other day the
governor----

     But COKESON has come in through the outer office; brisk with
     east wind, and decidedly greyer.

COKESON.  [Drawing off his coat and gloves]  Why! it's you!  [Then
motioning SWEEDLE out, and closing the door]  Quite a stranger!  Must
be two years.  D'you want to see me?  I can give you a minute.  Sit
down!  Family well?

RUTH.  Yes.  I'm not living where I was.

COKESON.  [Eyeing her askance] I hope things are more comfortable at
home.

RUTH.  I couldn't stay with Honeywill, after all.

COKESON.  You haven't done anything rash, I hope.  I should be sorry
if you'd done anything rash.

RUTH.  I've kept the children with me.

COKESON.  [Beginning to feel that things are not so jolly as ha had
hoped]  Well, I'm glad to have seen you.  You've not heard from the
young man, I suppose, since he came out?

RUTH.  Yes, I ran across him yesterday.

COKESON.  I hope he's well.

RUTH.  [With sudden fierceness]  He can't get anything to do.  It's
dreadful to see him.  He's just skin and bone.

COKESON.  [With genuine concern] Dear me!  I'm sorry to hear that.
[On his guard again]  Didn't they find him a place when his time was
up?

RUTH.  He was only there three weeks.  It got out.

COKESON.  I'm sure I don't know what I can do for you.  I don't like
to be snubby.

RUTH.  I can't bear his being like that.

COKESON.  [Scanning her not unprosperous figure] I know his relations
aren't very forthy about him.  Perhaps you can do something for him,
till he finds his feet.

RUTH.  Not now.  I could have--but not now.

COKESON.  I don't understand.

RUTH.  [Proudly]  I've seen him again--that's all over.

COKESON.  [Staring at her--disturbed]  I'm a family man--I don't want
to hear anything unpleasant.  Excuse me--I'm very busy.

RUTH.  I'd have gone home to my people in the country long ago, but
they've never got over me marrying Honeywill.  I never was waywise,
Mr. Cokeson, but I'm proud.  I was only a girl, you see, when I
married him.  I thought the world of him, of course .  .  .  he used
to come travelling to our farm.

COKESON.  [Regretfully]  I did hope you'd have got on better, after
you saw me.

RUTH.  He used me worse than ever.  He couldn't break my nerve, but I
lost my health; and then he began knocking the children about.  I
couldn't stand that.  I wouldn't go back now, if he were dying.

COKESON.  [Who has risen and is shifting about as though dodging a
stream of lava] We mustn't be violent, must we?

RUTH.  [Smouldering]  A man that can't behave better than that--
[There is silence]

COKESON.  [Fascinated in spite of himself]  Then there you were!  And
what did you do then?

RUTH.  [With a shrug]  Tried the same as when I left him before...,
making skirts... cheap things.  It was the best I could get, but I
never made more than ten shillings a week, buying my own cotton and
working all day; I hardly ever got to bed till past twelve.  I kept
at it for nine months.  [Fiercely]  Well, I'm not fit for that; I
wasn't made for it.  I'd rather die.

COKESON.  My dear woman!  We mustn't talk like that.

RUTH.  It was starvation for the children too--after what they'd
always had.  I soon got not to care.  I used to be too tired. [She is
silent]

COKESON.  [With fearful curiosity]  Why, what happened then?

RUTH.  [With a laugh] My employer happened then--he's happened ever
since.

COKESON.  Dear!  Oh dear!  I never came across a thing like this.

RUTH.  [Dully] He's treated me all right.  But I've done with that.
[Suddenly her lips begin to quiver, and she hides them with the back
of her hand] I never thought I'd see him again, you see.  It was just
a chance I met him by Hyde Park.  We went in there and sat down, and
he told me all about himself.  Oh!  Mr. Cokeson, give him another
chance.

COKESON.  [Greatly disturbed]  Then you've both lost your livings!
What a horrible position!

RUTH.  If he could only get here--where there's nothing to find out
about him!

COKESON.  We can't have anything derogative to the firm.

RUTH.  I've no one else to go to.

COKESON.  I'll speak to the partners, but I don't think they'll take
him, under the circumstances.  I don't really.

RUTH.  He came with me; he's down there in the street. [She points to
the window.]

COKESON.  [On his dignity] He shouldn't have done that until he's
sent for.  [Then softening at the look on her face]  We've got a
vacancy, as it happens, but I can't promise anything.

RUTH.  It would be the saving of him.

COKESON.  Well, I'll do what I can, but I'm not sanguine.  Now tell
him that I don't want him till I see how things are.  Leave your
address?  [Repeating her] 83 Mullingar Street?  [He notes it on
blotting-paper] Good-morning.

RUTH.  Thank you.

     She moves towards the door, turns as if to speak, but does not,
     and goes away.

COKESON.  [Wiping his head and forehead with a large white cotton
handkerchief] What a business!  [Then looking amongst his papers, he
sounds his bell.  SWEEDLE answers it]

COKESON.  Was that young Richards coming here to-day after the
clerk's place?

SWEEDLE.  Yes.

COKESON.  Well, keep him in the air; I don't want to see him yet.

SWEEDLE.  What shall I tell him, sir?

COKESON.  [With asperity] invent something.  Use your brains.  Don't
stump him off altogether.

SWEEDLE.  Shall I tell him that we've got illness, sir?

COKESON.  No!  Nothing untrue.  Say I'm not here to-day.

SWEEDLE.  Yes, sir.  Keep him hankering?

COKESON.  Exactly.  And look here.  You remember Falder?  I may be
having him round to see me.  Now, treat him like you'd have him treat
you in a similar position.

SWEEDLE.  I naturally should do.

COKESON.  That's right.  When a man's down never hit 'im.  'Tisn't
necessary.  Give him a hand up.  That's a metaphor I recommend to you
in life.  It's sound policy.

SWEEDLE.  Do you think the governors will take him on again, sir?

COKESON.  Can't say anything about that.  [At the sound of some one
having entered the outer office]  Who's there?

SWEEDLE.  [Going to the door and looking] It's Falder, sir.

COKESON.  [Vexed]  Dear me!  That's very naughty of her.  Tell him to
call again.  I don't want----

     He breaks off as FALDER comes in.  FALDER is thin, pale, older,
     his eyes have grown more restless.  His clothes are very worn
     and loose.

     SWEEDLE, nodding cheerfully, withdraws.

COKESON.  Glad to see you.  You're rather previous.  [Trying to keep
things pleasant]  Shake hands!  She's striking while the iron's hot.
[He wipes his forehead] I don't blame her.  She's anxious.

     FALDER  timidly takes COKESON's hand and glances towards the
     partners' door.

COKESON.  No--not yet!  Sit down!  [FALDER sits in the chair at the
aide of COKESON's table, on which he places his cap]  Now you are
here I'd like you to give me a little account of yourself.  [Looking
at him over his spectacles]  How's your health?

FALDER.  I'm alive, Mr. Cokeson.

COKESON.  [Preoccupied]  I'm glad to hear that.  About this matter.
I don't like doing anything out of the ordinary; it's not my habit.
I'm a plain man, and I want everything smooth and straight.  But I
promised your friend to speak to the partners, and I always keep my
word.

FALDER.  I just want a chance, Mr. Cokeson.  I've paid for that job a
thousand times and more.  I have, sir.  No one knows.  They say I
weighed more when I came out than when I went in.  They couldn't
weigh me here [he touches his head]  or here [he touches--his heart,
and gives a sort of laugh].  Till last night I'd have thought there
was nothing in here at all.

COKESON.  [Concerned] You've not got heart disease?

FALDER.  Oh!  they passed me sound enough.

COKESON.  But they got you a place, didn't they?

FALSER.  Yes; very good people, knew all about it--very kind to me.
I thought I was going to get on first rate.  But one day, all of a
sudden, the other clerks got wind of it....  I couldn't stick it, Mr.
COKESON, I couldn't, sir.

COKESON. Easy, my dear fellow, easy!

FALDER.  I had one small job after that, but it didn't last.

COKESON.  How was that?

FALDER.  It's no good deceiving you, Mr. Cokeson.  The fact is, I
seem to be struggling against a thing that's all round me.  I can't
explain it: it's as if I was in a net; as fast as I cut it here, it
grows up there.  I didn't act as I ought to have, about references;
but what are you to do?  You must have them.  And that made me
afraid, and I left.  In fact, I'm--I'm afraid all the time now.

     He bows his head and leans dejectedly silent over the table.

COKESON.  I feel for you--I do really.  Aren't your sisters going to
do anything for you?

FALDER.  One's in consumption.  And the other----

COKESON.  Ye...es.  She told me her husband wasn't quite pleased with
you.

FALDER.  When I went there--they were at supper--my sister wanted to
give me a kiss--I know.  But he just looked at her, and said: "What
have you come for?  "Well, I pocketed my pride and I said: "Aren't
you going to give me your hand, Jim?  Cis is, I know," I said.  "Look
here!" he said, "that's all very well, but we'd better come to an
understanding.  I've been expecting you, and I've made up my mind.
I'll give you fifteen pounds to go to Canada with."  "I see," I
said-"good riddance!  No, thanks; keep your fifteen pounds."
Friendship's a queer thing when you've been where I have.

COKESON.  I understand.  Will you take the fifteen pound from me?
[Flustered, as FALDER regards him with a queer smile]  Quite without
prejudice; I meant it kindly.

FALDER.  I'm not allowed to leave the country.

COKESON.  Oh!  ye...es--ticket-of-leave?  You aren't looking the
thing.

FALDER.  I've slept in the Park three nights this week.  The dawns
aren't all poetry there.  But meeting her--I feel a different man
this morning.  I've often thought the being fond of hers the best
thing about me; it's sacred, somehow--and yet it did for me.  That's
queer, isn't it?

COKESON.  I'm sure we're all very sorry for you.

FALDER.  That's what I've found, Mr. Cokeson.  Awfully sorry for me.
[With quiet bitterness]  But it doesn't do to associate with
criminals!

COKESON.  Come, come, it's no use calling yourself names.  That never
did a man any good.  Put a face on it.

FALDER.  It's easy enough to put a face on it, sir, when you're
independent.  Try it when you're down like me.  They talk about
giving you your deserts.  Well, I think I've had just a bit over.

COKESON.  [Eyeing him askance over his spectacles]  I hope they haven't
made a Socialist of you.

     FALDER is suddenly still, as if brooding over his past self; he
     utters a peculiar laugh.

COKESON.  You must give them credit for the best intentions.  Really
you must.  Nobody wishes you harm, I'm sure.

FALDER.  I believe that, Mr. Cokeson.  Nobody wishes you harm, but
they down you all the same.  This feeling--[He stares round him, as
though at something closing in]  It's crushing me.  [With sudden
impersonality]  I know it is.

COKESON.  [Horribly disturbed] There's nothing there!  We must try
and take it quiet.  I'm sure I've often had you in my prayers.  Now
leave it to me.  I'll use my gumption and take 'em when they're
jolly.  [As he speaks the two partners come in]

COKESON  [Rather disconcerted, but trying to put them all at ease]
I didn't expect you quite so soon.  I've just been having a talk with
this young man.  I think you'll remember him.

JAMES.  [With a grave, keen look] Quite well.  How are you, Falder?

WALTER.  [Holding out his hand almost timidly] Very glad to see you
again, Falder.

FALDER.  [Who has recovered his self-control, takes the hand] Thank
you, sir.

COKESON.  Just a word, Mr. James.  [To FALDER, pointing to the
clerks' office] You might go in there a minute.  You know your way.
Our junior won't be coming this morning.  His wife's just had a
little family.

     FALDER, goes uncertainly out into the clerks' office.

COKESON.  [Confidentially] I'm bound to tell you all about it.  He's
quite penitent.  But there's a prejudice against him.  And you're not
seeing him to advantage this morning; he's under-nourished.  It's
very trying to go without your dinner.

JAMES.  Is that so, COKESON?

COKESON.  I wanted to ask you.  He's had his lesson.  Now we know all
about him, and we want a clerk.  There is a young fellow applying,
but I'm keeping him in the air.

JAMES.  A gaol-bird in the office, COKESON?  I don't see it.

WALTER.  "The rolling of the chariot-wheels of Justice!"  I've never
got that out of my head.

JAMES.  I've nothing to reproach myself with in this affair.  What's
he been doing since he came out?

COKESON.  He's had one or two places, but he hasn't kept them.  He's
sensitive--quite natural.  Seems to fancy everybody's down on him.

JAMES.  Bad sign.  Don't like the fellow--never did from the first.
"Weak character"'s written all over him.

WALTER.  I think we owe him a leg up.

JAMES.  He brought it all on himself.

WALTER.  The doctrine of full responsibility doesn't quite hold in
these days.

JAMES.  [Rather grimly]  You'll find it safer to hold it for all
that, my boy.

WALTER.  For oneself, yes--not for other people, thanks.

JAMES.  Well!  I don't want to be hard.

COKESON.  I'm glad to hear you say that.  He seems to see something
[spreading his arms] round him.  'Tisn't healthy.

JAMES.  What about that woman he was mixed up with?  I saw some one
uncommonly like her outside as we came in.

COKESON.  That!  Well, I can't keep anything from you.  He has met
her.

JAMES.  Is she with her husband?

COKESON.  No.

JAMES.  Falder living with her, I suppose?

COKESON.  [Desperately trying to retain the new-found jollity] I
don't know that of my own knowledge.  'Tisn't my business.

JAMES.  It's our business, if we're going to engage him, COKESON.

COKESON.  [Reluctantly] I ought to tell you, perhaps.  I've had the
party here this morning.

JAMES.  I thought so.  [To WALTER] No, my dear boy, it won't do.  Too
shady altogether!

COKESON.  The two things together make it very awkward for you--I see
that.

WALTER.  [Tentatively]  I don't quite know what we have to do with
his private life.

JAMES.  No, no!  He must make a clean sheet of it, or he can't come
here.

WALTER.  Poor devil!

COKESON.  Will you--have him in?  [And as JAMES nods] I think I can
get him to see reason.

JAMES.  [Grimly] You can leave that to me, COKESON.

WALTER.  [To JAMES, in a low voice, while COKESON is summoning
FALDER]  His whole future may depend on what we do, dad.

FALDER comes in.  He has pulled himself together, and presents a
steady front.

JAMES.  Now look here, Falder.  My son and I want to give you another
chance; but there are two things I must say to you.  In the first
place: It's no good coming here as a victim.  If you've any notion
that you've been unjustly treated--get rid of it.  You can't play
fast and loose with morality and hope to go scot-free.  If Society
didn't take care of itself, nobody would--the sooner you realise that
the better.

FALDER.  Yes, sir; but--may I say something?

JAMES.  Well?

FALDER.  I had a lot of time to think it over in prison.  [He stops]

COKESON.  [Encouraging him] I'm sure you did.

FALDER.  There were all sorts there.  And what I mean, sir, is, that
if we'd been treated differently the first time, and put under
somebody that could look after us a bit, and not put in prison, not a
quarter of us would ever have got there.

JAMES.  [Shaking his head] I'm afraid I've very grave doubts of that,
Falder.

FALDER.  [With a gleam of malice] Yes, sir, so I found.

JAMES.  My good fellow, don't forget that you began it.

FALDER.  I never wanted to do wrong.

JAMES.  Perhaps not.  But you did.

FALDER.  [With all the bitterness of his past suffering] It's knocked
me out of time.  [Pulling himself up]  That is, I mean, I'm not what
I was.

JAMES.  This isn't encouraging for us, Falder.

COKESON.  He's putting it awkwardly, Mr. James.

FALDER.  [Throwing over his caution from the intensity of his
feeling]  I mean it, Mr. Cokeson.

JAMES.  Now, lay aside all those thoughts, Falder, and look to the
future.

FALDER.  [Almost eagerly] Yes, sir, but you don't understand what
prison is.  It's here it gets you.

     He grips his chest.

COKESON.  [In a whisper to James] I told you he wanted nourishment.

WALTER.  Yes, but, my dear fellow, that'll pass away.  Time's
merciful.

FALDER.  [With his face twitching]  I hope so, sir.

JAMES.  [Much more gently]  Now, my boy, what you've got to do is to
put all the past behind you and build yourself up a steady
reputation.  And that brings me to the second thing.  This woman you
were mixed up with you must give us your word, you know, to have done
with that.  There's no chance of your keeping straight if you're
going to begin your future with such a relationship.

FALDER.  [Looking from one to the other with a hunted expression] But
sir .  .  .  but sir .  .  .  it's the one thing I looked forward to
all that time.  And she too .  .  .  I couldn't find her before last
night.

     During this and what follows COKESON becomes more and more
     uneasy.

JAMES.  This is painful, Falder.  But you must see for yourself that
it's impossible for a firm like this to close its eyes to everything.
Give us this proof of your resolve to keep straight, and you can come
back--not otherwise.

FALDER.  [After staring at JAMES, suddenly stiffens himself]  I
couldn't give her up.  I couldn't!  Oh, sir!

     I'm all she's got to look to.  And I'm sure she's all I've got.

JAMES.  I'm very sorry, Falder, but I must be firm.  It's for the
benefit of you both in the long run.  No good can come of this
connection.  It was the cause of all your disaster.

FALDER.  But sir, it means-having gone through all that-getting
broken up--my nerves are in an awful state--for nothing.  I did it
for her.

JAMES.  Come!  If she's anything of a woman she'll see it for
herself.  She won't want to drag you down further.  If there were a
prospect of your being able to marry her--it might be another thing.

FALDER.  It's not my fault, sir, that she couldn't get rid of him
--she would have if she could.  That's been the whole trouble from
the beginning.  [Looking suddenly at WALTER] .  .  .  If anybody
would help her!  It's only money wants now, I'm sure.

COKESON.  [Breaking in, as WALTER hesitates, and is about to speak] I
don't think we need consider that--it's rather far-fetched.

FALDER.  [To WALTER, appealing]  He must have given her full cause
since; she could prove that he drove her to leave him.

WALTER.  I'm inclined to do what you say, Falder, if it can be
managed.

FALDER.  Oh, sir!

He goes to the window and looks down into the street.

COKESON.  [Hurriedly]  You don't take me, Mr. Walter.  I have my
reasons.

FALDER.  [From the window]  She's down there, sir.  Will you see her?
I can beckon to her from here.

     WALTER hesitates, and looks from COKESON to JAMES.

JAMES.  [With a sharp nod] Yes, let her come.

FALDER beckons from the window.

COKESON.  [In a low fluster to JAMES and WALTER]  No, Mr. James.
She's not been quite what she ought to ha' been, while this young
man's been away.  She's lost her chance.  We can't consult how to
swindle the Law.

     FALDER has come from the window.  The three men look at him in a
     sort of awed silence.

FALDER.  [With instinctive apprehension of some change--looking from
one to the other]  There's been nothing between us, sir, to prevent
it .  .  .  .  What I said at the trial was true.  And last night we
only just sat in the Park.

SWEEDLE comes in from the outer office.

COKESON.  What is it?

SWEEDLE.  Mrs. Honeywill.   [There is silence]

JAMES.  Show her in.

     RUTH comes slowly in, and stands stoically with FALDER on one
     side and the three men on the other.  No one speaks.  COKESON
     turns to his table, bending over his papers as though the burden
     of the situation were forcing him back into his accustomed
     groove.

JAMES.  [Sharply]  Shut the door there.  [SWEEDLE shuts the door]
We've asked you to come up because there are certain facts to be
faced in this matter.  I understand you have only just met Falder
again.

RUTH.  Yes--only yesterday.

JAMES.  He's told us about himself, and we're very sorry for him.
I've promised to take him back here if he'll make a fresh start.
[Looking steadily at RUTH] This is a matter that requires courage,
ma'am.

RUTH, who is looking at FALDER, begins to twist her hands in front of
her as though prescient of disaster.

FALDER.  Mr. Walter How is good enough to say that he'll help us to
get you a divorce.

     RUTH flashes a startled glance at JAMES and WALTER.

JAMES.  I don't think that's practicable, Falder.

FALDER.  But, Sir----!

JAMES.  [Steadily]  Now, Mrs. Honeywill.  You're fond of him.

RUTH.  Yes, Sir; I love him.

     She looks miserably at FALDER.

JAMES.  Then you don't want to stand in his way, do you?

RUTH.  [In a faint voice] I could take care of him.

JAMES.  The best way you can take care of him will be to give him up.

FALDER.  Nothing shall make me give you up.  You can get a divorce.
There's been nothing between us, has there?

RUTH.  [Mournfully shaking her head-without looking at him]  No.

FALDER.  We'll keep apart till it's over, sir; if you'll only help
us--we promise.

JAMES.  [To RUTH]  You see the thing plainly, don't you?  You see
what I mean?

RUTH.  [Just above a whisper]  Yes.

COKESON.  [To himself] There's a dear woman.

JAMES.  The situation is impossible.

RUTH.  Must I, Sir?

JAMES.  [Forcing himself to look at her] I put it to you, ma'am.  His
future is in your hands.

RUTH.  [Miserably] I want to do the best for him.

JAMES.  [A little huskily] That's right, that's right!

FALDER.  I don't understand.  You're not going to give me up--after
all this?  There's something--[Starting forward to JAMES] Sir, I
swear solemnly there's been nothing between us.

JAMES.  I believe you, Falder.  Come, my lad, be as plucky as she is.

FALDER.  Just now you were going to help us.  [He starts at RUTH, who
is standing absolutely still; his face and hands twitch and quiver as
the truth dawns on him]  What is it?  You've not been

WALTER.  Father!

JAMES.  [Hurriedly]  There, there!  That'll do, that'll do!  I'll
give you your chance, Falder.  Don't let me know what you do with
yourselves, that's all.

FALDER.  [As if he has not heard] Ruth?

     RUTH looks at him; and FALDER covers his face with his hands.
     There is silence.

COKESON.  [Suddenly]  There's some one out there.  [To RUTH]  Go in
here.  You'll feel better by yourself for a minute.

     He points to the clerks' room and moves towards the outer
     office.  FALDER does not move.  RUTH puts out her hand timidly.
     He shrinks back from the touch.  She turns and goes miserably
     into the clerks' room.  With a brusque movement he follows,
     seizing her by the shoulder just inside the doorway.  COKESON
     shuts the door.

JAMES.  [Pointing to the outer office]  Get rid of that, whoever it
is.

SWEEDLE.  [Opening the office door, in a scared voice]  Detective-
Sergeant blister.

     The detective enters, and closes the door behind him.

WISTER.  Sorry to disturb you, sir.  A clerk you had here, two years
and a half ago: I arrested him in, this room.

JAMES.  What about him?

WISTER.  I thought perhaps I might get his whereabouts from you.
[There is an awkward silence]

COKESON.  [Pleasantly, coming to the rescue] We're not responsible
for his movements; you know that.

JAMES.  What do you want with him?

WISTER.  He's failed to report himself this last four weeks.

WALTER.  How d'you mean?

WISTER.  Ticket-of-leave won't be up for another six months, sir.

WALTER.  Has he to keep in touch with the police till then?

WISTER.  We're bound to know where he sleeps every night.  I dare say
we shouldn't interfere, sir, even though he hasn't reported himself.
But we've just heard there's a serious matter of obtaining employment
with a forged reference.  What with the two things together--we must
have him.

     Again there is silence.  WALTER and COKESON steal glances at
     JAMES, who stands staring steadily at the detective.

COKESON.  [Expansively]  We're very busy at the moment.  If you could
make it convenient to call again we might be able to tell you then.

JAMES.  [Decisively] I'm a servant of the Law, but I dislike
peaching.  In fact, I can't do such a thing.  If you want him you
must find him without us.

     As he speaks his eye falls on FALDER'S cap, still lying on the
     table, and his face contracts.

WISTER.  [Noting the gesture--quietly]  Very good, sir.  I ought to
warn you that, having broken the terms of his licence, he's still a
convict, and sheltering a convict.

JAMES.  I shelter no one.  But you mustn't come here and ask
questions which it's not my business to answer.

WISTER.  [Dryly] I won't trouble you further then, gentlemen.

COKESON.  I'm sorry we couldn't give you the information.  You quite
understand, don't you?  Good-morning!

     WISTER turns to go, but instead of going to the door of the
     outer office he goes to the door of the clerks' room.

COKESON.  The other door....  the other door!

     WISTER opens the clerks' door.  RUTHS's voice is heard: "Oh,
     do!" and FALDER,'S: "I can't !"  There is a little pause; then,
     with sharp fright, RUTH says: "Who's that?"

     WISTER has gone in.

     The three men look aghast at the door.

WISTER  [From within]  Keep back, please!

     He comes swiftly out with his arm twisted in FALDER'S.  The
     latter gives a white, staring look at the three men.

WALTER.  Let him go this time, for God's sake!

WISTER.  I couldn't take the responsibility, sir.

FALDER.  [With a queer, desperate laugh]  Good!

     Flinging a look back at RUTH, he throws up his head, and goes
     out through the outer office, half dragging WISTER after him.

WALTER.  [With despair]  That finishes him.  It'll go on for ever
now.

     SWEEDLE can be seen staring through the outer door.  There are
     sounds of footsteps descending the stone stairs; suddenly a dull
     thud, a faint "My God!" in WISTER's voice.

JAMES.  What's that?

     SWEEDLE dashes forward.  The door swings to behind him.  There
     is dead silence.

WALTER.  [Starting forward to the inner room] The woman-she's
fainting!

     He and COKESON support the fainting RUTH from the doorway of the
     clerks' room.

COKESON.  [Distracted]  Here, my dear!  There, there!

WALTER.  Have you any brandy?

COKESON.  I've got sherry.

WALTER.  Get it, then.  Quick!

     He places RUTH in a chair--which JAMES has dragged forward.

COKESON.  [With sherry] Here!  It's good strong sherry.  [They try to
force the sherry between her lips.]

     There is the sound of feet, and they stop to listen.

     The outer door is reopened--WISTER and SWEEDLE are seen carrying
     some burden.

JAMES.  [Hurrying forward]  What is it?

     They lay the burden doom in the outer office, out of sight, and
     all but RUTH cluster round it, speaking in hushed voices.

WISTER.  He jumped--neck's broken.

WALTER.  Good God!

WISTER.  He must have been mad to think he could give me the slip
like that.  And what was it--just a few months!

WALTER.  [Bitterly] Was that all?

JAMES.  What a desperate thing!  [Then, in a voice unlike his own]
Run for a doctor--you!  [SWEEDLE rushes from the outer office] An
ambulance!

     WISTER goes out.  On RUTH's face an expression of fear and
     horror has been seen growing, as if she dared not turn towards
     the voices.  She now rises and steals towards them.

WALTER.  [Turning suddenly] Look!

     The three men shrink back out of her way, one by one, into
     COKESON'S room.  RUTH drops on her knees by the body.

RUTH.  [In a whisper]  What is it?  He's not breathing.  [She
crouches over him]  My dear!  My pretty!

     In the outer office doorway the figures of men am seen standing.

RUTH.  [Leaping to her feet] No, no!  No, no!  He's dead!

     [The figures of the men shrink back]

COKESON.  [Stealing forward.  In a hoarse voice] There, there, poor
dear woman!

     At the sound behind her RUTH faces round at him.

COKESON.  No one'll touch him now!  Never again!  He's safe with
gentle Jesus!

     RUTH stands as though turned to stone in the doorway staring at
     COKESON, who, bending humbly before her, holds out his hand as
     one would to a lost dog.



The curtain falls.





End of this Project Gutenberg Etext of JUSTICE, by John Galsworthy






GALSWORTHY PLAYS--SERIES 3


THE FUGITIVE

A Play in Four Acts




PERSONS OF THE PLAY

GEORGE DEDMOND, a civilian
CLARE, his wife
GENERAL SIR CHARLES DEDMOND, K.C.B., his father.
LADY DEDMOND, his mother
REGINALD HUNTINGDON, Clare's brother
EDWARD FULLARTON, her friend
DOROTHY FULLARTON, her friend
PAYNTER, a manservant
BURNEY, a maid
TWISDEN, a solicitor
HAYWOOD, a tobacconist
MALISE, a writer
MRS. MILER, his caretaker
THE PORTER at his lodgings
A BOY messenger
ARNAUD, a waiter at "The Gascony"
MR. VARLEY, manager of "The Gascony"
TWO LADIES WITH LARGE HATS, A LADY AND GENTLEMAN, A LANGUID LORD,
     HIS COMPANION, A YOUNG MAN, A BLOND GENTLEMAN, A DARK GENTLEMAN.




ACT I.  George Dedmond's Flat.  Evening.

ACT II.  The rooms of Malise.  Morning.

ACT III.  SCENE I.  The rooms of Malice.  Late afternoon.

          SCENE II.      The rooms of Malise.  Early Afternoon.

ACT IV. A small supper room at "The Gascony."




Between Acts I and II three nights elapse.

Between Acts II and Act III, Scene I, three months.

Between Act III, Scene I, and Act III, Scene II, three months.

Between Act III, Scene II, and Act IV, six months.




  "With a hey-ho chivy
  Hark forrard, hark forrard, tantivy!"




ACT I

     The SCENE is the pretty drawing-room of a flat.  There are two
     doors, one open into the hall, the other shut and curtained.
     Through a large bay window, the curtains of which are not yet
     drawn, the towers of Westminster can be seen darkening in a
     summer sunset; a grand piano stands across one corner.  The
     man-servant PAYNTER, clean-shaven and discreet, is arranging two
     tables for Bridge.

     BURNEY, the maid, a girl with one of those flowery Botticellian
     faces only met with in England, comes in through the curtained
     door, which she leaves open, disclosing the glimpse of a white
     wall.  PAYNTER looks up at her; she shakes her head, with an
     expression of concern.

PAYNTER.  Where's she gone?

BURNEY.  Just walks about, I fancy.

PAYNTER.  She and the Governor don't hit it!  One of these days
she'll flit--you'll see.  I like her--she's a lady; but these
thoroughbred 'uns--it's their skin and their mouths.  They'll go till
they drop if they like the job, and if they don't, it's nothing but
jib--jib--jib.  How was it down there before she married him?

BURNEY.  Oh!  Quiet, of course.

PAYNTER.  Country homes--I know 'em.  What's her father, the old
Rector, like?

BURNEY.  Oh! very steady old man.  The mother dead long before I took
the place.

PAYNTER.  Not a penny, I suppose?

BURNEY.  [Shaking her head]  No; and seven of them.

PAYNTER.  [At sound of the hall door]  The Governor!

     BURNEY withdraws through the curtained door.

     GEORGE DEDMOND enters from the hall.  He is in evening dress,
     opera hat, and overcoat; his face is broad, comely, glossily
     shaved, but with neat moustaches.  His eyes, clear, small, and
     blue-grey, have little speculation.  His hair is well brushed.

GEORGE.  [Handing PAYNTER his coat and hat]  Look here, Paynter!
When I send up from the Club for my dress things, always put in a
black waistcoat as well.

PAYNTER.  I asked the mistress, sir.

GEORGE.  In future--see?

PAYNTER.  Yes, sir.  [Signing towards the window]  Shall I leave the
sunset, sir?

     But GEORGE has crossed to the curtained door; he opens it and
     says: "Clare!"  Receiving no answer, he goes in.  PAYNTER
     switches up the electric light.  His face, turned towards the
     curtained door, is apprehensive.

GEORGE.  [Re-entering]  Where's Mrs. Dedmond?

PAYNTER.  I hardly know, sir.

GEORGE.  Dined in?

PAYNTER.  She had a mere nothing at seven, sir.

GEORGE.  Has she gone out, since?

PAYNTER.  Yes, sir--that is, yes.  The--er--mistress was not dressed
at all.  A little matter of fresh air, I think; sir.

GEORGE.  What time did my mother say they'd be here for Bridge?

PAYNTER.  Sir Charles and Lady Dedmond were coming at half-past nine;
and Captain Huntingdon, too--Mr. and Mrs.  Fullarton might be a bit
late, sir.

GEORGE.  It's that now.  Your mistress said nothing?

PAYNTER.  Not to me, sir.

GEORGE.  Send Burney.

PAYNTER.  Very good, sir.  [He withdraws.]

     GEORGE stares gloomily at the card tables.  BURNEY comes in
     front the hall.

GEORGE.  Did your mistress say anything before she went out?

BURNEY.  Yes, sir.

GEORGE.  Well?

BURNEY.  I don't think she meant it, sir.

GEORGE.  I don't want to know what you don't think, I want the fact.

BURNEY.  Yes, sir.  The mistress said: "I hope it'll be a pleasant
evening, Burney!"

GEORGE.  Oh!--Thanks.

BURNEY.  I've put out the mistress's things, sir.

GEORGE.  Ah!

BURNEY.  Thank you, sir.  [She withdraws.]

GEORGE.  Damn!

     He again goes to the curtained door, and passes through.
     PAYNTER, coming in from the hall, announces: "General Sir
     Charles and Lady Dedmond."  SIR CHARLES is an upright, well-
     groomed, grey-moustached, red-faced man of sixty-seven, with a
     keen eye for molehills, and none at all for mountains.  LADY
     DEDMOND has a firm, thin face, full of capability and decision,
     not without kindliness; and faintly weathered, as if she had
     faced many situations in many parts of the world.  She is fifty
     five.

     PAYNTER withdraws.

SIR CHARLES.  Hullo!  Where are they?  H'm!

     As he speaks, GEORGE re-enters.

LADY DEDMOND.  [Kissing her son]  Well, George.  Where's Clare?

GEORGE.  Afraid she's late.

LADY DEDMOND.  Are we early?

GEORGE.  As a matter of fact, she's not in.

LADY DEDMOND.  Oh?

SIR CHARLES.  H'm!  Not--not had a rumpus?

GEORGE.  Not particularly.  [With the first real sign of feeling]
What I can't stand is being made a fool of before other people.
Ordinary friction one can put up with.  But that----

SIR CHARLES.  Gone out on purpose?  What!

LADY DEDMOND.  What was the trouble?

GEORGE.  I told her this morning you were coming in to Bridge.
Appears she'd asked that fellow Malise, for music.

LADY DEDMOND.  Without letting you know?

GEORGE.  I believe she did tell me.

LADY DEDMOND.  But surely----

GEORGE.  I don't want to discuss it.  There's never anything in
particular.  We're all anyhow, as you know.

LADY DEDMOND.  I see.  [She looks shrewdly at her son]  My dear,
I should be rather careful about him, I think.

SIR CHARLES.  Who's that?

LADY DEDMOND.  That Mr. Malise.

SIR CHARLES.  Oh!  That chap!

GEORGE.  Clare isn't that sort.

LADY DEDMOND.  I know.  But she catches up notions very easily.  I
think it's a great pity you ever came across him.

SIR CHARLES.  Where did you pick him up?

GEORGE.  Italy--this Spring--some place or other where they couldn't
speak English.

SIR CHARLES.  Um!  That's the worst of travellin'.

LADY DEDMOND.  I think you ought to have dropped him.  These literary
people---[Quietly]  From exchanging ideas to something else, isn't
very far, George.

SIR CHARLES.  We'll make him play Bridge.  Do him good, if he's that
sort of fellow.

LADY DEDMOND.  Is anyone else coming?

GEORGE.  Reggie Huntingdon, and the Fullartons.

LADY DEDMOND.  [Softly]  You know, my dear boy, I've been meaning to
speak to you for a long time.  It is such a pity you and Clare--What
is it?

GEORGE.  God knows!  I try, and I believe she does.

SIR CHARLES.  It's distressin'--for us, you know, my dear fellow--
distressin'.

LADY DEDMOND.  I know it's been going on for a long time.

GEORGE.  Oh!  leave it alone, mother.

LADY DEDMOND.  But, George, I'm afraid this man has brought it to a
point--put ideas into her head.

GEORGE.  You can't dislike him more than I do.  But there's nothing
one can object to.

LADY DEDMOND.  Could Reggie Huntingdon do anything, now he's home?
Brothers sometimes----

GEORGE.  I can't bear my affairs being messed about----

LADY DEDMOND.  Well! it would be better for you and Clare to be
supposed to be out together, than for her to be out alone.  Go
quietly into the dining-room and wait for her.

SIR CHARLES.  Good!  Leave your mother to make up something.  She'll
do it!

LADY DEDMOND.  That may be he.  Quick!

     [A bell sounds.]

     GEORGE goes out into the hall, leaving the door open in his
     haste.  LADY DEDMOND, following, calls "Paynter!"  PAYNTER
     enters.

LADY DEDMOND.  Don't say anything about your master and mistress
being out.  I'll explain.

PAYNTER.  The master, my lady?

LADY DEDMOND.  Yes, I know.  But you needn't say so.  Do you
understand?

PAYNTER.  [In polite dudgeon]  Just so, my lady.

     [He goes out.]

SIR CHARLES.  By Jove!  That fellow smells a rat!

LADY DEDMOND.  Be careful, Charles!

SIR CHARLES.  I should think so.

LADY DEDMOND.  I shall simply say they're dining out, and that we're
not to wait Bridge for them.

SIR CHARLES.  [Listening]  He's having a palaver with that man of
George's.

     PAYNTER, reappearing, announces: "Captain Huntingdon."  SIR
     CHARLES and LADY DEDMOND turn to him with relief.

LADY DEDMOND.  Ah!  It's you, Reginald!

HUNTINGDON.  [A tall, fair soldier, of thirty] How d'you do?  How are
you, sir?  What's the matter with their man?

SHE CHARLES.  What!

HUNTINGDON.  I was going into the dining-room to get rid of my cigar;
and he said: "Not in there, sir.  The master's there, but my
instructions are to the effect that he's not."

SHE CHARLES.  I knew that fellow----

LADY DEDMOND.  The fact is, Reginald, Clare's out, and George is
waiting for her.  It's so important people shouldn't----

HUNTINGDON.  Rather!

     They draw together, as people do, discussing the misfortunes of
     members of their families.

LADY DEDMOND.  It's getting serious, Reginald.  I don't know what's
to become of them.  You don't think the Rector--you don't think your
father would speak to Clare?

HUNTINGDON.  Afraid the Governor's hardly well enough.  He takes
anything of that sort to heart so--especially Clare.

SIR CHARLES.  Can't you put in a word yourself?

HUNTINGDON.  Don't know where the mischief lies.

SIR CHARLES.  I'm sure George doesn't gallop her on the road.  Very
steady-goin' fellow, old George.

HUNTINGDON.  Oh, yes; George is all right, sir.

LADY DEDMOND.  They ought to have had children.

HUNTINGDON.  Expect they're pretty glad now they haven't.  I really
don't know what to say, ma'am.

SIR CHARLES.  Saving your presence, you know, Reginald, I've often
noticed parsons' daughters grow up queer.  Get too much morality and
rice puddin'.

LADY DEDMOND.  [With a clear look]  Charles!

SIR CHARLES.  What was she like when you were kids?

HUNTINGDON.  Oh, all right.  Could be rather a little devil, of
course, when her monkey was up.

SIR CHARLES.  I'm fond of her.  Nothing she wants that she hasn't
got, is there?

HUNTINGDON.  Never heard her say so.

SIR CHARLES.  [Dimly]  I don't know whether old George is a bit too
matter of fact for her.  H'm?

     [A short silence.]

LADY DEDMOND.  There's a Mr. Malise coming here to-night.  I forget
if you know him.

HUNTINGDON.  Yes.  Rather a thorough-bred mongrel.

LADY DEDMOND.  He's literary.  [With hesitation]  You--you don't
think he--puts--er--ideas into her head?

HUNTINGDON.  I asked Greyman, the novelist, about him; seems he's a
bit of an Ishmaelite, even among those fellows.  Can't see Clare----

LADY DEDMOND.  No.  Only, the great thing is that she shouldn't be
encouraged.  Listen!--It is her-coming in.  I can hear their voices.
Gone to her room.  What a blessing that man isn't here yet!  [The
door bell rings] Tt!  There he is, I expect.

SIR CHARLES.  What are we goin' to say?

HUNTINGDON.  Say they're dining out, and we're not to wait Bridge for
them.

SIR CHARLES.  Good!

     The door is opened, and PAYNTER announces "Mr. Kenneth Malise."
     MALISE enters.  He is a tall man, about thirty-five, with a
     strongly marked, dark, irregular, ironic face, and eyes which
     seem to have needles in their pupils.  His thick hair is rather
     untidy, and his dress clothes not too new.

LADY DEDMOND.  How do you do?  My son and daughter-in-law are so very
sorry.  They'll be here directly.

     [MALISE bows with a queer, curly smile.]

SIR CHARLES.  [Shaking hands] How d'you do, sir?

HUNTINGDON.  We've met, I think.

     He gives MALISE that peculiar smiling stare, which seems to warn
     the person bowed to of the sort of person he is.  MALISE'S eyes
     sparkle.

LADY DEDMOND.  Clare will be so grieved.  One of those invitations

MALISE.  On the spur of the moment.

SIR CHARLES.  You play Bridge, sir?

MALISE.  Afraid not!

SIR CHARLES.  Don't mean that?  Then we shall have to wait for 'em.

LADY DEDMOND.  I forget, Mr. Malise--you write, don't you?

MALISE.  Such is my weakness.

LADY DEDMOND.  Delightful profession.

SIR CHARLES.  Doesn't tie you!  What!

MALISE.  Only by the head.

SIR CHARLES.  I'm always thinkin' of writin' my experiences.

MALISE.  Indeed!

[There is the sound of a door banged.]

SIR CHARLES.  [Hastily]  You smoke, Mr.  MALISE?

MALISE.  Too much.

SIR CHARLES.  Ah!  Must smoke when you think a lot.

MALISE.  Or think when you smoke a lot.

SIR CHARLES.  [Genially]  Don't know that I find that.

LADY DEDMOND.  [With her clear look at him]  Charles!

     The door is opened.  CLARE DEDMOND in a cream-coloured evening
     frock comes in from the hall, followed by GEORGE.  She is rather
     pale, of middle height, with a beautiful figure, wavy brown
     hair, full, smiling lips, and large grey mesmeric eyes, one of
     those women all vibration, iced over with a trained stoicism of
     voice and manner.

LADY DEDMOND.  Well, my dear!

SIR CHARLES.  Ah!  George.  Good dinner?

GEORGE.  [Giving his hand to MALISE]  How are you?  Clare!  Mr.
MALISE!

CLARE.  [Smiling-in a clear voice with the faintest possible lisp]
Yes, we met on the door-mat.  [Pause.]

SIR CHARLES.  Deuce you did!  [An awkward pause.]

LADY DEDMOND.  [Acidly]  Mr. Malise doesn't play Bridge, it appears.
Afraid we shall be rather in the way of music.

SIR CHARLES.  What!  Aren't we goin' to get a game?  [PAYNTER has
entered with a tray.]

GEORGE.  Paynter!  Take that table into the dining room.

PAYNTER.  [Putting down the tray on a table behind the door]  Yes,
sir.

MALISE.  Let me give you a hand.

     PAYNTER and MALISE carry one of the Bridge tables out, GEORGE
     making a half-hearted attempt to relieve MALISE.

SIR CHARLES.  Very fine sunset!

     Quite softly CLARE begins to laugh.  All look at her first with
     surprise, then with offence, then almost with horror.  GEORGE is
     about to go up to her, but HUNTINGDON heads him off.

HUNTINGDON.  Bring the tray along, old man.

     GEORGE takes up the tray, stops to look at CLARE, then allows
     HUNTINGDON to shepherd him out.

LADY DEDMOND.  [Without looking at CLARE]  Well, if we're going to
play, Charles? [She jerks his sleeve.]

SIR CHARLES.  What?  [He marches out.]

LADY DEDMOND.  [Meeting MALISE in the doorway]  Now you will be able
to have your music.

     [She follows the GENERAL out]

     [CLARE stands perfectly still, with her eyes closed.]

MALISE.  Delicious!

CLARE.  [In her level, clipped voice]  Perfectly beastly of me!  I'm
so sorry.  I simply can't help running amok to-night.

MALISE.  Never apologize for being fey.  It's much too rare.

CLARE.  On the door-mat!  And they'd whitewashed me so beautifully!
Poor dears!  I wonder if I ought----[She looks towards the door.]

MALISE.  Don't spoil it!

CLARE.  I'd been walking up and down the Embankment for about three
hours.  One does get desperate sometimes.

MALISE.  Thank God for that!

CLARE.  Only makes it worse afterwards.  It seems so frightful to
them, too.

MALISE.  [Softly and suddenly, but with a difficulty in finding the
right words]  Blessed be the respectable!  May they dream of--me!
And blessed be all men of the world!  May they perish of a surfeit
of--good form!

CLARE.  I like that.  Oh, won't there be a row!  [With a faint
movement of her shoulders]  And the usual reconciliation.

MALISE.  Mrs. Dedmond, there's a whole world outside yours.  Why
don't you spread your wings?

CLARE.  My dear father's a saint, and he's getting old and frail; and
I've got a sister engaged; and three little sisters to whom I'm
supposed to set a good example.  Then, I've no money, and I can't do
anything for a living, except serve in a shop.  I shouldn't be free,
either; so what's the good?  Besides, I oughtn't to have married if I
wasn't going to be happy.  You see, I'm not a bit misunderstood or
ill-treated.  It's only----

MALISE.  Prison.  Break out!

CLARE.  [Turning to the window]  Did you see the sunset?  That white
cloud trying to fly up?

     [She holds up her bare arms, with a motion of flight.]

MALISE.  [Admiring her] Ah-h-h!  [Then, as she drops her arms
suddenly]  Play me something.

CLARE.  [Going to the piano]  I'm awfully grateful to you.  You don't
make me feel just an attractive female.  I wanted somebody like that.
[Letting her hands rest on the notes]  All the same, I'm glad not to
be ugly.

MALISE.  Thank God for beauty!

PAYNTER.  [Opening the door]  Mr. and Mrs. Fullarton.

MALISE.  Who are they?

CLARE.  [Rising]  She's my chief pal.  He was in the Navy.

     She goes forward.  MRS.  FULLERTON is a rather tall woman, with
     dark hair and a quick eye.  He, one of those clean-shaven naval
     men of good presence who have retired from the sea, but not from
     their susceptibility.

MRS. FULLARTON.  [Kissing CLARE, and taking in both MALISE and her
husband's look at CLARE]  We've only come for a minute.

CLARE.  They're playing Bridge in the dining-room.  Mr. Malise
doesn't play.  Mr. Malise--Mrs. Fullarton, Mr. Fullarton.

     [They greet.]

FULLARTON.  Most awfully jolly dress, Mrs. Dedmond.

MRS. FULLARTON.  Yes, lovely, Clare.  [FULLARTON abases eyes which
mechanically readjust themselves]  We can't stay for Bridge, my dear;
I just wanted to see you a minute, that's all.  [Seeing HUNTINGDON
coming in she speaks in a low voice to her husband]  Edward, I want
to speak to Clare.  How d'you do, Captain Huntingdon?

MALISE.  I'll say good-night.

     He shakes hands with CLARE, bows to MRS. FULLARTON, and makes
     his way out.  HUNTINGDON and FULLERTON foregather in the
     doorway.

MRS. FULLARTON.  How are things, Clare?  [CLARE just moves her
shoulders]  Have you done what I suggested?  Your room?

CLARE.  No.

MRS. FULLARTON.  Why not?

CLARE.  I don't want to torture him.  If I strike--I'll go clean.  I
expect I shall strike.

MRS. FULLARTON.  My dear!  You'll have the whole world against you.

CLARE.  Even you won't back me, Dolly?

MRS. FULLARTON.  Of course I'll back you, all that's possible, but I
can't invent things.

CLARE.  You wouldn't let me come to you for a bit, till I could find
my feet?

     MRS. FULLARTON, taken aback, cannot refrain from her glance at
     FULLARTON automatically gazing at CLARE while he talks with
     HUNTINGDON.

MRS. FULLARTON.  Of course--the only thing is that----

CLARE.  [With a faint smile]  It's all right, Dolly.  I'm not coming.

MRS. FULLARTON.  Oh!  don't do anything desperate, Clare--you are so
desperate sometimes.  You ought to make terms--not tracks.

CLARE.  Haggle?  [She shakes her head]  What have I got to make terms
with?  What he still wants is just what I hate giving.

MRS. FULLARTON.  But, Clare----

CLARE.  No, Dolly; even you don't understand.  All day and every day
--just as far apart as we can be--and still--Jolly, isn't it?  If
you've got a soul at all.

MRS. FULLARTON.  It's awful, really.

CLARE.  I suppose there are lots of women who feel as I do, and go on
with it; only, you see, I happen to have something in me that--comes
to an end.  Can't endure beyond a certain time, ever.

     She has taken a flower from her dress, and suddenly tears it to
     bits.  It is the only sign of emotion she has given.

MRS. FULLARTON.  [Watching]  Look here, my child; this won't do.  You
must get a rest.  Can't Reggie take you with him to India for a bit?

CLARE.  [Shaking her head]  Reggie lives on his pay.

MRS. FULLARTON.  [With one of her quick looks]  That was Mr. Malise,
then?

FULLARTON.  [Coming towards them]  I say, Mrs. Dedmond, you wouldn't
sing me that little song you sang the other night,  [He hums]  "If I
might be the falling bee and kiss thee all the day"?  Remember?

MRS. FULLARTON.  "The falling dew," Edward.  We simply must go,
Clare.  Good-night.  [She kisses her.]

FULLARTON.  [Taking half-cover between his wife and CLARE]  It suits
you down to the ground-that dress.

CLARE.  Good-night.

     HUNTINGDON sees them out.  Left alone CLARE clenches her hands,
     moves swiftly across to the window, and stands looking out.

HUNTINGDON.  [Returning]  Look here, Clare!

CLARE.  Well, Reggie?

HUNTINGDON.  This is working up for a mess, old girl.  You can't do
this kind of thing with impunity.  No man'll put up with it.  If
you've got anything against George, better tell me.  [CLARE shakes
her head]  You ought to know I should stick by you.  What is it?
Come?

CLARE.  Get married, and find out after a year that she's the wrong
person; so wrong that you can't exchange a single real thought; that
your blood runs cold when she kisses you--then you'll know.

HUNTINGDON.  My dear old girl, I don't want to be a brute; but it's a
bit difficult to believe in that, except in novels.

CLARE.  Yes, incredible, when you haven't tried.

HUNTINGDON.  I mean, you--you chose him yourself.  No one forced you
to marry him.

CLARE.  It does seem monstrous, doesn't it?

HUNTINGDON.  My dear child, do give us a reason.

CLARE.  Look!  [She points out at the night and the darkening towers]
If George saw that for the first time he'd just say, "Ah,
Westminster!  Clock Tower!  Can you see the time by it?"  As if one
cared where or what it was--beautiful like that!  Apply that to every
--every--everything.

HUNTINGDON.  [Staring] George may be a bit prosaic.  But, my dear old
girl, if that's all----

CLARE.  It's not all--it's nothing.  I can't explain, Reggie--it's
not reason, at all; it's--it's like being underground in a damp cell;
it's like knowing you'll never get out.  Nothing coming--never
anything coming again-never anything.

HUNTINGDON.  [Moved and puzzled]  My dear old thing; you mustn't get
into fantods like this.  If it's like that, don't think about it.

CLARE.  When every day and every night!--Oh!  I know it's my fault
for having married him, but that doesn't help.

HUNTINGDON.  Look here!  It's not as if George wasn't quite a decent
chap.  And it's no use blinking things; you are absolutely dependent
on him.  At home they've got every bit as much as they can do to keep
going.

CLARE.  I know.

HUNTINGDON.  And you've got to think of the girls.  Any trouble would
be very beastly for them.  And the poor old Governor would feel it
awfully.

CLARE.  If I didn't know all that, Reggie, I should have gone home
long ago.

HUNTINGDON.  Well, what's to be done?  If my pay would run to it--but
it simply won't.

CLARE.  Thanks, old boy, of course not.

HUNTINGDON.  Can't you try to see George's side of it a bit?

CLARE.  I do.  Oh!  don't let's talk about it.

HUNTINGDON.  Well, my child, there's just one thing you won't go
sailing near the wind, will you?  I mean, there are fellows always on
the lookout.

CLARE.  "That chap, Malise, you'd better avoid him!"  Why?

HUNTINGDON.  Well!  I don't know him.  He may be all right, but he's
not our sort.  And you're too pretty to go on the tack of the New
Woman and that kind of thing--haven't been brought up to it.

CLARE.  British home-made summer goods, light and attractive--don't
wear long.  [At the sound of voices in the hall]  They seem 'to be
going, Reggie.

     [HUNTINGDON looks at her, vexed, unhappy.]

HUNTINGDON.  Don't head for trouble, old girl.  Take a pull.  Bless
you!  Good-night.

     CLARE kisses him, and when he has gone turns away from the door,
     holding herself in, refusing to give rein to some outburst of
     emotion.  Suddenly she sits down at the untouched Bridge table,
     leaning her bare elbows on it and her chin on her hands, quite
     calm.  GEORGE is coming in.  PAYNTER follows him.

CLARE.  Nothing more wanted, thank you, Paynter.  You can go home,
and the maids can go to bed.

PAYNTER.  We are much obliged, ma'am.

CLARE.  I ran over a dog, and had to get it seen to.

PAYNTER.  Naturally, ma'am!

CLARE.  Good-night.

PAYNTER.  I couldn't get you a little anything, ma'am?

CLARE.  No, thank you.

PAYNTER.  No, ma'am.  Good-night, ma'am.

     [He withdraws.]

GEORGE.  You needn't have gone out of your way to tell a lie that
wouldn't deceive a guinea-pig.  [Going up to her]  Pleased with
yourself to-night?  [CLARE shakes her head]  Before that fellow
MALISE; as if our own people weren't enough!

CLARE.  Is it worth while to rag me?  I know I've behaved badly, but
I couldn't help it, really!

GEORGE.  Couldn't help behaving like a shop-girl?  My God!  You were
brought up as well as I was.

CLARE.  Alas!

GEORGE.  To let everybody see that we don't get on--there's only one
word for it--Disgusting!

CLARE.  I know.

GEORGE.  Then why do you do it?  I've always kept my end up.  Why in
heaven's name do you behave in this crazy way?

CLARE.  I'm sorry.

GEORGE.  [With intense feeling]  You like making a fool of me!

CLARE.  No--Really!  Only--I must break out sometimes.

GEORGE.  There are things one does not do.

CLARE.  I came in because I was sorry.

GEORGE.  And at once began to do it again!  It seems to me you
delight in rows.

CLARE.  You'd miss your--reconciliations.

GEORGE.  For God's sake, Clare, drop cynicism!

CLARE.  And truth?

GEORGE.  You are my wife, I suppose.

CLARE.  And they twain shall be one--spirit.

GEORGE.  Don't talk wild nonsense!

     [There is silence.]

CLARE.  [Softly]  I don't give satisfaction.  Please give me notice!

GEORGE.  Pish!

CLARE.  Five years, and four of them like this!  I'm sure we've
served our time.  Don't you really think we might get on better
together--if I went away?

GEORGE.  I've told you I won't stand a separation for no real reason,
and have your name bandied about all over London.  I have some
primitive sense of honour.

CLARE.  You mean your name, don't you?

GEORGE.  Look here.  Did that fellow Malise put all this into your
head?

CLARE.  No; my own evil nature.

GEORGE.  I wish the deuce we'd never met him.  Comes of picking up
people you know nothing of.  I distrust him--and his looks--and his
infernal satiric way.  He can't even 'dress decently.  He's not--good
form.

CLARE.  [With a touch of rapture]  Ah-h!

GEORGE.  Why do you let him come?  What d'you find interesting in
him?

CLARE.  A mind.

GEORGE.  Deuced funny one!  To have a mind--as you call it--it's not
necessary to talk about Art and Literature.

CLARE.  We don't.

GEORGE.  Then what do you talk about--your minds?  [CLARE looks at
him]  Will you answer a straight question?  Is he falling in love
with you?

CLARE.  You had better ask him.

GEORGE.  I tell you plainly, as a man of the world, I don't believe
in the guide, philosopher and friend business.

CLARE.  Thank you.

     A silence.  CLARE suddenly clasps her hands behind her head.

CLARE.  Let me go!  You'd be much happier with any other woman.

GEORGE.  Clare!

CLARE.  I believe--I'm sure I could earn my living.  Quite serious.

GEORGE.  Are you mad?

CLARE.  It has been done.

GEORGE.  It will never be done by you--understand that!

CLARE.  It really is time we parted.  I'd go clean out of your life.
I don't want your support unless I'm giving you something for your
money.

GEORGE.  Once for all, I don't mean to allow you to make fools of us
both.

CLARE.  But if we are already!  Look at us.  We go on, and on.  We're
a spectacle!

GEORGE.  That's not my opinion; nor the opinion of anyone, so long as
you behave yourself.

CLARE.  That is--behave as you think right.

GEORGE.  Clare, you're pretty riling.

CLARE.  I don't want to be horrid.  But I am in earnest this time.

GEORGE.  So am I.

     [CLARE turns to the curtained door.]

GEORGE.  Look here!  I'm sorry.  God knows I don't want to be a
brute.  I know you're not happy.

CLARE.  And you--are you happy?

GEORGE.  I don't say I am.  But why can't we be?

CLARE.  I see no reason, except that you are you, and I am I.

GEORGE.  We can try.

CLARE.  I HAVE--haven't you?

GEORGE.  We used----

CLARE.  I wonder!

GEORGE.  You know we did.

CLARE.  Too long ago--if ever.

GEORGE [Coming closer] I--still----

CLARE.  [Making a barrier of her hand]  You know that's only cupboard
love.

GEORGE.  We've got to face the facts.

CLARE.  I thought I was.

GEORGE.  The facts are that we're married--for better or worse, and
certain things are expected of us.  It's suicide for you, and folly
for me, in my position, to ignore that.  You have all you can
reasonably want; and I don't--don't wish for any change.  If you
could bring anything against me--if I drank, or knocked about town,
or expected too much of you.  I'm not unreasonable in any way, that I
can see.

CLARE.  Well, I think we've talked enough.

     [She again moves towards the curtained door.]

GEORGE.  Look here, Clare; you don't mean you're expecting me to put
up with the position of a man who's neither married nor unmarried?
That's simple purgatory.  You ought to know.

CLARE.  Yes.  I haven't yet, have I?

GEORGE.  Don't go like that!  Do you suppose we're the only couple
who've found things aren't what they thought, and have to put up with
each other and make the best of it.

CLARE.  Not by thousands.

GEORGE.  Well, why do you imagine they do it?

CLARE.  I don't know.

GEORGE.  From a common sense of decency.

CLARE.  Very!

GEORGE.  By Jove!  You can be the most maddening thing in all the
world!  [Taking up a pack of cards, he lets them fall with a long
slithering flutter]  After behaving as you have this evening, you
might try to make some amends, I should think.

     CLARE moves her head from side to side, as if in sight of
     something she could not avoid.  He puts his hand on her arm.

CLARE.  No, no--no!

GEORGE.  [Dropping his hand]  Can't you make it up?

CLARE.  I don't feel very Christian.

     She opens the door, passes through, and closes it behind her.
     GEORGE steps quickly towards it, stops, and turns back into the
     room.  He goes to the window and stands looking out; shuts it
     with a bang, and again contemplates the door.  Moving forward,
     he rests his hand on the deserted card table, clutching its
     edge, and muttering.  Then he crosses to the door into the hall
     and switches off the light.  He opens the door to go out, then
     stands again irresolute in the darkness and heaves a heavy sigh.
     Suddenly he mutters: "No!"  Crosses resolutely back to the
     curtained door, and opens it.  In the gleam of light CLARE is
     standing, unhooking a necklet.

     He goes in, shutting the door behind him with a thud.


                              CURTAIN.





ACT II

     The scene is a large, whitewashed, disordered room, whose outer
     door opens on to a corridor and stairway.  Doors on either side
     lead to other rooms.  On the walls are unframed reproductions of
     fine pictures, secured with tintacks.  An old wine-coloured
     armchair of low and comfortable appearance, near the centre of
     the room, is surrounded by a litter of manuscripts, books, ink,
     pens and newspapers, as though some one had already been up to
     his neck in labour, though by a grandfather's clock it is only
     eleven.  On a smallish table close by, are sheets of paper,
     cigarette ends, and two claret bottles.  There are many books on
     shelves, and on the floor, an overflowing pile, whereon rests a
     soft hat, and a black knobby stick.  MALISE sits in his
     armchair, garbed in trousers, dressing-gown, and slippers,
     unshaved and uncollared, writing.  He pauses, smiles, lights a
     cigarette, and tries the rhythm of the last sentence, holding up
     a sheet of quarto MS.

MALISE.  "Not a word, not a whisper of Liberty from all those
excellent frock-coated gentlemen--not a sign, not a grimace.  Only
the monumental silence of their profound deference before triumphant
Tyranny."

     While he speaks, a substantial woman, a little over middle-age,
     in old dark clothes and a black straw hat, enters from the
     corridor.  She goes to a cupboard, brings out from it an apron
     and a Bissell broom.  Her movements are slow and imperturbable,
     as if she had much time before her.  Her face is broad and dark,
     with Chinese eyebrows.

MALISE.  Wait, Mrs. Miller!

MRS. MILER.  I'm gettin' be'ind'and, sir.

     She comes and stands before him.  MALISE writes.

MRS. MILER.  There's a man 'angin' about below.

     MALISE looks up; seeing that she has roused his attention, she
     stops.  But as soon as he is about to write again, goes on.

MRS. MILER.  I see him first yesterday afternoon.  I'd just been out
to get meself a pennyworth o' soda, an' as I come in I passed 'im on
the second floor, lookin' at me with an air of suspicion.  I thought
to meself at the time, I thought: You're a'andy sort of 'ang-dog man.

MALISE.  Well?

MRS. MILER.  Well-peekin' down through the balusters, I see 'im
lookin' at a photograft.  That's a funny place, I thinks, to look at
pictures--it's so dark there, ye 'ave to use yer eyesight.  So I giv'
a scrape with me 'eel [She illustrates] an' he pops it in his pocket,
and puts up 'is 'and to knock at number three.  I goes down an' I
says: "You know there's no one lives there, don't yer?"  "Ah!" 'e
says with an air of innercence, "I wants the name of Smithers."
"Oh!" I says, "try round the corner, number ten."  "Ah!" 'e says
tactful, "much obliged."  "Yes," I says, "you'll find 'im in at this
time o' day.  Good evenin'!"  And I thinks to meself  [She closes one
eye] Rats!  There's a good many corners hereabouts.

MALISE.  [With detached appreciation]  Very good, Mrs. Miler.

MRS. MILER.  So this mornin', there e' was again on the first floor
with 'is 'and raised, pretendin' to knock at number two.  "Oh!
you're still lookin' for 'im?" I says, lettin' him see I was 'is
grandmother.  "Ah!" 'e says, affable, "you misdirected me; it's here
I've got my business."  "That's lucky," I says, "cos nobody lives
there neither.  Good mornin'!"  And I come straight up.  If you want
to see 'im at work you've only to go downstairs, 'e'll be on the
ground floor by now, pretendin' to knock at number one.  Wonderful
resource!

MALISE.  What's he like, this gentleman?

MRS. MILER.  Just like the men you see on the front page o' the daily
papers.  Nasty, smooth-lookin' feller, with one o' them billycock
hats you can't abide.

MALISE.  Isn't he a dun?

MRS. MILER.  They don't be'ave like that; you ought to know, sir.
He's after no good.  [Then, after a little pause]  Ain't he to be put
a stop to?  If I took me time I could get 'im, innercent-like, with a
jug o' water.

     [MALISE, smiling, shakes his head.]

MALISE.  You can get on now; I'm going to shave.

     He looks at the clock, and passes out into the inner room.  MRS.
     MILER, gazes round her, pins up her skirt, sits down in the
     armchair, takes off her hat and puts it on the table, and slowly
     rolls up her sleeves; then with her hands on her knees she
     rests.  There is a soft knock on the door.  She gets up
     leisurely and moves flat-footed towards it.  The door being
     opened CLARE is revealed.

CLARE.  Is Mr. Malise in?

MRS. MILER.  Yes.  But 'e's dressin'.

CLARE.  Oh.

MRS. MILER.  Won't take 'im long.  What name?

CLARE.  Would you say--a lady.

MRS. MILER.  It's against the rules.  But if you'll sit down a moment
I'll see what I can do.  [She brings forward a chair and rubs it with
her apron.  Then goes to the door of the inner room and speaks
through it]  A lady to see you.  [Returning she removes some
cigarette ends]  This is my hour.  I shan't make much dust.  [Noting
CLARE's eyebrows raised at the debris round the armchair]  I'm
particular about not disturbin' things.

CLARE.  I'm sure you are.

MRS. MILER.  He likes 'is 'abits regular.

     Making a perfunctory pass with the Bissell broom, she runs it to
     the cupboard, comes back to the table, takes up a bottle and
     holds it to the light; finding it empty, she turns it upside
     down and drops it into the wastepaper basket; then, holding up
     the other bottle, arid finding it not empty, she corks it and
     drops it into the fold of her skirt.

MRS. MILER.  He takes his claret fresh-opened--not like these 'ere
bawgwars.

CLARE.  [Rising] I think I'll come back later.

MRS. MILER.  Mr. Malise is not in my confidence.  We keep each other
to ourselves.  Perhaps you'd like to read the paper; he has it fresh
every mornin'--the Westminister.

     She plucks that journal from out of the armchair and hands it to
     CLARE, who sits doom again unhappily to brood.  MRS. MILER makes
     a pass or two with a very dirty duster, then stands still.  No
     longer hearing sounds, CLARE looks up.

MRS. MILER.  I wouldn't interrupt yer with my workin,' but 'e likes
things clean.  [At a sound from the inner room]  That's 'im; 'e's cut
'isself!  I'll just take 'im the tobaccer!

     She lifts a green paper screw of tobacco from the debris round
     the armchair and taps on the door.  It opens.  CLARE moves
     restlessly across the room.

MRS. MILER.  [Speaking into the room] The tobaccer.  The lady's
waitin'.

     CLARE has stopped before a reproduction of Titian's picture
     "Sacred and Profane Love."  MRS. MILER stands regarding her with
     a Chinese smile.  MALISE enters, a thread of tobacco still
     hanging to his cheek.

MALISE.  [Taking MRS. MILER's hat off the table and handing it to
her] Do the other room.

     [Enigmatically she goes.]

MALISE.  Jolly of you to come.  Can I do anything?

CLARE.  I want advice-badly.

MALISE.  What!  Spreading your wings?

CLARE.  Yes.

MALISE.  Ah!  Proud to have given you that advice.  When?

CLARE.  The morning after you gave it me .  .  .

MALISE.  Well?

CLARE.  I went down to my people.  I knew it would hurt my Dad
frightfully, but somehow I thought I could make him see.  No good.
He was awfully sweet, only--he couldn't.

MALISE.  [Softly]  We English love liberty in those who don't belong
to us.  Yes.

CLARE.  It was horrible.  There were the children--and my old nurse.
I could never live at home now.  They'd think I was----.  Impossible
--utterly!  I'd  made up my mind to go back to my owner--And then--
he came down himself.  I couldn't d it.  To be hauled back and begin
all over again; I simply couldn't.  I watched for a chance; and ran
to the station, and came up to an hotel.

MALISE.  Bravo!

CLARE.  I don't know--no pluck this morning!  You see, I've got to
earn my living--no money; only a few things I can sell.  All
yesterday I was walking about, looking at the women.  How does anyone
ever get a chance?

MALISE.  Sooner than you should hurt his dignity by working, your
husband would pension you off.

CLARE.  If I don't go back to him I couldn't take it.

MALISE.  Good!

CLARE.  I've thought of nursing, but it's a long training, and I do
so hate watching pain.  The fact is, I'm pretty hopeless; can't even
do art work.  I came to ask you about the stage.

MALISE.  Have you ever acted?  [CLARE shakes her head]  You mightn't
think so, but I've heard there's a prejudice in favour of training.
There's Chorus--I don't recommend it.  How about your brother?

CLARE.  My brother's got nothing to spare, and he wants to get
married; and he's going back to India in September.  The only friend
I should care to bother is Mrs. Fullarton, and she's--got a husband.

MALISE.  I remember the gentleman.

CLARE.  Besides, I should be besieged day and night to go back.  I
must lie doggo somehow.

MALISE.  It makes my blood boil to think of women like you.  God help
all ladies without money.

CLARE.  I expect I shall have to go back.

MALISE.  No, no!  We shall find something.  Keep your soul alive at
all costs.  What! let him hang on to you till you're nothing but--
emptiness and ache, till you lose even the power to ache.  Sit in his
drawing-room, pay calls, play Bridge, go out with him to dinners,
return to--duty; and feel less and less, and be less and less, and so
grow old and--die!

     [The bell rings.]

MALISE.  [Looking at the door in doubt]  By the wayhe'd no means of
tracing you?

     [She shakes her head.]

     [The bell rings again.]

MALISE.  Was there a man on the stairs as you came up?

CLARE.  Yes.  Why?

MALISE.  He's begun to haunt them, I'm told.

CLARE.  Oh!  But that would mean they thought I--oh!  no!

MALISE.  Confidence in me is not excessive.

CLARE.  Spying!

MALISE.  Will you go in there for a minute?  Or shall we let them
ring--or--what?  It may not be anything, of course.

CLARE.  I'm not going to hide.

     [The bell rings a third time.]

MALISE.  [Opening the door of the inner room]  Mrs. Miler, just see
who it is; and then go, for the present.

     MRS. MILER comes out with her hat on, passes enigmatically to
     the door, and opens it.  A man's voice says: "Mr. Malise?  Would
     you give him these cards?"

MRS. MILER.  [Re-entering]  The cards.

MALISE.  Mr. Robert Twisden.  Sir Charles and Lady Dedmond.  [He
looks at CLARE.]

CLARE.  [Her face scornful and unmoved]  Let them come.

MALISE. [TO MRS. MILER] Show them in!

     TWISDEN enters-a clean-shaved, shrewd-looking man, with a
     fighting underlip, followed by SIR CHARLES and LADY DEDMOND.
     MRS. MILER goes.  There are no greetings.

TWISDEN.  Mr.  Malise?  How do you do, Mrs. Dedmond?  Had the
pleasure of meeting you at your wedding.  [CLARE inclines her head]
I am Mr.  George Dedmond's solicitor, sir.  I wonder if you would be
so very kind as to let us have a few words with Mrs. Dedmond alone?

     At a nod from CLARE, MALISE passes into the inner room, and
     shuts the door.  A silence.

SIR CHARLES.  [Suddenly] What!

LADY DEDMOND.  Mr. Twisden, will you----?

TWISDEN.  [Uneasy]  Mrs. Dedmond I must apologize, but you--you
hardly gave us an alternative, did you?  [He pauses for an answer,
and, not getting one, goes on]  Your disappearance has given your
husband great anxiety.  Really, my dear madam, you must forgive us
for this--attempt to get into communication.

CLARE.  Why did you spy, HERE?

SIR CHARLES.  No, no!  Nobody's spied on you.  What!

TWISDEN.  I'm afraid the answer is that we appear to have been
justified.  [At the expression on CLARE'S face he goes on hastily]
Now, Mrs. Dedmond, I'm a lawyer and I know that appearances are
misleading.  Don't think I'm unfriendly; I wish you well.  [CLARE
raises her eyes.  Moved by that look, which is exactly as if she had
said: "I have no friends," he hurries on]  What we want to say to you
is this: Don't let this split go on!  Don't commit yourself to what
you'll bitterly regret.  Just tell us what's the matter.  I'm sure it
can be put straight.

CLARE.  I have nothing against my husband--it was quite unreasonable
to leave him.

TWISDEN.  Come, that's good.

CLARE.  Unfortunately, there's something stronger than reason.

TWISDEN.  I don't know it, Mrs. Dedmond.

CLARE.  No?

TWISDEN.  [Disconcerted] Are you--you oughtn't to take a step without
advice, in your position.

CLARE.  Nor with it?

TWISDEN.  [Approaching her]  Come, now; isn't there anything you feel
you'd like to say--that might help to put matters straight?

CLARE.  I don't think so, thank you.

LADY DEDMOND.  You must see, Clare, that----

TWISDEN.  In your position, Mrs. Dedmond--a beautiful young woman
without money.  I'm quite blunt.  This is a hard world.  Should be
awfully sorry if anything goes wrong.

CLARE.  And if I go back?

TWISDEN.  Of two evils, if it be so--choose the least!

CLARE.  I am twenty-six; he is thirty-two.  We can't reasonably
expect to die for fifty years.

LADY DESMOND.  That's morbid, Clare.

TWISDEN.  What's open to you if you don't go back?  Come, what's your
position?  Neither fish, flesh, nor fowl; fair game for everybody.
Believe me, Mrs. Dedmond, for a pretty woman to strike, as it appears
you're doing, simply because the spirit of her marriage has taken
flight, is madness.  You must know that no one pays attention to
anything but facts.  If now--excuse me--you--you had a lover, [His
eyes travel round the room and again rest on her]  you would, at all
events, have some ground under your feet, some sort of protection,
but  [He pauses]  as you have not--you've none.

CLARE.  Except what I make myself.

SIR CHARLES.  Good God!

TWISDEN.  Yes!  Mrs. Dedmond!  There's the bedrock difficulty.  As
you haven't money, you should never have been pretty.  You're up
against the world, and you'll get no mercy from it.  We lawyers see
too much of that.  I'm putting it brutally, as a man of the world.

CLARE.  Thank you.  Do you think you quite grasp the alternative?

TWISDEN.  [Taken aback]  But, my dear young lady, there are two sides
to every contract.  After all, your husband's fulfilled his.

CLARE.  So have I up till now.  I shan't ask anything from him--
nothing--do you understand?

LADY DEDMOND.  But, my dear, you must live.

TWISDEN.  Have you ever done any sort of work?

CLARE.  Not yet.

TWISDEN.  Any conception of the competition nowadays?

CLARE.  I can try.

     [TWISDEN, looking at her, shrugs his shoulders]

CLARE.  [Her composure a little broken by that look]  It's real to
me--this--you see!

SIR CHARLES.  But, my dear girl, what the devil's to become of
George?

CLARE.  He can do what he likes--it's nothing to me.

TWISDEN.  Mrs. Dedmond, I say without hesitation you've no notion of
what you're faced with, brought up to a sheltered life as you've
been.  Do realize that you stand at the parting of the ways, and one
leads into the wilderness.

CLARE.  Which?

TWISDEN.  [Glancing at the door through which MALISE has gone]  Of
course, if you want to play at wild asses there are plenty who will
help you.

SIR CHARLES.  By Gad!  Yes!

CLARE.  I only want to breathe.

TWISDEN.  Mrs. Dedmond, go back!  You can now.  It will be too late
soon.  There are lots of wolves about.  [Again he looks at the door]

CLARE.  But not where you think.  You say I need advice.  I came here
for it.

TWISDEN.  [With a curiously expressive shrug]  In that case I don't
know that I can usefully stay.

     [He goes to the outer door.]

CLARE.  Please don't have me followed when I leave here.  Please!

LADY DEDMOND.  George is outside, Clare.

CLARE.  I don't wish to see him.  By what right have you come here?
[She goes to the door through which MALISE has passed, opens it, and
says]  Please come in, Mr. Malise.

     [MALISE enters.]

TWISDEN.  I am sorry.  [Glancing at MALISE, he inclines his head]  I
am sorry.  Good morning.  [He goes]

LADY DEDMOND.  Mr. Malise, I'm sure, will see----

CLARE.  Mr. Malise will stay here, please, in his own room.

     [MALISE bows]

SIR CHARLES.  My dear girl, 'pon my soul, you know, I can't grasp
your line of thought at all!

CLARE.  No?

LADY DEDMOND.  George is most willing to take up things just as they
were before you left.

CLARE.  Ah!

LADY DEDMOND.  Quite frankly--what is it you want?

CLARE.  To be left alone.  Quite frankly, he made a mistake to have
me spied on.

LADY DEDMOND.  But, my good girl, if you'd let us know where you
were, like a reasonable being.  You can't possibly be left to
yourself without money or position of any kind.  Heaven knows what
you'd be driven to!

MALISE.  [Softly] Delicious!

SIR CHARLES.  You will be good enough to repeat that out loud, sir.

LADY DEDMOND.  Charles!  Clare, you must know this is all a fit of
spleen; your duty and your interest--marriage is sacred, Clare.

CLARE.  Marriage!  My marriage has become the--the reconciliation--of
two animals--one of them unwilling.  That's all the sanctity there is
about it.

SIR CHARLES.  What!

     [She looks at MALISE]

LADY DEDMOND.  You ought to be horribly ashamed.  CLARE.  Of the
fact-I am.

LADY DEDMOND.  [Darting a glance at MALISE]  If we are to talk this
out, it must be in private.

MALISE.  [To CLARE]  Do you wish me to go?

CLARE.  No.

LADY DEDMOND.  [At MALISE]  I should have thought ordinary decent
feeling--Good heavens, girl!  Can't you see that you're being played
with?

CLARE.  If you insinuate anything against Mr. Malise, you lie.

LADY DEDMOND.  If you will do these things--come to a man's rooms----

CLARE.  I came to Mr. Malise because he's the only person I know
with imagination enough to see what my position is; I came to him a
quarter of an hour ago, for the first time, for definite advice, and
you instantly suspect him.  That is disgusting.

LADY DEDMOND.  [Frigidly]  Is this the natural place for me to find
my son's wife?

CLARE.  His woman.

LADY DEDMOND.  Will you listen to Reginald?

CLARE.  I have.

LADY DEDMOND.  Haven't you any religious sense at all, Clare?

CLARE.  None, if it's religion to live as we do.

LADY DEDMOND.  It's terrible--this state of mind!  It's really
terrible!

     CLARE breaks into the soft laugh of the other evening.  As if
     galvanized by the sound, SIR CHARLES comes to life out of the
     transfixed bewilderment with which he has been listening.

SIR CHARLES.  For God's sake don't laugh like that!

     [CLARE Stops]

LADY DEDMOND.  [With real feeling]  For the sake of the simple right,
Clare!

CLARE.  Right?  Whatever else is right--our life is not.  [She puts
her hand on her heart] I swear before God that I've tried and tried.
I swear before God, that if I believed we could ever again love each
other only a little tiny bit, I'd go back.  I swear before God that I
don't want to hurt anybody.

LADY DEDMOND.  But you are hurting everybody.  Do--do be reasonable!

CLARE.  [Losing control]  Can't you see that I'm fighting for all my
life to come--not to be buried alive--not to be slowly smothered.
Look at me!  I'm not wax--I'm flesh and blood.  And you want to
prison me for ever--body and soul.

     [They stare at her]

SIR CHARLES.  [Suddenly]  By Jove!  I don't know, I don't know!
What!

LADY DEDMOND.  [To MALISE]  If you have any decency left, sir, you
will allow my son, at all events, to speak to his wife alone.
[Beckoning to her husband] We'll wait below.

SIR CHARLES.  I--I want to speak.  [To CLARE] My dear, if you feel
like this, I can only say--as a--as a gentleman----

LADY DEDMOND.  Charles!

SIR CHARLES.  Let me alone!  I can only say that--damme, I don't know
that I can say anything!

     He looks at her very grieved, then turns and marches out,
     followed by LADY DEDMOND, whose voice is heard without, answered
     by his: "What!"  In the doorway, as they pass, GEORGE is
     standing; he comes in.

GEORGE.  [Going up to CLARE, who has recovered all her self-control]
Will you come outside and speak to me?

CLARE.  No.

     GEORGE glances at MALISE, who is leaning against the wall with
     folded arms.

GEORGE.  [In a low voice]  Clare!

CLARE.  Well!

GEORGE.  You try me pretty high, don't you, forcing me to come here,
and speak before this fellow?  Most men would think the worst,
finding you like this.

CLARE.  You need not have come--or thought at all.

GEORGE.  Did you imagine I was going to let you vanish without an
effort----

CLARE.  To save me?

GEORGE.  For God's sake be just!  I've come here to say certain
things.  If you force me to say them before him--on your head be it!
Will you appoint somewhere else?

CLARE.  No.

GEORGE.  Why not?

CLARE.  I know all those "certain things."  "You must come back.  It
is your duty.  You have no money.  Your friends won't help you.  You
can't earn your living.  You are making a scandal."  You might even
say for the moment: "Your room shall be respected."

GEORGE.  Well, it's true and you've no answer.

CLARE.  Oh!  [Suddenly]  Our life's a lie.  It's stupid; it's
disgusting.  I'm tired of it!  Please leave me alone!

GEORGE.  You rather miss the point, I'm afraid.  I didn't come here
to tell you what you know perfectly well when you're sane.  I came
here to say this: Anyone in her senses could see the game your friend
here is playing.  It wouldn't take a baby in.  If you think that a
gentleman like that  [His stare travels round the dishevelled room
till it rests on MALISE]  champions a pretty woman for nothing, you
make a fairly bad mistake.

CLARE.  Take care.

     But MALISE, after one convulsive movement of his hands, has
     again become rigid.

GEORGE.  I don't pretend to be subtle or that kind of thing; but I
have ordinary common sense.  I don't attempt to be superior to plain
facts----

CLARE.  [Under her breath]  Facts!

GEORGE.  Oh! for goodness' sake drop that hifalutin' tone.  It
doesn't suit you.  Look here!  If you like to go abroad with one of
your young sisters until the autumn, I'll let the flat and go to the
Club.

CLARE.  Put the fire out with a penny hose.  [Slowly]  I am not
coming back to you, George.  The farce is over.

GEORGE.  [Taken aback for a moment by the finality of her tone,
suddenly fronts MALISE] Then there is something between you and this
fellow.

MALISE.  [Dangerously, but without moving]  I beg your pardon!

CLARE.  There--is--nothing.

GEORGE.  [Looking from one to the other]  At all events, I won't--I
won't see a woman who once--[CLARE makes a sudden effacing movement
with her hands]  I won't see her go to certain ruin without lifting a
finger.

CLARE.  That is noble.

GEORGE.  [With intensity]  I don't know that you deserve anything of
me.  But on my honour, as a gentleman, I came here this morning for
your sake, to warn you of what you're doing.  [He turns suddenly on
MALISE]  And I tell this precious friend of yours plainly what I
think of him, and that I'm not going to play into his hands.

     [MALISE, without stirring from the wall, looks at CLARE, and his
     lips move.]

CLARE.  [Shakes her head at him--then to GEORGE]  Will you go,
please?

GEORGE.  I will go when you do.

MALISE.  A man of the world should know better than that.

GEORGE.  Are you coming?

MALISE.  That is inconceivable.

GEORGE.  I'm not speaking to you, sir.

MALISE.  You are right.  Your words and mine will never kiss each
other.

GEORGE.  Will you come?  [CLARE shakes her head]

GEORGE.  [With fury]  D'you mean to stay in this pigsty with that
rhapsodical swine?

MALISE.  [Transformed] By God, if you don't go, I'll kill you.

GEORGE.  [As suddenly calm]  That remains to be seen.

MALISE.  [With most deadly quietness]  Yes, I will kill you.

     He goes stealthily along the wall, takes up from where it lies
     on the pile of books the great black knobby stick, and
     stealthily approaches GEORGE, his face quite fiendish.

CLARE.  [With a swift movement, grasping the stick]  Please.

     MALISE resigns the stick, and the two men, perfectly still,
     glare at each other.  CLARE, letting the stick fall, puts her
     foot on it.  Then slowly she takes off her hat and lays it on
     the table.

CLARE.  Now will you go!  [There is silence]

GEORGE.  [Staring at her hat]  You mad little fool!  Understand this;
if you've not returned home by three o'clock I'll divorce you, and
you may roll in the gutter with this high-souled friend of yours.
And mind this, you sir--I won't spare you--by God!  Your pocket shall
suffer.  That's the only thing that touches fellows like you.

     Turning, he goes out, and slams the door.  CLARE and MALISE
     remain face to face.  Her lips have begun to quiver.

CLARE.  Horrible!

     She turns away, shuddering, and sits down on the edge of the
     armchair, covering her eyes with the backs of her hands.  MALISE
     picks up the stick, and fingers it lovingly.  Then putting it
     down, he moves so that he can see her face.  She is sitting
     quite still, staring straight before her.

MALISE.  Nothing could be better.

CLARE.  I don't know what to do!  I don't know what to do!

MALISE.  Thank the stars for your good fortune.

CLARE.  He means to have revenge on you!  And it's all my fault.

MALISE.  Let him.  Let him go for his divorce.  Get rid of him.  Have
done with him--somehow.

     She gets up and stands with face averted.  Then swiftly turning
     to him.

CLARE.  If I must bring you harm--let me pay you back!  I can't bear
it otherwise!  Make some use of me, if you don't mind!

MALISE.  My God!

     [She puts up her face to be kissed, shutting her eyes.]

MALISE.  You poor----

     He clasps and kisses her, then, drawing back, looks in her face.
     She has not moved, her eyes are still closed; but she is
     shivering; her lips are tightly pressed together; her hands
     twitching.

MALISE.  [Very quietly] No, no!  This is not the house of a
"gentleman."

CLARE.  [Letting her head fall, and almost in a whisper]  I'm sorry.

MALISE.  I understand.

CLARE.  I don't feel.  And without--I can't, can't.

MALISE.  [Bitterly]  Quite right.  You've had enough of that.

     There is a long silence.  Without looking at him she takes up
     her hat, and puts it on.

MALISE.  Not going?

     [CLARE nods]

MALISE.  You don't trust me?

CLARE.  I do!  But I can't take when I'm not giving.

MALISE.  I beg--I beg you!  What does it matter?  Use me!  Get free
somehow.

CLARE.  Mr. Malise, I know what I ought to be to you, if I let you in
for all this.  I know what you want--or will want.  Of course--why
not?

MALISE.  I give you my solemn word----

CLARE.  No! if I can't be that to you--it's not real.  And I can't.
It isn't to be manufactured, is it?

MALISE.  It is not.

CLARE.  To make use of you in such a way!  No.

     [She moves towards the door]

MALISE.  Where are you going?

     CLARE does not answer.  She is breathing rapidly.  There is a
     change in her, a sort of excitement beneath her calmness.

MALISE.  Not back to him?  [CLARE shakes her head]  Thank God!  But
where?  To your people again?

CLARE.  No.

MALISE.  Nothing--desperate?

CLARE.  Oh! no.

MALISE.  Then what--tell me--come!

CLARE.  I don't know.  Women manage somehow.

MALISE.  But you--poor dainty thing!

CLARE.  It's all right!  Don't be unhappy!  Please!

MALISE.  [Seizing her arm]  D'you imagine they'll let you off, out
there--you with your face?  Come, trust me trust me!  You must!

CLARE.  [Holding out her hand]  Good-bye!

MALISE.  [Not taking that hand]  This great damned world, and--you!
Listen!  [The sound of the traffic far down below is audible in the
stillness] Into that!  alone--helpless--without money.  The men who
work with you; the men you make friends of--d'you think they'll let
you be?  The men in the streets, staring at you, stopping you--pudgy,
bull-necked brutes; devils with hard eyes; senile swine; and the
"chivalrous" men, like me, who don't mean you harm, but can't help
seeing you're made for love!  Or suppose you don't take covert but
struggle on in the open.  Society!  The respectable!  The pious!
Even those who love you!  Will they let you be?  Hue and cry!  The
hunt was joined the moment you broke away!  It will never let up!
Covert to covert--till they've run you down, and you're back in the
cart, and God pity you!

CLARE.  Well, I'll die running!

MALISE.  No, no!  Let me shelter you!  Let me!

CLARE.  [Shaking her head and smiling]  I'm going to seek my fortune.
Wish me luck!

MALISE.  I can't let you go.

CLARE.  You must.

     He looks into her face; then, realizing that she means it,
     suddenly bends down to her fingers, and puts his lips to them.

MALISE.  Good luck, then!  Good luck!

     He releases her hand.  Just touching his bent head with her
     other hand, CLARE turns and goes.  MALISE remains with bowed
     head, listening to the sound of her receding footsteps.  They
     die away.  He raises himself, and strikes out into the air with
     his clenched fist.


                              CURTAIN.





ACT III

     MALISE'S sitting-room.  An afternoon, three months later.  On
     the table are an open bottle of claret, his hat, and some tea-
     things.  Down in the hearth is a kettle on a lighted spirit-
     stand.  Near the door stands HAYWOOD, a short, round-faced man,
     with a tobacco-coloured moustache; MALISE, by the table, is
     contemplating a piece of blue paper.

HAYWOOD.  Sorry to press an old customer, sir, but a year and an 'alf
without any return on your money----

MALISE.  Your tobacco is too good, Mr. Haywood.  I wish I could see
my way to smoking another.

HAYWOOD.  Well, sir--that's a funny remedy.

     With a knock on the half-opened door, a Boy appears.

MALISE.  Yes.  What is it?

BOY.  Your copy for "The Watchfire," please, sir.

MALISE.  [Motioning him out] Yes.  Wait!

     The Boy withdraws.  MALISE goes up to the pile of books, turns
     them over, and takes up some volumes.

MALISE.  This is a very fine unexpurgated translation of Boccaccio's
"Decameron," Mr.  Haywood illustrated.  I should say you would get
more than the amount of your bill for them.

HAYWOOD. [Shaking his head]  Them books worth three pound seven!

MALISE.  It's scarce, and highly improper.  Will you take them in
discharge?

HAYWOOD.  [Torn between emotions]  Well, I 'ardly know what to say--
No, Sir, I don't think I'd like to 'ave to do with that.

MALISE.  You could read them first, you know?

HAYWOOD.  [Dubiously]  I've got my wife at 'ome.

MALISE.  You could both read them.

HAYWOOD.  [Brought to his bearings]  No, Sir, I couldn't.

MALISE.  Very well; I'll sell them myself, and you shall have the
result.

HAYWOOD.  Well, thank you, sir.  I'm sure I didn't want to trouble
you.

MALISE.  Not at all, Mr. Haywood.  It's for me to apologize.

HAYWOOD.  So long as I give satisfaction.

MALISE.  [Holding the door for him]  Certainly.  Good evening.

HAYWOOD.  Good evenin', sir; no offence, I hope.

MALISE.  On the contrary.

     Doubtfully HAYWOOD goes.  And MALISE stands scratching his head;
     then slipping the bill into one of the volumes to remind him, he
     replaces them at the top of the pile.  The Boy again advances
     into the doorway.

MALISE.  Yes, now for you.

     He goes to the table and takes some sheets of MS. from an old
     portfolio.  But the door is again timidly pushed open, and
     HAYWOOD reappears.

MALISE.  Yes, Mr. Haywood?

HAYWOOD.  About that little matter, sir.  If--if it's any convenience
to you--I've--thought of a place where I could----

MALISE.  Read them?  You'll enjoy them thoroughly.

HAYWOOD.  No, sir, no!  Where I can dispose of them.

MALISE.  [Holding out the volumes]  It might be as well.  [HAYWOOD
takes the books gingerly]  I congratulate you, Mr. Haywood; it's a
classic.

HAYWOOD.  Oh, indeed--yes, sir.  In the event of there being any----

MALISE.  Anything over?  Carry it to my credit.  Your bill--[He
hands over the blue paper] Send me the receipt.  Good evening!

     HAYWOOD, nonplussed, and trying to hide the books in an evening
     paper, fumbles out.  "Good evenin', sir!" and departs.  MALISE
     again takes up the sheets of MS.  and cons a sentence over to
     himself, gazing blankly at the stolid BOY.

MALISE.  "Man of the world--good form your god!  Poor buttoned-up
philosopher"  [the Boy shifts his feet]  "inbred to the point of
cretinism, and founded to the bone on fear of ridicule  [the Boy
breathes heavily]--you are the slave of facts!"

     [There is a knock on the door]

MALISE.  Who is it?

     The door is pushed open, and REGINALD HUNTINGDON stands there.

HUNTINGDON.  I apologize, sir; can I come in a minute?

     [MALISE bows with ironical hostility]

HUNTINGDON.  I don't know if you remember me--Clare Dedmond's
brother.

MALISE.  I remember you.

     [He motions to the stolid Boy to go outside again]

HUNTINGDON.  I've come to you, sir, as a gentleman----

MALISE.  Some mistake.  There is one, I believe, on the first floor.

HUNTINGDON.  It's about my sister.

MALISE.  D--n you!  Don't you know that I've been shadowed these last
three months?  Ask your detectives for any information you want.

HUNTINGDON.  We know that you haven't seen her, or even known where
she is.

MALISE.  Indeed!  You've found that out?  Brilliant!

HUNTINGDON.  We know it from my sister.

MALISE.  Oh!  So you've tracked her down?

HUNTINGDON.  Mrs. Fullarton came across her yesterday in one of those
big shops--selling gloves.

MALISE.  Mrs. Fullarton the lady with the husband.  Well! you've got
her.  Clap her back into prison.

HUNTINGDON.  We have not got her.  She left at once, and we don't
know where she's gone.

MALISE.  Bravo!

HUNTINGDON.  [Taking hold of his bit]  Look here, Mr. Malise, in a
way I share your feeling, but I'm fond of my sister, and it's
damnable to have to go back to India knowing she must be all adrift,
without protection, going through God knows what!  Mrs. Fullarton
says she's looking awfully pale and down.

MALISE.  [Struggling between resentment and sympathy]  Why do you
come to me?

HUNTINGDON.  We thought----

MALISE.  Who?

HUNTINGDON.  My--my father and myself.

MALISE.  Go on.

HUNTINGDON.  We thought there was just a chance that, having lost
that job, she might come to you again for advice.  If she does, it
would be really generous of you if you'd put my father in touch with
her.  He's getting old, and he feels this very much.  [He hands
MALISE a card]  This is his address.

MALISE.  [Twisting the card]  Let there be no mistake, sir; I do
nothing that will help give her back to her husband.  She's out to
save her soul alive, and I don't join the hue and cry that's after
her.  On the contrary--if I had the power.  If your father wants to
shelter her, that's another matter.  But she'd her own ideas about
that.

HUNTINGDON.  Perhaps you don't realize how unfit my sister is for
rough and tumble.  She's not one of this new sort of woman.  She's
always been looked after, and had things done for her.  Pluck she's
got, but that's all, and she's bound to come to grief.

MALISE.  Very likely--the first birds do.  But if she drops half-way
it's better than if she'd never flown.  Your sister, sir, is trying
the wings of her spirit, out of the old slave market.  For women as
for men, there's more than one kind of dishonour, Captain Huntingdon,
and worse things than being dead, as you may know in your profession.

HUNTINGDON.  Admitted--but----

MALISE.  We each have our own views as to what they are.  But they
all come to--death of our spirits, for the sake of our carcases.
Anything more?

HUNTINGDON.  My leave's up.  I sail to-morrow.  If you do see my
sister I trust you to give her my love and say I begged she would see
my father.

MALISE.  If I have the chance--yes.

     He makes a gesture of salute, to which HUNTINGDON responds.
     Then the latter turns and goes out.

MALISE.  Poor fugitive!  Where are you running now?

     He stands at the window, through which the evening sunlight is
     powdering the room with smoky gold.  The stolid Boy has again
     come in.  MALISE stares at him, then goes back to the table,
     takes up the MS., and booms it at him; he receives the charge,
     breathing hard.

MALISE.  "Man of the world--product of a material age; incapable of
perceiving reality in motions of the spirit; having 'no use,' as you
would say, for 'sentimental nonsense'; accustomed to believe yourself
the national spine--your position is unassailable.  You will remain
the idol of the country--arbiter of law, parson in mufti, darling of
the playwright and the novelist--God bless you!--while waters lap
these shores."

     He places the sheets of MS. in an envelope, and hands them to
     the Boy.

MALISE.  You're going straight back to "The Watchfire"?

BOY.  [Stolidly]  Yes, sir.

MALISE.  [Staring at him] You're a masterpiece.  D'you know that?

BOY.  No, sir.

MALISE.  Get out, then.

     He lifts the portfolio from the table, and takes it into the
     inner room.  The Boy, putting his thumb stolidly to his nose,
     turns to go.  In the doorway he shies violently at the figure of
     CLARE, standing there in a dark-coloured dress, skids past her
     and goes.  CLARE comes into the gleam of sunlight, her white
     face alive with emotion or excitement.  She looks round her,
     smiles, sighs; goes swiftly to the door, closes it, and comes
     back to the table.  There she stands, fingering the papers on
     the table, smoothing MALISE's hat wistfully, eagerly, waiting.

MALISE.  [Returning]  You!

CLARE.  [With a faint smile]  Not very glorious, is it?

     He goes towards her, and checks himself, then slews the armchair
     round.

MALISE.  Come!  Sit down, sit down!  [CLARE, heaving a long sigh,
sinks down into the chair]  Tea's nearly ready.

     He places a cushion for her, and prepares tea; she looks up at
     him softly, but as he finishes and turns to her, she drops that
     glance.

CLARE.  Do you think me an awful coward for coming?  [She has taken a
little plain cigarette case from her dress]  Would you mind if I
smoked?

     MALISE shakes his head, then draws back from her again, as if
     afraid to be too close.  And again, unseen, she looks at him.

MALISE.  So you've lost your job?

CLARE.  How did you----?

MALISE.  Your brother.  You only just missed him.  [CLARE starts up]
They had an idea you'd come.  He's sailing to-morrow--he wants you to
see your father.

CLARE.  Is father ill?

MALI$E.  Anxious about you.

CLARE.  I've written to him every week.  [Excited]  They're still
hunting me!

MALISE.  [Touching her shoulder gently]  It's all right--all right.

     She sinks again into the chair, and again he withdraws.  And
     once more she gives him that soft eager look, and once more
     averts it as he turns to her.

CLARE.  My nerves have gone funny lately.  It's being always on one's
guard, and stuffy air, and feeling people look and talk about you,
and dislike your being there.

MALISE.  Yes; that wants pluck.

CLARE.  [Shaking her head]  I curl up all the time.  The only thing I
know for certain is, that I shall never go back to him.  The more
I've hated what I've been doing, the more sure I've been.  I might
come to anything--but not that.

MALISE.  Had a very bad time?

CLARE.  [Nodding]  I'm spoilt.  It's a curse to be a lady when you
have to earn your living.  It's not really been so hard, I suppose;
I've been selling things, and living about twice as well as most shop
girls.

MALISE.  Were they decent to you?

CLARE.  Lots of the girls are really nice.  But somehow they don't
want me, can't help thinking I've got airs or something; and in here
[She touches her breast]  I don't want them!

MALISE.  I know.

CLARE.  Mrs. Fullarton and I used to belong to a society for helping
reduced gentlewomen to get work.  I know now what they want: enough
money not to work--that's all!  [Suddenly looking up at him]  Don't
think me worse than I am-please!  It's working under people; it's
having to do it, being driven.  I have tried, I've not been
altogether a coward, really!  But every morning getting there the
same time; every day the same stale "dinner," as they call it; every
evening the same "Good evening, Miss Clare,"  "Good evening, Miss
Simpson,"  "Good evening, Miss Hart,"  "Good evening, Miss Clare."
And the same walk home, or the same 'bus; and the same men that you
mustn't look at, for fear they'll follow you.  [She rises]  Oh! and
the feeling-always, always--that there's no sun, or life, or hope, or
anything.  It was just like being ill, the way I've wanted to ride
and dance and get out into the country.  [Her excitement dies away
into the old clipped composure, and she sits down again]  Don't think
too badly of me--it really is pretty ghastly!

MALISE.  [Gruffly]  H'm!  Why a shop?

CLARE.  References.  I didn't want to tell more lies than I could
help; a married woman on strike can't tell the truth, you know.  And
I can't typewrite or do shorthand yet.  And chorus--I thought--you
wouldn't like.

MALISE.  I?  What have I----?  [He checks himself ] Have men been
brutes?

CLARE.  [Stealing a look at him]  One followed me a lot.  He caught
hold of my arm one evening.  I just took this out [She draws out her
hatpin and holds it like a dagger, her lip drawn back as the lips of
a dog going to bite]  and said: "Will you leave me alone, please?"
And he did.  It was rather nice.  And there was one quite decent
little man in the shop--I was sorry for him--such a humble little
man!

MALISE.  Poor devil--it's hard not to wish for the moon.

     At the tone of his voice CLARE looks up at him; his face is
     turned away.

CLARE.  [Softly]  How have you been?  Working very hard?

MALISE.  As hard as God will let me.

CLARE.  [Stealing another look] Have you any typewriting I could do?
I could learn, and I've still got a brooch I could sell.  Which is
the best kind?

MALISE.  I had a catalogue of them somewhere.

     He goes into the inner room.  The moment he is gone, CLARE
     stands up, her hands pressed to her cheeks as if she felt them
     flaming.  Then, with hands clasped, she stands waiting.  He
     comes back with the old portfolio.

MALISE.  Can you typewrite where you are?

CLARE.  I have to find a new room anyway.  I'm changing--to be safe.
[She takes a luggage ticket from her glove]  I took my things to
Charing Cross--only a bag and one trunk.  [Then, with that queer
expression on her face which prefaces her desperations] You don't
want me now, I suppose.

MALISE.  What?

CLARE.  [Hardly above a whisper] Because--if you still wanted me--
I do--now.

     [Etext editors note: In the 1924 revision, 11 years after this
     1913 edition: "I do--now" is changed to "I could--now"--
     a significant change in meaning.  D.W.]

MALISE.  [Staring hard into her face that is quivering and smiling]
You mean it?  You do?  You care----?

CLARE.  I've thought of you--so much!  But only--if you're sure.

     He clasps her and kisses her closed eyes; and so they stand for
     a moment, till the sound of a latchkey in the door sends them
     apart.

MALISE.  It's the housekeeper.  Give me that ticket; I'll send for
your things.

     Obediently she gives him the ticket, smiles, and goes quietly
     into the inner room.  MRS. MILER has entered; her face, more
     Chinese than ever, shows no sign of having seen.

MALISE.  That lady will stay here, Mrs. Miler.  Kindly go with this
ticket to the cloak-room at Charing Cross station, and bring back her
luggage in a cab.  Have you money?

MRS. MILER.  'Arf a crown.  [She takes the ticket--then impassively]
In case you don't know--there's two o' them men about the stairs now.

     The moment she is gone MALISE makes a gesture of maniacal fury.
     He steals on tiptoe to the outer door, and listens.  Then,
     placing his hand on the knob, he turns it without noise, and
     wrenches back the door.  Transfigured in the last sunlight
     streaming down the corridor are two men, close together,
     listening and consulting secretly.  They start back.

MALISE.  [With strange, almost noiseless ferocity]  You've run her to
earth; your job's done.  Kennel up, hounds!  [And in their faces he
slams the door]


                              CURTAIN.





SCENE II

SCENE II--The same, early on a winter afternoon, three months later.
The room has now a certain daintiness.  There are curtains over the
doors, a couch,  under the window, all the books are arranged on
shelves.  In small vases, over the fireplace, are a few violets and
chrysanthemums.  MALISE sits huddled in his armchair drawn close to
the fore, paper on knee, pen in hand.  He looks rather grey and
drawn, and round his chair is the usual litter.  At the table, now
nearer to the window, CLARE sits working a typewriter.  She finishes
a line, puts sheets of paper together, makes a note on a card--adds
some figures, and marks the total.

CLARE.  Kenneth, when this is paid, I shall have made two pound
seventeen in the three months, and saved you about three pounds.  One
hundred and seventeen shillings at tenpence a thousand is one hundred
and forty thousand words at fourteen hundred words an hour.  It's
only just over an hour a day.  Can't you get me more?

     MALISE lifts the hand that holds his pen and lets it fall again.
     CLARE puts the cover on the typewriter, and straps it.

CLARE.  I'm quite packed.  Shall I pack for you?  [He nods]  Can't we
have more than three days at the sea?  [He shakes his head.  Going up
to him] You did sleep last night.

MALISE.  Yes, I slept.

CLARE.  Bad head?  [MALISE nods]  By this time the day after to-
morrow the case will be heard and done with.  You're not worrying for
me?  Except for my poor old Dad, I don't care a bit.

     MALISE heaves himself out of the chair, and begins pacing up and
     down.

CLARE.  Kenneth, do you understand why he doesn't claim damages,
after what he said that day-here?  [Looking suddenly at him]  It is
true that he doesn't?

MALISE.  It is not.

CLARE.  But you told me yourself

MALISE.  I lied.

CLARE.  Why?

MALISE.  [Shrugging]  No use lying any longer--you'd know it
tomorrow.

CLARE.  How much am I valued at?

MALISE.  Two thousand.  [Grimly] He'll settle it on you.  [He laughs]
Masterly!  By one stroke, destroys his enemy, avenges his "honour,"
and gilds his name with generosity!

CLARE.  Will you have to pay?

MALISE.  Stones yield no blood.

CLARE.  Can't you borrow?

MALISE.  I couldn't even get the costs.

CLARE.  Will they make you bankrupt, then?  [MALISE nods]  But that
doesn't mean that you won't have your income, does it?  [MALISE
laughs]  What is your income, Kenneth?  [He is silent]  A hundred and
fifty from "The Watchfire," I know.  What else?

MALISE.  Out of five books I have made the sum of forty pounds.

CLARE.  What else?  Tell me.

MALISE.  Fifty to a hundred pounds a year.  Leave me to gnaw my way
out, child.

     CLARE stands looking at him in distress, then goes quickly into
     the room behind her.  MALISE takes up his paper and pen.  The
     paper is quite blank.

MALISE.  [Feeling his head]  Full of smoke.

     He drops paper and pen, and crossing to the room on the left
     goes in.  CLARE re-enters with a small leather box.  She puts it
     down on her typing table as MALISE returns followed by MRS.
     MILER, wearing her hat, and carrying His overcoat.

MRS. MILER.  Put your coat on.  It's a bitter wind.

     [He puts on the coat]

CLARE.  Where are you going?

MALISE.  To "The Watchfire."

     The door closes behind him, and MRS. MILER goes up to CLARE
     holding out a little blue bottle with a red label, nearly full.

MRS. MILER.  You know he's takin' this [She makes a little motion
towards her mouth] to make 'im sleep?

CLARE.  [Reading the label]  Where was it?

MRS. MILER.  In the bathroom chest o' drawers, where 'e keeps 'is
odds and ends.  I was lookin' for 'is garters.

CLARE.  Give it to me!

MRS. MILER.  He took it once before.  He must get his sleep.

CLARE.  Give it to me!

     MRS. MILER resigns it, CLARE takes the cork out, smells, then
     tastes it from her finger.  MRS. MILER, twisting her apron in
     her hands, speaks.

MILS. MILER.  I've 'ad it on my mind a long time to speak to yer.
Your comin' 'ere's not done 'im a bit o' good.

CLARE.  Don't!

MRS. MILER.  I don't want to, but what with the worry o' this 'ere
divorce suit, an' you bein' a lady an' 'im havin' to be so careful of
yer, and tryin' to save, not smokin' all day like 'e used, an' not
gettin' 'is two bottles of claret regular; an' losin' his sleep, an'
takin' that stuff for it; and now this 'ere last business.  I've seen
'im sometimes holdin' 'is 'ead as if it was comin' off.  [Seeing
CLARE wince, she goes on with a sort of compassion in her Chinese
face] I can see yer fond of him; an' I've nothin' against yer you
don't trouble me a bit; but I've been with 'im eight years--we're
used to each other, and I can't bear to see 'im not 'imself, really I
can't.

     She gives a sadden sniff.  Then her emotion passes, leaving her
     as Chinese as ever.

CLARE.  This last business--what do you mean by that?

MRS. MILER.  If 'e a'n't told yer, I don't know that I've any call
to.

CLARE.  Please.

MRS. MILER.  [Her hands twisting very fast] Well, it's to do with
this 'ere "Watchfire."  One of the men that sees to the writin' of
it 'e's an old friend of Mr. Malise, 'e come 'ere this mornin' when
you was out.  I was doin' my work in there  [She points to the room
on the right]  an' the door open, so I 'earl 'em.  Now you've 'ung
them curtains, you can't 'elp it.

CLARE.  Yes?

MRS. MILER.  It's about your divorce case.  This 'ere "Watchfire,"
ye see, belongs to some fellers that won't 'ave their men gettin'
into the papers.  So this 'ere friend of Mr. Malise--very nice 'e
spoke about it: "If it comes into Court," 'e says, "you'll 'ave to
go," 'e says.  "These beggars, these dogs, these dogs," 'e says,
"they'll 'oof you out," 'e says.  An' I could tell by the sound of
his voice, 'e meant it--proper upset 'e was.  So that's that!

CLARE.  It's inhuman!

MRS. MILER.  That's what I thinks; but it don't 'elp, do it?
"'Tain't the circulation," 'e says, "it's the principle," 'e says;
and then 'e starts in swearin' horrible.  'E's a very nice man.  And
Mr. Malise, 'e says: "Well, that about does for me!" 'e says.

CLARE.  Thank you, Mrs. Miler--I'm glad to know.

MRS. MILER.  Yes; I don't know as I ought to 'ave told you.
[Desperately uncomfortable]  You see, I don't take notice of Mr.
MALISE, but I know 'im very well.  'E's a good 'arted gentleman, very
funny, that'll do things to help others, and what's more, keep on
doin' 'em, when they hurt 'im; very obstinate 'e is.  Now, when you
first come 'ere, three months ago, I says to meself: "He'll enjoy
this 'ere for a bit, but she's too much of a lady for 'im."  What 'e
wants about 'im permanent is a woman that thinks an' talks about all
them things he talks about.  And sometimes I fancy 'e don't want
nothin' permanent about 'im at all.

CLARE.  Don't!

MRS. MILER.  [With another sudden sniff]  Gawd knows I don't want to
upset ye.  You're situated very hard; an' women's got no business to
'urt one another--that's what I thinks.

CLARE.  Will you go out and do something for me?  [MRS. MILER nods]

     [CLARE takes up the sheaf of papers and from the leather box a
     note and an emerald pendant]

Take this with the note to that address--it's quite close.  He'll
give you thirty pounds for it.  Please pay these bills and bring me
back the receipts, and what's over.

MRS. MILER.  [Taking the pendant and note]  It's a pretty thing.

CLARE.  Yes.  It was my mother's.

MRS. MILER.  It's a pity to part with it; ain't you got another?

CLARE.  Nothing more, Mrs. Miler, not even a wedding ring.

MRS. MILER.  [Without expression]  You make my 'eart ache sometimes.

     [She wraps pendant and note into her handkerchief and goes out to
     the door.]

MRS. MILER.  [From the door]  There's a lady and gentleman out here.
Mrs. Fuller--wants you, not Mr. Malise.

CLARE.  Mrs. Fullarton?  [MRS. MILER nods]  Ask them to come in.

     MRS. MILER opens the door wide, says "Come in," and goes.  MRS.
     FULLARTON is accompanied not by FULLARTON, but by the lawyer,
     TWISDON.  They come in.

MRS. FULLARTON.  Clare!  My dear!  How are you after all this time?

CLARE.  [Her eyes fixed on TWISDEN]  Yes?

MRS. FULLARTON.  [Disconcerted by the strange greeting]  I brought
Mr.  Twisden to tell you something.  May I stay?

CLARE.  Yes.  [She points to the chair at the same table: MRS.
FULLARTON sits down]  Now!

     [TWISDEN comes forward]

TWISDEN.  As you're not defending this case, Mrs. Dedmond, there is
nobody but yourself for me to apply to.

CLARE.  Please tell me quickly, what you've come for.

TWISDEN.  [Bowing slightly]  I am instructed by Mr.  Dedmond to say
that if you will leave your present companion and undertake not to
see him again, he will withdraw the suit and settle three hundred a
year on you.  [At CLARE's movement of abhorrence]  Don't
misunderstand me, please--it is not--it could hardly be, a request
that you should go back.  Mr.  Dedmond is not prepared to receive you
again.  The proposal--forgive my saying so--remarkably Quixotic--is
made to save the scandal to his family and your own.  It binds you to
nothing but the abandonment of your present companion, with certain
conditions of the same nature as to the future.  In other words, it
assures you a position--so long as you live quietly by yourself.

CLARE.  I see.  Will you please thank Mr. Dedmond, and say that I
refuse?

MRS. FULLARTON.  Clare, Clare!  For God's sake don't be desperate.

     [CLARE, deathly still, just looks at her]

TWISDEN.  Mrs. Dedmond, I am bound to put the position to you in its
naked brutality.  You know there's a claim for damages?

CLARE.  I have just learnt it.

TWISDEN.  You realize what the result of this suit must be: You will
be left dependent on an undischarged bankrupt.  To put it another
way, you'll be a stone round the neck of a drowning man.

CLARE.  You are cowards.

MRS. FULLARTON.  Clare, Clare!  [To TWISDEN]  She doesn't mean it;
please be patient.

CLARE.  I do mean it.  You ruin him because of me.  You get him down,
and kick him to intimidate me.

MRS. FULLARTON.  My dear girl!  Mr. Twisden is not personally
concerned.  How can you?

CLARE.  If I were dying, and it would save me, I wouldn't take a
penny from my husband.

TWISDEN.  Nothing could be more bitter than those words.  Do you
really wish me to take them back to him?

CLARE.  Yes.  [She turns from them to the fire]

MRS. FULLARTON.  [In a low voice to TWISDEN]  Please leave me alone
with her, don't say anything to Mr. Dedmond yet.

TWISDEN.  Mrs. Dedmond, I told you once that I wished you well.
Though you have called me a coward, I still do that.  For God's sake,
think--before it's too late.

CLARE.  [Putting out her hand blindly]  I'm sorry I called you a
coward.  It's the whole thing, I meant.

TWISDEN.  Never mind that.  Think!

     With the curious little movement of one who sees something he
     does not like to see, he goes.  CLARE is leaning her forehead
     against the mantel-shelf, seemingly unconscious that she is not
     alone.  MRS. FULLARTON approaches quietly till she can see
     CLARE'S face.

MRS. FULLARTON.  My dear sweet thing, don't be cross with met [CLARE
turns from her.  It is all the time as if she were trying to get away
from words and people to something going on within herself]  How can
I help wanting to see you saved from all this ghastliness?

CLARE.  Please don't, Dolly!  Let me be!

MRS. FULLARTON.  I must speak, Clare!  I do think you're hard on
George.  It's generous of him to offer to withdraw the suit--
considering.  You do owe it to us to try and spare your father and
your sisters and--and all of us who care for you.

CLARE.  [Facing her] You say George is generous!  If he wanted to be
that he'd never have claimed these damages.  It's revenge he wants--I
heard him here.  You think I've done him an injury.  So I did--when I
married him.  I don't know what I shall come to, Dolly, but I shan't
fall so low as to take money from him.  That's as certain as that I
shall die.

MRS. FULLARTON.  Do you know, Clare, I think it's awful about you!
You're too fine, and not fine enough, to put up with things; you're
too sensitive to take help, and you're not strong enough to do
without it.  It's simply tragic.  At any rate, you might go home to
your people.

CLARE.  After this!

MRS. FULLARTON.  To us, then?

CLARE.  "If I could be the falling bee, and kiss thee all the day!"
No, Dolly!

     MRS. FULLARTON turns from her ashamed and baffled, but her quick
     eyes take in the room, trying to seize on some new point of
     attack.

MRS. FULLARTON.  You can't be--you aren't-happy, here?

CLARE.  Aren't I?

MRS. FULLARTON.  Oh!  Clare!  Save yourself--and all of us!

CLARE.  [Very still] You see, I love him.

MRS. FULLARTON.  You used to say you'd never love; did not want it--
would never want it.

CLARE.  Did I?  How funny!

MRS. FULLARTON.  Oh!  my dear!  Don't look like that, or you'll make
me cry.

CLARE.  One doesn't always know the future, does one?  [Desperately]
I love him!  I love him!

MRS. FULLARTON.  [Suddenly] If you love him, what will it be like for
you, knowing you've ruined him?

CLARE.  Go away!  Go away!

MRS. FULLARTON.  Love!--you said!

CLARE.  [Quivering at that stab-suddenly]  I must--I will keep him.
He's all I've got.

MRS. FULLARTON.  Can you--can you keep him?

CLARE.  Go!

MRS. FULLARTON.  I'm going.  But, men are hard to keep, even when
you've not been the ruin of them.  You know whether the love this man
gives you is really love.  If not--God help you!  [She turns at the
door, and says mournfully] Good-bye, my child!  If you can----

     Then goes.  CLARE, almost in a whisper, repeats the words:
     "Love!  you said!"  At the sound of a latchkey she runs as if to
     escape into the bedroom, but changes her mind and stands blotted
     against the curtain of the door.  MALISE enters.  For a moment
     he does not see her standing there against the curtain that is
     much the same colour as her dress.  His face is that of a man in
     the grip of a rage that he feels to be impotent.  Then, seeing
     her, he pulls himself together, walks to his armchair, and sits
     down there in his hat and coat.

CLARE.  Well?  "The Watchfire?"  You may as well tell me.

MALISE.  Nothing to tell you, child.

     At that touch of tenderness she goes up to his chair and kneels
     down beside it.  Mechanically MALISE takes off his hat.

CLARE.  Then you are to lose that, too?  [MALISE stares at her] I
know about it--never mind how.

MALISE.  Sanctimonious dogs!

CLARE.  [Very low]  There are other things to be got, aren't there?

MALISE.  Thick as blackberries.  I just go out and cry, "MALISE,
unsuccessful author, too honest journalist, freethinker, co-
respondent, bankrupt," and they tumble!

CLARE.  [Quietly]  Kenneth, do you care for me?  [MALISE stares at
her]  Am I anything to you but just prettiness?

MALISE.  Now, now!  This isn't the time to brood!  Rouse up and
fight.

CLARE.  Yes.

MALISE.  We're not going to let them down us, are we?  [She rubs her
cheek against his hand, that still rests on her shoulder] Life on
sufferance, breath at the pleasure of the enemy!  And some day in the
fullness of his mercy to be made a present of the right to eat and
drink and breathe again.  [His gesture sums up the rage within him]
Fine!  [He puts his hat on and rises]  That's the last groan they get
from me.

CLASS.  Are you going out again?  [He nods]  Where?

MALISE.  Blackberrying!  Our train's not till six.

     He goes into the bedroom.  CLARE gets up and stands by the fire,
     looking round in a dazed way.  She puts her hand up and
     mechanically gathers together the violets in the little vase.
     Suddenly she twists them to a buttonhole, and sinks down into
     the armchair, which he must pass.  There she sits, the violets
     in her hand.  MALISE comes out and crosses towards the outer
     door.  She puts the violets up to him.  He stares at them,
     shrugs his shoulders, and passes on.  For just a moment CLARE
     sits motionless.

CLARE.  [Quietly]  Give me a kiss!

     He turns and kisses her.  But his lips, after that kiss, have
     the furtive bitterness one sees on the lips of those who have
     done what does not suit their mood.  He goes out.  She is left
     motionless by the armchair, her throat working.  Then,
     feverishly, she goes to the little table, seizes a sheet of
     paper, and writes.  Looking up suddenly she sees that MRS. MILER
     has let herself in with her latchkey.

MRS. MILER.  I've settled the baker, the milk, the washin' an' the
groceries--this 'ere's what's left.

     She counts down a five-pound note, four sovereigns, and two
     shillings on to the little table.  CLARE folds the letter into
     an envelope, then takes up the five-pound note and puts it into
     her dress.

CLARE.  [Pointing to the money on the table]  Take your wages; and
give him this when he comes in.  I'm going away.

MRS. MILER.  Without him?  When'll you be comin' back?

CLARE.  [Rising] I shan't be coming back.  [Gazing at MRS. MILER'S
hands, which are plaiting at her dress]  I'm leaving Mr. Malise, and
shan't see him again.  And the suit against us will be withdrawn--the
divorce suit--you understand?

MRS. MILER.  [Her face all broken up]  I never meant to say anything
to yer.

CLARE.  It's not you.  I can see for myself.  Don't make it harder;
help me.  Get a cab.

MRS. MILER.  [Disturbed to the heart]  The porter's outside, cleanin'
the landin' winder.

CLARE.  Tell him to come for my trunk.  It is packed.  [She goes into
the bedroom]

MRS. MILER.  [Opening the door-desolately]  Come 'ere!

     [The PORTER appears in shirt-sleeves at the door]

MRS. MILER.  The lady wants a cab.  Wait and carry 'er trunk down.

     CLARE comes from the bedroom in her hat and coat.

MRS. MILER.  [TO the PORTER] Now.

     They go into the bedroom to get the trunk.  CLARE picks up from
     the floor the bunch of violets, her fingers play with it as if
     they did not quite know what it was; and she stands by the
     armchair very still, while MRS. MILER and the PORTER pass her
     with trunk and bag.  And even after the PORTER has shouldered
     the trunk outside, and marched away, and MRS. MILER has come
     back into the room, CLARE still stands there.

MRS. MILER.  [Pointing to the typewriter] D'you want this 'ere, too?

CLARE.  Yes.

     MRS. MILER carries it out.  Then, from the doorway, gazing at
     CLARE taking her last look, she sobs, suddenly.  At sound of
     that sob CLARE throws up her head.

CLARE.  Don't!  It's all right.  Good-bye!

     She walks out and away, not looking back.  MRS. MILER chokes her
     sobbing into the black stuff of her thick old jacket.


                              CURTAIN




ACT IV

     Supper-time in a small room at "The Gascony" on Derby Day.
     Through the windows of a broad corridor, out of which the door
     opens, is seen the dark blue of a summer night.  The walls are
     of apricot-gold; the carpets, curtains, lamp-shades, and gilded
     chairs, of red; the wood-work and screens white; the palms in
     gilded tubs.  A doorway that has no door leads to another small
     room.  One little table behind a screen, and one little table in
     the open, are set for two persons each.  On a service-table,
     above which hangs a speaking-tube, are some dishes of hors
     d'ouvres, a basket of peaches, two bottles of champagne in ice-
     pails, and a small barrel of oysters in a gilded tub.  ARNAUD,
     the waiter, slim, dark, quick, his face seamed with a quiet,
     soft irony, is opening oysters and listening to the robust joy
     of a distant supper-party, where a man is playing the last bars
     of: "Do ye ken John Peel" on a horn.  As the sound dies away, he
     murmurs: "Tres Joli!" and opens another oyster.  Two Ladies with
     bare shoulders and large hats pass down the corridor.  Their
     talk is faintly wafted in: "Well, I never like Derby night!  The
     boys do get so bobbish!"  "That horn--vulgar, I call it!"

     ARNAUD'S eyebrows rise, the corners of his mouth droop.  A Lady
     with bare shoulders, and crimson roses in her hair, comes along
     the corridor, and stops for a second at the window, for a man to
     join her.  They come through into the room.  ARNAUD has sprung
     to attention, but with: "Let's go in here, shall we?" they pass
     through into the further room.  The MANAGER, a gentleman with
     neat moustaches, and buttoned into a frock-coat, has appeared,
     brisk, noiseless, his eyes everywhere; he inspects the peaches.

MANAGER.  Four shillin' apiece to-night, see?

ARNAUD.  Yes, Sare.

     From the inner room a young man and his partner have come in.
     She is dark, almost Spanish-looking; he fair, languid, pale,
     clean-shaved, slackly smiling, with half-closed eyes-one of
     those who are bred and dissipated to the point of having lost
     all save the capacity for hiding their emotions.  He speaks in
     a----

LANGUID VOICE.  Awful row they're kickin' up in there, Mr. Varley.
A fellow with a horn.

MANAGER.  [Blandly]  Gaddesdon Hunt, my lord--always have their
supper with us, Derby night.  Quiet corner here, my lord.  Arnaud!

     ARNAUD is already at the table, between screen and palm.  And,
     there ensconced, the couple take their seats.  Seeing them
     safely landed, the MANAGER, brisk and noiseless, moves away.  In
     the corridor a lady in black, with a cloak falling open, seems
     uncertain whether to come in.  She advances into the doorway.
     It is CLARE.

ARNAUD.  [Pointing to the other table as he flies with dishes]  Nice
table, Madame.

     CLARE moves to the corner of it.  An artist in observation of
     his clients, ARNAUD takes in her face--very pale under her wavy,
     simply-dressed hair; shadowy beneath the eyes; not powdered; her
     lips not reddened; without a single ornament; takes in her black
     dress, finely cut, her arms and neck beautifully white, and at
     her breast three gardenias.  And as he nears her, she lifts her
     eyes.  It is very much the look of something lost, appealing for
     guidance.

ARNAUD.  Madame is waiting for some one?  [She shakes her head]  Then
Madame will be veree well here--veree well.  I take Madame's cloak?

     He takes the cloak gently and lays it on the back of the chair
     fronting the room, that she may put it round her when she
     wishes.  She sits down.

LANGUID VOICE.  [From the corner]  Waiter!

ARNAUD.  Milord!

LANGUID VOICE.  The Roederer.

ARNAUD.  At once, Milord.

     CLARE sits tracing a pattern with her finger on the cloth, her
     eyes lowered.  Once she raises them, and follows ARNAUD's dark
     rapid figure.

ARNAUD.  [Returning] Madame feels the 'eat?  [He scans her with
increased curiosity] You wish something, Madame?

CLARE.  [Again giving him that look]  Must I order?

ARNAUD.  Non, Madame, it is not necessary.  A glass of water.  [He
pours it out]  I have not the pleasure of knowing Madame's face.

CLARE.  [Faintly smiling]  No.

ARNAUD.  Madame will find it veree good 'ere, veree quiet.

LANGUID VOICE.  Waiter!

ARNAUD.  Pardon!  [He goes]

     The bare-necked ladies with large hats again pass down the
     corridor outside, and again their voices are wafted in: "Tottie!
     Not she!  Oh!  my goodness, she has got a pride on her!"
     "Bobbie'll never stick it!"  "Look here, dear----"  Galvanized
     by those sounds, CLARE has caught her cloak and half-risen; they
     die away and she subsides.

ARNAUD.  [Back at her table, with a quaint shrug towards the
corridor] It is not rowdy here, Madame, as a rule--not as in some
places.  To-night a little noise.  Madame is fond of flowers?  [He
whisks out, and returns almost at once with a bowl of carnations from
some table in the next room] These smell good!

CLARE.  You are very kind.

ARNAUD.  [With courtesy]  Not at all, Madame; a pleasure.  [He bows]

     A young man, tall, thin, hard, straight, with close-cropped,
     sandyish hair and moustache, a face tanned very red, and one of
     those small, long, lean heads that only grow in Britain; clad in
     a thin dark overcoat thrown open, an opera hat pushed back, a
     white waistcoat round his lean middle, he comes in from the
     corridor.  He looks round, glances at CLARE, passes her table
     towards the further room, stops in the doorway, and looks back
     at her.  Her eyes have just been lifted, and are at once cast
     down again.  The young man wavers, catches ARNAUD's eye, jerks
     his head to summon him, and passes into the further room.
     ARNAUD takes up the vase that has been superseded, and follows
     him out.  And CLARE sits alone in silence, broken by the murmurs
     of the languid lord and his partner, behind the screen.  She is
     breathing as if she had been running hard.  She lifts her eyes.
     The tall young man, divested of hat and coat, is standing by her
     table, holding out his hand with a sort of bashful hardiness.

YOUNG MAN.  How d'you do?  Didn't recognize you at first.  So sorry-
awfully rude of me.

     CLARE'S eyes seem to fly from him, to appeal to him, to resign
     herself all at once.  Something in the YOUNG MAN responds.  He
     drops his hand.

CLARE.  [Faintly]  How d'you do?

YOUNG MAN.  [Stammering]  You--you been down there to-day?

CLARE.  Where?

YOUNG MAN.  [With a smile]  The Derby.  What?  Don't you generally go
down?  [He touches the other chair]  May I?

CLARE.  [Almost in a whisper] Yes.

     As he sits down, ARNAUD returns and stands before them.

ARNAUD.  The plovers' eggs veree good to-night, Sare.  Veree good,
Madame.  A peach or two, after.  Veree good peaches.  The Roederer,
Sare--not bad at all.  Madame likes it frappe, but not too cold--yes?

     [He is away again to his service-table.]

YOUNG MAN.  [Burying his face in the carnations]  I say--these are
jolly, aren't they?  They do you pretty well here.

CLARE.  Do they?

YOUNG MAN.  You've never been here?  [CLARE shakes her head] By Jove!
I thought I didn't know your face.  [CLARE looks full at him.  Again
something moves in the YOUNG MAN, and he stammers]  I mean--not----

CLARE.  It doesn't matter.

YOUNG MAN.  [Respectfully]  Of course, if I--if you were waiting for
anybody, or anything--I----

     [He half rises]

CLARE.  It's all right, thank you.

     The YOUNG MAN sits down again, uncomfortable, nonplussed.  There
     is silence, broken by the inaudible words of the languid lord,
     and the distant merriment of the supper-party.  ARNAUD brings
     the plovers' eggs.

YOUNG MAN.  The wine, quick.

ARNAUD.  At once, Sare.

YOUNG MAN.  [Abruptly] Don't you ever go racing, then?

CLARE.  No.

     [ARNAUD pours out champagne]

YOUNG MAN.  I remember awfully well my first day.  It was pretty
thick--lost every blessed bob, and my watch and chain, playin' three
cards on the way home.

CLARE.  Everything has a beginning, hasn't it?

     [She drinks.  The YOUNG MAN stares at her]

YOUNG MAN.  [Floundering in these waters deeper than he had bargained
for] I say--about things having beginnings--did you mean anything?

     [CLARE nods]

YOUNG MAN.  What! D'you mean it's really the first----?

     CLARE nods.  The champagne has flicked her courage.

YOUNG MAN.  By George!  [He leans back]  I've often wondered.

ARNAUD.  [Again filling the glasses]  Monsieur finds----

YOUNG MAN.  [Abruptly]  It's all right.

     He drains his glass, then sits bolt upright.  Chivalry and the
     camaraderie of class have begun to stir in him.

YOUNG MAN.  Of course I can see that you're not--I mean, that you're
a--a lady.  [CLARE smiles]  And I say, you know--if you have to--
because you're in a hole--I should feel a cad.  Let me lend you----?

CLARE.  [Holding up her glass] 'Le vin est tire, il faut le boire'!

     She drinks.  The French words, which he does not too well
     understand, completing his conviction that she is a lady, he
     remains quite silent, frowning.  As CLARE held up her glass, two
     gentlemen have entered.  The first is blond, of good height and
     a comely insolence.  His crisp, fair hair, and fair brushed-up
     moustache are just going grey; an eyeglass is fixed in one of
     two eyes that lord it over every woman they see; his face is
     broad, and coloured with air and wine.  His companion is a tall,
     thin, dark bird of the night, with sly, roving eyes, and hollow
     cheeks.  They stand looking round, then pass into the further
     room; but in passing, they have stared unreservedly at CLARE.

YOUNG MAN.  [Seeing her wince]  Look here!  I'm afraid you must feel
me rather a brute, you know.

CLARE.  No, I don't; really.

YOUNG MAN.  Are you absolute stoney?  [CLARE nods]  But [Looking at
her frock and cloak] you're so awfully well----

CLARE.  I had the sense to keep them.

YOUNG MAN.  [More and more disturbed]  I say, you know--I wish you'd
let me lend you something.  I had quite a good day down there.

CLARE.  [Again tracing her pattern on the cloth--then looking up at
him full] I can't take, for nothing.

YOUNG MAN.  By Jove!  I don't know-really, I don't--this makes me
feel pretty rotten.  I mean, it's your being a lady.

CLARE.  [Smiling]  That's not your fault, is it?  You see, I've been
beaten all along the line.  And I really don't care what happens to
me.  [She has that peculiar fey look on her face now]  I really
don't; except that I don't take charity.  It's lucky for me it's you,
and not some----

The supper-party is getting still more boisterous, and there comes a
long view holloa, and a blast of the horn.

YOUNG MAN.  But I say, what about your people?  You must have people
of some sort.

     He is fast becoming fascinated, for her cheeks have begun to
     flush and her eyes to shine.

CLARE.  Oh, yes; I've had people, and a husband, and--everything----
And here I am!  Queer, isn't it?  [She touches her glass]  This is
going to my head!  Do you mind?  I sha'n't sing songs and get up and
dance, and I won't cry, I promise you!

YOUNG MAN.  [Between fascination and chivalry]  By George!  One
simply can't believe in this happening to a lady.

CLARE.  Have you got sisters? [Breaking into her soft laughter]  My
brother's in India.  I sha'n't meet him, anyway.

YOUNG MAN.  No, but--I say-are you really quite cut off from
everybody?  [CLARE nods]  Something rather awful must have happened?

     She smiles.  The two gentlemen have returned. The blond one is
     again staring fixedly at CLARE.  This time she looks back at
     him, flaming; and, with a little laugh, he passes with his
     friend into the corridor.

CLARE.  Who are those two?

YOUNG MAN.  Don't know--not been much about town yet.  I'm just back
from India myself.  You said your brother was there; what's his
regiment?

CLARE.  [Shaking her head]  You're not going to find out my name.  I
haven't got one--nothing.

     She leans her bare elbows on the table, and her face on her
     hands.

CLARE.  First of June!  This day last year I broke covert--I've been
running ever since.

YOUNG MAN.  I don't understand a bit.  You--must have had a--a--some
one----

     But there is such a change in her face, such rigidity of her
     whole body, that he stops and averts his eyes.  When he looks
     again she is drinking.  She puts the glass down, and gives a
     little laugh.

YOUNG MAN.  [With a sort of awe]  Anyway it must have been like
riding at a pretty stiff fence, for you to come here to-night.

CLARE.  Yes.  What's the other side?

     The YOUNG MAN puts out his hand and touches her arm.  It is
     meant for sympathy, but she takes it for attraction.

CLARE.  [Shaking her head]  Not yet please!  I'm enjoying this.  May
I have a cigarette?

     [He takes out his case, and gives her one]

CLARE.  [Letting the smoke slowly forth]  Yes, I'm enjoying it.  Had
a pretty poor time lately; not enough to eat, sometimes.

YOUNG MAN.  Not really!  How damnable!  I say--do have something more
substantial.

     CLARE gives a sudden gasp, as if going off into hysterical
     laughter, but she stifles it, and shakes her head.

YOUNG MAN.  A peach?

     [ARNAUD brings peaches to the table]

CLARE.  [Smiling] Thank you.

     [He fills their glasses and retreats]

CLARE. [Raising her glass] Eat and drink, for tomorrow we--Listen!

     From the supper-party comes the sound of an abortive chorus:
     "With a hey ho, chivy, hark forrard, hark forrard, tantivy!"
     Jarring out into a discordant whoop, it sinks.

CLARE.  "This day a stag must die."  Jolly old song!

YOUNG MAN.  Rowdy lot!  [Suddenly] I say--I admire your pluck.

CLARE.  [Shaking her head] Haven't kept my end up.  Lots of women do!
You see: I'm too fine, and not fine enough!  My best friend said
that.  Too fine, and not fine enough.  [She laughs] I couldn't be a
saint and martyr, and I wouldn't be a soulless doll.  Neither one
thing nor the other--that's the tragedy.

YOUNG MAN.  You must have had awful luck!

CLARE.  I did try.  [Fiercely]  But what's the good--when there's
nothing before you?--Do I look ill?

YOUNG MAN.  No; simply awfully pretty.

CLARE.  [With a laugh]  A man once said to me: "As you haven't money,
you should never have been pretty!"  But, you see, it is some good.
If I hadn't been, I couldn't have risked coming here, could I?  Don't
you think it was rather sporting of me to buy these  [She touches the
gardenias]  with the last shilling over from my cab fare?

YOUNG MAN.  Did you really?  D---d sporting!

CLARE.  It's no use doing things by halves, is it?  I'm--in for it--
wish me luck!  [She drinks, and puts her glass down with a smile] In
for it--deep!  [She flings up her hands above her smiling face] Down,
down, till they're just above water, and then--down, down, down, and
--all over!  Are you sorry now you came and spoke to me?

YOUNG MAN.  By Jove, no!  It may be caddish, but I'm not.

CLARE.  Thank God for beauty!  I hope I shall die pretty!  Do you
think I shall do well?

YOUNG MAN.  I say--don't talk like that!

CLARE.  I want to know.  Do you?

YOUNG MAN.  Well, then--yes, I do.

CLARE.  That's splendid.  Those poor women in the streets would give
their eyes, wouldn't they?--that have to go up and down, up and down!
Do you think I--shall----

     The YOUNG MAN, half-rising, puts his hand on her arm.

YOUNG MAN.  I think you're getting much too excited.  You look all--
Won't you eat your peach?  [She shakes her head]  Do!  Have something
else, then--some grapes, or something?

CLARE.  No, thanks.

     [She has become quite calm again]

YOUNG MAN.  Well, then, what d'you think?  It's awfully hot in here,
isn't it?  Wouldn't it be jollier drivin'?  Shall we--shall we make a
move?

CLARE.  Yes.

     The YOUNG MAN turns to look for the waiter, but ARNAUD is not in
     the room.  He gets up.

YOUNG MAN.  [Feverishly] D---n that waiter!  Wait half a minute, if
you don't mind, while I pay the bill.

     As he goes out into the corridor, the two gentlemen re-appear.
     CLARE is sitting motionless, looking straight before her.

DARK ONE.  A fiver you don't get her to!

BLOND ONE.  Done!

     He advances to her table with his inimitable insolence, and
     taking the cigar from his mouth, bends his stare on her, and
     says: "Charmed to see you lookin' so well!  Will you have supper
     with me here to-morrow night?"  Startled out of her reverie,
     CLARE looks up.  She sees those eyes, she sees beyond him the
     eyes of his companion-sly, malevolent, amused-watching; and she
     just sits gazing, without a word.  At that regard, so clear, the
     BLOND ONE does not wince.  But rather suddenly he says: "That's
     arranged then.  Half-past eleven.  So good of you.  Good-night!"
     He replaces his cigar and strolls back to his companion, and in
     a low voice says: "Pay up!"  Then at a languid "Hullo, Charles!"
     they turn to greet the two in their nook behind the screen.
     CLARE has not moved, nor changed the direction of her gaze.
     Suddenly she thrusts her hand into the, pocket of the cloak that
     hangs behind her, and brings out the little blue bottle which,
     six months ago, she took from MALISE.  She pulls out the cork
     and pours the whole contents into her champagne.  She lifts the
     glass, holds it before her--smiling, as if to call a toast, then
     puts it to her lips and drinks.  Still smiling, she sets the
     empty glass down, and lays the gardenia flowers against her
     face.  Slowly she droops back in her chair, the drowsy smile
     still on her lips; the gardenias drop into her lap; her arms
     relax, her head falls forward on her breast.  And the voices
     behind the screen talk on, and the sounds of joy from the
     supper-party wax and wane.

     The waiter, ARNAUD, returning from the corridor, passes to his
     service-table with a tall, beribboned basket of fruit.  Putting
     it down, he goes towards the table behind the screen, and sees.
     He runs up to CLARE.

ARNAUD.  Madame! Madame!  [He listens for her breathing; then
suddenly catching sight of the little bottle, smells at it] Bon Dieu!

     [At that queer sound they come from behind the screen--all four,
     and look.  The dark night bird says: "Hallo; fainted!" ARNAUD
     holds out the bottle.]

LANGUID LORD.  [Taking it, and smelling] Good God!  [The woman bends
over CLARE, and lifts her hands; ARNAUD rushes to his service-table,
and speaks into his tube]

ARNAUD.  The boss.  Quick!  [Looking up he sees the YOUNG MAN,
returning] 'Monsieur, elle a fui!  Elle est morte'!

LANGUID LORD.  [To the YOUNG MAN standing there aghast]  What's this?
Friend of yours?

YOUNG MAN.  My God!  She was a lady.  That's all I know about her.

LANGUID LORD.  A lady!

     [The blond and dark gentlemen have slipped from the room; and out
     of the supper-party's distant laughter comes suddenly a long,
     shrill: "Gone away!" And the sound of the horn playing the seven
     last notes of the old song: "This day a stag must die!" From the
     last note of all the sound flies up to an octave higher, sweet
     and thin, like a spirit passing, till it is drowned once more in
     laughter.  The YOUNG MAN has covered his eyes with his hands;
     ARNAUD is crossing himself fervently; the LANGUID LORD stands
     gazing, with one of the dropped gardenias twisted in his
     fingers; and the woman, bending over CLARE, kisses her forehead.]


CURTAIN.




End of this Project Gutenberg Etext of THE FUGITIVE, by John Galsworthy






THE PIGEON

A Fantasy in Three Acts



PERSONS OF THE PLAY

CHRISTOPHER WELLWYN, an artist
ANN, his daughter
GUINEVERE MEGAN, a flower-seller
RORY MEGAN, her husband
FERRAND, an alien
TIMSON, once a cabman
EDWARD BERTLEY, a Canon
ALFRED CALWAY, a Professor
SIR THOMAS HOXTON, a Justice of the Peace
Also a police constable, three humble-men, and some curious persons




The action passes in Wellwyn's Studio, and the street outside.

ACT I. Christmas Eve.

ACT II. New Year's Day.

ACT III. The First of April.




ACT I

     It is the night of Christmas Eve, the SCENE is a Studio, flush
     with the street, having a skylight darkened by a fall of snow.
     There is no one in the room, the walls of which are whitewashed,
     above a floor of bare dark boards.  A fire is cheerfully
     burning.  On a model's platform stands an easel and canvas.
     There are busts and pictures; a screen, a little stool, two arm.
     chairs, and a long old-fashioned settle under the window.  A
     door in one wall leads to the house, a door in the opposite wall
     to the model's dressing-room, and the street door is in the
     centre of the wall between.  On a low table a Russian samovar is
     hissing, and beside it on a tray stands a teapot, with glasses,
     lemon, sugar, and a decanter of rum.  Through a huge uncurtained
     window close to the street door the snowy lamplit street can be
     seen, and beyond it the river and a night of stars.

     The sound of a latchkey turned in the lock of the street door,
     and ANN WELLWYN enters, a girl of seventeen, with hair tied in a
     ribbon and covered by a scarf.  Leaving the door open, she turns
     up the electric light and goes to the fire.  She throws of her
     scarf and long red cloak.  She is dressed in a high evening
     frock of some soft white material.  Her movements are quick and
     substantial.  Her face, full of no nonsense, is decided and
     sincere, with deep-set eyes, and a capable, well-shaped
     forehead.  Shredding of her gloves she warms her hands.

     In the doorway appear the figures of two men.  The first is
     rather short and slight, with a soft short beard, bright soft
     eyes, and a crumply face.  Under his squash hat his hair is
     rather plentiful and rather grey.  He wears an old brown ulster
     and woollen gloves, and is puffing at a hand-made cigarette.  He
     is ANN'S father, WELLWYN, the artist.  His companion is a
     well-wrapped clergyman of medium height and stoutish build, with
     a pleasant, rosy face, rather shining eyes, and rather chubby
     clean-shaped lips; in appearance, indeed, a grown-up boy.  He is
     the Vicar of the parish--CANON BERTLEY.


BERTLEY.  My dear Wellwyn, the whole question of reform is full of
difficulty.  When you have two men like Professor Calway and Sir
Thomas Hoxton taking diametrically opposite points of view, as we've
seen to-night, I confess, I----

WELLWYN.  Come in, Vicar, and have some grog.

BERTLEY.  Not to-night, thanks!  Christmas tomorrow!  Great
temptation, though, this room!  Goodnight, Wellwyn; good-night, Ann!

ANN.  [Coming from the fire towards the tea-table.]  Good-night,
Canon Bertley.

     [He goes out, and WELLWYN, shutting the door after him,
     approaches the fire.]

ANN.  [Sitting on the little stool, with her back to the fire, and
making tea.]  Daddy!

WELLWYN.  My dear?

ANN.  You say you liked Professor Calway's lecture.  Is it going to
do you any good, that's the question?

WELLWYN.  I--I hope so, Ann.

ANN.  I took you on purpose.  Your charity's getting simply awful.
Those two this morning cleared out all my housekeeping money.

WELLWYN.  Um!  Um!  I quite understand your feeling.

ANN.  They both had your card, so I couldn't refuse--didn't know what
you'd said to them.  Why don't you make it a rule never to give your
card to anyone except really decent people, and--picture dealers, of
course.

WELLWYN.  My dear, I have--often.

ANN.  Then why don't you keep it?  It's a frightful habit.  You are
naughty, Daddy.  One of these days you'll get yourself into most
fearful complications.

WELLWYN.  My dear, when they--when they look at you?

ANN.  You know the house wants all sorts of things.  Why do you speak
to them at all?

WELLWYN.  I don't--they speak to me.

     [He takes of his ulster and hangs it over the back of an
     arm-chair.]

ANN.  They see you coming.  Anybody can see you coming, Daddy.
That's why you ought to be so careful.  I shall make you wear a hard
hat.  Those squashy hats of yours are hopelessly inefficient.

WELLWYN. [Gazing at his hat.]  Calway wears one.

ANN.  As if anyone would beg of Professor Calway.

WELLWYN.  Well-perhaps not.  You know, Ann, I admire that fellow.
Wonderful power of-of-theory!  How a man can be so absolutely tidy in
his mind!  It's most exciting.

ANN.  Has any one begged of you to-day?

WELLWYN.  [Doubtfully.]  No--no.

ANN.  [After a long, severe look.]  Will you have rum in your tea?

WELLWYN.  [Crestfallen.] Yes, my dear--a good deal.

ANN.  [Pouring out the rum, and handing him the glass.]  Well, who
was it?

WELLWYN.  He didn't beg of me.  [Losing himself in recollection.]
Interesting old creature, Ann--real type.  Old cabman.

ANN.  Where?

WELLWYN.  Just on the Embankment.

ANN.  Of course!  Daddy, you know the Embankment ones are always
rotters.

WELLWYN.  Yes, my dear; but this wasn't.

ANN.  Did you give him your card?

WELLWYN.  I--I--don't

ANN.  Did you, Daddy?

WELLWYN.  I'm rather afraid I may have!

ANN.  May have!  It's simply immoral.

WELLWYN.  Well, the old fellow was so awfully human, Ann.  Besides, I
didn't give him any money--hadn't got any.

ANN.  Look here, Daddy!  Did you ever ask anybody for anything?  You
know you never did, you'd starve first.  So would anybody decent.
Then, why won't you see that people who beg are rotters?

WELLWYN.  But, my dear, we're not all the same.  They wouldn't do it
if it wasn't natural to them.  One likes to be friendly.  What's the
use of being alive if one isn't?

ANN.  Daddy, you're hopeless.

WELLWYN.  But, look here, Ann, the whole thing's so jolly
complicated.  According to Calway, we're to give the State all we can
spare, to make the undeserving deserving.  He's a Professor; he ought
to know.  But old Hoxton's always dinning it into me that we ought to
support private organisations for helping the deserving, and damn the
undeserving.  Well, that's just the opposite.  And he's a J.P.
Tremendous experience.  And the Vicar seems to be for a little bit of
both.  Well, what the devil----?  My trouble is, whichever I'm with,
he always converts me.  [Ruefully.] And there's no fun in any of
them.

ANN.  [Rising.]  Oh!  Daddy, you are so--don't you know that you're
the despair of all social reformers?  [She envelops him.]  There's a
tear in the left knee of your trousers.  You're not to wear them
again.

WELLWYN.  Am I likely to?

ANN.  I shouldn't be a bit surprised if it isn't your only pair.
D'you know what I live in terror of?

     [WELLWYN gives her a queer and apprehensive look.]

ANN.  That you'll take them off some day, and give them away in the
street.  Have you got any money?  [She feels in his coat, and he his
trousers--they find nothing.]  Do you know that your pockets are one
enormous hole?

WELLWYN.  No!

ANN.  Spiritually.

WELLWYN.  Oh!  Ah!  H'm!

ANN.  [Severely.]  Now, look here, Daddy!  [She takes him by his
lapels.]  Don't imagine that it isn't the most disgusting luxury on
your part to go on giving away things as you do!  You know what you
really are, I suppose--a sickly sentimentalist!

WELLWYN.  [Breaking away from her, disturbed.]  It isn't sentiment.
It's simply that they seem to me so--so--jolly.  If I'm to give up
feeling sort of--nice in here [he touches his chest] about people--it
doesn't matter who they are--then I don't know what I'm to do.
I shall have to sit with my head in a bag.

ANN.  I think you ought to.

WELLWYN.  I suppose they see I like them--then they tell me things.
After that, of course you can't help doing what you can.

ANN.  Well, if you will love them up!

WELLWYN.  My dear, I don't want to.  It isn't them especially--why, I
feel it even with old Calway sometimes.  It's only Providence that he
doesn't want anything of me--except to make me like himself--confound
him!

ANN.  [Moving towards the door into the house--impressively.]  What
you don't see is that other people aren't a bit like you.

WELLWYN.  Well, thank God!

ANN.  It's so old-fashioned too!  I'm going to bed--I just leave you
to your conscience.

WELLWYN.  Oh!

ANN.  [Opening the door-severely.] Good-night--[with a certain
weakening] you old--Daddy!

     [She jumps at him, gives him a hug, and goes out.]

     [WELLWYN stands perfectly still.  He first gazes up at the
     skylight, then down at the floor.  Slowly he begins to shake his
     head, and mutter, as he moves towards the fire.]

WELLWYN.  Bad lot.  .  .  .  Low type--no backbone, no stability!

     [There comes a fluttering knock on the outer door.  As the sound
     slowly enters his consciousness, he begins to wince, as though
     he knew, but would not admit its significance.  Then he sits
     down, covering his ears.  The knocking does not cease.  WELLWYN
     drops first one, then both hands, rises, and begins to sidle
     towards the door.  The knocking becomes louder.]

WELLWYN.  Ah dear!  Tt!  Tt!  Tt!

     [After a look in the direction of ANN's disappearance, he opens
     the street door a very little way.  By the light of the lamp
     there can be seen a young girl in dark clothes, huddled in a
     shawl to which the snow is clinging.  She has on her arm a
     basket covered with a bit of sacking.]

WELLWYN.  I can't, you know; it's impossible.

     [The girl says nothing, but looks at him with dark eyes.]

WELLWYN.  [Wincing.] Let's see--I don't know you--do I?

     [The girl, speaking in a soft, hoarse voice, with a faint accent
     of reproach: "Mrs. Megan--you give me this---"  She holds out a
     dirty visiting card.]

WELLWYN.  [Recoiling from the card.]  Oh!  Did I?  Ah!  When?

MRS. MEGAN.  You 'ad some vi'lets off of me larst spring.  You give
me 'arf a crown.

     [A smile tries to visit her face.]

WELLWYN.  [Looking stealthily round.] Ah!  Well, come in--just for a
minute--it's very cold--and tell us what it is.

     [She comes in stolidly, a Sphinx-like figure, with her pretty
     tragic little face.]

WELLWYN.  I don't remember you.  [Looking closer.] Yes, I do.  Only--
you weren't the same-were you?

MRS. MEGAN.  [Dully.]  I seen trouble since.

WELLWYN.  Trouble!  Have some tea?

     [He looks anxiously at the door into the house, then goes
     quickly to the table, and pours out a glass of tea, putting rum
     into it.]

WELLWYN.  [Handing her the tea.]  Keeps the cold out!  Drink it off!

     [MRS. MEGAN drinks it of, chokes a little, and almost
     immediately seems to get a size larger.  WELLWYN watches her
     with his head held on one side, and a smile broadening on his
     face.]

WELLWYN.  Cure for all evils, um?

MRS. MEGAN.  It warms you.  [She smiles.]

WELLWYN.  [Smiling back, and catching himself out.]  Well!  You know,
I oughtn't.

MRS. MEGAN.  [Conscious of the disruption of his personality, and
withdrawing into her tragic abyss.]  I wouldn't 'a come, but you told
me if I wanted an 'and----

WELLWYN.  [Gradually losing himself in his own nature.]  Let me
see--corner of Flight Street, wasn't it?

MRS. MEGAN.  [With faint eagerness.]  Yes, sir, an' I told you about
me vi'lets--it was a luvly spring-day.

WELLWYN.  Beautiful!  Beautiful!  Birds singing, and the trees, &c.!
We had quite a talk.  You had a baby with you.

MRS. MEGAN.  Yes.  I got married since then.

WELLWYN.  Oh!  Ah!  Yes!  [Cheerfully.]  And how's the baby?

MRS.  MEGAN.  [Turning to stone.]  I lost her.

WELLWYN.  Oh!  poor--- Um!

MRS. MEGAN.  [Impassive.]  You said something abaht makin' a picture
of me.  [With faint eagerness.]  So I thought I might come, in case
you'd forgotten.

WELLWYN.  [Looking at, her intently.]  Things going badly?

MRS.  MEGAN.  [Stripping the sacking off her basket.]  I keep 'em
covered up, but the cold gets to 'em.  Thruppence--that's all I've
took.

WELLWYN.  Ho!  Tt! Tt!  [He looks into the basket.]  Christmas, too!

MRS. MEGAN.  They're dead.

WELLWYN.  [Drawing in his breath.]  Got a good husband?

MRS. MEGAN.  He plays cards.

WELLWYN.  Oh, Lord!  And what are you doing out--with a cold like
that?  [He taps his chest.]

MRS. MEGAN.  We was sold up this morning--he's gone off with 'is
mates.  Haven't took enough yet for a night's lodgin'.

WELLWYN.  [Correcting a spasmodic dive into his pockets.]  But who
buys flowers at this time of night?

     [MRS. MEGAN looks at him, and faintly smiles.]

WELLWYN.  [Rumpling his hair.]  Saints above us!  Here!  Come to the
fire!

     [She follows him to the fire.  He shuts the street door.]

WELLWYN.  Are your feet wet?  [She nods.]  Well, sit down here, and
take them off.  That's right.

     [She sits on the stool.  And after a slow look up at him, which
     has in it a deeper knowledge than belongs of right to her years,
     begins taking off her shoes and stockings.  WELLWYN goes to the
     door into the house, opens it, and listens with a sort of
     stealthy casualness.  He returns whistling, but not out loud.
     The girl has finished taking off her stockings, and turned her
     bare toes to the flames.  She shuffles them back under her
     skirt.]

WELLWYN.  How old are you, my child?

MRS. MEGAN.  Nineteen, come Candlemas.

WELLWYN.  And what's your name?

MRS. MEGAN.  Guinevere.

WELLWYN.  What?  Welsh?

MRS. MEGAN.  Yes--from Battersea.

WELLWYN.  And your husband?

MRS. MEGAN.  No.  Irish, 'e is.  Notting Dale, 'e comes from.

WELLWYN.  Roman Catholic?

MRS. MEGAN.  Yes.  My 'usband's an atheist as well.

WELLWYN.  I see.  [Abstractedly.] How jolly!  And how old is he--this
young man of yours?

MRS. MEGAN.  'E'll be twenty soon.

WELLWYN.  Babes in the wood!  Does he treat you badly?

MRS. MEGAN.  No.

WELLWYN.  Nor drink?

MRS. MEGAN.  No.  He's not a bad one.  Only he gets playin'
cards then 'e'll fly the kite.

WELLWYN.  I see.  And when he's not flying it, what does he do?

MRS. MEGAN. [Touching her basket.] Same as me.  Other jobs tires 'im.

WELLWYN.  That's very nice!  [He checks himself.]  Well, what am I to
do with you?

MRS. MEGAN.  Of course, I could get me night's lodging if I like to
do--the same as some of them.

WELLWYN.  No!  no!  Never, my child!  Never!

MRS. MEGAN.  It's easy that way.

WELLWYN.  Heavens!  But your husband!  Um?

MRS. MEGAN.  [With stoical vindictiveness.] He's after one I know of.

WELLWYN.  Tt!  What a pickle!

MRS. MEGAN.  I'll 'ave to walk about the streets.

WELLWYN.  [To himself.]  Now how can I?

     [MRS. MEGAN looks up and smiles at him, as if she had already
     discovered that he is peculiar.]

WELLWYN.  You see, the fact is, I mustn't give you anything--because
--well, for one thing I haven't got it.  There are other reasons, but
that's the--real one.  But, now, there's a little room where my
models dress.  I wonder if you could sleep there.  Come, and see.

     [The Girl gets up lingeringly, loth to leave the warmth.  She
     takes up her wet stockings.]

MRS. MEGAN.  Shall I put them on again?

WELLWYN.  No, no; there's a nice warm pair of slippers.  [Seeing the
steam rising from her.]  Why, you're wet all over.  Here, wait a
little!

     [He crosses to the door into the house, and after stealthy
     listening, steps through.  The Girl, like a cat, steals back to
     the warmth of the fire.  WELLWYN returns with a candle, a
     canary-coloured bath gown, and two blankets.]

WELLWYN.  Now then!  [He precedes her towards the door of the model's
room.]  Hsssh!  [He opens the door and holds up the candle to show
her the room.]  Will it do?  There's a couch.  You'll find some
washing things.  Make yourself quite at home.  See!

     [The Girl, perfectly dumb, passes through with her basket--and
     her shoes and stockings.  WELLWYN hands her the candle,
     blankets, and bath gown.]

WELLWYN.  Have a good sleep, child!  Forget that you're alive!
[He closes the door, mournfully.]  Done it again!  [He goes to the
table, cuts a large slice of cake, knocks on the door, and hands it
in.]  Chow-chow!  [Then, as he walks away, he sights the opposite
door.]  Well--damn it, what could I have done?  Not a farthing on me!
[He goes to the street door to shut it, but first opens it wide to
confirm himself in his hospitality.]  Night like this!

     [A sputter of snow is blown in his face.  A voice says:
     "Monsieur, pardon!"  WELLWYN recoils spasmodically.  A figure
     moves from the lamp-post to the doorway.  He is seen to be young
     and to have ragged clothes.  He speaks again: "You do not
     remember me, Monsieur?  My name is Ferrand--it was in Paris, in
     the Champs-Elysees--by the fountain .  .  .  .  When you came to
     the door, Monsieur--I am not made of iron .  .  .  .  Tenez,
     here is your card I have never lost it." He holds out to WELLWYN
     an old and dirty wing card.  As inch by inch he has advanced
     into the doorway, the light from within falls on him, a tall
     gaunt young pagan with fair hair and reddish golden stubble of
     beard, a long ironical nose a little to one side, and large,
     grey, rather prominent eyes.  There is a certain grace in his
     figure and movements; his clothes are nearly dropping off him.]

WELLWYN.  [Yielding to a pleasant memory.]  Ah!  yes.  By the
fountain.  I was sitting there, and you came and ate a roll, and
drank the water.

FERRAND.  [With faint eagerness.]  My breakfast.  I was in poverty--
veree bad off.  You gave me ten francs.  I thought I had a little the
right [WELLWYN makes a movement of disconcertion]  seeing you said
that if I came to England----

WELLWYN.  Um!  And so you've come?

FERRAND.  It was time that I consolidated my fortunes, Monsieur.

WELLWYN.  And you--have----

     [He stops embarrassed.  FERRAND.  [Shrugging his ragged
     shoulders.]  One is not yet Rothschild.

WELLWYN.  [Sympathetically.]  No.  [Yielding to memory.]  We talked
philosophy.

FERRAND.  I have not yet changed my opinion.  We other vagabonds, we
are exploited by the bourgeois.  This is always my idea, Monsieur.

WELLWYN.  Yes--not quite the general view, perhaps!  Well----
[Heartily.]  Come in!  Very glad to see you again.

FERRAND.  [Brushing his arms over his eyes.] Pardon, Monsieur--your
goodness--I am a little weak.  [He opens his coat, and shows a belt
drawn very tight over his ragged shirt.]  I tighten him one hole for
each meal, during two days now.  That gives you courage.

WELLWYN.  [With cooing sounds, pouring out tea, and adding rum.] Have
some of this.  It'll buck you up.  [He watches the young man drink.]

FERRAND.  [Becoming a size larger.]  Sometimes I think that I will
never succeed to dominate my life, Monsieur--though I have no vices,
except that I guard always the aspiration to achieve success.  But I
will not roll myself under the machine of existence to gain a nothing
every day.  I must find with what to fly a little.

WELLWYN.  [Delicately.] Yes; yes--I remember, you found it difficult
to stay long in any particular--yes.

FERRAND.  [Proudly.]  In one little corner?  No--Monsieur--never!
That is not in my character.  I must see life.

WELLWYN.  Quite, quite!  Have some cake?

     [He cuts cake.]

FERRAND.  In your country they say you cannot eat the cake and have
it.  But one must always try, Monsieur; one must never be content.
[Refusing the cake.] 'Grand merci', but for the moment I have no
stomach--I have lost my stomach now for two days.  If I could smoke,
Monsieur!  [He makes the gesture of smoking.]

WELLWYN.  Rather!  [Handing his tobacco pouch.]  Roll yourself one.

FERRAND.  [Rapidly rolling a cigarette.]  If I had not found you,
Monsieur--I would have been a little hole in the river to-night--
I was so discouraged.  [He inhales and puffs a long luxurious whif of
smoke.  Very bitterly.]  Life!  [He disperses the puff of smoke with
his finger, and stares before him.]  And to think that in a few
minutes HE will be born!  Monsieur!  [He gazes intently at WELLWYN.]
The world would reproach you for your goodness to me.

WELLWYN.  [Looking uneasily at the door into the house.]  You think
so?  Ah!

FERRAND.  Monsieur, if HE himself were on earth now, there would be a
little heap of gentlemen writing to the journals every day to call
Him sloppee sentimentalist!  And what is veree funny, these gentlemen
they would all be most strong Christians.  [He regards WELLWYN
deeply.]  But that will not trouble you, Monsieur; I saw well from
the first that you are no Christian.  You have so kind a face.

WELLWYN.  Oh!  Indeed!

FERRAND.  You have not enough the Pharisee in your character.  You do
not judge, and you are judged.

     [He stretches his limbs as if in pain.]

WELLWYN.  Are you in pain?

FERRAND.  I 'ave a little the rheumatism.

WELLWYN.  Wet through, of course!  [Glancing towards the house.] Wait
a bit!  I wonder if you'd like these trousers; they've--er--they're
not quite----

     [He passes through the door into the house.  FERRAND stands at
     the fire, with his limbs spread as it were to embrace it,
     smoking with abandonment.  WELLWYN returns stealthily, dressed
     in a Jaeger dressing-gown, and bearing a pair of drawers, his
     trousers, a pair of slippers, and a sweater.]

WELLWYN.  [Speaking in a low voice, for the door is still open.]  Can
you make these do for the moment?

FERRAND.  'Je vous remercie', Monsieur.  [Pointing to the screen.]
May I retire?

WELLWYN.  Yes, yes.

     [FERRAND goes behind the screen.  WELLWYN closes the door into
     the house, then goes to the window to draw the curtains.  He
     suddenly recoils and stands petrified with doubt.]

WELLWYN.  Good Lord!

     [There is the sound of tapping on glass.  Against the
     window-pane is pressed the face of a man. WELLWYN motions to him
     to go away.  He does not go, but continues tapping.  WELLWYN
     opens the door.  There enters a square old man, with a red,
     pendulous jawed, shaking face under a snow besprinkled bowler
     hat.  He is holding out a visiting card with tremulous hand.]

WELLWYN.  Who's that?  Who are you?

TIMSON.  [In a thick, hoarse, shaking voice.] 'Appy to see you, sir;
we 'ad a talk this morning.  Timson--I give you me name.  You invited
of me, if ye remember.

WELLWYN.  It's a little late, really.

TIMSON.  Well, ye see, I never expected to 'ave to call on yer.  I
was 'itched up all right when I spoke to yer this mornin', but bein'
Christmas, things 'ave took a turn with me to-day.  [He speaks with
increasing thickness.]  I'm reg'lar disgusted--not got the price of a
bed abaht me.  Thought you wouldn't like me to be delicate--not at my
age.

WELLWYN.  [With a mechanical and distracted dive of his hands into
his pockets.]  The fact is, it so happens I haven't a copper on me.

TIMSON.  [Evidently taking this for professional refusal.]  Wouldn't
arsk you if I could 'elp it.  'Ad to do with 'orses all me life.
It's this 'ere cold I'm frightened of.  I'm afraid I'll go to sleep.

WELLWYN.  Well, really, I----

TIMSON.  To be froze to death--I mean--it's awkward.

WELLWYN.  [Puzzled and unhappy.]  Well--come in a moment, and let's--
think it out.  Have some tea!

     [He pours out the remains of the tea, and finding there is not
     very much, adds rum rather liberally.  TIMSON, who walks a
     little wide at the knees, steadying his gait, has followed.]

TIMSON.  [Receiving the drink.]  Yer 'ealth.  'Ere's--soberiety!
[He applies the drink to his lips with shaking hand.  Agreeably
surprised.]  Blimey!  Thish yer tea's foreign, ain't it?

FERRAND.  [Reappearing from behind the screen in his new clothes of
which the trousers stop too soon.]  With a needle, Monsieur, I would
soon have with what to make face against the world.

WELLWYN.  Too short!  Ah!

     [He goes to the dais on which stands ANN's workbasket, and takes
     from it a needle and cotton.]

     [While he is so engaged FERRAND is sizing up old TIMSON, as one
     dog will another.  The old man, glass in hand, seems to have
     lapsed into coma.]

FERRAND.  [Indicating TIMSON]  Monsieur!

     [He makes the gesture of one drinking, and shakes his head.]

WELLWYN.  [Handing him the needle and cotton.]  Um!  Afraid so!

     [They approach TIMSON, who takes no notice.]

FERRAND.  [Gently.]  It is an old cabby, is it not, Monsieur?  'Ceux
sont tous des buveurs'.

WELLWYN.  [Concerned at the old man's stupefaction.]  Now, my old
friend, sit down a moment.  [They manoeuvre TIMSON to the settle.]
Will you smoke?

TIMSON.  [In a drowsy voice.]  Thank 'ee-smoke pipe of 'baccer.  Old
'orse--standin' abaht in th' cold.

     [He relapses into coma.]

FERRAND.  [With a click of his tongue.] 'Il est parti'.

WELLWYN.  [Doubtfully.]  He hasn't really left a horse outside, do
you think?

FERRAND.  Non, non, Monsieur--no 'orse.  He is dreaming.  I know very
well that state of him--that catches you sometimes.  It is the warmth
sudden on the stomach.  He will speak no more sense to-night.  At the
most, drink, and fly a little in his past.

WELLWYN.  Poor old buffer!

FERRAND.  Touching, is it not, Monsieur?  There are many brave gents
among the old cabbies--they have philosophy--that comes from 'orses,
and from sitting still.

WELLWYN.  [Touching TIMSON's shoulder.]  Drenched!

FERRAND.  That will do 'im no 'arm, Monsieur-no 'arm at all.  He is
well wet inside, remember--it is Christmas to-morrow.  Put him a rug,
if you will, he will soon steam.

     [WELLWYN takes up ANN's long red cloak, and wraps it round the
     old man.]

TIMSON.  [Faintly roused.]  Tha's right.  Put--the rug on th' old
'orse.

     [He makes a strange noise, and works his head and tongue.]

WELLWYN.  [Alarmed.]  What's the matter with him?

FERRAND.  It is nothing, Monsieur; for the moment he thinks 'imself a
'orse.  'Il joue "cache-cache,"'  'ide and seek, with what you call--
'is bitt.

WELLWYN.  But what's to be done with him?  One can't turn him out in
this state.

FERRAND.  If you wish to leave him 'ere, Monsieur, have no fear.  I
charge myself with him.

WELLWYN.  Oh!  [Dubiously.]  You--er--I really don't know, I--hadn't
contemplated--You think you could manage if I--if I went to bed?

FERRAND.  But certainly, Monsieur.

WELLWYN.  [Still dubiously.] You--you're sure you've everything you
want?

FERRAND.  [Bowing.] 'Mais oui, Monsieur'.

WELLWYN.  I don't know what I can do by staying.

FERRAND.  There is nothing you can do, Monsieur.  Have confidence in
me.

WELLWYN.  Well-keep the fire up quietly--very quietly.  You'd better
take this coat of mine, too.  You'll find it precious cold, I expect,
about three o'clock.  [He hands FERRAND his Ulster.]

FERRAND.  [Taking it.]  I shall sleep in praying for you, Monsieur.

WELLWYN.  Ah!  Yes!  Thanks!  Well-good-night!  By the way, I shall
be down rather early.  Have to think of my household a bit, you know.

FERRAND.  'Tres bien, Monsieur'.  I comprehend.  One must well be
regular in this life.

WELLWYN.  [With a start.]  Lord!  [He looks at the door of the
model's room.] I'd forgotten----

FERRAND.  Can I undertake anything, Monsieur?

WELLWYN.  No, no!  [He goes to the electric light switch by the outer
door.] You won't want this, will you?

FERRAND.  'Merci, Monsieur'.

     [WELLWYN switches off the light.]

FERRAND.  'Bon soir, Monsieur'!

WELLWYN.  The devil!  Er--good-night!

     [He hesitates, rumples his hair, and passes rather suddenly
     away.]

FERRAND.  [To himself.]  Poor pigeon!  [Looking long at old TIMSON]
'Espece de type anglais!'

     [He sits down in the firelight, curls up a foot on his knee, and
     taking out a knife, rips the stitching of a turned-up end of
     trouser, pinches the cloth double, and puts in the preliminary
     stitch of a new hem--all with the swiftness of one well-
     accustomed.  Then, as if hearing a sound behind him, he gets up
     quickly and slips behind the screen.  MRS. MEGAN, attracted by
     the cessation of voices, has opened the door, and is creeping
     from the model's room towards the fire.  She has almost reached
     it before she takes in the torpid crimson figure of old TIMSON.
     She halts and puts her hand to her chest--a queer figure in the
     firelight, garbed in the canary-coloured bath gown and rabbit's-
     wool slippers, her black matted hair straggling down on her
     neck.  Having quite digested the fact that the old man is in a
     sort of stupor, MRS. MEGAN goes close to the fire, and sits on
     the little stool, smiling sideways at old TIMSON.  FERRAND,
     coming quietly up behind, examines her from above, drooping his
     long nose as if enquiring with it as to her condition in life;
     then he steps back a yard or two.]

FERRAND.  [Gently.] 'Pardon, Ma'moiselle'.

MRS. MEGAN.  [Springing to her feet.]  Oh!

FERRAND.  All right, all right!  We are brave gents!

TIMSON.  [Faintly roused.]  'Old up, there!

FERRAND.  Trust in me, Ma'moiselle!

     [MRS. MEGAN responds by drawing away.]

FERRAND.  [Gently.]  We must be good comrades.  This asylum--it is
better than a doss-'ouse.

     [He pushes the stool over towards her, and seats himself.
     Somewhat reassured, MRS. MEGAN again sits down.]

MRS. MEGAN.  You frightened me.

TIMSON.  [Unexpectedly-in a drowsy tone.]  Purple foreigners!

FERRAND.  Pay no attention, Ma'moiselle.  He is a philosopher.

MRS. MEGAN.  Oh!  I thought 'e was boozed.

     [They both look at TIMSON]

FERRAND.  It is the same-veree 'armless.

MRS. MEGAN.  What's that he's got on 'im?

FERRAND.  It is a coronation robe.  Have no fear, Ma'moiselle.  Veree
docile potentate.

MRS. MEGAN.  I wouldn't be afraid of him.  [Challenging FERRAND.] I'm
afraid o' you.

FERRAND.  It is because you do not know me, Ma'moiselle.  You are
wrong, it is always the unknown you should love.

MRS. MEGAN.  I don't like the way you-speaks to me.

FERRAND.  Ah! You are a Princess in disguise?

MRS. MEGAN.  No fear!

FERRAND.  No?  What is it then you do to make face against the
necessities of life?  A living?

MRS. MEGAN.  Sells flowers.

FERRAND.  [Rolling his eyes.]  It is not a career.

MRS. MEGAN.  [With a touch of devilry.]  You don't know what I do.

FERRAND.  Ma'moiselle, whatever you do is charming.

     [MRS. MEGAN looks at him, and slowly smiles.]

MRS. MEGAN.  You're a foreigner.

FERRAND.  It is true.

MRS. MEGAN.  What do you do for a livin'?

FERRAND.  I am an interpreter.

MRS. MEGAN.  You ain't very busy, are you?

FERRAND.  [With dignity.]  At present I am resting.

MRS. MEGAN.  [Looking at him and smiling.]  How did you and 'im come
here?

FERRAND.  Ma'moiselle, we would ask you the same question.

MRS. MEGAN.  The gentleman let me.  'E's funny.

FERRAND.  'C'est un ange'  [At MRS. MEGAN's blank stare he
interprets.]  An angel!

MRS. MEGAN.  Me luck's out-that's why I come.

FERRAND.  [Rising.]  Ah!  Ma'moiselle!  Luck!  There is the little
God who dominates us all.  Look at this old!  [He points to TIMSON.]
He is finished.  In his day that old would be doing good business.
He could afford himself--[He maker a sign of drinking.]--Then come
the motor cars.  All goes--he has nothing left, only 'is 'abits of a
'cocher'!  Luck!

TIMSON.  [With a vague gesture--drowsily.]  Kick the foreign beggars
out.

FERRAND.  A real Englishman .  .  .  .  And look at me!  My father
was merchant of ostrich feathers in Brussels.  If I had been content
to go in his business, I would 'ave been rich.  But I was born to
roll--"rolling stone"to voyage is stronger than myself.  Luck!  .  .
And you, Ma'moiselle, shall I tell your fortune?  [He looks in her
face.]  You were born for 'la joie de vivre'--to drink the wines of
life.  'Et vous voila'!  Luck!

     [Though she does not in the least understand what he has said,
     her expression changes to a sort of glee.]

FERRAND.  Yes.  You were born loving pleasure.  Is it not?  You see,
you cannot say, No.  All of us, we have our fates.  Give me your
hand.  [He kneels down and takes her hand.]  In each of us there is
that against which we cannot struggle.  Yes, yes!

     [He holds her hand, and turns it over between his own.
     MRS. MEGAN remains stolid, half fascinated, half-reluctant.]

TIMSON.  [Flickering into consciousness.]  Be'ave yourselves!  Yer
crimson canary birds!

     [MRS. MEGAN would withdraw her hand, but cannot.]

FERRAND.  Pay no attention, Ma'moiselle.  He is a Puritan.

     [TIMSON relapses into comatosity, upsetting his glass, which
     falls with a crash.]

MRS. MEGAN.  Let go my hand, please!

FERRAND.  [Relinquishing it, and staring into the fore gravely.]
There is one thing I have never done--'urt a woman--that is hardly in
my character.  [Then, drawing a little closer, he looks into her
face.]  Tell me, Ma'moiselle, what is it you think of all day long?

MRS. MEGAN.  I dunno--lots, I thinks of.

FERRAND.  Shall I tell you?  [Her eyes remain fixed on his, the
strangeness of him preventing her from telling him to "get along."
He goes on in his ironic voice.]  It is of the streets--the lights--
the faces--it is of all which moves, and is warm--it is of colour--it
is [he brings his face quite close to hers] of Love.  That is for you
what the road is for me.  That is for you what the rum is for that
old--[He jerks his thumb back at TIMSON.  Then bending swiftly
forward to the girl.]  See!  I kiss you--Ah!

     [He draws her forward off the stool.  There is a little
     struggle, then she resigns her lips.  The little stool,
     overturned, falls with a clatter.  They spring up, and move
     apart.  The door opens and ANN enters from the house in a blue
     dressing-gown, with her hair loose, and a candle held high above
     her head.  Taking in the strange half-circle round the stove,
     she recoils.  Then, standing her ground, calls in a voice
     sharpened by fright: "Daddy--Daddy!"]

TIMSON. [Stirring uneasily, and struggling to his feet.]  All right!
I'm comin'!

FERRAND.  Have no fear, Madame!

     [In the silence that follows, a clock begins loudly striking
     twelve.  ANN remains, as if carved in atone, her eyes fastened
     on the strangers.  There is the sound of someone falling
     downstairs, and WELLWYN appears, also holding a candle above his
     head.]

ANN.  Look!

WELLWYN.  Yes, yes, my dear!  It--it happened.

ANN.  [With a sort of groan.]  Oh!  Daddy!

     [In the renewed silence, the church clock ceases to chime.]

FERRAND.  [Softly, in his ironic voice.] HE is come, Monsieur!  'Appy
Christmas!  Bon Noel!

     [There is a sudden chime of bells.  The Stage is blotted dark.]


                              Curtain.




ACT II

It is four o'clock in the afternoon of New Year's Day.  On the raised
dais MRS. MEGAN is standing, in her rags; with bare feet and ankles,
her dark hair as if blown about, her lips parted, holding out a
dishevelled bunch of violets.  Before his easel, WELLWYN is painting
her.  Behind him, at a table between the cupboard and the door to the
model's room, TIMSON is washing brushes, with the movements of one
employed upon relief works.  The samovar is hissing on the table by
the stove, the tea things are set out.

WELLWYN.  Open your mouth.

     [MRS. MEGAN opens her mouth.]

ANN.  [In hat and coat, entering from the house.]  Daddy!

     [WELLWYN goes to her; and, released from restraint, MRS. MEGAN
     looks round at TIMSON and grimaces.]

WELLWYN.  Well, my dear?

     [They speak in low voices.]

ANN.  [Holding out a note.] This note from Canon Bentley.  He's going
to bring her husband here this afternoon.  [She looks at MRS. MEGAN.]

WELLWYN.  Oh!  [He also looks at MRS. MEGAN.]

ANN.  And I met Sir Thomas Hoxton at church this morning, and spoke
to him about Timson.

WELLWYN.  Um!

     [They look at TIMSON.  Then ANN goes back to the door, and
     WELLWYN follows her.]

ANN.  [Turning.]  I'm going round now, Daddy, to ask Professor Calway
what we're to do with that Ferrand.

WELLWYN.  Oh!  One each!  I wonder if they'll like it.

ANN.  They'll have to lump it.

     [She goes out into the house.]

WELLWYN.  [Back at his easel.] You can shut your mouth now.

     [MRS. MEGAN shuts her mouth, but opens it immediately to smile.]

WELLWYN.  [Spasmodically.]  Ah!  Now that's what I want.  [He dabs
furiously at the canvas.  Then standing back, runs his hands through
his hair and turns a painter's glance towards the skylight.]  Dash!
Light's gone!  Off you get, child--don't tempt me!

     [MRS. MEGAN descends.  Passing towards the door of the model's
     room she stops, and stealthily looks at the picture.]

TIMSON.  Ah!  Would yer!

WELLWYN.  [Wheeling round.]  Want to have a look?  Well--come on!

     [He takes her by the arm, and they stand before the canvas.
     After a stolid moment, she giggles.]

WELLWYN.  Oh!  You think so?

MRS. MEGAN.  [Who has lost her hoarseness.]  It's not like my picture
that I had on the pier.

WELLWYN.  No-it wouldn't be.

MRS. MEGAN.  [Timidly.] If I had an 'at on, I'd look better.

WELLWYN.  With feathers?

MRS. MEGAN.  Yes.

WELLWYN.  Well, you can't!  I don't like hats, and I don't like
feathers.

     [MRS. MEGAN timidly tugs his sleeve.  TIMSON, screened as he
     thinks by the picture, has drawn from his bulky pocket a bottle
     and is taking a stealthy swig.]

WELLWYN.  [To MRS. MEGAN, affecting not to notice.] How much do I owe
you?

MRS. MEGAN.  [A little surprised.]  You paid me for to-day-all 'cept
a penny.

WELLWYN.  Well!  Here it is.  [He gives her a coin.]  Go and get your
feet on!

MRS. MEGAN.  You've give me 'arf a crown.

WELLWYN.  Cut away now!

     [MRS. MEGAN, smiling at the coin, goes towards the model's room.
     She looks back at WELLWYN, as if to draw his eyes to her, but he
     is gazing at the picture; then, catching old TIMSON'S sour
     glance, she grimaces at him, kicking up her feet with a little
     squeal.  But when WELLWYN turns to the sound, she is demurely
     passing through the doorway.]

TIMSON.  [In his voice of dubious sobriety.]  I've finished these yer
brushes, sir.  It's not a man's work.  I've been thinkin' if you'd
keep an 'orse, I could give yer satisfaction.

WELLWYN.  Would the horse, Timson?

TIMSON.  [Looking him up and down.]  I knows of one that would just
suit yer.  Reel 'orse, you'd like 'im.

WELLWYN.  [Shaking his head.]  Afraid not, Timson!  Awfully sorry,
though, to have nothing better for you than this, at present.

TIMSON.  [Faintly waving the brushes.]  Of course, if you can't
afford it, I don't press you--it's only that I feel I'm not doing
meself justice.  [Confidentially.]  There's just one thing, sir; I
can't bear to see a gen'leman imposed on.  That foreigner--'e's not
the sort to 'ave about the place.  Talk?  Oh!  ah!  But 'e'll never
do any good with 'imself.  He's a alien.

WELLWYN.  Terrible misfortune to a fellow, Timson.

TIMSON.  Don't you believe it, sir; it's his fault I says to the
young lady yesterday: Miss Ann, your father's a gen'leman [with a
sudden accent of hoarse sincerity], and so you are--I don't mind
sayin' it--but, I said, he's too easy-goin'.

WELLWYN.  Indeed!

TIMSON.  Well, see that girl now!  [He shakes his head.]  I never did
believe in goin' behind a person's back--I'm an Englishman--but
[lowering his voice]  she's a bad hat, sir.  Why, look at the street
she comes from!

WELLWYN.  Oh!  you know it.

TIMSON.  Lived there meself larst three years.  See the difference a
few days' corn's made in her. She's that saucy you can't touch 'er
head.

WELLWYN.  Is there any necessity, Timson?

TIMSON.  Artful too.  Full o' vice, I call'er.  Where's 'er 'usband?

WELLWYN.  [Gravely.] Come, Timson!  You wouldn't like her to----

TIMSON.  [With dignity, so that the bottle in his pocket is plainly
visible.]  I'm a man as always beared inspection.

WELLWYN.  [With a well-directed smile.]  So I see.

TIMSON.  [Curving himself round the bottle.]  It's not for me to say
nothing--but I can tell a gen'leman as quick as ever I can tell an
'orse.

WELLWYN.  [Painting.]  I find it safest to assume that every man is a
gentleman, and every woman a lady.  Saves no end of self-contempt.
Give me the little brush.

TIMSON.  [Handing him the brush--after a considerable introspective
pause.]  Would yer like me to stay and wash it for yer again?  [With
great resolution.]  I will--I'll do it for you--never grudged workin'
for a gen'leman.

WELLWYN.  [With sincerity.]  Thank you, Timson--very good of you, I'm
sure.  [He hands him back the brush.]  Just lend us a hand with this.
[Assisted by TIMSON he pushes back the dais.]  Let's see!  What do I
owe you?

TIMSON.  [Reluctantly.]  It so 'appens, you advanced me to-day's
yesterday.

WELLWYN.  Then I suppose you want to-morrow's?

TIMSON.  Well, I 'ad to spend it, lookin' for a permanent job.  When
you've got to do with 'orses, you can't neglect the publics, or you
might as well be dead.

WELLWYN.  Quite so!

TIMSON.  It mounts up in the course o' the year.

WELLWYN.  It would.  [Passing him a coin.] This is for an exceptional
purpose--Timson--see.  Not----

TIMSON.  [Touching his forehead.] Certainly, sir.  I quite
understand.  I'm not that sort, as I think I've proved to yer, comin'
here regular day after day, all the week.  There's one thing, I ought
to warn you perhaps--I might 'ave to give this job up any day.

     [He makes a faint demonstration with the little brush, then puts
     it, absent-mindedly, into his pocket.]

WELLWYN.  [Gravely.]  I'd never stand in the way of your bettering
yourself, Timson.  And, by the way, my daughter spoke to a friend
about you to-day.  I think something may come of it.

TIMSON.  Oh!  Oh!  She did!  Well, it might do me a bit o' good.  [He
makes for the outer door, but stops.]  That foreigner!  'E sticks in
my gizzard.  It's not as if there wasn't plenty o' pigeons for 'im to
pluck in 'is own Gawd-forsaken country.  Reg-lar jay, that's what I
calls 'im.  I could tell yer something----

     [He has opened the door, and suddenly sees that FERRAND himself
     is standing there.  Sticking out his lower lip, TIMSON gives a
     roll of his jaw and lurches forth into the street.  Owing to a
     slight miscalculation, his face and raised arms are plainly
     visible through the window, as he fortifies himself from his
     battle against the cold.  FERRAND, having closed the door,
     stands with his thumb acting as pointer towards this spectacle.
     He is now remarkably dressed in an artist's squashy green hat, a
     frock coat too small for him, a bright blue tie of knitted silk,
     the grey trousers that were torn, well-worn brown boots, and a
     tan waistcoat.]

WELLWYN.  What luck to-day?

FERRAND.  [With a shrug.]  Again I have beaten all London, Monsieur-
-not one bite.  [Contemplating himself.]  I think perhaps, that, for
the bourgeoisie, there is a little too much colour in my costume.

WELLWYN.  [Contemplating him.]  Let's see--I believe I've an old top
hat somewhere.

FERRAND.  Ah!  Monsieur, 'merci', but that I could not.  It is
scarcely in my character.

WELLWYN.  True!

FERRAND.  I have been to merchants of wine, of tabac, to hotels, to
Leicester Square.  I have been to a Society for spreading Christian
knowledge--I thought there I would have a chance perhaps as
interpreter.  'Toujours meme chose', we regret, we have no situation
for you--same thing everywhere.  It seems there is nothing doing in
this town.

WELLWYN.  I've noticed, there never is.

FERRAND.  I was thinking, Monsieur, that in aviation there might be a
career for me--but it seems one must be trained.

WELLWYN.  Afraid so, Ferrand.

FERRAND.  [Approaching the picture.]  Ah!  You are always working at
this.  You will have something of very good there, Monsieur.  You
wish to fix the type of wild savage existing ever amongst our high
civilisation.  'C'est tres chic ca'!  [WELLWYN manifests the quiet
delight of an English artist actually understood.]  In the figures
of these good citizens, to whom she offers her flower, you would
give the idea of all the cage doors open to catch and make tame the
wild bird, that will surely die within.  'Tres gentil'!  Believe me,
Monsieur, you have there the greatest comedy of life!  How anxious
are the tame birds to do the wild birds good.  [His voice changes.]
For the wild birds it is not funny.  There is in some human souls,
Monsieur, what cannot be made tame.

WELLWYN.  I believe you, Ferrand.

     [The face of a young man appears at the window, unseen.
     Suddenly ANN opens the door leading to the house.]

ANN.  Daddy--I want you.

WELLWYN.  [To FERRAND.]  Excuse me a minute!

     [He goes to his daughter, and they pass out.  FERRAND remains
     at the picture.  MRS. MEGAN dressed in some of ANN's discarded
     garments, has come out of the model's room.  She steals up
     behind FERRAND like a cat, reaches an arm up, and curls it
     round his mouth.  He turns, and tries to seize her; she
     disingenuously slips away. He follows.  The chase circles the
     tea table.  He catches her, lifts her up, swings round with
     her, so that her feet fly out; kisses her bent-back face, and
     sets her down.  She stands there smiling. The face at the
     window darkens.]

FERRAND.  La Valse!

     [He takes her with both hands by the waist, she puts her hands
     against his shoulders to push him of--and suddenly they are
     whirling.  As they whirl, they bob together once or twice, and
     kiss.  Then, with a warning motion towards the door, she
     wrenches herself free, and stops beside the picture, trying
     desperately to appear demure.  WELLWYN and ANN have entered.
     The face has vanished.]

FERRAND.  [Pointing to the picture.]  One does not comprehend all
this, Monsieur, without well studying.  I was in train to interpret
for Ma'moiselle the chiaroscuro.

WELLWYN.  [With a queer look.]  Don't take it too seriously,
Ferrand.

FERRAND.  It is a masterpiece.

WELLWYN.  My daughter's just spoken to a friend, Professor Calway.
He'd like to meet you.  Could you come back a little later?

FERRAND.  Certainly, Ma'moiselle.  That will be an opening for me, I
trust.  [He goes to the street door.]

ANN.  [Paying no attention to him.]  Mrs. Megan, will you too come
back in half an hour?

FERRAND.  'Tres bien, Ma'moiselle'! I will see that she does.  We
will take a little promenade together.  That will do us good.

     [He motions towards the door; MRS. MEGAN, all eyes, follows him
     out.]

ANN.  Oh!  Daddy, they are rotters.  Couldn't you see they were
having the most high jinks?

WELLWYN.  [At his picture.]  I seemed to have noticed something.

ANN.  [Preparing for tea.]  They were kissing.

WELLWYN.  Tt!  Tt!

ANN.  They're hopeless, all three--especially her.  Wish I hadn't
given her my clothes now.

WELLWYN.  [Absorbed.]  Something of wild-savage.

ANN.  Thank goodness it's the Vicar's business to see that married
people live together in his parish.

WELLWYN.  Oh!  [Dubiously.]  The Megans are Roman Catholic-Atheists,
Ann.

ANN.  [With heat.]  Then they're all the more bound.  [WELLWYN gives
a sudden and alarmed whistle.]

ANN.  What's the matter?

WELLWYN.  Didn't you say you spoke to Sir Thomas, too.  Suppose he
comes in while the Professor's here.  They're cat and dog.

ANN.  [Blankly.]  Oh!  [As WELLWYN strikes a match.] The samovar is
lighted.  [Taking up the nearly empty decanter of rum and going to
the cupboard.]  It's all right.  He won't.

WELLWYN.  We'll hope not.

     [He turns back to his picture.]

ANN.  [At the cupboard.]  Daddy!

WELLWYN.  Hi!

ANN.  There were three bottles.

WELLWYN.  Oh!

ANN.  Well!  Now there aren't any.

WELLWYN.  [Abstracted.]  That'll be Timson.

ANN.  [With real horror.]  But it's awful!

WELLWYN.  It is, my dear.

ANN.  In seven days.  To say nothing of the stealing.

WELLWYN.  [Vexed.]  I blame myself-very much.  Ought to have kept it
locked up.

ANN.  You ought to keep him locked up!

     [There is heard a mild but authoritative knock.]

WELLWYN.  Here's the Vicar!

ANN.  What are you going to do about the rum?

WELLWYN.  [Opening the door to CANON BERTLEY.]  Come in, Vicar!
Happy New Year!

BERTLEY.  Same to you!  Ah!  Ann!  I've got into touch with her
young husband--he's coming round.

ANN.  [Still a little out of her plate.]  Thank Go---Moses!

BERTLEY.  [Faintly surprised.]  From what I hear he's not really a
bad youth.  Afraid he bets on horses.  The great thing, WELLWYN,
with those poor fellows is to put your finger on the weak spot.

ANN.  [To herself-gloomily.]  That's not difficult.  What would you
do, Canon Bertley, with a man who's been drinking father's rum?

BERTLEY.  Remove the temptation, of course.

WELLWYN.  He's done that.

BERTLEY.  Ah!  Then--[WELLWYN and ANN hang on his words]  then I
should--er

ANN.  [Abruptly.]  Remove him.

BERTLEY.  Before I say that, Ann, I must certainly see the
individual.

WELLWYN.  [Pointing to the window.]  There he is!

     [In the failing light TIMSON'S face is indeed to be seen
     pressed against the window pane.]

ANN.  Daddy, I do wish you'd have thick glass put in.  It's so
disgusting to be spied at!  [WELLWYN going quickly to the door, has
opened it.]  What do you want?  [TIMSON enters with dignity.  He is
fuddled.]

TIMSON.  [Slowly.] Arskin' yer pardon-thought it me duty to come
back-found thish yer little brishel on me.  [He produces the little
paint brush.]

ANN.  [In a deadly voice.]  Nothing else?

     [TIMSON accords her a glassy stare.]

WELLWYN.  [Taking the brush hastily.]  That'll do, Timson, thanks!

TIMSON.  As I am 'ere, can I do anything for yer?

ANN.  Yes, you can sweep out that little room.  [She points to the
model's room.]  There's a broom in there.

TIMSON.  [Disagreeably surprised.]  Certainly; never make bones
about a little extra--never 'ave in all me life.  Do it at onsh, I
will.  [He moves across to the model's room at that peculiar broad
gait so perfectly adjusted to his habits.]  You quite understand me
--couldn't bear to 'ave anything on me that wasn't mine.

     [He passes out.]

ANN.  Old fraud!

WELLWYN.  "In" and "on."  Mark my words, he'll restore the--bottles.

BERTLEY.  But, my dear WELLWYN, that is stealing.

WELLWYN.  We all have our discrepancies, Vicar.

ANN.  Daddy!  Discrepancies!

WELLWYN.  Well, Ann, my theory is that as regards solids Timson's an
Individualist, but as regards liquids he's a Socialist .  .  .  or
'vice versa', according to taste.

BERTLEY.  No, no, we mustn't joke about it.  [Gravely.]  I do think
he should be spoken to.

WELLWYN.  Yes, but not by me.

BERTLEY.  Surely you're the proper person.

WELLWYN.  [Shaking his head.]  It was my rum, Vicar.  Look so
personal.

     [There sound a number of little tat-tat knocks.]

WELLWYN.  Isn't that the Professor's knock?

     [While Ann sits down to make tea, he goes to the door and opens
     it.  There, dressed in an ulster, stands a thin, clean-shaved
     man, with a little hollow sucked into either cheek, who, taking
     off a grey squash hat, discloses a majestically bald forehead,
     which completely dominates all that comes below it.]

WELLWYN.  Come in, Professor!  So awfully good of you!  You know
Canon Bentley, I think?

CALWAY.  Ah!  How d'you do?

WELLWYN.  Your opinion will be invaluable, Professor.

ANN.  Tea, Professor Calway?

     [They have assembled round the tea table.]

CALWAY.  Thank you; no tea; milk.

WELLWYN.  Rum?

     [He pours rum into CALWAY's milk.]

CALWAY.  A little-thanks!  [Turning to ANN.]  You were going to show
me some one you're trying to rescue, or something, I think.

ANN.  Oh!  Yes.  He'll be here directly--simply perfect rotter.

CALWAY.  [Smiling.]  Really!  Ah!  I think you said he was a
congenital?

WELLWYN.  [With great interest.]  What!

ANN.  [Low.]  Daddy!  [To CALWAY.] Yes; I--I think that's what you
call him.

CALWAY.  Not old?

ANN.  No; and quite healthy--a vagabond.

CALWAY.  [Sipping.]  I see!  Yes.  Is it, do you think chronic
unemployment with a vagrant tendency?  Or would it be nearer the
mark to say: Vagrancy----

WELLWYN.  Pure!  Oh!  pure!  Professor.  Awfully human.

CALWAY.  [With a smile of knowledge.]  Quite!  And--er----

ANN.  [Breaking in.]  Before he comes, there's another----

BERTLEY.  [Blandly.]  Yes, when you came in, we were discussing what
should be done with a man who drinks rum--[CALWAY pauses in the act
of drinking]--that doesn't belong to him.

CALWAY.  Really!  Dipsomaniac?

BERTLEY.  Well--perhaps you could tell us--drink certainly changing
thine to mine.  The Professor could see him, WELLWYN?

ANN.  [Rising.]  Yes, do come and look at him, Professor CALWAY.
He's in there.

     [She points towards the model's room.  CALWAY smiles
     deprecatingly.]

ANN.  No, really; we needn't open the door.  You can see him through
the glass.  He's more than half----

CALWAY.  Well, I hardly----

ANN.  Oh!  Do!  Come on, Professor CALWAY!  We must know what to do
with him.  [CALWAY rises.]  You can stand on a chair.  It's all
science.

     [She draws CALWAY to the model's room, which is lighted by a
     glass panel in the top of the high door.  CANON BERTLEY also
     rises and stands watching.  WELLWYN hovers, torn between
     respect for science and dislike of espionage.]

ANN.  [Drawing up a chair.]  Come on!

CALWAY.  Do you seriously wish me to?

ANN.  Rather!  It's quite safe; he can't see you.

CALWAY.  But he might come out.

     [ANN puts her back against the door.  CALWAY mounts the chair
     dubiously, and raises his head cautiously, bending it more and
     more downwards.]

ANN.  Well?

CALWAY.  He appears to be---sitting on the floor.

WELLWYN.  Yes, that's all right!

     [BERTLEY covers his lips.]

CALWAY.  [To ANN--descending.]  By the look of his face, as far as
one can see it, I should say there was a leaning towards mania.  I
know the treatment.

     [There come three loud knocks on the door.  WELLWYN and ANN
     exchange a glance of consternation.]

ANN.  Who's that?

WELLWYN.  It sounds like Sir Thomas.

CALWAY.  Sir Thomas Hoxton?

WELLWYN.  [Nodding.]  Awfully sorry, Professor.  You see, we----

CALWAY.  Not at all.  Only, I must decline to be involved in
argument with him, please.

BERTLEY.  He has experience.  We might get his opinion, don't you
think?

CALWAY.  On a point of reform?  A J.P.!

BERTLEY.  [Deprecating.]  My dear Sir--we needn't take it.

     [The three knocks resound with extraordinary fury.]

ANN.  You'd better open the door, Daddy.

     [WELLWYN opens the door.  SIR, THOMAS HOXTON is disclosed in a
     fur overcoat and top hat.  His square, well-coloured face is
     remarkable for a massive jaw, dominating all that comes above
     it.  His Voice is resolute.]

HOXTON.  Afraid I didn't make myself heard.

WELLWYN.  So good of you to come, Sir Thomas.  Canon Bertley!  [They
greet.]  Professor CALWAY you know, I think.

HOXTON.  [Ominously.]  I do.

     [They almost greet.  An awkward pause.]

ANN.  [Blurting it out.]  That old cabman I told you of's been
drinking father's rum.

BERTLEY.  We were just discussing what's to be done with him, Sir
Thomas.  One wants to do the very best, of course.  The question of
reform is always delicate.

CALWAY.  I beg your pardon.  There is no question here.

HOXTON.  [Abruptly.]  Oh!  Is he in the house?

ANN.  In there.

HOXTON.  Works for you, eh?

WELLWYN.  Er--yes.

HOXTON.  Let's have a look at him!

     [An embarrassed pause.]

BERTLEY.  Well--the fact is, Sir Thomas----

CALWAY.  When last under observation----

ANN.  He was sitting on the floor.

WELLWYN.  I don't want the old fellow to feel he's being made a show
of.  Disgusting to be spied at, Ann.

ANN.  You can't, Daddy!  He's drunk.

HOXTON.  Never mind, Miss WELLWYN.  Hundreds of these fellows before
me in my time.  [At CALWAY.]  The only thing is a sharp lesson!

CALWAY.  I disagree.  I've seen the man; what he requires is steady
control, and the bobbins treatment.

     [WELLWYN approaches them with fearful interest.]

HOXTON.  Not a bit of it!  He wants one for his knob!  Brace 'em up!
It's the only thing.

BERTLEY.  Personally, I think that if he were spoken to seriously

CALWAY.  I cannot walk arm in arm with a crab!

HOXTON.  [Approaching CALWAY.]  I beg your pardon?

CALWAY.  [Moving back a little.] You're moving backwards, Sir
Thomas.  I've told you before, convinced reactionaryism, in these
days----

     [There comes a single knock on the street door.]

BERTLEY.  [Looking at his watch.]  D'you know, I'm rather afraid
this may be our young husband, WELLWYN.  I told him half-past four.

WELLWYN.  Oh!  Ah!  Yes.  [Going towards the two reformers.]  Shall
we go into the house, Professor, and settle the question quietly
while the Vicar sees a young man?

CALWAY.  [Pale with uncompleted statement, and gravitating
insensibly in the direction indicated.]  The merest sense of
continuity--a simple instinct for order----

HOXTON.  [Following.]  The only way to get order, sir, is to bring
the disorderly up with a round turn.  [CALWAY turns to him in the
doorway.]  You people without practical experience----

CALWAY.  If you'll listen to me a minute.

HOXTON.  I can show you in a mo----

     [They vanish through the door.]

WELLWYN.  I was afraid of it.

BERTLEY.  The two points of view.  Pleasant to see such keenness.
I may want you, WELLWYN.  And Ann perhaps had better not be present.

WELLWYN.  [Relieved.]  Quite so!  My dear!

     [ANN goes reluctantly.  WELLWYN opens the street door.  The
     lamp outside has just been lighted, and, by its gleam, is seen
     the figure of RORY MEGAN, thin, pale, youthful.  ANN turning at
     the door into the house gives him a long, inquisitive look,
     then goes.]

WELLWYN.  Is that Megan?

MEGAN.  Yus.

WELLWYN.  Come in.

     [MEGAN comes in.  There follows an awkward silence, during
     which WELLWYN turns up the light, then goes to the tea table
     and pours out a glass of tea and rum.]

BERTLEY.  [Kindly.]  Now, my boy, how is it that you and your wife
are living apart like this?

MEGAN.  I dunno.

BERTLEY.  Well, if you don't, none of us are very likely to, are we?

MEGAN.  That's what I thought, as I was comin' along.

WELLWYN.  [Twinkling.]  Have some tea, Megan?  [Handing him the
glass.]  What d'you think of her picture?  'Tisn't quite finished.

MEGAN.  [After scrutiny.] I seen her look like it--once.

WELLWYN.  Good!  When was that?

MEGAN.  [Stoically.]  When she 'ad the measles.

     [He drinks.]

WELLWYN.  [Ruminating.] I see--yes.  I quite see feverish!

BERTLEY.  My dear WELLWYN, let me--[To, MEGAN.]  Now, I hope you're
willing to come together again, and to maintain her?

MEGAN.  If she'll maintain me.

BERTLEY.  Oh!  but--I see, you mean you're in the same line of
business?

MEGAN.  Yus.

BERTLEY.  And lean on each other.  Quite so!

MEGAN.  I leans on 'er mostly--with 'er looks.

BERTLEY.  Indeed!  Very interesting--that!

MEGAN.  Yus.  Sometimes she'll take 'arf a crown off of a toff.  [He
looks at WELLWYN.]

WELLWYN.  [Twinkling.]  I apologise to you, Megan.

MEGAN.  [With a faint smile.]  I could do with a bit more of it.

BERTLEY.  [Dubiously.]  Yes!  Yes!  Now, my boy, I've heard you bet
on horses.

MEGAN.  No, I don't.

BERTLEY.  Play cards, then?  Come!  Don't be afraid to acknowledge
it.

MEGAN.  When I'm 'ard up--yus.

BERTLEY.  But don't you know that's ruination?

MEGAN.  Depends.  Sometimes I wins a lot.

BERTLEY.  You know that's not at all what I mean.  Come, promise me
to give it up.

MEGAN.  I dunno abaht that.

BERTLEY.  Now, there's a good fellow.  Make a big effort and throw
the habit off!

MEGAN.  Comes over me--same as it might over you.

BERTLEY.  Over me!  How do you mean, my boy?

MEGAN.  [With a look up.]  To tork!

     [WELLWYN, turning to the picture, makes a funny little noise.]

BERTLEY.  [Maintaining his good humour.]  A hit!  But you forget,
you know, to talk's my business.  It's not yours to gamble.

MEGAN.  You try sellin' flowers.  If that ain't a--gamble

BERTLEY.  I'm afraid we're wandering a little from the point.
Husband and wife should be together.  You were brought up to that.
Your father and mother----

MEGAN.  Never was.

WELLWYN.  [Turning from the picture.]  The question is, Megan: Will
you take your wife home?  She's a good little soul.

MEGAN.  She never let me know it.

     [There is a feeble knock on the door.]

WELLWYN.  Well, now come.  Here she is!

     [He points to the door, and stands regarding MEGAN with his
     friendly smile.]

MEGAN.  [With a gleam of responsiveness.]  I might, perhaps, to
please you, sir.

BERTLEY.  [Appropriating the gesture.]  Capital, I thought we should
get on in time.

MEGAN.  Yus.

     [WELLWYN opens the door.  MRS. MEGAN and FERRAND are revealed.
     They are about to enter, but catching sight of MEGAN,
     hesitate.]

BERTLEY.  Come in!  Come in!

     [MRS. MEGAN enters stolidly.  FERRAND, following, stands apart
     with an air of extreme detachment.  MEGAN, after a quick glance
     at them both, remains unmoved.  No one has noticed that the
     door of the model's room has been opened, and that the unsteady
     figure of old TIMSON is standing there.]

BERTLEY. [A little awkward in the presence of FERRAND--to the
MEGANS.]  This begins a new chapter.  We won't improve the occasion.
No need.

     [MEGAN, turning towards his wife, makes her a gesture as if to
     say: "Here!  let's get out of this!"]

BENTLEY.  Yes, yes, you'll like to get home at once--I know.  [He
holds up his hand mechanically.]

TIMSON.  I forbids the banns.

BERTLEY, [Startled.]  Gracious!

TIMSON.  [Extremely unsteady.]  Just cause and impejiment.  There 'e
stands.  [He points to FERRAND.] The crimson foreigner!  The mockin'
jay!

WELLWYN.  Timson!

TIMSON.  You're a gen'leman--I'm aweer o' that but I must speak the
truth--[he waves his hand] an' shame the devil!

BERTLEY.  Is this the rum--?

TIMSON.  [Struck by the word.]  I'm a teetotaler.

WELLWYN.  Timson, Timson!

TIMSON.  Seein' as there's ladies present, I won't be conspicuous.
[Moving away, and making for the door, he strikes against the dais,
and mounts upon it.]  But what I do say, is: He's no better than 'er
and she's worse.

BERTLEY.  This is distressing.

FERRAND.  [Calmly.]  On my honour, Monsieur!

     [TIMSON growls.]

WELLWYN.  Now, now, Timson!

TIMSON.  That's all right.  You're a gen'leman, an' I'm a gen'leman,
but he ain't an' she ain't.

WELLWYN.  We shall not believe you.

BERTLEY.  No, no; we shall not believe you.

TIMSON.  [Heavily.]  Very well, you doubts my word.  Will it make
any difference, Guv'nor, if I speaks the truth?

BERTLEY.  No, certainly not--that is--of course, it will.

TIMSON.  Well, then, I see 'em plainer than I see [pointing at
BERTLEY]  the two of you.

WELLWYN.  Be quiet, Timson!

BERTLEY.  Not even her husband believes you.

MEGAN.  [Suddenly.]  Don't I!

WELLWYN.  Come, Megan, you can see the old fellow's in Paradise.

BERTLEY.  Do you credit such a--such an object?

     [He points at TIMSON, who seems falling asleep.]

MEGAN.  Naow!

     [Unseen by anybody, ANN has returned.]

BERTLEY.  Well, then, my boy?

MEGAN.  I seen 'em meself.

BERTLEY.  Gracious!  But just now you were will----

MEGAN.  [Sardonically.]  There wasn't nothing against me honour,
then.  Now you've took it away between you, cumin' aht with it like
this.  I don't want no more of 'er, and I'll want a good deal more
of 'im; as 'e'll soon find.

     [He jerks his chin at FERRAND, turns slowly on his heel, and
     goes out into the street.]

     [There follows a profound silence.]

ANN.  What did I say, Daddy?  Utter!  All three.

     [Suddenly alive to her presence, they all turn.]

TIMSON.  [Waking up and looking round him.]  Well, p'raps I'd better
go.

     [Assisted by WELLWYN he lurches gingerly off the dais towards
     the door, which WELLWYN holds open for him.]

TIMSON.  [Mechanically.]  Where to, sir?

     [Receiving no answer he passes out, touching his hat; and the
     door is closed.]

WELLWYN.  Ann!

     [ANN goes back whence she came.]

     [BERTLEY, steadily regarding MRS. MEGAN, who has put her arm up
     in front of her face, beckons to FERRAND, and the young man
     comes gravely forward.]

BERTLEY.  Young people, this is very dreadful.  [MRS. MEGAN lowers
her arm a little, and looks at him over it.]  Very sad!

MRS. MEGAN.  [Dropping her arm.]  Megan's no better than what I am.

BERTLEY.  Come, come!  Here's your home broken up!  [MRS.  MEGAN
Smiles.  Shaking his head gravely.]  Surely-surely-you mustn't
smile.  [MRS.  MEGAN becomes tragic.]  That's better.  Now, what is
to be done?

FERRAND.  Believe me, Monsieur, I greatly regret.

BERTLEY.  I'm glad to hear it.

FERRAND.  If I had foreseen this disaster.

BERTLEY.  Is that your only reason for regret?

FERRAND.  [With a little bow.]  Any reason that you wish, Monsieur.
I will do my possible.

MRS. MEGAN.  I could get an unfurnished room if [she slides her eyes
round at WELLWYN]  I 'ad the money to furnish it.

BERTLEY.  But suppose I can induce your husband to forgive you, and
take you back?

MRS. MEGAN.  [Shaking her head.]  'E'd 'it me.

BERTLEY.  I said to forgive.

MRS. MEGAN.  That wouldn't make no difference.  [With a flash at
BERTLEY.]  An' I ain't forgiven him!

BERTLEY.  That is sinful.

MRS. MEGAN.  I'm a Catholic.

BERTLEY.  My good child, what difference does that make?

FERRAND.  Monsieur, if I might interpret for her.

     [BERTLEY silences him with a gesture.  MRS. MEGAN.]

     [Sliding her eyes towards WELLWYN.] If I 'ad the money to buy
     some fresh stock.]

BERTLEY.  Yes; yes; never mind the money.  What I want to find in
you both, is repentance.

MRS. MEGAN.  [With a flash up at him.]  I can't get me livin' off of
repentin'.

BERTLEY.  Now, now!  Never say what you know to be wrong.

FERRAND.  Monsieur, her soul is very simple.

BERTLEY.  [Severely.]  I do not know, sir, that we shall get any
great assistance from your views.  In fact, one thing is clear to
me, she must discontinue your acquaintanceship at once.

FERRAND.  Certainly, Monsieur.  We have no serious intentions.

BERTLEY.  All the more shame to you, then!

FERRAND.  Monsieur, I see perfectly your point of view.  It is very
natural.  [He bows and is silent.]

MRS. MEGAN.  I don't want'im hurt'cos o' me.  Megan'll get his mates
to belt him--bein' foreign like he is.

BERTLEY.  Yes, never mind that.  It's you I'm thinking of.

MRS. MEGAN.  I'd sooner they'd hit me.

WELLWYN.  [Suddenly.]  Well said, my child!

MRS. MEGAN.  'Twasn't his fault.

FERRAND.  [Without irony--to WELLWYN.] I cannot accept that
Monsieur.  The blame--it is all mine.

ANN.  [Entering suddenly from the house.]  Daddy, they're having an
awful----!

     [The voices of PROFESSOR CALWAY and SIR THOMAS HOXTON are
     distinctly heard.]

CALWAY.  The question is a much wider one, Sir Thomas.

HOXTON.  As wide as you like, you'll never----

     [WELLWYN pushes ANN back into the house and closes the door
     behind her.  The voices are still faintly heard arguing on the
     threshold.]

BERTLEY.  Let me go in here a minute, Wellyn.  I must finish
speaking to her.  [He motions MRS. MEGAN towards the model's room.]
We can't leave the matter thus.

FERRAND.  [Suavely.] Do you desire my company, Monsieur?

     [BERTLEY, with a prohibitive gesture of his hand, shepherds the
     reluctant MRS. MEGAN into the model's room.]

WELLWYN.  [Sorrowfully.]  You shouldn't have done this, Ferrand.  It
wasn't the square thing.

FERRAND.  [With dignity.]  Monsieur, I feel that I am in the wrong.
It was stronger than me.

     [As he speaks, SIR THOMAS HOXTON and PROFESSOR CALWAY enter
     from the house.  In the dim light, and the full cry of
     argument, they do not notice the figures at the fire.  SIR
     THOMAS HOXTON leads towards the street door.]

HOXTON.  No, Sir, I repeat, if the country once commits itself to
your views of reform, it's as good as doomed.

CALWAY.  I seem to have heard that before, Sir Thomas.  And let me
say at once that your hitty-missy cart-load of bricks regime----

HOXTON.  Is a deuced sight better, sir, than your grand-motherly
methods.  What the old fellow wants is a shock!  With all this
socialistic molly-coddling, you're losing sight of the individual.

CALWAY.  [Swiftly.] You, sir, with your "devil take the hindmost,"
have never even seen him.

     [SIR THOMAS HOXTON, throwing back a gesture of disgust, steps
     out into the night, and falls heavily PROFESSOR CALWAY,
     hastening to his rescue, falls more heavily still.]

     [TIMSON, momentarily roused from slumber on the doorstep, sits
     up.]

HOXTON.  [Struggling to his knees.]  Damnation!

CALWAY.  [Sitting.]  How simultaneous!

     [WELLWYN and FERRAND approach hastily.]

FERRAND. [Pointing to TIMSON.]  Monsieur, it was true, it seems.
They had lost sight of the individual.

     [A Policeman has appeared under the street lamp.  He picks up
     HOXTON'S hat.]

CONSTABLE.  Anything wrong, sir?

HOXTON.  [Recovering his feet.]  Wrong?  Great Scott!  Constable!
Why do you let things lie about in the street like this?  Look here,
Wellyn!

     [They all scrutinize TIMSON.]

WELLWYN.  It's only the old fellow whose reform you were discussing.

HOXTON.  How did he come here?

CONSTABLE.  Drunk, sir.  [Ascertaining TIMSON to be in the street.]
Just off the premises, by good luck.  Come along, father.

TIMSON.  [Assisted to his feet-drowsily.]  Cert'nly, by no means;
take my arm.

     [They move from the doorway.  HOXTON and CALWAY re-enter, and
     go towards the fire.]

ANN.  [Entering from the house.]  What's happened?

CALWAY.  Might we have a brush?

HOXTON.  [Testily.]  Let it dry!

     [He moves to the fire and stands before it.  PROFESSOR CALWAY
     following stands a little behind him.  ANN returning begins to
     brush the PROFESSOR's sleeve.]

WELLWYN.  [Turning from the door, where he has stood looking after
the receding TIMSON.]  Poor old Timson!

FERRAND.  [Softly.]  Must be philosopher, Monsieur! They will but
run him in a little.

     [From the model's room MRS. MEGAN has come out, shepherded by
     CANON BERTLEY.]

BERTLEY.  Let's see, your Christian name is----.

MRS. MEGAN.  Guinevere.

BERTLEY.  Oh!  Ah!  Ah!  Ann, take Gui--take our little friend into
the study a minute: I am going to put her into service.  We shall
make a new woman of her, yet.

ANN.  [Handing CANON BERTLEY the brush, and turning to MRS. MEGAN.]
Come on!

     [She leads into the house, and MRS. MEGAN follows Stolidly.]

BERTLEY.  [Brushing CALWAY'S back.]  Have you fallen?

CALWAY.  Yes.

BERTLEY.  Dear me!  How was that?

HOXTON.  That old ruffian drunk on the doorstep.  Hope they'll give
him a sharp dose!  These rag-tags!

     [He looks round, and his angry eyes light by chance on FERRAND.]

FERRAND.  [With his eyes on HOXTON--softly.]  Monsieur, something
tells me it is time I took the road again.

WELLWYN.  [Fumbling out a sovereign.]  Take this, then!

FERRAND.  [Refusing the coin.]  Non, Monsieur.  To abuse 'ospitality
is not in my character.

BERTLEY.  We must not despair of anyone.

HOXTON.  Who talked of despairing?  Treat him, as I say, and you'll
see!

CALWAY.  The interest of the State----

HOXTON.  The interest of the individual citizen sir----

BERTLEY.  Come!  A little of both, a little of both!

     [They resume their brushing.]

FERRAND.  You are now debarrassed of us three, Monsieur.  I leave
you instead--these sirs.  [He points.]  'Au revoir, Monsieur'!
[Motioning towards the fire.]  'Appy New Year!

     [He slips quietly out.  WELLWYN, turning, contemplates the
     three reformers.  They are all now brushing away, scratching
     each other's backs, and gravely hissing.  As he approaches
     them, they speak with a certain unanimity.]

HOXTON.  My theory----!

CALWAY.  My theory----!

BERTLEY.  My theory----!

     [They stop surprised.  WELLWYN makes a gesture of discomfort,
     as they speak again with still more unanimity.]

HOXTON.  My----!  CALWAY.  My----!  BERTLEY.  My----!

     [They stop in greater surprise.  The stage is blotted dark.]


                              Curtain.




ACT III

It is the first of April--a white spring day of gleams and driving
showers.  The street door of WELLWYN's studio stands wide open, and,
past it, in the street, the wind is whirling bits of straw and paper
bags.  Through the door can be seen the butt end of a stationary
furniture van with its flap let down.  To this van three humble-men
in shirt sleeves and aprons, are carrying out the contents of the
studio.  The hissing samovar, the tea-pot, the sugar, and the nearly
empty decanter of rum stand on the low round table in the
fast-being-gutted room.  WELLWYN in his ulster and soft hat, is
squatting on the little stool in front of the blazing fire, staring
into it, and smoking a hand-made cigarette.  He has a moulting air.
Behind him the humble-men pass, embracing busts and other articles
of vertu.

CHIEF H'MAN.  [Stopping, and standing in the attitude of
expectation.]  We've about pinched this little lot, sir.  Shall we
take the--reservoir?

     [He indicates the samovar.]

WELLWYN.  Ah! [Abstractedly feeling in his pockets, and finding
coins.]  Thanks--thanks--heavy work, I'm afraid.

H'MAN.  [Receiving the coins--a little surprised and a good deal
pleased.]  Thank'ee, sir.  Much obliged, I'm sure.  We'll 'ave to
come back for this.  [He gives the dais a vigorous push with his
foot.]  Not a fixture, as I understand.  Perhaps you'd like us to
leave these 'ere for a bit.  [He indicates the tea things.]

WELLWYN.  Ah! do.

     [The humble-men go out.  There is the sound of horses being
     started, and the butt end of the van disappears.  WELLWYN stays
     on his stool, smoking and brooding over the fare.  The open
     doorway is darkened by a figure.  CANON BERTLEY is standing
     there.]

BERTLEY.  WELLWYN!  [WELLWYN turns and rises.]  It's ages since I
saw you.  No idea you were moving.  This is very dreadful.

WELLWYN.  Yes, Ann found this--too exposed.  That tall house in
Flight Street--we're going there.  Seventh floor.

BERTLEY.  Lift?

     [WELLWYN shakes his head.]

BERTLEY.  Dear me!  No lift?  Fine view, no doubt.  [WELLWYN nods.]
You'll be greatly missed.

WELLWYN.  So Ann thinks.  Vicar, what's become of that little
flower-seller I was painting at Christmas?  You took her into
service.

BERTLEY.  Not we--exactly!  Some dear friends of ours.  Painful
subject!

WELLWYN.  Oh!

BERTLEY.  Yes.  She got the footman into trouble.

WELLWYN.  Did she, now?

BERTLEY.  Disappointing.  I consulted with CALWAY, and he advised me
to try a certain institution.  We got her safely in--excellent
place; but, d'you know, she broke out three weeks ago.  And since--
I've heard  [he holds his hands up]  hopeless, I'm afraid--quite!

WELLWYN.  I thought I saw her last night.  You can't tell me her
address, I suppose?

BERTLEY.  [Shaking his head.]  The husband too has quite passed out
of my ken.  He betted on horses, you remember.  I'm sometimes
tempted to believe there's nothing for some of these poor folk but
to pray for death.

     [ANN has entered from the house.  Her hair hangs from under a
     knitted cap.  She wears a white wool jersey, and a loose silk
     scarf.]

BERTLEY.  Ah!  Ann.  I was telling your father of that poor little
Mrs. Megan.

ANN.  Is she dead?

BERTLEY.  Worse I fear.  By the way--what became of her accomplice?

ANN.  We haven't seen him since.  [She looks searchingly at
WELLWYN.]  At least--have you--Daddy?

WELLWYN.  [Rather hurt.]  No, my dear; I have not.

BERTLEY.  And the--old gentleman who drank the rum?

ANN.  He got fourteen days.  It was the fifth time.

BERTLEY.  Dear me!

ANN.  When he came out he got more drunk than ever.  Rather a score
for Professor Calway, wasn't it?

BERTLEY.  I remember.  He and Sir Thomas took a kindly interest in
the old fellow.

ANN.  Yes, they fell over him.  The Professor got him into an
Institution.

BERTLEY.  Indeed!

ANN.  He was perfectly sober all the time he was there.

WELLWYN.  My dear, they only allow them milk.

ANN.  Well, anyway, he was reformed.

WELLWYN.  Ye-yes!

ANN.  [Terribly.]  Daddy!  You've been seeing him!

WELLWYN.  [With dignity.]  My dear, I have not.

ANN.  How do you know, then?

WELLWYN.  Came across Sir Thomas on the Embankment yesterday; told
me old Timso--had been had up again for sitting down in front of a
brewer's dray.

ANN.  Why?

WELLWYN.  Well, you see, as soon as he came out of the what d'you
call 'em, he got drunk for a week, and it left him in low spirits.

BERTLEY.  Do you mean he deliberately sat down, with the
intention--of--er?

WELLWYN.  Said he was tired of life, but they didn't believe him.

ANN.  Rather a score for Sir Thomas!  I suppose he'd told the
Professor?  What did he say?

WELLWYN.  Well, the Professor said  [with a quick glance at BERTLEY]
he felt there was nothing for some of these poor devils but a lethal
chamber.

BERTLEY.  [Shocked.]  Did he really!

[He has not yet caught WELLWYN' s glance.]

WELLWYN.  And Sir Thomas agreed.  Historic occasion.  And you, Vicar
H'm!

     [BERTLEY winces.]

ANN.  [To herself.]  Well, there isn't.

BERTLEY.  And yet!  Some good in the old fellow, no doubt, if one
could put one's finger on it.  [Preparing to go.]  You'll let us
know, then, when you're settled.  What was the address?  [WELLWYN
takes out and hands him a card.]  Ah! yes.  Good-bye, Ann.
Good-bye, Wellyn.  [The wind blows his hat along the street.]  What
a wind!  [He goes, pursuing.]

ANN.  [Who has eyed the card askance.] Daddy, have you told those
other two where we're going?

WELLWYN.  Which other two, my dear?

ANN.  The Professor and Sir Thomas.

WELLWYN.  Well, Ann, naturally I----

ANN.  [Jumping on to the dais with disgust.]  Oh, dear!  When I'm
trying to get you away from all this atmosphere.  I don't so much
mind the Vicar knowing, because he's got a weak heart----

     [She jumps off again. ]

WELLWYN.  [To himself.]  Seventh floor!  I felt there was something.

ANN.  [Preparing to go.]  I'm going round now.  But you must stay
here till the van comes back.  And don't forget you tipped the men
after the first load.

WELLWYN.  Oh!  Yes, yes.  [Uneasily.]  Good sorts they look, those
fellows!

ANN.  [Scrutinising him.]  What have you done?

WELLWYN.  Nothing, my dear, really----!

ANN.  What?

WELLWYN.  I--I rather think I may have tipped them twice.

ANN.  [Drily.]  Daddy!  If it is the first of April, it's not
necessary to make a fool of oneself.  That's the last time you ever
do these ridiculous things.  [WELLWYN eyes her askance.]  I'm going
to see that you spend your money on yourself.  You needn't look at
me like that!  I mean to.  As soon as I've got you away from here,
and all--these----

WELLWYN.  Don't rub it in, Ann!

ANN.  [Giving him a sudden hug--then going to the door--with a sort
of triumph.]  Deeds, not words, Daddy!

     [She goes out, and the wind catching her scarf blows it out
     beneath her firm young chin.  WELLWYN returning to the fire,
     stands brooding, and gazing at his extinct cigarette.]

WELLWYN.  [To himself.]  Bad lot--low type!  No method!  No theory!

     [In the open doorway appear FERRAND and MRS. MEGAN.  They
     stand, unseen, looking at him.  FERRAND is more ragged, if
     possible, than on Christmas Eve.  His chin and cheeks are
     clothed in a reddish golden beard.  MRS. MEGAN's dress is not
     so woe-begone, but her face is white, her eyes dark-circled.
     They whisper.  She slips back into the shadow of the doorway.
     WELLWYN turns at the sound, and stares at FERRAND in
     amazement.]

FERRAND.  [Advancing.]  Enchanted to see you, Monsieur.  [He looks
round the empty room.]  You are leaving?

WELLWYN.  [Nodding--then taking the young man's hand.]  How goes it?

FERRAND.  [Displaying himself, simply.]  As you see, Monsieur.  I
have done of my best.  It still flies from me.

WELLWYN.  [Sadly--as if against his will.]  Ferrand, it will always
fly.

     [The young foreigner shivers suddenly from head to foot; then
     controls himself with a great effort.]

FERRAND.  Don't say that, Monsieur!  It is too much the echo of my
heart.

WELLWYN.  Forgive me!  I didn't mean to pain you.

FERRAND.  [Drawing nearer the fire.]  That old cabby, Monsieur, you
remember--they tell me, he nearly succeeded to gain happiness the
other day.

     [WELLWYN nods.]

FERRAND.  And those Sirs, so interested in him, with their theories?
He has worn them out?  [WELLWYN nods.]  That goes without saying.
And now they wish for him the lethal chamber.

WELLWYN.  [Startled.]  How did you know that?

     [There is silence.]

FERRAND.  [Staring into the fire.]  Monsieur, while I was on the
road this time I fell ill of a fever.  It seemed to me in my illness
that I saw the truth--how I was wasting in this world--I would never
be good for any one--nor any one for me--all would go by, and I
never of it--fame, and fortune, and peace, even the necessities of
life, ever mocking me.

     [He draws closer to the fire, spreading his fingers to the
     flame.  And while he is speaking, through the doorway MRS.
     MEGAN creeps in to listen.]

FERRAND.  [Speaking on into the fire.]  And I saw, Monsieur, so
plain, that I should be vagabond all my days, and my days short, I
dying in the end the death of a dog.  I saw it all in my fever--
clear as that flame--there was nothing for us others, but the herb
of death.  [WELLWYN takes his arm and presses it.]  And so,
Monsieur, I wished to die.  I told no one of my fever.  I lay out on
the ground--it was verree cold.  But they would not let me die on
the roads of their parishes--they took me to an Institution,
Monsieur, I looked in their eyes while I lay there, and I saw more
clear than the blue heaven that they thought it best that I should
die, although they would not let me.  Then Monsieur, naturally my
spirit rose, and I said: "So much the worse for you.  I will live a
little more."  One is made like that!  Life is sweet, Monsieur.

WELLWYN.  Yes, Ferrand; Life is sweet.

FERRAND.  That little girl you had here, Monsieur  [WELLWYN nods.]
in her too there is something of wild-savage.  She must have joy of
life.  I have seen her since I came back.  She has embraced the life
of joy.  It is not quite the same thing.  [He lowers his voice.]
She is lost, Monsieur, as a stone that sinks in water.  I can see,
if she cannot.  [As WELLWYN makes a movement of distress.]  Oh!  I
am not to blame for that, Monsieur.  It had well begun before I knew
her.

WELLWYN.  Yes, yes--I was afraid of it, at the time.

     [MRS. MEGAN turns silently, and slips away.]

FEERRAND.  I do my best for her, Monsieur, but look at me!  Besides,
I am not good for her--it is not good for simple souls to be with
those who see things clear.  For the great part of mankind, to see
anything--is fatal.

WELLWYN.  Even for you, it seems.

FERRAND.  No, Monsieur.  To be so near to death has done me good; I
shall not lack courage any more till the wind blows on my grave.
Since I saw you, Monsieur, I have been in three Institutions.  They
are palaces.  One may eat upon the floor--though it is true--for
Kings--they eat too much of skilly there.  One little thing they
lack--those palaces.  It is understanding of the 'uman heart.  In
them tame birds pluck wild birds naked.

WELLWYN.  They mean well.

FERRAND.  Ah!  Monsieur, I am loafer, waster--what you like--for all
that  [bitterly]  poverty is my only crime.  If I were rich, should
I not be simply veree original, 'ighly respected, with soul above
commerce, travelling to see the world?  And that young girl, would
she not be "that charming ladee,"  "veree chic, you know!"  And the
old Tims--good old-fashioned gentleman--drinking his liquor well.
Eh! bien--what are we now?  Dark beasts, despised by all.  That is
life, Monsieur.  [He stares into the fire.]

WELLWYN.  We're our own enemies, Ferrand.  I can afford it--you
can't.  Quite true!

FERRAND.  [Earnestly.]  Monsieur, do you know this?  You are the
sole being that can do us good--we hopeless ones.

WELLWYN.  [Shaking his head.]  Not a bit of it; I'm hopeless too.

FERRAND.  [Eagerly.]  Monsieur, it is just that.  You understand.
When we are with you we feel something--here--[he touches his
heart.]  If I had one prayer to make, it would be, Good God, give me
to understand!  Those sirs, with their theories, they can clean our
skins and chain our 'abits--that soothes for them the aesthetic
sense; it gives them too their good little importance.  But our
spirits they cannot touch, for they nevare understand.  Without
that, Monsieur, all is dry as a parched skin of orange.

WELLWYN.  Don't be so bitter.  Think of all the work they do!

FERRAND.  Monsieur, of their industry I say nothing.  They do a good
work while they attend with their theories to the sick and the tame
old, and the good unfortunate deserving.  Above all to the little
children.  But, Monsieur, when all is done, there are always us
hopeless ones.  What can they do with me, Monsieur, with that girl,
or with that old man?  Ah!  Monsieur, we, too, 'ave our qualities,
we others--it wants you courage to undertake a career like mine, or
like that young girl's.  We wild ones--we know a thousand times more
of life than ever will those sirs.  They waste their time trying to
make rooks white.  Be kind to us if you will, or let us alone like
Mees Ann, but do not try to change our skins.  Leave us to live, or
leave us to die when we like in the free air.  If you do not wish of
us, you have but to shut your pockets and--your doors--we shall die
the faster.

WELLWYN.  [With agitation.]  But that, you know--we can't do--now
can we?

FERRAND.  If you cannot, how is it our fault?  The harm we do to
others--is it so much?  If I am criminal, dangerous--shut me up!
I would not pity myself--nevare.  But we in whom something moves--
like that flame, Monsieur, that cannot keep still--we others--we are
not many--that must have motion in our lives, do not let them make
us prisoners, with their theories, because we are not like them--it
is life itself they would enclose!  [He draws up his tattered
figure, then bending over the fire again.]  I ask your pardon; I am
talking.  If I could smoke, Monsieur!

     [WELLWYN hands him a tobacco pouch; and he rolls a cigarette
     with his yellow-Stained fingers.]

FERRAND.  The good God made me so that I would rather walk a whole
month of nights, hungry, with the stars, than sit one single day
making round business on an office stool!  It is not to my
advantage.  I cannot help it that I am a vagabond.  What would you
have?  It is stronger than me.  [He looks suddenly at WELLWYN.]
Monsieur, I say to you things I have never said.

WELLWYN.  [Quietly.]  Go on, go on.  [There is silence.]

FERRAND.  [Suddenly.]  Monsieur!  Are you really English?  The
English are so civilised.

WELLWYN.  And am I not?

FERRAND.  You treat me like a brother.

     [WELLWYN has turned towards the street door at a sound of feet,
     and the clamour of voices.]

TIMSON.  [From the street.]  Take her in 'ere.  I knows 'im.

     [Through the open doorway come a POLICE CONSTABLE and a LOAFER,
     bearing between them the limp white faced form of MRS. MEGAN,
     hatless and with drowned hair, enveloped in the policeman's
     waterproof.  Some curious persons bring up the rear, jostling
     in the doorway, among whom is TIMSON carrying in his hands the
     policeman's dripping waterproof leg pieces.]

FERRAND.  [Starting forward.]  Monsieur, it is that little girl!

WELLWYN.  What's happened?  Constable!  What's happened!

     [The CONSTABLE and LOAFER have laid the body down on the dais;
     with WELLWYN and FERRAND they stand bending over her.]

CONSTABLE.  'Tempted sooicide, sir; but she hadn't been in the water
'arf a minute when I got hold of her.  [He bends lower.]  Can't
understand her collapsin' like this.

WELLWYN.  [Feeling her heart.]  I don't feel anything.

FERRAND.  [In a voice sharpened by emotion.]  Let me try, Monsieur.

CONSTABLE.  [Touching his arm.]  You keep off, my lad.

WELLWYN.  No, constable--let him.  He's her friend.

CONSTABLE.  [Releasing FERRAND--to the LOAFER.]  Here you!  Cut off
for a doctor-sharp now!  [He pushes back the curious persons.]  Now
then, stand away there, please--we can't have you round the body.
Keep back--Clear out, now!

     [He slowly moves them back, and at last shepherds them through
     the door and shuts it on them, TIMSON being last.]

FERRAND.  The rum!

     [WELLWYN fetches the decanter.  With the little there is left
     FERRAND chafes the girl's hands and forehead, and pours some
     between her lips.  But there is no response from the inert
     body.]

FERRAND.  Her soul is still away, Monsieur!

     [WELLWYN, seizing the decanter, pours into it tea and boiling
     water.]

CONSTABLE.  It's never drownin', sir--her head was hardly under; I
was on to her like knife.

FERRAND.  [Rubbing her feet.]  She has not yet her philosophy,
Monsieur; at the beginning they often try.  If she is dead!  [In a
voice of awed rapture.]  What fortune!

CONSTABLE.  [With puzzled sadness.]  True enough, sir--that!  We'd
just begun to know 'er.  If she 'as been taken--her best friends
couldn't wish 'er better.

WELLWYN.  [Applying the decanter to her dips.]  Poor little thing!
I'll try this hot tea.

FERRAND.  [Whispering.] 'La mort--le grand ami!'

WELLWYN.  Look!  Look at her!  She's coming round!

     [A faint tremor passes over MRS. MEGAN's body.  He again
     applies the hot drink to her mouth.  She stirs and gulps.]

CONSTABLE.  [With intense relief.]  That's brave!  Good lass!
She'll pick up now, sir.

     [Then, seeing that TIMSON and the curious persons have again
     opened the door, he drives them out, and stands with his back
     against it.  MRS. MEGAN comes to herself.]

WELLWYN.  [Sitting on the dais and supporting her--as if to a
child.]  There you are, my dear.  There, there--better now!  That's
right.  Drink a little more of this tea.

     [MRS. MEGAN drinks from the decanter.]

FERRAND.  [Rising.]  Bring her to the fire, Monsieur.

     [They take her to the fire and seat her on the little stool.
     From the moment of her restored animation FERRAND has resumed
     his air of cynical detachment, and now stands apart with arms
     folded, watching.]

WELLWYN.  Feeling better, my child?

MRS. MEGAN.  Yes.

WELLWYN.  That's good.  That's good.  Now, how was it?  Um?

MRS. MEGAN.  I dunno.  [She shivers.]  I was standin' here just now
when you was talkin', and when I heard 'im, it cam' over me to do
it--like.

WELLWYN.  Ah, yes I know.

MRS. MEGAN.  I didn't seem no good to meself nor any one.  But when
I got in the water, I didn't want to any more.  It was cold in
there.

WELLWYN.  Have you been having such a bad time of it?

MRS. MEGAN.  Yes.  And listenin' to him upset me.  [She signs with
her head at FERRAND.]  I feel better now I've been in the water.
[She smiles and shivers.]

WELLWYN.  There, there!  Shivery?  Like to walk up and down a
little?

     [They begin walking together up and down.]

WELLWYN.  Beastly when your head goes under?

MRS. MEGAN.  Yes.  It frightened me.  I thought I wouldn't come up
again.

WELLWYN.  I know--sort of world without end, wasn't it?  What did
you think of, um?

MRS. MEGAN.  I wished I 'adn't jumped--an' I thought of my baby--
that died--and--[in a rather surprised voice] and I thought of
d-dancin'.

     [Her mouth quivers, her face puckers, she gives a choke and a
     little sob.]

WELLWYN.  [Stopping and stroking her.]  There, there--there!

     [For a moment her face is buried in his sleeve, then she
     recovers herself.]

MRS. MEGAN.  Then 'e got hold o' me, an' pulled me out.

WELLWYN.  Ah! what a comfort--um?

MRS. MEGAN.  Yes.  The water got into me mouth.

     [They walk again.] I wouldn't have gone to do it but for him.
     [She looks towards FERRAND.]  His talk made me feel all funny,
     as if people wanted me to.

WELLWYN.  My dear child!  Don't think such things!  As if anyone
would----!

MRS. MEGAN.  [Stolidly.] I thought they did.  They used to look at
me so sometimes, where I was before I ran away--I couldn't stop
there, you know.

WELLWYN.  Too cooped-up?

MRS. MEGAN.  Yes.  No life at all, it wasn't--not after sellin'
flowers, I'd rather be doin' what I am.

WELLWYN.  Ah!  Well-it's all over, now!  How d'you feel--eh?
Better?

MRS. MEGAN.  Yes.  I feels all right now.

     [She sits up again on the little stool before the fire.]

WELLWYN.  No shivers, and no aches; quite comfy?

MRS. MEGAN.  Yes.

WELLWYN.  That's a blessing.  All well, now, Constable--thank you!

CONSTABLE.  [Who has remained discreetly apart at the
door-cordially.] First rate, sir!  That's capital!  [He approaches
and scrutinises MRS. MEGAN.] Right as rain, eh, my girl?

MRS. MEGAN.  [Shrinking a little.] Yes.

CONSTABLE.  That's fine.  Then I think perhaps, for 'er sake, sir,
the sooner we move on and get her a change o' clothin', the better.

WELLWYN.  Oh!  don't bother about that--I'll send round for my
daughter--we'll manage for her here.

CONSTABLE.  Very kind of you, I'm sure, sir.  But [with
embarrassment] she seems all right.  She'll get every attention at
the station.

WELLWYN.  But I assure you, we don't mind at all; we'll take the
greatest care of her.

CONSTABLE.  [Still more embarrassed.]  Well, sir, of course, I'm
thinkin' of--I'm afraid I can't depart from the usual course.

WELLWYN.  [Sharply.] What!  But-oh!  No!  No!  That'll be all right,
Constable!  That'll be all right!  I assure you.

CONSTABLE.  [With more decision.] I'll have to charge her, sir.

WELLWYN.  Good God!  You don't mean to say the poor little thing has
got to be----

CONSTABLE.  [Consulting with him.]  Well, sir, we can't get over the
facts, can we?  There it is!  You know what sooicide amounts to--
it's an awkward job.

WELLWYN.  [Calming himself with an effort.] But look here,
Constable, as a reasonable man--This poor wretched little girl--you
know what that life means better than anyone!  Why!  It's to her
credit to try and jump out of it!

     [The CONSTABLE shakes his head.]

WELLWYN.  You said yourself her best friends couldn't wish her
better!  [Dropping his voice still more.]  Everybody feels it!  The
Vicar was here a few minutes ago saying the very same thing--the
Vicar, Constable!  [The CONSTABLE shakes his head.]  Ah!  now, look
here, I know something of her.  Nothing can be done with her.  We
all admit it.  Don't you see?  Well, then hang it--you needn't go
and make fools of us all by----

FERRAND.  Monsieur, it is the first of April.

CONSTABLE.  [With a sharp glance at him.]  Can't neglect me duty,
sir; that's impossible.

WELLWYN.  Look here!  She--slipped.  She's been telling me.  Come,
Constable, there's a good fellow.  May be the making of her, this.

CONSTABLE.  I quite appreciate your good 'eart, sir, an' you make it
very 'ard for me--but, come now!  I put it to you as a gentleman,
would you go back on yer duty if you was me?

     [WELLWYN raises his hat, and plunges his fingers through and
     through his hair.]

WELLWYN.  Well!  God in heaven!  Of all the d---d topsy--turvy--!
Not a soul in the world wants her alive--and now she's to be
prosecuted for trying to be where everyone wishes her.

CONSTABLE.  Come, sir, come!  Be a man!

     [Throughout all this MRS. MEGAN has sat stolidly before the
     fire, but as FERRAND suddenly steps forward she looks up at
     him.]

FERRAND.  Do not grieve, Monsieur!  This will give her courage.
There is nothing that gives more courage than to see the irony of
things.  [He touches MRS. MEGAN'S shoulder.] Go, my child; it will
do you good.

     [MRS. MEGAN rises, and looks at him dazedly.]

CONSTABLE.  [Coming forward, and taking her by the hand.] That's my
good lass.  Come along!  We won't hurt you.

MRS. MEGAN.  I don't want to go.  They'll stare at me.

CONSTABLE.  [Comforting.]  Not they!  I'll see to that.

WELLWYN.  [Very upset.]  Take her in a cab, Constable, if you must-
-for God's sake!  [He pulls out a shilling.]  Here!

CONSTABLE.  [Taking the shilling.]  I will, sir, certainly.  Don't
think I want to----

WELLWYN.  No, no, I know.  You're a good sort.

CONSTABLE.  [Comfortable.]  Don't you take on, sir.  It's her first
try; they won't be hard on 'er.  Like as not only bind 'er over in
her own recogs. not to do it again.  Come, my dear.

MRS. MEGAN.  [Trying to free herself from the policeman's cloak.] I
want to take this off.  It looks so funny.

     [As she speaks the door is opened by ANN; behind whom is dimly
     seen the form of old TIMSON, still heading the curious
     persons.]

ANN.  [Looking from one to the other in amazement.]  What is it?
What's happened?  Daddy!

FERRAND.  [Out of the silence.]  It is nothing, Ma'moiselle!  She
has failed to drown herself.  They run her in a little.

WELLWYN.  Lend her your jacket, my dear; she'll catch her death.

     [ANN, feeling MRS. MEGAN's arm, strips of her jacket, and helps
     her into it without a word.]

CONSTABLE.  [Donning his cloak.]  Thank you.  Miss--very good of
you, I'm sure.

MRS. MEGAN.  [Mazed.]  It's warm!

     [She gives them all a last half-smiling look, and Passes with
     the CONSTABLE through the doorway.]

FERRAND.  That makes the third of us, Monsieur.  We are not in luck.
To wish us dead, it seems, is easier than to let us die.

     [He looks at ANN, who is standing with her eyes fixed on her
     father.  WELLWYN has taken from his pocket a visiting card.]

WELLWYN.  [To FERRAND.]  Here quick; take this, run after her!  When
they've done with her tell her to come to us.

FERRAND.  [Taking the card, and reading the address.]  "No. 7, Haven
House, Flight Street!"  Rely on me, Monsieur--I will bring her
myself to call on you.  'Au revoir, mon bon Monsieur'!

     [He bends over WELLWYN's hand; then, with a bow to ANN goes
     out; his tattered figure can be seen through the window,
     passing in the wind.  WELLWYN turns back to the fire.  The
     figure of TIMSON advances into the doorway, no longer holding
     in either hand a waterproof leg-piece.]

TIMSON.  [In a croaky voice.]  Sir!

WELLWYN.  What--you, Timson?

TIMSON.  On me larst legs, sir.  'Ere!  You can see 'em for yerself!
Shawn't trouble yer long....

WELLWYN.  [After a long and desperate stare.]  Not now--TIMSON not
now!  Take this!  [He takes out another card, and hands it to
TIMSON]  Some other time.

TIMSON.  [Taking the card.]  Yer new address!  You are a gen'leman.
[He lurches slowly away.]

     [ANN shuts the street door and sets her back against it.  The
     rumble of the approaching van is heard outside.  It ceases.]

ANN.  [In a fateful voice.]  Daddy!  [They stare at each other.]  Do
you know what you've done?  Given your card to those six rotters.

WELLWYN.  [With a blank stare.]  Six?

ANN.  [Staring round the naked room.]  What was the good of this?

WELLWYN.  [Following her eyes---very gravely.]  Ann!  It is stronger
than me.

     [Without a word ANN opens the door, and walks straight out.
     With a heavy sigh, WELLWYN sinks down on the little stool
     before the fire.  The three humble-men come in.]

CHIEF HUMBLE-MAN.  [In an attitude of expectation.]  This is the
larst of it, sir.

WELLWYN.  Oh!  Ah!  yes!

     [He gives them money; then something seems to strike him, and
     he exhibits certain signs of vexation.  Suddenly he recovers,
     looks from one to the other, and then at the tea things.  A
     faint smile comes on his face.]

WELLWYN.  You can finish the decanter.

     [He goes out in haste.]

CHIEF HUMBLE-MAN.  [Clinking the coins.]  Third time of arskin'!
April fool!  Not 'arf!  Good old pigeon!

SECOND HUMBLE-MAN.  'Uman being, I call 'im.

CHIEF HUMBLE-MAN.  [Taking the three glasses from the last
packing-case, and pouring very equally into them.] That's right.
Tell you wot, I'd never 'a touched this unless 'e'd told me to, I
wouldn't--not with 'im.

SECOND HUMBLE-MAN.  Ditto to that!  This is a bit of orl right!
[Raising his glass.] Good luck!

THIRD HUMBLE-MAN.  Same 'ere!

[Simultaneously they place their lips smartly against the liquor,
and at once let fall their faces and their glasses.]

CHIEF HUMBLE-MAN.  [With great solemnity.]  Crikey!  Bill!  Tea!
.....'E's got us!

     [The stage is blotted dark.]


Curtain.


THE END





End of this Project Gutenberg Etext of THE PIGEON, by John Galsworthy






THE MOB

A Play in Four Acts



PERSONS OF THE PLAY

STEPHEN MORE, Member of Parliament
KATHERINE, his wife
OLIVE, their little daughter
THE DEAN OF STOUR, Katherine's uncle
GENERAL SIR JOHN JULIAN, her father
CAPTAIN HUBERT JULIAN, her brother
HELEN, his wife
EDWARD MENDIP, editor of "The Parthenon"
ALAN STEEL, More's secretary
JAMES HOME, architect                   |
CHARLES SHELDER, Solicitor              |A deputation of More's
MARK WACE, bookseller                   |constituents
WILLIAM BANNING, manufacturer           |
NURSE WREFORD
WREFORD (her son), Hubert's orderly
HIS SWEETHEART
THE FOOTMAN HENRY
A DOORKEEPER
SOME BLACK-COATED GENTLEMEN
A STUDENT
A GIRL




                         A MOB

ACT I.    The dining-room of More's town house, evening.

ACT II.   The same, morning.

ACT III.  SCENE I. An alley at the back of a suburban theatre.
          SCENE II. Katherine's bedroom.

ACT IV.   The dining-room of More's house, late afternoon.

AFTERMATH. The corner of a square, at dawn.



Between ACTS I and II some days elapse.
Between ACTS II and III three months.
Between ACT III SCENE I and ACT III SCENE II no time.
Between ACTS III and IV a few hours.
Between ACTS IV and AFTERMATH an indefinite period.




ACT I

     It is half-past nine of a July evening.  In a dining-room
     lighted by sconces, and apparelled in wall-paper, carpet, and
     curtains of deep vivid blue, the large French windows between
     two columns are open on to a wide terrace, beyond which are seen
     trees in darkness, and distant shapes of lighted houses.  On one
     side is a bay window, over which curtains are partly drawn.
     Opposite to this window is a door leading into the hall.  At an
     oval rosewood table, set with silver, flowers, fruit, and wine,
     six people are seated after dinner.  Back to the bay window is
     STEPHEN MORE, the host, a man of forty, with a fine-cut face, a
     rather charming smile, and the eyes of an idealist; to his
     right, SIR, JOHN JULIAN, an old soldier, with thin brown
     features, and grey moustaches; to SIR JOHN's right, his brother,
     the DEAN OF STOUR, a tall, dark, ascetic-looking Churchman: to
     his right KATHERINE is leaning forward, her elbows on the table,
     and her chin on her hands, staring across at her husband; to her
     right sits EDWARD MENDIP, a pale man of forty-five, very bald,
     with a fine forehead, and on his clear-cut lips a smile that
     shows his teeth; between him and MORE is HELEN JULIAN, a pretty
     dark-haired young woman, absorbed in thoughts of her own.  The
     voices are tuned to the pitch of heated discussion, as the
     curtain rises.


THE DEAN. I disagree with you, Stephen; absolutely, entirely
disagree.

MORE.  I can't help it.

MENDIP.  Remember a certain war, Stephen!  Were your chivalrous
notions any good, then?  And, what was winked at in an obscure young
Member is anathema for an Under Secretary of State.  You can't
afford----

MORE.  To follow my conscience?  That's new, Mendip.

MENDIP.  Idealism can be out of place, my friend.

THE DEAN.  The Government is dealing here with a wild lawless race,
on whom I must say I think sentiment is rather wasted.

MORE.  God made them, Dean.

MENDIP.  I have my doubts.

THE DEAN.  They have proved themselves faithless.  We have the right
to chastise.

MORE.  If I hit a little man in the eye, and he hits me back, have I
the right to chastise him?

SIR JOHN.  We didn't begin this business.

MORE.  What!  With our missionaries and our trading?

THE DEAN.  It is news indeed that the work of civilization may be
justifiably met by murder.  Have you forgotten Glaive and Morlinson?

SIR JOHN.  Yes.  And that poor fellow Groome and his wife?

MORE.  They went into a wild country, against the feeling of the
tribes, on their own business.  What has the nation to do with the
mishaps of gamblers?

SIR JOHN.  We can't stand by and see our own flesh and blood
ill-treated!

THE DEAN.  Does our rule bring blessing--or does it not, Stephen?

MORE.  Sometimes; but with all my soul I deny the fantastic
superstition that our rule can benefit a people like this, a nation
of one race, as different from ourselves as dark from light--in
colour, religion, every mortal thing.  We can only pervert their
natural instincts.

THE DEAN.  That to me is an unintelligible point of view.

MENDIP.  Go into that philosophy of yours a little deeper, Stephen--
it spells stagnation.  There are no fixed stars on this earth.
Nations can't let each other alone.

MORE.  Big ones could let little ones alone.

MENDIP.  If they could there'd be no big ones.  My dear fellow, we
know little nations are your hobby, but surely office should have
toned you down.

SIR JOHN.  I've served my country fifty years, and I say she is not
in the wrong.

MORE.  I hope to serve her fifty, Sir John, and I say she is.

MENDIP.  There are moments when such things can't be said, More.

MORE.  They'll be said by me to-night, Mendip.

MENDIP.  In the House?

     [MORE nods.]

KATHERINE.  Stephen!

MENDIP.  Mrs. More, you mustn't let him.  It's madness.

MORE.  [Rising]  You can tell people that to-morrow, Mendip.  Give it
a leader in 'The Parthenon'.

MENDIP.  Political lunacy!  No man in your position has a right to
fly out like this at the eleventh hour.

MORE.  I've made no secret of my feelings all along.  I'm against
this war, and against the annexation we all know it will lead to.

MENDIP.  My dear fellow!  Don't be so Quixotic!  We shall have war
within the next twenty-four hours, and nothing you can do will stop
it.

HELEN.  Oh!  No!

MENDIP.  I'm afraid so, Mrs. Hubert.

SIR JOHN.  Not a doubt of it, Helen.

MENDIP.  [TO MORE]  And you mean to charge the windmill?

     [MORE nods.]

MENDIP.  'C'est magnifique'!

MORE.  I'm not out for advertisement.

MENDIP.  You will get it!

MORE.  Must speak the truth sometimes, even at that risk.

SIR JOHN.  It is not the truth.

MENDIP.  The greater the truth the greater the libel, and the greater
the resentment of the person libelled.

THE DEAN.  [Trying to bring matters to a blander level]  My dear
Stephen, even if you were right--which I deny--about the initial
merits, there surely comes a point where the individual conscience
must resign it self to the country's feeling.  This has become a
question of national honour.

SIR JOHN.  Well said, James!

MORE.  Nations are bad judges of their honour, Dean.

THE DEAN.  I shall not follow you there.

MORE.  No.  It's an awkward word.

KATHERINE.  [Stopping THE DEAN]  Uncle James!  Please!

     [MORE looks at her intently.]

SIR JOHN.  So you're going to put yourself at the head of the cranks,
ruin your career, and make me ashamed that you're my son-in-law?

MORE.  Is a man only to hold beliefs when they're popular?  You've
stood up to be shot at often enough, Sir John.

SIR JOHN.  Never by my country!  Your speech will be in all the
foreign press-trust 'em for seizing on anything against us.  A
show-up before other countries----!

MORE.  You admit the show-up?

SIR JOHN.  I do not, sir.

THE DEAN.  The position has become impossible.  The state of things
out there must be put an end to once for all!  Come, Katherine, back
us up!

MORE.  My country, right or wrong!  Guilty--still my country!

MENDIP.  That begs the question.

     [KATHERINE rises.  THE DEAN, too, stands up.]

THE DEAN.  [In a low voice] 'Quem Deus volt perdere'----!

SIR JOHN.  Unpatriotic!

MORE.  I'll have no truck with tyranny.

KATHERINE.  Father doesn't admit tyranny.  Nor do any of us, Stephen.

HUBERT JULIAN, a tall Soldier-like man, has come in.

HELEN.  Hubert!

     [She gets up and goes to him, and they talk together near the
     door.]

SIR JOHN.  What in God's name is your idea?  We've forborne long
enough, in all conscience.

MORE.  Sir John, we great Powers have got to change our ways in
dealing with weaker nations.  The very dogs can give us lessons--
watch a big dog with a little one.

MENDIP.  No, no, these things are not so simple as all that.

MORE.  There's no reason in the world, Mendip, why the rules of
chivalry should not apply to nations at least as well as to---dogs.

MENDIP.  My dear friend, are you to become that hapless kind of
outcast, a champion of lost causes?

MORE.  This cause is not lost.

MENDIP.  Right or wrong, as lost as ever was cause in all this world.
There was never a time when the word "patriotism" stirred mob
sentiment as it does now.  'Ware "Mob," Stephen---'ware "Mob"!

MORE.  Because general sentiment's against me, I--a public man--am to
deny my faith?  The point is not whether I'm right or wrong, Mendip,
but whether I'm to sneak out of my conviction because it's unpopular.

THE DEAN.  I'm afraid I must go.  [To KATHERINE]  Good-night, my
dear!  Ah!  Hubert!  [He greets HUBERT]  Mr. Mendip, I go your way.
Can I drop you?

MENDIP.  Thank you.  Good-night, Mrs. More.  Stop him!  It's
perdition.

     [He and THE DEAN go out.  KATHERINE puts her arm in HELEN'S, and
     takes her out of the room.  HUBERT remains standing by the door]

SIR JOHN.  I knew your views were extreme in many ways, Stephen, but
I never thought the husband of my daughter would be a Peace-at-any-
price man!

MORE.  I am not!  But I prefer to fight some one my own size.

SIR JOHN.  Well!  I can only hope to God you'll come to your senses
before you commit the folly of this speech.  I must get back to the
War Office.  Good-night, Hubert.

HUBERT.  Good-night, Father.

     [SIR JOHN goes out.  HUBERT stands motionless, dejected.]

HUBERT.  We've got our orders.

MORE.  What?  When d'you sail?

HUBERT.  At once.

MORE.  Poor Helen!

HUBERT.  Not married a year; pretty bad luck!  [MORE touches his arm
in sympathy] Well!  We've got to put feelings in our pockets.  Look
here, Stephen--don't make that speech!  Think of Katherine--with the
Dad at the War Office, and me going out, and Ralph and old George out
there already!  You can't trust your tongue when you're hot about a
thing.

MORE.  I must speak, Hubert.

HUBERT.  No, no!  Bottle yourself up for to-night.  The next few
hours 'll see it begin.  [MORE turns from him]  If you don't care
whether you mess up your own career--don't tear Katherine in two!

MORE.  You're not shirking your duty because of your wife.

HUBERT.  Well!  You're riding for a fall, and a godless mucker it'll
be.  This'll be no picnic.  We shall get some nasty knocks out there.
Wait and see the feeling here when we've had a force or two cut up in
those mountains.  It's awful country.  Those fellows have got modern
arms, and are jolly good fighters.  Do drop it, Stephen!

MORE.  Must risk something, sometimes, Hubert--even in my profession!

     [As he speaks, KATHERINE comes in.]

HUBERT.  But it's hopeless, my dear chap--absolutely.

     [MORE turns to the window, HUBERT to his sister--then with a
     gesture towards MORE, as though to leave the matter to her, he
     goes out.]

KATHERINE.  Stephen!  Are you really going to speak?  [He nods] I ask
you not.

MORE.  You know my feeling.

KATHERINE.  But it's our own country.  We can't stand apart from it.
You won't stop anything--only make people hate you.  I can't bear
that.

MORE.  I tell you, Kit, some one must raise a voice.  Two or three
reverses--certain to come--and the whole country will go wild.  And
one more little nation will cease to live.

KATHERINE.  If you believe in your country, you must believe that the
more land and power she has, the better for the world.

MORE.  Is that your faith?

KATHERINE.  Yes.

MORE.  I respect it; I even understand it; but--I can't hold it.

KATHERINE.  But, Stephen, your speech will be a rallying cry to all
the cranks, and every one who has a spite against the country.
They'll make you their figurehead.  [MORE smiles]  They will.  Your
chance of the Cabinet will go--you may even have to resign your seat.

MORE.  Dogs will bark.  These things soon blow over.

KATHERINE.  No, no!  If you once begin a thing, you always go on; and
what earthly good?

MORE.  History won't say: "And this they did without a single protest
from their public men!"

KATHERINE.  There are plenty who----

MORE.  Poets?

KATHERINE.  Do you remember that day on our honeymoon, going up Ben
Lawers?  You were lying on your face in the heather; you said it was
like kissing a loved woman.  There was a lark singing--you said that
was the voice of one's worship.  The hills were very blue; that's why
we had blue here, because it was the best dress of our country.  You
do love her.

MORE.  Love her!

KATHERINE.  You'd have done this for me--then.

MORE.  Would you have asked me--then, Kit?

KATHERINE.  Yes.  The country's our country!  Oh!  Stephen, think
what it'll be like for me--with Hubert and the other boys out there.
And poor Helen, and Father!  I beg you not to make this speech.

MORE.  Kit!  This isn't fair.  Do you want me to feel myself a cur?

KATHERINE.  [Breathless] I--I--almost feel you'll be a cur to do it
[She looks at him, frightened by her own words.  Then, as the footman
HENRY has come in to clear the table--very low]  I ask you not!

     [He does not answer, and she goes out.]

MORE  [To the servant] Later, please, Henry, later!

     The servant retires.  MORE still stands looking down at the
     dining-table; then putting his hand to his throat, as if to free
     it from the grip of his collar, he pours out a glass of water,
     and drinks it of.  In the street, outside the bay window, two
     street musicians, a harp and a violin, have taken up their
     stand, and after some twangs and scrapes, break into music.
     MORE goes towards the sound, and draws aside one curtain.  After
     a moment, he returns to the table, and takes up the notes of the
     speech.  He is in an agony of indecision.

MORE.  A cur!

     He seems about to tear his notes across.  Then, changing his
     mind, turns them over and over, muttering.  His voice gradually
     grows louder, till he is declaiming to the empty room the
     peroration of his speech.

MORE.  .  .  .  We have arrogated to our land the title Champion of
Freedom, Foe of Oppression.  Is that indeed a bygone glory?  Is it
not worth some sacrifice of our pettier dignity, to avoid laying
another stone upon its grave; to avoid placing before the searchlight
eyes of History the spectacle of yet one more piece of national
cynicism?  We are about to force our will and our dominion on a race
that has always been free, that loves its country, and its
independence, as much as ever we love ours.  I cannot sit silent
to-night and see this begin.  As we are tender of our own land, so we
should be of the lands of others.  I love my country.  It is because
I love my country that I raise my voice.  Warlike in spirit these
people may be--but they have no chance against ourselves.  And war on
such, however agreeable to the blind moment, is odious to the future.
The great heart of mankind ever beats in sense and sympathy with the
weaker.  It is against this great heart of mankind that we are going.
In the name of Justice and Civilization we pursue this policy; but by
Justice we shall hereafter be judged, and by Civilization--condemned.

     While he is speaking, a little figure has flown along the
     terrace outside, in the direction of the music, but has stopped
     at the sound of his voice, and stands in the open window,
     listening--a dark-haired, dark-eyed child, in a blue dressing-
     gown caught up in her hand.  The street musicians, having
     reached the end of a tune, are silent.

     In the intensity of MORES feeling, a wine-glass, gripped too
     strongly, breaks and falls in pieces onto a finger-bowl.  The
     child starts forward into the room.

MORE.  Olive!

OLIVE.  Who were you speaking to, Daddy?

MORE.  [Staring at her]  The wind, sweetheart!

OLIVE.  There isn't any!

MORE.  What blew you down, then?

OLIVE.  [Mysteriously]  The music.  Did the wind break the wine-
glass, or did it come in two in your hand?

MORE.  Now my sprite!  Upstairs again, before Nurse catches you.
Fly!  Fly!

OLIVE.  Oh! no, Daddy!  [With confidential fervour]  It feels like
things to-night!

MORE.  You're right there!

OLIVE.  [Pulling him down to her, and whispering]  I must get back
again in secret.  H'sh!

     She suddenly runs and wraps herself into one of the curtains of
     the bay window.  A young man enters, with a note in his hand.

MORE.  Hello, Steel!

     [The street musicians have again begun to play.]

STEEL.  From Sir John--by special messenger from the War Office.

MORE.  [Reading the note] "The ball is opened."

     He stands brooding over the note, and STEEL looks at him
     anxiously.  He is a dark, sallow, thin-faced young man, with the
     eyes of one who can attach himself to people, and suffer with
     them.

STEEL.  I'm glad it's begun, sir.  It would have been an awful pity
to have made that speech.

MORE.  You too, Steel!

STEEL.  I mean, if it's actually started----

MORE.  [Tearing tie note across]  Yes.  Keep that to yourself.

STEEL.  Do you want me any more?

     MORE takes from his breast pocket some papers, and pitches them
     down on the bureau.

MORE.  Answer these.

STEEL.  [Going to the bureau]  Fetherby was simply sickening.  [He
begins to write.  Struggle has begun again in MORE]  Not the faintest
recognition that there are two sides to it.

     MORE gives him a quick look, goes quietly to the dining-table
     and picks up his sheaf of notes.  Hiding them with his sleeve,
     he goes back to the window, where he again stands hesitating.

STEEL.  Chief gem: [Imitating]  "We must show Impudence at last that
Dignity is not asleep!"

MORE.  [Moving out on to the terrace]  Nice quiet night!

STEEL.  This to the Cottage Hospital--shall I say you will preside?

MORE.  No.

     STEEL writes; then looking up and seeing that MORE is no longer
     there, he goes to the window, looks to right and left, returns
     to the bureau, and is about to sit down again when a thought
     seems to strike him with consternation.  He goes again to the
     window.  Then snatching up his hat, he passes hurriedly out
     along the terrace.  As he vanishes, KATHERINE comes in from the
     hall.  After looking out on to the terrace she goes to the bay
     window; stands there listening; then comes restlessly back into
     the room.  OLIVE, creeping quietly from behind the curtain,
     clasps her round the waist.

KATHERINE.  O my darling!  How you startled me!  What are you doing
down here, you wicked little sinner!

OLIVE.  I explained all that to Daddy.  We needn't go into it again,
need we?

KATHERINE.  Where is Daddy?

OLIVE.  Gone.

KATHERINE.  When?

OLIVE.  Oh!  only just, and Mr. Steel went after him like a rabbit.
[The music stops]  They haven't been paid, you know.

KATHERINE.  Now, go up at once.  I can't think how you got down here.

OLIVE.  I can.  [Wheedling]  If you pay them, Mummy, they're sure to
play another.

KATHERINE.  Well, give them that!  One more only.

     She gives OLIVE a coin, who runs with it to the bay window,
     opens the aide casement, and calls to the musicians.

OLIVE.  Catch, please!  And would you play just one more?

     She returns from the window, and seeing her mother lost in
     thought, rubs herself against her.

OLIVE.  Have you got an ache?

KATHARINE.  Right through me, darling!

OLIVE.  Oh!

     [The musicians strike up a dance.]

OLIVE.  Oh!  Mummy!  I must just dance!

     She kicks off her lisle blue shoes, and begins dancing.  While
     she is capering HUBERT comes in from the hall.  He stands
     watching his little niece for a minute, and KATHERINE looks at
     him.

HUBERT.  Stephen gone!

KATHERINE.  Yes--stop, Olive!

OLIVE.  Are you good at my sort of dancing, Uncle?

HUBERT.  Yes, chick--awfully!

KATHERINE.  Now, Olive!

     The musicians have suddenly broken off in the middle of a bar.
     From the street comes the noise of distant shouting.

OLIVE.  Listen, Uncle!  Isn't it a particular noise?

     HUBERT and KATHERINE listen with all their might, and OLIVE
     stares at their faces.  HUBERT goes to the window.  The sound
     comes nearer.  The shouted words are faintly heard:  "Pyper----
     war----our force crosses frontier--sharp fightin'----pyper."

KATHERINE.  [Breathless] Yes!  It is.

     The street cry is heard again in two distant voices coming from
     different directions: "War--pyper--sharp fightin' on the
     frontier--pyper."

KATHERINE.  Shut out those ghouls!

     As HUBERT closes the window, NURSE WREFORD comes in from the
     hall.  She is an elderly woman endowed with a motherly grimness.
     She fixes OLIVE with her eye, then suddenly becomes conscious of
     the street cry.

NURSE.  Oh! don't say it's begun.

     [HUBERT comes from the window.]

NURSE.  Is the regiment to go, Mr. Hubert?

HUBERT.  Yes, Nanny.

NURSE.  Oh, dear!  My boy!

KATHERINE.  [Signing to where OLIVE stands with wide eyes]  Nurse!

HUBERT.  I'll look after him, Nurse.

NURSE.  And him keepin' company.  And you not married a year.  Ah!
Mr. Hubert, now do 'ee take care; you and him's both so rash.

HUBERT.  Not I, Nurse!

     NURSE looks long into his face, then lifts her finger, and
     beckons OLIVE.

OLIVE.  [Perceiving new sensations before her, goes quietly]  Good-
night, Uncle!  Nanny, d'you know why I was obliged to come down?  [In
a fervent whisper]  It's a secret!

     [As she passes with NURSE out into the hall, her voice is heard
     saying, "Do tell me all about the war."]

HUBERT.  [Smothering emotion under a blunt manner]  We sail on
Friday, Kit.  Be good to Helen, old girl.

KATHERINE.  Oh! I wish----!  Why--can't--women--fight?

HUBERT.  Yes, it's bad for you, with Stephen taking it like this.
But he'll come round now it's once begun.

     KATHERINE shakes her head, then goes suddenly up to him, and
     throws her arms round his neck.  It is as if all the feeling
     pent up in her were finding vent in this hug.

     The door from the hall is opened, and SIR JOHN'S voice is heard
     outside: "All right, I'll find her."

KATHERINE.  Father!

     [SIR JOHN comes in.]

SIR JOHN.  Stephen get my note?  I sent it over the moment I got to
the War Office.

KATHERINE.  I expect so.  [Seeing the torn note on the table] Yes.

SIR JOHN.  They're shouting the news now.  Thank God, I stopped that
crazy speech of his in time.

KATHERINE.  Have you stopped it?

SIR JOHN.  What!  He wouldn't be such a sublime donkey?

KATHERINE.  I think that is just what he might be.  [Going to the
window]  We shall know soon.

     [SIR JOHN, after staring at her, goes up to HUBERT.]

SIR JOHN.  Keep a good heart, my boy.  The country's first.  [They
exchange a hand-squeeze.]

     KATHERINE backs away from the window.  STEEL has appeared there
     from the terrace, breathless from running.

STEEL.  Mr. More back?

KATHERINE.  No. Has he spoken?

STEEL.  Yes.

KATHERINE.  Against?

STEEL.  Yes.

SIR JOHN.  What?  After!

     SIR, JOHN stands rigid, then turns and marches straight out into
     the hall.  At a sign from KATHERINE, HUBERT follows him.

KATHERINE.  Yes, Mr. Steel?

STEEL.  [Still breathless and agitated]  We were here--he slipped
away from me somehow.  He must have gone straight down to the House.
I ran over, but when I got in under the Gallery he was speaking
already.  They expected something--I never heard it so still there.
He gripped them from the first word--deadly--every syllable.  It got
some of those fellows.  But all the time, under the silence you could
feel a--sort of--of--current going round.  And then Sherratt--I think
it was--began it, and you saw the anger rising in them; but he kept
them down--his quietness!  The feeling!  I've never seen anything
like it there.

Then there was a whisper all over the House that fighting had begun.
And the whole thing broke out--regular riot--as if they could have
killed him.  Some one tried to drag him down by the coat-tails, but
he shook him off, and went on.  Then he stopped dead and walked out,
and the noise dropped like a stone.  The whole thing didn't last five
minutes.  It was fine, Mrs.  More; like--like lava; he was the only
cool person there.  I wouldn't have missed it for anything--it was
grand!

     MORE has appeared on the terrace, behind STEEL.

KATHERINE.  Good-night, Mr.  Steel.

STEEL.  [Startled]  Oh!--Good-night!

     He goes out into the hall.  KATHERINE picks up OLIVE'S shoes,
     and stands clasping them to her breast.  MORE comes in.

KATHERINE.  You've cleared your conscience, then!  I didn't think
you'd hurt me so.

     MORE does not answer, still living in the scene he has gone
     through, and KATHERINE goes a little nearer to him.

KATHERINE.  I'm with the country, heart and soul, Stephen.  I warn
you.

     While they stand in silence, facing each other, the footman,
     HENRY, enters from the hall.

FOOTMAN.  These notes, sir, from the House of Commons.

KATHERINE.  [Taking them] You can have the room directly.

     [The FOOTMAN goes out.]

MORE.  Open them!

     KATHERINE opens one after the other, and lets them fall on the
     table.

MORE.  Well?

KATHERINE.  What you might expect.  Three of your best friends.  It's
begun.

MORE.  'Ware Mob!  [He gives a laugh]  I must write to the Chief.

     KATHERINE makes an impulsive movement towards him; then quietly
     goes to the bureau, sits down and takes up a pen.

KATHERINE.  Let me make the rough draft.  [She waits]  Yes?

MORE.  [Dictating]

"July 15th.

"DEAR SIR CHARLES, After my speech to-night, embodying my most
unalterable convictions [KATHERINE turns and looks up at him, but he
is staring straight before him, and with a little movement of despair
she goes on writing]  I have no alternative but to place the
resignation of my Under-Secretaryship in your hands.  My view, my
faith in this matter may be wrong--but I am surely right to keep the
flag of my faith flying.  I imagine I need not enlarge on the
reasons----"


                         THE CURTAIN FALLS.





ACT.  II

     Before noon a few days later.  The open windows of the dining-
     room let in the sunlight.  On the table a number of newspapers
     are littered.  HELEN is sitting there, staring straight before
     her.  A newspaper boy runs by outside calling out his wares.  At
     the sound she gets up anti goes out on to the terrace.  HUBERT
     enters from the hall.  He goes at once to the terrace, and draws
     HELEN into the room.

HELEN.  Is it true--what they're shouting?

HUBERT.  Yes.  Worse than we thought.  They got our men all crumpled
up in the Pass--guns helpless.  Ghastly beginning.

HELEN.  Oh, Hubert!

HUBERT.  My dearest girl!

     HELEN puts her face up to his.  He kisses her.  Then she turns
     quickly into the bay window.  The door from the hall has been
     opened, and the footman, HENRY, comes in, preceding WREFORD and
     his sweetheart.

HENRY.  Just wait here, will you, while I let Mrs.  More know.
[Catching sight of HUBERT]  Beg pardon, sir!

HUBERT.  All right, Henry.  [Off-hand]  Ah! Wreford!  [The FOOTMAN
withdraws]  So you've brought her round.  That's good!  My sister'll
look after her--don't you worry!  Got everything packed?  Three
o'clock sharp.

WREFORD.  [A broad faced soldier, dressed in khaki with a certain
look of dry humour, now dimmed-speaking with a West Country burr]
That's right, zurr; all's ready.

     HELEN has come out of the window, and is quietly looking at
     WREFORD and the girl standing there so awkwardly.

HELEN.  [Quietly]  Take care of him, Wreford.

HUBERT.  We'll take care of each other, won't we, Wreford?

HELEN.  How long have you been engaged?

THE GIRL.  [A pretty, indeterminate young woman] Six months.  [She
sobs suddenly.]

HELEN.  Ah!  He'll soon be safe back.

WREFORD.  I'll owe 'em for this.  [In a lacy voice to her]  Don't 'ee
now!  Don't 'ee!

HELEN.  No!  Don't cry, please!

     She stands struggling with her own lips, then goes out on to the
     terrace, HUBERT following.  WREFORD and his girl remain where
     they were, strange and awkward, she muffling her sobs.

WREFORD.  Don't 'ee go on like that, Nance; I'll 'ave to take you
'ome.  That's silly, now we've a-come.  I might be dead and buried by
the fuss you're makin'.  You've a-drove the lady away.  See!

     She regains control of herself as the door is opened and
     KATHERINE appears, accompanied by OLIVE, who regards WREFORD
     with awe and curiosity, and by NURSE, whose eyes are red, but
     whose manner is composed.

KATHERINE.  My brother told me; so glad you've brought her.

WREFORD.  Ye--as, M'.  She feels me goin', a bit.

KATHERINE.  Yes, yes!  Still, it's for the country, isn't it?

THE GIRL.  That's what Wreford keeps tellin' me.  He've got to go--so
it's no use upsettin' 'im.  And of course I keep tellin' him I shall
be all right.

NURSE.  [Whose eyes never leave her son's face]  And so you will.

THE GIRL.  Wreford thought it'd comfort him to know you were
interested in me.  'E's so 'ot-headed I'm sure somethin'll come to
'im.

KATHERINE.  We've all got some one going.  Are you coming to the
docks?   We must send them off in good spirits, you know.

OLIVE.  Perhaps he'll get a medal.

KATHERINE.  Olive!

NURSE.  You wouldn't like for him to be hanging back, one of them
anti-patriot, stop-the-war ones.

KATHERINE.  [Quickly]  Let me see--I have your address.  [Holding out
her hand to WREFORD]  We'll look after her.

OLIVE.  [In a loud whisper] Shall I lend him my toffee?

KATHERINE.  If you like, dear.  [To WREFORD]  Now take care of my
brother and yourself, and we'll take care of her.

WREFORD.  Ye--as, M'.

     He then looks rather wretchedly at his girl, as if the interview
     had not done so much for him as he had hoped.  She drops a
     little curtsey.  WREFORD salutes.

OLIVE.  [Who has taken from the bureau a packet, places it in his
hand] It's very nourishing!

WREFORD.  Thank you, miss.

     Then, nudging each other, and entangled in their feelings and
     the conventions, they pass out, shepherded by NURSE.

KATHERINE.  Poor things!

OLIVE.  What is an anti-patriot, stop-the-war one, Mummy?

KATHERINE.  [Taking up a newspaper]  Just a stupid name, dear--don't
chatter!

OLIVE.  But tell me just one weeny thing!

KATHERINE.  Well?

OLIVE.  Is Daddy one?

KATHERINE.  Olive!  How much do you know about this war?

OLIVE.  They won't obey us properly.  So we have to beat them, and
take away their country.  We shall, shan't we?

KATHERINE.  Yes.  But Daddy doesn't want us to; he doesn't think it
fair, and he's been saying so.  People are very angry with him.

OLIVE.  Why isn't it fair?  I suppose we're littler than them.

KATHERINE.  No.

OLIVE.  Oh! in history we always are.  And we always win.  That's why
I like history.  Which are you for, Mummy--us or them?

KATHERINE.  Us.

OLIVE.  Then I shall have to be.  It's a pity we're not on the same
side as Daddy.  [KATHERINE shudders]  Will they hurt him for not
taking our side?

KATHERINE.  I expect they will, Olive.

OLIVE.  Then we shall have to be extra nice to him.

KATHERINE.  If we can.

OLIVE.  I can; I feel like it.

     HELEN and HUBERT have returned along the terrace.  Seeing
     KATHERINE and the child, HELEN passes on, but HUBERT comes in at
     the French window.

OLIVE.  [Catching sight of him-softly] Is Uncle Hubert going to the
front to-day?  [KATHERINE nods]  But not grandfather?

KATHERINE.  No, dear.

OLIVE.  That's lucky for them, isn't it?

     HUBERT comes in.  The presence of the child give him self-
     control.

HUBERT.  Well, old girl, it's good-bye.  [To OLIVE]  What shall I
bring you back, chick?

OLIVE.  Are there shops at the front?  I thought it was dangerous.

HUBERT.  Not a bit.

OLIVE.  [Disillusioned]  Oh!

KATHERINE.  Now, darling, give Uncle a good hug.

     [Under cover of OLIVE's hug, KATHERINE repairs her courage.]

KATHERINE.  The Dad and I'll be with you all in spirit.  Good-bye,
old boy!

     They do not dare to kiss, and HUBERT goes out very stiff and
     straight, in the doorway passing STEEL, of whom he takes no
     notice.  STEEL hesitates, and would go away.

KATHERINE.  Come in, Mr. Steel.

STEEL.  The deputation from Toulmin ought to be here, Mrs. More.
It's twelve.

OLIVE.  [Having made a little ball of newspaper-slyly]  Mr. Steel,
catch!

     [She throws, and STEEL catches it in silence.]

KATHERINE.  Go upstairs, won't you, darling?

OLIVE.  Mayn't I read in the window, Mummy?  Then I shall see if any
soldiers pass.

KATHERINE.  No.  You can go out on the terrace a little, and then you
must go up.

     [OLIVE goes reluctantly out on to the terrace.]

STEEL.  Awful news this morning of that Pass!  And have you seen
these?  [Reading from the newspaper] "We will have no truck with the
jargon of the degenerate who vilifies his country at such a moment.
The Member for Toulmin has earned for himself the contempt of all
virile patriots."  [He takes up a second journal]  "There is a
certain type of public man who, even at his own expense, cannot
resist the itch to advertise himself.  We would, at moments of
national crisis, muzzle such persons, as we muzzle dogs that we
suspect of incipient rabies .  .  .  ."  They're in full cry after
him!

KATHERINE.  I mind much more all the creatures who are always
flinging mud at the country making him their hero suddenly!  You know
what's in his mind?

STEEL.  Oh!  We must get him to give up that idea of lecturing
everywhere against the war, Mrs. More; we simply must.

KATHERINE.  [Listening]  The deputation's come.  Go and fetch him,
Mr. Steel.  He'll be in his room, at the House.

     [STEEL goes out, and KATHERINE Stands at bay.  In a moment he
     opens the door again, to usher in the deputation; then retires.
     The four gentlemen have entered as if conscious of grave issues.
     The first and most picturesque is JAMES HOME, a thin, tall,
     grey-bearded man, with plentiful hair, contradictious eyebrows,
     and the half-shy, half-bold manners, alternately rude and over
     polite, of one not accustomed to Society, yet secretly much
     taken with himself.  He is dressed in rough tweeds, with a red
     silk tie slung through a ring, and is closely followed by MARK
     WACE, a waxy, round-faced man of middle-age, with sleek dark
     hair, traces of whisker, and a smooth way of continually rubbing
     his hands together, as if selling something to an esteemed
     customer.  He is rather stout, wears dark clothes, with a large
     gold chain.  Following him comes CHARLES SHELDER, a lawyer of
     fifty, with a bald egg-shaped head, and gold pince-nez.  He has
     little side whiskers, a leathery, yellowish skin, a rather kind
     but watchful and dubious face, and when he speaks seems to have
     a plum in his mouth, which arises from the preponderance of his
     shaven upper lip.  Last of the deputation comes WILLIAM BANNING,
     an energetic-looking, square-shouldered, self-made country-man,
     between fifty and sixty, with grey moustaches, ruddy face, and
     lively brown eyes.]

KATHERINE.  How do you do, Mr. Home?

HOME.  [Bowing rather extravagantly over her hand, as if to show his
independence of women's influence]  Mrs. More!  We hardly expected--
This is an honour.

WACE.  How do you do, Ma'am?

KATHERINE.  And you, Mr. Wace?

WACE.  Thank you, Ma'am, well indeed!

SHELDER.  How d'you do, Mrs. More?

KATHERINE.  Very well, thank you, Mr. Shelder.

BANNING.  [Speaking with a rather broad country accent]  This is but
a poor occasion, Ma'am.

KATHERINE.  Yes, Mr.  Banning.  Do sit down, gentlemen.

     Seeing that they will not settle down while she is standing, she
     sits at the table.  They gradually take their seats.  Each
     member of the deputation in his own way is severely hanging back
     from any mention of the subject in hand; and KATHERINE as intent
     on drawing them to it.

KATHERINE.  My husband will be here in two minutes.  He's only over
at the House.

SHELDER.  [Who is of higher standing and education than the others]
Charming position--this, Mrs. More!  So near the--er--Centre of--
Gravity um?

KATHERINE.  I read the account of your second meeting at Toulmin.

BANNING.  It's bad, Mrs. More--bad.  There's no disguising it.  That
speech was moon-summer madness--Ah! it was!  Take a lot of explaining
away.  Why did you let him, now?  Why did you?  Not your views, I'm
sure!

     [He looks at her, but for answer she only compresses her lips.]

BANNING.  I tell you what hit me--what's hit the whole constituency--
and that's his knowing we were over the frontier, fighting already,
when he made it.

KATHERINE.  What difference does it make if he did know?

HOME.  Hitting below the belt--I should have thought--you'll pardon
me!

BANNING.  Till war's begun, Mrs. More, you're entitled to say what
you like, no doubt--but after!  That's going against your country.
Ah! his speech was strong, you know--his speech was strong.

KATHERINE.  He had made up his mind to speak.  It was just an
accident the news coming then.

     [A silence.]

BANNING.  Well, that's true, I suppose.  What we really want is to
make sure he won't break out again.

HOME.  Very high-minded, his views of course--but, some consideration
for the common herd.  You'll pardon me!

SHELDER.  We've come with the friendliest feelings, Mrs. More--but,
you know, it won't do, this sort of thing!

WACE.  We shall be able to smooth him down.  Oh! surely.

BANNING.  We'd be best perhaps not to mention about his knowing that
fighting had begun.

     [As he speaks, MORE enters through the French windows.  They all
     rise.]

MORE.  Good-morning, gentlemen.

     [He comes down to the table, but does not offer to shake hands.]

BANNING.  Well, Mr. More?  You've made a woeful mistake, sir; I tell
you to your face.

MORE.  As everybody else does, Banning.  Sit down again, please.

     [They gradually resume their seats, and MORE sits in KATHERINE's
     chair.  She alone remains standing leaning against the corner of
     the bay window, watching their faces.]

BANNING.  You've seen the morning's telegrams?  I tell you, Mr.
More--another reverse like that, and the flood will sweep you clean
away.  And I'll not blame it.  It's only flesh and blood.

MORE, Allow for the flesh and blood in me, too, please.  When I spoke
the other night it was not without a certain feeling here.  [He
touches his heart.]

BANNING.  But your attitude's so sudden--you'd not been going that
length when you were down with us in May.

MORE.  Do me the justice to remember that even then I was against our
policy.  It cost me three weeks' hard struggle to make up my mind to
that speech.  One comes slowly to these things, Banning.

SHELDER.  Case of conscience?

MORE.  Such things have happened, Shelder, even in politics.

SHELDER.  You see, our ideals are naturally low--how different from
yours!

     [MORE smiles.]

     KATHERINE, who has drawn near her husband, moves back again, as
     if relieved at this gleam of geniality.  WACE rubs his hands.

BANNING.  There's one thing you forget, sir.  We send you to
Parliament, representing us; but you couldn't find six men in the
whole constituency that would have bidden you to make that speech.

MORE.  I'm sorry; but I can't help my convictions, Banning.

SHELDER.  What was it the prophet was without in his own country?

BANNING.  Ah! but we're not funning, Mr. More.  I've never known
feeling run so high.  The sentiment of both meetings was dead against
you.  We've had showers of letters to headquarters.  Some from very
good men--very warm friends of yours.

SHELDER.  Come now!  It's not too late.  Let's go back and tell them
you won't do it again.

MORE.  Muzzling order?

BANNING.  [Bluntly]  That's about it.

MORE.  Give up my principles to save my Parliamentary skin.  Then,
indeed, they might call me a degenerate!  [He touches the newspapers
on the table.]

     KATHERINE makes an abrupt and painful movement, then remains as
     still as before, leaning against the corner of the window-seat.

BANNING.  Well, Well!  I know.  But we don't ask you to take your
words back--we only want discretion in the future.

MORE.  Conspiracy of silence!  And have it said that a mob of
newspapers have hounded me to it.

BANNING.  They won't say that of you.

SHELDER.  My dear More, aren't you rather dropping to our level?
With your principles you ought not to care two straws what people
say.

MORE.  But I do.  I can't betray the dignity and courage of public
men.  If popular opinion is to control the utterances of her
politicians, then good-bye indeed to this country!

BANNING.  Come now!  I won't say that your views weren't sound enough
before the fighting began.  I've never liked our policy out there.
But our blood's being spilled; and that makes all the difference.
I don't suppose they'd want me exactly, but I'd be ready to go
myself.  We'd all of us be ready.  And we can't have the man that
represents us talking wild, until we've licked these fellows.  That's
it in a nutshell.

MORE.  I understand your feeling, Banning.  I tender you my
resignation.  I can't and won't hold on where I'm not wanted.

BANNING.  No, no, no!  Don't do that!  [His accent broader and
broader]  You've 'ad your say, and there it is.  Coom now!  You've
been our Member nine years, in rain and shine.

SHELDER.  We want to keep you, More.  Come!  Give us your promise-
that's a good man!

MORE.  I don't make cheap promises.  You ask too much.

     [There is silence, and they all look at MORE.]

SHELDER.  There are very excellent reasons for the Government's
policy.

MORE.  There are always excellent reasons for having your way with
the weak.

SHELDER.  My dear More, how can you get up any enthusiasm for those
cattle-lifting ruffians?

MORE.  Better lift cattle than lift freedom.

SHELDER.  Well, all we'll ask is that you shouldn't go about the
country, saying so.

MORE.  But that is just what I must do.

     [Again they all look at MORE in consternation.]

HOME.  Not down our way, you'll pardon me.

WACE.  Really--really, sir----

SHELDER.  The time of crusades is past, More.

MORE.  Is it?

BANNING.  Ah!  no, but we don't want to part with you, Mr.  More.
It's a bitter thing, this, after three elections.  Look at the 'uman
side of it!  To speak ill of your country when there's been a
disaster like this terrible business in the Pass.  There's your own
wife.  I see her brother's regiment's to start this very afternoon.
Come now--how must she feel?

     MORE breaks away to the bay window.  The DEPUTATION exchange
     glances.

MORE.  [Turning]  To try to muzzle me like this--is going too far.

BANNING.  We just want to put you out of temptation.

MORE.  I've held my seat with you in all weathers for nine years.
You've all been bricks to me.  My heart's in my work, Banning; I'm
not eager to undergo political eclipse at forty.

SHELDER.  Just so--we don't want to see you in that quandary.

BANNING.  It'd be no friendliness to give you a wrong impression of
the state of feeling.  Silence--till the bitterness is overpast;
there's naught else for it, Mr. More, while you feel as you do.  That
tongue of yours!  Come!  You owe us something.  You're a big man;
it's the big view you ought to take.

MORE.  I am trying to.

HOME.  And what precisely is your view--you'll pardon my asking?

MORE.  [Turning on him]  Mr. Home a great country such as ours--is
trustee for the highest sentiments of mankind.  Do these few outrages
justify us in stealing the freedom of this little people?

BANNING.  Steal--their freedom!  That's rather running before the
hounds.

MORE.  Ah, Banning! now we come to it.  In your hearts you're none of
you for that--neither by force nor fraud.  And yet you all know that
we've gone in there to stay, as we've gone into other lands--as all
we big Powers go into other lands, when they're little and weak.  The
Prime Minister's words the other night were these: "If we are forced
to spend this blood and money now, we must never again be forced."
What does that mean but swallowing this country?

SHELDER.  Well, and quite frankly, it'd be no bad thing.

HOME.  We don't want their wretched country--we're forced.

MORE.  We are not forced.

SHELDER.  My dear More, what is civilization but the logical,
inevitable swallowing up of the lower by the higher types of man?
And what else will it be here?

MORE.  We shall not agree there, Shelder; and we might argue it all
day.  But the point is, not whether you or I are right--the point is:
What is a man who holds a faith with all his heart to do?  Please
tell me.

     [There is a silence.]

BANNING.  [Simply] I was just thinkin' of those poor fellows in the
Pass.

MORE.  I can see them, as well as you, Banning.  But, imagine!  Up in
our own country--the Black Valley--twelve hundred foreign devils dead
and dying--the crows busy over them--in our own country, our own
valley--ours--ours--violated.  Would you care about "the poor
fellows" in that Pass?--Invading, stealing dogs!  Kill them--kill
them!  You would, and I would, too!

     The passion of those words touches and grips as no arguments
     could; and they are silent.

MORE.  Well!  What's the difference out there?  I'm not so inhuman as
not to want to see this disaster in the Pass wiped out.  But once
that's done, in spite of my affection for you; my ambitions, and
they're not few;  [Very low]  in spite of my own wife's feeling, I
must be free to raise my voice against this war.

BANNING.  [Speaking slowly, consulting the others, as it were, with
his eyes]  Mr. More, there's no man I respect more than yourself.  I
can't tell what they'll say down there when we go back; but I, for
one, don't feel it in me to take a hand in pressing you farther
against your faith.

SHELDER.  We don't deny that--that you have a case of sorts.

WACE.  No--surely.

SHELDER.  A--man should be free, I suppose, to hold his own opinions.

MORE.  Thank you, Shelder.

BANNING.  Well! well!  We must take you as you are; but it's a rare
pity; there'll be a lot of trouble----

     His eyes light on Honk who is leaning forward with hand raised
     to his ear, listening.  Very faint, from far in the distance,
     there is heard a skirling sound.  All become conscious of it,
     all listen.

HOME.  [Suddenly]  Bagpipes!

     The figure of OLIVE flies past the window, out on the terrace.
     KATHERINE turns, as if to follow her.

SHELDER.  Highlanders!

     [He rises.  KATHERINE goes quickly out on to the terrace.  One
     by one they all follow to the window.  One by one go out on to
     the terrace, till MORE is left alone.  He turns to the bay
     window.  The music is swelling, coming nearer.  MORE leaves the
     window--his face distorted by the strafe of his emotions.  He
     paces the room, taking, in some sort, the rhythm of the march.]

     [Slowly the music dies away in the distance to a drum-tap and the
     tramp of a company.  MORE stops at the table, covering his eyes
     with his hands.]

     [The DEPUTATION troop back across the terrace, and come in at the
     French windows.  Their faces and manners have quite changed.
     KATHERINE follows them as far as the window.]

HOME.  [In a strange, almost threatening voice]  It won't do, Mr.
More.  Give us your word, to hold your peace!

SHELDER.  Come! More.

WACE.  Yes, indeed--indeed!

BANNING.  We must have it.

MORE.  [Without lifting his head] I--I----

     The drum-tap of a regiment marching is heard.

BANNING.  Can you hear that go by, man--when your country's just been
struck?

     Now comes the scale and mutter of a following crowd.

MORE.  I give you----

     Then, sharp and clear above all other sounds, the words: "Give
     the beggars hell, boys!"  "Wipe your feet on their dirty
     country!"  "Don't leave 'em a gory acre!  "And a burst of hoarse
     cheering.

MORE.  [Flinging up his head]  That's reality!  By Heaven!  No!

KATHERINE.  Oh!

SHELDER.  In that case, we'll go.

BANNING.  You mean it?  You lose us, then!

     [MORE bows.]

HOME.  Good riddance!  [Venomously--his eyes darting between MORE and
KATHERINE]  Go and stump the country!  Find out what they think of
you!  You'll pardon me!

     One by one, without a word, only BANNING looking back, they pass
     out into the hall.  MORE sits down at the table before the pile
     of newspapers.  KATHERINE, in the window, never moves.  OLIVE
     comes along the terrace to her mother.

OLIVE.  They were nice ones!  Such a lot of dirty people following,
and some quite clean, Mummy.  [Conscious from her mother's face that
something is very wrong, she looks at her father, and then steals up
to his side]  Uncle Hubert's gone, Daddy; and Auntie Helen's crying.
And--look at Mummy!

     [MORE raises his head and looks.]

OLIVE.  Do be on our side!  Do!

     She rubs her cheek against his.  Feeling that he does not rub
     his cheek against hers, OLIVE stands away, and looks from him to
     her mother in wonder.


                         THE CURTAIN FALLS





ACT III

SCENE I

     A cobble-stoned alley, without pavement, behind a suburban
     theatre.  The tall, blind, dingy-yellowish wall of the building
     is plastered with the tattered remnants of old entertainment
     bills, and the words: "To Let," and with several torn, and one
     still virgin placard, containing this announcement: "Stop-the-
     War Meeting, October 1st.  Addresses by STEPHEN MORE, Esq., and
     others."  The alley is plentifully strewn with refuse and scraps
     of paper.  Three stone steps, inset, lead to the stage door.  It
     is a dark night, and a street lamp close to the wall throws all
     the light there is.  A faint, confused murmur, as of distant
     hooting is heard.  Suddenly a boy comes running, then two rough
     girls hurry past in the direction of the sound; and the alley is
     again deserted.  The stage door opens, and a doorkeeper, poking
     his head out, looks up and down.  He withdraws, but in a second
     reappears, preceding three black-coated gentlemen.

DOORKEEPER.  It's all clear.  You can get away down here, gentlemen.
Keep to the left, then sharp to the right, round the corner.

THE THREE.  [Dusting themselves, and settling their ties] Thanks,
very much!  Thanks!

FIRST BLACK-COATED GENTLEMAN.  Where's More?  Isn't he coming?

     They are joined by a fourth black-coated GENTLEMAN.

FOURTH BLACK-COATED GENTLEMAN.  Just behind. [TO the DOORKEEPER]
Thanks.

     They hurry away.  The DOORKEEPER retires.  Another boy runs
     past.  Then the door opens again.  STEEL and MORE come out.

     MORE stands hesitating on the steps; then turns as if to go
     back.

STEEL.  Come along, sir, come!

MORE.  It sticks in my gizzard, Steel.

STEEL.  [Running his arm through MORE'S, and almost dragging him down
the steps]  You owe it to the theatre people.  [MORE still hesitates]
We might be penned in there another hour; you told Mrs. More half-
past ten; it'll only make her anxious.  And she hasn't seen you for
six weeks.

MORE.  All right; don't dislocate my arm.

     They move down the steps, and away to the left, as a boy comes
     running down the alley.  Sighting MORE, he stops dead, spins
     round, and crying shrilly: "'Ere 'e is!  That's 'im!  'Ere 'e
     is!" he bolts back in the direction whence he came.

STEEL.  Quick, Sir, quick!

MORE.  That is the end of the limit, as the foreign ambassador
remarked.

STEEL.  [Pulling him back towards the door]  Well! come inside again,
anyway!

     A number of men and boys, and a few young girls, are trooping
     quickly from the left.  A motley crew, out for excitement;
     loafers, artisans, navvies; girls, rough or dubious.  All in
     the mood of hunters, and having tasted blood.  They gather round
     the steps displaying the momentary irresolution and curiosity
     that follows on a new development of any chase.  MORE, on the
     bottom step, turns and eyes them.

A GIRL.  [At the edge] Which is 'im!  The old 'un or the young?

     [MORE turns, and mounts the remaining steps.]

TALL YOUTH.  [With lank black hair under a bowler hat] You blasted
traitor!

     MORE faces round at the volley of jeering that follows; the
     chorus of booing swells, then gradually dies, as if they
     realized that they were spoiling their own sport.

A ROUGH GIRL.  Don't frighten the poor feller!

     [A girl beside her utters a shrill laugh.]

STEEL.  [Tugging at MORE's arm]  Come along, sir.

MORE.  [Shaking his arm free--to the crowd]  Well, what do you want?

A VOICE.  Speech.

MORE.  Indeed!  That's new.

ROUGH VOICE.  [At the back of the crowd]  Look at his white liver.
You can see it in his face.

A BIG NAVY.  [In front]  Shut it!  Give 'im a chanst!

TALL YOUTH.  Silence for the blasted traitor?

     A youth plays the concertina; there is laughter, then an abrupt
     silence.

MORE.  You shall have it in a nutshell!

A SHOPBOY.  [Flinging a walnut-shell which strikes MORE on the
shoulder]  Here y'are!

MORE.  Go home, and think!  If foreigners invaded us, wouldn't you be
fighting tooth and nail like those tribesmen, out there?

TALL YOUTH.  Treacherous dogs!  Why don't they come out in the open?

MORE.  They fight the best way they can.

     [A burst of hooting is led by a soldier in khaki on the
     outskirt.]

MORE.  My friend there in khaki led that hooting.  I've never said a
word against our soldiers.  It's the Government I condemn for putting
them to this, and the Press for hounding on the Government, and all
of you for being led by the nose to do what none of you would do,
left to yourselves.

     The TALL YOUTH leads a somewhat unspontaneous burst of
     execration.

MORE.  I say not one of you would go for a weaker man.

VOICES IN THE CROWD.

     ROUGH VOICE.  Tork sense!

     GIRL'S VOICE.  He's gittin' at you!

     TALL YOUTH'S VOICE.  Shiny skunk!

A NAVVY.  [Suddenly shouldering forward]  Look 'ere, Mister!  Don't
you come gaflin' to those who've got mates out there, or it'll be the
worse for you-you go 'ome!

COCKNEY VOICE.  And git your wife to put cottonwool in yer ears.

     [A spurt of laughter.]

A FRIENDLY VOICE.  [From the outskirts]  Shame! there!  Bravo, More!
Keep it up!

     [A scuffle drowns this cry.]

MORE.  [With vehemence] Stop that!  Stop that!  You---!

TALL YOUTH.  Traitor!

AN ARTISAN.  Who black-legged?

MIDDLE-AGED MAN.  Ought to be shot-backin' his country's enemies!

MORE.  Those tribesmen are defending their homes.

TWO VOICES.  Hear!  hear!

     [They are hustled into silence.]

TALL YOUTH.  Wind-bag!

MORE.  [With sudden passion]  Defending their homes!  Not mobbing
unarmed men!

     [STEEL again pulls at his arm.]

ROUGH.  Shut it, or we'll do you in!

MORE.  [Recovering his coolness] Ah!  Do me in by all means!  You'd
deal such a blow at cowardly mobs as wouldn't be forgotten in your
time.

STEEL.  For God's sake, sir!

MORE.  [Shaking off his touch]  Well!

     There is an ugly rush, checked by the fall of the foremost
     figures, thrown too suddenly against the bottom step.  The crowd
     recoils.

     There is a momentary lull, and MORE stares steadily down at
     them.

COCKNEY VOICE.  Don't 'e speak well!  What eloquence!

     Two or three nutshells and a piece of orange-peel strike MORE
     across the face.  He takes no notice.

ROUGH VOICE.  That's it!  Give 'im some encouragement.

     The jeering laughter is changed to anger by the contemptuous
     smile on MORE'S face.

A TALL YOUTH.  Traitor!

A VOICE.  Don't stand there like a stuck pig.

A ROUGH.  Let's 'ave 'im dahn off that!

     Under cover of the applause that greets this, he strikes MORE
     across the legs with a belt.  STEEL starts forward.  MORE,
     flinging out his arm, turns him back, and resumes his tranquil
     staring at the crowd, in whom the sense of being foiled by this
     silence is fast turning to rage.

THE CROWD.  Speak up, or get down!  Get off! Get away, there--or
we'll make you!  Go on!

     [MORE remains immovable.]

A YOUTH.  [In a lull of disconcertion] I'll make 'im speak!  See!

     He darts forward and spits, defiling MORES hand.  MORE jerks it
     up as if it had been stung, then stands as still as ever.  A
     spurt of laughter dies into a shiver of repugnance at the
     action.  The shame is fanned again to fury by the sight of MORES
     scornful face.

TALL YOUTH.  [Out of murmuring] Shift!  or you'll get it!

A VOICE.  Enough of your ugly mug!

A ROUGH.  Give 'im one!

     Two flung stones strike MORE.  He staggers and nearly falls,
     then rights himself.

A GIRL'S VOICE.  Shame!

FRIENDLY VOICE.  Bravo, More!  Stick to it!

A ROUGH.  Give 'im another!

A VOICE.  No!

A GIRL'S VOICE.  Let 'im alone!  Come on, Billy, this ain't no fun!

     Still looking up at MORE, the whole crowd falls into an uneasy
     silence, broken only by the shuffling of feet.  Then the BIG
     NAVVY in the front rank turns and elbows his way out to the edge
     of the crowd.

THE NAVVY.  Let 'im be!

     With half-sullen and half-shamefaced acquiescence the crowd
     breaks up and drifts back whence it came, till the alley is
     nearly empty.

MORE.  [As if coming to, out of a trance-wiping his hand and dusting
his coat]  Well, Steel!

     And followed by STEEL, he descends the steps and moves away.
     Two policemen pass glancing up at the broken glass.  One of them
     stops and makes a note.


                         THE CURTAIN FALLS.




SCENE II

The window-end of KATHERINE'S bedroom, panelled in cream-coloured
wood.  The light from four candles is falling on KATHERINE, who is
sitting before the silver mirror of an old oak dressing-table,
brushing her hair.  A door, on the left, stands ajar.  An oak chair
against the wall close to a recessed window is all the other
furniture.  Through this window the blue night is seen, where a mist
is rolled out flat amongst trees, so that only dark clumps of boughs
show here and there, beneath a moonlit sky.  As the curtain rises,
KATHERINE, with brush arrested, is listening.  She begins again
brushing her hair, then stops, and taking a packet of letters from a
drawer of her dressing-table, reads.  Through the just open door
behind her comes the voice of OLIVE.

OLIVE.  Mummy!  I'm awake!

     But KATHERINE goes on reading; and OLIVE steals into the room in
     her nightgown.

OLIVE.  [At KATHERINE'S elbow--examining her watch on its stand] It's
fourteen minutes to eleven.

KATHERINE.  Olive, Olive!

OLIVE.  I just wanted to see the time.  I never can go to sleep if I
try--it's quite helpless, you know.  Is there a victory yet?
[KATHERINE, shakes her head] Oh!  I prayed extra special for one in
the evening papers.  [Straying round her mother]  Hasn't Daddy come?

KATHERINE.  Not yet.

OLIVE.  Are you waiting for him?  [Burying her face in her mother's
hair] Your hair is nice, Mummy.  It's particular to-night.

     KATHERINE lets fall her brush, and looks at her almost in alarm.

OLIVE.  How long has Daddy been away?

KATHERINE.  Six weeks.

OLIVE.  It seems about a hundred years, doesn't it?  Has he been
making speeches all the time?

KATHERINE.  Yes.

OLIVE.  To-night, too?

KATHERINE.  Yes.

OLIVE.  The night that man was here whose head's too bald for
anything--oh!  Mummy, you know--the one who cleans his teeth so
termendously--I heard Daddy making a speech to the wind.  It broke a
wine-glass.  His speeches must be good ones, mustn't they!

KATHERINE.  Very.

OLIVE.  It felt funny; you couldn't see any wind, you know.

KATHERINE.  Talking to the wind is an expression, Olive.

OLIVE.  Does Daddy often?

KATHERINE.  Yes, nowadays.

OLIVE.  What does it mean?

KATHERINE.  Speaking to people who won't listen.

OLIVE.  What do they do, then?

KATHERINE.  Just a few people go to hear him, and then a great crowd
comes and breaks in; or they wait for him outside, and throw things,
and hoot.

OLIVE.  Poor Daddy!  Is it people on our side who throw things?

KATHERINE.  Yes, but only rough people.

OLIVE.  Why does he go on doing it?  I shouldn't.

KATHERINE.  He thinks it is his duty.

OLIVE.  To your neighbour, or only to God?

KATHERINE.  To both.

OLIVE.  Oh!  Are those his letters?

KATHERINE.  Yes.

OLIVE.  [Reading from the letter]  "My dear Heart."  Does he always
call you his dear heart, Mummy?  It's rather jolly, isn't it?
"I shall be home about half-past ten to-morrow night.  For a few
hours the fires of p-u-r-g-a-t-or-y will cease to burn--" What are
the fires of p-u-r-g-a-t-o-r-y?

KATHERINE.  [Putting away the letters]  Come, Olive!

OLIVE.  But what are they?

KATHERINE.  Daddy means that he's been very unhappy.

OLIVE.  Have you, too?

KATHERINE.  Yes.

OLIVE.  [Cheerfully]  So have I.  May I open the window?

KATHERINE.  No; you'll let the mist in.

OLIVE.  Isn't it a funny mist-all flat!

KATHERINE.  Now, come along, frog!

OLIVE.  [Making time]  Mummy, when is Uncle Hubert coming back?

KATHERINE.  We don't know, dear.

OLIVE.  I suppose Auntie Helen'll stay with us till he does.

KATHERINE.  Yes.

OLIVE.  That's something, isn't it?

KATHERINE.  [Picking her up]  Now then!

OLIVE.  [Deliciously limp]  Had I better put in the duty to your
neighbour if there isn't a victory soon?  [As they pass through the
door]  You're tickling under my knee!  [Little gurgles of pleasure
follow.  Then silence.  Then a drowsy voice] I must keep awake for
Daddy.

     KATHERINE comes back.  She is about to leave the door a little
     open, when she hears a knock on the other door.  It is opened a
     few inches, and NURSE'S voice says: "Can I come in, Ma'am?" The
     NURSE comes in.

KATHERINE.  [Shutting OLIVE's door, and going up to her]  What is it,
Nurse?

NURSE.  [Speaking in a low voice] I've been meaning to--I'll never do
it in the daytime.  I'm giving you notice.

KATHERINE.  Nurse!  You too!

     She looks towards OLIVE'S room with dismay.  The NURSE smudges a
     slow tear away from her cheek.

NURSE.  I want to go right away at once.

KATHERINE.  Leave Olive!  That is the sins of the fathers with a
vengeance.

NURSE.  I've had another letter from my son.  No, Miss Katherine,
while the master goes on upholdin' these murderin' outlandish
creatures, I can't live in this house, not now he's coming back.

KATHERINE.  But, Nurse----!

NURSE.  It's not like them  [With an ineffable gesture]  downstairs,
because I'm frightened of the mob, or of the window's bein' broke
again, or mind what the boys in the street say.  I should think not--
no!  It's my heart.  I'm sore night and day thinkin' of my son, and
him lying out there at night without a rag of dry clothing, and water
that the bullocks won't drink, and maggots in the meat; and every day
one of his friends laid out stark and cold, and one day--'imself
perhaps.  If anything were to 'appen to him.  I'd never forgive
meself--here.  Ah!  Miss Katherine, I wonder how you bear it--bad
news comin' every day--And Sir John's face so sad--And all the time
the master speaking against us, as it might be Jonah 'imself.

KATHERINE.  But, Nurse, how can you leave us, you?

NURSE.  [Smudging at her cheeks]  There's that tells me it's
encouragin' something to happen, if I stay here; and Mr. More coming
back to-night.  You can't serve God and Mammon, the Bible says.

KATHERINE.  Don't you know what it's costing him?

NURSE.  Ah!  Cost him his seat, and his reputation; and more than
that it'll cost him, to go against the country.

KATHERINE.  He's following his conscience.

NURSE.  And others must follow theirs, too.  No, Miss Katherine, for
you to let him--you, with your three brothers out there, and your
father fair wasting away with grief.  Sufferin' too as you've been
these three months past.  What'll you feel if anything happens to my
three young gentlemen out there, to my dear Mr. Hubert that I nursed
myself, when your precious mother couldn't?  What would she have said
--with you in the camp of his enemies?

KATHERINE.  Nurse, Nurse!

NURSE.  In my paper they say he's encouraging these heathens and
makin' the foreigners talk about us; and every day longer the war
lasts, there's our blood on this house.

KATHERINE.  [Turning away] Nurse, I can't--I won't listen.

NURSE.  [Looking at her intently]  Ah!  You'll move him to leave off!
I see your heart, my dear.  But if you don't, then go I must!

     She nods her head gravely, goes to the door of OLIVE'S room,
     opens it gently, stands looking for a-moment, then with the
     words "My Lamb!" she goes in noiselessly and closes the door.

     KATHERINE turns back to her glass, puts back her hair, and
     smooths her lips and eyes.  The door from the corridor is
     opened, and HELEN's voice says: "Kit!  You're not in bed?"

KATHERINE.  No.

     HELEN too is in a wrapper, with a piece of lace thrown over her
     head.  Her face is scared and miserable, and she runs into
     KATHERINE's arms.

KATHERINE.  My dear, what is it?

HELEN.  I've seen--a vision!

KATHERINE.  Hssh!  You'll wake Olive!

HELEN.  [Staring before her]  I'd just fallen asleep, and I saw a
plain that seemed to run into the sky--like--that fog.  And on it
there were--dark things.  One grew into a body without a head, and a
gun by its side.  And one was a man sitting huddled up, nursing a
wounded leg.  He had the face of Hubert's servant, Wreford.  And then
I saw--Hubert.  His face was all dark and thin; and he had--a wound,
an awful wound here [She touches her breast].  The blood was running
from it, and he kept trying to stop it--oh!  Kit--by kissing it [She
pauses, stifled by emotion].  Then I heard Wreford laugh, and say
vultures didn't touch live bodies.  And there came a voice, from
somewhere, calling out: "Oh!  God! I'm dying!"  And Wreford began to
swear at it, and I heard Hubert say: "Don't, Wreford; let the poor
fellow be!"  But the voice went on and on, moaning and crying out:
"I'll lie here all night dying--and then I'll die!"  And Wreford
dragged himself along the ground; his face all devilish, like a man
who's going to kill.

KATHERINE.  My dear!  HOW ghastly!

HELEN.  Still that voice went on, and I saw Wreford take up the dead
man's gun.  Then Hubert got upon his feet, and went tottering along,
so feebly, so dreadfully--but before he could reach and stop him,
Wreford fired at the man who was crying.  And Hubert called out: "You
brute!" and fell right down.  And when Wreford saw him lying there,
he began to moan and sob, but Hubert never stirred.  Then it all got
black again--and I could see a dark woman--thing creeping, first to
the man without a head; then to Wreford; then to Hubert, and it
touched him, and sprang away.  And it cried out: "A-ai-ah!" [Pointing
out at the mist]  Look!  Out there!  The dark things!

KATHERINE.  [Putting her arms round her] Yes, dear, yes!  You must
have been looking at the mist.

HELEN.  [Strangely calm]  He's dead!

KATHERINE.  It was only a dream.

HELEN.  You didn't hear that cry.  [She listens]  That's Stephen.
Forgive me, Kit; I oughtn't to have upset you, but I couldn't help
coming.

     She goes out, KATHERINE, into whom her emotion seems to have
     passed, turns feverishly to the window, throws it open and leans
     out.  MORE comes in.

MORE.  Kit!

     Catching sight of her figure in the window, he goes quickly to
     her.

KATHERINE.  Ah!  [She has mastered her emotion.]

MORE.  Let me look at you!

     He draws her from the window to the candle-light, and looks long
     at her.

MORE.  What have you done to your hair?

KATHERINE.  Nothing.

MORE.  It's wonderful to-night.

     [He takes it greedily and buries his face in it.]

KATHERINE.  [Drawing her hair away]  Well?

MORE.  At last!

KATHERINE.  [Pointing to OLIVE's room] Hssh!

MORE.  How is she?

KATHERINE.  All right.

MORE.  And you?

     [KATHERINE shrugs her shoulders.]

MORE.  Six weeks!

KATHERINE.  Why have you come?

MORE.  Why!

KATHERINE.  You begin again the day after tomorrow.  Was it worth
while?

MORE.  Kit!

KATHERINE.  It makes it harder for me, that's all.

MORE.  [Staring at her]  What's come to you?

KATHERINE.  Six weeks is a long time to sit and read about your
meetings.

MORE.  Put that away to-night.  [He touches her]  This is what
travellers feel when they come out of the desert to-water.

KATHERINE.  [Suddenly noticing the cut on his forehead]  Your
forehead!  It's cut.

MORE.  It's nothing.

KATHERINE.  Oh!  Let me bathe it!

MORE.  No, dear!  It's all right.

KATHERINE.  [Turning away]  Helen has just been telling me a dream
she's had of Hubert's death.

MORE.  Poor child!

KATHERINE.  Dream bad dreams, and wait, and hide oneself--there's
been nothing else to do.  Nothing, Stephen--nothing!

MORE.  Hide?  Because of me?

     [KATHERINE nods.]

MORE.  [With a movement of distress] I see.  I thought from your
letters you were coming to feel----.  Kit!  You look so lovely!

     [Suddenly he sees that she is crying, and goes quickly to her.]

MORE.  My dear, don't cry!  God knows I don't want to make things
worse for you.  I'll go away.

     She draws away from him a little, and after looking long at her,
     he sits down at the dressing-table and begins turning over the
     brushes and articles of toilet, trying to find words.

MORE.  Never look forward.  After the time I've had--I thought--
tonight--it would be summer--I thought it would be you--and
everything!

     While he is speaking KATHERINE has stolen closer.  She suddenly
     drops on her knees by his side and wraps his hand in her hair.
     He turns and clasps her.

MORE.  Kit!

KATHERINE.  Ah! yes!  But-to-morrow it begins again.  Oh! Stephen!
How long--how long am I to be torn in two?  [Drawing back in his
arms] I can't--can't bear it.

MORE.  My darling!

KATHERINE.  Give it up!  For my sake!  Give it up!  [Pressing closer
to him] It shall be me--and everything----

MORE.  God!

KATHERINE.  It shall be--if--if----

MORE.  [Aghast] You're not making terms?  Bargaining?  For God's
sake, Kit!

KATHERINE.  For God's sake, Stephen!

MORE.  You!--of all people--you!

KATHERINE.  Stephen!

     [For a moment MORE yields utterly, then shrinks back.]

MORE.  A bargain!  It's selling my soul!

     He struggles out of her arms, gets up, and stands without
     speaking, staring at her, and wiping the sweat from his
     forehead.  KATHERINE remains some seconds on her knees, gazing
     up at him, not realizing.  Then her head droops; she too gets up
     and stands apart, with her wrapper drawn close round her.  It is
     as if a cold and deadly shame had come to them both.  Quite
     suddenly MORE turns, and, without looking back, feebly makes his
     way out of the room.  When he is gone KATHERINE drops on her
     knees and remains there motionless, huddled in her hair.


                              THE CURTAIN FALLS





ACT IV

     It is between lights, the following day, in the dining-room of
     MORE's house.  The windows are closed, but curtains are not
     drawn.  STEEL is seated at the bureau, writing a letter from
     MORE's dictation.

STEEL.  [Reading over the letter]  "No doubt we shall have trouble.
But, if the town authorities at the last minute forbid the use of the
hall, we'll hold the meeting in the open.  Let bills be got out, and
an audience will collect in any case."

MORE.  They will.

STEEL.  "Yours truly"; I've signed for you.

     [MORE nods.]

STEEL.  [Blotting and enveloping the letter] You know the servants
have all given notice--except Henry.

MORE.  Poor Henry!

STEEL.  It's partly nerves, of course--the windows have been broken
twice--but it's partly----

MORE.  Patriotism.  Quite! they'll do the next smashing themselves.
That reminds me--to-morrow you begin holiday, Steel.

STEEL.  Oh, no!

MORE.  My dear fellow--yes.  Last night ended your sulphur cure.
Truly sorry ever to have let you in for it.

STEEL.  Some one must do the work.  You're half dead as it is.

MORE.  There's lots of kick in me.

STEEL.  Give it up, sir.  The odds are too great.  It isn't worth it.

MORE.  To fight to a finish; knowing you must be beaten--is anything
better worth it?

STEEL.  Well, then, I'm not going.

MORE.  This is my private hell, Steel; you don't roast in it any
longer.  Believe me, it's a great comfort to hurt no one but
yourself.

STEEL.  I can't leave you, sir.

MORE.  My dear boy, you're a brick--but we've got off by a miracle so
far, and I can't have the responsibility of you any longer.  Hand me
over that correspondence about to-morrow's meeting.

STEEL takes some papers from his pocket, but does not hand them.

MORE.  Come!  [He stretches out his hand for the papers.  As STEEL
still draws back, he says more sharply]  Give them to me, Steel!
[STEEL hands them over]  Now, that ends it, d'you see?

     They stand looking at each other; then STEEL, very much upset,
     turns and goes out of the room.  MORE, who has watched him with
     a sorry smile, puts the papers into a dispatch-case.  As he is
     closing the bureau, the footman HENRY enters, announcing: "Mr.
     Mendip, sir."  MENDIP comes in, and the FOOTMAN withdraws.  MORE
     turns to his visitor, but does not hold out his hand.

MENDIP.  [Taking MORE'S hand] Give me credit for a little philosophy,
my friend.  Mrs. More told me you'd be back to-day.  Have you heard?

MORE.  What?

MENDIP.  There's been a victory.

MORE.  Thank God!

MENDIP.  Ah! So you actually are flesh and blood.

MORE.  Yes!

MENDIP.  Take off the martyr's shirt, Stephen.  You're only flouting
human nature.

MORE.  So--even you defend the mob!

MENDIP.  My dear fellow, you're up against the strongest common
instinct in the world.  What do you expect?  That the man in the
street should be a Quixote?  That his love of country should express
itself in philosophic altruism?  What on earth do you expect?  Men
are very simple creatures; and Mob is just conglomerate essence of
simple men.

MORE.  Conglomerate excrescence.  Mud of street and market-place
gathered in a torrent--This blind howling "patriotism"--what each man
feels in here?  [He touches his breast]  No!

MENDIP.  You think men go beyond instinct--they don't.  All they know
is that something's hurting that image of themselves that they call
country.  They just feel something big and religious, and go it
blind.

MORE.  This used to be the country of free speech.  It used to be the
country where a man was expected to hold to his faith.

MENDIP.  There are limits to human nature, Stephen.

MORE.  Let no man stand to his guns in face of popular attack.  Still
your advice, is it?

MENDIP.  My advice is: Get out of town at once.  The torrent you
speak of will be let loose the moment this news is out.  Come, my
dear fellow, don't stay here!

MORE.  Thanks!  I'll see that Katherine and Olive go.

MENDIP.  Go with them!  If your cause is lost, that's no reason why
you should be.

MORE.  There's the comfort of not running away.  And--I want comfort.

MENDIP.  This is bad, Stephen; bad, foolish--foolish.  Well!  I'm
going to the House.  This way?

MORE.  Down the steps, and through the gate.  Good-bye?

     KATHERINE has come in followed by NURSE, hatted and cloaked,
     with a small bag in her hand.  KATHERINE takes from the bureau a
     cheque which she hands to the NURSE.  MORE comes in from the
     terrace.

MORE.  You're wise to go, Nurse.

NURSE.  You've treated my poor dear badly, sir.  Where's your heart?

MORE.  In full use.

NURSE.  On those heathens.  Don't your own hearth and home come
first?  Your wife, that was born in time of war, with her own father
fighting, and her grandfather killed for his country.  A bitter
thing, to have the windows of her house broken, and be pointed at by
the boys in the street.

     [MORE stands silent under this attack, looking at his wife.]

KATHERINE.  Nurse!

NURSE.  It's unnatural, sir--what you're doing!  To think more of
those savages than of your own wife!  Look at her!  Did you ever see
her look like that?  Take care, sir, before it's too late!

MORE.  Enough, please!

     NURSE stands for a moment doubtful; looks long at KATHERINE;
     then goes.

MORE.  [Quietly] There has been a victory.

     [He goes out.  KATHERINE is breathing fast, listening to the
     distant hum and stir rising in the street.  She runs to the
     window as the footman, HENRY, entering, says: "Sir John Julian,
     Ma'am!" SIR JOHN comes in, a newspaper in his hand.]

KATHERINE.  At last!  A victory!

SIR JOHN.  Thank God!  [He hands her the paper.]

KATHERINE.  Oh, Dad!

     [She tears the paper open, and feverishly reads.]

KATHERINE.  At last!

     The distant hum in the street is rising steadily.  But SIR JOHN,
     after the one exultant moment when he handed her the paper,
     stares dumbly at the floor.

KATHERINE.  [Suddenly conscious of his gravity]  Father!

SIR JOHN.  There is other news.

KATHERINE.  One of the boys?  Hubert?

     [SIR JOHN bows his head.]

KATHERINE.  Killed?

     [SIR JOHN again bows his head.]

KATHERINE.  The dream!  [She covers her face]  Poor Helen!

     They stand for a few seconds silent, then SIR JOHN raises his
     head, and putting up a hand, touches her wet cheek.

SIR JOHN.  [Huskily]  Whom the gods love----

KATHERINE.  Hubert!

SIR JOHN.  And hulks like me go on living!

KATHERINE.  Dear Dad!

SIR JOHN.  But we shall drive the ruffians now!  We shall break them.
Stephen back?

KATHERINE.  Last night.

SIR JOHN.  Has he finished his blasphemous speech-making at last?
[KATHERINE shakes her head]  Not?

     [Then, seeing that KATHERINE is quivering with emotion, he `
     strokes her hand.]

SIR JOHN.  My dear!  Death is in many houses!

KATHERINE.  I must go to Helen.  Tell Stephen, Father.  I can't.

SIR JOHN.  If you wish, child.

     [She goes out, leaving SIR JOHN to his grave, puzzled grief, and
     in a few seconds MORE comes in.]

MORE.  Yes, Sir John.  You wanted me?

SIR JOHN.  Hubert is killed.

MORE.  Hubert!

SIR JOHN.  By these--whom you uphold.  Katherine asked me to let you
know.  She's gone to Helen.  I understand you only came back last
night from your----No word I can use would give what I feel about
that.  I don't know how things stand now between you and Katherine;
but I tell you this, Stephen: you've tried her these last two months
beyond what any woman ought to bear!

     [MORE makes a gesture of pain.]

SIR JOHN.  When you chose your course----

MORE.  Chose!

SIR JOHN.  You placed yourself in opposition to every feeling in her.
You knew this might come.  It may come again with another of my sons

MORE.  I would willingly change places with any one of them.

SIR JOHN.  Yes--I can believe in your unhappiness.  I cannot conceive
of greater misery than to be arrayed against your country.  If I
could have Hubert back, I would not have him at such a price--no, nor
all my sons.  'Pro patri mori'--My boy, at all events, is happy!

MORE.  Yes!

SIR JOHN.  Yet you can go on doing what you are!  What devil of pride
has got into you, Stephen?

MORE.  Do you imagine I think myself better than the humblest private
fighting out there?  Not for a minute.

SIR JOHN.  I don't understand you.  I always thought you devoted to
Katherine.

MORE.  Sir John, you believe that country comes before wife and
child?

SIR JOHN.  I do.

MORE.  So do I.

SIR JOHN.  [Bewildered]  Whatever my country does or leaves undone, I
no more presume to judge her than I presume to judge my God.  [With
all the exaltation of the suffering he has undergone for her]  My
country!

MORE.  I would give all I have--for that creed.

SIR JOHN.  [Puzzled]  Stephen, I've never looked on you as a crank;
I always believed you sane and honest.  But this is--visionary mania.

MORE.  Vision of what might be.

SIR JOHN.  Why can't you be content with what the grandest nation--
the grandest men on earth--have found good enough for them?  I've
known them, I've seen what they could suffer, for our country.

MORE.  Sir John, imagine what the last two months have been to me!
To see people turn away in the street--old friends pass me as if I
were a wall!  To dread the post!  To go to bed every night with the
sound of hooting in my ears!  To know that my name is never referred
to without contempt----

SIR JOHN.  You have your new friends.  Plenty of them, I understand.

MORE.  Does that make up for being spat at as I was last night?  Your
battles are fool's play to it.

     The stir and rustle of the crowd in the street grows louder.
     SIR JOHN turns his head towards it.

SIR JOHN.  You've heard there's been a victory.  Do you carry your
unnatural feeling so far as to be sorry for that?  [MORE shakes his
head]  That's something!  For God's sake, Stephen, stop before it's
gone past mending.  Don't ruin your life with Katherine.  Hubert was
her favourite brother; you are backing those who killed him.  Think
what that means to her!  Drop this--mad Quixotism--idealism--whatever
you call it.  Take Katherine away.  Leave the country till the
thing's over--this country of yours that you're opposing, and--and--
traducing.  Take her away!  Come!  What good are you doing?  What
earthly good?  Come, my boy!  Before you're utterly undone.

MORE.  Sir John!  Our men are dying out there for, the faith that's
in them!  I believe my faith the higher, the better for mankind--Am
I to slink away?  Since I began this campaign I've found hundreds
who've thanked me for taking this stand.  They look on me now as
their leader.  Am I to desert them?  When you led your forlorn hope--
did you ask yourself what good you were doing, or, whether you'd come
through alive?  It's my forlorn hope not to betray those who are
following me; and not to help let die a fire--a fire that's sacred--
not only now in this country, but in all countries, for all time.

SIR JOHN.  [After a long stare]  I give you credit for believing what
you say.  But let me tell you whatever that fire you talk of--I'm too
old-fashioned to grasp--one fire you are letting die--your wife's
love.  By God!  This crew of your new friends, this crew of cranks
and jays, if they can make up to you for the loss of her love--of
your career, of all those who used to like and respect you--so much
the better for you.  But if you find yourself bankrupt of affection--
alone as the last man on earth; if this business ends in your utter
ruin and destruction--as it must--I shall not pity--I cannot pity
you.  Good-night!

     He marches to the door, opens it, and goes out.  MORE is left
     standing perfectly still.  The stir and murmur of the street is
     growing all the time, and slowly forces itself on his
     consciousness.  He goes to the bay window and looks out; then
     rings the bell.  It is not answered, and, after turning up the
     lights, he rings again.  KATHERINE comes in.  She is wearing a
     black hat, and black outdoor coat.  She speaks coldly without
     looking up.

KATHERINE.  You rang!

MORE.  For them to shut this room up.

KATHERINE.  The servants have gone out.  They're afraid of the house
being set on fire.

MORE.  I see.

KATHERINE.  They have not your ideals to sustain them.  [MORE winces]
I am going with Helen and Olive to Father's.

MORE.  [Trying to take in the exact sense of her words]  Good!  You
prefer that to an hotel?  [KATHERINE nods.   Gently] Will you let me
say, Kit, how terribly I feel for you--Hubert's----

KATHERINE.  Don't.  I ought to have made what I meant plainer.  I am
not coming back.

MORE.  Not?  Not while the house----

KATHERINE.  Not--at all.

MORE.  Kit!

KATHERINE.  I warned you from the first.  You've gone too far!

MORE.  [Terribly moved]  Do you understand what this means?  After
ten years--and all--our love!

KATHERINE.  Was it love?  How could you ever have loved one so
unheroic as myself!

MORE.  This is madness, Kit--Kit!

KATHERINE.  Last night I was ready.  You couldn't.  If you couldn't
then, you never can.  You are very exalted, Stephen.  I don't like
living--I won't live, with one whose equal I am not.  This has been
coming ever since you made that speech.  I told you that night what
the end would be.

MORE.  [Trying to put his arms round her]  Don't be so terribly
cruel!

KATHERINE.  No!  Let's have the truth!  People so wide apart don't
love!  Let me go!

MORE.  In God's name, how can I help the difference in our faiths?

KATHERINE.  Last night you used the word--bargain.  Quite right.  I
meant to buy you.  I meant to kill your faith.  You showed me what I
was doing.  I don't like to be shown up as a driver of bargains,
Stephen.

MORE.  God knows--I never meant----

KATHERINE.  If I'm not yours in spirit--I don't choose to be your--
mistress.

     MORE, as if lashed by a whip, has thrown up his hands in an
     attitude of defence.

KATHERINE.  Yes, that's cruel!  It shows the heights you live on.  I
won't drag you down.

MORE.  For God's sake, put your pride away, and see!  I'm fighting
for the faith that's in me.  What else can a man do?  What else?  Ah!
Kit!  Do see!

KATHERINE.  I'm strangled here!  Doing nothing--sitting silent--when
my brothers are fighting, and being killed.  I shall try to go out
nursing.  Helen will come with me.  I have my faith, too; my poor
common love of country.  I can't stay here with you.  I spent last
night on the floor--thinking--and I know!

MORE.  And Olive?

KATHERINE.  I shall leave her at Father's, with Nurse; unless you
forbid me to take her.  You can.

MORE.  [Icily]  That I shall not do--you know very well.  You are
free to go, and to take her.

KATHERINE.  [Very low]  Thank you!  [Suddenly she turns to him, and
draws his eyes on her.  Without a sound, she puts her whole strength
into that look]  Stephen!  Give it up!  Come down to me!

     The festive sounds from the street grow louder.  There can be
     heard the blowing of whistles, and bladders, and all the sounds
     of joy.

MORE.  And drown in--that?

KATHERINE turns swiftly to the door.  There she stands and again
looks at him.  Her face is mysterious, from the conflicting currents
of her emotions.

MORE.  So--you're going?

KATHERINE.  [In a whisper]  Yes.

     She bends her head, opens the door, and goes.  MORE starts
     forward as if to follow her, but OLIVE has appeared in the
     doorway.  She has on a straight little white coat and a round
     white cap.

OLIVE.  Aren't you coming with us, Daddy?

     [MORE shakes his head.]

OLIVE.  Why not?

MORE.  Never mind, my dicky bird.

OLIVE.  The motor'll have to go very slow.  There are such a lot of
people in the street.  Are you staying to stop them setting the house
on fire?  [MORE nods]  May I stay a little, too?  [MORE shakes his
head]  Why?

MORE.  [Putting his hand on her head]  Go along, my pretty!

OLIVE.  Oh!  love me up, Daddy!

     [MORE takes and loves her up]

OLIVE.  Oo-o!

MORE.  Trot, my soul!

     [She goes, looks back at him, turns suddenly, and vanishes.]

     MORE follows her to the door, but stops there.  Then, as full
     realization begins to dawn on him, he runs to the bay window,
     craning his head to catch sight of the front door.  There is the
     sound of a vehicle starting, and the continual hooting of its
     horn as it makes its way among the crowd.  He turns from the
     window.

MORE.  Alone as the last man on earth!

     [Suddenly a voice rises clear out of the hurly-burly in the
     street.]

VOICE.  There 'e is!  That's 'im!  More!  Traitor!  More!

     A shower of nutshells, orange-peel, and harmless missiles begins
     to rattle against the glass of the window.  Many voices take up
     the groaning: "More!  Traitor!  Black-leg!  More!"  And through
     the window can be seen waving flags and lighted Chinese
     lanterns, swinging high on long bamboos.  The din of execration
     swells.  MORE stands unheeding, still gazing after the cab.
     Then, with a sharp crack, a flung stone crashes through one of
     the panes.  It is followed by a hoarse shout of laughter, and a
     hearty groan.  A second stone crashes through the glass.  MORE
     turns for a moment, with a contemptuous look, towards the
     street, and the flare of the Chinese lanterns lights up his
     face.  Then, as if forgetting all about the din outside, he
     moves back into the room, looks round him, and lets his head
     droop.  The din rises louder and louder; a third stone crashes
     through.  MORE raises his head again, and, clasping his hands,
     looks straight before him.  The footman, HENRY, entering,
     hastens to the French windows.

MORE.  Ah!  Henry, I thought you'd gone.

FOOTMAN.  I came back, sir.

MORE.  Good fellow!

FOOTMAN.  They're trying to force the terrace gate, sir.  They've no
business coming on to private property--no matter what!

     In the surging entrance of the mob the footman, HENRY, who shows
     fight, is overwhelmed, hustled out into the crowd on the
     terrace, and no more seen.  The MOB is a mixed crowd of
     revellers of both sexes, medical students, clerks, shop men and
     girls, and a Boy Scout or two.  Many have exchanged hats--Some
     wear masks, or false noses, some carry feathers or tin whistles.
     Some, with bamboos and Chinese lanterns, swing them up outside
     on the terrace.  The medley of noises is very great.  Such
     ringleaders as exist in the confusion are a GROUP OF STUDENTS,
     the chief of whom, conspicuous because unadorned, is an
     athletic, hatless young man with a projecting underjaw, and
     heavy coal-black moustache, who seems with the swing of his huge
     arms and shoulders to sway the currents of motion.  When the
     first surge of noise and movement subsides, he calls out: "To
     him, boys!  Chair the hero!"  THE STUDENTS rush at the impassive
     MORE, swing him roughly on to their shoulders and bear him round
     the room.  When they have twice circled the table to the music
     of their confused singing, groans and whistling, THE CHIEF OF
     THE STUDENTS calls out: "Put him down!" Obediently they set him
     down on the table which has been forced into the bay window, and
     stand gaping up at him.

CHIEF STUDENT.  Speech!  Speech!

     [The noise ebbs, and MORE looks round him.]

CHIEF STUDENT.  Now then, you, sir.

MORE.  [In a quiet voice]  Very well.  You are here by the law that
governs the action of all mobs--the law of Force.  By that law, you
can do what you like to this body of mine.

A VOICE.  And we will, too.

MORE.  I don't doubt it.  But before that, I've a word to say.

A VOICE.  You've always that.

     [ANOTHER VOICE raises a donkey's braying.]

MORE.  You--Mob--are the most contemptible thing under the sun.  When
you walk the street--God goes in.

CHIEF STUDENT.  Be careful, you--sir.

VOICES.  Down him!  Down with the beggar!

MORE.  [Above the murmurs]  My fine friends, I'm not afraid of you.
You've forced your way into my house, and you've asked me to speak.
Put up with the truth for once!  [His words rush out]  You are the
thing that pelts the weak; kicks women; howls down free speech.  This
to-day, and that to-morrow.  Brain--you have none.  Spirit--not the
ghost of it!  If you're not meanness, there's no such thing.  If
you're not cowardice, there is no cowardice [Above the growing
fierceness of the hubbub] Patriotism--there are two kinds--that of
our soldiers, and this of mine.  You have neither!

CHIEF STUDENT.  [Checking a dangerous rush]  Hold on!  Hold on!  [To
MORE] Swear to utter no more blasphemy against your country: Swear
it!

CROWD.  Ah!  Ay!  Ah!

MORE.  My country is not yours.  Mine is that great country which
shall never take toll from the weakness of others.  [Above the
groaning] Ah!  you can break my head and my windows; but don't think
that you can break my faith.  You could never break or shake it, if
you were a million to one.

     A girl with dark eyes and hair all wild, leaps out from the
     crowd and shakes her fist at him.

GIRL.  You're friends with them that killed my lad!  [MORE smiles
down at her, and she swiftly plucks the knife from the belt of a Boy
Scout beside her]  Smile, you--cur!

     A violent rush and heave from behind flings MORE forward on to
     the steel.  He reels, staggers back, and falls down amongst the
     crowd.  A scream, a sway, a rush, a hubbub of cries.  The CHIEF
     STUDENT shouts above the riot: "Steady!"  Another: "My God!
     He's got it!"

CHIEF STUDENT.  Give him air!

     The crowd falls back, and two STUDENTS, bending over MORE, lift
     his arms and head, but they fall like lead.  Desperately they
     test him for life.

CHIEF STUDENT.  By the Lord, it's over!

     Then begins a scared swaying out towards the window.  Some one
     turns out the lights, and in the darkness the crowd fast melts
     away.  The body of MORE lies in the gleam from a single Chinese
     lantern.  Muttering the words: "Poor devil!  He kept his end up
     anyway!" the CHIEF STUDENT picks from the floor a little
     abandoned Union Jack and lays it on MORE's breast.  Then he,
     too, turns, and rushes out.

     And the body of MORE lies in the streak of light; and flee
     noises in the street continue to rise.


          THE CURTAIN FALLS, BUT RISES AGAIN ALMOST AT ONCE.





                              AFTERMATH

     A late Spring dawn is just breaking.  Against trees in leaf and
     blossom, with the houses of a London Square beyond, suffused by
     the spreading glow, is seen a dark life-size statue on a granite
     pedestal.  In front is the broad, dust-dim pavement.  The light
     grows till the central words around the pedestal can be clearly
     read:

                              ERECTED
                           To the Memory
                                 of
                            STEPHEN MORE
                       "Faithful to his ideal"

High above, the face of MORE looks straight before him with a faint
smile.  On one shoulder and on his bare head two sparrows have
perched, and from the gardens, behind, comes the twittering and
singing of birds.


THE CURTAIN FALLS.


The End





End of this Project Gutenberg Etext of THE MOB, by John Galsworthy






PLAYS in the FOURTH SERIES

A BIT O' LOVE
     THE FOUNDATIONS
          THE SKIN GAME




A BIT O' LOVE



PERSONS OF THE PLAY

MICHAEL STRANGWAY
BEATRICE STRANGWAY
MRS. BRADMERE
JIM BERE
JACK CREMER
MRS. BURLACOMBE
BURLACOMBE
TRUSTAFORD
JARLAND
CLYST
FREMAN
GODLEIGH
SOL POTTER
MORSE, AND OTHERS
IVY BURLACOMBE
CONNIE TRUSTAFORD
GLADYS FREMAN
MERCY JARLAND
TIBBY JARLAND
BOBBIE JARLAND




SCENE: A VILLAGE OF THE WEST

The Action passes on Ascension Day.

ACT I.  STRANGWAY'S rooms at BURLACOMBE'S.  Morning.

ACT II.  Evening

     SCENE I.  The Village Inn.
     SCENE II.  The same.
     SCENE III.  Outside the church.

ACT III.  Evening

     SCENE I.  STRANGWAY'S rooms.
     SCENE II.  BURLACOMBE'S barn.



A BIT O' LOVE


ACT I

     It is Ascension Day in a village of the West.  In the low
     panelled hall-sittingroom of the BURLACOMBE'S farmhouse on the
     village green, MICHAEL STRANGWAY, a clerical collar round his
     throat and a dark Norfolk jacket on his back, is playing the
     flute before a very large framed photograph of a woman, which is
     the only picture on the walls.  His age is about thirty-five his
     figure thin and very upright and his clean-shorn face thin,
     upright, narrow, with long and rather pointed ears; his dark
     hair is brushed in a coxcomb off his forehead.  A faint smile
     hovers about his lips that Nature has made rather full and he
     has made thin, as though keeping a hard secret; but his bright
     grey eyes, dark round the rim, look out and upwards almost as if
     he were being crucified.  There is something about the whole of
     him that makes him seen not quite present.  A gentle creature,
     burnt within.

     A low broad window above a window-seat forms the background to
     his figure; and through its lattice panes are seen the outer
     gate and yew-trees of a churchyard and the porch of a church,
     bathed in May sunlight.  The front door at right angles to the
     window-seat, leads to the village green, and a door on the left
     into the house.

     It is the third movement of Veracini's violin sonata that
     STRANGWAY plays.  His back is turned to the door into the house,
     and he does not hear when it is opened, and IVY BURLACOMBE, the
     farmer's daughter, a girl of fourteen, small and quiet as a
     mouse, comes in, a prayer-book in one hand, and in the other a
     gloss of water, with wild orchis and a bit of deep pink
     hawthorn.  She sits down on the window-seat, and having opened
     her book, sniffs at the flowers.  Coming to the end of the
     movement STRANGWAY stops, and looking up at the face on the
     wall, heaves a long sigh.

IVY.  [From the seat] I picked these for yu, Mr. Strangway.

STRANGWAY.  [Turning with a start]  Ah!  Ivy.  Thank you.  [He puts
his flute down on a chair against the far wall]  Where are the
others?

     As he speaks, GLADYS FREMAN, a dark gipsyish girl, and CONNIE
     TRUSTAFORD, a fair, stolid, blue-eyed Saxon, both about sixteen,
     come in through the front door, behind which they have evidently
     been listening.  They too have prayer-books in their hands.
     They sidle past Ivy, and also sit down under the window.

GLADYS.  Mercy's comin', Mr. Strangway.

STRANGWAY.  Good morning, Gladys; good morning, Connie.

     He turns to a book-case on a table against the far wall, and
     taking out a book, finds his place in it.  While he stands thus
     with his back to the girls, MERCY JARLAND comes in from the
     green.  She also is about sixteen, with fair hair and china-blue
     eyes.  She glides in quickly, hiding something behind her, and
     sits down on the seat next the door.  And at once there is a
     whispering.

STRANGWAY.  [Turning to them] Good morning, Mercy.

MERCY.  Good morning, Mr.  Strangway.

STRANGWAY.  Now, yesterday I was telling you what our Lord's coming
meant to the world.  I want you to understand that before He came
there wasn't really love, as we know it.  I don't mean to say that
there weren't many good people; but there wasn't love for the sake of
loving.  D'you think you understand what I mean?

     MERCY fidgets.  GLADYS'S eyes are following a fly.

IVY.  Yes, Mr.  Strangway.

STRANGWAY.  It isn't enough to love people because they're good to
you, or because in some way or other you're going to get something by
it.  We have to love because we love loving.  That's the great thing-
-without that we're nothing but Pagans.

GLADYS.  Please, what is Pagans?

STRANGWAY.  That's what the first Christians called the people who
lived in the villages and were not yet Christians, Gladys.

MERCY.  We live in a village, but we're Christians.

STRANGWAY.  [With a smile] Yes, Mercy; and what is a Christian?

     MERCY kicks afoot, sideways against her neighbour, frowns over
     her china-blare eyes, is silent; then, as his question passes
     on, makes a quick little face, wriggles, and looks behind her.

STRANGWAY.  Ivy?

IVY.  'Tis a man--whu--whu----

STRANGWAY.  Yes?--Connie?

CONNIE.  [Who speaks rather thickly, as if she had a permanent slight
cold] Please, Mr.  Strangway, 'tis a man what goes to church.

GLADYS.  He 'as to be baptised--and confirmed; and--and--buried.

IVY.  'Tis a man whu--whu's gude and----

GLADYS.  He don't drink, an' he don't beat his horses, an' he don't
hit back.

MERCY.  [Whispering]  'Tisn't your turn.  [To STRANGWAY]  'Tis a man
like us.

IVY.  I know what Mrs. Strangway said it was, 'cause I asked her
once, before she went away.

STRANGWAY.  [Startled]  Yes?

IVY.  She said it was a man whu forgave everything.

STRANGWAY.  Ah!

     The note of a cuckoo comes travelling.  The girls are gazing at
     STRANGWAY, who seems to have gone of into a dream.  They begin
     to fidget and whisper.

CONNIE.  Please, Mr. Strangway, father says if yu hit a man and he
don't hit yu back, he's no gude at all.

MERCY.  When Tommy Morse wouldn't fight, us pinched him--he did
squeal!  [She giggles]  Made me laugh!

STRANGWAY.  Did I ever tell you about St. Francis of Assisi?

IVY.  [Clasping her hands]  No.

STRANGWAY.  Well, he was the best Christian, I think, that ever
lived--simply full of love and joy.

IVY.  I expect he's dead.

STRANGWAY.  About seven hundred years, Ivy.

IVY.  [Softly]  Oh!

STRANGWAY.  Everything to him was brother or sister--the sun and the
moon, and all that was poor and weak and sad, and animals and birds,
so that they even used to follow him about.

MERCY.  I know!  He had crumbs in his pocket.

STRANGWAY.  No; he had love in his eyes.

IVY.  'Tis like about Orpheus, that yu told us.

STRANGWAY.  Ah!  But St.  Francis was a Christian, and Orpheus was a
Pagan.

IVY.  Oh!

STRANGWAY.  Orpheus drew everything after him with music; St.
Francis by love.

IVY.  Perhaps it was the same, really.

STRANGWAY.  [looking at his flute]  Perhaps it was, Ivy.

GLADYS.  Did 'e 'ave a flute like yu?

IVY.  The flowers smell sweeter when they 'ear music; they du.

     [She holds up the glass of flowers.]

STRANGWAY.  [Touching one of the orchis]  What's the name of this
one?

     [The girls cluster; save MERCY, who is taking a stealthy
     interest in what she has behind her.]

CONNIE.  We call it a cuckoo, Mr. Strangway.

GLADYS.  'Tis awful common down by the streams.  We've got one medder
where 'tis so thick almost as the goldie cups.

STRANGWAY.  Odd!  I've never noticed it.

IVY.  Please, Mr. Strangway, yu don't notice when yu're walkin'; yu
go along like this.

     [She holds up her face as one looking at the sky.]

STRANGWAY.  Bad as that, Ivy?

IVY.  Mrs. Strangway often used to pick it last spring.

STRANGWAY.  Did she?  Did she?

     [He has gone off again into a kind of dream.]

MERCY.  I like being confirmed.

STRANGWAY.  Ah!  Yes.  Now----What's that behind you, Mercy?

MERCY.  [Engagingly producing a cage a little bigger than a
mouse-trap, containing a skylark]  My skylark.

STRANGWAY.  What!

MERCY.  It can fly; but we're goin' to clip its wings.  Bobbie caught
it.

STRANGWAY.  How long ago?

MERCY.  [Conscious of impending disaster]  Yesterday.

STRANGWAY.  [White hot]  Give me the cage!

MERCY.  [Puckering]  I want my skylark.  [As he steps up to her and
takes the cage--thoroughly alarmed]  I gave Bobbie thrippence for it!

STRANGWAY.  [Producing a sixpence]  There!

MERCY.  [Throwing it down-passionately]  I want my skylark!

STRANGWAY.  God made this poor bird for the sky and the grass.  And
you put it in that!  Never cage any wild thing!  Never!

MERCY.  [Faint and sullen]  I want my skylark.

STRANGWAY.  [Taking the cage to the door]  No!  [He holds up the cage
and opens it]  Off you go, poor thing!

     [The bird flies out and away.  The girls watch with round eyes
     the fling up of his arm, and the freed bird flying away.]

IVY.  I'm glad!

     [MERCY kicks her viciously and sobs.  STRANGWAY comes from the
     door, looks at MERCY sobbing, and suddenly clasps his head.  The
     girls watch him with a queer mixture of wonder, alarm, and
     disapproval.]

GLADYS.  [Whispering]  Don't cry, Mercy.  Bobbie'll soon catch yu
another.

     [STRANGWAY has dropped his hands, and is looking again at MERCY.
     IVY sits with hands clasped, gazing at STRANGWAY.  MERCY
     continues her artificial sobbing.]

STRANGWAY.  [Quietly]  The class is over for to-day.

     [He goes up to MERCY, and holds out his hand.  She does not take
     it, and runs out knuckling her eyes.  STRANGWAY turns on his
     heel and goes into the house.]

CONNIE.  'Twasn't his bird.

IVY.  Skylarks belong to the sky.  Mr. Strangway said so.

GLADYS.  Not when they'm caught, they don't.

IVY.  They du.

CONNIE.  'Twas her bird.

IVY.  He gave her sixpence for it.

GLADYS.  She didn't take it.

CONNIE.  There it is on the ground.

IVY.  She might have.

GLADYS.  He'll p'raps take my squirrel, tu.

IVY.  The bird sang--I 'eard it!  Right up in the sky.  It wouldn't
have sanged if it weren't glad.

GLADYS.  Well, Mercy cried.

IVY.  I don't care.

GLADYS.  'Tis a shame!  And I know something.  Mrs. Strangway's at
Durford.

CONNIE.  She's--never!

GLADYS.  I saw her yesterday.  An' if she's there she ought to be
here.  I told mother, an' she said: "Yu mind yer business."  An' when
she goes in to market to-morrow she'm goin' to see.  An' if she's
really there, mother says, 'tis a fine tu-du an' a praaper scandal.
So I know a lot more'n yu du.

     [Ivy stares at her.]

CONNIE.  Mrs. Strangway told mother she was goin' to France for the
winter because her mother was ill.

GLADYS.  'Tisn't, winter now--Ascension Day.  I saw her cumin' out o'
Dr. Desert's house.  I know 'twas her because she had on a blue dress
an' a proud luke.  Mother says the doctor come over here tu often
before Mrs. Strangway went away, just afore Christmas.  They was old
sweethearts before she married Mr. Strangway.  [To Ivy]  'Twas yure
mother told mother that.

     [Ivy gazes at them more and more wide-eyed.]

CONNIE.  Father says if Mrs. Bradmere an' the old Rector knew about
the doctor, they wouldn't 'ave Mr. Strangway 'ere for curate any
longer; because mother says it takes more'n a year for a gude wife to
leave her 'usband, an' 'e so fond of her.  But 'tisn't no business of
ours, father says.

GLADYS.  Mother says so tu.  She's praaper set against gossip.
She'll know all about it to-morrow after market.

IVY.  [Stamping her foot]  I don't want to 'ear nothin' at all; I
don't, an' I won't.

     [A rather shame faced silence falls on the girls.]

GLADYS.  [In a quick whisper]  'Ere's Mrs. Burlacombe.

     [There enters fawn the house a stout motherly woman with a round
     grey eye and very red cheeks.]

MRS. BURLACOMBE.  Ivy, take Mr. Strangway his ink, or we'll never
'eve no sermon to-night.  He'm in his thinkin' box, but 'tis not a
bit o' yuse 'im thinkin' without 'is ink.  [She hands her daughter an
inkpot and blotting-pad.  Ivy Takes them and goes out]  What ever's
this?  [She picks up the little bird-cage.]

GLADYS.  'Tis Mercy Jarland's.  Mr. Strangway let her skylark go.

MRS. BURLACOMBE.  Aw!  Did 'e now?  Serve 'er right, bringin' an
'eathen bird to confirmation class.

CONNIE.  I'll take it to her.

MRS. BURLACOMBE.  No.  Yu leave it there, an' let Mr. Strangway du
what 'e likes with it.  Bringin' a bird like that!  Well 'I never!

     [The girls, perceiving that they have lighted on stony soil,
     look at each other and slide towards the door.]

MRS. BURLACOMBE.  Yes, yu just be off, an' think on what yu've been
told in class, an' be'ave like Christians, that's gude maids.  An'
don't yu come no more in the 'avenin's dancin' them 'eathen dances in
my barn, naighther, till after yu'm confirmed--'tisn't right.  I've
told Ivy I won't 'ave it.

CONNIE.  Mr. Strangway don't mind--he likes us to; 'twas Mrs.
Strangway began teachin' us.  He's goin' to give a prize.

MRS.  BURLACOMBE.  Yu just du what I tell yu an' never mind Mr.
Strangway--he'm tu kind to everyone.  D'yu think I don't know how
gells oughter be'ave before confirmation?  Yu be'ave like I did!
Now, goo ahn!  Shoo!

     [She hustles them out, rather as she might hustle her chickens,
     and begins tidying the room.  There comes a wandering figure to
     the open window.  It is that of a man of about thirty-five, of
     feeble gait, leaning the weight of all one side of him on a
     stick.  His dark face, with black hair, one lock of which has
     gone white, was evidently once that of an ardent man.  Now it is
     slack, weakly smiling, and the brown eyes are lost, and seem
     always to be asking something to which there is no answer.]

MRS. BURLACOMBE.  [With that forced cheerfulness always assumed in
the face of too great misfortune]  Well, Jim!  better?  [At the faint
brightening of the smile]  That's right!  Yu'm gettin' on bravely.
Want Parson?

JIM.  [Nodding and smiling, and speaking slowly]  I want to tell 'un
about my cat.

     [His face loses its smile.]

MRS. BURLACOMBE.  Why!  what's she been duin' then?  Mr. Strangway's
busy.  Won't I du?

JIM.  [Shaking his head]  No.  I want to tell him.

MRS. BURLACOMBE.  Whatever she been duin'?  Havin' kittens?

JIM.  No.  She'm lost.

MRS. BURLACOMBE.  Dearie me!  Aw!  she'm not lost.  Cats be like
maids; they must get out a bit.

JIM.  She'm lost.  Maybe he'll know where she'll be.

MRS. BURLACOMBE.  Well, well.  I'll go an' find 'im.

JIM.  He's a gude man.  He's very gude.

MRS. BURLACOMBE.  That's certain zure.

STRANGWAY.  [Entering from the house]  Mrs. Burlacombe, I can't think
where I've put my book on St. Francis--the large, squarish pale-blue
one?

MRS. BURLACOMBE.  Aw! there now!  I knu there was somethin' on me
mind.  Miss Willis she came in yesterday afternune when yu was out,
to borrow it.  Oh! yes--I said--I'm zure Mr. Strangway'll lend it
'ee.  Now think o' that!

STRANGWAY.  Of course, Mrs. Burlacombe; very glad she's got it.

MRS. BURLACOMBE.  Aw!  but that's not all.  When I tuk it up there
come out a whole flutter o' little bits o' paper wi' little rhymes on
'em, same as I see yu writin'.  Aw!  my gudeness!  I says to meself,
Mr. Strangway widn' want no one seein' them.

STRANGWAY.  Dear me!  No; certainly not!

MRS. BURLACOMBE.  An' so I putt 'em in your secretary.

STRANGWAY.  My-ah!  Yes.  Thank you; yes.

MRS. BURLACOMBE.  But I'll goo over an' get the buke for yu.
'T won't take me 'alf a minit.

     [She goes out on to the green.  JIM BERE has come in.]

STRANGWAY.  [Gently]  Well, Jim?

JIM.  My cat's lost.

STRANGWAY.  Lost?

JIM.  Day before yesterday.  She'm not come back.  They've shot 'er,
I think; or she'm caught in one o' they rabbit-traps.

STRANGWAY.  Oh!  no; my dear fellow, she'll come back.  I'll speak to
Sir Herbert's keepers.

JIM.  Yes, zurr.  I feel lonesome without 'er.

STRANGWAY.  [With a faint smile--more to himself than to Jim]
Lonesome!  Yes!  That's bad, Jim!  That's bad!

JIM.  I miss 'er when I sits than in the avenin'.

STRANGWAY.  The evenings----They're the worst----and when the
blackbirds sing in the morning.

JIM. She used to lie on my bed, ye know, zurr.

     [STRANGWAY turns his face away, contracted with pain]

She'm like a Christian.

STRANGWAY.  The beasts are.

JIM.  There's plenty folk ain't 'alf as Christian as 'er be.

STRANGWAY.  Well, dear Jim, I'll do my very best.  And any time
you're lonely, come up, and I'll play the flute to you.

JIM.  [Wriggling slightly]  No, zurr.  Thank 'ee, zurr.

STRANGWAY.  What--don't you like music?

JIM.  Ye-es, zurr.  [A figure passes the window.  Seeing it he says
with his slow smile] "'Ere's Mrs. Bradmere, comin' from the Rectory."
[With queer malice]  She don't like cats.  But she'm a cat 'erself, I
think.

STRANGWAY.  [With his smile]  Jim!

JIM.  She'm always tellin' me I'm lukin' better.  I'm not better,
zurr.

STRANGWAY.  That's her kindness.

JIM.  I don't think it is.  'Tis laziness, an' 'avin' 'er own way.
She'm very fond of 'er own way.

     [A knock on the door cuts off his speech.  Following closely on
     the knock, as though no doors were licensed to be closed against
     her, a grey-haired lady enters; a capable, broad-faced woman of
     seventy, whose every tone and movement exhales authority.  With
     a nod and a "good morning" to STRANGWAY she turns at face to JIM
     BERE.]

MRS. BRADMERE  Ah!  Jim; you're looking better.

     [JIM BERE shakes his head.  MRS. BRADMERE.  Oh!  yes, you are.
     Getting on splendidly.  And now, I just want to speak to Mr.
     Strangway.]

     [JIM BERE touches his forelock, and slowly, leaning on his
     stick, goes out.]

MRS. BRADMERE.  [Waiting for the door to close]  You know how that
came on him?  Caught the girl he was engaged to, one night, with
another man, the rage broke something here.  [She touches her
forehead]  Four years ago.

STRANGWAY.  Poor fellow!

MRS. BRADMERE.  [Looking at him sharply]  Is your wife back?

STRANGWAY.  [Starting]  No.

MRS. BRADMERE.  By the way, poor Mrs. Cremer--is she any better?

STRANGWAY.  No; going fast: Wonderful--so patient.

MRS. BRADMERE.  [With gruff sympathy]  Um!  Yes.  They know how to
die!  [Wide another sharp look at him]  D'you expect your wife soon?

STRANGWAY.  I I--hope so.

MRS. BRADMERE:  So do I.  The sooner the better.

STRANGWAY.  [Shrinking]  I trust the Rector's not suffering so much
this morning?

MRS. BRADMERE.  Thank you!  His foot's very bad.

     [As she speaks Mrs. BURLACOMBE returns with a large pale-blue
     book in her bared.]

MRS. BURLACOMBE.  Good day, M'm!  [Taking the book across to
STRANGWAY]  Miss Willie, she says she'm very sorry, zurr.

STRANGWAY.  She was very welcome, Mrs. Burlacombe.  [To MRS.
BURLACOMBE]  Forgive me--my sermon.

     [He goes into the house.  The two women graze after him.  Then,
     at once, as it were, draw into themselves, as if preparing for
     an encounter, and yet seem to expand as if losing the need for
     restraint.]

MRS. BRADMERE.  [Abruptly] He misses his wife very much, I'm afraid.

MRS. BURLACOMBE.  Ah!  Don't he?  Poor dear man; he keeps a terrible
tight 'and over 'imself, but 'tis suthin' cruel the way he walks
about at night.  He'm just like a cow when its calf's weaned.  'T'as
gone to me 'eart truly to see 'im these months past.  T'other day
when I went up to du his rume, I yeard a noise like this [she
sniffs]; an' ther' 'e was at the wardrobe, snuffin' at 'er things.  I
did never think a man cud care for a woman so much as that.

MRS. BRADMERE.   H'm!

MRS. BURLACOMBE.  'Tis funny rest an' 'e comin' 'ere for quiet after
that tearin' great London parish! 'E'm terrible absent-minded tu-
-don't take no interest in 'is fude.  Yesterday, goin' on for one
o'clock, 'e says to me, "I expect 'tis nearly breakfast-time, Mrs.
Burlacombe!" 'E'd 'ad it twice already!

MRS. BRADMERE.  Twice!  Nonsense!

MRS. BURLACOMBE.  Zurely!  I give 'im a nummit afore 'e gets up; an'
'e 'as 'is brekjus reg'lar at nine.  Must feed un up.  He'm on 'is
feet all day, gain' to zee folk that widden want to zee an angel,
they're that busy; an' when 'e comes in 'e'll play 'is flute there.
Hem wastin' away for want of 'is wife.  That's what 'tis.  An' 'im so
sweet-spoken, tu, 'tes a pleasure to year 'im--Never says a word!

MRS. BRADMERE.  Yes, that's the kind of man who gets treated badly.
I'm afraid she's not worthy of him, Mrs. Burlacombe.

MRS. BURLACOMBE.  [Plaiting her apron] 'Tesn't for me to zay that.
She'm a very pleasant lady.

MRS. BRADMERE  Too pleasant.  What's this story about her being seen
in Durford?

MRS. BURLACOMBE.  Aw!  I du never year no gossip, m'm.

MRS. BRADMERE.  [Drily]  Of course not!  But you see the Rector
wishes to know.

MRS. BURLACOMBE.  [Flustered]  Well--folk will talk!  But, as I says
to Burlacombe--"'Tes paltry," I says; and they only married eighteen
months, and Mr. Strangway so devoted-like.  'Tes nothing but love,
with 'im.

MRS. BRADMERE.  Come!

MRS. BURLACOMBE.  There's puzzivantin' folk as'll set an' gossip the
feathers off an angel.  But I du never listen.

MRS. BRADMERE  Now then, Mrs. Burlacombe?

MRS. BURLACOMBE.  Well, they du say as how Dr. Desart over to Durford
and Mrs. Strangway was sweethearts afore she wer' married.

MRS. BRADMERE.  I knew that.  Who was it saw her coming out of Dr.
Desart's house yesterday?

MRS. BURLACOMBE.  In a manner of spakin' 'tes Mrs. Freman that says
'er Gladys seen her.

MRS. BRADMERE.  That child's got an eye like a hawk.

MRS. BURLACOMBE.  'Tes wonderful how things du spread.  'Tesn't as if
us gossiped.  Du seem to grow-like in the naight.

MRS. BRADMERE  [To herself]  I never lied her.  That Riviera excuse,
Mrs. Burlacombe--Very convenient things, sick mothers.  Mr.
Strangway doesn't know?

MRS. BURLACOMBE.  The Lord forbid!  'Twid send un crazy, I think.
For all he'm so moony an' gentlelike, I think he'm a terrible
passionate man inside.  He've a-got a saint in 'im, for zure; but
'tes only 'alf-baked, in a manner of spakin'.

MRS. BRADMERE.  I shall go and see Mrs. Freman.  There's been too
much of this gossip all the winter.

MRS. BURLACOMBE.  'Tes unfortunate-like 'tes the Fremans.  Freman
he'm a gipsy sort of a feller; and he've never forgiven Mr. Strangway
for spakin' to 'im about the way he trates 'is 'orses.

MRS. BRADMERE.  Ah!  I'm afraid Mr. Strangway's not too discreet when
his feelings are touched.

MRS. BURLACOMBE.  'E've a-got an 'eart so big as the full mune.  But
'tes no yuse espectin' tu much o' this world.  'Tes a funny place,
after that.

MRS.  BRADMERE.  Yes, Mrs. Burlacombe; and I shall give some of these
good people a rare rap over the knuckles for their want of charity.
For all they look as if butter wouldn't melt in their mouths, they're
an un-Christian lot.  [Looking very directly at Mrs. BURLACOMBE]
It's lucky we've some hold over the village.  I'm not going to have
scandal.  I shall speak to Sir Herbert, and he and the Rector will
take steps.

MRS. BURLACOMBE.  [With covert malice]  Aw!  I du hope 'twon't upset
the Rector, an' 'is fute so poptious!

MRS. BRADMERE.  [Grimly]  His foot'll be sound enough to come down
sharp.  By the way, will you send me a duck up to the Rectory?

MRS. BURLACOMBE.  [Glad to get away]  Zurely, m'm; at once.  I've
some luv'ly fat birds.

     [She goes into the house.]

MRS. BRADMERE.  Old puss-cat!

     [She turns to go, and in the doorway encounters a very little,
     red-cheeked girl in a peacock-blue cap, and pink frock, who
     curtsies stolidly.]

MRS. BRADMERE.  Well, Tibby Jarland, what do you want here?  Always
sucking something, aren't you?

     [Getting no reply from Tibby JARLAND, she passes out.  Tibby
     comes in, looks round, takes a large sweet out of her mouth,
     contemplates it, and puts it back again.  Then, in a perfunctory
     and very stolid fashion, she looks about the floor, as if she
     had been told to find something.  While she is finding nothing
     and sucking her sweet, her sister MERCY comes in furtively,
     still frowning and vindictive.]

MERCY.  What!  Haven't you found it, Tibby?  Get along with 'ee,
then!

     [She accelerates the stolid Tissy's departure with a smack,
     searches under the seat, finds and picks up the deserted
     sixpence.  Then very quickly she goes to the door: But it is
     opened before she reaches it, and, finding herself caught, she
     slips behind the chintz window-curtain.  A woman has entered,
     who is clearly the original of the large photograph.  She is not
     strictly pretty, but there is charm in her pale, resolute face,
     with its mocking lips, flexible brows, and greenish eyes, whose
     lids, square above them, have short, dark lashes.  She is
     dressed in blue, and her fair hair is coiled up under a cap and
     motor-veil.  She comes in swiftly, and closes the door behind
     her; becomes irresolute; then, suddenly deciding, moves towards
     the door into the house.  MERCY slips from behind her curtain to
     make off, but at that moment the door into the house is opened,
     and she has at once to slip back again into covert.  It is Ivy
     who has appeared.]

IVY.  [Amazed]  Oh!  Mrs. Strangway!

     [Evidently disconcerted by this appearance, BEATRICE STRANGWAY
     pulls herself together and confronts the child with a smile.]

BEATRICE.  Well, Ivy--you've grown!  You didn't expect me, did you?

IVY.  No, Mrs. Strangway; but I hoped yu'd be comin' soon.

BEATRICE.  Ah!  Yes.  Is Mr. Strangway in?

IVY.  [Hypnotized by those faintly smiling lips]  Yes--oh, yes!  He's
writin' his sermon in the little room.  He will be glad!

BEATRICE.  [Going a little closer, and never taking her eyes off the
child]   Yes.  Now, Ivy; will you do something for me?

IVY.  [Fluttering]  Oh, yes, Mrs. Strangway.

BEATRICE.  Quite sure?

IVY.  Oh, yes!

BEATRICE.  Are you old enough to keep a secret?

IVY.  [Nodding]  I'm fourteen now.

BEATRICE.  Well, then--, I don't want anybody but Mr. Strangway to
know I've been here; nobody, not even your mother.  D'you understand?

IVY.  [Troubled]  No.  Only, I can keep a secret.

BEATRICE.  Mind, if anybody hears, it will hurt Mr. Strangway.

IVY.  Oh!  I wouldn't--hurt--him.  Must yu go away again?  [Trembling
towards her]  I wish yu wer goin' to stay.  And perhaps some one has
seen yu--They----

BEATRICE.  [Hastily]  No, no one.  I came motoring; like this.  [She
moves her veil to show how it can conceal her face]  And I came
straight down the little lane, and through the barn, across the yard.

IVY.  [Timidly]  People du see a lot.

BEATRICE.  [Still with that hovering smile]  I know, but----Now go
and tell him quickly and quietly.

IVY.  [Stopping at the door]  Mother's pluckin' a duck.  Only,
please, Mrs. Strangway, if she comes in even after vu've gone, she'll
know, because--because yu always have that particular nice scent.

BEATRICE.  Thank you, my child.  I'll see to that.

     [Ivy looks at her as if she would speak again, then turns
     suddenly, and goes out.  BEATRICE'S face darkens; she shivers.
     Taking out a little cigarette case, she lights a cigarette, and
     watches the puff's of smoke wreathe shout her and die away.  The
     frightened MERCY peers out, spying for a chance, to escape.
     Then from the house STRANGWAY comes in.  All his dreaminess is
     gone.]

STRANGWAY.  Thank God!  [He stops at the look on her face]  I don't
understand, though.  I thought you were still out there.

BEATRICE. [Letting her cigarette fall, and putting her foot on it]
No.

STRANGWAY: You're staying?  Oh!  Beatrice; come!  We'll get away from
here at once--as far, as far--anywhere you like.  Oh!  my darling-
-only come!  If you knew----

BEATRICE.  It's no good, Michael; I've tried and tried.

STRANGWAY.  Not!  Then, why--?  Beatrice!  You said, when you were
right away--I've waited----

BEATRICE.  I know.  It's cruel--it's horrible.  But I told you not to
hope, Michael.  I've done my best.  All these months at Mentone, I've
been wondering why I ever let you marry me--when that feeling wasn't
dead!

STRANGWAY.  You can't have come back just to leave me again?

BEATRICE.  When you let me go out there with mother I thought--I did
think I would be able; and I had begun--and then--spring came!

STRANGWAY.  Spring came here too!  Never so--aching!  Beatrice, can't
you?

BEATRICE.  I've something to say.

STRANGWAY.  No!  No!  No!

BEATRICE.  You see--I've--fallen.

STBANGWAY.  Ah!  [In a twice sharpened by pain]  Why, in the name of
mercy, come here to tell me that?  Was he out there, then?

BEATRICE.  I came straight back to him.

STRANGGWAY.  To Durford?

BEATRICE.  To the Crossway Hotel, miles out--in my own name.  They
don't know me there.  I told you not to hope, Michael.  I've done my
best; I swear it.

STRANGWAY.  My God!

BEATRICE.  It was your God that brought us to live near him!

STRANGWAY.  Why have you come to me like this?

BEATRICE.  To know what you're going to do.  Are you going to divorce
me?  We're in your power.  Don't divorce me--Doctor and patient--you
must know--it ruins him.  He'll lose everything.  He'd be
disqualified, and he hasn't a penny without his work.

STRANGWAY.  Why should I spare him?

BEATRICE.  Michael; I came to beg.  It's hard.

STRANGWAY.  No; don't beg!  I can't stand it.

     [She shakes her head.]

BEATRICE.  [Recovering her pride]  What are you going to do, then?
Keep us apart by the threat of a divorce?  Starve us and prison us?
Cage me up here with you?  I'm not brute enough to ruin him.

STRANGWAY.  Heaven!

BEATRICE.  I never really stopped loving him.  I never--loved you,
Michael.

STRANGWAY.  [Stunned]  Is that true?  [BEATRICE bends her head]
Never loved me?  Not--that night--on the river--not----?

BEATRICE.  [Under her breath]  No.

STRANGWAY.  Were you lying to me, then?  Kissing me, and--hating me?

BEATRICE.  One doesn't hate men like you; but it wasn't love.

STRANGWAY.  Why did you tell me it was?

BEATRICE.  Yes.  That was the worst thing I've ever done.

STRANGWAY.  Do you think I would have married you?  I would have
burned first!  I never dreamed you didn't.  I swear it!

BEATRICE.  [Very low]  Forget it!

STRANGWAY.  Did he try to get you away from me?  [BEATRICE gives him
a swift look]  Tell me the truth!

BEATRICE.  No.  It was--I--alone.  But--he loves me.

STRANGWAY.  One does not easily know love, it seems.

     [But her smile, faint, mysterious, pitying, is enough, and he
     turns away from her.]

BEATRICE.  It was cruel to come, I know.  For me, too.  But I
couldn't write.  I had to know.

STRANGWAY.  Never loved me?  Never loved me?  That night at Tregaron?
[At the look on her face]  You might have told me before you went
away!  Why keep me all these----

BEATRICE.  I meant to forget him again.  I did mean to.  I thought I
could get back to what I was, when I married you; but, you see, what
a girl can do, a woman that's been married--can't.

STRANGWAY.  Then it was I--my kisses that----!  [He laughs]  How did
you stand them?  [His eyes dart at her face]  Imagination helped you,
perhaps!

BEATRICE.  Michael, don't, don't!  And--oh! don't make a public thing
of it!  You needn't be afraid I shall have too good a time!

     [He stays quite still and silent, and that which is writhing in
     him makes his face so strange that BEATRICE stands aghast.  At
     last she goes stumbling on in speech]

If ever you want to marry some one else--then, of course--that's only
fair, ruin or not.  But till then--till then----He's leaving
Durford, going to Brighton.  No one need know.  And you--this isn't
the only parish in the world.

STRANGWAY.  [Quietly]  You ask me to help you live in secret with
another man?

BEATRICE.  I ask for mercy.

STRANGWAY.  [As to himself]  What am I to do?

BEATRICE.  What you feel in the bottom of your heart.

STRANGWAY.  You ask me to help you live in sin?

BEATRICE.  To let me go out of your life.  You've only to do--
nothing.  [He goes, slowly, close to her.]

STRANGWAY.  I want you.  Come back to me!  Beatrice, come back!

BEATRICE.  It would be torture, now.

STANGWAY.  [Writhing]  Oh!

BEATRICE.  Whatever's in your heart--do!

STRANGWAY.  You'd come back to me sooner than ruin him?  Would you?

BEATRICE.  I can't bring him harm.

STRANGWAY.  [Turning away]  God!--if there be one help me!  [He
stands leaning his forehead against the window.  Suddenly his glance
falls on the little bird cage, still lying on the window-seat]  Never
cage any wild thing!  [He gives a laugh that is half a sob; then,
turning to the door, says in a low voice]  Go!  Go please, quickly!
Do what you will.  I won't hurt you--can't----But--go!  [He opens
the door.]

BEATRICE.  [Greatly moved]  Thank you!

     [She passes him with her head down, and goes out quickly.
     STRANGWAY stands unconsciously tearing at the little bird-cage.
     And while he tears at it he utters a moaning sound.  The
     terrified MERCY, peering from behind the curtain, and watching
     her chance, slips to the still open door; but in her haste and
     fright she knocks against it, and STRANGWAY sees her.  Before he
     can stop her she has fled out on to the green and away.]

     [While he stands there, paralysed, the door from the house is
     opened, and MRS. BURLACOMBE approaches him in a queer, hushed
     way.]

MRS. BURLACOMBE.  [Her eyes mechanically fixed on the twisted
bird-cage in his hands]  'Tis poor Sue Cremer, zurr, I didn't 'ardly
think she'd last thru the mornin'.  An' zure enough she'm passed
away!  [Seeing that he has not taken in her words]  Mr. Strangway--
yu'm feelin' giddy?

STRANGWAY.  No, no!  What was it?  You said----

MRS. BURLACOMBE.  'Tes Jack Cremer.  His wife's gone.  'E'm in a
terrible way.  'Tes only yu, 'e ses, can du 'im any gude.  He'm in
the kitchen.

STRANGWAY.  Cremer?  Yes!  Of course.  Let him----

MRS. BURLACOMBE.  [Still staring at the twisted cage]  Yu ain't
wantin' that--'tes all twizzled.  [She takes it from him]  Sure yu'm
not feelin' yer 'ead?

STRANGWAY.  [With a resolute effort]  No!

MRS. BURLACOMBE.  [Doubtfully]  I'll send 'im in, then. [She goes.
When she is gone, Strangway passes his handkerchief across his
forehead, and his lips move fast.  He is standing motionless when
CREMER, a big man in labourer's clothes, with a thick, broad face,
and tragic, faithful eyes, comes in, and stands a little in from the
elosed door, quite dumb.]

STRANGWAY.  [After a moment's silence--going up to him and laying a
hand on his shoulder]  Jack!  Don't give way.  If we give way--we're
done.

CREMER.  Yes, zurr.  [A quiver passes over his face.]

STRANGWAY.  She didn't.  Your wife was a brave woman.  A dear woman.

CREMER.  I never thought to luse 'er.  She never told me 'ow bad she
was, afore she tuk to 'er bed.  'Tis a dreadful thing to luse a wife,
zurr.

STRANGWAY.  [Tightening his lips, that tremble]  Yes.  But don't give
way!  Bear up, Jack!

CREMER.  Seems funny 'er goin' blue-bell time, an' the sun shinin' so
warm.  I picked up an 'orse-shu yesterday.  I can't never 'ave 'er
back, zurr.

     [His face quivers again.]

STRANGWAY.  Some day you'll join her.  Think!  Some lose their wives
for ever.

CREMER.  I don't believe as there's a future life, zurr.  I think we
goo to sleep like the beasts.

STRANGWAY.  We're told otherwise.  But come here!  [Drawing him to
the window]  Look!  Listen!  To sleep in that!  Even if we do, it
won't be so bad, Jack, will it?

CREMER.  She wer' a gude wife to me--no man didn't 'ave no better
wife.

STRANGWAY.  [Putting his hand out]  Take hold--hard--harder!  I want
yours as much as you want mine.  Pray for me, Jack, and I'll pray for
you.  And we won't give way, will we?

CREMER.  [To whom the strangeness of these words has given some
relief]  No, zurr; thank 'ee, zurr.  'Tes no gude, I expect.  Only,
I'll miss 'er.  Thank 'ee, zurr; kindly.

     [He lifts his hand to his head, turns, and uncertainly goes out
     to the kitchen.  And STRANGWAY stays where he is, not knowing
     what to do.  They blindly he takes up his flute, and hatless,
     hurries out into the air.]





ACT II


SCENE I

     About seven o'clock in the taproom of the village inn.  The bar,
     with the appurtenances thereof, stretches across one end, and
     opposite is the porch door on to the green.  The wall between is
     nearly all window, with leaded panes, one wide-open casement
     whereof lets in the last of the sunlight.  A narrow bench runs
     under this broad window.  And this is all the furniture, save
     three spittoons:

     GODLEIGH, the innkeeper, a smallish man with thick ruffled hair,
     a loquacious nose, and apple-red cheeks above a reddish-brown
     moustache; is reading the paper.  To him enters TIBBY JARLAND
     with a shilling in her mouth.

GODLEIGH.  Well, TIBBY JARLAND, what've yu come for, then?  Glass o'
beer?

     [TIBBY takes the shilling from her mouth and smiles stolidly.]

GODLEIGH.  [Twinkling]  I shid zay glass o' 'arf an' 'arf's about
yure form.  [TIBBY smiles more broadly]  Yu'm a praaper masterpiece.
Well!  'Ave sister Mercy borrowed yure tongue?  [TIBBY shakes her
head]  Aw, she 'aven't.  Well, maid?

TIBBY.  Father wants six clay pipes, please.

GODLEIGH.  'E du, du 'ee?  Yu tell yure father 'e can't 'ave more'n
one, not this avenin'.  And 'ere 'tis.  Hand up yure shillin'.

     [TIBBY reaches up her hand, parts with the shilling, and
     receives a long clay pipe and eleven pennies.  In order to
     secure the coins in her pinafore she places the clay pipe in her
     mouth.  While she is still thus engaged, MRS. BRADMERE enters
     the porch and comes in.  TIBBY curtsies stolidly.]

MRS. BRADMERE.  Gracious, child!  What are you doing here?  And what
have you got in your mouth?  Who is it?  Tibby Jarland?  [TIBBY
curtsies again]  Take that thing out.  And tell your father from me
that if I ever see you at the inn again I shall tread on his toes
hard.  Godleigh, you know the law about children?

GODLEIGH.  [Cocking his eye, and not at all abashed]  Surely, m'm.
But she will come.  Go away, my dear.

     [TIBBY, never taking her eyes off MRS. BRADMERE, or the pipe
     from her mouth, has backed stolidly to the door, and vanished.]

MRS. BRADMERE.  [Eyeing GODLEIGH]  Now, Godleigh, I've come to talk
to you.  Half the scandal that goes about the village begins here.
[She holds up her finger to check expostulation]  No, no--its no
good.  You know the value of scandal to your business far too well.

GODLEIGH.  Wi' all respect, m'm, I knows the vally of it to yourn,
tu.

MRS. BRADMERE.  What do you mean by that?

GODLEIGH.  If there weren't no Rector's lady there widden' be no
notice taken o' scandal; an' if there weren't no notice taken,
twidden be scandal, to my thinkin'.

MRS. BRADMERE.  [Winking out a grim little smile]  Very well!  You've
given me your views.  Now for mine.  There's a piece of scandal going
about that's got to be stopped, Godleigh.  You turn the tap of it off
here, or we'll turn your tap off.  You know me.  See?

GODLEIGH. I shouldn' never presume, m'm, to know a lady.

MRS. BRADMERE.  The Rector's quite determined, so is Sir Herbert.
Ordinary scandal's bad enough, but this touches the Church.  While
Mr. Strangway remains curate here, there must be no talk about him
and his affairs.

GODLEIGH.  [Cocking his eye]  I was just thinkin' how to du it, m'm.
'Twid be a brave notion to putt the men in chokey, and slit the
women's tongues-like, same as they du in outlandish places, as I'm
told.

MRS. BRADMERE.  Don't talk nonsense, Godleigh; and mind what I say,
because I mean it.

GODLEIGH.  Make yure mind aisy, m'm there'll be no scandal-monkeyin'
here wi' my permission.

     [MRS. BRADMERE gives him a keen stare, but seeing him perfectly
     grave, nods her head with approval.]

MRS. BRADMERE.  Good!  You know what's being said, of course?

GODLEIGH.  [With respectful gravity]  Yu'll pardon me, m'm, but ef
an' in case yu was goin' to tell me, there's a rule in this 'ouse:
"No scandal 'ere!"

MRS. BRADMERE.  [Twinkling grimly]  You're too smart by half, my man.

GODLEIGH.  Aw fegs, no, m'm--child in yure 'ands.

MRS. BRADMERE.  I wouldn't trust you a yard.  Once more, Godleigh!
This is a Christian village, and we mean it to remain so.  You look
out for yourself.

     [The door opens to admit the farmers TRUSTAFORD and BURLACOMBE.
     They doff their hats to MRS. BRADMERE, who, after one more sharp
     look at GODLEIGH, moves towards the door.]

MRS. BRADMERE.  Evening, Mr. Trustaford.  [To BURLACOMBE]
Burlacombe, tell your wife that duck she sent up was in hard
training.

     [With one of her grim winks, and a nod, she goes.]

TRUSTAFORD.  [Replacing a hat which is black, hard, and not very new,
on his long head, above a long face, clean-shaved but for little
whiskers]  What's the old grey mare want, then?  [With a horse-laugh]
'Er's lukin' awful wise!

GODLEIGH.  [Enigmatically]  Ah!

TRUSTAFORD.  [Sitting on the bench dose to the bar]  Drop o' whisky,
an' potash.

BURLACOMBE.  [A taciturn, alien, yellowish man, in a worn soft hat]
What's wise, Godleigh?  Drop o' cider.

GODLEIGH.  Nuse?  There's never no nuse in this 'ouse.  Aw, no!  Not
wi' my permission.  [In imitation]  This is a Christian village.

TRUSTAFORD.  Thought the old grey mare seemed mighty busy.  [To
BURLACOMBE]  'Tes rather quare about the curate's wife a-cumin'
motorin' this mornin'.  Passed me wi' her face all smothered up in a
veil, goggles an' all.  Haw, haw!

BURLACOMBE.  Aye!

TRUSTAFORD.  Off again she was in 'alf an hour.  'Er didn't give poor
old curate much of a chance, after six months.

GODLEIGH.  Havin' an engagement elsewhere--No scandal, please,
gentlemen.

BURLACOMBE.  [Acidly]  Never asked to see my missis.  Passed me in
the yard like a stone.

TRUSTAFORD.  'Tes a little bit rumoursome lately about 'er doctor.

GODLEIGH.  Ah!  he's the favourite.  But 'tes a dead secret; Mr.
Trustaford.  Don't yu never repate it--there's not a cat don't know
it already!

BURLACOMBE frowns, and TRUSTAFORD utters his laugh.  The door is
opened and FREMAN, a dark gipsyish man in the dress of a farmer,
comes in.

GODLEIGH.  Don't yu never tell Will Freman what 'e told me!

FREMAN.  Avenin'!

TRUSTAFORD.  Avenin', Will; what's yure glass o' trouble?

FREMAN.  Drop o' eider, clove, an' dash o' gin.  There's blood in the
sky to-night.

BURLACOMBE.  Ah!  We'll 'ave fine weather now, with the full o' the
mune.

FREMAN.  Dust o' wind an' a drop or tu, virst, I reckon.  'Earl t'
nuse about curate an' 'is wife?

GODLEIGH.  No, indeed; an' don't yu tell us.  We'm Christians 'ere in
this village.

FREMAN.  'Tain't no very Christian nuse, neither.  He's sent 'er off
to th' doctor.  "Go an' live with un," 'e says; "my blessin' on ye."
If 'er'd a-been mine, I'd 'a tuk the whip to 'er.  Tam Jarland's
maid, she yeard it all.  Christian, indeed!  That's brave
Christianity!  "Goo an' live with un!" 'e told 'er.

BURLACOMBE.  No, no; that's, not sense--a man to say that.  I'll not
'ear that against a man that bides in my 'ouse.

FREMAN.  'Tes sure, I tell 'ee.  The maid was hid-up, scared-like,
behind the curtain.  At it they went, and parson 'e says: "Go," 'e
says, "I won't kape 'ee from 'im," 'e says, "an' I won't divorce 'ee,
as yu don't wish it!"  They was 'is words, same as Jarland's maid
told my maid, an' my maid told my missis.  If that's parson's talk,
'tes funny work goin' to church.

TRUSTAFORD.  [Brooding]  'Tes wonderful quare, zurely.

FREMAN.  Tam Jarland's fair mad wi' curate for makin' free wi' his
maid's skylark.  Parson or no parson, 'e've no call to meddle wi'
other people's praperty.  He cam' pokin' 'is nose into my affairs.  I
told un I knew a sight more 'bout 'orses than 'e ever would!

TRUSTAFORD.  He'm a bit crazy 'bout bastes an' birds.

     [They have been so absorbed that they bane not noticed the
     entrance of CLYST, a youth with tousled hair, and a bright,
     quick, Celtic eye, who stands listening, with a bit of paper in
     his hand.]

CLYST.  Ah! he'm that zurely, Mr. Trustaford.

     [He chuckles.]

GODLEIGH.  Now, Tim Clyst, if an' in case yu've a-got some scandal on
yer tongue, don't yu never unship it here.  Yu go up to Rectory where
'twill be more relished-like.

CLYST.  [Waving the paper]  Will y' give me a drink for this, Mr.
Godleigh?  'Tes rale funny.  Aw!  'tes somethin' swats.  Butiful
readin'.  Poetry.  Rale spice.  Yu've a luv'ly voice for readin', Mr.
Godleigh.

GODLEIGH.  [All ears and twinkle]  Aw, what is it then?

CLYST.  Ah!  Yu want t'know tu much.

     [Putting the paper in his pocket.]

     [While he is speaking, JIM BERE has entered quietly, with his
     feeble step and smile, and sits down.]

CLYST.  [Kindly]  Hello, Jim!  Cat come 'ome?

JIM BERE.  No.

     [All nod, and speak to him kindly.  And JIM BERE smiles at them,
     and his eyes ask of them the question, to which there is no
     answer.  And after that he sits motionless and silent, and they
     talk as if he were not there.]

GODLEIGH.  What's all this, now--no scandal in my 'ouse!

CLYST.  'Tes awful peculiar--like a drame.  Mr. Burlacombe 'e don't
like to hear tell about drames.  A guess a won't tell 'ee, arter
that.

FREMAN.  Out wi' it, Tim.

CLYST.  'Tes powerful thirsty to-day, Mr. Godleigh.

GODLEIGH.  [Drawing him some cider]  Yu're all wild cat's talk, Tim;
yu've a-got no tale at all.

CLYST.  [Moving for the cider]  Aw, indade!

GODLEIGH.  No tale, no cider!

CLYST.  Did ye ever year tell of Orphus?

TRUSTAFORD.  What?  The old vet. up to Drayleigh?

CLYST.  Fegs, no; Orphus that lived in th' old time, an' drawed the
bastes after un wi' his music, same as curate was tellin' the maids.

FREMAN.  I've 'eard as a gipsy over to Vellacott could du that wi'
'is viddle.

CLYST.  'Twas no gipsy I see'd this arternune; 'twee Orphus, down to
Mr. Burlacombe's long medder; settin' there all dark on a stone among
the dimsy-white flowers an' the cowflops, wi' a bird upon 'is 'ead,
playin' his whistle to the ponies.

FREMAN.  [Excitedly]  Yu did never zee a man wi' a bird on 'is 'ead.

CLYST.  Didn' I?

FREMAN.  What sort o' bird, then?  Yu tell me that.

TRUSTAFORD.  Praaper old barndoor cock.  Haw, haw!

GODLEIGH.  [Soothingly]  'Tes a vairy-tale; us mustn't be tu
partic'lar.

BURLACOMBE:  In my long medder?  Where were yu, then, Tim Clyst?

CLYST.  Passin' down the lane on my bike.  Wonderful sorrowful-fine
music 'e played.  The ponies they did come round 'e--yu cud zee the
tears rennin' down their chakes; 'twas powerful sad.  'E 'adn't no
'at on.

FREMAN.  [Jeering]  No; 'e 'ad a bird on 'is 'ead.

CLYST.  [With a silencing grin]  He went on playin' an' playin'.  The
ponies they never muved.  An' all the dimsy-white flowers they waved
and waved, an' the wind it went over 'em.  Gav' me a funny feelin'.

GODLEIGH.  Clyst, yu take the cherry bun!

CLYST.  Where's that cider, Mr. Godleigh?

GODLEIGH.  [Bending over the cider]  Yu've a -'ad tu much already,
Tim.

     [The door is opened, and TAM JARLAND appears.  He walks rather
     unsteadily; a man with a hearty jowl, and sullen, strange;
     epileptic-looking eyes.]

CLYST.  [Pointing to JARLAND]  'Tis Tam Jarland there 'as the cargo
aboard.

JARLAND.  Avenin', all!  [To GODLEIGH]  Pinto' beer.  [To JIM BERE]
Avenin', Jim.

     [JIM BERE looks at him and smiles.]

GODLEIGH.  [Serving him after a moment's hesitation]  'Ere y'are,
Tam.  [To CLYST, who has taken out his paper again]  Where'd yu get
thiccy paper?

CLYST.  [Putting down his cider-mug empty]  Yure tongue du watter,
don't it, Mr. Godleigh?  [Holding out his mug]  No zider, no poetry.
'Tis amazin' sorrowful; Shakespeare over again.  "The boy stude on
the burnin' deck."

FREMAN.  Yu and yer yap!

CLYST.  Ah! Yu wait a bit.  When I come back down t'lane again,
Orphus 'e was vanished away; there was naught in the field but the
ponies, an' a praaper old magpie, a-top o' the hedge.  I zee
somethin' white in the beak o' the fowl, so I giv' a "Whisht," an'
'e drops it smart, an' off 'e go.  I gets over bank an' picks un up,
and here't be.

     [He holds out his mug.]

BURLACOMBE.  [Tartly]  Here, give 'im 'is cider.  Rade it yureself,
ye young teasewings.

     [CLYST, having secured his cider, drinks it o$.  Holding up the
     paper to the light, he makes as if to begin, then.  slides his
     eye round, tantalizing.]

CLYST.  'Tes a pity I bain't dressed in a white gown, an' flowers in
me 'air.

FREMAN.  Read it, or we'll 'aye yu out o' this.

CLYST.  Aw, don't 'ee shake my nerve, now!

     [He begins reading with mock heroism, in his soft, high, burring
     voice.  Thus, in his rustic accent, go the lines]

          God lighted the zun in 'eaven far.
          Lighted the virefly an' the star.
          My 'eart 'E lighted not!

          God lighted the vields fur lambs to play,
          Lighted the bright strames, 'an the may.
          My 'eart 'E lighted not!

          God lighted the mune, the Arab's way,
          He lights to-morrer, an' to-day.
          My 'eart 'E 'ath vorgot!

     [When he has finished, there is silence.  Then TRUSTAFORD,
     scratching his head, speaks:]

TAUSTAFORD.  'Tes amazin' funny stuff.

FREMAN.  [Looking over CLYST'S shoulder]  Be danged!  'Tes the
curate's 'andwritin'.  'Twas curate wi' the ponies, after that.

CLYST.  Fancy, now!  Aw, Will Freman, an't yu bright!

FREMAN.  But 'e 'adn't no bird on 'is 'ead.

CLYST.  Ya-as, 'e 'ad.

JARLAND.  [In a dull, threatening voice]  'E 'ad my maid's bird, this
arternune.  'Ead or no, and parson or no, I'll gie 'im one for that.

FREMAN.  Ah! And 'e meddled wi' my 'orses.

TRUSTAFORD.  I'm thinkin' 'twas an old cuckoo bird 'e 'ad on 'is
'ead.  Haw, haw!

GODLEIGH.  "His 'eart She 'ath Vorgot!"

FREMAN.  'E's a fine one to be tachin' our maids convirmation.

GODLEIGH.  Would ye 'ave it the old Rector then?  Wi' 'is gouty shoe?
Rackon the maids wid rather 'twas curate; eh, Mr. Burlacombe?

BURLACOMBE.  [Abruptly]  Curate's a gude man.

JARLAND.  [With the comatose ferocity of drink]  I'll be even wi' un.

FREMAN.  [Excitedly]  Tell 'ee one thing--'tes not a proper man o'
God to 'ave about, wi' 'is luse goin's on.  Out vrom 'ere he oughter
go.

BURLACOMBE.  You med go further an' fare worse.

FREMAN.  What's 'e duin', then, lettin' 'is wife runoff?

TRUSTAFORD.  [Scratching his head]  If an' in case 'e can't kape 'er,
'tes a funny way o' duin' things not to divorce 'er, after that.  If
a parson's not to du the Christian thing, whu is, then?

BURLACOMBE.  'Tes a bit immoral-like to pass over a thing like that.
Tes funny if women's gain's on's to be encouraged.

FREMAN.  Act of a coward, I zay.

BURLACOMBE.  The curate ain't no coward.

FREMAN.  He bides in yure house; 'tes natural for yu to stand up for
un; I'll wager Mrs. Burlacombe don't, though.  My missis was fair
shocked.  "Will," she says, "if yu ever make vur to let me go like
that, I widden never stay wi' yu," she says.

TRUSTAFORD.  'Tes settin' a bad example, for zure.

BURLACOMBE.  'Tes all very airy talkin'; what shude 'e du, then?

FREMAN.  [Excitedly]  Go over to Durford and say to that doctor: "Yu
come about my missis, an' zee what I'll du to 'ee."  An' take 'er
'ome an' zee she don't misbe'ave again.

CLYST.  'E can't take 'er ef 'er don' want t' come--I've 'eard
lawyer, that lodged wi' us, say that.

FREMAN.  All right then, 'e ought to 'ave the law of 'er and 'er
doctor; an' zee 'er goin's on don't prosper; 'e'd get damages, tu.
But this way 'tes a nice example he'm settin' folks.  Parson indade!
My missis an' the maids they won't goo near the church to-night, an'
I wager no one else won't, neither.

JARLAND. [Lurching with his pewter up to GODLEIGH]  The beggar!  I'll
be even wi' un.

GODLEIGH.  [Looking at him in doubt]  'Tes the last, then, Tam.

     [Having received his beer, JARLAND stands, leaning against the
     bar, drinking.]

BURLACOMBE.  [Suddenly]  I don' goo with what curate's duin--'tes
tiff soft 'earted; he'm a muney kind o' man altogether, wi' 'is flute
an' 'is poetry; but he've a-lodged in my 'ouse this year an' mare,
and always 'ad an 'elpin' 'and for every one.  I've got a likin' for
him an' there's an end of it.

JARLAND.  The coward!

TRUSTAFORD.  I don' trouble nothin' about that, Tam Jarland.
[Turning to BURLACOMBE]  What gits me is 'e don't seem to 'ave no
zense o' what's his own praperty.

JARLAND.  Take other folk's property fast enough!

     [He saws the air with his empty.  The others have all turned to
     him, drawn by the fascination that a man in liquor has for his
     fellow-men.  The bell for church has begun to rang, the sun is
     down, and it is getting dusk.]

He wants one on his crop, an' one in 'is belly; 'e wants a man to
take an' gie un a gude hidin zame as he oughter give 'is fly-be-night
of a wife.

     [STRANGWAY in his dark clothes has entered, and stands by the
     door, his lips compressed to a colourless line, his thin,
     darkish face grey-white]

Zame as a man wid ha' gi'en the doctor, for takin' what isn't his'n.

     All but JARLAND have seen STRANGWAY.  He steps forward, JARLAND
     sees him now; his jaw drops a little, and he is silent.

STRANGWAY.  I came for a little brandy, Mr. Godleigh--feeling rather
faint.  Afraid I mightn't get through the service.

GODLEIGH.  [With professional composure]  Marteil's Three Star, zurr,
or 'Ennessy's?

STRANGWAY.  [Looking at JARLAND]  Thank you; I believe I can do
without, now. [He turns to go.]

     [In the deadly silence, GODLEIGH touches the arm of JARLAND,
     who, leaning against the bar with the pewter in his hand, is
     staring with his strange lowering eyes straight at STRANGWAY.]

JARLAND.  [Galvanized by the touch into drunken rage]  Lave me be-
I'll talk to un-parson or no.  I'll tache un to meddle wi' my maid's
bird.  I'll tache un to kape 'is thievin' 'ands to 'imself.

     [STRANGWAY turns again.]

CLYST.  Be quiet, Tam.

JARLAND.  [Never loosing STRANGWAY with his eyes--like a bull-dog who
sees red]  That's for one chake; zee un turn t'other, the white-
livered buty!  Whu lets another man 'ave 'is wife, an' never the
sperit to go vor un!

BURLACOMBE.  Shame, Jarland; quiet, man!

     [They are all looking at STRANGWAY, who, under JARLAND'S drunken
     insults is standing rigid, with his eyes closed, and his hands
     hard clenched.  The church bell has stopped slow ringing, and
     begun its five minutes' hurrying note.]

TRUSTAFORD.  [Rising, and trying to hook his arm into JARLAND'S]
Come away, Tam; yu've a-'ad to much, man.

JARLAND.  [Shaking him off]  Zee, 'e darsen't touch me; I might 'it
un in the vase an' 'e darsen't; 'e's afraid--like 'e was o' the
doctor.

     [He raises the pewter as though to fling it, but it is seized by
     GODLEIGH from behind, and falls clattering to the floor.
     STRANGWAY has not moved.]

JARLAND.  [Shaking his fist almost in his face]  Luke at un, Luke at
un!  A man wi' a slut for a wife----

     [As he utters the word "wife" STRANGWAY seizes the outstretched
     fist, and with a jujitsu movement, draws him into his clutch,
     helpless.  And as they sway and struggle in the open window,
     with the false strength of fury he forces JARLAND through.
     There is a crash of broken glass from outside.  At the sound
     STRANGWAY comes to himself.  A look of agony passes over his
     face.  His eyes light on JIM BERE, who has suddenly risen, and
     stands feebly clapping his hands.  STRANGWAY rushes out.]

     [Excitedly gathering at the window, they all speak at once.]

CLYST.  Tam's hatchin' of yure cucumbers, Mr. Godleigh.

TRUSTAFORD.  'E did crash; haw, haw!

FREMAN. 'Twas a brave throw, zurely.  Whu wid a' thought it?

CLYST.  Tam's crawlin' out.  [Leaning through window]  Hello, Tam--
'ow's t' base, old man?

FREMAN.  [Excitedly]  They'm all comin' up from churchyard to zee.

TRUSTAFORD.  Tam du luke wonderful aztonished; haw, haw!  Poor old
Tam!

CLYST.  Can yu zee curate?  Reckon 'e'm gone into church.  Aw, yes;
gettin' a bit dimsy-service time.  [A moment's hush.]

TRUSTAFORD.  Well, I'm jiggered.  In 'alf an hour he'm got to prache.

GODLEIGH.  'Tes a Christian village, boys.

     [Feebly, quietly, JIM BERE laughs.  There is silence; but the
     bell is heard still ranging.]


                              CURTAIN.



SCENE II

     The same-in daylight dying fast.  A lamp is burning on the bar.
     A chair has been placed in the centre of the room, facing the
     bench under the window, on which are seated from right to left,
     GODLEIGH, SOL POTTER the village shopman, TRUSTAFORD,
     BURLACOMBE, FREMAN, JIM BERE, and MORSE the blacksmith.  CLYST
     is squatting on a stool by the bar, and at the other end
     JARLAND, sobered and lowering, leans against the lintel of the
     porch leading to the door, round which are gathered five or six
     sturdy fellows, dumb as fishes.  No one sits in the chair.  In
     the unnatural silence that reigns, the distant sound of the
     wheezy church organ and voices singing can be heard.

TAUSTAFORD.  [After a prolonged clearing of his throat]  What I mean
to zay is that 'tes no yuse, not a bit o' yuse in the world, not
duin' of things properly.  If an' in case we'm to carry a resolution
disapprovin' o' curate, it must all be done so as no one can't, zay
nothin'.

SOL POTTER.  That's what I zay, Mr. Trustaford; ef so be as 'tis to
be a village meetin', then it must be all done proper.

FREMAN.  That's right, Sot Potter.  I purpose Mr. Sot Potter into the
chair.  Whu seconds that?

     [A silence.  Voices from among the dumb-as-fishes: "I du."]

CLYST.  [Excitedly] Yu can't putt that to the meetin'.  Only a
chairman can putt it to the meetin'.  I purpose that Mr. Burlacombe--
bein as how he's chairman o' the Parish Council--take the chair.

FREMAN.  Ef so be as I can't putt it, yu can't putt that neither.

TRUSTAFORD.  'Tes not a bit o' yuse; us can't 'ave no meetin' without
a chairman.

GODLEIGH.  Us can't 'ave no chairman without a meetin' to elect un,
that's zure.  [A silence.]

MORSE.  [Heavily]  To my way o' thinkin', Mr. Godleigh speaks zense;
us must 'ave a meetin' before us can 'ave a chairman.

CLYST.  Then what we got to du's to elect a meetin'.

BURLACOMBE.  [Sourly]  Yu'll not find no procedure far that.

     [Voices from among the dumb-as fishes: "Mr. Burlacombe 'e
     oughter know."]

SOL POTTER.  [Scratching his head--with heavy solemnity]  'Tes my
belief there's no other way to du, but to elect a chairman to call a
meetin'; an' then for that meetin' to elect a chairman.

CLYST.  I purpose Mr. Burlacombe as chairman to call a meetin'.

FREMAN.  I purpose Sol Potter.

GODLEIGH.  Can't 'ave tu propositions together before a meetin';
that's apple-pie zure vur zurtain.

     [Voice from among the dumb-as fishes: "There ain't no meetin'
     yet, Sol Potter zays."]

TRUSTAFORD.  Us must get the rights of it zettled some'ow.  'Tes like
the darned old chicken an' the egg--meetin' or chairman--which come
virst?

SOL POTTER.  [Conciliating]  To my thinkin' there shid be another way
o' duin' it, to get round it like with a circumbendibus.  'T'all
comes from takin' different vuse, in a manner o' spakin'.

FREMAN.  Vu goo an' zet in that chair.

SOL POTTER.  [With a glance at BURLACOMBE modestly]  I shid'n never
like fur to du that, with Mr. Burlacombe zettin' there.

BURLACOMBE.  [Rising]  'Tes all darned fulishness.

     [Amidst an uneasy shufflement of feet he moves to the door, and
     goes out into the darkness.]

CLYST.  [Seeing his candidate thus depart]  Rackon curate's pretty
well thru by now, I'm goin' to zee.  [As he passes JARLAND]  'Ow's to
base, old man?

     [He goes out.  One of the dumb-as-fishes moves from the door and
     fills the apace left on the bench by BURLACOMBE'S departure.]

JARLAND.  Darn all this puzzivantin'!  [To SOL POTTER]  Got an' zet
in that chair.

SOL POTTER.  [Rising and going to the chair; there he stands,
changing from one to the other of his short broad feet and sweating
from modesty and worth]  'Tes my duty now, gentlemen, to call a
meetin' of the parishioners of this parish.  I beg therefore to
declare that this is a meetin' in accordance with my duty as chairman
of this meetin' which elected me chairman to call this meetin'.  And
I purceed to vacate the chair so that this meetin' may now purceed to
elect a chairman.

     [He gets up from the chair, and wiping the sweat from his brow,
     goes back to his seat.]

FREMAN.  Mr. Chairman, I rise on a point of order.

GODLEIGH.  There ain't no chairman.

FREMAN.  I don't give a darn for that.  I rise on a point of order.

GODLEIGH.  'Tes a chairman that decides points of order.  'Tes
certain yu can't rise on no points whatever till there's a chairman.

TRUSTAFORD.  'Tes no yuse yure risin', not the least bit in the
world, till there's some one to set yu down again.  Haw, haw!

     [Voice from the dumb-as-Etches: "Mr. Trustaford 'e's right."]

FREMAN.  What I zay is the chairman ought never to 'ave vacated the
chair till I'd risen on my point of order.  I purpose that he goo and
zet down again.

GODLEIGH.  Yu can't purpose that to this meetin'; yu can only purpose
that to the old meetin' that's not zettin' any longer.

FREMAN.  [Excitedly]  I didn' care what old meetin' 'tis that's
zettin'.  I purpose that Sol Potter goo an' zet in that chair again,
while I rise on my point of order.

TRUSTAFORD.  [Scratching his head]  'Tesn't regular but I guess yu've
got to goo, Sol, or us shan't 'ave no peace.

     [SOL POTTER, still wiping his brow, goes back to the chair.]

MORSE.  [Stolidly-to FREMAN]  Zet down, Will Freman.  [He pulls at
him with a blacksmith's arm.]

FREMAN.  [Remaining erect with an effort]  I'm not a-goin' to zet
down till I've arisen.

JARLAND.  Now then, there 'e is in the chair.  What's yore point of
order?

FREMAN.  [Darting his eyes here and there, and flinging his hand up
to his gipsy-like head]  'Twas--'twas--Darned ef y' 'aven't putt it
clean out o' my 'ead.

JARLAND.  We can't wait for yore points of order.  Come out o' that
chair.  Sol Potter.

     [SOL POTTER rises and is about to vacate the chair.]

FREMAN.  I know!  There ought to 'a been minutes taken.  Yu can't
'ave no meetin' without minutes.  When us comes to electin' a
chairman o' the next meetin', 'e won't 'ave no minutes to read.

SOL POTTER.  'Twas only to putt down that I was elected chairman to
elect a meetin' to elect a chairman to preside over a meetin' to pass
a resolution dalin' wi' the curate.  That's aisy set down, that is.

FREMAN.  [Mollified]  We'll 'ave that zet down, then, while we're
electin' the chairman o' the next meetin'.

     [A silence. ]

TRUSTAFORD.  Well then, seein' this is the praaper old meetin' for
carryin' the resolution about the curate, I purpose Mr. Sol Potter
take the chair.

FREMAN.  I purpose Mr. Trustaford.  I 'aven't a-got nothin' against
Sol Potter, but seein' that he elected the meetin' that's to elect
'im, it might be said that 'e was electin' of himzelf in a manner of
spakin'.  Us don't want that said.

MORSE.  [Amid meditative grunts from the dumb-as-fishes]  There's
some-at in that.  One o' they tu purposals must be putt to the
meetin'.

FREMAN.  Second must be putt virst, fur zure.

TRUSTAFORD.  I dunno as I wants to zet in that chair.  To hiss the
curate, 'tis a ticklish sort of a job after that.  Vurst comes afore
second, Will Freeman.

FREMAN.  Second is amendment to virst.  'Tes the amendments is putt
virst.

TRUSTAFORD.  'Ow's that, Mr. Godleigh?  I'm not particular eggzac'ly
to a dilly zort of a point like that.

SOL POTTER.  [Scratching his, head]  'Tes a very nice point, for
zure.

GODLEIGH.  'Tes undoubtedly for the chairman to decide.

     [Voice from the dumb-as fishes: "But there ain't no chairman
     yet."]

JARLAND.  Sol Potter's chairman.

FREMAN.  No, 'e ain't.

MORSE.  Yes, 'e is--'e's chairman till this second old meetin' gets
on the go.

FREMAN.  I deny that.  What du yu say, Mr. Trustaford?

TRUSTAFORD.  I can't 'ardly tell.  It du zeem a darned long-sufferin'
sort of a business altogether.

     [A silence.]

MORSE.  [Slowly]  Tell 'ee what 'tis, us shan't du no gude like this.

GODLEIGH.  'Tes for Mr. Freman or Mr. Trustaford, one or t'other to
withdraw their motions.

TRUSTAFORD.  [After a pause, with cautious generosity]  I've no
objections to withdrawin' mine, if Will Freman'll withdraw his'n.

FREMAN.  I won't never be be'indhand.  If Mr. Trustaford withdraws, I
withdraws mine.

MORSE.  [With relief]  That's zensible.  Putt the motion to the
meetin'.

SOL POTTER.  There ain't no motion left to putt.

     [Silence of consternation.]

     [In the confusion Jim BERE is seen to stand up.]

GODLEIGH.  Jim Bere to spike.  Silence for Jim!

VOICES.  Aye!  Silence for Jim!

SOL POTTER.  Well, Jim?

JIM.  [Smiling and slow]  Nothin' duin'.

TRUSTAFORD.  Bravo, Jim!  Yu'm right.  Best zense yet!

     [Applause from the dumb-as-fishes.]

     [With his smile brightening, JIM resumes his seat.]

SOL POTTER.  [Wiping his brow]  Du seem to me, gentlemen, seem' as
we'm got into a bit of a tangle in a manner of spakin', 'twid be the
most zimplest and vairest way to begin all over vrom the beginnin',
so's t'ave it all vair an' square for every one.

     [In the uproar Of "Aye" and "No," it is noticed that TIBBY
     JARLAND is standing in front of her father with her finger, for
     want of something better, in her mouth.]

TIBBY.  [In her stolid voice]  Please, sister Mercy says, curate 'ave
got to "Lastly."  [JARLAND picks her up, and there is silence.]  An'
please to come quick.

JARLAND.  Come on, mates; quietly now!

     [He goes out, and all begin to follow him.]

MORSE.  [Slowest, save for SOL POTTER]  'Tes rare lucky us was all
agreed to hiss the curate afore us began the botherin' old meetin',
or us widn' 'ardly 'ave 'ad time to settle what to du.

SOL POTTER.  [Scratching his head]  Aye, 'tes rare lucky; but I dunno
if 'tes altogether reg'lar.


                              CURTAIN.




SCENE III

     The village green before the churchyard and the yew-trees at the
     gate.  Into the pitch dark under the yews, light comes out
     through the half-open church door.  Figures are lurking, or
     moving stealthily--people waiting and listening to the sound of
     a voice speaking in the church words that are inaudible.
     Excited whispering and faint giggles come from the deepest yew-
     tree shade, made ghostly by the white faces and the frocks of
     young girls continually flitting up and back in the blackness.
     A girl's figure comes flying out from the porch, down the path
     of light, and joins the stealthy group.

WHISPERING VOICE of MERCY.  Where's 'e got to now, Gladys?

WHISPERING VOICE OF GLADYS.  'E've just finished.

VOICE OF CONNIE. Whu pushed t'door open?

VOICE OF GLADYS.  Tim Clyst I giv' it a little push, meself.

VOICE OF CONNIE.  Oh!

VOICE of GLADYS.  Tim Clyst's gone in!

ANOTHER VOICE.  O-o-o-h!

VOICE of MERCY.  Whu else is there, tu?

VOICE OF GLADYS.  Ivy's there, an' Old Mrs. Potter, an' tu o' the
maids from th'Hall; that's all as ever.

VOICE of CONNIE.  Not the old grey mare?

VOICE of GLADYS.  No.  She ain't ther'.  'Twill just be th'ymn now,
an' the Blessin'.  Tibby gone for 'em?

VOICE OF MERCY.  Yes.

VOICE of CONNIE.  Mr. Burlacombe's gone in home, I saw 'im pass by
just now--'e don' like it.  Father don't like it neither.

VOICE of MERCY.  Mr. Strangway shoudn' 'ave taken my skylark, an'
thrown father out o' winder.  'Tis goin' to be awful fun!  Oh!

     [She jumps up and dawn in the darkness.  And a voice from far in
     the shadow says: "Hsssh!  Quiet, yu maids!"  The voice has
     ceased speaking in the church.  There is a moment's dead
     silence.  The voice speaks again; then from the wheezy little
     organ come the first faint chords of a hymn.]

GLADYS.  "Nearer, my God, to Thee!"

VOICE of MERCY.  'Twill be funny, with no one 'ardly singin'.

     [The sound of the old hymn sung by just six voices comes out to
     them rather sweet and clear.]

GLADYS.  [Softly]  'Tis pretty, tu.  Why!  They're only singin' one
verse!

     [A moment's silence, and the voice speaks, uplifted, pronouncing
     the Blessing: "The peace of God----" As the last words die away,
     dark figures from the inn approach over the grass, till quite a
     crowd seems standing there without a word spoken.  Then from out
     of the church porch come the congregation.  TIM CLYST first,
     hastily lost among the waiting figures in the dark; old Mrs.
     Potter, a half blind old lady groping her way and perceiving
     nothing out of the ordinary; the two maids from the Hall, self-
     conscious and scared, scuttling along.  Last, IVY BURLACOMBE
     quickly, and starting back at the dim, half-hidden crowd.]

VOICE of GLADYS.  [Whispering]  Ivy!  Here, quick!

     [Ivy sways, darts off towards the voice, and is lost in the
     shadow.]

VOICE OF FREMAN.  [Low]  Wait, boys, till I give signal.

     [Two or three squirks and giggles; Tim CLYST'S voice: "Ya-as!
     Don't 'ee tread on my toe!" A soft, frightened "O-o-h!" from a
     girl.  Some quick, excited whisperings: "Luke!"  "Zee there!"
     "He's comin'!"  And then a perfectly dead silence.  The figure
     of STRANGWAY is seen in his dark clothes, passing from the
     vestry to the church porch.  He stands plainly visible in the
     lighted porch, locking the door, then steps forward.  Just as he
     reaches the edge of the porch, a low hiss breaks the silence.
     It swells very gradually into a long, hissing groan.  STRANGWAY
     stands motionless, his hand over his eyes, staring into the
     darkness.  A girl's figure can be seen to break out of the
     darkness and rush away.  When at last the groaning has died into
     sheer expectancy, STRANGWAY drops his hand.]

STRANGWAY.  [In a loco voice]  Yes!  I'm glad.  Is Jarland there?

FREMAN.  He's 'ere-no thanks to yu!  Hsss!

     [The hiss breaks out again, then dies away.]

JARLAND'S VOICE.  [Threatening]  Try if yu can du it again.

STRANGWAY.  No, Jarland, no!  I ask you to forgive me.  Humbly!

     [A hesitating silence, broken by muttering.]

CLYST'S VOICE.  Bravo!

A VOICE.  That's vair.

A VOICE.  'E's afraid o' the sack--that's what 'tis.

A VOICE.  [Groaning]  'E's a praaper coward.

A VOICE.  Whu funked the doctor?

CLYST'S VOICE.  Shame on 'ee, therr!

STRANGWAY.  You're right--all of you!  I'm not fit!  An uneasy and
excited mustering and whispering dies away into renewed silence.

STRANGWAY.  What I did to Tam Jarland is not the real cause of what
you're doing, is it?  I understand.  But don't be troubled.  It's all
over.  I'm going--you'll get some one better.  Forgive me, Jarland.
I can't see your face--it's very dark.

FREMAN'S Voice.  [Mocking]  Wait for the full mune.

GODLEIGH.  [Very low]  "My 'eart 'E lighted not!"

STRANGWAY.  [starting at the sound of his own words thus mysteriously
given him out of the darkness]  Whoever found that, please tear it
up!  [After a moment's silence]  Many of you have been very kind to
me.  You won't see me again--Good-bye, all!

     [He stands for a second motionless, then moves resolutely down
     into the darkness so peopled with shadows.]

UNCERTAIN VOICES AS HE PASSES.  Good-bye, zurr!
Good luck, zurr!  [He has gone.]

CLYST'S VOICE.  Three cheers for Mr. Strangway!

     [And a queer, strangled cheer, with groans still threading it,
     arises.]


                         CURTAIN.





ACT III


SCENE I

     In the BURLACOMBES' hall-sitting-room the curtains are drawn, a
     lamp burns, and the door stands open.  BURLACOMBE and his wife
     are hovering there, listening to the sound of mingled cheers and
     groaning.

MRS. BURLACOMBE.  Aw!  my gudeness--what a thing t'appen!  I'd saner
'a lost all me ducks.  [She makes towards the inner door]  I can't
never face 'im.

BURLACOMBE.  'E can't expect nothin' else, if 'e act like that.

MRS. BURLACOMBE.  'Tes only duin' as 'e'd be done by.

BURLACOMBE.  Aw!  Yu can't go on forgivin' 'ere, an' forgivin' there.
'Tesn't nat'ral.

MRS. BURLACOMBE.  'Tes the mischief 'e'm a parson.  'Tes 'im bein' a
lamb o' God--or 'twidden be so quare for 'im to be forgivin'.

BURLACOMBE.  Yu goo an' make un a gude 'ot drink.

MRS. BURLACOMBE.  Poor soul!  What'll 'e du now, I wonder?  [Under
her breath]  'E's cumin'!

     [She goes hurriedly.  BURLACOMBE, with a startled look back,
     wavers and makes to follow her, but stops undecided in the inner
     doorway.  STRANGWAY comes in from the darkness.  He turns to the
     window and drops overcoat and hat and the church key on the
     windowseat, looking about him as men do when too hard driven,
     and never fixing his eyes long enough on anything to see it.
     BURLACOMBE, closing the door into the house, advances a step.
     At the sound STRANGWAY faces round.]

BURLACOMBE.  I wanted for yu to know, zurr, that me an' mine 'adn't
nothin' to du wi' that darned fulishness, just now.

STRANGWAY.  [With a ghost of a smile]  Thank you, Burlacombe.  It
doesn't matter.  It doesn't matter a bit.

BURLACOMBE.  I 'ope yu won't take no notice of it.  Like a lot o'
silly bees they get.  [After an uneasy pause]  Yu'll excuse me
spakin' of this mornin', an' what 'appened.  'Tes a brave pity it
cam' on yu so sudden-like before yu 'ad time to think.  'Tes a sort
o' thing a man shude zet an' chew upon.  Certainly 'tes not a bit o'
yuse goin' against human nature.  Ef yu don't stand up for yureself
there's no one else not goin' to.  'Tes yure not 'avin' done that 'as
made 'em so rampageous.  [Stealing another look at STRANGWAY]  Yu'll
excuse me, zurr, spakin' of it, but 'tes amazin' sad to zee a man let
go his own, without a word o' darin'.  'Tea as ef 'e 'ad no passions-
like.

STRANGWAY.  Look at me, Burlacombe.

     [BURLACOMBE looks up, trying hard to keep his eyes on
     STRANGWAY'S, that seem to burn in his thin face.]

STRANGWAY.  Do I look like that?  Please, please!  [He touches his
breast]  I've too much here.  Please!

BURLACOMBE.  [With a sort of startled respect]  Well, zurr, 'tes not
for me to zay nothin', certainly.

     [He turns and after a slow look back at STRANGWAY goes out.]

STRANGWAY.  [To himself]  Passions!  No passions!  Ha!

     [The outer door is opened and IVY BURLACOMBE appears, and,
     seeing him, stops.  Then, coming softly towards him, she speaks
     timidly.]

IVY.  Oh!  Mr. Strangway, Mrs. Bradmere's cumin' from the Rectory.  I
ran an' told 'em.  Oh!  'twas awful.

     [STRANGWAY starts, stares at her, and turning on his heel, goes
     into the house.  Ivy's face is all puckered, as if she were on
     the point of tears.  There is a gentle scratching at the door,
     which has not been quite closed.]

VOICE OF GLADYS.  [Whispering]  Ivy!  Come on Ivy.  I won't.

VOICE OF MERCY.  Yu must.  Us can't du without Yu.

Ivy.  [Going to the door]  I don't want to.

VOICE of GLADYS.  "Naughty maid, she won't come out," Ah! du 'ee!

VOICE OF CREMER.  Tim Clyst an' Bobbie's cumin'; us'll only be six
anyway.  Us can't dance "figure of eight" without yu.

Ivy.  [Stamping her foot]  I don't want to dance at all!  I don't.

MERCY.  Aw!  She's temper.  Yu can bang on tambourine, then!

GLADYS.  [Running in]  Quick, Ivy!  Here's the old grey mare cumin'
down the green.  Quick.

     [With whispering and scuffling; gurgling and squeaking, the
     reluctant Ivy's hand is caught and she is jerked away.  In their
     haste they have left the door open behind them.]

VOICE of MRS. BRADMERE.  [Outside]  Who's that?

     [She knocks loudly, and rings a bell; then, without waiting,
     comes in through the open door.]

     [Noting the overcoat and hat on the window-sill she moves across
     to ring the bell.  But as she does so, MRS. BURLACOMBE, followed
     by BURLACOMBE, comes in from the house.]

MRS. BRADMERE  This disgraceful business!  Where's Mr. Strangway?  I
see he's in.

MRS. BURLACOMBE.  Yes, m'm, he'm in--but--but Burlacombe du zay he'm
terrible upset.

MRS. BRADMERE.  I should think so.  I must see him--at once.

MRS. BURLACOMBE.  I doubt bed's the best place for 'un, an' gude 'ot
drink.  Burlacombe zays he'm like a man standin' on the edge of a
cliff; and the lasts tipsy o' wind might throw un over.

MRS. BRADMERE.  [To BURLACOMBE]  You've seen him, then?

BURLACOMBE.  Yeas; an' I don't like the luke of un--not a little bit,
I don't.

MRS.  BURLACOMBE.  [Almost to herself]  Poor soul; 'e've a-'ad to
much to try un this yer long time past.  I've a-seen 'tis sperrit
cumin' thru 'is body, as yu might zay.  He's torn to bits, that's
what 'tis.

BURLACOMBE.  'Twas a praaper cowardly thing to hiss a man when he's
down.  But 'twas natural tu, in a manner of spakin'.  But 'tesn't
that troublin' 'im.  'Tes in here [touching his forehead], along of
his wife, to my thinkin'.  They zay 'e've a-known about 'er a-fore
she went away.  Think of what 'e've 'ad to kape in all this time.
'Tes enough to drive a man silly after that.  I've a-locked my gun
up.  I see a man like--like that once before--an' sure enough 'e was
dead in the mornain'!

MRS. BRADMERE.  Nonsense, Burlacombe!  [To MRS. BURLACOMBE]  Go and
tell him I want to see him--must see him.  [MRS.  BURLACOMBE goes
into the house]  And look here, Burlacombe; if we catch any one, man
or woman, talking of this outside the village, it'll be the end of
their tenancy, whoever they may be.  Let them all know that.  I'm
glad he threw that drunken fellow out of the window, though it was a
little----

BURLACOMBE.  Aye!  The nuspapers would be praaper glad of that, for a
tiddy bit o' nuse.

MRS. BRADMERE.  My goodness!  Yes!  The men are all up at the inn.
Go and tell them what I said--it's not to get about.  Go at once,
Burlacombe.

BURLACOMBE.  Must be a turrable job for 'im, every one's knowin'
about 'is wife like this.  He'm a proud man tu, I think.  'Tes a
funny business altogether!

MRS. BRADMERE.  Horrible!  Poor fellow!  Now, come!  Do your best,
Burlacombe!

     [BURLACOMBE touches his forelock and goes.  MRS. BRADMERE stands
     quite still, thinking.  Then going to the photograph, she stares
     up at it.]

MRS. BRADMERE.  You baggage!

     [STRANGWAY has come in noiselessly, and is standing just behind
     her.  She turns, and sees him.  There is something so still, so
     startlingly still in his figure and white face, that she cannot
     for the moment fond her voice.]

MRS. BRADMERE.  [At last]  This is most distressing.  I'm deeply
sorry.  [Then, as he does not answer, she goes a step closer]  I'm an
old woman; and old women must take liberties, you know, or they
couldn't get on at all.  Come now!  Let's try and talk it over calmly
and see if we can't put things right.

STRANGWAY.  You were very good to come; but I would rather not.

MRS. BRADMERE.  I know you're in as grievous trouble as a man can be.

STRANGWAY.  Yes.

MRS. BRADMERE.  [With a little sound of sympathy]  What are you--
thirty-five?  I'm sixty-eight if I'm a day--old enough to be your
mother.  I can feel what you must have been through all these months,
I can indeed.  But you know you've gone the wrong way to work.  We
aren't angels down here below!  And a son of the Church can't act as
if for himself alone.  The eyes of every one are on him.

STRANGWAY.  [Taking the church key from the window.]  Take this,
please.

MRS. BRADMERE.  No, no, no!  Jarland deserved all he got.  You had
great provocation.

STRANGWAY.  It's not Jarland.  [Holding out the key]  Please take it
to the Rector.  I beg his forgiveness.  [Touching his breast]
There's too much I can't speak of--can't make plain.  Take it to him,
please.

MRS. BRADMERE.  Mr. Strangway--I don't accept this.  I am sure my
husband--the Church--will never accept----

STRANGWAY.  Take it!

MRS. BRADMERE.  [Almost unconsciously taking it]  Mind!  We don't
accept it.  You must come and talk to the Rector to-morrow.  You're
overwrought.  You'll see it all in another light, then.

STRANGWAY.  [With a strange smile]  Perhaps.  [Lifting the blind]
Beautiful night!  Couldn't be more beautiful!

MRS. BRADMERE.  [Startled-softly]  Don't turn sway from these who
want to help you!  I'm a grumpy old woman, but I can feel for you.
Don't try and keep it all back, like this!  A woman would cry, and it
would all seem clearer at once.  Now won't you let me----?

STRANGWAY.  No one can help, thank you.

MRS. BRADMERE.  Come!  Things haven't gone beyond mending, really, if
you'll face them.  [Pointing to the photograph]  You know what I
mean.  We dare not foster immorality.

STRANGWAY.  [Quivering as at a jabbed nerve]  Don't speak of that!

MRS. BRADMERE.  But think what you've done, Mr. Strangway!  If you
can't take your wife back, surely you must divorce her.  You can
never help her to go on like this in secret sin.

STRANGWAY.  Torture her--one way or the other?

MRS. BRADMERE.  No, no; I want you to do as the Church--as all
Christian society would wish.  Come!  You can't let this go on.  My
dear man, do your duty at all costs!

STRANGWAY.  Break her heart?

MRS. BRADMERE.  Then you love that woman--more than God!

STRANGWAY.  [His face quivering]  Love!

MRS. BRADMERE.  They told me----Yes, and I can see you're is a bad
way.  Come, pull yourself together!  You can't defend what you're
doing.

STRANGWAY.  I do not try.

MRS. BRADMERE.  I must get you to see!  My father was a clergyman;
I'm married to one; I've two sons in the Church.  I know what I'm
talking about.  It's a priest's business to guide the people's lives.

STRANGWAY.  [Very low]  But not mine!  No more!

MRS. BRADMERE.  [Looking at him shrewdly]  There's something very
queer about you to-night.  You ought to see doctor.

STRANGWAY.  [A smile awning and going on his lips] If I am not better
soon----

MRS. BRADMERE.  I know it must be terrible to feel that everybody----

     [A convulsive shiver passes over STRANGWAY, and he shrinks
     against the door]

But come!  Live it down!

     [With anger growing at his silence]

Live it down, man!  You can't desert your post--and let these
villagers do what they like with us?  Do you realize that you're
letting a woman, who has treated you abominably;--yes, abominably
--go scot-free, to live comfortably with another man? What an
example!

STRANGWAY.  Will you, please, not speak of that!

MRS. BRADMERE.  I must!  This great Church of ours is based on the
rightful condemnation of wrongdoing.  There are times when
forgiveness is a sin, Michael Strangway.  You must keep the whip
hand.  You must fight!

STRANGWAY.  Fight!  [Touching his heart]  My fight is here.  Have you
ever been in hell?  For months and months--burned and longed; hoped
against hope; killed a man in thought day by day?  Never rested, for
love and hate?  I--condemn!  I--judge!  No!  It's rest I have to
find--somewhere--somehow-rest!  And how--how can I find rest?

MRS. BRADMERE.  [Who has listened to his outburst in a soft of coma]
You are a strange man!  One of these days you'll go off your head if
you don't take care.

STRANGWAY.  [Smiling]  One of these days the flowers will grow out of
me; and I shall sleep.

     [MRS. BRADMERE stares at his smiling face a long moment in
     silence, then with a little sound, half sniff, half snort, she
     goes to the door.  There she halts.]

MRS. BRADMERE.  And you mean to let all this go on----Your wife----

STRANGWAY.  Go!  Please go!

MRS. BRADMERE.  Men like you have been buried at cross-roads before
now!  Take care!  God punishes!

STRANGWAY.  Is there a God?

MRS. BRADMERE.  Ah!  [With finality]  You must see a doctor.

     [Seeing that the look on his face does not change, she opens the
     door, and hurries away into the moonlight.]

     [STRANGWAY crosses the room to where his wife's picture hangs,
     and stands before it, his hands grasping the frame.  Then he
     takes it from the wall, and lays it face upwards on the window
     seat.]

STRANGWAY.  [To himself]  Gone!  What is there, now?

     [The sound of an owl's hooting is floating in, and of voices
     from the green outside the inn.]

STRANGWAY.  [To himself]  Gone!  Taken faith--hope--life!

     [JIM BERE comes wandering into the open doorway.]

JIM BERE.  Gude avenin', zurr.

     [At his slow gait, with his feeble smile, he comes in, and
     standing by the window-seat beside the long dark coat that still
     lies there, he looks down at STRANGWAY with his lost eyes.]

JIM.  Yu threw un out of winder.  I cud 'ave, once, I cud.

     [STRANGWAY neither moves nor speaks; and JIM BERE goes on with
     his unimaginably slow speech]

They'm laughin' at yu, zurr.  An' so I come to tell 'ee how to du.
'Twas full mune--when I caught 'em, him an' my girl.  I caught 'em.
[With a strange and awful flash of fire]  I did; an' I tuk un [He
taken up STRANGWAY'S coat and grips it with his trembling hands, as a
man grips another's neck]  like that--I tuk un.  As the coat falls,
like a body out of which the breath has been squeezed, STRANGWAY,
rising, catches it.

STRANGWAY.  [Gripping the coat]  And he fell!

     [He lets the coat fall on the floor, and puts his foot on it.
     Then, staggering back, he leans against the window.]

JIM.   Yu see, I loved 'er--I did.  [The lost look comes back to his
eyes]  Then somethin'--I dunno--and--and----[He lifts his hand and
passes it up and down his side]  Twas like this for ever.

     [They gaze at each other in silence.]

JIM.  [At last]  I come to tell yu.  They'm all laughin' at yu.  But
yu'm strong--yu go over to Durford to that doctor man, an' take un
like I did.  [He tries again to make the sign of squeezing a man's
neck]  They can't laugh at yu no more, then.  Tha's what I come to
tell yu.  Tha's the way for a Christian man to du.  Gude naight,
zurr.  I come to tell yee.

     [STRANGWAY motions to him in silence.  And, very slowly, JIM
     BERE passes out.]

     [The voices of men coming down the green are heard.]

VOICES.  Gude night, Tam.  Glide naight, old Jim!

VOICES.  Gude might, Mr. Trustaford.  'Tes a wonderful fine mune.

VOICE OF TRUSTAFORD.  Ah! 'Tes a brave mune for th' poor old curate!

VOICE.  "My 'eart 'E lighted not!"

     [TRUSTAFORD'S laugh, and the rattling, fainter and fainter, of
     wheels.  A spasm seizes on STRANGWAY'S face, as he stands there
     by the open door, his hand grips his throat; he looks from side
     to side, as if seeking a way of escape.]


                              CURTAIN.



SCENE II

     The BURLACOMBES' high and nearly empty barn.  A lantern is hung
     by a rope that lifts the bales of straw, to a long ladder
     leaning against a rafter.  This gives all the light there is,
     save for a slender track of moonlight, slanting in from the end,
     where the two great doors are not quite closed.  On a rude bench
     in front of a few remaining, stacked, square-cut bundles of last
     year's hay, sits TIBBY JARLAND, a bit of apple in her mouth,
     sleepily beating on a tambourine.  With stockinged feet GLADYS,
     IVY, CONNIE, and MERCY, TIM CLYST, and BOBBIE JARLAND, a boy of
     fifteen, are dancing a truncated "Figure of Eight"; and their
     shadow are dancing alongside on the walls.  Shoes and some
     apples have been thrown down close to the side door through
     which they have come in.  Now and then IVY, the smallest and
     best of the dancers, ejaculates words of direction, and one of
     the youths grunts or breathes loudly out of the confusion of his
     mind.  Save for this and the dumb beat and jingle of the sleepy
     tambourine, there is no sound.  The dance comes to its end, but
     the drowsy TIBBY goes on beating.

MERCY.  That'll du, Tibby; we're finished.  Ate yore apple.  [The
stolid TIBBY eats her apple.]

CLYST.  [In his teasing, excitable voice]  Yu maids don't dance
'elf's well as us du.  Bobbie 'e's a great dancer.  'E dance vine.
I'm a gude dancer, meself.

GLADYS.  A'n't yu conceited just?

CLYST.  Aw!  Ah! Yu'll give me kiss for that.  [He chases, but cannot
catch that slippery white figure]  Can't she glimmer!

MERCY.  Gladys!  Up ladder!

CLYST.  Yu go up ladder; I'll catch 'ee then.  Naw, yu maids, don't
yu give her succour.  That's not vair [Catching hold of MERCY, who
gives a little squeal.]

CONNIE.  Mercy, don't!  Mrs. Burlacombe'll hear.  Ivy, go an' peek.

     [Ivy goes to flee side door and peers through.]

CLYST.  [Abandoning the chase and picking up an apple--they all have
the joyous irresponsibility that attends forbidden doings]  Ya-as,
this is a gude apple.  Luke at Tibby!

     [TIBBY, overcome by drowsiness, has fallen back into the hay,
     asleep.  GLADYS, leaning against the hay breaks into humming:]

    "There cam' three dukes a-ridin', a-ridin', a-ridin',
     There cam' three dukes a ridin'
     With a ransy-tansy tay!"

CLYST.  Us 'as got on vine; us'll get prize for our dancin'.

CONNIE.  There won't be no prize if Mr. Strangway goes away.  'Tes
funny 'twas Mrs. Strangway start us.

IVY.  [From the door]  'Twas wicked to hiss him.

     [A moment's hush.]

CLYST.  Twasn't I.

BOBBIE.  I never did.

GLADYS.  Oh!  Bobbie, yu did!  Yu blew in my ear.

CLYST.  'Twas the praaper old wind in the trees.  Did make a brave
noise, zurely.

MERCY.  'E shuld'n' 'a let my skylark go.

CLYST.  [Out of sheer contradictoriness]  Ya-as, 'e shude, then.
What du yu want with th' birds of the air?  They'm no gude to yu.

IVY.  [Mournfully]  And now he's goin' away.

CLYST.  Ya-as; 'tes a pity.  He's the best man I ever seen since I
was comin' from my mother.  He's a gude man.  He'em got a zad face,
sure enough, though.

IVY.  Gude folk always 'ave zad faces.

CLYST.  I knu a gude man--'e sold pigs--very gude man: 'e 'ad a
budiful bright vase like the mane. [Touching his stomach]  I was sad,
meself, once.  'Twas a funny scrabblin'--like feelin'.

GLADYS.  If 'e go away, whu's goin' to finish us for confirmation?

CONNIE.  The Rector and the old grey mare.

MERCY.  I don' want no more finishin'; I'm confirmed enough.

CLYST.  Ya-as; yu'm a buty.

GLADYS.  Suppose we all went an' asked 'im not to go?

IVY.  'Twouldn't be no gude.

CONNIE.  Where's 'e goin'?

MERCY.  He'll go to London, of course.

IVY.  He's so gentle; I think 'e'll go to an island, where there's
nothin' but birds and beasts and flowers.

CLYST.  Aye!  He'm awful fond o' the dumb things.

IVY.  They're kind and peaceful; that's why.

CLYST.  Aw! Yu see tu praaper old tom cats; they'm not to peaceful,
after that, nor kind naighther.

BOBBIE.  [Surprisingly]  If 'e's sad, per'aps 'e'll go to 'Eaven.

IVY.  Oh!  not yet, Bobbie.  He's tu young.

CLYST.  [Following his own thoughts]  Ya-as.  'Tes a funny place, tu,
nowadays, judgin' from the papers.

GLADYS.  Wonder if there's dancin' in 'Eaven?

IVY.  There's beasts, and flowers, and waters, and 'e told us.

CLYST.  Naw!  There's no dumb things in 'Eaven.  Jim Bere 'e says
there is!  'E thinks 'is old cat's there.

IVY.  Yes.  [Dreamily]  There's stars, an' owls, an' a man playin' on
the flute.  Where 'tes gude, there must be music.

CLYST.  Old brass band, shuldn' wonder, like th' Salvation Army.

IVY.  [Putting up her hands to an imaginary pipe]  No; 'tis a boy
that goes so; an' all the dumb things an' all the people goo after
'im--like this.

     [She marches slowly, playing her imaginary pipe, and one by one
     they all fall in behind her, padding round the barn in their
     stockinged feet.  Passing the big doors, IVY throws them open.]

An' 'tes all like that in 'Eaven.

     [She stands there gazing out, still playing on her imaginary
     pipe.  And they all stand a moment silent, staring into the
     moonlight.]

CLYST.  'Tes a glory-be full mune to-night!

IVY.  A goldie-cup--a big one.  An' millions o' little goldie-cups on
the floor of 'Eaven.

MERCY.  Oh!  Bother 'Eaven!  Let's dance "Clapperclaws"!  Wake up,
Tibby!

GLADYS.  Clapperelaws, clapperclaws!  Come on, Bobbie--make circle!

CLYST.  Clapperclaws!  I dance that one fine.

IVY.  [Taking the tambourine]  See, Tibby; like this.  She hums and
beats gently, then restores the tambourine to the sleepy TIBBY, who,
waking, has placed a piece of apple in her mouth.

CONNIE.  'Tes awful difficult, this one.

IVY.  [Illustrating]  No; yu just jump, an' clap yore 'ands.  Lovely,
lovely!

CLYST.  Like ringin' bells!  Come ahn!

     [TIBBY begins her drowsy beating, IVY hums the tune; they dance,
     and their shadows dance again upon the walls.  When she has
     beaten but a few moments on the tambourine, TIBBY is overcome
     once more by sleep and falls back again into her nest of hay,
     with her little shoed feet just visible over the edge of the
     bench.  Ivy catches up the tambourine, and to her beating and
     humming the dancers dance on.]

     [Suddenly GLADYS stops like a wild animal surprised, and cranes
     her neck towards the aide door.]

CONNIE.  [Whispering]  What is it?

GLADYS.  [Whispering]  I hear--some one comin' across the yard.

     [She leads a noiseless scamper towards the shoes.  BOBBIE
     JARLAND shins up the ladder and seizes the lantern.  Ivy drops
     the tambourine.  They all fly to the big doors, and vanish into
     the moonlight, pulling the door nearly to again after them.]

     [There is the sound of scrabbling at the hitch of the side door,
     and STRANGWAY comes into the nearly dark barn.  Out in the night
     the owl is still hooting.  He closes the door, and that sound is
     lost.  Like a man walking in his sleep, he goes up to the
     ladder, takes the rope in his hand, and makes a noose.  He can
     be heard breathing, and in the darkness the motions of his hands
     are dimly seen, freeing his throat and putting the noose round
     his neck.  He stands swaying to and fro at the foot of the
     ladder; then, with a sigh, sets his foot on it to mount.  One of
     the big doors creaks and opens in the wind, letting in a broad
     path of moonlight.]

     [STRANGWAY stops; freeing his neck from the noose, he walks
     quickly up the track of moonlight, whitened from head to foot,
     to close the doors.]

     [The sound of his boots on the bare floor has awakened TIBBY
     JARLAND.  Struggling out of her hay nest she stands staring at
     his whitened figure, and bursts suddenly into a wail.]

TIBBY.  O-oh!  Mercy!  Where are yu?  I'm frightened!  I'm
frightened!  O-oooo!

STRANGWAY.  [Turning--startled]  Who's that?  Who is it?

TIBBY.  O-oh!  A ghosty!  Oo-ooo!

STRANGWAY.  [Going to her quickly]  It's me, Tibby--Tib only me!

TIBBY.  I seed a ghosty.

STRANGWAY.  [Taking her up]  No, no, my bird, you didn't!  It was
me.

TIBBY.  [Burying her face against him]  I'm frighted.  It was a big
one.  [She gives tongue again]  O-o-oh!

STRANGWAY.  There, there!  It's nothing but me.  Look!

TIBBY.  No. [She peeps out all the same.]

STRANGWAY.  See!  It's the moonlight made me all white.  See!  You're
a brave girl now?

TIBBY.  [Cautiously]  I want my apple.

     [She points towards her nest.  STRANGWAY carries her there,
     picks up an apple, and gives it her.  TIBBY takes a bite.]

TIBBY.  I want any tambourine.

STRANGWAY.  [Giving her the tambourine, and carrying her back into
the' track of moonlight]  Now we're both ghosties!  Isn't it funny?

TABBY. [Doubtfully]  Yes.

STRANGWAY.  See!  The moon's laughing at us!  See?  Laugh then!

     [TABBY, tambourine in one hand and apple in the other, smiles
     stolidly.  He sets her down on the ladder, and stands, holding
     her level With him.]

TABBY.  [Solemnly]  I'se still frightened.

STRANGWAY.  No!  Full moon, Tibby!  Shall we wish for it?

TABBY.  Full mune.

STRANGWAY.  Moon!  We're wishing for you.  Moon, moon!

TIBBY.  Mune, we're wishin' for yu!

STRANGWAY.  What do, you wish it to be?

TIBBY.  Bright new shillin'!

STRANGWAY.  A face.

TIBBY.  Shillin', a shillin'!

STRANGWAY.  [Taking out a shilling and spinning it so that it falls
into her pinafore]  See!  Your wish comes true.

TIBBY.  Oh!  [Putting the shilling in her mouth]  Mune's still there!

STRANGWAY.  Wish for me, Tibby!

TIBBY.  Mune.  I'm wishin' for yu!

STRANGWAY.  Not yet!

TIBBY.  Shall I shake my tambouline?

STRANGWAY.  Yes, shake your tambouline.

TIBBY.  [Shaking her tambourine]  Mune, I'm shaken' at yu.

     [STRANGWAY lays his hand suddenly on the rope, and swings it up
     on to the beam.]

TIBBY.  What d'yu du that for?

STRANGWAY.  To put it out of reach.  It's better----

TIBBY.  Why is it better?  [She stares up at him.]

STRANGWAY.  Come along, Tibby!  [He carries her to the big doors, and
sets her down]  See!  All asleep!  The birds, and the fields, and the
moon!

TIBBY.  Mune, mune, we're wishing for yu!

STRANGWAY.  Send her your love, and say good-night.

TIBBY.  [Blowing a kiss]  Good-night, mune!

     [From the barn roof a little white dove's feather comes floating
     down in the wind.  TIBBY follows it with her hand, catches it,
     and holds it up to him.]

TIBBY.  [Chuckling]  Luke.  The mune's sent a bit o' love!

STRANGWAY.  [Taking the feather]  Thank you, Tibby!  I want that bit
o' love.  [Very faint, comes the sound of music]  Listen!

TIBBY.  It's Miss Willis, playin' on the pianny!

STRANGWAY.  No; it's Love; walking and talking in the world.

TIBBY.  [Dubiously]  Is it?

STRANGWAY.  [Pointing]  See!  Everything coming out to listen!  See
them, Tibby!  All the little things with pointed ears, children, and
birds, and flowers, and bunnies; and the bright rocks, and--men!
Hear their hearts beating!  And the wind listening!

TIBBY.  I can't hear--nor I can't see!

STRANGWAY.  Beyond----[To himself]  They are--they must be; I swear
they are!  [Then, catching sight of TIBBY'S amazed eyes]  And now say
good-bye to me.

TIBBY.  Where yu goin'?

STRANGWAY.  I don't know, Tibby.

VOICE OF MERCY.  [Distant and cautious]  Tibby!  Tibby!  Where are
yu?

STRANGWAY.  Mercy calling; run to her!

     [TIBBY starts off, turns back and lifts her face.  He bends to
     kiss her, and flinging her arms round his neck, she gives him a
     good hug.  Then, knuckling the sleep out of her eyes, she runs.]

     [STRANGWAY stands, uncertain.  There is a sound of heavy
     footsteps; a man clears his throat, close by.]

STRANGWAY.  Who's that?

CREMER.  Jack Cremer.  [The big man's figure appears out of the
shadow of the barn]  That yu, zurr?

STRANGWAY.  Yes, Jack.  How goes it?

CREMER.  'Tes empty, zurr.  But I'll get on some'ow.

STRANGWAY.  You put me to shame.

CREMER.  No, zurr.  I'd be killin' meself, if I didn' feel I must
stick it, like yu zaid.

     [They stand gazing at each other in the moonlight.]

STRANGWAY.  [Very low]  I honour you.

CREMER.  What's that?  [Then, as STRANGWAY does not answer]  I'll
just be walkin'--I won' be gain' 'ome to-night.  'Tes the full mune--
lucky.

STRANGWAY.  [Suddenly]  Wait for me at the crossroads, Jack.  I'll
come with you.  Will you have me, brother?

CREMER.  Sure!

STRANGWAY.  Wait, then.

CREMER.  Aye, zurr.

     [With his heavy tread CREMER passes on.  And STRANGWAY leans
     against the lintel of the door, looking at the moon, that, quite
     full and golden, hangs not far above the straight horizon, where
     the trees stand small, in a row.]

STRANGWAY.  [Lifting his hand in the gesture of prayer]  God, of the
moon and the sun; of joy and beauty, of loneliness and sorrow--give
me strength to go on, till I love every living thing!

     [He moves away, following JACK CREMER.  The full moon shines;
     the owl hoots; and some one is shaking TIBBY'S tambourine.]





End of this Project Gutenberg Etext of A BIT 'O LOVE, by John Galsworthy






THE FOUNDATIONS

(AN EXTRAVAGANT PLAY)



PERSONS OF THE PLAY

LORD WILLIAM DROMONDY, M.P.
LADY WILLIAM DROMONDY
LITTLE ANNE
MISS STOKES
MR. POULDER
JAMES
HENRY
THOMAS
CHARLES
THE PRESS
LEMMY
OLD MRS. LEMMY
LITTLE AIDA
THE DUKE OF EXETER

Some ANTI-SWEATERS; Some SWEATED WORKERS; and a CROWD




SCENES

SCENE I.  The cellar at LORD WILLIAM DROMONDY'S in Park Lane.

SCENE II.  The room of old MRS. LEMMY in Bethnal Green.

SCENE III.  Ante-room of the hall at LORD WILLIAM DROMONDY'S



The Action passes continuously between 8 and 10.30 of a
summer evening, some years after the Great War.




ACT I


LORD WILLIAM DROMONDY'S mansion in Park Lane.  Eight o'clock of the
evening.  LITTLE ANNE DROMONDY and the large footman, JAMES, gaunt
and grin, discovered in the wine cellar, by light of gas.  JAMES, in
plush breeches, is selecting wine.

L. ANNE: James, are you really James?

JAMES.  No, my proper name's John.

L. ANNE.  Oh!  [A pause]  And is Charles's an improper name too?

JAMES.  His proper name's Mark.

L. ANNE.  Then is Thomas Matthew?

JAMES.  Miss Anne, stand clear o' that bin.  You'll put your foot
through one o' those 'ock bottles.

L. ANNE.  No, but James--Henry might be Luke, really?

JAMES.  Now shut it, Miss Anne!

L. ANNE.  Who gave you those names?  Not your godfathers and
godmothers?

JAMES.  Poulder.  Butlers think they're the Almighty.  [Gloomily]
But his name's Bartholomew.

L. ANNE.  Bartholomew Poulder?  It's rather jolly.

JAMES.  It's hidjeous.

L. ANNE.  Which do you like to be called--John or James?

JAMES.  I don't give a darn.

L. ANNE.  What is a darn?

JAMES.  'Tain't in the dictionary.

L. ANNE.  Do you like my name?  Anne Dromondy?  It's old, you know.
But it's funny, isn't it?

JAMES.  [Indifferently]  It'll pass.

L. ANNE.  How many bottles have you got to pick out?

JAMES.  Thirty-four.

L. ANNE.  Are they all for the dinner, or for the people who come in
to the Anti-Sweating Meeting afterwards?

JAMES.  All for the dinner.  They give the Sweated--tea.

L. ANNE.  All for the dinner?  They'll drink too much, won't they?

JAMES.  We've got to be on the safe side.

L. ANNE.  Will it be safer if they drink too much?

     [JAMES pauses in the act of dusting a bottle to look at her, as
     if suspecting irony.]

[Sniffing]  Isn't the smell delicious here-like the taste of cherries
when they've gone bad--[She sniffs again] and mushrooms; and boot
blacking.

JAMES.  That's the escape of gas.

L. ANNE.  Has the plumber's man been?

JAMES.  Yes.

L. ANNE.  Which one?

JAMES.  Little blighter I've never seen before.

L. ANNE.  What is a little blighter?  Can I see?

JAMES.  He's just gone.

L. ANNE.  [Straying]  Oh!  .  .  .  James, are these really the
foundations?

JAMES.  You might 'arf say so.  There's a lot under a woppin' big
house like this; you can't hardly get to the bottom of it.

L. ANNE.  Everything's built on something, isn't it?  And what's THAT
built on?

JAMES.  Ask another.

L. ANNE.  If you wanted to blow it up, though, you'd have to begin
from here, wouldn't you?

JAMES.  Who'd want to blow it up?

L. ANNE.  It would make a mess in Park Lane.

JAMES.  I've seen a lot bigger messes than this'd make, out in the
war.

L. ANNE.  Oh!  but that's years ago!  Was it like this in the
trenches, James?

JAMES.  [Grimly]  Ah!  'Cept that you couldn't lay your 'and on a
bottle o' port when you wanted one.

L. ANNE.  Do you, when you want it, here?

JAMES.  [On guard]  I only suggest it's possible.

L. ANNE.  Perhaps Poulder does.

JAMES.  [Icily]  I say nothin' about that.

L. ANNE.  Oh!  Do say something!

JAMES.  I'm ashamed of you, Miss Anne, pumpin' me!

L. ANNE.  [Reproachfully]  I'm not pumpin'!  I only want to make
Poulder jump when I ask him.

JAMES.  [Grinning]  Try it on your own responsibility, then; don't
bring me in!

L. ANNE.  [Switching off]  James, do you think there's going to be a
bloody revolution?

JAMES.  [Shocked]  I shouldn't use that word, at your age.

L. ANNE.  Why not?  Daddy used it this morning to Mother.
[Imitating]  "The country's in an awful state, darling; there's going
to be a bloody revolution, and we shall all be blown sky-high."  Do
you like Daddy?

JAMES.  [Taken aback]  Like Lord William?  What do you think?  We
chaps would ha' done anything for him out there in the war.

L. ANNE.  He never says that he always says he'd have done anything
for you!

JAMES.  Well--that's the same thing.

L. ANNE.  It isn't--it's the opposite.  What is class hatred, James?

JAMES.  [Wisely]  Ah!  A lot o' people thought when the war was over
there'd be no more o' that.  [He sniggers]  Used to amuse me to read
in the papers about the wonderful unity that was comin'.  I could ha'
told 'em different.

L. ANNE.  Why should people hate?  I like everybody.

JAMES.  You know such a lot o' people, don't you?

L. ANNE.  Well, Daddy likes everybody, and Mother likes everybody,
except the people who don't like Daddy.  I bar Miss Stokes, of
course; but then, who wouldn't?

JAMES.  [With a touch of philosophy]  That's right--we all bars them
that tries to get something out of us.

L. ANNE.  Who do you bar, James?

JAMES.  Well--[Enjoying the luxury of thought]--Speaking generally, I
bar everybody that looks down their noses at me.  Out there in the
trenches, there'd come a shell, and orf'd go some orficer's head, an'
I'd think: That might ha' been me--we're all equal in the sight o'
the stars.  But when I got home again among the torfs, I says to
meself: Out there, ye know, you filled a hole as well as me; but here
you've put it on again, with mufti.

L. ANNE.  James, are your breeches made of mufti?

JAMES.  [Contemplating his legs with a certain contempt]  Ah!
Footmen were to ha' been off; but Lord William was scared we wouldn't
get jobs in the rush.  We're on his conscience, and it's on my
conscience that I've been on his long enough--so, now I've saved a
bit, I'm goin' to take meself orf it.

L. ANNE.  Oh!  Are you going?  Where?

JAMES.  [Assembling the last bottles]  Out o' Blighty!

L. ANNE.  Is a little blighter a little Englishman?

JAMES.  [Embarrassed]  Well-'e can be.

L. ANNE [Mining]  James--we're quite safe down here, aren't we, in a
revolution?  Only, we wouldn't have fun.  Which would you rather--be
safe, or have fun?

JAMES.  [Grimly]  Well, I had my bit o' fun in the war.

L. ANNE.  I like fun that happens when you're not looking.

JAMES.  Do you?  You'd ha' been just suited.

L. ANNE.  James, is there a future life?  Miss Stokes says so.

JAMES.  It's a belief, in the middle classes.

L. ANNE.  What are the middle classes?

JAMES.  Anything from two 'undred a year to supertax.

L. ANNE.  Mother says they're terrible.  Is Miss Stokes middle class?

JAMES.  Yes.

L. ANNE.  Then I expect they are terrible.  She's awfully virtuous,
though, isn't she?

JAMES.  'Tisn't so much the bein' virtuous, as the lookin' it, that's
awful.

L. ANNE.  Are all the middle classes virtuous?  Is Poulder?

JAMES.  [Dubiously]  Well.  Ask him!

L. ANNE.  Yes, I will.  Look!

     [From an empty bin on the ground level she picks up a lighted
     taper,--burnt almost to the end.]

JAMES.  [Contemplating it]  Careless!

L.  Ate.  Oh!  And look!  [She paints to a rounded metal object lying
in the bin, close to where the taper was]  It's a bomb!

She is about to pick it up when JAMES takes her by the waist and puts
her aside.

JAMES.  [Sternly]  You stand back, there!  I don't like the look o'
that!

L. ANNE.  [With intense interest]  Is it really a bomb?  What fun!

JAMES.  Go and fetch Poulder while I keep an eye on it.

L. ANNE.  [On tiptoe of excitement]  If only I can make him jump!
Oh, James!  we needn't put the light out, need we?

JAMES.  No.  Clear off and get him, and don't you come back.

L. ANNE.  Oh! but I must!  I found it!

JAMES.  Cut along.

L. ANNE.  Shall we bring a bucket?

JAMES.  Yes.  [ANNE flies off.]

[Gazing at the object]  Near go!  Thought I'd seen enough o'them
to last my time.  That little gas blighter!  He looked a rum 'un,
too--one o' these 'ere Bolshies.

     [In the presence of this grim object the habits of the past are
     too much for him.  He sits on the ground, leaning against one of
     the bottle baskets, keeping his eyes on the bomb, his large,
     lean, gorgeous body spread, one elbow on his plush knee.  Taking
     out an empty pipe, he places it mechanically, bowl down, between
     his dips.  There enter, behind him, as from a communication
     trench, POULDER, in swallow-tails, with LITTLE ANNE behind him.]

L. ANNE.  [Peering round him--ecstatic]  Hurrah!  Not gone off yet!
It can't--can it--while James is sitting on it?

POULDER.  [Very broad and stout, with square shoulders,--a large
ruddy face, and a small mouth]  No noise, Miss.--James.

JAMES.  Hallo!

POULDER.  What's all this?

JAMES.  Bomb!

POULDER.  Miss Anne, off you go, and don't you----

L. ANNE.  Come back again!  I know!  [She flies.]

JAMES.  [Extending his hand with the pipe in it]  See!

POULDER.  [Severely]  You've been at it again!  Look here, you're not
in the trenches now.  Get up!  What are your breeches goin' to be
like?  You might break a bottle any moment!

JAMES.  [Rising with a jerk to a sort of "Attention!"]  Look here,
you starched antiquity, you and I and that bomb are here in the sight
of the stars.  If you don't look out I'll stamp on it and blow us all
to glory!  Drop your civilian swank!

POULDER.  [Seeing red]  Ho!  Because you had the privilege of
fightin' for your country you still think you can put it on, do you?
Take up your wine! 'Pon my word, you fellers have got no nerve left!

     [JAMES makes a sudden swoop, lifts the bomb and poises it in
     both hands.  POULDER recoils against a bin and gazes, at the
     object.]

JAMES.  Put up your hands!

POULDER.  I defy you to make me ridiculous.

JAMES.  [Fiercely]  Up with 'em!

     [POULDER'S hands go up in an uncontrollable spasm, which he
     subdues almost instantly, pulling them down again.]

JAMES.  Very good. [He lowers the bomb.]

POULDER.  [Surprised] I never lifted 'em.

JAMES.  You'd have made a first-class Boche, Poulder.  Take the bomb
yourself; you're in charge of this section.

POULDER.  [Pouting]  It's no part of my duty to carry menial objects;
if you're afraid of it I'll send 'Enry.

JAMES.  Afraid!  You 'Op o' me thumb!

     [From the "communication trench" appears LITTLE ANNE, followed
     by a thin, sharp, sallow-faced man of thirty-five or so, and
     another FOOTMAN, carrying a wine-cooler.]

L. ANNE.  I've brought the bucket, and the Press.

PRESS.  [In front of POULDER'S round eyes and mouth]  Ah, major domo,
I was just taking the names of the Anti-Sweating dinner.  [He catches
sight of the bomb in JAMES'S hand]  By George!  What A.1. irony!  [He
brings out a note-book and writes]  "Highest class dining to relieve
distress of lowest class-bombed by same!"  Tipping!  [He rubs his
hands].

POULDER.  [Drawing himself up]  Sir?  This is present!  [He indicates
ANNE with the flat of his hand.]

L. ANNE.  I found the bomb.

PRESS.  [Absorbed]  By Jove!  This is a piece of luck!  [He writes.]

POULDER.  [Observing him]  This won't do--it won't do at all!

PRESS.  [Writing-absorbed]  "Beginning of the British Revolution!"

POULDER.  [To JAMES]  Put it in the cooler.  'Enry, 'old up the
cooler.  Gently!  Miss Anne, get be'ind the Press.

JAMES.  [Grimly--holding the bomb above the cooler]  It won't be the
Press that'll stop Miss Anne's goin' to 'Eaven if one o' this sort
goes off.  Look out!  I'm goin' to drop it.

     [ALL recoil.  HENRY puts the cooler down and backs away.]

L. ANNE.  [Dancing forward]  Oh!  Let me see!  I missed all the war,
you know!

     [JAMES lowers the bomb into the cooler.]

POULDER.  [Regaining courage--to THE PRESS, who is scribbling in his
note-book]  If you mention this before the police lay their hands on
it, it'll be contempt o' Court.

PRESS.  [Struck]  I say, major domo, don't call in the police!
That's the last resort.  Let me do the Sherlocking for you.  Who's
been down here?

L. ANNE.  The plumber's man about the gas---a little blighter we'd
never seen before.

JAMES.  Lives close by, in Royal Court Mews--No. 3.  I had a word
with him before he came down.  Lemmy his name is.

PRESS.  "Lemmy!" [Noting the address] Right-o!

L. ANNE.  Oh!  Do let me come with you!

POULDER.  [Barring the way]  I've got to lay it all before Lord
William.

PRESS.  Ah!  What's he like?

POULDER.  [With dignity]  A gentleman, sir.

PRESS.  Then he won't want the police in.

POULDER.  Nor the Press, if I may go so far, as to say so.

PRESS.  One to you!  But I defy you to keep this from the Press,
major domo: This is the most significant thing that has happened in
our time.  Guy Fawkes is nothing to it.  The foundations of Society
reeling!  By George, it's a second Bethlehem!

     [He writes.]

POULDER.  [To JAMES] Take up your wine and follow me.  'Enry, bring
the cooler.  Miss Anne, precede us.  [To THE PRESS]  You defy me?
Very well; I'm goin' to lock you up here.

PRESS.  [Uneasy]  I say this is medieval.

     [He attempts to pass.]

POULDER.  [Barring the way]  Not so!  James, put him up in that empty
'ock bin.  We can't have dinner disturbed in any way.

JAMES.  [Putting his hands on THE PRESS'S shoulders]  Look here--go
quiet!  I've had a grudge against you yellow newspaper boys ever
since the war--frothin' up your daily hate, an' makin' the Huns
desperate.  You nearly took my life five hundred times out there.  If
you squeal, I'm gain' to take yours once--and that'll be enough.

PRESS.  That's awfully unjust.  Im not yellow!

JAMES.  Well, you look it.  Hup.

PRESS. Little Lady-Anne, haven't you any authority with these
fellows?

L. ANNE.  [Resisting Poulard's pressure]  I won't go!  I simply must
see James put him up!

PRESS.  Now, I warn you all plainly--there'll be a leader on this.

     [He tries to bolt but is seized by JAMES.]

JAMES.  [Ironically]  Ho!

PRESS.  My paper has the biggest influence

JAMES.  That's the one!  Git up in that 'ock bin, and mind your feet
among the claret.

PRESS.  This is an outrage on the Press.

JAMES.  Then it'll wipe out one by the Press on the Public--an' leave
just a million over!  Hup!

POULDER.  'Enry, give 'im an 'and.

     [THE PRESS mounts, assisted by JAMES and HENRY.]

L. ANNE.  [Ecstatic]  It's lovely!

POULDER.  [Nervously]  Mind the '87!  Mind!

JAMES.  Mind your feet in Mr. Poulder's favourite wine!

     [A WOMAN'S voice is heard, as from the depths of a cave, calling
     "Anne!  Anne!"]

L. ANNE.  [Aghast]  Miss Stokes--I must hide!

     [She gets behind POULDER.  The three Servants achieve dignified
     positions in front of the bins.  The voice comes nearer.  THE
     PRESS sits dangling his feet, grinning.  MISS STOKES appears.
     She is woman of forty-five and terribly good manners.  Her
     greyish hair is rolled back off her forehead.  She is in a high
     evening dress, and in the dim light radiates a startled
     composure.]

MISS STOKES.  Poulder, where is Miss Anne?

     [ANNE lays hold of the backs of his legs.]

POULDER.  [Wincing]  I am not in a position to inform you, Miss.

MISS S.  They told me she was down here.  And what is all this about
a bomb?

POULDER.  [Lifting his hand in a calming manner]  The crisis is past;
we have it in ice, Miss.  'Enry, show Miss Stokes!  [HENRY indicates
the cooler.]

MISS S.  Good gracious!  Does Lord William know?

POULDER.  Not at present, Miss.

MISS S.  But he ought to, at once.

POULDER.  We 'ave 'ad complications.

MISS S.  [Catching sight of the legs of THE PRESS]  Dear me!  What
are those?

JAMES.  [Gloomily]  The complications.

     [MISS STOKES pins up her glasses and stares at them.]

PRESS.  [Cheerfully]  Miss Stokes, would you kindly tell Lord William
I'm here from the Press, and would like to speak to him?

MISS S.  But--er--why are you up there?

JAMES.  'E got up out o' remorse, Miss.

MISS S.  What do you mean, James?

PRESS.  [Warmly]  Miss Stokes, I appeal to you.  Is it fair to
attribute responsibility to an unsigned journalist--for what he has
to say?

JAMES.  [Sepulchrally]  Yes, when you've got 'im in a nice dark
place.

MISS. S.   James, be more respectful!  We owe the Press a very great
debt.

JAMES.  I'm goin' to pay it, Miss.

MISS S.  [At a loss]  Poulder, this is really most----

POULDER.  I'm bound to keep the Press out of temptation, miss, till
I've laid it all before Lord William.  'Enry, take up the cooler.
James, watch 'im till we get clear, then bring on the rest of the
wine and lock up.  Now, Miss.

MISS S.  But where is Anne?

PRESS.  Miss Stokes, as a lady----!

MISS S.  I shall go and fetch Lord William!

POULDER.  We will all go, Miss.

L. ANNE.  [Rushing out from behind his legs]  No--me!

     [She eludes MISS STOKES and vanishes, followed by that
     distracted but still well-mannered lady.]

POULDER.  [Looking at his watch]  'Enry, leave the cooler, and take
up the wine; tell Thomas to lay it out; get the champagne into ice,
and 'ave Charles 'andy in the 'all in case some literary bounder
comes punctual.

     [HENRY takes up the wine and goes.]

PRESS.  [Above his head]  I say, let me down.  This is a bit
undignified, you know.  My paper's a great organ.

POULDER. [After a moment's hesitation]  Well--take 'im down, James;
he'll do some mischief among the bottles.

JAMES.  'Op off your base, and trust to me.

     [THE, PRESS slides off the bin's edge, is received by JAMES, and
     not landed gently.]

POULDER.  [Contemplating him]  The incident's closed; no ill-feeling,
I hope?

PRESS.  No-o.

POULDER.  That's right.  [Clearing his throat]  While we're waitin'
for Lord William--if you're interested in wine--[Philosophically]
you can read the history of the times in this cellar.  Take 'ock: [He
points to a bin]  Not a bottle gone.  German product, of course.
Now, that 'ock is 'sa 'avin' the time of its life--maturin' grandly;
got a wonderful chance.  About the time we're bringin' ourselves to
drink it, we shall be havin' the next great war.  With luck that 'ock
may lie there another quarter of a century, and a sweet pretty wine
it'll be.  I only hope I may be here to drink it.  Ah! [He shakes his
head]--but look at claret!  Times are hard on claret.  We're givin'
it an awful doin'.  Now, there's a Ponty Canny [He points to a bin]-
if we weren't so 'opelessly allied with France, that wine would have
a reasonable future.  As it is--none!  We drink it up and up; not
more than sixty dozen left.  And where's its equal to come from for a
dinner wine--ah!  I ask you?  On the other hand, port is steady; made
in a little country, all but the cobwebs and the old boot flavour;
guaranteed by the British Nary; we may 'ope for the best with port.
Do you drink it?

PRESS.  When I get the chance.

POULDER.  Ah! [Clears his throat]  I've often wanted to ask: What do
they pay you--if it's not indelicate?

[THE PRESS shrugs his shoulders.]

Can you do it at the money?

[THE PRESS shakes his head.]  Still--it's an easy life!  I've
regretted sometimes that I didn't have a shot at it myself;
influencin' other people without disclosin' your identity--something
very attractive about that.  [Lowering his voice]  Between man and
man, now-what do you think of the situation of the country--these
processions of the unemployed--the Red Flag an' the Marsillaisy in
the streets--all this talk about an upheaval?

PRESS.  Well, speaking as a Socialist----

POULDER. [Astounded] Why; I thought your paper was Tory!

PRESS.  So it is.  That's nothing!

POULDER.  [Open-mouthed]  Dear me!  [Pointing to the bomb] Do you
really think there's something in this?

JAMES.  [Sepulchrally]  'Igh explosive.

PRESS.  [Taking out his note-book]  Too much, anyway, to let it drop.

     [A pleasant voice calls "Poulder! Hallo!".]

POULDER.  [Forming a trumpet with his hand]  Me Lord!

     [As LORD WILLIAM appears, JAMES, overcome by reminiscences;
     salutes, and is mechanically answered.  LORD WILLIAM has
     "charm."  His hair and moustache are crisp and just beginning to
     grizzle.  His bearing is free, easy, and only faintly armoured.
     He will go far to meet you any day.  He is in full evening
     dress.]

LORD W.  [Cheerfully]  I say, Poulder, what have you and James been
doing to the Press?  Liberty of the Press--it isn't what it was, but
there is a limit.  Where is he?

     [He turns to Jams between whom and himself there is still the
     freemasonry of the trenches.]

JAMES.  [Pointing to POULDER]  Be'ind the parapet, me Lord.

     [THE PRESS mopes out from where he has involuntarily been.
     screened by POULDER, who looks at JAMES severely.  LORD WILLIAM
     hides a smile.]

PRESS.  Very glad to meet you, Lord William.  My presence down here
is quite involuntary.

LORD W.  [With a charming smile]  I know.  The Press has to put its--
er--to go to the bottom of everything.  Where's this bomb, Poulder?
Ah!

     [He looks into the wine cooler.]

PRESS.  [Taking out his note-book]  Could I have a word with you on
the crisis, before dinner, Lord William?

LORD W.  It's time you and James were up, Poulder.  [Indicating the
cooler]  Look after this; tell Lady William I'll be there in a
minute.

POULDER.  Very good, me Lord.

     [He goes, followed by JAMES carrying the cooler.]

     [As THE PRESS turns to look after them, LORD WILLIAM catches
     sight of his back.]

LORD W.  I must apologise, sir.  Can I brush you?

PRESS.  [Dusting himself]  Thanks; it's only behind.  [He opens his
note-book]  Now, Lord William, if you'd kindly outline your views on
the national situation; after such a narrow escape from death, I feel
they might have a moral effect.  My paper, as you know, is concerned
with--the deeper aspect of things.  By the way, what do you value
your house and collection at?

LORD W.  [Twisting his little mustache]  Really: I can't!  Really!

PRESS.  Might I say a quarter of a million-lifted in two seconds and
a half-hundred thousand to the second.  It brings it home, you know.

LORD W.  No, no; dash it!  No!

PRESS.  [Disappointed]  I see--not draw attention to your property in
the present excited state of public feeling?  Well, suppose we
approach it from the viewpoint of the Anti-Sweating dinner.  I have
the list of guests--very weighty!

LORD W.  Taken some lifting-wouldn't they?

PRESS.  [Seriously]  May I say that you designed the dinner to soften
the tension, at this crisis?  You saw that case, I suppose, this
morning, of the woman dying of starvation in Bethnal Green?

LORD W.  [Desperately]  Yes-yes!  I've been horribly affected.  I
always knew this slump would come after the war, sooner or later.

PRESS.  [Writing]  ".  .  .  had predicted slump."

LORD W.  You see, I've been an Anti-Sweating man for years, and I
thought if only we could come together now .  .  .  .

PRESS.  [Nodding]  I see--I see!  Get Society interested in the
Sweated, through the dinner.  I have the menu here. [He produces it.]

LORD W.  Good God, man--more than that!  I want to show the people
that we stand side by side with them, as we did in the trenches.  The
whole thing's too jolly awful.  I lie awake over it.

     [He walks up and down.]

PRESS.  [Scribbling]  One moment, please.  I'll just get that down--
"Too jolly awful--lies awake over it.  Was wearing a white waistcoat
with pearl buttons."  [At a sign of resentment from his victim.]
I want the human touch, Lord William--it's everything in my paper.
What do you say about this attempt to bomb you?

LORD W.  Well, in a way I think it's d---d natural

PRESS.  [Scribbling]  "Lord William thought it d---d natural."

LORD W.  [Overhearing]  No, no; don't put that down.  What I mean is,
I should like to get hold of those fellows that are singing the
Marseillaise about the streets--fellows that have been in the war--
real sports they are, you know--thorough good chaps at bottom--and
say to them: "Have a feeling heart, boys; put yourself in my
position."  I don't believe a bit they'd want to bomb me then.

     [He walks up and down.]

PRESS.  [Scribbling and muttering] "The idea, of brotherhood--" D'you
mind my saying that?  Word brotherhood--always effective--always----

     [He writes.]

LORD E.  [Bewildered]  "Brotherhood!" Well, it's pure accident that
I'm here and they're there.  All the same, I can't pretend to be
starving.  Can't go out into Hyde Park and stand on a tub, can I?
But if I could only show them what I feel--they're such good chaps--
poor devils.

PRESS.  I quite appreciate!  [He writes]  "Camel and needle's eye."
You were at Eton and Oxford?  Your constituency I know.  Clubs?  But
I can get all that.  Is it your view that Christianity is on the up-
grade, Lord William?

LORD W.  [Dubious]  What d'you mean by Christianity--loving--kindness
and that?  Of course I think that dogma's got the knock.

     [He walks.]

PRESS.  [Writing]  "Lord William thought dogma had got the knock."
I should like you just to develop your definition of Christianity.
"Loving--kindness" strikes rather a new note.

LORD W.  New?  What about the Sermon on the Mount?

PRESS.  [Writing]  "Refers to Sermon on Mount."  I take it you don't
belong to any Church, Lord William?

LORD W.  [Exasperated]  Well, really--I've been baptised and that
sort of thing.  But look here----

PRESS.  Oh!  you can trust me--I shan't say anything that you'll
regret.  Now, do you consider that a religious revival would help to
quiet the country?

LORD W.  Well, I think it would be a deuced, good thing if everybody
were a bit more kind.

PRESS.  Ah!  [Musing]  I feel that your views are strikingly
original, Lord William.  If you could just open out on them a little
more?  How far would you apply kindness in practice?

LORD W.  Can you apply it in theory?

PRESS.  I believe it is done.  But would you allow yourself to be
blown up with impunity?

LORD W.  Well, that's a bit extreme.  But I quite sympathise with
this chap.  Imagine yourself in his shoes.  He sees a huge house, all
these bottles; us swilling them down; perhaps he's got a starving
wife, or consumptive kids.

PRESS.  [Writing and murmuring]  Um-m!  "Kids."

LORD W.  He thinks: "But for the grace of God, there swill I.  Why
should that blighter have everything and I nothing?" and all that.

PRESS.  [Writing]  "And all that."  [Eagerly]  Yes?

LORD W.  And gradually--you see--this contrast--becomes an obsession
with him.  "There's got to be an example made," he thinks; and--er--
he makes it, don't you know?

PRESS.  [Writing]  Ye-es?  And--when you're the example?

LORD W.  Well, you feel a bit blue, of course.  But my point is that
you quite see it.

PRESS.  From the other world.  Do you believe in a future life, Lord
William?  The public took a lot of interest in the question, if you
remember, at the time of the war.  It might revive at any moment, if
there's to be a revolution.

LORD W.  The wish is always father to the thought, isn't it?

PRESS.  Yes!  But--er--doesn't the question of a future life rather
bear on your point about kindness?  If there isn't one--why be kind?

LORD W.  Well, I should say one oughtn't to be kind for any motive--
that's self-interest; but just because one feels it, don't you know.

PRESS.  [Writing vigorously]  That's very new--very new!

LORD W.  [Simply]  You chaps are wonderful.

PRESS.  [Doubtfully]  You mean we're--we're----

LORD W.  No, really.  You have such a d---d hard time.  It must be
perfectly beastly to interview fellows like me.

PRESS.  Oh!  Not at all, Lord William.  Not at all.  I assure you
compared with a literary man, it's--it's almost heavenly.

LORD W.  You must have a wonderful knowledge of things.

PRESS.  [Bridling a little]  Well--I shouldn't say that.

LORD W.  I don't see how you can avoid it.  You turn your hands to
everything.

PRESS.  [Modestly]  Well--yes, Yes.

LORD W.  I say:  Is there really going to be a revolution, or are you
making it up, you Press?

PRESS.  We don't know.  We never know whether we come before the
event, or it comes before us.

LORD W.  That's--very deep--very dip.  D'you mind lending me your
note-book a moment.  I'd like to stick that down.  All right, I'll
use the other end.  [THE PRESS hands it hypnotically.]

LORD W.  [Jotting]  Thanks awfully.  Now what's your real opinion of
the situation?

PRESS.  As a man or a Press man?

LORD W.  Is there any difference?

PRESS.  Is there any connection?

LORD W.  Well, as a man.

PRESS.  As a man, I think it's rotten.

LORD W.  [Jotting]  "Rotten."  And as a pressman?

PRESS.  [Smiling]  Prime.

LORD W.  What!  Like a Stilton cheese.  Ha, ha!

     [He is about to write.]

PRESS.  My stunt, Lord William.  You said that.

     [He jots it on his cuff.]

LORD W.  But look here!  Would you say that a strong press movement
would help to quiet the country?

PRESS.  Well, as you ask me, Lord William, I'll tell you.  No
newspapers for a month would do the trick.

LORD W.  [Jotting]  By Jove!  That's brilliant.

PRESS.  Yes, but I should starve.  [He suddenly looks up, and his
eyes, like gimlets, bore their way into LORD WILLIAM'S pleasant,
troubled face]  Lord William, you could do me a real kindness.
Authorise me to go and interview the fellow who left the bomb here;
I've got his address.  I promise you to do it most discreetly.  Fact
is--well--I'm in low water.  Since the war we simply can't get
sensation enough for the new taste.  Now, if I could have an article
headed: "Bombed and Bomber"--sort of double interview, you know, it'd
very likely set me on my legs again.  [Very earnestly]  Look!
[He holds out his frayed wristbands.]

LORD W.  [Grasping his hand]  My dear chap, certainly.  Go and
interview this blighter, and then bring him round here.  You can do
that for one.  I'd very much like to see him, as a matter of fact.

PRESS.  Thanks awfully; I shall never forget it.  Oh!  might I have
my note-book?

     [LORD WILLIAM hands it back.]

LORD W.  And look here, if there's anything--when a fellow's
fortunate and another's not----

[He puts his hand into his breast pocket.]

PRESS.  Oh, thank you!  But you see, I shall have to write you up a
bit, Lord William.  The old aristocracy--you know what the public
still expects; if you were to lend me money, you might feel----

LORD W.  By Jove!  Never should have dreamt----

PRESS.  No!  But it wouldn't do.  Have you a photograph of yourself.

LORD W.  Not on me.

PRESS.  Pity!  By the way, has it occurred to you that there may be
another bomb on the premises?

LORD W.  Phew!  I'll have a look.

     [He looks at his watch, and begins hurriedly searching the bins,
     bending down and going on his knees.  THE PRESS reverses the
     notebook again and sketches him.]

PRESS.  [To himself]  Ah!  That'll do.  "Lord William examines the
foundations of his house."

     [A voice calls "Bill!" THE PRESS snaps the note-book to, and
     looks up.  There, where the "communication trench" runs in,
     stands a tall and elegant woman in the extreme of evening
     dress.]

     [With presence of mind]  Lady William?  You'll find Lord William
--Oh!  Have you a photograph of him?

LADY W.  Not on me.

PRESS.  [Eyeing her]  Er--no--I suppose not--no.  Excuse me!  [He
sidles past her and is gone.]

LADY W.  [With lifted eyebrows]  Bill!

LORD W.  [Emerging, dusting his knees]  Hallo, Nell!  I was just
making sure there wasn't another bomb.

LADY W.  Yes; that's why I came dawn: Who was that person?

LORD W.  Press.

LADY W.  He looked awfully yellow.  I hope you haven't been giving
yourself away.

LORD W.  [Dubiously]  Well, I don't know.  They're like corkscrews.

LADY W.  What did he ask you?

LORD W.  What didn't he?

LADY W.  Well, what did you tell him?

LORD W.  That I'd been baptised--but he promised not to put it down.

LADY W.  Bill, you are absurd.

     [She gives a light tittle laugh.]

LORD W.  I don't remember anything else, except that it was quite
natural we should be bombed, don't you know.

LADY W.  Why, what harm have we done?

LORD W.  Been born, my dear.  [Suddenly serious]  I say, Nell, how am
I to tell what this fellow felt when he left that bomb here?

LADY W.  Why do you want to?

LORD W.  Out there one used to know what one's men felt.

LADY W.  [Staring]  My dear boy, I really don't think you ought to
see the Press; it always upsets you.

LORD W.  Well!  Why should you and I be going to eat ourselves silly
to improve the condition of the sweated, when----

LADY W.  [Calmly]  When they're going to "improve" ours, if we don't
look out.  We've got to get in first, Bill.

LORD W.  [Gloomily]  I know.  It's all fear.  That's it!  Here we
are, and here we shall stay--as if there'd never been a war.

LADY W.  Well, thank heaven there's no "front" to a revolution.  You
and I can go to glory together this time.  Compact!  Anything that's
on, I'm to abate in.

LORD W.  Well, in reason.

LADY W.  No, in rhyme, too.

LORD W.  I say, your dress!

LADY W.  Yes, Poulder tried to stop me, but I wasn't going to have
you blown up without me.

LORD W.  You duck.  You do look stunning.  Give us a kiss!

LADY W.  [Starting back]  Oh, Bill!  Don't touch me--your hands!

LORD W.  Never mind, my mouth's clean.

They stand about a yard apart, and banding their faces towards each
other, kiss on the lips.

L. ANNE.  [Appearing suddenly from the "communication trench," and
tip-toeing silently between them]  Oh, Mum!  You and Daddy ARE
wasting time!  Dinner's ready, you know!


                              CURTAIN




ACT II

     The single room of old MRS. LEMMY, in a small grey house in
     Bethnal Green, the room of one cumbered by little save age, and
     the crockery debris of the past.  A bed, a cupboard, a coloured
     portrait of Queen Victoria, and--of all things--a fiddle,
     hanging on the wall.  By the side of old MRS. LEMMY in her chair
     is a pile of corduroy trousers, her day's sweated sewing, and a
     small table.  She sits with her back to the window, through
     which, in the last of the light, the opposite side of the little
     grey street is visible under the evening sky, where hangs one
     white cloud shaped like a horned beast.  She is still sewing,
     and her lips move.  Being old, and lonely, she has that habit of
     talking to herself, distressing to those who cannot overhear.
     From the smack of her tongue she was once a West Country cottage
     woman; from the look of her creased, parchmenty face, she was
     once a pretty girl with black eyes, in which there is still much
     vitality.  The door is opened with difficulty and a little girl
     enters, carrying a pile of unfinished corduroy trousers nearly
     as large as herself. She puts them down against the wall, and
     advances.  She is eleven or twelve years old; large-eyed, dark
     haired, and sallow.  Half a woman of this and half of another
     world, except when as now, she is as irresponsible a bit of life
     as a little flowering weed growing out of a wall.  She stands
     looking at MRS. LEMMY with dancing eyes.

L. AIDA.  I've brought yer to-morrer's trahsers.  Y'nt yer finished
wiv to-dy's?  I want to tyke 'em.

MRS. L.  No, me dear.  Drat this last one--me old fengers!

L. AIDA.  I learnt some poytry to-dy--I did.

MRS. L.  Well, I never!

L. AIDA.  [Reciting with unction]

         "Little lamb who myde thee?
          Dost thou know who myde thee,
          Gyve thee life and byde thee feed
          By the stream and oer the mead;
          Gyve the clothing of delight,
          Softest clothing, woolly, bright;
          Gyve thee such a tender voice,
          Myking all the vyles rejoice.
               Little lamb who myde thee?
               Dost thou know who myde thee?"

MRS. L.  'Tes wonderful what things they tache ya nowadays.

L.  AIDA.  When I grow up I'm goin' to 'ave a revolver an' shoot the
people that steals my jools.

MRS. L.  Deary-me, wherever du yu get yore notions?

L. AIDA.  An' I'm goin' to ride on as 'orse be'ind a man; an' I'm
goin' to ryce trynes in my motor car.

MRS. L.  [Dryly]  Ah!--Yu'um gwine to be very busy, that's sartin.
Can you sew?

L. AIDA.  [With a Smile]  Nao.

MRS. L.  Don' they tache Yu that, there?

L. AIDA.  [Blending contempt and a lingering curiosity]  Nao.

MRS. L.  'Tes wonderful genteel.

L. AIDA.  I can sing, though.

MRS. L.  Let's 'ear yu, then.

L. AIDA.  [Shaking her head]  I can ply the pianner.  I can ply a
tune.

MRS. L.  Whose pianner?

L. AIDA.  Mrs. Brahn's when she's gone aht.

MRS. L.  Well, yu are gettin' edjucation!  Du they tache yu to love
yore neighbours?

L. AIDA.  [Ineffably]  Nao.  [Straying to the window]  Mrs. Lemmy,
what's the moon?

MRS. L.  The mune?  Us used to zay 'twas made o' crame cheese.

L. AIDA.  I can see it.

MRS. L.  Ah!  Don' yu never go wishin' for it, me dear.

L. AIDA.  I daon't.

MRS. L.  Folks as wish for the mune never du no gude.

L. AIDA.  [Craning out, brilliant]  I'm goin' dahn in the street.
I'll come back for yer trahsers.

MRS. L.  Well; go yu, then, and get a breath o' fresh air in yore
chakes.  I'll sune 'a feneshed.

L. AIDA.  [Solemnly]  I'm goin' to be a dancer, I am.

She rushes suddenly to the door, pulls it open, and is gone.

MRS. L.  [Looking after her, and talking to herself.]  Ah!  'Er've
a-got all 'er troubles before 'er!  "Little lamb, a made'ee?"
[Cackling]  'Tes a funny world, tu! [She sings to herself.]

         "There is a green 'ill far away
               Without a city wall,
          Where our dear-Lord was crucified,
               'U died to save us all."

     The door is opened, and LEMMY comes in; a little man with a
     stubble of dark moustache and spiky dark hair; large, peculiar
     eyes he has, and a look of laying his ears back, a look of
     doubting, of perversity with laughter up the sleeve, that grows
     on those who have to do with gas and water.  He shuts the door.

MRS. L.  Well, Bob, I 'aven't a-seen yu this tu weeks.

     LEMMY comes up to his mother, and sits down on a stool, sets a
     tool-bag between his knees, and speaks in a cockney voice.

LEMMY.  Well, old lydy o' leisure!  Wot would y' 'ave for supper, if
yer could choose--salmon wivaht the tin, an' tipsy cyke?

MRS. L.  [Shaking her head and smiling blandly]  That's showy.  Toad
in the 'ole I'd 'ave--and a glass o' port wine.

LEMMY.  Providential.  [He opens a tool-bag]  Wot dyer think I've got
yer?

MRS. L.  I 'ope yu've a-got yureself a job, my son!

LEMMY.  [With his peculiar smile]  Yus, or I couldn't 'ave afforded
yer this.  [He takes out a bottle]  Not 'arf!  This'll put the blood
into yer.  Pork wine--once in the cellars of the gryte.  We'll drink
the ryyal family in this.

[He apostrophises the portrait of Queen Victoria.]

MRS. L. Ah!  She was a praaper gude queen.  I see 'er once, when 'er
was bein' burried.

LEMMY.  Ryalties--I got nothin' to sy agynst 'em in this country.
But the STYTE 'as got to 'ave its pipes seen to.  The 'ole show's
goin' up pop.  Yer'll wyke up one o' these dyes, old lydy, and find
yerself on the roof, wiv nuffin' between yer an' the grahnd.

MRS. L.  I can't tell what yu'm talkin' about.

LEMMY.  We're goin' to 'ave a triumpherat in this country Liberty,
Equality, Fraternity; an' if yer arsk me, they won't be in power six
months before they've cut each other's throats.  But I don't care--I
want to see the blood flow!  (Dispassionately) I don' care 'oose
blood it is.  I want to see it flow!

MRS. L.  [Indulgently]  Yu'm a funny boy, that's sartin.

LEMMY. [Carving at the cork with a knife] This 'ere cork is like
Sasiety--rotten; it's old--old an' moulderin'.  [He holds up a bit of
cork on the point of the knife]  Crumblin' under the wax, it is.  In
goes the screw an' out comes the cork.  [With unction]--an' the blood
flows.  [Tipping the bottle, he lets a drop fall into the middle of
his hand, and licks it up.  Gazing with queer and doubting
commiseration at has mother]  Well, old dear, wot shall we 'ave it
aht of--the gold loving-cup, or--what?  'Ave yer supper fust, though,
or it'll go to yer 'ead!  [He goes to the cupboard and taken out a
disk in which a little bread is sopped in a little' milk]  Cold pap!
'Ow can yer?  'Yn't yer got a kipper in the 'ouse?

MRS. L.  [Admiring the bottle]  Port wine!  'Tis a brave treat!  I'll
'ave it out of the "Present from Margitt," Bob.  I tuk 'ee therr by
excursion when yu was six months.  Yu 'ad a shrimp an' it choked yu
praaperly.  Yu was always a squeamy little feller.  I can't never
think 'ow yu managed in the war-time, makin' they shells.

     LEMMY, who has brought to the table two mugs and blown the duet
     out of; them, fills them with port, and hands one to his mother,
     who is eating her bread and milk.

LEMMY.  Ah!  Nothin' worried me, 'cept the want o' soap.

MRS. L.  [Cackling gently]  So it du still, then!  Luke at yore face.
Yu never was a clean boy, like Jim.

     [She puts out a thin finger and touches his cheek, whereon is a
     black smudge.]

LEMMY.  [Scrubbing his cheek with his sleeve.]  All right!  Y'see, I
come stryte 'ere, to get rid o' this.

     [He drinks.]

MRS.  L.  [Eating her bread and milk]  Tes a pity yu'm not got a wife
to see't yu wash yureself.

LEMMY.  [Goggling]  Wife!  Not me--I daon't want ter myke no food for
pahder.  Wot oh!--they said, time o' the war--ye're fightin' for yer
children's 'eritage.  Well; wot's the 'eritage like, now we've got
it?  Empty as a shell before yer put the 'igh explosive in.  Wot's it
like?  [Warming to his theme]  Like a prophecy in the pypers--not a
bit more substantial.

MRS. L.  [Slightly hypnotised]  How 'e du talk!  The gas goes to yore
'ead, I think!

LEMMY.  I did the gas to-dy in the cellars of an 'ouse where the wine
was mountains 'igh.  A regiment couldn't 'a drunk it.  Marble pillars
in the 'all, butler broad as an observytion balloon, an' four
conscientious khaki footmen.  When the guns was roarin' the talk was
all for no more o' them glorious weeds-style an' luxury was orf.  See
wot it is naow.  You've got a bare crust in the cupboard 'ere, I
works from 'and to mouth in a glutted market--an' there they stand
abaht agyne in their britches in the 'oases o' the gryte.  I was
reg'lar overcome by it.  I left a thing in that cellar--I left a
thing .  .  .  .  It'll be a bit ork'ard for me to-mower.  [Drinks
from his mug.]

MRS. L.  [Placidly, feeling the warmth of the little she has drunk]
What thing?

LEMMY.  Wot thing?  Old lydy, ye're like a winkle afore yer opens
'er--I never see anything so peaceful.  'Ow dyer manage it?

MRS. L.  Settin' 'ere and thenkin'.

LEA.  Wot abaht?

MRS. L.  We-el--Money, an' the works o' God.

LEMMY.  Ah! So yer give me a thought sometimes.

MRS. L.  [Lofting her mug]  Yu ought never to ha' spent yore money on
this, Bob!

LEMMY.  I thought that meself.

MRS. L.  Last time I 'ad a glass o' port wine was the day yore
brother Jim went to Ameriky.  [Smacking her lips]  For a teetotal
drink, it du warm 'ee!

LEMMY.  [Raising his mug]  Well, 'ere's to the British revolution!
'Ere's to the conflygrytion in the sky!

MRS. L.  [Comfortably]  So as to kape up therr, 'twon't du no 'arm.

     LEMMY goes to the window and unhooks his fiddle; he stands with
     it halfway to his shoulder.  Suddenly he opens the window and
     leans out.  A confused murmur of voices is heard; and a snatch
     of the Marseillaise, sung by a girl.  Then the shuffling tramp
     of feet, and figures are passing in the street.

LEMMY.  [Turning--excited]  Wot'd I tell yer, old lydy?  There it is-
-there it is!

MRS. L.  [Placidly]  What is?

LEMMY.  The revolution.  [He cranes out]  They've got it on a barrer.
Cheerio!

VOICE.  [Answering]  Cheerio!

LEMMY.  [Leaning out]  I sy--you 'yn't tykin' the body, are yer?

VOICE.  Nao.

LEMMY.  Did she die o' starvytion O.K.?

VOICE.  She bloomin' well did; I know 'er brother.

LEMMY.  Ah!  That'll do us a bit o' good!

VOICE.  Cheerio!

LEMMY.  So long!

VOICE.  So long!

     [The girl's voice is heard again in the distance singing the
     Marseillaise.  The door is flung open and LITTLE AIDA comes
     running in again.]

LEMMY.  'Allo, little Aida!

L. AIDA.  'Allo, I been follerin' the corfin.  It's better than an
'orse dahn!

MRS. L.  What coffin?

L. AIDA.  Why, 'er's wot died o' starvytion up the street.  They're
goin' to tyke it to 'Yde Pawk, and 'oller.

MRS. L.  Well, never yu mind wot they'm goin' to du: Yu wait an' take
my trousers like a gude gell.

     [She puts her mug aside and takes up her unfinished pair of
     trousers.  But the wine has entered her fingers, and strength to
     push the needle through is lacking.]

LEMMY. [Tuning his fiddle] Wot'll yer 'ave, little Aida?  "Dead March
in Saul" or "When the fields was white wiv dysies"?

L. AIDA.  [With a hop and a brilliant smile]  Aoh yus!  "When the
fields"----

MRS. L. [With a gesture of despair] Deary me!  I 'aven't a-got the
strength!

LEMMY.  Leave 'em alone, old dear!  No one'll be goin' aht wivaht
trahsers to-night 'cos yer leaves that one undone.  Little Aida, fold
'em up!

     [LITTLE AIDA methodically folds the five finished pairs of
     trousers into a pile.  LEMMY begins playing.  A smile comes on
     the face of MRS. L, who is rubbing her fingers.  LITTLE AIDA,
     trousers over arm, goes and stares at LEMMY playing.]

LEMMY.  [Stopping]  Little Aida, one o' vese dyes yer'll myke an
actress.  I can see it in yer fyce!

     [LITTLE AIDA looks at him wide-eyed.]

MRS. L.  Don't 'ee putt things into 'er 'ead, Bob!

LEMMY.  'Tyn't 'er 'ead, old lydy--it's lower.  She wants feedin'--
feed 'er an' she'll rise.  [He strikes into the "Machichi"]  Look at
'er naow.  I tell yer there's a fortune in 'er.

     [LITTLE AIDA has put out her tongue.]

MRS. L. I'd saner there was a gude 'eart in 'er than any fortune.

L. AIDA. [Hugging her pile of trousers] It's thirteen pence three
farthin's I've got to bring yer, an' a penny aht for me, mykes twelve
three farthin's: [With the same little hop and sudden smile] I'm
goin' to ride back on a bus, I am.

LEMMY. Well, you myke the most of it up there; it's the nearest
you'll ever git to 'eaven.

MRS. L. Don' yu discourage 'er, Bob; she'm a gude little thing, an't
yu, dear?

L. AIDA. [Simply] Yus.

LEMMY. Not 'arf. Wot c'her do wiv yesterdy's penny?

L. AIDA. Movies.

LEMMY. An' the dy before?

L. AIDA. Movies.

LEMMY. Wot'd I tell yer, old lydy--she's got vicious tystes, she'll
finish in the theayter yep Tyke my tip, little Aida; you put every
penny into yer foundytions, yer'll get on the boards quicker that wy.

MRS. L. Don' yu pay no 'eed to his talk.

L. AIDA. I daon't.

Ice. Would yer like a sip aht o' my mug?

L. AIDA. [Brilliant] Yus.

MRS. L. Not at yore age, me dear, though it is teetotal.

     [LITTLE AIDA puts her head on one side, like a dog trying to
     understand.]

LEMMY.  Well, 'ave one o' my gum-drops.

     [Holds out a paper.]

     [LITTLE AIDA brilliant, takes a flat, dark substance from it,
     and puts it in her mouth.]

Give me a kiss, an' I'll give yer a penny.

     [LITTLE AIDA shakes her head, and leans out of window.]

Movver, she daon't know the valyer of money.

MRS. L. Never mind 'im, me dear.

L. AIDA. [Sucking the gum-drop--with difficulty]  There's a taxi-cab
at the corner.

     [LITTLE AIDA runs to the door. A figure stands in the doorway;
     she skids round him and out. THE PRESS comes in.]

LEMMY.  [Dubiously]  Wat-oh!

PRESS.  Mr. Lemmy?

LEMMY.  The syme.

PRESS.  I'm from the Press.

LEMMY.  Blimy.

PRESS.  They told me at your place you wens very likely here.

LEMMY.  Yus I left Downin' Street a bit early to-dy!  [He twangs the
feddle-strings pompously.]

PRESS.  [Taking out his note-book and writing]  "Fiddles while Rome
is burning!"  Mr. Lemmy, it's my business at this very critical time
to find out what the nation's thinking.  Now, as a representative
working man

LEMMY.  That's me.

PRESS.  You can help me.  What are your views?

LEMMY.  [Putting down fiddle]  Voos?  Sit dahn!

     [THE PRESS sits on the stool which LEMMY has vacated.]

The Press--my Muvver.  Seventy-seven.  She's a wonder; 'yn't yer, old
dear?

PRESS.  Very happy to make your acquaintance, Ma'am.  [He writes]
"Mrs. Lemmy, one of the veterans of industry----" By the way, I've
jest passed a lot of people following a coffin.


LEMMY.  Centre o' the cyclone--cyse o' starvytion; you 'ad 'er in the
pyper this mornin'.

PRESS.  Ah! yes!  Tragic occurrence.  [Looking at the trousers.]  Hub
of the Sweated Industries just here.  I especially want to get at the
heart----

MRS. L.  'Twasn't the 'eart, 'twas the stomach.

PRESS.  [Writing]  "Mrs. Lemmy goes straight to the point."

LEMMY. Mister, is it my voos or Muvver's yer want?

PRESS.  Both.

LEMMY.  'Cos if yer get Muvver's, yer won't 'ave time for mine.  I
tell yer stryte [Confidentially]  she's get a glawss a' port wine in
'er.  Naow, mind yer, I'm not anxious to be intervooed.  On the other
'and, anyfink I might 'eve to sy of valyer----There is a clawss o'
politician that 'as nuffn to sy--Aoh!  an' daon't 'e sy it just!  I
dunno wot pyper yer represent.

PRESS.  [Smiling]  Well, Mr. Lemmy, it has the biggest influ----

LEMMY.  They all 'as that; dylies, weeklies, evenin's, Sundyes; but
it's of no consequence--my voos are open and aboveboard.  Naow, wot
shall we begin abaht?

PRESS.  Yourself, if you please.  And I'd like you to know at once
that my paper wants the human note, the real heart-beat of things.

LEMMY.  I see; sensytion!  Well; 'ere am I--a fustclawss plumber's.
assistant--in a job to-dy an' out tomorrer.  There's a 'eart-beat in
that, I tell yer.  'Oo knows wot the mower 'as for me!

PRESS.  [Writing].  "The great human issue--Mr. Lemmy touches it at
once."

LEMMY.  I sy keep my nyme aht o' this; I don' go in fer self-
advertisement.

PRESS.  [Writing]  "True working-man--modest as usual."

LEMMY.  I daon't want to embarrass the Gover'ment.  They're so
ticklish ever since they got the 'abit, war-time, o' mindin' wot
people said.

PRESS.  Right-o!

LEMMY.  For instance, suppose there's goin' to be a revolution----
[THE PRESS writes with energy.]  'Ow does it touch me?  Like this: I
my go up--I cawn't come dahn; no more can Muvver.

MRS. L. [Surprisingly] Us all goes down into the grave.

PRESS.  "Mrs. Lemmy interjects the deeper note."

LEMMY.  Naow, the gryte--they can come dahn, but they cawn't go up!
See!  Put two an' two together, an' that's 'ow it touches me.  [He
utters a throaty laugh]  'Ave yer got that?

PRESS.  [Quizzical]  Not go up?  What about bombs, Mr. Lemmy?

LEMMY.  [Dubious]  Wot abaht 'em?  I s'pose ye're on the comic
pypers?  'Ave yer noticed wot a weakness they 'ave for the 'orrible?

PRESS.  [Writing]  "A grim humour peeped out here and there through
the earnestness of his talk."

     [He sketches LEMMY'S profile.]

LEMMY.  We 'ad an explosion in my factory time o' the war, that would
just ha' done for you comics. [He meditates]  Lord!  They was after
it too,--they an' the Sundyes; but the Censor did 'em.  Strike me, I
could tell yer things!

PRESS.  That's what I want, Mr. Lemmy; tell me things!

LEMMY.  [Musing]  It's a funny world, 'yn't it?  'Ow we did blow each
other up!  [Getting up to admire] I sy, I shall be syfe there.  That
won't betry me anonymiety.  Why!  I looks like the Prime Minister!

PRESS.  [Rather hurt]  You were going to tell me things.

LEMMY.  Yus, an' they'll be the troof, too.

PRESS.  I hope so; we don't----

LEMMY.  Wot oh!

PRESS.  [A little confused.]  We always try to verify----

LEMMY.  Yer leave it at tryin', daon't yer?  Never, mind, ye're a
gryte institootion.  Blimy, yer do have jokes, wiv it, spinnin' rahnd
on yer own tyles, denyin' to-dy wot ye're goin' to print to-morrer.
Ah, well!  Ye're like all of us below the line o' comfort--live
dyngerously--ever' dy yer last.  That's wy I'm interested in the
future.

PRESS.  Well now--the future.  [Writing]  "He prophesies."

LEMMY.  It's syfer, 'yn't it? [He winks]  No one never looks back on
prophecies.  I remembers an editor spring o' 1916 stykin' his
reputytion the war'd be over in the follerin' October.  Increased 'is
circulytion abaht 'arf a million by it.  1917 an' war still on--'ad
'is readers gone back on 'im?  Nao!  They was increasin' like
rabbits.  Prophesy wot people want to believe, an' ye're syfe.  Naow,
I'll styke my reputption on somethin', you tyke it dahn word for
word.  This country's goin' to the dawgs--Naow, 'ere's the
sensytion--unless we gets a new religion.

PRESS.  Ah! Now for it--yes?

LEMMY.  In one word: "Kindness."  Daon't mistyke me, nao sickly
sentiment and nao patronizin'.  Me as kind to the millionaire as 'im
to me.  [Fills his mug and drinks.]

PRESS.  [Struck]  That's queer!  Kindness!  [Writing]  "Extremes
meet.  Bombed and bomber breathing the same music."

LEMMY.  But 'ere's the interestin' pynt.  Can it be done wivaht
blood?

PRESS.  [Writing]  "He doubts."

LEMMY.  No dabt wotever.  It cawn't!  Blood-and-kindness!  Spill the
blood o' them that aren't kind--an' there ye are!

PRESS.  But pardon me, how are you to tell?

LEMMY.  Blimy, they leaps to the heye!

PRESS.  [Laying down-his note-book]  I say, let me talk to you as man
to man for a moment.

LEMMY.  Orl right.  Give it a rest!

PRESS.  Your sentiments are familiar to me.  I've got a friend on the
Press who's very keen on Christ and kindness; and wants to strangle
the last king with the--hamstrings of the last priest.

LEMMY.  [Greatly intrigued]  Not 'arf!  Does 'e?

PRESS.  Yes.  But have you thought it out?  Because he hasn't.

LEMMY.  The difficulty is--where to stop.

PRESS.  Where to begin.

LEMMY.  Lawd!  I could begin almost anywhere.  Why, every month
abaht, there's a cove turns me aht of a job 'cos I daon't do just wot
'e likes.  They'd 'ave to go.  .  I tell yer stryte--the Temple wants
cleanin' up.

PRESS.  Ye-es.  If I wrote what I thought, I should get the sack as
quick as you.  D'you say that justifies me in shedding the blood of
my boss?

LEMMY.  The yaller Press 'as got no blood--'as it?  You shed their
ile an' vinegar--that's wot you've got to do.  Stryte--do yer believe
in the noble mission o' the Press?

PRESS.  [Enigmatically]  Mr. Lemmy, I'm a Pressman.

LEMMY.  [Goggling]  I see.  Not much!  [Gently jogging his mother's
elbow]  Wyke up, old lydy!

     [For Mrs. LEMMY who has been sipping placidly at her port, is
     nodding.  The evening has drawn in.  LEMMY strikes a match on
     his trousers and lights a candle.]

Blood an' kindness-that's what's wanted--'specially blood!  The
'istory o' me an' my family'll show yer that.  Tyke my bruver Fred-
crushed by burycrats.  Tyke Muvver 'erself.  Talk o' the wrongs o'
the people!  I tell yer the foundytions is rotten.  [He empties the
bottle into his mother's mug]  Daon't mind the mud at the bottom, old
lydy--it's all strengthenin'!  You tell the Press, Muvver.  She can
talk abaht the pawst.

PRESS.  [Taking up his note-book, and becoming, again his
professional self] Yes, Mrs. Lemmy?  "Age and Youth--Past and
Present--"

MRS. L.  Were yu talkin' about Fred?  [The port has warmed her veins,
the colour in her eyes and cheeks has deepened]  My son Fred was
always a gude boy--never did nothin' before 'e married.  I can see
Fred [She bends forward a little in her chair, looking straight
before her]  acomin' in wi' a pheasant 'e'd found--terrible 'e was at
findin' pheasants.  When father died, an' yu was cumin', Bob, Fred 'e
said to me: "Don't yu never cry, Mother, I'll look after 'ee."  An'
so 'e did, till 'e married that day six months an' take to the drink
in sower.  'E wasn't never 'the same boy again--not Fred.  An' now
'e's in That.  I can see poor Fred----

     [She slowly wipes a tear out of the corner of an eye with the
     back of her finger.]

PRESS.  [Puzzled]  In--That?

LEMMY.  [Sotto voce]  Come orf it!  Prison!  'S wot she calls it.

MRS. L.  [Cheerful]  They say life's a vale o' sorrows.  Well, so
'tes, but don' du to let yureself thenk so.

PRESS.  And so you came to London, Mrs. Lemmy?

MRS. L.  Same year as father died.  With the four o' them--that's my
son Fred, an' my son Jim, an' my son Tom, an' Alice.  Bob there, 'e
was born in London--an' a praaper time I 'ad of et.

PRESS.  [Writing]  "Her heroic struggles with poverty----"

MRS. L.  Worked in a laundry, I ded, at fifteen shellin's a week, an'
brought 'em all up on et till Alice 'ad the gallopin' consumption.  I
can see poor Alice wi' the little red spots is 'er cheeks---an' I not
knowin' wot to du wi' 'her--but I always kept up their buryin' money.
Funerals is very dear; Mr. Lemmy was six pound, ten.

PRESS.  "High price of Mr. Lemmy."

MRS. L.  I've a-got the money for when my time come; never touch et,
no matter 'ow things are.  Better a little goin' short here below,
an' enter the kingdom of 'eaven independent:

PRESS.  [Writing]  "Death before dishonour--heroine of the slums.
Dickens--Betty Higden."

MRS. L.  No, sir.  Mary Lemmy.  I've seen a-many die, I 'ave; an' not
one grievin'.  I often says to meself: [With a little laugh]  "Me
dear, when yu go, yu go 'appy.  Don' yu never fret about that," I
says.  An' so I will; I'll go 'appy.

     [She stays quite still a moment, and behind her LEMMY draws one
     finger across his face.]

[Smiling]  "Yore old fengers'll 'ave a rest.  Think o' that!" I says.
"'Twill be a brave change."  I can see myself lyin' there an' duin'
nothin'.

     [Again a pause, while MRS. LEMMY sees herself doing nothing.]

LEMMY.  Tell abaht Jim; old lydy.

MRS. L.  My son Jim 'ad a family o' seven in six years.  "I don' know
'ow 'tes, Mother," 'e used to say to me; "they just sim to come!"
That was Jim--never knu from day to day what was cumin'.  "Therr's
another of 'em dead," 'e used to say, "'tes funny, tu"  "Well," I
used to say to 'im; "no wonder, poor little things, livin' in they
model dwellin's.  Therr's no air for 'em," I used to say.  "Well," 'e
used to say, "what can I du, Mother?  Can't afford to live in Park
Lane:" An' 'e take an' went to Ameriky.  [Her voice for the first
time is truly doleful]  An' never came back.  Fine feller.  So that's
my four sons--One's dead, an' one's in--That, an' one's in Ameriky,
an' Bob 'ere, poor boy, 'e always was a talker.

     [LEMMY, who has re-seated himself in the window and taken up his
     fiddle, twangs the strings.]

PRESS.  And now a few words about your work, Mrs. Lemmy?

MRS. L.  Well, I sews.

PRESS.  [Writing]  "Sews."  Yes?

MRS. L.  [Holding up her unfinished pair of trousers]  I putt in the
button'oles, I stretches the flies, I lines the crutch, I putt on
this bindin', [She holds up the calico that binds the top]  I sews on
the buttons, I press the seams--Tuppence three farthin's the pair.

PRESS.  Twopence three farthings a pair!  Worse than a penny a line!

MRS. L.  In a gude day I gets thru four pairs, but they'm gettin'
plaguey 'ard for my old fengers.

PRESS.  [Writing]  "A monumental figure, on whose labour is built the
mighty edifice of our industrialism."

LEMMY.  I sy--that's good.  Yer'll keep that, won't yet?

MRS. L.  I finds me own cotton, tuppence three farthin's, and other
expension is a penny three farthin's.

PRESS.  And are you an exception, Mrs. Lemmy?

MRS. L.  What's that?

LEMMY.  Wot price the uvvers, old lydy?  Is there a lot of yer sewin'
yer fingers orf at tuppence 'ypenny the pair?

MRS. L.  I can't tell yu that.  I never sees nothin' in 'ere.  I pays
a penny to that little gell to bring me a dozen pair an' fetch 'em
back.  Poor little thing, she'm 'ardly strong enough to carry 'em.
Feel!  They'm very 'eavy!

PRESS.  On the conscience of Society!

LEMMY.  I sy put that dahn, won't yer?

PRESS.  Have things changed much since the war, Mrs.  Lemmy?

MRS. L.  Cotton's a lot dearer.

PRESS.  All round, I mean.

MRS. L.  Aw!  Yu don' never get no change, not in my profession.
[She oscillates the trousers]  I've a-been in trousers fifteen year;
ever since I got to old for laundry.

PRESS.  [Writing]  "For fifteen years sewn trousers."  What would a
good week be, Mrs. Lemmy?

MRS. L.  'Tes a very gude week, five shellin's.

LEMMY.  [From the window]  Bloomin' millionairess, Muvver.  She's
lookin' forward to 'eaven, where vey don't wear no trahsers.

MRS.  L.  [With spirit] 'Tidn for me to zay whether they du.  An'
'tes on'y when I'm a bit low-sperrity-like as I wants to go therr.
What I am a-lukin' forward to, though, 'tes a day in the country.
I've not a-had one since before the war.  A kind lady brought me in
that bit of 'eather; 'tes wonderful sweet stuff when the 'oney's in
et.  When I was a little gell I used to zet in the 'eather gatherin'
the whorts, an' me little mouth all black wi' eatin' them.  'Twas in
the 'eather I used to zet, Sundays, courtin'.  All flesh is grass--
an' 'tesn't no bad thing--grass.

PRESS.  [Writing]  "The old paganism of the country."  What is your
view of life, Mrs. Lemmy?

LEMMY.  [Suddenly]  Wot is 'er voo of life?  Shall I tell yer mine?
Life's a disease--a blinkin' oak-apple!  Daon't myke no mistyke.  An'
'umen life's a yumourous disease; that's all the difference.  Why--
wot else can it be?  See the bloomin' promise an' the blighted
performance--different as a 'eadline to the noos inside.  But yer
couldn't myke Muvver see vat--not if yer talked to 'er for a wok.
Muvver still believes in fings.  She's a country gell; at a 'undred
and fifty she'll be a country gell, won't yer, old lydy?

MRS. L.  Well, 'tesn't never been 'ome to me in London.  I lived in
the country forty year--I did my lovin' there; I burried father
therr.  Therr bain't nothin' in life, yu know, but a bit o' lovin'--
all said an' done; bit o' lovin', with the wind, an' the stars out.

LEMMY.  [In a loud apologetic whisper]  She 'yn't often like this.  I
told yer she'd got a glawss o' port in 'er.

MRS. L.  'Tes a brave pleasure, is lovin'.  I likes to zee et in
young folk.  I likes to zee 'em kissin'; shows the 'eart in 'em.
'Tes the 'eart makes the world go round; 'tesn't nothin' else, in my
opinion.

PRESS.  [Writing]  "--sings the swan song of the heart."----

MRS. L.  [Overhearing]  No, I never yeard a swan sing--never!  But I
tell 'ee what I 'eve 'eard; the Bells singin' in th' orchard 'angin'
up the clothes to dry, an' the cuckoos callin' back to 'em.
[Smiling]  There's a-many songs in the country-the 'eart is freelike
in th' country!

LEMMY.  [Soto voce]  Gi' me the Strand at ar' past nine.

PRESS. [Writing]  "Town and country----"

MRS. L.  'Tidn't like that in London; one day's jest like another.
Not but what therr's a 'eap o' kind'eartedness 'ere.

LEMMY.  [Gloomily]  Kind-'eartedness!  I daon't fink "Boys an' Gells
come out to play."

     [He plays the old tune on his fiddle.]

MRS. L.  [Singing]  "Boys an' Gells come out to play.  The mune is
shinin' bright as day."  [She laughs]  I used to sing like a lark
when I was a gell.

     [LITTLE AIDA enters.]

L. AIDA.  There's 'undreds follerin' the corfin.  'Yn't you goin',
Mr. Lemmy--it's dahn your wy!

LEMMY.  [Dubiously]  Well yus--I s'pose they'll miss me.

L. AIDA.  Aoh!  Tyke me!

PRESS.  What's this?

LEMMY.  The revolution in 'Yde Pawk.

PRESS.  [Struck]  In Hyde Park?  The very thing.  I'll take you down.
My taxi's waiting.

L. AIDA.  Yus; it's breathin' 'ard, at the corner.

PRESS.  [Looking at his watch]  Ah! and Mrs. Lemmy.  There's an Anti-
Sweating Meeting going on at a house in Park Lane.  We can get there
in twenty minutes if we shove along.  I want you to tell them about
the trouser-making.  You'll be a sensation!

LEMMY.  [To himself]  Sensytion!  'E cawn't keep orf it!

MRS. L.  Anti-Sweat.  Poor fellers!  I 'ad one come to see we before
the war, an' they'm still goin' on?  Wonderful, an't it?

PRESS.  Come, Mrs. Lemmy; drive in a taxi, beautiful moonlit night;
and they'll give you a splendid cup of tea.

MRS. L.  [Unmoved]  Ah! I cudn't never du without my tea.  There's
not an avenin' but I thinks to meself: Now, me dear, yu've a-got one
more to fennish, an' then yu'll 'eve yore cup o' tea.  Thank you for
callin', all the same.

LEMMY.  Better siccumb to the temptytion, old lydy; joyride wiv the
Press; marble floors, pillars o' gold; conscientious footmen; lovely
lydies; scuppers runnin' tea!  An' the revolution goin' on across the
wy.  'Eaven's nuffink to Pawk Lyne.

PRESS.  Come along, Mrs. Lemmy!

MRS. L.  [Seraphically]  Thank yu,--I'm a-feelin' very comfortable.
'Tes wonderful what a drop o' wine'll du for the stomach.

PRESS.  A taxi-ride!

MRS. L.  [Placidly]  Ah! I know'em.  They'm very busy things.

LEMMY.  Muvver shuns notority.  [Sotto voce to THE PRESS]  But you
watch me!  I'll rouse 'er.

     [He takes up his fiddle and sits on the window seat.  Above the
     little houses on the opposite side of the street, the moon has
     risen in the dark blue sky, so that the cloud shaped like a
     beast seems leaping over it.  LEMMY plays the first notes of the
     Marseillaise.  A black cat on the window-sill outside looks in,
     hunching its back.  LITTLE AIDA barks at her.  MRS. LEMMY
     struggles to her feet, sweeping the empty dish and spoon to the
     floor in the effort.]

The dish ran awy wiv the spoon!  That's right, old lydy!  [He stops
playing.]

MRS. L.  [Smiling, and moving her hands]  I like a bit o' music.  It
du that move 'ee.

PRESS.  Bravo, Mrs. Lemmy.  Come on!

LEMMY.  Come on, old dear!  We'll be in time for the revolution yet.

MRS. L.  'Tes 'earin' the Old 'Undred again!

LEMMY.  [To THE PRESS]  She 'yn't been aht these two years.  [To his
mother, who has put up her hands to her head]  Nao, never mind yer
'at.  [To THE PRESS]  She 'yn't got none!  [Aloud]  No West-End lydy
wears anyfink at all in the evenin'!

MRS. L.  'Ow'm I lukin', Bob?

LEMMY.  First-clawss; yer've got a colour fit to toast by.  We'll
show 'em yer've got a kick in yer.  [He takes her arm]  Little Aida,
ketch 'old o' the sensytions.

     [He indicates the trousers THE PRESS takes MRS. LEMMY'S other
     arm.]

MRS. L.  [With an excited little laugh]  Quite like a gell!

And, smiling between her son and THE PRESS, she passes out; LITTLE
AIDA, with a fling of her heels and a wave of the trousers, follows.


                              CURTAIN



ACT III

     An octagon ante-room of the hall at LORD WILLIAM DROMONDY'S.
     A shining room lighted by gold candelabra, with gold-curtained
     pillars, through which the shining hall and a little of the
     grand stairway are visible.  A small table with a gold-coloured
     cloth occupies the very centre of the room, which has a polished
     parquet floor and high white walls.  Gold-coloured doors on the
     left.  Opposite these doors a window with gold-coloured curtains
     looks out on Park Lane.  LADY WILLIAM standing restlessly
     between the double doors and the arch which leads to the hall.
     JAMES is stationary by the double doors, from behind which come
     sounds of speech and applause.

POULDER.  [Entering from the hall]  His Grace the Duke of Exeter, my
lady.

     [His GRACE enters.  He is old, and youthful, with a high colour
     and a short rough white beard.  LADY WILLIAM advances to meet
     him.  POULDER stands by.]

LADY W.  Oh!  Father, you ARE late.

HIS G.  Awful crowd in the streets, Nell.  They've got a coffin--
couldn't get by.

LADY W.  Coin?  Whose?

HIS G.  The Government's I should think-no flowers, by request.  I
say, have I got to speak?

LADY W.  Oh!  no, dear.

HIS G.  H'm!  That's unlucky.  I've got it here.  [He looks down his
cuff]  Found something I said in 1914--just have done.

LADY W.  Oh! If you've got it--James, ask Lord William to come to me
for a moment.  [JAMES vanishes through the door.  To THE DUKE] Go in,
Grand-dad; they'll be so awfully pleased to see you.  I'll tell Bill.

HIS G.  Where's Anne?

LADY W.  In bed, of course.

HIS G.  I got her this--rather nice?

     [He has taken from his breast-pocket one of those street toy-men
     that jump head over heels on your hand; he puts it through its
     paces.]

LADY W.  [Much interested]  Oh!  no, but how sweet!  She'll simply
love it.

POULDER.  If I might suggest to Your Grace to take it in and operate
it.  It's sweated, Your Grace.  They-er-make them in those places.

HIS G.  By Jove!  D'you know the price, Poulder?

POULDER.  [Interrogatively]  A penny, is it?  Something paltry, Your
Grace!

HIS G.  Where's that woman who knows everything; Miss Munday?

LADY W.  Oh!  She'll be in there, somewhere.

     [His GRACE moves on, and passes through the doors.  The sound of
     applause is heard.]

POULDER.  [Discreetly]  would you care to see the bomb, my lady?

LADY W.  Of course--first quiet moment.

POULDER.  I'll bring it up, and have a watch put on it here, my lady.

     [LORD WILLIAM comes through the double doom followed by JAMES.
     POULDER retires.]

LORD W.  Can't you come, Nell?

LADY W.  Oh!  Bill, your Dad wants to speak.

LORD W.  The deuce he does--that's bad.

LADY W.  Yes, of course, but you must let him; he's found something
he said in 1914.

LORD W.  I knew it.  That's what they'll say.  Standing stock still,
while hell's on the jump around us.

LADY W.  Never mind that; it'll please him; and he's got a lovely
little sweated toy that turns head over heels at one penny.

LORD W.  H'm!  Well, come on.

LADY W.  No, I must wait for stragglers.  There's sure to be an
editor in a hurry.

POULDER.  [Announcing]  Mis-ter Gold-rum!

LADY W. [Sotto voce]  And there he is!  [She advances to meet a thin,
straggling man in eyeglasses, who is smiling absently]  How good of
you!

MR. G.  Thanks awfully.  I just er--and then I'm afraid I must--er--
Things look very----Thanks----Thanks so much.

     [He straggles through the doors, and is enclosed by JAMES.]

POULDER.  Miss Mun-day.

LORD W.  There!  I thought she was in--She really is the most
unexpected woman!  How do you do?  How awfully sweet of you!

MISS M.  [An elderly female schoolboy]  How do you do?  There's a
spiffing crowd.  I believe things are really going Bolshy.  How do
you do, Lord William?  Have you got any of our people to show?  I
told one or two, in case--they do so simply love an outing.

JAMES.  There are three old chips in the lobby, my Lord.

LORD W.  What?  Oh!  I say!  Bring them in at once.  Why--they're the
hub of the whole thing.

JAMES.  [Going]  Very good, my Lord.

LADY W.  I am sorry.  I'd no notion; and they're such dears always.

MISS M.  I must tell you what one of them said to me.  I'd told him
not to use such bad language to his wife.  "Don't you worry, Ma!" he
said, "I expert you can do a bit of that yourself!"

LADY W.  How awfully nice!  It's SO like them.

MISS M.  Yes.  They're wonderful.

LORD W.  I say, why do we always call them they?

LADY W.  [Puzzled]  Well, why not?

LORD W.  THEY!

MISS M.  [Struck]  Quite right, Lord William!  Quite right!  Another
species.  They!  I must remember that.  THEY! [She passes on.]

LADY W.  [About to follow]  Well, I don't see; aren't they?

LORD W.  Never mind, old girl; follow on.  They'll come in with me.

     [MISS MUNDAY and LADY WILLIAM pass through the double doors.]

POULDER.  [Announcing]  Some sweated workers, my Lord.

     [There enter a tall, thin, oldish woman; a short, thin, very
     lame man, her husband; and a stoutish middle-aged woman with a
     rolling eye and gait, all very poorly dressed, with lined and
     heated faces.]

LORD W.  [Shaking hands]  How d'you do!  Delighted to see you all.
It's awfully good of you to have come.

LAME M.  Mr. and Mrs. Tomson.  We 'ad some trouble to find it.  You
see, I've never been in these parts.  We 'ad to come in the oven; and
the bus-bloke put us dahn wrong.  Are you the proprietor?

LORD W.  [Modestly]  Yes, I--er--

LAME M.  You've got a nice plyce.  I says to the missis, I says:
"'E's got a nice plyce 'ere," I says; "there's room to turn rahnd."

LORD W.  Yes--shall we--?

LAME M.  An' Mrs. Annaway she says: "Shouldn't mind livin 'ere
meself," she says; "but it must cost'im a tidy penny," she says.

LORD W.  It does--it does; much too tidy.  Shall we--?

MRS. ANN.  [Rolling her eye]  I'm very pleased to 'ave come.  I've
often said to 'em: "Any time you want me," I've said, "I'd be pleased
to come."

LORD W.  Not so pleased as we are to see you.

MRS. ANN.  I'm sure you're very kind.

JAMES.  [From the double doors, through which he has received a
message]  Wanted for your speech, my Lord.

LORD W.  Oh!  God!  Poulder, bring these ladies and gentleman in, and
put them where everybody can--where they can see everybody, don't you
know.

     [He goes out hurriedly through the double doors.]

LAME M.  Is 'e a lord?

POULDER.  He is.  Follow me.

     [He moves towards the doors, the three workers follow.]

MRS. ANN.  [Stopping before JAMES]  You 'yn't one, I suppose?
[JAMES stirs no muscle.]

POULDER.  Now please.  [He opens the doors.  The Voice of LORD
WILLIAM speaking is heard]  Pass in.

     [THE THREE WORKERS pass in, POULDER and JAMES follow them.  The
     doors are not closed, and through this aperture comes the voice
     of LORD WILLIAM, punctuated and supported by decorous applause.]

     [LITTLE ANNE runs in, and listens at the window to the confused
     and distant murmurs of a crowd.]

VOICE OF LORD W.  We propose to move for a further advance in the
chain-making and--er--er--match-box industries.  [Applause.]

     [LITTLE ANNE runs across to the door, to listen.]

[On rising voice]  I would conclude with some general remarks.
Ladies and gentlemen, the great natural, but--er--artificial
expansion which trade experienced the first years after the war has--
er--collapsed.  These are hard times.  We who are fortunate feel more
than ever--er--responsible--[He stammers, loses the thread of his
thoughts.]--[Applause]--er--responsible--[The thread still eludes
him]--er----

L. ANNE.  [Poignantly]  Oh, Daddy!

LORD W.  [Desperately]  In fact--er--you know how--er--responsible we
feel.

L. ANNE.  Hooray!  [Applause.]

     [There float in through the windows the hoarse and distant
     sounds of the Marseillaise, as sung by London voices.]

LORD W.  There is a feeling in the air--that I for one should say
deliberately was--er--a feeling in the air--er--a feeling in the
air----

L. ANNE.  [Agonised]  Oh, Daddy!  Stop!

     [Jane enters, and closes the door behind him.  JAMES.  Look
     here!  'Ave I got to report you to Miss Stokes?]

L. ANNE.  No-o-o!

JAMES.  Well, I'm goin' to.

L. ANNE.  Oh, James, be a friend to me!  I've seen nothing yet.

JAMES.  No; but you've eaten a good bit, on the stairs.  What price
that Peach Melba?

L. ANNE.  I can't go to bed till I've digested it can I?  There's
such a lovely crowd in the street!

JAMES.  Lovely?  Ho!

L. ANNE.  [Wheedling]  James, you couldn't tell Miss Stokes!  It
isn't in you, is it?

JAMES.  [Grinning]  That's right.

L. ANNE.  So-I'll just get under here.  [She gets under the table]
Do I show?

JAMES.  [Stooping]  Not 'arf!

     [POULDER enters from the hall.]

POULDER.  What are you doin' there?

JAMES. [Between him and the table--raising himself]  Thinkin'.

     [POULDER purses his mouth to repress his feedings.]

POULDER.  My orders are to fetch the bomb up here for Lady William to
inspect.  Take care no more writers stray in.

JAMES.  How shall I know 'em?

POULDER.  Well--either very bald or very hairy.

JAMES.  Right-o!  [He goes.]

     [POULDER, with his back to the table, busies himself with the
     set of his collar.]

POULDER. [Addressing an imaginary audience--in a low but important
voice]  The--ah--situation is seerious.  It is up to us of the--ah--
leisured classes----

     [The face of LITTLE ANNE is poked out close to his legs, and
     tilts upwards in wonder towards the bow of his waistcoat.]

to--ah--keep the people down.  The olla polloi are clamourin'----

     [Miss STOKES appears from the hall, between the pillars.]

Miss S. Poulder!

POULDER.  [Making a volte face towards the table] Miss?

MISS S.  Where is Anne?

POULDER.  [Vexed at the disturbance of his speech]  Excuse me, Miss--
to keep track of Miss Anne is fortunately no part of my dooties.

     [Miss S.  She really is naughty.]

POULDER.  She is.  If she was mine, I'd spank her.

     [The smiling face of LITTLE ANNE becomes visible again close to
     his legs.]

MISS S.  Not a nice word.

POULDER.  No; but a pleasant haction.  Miss Anne's the limit.  In
fact, Lord and Lady William are much too kind 'earted all round.
Take these sweated workers; that class o' people are quite 'opeless.
Treatin' them as your equals, shakin 'ands with 'em, givin 'em tea--
it only puffs 'em out.  Leave it to the Church, I say.

MISS S.  The Church is too busy, Poulder.

POULDER.  Ah!  That "Purity an' Future o' the Race Campaign."  I'll
tell you what I thinks the danger o' that, Miss.  So much purity that
there won't be a future race.  [Expanding]  Purity of 'eart's an
excellent thing, no doubt, but there's a want of nature about it.
Same with this Anti-Sweating.  Unless you're anxious to come down,
you must not put the lower classes up.

MISS S.  I don't agree with you at all, Poulder.

POULDER.  Ah!  You want it both ways, Miss.  I should imagine you're
a Liberal.

MISS S.  [Horrified]  Oh, no!  I certainly am not.

POULDER.  Well, I judged from your takin' cocoa.  Funny thing that,
about cocoa-how it still runs through the Liberal Party!  It's
virtuous, I suppose.  Wine, beer, tea, coffee-all of 'em vices.  But
cocoa you might drink a gallon a day and annoy no one but yourself!
There's a lot o' deep things in life, Miss!

Miss S.  Quite so.  But I must find Anne.

     [She recedes. ]

POULDER.  [Suavely]  Well, I wish you every success; and I hope
you'll spank her.  This modern education--there's no fruitiness in
it.

L. ANNE.  [From under the table]  Poulder, are you virtuous?

POULDER.  [Jumping]  Good Ged!

L. ANNE.  D'you mind my asking?  I promised James I would.

POULDER.  Miss Anne, come out!

     [The four footmen appear in the hall, HENRY carrying the wine
     cooler.]

JAMES.  Form fours-by your right-quick march!

     [They enter, marching down right of table.]

Right incline--Mark time!  Left turn!  'Alt!  'Enry, set the bomb!
Stand easy!

     [HENRY places the wine cooler on the table and covers it with a
     blue embroidered Chinese mat, which has occupied the centre of
     the tablecloth.]

POULDER.  Ah!  You will 'ave your game!  Thomas, take the door there!
James, the 'all!  Admit titles an' bishops.  No literary or Labour
people.  Charles and 'Enry, 'op it and 'ang about!

     [CHARLES and HENRY go out, the other too move to their
     stations.]

     [POULDER, stands by the table looking at the covered bomb.  The
     hoarse and distant sounds of the Marseillaise float in again
     from Park Lane.]

[Moved by some deep feeling]  And this house an 'orspital in the war!
I ask you--what was the good of all our sacrifices for the country?
No town 'ouse for four seasons--rustygettin' in the shires, not a
soul but two boys under me.  Lord William at the front, Lady William
at the back.  And all for this!  [He points sadly at the cooler]  It
comes of meddlin' on the Continent.  I had my prognostications at the
time.  [To JAMES]  You remember my sayin' to you just before you
joined up: "Mark my words--we shall see eight per cent. for our money
before this is over!"

JAMES.  [Sepulchrally]  I see the eight per cent., but not the money.

POULDER.  Hark at that!

     [The sounds of the Marseillaise grow louder.  He shakes his
     head.]

I'd read the Riot Act.  They'll be lootin' this house next!

JAMES.  We'll put up a fight over your body: "Bartholomew Poulder,
faithful unto death!"  Have you insured your life?

POULDER.  Against a revolution?

JAMES.  Act o' God!  Why not?

POULDER.  It's not an act o' God.

JAMES.  It is; and I sympathise with it.

POULDER.  You--what?

JAMES.  I do--only--hands off the gov'nor.

POULDER.  Oh!  Really!  Well, that's something.  I'm glad to see you
stand behind him, at all events.

JAMES.  I stand in front of 'im when the scrap begins!

POULDER.  Do you insinuate that my heart's not in the right place?

JAMES.  Well, look at it!  It's been creepin' down ever since I knew
you.  Talk of your sacrifices in the war--they put you on your
honour, and you got stout on it.  Rations--not 'arf.

POULDER.  [Staring at him]  For independence, I've never seen your
equal, James.  You might be an Australian.

JAMES.  [Suavely]  Keep a civil tongue, or I'll throw you to the
crowd!  [He comes forward to the table]  Shall I tell you why I
favour the gov'nor?  Because, with all his pomp, he's a gentleman, as
much as I am.  Never asks you to do what he wouldn't do himself.
What's more, he never comes it over you.  If you get drunk, or--well,
you understand me, Poulder--he'll just say: "Yes, yes; I know,
James!" till he makes you feel he's done it himself.  [Sinking his
voice mysteriously] I've had experience with him, in the war and out.
Why he didn't even hate the Huns, not as he ought.  I tell you he's
no Christian.

POULDER.  Well, for irreverence----!

JAMES.  [Obstinately]  And he'll never be.  He's got too soft a
heart.

L. ANNE.  [Beneath the table-shrilly] Hurrah!

POULDER.  [Jumping]  Come out, Miss Anne!

JAMES.  Let 'er alone!

POULDER.  In there, under the bomb?

JAMES.  [Contemptuously]  Silly ass!  You should take 'em lying down!

POULDER.  Look here, James!  I can't go on in this revolutionary
spirit; either you or I resign.

JAMES.  Crisis in the Cabinet!

POULDER.  I give you your marchin' orders.

JAMES.  [Ineffably] What's that you give me?

POULDER.  Thomas, remove James!

     [THOMAS grins.]

L. ANNE.  [Who, with open mouth, has crept out to see the fun]  Oh!
Do remove James, Thomas!

POULDER.  Go on, Thomas.

     [THOMAS takes one step towards JAMES, who lays a hand on the
     Chinese mat covering the bomb.]

JAMES.  [Grimly]  If I lose control of meself.

L. ANNE.  [Clapping her hands]  Oh!  James!  Do lose control!  Then I
shall see it go off!

JAMES.  [To POULDER]  Well, I'll merely empty the pail over you!

POULDER.  This is not becomin'!

     [He walks out into the hall.]

JAMES.  Another strategic victory!  What a Boche he'd have made.  As
you were, Tommy!

     [THOMAS returns to the door.  The sound of prolonged applause
     cornea from within.]

That's a bishop.

L. ANNE.  Why?

JAMES.  By the way he's drawin'.  It's the fine fightin' spirit in
'em.  They were the backbone o' the war.  I see there's a bit o' the
old stuff left in you, Tommy.

L. ANNE.  [Scrutinizing the widely--grinning THOM]  Where?  Is it in
his mouth?

JAMES.  You've still got a sense of your superiors.  Didn't you
notice how you moved to Poulder's orders, me boy; an' when he was
gone, to mine?

L. ANNE.  [To THOMAS]  March!

     [The grinning THOMAS remains immovable.]

He doesn't, James!

JAMES.  Look here, Miss Anne--your lights ought to be out before ten.
Close in, Tommy!

     [He and THOMAS move towards her.]

L. ANNE.  [Dodging]  Oh, no!  Oh, no!  Look!

     [The footmen stop and turn.  There between the pillars, stands
     LITTLE AIDA with the trousers, her face brilliant With
     surprise.]

JAMES.  Good Lord!  What's this?

     [Seeing L. ANNE, LITTLE AIDA approaches, fascinated, and the two
     children sniff at each other as it were like two little dogs
     walking round and round.]

L. ANNE.  [Suddenly]  My name's Anne; what's yours?

L. AIDA.  Aida.

L. ANNE.  Are you lost?

L. AIDA.  Nao.

L. ANNE.  Are those trousers?

L. AIDA.  Yus.

L. Arms.  Whose?

L. AIDA.  Mrs. Lemmy's.

L. ANNE.  Does she wear them?

     [LITTLE AIDA smiles brilliantly.]

L. AIDA.  Nao.  She sews 'em.

L. ANNE.  [Touching the trousers]  They are hard.  James's are much
softer; aren't they, James?  [JAMES deigns no reply]  What shall we
do?  Would you like to see my bedroom?

L. AIDA.  [With a hop]  Aoh, yus!

JAMES.  No.

L. ANNE.  Why not?

JAMES.  Have some sense of what's fittin'.

L. ANNE.  Why isn't it fittin'?  [To LITTLE AIDA]  Do you like me?

L. AIDA.  Yus-s.

L. ANNE.  So do I.  Come on!

     [She takes LITTLE AIDA'S hand.]

JAMES.  [Between the pillars]  Tommy, ketch 'em!

     [THOMAS retains them by the skirts.]

L. ANNE.  [Feigning indifference]  All right, then!  [To LITTLE AIDA]
Have you ever seen a bomb?

L. AIDA.  Nao.

L. ANNE.  [Going to the table and lifting a corner of the cover]
Look!

L. AIDA.  [Looking]  What's it for?

L. ANNE.  To blow up this house.

L. AIDA.  I daon't fink!

L. ANNE.  Why not?

L. AIDA.  It's a beautiful big 'Ouse.

L. ANNE.  That's why.  Isn't it, James?

L. AIDA.  You give the fing to me; I'll blow up our 'ouse--it's an
ugly little 'ouse.

L. ANNE  [Struck]  Let's all blow up our own; then we can start fair.
Daddy would like that.

L. AIDA.  Yus.  [Suddenly brilliant]  I've 'ad a ride in a taxi, an'
we're goin' 'ome in it agyne!

L. ANNE.  Were you sick?

LITTLE AIDA.  [Brilliant]  Nao.

L. ANNE I was; when I first went in one, but I was quite young then.
James, could you get her a Peche Melba?  There was one.

JAMES.  No.

L. ANNE.  Have you seen the revolution?

L. AIDA.  Wot's that?

L. ANNE.  It's made of people.

L. AIDA.  I've seen the corfin, it's myde o' wood.

L. ANNE.  Do you hate the rich?

L. AIDA.  [Ineffably]  Nao.  I hates the poor.

L. ANNE.  Why?

L. AIDA.  'Cos they 'yn't got nuffin'.

L. ANNE.  I love the poor.  They're such dears.

L. AIDA.  [Shaking her head with a broad smile]  Nao.

L. ANNE.  Why not?

L. AIDA.  I'd tyke and lose the lot, I would.

L. ANNE.  Where?

L. AIDA.  In the water.

L. ANNE.  Like puppies?

L. AIDA.  Yus.

L. ANNE.  Why?

L. AIDA.  Then I'd be shut of 'em.

L. ANNE.  [Puzzled]  Oh!

     [The voice of THE PRESS is heard in the hall.  "Where's the
     little girl?"]

JAMES.  That's you.  Come 'ere!

     [He puts a hand behind LITTLE AIDA'S back and propels her
     towards the hall.  THE PRESS enters with old MRS. LEMMY.]

PRESS.  Oh!  Here she is, major domo.  I'm going to take this old
lady to the meeting; they want her on the platform.  Look after our
friend, Mr. Lemmy here; Lord William wants to see him presently.

L. ANNE.  [In an awed whisper]  James, it's the little blighter!

     [She dives again under the table.  LEMMY enters.]

LEMMY.  'Ere!  'Arf a mo'!  Yer said yer'd drop me at my plyce.
Well, I tell yer candid--this 'yn't my plyce

PRESS.  That's all right, Mr. Lemmy.  [He grins]  They'll make you
wonderfully comfortable, won't you, major domo?

     [He passes on through the room, to the door, ushering old MRS.
     LEMMY and LITTLE AIDA.]

     [POULDER blocks LEMMY'S way, with CHARLES and HENRY behind him.]

POULDER.  James, watch it; I'll report.

     [He moves away, following THE PRESS through the door.  JAMES
     between table and window.  THOMAS has gone to the door.  HENRY
     and CHARLES remain at the entrances to the hall.  LEMMY looks
     dubiously around, his cockney assurrance gradually returns.]

LEMMY.  I think I knows the gas 'ere.  This is where I came to-dy,
'yn't it?  Excuse my hesitytion--these little 'ouses IS so much the
syme.

JAMES.  [Gloomily]  They are!

LEMMY.  [Looking at the four immovable footmen, till he concentrates
on JAMES]  Ah! I 'ad a word wiv you, 'adn't I?  You're the four
conscientious ones wot's wyin' on your gov'nor's chest.  'Twas you I
spoke to, wasn't it?  [His eyes travel over them again]  Ye're so
monotonous.  Well, ye're busy now, I see.  I won't wyste yer time.

     [He turns towards the hall, but CHARLES and HENRY bar the way in
     silence.]

     [Skidding a little, and regarding the four immovables once more]

I never see such pytient men?  Compared wiv yer, mountains is
restless.

     [He goes to the table.  JAMES watches him.  ANNE barks from
     underneath.]

[Skidding again]  Why!  There's a dawg under there.  [Noting the grin
on THOMAS'S face]  Glad it amooses yer.  Yer want it, daon't yer, wiv
a fyce like that?  Is this a ply wivaht words?  'Ave I got into the
movies by mistyke?  Turn aht, an' let's 'ave six penn'orth o'
darkness.

L. ANNE.  [From beneath the cable]  No, no!  Not dark!

LEMMY.  [Musingly]  The dawg talks anywy.  Come aht, Fido!

     [LITTLE ANNE emerges, and regards him with burning curiosity.]

I sy: Is this the lytest fashion o' receivin' guests?

L. ANNE.  Mother always wants people to feel at home.  What shall we
do?  Would you like to hear the speeches?  Thomas, open the door a
little, do!

JAMES.  'Umour 'er a couple o' inches, Tommy!

     [THOMAS draws the door back stealthily an inch or so.]

L. ANNE.  [After applying her eye-in a loud whisper]  There's the old
lady.  Daddy's looking at her trousers.  Listen!

     [For MRS. LEMMY'S voice is floating faintly through: "I putt in
     the buttonholes, I stretches the flies; I 'ems the bottoms; I
     lines the crutch; I putt on this bindin'; I sews on the buttons;
     I presses the seams--Tuppence three farthin's the pair."]

LEMMY.  [In a hoarse whisper]  That's it, old lydy: give it 'em!

L. ANNE.  Listen!

VOICE OF LORD W.  We are indebted to our friends the Press for giving
us the pleasure--er--pleasure of hearing from her own lips--the
pleasure----

L. ANNE.  Oh!  Daddy!

     [THOMAS abruptly closes the doors.]

LEMMY.  [To ANNE]  Now yer've done it.  See wot comes o' bein'
impytient.  We was just gettin' to the marrer.

L. ANNE.  What can we do for you now?

LEMMY.  [Pointing to ANNE, and addressing JAMES]  Wot is this one,
anywy?

JAMES.  [Sepulchrally]  Daughter o' the house.

LEMMY.  Is she insured agynst 'er own curiosity?

L. ANNE.  Why?

LEMMY.  As I daon't believe in a life beyond the gryve, I might be
tempted to send yer there.

L. ANNE.  What is the gryve?

LEMMY.  Where little gells goes to.

L. ANNE.  Oh, when?

LEMMY.  [Pretending to look at a match, which is not there]  Well, I
dunno if I've got time to finish yer this minute.  Sy to-mower at.
'arf past.

L. ANNE.  Half past what?

LEMMY.  [Despairingly]  'Arf past wot!

     [The sound of applause is heard.]

JAMES.  That's 'is Grace.  'E's gettin' wickets, too.

     [POULDER entering from the door.]

POULDER.  Lord William is slippin' in.

     [He makes a cabalistic sign with his head.  Jeers crosses to the
     door.  LEMMY looks dubiously at POULDER.]

LEMMY.  [Suddenly--as to himself]  Wot oh!  I am the portly one!

POULDER.  [Severely]  Any such allusion aggeravates your offence.

LEMMY.  Oh, ah!  Look 'ere, it was a corked bottle.  Now, tyke care,
tyke care, 'aughty!  Daon't curl yer lip!  I shall myke a clean
breast o' my betryal when the time comes!

     [There is a alight movement of the door.  ANNE makes a dive
     towards the table but is arrested by POULDER grasping her
     waistband.  LORD WILLIAM slips in, followed by THE PRESS, on
     whom JAMES and THOMAS close the door too soon.]

HALF OF THE PRESS.  [Indignantly]  Look out!

JAMES.  Do you want him in or out, me Lord?

LEMMY.  I sy, you've divided the Press; 'e was unanimous.

     [The FOOTMEN let THE PRESS through.]

LORD W.  [To THE PRESS]  I'm so sorry.

LEMMY.  Would yer like me to see to 'is gas?

LORD W.  So you're my friend of the cellars?

LEMMY.  [Uneasy]  I daon't deny it.

     [POULDER begins removing LITTLE ANNE.]

L. ANNE.  Let me stay, Daddy; I haven't seen anything yet!  If I go,
I shall only have to come down again when they loot the house.
Listen!

     [The hoarse strains of the Marseillaise are again heard from the
     distance.]

LORD W.  [Blandly]  Take her up, Poulder!

L. ANNE.  Well, I'm coming down again--and next time I shan't have
any clothes on, you know.

     [They vanish between the pillars.  LORD WILLIAM makes a sign of
     dismissal.  The FOOTMAN file out.]

LEMMY.  [Admiringly]  Luv'ly pyces!

LORD W.  [Pleasantly]  Now then; let's have our talk, Mr.----

LEMMY.  Lemmy.

PRESS.  [Who has slipped his note-book out]  "Bombed and Bomber face
to face----"

LEMMY. [Uneasy]  I didn't come 'ere agyne on me own, yer know.  The
Press betryed me.

LORD W.  Is that old lady your mother?

LEMMY.  The syme.  I tell yer stryte, it was for 'er I took that old
bottle o' port.  It was orful old.

LORD W.  Ah!  Port?  Probably the '83.  Hope you both enjoyed it.

LEMMY. So far-yus.  Muvver'll suffer a bit tomower, I expect.

LORD W.  I should like to do something for your mother, if you'll
allow me.

LEMMY.  Oh!  I'll allow yer.  But I dunno wot she'll sy.

LORD W.  I can see she's a fine independent old lady!  But suppose
you were to pay her ten bob a week, and keep my name out of it?

LEMMY.  Well, that's one wy o' YOU doin' somefink, 'yn't it?

LORD W.  I giving you the money, of course.

PRESS.  [Writing] "Lord William, with kingly generosity----"

LEMMY.  [Drawing attention to THE PRESS with his thumb] I sy--
I daon't mind, meself--if you daon't----

LORD W.  He won't write anything to annoy me.

PRESS.  This is the big thing, Lord William; it'll get the public
bang in the throat.

LEMMY.  [Confidentially]  Bit dyngerous, 'yn't it? trustin' the
Press?  Their right 'ands never knows wot their left 'ands is
writin'.  [To THE PRESS]  'Yn't that true, speakin' as a man?

PRESS.  Mr. Lemmy, even the Press is capable of gratitude.

LEMMY.  Is it?  I should ha' thought it was too important for a
little thing like that.  [To LORD WILLIAM]  But ye're quite right; we
couldn't do wivaht the Press--there wouldn't be no distress, no
coffin, no revolution--'cos nobody'd know nuffin' abaht it.  Why!
There wouldn't be no life at all on Earf in these dyes, wivaht the
Press!  It's them wot says: "Let there be Light--an' there is Light."

LORD W.  Umm!  That's rather a new thought to me.  [Writes on his
cuff.]

LEMMY.  But abaht Muvver, I'll tell yer 'ow we can arrynge.  You send
'er the ten bob a week wivaht syin' anyfink, an' she'll fink it comes
from Gawd or the Gover'ment yer cawn't tell one from t'other in
Befnal Green.

LORD W.  All right; we'll' do that.

LEMMY.  Will yer reely?  I'd like to shyke yer 'and.

     [LORD WILLIAM puts out his hand, which LEMMY grasps.]

PRESS.  [Writing]  "The heartbeat of humanity was in that grasp
between the son of toil and the son of leisure."

LEMMY.  [Already ashamed of his emotion]  'Ere, 'arf a mo'!  Which is
which?  Daon't forget I'm aht o' wori; Lord William, if that's 'is
nyme, is workin 'ard at 'is Anti-Sweats!  Wish I could get a job like
vat--jist suit me!

LORD W.  That hits hard, Mr. Lemmy.

LEMMY.  Daon't worry!  Yer cawn't 'elp bein' born in the purple!

LORD W.  Ah!  Tell me, what would you do in my place?

LEMMY.  Why--as the nobleman said in 'is well-known wy: "Sit in me
Club winder an' watch it ryne on the dam people!"  That's if I was a
average nobleman!  If I was a bit more noble, I might be tempted to
come the kind'earted on twenty thou' a year.  Some prefers yachts, or
ryce 'orses.  But philanthropy on the 'ole is syfer, in these dyes.

LORD W.  So you think one takes to it as a sort of insurance, Mr.
Lemmy?  Is that quite fair?

LEMMY.  Well, we've all got a weakness towards bein' kind, somewhere
abaht us.  But the moment wealf comes in, we 'yn't wot I call single-
'earted.  If yer went into the foundytions of your wealf--would yer
feel like 'avin' any?  It all comes from uvver people's 'ard,
unpleasant lybour--it's all built on Muvver as yer might sy.  An' if
yer daon't get rid o' some of it in bein' kind--yer daon't feel syfe
nor comfy.

LORD W.  [Twisting his moustache] Your philosophy is very pessimistic.

LEMMY.  Well, I calls meself an optimist; I sees the worst of
everyfink.  Never disappynted, can afford to 'ave me smile under the
blackest sky.  When deaf is squeezin' of me windpipe, I shall 'ave a
laugh in it!  Fact is, if yer've 'ad to do wiv gas an' water pipes,
yer can fyce anyfing.  [The distant Marseillaise blares up] 'Ark at
the revolution!

LORD W.  [Rather desperately]  I know--hunger and all the rest of it!
And here am I, a rich man, and don't know what the deuce to do.

LEMMY.  Well, I'll tell yer.  Throw yer cellars open, an' while the
populyce is gettin' drunk, sell all yer 'ave an' go an' live in
Ireland; they've got the millennium chronic over there.

     [LORD WILLIAM utters a short, vexed laugh, and begins to walk
     about.]

That's speakin' as a practical man.  Speakin' as a synt "Bruvvers,
all I 'ave is yours.  To-morrer I'm goin' dahn to the Lybour Exchynge
to git put on the wytin' list, syme as you!"

LORD W.  But, d---it, man, there we should be, all together!  Would
that help?

LEMMY.  Nao; but it'd syve a lot o' blood.

     [LORD WILLIAM stops abruptly, and looks first at LEMMY, then at
     the cooler, still cohered with the Chinese mat.]

Yer thought the Englishman could be taught to shed blood wiv syfety.
Not 'im!  Once yer git 'im into an 'abit, yer cawn't git 'im out of
it agyne.  'E'll go on sheddin' blood mechanical--Conservative by
nyture.  An' 'e won't myke nuffin' o' yours.  Not even the Press wiv
'is 'oneyed words'll sty 'is 'and.

LORD W.  And what do you suggest we could have done, to avoid
trouble?

LEMMY.  [Warming to his theme]  I'll tell yer.  If all you wealfy
nobs wiv kepitel 'ad come it kind from the start after the war yer'd
never 'a been 'earin' the Marseillaisy naow.  Lord!  'Ow you did talk
abaht Unity and a noo spirit in the Country.  Noo spirit!  Why, soon
as ever there was no dynger from outside, yer stawted to myke it
inside, wiv an iron'and.  Naow, you've been in the war an' it's given
yer a feelin' 'eart; but most of the nobs wiv kepitel was too old or
too important to fight.  They weren't born agyne.  So naow that bad
times is come, we're 'owlin' for their blood.

LORD W.  I quite agree; I quite agree.  I've often said much the same
thing.

LEMMY.  Voice cryin' in the wilderness--I daon't sy we was yngels--
there was faults on bofe sides.  [He looks at THE PRESS]  The Press
could ha' helped yer a lot.  Shall I tell yer wot the Press did?
"It's vital," said the Press, "that the country should be united, or
it will never recover."  Nao strikes, nao 'omen nature, nao nuffink.
Kepitel an' Lybour like the Siamese twins.  And, fust dispute that
come along, the Press orfs wiv its coat an' goes at it bald'eaded.
An' wot abaht since?  Sich a riot o' nymes called, in Press--and
Pawlyement.  Unpatriotic an' outrygeous demands o' lybour.  Blood-
suckin' tyranny o' Kepitel; thieves an' dawgs an 'owlin Jackybines--
gents throwin' books at each other; all the resources of edjucytion
exhausted!  If I'd bin Prime Minister I'd 'ave 'ad the Press's gas
cut 'orf at the meter.  Puffect liberty, of course, nao Censorship;
just sy wot yer like--an' never be 'eard of no more.

     [Turning suddenly to THE PRESS, who has been scribbling in pace
     with this harangue, and now has developed a touch of writer's
     cramp.]

Why!  'Is 'end's out o' breath!  Fink o' vet!

LORD W.  Great tribute to your eloquence, Mr. Lemmy!

     [A sudden stir of applause and scraping of chairs is heard; the
     meeting is evidently breaking up.  LADY WILLIAM comes in,
     followed by MRS. LEMMY with her trousers, and LITTLE AIDA.
     LEMMY stares fixedly at this sudden, radiant apparition.  His
     gaze becomes as that of a rabbit regarding a snake.  And
     suddenly he puts up his hand and wipes his brow.]

     [LADY WILLIAM, going to the table, lifts one end of the Chinese
     mat, and looks at LEMMY.  Then she turns to LORD WILLIAM.]

LADY W.  Bill!

LEMMY.  [To his mother--in a hoarse whisper]  She calls 'im Bill.
'Ow!  'Yn't she IT?

LADY W.  [Apart]  Have you--spoken to him?

     [LORD WILLIAM shakes his head.]

Not?  What have you been saying, then?

LORD W.  Nothing, he's talked all the time.

LADY W.  [Very low]  What a little caution!

LORD W.  Steady, old girl!  He's got his eye on you!

     [LADY WILLIAM looks at LEMMY, whose eyes are still fixed on
     her.]

LADY W.  [With resolution]  Well, I'm going to tackle him.

     [She moves towards LEMMY, who again wipes his brow, and wrings
     out his hand.]

MRS. LEMMY.  Don't 'ee du that, Bob.  Yu must forgive'im, Ma'am; it's
'is admiration.  'E was always one for the ladies, and he'm not used
to seein' so much of 'em.

LADY W.  Don't you think you owe us an explanation?

MRS. LEMMY.  Speak up, Bob.

     [But LEMMY only shifts his feet.]

My gudeness!  'E've a-lost 'is tongue.  I never knu that 'appen to 'e
before.

LORD W.  [Trying to break the embarrassment]  No ill-feeling, you
know, Lemmy.

     [But LEMMY still only rolls his eyes.]

LADY W.  Don't you think it was rather--inconsiderate of you?

LEMMY.  Muvver, tyke me aht, I'm feelin' fynte!

     [Spurts of the Marseillaise and the mutter of the crowd have
     been coming nearer; and suddenly a knocking is heard.  POULDER
     and JAMES appear between the pillars.]

POULDER.  The populace, me Lord!

LADY W.  What!

LORD W.  Where've you put 'em, Poulder?

POULDER.  They've put theirselves in the portico, me Lord.

LORD W.  [Suddenly wiping his brow]  Phew!  I say, this is awful,
Nell!  Two speeches in one evening.  Nothing else for it, I suppose.
Open the window, Poulder!

POULDER.  [Crossing to the window]  We are prepared for any
sacrifice, me Lord.

     [He opens the window.]

PRESS.  [Writing furiously]  "Lady William stood like a statue at
bay."

LORD W.  Got one of those lozenges on you, Nell?

     [But LADY WILLIAM has almost nothing on her.]

LEMMY.  [Producing a paper from his pocket]  'Ave one o' my gum
drops?

     [He passes it to LORD WILLIAM.]

LORD W.  [Unable to refuse, takes a large, flat gum drop from the
paper, and looks at it in embarrassment.]  Ah! thanks!  Thanks
awfully!

     [LEMMY turns to LITTLE AIDA, and puts a gum drop in her mouth.
     A burst of murmurs from the crowd.]

JAMES. [Towering above the wine cooler]  If they get saucy, me Lord,
I can always give 'em their own back.

LORD W.  Steady, James; steady!

     [He puts the gum drop absently in his mouth, and turns up to the
     open window.]

VOICE.  [Outside]  'Ere they are--the bally plutocrats.

     [Voices in chorus: "Bread!  Bread!"]

LORD W.  Poulder, go and tell the chef to send out anything there is
in the house--nicely, as if it came from nowhere in particular.

POULDER.  Very good, me Lord.  [Sotto voce]  Any wine?  If I might
suggest--German--'ock?

LORD W.  What you like.

POULDER.  Very good, me Lord. [He goes.]

LORD W.  I say, dash it, Nell, my teeth are stuck!  [He works his
finger in his mouth.]

LADY W.  Take it out, darling.

LORD W.  [Taking out the gum drop and looking at it]  What the deuce
did I put it in for?

PRESS.  ['Writing]  "With inimitable coolness Lord William prepared
to address the crowd."

     [Voices in chorea: "Bread!  Bread!"]

LORD W.  Stand by to prompt, old girl.  Now for it.  This ghastly gum
drop!

     [LORD WILLIAM takes it from his agitated hand, and flips it
     through the window.]

VOICE.  Dahn with the aristo----[Chokes.]

LADY W.  Oh!  Bill----oh!  It's gone into a mouth!

LORD W.  Good God!

VOICE.  Wet's this?  Throwin' things?  Mind aht, or we'll smash yer
winders!

     [As the voices in chorus chant: "Bread! Bread!" LITTLE ANNE,
     night-gowned, darts in from the hall.  She is followed by MISS
     STOKES.  They stand listening.]

LORD W.  [To the Crowd]  My friends, you've come to the wrong shop.
There's nobody in London more sympathetic with you.  [The crowd
laughs hoarsely.]  [Whispering]  Look out, old girl; they can see your
shoulders.  [LORD WILLIAM moves back a step.]  If I were a speaker, I
could make you feel----

VOICE.  Look at his white weskit!  Blood-suckers--fattened on the
people!

     [JAMES dives his hand at the wine cooler.]

LORD W.  I've always said the Government ought to take immediate
steps----

VOICE.  To shoot us dahn.

LORD W.  Not a bit.  To relieve the--er----

LADY W.  [Prompting]  Distress.

LADY W.  Distress, and ensure--er--ensure

LADY W.  [Prompting] Quiet.

LORD W. [To her] No, no.  To ensure--ensure----

L. ANNE.  [Agonized]  Oh, Daddy!

VOICE.  'E wants to syve 'is dirty great 'ouse.

LORD W.  [Roused]  D----if I do!

     [Rude and hoarse laughter from the crowd.]

JAMES.  [With fury]  Me Lord, let me blow 'em to glory!

     [He raises the cooler and advances towards the window.]

LORD W.  [Turning sharply on him]  Drop it, James; drop it!

PRESS.  [Jumping]  No, no; don't drop it!

     [JAMES retires crestfallen to the table, where he replaces the
     cooler.]

LORD W.  [Catching hold of his bit]  Look here, I must have fought
alongside some of you fellows in the war.  Weren't we jolly well like
brothers?

A VOICE.  Not so much bloomin' "Kamerad"; hand over yer 'Ouse.

LORD W.  I was born with this beastly great house, and money, and
goodness knows what other entanglements--a wife and family----

VOICE.  Born with a wife and family!

     [Jeers and laughter.]

LORD W.  I feel we're all in the same boat, and I want to pull my
weight.  If you can show me the way, I'll take it fast enough.

A DEEP VOICE.  Step dahn then, an' we'll step up.

ANOTHER VOICE.  'Ear, 'Ear!

     [A fierce little cheer.]

LORD W.  [To LADY WILLIAM--in despair]  By George!  I can't get in
anywhere!

LADY W.  [Calmly]  Then shut the window, Bill.

LEMMY. [Who has been moving towards them slowly]  Lemme sy a word to
'em.

     [All stare at him.  LEMMY approaches the window, followed by
     LITTLE AIDA.  POULDER re-enters with the three other footmen.]

[At the window]  Cheerio!  Cockies!

     [The silence of surprise falls on the crowd.]

I'm one of yer.  Gas an' water I am.  Got more grievances an' out of
employment than any of yer.  I want to see their blood flow, syme as
you.

PRESS.  [writing]  "Born orator--ready cockney wit--saves situation."

LEMMY.  Wot I sy is: Dahn wiv the country, dahn wiv everyfing.  Begin
agyne from the foundytions.  [Nodding his head back at the room]  But
we've got to keep one or two o' these 'ere under glawss, to show our
future generytions.  An' this one is 'armless.  His pipes is sahnd,
'is 'eart is good; 'is 'ead is not strong.  Is 'ouse will myke a
charmin' palace o' varieties where our children can come an' see 'ow
they did it in the good old dyes.  Yer never see rich waxworks as 'is
butler and 'is four conscientious khaki footmen.  Why--wot dyer think
'e 'as 'em for--fear they might be out o'-works like you an' me.
Nao!  Keep this one; 'e's a Flower.  'Arf a mo'!  I'll show yer my
Muvver.  Come 'ere, old lydy; and bring yer trahsers. [MRS. LEMMY
comes forward to the window]  Tell abaht yer speech to the meetin'.

MRS. LEMMY.  [Bridling]  Oh dear!  Well, I cam' in with me trousers,
an' they putt me up on the pedestory at once, so I tole 'em.
[Holding up the trousers]  "I putt in the button'oles, I stretches
the flies; I lines the crutch; I putt on this bindin', I presses the
seams--Tuppence three farthin's a pair."

     [A groan from tote crowd, ]

LEMMY. [Showing her off]  Seventy-seven!  Wot's 'er income?  Twelve
bob a week; seven from the Gover'ment an' five from the sweat of 'er
brow.  Look at 'er!  'Yn't she a tight old dear to keep it goin'!  No
workus for 'er, nao fear!  The gryve rather!

     [Murmurs from the crowd, at Whom MRS. LEMMY is blandly smiling.]

You cawn't git below 'er--impossible!  She's the foundytions of the
country--an' rocky 'yn't the word for 'em.  Worked 'ard all 'er life,
brought up a family and buried 'em on it.  Twelve bob a week, an'
given when 'er fingers goes, which is very near.  Well, naow, this
torf 'ere comes to me an' says: "I'd like to do somefin' for yer
muvver.  'Ow's ten bob a week?" 'e says.  Naobody arst 'im--quite on
'is own.  That's the sort 'e is.  [Sinking his voice confidentially]
Sorft.  You bring yer muvvers 'ere, 'e'll do the syme for them.  I
giv yer the 'int.

VOICE.  [From the crowd]  What's 'is nyme?

LEMMY.  They calls 'im Bill.

VOICE.  Bill What?

L. ANNE.  Dromondy.

LADY W.  Anne!

LEMMY.  Dromedary 'is nyme is.

VOICE.  [From the crowd]  Three cheers for Bill Dromedary.

LEMMY.  I sy, there's veal an' 'am, an' pork wine at the back for
them as wants it; I 'eard the word passed.  An' look 'ere, if yer
want a flag for the revolution, tyke muvver's trahsers an' tie 'em to
the corfin.  Yer cawn't 'ave no more inspirin' banner.  Ketch!  [He
throws the trousers out]  Give Bill a double-barrel fast, to show
there's no ill-feelin'.  Ip, 'ip!

     [The crowd cheers, then slowly passes away, singing at a hoarse
     version of the Marseillaise, till all that is heard is a faint
     murmuring and a distant barrel-organ playing the same tune.]

PRESS.  [Writing]  "And far up in the clear summer air the larks were
singing."

LORD W.  [Passing his heard over his hair, and blinking his eyes]
James!  Ready?

JAMES.  Me Lord!

L. ANNE.  Daddy!

LADY W.  [Taking his arm]  Bill!  It's all right, old man--all right!

LORD W.  [Blinking]  Those infernal larks!  Thought we were on the
Somme again!  Ah!  Mr. Lemmy, [Still rather dreamy]  no end obliged
to you; you're so decent.  Now, why did you want to blow us up before
dinner?

LEMMY.  Blow yer up?  [Passing his hand over his hair in travesty]
"Is it a dream?  Then wykin' would be pyne."

MRS. LEMMY.  Bo-ob!  Not so saucy, my boy!

LEMMY.  Blow yet up?  Wot abaht it?

LADY W.  [Indicating the bomb]  This, Mr. Lemmy!

     [LEMMY looks at it, and his eyes roll and goggle.]

LORD W.  Come, all's forgiven!  But why did you?

LEMMY.  Orl right!  I'm goin' to tyke it awy; it'd a-been a bit
ork'ard for me.  I'll want it to-mower.

LORD W.  What!  To leave somewhere else?

LEMMY.  'Yus, of course!

LORD W.  No, no; dash it!  Tell us what's it filled with?

LEMMY.  Filled wiv?  Nuffin'.  Wot did yet expect?  Toof-pahder?
It's got a bit o' my lead soldered on to it.  That's why it's 'eavy!

LORD W.  But what is it?

LEMMY.  Wot is it?  [His eyes are fearfully fixed on LADY WILLIAM]  I
fought everybody knew 'em.

LADY W.  Mr. Lemmy, you must clear this up, please.

LEMMY.  [TO LORD WILLIAM, With his eyes still held On LADY WILLIAM--
mysteriously]  Wiv lydies present?  'Adn't I better tell the Press?

LORD W.  All right; tell someone--anyone!

     [LEMMY goes down to THE PRESS, who is reading over his last
     note.  Everyone watches and listens with the utmost discretion,
     while he whispers into the ear of THE PRESS; who shakes his head
     violently.]

PRESS.  No, no; it's too horrible.  It destroys my whole----

LEMMY.  Well, I tell yer it is.

     [Whispers again violently.]

PRESS.  No, no; I can't have it.  All my article!  All my article!
It can't be--no----

LEMMY.  I never see sick an obstinate thick-head!  Yer 'yn't worvy of
yet tryde.

     [He whispers still more violently and makes cabalistic signs.]

     [LADY WILLIAM lifts the bomb from the cooler into the sight of
     all.  LORD WILLIAM, seeing it for the first time in full light,
     bends double in silent laughter, and whispers to his wife.  LADY
     WILLIAM drops the bomb and gives way too.  Hearing the sound,
     LEMMY turns, and his goggling eyes pan them all in review.  LORD
     and LADY WILLIAM in fits of laughter, LITTLE ANNE stamping her
     feet, for MISS STOKES, red, but composed, has her hands placed
     firmly over her pupil's eyes and ears; LITTLE AIDA smiling
     brilliantly, MRS. LEMMY blandly in sympathy, neither knowing
     why; the FOUR FOOTMAN in a row, smothering little explosions.
     POULDER, extremely grave and red, THE PRESS perfectly haggard,
     gnawing at his nails.]

LEMMY.  [Turning to THE PRESS]  Blimy!  It amooses 'em, all but the
genteel ones.  Cheer oh!  Press!  Yer can always myke somefin' out o'
nufun'?  It's not the fust thing as 'as existed in yer imaginytion
only.

PRESS.  No, d---it; I'll keep it a bomb!

LEMMY.  [Soothingly]  Ah!  Keep the sensytion.  Wot's the troof
compared wiv that?  Come on, Muvver! Come on, Little Aida!  Time we
was goin' dahn to 'Earf.

     [He goes up to the table, and still skidding a little at LADY
     WILLIAM, takes the late bomb from the cooler, placing it under
     his arm.]

MRS. LEMMY.  Gude naight, sir; gude naight, ma'am; thank yu for my
cup o' tea, an' all yore kindness.

     [She shakes hands with LORD and LADY WILLIAM, drops the curtsey
     of her youth before Mr. POULDER, and goes out followed by LITTLE
     AIDA, who is looking back at LITTLE ANNE.]

LEMMY.  [Turning suddenly]  Aoh!  An' jist one frog!  Next time yer
build an 'ouse, daon't forget--it's the foundytions as bears the
wyte.

     [With a wink that gives way, to a last fascinated look at LADY
     WILLIAM, he passes out.  All gaze after them, except THE PRESS,
     who is tragically consulting his spiflicated notes.]

L. ANNE.  [Breaking away from Miss STOKES and rushing forward]  Oh!
Mum!  what was it?


CURTAIN





End of this Project Gutenberg Etext of THE FOUNDATIONS, by John Galsworthy






THE SKIN GAME

(A TRAGI-COMEDY)

"Who touches pitch shall be defiled"



CHARACTERS

HILLCRIST ...............A Country Gentleman
AMY .....................His Wife
JILL ....................His Daughter
DAWKER ..................His Agent
HORNBLOWER ..............A Man Newly-Rich
CHARLES .................His Elder Son
CHLOE ...................Wife to Charles
ROLF ....................His Younger Son
FELLOWS .................Hillcrist's Butler
ANNA ....................Chloe's Maid
THE JACKMANS ............Man and Wife

AN AUCTIONEER
A SOLICITOR
TWO STRANGERS



ACT I.  HILLCRIST'S Study

ACT II.
     SCENE I.   A month later.  An Auction Room.
     SCENE II.  The same evening.  CHLOE'S Boudoir.

ACT III

     SCENE I.   The following day.  HILLCRIST'S Study.  Morning.
     SCENE II.  The Same.  Evening.




ACT I

     HILLCRIST'S study.  A pleasant room, with books in calf
     bindings, and signs that the HILLCRIST'S have travelled, such
     as a large photograph of the Taj Mahal, of Table Mountain, and
     the Pyramids of Egypt.  A large bureau [stage Right], devoted
     to the business of a country estate.  Two foxes' masks.
     Flowers in bowls.  Deep armchairs.  A large French window open
     [at Back], with a lovely view of a slight rise of fields and
     trees in August sunlight.  A fine stone fireplace [stage Left].
     A door [Left].  A door opposite [Right].  General colour
     effect--stone, and cigar-leaf brown, with spots of bright
     colour.

     [HILLCRIST sits in a swivel chair at the bureau, busy with
     papers.  He has gout, and his left foot is encased accord: He
     is a thin, dried-up man of about fifty-five, with a rather
     refined, rather kindly, and rather cranky countenance.  Close
     to him stands his very upstanding nineteen-year-old daughter
     JILL, with clubbed hair round a pretty, manly face.]

JILL.  You know, Dodo, it's all pretty good rot in these days.

HILLCRIST.  Cads are cads, Jill, even in these days.

JILL.  What is a cad?

HILLCRIST.  A self-assertive fellow, without a sense of other
people.

JILL.  Well, Old Hornblower I'll give you.

HILLCRIST.  I wouldn't take him.

JILL.  Well, you've got him.  Now, Charlie--Chearlie--I say--the
importance of not being Charlie----

HILLCRIST.  Good heavens!  do you know their Christian names?

JILL. My dear father, they've been here seven years.

HILLCRIST.  In old days we only knew their Christian names from
their tombstones.

JILL.  Charlie Hornblower isn't really half a bad sport.

HILLCRIST.  About a quarter of a bad sport I've always thought out
hunting.

JILL.  [Pulling his hair]  Now, his wife--Chloe---

HILLCRIST.  [Whimsical]  Gad! your mother'd have a fit if she knew
you called her Chloe.

JILL.  It's a ripping name.

HILLCRIST.  Chloe!  H'm!  I had a spaniel once----

JILL.  Dodo, you're narrow.  Buck up, old darling, it won't do.
Chloe has seen life, I'm pretty sure; THAT'S attractive, anyway.
No, mother's not in the room; don't turn your uneasy eyes.

HILLCRIST.  Really, my dear, you are getting----

JILL.  The limit.  Now, Rolf----

HILLCRIST.  What's Rolf?  Another dog?

JILL.  Rolf Hornblower's a topper; he really is a nice boy.

HILLCRIST.  [With a sharp look]  Oh!  He's a nice boy?

JILL.  Yes, darling.  You know what a nice boy is, don't you?

HILLCRIST.  Not in these days.

JILL.  Well, I'll tell you.  In the first place, he's not amorous.

HILLCRIST.  What!  Well, that's some comfort.

JILL.  Just a jolly good companion.

HILLCRIST.  To whom?

JILL.  Well, to anyone--me.

HILLCRIST.  Where?

JILL.  Anywhere.  You don't suppose I confine myself to the home
paddocks, do you?  I'm naturally rangey, Father.

HILLCRIST.  [Ironically]  You don't say so!

JILL.  In the second place, he doesn't like discipline.

HILLCRIST.  Jupiter!  He does seem attractive.

JILL.  In the third place, he bars his father.

HILLCRIST.  Is that essential to nice girls too?

JILL.  [With a twirl of his hair]  Fish not!  Fourthly, he's got
ideas.

HILLCRIST.  I knew it!

JILL.  For instance, he thinks--as I do----

HILLCRIST.  Ah!  Good ideas.

JILL.  [Pulling gently]  Careful!  He thinks old people run the show
too much.  He says they oughtn't to, because they're so damtouchy.
Are you damtouchy, darling?

HILLCRIST.  Well, I'm----!  I don't know about touchy.

JILL.  He says there'll be no world fit to live in till we get rid
of the old.  We must make them climb a tall tree, and shake them off
it.

HILLCRIST.  [Drily]  Oh!  he says that!

JILL.  Otherwise, with the way they stand on each other's rights,
they'll spoil the garden for the young.

HILLCRIST.  Does his father agree?

JILL.  Oh!  Rolf doesn't talk to him, his mouth's too large.  Have
you ever seen it, Dodo?

HILLCRIST.  Of course.

JILL.  It's considerable, isn't it?  Now yours is--reticent,
darling.  [Rumpling his hair.]

HILLCRIST.  It won't be in a minute.  Do you realise that I've got
gout?

JILL.  Poor ducky!  How long have we been here, Dodo?

HILLCRIST.  Since Elizabeth, anyway.

JILL.  [Looking at his foot]  It has its drawbacks.  D'you think
Hornblower had a father?  I believe he was spontaneous.  But, Dodo,
why all this--this attitude to the Hornblowers?

     [She purses her lips and makes a gesture as of pushing persons
     away.]

HILLCRIST.  Because they're pushing.

JILL.  That's only because we are, as mother would say, and they're
not--yet.  But why not let them be?

HILLCRIST.  You can't.

JILL.  Why?

HILLCRIST.  It takes generations to learn to live and let live,
Jill.  People like that take an ell when you give them an inch.

JILL.  But if you gave them the ell, they wouldn't want the inch.
Why should it all be such a skin game?

HILLCRIST.  Skin game?  Where do you get your lingo?

JILL.  Keep to the point, Dodo.

HILLCRIST.  Well, Jill, all life's a struggle between people at
different stages of development, in different positions, with
different amounts of social influence and property.  And the only
thing is to have rules of the game and keep them.  New people like
the Hornblowers haven't learnt those rules; their only rule is to
get all they can.

JILL.  Darling, don't prose.  They're not half as bad as you think.

HILLCRIST.  Well, when I sold Hornblower Longmeadow and the
cottages, I certainly found him all right.  All the same, he's got
the cloven hoof.  [Warming up]  His influence in Deepwater is
thoroughly bad; those potteries of his are demoralising--the whole
atmosphere of the place is changing.  It was a thousand pities he
ever came here and discovered that clay.  He's brought in the modern
cutthroat spirit.

JILL.  Cut our throat spirit, you mean.  What's your definition of a
gentleman, Dodo?

HILLCRIST. [Uneasily]  Can't describe--only feel it.

JILL.  Oh!  Try!

HILLCRIST.  Well--er--I suppose you might say--a man who keeps his
form and doesn't let life scupper him out of his standards.

JILL.  But suppose his standards are low?

HILLCRIST.  [With some earnestness]  I assume, of course, that he's
honest and tolerant, gentle to the weak, and not self-seeking.

JILL.  Ah! self-seeking?  But aren't we all, Dodo?  I am.

HILLCRIST.  [With a smile]  You!

JILL.  [Scornfully]  Oh! yes--too young to know.

HILLCRIST.  Nobody knows till they're under pretty heavy fire, Jill.

JILL.  Except, of course, mother.

HILLCRIST.  How do you mean--mother?

JILL.  Mother reminds me of England according to herself--always
right whatever she does.

HILLCRIST.  Ye-es.  Your mother it perhaps--the perfect woman.

JILL.  That's what I was saying.  Now, no one could call you
perfect, Dodo.  Besides, you've got gout.

HILLCRIST.  Yes; and I want Fellows.  Ring that bell.

JILL.  [Crossing to the bell]  Shall I tell you my definition of a
gentleman?  A man who gives the Hornblower his due.  [She rings the
bell]  And I think mother ought to call on them.  Rolf says old
Hornblower resents it fearfully that she's never made a sign to
Chloe the three years she's been here.

HILLCRIST.  I don't interfere with your mother in such matters.  She
may go and call on the devil himself if she likes.

JILL.  I know you're ever so much better than she is.

HILLCRIST.  That's respectful.

JILL.  You do keep your prejudices out of your phiz.  But mother
literally looks down her nose.  And she never forgives an "h."
They'd get the "hell" from her if they took the "hinch."

HILLCRIST.  Jill-your language!

JILL.  Don't slime out of it, Dodo.  I say, mother ought to call on
the Hornblowers.  [No answer.]  Well?

HILLCRIST.  My dear, I always let people have the last word.  It
makes them--feel funny.  Ugh!  My foot![Enter FELLOWS, Left.]
Fellows, send into the village and get another bottle of this stuff.

JILL.  I'll go, darling.

     [She blow him a kiss, and goes out at the window.]

HILLCRIST.  And tell cook I've got to go on slops.  This foot's
worse.

FELLOWS.  [Sympathetic]  Indeed, sir.

HILLCRIST.  My third go this year, Fellows.

FELLOWS.  Very annoying, sir.

HILLCRIST.  Ye-es.  Ever had it?

FELLOWS.  I fancy I have had a twinge, sir.

HILLCRIST.  [Brightening]  Have you?  Where?

FELLOWS.  In my cork wrist, sir.

HILLCRIST.  Your what?

FELLOWS.  The wrist I draw corks with.

HILLCRIST.  [With a cackle]  You'd have had more than a twinge if
you'd lived with my father.  H'm!

FELLOWS.  Excuse me, sir--Vichy water corks, in my experience, are
worse than any wine.

HILLCRIST.  [Ironically]  Ah!  The country's not what it was, is it,
Fellows?

FELLOWS.  Getting very new, sir.

HILLCRIST. [Feelingly]  You're right.  Has Dawker come?

FELLOWS.  Not yet, sir.  The Jackmans would like to see you, sir.

HILLCRIST.  What about?

FELLOWS.  I don't know, sir.

HILLCRIST.  Well, show them in.

FELLOWS.  [Going]  Yes, sir.

     [HILLCRIST turns his swivel chair round.  The JACKMANS come in.
     He, a big fellow about fifty, in a labourer's dress, with eyes
     which have more in then than his tongue can express; she, a
     little woman with a worn face, a bright, quick glance, and a
     tongue to match.]

HILLCRIST.  Good morning, Mrs. Jackman!  Morning, Jackman!  Haven't
seen you for a long time.  What can I do?

     [He draws in foot, and breath, with a sharp hiss.]

HILLCRIST.  [In a down-hearted voice]  We've had notice to quit,
sir.

HILLCRIST.  [With emphasis]  What!

JACKMAN.  Got to be out this week.

MRS. J.  Yes, sir, indeed.

HILLCRIST.  Well, but when I sold Longmeadow and the cottages, it
was on the express understanding that there was to be no disturbance
of tenancies:

MRS. J.  Yes, sir; but we've all got to go.  Mrs. 'Arvey, and the
Drews, an' us, and there isn't another cottage to be had anywhere in
Deepwater.

HILLCRIST.  I know; I want one for my cowman.  This won't do at all.
Where do you get it from?

JACKMAN.  Mr. 'Ornblower, 'imself, air.  Just an hour ago.  He come
round and said: "I'm sorry; I want the cottages, and you've got to
clear."

MRS. J.  [Bitterly]  He's no gentleman, sir; he put it so brisk.  We
been there thirty years, and now we don't know what to do.  So I
hope you'll excuse us coming round, sir.

HILLCRIST.  I should think so, indeed!  H'm!  [He rises and limps
across to the fireplace on his stick.  To himself]  The cloven hoof.
By George!  this is a breach of faith.  I'll write to him, Jackman.
Confound it!  I'd certainly never have sold if I'd known he was
going to do this.

MRS. J.  No, sir, I'm sure, sir.  They do say it's to do with the
potteries.  He wants the cottages for his workmen.

HILLCRIST.  [Sharply]  That's all very well, but he shouldn't have
led me to suppose that he would make no change.

JACKMAN. [Heavily]  They talk about his havin' bought the Centry to
gut up more chimneys there, and that's why he wants the cottages.

HINT.  The Centry!  Impossible!

     [Mrs. J.  Yes, air; it's such a pretty spot-looks beautiful
     from here.  [She looks out through the window]  Loveliest spot
     in all Deepwater, I always say.  And your father owned it, and
     his father before 'im.  It's a pity they ever sold it, sir,
     beggin' your pardon.]

HILLCRIST.  The Centry!  [He rings the bell.]

Mrs. J.  [Who has brightened up]  I'm glad you're goin' to stop it,
sir.  It does put us about.  We don't know where to go.  I said to
Mr. Hornblower, I said, "I'm sure Mr. Hillcrist would never 'eve
turned us out."  An' 'e said: "Mr. Hillcrist be----" beggin' your
pardon, sir.  "Make no mistake," 'e said, "you must go, missis."  He
don't even know our name; an' to come it like this over us!  He's a
dreadful new man, I think, with his overridin notions.  And sich a
heavyfooted man, to look at.  [With a sort of indulgent contempt]
But he's from the North, they say.

     [FELLOWS has entered, Left.]

HILLCRIST.  Ask Mrs. Hillcrist if she'll come.

FELLOWS.  Very good, sir.

HILLCRIST.  Is Dawker here?

FELLOWS.  Not yet, sir.

HILLCRIST.  I want to see him at once.

     [FELLOWS retires.]

JACKMAN.  Mr. Hornblower said he was comin' on to see you, sir.  So
we thought we'd step along first.

HILLCRIST.  Quite right, Jackman.

MRS. J.  I said to Jackman: "Mr. Hillcrist'll stand up for us, I
know.  He's a gentleman," I said.  "This man," I said, "don't care
for the neighbourhood, or the people; he don't care for anything so
long as he makes his money, and has his importance.  You can't
expect it, I suppose," I said; [Bitterly]  "havin' got rich so
sudden."  The gentry don't do things like that.

HILLCRIST.  [Abstracted]  Quite, Mrs. Jackman, quite!
[To himself]  The Centry!  No!

     [MRS. HILLCRIST enters.  A well-dressed woman, with a firm,
     clear-cut face.]

Oh!  Amy!  Mr. and Mrs. Jackman turned out of their cottage, and
Mrs. Harvey, and the Drews.  When I sold to Hornblower, I stipulated
that they shouldn't be.

MRS. J.  Our week's up on Saturday, ma'am, and I'm sure I don't know
where we shall turn, because of course Jackman must be near his
work, and I shall lose me washin' if we have to go far.

HILLCRIST.  [With decision]  You leave it to me, Mrs. Jackman.  Good
morning!  Morning, Jackman!  Sorry I can't move with this gout.

MRS. J.  [For them both]  I'm sure we're very sorry, sir.  Good
morning, sir.  Good morning, ma'am; and thank you kindly.  [They go
out.]

HILLCRIST.  Turning people out that have been there thirty years.  I
won't have it.  It's a breach of faith.

MRS. H.  Do you suppose this Hornblower will care two straws about
that Jack?

HILLCRIST.  He must, when it's put to him, if he's got any decent
feeling.

MRS. H.  He hasn't.

HILLCRIST.  [Suddenly]  The Jackmans talk of his having bought the
Centry to put up more chimneys.

MRS. H.  Never!  [At the window, looking out]  Impossible!  It would
ruin the place utterly; besides cutting us off from the Duke's.  Oh,
no!  Miss Mullins would never sell behind our backs.

HILLCRIST.  Anyway I must stop his turning these people out.

Mrs. H.  [With a little smile, almost contemptuous]  You might have
known he'd do something of the sort.  You will imagine people are
like yourself, Jack.  You always ought to make Dawker have things in
black and white.

HILLCRIST.  I said quite distinctly: "Of course you won't want to
disturb the tenancies; there's a great shortage of cottages."
Hornblower told me as distinctly that he wouldn't.  What more do you
want?

Mrs. H.  A man like that thinks of nothing but the short cut to his
own way.  [Looking out of the window towards the rise]  If he buys
the Centry and puts up chimneys, we simply couldn't stop here.

HILLCRIST.  My father would turn in his grave.

MRS. H.  It would have been more useful if he'd not dipped the
estate, and sold the Centry.  This Hornblower hates us; he thinks we
turn up our noses at him.

HILLCRIST.  As we do, Amy.

MRS. H.  Who wouldn't?  A man without traditions, who believes in
nothing but money and push.

HILLCRIST.  Suppose he won't budge, can we do anything for the
Jackmans?

MRS. H.  There are the two rooms Beaver used to have, over the
stables.

FELLOWS.  Mr. Dawker, sir.

     [DAWKERS is a short, square, rather red-faced terrier of a man,
     in riding clothes and gaiters.]

HILLCRIST.  Ah! Dawker, I've got gout again.

DAWKER.  Very sorry, sir.  How de do, ma'am?

HILLCRIST.  Did you meet the Jackmans?

DAWKERS.  Yeh.

     [He hardly ever quite finishes a word, seeming to snap of their
     tails.]

HILLCRIST.  Then you heard?

DAWKER.  [Nodding]  Smart man, Hornblower; never lets grass grow.

HILLCRIST.  Smart?

DAWKER.  [Grinning]  Don't do to underrate your neighbours.

MRS. H.  A cad--I call him.

DAWKER.  That's it, ma'am-got all the advantage.

HILLCRIST.  Heard anything about the Centry, Dawker?

DAWKER.  Hornblower wants to buy.

HILLCRIST.  Miss Mullins would never sell, would she?

DAWKER.  She wants to.

HILLCRIST.  The deuce she does!

DAWKER.  He won't stick at the price either.

MRS. H.  What's it worth, Dawker?

DAWKER.  Depends on what you want it for.

MRS. H.  He wants it for spite; we want it for sentiment.

DAWKER.  [Grinning]  Worth what you like to give, then; but he's a
rich man.

MRS. H.  Intolerable!

DAWKER.  [To HILLCRIST]  Give me your figure, sir.  I'll try the old
lady before he gets at her.

HILLCRIST.  [Pondering]  I don't want to buy, unless there's nothing
else for it.  I should have to raise the money on the estate; it
won't stand much more.  I can't believe the fellow would be such a
barbarian.  Chimneys within three hundred yards, right in front of
this house!  It's a nightmare.

MRS. H.  You'd much better let Dawker make sure, Jack.

HILLCRIST.  [Uncomfortable]  Jackman says Hornblower's coming round
to see me.  I shall put it to him.

DAWKER.  Make him keener than ever.  Better get in first.

HILLCRIST.  Ape his methods!--Ugh!  Confound this gout!  [He gets
back to his chair with difficulty]  Look here, Dawker, I wanted to
see you about gates----

FELLOWS.  [Entering]  Mr. Hornblower.

     [HORNBLOWER enters-a man of medium, height, thoroughly
     broadened, blown out, as it were, by success.  He has thick,
     coarse, dark hair, just grizzled, wry bushy eyebrow, a wide
     mouth.  He wears quite ordinary clothes, as if that department
     were in charge of someone who knew about such, things.  He has
     a small rose in his buttonhole, and carries a Homburg hat,
     which one suspects will look too small on his head.]

HORNBLOWER.  Good morning!  good morning!  How are ye, Dawker?  Fine
morning!  Lovely weather!

     [His voice has a curious blend in its tone of brass and oil,
     and an accent not quite Scotch nor quite North country.]

Haven't seen ye for a long time, Hillcrist.

HILLCRIST.  [Who has risen]  Not since I sold you Longmeadow and
those cottages, I believe.

HORNBLOWER.  Dear me, now!  that's what I came about.

HILLCRIST.  [Subsiding again into his chair]  Forgive me!  Won't you
sit down?

HORNBLOWER.  [Not sitting]  Have ye got gout?  That's unfortunate.
I never get it.  I've no disposition that way.  Had no ancestors,
you see.  Just me own drinkin' to answer for.

HILLCRIST.  You're lucky.

HORNBLOWER.  I wonder if Mrs. Hillcrist thinks that!  Am I lucky to
have no past, ma'am?  Just the future?

MRS. H.  You're sure you have the future, Mr. Hornblower?

HORNBLOWER.  [With a laugh]  That's your aristocratic rapier thrust.
You aristocrats are very hard people underneath your manners.  Ye
love to lay a body out.  But I've got the future all right.

HILLCRIST.  [Meaningly] I've had the Dackmans here, Mr. Hornblower.

HORNBLOWER.  Who are they--man with the little spitfire wife?

HILLCRIST.  They're very excellent, good people, and they've been in
that cottage quietly thirty years.

HORNBLOWER.  [Throwing out his forefinger--a favourite gesture]  Ah!
ye've wanted me to stir ye up a bit.  Deepwater needs a bit o' go
put into it.  There's generally some go where I am.  I daresay you
wish there'd been no "come."  [He laughs].

MRS. H.  We certainly like people to keep their word, Mr.
Hornblower.

HILLCRIST.  Amy!

HORNBLOWER.  Never mind, Hillcrist; takes more than that to upset
me.

     [MRS. HILLCRIST exchanges a look with DAWKER who slips out
     unobserved.]

HILLCRIST.  You promised me, you know, not to change the tenancies.

HORNBLOWER.  Well, I've come to tell ye that I have.  I wasn't
expecting to have the need when I bought.  Thought the Duke would
sell me a bit down there; but devil a bit he will; and now I must
have those cottages for my workmen.  I've got important works, ye
know.

HILLCRIST.  [Getting heated]  The Jackmans have their importance
too, sir.  Their heart's in that cottage.

HORNBLOWER.  Have a sense of proportion, man.  My works supply
thousands of people, and my, heart's in them.  What's more, they
make my fortune.  I've got ambitions--I'm a serious man.  Suppose I
were to consider this and that, and every little potty objection--
where should I get to?--nowhere!

HILLCRIST.  All the same, this sort of thing isn't done, you know.

HORNBLOWER.  Not by you because ye've got no need to do it.  Here ye
are, quite content on what your fathers made for ye.  Ye've no
ambitions; and ye want other people to have none.  How d'ye think
your fathers got your land?

HILLCRIST.  [Who has risen]  Not by breaking their word.

HORNBLOWER.  [Throwing out his, finger]  Don't ye believe it.  They
got it by breaking their word and turnin' out Jackmans, if that's
their name, all over the place.

MRS. H.  That's an insult, Mr. Hornblower.

HORNBLOWER.  No; it's a repartee.  If ye think so much of these
Jackmans, build them a cottage yourselves; ye've got the space.

HILLCRIST.  That's beside the point.  You promised me, and I sold on
that understanding.

HORNBLOWER.  And I bought on the understandin' that I'd get some
more land from the Duke.

HILLCRIST.  That's nothing to do with me.

HORNBLOWER.  Ye'll find it has; because I'm going to have those
cottages.

HILLCRIST.  Well, I call it simply----

     [He checks himself.]

HORNBLOWER.  Look here, Hillcrist, ye've not had occasion to
understand men like me.  I've got the guts, and I've got the money;
and I don't sit still on it.  I'm going ahead because I believe in
meself.  I've no use for sentiment and that sort of thing.  Forty of
your Jackmans aren't worth me little finger.

HILLCRIST.  [Angry]  Of all the blatant things I ever heard said!

HORNBLOWER.  Well, as we're speaking plainly, I've been thinkin'.
Ye want the village run your oldfashioned way, and I want it run
mine.  I fancy there's not room for the two of us here.

MRS. H.  When are you going?

HORNBLOWER.  Never fear, I'm not going.

HILLCRIST.  Look here, Mr. Hornblower--this infernal gout makes me
irritable--puts me at a disadvantage.  But I should be glad if you'd
kindly explain yourself.

HORNBLOWER.  [With a great smile]  Ca' canny; I'm fra' the North.

HILLCRIST.  I'm told you wish to buy the Centry and put more of your
chimneys up there, regardless of the fact [He Points through the
window]  that it would utterly ruin the house we've had for
generations, and all our pleasure here.

HORNBLOWER.  How the man talks!  Why!  Ye'd think he owned the sky,
because his fathers built him a house with a pretty view, where he's
nothing to do but live.  It's sheer want of something to do that
gives ye your fine sentiments, Hillcrist.


HILLCRIST.  Have the goodness not to charge me with idleness.
Dawker--where is he?----[He shows the bureau]  When you do the
drudgery of your works as thoroughly as I do that of my estate----
Is it true about the Centry?

HORNBLOWER.  Gospel true.  If ye want to know, my son Chearlie is
buyin' it this very minute.

MRS. H.  [Turning with a start]  What do you say?

HORNBLOWER.  Ay, he's with the old lady she wants to sell, an'
she'll get her price, whatever it is.

HILLCRIST.  [With deep anger]  If that isn't a skin game, Mr.
Hornblower, I don't know what is.

HORNBLOWER.  Ah! Ye've got a very nice expression there.  "Skin
game!"  Well, bad words break no bones, an' they're wonderful for
hardenin' the heart.  If it wasn't for a lady's presence, I could
give ye a specimen or two.

MRS. H.  Oh!  Mr. Hornblower, that need not stop you, I'm sure.

HORNBLOWER.  Well, and I don't know that it need.  Ye're an
obstruction--the like of you--ye're in my path.  And anyone in my
path doesn't stay there long; or, if he does, he stays there on my
terms.  And my terms are chimneys in the Centry where I need 'em.
It'll do ye a power of good, too, to know that ye're not almighty.

HILLCRIST.  And that's being neighbourly!

HORNBLOWER.  And how have ye tried bein' neighbourly to me?  If I
haven't a wife, I've got a daughter-in-law.  Have Ye celled on her,
ma'am?  I'm new, and ye're an old family.  Ye don't like me, ye
think I'm a pushin' man.  I go to chapel, an' ye don't like that.
I make things and I sell them, and ye don't like that.  I buy land,
and ye don't like that.  It threatens the view from your windies.
Well, I don't lie you, and I'm not goin' to put up with your
attitude.  Ye've had things your own way too long, and now ye're not
going to have them any longer.

HILLCRIST.  Will you hold to your word over those cottages?

HORNBLOWER.  I'm goin' to have the cottages.  I need them, and more
besides, now I'm to put up me new works.

HILLCRIST.  That's a declaration of war.

HORNBLOWER.  Ye never said a truer word.  It's one or the other of
us, and I rather think it's goin' to be me.  I'm the risin' and
you're the settin' sun, as the poet says.

HILLCRIST.  [Touching the bell]  We shall see if you can ride rough-
shod like this.  We used to have decent ways of going about things
here.  You want to change all that.  Well, we shall do our damnedest
to stop you.  [To FELLOWS at the door]  Are the Jackmans still in
the house?  Ask them to be good enough to come in.

HORNBLOWER.  [With the first sign of uneasiness]  I've seen these
people.  I've nothing more to say to them.  I told 'em I'd give 'em
five pounds to cover their moving.

HILLCRIST.  It doesn't occur to you that people, however humble,
like to have some say in their own fate?

HORNBLOWER.  I never had any say in mine till I had the brass, and
nobody ever will.  It's all hypocrisy.  You county folk are fair
awful hypocrites.  Ye talk about good form and all that sort o'
thing.  It's just the comfortable doctrine of the man in the saddle;
sentimental varnish.  Ye're every bit as hard as I am, underneath.

MRS. H.  [Who had been standing very still all this time]  You
flatter us.

HORNBLOWER.  Not at all.  God helps those who 'elp themselves--
that's at the bottom of all religion.  I'm goin' to help meself, and
God's going to help me.

MRS. H.  I admire your knowledge.

HILLCRIST.  We are in the right, and God helps----

HORNBLOWER.  Don't ye believe it; ye 'aven't got the energy.

MRS. H.  Nor perhaps the conceit.

HORNBLOWER.  [Throwing out his forefinger]  No, no; 'tisn't conceit
to believe in yourself when ye've got reason to.  [The JACKMAN'S
have entered.]

HILLCRIST.  I'm very sorry, Mrs. Jackman, but I just wanted you to
realise that I've done my best with this gentleman.

MRS. J.  [Doubtfully]  Yes, sir.  I thought if you spoke for us,
he'd feel different-like.

HORNBLOWER.  One cottage is the same as another, missis.  I made ye
a fair offer of five pounds for the moving.

JACKMAN.  [Slowly]  We wouldn't take fifty to go out of that 'ouse.
We brought up three children there, an' buried two from it.

MRS. J.  [To MRS. HILLCRIST]  We're attached to it like, ma'am.

HILLCRIST.  [To HORNBLOWER.]  How would you like being turned out of
a place you were fond of?

HORNBLOWER.  Not a bit.  But little considerations have to give way
to big ones.  Now, missis, I'll make it ten pounds, and I'll send a
wagon to shift your things.  If that isn't fair--!  Ye'd better
accept, I shan't keep it open.

     [The JACKMANS look at each other; their faces show deep anger--
     and the question they ask each other is which will speak.]

MRS. J.  We won't take it; eh, George?

JACKMAN.  Not a farden.  We come there when we was married.

HORNBLOWER.  [Throwing out his finger]  Ye're very improvident folk.

HILLCRIST.  Don't lecture them, Mr. Hornblower; they come out of
this miles above you.

HORNBLOWER. [Angry]  Well, I was going to give ye another week, but
ye'll go out next Saturday; and take care ye're not late, or your
things'll be put out in the rain.

MRS. H.  [To MRS. JACKMAN]  We'll send down for your things, and you
can come to us for the time being.

     [MRS. JACKMAN drops a curtsey; her eyes stab HORNBLOWERS.]

JACKMAN.  [Heavily, clenching his fists]  You're no gentleman!
Don't put temptation in my way, that's all,

HILLCRIST.  [In a low voice]  Jackman!

HORNBLOWER.  [Triumphantly]  Ye hear that?  That's your protegee!
Keep out o' my way, me man, or I'll put the police on to ye for
utterin' threats.

HILLCRIST.  You'd better go now, Jackman.

     [The JACKMANS move to the door.]

MRS. J.  [Turning]  Maybe you'll repent it some day, sir.

     [They go out, MRS. HILLCRIST following.]

HORNBLOWER.  We-ell, I'm sorry they're such unreasonable folk.  I
never met people with less notion of which side their bread was
buttered.

HILLCRIST.  And I never met anyone so pachydermatous.

HORNBLOWER.  What's that, in Heaven's name?  Ye needn' wrap it up in
long words now your good lady's gone.

HILLCRIST.  [With dignity]  I'm not going in for a slanging match.
I resent your conduct much too deeply.

HORNBLOWER. Look here, Hillcrist, I don't object to you personally;
ye seem to me a poor creature that's bound to get left with your
gout and your dignity; but of course ye can make yourself very
disagreeable before ye're done.  Now I want to be the movin' spirit
here.  I'm full of plans.  I'm goin' to stand for Parliament; I'm
goin' to make this a prosperous place.  I'm a good-matured man if
you'll treat me as such.  Now, you take me on as a neighbour and all
that, and I'll manage without chimneys on the Centry.  Is it a
bargain?  [He holds out his hand.]

HILLCRIST.  [Ignoring it]  I thought you said you didn't keep your
word when it suited you to break it?

HORNBLOWER.  Now, don't get on the high horse.  You and me could be
very good friends; but I can be a very nasty enemy.  The chimneys
will not look nice from that windie, ye know.

HILLCRIST.  [Deeply angry]  Mr. Hornblower, if you think I'll take
your hand after this Jackman business, you're greatly mistaken.  You
are proposing that I shall stand in with you while you tyrannise
over the neighbourhood.  Please realise that unless you leave those
tenancies undisturbed as you said you would, we don't know each
other.

HORNBLOWER.  Well, that won't trouble me much.  Now, ye'd better
think it over; ye've got gout and that makes ye hasty.  I tell ye
again: I'm not the man to make an enemy of.  Unless ye're friendly,
sure as I stand here I'll ruin the look of your place.

     [The toot of a car is heard.]

There's my car.  I sent Chearlie and his wife in it to buy the
Centry.  And make no mistake--he's got it in his packet.  It's your
last chance, Hillcrist.  I'm not averse to you as a man; I think
ye're the best of the fossils round here; at least, I think ye can
do me the most harm socially.  Come now!

     [He holds out his hand again.]

HILLCRIST.  Not if you'd bought the Centry ten times over.  Your
ways are not mine, and I'll have nothing to do with you.

HORNBLOWER.  [Very angry]  Really!  Is that so?  Very well.  Now
ye're goin' to learn something, an' it's time ye did.  D'ye realise
that I'm 'very nearly round ye?  [He draws a circle slowly in the
air]  I'm at Uphill, the works are here, here's Longmeadow, here's
the Centry that I've just bought, there's only the Common left to
give ye touch with the world.  Now between you and the Common
there's the high road.

I come out on the high road here to your north, and I shall come out
on it there to your west.  When I've got me new works up on the
Centry, I shall be makin' a trolley track between the works up to
the road at both ends, so any goods will be running right round ye.
How'll ye like that for a country place?

     [For answer HILLCRIST, who is angry beyond the power of speech,
     walks, forgetting to use his stick, up to the French window.
     While he stands there, with his back to HORNBLOWER, the door L.
     is flung open, and Jim enters, preceding CHARLES, his wife
     CHLOE, and ROLF.  CHARLES is a goodish-looking, moustached
     young man of about twenty-eight, with a white rim to the collar
     of his waistcoat, and spats.  He has his hand behind CHLOE'S
     back, as if to prevent her turning tail.  She is rather a
     handsome young woman, with dark eyes, full red lips, and a
     suspicion of powder, a little under-dressed for the country.
     ROLF, mho brings up the rear, is about twenty, with an open
     face and stiffish butter-coloured hair.  JILL runs over to her
     father at the window.  She has a bottle.]

JILL.  [Sotto voce]  Look, Dodo, I've brought the lot!  Isn't it a
treat, dear Papa?  And here's the stuff.  Hallo!

     [The exclamation is induced by the apprehension that there has
     been a row.  HILLCRIST gives a stiff little bow, remaining
     where he is in the window.  JILL, stays close to him, staring
     from one to the other, then blocks him off and engages him in
     conversation.  CHARLES has gone up to his father, who has
     remained maliciously still, where he delivered his last speech.
     CHLOE and ROLF stand awkwardly waiting between the fireplace
     and the door.]

HORNBLOWER.  Well, Chearlie?

CHARLES.  Not got it.

HORNBLOWER.  Not!

CHARLES.  I'd practically got her to say she'd sell at three
thousand five hundred, when that fellow Dawker turned up.

HORNBLOWER.  That bull-terrier of a chap!  Why, he was here a while
ago.  Oh--ho!  So that's it!

CHARLES.  I heard him gallop up.  He came straight for the old lady,
and got her away.  What he said I don't know; but she came back
looking wiser than an owl; said she'd think it over, thought she had
other views.

HORNBLOWER.  Did ye tell her she might have her price?

CHARLES.  Practically I did.

HORNBLOWER.  Well?

CHARLES.  She thought it would be fairer to put it up to auction.
There were other enquiries.  Oh!  She's a leery old bird--reminds me
of one of those pictures of Fate, don't you know.

HORNBLOWER.  Auction!  Well, if it's not gone we'll get it yet.
That damned little Dawker!  I've had a row with Hillcrist.

CHARLES.  I thought so.

     [They are turning cautiously to look at HILLCRIST, when JILL
     steps forward.]

JILL.  [Flushed and determined]  That's not a bit sporting of you,
Mr. Hornblower.

     [At her words ROLE comes forward too.]

HORNBLOWER.  Ye should hear both sides before ye say that, missy.

JILL.  There isn't another side to turning out the Jackmans after
you'd promised.

HORNBLOWER.  Oh!  dear me, yes.  They don't matter a row of
gingerbread to the schemes I've got for betterin' this
neighbourhood.

JILL.  I had been standing up for you; now I won't.

HOUNBLOWER.  Dear, dear!  What'll become of me?

JILL.  I won't say anything about the other thing because I think
it's beneath, dignity to notice it.  But to turn poor people out of
their cottages is a shame.

HORNBLOWER.  Hoity me!

ROLF. [Suddenly]  You haven't been doing that, father?

CHARLES.  Shut up, Rolf!

HORNBLOWER.  [Turning on ROLF]  Ha!  Here's a league o' Youth!  My
young whipper-snapper, keep your mouth shut and leave it to your
elders to know what's right.

     [Under the weight of this rejoinder ROLF stands biting his
     lips.  Then he throws his head up.]

ROLF.  I hate it!

HORNBLOWER.  [With real venom]  Oh!  Ye hate it?  Ye can get out of
my house, then.

JILL.  Free speech, Mr. Hornblower; don't be violent.

HORNBLOWER.  Ye're right, young lady.  Ye can stay in my house,
Rolf, and learn manners.  Come, Chearlie!

JILL.  [Quite softly]  Mr. Hornblower!

HILLCRIST.  [From the window]  Jill!

JILL.  [Impatiently]  Well, what's the good of it?  Life's too short
for rows, and too jolly!

ROLF.  Bravo!

HORNBLOWER.  [Who has shown a sign of weakening]  Now, look here!
I will not have revolt in my family.  Ye'll just have to learn that
a man who's worked as I have, who's risen as I have, and who knows
the world, is the proper judge of what's right and wrong.  I'll
answer to God for me actions, and not to you young people.

JILL.  Poor God!

HORNBLOWER.  [Genuinely shocked]  Ye blasphemous young thing!  [To
ROLF]  And ye're just as bad, ye young freethinker.  I won't have
it.

HILLCRIST.  [Who has come down, Right]  Jill, I wish you would
kindly not talk.

JILL.  I can't help it.

CHARLES.  [Putting his arm through HORNBLOWER'S]  Come along,
father!  Deeds, not words.

HORNBLOWER.  Ay! Deeds!

     [MRS. HILLCRIST and DAWKERS have entered by the French window.]

MRS. H.  Quite right!

     [They all turn and look at her.]

HORNBLOWER.  Ah!  So ye put your dog on to it.  [He throws out his
finger at DAWKERS]  Very smart, that--I give ye credit.

MRS. H.  [Pointing to CHLOE, who has stood by herself, forgotten and
uncomfortable throughout the scene]
May I ask who this lady is?

     [CHLOE turns round startled, and her vanity bag slips down her
     dress to the floor.]

HORNBLOWER.  No, ma'am, ye may not, for ye know perfectly well.

JILL.  I brought her in, mother [She moves to CHLOE's side.]

MRS. H.  Will you take her out again, then.

HILLCRIST.  Amy, have the goodness to remember----

MRS. H.  That this is my house so far as ladies are concerned.

JILL.  Mother!

     [She looks astonished at CHLOE, who, about to speak, does not,
     passing her eyes, with a queer, half-scarred expression, from
     MRS. HILLCRIST to DAWKER.]

     [To CHLOE]  I'm awfully sorry.  Come on!

     [They go out, Left.  ROLF hurries after them.]

CHARLES.  You've insulted my wife.  Why?  What do you mean by it?

     [MRS. HILLCRIST simply smiles.]

HILLCRIST.  I apologise.  I regret extremely.  There is no reason
why the ladies of your family or of mine should be involved in our
quarrel.  For Heaven's sake, let's fight like gentlemen.

HORNBLOWER.  Catchwords--sneers!  No; we'll play what ye call a skin
game, Hillcrist, without gloves on; we won't spare each other.  Ye
look out for yourselves, for, begod, after this morning I mean
business.  And as for you, Dawker, ye sly dog, ye think yourself
very clever; but I'll have the Centry yet.  Come, Chearlie!

     [They go out, passing JILL, who is coming in again, in the
     doorway.]

HILLCRIST.  Well, Dawker?

DAWKER.  [Grinning]  Safe for the moment.  The old lady'll put it up
to auction.  Couldn't get her to budge from that.  Says she don't
want to be unneighbourly to either.  But, if you ask me, it's money
she smells!

JILL.  [Advancing]  Now, mother

MRS. H.  Well?

JILL.  Why did you insult her?

MRS. H.  I think I only asked you to take her out.

JILL.  Why?  Even if she is Old Combustion's daughter-in-law?

MRS. H.  My dear Jill, allow me to judge the sort of acquaintances I
wish to make.  [She looks at DAWKER.]

JILL.  She's all right.  Lots of women powder and touch up their
lips nowadays.  I think she's rather a good sort; she was awfully
upset.

MRS. H.  Too upset.

JILL.  Oh!  don't be so mysterious, mother.  If you know something,
do spit it out!

MRS. H.  Do you wish me to--er--"spit it out," Jack?

HILLCRIST.  Dawker,  if you don't mind----

     [DAWKER, with a nod, passes away out of the French window.]

Jill, be respectful, and don't talk like a bargee.

JILL.  It's no good, Dodo.  It made me ashamed.  It's just as--as
caddish to insult people who haven't said a word, in your own house,
as it is to be--old Hornblower.

MRS. H.  You don't know what you're talking about.

HILLCRIST.  What's the matter with young Mrs. Hornblower?

MRS. H.  Excuse me, I shall keep my thoughts to myself at present.

     [She looks coldly at JILL, and goes out through the French
     window.]

HILLCRIST.  You've thoroughly upset your mother, Jill.

JILL.  It's something Dawker's told her; I saw them.  I don't like
Dawker, father, he's so common.

HILLCRIST.  My dear, we can't all be uncommon.  He's got lots of go,
You must apologise to your mother.

JILL.  [Shaking-her clubbed hair]  They'll make you do things you
don't approve of, Dodo, if you don't look out.  Mother's fearfully
bitter when she gets her knife in.  If old Hornblower's disgusting,
it's no reason we should be.

HILLCRIST.  So you think I'm capable--that's nice, Jill!

JILL.  No, no, darling!  I only want to warn you solemnly that
mother'll tell you you're fighting fair, no matter what she and
Dawker do.

HILLCRIST.  [Smiling]  Jill, I don't think I ever saw you so
serious.

JILL.  No.  Because--[She swallows a lump in her throat]  Well--I
was just beginning to enjoy, myself; and now--everything's going to
be bitter and beastly, with mother in that mood.  That horrible old
man!  Oh, Dodo!  Don't let them make you horrid!  You're such a
darling.  How's your gout, ducky?

HILLCRIST.  Better; lot better.

JILL.  There, you see!  That shows!  It's going to be half-
interesting for you, but not for--us.

HILLCRIST.  Look here, Jill--is there anything between you and young
what's-his-name--Rolf?

JILL.  [Biting her lip]  No.  But--now it's all spoiled.

HILLCRIST.  You can't expect me to regret that.

JILL.  I don't mean any tosh about love's young dream; but I do like
being friends.  I want to enjoy things, Dodo, and you can't do that
when everybody's on the hate.  You're going to wallow in it, and so
shall I--oh!  I know I shall!--we shall all wallow, and think of
nothing but "one for his nob."

HILLCRIST.  Aren't you fond of your home?

JILL.  Of course.  I love it.

HILLCRIST.  Well, you won't be able to live in it unless we stop
that ruffian.  Chimneys and smoke, the trees cut down, piles of
pots.  Every kind of abomination.  There!  [He points]  Imagine!
[He points through the French window, as if he could see those
chimneys rising and marring the beauty of the fields]  I was born
here, and my father, and his, and his, and his.  They loved those
fields, and those old trees.  And this barbarian, with his
"improvement" schemes, forsooth!  I learned to ride in the Centry
meadows--prettiest spring meadows in the world; I've climbed every
tree there.  Why my father ever sold----!  But who could have
imagined this?  And come at a bad moment, when money's scarce.

JILL.  [Cuddling his arm]  Dodo!

HILLCRIST.  Yes.  But you don't love the place as I do, Jill.  You
youngsters don't love anything, I sometimes think.

JILL.  I do, Dodo, I do!

HILLCRIST.  You've got it all before you.  But you may live your
life and never find anything so good and so beautiful as this old
home.  I'm not going to have it spoiled without a fight.

     [Conscious of batting betrayed Sentiment, he walks out at the
     French window, passing away to the right.  JILL following to
     the window, looks.  Then throwing back her head, she clasps her
     hands behind it.]

JILL.  Oh--oh-oh!

     [A voice behind her says, "JILL!"  She turns and starts back,
     leaning against the right lintel of the window.  ROLF appears
     outside the window from Left.]

Who goes there?

ROLE.  [Buttressed against the Left lintel]  Enemy--after Chloe's
bag.

JILL.  Pass, enemy!  And all's ill!

     [ROLF passes through the window, and retrieves the vanity bag
     from the floor where CHLOE dropped it, then again takes his
     stand against the Left lintel of the French window.]

ROLF.  It's not going to make any difference, is it?

JILL.  You know it is.

ROLF.  Sins of the fathers.

JILL.  Unto the third and fourth generations.  What sin has my
father committed?

ROLF.  None, in a way; only, I've often told you I don't see why you
should treat us as outsiders.  We don't like it.

JILL.  Well, you shouldn't be, then; I mean, he shouldn't be.

ROLF.  Father's just as human as your father; he's wrapped up in us,
and all his "getting on" is for us.  Would you like to be treated as
your mother treated Chloe?  Your mother's set the stroke for the
other big-wigs about here; nobody calls on Chloe.  And why not?  Why
not?  I think it's contemptible to bar people just because they're
new, as you call it, and have to make their position instead of
having it left them.

JILL.  It's not because they're new, it's because--if your father
behaved like a gentleman, he'd be treated like one.

ROLF.  Would he?  I don't believe it.  My father's a very able man;
he thinks he's entitled to have influence here.  Well, everybody
tries to keep him down.  Oh!  yes, they do.  That makes him mad and
more determined than ever to get his way.  You ought to be just,
Jill.

JILL.  I am just.

ROLF.  No, you're not.  Besides, what's it got to do with Charlie
and Chloe?  Chloe's particularly harmless.  It's pretty sickening
for her.  Father didn't expect people to call until Charlie married,
but since----

JILL.  I think it's all very petty.

ROLF.  It is--a dog-in-the-manger business; I did think you were
above it.

JILL.  How would you like to have your home spoiled?

ROLE.  I'm not going to argue.  Only things don't stand still.
Homes aren't any more proof against change than anything else.

JILL.  All right!  You come and try and take ours.

ROLF.  We don't want to take your home.

JILL.  Like the Jackmans'?

ROLF.  All right.  I see you're hopelessly prejudiced.

     [He turns to go.]

JILL.  [Just as he is vanishing--softly]  Enemy?

ROLF.  [Turning]  Yes, enemy.

JILL.  Before the battle--let's shake hands.

     [They move from the lintels and grasp each other's hands in the
     centre of the French window.]


                              CURTAIN




ACT II


SCENE I

     A billiard room in a provincial hotel, where things are bought
     and sold.  The scene is set well forward, and is not very
     broad; it represents the auctioneer's end of the room, having,
     rather to stage Left, a narrow table with two chairs facing the
     audience, where the auctioneer will sit and stand.  The table,
     which is set forward to the footlights, is littered with green-
     covered particulars of sale.  The audience are in effect public
     and bidders.  There is a door on the Left, level with the
     table.  Along the back wall, behind the table, are two raised
     benches with two steps up to them, such as billiard rooms often
     have, divided by a door in the middle of a wall, which is
     panelled in oak.  Late September sunlight is coming from a
     skylight (not visible) on to these seats.  The stage is empty
     when the curtain goes up, but DAWKERS, and MRS. HILLCRIST are
     just entering through the door at the back.

DAWKER.  Be out of their way here, ma'am.  See old Hornblower with
Chearlie?

     [He points down to the audience.]

MRS. H.  It begins at three, doesn't it?

DAWKER.  They won't be over-punctual; there's only the Centry
selling.  There's young Mrs. Hornblower with the other boy--
[Pointing]  over at the entrance.  I've got that chap I told you of
down from town.

MRS. H.  Ah! make sure quite of her, Dawker.  Any mistake would be
fatal.

DAWKER.  [Nodding]  That's right, ma'am.  Lot of peopled--always
spare time to watch an auction--ever remark that?  The Duke's
agent's here; shouldn't be surprised if he chipped in.

MRS. H.  Where did you leave my husband?

DAWKER.  With Miss Jill, in the courtyard.  He's coming to you.  In
case I miss him; tell him when I reach his limit to blow his nose if
he wants me to go on; when he blows it a second time, I'll stop for
good.  Hope we shan't get to that.  Old Hornblower doesn't throw his
money away.

MRS. H.  What limit did you settle?

DAWKER.  Six thousand!

MRS. H.  That's a fearful price.  Well, good luck to you, Dawker!

DAWKER.  Good luck, ma'am.  I'll go and see to that little matter of
Mrs. Chloe.  Never fear, we'll do them is somehow.

     [He winks, lays his finger on the side of his nose, and goes
     out at the door.]

     [MRS. HILLCRIST mounts the two steps, sits down Right of the
     door, and puts up a pair of long-handled glasses.  Through the
     door behind her come CHLOE and ROLF.  She makes a sign for him
     to go, and shuts the door.]

CHLOE.  [At the foot of the steps in the gangway--with a slightly
common accent]  Mrs. Hillcrist!

MRS. H.  [Not quite starting]  I beg your pardon?

CHLOE.  [Again]  Mrs. Hillcrist----

MRS. H.  Well?

CHLOE.  I never did you any harm.

MRS. H.  Did I ever say you did?

CHLOE.  No; but you act as if I had.

MRS. H.  I'm not aware that I've acted at all--as yet.  You are
nothing to me, except as one of your family.

CHLOE.  'Tisn't I that wants to spoil your home.

MRS. H.  Stop them then.  I see your husband down there with his
father.

CHLOE.  I--I have tried.

MRS. H.  [Looking at her]  Oh!  I suppose such men don't pay
attention to what women ask them.

CHLOE.  [With a flash of spirit]  I'm fond of my husband.  I----

MRS. H.  [Looking at her steadily]  I don't quite know why you spoke
to me.

CHLOE.  [With a sort of pathetic sullenness]  I only thought perhaps
you'd like to treat me as a human being.

MRS. H.  Really, if you don't mind, I should like to be left alone
just now.

CHLOE.  [Unhappily acquiescent]  Certainly!  I'll go to the other
end.

     [She moves to the Left, mounts the steps and sits down.]

     [ROLF, looking in through the door, and seeing where she is,
     joins her.  MRS. HILLCRIST resettles herself a little further
     in on the Right.]

ROLF.  [Bending over to CHLOE, after a glance at MRS. HILLCRIST.]
Are you all right?

CHLOE.  It's awfully hot.

     [She fans herself wide the particulars of sale.]

ROLF.  There's Dawker.  I hate that chap!

CHLOE.  Where?

ROLF.  Down there; see?

     [He points down to stage Right of the room.]

CHLOE.  [Drawing back in her seat with a little gasp]  Oh!

ROLF.  [Not noticing]  Who's that next him, looking up here?

CHLOE.  I don't know.

     [She has raised her auction programme suddenly, and sits
     fanning herself, carefully screening her face.]

ROLE.  [Looking at her]  Don't you feel well?  Shall I get you some
water?  [He gets up at her nod.]

     [As he reaches the door, HILLCRIST and JILL come in.  HILLCRIST
     passes him abstractedly with a nod, and sits down beside his
     wife.]

JILL.  [To ROLF]  Come to see us turned out?

ROLF.  [Emphatically]  No.  I'm looking after Chloe; she's not well.

JILL.  [Glancing at her]  Sorry.  She needn't have come, I suppose?
     [RALF deigns no answer, and goes out.]

     [JILL glances at CHLOE, then at her parents talking in low
     voices, and sits down next her father, who makes room for her.]

MRS. H.  Can Dawker see you there, Jack?

     [HILLCRIST nods.]

What's the time?

HILLCRIST.  Three minutes to three.

JILL.  Don't you feel beastly all down the backs of your legs.
Dodo?

HILLCRIST.  Yes.

JILL.  Do you, mother?

MRS. H.  No.

JILL.  A wagon of old Hornblower's pots passed while we were in the
yard.  It's an omen.

MRS. H.  Don't be foolish, Jill.

JILL.  Look at the old brute!  Dodo, hold my hand.

MRS. H.  Make sure you've got a handkerchief, Jack.

HILLCRIST.  I can't go beyond the six thousand; I shall have to
raise every penny on mortgage as it is.  The estate simply won't
stand more, Amy.

     [He feels in his breast pocket, and pulls up the edge of his
     handkerchief.]

JILL.  Oh! Look!  There's Miss Mullins, at the back; just come in.
Isn't she a spidery old chip?

MRS. H.  Come to gloat.  Really, I think her not accepting your
offer is disgusting.  Her impartiality is all humbug.

HILLCRIST.  Can't blame her for getting what she can--it's human
nature.  Phew!  I used to feel like this before a 'viva voce'.
Who's that next to Dawker?

JILL.  What a fish!

MRS. H.  [To herself]  Ah!  yes.

     [Her eyes slide round at CHLOE, silting motionless and rather
     sunk in her seat, slowly fanning herself with they particulars
     of the sale.  Jack, go and offer her my smelling salts.]

HILLCRIST.  [Taking the salts]  Thank God for a human touch!

MRS. H.  [Taken aback]  Oh!

JILL.  [With a quick look at her mother, snatching the salts]  I
will.  [She goes over to CHLOE with the salts]  Have a sniff; you
look awfully white.

CHLOE.  [Looking up, startled]  Oh!  no thanks.  I'm all right.

JILL.  No, do!  You must.  [CHLOE takes them.]

JILL.  D'you mind letting me see that a minute?

     [She takes the particulars of the sale and studies it, but
     CHLOE has buried the lower part of her face in her hand and the
     smelling salts bottle.]

Beastly hot, isn't it?  You'd better keep that.

CHLOE.  [Her dark eyes wandering and uneasy]  Rolf's getting me some
water.

JILL.  Why do you stay?  You didn't want to come, did you?

     [CHLOE shakes her head.]

All right!  Here's your water.

     [She hands back the particulars and slides over to her seat,
     passing ROLF in the gangway, with her chin well up.]

     [MRS. HILLCRIST, who has watched CHLOE and JILL and DAWKER, and
     his friend, makes an enquiring movement with her hand, but gets
     a disappointing answer.]

JILL.  What's the time, Dodo?

HILLCRIST.  [Looking at his watch]  Three minutes past.

JILL.  [Sighing]  Oh, hell!

HILLCRIST.  Jill!

JILL.  Sorry, Dodo.  I was only thinking.  Look!  Here he is!
Phew!--isn't he----?

MRS. H.  'Sh!

     The AUCTIONEER comes in Left and goes to the table.  He is a
     square, short, brown-faced, common looking man, with clipped
     grey hair fitting him like a cap, and a clipped grey moustache.
     His lids come down over his quick eyes, till he can see you
     very sharply, and you can hardly see that he can see you. He
     can break into a smile at any moment, which has no connection
     with him, as it were.  By a certain hurt look, however, when
     bidding is slow, he discloses that he is not merely an
     auctioneer, but has in him elements of the human being.  He can
     wink with anyone, and is dressed in a snug-brown suit, with a
     perfectly unbuttoned waistcoat, a low, turned down collar, and
     small black and white sailor knot tie.  While he is settling
     his papers, the HILLCRISTS settle themselves tensely.  CHLOE
     has drunk her water and leaned back again, with the smelling
     salts to her nose.  ROLF leans forward in the seat beside her,
     looking sideways at JILL.  A SOLICITOR, with a grey beard, has
     joined the AUCTIONEER, at his table.

AUCTIONEER.  [Tapping the table]  Sorry to disappoint you,
gentlemen, but I've only one property to offer you to-day, No. 1,
The Centry, Deepwater.  The second on the particulars has been
withdrawn.  The third that's Bidcot, desirable freehold mansion and
farmlands in the Parish of Kenway--we shall have to deal with next
week.  I shall be happy to sell it you then with out reservation.
[He looks again through the particulars in his hand, giving the
audience time to readjust themselves to his statements]  Now,
gen'lemen, as I say, I've only the one property to sell.  Freehold
No. 1--all that very desirable corn and stock-rearing and parklike
residential land known as the Centry, Deepwater, unique property an
A.1.  chance to an A.1.  audience. [With his smile]  Ought to make
the price of the three we thought we had.  Now you won't mind
listening to the conditions of sale; Mr. Blinkard'll read 'em, and
they won't wirry you, they're very short.

     [He sits down and gives two little tape on the table.]

     [The SOLICITOR rises and reads the conditions of sale in a
     voice which no one practically can hear.  Just as he begins to
     read these conditions of sale, CHARLES HORNBLOWER enters at
     back.  He stands a moment, glancing round at the HILLCRIST and
     twirling his moustache, then moves along to his wife and
     touches her.]

CHARLES.  Chloe, aren't you well?

     [In the start which she gives, her face is fully revealed to
     the audience.]

CHARLES.  Come along, out of the way of these people.

     [He jerks his head towards the HILLCRISTS.  CHLOE gives a swift
     look down to the stage Right of the audience.]

CHLOE.  No; I'm all right; it's hotter there.

CHARLES.  [To ROLF]  Well, look after her--I must go back.

     [ROLF node.  CHARLES, slides bank to the door, with a glance at
     the HILLCRISTS, of whom MRS. HILLCRIST has been watching like a
     lynx.  He goes out, just as the SOLICITOR, finishing, sits
     down.]

AUCTIONEER.  [Rising and tapping]  Now, gen'lemen, it's not often a
piece of land like this comes into the market.  What's that?  [To a
friend in front of him]  No better land in Deepwater--that's right,
Mr. Spicer.  I know the village well, and a charming place it is;
perfect locality, to be sure.  Now I don't want to wirry you by
singing the praises of this property; there it is--well-watered,
nicely timbered--no reservation of the timber, gen'lemen--no tenancy
to hold you up; free to do what you like with it to-morrow.  You've
got a jewel of a site there, too; perfect position for a house.  It
lies between the Duke's and Squire Hillcrist's--an emerald isle.
[With his smile]  No allusion to Ireland, gen'lemen--perfect peace
in the Centry.  Nothing like it in the county--a gen'leman's site,
and you don't get that offered you every day.  [He looks down
towards HORNBLOWER, stage Left]  Carries the mineral rights, and as
you know, perhaps, there's the very valuable Deepwater clay there.
What am I to start it at?  Can I say three thousand?  Well, anything
you like to give me.  I'm sot particular.  Come now, you've got more
time than me, I expect.  Two hundred acres of first-rate grazin' and
cornland, with a site for a residence unequalled in the county; and
all the possibilities!  Well, what shall I say?

     [Bid from SPICER.]

Two thousand? [With his smile]  That won't hurt you, Mr. Spicer.
Why, it's worth that to overlook the Duke.  For two thousand?

     [Bid from HORNBLOWER, stage Left.]

And five. Thank you, sir. Two thousand five hundred bid.

     [To a friend just below him.]

Come, Mr. Sandy, don't scratch your head over it.

     [Bid from DAWKER, Stage Right.]

And five.  Three thousand bid for this desirable property.  Why,
you'd think it wasn't desirable.  Come along, gen'lemen.  A little
spirit.

     [A alight pause.]

JILL. Why can't I see the bids, Dodo?

HILLCRIST. The last was Dawker's.

AUCTIONEER.  For three thousand. [HORNBLOWER]  Three thousand five
hundred?  May I say--four? [A bid from the centre] No, I'm not
particular; I'll take hundreds. Three thousand six hundred bid.
[HORNBLOWER] And seven.  Three thousand seven hundred, and----

     [He pauses, quartering the audience.]

JILL. Who was that, Dodo?

HILLCRIST.  Hornblower.  It's the Duke in the centre.

AUCTIONEER.  Come, gen'lemen, don't keep me all day.  Four thousand
may I say? [DAWKER]  Thank you.  We're beginning.  And one? [A bid
from the centre]  Four thousand one hundred. [HORNBLOWER]  Four
thousand two hundred.  May I have yours, sir? [To DAWKER]  And
three.  Four thousand three hundred bid.  No such site in the
county, gen'lemen. I'm going to sell this land for what it's worth.
You can't bid too much for me.  [He smiles] [HORNBLOWER]  Four
thousand five hundred bid.  [Bid from the centre] And six. [DAWKER]
And seven. [HORNBLOWER]  And eight.  Nine, may I say?  [But the
centre has dried up]  [DAWKER]  And nine. [HORNBLOWER]  Five
thousand.  Five thousand bid. That's better; there's some spirit in
it.  For five thousand.

     [He pauses while he speak& to the SOLICITOR]

HILLCRIST.  It's a duel now.

AUCTIONEER.  Now, gen'lemen, I'm not going to give this property
away. Five thousand bid. [DAWKER]  And one. [HORNBLOWER]  And two.
[DAWKER]  And three.  Five thousand three hundred bid.  And five,
did you say, sir?  [HORNBLOWER]  Five thousand five hundred bid.

     [He looks at hip particulars.]

JILL. [Rather agonised] Enemy, Dodo.

AUCTIONEER. This chance may never come again.

     "How you'll regret it
     If you don't get it,"

as the poet says. May I say five thousand six hundred, sir?
[DAWKER]  Five thousand six hundred bid. [HORNBLOWER]  And seven.
[DAWKER]  And eight.  For five thousand eight hundred pounds.  We're
gettin' on, but we haven't got the value yet.

[A slight pause, while he wipes his brow at the success of his own
efforts.]

JILL.  Us, Dodo?

     [HILLCRIST nods.   JILL looks over at ROLF, whose face is
     grimly set.  CHLOE has never moved. MRS. HILLCRIST whispers to
     her husband.]

AUCTIONEER.  Five thousand eight hundred bid.  For five thousand
eight hundred.  Come along, gen'lemen, come along.  We're not
beaten.  Thank you, sir.  [HORNBLOWER]  Five thousand nine hundred.
And--?  [DAWKER]  Six thousand.  Six thousand bid.  Six thousand
bid.  For six thousand!  The Centry--most desirable spot in the
county--going for the low price of six thousand.

HILLCRIST.  [Muttering]  Low!  Heavens!

AUCTIONEER.  Any advance on six thousand?  Come, gen'lemen, we
haven't dried up?  A little spirit.  Six thousand?  For six
thousand?  For six thousand pounds?  Very well, I'm selling.  For
six thousand once--[He taps]  For six thousand twice--[He taps].

JILL.  [Low]  Oh!  we've got it!

AUCTIONEER.  And one, sir? [HORNBLOWER]  Six thousand one hundred
bid.

     [The SOLICITOR touches his arm and says something, to which the
     AUCTIONEER responds with a nod.]

MRS. H.  Blow your nose, Jack.

     [HILLCRIST blows his nose.]

AUCTIONEER.  For six thousand one hundred.  [DAWKER]  And two.
Thank you.  [HORNBLOWER]  And three.  For six thousand three
hundred.  [DAWKER]  And four.  For six thousand four hundred pounds.
This coveted property.  For six thousand four hundred pounds. Why,
it's giving it away, gen'lemen.  [A pause.]

MRS. H.  Giving!

AUCTIONEER.  Six thousand four hundred bid.  [HORNBLOWER]  And five.
[DAWKER]  And six.  [HORNBLOWER]  And seven.  [DAWKER]  And eight.

     [A pause, during which, through the door Left, someone beckons
     to the SOLICITOR, who rises and confers.]

HILLCRIST.  [Muttering]  I've done if that doesn't get it.

AUCTIONEER.  For six thousand eight hundred.  For six thousand eight
hundred-once--[He taps]  twice--[He tape]  For the last time.  This
dominating site.  [HORNBLOWER]  And nine.  Thank you.  For six
thousand nine hundred.

     [HILLCRIST  has taken out his handkerchief.]

JILL.  Oh! Dodo!

MRS. H.  [Quivering]  Don't give in!

AUCTIONEER.  Seven thousand may I say?  [DAWKER]  Seven thousand.

MRS. H.  [Whispers] Keep it down; don't show him.

AUCTIONEER.  For seven-thousand--going for seven thousand--once--
[Taps] twice [Taps] [HORNBLOWER]  And one.  Thank you, sir.

     [HILLCRIST blows his nose.  JILL, with a choke, leans back in
     her seat and folds her arms tightly on her chest.  MRS.
     HILLCRIST passes her handkerchief over her lips, sitting
     perfectly still.  HILLCRIST, too, is motionless.]

     [The AUCTIONEER, has paused, and is talking to the SOLICITOR,
     who has returned to his seat.]

MRS. H.  Oh!  Jack.

JILL.  Stick it, Dodo; stick it!

AUCTIONEER.  Now, gen'lemen, I have a bid of seven thousand one
hundred for the Centry.  And I'm instructed to sell if I can't get
more.  It's a fair price, but not a big price.  [To his friend MR.
SPICER]  A thumpin' price?  [With his smile]  Well, you're a judge
of thumpin', I admit.  Now, who'll give me seven thousand two
hundred?  What, no one?  Well, I can't make you, gen'lemen.  For
seven thousand one hundred.  Once--[Taps] Twice--[Taps].

     [JILL utters a little groan.]

HILLCRIST.  [Suddenly, in a queer voice] Two.

AUCTIONEER.  [Turning with surprise and looking up to receive
HILLCRIST'S nod]  Thank you, sir.  And two.  Seven thousand two
hundred. [He screws himself round so as to command both HILLCRIST
and HORNBLOWER]  May I have yours, sir?  [HORNBLOWER] And three.
[HILLCRIST]  And four.  Seven thousand four hundred.  For seven
thousand four hundred.  [HORNBLOWER] Five.  [HILLCRIST] Six.  For
seven thousand six hundred. [A pause]  Well, gen'lemen, this is.
better, but a record property shid fetch a record price.  The
possibilities are enormous.  [HORNBLOWER]  Eight thousand did you
say, sir?  Eight thousand.  Going for eight thousand pounds.
[HILLCRIST]  And one.  [HORNBLOWER] And two.  [HILLCRIST]  And
three.  [HORNBLOWER]  And four.  [HILLCRIST]  And five.  For eight
thousand five hundred.  A wonderful property for eight thousand five
hundred.

[He wipes his brow.]

JILL.  [Whispering] Oh, Dodo!

MRS. H.  That's enough, Jack, we must stop some time.

AUCTIONEER.  For eight thousand five hundred.  Once--[Taps]--twice--
[Taps]  [HORNBLOWER]  Six hundred.  [HILLCRIST]  Seven.  May I have
yours, sir?  [HORNBLOWER]  Eight.

HILLCRIST.  Nine thousand.

     [MRS. HILLCRIST looks at him, biting her lips, but he is quite
     absorbed.]

AUCTIONEER.  Nine thousand for this astounding property.  Why, the
Duke would pay that if he realised he'd be overlooked.  Now, Sir?
[To HORNBLOWER.  No response].  Just a little raise on that.  [No
response.]  For nine thousand.  The Centry, Deepwater, for nine
thousand.  Once--[Taps] Twice----[Taps].

JILL.  [Under her breath] Ours!

A VOICE.  [From far back in the centre]  And five hundred.

AUCTIONEER.  [Surprised and throwing out his arms towards the voice]
And five hundred.  For nine thousand five hundred.  May I have
yours, sir?  [He looks at HORNBLOWER.  No response.]

     [The SOLICITOR speaks to him.  MRS. H.  [Whispering]  It must
     be the Duke again.]

HILLCRIST. [Passing his hand over his brow]  That's stopped him,
anyway.

AUCTIONEER.  [Looking at HILLCRIST]  For nine thousand five hundred?
[HILLCRIST shakes his head.]  Once more.  The Centry, Deepwater, for
nine thousand five hundred.  Once--[Taps]  Twice--[Taps]  [He pauses
and looks again at HORNBLOWER and HILLCRIST]  For the last time--at
nine thousand five hundred.  [Taps]  [With a look towards the
bidder]  Mr. Smalley.  Well!  [With great satisfaction]  That's
that!  No more to-day, gen'lemen.

     [The AUCTIONEER and SOLICITOR busy themselves.  The room begins
     to empty.]

MRS. H.  Smalley?  Smalley?  Is that the Duke's agent?  Jack!

HILLCRIST.  [Coming out of a sort of coma, after the excitement he
has been going through]  What!  What!

JILL.  Oh, Dodo!  How splendidly you stuck it!

HILLCRIST.  Phew!  What a squeak!  I was clean out of my depth.  A
mercy the Duke chipped in again.

MRS. H.  [Looking at ROLF and CHLOE, who are standing up as if about
to go]  Take care; they can hear you.  Find DAWKER, Jack.

     [Below, the AUCTIONEER and SOLICITOR take up their papers, and
     move out Left.]

     [HILLCRIST stretches himself, standing up, as if to throw off
     the strain.  The door behind is opened, and HORNBLOWER
     appears.]

HORNBLOWER.  Ye ran me up a pretty price.  Ye bid very pluckily,
Hillcrist.  But ye didn't quite get my measure.

HILLCRIST.  Oh!  It was my nine thousand the Duke capped.  Thank
God, the Centry's gone to a gentleman!

HORNBLOWER.  The Duke?  [He laughs]  No, the Gentry's not gone to a
gentleman, nor to a fool.  It's gone to me.

HILLCRIST.  What!

HOUNBLOWER.  I'm sorry for ye; ye're not fit to manage these things.
Well, it's a monstrous price, and I've had to pay it because of your
obstinacy.  I shan't forget that when I come to build.

HILLCRIST.  D'you mean to say that bid was for you?

HORNBLOWER.  Of course I do.  I told ye I was a bad man to be up
against.  Perhaps ye'll believe me now.

HILLCRIST.  A dastardly trick!

HORNBLOWER.  [With venom]  What did ye call it--a skin game?
Remember we're playin' a skin game, Hillcrist.

HILLCRIST.  [Clenching his fists]  If we were younger men----

HORNBLOWER.  Ay!  'Twouldn't Look pretty for us to be at fisticuffs.
We'll leave the fightin' to the young ones.  [He glances at ROLF and
JILL; suddenly throwing out his finger at ROLF]  No makin' up to
that young woman!  I've watched ye.  And as for you, missy, you
leave my boy alone.

JILL.  [With suppressed passion]  Dodo, may I spit in his eye or
something?

HILLCRIST.  Sit down.

     [JILL sits down.  He stands between her and HORNBLOWER.]

     [Yu've won this round, sir, by a foul blow.  We shall see
     whether you can take any advantage of it.  I believe the law
     can stop you ruining my property.]

HORNBLOWER.  Make your mind easy; it can't.  I've got ye in a noose,
and I'm goin' to hang ye.

MRS. H.  [Suddenly]  Mr. Hornblower, as you fight foul--so shall we.

HILLCRIST.  Amy!

MRS. H.  [Paying no attention]  And it will not be foul play towards
you and yours.  You are outside the pale.

HORNBLOWER.  That's just where I am, outside your pale all round ye.
Ye're not long for Deepwater, ma'am.  Make your dispositions to go;
ye'll be out in six months, I prophesy.  And good riddance to the
neighbourhood.  [They are all down on the level now.]

CHLOE.  [Suddenly coming closer to MRS. HILLCRIST]  Here are your
salts, thank you.  Father, can't you----?

HORNBLOWER.  [Surprised]  Can't I what?

CHLOE.  Can't you come to an arrangement?

MRS. H.  Just so, Mr. Hornblower.  Can't you?

HORNBLOWER.  [Looking from one to the other]  As we're speakin' out,
ma'am, it's your behaviour to my daughter-in-law--who's as good as
you--and better, to my thinking--that's more than half the reason
why I've bought this property.  Ye've fair got my dander up.  Now
it's no use to bandy words.  It's very forgivin' of ye, Chloe, but
come along!

MRS. H.  Quite seriously, Mr. Hornblower, you had better come to an
arrangement.

HORNBLOWER.  Mrs. Hillcrist, ladies should keep to their own
business.

MRS. H.  I will.

HILLCRIST.  Amy, do leave it to us men.  You young man [He speaks to
ROLF]  do you support your father's trick this afternoon?

     [JILL looks round at ROLF, who tries to speak, when HORNBLOWER
     breaks in.]

HORNBLOWER.  My trick?  And what dye call it, to try and put me own
son against me?

JILL.  [To ROLF]  Well?

ROLF.  I don't, but----

HORNBLOWER.  Trick?  Ye young cub, be quiet.  Mr. Hillcrist had an
agent bid for him--I had an agent bid for me.  Only his agent bid at
the beginnin', an' mine bid at the end.  What's the trick in that?

[He laughs.]

HILLCRIST.  Hopeless; we're in different worlds.

HORNBLOWER.  I wish to God we were!  Come you, Chloe.  And you,
Rolf, you follow.  In six months I'll have those chimneys up, and me
lorries runnin' round ye.

MRS. H.  Mr. Hornblower, if you build----

HORNBLOWER.  [Looking at MRS. HILLCRIST]  Ye know--it's laughable.
Ye make me pay nine thousand five hundred for a bit o' 1and not
worth four, and ye think I'm not to get back on ye.  I'm goin' on
with as little consideration as if ye were a family of blackbeetles.
Good afternoon!

ROLF.  Father!

JILL.  Oh, Dodo!  He's obscene.

HILLCRIST.  Mr. Hornblower, my compliments.

     [HORNBLOWER with a stare at HILLCRIST'S half-smiling face,
     takes CHLOE'S arm, and half drags her towards the door on the
     Left.  But there, in the opened doorway, are standing DAWKER
     and a STRANGER.  They move just out of the way of the exit,
     looking at CHLOE, who sways and very nearly falls.]

HORNBLOWER.  Why!  Chloe!  What's the matter?

CHLOE.  I don't know; I'm not well to-day.

     [She pulls herself together with a great, effort.]

MRS. H.  [Who has exchanged a nod with DAWKER and the STRANGER]  Mr.
Hornblower, you build at your peril.  I warn you.

HORNBLOWER.  [Turning round to speak]  Ye think yourself very cool
and very smart.  But I doubt this is the first time ye've been up
against realities.  Now, I've been up against them all my life.
Don't talk to me, ma'am, about peril and that sort of nonsense; it
makes no impression.  Your husband called me pachydermatous.  I
don't know Greek, and Latin, and all that, but I've looked it out in
the dictionary, and I find it means thick-skinned.  And I'm none
the worse for that when I have to deal with folk like you.  Good
afternoon.

     [He draws CHLOE forward, and they pass through the door,
     followed quickly by ROLF.]

MRS. H.  Thank you; Dawker.

     [She moves up to DAWKER  and the STRANGER, Left, and they
     talk.]

JILL.  Dodo!  It's awful!

HILLCRIST.  Well, there's nothing for it now but to smile and pay
up.  Poor old home!  It shall be his wash-pot.  Over the Centry will
he cast his shoe.  By Gad, Jill, I could cry!

JILL.  [Pointing]  Look!  Chloe's sitting down.  She nearly fainted
just now.  It's something to do with Dawker, Dodo, and that man with
him.  Look at mother!  Ask them!

HILLCRIST.  Dawker!

     [DAWKER comes to him, followed by MRS. HILLCRIST.]

What's the mystery about young Mrs. Hornblower?

DAWKER.  No mystery.

HILLCRIST.  Well, what is it?

MRS. H.  You'd better not ask.

HILLCRIST.  I wish to know.

MRS. H.  Jill, go out and wait for us.

JILL.  Nonsense, mother!

MRS. H.  It's not for a girl to hear.

JILL.  Bosh!  I read the papers every day.

DAWKER.  It's nothin' worse than you get there, anyway.

MRS. H.  Do you wish your daughter----

JILL.  It's ridiculous, Dodo; you'd think I was mother at my age.

MRS. H.  I was not so proud of my knowledge.

JILL.  No, but you had it, dear.

HILLCRIST.  What is it----what is it?  Come over here, Dawker.

     [DAWKER goes to him, Right, and speaks in a low voice.]

What!  [Again DAWKER speaks in, a low voice.]

Good God!

MRS. H.  Exactly!

JILL.  Poor thing--whatever it is!

MRS. H.  Poor thing?

JILL.  What went before, mother?

MRS. H.  It's what's coming after that matters; luckily.

HILLCRIST.  How do you know this?

DAWKER.  My friend here [He points to the STRANGER]  was one of the
agents.

HILLCRIST.  It's shocking.  I'm sorry I heard it.

MRS. H.  I told you not to.

HILLCRIST.  Ask your friend to come here.

     [DAWKER beckons, and the STRANGER joins the group.]

Are you sure of what you've said, sir?

STRANGER.  Perfectly.  I remember her quite well; her name then
was----

HILLCRIST.  I don't want to know, thank you.  I'm truly sorry.  I
wouldn't wish the knowledge of that about his womenfolk to my worst
enemy.  This mustn't be spoken of.  [JILL hugs his arm.]

MRS. H.  It will not be if Mr. Hornblower is wise.  If he is not
wise, it must be spoken of.

HILLCRIST.  I say no, Amy.  I won't have it.  It's a dirty weapon.
Who touches pitch shall be defiled.

MRS. H.  Well, what weapons does he use against us?  Don't be
quixotic.  For all we can tell, they know it quite well already, and
if they don't they ought to.  Anyway, to know this is our salvation,
and we must use it.

JILL: [Sotto voce]  Pitch!  Dodo!  Pitch!

DAWKER.  The threat's enough!  J.P.--Chapel--Future member for the
constituency----.

HILLCRIST.  [A little more doubtfully]  To use a piece of knowledge
about a woman--it's repugnant.  I--I won't do it.

     [Mrs. H.  If you had a son tricked into marrying such a woman,
     would you wish to remain ignorant of it?]

HILLCRIST.  [Struck]  I don't know--I don't know.

MRS. H.  At least, you'd like to be in a position to help him, if
you thought it necessary?

HILLCRIST.  Well--that perhaps.

MRS. H.  Then you agree that Mr. Hornblower at least should be told.
What he does with the knowledge is not our affair.

HILLCRIST. [Half to the STRANGER and half to DAWKER] Do you realise
that an imputation of that kind may be ground for a criminal libel
action?

STRANGER.  Quite.  But there's no shadow of doubt; not the faintest.
You saw her just now?

HILLCRIST.  I did.  [Revolting again]  No; I don't like it.

     [DAWKER has drawn the STRANGER a step or two away, and they
     talk together.]

MRS. H.  [In a low voice]  And the ruin of our home?  You're
betraying your fathers, Jack.

HILLCRIST.  I can't bear bringing a woman into it.

MRS. H.  We don't.  If anyone brings her in; it will be Hornblower
himself.

HILLCRIST.  We use her secret as a lever.

MRS. H.  I tell you quite plainly: I will only consent to holding my
tongue about her, if you agree to Hornblower being told.  It's a
scandal to have a woman like that in the neighbourhood.

JILL.  Mother means that, father.

HILLCRIST.  Jill, keep quiet.  This is a very bitter position.  I
can't tell what to do.

MRS. H.  You must use this knowledge.  You owe it to me--to us all.
You'll see that when you've thought it over.

JILL.  [Softly]  Pitch, Dodo, pitch!

MRS. H.  [Furiously]  Jill, be quiet!

HILLCRIST.  I was brought up never to hurt a woman.  I can't do it,
Amy--I can't do it.  I should never feel like a gentleman again.

MRS. H.  [Coldly]  Oh!  Very well.

HILLCRIST.  What d'you mean by that?

MRS. H.  I shall use the knowledge in my own way.

HILLCRIST.  [Staring at her]  You would--against my wishes?

MRS. H.  I consider it my duty.

HILLCRIST.  If I agree to Hornblower being told----

MRS. H.  That's all I want.

HILLCRIST.  It's the utmost I'll consent to, Amy; and don't let's
have any humbug about its being, morally necessary.  We do it to
save our skins.

MRS. H.  I don't know what you mean by humbug?

JILL.  He means humbug; mother.

HILLCRIST.  It must stop at old Hornblower.  Do you quite
understand?

MRS. H.  Quite.

JILL.  Will it stop?

MRS. H.  Jill, if you can't keep your impertinence to yourself----

HILLCRIST.  Jill, come with me.

     [He turns towards door, Back.]

JILL.  I'm sorry, mother.  Only it is a skin game, isn't it?

MRS. H.  You pride yourself on plain speech, Jill.  I pride myself
on plain thought.  You will thank me afterwards that I can see
realities.  I know we are better people than these Hornblowers.
Here we are going to stay, and they--are not.

JILL.  [Looking at her with a sort of unwilling admiration]  Mother,
you're wonderful!

HILLCRIST.  Jill!

JILL.  Coming, Dodo.

     [She turns and runs to the door.  They go out.]

     [MRS. HILLCRIST, with a long sigh, draws herself up, fine and
     proud.]

MRS. H.  Dawker!   [He comes to her.]

     [I shall send him a note to-night, and word it so that
     he will be bound to come and see us to-marrow morning.  Will
     you be in the study just before eleven o'clock, with this
     gentleman?]

DAWKER.  [Nodding]  We're going to wire for his partner.  I'll bring
him too.  Can't make too sure.

     [She goes firmly up the steps and out.]

DAWKER.  [To the STRANGER, with a wink]  The Squire's squeamish--too
much of a gentleman.  But he don't count.  The grey mare's all
right.  You wire to Henry.  I'm off to our solicitors.  We'll make
that old rhinoceros sell us back the Centry at a decent price.
These Hornblowers--[Laying his finger on his nose]  We've got 'em


                         CURTAIN





SCENE II

     CHLOE's boudoir at half-past seven the same evening.  A pretty
     room.  No pictures on the walls, but two mirrors.  A screen and
     a luxurious couch an the fireplace side, stage Left.  A door
     rather Right of Centre Back; opening inwards.  A French window,
     Right forward: A writing table, Right Back.  Electric light
     burning.

     CHLOE, in a tea-gown, is standing by the forward end of the
     sofa, very still, and very pale.  Her lips are parted, and her
     large eyes stare straight before them as if seeing ghosts: The
     door is opened noiselessly and a WOMAN'S face is seen.  It
     peers at CHLOE, vanishes, and the door is closed.  CHLOE raises
     her hands, covers her eyes with them, drops them with a quick
     gesture, and looks round her.  A knock.  With a swift movement
     she slides on to the sofa, and lies prostrate, with eyes
     closed.

CHLOE.  [Feebly]  Come in!

     [Her Maid enters; a trim, contained figure of uncertain years,
     in a black dress, with the face which was peering in.]

Yes, Anna?

ANNA.  Aren't you going in to dinner, ma'am?

CHLOE.  [With closed eyes]  No.

ANNA.  Will you take anything here, ma'am?

CHLOE.  I'd like a biscuit and a glass of champagne.

     [The MAID, who is standing between sofa and door, smiles.
     CHLOE, with a swift look, catches the smile.]

Why do you smile?

ANNA.  Was I, ma'am?

CHLOE.  You know you were.  [Fiercely]  Are you paid to smile at me?

ANNA.  [Immovable]  No, ma'am, Would you like some eau de Cologne on
your forehead?

CHLOE.  Yes.--No.--What's the good?  [Clasping her forehead]  My
headache won't go.

ANNA.  To keep lying down's the best thing for it.

CHLOE.  I have been--hours.

ANNA.  [With the smile]  Yes, ma'am.

CHLOE.  [Gathering herself up on the sofa]  Anna!  Why do you do it?

ANNA.  Do what, ma'am?

CHLOE.  Spy on me.

ANNA.  I--never!  I----!

CHLOE.  To spy!  You're a fool, too.  What is there to spy on?

ANNA.  Nothing, ma'am.  Of course, if you're not satisfied with me,
I must give notice.  Only--if I were spying, I should expect to have
notice given me.  I've been accustomed to ladies who wouldn't stand
such a thing for a minute.

CHLOE: [Intently]  Well, you'll take a month's wages and go
tomorrow.  And that's all, now.

     [ANNA inclines her head and goes out.]

     [CHLOE, with a sort of moan, turns over and buries her face in
     the cushion.]

CHLOE.  [Sitting up]  If I could see that man--if only--or Dawker---

     [She springs up and goes to the door, but hesitates, and comes
     back to the head of the sofa, as ROLF comes in.  During this
     scene the door is again opened stealthily, an inch or too.]

ROLF.  How's the head?

CHLOE.  Beastly, thanks.  I'm not going into dinner.

ROLF.  Is there anything I can do for you?

CHLOE.  No, dear boy.  [Suddenly looking at him]  You don't want
this quarrel with the Hillcrists to go on, do you, Rolf?

ROLF.  No; I hate it.

CHLOE.  Well, I think I might be able to stop it.  Will you slip
round to Dawker's--it's not five minutes--and ask him to come and
see me.

ROLF.  Father and Charlie wouldn't----

CHLOE.  I know.  But if he comes to the window here while you're at
dinner, I'll let him in, and out, and nobody'd know.

ROLF.  [Astonished]  Yes, but what I mean how----

CHLOE.  Don't ask me.  It's worth the shot that's all.  [Looking at
her wrist-watch]  To this window at eight o'clock exactly.  First
long window on the terrace, tell him.

ROLF.  It's nothing Charlie would mind?

CHLOE.  No; only I can't tell him--he and father are so mad about it
all.

ROLF.  If there's a real chance----

CHLOE.  [Going to the window and opening it]  This way, Rolf.  If
you don't come back I shall know he's coming.  Put your watch by
mine.  [Looking at his watch]  It's a minute fast, see!

ROLF.  Look here, Chloe

CHLOE.  Don't wait; go on.

     [She almost pushes him out through the window, closes it after
     him, draws the curtains again, stands a minute, thinking hard;
     goes to the bell and rings it; then, crossing to the writing
     table, Right Back, she takes out a chemist's prescription.]

     [ANNA comes in.]

CHLOE.  I don't want that champagne.  Take this to the chemist and
get him to make up some of these cachets quick, and bring them back
yourself.

ANNA.  Yes, ma'am; but you have some.

CHLOE.  They're too old; I've taken two--the strength's out of them.
Quick, please; I can't stand this head.

ANNA.  [Taking the prescription--with her smile]  Yes, ma'am.  It'll
take some time--you don't want me?

CHLOE.  No; I want the cachets.

     [ANNA goes out.]

     [CHLOE looks at her wrist-watch, goes to the writing-table,
     which is old-fashioned, with a secret drawer, looks round her,
     dives at the secret drawer, takes out a roll of notes and a
     tissue paper parcel.  She counts the notes: "Three hundred."
     Slips them into her breast and unwraps the little parcel.  It
     contains pears.  She slips them, too, into her dress, looks
     round startled, replaces the drawer, and regains her place on
     the sofa, lying prostrate as the door opens, and HORNBLOWER
     comes in.  She does not open her ages, and he stands looking at
     her a moment before speaking.]

HORNBLOWER.  [Almost softly]  How are ye feelin'.  Chloe?

CHLOE.  Awful head!

HORNBLOWER: Can ye attend a moment?  I've had a note from that
woman.

     [CHLOE sits up.]

HORNBLOWER.  [Reading]  "I have something of the utmost importance
to tell you in regard to your daughter-in-law.  I shall be waiting
to see you at eleven o'clock to-morrow morning.  The matter is so
utterly vital to the happiness of all your family, that I cannot
imagine you will fail to come."  Now, what's the meaning of it?  Is
it sheer impudence, or lunacy, or what?

CHLOE.  I don't know.

HORNBLOWER.  [Not unkindly]  Chloe, if there's anything--ye'd better
tell me.  Forewarned's forearmed.

CHLOE.  There's nothing; unless it's--[With a quick took at him,]--
Unless it's that my father was a--a bankrupt.

HORNBLOWER.  Hech!  Many a man's been that.  Ye've never told us
much about your family.

CHLOE.  I wasn't very proud of him.

HORNBLOWER.  Well, ye're not responsible for your father.  If that's
all, it's a relief.  The bitter snobs!  I'll remember it in the
account I've got with them.

CHLOE.  Father, don't say anything to Charlie; it'll only worry him
for nothing.

HORNBLOWER.  No, no, I'll not.  If I went bankrupt, it'd upset
Chearlie, I've not a doubt.  [He laugh.  Looking at her shrewdly]
There's nothing else, before I answer her?

     [CHLOE shakes her head.]

Ye're sure?

CHLOE.  [With an efort]  She may invent things, of course.

HORNBLOWER.  [Lost in his feud feeling]  Ah!  but there's such a
thing as the laws o' slander.  If they play pranks, I'll have them
up for it.

CHLOE.  [Timidly]  Couldn't you stop this quarrel; father?  You said
it was on my account.  But I don't want to know them.  And they do
love their old home.  I like the girl.  You don't really need to
build just there, do you?  Couldn't you stop it?  Do!

HORNBLOWER.  Stop it?  Now I've bought?  Na, no!  The snobs defied
me, and I'm going to show them.  I hate the lot of them, and I hate
that little Dawker worst of all.

CHLOE.  He's only their agent.

HORNBLOWER.  He's a part of the whole dog-in-the-manger system that
stands in my way.  Ye're a woman, and ye don't understand these
things.  Ye wouldn't believe the struggle I've had to make my money
and get my position.  These county folk talk soft sawder, but to get
anything from them's like gettin' butter out of a dog's mouth.  If
they could drive me out of here by fair means or foul, would they
hesitate a moment?  Not they!  See what they've made me pay; and
look at this letter.  Selfish, mean lot o' hypocrites!

CHLOE.  But they didn't begin the quarrel.

HORNBLOWER.  Not openly; but underneath they did--that's their way.
They began it by thwartin' me here and there and everywhere, just
because I've come into me own a bit later than they did.  I gave 'em
their chance, and they wouldn't take it.  Well, I'll show 'em what a
man like me can do when he sets his mind to it.  I'll not leave much
skin on them.

     [In the intensity of his feeling he has lost sight of her face,
     alive with a sort of agony of doubt, whether to plead with him
     further, or what to do.  Then, with a swift glance at her
     wristwatch, she falls back on the sofa and closes her eyes.]

It'll give me a power of enjoyment seein' me chimneys go up in front
of their windies.  That was a bonnie thought--that last bid o' mine.
He'd got that roused up, I believe, he, never would a' stopped.
[Looking at her]  I forgot your head.  Well, well, ye'll be best
tryin' quiet.  [The gong sounds.]  Shall we send ye something in
from dinner?

CHLOE.  No; I'll try to sleep.  Please tell them I don't want to be
disturbed.

HORNBLOWER.  All right.  I'll just answer this note.

     [He sits down at her writing-table.]

     [CHLOE starts up from the sofa feverishly, looking at her
     watch, at the window, at her watch; then softly crosses to the
     window and opens it.]

HORNBLOWER.  [Finishing]  Listen!  [He turns round towards the sofa]
Hallo!  Where are ye?

CHLOE.  [At the window]  It's so hot.

HORNBLOWER.  Here's what I've said:

     "MADAM,--You can tell me nothing of my daughter-in-law which
     can affect the happiness of my family.  I regard your note as
     an impertinence, and I shall not be with you at eleven o'clock
     to-morrow morning.

     "Yours truly----"

CHLOE.  [With a suffering movement of her head]  Oh!--Well!--[The
gong is touched a second time.]

HORNBLOWER.  [Crossing to the door]  Lie ye down, and get a sleep.
I'll tell them not to disturb ye; and I hope ye'll be all right to-
morrow.  Good-night, Chloe.

CHLOE.  Good-night.  [He goes out.]

     [After a feverish turn or two, CHLOE returns to the open window
     and waits there, half screened by the curtains.  The door is
     opened inch by inch, and ANNA'S head peers round.  Seeing where
     CHLOE is, she slips in and passes behind the screen, Left.
     Suddenly CHLOE backs in from the window.]

CHLOE.  [In a low voice]  Come in.

     [She darts to the door and locks it.]

     [DAWKER has come in through the window and stands regarding her
     with a half smile.]

DAWKER.  Well, young woman, what do you want of me?

     [In the presence of this man of her own class, there comes a
     distinct change in CHLOE'S voice and manner; a sort of frank
     commonness, adapted to the man she is dealing with, but she
     keeps her voice low.]

CHLOE.  You're making a mistake, you know.

DAWKER.  [With a broad grin]  No.  I've got a memory for faces.

CHLOE.  I say you are.

DAWKER.  [Turning to go]  If that's all, you needn't have troubled
me to come.

CHLOE.  No.  Don't go!  [With a faint smile]  You are playing a game
with me.  Aren't you ashamed?  What harm have I done you?  Do you
call this cricket?

DAWKER.  No, my girl--business.

CHLOE.  [Bitterly]  What have I to do with this quarrel?  I couldn't
help their falling out.

DAWKER.  That's your misfortune.

CHLOE.  [Clasping her hands]  You're a cruel fellow if you can spoil
a woman's life who never did you an ounce of harm.

DAWKER.  So they don't know about you.  That's all right.  Now, look
here, I serve my employer.  But I'm flesh and blood, too, and I
always give as good as I get.  I hate this family of yours.  There's
no name too bad for 'em to call me this last month, and no looks too
black to give me.  I tell you frankly, I hate.

CHLOE.  There's good in them same as in you.

DAWKER.  [With a grin]  There's no good Hornblower but a dead
Hornblower.

CHLOE.  But--but Im not one.

DAWKER.  You'll be the mother of some, I shouldn't wonder.

CHLOE.  [Stretching out her hand-pathetically]  Oh!  leave me alone,
do!  I'm happy here.  Be a sport!  Be a sport!

DAWKER.  [Disconcerted for a second]  You can't get at me, so don't
try it on.

CHLOE.  I had such a bad time in old days.

     [DAWKER shakes his head; his grin has disappeared and his face
     is like wood.]

CHLOE.  [Panting]  Ah! do!  You might!  You've been fond of some
woman, I suppose.  Think of her!

DAWKER.  [Decisively]  It won't do, Mrs. Chloe.  You're a pawn in
the game, and I'm going to use you.

CHLOE.  [Despairingly]  What is it to you?  [With a sudden touch of
the tigress]  Look here!  Don't you make an enemy, of me.  I haven't
dragged through hell for nothing.  Women like me can bite, I tell
you.

DAWKER.  That's better.  I'd rather have a woman threaten than
whine, any day.  Threaten away!  You'll let 'em know that you met me
in the Promenade one night.  Of course you'll let 'em know that,
won't you?--or that----

CHLOE.  Be quiet!  Oh!  Be quiet!  [Taking from her bosom the notes
and the pearls]  Look!  There's my savings--there's all I've got!
The pearls'll fetch nearly a thousand.  [Holding it out to him]
Take it, and drop me out--won't you?  Won't you?

DAWKER.  [Passing his tongue over his lips with a hard little laugh]
You mistake your man, missis.  I'm a plain dog, if you like, but I'm
faithful, and I hold fast.  Don't try those games on me.

CHLOE.  [Losing control]  You're a beast!--a beast!  a cruel,
cowardly beast!  And how dare you bribe that woman here to spy on
me?  Oh!  yes, you do; you know you do.  If you drove me mad, you
wouldn't care.  You beast!

DAWKER.  Now, don't carry on!  That won't help you.

CHLOE.  What d'you call it--to dog a woman down like this, just
because you happen to have a quarrel with a man?

DAWKER.  Who made the quarrel?  Not me, missis.  You ought to know
that in a row it's the weak and helpless--we won't say the innocent-
that get it in the neck.  That can't be helped.

CHLOE.  [Regarding him intently]  I hope your mother or your sister,
if you've got any, may go through what I'm going through ever since
you got on my track.  I hope they'll know what fear means.  I hope
they'll love and find out that it's hanging on a thread, and--and--
Oh! you coward, you persecuting coward!  Call yourself a man!

DAWKER.  [With his grin]  Ah!  You look quite pretty like that.  By
George! you're a handsome woman when you're roused.

     [CHLOE'S passion fades out as quickly as it blazed up.  She
     sinks down on the sofa, shudders, looks here and there, and
     then for a moment up at him.]

CHLOE.  Is there anything you'll take, not to spoil my life?
[Clasping her hands on her breast; under her breath]  Me?

DAWKER.  [Wiping his brow]  By God!  That's an offer.  [He recoils
towards the window]  You--you touched me there.  Look here!  I've
got to use you and I'm going to use you, but I'll do my best to let
you down as easy as I can.  No, I don't want anything you can give
me--that is--[He wipes his brow again]  I'd like it--but I won't
take it.

     [CHLOE buries her face in her hands.]

There!  Keep your pecker up; don't cry.  Good-night!  [He goes
through the window.]

CHLOE.  [Springing up]  Ugh!  Rat in a trap!  Rat----!

     [She stands listening; flies to the door, unlocks it, and,
     going back to the sofa, lies down and doses her eyes.  CHARLES
     comes in very quietly and stands over her, looking to see if
     she is asleep.  She opens her eyes.]

CHARLES.  Well, Clo!  Had a sleep, old girl?

CHLOE.  Ye-es.

CHARLES.  [Sitting on the arm of the sofa and caressing her]  Feel
better, dear?

CHLOE.  Yes, better, Charlie.

CHARLES.  That's right.  Would you like some soup?

CHLOE.  [With a shudder]  No.

CHARLES.  I say-what gives you these heads?  You've been very on and
off all this last month.

CHLOE.  I don't know.  Except that--except that I am going to have a
child, Charlie.

CHARLES.  After all!  By Jove!  Sure?

CHLOE.  [Nodding]  Are you glad?

CHARLES.  Well--I suppose I am.  The guv'nor will be mighty pleased,
anyway.

CHLOE.  Don't tell him--yet.

CHARLES.  All right!  [Bending over and drawing her to him]  My poor
girl, I'm so sorry you're seedy.  Give us a kiss.

     [CHLOE puts up her face and kisses him passionately.]

I say, you're like fire.  You're not feverish?


CHLOE.  [With a laugh]  It's a wonder if I'm not.  Charlie, are you
happy with me?

CHARLES.  What do you think?

CHLOE.  [Leaning against him]  You wouldn't easily believe things
against me, would you?

CHARLES.  What!  Thinking of those Hillcrists?  What the hell that
woman means by her attitude towards you--When I saw her there to-
day, I had all my work cut out not to go up and give her a bit of my
mind.

CHLOE.  [Watching him stealthily]  It's not good for me, now I'm
like this.  It's upsetting me, Charlie.

CHARLES.  Yes; and we won't forget.  We'll make 'em pay for it.

CHLOE.  It's wretched in a little place like this.  I say, must you
go on spoiling their home?

CHARLES.  The woman cuts you and insults you.  That's enough for me.

CHLOE.  [Timidly]  Let her.  I don't care; I can't bear feeling
enemies about, Charlie, I--get nervous--I----

CHARLES.  My dear girl!  What is it?

     [He looks at her intently.]

CHLOE.  I suppose it's--being like this.  [Suddenly] But, Charlie,
do stop it for my sake.  Do, do!

CHARLES.  [Patting her arm]  Come, come; I say, Chloe!  You're
making mountains.  See things in proportion.  Father's paid nine
thousand five hundred to get the better of those people, and you
want him to chuck it away to save a woman who's insulted you.
That's not sense, and it's not business.  Have some pride.

CHLOE.  [Breathless]  I've got no pride, Charlie.  I want to be
quiet--that's all.

CHARLES.  Well, if the row gets on your nerves, I can take you to
the sea.  But you ought to enjoy a fight with people like that.

CHLOE.  [With calculated bitterness]  No, it's nothing, of course--
what I want.

CHARLES.  Hello!  Hello!  You are on the jump!

CHLOE.  If you want me to be a good wife to you, make father stop
it.

CHARLES.  [Standing up]  Now, look here, Chloe, what's behind this?

CHLOE.  [Faintly]  Behind?

CHARLES.  You're carrying on as if--as if you were really scared!
We've got these people: We'll have them out of Deepwater in six
months.  It's absolute ruination to their beastly old house; we'll
put the chimneys on the very edge, not three hundred yards off, and
our smoke'll be drifting over them half the time.  You won't have
this confounded stuck-up woman here much longer.  And then we can
really go ahead and take our proper place.  So long as she's here,
we shall never do that.  We've only to drive on now as fast as we
can.

CHLOE.  [With a gesture]  I see.

CHARLES.  [Again looking at her]  If you go on like this, you know,
I shall begin to think there's something you----

CHLOE [softly]  Charlie! [He comes to her.]  Love me!

CHARLES.  [Embracing her]  There, old girl!  I know women are funny
at these times.  You want a good night, that's all.

CHLOE.  You haven't finished dinner, have you?  Go back, and I'll go
to bed quite soon.  Charlie, don't stop loving me.

CHARLES.  Stop?  Not much.

     [While he is again embracing her, ANNA steals from behind the
     screen to the door, opens it noiselessly, and passes through,
     but it clicks as she shuts it.]

CHLOE.  [Starting violently]  Oh-h!

     [He comes to her.]

CHARLES.  What is it?  What is it?  You are nervy, my dear.

CHLOE.  [Looking round with a little laugh]  I don't know.  Go on,
Charlie.  I'll be all right when this head's gone.

CHARLES.  [Stroking her forehead and, looking at her doubtfully]
You go to bed; I won't be late coming up.

     [He turn, and goes, blowing a kiss from the doorway.  When he
     is gone, CHLOE gets up and stands in precisely the attitude in
     which she stood at the beginning of the Act, thinking, and
     thinking.  And the door is opened, and the face of the MAID
     peers round at her.]


                              CURTAIN




ACT III


SCENE I

     HILLCRIST'S study next morning.

     JILL coming from Left, looks in at the open French window.

JILL.  [Speaking to ROLF, invisible]  Come in here.  There's no one.

     [She goes in.  ROLF joins her, coming from the garden.]

ROLF.  Jill, I just wanted to say--Need we?

     [JILL.  nodes.]

Seeing you yesterday--it did seem rotten.

JILL.  We didn't begin it.

ROLF.  No; but you don't understand.  If you'd made yourself, as
father has----

JILL.  I hope I should be sorry.

ROLF.  [Reproachfully]  That isn't like you.  Really he can't help
thinking he's a public benefactor.

JILL.  And we can't help thinking he's a pig.  Sorry!

ROLF.  If the survival of the fittest is right----

JILL.  He may be fitter, but he's not going to survive.

ROLF.  [Distracted]  It looks like it, though.

JILL.  Is that all you came to say?

ROLF.  Suppose we joined, couldn't we stop it?

JILL.  I don't feel like joining.

ROLF.  We did shake hands.

JILL.  One can't fight and not grow bitter.

ROLF.  I don't feel bitter.

JILL.  Wait; you'll feel it soon enough.

ROLF.  Why?  [Attentively]  About Chloe?  I do think your mother's
manner to her is----

JILL.  Well?

ROLF.  Snobbish.  [JILL laughs.]
She may not be your class; and that's just why it's
snobbish.

JILL.  I think you'd better shut up.

ROLF.  What my father said was true; your mother's rudeness to her
that day she came here, has made both him and Charlie ever so much
more bitter.

     [JILL whistles the Habanera from "Carmen."]

     [Staring at her, rather angrily]

Is it a whistling matter?

JILL.  No.

ROLF.  I suppose you want me to go?

JILL.  Yes.

ROLF.  All right.  Aren't we ever going to be friends again?

JILL.  [Looking steadily at him]  I don't expect so.

ROLF.  That's very-horrible.

JILL.  Lots of horrible things in the world.

ROLF.  It's our business to make them fewer, Jill.

JILL.  [Fiercely]  Don't be moral.

ROLF.  [Hurt]  That's the last thing I want to be.--I only want to
be friendly.

JILL.  Better be real first.

ROLF.  From the big point of view----

JILL.  There isn't any.  We're all out, for our own.  And why not?

ROLF.  By jove, you have got----

JILL.  Cynical?  Your father's motto--"Every man for himself."
That's the winner--hands down.  Goodbye!

ROLF.  Jill!  Jill!

JILL.  [Putting her hands behind her back, hums]--
          "If auld acquaintance be forgot
           And days of auld lang syne"----

ROLF.  Don't!

     [With a pained gesture he goes out towards Left, through the
     French window.]

     [JILL, who has broken off the song, stands with her hands
     clenched and her lips quivering.]

     [FELLOWS enters Left.]

FELLOWS.  Mr. Dawker, Miss, and two gentlemen.

JILL.  Let the three gentlemen in, and me out.

     [She passes him and goes out Left.  And immediately.  DAWKER
     and the two STRANGERS come in.]

FELLOWS.  I'll inform Mrs. Hillcrist, sir.  The Squire is on his
rounds.   [He goes out Left.]

     [The THREE MEN gather in a discreet knot at the big bureau,
     having glanced at the two doors and the open French window.]

DAWKER.  Now this may come into Court, you know.  If there's a screw
loose anywhere, better mention it.  [To SECOND STRANGE]  You knew
her personally?

SECOND S.  What do you think?  I don't, take girls on trust for that
sort of job.  She came to us highly recommended, too; and did her
work very well.  It was a double stunt--to make sure--wasn't it,
George?

FIRST S.  Yes; we paid her for the two visits.

SECOND S.  I should know her in a minute; striking looking girl; had
something in her face.  Daresay she'd seen hard times.

FIRST S.  We don't want publicity.

DAWKER.  Not Likely.  The threat'll do it; but the stakes are heavy
--and the man's a slugger; we must be able to push it home.  If you
can both swear to her, it'll do the trick.

SECOND S.  And about--I mean, we're losing time, you know, coming
down here.

DAWKER.  [With a nod at FIRST STRANGER]  George here knows me.
That'll be all right.  I'll guarantee it well worth your while.

SECOND S.  I don't want to do the girl harm, if she's married.

DAWKER.  No, no; nobody wants to hurt her.  We just want a cinch on
this fellow till he squeals.

     [They separate a little as MRS. HILLCRIST enters from Right.]

DAWKER.  Good morning, ma'am.  My friend's partner.  Hornblower
coming?

MRS. H.  At eleven.  I had to send up a second note, Dawker.

DAWKER.  Squire not in?

MRS. H.  I haven't told him.

DAWKER.  [Nodding]  Our friends might go in here [Pointing Right]
and we can use 'em as the want 'em.

MRS. H.  [To the STRANGERS]  Will you make yourselves comfortable?

     [She holds the door open, and they pass her into the room,
     Right.]

DAWKER.  [Showing document] I've had this drawn and engrossed.
Pretty sharp work.  Conveys the Centry, and Longmeadow; to the
Squire at four thousand five hundred: Now, ma'am, suppose Hornblower
puts his hand to that, hell have been done in the eye, and six
thousand all told out o' pocket.--You'll have a very nasty neighbour
here.

MRS. H.  But we shall still have the power to disclose that secret
at any time.

DAWKER.  Yeh!  But things might happen here you could never bring
home to him.  You can't trust a man like that.  He isn't goin' to
forgive me, I know.

MRS. H.  [Regarding him keenly] But if he signs, we couldn't
honourably----

DAWKER.  No, ma'am, you couldn't; and I'm sure I don't want to do
that girl a hurt.  I just mention it because, of course, you can't
guarantee that it doesn't get out.

MRS. H.  Not absolutely, I suppose.

     [A look passes between them, which neither of them has quite
     sanctioned.]

     [There's his car.  It always seems to make more noise than any
     other.]

DAWKER.   He'll kick and flounder--but you leave him to ask what you
want, ma'am; don't mention this [He puts the deed back into his
pocket].  The Centry's no mortal good to him if he's not going to
put up works; I should say he'd be glad to save what he can.

     [MRS. HILLCRIST inclines her head.  FELLOWS enters Left.]

FELLOWS.  [Apologetically]  Mr. Hornblower, ma'am; by appointment,
he says.

MRS. H.  Quite right, Fellows.

     [HORNBLOWER comes in, and FELLOWS goes out.]

HORNBLOWER.  [Without salutation]  I've come to ask ye point bleak
what ye mean by writing me these letters.  [He takes out two
letters.]  And we'll discus it in the presence of nobody, if ye,
please.

MRS. H.  Mr. Dawker knows all that I know, and more.

HORNBLOWER.  Does he?  Very well!  Your second note says that my
daughter-in-law has lied to me.  Well, I've brought her, and what
ye've got to say--if it's not just a trick to see me again--ye'll
say to her face.  [He takes a step towards the window.]

MRS. H.  Mr. Hornblower, you had better, decide that after hearing
what it is--we shall be quite ready to repeat it in her presence;
but we want to do as little harm as possible.

HORNBLOWER.  [Stopping]  Oh!  ye do!  Well, what lies have ye been
hearin'?  Or what have ye made up?  You and Mr. Dawker?  Of course
ye know there's a law of libel and slander.  I'm, not the man to
stop at that.

MRS. H.  [Calmly]  Are you familiar with the law of divorce, Mr.
Hornblower?

HORNBLOWER.  [Taken aback]  No, I'm not.  That is-----.

MRS. H.  Well, you know that misconduct is required.  And I suppose
you've heard that cases are arranged.

HORNBLOWER.  I know it's all very shocking--what about it?

MRS. H.  When cases are arranged, Mr. Hornblower, the man who is to
be divorced often visits an hotel with a strange woman.  I am
extremely sorry to say that your daughter-in-law, before her
marriage, was in the habit of being employed as such a woman.

HORNBLOWER.  Ye dreadful creature!

DAWKER.  [Quickly]  All proved, up to the hilt!

HORNBLOWER.  I don't believe a word of it.  Ye're lyin' to save your
skins.  How dare ye tell me such monstrosities?  Dawker, I'll have
ye in a criminal court.

DAWKER.  Rats!  You saw a gent with me yesterday?  Well, he's
employed her.

HORNBLOWER.  A put-up job!  Conspiracy!

MRS. H.  Go and get your daughter-in-law.

HORNBLOWER.  [With the first sensation of being in a net]  It's a
foul shame--a lying slander!

MRS. H.  If so, it's easily disproved.  Go and fetch her.

HORNBLOWER.  [Seeing them unmoved]  I will.  I don't believe a word
of it.

MRS. H.  I hope you are right.

     [HORNBLOWER goes out by the French window, DAWKER slips to the
     door Right, opens it, arid speaks to those within.  MRS.
     HILLCRIST stands moistening her lips, and passim her
     handkerchief over them.  HORNBLOWER returns, preceding CHLOE,
     strung up to hardness and defiance.]

HORNBLOWER.  Now then, let's have this impudent story torn to rags.

CHLOE.  What story?

HORNBLOWER.  That you, my dear, were a woman--it's too shockin--I
don't know how to tell ye----

CHLOE.  Go on!

HORNBLOWER.  Were a woman that went with men, to get them their
divorce.

CHLOE.  Who says that?

HORNBLOWER.  That lady [Sneering]  there, and her bull-terrier here.

CHLOE.  [Facing MRS.  HILLCRIST]  That's a charitable thing to say,
isn't it?

MRS. H.  Is it true?

CHLOE.  No.

HORNBLOWER.  [Furiously]  There!  I'll have ye both on your knees to
her!

DAWKER.  [Opening the door, Right]  Come in.

     [The FIRST STRANGER comes in.  CHLOE, with a visible effort,
     turns to face him.]

FIRST S.  How do you do, Mrs. Vane?

CHLOE.  I don't know you.

FIRST S.  Your memory is bad, ma'am: You knew me yesterday well
enough.  One day is not a long time, nor are three years.

CHLOE.  Who are you?

FIRST S.  Come, ma'am, come!  The Caster case.

CHLOE.  I don't know you, I say.  [To MRS.  HILLCRIST]  How can you
be so vile?

FIRST S.  Let me refresh your memory, ma'am.  [Producing a notebook]
Just on three years ago; "Oct.3.  To fee and expenses Mrs. Vane with
Mr. C----, Hotel Beaulieu, Twenty pounds.  Oct. 10, Do., Twenty
pounds."  [To HORNBLOWER]  Would you like to glance at this book,
sir?  You'll see they're genuine entries.

     [HORNBLOWER makes a motion to do so, but checks himself and
     looks at CHLOE.]

CHLOE.  [Hysterically]  It's all lies--lies!

FIRST S.  Come, ma'am, we wish you no harm.

CHLOE.  Take me away.  I won't be treated like this.

MRS. H.  [In a low voice] Confess.

CHLOE.  Lies!

HORNBLOWER.  Were ye ever called Vane?

CHLOE.  No, never.

     [She makes a movement towards the window, but DAWKER is in the
     way, and she halts.  FIRST S.  [Opening the door, Right]
     Henry.]

     [The SECOND STRANGER comes in quickly.  At sight of him CHLOE
     throws up her hands, gasps, breaks down, stage Left, and stands
     covering her face with her hands.  It is so complete a
     confession that HORNBLOWER stands staggered; and, taking out a
     coloured handkerchief, wipes his brow.]

DAWKER.  Are you convinced?

HORNBLOWER.  Take those men away.

DAWKER.  If you're not satisfied, we can get other evidence; plenty.

HORNBLOWER.  [Looking at CHLOE]  That's enough.  Take them out.
Leave me alone with her.

     [DAWKER takes them out Right.  MRS. HILLCRIST passes HORNBLOWER
     and goes out at the window.  HORNBLOWER moves down a step or
     two towards CHLOE.]

HORNBLOWER.  My God!

CHLOE.  [With an outburst]  Don't tell Charlie!  Don't tell Charlie!

HORNBLOWER.  Chearlie!  So, that was your manner of life.

     [CHLOE utters a moaning sound.]

So that's what ye got out of by marryin' into my family!  Shame on
ye, ye Godless thing!

CHLOE.  Don't tell Charlie!

HORNBLOWER.  And that's all ye can say for the wreck ye've wrought.
My family, my works, my future!  How dared ye!

CHLOE.  If you'd been me!----

HORNBLOWER.  An' these Hillcrists.  The skin game of it!

CHLOE.  [Breathless]  Father!

HORNBLOWER.  Don't call me that, woman!

CHLOE.  [Desperate]  I'm going to have a child.

HORNBLOWER.  God!  Ye are!

CHLOE.  Your grandchild.  For the sake of it, do what these people
want; and don't tell anyone--DON'T TELL CHARLIE!

HORNBLOWER.  [Again wiping his forehead]  A secret between us.  I
don't know that I can keep it.  It's horrible.  Poor Chearlie!

CHLOE.  [Suddenly fierce]  You must keep it, you shall!  I won't
have him told.  Don't make me desperate!  I can be--I didn't live
that life for nothing.

HORNBLOWER.  [Staring at her resealed in a new light]  Ay; ye look a
strange, wild woman, as I see ye.  And we thought the world of ye!

CHLOE.  I love Charlie; I'm faithful to him.  I can't live without
him.  You'll never forgive me, I know; but Charlie----!  [Stretching
out her hands.]

     [HORNBLOWER makes a bewildered gesture with his large hands.]

HORNBLOWER.  I'm all at sea here.  Go out to the car and wait for
me.

     [CHLOE passes him and goes out, Left.]

[Muttering to himself] So I'm down!  Me enemies put their heels upon
me head!  Ah! but we'll see yet!

     [He goes up to the window and beckons towards the Right.]

     [MRS. HILLCRIST comes in.]

What d'ye want for this secret?

MRS. H.  Nothing.

HORNBLOWER.  Indeed!  Wonderful!--the trouble ye've taken for--
nothing.

MRS. H.  If you harm us we shall harm you.  Any use whatever of the
Centry.

HORNBLOWER.  For which ye made me pay nine thousand five hundred
pounds.

MRS. H.  We will buy it from you.

HORNBLOWER.  At what price?

MRS. H.  The Centry at the price Miss Muffins would have taken at
first, and Longmeadow at the price you--gave us--four thousand five
hundred altogether.

HORNBLOWER.  A fine price, and me six thousand out of pocket.  Na,
no!  I'll keep it and hold it over ye.  Ye daren't tell this secret
so long as I've got it.

MRS. H.  No, Mr. Hornblower.  On second thoughts, you must sell.
You broke your word over the Jackmans.  We can't trust you.  We
would rather have our place here ruined at once, than leave you the
power to ruin it as and when you like.  You will sell us the Centry
and Longmeadow now, or you know what will happen.

HORNBLOWER.  [Writhing]  I'll not.  It's blackmail.

MRS. H.  Very well then!  Go your own way and we'll go ours.  There
is no witness to this conversation.

HORNBLOWER.  [Venomously]  By heaven, ye're a clever woman.  Will ye
swear by Almighty God that you and your family, and that agent of
yours, won't breathe a word of this shockin' thing to mortal soul.

MRS. H.  Yes, if you sell.

HORNBLOWER.  Where's Dawker?

MRS. H.  [Going to the door, Right]  Mr. Dawker

     [DAWKER comes in.]

HORNBLOWER.  I suppose ye've got your iniquity ready.

     [DAWKER grins and produces the document.]

It's mighty near conspiracy, this.  Have ye got a Testament?

MRS. H.  My word will be enough, Mr. Hornblower.

HORNBLOWER.  Ye'll pardon me--I can't make it solemn enough for you.

MRS. H.  Very well; here is a Bible.

     [She takes a small Bible from the bookshelf.]

DAWKER.  [Spreading document on bureau]  This is a short conveyance
of the Centry and Longmeadow--recites sale to you by Miss Mulling,
of the first, John Hillcrist of the second, and whereas you have
agreed for the sale to said John Hillcrist, for the sum of four
thousand five hundred pounds, in consideration of the said sum,
receipt whereof, you hereby acknowledge you do convey all that, etc.
Sign here.  I'll witness.

HORNBLOWER [To MRS. HILLCRIST]  Take that Book in your hand, and
swear first.  I swear by Almighty God never to breathe a word of
what I know.  concerning Chloe Hornblower to any living soul.

MRS. H.  No, Mr. Hornblower; you will please sign first.  We are not
in the habit of breaking our word.

     [HORNBLOWER after a furious look at them, seizes a pen, runs
     his eye again over the deed, and signs, DAWKER witnessing.]

To that oath, Mr. Hornblower, we shall add the words, "So long as
the Hornblower family do us no harm."

HORNBLOWER.  [With a snarl]  Take it in your hands, both of ye, and
together swear.

MRS. H.  [Taking the Book]  I swear that I will breathe no word of
what I know concerning Chloe Hornblower to any living soul, so long
as the Hornblower family do us no harm.

DAWKER.  I swear that too.

MRS. H.  I engage for my husband.

HORNBLOWER.  Where are those two fellows?

DAWKER.  Gone.  It's no business of theirs.

HORNBLOWER.  It's no business of any of ye what has happened to a
woman in the past.  Ye know that.  Good-day!

     [He gives them a deadly look, and goes out, left, followed by
     DAWKER.]

MRS. H.  [With her hand on the Deed]  Safe!

     [HILLCRIST enters at the French window, followed by JILL.]

[Holding up the Deed]  Look!  He's just gone!  I told you it was
only necessary to use the threat.  He caved in and signed this; we
are sworn to say nothing.  We've beaten him.

     [HILLCRIST studies the Deed.]

JILL.  [Awed]  We saw Chloe in the car.  How did she take it,
mother?

MRS. H.  Denied, then broke down when she saw our witnesses.  I'm
glad you were not here, Jack.

JILL.  [Suddenly]  I shall go and see her.

MRS. H.  Jill, you will not; you don't know what she's done.

JILL.  I shall.  She must be in an awful state.

HILLCRIST.  My dear, you can do her no good.

JILL.  I think I can, Dodo.

MRS. H.  You don't understand human nature.  We're enemies for life
with those people.  You're a little donkey if you think anything
else.

JILL.  I'm going, all the same.

MRS. H.  Jack, forbid her.

HILLCRIST.  [Lifting an eyebrow]  Jill, be reasonable.

JILL.  Suppose I'd taken a knock like that, Dodo, I'd be glad of
friendliness from someone.

MRS. H.  You never could take a knock like that.

JILL.  You don't know what you can do till you try, mother.

HILLCRIST.  Let her go, Amy.  Im sorry for that young woman.

MRS. H.  You'd be sorry for a man who picked your pocket, I believe.

HILLCRIST.  I certainly should!  Deuced little he'd get out of it,
when I've paid for the Centry.

MRS. H.  [Bitterly]  Much gratitude I get for saving you both our
home!

JILL.  [Disarmed]  Oh!  Mother, we are grateful.  Dodo, show your
gratitude.

HILLCRIST.  Well, my dear, it's an intense relief.  I'm not good at
showing my feelings, as you know.  What d'you want me to do?  Stand
on one leg and crow?

JILL.  Yes, Dodo, yes!  Mother, hold him while I [Suddenly she
stops, and all the fun goes out of her]  No!  I can't--I can't help
thinking of her.


               CURTAIN falls for a minute.



SCENE II


     When it rises again, the room is empty and dark, same for
     moonlight coming in through the French window, which is open.

     The figure of CHLOE, in a black cloak, appears outside in the
     moonlight; she peers in, moves past, comes bank, hesitatingly
     enters.  The cloak, fallen back, reveals a white evening dress;
     and that magpie figure stands poised watchfully in the dim
     light, then flaps unhappily Left and Right, as if she could not
     keep still.  Suddenly she stands listening.

ROLF'S VOICE.  [Outside]  Chloe!  Chloe!

     [He appears]

CHLOE.  [Going to the window]  What are you doing here?

ROLF.  What are you?  I only followed you.

CHLOE.  Go away.

ROLF.  What's the matter?  Tell me!

CHLOE.  Go away, and don't say anything.  Oh!  The roses!  [She has
put her nose into some roses in a bowl on a big stand close to the
window]  Don't they smell lovely?

ROLF.  What did Jill want this afternoon?

CHLOE.  I'll tell you nothing.  Go away!

ROLF.  I don't like leaving you here in this state.

CHLOE.  What state?  I'm all right.  Wait for me down in the drive,
if you want to.

     [ROLF starts to go, stops, looks at her, and does go.  CHLOE,
     with a little moaning sound, flutters again, magpie-like, up
     and down, then stands by the window listening.  Voices are
     heard, Left.  She darts out of the window and away to the
     Right, as HILLCRIST and JILL come in.  They have turned up the
     electric light, and come down in frond of the fireplace, where
     HILLCRIST sits in an armchair, and JILL on the arm of it.  They
     are in undress evening attire.]

HILLCRIST.  Now, tell me.

JILL.  There isn't much, Dodo.  I was in an awful funk for fear I
should meet any of the others, and of course I did meet Rolf, but I
told him some lie, and he took me to her room-boudoir, they call it
--isn't boudoir a "dug-out" word?

HILLCRIST.  [Meditatively]  The sulking room.  Well?

JILL.  She was sitting like this.  [She buries her chin in her
hands, wide her elbows on her knees]  And she said in a sort of
fierce way: "What do you want?"  And I said: "I'm awfully sorry, but
I thought you might like it."

HILLCRIST.  Well?

JILL.  She looked at me hard, and said: "I suppose you know all
about it."  And I Said: "Only vaguely," because of course I don't.
And she said: "Well, it was decent of you to come."  Dodo, she looks
like a lost soul.  What has she done?

HILLCRIST.  She committed her real crime when she married young
Hornblower without telling him.  She came out of a certain world to
do it.

JILL.  Oh!  [Staring in front of her] Is it very awful in that
world, Dodo?

HILLCRIST.  [Uneasy]  I don't know, Jill.  Some can stand it, I
suppose; some can't.  I don't know which sort she is.

JILL.  One thing I'm sure of: she's awfully fond of Chearlie.

HILLCRIST.  That's bad; that's very bad.

JILL.  And she's frightened, horribly.  I think she's desperate.

HILLCRIST.  Women like that are pretty tough, Jill; don't judge her
too much by your own feelings.

JILL.  No; only----Oh!  it was beastly; and of course I dried up.

HILLCRIST.  [Feelingly]  H'm!  One always does.  But perhaps it was
as well; you'd have been blundering in a dark passage.

JILL.  I just said: "Father and I feel awfully sorry; if there's
anything we can do----"

HILLCRIST.  That was risky, Jill.

JILL.  (Disconsolately) I had to say something.  I'm glad I went,
anyway.  I feel more human.

HILLCRIST.  We had to fight for our home.  I should have felt like a
traitor if I hadn't.

JILL.  I'm not enjoying home tonight, Dodo.

HILLCRIST.  I never could hate proper; it's a confounded nuisance.

JILL.  Mother's fearfully' bucked, and Dawker's simply oozing
triumph.  I don't trust him.  Dodo; he's too--not pugilistic--the
other one with a pug-naceous.

HILLCRIST.  He is rather.

JILL.  I'm sure he wouldn't care tuppence if Chloe committed
suicide.

HILLCRIST.  [Rising uneasily] Nonsense!  Nonsense!

JILL.  I wonder if mother would.

HILLCRIST. [Turning his face towards the window]  What's that?  I
thought I heard--[Louder]--Is these anybody out there?

     [No answer.  JILL, springs up and runs to the window.]

JILL.  You!

     [She dives through to the Right, and returns, holding CHLOE'S
     hand and drawing her forward]

Come in!  It's only us!  [To HILLCRIST]  Dodo!

HILLCRIST.  [Flustered, but making a show of courtesy]  Good
evening!  Won't you sit down?

JILL.  Sit down; you're all shaky.

     [She makes CHLOE sit down in the armchair, out of which they
     have risen, then locks the door, and closing the windows, draws
     the curtains hastily over them.]

HILLCRIST.  [Awkward and expectant]  Can I do anything for you?

CHLOE.  I couldn't bear it he's coming to ask you----

HILLCRIST.  Who?

CHLOE.  My husband.  [She draws in her breath with a long shudder,
then seem to seize her courage in her hands]  I've got to be quick.
He keeps on asking--he knows there's something.

HILLCRIST.  Make your mind easy.  We shan't tell him.

CHLOE.  [Appealing]  Oh!  that's not enough.  Can't you tell him
something to put him back to thinking it's all right?  I've done him
such a wrong.  I didn't realise till after--I thought meeting him
was just a piece of wonderful good luck, after what I'd been
through.  I'm not such a bad lot--not really.

     [She stops from the over-quivering of her lips.  JILL, standing
     beside the chair, strokes her shoulder.  HILLCRIST stands very
     still, painfully biting at a finger.]

You see, my father went bankrupt, and I was in a shop----

HILLCRIST.  [Soothingly, and to prevent disclosures] Yes, yes; Yes,
yes!

CHLOE.  I never gave a man away or did anything I was ashamed of--at
least--I mean, I had to make my living in all sorts of ways, and
then I met Charlie.

     [Again she stopped from the quivering of her lips.]

JILL.  It's all right.

CHLOE.  He thought I was respectable, and that was such a relief,
you can't think, so--so I let him.

JILL.  Dodo!  It's awful

HILLCRIST.  It is!

CHLOE.  And after I married him, you see, I fell in love.  If I had
before, perhaps I wouldn't have dared only, I don't know--you never
know, do you?  When there's a straw going, you catch at it.

JILL.  Of course you do.

CHLOE.  And now, you see, I'm going to have a child.

JILL.  [Aghast]  Oh!  Are you?

HILLCRIST.  Good God!

CHLOE.  [Dully]  I've been on hot bricks all this month, ever since
that day here.  I knew it was in the wind.  What gets in the wind
never gets out.  [She rises and throws out her arms]  Never!  It
just blows here and there  [Desolately]  and then--blows home.  [Her
voice changes to resentment]  But I've paid for being a fool--
'tisn't fun, that sort of life, I can tell you.  I'm not ashamed and
repentant, and all that.  If it wasn't for him!  I'm afraid he'll
never forgive me; it's such a disgrace for him--and then, to have
his child!  Being fond of him, I feel it much worse than anything I
ever felt, and that's saying a good bit.  It is.

JILL.  [Energetically]  Look here!  He simply mustn't find out.

CHLOE.  That's it; but it's started, and he's bound to keep on
because he knows there's something.  A man isn't going to be
satisfied when there's something he suspects about his wife, Charlie
wouldn't never.  He's clever, and he's jealous; and he's coming
here.

     [She stops, and looks round wildly, listening.]

JILL.  Dodo, what can we say to put him clean off the scent?

HILLCRIST.  Anything--in reason.

CHLOE.  [Catching at this straw]  You will!  You see, I don't know
what I'll do.  I've got soft, being looked after--he does love me.
And if he throws me off, I'll go under--that's all.

HILLCRIST.  Have you any suggestion?

CHLOE.  [Eagerly]  The only thing is to tell him something positive,
something he'll believe, that's not too bad--like my having been a
lady clerk with those people who came here, and having been
dismissed on suspicion of taking money.  I could get him to believe
that wasn't true.

JILL.  Yes; and it isn't--that's splendid!  You'd be able to put
such conviction into it.  Don't you think so, Dodo?

HILLCRIST.  Anything I can.  I'm deeply sorry.

CHLOE.  Thank you.  And don't say I've been here, will you?  He's
very suspicious.  You see, he knows that his father has re-sold that
land to you; that's what he can't make out--that, and my coming here
this morning; he knows something's being kept from him; and he
noticed that man with Dawker yesterday.  And my maid's been spying
on me.  It's in the air.  He puts two and two together.  But I've
told him there's nothing he need worry about; nothing that's true.

HILLCRIST.  What a coil!

CHLOE.  I'm very honest and careful about money.  So he won't
believe that about me, and the old man wants to keep it from
Charlie, I know.

HILLCRIST.  That does seem the best way out.

CHLOE.  [With a touch of defiance]  I'm a true wife to him.

CHLOE.  Of course we know that.

HILLCRIST.  It's all unspeakably sad.  Deception's horribly against
the grain--but----

CHLOE.  [Eagerly]  When I deceived him, I'd have deceived God
Himself--I was so desperate.  You've never been right down in the
mud.  You can't understand what I've been through.

HILLCRIST.  Yes, Yes.  I daresay I'd have done the same.  I should
be the last to judge

     [CHLOE covers her eyes with her hands.]

There, there!  Cheer up!  [He puts his hand on her arm.]

CHLOE.  [To herself]  Darling Dodo!

CHLOE.  [Starting]  There's somebody at the door.  I must go; I must
go.

     [She runs to the window and slips through the curtains.]

     [The handle of the door is again turned.]

JILL.  [Dismayed]  Oh!  It's locked--I forgot.

     [She spring to the door, unlocks and opens it, while HILLCRIST
     goes to the bureau and sits down.]

It's all right, Fellows; I was only saying something rather
important.

FELLOWS.  [Coming in a step or two and closing the door behind him]
Certainly, Miss.  Mr. Charles 'Ornblower is in the hall.  Wants to
see you, sir, or Mrs. Hillcrist.

JILL.  What a bore!  Can you see him, Dodo?

HILLCRIST.  Er--yes.  I suppose so.  Show him in here, Fellows.

     [As FELLOWS goes out, JILL runs to the window, but has no time
     to do more than adjust the curtains and spring over to stand by
     her father, before CHARLES comes in.  Though in evening
     clothes, he is white arid disheveled for so spruce a young
     mean.]

CHARLES.  Is my wife here?

HILLCRIST.  No, sir.

CHARLES.  Has she been?

HILLCRIST.  This morning, I believe, Jill?

JILL.  Yes, she came this morning.

CHARLES.  [staring at her]  I know that--now, I mean?

JILL.  No.

     [HILLCRIST shakes has head.]

CHARLES.  Tell me what was said this morning.

HILLCRIST.  I was not here this morning.

CHARLES.  Don't try to put me off.  I know too much.  [To JILL]
You.

JILL.  Shall I, Dodo?

HILLCRIST.  No; I will.  Won't you sit down?

CHARLES.  No.  Go on.

HILLCRIST.  [Moistening his lips]  It appears, Mr. Hornblower, that
my agent, Mr. Dawker--

     [CHARLES, who is breathing hard, utters a sound of anger.]

--that my agent happens to know a firm, who in old days employed
your wife.  I should greatly prefer not to say any more, especially
as we don't believe the story.

JILL.  No; we don't.

CHARLES.  Go on!

HILLCRIST.  [Getting up]  Come!  If I were you, I should refuse to
listen to anything against my wife.

CHARLES.  Go on, I tell you.

HILLCRIST.  You insist?  Well, they say there was some question
about the accounts, and your wife left them under a cloud.  As I
told you, we don't believe it.

CHARLES. [Passionately]  Liars!

     [He makes a rush for the door.]

HILLCRIST.  [Starting]  What did you say?

JILL.  [Catching his arm]  Dodo!  [Sotto voce]  We are, you know.

CHARLES.  [Turning back to them]  Why do you tell me that lie?  When
I've just had the truth out of that little scoundrel!  My wife's
been here; she put you up to it.

     [The face of CHLOE is seen transfixed between the curtains,
     parted by her hands.]

She--she put you up to it.  Liar that she is--a living lie.  For
three years a living lie!

     [HILLCRIST  whose face alone is turned towards the curtains,
     sees that listening face.  His hand goes up from uncontrollable
     emotion.]

And hasn't now the pluck to tell me.  I've done with her.  I won't
own a child by such a woman.

     [With a little sighing sound CHLOE drops the curtain and
     vanishes.]

HILLCRIST.  For God's sake, man, think of what you're saying.  She's
in great distress.

CHARLES.  And what am I?

JILL.  She loves you, you know.

CHARLES.  Pretty love!  That scoundrel Dawker told me--told me--
Horrible!  Horrible!

HILLCRIST.  I deeply regret that our quarrel should have brought
this about.

CHARLES.  [With intense bitterness]  Yes, you've smashed my life.

     [Unseen by them, MRS. HILLCRIST has entered and stands by the
     door, Left.]

MRS.  H.  Would you have wished to live on in ignorance?  [They all
turn to look at her.]

CHARLES.  [With a writhing movement]  I don't know.  But--you--you
did it.

MRS. H.  You shouldn't have attacked us.

CHARLES.  What did we do to you--compared with this?

MRS. H.  All you could.

HILLCRIST.  Enough, enough!  What can we do to help you?

CHARLES.  Tell me where my wife is.

     [JILL draws the curtains apart--the window is open--JILL looks
     out.  They wait in silence.]

JILL.  We don't know.

CHARLES.  Then she was here?

HILLCRIST.  Yes, sir; and she heard you.

CHARLES.  All the better if she did.  She knows how I feel.

HILLCRIST.  Brace up; be gentle with her.

CHARLES. Gentle?  A woman who--who----

HILLCRIST.  A most unhappy creature.  Come!

CHARLES.  Damn your sympathy!

     [He goes out into the moonlight, passing away.]

JILL.  Dodo, we ought to look for her; I'm awfully afraid.

HILLCRIST.  I saw her there--listening.  With child!  Who knows
where things end when they and begin?  To the gravel pit, Jill; I'll
go to the pond.  No, we'll go together.  [They go out.]

     [MRS.  HILLCRIST comes down to the fireplace, rings the bell
     and stands there, thinking.  FELLOWS enters.]

MRS. H.  I want someone to go down to Mr. Dawker's.

FELLOWS.  Mr. Dawker is here, ma'am, waitin' to see you.

MRS.  H.  Ask him to come in.  Oh!  and Fellows, you can tell the
Jackmans that they can go back to their cottage.

FELLOWS.  Very good, ma'am.  [He goes out.]

     [MRS. HILLCRIST searches at the bureau, finds and takes out the
     deed.  DAWKERS comes in; he has the appearance of a man whose
     temper has been badly ruffled.]

MRS. H.  Charles Hornblower--how did it happen?

DAWKER.  He came to me.  I said I knew nothing.  He wouldn't take
it; went for me, abused me up hill and down dale; said he knew
everything, and then he began to threaten me.  Well, I lost my
temper, and I told him.

MRS. H.  That's very serious, Dawker, after our promise.  My husband
is most upset.

DAWKER.  [Sullenly]  It's not my fault, ma'am; he shouldn't have
threatened and goaded me on.  Besides, it's got out that there's a
scandal; common talk in the village--not the facts, but quite enough
to cook their goose here.  They'll have to go.  Better have done
with it, anyway, than have enemies at your door.

MRS. H.  Perhaps; but--Oh!  Dawker, take charge of this.  [She hands
him the deed]  These people are desperate--and--I'm sot sure of my
husband when his feelings are worked on.

     [The sound of a car stopping.]

DAWKER.  [At the window, looking to the Left]  Hornblower's, I
think.  Yes, he's getting out.

MRS. H.  [Bracing herself]  You'd better wait, then.

DAWKER.  He mustn't give me any of his sauce; I've had enough.

     [The door is opened and HORNBLOWER enters, pressing so on the
     heels of FELLOWS that the announcement of his name is lost.]

HORNBLOWER.  Give me that deed!  Ye got it out of me by false
pretences and treachery.  Ye swore that nothing should be heard of
this.  Why!  me own servants know.

MRS. H.  That has nothing to do with us.  Your son came and wrenched
the knowledge out of Mr. DAWKER by abuse and threats; that is all.
You will kindly behave yourself here, or I shall ask that you be
shown out.

HORNBLOWER.  Give me that deed, I say!  [He suddenly turns on
DAWKER]  Ye little ruffian, I see it in your pocket.

     [The end indeed is projecting from DAWKER'S breast pocket.]

DAWKER.  [Seeing red]  Now, look 'ere, 'Ornblower, I stood a deal
from your son, and I'll stand no more.

HORNBLOWER.  [To MRS. HILLCRIST]  I'll ruin your place yet!  [To
DAWKER]  Ye give me that deed, or I'll throttle ye.

     [He closes on DAWKER, and makes a snatch at the deed.  DAWKER,
     springs at him, and the two stand swaying, trying for a grip at
     each other's throats.  MRS. HILLCRIST tries to cross and reach
     the bell, but is shut off by their swaying struggle.]

     [Suddenly ROLF appears in the window, looks wildly at the
     struggle, and seizes DAWKER'S hands, which have reached
     HORNBLOWER'S throat.  JILL, who is following, rushes up to him
     and clutches his arm.]

JILL.  Rolf!  All of you!  Stop!  Look!

     [DAWKER'S hand relaxes, and he is swung round.  HORNBLOWER
     staggers and recovers himself, gasping for breath.  All turn to
     the window, outside which in the moonlight HILLCRIST and
     CHARLES HORNBLOWER have CHLOE'S motionless body in their arms.]

In the gravel pit.  She's just breathing; that's all.

MRS. H.  Bring her in.  The brandy, Jill!

HORNBLOWER.  No.  Take her to the car.  Stand back, young woman!  I
want no help from any of ye.  Rolf--Chearlie--take her up.

     [They lift and bear her away, Left.  JILL follows.]

Hillcrist, ye've got me beaten and disgraced hereabouts, ye've
destroyed my son's married life, and ye've killed my grandchild.
I'm not staying in this cursed spot, but if ever I can do you or
yours a hurt, I will.

DAWKER.  [Muttering]  That's right.  Squeal and threaten.  You began
it.

HILLCRIST.  Dawker, have the goodness!  Hornblower, in the presence
of what may be death, with all my heart I'm sorry.

HORNBLOWER.  Ye hypocrite!

     [He passes them with a certain dignity, and goes out at the
     window, following to his car.]

     [HILLCRIST who has stood for a moment stock-still, goes slowly
     forward and sits in his swivel chair.]

MRS. H.  Dawker, please tell Fellows to telephone to Dr. Robinson to
go round to the Hornblowers at once.

     [DAWKER, fingering the deed, and with a noise that sounds like
     "The cur!" goes out, Left.]

     [At the fireplace]

Jack!  Do you blame me?

HILLCRIST.  [Motionless]  No.

MRS. H.  Or Dawker?  He's done his best.

HILLCRIST.  No.

MRS. H.  [Approaching]  What is it?

HILLCRIST.  Hypocrite!

     [JILL comes running in at the window.]

JILL.  Dodo, she's moved; she's spoken.  It may not be so bad.

HILLCRIST.  Thank God for that!

     [FELLOWS enters, Left.]

FELLOWS.  The Jackmans, ma'am.

HILLCRIST.  Who?  What's this?

     [The JACKMANS have entered, standing close to the door.]

MRS. J.  We're so glad we can go back, sir--ma'am, we just wanted to
thank you.

     [There is a silence.  They see that they are not welcome.]

Thank you kindly, sir.  Good night, ma'am.

     [They shuffle out. ]

HILLCRIST.  I'd forgotten their existence.  [He gets up]  What is it
that gets loose when you begin a fight, and makes you what you think
you're not?  What blinding evil!  Begin as you may, it ends in this-
skin game!  Skin game!

JILL.  [Rushing to him]  It's not you, Dodo; it's not you, beloved
Dodo.

HILLCRIST.  It is me.  For I am, or should be, master in this house!

MRS. H.  I don't understand.

HILLCRIST.  When we began this fight, we had clean hands--are they
clean' now?  What's gentility worth if it can't stand fire?


CURTAIN





End of this Project Gutenberg Etext of THE SKIN GAME, by John Galsworthy






FROM THE SERIES OF SIX SHORT PLAYS



THE FIRST AND THE LAST

A DRAMA IN THREE SCENES




PERSONS OF THE PLAY

KEITH DARRANT, K.C.
LARRY DARRANT, His Brother.
WANDA.



SCENE I. KEITH'S Study.

SCENE II. WANDA's Room.

SCENE III. The Same.

Between SCENE I. and SCENE II.--Thirty hours.
Between SCENE II. and SCENE III.--Two months.




SCENE I

It is six o'clock of a November evening, in KEITH DARRANT'S
study.  A large, dark-curtained room where the light from a single
reading-lamp falling on Turkey carpet, on books beside a large
armchair, on the deep blue-and-gold coffee service, makes a sort of
oasis before a log fire.  In red Turkish slippers and an old brown
velvet coat, KEITH DARRANT sits asleep.  He has a dark, clean-cut,
clean-shaven face, dark grizzling hair, dark twisting eyebrows.

     [The curtained door away out in the dim part of the room behind
     him is opened so softly that he does not wake.  LARRY DARRANT
     enters and stands half lost in the curtain over the door.  A
     thin figure, with a worn, high cheek-boned face, deep-sunk blue
     eyes and wavy hair all ruffled--a face which still has a certain
     beauty.  He moves inwards along the wall, stands still again and
     utters a gasping sigh.  KEITH stirs in his chair.]

KEITH.  Who's there?

LARRY.  [In a stifled voice]  Only I--Larry.

KEITH.  [Half-waked]  Come in!  I was asleep.  [He does not turn his
head, staring sleepily at the fire.]

     The sound of LARRY's breathing can be heard.

     [Turning his head a little]  Well, Larry, what is it?

     LARRY comes skirting along the wall, as if craving its support,
     outside the radius of the light.

     [Staring]  Are you ill?

     LARRY stands still again and heaves a deep sigh.

KEITH.  [Rising, with his back to the fire, and staring at his
brother]  What is it, man?  [Then with a brutality born of nerves
suddenly ruffled]  Have you committed a murder that you stand there
like a fish?

LARRY.  [In a whisper]  Yes, Keith.

KEITH.  [With vigorous disgust]  By Jove!  Drunk again!  [In a
voice changed by sudden apprehension]  What do you mean by coming
here in this state?  I told you---- If you weren't my brother----!
Come here, where I can we you!  What's the matter with you, Larry?

     [With a lurch LARRY leaves the shelter of the wall and sinks into
     a chair in the circle of light.]

LARRY.  It's true.

     [KEITH steps quickly forward and stares down into his brother's
     eyes, where is a horrified wonder, as if they would never again
     get on terms with his face.]

KEITH.  [Angry, bewildered-in a low voice]  What in God's name is
this nonsense?

     [He goes quickly over to the door and draws the curtain aside, to
     see that it is shut, then comes back to LARRY, who is huddling
     over the fire.]

Come, Larry!  Pull yourself together and drop exaggeration!  What on
earth do you mean?

LARRY.  [In a shrill outburst]  It's true, I tell you; I've killed a
man.

KEITH.  [Bracing himself; coldly]  Be quiet!

     LARRY lifts his hands and wrings them.

[Utterly taken aback]  Why come here and tell me this?

LARRY.  Whom should I tell, Keith?  I came to ask what I'm to do--
give myself up, or what?

KEITH.  When--when--what----?

LARRY.  Last night.

KEITH.  Good God!  How?  Where?  You'd better tell me quietly from
the beginning.  Here, drink this coffee; it'll clear your head.

     He pours out and hands him a cup of coffee.  LARRY drinks it
     off.

LARRY.  My head!  Yes!  It's like this, Keith--there's a girl----

KEITH.  Women!  Always women, with you!  Well?

LARRY.  A Polish girl.  She--her father died over here when she was
sixteen, and left her all alone.  There was a mongrel living in the
same house who married her--or pretended to.  She's very pretty,
Keith.  He left her with a baby coming.  She lost it, and nearly
starved.  Then another fellow took her on, and she lived with him two
years, till that brute turned up again and made her go back to him.
He used to beat her black and blue.  He'd left her again when--I met
her.  She was taking anybody then.  [He stops, passes his hand over
his lips, looks up at KEITH, and goes on defiantly]  I never met a
sweeter woman, or a truer, that I swear.  Woman!  She's only twenty
now!  When I went to her last night, that devil had found her out
again.  He came for me--a bullying, great, hulking brute.  Look!
[He touches a dark mark on his forehead]  I took his ugly throat, and
when I let go--[He stops and his hands drop.]

KEITH.  Yes?

LARRY.  [In a smothered voice]  Dead, Keith.  I never knew till
afterwards that she was hanging on to him--to h-help me.  [Again he
wrings his hands.]

KEITH.  [In a hard, dry voice]  What did you do then?

LARRY.  We--we sat by it a long time.

KEITH.  Well?

LARRY.  Then I carried it on my back down the street, round a corner,
to an archway.

KEITH.  How far?

LARRY.  About fifty yards.

KEITH.  Was--did anyone see?

LARRY.  No.

KEITH.  What time?

LARRY.  Three in the morning.

KEITH.  And then?

LARRY.  Went back to her.

KEITH.  Why--in heaven's name?

LARRY.  She way lonely and afraid.  So was I, Keith.

KEITH.  Where is this place?

LARRY.  Forty-two Borrow Square, Soho.

KEITH.  And the archway?

LARRY.  Corner of Glove Lane.

KEITH.  Good God!  Why, I saw it in the paper this morning.  They
were talking of it in the Courts!  [He snatches the evening paper
from his armchair, and runs it over anal reads]  Here it is again.
"Body of a man was found this morning under an archway in Glove Lane.
>From marks about the throat grave suspicion of foul play are
entertained.  The body had apparently been robbed.  "My God!
[Suddenly he turns]  You saw this in the paper and dreamed it.  D'you
understand, Larry?--you dreamed it.

LARRY.  [Wistfully]  If only I had, Keith!

     [KEITH makes a movement of his hands almost like his brother's.]

KEITH.  Did you take anything from the-body?

LARRY.  [Drawing au envelope from his pocket]  This dropped out while
we were struggling.

KEITH.  [Snatching it and reading]  "Patrick Walenn"--Was that his
name?  "Simon's Hotel, Farrier Street, London." [Stooping, he puts it
in the fire]  No!--that makes me----[He bends to pluck it out, stays
his hand, and stamps it suddenly further in with his foot]  What in
God's name made you come here and tell me?  Don't you know I'm--I'm
within an ace of a Judgeship?

LARRY.  [Simply]  Yes.  You must know what I ought to do.  I didn't,
mean to kill him, Keith.  I love the girl--I love her.  What shall I
do?

KEITH.  Love!

LARRY.  [In a flash]  Love!--That swinish brute! A million creatures
die every day, and not one of them deserves death as he did.  But but
I feel it here.  [Touching his heart]  Such an awful clutch, Keith.
Help me if you can, old man.  I may be no good, but I've never hurt a
fly if I could help it. [He buries his face in his hands.]

KEITH.  Steady, Larry!  Let's think it out.  You weren't seen, you
say?

LARRY.  It's a dark place, and dead night.

KEITH.  When did you leave the girl again?

LARRY.  About seven.

KEITH.  Where did you go?

LARRY.  To my rooms.

KEITH.  To Fitzroy Street?

LARRY.  Yes.

KEITH.  What have you done since?

LARRY.  Sat there--thinking.

KEITH.  Not been out?

LARRY.  No.

KEITH.  Not seen the girl?

     [LARRY shakes his head.]

Will she give you away?

LARRY.  Never.

KEITH.  Or herself hysteria?

LARRY.  No.

KEITH.  Who knows of your relations with her?

LARRY.  No one.

KEITH.  No one?

LARRY.  I don't know who should, Keith.

KEITH.  Did anyone see you go in last night, when you first went to
her?

LARRY.  No.  She lives on the ground floor.  I've got keys.

KEITH.  Give them to me.

     LARRY takes two keys from his pocket and hands them to his
     brother.

LARRY.  [Rising]  I can't be cut off from her!

KEITH.  What!  A girl like that?

LARRY.  [With a flash]  Yes, a girl like that.

KEITH.  [Moving his hand to put down old emotion]  What else have you
that connects you with her?

LARRY.  Nothing.

KEITH.  In your rooms?

     [LARRY shakes his head.]

Photographs?  Letters?

LARRY.  No.

KEITH.  Sure?

LARRY.  Nothing.

KEITH.  No one saw you going back to her?

     [LARRY shakes his head. ]
Nor leave in the morning?  You can't be certain.

LARRY.  I am.

KEITH.  You were fortunate.  Sit down again, man.  I must think.

     He turns to the fire and leans his elbows on the mantelpiece and
     his head on his hands.  LARRY Sits down again obediently.

KEITH.  It's all too unlikely.  It's monstrous!

LARRY.  [Sighing it out]  Yes.

KEITH.  This Walenn--was it his first reappearance after an absence?

LARRY.  Yes.

KEITH.  How did he find out where she was?

LARRY.  I don't know.

KEITH.  [Brutally]  How drunk were you?

LARRY.  I was not drunk.

KEITH.  How much had you drunk, then?

LARRY.  A little claret--nothing!

KEITH.  You say you didn't mean to kill him.

LARRY.  God knows.

KEITH.  That's something.

LARRY.  He hit me.  [He holds up his hands]  I didn't know I was so
strong.

KEITH.  She was hanging on to him, you say?--That's ugly.

LARRY.  She was scared for me.

KEITH.  D'you mean she--loves you?

LARRY.  [Simply]  Yes, Keith.

KEITH.  [Brutally]  Can a woman like that love?

LARRY.  [Flashing out]  By God, you are a stony devil!  Why not?

KEITH.  [Dryly]  I'm trying to get at truth.  If you want me to help,
I must know everything.  What makes you think she's fond of you?

LARRY.  [With a crzay laugh]  Oh, you lawyer!  Were you never in a
woman's arms?

KEITH.  I'm talking of love.

LARRY.  [Fiercely]  So am I.  I tell you she's devoted.  Did you ever
pick up a lost dog?  Well, she has the lost dog's love for me.  And I
for her; we picked each other up.  I've never felt for another woman
what I feel for her--she's been the saving of me!

KEITH.  [With a shrug]  What made you choose that archway?

LARRY.  It was the first dark place.

KEITH.  Did his face look as if he'd been strangled?

LARRY.  Don't!

KEITH.  Did it?

     [LARRY bows his head.]

Very disfigured?

LARRY.  Yes.

KEITH.  Did you look to see if his clothes were marked?

LARRY.  No.

KEITH.  Why not?

LARRY.  [In an outburst]  I'm not made of iron, like you.  Why not?
If you had done it----!

KEITH.  [Holding up his hand]  You say he was disfigured.  Would he
be recognisable?

LARRY.  [Wearily]  I don't know.

KEITH.  When she lived with him last--where was that?

LARRY.  In Pimlico, I think.

KEITH.  Not Soho?

     [LARRY shakes his head.]

How long has she been at this Soho place?

LARRY.  Nearly a year.

KEITH.  Living this life?

LARRY.  Till she met me.

KEITH.  Till, she met you?  And you believe----?

LARRY.  [Starting up]  Keith!

KEITH.  [Again raising his hand]  Always in the same rooms?

LARRY.  [Subsiding]  Yes.

KEITH.  What was he?  A professional bully?

     [LARRY nods.]

Spending most of his time abroad, I suppose.

LARRY.  I think so.

KEITH.  Can you say if he was known to the police?

LARRY.  I've never heard.

     KEITH turns away and walks up and down; then, stopping at
     LARRY's chair, he speaks.

KEITH.  Now listen, Larry.  When you leave here, go straight home,
and stay there till I give you leave to go out again.  Promise.

LARRY.  I promise.

KEITH.  Is your promise worth anything?

LARRY.  [With one of his flashes]  "Unstable as water, he shall not
excel!"

KEITH.  Exactly.  But if I'm to help you, you must do as I say.
I must have time to think this out.  Have you got money?

LARRY.  Very little.

KEITH.  [Grimly]  Half-quarter day--yes, your quarter's always spent
by then.  If you're to get away--never mind, I can manage the money.

LARRY.  [Humbly]  You're very good, Keith; you've always been very
good to me--I don't know why.

KEITH.  [Sardonically]  Privilege of A brother.  As it happens, I'm
thinking of myself and our family.  You can't indulge yourself in
killing without bringing ruin.  My God!  I suppose you realise that
you've made me an accessory after the fact--me, King's counsel--sworn
to the service of the Law, who, in a year or two, will have the
trying of cases like yours!  By heaven, Larry, you've surpassed
yourself!

LARRY.  [Bringing out a little box]  I'd better have done with it.

KErra.  You fool!  Give that to me.

LARRY.  [With a strange smite]  No.  [He holds up a tabloid between
finger and thumb]  White magic, Keith!  Just one--and they may do
what they like to you, and you won't know it.  Snap your fingers at
all the tortures.  It's a great comfort!  Have one to keep by you?

KEITH.  Come, Larry!  Hand it over.

LARRY.  [Replacing the box]  Not quite!  You've never killed a man,
you see.  [He gives that crazy laugh.]  D'you remember that hammer
when we were boys and you riled me, up in the long room?  I had luck
then.  I had luck in Naples once.  I nearly killed a driver for
beating his poor brute of a horse.  But now--! My God!  [He covers
his face.]

     KEITH touched, goes up and lays a hand on his shoulder.

KEITH.  Come, Larry!  Courage!

     LARRY looks up at him.

LARRY.  All right, Keith; I'll try.

KEITH.  Don't go out.  Don't drink.  Don't talk.  Pull yourself
together!

LARRY.  [Moving towards the door]  Don't keep me longer than you can
help, Keith.

KEITH.  No, no.  Courage!

     LARRY reaches the door, turns as if to say something-finds no
     words, and goes.

[To the fire]  Courage!  My God!  I shall need it!


                              CURTAIN




SCENE II

     At out eleven o'clock the following night an WANDA'S room on the
     ground floor in Soho.  In the light from one close-shaded
     electric bulb the room is but dimly visible.  A dying fire burns
     on the left.  A curtained window in the centre of the back wall.
     A door on the right.  The furniture is plush-covered and
     commonplace, with a kind of shabby smartness.  A couch, without
     back or arms, stands aslant, between window and fire.

     [On this WANDA is sitting, her knees drawn up under her, staring
     at the embers.  She has on only her nightgown and a wrapper over
     it; her bare feet are thrust into slippers.  Her hands are
     crossed and pressed over her breast.  She starts and looks up,
     listening.  Her eyes are candid and startled, her face alabaster
     pale, and its pale brown hair, short and square-cut, curls
     towards her bare neck.  The startled dark eyes and the faint
     rose of her lips are like colour-staining on a white mask.]

     [Footsteps as of a policeman, very measured, pass on the
     pavement outside, and die away.  She gets up and steals to the
     window, draws one curtain aside so that a chink of the night is
     seen.  She opens the curtain wider, till the shape of a bare,
     witch-like tree becomes visible in the open space of the little
     Square on the far side of the road.  The footsteps are heard
     once more coming nearer.  WANDA closes the curtains and cranes
     back.  They pass and die again.  She moves away and looking down
     at the floor between door and couch, as though seeing something
     there;  shudders; covers her eyes; goes back to the couch and
     down again just as before, to stare at the embers.  Again she is
     startled by noise of the outer door being opened.  She springs
     up, runs and turns the light by a switch close to the door.  By
     the glimmer of the fire she can just be seen standing by the
     dark window-curtains, listening.  There comes the sound of
     subdued knocking on her door.  She stands in breathless terror.
     The knocking is repeated.  The sound of a latchkey in the door
     is heard.  Her terror leaves her.  The door opens; a man enters
     in a dark, fur overcoat.]

WANDA.  [In a voice of breathless relief, with a rather foreign
accent]  Oh! it's you, Larry!  Why did you knock?  I was so
frightened.  Come in!  [She crosses quickly, and flings her arms
round his neck]  [Recoiling--in a terror-stricken whisper]  Oh!  Who
is it?

KEITH.  [In a smothered voice]  A friend of Larry's.  Don't be
frightened.

     She has recoiled again to the window; and when he finds the
     switch and turns the light up, she is seen standing there
     holding her dark wrapper up to her throat, so that her face has
     an uncanny look of being detached from the body.

[Gently]  You needn't be afraid.  I haven't come to do you harm--
quite the contrary.  [Holding up the keys]  Larry wouldn't have given
me these, would he, if he hadn't trusted me?

     WANDA does not move, staring like a spirit startled out of the
     flesh.

[After looking round him]  I'm sorry to have startled you.

WANDA.  [In a whisper]  Who are you, please?

KEITH.  Larry's brother.

     WANDA, with a sigh of utter relief, steals forward to the couch
     and sinks down.  KEITH goes up to her.

He'd told me.

WANDA.  [Clasping her hands round her knees.]  Yes?

KEITH.  An awful business!

WANDA.  Yes; oh, yes!  Awful--it is awful!

KEITH.  [Staring round him again.]  In this room?

WANDA.  Just where you are standing.  I see him now, always falling.

KEITH.  [Moved by the gentle despair in her voice]  You--look very
young.  What's your name?

WANDA.  Wanda.

KEITH.  Are you fond of Larry?

WANDA.  I would die for him!

     [A moment's silence.]

KEITH.  I--I've come to see what you can do to save him.

WANDA, [Wistfully]  You would not deceive me.  You are really his
brother?

KEITH.  I swear it.

WANDA.  [Clasping her hands]  If I can save him!  Won't you sit down?

KEITH.  [Drawing up a chair and sitting]  This, man, your--your
husband, before he came here the night before last--how long since
you saw him?

WANDA.  Eighteen month.

KEITH.  Does anyone about here know you are his wife?

WANDA.  No.  I came here to live a bad life.  Nobody know me.  I am
quite alone.

KEITH.  They've discovered who he was--you know that?

WANDA.  No; I have not dared to go out.

KEITH: Well, they have; and they'll look for anyone connected with
him, of course.

WANDA.  He never let people think I was married to him.  I don't know
if I was--really.  We went to an office and signed our names; but he
was a wicked man.  He treated many, I think, like me.

KEITH.  Did my brother ever see him before?

WANDA.  Never!  And that man first went for him.

KEITH.  Yes.  I saw the mark.  Have you a servant?

WANDA.  No.  A woman come at nine in the morning for an hour.

KEITH.  Does she know Larry?

WANDA.  No.  He is always gone.

KEITH.  Friends--acquaintances?

WANDA.  No; I am verree quiet.  Since I know your brother, I see no
one, sare.

KEITH.  [Sharply]  Do you mean that?

WANDA.  Oh, yes!  I love him.  Nobody come here but him for a long
time now.

KEITH.  How long?

WANDA.  Five month.

KEITH.  So you have not been out since----?

     [WANDA shakes her head.]

What have you been doing?

WANDA.  [Simply]  Crying.  [Pressing her hands to her breast]  He is
in danger because of me.  I am so afraid for him.

KEITH.  [Checking her emotion]  Look at me.

     [She looks at him.]

If the worst comes, and this man is traced to you, can you trust
yourself not to give Larry away?

WANDA.  [Rising and pointing to the fire]  Look!  I have burned all
the things he have given me--even his picture.  Now I have nothing
from him.

KEITH.  [Who has risen too]  Good!  One more question.  Do the police
know you--because--of your life?

     [She looks at him intently, and shakes her, head.]

You know where Larry lives?

WANDA.  Yes.

KEITH.  You mustn't go there, and he mustn't come to you.

     [She bows her head; then, suddenly comes close to him.]

WANDA.  Please do not take him from me altogether.  I will be so
careful.  I will not do anything to hurt him.  But if I cannot see
him sometimes, I shall die.  Please do not take him from me.

     [She catches his hand and presses it desperately between her
     own.]

KEITH.  Leave that to me.  I'm going to do all I can.

WANDA.  [Looking up into his face]  But you will be kind?

     Suddenly she bends and kisses his hand.  KEITH draws his hand
     away, and she recoils a little humbly, looking up at him again.
     Suddenly she stands rigid, listening.

[In a whisper]  Listen!  Someone--out there!

     She darts past him and turns out the light.  There is a knock on
     the door.  They are now close together between door and window.

 [Whispering]  Oh!  Who is it?

KEITH.  [Under his breath]  You said no one comes but Larry.

WANDA.  Yes, and you have his keys.  Oh! if it is Larry! I must open!

     KEITH shrinks back against the wall.  WANDA goes to the door.

[Opening the door an inch]  Yes?  Please?  Who?

     A thin streak of light from a bull's-eye lantern outside plays
     over the wall.  A Policeman's voice says: "All right, Miss.
     Your outer door's open.  You ought to keep it shut after dark,
     you know."

WANDA.  Thank you, air.

     [The sound of retreating footsteps, of the outer door closing.
     WANDA shuts the door.]

A policeman!

KEITH.  [Moving from the wall]  Curse!  I must have left that door.
[Suddenly-turning up the light]  You told me they didn't know you.

WANDA.  [Sighing]  I did not think they did, sir.  It is so long I
was not out in the town; not since I had Larry.

     KEITH gives her an intent look, then crosses to the fire.  He
     stands there a moment, looking down, then turns to the girl, who
     has crept back to the couch.

KEITH.  [Half to himself]  After your life, who can believe---?  Look
here!  You drifted together and you'll drift apart, you know.  Better
for him to get away and make a clean cut of it.

WANDA.  [Uttering a little moaning sound]  Oh, sir!  May I not love,
because I have been bad?  I was only sixteen when that man spoiled
me.  If you knew----

KEITH.  I'm thinking of Larry.  With you, his danger is much greater.
There's a good chance as things are going.  You may wreck it.  And
for what?  Just a few months more of--well--you know.

WANDA.  [Standing at the head of the couch and touching her eyes with
her hands]  Oh, sir!  Look!  It is true.  He is my life.  Don't take
him away from me.

KEITH.  [Moved and restless]  You must know what Larry is.  He'll
never stick to you.

WANDA.  [Simply]  He will, sir.

KEITH.  [Energetically]  The last man on earth to stick to anything!
But for the sake of a whim he'll risk his life and the honour of all
his family.  I know him.

WANDA.  No, no, you do not.  It is I who know him.

KEITH.  Now, now!  At any moment they may find out your connection
with that man.  So long as Larry goes on with you, he's tied to this
murder, don't you see?

WANDA.  [Coming close to him]  But he love me. Oh, sir!  he love me!

KEITH.  Larry has loved dozens of women.

WANDA.  Yes, but----[Her face quivers].

KEITH.  [Brusquely]  Don't cry!  If I give you money, will you
disappear, for his sake?

WANDA.  [With a moan]  It will be in the water, then.  There will be
no cruel men there.

KEITH.  Ah!  First Larry, then you!  Come now.  It's better for you
both.  A few months, and you'll forget you ever met.

WANDA.  [Looking wildly up]  I will go if Larry say I must.  But not
to live.  No! [Simply]  I could not, sir.

     [KEITH, moved, is silent.]

I could not live without Larry.  What is left for a girl like me--
when she once love?  It is finish.

KEITH.  I don't want you to go back to that life.

WANDA.  No; you do not care what I do.  Why should you?  I tell you I
will go if Larry say I must.

KEITH.  That's not enough.  You know that.  You must take it out of
his hands.  He will never give up his present for the sake of his
future.  If you're as fond of him as you say, you'll help to save
him.

WANDA.  [Below her breath]  Yes!  Oh, yes!  But do not keep him long
from me--I beg!  [She sinks to the floor and clasps his knees.]

KEITH.  Well, well!  Get up.

     [There is a tap on the window-pane]

Listen!

     [A faint, peculiar whistle. ]

WANDA.  [Springing up]  Larry!  Oh, thank God!

     [She runs to the door, opens it, and goes out to bring him in.
     KEITH stands waiting, facing the open doorway.]

     [LARRY entering with WANDA just behind him.]

LARRY.  Keith!

KEITH.  [Grimly]  So much for your promise not to go out!

LARRY.  I've been waiting in for you all day.  I couldn't stand it
any longer.

KEITH.  Exactly!

LARRY.  Well, what's the sentence, brother?  Transportation for life
and then to be fined forty pounds'?

KEITH.  So you can joke, can you?

LARRY.  Must.

KEITH.  A boat leaves for the Argentine the day after to-morrow; you
must go by it.

LARRY.  [Putting  his arms round WANDA, who is standing motionless
with her eyes fixed on him]  Together, Keith?

KEITH.  You can't go together.  I'll send her by the next boat.

LARRY.  Swear?

KEITH.  Yes.  You're lucky they're on a false scent.

LARRY.  What?

KEITH.  You haven't seen it?

LARRY.  I've seen nothing, not even a paper.

KEITH.  They've taken up a vagabond who robbed the body.  He pawned a
snake-shaped ring, and they identified this Walenn by it.  I've been
down and seen him charged myself.

LARRY.  With murder?

WANDA.  [Faintly]  Larry!

KEITH.  He's in no danger.  They always get the wrong man first.
It'll do him no harm to be locked up a bit--hyena like that.  Better
in prison, anyway, than sleeping out under archways in this weather.

LARRY.  What was he like, Keith?

KEITH.  A little yellow, ragged, lame, unshaven scarecrow of a chap.
They were fools to think he could have had the strength.

LARRY.  What!  [In an awed voice]  Why, I saw him--after I left you
last night.

KEITH.  You?  Where?

LARRY.  By the archway.

KEITH.  You went back there?

LARRY.  It draws you, Keith.

KErra.  You're mad, I think.

LARRY.  I talked to him, and he said, "Thank you for this little
chat.  It's worth more than money when you're down."  Little grey man
like a shaggy animal.  And a newspaper boy came up and said: "That's
right, guv'nors!  'Ere's where they found the body--very spot.  They
'yn't got 'im yet."

     [He laughs; and the terrified girl presses herself against him.]

An innocent man!

KEITH.  He's in no danger, I tell you.  He could never have
strangled----Why, he hadn't the strength of a kitten.  Now, Larry!
I'll take your berth to-morrow.  Here's money [He brings out a pile
of notes and puts them on the couch]  You can make a new life of it
out there together presently, in the sun.

LARRY.  [In a whisper]  In the sun!  "A cup of wine and thou."
[Suddenly]  How can I, Keith?  I must see how it goes with that poor
devil.

KEITH.  Bosh!  Dismiss it from your mind; there's not nearly enough
evidence.

LARRY.  Not?

KEITH.  No.  You've got your chance.  Take it like a man.

LARRY.  [With a strange smile--to the girl]  Shall we, Wanda?

WANDA.  Oh, Larry!

LARRY.  [Picking the notes up from the couch]  Take them back, Keith.

KEITH.  What!  I tell you no jury would convict; and if they did, no
judge would hang.  A ghoul who can rob a dead body, ought to be in
prison.  He did worse than you.

LARRY.  It won't do, Keith.  I must see it out.

KEITH.  Don't be a fool!

LARRY.  I've still got some kind of honour.  If I clear out before I
know, I shall have none--nor peace.  Take them, Keith, or I'll put
them in the fire.

KEITH.  [Taking back the notes; bitterly]  I suppose I may ask you
not to be entirely oblivious of our name.  Or is that unworthy of
your honour?

LARRY.  [Hanging his head]  I'm awfully sorry, Keith; awfully sorry,
old man.

KEITH.  [sternly]  You owe it to me--to our name--to our dead mother-
-to do nothing anyway till we see what happens.

LARRY.  I know.  I'll do nothing without you, Keith.

KEITH.  [Taking up his hat]  Can I trust you?  [He stares hard at his
brother.]

LARRY.  You can trust me.

KEITH.  Swear?

LARRY.  I swear.

KEITH.  Remember, nothing!  Good night!

LARRY.  Good night!

     KEITH goes.  LARRY Sits down on the couch sand stares at the
     fire.  The girl steals up and slips her arms about him.

LARRY.  An innocent man!

WANDA.  Oh, Larry!  But so are you.  What did we want--to kill that
man?  Never!  Oh!  kiss me!

     [LARRY turns his face.  She kisses his lips.]

I have suffered so--not seein' you.  Don't leave me again--don't!
Stay here.  Isn't it good to be together?--Oh!  Poor Larry!  How
tired you look!--Stay with me.  I am so frightened all alone.  So
frightened they will take you from me.

LARRY.  Poor child!

WANDA.  No, no!  Don't look like that!

LARRY.  You're shivering.

WANDA.  I will make up the fire.  Love me, Larry!  I want to forget.

LARRY.  The poorest little wretch on God's earth--locked up--for me!
A little wild animal, locked up.  There he goes, up and down, up and
down--in his cage--don't you see him?--looking for a place to gnaw
his way through--little grey rat.  [He gets up and roams about.]

WANDA.  No, no!  I can't bear it!  Don't frighten me more!

     [He comes back and takes her in his arms.]

LARRY.  There, there! [He kisses her closed eyes.]

WANDA.  [Without moving]  If we could sleep a little--wouldn't it be
nice?

LARRY.  Sleep?

WANDA.  [Raising herself]  Promise to stay with me--to stay here for
good, Larry.  I will cook for you; I will make you so comfortable.
They will find him innocent.  And then--Oh, Larry!  in the sun-right
away--far from this horrible country.  How lovely!  [Trying to get
him to look at her]  Larry!

LARRY.  [With a movement to free 'himself]  To the edge of the
world-and---over!

WANDA.  No, no!  No, no!  You don't want me to die, Larry, do you?  I
shall if you leave me.  Let us be happy!  Love me!

LARRY.  [With a laugh]  Ah!  Let's be happy and shut out the sight of
him.  Who cares?  Millions suffer for no mortal reason.  Let's be
strong, like Keith.  No!  I won't leave you, Wanda.  Let's forget
everything except ourselves.  [Suddenly]  There he goes-up and down!

WANDA. [Moaning]  No, no!  See!  I will pray to the Virgin.  She will
pity us!

     She falls on her knees and clasps her hands, praying.  Her lips
     move.  LARRY stands motionless, with arms crossed, and on his
     face are yearning and mockery, love and despair.

LARRY.  [Whispering]  Pray for us!  Bravo!  Pray away!

     [Suddenly the girl stretches out her arms and lifts her face
     with a look of ecstasy.]

What?

WANDA.  She is smiling!  We shall be happy soon.

LARRY.  [Bending down over her]  Poor child!  When we die, Wanda,
let's go together.  We should keep each other warm out in the dark.

WANDA.  [Raising her hands to his face]  Yes!  oh, yes!  If you die I
could not--I could not go on living!


                              CURTAIN



SCENE III.

TWO MONTHS LATER

     WANDA'S room.  Daylight is just beginning to fail of a January
     afternoon.  The table is laid for supper, with decanters of
     wine.

     WANDA is standing at the window looking out at the wintry trees
     of the Square beyond the pavement.  A newspaper Boy's voice is
     heard coming nearer.

VOICE.  Pyper!  Glove Lyne murder!  Trial and verdict!  [Receding]
Verdict!  Pyper!

     WANDA throws up the window as if to call to him, checks herself,
     closes it and runs to the door.  She opens it, but recoils into
     the room.  KEITH is standing there.  He comes in.

KEITH.  Where's Larry?

WANDA.  He went to the trial.  I could not keep him from it.  The
trial--Oh!  what has happened, sir?

KEITH.  [Savagely]  Guilty!  Sentence of death!  Fools!--idiots!

WANDA.  Of death!  [For a moment she seems about to swoon.]

KEITH.  Girl!  girl!  It may all depend on you.  Larry's still living
here?

WANDA.  Yes.

KEITH.  I must wait for him.

WANDA.  Will you sit down, please?

KEITH.  [Shaking his head]  Are you ready to go away at any time?

WANDA.  Yes, yes; always I am ready.

KEITH.  And he?

WANDA.  Yes--but now!  What will he do?  That poor man!

KEITH.  A graveyard thief--a ghoul!

WANDA.  Perhaps he was hungry.  I have been hungry: you do things
then that you would not.  Larry has thought of him in prison so much
all these weeks.  Oh! what shall we do now?

KEITH.  Listen!  Help me.  Don't let Larry out of your sight.  I must
see how things go.  They'll never hang this wretch.  [He grips her
arms]  Now, we must stop Larry from giving himself up.  He's fool
enough.  D'you understand?

WANDA.  Yes.  But why has he not come in?  Oh!  If he have, already!

KEITH.  [Letting go her arms]  My God!  If the police come--find me
here--[He moves to the door] No, he wouldn't without seeing you
first.  He's sure to come.  Watch him like a lynx.  Don't let him go
without you.

WANDA.  [Clasping her hands on her breast]  I will try, sir.

KEITH.  Listen!

     [A key is heard in the lock.]

It's he!

     LARRY enters.  He is holding a great bunch of pink lilies and
     white narcissus.  His face tells nothing.  KEITH looks from him
     to the girl, who stands motionless.

LARRY.  Keith!  So you've seen?

KEITH.  The thing can't stand.  I'll stop it somehow.  But you must
give me time, Larry.

LARRY.  [Calmly]  Still looking after your honour, KEITH!

KEITH.  [Grimly]  Think my reasons what you like.

WANDA.  [Softly]  Larry!

     [LARRY puts his arm round her.]

LARRY.  Sorry, old man.

KEITH.  Tnis man can and shall get off.  I want your solemn promise
that you won't give yourself up, nor even go out till I've seen you
again.

LARRY.  I give it.

KEITH.  [Looking from one to the other]  By the memory of our mother,
swear that.

LARRY.  [With a smile]  I swear.

KEITH.  I have your oath--both of you--both of you.  I'm going at
once to see what can be done.

LARRY.  [Softly]  Good luck, brother.

     KEITH goes out.

WANDA.  [Putting her hands on LARRY's breast]  What does it mean?

LARRY.  Supper, child--I've had nothing all day.  Put these lilies in
water.

     [She takes the lilies and obediently puts them into a vase.
     LARRY pours wine into a deep-coloured glass and drinks it off.]

We've had a good time, Wanda.  Best time I ever had, these last two
months; and nothing but the bill to pay.

WANDA.  [Clasping him desperately]  Oh, Larry! Larry!

LARRY.  [Holding her away to look at her.]  Take off those things and
put on a bridal garment.

WANDA.  Promise me--wherever you go, I go too.  Promise!  Larry, you
think I haven't seen, all these weeks.  But I have seen everything;
all in your heart, always.  You cannot hide from me.  I knew--I knew!
Oh, if we might go away into the sun!  Oh! Larry--couldn't we?  [She
searches his eyes with hers--then shuddering]  Well!  If it must be
dark--I don't care, if I may go in your arms.  In prison we could not
be together.  I am ready.  Only love me first.  Don't let me cry
before I go.  Oh! Larry, will there be much pain?

LARRY.  [In a choked voice]  No pain, my pretty.

WANDA.  [With a little sigh]  It is a pity.

LARRY.  If you had seen him, as I have, all day, being tortured.
Wanda,--we shall be out of it.  [The wine mounting to his head]  We
shall be free in the dark; free of their cursed inhumanities.  I hate
this world--I loathe it!  I hate its God-forsaken savagery; its pride
and smugness!  Keith's world--all righteous will-power and success.
We're no good here, you and I--we were cast out at birth--soft,
will-less--better dead.  No fear, Keith!  I'm staying indoors.  [He
pours wine into two glasses]  Drink it up!


     [Obediently WANDA drinks, and he also.]

Now go and make yourself beautiful.

WANDA.  [Seizing him in her arms]  Oh, Larry!

LARRY.  [Touching her face and hair]  Hanged by the neck until he's
dead--for what I did.

     [WANDA takes a long look at his face, slips her arms from him,
     and goes out through the curtains below the fireplace.]

     [LARRY feels in his pocket, brings out the little box, opens it,
     fingers the white tabloids.]

LARRY.  Two each--after food.  [He laughs and puts back the box]  Oh!
my girl!

     [The sound of a piano playing a faint festive tune is heard afar
     off.  He mutters, staring at the fire.]

     [Flames-flame, and flicker-ashes.]

"No more, no more, the moon is dead, And all the people in it."

     [He sits on the couch with a piece of paper on his knees, adding
     a few words with a stylo pen to what is already written.]

     [The GIRL, in a silk wrapper, coming back through the curtains,
     watches him.]

LARRY.  [Looking up]  It's all here--I've confessed.  [Reading]

"Please bury us together."
"LAURENCE DARRANT.
"January 28th, about six p.m."

They'll find us in the morning.  Come and have supper, my dear love.

     [The girl creeps forward.  He rises, puts his arm round her, and
     with her arm twined round him, smiling into each other's faces,
     they go to the table and sit down.]

     The curtain falls for a few seconds to indicate the passage of
     three hours.  When it rises again, the lovers are lying on the
     couch, in each other's arms, the lilies stream about them.  The
     girl's bare arm is round LARRY'S neck.  Her eyes are closed; his
     are open and sightless.  There is no light but fire-light.

     A knocking on the door and the sound of a key turned in the
     lock.  KEITH enters.  He stands a moment bewildered by the half-
     light, then calls sharply: "Larry!" and turns up the light.
     Seeing the forms on the couch, he recoils a moment.  Then,
     glancing at the table and empty decanters, goes up to the couch.

KEITH.  [Muttering]  Asleep!  Drunk!  Ugh!

     [Suddenly he bends, touches LARRY, and springs back.]

What!  [He bends again, shakes him and calls]  Larry! Larry!

     [Then, motionless, he stares down at his brother's open,
     sightless eyes.  Suddenly he wets his finger and holds it to the
     girl's lips, then to LARRY'S.]

     [He bends and listens at their hearts; catches sight of the
     little box lying between them and takes it up.]

My God!

     [Then, raising himself, he closes his brother's eyes, and as he
     does so, catches sight of a paper pinned to the couch; detaches
     it and reads:]

"I, Lawrence Darrant, about to die by my own hand confess that I----"

     [He reads on silently, in horror; finishes, letting the paper
     drop, and recoils from the couch on to a chair at the
     dishevelled supper table.  Aghast, he sits there.  Suddenly he
     mutters:]

If I leave that there--my name--my whole future!

     [He springs up, takes up the paper again, and again reads.]

My God!  It's ruin!

     [He makes as if to tear it across, stops, and looks down at
     those two; covers his eyes with his hand; drops the paper and
     rushes to the door.  But he stops there and comes back,
     magnetised, as it were, by that paper.  He takes it up once more
     and thrusts it into his pocket.]

     [The footsteps of a Policeman pass, slow and regular, outside.
     His face crisps and quivers; he stands listening till they die
     away.  Then he snatches the paper from his pocket, and goes past
     the foot of the couch to the fore.]

All my----No!  Let him hang!

     [He thrusts the paper into the fire, stamps it down with his
     foot, watches it writhe and blacken.  Then suddenly clutching
     his head, he turns to the bodies on the couch.  Panting and like
     a man demented, he recoils past the head of the couch, and
     rushing to the window, draws the curtains and throws the window
     up for air.  Out in the darkness rises the witch-like skeleton
     tree, where a dark shape seems hanging.  KEITH starts back.]

What's that?  What----!

     [He shuts the window and draws the dark curtains across it
     again.]

Fool!  Nothing!

     [Clenching his fists, he draws himself up, steadying himself
     with all his might.  Then slowly he moves to the door, stands a
     second like a carved figure, his face hard as stone.]

     [Deliberately he turns out the light, opens the door, and goes.]

     [The still bodies lie there before the fire which is licking at
     the last blackened wafer.]


CURTAIN




End of this Project Gutenberg Etext of THE FIRST AND LAST, by John Galsworthy






THE LITTLE MAN

A FARCICAL MORALITY IN THREE SCENES



CHARACTERS

THE LITTLE MAN.
THE AMERICAN.
THE ENGLISHMAN.
THE ENGLISHWOMAN.
THE GERMAN.
THE DUTCH BOY.
THE MOTHER.
THE BABY.
THE WAITER.
THE STATION OFFICIAL.
THE POLICEMAN.
THE PORTER.




SCENE I

     Afternoon, on the departure platform of an Austrian railway
     station.  At several little tables outside the buffet persons
     are taking refreshment, served by a pale young waiter.  On a
     seat against the wall of the buffet a woman of lowly station is
     sitting beside two large bundles, on one of which she has placed
     her baby, swathed in a black shawl.

WAITER.  [Approaching a table whereat sit an English traveller and
his wife]  Two coffee?

ENGLISHMAN.  [Paying]  Thanks.  [To his wife, in an Oxford voice]
Sugar?

ENGLISHWOMAN.  [In a Cambridge voice]  One.

AMERICAN TRAVELLER.  [With field-glasses and a pocket camera from
another table]  Waiter, I'd like to have you get my eggs.  I've been
sitting here quite a while.

WAITER.  Yes, sare.

GERMAN TRAVELLER.  'Kellner, bezahlen'!  [His voice is, like his
moustache, stiff and brushed up at the ends.  His figure also is
stiff and his hair a little grey; clearly once, if not now, a
colonel.]

WAITER.  'Komm' gleich'!

     [The baby on the bundle wails.  The mother takes it up to soothe
     it.  A young, red-cheecked Dutchman at the fourth table stops
     eating and laughs.]

AMERICAN.  My eggs!  Get a wiggle on you!

WAITER.  Yes, sare.  [He rapidly recedes.]

     [A LITTLE MAN in a soft hat is seen to the right of tables.  He
     stands a moment looking after the hurrying waiter, then seats
     himself at the fifth table.]

ENGLISHMAN.  [Looking at his watch]  Ten minutes more.

ENGLISHWOMAN.  Bother!

AMERICAN.  [Addressing them]  'Pears as if they'd a prejudice against
eggs here, anyway.

     [The ENGLISH look at him, but do not speak. ]

GERMAN.  [In creditable English]  In these places man can get
nothing.

     [The WAITER comes flying back with a compote for the DUTCH
     YOUTH, who pays.]

GERMAN.  'Kellner, bezahlen'!

WAITER.  'Eine Krone sechzig'.

     [The GERMAN pays.]

AMERICAN.  [Rising, and taking out his watch--blandly]  See here.  If
I don't get my eggs before this watch ticks twenty, there'll be
another waiter in heaven.

WAITER.  [Flying] 'Komm' gleich'!

AMERICAN.  [Seeking sympathy]  I'm gettin' kind of mad!

     [The ENGLISHMAN halves his newspaper and hands the advertisement
     half to his wife.  The BABY wails.  The MOTHER rocks it.]

     [The DUTCH YOUTH stops eating and laughs.  The GERMAN lights a
     cigarette.  The LITTLE MAN sits motionless, nursing his hat.
     The WAITER comes flying back with the eggs and places them
     before the AMERICAN.]

AMERICAN.  [Putting away his watch]  Good!  I don't like trouble.
How much?

     [He pays and eats.  The WAITER stands a moment at the edge of
     the platform and passes his hand across his brow.  The LITTLE
     MAN eyes him and speaks gently.]

LITTLE MAN.  Herr Ober!

     [The WAITER turns.]

Might I have a glass of beer?

WAITER.  Yes, sare.

LITTLE MAN.  Thank you very much.

     [The WAITER goes.]

AMERICAN.  [Pausing in the deglutition of his eggs--affably]  Pardon
me, sir; I'd like to have you tell me why you called that little bit
of a feller "Herr Ober."  Reckon you would know what that means?
Mr. Head Waiter.

LITTLE MAN.  Yes, yes.

AMERICAN.  I smile.

LITTLE MAN.  Oughtn't I to call him that?

GERMAN.  [Abruptly] 'Nein--Kellner'.

AMERICAN.  Why, yes!  Just "waiter."

     [The ENGLISHWOMAN looks round her paper for a second.  The DUTCH
     YOUTH stops eating and laughs.  The LITTLE MAN gazes from face
     to face and nurses his hat.]

LITTLE MAN.  I didn't want to hurt his feelings.

GERMAN.  Gott!

AMERICAN.  In my country we're very democratic--but that's quite a
proposition.

ENGLISHMAN.  [Handling coffee-pot, to his wife]  More?

ENGLISHWOMAN.  No, thanks.

GERMAN.  [Abruptly]  These fellows--if you treat them in this manner,
at once they take liberties.  You see, you will not get your beer.

     [As he speaks the WAITER returns, bringing the LITTLE MAN'S
     beer, then retires.]

AMERICAN.  That 'pears to be one up to democracy.  [To the LITTLE
MAN]  I judge you go in for brotherhood?

LITTLE MAN.  [Startled]  Oh, no!

AMERICAN.  I take considerable stock in Leo Tolstoi myself.  Grand
man--grand-souled apparatus.  But I guess you've got to pinch those
waiters some to make 'em skip.  [To the ENGLISH, who have carelessly
looked his way for a moment]  You'll appreciate that, the way he
acted about my eggs.

     [The ENGLISH make faint motions with their chins and avert their
     eyes.]

     [To the WAITER, who is standing at the door of the buffet]

Waiter!  Flash of beer--jump, now!

WAITER.  'Komm' gleich'!

GERMAN.  'Cigarren'!

WAITER.  'Schon'!

     [He disappears.]

AMERICAN.  [Affably--to the LITTLE MAN]  Now, if I don't get that
flash of beer quicker'n you got yours, I shall admire.

GERMAN.  [Abruptly]  Tolstoi is nothing 'nichts'!  No good!  Ha?

AMERICAN.  [Relishing the approach of argument]  Well, that is a
matter of temperament.  Now, I'm all for equality.  See that poor
woman there--very humble woman--there she sits among us with her
baby.  Perhaps you'd like to locate her somewhere else?

GERMAN.  [Shrugging].  Tolstoi is 'sentimentalisch'.  Nietzsche is
the true philosopher, the only one.

AMERICAN.  Well, that's quite in the prospectus--very stimulating
party--old Nietch--virgin mind.  But give me Leo!  [He turns to the
red-cheeked YOUTH]  What do you opine, sir?  I guess by your labels
you'll be Dutch.  Do they read Tolstoi in your country?

     [The DUTCH YOUTH laughs.]

AMERICAN.  That is a very luminous answer.

GERMAN.  Tolstoi is nothing.  Man should himself express.  He must
push--he must be strong.

AMERICAN.  That is so.  In America we believe in virility; we like a
man to expand.  But we believe in brotherhood too.  We draw the line
at niggers; but we aspire.  Social barriers and distinctions we've
not much use for.

ENGLISHMAN.  Do you feel a draught?

ENGLISHWOMAN.  [With a shiver of her shoulder toward the AMERICAN]  I
do--rather.

GERMAN.  Wait!  You are a young people.

AMERICAN.  That is so; there are no flies on us.  [To the LITTLE MAN,
who has been gazing eagerly from face to face]  Say!  I'd like to
have you give us your sentiments in relation to the duty of man.

     [The LITTLE MAN, fidgets, and is about to opens his mouth.]

AMERICAN.  For example--is it your opinion that we should kill off
the weak and diseased, and all that can't jump around?

GERMAN.  [Nodding] 'Ja, ja'!  That is coming.

LITTLE MAN.  [Looking from face to face]  They might be me.

     [The DUTCH YOUTH laughs.]

AMERICAN.  [Reproving him with a look]  That's true humility.
'Tisn't grammar.  Now, here's a proposition that brings it nearer the
bone:  Would you step out of your way to help them when it was liable
to bring you trouble?

GERMAN.  'Nein, nein'!  That is stupid.

LITTLE MAN.  [Eager but wistful]  I'm afraid not.  Of course one
wants to--There was St Francis d'Assisi and St Julien L'Hospitalier,
and----

AMERICAN.  Very lofty dispositions.  Guess they died of them.  [He
rises]  Shake hands, sir--my name is--[He hands a card]  I am an
ice-machine maker.  [He shakes the LITTLE MAN's hand] I like your
sentiments--I feel kind of brotherly.  [Catching sight of the WAITER
appearing in the doorway]  Waiter; where to h-ll is that glass of
beer?

GERMAN.  Cigarren!

WAITER.  'Komm' gleich'!

ENGLISHMAN.  [Consulting watch]  Train's late.

ENGLISHWOMAN.  Really!  Nuisance!

     [A station POLICEMAN, very square and uniformed, passes and
     repasses.]

AMERICAN.  [Resuming his seat--to the GERMAN]  Now, we don't have so
much of that in America.  Guess we feel more to trust in human
nature.

GERMAN.  Ah!  ha!  you will bresently find there is nothing in him
but self.

LITTLE MAN.  [Wistfully]  Don't you believe in human nature?

AMERICAN.  Very stimulating question.

     [He looks round for opinions.  The DUTCH YOUTH laughs.]

ENGLISHMAN. [Holding out his half of the paper to his wife]  Swap!

     [His wife swaps.]

GERMAN.  In human nature I believe so far as I can see him--no more.

AMERICAN.  Now that 'pears to me kind o' blasphemy.  I believe in
heroism.  I opine there's not one of us settin' around here that's
not a hero--give him the occasion.

LITTLE MAN.  Oh!  Do you believe that?

AMERICAN.  Well!  I judge a hero is just a person that'll help
another at the expense of himself.  Take that poor woman there.
Well, now, she's a heroine, I guess.  She would die for her baby any
old time.

GERMAN.  Animals will die for their babies.  That is nothing.

AMERICAN.  I carry it further.  I postulate we would all die for that
baby if a locomotive was to trundle up right here and try to handle
it.  [To the GERMAN]  I guess you don't know how good you are.  [As
the GERMAN is twisting up the ends of his moustache--to the
ENGLISHWOMAN]  I should like to have you express an opinion, ma'am.

ENGLISHWOMAN.  I beg your pardon.

AMERICAN.  The English are very humanitarian; they have a very high
sense of duty.  So have the Germans, so have the Americans.  [To the
DUTCH YOUTH]  I judge even in your little country they have that.
This is an epoch of equality and high-toned ideals.  [To the LITTLE
MAN]  What is your nationality, sir?

LITTLE MAN.  I'm afraid I'm nothing particular.  My father was
half-English and half-American, and my mother half-German and
half-Dutch.

AMERICAN.  My!  That's a bit streaky, any old way.  [The POLICEMAN
passes again]  Now, I don't believe we've much use any more for those
gentlemen in buttons.  We've grown kind of mild--we don't think of
self as we used to do.

     [The WAITER has appeared in the doorway.]

GERMAN.  [In a voice of thunder] 'Cigarren!  Donnerwetter'!

AMERICAN.  [Shaking his fist at the vanishing WAITER]  That flash of
beer!

WAITER.  'Komm' gleich'!

AMERICAN.  A little more, and he will join George Washington!  I was
about to remark when he intruded: In this year of grace 1913 the
kingdom of Christ is quite a going concern.  We are mighty near
universal brotherhood.  The colonel here [He indicates the GERMAN] is
a man of blood and iron, but give him an opportunity to be
magnanimous, and he'll be right there.  Oh, sir!  yep!

     [The GERMAN, with a profound mixture of pleasure and cynicism,
     brushes up the ends of his moustache.]

LITTLE MAN.  I wonder.  One wants to, but somehow--[He shakes his
head.]

AMERICAN. You seem kind of skeery about that.  You've had experience,
maybe.  I'm an optimist--I think we're bound to make the devil hum in
the near future.  I opine we shall occasion a good deal of trouble to
that old party.  There's about to be a holocaust of selfish
interests.  The colonel there with old-man Nietch he won't know
himself.  There's going to be a very sacred opportunity.

     [As he speaks, the voice of a RAILWAY OFFICIAL is heard an the
     distance calling out in German.  It approaches, and the words
     become audible.]

GERMAN.  [Startled] 'Der Teufel'!  [He gets up, and seizes the bag
beside him.]

     [The STATION OFFICIAL has appeared; he stands for a moment
     casting his commands at the seated group.  The DUTCH YOUTH also
     rises, and takes his coat and hat.  The OFFICIAL turns on his
     heel and retires still issuing directions.]

ENGLISHMAN.  What does he say?

GERMAN.  Our drain has come in, de oder platform; only one minute we
haf.

     [All, have risen in a fluster.]

AMERICAN.  Now, that's very provoking.  I won't get that flash of
beer.

     [There is a general scurry to gather coats and hats and wraps,
     during which the lowly WOMAN is seen making desperate attempts
     to deal with her baby and the two large bundles.  Quite
     defeated, she suddenly puts all down, wrings her hands, and
     cries out: "Herr Jesu!  Hilfe!"  The flying procession turn
     their heads at that strange cry.]

AMERICAN.  What's that?  Help?

     [He continues to run.  The LITTLE MAN spins round, rushes back,
     picks up baby and bundle on which it was seated.]

LITTLE MAN.  Come along, good woman, come along!

     [The WOMAN picks up the other bundle and they run.]

     [The WAITER, appearing in the doorway with the bottle of beer,
     watches with his tired smile.]


                              CURTAIN




SCENE II

     A second-class compartment of a corridor carriage, in motion.
     In it are seated the ENGLISHMAN and his WIFE, opposite each
     other at the corridor end, she with her face to the engine, he
     with his back.  Both are somewhat protected from the rest of the
     travellers by newspapers.  Next to her sits the GERMAN, and
     opposite him sits the AMERICAN; next the AMERICAN in one window
     corner is seated the DUTCH YOUTH; the other window corner is
     taken by the GERMAN'S bag.  The silence is only broken by the
     slight rushing noise of the train's progression and the
     crackling of the English newspapers.

AMERICAN.  [Turning to the DUTCH YOUTH]  Guess I'd like that window
raised; it's kind of chilly after that old run they gave us.

     [The DUTCH YOUTH laughs, and goes through the motions of raising
     the window.  The ENGLISH regard the operation with uneasy
     irritation.  The GERMAN opens his bag, which reposes on the
     corner seat next him, and takes out a book.]

AMERICAN.  The Germans are great readers.  Very stimulating practice.
I read most anything myself!

     [The GERMAN holds up the book so that the title may be read.]

"Don Quixote"--fine book.  We Americans take considerable stock in
old man Quixote.  Bit of a wild-cat--but we don't laugh at him.

GERMAN.  He is dead.  Dead as a sheep.  A good thing, too.

AMERICAN.  In America we have still quite an amount of chivalry.

GERMAN.  Chivalry is nothing 'sentimentalisch'.  In modern days--no
good.  A man must push, he must pull.

AMERICAN.  So you say.  But I judge your form of chivalry is
sacrifice to the state.  We allow more freedom to the individual
soul.  Where there's something little and weak, we feel it kind of
noble to give up to it.  That way we feel elevated.

     [As he speaks there is seen in the corridor doorway the LITTLE
     MAN, with the WOMAN'S BABY still on his arm and the bundle held
     in the other hand.  He peers in anxiously.  The ENGLISH, acutely
     conscious, try to dissociate themselves from his presence with
     their papers.  The DUTCH YOUTH laughs.]

GERMAN.  'Ach'!  So!

AMERICAN.  Dear me!

LITTLE MAN.  Is there room?  I can't find a seat.

AMERICAN.  Why, yes!  There's a seat for one.

LITTLE MAN.  [Depositing bundle outside, and heaving BABY]  May I?

AMERICAN.  Come right in!

     [The GERMAN sulkily moves his bag.  The LITTLE MAN comes in and
     seats himself gingerly.]

AMERICAN.  Where's the mother?

LITTLE MAN.  [Ruefully]  Afraid she got left behind.

     [The DUTCH YOUTH laughs.  The ENGLISH unconsciously emerge from
     their newspapers.]

AMERICAN.  My!  That would appear to be quite a domestic incident.

     [The ENGLISHMAN suddenly utters a profound "Ha, Ha!" and
     disappears behind his paper.  And that paper and the one
     opposite are seen to shake, and little sguirls and squeaks
     emerge.]

GERMAN.  And you haf got her bundle, and her baby.  Ha!  [He cackles
drily.]

AMERICAN.  [Gravely]  I smile.  I guess Providence has played it
pretty low down on you.  It's sure acted real mean.

     [The BABY wails, and the LITTLE MAN jigs it with a sort of
     gentle desperation, looking apologetically from face to face.
     His wistful glance renews the fore of merriment wherever it
     alights.  The AMERICAN alone preserves a gravity which seems
     incapable of being broken.]

AMERICAN.  Maybe you'd better get off right smart and restore that
baby.  There's nothing can act madder than a mother.

LITTLE MAN.  Poor thing, yes!  What she must be suffering!

     [A gale of laughter shakes the carriage.  The ENGLISH for a
     moment drop their papers, the better to indulge.  The LITTLE MAN
     smiles a wintry smile.]

AMERICAN.  [In a lull]  How did it eventuate?

LITTLE MAN.  We got there just as the train was going to start; and I
jumped, thinking I could help her up.  But it moved too quickly,
and--and left her.

     [The gale of laughter blows up again.]

AMERICAN.  Guess I'd have thrown the baby out to her.

LITTLE MAN.  I was afraid the poor little thing might break.

     [The Baby wails; the LITTLE MAN heaves it; the gale of laughter
     blows.]

AMERICAN.  [Gravely]  It's highly entertaining--not for the baby.
What kind of an old baby is it, anyway?  [He sniff's]  I judge it's a
bit--niffy.

LITTLE MAN.  Afraid I've hardly looked at it yet.

AMERICAN.  Which end up is it?

LITTLE MAM.  Oh!  I think the right end.  Yes, yes, it is.

AMERICAN.  Well, that's something.  Maybe you should hold it out of
window a bit.  Very excitable things, babies!

ENGLISHWOMAN.  [Galvanized]  No, no!

ENGLISHMAN.  [Touching her knee]  My dear!

AMERICAN.  You are right, ma'am.  I opine there's a draught out
there.  This baby is precious.  We've all of us got stock in this
baby in a manner of speaking.  This is a little bit of universal
brotherhood.  Is it a woman baby?

LITTLE MAN.  I--I can only see the top of its head.

AMERICAN.  You can't always tell from that.  It looks kind of
over-wrapped up.  Maybe it had better be unbound.

GERMAN.  'Nein, nein, nein'!

AMERICAN.  I think you are very likely right, colonel.  It might be a
pity to unbind that baby.  I guess the lady should be consulted in
this matter.

ENGLISHWOMAN.  Yes, yes, of course----!

ENGLISHMAN.  [Touching her]  Let it be!  Little beggar seems all
right.

AMERICAN.  That would seem only known to Providence at this moment.
I judge it might be due to humanity to look at its face.

LITTLE MAN.  [Gladly]  It's sucking my' finger.  There, there--nice
little thing--there!

AMERICAN.  I would surmise in your leisure moments you have created
babies, sir?

LITTLE MAN.  Oh! no--indeed, no.

AMERICAN.  Dear me!--That is a loss.  [Addressing himself to the
carriage at large]  I think we may esteem ourselves fortunate to have
this little stranger right here with us.  Demonstrates what a hold
the little and weak have upon us nowadays.  The colonel here--a man
of blood and iron--there he sits quite calm next door to it.  [He
sniffs]  Now, this baby is rather chastening--that is a sign of
grace, in the colonel--that is true heroism.

LITTLE MAN.  [Faintly]  I--I can see its face a little now.

     [All bend forward.]

AMERICAN.  What sort of a physiognomy has it, anyway?

LITTLE MAN.  [Still faintly]  I don't see anything but--but spots.

GERMAN.  Oh!  Ha!  Pfui!

     [The DUTCH YOUTH laughs.]

AMERICAN.  I am told that is not uncommon amongst babies.  Perhaps we
could have you inform us, ma'am.

ENGLISHWOMAN.  Yes, of course--only what sort of----

LITTLE MAN.  They seem all over its----[At the slight recoil of
everyone] I feel sure it's--it's quite a good baby underneath.

AMERICAN.  That will be rather difficult to come at.  I'm just a bit
sensitive.  I've very little use for affections of the epidermis.

GERMAN.  Pfui!  [He has edged away as far as he can get, and is
lighting a big cigar]

     [The DUTCH YOUTH draws his legs back.]

AMERICAN.  [Also taking out a cigar]  I guess it would be well to
fumigate this carriage.  Does it suffer, do you think?

LITTLE MAN.  [Peering]  Really, I don't--I'm not sure--I know so
little about babies.  I think it would have a nice expression--if--if
it showed.

AMERICAN.  Is it kind of boiled looking?

LITTLE MAN.  Yes--yes, it is.

AMERICAN.  [Looking gravely round]  I judge this baby has the
measles.

     [The GERMAN screws himself spasmodically against the arm of the
     ENGLISHWOMAN'S seat.]

ENGLISHWOMAN.  Poor little thing!  Shall I----?

     [She half rises.]

ENGLISHMAN.  [Touching her]  No, no----Dash it!

AMERICAN.  I honour your emotion, ma'am.  It does credit to us all.
But I sympathize with your husband too.  The measles is a very
important pestilence in connection with a grown woman.

LITTLE MAN.  It likes my finger awfully.  Really, it's rather a sweet
baby.

AMERICAN.  [Sniffing]  Well, that would appear to be quite a
question.  About them spots, now?  Are they rosy?

LITTLE MAN.  No-o; they're dark, almost black.

GERMAN.  Gott!  Typhus!  [He bounds up on to the arm of the
ENGLISHWOMAN'S Seat.]

AMERICAN.  Typhus!  That's quite an indisposition!

     [The DUTCH YOUTH rises suddenly, and bolts out into the
     corridor.  He is followed by the GERMAN, puffing clouds of
     smoke.  The ENGLISH and AMERICAN sit a moment longer without
     speaking.  The ENGLISHWOMAN'S face is turned with a curious
     expression--half pity, half fear--towards the LITTLE MAN.  Then
     the ENGLISHMAN gets up.]

ENGLISHMAN.  Bit stuffy for you here, dear, isn't it?

     [He puts his arm through hers, raises her, and almost pushes her
     through the doorway.  She goes, still looking back.]

AMERICAN.  [Gravely]  There's nothing I admire more'n courage.  Guess
I'll go and smoke in the corridor.

     [As he goes out the LITTLE MAN looks very wistfully after him.
     Screwing up his mouth and nose, he holds the BABY away from him
     and wavers; then rising, he puts it on the seat opposite and
     goes through the motions of letting down the window.  Having
     done so he looks at the BABY, who has begun to wail.  Suddenly
     he raises his hands and clasps them, like a child praying.
     Since, however, the BABY does not stop wailing, he hovers over
     it in indecision; then, picking it up, sits down again to dandle
     it, with his face turned toward the open window.  Finding that
     it still wails, he begins to sing to it in a cracked little
     voice.  It is charmed at once.  While he is singing, the
     AMERICAN appears in the corridor.  Letting down the passage
     window, he stands there in the doorway with the draught blowing
     his hair and the smoke of his cigar all about him.  The LITTLE
     MAN stops singing and shifts the shawl higher to protect the
     BABY'S head from the draught.]

AMERICAN.  [Gravely]  This is the most sublime spectacle I have ever
envisaged.  There ought to be a record of this.

     [The LITTLE MAN looks at him, wondering.  You are typical, sir,
     of the sentiments of modern Christianity.  You illustrate the
     deepest feelings in the heart of every man.]

     [The LITTLE MAN rises with the BABY and a movement of approach.]

Guess I'm wanted in the dining-car.

     [He vanishes.  The LITTLE MAN sits down again, but back to the
     engine, away from the draught, and looks out of the window,
     patiently jogging the BABY On his knee.]


                              CURTAIN



SCENE III

     An arrival platform.  The LITTLE MAN, with the BABY and the
     bundle, is standing disconsolate, while travellers pass and
     luggage is being carried by.  A STATION OFFICIAL, accompanied by
     a POLICEMAN, appears from a doorway, behind him.

OFFICIAL.  [Consulting telegram in his hand] 'Das ist der Herr'.

     [They advance to the LITTLE MAN.]

OFFICIAL.  'Sie haben einen Buben gestohlen'?

LITTLE MAN.  I only speak English and American.

OFFICIAL.  'Dies ist nicht Ihr Bube'?

     [He touches the Baby.]

LITTLE MAN.  [Shaking his head]  Take care--it's ill.

     [The man does not understand.]

Ill--the baby----

OFFICIAL.  [Shaking his head]  'Verstehe nicht'.  Dis is nod your baby?
No?

LITTLE MAN.  [Shaking his head violently]  No, it is not.  No.

OFFICIAL.  [Tapping the telegram]  Gut!  You are 'rested.  [He signs
to the POLICEMAN, who takes the LITTLE MAN's arm.]

LITTLE MAN.  Why?  I don't want the poor baby.

OFFICIAL.  [Lifting the bundle] 'Dies ist nicht Ihr Gepack'--pag?

LITTLE Mary.  No.

OFFICIAL.  Gut!  You are 'rested.

LITTLE MAN.  I only took it for the poor woman.  I'm not a thief--
I'm--I'm----

OFFICIAL.  [Shaking head]  Verstehe nicht.

     [The LITTLE MAN tries to tear his hair.  The disturbed BABY
     wails.]

LITTLE MAN.  [Dandling it as best he can]  There, there--poor, poor!

OFFICIAL.  Halt still!  You are 'rested.  It is all right.

LITTLE MAN.  Where is the mother?

OFFICIAL.  She comet by next drain.  Das telegram say: 'Halt einen
Herren mit schwarzem Buben and schwarzem Gepack'.  'Rest gentleman
mit black baby and black--pag.

     [The LITTLE MAN turns up his eyes to heaven.]

OFFICIAL.  'Komm mit us'.

     [They take the LITTLE MAN toward the door from which they have
     come.  A voice stops them.]

AMERICAN.  [Speaking from as far away as may be]  Just a moment!

     [The OFFICIAL stops; the LITTLE MAN also stops and sits down on
     a bench against the wall.  The POLICEMAN stands stolidly beside
     him.  The AMERICAN approaches a step or two, beckoning; the
     OFFICIAL goes up to him.]

AMERICAN.  Guess you've got an angel from heaven there!  What's the
gentleman in buttons for?

OFFICIAL.  'Was ist das'?

AMERICAN.  Is there anybody here that can understand American?

OFFICIAL.  'Verstehe nicht'.

AMERICAN.  Well, just watch my gestures.  I was saying [He points to
the LITTLE MAN, then makes gestures of flying]  you have an angel
from heaven there.  You have there a man in whom Gawd [He points
upward]  takes quite an amount of stock.  You have no call to arrest
him.  [He makes the gesture of arrest]  No, Sir.  Providence has
acted pretty mean, loading off that baby on him.  [He makes the
motion of dandling]  The little man has a heart of gold.  [He points
to his heart, and takes out a gold coin.]

OFFICIAL.  [Thinking he is about to be bribed] 'Aber, das ist zu
viel'!

AMERICAN.  Now, don't rattle me!  [Pointing to the LITTLE MAN]  Man
[Pointing to his heart] 'Herz' [Pointing to the coin] 'von' Gold.
This is a flower of the field--he don't want no gentleman in buttons
to pluck him up.

     [A little crowd is gathering, including the Two ENGLISH, the
     GERMAN, and the DUTCH YOUTH.]

OFFICIAL.  'Verstehe absolut nichts'.  [He taps the telegram] 'Ich muss
mein' duty do.

AMERICAN.  But I'm telling you.  This is a white man.  This is
probably the whitest man on Gawd's earth.

OFFICIAL.  'Das macht nichts'--gut or no gut, I muss mein duty do.
[He turns to go toward the LITTLE MAN.]

AMERICAN.  Oh!  Very well, arrest him; do your duty.  This baby has
typhus.

     [At the word "typhus" the OFFICIAL stops.]

AMERICAN.  [Making gestures]  First-class typhus, black typhus,
schwarzen typhus.  Now you have it.  I'm kind o' sorry for you and
the gentleman in buttons.  Do your duty!

OFFICIAL.  Typhus?  Der Bub--die baby hat typhus?

AMERICAN.  I'm telling you.

OFFICIAL.  Gott im Himmel!

AMERICAN.  [Spotting the GERMAN in the little throng]  here's a
gentleman will corroborate me.

OFFICIAL.  [Much disturbed, and signing to the POLICEMAN to stand
clear]  Typhus!  'Aber das ist grasslich'!

AMERICAN.  I kind o' thought you'd feel like that.

OFFICIAL.  'Die Sanitatsmachine!  Gleich'!

     [A PORTER goes to get it.  From either side the broken half-moon
     of persons stand gazing at the LITTLE MAN, who sits unhappily
     dandling the BABY in the centre.]

OFFICIAL.  [Raising his hands] 'Was zu thun'?

AMERICAN.  Guess you'd better isolate the baby.

     [A silence, during which the LITTLE MAN is heard faintly
     whistling and clucking to the BABY.]

OFFICIAL.  [Referring once more to his telegram]

"'Rest gentleman mit black baby." [Shaking his head]  Wir must de
gentleman hold.  [To the GERMAN] 'Bitte, mein Herr, sagen Sie ihm,
den Buben zu niedersetzen'.  [He makes the gesture of deposit.]

GERMAN.  [To the LITTLE MAN]  He say: Put down the baby.

     [The LITTLE MAN shakes his head, and continues to dandle the
     BABY.]

OFFICIAL.  You must.

     [The LITTLE MAN glowers, in silence.]

ENGLISHMAN.  [In background--muttering]  Good man!

GERMAN.  His spirit ever denies.

OFFICIAL.  [Again making his gesture] 'Aber er muss'!

     [The LITTLE MAN makes a face at him.]

'Sag' Ihm': Instantly put down baby, and komm' mit us.

     [The BABY wails.]

LITTLE MAN.  Leave the poor ill baby here alone?  Be--be--be d---d to
you!

AMERICAN.  [Jumping on to a trunk--with enthusiasm]  Bully!

     [The ENGLISH clap their hands; the DUTCH YOUTH laughs.  The
     OFFICIAL is muttering, greatly incensed.]

AMERICAN.  What does that body-snatcher say?

GERMAN.  He say this man use the baby to save himself from arrest.
Very smart he say.

AMERICAN.  I judge you do him an injustice.  [Showing off the LITTLE
MAN with a sweep of his arm.]  This is a white man.  He's got a black
baby, and he won' leave it in the lurch.  Guess we would all act
noble that way, give us the chance.

     [The LITTLE MAN rises, holding out the BABY, and advances a step
     or two.  The half-moon at once gives, increasing its size; the
     AMERICAN climbs on to a higher trunk.  The LITTLE MAN retires
     and again sits down.]

AMERICAN.  [Addressing the OFFICIAL]  Guess you'd better go out of
business and wait for the mother.

OFFICIAL.  [Stamping his foot]  Die Mutter sall 'rested be for taking
out baby mit typhus.  Ha!  [To the LITTLE MAN]  Put ze baby down!

     [The LITTLE MAN smiles.]

Do you 'ear?

AMERICAN.  [Addressing the OFFICIAL]  Now, see here.  'Pears to me
you don't suspicion just how beautiful this is.  Here we have a man
giving his life for that old baby that's got no claim on him.  This
is not a baby of his own making.  No, sir, this is a very Christ-like
proposition in the gentleman.

OFFICIAL.  Put ze baby down, or ich will gommand someone it to do.

AMERICAN.  That will be very interesting to watch.

OFFICIAL.  [To POLICEMAN]  Dake it vrom him.

     [The POLICEMAN mutters, but does not.]

AMERICAN.  [To the German]  Guess I lost that.

GERMAN.  He say he is not his officier.

AMERICAN.  That just tickles me to death.

OFFICIAL.  [Looking round]  Vill nobody dake ze Bub'?

ENGLISHWOMAN.  [Moving a step faintly]  Yes--I----

ENGLISHMAN.  [Grasping her arm].  By Jove!  Will you!

OFFICIAL.  [Gathering himself for a great effort to take the BABY,
and advancing two steps]  Zen I goummand you--[He stops and his voice
dies away]  Zit dere!

AMERICAN.  My!  That's wonderful.  What a man this is!  What a
sublime sense of duty!

     [The DUTCH YOUTH laughs.  The OFFICIAL turns on him, but as he
     does so the MOTHER of the Busy is seen hurrying.]

MOTHER.  'Ach!  Ach!  Mei' Bubi'!

     [Her face is illumined; she is about to rush to the LITTLE MAN.]

OFFICIAL.  [To the POLICEMAN]  'Nimm die Frau'!

     [The POLICEMAN catches hold of the WOMAN.]

OFFICIAL.  [To the frightened WOMAN] 'Warum haben Sie einen Buben mit
Typhus mit ausgebracht'?

AMERICAN.  [Eagerly, from his perch]  What was that?  I don't want to
miss any.

GERMAN.  He say: Why did you a baby with typhus with you bring out?

AMERICAN.  Well, that's quite a question.

     [He takes out the field-glasses slung around him and adjusts
     them on the BABY.]

MOTHER.  [Bewildered] Mei' Bubi--Typhus--aber Typhus?  [She shakes
her head violently]  'Nein, nein, nein!  Typhus'!

OFFICIAL.  Er hat Typhus.

MOTHER.  [Shaking her head]  'Nein, nein, nein'!

AMERICAN.  [Looking through his glasses]  Guess she's kind of right!
I judge the typhus is where the baby' slobbered on the shawl, and
it's come off on him.

     [The DUTCH YOUTH laughs.]

OFFICIAL.  [Turning on him furiously]  Er hat Typhus.

AMERICAN.  Now, that's where you slop over.  Come right here.

     [The OFFICIAL mounts, and looks through the glasses.]

AMERICAN.  [To the LITTLE MAN]  Skin out the baby's leg.  If we don't
locate spots on that, it'll be good enough for me.

     [The LITTLE MAN fumbles Out the BABY'S little white foot.]

MOTHER.  Mei' Bubi!  [She tries to break away.]

AMERICAN.  White as a banana.  [To the OFFICIAL--affably]  Guess
you've made kind of a fool of us with your old typhus.

OFFICIAL.  Lass die Frau!

     [The POLICEMAN lets her go, and she rushes to her BABY.]

MOTHER.  Mei' Bubi!

     [The BABY, exchanging the warmth of the LITTLE MAN for the
     momentary chill of its MOTHER, wails.]

OFFICIAL.  [Descending and beckoning to the POLICEMAN] 'Sie wollen
den Herrn accusiren'?

     [The POLICEMAN takes the LITTLE MAN's arm.]

AMERICAN.  What's that?  They goin' to pitch him after all?

     [The MOTHER, still hugging her BABY, who has stopped crying,
     gazes at the LITTLE MAN, who sits dazedly looking up.  Suddenly
     she drops on her knees, and with her free hand lifts his booted
     foot and kisses it.]

AMERICAN.  [Waving his hat]  Ra!  Ra!  [He descends swiftly, goes up
to the LITTLE MAN, whose arm the POLICEMAN has dropped, and takes his
hand]  Brother; I am proud to know you.  This is one of the greatest
moments I have ever experienced.  [Displaying the LITTLE MAN to the
assembled company]  I think I sense the situation when I say that we
all esteem it an honour to breathe the rather inferior atmosphere of
this station here Along with our little friend.  I guess we shall all
go home and treasure the memory of his face as the whitest thing in
our museum of recollections.  And perhaps this good woman will also
go home and wash the face of our little brother here.  I am inspired
with a new faith in mankind.  Ladies and gentlemen, I wish to present
to you a sure-enough saint--only wants a halo, to be transfigured.
[To the LITTLE MAN]  Stand right up.

     [The LITTLE MAN stands up bewildered.  They come about him.  The
     OFFICIAL bows to him, the POLICEMAN salutes him.  The DUTCH
     YOUTH shakes his head and laughs.  The GERMAN draws himself up
     very straight, and bows quickly twice.  The ENGLISHMAN and his
     WIFE approach at least two steps, then, thinking better of it,
     turn to each other and recede.  The MOTHER kisses his hand.  The
     PORTER returning with the Sanitatsmachine, turns it on from
     behind, and its pinkish shower, goldened by a ray of sunlight,
     falls around the LITTLE MAN's head, transfiguring it as he
     stands with eyes upraised to see whence the portent comes.]

AMERICAN.  [Rushing forward and dropping on his knees]  Hold on just
a minute!  Guess I'll take a snapshot of the miracle.  [He adjusts
his pocket camera]  This ought to look bully!




CURTAIN





End of this Project Gutenberg Etext of THE LITTLE MAN, by John Galsworthy






FROM THE SERIES OF SIX SHORT PLAYS



Four of the SIX SHORT PLAYS


CONTENTS:

     HALL-MARKED
     DEFEAT
     THE SUN
     PUNCH AND GO




HALL-MARKED

A SATIRIC TRIFLE



CHARACTERS

HERSELF.
LADY ELLA.
THE SQUIRE.
THE MAID.
MAUD.
THE RECTOR.
THE DOCTOR.
THE CABMAN.
HANNIBAL and EDWARD




                    HALL-MARKED


     The scene is the sitting-room and verandah of HER bungalow.

     The room is pleasant, and along the back, where the verandah
     runs, it seems all window, both French and casement.  There is a
     door right and a door left.  The day is bright; the time
     morning.

     [HERSELF, dripping wet, comes running along the verandah,
     through the French window, with a wet Scotch terrier in her
     arms.  She vanishes through the door left.  A little pause, and
     LADY ELLA comes running, dry, thin, refined, and agitated.  She
     halts where the tracks of water cease at the door left.  A
     little pause, and MAUD comes running, fairly dry, stolid,
     breathless, and dragging a bull-dog, wet, breathless, and stout,
     by the crutch end of her 'en-tout-cas'].

LADY ELLA.  Don't bring Hannibal in till I know where she's put
Edward!

MAUD.  [Brutally, to HANNIBAL]  Bad dog!  Bad dog!

     [HANNIBAL snuffles.]

LADY ELLA.  Maud, do take him out!  Tie him up.  Here!  [She takes
out a lace handkerchief ]  No--something stronger!  Poor darling
Edward!  [To HANNIBAL]  You are a bad dog!

     [HANNIBAL snuffles.]

MAUD.  Edward began it, Ella.  [To HANNIBAL]  Bad dog!  Bad dog!

     [HANNIBAL snuffles.]

LADY ELLA.  Tie him up outside.  Here, take my scarf.  Where is my
poor treasure?  [She removes her scarf]  Catch!  His ear's torn; I
saw it.

MAUD.  [Taking the scarf, to HANNIBAL]  Now!

     [HANNIBAL snuffles.]

     [She ties the scarf to his collar]

He smells horrible.  Bad dog--getting into ponds to fight!

LADY ELLA.  Tie him up, Maud.  I must try in here.

     [Their husbands, THE SQUIRE and THE RECTOR, come hastening along
     the verandah.]

MAUD.  [To THE RECTOR]  Smell him, Bertie!  [To THE SQUIRE]  You
might have that pond drained, Squire!

     [She takes HANNIBAL out, and ties him to the verandah.  THE
     SQUIRE and RECTOR Come in.  LADY ELLA is knocking on the door
     left.]

HER VOICE.  All right!  I've bound him up!

LADY ELLA.  May I come in?

HER VOICE.  Just a second!  I've got nothing on.

     [LADY ELLA recoils.  THE SQUIRE and RECTOR make an involuntary
     movement of approach.]

LADY ELLA.  Oh!  There you are!

THE RECTOR.  [Doubtfully]  I was just going to wade in----

LADY ELLA.  Hannibal would have killed him, if she hadn't rushed in!

THE SQUIRE.  Done him good, little beast!

LADY ELLA.  Why didn't you go in, Tommy?

THE SQUIRE.  Well, I would--only she----

LADY ELLA.  I can't think how she got Edward out of Hannibal's awful
mouth!

MAUD.  [Without--to HANNIBAL, who is snuffling on the verandah and
straining at the scarf]  Bad dog!

LADY ELLA.  We must simply thank her tremendously!  I shall never
forget the way she ran in, with her skirts up to her waist!

THE SQUIRE.  By Jove!  No.  It was topping.

LADY ELLA.  Her clothes must be ruined.  That pond--ugh! [She
wrinkles her nose]  Tommy, do have it drained.

THE RECTOR.  [Dreamily]  I don't remember her face in church.

THE SQUIRE.  Ah!  Yes.  Who is she?  Pretty woman!

LADY ELLA.  I must get the Vet. to Edward.  [To THE SQUIRE]  Tommy,
do exert yourself!

     [MAUD re-enters.]

THE SQUIRE.  All right!  [Exerting himself]  Here's a bell!

HER VOICE.  [Through the door]  The bleeding's stopped.  Shall I send
him in to you?

LADY ELLA.  Oh, please!  Poor darling!

     [They listen.]

     [LADY ELLA, prepares to receive EDWARD.  THE SQUIRE and RECTOR
     stand transfixed.  The door opens, and a bare arm gently pushes
     EDWARD forth.  He is bandaged with a smooth towel.  There is a
     snuffle--HANNIBAL has broken the scarf, outside.]

LADY ELLA.  [Aghast]  Look!  Hannibal's loose!  Maud--Tommy.  [To THE
RECTOR]  You!

     [The THREE rush to prevent HANNIBAL from re-entering.]

LADY ELLA.  [To EDWARD]  Yes, I know--you'd like to!  You SHALL bite
him when it's safe.  Oh!  my darling, you DO----[She sniffs].

     [MAUD and THE SQUIRE re-enter.]

Have you tied him properly this time?

MAUD.  With Bertie's braces.

LADY ELLA.  Oh! but----

MAUD.  It's all right; they're almost leather.

     [THE RECTOR re-enters, with a slight look of insecurity.]

LADY ELLA.  Rector, are you sure it's safe?

THE RECTOR.  [Hitching at his trousers]  No, indeed, LADY Ella--I----

LADY ELLA.  Tommy, do lend a hand!

THE SQUIRE.  All right, Ella; all right!  He doesn't mean what you
mean!

LADY ELLA.  [Transferring EDWARD to THE SQUIRE]  Hold him, Tommy.
He's sure to smell out Hannibal!

THE SQUIRE.  [Taking EDWARD by the collar, and holding his own nose]
Jove!  Clever if he can smell anything but himself.  Phew!  She ought
to have the Victoria Cross for goin' in that pond.

     [The door opens, and HERSELF appears; a fine, frank, handsome
     woman, in a man's orange-coloured motor-coat, hastily thrown on
     over the substrata of costume.]

SHE.  So very sorry--had to have a bath, and change, of course!

LADY ELLA.  We're so awfully grateful to you.  It was splendid.

MAUD.  Quite.

THE RECTOR.  [Rather holding himself together]  Heroic!  I was just
myself about to----

THE SQUIRE.  [Restraining EDWARD]  Little beast will fight--must
apologise--you were too quick for me----

     [He looks up at her.  She is smiling, and regarding the wounded
     dog, her head benevolently on one side.]

SHE.  Poor dears!  They thought they were so safe in that nice pond!

LADY ELLA.  Is he very badly torn?

SHE.  Rather nasty.  There ought to be a stitch or two put in his
ear.

LADY ELLA.  I thought so.  Tommy, do----

THE SQUIRE.  All right.  Am I to let him go?

LADY ELLA.  No.

MAUD.  The fly's outside.  Bertie, run and tell Jarvis to drive in
for the Vet.

THE RECTOR.  [Gentle and embarrassed]  Run?  Well, Maud--I----

SHE.  The doctor would sew it up.  My maid can go round.

     [HANNIBAL.  appears at the open casement with the broken braces
     dangling from his collar.]

LADY ELLA.  Look!  Catch him!  Rector!

MAUD.  Bertie!  Catch him!

     [THE RECTOR seizes HANNIBAL, but is seen to be in difficulties
     with his garments.  HERSELF, who has gone out left, returns,
     with a leather strop in one hand and a pair of braces in the
     other.]

SHE.  Take this strop--he can't break that.  And would these be any
good to you?

     [SHE hands the braces to MAUD and goes out on to the verandah
     and hastily away.  MAUD, transferring the braces to the RECTOR,
     goes out, draws HANNIBAL from the casement window, and secures
     him with the strap.  THE RECTOR sits suddenly with the braces in
     his hands.  There is a moment's peace.]

LADY ELLA.  Splendid, isn't she?  I do admire her.

THE SQUIRE.  She's all there.

THE RECTOR.  [Feelingly]  Most kind.

     [He looks ruefully at the braces and at LADY ELLA.  A silence.
     MAUD reappears at the door and stands gazing at the braces.]

THE SQUIRE.  [Suddenly]  Eh?

MAUD.  Yes.

THE SQUIRE.  [Looking at his wife]  Ah!

LADY ELLA.  [Absorbed in EDWARD]  Poor darling!

THE SQUIRE.  [Bluntly]  Ella, the Rector wants to get up!

THE RECTOR.  [Gently]  Perhaps--just for a moment----

LADY ELLA.  Oh!  [She turns to the wall.]

     [THE RECTOR, screened by his WIFE, retires on to the verandah to
     adjust his garments.]

THE SQUIRE.  [Meditating]  So she's married!

LADY ELLA.  [Absorbed in EDWARD]  Why?

THE SQUIRE.  Braces.

LADY ELLA.  Oh!  Yes.  We ought to ask them to dinner, Tommy.

THE SQUIRE.  Ah!  Yes.  Wonder who they are?

     [THE RECTOR and MAUD reappear.]

THE RECTOR.  Really very good of her to lend her husband's--I was--
er--quite----

MAUD.  That'll do, Bertie.

     [THEY see HER returning along the verandah, followed by a sandy,
     red-faced gentleman in leather leggings, with a needle and
     cotton in his hand.]

HERSELF.  Caught the doctor just starting, So lucky!

LADY ELLA.  Oh!  Thank goodness!

DOCTOR.  How do, Lady Ella?  How do, Squire?--how do, Rector?  [To
MAUD]  How de do?  This the beastie?  I see.  Quite!  Who'll hold him
for me?

LADY ELLA.  Oh!  I!

HERSELF.  D'you know, I think I'd better.  It's so dreadful when it's
your own, isn't it?  Shall we go in here, doctor?  Come along, pretty
boy!

     [She takes EDWARD, and they pass into the room, left.]

LADY ELLA.  I dreaded it.  She is splendid!

THE SQUIRE.  Dogs take to her.  That's a sure sign.

THE RECTOR.  Little things--one can always tell.

THE SQUIRE.  Something very attractive about her--what!  Fine build
of woman.

MAUD.  I shall get hold of her for parish work.

THE RECTOR.  Ah!  Excellent--excellent!  Do!

THE SQUIRE.  Wonder if her husband shoots?  She seems
quite-er--quite----

LADY ELLA.  [Watching the door]  Quite!  Altogether charming; one of
the nicest faces I ever saw.

     [THE DOCTOR comes out alone.]

Oh!  Doctor--have you? is it----?

DOCTOR.  Right as rain!  She held him like an angel--he just licked
her, and never made a sound.

LADY ELLA.  Poor darling!  Can I----

     [She signs toward the door.]

DOCTOR.  Better leave 'em a minute.  She's moppin' 'im off.  [He
wrinkles his nose]  Wonderful clever hands!

THE SQUIRE.  I say--who is she?

DOCTOR.  [Looking from face to face with a dubious and rather
quizzical expression]  Who?  Well--there you have me!  All I know is
she's a first-rate nurse--been helpin' me with a case in Ditch Lane.
Nice woman, too--thorough good sort!  Quite an acquisition here.
H'm!  [Again that quizzical glance]  Excuse me hurryin' off--very
late.  Good-bye, Rector.  Good-bye, Lady Ella.  Good-bye!

     [He goes.  A silence.]

THE SQUIRE.  H'm!  I suppose we ought to be a bit careful.

     [JARVIS, flyman of the old school, has appeared on the
     verandah.]

JARVIS.  [To THE RECTOR]  Beg pardon, sir.  Is the little dog all
right?

MAUD.  Yes.

JARVIS.  [Touching his hat]  Seein' you've missed your train, m'm,
shall I wait, and take you 'ome again?

MAUD.  No.

JARVIS.  Cert'nly, m'm.  [He touches his hat with a circular gesture,
and is about to withdraw.]

LADY ELLA.  Oh, Jarvis--what's the name of the people here?

JARVIS.  Challenger's the name I've driven 'em in, my lady.

THE SQUIRE.  Challenger?  Sounds like a hound.  What's he like?

JARVIS.  [Scratching his head]  Wears a soft 'at, sir.

THE SQUIRE.  H'm!  Ah!

JARVIS.  Very nice gentleman, very nice lady.  'Elped me with my old
mare when she 'ad the 'ighsteria last week--couldn't 'a' been kinder
if they'd 'a' been angels from 'eaven.  Wonderful fond o' dumb
animals, the two of 'em.  I don't pay no attention to gossip, meself.

MAUD.  Gossip?  What gossip?

JARVIS.  [Backing]  Did I make use of the word, m'm?  You'll excuse
me, I'm sure.  There's always talk where there's newcomers.  I takes
people as I finds 'em.


THE RECTOR.  Yes, yes, Jarvis--quite--quite right!

JARVIS.  Yes, sir.  I've--I've got a 'abit that way at my time o'
life.

MAUD.  [Sharply]  How long have they been here, Jarvis?

JARVIS.  Well---er--a matter of three weeks, m'm.

     [A slight involuntary stir.]

[Apologetic]  Of course, in my profession I can't afford to take
notice of whether there's the trifle of a ring between 'em, as the
sayin' is.  'Tisn't 'ardly my business like.

     [A silence.]

LADY ELLA.  [Suddenly]  Er--thank you, Jarvis; you needn't wait.

JARVIS.  No, m'lady.  Your service, sir--service, m'm.

     [He goes.  A silence.]

THE SQUIRE.  [Drawing a little closer]  Three weeks?  I say--er--
wasn't.  there a book?

THE RECTOR.  [Abstracted]  Three weeks----I certainly haven't seen
them in church.

MAUD.  A trifle of a ring!

LADY ELLA.  [Impulsively]  Oh, bother!  I'm sure she's all right.
And if she isn't, I don't care.  She's been much too splendid.

THE SQUIRE.  Must think of the village.  Didn't quite like the
doctor's way of puttin' us off.

LADY ELLA.  The poor darling owes his life to her.

THE SQUIRE.  H'm!  Dash it!  Yes!  Can't forget the way she ran into
that stinkin' pond.

MAUD.  Had she a wedding-ring on?

     [They look at each other, but no one knows.]

LADY ELLA.  Well, I'm not going to be ungrateful.

THE SQUIRE.  It'd be dashed awkward--mustn't take a false step, Ella.

THE RECTOR.  And I've got his braces!  [He puts his hand to his
waist.]

MAUD.  [Warningly]  Bertie!

THE SQUIRE.  That's all right, Rector--we're goin' to be perfectly
polite, and--and--thank her, and all that.

LADY ELLA.  We can see she's a good sort.  What does it matter?

MAUD.  My dear Ella!  "What does it matter!"  We've got to know.

THE RECTOR.  We do want light.

THE SQUIRE.  I'll ring the bell.  [He rings.]

     [They look at each other aghast.]

LADY ELLA.  What did you ring for, Tommy?

THE SQUIRE.  [Flabbergasted]  God knows!

MAUD.  Somebody'll come.

THE SQUIRE.  Rector--you--you've got to----

MAUD.  Yes, Bertie.

THE RECTOR.  Dear me!  But--er--what--er----How?

THE SQUIRE.  [Deeply-to himself]  The whole thing's damn delicate.

     [The door right is opened and a MAID appears.  She is a
     determined-looking female.  They face her in silence.]

THE RECTOR.  Er--er----your master is not in?

THE MAID.  No.  'E's gone up to London.

THE RECTOR.  Er----Mr Challenger, I think?

THE MAID.  Yes.

THE RECTOR.  Yes!  Er----quite so

THE MAID.  [Eyeing them]  D'you want--Mrs Challenger?

THE RECTOR.  Ah! Not precisely----

THE SQUIRE.  [To him in a low, determined voice]  Go on.

THE RECTOR.  [Desperately]  I asked because there was a--a--Mr.
Challenger I used to know in the 'nineties, and I thought--you
wouldn't happen to know how long they've been married?  My friend
marr----

THE MAID.  Three weeks.

THE RECTOR.  Quite so--quite so!  I shall hope it will turn out to
be----Er--thank you--Ha!

LADY ELLA.  Our dog has been fighting with the Rector's, and Mrs
Challenger rescued him;  she's bathing his ear.  We're waiting to
thank her.  You needn't----

THE MAID.  [Eyeing them]  No.

     [She turns and goes out.]

THE SQUIRE.  Phew!  What a gorgon!  I say, Rector, did you really
know a Challenger in the 'nineties?

THE RECTOR.  [Wiping his brow]  No.

THE SQUIRE.  Ha!  Jolly good!

LADY ELLA.  Well, you see!--it's all right.

THE RECTOR.  Yes, indeed.  A great relief!

LADY ELLA.  [Moving to the door]  I must go in now.

THE SQUIRE.  Hold on!  You goin' to ask 'em to--to--anything?

LADY ELLA.  Yes.

MAUD.  I shouldn't.

LADY ELLA.  Why not?  We all like the look of her.

THE RECTOR.  I think we should punish ourselves for entertaining that
uncharitable thought.

LADY ELLA.  Yes.  It's horrible not having the courage to take people
as they are.

THE SQUIRE.  As they are?  H'm!  How can you till you know?

LADY ELLA.  Trust our instincts, of course.

THE SQUIRE.  And supposing she'd turned out not married--eh!

LADY ELLA!  She'd still be herself, wouldn't she?

MAUD.  Ella!

THE SQUIRE.  H'm!  Don't know about that.

LADY ELLA.  Of course she would, Tommy.

THE RECTOR.  [His hand stealing to his waist]  Well!  It's a great
weight off my----!

LADY ELLA.  There's the poor darling snuffling.  I must go in.

     [She knocks on the door.  It is opened, and EDWARD comes out
     briskly, with a neat little white pointed ear-cap on one ear.]

LADY ELLA.  Precious!

     [SHE HERSELF Comes out, now properly dressed in flax-blue
     linen.]

LADY ELLA.  How perfectly sweet of you to make him that!

SHE.  He's such a dear.  And the other poor dog?

MAUD.  Quite safe, thanks to your strop.

     [HANNIBAL appears at the window, with the broken strop dangling.
     Following her gaze, they turn and see him.]

MAUD.  Oh!  There, he's broken it.  Bertie!

SHE.  Let me!  [She seizes HANNIBAL.]

THE SQUIRE.  We're really most tremendously obliged to you.  Afraid
we've been an awful nuisance.

SHE.  Not a bit.  I love dogs.

THE SQUIRE.  Hope to make the acquaintance of Mr----of your husband.

LADY ELLA.  [To EDWARD, who is straining]

     [Gently, darling!  Tommy, take him.]

     [THE SQUIRE does so.]

MAUD.  [Approaching HANNIBAL.]  Is he behaving?

     [She stops short, and her face suddenly shoots forward at HER
     hands that are holding HANNIBAL'S neck.]

SHE.  Oh!  yes--he's a love.

MAUD.  [Regaining her upright position, and pursing her lips; in a
peculiar voice]  Bertie, take Hannibal.

THE RECTOR takes him.

LADY ELLA.  [Producing a card]  I can't be too grateful for all
you've done for my poor darling.  This is where we live.  Do come--
and see----

     [MAUD, whose eyes have never left those hands, tweaks LADY
     ELLA's dress.]

LADY ELLA.  That is--I'm--I----

     [HERSELF looks at LADY ELLA in surprise.]

THE SQUIRE.  I don't know if your husband shoots, but if----

     [MAUD, catching his eye, taps the third finger of her left
     hand.]

--er--he--does--er--er----

     [HERSELF looks at THE SQUIRE surprised.]

MAUD.  [Turning to her husband, repeats the gesture with the low and
simple word]  Look!

THE RECTOR.  [With round eyes, severely]  Hannibal!  [He lifts him
bodily and carries him away.]

MAUD.  Don't squeeze him, Bertie!

     [She follows through the French window.]

THE SQUIRE.  [Abruptly--of the unoffending EDWARD]  That dog'll be
forgettin' himself in a minute.

     [He picks up EDWARD and takes him out.]

     [LADY ELLA is left staring.]

LADY ELLA.  [At last]  You mustn't think, I----You mustn't think, we
----Oh!  I must just see they--don't let Edward get at Hannibal.

     [She skims away.]

     [HERSELF is left staring after LADY ELLA, in surprise.]

SHE.  What is the matter with them?

     [The door is opened.]

THE MAID.  [Entering and holding out a wedding-ring--severely]  You
left this, m'm, in the bathroom.

SHE.  [Looking, startled, at her finger]  Oh! [Taking it]  I hadn't
missed it.  Thank you, Martha.

     [THE MAID goes.]

     [A hand, slipping in at the casement window, softly lays a pair
     of braces on the windowsill.  SHE looks at the braces, then at
     the ring.  HER lip curls.]

Sue.  [Murmuring deeply]  Ah!


                              CURTAIN







DEFEAT

A TINY DRAMA



CHARACTERS

THE OFFICER.
THE GIRL.


                              DEFEAT

                  During the Great War.  Evening.



     An empty room.  The curtains drawn and gas turned low.  The
     furniture and walls give a colour-impression as of greens and
     beetroot.  There is a prevalence of plush.  A fireplace on the
     Left, a sofa, a small table; the curtained window is at the
     back.  On the table, in a common pot, stands a little plant of
     maidenhair fern, fresh and green.

     Enter from the door on the Right, a GIRL and a YOUNG OFFICER in
     khaki.  The GIRL wears a discreet dark dress, hat, and veil, and
     stained yellow gloves.  The YOUNG OFFICER is tall, with a fresh
     open face, and kindly eager blue eyes; he is a little lame.  The
     GIRL, who is evidently at home, moves towards the gas jet to
     turn it up, then changes her mind, and going to the curtains,
     draws them apart and throws up the window.  Bright moonlight
     comes flooding in.  Outside are seen the trees of a little
     Square.  She stands gazing out, suddenly turns inward with a
     shiver.

YOUNG OFF.  I say; what's the matter?  You were crying when I spoke
to you.

GIRL.  [With a movement of recovery]  Oh!  nothing.  The beautiful
evening-that's all.

YOUNG OFF.  [Looking at her]  Cheer up!

GIRL.  [Taking of hat and veil; her hair is yellowish and crinkly]
Cheer up!  You are not lonelee, like me.

YOUNG OFF.  [Limping to the window--doubtfully]  I say, how did you
how did you get into this?  Isn't it an awfully hopeless sort of
life?

GIRL.  Yees, it ees.  You haf been wounded?

YOUNG OFF.  Just out of hospital to-day.

GIRL.  The horrible war--all the misery is because of the war.  When
will it end?

YOUNG OFF.  [Leaning against the window-sill, looking at her
attentively]  I say, what nationality are you?

GIRL.  [With a quick look and away]  Rooshian.

YOUNG OFF.  Really!  I never met a Russian girl.  [The GIRL gives him
another quick look]  I say, is it as bad as they make out?

GIRL.  [Slipping her hand through his arm]  Not when I haf anyone as
ni-ice as you; I never haf had, though.  [She smiles, and her smile,
like her speech, is slow and confining]  You stopped because I was
sad, others stop because I am gay.  I am not fond of men at all.
When you know--you are not fond of them.

YOUNG OFF.  Well, you hardly know them at their best, do you?  You
should see them in the trenches.  By George!  They're simply
splendid--officers and men, every blessed soul.  There's never been
anything like it--just one long bit of jolly fine self-sacrifice;
it's perfectly amazing.

GIRL.  [Turning her blue-grey eyes on him]  I expect you are not the
last at that.  You see in them what you haf in yourself, I think.

YOUNG OFF.  Oh, not a bit; you're quite out!  I assure you when we
made the attack where I got wounded there wasn't a single man in my
regiment who wasn't an absolute hero.  The way they went in--never
thinking of themselves--it was simply ripping.

GIRL.  [In a queer voice]  It is the same too, perhaps, with--the
enemy.

YOUNG OFF.  Oh, yes!  I know that.

GIRL.  Ah!  You are not a mean man.  How I hate mean men!

YOUNG OFF.  Oh! they're not mean really--they simply don't
understand.

GIRL.  Oh!  You are a babee--a good babee aren't you?

     [The YOUNG OFFICER doesn't like this, and frowns.  The GIRL
     looks a little scared.]

GIRL.  [Clingingly]  But I li-ke you for it.  It is so good to find a
ni-ice man.

YOUNG OFF.  [Abruptly]  About being lonely?  Haven't you any Russian
friends?

GIRL.  [Blankly]  Rooshian?  No.  [Quickly]  The town is so beeg.
Were you at the concert before you spoke to me?

YOUNG OFF.  Yes.

GIRL.  I too.  I lofe music.

YOUNG OFF.  I suppose all Russians do.

GIRL.  [With another quick look tat him]  I go there always when I
haf the money.

YOUNG OFF.  What!  Are you as badly on the rocks as that?

GIRL.  Well, I haf just one shilling now!

     [She laughs bitterly.  The laugh upsets him; he sits on the
     window-sill, and leans forward towards her.]

YOUNG OFF.  I say, what's your name?

GIRL.  May.  Well, I call myself that.  It is no good asking yours.

YOUNG OFF.  [With a laugh]  You're a distrustful little soul; aren't
you?

GIRL.  I haf reason to be, don't you think?

YOUNG OFF.  Yes.  I suppose you're bound to think us all brutes.

GIRL.  [Sitting on a chair close to the window where the moonlight
falls on one powdered cheek]  Well, I haf a lot of reasons to be
afraid all my time.  I am dreadfully nervous now; I am not trusding
anybody.  I suppose you haf been killing lots of Germans?

YOUNG OFF.  We never know, unless it happens to be hand to hand; I
haven't come in for that yet.

GIRL.  But you would be very glad if you had killed some.

YOUNG OFF.  Oh, glad?  I don't think so.  We're all in the same boat,
so far as that's concerned.  We're not glad to kill each other--not
most of us.  We do our job--that's all.

GIRL.  Oh!  It is frightful.  I expect I haf my brothers killed.

YOUNG OFF.  Don't you get any news ever?

GIRL.  News?  No indeed, no news of anybody in my country.  I might
not haf a country; all that I ever knew is gone; fader, moder,
sisters, broders, all;  never any more I shall see them, I suppose,
now.  The war it breaks and breaks, it breaks hearts.  [She gives a
little snarl]  Do you know what I was thinking when you came up to
me?  I was thinking of my native town, and the river in the
moonlight.  If I could see it again I would be glad.  Were you ever
homeseeck?

YOUNG OFF.  Yes, I have been--in the trenches.  But one's ashamed
with all the others.

GIRL.  Ah!  Yees!  Yees!  You are all comrades there.  What is it
like for me here, do you think, where everybody hates and despises
me, and would catch me and put me in prison, perhaps.  [Her breast
heaves.]

YOUNG OFF.  [Leaning forward and patting her knee]  Sorry--sorry.

GIRL.  [In a smothered voice]  You are the first who has been kind to
me for so long!  I will tell you the truth--I am not Rooshian at all
--I am German.

YOUNG OFF.  [Staring]  My dear girl, who cares.   We aren't fighting
against women.

GIRL.  [Peering at him]  Another man said that to me.  But he was
thinkin' of his fun.  You are a veree ni-ice boy; I am so glad I met
you.  You see the good in people, don't you?  That is the first thing
in the world--because--there is really not much good in people, you
know.

YOUNG OFF.  [Smiling]  You are a dreadful little cynic!  But of
course you are!

GIRL.  Cyneec?  How long do you think I would live if I was not a
cyneec?  I should drown myself to-morrow.  Perhaps there are good
people, but, you see, I don't know them.

YOUNG OFF.  I know lots.

GIRL.  [Leaning towards him]  Well now--see, ni-ice boy--you haf
never been in a hole, haf you?

YOUNG OFF.  I suppose not a real hole.

GIRL.  No, I should think not, with your face.  Well, suppose I am
still a good girl, as I was once, you know; and you took me to your
mother and your sisters and you said: "Here is a little German girl
that has no work, and no money, and no friends."  They will say: "Oh!
how sad!  A German girl!"  And they will go and wash their hands.

     [The OFFICER, is silent, staring at her.]

GIRL.  You see.

YOUNG OFF.  [Muttering]  I'm sure there are people.

GIRL.  No.  They would not take a German, even if she was good.
Besides, I don't want to be good any more--I am not a humbug; I have
learned to be bad.  Aren't you going to kees me, ni-ice boy?

She puts her face close to his.  Her eyes trouble him; he draws back.

YOUNG OFF.  Don't.  I'd rather not, if you don't mind.  [She looks at
him fixedly, with a curious inquiring stare]  It's stupid.  I don't
know--but you see, out there, and in hospital, life's different.
It's--it's--it isn't mean, you know.  Don't come too close.

GIRL.  Oh!  You are fun----[She stops]  Eesn't it light.  No Zeps
to-night.  When they burn--what a 'orrble death!  And all the people
cheer.  It is natural.   Do you hate us veree much?

YOUNG OFF.  [Turning sharply]  Hate?  I don't know.

GIRL.  I don't hate even the English--I despise them.  I despise my
people too; even more, because they began this war.  Oh! I know that.
I despise all the peoples.  Why haf they made the world so miserable
--why haf they killed all our lives--hundreds and thousands and
millions of lives--all for noting?  They haf made a bad world--
everybody hating, and looking for the worst everywhere.  They haf
made me bad, I know.  I believe no more in anything.  What is there
to believe in?  Is there a God?  No!  Once I was teaching little
English children their prayers--isn't that funnee?  I was reading to
them about Christ and love.  I believed all those things.  Now I
believe noting at all--no one who is not a fool or a liar can
believe.  I would like to work in a 'ospital; I would like to go and
'elp poor boys like you.  Because I am a German they would throw me
out a 'undred times, even if I was good.  It is the same in Germany,
in France, in Russia, everywhere.  But do you think I will believe in
Love and Christ and God and all that--Not I!  I think we are animals
--that's all!  Oh, yes! you fancy it is because my life has spoiled
me.  It is not that at all--that is not the worst thing in life.  The
men I take are not ni-ice, like you, but it's their nature; and--they
help me to live, which is something for me, anyway.  No, it is the
men who think themselves great and good and make the  war with their
talk and their hate, killing us all--killing all the boys like you,
and keeping poor People in prison, and telling us to go on hating;
and all these dreadful cold-blood creatures who write in the papers
--the same in my country--just the same; it is because of all of them
that I think we are only animals.

     [The YOUNG OFFICER gets up, acutely miserable.]

     [She follows him with her eyes.]

GIRL.  Don't mind me talkin', ni-ice boy.  I don't know anyone to
talk to.  If you don't like it, I can be quiet as a mouse.

YOUNG OFF.  Oh, go on!  Talk away; I'm not obliged to believe you,
and I don't.

     [She, too, is on her feet now, leaning against the wall; her
     dark dress and white face just touched by the slanting
     moonlight.  Her voice comes again, slow and soft and bitter.]

GIRL.  Well, look here, ni-ice boy, what sort of world is it, where
millions are being tortured, for no fault of theirs, at all?  A
beautiful world, isn't it?  'Umbog!  Silly rot, as you boys call it.
You say it is all "Comrades" and braveness out there at the front,
and people don't think of themselves.  Well, I don't think of myself
veree much.  What does it matter?  I am lost now, anyway.  But I
think of my people at 'ome; how they suffer and grieve.  I think of
all the poor people there, and here, how lose those they love, and
all the poor prisoners.  Am I not to think of them?  And if I do, how
am I to believe it a beautiful world, ni-ice boy?

     [He stands very still, staring at her.]

GIRL.  Look here!  We haf one life each, and soon it is over.  Well,
I think that is lucky.

YOUNG OFF.  No!  There's more than that.

GIRL.  [Softly]  Ah!  You think the war is fought for the future; you
are giving your lives for a better world, aren't you?

YOUNG OFF.  We must fight till we win.

GIRL.  Till you win.  My people think that too.  All the peoples
think that if they win the world will be better.  But it will not,
you know; it will be much worse, anyway.

     [He turns away from her, and catches up his cap.  Her voice
     follows him.]

GIRL.  I don't care which win.  I don't care if my country is beaten.
I despise them all--animals--animals.  Ah!  Don't go, ni-ice boy; I
will be quiet now.

     [He has taken some notes from his tunic pocket; he puts then on
     the table and goes up to her.]

YOUNG OFF.  Good-night.

GIRL.  [Plaintively]  Are you really going?  Don't you like me
enough?

YOUNG OFF.  Yes, I like you.

GIRL.  It is because I am German, then?

YOUNG OFF.  No.

GIRL.  Then why won't you stay?

YOUNG OFF.  [With a shrug]  If you must know--because you upset me.

GIRL.  Won't you kees me once?

     [He bends, puts his lips to her forehead.  But as he takes them
     away she throws her head back, presses her mouth to his, and
     clings to him.]

YOUNG OFF.  [Sitting down suddenly]  Don't!  I don't want to feel a
brute.

GIRL.  [Laughing]  You are a funny boy; but you are veree good.  Talk
to me a little, then.  No one talks to me.  Tell me, haf you seen
many German prisoners?

YOUNG OFF.  [Sighing]  A good many.

GIRL.  Any from the Rhine?

YOUNG OFF.  Yes, I think so.

GIRL.  Were they veree sad?

YOUNG OFF.  Some were; some were quite glad to be taken.

GIRL.  Did you ever see the Rhine?  It will be wonderful to-night.
The moonlight will be the same there, and in Rooshia too, and France,
everywhere; and the trees will look the same as here, and people will
meet under them and make love just as here.  Oh! isn't it stupid, the
war?  As if it were not good to be alive!

YOUNG OFF.  You can't tell how good it is to be alive till you're
facing death.  You don't live till then.  And when a whole lot of you
feel like that--and are ready to give their lives for each other,
it's worth all the rest of life put together.

     [He stops, ashamed of such, sentiment before this girl, who
     believes in nothing.]

GIRL.  [Softly]  How were you wounded, ni-ice boy?

YOUNG OFF.  Attacking across open ground: four machine bullets got me
at one go off.

GIRL.  Weren't you veree frightened when they ordered you to attack?

     [He shakes his head and laughs.]

YOUNG OFF.  It was great.  We did laugh that morning.  They got me
much too soon, though--a swindle.

GIRL.  [Staring at him]  You laughed?

YOUNG OFF.  Yes.  And what do you think was the first thing I was
conscious of next morning?  My old Colonel bending over me and giving
me a squeeze of lemon.  If you knew my Colonel you'd still believe in
things.  There is something, you know, behind all this evil.  After
all, you can only die once, and, if it's for your country--all the
better!

     [Her face, in the moonlight, with, intent eyes touched up with
     black, has a most strange, other-world look.]

GIRL.  No; I believe in nothing, not even in my country.  My heart is
dead.

YOUNG OFF.  Yes; you think so, but it isn't, you know, or you
wouldn't have 'been crying when I met you.

GIRL.  If it were not dead, do you think I could live my life-walking
the streets every night, pretending to like strange men; never
hearing a kind word; never talking, for fear I will be known for a
German?  Soon I shall take to drinking; then I shall be "Kaput" veree
quick.  You see, I am practical; I see things clear.  To-night I am a
little emotional; the moon is funny, you know.  But I live for myself
only, now.  I don't care for anything or anybody.

YOUNG OFF.  All the same; just now you were pitying your folk at
home, and prisoners and that.

GIRL.  Yees; because they suffer.  Those who suffer are like me--I
pity myself, that's all; I am different from your English women.  I
see what I am doing; I do not let my mind become a turnip just
because I am no longer moral.

YOUNG OFF.  Nor your heart either, for all you say.

GIRL.  Ni-ice boy, you are veree obstinate.  But all that about love
is 'umbog.  We love ourselves, noting more.

     At that intense soft bitterness in her voice, he gets up,
     feeling stifled, and stands at the window.  A newspaper boy some
     way off is calling his wares.  The GIRL's fingers slip between
     his own, and stay unmoving.  He looks round into her face.  In
     spite of make-up it has a queer, unholy, touching beauty.

YOUNG OFF.  [With an outburst]  No; we don't only love ourselves;
there is more.  I can't explain, but there's something great; there's
kindness--and--and-----

     [The shouting of newspaper boys grows louder and their cries,
     passionately vehement, clash into each other and obscure each
     word.  His head goes up to listen; her hand tightens within his
     arm--she too is listening.  The cries come nearer, hoarser, more
     shrill and clamorous; the empty moonlight outside seems suddenly
     crowded with figures, footsteps, voices, and a fierce distant
     cheering.  "Great victory--great victory!  Official!  British!
     'Eavy defeat of the 'Uns!  Many thousand prisoners!  'Eavy
     defeat!" It speeds by, intoxicating, filling him with a fearful
     joy; he leans far out, waving his cap and cheering like a
     madman; the night seems to flutter and vibrate and answer.  He
     turns to rush down into the street, strikes against something
     soft, and recoils.  The GIRL stands with hands clenched, and
     face convulsed, panting.  All confused with the desire to do
     something, he stoops to kiss her hand.  She snatches away her
     fingers, sweeps up the notes he has put down, and holds them out
     to him.]

GIRL.  Take them--I will not haf your English money--take them.

     Suddenly she tears them across, twice, thrice, lets the bits.
     flutter to the floor, and turns her back on him.  He stands
     looking at her leaning against the plush-covered table, her head
     down, a dark figure in a dark room, with the moonlight
     sharpening her outline.  Hardly a moment he stays, then makes
     for the door.  When he is gone, she still stands there, her chin
     on her breast, with the sound in her ears of cheering, of
     hurrying feet, and voices crying: "'Eavy Defeat!" stands, in the
     centre of a pattern made by the fragments of the torn-up notes,
     staring out unto the moonlight, seeing not this hated room and
     the hated Square outside, but a German orchard, and herself, a
     little girl, plucking apples, a big dog beside her; and a
     hundred other pictures, such as the drowning see.  Then she
     sinks down on the floor, lays her forehead on the dusty carpet,
     and presses her body to it.  Mechanically, she sweeps together
     the scattered fragments of notes, assembling them with the dust
     into a little pile, as of fallen leaves, and dabbling in it with
     her fingers, while the tears run down her cheeks.

GIRL.  Defeat!  Der Vaterland!  Defeat!. . . .  One shillin'!

     [Then suddenly, in the moonlight, she sits up, and begins to
     sing with all her might "Die Wacht am Rhein."  And outside men
     pass, singing: "Rule, Britannia!"]


                              CURTAIN







THE SUN

A SCENE




CHARACTERS

THE GIRL.
THE MAN.
THE SOLDIER.


                              THE SUN

     A Girl, sits crouched over her knees on a stile close to a
     river.  A MAN with a silver badge stands beside her, clutching
     the worn top plank.  THE GIRL'S level brows are drawn together;
     her eyes see her memories.  THE MAN's eyes see THE GIRL; he has
     a dark, twisted face.  The bright sun shines; the quiet river
     flows; the Cuckoo is calling; the mayflower is in bloom along
     the hedge that ends in the stile on the towing-path.

THE GIRL.  God knows what 'e'll say, Jim.

THE MAN.  Let 'im.  'E's come too late, that's all.

THE GIRL.  He couldn't come before.  I'm frightened.  'E was fond o'
me.

THE MAN.  And aren't I fond of you?

THE GIRL.  I ought to 'a waited, Jim; with 'im in the fightin'.

THE MAN.  [Passionately]  And what about me?  Aren't I been in the
fightin'--earned all I could get?

THE GIRL.  [Touching him]  Ah!

THE MAN.  Did you--?  [He cannot speak the words.]

THE GIRL.  Not like you, Jim--not like you.

THE MAN.  Have a spirit, then.

THE GIRL.  I promised him.

THE MAN.  One man's luck's another's poison.

THE GIRL.  I ought to 'a waited.  I never thought he'd come back from
the fightin'.

THE MAN.  [Grimly]  Maybe 'e'd better not 'ave.

THE GIRL.  [Looking back along the tow-path]  What'll he be like, I
wonder?

THE MAN.  [Gripping her shoulder]  Daisy, don't you never go back on
me, or I should kill you, and 'im too.

     [THE GIRL looks at him, shivers, and puts her lips to his.]

THE GIRL.  I never could.

THE MAN.  Will you run for it?  'E'd never find us!

     [THE GIRL shakes her head.]

THE MAN [Dully]  What's the good o' stayin'?  The world's wide.

THE GIRL.  I'd rather have it off me mind, with him home.

THE MAN.  [Clenching his hands]  It's temptin' Providence.

THE GIRL.  What's the time, Jim?

THE MAN.  [Glancing at the sun]  'Alf past four.

THE GIRL.  [Looking along the towing-path]  He said four o'clock.
Jim, you better go.

THE MAN.  Not I.  I've not got the wind up.  I've seen as much of
hell as he has, any day.  What like is he?

THE GIRL.  [Dully]  I dunno, just.  I've not seen him these three
years.  I dunno no more, since I've known you.

THE MAN.  Big or little chap?

THE GIRL.  'Bout your size.  Oh! Jim, go along!

THE MAN.  No fear!  What's a blighter like that to old Fritz's
shells?  We didn't shift when they was comin'.  If you'll go, I'll
go; not else.

     [Again she shakes her head.]

THE GIRL.  Jim, do you love me true?

     [For answer THE MAN takes her avidly in his arms.]

I ain't ashamed--I ain't ashamed.  If 'e could see me 'eart.

THE MAN.  Daisy!  If I'd known you out there, I never could 'a stuck
it.  They'd 'a got me for a deserter.  That's how I love you!

THE GIRL.  Jim, don't lift your hand to 'im!  Promise!

THE MAN.  That's according.

THE GIRL.  Promise!

THE MAN.  If 'e keeps quiet, I won't.  But I'm not accountable--not
always, I tell you straight--not since I've been through that.

THE GIRL.  [With a shiver]  Nor p'raps he isn't.

THE MAN.  Like as not.  It takes the lynch pins out, I tell you.

THE GIRL.  God 'elp us!

THE MAN.  [Grimly]  Ah!  We said that a bit too often.  What we want
we take, now; there's no one else to give it us, and there's no
fear'll stop us; we seen the bottom of things.

THE GIRL.  P'raps he'll say that too.

THE MAN.  Then it'll be 'im or me.

THE GIRL.  I'm frightened:

THE MAN.  [Tenderly]  No, Daisy, no!  The river's handy.  One more or
less.  'E shan't 'arm you; nor me neither.  [He takes out a knife.]

THE GIRL.  [Seizing his hand]  Oh, no!  Give it to me, Jim!

THE MAN.  [Smiling]  No fear!  [He puts it away]  Shan't 'ave no need
for it like as not.  All right, little Daisy; you can't be expected
to see things like what we do.  What's life, anyway?  I've seen a
thousand lives taken in five minutes.  I've seen dead men on the
wires like flies on a flypaper.  I've been as good as dead meself a
hundred times.  I've killed a dozen men.  It's nothin'.  He's safe,
if 'e don't get my blood up.  If he does, nobody's safe; not 'im, nor
anybody else; not even you.  I'm speakin' sober.

THE GIRL.  [Softly]  Jim, you won't go fightin' in the sun, with the
birds all callin'?

THE MAN.  That depends on 'im.  I'm not lookin' for it.  Daisy, I
love you.  I love your hair.  I love your eyes.  I love you.

THE GIRL.  And I love you, Jim.  I don't want nothin' more than you
in all the world.

THE MAN.  Amen to that, my dear.  Kiss me close!

     The sound of a voice singing breaks in on their embrace.  THE
     GIRL starts from his arms, and looks behind her along the
     towing-path.  THE MAN draws back against, the hedge, fingering
     his side, where the knife is hidden.  The song comes nearer.


                   "I'll be right there to-night,
                    Where the fields are snowy white;
                    Banjos ringing, darkies singing,
                    All the world seems bright."

THE GIRL.  It's him!

THE MAN.  Don't get the wind up, Daisy.  I'm here!

     [The singing stops.  A man's voice says "Christ!  It's Daisy;
     it's little Daisy 'erself!"  THE GIRL stands rigid.  The figure
     of a soldier appears on the other side of the stile.  His cap is
     tucked into his belt, his hair is bright in the sunshine; he is
     lean, wasted, brown, and laughing.]

SOLDIER.  Daisy!  Daisy!  Hallo, old pretty girl!

     [THE GIRL does not move, barring the way, as it were.]

THE GIRL.  Hallo, Jack! [Softly]  I got things to tell you!

SOLDIER.  What sort o' things, this lovely day?  Why, I got things
that'd take me years to tell.  Have you missed me, Daisy?

THE GIRL.  You been so long.

SOLDIER.  So I 'ave.  My Gawd!  It's a way they 'ave in the Army.  I
said when I got out of it I'd laugh.  Like as the sun itself I used
to think of you, Daisy, when the trumps was comin' over, and the wind
was up.  D'you remember that last night in the wood?  "Come back and
marry me quick, Jack."  Well, here I am--got me pass to heaven.  No
more fightin', no more drillin', no more sleepin' rough.  We can get
married now, Daisy.  We can live soft an' 'appy.  Give us a kiss, my
dear.

THE GIRL.  [Drawing back]  No.

SOLDIER.  [Blankly]  Why not?

     [THE MAN, with a swift movement steps along the hedge to THE
     GIRL'S side.]

THE MAN.  That's why, soldier.

SOLDIER.  [Leaping over the stile]  'Oo are you, Pompey?  The sun
don't shine in your inside, do it?  'Oo is he, Daisy?

THE GIRL.  My man.

SOLDIER.  Your-man!  Lummy!  "Taffy was a Welshman, Taffy was a
thief!"  Well, mate!  So you've been through it, too.  I'm laughin'
this mornin' as luck will 'ave it.  Ah!  I can see your knife.

THE MAN.  [Who has half drawn his knife]  Don't laugh at me, I tell
you.

SOLDIER.  Not at you, not at you.  [He looks from one to the other]
I'm laughin' at things in general.  Where did you get it, mate?

THE MAN.  [Watchfully]  Through the lung.

SOLDIER.  Think o' that!  An' I never was touched.  Four years an'
never was touched.  An' so you've come an' took my girl!  Nothin'
doin'!  Ha!  [Again he looks from one to the other-then away]  Well!
The world's before me!  [He laughs]  I'll give you Daisy for a lung
protector.

THE MAN.  [Fiercely]  You won't.  I've took her.

SOLDIER.  That's all right, then.  You keep 'er.  I've got a laugh in
me you can't put out, black as you look!  Good-bye, little Daisy!

     [THE GIRL makes a movement towards him.]

THE MAN.  Don't touch 'im!

     [THE GIRL stands hesitating, and suddenly bursts into tears.]

SOLDIER.  Look 'ere, mate; shake 'ands!  I don't want to see a girl
cry, this day of all, with the sun shinin'.  I seen too much of
sorrer.  You and me've been at the back of it.  We've 'ad our whack.
Shake!

THE MAN.  Who are you kiddin'?  You never loved 'er!

SOLDIER.  [After a long moment's pause]  Oh!  I thought I did.

THE MAN.  I'll fight you for her.

     [He drops his knife. ]

SOLDIER.  [Slowly]  Mate, you done your bit, an' I done mine.  It's
took us two ways, seemin'ly.

THE GIRL.  [Pleading]  Jim!  `

THE MAN.  [With clenched fists]  I don't want 'is charity.  I only
want what I can take.

SOLDIER.  Daisy, which of us will you 'ave?

THE GIRL.  [Covering her face]  Oh!  Him!

SOLDIER.  You see, mate!  Put your 'ands down.  There's nothin' for
it but a laugh.  You an' me know that.  Laugh, mate!

THE MAN.  You blarsted----!

     [THE GIRL springs to him and stops his mouth.]

SOLDIER.  It's no use, mate.  I can't do it.  I said I'd laugh
to-day, and laugh I will.  I've come through that, an' all the stink
of it; I've come through sorrer.  Never again!  Cheerio, mate!  The
sun's a-shinin'!  He turns away.

THE GIRL.  Jack, don't think too 'ard of me!

SOLDIER.  [Looking back]  No fear, my dear!  Enjoy your fancy!  So
long!  Gawd bless you both!

He sings, and goes along the path, and the song fades away.

              "I'll be right there to-night
               Where the fields are snowy white;
               Banjos ringing, darkies singing
               All the world seems bright!"



THE MAN.  'E's mad!

THE GIRL. [Looking down the path with her hands clasped]  The sun has
touched 'im, Jim!


                         CURTAIN






PUNCH AND GO

A LITTLE COMEDY

"Orpheus with his lute made trees
And the mountain tope that freeze....."




PERSONS OF THE PLAY

JAMES G. FRUST ..............The Boss
E. BLEWITT VANE .............The Producer
MR. FORESON .................The Stage Manager
"ELECTRICS"..................The Electrician
"PROPS" .....................The Property Man
HERBERT .....................The Call Boy




OF THE PLAY WITHIN THE PLAY

GUY TOONE ...................The Professor
VANESSA HELLGROVE ...........The Wife
GEORGE FLEETWAY .............Orpheus
MAUDE HOPKINS ...............The Faun




SCENE: The Stage of a Theatre.

Action continuous, though the curtain is momentarily lowered
according to that action.



                         PUNCH AND GO

     The Scene is the stage of the theatre set for the dress
     rehearsal of the little play: "Orpheus with his Lute." The
     curtain is up and the audience, though present, is not supposed
     to be.  The set scene represents the end section of a room, with
     wide French windows, Back Centre, fully opened on to an apple
     orchard in bloom.  The Back Wall with these French windows, is
     set only about ten feet from the footlights, and the rest of the
     stage is orchard.  What is visible of the room would indicate
     the study of a writing man of culture.  ( Note.--If found
     advantageous for scenic purposes, this section of room can be
     changed to a broad verandah or porch with pillars supporting its
     roof.) In the wall, Stage Left, is a curtained opening, across
     which the curtain is half drawn.  Stage Right of the French
     windows is a large armchair turned rather towards the window,
     with a book rest attached, on which is a volume of the
     Encyclopedia Britannica, while on a stool alongside are writing
     materials such as a man requires when he writes with a pad on
     his knees.  On a little table close by is a reading-lamp with a
     dark green shade.  A crude light from the floats makes the stage
     stare; the only person on it is MR FORESON, the stage manager,
     who is standing in the centre looking upwards as if waiting for
     someone to speak.  He is a short, broad man, rather blank, and
     fatal.  From the back of the auditorium, or from an empty box,
     whichever is most convenient, the producer, MR BLEWITT VANE, a
     man of about thirty four, with his hair brushed back, speaks.

VANE.  Mr Foreson?

FORESON.  Sir?

VANE.  We'll do that lighting again.

     [FORESON walks straight of the Stage into the wings Right.]

     [A pause.]

Mr Foreson!  [Crescendo]  Mr Foreson.

     [FORESON walks on again from Right and shades his eyes.]

VANE.  For goodness sake, stand by!  We'll do that lighting again.
Check your floats.

FORESON.  [Speaking up into the prompt wings]  Electrics!

VOICE OF ELECTRICS.  Hallo!

FORESON.  Give it us again.  Check your floats.

     [The floats go down, and there is a sudden blinding glare of
     blue lights, in which FORESON looks particularly ghastly.]

VANE.  Great Scott!  What the blazes!  Mr Foreson!

     [FORESON walks straight out into the wings Left.  Crescendo.]

Mr Foreson!

FORESON.  [Re-appearing]  Sir?

VANE.  Tell Miller to come down.

FORESON.  Electrics!  Mr Blewitt Vane wants to speak to you.  Come
down!

VANE.  Tell Herbert to sit in that chair.

     [FORESON walks straight out into the Right wings.]

Mr Foreson!

FORESON.  [Re-appearing]  Sir?

VANE.  Don't go off the stage.  [FORESON mutters.]

     [ELECTRICS appears from the wings, Stage Left.  He is a dark,
     thin-faced man with rather spikey hair.]

ELECTRICS.  Yes, Mr Vane?

VANE.  Look!

ELECTRICS.  That's what I'd got marked, Mr Vane.

VANE.  Once for all, what I want is the orchard in full moonlight,
and the room dark except for the reading lamp.  Cut off your front
battens.

     [ELECTRICS withdraws Left.  FORESON walks off the Stage into the
     Right wings.]

Mr Foreson!

FORESON.  [Re-appearing]  Sir?

VANE.  See this marked right.  Now, come on with it!  I want to get
some beauty into this!

     [While he is speaking, HERBERT, the call boy, appears from the
     wings Right, a mercurial youth of about sixteen with a wide
     mouth.]

FORESON.  [Maliciously]  Here you are, then, Mr Vane.  Herbert, sit
in that chair.

     [HERBERT sits an the armchair, with an air of perfect peace.]

VANE.  Now!  [All the lights go out.  In a wail]  Great Scott!

     [A throaty chuckle from FORESON in the darkness.  The light
     dances up, flickers, shifts, grows steady, falling on the
     orchard outside.  The reading lamp darts alight and a piercing
     little glare from it strikes into the auditorium away from
     HERBERT.]

[In a terrible voice]  Mr Foreson.

FORESON.  Sir?

VANE.  Look--at--that--shade!

     [FORESON mutters, walks up to it and turns it round so that the
     light shines on HERBERT'S legs.]

On his face, on his face!

     [FORESON turns the light accordingly.]

FORESON.  Is that what you want, Mr Vane?

VANE.  Yes.  Now, mark that!

FORESON.  [Up into wings Right]  Electrics!

ELECTRICS.  Hallo!

FORESON.  Mark that!

VANE.  My God!

     [The blue suddenly becomes amber.]

     [The blue returns.  All is steady.  HERBERT is seen diverting
     himself with an imaginary cigar.]

Mr Foreson.

FORESON.  Sir?

VANE.  Ask him if he's got that?

FORESON.  Have you got that?

ELECTRICS.  Yes.

VANE.  Now pass to the change.  Take your floats off altogether.

FORESON.  [Calling up]  Floats out.  [They go out.]

VANE.  Cut off that lamp.  [The lamp goes out]  Put a little amber in
your back batten.  Mark that!  Now pass to the end.  Mr Foreson!

FORESON.  Sir?

VANE.  Black out

FORESON.  [Calling up]  Black out!

     [The lights go out.]

VANE.  Give us your first lighting-lamp on.  And then the two
changes.  Quick as you can.   Put some pep into it.  Mr Foreson!

FORESON.  Sir?

VANE.  Stand for me where Miss Hellgrove comes in.  FORESON crosses
to the window.  No, no!--by the curtain.

     [FORESON takes his stand by the curtain; and suddenly the three
     lighting effects are rendered quickly and with miraculous
     exactness.]

Good!  Leave it at that.  We'll begin.  Mr Foreson, send up to Mr
Frust.

     [He moves from the auditorium and ascends on to the Stage, by
     some steps Stage Right.]

FORESON.  Herb!  Call the boss, and tell beginners to stand by.
Sharp, now!

     [HERBERT gets out of the chair, and goes off Right.]

     [FORESON is going off Left as VANE mounts the Stage.]

VANE.  Mr Foreson.

FORESON.  [Re-appearing]  Sir?

VANE.  I want "Props."

FORESON.  [In a stentorian voice]  "Props!"

     [Another moth-eaten man appears through the French windows.]

VANE.  Is that boulder firm?

PROPS.  [Going to where, in front of the back-cloth, and apparently
among its apple trees, lies the counterfeitment of a mossy boulder;
he puts his foot on it]  If, you don't put too much weight on it,
sir.

VANE.  It won't creak?

PROPS.  Nao.  [He mounts on it, and a dolorous creaking arises.]

VANE.  Make that right.  Let me see that lute.

     [PROPS produces a property lute.  While they scrutinize it, a
     broad man with broad leathery clean-shaven face and small mouth,
     occupied by the butt end of a cigar, has come on to the stage
     from Stage Left, and stands waiting to be noticed.]

PROPS.  [Attracted by the scent of the cigar]  The Boss, Sir.

VANE.  [Turning to "PROPS"]  That'll do, then.

     ["PROPS" goes out through the French windows.]

VANE.  [To FRUST]  Now, sir, we're all ready for rehearsal of
"Orpheus with his Lute."

FRUST.  [In a cosmopolitan voice]  "Orphoos with his loot!"  That his
loot, Mr Vane?  Why didn't he pinch something more precious?  Has
this high-brow curtain-raiser of yours got any "pep" in it?

VANE.  It has charm.

FRUST.  I'd thought of "Pop goes the Weasel" with little Miggs.  We
kind of want a cock-tail before "Louisa loses," Mr Vane.

VANE.  Well, sir, you'll see.

FRUST.  This your lighting?  It's a bit on the spiritool side.  I've
left my glass.  Guess I'll sit in the front row.  Ha'f a minute.  Who
plays this Orphoos?

VANE.  George Fleetway.

FRUST.  Has he got punch?

VANE.  It's a very small part.

FRUST.  Who are the others?

VANE.  Guy Toone plays the Professor; Vanessa Hellgrove his wife;
Maude Hopkins the faun.

FRUST.  H'm!  Names don't draw.

VANE.  They're not expensive, any of them.  Miss Hellgrove's a find,
I think.

FRUST.  Pretty?

VANE.  Quite.

FRUST.  Arty?

VANE.  [Doubtfully]  No.  [With resolution]  Look here, Mr FRUST,
it's no use your expecting another "Pop goes the Weasel."

FRUST.  We-ell, if it's got punch and go, that'll be enough for me.
Let's get to it!

     [He extinguishes his cigar and descends the steps and sits in
     the centre of the front row of the stalls.]

VANE.  Mr Foreson?

FORESON.  [Appearing through curtain, Right]  Sir?

VANE.  Beginners.  Take your curtain down.

     [He descends the steps and seats himself next to FRUST.  The
     curtain goes down.]

     [A woman's voice is heard singing very beautifully Sullivan's
     song: "Orpheus with his lute, with his lute made trees and the
     mountain tops that freeze'." etc.]

FRUST.  Some voice!

     The curtain rises. In the armchair the PROFESSOR is yawning,
     tall, thin, abstracted, and slightly grizzled in the hair.  He
     has a pad of paper over his knee, ink on the stool to his right
     and the Encyclopedia volume on the stand to his left-barricaded
     in fact by the article he is writing.  He is reading a page over
     to himself, but the words are drowned in the sound of the song
     his WIFE is singing in the next room, partly screened off by the
     curtain.  She finishes, and stops.  His voice can then be heard
     conning the words of his article.

PROF.  "Orpheus symbolized the voice of Beauty, the call of life,
luring us mortals with his song back from the graves we dig for
ourselves.  Probably the ancients realized this neither more nor less
than we moderns.  Mankind has not changed.  The civilized being still
hides the faun and the dryad within its broadcloth and its silk.  And
yet"--[He stops, with a dried-up air-rather impatiently]  Go on, my
dear!  It helps the atmosphere.

     [The voice of his WIFE begins again, gets as far as "made them
     sing" and stops dead, just as the PROFESSOR's pen is beginning
     to scratch.  And suddenly, drawing the curtain further aside]

     [SHE appears.  Much younger than the PROFESSOR, pale, very
     pretty, of a Botticellian type in face, figure, and in her
     clinging cream-coloured frock.  She gazes at her abstracted
     husband; then swiftly moves to the lintel of the open window,
     and stands looking out.]

THE WIFE.  God!  What beauty!

PROF.  [Looking Up]  Umm?

THE WIFE.  I said: God!  What beauty!

PROF.  Aha!

THE WIFE.  [Looking at him]  Do you know that I have to repeat
everything to you nowadays?

PROF.  What?

THE WIFE.  That I have to repeat----

PROF.  Yes; I heard.  I'm sorry.  I get absorbed.

THE WIFE.  In all but me.

PROF.  [Startled]  My dear, your song was helping me like anything to
get the mood.  This paper is the very deuce--to balance between the
historical and the natural.

THE WIFE.  Who wants the natural?

PROF.  [Grumbling]  Umm!  Wish I thought that!  Modern taste!
History may go hang; they're all for tuppence-coloured sentiment
nowadays.

THE WIFE.  [As if to herself]  Is the Spring sentiment?

PROF.  I beg your pardon, my dear; I didn't catch.

WIFE.  [As if against her will--urged by some pent-up force]  Beauty,
beauty!

PROF.  That's what I'm, trying to say here.  The Orpheus legend
symbolizes to this day the call of Beauty!  [He takes up his pen,
while she continues to stare out at the moonlight.  Yawning]  Dash
it!  I get so sleepy; I wish you'd tell them to make the after-dinner
coffee twice as strong.

WIFE.  I will.

PROF.  How does this strike you?  [Conning]  "Many Renaissance
pictures, especially those of Botticelli, Francesca and Piero di
Cosimo were inspired by such legends as that of Orpheus, and we owe a
tiny gem--like Raphael 'Apollo and Marsyas' to the same Pagan
inspiration."

WIFE.  We owe it more than that--rebellion against the dry-as-dust.

PROF.  Quite.  I might develop that: "We owe it our revolt against
the academic; or our disgust at 'big business,' and all the grossness
of commercial success.  We owe----".  [His voice peters out.]

WIFE.  It--love.

PROF.  [Abstracted]  Eh!

WIFE.  I said: We owe it love.

PROF.  [Rather startled]  Possibly.  But--er  [With a dry smile]
I mustn't say that here--hardly!

WIFE.  [To herself and the moonlight]  Orpheus with his lute!

PROF.  Most people think a lute is a sort of flute.  [Yawning
heavily]  My dear, if you're not going to sing again, d'you mind
sitting down?  I want to concentrate.

WIFE.  I'm going out.

PROF.  Mind the dew!

WIFE.  The Christian virtues and the dew.

PROF.  [With a little dry laugh]  Not bad!  Not bad!  The Christian
virtues and the dew.  [His hand takes up his pen, his face droops
over his paper, while his wife looks at him with a very strange face]
"How far we can trace the modern resurgence against the Christian
virtues to the symbolic figures of Orpheus, Pan, Apollo, and Bacchus
might be difficult to estimate, but----"

     [During those words his WIFE has passed through the window into
     the moonlight, and her voice rises, singing as she goes:
     "Orpheus with his lute, with his lute made trees . . ."]

PROF.  [Suddenly aware of something]  She'll get her throat bad.
[He is silent as the voice swells in the distance]  Sounds queer at
night-H'm!  [He is silent--Yawning.  The voice dies away.  Suddenly
his head nods; he fights his drowsiness; writes a word or two, nods
again, and in twenty seconds is asleep.]

     [The Stage is darkened by a black-out.  FRUST's voice is heard
     speaking.]

FRUST.  What's that girl's name?

VANE.  Vanessa Hellgrove.

FRUST.  Aha!

     [The Stage is lighted up again.  Moonlight bright on the
     orchard; the room in darkness where the PROFESSOR'S figure is
     just visible sleeping in the chair, and screwed a little more
     round towards the window.  From behind the mossy boulder a
     faun-like figure uncurls itself and peeps over with ears
     standing up and elbows leaning on the stone, playing a rustic
     pipe; and there are seen two rabbits and a fox sitting up and
     listening.  A shiver of wind passes, blowing petals from the
     apple-trees.]

     [The FAUN darts his head towards where, from Right, comes slowly
     the figure of a Greek youth, holding a lute or lyre which his
     fingers strike, lifting out little wandering strains as of wind
     whinnying in funnels and odd corners.  The FAUN darts down
     behind the stone, and the youth stands by the boulder playing
     his lute.  Slowly while he plays the whitened trunk of an
     apple-tree is seen, to dissolve into the body of a girl with
     bare arms and feet, her dark hair unbound, and the face of the
     PROFESSOR'S WIFE.  Hypnotized, she slowly sways towards him,
     their eyes fixed on each other, till she is quite close.  Her
     arms go out to him, cling round his neck and, their lips meet.
     But as they meet there comes a gasp and the PROFESSOR with
     rumpled hair is seen starting from his chair, his hands thrown
     up; and at his horrified "Oh!" the Stage is darkened with a
     black-out.]

     [The voice of FRUST is heard speaking.]

FRUST.  Gee!

     The Stage is lighted up again, as in the opening scene.  The
     PROFESSOR is seen in his chair, with spilt sheets of paper round
     him, waking from a dream.  He shakes himself, pinches his leg,
     stares heavily round into the moonlight, rises.

PROF.  Phew!  Beastly dream!  Boof!  H'm!  [He moves to the window
and calls.]  Blanche!  Blanche!  [To himself]  Made trees-made trees!
[Calling]  Blanche!

WIFE's VOICE.  Yes.

PROF.  Where are you?

WIFE.  [Appearing by the stone with her hair down]  Here!

PROF.  I say--I---I've been asleep--had a dream.  Come in.  I'll tell
you.

     [She comes, and they stand in the window.]

PROF.  I dreamed I saw a-faun on that boulder blowing on a pipe.  [He
looks nervously at the stone]  With two damned little rabbits and a
fox sitting up and listening.  And then from out there came our
friend Orpheus playing on his confounded lute, till he actually
turned that tree there into you.  And gradually he-he drew you like a
snake till you--er--put your arms round his neck and--er--kissed him.
Boof!  I woke up.  Most unpleasant.  Why!  Your hair's down!

WIFE.  Yes.

PROF.  Why?

WIFE.  It was no dream.  He was bringing me to life.

PROF.  What on earth?

WIFE.  Do you suppose I am alive?  I'm as dead as Euridice.

PROF.  Good heavens, Blanche, what's the matter with you to-night?

WIFE.  [Pointing to the litter of papers]  Why don't we live, instead
of writing of it?  [She points out unto the moonlight]  What do we
get out of life?  Money, fame, fashion, talk, learning?  Yes.  And
what good are they?  I want to live!

PROF.  [Helplessly]  My dear, I really don't know what you mean.

WIFE.  [Pointing out into the moonlight]  Look!  Orpheus with his
lute, and nobody can see him.  Beauty, beauty, beauty--we let it go.
[With sudden passion]  Beauty, love, the spring.  They should be in
us, and they're all outside.

PROF.  My dear, this is--this is--awful.  [He tries to embrace her.]

WIFE.  [Avoiding him--an a stilly voice]  Oh!  Go on with your
writing!

PROF.  I'm--I'm upset.  I've never known you so--so----

WIFE.  Hysterical?  Well!  It's over.  I'll go and sing.

PROF.  [Soothingly]  There, there!  I'm sorry, darling; I really am.
You're kipped--you're kipped.  [He gives and she accepts a kiss]
Better?

     [He gravitates towards his papers.]

All right, now?

WIFE.  [Standing still and looking at him]  Quite!

PROF.  Well, I'll try and finish this to-night; then, to-morrow we
might have a jaunt.  How about a theatre?  There's a thing--they say-
-called "Chinese Chops," that's been running years.

WIFE.  [Softly to herself as he settles down into his chair]  Oh!
God!

     [While he takes up a sheet of paper and adjusts himself, she
     stands at the window staring with all her might at the boulder,
     till from behind it the faun's head and shoulders emerge once
     more.]

PROF.  Very queer the power suggestion has over the mind.  Very
queer!  There's nothing really in animism, you know, except the
curious shapes rocks, trees and things take in certain lights--effect
they have on our imagination.  [He looks up]  What's the matter now?

WIFE.  [Startled]  Nothing!  Nothing!

     [Her eyes waver to him again, and the FAUN vanishes.  She turns
     again to look at the boulder; there is nothing there; a little
     shiver of wind blows some petals off the trees.  She catches one
     of them, and turning quickly, goes out through the curtain.]

PROF.  [Coming to himself and writing]  "The Orpheus legend is the--
er--apotheosis of animism.  Can we accept----" [His voice is lost in
the sound of his WIFE'S voice beginning again: "Orpheus with his
lute--with his lute made trees----" It dies in a sob.  The PROFESSOR
looks up startled, as the curtain falls].

FRUST.  Fine!  Fine!

VANE.  Take up the curtain.  Mr Foreson?

     [The curtain goes up.]

FORESON.  Sir?

VANE.  Everybody on.

     [He and FRUST leave their seats and ascend on to the Stage, on
     which are collecting the four Players.]

VANE.  Give us some light.

FORESON.  Electrics!  Turn up your floats!

     [The footlights go up, and the blue goes out; the light is crude
     as at the beginning.]

FRUST.  I'd like to meet Miss Hellgrove.  [She comes forward eagerly
and timidly.  He grasps her hand]  Miss Hellgrove, I want to say I
thought that fine--fine.  [Her evident emotion and pleasure warm him
so that he increases his grasp and commendation]  Fine.  It quite got
my soft spots.  Emotional.  Fine!

MISS H.  Oh!  Mr Frust; it means so much to me.  Thank you!

FRUST.  [A little balder in the eye, and losing warmth]  Er--fine!
[His eye wanders]  Where's Mr Flatway?

VANE.  Fleetway.

     [FLEETWAY comes up.]

FRUST.  Mr Fleetway, I want to say I thought your Orphoos very
remarkable.  Fine.

FLEETWAY.  Thank you, sir, indeed--so glad you liked it.

FRUST.  [A little balder in the eye]  There wasn't much to it, but
what there was was fine.  Mr Toone.

     [FLEETWAY melts out and TOONE is precipitated.]

Mr Toone, I was very pleased with your Professor--quite a character-
study.  [TOONE bows and murmurs]  Yes, sir!  I thought it fine.  [His
eye grows bald]  Who plays the goat?

MISS HOPK.  [Appearing suddenly between the windows]  I play the
faun, Mr Frost.

FORESON.  [Introducing]  Miss Maude 'Opkins.

FRUST.  Miss Hopkins, I guess your fawn was fine.

MISS HOPK.  Oh! Thank you, Mr Frost.  How nice of you to say so.  I
do so enjoy playing him.

FRUST.  [His eye growing bald]  Mr Foreson, I thought the way you
fixed that tree was very cunning; I certainly did.  Got a match?

     [He takes a match from FORESON, and lighting a very long cigar,
     walks up Stage through the French windows followed by FORESON,
     and examines the apple-tree.]

     [The two Actors depart, but Miss HELLGROVE runs from where she
     has been lingering, by the curtain, to VANE, Stage Right.]

MISS H.  Oh!  Mr Vane--do you think?  He seemed quite--Oh!  Mr Vane
[ecstatically]  If only----

VANE.  [Pleased and happy]  Yes, yes.  All right--you were splendid.
He liked it.  He quite----

MISS H.  [Clasping her hand]  How wonderful Oh, Mr Vane, thank you!

     [She clasps his hands; but suddenly, seeing that FRUST is coming
     back, fits across into the curtain and vanishes.]

     [The Stage, in the crude light, as empty now save for FRUST,
     who, in the French windows, Centre, is mumbling his cigar; and
     VANE, Stage Right, who is looking up into the wings, Stage
     Left.]

VANE.  [Calling up]  That lighting's just right now, Miller.  Got it
marked carefully?

ELECTRICS.  Yes, Mr Vane.

VANE.  Good.  [To FRUST who as coming down]  Well, sir?  So glad----

FRUST.  Mr Vane, we got little Miggs on contract?

VANE.  Yes.

FRUST.  Well, I liked that little pocket piece fine.  But I'm blamed
if I know what it's all about.

VANE.  [A little staggered]  Why!  Of course it's a little allegory.
The tragedy of civilization--all real feeling for Beauty and Nature
kept out, or pent up even in the cultured.

FRUST.  Ye-ep.  [Meditatively]  Little Miggs'd be fine in "Pop goes
the Weasel."

VANE.  Yes, he'd be all right, but----

FRUST.  Get him on the 'phone, and put it into rehearsal right now.

VANE.  What!  But this piece--I--I----!

FRUST.  Guess we can't take liberties with our public, Mr Vane.  They
want pep.

VANE.  [Distressed]  But it'll break that girl's heart.  I--really--I
can't----

FRUST.  Give her the part of the 'tweeny in "Pop goes".

VANE.  Mr Frust, I--I beg.  I've taken a lot of trouble with this
little play.  It's good.  It's that girl's chance--and I----

FRUST.  We-ell!  I certainly thought she was fine.  Now, you 'phone
up Miggs, and get right along with it.  I've only one rule, sir!
Give the Public what it wants; and what the Public wants is punch and
go.  They've got no use for Beauty, Allegory, all that high-brow
racket.  I know 'em as I know my hand.

     [During this speech MISS HELLGROVE is seen listening by the
     French window, in distress, unnoticed by either of them.]

VANE.  Mr Frost, the Public would take this, I'm sure they would; I'm
convinced of it.  You underrate them.

FRUST.  Now, see here, Mr Blewitt Vane, is this my theatre?  I tell
you, I can't afford luxuries.

VANE.  But it--it moved you, sir; I saw it.  I was watching.

FRUST.  [With unmoved finality]  Mr Vane, I judge I'm not the average
man.  Before "Louisa Loses" the Public'll want a stimulant.  "Pop
goes the Weasel" will suit us fine.  So--get right along with it.
I'll go get some lunch.

     [As he vanishes into the wings, Left, MISS HELLGROVE covers her
     face with her hands.  A little sob escaping her attracts VANE'S
     attention.  He takes a step towards her, but she flies.]

VANE.  [Dashing his hands through his hair till it stands up]
Damnation!

     [FORESON walks on from the wings, Right.]

FORESON.  Sir?

VANE.  "Punch and go!" That superstition!

     [FORESON walks straight out into the wings, Left.]

VANE.  Mr Foreson!

FORESON.  [Re-appearing]  Sir?

VANE.  This is scrapped.  [With savagery]  Tell 'em to set the first
act of "Louisa Loses," and put some pep into it.

     [He goes out through the French windows with the wind still in
     his hair.]

FORESON.  [In the centre of the Stage]  Electrics!

ELECTRICS.  Hallo!

FORESON.  Where's Charlie?

ELECTRICS.  Gone to his dinner.

FORESON.  Anybody on the curtain?

A VOICE.  Yes, Mr Foreson.

FORESON.  Put your curtain down.

     [He stands in the centre of the Stage with eyes uplifted as the
     curtain descends.]

THE END




End of this Project Gutenberg Etext of Four of the SIX SHORT PLAYS
by John Galsworthy






FIFTH SERIES

CONTENTS:
     A Family Man
     Loyalties
     Windows



A FAMILY MAN

From the 5th Series Plays

By John Galsworthy




CHARACTERS

JOHN BUILDER................ of the firm of Builder & Builder
JULIA....................... His Wife
ATHENE...................... His elder Daughter
MAUD........................ His younger Daughter
RALPH BUILDER............... His Brother, and Partner
GUY HERRINGHAME............. A Flying Man
ANNIE....................... A Young Person in Blue
CAMILLE..................... Mrs Builder's French Maid
TOPPING..................... Builder's Manservant
THE MAYOR................... Of Breconridge
HARRIS...................... His Secretary
FRANCIS CHANTREY............ J.P.
MOON........................ A Constable
MARTIN...................... A Police Sergeant
A JOURNALIST................ From The Comet
THE FIGURE OF A POACHER
THE VOICES AND FACES OF SMALL BOYS



The action passes in the town of Breconridge, the Midlands.



ACT I.
     SCENE I.  BUILDER'S Study.  After breakfast.
     SCENE II.  A Studio.

ACT II.  BUILDER'S Study.  Lunchtime.

ACT III.
     SCENE I. THE MAYOR'S Study.  10am the following day.
     SCENE II.  BUILDER'S Study.  The same.  Noon.
     SCENE III.  BUILDER'S Study.  The same.  Evening.



ACT I

SCENE I

     The study of JOHN BUILDER in the provincial town of Breconridge.
     A panelled room wherein nothing is ever studied, except perhaps
     BUILDER'S face in the mirror over the fireplace.  It is, however,
     comfortable, and has large leather chairs and a writing table in the
     centre, on which is a typewriter, and many papers.  At the back is a
     large window with French outside shutters, overlooking the street,
     for the house is an old one, built in an age when the homes of
     doctors, lawyers and so forth were part of a provincial town, and
     not yet suburban.  There are two or three fine old prints on the
     walls, Right and Left; and a fine, old fireplace, Left, with a
     fender on which one can sit.  A door, Left back, leads into the
     dining-room, and a door, Right forward, into the hall.

     JOHN BUILDER is sitting in his after-breakfast chair before the fire
     with The Times in his hands.  He has breakfasted well, and is in
     that condition of first-pipe serenity in which the affairs of the.
     nation seem almost bearable.  He is a tallish, square, personable
     man of forty-seven, with a well-coloured, jowly, fullish face,
     marked under the eyes, which have very small pupils and a good deal
     of light in them.  His bearing has force and importance, as of a man
     accustomed to rising and ownerships, sure in his opinions, and not
     lacking in geniality when things go his way.  Essentially a
     Midlander.  His wife, a woman of forty-one, of ivory tint, with a
     thin, trim figure and a face so strangely composed as to be almost
     like a mask (essentially from Jersey) is putting a nib into a pen-
     holder, and filling an inkpot at the writing-table.

     As the curtain rises CAMILLE enters with a rather broken-down
     cardboard box containing flowers.  She is a young woman with a good
     figure, a pale face, the warm brown eyes and complete poise of a
     Frenchwoman.  She takes the box to MRS BUILDER.


MRS BUILDER.  The blue vase, please, Camille.
     CAMILLE fetches a vase.  MRS BUILDER puts the flowers into the vase.
     CAMILLE gathers up the debris;  and with a glance at BUILDER goes
     out.

BUILDER.  Glorious October!  I ought to have a damned good day's shooting
with Chantrey tomorrow.

MRS BUILDER.  [Arranging the flowers]  Aren't you going to the office
this morning?

BUILDER.  Well, no, I was going to take a couple of days off.  If you
feel at the top of your form, take a rest--then you go on feeling at the
top.  [He looks at her, as if calculating]  What do you say to looking up
Athene?

MRS BUILDER.  [Palpably  astonished]  Athene?  But you said you'd done
with her?

BUILDER.  [Smiling] Six weeks ago; but, dash it, one can't have done with
one's own daughter.  That's the weakness of an Englishman; he can't keep
up his resentments.  In a town like this it doesn't do to have her living
by herself.  One of these days it'll get out we've had a row.  That
wouldn't do me any good.

MRS BUILDER.  I see.

BUILDER.  Besides, I miss her.  Maud's so self-absorbed.  It makes a big
hole in the family, Julia.  You've got her address, haven't you?

MRS BUILDER.  Yes.  [Very still]  But do you think it's dignified, John?

BUILDER.  [Genially]  Oh, hang dignity!  I rather pride myself on knowing
when to stand on my dignity and when to sit on it.  If she's still crazy
about Art, she can live at home, and go out to study.

MRS BUILDER.  Her craze was for liberty.

BUILDER.  A few weeks' discomfort soon cures that.  She can't live on her
pittance.  She'll have found that out by now.  Get your things on and
come with me at twelve o'clock.

MRS BUILDER.  I think you'll regret it.  She'll refuse.

BUILDER.  Not if I'm nice to her.  A child could play with me to-day.
Shall I tell you a secret, Julia?

MRS BUILDER.  It would be pleasant for a change.

BUILDER.  The Mayor's coming round at eleven, and I know perfectly well
what he's coming for.

MRS BUILDER.  Well?

BUILDER.  I'm to be nominated for Mayor next month.  Harris tipped me the
wink at the last Council meeting.  Not so bad at forty-seven--h'm?  I can
make a thundering good Mayor.  I can do things for this town that nobody
else can.

MRS BUILDER.  Now I understand about Athene.

BUILDER.  [Good-humouredly]  Well, it's partly that.  But [more
seriously] it's more the feeling I get that I'm not doing my duty by her.
Goodness knows whom she may be picking up with!  Artists are a loose lot.
And young people in these days are the limit.  I quite believe in moving
with the times, but one's either born a Conservative, or one isn't.
So you be ready at twelve, see.  By the way, that French maid of yours,
Julia--

MRS BUILDER.  What about her?

BUILDER.  Is she--er--is she all right?  We don't want any trouble with
Topping.

MRS BUILDER.  There will be none with--Topping.
     [She opens the door Left.]

BUILDER.  I don't know; she strikes me as--very French.

     MRS BUILDER smiles and passes out.

     BUILDER fills his second pipe.  He is just taking up the paper again
     when the door from the hall is opened, and the manservant TOPPING,
     dried, dark, sub-humorous, in a black cut-away, announces:

TOPPING.  The Mayor, Sir, and Mr Harris!

     THE MAYOR of Breconridge enters, He is clean-shaven, red-faced,
     light-eyed, about sixty, shrewd, poll-parroty, naturally jovial,
     dressed with the indefinable wrongness of a burgher; he is followed
     by his Secretary HARRIS, a man all eyes and cleverness.  TOPPING
     retires.

BUILDER.  [Rising]  Hallo, Mayor!  What brings you so early?  Glad to see
you.  Morning, Harris!

MAYOR.  Morning, Builder, morning.

HARRIS.  Good-morning, Sir.

BUILDER.  Sit down-sit down!  Have a cigar!

     The MAYOR takes a cigar HARRIS a cigarette from his own case.

BUILDER.  Well, Mayor, what's gone wrong with the works?

     He and HARRIS exchange a look.

MAYOR.  [With his first puff]  After you left the Council the other day,
Builder, we came to a decision.

BUILDER.  Deuce you did!  Shall I agree with it?

MAYOR.  We shall see.  We want to nominate you for Mayor.  You willin' to
stand?

BUILDER.  [Stolid]  That requires consideration.

MAYOR.  The only alternative is Chantrey;  but he's a light weight, and
rather too much County.  What's your objection?

BUILDER.  It's a bit unexpected, Mayor.  [Looks at HARRIS]  Am I the
right man?  Following you, you know.  I'm shooting with Chantrey
to-morrow.  What does he feel about it?

MAYOR.  What do you say, 'Arris?

HARRIS.  Mr Chantrey's a public school and University man, Sir; he's not
what I call ambitious.

BUILDER.  Nor am I, Harris.

HARRIS.  No, sir; of course you've a high sense of duty.  Mr Chantrey's
rather dilettante.

MAYOR.  We want a solid man.

BUILDER.  I'm very busy, you know, Mayor.

MAYOR.  But you've got all the qualifications--big business, family man,
live in the town, church-goer, experience on the Council and the Bench.
Better say "yes," Builder.

BUILDER.  It's a lot of extra work.  I don't take things up lightly.

MAYOR.  Dangerous times, these.  Authority questioned all over the place.
We want a man that feels his responsibilities, and we think we've got him
in you.

BUILDER.  Very good of you, Mayor.  I don't know, I'm sure.  I must think
of the good of the town.

HARRIS.  I shouldn't worry about that, sir.

MAYOR.  The name John Builder carries weight.  You're looked up to as a
man who can manage his own affairs.  Madam and the young ladies well?

BUILDER.  First-rate.

MAYOR.  [Rises]  That's right.  Well, if you'd like to talk it over with
Chantrey to-morrow.  With all this extremism, we want a man of principle
and common sense.

HARRIS.  We want a man that'll grasp the nettle, sir--and that's you.

BUILDER.  Hm!  I've got a temper, you know.

MAYOR.  [Chuckling]  We do--we do!  You'll say "yes," I see.  No false
modesty!  Come along, 'Arris, we must go.

BUILDER.  Well, Mayor, I'll think it over, and let you have an answer.
You know my faults, and you know my qualities, such as they are.  I'm
just a plain Englishman.

MAYOR.  We don't want anything better than that.  I always say the great
point about an Englishman is that he's got bottom; you may knock him off
his pins, but you find him on 'em again before you can say "Jack
Robinson."  He may have his moments of aberration, but he's a sticker.
Morning, Builder, morning!  Hope you'll say "yes."

     He shakes hands and goes out, followed by HARRIS.

     When the door is dosed BUILDER stands a moment quite still with a
     gratified smile on his face; then turns and scrutinises himself in
     the glass over the hearth.  While he is doing so the door from the
     dining-room is opened quietly and CAMILLE comes in.  BUILDER,
     suddenly seeing her reflected in the mirror, turns.

BUILDER.  What is it, Camille?

CAMILLE.  Madame send me for a letter she say you have, Monsieur, from
the dyer and cleaner, with a bill.

BUILDER.  [Feeling in his pockets]  Yes--no.  It's on the table.

CAMILLE goes to the writing-table and looks.  That blue thing.

CAMILLE.  [Taking it up] Non, Monsieur, this is from the gas.

BUILDER.  Oh!  Ah!
     [He moves up to the table and turns over papers.  CAMILLE stands
     motionless close by with her eyes fixed on him.]
Here it is!
     [He looks up, sees her looking at him, drops his own gaze, and hands
     her the letter.  Their hands touch.  Putting his hands in his
     pockets]
What made you come to England?

CAMILLE.  [Demure]  It is better pay, Monsieur, and  [With a smile]  the
English are so amiable.

BUILDER.  Deuce they are!  They haven't got that reputation.

CAMILLE.  Oh!  I admire Englishmen.  They are so strong and kind.

BUILDER.  [Bluffly  flattered]  H'm!  We've  no manners.

CAMILLE.  The Frenchman is more polite, but not in the 'eart.

BUILDER.  Yes.  I suppose we're pretty sound at heart.

CAMILLE.  And the Englishman have his life in the family--the Frenchman
have his life outside.

BUILDER.  [With discomfort]  H'm!

CAMILLE.  [With a look]  Too mooch in the family--like a rabbit in a
'utch.

BUILDER.  Oh!  So that's your view of us!  [His eyes rest on her,
attracted but resentful].

CAMILLE.  Pardon, Monsieur, my tongue run away with me.

BUILDER.  [Half conscious of being led on]  Are you from Paris?

CAMILLE.  [Clasping her hands]  Yes.  What a town for pleasure--Paris!

BUILDER.  I suppose so.  Loose place, Paris.

CAMILLE.  Loose?  What is that, Monsieur?

BUILDER.  The opposite of strict.

CAMILLE.  Strict!  Oh! certainly we like life, we other French.  It is
not like England.  I take this to Madame, Monsieur.  [She turns as if to
go]  Excuse me.

BUILDER.  I thought you Frenchwomen all married young.

CAMILLE.  I 'ave been married; my 'usband did die--en Afrique.

BUILDER.  You wear no ring.

CAMILLE.  [Smiling]  I prefare to be mademoiselle, Monsieur.

BUILDER.  [Dubiously]  Well, it's all the same to us.  [He takes a letter
up from the table]  You might take this to Mrs Builder too.  [Again their
fingers touch, and there is a suspicion of encounter between their eyes.]

CAMILLE goes out.

BUILDER.  [Turning to his chair]  Don't know about that woman--she's a
tantalizer.

     He compresses his lips, and is settling back into his chair, when
     the door from the hall is opened and his daughter MAUD comes in; a
     pretty girl, rather pale, with fine eyes.  Though her face has a
     determined cast her manner at this moment is by no means decisive.
     She has a letter in her hand, and advances rather as if she were
     stalking her father, who, after a "Hallo, Maud!" has begun to read
     his paper.

MAUD.  [Getting as far as the table]  Father.

BUILDER.  [Not lowering the paper]  Well?  I know that tone.  What do you
want--money?

MAUD.  I always want money, of course; but--but--

BUILDER.  [Pulling out a note-abstractedly]  Here's five pounds for you.

     MAUD, advancing, takes it, then seems to find what she has come for
     more on her chest than ever.

BUILDER.  [Unconscious]  Will you take a letter for me?

     MAUD sits down Left of table and prepares to take down the letter.

[Dictating] "Dear Mr Mayor,--Referring to your call this morning, I have
--er--given the matter very careful consideration, and though somewhat
reluctant--"

MAUD.  Are you really reluctant, father?

BUILDER.  Go on--"To assume greater responsibilities, I feel it my duty
to come forward in accordance with your wish.  The--er--honour is one of
which I hardly feel myself worthy, but you may rest assured--"

MAUD.  Worthy.  But you do, you know.

BUILDER.  Look here!  Are you trying to get a rise out of me?--because
you won't succeed this morning.

MAUD.  I thought you were trying to get one out of me.

BUILDER.  Well, how would you express it?

MAUD.  "I know I'm the best man for the place, and so do you--"

BUILDER.  The disrespect of you young people is something extraordinary.
And that reminds me where do you go every evening now after tea?

MAUD.  I--I don't know.

BUILDER.  Come now, that won't do--you're never in the house from six to
seven.

MAUD.  Well!  It has to do with my education.

BUILDER.  Why, you finished that two years ago!

MAUD.  Well, call it a hobby, if you like, then, father.

     She takes up the letter she brought in and seems on the point of
     broaching it.

BUILDER.  Hobby?  Well, what is it?

MAUD.  I don't want to irritate you, father.

BUILDER.  You can't irritate me more than by having secrets.  See what
that led to in your sister's case.  And, by the way, I'm going to put an
end to that this morning.  You'll be glad to have her back, won't you?

MAUD.  [Startled]  What!

BUILDER.  Your mother and I are going round to Athene at twelve o'clock.
I shall make it up with her.  She must come back here.

MAUD.  [Aghast, but hiding it]  Oh!  It's--it's no good, father.  She
won't.

BUILDER.  We shall see that.  I've quite got over my tantrum, and I
expect she has.

MAUD.  [Earnestly]  Father!  I do really assure you she won't; it's only
wasting your time, and making you eat humble pie.

BUILDER.  Well, I can eat a good deal this morning.  It's all nonsense!
A family's a family.

MAUD.  [More and more disturbed, but hiding it]  Father, if I were you,
I wouldn't-really!  It's not-dignified.

BUILDER.  You can leave me to judge of that.  It's not dignified for the
Mayor of this town to have an unmarried daughter as young as Athene
living by herself away from home.  This idea that she's on a visit won't
wash any longer.  Now finish that letter--"worthy, but you may rest
assured that I shall do my best to sustain the--er--dignity of the
office." [MAUD types desperately.]  Got that?  "And--er--preserve the
tradition so worthily--"  No--  "so staunchly"--er--er--

MAUD.  Upheld.

BUILDER.  Ah!  "--upheld by yourself.--Faithfully yours."

MAUD.  [Finishing]  Father, you thought Athene went off in a huff.  It
wasn't that a bit.  She always meant to go.  She just got you into a rage
to make it easier.  She hated living at home.

BUILDER.  Nonsense!  Why on earth should she?

MAUD.  Well, she did!  And so do-- [Checking herself]  And so you see
it'll only make you ridiculous to go.

BUILDER.  [Rises]  Now what's behind this, Maud?

MAUD.  Behind--Oh!  nothing!

BUILDER.  The fact is, you girls have been spoiled, and you enjoy
twisting my tail; but you can't make me roar this morning.  I'm too
pleased with things.  You'll see, it'll be all right with Athene.

MAUD.  [Very suddenly]  Father!

BUILDER.  [Grimly humorous]  Well!  Get it off your chest.  What's that
letter about?

MAUD.  [Failing again and crumpling the letter behind her back]
Oh! nothing.

BUILDER.  Everything's nothing this morning.  Do you know what sort of
people Athene associates with now--I suppose you see her?

MAUD.  Sometimes.

BUILDER.  Well?

MAUD.  Nobody much.  There isn't anybody here to associate with.  It's
all hopelessly behind the times.

BUILDER.  Oh! you think so!  That's the inflammatory fiction you pick up.
I tell you what, young woman--the sooner you and your sister get rid of
your silly notions about not living at home, and making your own way, the
sooner you'll both get married and make it.  Men don't like the new
spirit in women--they may say they do, but they don't.

MAUD.  You don't, father, I know.

BUILDER.  Well, I'm very ordinary.  If you keep your eyes open, you'll
soon see that.

MAUD.  Men don't like freedom for anybody but themselves.

BUILDER.  That's not the way to put it.  [Tapping out his pipe]  Women in
your class have never had to face realities.

MAUD.  No, but we want to.

BUILDER.  [Good-humouredly]  Well, I'll bet you what you like, Athene's
dose of reality will have cured her.

MAUD.  And I'll bet you--No, I won't!

BUILDER.  You'd better not.  Athene will come home, and only too glad to
do it.  Ring for Topping and order the car at twelve.

     As he opens the door to pass out, MAUD starts forward, but checks
     herself.

MAUD.  [Looking at her watch]  Half-past eleven!  Good heavens!

     She goes to the bell and rings.  Then goes back to the table, and
     writes an address on a bit of paper.

     TOPPING enters Right.

TOPPING.  Did you ring, Miss?

MAUD.  [With the paper]  Yes.  Look here, Topping!  Can you manage--
on your bicycle--now at once?  I want to send a message to Miss Athene
--awfully important.  It's just this:  "Look out!  Father is coming."
[Holding out the paper]  Here's her address.  You must get there and away
again by twelve.  Father and mother want the car then to go there.  Order
it before you go.  It won't take you twenty minutes on your bicycle.
It's down by the river near the ferry.  But you mustn't be seen by them
either going or coming.

TOPPING.  If I should fall into their hands, Miss, shall I eat the
despatch?

MAUD.  Rather!  You're a brick, Topping.  Hurry up!

TOPPING.  Nothing more precise, Miss?

MAUD.  M--m--No.

TOPPING.  Very good, Miss Maud.  [Conning the address]  "Briary Studio,
River Road.  Look out!  Father is coming!"  I'll go out the back way.
Any answer?

MAUD.  No.

     TOPPING nods his head and goes out.

MAUD.  [To herself] Well, it's all I can do.

     She stands, considering, as the CURTAIN falls.




SCENE II

     The Studio, to which are attached living rooms, might be rented at
     eighty pounds a year--some painting and gear indeed, but an air of
     life rather than of work.  Things strewn about.  Bare walls, a
     sloping skylight, no windows; no fireplace visible; a bedroom door,
     stage Right; a kitchen door, stage Left.  A door, Centre back, into
     the street.  The door knocker is going.

From the kitchen door, Left, comes the very young person, ANNIE, in
blotting-paper blue linen, with a white Dutch cap.  She is pretty, her
cheeks rosy, and her forehead puckered.  She opens the street door.
Standing outside is TOPPING.  He steps in a pace or two.

TOPPING.  Miss Builder live here?

ANNIE.  Oh!  no, sir; Mrs Herringhame.

TOPPING.  Mrs Herringhame?  Oh! young lady with dark hair and large
expressive eyes?

ANNIE.  Oh! yes, sir.

TOPPING.  With an "A. B."  on her linen?  [Moves to table].

ANNIE.  Yes, sir.

TOPPING.  And "Athene Builder" on her drawings?

ANNIE.  [Looking at one]  Yes, sir.

TOPPING.  Let's see.  [He examines the drawing]  Mrs Herringhame, you
said?

ANNIE.  Oh!  yes, Sir.

TOPPING.  Wot oh!

ANNIE.  Did you want anything, sir?

TOPPING.  Drop the  "sir,"  my dear;  I'm the Builders' man.
Mr Herringhame in?

ANNIE.  Oh! no, Sir.

TOPPING.  Take a message.  I can't wait.  From Miss Maud Builder.  "Look
out!  Father is coming."  Now, whichever of 'em comes in first--that's
the message, and don't you forget it.

ANNIE.  Oh! no, Sir.

TOPPING.  So they're married?

ANNIE.  Oh!  I don't know, sir.

TOPPING.  I see.  Well, it ain't known to Builder, J.P., either.  That's
why there's a message.  See?

ANNIE.  Oh!  yes, Sir.

TOPPING.  Keep your head.  I must hop it.  From Miss  Maud  Builder.
"Look  out!  Father  is coming."

     He nods, turns and goes, pulling the door to behind him.  ANNIE
     stands "baff" for a moment.

ANNIE.  Ah!

     She goes across to the bedroom on the Right, and soon returns with a
     suit of pyjamas, a toothbrush, a pair of slippers and a case of
     razors, which she puts on the table, and disappears into the
     kitchen.  She reappears with a bread pan, which she deposits in the
     centre of the room; then crosses again to the bedroom, and once more
     reappears with a clothes brush, two hair brushes, and a Norfolk
     jacket.  As she stuffs all these into the bread pan and bears it
     back into the kitchen, there is the sound of a car driving up and
     stopping.  ANNIE reappears at the kitchen door just as the knocker
     sounds.

ANNIE.  Vexin' and provokin'!  [Knocker again.  She opens the door] Oh!

     MR and MRS BUILDER enter.

BUILDER.  Mr and Mrs Builder.  My daughter in?

ANNIE.  [Confounded]  Oh!  Sir, no, sir.

BUILDER.  My good girl, not "Oh!  Sir, no, sir."  Simply: No, Sir.  See?

ANNIE.  Oh!  Sir, yes, Sir.

BUILDER.  Where is she?

ANNIE.  Oh!  Sir, I don't know, Sir.

BUILDER.  [Fixing her as though he suspected her of banter] Will she be
back soon?

ANNIE.  No, Sir.

BUILDER.  How do you know?

ANNIE.  I d--don't, sir.

BUILDER.  They why do you say so?  [About to mutter "She's an idiot!" he
looks at her blushing face and panting figure, pats her on the shoulder
and says] Never mind; don't be nervous.

ANNIE.  Oh!  yes, sir.  Is that all, please, sir?

MRS BUILDER.  [With a side look at her husband and a faint smile] Yes;
you can go.

ANNIE.  Thank you, ma'am.

     She turns and hurries out into the kitchen, Left.  BUILDER gazes
     after her, and MRS BUILDER gazes at BUILDER with her faint smile.

BUILDER.  [After the girl is gone]  Quaint and Dutch--pretty little
figure!  [Staring round]  H'm!  Extraordinary girls are!  Fancy Athene
preferring this to home.  What?

MRS BUILDER.  I didn't say anything.

BUILDER.  [Placing a chair for his wife, and sitting down himself]  Well,
we must wait, I suppose.  Confound that Nixon legacy!  If Athene hadn't
had that potty little legacy left her, she couldn't have done this.
Well, I daresay it's all spent by now.  I made a mistake to lose my
temper with her.

MRS BUILDER.  Isn't it always a mistake to lose one's temper?

BUILDER.  That's very nice and placid; sort of thing you women who live
sheltered lives can say.  I often wonder if you women realise the strain
on a business man.

MRS BUILDER.  [In her softly ironical voice]  It seems a shame to add the
strain of family life.

BUILDER.  You've always been so passive.  When I want a thing, I've got
to have it.

MRS BUILDER.  I've noticed that.

BUILDER.  [With a short laugh]  Odd if you hadn't, in twenty-three years.
[Touching a canvas standing against the chair with his toe]  Art!  Just a
pretext.  We shall be having Maud wanting to cut loose next.  She's very
restive.  Still, I oughtn't to have had that scene with Athene.  I ought
to have put quiet pressure.

     MRS BUILDER Smiles.

BUILDER.  What are you smiling at?

     MRS BUILDER shrugs her shoulders.

Look at this-- Cigarettes!  [He examines the brand on the box] Strong,
very--and not good!  [He opens the door]  Kitchen!  [He shuts it,
crosses, and opens the door, Right]  Bedroom!

MRS BUILDER.  [To his disappearing form]  Do you think you ought, John?

     He has disappeared, and she ends with an expressive movement of her
     hands, a long sigh, and a closing of her eyes.  BUILDER'S peremptory
     voice is heard: "Julia!"

What now?

     She follows into the bedroom.  The maid ANNIE puts her head out of
     the kitchen door; she comes out a step as if to fly; then, at
     BUILDER'S voice, shrinks back into the kitchen.

BUILDER, reappearing with a razor strop in one hand and a shaving-brush
in the other, is followed by MRS BUILDER.

BUILDER.  Explain these!  My God!  Where's that girl?

MRS BUILDER.  John!  Don't!  [Getting between him and the kitchen door]
It's not dignified.

BUILDER.  I don't care a damn.

MRS BUILDER.  John, you mustn't.  Athene has the tiny beginning of a
moustache, you know.

BUILDER.  What!  I shall stay and clear this up if I have to wait a week.
Men who let their daughters--!  This age is the limit.  [He makes a
vicious movement with the strop, as though laying it across someone's
back.]

MRS BUILDER.  She would never stand that.  Even wives object, nowadays.

BUILDER.  [Grimly]  The war's upset everything.  Women are utterly out
of hand.  Why the deuce doesn't she come?

MRS BUILDER.  Suppose you leave me here to see her.

BUILDER.  [Ominously]  This is my job.

MRS BUILDER.  I think it's more mine.

BUILDER.  Don't stand there opposing everything I say!  I'll go and have
another look--[He is going towards the bedroom when the sound of a
latchkey in the outer door arrests him.  He puts the strop and brush
behind his back, and adds in a low voice]  Here she is!

     MRS BUILDER has approached him, and they have both turned towards
     the opening door.  GUY HERRINGHAME comes in.  They are a little out
     of his line of sight, and he has shut the door before he sees them.
     When he does, his mouth falls open, and his hand on to the knob of
     the door.  He is a comely young man in Harris tweeds.  Moreover, he
     is smoking.  He would speak if he could, but his surprise is too
     excessive.  BUILDER.  Well, sir?

GUY.  [Recovering a little] I was about to say the same to you, sir.

BUILDER.  [Very red from repression]  These rooms are not yours, are
they?

GUY.  Nor yours, sir?

BUILDER.  May I ask if you know whose they are?

GUY.  My sister's.

BUILDER.  Your--you--!

MRS BUILDER.  John!

BUILDER.  Will you kindly tell me why your sister signs her drawings by
the name of my daughter, Athene Builder--and has a photograph of my wife
hanging there?

     The YOUNG MAN looks at MRS BUILDER and winces, but recovers himself.

GUY.  [Boldly]  As a matter of fact this is my sister's studio; she's in
France--and has a friend staying here.

BUILDER.  Oh!  And you have a key?

GUY.  My sister's.

BUILDER.  Does your sister shave?

GUY.  I--I don't think so.

BUILDER.  No.  Then perhaps you'll tell me what these mean?  [He takes
out the strop and shaving stick].

GUY.  Oh!  Ah!  Those things?

BUILDER.  Yes.  Now then?

GUY.  [Addressing MRS BUILDER]  Need we go into this in your presence,
ma'am?  It seems rather delicate.

BUILDER.  What explanation have you got?

GUY.  Well, you see--

BUILDER.  No lies; out with it!

GUY.  [With decision]  I prefer to say nothing.

BUILDER.  What's your name?

GUY.  Guy Herringhame.

BUILDER.  Do you live here?

     Guy makes no sign.

MRS BUILDER.  [To Guy]  I think you had better go.

BUILDER.  Julia, will you leave me to manage this?

MRS BUILDER.  [To Guy]  When do you expect my daughter in?

GUY.  Now--directly.

MRS BUILDER.  [Quietly]  Are you married to her?

GUY.  Yes.  That is--no--o;  not altogether,  I mean.

BUILDER.  What's that?  Say that again!

GUY.  [Folding his arms] I'm not going to say another word.

BUILDER.  I am.

MRS BUILDER.  John--please!

BUILDER.  Don't put your oar in!  I've had wonderful patience so far.
[He puts his boot through a drawing] Art!  This is what comes of it!  Are
you an artist?

GUY.  No; a flying man.  The truth is--

BUILDER.  I don't want to hear you speak the truth.  I'll wait for my
daughter.

GUY.  If you do, I hope you'll be so very good as to be gentle.  If you
get angry I might too, and that would be awfully ugly.

BUILDER.  Well, I'm damned!

GUY.  I quite understand that, sir.  But, as a man of the world, I hope
you'll take a pull before she comes, if you mean to stay.

BUILDER.  If we mean to stay!  That's good!

GUY.  Will you have a cigarette?

BUILDER.  I--I can't express--

GUY.  [Soothingly]  Don't try, sir.  [He jerks up his chin, listening] I
think that's her.  [Goes to the door] Yes.  Now, please!  [He opens the
door]  Your father and mother, Athene.

ATHENE enters.  She is flushed and graceful.  Twenty-two, with a short
upper lip, a straight nose, dark hair, and glowing eyes.  She wears
bright colours, and has a slow, musical voice, with a slight lisp.

ATHENE.  Oh!  How are you, mother dear?  This is rather a surprise.
Father always keeps his word, so I certainly didn't expect him.  [She
looks steadfastly at BUILDER, but does not approach].

BUILDER.  [Controlling himself with an effort]  Now, Athene, what's this?

ATHENE.  What's what?

BUILDER.  [The strop held out]  Are you married to this--this--?

ATHENE.  [Quietly]  To all intents and purposes.

BUILDER.  In law?

ATHENE.  No.

BUILDER.  My God!  You--you--!

ATHENE.  Father, don't call names, please.

BUILDER.  Why aren't you married to him?

ATHENE.  Do you want a lot of reasons, or the real one?

BUILDER.  This is maddening!  [Goes up stage].

ATHENE.  Mother dear, will you go into the other room with Guy?  [She
points to the door Right].

BUILDER.  Why?

ATHENE.  Because I would rather she didn't hear the reason.

GUY.  [To ATHENE, sotto voce] He's not safe.

ATHENE.  Oh! yes; go on.

     Guy follows MRS BUILDER, and after hesitation at the door they go
     out into the bedroom.

BUILDER.  Now then!

ATHENE.  Well, father, if you want to know the real reason, it's--you.

BUILDER.  What on earth do you mean?

ATHENE.  Guy wants to marry me.  In fact, we--But I had such a stunner of
marriage from watching you at home, that I--

BUILDER.  Don't be impudent!  My patience is at breaking-point, I warn
you.

ATHENE.  I'm perfectly serious, Father.  I tell you, we meant to marry,
but so far I haven't been able to bring myself to it.  You never noticed
how we children have watched you.

BUILDER.  Me?

ATHENE.  Yes.  You and mother, and other things; all sorts of things--

BUILDER.  [Taking out a handkerchief and wiping his brow]  I really think
you're mad.

ATHENE.  I'm sure you must, dear.

BUILDER.  Don't "dear" me!  What have you noticed?  D'you mean I'm not a
good husband and father?

ATHENE.  Look at mother.  I suppose you can't, now; you're too used to
her.

BUILDER.  Of course I'm used to her.  What else is marrying for?

ATHENE.  That; and the production of such as me.  And it isn't good
enough, father.  You shouldn't have set us such a perfect example.

BUILDER.  You're talking the most arrant nonsense I ever heard.  [He
lifts his hands]  I've a good mind to shake it out of you.

ATHENE.  Shall I call Guy?

     He drops his hands.

Confess that being a good husband and father has tried you terribly.  It
has us, you know.

BUILDER.  [Taking refuge in sarcasm] When you've quite done being funny,
perhaps you'll tell me why you've behaved like a common street flapper.

ATHENE.  [Simply]  I couldn't bear to think of Guy as a family man.
That's all--absolutely.  It's not his fault; he's been awfully anxious to
be one.

BUILDER.  You've disgraced us, then; that's what it comes to.

ATHENE.  I don't want to be unkind, but you've brought it on yourself.

BUILDER.  [Genuinely distracted]  I can't even get a glimmer of what you
mean.  I've never been anything but firm.  Impatient, perhaps.  I'm not
an angel; no ordinary healthy man is.  I've never grudged you girls any
comfort, or pleasure.

ATHENE.  Except wills of our own.

BUILDER.  What do you want with wills of your own till you're married?

ATHENE.  You forget mother!

BUILDER.  What about her?

ATHENE.  She's very married.  Has she a will of her own?

BUILDER.  [Sullenly]  She's learnt to know when I'm in the right.

ATHENE.  I don't ever mean to learn to know when Guy's in the right.
Mother's forty-one, and twenty-three years of that she's been your wife.
It's a long time, father.  Don't you ever look at her face?

BUILDER.  [Troubled in a remote way]  Rubbish!

ATHENE.  I didn't want my face to get like that.

BUILDER.  With such views about marriage, what business had you to go
near a man?  Come, now!

ATHENE.  Because I fell in love.

BUILDER.  Love leads to marriage--and to nothing else, but the streets.
What an example to your sister!

ATHENE.  You don't know Maud any more than you knew me.  She's got a will
of her own too, I can tell you.

BUILDER.  Now, look here, Athene.  It's always been my way to face
accomplished facts.  What's done can't be undone; but it can be remedied.
You must marry this young----at once, before it gets out.  He's behaved
like a ruffian: but, by your own confession, you've behaved worse.
You've been bitten by this modern disease, this--this, utter lack of
common decency.  There's an eternal order in certain things, and marriage
is one of them; in fact, it's the chief.  Come, now.  Give me a promise,
and I'll try my utmost to forget the whole thing.

ATHENE.  When we quarrelled, father, you said you didn't care what became
of me.

BUILDER.  I was angry.

ATHENE.  So you are now.

BUILDER.  Come, Athene, don't be childish!  Promise me!

ATHENE.  [With a little shudder] No!  We were on the edge of it.  But now
I've seen you again--Poor mother!

BUILDER.  [Very angry]  This is simply blasphemous.  What do you mean by
harping on your mother?  If you think that--that--she doesn't--that she
isn't--

ATHENE.  Now, father!

BUILDER.  I'm damned if I'll sit down under this injustice.  Your mother
is--is pretty irritating, I can tell you.  She--she--Everything
suppressed.  And--and no--blood in her!

ATHENE.  I knew it!

BUILDER.  [Aware that he has confirmed some thought in her that he had no
intention of confirming]  What's that?

ATHENE.  Don't you ever look at your own face, father?  When you shave,
for instance.

BUILDER.  Of course I do.

ATHENE.  It isn't satisfied, is it?

BUILDER.  I don't know what on earth you mean.

ATHENE.  You can't help it, but you'd be ever so much happier if you were
a Mohammedan, and two or three, instead of one, had--had learned to know
when you were in the right.

BUILDER.  'Pon my soul!  This is outrageous!

ATHENE.  Truth often is.

BUILDER.  Will you be quiet?

ATHENE.  I don't ever want to feel sorry for Guy in that way.

BUILDER.  I think you're the most immodest--I'm ashamed that you're my
daughter.  If your another had ever carried on as you are now--

ATHENE.  Would you have been firm with her?

BUILDER.  [Really sick at heart at this unwonted mockery which meets him
at every turn]  Be quiet, you----!

ATHENE.  Has mother never turned?

BUILDER.  You're an unnatural girl!  Go your own way to hell!

ATHENE.  I am not coming back home, father.

BUILDER.  [Wrenching open the door, Right] Julia!  Come!  We can't stay
here.

     MRS BUILDER comes forth, followed by GUY.

As for you, sir, if you start by allowing a woman to impose her crazy
ideas about marriage on you, all I can say is--I despise you.  [He
crosses to the outer door, followed by his wife.  To ATHENE]  I've done
with you!

     He goes out.

     MRS BUILDER, who has so far seemed to accompany him, shuts the door
     quickly and remains in the studio.  She stands there with that faint
     smile on her face, looking at the two young people.

ATHENE.  Awfully sorry, mother; but don't you see what a stunner father's
given me?

MRS BUILDER.  My dear, all men are not alike.

GUY.  I've always told her that, ma'am.

ATHENE.  [Softly]  Oh!  mother, I'm so sorry for you.

     The handle of the door is rattled, a fist is beaten on it.

[She stamps, and covers her ears] Disgusting!

GUY.  Shall I--?

MRS BUILDER.  [Shaking her head] I'm going in a moment.  [To ATHENE] You
owe it to me, Athene.

ATHENE.  Oh!  if somebody would give him a lesson!

     BUILDER's voice: "Julia!"

Have you ever tried, mother?

     MRS BUILDER looks at the YOUNG MAN, who turns away out of hearing.

MRS BUILDER.  Athene, you're mistaken.  I've always stood up to him in my
own way.

ATHENE.  Oh! but, mother--listen!

     The beating and rattling have recommenced, and the voice: "Are you
     coming?"

[Passionately]  And that's family life!  Father was all right before he
married, I expect.  And now it's like this.  How you survive--!

MRS BUILDER.  He's only in a passion, my dear.

ATHENE.  It's wicked.

MRS BUILDER.  It doesn't work otherwise, Athene.

     A single loud bang on the door.

ATHENE.  If he beats on that door again, I shall scream.

     MRS BUILDER smiles, shakes her head, and turns to the door.

MRS BUILDER.  Now, my dear, you're going to be sensible, to please me.
It's really best.  If I say so, it must be.  It's all comedy, Athene.

ATHENE.  Tragedy!

GUY.  [Turning to them]  Look here!  Shall I shift him?

     MRS BUILDER shakes her head and opens the door.  BUILDER stands
     there, a furious figure.

BUILDER.  Will you come, and leave that baggage and her cad?

MRS BUILDER steps quickly out and the door is closed.  Guy makes an angry
movement towards it.

ATHENE.  Guy!

GUY.  [Turning to her]  That puts the top hat on.  So persuasive!  [He
takes out of his pocket a wedding ring, and a marriage licence]  Well!
What's to be done with these pretty things, now?

ATHENE.  Burn them!

GUY.  [Slowly]  Not quite.  You can't imagine I should ever be like that,
Athene?

ATHENE.  Marriage does wonders.

GUY.  Thanks.

ATHENE.  Oh!  Guy, don't be horrid.  I feel awfully bad.

GUY.  Well, what do you think I feel?  "Cad!"

     They turn to see ANNIE in hat and coat, with a suit-case in her
     hand, coming from the door Left.

ANNIE.  Oh!  ma'am, please, Miss, I want to go home.

GUY.  [Exasperated!]  She wants to go home--she wants to go home!

ATHENE.  Guy!  All right, Annie.

ANNIE.  Oh! thank you, Miss.  [She moves across in front of them].

ATHENE.  [Suddenly] Annie!

     ANNIE stops and turns to her.

What are you afraid of?

ANNIE.  [With comparative boldness] I--I might catch it, Miss.

ATHENE.  From your people?

ANNIE.  Oh! no, Miss; from you.  You see, I've got a young man that wants
to marry me.  And if I don't let him, I might get into trouble meself.

ATHENE.  What sort of father and mother have you got, Annie?

ANNIE.  I never thought, Miss.  And of course I don't want to begin.

ATHENE.  D'you mean you've never noticed how they treat each other?

ANNIE.  I don't think they do, Miss.

ATHENE.  Exactly.

ANNIE.  They haven't time.  Father's an engine driver.

GUY.  And what's your young man, Annie?

ANNIE.  [Embarrassed]  Somethin' like you, sir.  But very respectable.

ATHENE.  And suppose you marry him, and he treats you like a piece of
furniture?

ANNIE.  I--I could treat him the same, Miss.

ATHENE.  Don't you believe that, Annie!

ANNIE.  He's very mild.

ATHENE.  That's because he wants you.  You wait till he doesn't.

     ANNIE looks at GUY.

GUY.  Don't you believe her, Annie; if he's decent--

ANNIE.  Oh! yes, sir.

ATHENE.  [Suppressing a smile]  Of course--but the point is, Annie, that
marriage makes all the difference.

ANNIE.  Yes, Miss; that's what I thought.

ATHENE.  You don't see.  What I mean is that when once he's sure of you,
he may change completely.

ANNIE.  [Slowly, looking at her thumb] Oh!  I don't--think--he'll hammer
me, Miss.  Of course, I know you can't tell till you've found out.

ATHENE.  Well, I've no right to influence you.

ANNIE.  Oh! no, Miss;  that's what I've been thinking.

-GUY.  You're quite right, Annie=-this is no place for you.

ANNIE.  You see, we can't be married; sir, till he gets his rise.  So
it'll be a continual temptation to me.

ATHENE.  Well, all right, Annie.  I hope you'll never regret it.

ANNIE.  Oh! no, Miss.

GUY.  I say, Annie, don't go away thinking evil of us; we didn't realise
you knew we weren't married.

ATHENE.  We certainly did not.

ANNIE.  Oh!  I didn't think it right to take notice.

GUY.  We beg your pardon.

ANNIE.  Oh!  no, sir.  Only, seein' Mr and Mrs Builder so upset, brought
it 'ome like.  And father can be 'andy with a strap.

ATHENE.  There you are!  Force majeure!

ANNIE.  Oh!  yes, Miss.

ATHENE.  Well, good-bye, Annie.  What are you going to say to your
people?

ANNIE.  Oh!  I shan't say I've been livin' in a family that wasn't a
family, Miss.  It wouldn't do no good.

ATHENE.  Well, here are your wages.

ANNIE.  Oh!  I'm puttin' you out, Miss.  [She takes the money].

ATHENE.  Nonsense, Annie.  And here's your fare home.

ANNIE.  Oh! thank you, Miss.  I'm very sorry.  Of course if you was to
change your mind--[She stops, embarrassed].

ATHENE.  I don't think--

GUY.  [Abruptly]  Good-bye, Annie.  Here's five bob for the movies.

ANNIE.  Oh! good-bye, sir, and thank you.  I was goin' there now with my
young man.  He's just round the corner.

GUY.  Be very careful of him.

ANNIE.  Oh! yes, sir, I will.  Good-bye, sir.  Goodbye, Miss.

     She goes.

GUY.  So her father has a firm hand too.  But it takes her back to the
nest.  How's that, Athene?

ATHENE.  [Playing with a leathern button on his coat]  If you'd watched
it ever since you could watch anything, seen it kill out all--It's having
power that does it.  I know Father's got awfully good points.

GUY.  Well, they don't stick out.

ATHENE.  He works fearfully hard; he's upright, and plucky.  He's not
stingy.  But he's smothered his animal nature-and that's done it.  I
don't want to see you smother anything, Guy.

GUY.  [Gloomily]  I suppose one never knows what one's got under the lid.
If he hadn't come here to-day--[He spins the wedding ring]  He certainly
gives one pause.  Used he to whack you?

ATHENE.  Yes.

GUY.  Brute!

ATHENE.  With the best intentions.  You see, he's a Town Councillor, and
a magistrate.  I suppose they have to be "firm."  Maud and I sneaked in
once to listen to him.  There was a woman who came for protection from
her husband.  If he'd known we were there, he'd have had a fit.

GUY.  Did he give her the protection?

ATHENE.  Yes; he gave her back to the husband.  Wasn't it--English?

GUY.  [With a grunt]  Hang it!  We're not all like that.

ATHENE.  [Twisting his button]  I think it's really a sense of property
so deep that they don't know they've got it.  Father can talk about
freedom like a--politician.

GUY.  [Fitting the wedding ring on her finger]  Well!  Let's see how it
looks, anyway.

ATHENE.  Don't play with fire, Guy.

GUY.  There's something in atavism, darling; there really is.  I like it
--I do.

     A knock on the door.

ATHENE.  That sounds like Annie again.  Just see.

GUY.  [Opening the door]  It is.  Come in, Annie.  What's wrong now?

ANNIE.  [Entering in confusion]  Oh!  sir, please, sir--I've told my
young man.

ATHENE.  Well, what does he say?

ANNIE.  'E was 'orrified, Miss.

GUY.  The deuce he was!  At our conduct?

ANNIE.  Oh!  no, sir--at mine.

ATHENE.  But you did your best; you left us.

ANNIE.  Oh! yes, Miss; that's why 'e's horrified.

GUY.  Good for your young man.

ANNIE.  [Flattered] Yes, sir.  'E said I 'ad no strength of mind.

ATHENE.  So you want to come back?

ANNIE.  Oh!  yes, Miss.

ATHENE.  All right.

GUY.  But what about catching it?

ANNIE.  Oh, sir, 'e said there was nothing like Epsom salts.

GUY.  He's a wag, your young man.

ANNIE.  He was in the Army, sir.

GUY.  You said he was respectable.

ANNIE.  Oh! yes, sir; but not so respectable as that.

ATHENE.  Well, Annie, get your things off, and lay lunch.

ANNIE.  Oh!  yes, Miss.

     She makes a little curtsey and passes through into the kitchen.

GUY.  Strength of mind!  Have a little, Athene won't you?  [He holds out
the marriage licence before her].

ATHENE.  I don't know--I don't know!  If--it turned out--

GUY.  It won't.  Come on.  Must take chances in this life.

ATHENE.  [Looking up into his face] Guy, promise me--solemnly that you'll
never let me stand in your way, or stand in mine!

GUY.  Right!  That's a bargain.  [They embrace.]

     ATHENE quivers towards him.  They embrace fervently as ANNIE enters
     with the bread pan.  They spring apart.

ANNIE.  Oh!

GUY.  It's all right, Annie.  There's only one more day's infection
before you.  We're to be married to-morrow morning.

ANNIE.  Oh! yes, sir.  Won't Mr Builder be pleased?

GUY.  H'm!  That's not exactly our reason.

ANNIE.  [Right] Oh! no, sir.  Of course you can't be a family without,
can you?

GUY.  What have you got in that thing?

     ANNIE is moving across with the bread pan.  She halts at the bedroom
     door.

ANNIE.  Oh! please, ma'am, I was to give you a message--very important--
from Miss Maud Builder "Lookout!  Father is coming!"

     She goes out.

     The CURTAIN falls.




ACT II

     BUILDER'S study.  At the table, MAUD has just put a sheet of paper
     into a typewriter.  She sits facing the audience, with her hands
     stretched over the keys.

MAUD.  [To herself]  I must get that expression.

     Her face assumes a furtive, listening look.  Then she gets up,
     whisks to the mirror over the fireplace, scrutinises the expression
     in it, and going back to the table, sits down again with hands
     outstretched above the keys, and an accentuation of the expression.
     The door up Left is opened, and TOPPING appears.  He looks at MAUD,
     who just turns her eyes.

TOPPING.  Lunch has been ready some time, Miss Maud.

MAUD.  I don't want any lunch.  Did you give it?

TOPPING.  Miss Athene was out.  I gave the message to a young party.  She
looked a bit green, Miss.  I hope nothing'll go wrong with the works.
Shall I keep lunch back?

MAUD.  If something's gone wrong, they won't have any appetite, Topping.

TOPPING.  If you think I might risk it, Miss, I'd like to slip round to
my dentist.  [He lays a finger on his cheek].

MAUD.  [Smiling] Oh!  What race is being run this afternoon, then,
Topping?

TOPPING.  [Twinkling, and shifting his finger to the side of his nose]
Well, I don't suppose you've 'eard of it, Miss; but as a matter of fact
it's the Cesarwitch.

MAUD.  Got anything on?

TOPPING.  Only my shirt, Miss.

MAUD.  Is it a good thing, then?

TOPPING.  I've seen worse roll up.  [With a touch of enthusiasm] Dark
horse, Miss Maud, at twenty to one.

MAUD.  Put me ten bob on, Topping.  I want all the money I can get, just
now.

TOPPING.  You're not the first, Miss.

MAUD.  I say, Topping, do you know anything about the film?

TOPPING.  [Nodding]  Rather a specialty of mine, Miss.

MAUD.  Well, just stand there, and give me your opinion of this.

     TOPPING moves down Left.  She crouches over the typewriter, lets her
     hands play on the keys; stops; assumes that listening, furtive look;
     listens again, and lets her head go slowly round, preceded by her
     eyes; breaks it off, and says:

What should you say I was?

TOPPING.  Guilty, Miss.

MAUD.  [With triumph]  There!  Then you think I've got it?

TOPPING.  Well, of course, I couldn't say just what sort of a crime you'd
committed, but I should think pretty 'ot stuff.

MAUD.  Yes; I've got them here.  [She pats her chest].

TOPPING.  Really, Miss.

MAUD.  Yes.  There's just one point, Topping; it's psychological.

TOPPING.  Indeed, Miss?

MAUD.  Should I naturally put my hand on them; or would there be a
reaction quick enough to stop me?  You see, I'm alone--and the point is
whether the fear of being seen would stop me although I knew I couldn't
be seen.  It's rather subtle.

TOPPING.  I think there's be a rehaction, Miss.

MAUD.  So do I.  To touch them [She clasps her chest] is a bit obvious,
isn't it?

TOPPING.  If the haudience knows you've got 'em there.

MAUD.  Oh! yes, it's seen me put them.  Look here, I'll show you that
too.

     She opens an imaginary drawer, takes out some bits of sealing-wax,
     and with every circumstance of stealth in face and hands, conceals
     them in her bosom.

All right?

TOPPING.  [Nodding]  Fine, Miss.  You have got a film face.  What are
they, if I may ask?

MAUD.  [Reproducing the sealing-wax]  The Fanshawe diamonds.  There's
just one thing here too, Topping.

In real life, which should I naturally do--put them in here  [She touches
her chest]  or in my bag?

TOPPING.  [Touching his waistcoat--earnestly]  Well!  To put 'em in here,
Miss, I should say is more--more pishchological.

MAUD.  [Subduing her lips]  Yes; but--

TOPPING.  You see, then you've got 'em on you.

MAUD.  But that's just the point.  Shouldn't I naturally think: Safer in
my bag; then I can pretend somebody put them there.  You see, nobody
could put them on me.

TOPPING.  Well, I should say that depends on your character.  Of course I
don't know what your character is.

MAUD.  No; that's the beastly part of it--the author doesn't, either.
It's all left to me.

TOPPING.  In that case, I should please myself, Miss.  To put 'em in
'ere's warmer.

MAUD.  Yes, I think you're right.  It's more human.

TOPPING.  I didn't know you 'ad a taste this way, Miss Maud.

MAUD.  More than a taste, Topping--a talent.

TOPPING.  Well, in my belief, we all have a vice about us somewhere.  But
if I were you, Miss, I wouldn't touch bettin', not with this other on
you.  You might get to feel a bit crowded.

MAUD.  Well, then, only put the ten bob on if you're sure he's going to
win.  You can post the money on after me.  I'll send you an address,
Topping, because I shan't be here.

TOPPING.  [Disturbed]  What!  You're not going, too, Miss Maud?

MAUD.  To seek my fortune.

TOPPING.  Oh!  Hang it all, Miss, think of what you'll leave behind.
Miss Athene's leavin' home has made it pretty steep, but this'll touch
bottom--this will.

MAUD.  Yes; I expect you'll find it rather difficult for a bit when I'm
gone.  Miss Baldini, you know.  I've been studying with her.  She's got
me this chance with the movie people.  I'm going on trial as the guilty
typist in "The Heartache of Miranda."

TOPPING.  [Surprised out of politeness]  Well, I never!  That does sound
like 'em!  Are you goin' to tell the guv'nor, Miss?

     MAUD nods.  In that case, I think I'll be gettin' off to my dentist
     before the band plays.

MAUD.  All right, Topping; hope you won't lose a tooth.

TOPPING.  [With a grin]  It's on the knees of the gods, Miss, as they say
in the headlines.

     He goes.  MAUD stretches herself and listens.

MAUD.  I believe that's them.  Shivery funky.

     She runs off up Left.

BUILDER.  [Entering from the hall and crossing to the fireplace]
Monstrous!  Really monstrous!

     CAMILLE enters from the hall.  She has a little collecting book in
     her hand.

BUILDER.  Well, Camille?

CAMILLE.  A sistare from the Sacred 'Eart, Monsieur--her little book for
the orphan children.

BUILDER.  I can't be bothered--What is it?

CAMILLE.  Orphan, Monsieur.

BUILDER.  H'm!  Well!  [Feeling in his breast pocket] Give her that.

     He hands her a five-pound note.

CAMILLE.  I am sure she will be veree grateful for the poor little
beggars.  Madame says she will not be coming to lunch, Monsieur.

BUILDER.  I don't want any, either.  Tell Topping I'll have some coffee.

CAMILLE.  Topping has gone to the dentist, Monsieur; 'e 'as the
toothache.

BUILDER.  Toothache--poor devil!  H'm!  I'm expecting my brother, but I
don't know that I can see him.

CAMILLE.  No, Monsieur?

BUILDER.  Ask your mistress to come here.

     He looks up, and catching her eye, looks away.

CAMILLE.  Yes, Monsieur.

     As she turns he looks swiftly at her, sweeping her up and down.  She
     turns her head and catches his glance, which is swiftly dropped.
     Will Monsieur not 'ave anything to eat?

BUILDER.  [Shaking his head-abruptly]  No.  Bring the coffee!

CAMILLE.  Is Monsieur not well?

BUILDER.  Yes--quite well.

CAMILLE.  [Sweetening her eyes]  A cutlet soubise?  No?

BUILDER.  [With a faint response in his eyes, instantly subdued] Nothing!
nothing!

CAMILLE.  And Madame nothing too--Tt!  Tt!  With her hand on the door she
looks back, again catches his eyes in an engagement instantly broken off,
and goes out.

BUILDER.  [Stock-still, and staring at the door]  That girl's a continual
irritation to me!  She's dangerous!  What a life!  I believe that girl--

     The door Left is opened and MRS BUILDER comes in.

BUILDER.  There's some coffee coming; do your head good.  Look here,
Julia.  I'm sorry I beat on that door.  I apologize.  I was in a towering
passion.  I wish I didn't get into these rages.  But--dash it all--!  I
couldn't walk away and leave you there.

MRS BUILDER.  Why not?

BUILDER.  You keep everything to yourself, so; I never have any notion
what you're thinking.  What did you say to her?

MRS BUILDER.  Told her it would never work.

BUILDER.  Well, that's something.  She's crazy.  D'you suppose she was
telling the truth about that young blackguard wanting to marry her?

MRS BUILDER.  I'm sure of it.

BUILDER.  When you think of how she's been brought up.  You would have
thought that religion alone--

MRS BUILDER.  The girls haven't wanted to go to church for years.
They've always said they didn't see why they should go to keep up your
position.  I don't know if you remember that you once caned them for
running off on a Sunday morning.

BUILDER.  Well?

MRS BUILDER.  They've never had any religion since.

BUILDER.  H'm!  [He takes a short turn up the room]  What's to be done
about Athene?

MRS BUILDER.  You said you had done with her.

BUILDER.  You know I didn't mean that.  I might just as well have said
I'd done with you!  Apply your wits, Julia!  At any moment this thing may
come out.  In a little town like this you can keep nothing dark.  How can
I take this nomination for Mayor?

MRS BUILDER.  Perhaps Ralph could help.

BUILDER.  What?  His daughters have never done anything disgraceful, and
his wife's a pattern.

MRS BUILDER.  Yes; Ralph isn't at all a family man.

BUILDER.  [Staring at her]  I do wish you wouldn't turn things upside
down in that ironical way.  It isn't--English.

MRS BUILDER.  I can't help having been born in Jersey.

BUILDER.  No; I suppose it's in your blood.  The French--  [He stops
short].

MRS BUILDER.  Yes?

BUILDER.  Very irritating sometimes to a plain Englishman--that's all.

MRS BUILDER.  Shall I get rid of Camille?

BUILDER.  [Staring at her, then dropping his glance]  Camille?  What's
she got to do with it?

MRS BUILDER.  I thought perhaps you found her irritating.

BUILDER.  Why should I?

     CAMILLE comes in from the dining-room with the coffee.

Put it there.  I want some brandy, please.

CAMILLE.  I bring it, Monsieur.

     She goes back demurely into the dining-room.

BUILDER.  Topping's got toothache, poor chap!  [Pouring out the coffee]
Can't you suggest any way of making Athene see reason?  Think of the
example!  Maud will be kicking over next.  I shan't be able to hold my
head up here.

MRS BUILDER.  I'm afraid I can't do that for you.

BUILDER.  [Exasperated]  Look here, Julia!  That wretched girl said
something to me about our life together.  What--what's the matter with
that?

MRS BUILDER.  It is irritating.

BUILDER.  Be explicit.

MRS BUILDER.  We have lived together twenty-three years, John.  No talk
will change such things.

BUILDER.  Is it a question of money?  You can always have more.  You know
that.  [MRS BUILDER smiles]  Oh! don't smile like that; it makes me feel
quite sick!

     CAMILLE enters with a decanter and little glasses, from the dining-
     room.

CAMILLE.  The brandy, sir.  Monsieur Ralph Builder has just come.

MRS BUILDER.  Ask him in, Camille.

CAMILLE.  Yes, Madame.

     She goes through the doorway into the hall.  MRS BUILDER, following
     towards the door, meets RALPH BUILDER, a man rather older than
     BUILDER and of opposite build and manner.  He has a pleasant,
     whimsical face and grizzled hair.

MRS BUILDER.  John wants to consult you, Ralph.

RALPH.  That's very gratifying.

     She passes him and goes out, leaving the two brothers eyeing one
     another.

About the Welsh contract?

BUILDER.  No.  Fact is, Ralph, something very horrible's happened.

RALPH.  Athene gone and got married?

BUILDER.  No.  It's--it's that she's gone and--and not got married.

     RALPH utters a sympathetic whistle.

Jolly, isn't it?

RALPH.  To whom?

BUILDER.  A young flying bounder.

RALPH.  And why?

BUILDER.  Some crazy rubbish about family life, of all things.

RALPH.  Athene's a most interesting girl.  All these young people are so
queer and delightful.

BUILDER.  By George, Ralph, you may thank your stars you haven't got a
delightful daughter.  Yours are good, decent girls.

RALPH.  Athene's tremendously good and decent, John.  I'd bet any money
she's doing this on the highest principles.

BUILDER.  Behaving like a--

RALPH.  Don't say what you'll regret, old man!  Athene always took things
seriously--bless her!

BUILDER.  Julia thinks you might help.  You never seem to have any
domestic troubles.

RALPH.  No--o.  I don't think we do.

BUILDER.  How d'you account for it?

RALPH.  I must ask at home.

BUILDER.  Dash it!  You must know!

RALPH.  We're all fond of each other.

BUILDER.  Well, I'm fond of my girls too;  I suppose I'm not amiable
enough.  H'm?

RALPH.  Well, old man, you do get blood to the head.  But what's Athene's
point, exactly?

BUILDER.  Family life isn't idyllic, so she thinks she and the young man
oughtn't to have one.

RALPH.  I see.  Home experience?

BUILDER.  Hang it all, a family's a family!  There must be a head.

RALPH.  But no tail, old chap.

BUILDER.  You don't let your women folk do just as they like?

RALPH.  Always.

BUILDER.  What happens if one of your girls wants to do an improper
thing?  [RALPH shrugs his shoulders].  You don't stop her?

RALPH.  Do you?

BUILDER.  I try to.

RALPH.  Exactly.  And she does it.  I don't and she doesn't.

BUILDER.  [With a short laugh]  Good Lord!  I suppose you'd have me eat
humble pie and tell Athene she can go on living in sin and offending
society, and have my blessing to round it off.

RALPH.  I think if you did she'd probably marry him.

BUILDER.  You've never tested your theory, I'll bet.

RALPH.  Not yet.

BUILDER.  There you are.

RALPH.  The 'suaviter in modo' pays, John.  The times are not what they
were.

BUILDER.  Look here!  I want to get to the bottom of this.  Do you tell
me I'm any stricter than nine out of ten men?

RALPH.  Only in practice.

BUILDER.  [Puzzled]  How do you mean?

RALPH.  Well, you profess the principles of liberty, but you practise the
principles of government.

BUILDER.  H'm!  [Taking up the decanter]  Have some?

RALPH.  No, thank you.

     BUILDER fills and raises his glass.

CAMILLE.  [Entering] Madame left her coffee.

     She comes forward, holds out a cup for BUILDER to pour into, takes
     it and goes out.  BUILDER'S glass remains suspended.  He drinks the
     brandy off as she shuts the door.

BUILDER.  Life isn't all roses, Ralph.

RALPH.  Sorry, old man.

BUILDER.  I sometimes think I try myself too high.  Well, about that
Welsh contract?

RALPH.  Let's take it.

BUILDER.  If you'll attend to it.  Frankly, I'm too upset.

     As they go towards the door into the hall, MAUD comes in from the
     dining-room, in hat and coat.

RALPH.  [Catching sight of her] Hallo!  All well in your cosmogony, Maud?

MAUD.  What is a cosmogony, Uncle?

RALPH.  My dear, I--I don't know.

     He goes out, followed by BUILDER.  MAUD goes quickly to the table,
     sits down and rests her elbows on it, her chin on her hands, looking
     at the door.

BUILDER.  [Re-entering]  Well, Maud!  You'd have won your bet!

MAUD.  Oh! father, I--I've got some news for you.

BUILDER.  [Staring at her]  News--what?

MAUD.  I'm awfully sorry, but I-I've got a job.

BUILDER.  Now, don't go saying you're going in for Art, too, because I
won't have it.

MAUD.  Art?  Oh! no!  It's the--[With a jerk]--the Movies.

     BUILDER.  who has taken up a pipe to fill, puts it down.

BUILDER.  [Impressively]  I'm not in a joking mood.

MAUD.  I'm not joking, father.

BUILDER.  Then what are you talking about?

MAUD.  You see, I--I've got a film face, and--

BUILDER.  You've what?  [Going up to his daughter, he takes hold of her
chin]  Don't talk nonsense!  Your sister has just tried me to the limit.

MAUD.  [Removing his hand from her chin] Don't oppose it, father, please!
I've always wanted to earn my own living.

BUILDER.  Living!  Living!

MAUD.  [Gathering determination]  You can't stop me, father, because I
shan't need support.  I've got quite good terms.

BUILDER.  [Almost choking, but mastering himself]  Do you mean to say
you've gone as far as that?

MAUD.  Yes.  It's all settled.

BUILDER.  Who put you up to this?

MAUD.  No one.  I've been meaning to, ever so long.  I'm twenty-one, you
know.

BUILDER.  A film face!  Good God!  Now, look here!  I will not have a
daughter of mine mixed up with the stage.  I've spent goodness knows what
on your education--both of you.

MAUD.  I don't want to be ungrateful; but I--I can't go on living at
home.

BUILDER.  You can't--!  Why?  You've every indulgence.

MAUD.  [Clearly and coldly]  I can remember occasions when your
indulgence hurt, father.  [She wriggles her shoulders and back] We never
forgot or forgave that.

BUILDER.  [Uneasily]  That!  You were just kids.

MAUD.  Perhaps you'd like to begin again?

BUILDER.  Don't twist my tail, Maud.  I had the most painful scene with
Athene this morning.  Now come!  Give up this silly notion!  It's really
too childish!

MAUD.  [Looking at him curiously]  I've heard you say ever so many times
that no man was any good who couldn't make his own way, father.  Well,
women are the same as men, now.  It's the law of the country.  I only
want to make my own way.

BUILDER.  [Trying to subdue his anger]  Now, Maud, don't be foolish.
Consider my position here--a Town Councillor, a Magistrate, and Mayor
next year.  With one daughter living with a man she isn't married to--

MAUD.  [With lively interest]  Oh!  So you did catch them out?

BUILDER.  D'you mean to say you knew?

MAUD.  Of course.

BUILDER.  My God!  I thought we were a Christian family.

MAUD.  Oh! father.

BUILDER.  Don't sneer at Christianity!

MAUD.  There's only one thing wrong with Christians--they aren't!

BUILDER Seizes her by the shoulders and shakes her vigorously.  When he
drops her shoulders, she gets up, gives him a vicious look, and suddenly
stamps her foot on his toe with all her might.

BUILDER.  [With a yowl of pain]  You little devil!

MAUD.  [Who has put the table between them]  I won't stand being shaken.

BUILDER.  [Staring at her across the table]  You've got my temper up and
you'll take the consequences.  I'll make you toe the line.

MAUD.  If you knew what a Prussian expression you've got!

     BUILDER passes his hand across his face uneasily, as if to wipe
     something off.

No!  It's too deep!

BUILDER.  Are you my daughter or are you not?

MAUD.  I certainly never wanted to be.  I've always disliked you, father,
ever since I was so high.  I've seen through you.  Do you remember when
you used to come into the nursery because Jenny was pretty?  You think we
didn't notice that, but we did.  And in the schoolroom--Miss Tipton.  And
d'you remember knocking our heads together?  No, you don't; but we do.
And--

BUILDER.  You disrespectful monkey!  Will you be quiet?

MAUD.  No; you've got to hear things.  You don't really love anybody but
yourself, father.  What's good for you has to be good for everybody.
I've often heard you talk about independence, but it's a limited company
and you've got all the shares.

BUILDER.  Rot; only people who can support themselves have a right to
independence.

MAUD.  That's why you don't want me to support myself.

BUILDER.  You can't!  Film, indeed!  You'd be in the gutter in a year.
Athene's got her pittance, but you--you've got nothing.

MAUD.  Except my face.

BUILDER.  It's the face that brings women to ruin, my girl.

MAUD.  Well, when I'm there I won't come to you to rescue me.

BUILDER.  Now, mind--if you leave my house, I've done with you.

MAUD.  I'd rather scrub floors now, than stay.

BUILDER.  [Almost pathetically]  Well, I'm damned!  Look here, Maud--
all this has been temper.  You got my monkey up.  I'm sorry I shook you;
you've had your revenge on my toes.  Now, come!  Don't make things worse
for me than they are.  You've all the liberty you can reasonably want
till you marry.

MAUD.  He can't see it--he absolutely can't!

BUILDER.  See what?

MAUD.  That I want to live a life of my own.

     He edges nearer to her, and she edges to keep her distance.

BUILDER.  I don't know what's bitten you.

MAUD.  The microbe of freedom; it's in the air.

BUILDER.  Yes, and there it'll stay--that's the first sensible word
you've uttered.  Now, come!  Take your hat off, and let's be friends!

MAUD looks at him and slowly takes off her hat.

BUILDER.  [Relaxing his attitude, with a sigh of relief]  That's right!
[Crosses to fireplace].

MAUD.  [Springing to the door leading to the hall]  Good-bye, father!

BUILDER.  [Following her] Monkey!

     At the sound of a bolt shot, BUILDER goes up to the window.  There
     is a fumbling at the door, and CAMILLE appears.

BUILDER.  What's the matter with that door?  CAMILLE.  It was bolted,
Monsieur.

BUILDER.  Who bolted it?

CAMILLE.  [Shrugging her shoulders]  I can't tell, Monsieur.

     She collects the cups, and halts close to him.  [Softly]  Monsieur
     is not 'appy.

BUILDER.  [Surprised]  What?  No!  Who'd be happy in a household like
mine?

CAMILLE.  But so strong a man--I wish I was a strong man, not a weak
woman.

BUILDER.  [Regarding her with reluctant admiration]  Why, what's the
matter with you?

CAMILLE.  Will Monsieur have another glass of brandy before I take it?

BUILDER.  No!  Yes--I will.

     She pours it out, and he drinks it, hands her the glass and sits
     down suddenly in an armchair.  CAMILLE puts the glass on a tray, and
     looks for a box of matches from the mantelshelf.

CAMILLE.  A light, Monsieur?

BUILDER.  Please.

CAMILLE.  [She trips over his feet and sinks on to his knee]  Oh!
Monsieur!

     BUILDER flames up and catches her in his arms

Oh!  Monsieur--

BUILDER.  You little devil!

     She suddenly kisses him, and he returns the kiss.  While they are
     engaged in this entrancing occupation, MRS BUILDER opens the door
     from the hall, watches unseen for a few seconds, and quietly goes
     out again.

BUILDER.  [Pushing her back from him, whether at the sound of the door or
of a still small voice]  What am I doing?

CAMILLE.  Kissing.

BUILDER.  I--I forgot myself.

     They rise.

CAMILLE.  It was na-ice.

BUILDER.  I didn't mean to.  You go away--go away!

CAMILLE.  Oh!  Monsieur, that spoil it.

BUILDER.  [Regarding her fixedly]  It's my opinion you're a temptation of
the devil.  You know you sat down on purpose.

CAMILLE.  Well, perhaps.

BUILDER.  What business had you to?  I'm a family man.

CAMILLE.  Yes.  What a pity!  But does it matter?

BUILDER.  [Much beset]  Look here, you know!  This won't do!  It won't
do!  I--I've got my reputation to think of!

CAMILLE.  So 'ave I!  But there is lots of time to think of it in
between.

BUILDER.  I knew you were dangerous.  I always knew it.

CAMILLE.  What a thing to say of a little woman!

BUILDER.  We're not in Paris.

CAMILLE.  [Clasping her hands] Oh! 'Ow I wish we was!

BUILDER.  Look here--I can't stand this; you've got to go.  Out with you!
I've always kept a firm hand on myself, and I'm not going to--

CAMILLE.  But I admire you so!

BUILDER.  Suppose my wife had come in?

CAMILLE.  Oh!  Don't suppose any such a disagreeable thing!  If you were
not so strict, you would feel much 'appier.

BUILDER.  [Staring at her] You're a temptress!

CAMILLE.  I lofe pleasure, and I don't get any.  And you 'ave such a
duty, you don't get any sport.  Well, I am 'ere!

     She stretches herself, and BUILDER utters a deep sound.

BUILDER.  [On the edge of succumbing]  It's all against my--I won't do
it!  It's--it's wrong!

CAMILLE.  Oh!  La, la!

BUILDER.  [Suddenly revolting] No!  If you thought it a sin--I--might.
But you don't; you're nothing but a--a little heathen.

CAMILLE.  Why should it be better if I thought it a sin?

BUILDER.  Then--then I should know where I was. As it is--

CAMILLE.  The English 'ave no idea of pleasure.  They make it all so
coarse and virtuous.

BUILDER.  Now, out you go before I--!  Go on!

     He goes over to the door and opens it.  His wife is outside in a hat
     and coat.  She comes in.

[Stammering] Oh!  Here you are--I wanted you.

     CAMILLE, taking up the tray, goes out Left, swinging her hips a very
     little.

BUILDER.  Going out?

MRS BUILDER.  Obviously.

BUILDER.  Where?

MRS BUILDER.  I don't know at present.

BUILDER.  I wanted to talk to you about Maud.

MRS BUILDER.  It must wait.

BUILDER.  She's-she's actually gone and--

MRS BUILDER.  I must tell you that I happened to look in a minute ago.

BUILDER.  [In absolute dismay]  You!  You what?

MRS BUILDER.  Yes.  I will put no obstacle in the way of your pleasures.

BUILDER.  [Aghast]  Put no obstacle?  What do you mean?  Julia, how can
you say a thing like that?  Why, I've only just--

MRS BUILDER.  Don't!  I saw.

BUILDER.  The girl fell on my knees.  Julia, she did.  She's--she's a
little devil.  I--I resisted her.  I give you my word there's been
nothing beyond a kiss, under great provocation.  I--I apologise.

MRS BUILDER.  [Bows her head]  Thank you!  I quite understand.  But you
must forgive my feeling it impossible to remain a wet blanket any longer.

BUILDER.  What!  Because of a little thing like that--all over in two
minutes, and I doing my utmost.

MRS BUILDER.  My dear John, the fact that you had to do your utmost is
quite enough.  I feel continually humiliated in your house, and I want to
leave it--quite quietly, without fuss of any kind.

BUILDER.  But--my God!  Julia, this is awful--it's absurd!  How can you?
I'm your husband.  Really--your saying you don't mind what I do--it's not
right; it's immoral!

MRS BUILDER.  I'm afraid you don't see what goes on in those who live
with you.  So, I'll just go.  Don't bother!

BUILDER.  Now, look here, Julia, you can't mean this seriously.  You
can't!  Think of my position!  You've never set yourself up against me
before.

MRS BUILDER.  But I do now.

BUILDER.  [After staring at her]  I've given you no real reason.  I'll
send the girl away.  You ought to thank me for resisting a temptation
that most men would have yielded to.  After twenty-three years of married
life, to kick up like this--you ought to be ashamed of yourself.

MRS BUILDER.  I'm sure you must think so.

BUILDER.  Oh! for heaven's sake don't be sarcastic!  You're my wife, and
there's an end of it; you've no legal excuse.  Don't be absurd!

MRS BUILDER.  Good-bye!

BUILDER.  D'you realise that you're encouraging me to go wrong?  That's a
pretty thing for a wife to do.  You ought to keep your husband straight.

MRS BUILDER.  How beautifully put!

BUILDER.  [Almost pathetically]  Don't rile me Julia!  I've had an awful
day.  First Athene--then Maud--then that girl--and now you!  All at once
like this!  Like a swarm of bees about one's head.  [Pleading]  Come,
now, Julia, don't be so--so im practicable!  You'll make us the laughing-
stock of the whole town.  A man in my position, and can't keep his own
family; it's preposterous!

MRS BUILDER.  Your own family have lives and thoughts and feelings of
their own.

BUILDER.  Oh!  This damned Woman's business!  I knew how it would be when
we gave you the vote.  You and I are married, and our daughters are our
daughters.  Come, Julia.  Where's your commonsense?  After twenty-three
years!  You know I can't do without you!

MRS BUILDER.  You could--quite easily.  You can tell people what you
like.

BUILDER.  My God!  I never heard anything so immoral in all my life from
the mother of two grownup girls.  No wonder they've turned out as they
have!  What is it you want, for goodness sake?

MRS BUILDER.  We just want to be away from you, that's all.  I assure you
it's best.  When you've shown some consideration for our feelings and
some real sign that we exist apart from you--we could be friends again--
perhaps--I don't know.

BUILDER.  Friends!  Good heavens!  With one's own wife and daughters!
[With great earnestness]  Now, look here, Julia, you haven't lived with
me all this time without knowing that I'm a man of strong passions;  I've
been a faithful husband to you--yes, I have.  And that means resisting
all sorts of temptations you know nothing of.  If you withdraw from my
society I won't answer for the consequences.  In fact, I can't have you
withdrawing.  I'm not going to see myself going to the devil and losing
the good opinion of everybody round me.  A bargain's a bargain.  And
until I've broken my side of it, and I tell you I haven't--you've no
business to break yours.  That's flat.  So now, put all that out of your
head.

MRS BUILDER.  No.

BUILDER.  [Intently]  D'you realise that I've supported you in luxury and
comfort?

MRS BUILDER.  I think I've earned it.

BUILDER.  And how do you propose to live?  I shan't give you a penny.
Come, Julia, don't be such an idiot!  Fancy letting a kiss which no man
could have helped, upset you like this!

MRS BUILDER.  The Camille, and the last straw!

BUILDER.  [Sharply] I won't have it.  So now you know.

     But MRS BUILDER has very swiftly gone.

Julia, I tell you--  [The outer door is heard being c1osed] Damnation!
I will not have it!  They're all mad!  Here--where's my hat?

     He looks distractedly round him, wrenches open the door, and a
     moment later the street door is heard to shut with a bang.


                             CURTAIN.




ACT III

SCENE I

     Ten o'clock the following morning, in the study of the Mayor of
     Breconridge, a panelled room with no window visible, a door Left
     back and a door Right forward.  The entire back wall is furnished
     with books from floor to ceiling; the other walls are panelled and
     bare.  Before the fireplace, Left, are two armchairs, and other
     chairs are against the walls.  On the Right is a writing-bureau at
     right angles to the footlights, with a chair behind it.  At its back
     corner stands HARRIS, telephoning.

HARRIS.  What--[Pause]  Well, it's infernally awkward, Sergeant.  .  .  .
The Mayor's in a regular stew.  .  .  . [Listens]  New constable?
I should think so!  Young fool!  Look here, Martin, the only thing to do
is to hear the charge here at once.  I've sent for Mr Chantrey;  he's on
his way.  Bring Mr Builder and the witnesses round sharp.  See?  And, I
say, for God's sake keep it dark.  Don't let the Press get on to it.  Why
you didn't let him go home--!  Black eye?  The  constable?  Well, serve
him right.  Blundering young ass!  I mean, it's undermining all
authority.  .  .  .  Well, you oughtn't--at least, I .  .  .  Damn it
all!--it's a nine days' wonder if it gets out--!  All right!  As soon as
you can.  [He hangs up the receiver, puts a second chair behind the
bureau, and other chairs facing it.] [To himself] Here's a mess!  Johnny
Builder, of all men!  What price Mayors!

     The telephone rings.

Hallo?  .  .  .  Poaching charge?  Well, bring him too; only, I say, keep
him back till the other's over.  By the way, Mr Chantrey's going
shooting.  He'll want to get off by eleven.  What?  .  .  Righto !

     As he hangs up the receiver the MAYOR enters.  He looks worried, and
     is still dressed with the indefinable wrongness of a burgher.

MAYOR.  Well, 'Arris?

HARRIS.  They'll be over in five minutes, Mr Mayor.

MAYOR.  Mr Chantrey?

HARRIS.  On his way, sir.

MAYOR.  I've had some awkward things to deal with in my time, 'Arris, but
this is just about the [Sniffs] limit.

HARRIS.  Most uncomfortable, Sir; most uncomfortable!

MAYOR.  Put a book on the chair, 'Arris; I like to sit 'igh.

     HARRIS puts a volume of Eneyclopaedia on the Mayor's chair behind
     the bureau.

[Deeply]  Our fellow-magistrate!  A family man!  In my shoes next year.
I suppose he won't be, now.  You can't keep these things dark.

HARRIS.  I've warned Martin, sir, to use the utmost discretion.  Here's
Mr Chantrey.

     By the door Left, a pleasant and comely gentleman has entered,
     dressed with indefinable rightness in shooting clothes.

MAYOR.  Ah, Chantrey!

CHANTREY.  How de do, Mr Mayor?  [Nodding to HARRIS]  This is
extraordinarily unpleasant.

     The MAYOR nods.

What on earth's he been doing?

HARRIS.  Assaulting one of his own daughters with a stick; and resisting
the police.

CHANTREY.  [With a low whistle]  Daughter!  Charity begins at home.

HARRIS.  There's a black eye.

MAYOR.  Whose?

HARRIS.  The constable's.

CHANTREY.  How did the police come into it?

HARRIS.  I don't know, sir.  The worst of it is he's been at the police
station since four o'clock yesterday.  The Superintendent's away, and
Martin never will take responsibility.

CHANTREY.  By George! he will be mad.  John Builder's a choleric fellow.

MAYOR.  [Nodding]  He is.  'Ot temper, and an 'igh sense of duty.

HARRIS.  There's one other charge, Mr Mayor--poaching.  I told them to
keep that back till after.

CHANTREY.  Oh, well, we'll make short work of that.  I want to get off by
eleven, Harris.  I shall be late for the first drive anyway.  John
Builder!  I say, Mayor--but for the grace of God, there go we!

MAYOR.  Harris, go out and bring them in yourself; don't let the
servants--

     HARRIS goes out Left.  The MAYOR takes the upper chair behind the
     bureau, sitting rather higher because of the book than CHANTREY, who
     takes the lower.  Now that they are in the seats of justice, a sort
     of reticence falls on them, as if they were afraid of giving away
     their attitudes of mind to some unseen presence.

MAYOR.  [Suddenly]  H'm!

CHANTREY.  Touch of frost.  Birds ought to come well to the guns--no
wind.  I like these October days.

MAYOR.  I think I 'ear them.  H'm.

     CHANTREY drops his eyeglass and puts on a pair of "grandfather"
     spectacles.  The MAYOR clears his throat and takes up a pen.  They
     neither of them look up as the door is opened and a little
     procession.  files in.  First HARRIS; then RALPH BUILDER, ATHENE,
     HERRINGHAME, MAUD, MRS BUILDER, SERGEANT MARTIN, carrying a heavy
     Malacca cane with a silver knob; JOHN BUILDER and the CONSTABLE
     MOON, a young man with one black eye.  No funeral was ever attended
     by mutes so solemn and dejected.  They stand in a sort of row.

MAYOR.  [Without looking up]  Sit down, ladies; sit down.

     HARRIS and HERRINGHAME succeed in placing the three women in chairs.
     RALPH BUILDER also sits.  HERRINGHAME stands behind.  JOHN BUILDER
     remains standing between the two POLICEMEN.  His face is unshaved
     and menacing, but he stands erect staring straight at the MAYOR.
     HARRIS goes to the side of the bureau, Back, to take down the
     evidence.

MAYOR.  Charges!

SERGEANT.  John Builder, of The Cornerways, Breconridge, Contractor and
Justice of the Peace, charged with assaulting his daughter Maud Builder
by striking her with a stick in the presence of Constable Moon and two
other persons; also with resisting Constable Moon in the execution of his
duty, and injuring his eye.  Constable Moon!

MOON.  [Stepping forward-one, two--like an automaton, and saluting] In
River Road yesterday afternoon, Your Worship, about three-thirty p.m., I
was attracted by a young woman callin' "Constable" outside a courtyard.
On hearing the words "Follow me, quick," I followed her to a painter's
studio inside the courtyard, where I found three persons in the act of
disagreement.  No sooner 'ad I appeared than the defendant, who was
engaged in draggin' a woman towards the door, turns to the young woman
who accompanied me, with violence.  "You dare, father," she says;
whereupon he hit her twice with the stick the same which is produced, in
the presence of myself and the two other persons, which I'm given to
understand is his wife and other daughter.

MAYOR.  Yes; never mind what you're given to understand.

MOON.  No, sir.  The party struck turns to me and says, "Come in.  I give
this man in charge for assault."  I moves accordingly with the words:
"I saw you.  Come along with me."  The defendant turns to me sharp and
says: "You stupid lout--I'm a magistrate."  "Come off it," I says to the
best of my recollection.  "You struck this woman in my presence," I says,
"and you come along!"   We were then at close quarters.  The defendant
gave me a push with the words: "Get out, you idiot!"  "Not at all," I
replies, and took 'old of his arm.  A struggle ensues, in the course of
which I receives the black eye which I herewith produce.  [He touches his
eye with awful solemnity.]

     The MAYOR clears his throat; CHANTREY'S eyes goggle; HARRIS bends
     over and writes rapidly.

During the struggle, Your Worship, a young man has appeared on the scene,
and at the instigation of the young woman, the same who was assaulted,
assists me in securing the prisoner, whose language and resistance was
violent in the extreme.  We placed him in a cab which we found outside,
and I conveyed him to the station.

CHANTREY.  What was his--er--conduct in the--er--cab?

MOON.  He sat quiet.

CHANTREY.  That seems--

MOON.  Seein' I had his further arm twisted behind him.

MAYOR [Looking at BUILDER] Any questions to ask him?

     BUILDER makes not the faintest sign, and the MAYOR drops his glance.

MAYOR.  Sergeant?

     MOON steps back two paces, and the SERGEANT steps two paces forward.

SERGEANT.  At ten minutes to four, Your Worship, yesterday afternoon,
Constable Moon brought the defendant to the station in a four-wheeled
cab.  On his recounting the circumstances of the assault, they were
taken down and read over to the defendant with the usual warning.  The
defendant said nothing.  In view of the double assault and the condition
of the constable's eye, and in the absence of the Superintendent,
I thought it my duty to retain the defendant for the night.

MAYOR.  The defendant said nothing?

SERGEANT.  He 'as not opened his lips to my knowledge, Your Worship, from
that hour to this.

MAYOR.  Any questions to ask the Sergeant?

BUILDER continues to stare at the MAYOR without a word.

MAYOR.  Very well!

     The MAYOR and CHANTREY now consult each other inaudibly, and the
     Mayor nods.

MAYOR.  Miss Maud Builder, will you tell us what you know of this--er--
occurrence?

MAUD.  [Rising; with eyes turning here and there] Must I?

MAYOR.  I'm afraid you must.

MAUD.  [After a look at her father, who never turns his eyes from the
MAYOR's face] I--I wish to withdraw the charge of striking me, please.
I--I never meant to make it.  I was in a temper--I saw red.

MAYOR.  I see.  A--a domestic disagreement.  Very well, that charge is
withdrawn.  You do not appear to have been hurt, and that seems to me
quite proper.  Now, tell me what you know of the assault on the
constable.  Is his account correct?

MAUD.  [Timidly]  Ye-yes.  Only--

MAYOR.  Yes?  Tell us the truth.

MAUD.  [Resolutely]  Only, I don't think my father hit the constable.
I think the stick did that.

MAYOR.  Oh, the stick?  But--er--the stick was in 'is 'and, wasn't it?

MAUD.  Yes; but I mean, my father saw red, and the constable saw red, and
the stick flew up between them and hit him in the eye.

CHANTREY.  And then he saw black?

MAYOR.  [With corrective severity]  But did 'e 'it 'im with the stick?

MAUD.  No--no.  I don't think he did.

MAYOR.  Then who supplied the--er--momentum?

MAUD.  I think there was a struggle for the cane, and it flew up.

MAYOR.  Hand up the cane.

     The SERGEANT hands up the cane.  The MAYOR and CHANTREY examine it.
MAYOR.  Which end--do you suggest--inflicted this injury?

MAUD.  Oh! the knob end, sir.

MAYOR.  What do you say to that, constable?

MOON.  [Stepping the mechanical two paces] I don't deny there was a
struggle, Your Worship, but it's my impression I was 'it.

CHANTREY.  Of course you were bit; we can see that.  But with the cane or
with the fist?

MOON.  [A little flurried] I--I--with the fist, sir.

MAYOR.  Be careful.  Will you swear to that?

MOON.  [With that sudden uncertainty which comes over the most honest in
such circumstances]  Not--not so to speak in black and white, Your
Worship; but that was my idea at the time.

MAYOR.  You won't swear to it?

MOON.  I'll swear he called me an idiot and a lout; the words made a deep
impression on me.

CHANTREY.  [To himself]  Mort aux vaches!

MAYOR.  Eh?  That'll do, constable; stand back.  Now, who else saw the
struggle?  Mrs Builder.  You're not obliged to say anything unless you
like.  That's your privilege as his wife.

     While he is speaking the door has been opened, and HARRIS has gone
     swiftly to it, spoken to someone and returned.  He leans forward to
     the MAYOR.

Eh?  Wait a minute.  Mrs Builder, do you wish to give evidence?

MRS BUILDER.  [Rising]  No, Mr Mayor.

     MRS BUILDER Sits.

MAYOR.  Very good.  [To HARRIS]  Now then, what is it?

HARRIS says something in a low and concerned voice.  The MAYOR'S face
lengthens.  He leans to his right and consults CHANTREY, who gives a
faint and deprecating shrug.  A moment's silence.

MAYOR.  This is an open Court.  The Press have the right to attend if
they wish.

     HARRIS goes to the door and admits a young man in glasses, of a
     pleasant appearance, and indicates to him a chair at the back.  At
     this untimely happening BUILDER's eyes have moved from side to side,
     but now he regains his intent and bull-like stare at his fellow-
     justices.

MAYOR.  [To Maud]  You can sit down, Miss Builder.

     MAUD resumes her seat.

Miss Athene Builder, you were present, I think?

ATHENE.  [Rising]  Yes, Sir.

MAYOR.  What do you say to this matter?

ATHENE.  I didn't see anything very clearly, but I think my sister's
account is correct, sir.

MAYOR.  Is it your impression that the cane inflicted the injury?

ATHENE.  [In a low voice]  Yes.

MAYOR.  With or without deliberate intent?

ATHENE.  Oh!  without.

BUILDER looks at her.

MAYOR.  But you were not in a position to see very well?

ATHENE.  No, Sir.

MAYOR.  Your sister having withdrawn her charge, we needn't go into that.
Very good!

     He motions her to sit down.  ATHENE, turning her eyes on her
     Father's impassive figure, sits.

MAYOR.  Now, there was a young man.  [Pointing to HERRINGHAME]  Is this
the young man?

MOON.  Yes, Your Worship.

MAYOR.  What's your name?

GUY.  Guy Herringhame.

MAYOR.  Address?

GUY.  Er--the Aerodrome, Sir.  MAYOR.  Private, I mean?

     The moment is one of considerable tension.

GUY.  [With an effort]  At the moment, sir, I haven't one.  I've just
left my diggings, and haven't yet got any others.

MAYOR.  H'm!  The Aerodrome.  How did you come to be present?

GUY.  I--er

     BUILDER's eyes go round and rest on him for a moment.

It's in my sister's studio that Miss Athene Builder is at present
working, sir.  I just happened to--to turn up.

MAYOR.  Did you appear on the scene, as the constable says, during the
struggle?

GUY.  Yes, sir.

MAYOR.  Did he summon you to his aid?

GUY.  Yes--No, sir.  Miss Maud Builder did that.

MAYOR.  What do you say to this blow?

GUY.  [Jerking his chin up a little]  Oh!  I saw that clearly.

MAYOR.  Well, let us hear.

GUY.  The constable's arm struck the cane violently and it flew up and
landed him in the eye.

MAYOR.  [With a little grunt]  You are sure of that?

GUY.  Quite sure, sir.

MAYOR.  Did you hear any language?

GUY.  Nothing out of the ordinary, sir.  One or two damns and blasts.

MAYOR.  You call that ordinary?

GUY.  Well, he's a--magistrate, sir.

     The MAYOR utters a profound grunt.  CHANTREY smiles.  There is a
     silence.  Then the MAYOR leans over to CHANTREY for a short
     colloquy.

CHANTREY.  Did you witness any particular violence other than a
resistance to arrest?

GUY.  No, sir.

MAYOR.  [With a gesture of dismissal]  Very well, That seems to be the
evidence.  Defendant John Builder--what do you say to all this?

BUILDER.  [In a voice different from any we have heard from him] Say!
What business had he to touch me, a magistrate?  I gave my daughter two
taps with a cane in a private house, for interfering with me for taking
my wife home--

MAYOR.  That charge is not pressed, and we can't go into the
circumstances.  What do you wish to say about your conduct towards
the constable?

BUILDER.  [In his throat]  Not a damned thing!

MAYOR.  [Embarrassed]  I--I didn't catch.

CHANTREY.  Nothing--nothing,  he  said,  Mr Mayor.

MAYOR.  [Clearing his throat] I understand, then, that you do not wish to
offer any explanation?

BUILDER.  I consider myself abominably treated, and I refuse to say
another word.

MAYOR.  [Drily] Very good.  Miss Maud Builder.

     MAUD stands up.


MAYOR.  When you spoke of the defendant seeing red, what exactly did you
mean?

MAUD.  I mean that my father was so angry that he didn't know what he was
doing.

CHANTREY.  Would you say as angry as he--er--is now?

MAUD.  [With a faint smile]  Oh!  much more angry.

RALPH BUILDER stands up.

RALPH.  Would you allow me to say a word, Mr Mayor?

MAYOR.  Speaking of your own knowledge, Mr Builder?

RALPH.  In regard to the state of my brother's mind--yes, Mr Mayor.  He
was undoubtedly under great strain yesterday; certain circumstances,
domestic and otherwise--

MAYOR.  You mean that he might have been, as one might say, beside
himself?

RALPH.  Exactly, Sir.

MAYOR.  Had you seen your brother?

RALPH.  I had seen him shortly before this unhappy business.

     The MAYOR nods and makes a gesture, so that MAUD and RALPH sit down;
     then, leaning over, he confers in a low voice with CHANTREY.  The
     rest all sit or stand exactly as if each was the only person in the
     room, except the JOURNALIST, who is writing busily and rather
     obviously making a sketch of BUILDER.

MAYOR.  Miss Athene Builder.

     ATHENE stands up.

This young man, Mr Herringhame, I take it, is a friend of the family's?

     A moment of some tension.

ATHENE.  N--no, Mr Mayor, not of my father or mother.

CHANTREY.  An acquaintance of yours?

ATHENE.  Yes.

MAYOR.  Very good.  [He clears his throat]  As the defendant, wrongly, we
think, refuses to offer his explanation of this matter, the Bench has to
decide on the evidence as given.  There seems to be some discrepancy as
to the blow which the constable undoubtedly received.  In view of this,
we incline to take the testimony of Mr--

     HARRIS prompts him.

Mr 'Erringhame--as the party least implicated personally in the affair,
and most likely to 'ave a cool and impartial view.  That evidence is to
the effect that the blow was accidental.  There is no doubt, however,
that the defendant used reprehensible language, and offered some
resistance to the constable in the execution of his duty.  Evidence 'as
been offered that he was in an excited state of mind; and it is possible
--I don't say that this is any palliation--but it is possible that he may
have thought his position as magistrate made him--er--

CHANTREY.  [Prompting]  Caesar's wife.

MAYOR.  Eh?  We think, considering all the circumstances, and the fact
that he has spent a night in a cell, that justice will be met by--er--
discharging him with a caution.

BUILDER.  [With a deeply muttered]  The devil you do!

     Walks out of the room.  The JOURNALIST, grabbing his pad, starts up
     and follows.  The BUILDERS rise and huddle, and, with HERRINGHAME,
     are ushered out by HARRIS.

MAYOR.  [Pulling out a large handkerchief and wiping his forehead]
My Aunt!

CHANTREY.  These new constables, Mayor!  I say, Builder'll have to go!
Damn the Press, how they nose everything out!  The Great Unpaid!--
We shall get it again!  [He suddenly goes off into a fit of laughter]
"Come off it," I says, "to the best of my recollection."  Oh!  Oh!
I shan't hit a bird all day!  That poor devil Builder!  It's no joke for
him.  You did it well, Mayor; you did it well.  British justice is safe
in your hands.  He blacked the fellow's eye all right.  "Which I herewith
produce."  Oh! my golly!  It beats the band!

     His uncontrollable laughter and the MAYOR'S rueful appreciation are
     exchanged with lightning rapidity for a preternatural solemnity, as
     the door opens, admitting SERGEANT MARTIN and the lugubrious object
     of their next attentions.

MAYOR.  Charges.

     SERGEANT steps forward to read the charge as

     The CURTAIN falls.




SCENE II

     Noon the same day.

     BUILDER'S study.  TOPPING is standing by the open window, looking up
     and down the street.  A newspaper boy's voice is heard calling the
     first edition of his wares.  It approaches from the Right.

TOPPING.  Here!

BOY'S VOICE.  Right, guv'nor!  Johnny Builder up before the beaks!
[A paper is pushed up].

TOPPING.  [Extending a penny]  What's that you're sayin'?  You take care!

BOY'S VOICE.  It's all 'ere.  Johnny Builder--beatin' his wife!
Dischawged.

TOPPING.  Stop it, you young limb!

BOY'S VOICE.  'Allo!  What's the matter wiv you?  Why, it's Johnny
Builder's house!  [Gives a cat-call]  'Ere, buy anuvver!  'E'll want to
read about 'isself.  [Appealing]  Buy anuvver, guv'nor!

TOPPING.  Move on!

     He retreats from the window, opening the paper.

BOY'S VOICE.  [Receding]  Payper!  First edition!  J.P. chawged!  Payper!

TOPPING.  [To himself as he reads] Crimes!  Phew!  That accounts for them
bein' away all night.

     While he is reading, CAMILLE enters from the hall.  Here!  Have you
     seen this, Camel--in the Stop Press?

CAMILLE.  No.

     They read eagerly side by side.

TOPPING.  [Finishing aloud] "Tried to prevent her father from forcing her
mother to return home with him, and he struck her for so doing.  She did
not press the charge.  The arrested gentleman, who said he acted under
great provocation, was discharged with a caution."  Well, I'm blowed!
He has gone and done it!

CAMILLE.  A black eye!

TOPPING.  [Gazing at her]  Have you had any hand in this?  I've seen you
making your lovely black eyes at him.  You foreigners--you're a loose
lot!

CAMILLE.  You are drunk!

TOPPING.  Not yet, my dear.  [Reverting to the paper; philosophically]
Well, this little lot's bust up!  The favourites will fall down.  Johnny
Builder!  Who'd have thought it?

CAMILLE.  He is an obstinate man.

TOPPING.  Ah!  He's right up against it now.  Comes of not knowin' when
to stop bein' firm.  If you meet a wall with your 'ead, it's any odds on
the wall, Camel.  Though, if you listened to some, you wouldn't think it.
What'll he do now, I wonder?  Any news of the mistress?

CAMILLE.  [Shaking her head]  I have pack her tr-runks.

TOPPING.  Why?

CAMILLE.  Because she take her jewels yesterday.

TOPPING.  Deuce she did!  They generally leave 'em.  Take back yer gifts!
She throws the baubles at 'is 'ead.  [Again staring at her]  You're a
deep one, you know!

     There is the sound of a cab stopping.

Wonder if that's him!  [He goes towards the hall.  CAMILLE watchfully
shifts towards the diningroom door.  MAUD enters.]

MAUD.  Is my father back, Topping?

TOPPING.  Not yet, Miss.

MAUD.  I've come for mother's things.

CAMILLE.  They are r-ready.

MAUD.  [Eyeing her]  Topping, get them down, please.

     TOPPING, after a look at them both, goes out into the hall.

Very clever of you to have got them ready.

CAMILLE.  I am clevare.

MAUD.  [Almost to herself]  Yes--father may, and he may not.

CAMILLE.  Look!  If you think I am a designing woman, you are mistook.
I know when things are too 'ot.  I am not sorry to go.

MAUD.  Oh! you are going?

CAMILLE.  Yes, I am going.  How can I stay when there is no lady in the
'ouse?

MAUD.  Not even if you're asked to?

CAMILLE.  Who will ask me?

MAUD.  That we shall see.

CAMILLE.  Well, you will see I have an opinion of my own.

MAUD.  Oh!  yes, you're clear-headed enough.

CAMILLE.  I am not arguing.  Good-morning!

     Exits up Left.

MAUD regards her stolidly as she goes out into the dining-room, then
takes up the paper and reads.

MAUD.  Horrible!

     TOPPING re-enters from the hall.

TOPPING.  I've got 'em on the cab, Miss.  I didn't put your ten bob on
yesterday, because the animal finished last.  You cant depend on horses.

MAUD.  [Touching the newspaper]  This is a frightful business, Topping.

TOPPING.  Ah!  However  did  it  happen,  Miss Maud?

MAUD.  [Tapping the newspaper]  It's all true.  He came after my mother
to Miss Athene's, and I--I couldn't stand it.  I did what it says here;
and now I'm sorry.  Mother's dreadfully upset.  You know father as well
as anyone, Topping; what do you think he'll do now?

TOPPING.  [Sucking in his cheeks]  Well, you see, Miss, it's like this:
Up to now Mr Builder's always had the respect of everybody--

     MAUD moves her head impatiently.

outside his own house, of course.  Well, now he hasn't got it.
Pishchologically that's bound to touch him.

MAUD.  Of course; but which way?  Will he throw up the sponge, or try and
stick it out here?

TOPPING.  He won't throw up the sponge, Miss; more likely to squeeze it
down the back of their necks.

MAUD.  He'll be asked to resign, of course.

     The NEWSPAPER BOY'S VOICE is heard again approaching:  "First
     edition!  Great sensation!  Local magistrate before  the Bench!
     Pay-per!"

Oh, dear!  I wish I hadn't!  But I couldn't see mother being--

TOPPING.  Don't you fret, Miss; he'll come through.  His jaw's above his
brow, as you might say.

MAUD.  What?

TOPPING.  [Nodding]  Phreenology, Miss.  I rather follow that.  When the
jaw's big and the brow is small, it's a sign of character.  I always
think the master might have been a Scotchman, except for his fishionomy.

MAUD.  A Scotsman?

TOPPING.  So down on anything soft, Miss.  Haven't you noticed whenever
one of these 'Umanitarians writes to the papers, there's always a
Scotchman after him next morning.  Seems to be a fact of 'uman nature,
like introducin' rabbits into a new country and then weasels to get rid
of 'em.  And then something to keep down the weasels.  But I never can
see what could keep down a Scotchman!  You seem to reach the hapex there!

MAUD.  Miss Athene was married this morning, Topping.  We've just come
from the Registrar's.

TOPPING.  [Immovably]  Indeed, Miss.  I thought perhaps she was about to
be.

MAUD.  Oh!

TOPPING.  Comin' events.  I saw the shadder yesterday.

MAUD.  Well, it's all right.  She's coming on here with my uncle.

     A cab is heard driving up.

That's them, I expect.  We all feel awful about father.

TOPPING.  Ah!  I shouldn't be surprised if he feels awful about you,
Miss.

MAUD.  [At the window] It is them.

     TOPPING goes out into the hall; ATHENE and RALPH enter Right.

MAUD.  Where's father, Uncle Ralph?

RALPH.  With his solicitor.

ATHENE.  We left Guy with mother at the studio.  She still thinks she
ought to come.  She keeps on saying she must, now father's in a hole.

MAUD.  I've got her things on the cab; she ought to be perfectly free to
choose.

RALPH.  You've got freedom on the brain, Maud.

MAUD.  So would you, Uncle Ralph, if you had father about.

RALPH.  I'm his partner, my dear.

MAUD.  Yes; how do you manage him?

RALPH.  I've never yet given him in charge.

ATHENE.  What do you do, Uncle Ralph?

RALPH.  Undermine him when I can.

MAUD.  And when you can't?

RALPH.  Undermine the other fellow.  You can't go to those movie people
now, Maud.  They'd star you as the celebrated Maud Builder who gave her
father into custody.  Come to us instead, and have perfect freedom, till
all this blows over.

MAUD.  Oh! what will father be like now?

ATHENE.  It's so queer you and he being brothers, Uncle Ralph.

RALPH.  There are two sides to every coin, my dear.  John's the head-and
I'm the tail.  He has the sterling qualities.  Now, you girls have got to
smooth him down, and make up to him.  You've tried him pretty high.

MAUD.  [Stubbornly]  I never wanted him for a father, Uncle.

RALPH.  They do wonderful things nowadays with inherited trouble.  Come,
are you going to be nice to him, both of you?

ATHENE.  We're going to try.

RALPH.  Good!  I don't even now understand how it happened.

MAUD.  When you went out with Guy, it wasn't three minutes before he
came.  Mother had just told us about--well, about something beastly.
Father wanted us to go, and we agreed to go out for five minutes while he
talked to mother.  We went, and when we came back he told me to get a cab
to take mother home.  Poor mother stood there looking like a ghost, and
he began hunting and hauling her towards the door.  I saw red, and
instead of a cab I fetched that policeman.  Of course father did black
his eye.  Guy was splendid.

ATHENE.  You gave him the lead.

MAUD.  I couldn't help it, seeing father standing there all dumb.

ATHENE.  It was awful!  Uncle, why didn't you come back with Guy?

MAUD.  Oh, yes!  why didn't you, Uncle?

ATHENE.  When Maud had gone for the cab, I warned him not to use force.
I told him it was against the law, but he only said: "The law be damned!"

RALPH.  Well, it all sounds pretty undignified.

MAUD.  Yes; everybody saw red.

     They have not seen the door opened from the hall, and BUILDER
     standing there.  He is still unshaven, a little sunken in the face,
     with a glum, glowering expression.  He has a document in his hand.
     He advances a step or two and they see him.

ATHENE and MAUD.  [Aghast]  Father!

BUILDER.  Ralph, oblige me!  See them off the premises!

RALPH.  Steady, John!

BUILDER.  Go!

MAUD.  [Proudly]  All right!  We thought you might like to know that
Athene's married, and that I've given up the movies.  Now we'll go.

     BUILDER turns his back on them, and, sitting down at his writing-
     table, writes.

     After a moment's whispered conversation with their Uncle, the two
     girls go out.

     RALPH BUILDER stands gazing with whimsical commiseration at his
     brother's back.  As BUILDER finishes writing, he goes up and puts
     his hand on his brother's shoulder.

RALPH.  This is an awful jar, old man!

BUILDER.  Here's what I've said to that fellow: "MR MAYOR,--You had the
effrontery to-day to discharge me with a caution--forsooth!--your fellow
--magistrate.  I've consulted my solicitor as to whether an action will
lie for false imprisonment.  I'm informed that it won't.  I take this
opportunity of saying that justice in this town is a travesty.  I have no
wish to be associated further with you or your fellows;  but you are
vastly mistaken if you imagine that I shall resign my position on the
Bench or the Town Council.--Yours,
                                        "JOHN BUILDER."

RALPH.  I say--keep your sense of humour, old boy.

BUILDER.  [Grimly]  Humour?  I've spent a night in a cell.  See this!
[He holds out the document]  It disinherits my family.

RALPH.  John!

BUILDER.  I've done with those two ladies.  As to my wife--if she doesn't
come back--!  When I suffer, I make others suffer.

RALPH.  Julia's very upset, my dear fellow; we all are.  The girls came
here to try and--

BUILDER.  [Rising] They may go to hell!  If that lousy Mayor thinks I'm
done with--he's mistaken!  [He rings the bell] I don't want any soft
sawder.  I'm a fighter.

RALPH.  [In a low voice]  The enemy stands within the gate, old chap.

BUILDER.  What's that?

RALPH.  Let's boss our own natures before we boss those of other people.
Have a sleep on it, John, before you do anything.

BUILDER.  Sleep?  I hadn't a wink last night.  If you'd passed the night
I had--

RALPH.  I hadn't many myself.

     TOPPING enters.

BUILDER.  Take this note to the Mayor with my compliments, and don't
bring back an answer.  TOPPING.  Very good, sir.  There's a gentleman
from the "Comet" in the hall, sir.  Would you see him for a minute, he
says.

BUILDER.  Tell him to go to--

     A voice says, "Mr Builder!"  BUILDER turns to see the figure of the
     JOURNALIST in the hall doorway.  TOPPING goes out.

JOURNALIST.  [Advancing with his card]  Mr Builder, it's very good of you
to see me.  I had the pleasure this morning--I mean--I tried to reach you
when you left the Mayor's.  I thought you would probably have your own
side of this unfortunate matter.  We shall be glad to give it every
prominence.

     TOPPING has withdrawn, and RALPH BUILDER, at the window, stands
     listening.

BUILDER.  [Drily, regarding the JOURNALIST, who has spoken in a pleasant
and polite voice]  Very good of you!

JOURNALIST.  Not at all, sir.  We felt that you would almost certainly
have good reasons of your own which would put the matter in quite a
different light.

BUILDER.  Good reasons?  I should think so!  I tell you--a very little
more of this liberty--licence I call it--and there isn't a man who'll be
able to call himself head of a family.

JOURNALIST.  [Encouragingly]  Quite!

BUILDER.  If the law thinks it can back up revolt, it's damned well
mistaken.  I struck my daughter--I was in a passion, as you would have
been.

JOURNALIST.  [Encouraging]  I'm sure--

BUILDER. [Glaring at him]  Well, I don't know that you would; you look a
soft sort; but any man with any blood in him.

JOURNALIST.  Can one ask what she was doing, sir?  We couldn't get that
point quite clear.

BUILDER.  Doing?  I just had my arm round my wife, trying to induce her
to come home with me after a little family tiff, and this girl came at
me.  I lost my temper, and tapped her with my cane.  And--that policeman
brought by my own daughter--a policeman!  If the law is going to enter
private houses and abrogate domestic authority, where the hell shall we
be?

JOURNALIST.  [Encouraging]  No, I'm sure--I'm sure!

BUILDER.  The maudlin sentimentality in these days is absolutely rotting
this country.  A man can't be master in his own house, can't require his
wife to fulfil her duties, can't attempt to control the conduct of his
daughters, without coming up against it and incurring odium.  A man can't
control his employees; he can't put his foot down on rebellion anywhere,
without a lot of humanitarians and licence-lovers howling at him.

JOURNALIST.  Excellent, Sir; excellent!

BUILDER.  Excellent?  It's damnable.  Here am I--a man who's always tried
to do his duty in private life and public--brought up before the Bench--
my God! because I was doing that duty; with a little too much zeal,
perhaps--I'm not an angel!

JOURNALIST.  No!  No! of course.

BUILDER.  A proper Englishman never is.  But there are no proper
Englishmen nowadays.

     He crosses the room in his fervour.

RALPH.  [Suddenly]  As I look at faces--

BUILDER.  [Absorbed]  What!  I told this young man I wasn't an angel.

JOURNALIST.  [Drawing him on]  Yes, Sir; I quite understand.

BUILDER.  If the law thinks it can force me to be one of your weak-kneed
sentimentalists who let everybody do what they like--

RALPH.  There are a good many who stand on their rights left, John.

BUILDER.  [Absorbed]  What!  How can men stand on their rights left?

JOURNALIST.  I'm afraid you had a painful experience, sir.

BUILDER.  Every kind of humiliation.  I spent the night in a stinking
cell.  I haven't eaten since breakfast yesterday.  Did they think I was
going to eat the muck they shoved in?  And all because in a moment of
anger--which I regret, I regret!--I happened to strike my daughter, who
was interfering between me and my wife.  The thing would be funny if it
weren't so disgusting.  A man's house used to be sanctuary.  What is it
now?  With all the world poking their noses in?

He stands before the fire with his head bent, excluding as it were his
interviewer and all the world.

JOURNALIST.  [Preparing to go]  Thank you very much, Mr Builder.  I'm
sure I can do you justice.  Would you like to see a proof?

BUILDER.  [Half conscious of him]  What?

JOURNALIST.  Or will you trust me?

BUILDER.  I wouldn't trust you a yard.

JOURNALIST.  [At the door]  Very well, sir; you shall have a proof, I
promise.  Good afternoon, and thank you.

BUILDER.  Here!

     But he is gone, and BUILDER is left staring at his brother, on whose
     face is still that look of whimsical commiseration.

RALPH.  Take a pull, old man!  Have a hot bath and go to bed.

BUILDER.  They've chosen to drive me to extremes, now let them take the
consequences.  I don't care a kick what anybody thinks.

RALPH.  [Sadly]  Well, I won't worry you anymore, now.

BUILDER.  [With a nasty laugh]  No; come again to-morrow!

RALPH.  When you've had a sleep.  For the sake of the family name, John,
don't be hasty.

BUILDER.  Shut the stable door?  No, my boy, the horse has gone.

RALPH.  Well, Well!

     With a lingering look at his brother, who has sat down sullenly at
     the writing table, he goes out into the hall.

     BUILDER remains staring in front of him.  The dining-room door
     opens, and CAMILLE's head is thrust in.  Seeing him, she draws back,
     but he catches sight of her.

BUILDER.  Here!

CAMILLE comes doubtfully up to the writing table.  Her forehead is
puckered as if she were thinking hard.

BUILDER.  [Looking at her, unsmiling]  So you want to be my mistress,
do you?

     CAMILLE makes a nervous gesture.

Well, you shall.  Come here.

CAMILLE.  [Not moving]  You f--frighten me.

BUILDER.  I've paid a pretty price for you.  But you'll make up for it;
you and others.

CAMILLE.  [Starting back]  No; I don't like you to-day!  No!

BUILDER.  Come along!  [She is just within reach and he seizes her arm]
All my married life I've put a curb on myself for the sake of
respectability.  I've been a man of principle, my girl, as you saw
yesterday.  Well, they don't want that!  [He draws her close] You can sit
on my knee now.

CAMILLE.  [Shrinking]  No; I don't want to, to-day.

BUILDER.  But you shall.  They've asked for it!

CAMILLE.  [With a supple movement slipping away from him] They?  What is
all that?  I don't want any trouble.  No, no; I am not taking any.

     She moves back towards the door.  BUILDER utters a sardonic laugh.

Oh!  you are a dangerous man!  No, no!  Not for me!  Good-bye, sare!

     She turns swiftly and goes out.  BUILDER again utters his glum
     laugh.  And then, as he sits alone staring before him, perfect
     silence reigns in the room.  Over the window-sill behind him a BOY'S
     face is seen to rise; it hangs there a moment with a grin spreading
     on it.

BOY'S VOICE.  [Sotto]  Johnny Builder!

     As BUILDER turns sharply, it vanishes.

'Oo beat 'is wife?

     BUILDER rushes to the window.

BOY'S VOICE.  [More distant and a little tentative]  Johnny Builder!

BUILDER.  You little devil!  If I catch you, I'll wring your blasted
little neck!

BOY'S VOICE.  [A little distant] 'Oo blacked the copper's eye?

     BUILDER, in an ungovernable passion, seizes a small flower-pot from
     the sill and dings it with all his force.  The sound of a crash.

BOY'S VOICE.  [Very distant]  Ya-a-ah!  Missed!

     BUILDER stands leaning out, face injected with blood, shaking his
     fist.

     The CURTAIN falls for a few seconds.




SCENE III

Evening the same day.

     BUILDER's study is dim and neglected-looking; the window is still
     open, though it has become night.  A street lamp outside shines in,
     and the end of its rays fall on BUILDER asleep.  He is sitting in a
     high chair at the fireside end of the writing-table, with his elbows
     on it, and his cheek resting on his hand.  He is still unshaven, and
     his clothes unchanged.  A Boy's head appears above the level of the
     window-sill, as if beheaded and fastened there.

BOY'S VOICE.  [In a forceful whisper]  Johnny Builder!

     BUILDER stirs uneasily.  The Boy's head vanishes.  BUILDER, raising
     his other hand, makes a sweep before his face, as if to brush away a
     mosquito.  He wakes.  Takes in remembrance, and sits a moment
     staring gloomily before him.  The door from the hall is opened and
     TOPPING comes in with a long envelope in his hand.

TOPPING.  [Approaching]  From the "Comet," sir.  Proof of your interview,
sir; will you please revise, the messenger says; he wants to take it back
at once.

BUILDER.  [Taking it]  All right.  I'll ring.

TOPPING.  Shall I close in, sir?

BUILDER.  Not now.

     TOPPING withdraws.  BUILDER turns up a standard lamp on the table,
     opens the envelope, and begins reading the galley slip.  The signs
     of uneasiness and discomfort grow on him.


BUILDER.  Did I say that?  Muck! Muck!  [He drops the proof, sits a
moment moving his head and rubbing one hand uneasily on the surface of
the table, then reaches out for the telephone receiver] Town, 245.
[Pause] The "Comet"?  John Builder.  Give me the Editor.  [Pause] That
you, Mr Editor?  John Builder speaking.  That interview.  I've got the
proof.  It won't do.  Scrap the whole thing, please.  I don't want to say
anything.  [Pause]  Yes.  I know I said it all; I can't help that.
[Pause]  No; I've changed my mind.  Scrap it, please.  [Pause]  No,
I will not say anything.  [Pause]  You can say what you dam' well please.
[Pause] I mean it; if you put a word into my mouth, I'll sue you for
defamation of character.  It's undignified muck.  I'm tearing it up.
Good-night.  [He replaces the receiver, and touches a bell; then, taking
up the galley slip, he tears it viciously across into many pieces, and
rams them into the envelope.]

     TOPPING enters.

Here, give this to the messenger-sharp, and tell him to run with it.

TOPPING.  [Whose hand can feel the condition of the contents, with a
certain surprise]  Yes, sir.

     He goes, with a look back from the door.

The Mayor is here, sir.  I don't know whether you would wish

     BUILDER, rising, takes a turn up and down the room.

BUILDER.  Nor do I.  Yes! I'll see him.

     TOPPING goes out, and BUILDER stands over by the fender, with his
     head a little down.

TOPPING.  [Re-entering]  The Mayor, sir.

     He retires up Left.  The MAYOR is overcoated, and carries, of all
     things, a top hat.  He reaches the centre of the room before he
     speaks.

MAYOR.  [Embarrassed]  Well, Builder?

BUILDER.  Well?

MAYOR.  Come!  That caution of mine was quite parliamentary.  I 'ad to
save face, you know.

BUILDER.  And what about my face?

MAYOR.  Well, you--you made it difficult for me.  'Ang it all!  Put
yourself into my place!

BUILDER.  [Grimly]  I'd rather put you into mine, as it was last night.

MAYOR.  Yes, yes!  I know; but the Bench has got a name to keep up--must
stand well in the people's eyes.  As it is, I sailed very near the wind.
Suppose we had an ordinary person up before us for striking a woman?

BUILDER.  I didn't strike a woman--I struck my daughter.

MAYOR.  Well, but she's not a child, you know.  And you did resist the
police, if no worse.  Come!  You'd have been the first to maintain
British justice.  Shake 'ands!

BUILDER.  Is that what you came for?

MAYOR.  [Taken aback]  Why--yes; nobody can be more sorry than I--

BUILDER.  Eye-wash!  You came to beg me to resign.

MAYOR.  Well, it's precious awkward, Builder.  We all feel--

BUILDER.  Save your powder, Mayor.  I've slept on it since I wrote you
that note.  Take my resignations.

MAYOR.  [In relieved embarrassment]  That's right.  We must face your
position.

BUILDER.  [With a touch of grim humour]  I never yet met a man who
couldn't face another man's position.

MAYOR.  After all, what is it?

BUILDER.  Splendid isolation.  No wife, no daughters, no Councillorship,
no Magistracy, no future--[With a laugh]  not even a French maid.  And
why?  Because I tried to exercise a little wholesome family authority.
That's the position you're facing, Mayor.

MAYOR.  Dear, dear!  You're devilish bitter, Builder.  It's unfortunate,
this publicity.  But it'll all blow over; and you'll be back where you
were.  You've a good sound practical sense underneath your temper.  [A
pause]  Come, now!  [A pause]  Well, I'll say good-night, then.

BUILDER.  You shall have them in writing tomorrow.

MAYOR.  [With sincerity]  Come!  Shake 'ands.

BUILDER, after a long look, holds out his hand.  The two men exchange a
grip.

     The MAYOR, turning abruptly, goes out.

     BUILDER remains motionless for a minute, then resumes his seat at
     the side of the writing table, leaning his head on his hands.

     The Boy's head is again seen rising above the level of the window-
     sill, and another and another follows, till the three, as if
     decapitated, heads are seen in a row.

BOYS' VOICES.  [One after another in a whispered crescendo]  Johnny
Builder!  Johnny Builder!  Johnny Builder!

     BUILDER rises, turns and stares at them.  The THREE HEADS disappear,
     and a Boy's voice cries shrilly:  "Johnny Builder!"  BUILDER moves
     towards the window; voices are now crying in various pitches and
     keys: "Johnny Builder!"  "Beatey Builder!"  "Beat 'is wife-er!"
     "Beatey Builder!"

     BUILDER stands quite motionless, staring, with the street lamp
     lighting up a queer, rather pitiful defiance on his face.  The
     voices swell.  There comes a sudden swish and splash of water, and
     broken yells of dismay.

TOPPING'S VOICE.  Scat!  you young devils!

     The sound of scuffling feet and a long-drawnout and distant
     "Miaou!"

     BUILDER stirs, shuts the window, draws the curtains, goes to the
     armchair before the fireplace and sits down in it.

     TOPPING enters with a little tray on which is a steaming jug of
     fluid, some biscuits and a glass.  He comes stealthily up level with
     the chair.  BUILDER stirs and looks up at him.

TOPPING.  Excuse me, sir, you must 'ave digested yesterday morning's
breakfast by now--must live to eat, sir.

BUILDER.  All right.  Put it down.

TOPPING.  [Putting the tray down on the table and taking up BUILDER'S
pipe] I fair copped those young devils.

BUILDER.  You're a good fellow.

TOPPING.  [Filling the pipe]  You'll excuse me, sir; the Missis--has come
back, sir--

     BUILDER stares at him and TOPPING stops.  He hands BUILDER the
     filled pipe and a box of matches.

BUILDER.  [With a shiver]  Light the fire, Topping.  I'm chilly.

     While TOPPING lights the fire BUILDER puts the pipe in his mouth and
     applies a match to it.  TOPPING, having lighted the fire, turns to
     go, gets as far as half way, then comes back level with the table
     and regards the silent brooding figure in the chair.

BUILDER.  [Suddenly]  Give me that paper on the table.  No; the other
one--the Will.

     TOPPING takes up the Will and gives it to him.

TOPPING.  [With much hesitation]  Excuse me, sir.  It's pluck that get's
'em 'ome, sir--begging your pardon.

     BUILDER has resumed his attitude and does not answer.

[In a voice just touched with feeling] Good-night, sir.

BUILDER.  [Without turning his head]  Good-night.

     TOPPING has gone.  BUILDER sits drawing at his pipe between the
     firelight and the light from the standard lamp.  He takes the pipe
     out of his mouth and a quiver passes over his face.  With a half
     angry gesture he rubs the back of his hand across his eyes.

BUILDER.  [To himself]  Pluck!  Pluck!  [His lips quiver again.  He
presses them hard together, puts his pipe back into his mouth, and,
taking the Will, thrusts it into the newly-lighted fire and holds it
there with a poker.]


     While he is doing this the door from the hall is opened quietly, and
     MRS BUILDER enters without his hearing her.  She has a work bag in
     her hand.  She moves slowly to the table, and stands looking at him.
     Then going up to the curtains she mechanically adjusts them, and
     still keeping her eyes on BUILDER, comes down to the table and pours
     out his usual glass of whisky toddy.  BUILDER, who has become
     conscious of her presence, turns in his chair as she hands it to
     him.  He sits a moment motionless, then takes it from her, and
     squeezes her hand.  MRS BUILDER goes silently to her usual chair
     below the fire, and taking out some knitting begins to knit.
     BUILDER makes an effort to speak, does not succeed, and sits drawing
     at his pipe.


                          The CURTAIN falls.






LOYALTIES

From the 5th Series Plays

By John Galsworthy



PERSONS OF THE PLAY

In the Order of Appearance

CHARLES WINSOR.................. Owner of Meldon Court, near Newmarket
LADY ADELA...................... His Wife
FERDINAND DE LEVIS.............. Young, rich, and new
TREISURE........................ Winsor's Butler
GENERAL CANYNGE................. A Racing Oracle
MARGARET ORME................... A Society Girl
CAPTAIN RONALD DANDY, D.S.O..... Retired
MABEL........................... His Wife
INSPECTOR DEDE.................. Of the County Constabulary
ROBERT.......................... Winsor's Footman
A CONSTABLE..................... Attendant on Dede
AUGUSTUS BOBBING................ A Clubman
LORD ST ERTH.................... A Peer of the Realm
A FOOTMAN....................... Of the Club
MAJOR COLFORD................... A Brother Officer of Dancy's
EDWARD GRAVITER................. A Solicitor
A YOUNG CLERK................... Of Twisden & Graviter's
GILMAN.......................... A Large Grocer
JACOB TWISDEN................... Senior Partner of Twisden & Graviter
RICARDOS........................ An Italian, in Wine



ACT I.
     SCENE  I.  CHARLES WINSOR's dressing-room at Meldon Court, near
                Newmarket, of a night in early October.
     SCENE II.  DE LEVIS'S Bedroom at Meldon Court, a few minutes later.

ACT II.
     SCENE  I.  The Card Room of a London Club between four and five in
                the afternoon, three weeks later.
     SCENE II.  The Sitting-room of the DANCYS' Flat, the following
                morning.

ACT III.
     SCENE   I.  OLD MR JACOB TWISDEN'S Room at TWISDEN & GRAVITER'S in
                 Lincoln's Inn Fields, at four in the afternoon, three
                 months later.
     SCENE  II.  The same, next morning at half-past ten.
     SCENE III.  The Sitting-room of the DANCYS' Flat, an hour later.




ACT I

SCENE I

     The dressing-room of CHARLES WINSOR, owner of Meldon Court, near
     Newmarket; about eleven-thirty at night.  The room has pale grey
     walls, unadorned; the curtains are drawn over a window Back Left
     Centre.  A bed lies along the wall, Left.  An open door, Right Back,
     leads into LADY ADELA's bedroom; a door, Right Forward, into a long
     corridor, on to which abut rooms in a row, the whole length of the
     house's left wing.  WINSOR's dressing-table, with a light over it,
     is Stage Right of the curtained window.  Pyjamas are laid out on the
     bed, which is turned back.  Slippers are handy, and all the usual
     gear of a well-appointed bed-dressing-room.  CHARLES WINSOR, a tall,
     fair, good-looking man about thirty-eight, is taking off a smoking
     jacket.

WINSOR.  Hallo!  Adela!

V. OF LADY A.  [From her bedroom] Hallo!

WINSOR.  In bed?

V. OF LADY A.  No.

     She appears in the doorway in under-garment and a wrapper.  She,
     too, is fair, about thirty-five, rather delicious, and suggestive
     of porcelain.

WINSOR.  Win at Bridge?

LADY A.  No fear.

WINSOR.  Who did?

LADY A.  Lord St Erth and Ferdy De Levis.

WINSOR.  That young man has too much luck--the young bounder won two
races to-day; and he's as rich as Croesus.

LADY A.  Oh!  Charlie, he did look so exactly as if he'd sold me a carpet
when I was paying him.

WINSOR.  [Changing into slippers]  His father did sell carpets,
wholesale, in the City.

LADY A.  Really?  And you say I haven't intuition!  [With a finger on her
lips]  Morison's in there.

WINSOR.  [Motioning towards the door, which she shuts]  Ronny Dancy took
a tenner off him, anyway, before dinner.

LADY A.  No!  How?

WINSOR.  Standing jump on to a bookcase four feet high.  De Levis had to
pay up, and sneered at him for making money by parlour tricks.  That
young Jew gets himself disliked.

LADY A.  Aren't you rather prejudiced?

WINSOR.  Not a bit.  I like Jews.  That's not against him--rather the
contrary these days.  But he pushes himself.  The General tells me he's
deathly keen to get into the Jockey Club.  [Taking off his tie]  It's
amusing to see him trying to get round old St Erth.

LADY A.  If Lord St Erth and General Canynge backed him he'd get in if he
did sell carpets!

WINSOR.  He's got some pretty good horses.  [Taking off his waistcoat]
Ronny Dancy's on his bones again, I'm afraid.  He had a bad day.  When a
chap takes to doing parlour stunts for a bet--it's a sure sign.  What
made him chuck the Army?

LADY A.  He says it's too dull, now there's no fighting.

WINSOR.  Well, he can't exist on backing losers.

LADY A.  Isn't it just like him to get married now?  He really is the
most reckless person.

WINSOR.  Yes.  He's a queer chap.  I've always liked him, but I've never
quite made him out.  What do you think of his wife?

LADY A.  Nice child; awfully gone on him.

WINSOR.  Is he?

LADY A.  Quite indecently--both of them.  [Nodding towards the wall,
Left]  They're next door.

WINSOR.  Who's beyond them?

LADY A.  De Levis; and Margaret Orme at the end.  Charlie, do you realise
that the bathroom out there has to wash those four?

WINSOR.  I know.

LADY A.  Your grandfather was crazy when he built this wing; six rooms in
a row with balconies like an hotel, and only one bath--if we hadn't put
ours in.

WINSOR.  [Looking at his watch]  Half-past eleven.  [Yawns]  Newmarket
always makes me sleepy.  You're keeping Morison up.

     LADY ADELA goes to the door, blowing a kiss.  CHARLES goes up to his
     dressing-table and begins to brush his hair, sprinkling on essence.
     There is a knock on the corridor door.

Come in.

     DE LEVIS enters, clad in pyjamas and flowered dressing-gown.  He is
     a dark, good-looking, rather Eastern young man.  His face is long
     and disturbed.

Hallo!  De Levis!  Anything I can do for you?

DE LEVIS.  [In a voice whose faint exoticism is broken by a vexed
excitement]  I say, I'm awfully sorry, Winsor, but I thought I'd better
tell you at once.  I've just had--er--rather a lot of money stolen.

WINSOR.  What!  [There is something of outrage in his tone and glance, as
who should say: "In my house?"]  How do you mean stolen?

DE LEVIS.  I put it under my pillow and went to have a bath; when I came
back it was gone.

WINSOR.  Good Lord!  How much?

DE LEVIS.  Nearly a thousand-nine hundred and seventy, I think.

WINSOR.  Phew!  [Again the faint tone of outrage, that a man should have
so much money about him].

DE LEVIS.  I sold my Rosemary filly to-day on the course to Bentman the
bookie, and he paid me in notes.

WINSOR.  What?  That weed Dancy gave you in the Spring?

DE LEVIS.  Yes.  But I tried her pretty high the other day; and she's in
the Cambridgeshire.  I was only out of my room a quarter of an hour, and
I locked my door.

WINSOR.  [Again outraged]  You locked--

DE LEVIS.  [Not seeing the fine shade]  Yes, and had the key here.  [He
taps his pocket]  Look here!  [He holds out a pocket-book]  It's been
stuffed with my shaving papers.

WINSOR.  [Between feeling that such things don't happen, and a sense that
he will have to clear it up]  This is damned awkward, De Levis.

DE LEVIS.  [With steel in his voice]  Yes.  I should like it back.

WINSOR.  Have you got the numbers of the notes?

DE LEVIS.  No.

WINSOR.  What were they?

DE LEVIS.  One hundred, three fifties, and the rest tens and fives.

WINSOR.  What d'you want me to do?

DE LEVIS.  Unless there's anybody you think--

WINSOR.  [Eyeing him]  Is it likely?

DE Levis.  Then I think the police ought to see my room.  It's a lot of
money.

WINSOR.  Good Lord!  We're not in Town; there'll be nobody nearer than
Newmarket at this time of night--four miles.

     The door from the bedroom is suddenly opened and LADY ADELA appears.
     She has on a lace cap over her finished hair, and the wrapper.

LADY A.  [Closing the door]  What is it?  Are you ill, Mr De Levis?

WINSOR.  Worse; he's had a lot of money stolen.  Nearly a thousand
pounds.

LADY A.  Gracious!  Where?

DE LEVIS.  From under my pillow, Lady Adela--my door was locked--I was in
the bath-room.

LADY A.  But how fearfully thrilling!

WINSOR.  Thrilling!  What's to be done?  He wants it back.

LADY A.  Of course!  [With sudden realisation]  Oh!  But  Oh!  it's quite
too unpleasant!

WINSOR.  Yes!  What am I to do?  Fetch the servants out of their rooms?
Search the grounds?  It'll make the devil of a scandal.

DE LEVIS.  Who's next to me?

LADY A.  [Coldly]  Oh!  Mr De Levis!

WINSOR.  Next to you?  The Dancys on this side, and Miss Orme on the
other.  What's that to do with it?

DE LEVIS.  They may have heard something.

WINSOR.  Let's get them.  But Dancy was down stairs when I came up.  Get
Morison, Adela!  No.  Look here!  When was this exactly?  Let's have as
many alibis as we can.

DE LEVIS.  Within the last twenty minutes, certainly.

WINSOR.  How long has Morison been up with you?

LADY A.  I came up at eleven, and rang for her at once.

WINSOR.  [Looking at his watch]  Half an hour.  Then she's all right.
Send her for Margaret and the Dancys--there's nobody else in this wing.
No; send her to bed.  We don't want gossip.  D'you mind going yourself,
Adela?

LADY A.  Consult General Canynge, Charlie.

WINSOR.  Right.  Could you get him too?  D'you really want the police,
De Levis?

DE LEVIS.  [Stung by the faint contempt in his tone of voice]  Yes, I do.

WINSOR.  Then, look here, dear!  Slip into my study and telephone to the
police at Newmarket.  There'll be somebody there; they're sure to have
drunks.  I'll have Treisure up, and speak to him.  [He rings the bell].

     LADY ADELA goes out into her room and closes the door.

WINSOR.  Look here, De Levis!  This isn't an hotel.  It's the sort of
thing that doesn't happen in a decent house.  Are you sure you're not
mistaken, and didn't have them stolen on the course?

DE LEVIS.  Absolutely.  I counted them just before putting them under my
pillow; then I locked the door and had the key here.  There's only one
door, you know.

WINSOR.  How was your window?

DE LEVIS.  Open.

WINSOR.  [Drawing back the curtains of his own window]  You've got a
balcony like this.  Any sign of a ladder or anything?

DE LEVIS.  No.

WINSOR.  It must have been done from the window, unless someone had a
skeleton key.  Who knew you'd got that money?  Where did Kentman pay you?

DE LEVIS.  Just round the corner in the further paddock.

WINSOR.  Anybody about?

DE LEVIS.  Oh, yes!

WINSOR.  Suspicious?

DE LEVIS.  I didn't notice anything.

WINSOR.  You must have been marked down and followed here.

DE LEVIS.  How would they know my room?

WINSOR.  Might have got it somehow.  [A knock from the corridor] Come in.

     TREISURE, the Butler, appears, a silent, grave man of almost
     supernatural conformity.  DE LEVIS gives him a quick, hard look,
     noted and resented by WINSOR.

TREISURE.  [To WINSOR]  Yes, sir?

WINSOR.  Who valets Mr De Levis?

TREISURE.  Robert, Sir.

WINSOR.  When was he up last?

TREISURE.  In the ordinary course of things, about ten o'clock, sir.

WINSOR.  When did he go to bed?

TREISURE.  I dismissed at eleven.

WINSOR.  But did he go?

TREISURE.  To the best of my knowledge.  Is there anything I can do, sir?

WINSOR.  [Disregarding a sign from DE LEVIS]  Look here, Treisure,
Mr De Levis has had a large sum of money taken from his bedroom within
the last half hour.

TREISURE.  Indeed, Sir!

WINSOR.  Robert's quite all right, isn't he?

TREISURE.  He is, sir.

DE LEVIS.  How do you know?

     TREISURE's eyes rest on DE LEVIS.

TREISURE.  I am a pretty good judge of character, sir, if you'll excuse
me.

WINSOR.  Look here, De Levis, eighty or ninety notes must have been
pretty bulky.  You didn't have them on you at dinner?

DE LEVIS.  No.

WINSOR.  Where did you put them?

DE LEVIS.  In a boot, and the boot in my suitcase, and locked it.

     TREISURE smiles faintly.

WINSOR.  [Again slightly outraged by such precautions in his house]  And
you found it locked--and took them from there to put under your pillow?

DE LEVIS.  Yes.

WINSOR.  Run your mind over things, Treisure--has any stranger been
about?

TREISURE.  No, Sir.

WINSOR.  This seems to have happened between 11.15 and 11.30.  Is that
right?  [DE LEVIS nods]  Any noise-anything outside-anything suspicious
anywhere?

TREISURE.  [Running his mind--very still]  No, sir.

WINSOR.  What time did you shut up?

TREISURE.  I should say about eleven-fifteen, sir.  As soon as Major
Colford and Captain Dancy had finished billiards.  What was Mr De Levis
doing out of his room, if I may ask, sir?

WINSOR.  Having a bath; with his room locked and the key in his pocket.

TREISURE.  Thank you, sir.

DE LEVIS.  [Conscious of indefinable suspicion]  Damn it!  What do you
mean?  I WAS!

TREISURE.  I beg your pardon, sir.

WINSOR.  [Concealing a smile]  Look here, Treisure, it's infernally
awkward for everybody.

TREISURE.  It is, sir.

WINSOR.  What do you suggest?

TREISURE.  The proper thing, sir, I suppose, would be a cordon and a
complete search--in our interests.

WINSOR.  I entirely refuse to suspect anybody.

TREISURE.  But if Mr De Levis feels otherwise, sir?

DE LEVIS.  [Stammering]  I?  All I know is--the money was there, and it's
gone.

WINSOR.  [Compunctious]  Quite!  It's pretty sickening for you.  But so
it is for anybody else.  However, we must do our best to get it back for
you.

     A knock on the door.

WINSOR.  Hallo!

     TREISURE opens the door, and GENERAL. CANYNGE enters.

Oh! It's you, General.  Come in.  Adela's told you?

     GENERAL CANYNGE nods.  He is a slim man of about sixty, very well
     preserved, intensely neat and self-contained, and still in evening
     dress.  His eyelids droop slightly, but his eyes are keen and his
     expression astute.

WINSOR.  Well, General, what's the first move?

CANYNGE.  [Lifting his eyebrows]  Mr De Levis presses the matter?

DE Levis.  [Flicked again]  Unless you think it's too plebeian of me,
General Canynge--a thousand pounds.

CANYNGE.  [Drily]  Just so!  Then we must wait for the police, WINSOR.
Lady Adela has got through to them.  What height are these rooms from the
ground, Treisure?

TREISURE.  Twenty-three feet from the terrace, sir.

CANYNGE.  Any ladders near?

TREISURE.  One in the stables, Sir, very heavy.  No others within three
hundred yards.

CANYNGE.  Just slip down, and see whether that's been moved.

TREISURE.  Very good, General.  [He goes out.]

DE LEVIS.  [Uneasily]  Of course, he--I suppose you--

WINSOR.  We do.

CANYNGE.  You had better leave this in our hands, De Levis.

DE LEVIS.  Certainly; only, the way he--

WINSOR.  [Curtly] Treisure has been here since he was a boy.  I should as
soon suspect myself.

DE LEVIS.  [Looking from one to the other--with sudden anger]  You seem
to think--!  What was I to do?  Take it lying down and let whoever it is
get clear off?  I suppose it's natural to want my money back?

     CANYNGE looks at his nails; WINSOR out of the window.

WINSOR.  [Turning]  Of course, De Levis!

DE LEVIS.  [Sullenly]  Well, I'll go to my room.  When the police come,
perhaps you'll let me know.  He goes out.

WINSOR.  Phew!  Did you ever see such a dressing-gown?

     The door is opened.  LADY ADELA and MARGARET ORME come in.  The
     latter is a vivid young lady of about twenty-five in a vivid
     wrapper; she is smoking a cigarette.

LADY A.  I've told the Dancys--she was in bed.  And I got through to
Newmarket, Charles, and Inspector Dede is coming like the wind on a motor
cycle.

MARGARET.  Did he say "like the wind," Adela?  He must have imagination.
Isn't this gorgeous?  Poor little Ferdy!

WINSOR.  [Vexed]  You might take it seriously, Margaret; it's pretty
beastly for us all.  What time did you come up?

MARGARET.  I came up with Adela.  Am I suspected, Charles?  How
thrilling!

WINSOR.  Did you hear anything?

MARGARET.  Only little Ferdy splashing.

WINSOR.  And saw nothing?

MARGARET.  Not even that, alas!

LADY A.  [With a finger held up] Leste!  Un peu leste!  Oh!  Here are the
Dancys.  Come in, you two!

     MABEL and RONALD DANCY enter.  She is a pretty young woman with
     bobbed hair, fortunately, for she has just got out of bed, and is in
     her nightgown and a wrapper.  DANCY is in his smoking jacket.  He
     has a pale, determined face with high cheekbones, small, deep-set
     dark eyes, reddish crisp hair, and looks like a horseman.

WINSOR.  Awfully sorry to disturb you, Mrs Dancy; but I suppose you and
Ronny haven't heard anything.  De Levis's room is just beyond Ronny's
dressing-room, you know.

MABEL.  I've been asleep nearly half an hour, and Ronny's only just come
up.

CANYNGE.  Did you happen to look out of your window, Mrs Dancy?

MABEL.  Yes.  I stood there quite five minutes.

CANYNGE.  When?

MABEL.  Just about eleven, I should think.  It was raining hard then.

CANYNGE.  Yes, it's just stopped.  You saw nothing?

MABEL.  No.

DANCY.  What time does he say the money was taken?

WINSOR.  Between the quarter and half past.  He'd locked his door and had
the key with him.

MARGARET.  How quaint!  Just like an hotel.  Does he put his boots out?

LADY A.  Don't be so naughty, Meg.

CANYNGE.  When exactly did you come up, Dance?

DANCY.  About ten minutes ago.  I'd only just got into my dressing-room
before Lady Adela came.  I've been writing letters in the hall since
Colford and I finished billiards.

CANYNGE.  You weren't up for anything in between?

DANCY.  No.

MARGARET.  The mystery of the grey room.

DANCY.  Oughtn't the grounds to be searched for footmarks?

CANYNGE.  That's for the police.

DANCY.  The deuce!  Are they coming?

CANYNGE.  Directly.  [A knock]  Yes?

     TREISURE enters.

Well?

TREISURE.  The ladder has not been moved, General.  There isn't a sign.

WINSOR.  All right.  Get Robert up, but don't say anything to him.  By
the way, we're expecting the police.

TREISURE.  I trust they will not find a mare's nest, sir, if I may say
so.

     He goes.

WINSOR.  De Levis has got wrong with Treisure.  [Suddenly]  But, I say,
what would any of us have done if we'd been in his shoes?

MARGARET.  A thousand pounds?  I can't even conceive having it.

DANCY.  We probably shouldn't have found it out.

LADY A.  No--but if we had.

DANCY.  Come to you--as he did.

WINSOR.  Yes; but there's a way of doing things.

CANYNGE.  We shouldn't have wanted the police.

MARGARET.  No.  That's it.  The hotel touch.

LADY A.  Poor young man; I think we're rather hard on him.

WINSOR.  He sold that weed you gave him, Dancy, to Kentman, the bookie,
and these were the proceeds.

DANCY.  Oh!

WINSOR.  He'd tried her high, he said.

DANCY.  [Grimly]  He would.

MABEL.  Oh! Ronny, what bad luck!

WINSOR.  He must have been followed here.  [At the window]  After rain
like that, there ought to be footmarks.

     The splutter of a motor cycle is heard.

MARGARET.  Here's the wind!

WINSOR.  What's the move now, General?

CANYNGE.  You and I had better see the Inspector in De Levis's room,
WINSOR.  [To the others]  If you'll all be handy, in case he wants to put
questions for himself.

MARGARET.  I hope he'll want me; it's just too thrilling.

DANCY.  I hope he won't want me; I'm dog-tired.  Come on, Mabel.  [He
puts his arm in his wife's].

CANYNGE.  Just a minute, Charles.

     He draws dose to WINSOR as the others are departing to their rooms.

WINSOR.  Yes, General?

CANYNGE.  We must be careful with this Inspector fellow.  If he pitches
hastily on somebody in the house it'll be very disagreeable.

WINSOR.  By Jove!  It will.

CANYNGE.  We don't want to rouse any ridiculous suspicion.

WINSOR.  Quite.  [A knock]  Come in!

TREISURE enters.

TREISURE.  Inspector Dede, Sir.

WINSOR.  Show him in.

TREISURE.  Robert is in readiness, sir; but I could swear he knows
nothing about it.

WINSOR.  All right.

     TREISURE re-opens the door, and says "Come in, please."  The
     INSPECTOR enters, blue, formal, moustachioed, with a peaked cap in
     his hand.

WINSOR.  Good evening, Inspector.  Sorry to have brought you out at this
time of night.

INSPECTOR.  Good  evenin',  sir.  Mr WINSOR?  You're the owner here, I
think?

WINSOR.  Yes.  General Canynge.

INSPECTOR.  Good evenin', General.  I understand, a large sum of money?

WINSOR.  Yes.  Shall we go straight to the room it was taken from?  One
of my guests, Mr De Levis.  It's the third room on the left.

CANYNGE.  We've not been in there yet, Inspector; in fact, we've done
nothing, except to find out that the stable ladder has not been moved.
We haven't even searched the grounds.

INSPECTOR.  Right, sir; I've brought a man with me.

     They go out.


               CURTAIN.  And interval of a Minute.




SCENE II

     [The same set is used for this Scene, with the different arrangement
     of furniture, as specified.]

     The bedroom of DE LEVIS is the same in shape as WINSOR'S dressing-
     room, except that there is only one door--to the corridor.  The
     furniture, however, is differently arranged; a small four-poster
     bedstead stands against the wall, Right Back, jutting into the room.
     A chair, on which DE LEVIS's clothes are thrown, stands at its foot.
     There is a dressing-table against the wall to the left of the open
     windows, where the curtains are drawn back and a stone balcony is
     seen.  Against the wall to the right of the window is a chest of
     drawers, and a washstand is against the wall, Left.  On a small
     table to the right of the bed an electric reading lamp is turned up,
     and there is a light over the dressing-table.  The INSPECTOR is
     standing plumb centre looking at the bed, and DE LEVIS by the back
     of the chair at the foot of the bed.  WINSOR and CANYNGE are close
     to the door, Right Forward.

INSPECTOR.  [Finishing a note]  Now, sir, if this is the room as you left
it for your bath, just show us exactly what you did after takin' the
pocket-book from the suit case.  Where was that, by the way?

DE LEVIS.  [Pointing]  Where it is now--under the dressing-table.

     He comes forward to the front of the chair, opens the pocket-book,
     goes through the pretence of counting his shaving papers, closes the
     pocket-book, takes it to the head of the bed and slips it under the
     pillow.  Makes the motion of taking up his pyjamas, crosses below
     the INSPECTOR to the washstand, takes up a bath sponge, crosses to
     the door, takes out the key, opens the door.

INSPECTOR.  [Writing].  We now have the room as it was when the theft was
committed.  Reconstruct accordin' to 'uman nature, gentlemen--assumin'
the thief to be in the room, what would he try first?--the clothes, the
dressin'-table, the suit case, the chest of drawers, and last the bed.

     He moves accordingly, examining the glass on the dressing-table, the
     surface of the suit cases, and the handles of the drawers, with a
     spy-glass, for finger-marks.

CANYNGE.  [Sotto voce to WINSOR]  The order would have been just the
other way.

     The INSPECTOR goes on hands and knees and examines the carpet
     between the window and the bed.

DE LEVIS.  Can I come in again?

INSPECTOR.  [Standing up]  Did you open the window, sir, or was it open
when you first came in?

DE LEVIS.  I opened it.

INSPECTOR.  Drawin' the curtains back first?

DE LEVIS.  Yes.

INSPECTOR.  [Sharply]  Are you sure there was nobody in the room already?

DE LEVIS.  [Taken aback]  I don't know.  I never thought.  I didn't look
under the bed, if you mean that.

INSPECTOR.  [Jotting]  Did not look under bed.  Did you look under it
after the theft?

DE LEVIS.  No.  I didn't.

INSPECTOR.  Ah!  Now, what did you do after you came back from your bath?
Just give us that precisely.

DE LEVIS.  Locked the door and left the key in.  Put back my sponge, and
took off my dressing-gown and put it there.  [He points to the footrails
of the bed]  Then I drew the curtains, again.

INSPECTOR.  Shutting the window?

DE LEVIS.  No.  I got into bed, felt for my watch to see the time.  My
hand struck the pocket-book, and somehow it felt thinner.  I took it out,
looked into it, and found the notes gone, and these shaving papers
instead.

INSPECTOR.  Let me have a look at those, sir.  [He applies the spy-
glasses]  And then?

DE LEVIS.  I think I just sat on the bed.

INSPECTOR.  Thinkin' and cursin' a bit, I suppose.  Ye-es?

DE LEVIS.  Then I put on my dressing-gown and went straight to Mr WINSOR.

INSPECTOR.  Not lockin' the door?

DE LEVIS.  No.

INSPECTOR.  Exactly.  [With a certain finality]  Now, sir, what time did
you come up?

DE LEVIS.  About eleven.

INSPECTOR.  Precise, if you can give it me.

DE LEVIS.  Well, I know it was eleven-fifteen when I put my watch under
my pillow, before I went to the bath, and I suppose I'd been about a
quarter of an hour undressing.  I should say after eleven, if anything.

INSPECTOR.  Just undressin'?  Didn't look over your bettin' book?

DE LEVIS.  No.

INSPECTOR.  No prayers or anything?

DE LEVIS.  No.

INSPECTOR.  Pretty slippy with your undressin' as a rule?

DE LEVIS.  Yes.  Say five past eleven.

INSPECTOR.  Mr WINSOR, what time did the gentleman come to you?

WINSOR.  Half-past eleven.

INSPECTOR.  How do you fix that, sir?

WINSOR.  I'd just looked at the time, and told my wife to send her maid
off.

INSPECTOR.  Then we've got it fixed between 11.15 and 11.30. [Jots]  Now,
sir, before we go further I'd like to see your butler and the footman
that valets this gentleman.

WINSOR.  [With distaste]  Very well, Inspector; only--my butler has been
with us from a boy.

INSPECTOR.  Quite so.  This is just clearing the ground, sir.

WINSOR.  General, d'you mind touching that bell?

CANYNGE rings a bell by the bed.

INSPECTOR.  Well, gentlemen, there are four possibilities.  Either the
thief was here all the time, waiting under the bed, and slipped out after
this gentleman had gone to Mr WINSOR.  Or he came in with a key that fits
the lock; and I'll want to see all the keys in the house.  Or he came in
with a skeleton key and out by the window, probably droppin' from the
balcony.  Or he came in by the window with a rope or ladder and out the
same way.  [Pointing]  There's a footmark here from a big boot which has
been out of doors since it rained.

CANYNGE.  Inspector--you er--walked up to the window when you first came
into the room.

INSPECTOR.  [Stiffly]  I had not overlooked that, General.

CANYNGE.  Of course.

     A knock on the door relieves a certain tension,

WINSOR.  Come in.

     The footman ROBERT, a fresh-faced young man, enters, followed by
     TREISURE.

INSPECTOR.  You valet Mr--Mr De Levis, I think?

ROBERT.  Yes, sir.

INSPECTOR.  At what time did you take his clothes and boots?

ROBERT.  Ten o'clock, sir.

INSPECTOR.  [With a pounce]  Did you happen to look under his bed?

ROBERT.  No, sir.

INSPECTOR.  Did you come up again, to bring the clothes back?

ROBERT.  No, sir; they're still downstairs.

INSPECTOR.  Did you come up again for anything?

ROBERT.  No, Sir.

INSPECTOR.  What time did you go to bed?

ROBERT.  Just after eleven, Sir.

INSPECTOR.  [Scrutinising him]  Now, be careful.  Did you go to bed at
all?

ROBERT.  No, Sir.

INSPECTOR.  Then why did you say you did?  There's been a theft here, and
anything you say may be used against you.

ROBERT.  Yes, Sir.  I meant, I went to my room.

INSPECTOR.  Where is your room?

ROBERT.  On the ground floor, at the other end of the right wing, sir.

WINSOR.  It's the extreme end of the house from this, Inspector.  He's
with the other two footmen.

INSPECTOR.  Were you there alone?

ROBERT.  No, Sir.  Thomas and Frederick was there too.

TREISURE.  That's right; I've seen them.

INSPECTOR.  [Holding up his hand for silence]  Were you out of the room
again after you went in?

ROBERT.  No, Sir.

INSPECTOR.  What were you doing, if you didn't go to bed?

ROBERT.  [To WINSOR]  Beggin' your pardon, Sir, we were playin' Bridge.

INSPECTOR.  Very good.  You can go.  I'll see them later on.

ROBERT.  Yes, Sir.  They'll say the same as me.  He goes out, leaving a
smile on the face of all except the INSPECTOR and DE LEVIS.

INSPECTOR.  [Sharply]  Call him back.

     TREISURE calls "Robert," and the FOOTMAN re-enters.

ROBERT.  Yes, Sir?

INSPECTOR.  Did you notice anything particular about Mr De Levis's
clothes?

ROBERT.  Only that they were very good, Sir.

INSPECTOR.  I mean--anything peculiar?

ROBERT.  [After reflection]  Yes, Sir.

INSPECTOR.  Well?

ROBERT.  A pair of his boots this evenin' was reduced to one, sir.

INSPECTOR.  What did you make of that?

ROBERT.  I thought he might have thrown the other at a cat or something.

INSPECTOR.  Did you look for it?

ROBERT.  No, Sir; I meant to draw his attention to it in the morning.

INSPECTOR.  Very good.

ROBERT.  Yes, Sir.  [He goes again.]

INSPECTOR.  [Looking at DE LEVIS]  Well, sir, there's your story
corroborated.

DE LEVIS.  [Stifly] I don't know why it should need corroboration,
Inspector.

INSPECTOR.  In my experience, you can never have too much of that.  [To
WINSOR] I understand there's a lady in the room on this side [pointing
Left] and a gentleman on this [pointing Right]  Were they in their rooms?

WINSOR.  Miss Orme was; Captain Dancy not.

INSPECTOR.  Do they know of the affair?

WINSOR.  Yes.

INSPECTOR.  Well, I'd just like the keys of their doors for a minute.  My
man will get them.

     He goes to the door, opens it, and speaks to a constable in the
     corridor.

[To TREISURE]  You can go with him.

     TREISURE goes Out.

In the meantime I'll just examine the balcony.

     He goes out on the balcony, followed by DE LEVIS.

WINSOR.  [To CANYNGE]  Damn De Levis and his money!  It's deuced
invidious, all this, General.

CANYNGE.  The Inspector's no earthly.

     There is a simultaneous re-entry of the INSPECTOR from the balcony
     and of TREISURE and the CONSTABLE from the corridor.

CONSTABLE.  [Handing key]  Room on the left, Sir.  [Handing key]  Room on
the right, sir.

     The INSPECTOR tries the keys in the door, watched with tension by
     the others.  The keys fail.

INSPECTOR.  Put them back.

     Hands keys to CONSTABLE, who goes out, followed by TREISURE.

I'll have to try every key in the house, sir.

WINSOR.  Inspector, do you really think it necessary to disturb the whole
house and knock up all my guests?  It's most disagreeable, all this, you
know.  The loss of the money is not such a great matter.  Mr De Levis has
a very large income.

CANYNGE.  You could get the numbers of the notes from Kentman the
bookmaker, Inspector; he'll probably have the big ones, anyway.

INSPECTOR.  [Shaking his head]  A bookie.  I don't suppose he will, sir.
It's come and go with them, all the time.

WINSOR.  We don't want a Meldon Court scandal, Inspector.

INSPECTOR.  Well, Mr WINSOR, I've formed my theory.

     As he speaks, DE LEVIS comes in from the balcony.

And I don't say to try the keys is necessary to it; but strictly, I ought
to exhaust the possibilities.

WINSOR.  What do you say, De Levis?  D'you want everybody in the house
knocked up so that their keys can be tried?

DE LEVIS.  [Whose face, since his return, expresses a curious excitement]
No, I don't.

INSPECTOR.  Very well, gentlemen.  In my opinion the thief walked in
before the door was locked, probably during dinner; and was under the
bed.  He escaped by dropping from the balcony--the creeper at that corner
[he points stage Left] has been violently wrenched.  I'll go down now,
and examine the grounds, and I'll see you again Sir.  [He makes another
entry in his note-book]  Goodnight, then, gentlemen!

CANYNGE.  Good-night!

WINSOR.  [With relief]  I'll come with you, Inspector.

     He escorts him to the door, and they go out.

DE LEVIS.  [Suddenly] General, I know who took them.

CANYNGE.  The deuce you do!  Are you following the Inspector's theory?

DE LEVIS.  [Contemptuously]  That ass!  [Pulling the shaving papers out
of the case]  No!  The man who put those there was clever and cool enough
to wrench that creeper off the balcony, as a blind.  Come and look here,
General.  [He goes to the window; the GENERAL follows.  DE LEVIS points
stage Right]  See the rail of my balcony, and the rail of the next?  [He
holds up the cord of his dressing-gown, stretching his arms out]  I've
measured it with this.  Just over seven feet, that's all!  If a man can
take a standing jump on to a narrow bookcase four feet high and balance
there, he'd make nothing of that.  And, look here!  [He goes out on the
balcony and returns with a bit of broken creeper in his hand, and holds
it out into the light]  Someone's stood on that--the stalk's crushed--the
inner corner too, where he'd naturally stand when he took his jump back.

CANYNGE.  [After examining it--stiffly]  That other balcony is young
Dancy's, Mr De Levis; a soldier and a gentleman.  This is an
extraordinary insinuation.

DE LEVIS.  Accusation.

CANYNGE.  What!

DE LEVIS.  I have intuitions, General; it's in my blood.  I see the whole
thing.  Dancy came up, watched me into the bathroom, tried my door,
slipped back into his dressing-room, saw my window was open, took that
jump, sneaked the notes, filled the case up with these, wrenched the
creeper there [He points stage Left] for a blind, jumped back, and
slipped downstairs again.  It didn't take him four minutes altogether.

CANYNGE.  [Very gravely]  This is outrageous, De Levis.  Dancy says he
was downstairs all the time.  You must either withdraw unreservedly,
or I must confront you with him.

DE LEVIS.  If he'll return the notes and apologise, I'll do nothing--
except cut him in future.  He gave me that filly, you know, as a hopeless
weed, and he's been pretty sick ever since, that he was such a flat as
not to see how good she was.  Besides, he's hard up, I know.

CANYNGE.  [After a vexed turn up and down the room]  It's mad, sir, to
jump to conclusions like this.

DE LEVIS.  Not so mad as the conclusion Dancy jumped to when he lighted
on my balcony.

CANYNGE.  Nobody could have taken this money who did not know you had it.

DE LEVIS.  How do you know that he didn't?

CANYNGE.  Do you know that he did?

DE LEVIS.  I haven't the least doubt of it.

CANYNGE.  Without any proof.  This is very ugly, De Levis.  I must tell
WINSOR.

DE LEVIS.  [Angrily]  Tell the whole blooming lot.  You think I've no
feelers, but I've felt the atmosphere here, I can tell you, General.  If
I were in Dancy's shoes and he in mine, your tone to me would be very
different.

CANYNGE.  [Suavely frigid]  I'm not aware of using any tone, as you call
it.  But this is a private house, Mr De Levis, and something is due to
our host and to the esprit de corps that exists among gentlemen.

DE LEVIS.  Since when is a thief a gentleman?  Thick as thieves--a good
motto, isn't it?

CANYNGE.  That's enough!  [He goes to the door, but stops before opening
it]  Now, look here!  I have some knowledge of the world.  Once an
accusation like this passes beyond these walls no one can foresee the
consequences.  Captain Dancy is a gallant fellow, with a fine record as a
soldier; and only just married.  If he's as innocent as--Christ--mud will
stick to him, unless the real thief is found.  In the old days of swords,
either you or he would not have gone out of this room alive.  It you
persist in this absurd accusation, you will both of you go out of this
room dead in the eyes of Society:  you for bringing it, he for being the
object of it.

DE LEVIS.  Society!  Do you think I don't know that I'm only tolerated
for my money?  Society can't add injury to insult and have my money as
well, that's all.  If the notes are restored I'll keep my mouth shut; if
they're not, I shan't.  I'm certain I'm right.  I ask nothing better than
to be confronted with Dancy; but, if you prefer it, deal with him in your
own way--for the sake of your esprit de corps.

CANYNGE.  'Pon my soul, Mr De Levis, you go too far.

DE LEVIS.  Not so far as I shall go, General Canynge, if those notes
aren't given back.

WINSOR comes in.

WINSOR.  Well, De Levis, I'm afraid that's all we can do for the present.
So very sorry this should have happened in my house.

CANYNGE.  [Alter a silence]  There's a development, WINSOR.  Mr De Levis
accuses one of your guests.

WINSOR.  What?

CANYNGE.  Of jumping from his balcony to this, taking the notes, and
jumping back.  I've done my best to dissuade him from indulging the
fancy--without success.  Dancy must be told.

DE LEVIS.  You can deal with Dancy in your own way.  All I want is the
money back.

CANYNGE.  [Drily]  Mr De Levis feels that he is only valued for his
money, so that it is essential for him to have it back.

WINSOR.  Damn it!  This is monstrous, De Levis.  I've known Ronald Dancy
since he was a boy.

CANYNGE.  You talk about adding injury to insult, De Levis.  What do you
call such treatment of a man who gave you the mare out of which you made
this thousand pounds?

DE LEVIS.  I didn't want the mare; I took her as a favour.

CANYNGE.  With an eye to possibilities, I venture to think--the principle
guides a good many transactions.

DE LEVIS.  [As if flicked on a raw spot]  In my race, do you mean?

CANYNGE.  [Coldly]  I said nothing of the sort.

DE LEVIS.  No; you don't say these things, any of you.

CANYNGE.  Nor did I think it.

DE LEVIS.  Dancy does.

WINSOR.  Really, De Levis, if this is the way you repay hospitality--

DE LEVIS.  Hospitality that skins my feelings and costs me a thousand
pounds!

CANYNGE.  Go and get Dancy, WINSOR; but don't say anything to him.

     WINSOR goes out.

CANYNGE.  Perhaps you will kindly control yourself, and leave this to me.

     DE LEVIS turns to the window and lights a cigarette.  WINSOR comes
     back, followed by DANCY.

CANYNGE.  For WINSOR's sake, Dancy, we don't want any scandal or fuss
about this affair.  We've tried to make the police understand that.  To
my mind the whole thing turns on our finding who knew that De Levis had
this money.  It's about that we want to consult you.

WINSOR.  Kentman paid De Levis round the corner in the further paddock,
he says.

     DE LEVIS turns round from the window, so that he and DANCY are
     staring at each other.

CANYNGE.  Did you hear anything that throws light, Dancy?  As it was your
filly originally, we thought perhaps you might.

DANCY.  I?  No.

CANYNGE.  Didn't hear of the sale on the course at all?

DANCY.  No.

CANYNGE.  Then you can't suggest any one who could have known?  Nothing
else was taken, you see.

DANCY.  De Levis is known to be rolling, as I am known to be stony.

CANYNGE.  There are a good many people still rolling, besides Mr De
Levis, but not many people with so large a sum in their pocket-books.

DANCY.  He won two races.

DE LEVIS.  Do you suggest that I bet in ready money?

DANCY.  I don't know how you bet, and I don't care.

CANYNGE.  You can't help us, then?

DANCY.  No.  I can't.  Anything else?  [He looks fixedly at DE LEVIS].

CANYNGE.  [Putting his hand on DANCY's arm]  Nothing else, thank you,
Dancy.

     DANCY goes.  CANYNGE puts his hand up to his face.  A moment's
     silence.

WINSOR.  You see, De Levis?  He didn't even know you'd got the money.

DE LEVIS.  Very conclusive.

WINSOR.  Well!  You are--!

     There is a knock on the door, and the INSPECTOR enters.

INSPECTOR.  I'm just going, gentlemen.  The grounds, I'm sorry to say,
have yielded nothing.  It's a bit of a puzzle.

CANYNGE.  You've searched thoroughly?

INSPECTOR.  We have, General.  I can pick up nothing near the terrace.

WINSOR.  [After a look at DE LEVIS, whose face expresses too much]  H'm!
You'll take it up from the other end, then, Inspector?

INSPECTOR.  Well, we'll see what we can do with the bookmakers about the
numbers, sir.  Before I go, gentlemen--you've had time to think it over--
there's no one you suspect in the house, I suppose?

     DE LEVIS's face is alive and uncertain.  CANYNGE is staring at him
     very fixedly.

WINSOR.  [Emphatically] No.

     DE LEVIS turns and goes out on to the balcony.

INSPECTOR.  If you're coming in to the racing to-morrow, sir, you might
give us a call.  I'll have seen Kentman by then.

WINSOR.  Right you are, Inspector.  Good night, and many thanks.

INSPECTOR.  You're welcome, sir.  [He goes out.]

WINSOR.  Gosh!  I thought that chap  [With a nod towards the balcony]
was going to--!  Look here, General, we must stop his tongue.  Imagine it
going the rounds.  They may never find the real thief, you know.  It's
the very devil for Dancy.

CANYNGE.  WINSOR!  Dancy's sleeve was damp.

WINSOR.  How d'you mean?

CANYNGE.  Quite damp.  It's been raining.

     The two look at each other.

WINSOR.  I--I don't follow--  [His voice is hesitative and lower, showing
that he does].

CANYNGE.  It was coming down hard; a minute out in it would have been
enough--[He motions with his chin towards the balcony].

WINSOR.  [Hastily]  He must have been out on his balcony since.

CANYNGE.  It stopped before I came up, half an hour ago.

WINSOR.  He's been leaning on the wet stone, then.

CANYNGE.  With the outside of the upper part of the arm?

WINSOR.  Against the wall, perhaps.  There may be a dozen explanations.
[Very low and with great concentration]  I entirely and absolutely refuse
to believe anything of the sort against Ronald Dancy in my house.  Dash
it, General, we must do as we'd be done by.  It hits us all--it hits us
all.  The thing's intolerable.

CANYNGE.  I agree.  Intolerable.  [Raising his voice]  Mr De Levis!

DE LEVIS returns into view, in the centre of the open window.

CANYNGE.  [With cold decision]  Young Dancy was an officer and is a
gentleman; this insinuation is pure supposition, and you must not make
it.  Do you understand me?

DE LEVIS.  My tongue is still mine, General, if my money isn't!

CANYNGE.  [Unmoved]  Must not.  You're a member of three Clubs, you want
to be member of a fourth.  No one who makes such an insinuation against a
fellow-guest in a country house, except on absolute proof, can do so
without complete ostracism.  Have we your word to say nothing?

DE LEVIS.  Social blackmail?  H'm!

CANYNGE.  Not at all--simple warning.  If you consider it necessary in
your interests to start this scandal-no matter how, we shall consider it
necessary in ours to dissociate ourselves completely from one who so
recklessly disregards the unwritten code.

DE LEVIS.  Do you think your code applies to me?  Do you, General?

CANYNGE.  To anyone who aspires to be a gentleman, Sir.

DE LEVIS.  Ah!  But you haven't known me since I was a boy.

CANYNGE.  Make up your mind.

     A pause.

DE LEVIS.  I'm not a fool, General.  I know perfectly well that you can
get me outed.

CANYNGE.  [Icily]  Well?

DE LEVIS.  [Sullenly]  I'll say nothing about it, unless I get more
proof.

CANYNGE.  Good!  We have implicit faith in Dancy.

     There is a moment's encounter of eyes; the GENERAL'S steady, shrewd,
     impassive; WINSOR'S angry and defiant; DE LEVIS's mocking, a little
     triumphant, malicious.  Then CANYNGE and WINSOR go to the door, and
     pass out.

DE LEVIS.  [To himself]  Rats!


                           CURTAIN




ACT II

SCENE I

     Afternoon, three weeks later, in the card room of a London Club.  A
     fire is burning, Left.  A door, Right, leads to the billiard-room.
     Rather Left of Centre, at a card table, LORD ST ERTH, an old John
     Bull, sits facing the audience; to his right is GENERAL CANYNGE, to
     his left AUGUSTUS BORRING, an essential Clubman, about thirty-five
     years old, with a very slight and rather becoming stammer or click
     in his speech.  The fourth Bridge player, CHARLES WINSOR, stands
     with his back to the fire.

BORRING.  And the r-rub.

WINSOR.  By George!  You do hold cards, Borring.

ST ERTH.  [Who has lost]  Not a patch on the old whist--this game.  Don't
know why I play it--never did.

CANYNGE.  St Erth, shall we raise the flag for whist again?

WINSOR.  No go, General.  You can't go back on pace.  No getting a man to
walk when he knows he can fly.  The young men won't look at it.

BORRING.  Better develop it so that t-two can sit out, General.

ST ERTH.  We ought to have stuck to the old game.  Wish I'd gone to
Newmarket, Canynge, in spite of the weather.

CANYNGE.  [Looking at his watch]  Let's hear what's won the
Cambridgeshire.  Ring, won't you, WINSOR? [WINSOR rings.]

ST ERTH.  By the way, Canynge, young De Levis was blackballed.

CANYNGE.  What!

ST ERTH.  I looked in on my way down.

     CANYNGE sits very still, and WINSOR utters a disturbed sound.

BORRING.  But of c-course he was, General.  What did you expect?

     A FOOTMAN enters.

FOOTMAN.  Yes, my lord?

ST ERTH.  What won the Cambridgeshire?

FOOTMAN.  Rosemary, my lord.  Sherbet second; Barbizon third.  Nine to
one the winner.

WINSOR.  Thank you.  That's all.

     FOOTMAN goes.

BORRING.  Rosemary!  And De Levis sold her!  But he got a good p-price, I
suppose.

     The other three look at him.

ST ERTH.  Many a slip between price and pocket, young man.

CANYNGE.  Cut!  [They cut].

BORRING.  I say, is that the yarn that's going round about his having had
a lot of m-money stolen in a country house?  By Jove!  He'll be pretty
s-sick.

WINSOR.  You and I, Borring.

     He sits down in CANYNGE'S chair, and the GENERAL takes his place by
     the fire.

BORRING.  Phew!  Won't Dancy be mad!  He gave that filly away to save her
keep.  He was rather pleased to find somebody who'd take her.  Bentman
must have won a p-pot.  She was at thirty-threes a fortnight ago.

ST ERTH.  All the money goes to fellows who don't know a horse from a
haystack.

CANYNGE.  [Profoundly]  And care less.  Yes!  We want men racing to whom
a horse means something.

BORRING.  I thought the horse m-meant the same to everyone, General--
chance to get the b-better of one's neighbour.

CANYNGE.  [With feeling]  The horse is a noble animal, sir, as you'd know
if you'd owed your life to them as often as I have.

BORRING.  They always try to take mine, General.  I shall never belong to
the noble f-fellowship of the horse.

ST ERTH.  [Drily]  Evidently.  Deal!

     As BORRING begins to deal the door is opened and MAJOR COLFORD
     appears--a lean and moustached cavalryman.

BORRING.  Hallo, C-Colford.

COLFORD.  General!

     Something in the tone of his voice brings them all to a standstill.

COLFORD.  I want your advice.  Young De Levis in there  [He points to the
billiard-room from which he has just come]  has started a blasphemous
story--

CANYNGE.  One moment.  Mr Borring, d'you mind--

COLFORD.  It makes no odds, General.  Four of us in there heard him.
He's saying it was Ronald Dancy robbed him down at WINSOR's.  The
fellow's mad over losing the price of that filly now she's won the
Cambridgeshire.

BORRING.  [All ears]  Dancy!  Great S-Scott!

COLFORD.  Dancy's in the Club.  If he hadn't been I'd have taken it on
myself to wring the bounder's neck.

     WINSOR and BORRING have risen.  ST ERTH alone remains seated.

CANYNGE.  [After consulting ST ERTH with a look]  Ask De Levis to be good
enough to come in here.  Borring, you might see that Dancy doesn't leave
the Club.  We shall want him.  Don't say anything to him, and use your
tact to keep people off.

     BORRING goes out, followed by COLFORD.  WINSOR.  Result of hearing
     he was black-balled--pretty slippy.

CANYNGE.  St Erth, I told you there was good reason when I asked you to
back young De Levis.  WINSOR and I knew of this insinuation; I wanted to
keep his tongue quiet.  It's just wild assertion; to have it bandied
about was unfair to Dancy.  The duel used to keep people's tongues in
order.

ST ERTH.  H'm!  It  never  settled  anything, except who could shoot
straightest.

COLFORD.  [Re-appearing]  De Levis says he's nothing to add to what he
said to you before, on the subject.

CANYNGE.  Kindly tell him that if he wishes to remain a member of this
Club he must account to the Committee for such a charge against a fellow-
member.  Four of us are here, and form a quorum.

     COLFORD goes out again.

ST ERTH.  Did Kentman ever give the police the numbers of those notes,
WINSOR?

WINSOR.  He only had the numbers of two--the hundred, and one of the
fifties.

ST ERTH.  And they haven't traced 'em?

WINSOR.  Not yet.

     As he speaks, DE LEVIS comes in.  He is in a highly-coloured, not to
     say excited state.  COLFORD follows him.

DE LEVIS.  Well, General Canynge!  It's a little too strong all this--
a little too strong.  [Under emotion his voice is slightly more exotic].

CANYNGE.  [Calmly]  It is obvious, Mr De Levis, that you and Captain
Dancy can't both remain members of this Club.  We ask you for an
explanation before requesting one resignation or the other.

DE LEVIS.  You've let me down.

CANYNGE.  What!

DE LEVIS.  Well, I shall tell people that you and Lord St Erth backed me
up for one Club, and asked me to resign from another.

CANYNGE.  It's a matter of indifference to me, sir, what you tell people.

ST ERTH.  [Drily]  You seem a venomous young man.

DE LEVIS.  I'll tell you what seems to me venomous, my lord--chasing a
man like a pack of hounds because he isn't your breed.

CANYNGE.  You appear to have your breed on the brain, sir.  Nobody else
does, so far as I know.

DE LEVIS.  Suppose I had robbed Dancy, would you chase him out for
complaining of it?

COLFORD.  My God!  If you repeat that--

CANYNGE.  Steady, Colford!

WINSOR.  You make this accusation that Dancy stole your money in my house
on no proof--no proof; and you expect Dancy's friends to treat you as if
you were a gentleman!  That's too strong, if you like!

DE LEVIS.  No proof?  Bentman told me at Newmarket yesterday that Dancy
did know of the sale.  He told Goole, and Goole says that he himself
spoke of it to Dancy.

WINSOR.  Well--if he did?

DE LEVIS.  Dancy told you he didn't know of it in General Canynge's
presence, and mine.  [To CANYNGE] You can't deny that, if you want to.

CANYNGE.  Choose your expressions more nicely, please!

DE LEVIS.  Proof!  Did they find any footmarks in the grounds below that
torn creeper?  Not a sign!  You saw how he can jump; he won ten pounds
from me that same evening betting on what he knew was a certainty.
That's your Dancy--a common sharper!

CANYNGE.  [Nodding towards the billiard-room]  Are those fellows still in
there, Colford?

COLFORD.  Yes.

CANYNGE.  Then bring Dancy up, will you?  But don't say anything to him.

COLFORD.  [To DE LEVIS] You may think yourself damned lucky if he doesn't
break your neck.

     He goes out.  The three who are left with DE LEVIS avert their eyes
     from him.

DE LEVIS.  [Smouldering]  I have a memory, and a sting too.  Yes, my
lord--since you are good enough to call me venomous.  [To CANYNGE]  I
quite understand--I'm marked for Coventry now, whatever happens.  Well,
I'll take Dancy with me.

ST ERTH.  [To himself]  This Club has always had a decent, quiet name.

WINSOR.  Are you going to retract, and apologise in front of Dancy and
the members who heard you?

DE LEVIS.  No fear!

ST ERTH.  You must be a very rich man, sir.  A jury is likely to take the
view that money can hardly compensate for an accusation of that sort.

     DE LEVIS stands silent.  CANYNGE.  Courts of law require proof.

ST ERTH.  He can make it a criminal action.

WINSOR.  Unless you stop this at once, you may find yourself in prison.
If you can stop it, that is.

ST ERTH.  If I were young Dancy, nothing should induce me.

DE LEVIS.  But you didn't steal my money, Lord St Erth.

ST ERTH.  You're deuced positive, sir.  So far as I could understand it,
there were a dozen ways you could have been robbed.  It seems to me you
value other men's reputations very lightly.

DE LEVIS.  Confront me with Dancy and give me fair play.

WINSOR.  [Aside to CANYNGE]  Is it fair to Dancy not to let him know?

CANYNGE.  Our duty is to the Club now, WINSOR.  We must have this cleared
up.

     COLFORD comes in, followed by BORRING and DANCY.

ST ERTH.  Captain Dancy, a serious accusation has been made against you
by this gentleman in the presence of several members of the Club.

DANCY.  What is it?

ST ERTH.  That you robbed him of that money at WINSOR's.

DANCY.  [Hard and tense]  Indeed!  On what grounds is he good enough to
say that?

DE LEVIS.  [Tense too]  You gave me that filly to save yourself her keep,
and you've been mad about it ever since; you knew from Goole that I had
sold her to Kentman and been paid in cash, yet I heard you myself deny
that you knew it.  You had the next room to me, and you can jump like a
cat, as we saw that evening; I found some creepers crushed by a weight on
my balcony on that side.  When I went to the bath your door was open, and
when I came back it was shut.

CANYNGE.  That's the first we have heard about the door.

DE LEVIS.  I remembered it afterwards.

ST ERTH.  Well, Dancy?

DANCY.  [With intense deliberation]  I'll settle this matter with any
weapons, when and where he likes.

ST ERTH.  [Drily]  It can't be settled that way--you know very well.
You must take it to the Courts, unless he retracts.

DANCY.  Will you retract?

DE LEVIS.  Why did you tell General Canynge you didn't know Kentman had
paid me in cash?

DANCY.  Because I didn't.

DE LEVIS.  Then Kentman and Goole lied--for no reason?

DANCY.  That's nothing to do with me.

DE LEVIS.  If you were downstairs all the time, as you say, why was your
door first open and then shut?

DANCY.  Being downstairs, how should I know?  The wind, probably.

DE LEVIS.  I should like to hear what your wife says about it.

DANCY.  Leave my wife alone, you damned Jew!

ST ERTH.  Captain Dancy!

DE LEVIS.  [White with rage] Thief!

DANCY.  Will you fight?

DE LEVIS.  You're very smart-dead men tell no tales.  No!  Bring your
action, and we shall see.

     DANCY takes a step towards him, but CANYNGE and WINSOR interpose.

ST ERTH.  That'll do, Mr De Levis; we won't keep you.  [He looks round]
Kindly consider your membership suspended till this matter has been
threshed out.

DE LEVIS.  [Tremulous with anger]  Don't trouble yourselves about my
membership.  I resign it.  [To DANCY]  You called me a damned Jew.  My
race was old when you were all savages.  I am proud to be a Jew.  Au
revoir, in the Courts.

     He goes out, and silence follows his departure.

ST ERTH.  Well, Captain Dancy?

DANCY.  If the brute won't fight, what am I to do, sir?

ST ERTH.  We've told you--take action, to clear your name.

DANCY.  Colford, you saw me in the hall writing letters after our game.

COLFORD.  Certainly I did; you were there when I went to the smoking-
room.

CANYNGE.  How long after you left the billiard-room?

COLFORD.  About five minutes.

DANCY.  It's impossible for me to prove that I was there all the time.

CANYNGE.  It's for De Levis to prove what he asserts.  You heard what he
said about Goole?

DANCY.  If he told me, I didn't take it in.

ST ERTH.  This concerns the honour of the Club.  Are you going to take
action?

DANCY.  [Slowly]  That is a very expensive business, Lord St Erth, and
I'm hard up.  I must think it over.  [He looks round from face to face]
Am I to take it that there is a doubt in your minds, gentlemen?

COLFORD.  [Emphatically]  No.

CANYNGE.  That's not the question, Dancy.  This accusation was overheard
by various members, and we represent the Club.  If you don't take action,
judgment will naturally go by default.

DANCY.  I might prefer to look on the whole thing as beneath contempt.

     He turns and goes out.  When he is gone there is an even longer
     silence than after DE LEVIS's departure.

ST ERTH.  [Abruptly] I don't like it.

WINSOR.  I've known him all his life.

COLFORD.  You may have my head if he did it, Lord St Erth.  He and I have
been in too many holes together.  By Gad!  My toe itches for that
fellow's butt end.

BORRING.  I'm sorry; but has he t-taken it in quite the right way?  I
should have thought--hearing it s-suddenly--

COLFORD.  Bosh!

WINSOR.  It's perfectly damnable for him.

ST ERTH.  More damnable if he did it, WINSOR.

BORRING.  The Courts are b-beastly distrustful, don't you know.

COLFORD.  His word's good enough for me.

CANYNGE.  We're as anxious to believe Dancy as you, Colford, for the
honour of the Army and the Club.

WINSOR.  Of course, he'll bring a case, when he's thought it over.

ST ERTH.  What are we to do in the meantime?

COLFORD.  If Dancy's asked to resign, you may take my resignation too.

BORRING.  I thought his wanting to f-fight him a bit screeny.

COLFORD.  Wouldn't you have wanted a shot at the brute?  A law court?
Pah!

WINSOR.  Yes.  What'll be his position even if he wins?

BORRING.  Damages, and a stain on his c-character.

WINSOR.  Quite so, unless they find the real thief.  People always
believe the worst.

COLFORD.  [Glaring at BORRING]  They do.

CANYNGE.  There is no decent way out of a thing of this sort.

ST ERTH.  No.  [Rising]  It leaves a bad taste.  I'm sorry for young Mrs
Dancy--poor woman!

BORRING.  Are you going to play any more?

ST ERTH.  [Abruptly]  No, sir.  Good night to you.  Canynge, can I give
you a lift?

     He goes out, followed by CANYNGE.  BORRING.

[After a slight pause]  Well, I shall go and take the t-temperature of
the Club.

     He goes out.

COLFORD.  Damn that effeminate stammering chap!  What can we do for
Dancy, WINSOR?

WINSOR.  Colford!  [A slight pause]  The General felt his coat sleeve
that night, and it was wet.

COLFORD.  Well!  What proof's that?  No, by George!  An old school-
fellow, a brother officer, and a pal.

WINSOR.  If he did do it--

COLFORD.  He didn't.  But if he did, I'd stick to him, and see him
through it, if I could.

     WINSOR walks over to the fire, stares into it, turns round and
     stares at COLFORD, who is standing motionless.

COLFORD.  Yes, by God!


                              CURTAIN.




SCENE II
     [NOTE.--This should be a small set capable of being set quickly
     within that of the previous scene.]

     Morning of the following day.  The DANCYS' flat.  In the sitting-
     room of this small abode MABEL DANCY and MARGARET ORME are sitting
     full face to the audience, on a couch in the centre of the room, in
     front of the imaginary window.  There is a fireplace, Left, with
     fire burning; a door below it, Left; and a door on the Right, facing
     the audience, leads to a corridor and the outer door of the flat,
     which is visible.  Their voices are heard in rapid exchange; then as
     the curtain rises, so does MABEL.

MABEL.  But it's monstrous!

MARGARET.  Of course!  [She lights a cigarette and hands the case to
MABEL, who, however, sees nothing but her own thoughts]  De Levis might
just as well have pitched on me, except that I can't jump more than six
inches in these skirts.

MABEL.  It's wicked!  Yesterday afternoon at the Club, did you say?
Ronny hasn't said a word to me.  Why?

MARGARET.  [With a long puff of smoke]  Doesn't want you bothered.

MABEL.  But----Good heavens!----Me!

MARGARET.  Haven't you found out, Mabel, that he isn't exactly
communicative?  No desperate character is.

MABEL.  Ronny?

MARGARET.  Gracious!  Wives are at a disadvantage, especially early on.
You've never hunted with him, my dear.  I have.  He takes more sudden
decisions than any man I ever knew.  He's taking one now, I'll bet.

MABEL.  That beast, De Levis!  I was in our room next door all the time.

MARGARET.  Was the door into Ronny's dressing-room open?

MABEL.  I don't know; I--I think it was.

MARGARET.  Well, you can say so in Court any way.  Not that it matters.
Wives are liars by law.

MABEL.  [Staring down at her]  What do you mean--Court?

MARGARET.  My dear, he'll have to bring an action for defamation of
character, or whatever they call it.

MABEL.  Were they talking of this last night at the WINSOR's?

MARGARET.  Well, you know a dinner-table, Mabel--Scandal is heaven-sent
at this time of year.

MABEL.  It's terrible, such a thing--terrible!

MARGARET.  [Gloomily] If only Ronny weren't known to be so broke.

MABEL.  [With her hands to her forehead] I can't realise--I simply can't.
If there's a case would it be all right afterwards?

MARGARET.  Do you remember St Offert--cards?  No, you wouldn't--you were
in high frocks.  Well, St Offert got damages, but he also got the hoof,
underneath.  He lives in Ireland.  There isn't the slightest connection,
so far as I can see, Mabel, between innocence and reputation.  Look at
me!

MABEL.  We'll fight it tooth and nail!

MARGARET.  Mabel, you're pure wool, right through; everybody's sorry for
you.

MABEL.  It's for him they ought--

MARGARET.  [Again handing the cigarette case]  Do smoke, old thing.

     MABEL takes a cigarette this time, but does not light it.

It isn't altogether simple.  General Canynge was there last night.  You
don't mind my being beastly frank, do you?

MABEL.  No.  I want it.

MARGARET.  Well, he's all for esprit de corps and that.  But he was
awfully silent.

MABEL.  I hate half-hearted friends.  Loyalty comes before everything.

MARGARET.  Ye-es;  but loyalties cut up against each other sometimes, you
know.

MABEL.  I must see Ronny.  D'you mind if I go and try to get him on the
telephone?

MARGARET.  Rather not.

     MABEL goes out by the door Left.

Poor kid!

     She curls herself into a corner of the sofa, as if trying to get
     away from life.  The bell rings.  MARGARET stirs, gets up, and goes
     out into the corridor, where she opens the door to LADY ADELA
     WINSOR, whom she precedes into the sitting-room.

Enter the second murderer!  D'you know that child knew nothing?

LADY A.  Where is she?

MARGARET.  Telephoning.  Adela, if there's going to be an action, we
shall be witnesses.  I shall wear black georgette with an ecru hat.  Have
you ever given evidence?

LADY A.  Never.

MARGARET.  It must be too frightfully thrilling.

LADY A.  Oh!  Why did I ever ask that wretch De Levis?  I used to think
him pathetic.  Meg did you know----Ronald Dancy's coat was wet?  The
General happened to feel it.

MARGARET.  So that's why he was so silent.

LADY A.  Yes; and after the scene in the Club yesterday he went to see
those bookmakers, and Goole--what a name!--is sure he told Dancy about
the sale.

MARGARET.  [Suddenly]  I don't care.  He's my third cousin.  Don't you
feel you couldn't, Adela?

LADY A.  Couldn't--what?

MARGARET.  Stand for De Levis against one of ourselves?

LADY A.  That's very narrow, Meg.

MARGARET.  Oh!  I know lots of splendid Jews, and I rather liked little
Ferdy; but when it comes to the point--!  They all stick together; why
shouldn't we?  It's in the blood.  Open your jugular, and see if you
haven't got it.

LADY A.  My dear, my great grandmother was a Jewess.  I'm very proud of
her.

MARGARET.  Inoculated.  [Stretching herself]  Prejudices, Adela--or are
they loyalties--I don't know--cris-cross--we all cut each other's throats
from the best of motives.

LADY A.  Oh! I shall remember that.  Delightful!  [Holding up a finger]
You got it from Bergson, Meg.  Isn't he wonderful?

MARGARET.  Yes; have you ever read him?

LADY A.  Well--No.  [Looking at the bedroom door]  That poor child!  I
quite agree.  I shall tell every body it's ridiculous.  You don't really
think Ronald Dancy--?

MARGARET.  I don't know, Adela.  There are people who simply can't live
without danger.  I'm rather like that myself.  They're all right when
they're getting the D.S.O. or shooting man-eaters; but if there's no
excitement going, they'll make it--out of sheer craving.  I've seen Ronny
Dancy do the maddest things for no mortal reason except the risk.  He's
had a past, you know.

LADY A.  Oh!  Do tell!

MARGARET.  He did splendidly in the war, of course, because it suited
him;  but--just before--don't you remember--a very queer bit of riding?

LADY A.  No.

MARGARET.  Most dare-devil thing--but not quite.  You must remember--
it was awfully talked about.  And then, of course, right up to his
marriage--[She lights a cigarette.]

LADY A.  Meg, you're very tantalising!

MARGARET.  A foreign-looking girl--most plummy.  Oh! Ronny's got charm
--this Mabel child doesn't know in the least what she's got hold of!

LADY A.  But they're so fond of each other!

MARGARET.  That's the mistake.  The General isn't mentioning the coat, is
he?

LADY A.  Oh, no!  It was only to Charles.

     MABEL returns.

MARGARET.  Did you get him?

MABEL.  No; he's not at Tattersall's, nor at the Club.

     LADY ADELA rises and greets her with an air which suggests
     bereavement.

LADY A.  Nobody's going to believe this, my dear.

MABEL.  [Looking straight at her]  Nobody who does need come here, or
trouble to speak to us again.

LADY A.  That's what I was afraid of;  you're going to be defiant.  Now
don't!  Just be perfectly natural.

MABEL.  So easy, isn't it?  I could kill anybody who believes such a
thing.

MARGARET.  You'll want a solicitor, Mabel, Go to old Mr Jacob Twisden.

LADY A.  Yes; he's so comforting.

MARGARET.  He got my pearls back once--without loss of life.  A
frightfully good fireside manner.  Do get him here, Mabel, and have a
heart-to-heart talk, all three of you!

MABEL.  [Suddenly]  Listen!  There's Ronny!

     DANCY comes in.

DANCY.  [With a smile]  Very good of you to have come.

MARGARET.  Yes.  We're just going.  Oh!  Ronny, this is quite too--
[But his face dries her up; and sidling past, she goes].

LADY A.  Charles sent his-love--[Her voice dwindles on the word, and she,
too, goes].

DANCY.  [Crossing to his wife]  What have they been saying?

MABEL.  Ronny!  Why didn't you tell me?

DANCY.  I wanted to see De Levis again first.

MABEL.  That wretch!  How dare he?  Darling!  [She suddenly clasps and
kisses him.  He does not return the kiss, but remains rigid in her arms,
so that she draws away and looks at him] It's hurt you awfully, I know.

DANCY.  Look  here,  Mabel!  Apart  from  that muck--this is a ghastly
tame-cat sort of life.  Let's cut it and get out to Nairobi.  I can scare
up the money for that.

MABEL.  [Aghast] But how can we?  Everybody would say--

RONNY.  Let them!  We shan't be here.

MABEL.  I couldn't bear people to think--

DANCY.  I don't care a damn what people think monkeys and cats.  I never
could stand their rotten menagerie.  Besides, what does it matter how I
act; if I bring an action and get damages--if I pound him to a jelly--
it's all no good!  I can't prove it.  There'll be plenty of people
unconvinced.

MABEL.  But they'll find the real thief.

DANCY.  [With a queer little smile]  Will staying here help them to do
that?

MABEL.  [In a sort of agony]  Oh!  I couldn't--it looks like running
away.  We must stay and fight it!

DANCY.  Suppose I didn't get a verdict--you never can tell.

MABEL.  But you must--I was there all the time, with the door open.

DANCY.  Was it?

MABEL.  I'm almost sure.

DANCY.  Yes.  But you're my wife.

MABEL.  [Bewildered]  Ronny, I don't understand--suppose I'd been accused
of stealing pearls!

DANCY.  [Wincing]  I can't.

MABEL.  But I might--just as easily.  What would you think of me if I ran
away from it?

DANCY.  I see.  [A pause]  All right!  You shall have a run for your
money.  I'll go and see old Twisden.

MABEL.  Let me come!  [DANCY shakes his head]  Why not?  I can't be happy
a moment unless I'm fighting this.

     DANCY puts out his hand suddenly and grips hers.

DANCY.  You are a little brick!

MABEL.  [Pressing his hand to her breast and looking into his face]
Do you know what Margaret called you?

RONNY.  No.

MABEL.  A desperate character.

DANCY.  Ha!  I'm not a tame cat, any more than she.

     The bell rings.  MABEL goes out to the door and her voice is heard
     saying coldly.

MABEL.  Will you wait a minute, please?  Returning.  It's De Levis--to
see you.  [In a low voice]  Let me see him alone first.  Just for a
minute!  Do!

DANCY.  [After a moment's silence] Go ahead!  He goes out into the
bedroom.

MABEL.  [Going to the door, Right]  Come in.

     DE LEVIS comes in, and stands embarrassed.

Yes?

DE LEVIS.  [With a slight bow]  Your husband, Mrs Dancy?

MABEL.  He is in.  Why do you want to see him?

DE LEVIS.  He came round to my rooms just now, when I was out.  He
threatened me yesterday.  I don't choose him to suppose I'm afraid of
him.

MABEL.  [With a great and manifest effort at self-control]  Mr De Levis,
you are robbing my husband of his good name.

DE LEVIS.  [Sincerely]  I admire your trustfulness, Mrs Dancy.

MABEL.  [Staring at him]  How can you do it?  What do you want?  What's
your motive?  You can't possibly believe that my husband is a thief!

DE LEVIS.  Unfortunately.

MABEL.  How dare you?  How dare you?  Don't you know that I was in our
bedroom all the time with the door open?  Do you accuse me too?

DE LEVIS.  No, Mrs Dancy.

MABEL.  But you do.  I must have seen, I must have heard.

DE LEVIS.  A wife's memory is not very good when her husband is in
danger.

MABEL.  In other words, I'm lying.

DE LEVIS.  No.  Your wish is mother to your thought, that's all.

MABEL.  [After staring again with a sort of horror, turns to get control
of herself.  Then turning back to him] Mr De Levis, I appeal to you as a
gentleman to behave to us as you would we should behave to you.  Withdraw
this wicked charge, and write an apology that Ronald can show.

DE LEVIS.  Mrs Dancy, I am not a gentleman, I am only a--damned Jew.
Yesterday I might possibly have withdrawn to spare you.  But when my race
is insulted I have nothing to say to your husband, but as he wishes to
see me, I've come.  Please let him know.

MABEL.  [Regarding him again with that look of horror--slowly]  I think
what you are doing is too horrible for words.

     DE LEVIS gives her a slight bow, and as he does so DANCY comes
     quickly in, Left.  The two men stand with the length of the sofa
     between them.  MABEL, behind the sofa, turns her eyes on her
     husband, who has a paper in his right hand.

DE LEVIS.  You came to see me.

DANCY.  Yes.  I want you to sign this.

DE LEVIS.  I will sign nothing.

DANCY.  Let me read it: "I apologise to Captain Dancy for the reckless
and monstrous charge I made against him, and I retract every word of it."

DE LEVIS.  Not much!

DANCY.  You will sign.

DE LEVIS.  I tell you this is useless.  I will sign nothing.  The charge
is true; you wouldn't be playing this game if it weren't.  I'm going.
You'll hardly try violence in the presence of your wife; and if you try
it anywhere else--look out for yourself.

DANCY.  Mabel, I want to speak to him alone.

MABEL.  No, no!

DE LEVIS.  Quite right, Mrs Dancy.  Black and tan swashbuckling will only
make things worse for him.

DANCY.  So you shelter behind a woman, do you, you skulking cur!

     DE LEVIS takes a step, with fists clenched and eyes blazing.  DANCY,
     too, stands ready to spring--the moment is cut short by MABEL going
     quickly to her husband.

MABEL.  Don't, Ronny.  It's undignified!  He isn't worth it.

     DANCY suddenly tears the paper in two, and flings it into the fire.

DANCY.  Get out of here, you swine!

     DE LEVIS stands a moment irresolute, then, turning to the door, he
     opens it, stands again for a moment with a smile on his face, then
     goes.  MABEL crosses swiftly to the door, and shuts it as the outer
     door closes.  Then she stands quite still, looking at her husband-
     her face expressing a sort of startled suspense.

DANCY.  [Turning and looking at her]  Well!  Do you agree with him?

MABEL.  What do you mean?

DANCY.  That I wouldn't be playing this game unless--

MABEL.  Don't!  You hurt me!

DANCY.  Yes.  You don't know much of me, Mabel.

MABEL.  Ronny!

DANCY.  What did you say to that swine?

MABEL.  [Her face averted] That he was robbing us.  [Turning to him
suddenly]  Ronny--you--didn't?  I'd rather know.

DANCY.  Ha!  I thought that was coming.

MABEL.  [Covering her face]  Oh!  How horrible of me--how horrible!

DANCY.  Not at all.  The thing looks bad.

MABEL.  [Dropping her hands]  If I can't believe in you, who can?
[Going to him, throwing her arms round him, and looking up into his face]
Ronny!  If all the world--I'd believe in you.  You know I would.

DANCY.  That's all right, Mabs!  That's all right!  [His face, above her
head, is contorted for a moment, then hardens into a mask] Well, what
shall we do?  Let's go to that lawyer--let's go--

MABEL.  Oh! at once!

DANCY.  All right.  Get your hat on.

     MABEL passes him, and goes into the bedroom, Left.  DANCY, left
     alone, stands quite still, staring before him.  With a sudden shrug
     of his shoulders he moves quickly to his hat and takes it up just as
     MABEL returns, ready to go out.  He opens the door; and crossing
     him, she stops in the doorway, looking up with a clear and trustful
     gaze as


                            The CURTAIN falls.




ACT III

SCENE I

     Three months later.  Old MR JACOB TWISDEN's Room, at the offices of
     Twisden & Graviter, in Lincoln's Inn Fields, is spacious, with two
     large windows at back, a fine old fireplace, Right, a door below it,
     and two doors, Left.  Between the windows is a large table sideways
     to the window wall, with a chair in the middle on the right-hand
     side, a chair against the wall, and a client's chair on the left-
     hand side.

     GRAVITER, TWISDEN'S much younger partner, is standing in front of
     the right-hand window looking out on to the Fields, where the lamps
     are being lighted, and a taxi's engine is running down below.  He
     turns his sanguine, shrewd face from the window towards a
     grandfather dock, between the doors, Left, which is striking "four."
     The door, Left Forward, is opened.

YOUNG CLERK.  [Entering]  A Mr Gilman, sir, to see Mr Twisden.

GRAVITER.  By appointment?

YOUNG CLERK.  No, sir.  But important, he says.

GRAVITER.  I'll see him.

     The CLERK goes.  GRAVITER sits right of table.  The CLERK returns,
     ushering in an oldish MAN, who looks what he is, the proprietor of a
     large modern grocery store.  He wears a dark overcoat and carries a
     pot hat.  His gingery-grey moustache and mutton-chop whiskers give
     him the expression of a cat.

GRAVITER.  [Sizing up his social standing]  Mr Gilman?  Yes.

GILMAN.  [Doubtfully]  Mr Jacob Twisden?

GRAVITER.  [Smiling] His partner.  Graviter my name is.

GILMAN.  Mr Twisden's not in, then?

GRAVITER.  No.  He's at the Courts.  They're just up; he should be in
directly.  But he'll be busy.

GILMAN.  Old Mr Jacob Twisden--I've heard of him.

GRAVITER.  Most people have.

GILMAN.  It's this Dancy-De Levis case that's keepin' him at the Courts,
I suppose?

     GRAVITER nods.

Won't be finished for a day or two?

     GRAVITER shakes his head.  No.

Astonishin' the interest taken in it.

GRAVITER.  As you say.

GILMAN.  The Smart Set,  eh?  This Captain Dancy got the D.S.O., didn't
he?

     GRAVITER nods.

Sad to have a thing like that said about you.  I thought he gave his
evidence well; and his wife too.  Looks as if this De Levis had got some
private spite.  Searchy la femme, I said to Mrs Gilman only this morning,
before I--

GRAVITER.  By the way, sir, what is your business?

GILMAN.  Well, my business here--No, if you'll excuse me, I'd rather
wait and see old Mr Jacob Twisden.  It's delicate, and I'd like his
experience.

GRAVITER. [With a shrug]  Very well; then, perhaps, you'll go in there.
[He moves towards the door, Left Back].

GILMAN.  Thank you.  [Following]  You see, I've never been mixed up with
the law--

GRAVITER.  [Opening the door] No?

GILMAN.  And I don't want to begin.  When you do, you don't know where
you'll stop, do you?  You see, I've only come from a sense of duty; and
--other reasons.

GRAVITER.  Not uncommon.

GILMAN.  [Producing card] This is my card.  Gilman's--several branches,
but this is the 'ead.

GRAVITER.  [Scrutinising card]  Exactly.

GILMAN.  Grocery--I daresay you know me; or your wife does.  They say old
Mr Jacob Twisden refused a knighthood.  If it's not a rude question, why
was that?

GRAVITER.  Ask him, sir; ask him.

GILMAN.  I said to my wife at the time, "He's holdin' out for a
baronetcy."

     GRAVITER Closes the door with an exasperated smile.

YOUNG CLERK.  [Opening the door, Left Forward]  Mr WINSOR, sir, and Miss
Orme.

     They enter, and the CLERK withdraws.

GRAVITER.  How d'you do, Miss Orme?  How do you do, WINSOR?

WINSOR.  Twisden not back, Graviter?

GRAVITER.  Not yet.

WINSOR.  Well, they've got through De Levis's witnesses.  Sir Frederick
was at the very top of his form.  It's looking quite well.  But I hear
they've just subpoenaed Canynge after all.  His evidence is to be taken
to-morrow.

GRAVITER.  Oho!

WINSOR.  I said Dancy ought to have called him.

GRAVITER.  We considered it.  Sir Frederic decided that he could use him
better in cross-examination.

WINSOR.  Well!  I don't know that.  Can I go and see him before he gives
evidence to-morrow?

GRAVITER.  I should like to hear Mr Jacob on that, WINSOR.  He'll be in
directly.

WINSOR.  They had Kentman, and Goole, the Inspector, the other bobby, my
footman, Dancy's banker, and his tailor.

GRAVITER.  Did we shake Kentman or Goole?

WINSOR.  Very little.  Oh! by the way, the numbers of those two notes
were given, and I see they're published in the evening papers.  I suppose
the police wanted that.  I tell you what I find, Graviter--a general
feeling that there's something behind it all that doesn't come out.

GRAVITER.  The public wants it's money's worth--always does in these
Society cases; they brew so long beforehand, you see.

WINSOR.  They're looking for something lurid.

MARGARET.  When I was in the bog, I thought they were looking for me.
[Taking out her cigarette case] I suppose I mustn't smoke, Mr Graviter?

GRAVITER.  Do!

MARGARET.  Won't Mr Jacob have a fit?

GRAVITER.  Yes, but not till you've gone.

MARGARET.  Just a whiff.  [She lights a cigarette].

WINSOR.  [Suddenly]  It's becoming a sort of Dreyfus case--people taking
sides quite outside the evidence.

MARGARET.  There are more of the chosen in Court every day.  Mr Graviter,
have you noticed the two on the jury?

GRAVITER.  [With a smile] No; I can't say--

MARGARET.  Oh! but quite distinctly.  Don't you think they ought to have
been challenged?

GRAVITER.  De Levis might have challenged the other ten, Miss Orme.

MARGARET.  Dear me, now!  I never thought of that.

     As she speaks, the door Left Forward is opened and old MR JACOB
     TWISDEN comes in.  He is tallish and narrow, sixty-eight years old,
     grey, with narrow little whiskers curling round his narrow ears, and
     a narrow bow-ribbon curling round his collar.  He wears a long,
     narrow-tailed coat, and strapped trousers on his narrow legs.  His
     nose and face are narrow, shrewd, and kindly.  He has a way of
     narrowing his shrewd and kindly eyes.  His nose is seen to twitch
     and snig.

TWISDEN.  Ah!  How are you, Charles?  How do you do, my dear?

MARGARET.  Dear Mr Jacob, I'm smoking.  Isn't it disgusting?  But they
don't allow it in Court, you know.  Such a pity!  The Judge might have a
hookah.  Oh! wouldn't he look sweet--the darling!

TWISDEN.  [With a little, old-fashioned bow] It does not become everybody
as it becomes you, Margaret.

MARGARET.  Mr Jacob, how charming!  [With a slight grimace she puts out
her cigarette].

GRAVITER.  Man called Gilman waiting in there to see you specially.

TWISDEN.  Directly.  Turn up the light, would you, Graviter?

GRAVITER.  [Turning up the light]  Excuse me.

     He goes.

WINSOR.  Look here, Mr Twisden--

TWISDEN.  Sit down; sit down, my dear.

     And he himself sits behind the table, as a cup of tea is brought in
     to him by the YOUNG CLERK, with two Marie biscuits in the saucer.

Will you have some, Margaret?

MARGARET.  No, dear Mr Jacob.

TWISDEN.  Charles?

WINSOR.  No, thanks.  The door is closed.

TWISDEN.  [Dipping a biscuit in the tea] Now, then?

WINSOR.  The General knows something which on the face of it looks rather
queer.  Now that he's going to be called, oughtn't Dancy to be told of
it, so that he may be ready with his explanation, in case it comes out?

TWISDEN.  [Pouring some tea into the saucer]  Without knowing, I can't
tell you.

     WINSOR and MARGARET exchange looks, and TWISDEN drinks from the
     saucer.  MARGARET.  Tell him, Charles.

WINSOR.  Well!  It rained that evening at Meldon.  The General happened
to put his hand on Dancy's shoulder, and it was damp.

     TWISDEN puts the saucer down and replaces the cup in it.  They both
     look intently at him.

TWISDEN.  I take it that General Canynge won't say anything he's not
compelled to say.

MARGARET.  No, of course; but, Mr Jacob, they might ask; they know it
rained.  And he is such a George Washington.

TWISDEN.  [Toying with a pair of tortoise-shell glasses]  They didn't ask
either of you.  Still-no harm in your telling Dancy.

WINSOR.  I'd rather you did it, Margaret.

MARGARET.  I daresay.  [She mechanically takes out her cigarette-case,
catches the lift of TWISDEN'S eyebrows, and puts it back].

WINSOR.  Well, we'll go together.  I don't want Mrs Dancy to hear.

MARGARET.  Do tell me, Mr Jacob; is he going to win?

TWISDEN.  I think so, Margaret; I think so.

MARGARET.  It'll be too--frightful if he doesn't get a verdict, after all
this.  But I don't know what we shall do when it's over.  I've been
sitting in that Court all these three days, watching, and it's made me
feel there's nothing we like better than seeing people skinned.  Well,
bye-bye, bless you!

     TWISDEN rises and pats her hand.

WINSOR.  Half a second, Margaret.  Wait for me.  She nods and goes out.
Mr Twisden, what do you really think?

TWISDEN.  I am Dancy's lawyer, my dear Charles, as well as yours.

WINSOR.  Well, can I go and see Canynge?

TWISDEN.  Better not.

WINSOR.  If they get that out of him, and recall me, am I to say he told
me of it at the time?

TWISDEN.  You didn't feel the coat yourself?  And Dancy wasn't present?
Then what Canynge told you is not evidence--he'll stop your being asked.

WINSOR.  Thank goodness.  Good-bye!

     WINSOR goes out.

     TWISDEN, behind his table, motionless, taps his teeth with the
     eyeglasses in his narrow, well-kept hand.  After a long shake of his
     head and a shrug of his rather high shoulders he snips, goes to the
     window and opens it.  Then crossing to the door, Left Back, he
     throws it open and says

TWISDEN.  At your service, sir.

     GILMAN comes forth, nursing his pot hat.

Be seated.

     TWISDEN closes the window behind him, and takes his seat.

GILMAN.  [Taking the client's chair, to the left of the table] Mr
Twisden, I believe?  My name's Gilman, head of Gilman's Department
Stores.  You have my card.

TWISDEN.  [Looking at the card] Yes.  What can we do for you?

GILMAN.  Well, I've come to you from a sense of duty, sir, and also a
feelin' of embarrassment.  [He takes from his breast pocket an evening
paper] You see, I've been followin' this Dancy case--it's a good deal
talked of in Putney--and I read this at half-past two this afternoon.  To
be precise, at 2.25.  [He rises and hands the paper to TWISDEN, and with
a thick gloved forefinger indicates a passage] When I read these numbers,
I 'appened to remember givin' change for a fifty-pound note--don't often
'ave one in, you know--so I went to the cash-box out of curiosity, to see
that I 'adn't got it.  Well, I 'ad; and here it is.  [He draws out from
his breast pocket and lays before TWISDEN a fifty-pound banknote]  It was
brought in to change by a customer of mine three days ago, and he got
value for it.  Now, that's a stolen note, it seems, and you'd like to
know what I did.  Mind you, that customer of mine I've known 'im--well--
eight or nine years; an Italian he is--wine salesman, and so far's I
know, a respectable man-foreign-lookin', but nothin' more.  Now, this was
at 'alf-past two, and I was at my head branch at Putney, where I live.
I want you to mark the time, so as you'll see I 'aven't wasted a minute.
I took a cab and I drove straight to my customer's private residence in
Putney, where he lives with his daughter--Ricardos his name is, Paolio
Ricardos.  They tell me there that he's at his business shop in the City.
So off I go in the cab again, and there I find him.  Well, sir, I showed
this paper to him and I produced the note.  "Here," I said, "you brought
this to me and you got value for it."  Well, that man was taken aback.
If I'm a judge, Mr Twisden, he was taken aback, not to speak in a guilty
way, but he was, as you might say, flummoxed.  "Now," I said to him,
"where did you get it--that's the point?"  He took his time to answer,
and then he said: "Well, Mr Gilman," he said, "you know me; I am an
honourable man.  I can't tell you offhand, but I am above the board."
He's foreign, you know, in his expressions.  "Yes," I said, "that's all
very well," I said, "but here I've got a stolen note and you've got the
value for it.  Now I tell you," I said, "what I'm going to do; I'm going
straight with this note to Mr Jacob Twisden, who's got this Dancy-De
Levis case in 'and.  He's a well-known Society lawyer," I said, "of great
experience."  "Oh!" he said, "that is what you do?"--funny the way he
speaks!  "Then I come with you!"--And I've got him in the cab below.
I want to tell you everything before he comes up.  On the way I tried to
get something out of him, but I couldn't--I could not.  "This is very
awkward," I said at last.  "It is, Mr Gilman," was his reply; and he
began to talk about his Sicilian claret--a very good wine, mind you; but
under the circumstances it seemed to me uncalled for.  Have I made it
clear to you?

TWISDEN.  [Who has listened with extreme attention] Perfectly, Mr Gilman.
I'll send down for him.  [He touches a hand-bell].

     The YOUNG CLERK appears at the door, Left Forward.

A gentleman in a taxi-waiting.  Ask him to be so good as to step up.  Oh!
and send Mr Graviter here again.

     The YOUNG CLERK goes out.

GILMAN.  As I told you, sir, I've been followin' this case.  It's what
you might call piquant.  And I should be very glad if it came about that
this helped Captain Dancy.  I take an interest, because, to tell you the
truth, [Confidentially] I don't like--well, not to put too fine a point
upon it 'Ebrews.  They work harder; they're more sober; they're honest;
and they're everywhere.  I've nothing against them, but the fact is--they
get on so.

TWISDEN.  [Cocking an eye]  A thorn in the flesh, Mr Gilman.

GILMAN.  Well, I prefer my own countrymen, and that's the truth of it.

     As he speaks, GRAVITER comes in by the door Left Forward.

TWISDEN.  [Pointing to the newspaper and the note]  Mr Gilman has brought
this, of which he is holder for value.  His customer, who changed it
three days ago, is coming up.

GRAVITER.  The fifty-pounder.  I see.  [His face is long and reflective].

YOUNG CLERK.  [Entering]  Mr Ricardos, sir.

     He goes out.  RICARDOS is a personable, Italian-looking man in a
     frock coat, with a dark moustachioed face and dark hair a little
     grizzled.  He looks anxious, and bows.

TWISDEN.  Mr Ricardos?  My name is Jacob Twisden.  My partner.  [Holding
up a finger, as RICARDOS would speak]  Mr Gilman has told us about this
note.  You took it to him, he says, three days ago; that is, on Monday,
and received cash for it?

RICARDOS.  Yes, sare.

TWISDEN.  You were not aware that it was stolen?

RICARDOS.  [With his hand to his breast]  Oh! no, sare.

TWISDEN.  You received it from--?

RICARDOS.  A minute, sare;  I would weesh to explain--[With an expressive
shrug] in private.

TWISDEN.  [Nodding] Mr Gilman, your conduct has been most prompt.  You
may safely leave the matter in our hands, now.  Kindly let us retain
this note; and ask for my cashier as you go out and give him [He writes]
this.  He will reimburse you.  We will take any necessary steps
ourselves.

GILMAN.  [In slight surprise, with modest pride]  Well, sir, I'm in your
'ands.  I must be guided by you, with your experience.  I'm glad you
think I acted rightly.

TWISDEN.  Very rightly, Mr Gilman--very rightly.  [Rising]
Good afternoon!

GILMAN.  Good afternoon, sir.  Good afternoon, gentlemen! [To TWISDEN]
I'm sure I'm very 'appy to have made your acquaintance, sir.  It's a
well-known name.

TWISDEN.  Thank you.

     GILMAN retreats, glances at RICARDOS, and turns again.

GILMAN.  I suppose there's nothing else I ought to do, in the interests
of the law?  I'm a careful man.

TWISDEN.  If there is, Mr Gilman, we will let you know.  We have your
address.  You may make your mind easy; but don't speak of this.  It might
interfere with Justice.

GILMAN.  Oh! I shouldn't dream of it.  I've no wish to be mixed up in
anything conspicuous.  That's not my principle at all.  Good-day,
gentlemen.

     He goes.

TWISDEN.  [Seating himself] Now, sir, will you sit down.

     But RICARDOS does not sit; he stands looking uneasily across the
     table at GRAVITER.

You may speak out.

RICARDOS.  Well, Mr Tweesden and sare, this matter is very serious for
me, and very delicate--it concairns my honour.  I am in a great
difficulty.

TWISDEN.  When in difficulty--complete frankness, sir.

RICARDOS.  It is a family matter, sare, I--

TWISDEN.  Let me be frank with you.  [Telling his points off on his
fingers]  We have your admission that you changed this stopped note for
value.  It will be our duty to inform the Bank of England that it has
been traced to you.  You will have to account to them for your possession
of it.  I suggest to you that it will be far better to account frankly to
us.

RICARDOS.  [Taking out a handkerchief and quite openly wiping his hands
and forehead]  I received this note, sare, with others, from a gentleman,
sare, in settlement of a debt of honour, and I know nothing of where he
got them.

TWISDEN.  H'm! that is very vague.  If that is all you can tell us, I'm
afraid--

RICARDOS.  Gentlemen, this is very painful for me.  It is my daughter's
good name--[He again wipes his brow].

TWISDEN.  Come, sir, speak out!

RICARDOS.  [Desperately]  The notes were a settlement to her from this
gentleman, of whom she was a great friend.

TWISDEN.  [Suddenly]  I am afraid we must press you for the name of the
gentleman.

RICARDOS.  Sare, if I give it to you, and it does 'im 'arm, what will my
daughter say?  This is a bad matter for me.  He behaved well to her; and
she is attached to him still; sometimes she is crying yet because she
lost him.  And now we betray him, perhaps, who knows?  This is very
unpleasant for me.  [Taking up the paper]  Here it gives the number of
another note--a 'undred-pound note.  I 'ave that too.  [He takes a note
from his breast pocket].

GRAVITER.  How much did he give you in all?

RICARDOS.  For my daughter's settlement one thousand pounds.  I
understand he did not wish to give a cheque because of his marriage.
So I did not think anything about it being in notes, you see.

TWISDEN.  When did he give you this money?

RICARDOS.  The middle of Octobare last.

TWISDEN.  [Suddenly looking up] Mr Ricardos, was it Captain Dancy?

RICARDOS.  [Again wiping his forehead] Gentlemen, I am so fond of my
daughter.  I have only the one, and no wife.

TWISDEN.  [With an effort] Yes, yes; but I must know.

RICARDOS.  Sare, if I tell you, will you give me your good word that my
daughter shall not hear of it?

TWISDEN.  So far as we are able to prevent it--certainly.

RICARDOS.  Sare, I trust you.--It was Captain Dancy.

     A long pause.

GRAVITER [Suddenly] Were you blackmailing him?

TWISDEN.  [Holding up his hand]  My partner means, did you press him for
this settlement?

RICARDOS.  I did think it my duty to my daughter to ask that he make
compensation to her.

TWISDEN.  With threats that you would tell his wife?

RICARDOS.  [With a shrug]  Captain Dancy was a man of honour.  He said:
"Of course I will do this."  I trusted him.  And a month later I did
remind him, and he gave me this money for her.  I do not know where he
got it--I do not know.  Gentlemen, I have invested it all on her--every
penny-except this note, for which I had the purpose to buy her a
necklace.  That is the sweared truth.

TWISDEN.  I must keep this note.  [He touches the hundred-pound note]
You will not speak of this to anyone.  I may recognise that you were a
holder for value received--others might take a different view.  Good-day,
sir.  Graviter, see Mr Ricardos out, and take his address.

RICARDOS.  [Pressing his hands over the breast of his frock coat--with a
sigh]  Gentlemen, I beg you--remember what I said.  [With a roll of his
eyes] My daughter--I am not happee.  Good-day.

     He turns and goes out slowly, Left Forward, followed by GRAVITER.

TWISDEN.  [To himself]  Young Dancy!  [He pins the two notes together and
places them in an envelope, then stands motionless except for his eyes
and hands, which restlessly express the disturbance within him.]

     GRAVITER returns, carefully shuts the door, and going up to him,
     hands him RICARDOS' card.

[Looking at the card] Villa Benvenuto.  This will have to be verified,
but I'm afraid it's true.  That man was not acting.

GRAVITER.  What's to be done about Dancy?

TWISDEN.  Can you understand a gentleman--?

GRAVITER.  I don't know, sir.  The war loosened "form" all over the
place.  I saw plenty of that myself.  And some men have no moral sense.
From the first I've had doubts.

TWISDEN.  We can't go on with the case.

GRAVITER.  Phew!  .  .  .  [A moment's silence]  Gosh!  It's an awful
thing for his wife.

TWISDEN.  Yes.

GRAVITER  [Touching the envelope]  Chance brought this here, sir.  That
man won't talk--he's too scared.

TWISDEN.  Gilman.

GRAVITER.  Too respectable.  If De Levis got those notes back, and the
rest of the money, anonymously?

TWISDEN.  But the case, Graviter; the case.

GRAVITER.  I don't believe this alters what I've been thinking.

TWISDEN.  Thought is one thing--knowledge another.  There's duty to our
profession.  Ours is a fine calling.  On the good faith of solicitors a
very great deal hangs.  [He crosses to the hearth as if warmth would help
him].

GRAVITER.  It'll let him in for a prosecution.  He came to us in
confidence.

TWISDEN.  Not as against the law.

GRAVITER.  No.  I suppose not.  [A pause]  By Jove, I don't like losing
this case.  I don't like the admission we backed such a wrong 'un.

TWISDEN.  Impossible to go on.  Apart from ourselves, there's Sir
Frederic.  We must disclose to him--can't let him go on in the dark.
Complete confidence between solicitor and counsel is the essence of
professional honour.

GRAVITER.  What are you going to do then, sir?

TWISDEN.  See Dancy at once.  Get him on the phone.

GRAVITER.  [Taking up the telephone] Get me Captain Dancy's flat. . . .
What? . . .[To TWISDEN]  Mrs Dancy is here.  That's a propos with a
vengeance.  Are you going to see her, sir?

TWISDEN.  [After a moment's painful hesitation] I must.

GRAVITER.  [Telephoning] Bring Mrs Dancy up.  [He turns to the window].

     MABEL DANDY is shown in, looking very pale.  TWISDEN advances from
     the fire, and takes her hand.

MABEL.  Major Colford's taken Ronny off in his car for the night.  I
thought it would do him good.  I said I'd come round in case there was
anything you wanted to say before to-morrow.

TWISDEN.  [Taken aback]  Where have they gone?

MABEL.  I don't know, but he'll be home before ten o'clock to-morrow.  Is
there anything?

TWISDEN.  Well, I'd like to see him before the Court sits.  Send him on
here as soon as he comes.

MABEL.  [With her hand to her forehead] Oh! Mr Twisden, when will it be
over?  My head's getting awful sitting in that Court.

TWISDEN.  My dear Mrs Dancy, there's no need at all for you to come down
to-morrow; take a rest and nurse your head.

MABEL.  Really and truly?

TWISDEN.  Yes; it's the very best thing you can do.

GRAVITER turns his head, and looks at them unobserved.

MABEL.  How do you think it's going?

TWISDEN.  It went very well to-day; very well indeed.

MABEL.  You must be awfully fed up with us.

TWISDEN.  My dear young lady, that's our business.  [He takes her hand].

     MABEL's face suddenly quivers.  She draws her hand away, and covers
     her lips with it.

There, there!  You want a day off badly.

MABEL.  I'm so tired of--!  Thank you so much for all you're doing.
Good night!  Good night, Mr Graviter!

GRAVITER.  Good night, Mrs Dancy.

     MABEL goes.

GRAVITER.  D'you know, I believe she knows.

TWISDEN.  No, no!  She believes in him implicitly.  A staunch little
woman.  Poor thing!

GRAVITER.  Hasn't that shaken you, sir?  It has me.

TWISDEN.  No, no!  I--I can't go on with the case.  It's breaking faith.
Get Sir Frederic's chambers.

GRAVITER.  [Telephoning, and getting a reply, looks round at TWISDEN]
Yes?

TWISDEN.  Ask if I can come round and see him.

GRAVITER.  [Telephoning]  Can Sir Frederic spare Mr Twisden a few minutes
now if he comes round?  [Receiving reply]  He's gone down to Brighton for
the night.

TWISDEN.  H'm!  What hotel?

GRAVITER.  [Telephoning]  What's  his  address?  What .  .  . ?  [To
TWISDEN] The Bedford.

TWISDEN.  I'll go down.

GRAVITER.  [Telephoning]  Thank you.  All right.  [He rings off].

TWISDEN.  Just look out the trains down and up early to-morrow.

     GRAVITER takes up an A B C, and TWISDEN takes up the Ricardos card.

TWISDEN.  Send to this address in Putney, verify the fact that Ricardos
has a daughter, and give me a trunk call to Brighton.  Better go
yourself, Graviter.  If you see her, don't say anything, of course--
invent some excuse.  [GRAVITER nods]  I'll be up in time to see Dancy.

GRAVITER.  By George!  I feel bad about this.

TWISDEN.  Yes.  But professional honour comes first.  What time is that
train?  [He bends over the ABC].


                             CURTAIN.




SCENE II

     The same room on the following morning at ten-twenty-five, by the
     Grandfather clock.

     The YOUNG CLERK is ushering in DANCY, whose face is perceptibly
     harder than it was three months ago, like that of a man who has
     lived under great restraint.

DANCY.  He wanted to see me before the Court sat.

YOUNG CLERK.  Yes, sir.  Mr Twisden will see you in one minute.  He had
to go out of town last night.  [He prepares to open the waiting-room
door].

DANCY.  Were you in the war?

YOUNG CLERK.  Yes.

DANCY.  How can you stick this?

YOUNG CLERK.  [With a smile]  My trouble was to stick that, sir.

DANCY.  But you get no excitement from year's end to year's end.  It'd
drive me mad.

YOUNG CLERK.  [Shyly]  A case like this is pretty exciting.  I'd give a
lot to see us win it.

DANCY.  [Staring at him]  Why?  What is it to you?

YOUNG CLERK.  I don't know, sir.  It's--it's like football--you want your
side to win.  [He opens the waiting-room door.  Expanding]  You see some
rum starts, too, in a lawyer's office in a quiet way.

     DANCY enters the waiting-room, and the YOUNG CLERK, shutting the
     door, meets TWISDEN as he comes in, Left Forward, and takes from him
     overcoat, top hat, and a small bag.

YOUNG CLERK.  Captain Dancy's waiting, sir.  [He indicates the waiting-
room].

TWISDEN.  [Narrowing his lips] Very well.  Mr Graviter gone to the
Courts?

YOUNG CLERK.  Yes, sir.

TWISDEN.  Did he leave anything for me?

YOUNG CLERK.  On the table, sir.

TWISDEN.  [Taking up an envelope]  Thank you.

     The CLERK goes.


TWISDEN.  [Opening the envelope and reading] "All corroborates."  H'm!
[He puts it in his pocket and takes out of an envelope the two notes,
lays them on the table, and covers them with a sheet of blotting-paper;
stands a moment preparing himself, then goes to the door of the waiting-
room, opens it, and says:]  Now, Captain Dancy.  Sorry to have kept you
waiting.

DANCY.  [Entering] WINSOR came to me yesterday about General Canynge's
evidence.  Is that what you wanted to speak to me about?

TWISDEN.  No.  It isn't that.

DANCY.  [Looking at his wrist watch]  By me it's just on the half-hour,
sir.

TWISDEN.  Yes.  I don't want you to go to the Court.

DANCY.  Not?

TWISDEN.  I have very serious news for you.

DANCY.  [Wincing and collecting himself]  Oh!

TWISDEN.  These two notes.  [He uncovers the notes]  After the Court rose
yesterday we had a man called Ricardos here.  [A pause] Is there any need
for me to say more?

DANCY.  [Unflinching] No.  What now?

TWISDEN.  Our duty was plain; we could not go on with the case.  I have
consulted Sir Frederic.  He felt--he felt that he must throw up his
brief, and he will do that the moment the Court sits.  Now I want to talk
to you about what you're going to do.

DANCY.  That's very good of you, considering.

TWISDEN.  I don't pretend to understand, but I imagine you may have done
this in a moment of reckless bravado, feeling, perhaps, that as you gave
the mare to De Levis, the money was by rights as much yours as his.

     Stopping DANCY, who is about to speak, with a gesture.

To satisfy a debt of honour to this--lady; and, no doubt, to save your
wife from hearing of it from the man Ricardos.  Is that so?

DANCY.  To the life.

TWISDEN.  It was mad, Captain Dancy, mad!  But the question now is:  What
do you owe to your wife?  She doesn't dream--I suppose?

DANCY.  [With a twitching face]  No.

TWISDEN.  We can't tell what the result of this collapse will be.  The
police have the theft in hand.  They may issue a warrant.  The money
could be refunded, and the costs paid--somehow that can all be managed.
But it may not help.  In any case, what end is served by your staying in
the country?  You can't save your honour--that's gone.  You can't save
your wife's peace of mind.  If she sticks to you--do you think she will?

DANCY.  Not if she's wise.

TWISDEN.  Better go!  There's a war in Morocco.

DANCY.  [With a bitter smile]  Good old Morocco!

TWISDEN.  Will you go, then, at once, and leave me to break it to your
wife?

DANCY.  I don't know yet.

TWISDEN.  You must decide quickly, to catch a boat train.  Many a man has
made good.  You're a fine soldier.

DANCY.  There are alternatives.

TWISDEN.  Now, go straight from this office.  You've a passport, I
suppose; you won't need a visa for France, and from there you can find
means to slip over.  Have you got money on you?  [Dancy nods].  We will
see what we can do to stop or delay proceedings.

DANCY.  It's all damned kind of you.  [With difficulty]  But I must think
of my wife.  Give me a few minutes.

TWISDEN.  Yes, yes; go in there and think it out.

     He goes to the door, Right, and opens it.  DANCY passes him and goes
     out.  TWISDEN rings a bell and stands waiting.

CLERK.  [Entering]  Yes, sir?

TWISDEN.  Tell them to call a taxi.

CLERK.  [Who has a startled look] Yes, sir.  Mr Graviter has come in,
air, with General Canynge.  Are you disengaged?

TWISDEN.  Yes.

     The CLERK goes out, and almost immediately GRAVITER and CANYNGE
     enter.  Good-morning, General.  [To GRAVITER]

Well?

GRAVITER.  Sir Frederic got up at once and said that since the
publication of the numbers of those notes, information had reached him
which forced him to withdraw from the case.  Great sensation, of course.
I left Bromley in charge.  There'll be a formal verdict for the
defendant, with costs.  Have you told Dancy?

TWISDEN.  Yes.  He's in there deciding what he'll do.

CANYNGE.  [Grave and vexed]  This is a dreadful thing, Twisden.  I've
been afraid of it all along.  A soldier!  A gallant fellow, too.  What on
earth got into him?

TWISDEN.  There's no end to human nature, General.

GRAVITER.  You can see queerer things in the papers, any day.

CANYNGE.  That poor young wife of his!  WINSOR gave me a message for you,
Twisden.  If money's wanted quickly to save proceedings, draw on him.
Is there anything I can do?

TWISDEN.  I've advised him to go straight off to Morocco.

CANYNGE.  I don't know that an asylum isn't the place for him.  He must
be off his head at moments.  That jump-crazy!  He'd have got a verdict on
that alone--if they'd seen those balconies.  I was looking at them when I
was down there last Sunday.  Daring thing, Twisden.  Very few men, on a
dark night--He risked his life twice.  That's a shrewd fellow--young De
Levis.  He spotted Dancy's nature.

     The YOUNG CLERK enters.

CLERK.  The taxi's here, sir.  Will you see Major Colford and Miss Orme?

TWISDEN.  Graviter--No; show them in.

     The YOUNG CLERK goes.

CANYNGE.  Colford's badly cut up.

     MARGARET ORME and COLFORD enter.

COLFORD.  [Striding forward]  There must be some mistake about this, Mr
Twisden.

TWISDEN.  Hssh!  Dancy's in there.  He's admitted it.

     Voices are subdued at once.

COLFORD.  What?  [With emotion]  If it were my own brother, I couldn't
feel it more.  But--damn it!  What right had that fellow to chuck up the
case--without letting him know, too.  I came down with Dancy this
morning, and he knew nothing about it.

TWISDEN.  [Coldly]  That was unfortunately unavoidable.

COLFORD.  Guilty or not, you ought to have stuck to him--it's not playing
the game, Mr Twisden.

TWISDEN.  You must allow me to judge where my duty lay, in a very hard
case.

COLFORD.  I thought a man was safe with his solicitor.

CANYNGE.  Colford, you don't understand professional etiquette.

COLFORD.  No, thank God!

TWISDEN.  When you have been as long in your profession as I have been in
mine, Major Colford, you will know that duty to your calling outweighs
duty to friend or client.

COLFORD.  But I serve the Country.

TWISDEN.  And I serve the Law, sir.

CANYNGE.  Graviter, give me a sheet of paper.  I'll write a letter for
him.

MARGARET.  [Going up to TWISDEN] Dear Mr Jacob--pay De Levis.  You know
my pearls--put them up the spout again.  Don't let Ronny be--

TWISDEN.  Money isn't the point, Margaret.

MARGARET.  It's ghastly!  It really is.

COLFORD.  I'm going in to shake hands with him.  [He starts to cross the
room].

TWISDEN.  Wait!  We want him to go straight off to Morocco.  Don't upset
him.  [To COLFORD and MARGARET] I think you had better go.  If, a little
later, Margaret, you could go round to Mrs Dancy--

COLFORD.  Poor little Mabel Dancy!  It's perfect hell for her.

     They have not seen that DANCY has opened the door behind them.

DANCY.  It is!

     They all turn round in consternation.

COLFORD.  [With a convulsive movement] Old boy!

DANCY.  No good, Colford.  [Gazing round at them]  Oh! clear out--I can't
stand commiseration; and let me have some air.

     TWISDEN motions to COLFORD and MARGARET to go; and as he turns to
     DANCY, they go out.  GRAVITER also moves towards the door.  The
     GENERAL sits motionless.  GRAVITER goes Out.

TWISDEN.  Well?

DANCY.  I'm going home, to clear up things with my wife.  General
Canynge, I don't quite know why I did the damned thing.  But I did,
and there's an end of it.

CANYNGE.  Dancy, for the honour of the Army, avoid further scandal if
you can.  I've written a letter to a friend of mine in the Spanish War
Office.  It will get you a job in their war.  [CANYNGE closes the
envelope].

DANCY.  Very good of you.  I don't know if I can make use of it.

     CANYNGE stretches out the letter, which TWISDEN hands to DANCY, who
     takes it.  GRAVITER re-opens the door.

TWISDEN.  What is it?

GRAVITER.  De Levis is here.

TWISDEN.  De Levis?  Can't see him.

DANCY.  Let him in!

     After a moment's hesitation TWISDEN nods, and GRAVITER goes out.
     The three wait in silence with their eyes fixed on the door, the
     GENERAL sitting at the table, TWISDEN by his chair, DANCY between
     him and the door Right.  DE LEVIS comes in and shuts the door.  He
     is advancing towards TWISDEN when his eyes fall on DANCY, and he
     stops.

TWISDEN.  You wanted to see me?

DE LEVIS.  [Moistening his lips]  Yes.  I came to say that--that I
overheard--I am afraid a warrant is to be issued.  I wanted you to
realise--it's not my doing.  I'll give it no support.  I'm content.  I
don't want my money.  I don't even want costs.  Dancy, do you understand?

     DANCY does not answer, but looks at him with nothing alive in his
     face but his eyes.

TWISDEN.  We are obliged to you, Sir.  It was good of you to come.

DE LEVIS.  [With a sort of darting pride] Don't mistake me.  I didn't
come because I feel Christian; I am a Jew.  I will take no money--not
even that which was stolen.  Give it to a charity.  I'm proved right.
And now I'm done with the damned thing.  Good-morning!

     He makes a little bow to CANYNGE and TWISDEN, and turns to face
     DANCY, who has never moved.  The two stand motionless, looking at
     each other, then DE LEVIS shrugs his shoulders and walks out.  When
     he is gone there is a silence.

CANYNGE.  [Suddenly]  You heard what he said, Dancy.  You have no time to
lose.

     But DANCY does not stir.

TWISDEN.  Captain Dancy?

     Slowly, without turning his head, rather like a man in a dream,
     DANCY walks across the room, and goes out.


                           CURTAIN.




SCENE III

     The DANCYS' sitting-room, a few minutes later.  MABEL DANCY is
     sitting alone on the sofa with a newspaper on her lap;  she is only
     just up, and has a bottle of smelling-salts in her hand.  Two or
     three other newspapers are dumped on the arm of the sofa.  She
     topples the one off her lap and takes up another as if she couldn't
     keep away from them; drops it in turn, and sits staring before her,
     sniffing at the salts.  The door, Right, is opened and DANCY comes
     in.

MABEL.  [Utterly  surprised]  Ronny!  Do  they want me in Court?

DANCY.  No.

MABEL.  What is it, then?  Why are you back?

DANCY.  Spun.

MABEL.  [Blank]  Spun?  What do you mean?  What's spun?

DANCY.  The case.  They've found out through those notes.

MABEL.  Oh!  [Staring at his face]  Who?

DANCY.  Me!

MABEL.  [After a moment of horrified stillness]  Don't, Ronny!  Oh!  No!
Don't!  [She buries her face in the pillows of the sofa].

     DANCY stands looking down at her.

DANCY.  Pity you wouldn't come to Africa three months ago.

MABEL.  Why didn't you tell me then?  I would have gone.

DANCY.  You wanted this case.  Well, it's fallen down.

MABEL.  Oh!  Why didn't I face  it?  But I couldn't--I had to believe.

DANCY.  And now you can't.  It's the end, Mabel.

MABEL.  [Looking up at him]  No.

     DANCY goes suddenly on his knees and seizes her hand.

DANCY.  Forgive me!

MABEL.  [Putting her hand on his head]  Yes; oh, yes!  I think I've known a
long time, really.  Only--why?  What made you?

DANCY.  [Getting up and speaking in jerks]  It was a crazy thing to do;
but, damn it, I was only looting a looter.  The money was as much mine as
his.  A decent chap would have offered me half.  You didn't see the brute
look at me that night at dinner as much as to say: "You blasted fool!"
It made me mad.  That wasn't a bad jump-twice over.  Nothing in the war
took quite such nerve.  [Grimly] I rather enjoyed that evening.

MABEL.  But--money!  To keep it!

DANCY.  [Sullenly] Yes, but I had a debt to pay.

MABEL.  To a woman?

DANCY.  A debt of honour--it wouldn't wait.

MABEL.  It was--it was to a woman.  Ronny, don't lie any more.

DANCY.  [Grimly] Well!  I wanted to save your knowing.  I'd promised a
thousand.  I had a letter from her father that morning, threatening to
tell you.  All the same, if that tyke hadn't jeered at me for parlour
tricks!--But what's the good of all this now?  [Sullenly]  Well--it may
cure you of loving me.  Get over that, Mab; I never was worth it--and I'm
done for!

MABEL.  The woman--have you--since--?

DANCY.  [Energetically] No!  You supplanted her.  But if you'd known I
was leaving a woman for you, you'd never have married me.  [He walks over
to the hearth].

     MABEL too gets up.  She presses her hands to her forehead, then
     walks blindly round to behind the sofa and stands looking straight
     in front of her.

MABEL.  [Coldly]  What has happened, exactly?

DANCY.  Sir Frederic chucked up the case.  I've seen Twisden; they want
me to run for it to Morocco.

MABEL.  To the war there?

DANCY.  Yes.  There's to be a warrant out.

MABEL.  A prosecution?  Prison?  Oh, go!  Don't wait a minute!  Go!

DANCY.  Blast them!

MABEL.  Oh, Ronny!  Please!  Please!  Think what you'll want.  I'll pack.
Quick!  No!  Don't wait to take things.  Have you got money?

DANCY.  [Nodding] This'll be good-bye, then!

MABEL.  [After a moment's struggle] Oh!  No!  No, no!  I'll follow--I'll
come out to you there.

DANCY.  D'you mean you'll stick to me?

MABEL.  Of course I'll stick to you.

DANCY seizes her hand and puts it to his lips.  The bell rings.

MABEL.  [In terror]  Who's that?

     The bell rings again.  DANCY moves towards the door.

No!  Let me!

     She passes him and steals out to the outer door of the flat, where
     she stands listening.  The bell rings again.  She looks through the
     slit of the letter-box.  While she is gone DANCY stands quite still,
     till she comes back.

MABEL.  Through the letter-bog--I can see----It's--it's police.  Oh!
God!  .  .  .  Ronny!  I can't bear it.

DANCY.  Heads up, Mab!  Don't show the brutes!

MABEL.  Whatever happens, I'll go on loving you.  If it's prison--I'll
wait.  Do you understand?  I don't care what you did--I don't care!  I'm
just the same.  I will be just the same when you come back to me.

DANCY.  [Slowly]  That's not in human nature.

MABEL.  It is.  It's in Me.

DANCY.  I've crocked up your life.

MABEL.  No, no!  Kiss me!

     A long kiss, till the bell again startles them apart, and there is a
     loud knock.

DANCY.  They'll break the door in.  It's no good--we must open.  Hold
them in check a little.  I want a minute or two.

MABEL.  [Clasping him]  Ronny!  Oh, Ronny!  It won't be for long--I'll be
waiting!  I'll be waiting--I swear it.

DANCY.  Steady, Mab!  [Putting her back from him]  Now!

     He opens the bedroom door, Left, and stands waiting for her to go.
     Summoning up her courage, she goes to open the outer door.  A sudden
     change comes over DANCY'S face; from being stony it grows almost
     maniacal.

DANCY.  [Under his breath]  No!  No!  By God!  No!  He goes out into the
bedroom, closing the door behind him.

     MABEL has now opened the outer door, and disclosed INSPECTOR DEDE
     and the YOUNG CONSTABLE who were summoned to Meldon Court on the
     night of the theft, and have been witnesses in the case.  Their
     voices are heard.

MABEL.  Yes?

INSPECTOR.  Captain Dancy in, madam?

MABEL.  I am not quite sure--I don't think so.

INSPECTOR.  I wish to speak to him a minute.  Stay here, Grover.  Now,
madam!

MABEL.  Will you come in while I see?

     She comes in, followed by the INSPECTOR.

INSPECTOR.  I should think you must be sure, madam.  This is not a big
place.

MABEL.  He was changing his clothes to go out.  I think he has gone.

INSPECTOR.  What's that door?

MABEL.  To our bedroom.

INSPECTOR.  [Moving towards it]  He'll be in there, then.

MABEL.  What do you want, Inspector?

INSPECTOR.  [Melting] Well, madam, it's no use disguising it.  I'm
exceedingly sorry, but I've a warrant for his arrest.

MABEL.  Inspector!

INSPECTOR.  I'm sure I've every sympathy for you, madam; but I must carry
out my instructions.

MABEL.  And break my heart?

INSPECTOR.  Well,  madam,  we're--we're  not allowed to take that into
consideration.  The Law's the Law.

MABEL.  Are you married?

INSPECTOR.  I am.

MABEL.  If you--your wife--

     The INSPECTOR raises his hand, deprecating.

[Speaking low] Just half an hour!  Couldn't you?  It's two lives--two
whole lives!  We've only been married four months.  Come back in half an
hour.  It's such a little thing--nobody will know.  Nobody.  Won't you?

INSPECTOR.  Now, madam--you must know my duty.

MABEL.  Inspector, I beseech you--just half an hour.

INSPECTOR.  No, no--don't you try to undermine me--I'm sorry for you;
but don't you try it!  [He tries the handle, then knocks at the door].

DANCY'S VOICE.  One minute!

INSPECTOR.  It's locked.  [Sharply]  Is there another door to that room?
Come, now--

     The bell rings.

[Moving towards the door, Left; to the CONSTABLE] Who's that out there?

CONSTABLE.  A lady and gentleman, sir.

INSPECTOR.  What lady and--  Stand by, Grover!

DANCY'S VOICE.  All right!  You can come in now.

     There is the noise of a lock being turned.  And almost immediately
     the sound of a pistol shot in the bedroom.  MABEL rushes to the
     door, tears it open, and disappears within, followed by the
     INSPECTOR, just as MARGARET ORME and COLFORD come in from the
     passage, pursued by the CONSTABLE.  They, too, all hurry to the
     bedroom door and disappear for a moment; then COLFORD and MARGARET
     reappear, supporting MABEL, who faints as they lay her on the sofa.
     COLFORD takes from her hand an envelope, and tears it open.

COLFORD.  It's addressed to me.  [He reads it aloud to MARGARET in a low
voice].

"DEAR COLFORD,--This is the only decent thing I can do.  It's too damned
unfair to her.  It's only another jump.  A pistol keeps faith.  Look
after her, Colford--my love to her, and you."

MARGARET gives a sort of choking sob, then, seeing the smelling bottle,
she snatches it up, and turns to revive MABEL.

COLFORD.  Leave her!  The longer she's unconscious, the better.

INSPECTOR.  [Re-entering] This is a very serious business, sir.

COLFORD.  [Sternly] Yes, Inspector; you've done for my best friend.

INSPECTOR.  I, sir?  He shot himself.

COLFORD.  Hara-kiri.

INSPECTOR.  Beg pardon?

COLFORD.  [He points with the letter to MABEL] For her sake, and his own.

INSPECTOR.  [Putting out his hand] I'll want that, sir.

COLFORD.  [Grimly]  You shall have it read at the inquest.  Till then--
it's addressed to me, and I stick to it.

INSPECTOR.  Very well, sir.  Do you want to have a look at him?

     COLFORD passes quickly into the bedroom, followed by the INSPECTOR.
     MARGARET remains kneeling beside MABEL.

     COLFORD comes quickly back.  MARGARET looks up at him.  He stands
     very still.

COLFORD.  Neatly--through the heart.

MARGARET [wildly]  Keeps faith!  We've all done that.  It's not enough.

COLFORD.  [Looking down at MABEL]  All right, old boy!


                         The CURTAIN falls.






WINDOWS

From the 5th Series of Plays

By John Galsworthy



PERSONS OF THE PLAY

GEOFFREY MARCH....... Freelance in Literature
JOAN MARCH........... His Wife
MARY MARCH........... Their Daughter
JOHNNY MARCH......... Their Son
COOK................. Their Cook
MR BLY............... Their Window Cleaner
FAITH BLY............ His Daughter
BLUNTER.............. A Strange Young Man
MR BARNADAS.......... In Plain Clothes



The action passes in Geofrey March's House, Highgate-Spring-time.

ACT   I.  Thursday morning.  The dining-room-after breakfast.

ACT  II.  Thursday, a fortnight later.  The dining-room after lunch.

ACT III.  The same day.  The dining-room-after dinner.




ACT I

     The MARCH'S dining-room opens through French windows on one of those
     gardens which seem infinite, till they are seen to be coterminous
     with the side walls of the house, and finite at the far end, because
     only the thick screen of acacias and sumachs prevents another house
     from being seen.  The French and other windows form practically all
     the outer wall of that dining-room, and between them and the screen
     of trees lies the difference between the characters of Mr and Mrs
     March, with dots and dashes of Mary and Johnny thrown in.  For
     instance, it has been formalised by MRS MARCH but the grass has not
     been cut by MR MARCH, and daffodils have sprung up there, which MRS
     MARCH desires for the dining-room, but of which MR MARCH says: "For
     God's sake, Joan, let them grow."  About half therefore are now in a
     bowl on the breakfast table, and the other half still in the grass,
     in the compromise essential to lasting domesticity.  A hammock under
     the acacias shows that MARY lies there sometimes with her eyes on
     the gleam of sunlight that comes through: and a trail in the longish
     grass, bordered with cigarette ends, proves that JOHNNY tramps there
     with his eyes on the ground or the stars, according.  But all this
     is by the way, because except for a yard or two of gravel terrace
     outside the windows, it is all painted on the backcloth.  The
     MARCHES have been at breakfast, and the round table, covered with
     blue linen, is thick with remains, seven baskets full.  The room is
     gifted with old oak furniture: there is a door, stage Left, Forward;
     a hearth, where a fire is burning, and a high fender on which one
     can sit, stage Right, Middle;  and in the wall below the fireplace,
     a service hatch covered with a sliding shutter, for the passage of
     dishes into the adjoining pantry.  Against the wall, stage Left, is
     an old oak dresser, and a small writing table across the Left Back
     corner.  MRS MARCH still sits behind the coffee pot, making up her
     daily list on tablets with a little gold pencil fastened to her
     wrist.  She is personable, forty-eight, trim, well-dressed, and more
     matter-of-fact than seems plausible.  MR MARCH is sitting in an
     armchair, sideways to the windows, smoking his pipe and reading his
     newspaper, with little explosions to which no one pays any
     attention, because it is his daily habit.  He is a fine-looking man
     of fifty odd, with red-grey moustaches and hair, both of which
     stiver partly by nature and partly because his hands often push them
     up.  MARY and JOHNNY are close to the fireplace, stage Right.
     JOHNNY sits on the fender, smoking a cigarette and warming his back.
     He is a commonplace looking young man, with a decided jaw, tall,
     neat, soulful, who has been in the war and writes poetry.  MARY is
     less ordinary; you cannot tell exactly what is the matter with her.
     She too is tall, a little absent, fair, and well-looking.  She has a
     small china dog in her hand, taken from the mantelpiece, and faces
     the audience.  As the curtain rises she is saying in her soft and
     pleasant voice:  "Well, what is the matter with us all, Johnny?"

JOHNNY.  Stuck, as we were in the trenches--like china dogs.  [He points
to the ornament in her hand.]

MR MARCH.  [Into his newspaper]  Damn these people!

MARY.  If there isn't an ideal left, Johnny, it's no good pretending one.

JOHNNY.  That's what I'm saying: Bankrupt!

MARY.  What do you want?

MRS MARCH.  [To herself]  Mutton cutlets.  Johnny, will you be in to
lunch?  [JOHNNY shakes his head] Mary?  [MARY nods]  Geof?

MR MARCH.  [Into his paper] Swine!

MRS MARCH.  That'll be three.  [To herself]  Spinach.

JOHNNY.  If you'd just missed being killed for three blooming years for
no spiritual result whatever, you'd want something to bite on, Mary.

MRS MARCH.  [Jotting] Soap.

JOHNNY.  What price the little and weak, now?  Freedom and self-
determination, and all that?

MARY.  Forty to one--no takers.

JOHNNY.  It doesn't seem to worry you.

MARY.  Well, what's the good?

JOHNNY.  Oh, you're a looker on, Mary.

MR MARCH.  [To his newspaper]  Of all Godforsaken time-servers!

     MARY is moved so lar as to turn and look over his shoulder a minute.

JOHNNY.  Who?

MARY.  Only the Old-Un.

MR MARCH.  This is absolutely Prussian!

MRS MARCH.  Soup, lobster, chicken salad.  Go to Mrs Hunt's.

MR MARCH.  And this fellow hasn't the nous to see that if ever there were
a moment when it would pay us to take risks, and be generous--My hat!
He ought to be--knighted!  [Resumes his paper.]

JOHNNY.  [Muttering]  You see, even Dad can't suggest chivalry without
talking of payment for it.  That shows how we've sunk.

MARY.  [Contemptuously]  Chivalry!  Pouf!  Chivalry was "off" even before
the war, Johnny.  Who wants chivalry?

JOHNNY.  Of all shallow-pated humbug--that sneering at chivalry's the
worst.  Civilisation--such as we've got--is built on it.

MARY.  [Airily]  Then it's built on sand.  [She sits beside him on the
fender.]

JOHNNY.  Sneering and smartness!  Pah!

MARY.  [Roused]  I'll tell you what, Johnny, it's mucking about with
chivalry that makes your poetry rotten.  [JOHNNY seizes her arm and
twists it]  Shut up--that hurts.  [JOHNNY twists it more] You brute!
[JOHNNY lets her arm go.]

JOHNNY.  Ha!  So you don't mind taking advantage of the fact that you can
cheek me with impunity, because you're weaker.  You've given the whole
show away, Mary.  Abolish chivalry and I'll make you sit up.

MRS MARCH.  What are you two quarrelling about?  Will you bring home
cigarettes, Johnny--not Bogdogunov's Mamelukes--something more Anglo-
American.

JOHNNY.  All right!  D'you want any more illustrations, Mary?

MARY.  Pig!  [She has risen and stands rubbing her arm and recovering her
placidity, which is considerable.]

MRS MARCH.  Geof, can you eat preserved peaches?

MR MARCH.  Hell!  What a policy!  Um?

MRS MARCH.  Can you eat preserved peaches?

MR MARCH.  Yes.  [To his paper]  Making the country stink in the eyes of
the world!

MARY.  Nostrils, Dad, nostrils.

     MR MARCH wriggles, half hearing.

JOHNNY.  [Muttering] Shallow idiots!  Thinking we can do without
chivalry!

MRS MARCH.  I'm doing my best to get a parlourmaid, to-day, Mary, but
these breakfast things won't clear themselves.

MARY.  I'll clear them, Mother.

MRS MARCH.  Good!  [She gets up.  At the door]  Knitting silk.

     She goes out.

JOHNNY.  Mother hasn't an ounce of idealism.  You might make her see
stars, but never in the singular.

MR MARCH.  [To his paper] If God doesn't open the earth soon--

MARY.  Is there anything special, Dad?

MR MARCH.  This sulphurous government.  [He drops the paper]  Give me a
match, Mary.

     As soon as the paper is out of his hands he becomes a different--an
     affable man.

MARY.  [Giving him a match]  D'you mind writing in here this morning,
Dad?  Your study hasn't been done.  There's nobody but Cook.

MR MARCH.  [Lighting his pipe]  Anywhere.

     He slews the armchair towards the fire.

MARY.  I'll get your things, then.

     She goes out.

JOHNNY.  [Still on the fender]  What do you say, Dad?  Is civilisation
built on chivalry or on self-interest?

MR MARCH.  The question is considerable, Johnny.  I should say it was
built on contract, and jerry-built at that.

JOHNNY.  Yes; but why do we keep contracts when we can break them with
advantage and impunity?

MR MARCH.  But do we keep them?

JOHNNY.  Well--say we do; otherwise you'll admit there isn't such a thing
as civilisation at all.  But why do we keep them?  For instance, why
don't we make Mary and Mother work for us like Kafir women?  We could
lick them into it.  Why did we give women the vote?  Why free slaves;
why anything decent for the little and weak?

MR MARCH.  Well, you might say it was convenient for people living in
communities.

JOHNNY.  I don't think it's convenient at all.  I should like to make
Mary sweat.  Why not jungle law, if there's nothing in chivalry.

MR MARCH.  Chivalry is altruism, Johnny.  Of course it's quite a question
whether altruism isn't enlightened self-interest!

JOHNNY.  Oh!  Damn!

     The lank and shirt-sleeved figure of MR BLY, with a pail of water
     and cloths, has entered, and stands near the window, Left.

BLY.  Beg pardon, Mr March; d'you mind me cleanin' the winders here?

MR MARCH.  Not a bit.

JOHNNY.  Bankrupt of ideals.  That's it!

     MR BLY stares at him, and puts his pail down by the window.

     MARY has entered with her father's writing materials which she puts
     on a stool beside him.

MARY.  Here you are, Dad!  I've filled up the ink pot.  Do be careful!
Come on, Johnny!

     She looks curiously at MR BLY, who has begun operations at the
     bottom of the left-hand window, and goes, followed by JOHNNY.

MR MARCH.  [Relighting his pipe and preparing his materials]  What do you
think of things, Mr Bly?

BLY.  Not much, sir.

MR MARCH.  Ah!  [He looks up at MR BLY, struck by his large philosophical
eyes and moth-eaten moustache] Nor I.

BLY.  I rather thought that, sir, from your writin's.

MR MARCH.  Oh!  Do you read?

BLY.  I was at sea, once--formed the 'abit.

MR MARCH.  Read any of my novels?

BLY.  Not to say all through--I've read some of your articles in the
Sunday papers, though.  Make you think!

MR MARCH.  I'm at sea now--don't see dry land anywhere, Mr Bly.

BLY.  [With a smile]  That's right.

MR MARCH.  D'you find that the general impression?

BLY.  No.  People don't think.  You 'ave to 'ave some cause for thought.

MR MARCH.  Cause enough in the papers.

BLY.  It's nearer 'ome with me.  I've often thought I'd like a talk with
you, sir.  But I'm keepin' you.  [He prepares to swab the pane.]

MR MARCH.  Not at all.  I enjoy it.  Anything to put off work.

BLY.  [Looking at MR MARCH, then giving a wipe at the window]  What's
drink to one is drought to another.  I've seen two men take a drink out
of the same can--one die of it and the other get off with a pain in his
stomach.

MR MARCH.  You've seen a lot, I expect.

BLY.  Ah!  I've been on the beach in my day.  [He sponges at the window]
It's given me a way o' lookin' at things that I don't find in other
people.  Look at the 'Ome Office.  They got no philosophy.

MR  MARCH.  [Pricking his ears] What?  Have you had dealings with them?

BLY.  Over the reprieve that was got up for my daughter.  But I'm keepin'
you.

     He swabs at the window, but always at the same pane, so that he does
     not advance at all.

MR MARCH.  Reprieve?

BLY.  Ah!  She was famous at eighteen.  The Sunday Mercury was full of
her, when she was in prison.

MR MARCH.  [Delicately]  Dear me!  I'd no idea.

BLY.  She's out now; been out a fortnight.  I always say that fame's
ephemereal.  But she'll never settle to that weavin'.  Her head got
turned a bit.

MR MARCH.  I'm afraid I'm in the dark, Mr Bly.

BLY.  [Pausing--dipping his sponge in the pail and then standing with it
in his hand]  Why!  Don't you remember the Bly case?  They sentenced 'er
to be 'anged by the neck until she was dead, for smotherin' her baby.
She was only eighteen at the time of speakin'.

MR MARCH.  Oh! yes!  An inhuman business!

BLY.  All! The jury recommended 'er to mercy.  So they reduced it to
Life.

MR MARCH.  Life!  Sweet Heaven!

BLY.  That's what I said; so they give her two years.  I don't hold with
the Sunday Mercury, but it put that over.  It's a misfortune to a girl to
be good-lookin'.

MR MARCH.  [Rumpling his hair]  No, no!  Dash it all!  Beauty's the only
thing left worth living for.

BLY.  Well, I like to see green grass and a blue sky; but it's a mistake
in a 'uman bein'.  Look at any young chap that's good-lookin'--'e's
doomed to the screen, or hair-dressin'.  Same with the girls.  My girl
went into an 'airdresser's at seventeen and in six months she was in
trouble.  When I saw 'er with a rope round her neck, as you might say,
I said to meself: "Bly," I said, "you're responsible for this.  If she
'adn't been good-lookin'--it'd never 'eve 'appened."

     During this speech MARY has come in with a tray, to clear the
     breakfast, and stands unnoticed at the dining-table, arrested by
     the curious words of MR BLY.

MR MARCH.  Your wife might not have thought that you were wholly the
cause, Mr Bly.

BLY.  Ah!  My  wife.  She's  passed  on.  But Faith--that's my girl's
name--she never was like 'er mother; there's no 'eredity in 'er on that
side.

MR MARCH.  What sort of girl is she?

BLY.  One for colour--likes a bit o' music--likes a dance, and a flower.

MARY.  [Interrupting softly]  Dad, I was going to clear, but I'll come
back later.

MR MARCH.  Come here and listen to this!  Here's a story to get your
blood up!  How old was the baby, Mr Bly?

BLY.  Two days--'ardly worth mentionin'.  They say she 'ad the
'ighstrikes after--an' when she comes to she says: "I've saved my baby's
life."  An' that's true enough when you come to think what that sort o'
baby goes through as a rule; dragged up by somebody else's hand, or took
away by the Law.  What can a workin' girl do with a baby born under the
rose, as they call it?  Wonderful the difference money makes when it
comes to bein' outside the Law.

MR MARCH.  Right you are, Mr Bly.  God's on the side of the big
battalions.

BLY.  Ah!  Religion!  [His eyes roll philosophically]  Did you ever read
'Aigel?

MR MARCH.  Hegel, or Haekel?

BLY.  Yes; with an aitch.  There's a balance abart 'im that I like.
There's no doubt the Christian religion went too far.  Turn the other
cheek!  What oh!  An' this Anti-Christ, Neesha, what came in with the
war--he went too far in the other direction.  Neither of 'em practical
men.  You've got to strike a balance, and foller it.

MR MARCH.  Balance!  Not much balance about us.  We just run about and
jump Jim Crow.

BLY.  [With a perfunctory wipe] That's right; we 'aven't got a faith
these days.  But what's the use of tellin' the Englishman to act like an
angel.  He ain't either an angel or a blond beast.  He's between the two,
an 'ermumphradite.  Take my daughter----If I was a blond beast, I'd turn
'er out to starve; if I was an angel, I'd starve meself to learn her the
piano.  I don't do either.  Why?  Becos my instincts tells me not.

MR MARCH.  Yes, but my doubt is whether our instincts at this moment of
the world's history are leading us up or down.

BLY.  What is up and what is down?  Can you answer me that?  Is it up or
down to get so soft that you can't take care of yourself?

MR MARCH.  Down.

BLY.  Well, is it up or down to get so 'ard that you can't take care of
others?

MR MARCH.  Down.

BLY.  Well, there you are!

MARCH.  Then our instincts are taking us down?

BLY.  Nao.  They're strikin' a balance, unbeknownst, all the time.

MR MARCH.  You're a philosopher, Mr Bly.

BLY.  [Modestly]  Well, I do a bit in that line, too.  In my opinion
Nature made the individual believe he's goin' to live after'e's dead just
to keep 'im livin' while 'es alive--otherwise he'd 'a died out.

MR MARCH.  Quite a thought--quite a thought!

BLY.  But I go one better than Nature.  Follow your instincts is my
motto.

MR MARCH.  Excuse me, Mr Bly, I think Nature got hold of that before you.

BLY.  [Slightly chilled]  Well, I'm keepin' you.

MR MARCH.  Not at all.  You're a believer in conscience, or the little
voice within.  When my son was very small, his mother asked him once if
he didn't hear a little voice within, telling him what was right.  [MR
MARCH touches his diaphragm]  And he said "I often hear little voices in
here, but they never say anything."  [MR BLY cannot laugh, but he smiles]
Mary, Johnny must have been awfully like the Government.

BLY.  As a matter of fact, I've got my daughter here--in obeyance.

MR MARCH.  Where?  I didn't catch.

BLY.  In the kitchen.  Your Cook told me you couldn't get hold of an
'ouse parlour-maid.  So I thought it was just a chance--you bein'
broadminded.

MR  MARCH.  Oh!  I  see.  What  would  your mother say, Mary?

MARY.  Mother would say:  "Has she had experience?"

BLY.  I've told you about her experience.

MR MARCH.  Yes, but--as a parlour-maid.

BLY.  Well!  She can do hair.  [Observing the smile exchanged between MR
MARCH and MARY]  And she's quite handy with a plate.

MR MARCH.  [Tentatively] I'm a little afraid my wife would feel--

BLY.  You see, in this weavin' shop--all the girls 'ave 'ad to be in
trouble, otherwise they wouldn't take 'em.  [Apologetically towards MARY]
It's a kind of a disorderly 'ouse without the disorders.  Excusin' the
young lady's presence.

MARY.  Oh!  You needn't mind me, Mr Bly.

MR MARCH.  And so you want her to come here?  H'm!

BLY.  Well I remember when she was a little bit of a thing--no higher
than my knee--[He holds out his hand.]

MR MARCH.  [Suddenly moved]  My God!  yes.  They've all been that.  [To
MARY]  Where's your mother?

MARY.  Gone to Mrs Hunt's.  Suppose she's engaged one, Dad?

MR MARCH.  Well, it's only a month's wages.

MARY.  [Softly]  She won't like it.

MR MARCH.  Well, let's see her, Mr Bly; let's see her, if you don't mind.

BLY.  Oh, I don't mind, sir, and she won't neither; she's used to bein'
inspected by now.  Why! she 'ad her bumps gone over just before she came
out!

MR MARCH.  [Touched on the raw again] H'm!  Too bad!  Mary, go and fetch
her.

     MARY, with a doubting smile, goes out.  [Rising] You might give me
     the details of that trial, Mr Bly.  I'll see if I can't write
     something that'll make people sit up.  That's the way to send Youth
     to hell!  How can a child who's had a rope round her neck--!

BLY.  [Who has been fumbling in his pocket, produces some yellow paper-
cuttings clipped together] Here's her references--the whole literature of
the case.  And here's a letter from the chaplain in one of the prisons
sayin' she took a lot of interest in him; a nice young man, I believe.
[He suddenly brushes a tear out of his eye with the back of his hand] I
never thought I could 'a felt like I did over her bein' in prison.
Seemed a crool senseless thing--that pretty girl o' mine.  All over a
baby that hadn't got used to bein' alive.  Tain't as if she'd been
follerin' her instincts; why, she missed that baby something crool.

MR MARCH.  Of course, human life--even an infant's----

BLY.  I know you've got to 'ave a close time for it.  But when you come
to think how they take 'uman life in Injia and Ireland, and all those
other places, it seems 'ard to come down like a cartload o' bricks on a
bit of a girl that's been carried away by a moment's abiration.

MR MARCH.  [Who is reading the cuttings] H'm!  What hypocrites we are!

BLY.  Ah!  And 'oo can tell 'oo's the father?  She never give us his
name.  I think the better of 'er for that.

MR MARCH.  Shake hands, Mr Bly.  So do I.  [BLY wipes his hand, and MR
MARCH shakes it]  Loyalty's loyalty--especially when we men benefit by
it.

BLY.  That's right, sir.

     MARY has returned with FAITH BLY, who stands demure and pretty on
     the far side of the table, her face an embodiment of the pathetic
     watchful prison faculty of adapting itself to whatever may be best
     for its owner at the moment.  At this moment it is obviously best
     for her to look at the ground, and yet to take in the faces of MR
     MARCH and MARY without their taking her face in.  A moment, for all,
     of considerable embarrassment.

MR MARCH.  [Suddenly]  We'll, here we are!

     The remark attracts FAITH;  she raises her eyes to his softly with a
     little smile, and drops them again.

So you want to be our parlour-maid?

FAITH.  Yes, please.

MR MARCH.  Well, Faith can remove mountains; but--er--I don't know if she
can clear tables.

BLY.  I've been tellin' Mr March and the young lady what you're capable
of.  Show 'em what you can do with a plate.

     FAITH takes the tray from the sideboard and begins to clear the
     table, mainly by the light of nature.  After a glance, MR MARCH
     looks out of the window and drums his fingers on the uncleaned pane.
     MR BLY goes on with his cleaning.  MARY, after watching from the
     hearth, goes up and touches her father's arm.

MARY.  [Between him and MR BLY who is bending over his bucket, softly]
You're not watching, Dad.

MR MARCH.  It's too pointed.

MARY.  We've got to satisfy mother.

MR MARCH.  I can satisfy her better if I don't look.

MARY.  You're right.

     FAITH has paused a moment and is watching them.  As MARY turns, she
     resumes her operations.  MARY joins, and helps her finish clearing,
     while the two men converse.

BLY.  Fine weather, sir, for the time of year.

MR MARCH.  It is.  The trees are growing.

BLY.  All!  I wouldn't be surprised to see a change of Government before
long.  I've seen 'uge trees in Brazil without any roots--seen 'em come
down with a crash.

MR MARCH.  Good image, Mr Bly.  Hope you're right!

BLY.  Well, Governments!  They're all the same--Butter when they're out
of power, and blood when they're in.  And Lord!  'ow they do abuse other
Governments for doin' the things they do themselves.  Excuse me, I'll
want her dosseer back, sir, when you've done with it.

MR MARCH.  Yes, yes.  [He turns, rubbing his hands at the cleared table]
Well, that seems all right!  And you can do hair?

FAITH.  Oh!  Yes, I can do hair.  [Again that little soft look, and smile
so carefully adjusted.]

MR MARCH.  That's important, don't you think, Mary?  [MARY, accustomed to
candour, smiles dubiously.]  [Brightly] Ah!  And cleaning plate?  What
about that?

FAITH.  Of course, if I had the opportunity--

MARY.  You haven't--so far?

FAITH.  Only tin things.

MR MARCH.  [Feeling a certain awkwardness] Well, I daresay we can find
some for you.  Can you--er--be firm on the telephone?

FAITH.  Tell them you're engaged when you're not?  Oh! yes.

MR MARCH.  Excellent!  Let's see, Mary, what else is there?

MARY.  Waiting, and house work.

MR MARCH.  Exactly.

FAITH.  I'm very quick.  I--I'd like to come.  [She looks down] I don't
care for what I'm doing now.  It makes you feel your position.

MARY.  Aren't they nice to you?

FAITH.  Oh! yes--kind; but-- [She looks up] it's against my instincts.

MR MARCH.  Oh!  [Quizzically]  You've got a disciple, Mr Bly.

BLY.  [Rolling his eyes at his daughter]  Ah! but you mustn't 'ave
instincts here, you know.  You've got a chance, and you must come to
stay, and do yourself credit.

FAITH.  [Adapting her face] Yes, I know, I'm very lucky.

MR MARCH.  [Deprecating thanks and moral precept]  That's all right!
Only, Mr Bly, I can't absolutely answer for Mrs March.  She may think--

MARY.  There is Mother; I heard the door.

BLY.  [Taking up his pail] I quite understand, sir; I've been a married
man myself.  It's very queer the way women look at things.  I'll take her
away now, and come back presently and do these other winders.  You can
talk it over by yourselves.  But if you do see your way, sir, I shan't
forget it in an 'urry.  To 'ave the responsibility of her--really, it's
dreadful.

     FAITH's face has grown sullen during this speech, but it clears up
     in another little soft look at MR MARCH, as she and MR BLY go out.

MR MARCH.  Well, Mary, have I done it?

MARY.  You have, Dad.

MR MARCH.  [Running his hands through his hair]  Pathetic little figure!
Such infernal inhumanity!

MARY.  How are you going to put it to mother?

MR MARCH.  Tell her the story, and pitch it strong.

MARY.  Mother's not impulsive.

MR MARCH.  We must tell her, or she'll think me mad.

MARY.  She'll do that, anyway, dear.

MR MARCH.  Here she is!  Stand by!

     He runs his arm through MARY's, and they sit on the fender, at bay.
     MRS MARCH enters, Left.

MR MARCH.  Well, what luck?

MRS MARCH.  None.

MR MARCH.  [Unguardedly]  Good!

MRS MARCH.  What?

MRS MARCH.  [Cheerfully]  Well, the fact is, Mary and I have caught one
for 'you; Mr Bly's daughter--

MRS MARCH.  Are you out of your senses?  Don't you know that she's the
girl who--

MR MARCH.  That's it.  She wants a lift.

MRS MARCH.  Geof!

MR MARCH.  Well, don't we want a maid?

MRS MARCH.  [Ineffably]  Ridiculous!

MR MARCH.  We tested her, didn't we, Mary?

MRS MARCH.  [Crossing to the bell, and ringing]  You'll just send for Mr
Bly and get rid of her again.

MR MARCH.  Joan, if we comfortable people can't put ourselves a little
out of the way to give a helping hand--

MRS MARCH.  To girls who smother their babies?

MR MARCH.  Joan, I revolt.  I won't be a hypocrite and a Pharisee.

MRS MARCH.  Well, for goodness sake let me be one.

MARY.  [As the door opens].  Here's Cook!

     COOK stands--sixty, stout, and comfortable with a crumpled smile.

COOK.  Did you ring, ma'am?

MR MARCH.  We're in a moral difficulty, Cook, so naturally we come to
you.

     COOK beams.

MRS MARCH.  [Impatiently]  Nothing of the sort, Cook; it's a question of
common sense.

COOK.  Yes, ma'am.

MRS MARCH.  That girl, Faith Bly, wants to come here as parlour-maid.
Absurd!

MARCH.  You know her story, Cook?  I want to give the poor girl a chance.
Mrs March thinks it's taking chances.  What do you say?

COCK.  Of course, it is a risk, sir;  but there! you've got to take 'em
to get maids nowadays.  If it isn't in the past, it's in the future.  I
daresay I could learn 'er.

MRS MARCH.  It's not her work, Cook, it's her instincts.  A girl who
smothered a baby that she oughtn't to have had--

MR MARCH.  [Remonstrant]  If she hadn't had it how could she have
smothered it?

COOK.  [Soothingly]  Perhaps  she's  repented, ma'am.

MRS MARCH.  Of course she's repented.  But did you ever know repentance
change anybody, Cook?

COOK.  [Smiling]  Well, generally it's a way of gettin' ready for the
next.

MRS MARCH.  Exactly.

MR  MARCH.  If we never get another chance because we repent--

COOK.  I always think of Master Johnny, ma'am, and my jam; he used to
repent so beautiful, dear little feller--such a conscience!  I never
could bear to lock it away.

MRS MARCH.  Cook, you're wandering.  I'm surprised at your encouraging
the idea; I really am.

     Cook plaits her hands.

MR MARCH.  Cook's been in the family longer than I have--haven't you,
Cook?  [COOK beams]  She knows much more about a girl like that than we
do.

COOK.  We had a girl like her, I remember, in your dear mother's time,
Mr Geoffrey.

MR MARCH.  How did she turn out?

COOK.  Oh!  She didn't.

MRS MARCH.  There!

MR MARCH.  Well, I can't bear behaving like everybody else.  Don't you
think we might give her a chance, Cook?

COOK.  My 'eart says yes, ma'am.

MR MARCH.  Ha!

COOK.  And my 'ead says no, sir.

MRS MARCH.  Yes!

MR MARCH.  Strike your balance, Cook.

     COOK involuntarily draws her joined hands sharply in upon her
     amplitude.

Well? .  .  .  I didn't catch the little voice within.

COOK.  Ask Master Johnny, sir; he's been in the war.

MR MARCH.  [To MARY]  Get Johnny.

     MARY goes out.

MRS MARCH.  What on earth has the war to do with it?

COOK.  The things he tells me, ma'am, is too wonderful for words.  He's
'ad to do with prisoners and generals, every sort of 'orror.

MR MARCH.  Cook's quite right.  The war destroyed all our ideals and
probably created the baby.

MRS MARCH.  It didn't smother it; or condemn the girl.

MR MARCH.  [Running his hands through his hair]  The more I think of
that--!  [He turns away.]

MRS MARCH.  [Indicating her husband]  You see, Cook, that's the mood in
which I have to engage a parlour-maid.  What am I to do with your master?

COOK.  It's an 'ealthy rage, ma'am.

MRS MARCH.  I'm tired of being the only sober person in this house.

COOK.  [Reproachfully]  Oh!  ma'am, I never touch a drop.

MRS MARCH.  I didn't mean anything of that sort.  But they do break out
so.

COOK.  Not Master Johnny.

MRS MARCH.  Johnny!  He's the worst of all.  His poetry is nothing but
one long explosion.

MR MARCH.  [Coming from the window]  I say We ought to have faith and
jump.

MRS MARCH.  If we do have Faith, we shall jump.

COOK.  [Blankly]  Of course, in the Bible they 'ad faith, and just look
what it did to them!

MR MARCH.  I mean faith in human instincts, human nature, Cook.

COOK.  [Scandalised]  Oh! no, sir, not human nature; I never let that get
the upper hand.

MR MARCH.  You talk to Mr Bly.  He's a remarkable man.

COOK.  I do, sir, every fortnight when he does the kitchen windows.

MR MARCH.  Well, doesn't he impress you?

COOK.  Ah!  When he's got a drop o' stout in 'im--Oh! dear!  [She smiles
placidly.]

     JOHNNY has come in.

MR MARCH.  Well, Johnny, has Mary told you?

MRS MARCH.  [Looking at his face]  Now, my dear boy, don't be hasty and
foolish!

JOHNNY.  Of course you ought to take her, Mother.

MRS MARCH.  [Fixing him]  Have you seen her, Johnny?

JOHNNY.  She's in the hall, poor little devil, waiting for her sentence.

MRS MARCH.  There are plenty of other chances, Johnny.  Why on earth
should we--?

JOHNNY.  Mother, it's just an instance.  When something comes along that
takes a bit of doing--Give it to the other chap!

MR MARCH.  Bravo, Johnny!

MRS MARCH.  [Drily]  Let me see, which of us will have to put up with her
shortcomings--Johnny or I?

MARY.  She looks quick, Mother.

MRS MARCH.  Girls pick up all sorts of things in prison.  We can hardly
expect her to be honest.  You don't mind that, I suppose?

JOHNNY.  It's a chance to make something decent out of her.

MRS MARCH.  I can't understand this passion for vicarious heroism,
Johnny.

JOHNNY.  Vicarious!

MRS MARCH.  Well, where do you come in?  You'll make poems about the
injustice of the Law.  Your father will use her in a novel.  She'll wear
Mary's blouses, and everybody will be happy--except Cook and me.

MR MARCH.  Hang it all, Joan, you might be the Great Public itself!

MRS MARCH.  I am--get all the kicks and none of the ha'pence.

JOHNNY.  We'll all help you.

MRS MARCH.  For Heaven's sake--no, Johnny!

MR MARCH.  Well, make up your mind!

MRS MARCH.  It was made up long ago.

JOHNNY.  [Gloomily]  The more I see of things the more disgusting they
seem.  I don't see what we're living for.  All right.  Chuck the girl
out, and let's go rooting along with our noses in the dirt.

MR MARCH.  Steady, Johnny!

JOHNNY.  Well, Dad, there was one thing anyway we learned out there--
When a chap was in a hole--to pull him out, even at a risk.

MRS MARCH.  There are people who--the moment you pull them out--jump in
again.

MARY.  We can't tell till we've tried, Mother.

COOK.  It's wonderful the difference good food'll make, ma'am.

MRS MARCH.  Well, you're all against me.  Have it your own way, and when
you regret it--remember me!

MR MARCH.  We will--we will!  That's settled, then.  Bring her in and
tell her.  We'll go on to the terrace.

He goes out through the window, followed by JOHNNY.

MARY.  [Opening the door] Come in, please.

     FAITH enters and stands beside COOK, close to the door.  MARY goes
     out.

MRS MARCH.  [Matter of fact in defeat as in victory]  You want to come to
us, I hear.

FAITH.  Yes.

MRS MARCH.  And you don't know much?

FAITH.  No.

COOK.  [Softly]  Say ma'am, dearie.

MRS MARCH.  Cook is going to do her best for you.  Are you going to do
yours for us?

FAITH.  [With a quick look up] Yes--ma'am.

MRS MARCH.  Can you begin at once?

FAITH.  Yes.

MRS MARCH.  Well, then, Cook will show you where things are kept, and how
to lay the table and that.  Your wages will be thirty until we see where
we are.  Every other Sunday, and Thursday afternoon.  What about dresses?

FAITH.  [Looking at her dress] I've only got this--I had it before, of
course, it hasn't been worn.

MRS MARCH.  Very neat.  But I meant for the house.  You've no money, I
suppose?

FAITH.  Only one pound thirteen, ma'am.

MRS MARCH.  We shall have to find you some dresses, then.  Cook will take
you to-morrow to Needham's.  You needn't wear a cap unless you like.
Well, I hope you'll get on.  I'll leave you with Cook now.

     After one look at the girl, who is standing motionless, she goes
     out.

FAITH.  [With a jerk, as if coming out of plaster of Paris]  She's never
been in prison!

COOK.  [Comfortably]  Well, my dear, we can't all of us go everywhere,
'owever 'ard we try!

     She is standing back to the dresser, and turns to it, opening the
     right-hand drawer.

COOK.  Now, 'ere's the wine.  The master likes 'is glass.  And 'ere's the
spirits in the tantaliser 'tisn't ever kept locked, in case Master Johnny
should bring a friend in.  Have you noticed Master Johnny?  [FAITH nods]
Ah!  He's a dear boy; and wonderful high-principled since he's been in
the war.  He'll come to me sometimes and say: "Cook, we're all going to
the devil!"  They think 'ighly of 'im as a poet.  He spoke up for you
beautiful.

FAITH.  Oh!  He spoke up for me?

COOK.  Well, of course they had to talk you over.

FAITH.  I wonder if they think I've got feelings.

COOK.  [Regarding her moody, pretty face]  Why!  We all have feelin's!

FAITH.  Not below three hundred a year.

COOK.  [Scandalised]  Dear, dear!  Where were you educated?

FAITH.  I wasn't.

COOK.  Tt!  Well--it's wonderful what a change there is in girls since my
young days [Pulling out a drawer] Here's the napkins.  You change the
master's every day at least because of his moustache and the others every
two days, but always clean ones Sundays.  Did you keep Sundays in there?

FAITH.  [Smiling] Yes.  Longer chapel.

COOK.  It'll be a nice change for you, here.  They don't go to Church;
they're agnosticals.  [Patting her shoulder]  How old are you?

FAITH.  Twenty.

COOK.  Think of that--and such a life!  Now, dearie, I'm your friend.
Let the present bury the past--as the sayin' is.  Forget all about
yourself, and you'll be a different girl in no time.

FAITH.  Do you want to be a different woman?

     COOK is taken flat aback by so sudden a revelation of the pharisaism
     of which she has not been conscious.

COOK.  Well!  You are sharp!  [Opening another dresser drawer]  Here's
the vinegar!  And here's the sweets, and [rather anxiously] you mustn't
eat them.

FAITH.  I wasn't in for theft.

COOK.  [Shocked at such rudimentary exposure of her natural misgivings]
No, no!  But girls have appetites.

FAITH.  They didn't get much chance where I've been.

COOK.  Ah!  You must tell me all about it.  Did you have adventures?

FAITH.  There isn't such a thing in a prison.

COOK.  You don't say!  Why, in the books they're escapin' all the time.
But books is books; I've always said so.  How were the men?

FAITH.  Never saw a man--only a chaplain.

COOK.  Dear, dear!  They must be quite fresh to you, then!  How long was
it?

FAITH.  Two years.

COOK.  And never a day out?  What did you do all the time?  Did they
learn you anything?

FAITH.  Weaving.  That's why I hate it.

COOK.  Tell me about your poor little baby.  I'm sure you meant it for
the best.

FAITH.  [Sardonically]  Yes; I was afraid they'd make it a ward in
Chancery.

COOK.  Oh!  dear--what things do come into your head!  Why!  No one can
take a baby from its mother.

FAITH.  Except the Law.

COOK.  Tt!  Tt!  Well!  Here's the pickled onions.  Miss Mary loves 'em!
Now then, let me see you lay the cloth.

     She takes a tablecloth out, hands it to FAITH, and while the girl
     begins to unfold the cloth she crosses to the service shutter.

And here's where we pass the dishes through into the pantry.

     The door is opened, and MRS MARCH'S voice says: "Cook--a minute!"

[Preparing to go] Salt cellars one at each corner--four, and the peppers.
[From the door]  Now the decanters.  Oh! you'll soon get on.  [MRS MARCH
"Cook!"] Yes, ma'am.

     She goes.  FAITH, left alone, stands motionless, biting her pretty
     lip, her eyes mutinous.  Hearing footsteps, she looks up.  MR BLY,
     with his pail and cloths, appears outside.

BLY.  [Preparing to work, while FAITH prepares to set the salt cellars]
So you've got it!  You never know your luck.  Up to-day and down to-
morrow.  I'll 'ave a glass over this to-night.  What d'you get?  FAITH.
Thirty.

BLY.  It's not the market price, still, you're not the market article.
Now, put a good heart into it and get to know your job; you'll find Cook
full o' philosophy if you treat her right--she can make a dumplin' with
anybody.  But look 'ere; you confine yourself to the ladies!

FAITH.  I don't want your advice, father.

BLY.  I know parents are out of date; still, I've put up with a lot on
your account, so gimme a bit of me own back.

FAITH.  I don't know whether I shall like this.  I've been shut up so
long.  I want to see some life.

BLY.  Well, that's natural.  But I want you to do well.  I suppose you'll
be comin' 'ome to fetch your things to-night?

FAITH.  Yes.

BLY.  I'll have a flower for you.  What'd you like--daffydils?

FAITH.  No; one with a scent to it.

BLY.  I'll ask at Mrs Bean's round the corner.

     She'll pick 'em out from what's over.  Never 'ad much nose for a
     flower meself.  I often thought you'd like a flower when you was
     in prison.

FAITH.  [A little touched]  Did you?  Did you really?

BLY.  Ah!  I suppose I've drunk more glasses over your bein' in there
than over anything that ever 'appened to me.  Why!  I couldn't relish the
war for it!  And I suppose you 'ad none to relish.  Well, it's over.  So,
put an 'eart into it.

FAITH.  I'll try.

BLY.  "There's compensation for everything," 'Aigel says.  At least, if
it wasn't 'Aigel it was one o' the others.  I'll move on to the study
now.  Ah!  He's got some winders there lookin' right over the country.
And a wonderful lot o' books, if you feel inclined for a read one of
these days.

COOK'S Voice.  Faith!

     FAITH sets down the salt cellar in her hand, puts her tongue out a
     very little, and goes out into the hall.  MR BLY is gathering up his
     pail and cloths when MR MARCH enters at the window.

MR MARCH.  So it's fixed up, Mr Bly.

BLY.  [Raising himself]  I'd like to shake your 'and, sir.  [They shake
hands]  It's a great weight off my mind.

MR MARCH.  It's rather a weight on my wife's, I'm afraid.  But we must
hope for the best.  The country wants rain, but--I doubt if we shall get
it with this Government.

BLY.  Ah!  We want the good old times-when you could depend on the
seasons.  The further you look back the more dependable the times get;
'ave you noticed that, sir?

MR MARCH.  [Suddenly] Suppose they'd hanged your daughter, Mr Bly.  What
would you have done?

BLY.  Well, to be quite frank, I should 'ave got drunk on it.

MR MARCH.  Public opinion's always in advance of the Law.  I think your
daughter's a most pathetic little figure.

BLY.  Her looks are against her.  I never found a man that didn't.

MR MARCH.  [A little disconcerted]  Well, we'll try and give her a good
show here.

BLY.  [Taking up his pail]  I'm greatly obliged; she'll appreciate
anything you can do for her.  [He moves to the door and pauses there to
say] Fact is--her winders wants cleanin', she 'ad a dusty time in there.

MR MARCH.  I'm sure she had.

     MR BLY passes out, and MR MARCH busies himself in gathering up his
     writing things preparatory to seeking his study.  While he is so
     engaged FAITH comes in.  Glancing at him, she resumes her placing of
     the decanters, as JOHNNY enters by the window, and comes down to his
     father by the hearth.

JOHNNY.  [Privately]  If you haven't begun your morning, Dad, you might
just tell me what you think of these verses.

     He puts a sheet of notepaper before his father, who takes it and
     begins to con over the verses thereon, while JOHNNY looks carefully
     at his nails.

MR MARCH.  Er--I--I like the last line awfully, Johnny.

JOHNNY.  [Gloomily]  What about the other eleven?

MR MARCH.  [Tentatively]  Well--old man, I--er--think perhaps it'd be
stronger if they were out.

JOHNNY.  Good God!

     He takes back the sheet of paper, clutches his brow, and crosses to
     the door.  As he passes FAITH, she looks up at him with eyes full of
     expression.  JOHNNY catches the look, jibs ever so little, and goes
     out.

COOK'S VOICE.  [Through the door, which is still ajar]  Faith!

     FAITH puts the decanters on the table, and goes quickly out.

MR MARCH.  [Who has seen this little by-play--to himself--in a voice of
dismay] Oh!  oh!  I wonder!


                               CURTAIN.




ACT II

     A fortnight later in the MARCH'S dining-room;  a day of violent
     April showers.  Lunch is over and the table littered with, remains--
     twelve baskets full.

     MR MARCH and MARY have lingered.  MR MARCH is standing by the hearth
     where a fire is burning, filling a fountain pen.  MARY sits at the
     table opposite, pecking at a walnut.

MR MARCH.  [Examining his fingers]  What it is to have an inky present!
Suffer with me, Mary!

MARY.  "Weep ye no more, sad Fountains!
        Why need ye flow so fast?"

MR MARCH.  [Pocketing his pen] Coming with me to the British Museum?
I want to have a look at the Assyrian reliefs.

MARY.  Dad, have you noticed Johnny?

MR MARCH.  I have.

MARY.  Then only Mother hasn't.

MR MARCH.  I've always found your mother extremely good at seeming not to
notice things, Mary.

MARY.  Faith! She's got on very fast this fortnight.

MR MARCH.  The glad eye, Mary.  I got it that first morning.

MARY.  You, Dad?

MR MARCH.  No, no!  Johnny got it, and I got him getting it.

MARY.  What are you going to do about it?

MR MARCH.  What does one do with a glad eye that belongs to some one
else?

MARY.  [Laughing]  No.  But, seriously,  Dad, Johnny's not like you and
me.  Why not speak to Mr Bly?

MR MARCH.  Mr Bly's eyes are not glad.

MARY.  Dad!  Do be serious!  Johnny's capable of anything except a sense
of humour.

MR MARCH.  The girl's past makes it impossible to say anything to her.

MARY.  Well, I warn you.  Johnny's very queer just now; he's in the "lose
the world to save your soul" mood.  It really is too bad of that girl.
After all, we did what most people wouldn't.

MR MARCH.  Come!  Get your hat on, Mary, or we shan't make the Tube
before the next shower.

MARY.  [Going to the door]  Something must be done.

MR MARCH.  As you say, something--Ah!  Mr Bly!

     MR BLY, in precisely the same case as a fortnight ago, with his pail
     and cloths, is coming in.

BLY.  Afternoon, sir!  Shall I be disturbing you if I do the winders
here?

MR MARCH.  Not at all.

     MR BLY crosses to the windows.

MARY.  [Pointing to MR BLY's back]  Try!

BLY.  Showery, sir.

MR MARCH.  Ah!

BLY.  Very tryin' for  winders.  [Resting]  My daughter givin'
satisfaction, I hope?

MR MARCH.  [With difficulty]  Er--in her work, I believe, coming on well.
But the question is, Mr Bly, do--er--any of us ever really give
satisfaction except to ourselves?

BLY.  [Taking it as an invitation to his philosophical vein] Ah! that's
one as goes to the roots of 'uman nature.  There's a lot of disposition
in all of us.  And what I always say is: One man's disposition is another
man's indisposition.

MR MARCH.  By George!  Just hits the mark.

BLY.  [Filling his sponge]  Question is: How far are you to give rein to
your disposition?  When I was in Durban, Natal, I knew a man who had the
biggest disposition I ever come across.  'E struck 'is wife, 'e smoked
opium, 'e was a liar, 'e gave all the rein 'e could, and yet withal one
of the pleasantest men I ever met.

MR MARCH.  Perhaps in giving rein he didn't strike you.

BLY.  [With a big wipe, following his thought]  He said to me once:
"Joe," he said, "if I was to hold meself in, I should be a devil."
There's where you get it.  Policemen, priests, prisoners.  Cab'net
Ministers, any one who leads an unnatural life, see how it twists 'em.
You can't suppress a thing without it swellin' you up in another place.

MR MARCH.  And the moral of that is--?

BLY.  Follow your instincts.  You see--if I'm not keepin' you--now that
we ain't got no faith, as we were sayin' the other day, no Ten
Commandments in black an' white--we've just got to be 'uman bein's--
raisin' Cain, and havin' feelin' hearts.  What's the use of all these
lofty ideas that you can't live up to?  Liberty, Fraternity, Equality,
Democracy--see what comes o' fightin' for 'em!  'Ere we are-wipin' out
the lot.  We thought they was fixed stars; they was only comets--hot air.
No; trust 'uman nature, I say, and follow your instincts.

MR MARCH.  We were talking of your daughter--I--I--

BLY.  There's a case in point.  Her instincts was starved goin' on for
three years, because, mind you, they kept her hangin' about in prison
months before they tried her.  I read your article, and I thought to
meself after I'd finished: Which would I feel smallest--if I was--the
Judge, the Jury, or the 'Ome Secretary?  It was a treat, that article!
They ought to abolish that in'uman "To be hanged by the neck until she is
dead."  It's my belief they only keep it because it's poetry; that and
the wigs--they're hard up for a bit of beauty in the Courts of Law.
Excuse my 'and, sir; I do thank you for that article.

     He extends his wiped hand, which MR MARCH shakes with the feeling
     that he is always shaking Mr. BLY's hand.

MR MARCH.  But, apropos of your daughter, Mr Bly.  I suppose none of us
ever change our natures.

BLY.  [Again responding to the appeal that he senses to his philosophical
vein] Ah!  but 'oo can see what our natures are?  Why, I've known people
that could see nothin' but theirselves and their own families, unless
they was drunk.  At my daughter's trial, I see right into the lawyers,
judge and all.  There she was, hub of the whole thing, and all they could
see of her was 'ow far she affected 'em personally--one tryin' to get 'er
guilty, the other tryin' to get 'er off, and the judge summin' 'er up
cold-blooded.

MR MARCH.  But that's what they're paid for, Mr Bly.

BLY.  Ah!  But which of 'em was thinkin' "'Ere's a little bit o' warm
life on its own.  'Ere's a little dancin' creature.  What's she feelin',
wot's 'er complaint?"--impersonal-like.  I like to see a man do a bit of
speculatin', with his mind off of 'imself, for once.

MR MARCH.  "The man that hath not speculation in his soul."

BLY.  That's right, sir.  When I see a mangy cat or a dog that's lost, or
a fellow-creature down on his luck, I always try to put meself in his
place.  It's a weakness I've got.

MR MARCH.  [Warmly]  A deuced good one.  Shake--

     He checks himself, but MR BLY has wiped his hand and extended it.

     While the shake is in progress MARY returns, and, having seen it to
     a safe conclusion, speaks.

MARY.  Coming, Dad?

MR MARCH.  Excuse me, Mr Bly, I must away.

     He goes towards the door, and BLY dips his sponge.

MARY.  [In a low voice]  Well?

MR MARCH.  Mr Bly is like all the greater men I know--he can't listen.

MARY.  But you were shaking--

MR MARCH.  Yes; it's a weakness we have--every three minutes.

MARY.  [Bubbling]  Dad--Silly!

MR MARCH.  Very!

     As they go out MR BLY pauses in his labours to catch, as it were,
     a philosophical reflection.  He resumes the wiping of a pane, while
     quietly, behind him, FAITH comes in with a tray.  She is dressed now
     in lilac-coloured linen, without a cap, and looks prettier than
     ever.  She puts the tray down on the sideboard with a clap that
     attracts her father's attention, and stands contemplating the debris
     on the table.

BLY.  Winders!  There they are!  Clean, dirty!  All sorts--All round yer!
Winders!

FAITH.  [With disgust]  Food!

BLY.  Ah!  Food and winders!  That's life!

FAITH.  Eight times a day four times for them and four times for us.
I hate food!

     She puts a chocolate into her mouth.

BLY.  'Ave some philosophy.  I might just as well hate me winders.

FAITH.  Well!

     She begins to clear.

BLY.  [Regarding her] Look 'ere, my girl!  Don't you forget that there
ain't many winders in London out o' which they look as philosophical as
these here.  Beggars can't be choosers.

FAITH.  [Sullenly]  Oh!  Don't go on at me!

BLY.  They spoiled your disposition in that place, I'm afraid.

FAITH.  Try it, and see what they do with yours.

BLY.  Well, I may come to it yet.

FAITH.  You'll get no windows to look out of there; a little bit of a
thing with bars to it, and lucky if it's not thick glass.  [Standing
still and gazing past MR BLY]  No sun, no trees, no faces--people don't
pass in the sky, not even angels.

BLY.  Ah!  But you shouldn't brood over it.  I knew a man in Valpiraso
that 'ad spent 'arf 'is life in prison-a jolly feller;  I forget what
'e'd done, somethin' bloody.  I want to see you like him.  Aren't you
happy here?

FAITH.  It's right enough, so long as I get out.

BLY.  This Mr March--he's like all these novelwriters--thinks 'e knows
'uman nature, but of course 'e don't.  Still, I can talk to 'im--got an
open mind, and hates the Gover'ment.  That's the two great things.  Mrs
March, so far as I see, 'as got her head screwed on much tighter.

FAITH.  She has.

BLY.  What's the young man like?  He's a long feller.

FAITH.  Johnny?  [With a shrug and a little smile] Johnny.

BLY.  Well, that gives a very good idea of him.  They say 'es a poet;
does 'e leave 'em about?

FAITH.  I've seen one or two.

BLY.  What's their tone?

FAITH.  All about the condition of the world; and the moon.

BLY.  Ah!  Depressin'.  And the young lady?

     FAITH shrugs her shoulders.

Um--'ts what I thought.  She 'asn't moved much with the times.  She
thinks she 'as, but she 'asn't.  Well, they seem a pleasant family.
Leave you to yourself.  'Ow's Cook?

FAITH.  Not much company.

BLY.  More body than mind?  Still, you get out, don't you?

FAITH.  [With a slow smile]  Yes.  [She gives a sudden little twirl, and
puts her hands up to her hair before the mirror]  My afternoon to-day.
It's fine in the streets, after-being in there.

BLY.  Well!  Don't follow your instincts too much, that's all!  I must
get on to the drawin' room now.  There's a shower comin'.
[Philosophically]  It's 'ardly worth while to do these winders.  You
clean 'em, and they're dirty again in no time.  It's like life.  And
people talk o' progress.  What a sooperstition!  Of course there ain't
progress; it's a world-without-end affair.  You've got to make up your
mind to it, and not be discouraged.  All this depression comes from
'avin' 'igh 'opes.  'Ave low 'opes, and you'll be all right.

He takes up his pail and cloths and moves out through the windows.

     FAITH puts another chocolate into her mouth, and taking up a flower,
     twirls round with it held to her nose, and looks at herself in the
     glass over the hearth.  She is still looking at herself when she
     sees in the mirror a reflection of JOHNNY, who has come in.  Her
     face grows just a little scared, as if she had caught the eye of a
     warder peering through the peep-hole of her cell door, then brazens,
     and slowly sweetens as she turns round to him.

JOHNNY.  Sorry!  [He has a pipe in his hand and wears a Norfolk jacket]
Fond of flowers?

FAITH.  Yes.  [She puts back the flower]  Ever so!

JOHNNY.  Stick to it.  Put it in your hair; it'll look jolly.  How do you
like it here?

FAITH.  It's quiet.

JOHNNY.  Ha!  I wonder if you've got the feeling I have.  We've both had
hell, you know;  I had three years of it, out there, and you've had three
years of it here.  The feeling that you can't catch up; can't live fast
enough to get even.

     FAITH nods.

Nothing's big enough; nothing's worth while enough--is it?

FAITH.  I don't know.  I know I'd like to bite.  She draws her lips back.

JOHNNY.  Ah!  Tell me all about your beastly time; it'll do you good.
You and I are different from anybody else in this house.  We've lived
they've just vegetated.  Come on; tell me!

     FAITH, who up to now has looked on him as a young male, stares at
     him for the first time without sex in her eyes.

FAITH.  I can't.  We didn't talk in there, you know.

JOHNNY.  Were you fond of the chap who--?

FAITH.  No.  Yes.  I suppose I was--once.

JOHNNY.  He must have been rather a swine.

FAITH.  He's dead.

JOHNNY.  Sorry!  Oh, sorry!

FAITH.  I've forgotten all that.

JOHNNY.  Beastly things, babies; and absolutely unnecessary in the
present state of the world.

FAITH.  [With a faint smile]  My baby wasn't beastly; but I--I got upset.

JOHNNY.  Well, I should think so!

FAITH.  My friend in the manicure came and told me about hers when I was
lying in the hospital.  She couldn't have it with her, so it got
neglected and died.

JOHNNY.  Um!  I believe that's quite common.

FAITH.  And she told me about another girl--the Law took her baby from
her.  And after she was gone, I--got all worked up--  [She hesitates, then
goes swiftly on]  And I looked at mine; it was asleep just here, quite
close.  I just put out my arm like that, over its face--quite soft--
I didn't hurt it.  I didn't really.  [She suddenly swallows, and her lips
quiver] I didn't feel anything under my arm.  And--and a beast of a nurse
came on me, and said "You've smothered your baby, you wretched girl!"

I didn't want to kill it--I only wanted to save it from living.  And when
I looked at it, I went off screaming.

JOHNNY.  I nearly screamed when I saved my first German from living.  I
never felt the same again.  They say the human race has got to go on, but
I say they've first got to prove that the human race wants to.  Would you
rather be alive or dead?

FAITH.  Alive.

JOHNNY.  But would you have in prison?

FAITH.  I don't know.  You can't tell anything in there.  [With sudden
vehemence] I wish I had my baby back, though.  It was mine; and I--I
don't like thinking about it.

JOHNNY.  I know.  I hate to think about anything I've killed, really.
At least, I should--but it's better not to think.

FAITH.  I could have killed that judge.

JOHNNY.  Did he come the heavy father?  That's what I can't stand.  When
they jaw a chap and hang him afterwards.  Or was he one of the joking
ones?

FAITH.  I've sat in my cell and cried all night--night after night,
I have.  [With a little laugh]  I cried all the softness out of me.

JOHNNY.  You never believed they were going to hang you, did you?

FAITH.  I didn't care if they did--not then.

JOHNNY.  [With a reflective grunt] You had a much worse time than I.  You
were lonely--

FAITH.  Have you been in a prison, ever?

JOHNNY.  No, thank God!

FAITH.  It's awfully clean.

JOHNNY.  You bet.

FAITH.  And it's stone cold.  It turns your heart.

JOHNNY.  Ah!  Did you ever see a stalactite?

FAITH.  What's that?

JOHNNY.  In caves.  The water drops like tears, and each drop has some
sort of salt, and leaves it behind till there's just a long salt
petrified drip hanging from the roof.

FAITH.  Ah!  [Staring at him] I  used to stand behind my door.  I'd stand
there sometimes I don't know how long.  I'd listen and listen--the noises
are all hollow in a prison.  You'd think you'd get used to being shut up,
but I never did.

     JOHNNY utters a deep grunt.

It's awful the feeling you get here-so tight and chokey.  People who are
free don't know what it's like to be shut up.  If I'd had a proper window
even--When you can see things living, it makes you feel alive.

JOHNNY.  [Catching her arm] We'll make you feel alive again.

     FAITH stares at him; sex comes back to her eyes.  She looks down.

I bet you used to enjoy life, before.

FAITH.  [Clasping her hands] Oh!  yes, I did.  And I love getting out
now.  I've got a fr--  [She checks herself]  The streets are beautiful,
aren't they?  Do you know Orleens Street?

JOHNNY.  [Doubtful] No-o.  .  .  .  Where?

FAITH.  At the corner out of the Regent.  That's where we had our shop.
I liked the hair-dressing.  We had fun.  Perhaps I've seen you before.
Did  you ever come in there?

JOHNNY.  No.

FAITH.  I'd go back there; only they wouldn't take me--I'm too
conspicuous now.

JOHNNY.  I expect you're well out of that.

FAITH.  [With a sigh]  But I did like it.  I felt free.  We had an hour
off in the middle of the day; you could go where you liked; and then,
after hours--I love the streets at night--all lighted.  Olga--that's one
of the other girls--and I used to walk about for hours.  That's life!
Fancy!  I  never saw a street for more than two years.  Didn't you miss
them in the war?

JOHNNY.  I missed grass and trees more--the trees!  All burnt, and
splintered.  Gah!

FAITH.  Yes, I like trees too; anything beautiful, you know.  I think the
parks are lovely--but they might let you pick the flowers.  But the
lights are best, really--they make you feel happy.  And music--I love an
organ.  There was one used to come and play outside the prison--before I
was tried.  It sounded so far away and lovely.  If I could 'ave met the
man that played that organ, I'd have kissed him.  D'you think he did it
on purpose?

JOHNNY.  He would have, if he'd been me.

     He says it unconsciously, but FAITH is instantly conscious of the
     implication.

FAITH.  He'd rather have had pennies, though.  It's all earning; working
and earning.  I wish I were like the flowers.  [She twirls the dower in
her hand]  Flowers don't work, and they don't get put in prison.

JOHNNY.  [Putting his arm round her]  Never mind!  Cheer up!  You're only
a kid.  You'll have a good time yet.

     FAITH leans against him, as it were indifferently, clearly expecting
     him to kiss her, but he doesn't.

FAITH.  When I was a little girl I had a cake covered with sugar.  I ate
the sugar all off and then I didn't want the cake--not much.

JOHNNY.  [Suddenly, removing his arm] Gosh!  If I could write a poem that
would show everybody what was in the heart of everybody else--!

FAITH.  It'd be too long for the papers, wouldn't it?

JOHNNY.  It'd be too strong.

FAITH.  Besides, you don't know.

     Her eyelids go up.

JOHNNY.  [Staring at her]  I could tell what's in you now.

FAITH.  What?

JOHNNY.  You feel like a flower that's been picked.

FAITH's smile is enigmatic.

FAITH.  [Suddenly]  Why do you go on about me so?

JOHNNY.  Because you're weak--little and weak.  [Breaking out again] Damn
it!  We went into the war to save the little and weak; at least we said
so; and look at us now!  The bottom's out of all that.  [Bitterly]  There
isn't a faith or an illusion left.  Look here!  I want to help you.

FAITH.  [Surprisingly]  My baby was little and weak.

JOHNNY.  You never meant--You didn't do it for your own advantage.

FAITH.  It didn't know it was alive.  [Suddenly]  D'you think I'm pretty?

JOHNNY.  As pie.

FAITH.  Then you'd better keep away, hadn't you?

JOHNNY.  Why?

FAITH.  You might want a bite.

JOHNNY.  Oh!  I can trust myself.

FAITH.  [Turning to the window, through which can be seen the darkening
of a shower] It's raining.  Father says windows never stay clean.

     They stand dose together, unaware that COOK has thrown up the
     service shutter, to see  why the clearing takes so long.  Her
     astounded head and shoulders pass into view just as FAITH suddenly
     puts up her face.  JOHNNY'S lips hesitate, then move towards her
     forehead.  But her face shifts, and they find themselves upon her
     lips.  Once there, the emphasis cannot help but be considerable.
     COOK'S mouth falls open.

COOK.  Oh!

     She closes the shutter, vanishing.

FAITH.  What was that?

JOHNNY.  Nothing.  [Breaking away] Look here!  I didn't mean--I oughtn't
to have--Please forget it!

FAITH.  [With a little smile]  Didn't you like it?

JOHNNY.  Yes--that's just it.  I didn't mean to  It won't do.

FAITH.  Why not?

JOHNNY.  No, no!  It's just the opposite of what--No, no!

     He goes to the door, wrenches it open and goes out.

     FAITH, still with that little half-mocking, half-contented smile,
     resumes the clearing of the table.  She is interrupted by the
     entrance through the French windows of MR MARCH and MARY, struggling
     with one small wet umbrella.

MARY.  [Feeling his sleeve] Go and change, Dad.

MR MARCH.  Women's shoes!  We could have made the Tube but for your
shoes.

MARY.  It was your cold feet, not mine, dear.  [Looking at FAITH and
nudging him]  Now!

     She goes towards the door, turns to look at FAITH still clearing the
     table, and goes out.

MR MARCH.  [In front of the hearth]  Nasty spring weather, Faith.

FAITH.  [Still in the mood of the kiss]  Yes, Sir.

MR MARCH.  [Sotto voce] "In the spring a young man's fancy."  I--I wanted
to say something to you in a friendly way.

     FAITH regards him as he struggles on.  Because I feel very friendly
     towards you.

FAITH.  Yes.

MR MARCH.  So you won't take what I say in bad part?

FAITH.  No.

MR MARCH.  After what you've been through, any man with a sense of
chivalry--

     FAITH gives a little shrug.

Yes, I know--but we don't all support the Government.

FAITH.  I don't know anything about the Government.

MR MARCH.  [Side-tracked on to his hobby]  Ah I forgot.  You saw no
newspapers.  But you ought to pick up the threads now.  What paper does
Cook take?

FAITH.  "COSY."

MR MARCH.  "Cosy"?  I don't seem--  What are its politics?

FAITH.  It hasn't any--only funny bits, and fashions.  It's full of
corsets.

MR MARCH.  What does Cook want with corsets?

FAITH.  She likes to think she looks like that.

MR MARCH.  By George!  Cook an idealist!  Let's see!--er--I was speaking
of chivalry.  My son, you know--er--my son has got it.

FAITH.  Badly?

MR MARCH.  [Suddenly alive to the fact that she is playing with him] I
started by being sorry for you.

FAITH.  Aren't you, any more?

MR MARCH.  Look here, my child!

FAITH looks up at him.  [Protectingly]  We want to do our best for you.
Now, don't spoil it by--  Well, you know!

FAITH.  [Suddenly]  Suppose you'd been stuffed away in a hole for years!

MR MARCH.  [Side-tracked again] Just what your father said.  The more I
see of Mr Bly, the more wise I think him.

FAITH.  About other people.

MR MARCH.  What sort of bringing up did he give you?

     FAITH smiles wryly and shrugs her shoulders.

MR MARCH.  H'm!  Here comes the sun again!

FAITH.  [Taking up the flower which is lying on the table]  May I have
this flower?

MR MARCH.  Of Course.  You can always take what flowers you like--that
is--if--er--

FAITH.  If Mrs March isn't about?

MR MARCH.  I meant, if it doesn't spoil the look of the table.  We must
all be artists in our professions, mustn't we?

FAITH.  My profession was cutting hair.  I would like to cut yours.

     MR MARCH'S hands instinctively go up to it.

MR MARCH.  You mightn't think it, but I'm talking to you seriously.

FAITH.  I was, too.

MR MARCH.  [Out of his depth]  Well!  I got wet; I must go and change.

     FAITH follows him with her eyes as he goes out, and resumes the
     clearing of the table.  She has paused and is again smelling at the
     flower when she hears the door, and quickly resumes her work.  It is
     MRS MARCH, who comes in and goes to the writing table, Left Back,
     without looking at FAITH.  She sits there writing a cheque, while
     FAITH goes on clearing.

MRS MARCH.  [Suddenly, in an unruffled voice] I have made your cheque out
for four pounds.  It's rather more than the fortnight, and a month's
notice.  There'll be a cab for you in an hour's time.  Can you be ready
by then?

FAITH.  [Astonished]  What for--ma'am?

MRS MARCH.  You don't suit.

FAITH.  Why?

MRS MARCH.  Do you wish for the reason?

FAITH.  [Breathless] Yes.

MRS MARCH.  Cook saw you just now.

FAITH.  [Blankly] Oh! I didn't mean her to.

MRS MARCH.  Obviously.

FAITH.  I--I--

MRS MARCH.  Now go and pack up your things.

FAITH.  He asked me to be a friend to him.  He said he was lonely here.

MRS MARCH.  Don't be ridiculous.  Cook saw you kissing him with p--p--

FAITH.  [Quickly]  Not with pep.

MRS MARCH.  I was going to say "passion."  Now, go quietly.

FAITH.  Where am I to go?

MRS MARCH.  You will have four pounds, and you can get another place.

FAITH.  How?

MRS MARCH.  That's hardly my affair.

FAITH.  [Tossing her head] All right!

MRS MARCH.  I'll speak to your father, if he isn't gone.

FAITH.  Why do you send me away--just for a kiss!  What's a kiss?

MRS MARCH.  That will do.

FAITH.  [Desperately] He wanted to--to save me.

MRS MARCH.  You know perfectly well people can only save themselves.

FAITH.  I don't care for your son; I've got a young--[She checks herself]
I--I'll leave your son alone, if he leaves me.

     MRS MARCH rings the bell on the table.

[Desolately] Well?  [She moves towards the door.  Suddenly holding out
the flower]  Mr March gave me that flower; would you like it back?

MRS MARCH.  Don't be absurd!  If you want more money till you get a
place, let me know.

FAITH.  I won't trouble you.

     She goes out.

     MRS MARCH goes to the window and drums her fingers on the pane.

     COOK enters.

MRS MARCH.  Cook, if Mr Bly's still here, I want to see him.  Oh!  And
it's three now.  Have a cab at four o'clock.

COOK.  [Almost tearful] Oh, ma'am--anybody but Master Johnny, and I'd
'ave been a deaf an' dummy.  Poor girl!  She's not responsive, I daresay.
Suppose I was to speak to Master Johnny?

MRS MARCH.  No, no, Cook!  Where's Mr Bly?

COOK.  He's done his windows; he's just waiting for his money.

MRS MARCH.  Then get him; and take that tray.

COOK.  I remember the master kissin' me, when he was a boy.  But then he
never meant anything; so different from Master Johnny.  Master Johnny
takes things to 'eart.

MRS MARCH.  Just so, Cook.

COOK.  There's not an ounce of vice in 'im.  It's all his goodness, dear
little feller.

MRS MARCH.  That's the danger, with a girl like that.

COOK.  It's eatin' hearty all of a sudden that's made her poptious.  But
there, ma'am, try her again.  Master Johnny'll be so cut up!

MRS MARCH.  No playing with fire, Cook.  We were foolish to let her come.

COOK.  Oh!  dear, he will be angry with me.  If you hadn't been in the
kitchen and heard me, ma'am, I'd ha' let it pass.

MRS MARCH.  That would have been very wrong of you.

COOK.  Ah!  But I'd do a lot of wrong things for Master Johnny.  There's
always some one you'll go wrong for!

MRS MARCH.  Well, get Mr Bly;  and take that tray, there's a good soul.

     COOK goes out with the tray; and while waiting, MRS MARCH finishes
     clearing the table.  She has not quite finished when MR BLY enters.

BLY.  Your service, ma'am!

MRS MARCH.  [With embarrassment]  I'm very sorry, Mr Bly, but
circumstances over which I have no control--

BLY.  [With deprecation]  Ah! we all has them.  The winders ought to be
done once a week now the Spring's on 'em.

MRS MARCH.  No, no; it's your daughter--

BLY.  [Deeply]  Not been given' way to'er instincts, I do trust.

MRS MARCH.  Yes.  I've just had to say good-bye to her.

BLY.  [Very blank]  Nothing to do with property, I hope?

MRS MARCH.  No, no!  Giddiness with my son.  It's impossible; she really
must learn.

BLY.  Oh! but 'oo's to learn 'er?  Couldn't you learn your son instead?

MRS MARCH.  No.  My son is very high-minded.

BLY.  [Dubiously] I see.  How am I goin' to get over this?  Shall I tell
you what I think, ma'am?

MRS MARCH.  I'm afraid it'll be no good.

BLY.  That's it.  Character's born, not made.  You can clean yer winders
and clean 'em, but that don't change the colour of the glass.  My father
would have given her a good hidin', but I shan't.  Why not?  Because my
glass ain't as thick as his.  I see through it; I see my girl's
temptations, I see what she is--likes a bit o' life, likes a flower, an'
a dance.  She's a natural morganatic.

MRS MARCH.  A what?

BLY.  Nothin'll ever make her regular.  Mr March'll understand how I
feel.  Poor girl!  In the mud again.  Well, we must keep smilin'.  [His
face is as long as his arm]  The poor 'ave their troubles, there's no
doubt.  [He turns to go]  There's nothin' can save her but money, so as
she can do as she likes.  Then she wouldn't want to do it.

MRS MARCH.  I'm very sorry, but there it is.

BLY.  And I thought she was goin' to be a success here.  Fact is, you
can't see anything till it 'appens.  There's winders all round, but you
can't see.  Follow your instincts--it's the only way.

MRS MARCH.  It hasn't helped your daughter.

BLY.  I was speakin' philosophic!  Well, I'll go 'ome now, and prepare
meself for the worst.

MRS MARCH.  Has Cook given you your money?

BLY.  She 'as.

     He goes out gloomily and is nearly overthrown in the doorway by the
     violent entry of JOHNNY.

JOHNNY.  What's this, Mother?  I won't have it--it's pre-war.

MRS MARCH.  [Indicating MR BLY] Johnny!

     JOHNNY waves BLY out of the room and doses the door.

JOHNNY.  I won't have her go.  She's a pathetic little creature.

MRS MARCH.  [Unruffled]  She's a minx.

JOHNNY.  Mother!

MRS MARCH.  Now, Johnny, be sensible.  She's a very pretty girl, and this
is my house.

JOHNNY.  Of course you think the worst.  Trust anyone who wasn't in the
war for that!

MRS MARCH.  I don't think either the better or the worse.  Kisses are
kisses!

JOHNNY.  Mother, you're like the papers--you put in all the vice and
leave out all the virtue, and call that human nature.  The kiss was an
accident that I bitterly regret.

MRS MARCH.  Johnny, how can you?

JOHNNY.  Dash it!  You know what I mean.  I regret it with my--my
conscience.  It shan't occur again.

MRS MARCH.  Till next time.

JOHNNY.  Mother, you make me despair.  You're so matter-of-fact, you
never give one credit for a pure ideal.

MRS MARCH.  I know where ideals lead.

JOHNNY.  Where?

MRS MARCH.  Into the soup.  And the purer they are, the hotter the soup.

JOHNNY.  And you married father!

MRS MARCH.  I did.

JOHNNY.  Well, that girl is not to be chucked out; won't have her on my
chest.

MRS MARCH.  That's why she's going, Johnny.

JOHNNY.  She is not.  Look at me!

     MRS MARCH looks at him from across the dining-table, for he has
     marched up to it, till they are staring at each other across the now
     cleared rosewood.

MRS MARCH.  How are you going to stop her?

JOHNNY.  Oh, I'll stop her right enough.  If I stuck it out in Hell, I
can stick it out in Highgate.

MRS MARCH.  Johnny, listen.  I've watched this girl; and I don't watch
what I want to see--like your father--I watch what is.  She's not a hard
case--yet; but she will be.

JOHNNY.  And why?  Because all you matter-of-fact people make up your
minds to it.  What earthly chance has she had?

MRS MARCH.  She's a baggage.  There are such things, you know, Johnny.

JOHNNY.  She's a little creature who went down in the scrum and has been
kicked about ever since.

MRS MARCH.  I'll give her money, if you'll keep her at arm's length.

JOHNNY.  I call that revolting.  What she wants is the human touch.

MRS MARCH.  I've not a doubt of it.

     JOHNNY rises in disgust.

Johnny, what is the use of wrapping the thing up in catchwords?  Human
touch!  A young man like you never saved a girl like her.  It's as
fantastic as--as Tolstoi's "Resurrection."

JOHNNY.  Tolstoi was the most truthful writer that ever lived.

MRS MARCH.  Tolstoi was a Russian--always proving that what isn't, is.

JOHNNY.  Russians are charitable, anyway, and see into other people's
souls.

MRS MARCH.  That's why they're hopeless.

JOHNNY.  Well--for cynicism--

MRS MARCH.  It's at least as important, Johnny, to see into ourselves as
into other people.  I've been trying to make your father understand that
ever since we married.  He'd be such a good writer if he did--he wouldn't
write at all.

JOHNNY.  Father has imagination.

MRS MARCH.  And no business to meddle with practical affairs.  You and he
always ride in front of the hounds.  Do you remember when the war broke
out, how angry you were with me because I said we were fighting from a
sense of self-preservation?  Well, weren't we?

JOHNNY.  That's what I'm doing now, anyway.

MRS MARCH.  Saving this girl, to save yourself?

JOHNNY.  I must have something decent to do sometimes.  There isn't an
ideal left.

MRS MARCH.  If you knew how tired I am of the word, Johnny!

JOHNNY.  There are thousands who feel like me--that the bottom's out of
everything.  It sickens me that anything in the least generous should get
sat on by all you people who haven't risked your lives.

MRS MARCH.  [With a smile]  I risked mine when you were born, Johnny.
You were always very difficult.

JOHNNY.  That girl's been telling me--I can see the whole thing.

MRS MARCH.  The fact that she suffered doesn't alter her nature; or the
danger to you and us.

JOHNNY.  There is no danger--I told her I didn't mean it.

MRS MARCH.  And she smiled?  Didn't she?

JOHNNY.  I--I don't know.

MRS MARCH.  If you were ordinary, Johnny, it would be the girl's look-
out.  But you're not, and I'm not going to have you in the trap she'll
set for you.

JOHNNY.  You think she's a designing minx.  I tell you she's got no more
design in her than a rabbit.  She's just at the mercy of anything.

MRS MARCH.  That's the trap.  She'll play on your feelings, and you'll be
caught.

JOHNNY.  I'm not a baby.

MRS MARCH.  You are--and she'll smother you.

JOHNNY.  How beastly women are to each other!

MRS MARCH.  We know ourselves, you see.  The girl's father realises
perfectly what she is.

JOHNNY.  Mr Bly is a dodderer.  And she's got no mother.  I'll bet you've
never realised the life girls who get outed lead.  I've seen them--I saw
them in France.  It gives one the horrors.

MRS MARCH.  I can imagine it.  But no girl gets "outed," as you call it,
unless she's predisposed that way.

JOHNNY.  That's all you know of the pressure of life.

MRS MARCH.  Excuse me, Johnny.  I worked three years among factory girls,
and I know how they manage to resist things when they've got stuff in
them.

JOHNNY.  Yes, I know what you mean by stuff--good hard self-preservative
instinct.  Why should the wretched girl who hasn't got that be turned
down?  She wants protection all the more.

MRS MARCH.  I've offered to help with money till she gets a place.

JOHNNY.  And you know she won't take it.  She's got that much stuff in
her.  This place is her only chance.  I appeal to you, Mother--please
tell her not to go.

MRS MARCH.  I shall not, Johnny.

JOHNNY.  [Turning abruptly]  Then we know where we are.

MRS MARCH.  I know where you'll be before a week's over.

JOHNNY.  Where?

MRS MARCH.  In her arms.

JOHNNY.  [From the door, grimly]  If I am, I'll have the right to be!

MRS MARCH.  Johnny!  [But he is gone.]

     MRS MARCH follows to call him back, but is met by MARY.

MARY.  So you've tumbled, Mother?

MRS MARCH.  I should think I have!  Johnny is making an idiot of himself
about that girl.

MARY.  He's got the best intentions.

MRS MARCH.  It's all your father.  What can one expect when your father
carries on like a lunatic over his paper every morning?

MARY.  Father must have opinions of his own.

MRS MARCH.  He has only one: Whatever is, is wrong.

MARY.  He can't help being intellectual, Mother.

MRS MARCH.  If he would only learn that the value of a sentiment is the
amount of sacrifice you are prepared to make for it!

MARY.  Yes:  I read that in "The Times" yesterday.  Father's much safer
than Johnny.  Johnny isn't safe at all; he might make a sacrifice any
day.  What were they doing?

MRS MARCH.  Cook caught them kissing.

MARY.  How truly horrible!

     As she speaks MR MARCH comes in.

MR MARCH.  I met Johnny using the most poetic language.  What's happened?

MRS MARCH.  He and that girl.  Johnny's talking nonsense about wanting to
save her.  I've told her to pack up.

MR MARCH.  Isn't that rather coercive, Joan?

MRS MARCH.  Do you approve of Johnny getting entangled with this girl?

MR MARCH.  No.  I was only saying to Mary--

MRS MARCH.  Oh!  You were!

MR MARCH.  But I can quite see why Johnny--

MRS MARCH.  The Government, I suppose!

MR MARCH.  Certainlv.

MRS MARCH.  Well, perhaps you'll get us out of the mess you've got us
into.

MR MARCH.  Where's the girl?

MRS MARCH.  In her room-packing.

MR MARCH.  We must devise means--

     MRS MARCH smiles.

The first thing is to see into them--and find out exactly--

MRS MARCH.  Heavens!  Are you going to have them X-rayed?  They haven't
got chest trouble, Geof.

MR MARCH.  They may have heart trouble.  It's no good being hasty, Joan.

MRS MARCH.  Oh!  For a man that can't see an inch into human nature, give
me a--psychological novelist!

MR MARCH.  [With dignity]  Mary, go and see where Johnny is.

MARY.  Do you want him here?

MR MARCH.  Yes.

MARY.  [Dubiously]  Well--if I can.

     She goes out.  A silence, during which the MARCHES look at each
     other by those turns which characterise exasperated domesticity.

MRS MARCH.  If she doesn't go, Johnny must.  Are you going to turn him
out?

MR MARCH.  Of course not.  We must reason with him.

MRS MARCH.  Reason with young people whose lips were glued together half
an hour ago!  Why ever did you force me to take this girl?

MR MARCH.  [Ruefully]  One can't always resist a kindly impulse, Joan.
What does Mr Bly say to it?

MRS MARCH.  Mr Bly?  "Follow your instincts "and then complains of his
daughter for following them.

MR MARCH.  The man's a philosopher.

MRS MARCH.  Before we know where we are, we shall be having Johnny
married to that girl.

MR MARCH.  Nonsense!

MRS MARCH.  Oh, Geof!  Whenever you're faced with reality, you say
"Nonsense!"  You know Johnny's got chivalry on the brain.

     MARY comes in.

MARY.  He's at the top of the servants' staircase; outside her room.
He's sitting in an armchair, with its back to her door.

MR MARCH.  Good Lord!  Direct action!

MARY.  He's got his pipe, a pound of chocolate, three volumes of "Monte
Cristo," and his old concertina.  He says it's better than the trenches.

MR MARCH.  My hat!  Johnny's made a joke.  This is serious.

MARY.  Nobody can get up, and she can't get down.  He says he'll stay
there till all's blue, and it's no use either of you coming unless mother
caves in.

MR MARCH.  I wonder if Cook could do anything with him?

MARY.  She's tried.  He told her to go to hell.

MR MARCH.  I Say!  And what did Cook--?

MARY.  She's gone.

MR MARCH.  Tt!  tt!  This is very awkward.

     COOK enters through the door which MARY has left open.

MR MARCH.  Ah,  Cook!  You're  back, then?  What's to be done?

MRS MARCH.  [With a laugh]  We must devise means!

COOK.  Oh, ma'am, it does remind me so of the tantrums he used to get
into, dear little feller!  Smiles with recollection.

MRS MARCH.  [Sharply]  You're not to take him up anything to eat, Cook!

COOK.  Oh!  But Master Johnny does get so hungry.  It'll drive him wild,
ma'am.  Just a Snack now and then!

MRS MARCH.  No, Cook.  Mind--that's flat!

COOK.  Aren't I to feed Faith, ma'am?

MR MARCH.  Gad!  It wants it!

MRS MARCH.  Johnny must come down to earth.

COOK.  Ah!  I remember how he used to fall down when he was little--he
would go about with his head in the air.  But he always picked himself up
like a little man.

MARY.  Listen!

     They all listen.  The distant sounds of a concertina being played
     with fury drift in through the open door.

COOK.  Don't it sound 'eavenly!

The concertina utters a long wail.


                              CURTAIN.




ACT III

The MARCH'S dining-room on the same evening at the end of a perfunctory
dinner.  MRS MARCH sits at the dining-table with her back to the windows,
MARY opposite the hearth, and MR MARCH with his back to it.  JOHNNY is
not present.  Silence and gloom.

MR MARCH.  We always seem to be eating.

MRS MARCH.  You've eaten nothing.

MR MARCH.  [Pouring himself out a liqueur glass of brandy but not
drinking it]  It's humiliating to think we can't exist without.
[Relapses into gloom.]

MRS MARCH.  Mary, pass him the walnuts.

MARY.  I was thinking of taking them up to Johnny.

MR MARCH.  [Looking at his watch]  He's been there six hours; even he
can't live on faith.

MRS MARCH.  If Johnny wants to make a martyr of himself, I can't help it.

MARY.  How many days are you going to let him sit up there, Mother?

MR MARCH.  [Glancing at MRS MARCH]  I never in my life knew anything so
ridiculous.

MRS MARCH.  Give me a little glass of brandy, Geof.

MR MARCH.  Good!  That's the first step towards seeing reason.

     He pours brandy into a liqueur glass from the decanter which stands
     between them.  MRS MARCH puts the brandy to her lips and makes a
     little face, then swallows it down manfully.  MARY gets up with the
     walnuts and goes.  Silence.  Gloom.

MRS MARCH.  Horrid stuff!

MR MARCH.  Haven't you begun to see that your policy's hopeless, Joan?
Come!  Tell the girl she can stay.  If we make Johnny feel victorious--we
can deal with him.  It's just personal pride--the curse of this world.
Both you and Johnny are as stubborn as mules.

MRS MARCH.  Human nature is stubborn, Geof.  That's what you easy--going
people never see.

     MR MARCH gets up, vexed, and goes to the fireplace.

MR MARCH.  [Turning]  Well!  This goes further than you think.  It
involves Johnny's affection and respect for you.

     MRS MARCH nervously refills the little brandy glass, and again
     empties it, with a grimacing shudder.

MR MARCH.  [Noticing]  That's better!  You'll begin to see things
presently.

     MARY re-enters.

MARY.  He's been digging himself in.  He's put a screen across the head
of the stairs, and got Cook's blankets.  He's going to sleep there.

MRS MARCH.  Did he take the walnuts?

MARY.  No; he passed them in to her.  He says he's on hunger strike.  But
he's eaten all the chocolate and smoked himself sick.  He's having the
time of his life, mother.

MR MARCH.  There you are!

MRS MARCH.  Wait till this time to-morrow.

MARY.  Cook's been up again.  He wouldn't let her pass.  She'll have to
sleep in the spare room.

MR MARCH.  I say!

MARY.  And he's got the books out of her room.

MRS MARCH.  D'you know what they are?  "The Scarlet Pimpernel,"
"The Wide Wide World," and the Bible.

MARY.  Johnny likes romance.

     She crosses to the fire.

MR MARCH.  [In a low voice] Are you going to leave him up there with the
girl and that inflammatory literature, all night?  Where's your common
sense, Joan?

     MRS MARCH starts up, presses her hand over her brow, and sits down
     again.  She is stumped.

[With consideration for her defeat]  Have another tot!  [He pours it out]
Let Mary go up with a flag of truce, and ask them both to come down for a
thorough discussion of the whole thing, on condition that they can go up
again if we don't come to terms.

MRS MARCH.  Very well!  I'm quite willing to meet him.  I hate
quarrelling with Johnny.

MR MARCH.  Good!  I'll go myself.  [He goes out.]

MARY.  Mother, this isn't a coal strike; don't discuss it for three hours
and then at the end ask Johnny and the girl to do precisely what you're
asking them to do now.

MRS MARCH.  Why should I?

MARY.  Because it's so usual.  Do fix on half-way at once.

MRS MARCH.  There is no half-way.

MARY.  Well, for goodness sake think of a plan which will make you both
look victorious.  That's always done in the end.  Why not let her stay,
and make Johnny promise only to see her in the presence of a third party?

MRS MARCH.  Because she'd see him every day while he was looking for the
third party.  She'd help him look for it.

MARY.  [With a gurgle]  Mother, I'd no idea you were so--French.

MRS MARCH.  It seems to me you none of you have any idea what I am.

MARY.  Well, do remember that there'll be no publicity to make either of
you look small.  You can have Peace with Honour, whatever you decide.
[Listening]  There they are!  Now, Mother, don't be logical!  It's so
feminine.

     As the door opens, MRS MARCH nervously fortifies herself with the
     third little glass of brandy.  She remains seated.  MARY is on her
     right.

     MR MARCH leads into the room and stands next his daughter, then
     FAITH in hat and coat to the left of the table, and JOHNNY, pale but
     determined, last.  Assembled thus, in a half fan, of which MRS MARCH
     is the apex, so to speak, they are all extremely embarrassed, and no
     wonder.

     Suddenly MARY gives a little gurgle.

JOHNNY.  You'd think it funnier if you'd just come out of prison and were
going to be chucked out of your job, on to the world again.

FAITH.  I didn't want to come down here.  If I'm to go I want to go at
once.  And if I'm not, it's my evening out, please.

     She moves towards the door.  JOHNNY takes her by the shoulders.

JOHNNY.  Stand still, and leave it to me.  [FAITH looks up at him,
hypnotized by his determination]  Now, mother, I've come down at your
request to discuss this; are you ready to keep her?  Otherwise up we go
again.

MR MARCH.  That's not the way to go to work, Johnny.  You mustn't ask
people to eat their words raw--like that.

JOHNNY.  Well, I've had no dinner, but I'm not going to eat my words, I
tell you plainly.

MRS MARCH.  Very well then; go up again.

MARY.  [Muttering]  Mother--logic.

MR MARCH.  Great Scott!  You two haven't the faintest idea of how to
conduct a parley.  We have--to--er--explore every path to--find a way to
peace.

MRS MARCH.  [To FAITH]  Have you thought of anything to do, if you leave
here?

FAITH.  Yes.

JOHNNY.  What?

FAITH.  I shan't say.

JOHNNY.  Of course, she'll just chuck herself away.

FAITH.  No, I won't.  I'll go to a place I know of, where they don't want
references.

JOHNNY.  Exactly!

MRS MARCH.  [To FAITH]  I want to ask you a question.  Since you came
out, is this the first young man who's kissed you?

     FAITH has hardly had time to start and manifest what may or may not
     be indignation when MR MARCH dashes his hands through his hair.

MR MARCH.  Joan, really!

JOHNNY.  [Grimly]  Don't condescend to answer!

MRS MARCH.  I thought we'd met to get at the truth.

MARY.  But do they ever?

FAITH.  I will go out!

JOHNNY.  No!  [And, as his back is against the door, she can't]  I'll see
that you're not insulted any more.

MR MARCH.  Johnny, I know you have the best intentions, but really the
proper people to help the young are the old--like--

     FAITH suddenly turns her eyes on him, and he goes on rather
     hurriedly

--your mother.  I'm sure that she and I will be ready to stand by Faith.

FAITH.  I don't want charity.

MR MARCH.  No, no!  But I hope--

MRS MARCH.  To devise means.

MR MARCH.  [Roused]  Of course, if nobody will modify their attitude-
Johnny, you ought to be ashamed of yourself, and [To MRS MARCH] so ought
you, Joan.

JOHNNY.  [Suddenly]  I'll modify mine.  [To FAITH] Come here--close!  [In
a low voice to FAITH]  Will you give me your word to stay here, if I make
them keep you?

FAITH.  Why?

JOHNNY.  To stay here quietly for the next two years?

FAITH.  I don't know.

JOHNNY.  I can make them, if you'll promise.

FAITH.  You're just in a temper.

JOHNNY.  Promise!

     During this colloquy the MARCHES have been so profoundly uneasy that
     MRS MARCH has poured out another glass of brandy.

MR MARCH.  Johnny, the terms of the Armistice didn't include this sort of
thing.  It was to be all open and above-board.

JOHNNY.  Well, if you don't keep her, I shall clear out.

     At this bombshell MRS MARCH rises.

MARY.  Don't joke, Johnny!  You'll do yourself an injury.

JOHNNY.  And if I go, I go for good.

MR MARCH.  Nonsense, Johnny!  Don't carry a good thing too far!

JOHNNY.  I mean it.

MRS MARCH.  What will you live on?

JOHNNY.  Not poetry.

MRS MARCH.  What, then?

JOHNNY.  Emigrate or go into the Police.

MR MARCH.  Good Lord!  [Going up to his wife--in a low voice]  Let her
stay till Johnny's in his right mind.

FAITH.  I don't want to stay.

JOHNNY.  You shall!

MARY.  Johnny, don't be a lunatic!

     COOK enters, flustered.

COOK.  Mr Bly, ma'am, come after his daughter.

MR MARCH.  He can have her--he can have her!

COOK.  Yes, sir.  But, you see, he's--Well, there!  He's cheerful.

MR MARCH.  Let him come and take his daughter away.

     But MR BLY has entered behind him.  He has a fixed expression, and
     speaks with a too perfect accuracy.

BLY.  Did your two Cooks tell you I'm here?

MR MARCH.  If you want your daughter, you can take her.

JOHNNY.  Mr Bly, get out!

BLY.  [Ignoring him]  I don't want any fuss with your two cooks.
[Catching sight of MRS MARCH] I've prepared myself for this.

MRS MARCH.  So we see.

BLY.  I 'ad a bit o' trouble, but I kep' on till I see 'Aigel walkin' at
me in the loo-lookin' glass.  Then I knew I'd got me balance.

     They all regard MR BLY in a fascinated manner.

FAITH.  Father!  You've been drinking.

BLY.  [Smiling]  What do you think.

MR MARCH.  We have a certain sympathy with you, Mr Bly.

BLY.  [Gazing at his daughter]  I don't want that one.  I'll take the
other.

MARY.  Don't repeat yourself, Mr Bly.

BLY.  [With a flash of muddled insight]  Well!  There's two of everybody;
two of my daughter; an' two of the 'Ome Secretary; and two-two of Cook-
an' I don't want either.  [He waves COOK aside, and grasps at a void
alongside FAITH]  Come along!

MR MARCH.  [Going up to him] Very well, Mr Bly!  See her home, carefully.
Good-night!

BLY.  Shake hands!

     He extends his other hand; MR MARCH grasps it and turns him round
     towards the door.

MR MARCH.  Now, take her away!  Cook, go and open the front door for Mr
Bly and his daughter.

BLY.  Too many Cooks!

MR MARCH.  Now then, Mr Bly, take her along!

BLY.  [Making no attempt to acquire the real FAITH--to an apparition
which he leads with his right hand] You're the one that died when my girl
was 'ung.  Will you go--first or shall--I?

     The apparition does not answer.

MARY.  Don't!  It's horrible!

FAITH.  I did die.

BLY.  Prepare yourself.  Then you'll see what you never saw before.

     He goes out with his apparition, shepherded by MR MARCH.

     MRS MARCH drinks off her fourth glass of brandy.  A peculiar whistle
     is heard through the open door, and FAITH starts forward.

JOHNNY.  Stand still!

FAITH.  I--I must go.

MARY.  Johnny--let her!

FAITH.  There's a friend waiting for me.

JOHNNY.  Let her wait!  You're not fit to go out to-night.

MARY.  Johnny!  Really!  You're not the girl's Friendly Society!

JOHNNY.  You none of you care a pin's head what becomes of her.  Can't
you see she's on the edge?  The whistle is heard again, but fainter.

FAITH.  I'm not in prison now.

JOHNNY.  [Taking her by the arm]  All right!  I'll come with you.

FAITH.  [Recoiling]  No.

     Voices are heard in the hall.

MARY.  Who's that with father?  Johnny, for goodness' sake don't make us
all ridiculous.

     MR MARCH'S voice is heard saying: "Your friend in here."  He enters,
     followed by a reluctant young man in a dark suit, with dark hair and
     a pale square face, enlivened by strange, very living, dark, bull's
     eyes.

MR MARCH.  [To FAITH, who stands shrinking a little]  I came on this--er
--friend of yours outside; he's been waiting for you some time, he says.

MRS MARCH.  [To FAITH]  You can go now.

JOHNNY.  [Suddenly, to the YOUNG MAN]  Who are you?

YOUNG M. Ask another!  [To FAITH]  Are you ready?

JOHNNY.  [Seeing red]  No, she's not; and you'll just clear out.

MR MARCH.  Johnny!

YOUNG M.  What have you got to do with her?

JOHNNY.  Quit.

YOUNG M.  I'll quit with her, and not before.  She's my girl.

JOHNNY.  Are you his girl?

FAITH.  Yes.

MRS MARCH sits down again, and reaching out her left hand, mechanically
draws to her the glass of brandy which her husband had poured out for
himself and left undrunk.

JOHNNY.  Then why did you--[He is going to say: "Kiss me," but checks
himself]--let me think you hadn't any friends?  Who is this fellow?

YOUNG M.  A little more civility, please.

JOHNNY.  You look a blackguard, and I believe you are.

MR MARCH.  [With perfunctory authority] I really can't have this sort of
thing in my house.  Johnny, go upstairs; and you two, please go away.

YOUNG M. [To JOHNNY]  We know the sort of chap you are--takin' advantage
of workin' girls.

JOHNNY.  That's a foul lie.  Come into the garden and I'll prove it on
your carcase.

YOUNG M.  All right!

FAITH.  No; he'll hurt you.  He's been in the war.

JOHNNY.  [To the YOUNG MAN]  You haven't, I'll bet.

YOUNG M.  I didn't come here to be slanged.

JOHNNY.  This poor girl is going to have a fair deal, and you're not
going to give it her.  I can see that with half an eye.

YOUNG M. You'll see it with no eyes when I've done with you.

JOHNNY.  Come on, then.

     He goes up to the windows.

MR MARCH.  For God's sake, Johnny, stop this vulgar brawl!

FAITH.  [Suddenly] I'm not a "poor girl" and I won't be called one.
I don't want any soft words.  Why can't you let me be?  [Pointing to
JOHNNY]  He talks wild.  [JOHNNY clutches the edge of the writing-table]
Thinks he can "rescue" me.  I don't want to be rescued.  I--[All the
feeling of years rises to the surface now that the barrier has broken]
--I want to be let alone.  I've paid for everything I've done--a pound
for every shilling's worth.

And all because of one minute when I was half crazy.  [Flashing round at
MARY]  Wait till you've had a baby you oughtn't to have had, and not a
penny in your pocket!  It's money--money--all money!

YOUNG M.  Sst!  That'll do!

FAITH.  I'll have what I like now, not what you think's good for me.

MR MARCH.  God knows we don't want to--

FAITH.  You mean very well, Mr March, but you're no good.

MR MARCH.  I knew it.

FAITH.  You were very kind to me.  But you don't see; nobody sees.

YOUNG M.  There!  That's enough!  You're gettin' excited.  You come away
with me.

     FAITH's look at him is like the look of a dog at her master.

JOHNNY.  [From the background] I know you're a blackguard--I've seen your
sort.

FAITH.  [Firing up]  Don't call him names!  I won't have it.  I'll go
with whom I choose!  [Her eyes suddenly fix themselves on the YOUNG MAN'S
face]  And I'm going with him!

     COOK enters.

MR MARCH.  What now, Cook?

COOK.  A Mr Barnabas in the hall, sir.  From the police.

     Everybody starts.  MRS MARCH drinks off her fifth little glass of
     brandy, then sits again.

MR MARCH.  From the police?

     He goes out, followed by COOK.  A moment's suspense.

YOUNG M.  Well, I can't wait any longer.  I suppose we can go out the
back way?

     He draws FAITH towards the windows.  But JOHNNY stands there,
     barring the way.  JOHNNY.  No, you don't.

FAITH.  [Scared] Oh!  Let me go--let him go!

JOHNNY.  You may go.  [He takes her arm to pull her to the window]  He
can't.

FAITH.  [Freeing herself]  No--no!  Not if he doesn't.

     JOHNNY has an evident moment of hesitation, and before it is over MR
     MARCH comes in again, followed by a man in a neat suit of plain
     clothes.

MR MARCH.  I should like you to say that in front of her.

P. C. MAN.  Your service, ma'am.  Afraid I'm intruding here.  Fact is,
I've been waiting for a chance to speak to this young woman quietly.
It's rather public here, sir; but if you wish, of course, I'll mention
it.  [He waits for some word from some one; no one speaks, so he goes on
almost apologetically]  Well, now, you're in a good place here, and you
ought to keep it.  You don't want fresh trouble, I'm sure.

FAITH.  [Scared]  What do you want with me?

P. C. MAN.  I don't want to frighten you; but we've had word passed that
you're associating with the young man there.  I observed him to-night
again, waiting outside here and whistling.

YOUNG M.  What's the matter with whistling?

P. C. MAN.  [Eyeing him]  I should keep quiet if I was you.  As you know,
sir [To MR MARCH]  there's a law nowadays against soo-tenors.

MR MARCH.  Soo--?

JOHNNY.  I knew it.

P. C. MAN.  [Deprecating]  I don't want to use any plain English--with
ladies present--

YOUNG M.  I don't know you.  What are you after?  Do you dare--?

P. C. MAN.  We cut the darin', 'tisn't necessary.  We know all about you.

FAITH.  It's a lie!

P. C. MAN.  There, miss, don't let your feelings--

FAITH.  [To the YOUNG MAN]  It's a lie, isn't it?

YOUNG M.  A blankety lie.

MR MARCH.  [To BARNABAs]  Have you actual proof?

YOUNG M.  Proof?  It's his job to get chaps into a mess.

P. C. MAN.  [Sharply] None of your lip, now!

     At the new tone in his voice FAITH turns and visibly quails, like a
     dog that has been shown a whip.

MR MARCH.  Inexpressibly painful!

YOUNG M.  Ah!  How would you like to be insulted in front of your girl?
If you're a gentleman you'll tell him to leave the house.  If he's got a
warrant, let him produce it; if he hasn't, let him get out.

P. C. MAN.  [To MR MARCH]  You'll understand, sir, that my object in
speakin' to you to-night was for the good of the girl.  Strictly, I've
gone a bit out of my way.  If my job was to get men into trouble, as he
says, I'd only to wait till he's got hold of her.  These fellows, you
know, are as cunning as lynxes and as impudent as the devil.

YOUNG M.  Now, look here, if I get any more of this from you--I--I'll
consult a lawyer.

JOHNNY.  Fellows like you--

MR MARCH.  Johnny!

P. C. MAN.  Your son, sir?

YOUNG M.  Yes; and wants to be where I am.  But my girl knows better;
don't you?

     He gives FAITH a look which has a certain magnetism.

P. C. MAN.  If we could have the Court cleared of ladies, sir, we might
speak a little plainer.

MR MARCH.  Joan!

     But MRS MARCH does not vary her smiling immobility; FAITH draws a
     little nearer to the YOUNG MAN.  MARY turns to the fire.

P. C. MAN.  [With half a smile]  I keep on forgettin' that women are men
nowadays.  Well!

YOUNG M.  When you've quite done joking, we'll go for our walk.

MR MARCH.  [To BARNABAS] I think you'd better tell her anything you know.

P. C. MAN.  [Eyeing FAITH and the YOUNG MAN] I'd rather not be more
precise, sir, at this stage.

YOUNG M.  I should think not!  Police spite!  [To FAITH] You know what
the Law is, once they get a down on you.

P. C. MAN.  [To MR MARCH] It's our business to keep an eye on all this
sort of thing, sir, with girls who've just come out.

JOHNNY.  [Deeply] You've only to look at his face!

YOUNG M.  My face is as good as yours.

     FAITH lifts her eyes to his.

P. C. MAN.  [Taking in that look]  Well, there it is!  Sorry I wasted my
time and yours, Sir!

MR MARCH.  [Distracted] My goodness!  Now, Faith, consider!  This is the
turning-point.  I've told you we'll stand by you.

FAITH.  [Flashing round]  Leave me alone!  I stick to my friends.  Leave
me alone, and leave him alone!  What is it to you?

P. C. MAN.  [With sudden resolution] Now, look here!  This man George
Blunter was had up three years ago--for livin' on the earnings of a woman
called Johnson.  He was dismissed with a caution.  We got him again last
year over a woman called Lee--that time he did--

YOUNG M.  Stop it!  That's enough of your lip.  I won't put up with this
--not for any woman in the world.  Not I!

FAITH.  [With a sway towards him] It's not--!

YOUNG M.  I'm off!  Bong Swore la Companee!  He tarns on his heel and
walks out unhindered.

P. C. MAN.  [Deeply]  A bad hat, that;  if ever there was one.  We'll be
having him again before long.

     He looks at FAITH.  They all look at FAITH.  But her face is so
     strange, so tremulous, that they all turn their eyes away.

FAITH.  He--he said--he--!

     On the verge of an emotional outbreak, she saves herself by an
     effort.  A painful silence.

P. C. MAN.  Well, sir--that's all.  Good evening!  He turns to the door,
touching his forehead to MR MARCH, and goes.

     As the door closes, FAITH sinks into a chair, and burying her face
     in her hands, sobs silently.  MRS MARCH sits motionless with a faint
     smile.  JOHNNY stands at the window biting his nails.  MARY crosses
     to FAITH.

MARY.  [Softly]  Don't.  You weren't really fond of him?

     FAITH bends her head.

MARY.  But how could you?  He--

FAITH.  I--I couldn't see inside him.

MARY.  Yes;  but he looked--couldn't you see he looked--?

FAITH.  [Suddenly flinging up her head]  If you'd been two years without
a word, you'd believe anyone that said he liked you.

MARY.  Perhaps I should.

FAITH.  But I don't want him--he's a liar.  I don't like liars.

MARY.  I'm awfully sorry.

FAITH.  [Looking at her] Yes--you keep off feeling--then you'll be happy!
[Rising] Good-bye!

MARY.  Where are you going?

FAITH.  To my father.

MARY.  With him in that state?

FAITH.  He won't hurt me.

MARY.  You'd better stay.  Mother, she can stay, can't she?

MRS MARCH nods.

FAITH.  No!

MARY.  Why not?  We're all sorry.  Do!  You'd better.

FAITH.  Father'll come over for my things tomorrow.

MARY.  What are you going to do?

FAITH.  [Proudly]  I'll get on.

JOHNNY.  [From the window] Stop!

     All turn and look at him.  He comes down.  Will you come to me?

     FAITH stares at him.  MRS MARCH continues to smile faintly.

MARY.  [With a horrified gesture] Johnny!

JOHNNY.  Will you?  I'll play cricket if you do.

MR MARCH.  [Under his breath]  Good God!

     He stares in suspense at FAITH, whose face is a curious blend of
     fascination and live feeling.

JOHNNY.  Well?

FAITH. [Softly]  Don't be silly!  I've got no call on you.  You don't
care for me, and I don't for you.  No!  You go and put your head in ice.
[She turns to the door]  Good-bye, Mr March!  I'm sorry I've been so much
trouble.

MR MARCH.  Not at all, not at all!

FAITH.  Oh!  Yes, I have.  There's nothing to be done with a girl like
me.  She goes out.

JOHNNY.  [Taking up the decanter to pour himself out a glass of brandy]
Empty!

COOK.  [Who has entered with a tray]  Yes, my dearie, I'm sure you are.

JOHNNY.  [Staring at his father]  A vision, Dad!  Windows of Clubs--men
sitting there; and that girl going by with rouge on her cheeks--

COOK.  Oh!  Master Johnny!

JOHNNY.  A blue night--the moon over the Park.  And she stops and looks
at it.--What has she wanted--the beautiful--something better than she's
got--something that she'll never get!

COOK.  Oh!  Master Johnny!

     She goes up to JOHNNY and touches his forehead.  He comes to himself
     and hurries to the door, but suddenly MRS MARCH utters a little
     feathery laugh.  She stands up, swaying slightly.  There is
     something unusual and charming in her appearance, as if formality
     had dropped from her.

MRS MARCH.  [With a sort of delicate slow lack of perfect sobriety] I
see--it--all.  You--can't--help--unless--you--love!

     JOHNNY stops and looks round at her.

MR MARCH.  [Moving a little towards her] Joan!

MRS MARCH.  She--wants--to--be--loved.  It's the way of the world.

MARY.  [Turning]  Mother!

MRS MARCH.  You thought she wanted--to be saved.  Silly!  She--just--
wants--to--be--loved.  Quite natural!

MR MARCH.  Joan, what's happened to you?

MRS MARCH.  [Smiling and nodding]  See--people--as--they--are!  Then you
won't be--disappointed.  Don't--have--ideals!  Have--vision--just simple
--vision!

MR MARCH.  Your mother's not well.

MRS MARCH.  [Passing her hand over her forehead]  It's hot in here!

MR MARCH.  Mary!

     MARY throws open the French windows.

MRS MARCH.  [Delightfully] The room's full of GAS.  Open the windows!
Open!  And let's walk--out--into the air!

     She turns and walks delicately out through the opened windows;
     JOHNNY and MARY follow her.  The moonlight and the air flood in.

COOK.  [Coming to the table and taking up the empty decanter] My Holy Ma!

MR MARCH.  Is this the Millennium, Cook?

COOK.  Oh! Master Geoffrey--there isn't a millehennium.  There's too much
human nature.  We must look things in the face.

MR MARCH.  Ah!  Neither up--nor down--but straight in the face!  Quite a
thought, Cook!  Quite a thought!


                                CURTAIN.





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